A DISH OF ORTS

BY

GEORGE MACDONALD

PREFACE. 

Since printing throughout the title _Orts_, a doubt has arisen in mymind as to its fitting the nature of the volume. It could hardly, however, be imagined that I associate the idea of _worthlessness_ withthe work contained in it. No one would insult his readers by offeringthem what he counted valueless scraps, and telling them they were such. These papers, those two even which were caught in the net of theready-writer from extempore utterance, whatever their merits inthemselves; are the results of by no means trifling labour. So much aman _ought_ to be able to say for his work. And hence I might defend, ifnot quite justify my title--for they are but fragmentary presentments oflarger meditation. My friends at least will accept them as such, whetherthey like their collective title or not. 

The title of the last is not quite suitable. It is that of the religiousnewspaper which reported the sermon. I noted the fact too late forcorrection. It ought to be _True Greatness_. 

The paper on _The Fantastic Imagination_ had its origin in the repeatedrequest of readers for an explanation of things in certain shorterstories I had written. It forms the preface to an American edition of myso-called Fairy Tales. 

GEORGE MACDONALD. 

EDENBRIDGE, KENT. _August 5, 1893. _

CONTENTS. 

THE IMAGINATION: ITS FUNCTIONS AND ITS CULTURE

A SKETCH OF INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT

ST. GEORGE'S DAY, 1564

THE ART OF SHAKSPERE, AS REVEALED BY HIMSELF

THE ELDER HAMLET

ON POLISH

BROWNING'S "CHRISTMAS EVE"

"ESSAYS ON SOME OF THE FORMS OF LITERATURE"

"THE HISTORY AND HEROES OF MEDICINE"

WORDSWORTH'S POETRY

SHELLEY

A SERMON

TRUE CHRISTIAN MINISTERING

THE FANTASTIC IMAGINATION

THE IMAGINATION: ITS FUNCTIONS AND ITS CULTURE. [Footnote: 1867. ]

There are in whose notion education would seem to consist in theproduction of a certain repose through the development of this and thatfaculty, and the depression, if not eradication, of this and that otherfaculty. But if mere repose were the end in view, an unsparingdepression of all the faculties would be the surest means of approachingit, provided always the animal instincts could be depressed likewise, or, better still, kept in a state of constant repletion. Happily, however, for the human race, it possesses in the passion of hunger even, a more immediate saviour than in the wisest selection and treatment ofits faculties. For repose is not the end of education; its end is anoble unrest, an ever renewed awaking from the dead, a ceaselessquestioning of the past for the interpretation of the future, an urgingon of the motions of life, which had better far be accelerated intofever, than retarded into lethargy. 

By those who consider a balanced repose the end of culture, theimagination must necessarily be regarded as the one faculty before allothers to be suppressed. "Are there not facts?" say they. "Why forsakethem for fancies? Is there not that which, may be _known_? Why forsakeit for inventions? What God hath made, into that let man inquire. "

We answer: To inquire into what God has made is the main function of theimagination. It is aroused by facts, is nourished by facts; seeks forhigher and yet higher laws in those facts; but refuses to regard scienceas the sole interpreter of nature, or the laws of science as the onlyregion of discovery. 

We must begin with a definition of the word _imagination_, or rathersome description of the faculty to which we give the name. 

The word itself means an _imaging_ or a making of likenesses. Theimagination is that faculty which gives form to thought--not necessarilyuttered form, but form capable of being uttered in shape or in sound, orin any mode upon which the senses can lay hold. It is, therefore, thatfaculty in man which is likest to the prime operation of the power ofGod, and has, therefore, been called the _creative_ faculty, and itsexercise _creation_. _Poet_ means _maker_. We must not forget, however, that between creator and poet lies the one unpassable gulf whichdistinguishes--far be it from us to say _divides_--all that is God'sfrom all that is man's; a gulf teeming with infinite revelations, but agulf over which no man can pass to find out God, although God needs notto pass over it to find man; the gulf between that which calls, and thatwhich is thus called into being; between that which makes in its ownimage and that which is made in that image. It is better to keep theword _creation_ for that calling out of nothing which is the imaginationof God; except it be as an occasional symbolic expression, whose daringis fully recognized, of the likeness of man's work to the work of hismaker. The necessary unlikeness between the creator and the createdholds within it the equally necessary likeness of the thing made to himwho makes it, and so of the work of the made to the work of the maker. When therefore, refusing to employ the word _creation_ of the work ofman, we yet use the word _imagination_ of the work of God, we cannot besaid to dare at all. It is only to give the name of man's faculty tothat power after which and by which it was fashioned. The imagination ofman is made in the image of the imagination of God. Everything of manmust have been of God first; and it will help much towards ourunderstanding of the imagination and its functions in man if we firstsucceed in regarding aright the imagination of God, in which theimagination of man lives and moves and has its being. 

As to _what_ thought is in the mind of God ere it takes form, or whatthe form is to him ere he utters it; in a word, what the consciousnessof God is in either case, all we can say is, that our consciousness inthe resembling conditions must, afar off, resemble his. But when we cometo consider the acts embodying the Divine thought (if indeed thought andact be not with him one and the same), then we enter a region of largedifference. We discover at once, for instance, that where a man wouldmake a machine, or a picture, or a book, God makes the man that makesthe book, or the picture, or the machine. Would God give us a drama? Hemakes a Shakespere. Or would he construct a drama more immediately hisown? He begins with the building of the stage itself, and that stage isa world--a universe of worlds. He makes the actors, and they do notact, --they _are_ their part. He utters them into the visible to work outtheir life--his drama. When he would have an epic, he sends a thinkinghero into his drama, and the epic is the soliloquy of his Hamlet. Instead of writing his lyrics, he sets his birds and his maidensa-singing. All the processes of the ages are God's science; all the flowof history is his poetry. His sculpture is not in marble, but in livingand speech-giving forms, which pass away, not to yield place to thosethat come after, but to be perfected in a nobler studio. What he hasdone remains, although it vanishes; and he never either forgets what hehas once done, or does it even once again. As the thoughts move in themind of a man, so move the worlds of men and women in the mind of God, and make no confusion there, for there they had their birth, theoffspring of his imagination. Man is but a thought of God. 

If we now consider the so-called creative faculty in man, we shall findthat in no _primary_ sense is this faculty creative. Indeed, a man israther _being thought_ than _thinking_, when a new thought arises in hismind. He knew it not till he found it there, therefore he could not evenhave sent for it. He did not create it, else how could it be thesurprise that it was when it arose? He may, indeed, in rare instancesforesee that something is coming, and make ready the place for itsbirth; but that is the utmost relation of consciousness and will he canbear to the dawning idea. Leaving this aside, however, and turning tothe _embodiment_ or revelation of thought, we shall find that a man nomore _creates_ the forms by which he would reveal his thoughts, than hecreates those thoughts themselves. 

For what are the forms by means of which a man may reveal his thoughts?Are they not those of nature? But although he is created in the closestsympathy with these forms, yet even these forms are not born in hismind. What springs there is the perception that this or that form isalready an expression of this or that phase of thought or of feeling. For the world around him is an outward figuration of the condition ofhis mind; an inexhaustible storehouse of forms whence he may chooseexponents--the crystal pitchers that shall protect his thought and notneed to be broken that the light may break forth. The meanings are inthose forms already, else they could be no garment of unveiling. God hasmade the world that it should thus serve his creature, developing in theservice that imagination whose necessity it meets. The man has but tolight the lamp within the form: his imagination is the light, it is notthe form. Straightway the shining thought makes the form visible, andbecomes itself visible through the form. [Footnote: We would not beunderstood to say that the man works consciously even in this. Oftentimes, if not always, the vision arises in the mind, thought andform together. ]

In illustration of what we mean, take a passage from the poet Shelley. 

In his poem _Adonais_, written upon the death of Keats, representingdeath as the revealer of secrets, he says:--

 "The one remains; the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines; earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until death tramples it to fragments. "

This is a new embodiment, certainly, whence he who gains not, for themoment at least, a loftier feeling of death, must be dull either ofheart or of understanding. But has Shelley created this figure, or onlyput together its parts according to the harmony of truths alreadyembodied in each of the parts? For first he takes the inventions of hisfellow-men, in glass, in colour, in dome: with these he represents lifeas finite though elevated, and as an analysis although a lovely one. Next he presents eternity as the dome of the sky above this dome ofcoloured glass--the sky having ever been regarded as the true symbol ofeternity. This portion of the figure he enriches by the attribution ofwhiteness, or unity and radiance. And last, he shows us Death as thedestroying revealer, walking aloft through, the upper region, treadingout this life-bubble of colours, that the man may look beyond it andbehold the true, the uncoloured, the all-coloured. 

But although the human imagination has no choice but to make use of theforms already prepared for it, its operation is the same as that of thedivine inasmuch as it does put thought into form. And if it be to manwhat creation is to God, we must expect to find it operative in everysphere of human activity. Such is, indeed, the fact, and that to a fargreater extent than is commonly supposed. 

The sovereignty of the imagination, for instance, over the region ofpoetry will hardly, in the present day at least, be questioned; but notevery one is prepared to be told that the imagination has had nearly asmuch to do with the making of our language as with "Macbeth" or the"Paradise Lost. " The half of our language is the work of theimagination. 

For how shall two agree together what name they shall give to a thoughtor a feeling. How shall the one show the other that which is invisible?True, he can unveil the mind's construction in the face--that livingeternally changeful symbol which God has hung in front of the unseenspirit--but that without words reaches only to the expression of presentfeeling. To attempt to employ it alone for the conveyance of theintellectual or the historical would constantly mislead; while theexpression of feeling itself would be misinterpreted, especially withregard to cause and object: the dumb show would be worse than dumb. 

But let a man become aware of some new movement within him. Lonelinesscomes with it, for he would share his mind with his friend, and hecannot; he is shut up in speechlessness. Thus

 He _may_ live a man forbid Weary seven nights nine times nine, or the first moment of his perplexity may be that of his release. Gazingabout him in pain, he suddenly beholds the material form of hisimmaterial condition. There stands his thought! God thought it beforehim, and put its picture there ready for him when he wanted it. Or, toexpress the thing more prosaically, the man cannot look around him longwithout perceiving some form, aspect, or movement of nature, somerelation between its forms, or between such and himself which resemblesthe state or motion within him. This he seizes as the symbol, as thegarment or body of his invisible thought, presents it to his friend, andhis friend understands him. Every word so employed with a new meaning ishenceforth, in its new character, born of the spirit and not of theflesh, born of the imagination and not of the understanding, and ishenceforth submitted to new laws of growth and modification. 

"Thinkest thou, " says Carlyle in "Past and Present, " "there were nopoets till Dan Chaucer? No heart burning with a thought which it couldnot hold, and had no word for; and needed to shape and coin a wordfor--what thou callest a metaphor, trope, or the like? For every word wehave there was such a man and poet. The coldest word was once a glowingnew metaphor and bold questionable originality. Thy very ATTENTION, doesit not mean an _attentio_, a STRETCHING-TO? Fancy that act of the mind, which all were conscious of, which none had yet named, --when this newpoet first felt bound and driven to name it. His questionableoriginality and new glowing metaphor was found adoptable, intelligible, and remains our name for it to this day. "

All words, then, belonging to the inner world of the mind, are of theimagination, are originally poetic words. The better, however, any suchword is fitted for the needs of humanity, the sooner it loses its poeticaspect by commonness of use. It ceases to be heard as a symbol, andappears only as a sign. Thus thousands of words which were originallypoetic words owing their existence to the imagination, lose theirvitality, and harden into mummies of prose. Not merely in literaturedoes poetry come first, and prose afterwards, but poetry is the sourceof all the language that belongs to the inner world, whether it be ofpassion or of metaphysics, of psychology or of aspiration. No poetrycomes by the elevation of prose; but the half of prose comes by the"massing into the common clay" of thousands of winged words, whence, like the lovely shells of by-gone ages, one is occasionally disinterredby some lover of speech, and held up to the light to show the play ofcolour in its manifold laminations. 

For the world is--allow us the homely figure--the human being turnedinside out. All that moves in the mind is symbolized in Nature. Or, touse another more philosophical, and certainly not less poetic figure, the world is a sensuous analysis of humanity, and hence an inexhaustiblewardrobe for the clothing of human thought. Take any word expressive ofemotion--take the word _emotion_ itself--and you will find that itsprimary meaning is of the outer world. In the swaying of the woods, inthe unrest of the "wavy plain, " the imagination saw the picture of awell-known condition of the human mind; and hence the word _emotion_. [Footnote: This passage contains only a repetition of what is far bettersaid in the preceding extract from Carlyle, but it was written before wehad read (if reviewers may be allowed to confess such ignorance) thebook from which that extract is taken. ]

But while the imagination of man has thus the divine function of puttingthought into form, it has a duty altogether human, which is paramount tothat function--the duty, namely, which springs from his immediaterelation to the Father, that of following and finding out the divineimagination in whose image it was made. To do this, the man must watchits signs, its manifestations. He must contemplate what the Hebrew poetscall the works of His hands. 

"But to follow those is the province of the intellect, not of theimagination. "--We will leave out of the question at present that poeticinterpretation of the works of Nature with which the intellect hasalmost nothing, and the imagination almost everything, to do. It isunnecessary to insist that the higher being of a flower even isdependent for its reception upon the human imagination; that science maypull the snowdrop to shreds, but cannot find out the idea of sufferinghope and pale confident submission, for the sake of which that darlingof the spring looks out of heaven, namely, God's heart, upon us hiswiser and more sinful children; for if there be any truth in this regionof things acknowledged at all, it will be at the same time acknowledgedthat that region belongs to the imagination. We confine ourselves tothat questioning of the works of God which is called the province ofscience. 

"Shall, then, the human intellect, " we ask, "come into readier contactwith the divine imagination than that human imagination?" The work ofthe Higher must he discovered by the search of the Lower in degree whichis yet similar in kind. Let us not be supposed to exclude the intellectfrom a share in every highest office. Man is not divided when themanifestations of his life are distinguished. The intellect "is all inevery part. " There were no imagination without intellect, however muchit may appear that intellect can exist without imagination. What we meanto insist upon is, that in finding out the works of God, the Intellectmust labour, workman-like, under the direction of the architect, Imagination. Herein, too, we proceed in the hope to show how much morethan is commonly supposed the imagination has to do with humanendeavour; how large a share it has in the work that is done under thesun. 

"But how can the imagination have anything to do with science? Thatregion, at least, is governed by fixed laws. "

"True, " we answer. "But how much do we know of these laws? How much ofscience already belongs to the region of the ascertained--in otherwords, has been conquered by the intellect? We will not now dispute, your vindication of the _ascertained_ from the intrusion of theimagination; but we do claim for it all the undiscovered, all theunexplored. " "Ah, well! There it can do little harm. There let it runriot if you will. " "No, " we reply. "Licence is not what we claim when weassert the duty of the imagination to be that of following and findingout the work that God maketh. Her part is to understand God ere sheattempts to utter man. Where is the room for being fanciful or riotoushere? It is only the ill-bred, that is, the uncultivated imaginationthat will amuse itself where it ought to worship and work. "

"But the facts of Nature are to be discovered only by observation andexperiment. " True. But how does the man of science come to think of hisexperiments? Does observation reach to the non-present, the possible, the yet unconceived? Even if it showed you the experiments which _ought_to be made, will observation reveal to you the experiments which _might_be made? And who can tell of which kind is the one that carries in itsbosom the secret of the law you seek? We yield you your facts. The lawswe claim for the prophetic imagination. "He hath set the world _in_man's heart, " not in his understanding. And the heart must open the doorto the understanding. It is the far-seeing imagination which beholdswhat might be a form of things, and says to the intellect: "Try whetherthat may not be the form of these things;" which beholds or invents _a_harmonious relation of parts and operations, and sends the intellect tofind out whether that be not _the_ harmonious relation of them--that is, the law of the phenomenon it contemplates. Nay, the poetic relationsthemselves in the phenomenon may suggest to the imagination the law thatrules its scientific life. Yea, more than this: we dare to claim for thetrue, childlike, humble imagination, such an inward oneness with thelaws of the universe that it possesses in itself an insight into thevery nature of things. 

Lord Bacon tells us that a prudent question is the half of knowledge. Whence comes this prudent question? we repeat. And we answer, From theimagination. It is the imagination that suggests in what direction tomake the new inquiry--which, should it cast no immediate light on theanswer sought, can yet hardly fail to be a step towards final discovery. Every experiment has its origin in hypothesis; without the scaffoldingof hypothesis, the house of science could never arise. And theconstruction of any hypothesis whatever is the work of the imagination. The man who cannot invent will never discover. The imagination oftengets a glimpse of the law itself long before it is or can be_ascertained_ to be a law. [Footnote: This paper was already writtenwhen, happening to mention the present subject to a mathematical friend, a lecturer at one of the universities, he gave us a corroborativeinstance. He had lately _guessed_ that a certain algebraic process couldbe shortened exceedingly if the method which his imagination suggestedshould prove to be a true one--that is, an algebraic law. He put it tothe test of experiment--committed the verification, that is, into thehands of his intellect--and found the method true. It has since beenaccepted by the Royal Society. 

Noteworthy illustration we have lately found in the record of theexperiences of an Edinburgh detective, an Irishman of the name ofMcLevy. That the service of the imagination in the solution of theproblems peculiar to his calling is well known to him, we could adducemany proofs. He recognizes its function in the construction of thetheory which shall unite this and that hint into an organic whole, andhe expressly sets forth the need of a theory before facts can beserviceable:--

"I would wait for my 'idea'. .. . I never did any good without mine. .. . Chance never smiled on me unless I poked her some way; so that my'notion, ' after all, has been in the getting of it my own work onlyperfected by a higher hand. "

"On leaving the shop I went direct to Prince's Street, --of course withan idea in my mind; and somehow I have always been contented with oneidea when I could not get another; and the advantage of sticking by oneis, that the other don't jostle it and turn you about in a circle whenyou should go in a straight line. " (Footnote: Since quoting the above Ihave learned that the book referred to is unworthy of confidence. Butlet it stand as illustration where it cannot be proof. )]

The region belonging to the pure intellect is straitened: theimagination labours to extend its territories, to give it room. Shesweeps across the borders, searching out new lands into which she mayguide her plodding brother. The imagination is the light which redeemsfrom the darkness for the eyes of the understanding. Novalis says, "Theimagination is the stuff of the intellect"--affords, that is, thematerial upon which the intellect works. And Bacon, in his "Advancementof Learning, " fully recognizes this its office, corresponding to theforesight of God in this, that it beholds afar off. And he says:"Imagination is much akin to miracle-working faith. " [Footnote: We aresorry we cannot verify this quotation, for which we are indebted to Mr. Oldbuck the Antiquary, in the novel of that ilk. There is, however, little room for doubt that it is sufficiently correct. ]

In the scientific region of her duty of which we speak, the Imaginationcannot have her perfect work; this belongs to another and higher spherethan that of intellectual truth--that, namely, of full-globed humanity, operating in which she gives birth to poetry--truth in beauty. But herfunction in the complete sphere of our nature, will, at the same time, influence her more limited operation in the sections that belong toscience. Coleridge says that no one but a poet will make any further_great_ discoveries in mathematics; and Bacon says that "wonder, " thatfaculty of the mind especially attendant on the child-like imagination, "is the seed of knowledge. " The influence of the poetic upon thescientific imagination is, for instance, especially present in theconstruction of an invisible whole from the hints afforded by a visiblepart; where the needs of the part, its uselessness, its brokenrelations, are the only guides to a multiplex harmony, completeness, andend, which is the whole. From a little bone, worn with ages of death, older than the man can think, his scientific imagination dashed with thepoetic, calls up the form, size, habits, periods, belonging to an animalnever beheld by human eyes, even to the mingling contrasts of scales andwings, of feathers and hair. Through the combined lenses of science andimagination, we look back into ancient times, so dreadful in theirincompleteness, that it may well have been the task of seraphic faith, as well as of cherubic imagination, to behold in the wallowingmonstrosities of the terror-teeming earth, the prospective, quiet, age-long labour of God preparing the world with all its humble, gracefulservice for his unborn Man. The imagination of the poet, on the otherhand, dashed with the imagination of the man of science, revealed toGoethe the prophecy of the flower in the leaf. No other than an artisticimagination, however, fulfilled of science, could have attained to thediscovery of the fact that the leaf is the imperfect flower. 

When we turn to history, however, we find probably the greatestoperative sphere of the intellectuo-constructive imagination. Todiscover its laws; the cycles in which events return, with the reasonsof their return, recognizing them notwithstanding metamorphosis; toperceive the vital motions of this spiritual body of mankind; to learnfrom its facts the rule of God; to construct from a succession of brokenindications a whole accordant with human nature; to approach a scheme ofthe forces at work, the passions overwhelming or upheaving, theaspirations securely upraising, the selfishnesses debasing andcrumbling, with the vital interworking of the whole; to illuminate allfrom the analogy with individual life, and from the predominant phasesof individual character which are taken as the mind of the people--thisis the province of the imagination. Without her influence no process ofrecording events can develop into a history. As truly might that becalled the description of a volcano which occupied itself with adelineation of the shapes assumed by the smoke expelled from themountain's burning bosom. What history becomes under the full sway ofthe imagination may be seen in the "History of the French Revolution, "by Thomas Carlyle, at once a true picture, a philosophical revelation, anoble poem. 

There is a wonderful passage about _Time_ in Shakespere's "Rape ofLucrece, " which shows how he understood history. The passage is reallyabout history, and not about time; for time itself does nothing--noteven "blot old books and alter their contents. " It is the forces at workin time that produce all the changes; and they are history. We quote forthe sake of one line chiefly, but the whole stanza is pertinent. 

 "Time's glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light, To stamp the seal of time in aged things, To wake the morn and sentinel the night, _To wrong the wronger till he render right;_ To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours, And smear with dust their glittering golden towers. "

_To wrong the wronger till he render right. _ Here is a historical cycleworthy of the imagination of Shakespere, yea, worthy of the creativeimagination of our God--the God who made the Shakespere with theimagination, as well as evolved the history from the laws which thatimagination followed and found out. 

In full instance we would refer our readers to Shakespere's historicalplays; and, as a side-illustration, to the fact that he repeatedlyrepresents his greatest characters, when at the point of death, asrelieving their overcharged minds by prophecy. Such prophecy is theresult of the light of imagination, cleared of all distorting dimness bythe vanishing of earthly hopes and desires, cast upon the facts ofexperience. Such prophecy is the perfect working of the historicalimagination. 

In the interpretation of individual life, the same principles hold; andnowhere can the imagination be more healthily and rewardingly occupiedthan in endeavouring to construct the life of an individual out of thefragments which are all that can reach us of the history of even thenoblest of our race. How this will apply to the reading of the gospelstory we leave to the earnest thought of our readers. 

We now pass to one more sphere in which the student imagination works inglad freedom--the sphere which is understood to belong more immediatelyto the poet. 

We have already said that the forms of Nature (by which word _forms_ wemean any of those conditions of Nature which affect the senses of man)are so many approximate representations of the mental conditions ofhumanity. The outward, commonly called the material, is _informed_ by, or has form in virtue of, the inward or immaterial--in a word, thethought. The forms of Nature are the representations of human thought invirtue of their being the embodiment of God's thought. As such, therefore, they can be read and used to any depth, shallow or profound. Men of all ages and all developments have discovered in them the meansof expression; and the men of ages to come, before us in every pathalong which we are now striving, must likewise find such means in thoseforms, unfolding with their unfolding necessities. The man, then, who, in harmony with nature, attempts the discovery of more of her meanings, is just searching out the things of God. The deepest of these are fartoo simple for us to understand as yet. But let our imaginationinterpretive reveal to us one severed significance of one of her parts, and such is the harmony of the whole, that all the realm of Nature isopen to us henceforth--not without labour--and in time. Upon the man whocan understand the human meaning of the snowdrop, of the primrose, or ofthe daisy, the life of the earth blossoming into the cosmical flower ofa perfect moment will one day seize, possessing him with its prophetichope, arousing his conscience with the vision of the "rest thatremaineth, " and stirring up the aspiration to enter into that rest:

 "Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal Eve! But long as godlike wish, or hope divine, Informs my spirit, ne'er can I believe That this magnificence is wholly thine! --From worlds not quickened by the sun A portion of the gift is won; An intermingling of Heaven's pomp is spread On ground which British shepherds tread!"

Even the careless curve of a frozen cloud across the blue will calm sometroubled thoughts, may slay some selfish thoughts. And what shall besaid of such gorgeous shows as the scarlet poppies in the green corn, the likest we have to those lilies of the field which spoke to theSaviour himself of the care of God, and rejoiced His eyes with the gloryof their God-devised array? From such visions as these the imaginationreaps the best fruits of the earth, for the sake of which all thescience involved in its construction, is the inferior, yet willing andbeautiful support. 

From what we have now advanced, will it not then appear that, on thewhole, the name given by our Norman ancestors is more fitting for theman who moves in these regions than the name given by the Greeks? Is notthe _Poet_, the _Maker_, a less suitable name for him than the_Trouvère_, the _Finder_? At least, must not the faculty that findsprecede the faculty that utters?

But is there nothing to be said of the function of the imagination fromthe Greek side of the question? Does it possess no creative faculty? Hasit no originating power?

Certainly it would be a poor description of the Imagination whichomitted the one element especially present to the mind that invented theword _Poet_. --It can present us with new thought-forms--new, that is, asrevelations of thought. It has created none of the material that goes tomake these forms. Nor does it work upon raw material. But it takes formsalready existing, and gathers them about a thought so much higher thanthey, that it can group and subordinate and harmonize them into a wholewhich shall represent, unveil that thought. [Footnote: Just so Spenserdescribes the process of the embodiment of a human soul in his Platonic"Hymn in Honour of Beauty. "

 "She frames her house in which she will be placed Fit for herself. .. . And the gross matter by a sovereign might Tempers so trim. .. . For of the soul the body form doth take; For soul is form, and doth the body make. "]

The nature of this process we will illustrate by an examination of thewell-known _Bugle Song_ in Tennyson's "Princess. "

First of all, there is the new music of the song, which does not evenremind one of the music of any other. The rhythm, rhyme, melody, harmonyare all an embodiment in sound, as distinguished from word, of what canbe so embodied--the _feeling_ of the poem, which goes before, andprepares the way for the following thought--tunes the heart into areceptive harmony. Then comes the new arrangement of thought and figurewhereby the meaning contained is presented as it never was before. Wegive a sort of paraphrastical synopsis of the poem, which, partly invirtue of its disagreeableness, will enable the lovers of the song toreturn to it with an increase of pleasure. 

The glory of midsummer mid-day upon mountain, lake, and ruin. Givenature a voice for her gladness. Blow, bugle. 

Nature answers with dying echoes, sinking in the midst of her splendourinto a sad silence. 

Not so with human nature. The echoes of the word of truth gather volumeand richness from every soul that re-echoes it to brother and sistersouls. 

With poets the _fashion_ has been to contrast the stability andrejuvenescence of nature with the evanescence and unreturning decay ofhumanity:--

 "Yet soon reviving plants and flowers, anew shall deck the plain; The woods shall hear the voice of Spring, and flourish green again. But man forsakes this earthly scene, ah! never to return: Shall any following Spring revive the ashes of the urn?"

But our poet vindicates the eternal in humanity:--

 "O Love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; And answer, echoes, answer, Dying, dying, dying. "

Is not this a new form to the thought--a form which makes us feel thetruth of it afresh? And every new embodiment of a known truth must be anew and wider revelation. No man is capable of seeing for himself thewhole of any truth: he needs it echoed back to him from every soul inthe universe; and still its centre is hid in the Father of Lights. In sofar, then, as either form or thought is new, we may grant the use of theword Creation, modified according to our previous definitions. 

This operation of the imagination in choosing, gathering, and vitallycombining the material of a new revelation, may be well illustrated froma certain employment of the poetic faculty in which our greatest poetshave delighted. Perceiving truth half hidden and half revealed in theslow speech and stammering tongue of men who have gone before them, theyhave taken up the unfinished form and completed it; they have, as itwere, rescued the soul of meaning from its prison of uninformed crudity, where it sat like the Prince in the "Arabian Nights, " half man, halfmarble; they have set it free in its own form, in a shape, namely, whichit could "through every part impress. " Shakespere's keen eye suggestedmany such a rescue from the tomb--of a tale drearily told--a tale whichno one now would read save for the glorified form in which he hasre-embodied its true contents. And from Tennyson we can produce onespecimen small enough for our use, which, a mere chip from the greatmarble re-embodying the old legend of Arthur's death, may, like the handof Achilles holding his spear in the crowded picture, "Stand for the whole to be imagined. "

In the "History of Prince Arthur, " when Sir Bedivere returns afterhiding Excalibur the first time, the king asks him what he has seen, andhe answers--

 "Sir, I saw nothing but waves and wind. "

The second time, to the same question, he answers--

 "Sir, I saw nothing but the water[1] wap, and the waves wan. "

[Footnote 1: The word _wap_ is plain enough; the word _wan_ we cannotsatisfy ourselves about. Had it been used with regard to the water, itmight have been worth remarking that _wan_, meaning dark, gloomy, turbid, is a common adjective to a river in the old Scotch ballad. Andit might be an adjective here; but that is not likely, seeing it isconjoined with the verb _wap_. The Anglo-Saxon _wanian_, to decrease, might be the root-word, perhaps, (in the sense of _to ebb_, ) if thiswater had been the sea and not a lake. But possibly the meaning is, "Iheard the water _whoop_ or _wail aloud_" (from _Wópan_); and "the waves_whine_ or _bewail_" (from _Wánian_ to lament). But even then the twoverbs would seem to predicate of transposed subjects. ]

This answer Tennyson has expanded into the well-known lines--

 "I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag;"

slightly varied, for the other occasion, into--

 "I heard the water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in the reeds. "

But, as to this matter of _creation_, is there, after all, I ask yet, any genuine sense in which a man may be said to create his ownthought-forms? Allowing that a new combination of forms already existingmight be called creation, is the man, after all, the author of this newcombination? Did he, with his will and his knowledge, proceed wittingly, consciously, to construct a form which should embody his thought? Or didthis form arise within him without will or effort of his--vivid if notclear--certain if not outlined? Ruskin (and better authority we do notknow) will assert the latter, and we think he is right: though perhapshe would insist more upon the absolute perfection of the vision than weare quite prepared to do. Such embodiments are not the result of theman's intention, or of the operation of his conscious nature. Hisfeeling is that they are given to him; that from the vast unknown, wheretime and space are not, they suddenly appear in luminous writing uponthe wall of his consciousness. Can it be correct, then, to say that hecreated them? Nothing less so, as it seems to us. But can we not saythat they are the creation of the unconscious portion of his nature?Yes, provided we can understand that that which is the individual, theman, can know, and not know that it knows, can create and yet beignorant that virtue has gone out of it. From that unknown region wegrant they come, but not by its own blind working. Nor, even were it so, could any amount of such production, where no will was concerned, bedignified with the name of creation. But God sits in that chamber of ourbeing in which the candle of our consciousness goes out in darkness, andsends forth from thence wonderful gifts into the light of thatunderstanding which is His candle. Our hope lies in no most perfectmechanism even of the spirit, but in the wisdom wherein we live and moveand have our being. Thence we hope for endless forms of beauty informedof truth. If the dark portion of our own being were the origin of ourimaginations, we might well fear the apparition of such monsters aswould be generated in the sickness of a decay which could neverfeel--only declare--a slow return towards primeval chaos. But the Makeris our Light. 

One word more, ere we turn to consider the culture of this noblestfaculty, which we might well call the creative, did we not see asomething in God for which we would humbly keep our mighty word:--thefact that there is always more in a work of art--which is the highesthuman result of the embodying imagination--than the producer himselfperceived while he produced it, seems to us a strong reason forattributing to it a larger origin than the man alone--for saying at thelast, that the inspiration of the Almighty shaped its ends. 

We return now to the class which, from the first, we supposed hostile tothe imagination and its functions generally. Those belonging to it willnow say: "It was to no imagination such as you have been setting forththat we were opposed, but to those wild fancies and vague reveries inwhich young people indulge, to the damage and loss of the real in theworld around them. "

"And, " we insist, "you would rectify the matter by smothering the youngmonster at once--because he has wings, and, young to their use, fluttersthem about in a way discomposing to your nerves, and destructive tothose notions of propriety of which this creature--you stop not toinquire whether angel or pterodactyle--has not yet learned even theexistence. Or, if it is only the creature's vagaries of which youdisapprove, why speak of them as _the_ exercise of the imagination? Aswell speak of religion as the mother of cruelty because religion hasgiven more occasion of cruelty, as of all dishonesty and devilry, thanany other object of human interest. Are we not to worship, because ourforefathers burned and stabbed for religion? It is more religion wewant. It is more imagination we need. Be assured that these are but thefirst vital motions of that whose results, at least in the region ofscience, you are more than willing to accept. " That evil may spring fromthe imagination, as from everything except the perfect love of God, cannot be denied. But infinitely worse evils would be the result of itsabsence. Selfishness, avarice, sensuality, cruelty, would flourishtenfold; and the power of Satan would be well established ere somechildren had begun to choose. Those who would quell the apparentlylawless tossing of the spirit, called the youthful imagination, wouldsuppress all that is to grow out of it. They fear the enthusiasm theynever felt; and instead of cherishing this divine thing, instead ofgiving it room and air for healthful growth, they would crush andconfine it--with but one result of their victorious endeavours--imposthume, fever, and corruption. And the disastrous consequenceswould soon appear in the intellect likewise which they worship. Killthat whence spring the crude fancies and wild day-dreams of the young, and you will never lead them beyond dull facts--dull because theirrelations to each other, and the one life that works in them all, must remain undiscovered. Whoever would have his children avoid thisarid region will do well to allow no teacher to approach them--noteven of mathematics--who has no imagination. 

"But although good results may appear in a few from the indulgence ofthe imagination, how will it be with the many?"

We answer that the antidote to indulgence is development, not restraint, and that such is the duty of the wise servant of Him who made theimagination. 

"But will most girls, for instance, rise to those useful uses of theimagination? Are they not more likely to exercise it in building castlesin the air to the neglect of houses on the earth? And as the worldaffords such poor scope for the ideal, will not this habit breed vaindesires and vain regrets? Is it not better, therefore, to keep to thatwhich is known, and leave the rest?"

"Is the world so poor?" we ask in return. The less reason, then, to besatisfied with it; the more reason to rise above it, into the region ofthe true, of the eternal, of things as God thinks them. This outwardworld is but a passing vision of the persistent true. We shall not livein it always. We are dwellers in a divine universe where no desires arein vain, if only they be large enough. Not even in this world do alldisappointments breed only vain regrets. [Footnote: "We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which, having been, must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. "]

And as to keeping to that which is known and leaving the rest--how manyaffairs of this world are so well-defined, so capable of being clearlyunderstood, as not to leave large spaces of uncertainty, whose verycorrelate faculty is the imagination? Indeed it must, in most things, work after some fashion, filling the gaps after some possible plan, before action can even begin. In very truth, a wise imagination, whichis the presence of the spirit of God, is the best guide that man orwoman can have; for it is not the things we see the most clearly thatinfluence us the most powerfully; undefined, yet vivid visions ofsomething beyond, something which eye has not seen nor ear heard, havefar more influence than any logical sequences whereby the same thingsmay be demonstrated to the intellect. It is the nature of the thing, notthe clearness of its outline, that determines its operation. We live byfaith, and not by sight. Put the question to our mathematicians--only besure the question reaches them--whether they would part with thewell-defined perfection of their diagrams, or the dim, strange, possiblyhalf-obliterated characters woven in the web of their being; theirscience, in short, or their poetry; their certainties, or their hopes;their consciousness of knowledge, or their vague sense of that whichcannot be known absolutely: will they hold by their craft or by theirinspirations, by their intellects or their imaginations? If they say theformer in each alternative, I shall yet doubt whether the objects of thechoice are actually before them, and with equal presentation. 

What can be known must be known severely; but is there, therefore, nofaculty for those infinite lands of uncertainty lying all about thesphere hollowed out of the dark by the glimmering lamp of our knowledge?Are they not the natural property of the imagination? there, _for_ it, that it may have room to grow? there, that the man may learn to imaginegreatly like God who made him, himself discovering their mysteries, invirtue of his following and worshipping imagination?

All that has been said, then, tends to enforce the culture of theimagination. But the strongest argument of all remains behind. For, ifthe whole power of pedantry should rise against her, the imaginationwill yet work; and if not for good, then for evil; if not for truth, then for falsehood; if not for life, then for death; the evilalternative becoming the more likely from the unnatural treatment shehas experienced from those who ought to have fostered her. The powerthat might have gone forth in conceiving the noblest forms of action, inrealizing the lives of the true-hearted, the self-forgetting, will goforth in building airy castles of vain ambition, of boundless riches, ofunearned admiration. The imagination that might be devising how to makehome blessed or to help the poor neighbour, will be absorbed in theinvention of the new dress, or worse, in devising the means of procuringit. For, if she be not occupied with the beautiful, she will be occupiedby the pleasant; that which goes not out to worship, will remain at hometo be sensual. Cultivate the mere intellect as you may, it will neverreduce the passions: the imagination, seeking the ideal in everything, will elevate them to their true and noble service. Seek not that yoursons and your daughters should not see visions, should not dream dreams;seek that they should see true visions, that they should dream nobledreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with aspiration, andwill do more to elevate above what is low and vile than all possibleinculcations of morality. Nor can religion herself ever rise up into herown calm home, her crystal shrine, when one of her wings, one of thetwain with which she flies, is thus broken or paralyzed. 

 "The universe is infinitely wide, And conquering Reason, if self-glorified, Can nowhere move uncrossed by some new wall Or gulf of mystery, which thou alone, Imaginative Faith! canst overleap, In progress towards the fount of love. "

The danger that lies in the repression of the imagination may be wellillustrated from the play of "Macbeth. " The imagination of the hero (inhim a powerful faculty), representing how the deed would appear toothers, and so representing its true nature to himself, was his greatimpediment on the path to crime. Nor would he have succeeded in reachingit, had he not gone to his wife for help--sought refuge from histroublesome imagination with her. She, possessing far less of thefaculty, and having dealt more destructively with what she had, took hishand, and led him to the deed. From her imagination, again, she for herpart takes refuge in unbelief and denial, declaring to herself and herhusband that there is no reality in its representations; that there isno reality in anything beyond the present effect it produces on the mindupon which it operates; that intellect and courage are equal to any, even an evil emergency; and that no harm will come to those who can rulethemselves according to their own will. Still, however, finding herimagination, and yet more that of her husband, troublesome, she effectsa marvellous combination of materialism and idealism, and asserts thatthings are not, cannot be, and shall not be more or other than peoplechoose to think them. She says, --

 "These deeds must not be thought After these ways; so, it will make us mad. "

 "The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures. "

But she had over-estimated the power of her will, and under-estimatedthat of her imagination. Her will was the one thing in her that was bad, without root or support in the universe, while her imagination was thevoice of God himself out of her own unknown being. The choice of no manor woman can long determine how or what he or she shall think of things. Lady Macbeth's imagination would not be repressed beyond its appointedperiod--a time determined by laws of her being over which she had nocontrol. It arose, at length, as from the dead, overshadowing her withall the blackness of her crime. The woman who drank strong drink thatshe might murder, dared not sleep without a light by her bed; rose andwalked in the night, a sleepless spirit in a sleeping body, rubbing thespotted hand of her dreams, which, often as water had cleared it of thedeed, yet smelt so in her sleeping nostrils, that all the perfumes ofArabia would not sweeten it. Thus her long down-trodden imagination roseand took vengeance, even through those senses which she had thought tosubordinate to her wicked will. 

But all this is of the imagination itself, and fitter, therefore, forillustration than for argument. Let us come to facts. --Dr. Pritchard, lately executed for murder, had no lack of that invention, which is, asit were, the intellect of the imagination--its lowest form. One of theclergymen who, at his own request, attended the prisoner, went throughindescribable horrors in the vain endeavour to induce the man simply tocease from lying: one invention after another followed the most earnestasseverations of truth. The effect produced upon us by this clergyman'sreport of his experience was a moral dismay, such as we had never feltwith regard to human being, and drew from us the exclamation, "The mancould have had no imagination. " The reply was, "None whatever. " Neverseeking true or high things, caring only for appearances, and, therefore, for inventions, he had left his imagination all undeveloped, and when it represented his own inner condition to him, had repressed ituntil it was nearly destroyed, and what remained of it was set on fireof hell. [Footnote: One of the best weekly papers in London, evidentlyas much in ignorance of the man as of the facts of the case, spoke ofDr. MacLeod as having been engaged in "white-washing the murderer forheaven. " So far is this from a true representation, that Dr. MacLeodactually refused to pray with him, telling him that if there was a hellto go to, he must go to it. ]

Man is "the roof and crown of things. " He is the world, and more. Therefore the chief scope of his imagination, next to God who made him, will he the world in relation to his own life therein. Will he do betteror worse in it if this imagination, touched to fine issues and havingfree scope, present him with noble pictures of relationship and duty, ofpossible elevation of character and attainable justice of behaviour, offriendship and of love; and, above all, of all these in that life tounderstand which as a whole, must ever be the loftiest aspiration ofthis noblest power of humanity? Will a woman lead a more or a lesstroubled life that the sights and sounds of nature break through thecrust of gathering anxiety, and remind her of the peace of the liliesand the well-being of the birds of the air? Or will life be lessinteresting to her, that the lives of her neighbours, instead of passinglike shadows upon a wall, assume a consistent wholeness, formingthemselves into stories and phases of life? Will she not hereby lovemore and talk less? Or will she be more unlikely to make a goodmatch----? But here we arrest ourselves in bewilderment over the word_good_, and seek to re-arrange our thoughts. If what mothers mean by a_good_ match, is the alliance of a man of position and means--or letthem throw intellect, manners, and personal advantages into the samescale--if this be all, then we grant the daughter of cultivatedimagination may not be manageable, will probably be obstinate. "We hopeshe will be obstinate enough. [Footnote: Let women who feel the wrongsof their kind teach women to be high-minded in their relation to men, and they will do more for the social elevation of women, and theestablishment of their rights, whatever those rights may be, than by anyamount of intellectual development or assertion of equality. Nor, ifthey are other than mere partisans, will they refuse the attempt becausein its success men will, after all, be equal, if not greater gainers, ifonly thereby they should be "feelingly persuaded" what they are. ] Butwill the girl be less likely to marry a _gentleman_, in the grand oldmeaning of the sixteenth century? when it was no irreverence to call ourLord

 "The first true gentleman that ever breathed;"

or in that of the fourteenth?--when Chaucer teaching "whom is worthy tobe called gentill, " writes thus:--

 "The first stocke was full of rightwisnes, Trewe of his worde, sober, pitous and free, Clene of his goste, and loved besinesse, Against the vice of slouth in honeste; And but his heire love vertue as did he, He is not gentill though he rich seme, All weare he miter, crowne, or diademe. "

Will she be less likely to marry one who honours women, and for theirsakes, as well as his own, honours himself? Or to speak from what manywould regard as the mother's side of the question--will the girl be morelikely, because of such a culture of her imagination, to refuse thewise, true-hearted, generous rich man, and fall in love with thetalking, verse-making fool, _because_ he is poor, as if that were avirtue for which he had striven? The highest imagination and thelowliest common sense are always on one side. 

For the end of imagination is _harmony_. A right imagination, being thereflex of the creation, will fall in with the divine order of things asthe highest form of its own operation; "will tune its instrument here atthe door" to the divine harmonies within; will be content alone withgrowth towards the divine idea, which includes all that is beautiful inthe imperfect imaginations of men; will know that every deviation fromthat growth is downward; and will therefore send the man forth from itsloftiest representations to do the commonest duty of the most wearisomecalling in a hearty and hopeful spirit. This is the work of the rightimagination; and towards this work every imagination, in proportion tothe rightness that is in it, will tend. The reveries even of the wiseman will make him stronger for his work; his dreaming as well as histhinking will render him sorry for past failure, and hopeful of futuresuccess. 

To come now to the culture of the imagination. Its development is one ofthe main ends of the divine education of life with all its efforts andexperiences. Therefore the first and essential means for its culturemust be an ordering of our life towards harmony with its ideal in themind of God. As he that is willing to do the will of the Father, shallknow of the doctrine, so, we doubt not, he that will do the will of THEPOET, shall behold the Beautiful. For all is God's; and the man who isgrowing into harmony with His will, is growing into harmony withhimself; all the hidden glories of his being are coming out into thelight of humble consciousness; so that at the last he shall be a puremicrocosm, faithfully reflecting, after his manner, the mightymacrocosm. We believe, therefore, that nothing will do so much for theintellect or the imagination as _being good_--we do not mean after anyformula or any creed, but simply after the faith of Him who did the willof his Father in heaven. 

But if we speak of direct means for the culture of the imagination, thewhole is comprised in two words--food and exercise. If you want strongarms, take animal food, and row. Feed your imagination with foodconvenient for it, and exercise it, not in the contortions of theacrobat, but in the movements of the gymnast. And first for the food. 

Goethe has told us that the way to develop the aesthetic faculty is tohave constantly before our eyes, that is, in the room we most frequent, some work of the best attainable art. This will teach us to refuse theevil and choose the good. It will plant itself in our minds and becomeour counsellor. Involuntarily, unconsciously, we shall compare with itsperfection everything that comes before us for judgment. Now, althoughno better advice could he given, it involves one danger, that ofnarrowness. And not easily, in dread of this danger, would one changehis tutor, and so procure variety of instruction. But in the culture ofthe imagination, books, although not the only, are the readiest means ofsupplying the food convenient for it, and a hundred books may he hadwhere even one work of art of the right sort is unattainable, seeingsuch must he of some size as well as of thorough excellence. And invariety alone is safety from the danger of the convenient food becomingthe inconvenient model. 

Let us suppose, then, that one who himself justly estimates theimagination is anxious to develop its operation in his child. No doubtthe best beginning, especially if the child be young, is an acquaintancewith nature, in which let him he encouraged to observe vital phenomena, to put things together, to speculate from what he sees to what he doesnot see. But let earnest care be taken that upon no matter shall he goon talking foolishly. Let him be as fanciful as he may, but let him not, even in his fancy, sin against fancy's sense; for fancy has its laws ascertainly as the most ordinary business of life. When he is silly, lethim know it and be ashamed. 

But where this association with nature is but occasionally possible, recourse must be had to literature. In books, we not only have store ofall results of the imagination, but in them, as in her workshop, we maybehold her embodying before our very eyes, in music of speech, in wonderof words, till her work, like a golden dish set with shining jewels, andadorned by the hands of the cunning workmen, stands finished before us. In this kind, then, the best must be set before the learner, that he mayeat and not be satisfied; for the finest products of the imagination areof the best nourishment for the beginnings of that imagination. And themind of the teacher must mediate between the work of art and the mind ofthe pupil, bringing them together in the vital contact of intelligence;directing the observation to the lines of expression, the points offorce; and helping the mind to repose upon the whole, so that noseparable beauties shall lead to a neglect of the scope--that is theshape or form complete. And ever he must seek to _show_ excellencerather than talk about it, giving the thing itself, that it may growinto the mind, and not a eulogy of his own upon the thing; isolating thepoint worthy of remark rather than making many remarks upon the point. 

Especially must he endeavour to show the spiritual scaffolding orskeleton of any work of art; those main ideas upon which the shape isconstructed, and around which the rest group as ministeringdependencies. 

But he will not, therefore, pass over that intellectual structurewithout which the other could not be manifested. He will not forget thebuilder while he admires the architect. While he dwells with delight onthe relation of the peculiar arch to the meaning of the whole cathedral, he will not think it needless to explain the principles on which it isconstructed, or even how those principles are carried out in actualprocess. Neither yet will the tracery of its windows, the foliage of itscrockets, or the fretting of its mouldings be forgotten. Every beautywill have its word, only all beauties will be subordinated to the finalbeauty--that is, the unity of the whole. 

Thus doing, he shall perform the true office of friendship. He willintroduce his pupil into the society which he himself prizes most, surrounding him with the genial presence of the high-minded, that thisgood company may work its own kind in him who frequents it. 

But he will likewise seek to turn him aside from such company, whetherof books or of men, as might tend to lower his reverence, his choice, orhis standard. He will, therefore, discourage indiscriminate reading, andthat worse than waste which consists in skimming the books of acirculating library. He knows that if a book is worth reading at all, itis worth reading well; and that, if it is not worth reading, it is onlyto the most accomplished reader that it _can_ be worth skimming. He willseek to make him discern, not merely between the good and the evil, butbetween the good and the not so good. And this not for the sake ofsharpening the intellect, still less of generating thatself-satisfaction which is the closest attendant upon criticism, but forthe sake of choosing the best path and the best companions upon it. Aspirit of criticism for the sake of distinguishing only, or, far worse, for the sake of having one's opinion ready upon demand, is not merelyrepulsive to all true thinkers, but is, in itself, destructive of allthinking. A spirit of criticism for the sake of the truth--a spirit thatdoes not start from its chamber at every noise, but waits till itspresence is desired--cannot, indeed, garnish the house, but can sweep itclean. Were there enough of such wise criticism, there would be tentimes the study of the best writers of the past, and perhaps one-tenthof the admiration for the ephemeral productions of the day. A gatheredmountain of misplaced worships would be swept into the sea by the studyof one good book; and while what was good in an inferior book wouldstill be admired, the relative position of the book would be altered andits influence lessened. 

Speaking of true learning, Lord Bacon says: "It taketh away vainadmiration of anything, _which is the root of all weakness_. "

The right teacher would have his pupil easy to please, but ill tosatisfy; ready to enjoy, unready to embrace; keen to discover beauty, slow to say, "Here I will dwell. "

But he will not confine his instructions to the region of art. He willencourage him to read history with an eye eager for the dawning figureof the past. He will especially show him that a great part of the Bibleis only thus to be understood; and that the constant and consistent wayof God, to be discovered in it, is in fact the key to all history. 

In the history of individuals, as well, he will try to show him how toput sign and token together, constructing not indeed a whole, but aprobable suggestion of the whole. 

And, again, while showing him the reflex of nature in the poets, he willnot be satisfied without sending him to Nature herself; urging him incountry rambles to keep open eyes for the sweet fashionings andblendings of her operation around him; and in city walks to watch the"human face divine. "

Once more: he will point out to him the essential difference betweenreverie and thought; between dreaming and imagining. He will teach himnot to mistake fancy, either in himself or in others for imagination, and to beware of hunting after resemblances that carry with them nointerpretation. 

Such training is not solely fitted for the possible development ofartistic faculty. Few, in this world, will ever be able to utter whatthey feel. Fewer still will be able to utter it in forms of their own. Nor is it necessary that there should be many such. But it is necessarythat all should feel. It is necessary that all should understand andimagine the good; that all should begin, at least, to follow and findout God. 

"The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is tofind it out, " says Solomon. "As if, " remarks Bacon on the passage, "according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty tookdelight to hide his works, to the end to have them found out; and as ifkings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows inthat game. "

One more quotation from the book of Ecclesiastes, setting forth both thenecessity we are under to imagine, and the comfort that our imaginingcannot outstrip God's making. 

"I have seen the travail which God hath given to the sons of men to beexercised in it. He hath made everything beautiful in his time; also hehath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the workthat God maketh from the beginning to the end. "

Thus to be playfellows with God in this game, the little ones may gathertheir daisies and follow their painted moths; the child of the kingdommay pore upon the lilies of the field, and gather faith as the birds ofthe air their food from the leafless hawthorn, ruddy with the stores Godhas laid up for them; and the man of science

 "May sit and rightly spell Of every star that heaven doth shew, And every herb that sips the dew; Till old experience do attain To something like prophetic strain. "

A SKETCH OF INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. [Footnote: 1880. ]

"I wish I had thought to watch when God was making me!" said a childonce to his mother. "Only, " he added, "I was not made till I wasfinished, so I couldn't. " We cannot recall whence we came, nor tell howwe began to be. We know approximately how far back we can remember, buthave no idea how far back we may not have forgotten. Certainly we knewonce much that we have forgotten now. My own earliest definable memoryis of a great funeral of one of the Dukes of Gordon, when I was betweentwo and three years of age. Surely my first knowledge was not of death. I must have known much and many things before, although that seems myearliest memory. As in what we foolishly call maturity, so in the dawnof consciousness, both before and after it has begun to be buttressedwith _self_-consciousness, each succeeding consciousness dims--oftenobliterates--that which went before, and with regard to our past as wellas our future, imagination and faith must step into the place vacated ofknowledge. We are aware, and we know that we are aware, but when or howwe began to be aware, is wrapt in a mist that deepens on the one sideinto deepest night, and on the other brightens into the full assuranceof existence. Looking back we can but dream, looking forward we loseourselves in speculation; but we may both speculate and dream, for allspeculation is not false, and all dreaming is not of the unreal. Whatmay we fairly imagine as to the inward condition of the child before thefirst moment of which his memory affords him testimony?

It is one, I venture to say, of absolute, though, no doubt, largelynegative faith. Neither memory of pain that is past, nor apprehension ofpain to come, once arises to give him the smallest concern. In some way, doubtless very vague, for his being itself is a border-land of awfulmystery, he is aware of being surrounded, enfolded with an atmosphere oflove; the sky over him is his mother's face; the earth that nourisheshim is his mother's bosom. The source, the sustentation, the defence ofhis being, the endless mediation betwixt his needs and the things thatsupply them, are all one. There is no type so near the highest idea ofrelation to a God, as that of the child to his mother. Her face is God, her bosom Nature, her arms are Providence--all love--one love--to him anundivided bliss. 

The region beyond him he regards from this vantage-ground ofunquestioned security. There things may come and go, rise and vanish--heneither desires nor bemoans them. Change may grow swift, its swiftnessgrow fierce, and pass into storm: to him storm is calm; his haven issecure; his rest cannot be broken: he is accountable for nothing, knowsno responsibility. Conscience is not yet awake, and there is noconflict. His waking is full of sleep, yet his very being is enough forhim. 

But all the time his mother lives in the hope of his growth. In thepresent babe, her heart broods over the coming boy--the unknown marvelclosed in the visible germ. Let mothers lament as they will over thechange from childhood to maturity, which of them would not grow weary ofnursing for ever a child in whom no live law of growth kept unfolding aninfinite change! The child knows nothing of growth--desires none--butgrows. Within him is the force of a power he can no more resist than thepeach can refuse to swell and grow ruddy in the sun. By slow, inappreciable, indivisible accretion and outfolding, he is lifted, floated, drifted on towards the face of the awful mirror in which hemust encounter his first foe--must front himself. 

By degrees he has learned that the world is around, and not withinhim--that he is apart, and that is apart; from consciousness he passesto self-consciousness. This is a second birth, for now a higher lifebegins. When a man not only lives, but knows that he lives, then firstthe possibility of a real life commences. By _real life_, I mean lifewhich has a share in its own existence. 

For now, towards the world around him--the world that is not his mother, and, actively at least, neither loves him nor ministers to him, revealthemselves certain relations, initiated by fancies, desires, preferences, that arise within himself--reasonable or not matterslittle:--founded in reason, they can in no case be _devoid_ of reason. Every object concerned in these relations presents itself to the man aslovely, desirable, good, or ugly, hateful, bad; and through theserelations, obscure and imperfect, and to a being weighted with a strongfaculty for mistake, begins to be revealed the existence and force ofBeing other and higher than his own, recognized as _Will_, and first ofall in its opposition to his desires. Thereupon begins the strifewithout which there never was, and, I presume, never can be, any growth, any progress; and the first result is what I may call the third birth ofthe human being. 

The first opposing glance of the mother wakes in the child not onlyanswering opposition, which is as the rudimentary sac of his own comingwill, but a new something, to which for long he needs no name, sonatural does it seem, so entirely a portion of his being, even when mosthe refuses to listen to and obey it. This new something--we call it_Conscience_--sides with his mother, and causes its presence andjudgment to be felt not only before but after the event, so that he sooncomes to know that it is well with him or ill with him as he obeys ordisobeys it. And now he not only knows, not only knows that he knows, but knows he knows that he knows--knows that he is self-conscious--thathe has a conscience. With the first sense of resistance to it, the powerabove him has drawn nearer, and the deepest within him has declareditself on the side of the highest without him. At one and the samemoment, the heaven of his childhood has, as it were, receded and comenigher. He has run from under it, but it claims him. It is farther, yetcloser--immeasurably closer: he feels on his being the grasp and hold ofhis mother's. Through the higher individuality he becomes aware of hisown. Through the assertion of his mother's will, his own begins toawake. He becomes conscious of himself as capable of action--of doing orof not doing; his responsibility has begun. 

He slips from her lap; he travels from chair to chair; he puts hiscircle round the room; he dares to cross the threshold; he braves theprecipice of the stair; he takes the greatest step that, according toGeorge Herbert, is possible to man--that out of doors, changing thehouse for the universe; he runs from flower to flower in the garden;crosses the road; wanders, is lost, is found again. His powers expand, his activity increases; he goes to school, and meets other boys likehimself; new objects of strife are discovered, new elements of strifedeveloped; new desires are born, fresh impulses urge. The old heaven, the face and will of his mother, recede farther and farther; a world ofmen, which he foolishly thinks a nobler as it is a larger world, drawshim, claims him. More or less he yields. The example and influence ofsuch as seem to him more than his mother like himself, grow strong uponhim. His conscience speaks louder. And here, even at this early point inhis history, what I might call his fourth birth _may_ begin to takeplace: I mean the birth in him of the Will--the real Will--not thepseudo-will, which is the mere Desire, swayed of impulse, selfishness, or one of many a miserable motive. When the man, listening to hisconscience, wills and does the right, irrespective of inclination as ofconsequence, then is the man free, the universe open before him. He isborn from above. To him conscience needs never speak aloud, needs neverspeak twice; to him her voice never grows less powerful, for he neverneglects what she commands. And when he becomes aware that he can willhis will, that God has given him a share in essential life, in thecausation of his own being, then is he a man indeed. I say, even herethis birth may begin; but with most it takes years not a few to completeit. For, the power of the mother having waned, the power of theneighbour is waxing. If the boy be of common clay, that is, of claywilling to accept dishonour, this power of the neighbour over him willincrease and increase, till individuality shall have vanished from him, and what his friends, what society, what the trade or the professionsay, will be to him the rule of life. With such, however, I have to dono more than with the deaf dead, who sleep too deep for words to reachthem. 

My typical child of man is not of such. He is capable not of beinginfluenced merely, but of influencing--and first of all of influencinghimself; of taking a share in his own making; of determining actively, not by mere passivity, what he shall be and become; for he never ceasesto pay at least a little heed, however poor and intermittent, to thevoice of his conscience, and to-day he pays more heed than he didyesterday. 

Long ere now the joy of space, of room, has laid hold upon him--the morepowerfully if he inhabit a wild and broken region. The human animaldelights in motion and change, motions of his members even violent, andswiftest changes of place. It is as if he would lay hold of the infiniteby ceaseless abandonment and choice of a never-abiding stand-point, asif he would lay hold of strength by the consciousness of the strength hehas. He is full of unrest. He must know what lies on the farther shoreof every river, see how the world looks from every hill: _What isbehind? What is beyond?_ is his constant cry. To learn, to gather intohimself, is his longing. Nor do many years pass thus, it may be not manymonths, ere the world begins to come alive around him. He begins to feelthat the stars are strange, that the moon is sad, that the sunrise ismighty. He begins to see in them all the something men call beauty. Hewill lie on the sunny bank and gaze into the blue heaven till his soulseems to float abroad and mingle with the infinite made visible, withthe boundless condensed into colour and shape. The rush of the waterthrough the still twilight, under the faint gleam of the exhausted west, makes in his ears a melody he is almost aware he cannot understand. Dissatisfied with his emotions he desires a deeper waking, longs for agreater beauty, is troubled with the stirring in his bosom of an unknownideal of Nature. Nor is it an ideal of Nature alone that is formingwithin him. A far more precious thing, a human ideal namely, is in hissoul, gathering to itself shape and consistency. The wind that at nightfills him with sadness--he cannot tell why, in the daytime haunts himlike a wild consciousness of strength which has neither difficulty nordanger enough to spend itself upon. He would be a champion of the weak, a friend to the great; for both he would fight--a merciless foe to everyoppressor of his kind. He would be rich that he might help, strong thathe might rescue, brave--that he counts himself already, for he has notproved his own weakness. In the first encounter he fails, and the bittercup of shame and confusion of face, wholesome and saving, is handed himfrom the well of life. He is not yet capable of understanding that onesuch as he, filled with the glory and not the duty of victory, could notbut fail, and therefore ought to fail; but his dismay and chagrin aresoothed by the forgetfulness the days and nights bring, gently wipingout the sins that are past, that the young life may have a fresh chance, as we say, and begin again unburdened by the weight of a too muchpresent failure. 

And now, probably at school, or in the first months of his college-life, a new phase of experience begins. He has wandered over the border ofwhat is commonly called science, and the marvel of facts multitudinous, strung upon the golden threads of law, has laid hold upon him. Hisintellect is seized and possessed by a new spirit. For a time knowledgeis pride; the mere consciousness of knowing is the reward of its labour;the ever recurring, ever passing contact of mind with a new fact is ajoy full of excitement, and promises an endless delight. But ever thething that is known sinks into insignificance, save as a step of theendless stair on which he is climbing--whither he knows not; the unknowndraws him; the new fact touches his mind, flames up in the contact, anddrops dark, a mere fact, on the heap below. Even the grandeur of law aslaw, so far from adding fresh consciousness to his life, causes it nosmall suffering and loss. For at the entrance of Science, nobly andgracefully as she bears herself, young Poetry shrinks back startled, dismayed. Poetry is true as Science, and Science is holy as Poetry; butyoung Poetry is timid and Science is fearless, and bears with her acolder atmosphere than the other has yet learned to brave. It is notthat Madam Science shows any antagonism to Lady Poetry; but theatmosphere and plane on which alone they can meet as friends whounderstand each other, is the mind and heart of the sage, not of theboy. The youth gazes on the face of Science, cold, clear, beautiful;then, turning, looks for his friend--but, alas! Poetry has fled. With agreat pang at the heart he rushes abroad to find her, but descries onlythe rainbow glimmer of her skirt on the far horizon. At night, in hisdreams, she returns, but never for a season may he look on her face ofloveliness. What, alas! have evaporation, caloric, atmosphere, refraction, the prism, and the second planet of our system, to do with"sad Hesper o'er the buried sun?" From quantitative analysis how shallhe turn again to "the rime of the ancient mariner, " and "the movingmoon" that "went up the sky, and nowhere did abide"? From his window hegazes across the sands to the mightily troubled ocean: "What is thestorm to me any more!" he cries; "it is but the clashing of countlesswater-drops!" He finds relief in the discovery that, the moment youplace man in the midst of it, the clashing of water-drops becomes astorm, terrible to heart and brain: human thought and feeling, hope, fear, love, sacrifice, make the motions of nature alive with mystery andthe shadows of destiny. The relief, however, is but partial, and may bebut temporary; for what if this mingling of man and Nature in the mindof man be but the casting of a coloured shadow over her coldindifference? What if she means nothing--never was meant to meananything! What if in truth "we receive but what we give, and in our lifealone doth Nature live!" What if the language of metaphysics as well asof poetry be drawn, not from Nature at all, but from human fancyconcerning her!

At length, from the unknown, whence himself he came, appears an angel todeliver him from this horror--this stony look--ah, God! of soulless law. The woman is on her way whose part it is to meet him with a life otherthan his own, at once the complement of his, and the visible presentmentof that in it which is beyond his own understanding. The enchantment ofwhat we specially call _love_ is upon him--a deceiving glamour, saysome, showing what is not, an opening of the eyes, say others, revealingthat of which a man had not been aware: men will still be divided intothose who believe that the horses of fire and the chariots of fire areever present at their need of them, and those who class the prophet andthe drunkard in the same category as the fools of their own fancies. Butwhat this love is, he who thinks he knows least understands. Let foolishmaidens and vulgar youths simper and jest over it as they please, it isone of the most potent mysteries of the living God. The man who can lovea woman and remain a lover of his wretched self, is fit only to be castout with the broken potsherds of the city, as one in whom the very salthas lost its savour. With this love in his heart, a man puts on at leastthe vision robes of the seer, if not the singing robes of the poet. Behe the paltriest human animal that ever breathed, for the time, and inhis degree, he rises above himself. His nature so far clarifies itself, that here and there a truth of the great world will penetrate, sorelydimmed, through the fog-laden, self-shadowed atmosphere of hismicrocosm. For the time, I repeat, he is not a lover only, but somethingof a friend, with a reflex touch of his own far-off childhood. To theyouth of my history, in the light of his love--a light that passesoutward from the eyes of the lover--the world grows alive again, yearadiant as an infinite face. He sees the flowers as he saw them inboyhood, recovering from an illness of all the winter, only they have ayet deeper glow, a yet fresher delight, a yet more unspeakable soul. Hebecomes pitiful over them, and not willingly breaks their stems, to hurtthe life he more than half believes they share with him. He cannot thinkanything created only for him, any more than only for itself. Nature isno longer a mere contention of forces, whose heaven and whose hell inone is the dull peace of an equilibrium; but a struggle, throughsplendour of colour, graciousness of form, and evasive vitality ofmotion and sound, after an utterance hard to find, and never found butmarred by the imperfection of the small and weak that would embody andset forth the great and mighty. The waving of the tree-tops is thebillowy movement of a hidden delight. The sun lifts his head with intentto be glorious. No day lasts too long, no night comes too soon: thetwilight is woven of shadowy arms that draw the loving to the bosom ofthe Night. In the woman, the infinite after which he thirsts is givenhim for his own. 

Man's occupation with himself turns his eyes from the great life beyondhis threshold: when love awakes, he forgets himself for a time, and manya glimpse of strange truth finds its way through his windows, blocked nolonger by the shadow of himself. He may now catch even a glimpse of thepossibilities of his own being--may dimly perceive for a moment theimage after which he was made. But alas! too soon, self, radiant ofdarkness, awakes; every window becomes opaque with shadow, and the manis again a prisoner. For it is not the highest word alone that the caresof this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other thingsentering in, choke, and render unfruitful. Waking from the divinevision, if that can be called waking which is indeed dying into thecommon day, the common man regards it straightway as a foolish dream;the wise man believes in it still, holds fast by the memory of thevanished glory, and looks to have it one day again a present portion ofthe light of his life. He knows that, because of the imperfection anddulness and weakness of his nature, after every vision follow theinclosing clouds, with the threat of an ever during dark; knows that, even if the vision could tarry, it were not well, for the sake of thatwhich must yet be done with him, yet be made of him, that it shouldtarry. But the youth whose history I am following is not like theformer, nor as yet like the latter. 

From whatever cause, then, whether of fault, of natural law, or ofsupernal will, the flush that seemed to promise the dawn of an eternalday, shrinks and fades, though, with him, like the lagging skirt of thesunset in the northern west, it does not vanish, but travels on, awithered pilgrim, all the night, at the long last to rise the aureole ofthe eternal Aurora. And now new paths entice him--or old paths openingfresh horizons. With stronger thews and keener nerves he turns again tothe visible around him. The changelessness amid change, the law amidseeming disorder, the unity amid units, draws him again. He begins todescry the indwelling poetry of science. The untiring forces at work inmeasurable yet inconceivable spaces of time and room, fill his soul withan awe that threatens to uncreate him with a sense of littleness; while, on the other side, the grandeur of their operations fills him with suchan informing glory, the mere presence of the mighty facts, that he nomore thinks of himself, but in humility is great, and knows it not. Raptspectator, seer entranced under the magic wand of Science, he beholdsthe billions of billions of miles of incandescent vapour begin a slow, scarce perceptible revolution, gradually grow swift, and gather an awfulspeed. He sees the vapour, as it whirls, condensing through sloweternities to a plastic fluidity. He notes ring after ring part from thecircumference of the mass, break, rush together into a globe, and theglowing ball keep on through space with the speed of its parent bulk. Itcools and still cools and condenses, but still fiercely glows. Presently--after tens of thousands of years is the creative_presently_--arises fierce contention betwixt the glowing heart and itsaccompanying atmosphere. The latter invades the former with antagonisticelement. He listens in his soul, and hears the rush of ever descendingtorrent rains, with the continuous roaring shock of their evanishment invapour--to turn again to water in the higher regions, and again rush tothe attack upon the citadel of fire. He beholds the slow victory of thewater at last, and the great globe, now glooming in a cloak of darkness, covered with a wildly boiling sea--not boiling by figure of speech, under contending forces of wind and tide, but boiling high as the hillsto come, with veritable heat. He sees the rise of the wrinkles we callhills and mountains, and from their sides the avalanches of water to thelower levels. He sees race after race of living things appear, as theearth becomes, for each new and higher kind, a passing home; and hewatches the succession of terrible convulsions dividing kind from kind, until at length the kind he calls his own arrives. Endless are thevisions of material grandeur unfathomable, awaked in his soul by thebare facts of external existence. 

But soon comes a change. So far as he can see or learn, all the motion, all the seeming dance, is but a rush for death, a panic flight into themoveless silence. The summer wind, the tropic tornado, the softest tide, the fiercest storm, are alike the tumultuous conflict of forces, rushing, and fighting as they rush, into the arms of eternal negation. On and on they hurry--down and down, to a cold stirless solidity, wherewind blows not, water flows not, where the seas are not merely tidelessand beat no shores, but frozen cleave with frozen roots to their gulfybasin. All things are on the steep-sloping path to final evanishment, uncreation, non-existence. He is filled with horror--not so much of thedreary end, as at the weary hopelessness of the path thitherward. Then adim light breaks upon him, and with it a faint hope revives, for heseems to see in all the forms of life, innumerably varied, a spiritrushing upward from death--a something in escape from the terror of thedownward cataract, of the rest that knows not peace. "Is it not, " heasks, "the soaring of the silver dove of life from its potsherd-bed--theheavenward flight of some higher and incorruptible thing? Is notvitality, revealed in growth, itself an unending resurrection?"

The vision also of the oneness of the universe, ever reappearing throughthe vapours of question, helps to keep hope alive in him. To find, forinstance, the law of the relation of the arrangements of the leaves ondiffering plants, correspond to the law of the relative distances of theplanets in approach to their central sun, wakes in him that hope of acentral Will, which alone can justify one ecstatic throb at any seemingloveliness of the universe. For without the hope of such a centre, delight is unreason--a mockery not such as the skeleton at the Egyptianfeast, but such rather as a crowned corpse at a feast of skeletons. Lifewithout the higher glory of the unspeakable, the atmosphere of a God, isnot life, is not worth living. He would rather cease to be, than walkthe dull level of the commonplace--than live the unideal of men in whosecompany he can take no pleasure--men who are as of a lower race, whom hefain would lift, who will not rise, but for whom as for himself he wouldcherish the hope they do their best to kill. Those who seem to himgreat, recognize the unseen--believe the roots of science to be thereinhid--regard the bringing forth into sight of the things that areinvisible as the end of all Art and every art--judge the true leader ofmen to be him who leads them closer to the essential facts of theirbeing. Alas for his love and his hope, alas for himself, if the visibleshould exist for its own sake only!--if the face of a flower meansnothing--appeals to no region beyond the scope of the science that wouldunveil its growth. He cannot believe that its structure exists for thesake of its laws; that would be to build for the sake of its joints ascaffold where no house was to stand. Those who put their faith inScience are trying to live in the scaffold of the house invisible. 

He finds harbour and comfort at times in the written poetry of hisfellows. He delights in analyzing and grasping the thought that informsthe utterance. For a moment, the fine figure, the delicate phrase, makehim jubilant and strong; but the jubilation and the strength soon pass, for it is not any of the _forms_, even of the thought-forms of truththat can give rest to his soul. 

History attracts him little, for he is not able to discover by itsrecords the operation of principles yielding hope for his race. Suchthere may be, but he does not find them. What hope for the rising wavethat knows in its rise only its doom to sink, and at length be dashed onthe low shore of annihilation?

But the time would fail me to follow the doubling of the soul coursed bythe hounds of Death, or to set down the forms innumerable in which thegolden Haemony springs in its path, Of sovran use 'Gainst all enchantments, mildew blast, or damp. 

And now the shadows are beginning to lengthen towards the night, which, whether there be a following morn or no, is the night, and spreads outthe wings of darkness. And still as it approaches the more aware growsthe man of a want that differs from any feeling I have already sought todescribe--a sense of insecurity, in no wise the same as the doubt oflife beyond the grave--a need more profound even than that which criesfor a living Nature. And now he plainly knows, that, all his life, likea conscious duty unfulfilled, this sense has haunted his path, ever andanon descending and clinging, a cold mist, about his heart. What if thislack was indeed the root of every other anxiety! Now freshly revived, this sense of not having, of something, he knows not what, for lack ofwhich his being is in pain at its own incompleteness, never leaves himmore. And with it the terror has returned and grows, lest there shouldbe no Unseen Power, as his fathers believed, and his mother taught him, filling all things and _meaning_ all things, --no Power with whom, in hislast extremity, awaits him a final refuge. With the quickening doubtfalls a tenfold blight on the world of poetry, both that in Nature andthat in books. Far worse than that early chill which the assertions ofscience concerning what it knows, cast upon his inexperienced soul, isnow the shivering death which its pretended denials concerning what itknows not, send through all his vital frame. The soul departs from theface of beauty, when the eye begins to doubt if there be any soul behindit; and now the man feels like one I knew, affected with a strangedisease, who saw in the living face always the face of a corpse. Whatcan the world be to him who lives for thought, if there be no supremeand perfect Thought, --none but such poor struggles after thought as hefinds in himself? Take the eternal thought from the heart of things, nolonger can any beauty be real, no more can shape, motion, aspect ofnature have significance in itself, or sympathy with human soul. At bestand most the beauty he thought he saw was but the projected perfectionof his own being, and from himself as the crown and summit of things, the soul of the man shrinks with horror: it is the more imperfect beingwho knows the least his incompleteness, and for whom, seeing so littlebeyond himself, it is easiest to imagine himself the heart and apex ofthings, and rejoice in the fancy. The killing power of a godless sciencereturns upon him with tenfold force. The ocean-tempest is once more amere clashing of innumerable water-drops; the green and amber sadness ofthe evening sky is a mockery of sorrow; his own soul and its sadness isa mockery of himself. There is nothing in the sadness, nothing in themockery. To tell him as comfort, that in his own thought lives themeaning if nowhere else, is mockery worst of all; for if there be notruth in them, if these things be no embodiment, to make them serve assuch is to put a candle in a death's-head to light the dying through theplace of tombs. To his former foolish fancy a primrose might preach achildlike trust; the untoiling lilies might from their field cast seedsof a higher growth into his troubled heart; now they are no better thanthe colour the painter leaves behind him on the doorpost of hisworkshop, when, the day's labour over, he wipes his brush on it ere hedepart for the night. The look in the eyes of his dog, happy in that heis short-lived, is one of infinite sadness. All graciousness musthenceforth be a sorrow: it has to go with the sunsets. That a thing mustcease takes from it the joy of even an aeonian endurance--for its _kind_is mortal; it belongs to the nature of things that cannot live. Thesorrow is not so much that it shall perish as that it could notlive--that it is not in its nature a real, that is, an eternal thing. His children are shadows--their life a dance, a sickness, a corruption. The very element of unselfishness, which, however feeble and becloudedit may be, yet exists in all love, in giving life its only dignity addsto its sorrow. Nowhere at the root of things is love--it is only asomething that came after, some sort of fungous excrescence in thehearts of men grown helplessly superior to their origin. Law, nothingbut cold, impassive, material law, is the root of things--lifelesshappily, so not knowing itself, else were it a demon instead of acreative nothing. Endeavour is paralyzed in him. "Work for posterity, "says he of the skyless philosophy; answers the man, "How can I workwithout hope? Little heart have I to labour, where labour is so littlehelp. What can I do for my children that would render their life lesshopeless than my own! Give me all you would secure for them, and my lifewould be to me but the worse mockery. The true end of labour would be, to lessen the number doomed to breathe the breath of this despair. "

Straightway he developes another and a deeper mood. He turns and regardshimself. Suspicion or sudden insight has directed the look. And there, in himself, he discovers such imperfection, such wrong, such shame, suchweakness, as cause him to cry out, "It were well I should cease! Whyshould I mourn after life? Where were the good of prolonging it in abeing like me? 'What should such fellows as I do crawling between heavenand earth!'" Such insights, when they come, the seers do their best, ingeneral, to obscure; suspicion of themselves they regard as a monster, and would stifle. They resent the waking of such doubt. Any attempt atthe raising in them of their buried best they regard as an offenceagainst intercourse. A man takes his social life in his hand who daresit. Few therefore understand the judgment of Hamlet upon himself; thecommon reader is so incapable of imagining he could mean it of his owngeneral character as a man, that he attributes the utterance to shamefor the postponement of a vengeance, which indeed he must have been suchas his critic to be capable of performing upon no better proof than hehad yet had. When the man whose unfolding I would now represent, regardseven his dearest love, he finds it such a poor, selfish, low-livedthing, that in his heart he shames himself before his children and hisfriends. How little labour, how little watching, how little pain has heendured for their sakes! He reads of great things in this kind, but inhimself he does not find them. How often has he not been wrongfullydispleased--wrathful with the innocent! How often has he not hurt aheart more tender than his own! Has he ever once been faithful to theheight of his ideal? Is his life on the whole a thing to regard withcomplacency, or to be troubled exceedingly concerning? Beyond him riseand spread infinite seeming possibilities--height beyond height, glorybeyond glory, each rooted in and rising from his conscious being, butalas! where is any hope of ascending them? These hills of peace, "in aseason of calm weather, " seem to surround and infold him, as a land inwhich he could dwell at ease and at home: surely among them lies theplace of his birth!--while against their purity and grandeur the beingof his consciousness shows miserable--dark, weak, and undefined--ashadow that would fain be substance--a dream that would gladly be borninto the light of reality. But alas if the whole thing be only inhimself--if the vision be a dream of nothing, a revelation of lies, theoutcome of that which, helplessly existent, is yet not created, therefore cannot create--if not the whole thing only be a dream of theimpotent, but the impotent be himself but a dream--a dream of his own--aself-dreamed dream--with no master of dreams to whom to cry! Where thenthe cherished hope of one day atoning for his wrongs to those who lovedhim!--they are nowhere--vanished for ever, upmingled and dissolved inthe primeval darkness! If truth be but the hollow of a sphere, ah, nevershall he cast himself before them, to tell them that now at last, afterlong years of revealing separation, he knows himself and them, and thatnow the love of them is a part of his very being--to implore theirforgiveness on the ground that he hates, despises, contemns, and scornsthe self that showed them less than absolute love and devotion! Neverthus shall he lay his being bare to their eyes of love! They do not evenrest, for they do not and will not know it. There is no voice norhearing in them, and how can there be in him any heart to live! The onecomfort left him is, that, unable to follow them, he shall yet die andcease, and fare as they--go also nowhither!

To a man under the dismay of existence dissociated from power, unrootedin, unshadowed by a creating Will, who is Love, the Father of Man--tohim who knows not being and God together, the idea of death--a deaththat knows no reviving, must be, and ought to be the blessedest thoughtleft him. "O land of shadows!" well may such a one cry! "land where theshadows love to ecstatic self-loss, yet forget, and love no more! landof sorrows and despairs, that sink the soul into a deeper Tophet thandeath has ever sounded! broken kaleidoscope! shaken camera! promiser, speaking truth to the ear, but lying to the sense! land where the heartof my friend is sorrowful as my heart--the more sorrowful that I havebeen but a poor and far-off friend! land where sin is strong andrighteousness faint! where love dreams mightily and walks abroad sofeeble! land where the face of my father is dust, and the hand of mymother will never more caress! where my children will spend a few yearsof like trouble to mine, and then drop from the dream into the no-dream!gladly, O land of sickliest shadows--gladly, that is, with what power ofgladness is in me, I take my leave of thee! Welcome the cold, pain-soothing embrace of immortal Death! Hideous are his looks, but Ilove him better than Life: he is true, and will not deceive us. Nay, heonly is our saviour, setting us free from the tyranny of the false thatought to be true, and sets us longing in vain. "

But through all the man's doubts, fears, and perplexities, a certainwhisper, say rather, an uncertain rumour, a vague legendary murmur, hasbeen at the same time about, rather than in, his ears--never ceasing tohaunt his air, although hitherto he has hardly heeded it. He knows ithas come down the ages, and that some in every age have been more orless influenced by a varied acceptance of it. Upon those, however, withwhom he has chiefly associated, it has made no impression beyond that ofa remarkable legend. It is the story of a man, represented as at leastgreater, stronger, and better than any other man. With the hero of thistale he has had a constantly recurring, though altogether undefinedsuspicion that he has something to do. It is strongest, though not eventhen strong, at such times when he is most aware of evil andimperfection in himself. Betwixt the two, the idea of this man and hisknowledge of himself, seems to lie, dim-shadowy, some imperative duty. He knows that the whole matter concerning the man is commemorated inmany of the oldest institutions of his country, but up to this time hehas shrunk from the demands which, by a kind of spiritual insight, heforesaw would follow, were he once to admit certain things to be true. He has, however, known some and read of more who by their faith in theman conquered all anxiety, doubt, and fear, lived pure, and died ingladsome hope. On the other hand, it seems to him that the faith whichwas once easy has now become almost an impossibility. And what is it heis called upon to believe? One says one thing, another another. Muchthat is asserted is simply unworthy of belief, and the foundation of thewhole has in his eyes something of the look of a cunningly devisedfable. Even should it be true, it cannot help him, he thinks, for itdoes not even touch the things that make his woe: the God the talepresents is not the being whose very existence can alone be his cure. 

But he meets one who says to him, "Have you then come to your time oflife, and not yet ceased to accept hearsay as ground of action--forthere is action in abstaining as well as in doing? Suppose the man inquestion to have taken all possible pains to be understood, does itfollow of necessity that he is now or ever was fairly represented by thebulk of his followers? With such a moral distance between him and them, is it possible?"

"But the whole thing has from first to last a strange aspect!" ourthinker replies. 

"As to the _last_ that is not yet come. And as to its _aspect_, itsreality must be such as human eye could never convey to reading heart. Every human idea of it _must_ be more or less wrong. And yet perhaps thetruer the aspect the stranger it would be. But is it not just withordinary things you are dissatisfied? And should not therefore the verystrangeness of these to you little better than rumours incline you toexamine the object of them? Will you assert that nothing strange canhave to do with human affairs? Much that was once scarce credible is nowso ordinary that men have grown stupid to the wonder inherent in it. Nothing around you serves your need: try what is at least of anotherclass of phenomena. What if the things rumoured belong to a _more_natural order than these, lie nearer the roots of your dissatisfiedexistence, and look strange only because you have hitherto been livingin the outer court, not in the _penetralia_ of life? The rumour has beenvital enough to float down the ages, emerging from every storm: why notsee for yourself what may be in it? So powerful an influence on humanhistory, surely there will be found in it signs by which to determinewhether the man understood himself and his message, or owed his apparentgreatness to the deluded worship of his followers! That he has alwayshad foolish followers none will deny, and none but a fool would judgeany leader from such a fact. Wisdom as well as folly will serve a fool'spurpose; he turns all into folly. I say nothing now of my ownconclusions, because what you imagine my opinions are as hateful to meas to you disagreeable and foolish. "

So says the friend; the man hears, takes up the old story, and says tohimself, "Let me see then what I can see!"

I will not follow him through the many shadows and slow dawns by whichat length he arrives at this much: A man claiming to be the Son of Godsays he has come to be the light of men; says, "Come to me, and I willgive you rest;" says, "Follow me, and you shall find my Father; to knowhim is the one thing you cannot do without, for it is eternal life. " Hehas learned from the reported words of the man, and from the man himselfas in the tale presented, that the bliss of his conscious being is hisFather; that his one delight is to do the will of that Father--the onlything in his eyes worthy of being done, or worth having done; that hewould make men blessed with his own blessedness; that the cry ofcreation, the cry of humanity shall be answered into the deepest soul ofdesire; that less than the divine mode of existence, the godlike way ofbeing, can satisfy no man, that is, make him content with hisconsciousness; that not this world only, but the whole universe is theinheritance of those who consent to be the children of their Father inheaven, who put forth the power of their will to be of the same sort ashe; that to as many as receive him he gives power to become the sons ofGod; that they shall be partakers of the divine nature, of the divinejoy, of the divine power--shall have whatever they desire, shall know nofear, shall love perfectly, and shall never die; that these things arebeyond the grasp of the knowing ones of the world, and to them themessage will be a scorn; but that the time will come when its truthshall be apparent, to some in confusion of face, to others in joyunspeakable; only that we must beware of judging, for many that arefirst shall be last, and there are last that shall be first. 

To find himself in such conscious as well as vital relation with thesource of his being, with a Will by which his own will exists, with aConsciousness by and through which he is conscious, would indeed be theend of all the man's ills! nor can he imagine any other, not to saybetter way, in which his sorrows could be met, understood andannihilated. For the ills that oppress him are both within him andwithout, and over each kind he is powerless. If the message were but atrue one! If indeed this man knew what he talked of! But if there shouldbe help for man from anywhere beyond him, some _one_ might know itfirst, and may not this be the one? And if the message be so great, soperfect as this man asserts, then only a perfect, an eternal man, athome in the bosom of the Father, could know, or bring, or tell it. According to the tale, it had been from the first the intent of theFather to reveal himself to man as man, for without the knowledge of theFather after man's own modes of being, he could not grow to realmanhood. The grander the whole idea, the more likely is it to be what itclaims to be! and if not high as the heavens above the earth, beyond usyet within our reach, it is not for us, it cannot be true. Fact or not, the existence of a God such as Christ, a God who is a good maninfinitely, is the only idea containing hope enough for man! If such aGod has come to be known, marvel must surround the first news at leastof the revelation of him. Because of its marvel, shall men find it inreason to turn from the gracious rumour of what, if it be true, must bethe event of all events? And could marvel be lovelier than the marvelreported? But the humble men of heart alone can believe in thehigh--they alone can perceive, they alone can embrace grandeur. Humilityis essential greatness, the inside of grandeur. 

Something of such truths the man glimmeringly sees. But in his mindawake, thereupon, endless doubts and questions. What if the whole ideaof his mission was a deception born of the very goodness of the man?What if the whole matter was the invention of men pretending themselvesthe followers of such a man? What if it was a little truth greatlyexaggerated? Only, be it what it may, less than its full idea would notbe enough for the wants and sorrows that weaken and weigh him down!

He passes through many a thorny thicket of inquiry; gathers evidenceupon evidence; reasons upon the goodness of the men who wrote: theymight be deceived, but they dared not invent; holds with himself athousand arguments, historical, psychical, metaphysical--which for theirsetting-forth would require volumes; hears many an opposing, many ascoffing word from men "who surely know, else would they speak?" andfinds himself much where he was before. But at least he is haunting thepossible borders of discovery, while those who turn their backs upon theidea are divided from him by a great gulf--it may be of moraldifference. To him there is still a grand auroral hope about the idea, and it still draws him; the others, taking the thing from merest reportof opinion, look anywhere but thitherward. He who would not trust hisbest friend to set forth his views of life, accepts the randomjudgements of unknown others for a sufficing disposal of what thehighest of the race have regarded as a veritable revelation from theFather of men. He sees in it therefore nothing but folly; for what hetakes for the thing nowhere meets his nature. Our searcher at leastholds open the door for the hearing of what voice may come to him fromthe region invisible: if there be truth there, he is where it will findhim. 

As he continues to read and reflect, the perception gradually growsclear in him, that, if there be truth in the matter, he must, first ofall, and beyond all things else, give his best heed to the reportedwords of the man himself--to what he says, not what is said about him, valuable as that may afterwards prove to be. And he finds thatconcerning these words of his, the man says, or at least plainlyimplies, that only the obedient, childlike soul can understand them. Itfollows that the judgement of no man who does not obey can be receivedconcerning them or the speaker of them--that, for instance, a man whohates his enemy, who tells lies, who thinks to serve God and Mammon, whether he call himself a Christian or no, has not the right of anopinion concerning the Master or his words--at least in the eyes of theMaster, however it may be in his own. This is in the very nature ofthings: obedience alone places a man in the position in which he can seeso as to judge that which is above him. In respect of great truthsinvestigation goes for little, speculation for nothing; if a man wouldknow them, he must obey them. Their nature is such that the only doorinto them is obedience. And the truth-seeker perceives--which allowshim no loophole of escape from life--that what things the Son of Manrequires of him, are either such as his conscience backs for just, orsuch as seem too great, too high for any man. But if there be help forhim, it must be a help that recognizes the highest in him, and urges himto its use. Help cannot come to one made in the image of God, save inthe obedient effort of what life and power are in him, for God isaction. In such effort alone is it possible for need to encounter help. It is the upstretched that meets the downstretched hand. He alone whoobeys can with confidence pray--to him alone does an answer seem a thingthat may come. And should anything spoken by the Son of Man seem to theseeker unreasonable, he feels in the rest such a majesty of duty ascompels him to judge with regard to the other, that he has not yetperceived its true nature, or its true relation to life. 

And now comes the crisis: if here the man sets himself honestly to dothe thing the Son of Man tells him, he so, and so first, sets outpositively upon the path which, if there be truth in these things, willconduct him to a knowledge of the whole matter; not until then is he adisciple. If the message be a true one, the condition of the knowledgeof its truth is not only reasonable but an unavoidable necessity. Ifthere be help for him, how otherways should it draw nigh? He has to beassured of the highest truth of his being: there can be no otherassurance than that to be gained thus, and thus alone; for not only byobedience does a man come into such contact with truth as to know whatit is, and in regard to truth knowledge and belief are one. That thingswhich cannot appear save to the eye capable of seeing them, that thingswhich cannot be recognized save by the mind of a certain development, should be examined by eye incapable, and pronounced upon by mindundeveloped, is absurd. The deliverance the message offers is a changesuch that the man shall _be_ the rightness of which he talked: while hissoul is not a hungered, athirst, aglow, a groaning afterrighteousness--that is, longing to be himself honest and upright, it isan absurdity that he should judge concerning the way to this rightness, seeing that, while he walks not in it, he is and shall be a dishonestman: he knows not whither it leads and how can he know the way! What he_can_ judge of is, his duty at a given moment--and that not in theabstract, but as something to be by him _done_, neither more, nor less, nor other than _done_. Thus judging and doing, he makes the onlypossible step nearer to righteousness and righteous judgement; doingotherwise, he becomes the more unrighteous, the more blind. For the manwho knows not God, whether he believes there is a God or not, there canbe, I repeat, no judgement of things pertaining to God. To our supposedsearcher, then, the crowning word of the Son of Man is this, "If any manis willing to do the will of the Father, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. "

Having thus accompanied my type to the borders of liberty, my task forthe present is over. The rest let him who reads prove for himself. Obedience alone can convince. To convince without obedience I would takeno bootless labour; it would be but a gain for hell. If any man callthese things foolishness, his judgement is to me insignificant. If anyman say he is open to conviction, I answer him he can have none but onthe condition, by the means of obedience. If a man say, "The thing isnot interesting to me, " I ask him, "Are you following your conscience?By that, and not by the interest you take or do not take in a thing, shall you be judged. Nor will anything be said to you, or of you, inthat day, whatever _that day_ mean, of which your conscience will notecho every syllable. "

Oneness with God is the sole truth of humanity. Life parted from itscausative life would be no life; it would at best be but a barrack ofcorruption, an outpost of annihilation. In proportion as the union isincomplete, the derived life is imperfect. And no man can be one withneighbour, child, dearest, except as he is one with his origin; and hefails of his perfection so long as there is one being in the universe hecould not love. 

Of all men he is bound to hold his face like a flint in witness of thistruth who owes everything that makes for eternal good, to the beliefthat at the heart of things and causing them to be, at the centre ofmonad, of world, of protoplastic mass, of loving dog, and of man mostcruel, is an absolute, perfect love; and that in the man Christ Jesusthis love is with us men to take us home. To nothing else do I for oneowe any grasp upon life. In this I see the setting right of all things. To the man who believes in the Son of God, poetry returns in a mightywave; history unrolls itself in harmony; science shows crowned with itsown aureole of holiness. There is no enlivener of the imagination, noenabler of the judgment, no strengthener of the intellect, to comparewith the belief in a live Ideal, at the heart of all personality, as ofevery law. If there be no such live Ideal, then a falsehood can do morefor the race than the facts of its being; then an unreality is needfulfor the development of the man in all that is real, in all that is inthe highest sense true; then falsehood is greater than fact, and an idolnecessary for lack of a God. They who deny cannot, in the nature ofthings, know what they deny. When one sees a chaos begin to put on theshape of an ordered world, he will hardly be persuaded it is by thepower of a foolish notion bred in a diseased fancy. 

Let the man then who would rise to the height of his being, be persuadedto test the Truth by the deed--the highest and only test that can beapplied to the loftiest of all assertions. To every man I say, "Do thetruth you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know. "

ST. GEORGE'S DAY, 1564. [Footnote: 1864. ]

All England knows that this year (1864) is the three hundredth sinceShakspere was born. The strong probability is likewise that this monthof April is that in which he first saw the earthly light. On thetwenty-sixth of April he was baptized. Whether he was born on thetwenty-third, to which effect there may once have been a tradition, wedo not know; but though there is nothing to corroborate that statement, there are two facts which would incline us to believe it if we could:the one that he _died_ on the twenty-third of April, thus, as it were, completing a cycle; and the other that the twenty-third of April is St. George's Day. If there is no harm in indulging in a little fancifulsentiment about such a grand fact, we should say that certainly it was_St. George for merry England_ when Shakspere was born. But had St. George been the best saint in the calendar--which we have little enoughground for supposing he was--it would better suit our subject to saythat the Highest was thinking of his England when he sent Shakspere intoit, to be a strength, a wonder, and a gladness to the nations of hisearth. 

But if we write thus about Shakspere, influenced only by the fashion ofthe day, we shall be much in the condition of those _fashionable_architects who with their vain praises built the tombs of the prophets, while they had no regard to the lessons they taught. We hope to be ableto show that we have good grounds for our rejoicing in the birth of thatchild whom after-years placed highest on the rocky steep of Art, upwhich so many of those who combine feeling and thought are alwaysstriving. 

First, however, let us look at some of the more powerful of theinfluences into the midst of which he was born. For a child is born intothe womb of the time, which indeed enclosed and fed him before he wasborn. Not the least subtle and potent of those influences which tend tothe education of the child (in the true sense of the word _education_)are those which are brought to bear upon him _through_ the mind, heart, judgement of his parents. We mean that those powers which have operatedstrongly upon them, have a certain concentrated operation, bothantenatal and psychological, as well as educational and spiritual, uponthe child. Now Shakspere was born in the sixth year of Queen Elizabeth. He was the eldest son, but the third child. His father and mother musthave been married not later than the year 1557, two years after Cranmerwas burned at the stake, one of the two hundred who thus perished inthat time of pain, resulting in the firm establishment of a reformationwhich, like all other changes for the better, could not be verified andsecured without some form or other of the _trial by fire_. Events suchas then took place in every part of the country could not fail to make astrong impression upon all thinking people, especially as it was notthose of high position only who were thus called upon to bear witness totheir beliefs. John Shakspere and Mary Arden were in all likelihoodthemselves of the Protestant party; and although, as far as we know, they were never in any especial danger of being denounced, the whole ofthe circumstances must have tended to produce in them individually, whatseems to have been characteristic of the age in which they lived, earnestness. In times such as those, people are compelled to think. 

And here an interesting question occurs: Was it in part to his motherthat Shakspere was indebted for that profound knowledge of the Biblewhich is so evident in his writings? A good many copies of theScriptures must have been by this time, in one translation or another, scattered over the country. [Footnote: And it seems to us probable thatthis diffusion of the Bible, did more to rouse the slumbering literarypower of England, than any influences of foreign literature whatever. ]No doubt the word was precious in those days, and hard to buy; but theremight have been a copy, notwithstanding, in the house of John Shakspere, and it is possible that it was from his mother's lips that the boy firstheard the Scripture tales. We have called his acquaintance withScripture _profound_, and one peculiar way in which it manifests itselfwill bear out the assertion; for frequently it is the very spirit andessential aroma of the passage that he reproduces, without making anyuse of the words themselves. There are passages in his writings which wecould not have understood but for some acquaintance with the NewTestament. We will produce a few specimens of the kind we mean, confining ourselves to one play, "Macbeth. "

Just mentioning the phrase, "temple-haunting martlet" (act i. Scene 6), as including in it a reference to the verse, "Yea, the sparrow hathfound an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may layher young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, " we pass to the followingpassage, for which we do not believe there is any explanation but thatsuggested to us by the passage of Scripture to be cited. 

Macbeth, on his way to murder Duncan, says, --

 "Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time Which now suits with it. "

What is meant by the last two lines? It seems to us to be just anotherform of the words, "For there is nothing covered, that shall not berevealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever yehave spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which yehave spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon thehouse-tops. " Of course we do not mean that Macbeth is represented ashaving this passage in his mind, but that Shakspere had the feeling ofit when he wrote thus. What Macbeth means is, "Earth, do not hear me inthe dark, which is suitable to the present horror, lest the very stonesprate about it in the daylight, which is not suitable to such things;thus taking 'the present horror _from_ the time which now suits withit. '"

Again, in the only piece of humour in the play--if that should be calledhumour which, taken in its relation to the consciousness of theprincipal characters, is as terrible as anything in the piece--theporter ends off his fantastic soliloquy, in which he personates theporter of hell-gate, with the words, "But this place is too cold forhell: I'll devil-porter it no further. I had thought to have let in someof all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlastingbonfire. " Now what else had the writer in his mind but the verse fromthe Sermon on the Mount, "For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat"?

It may be objected that such passages as these, being of the mostcommonly quoted, imply no profound acquaintance with Scripture, such aswe have said Shakspere possessed. But no amount of knowledge of the_words_ of the Bible would be sufficient to justify the use of the word_profound_. What is remarkable in the employment of these passages, isnot merely that they are so present to his mind that they come up foruse in the most exciting moments of composition, but that he embodiesthe spirit of them in such a new form as reveals to minds saturated anddeadened with the _sound_ of the words, the very visual image andspiritual meaning involved in them. "_The primrose way!_" And to what?

We will confine ourselves to one passage more:--

 "Macbeth Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above Put on their instruments. "

In the end of the 14th chapter of the Revelation we have the words, "Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap;for the harvest of the earth is ripe. " We suspect that Shakspere wrote, ripe _to_ shaking. 

The instances to which we have confined ourselves do not by any meansbelong to the most evident kind of proof that might be adduced ofShakspere's acquaintance with Scripture. The subject, in its ordinaryaspect, has been elsewhere treated with far more fulness than our designwould permit us to indulge in, even if it had not been done already. Ourobject has been to bring forward a few passages which seem to us tobreathe the very spirit of individual passages in sacred writ, withoutdirect use of the words themselves; and, of course, in such a case wecan only appeal to the (no doubt) very various degrees of convictionwhich they may rouse in the minds of our readers. 

But there is one singular correspondence in another _almost_ literalquotation from the Gospel, which is to us wonderfully interesting. Weare told that the words "eye of a needle, " in the passage about a richman entering the kingdom of heaven, mean the small side entrance in acity gate. Now, in "Richard II, " act v. Scene 5, _Richard_ quotes thepassage thus:--

 "It is as hard to come as for a camel To thread the postern of a needle's eye;"

showing that either the imagination of Shakspere suggested the realexplanation, or he had taken pains to acquaint himself with thesignificance of the simile. We can hardly say that the correspondencemight be _merely_ fortuitous; because, at the least, Shakspere lookedfor and found a suitable figure to associate with the words _eye of aneedle_, and so fell upon the real explanation; except, indeed, he hadno particular significance in using the word that meant a _little_ gate, instead of a word meaning any kind of entrance, which, with him, seemsunlikely. 

We have not by any means proven that Shakspere's acquaintance with theScriptures had an early date in his history; but certainly the Biblemust have had a great influence upon him who was the highestrepresentative mind of the time, its influence on the generaldevelopment of the nation being unquestionable. This, therefore, seeingthe Bible itself was just dawning full upon the country while Shaksperewas becoming capable of understanding it, seems the suitable sequence inwhich to take notice of that influence, and of some of those passages inhis works which testify to it. 

But, besides _the_ Bible, every nation has _a_ Bible, or at least _an_Old Testament, in its own history; and that Shakspere paid especialattention to this, is no matter of conjecture. We suspect his mode ofwriting historical plays is more after the fashion of the Biblehistories than that of most writers of history. Indeed, the developmentand consequences of character and conduct are clear to those that readhis histories with open eyes. Now, in his childhood Shakspere may havehad some special incentive to the study of history springing out of thefact that his mother's grandfather had been "groom of the chamber toHenry VII. , " while there is sufficient testimony that a further removedancestor of his father, as well, had stood high in the favour of thesame monarch. Therefore the history of the troublous times of thepreceding century, which were brought to a close by the usurpation ofHenry VII. , would naturally be a subject of talk in the quiet household, where books and amusements such as now occupy our boys, were scarce orwanting altogether. The proximity of such a past of strife andcommotion, crowded with eventful change, must have formed a backgroundfull of the material of excitement to an age which lived in the midst ofa peculiarly exciting history of its own. 

Perhaps the chief intellectual characteristic of the age of Elizabethwas _activity_; this activity accounting even for much that isobjectionable in its literature. Now this activity must have beengrowing in the people throughout the fifteenth century; the wars of theRoses, although they stifled literature, so that it had, as it were, tobe born again in the beginning of the following century, being, afterall, but as the "eager strife" of the shadow-leaves above the "genuinelife" of the grass, --

 "And the mute repose Of sweetly breathing flowers. "

But when peace had fallen on the land, it would seem as if the impulseto action springing from strife still operated, as the waves will go onraving upon the shore after the wind has ceased, and found one outlet, amongst others, in literature, and peculiarly in dramatic literature. Peace, rendered yet more intense by the cessation of the cries of thetormentors, and the groans of the noble army of suffering martyrs, made, as it were, a kind of vacuum; and into that vacuum burst up thetorrent-springs of a thousand souls--the thoughts that were no longerrepressed--in the history of the past and the Utopian speculation on thefuture; in noble theology, capable statesmanship, and science at oncebrilliant and profound; in the voyage of discovery, and the change ofthe swan-like merchantman into a very fire-drake of war for the defenceof the threatened shores; in the first brave speech of the Puritan inElizabeth's Parliament, the first murmurs of the voice of liberty, soonto thunder throughout the land; in the naturalizing of foreign genius bytranslation, and the invention, or at least adoption, of a new andtranscendent rhythm; in the song, in the epic, in the drama. 

So much for the general. Let us now, following the course of his life, recall, in a few sentences, some of the chief events which must haveimpressed the all-open mind of Shakspere in the earlier portion of hishistory. 

Perhaps it would not be going back too far to begin with the Massacre ofParis, which took place when he was eight years old. It caused so muchhorror in England, that it is not absurd to suppose that some black raysfrom the deed of darkness may have fallen on the mind of such a child asShakspere. 

In strong contrast with the foregoing is the next event to which weshall refer. 

When he was eleven years old, Leicester gave the Queen that magnificentreception at Kenilworth which is so well known from its memorials in ourliterature. It has been suggested as probable, with quite enough oflikelihood to justify a conjecture, that Shakspere may have been presentat the dramatic representations then so gorgeously accumulated beforeher Majesty. If such was the fact, it is easy to imagine what aninfluence the shows must have had on the mind of the young dramaticgenius, at a time when, happily, the critical faculty is not by anymeans so fully awake as are the receptive and exultant faculties, andwhen what the nature chiefly needs is excitement to growth, withoutwhich all pruning, the most artistic, is useless, as having nothing tooperate upon. 

When he was fifteen years old, Sir Thomas North's translation ofPlutarch (through the French) was first published. Any reader who hascompared one of Shakspere's Roman plays with the corresponding life inPlutarch, will not be surprised that we should mention this as one ofthose events which must have been of paramount influence upon Shakspere. It is not likely that he became acquainted with the large folio with itsmedallion portraits first placed singly, and then repeated side by sidefor comparison, as soon as it made its appearance, but as we cannot tellwhen he began to read it, it seems as well to place it in the order itspublication would assign to it. Besides, it evidently took such a holdof the man, that it is most probable his acquaintance with it began at avery early period of his history. Indeed, it seems to us to have beenone of the most powerful aids to the development of that perception anddiscrimination of character with which he was gifted to such aremarkable degree. Nor would it be any derogation from the originalityof his genius to say, that in a very pregnant sense he must have been adisciple of Plutarch. In those plays founded on Plutarch's stories hepicked out every dramatic point, and occasionally employed the veryphrases of North's nervous, graphic, and characteristic English. Heseems to have felt that it was an honour to his work to embody in it thewords of Plutarch himself, as he knew them first. From him he seemsespecially to have learned how to bring out the points of a character, by putting one man over against another, and remarking wherein theyresembled each other and wherein they differed; after which fashion, inother plays as well as those, he partly arranged his dramaticcharacters. 

Not long after he went to London, when he was twenty-two, the death ofSir Philip Sidney at the age of thirty-two, must have had itsunavoidable influence on him, seeing all Europe was in mourning for thedeath of its model, almost ideal man. In England the general mourning, both in the court and the city, which lasted for months, is supposed byDr. Zouch to have been the first instance of the kind; that is, for thedeath of a private person. Renowned over the civilized world foreverything for which a man could be renowned, his literary fame musthave had a considerable share in the impression his death would make onsuch a man as Shakspere. For although none of his works were publishedtill after his death, the first within a few months of that event, hisfame as a writer was widely spread in private, and report of the samecould hardly fail to reach one who, although he had probably no friendsof rank as yet, kept such keen open ears for all that was going onaround him. But whether or not he had heard of the literary greatness ofSir Philip before his death, the "Arcadia, " which was first publishedfour years after his death (1590), and which in eight years had reachedthe third edition--with another still in Scotland the followingyear--must have been full of interest to Shakspere. This book is verydifferent indeed from the ordinary impression of it which most mindshave received through the confident incapacity of the critics of lastcentury. Few books have been published more fruitful in the results andcauses of thought, more sparkling with fancy, more evidently the outcomeof rich and noble habit, than this "Arcadia" of Philip Sidney. ThatShakspere read it, is sufficiently evident from the fact that from it hehas taken the secondary but still important plots in two of his plays. 

Although we are anticipating, it is better to mention here another book, published in the same year, namely, 1590, when Shakspere wassix-and-twenty: the first three books of Spenser's "Faery Queen. " Of itsreception and character it is needless here to say anything furtherthan, of the latter, that nowadays the depths of its teaching, heartilyprized as that was by no less a man than Milton, are seldom explored. But it would be a labour of months to set out the known and imaginedsources of the knowledge and spiritual pabulum of the man who laid everymental region so under contribution, that he has been claimed by almostevery profession as having been at one time or another a student of itspeculiar science, so marvellously in him was the power of assimilationcombined with that of reproduction. 

To go back a little: in 1587, when he was three-and-twenty, Mary Queenof Scots was executed. In the following year came that mighty victory ofEngland, and her allies the winds and the waters, over the toweringpride of the Spanish Armada. Out from the coasts, like the birds fromtheir cliffs to defend their young, flew the little navy, many of thevessels only able to carry a few guns; and fighting, fire-ships andtempest left this island, --

 "This precious stone set in the silver sea, "

still a "blessed plot, " with an accumulated obligation to liberty whichcan only be paid by helping others to be free; and when she utterlyforgets which, her doom is sealed, as surely as that of the old empireswhich passed away in their self-indulgence and wickedness. 

When Shakspere was about thirty-two, Sir Walter Raleigh published hisglowing account of Guiana, which instantly provided the English mindwith an earthly paradise or fairy-land. Raleigh himself seems to havebeen too full of his own reports for us to be able to suppose that heeither invented or disbelieved them; especially when he represents theheavenly country to which, in expectation of his execution, he islooking forward, after the fashion of those regions of the wonderfulWest:--

 "Then the blessed Paths wee'l travel, Strow'd with Rubies thick as gravel; Sealings of Diamonds, Saphire floors, High walls of Coral, and Pearly Bowers. "

Such were some of the influences which widened the region of thought, and excited the productive power, in the minds of the time. After thisperiod there were fewer of such in Shakspere's life; and if there hadbeen more of them they would have been of less import as to theiroperation on a mind more fully formed and more capable of choosing itsown influences. Let us now give a backward glance at the history of theart which Shakspere chose as the means of easing his own mind of thatwealth which, like the gold and the silver, has a moth and rust of itsown, except it be kept in use by being sent out for the good of ourneighbours. 

It was a mighty gain for the language and the people when, in the middleof the fourteenth century, by permission of the Pope, the miracle-plays, most probably hitherto represented in Norman-French, as Mr. Colliersupposes, began to be represented in English. Most likely there had beendramatic representations of a sort from the very earliest period of thenation's history; for, to begin with the lowest form, at what time wouldthere not, for the delight of listeners, have been the imitation ofanimal sounds, such as the drama of the conversation between anattacking poodle and a fiercely repellent puss? Through innumerablegradations of childhood would the art grow before it attained the firstformal embodiment in such plays as those, so-called, of miracles, consisting just of Scripture stories, both canonical and apocryphal, dramatized after the rudest fashion. Regarded from the height which theart had reached two hundred and fifty years after, "how dwarfed a growthof cold and night" do these miracle-plays show themselves! But at a timewhen there was no printing, little preaching, and Latin prayers, wecannot help thinking that, grotesque and ill-imagined as they are, theymust have been of unspeakable value for the instruction of a peoplewhose spiritual digestion was not of a sort to be injured by thepresence of a quite abnormal quantity of husk and saw-dust in theirfood. And occasionally we find verses of true poetic feeling, such asthe following, in "The Fall of Man:"--

 _Deus. _ Adam, that with myn handys I made, Where art thou now? What hast thou wrought?

 _Adam. _ A! lord, for synne oure floures do ffade, I here thi voys, but I se the nought;

implying that the separation between God and man, although it haddestroyed the beatific vision, was not yet so complete as to make thecreature deaf to the voice of his Maker. Nor are the words of Eve, withwhich she begs her husband, in her shame and remorse, to strangle her, odd and quaint as they are, without an almost overpowering pathos:--

 "Now stomble we on stalk and ston; My wyt awey is fro me gon: Wrythe on to my necke bon With, hardnesse of thin honde. "

To this Adam commences his reply with the verses, --

 "Wyff, thi wytt is not wurthe a rosche. Leve woman, turn thi thought. "

And this portion of the general representation ends with these verses, spoken by Eve:--

 "Alas! that ever we wrought this synne. Oure bodely sustenauns for to wynne, Ye must delve and I xal spynne, In care to ledyn oure lyff. "

In connexion with these plays, one of the contemplations mostinteresting to us is, the contrast between them and the places in whichthey were occasionally represented. For though the scaffolds on whichthey were shown were usually erected in market-places or churchyards, sometimes they rose in the great churches, and the plays wererepresented with the aid of ecclesiastics. Here, then, we have the rudebeginnings of the dramatic art, in which the devil is the unfortunatebuffoon, giving occasion to the most exuberant laughter of thepeople--here is this rude boyhood, if we may so say, of the one art, roofed in with the perfection of another, of architecture; a perfectionwhich now we can only imitate at our best: below, the clumsy contrivanceand the vulgar jest; above, the solemn heaven of uplifted arches, theirmysterious glooms ringing with the delight of the multitude: the play ofchildren enclosed in the heart of prayer aspiring in stone. But it wasnot by any means all laughter; and so much, nearer than architecture isthe drama to the ordinary human heart, that we cannot help thinkingthese grotesque representations did far more to arouse the inward lifeand conscience of the people than all the glory into which theout-working spirit of the monks had compelled the stubborn stone tobourgeon and blossom. 

But although, no doubt, there was some kind of growth going on in thedrama even during the dreary fifteenth century, we must not suppose thatit was by any regular and steady progression that it arrived at thegrandeur of the Elizabethan perfection. It was rather as if a dry, knotty, uncouth, but vigorous plant suddenly opened out its inward lifein a flower of surpassing splendour and loveliness. When therepresentation of real historical persons in the miracle-plays gave waybefore the introduction of unreal allegorical personages, and themiracle-play was almost driven from the stage by the "play of morals" asit was called, there was certainly no great advance made in dramaticrepresentation. The chief advantage gained was room for more variety;while in some important respects these plays fell off from the merits ofthe preceding kind. Indeed, any attempt to teach morals allegoricallymust lack that vivifying fire of faith working in the poorestrepresentations of a history which the people heartily believed andloved. Nor when we come to examine the favourite amusement of laterroyalty, do we find that the interludes brought forward in the pauses ofthe banquets of Henry VIII. Have a claim to any refinement upon thoseold miracle-plays. They have gained in facility and wit; they have lostin poetry. They have lost pathos too, and have gathered grossness. Inthe comedies which soon appear, there is far more of fun than of art;and although the historical play had existed for some time, and thestreams of learning from the inns of court had flowed in to swell thatof the drama, it is not before the appearance of Shakspere that we findany _whole_ of artistic or poetic value. And this brings us to anotherbranch of the subject, of which it seems to us that the importance hasnever been duly acknowledged. We refer to the use, if not invention, of_blank verse_ in England, and its application to the purposes of thedrama. It seems to us that in any contemplation of Shakspere and histimes, the consideration of these points ought not to be omitted. 

We have in the present day one grand master of blank verse, the PoetLaureate. But where would he have been if Milton had not gone beforehim; or if the verse amidst which he works like an informing spirit hadnot existed at all? No doubt he might have invented it himself; but howdifferent would the result have been from the verse which he will nowleave behind him to lie side by side for comparison with that of themaster of the epic! All thanks then to Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey!who, if, dying on the scaffold at the early age of thirty, he has leftno poetry in itself of much value, yet so wrote that he refined thepoetic usages of the language, and, above all, was the first who evermade blank verse in English. He used it in translating the second andfourth books of Virgil's "Aeneid. " This translation he probably wrotenot long before his execution, which took place in 1547, seventeen yearsbefore the birth of Shakspere. There are passages of excellence in thework, and very rarely does a verse quite fail. But, as might beexpected, it is somewhat stiff, and, as it were, stunted in sound;partly from the fact that the lines are too much divided, where_distinction_ would have been sufficient. It would have been strange, indeed, if he had at once made a free use of a rhythm which everyboy-poet now thinks he can do what he pleases with, but of which only afew ever learn the real scope and capabilities. Besides, the difficultywas increased by the fact that the nearest approach to it in measure wasthe heroic couplet, so well known in our language, although scarce onewho has used it has come up to the variousness of its modelling in thehands of Chaucer, with whose writings Surrey was of course familiar. Butvarious as is its melody in Chaucer, the fact of there being always ananticipation of the perfecting of a rhyme at the end of the coupletwould make one accustomed to heroic verse ready to introduce arhythmical fall and kind of close at the end of every blank verse intrying to write that measure for the first time. Still, as we say, thereis good verse in Surrey's translation. Take the following lines for aspecimen, in which the fault just mentioned is scarcely perceptible. Mercury is the subject of them. 

 "His golden wings he knits, which him transport, With a light wind above the earth and seas; And then with him his wand he took, whereby He calls from hell pale ghosts. * * * * * "By power whereof he drives the winds away, And passeth eke amid the troubled clouds, Till in his flight he 'gan descry the top And the steep flanks of rocky Atlas' hill That with his crown sustains the welkin up; Whose head, forgrown with pine, circled alway With misty clouds, is beaten with wind and storm; His shoulders spread with snow; and from his chin The springs descend; his beard frozen with ice. Here Mercury with equal shining wings First touched. "

In all comparative criticism justice demands that he who began any modeshould not be compared with those who follow only on the ground ofabsolute merit in the productions themselves; for while he may beinferior in regard to quality, he stands on a height, as the inventor, to which they, as imitators, can never ascend, although they may climbother and loftier heights, through the example he has set them. It isdoubtful, however, whether Surrey himself invented this verse, or onlyfollowed the lead of some poet of Italy or Spain; in both whichcountries it is said that blank verse had been used before Surrey wroteEnglish in that measure. 

Here then we have the low beginnings of blank verse. It was nearly ahundred and twenty years before Milton took it up, and, while it servedhim well, glorified it; nor are we aware of any poem of worth written inthat measure between. Here, of course, we speak of the epic form of theverse, which, as being uttered _ore rotundo_, is necessarily ofconsiderable difference from the form it assumes in the drama. 

Let us now glance for a moment at the forms of composition in use fordramatic purposes before blank verse came into favour with play-writers. The nature of the verse employed in the miracle-plays will besufficiently seen from the short specimens already given. These playswere made up of carefully measured and varied lines, with correct andsuperabundant rhymes, and no marked lack of melody or rhythm. But as faras we have made acquaintance with the moral and other rhymed plays whichfollowed, there was a great falling off in these respects. They are ingreat measure composed of long, irregular lines, with a kind ofrhythmical progress rather than rhythm in them. They are exceedinglydifficult to read musically, at least to one of our day. Here are a fewverses of the sort, from the dramatic poem, rather than drama, calledsomewhat improperly "The Moral Play of God's Promises, " by John Bale, who died the year before Shakspere was born. It is the first inDodsley's collection. The verses have some poetic merit. The rhythm willbe allowed to be difficult at least. The verses are arranged in stanzas, of which we give two. In most plays the verses are arranged in rhymingcouplets only. 

 _Pater Coelestis. _

 I have with fearcenesse mankynde oft tymes corrected, And agayne, I have allured hym by swete promes. I have sent sore plages, when he hath me neglected, And then by and by, most comfortable swetnes. To wynne hym to grace, bothe mercye and ryghteousnes I have exercysed, yet wyll he not amende. Shall I now lose hym, or shall I him defende?

 In hys most myschefe, most hygh grace will I sende, To overcome hym by favoure, if it may be. With hys abusyons no longar wyll I contende, But now accomplysh my first wyll and decre. My worde beynge flesh, from hens shall set hym fre, Hym teachynge a waye of perfyght ryhteousnesse, That he shall not nede to perysh in hys weaknesse. 

To our ears, at least, the older miracle-plays were greatly superior. Itis interesting to find, however, in this apparently popular mode of"building the rhyme"--certainly not the _lofty_ rhyme, for no suchcrumbling foundation could carry any height of superstructure--theelements of the most popular rhythm of the present day; a rhythmadmitting of any number of syllables in the line, from four up totwelve, or even more, and demanding only that there shall be not morethan four accented syllables in the line. A song written with any spiritin this measure has, other things _not_ being quite equal, yet almost acertainty of becoming more popular than one written in any othermeasure. Most of Barry Cornwall's and Mrs. Heman's songs are written init. Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel, " Coleridge's "Christabel, "Byron's "Siege of Corinth, " Shelley's "Sensitive Plant, " are examples ofthe rhythm. Spenser is the first who has made good use of it. One of themonths in the "Shepherd's Calendar" is composed in it. We quote a fewlines from this poem, to show at once the kind we mean:--

 "No marvel, Thenot, if thou can bear Cheerfully the winter's wrathful cheer; For age and winter accord full nigh; This chill, that cold; this crooked, that wry; And as the lowering weather looks down, So seemest thou like Good Friday to frown: But my flowering youth is foe to frost; My ship unwont in storms to be tost. "

We can trace it slightly in Sir Thomas Wyatt, and we think in others whopreceded Spenser. There is no sign of it in Chaucer. But we judge it tobe the essential rhythm of Anglo-Saxon poetry, which will quiteharmonize with, if it cannot explain, the fact of its being the mostpopular measure still. Shakspere makes a little use of it in one, if notin more, of his plays, though it there partakes of the irregularcharacter of that of the older plays which he is imitating. But wesuspect the clowns of the authorship of some of the rhymes, "speakingmore than was set down for them, " evidently no uncommon offence. 

Prose was likewise in use for the drama at an early period. 

But we must now regard the application of blank verse to the use of thedrama. And in this part of our subject we owe most to the investigationsof Mr. Collier, than whom no one has done more to merit our gratitudefor such aids. It is universally acknowledged that "Ferrex and Porrex"was the first drama in blank verse. But it was never represented on thepublic stage. It was the joint production of Thomas Sackville, afterwards Lord Buckhurst and Earl of Dorset, and Thomas Norton, bothgentlemen of the Inner Temple, by the members of which it was playedbefore the Queen at Whitehall in 1561, three years before Shakspere wasborn. As to its merits, the impression left by it upon our minds is suchthat, although the verse is decent, and in some respects irreproachable, we think the time spent in reading it must be all but lost to any butthose who must verify to themselves their literary profession; aprofession which, like all other professions, involves a good deal ofdisagreeable duty. We spare our readers all quotation, there being nooccasion to show what blank verse of the commonest description is. Butwe beg to be allowed to state that this drama by no means represents thepoetic powers of Thomas Sackville. For although we cannot agree withHallam's general criticism, either for or against Sackville, andalthough we admire Spenser, we hope, as much as that writer could haveadmired him, we yet venture to say that not only may some of Sackville'spersonifications "fairly be compared with some of the most poeticalpassages in Spenser, " but that there is in this kind in Sackville astrength and simplicity of representation which surpasses that ofSpenser in passages in which the latter probably imitated the former. Werefer to the allegorical personages in Sackville's "Induction to theMirrour of Magistrates, " and in Spenser's description of the "House ofPride. "

Mr. Collier judges that the play in blank verse first represented on thepublic stage was the "Tamburlaine" of Christopher Marlowe, and that itwas acted before 1587, at which date Shakspere would be twenty-three. This was followed by other and better plays by the same author. Althoughwe cannot say much for the dramatic art of Marlowe, he has far surpassedevery one that went before him in dramatic _poetry_. The passages thatmight worthily be quoted from Marlowe's writings for the sake of theirpoetry are innumerable, notwithstanding that there are many others whichoccupy a border land between poetry and bombast, and are such that it isto us impossible to say to which class they rather belong. Of course itis easy for a critic to gain the credit of common-sense at the same timethat he saves himself the trouble of doing what he too frequently showshimself incapable of doing to any good purpose--we mean _thinking_--byclassing all such passages together as bombastical nonsense; but even inthe matter of poetry and bombast, a wise reader will recognize thatextremes so entirely meet, without being in the least identical, thatthey are capable of a sort of chemico-literary admixture, if not ofcombination. Goethe himself need not have been ashamed to have writtenone or two of the scenes in Marlowe's "Faust;" not that we mean to implythat they in the least resemble Goethe's handiwork. His verse is, fordramatic purposes, far inferior to Shakspere's; but it was a greatmatter for Shakspere that Marlowe preceded him, and helped to prepare tohis hand the tools and fashions he needed. The provision of blank versefor Shakspere's use seems to us worthy of being called providential, even in a system in which we cannot believe that there is any chance. For as the stage itself is elevated a few feet above the ordinary level, because it is the scene of a _representation_, just so the speech of thedrama, dealing not with unreal but with ideal persons, the fool being aworthy fool, and the villain a worthy villain, needs to be elevated sometones above that of ordinary life, which is generally flavoured with somuch of the _commonplace_. Now the commonplace has no place at all inthe drama of Shakspere, which fact at once elevates it above the tone ofordinary life. And so the mode of the speech must be elevated as well;therefore from prose into blank verse. If we go beyond this, we cease tobe natural for the stage as well as life; and the result is that kind ofcomposition well enough known in Shakspere's time, which he ridicules inthe recitations of the player in "Hamlet, " about _Priam_ and _Hecuba_. We could show the very passages of the play-writer Nash which Shakspereimitates in these. To use another figure, Shakspere, in the same play, instructs the players "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature. " Nowevery one must have felt that somehow there is a difference between theappearance of any object or group of objects immediately presented tothe eye, and the appearance of the same object or objects in a mirror. Nature herself is not the same in the mirror held up to her. Everythingchanges sides in this representation; and the room which is an ordinary, well-known, homely room, gains something of the strange and poetic whenregarded in the mirror over the fire. Now for this representation, forthis mirror-reflection on the stage, blank verse is just the suitableglass to receive the silvering of the genius-mind behind it. 

But if Shakspere had had to sit down and make his tools first, and thenquarry his stone and fell his timber for the building of his house, instead of finding everything ready to his hand for dressing his stonealready hewn, for sawing and carving the timber already in logs andplanks beside him, no doubt his house would have been built; but can wewith any reason suppose that it would have proved such "a lordlypleasure-house"? Not even Shakspere could do without his poor littlebrothers who preceded him, and, like the goblins and gnomes of thedrama, got everything out of the bowels of the dark earth, ready for themaster, whom it would have been a shame to see working in the gloom andthe dust instead of in the open eye of the day. Nor is anything sohelpful to the true development of power as the possibility of freeaction for as much of the power as is already operative. This room forfree action was provided by blank verse. 

Yet when Shakspere came first upon the scene of dramatic labour, he hadto serve his private apprenticeship, to which the apprenticeship of theage in the drama, had led up. He had to act first of all. Driven toLondon and the drama by an irresistible impulse, when the choice of someprofession was necessary to make him independent of his father, seeinghe was himself, though very young, a married man, the first form inwhich the impulse to the drama would naturally show itself in him wouldbe the desire to act; for the outside relations would first operate. Asto the degree of merit he possessed as an actor we have but scanty meansof judging; for afterwards, in his own plays, he never took the bestcharacters, having written them for his friend Richard Burbage. Possiblythe dramatic impulse was sufficiently appeased by the writing of theplay, and he desired no further satisfaction from personalrepresentation; although the amount of study spent upon the higherdepartment of the art might have been more than sufficient to render himunrivalled as well in the presentation of his own conceptions. But thedramatic spring, having once broken the upper surface, would scoop out adeeper and deeper well for itself to play in, and the actor would soonbegin to work upon the parts he had himself to study for presentation. It being found that he greatly bettered his own parts, those of otherswould be submitted to him, and at length whole plays committed to hisrevision, of which kind there may be several in the collection of hisworks. If the feather-end of his pen is just traceable in "TitusAndronicus, " the point of it is much more evident, and to as goodpurpose as Beaumont or Fletcher could have used his to, at the best, in"Pericles, Prince of Tyre. " Nor would it be long before he would submitone of his own plays for approbation; and then the whole of his dramaticcareer lies open before him, with every possible advantage forperfecting the work, for the undertaking of which he was betterqualified by nature than probably any other man whosoever; for he kneweverything about acting, practically--about the play-house and itscapabilities, about stage necessities, about the personal endowments andindividual qualifications of each of the company--so that, when he waswriting a play, he could distribute the parts before they even appearedupon paper, and write for each actor with the very living form of theideal person present "in his mind's eye, " and often to his bodily sight;so that the actual came in aid of the ideal, as it always does if theideal be genuine, and the loftiest conceptions proved the truest tovisible nature. 

This close relation of Shakspere to the actual leads us to a general andremarkable fact, which again will lead us back to Shakspere. All thegreat writers of Queen Elizabeth's time were men of affairs; they werenot literary men merely, in the general acceptation of the word atpresent. Hooker was a hard-working, sheep-keeping, cradle-rocking pastorof a country parish. Bacon's legal duties were innumerable before hebecame Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor. Raleigh was soldier, sailor, adventurer, courtier, politician, discoverer: indeed, it is to hisimprisonment that we are indebted for much the most ambitious of hisliterary undertakings, "The History of the World, " a work which forsimple majesty of subject and style is hardly to be surpassed in prose. Sidney, at the age of three-and-twenty, received the highest praise forthe management of a secret embassy to the Emperor of Germany; took thedeepest and most active interest in the political affairs of hiscountry; would have sailed with Sir Francis Drake for South Americandiscovery; and might probably have been king of poor Poland, if thequeen had not been too selfish or wise to spare him. The whole of hisliterary productions was the work of his spare hours. Spenser himself, who was, except Shakspere, the most purely a literary man of them all, was at one time Secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, and, later inlife, Sheriff of Cork. Nor is the remark true only of the writers ofElizabeth's period, or of the country of England. 

It seems to us one of the greatest advantages that can befall a poet, tobe drawn out of his study, and still more out of the chamber of imageryin his own thoughts, to behold and speculate upon the embodiment ofDivine thoughts and purposes in men and their affairs around him. NowShakspere had no public appointment, but he reaped all the advantagewhich such could have given him, and more, from the perfection of hisdramatic position. It was not with making plays alone that he had to do;but, himself an actor, himself in a great measure the owner of more thanone theatre, with a little realm far more difficult to rule than many akingdom--a company, namely, of actors--although possibly less difficultfrom the fact that they were only men and boys; with the pecuniaryaffairs of the management likewise under his supervision--he must havefound, in the relations and necessities of his own profession, notmerely enough of the actual to keep him real in his representations, butalmost sufficient opportunity for his one great study, that of mankind, independently of social and friendly relations, which in his case wereof the widest and deepest. 

But Shakspere had not business relations merely: he was a man ofbusiness. There is a common blunder manifested, both in theory on theone side, and in practice on the other, which the life of Shakspere setsfull in the light. The theory is, that genius is a sort of abnormaldevelopment of the imagination, to the detriment and loss of thepractical powers, and that a genius is therefore a kind of incapable, incompetent being, as far as worldly matters are concerned. The mostcomplete refutation of this notion lies in the fact that the greatestgenius the world has known was a successful man in common affairs. Whilehis genius grew in strength, fervour, and executive power, his worldlycondition rose as well; he became a man of importance in the eyes of histownspeople, by whom he would not have been honoured if he had not mademoney; and he purchased landed property in his native place with theresults of his management of his theatres. 

The practical blunder lies in the notion cherished occasionally by youngpeople ambitious of literary distinction, that in the pursuit of suchthings they must be content with the poverty to which the world doomsits greatest men; accepting their very poverty as an additional proof oftheir own genius. If this means that the poet is not to make money hisobject, it means well: no man should. But if it means either that theworld is unkind, or that the poet is not to "gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost, " it means ill. Shakspere did not make haste to berich. He neither blamed, courted, nor neglected the world: he wasfriendly with it. He _could_ not have pinched and scraped; but neitherdid he waste or neglect his worldly substance, which is God's gift too. Many immense fortunes have been made, not by absolute dishonesty, but inways to which a man of genius ought to be yet more ashamed than anotherto condescend; but it does not therefore follow that if a man of geniuswill do honest work he will not make a fair livelihood by it, which forall good results of intellect and heart is better than a great fortune. But then Shakspere began with doing what he could. He did not consent tostarve until the world should recognize his genius, or grumble againstthe blindness of the nation in not seeing what it was impossible itshould see before it was fairly set forth. He began at once to supplysomething which the world wanted; for it wants many an honest thing. Hewent on the stage and acted, and so gained power to reveal the geniuswhich he possessed; and the world, in its possible measure, was not slowto recognize it. Many a young fellow who has entered life with the oneambition of being a poet, has failed because he did not perceive that itis better to be a man than to be a poet, that it is his first duty toget an honest living by doing some honest work that he can do, and forwhich there is a demand, although it may not be the most pleasantemployment. Time would have shown whether he was meant to be a poet ornot; and if he had been no poet he would have been no beggar; and if hehad turned out a poet, it would have been partly in virtue of thatexperience of life and truth, gained in his case in the struggle forbread, without which, gained somehow, a man may be a sweet dreamer, butcan be no strong maker, no poet. In a word, here is _the_ Englishman ofgenius, beginning life with nothing, and dying, not rich, but easy andhonoured; and this by doing what no one else could do, writing dramas inwhich the outward grandeur or beauty is but an exponent of the inwardworth; hiding pearls for the wise even within the jewelled play of thevariegated bubbles of fancy, which he blew while he wrought, for theinnocent delight of his thoughtless brothers and sisters. Wherever therainbow of Shakspere's genius stands, there lies, indeed, at the foot ofits glorious arch, a golden key, which will open the secret doors oftruth, and admit the humble seeker into the presence of Wisdom, who, having cried in the streets in vain, sits at home and waits for him whowill come to find her. And Shakspere had cakes and ale, although he wasvirtuous. 

But what do we know about the character of Shakspere? How can we tellthe inner life of a man who has uttered himself in dramas, in which ofcourse it is impossible that he should ever speak in his own person? Nodoubt he may speak his own sentiments through the mouths of many of hispersons; but how are we to know in what cases he does so?--At least wemay assert, as a self-evident negative, that a passage treating of awide question put into the mouth of a person despised and rebuked by thebest characters in the play, is not likely to contain any cautiouslyformed and cherished opinion of the dramatist. At first sight this mayseem almost a truism; but we have only to remind our readers that one ofthe passages oftenest quoted with admiration, and indeed separatelyprinted and illuminated, is "The Seven Ages of Man, " a passage full ofinhuman contempt for humanity and unbelief in its destiny, in which notone of the seven ages is allowed to pass over its poor sad stage withouta sneer; and that this passage is given by Shakspere to the _blasé_sensualist _Jaques_ in "As You Like it, " a man who, the good and wise_Duke_ says, has been as vile as it is possible for man to be, so vilethat it would be an additional sin in him to rebuke sin; a man who neverwas capable of seeing what is good in any man, and hates men's vices_because_ he hates themselves, seeing in them only the reflex of his owndisgust. Shakspere knew better than to say that all the world is astage, and all the men and women merely players. He had been a playerhimself, but only on the stage: _Jaques_ had been a player where heought to have been a true man. The whole of his account of human life iscontradicted and exposed at once by the entrance, the very moment whenhe has finished his wicked burlesque, of _Orlando_, the young master, carrying _Adam_, the old servant, upon his back. The song thatimmediately follows, sings true: "Most friendship is feigning, mostloving mere folly. " But between the _all_ of _Jaques_ and the _most_ ofthe song, there is just the difference between earth and hell. --Ofcourse, both from a literary and dramatic point of view, "The SevenAges" is perfect. 

Now let us make one positive statement to balance the other: thatwherever we find, in the mouth of a noble character, not stocksentiments of stage virtue, but appreciation of a truth which it needsdeep thought and experience united with love of truth, to discover orverify for one's self, especially if the truth be of a sort which mostmen will fail not merely to recognize as a truth, but to understand atall, because the understanding of it depends on the foregoing spiritualperception--then we think we may receive the passage as an expression ofthe inner soul of the writer. He must have seen it before he could havesaid it; and to see such a truth is to love it; or rather, love of truthin the general must have preceded and enabled to the discovery of it. Such a passage is the speech of the _Duke_, opening the second act ofthe play just referred to, "As You Like it. " The lesson it contains is, that the well-being of a man cannot be secured except he partakes of theills of life, "the penalty of Adam. " And it seems to us strange that theexcellent editors of the Cambridge edition, now in the course ofpublication--a great boon to all students of Shakspere--should not haveperceived that the original reading, that of the folios, is the rightone, --

 "Here feel we _not_ the penalty of Adam?"

which, with the point of interrogation supplied, furnishes the truemeaning of the whole passage; namely, that the penalty of Adam is justwhat makes the "wood more free from peril than the envious court, "teaching each "not to think of himself more highly than he ought tothink. "

But Shakspere, although everywhere felt, is nowhere seen in his plays. He is too true an artist to show his own face from behind the play oflife with which he fills his stage. What we can find of him there wemust find by regarding the whole, and allowing the spiritual essence ofthe whole to find its way to our brain, and thence to our heart. Thestudent of Shakspere becomes imbued with the idea of his character. Itexhales from his writings. And when we have found the main drift of anyplay--the grand rounding of the whole--then by that we may interpretindividual passages. It is alone in their relation to the whole that wecan do them full justice, and in their relation to the whole that wediscover the mind of the master. 

But we have another source of more direct enlightenment as to Shaksperehimself. We only say more _direct_, not more certain or extendedenlightenment. We have one collection of poems in which he speaks in hisown person and of himself. Of course we refer to his sonnets. Thoughthese occupy, with their presentation of himself, such a small relativespace, they yet admirably round and complete, to our eyes, the circle ofhis individuality. In them and the plays the common saying--one of thetruest--that extremes meet, is verified. No man is complete in whomthere are no extremes, or in whom those extremes do not meet. Now thevery individuality of Shakspere, judged by his dramas alone, has beendeclared nonexistent; while in the sonnets he manifests some of thedeepest phases of a healthy self-consciousness. We do not intend toenter into the still unsettled question as to whether these sonnets wereaddressed to a man or a woman. We have scarcely a doubt left on thequestion ourselves, as will be seen from the argument we found on ourconviction. We cannot say we feel much interest in the other question, _If a man, what man?_ A few placed at the end, arranged as they havecome down to us, are beyond doubt addressed to a woman. But thedifference in tone between these and the others we think veryremarkable. Possibly at the time they were written--most of them earlyin his life, as it appears to us, although they were not published tillthe year 1609, when he was forty-five years of age, Meres referring tothem in the year 1598, eleven years before, as known "among his privatefriends"--he had not known such women as he knew afterwards, and hencethe true devotion of his soul is given to a friend of his own sex. Gervinus, whose lectures on Shakspere, profound and lofty to a degreeunattempted by any other interpreter, we are glad to find have been doneinto a suitable English translation, under the superintendence of theauthor himself--Gervinus says somewhere in them that, as Shakspere livedand wrote, his ideal of womanhood grew nobler and purer. Certainly thewoman to whom the last few of these sonnets are addressed was neithernoble nor pure. We think, in this matter at least, they record one ofhis early experiences. 

We shall briefly indicate what we find in these sonnets about the manhimself, and shall commence with what is least pleasing and of leastvalue. 

We must confess, then, that, probably soon after he came first toLondon, he, then a married man, had an intrigue with a married woman, ofwhich there are indications that he was afterwards deeply ashamed. Onelittle incident seems curiously traceable: that he had given her a setof tablets which his friend had given him; and the sonnet in which heexcuses himself to his friend for having done so, seems to us the onlypiece of special pleading, and therefore ungenuine expression, in thewhole. This friend, to whom the rest of the sonnets are addressed, madethe acquaintance of this woman, and both were false to Shakspere. EvenShakspere could not keep the love of a worthless woman. So much thebetter for him; but it is a sad story at best. Yet even in thisenvironment of evil we see the nobility of the man, and his real self. The sonnets in which he mourns his friend's falsehood, forgives him, andeven finds excuses for him, that he may not lose his own love of him, are, to our minds, amongst the most beautiful, as they are the mostprofound. Of these are the 33rd and 34th. Nor does he stop here, butproceeds in the following, the 35th, to comfort his friend in his grieffor his offence, even accusing himself of offence in having made moreexcuse for his fault than the fault needed! But to leave this part ofhis history, which, as far as we know, stands alone, and yet cannot withtruth be passed by, any more than the story of the crime of David, though in this case there is no comparison to be made between the twofurther than the primary fact, let us look at the one reality which, from a spiritual point of view, independently of the literary beautiesof these poems, causes them to stand all but alone in literature. Wemean what has been unavoidably touched upon already, the devotion of hisfriendship. We have said this makes the poems stand _all but alone_; forwe ought to be better able to understand these poems of Shakspere, fromthe fact that in our day has appeared the only other poem which is likethese, and which casts back a light upon them. 

 "Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore, Where thy first form was made a man: I loved thee, spirit, and love; nor can The soul of Shakspeare love thee more. "

So sings the Poet of our day, in the loftiest of his poems--"InMemoriam"--addressing the spirit of his vanished friend. In the midst ofhis song arises the thought of _the Poet_ of all time, who loved hisfriend too, and would have lost him in a way far worse than death, hadnot his love been too strong even for that death, alone ghastly, whichthreatened to cut the golden chain that bound them, and part them by thegulf impassable. Tennyson's friend had never wronged him; and to thedivineness of Shakspere's love is added that of forgiveness. Such loveas this between man and man is rare, and therefore to the mind which isin itself no way rare, incredible, because unintelligible. But thoughall the commonest things are very divine, yet divine individuality isand will be a rare thing at any given period on the earth. Faith, in itsideal sense, will always be hard to find on the earth. But perhaps thiskind of affection between man and man may, as Coleridge indicates in his"Table Talk, " have been more common in the reigns of Elizabeth and Jamesthan it is now. There is a certain dread of the demonstrative in thepresent day, which may, perhaps, be carried into regions where it is outof place, and hinder the development of a devotion which must be real, and grand, and divine, if one man such as Shakspere or Tennyson has everfelt it. If one has felt it, humanity may claim it. And surely He who is_the_ Son of man has verified the claim. We believe there are indeed fewof us who know what _to love our neighbour as ourselves_ means; but whenwe find a man here and there in the course of centuries who does, we maytake this man as the prophet of coming good for his race, his prophecybeing himself. 

But next to the interest of knowing that a man could love so well, comesthe association of this fact with his art. He who could look abroad uponmen, and understand them all--who stood, as it were, in the wide-opengates of his palace, and admitted with welcome every one who came insight--had in the inner places of that palace one chamber in which hemet his friend, and in which his whole soul went forth to understand thesoul of his friend. The man to whom nothing in humanity was common orunclean; in whom the most remarkable of his artistic morals isfair-play; who fills our hearts with a saintly love for _Cordelia_ andan admiration of _Sir John Falstaff_ the lost gentleman, mournful evenin the height of our laughter; who could make an _Autolycus_ and a_Macbeth_ both human, and an _Ariel_ and a _Puck_ neither human--this isthe man who loved best. And we believe that this depth of capacity forloving lay at the root of all his knowledge of men and women, and allhis dramatic pre-eminence. The heart is more intelligent than theintellect. Well says the poet Matthew Raydon, who has hardly leftanything behind him but the lamentation over Sir Philip Sidney in whichthe lines occur, --

 "He that hath love and judgment too Sees more than any other do. "

Simply, we believe that this, not this only, but this more than anyother endowment, made Shakspere the artist he was, in providing him allthe material of humanity to work upon, and keeping him to the truespirit of its use. Love looking forth upon strife, understood it all. Love is the true revealer of secrets, because it makes one with theobject regarded. 

"But, " say some impatient readers, "when shall we have done withShakspere? There is no end to this writing about him. " It will be a badday for England when we have done with Shakspere; for that will imply, along with the loss of him, that we are no longer capable ofunderstanding him. Should that time ever come, Heaven grant thegeneration which does not understand him at least the grace to keep itspens off him, which will by no means follow as a necessary consequenceof the non-intelligence! But the writing about Shakspere which has beenhitherto so plentiful must do good just in proportion as it directsattention to him and gives aid to the understanding of him. And whilethe utterances of to-day pass away, the children of to-morrow are born, and require a new utterance for their fresh need from those who, havinggone before, have already tasted life and Shakspere, and can give somelittle help to further progress than their own, by telling the followinggeneration what they have found. Suppose that this cry had been raisedlast century, after good Dr. Johnson had ceased to produce to the eyesof men the facts about his own incapacity which he presumed to becriticisms of Shakspere, where would our aids be now to theunderstanding of the dramatist? Our own conviction is, when we reflectwith how much labour we have deepened our knowledge of him, and therebyfound in him _the best_--for the best lies not on the surface for thecareless reader--our own conviction is, that not half has been done thatought to be done to help young people at least to understand the mastermind of their country. Few among them can ever give the attention orwork to it that we have given; but much may be done with judicious aid. And a profound knowledge of their greatest writer would do more thanalmost anything else to bind together as Englishmen, in a true andunselfish way, the hearts of the coming generations; for his works areour country in a convex magic mirror. 

When a man finds that every time he reads a book not only does someobscurity melt away, but deeper depths, which he had not before seen, dawn upon him, he is not likely to think that the time for ceasing towrite about the book has come. And certainly in Shakspere, as in alltrue artistic work, as in nature herself, the depths are not to berevealed utterly; while every new generation needs a new aid towardsdiscovering itself and its own thoughts in these forms of the past. Andof all that read about Shakspere there are few whom more than one or twoutterances have reached. The speech or the writing must go forth to findthe soil for the growth of its kernel of truth. We shall, therefore, with the full consciousness that perhaps more has been already said andwritten about Shakspere than about any other writer, yet venture to addto the mass by a few general remarks. 

And first we would remind our readers of the marvel of the combinationin Shakspere of such a high degree of two faculties, one of which isgenerally altogether inferior to the other: the faculties of receptionand production. Rarely do we find that great receptive power, broughtinto operation either by reading or by observation, is combined withoriginality of thought. Some hungers are quite satisfied by taking inwhat others have thought and felt and done. By the assimilation of thisfood many minds grow and prosper; but other minds feed far more uponwhat rises from their own depths; in the answers they are compelled toprovide to the questions that come unsought; in the theories they cannothelp constructing for the inclusion in one whole of the various factsaround them, which seem at first sight to strive with each other likethe atoms of a chaos; in the examination of those impulses of hiddenorigin which at one time indicate a height of being far above thethinker's present condition, at another a gulf of evil into which he maypossibly fall. But in Shakspere the two powers of beholding andoriginating meet like the rejoining halves of a sphere. A man who thinkshis own thoughts much, will often walk through London streets and seenothing. In the man who observes only, every passing object mirrorsitself in its prominent peculiarities, having a kind of harmony with allthe rest, but arouses no magician from the inner chamber to charm andchain its image to his purpose. In Shakspere, on the contrary, everyouter form of humanity and nature spoke to that ever-moving, self-vindicating--we had almost said, and in a sense it would be true, self-generating--humanity within him. The sound of any action withouthim, struck in him just the chord which, in motion in him, would haveproduced a similar action. When anything was done, he felt as if he weredoing it--perception and origination conjoining in one consciousness. 

But to this gift was united the gift of utterance, or representation. Many a man both receives and generates who, somehow, cannot represent. Nothing is more disappointing sometimes than our first experience of theartistic attempts of a man who has roused our expectations by a socialdisplay of familiarity with, and command over, the subjects ofconversation. Have we not sometimes found that when such a one sought togive vital or artistic form to these thoughts, so that they might not beborn and die in the same moment upon his lips, but might _exist_, apoor, weak, faded _simulacrum_ alone was the result? Now Shakspere was agreat talker, who enraptured the listeners, and was himself so rapt inhis speech that he could scarcely come to a close; but when he was alonewith his art, then and then only did he rise to the height of his greatargument, and all the talk was but as the fallen mortar and stony chipslying about the walls of the great temple of his drama. 

But, along with all this wealth of artistic speech, an artistic virtueof an opposite nature becomes remarkable: his reticence. How often mighthe not say fine things, particularly poetic things, when he does not, because it would not suit the character or the time! How many delicatepoints are there not in his plays which we only discover after manyreadings, because he will not put a single tone of success into the flowof natural utterance, to draw our attention to the triumph of theauthor, and jar with the all-important reality of his production!Wherever an author obtrudes his own self-importance, an unreality is theconsequence, of a nature similar to that which we feel in the old moralplays, when historical and allegorical personages, such as _JuliusCaesar_ and _Charity_, for instance, are introduced at the same time onthe same stage, acting in the same story. Shakspere never points to anystroke of his own wit or art. We may find it or not: there it is, and nomatter if no one see it!

Much has been disputed about the degree of consciousness of his own artpossessed by Shakspere: whether he did it by a grand yet blind impulse, or whether he knew what he wanted to do, and knowingly used the means toarrive at that end. Now we cannot here enter upon the question; but wewould recommend any of our readers who are interested in it not toattempt to make up their minds upon it before considering a passage inanother of his poems, which may throw some light on the subject forthem. It is the description of a painting, contained in "The Rape ofLucrece, " towards the end of the poem. Its very minuteness involves theexpression of principles, and reveals that, in relation to an art nothis own, he could hold principles of execution, and indicate perfectionof finish, which, to say the least, must proceed from a general capacityfor art, and therefore might find an equally conscious operation in hisown peculiar province of it. For our own part, we think that his resultsare a perfect combination of the results of consciousness andunconsciousness; consciousness where the arrangements of the play, outside the region of inspiration, required the care of the wakefulintellect; unconsciousness where the subject itself bore him aloft onthe wings of its own creative delight. 

There is another manifestation of his power which will astonish thosewho consider it. It is this: that, while he was able to go down to thesimple and grand realities of human nature, which are all tragic; andwhile, therefore, he must rejoice most in such contemplations of humannature as find fit outlet in a "Hamlet, " a "Lear, " a "Timon, " or an"Othello, " the tragedies of Doubt, Ingratitude, and Love, he can yet, when he chooses, float on the very surface of human nature, as in"Love's Labour's Lost, " "The Merry Wives of Windsor, " "The Comedy ofErrors, " "The Taming of the Shrew;" or he can descend half way as itwere, and there remain suspended in the characters and feelings ofordinary nice people, who, interesting enough to meet in society, haveneither received that development, nor are placed in thosecircumstances, which admit of the highest and simplest poetic treatment. In these he will bring out the ordinary noble or the ordinary vicious. Of this nature are most of his comedies, in which he gives an idealrepresentation of common social life, and steers perfectly clear of whatin such relations and surroundings would be _heroics_. Look how steadilyhe keeps the noble-minded youth _Orlando_ in this middle region; andlook how the best comes out at last in the wayward and _recalcitrant_and _bizarre_, but honest and true natures of _Beatrice_ and _Benedick_;and this without any untruth to the nature of comedy, although thecircumstances border on the tragic. When he wants to give the deeperaffairs of the heart, he throws the whole at once out of the socialcircle with its multiform restraints. As in "Hamlet" the stage on whichthe whole is acted is really the heart of _Hamlet_, so he makes hisvisible stage as it were, slope off into the misty infinite, with agrey, starless heaven overhead, and Hades open beneath his feet. Henceyoung people brought up in the country understand the tragedies farsooner than they can comprehend the comedies. It needs acquaintance withsociety and social ways to clear up the latter. 

The remarks we have made on "Hamlet" by way of illustration, lead us topoint out how Shakspere prepares, in some of his plays, a stage suitablefor all the representation. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream" the placewhich gives tone to the whole is a midnight wood in the first flush andyouthful delight of summer. In "As You Like it" it is a daylight wood inspring, full of morning freshness, with a cold wind now and then blowingthrough the half-clothed boughs. In "The Tempest" it is a solitaryisland, circled by the mysterious sea-horizon, over which what may comewho can tell?--a place where the magician may work his will, and haveall nature at the beck of his superior knowledge. 

The only writer who would have had a chance of rivalling Shakspere inhis own walk, if he had been born in the same period of English history, is Chaucer. He has the same gift of individualizing the general, andidealizing the portrait. But the best of the dramatic writers ofShakspere's time, in their desire of dramatic individualization, forgetthe modifying multiformity belonging to individual humanity. In theiranxiety to present a _character_, they take, as it were, a human mould, label it with a certain peculiarity, and then fill in speeches and formsaccording to the label. Thus the indications of character, ofpeculiarity, so predominate, the whole is so much of one colour, thatthe result resembles one of those allegorical personifications in which, as much as possible, everything human is eliminated except what belongsto the peculiarity, the personification. How different is it withShakspere's representations! He knows that no human being ever was likethat. He makes his most peculiar characters speak very much like otherpeople; and it is only over the whole that their peculiarities manifestthemselves with indubitable plainness. The one apparent exception is_Jaques_, in "As You Like it. " But there we must remember that Shakspereis representing a man who so chooses to represent himself. He is a man_in his humour_, or his own peculiar and chosen affectation. _Jaques_ isthe writer of his own part; for with him "all the world's a stage, andall the men and women, " himself first, "merely players. " We have hisown presentation of himself, not, first of all, as he is, but as hechooses to be taken. Of course his real self does come out in it, for noman can seem altogether other than he is; and besides, the _Duke_, whosees quite through him, rebukes him in the manner already referred to;but it is his affectation that gives him the unnatural peculiarity ofhis modes and speeches. He wishes them to be such. 

There is, then, for every one of Shakspere's characters the firm groundof humanity, upon which the weeds, as well as the flowers, glorious orfantastic, as the case may be, show themselves. His more heroic personsare the most profoundly human. Nor are his villains unhuman, althoughinhuman enough. Compared with Marlowe's Jew, _Shylock_ is a terrible_man_ beside a dreary _monster_, and, as far as logic and the _lextalionis_ go, has the best of the argument. It is the strength of humannature itself that makes crime strong. Wickedness could have no power ofitself: it lives by the perverted powers of good. And so great isShakspere's sympathy with _Shylock_ even, in the hard and unjust doomthat overtakes him, that he dismisses him with some of the sparesympathies of the more tender-hearted of his spectators. Nowhere is thejustice of genius more plain than in Shakspere's utter freedom fromparty-spirit, even with regard to his own creations. Each charactershall set itself forth from its own point of view, and only in thechoice and scope of the whole shall the judgment of the poet be beheld. He never allows his opinion to come out to the damaging of theindividual's own self-presentation. He knows well that for the worstsomething can be said, and that a feeling of justice and his own rightwill be strong in the mind of a man who is yet swayed by perfectselfishness. Therefore the false man is not discoverable in his speech, not merely because the villain will talk as like a true man as he may, but because seldom is the villainy clear to the villain's own mind. Itis impossible for us to determine whether, in their fierce bandying ofthe lie, _Bolingbroke_ or _Norfolk_ spoke the truth. Doubtless eachbelieved the other to be the villain that he called him. And Shaksperehas no desire or need to act the historian in the decision of thatquestion. He leaves his reader in full sympathy with the perplexity of_Richard_; as puzzled, in fact, as if he had been present at theinterrupted combat. 

If every writer could write up to his own best, we should have far lessto marvel at in Shakspere. It is in great measure the wealth ofShakspere's suggestions, giving him abundance of the best to choosefrom, that lifts him so high above those who, having felt theinspiration of a good idea, are forced to go on writing, constructing, carpentering, with dreary handicraft, before the exhausted faculty hasrecovered sufficiently to generate another. And then comes in theunerring choice of the best of those suggestions. Yet if any one wishesto see what variety of the same kind of thoughts he could produce, lethim examine the treatment of the same business in different plays; as, for instance, the way in which instigation to a crime is managed in"Macbeth, " where _Macbeth_ tempts the two murderers to kill _Banquo_; in"King John, " when _the King_ tempts _Hubert_ to kill _Arthur_; in "TheTempest, " when _Antonio_ tempts _Sebastian_ to kill _Alonzo_; in "As YouLike it, " when _Oliver_ instigates _Charles_ to kill _Orlando_; and in"Hamlet, " where _Claudius_ urges _Laertes_ to the murder of _Hamlet_. 

He shows no anxiety about being original. When a man is full of his workhe forgets himself. In his desire to produce a good play he lays holdupon any material that offers itself. He will even take a bad play andmake a good one of it. One of the most remarkable discoveries to thestudent of Shakspere is the hide-bound poverty of some of the stories, which, informed by his life-power; become forms of strength, richness, and grace. He does what the _Spirit_ in "Comus" says the music he heardmight do, --

 "create a soul Under the ribs of death;"

and then death is straightway "clothed upon. " And nowhere is therefining operation of his genius more evident than in the purificationof these stories. Characters and incidents which would have been honeyand nuts to Beaumont and Fletcher are, notwithstanding their dramaticrecommendations, entirely remodelled by him. The fair _Ophelia_ is, inthe old tale, a common woman, and _Hamlet's_ mistress; while the policyof the _Lady of Belmont_, who in the old story occupies the place forwhich he invented the lovely _Portia_, upon which policy the whole storyturns, is such that it is as unfit to set forth in our pages as it wasunfit for Shakspere's purposes of art. His noble art refuses to workupon base matter. He sees at once the capabilities of a tale, but hewill not use it except he may do with it what he pleases. 

If we might here offer some assistance to the young student who wants tohelp himself, we would suggest that to follow, in a measure, Plutarch'sfashion of comparison, will be the most helpful guide to theunderstanding of the poet. Let the reader take any two characters, andputting them side by side, look first for differences, and then forresemblances between them, with the causes of each; or let him make awider attempt, and setting two plays one over against the other, compareor contrast them, and see what will be the result. Let him, forinstance, take the two characters _Hamlet_ and _Brutus_, and comparetheir beginnings and endings, the resemblances in their characters, thedifferences in their conduct, the likeness and unlikeness of what wasrequired of them, the circumstances in which action was demanded ofeach, the helps or hindrances each had to the working out of the problemof his life, the way in which each encounters the supernatural, or anyother question that may suggest itself in reading either of the plays, ending off with the main lesson taught in each; and he will beastonished to find, if he has not already discovered it, what a richmine of intellectual and spiritual wealth is laid open to his delightedeyes. Perhaps not the least valuable end to be so gained is, that theyoung Englishman, who wants to be delivered from any temptation to thinkhimself the centre around which the universe revolves, will be aided inhis endeavours after honourable humility by looking up to the man whotowers, like Saul, head and shoulders above his brethren, and seeingthat he is humble, may learn to leave it to the pismire to be angry, tothe earwig to be conceited, and to the spider to insist on his ownimportance. 

But to return to the main course of our observations. The dramas ofShakspere are so natural, that this, the greatest praise that can begiven them, is the ground of one of the difficulties felt by the youngstudent in estimating them. The very simplicity of Shakspere's art seemsto throw him out of any known groove of judgment. When he hears one say, "_Look at this, and admire_, " he feels inclined to rejoin, "Why, he onlysays in the simplest way what the thing must have been. It is as plainas daylight. " Yes, to the reader; and because Shakspere wrote it. Butthere were a thousand wrong ways of doing it: Shakspere took the oneright way. It is he who has made it plain in art, whatever it was beforein nature; and most likely the very simplicity of it in nature wasscarcely observed before he saw it and represented it. And is it not theglory of art to attain this simplicity? for simplicity is the end of allthings--all manners, all morals, all religion. To say that the thingcould not have been done otherwise, is just to say that you forget theart in beholding its object, that you forget the mirror because you seenature reflected in the mirror. Any one can see the moon in Lord Rosse'stelescope; but who made the reflector? And let the student try toexpress anything in prose or in verse, in painting or in modelling, justas it is. No man knows till he has made many attempts, how hard to reachis this simplicity of art. And the greater the success, the fewer arethe signs of the labour expended. Simplicity is art's perfection. 

But so natural are all his plays, and the great tragedies to which wewould now refer in particular, amongst the rest, that it may appear tosome, at first sight, that Shakspere could not have constructed themafter any moral plan, could have had no lesson of his own to teach inthem, seeing they bear no marks of individual intent, in that theydepart nowhere from, nature, the construction of the play itself goingstraight on like a history. The directness of his plays springs in partfrom the fact that it is humanity and not circumstance that Shakspererespects. Circumstance he uses only for the setting forth of humanity;and for the plot of circumstance, so much in favour with Ben Jonson, andothers of his contemporaries, he cares nothing. As to their looking toonatural to have any design in them, we are not of those who believe thatit is unlike nature to have a design and a result. If the proof of ahigh aim is to be what the critics used to call _poetic justice_, a kindof justice that one would gladly find more of in grocers' andlinen-drapers' shops, but can as well spare from a poem, then we mustsay that he has not always a high end: the wicked man is not tortured, nor is the good man smothered in bank-notes and rose-leaves. Even whenhe shows the outward ruin and death that comes upon Macbeth at last, itis only as an unavoidable little consequence, following in the wake ofthe mighty vengeance of nature, even of God, that Macbeth cannot say_Amen_; that Macbeth can sleep no more; that Macbeth is "cabinedcribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears;" that his verybrain is a charnel-house, whence arise the ghosts of his own murders, till he envies the very dead the rest to which his hand has sent them. That immediate and eternal vengeance upon crime, and that inner rewardof well-doing, never fail in nature or in Shakspere, appear as such amatter of course that they hardly look like design either in nature orin the mirror which he holds up to her. The secret is that, in theideal, habit and design are one. 

Most authors seem anxious to round off and finish everything in fullsight. Most of Shakspere's tragedies compel our thoughts to follow their_persons_ across the bourn. They need, as Jean Paul says, a piece of thenext world painted in to complete the picture, And this is surelynature: but it need not therefore be no design. What could be done withHamlet, but send him into a region where he has some chance of findinghis difficulties solved; where he will know that his reverence for God, which was the sole stay left him in the flood of human worthlessness, has not been in vain; that the skies are not "a foul and pestilentcongregation of vapours;" that there are noble women, though his motherwas false and Ophelia weak; and that there are noble men, although hisuncle and Laertes were villains and his old companions traitors? IfHamlet is not to die, the whole of the play must perish under theaccusation that the hero of it is left at last with only a superaddedmisery, a fresh demand for action, namely, to rule a worthless people, as they seem to him, when action has for him become impossible; that hehas to live on, forsaken even of death, which will not come though thecup of misery is at the brim. 

But a high end may be gained in this world, and the vision into theworld beyond so justified, as in King Lear. The passionate, impulsive, unreasoning old king certainly must have given his wicked daughtersoccasion enough of making the charges to which their avarice urged them. He had learned very little by his life of kingship. He was but a boywith grey hair. He had had no inner experiences. And so all thedevelopment of manhood and age has to be crowded into the few remainingweeks of his life. His own folly and blindness supply the occasion. Andbefore the few weeks are gone, he has passed through all the stages of afever of indignation and wrath, ending in a madness from which loveredeems him; he has learned that a king is nothing if the man isnothing; that a king ought to care for those who cannot help themselves;that love has not its origin or grounds in favours flowing from royalresource and munificence, and yet that love is the one thing worthliving for, which gained, it is time to die. And now that he has theexperience that life can give, has become a child in simplicity of heartand judgment, he cannot lose his daughter again; who, likewise, haslearned the one thing she needed, as far as her father was concerned, alittle more excusing tenderness. In the same play it cannot be by chancethat at its commencement Gloucester speaks with the utmost carelessnessand _off-hand_ wit about the parentage of his natural son Edmund, butfinds at last that this son is his ruin. 

Edgar, the true son, says to Edmund, after having righteously dealt himhis death-wound, --

 "The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to scourge us: The dark and vicious place where thee he got Cost him his eyes. "

To which the dying and convicted villain replies, --

 "Thou hast spoken right; 'tis true: The wheel is come full circle; I am here. "

Could anything be put more plainly than the moral lesson in this?

It would be easy to produce examples of fine design from his comedies aswell; as for instance, from "Much Ado about Nothing:" the two who aremade to fall in love with each other, by being each severally assured ofpossessing the love of the other, Beatrice and Benedick, are shownbeforehand to have a strong inclination towards each other, manifestedin their continual squabbling after a good-humoured fashion; but not allthis is sufficient to make them heartily in love, until they find outthe nobility of each other's character in their behaviour about thecalumniated Hero; and the author takes care they shall not be marriedwithout a previous acquaintance with the trick that has been played uponthem. Indeed we think the remark, that Shakspere never leaves any of hischaracters the same at the end of a play as he took them up at thebeginning, will be found to be true. They are better or worse, wiser ormore irretrievably foolish. The historical plays would illustrate theremark as well as any. 

But of all the terrible plays we are inclined to think "Timon" the mostterrible, and to doubt whether justice has been done to the finish andcompleteness of it. At the same time we are inclined to think that itwas printed (first in the first folio, 1623, seven years afterShakspere's death) from a copy, corrected by the author, but not_written fair_, and containing consequent mistakes. The same accountmight belong to others of the plays, but more evidently perhaps belongsto the "Timon. " The idea of making the generous spendthrift, whose oldidolaters had forsaken him because the idol had no more to give, intothe high-priest of the Temple of Mammon, dispensing the gold which hehated and despised, that it might be a curse to the race which he hadlearned to hate and despise as well; and the way in which Shaksperediscloses the depths of Timon's wound, by bringing him into comparisonwith one who hates men by profession and humour--are as powerful asanything to be found even in Shakspere. 

We are very willing to believe that "Julius Caesar" was one of hislatest plays; for certainly it is the play in which he has represented ahero in the high and true sense. _Brutus_ is this hero, of course; ahero because he will do what he sees to be right, independently ofpersonal feeling or personal advantage. Nor does his attempt fail fromany overweening or blindness, in himself. Had he known that the variouspapers thrown in his way, were the concoctions of _Cassius_, he wouldnot have made the mistake of supposing that the Romans longed forfreedom, and therefore would be ready to defend it. As it was, heattempted to liberate a people which did not feel its slavery. He failedfor others, but not for himself; for his truth was such that everybodywas true to him. Unlike Jaques with his seven acts of the burlesque ofhuman life, Brutus says at the last, --

 "Countrymen, My heart doth joy, that yet, in all my life, I found no man but he was true to me. "

Of course all this is in Plutarch. But it is easy to see with whatrelish Shakspere takes it up, setting forth all the aids in himself andin others which Brutus had to being a hero, and thus making therepresentation as credible as possible. 

We must heartily confess that no amount of genius alone will make a mana good man; that genius only shows the right way--drives no man to walkin it. But there is surely some moral scent in us to let us know whethera man only cares for good from an artistic point of view, or whether headmires and loves good. This admiration and love cannot be _prominently_set forth by any dramatist true to his art; but it must come out overthe whole. His predilections must show themselves in the scope of hisartistic life, in the things and subjects he chooses, and the way inwhich he represents them. Notwithstanding Uncle Toby and Maria, who willventure to say that Sterne was noble or virtuous, when he looks over thewhole that he has written? But in Shakspere there is no suspicion of acloven foot. Everywhere he is on the side of virtue and of truth. Manysmall arguments, with great cumulative force, might be adduced to thiseffect. 

For ourselves we cannot easily believe that the calmness of his artcould be so unvarying except he exercised it with a good conscience;that he could have kept looking out upon the world around him with theuntroubled regard necessary for seeing all things as they are, exceptthere had been peace in his house at home; that he could have known allmen as he did, and failed to know himself. We can understand theco-existence of any degree of partial or excited genius with evil ways, but we cannot understand the existence of such calm and universalgenius, wrought out in his works, except in association with all that isnoblest in human nature. Nor is it other than on the side of theargument for his rectitude that he never forces rectitude upon theattention of others. The strong impression left upon our minds is, thathowever Shakspere may have strayed in the early portion of his life inLondon, he was not only an upright and noble man for the main part, buta repentant man, and a man whose life was influenced by the truths ofChristianity. 

Much is now said about a memorial to Shakspere. The best and only truememorial is no doubt that described in Milton's poem on this verysubject: the living and ever-changing monument of human admiration, expressed in the faces and forms of those absorbed in the reading of hisworks. But if the external monument might be such as to foster theconstant reproduction of the inward monument of love and admiration, then, indeed, it might be well to raise one; and with this object inview let us venture to propose one mode which we think would favour theattainment of it. 

Let a Gothic hall of the fourteenth century be built; such a hall aswould be more in the imagination of Shakspere than any of thearchitecture of his own time. Let all the copies that can be procured ofevery early edition of his works, singly or collectively, be stored inthis hall. Let a copy of every other edition ever printed be procuredand deposited. Let every book or treatise that can be found, good, bad, or indifferent, written about Shakspere or any of his works, be likewisecollected for the Shakspere library. Let a special place be allotted tothe shameless corruptions of his plays that have been produced asimprovements upon them, some of which, to the disgrace of England, stillpartially occupy the stage instead of what Shakspere wrote. Let onedepartment contain every work of whatever sort that tends to directelucidation of his meaning, chiefly those of the dramatic writers whopreceded him and closely followed him. Let the windows be filled withstained glass, representing the popular sports of his own time and thetimes of his English histories. Let a small museum be attached, containing all procurable antiquities that are referred to in his plays, along with first editions, if possible, of the best books that came outin his time, and were probably read by him. Let the whole thus as muchas possible represent his time. Let a marble statue in the midst do thebest that English art can accomplish for the representation of thevanished man; and let copies, if not the originals, of the severalportraits be safely shrined for the occasional beholding of themultitude. Let the perpetuity of care necessary for this monument besecured by endowment; and let it be for the use of the public, by meansof a reading-room fitted for the comfort of all who choose to availthemselves of these facilities for a true acquaintance with our greatestartist. Let there likewise be a simple and moderately-sized theatreattached, not for regular, but occasional use; to be employed for therepresentation of Shakspere's plays _only_, and allowed free of expensefor amateur or other representations of them for charitable purposes. But within a certain cycle of years--if, indeed, it would be too much toexpect that out of the London play-goers a sufficient number would befound to justify the representation of all the plays of Shakspere oncein the season--let the whole of Shakspere's plays be acted in the bestmanner possible to the managers for the time being. 

The very existence of such a theatre would be a noble protest of thehighest kind against the sort of play, chiefly translated and adaptedfrom the French, which infests our boards, the low tone of which, evenwhere it is not decidedly immoral, does more harm than any amount of therough, honest plain-spokenness of Shakspere, as judged by our morefastidious, if not always purer manners. The representation of suchplays forms the real ground of objection to theatre-going. We believethat other objections, which may be equally urged against largeassemblies of any sort, are not really grounded upon such an amount ofobjectionable fact as good people often suppose. At all events it is notagainst the drama itself, but its concomitants, its avoidableconcomitants, that such objections are, or ought to be, felt anddirected. The dramatic impulse, as well as all other impulses of ournature, are from the Maker. 

A monument like this would help to change a blind enthusiasm and a_dilettante_-talk into knowledge, reverence, and study; and surely thiswould be the true way to honour the memory of the man who appeals toposterity by no mighty deeds of worldly prowess, but has left behind himfood for heart, brain, and conscience, on which the generations willfeed till the end of time. It would be the one true and natural mode ofperpetuating his fame in kind; helping him to do more of that for whichhe was born, and because of which we humbly desire to do him honour, asthe years flow farther away from the time when, at the age of fifty-two, he left the world a richer legacy of the results of intellectual labourthan any other labourer in literature has ever done. It would be toraise a monument to his mind more than to his person. 

But to honour Shakspere in the best way we must not gaze upon some grandmemorial of his fame, we must not talk largely of his wonderful doings, we must not even behold the representation of his works on the stage, invaluable aid as that is to the right understanding of what he haswritten; but we must, by close, silent, patient study, enter into anunderstanding with the spirit of the departed poet-sage, and thus lethis own words be the necromantic spell that raises the dead, and bringsus into communion with that man who knew what was in men more than anyother mere man ever did. Well was it for Shakspere that he was humble;else on what a desolate pinnacle of companionless solitude must he havestood! Where was he to find his peers? To most thoughtful minds it is aterrible fancy to suppose that there were no greater human being thanthemselves. From the terror of such a _truth_ Shakspere's love for menpreserved him. He did not think about himself so much as he thoughtabout them. Had he been a self-student alone, or chiefly, could he everhave written those dramas? We close with the repetition of this truth:that the love of our kind is the one key to the knowledge of humanityand of ourselves. And have we not sacred authority for concluding thathe who loves his brother is the more able and the more likely to loveHim who made him and his brother also, and then told them that love isthe fulfilling of the law?

THE ART OF SHAKSPERE, AS REVEALED BY HIMSELF. [Footnote: 1863. ]

 Who taught you this? I learn'd it out of women's faces. 

_Winter's Tale_, Act ii. Scene 1. 

One occasionally hears the remark, that the commentators upon Shaksperefind far more in Shakspere than Shakspere ever intended to express. Taking this assertion as it stands, it may be freely granted, not onlyof Shakspere, but of every writer of genius. But if it be intended byit, that nothing can _exist_ in any work of art beyond what the writerwas conscious of while in the act of producing it, so much of its scopeis false. 

No artist can have such a claim to the high title of _creator_, as thathe invents for himself the forms, by means of which he produces his newresult; and all the forms of man and nature which he modifies andcombines to make a new region in his world of art, have their ownoriginal life and meaning. The laws likewise of their variouscombinations are natural laws, harmonious with each other. While, therefore, the artist employs many or few of their original aspects forhis immediate purpose, he does not and cannot thereby deprive them ofthe many more which are essential to their vitality, and the vitalitylikewise of his presentation of them, although they form only thebackground from which his peculiar use of them stands out. The objectspresented must therefore fall, to the eye of the observant reader, intomany different combinations and harmonies of operation and result, whichare indubitably there, whether the writer saw them or not. These latentcombinations and relations will be numerous and true, in proportion tothe scope and the truth of the representation; and the greater thenumber of meanings, harmonious with each other, which any work of artpresents, the greater claim it has to be considered a work of genius. Itmust, therefore, be granted, and that joyfully, that there may bemeanings in Shakspere's writings which Shakspere himself did not see, and to which therefore his art, as art, does not point. 

But the probability, notwithstanding, must surely be allowed as well, that, in great artists, the amount of conscious art will bear someproportion to the amount of unconscious truth: the visible volcaniclight will bear a true relation to the hidden fire of the globe; so thatit will not seem likely that, in such a writer as Shakspere, we shouldfind many indications of present and operative _art_, of which he washimself unaware. Some truths may be revealed through him, which hehimself knew only potentially; but it is not likely that marks of work, bearing upon the results of the play, should be fortuitous, or that thework thus indicated should be unconscious work. A stroke of the malletmay be more effective than the sculptor had hoped; but it was intended. In the drama it is easier to discover individual marks of the chisel, than in the marble whence all signs of such are removed: in the dramathe lines themselves fall into the general finish, without necessaryobliteration as lines: Still, the reader cannot help being fearful, lest, not as regards truth only, but as regards art as well, he besometimes clothing the idol of his intellect with the weavings of hisfancy. My conviction is, that it is the very consummateness ofShakspere's art, that exposes his work to the doubt that springs fromloving anxiety for his honour; the dramatist, like the sculptor, avoiding every avoidable hint of the process, in order to render theresult a vital whole. But, fortunately, we are not left to argueentirely from probabilities. He has himself given us a peep into hisstudio--let me call it _workshop_, as more comprehensive. 

It is not, of course, in the shape of _literary_ criticism, that weshould expect to meet such a revelation; for to use art evenconsciously, and to regard it as an object of contemplation, or totheorize about it, are two very different mental operations. Theproductive and critical faculties are rarely found in equal combination;and even where they are, they cannot operate equally in regard to thesame object. There is a perfect satisfaction in producing, which doesnot demand a re-presentation to the critical faculty. In other words, the criticism which a great writer brings to bear upon his own work, isfrom within, regarding it upon the hidden side, namely, in relation tohis own idea; whereas criticism, commonly understood, has reference tothe side turned to the public gaze. Neither could we expect one soprolific as Shakspere to find time for the criticism of the works ofother men, except in such moments of relaxation as those in which thefriends at the Mermaid Tavern sat silent beneath the flow of his wisdomand humour, or made the street ring with the overflow of their ownenjoyment. 

But if the artist proceed to speculate upon the nature or productions ofanother art than his own, we may then expect the principles upon whichhe operates in his own, to take outward and visible form--a formmodified by the difference of the art to which he now applies them. Inone of Shakspere's poems, we have the description of an imaginedproduction of a sister-art--that of Painting--a description so brilliantthat the light reflected from the poet-picture illumines the art of thePoet himself, revealing the principles which he held with regard torepresentative art generally, and suggesting many thoughts with regardto detail and harmony, finish, pregnancy, and scope. This description isfound in "The Rape of Lucrece. " Apology will hardly be necessary formaking a long quotation, seeing that, besides the convenience it willafford of easy reference to the ground of my argument, one of thegreatest helps which even the artist can give to us, is to isolatepeculiar beauties, and so compel us to perceive them. 

Lucrece has sent a messenger to beg the immediate presence of herhusband. Awaiting his return, and worn out with weeping, she looks aboutfor some variation of her misery. 

 1. 

 At last she calls to mind where hangs a piece Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy; Before the which is drawn the power of Greece, For Helen's rape the city to destroy, Threatening cloud-kissing Ilion with annoy; Which the conceited painter drew so proud, As heaven, it seemed, to kiss the turrets, bowed. 

 2. 

 A thousand lamentable objects there, In scorn of Nature, Art gave lifeless life: Many a dry drop seemed a weeping tear, Shed for the slaughtered husband by the wife; The red blood reeked, to show the painter's strife. And dying eyes gleamed forth their ashy lights, Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights. 

 3. 

 There might you see the labouring pioneer Begrimed with sweat, and smeared all with dust; And, from the towers of Troy there would appear The very eyes of men through loopholes thrust, Gazing upon the Greeks with little lust: Such sweet observance in this work was had, That one might see those far-off eyes look sad. 

 4. 

 In great commanders, grace and majesty You might behold, triumphing in their faces; In youth, quick bearing and dexterity; And here and there the painter interlaces Pale cowards, marching on with trembling paces, Which heartless peasants did so well resemble, That one would swear he saw them quake and tremble. 

 5. 

 In Ajax and Ulysses, O what art Of physiognomy might one behold! The face of either ciphered either's heart; Their face their manners most expressly told: In Ajax' eyes blunt rage and rigour rolled; But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent Showed deep regard, and smiling government. 

 6. 

 There pleading might you see grave Nestor stand, As 'twere encouraging the Greeks to fight; Making such sober action with his hand, That it beguiled attention, charmed the sight; In speech, it seemed his beard, all silver-white, Wagged up and down, and from his lips did fly Thin winding breath, which purled up to the sky. 

 7. 

 About him were a press of gaping faces, Which seemed to swallow up his sound advice; All jointly listening, but with several graces, As if some mermaid did their ears entice; Some high, some low, the painter was so nice. The scalps of many, almost hid behind, To jump up higher seemed, to mock the mind. 

 8. 

 Here one man's hand leaned on another's head, His nose being shadowed by his neighbour's ear; Here one, being thronged, bears back, all bollen and red; Another, smothered, seems to pelt and swear; And in their rage such signs of rage they bear, As, but for loss of Nestor's golden words, It seemed they would debate with angry swords. 

 9. 

 For much imaginary work was there; Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles' image stood his spear, Griped in an armed hand; himself behind Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole to be imagined. 

 10. 

 And, from the walls of strong-besieged Troy, When their brave hope, bold Hector, marched to field, Stood many Trojan mothers, sharing joy To see their youthful sons bright weapons wield, And to their hope they such odd action yield; That through their light joy seemed to appear, Like bright things stained, a kind of heavy fear. 

 11. 

 And from the strond of Dardan, where they fought, To Simois' reedy banks, the red blood ran; Whose waves to imitate the battle sought, With swelling ridges; and their ranks began To break upon the galled shore, and then Retire again, till, meeting greater ranks, They join, and shoot their foam at Simois' banks. 

The oftener I read these verses, amongst the very earliest compositionsof Shakspere, I am the more impressed with the carefulness with which herepresents the _work_ of the picture--"shows the strife of the painter. "The most natural thought to follow in sequence is: How like his own art!

The scope and variety of the whole picture, in which mass is effected bythe accumulation of individuality; in which, on the one hand, Troystands as the impersonation of the aim and object of the whole; and onthe other, the Simois flows in foaming rivalry of the strife ofmen, --the pictorial form of that sympathy of nature with human effortand passion, which he so often introduces in his plays, --is like nothingelse so much as one of the works of his own art. But to take a portionas a more condensed representation of his art in combining all varietiesinto one harmonious whole: his genius is like the oratory of Nestor asdescribed by its effects in the seventh and eighth stanzas. Everyvariety of attitude and countenance and action is harmonized by theinfluence which is at once the occasion of debate, and the charm whichrestrains by the fear of its own loss: the eloquence and the listeningform the one bond of the unruly mass. So the dramatic genius thatharmonizes his play, is visible only in its effects; so ethereal in itsown essence that it refuses to be submitted to the analysis of the ruderintellect, it is like the words of Nestor, for which in the picturethere stands but "thin winding breath which purled up to the sky. " Take, for an instance of this, the reconciling power by which, in themysterious midnight of the summer-wood, he brings together in oneharmony the graceful passions of childish elves, and the fierce passionsof men and women, with the ludicrous reflection of those passions in thelittle convex mirror of the artisan's drama; while the mischievous Puckrevels in things that fall out preposterously, and the Elf-Queen is inlove with ass-headed Bottom, from the hollows of whose long hairyears--strange bouquet-holders--bloom and breathe the musk-roses, thecharacteristic odour-founts of the play; and the philosophy of theunbelieving Theseus, with the candour of Hippolyta, lifts the whole intorelation with the realities of human life. Or take, as another instance, the pretended madman Edgar, the court-fool, and the rugged old kinggoing grandly mad, sheltered in one hut, and lapped in the roar of athunderstorm. 

My object, then, in respect to this poem, is to produce, from manyinstances, a few examples of the metamorphosis of such excellences as hedescribes in the picture, into the corresponding forms of the drama; inthe hope that it will not then be necessary to urge the probability thatthe presence of those artistic virtues in his own practice, upon whichhe expatiates in his representation of another man's art, wereaccompanied by the corresponding consciousness--that, namely, of theartist as differing from that of the critic, its objects being regardedfrom the concave side of the hammered relief. If this probability begranted, I would, from it, advance to a higher and far more importantconclusion--how unlikely it is that if the writer was conscious of suchfitnesses, he should be unconscious of those grand embodiments of truth, which are indubitably present in his plays, whether he knew it or not. This portion of my argument will be strengthened by an instance to showthat Shakspere was himself quite at home in the contemplation of suchtruths. 

Let me adduce, then, some of those corresponding embodiments in wordsinstead of in forms; in which colours yield to tones, lines to phrases. I will begin with the lowest kind, in which the art has to do withmatters so small, that it is difficult to believe that _unconscious_ artcould have any relation to them. They can hardly have proceeded directlyfrom the great inspiration of the whole. Their very minuteness is anargument for their presence to the poet's consciousness; whilebelonging, as they do, only to the _construction_ of the play, no suchindependent existence can be accorded to them, as to _truths_, which, being in themselves realities, _are_ there, whether Shakspere saw themor not. If he did not intend them, the most that can be said for themis, that such is the naturalness of Shakspere's representations, thatthere is room in his plays, as in life, for those wonderful coincidenceswhich are reducible to no law. 

Perhaps every one of the examples I adduce will be found open todispute. This is a kind in which direct proof can have no share; norshould I have dared thus to combine them in argument, but for the ninthstanza of those quoted above, to which I beg my readers to revert. Its_imaginary work_ means--work hinted at, and then left to the imaginationof the reader. Of course, in dramatic representation, such work mustexist on a great scale; but the minute particularization of the "conceitdeceitful" in the rest of the stanza, will surely justify us in thinkingit possible that Shakspere intended many, if not all, of the _little_fitnesses which a careful reader discovers in his plays. That such arenot oftener discovered comes from this: that, like life itself, he soblends into vital beauty, that there are no salient points. To use ahomely simile: he is not like the barn-door fowl, that always runs outcackling when she has laid an egg; and often when she has not. In thetone of an ordinary drama, you may know when something is coming; andthe tone itself declares--_I have done it_. But Shakspere will not spoilhis art to show his art. It is there, and does its part: that is enough. If you can discover it, good and well; if not, pass on, and take whatyou can find. He can afford not to be fathomed for every little pearlthat lies at the bottom of his ocean. If I succeed in showing that suchart may exist where it is not readily discovered, this may give someadditional probability to its existence in places where it is harder toisolate and define. 

To produce a few instances, then:

In "Much Ado about Nothing, " seeing the very nature of the play isexpressed in its name, is it not likely that Shakspere named the twoconstables, Dogberry (_a poisonous berry_) and Verjuice (_the juice ofcrab-apples_); those names having absolutely nothing to do with thestupid innocuousness of their characters, and so corresponding to theirway of turning things upside down, and saying the very opposite of whatthey mean?

In the same play we find Margaret objecting to her mistress's wearing acertain rebato (_a large plaited ruff_), on the morning of her wedding:may not this be intended to relate to the fact that Margaret had dressedin her mistress's clothes the night before? She might have rumpled orsoiled it, and so feared discovery. 

In "King Henry IV. , " Part I. , we find, in the last scene, that thePrince kills Hotspur. This is not recorded in history: the conqueror ofPercy is unknown. Had it been a fact, history would certainly haverecorded it; and the silence of history in regard to a deed of suchmark, is equivalent to its contradiction. But Shakspere requires, forhis play's sake, to identify the slayer of Hotspur with his rival thePrince. Yet Shakspere will not contradict history, even in its silence. What is he to do? He will account for history _not knowing_ thefact. --Falstaff claiming the honour, the Prince says to him:

 "For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have;"

revealing thus the magnificence of his own character, in his readiness, for the sake of his friend, to part with his chief renown. But theHistoric Muse could not believe that fat Jack Falstaff had killedHotspur, and therefore she would not record the claim. 

In the second part of the same play, act i. Scene 2, we find Falstafftoweringly indignant with Mr. Dombledon, the silk mercer, that he willstand upon security with a gentleman for a short cloak and slops ofsatin. In the first scene of the second act, the hostess mentions thatSir John is going to dine with Master Smooth, the silkman. Foiled withMr. Dombledon, he has already made himself so agreeable to MasterSmooth, that he is "indited to dinner" with him. This is, by the bye, asto the action of the play; but as to the character of Sir John, is itnot

 "Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind"--_kinned--natural_?

The _conceit deceitful_ in the painting, is the imagination that meansmore than its says. So the words of the speakers in the play, stand formore than the speakers mean. They are _Shakspere's_ in their relation tohis whole. To Achilles, his spear is but his spear: to the painter andhis company, the spear of Achilles stands for Achilles himself. 

Coleridge remarks upon _James Gurney_, in "King John:" "How individualand comical he is with the four words allowed to his dramatic life!"These words are those with which he answers the Bastard's request toleave the room. He has been lingering with all the inquisitiveness andprivilege of an old servant; when Faulconbridge says: "James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave a while?" with strained politeness. With markedcondescension to the request of the second son, whom he has known andserved from infancy, James Gurney replies: "Good leave, good Philip;"giving occasion to Faulconbridge to show his ambition, and scorn of hispresent standing, in the contempt with which he treats even theChristian name he is so soon to exchange with his surname for _SirRichard_ and _Plantagenet; Philip_ being the name for a sparrow in thosedays, when ladies made pets of them. Surely in these words of theserving-man, we have an outcome of the same art by which

 "A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole to be imagined. "

In the "Winter's Tale, " act iv. Scene 3, Perdita, dressed with unwontedgaiety at the festival of the sheep-shearing, is astonished at findingherself talking in full strains of poetic verse. She says, half-ashamed:

 "Methinks I play as I have seen them do In Whitsun pastorals: sure, this robe of mine Does change my disposition!"

She does not mean this seriously. But the robe has more to do with itthan she thinks. Her passion for Florizel is the warmth that sets thesprings of her thoughts free, and they flow with the grace belonging toa princess-nature; but it is the robe that opens the door of her speech, and, by elevating her consciousness of herself, betrays her into what isonly natural to her, but seems to her, on reflection, inconsistent withher low birth and poor education. This instance, however, involves farhigher elements than any of the examples I have given before, andnaturally leads to a much more important class of illustrations. 

In "Macbeth, " act ii. Scene 4, why is the old man, who has nothing to dowith the conduct of the play, introduced?--That, in conversation withRosse, he may, as an old man, bear testimony to the exceptionallyterrific nature of that storm, which, we find--from the words of Banquo:

 "There's husbandry in heaven: Their candles are all out, "--

had begun to gather, before supper was over in the castle. This storm isthe sympathetic horror of Nature at the breaking open of the Lord'sanointed temple--horror in which the animal creation partakes, for thehorses of Duncan, "the minions of their race, " and therefore the mostsensitive of their sensitive race, tear each other to pieces in thewildness of their horror. Consider along with this a foregoing portionof the second scene in the same act. Macbeth, having joined his wifeafter the murder, says:

 "Who lies i' the second chamber?

 "_Lady M. _ Donalbain. * * * * * "There are two lodged together. "

These two, Macbeth says, woke each other--the one laughing, the othercrying _murder_. Then they said their prayers and went to sleepagain. --I used to think that the natural companion of Donalbain would beMalcolm, his brother; and that the two brothers woke in horror from theproximity of their father's murderer who was just passing the door. Afriend objected to this, that, had they been together, Malcolm, beingthe elder, would have been mentioned rather than Donalbain. Accept thisobjection, and we find a yet more delicate significance: the _presence_operated differently on the two, one bursting out in a laugh, the othercrying _murder_; but both were in terror when they awoke, and dared notsleep till they had said their prayers. His sons, his horses, theelements themselves, are shaken by one unconscious sympathy with themurdered king. 

Associate with this the end of the third scene of the fourth act of"Julius Caesar;" where we find that the attendants of Brutus all cry outin their sleep, as the ghost of Caesar leaves their master's tent. Thisoutcry is not given in Plutarch. 

To return to "Macbeth:" Why is the doctor of medicine introduced in thescene at the English court? He has nothing to do with the progress ofthe play itself, any more than the old man already alluded to. --He isintroduced for a precisely similar reason. --As a doctor, he is the besttestimony that could be adduced to the fact, that the English KingEdward the Confessor, is a fountain of health to his people, gifted forhis goodness with the sacred privilege of curing _The King's Evil_, bythe touch of his holy hands. The English King himself is thusintroduced, for the sake of contrast with the Scotch King, who is araging bear amongst his subjects. 

In the "Winter's Tale, " to which he gives the name because of thealtogether extraordinary character of the occurrences (referring to itin the play itself, in the words: "_a sad tale's best for winter: I haveone of sprites and goblins_") Antigonus has a remarkable dream orvision, in which Hermione appears to him, and commands the exposure ofher child in a place to all appearance the most unsuitable anddangerous. Convinced of the reality of the vision, Antigonus obeys; andthe whole marvellous result depends upon this obedience. Therefore thevision must be intended for a genuine one. But how could it be such, ifHermione was not dead, as, from her appearance to him, Antigonus firmlybelieved she was? I should feel this to be an objection to the art ofthe play, but for the following answer:--At the time she appeared tohim, she was still lying in that deathlike swoon, into which she fellwhen the news of the loss of her son reached her as she stood before thejudgment-seat of her husband, at a time when she ought not to have beenout of her chamber. 

Note likewise, in the first scene of the second act of the same play, the changefulness of Hermione's mood with regard to her boy, asindicative of her condition at the time. If we do not regard this fact, we shall think the words introduced only for the sake of filling up thebusiness of the play. 

In "Twelfth Night, " both ladies make the first advances in love. Is itnot worthy of notice that one of them has lost her brother, and that theother believes she has lost hers? In this respect, they may be placedwith Phoebe, in "As You Like It, " who, having suddenly lost her love bythe discovery that its object was a woman, immediately and heartilyaccepts the devotion of her rejected lover, Silvius. Along with thesemay be classed Romeo, who, rejected and, as he believes, inconsolable, falls in love with Juliet the moment he sees her. That his love forRosaline, however, was but a kind of _calf-love_ compared with his lovefor Juliet, may be found indicated in the differing tones of his speechunder the differing conditions. Compare what he says in his conversationwith Benvolio, in the first scene of the first act, with any of his manyspeeches afterwards, and, while _conceit_ will be found prominent enoughin both, the one will be found to be ruled by the fancy, the other bythe imagination. 

In this same play, there is another similar point which I should like tonotice. In Arthur Brook's story, from which Shakspere took his, there isno mention of any communication from Lady Capulet to Juliet of theirintention of marrying her to Count Paris. Why does Shakspere insertthis?--to explain her falling in love with Romeo so suddenly. Her motherhas set her mind moving in that direction. She has never seen Paris. Sheis looking about her, wondering which may be he, and whether she shallbe able to like him, when she meets the love-filled eyes of Romeo fixedupon her, and is at once overcome. What a significant speech is thatgiven to Paulina in the "Winter's Tale, " act v. Scene 1: "How? Notwomen?" Paulina is a thorough partisan, siding with women against men, and strengthened in this by the treatment her mistress has received fromher husband. One has just said to her, that, if Perdita would begin asect, she might "make proselytes of who she bid but follow. " "How? Notwomen?" Paulina rejoins. Having received assurance that "women will loveher, " she has no more to say. 

I had the following explanation of a line in "Twelfth Night" from astranger I met in an old book-shop:--Malvolio, having built his castlein the air, proceeds to inhabit it. Describing his own behaviour in asupposed case, he says (act ii. Scene 5): "I frown the while; andperchance, wind up my watch, or play with my some rich jewel"--A dashought to come after _my_. Malvolio was about to say _chain_; butremembering that his chain was the badge of his office of steward, andtherefore of his servitude, he alters the word to "_some rich jewel_"uttered with pretended carelessness. 

In "Hamlet, " act iii. Scene 1, did not Shakspere intend the passionatesoliloquy of Ophelia--a soliloquy which no maiden knowing that she wasoverheard would have uttered, --coupled with the words of her father:

 "How now, Ophelia? You need not tell us what lord Hamlet said, We heard it all;"--

to indicate that, weak as Ophelia was, she was not false enough to beaccomplice in any plot for betraying Hamlet to her father and the King?They had remained behind the arras, and had not gone out as she musthave supposed. 

Next, let me request my reader to refer once more to the poem; andhaving considered the physiognomy of Ajax and Ulysses, as described inthe fifth stanza, to turn then to the play of "Troilus and Cressida, "and there contemplate that description as metamorphosed into the higherform of revelation in speech. Then, if he will associate the generalprinciples in that stanza with the third, especially the last two lines, I will apply this to the character of Lady Macbeth. 

Of course, Shakspere does not mean that one regarding that portion ofthe picture alone, could see the eyes looking sad; but that the _sweetobservance_ of the whole so roused the imagination that it supplied whatdistance had concealed, keeping the far-off likewise in sweet observancewith the whole: the rest pointed that way. --In a manner something likethis are we conducted to a right understanding of the character of LadyMacbeth. First put together these her utterances:

 "You do unbend your noble strength, to think So brainsickly of things. "

 "Get some water, And wash this filthy witness from your hands. "

 "The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures. "

 "A little water clears us of this deed. "

 "When all's done, You look but on a stool. "

 "You lack the season of all natures, sleep. "--

Had these passages stood in the play unmodified by others, we might havejudged from them that Shakspere intended to represent Lady Macbeth as anutter materialist, believing in nothing beyond the immediatecommunications of the senses. But when we find them associated with suchpassages as these--

 "Memory, the warder of the brain, Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason A limbeck only;"

 "Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done't;

 "These deeds must not be thought After these ways; so, it will make us mad;"--

then we find that our former theory will not do, for here are deeper andbroader foundations to build upon. We discover that Lady Macbeth was anunbeliever _morally_, and so found it necessary to keep down allimagination, which is the upheaving of that inward world whose verybeing she would have annihilated. Yet out of this world arose at lastthe phantom of her slain self, and possessing her sleeping frame, sentit out to wander in the night, and rub its distressed and blood-stainedhands in vain. For, as in this same "Rape of Lucrece, "

 "the soul's fair temple is defaced; To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares, To ask the spotted princess how she fares. "

But when so many lines of delineation meet, and run into, and correctone another, assuming such a natural and vital form, that there is no_making of a point_ anywhere; and the woman is shown after no theory, but according to the natural laws of human declension, we feel that theonly way to account for the perfection of the representation is to saythat, given a shadow, Shakspere had the power to place himself so, thatthat shadow became his own--was the correct representation as shadow, ofhis form coming between it and the sunlight. And this is the highestdramatic gift that a man can possess. But we feel at the same time, thatthis is, in the main, not so much art as inspiration. There would be, inall probability, a great mingling of conscious art with the inspiration;but the lines of the former being lost in the general glow of thelatter, we may be left where we were as to any certainty about theartistic consciousness of Shakspere. I will now therefore attempt togive a few plainer instances of such _sweet observance_ in his own workas he would have admired in a painting. 

First, then, I would request my reader to think how comparatively seldomShakspere uses poetry in his plays. The whole play is a poem in thehighest sense; but truth forbids him to make it the rule for hischaracters to speak poetically. Their speech is poetic in relation tothe whole and the end, not in relation to the speaker, or in theimmediate utterance. And even although their speech is immediatelypoetic, in this sense, that every character is idealized; yet it isidealized _after its kind_; and poetry certainly would not be the idealspeech of most of the characters. This granted, let us look at theexceptions: we shall find that such passages not only glow with poeticloveliness and fervour, but are very jewels of _sweet observance_, whosesetting allows them their force as lawful, and their prominence asnatural. I will mention a few of such. 

In "Julius Caesar, " act i. Scene 3, we are inclined to think the way_Casca_ speaks, quite inconsistent with the "sour fashion" which_Cassius_ very justly attributes to him; till we remember that he isspeaking in the midst of an almost supernatural thunder-storm: thehidden electricity of the man's nature comes out in poetic forms andwords, in response to the wild outburst of the overcharged heavens andearth. 

Shakspere invariably makes the dying speak poetically, and generallyprophetically, recognizing the identity of the poetic and propheticmoods, in their highest development, and the justice that gives them thesame name. Even _Sir John_, poor ruined gentleman, _babbles of greenfields_. Every one knows that the passage is disputed: I believe that ifthis be not the restoration of the original reading, Shakspere himselfwould justify it, and wish that he had so written it. 

_Romeo_ and _Juliet_ talk poetry as a matter of course. 

In "King John, " act v. Scenes 4 and 5, see how differently the dying_Melun_ and the living and victorious _Lewis_ regard the same sunset:

 _Melun_. 

 . . . . . This night, whose black contagious breath Already smokes about the burning crest Of the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun. 

 _Lewis_. 

 The sun in heaven, methought, was loath to set; But stayed, and made the western welkin blush, When the English measured backward their own ground. 

The exquisite duet between _Lorenzo_ and _Jessica_, in the opening ofthe fifth act of "The Merchant of Venice, " finds for its subject thecircumstances that produce the mood--the lovely night and the crescentmoon--which first make them talk poetry, then call for music, and nextspeculate upon its nature. 

Let us turn now to some instances of sweet observance in other kinds. 

There is observance, more true than sweet, in the character of_Jacques_, in "As You Like It:" the fault-finder in age was thefault-doer in youth and manhood. _Jacques_ patronizing the fool, is oneof the rarest shows of self-ignorance. 

In the same play, when _Rosalind_ hears that _Orlando_ is in the wood, she cries out, "Alas the day! what shall I do with my doublet and hose?"And when _Orlando_ asks her, "Where dwell you, pretty youth?" sheanswers, tripping in her rôle, "Here in the skirts of the forest, likefringe upon a petticoat. "

In the second part of "King Henry IV. , " act iv. Scene 3, _Falstaff_ saysof _Prince John_: "Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy dothnot love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh;--but that's no marvel: hedrinks no wine. " This is the _Prince John_ who betrays the insurgentsafterwards by the falsest of quibbles, and gains his revenge throughtheir good faith. 

In "King Henry IV, " act i. Scene 2, _Poins_ does not say _Falstaff_ is acoward like the other two; but only--"If he fight longer than he seesreason, I'll forswear arms. " Associate this with _Falstaff's_ soliloquyabout _honour_ in the same play, act v. Scene 1, and the true characterof his courage or cowardice--for it may bear either name--comes out. 

Is there not conscious art in representing the hospitable face of thecastle of _Macbeth_, bearing on it a homely welcome in the multitude ofthe nests of _the temple-haunting martlet_ (Psalm lxxxiv. 3), just as_Lady Macbeth_, the fiend-soul of the house, steps from the door, likethe speech of the building, with her falsely smiled welcome? Is therenot _observance_ in it?

But the production of such instances might be endless, as the work ofShakspere is infinite. I confine myself to two more, taken from "TheMerchant of Venice. "

Shakspere requires a character capable of the magnificent devotion offriendship which the old story attributes to _Antonio_. He thereforeintroduces us to a man sober even to sadness, thoughtful even tomelancholy. The first words of the play unveil this characteristic. Heholds "the world but as the world, "--

 "A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one. "

The cause of this sadness we are left to conjecture. _Antonio_ himselfprofesses not to know. But such a disposition, even if it be notoccasioned by any definite event or object, will generally associateitself with one; and when _Antonio_ is accused of being in love, herepels the accusation with only a sad "Fie! fie!" This, and his wholecharacter, seem to me to point to an old but ever cherished grief. 

Into the original story upon which this play is founded, Shakspere has, among other variations, introduced the story of _Jessica_ and _Lorenzo_, apparently altogether of his own invention. What was his object in doingso? Surely there were characters and interests enough already!--It seemsto me that Shakspere doubted whether the Jew would have actuallyproceeded to carry out his fell design against _Antonio_, upon theoriginal ground of his hatred, without the further incitement to revengeafforded by another passion, second only to his love of gold--hisaffection for his daughter; for in the Jew having reference to his ownproperty, it had risen to a passion. Shakspere therefore invents her, that he may send a dog of a Christian to steal her, and, yet worse, totempt her to steal her father's stones and ducats. I suspect Shaksperesends the old villain off the stage at the last with more of the pity ofthe audience than any of the other dramatists of the time would haveventured to rouse, had they been capable of doing so. I suspect he isthe only human Jew of the English drama up to that time. 

I have now arrived at the last and most important stage of my argument. It is this: If Shakspere was so well aware of the artistic relations ofthe parts of his drama, is it likely that the grand meanings involved inthe whole were unperceived by him, and conveyed to us without anyintention on his part--had their origin only in the fact that he dealtwith human nature so truly, that his representations must involvewhatever lessons human life itself involves?

Is there no intention, for instance, in placing _Prospero_, who forsookthe duties of his dukedom for the study of magic, in a desert island, with just three subjects; one, a monster below humanity; the second, acreature etherealized beyond it; and the third a complete embodiment ofhuman perfection? Is it not that he may learn how to rule, and, havinglearned, return, by the aid of his magic wisely directed, to the homeand duties from which exclusive devotion to that magic had driven him?

In "Julius Caesar, " the death of _Brutus_, while following as theconsequence of his murder of _Caesar_, is yet as much distinguished incharacter from that death, as the character of _Brutus_ is differentfrom that of _Caesar_. _Caesar's_ last words were _Et tu Brute? Brutus_, when resolved to lay violent hands on himself, takes leave of hisfriends with these words:

 "Countrymen, My heart doth joy, that yet, in all my life, I found no man, but he was true to me. "

Here Shakspere did not invent. He found both speeches in Plutarch. Buthow unerring his choice!

Is the final catastrophe in "Hamlet" such, because Shakspere could do nobetter?--It is: he could do no better than the best. Where but in theregions beyond could such questionings as _Hamlet's_ be put to rest? Itwould have been a fine thing indeed for the most nobly perplexed ofthinkers to be left--his love in the grave; the memory of his father atorment, of his mother a blot; with innocent blood on his innocenthands, and but half understood by his best friend--to ascend in desolatedreariness the contemptible height of the degraded throne, and shine thefirst in a drunken court!

Before bringing forward my last instance, I will direct the attention ofmy readers to a passage, in another play, in which the lesson of theplay I am about to speak of, is _directly_ taught: the first speech inthe second act of "As You Like It, " might be made a text for theexposition of the whole play of "King Lear. "

The banished duke is seeking to bring his courtiers to regard theirexile as a part of their moral training. I am aware that I point thepassage differently, while I revert to the old text. 

 "Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court? Here feel we not the penalty of Adam-- The season's difference, as the icy fang, And churlish chiding of the winter's wind? Which, when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say-- This is no flattery; these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am. Sweet are the uses of adversity. "

The line _Here feel we not the penalty of Adam?_ has given rise to muchperplexity. The expounders of Shakspere do not believe he can mean thatthe uses of adversity are really sweet. But the duke sees that _thepenalty_ of Adam is what makes the _woods more free from peril than theenvious court;_ that this penalty is in fact the best blessing, for it_feelingly persuades_ man _what_ he is; and to know what we are, to haveno false judgments of ourselves, he considers so sweet, that to be thustaught, the _churlish chiding of the winter's wind_ is well endured. 

Now let us turn to _Lear_. We find in him an old man with a largeheart, hungry for love, and yet not knowing what love is; an old man asignorant as a child in all matters of high import; with a temper sounsubdued, and therefore so unkingly, that he storms because his dinneris not ready by the clock of his hunger; a child, in short, ineverything but his grey hairs and wrinkled face, but his failing, instead of growing, strength. If a life end so, let the success of thatlife be otherwise what it may, it is a wretched and unworthy end. Butlet _Lear_ be blown by the winds and beaten by the rains of heaven, tillhe pities "poor naked wretches;" till he feels that he has "ta'en toolittle care of" such; till pomp no longer conceals from him what "apoor, bare, forked animal" he is; and the old king has risen higher inthe real social scale--the scale of that country to which he isbound--far higher than he stood while he still held his kingdomundivided to his thankless daughters. Then let him learn at last that"love is the only good in the world;" let him find his _Cordelia_, andplot with her how they will in their dungeon _singing like birds i' thecage_, and, dwelling in the secret place of peace, look abroad on theworld like _God's spies_; and then let the generous great old heartswell till it breaks at last--not with rage and hate and vengeance, butwith love; and all is well: it is time the man should go to overtake hisdaughter; henceforth to dwell with her in the home of the true, theeternal, the unchangeable. All his suffering came from his own fault;but from the suffering has sprung another crop, not of evil but of good;the seeds of which had lain unfruitful in the soil, but were broughtwithin the blessed influences of the air of heaven by the sharp torturesof the ploughshare of ill. 

THE ELDER HAMLET. [Footnote: 1875]

 'Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart. 

The ghost in "Hamlet" is as faithfully treated as any character in theplay. Next to Hamlet himself, he is to me the most interesting person ofthe drama. The rumour of his appearance is wrapped in the larger rumourof war. Loud preparations for uncertain attack fill the ears of "thesubject of the land. " The state is troubled. The new king has hardlycompassed his election before his marriage with his brother's widowswathes the court in the dust-cloud of shame, which the merriment of itsforced revelry can do little to dispel. A feeling is in the moral air towhich the words of Francisco, the only words of significance he utters, give the key: "'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart. " Into thefrosty air, the pallid moonlight, the drunken shouts of Claudius and hiscourt, the bellowing of the cannon from the rampart for the enlargementof the insane clamour that it may beat the drum of its own disgrace atthe portals of heaven, glides the silent prisoner of hell, no longer aking of the day walking about his halls, "the observed of allobservers, " but a thrall of the night, wandering between the bell andthe cock, like a jailer on each side of him. A poet tells the tale ofthe king who lost his garments and ceased to be a king: here is the kingwho has lost his body, and in the eyes of his court has ceased to be aman. Is the cold of the earth's night pleasant to him after the purgingfire? What crimes had the honest ghost committed in his days of nature?He calls them foul crimes! Could such be his? Only who can tell how aghost, with his doubled experience, may think of this thing or that? Theghost and the fire may between them distinctly recognize that as a foulcrime which the man and the court regarded as a weakness at worst, andindeed in a king laudable. 

Alas, poor ghost! Around the house he flits, shifting and shadowy, overthe ground he once paced in ringing armour--armed still, but his veryarmour a shadow! It cannot keep out the arrow of the cock's cry, and theheart that pierces is no shadow. Where now is the loaded axe with which, in angry dispute, he smote the ice at his feet that cracked to the blow?Where is the arm that heaved the axe? Wasting in the marble maw of thesepulchre, and the arm he carries now--I know not what it can do, but itcannot slay his murderer. For that he seeks his son's. Doubtless his newethereal form has its capacities and privileges. It can shift its garbat will; can appear in mail or night-gown, unaided of armourer ortailor; can pass through Hades-gates or chamber-door with equal ease;can work in the ground like mole or pioneer, and let its voice be heardfrom the cellarage. But there is one to whom it cannot appear, one whomthe ghost can see, but to whom he cannot show himself. She has built adoorless, windowless wall between them, and sees the husband of heryouth no more. Outside her heart--that is the night in which he wanders, while the palace-windows are flaring, and the low wind throbs to thewassail shouts: within, his murderer sits by the wife of his bosom, andin the orchard the spilt poison is yet gnawing at the roots of thedaisies. 

Twice has the ghost grown out of the night upon the eyes of thesentinels. With solemn march, slow and stately, three times each night, has he walked by them; they, jellied with fear, have uttered nochallenge. They seek Horatio, who the third night speaks to him as ascholar can. To the first challenge he makes no answer, but stalks away;to the second, It lifted up its head, and did address Itself to motion, like as it would speak;

but the gaoler cock calls him, and the kingly shape

 started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons;

and then

 shrunk in haste away, And vanished from our sight. 

Ah, that summons! at which majesty welks and shrivels, the king andsoldier starts and cowers, and, armour and all, withers from the air!

But why has he not spoken before? why not now ere the cock could claimhim? He cannot trust the men. His court has forsaken his memory--crowdswith as eager discontent about the mildewed ear as ever about hiswholesome brother, and how should he trust mere sentinels? There is butone who will heed his tale. A word to any other would but defeat hisintent. Out of the multitude of courtiers and subjects, in all the landof Denmark, there is but one whom he can trust--his student-son. Him hehas not yet found--the condition of a ghost involving strangedifficulties. 

Or did the horror of the men at the sight of him wound and repel him?Does the sense of regal dignity, not yet exhausted for all the fastingin fires, unite with that of grievous humiliation to make him shun theirspeech?

But Horatio--why does the ghost not answer him ere the time of the cockis come? Does he fold the cloak of indignation around him because hisson's friend has addressed him as an intruder on the night, an usurperof the form that is his own? The companions of the speaker take notethat he is offended and stalks away. 

Much has the kingly ghost to endure in his attempt to re-open relationswith the world he has left: when he has overcome his wrath and returns, that moment Horatio again insults him, calling him an illusion. But thistime he will bear it, and opens his mouth to speak. It is too late; thecock is awake, and he must go. Then alas for the buried majesty ofDenmark! with upheaved halberts they strike at the shadow, and wouldstop it if they might--usage so grossly unfitting that they areinstantly ashamed of it themselves, recognizing the offence in themajesty of the offended. But he is already gone. The proud, angry kinghas found himself but a thing of nothing to his body-guard--for he haslost the body which was their guard. Still, not even yet has he learnedhow little it lies in the power of an honest ghost to gain credit forhimself or his tale! His very privileges are against him. 

All this time his son is consuming his heart in the knowledge of amother capable of so soon and so utterly forgetting such a husband, andin pity and sorrow for the dead father who has had such a wife. He isthirty years of age, an obedient, honourable son--a man of thought, offaith, of aspiration. Him now the ghost seeks, his heart burning like acoal with the sense of unendurable wrong. He is seeking the one dropthat can fall cooling on that heart--the sympathy, the answering rageand grief of his boy. But when at length he finds him, the generous, loving father has to see that son tremble like an aspen-leaf in hisdoubtful presence. He has exposed himself to the shame of eyes and theindignities of dullness, that he may pour the pent torrent of his wrongsinto his ears, but his disfranchisement from the flesh tells against himeven with his son: the young Hamlet is doubtful of the identity of theapparition with his father. After all the burning words of the phantom, the spirit he has seen may yet be a devil; the devil has power to assumea pleasing shape, and is perhaps taking advantage of his melancholy todamn him. 

Armed in the complete steel of a suit well known to the eyes of thesentinels, visionary none the less, with useless truncheon in hand, resuming the memory of old martial habits, but with quiet countenance, more in sorrow than in anger, troubled--not now with the thought of thehell-day to which he must sleepless return, but with that unceasing acheat the heart, which ever, as often as he is released into the coolingair of the upper world, draws him back to the region of hiswrongs--where having fallen asleep in his orchard, in sacred securityand old custom, suddenly, by cruel assault, he was flung into Hades, where horror upon horror awaited him--worst horror of all, the knowledgeof his wife!--armed he comes, in shadowy armour but how real sorrow!Still it is not pity he seeks from his son: he needs it not--he canendure. There is no weakness in the ghost. It is but to the imperfecthuman sense that he is shadowy. To himself he knows his doom hisdeliverance; that the hell in which he finds himself shall endure butuntil it has burnt up the hell he has found within him--until the evilhe was and is capable of shall have dropped from him into the lake offire; he nerves himself to bear. And the cry of revenge that comes fromthe sorrowful lips is the cry of a king and a Dane rather than of awronged man. It is for public justice and not individual vengeance hecalls. He cannot endure that the royal bed of Denmark should be a couchfor luxury and damned incest. To stay this he would bring the murdererto justice. There is a worse wrong, for which he seeks no revenge: itinvolves his wife; and there comes in love, and love knows no amends butamendment, seeks only the repentance tenfold more needful to the wrongerthan the wronged. It is not alone the father's care for the human natureof his son that warns him to take no measures against his mother; it isthe husband's tenderness also for her who once lay in his bosom. Themurdered brother, the dethroned king, the dishonoured husband, thetormented sinner, is yet a gentle ghost. Has suffering already begun tomake him, like Prometheus, wise?

But to measure the gentleness, the forgiveness, the tenderness of theghost, we must well understand his wrongs. The murder is plain; butthere is that which went before and is worse, yet is not so plain toevery eye that reads the story. There is that without which the murderhad never been, and which, therefore, is a cause of all the wrong. Forlisten to what the ghost reveals when at length he has withdrawn his sonthat he may speak with him alone, and Hamlet has forestalled thedisclosure of the murderer:

 "Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, (O wicked wit and gifts that have the power So to seduce!) won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming virtuous queen: Oh, Hamlet, what a falling off was there! From me, whose love was of that dignity That it went hand in hand even with the vow I made to her in marriage, and to decline Upon a wretch, whose natural gifts were poor To those of mine! But virtue--as it never will be moved Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, So lust, though to a radiant angel linked, Will sate itself in a celestial bed, And prey on garbage. "

Reading this passage, can any one doubt that the ghost charges his latewife with adultery, as the root of all his woes? It is true that, obedient to the ghost's injunctions, as well as his own filialinstincts, Hamlet accuses his mother of no more than was patent to allthe world; but unless we suppose the ghost misinformed or mistaken, wemust accept this charge. And had Gertrude not yielded to the witchcraftof Claudius' wit, Claudius would never have murdered Hamlet. Through herhis life was dishonoured, and his death violent and premature: unhuzled, disappointed, unaneled, he woke to the air--not of his orchard-blossoms, but of a prison-house, the lightest word of whose terrors would freezethe blood of the listener. What few men can say, he could--that his loveto his wife had kept even step with the vow he made to her in marriage;and his son says of him--

 "so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly;"

and this was her return! Yet is it thus he charges his son concerningher:

 "But howsoever thou pursu'st this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her. "

And may we not suppose it to be for her sake in part that the ghostinsists, with fourfold repetition, upon a sword-sworn oath to silencefrom Horatio and Marcellus?

Only once again does he show himself--not now in armour upon the walls, but in his gown and in his wife's closet. 

Ever since his first appearance, that is, all the time filling theinterval between the first and second acts, we may presume him to havehaunted the palace unseen, waiting what his son would do. But the taskhas been more difficult than either had supposed. The ambassadors havegone to Norway and returned; but Hamlet has done nothing. Probably hehas had no opportunity; certainly he has had no clear vision of duty. But now all through the second and third acts, together occupying, itmust be remembered, only one day, something seems imminent. The play hasbeen acted, and Hamlet has gained some assurance, yet the one chancepresented of killing the king--at his prayers--he has refused. He is nowin his mother's closet, whose eyes he has turned into her very soul. There, and then, the ghost once more appears--come, he says, to whet hisson's almost blunted purpose. But, as I have said, he does not know allthe disadvantages of one who, having forsaken the world, has yetbusiness therein to which he would persuade; he does not know how hardit is for a man to give credence to a ghost; how thoroughly he isjustified in delay, and the demand for more perfect proof. He does notknow what good reasons his son has had for uncertainty, or how muchnatural and righteous doubt has had to do with what he takes for theblunting of his purpose. Neither does he know how much more tender hisson's conscience is than his own, or how necessary it is to him to besure before he acts. As little perhaps does he understand how hateful toHamlet is the task laid upon him--the killing of one wretched villain inthe midst of a corrupt and contemptible court, one of a world of whosewomen his mother may be the type!

Whatever the main object of the ghost's appearance, he has spoken but afew words concerning the matter between him and Hamlet, when he turnsabruptly from it to plead with his son for his wife. The ghost sees andmistakes the terror of her looks; imagines that, either from somefeeling of his presence, or from the power of Hamlet's words, herconscience is thoroughly roused, and that her vision, her conception ofthe facts, is now more than she can bear. She and her fighting soul areat odds. She is a kingdom divided against itself. He fears theconsequences. He would not have her go mad. He would not have her dieyet. Even while ready to start at the summons of that hell to which shehas sold him, he forgets his vengeance on her seducer in his desire tocomfort her. He dares not, if he could, manifest himself to her: whatword of consolation could she hear from his lips? Is not the thought ofhim her one despair? He turns to his son for help: he cannot console hiswife; his son must take his place. Alas! even now he thinks better ofher than she deserves; for it is only the fancy of her son's madnessthat is terrifying her: he gazes on the apparition of which she seesnothing, and from his looks she anticipates an ungovernable outbreak. 

 "But look; amazement on thy mother sits! Oh; step between her and her fighting soul Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. Speak to her, Hamlet. "

The call to his son to soothe his wicked mother is the ghost's lastutterance. For a few moments, sadly regardful of the two, hestands--while his son seeks in vain to reveal to his mother the presenceof his father--a few moments of piteous action, all but ruining theremnant of his son's sorely-harassed self-possession--his whole concernhis wife's distress, and neither his own doom nor his son's duty; then, as if lost in despair at the impassable gulf betwixt them, revealed byher utter incapacity for even the imagination of his proximity, he turnsaway, and steals out at the portal. Or perhaps he has heard the blackcock crow, and is wanted beneath: his turn has come. 

Will the fires ever cleanse _her_? Will his love ever lift him above thepain of its loss? Will eternity ever be bliss, ever be endurable to poor_King Hamlet?_

Alas! even the memory of the poor ghost is insulted. Night after nighton the stage his effigy appears--cadaverous, sepulchral--no longer asShakspere must have represented him, aerial, shadowy, gracious, the thincorporeal husk of an eternal--shall I say ineffaceable?--sorrow! It isno hollow monotone that can rightly upbear such words as his, but asound mingled of distance and wind in the pine-tops, of agony and love, of horror and hope and loss and judgment--a voice of endless andsweetest inflection, yet with a shuddering echo in it as from the cavesof memory, on whose walls, are written the eternal blazon that must notbe to ears of flesh and blood. The spirit that can assume form at willmust surely be able to bend that form to completest and most delicateexpression, and the part of the ghost in the play offers work worthy ofthe highest artist. The would-be actor takes from it vitality andmotion, endowing it instead with the rigidity of death, as if the soulhad resumed its cast-off garment, the stiffened and mouldy corpse--whosefrozen deadness it could ill model to the utterance of its lively will!

ON POLISH. [Footnote: 1865]

By Polish I mean a certain well-known and immediately recognizablecondition of surface. But I must request my reader to consider well whatthis condition really is. For the definition of it appears to us to be, that condition of surface which allows the inner structure of thematerial to manifest itself. Polish is, as it were, a translucent skin, in which the life of the inorganic comes to the surface, as in theanimal skin the animal life. Once clothed in this, the inner glories ofthe marble rock, of the jasper, of the porphyry, leave the darknessbehind, and glow into the day. From the heart of the agate the mossylandscape comes dreaming out. From the depth of the green chrysolitelooks up the eye of its gold. The "goings on of life" hidden for agesunder the rough bark of the patient forest-trees, are brought to light;the rings of lovely shadow which the creature went on making in thedark, as the oyster its opaline laminations, and its tree-pearls ofbeautiful knots, where a beneficent disease has broken the geometricalperfection of its structure, gloom out in their infinite variousness. 

Nor are the revelations of polish confined to things having variety intheir internal construction; they operate equally in things ofhomogeneous structure. It is the polished ebony or jet which gives thetrue blank, the material darkness. It is the polished steel that shineskeen and remorseless and cold, like that human justice whose symbol itis. And in the polished diamond the distinctive purity is most evident;while from it, I presume, will the light absorbed from the sun gleamforth on the dark most plentifully. 

But the mere fact that the end of polish is revelation, can hardly beworth setting forth except for some ulterior object, some furtherrevelation in the fact itself. --I wish to show that in the symbolic useof the word the same truth is involved, or, if not involved, at leastsuggested. But let me first make another remark on the precedingdefinition of the word. 

There is no denying that the first notion suggested by the word polishis that of smoothness, which will indeed be the sole idea associatedwith it before we begin to contemplate the matter. But when we considerwhat things are chosen to be "clothed upon" with this smoothness, thenwe find that the smoothness is scarcely desired for its own sake, andremember besides that in many materials and situations it is elaboratelyavoided. We find that here it is sought because of its faculty ofenabling other things to show themselves--to come to the surface. 

I proceed then to examine how far my pregnant interpretation of the wordwill apply to its figurative use in two cases--_Polish of Style_, and_Polish of Manners_. The two might be treated together, seeing that_Style_ may be called the manners of intellectual utterance, and_Manners_ the style of social utterance; but it is more convenient totreat them separately. 

I will begin with the Polish of Style. 

It will be seen at once that if the notion of polish be limited to thatof smoothness, there can be little to say on the matter, and nothingworthy of being said. For mere smoothness is no more a desirable qualityin a style than it is in a country or a countenance; and its pursuitwill result at length in the gain of the monotonous and the loss of themelodious and harmonious. But it is only upon worthless material thatpolish can be _mere_ smoothness; and where the material is not valuable, polish can be nothing but smoothness. No amount of polish in a style canrender the production of value, except there be in it embodied thoughtthereby revealed; and the labour of the polish is lost. Let us then takethe fuller meaning of polish, and see how it will apply to style. 

If it applies, then Polish of Style will imply the approximatelycomplete revelation of the thought. It will be the removal of everythingthat can interfere between the thought of the speaker and the mind ofthe hearer. True polish in marble or in speech reveals inlyingrealities, and, in the latter at least, mere smoothness, either of soundor of meaning, is not worthy of the name. The most polished style willbe that which most immediately and most truly flashes the meaningembodied in the utterance upon the mind of the listener or reader. 

"Will you then, " I imagine a reader objecting, "admit of no ornament instyle?"

"Assuredly, " I answer, "I would admit of no ornament whatever. "

But let me explain what I mean by ornament. I mean anything stuck in oron, like a spangle, because it is pretty in itself, although it revealsnothing. Not one such ornament can belong to a polished style. It ispaint, not polish. And if this is not what my questioner means by_ornament_, my answer must then be read according to the differences inhis definition of the word. What I have said has not the leastapplication to the natural forms of beauty which thought assumes inspeech. Between such beauty and such ornament there lies the samedifference as between the overflow of life in the hair, and the dressingof that loveliest of utterances in grease and gold. 

For, when I say that polish is the removal of everything that comesbetween thought and thinking, it must not be supposed that in my ideathought is only of the intellect, and therefore that all forms but bareintellectual forms are of the nature of ornament. As well might one saythat the only essential portion of the human form is the bones. Andevery human thought is in a sense a human being, has as necessarily itsmuscles of motion, its skin of beauty, its blood of feeling, as itsskeleton of logic. For complete utterance, music itself in its rightproportions, sometimes clear and strong, as in rhymed harmonies, sometimes veiled and dim, as in the prose compositions of the masters ofspeech, is as necessary as correctness of logic, and common sense inconstruction. I should have said _conveyance_ rather than utterance; forthere may be utterance such as to relieve the mind of the speaker withmore or less of fancied communication, while the conveyance of thoughtmay be little or none; as in the speaking with tongues of the infantChurch, to which the lovely babblement of our children has probably morethan a figurative resemblance, relieving their own minds, but, theinterpreter not yet at his post, neither instructing nor misleading anyone. But as the object of grown-up speech must in the main be theconveyance of thought, and not the mere utterance, everything in thestyle of that speech which interposes between the mental eyes and thethought embodied in the speech, must be polished away, that theindwelling life may manifest itself. 

What, then (for now we must come to the practical), is the kind of thingto be polished away in order that the hidden may be revealed?

All words that can be dismissed without loss; for all such more or lessobscure the meaning upon which they gather. The first step towards thepolishing of most styles is to strike out--polish off--the useless wordsand phrases. It is wonderful with how many fewer words most things couldbe said that are said; while the degree of certainty and rapidity withwhich an idea is conveyed would generally be found to be in an inverseratio to the number of words employed. 

All ornaments so called--the nose and lip jewels of style--the tattooingof the speech; all similes that, although true, give no additionalinsight into the meaning; everything that is only pretty and notbeautiful; all mere sparkle as of jewels that lose their own beauty bybeing set in the grandeur of statues or the dignity of monumental stone, must be ruthlessly polished away. 

All utterances which, however they may add to the amount of thought, distract the mind, and confuse its observation of the main idea, theessence or life of the book or paper, must be diligently refused. In themanuscript of _Comus_ there exists, cancelled but legible, a passage ofwhich I have the best authority for saying that it would have made thepoetic fame of any writer. But the grand old self-denier struck it outof the opening speech because that would be more polished withoutit--because the _Attendant Spirit_ would say more immediately andexclusively, and therefore more completely, what he had to say, withoutit. --All this applies much more widely and deeply in the region of art;but I am at present dealing with the surface of style, not with theround of result. 

I have one instance at hand, however, belonging to this region, thanwhich I could scarcely produce a more apt illustration of my thesis. Oneof the greatest of living painters, walking with a friend through thelate Exhibition of Art-Treasures at Manchester, came upon Albert Dürer's_Melancholia_. After looking at it for a moment, he told his friend thatnow for the first time he understood it, and proceeded to set forth whathe saw in it. It was a very early impression, and the delicacy of thelines was so much the greater. He had never seen such a perfectimpression before, and had never perceived the intent and scope of theengraving. The mere removal of accidental thickness and furriness in thelines of the drawing enabled him to see into the meaning of thatwonderful production. The polish brought it to the surface. Or, whatamounts to the same thing for my argument, the dulling of the surfacehad concealed it even from his experienced eyes. 

In fine, and more generally, all cause whatever of obscurity must bepolished away. There may lie in the matter itself a darkness of colourand texture which no amount of polishing can render clear or even vivid;the thoughts themselves may be hard to think, and difficulty must not beconfounded with obscurity. The former belongs to the thoughtsthemselves; the latter to the mode of their embodiment. All cause ofobscurity in this must, I say, be removed. Such may lie even in theregion of grammar, or in the mere arrangement of a sentence. And while, as I have said, no ornament is to be allowed, so all roughnesses, whichirritate the mental ear, and so far incapacitate it for receiving a trueimpression of the meaning from the words, must be carefully reduced. Forthe true music of a sentence, belonging as it does to the essence of thethought itself, is the herald which goes before to prepare the mind forthe following thought, calming the surface of the intellect to amirror-like reflection of the image about to fall upon it. But syllablesthat hang heavy on the tongue and grate harsh upon the ear are thetrumpet of discord rousing to unconscious opposition and consciousrejection. 

And now the consideration of the Polish of Manners will lead us to someyet more important reflections. Here again I must admit that theordinary use of the phrase is analogous to that of the preceding; butits relations lead us deep into realities. For as diamond alone canpolish diamond, so men alone can polish men; and hence it is that it wasfirst by living in a city ([Greek: polis], _polis_) that men--

 "rubbed each other's angles down, "

and became _polished_. And while a certain amount of ease with regard toourselves and of consideration with regard to others is everywherenecessary to a man's passing as a gentleman--all unevenness of behaviourresulting either from shyness or self-consciousness (in the shape ofawkwardness), or from overweening or selfishness (in the shape ofrudeness), having to be polished away--true human polish must go furtherthan this. Its respects are not confined to the manners of the ball-roomor the dinner-table, of the club or the exchange, but wherever a man mayrejoice with them that rejoice or weep with them that weep, he mustremain one and the same, as polished to the tiller of the soil as to theleader of the fashion. 

But how will the figure of material polish aid us any further? How canit be said that Polish of Manners is a revelation of that which iswithin, a calling up to the surface of the hidden loveliness of thematerial? For do we not know that courtesy may cover contempt; thatsmiles themselves may hide hate; that one who will place you at hisright hand when in want of your inferior aid, may scarce acknowledgeyour presence when his necessity has gone by? And how then can polishedmanners be a revelation of what is within? Are they not the result ofputting on rather than of taking off? Are they not paint and varnishrather than polish?

I must yield the answer to each of these questions; protesting, however, that with such polish I have nothing to do; for these manners areconfessedly false. But even where least able to mislead, they are, withcorresponding courtesy, accepted as outward signs of an inward grace. Hence even such, by the nature of their falsehood, support my position. For in what forms are the colours of the paint laid upon the surface ofthe material? Is it not in as near imitations of the real right humanfeelings about oneself and others as the necessarily imperfect knowledgeof such an artist can produce? He will not encounter the labour ofpolishing, for he does not believe in the divine depths of his ownnature: he paints, and calls the varnish polish. 

"But why talk of polish with reference to such a character, seeing thatno amount of polishing can bring to the surface what is not there? Nopolishing of sandstone will reveal the mottling of marble. For it issandstone, crumbling and gritty--not noble in any way. "

Is it so then? Can such be the real nature of the man? And can polishreach nothing deeper in him than such? May not this selfishness bepolished away, revealing true colour and harmony beneath? Was not theman made in the image of God? Or, if you say that man lost that image, did not a new process of creation begin from the point of that loss, aprocess of re-creation in him in whom all shall be made alive, which, although so far from being completed yet, can never be checked? If wecut away deep enough at the rough block of our nature, shall we notarrive at some likeness of that true man who, the apostle says, dwellsin us--the hope of glory? He informs us--that is, forms us from within. 

Dr. Donne (who knew less than any other writer in the English languagewhat Polish of Style means) recognizes this divine polishing to thefull. He says in a poem called "The Cross:"--

 As perchance carvers do not faces make, But that away, which hid them there, do take, Let Crosses so take what hid Christ in thee, And be his Image, or not his, but He. 

This is no doubt a higher figure than that of _polish_, but it is of thesame kind, revealing the same truth. It recognizes the fact that thedivine nature lies at the root of the human nature, and that the polishwhich lets that spiritual nature shine out in the simplicity of heavenlychildhood, is the true Polish of Manners of which all merely socialrefinements are a poor imitation. --Whence Coleridge says that nothingbut religion can make a man a gentleman. --And when these harmonies ofour nature come to the surface, we shall be indeed "lively stones, " fitfor building into the great temple of the universe, and echoing themusic of creation. Dr. Donne recognizes, besides, the notable fact that_crosses_ or afflictions are the polishing powers by means of which thebeautiful realities of human nature are brought to the surface. One cantell at once by the peculiar loveliness of certain persons that theyhave suffered. 

But, to look for a moment less profoundly into the matter, have we notknown those whose best never could get to the surface just from the lackof polish?--persons who, if they could only reveal the kindness oftheir nature, would make men believe in human nature, but in whom someroughness of awkwardness or of shyness prevents the true self fromappearing? Even the dread of seeming to claim a good deed or topatronize a fellow-man will sometimes spoil the last touch of tendernesswhich would have been the final polish of the act of giving, and wouldhave revealed infinite depths of human devotion. For let the truth out, and it will be seen to be true. 

Simplicity is the end of all Polish, as of all Art, Culture, Morals, Religion, and Life. The Lord our God is one Lord, and we and ourbrothers and sisters are one Humanity, one Body of the Head. 

Now to the practical: what are we to do for the polish of our manners?

Just what I have said we must do for the polish of our style. Take off;do not put on. Polish away this rudeness, that awkwardness. Correcteverything self-assertive, which includes nine tenths of all vulgarity. Imitate no one's behaviour; that is to paint. Do not think aboutyourself; that is to varnish. Put what is wrong right, and what is inyou will show itself in harmonious behaviour. 

But no one can go far in this track without discovering that true polishreaches much deeper; that the outward exists but for the sake of theinward; and that the manners, as they depend on the morals, must beforgotten in the morals of which they are but the revelation. Look atthe high-shouldered, ungainly child in the corner: his mother tells himto go to his book, and he wants to go to his play. Regard the swollenlips, the skin tightened over the nose, the distortion of his shape, theangularity of his whole appearance. Yet he is not an awkward child bynature. Look at him again the moment after he has given in and kissedhis mother. His shoulders have dropped to their place; his limbs arefree from the fetters that bound them; his motions are graceful, and theone blends harmoniously with the other. He is no longer thinking ofhimself. He has given up his own way. The true childhood comes to thesurface, and you see what the boy is meant to be always. Look at thejerkiness of the conceited man. Look at the quiet _fluency_ of motion inthe modest man. Look how anger itself which forgets self, which isunhating and righteous, will elevate the carriage and ennoble themovements. 

But how far can the same rule of _omission_ or _rejection_ be appliedwith safety to this deeper character--the manners of the spirit?

It seems to me that in morals too the main thing is to avoid doingwrong; for then the active spirit of life in us will drive us on to theright. But on such a momentous question I would not be dogmatic. Only asfar as regards the feelings I would say: it is of no use to try to makeourselves feel thus or thus. Let us fight with our wrong feelings; letus polish away the rough ugly distortions of feeling. Then the real andthe good will come of themselves. Or rather, to keep to my figure, theywill then show themselves of themselves as the natural home-produce, theindwelling facts of our deepest--that is, our divine nature. 

Here I find that I am sinking through my subject into another anddeeper--a truth, namely, which should, however, be the foundation of allour building, the background of all our representations: that Life is atwork in us--the sacred Spirit of God travailing in us. That Spirit hasgained one end of his labour--at which he can begin to do yet more forus--when he has brought us to beg for the help which he has been givingus all the time. 

I have been regarding infinite things through the medium of one limitedfigure, knowing that figures with all their suggestions and relationscould not reveal them utterly. But so far as they go, these thoughtsraised by the word Polish and its figurative uses appear to me to bemost true. 

BROWNING'S "CHRISTMAS EVE" [Footnote: 1853. ]

Goethe says:--

 "Poems are painted window panes. If one looks from the square into the church, Dusk and dimness are his gains-- Sir Philistine is left in the lurch! The sight, so seen, may well enrage him, Nor anything henceforth assuage him. 

 "But come just inside what conceals; Cross the holy threshold quite-- All at once 'tis rainbow-bright, Device and story flash to light, A gracious splendour truth reveals. This to God's children is full measure, It edifies and gives you pleasure!"

This is true concerning every form in which truth is embodied, whetherit be sight or sound, geometric diagram or scientific formula. Unintelligible, it may be dismal enough, regarded from the outside;prismatic in its revelation of truth from within. Such is the worlditself, as beheld by the speculative eye; a thing of disorder, obscurity, and sadness: only the child-like heart, to which the doorinto the divine idea is thrown open, can understand somewhat the secretof the Almighty. In human things it is particularly true of art, inwhich the fundamental idea seems to be the revelation of the truethrough the beautiful. But of all the arts it is most applicable topoetry; for the others have more that is beautiful on the outside; cangive pleasure to the senses by the form of the marble, the hues of thepainting, or the sweet sounds of the music, although the heart may neverperceive the meaning that lies within. But poetry, except its rhythmicmelody, and its scattered gleams of material imagery, for which few carethat love it not for its own sake, has no attraction on the outside toentice the passer to enter and partake of its truth. It is inwards thatits colours shine, within that its forms move, and the sound of its holyorgan cannot be heard from without. 

Now, if one has been able to reach the heart of a poem, answering toGoethe's parabolic description; or even to discover a loop-hole, throughwhich, from an opposite point, the glories of its stained windows arevisible; it is well that he should seek to make others partakers in hispleasure and profit. Some who might not find out for themselves, wouldyet be evermore grateful to him who led them to the point of vision. Surely if a man would help his fellow-men, he can do so far moreeffectually by exhibiting truth than exposing error, by unveiling beautythan by a critical dissection of deformity. From the very nature of thethings it must be so. Let the true and good destroy their opposites. Itis only by the good and beautiful that the evil and ugly are known. Itis the light that makes manifest. 

The poem "Christmas Eve, " by Robert Browning, with the accompanying poem"Easter Day, " seems not to have attracted much notice from the readersof poetry, although highly prized by a few. This is, perhaps, to beattributed, in a great measure, to what many would call a considerabledegree of obscurity. But obscurity is the appearance which to a firstglance may be presented either by profundity or carelessness of thought. To some, obscurity itself is attractive, from the hope that worthinessis the cause of it. To apply a test similar to that by which Pascaltries the Koran and the Scriptures: what is the character of thoseportions, the meaning of which is plain? Are they wise or foolish? Ifthe former, the presumption is that the obscurity of other parts iscaused not by opacity, but profundity. But some will object, notwithstanding, that a writer ought to make himself plain to hisreaders; nay, that if he has a clear idea himself, he must be able toexpress that idea clearly. But for communion of thought, two minds, notone, are necessary. The fault may lie in him that receives or in himthat gives, or it may be in neither. For how can the result of muchthought, the idea which for mouths has been shaping itself in the mindof one man, be at once received by another mind to which it comes astranger and unexpected? The reader has no right to complain of socaused obscurity. Nor is that form of expression, which is most easilyunderstood at first sight, necessarily the best. It will not, therefore, continue to move; nor will it gather force and influence with moreintimate acquaintance. Here Goethe's little parable, as he calls it, ispeculiarly applicable. But, indeed, if after all a writer is obscure, the man who has spent most labour in seeking to enter into his thoughts, will be the least likely to complain of his obscurity; and they who havethe least difficulty in understanding a writer, are frequently those whounderstand him the least. 

To those to whom the religion of Christ has been the law of liberty; whoby that door have entered into the universe of God, and have begun tofeel a growing delight in all the manifestations of God, it is cause ofmuch joy to find that, whatever may be the position taken by men ofscience, or by those in whom the intellect predominates, with regard tothe Christian religion, men of genius, at least, in virtue of what ischild-like in their nature, are, in the present time, plainlymanifesting deep devotion to Christ. There are exceptions, certainly;but even in those, there are symptoms of feelings which, one can hardlyhelp thinking, tend towards him, and will one day flame forth inconscious worship. A mind that recognizes any of the multitudinousmeanings of the revelation of God, in the world of sounds, and forms, and colours, cannot be blind to the higher manifestation of God incommon humanity; nor to him in whom is hid the key to the whole, theFirst-born of the creation of God, in whose heart lies, as yet butpartially developed, the kingdom of heaven, which is the redemption ofthe earth. The mind that delights in that which is lofty and great, which feels there is something higher than self, will undoubtedly bedrawn towards Christ; and they, who at first looked on him as a greatprophet, came at length to perceive that he was the radiation of theFather's glory, the likeness of his unseen being. 

A description of the poem may, perhaps, both induce to the reading ofit, and contribute to its easier comprehension while being perused. On astormy Christmas Eve, the poet, or rather the seer (for the whole mustbe regarded as a poetic vision), is compelled to take refuge in the"lath and plaster entry" of a little chapel, belonging to a congregationof Calvinistic Methodists, who are at the time assembling for worship. Wonderful in its reality is the description of various of the flock thatpass him as they enter the chapel, from

 "the many-tattered Little old-faced, peaking sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother Somehow up, with its spotted face, From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place:"

to the "shoemaker's lad;" whom he follows, determined not to endure theinquisition of their looks any longer, into the chapel. The humour ofthe whole scene within is excellent. The stifling closeness, both of theatmosphere and of the sermon, the wonderful content of the audience, the"old fat woman, " who

 "purred with pleasure, And thumb round thumb went twirling faster, While she, to his periods keeping measure, Maternally devoured the pastor;"

are represented by a few rapid touches that bring certain points of thereality almost unpleasantly near. At length, unable to endure it longer, he rushes out into the air. Objection may, probably, be made to themingling of the humorous, even the ridiculous, with the serious; atleast, in a work of art like this, where they must be brought into suchclose proximity. But are not these things as closely connected in theworld as they can be in any representation of it? Surely there are fewwho have never had occasion to attempt to reconcile the thought of thetwo in their own minds. Nor can there be anything human that is not, insome connexion or other, admissible into art. The widest idea of artmust comprehend all things. A work of this kind must, like God's world, in which he sends rain on the just and on the unjust, be taken as awhole and in regard to its design. The requisition is, that everythingintroduced have a relation to the adjacent parts and to the wholesuitable to the design. Here the thing is real, is true, is human; athing to be thought about. It has its place amongst other phenomena, with which, however apparently incongruous, it is yet vitally connectedwithin. 

A coolness and delight visit us, on turning over the page and commencingto read the description of sky, and moon, and clouds, which greet himoutside the chapel. It is as a vision of the vision-bearing worlditself, in one of its fine, though not, at first, one of its rarestmoods. And here a short digression to notice like feelings in unlikedresses, one thought differently expressed will, perhaps, be pardoned. The moon is prevented from shining out by the "blocks" of cloud "builtup in the west:"--

 "And the empty other half of the sky Seemed in its silence as if it knew What, any moment, might look through A chance-gap in that fortress massy. "

Old Henry Vaughan says of the "Dawning:"--

 "The whole Creation shakes off night, And for thy shadow looks the Light; Stars now vanish without number, Sleepie Planets set and slumber, The pursie Clouds disband and scatter, _All expect some sudden matter_. "

Calmness settles down on his mind. He walks on, thinking of the scene hehad left, and the sermon he had heard. In the latter he sees the goodand the bad intimately mingled; and is convinced that the chief benefitderived from it is a reproducing of former impressions. The thoughtcrosses him, in how many places and how many different forms the samething takes place, "a convincing" of the "convinced;" and he rejoices inthe contrast which his church presents to these; for in the church ofNature his love to God, assurance of God's love to him, and confidencein the design of God regarding him, commenced. While exulting in God andthe knowledge of Him to be attained hereafter, he is favoured with asight of a glorious moon-rainbow, which elevates his worship to ecstasy. During which--

 "All at once I looked up with terror-- He was there. He himself with His human air, On the narrow pathway, just before: I saw the back of Him, no more-- He had left the chapel, then, as I. I forgot all about the sky. No face: only the sight Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, With a hem that I could recognize. I felt terror, no surprise: My mind filled with the cataract, At one bound, of the mighty fact. I remembered, He did say Doubtless, that, to this world's end, Where two or three should meet and pray, He would be in the midst, their friend: Certainly He was there with them. And my pulses leaped for joy Of the golden thought without alloy, That I saw His very vesture's hem. Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear, With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear. "

Praying for forgiveness wherein he has sinned, and prostrate inadoration before the form of Christ, he is "caught up in the whirl anddrift" of his vesture, and carried along with him over the earth. 

Stopping at length at the entrance of St. Peter's in Rome, he remainsoutside, while the form disappears within. He is able, however, to seeall that goes on, in the crowded, hushed interior. It is high mass. Hehas been carried at once from the little chapel to the oppositeaesthetic pole. From the entry, where--

 "The flame of the single tallow candle In the cracked square lanthorn I stood under Shot its blue lip at me, "

to-- "This miraculous dome of God-- This colonnade With arms wide open to embrace The entry of the human race To the breast of. .. . What is it, yon building, Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding, With marble for brick, and stones of price For garniture of the edifice?"

to "those fountains"--

 "Growing up eternally Each to a musical water-tree, Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon, Before my eyes, in the light of the moon, To the granite lavers underneath;"

from the singing of the chapel to the organ self-restrained, that "holdshis breath and grovels latent, " while expecting the elevation of theHost. Christ is within; he is left without. Reflecting on the matter, hethinks his Lord would not require him to go in, though he himselfentered, because there was a way to reach him there. By-and-by, however, his heart awakes and declares that Love goes beyond error with them, andif the Intellect be kept down, yet Love is the oppressor; so next timehe resolves to enter and praise along with them. The passage commencing, "Oh, love of those first Christian days!" describing Love's victory overIntellect, is very fine. 

Again he is caught up and carried along as before. This time halt ismade at the door of a college in a German town, in which the class-roomof one of the professors is open for lecture this Christmas Eve. It is, intellectually considered, the opposite pole to both the Methodistchapel and the Roman Basilica. The poet enters, fearful of losing thesociety of "any that call themselves his friends. " He describes theassembled company, and the entrance of "the hawk-nosed, high-cheek-bonedprofessor, " of part of whose Christmas Eve's discourse he proceeds togive the substance. The professor takes it for granted that "plainly nosuch life was liveable, " and goes on to inquire what explanation of thephenomena of the life of Christ it were best to adopt. Not that itmattered much, "so the idea be left the same. " Taking the popular story, for convenience sake, and separating all extraneous matter from it, hefound that Christ was simply a good man, with an honest, true heart;whose disciples thought him divine; and whose doctrine, though quitemistaken by those who received and published it, "had yet a meaningquite as respectable. " Here the poet takes advantage of a pause to leavehim; reflecting that though the air may be poisoned by the sects, yethere "the critic leaves no air to poison. " His meditations and argumentsfollowing, are among the most valuable passages in the book. Theprofessor, notwithstanding the idea of Christ has by him been exhaustedof all that is peculiar to it, yet recommends him to the veneration andworship of his hearers, "rather than all who went before him, and allwho ever followed after. " But why? says the poet. For his intellect, "Which tells me simply what was told (If mere morality, bereft Of the God in Christ, be all that's left) Elsewhere by voices manifold?"

with which must be combined the fact that this intellect of his did notsave him from making the "important stumble, " of saying that he and Godwere one. "But his followers misunderstood him, " says the objector. Perhaps so; but "the stumbling-block, his speech, who laid it?" Wellthen, is it on the score of his goodness that he should rule his race?

 "You pledge Your fealty to such rule? What, all-- From Heavenly John and Attic Paul, And that brave weather-battered Peter, Whose stout faith only stood completer For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, As the more his hands hauled nets, they hardened-- All, down to you, the man of men, Professing here at Göttingen, Compose Christ's flock! So, you and I Are sheep of a good man! And why?"

Did Christ _invent_ goodness? or did he only demonstrate that of whichthe common conscience was judge?

 "I would decree Worship for such mere demonstration And simple work of nomenclature, Only the day I praised, not Nature, But Harvey, for the circulation. "

The worst man, says the poet, _knows_ more than the best man _does_. Godin Christ appeared to men to help them to _do_, to awaken the lifewithin them. 

 "Morality to the uttermost, Supreme in Christ as we all confess, Why need _we_ prove would avail no jot To make Him God, if God he were not? What is the point where Himself lays stress? Does the precept run, 'Believe in good, In justice, truth, now understood For the first time?'--or, 'Believe in ME, Who lived and died, yet essentially Am Lord of life'? Whoever can take The same to his heart, and for mere love's sake Conceive of the love, --that man obtains A new truth; no conviction gains Of an old one only, made intense By a fresh appeal to his faded sense. "

In this lies the most direct practical argument with regard to what iscommonly called the Divinity of Christ. Here is a man whom those thatmagnify him the least confess to be a good man, the best of men. He_says_, "I and the Father are one. " Will an earnest heart, knowing this, be likely to draw back, or will it draw nearer to behold the greatsight? Will not such a heart feel: "A good man like this would not havesaid so, were it not so. In all probability the great truth of God liesbehind this veil. " The reality of Christ's nature is not to be proved byargument. He must be beheld. The manifestation of Him must "gravitateinwards" on the soul. It is by looking that one can know. As amathematical theorem is to be proved only by the demonstration of thattheorem itself, not by talking _about_ it; so Christ must prove himselfto the human soul through being beheld. The only proof of Christ'sdivinity is his humanity. Because his humanity is not comprehended, hisdivinity is doubted; and while the former is uncomprehended, an assentto the latter is of little avail. For a man to theorize theologically inany form, while he has not so apprehended Christ, or to neglect thegazing on him for the attempt to substantiate to himself any form ofbelief respecting him, is to bring on himself, in a matter of divineimport, such errors as the expounders of nature in old time brought onthemselves, when they speculated on what a thing must be, instead ofobserving what it was; this _must be_ having for its foundation notself-evident truth, but notions whose chief strength lay in theirpreconception. There are thoughts and feelings that cannot be called upin the mind by any power of will or force of imagination; which, beingspiritual, must arise in the soul when in its highest spiritualcondition; when the mind, indeed, like a smooth lake, reflects onlyheavenly images. A steadfast regarding of Him will produce this calm, and His will be the heavenly form reflected from the mental depth. 

But to return to the poem. The fact that Christ remains inside, leadsthe poet to reflect, in the spirit of Him who found all the good in menhe could, neglecting no point of contact which presented itself, whetherthere was anything at this lecture with which he could sympathize; andhe finds that the heart of the professor does something to rescue himfrom the error of his brain. In his brain, even, "if Love's dead there, it has left a ghost. " For when the natural deduction from his argumentwould be that our faith

 "Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole, -- He bids us, when we least expect it, Take back our faith--if it be not just whole, Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it, Which fact pays the damage done rewardingly, So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!"

Love as well as learning being necessary to the understanding of the NewTestament, it is to the poet matter of regret that "loveless learning"should leave its proper work, and make such havoc in that which belongsnot to it. But while he sits "talking with his mind, " his mood begins todegenerate from sympathy with that which is good to indifference towardsall forms, and he feels inclined to rest quietly in the enjoyment of hisown religious confidence, and trouble himself in no wise about the faithof his neighbours; for doubtless all are partakers of the central light, though variously refracted by the varied translucency of the mentalprism. .. . 

 "'Twas the horrible storm began afresh! The black night caught me in his mesh, Whirled me up, and flung me prone! I was left on the college-step alone. I looked, and far there, ever fleeting Far, far away, the receding gesture, And looming of the lessening vesture, Swept forward from my stupid hand, While I watched my foolish heart expand In the lazy glow of benevolence O'er the various modes of man's belief. I sprang up with fear's vehemence. --Needs must there be one way, our chief Best way of worship: let me strive To find it, and when found, contrive My fellows also take their share. This constitutes my earthly care: God's is above it and distinct!"

The symbolism in the former part of this extract is grand. As soon as heceases to look practically on the phenomena with which he is surrounded, he is enveloped in storm and darkness, and sees only in the far distancethe disappearing skirt of his Lord's garment. God's care is over all, hegoes on to say; I must do _my part_. If I look speculatively on theworld, there is nothing but dimness and mystery. If I look practicallyon it, "No mere mote's-breadth, but teems immense With witnessings of Providence. "

And whether the world which I seek to help censures or praises me--thatis nothing to me. My life--how is it with me?

 "Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held By the hem of the vesture. .. . And I caught At the flying robe, and, unrepelled, Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught With warmth and wonder and delight, God's mercy being infinite. And scarce had the words escaped my tongue, When, at a passionate bound, I sprung Out of the wandering world of rain, Into the little chapel again. "

Had he dreamed? how then could he report of the sermon and the preacher?of which and of whom he proceeds to give a very external account. Butcorrecting himself--

 "Ha! Is God mocked, as He asks? Shall I take on me to change his tasks, And dare, despatched to a river-head For a simple draught of the element, Neglect the thing for which He sent, And return with another thing instead! Saying . .. . 'Because the water found Welling up from underground, Is mingled with the taints of earth, While Thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, And couldest, at a word, convulse The world with the leap of its river-pulse, -- Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy, And bring thee a chalice I found, instead. See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy! One would suppose that the marble bled. What matters the water? A hope I have nursed, That the waterless cup will quench my thirst. ' --Better have knelt at the poorest stream That trickles in pain from the straitest rift! For the less or the more is all God's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite seam. And here, is there water or not, to drink?"

He comes to the conclusion, that the best for him is that mode ofworship which partakes the least of human forms, and brings him nearestto the spiritual; and, while expressing good wishes for the Pope and theprofessor--

 "Meantime, in the still recurring fear Lest myself, at unawares, be found, While attacking the choice of my neighbours round, Without my own made--I choose here!"

He therefore joins heartily in the hymn which is sung by thecongregation of the little chapel at the close of their worship. Andthis concludes the poem. 

What is the central point from which this poem can be regarded? It doesnot seem to be very hard to find. Novalis has said: "Die Philosophie isteigentlich Heimweh, ein Trieb überall zu Hause zu sein. " (Philosophy isreally home-sickness, an impulse to be at home everywhere. ) The life ofa man here, if life it be, and not the vain image of what might be alife, is a continual attempt to find his place, his centre ofrecipiency, and active agency. He wants to know where he is, and wherehe ought to be and can be; for, rightly considered, the position a manought to occupy is the only one he truly _can_ occupy. It is a climbingand striving to reach that point of vision where the multiplex crossingsand apparent intertwistings of the lines of fact and feeling and dutyshall manifest themselves as a regular and symmetrical design. Acontradiction, or a thing unrelated, is foreign and painful to him, evenas the rocky particle in the gelatinous substance of the oyster; and, like the latter, he can only rid himself of it by encasing it in thepearl-like enclosure of faith; believing that hidden there lies thenecessity for a higher theory of the universe than has yet beengenerated in his soul. The quest for this home-centre, in the man whohas faith, is calm and ceaseless; in the man whose faith is weak, it isstormy and intermittent. Unhappy is that man, of necessity, whoseperceptions are keener than his faith is strong. Everywhere Natureherself is putting strange questions to him; the human world is full ofdismay and confusion; his own conscience is bewildered by contradictoryappearances; all which may well happen to the man whose eye is not yetsingle, whose heart is not yet pure. He is not at home; his soul isastray amid people of a strange speech and a stammering tongue. But thefaithful man is led onward; in the stillness that his confidenceproduces arise the bright images of truth; and visions of God, which areonly beheld in solitary places, are granted to his soul. 

 "O struggling with the darkness all the night, And visited all night by troops of stars!"

What is true of the whole, is true of its parts. In all the relations oflife, in all the parts of the great whole of existence, the true man isever seeking his home. This poem seems to show us such a quest. "Here Iam in the midst of many who belong to the same family. They differ ineducation, in habits, in forms of thought; but they are called by thesame name. What position with regard to them am I to assume? I am aChristian; how am I to live in relation to Christians?" Such seems to besomething like the poet's thought. What central position can he gain, which, while it answers best the necessities of his own soul with regardto God, will enable him to feel himself connected with the wholeChristian world, and to sympathize with all; so that he may not bealone, but one of the whole. Certainly the position necessary for bothrequirements is one and the same. He that is isolated from his brethren, loses one of the greatest helps to draw near to God. Now, in this time, which is so peculiarly transitional, this is a question of no littleimport for all who, while they gladly forsake old, or rather _modern_, theories, for what is to them a more full development of Christianity aswell as a return to the fountain-head, yet seek to be saved from thedanger of losing sympathy with those who are content with what they arecompelled to abandon. Seeing much in the common modes of thought andbelief that is inconsistent with Christianity, and even opposed to it, they yet cannot but see likewise in many of them a power of spiritualgood; which, though not dependent on the peculiar mode, is yetenveloped, if not embodied, in that mode. 

 "Ask, else, these ruins of humanity, This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, This soul at struggle with insanity, Who thence take comfort, can I doubt, Which an empire gained, were a loss without. "

The love of God is the soul of Christianity. Christ is the body of thattruth. The love of God is the creating and redeeming, the forming andsatisfying power of the universe. The love of God is that which killsevil and glorifies goodness. It is the safety of the great whole. It isthe home-atmosphere of all life. Well does the poet of the "ChristmasEve" say:--

 "The loving worm within its clod, Were diviner than a loveless God Amid his worlds, I will dare to say. "

Surely then, inasmuch as man is made in the image of God nothing lessthan a love in the image of God's love, all-embracing, quietly excusing, heartily commending, can constitute the blessedness of man; a love notinsensible to that which is foreign to it, but overcoming it with good. Where man loves in his kind, even as God loves in His kind, then man issaved, then he has reached the unseen and eternal. But if, besides thenecessity to love that lies in a man, there be likewise in the man whomhe ought to love something in common with him, then the law of love hasincreased force. If that point of sympathy lies at the centre of thebeing of each, and if these centres are brought into contact, then thecircles of their being will be, if not coincident, yet concentric. Wemust wait patiently for the completion of God's great harmony, andmeantime love everywhere and as we can. 

But the great lesson which this poem teaches, and which is taught moredirectly in the "Easter Day" (forming part of the same volume), is thatthe business of a man's life is to be a Christian. A man has to do withGod first; in Him only can he find the unity and harmony he seeks. To beone with Him is to be at the centre of things. If one acknowledges thatGod has revealed himself in Christ; that God has recognized man as hisfamily, by appearing among them in their form; surely that veryacknowledgment carries with it the admission that man's chief concern iswith this revelation. What does God say and mean, teach and manifest, herein? If this world is God's making, and he is present in all nature;if he rules all things and is present in all history; if the soul of manis in his image, with all its circles of thought and multiplicity offorms; and if for man it be not enough to be rooted in God, but he mustlikewise lay hold on God; then surely no question, in whateverdirection, can be truly answered, save by him who stands at the side ofChrist. The doings of God cannot be understood, save by him who has themind of Christ, which is the mind of God. All things must be strange toone who sympathizes not with the thought of the Maker, who understandsnot the design of the Artist. Where is he to begin? What light has he bywhich to classify? How will he bring order out of this apparentconfusion, when the order is higher than his thought; when the confusionto him is _caused_ by the order's being greater than he can comprehend?Because he stands outside and not within, he sees an entangled maze offorces, where there is in truth an intertwining dance of harmony. Thereis for no one any solution of the world's mystery, or of any part of itsmystery, except he be able to say with our poet:--

 "I have looked to Thee from the beginning, Straight up to Thee through all the world, Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled To nothingness on either side: And since the time Thou wast descried, Spite of the weak heart, so have I Lived ever, and so fain would die, Living and dying, Thee before!"

Christianity is not the ornament, or even complement, of life; it is itsnecessity; it is life itself glorified into God's ideal. 

Dr. Chalmers, from considering the minuteness of the directions given toMoses for the making of the tabernacle, was led to think that he himselfwas wrong in attending too little to the "_petite morale_" of dress. Will this be excuse enough for occupying a few sentences with therhyming of this poem? Certainly the rhymes of a poem form no small partof its artistic existence. Probably there is a deeper meaning in thispart of the poetic art than has yet been made clear to poet's mind. Inthis poem the rhymes have their share in its humorous charm. Thewriter's power of using double and triple rhymes is remarkable, and theeffect is often pleasing, even where they are used in the more solemnparts of the poem. Take the lines:--

 "No! love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it. "

A poem is a thing not for the understanding or heart only, but likewisefor the ear; or, rather, for the understanding and heart through theear. The best poem is best set forth when best read. If, then, there berhymes which, when read aloud, do, by their composition of words, prevent the understanding from laying hold on the separate words, whilethe ear lays hold on the rhymes, the perfection of the art must here belost sight of, notwithstanding the completeness which the rhymingmanifests on close examination. For instance, in "_equipt yours, ""Scriptures;" "Manchester, " "haunches stir_;" or "_affirm any, ""Germany_;" where two words rhyme with one word. But there are very fewof them that are objectionable on account of this difficulty andnecessity of rapid analysis. 

One of the most wonderful things in the poem is, that so much ofargument is expressed in a species of verse, which one might beinclined, at first sight, to think the least fitted for embodying it. But, in fact, the same amount of argument in any other kind of versewould, in all likelihood, have been intolerably dull as a work of art. Here the verse is full of life and vigour, flagging never. Where, inseveral parts, the exact meaning is difficult to reach, this resultschiefly from the dramatic rapidity and condensation of the thoughts. Theargumentative power is indeed wonderful; the arguments themselvespowerful in their simplicity, and embodied in words of admirable force. The poem is full of pathos and humour; full of beauty and grandeur, earnestness and truth. 

ESSAYS ON SOME OF THE FORMS OF LITERATURE [Footnote: "Essays on some ofthe Forms of Literature. " By T. T. Lynch, Author of "Theophilus Trinal. "Longmans. ]

Schoppe, the satiric chorus of Jean Paul's romance of Titan, makes hisappearance at a certain masked ball, carrying in front of him a glasscase, in which the ball is remasked, repeated, and again reflected in amirror behind, by a set of puppets, ludicrously aping the apery of thecourtiers, whose whole life and outward manifestation was but abody-mask mechanically moved with the semblance of real life and action. The court simulates reality. The masks are a multiform mockery at theirown unreality, and as such are regarded by Schoppe, who takes them offwith the utmost ridicule in his masked puppet-show, which, with itsreflection in the mirror, is again indefinitely multiplied in themany-sided reflector of Schoppe's, or of Richter's, or of the reader'sown imagination. The successive retreating and beholding in this sceneis suggested to the reviewer by the fact that the last of these essaysby Mr. Lynch is devoted in part to reviews. So that the reviews reviewbooks, --Mr. Lynch reviews the reviews, and the present Reviewer findshimself (somewhat presumptuously, it may be) attempting to review Mr. Lynch. In this, however, his office must be very different from that ofSchoppe (for there is a deeper and more real correspondence between theposition of the showman and the reviewer than that outward resemblancewhich first caused the one to suggest the other). The latter's office, in the present instance, was, by mockery, to destroy the false, the veryinvolution of the satire adding to the strength of the ridicule. Hisglass case was simply a review uttered by shapes and wires instead ofwords and handwriting. And the work of the true critic must sometimes beto condemn, and, as far as his strength can reach, utterly to destroythe false, --scorching and withering its seeming beauty, till it isreduced to its essence and original groundwork of dust and ashes. It isonly, however, when it wears the form of beauty which is the garment oftruth, and so, like the Erl-maidens, has power to bewitch, that it isworth the notice and attack of the critic. Many forms of error, perhapsmost, are better left alone to die of their own weakness, for thegalvanic battery of criticism only helps to perpetuate their ghastlylife. The highest work of the critic, however, must surely be to directattention to the true, in whatever form it may have found utterance. Buton this let us hear Mr. Lynch himself in the last of these four lectureswhich were delivered by him at the Royal Institution, Manchester, andare now before us in the form of a book:--

"The kritikos, the discerner, if he is ever saying to us, This is notgold; and never, This is; is either very humbly useful, or veryperverse, or very unfortunate. This is not gold, he says. Thank you, wereply, we perceived as much. And this is not, he adds. True, we answer, but we see gold grains glittering out of its rude, dark mass. Well, atleast, this is not, he proceeds. Perverse man! we retort, are youseeking what is not gold? We are inquiring for what is, and unfortunateindeed are we if, born into a world of Nature, and of Spirit once sorich, we are born but to find that it has spent or has lost all itswealth. Unhappy man would he be, who, walking his garden, should scentonly the earthy savour of leaves dead or dying, never perceiving, andthat afar off, the heavenly odour of roses fresh to-day from the Maker'shands. The discerning by spiritual aroma may lead to discernment by theeye, and to that careful scrutiny, and thence greater knowledge, ofwhich the eye is instrument and minister. "

And again:--

"The critic criticized, if dealt with in the worst fashion of his ownclass, must be pronounced a mere monster, 'seeking whom he may devour;'and, therefore, to be hunted and slain as speedily as possible, andstuffed for the museum, where he may be regarded with due horror, but insafety. But if dealt with after the best fashion of his class, a veryhonourable and beneficent office is assigned him, and he is warnedonly--though zealously--against its perversions. A judicial chair in thekingdom of human thought, filled by a man of true integrity, comprehensiveness, and delicacy of spirit, is a seat of terror andpraise, whose powers are at once most fostering to whatever is good, most repressive of whatever is evil. .. . The critic, in his office ofcensurer, has need so much to controvert, expose, and punish, because ofthe abundance of literary faults; and as there is a right and a wrongside in warfare, so there will be in criticism. And as when soldiers arenumerous, there will be not a few who are only tolerable, if even that, so of critics. But then the critic is more than the censurer; and in hishigher and happier aspect appears before us and serves us, as thediscoverer, the vindicator, and the eulogist of excellence. "

But resisting the temptation to quote further from Mr. Lynch's book onthis matter of Criticism, which seemed the natural point of contact bywhich the Reviewer could lay hold on the book, he would pass on with theremark that his duty in the present instance is of the nobler and bettersort--nobler and better, that is, with regard to the object, for duty inthe man remains ever the same--namely, the exposition of excellence, andnot of its opposite. Mr. Lynch is a man of true insight and large heart, who has already done good in the world, and will do more; although, possibly, he belongs rather to the last class of writers described byhimself, in the extract I am about to give from this same essay, than toany of the preceding:--

"Some of the best books are written avowedly, or with evidentconsciousness of the fact, for the select public that is constituted byminds of the deeper class, or minds the more advanced of their time. Such books may have but a restricted circulation and limited esteem intheir own day, and may afterwards extend both their fame and the circleof their readers. Others of the best books, written with a pathos and apower that may be universally felt, appeal at once to the commonhumanity of the world, and get a response marvellously strong andimmediate. An ordinary human eye and heart, whose glances are true, whose pulses healthy, will fit us to say of much that we read--This isgood, that is poor. But only the educated eye and the experienced heartwill fit us to judge of what relates to matters veiled from ordinaryobservation, and belonging to the profounder region of human thought andemotion. Powers, however, that the few only possess, may be required topaint what everybody can see, so that everybody shall say, Howbeautiful! how like! And powers adequate to do this in the finest mannerwill be often adequate to do much more--may produce, indeed, books orpictures, whose singular merit only the few shall perceive, and the manyfor awhile deny, and books or pictures which, while they give animmediate and pure pleasure to the common eye, shall give a far fullerand finer pleasure to that eye that is the organ of a deeper and morecultivated soul. There are, too, men of _peculiar_ powers, rare andfine, who can never hope to please the large public, at least of theirown age, but whose writings are a heart's ease and heart's joy to theselect few, and serve such as a cup of heavenly comfort for the earth'sjourney, and a lamp of heavenly light for the shadows of the way. "

One other extract from the general remarks on Books in this essay, andwe will turn to another:--

"In all our estimation of the various qualities of books, if it be truethat our reading assists our life, it is true also that our life assistsour reading. If we let our spirit talk to us in undistracted moments--ifwe commune with friendly, serious Nature, face to face, often--if wepursue honourable aims in a steady progress--if we learn how a man'sbest work falls below his thought, yet how still his failure prompts atenderer love of his thought--if we live in sincere, frank relationswith some few friends, joying in their joy, hearing the tale and sharingthe pain of their grief, and in frequent interchange of honest, household sensibility--if we look about us on character, markingdistinctly what we can see, and feeling the prompting of a hundredquestions concerning what is out of our ken:--if we live thus, we shallbe good readers and critics of books, and improving ones. "

The second and third of these essays are on Biography and Fictionrespectively and principally; treating, however, of collateral subjectsas well. Deep is the relation between the life shadowed forth in abiography, and the life in a man's brain which he shadows forth in afiction--when that fiction is of the highest order, and written in love, is beheld even by the writer himself with reverence. Delightful, surely, it must be; yes, awful too, to read to-day the embodiment of a man'snoblest thought, to follow the hero of his creation through histemptations, contests, and victories, in a world which likewise is--

 "All made out of the carver's brain;"

and to-morrow to read the biography of this same writer. What of his ownideal has he realized? Where can the life-fountain be detected withinhim which found issue to the world's light and air, in this ideal self?Shall God's fiction, which is man's reality, fall short of man'sfiction? Shall a man be less than what he can conceive and utter? Surelyit will not, cannot end thus. If a man live at all in harmony with thegreat laws of being--if he will permit the working out of God's idea inhim, he must one day arrive at something greater than what now he canproject and behold. Yet, in biography, we do not so often find traces ofthose struggles depicted in the loftier fiction. One reason may be thatthe contest is often entirely within, and so a man may have won hisspiritual freedom without any outward token directly significant of thevictory; except, if he be an artist, such expression as it finds infiction, whether the fiction be in marble, or in sweet harmonies, or inink. Nor can we determine the true significance of any living act; forbeing ourselves within the compass of the life-mystery, we cannot holdit at arm's length from us and look at its lines of configuration. Norof a life can we in any measure determine the success by what we beholdof it. It is to us at best but a truncated spire, whose want ofcompletion may be the greater because of the breadth of its base, andits slow taper, indicating the lofty height to which it is intended toaspire. The idea of our own life is more than we can embrace. It is notours, but God's, and fades away into the infinite. Our comprehension isfinite; we ourselves infinite. We can only trust in God and do thetruth; then, and then only, is our life safe, and sure both ofcontinuance and development. 

But the reviewer perhaps too often merely steals his author's text andwrites upon it; or, like a man who lies in bed thinking about a dreamtill its folds enwrap him and he sinks into the midst of its visions, heforgets his position of beholding, and passes from observation intospontaneous utterance. What says our author about "biography, autobiography, and history?" This lecture has pleased the reviewer mostof the four. Reading it in a lonely place, under a tree, with widefields and slopes around, it produced on his mind the two effects whichperhaps Mr. Lynch would most wish it should produce--namely, first, alonging to lead a more true and noble life; and, secondly, a desire toread more biography. Nor can he but hope that it must produce the sameeffect on every earnest reader, on every one whose own biography wouldnot be altogether a blank in what regards the individual will andspiritual aim. 

"In meditative hours, when we blend despair of ourself with complaint ofthe world, the biography of a man successful in this great business ofliving is as the visit of an angel sent to strengthen us. Give thesoldier his sword, the farmer his plough, the carpenter his hammer andnails, the manufacturer his machines, the merchant his stores, and thescholar his books; these are but implements; the man is more than hiswork or tools. How far has he fulfilled the law of his being, andattained its desire? Is his life a whole; the days as threads and astouches; the life, the well-woven garment, the well-painted picture?Which of two sacrifices has he offered--the one so acceptable to thepowers of dark worlds, the other so acceptable to powers of brightones--that of soul to body, or that of body to soul? Has he slain whatwas holiest in him to obtain gifts from Fashion or Mammon? Or has he, indays so arduous, so assiduous, that they are like a noble army ofmartyrs, made burnt-offering of what was secondary, throwing into theflames the salt of true moral energy and the incense of cordialaffections? We want the work to show us by its parts, its mass, itsform, the qualities of the man, and to see that the man is perfectedthrough his work as well as the work finished by his effort. "

Perhaps the highest moral height which a man can reach, and at the sametime the most difficult of attainment, is the willingness to be_nothing_ relatively, so that he attain that positive excellence whichthe original conditions of his being render not merely possible, butimperative. It is nothing to a man to be greater or less thananother--to be esteemed or otherwise by the public or private world inwhich he moves. Does he, or does he not, behold, and love, and live, theunchangeable, the essential, the divine? This he can only do accordingas God hath made him. He can behold and understand God in the leastdegree, as well as in the greatest, only by the godlike within him; andhe that loves thus the good and great, has no room, no thought, nonecessity for comparison and difference. The truth satisfies him. Helives in its absoluteness. God makes the glow-worm as well as the star;the light in both is divine. If mine be an earth-star to gladden thewayside, I must cultivate humbly and rejoicingly its green earth-glow, and not seek to blanch it to the whiteness of the stars that lie in thefields of blue. For to deny God in my own being is to cease to beholdhim in any. God and man can meet only by the man's becoming that whichGod meant him to be. Then he enters into the house of life, which isgreater than the house of fame. It is better to be a child in a greenfield than a knight of many orders in a state ceremonial. 

"One biography may help conjecture or satisfy reason concerning thestory of a thousand unrecorded lives. And how few even of the deservingamong the multitude can deserve, as 'dear sons of memory, ' to be shrinedin the public heart. Few of us die unwept, but most of us unwritten. Weshall find a grave--less certainly a tombstone--and with much lesslikelihood a biographer. Those 'bright particular' stars that at eveninglook towards us from afar, yet still are individual in the distance, areat clearest times but about a thousand; but the milky lustre that runsthrough mid heaven is composed of a million million lights, which arenot the less separate because seen undistinguishably. Absorbed, notlost, in the multitude of the unrecorded, our private dear ones makepart in this mild, blissful shining of the 'general assembly, ' the greatcongregation of the skies. Thus the past is aglow with the unwritten, the nameless. The leaders, sons of fame, conspicuous in lustre, eminentin place; these are the few, whose great individuality burns withdistinct, starry light through the dark of ages. Such stars, without thestarry way, would not teach us the vastness of heaven; and the 'way, 'without these, were not sufficient to gladden and glorify the night withpomp of Hierarchical Ascents of Domination. "

There are many passages in this essay with which the reviewer would beglad to enrich his notice of the book, but limitation of space, andperhaps justice to the essay itself, which ought to be read in its owncompleteness, forbid. Mr. Lynch looks to the heart of the matter, andmakes one put the question--"Would not a biography written by Mr. Lynchhimself be a valuable addition to this kind of literature?" His wouldnot be an interesting account of outward events and relationships andprogress, nor even a succession of revelations of inward conditions, butwe should expect to find ourselves elevated by him to a point of viewfrom which the life of the man would assume an artistic individuality, as it were an isolation of existence; for the supposed author could notchoose for his regard any biography for which this would be impossible;or in which the reticulated nerves of purpose did not combine the whole, with more or less of success, into a true and remarkable unity. Onepassage more from this essay, --

"Biography, then, makes life known to us as more wealthy in character, and much more remarkable in its every-day stories, than we had deemedit. Another good it does us is this. It introduces us to some of ourmost agreeable and stimulative friendships. People may be morebeneficially intimate with one they never saw than even with a neighbouror brother. Many a solitary, puzzled, incommunicative person, has foundsociety provided, his riddle read, and his heart's secret, that longedand strove for utterance, outspoken for him in a biography. And both alove purer than any yet entertained may be originated, and a pure butungratified love already existing, find an object, by the visit of abiography. In actual life you see your friend to-day, and will see himagain to-morrow or next year; but in the dear book, you have your friendand all his experiences at once and ever. He is with you wholly, and maybe with you at any time. He lives for you, and has already died for you, to give finish to the meaning, fulness, and sanctity, to the comfort ofhis days. He is mysteriously above as well as before you, by this fact, that he has died. Thus your intimate is your superior, your solace, butyour support, too, and an example of the victory to which he calls you. His end, or her end, is our own in view, and the flagging spiritrevives. We see the goal, and gird our loins anew for the race. Or, speaking of things minor, there is fresh prospect of the game, there iscompanionship in the hunt, and spirit for the winning. Such biography, too, is a mirror in which we see ourselves; and we see that we may trimor adorn, or that the plain signs of our deficient health or ill-ruledtemper may set us to look for, and to use the means of improvement. Butsuch a mirror is as a water one; in which first you may see your face, and which then becomes for you a bath to wash away the stains you see, and to offer its pure, cool stream as a restorative and cosmetic foryour wrinkles and pallors. And what a pleasure there will be sometimesas we peruse a biography, in finding another who is so like ourself--saying the same things, feeling the same dreads, and shames, andflutterings; hampered and harassed much as poor self is. Then, theescapes of such a friend give us hope of deliverance for ourself; andhis better, or if not better, yet rewarded, patience, freshens our eyeand sinews, and puts a staff into our hand. And certain seals ofimpossibility that we had put on this stone, and on that, beneath whichour hopes lay buried, are by this biography, as by a visiting angel, effectually broken, and our hopes arise again. Our view of life becomesmore complete because we see the whole of his, or of hers. We view life, too, in a more composed, tender way. Wavering faith, in its chosendetermining principles, is confirmed. In quiet comparison of ourselveswith one of our own class, or one who has made the mark for which we arestriving, we are shamed to have done no better, and stirred to attemptformer things again, or fresh ones in a stronger and more patientspirit. "

It is, indeed, well with him who has found a friend whose spirit toucheshis own and illuminates it. 

 "I missed him when the sun began to bend; I found him not when I had lost his rim; With many tears I went in search of him, Climbing high mountains which did still ascend, And gave me echoes when I called my friend; Through cities vast and charnel-houses grim, And high cathedrals where the light was dim; Through books, and arts, and works without an end-- But found him not, the friend whom I had lost. And yet I found him, as I found the lark, A sound in fields I heard but could not mark; I found him nearest when I missed him most, I found him in my heart, a life in frost, A light I knew not till my soul was dark. "

Next to possessing a true, wise, and victorious friend seated by yourfireside, it is blessed to have the spirit of such a friendembodied--for spirit can assume any embodiment--on your bookshelves. Butin the latter case the friendship is all on one side. For fullfriendship your friend must love you, and know that you love him. Surelythese biographies are not merely spiritual links connecting us in thetruest manner with past times and vanished minds, and thus producingstrong half friendships. Are they not likewise links connecting us witha future, wherein these souls shall dawn upon ours, rising again fromthe death of the past into the life of our knowledge and love? Are notthese biographies letters of introduction, forwarded, but not yetfollowed by him whom they introduce, for whose step we listen, and whosevoice we long to hear; and whom we shall yet meet somewhere in theInfinite? Shall I not one day, "somewhere, somehow, " clasp the largehand of Novalis, and, gazing on his face, compare his features withthose of Saint John?

The essay on light literature must be left to the spontaneousappreciation of those who are already acquainted with this book, or whomay be induced, by the representations here made, to become acquaintedwith it. Before proceeding to notice the first essay in the littlevolume, namely, that on Poetry, its subject suggests the fact of thepublication of a second edition of the Memorials of Theophilus Trinal, by the same author, a portion of which consists of interspersed poems. These are of true poetic worth; and although in some cases wanting inrhythmic melody, yet in most of these cases they possess a wild andpeculiar rhythm of their own. The reviewer knows of some whose heartsthis book has made glad, and doubtless there are many such. 

The essay on Poetry is itself poetic throughout in its expression. Andhow else shall Poetry be described than by Poetry? What form shallembrace and define the highest? Must it not be self-descriptive asself-existent? For what man is to this planet, what the eye is to manhimself, Poetry is to Literature. Yet one can hardly help wishing thatthe poetic forms in this Essay were fewer and less minute, and the wholea little more scientific; though it is a question how far we have aright to ask for this. As you open it, however, the pages seemabsolutely to sparkle, as if strewn with diamond sparks. It is no dull, metallic, surface lustre, but a shining from within, as well as from thesuperficies. Still one cannot deny that fancy is too prominent in Mr. Lynch's writings. It is true that his Fancy is the fairy attendant onhis Imagination, which latter uses the former for her own higher ends;and that there is little or no _mere_ fancy to be found in his books;for if you look below the surface-form you find a truth. But it were tobe desired that the Truth clothed herself always in the living forms ofImagination, and thus walked forth amongst her worshippers, looking onthem from living eyes, rather than that she should show herself throughthe windows of fancy. Sometimes there may be an offence against taste, as in page 20; sometimes an image may be expanded too much, andsometimes the very exuberance of imaginative fancy (if the combinationbe correct) may lead to an association of images that suggestsincongruity. Still the essay is abundantly beautiful and true. Thepoetical quotations are not isolated, or exposed to view as specimens, but are worked into the web of the prose like the flowers in the damask, and do their part in the evolution of the continuous thought. 

"If poetry, as light from the heart of God, is for our heart, that wemay brighten and distinguish individual things; if it is to transfigurefor us the round, dusk world as by an inner radiance; if it is topresent human life and history as Rembrandt pictures, in which darknessserves and glorifies light; if, like light, formless in its essence, allthings shapen towards the perfection of their forms under its influence;if, entering as through crevices in single beams, it makes dimmestplaces cheerful and sacred with its golden touch: then must the heart ofthe Poet in which this true light shineth be as a hospice on themountain pathways of the world, and his verse must be the lamp seen fromfar that burns to tell us where bread and shelter, drink, fire, andcompanionship, may be found; and he himself should have themountaineer's hardiness and resolution. From the heart as source, to theheart in influence, Poetry comes. The inward, the upward, and theonward, whether we speak of an individual or a nation, may not beseparated in our consideration. Deep and sacred imaginative meditationsare needed for the true earthward as well as for the heavenward progressof men and peoples. And Poetry, whether old or new, streaming from theheart moved by the powerful spirit of love, has influence on the heartpublic and individual, and thence on the manners, laws, and institutionsof nations. If Poesy visit the length and breadth of a country afteryears unfruitfully dull, coming like a showery fertilizing wind afterdrought, the corners and the valley-hidings are visited too, and theseperhaps she now visits first, as these sometimes she has visited only. For miles and for miles, the public corn, the bread of the nation'slife, is bettered; and in our own endeared spot, the roses, delight ofour individual eye and sense, yield us more prosperingly their colourand their fragrance. For the universal sunshine which brightens athousand cities, beautifies ten thousand homesteads, and rejoices tentimes ten thousand hearts. And as rains in the mid season renew forawhile the faded greenness of spring; and trees in fervent summers, whentheir foliage has deepened or fully fixed its hue, bedeck themselvesthrough the fervency with bright midsummer shoots; so, by Poetry are theyouthful hues of the soul renewed, and truths that have long stoodfull-foliaged in our minds, are by its fine influences empowered to putforth fresh shoots. Thus age, which is a necessity for the body, may bewarded off as a disease from the soul, and we may be like the old man inChaucer, who had nothing hoary about him but his hairs--

 "'Though I be hoor I fare as doth a tree That blosmeth er the fruit ywoxen be, The blosmy tree n' is neither drie ne ded: I feel me nowhere hoor, but on my head. Min herte and all my limmes ben as grene As laurel through the yere is for to sene. '"

Hear our author again as to the calling of the poet:--

"To unite earthly love and celestial--'true to the kindred points ofheaven and home;' to reconcile time and eternity; to draw presage ofjoy's victory from the delight of the secret honey dropping from theclefts of rocky sorrow; _to harmonize our instinctive longings for thedefinite and the infinite, in the ideal Perfect_; to read creation as ahuman book of the heart, both plain and mystical, and divinely written:such is the office fulfilled by best-loved poets. Their ladder ofcelestial ascent must be fixed on its base, earth, if its top is tosecurely rest on heaven. "

Beautifully, too, does he describe the birth of Poetry; though one maydoubt its correctness, at least if attributed to the highest kind ofpoetry. 

"When words of felt truth were first spoken by the first pair, in loveof their garden, their God, and one another, and these words were withjoyful surprise felt to be in their form and glow answerable to thehappy thought uttered; then Poetry sprang. And when the first Father andfirst Mother, settling their soul upon its thought, found that thoughtbrighten; and when from it, as thus they mused, like branchlets from abranch, or flowerets from their bud, other thoughts came, rangingthemselves by the exerted, yet painlessly exerted, power of the soul, inan order felt to be beautiful, and of a sound pleasant in utterance toear and soul; being withal, through the sweetness of their impression onthe heart, fixed for memory's frequentest recurrence; then was theworld's first poem composed, and in the joyful flutter of a heart thathad thus become a maker, the maker of a 'thing of beauty, ' like inbeauty even unto God's heaven, and trees, and flowers, the secret ofPoesy shone tremulously forth. "

Whether this be so or not, the highest poetic feeling of which we arenow conscious springs not from the beholding of perfected beauty, butfrom the mute sympathy which the creation with all its childrenmanifests with us in the groaning and travailing which looketh for thesonship. Because of our need and aspiration, the snowdrop gives birth inour hearts to a loftier spiritual and poetic feeling, than the rose mostcomplete in form, colour, and odour. The rose is of Paradise--thesnowdrop is of the striving, hoping, longing Earth. Perhaps our highestpoetry is the expression of our aspirations in the sympathetic forms ofvisible nature. Nor is this merely a longing for a restored Paradise;for even in the ordinary history of men, no man or woman that has fallencan be restored to the position formerly occupied. Such must rise to ayet higher place, whence they can behold their former standing farbeneath their feet. They must be restored by attaining something betterthan they ever possessed before, or not at all. If the law be aweariness, we must escape it by being filled with the spirit, for nototherwise can we fulfil the law than by being above the law. There isfor us no escape, save as the Poet counsels us:--

 "Is thy strait horizon dreary? Is thy foolish fancy chill? Change the feet that have grown weary, For the wings that never will. Burst the flesh and live the spirit; Haunt the beautiful and far; Thou hast all things to inherit, And a soul for every star. "

But the Reviewer must hasten to take leave, though unwillingly, of thispleasing, earnest, and profitable book. Perhaps it could be wished thatthe writer helped his readers a little more into the channel of histhought; made it easier for them to see the direction in which he isleading them; called out to them, "Come up hither, " before he said, "Iwill show you a thing. " But the Reviewer says this with deference; andtakes his leave with the hope that Mr. Lynch will be listened to for twogood reasons: first, that he speaks the truth; last, that he has alreadysuffered for the Truth's sake. 

THE HISTORY AND HEROES OF MEDICINE. [Footnote: By J. Rutherfurd Russell, M. D. ]

In this volume, Dr. Russell has not merely aimed at the production of abook that might be serviceable to the Faculty, by which the history ofits own art is not at all sufficiently studied, but has aspired to thefar more difficult success of writing a history of medicine which shallbe readable to all who care for true history--that history, namely, inwhich not merely growth and change are represented, but the secretsupplies and influences as well, which minister to the one and occasionthe other. If the difficulty has been greater (although with hisevidently wide sympathies and keen insight into humanity we doubt if ithas), the success is the more honourable; for a success it certainly is. The partially biographical plan on which he has constructed his work hasno doubt aided in the accomplishment of this purpose; for it is mucheasier to present the subject in its human relations, when its historyis given in connexion with the lives of those who were most immediatelyassociated with it. But it would be a great mistake to conclude fromthis, that it is the less a history of the art itself; for no art orscience has life in itself, apart from the minds which foresee, discover, and verify it. Whatever point in its progress it may havereached, it will there remain until a new man appears, whose newquestions shall illicit new replies from nature--replies which are theessential food of the science, by which it lives, grows, and makesitself a history. 

Nor must our readers suppose that because the book is readable, it istherefore slight, either in material or construction. Much reading andresearch have provided the material, while real thought and argumenthave superintended the construction. Nor is it by any means without theadornment that a poetic temperament and a keen sense of humour cansupply. 

Naturally, the central life in the book is that of Lord Bacon, the manwho brought out of his treasures things both new and old. Up to him thestory gradually leads from the prehistoric times of Aesculapius, thepathway first becoming plainly visible in the life and labours ofHippocrates. His fine intellect and powers of acute observation affordedthe material necessary for the making of a true physician. The Greekmind, partly, perhaps, from its artistic tendencies, seems to have beenpeculiarly impatient of incomplete forms, and therefore, to have muchpreferred the construction of a theory from the most shadowy material, to the patient experiment and investigation necessary for the procuringof the real substance; and Hippocrates, not knowing how to advance to atheory by rational experiment, and too honest to invent one, assumes thetraditional theories, founded on the vaguest and most obtrusivegeneralizations. Those which his experience taught him to reject, wereadopted and maintained by Galen and all who followed him for centuries, the chief instance of progress being only the substitution by theArabians of some of the milder medicines now in use, for the terribleand often fatal drugs employed by the Greek and Roman physicians. Thefanciful classification of diseases into four kinds--hot, cold, moistand dry, with the corresponding arbitrary classification of remedies tobe administered by contraries, continued to be the only recognizedtheory of medicine for many centuries after the Christian era. 

But Lord Bacon, amongst other branches of knowledge which he considersill-followed, makes especial mention of medicine, which he would submitto the same rules of observation and experiment laid down by him for theadvancement of learning in general. With regard to it, as with regard tothe discovery of all the higher laws of nature, he considers "that menhave made too untimely a departure, and too remote a recess fromparticulars. " Men have hurried to conclusions, and then argued from themas from facts. Therefore let us have no traditional theories, and makenone for ourselves but such as are revealed in the form of laws to thepatient investigator, who has "straightened and held fast Proteus, thathe might be compelled to change his shapes, " and so reveal his nature. Hence one of the aspects in which Lord Bacon was compelled to appear wasthat of a destroyer of what preceded. In this he resembled Cardan andParacelsus who went before him, and who like him pulled down, but couldnot, like him, build up. He resembled them, however, in the possessionof another element of character, namely, that poetic imagination whichlooks abroad into the regions of possibilities, and foresees or invents. But in the case of the charlatan, the vaguest suggestions of his mind inits favourite mood, is adopted as a theory all but proved, if not as adirect revelation to the favoured individual; while the true thinkerseeks but an hypothesis corresponding in some measure to facts alreadydiscovered, in order that he may have the suggestion of new experimentsand investigations in the course of his attempts to verify or disprovethe hypothesis. Lord Bacon considered hypothesis invaluable in thediscovery of truth, but he only used it as a board upon which to writehis questions to nature; or, to use another figure, hypothesis with himis as the next stepping-stone in the swollen river, which he supposes tobe here or there, and so feels for with his staff. But it must be provedbefore it be regarded as a law, and greatly corroborated before it beeven adopted as a theory. Cardan and Paracelsus were destroyers andmystics only; they destroyed on the earth that they might build in theair: Lord Bacon united both characters in the philosopher. He lookedabroad into the regions of the unknown, whence all knowledge comes; hecalled wonder the seed of knowledge; but he would build nowhere but onthe earth--on the firm land of ascertained truth. That which kept himright was his practical humanity. It was for the sake of delivering menfrom the ills of life, by discovering the laws of the elements amidstwhich that life must be led, that he laboured and thought. This objectkept him true, made him able to discover the very laws of discovery;brought him so far into _rapport_ with the heart of nature herself, that, like a physical prophet, his seeing could outspeed his knowing, and behold a law--dimly, it is true, but yet behold it--long before hisintellect, which had to build bridges and find straw to make the bricks, could dare to affirm its approach to the same conclusion. Truth tohumanity made him true to fact; and truth to fact made him true intheory. 

It was in this spirit of devotion to his kind that he said, "Thereforehere is the deficience which I find, that physicians have not . .. Setdown and delivered over certain experimental medicines for the cure ofparticular diseases. "

Dr. Russell's true insight into the relation of Lord Bacon to themedical as well as to all science, has suggested the above remarks. Whatour author chiefly desires is, that the same principles which mademedicine what it is, should be allowed to carry it yet further, and makeit what it ought to be, and must become. As he goes on to show, throughsucceeding lives and theories, that just in proportion as theseprinciples have been followed--the principles of careful observation, hypothesis, and experiment--have men made discoveries that have beenhelpful to their fellow-men; while, on the other hand, the mostelaborate theories of the most popular physicians, which have owed theirbirth to premature generalization and invention, have passed away, likethe crackling of thorns under a pot. Belonging to the latter class ofmen, we have Stahl, Hoffman, Boerhaave, Cullen, and Brown; while to theformer belong Harvey, Sydenham, Jenner, and Hahnemann. 

After the last name, there is no need to say that our author is ahomoeopath. Whatever may be our private opinion of the system, justicerequires that we should say at least that books such as these are quiteas open to refutation as to ridicule; for it is only a good argumentthat is worth refuting by a better. But we fear there are few books onthis subject that treat of it with the calmness and fairness which wouldincline an honest homoeopath to put them into the hands of one of theopposite party as an exposition of his opinions. There is no excitementin these pages. They are the work of a man of liberal education, ofrefinement, and of truthfulness, with power to understand, and facilityto express; one of whose main objects is to vindicate for homoeopathy, on the most rightful of all grounds--those on which alone science canstand--on the ground, that is, of laws discovered by observation andexperiment--the place not only of a fact in the history of medicine, butthe right to be considered as one of the greatest advances towards theestablishment of a science of curing. Certainly if he and the rest ofits advocates should fail utterly in this, the heresy will yet haveestablished for itself a memorial in history, as one of the mostpowerful illusions that have ever deceived both priests and people. Butthe chief advantage which the system will derive from Dr. Russell's bookwill spring, it seems to us, from his attempt--a successful one it mustbe confessed--to prove _that homoeopathy is a development, and not amere reaction_; that it has its roots far down in the history ofscience. The first mention of it in the book, however, is made for thepurpose of disavowing the claim, advanced by many homoeopathists, toHippocrates as one of their order. Not to mention the curious storyabout Galen and the patient ill from an overdose of theriacum, who wascured by another dose of the same substance, nor the ridicule of thedoctrine of contraries by Paracelsus and Van Helmont, nor the fact thatthe _contraries_ of Boerhaave, by his own explanation, merely signifywhatever substances prove their contrariety to the disease by curingit--to pass by these, we find one of the main objects of homoeopathy, the discovery of specifics, insisted upon by Lord Bacon in his wordsalready quoted. Not that homoeopaths, while they depend upon specifics, believe that there is any such thing as a specific for a disease--adisease being as various as the individuality of the human beings whomit may attack; but that an approximate specific may be found for everywell-defined stage in every individual disease; a disease having itsprocess of change, development, and decline, like a vegetable or animallife. Besides an equally strong desire for specifics, and a determinedopposition to compound medicines, Boyle, who was born the year ofBacon's death, and inherited the mantle of the great philosopher, manifests a strong belief in the power of the infinitesimal dose. Neither Bacon nor Boyle, however, were medical men by profession. ButSydenham followed them, according to Dr. Russell, in their tendencytowards specifics. It is almost needless to mention Jenner's victoryover the small-pox as, in the eyes of the homoeopaths, a grand step inthe development of their system. It gives Dr. Russell an opportunity ofshowing in a strong instance that the best discoveries for deliveringmankind from those ills even of which they are most sensible have beenreceived with derision, with more than bare unbelief. This is one of hisobjects in the book, and while it is no proof whatever of the truth ofhomoepathy, it shows at least that the opposition manifested to it is noproof of its falsehood. This is enough; for it seeks to be tried on itsown merits; and its foes are bound to accord it this when it isadvocated in such an honest and dignified manner as in the book beforeus. 

The need of man, in physics as well as in higher things, is the guide totruth. With evils of any sort we need no further acquaintance than maybe gained in the endeavour to combat them. The discovery of what willcure diseases seems the only natural mode of rising by generalization tothe discovery of the laws of cure and the nature of disease. 

Those portions of the volume which discuss the influence of Christianityon the healing art, likewise those relating to the different feelingswith which at different times in different countries physicians havebeen regarded, are especially interesting. 

The only portion of the book we should be inclined to find fault with, as to the quality of the thought expended upon it, is the dissertationin the second chapter on the [Greek: psuchae] and [Greek: pneuma]. Wedoubt likewise whether the author gives the Archaeus of Van Helmontquite fair play; but these are questions so purely theoretical that theyscarcely admit of discussion here. We rise from the perusal of thebook, whatever may be our feelings with regard to the truth or falsehoodof the system it advocates, with increased respect for the profession ofmedicine, with enlarged hope for its future, and with a strong feelingof the nobility conferred by the art upon every one of its practitionerswho is aware of the dignity of his calling. 

WORDSWORTH'S POETRY [Footnote: Delivered extempore at Manchester. ]

The history of the poetry of Wordsworth is a true reflex of the manhimself. The life of Wordsworth was not outwardly eventful, but hisinner life was full of conflict, discovery, and progress. His outwardlife seems to have been so ordered by Providence as to favour thedevelopment of the poetic life within. Educated in the country, andspending most of his life in the society of nature, he was not subjectedto those violent external changes which have been the lot of some poets. Perfectly fitted as he was to cope with the world, and to fight his wayto any desired position, he chose to retire from it, and in solitude towork out what appeared to him to be the true destiny of his life. 

The very element in which the mind of Wordsworth lived and moved was aChristian pantheism. Allow me to explain the word. The poets of the OldTestament speak of everything as being the work of God's hand:--We arethe "work of his hand;" "The world was made by him. " But in the NewTestament there is a higher form used to express the relation in whichwe stand to him--"We are his offspring;" not the work of his hand, butthe children that came forth from his heart. Our own poet Goldsmith, with the high instinct of genius, speaks of God as having "loved us intobeing. " Now I think this is not only true with regard to man, but truelikewise with regard to the world in which we live. This world is notmerely a thing which God hath made, subjecting it to laws; but it is anexpression of the thought, the feeling, the heart of God himself. And soit must be; because, if man be the child of God, would he not feel to beout of his element if he lived in a world which came, not from the heartof God, but only from his hand? This Christian pantheism, this beliefthat God is in everything, and showing himself in everything, has beenmuch brought to the light by the poets of the past generation, and hasits influence still, I hope, upon the poets of the present. We are notsatisfied that the world should be a proof and varying indication of theintellect of God. That was how Paley viewed it. He taught us to believethere is a God from the mechanism of the world. But, allowing all theargument to be quite correct, what does it prove? A mechanical God, andnothing more. 

Let us go further; and, looking at beauty, believe that God is the firstof artists; that he has put beauty into nature, knowing how it willaffect us, and intending that it should so affect us; that he hasembodied his own grand thoughts thus that we might see them and be glad. Then, let us go further still, and believe that whatever we feel in thehighest moments of truth shining through beauty, whatever comes to oursouls as a power of life, is meant to be seen and felt by us, and to beregarded not as the work of his hand, but as the flowing forth of hisheart, the flowing forth of his love of us, making us blessed in theunion of his heart and ours. 

Now, Wordsworth is the high priest of nature thus regarded. He saw Godpresent everywhere; not always immediately, in his own form, it is true;but whether he looked upon the awful mountain-peak, sky-encompassed withloveliness, or upon the face of a little child, which is as it were eyesin the face of nature--in all things he felt the solemn presence of theDivine Spirit. By Keats this presence was recognized only as the spiritof beauty; to Wordsworth, God, as the Spirit of Truth, was manifestedthrough the forms of the external world. 

I have said that the life of Wordsworth was so ordered as to bring thisout of him, in the forms of _his_ art, to the ears of men. In childhoodeven his conscience was partly developed through the influences ofnature upon him. He thus retrospectively describes this specialinfluence of nature:--

 One summer evening (led by her) I found A little boat, tied to a willow tree, Within a rocky cave, its usual home. Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in, Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth, And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice Of mountain echoes did my boat move on, Leaving behind her still, on either side, Small circles glittering idly in the moon, Until they melted all into one track Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rows Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point With an unswerving line, I fixed my view Upon the summit of a craggy ridge, The horizon's utmost boundary; far above Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky. She was an elfin pinnace; lustily I dipped my oars into the silent lake, And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat Went heaving through the water like a swan; When, from behind that craggy steep, till then The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge, As if with voluntary power instinct, Upreared its head. I struck and struck again, And, growing still in stature, the grim shape Towered up between me and the stars, and still For so it seemed, with purpose of its own, And measured motion like a living thing, Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned, And through the silent water stole my way Back to the covert of the willow tree; There in her mooring place I left my bark, And through the meadows homeward went, in grave And serious mood; but after I had seen That spectacle, for many days, my brain Worked with a dim and undetermined sense Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts There hung a darkness, call it solitude, Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes Remained, no pleasant images of trees, Of sea, or sky, no colours of green fields; But huge and mighty forms, that do not live Like living men, moved slowly through the mind By day, and were a trouble to my dreams. 

Here we see that a fresh impulse was given to his life even in boyhood, by the influence of nature. If we have had any similar experience, weshall be able to enter into this feeling of Wordsworth's; if not, thetale will be almost incredible. 

One passage more I would refer to, as showing what Wordsworth felt withregard to nature, in his youth; and the growth that took place in him inconsequence. Nature laid up in the storehouse of his mind and heart hermost beautiful and grand forms, whence they might be brought, afterwards, to be put to the highest human service. I quote only a fewlines from that poem, deservedly a favourite with all the lovers ofWordsworth, "Lines written above Tintern Abbey:"--

 I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye. --That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. 

In this little passage you see the growth of the influence of nature onthe mind of the poet. You observe, too, that nature passes into poetry;that form is sublimed into speech. You see the result of the conjunctionof the mind of man, and the mind of God manifested in His works; spiritcoming to know the speech of spirit. The outflowing of spirit in natureis received by the poet, and he utters again, in his form, what God hasalready uttered in His. Wordsworth wished to give to man what he foundin nature. It was to him a power of good, a world of teaching, astrength of life. He knew that nature was not his, and that hisenjoyment of nature was given to him that he might give it to man. Itwas the birthright of man. 

But what did Wordsworth find in nature? To begin with the lowest; hefound amusement in nature. Right amusement is a part of teaching; it isthe childish form of teaching, and if we can get this in nature, we getsomething that lies near the root of good. In proof that Wordsworthfound this, I refer to a poem which you probably know well, "The Daisy. "The poet sits playing with the flower, and listening to the suggestionsthat come to him of odd resemblances that this flower bears to otherthings. He likens the daisy to--

 A little cyclops, with one eye Staring to threaten and defy, That thought comes next--and instantly The freak is over, The shape will vanish--and behold A silver shield with boss of gold, That spreads itself, some faëry bold In fight to cover!

Look at the last stanza, too, and you will see how close amusement maylie to deep and earnest thought:--

 Bright _Flower_! for by that name at last When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast, Sweet silent creature! That breath'st with me in sun and air, Do thou, as thou art wont, repair My heart with gladness, and a share Of thy meek nature!

But Wordsworth found also joy in nature, which is a better thing thanamusement, and consequently easier to be found. We can often have joywhere we can have no amusement, --

 I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

 * * * * *

 The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What Health the show to me had brought. 

 "For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. "

This is the joy of the eye, as far as that can be separated from the joyof the whole nature; for his whole nature rejoiced in the joy of theeye; but it was simply joy; there was no further teaching, no attempt togo through this beauty and find the truth below it. We are not always tobe in that hungry, restless condition, even after truth itself. If wekeep our minds quiet and ready to receive truth, and _sometimes_ arehungry for it, that is enough. 

Going a step higher, you will find that he sometimes _draws_ a lessonfrom nature, seeming almost to force a meaning from her. I do not objectto this, if he does not make too much of it as _existing_ in nature. Itis rather finding a meaning in nature that he brought to it. The meaningexists, if not _there_. For illustration I refer to another poem. Observe that Wordsworth found the lesson because he looked for it, and_would_ find it. 

 This Lawn, a carpet all alive With shadows flung from leaves--to strive In dance, amid a press Of sunshine, an apt emblem yields Of Worldlings revelling in the fields Of strenuous idleness. 

 * * * * *

 Yet, spite of all this eager strife, This ceaseless play, the genuine life That serves the steadfast hours, Is in the grass beneath, that grows Unheeded, and the mute repose Of sweetly-breathing flowers. 

Whether he forced this lesson from nature, or not, it is a good lesson, teaching a great many things with regard to life and work. 

Again, nature sometimes flashes a lesson on his mind; _gives_ it tohim--and when nature gives, we cannot but receive. As in this sonnetcomposed during a storm, --

 One who was suffering tumult in his soul Yet failed to seek the sure relief of prayer, Went forth; his course surrendering to the care Of the fierce wind, while mid-day lightnings prowl Insiduously, untimely thunders growl; While trees, dim-seen, in frenzied numbers tear The lingering remnant of their yellow hair, And shivering wolves, surprised with darkness, howl As if the sun were not. He raised his eye Soul-smitten; for, that instant, did appear Large space (mid dreadful clouds) of purest sky, An azure disc--shield of Tranquillity; Invisible, unlooked-for, minister Of providential goodness ever nigh!

Observe that he was not looking for this; he had not thought of praying;he was in such distress that it had benumbed the out-goings of hisspirit towards the source whence alone sure comfort comes. He went outinto the storm; and the uproar in the outer world was in harmony withthe tumult within his soul. Suddenly a clear space in the sky makes himfeel--he has no time to think about it--that there is a shield oftranquillity spread over him. For was it not as it were an opening upinto that region where there are no storms; the regions of peace, because the regions of love, and truth, and purity, --the home of Godhimself?

There is yet a higher and more sustained influence exercised by nature, and that takes effect when she puts a man into that mood or condition inwhich thoughts come of themselves. That is perhaps the best thing thatcan be done for us, the best at least that nature can do. It iscertainly higher than mere intellectual teaching. That nature did thisfor Wordsworth is very clear; and it is easily intelligible. If theworld proceeded from the imagination of God, and man proceeded from thelove of God, it is easy to believe that that which proceeded from theimagination of God should rouse the best thoughts in the mind of a beingwho proceeded from the love of God. This I think is the relation betweenman and the world. As an instance of what I mean, I refer to one ofWordsworth's finest poems, which he classes under the head of "EveningVoluntaries. " It was composed upon an evening of extraordinary splendourand beauty:--

 "Had this effulgence disappeared With flying haste, I might have sent, Among the speechless clouds, a look Of blank astonishment; But 'tis endued with power to stay, And sanctify one closing day, That frail Mortality may see-- What is?--ah no, but what _can_, be! Time was when field and watery cove With modulated echoes rang, While choirs of fervent Angels sang Their vespers in the grove; Or, crowning, star-like, each some sovereign height, Warbled, for heaven above and earth below, Strains suitable to both. Such holy rite, Methinks, if audibly repeated now From hill or valley, could not move Sublimer transport, purer love, Than doth this silent spectacle--the gleam-- The shadow--and the peace supreme!

 "No sound is uttered, --but a deep And solemn harmony pervades The hollow vale from steep to steep, And penetrates the glades. 

 * * * * *

 "Wings at my shoulders seem to play; But, rooted here, I stand and gaze On those bright steps that heaven-ward raise Their practicable way. Come forth, ye drooping old men, look abroad, And see to what fair countries ye are bound!

 * * * * *

 "Dread Power! whom peace and calmness serve No less than Nature's threatening voice, From THEE, if I would swerve, Oh, let Thy grace remind me of the light Full early lost, and fruitlessly deplored; Which, at this moment, on my waking sight Appears to shine, by miracle restored; My soul, though yet confined to earth, Rejoices in a second birth!"

Picture the scene for yourselves; and observe how it moves in him thesense of responsibility, and the prayer, that if he has in any matterwandered from the right road, if he has forgotten the simplicity ofchildhood in the toil of life, he may, from this time, remember the vowthat he now records--from this time to press on towards the things thatare unseen, but which are manifested through the things that are seen. Irefer you likewise to the poem "Resolution and Independence, " commonlycalled "The Leech Gatherer;" also to that grandest ode that has everbeen written, the "Ode on Immortality. " You will find there, whateveryou may think of his theory, in the latter, sufficient proof that naturewas to him a divine teaching power. Do not suppose that I mean that mancan do without more teaching than nature's, or that a man with onlynature's teaching would have seen these things in nature. No, the soulmust be tuned to such things. Wordsworth could not have found suchthings, had he not known something that was more definite and helpful tohim; but this known, then nature was full of teaching. When weunderstand the Word of God, then we understand the works of God; when weknow the nature of an artist, we know his pictures; when we have knownand talked with the poet, we understand his poetry far better. To theman of God, all nature will be but changeful reflections of the face ofGod. 

Loving man as Wordsworth did, he was most anxious to give him thisteaching. How was he to do it? By poetry. Nature put into the crucibleof a loving heart becomes poetry. We cannot explain poetryscientifically; because poetry is something beyond science. The poet maybe man of science, and the man of science may be a poet; but poetryincludes science, and the man who will advance science most, is the manwho, other qualifications being equal, has most of the poetic faculty inhim. Wordsworth defines poetry to be "the impassioned expression whichis on the face of science. " Science has to do with the construction ofthings. The casting of the granite ribs of the mighty earth, and all thethousand operations that result in the manifestations on its surface, this is the domain of science. But when there come the grass-bearingmeadows, the heaven-reared hills, the great streams that go everdownward, the bubbling fountains that ever arise, the wind that wandersamongst the leaves, and the odours that are wafted upon its wings; whenwe have colour, and shape, and sound, then we have the material withwhich poetry has to do. Science has to do with the underwork. For whatdoes this great central world exist, with its hidden winds and waters, its upheavings and its downsinkings, its strong frame of rock, and itsheart of fire? What do they all exist for? Not for themselves surely, but for the sake of this out-spreading world of beauty, that floats up, as it were, to the surface of the shapeless region of force. Science hasto do with the one, and poetry with the other: poetry is "theimpassioned expression that is on the face of science. " To illustrate itstill further. You are walking in the woods, and you find the firstprimrose of the year. You feel almost as if you had found a child. Youknow in yourself that you have found a new beauty and a new joy, thoughyou have seen it a thousand times before. It is a primrose. A littleflower that looks at me, thinks itself into my heart, and gives me apleasure distinct in itself, and which I feel as if I could not dowithout. The impassioned expression on the face of this little outspreadflower is its childhood; it means trust, consciousness of protection, faith, and hope. Science, in the person of the botanist, comes afteryou, and pulls it to pieces to see its construction, and delights theintellect; but the science itself is dead, and kills what it touches. The flower exists not for it, but for the expression on its face, whichis its poetry, --that expression which you feel to mean a living thing;that expression which makes you feel that this flower is, as it were, just growing out of the heart of God. The intellect itself is but thescaffolding for the uprearing of the spiritual nature. 

It will make all this yet plainer, if you can suppose a human form to becreated without a soul in it. Divine science _has_ put it together, butonly for the sake of the outshining soul that shall cause it to live, and move, and have a being of its own in God. When you see the facelighted up with soul, when you recognize in it thought and feeling, joyand love, then you know that here is the end for which it was made. Thusyou see the relation that poetry has to science; and you find that, tospeak in an apparent paradox, the surface is the deepest after all; for, through the surface, for the sake of which all this building went on, wehave, as it were, a window into the depths of truth. There is not a formthat lives in the world, but is a window cloven through the blankdarkness of nothingness, to let us look into the heart, and feeling, andnature of God. So the surface of things is the best and the deepest, provided it is not mere surface, but the impassioned expression, for thesake of which the science of God has thought and laboured. 

Satisfied that this was the nature of poetry, and wanting to convey thisto the minds of his fellow-men, "What vehicle, " Wordsworth may besupposed to have asked himself, "shall I use? How shall I decide whatform of words to employ? Where am I to find the right language forspeaking such great things to men?" He saw that the poetry of theeighteenth century (he was born in 1770) was not like nature at all, butwas an artificial thing, with no more originality in it than there wouldbe in a picture a hundred times copied, the copyists never reverting tothe original. You cannot look into this eighteenth century poetry, excepting, of course, a great proportion of the poetry of Cowper andThompson, without being struck with the sort of agreement that nothingshould be said naturally. A certain set form and mode was employed forsaying things that ought never to have been said twice in the same way. Wordsworth resolved to go back to the root of the thing, to the naturalsimplicity of speech; he would have none of these stereotyped forms ofexpression. "Where shall I find, " said he, "the language that will besimple and powerful?" And he came to the conclusion that the language ofthe common people was the only language suitable for his purpose. Yourexperience of the everyday language of the common people may be that itis not poetical. True, but not even a poet can speak poetically in hisstupid moments. Wordsworth's idea was to take the language of the commonpeople in their uncommon moods, in their high and, consequently, simplemoods, when their minds are influenced by grief, hope, reverence, worship, love; for then he believed he could get just the languagesuitable for the poet. As far as that language will go, I think he wasright, if I may venture to give an opinion in support of Wordsworth. Ofcourse, there will occur necessities to the poet which would not becomprehended in the language of a man whose thoughts had never moved inthe same directions, but the kind of language will be the right thing, and I have heard such amongst the common people myself--language whichthey did not know to be poetic, but which fell upon my ear and heart asprofoundly poetic both in its feeling and its form. 

In attempting to carry out this theory, I am not prepared to say thatWordsworth never transgressed his own self-imposed laws. But he adheredto his theory to the last. A friend of the poet's told me thatWordsworth had to him expressed his belief that he would be rememberedlongest, not by his sonnets, as his friend thought, but by his lyricalballads, those for which he had been reviled and laughed at; the most bycritics who could not understand him, and who were unworthy to read whathe had written. As a proof of this let me read to you three verses, composing a poem that was especially marked for derision:--

 She dwelt among the untrodden ways, Beside the springs of Dove; A maid whom there were none to praise, And very few to love. 

 A violet by a mossy stone. Half hidden from the eye; Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. 

 She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and Oh! The difference to me. 

The last line was especially chosen as the object of ridicule; but Ithink with most of us the feeling will be, that its very simplicity ofexpression is overflowing in suggestion, it throws us back upon our ownexperience; for, instead of trying to utter what he felt, he says inthose simple and common words, "You who have known anything of the kind, will know what the difference to me is, and only you can know. " "Myintention and desire, " he says in one of his essays, "are that theinterest of the poem shall owe nothing to the circumstances; but thatthe circumstances shall be made interesting by the thing itself. " Inmost novels, for instance, the attempt is made to interest us inworthless, commonplace people, whom, if we had our choice, we would farrather not meet at all, by surrounding them with peculiar andextraordinary circumstances; but this is a low source of interest. Wordsworth was determined to owe nothing to such an adventitious cause. For illustration allow me to read that well-known little ballad, "TheReverie of Poor Susan, " and you will see how entirely it bears out whathe lays down as his theory. The scene is in London:--

 At the corner of Wood-street, when daylight appears, Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years; Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard, In the silence of morning, the song of the Bird. 

 'Tis a note of enchantment: what ails her? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees; Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. 

 Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, Down which she so often has tripped with her pail; And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. 

 She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade, The mist and the river, the hill and the shade: The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, And the colours have all passed away from her eyes!

Is any of the interest here owing to the circumstances? Is it not a verycommon incident? But has he not treated it so that it is not_commonplace_ in the least? We recognize in this girl just the feelingswe discover in ourselves, and acknowledge almost with tears hersisterhood to us all. 

I have tried to make you feel something of what Wordsworth attempts todo, but I have not given you the best of his poems. Allow me to finishby reading the closing portion of the _Prelude_, the poem that waspublished after his death. It is addressed to Coleridge:--

 Oh! yet a few short years of useful life, And all will be complete, thy race be run, Thy monument of glory will be raised; Then, though (too weak to head the ways of truth) This age fall back to old idolatry, Though men return to servitude as fast As the tide ebbs, to ignominy and shame By nations sink together, we shall still Find solace--knowing what we have learnt to know-- Rich in true happiness, if allowed to be Faithful alike in forwarding a day Of firmer trust, joint labourers in the work (Should Providence such grace to us vouchsafe) Of their deliverance, surely yet to come. Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak A lasting inspiration, sanctified By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how; Instruct them how the mind of man becomes A thousand times more beautiful than the earth On which he dwells, above this frame of things (Which, 'mid all revolution in the hopes And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged) In beauty exalted, as it is itself Of quality and fabric more divine. 

SHELLEY. 

Whatever opinion may be held with regard to the relative positionoccupied by Shelley as a poet, it will be granted by most of those whohave studied his writings, that they are of such an individual andoriginal kind, that he can neither be hidden in the shade, nor lost inthe brightness, of any other poet. No idea of his works could beconveyed by instituting a comparison, for he does not sufficientlyresemble any other among English writers to make such a comparisonpossible. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in thecounty of Sussex, on the 4th of August, 1792. He was the son of TimothyShelley, Esq. , and grandson of Sir Bysshe Shelley, the first baronet. His ancestors had long been large landed proprietors in Sussex. 

As a child his habits were noticeable. He was especially fond oframbling by moonlight, of inventing wonderful tales, of occupyinghimself with strange, and sometimes dangerous, amusements. At the age ofthirteen he went to Eton. In this little world, that determinedopposition to whatever appeared to him an invasion of human rights andliberty, which was afterwards the animating principle of most of hiswritings, was first roused in the mind of Shelley. Were we not aware offar keener distress which he afterwards endured from yet greaterinjustice, we might suppose that the sufferings he had to bear fromplacing himself in opposition to the custom of the school, by refusingto fag, had made him morbidly sensitive on the point of liberty. At atime, however, when freedom of speech, as indicating freedom of thought, was especially obnoxious to established authorities; when no allowancecould be made on the score of youth, still less on that of individualpeculiarity, Shelley became a student at Oxford. He was then eighteen. Devoted to metaphysical speculation, and especially fond of logicaldiscussion, he, in his first year, printed and distributed among theauthorities and members of his college a pamphlet, if that can be calleda pamphlet which consisted only of two pages, in which he opposed theusual arguments for the existence of a Deity; arguments which, perhaps, the most ardent believers have equally considered inconclusive. WhetherShelley wrote this pamphlet as an embodiment of his own opinions, ormerely as a logical confutation of certain arguments, the mode ofprocedure adopted with him was certainly not one which necessarilyresulted from the position of those to whose care the education of hisopinions was entrusted. Without waiting to be assured that he was theauthor, and satisfying themselves with his refusal to answer whenquestioned as to the authorship, they handed him his sentence ofexpulsion, which had been already drawn up in due form. 

About this time Shelley wrote, or commenced writing, _Queen Mab_, a poemwhich he never published, although he distributed copies among hisfriends. In after years he had such a low opinion of it in everyrespect, that he regretted having printed it at all; and when an editionof it was published without his consent, he applied to the Court ofChancery for an injunction to suppress it. 

Shelley's opinions in politics and theology, which he appears to havebeen far more anxious to maintain than was consistent with the peace ofthe household, were peculiarly obnoxious to his father, a man asdifferent from his son as it is possible to conceive; and his expulsionfrom Oxford was soon followed by exile from his home. He went to London, where, through his sisters, who were at school in the neighbourhood, hemade the acquaintence of Harriet West brook, whom he eloped with andmarried, when he was nineteen and she sixteen years of age. It seemsdoubtful whether the attachment between them was more than the result ofthe reception accorded by the enthusiasm of the girl to the enthusiasmof the youth, manifesting itself in wild talk about human rights, andequally wild plans for their recovery and security. However this may be, the result was unfortunate. They wandered about England, Scotland, andIreland, with frequent and sudden change of residence, for rather morethan two years. During this time Shelley gained the friendship of someof the most eminent men of the age, of whom the one who exercised themost influence upon his character and future history was William Godwin, whose instructions and expostulations tended to reduce to solidity andform the vague and extravagant opinions and projects of the youthfulreformer. Shortly after the commencement of the third year of theirmarried life, an estrangement of feeling, which had been graduallywidening between them, resulted in the final separation of the poet andhis wife. We are not informed as to the causes of this estrangement, further than that it seems to have been owing, in a considerable degree, to the influence of an elder sister of Mrs. Shelley, who domineered overher, and whose presence became at last absolutely hateful to Shelley. His wife returned to her father's house; where, apparently about threeyears after, she committed suicide. There seems to have been noimmediate connection between this act and any conduct of Shelley. One ofhis biographers informs us, that while they were living happilytogether, suicide was with Mrs. Shelley a favourite subject ofspeculation and conversation. 

Shortly after his first wife's death, Shelley married the daughter ofWilliam Godwin. He had lived with her almost from the date of theseparation, during which time they had twice visited Switzerland. In thefollowing year (1817), it was decreed in Chancery that Shelley was not aproper person to take charge of his two children by his first wife, whohad lived with her till her death. The bill was filed in Chancery bytheir grandfather, Mr. Westbrook. The effects of this proceeding uponShelley may be easily imagined. Perhaps he never recovered from them, for they were not of a nature to pass away. During this year he residedat Marlow, and wrote _The Revolt of Islam_, besides portions of otherpoems; and the next year he left England, not to return. The state ofhis health, for he had appeared to be in a consumption for some time, and the fear lest his son, by his second wife, should be taken from him, combined to induce him to take refuge in Italy from both impendingevils. At Lucca he began his _Prometheus_, and wrote _Julian andMaddalo_. He moved from place to place in Italy, as he had done in hisown country. Their two children dying, they were for a time leftchildless; but the loss of these grieved Shelley less than that of hiseldest two, who were taken from him by the hand of man. In 1819, Shelleyfinished his _Prometheus Unbound_, writing the greater part at Rome, andcompleting it at Florence. In this year also he wrote his tragedy, _TheCenci_, which attracted more attention during his lifetime than anyother of his works. The _Ode to a Skylark_ was written at Leghorn in thespring of 1820; and in August of the same year, the _Witch of Atlas_ waswritten, near Pisa. In the following year Shelley and Byron met at Pisa. They were a good deal together; but their friendship, although real, does not appear to have been of a very profound nature; for thoughunlikeness be one of the necessary elements of friendship, there arekinds of unlikeness which will not harmonize. During all this time, hewas not only maligned by unknown enemies, and abused by anonymouswriters, but attempts of other kinds are said to have been made torender his life as uncomfortable as possible. There are grounds, however, for doubting whether Shelley was not subject to a kind ofmonomania upon this and similar points. In 1821, he wrote his _Adonais_, a monody on the death of Keats. Part of this poem had its origin in themistaken notion, that the illness and death of Keats were caused by abrutal criticism of his _Endymion_, which appeared in the _QuarterlyReview_. The last verse of the _Adonais_ seems almost prophetic of hisown end. Passionately fond of boating, he and a friend of his, Mr. Williams, united in constructing a boat of a peculiar build, a very fastsailer, but difficult to manage. On the 8th of July, 1822, Shelley andhis friend Williams sailed from Leghorn for Lerici, on the Bay ofSpezia, near which lay his home for the time. A sudden squall came on, and their boat disappeared. The bodies of the two friends were cast onshore; and, according to quarantine regulations, were burned to ashes. Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Mr. Trelawney were present when the body ofShelley was burned; so that his ashes were saved, and buried in theProtestant burial-ground at Rome, near the grave of Keats, whose bodyhad been laid there in the spring of the preceding year. _Cor Cordium_were the words inscribed by his widow on the tomb of the poet. 

The character of Shelley has been sadly maligned. Whatever faults he mayhave committed against society, they were not the result of sensuality. One of his biographers, who was his companion at Oxford, and who doesnot seem inclined to do him _more_ than justice, asserts that whilethere his conduct was immaculate. The whole picture he gives of theyouth, makes it easy to believe this. To discuss the moral questioninvolved in one part of his history would be out of place here; but evenon the supposition that a man's conduct is altogether inexcusable inindividual instances, there is the more need that nothing but the truthshould be said concerning that, and other portions thereof. And whateversociety may have thought itself justified in making subject ofreprobation, it must be remembered that Shelley was under lessobligation to society than most men. Yet his heart seemed full of loveto his kind; and the distress which the oppression of others caused him, was the source of much of that wild denunciation which exposed him tothe contempt and hatred of those who were rendered uncomfortable by hisunsparing and indiscriminate anathemas. In private, he was beloved byall who knew him; a steady, generous, self-denying friend, not only tothose who moved in his own circle, but to all who were brought withinthe reach of any aid he could bestow. To the poor he was a true andlaborious benefactor. That man must have been good to whom the heart ofhis widow returns with such earnest devotion and thankfulness in therecollection of the past, and such fond hope for the future, as aremanifested by Mrs. Shelley in those extracts from her private journalgiven us by Lady Shelley. 

As regards his religious opinions, one of the thoughts which moststrongly suggest themselves is, --how ill he must have been instructed inthe principles of Christianity! He says himself in a letter to Godwin, "I have known no tutor or adviser (_not excepting my father_) from whoselessons and suggestions I have not recoiled with disgust. " So far is hefrom being an opponent of Christianity properly so called, that one canhardly help feeling what a Christian he would have been, could he buthave seen Christianity in any other way than through the traditional andpractical misrepresentations of it which surrounded him. All his attackson Christianity are, in reality, directed against evils to which thetrue doctrines of Christianity are more opposed than those of Shelleycould possibly be. How far he was excusable in giving the name ofChristianity to what he might have seen to be only a miserableperversion of it, is another question, and one which hardly admits ofdiscussion here. It was in the _name_ of Christianity, however, that theworst injuries of which he had to complain were inflicted upon him. Coming out of the cathedral at Pisa one day, [Footnote: From _ShelleyMemorials_, edited by Lady Shelley, which the writer of this paper hasprincipally followed in regard to the external facts of Shelley'shistory. ] Shelley warmly assented to a remark of Leigh Hunt, "that adivine religion might be found out, if charity were really made theprinciple of it instead of faith. " Surely the founders of Christianity, even when they magnified faith, intended thereby a spiritual condition, of which the central principle is coincident with charity. Shelley's ownfeelings towards others, as judged from his poetry, seem to be tincturedwith the very essence of Christianity. [Footnote: His _Essay onChristianity_ is full of noble views, some of which are held at thepresent day by some of the most earnest believers. At what time of hislife it was written we are not informed; but it seems such as wouldinsure his acceptance with any company of intelligent and devoutUnitarians. ] He did not, at one time at least, believe that we couldknow the source of our being; and seemed to take it as a self-evidenttruth, that the Creator could not be like the creature. But it is unjustto fix upon any utterance of opinion, and regard it as the religion of aman who died in his thirtieth year, and whose habits of thinking weresuch, that his opinions must have been in a state of constant change. Coleridge says in a letter: "His (Shelley's) discussions, tendingtowards atheism of a certain sort, would not have scared _me;_ for _me_it would have been a semitransparent larva, soon to be sloughed, andthrough which I should have seen the true _image_--the finalmetamorphosis. Besides, I have ever thought that sort of atheism thenext best religion to Christianity; nor does the better faith I havelearned from Paul and John interfere with the cordial reverence I feelfor Benedict Spinoza. "

Shelley's favourite study was metaphysics. The more impulse there is inany direction, the more education and experience are necessary tobalance that impulse: one cannot help thinking that Shelley's _taste_for exercises of this kind was developed more rapidly than thecorresponding _power_. His favourite physical studies were chemistry andelectricity. With these he occupied himself from his childhood;apparently, however, with more delight in the experiments themselves, than interest in the general conclusions to be arrived at by means ofthem. In the embodiment of his metaphysical ideas in poetry, theinfluence of these studies seems to show itself; for he uses forms whichappeal more to the outer senses than to the inward eye; and his similesbelong to the realm of the fancy, rather than the imagination: they lack_vital_ resemblance. Logic had considerable attractions for him. Togeometry and mathematics he was quite indifferent. One of hisbiographers states that "he was neglectful of flowers, " because he hadno interest in botany; but one who derived such full delight from thecontemplation of their external forms, could hardly be expected to feelvery strongly the impulse to dissect them. He derived exceeding pleasurefrom Greek literature, especially from the works of Plato. 

Several little peculiarities in Shelley's tastes are worth mentioning, because, although in themselves insignificant, they seem to correspondwith the nature of his poetry. Perhaps the most prominent of these washis passion for boat-sailing. He could not pass any piece of waterwithout launching upon it a number of boats, constructed from what paperhe could find in his pockets. The fly-leaves of the books he was in theway of carrying with him, for he was constantly reading, often went tothis end. He would watch the fate of these boats with the utmostinterest, till they sank or reached the opposite side. He was just asfond of real boating, and that frequently of a dangerous kind; but it ischaracteristic of him, that all the boats he describes in his poems areof a fairy, fantastic sort, barely related to the boats which battlewith earthly winds and waves. Pistol-shooting was also a favouriteamusement. Fireworks, too, gave him great delight. Some of his habitswere likewise peculiar. He was remarkably abstemious, preferring breadand raisins to anything else in the way of eating, and very seldomdrinking anything stronger than water. Honey was a favourite luxury withhim. While at college, his biographer Hogg says he was in the habit, during the evening, of going to sleep on the rug, close to a blazingfire, heat seeming never to have other than a beneficial effect uponhim. After sleeping some hours, he would awake perfectly restored, andcontinue actively occupied till far into the morning. His wholemovements are represented as rapid, hurried, and uncertain. He wouldappear and disappear suddenly and unexpectedly; forget appointments;burst into wild laughter, heedless of his situation, whenever anythingstruck him as peculiarly ludicrous. His changes of residence were mostnumerous, and frequently made with so much haste that whole littlelibraries were left behind, and often lost. He was very fond ofchildren, and used to make humorous efforts to induce them to discloseto him the still-remembered secrets of their pre-existence. He seemed tohave a peculiar attraction towards mystery, and was ready to believe ina hidden secret, where no one else would have thought of one. His room, while he was at college, was in a state of indescribable confusion. Notonly were all sorts of personal necessaries mingled with books andphilosophical instruments, but things belonging to one department ofservice were not unfrequently pressed into the slavery of another. Hedressed well but carelessly. In person he was tall, slender, andstooping; awkward in gait, but in manners a thorough gentleman. Hiscomplexion was delicate; his head, face, and features, remarkably small;the last not very regular, but in expression, both intellectual andmoral, wonderfully beautiful. His eyes were deep blue, "of a wild, strange beauty;" his forehead high and white; his hair dark brown, curling, long, and bushy. His appearance in later life is described assingularly combining the appearances of premature age and prolongedyouth. 

The only art in which his taste appears to have been developed waspoetry. Even in his poetry, taken as a whole, the artistic element isnot generally very manifest. His earliest verses (none of which areincluded in his collected works) can hardly be said to be good in anysense. He seems in these to have chosen poetry as a fitting material forthe embodiment of his ardent, hopeful, indignant thoughts and feelings, but, provided he can say what he wants to say, does not seem tocare much about _how_ he says it. Indeed, there is too much ofthis throughout his works; for if the _utterance_, instead ofthe _conveyance_ of thought, were the object pursued in art, ofcourse not merely imperfection of language, but absolute externalunintelligibility, would be admissible. But his art constantly increaseswith his sense of its necessity; so that the _Cenci_, which is the lastwork of any pretension that he wrote, is decidedly the most artistic ofall. There are beautiful passages in _Queen Mab_, but it is the work ofa boy-poet; and as it was all but repudiated by himself, it is notnecessary to remark further upon it. _The Revolt of Islam_ is a poem oftwelve cantos, in the Spenserian stanza; but in all respects except thearrangement of lines and rimes, his stanza, in common with all otherimitations of the Spenserian, has little or nothing of the spirit orindividuality of the original. The poem is dedicated to the cause offreedom, and records the efforts, successes, defeats, and finaltriumphant death of two inspired champions of liberty--a youth andmaiden. The adventures are marvellous, not intended to be within thebounds of probability, scarcely of possibility. There are very noblesentiments and fine passages throughout the poem. Now and then there isgrandeur. But the absence of art is too evident in the fact that themeaning is often obscure; an obscurity not unfrequently occasioned bythe difficulty of the stanza, which is the most difficult mode ofcomposition in English, except the rigid sonnet. The words and forms heemploys to express thought seem sometimes mechanical devices for thatpurpose, rather than an utterance which suggested itself naturally to amind where the thought was vitally present. The words are more a_clothing_ for the thought than an _embodiment_ of it. They do not lienear enough to the thing which is intended to be represented by them. Itis, however, but just to remark, that some of the obscurity is owing tothe fact, that, even with Mrs. Shelley's superintendence, the works havenot yet been satisfactorily edited, or at least not conducted throughthe press with sufficient care. [Footnote: This statement is no longertrue. ]

_The Cenci_ is a very powerful tragedy, but unfitted for publicrepresentation by the horrible nature of the historical facts upon whichit is founded. In the execution of it, however, Shelley has kept verymuch nearer to nature than in any other of his works. He has rigidlyadhered to his perception of artistic propriety in respect to thedramatic utterance. It may be doubted whether there is sufficientdifference between the modes of speech of the different actors in thetragedy, but it is quite possible to individualize speech far toominutely for probable nature; and in this respect, at least, Shelley hasnot erred. Perhaps the action of the whole is a little hurried, and acentral moment of awful repose and fearful anticipation might add to theforce of the tragedy. The scenes also might, perhaps, have beenconstructed so as to suggest more of evolution; but the central point ofhorror is most powerfully and delicately handled. You see a possiblespiritual horror yet behind, more frightful than all that has gonebefore. The whole drama, indeed, is constructed around, not a prominentpoint, but a dim, infinitely-withdrawn, underground perspective ofdismay and agony. Perhaps it detracts a little from our interest in theLady Beatrice, that after all she should wish to live, and should seekto preserve her life by a denial of her crime. She, however, evidentlyjustifies the denial to herself on the ground that, the deed beingabsolutely right, although regarded as most criminal by her judges, theonly way to get true justice is to deny the fact, which, there being noguilt, she might consider as only a verbal lie. Her very purity ofconscience enables her to utter this with the most absolute innocence oflook, and word, and tone. This is probably a historical fact, andShelley had to make the best of it. In the drama there is greattenderness, as well as terror; but for a full effect, one feels itdesirable to be brought better acquainted with the individuals than thedrama, from its want of graduation, permits. Shelley, however, was onlysix-and-twenty when he wrote it. He must have been attracted to thesubject by its embodying the concentration of tyranny, lawlessness, andbrutality in old Cenci, as opposed to, and exercised upon, an idealloveliness and nobleness in the person of Beatrice. 

But of all Shelley's works, the _Prometheus Unbound_ is that whichcombines the greatest amount of individual power and peculiarity. Thereis an airy grandeur about it, reminding one of the vast masses of cloudscattered about in broken, yet magnificently suggestive forms, all overthe summer sky, after a thunderstorm. The fundamental ideas are grand;the superstructure, in many parts, so ethereal, that one hardly knowswhether he is gazing on towers of solid masonry rendered dim andunsubstantial by intervening vapour, or upon the golden turrets ofcloudland, themselves born of the mist which surrounds them with a haloof glory. The beings of Greek, mythology are idealized and etherealizedby the new souls which he puts into them, making them think his thoughtsand say his words. In reading this, as in reading most of his poetry, wefeel that, unable to cope with the evils and wrongs of the world as itand they are, he constructs a new universe, wherein he may ruleaccording to his will; and a good will in the main it is--good always inintent, good generally in form and utterance. Of the wrongs whichShelley endured from the collision and resulting conflict between hislawless goodness and the lawful wickedness of those in authority, thisis one of the greatest, --that during the right period of pupillage, hewas driven from the place of learning, cast on his own mental resourceslong before those resources were sufficient for his support, andirritated against the purest embodiment of good by the harsh treatmenthe received under its name. If that reverence which was far from wantingto his nature, had been but presented, in the person of some guide tohis spiritual being, with an object worthy of its homage and trust, itis probable that the yet free and noble result of Shelley'sindividuality would have been presented to the world in a form which, while it attracted still only the few, would not have repelled the many;at least, not by such things as were merely accidental in theirassociation with his earnest desires and efforts for the well-being ofhumanity. 

That which chiefly distinguishes Shelley from other writers is theunequalled exuberance of his fancy. The reader, say for instance of thatfantastically brilliant poem, _The Witch of Atlas_, the work of threedays, is overwhelmed in a storm, as it were, of rainbow snow-flakes andmany-coloured lightnings, accompanied ever by "a low melodious thunder. "The evidences of pure imagination in his writings are unfrequent ascompared with those of fancy: there are not half the instances of thedirect embodiment of idea in form, that there are of the presentation ofstrange resemblances between external things. 

One of the finest short specimens of Shelley's peculiar mode is his _Odeto the West Wind_, full of mysterious melody of thought and sound. Butof all his poems, the most popular, and deservedly so, is the _Skylark_. Perhaps the _Cloud_ may contest it with the _Skylark_ in regard topopular favour; but the _Cloud_, although full of beautiful words andfantastic cloud-like images, is, after all, principally a work of thefancy; while the _Skylark_, though even in it fancy predominates overimagination in the visual images, forms, as a whole, a lovely, true, individual work of art; a _lyric_ not unworthy of the _lark_, whichMason apostrophizes as "sweet feathered lyric. " The strain of sadnesswhich pervades it is only enough to make the song of the lark human. 

In _The Sensitive Plant_, a poem full of the peculiarities of hisgenius, tending through a wilderness of fanciful beauties to a thicketof mystical speculation, one curious idiosyncrasy is more prominent thanin any other--curious, as belonging to the poet of beauty andloveliness: it is the tendency to be fascinated by what is ugly andrevolting, so that he cannot withdraw his thoughts from it till he hasdescribed it in language, powerful, it is true, and poetic, whenconsidered as to its fitness for the desired end, but, in force of thesevery excellences in the means, nearly as revolting as the objectsthemselves. Associated with this is the tendency to discover strangelyunpleasant likenesses between things; which likenesses he is not contentwith seeing, but seems compelled, perhaps in order to get rid of themhimself, to force upon the observation of his reader. But the admirer ofShelley is not pleased to find that one or two passages of this naturehave been omitted in some editions of his works. 

Few men have been more misunderstood or misrepresented than Shelley. Doubtless this has in part been his own fault, as Coleridge implies whenhe writes to this effect of him: that his horror of hypocrisy made himspeak in such a wild way, that Southey (who was so much a man of formsand proprieties) was quite misled, not merely in his estimate of hisworth, but in his judgment of his character. But setting aside thisconsideration altogether, and regarding him merely as a poet, Shelleyhas written verse which will last as long as English literature lasts;valuable not only from its excellence, but from the peculiarity of itsexcellence. To say nothing of his noble aims and hopes, Shelley willalways be admired for his sweet melodies, lovely pictures, and wildprophetic imaginings. His indignant remonstrances, intermingled withgrand imprecations, burst in thunder from a heart overcharged with thelove of his kind, and roused to a keener sense of all oppression by thewrongs which sought to overwhelm himself. But as he recedes further intime, and men are able to see more truly the proportions of the man, they will judge, that without having gained the rank of a greatreformer, Shelley had in him that element of wide sympathy and loftyhope for his kind which is essential both to the _birth_ and thesubsequent _making_ of the greatest of poets. 

A SERMON. [Footnote: Read in the Unitarian chapel, Essex-street, London, 1879. ]

PHILIPPIANS iii. 15, 16. --Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, bethus minded; and if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall revealeven this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, letus walk by that same. 

This is the reading of the oldest manuscripts. The rest of the verse ispretty clearly a not overwise marginal gloss that has crept into thetext. 

In its origin, opinion is the intellectual body, taken for utterance andpresentation by something necessarily larger than any intellect canafford stuff sufficient for the embodiment of. To the man himself, therefore, in whose mind it arose, an opinion will always represent andrecall the spirit whose form it is, --so long, at least, as the manremains true to his better self. Hence, a man's opinion may be for himinvaluable, the needle of his moral compass, always pointing to thetruth whence it issued, and whose form it is. Nor is the man's opinionof the less value to him that it may change. Nay, to be of true value, it must have in it not only the possibility, but the necessity ofchange: it must change in every man who is alive with that life which, in the New Testament, is alone treated as life at all. For, if a man'sopinion be in no process of change whatever, it must be dead, valueless, hurtful Opinion is the offspring of that which is itself born to grow;which, being imperfect, must grow or die. Where opinion is growing, itsimperfections, however many and serious, will do but little hurt; whereit is not growing, these imperfections will further the decay andcorruption which must already have laid hold of the very heart of theman. But it is plain in the world's history that what, at some givenstage of the same, was the embodiment in intellectual form of thehighest and deepest of which it was then spiritually capable, has oftenand speedily become the source of the most frightful outrages uponhumanity. How is this? Because it has passed from the mind in which itgrew into another in which it did not grow, and has of necessity alteredits nature. Itself sprung from that which was deepest in the man, itcasts seeds which take root only in the intellectual understanding ofhis neighbour; and these, springing up, produce flowers indeed whichlook much the same to the eye, but fruit which is poison andbitterness, --worst of it all, the false and arrogant notion that it isduty to force the opinion upon the acceptance of others. But it isbecause such men themselves hold with so poor a grasp the truthunderlying their forms that they are, in their self-sufficiency, soambitious of propagating the forms, making of themselves the worstenemies of the truth of which they fancy themselves the champions. Howtruly, in the case of all genuine teachers of men, shall a man's foes bethey of his own household! For of all the destroyers of the truth whichany man has preached, none have done it so effectually or so grievouslyas his own followers. So many of them have received but the forms, andknow nothing of the truth which gave him those forms! They lay hold butof the non-essential, the specially perishing in those forms; and theseaspects, doubly false and misleading in their crumbling disjunction, they proceed to force upon the attention and reception of men, callingthat the truth which is at best but the draggled and useless fringe ofits earth-made garment. Opinions so held belong to the theology ofhell, --not necessarily altogether false in form, but false utterly inheart and spirit. The opinion then that is hurtful is not that which isformed in the depths, and from the honest necessities of a man's ownnature, but that which he has taken up at second hand, the study ofwhich has pleased his intellect; has perhaps subdued fears and mollifieddistresses which ought rather to have grown and increased until they haddriven the man to the true physician; has puffed him up with a sense ofsuperiority as false as foolish, and placed in his hand a club withwhich to subjugate his neighbour to his spiritual dictation. The trueman even, who aims at the perpetuation of his opinion, is ratherobstructing than aiding the course of that truth for the love of whichhe holds his opinion; for truth is a living thing, opinion is a deadthing, and transmitted opinion a deadening thing. 

Let us look at St. Paul's feeling in this regard. And, in order that wemay deprive it of none of its force, let us note first the nature of thetruth which he had just been presenting to his disciples, when hefollows it with the words of my text:--

But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. 

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of theknowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss ofall things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of thelaw, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousnesswhich is of God by faith:

That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and thefellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. 

Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but Ifollow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I amapprehended of Christ Jesus. 

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing Ido, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth untothose things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize ofthe high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 

St. Paul, then, had been declaring to the Philippians the idea uponwhich, so far as it lay with him, his life was constructed, the thingfor which he lived, to which the whole conscious effort of his being wasdirected, --namely, to be in his very nature one with Christ, to becomerighteous as he is righteous; to die into his death, so that he shouldno more hold the slightest personal relation to evil, but be alive inevery fibre to all that is pure, lovely, loving, beautiful, perfect. Hehad been telling them that he spent himself in continuous effort to layhold upon that for the sake of which Christ had laid hold on him. Thishe declares the sole thing worth living for: the hope of this, the hopeof becoming one with the living God, is that which keeps a gloriousconsciousness awake in him, amidst all the unrest of a being not yet atharmony with itself, and a laborious and persecuted life. It cannottherefore be any shadow of indifference to the truth to which he hasborne this witness, that causes him to add, "If in anything ye beotherwise minded. " It is to him even the test of perfection, whetherthey be thus minded or not; for, although a moment before, he hasdeclared himself short of the desired perfection, he now says, "Let asmany of us as are perfect be thus minded. " There is here no room forthat unprofitable thing, bare logic: we must look through the shiftingrainbow of his words, --rather, we must gather all their tints together, then turn our backs upon the rainbow, that we may see the glorious lightwhich is the soul of it. St. Paul is not that which he would be, whichhe must be; but he, and all they who with him believe that theperfection of Christ is the sole worthy effort of a man's life, are inthe region, though not yet at the centre, of perfection. They are, evennow, not indeed grasping, but in the grasp of, that perfection. He tellsthem this is the one thing to mind, the one thing to go on desiring andlabouring for, with all the earnestness of a God-born existence; but, ifany one be at all otherwise minded, --that is, of a differentopinion, --what then? That it is of little or no consequence? No, verily;but of such endless consequence that God will himself unveil to them thetruth of the matter. This is Paul's faith, not his opinion. Faith isthat by which a man lives inwardly, and orders his way outwardly. Faithis the root, belief the tree, and opinion the foliage that falls and isrenewed with the seasons. Opinion is, at best, even the opinion of atrue man, but the cloak of his belief, which he may indeed cast to hisneighbour, but not with the truth inside it: that remains in his ownbosom, the oneness between him and his God. St. Paul knows well--whobetter?--that by no argument, the best that logic itself can afford, cana man be set right with the truth; that the spiritual perception whichcomes of hungering contact with the living truth--a perception which isin itself a being born again--can alone be the mediator between a manand the truth. He knows that, even if he could pass his opinion overbodily into the understanding of his neighbour, there would be little ornothing gained thereby, for the man's spiritual condition would be justwhat it was before. God must reveal, or nothing is known. And this, through thousands of difficulties occasioned by the man himself, God isever and always doing his mighty best to effect. 

See the grandeur of redeeming liberality in the Apostle. In his heart ofhearts he knows that salvation consists in nothing else than being onewith Christ; that the only life of every man is hid with Christ in God, and to be found by no search anywhere else. He believes that for thiscause was he born into the world, --that he should give himself, heartand soul, body and spirit, to him who came into the world that he mightbear witness to the truth. He believes that for the sake of this, andnothing less, --anything more there cannot be, --was the world, with itsendless glories, created. Nay, more than all, he believes that for thisdid the Lord, in whose cross, type and triumph of his self-abnegation, he glories, come into the world, and live and die there. And yet, andyet, he says, and says plainly, that a man thinking differently from allthis or at least, quite unprepared to make this whole-hearted professionof faith, is yet his brother in Christ, in whom the knowledge of Christthat he has will work and work, the new leaven casting out the oldleaven until he, too, in the revelation of the Father, shall come to theperfect stature of the fulness of Christ. Meantime, Paul, the Apostle, must show due reverence to the halting and dull disciple. He must andwill make no demand upon him on the grounds of what he, Paul, believes. He is where he is, and God is his teacher. To his own Master, --that is, Paul's Master, and not Paul, --he stands. He leaves him to the company ofhis Master. "Leaves him?" No: that he does not; that he will never do, any more than God will leave him. Still and ever will he hold him andhelp him. But how help him, if he is not to press upon him his ownlarger and deeper and wiser insights? The answer is ready: he willpress, not his opinion, not even the man's opinion, but the man's ownfaith upon him. "O brother, beloved of the Father, walk in thelight, --in the light, that is, which is thine, not which is mine; in thelight which is given to thee, not to me: thou canst not walk by mylight, I cannot walk by thine: how should either walk except by thelight which is in him? O brother, what thou seest, that do; and whatthou seest not, that thou shalt see: God himself, the Father of Lights, will show it to you. " This, this is the condition of all growth, --thatwhereto we have attained, we mind that same; for such, following themanuscripts, at least the oldest, seems to me the Apostle's meaning. Obedience is the one condition of progress, and he entreats them toobey. If a man will but work that which is in him, will but make thepower of God his own, then is it well with him for evermore. Like hisMaster, Paul urges to action, to the highest operation, therefore to thehighest condition of humanity. As Christ was the Son of his Fatherbecause he did the will of the Father, so the Apostle would have themthe sons of the Father by doing the will of the Father. Whereto ye haveattained, walk by _that_. 

But there is more involved in this utterance than the words themselveswill expressly carry. Next to his love to the Father and the ElderBrother, the passion of Paul's life--I cannot call it less--is love toall his brothers and sisters. Everything human is dear to him: he canpart with none of it. Division, separation, the breaking of the body ofChrist, is that which he cannot endure. The body of his flesh had oncebeen broken, that a grander body might be prepared for him: was it forthat body itself to tear itself asunder? With the whole energy of hisgreat heart, Paul clung to unity. He could clasp together with might andmain the body of his Master--the body that Master loved because it was aspiritual body, with the life of his Father in it. And he knew well thatonly by walking in the truth to which they had attained, could they everdraw near to each other. Whereto we have attained, let us walk by that. 

My honoured friends, if we are not practical, we are nothing. Now, theone main fault in the Christian Church is separation, repulsion, recoilbetween the component particles of the Lord's body. I will not, I do notcare to inquire who is more to blame than another in the evil fact. Ionly care to insist that it is the duty of every individual man to beinnocent of the same. One main cause, perhaps I should say _the one_cause of this deathly condition, is that whereto we had, we did not, whereto we have attained, we do not walk by that. Ah, friend! do not nowthink of thy neighbour. Do not applaud my opinion as just from what thouhast seen around thee, but answer it from thy own being, thy ownbehaviour. Dost thou ever feel thus toward thy neighbour, --"Yes, ofcourse, every man is my brother; but how can I be a brother to him solong as he thinks me wrong in what I believe, and so long as I think hewrongs in his opinions the dignity of the truth?" What, I return, hasthe man no hand to grasp, no eyes into which yours may gaze far deeperthan your vaunted intellect can follow? Is there not, I ask, anything inhim to love? Who asks you to be of one opinion? It is the Lord who asksyou to be of one heart. Does the Lord love the man? Can the Lord love, where there is nothing to love? Are you wiser than he, inasmuch as youperceive impossibility where he has failed to discover it? Or will yousay, "Let the Lord love where he pleases: I will love where I please"?or say, and imagine you yield, "Well, I suppose I must, and therefore Iwill, --but with certain reservations, politely quiet in my own heart"?Or wilt thou say none of all these things, but do them all, one afterthe other, in the secret chambers of thy proud spirit? If you delight tocondemn, you are a wounder, a divider of the oneness of Christ. If youpride yourself on your loftier vision, and are haughty to yourneighbour, you are yourself a division and have reason to ask: "Am I aparticle of the body at all?" The Master will deal with thee upon thescore. Let it humble thee to know that thy dearest opinion, the one thoudost worship as if it, and not God, were thy Saviour, this very opinionthou art doomed to change, for it cannot possibly be right, if it workin thee for death and not for life. 

Friends, you have done me the honour and the kindness to ask me to speakto you. I will speak plainly. I come before you neither hiding anythingof my belief, nor foolishly imagining I can transfer my opinions intoyour bosoms. If there is one rôle I hate, it is that of theproselytizer. But shall I not come to you as a brother to brethren?Shall I not use the privilege of your invitation and of the place inwhich I stand, nay, must I not myself be obedient to the heavenlyvision, in urging you with all the power of my persuasion to setyourselves afresh to _walk_ according to that to which you haveattained. So doing, whatever yet there is to learn, you shall learn it. Thus doing, and thus only, can you draw nigh to the centre truth; thusdoing, and thus only, shall we draw nigh to each other, and becomebrothers and sisters in Christ, caring for each other's honour andrighteousness and true well-being. It is to them that keep hiscommandments that he and his Father will come to take up their abodewith them. Whether you or I have the larger share of the truth in thatwhich we hold, of this I am sure, that it is to them that keep hiscommandments that it shall be given to eat of the Tree of Life. Ibelieve that Jesus is the eternal son of the eternal Father; that in himthe ideal humanity sat enthroned from all eternity; that as he is thedivine man, so is he the human God; that there was no taking of ournature upon himself, but the showing of himself as he really was, andthat from evermore: these things, friends, I believe, though never wouldI be guilty of what in me would be the irreverence of opening my mouthin dispute upon them. Not for a moment would I endeavour by argument toconvince another of this, my opinion. If it be true, it is God's work toshow it, for logic cannot. But the more, and not the less, do I believethat he, who is no respecter of persons, will, least of all, respect theperson of him who thinks to please him by respecting his person, callinghim, "Lord, Lord, " and not doing the things that he tells him. Even if Ibe right, friend, and thou wrong, to thee who doest his commandmentsmore faithfully than I, will the more abundant entrance be administered. God grant that, when thou art admitted first, I may not be cast out, butadmitted to learn of thee that it is truth in the inward parts that herequireth, and they that have that truth, and they alone, shall everknow wisdom. Bear with me, friends, for I love and honour you. I seekbut to stir up your hearts, as I would daily stir up my own, to be trueto that which is deepest in us, --the voice and the will of the Father ofour spirits. 

Friends, I have not said we are not to utter our opinions. I have onlysaid we are not to make those opinions the point of a fresh start, thefoundation of a new building, the groundwork of anything. They are notto occupy us in our dealings with our brethren. Opinion is often thevery death of love. Love aright, and you will come to think aright; andthose who think aright must think the same. In the meantime, it mattersnothing. The thing that does matter is, that whereto we have attained, by that we should walk. But, while we are not to insist upon ouropinions, which is only one way of insisting upon ourselves, however wemay cloak the fact from ourselves in the vain imagination of therebyspreading the truth, we are bound by loftiest duty to spread the truth;for that is the saving of men. Do you ask, How spread it, if we are notto talk about it? Friends, I never said, Do not talk about the truth, although I insist upon a better and the only indispensable way: let yourlight shine. What I said before, and say again, is, Do not talk aboutthe lantern that holds the lamp, but make haste, uncover the light, andlet it shine. Let your light so shine before men that they may see yourgood works, --I incline to the Vatican reading of _good things_, --andglorify your Father who is in heaven. It is not, Let your good worksshine, but, Let your light shine. Let it be the genuine love of yourhearts, taking form in true deeds; not the doing of good deeds to provethat your opinions are right. If ye are thus true, your very talk aboutthe truth will be a good work, a shining of the light that is in you. Atrue smile is a good work, and may do much to reveal the Father who isin heaven; but the smile that is put on for the sake of looking right, or even for the sake of being right, will hardly reveal him, not beinglike him. Men say that you are cold: if you fear it may be so, do notthink to make yourselves warm by putting on the cloak of this or thatfresh opinion; draw nearer to the central heat, the living humanity ofthe Son of Man, that ye may have life in yourselves, so heat inyourselves, so light in yourselves; understand him, obey him, then yourlight will shine, and your warmth will warm. There is an infection, asin evil, so in good. The better we are, the more will men glorify God. If we trim our lamps so that we have light in our house, that light willshine through our windows, and give light to those that are not in thehouse. But remember, love of the light alone can trim the lamp. Had Lovetrimmed Psyche's lamp, it had never dropped the scalding oil that scaredhim from her. 

The man who holds his opinion the most honestly ought to see the mostplainly that his opinion must change. It is impossible a man should holdanything aright. How shall the created embrace the self-existentCreator? That Creator, and he alone, is _the truth_: how, then, shall aman embrace the truth? But to him who will live it, --to him, that is, who walks by that to which he has attained, --the truth will reach down athousand true hands for his to grasp. We would not wish to enclose thatwhich we can do more than enclose, --live in, namely, as our home, inherit, exult in, --the presence of the infinitely higher and better, the heart of the living one. And, if we know that God himself is ourinheritance, why should we tremble even with hatred at the suggestionthat we may, that we must, change our opinions? If we held them aright, we should know that nothing in them that is good can ever be lost; forthat is the true, whatever in them may be the false. It is only as theyhelp us toward God, that our opinions are worth a straw; and everynecessary change in them must be to more truth, to greater upliftingpower. Lord, change me as thou wilt, only do not send me away. That inmy opinions for which I really hold them, if I be a true man, will neverpass away; that which my evils and imperfections have, in the process ofembodying it, associated with the truth, must, thank God, perish andfall. My opinions, as my life, as my love, I leave in the hands of himwho is my being. I commend my spirit to him of whom it came. Why, then, that dislike to the very idea of such change, that dread of having toaccept the thing offered by those whom we count our opponents, which issuch a stumbling-block in the way in which we have to walk, such anobstruction to our yet inevitable growth? It may be objected that no manwill hold his opinions with the needful earnestness, who can entertainthe idea of having to change them. But the very objection speakspowerfully against such an overvaluing of opinion. For what is it but tosay that, in order to be wise, a man must consent to be a fool. Whatevermust be, a man must be able to look in the face. It is because we cleaveto our opinions rather than to the living God, because self and prideinterest themselves for their own vile sakes with that which belongsonly to the truth, that we become such fools of logic and temper that welie in the prison-houses of our own fancies, ideas, and experiences, shut the doors and windows against the entrance of the free spirit, andwill not inherit the love of the Father. 

Yet, for the help and comfort of even such a refuser as this, I wouldsay: Nothing which you reject can be such as it seems to you. For athing is either true or untrue: if it be untrue, it looks, so far likeitself that you reject it, and with it we have nothing more to do; but, if it be true, the very fact that you reject it shows that to you it hasnot appeared true, --has not appeared itself. The truth can never be evenbeheld but by the man who accepts it: the thing, therefore, which youreject, is not that which it seems to you, but a thing good, andaltogether beautiful, altogether fit for your gladsome embrace, --a thingfrom which you would not turn away, did you see it as it is, but rush toit, as Dante says, like the wild beast to his den, --so eager for therefuge of home. No honest man holds a truth for the sake of that becauseof which another honest man rejects it: how it may be with thedishonest, I have no confidence in my judgment, and hope I am not boundto understand. 

Let us then, my friends, beware lest our opinions come between us andour God, between us and our neighbour, between us and our better selves. Let us be jealous that the human shall not obscure the divine. For weare not _mere_ human: we, too, are divine; and there is no suchobliterator of the divine as the human that acts undivinely. The onesecurity against our opinions is to walk according to the truth whichthey contain. 

And if men seem to us unreasonable, opposers of that which to us isplainly true, let us remember that we are not here to convince men, butto let our light shine. Knowledge is not necessarily light; and it islight, not knowledge, that we have to diffuse. The best thing we can do, infinitely the best, indeed the only thing, that men may receive thetruth, is to be ourselves true. Beyond all doing of good is the beinggood; for he that is good not only does good things, but all that hedoes is good. Above all, let us be humble before the God of truth, faithfully desiring of him that truth in the inward parts which alonecan enable us to walk according to that which we have attained. May theGod of peace give you his peace; may the love of Christ constrain you;may the gift of the Holy Spirit be yours. Amen. 

TRUE CHRISTIAN MINISTERING. [Footnote: A spoken sermon. ]

MATT. Xx. 25--28--But Jesus called them unto him and said, Ye know thatthe princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they thatare great exercise authority upon them. But it should not be so amongyou: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: even asthe Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and togive his life a ransom for many. 

How little this is believed! People think, if they think about it atall, that this is very well in the church, but, as things go in theworld, it won't do. At least, their actions imply this, for every man isstruggling to get above the other. Every man would make his neighbourhis footstool that he may climb upon him to some throne of glory whichhe has in his own mind. There is a continual jostling, and crowding, andbuzzing, and striving to get promotion. Of course there are known andnoble exceptions; but still, there it is. And yet we call ourselves"Christians, " and we are Christians, all of us, thus far, that the truthis within reach of us all, that it has come nigh to us, talking to us atour door, and even speaking in our hearts, and yet this is the way inwhich we go on! The Lord said, "It shall not be so among you. " Did hemean only his twelve disciples? This was all that he had to say to them, but--thanks be to him!--he says the same to every one of us now. "Itshall not be so among you: that is not the way in my kingdom. " Thepeople of the world--the people who live in the world--will always thinkit best to get up, to have less and less of service to do, more and moreof service done to them. The notion of rank in the world is like apyramid; the higher you go up, the fewer are there who have to servethose above them, and who are served more than those underneath them. All who are under serve those who are above, until you come to the apex, and there stands some one who has to do no service, but whom all theothers have to serve. Something like that is the notion of position--ofsocial standing and rank. And if it be so in an intellectual wayeven--to say nothing of mere bodily service--if any man works to aposition that others shall all look up to him and that he may have tolook up to nobody, he has just put himself precisely into the samecondition as the people of whom our Lord speaks--as those who exercisedominion and authority, and really he thinks it a fine thing to beserved. 

But it is not so in the kingdom of heaven. The figure there is entirelyreversed. As you may see a pyramid reflected in the water, just so, in areversed way altogether, is the thing to be found in the kingdom of God. It is in this way: the Son of Man lies at the inverted apex of thepyramid; he upholds, and serves, and ministers unto all, and they whowould be high in his kingdom must go near to him at the bottom, touphold and minister to all that they may or can uphold and ministerunto. There is no other law of precedence, no other law of rank andposition in God's kingdom. And mind, that is _the_ kingdom. The otherkingdom passes away--it is a transitory, ephemeral, passing, bad thing, and away it must go. It is only there on sufferance, because in the mindof God even that which is bad ministers to that which is good; and whenthe new kingdom is built the old kingdom shall pass away. 

But the man who seeks this rank of which I have spoken, must be honestto follow it. It will not do to say, "I want to be great, and thereforeI will serve. " A man will not get at it so. He may begin so, but he willsoon find that that will not do. He must seek it for the truth's sake, for the love of his fellows, for the worship of God, for the delight inwhat is good. In the kingdom of heaven people do not think whether I ampromoted, or whether you are promoted. They are so absorbed in thedelight and glory of the goodness that is round about them, that theylearn not to think much about themselves. It is the bad that is in usthat makes us think about ourselves. It is necessary for us, becausethere is bad in us, to think about ourselves, but as we go on we thinkless and less about ourselves, until at last we are possessed with thespirit of the truth, the spirit of the kingdom, and live in gladness andin peace. We are prouder of our brothers and sisters than of ourselves;we delight to look at them. God looks at us, and makes us what hepleases, and this is what we must come to; there is no escape from it. 

But the Lord says, that "the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto. "Was he not ministered unto then? Ah! he was ministered unto as never manwas, but he did not come for that. Even now we bring to him theburnt-offerings of our very spirits, but he did not come for that. Itwas to help us that he came. We are told, likewise, that he is theexpress image of the Father. Then what he does, the Father must do; andhe says himself, when he is accused of breaking the Sabbath by doingwork on it, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. " Then this must beGod's way too, or else it could not have been Jesus's way. It is God'sway. Oh! do not think that God made us with his hands, and then turnedus out to find out our own way. Do not think of him as being always overour heads, merely throwing over us a wide-spread benevolence. You canimagine the tenderness of a mother's heart who takes her child even fromits beloved nurse to soothe and to minister to it, and that is like God;that is God. His hand is not only over us, but recollect what Davidsaid--"His hand was upon me. " I wish we were all as good Christians asDavid was. "Wherever I go, " he said, "God is there--beneath me, beforeme, his hand is upon me; if I go to sleep he is there; when I go down tothe dead he is there. " Everywhere is God. The earth underneath us is hishand upholding us. [Footnote: The waters are in the hollow of it. ] Everyspring-fountain of gladness about us is his making and his delight. Hetends us and cares for us; he is close to us, breathing into ournostrils the breath of life, and breathing into our spirit this thoughtand that thought to make us look up and recognize the love and the carearound us. What a poor thing for the little baby would it be if it wereto be constantly tended thus tenderly and preciously by its mother, butif it were never to open its eyes to look up and see her mother's facebending over it. A poor thing all its tending would be without that. Itis for that that the other exists; it is by that that the other comes. To recognize and know this loving-kindness, and to stand up in it strongand glad; this is the ministration of God unto us. Do you ever think "Icould worship God if he was so-and-so?" Do you imagine that God is notas good, as perfect, as absolutely all-in-all as your thoughts canimagine? Aye, you cannot come up to it; do what you will you never willcome up to it. Use all the symbols that we have in nature, in humanrelations, in the family--all our symbols of grace and tenderness, andloving-kindness between man and man, and between man and woman, andbetween woman and woman, but you can never come up to the thought ofwhat God's ministration is. When our Lord came he just let us see howhis Father was doing this always, he "came to give his life a ransom formany. " It was in giving his life a ransom for us that he died; that wasthe consummation and crown of it all, but it was his life that he gavefor us--his whole being, his whole strength, his whole energy--not alonehis days of trouble and of toil, but deeper than that, he gave his wholebeing for us; yea, he even went down to death for us. 

But how are we to learn this ministration? I will tell you where itbegins. The most of us are forced to work; if you do not see that thecommonest things in life belong to the Christian scheme, the plan ofGod, you have got to learn it. I say this is at the beginning. Most ofus have to work, and infinitely better is that for us than if we werenot forced to work, but not a very fine thing unless it goes tosomething farther. We are forced to work; and what is our work? It isdoing something for other people always. It is doing; it is ministrationin some shape or other. All kind of work is a serving, but it may not bealways Christian service. No. Some of us only work for our wages; wemust have them. We starve, and deserve to starve, if we do not work toget them. But we must go a little beyond that; yes, a very great waybeyond that. There is no honest work that one man does for another whichhe may not do as unto the Lord and not unto men; in which he cannot doright as he ought to do right. Thus, I say that the man who sees thecommonest thing in the world, recognizing it as part of the divine orderof things, the law by which the world goes, being the intention of Godthat one man should be serviceable and useful to another--the man, Isay, who does a thing well because of this, and who tries to do itbetter, is doing God service. 

We talk of "divine service. " It is a miserable name for a great thing. It is not service, properly speaking, at all. When a boy comes to hisfather and says, "May I do so and so for you?" or, rather, comes andbreaks out in some way, showing his love to his father--says, "May Icome and sit beside you? May I have some of your books? May I come andbe quiet a little in your room?" what would you think of that boy if hewent and said, "I have been doing my father a service. " So with prayingto and thanking God, do you call that serving God? If it is not servingyourselves it is worth nothing; if it is not the best condition you canfind yourselves in, you have to learn what it is yet. Not so; the workyou have to do to-morrow in the counting-house, in the shop, or whereveryou may be, is that by which you are to serve God. Do it with a highregard, and then there is nothing mean in it; but there is everythingmean in it if you are pretending to please people when you only look foryour wages. It is mean then; but if you have regard to doing a thingnobly, greatly, and truly, because it is the work that God has given youto do, then you are doing the divine service. 

Of course, this goes a great deal farther. We have endless opportunitiesof showing ourselves neighbours to the man who comes near us. That isthe divine service; that is the reality of serving God. The others oughtto be your reward, if "reward" is a word that can be used in such arelation at all. Go home and speak to God; nay, hold your tongue, andquietly go to him in the secret recesses of your own heart, and knowthat God is there. Say, "God has given me this work to do, and I amdoing it;" and that is your joy, that is your refuge, that is your goingto heaven. It is not service. The words "divine service, " as they areused, always move me to something of indignation. It is perfectpaganism; it is looking to please God by gathering together yourservices, --something that is supposed to be service to him. He isserving us for ever, and our Lord says, "If I have washed your feet, soyou ought to wash one another's feet. " This will be the way in which tominister for some. 

But still, when we are beginning to learn this, some of us are lookingabout us in a blind kind of way, thinking, "I wish I could serve God; Ido not know what to do! How is it to be begun? What is it at the root ofit? What shall I find out to do? Where is there something to do?"

Now, first of all, service is obedience, or it is nothing. This is whatI would gladly impress upon you; upon every young man who has come tothe point to be able to receive it. There is a tendency in us to thinkthat there is something degrading in obedience, something degrading inservice. According to the social judgment there is; according to thejudgment of the earth there is. Not so according to the judgment ofheaven, for God would only have us do the very thing he is doinghimself. You may see the tendency of this nowadays. There is scarcely ayoung man who will speak of his "master. " He feels as if there issomething that hurts his dignity in doing so. He does just what so manytheologians have done about God, who, instead of taking what our Lordhas given us, talk about God as "the Governor of the Universe. " So ayoung man talks about his master as "the governor;" nay, he even talksof his own father in that way, and then you come in another regionaltogether, and a worse one. I take these things as symptoms, mind. Iknow habits may be picked up, when they get common, without any greatcorresponding feeling; but a wrong habit tends always to a wrongfeeling, and if a man cannot learn to honour his father, so as to beable to call him "father, " I think one or the other of them is greatlyto blame, whether the father or the son I cannot say. I know there aresuch parents that to tell their children that God is their "Father" isno help to them, but the contrary. I heard of a lady just the other dayto whom, in trying to comfort her, some one said, "Remember God is yourFather. " "Do not mention the name 'father' to me, " she said. Ah! thatkind of fault does not lie in God, but in those who, not being like him, cannot use the names aright which belong to him. 

But now, as to this service, this obedience. Our Lord came to give hislife a ransom for the many, and to minister unto all in obedience to hisFather's will. We call him equal with God--at least, most of us here, Isuppose, do; of course we do not pretend to explain; we know that God isgreater than he, because he said so; but somehow, we can worship himwith our God, and we need not try to distinguish more than is necessaryabout it. But do you think that he was less divine than the Father whenhe was obedient? Observe his obedience to the will of his Father. He wasnot the ruler there. He did not give the commands; he obeyed them. Andyet we say He is God! Ah, that is no difficulty to me. Obedience is asdivine in its essence as command; nay, it may be more divine in thehuman being far; it cannot be more divine in God, but obedience is farmore divine in its essence with regard to humanity than command is. Itis not the ruling being who is most like God; it is the man whoministers to his fellow, who is like God; and the man who will juststernly and rigidly do what his master tells him--be that master what hemay--who is likest Christ in that one particular matter. Obedience isthe grandest thing in the world to begin with. Yes, and we shall endwith it too. I do not think the time will ever come when we shall nothave something to do, because we are told to do it without knowing why. Those parents act most foolishly who wish to explain everything to theirchildren--most foolishly. No; teach your child to obey, and you give himthe most precious lesson that can be given to a child. Let him come tothat before you have had him long, to do what he is told, and you havegiven him the plainest, first, and best lesson that you can give him. Ifhe never goes to school at all he had better have that lesson than allthe schooling in the world. Hence, when some people are accustomed toglorify this age of ours as being so much better in everything thanthose which went before, I look back to the times of chivalry, which weregard now, almost, as a thing to laugh at, or a merry thing to makejokes about; but I find that the one essential of chivalry wasobedience. It is recognized in our army still, but in those times it wascarried much farther. When a boy was seven years old he was sent intoanother family, and put with another boy there to do what? To wait withhim upon the master and the mistress of the house, and to be taught, aswell, what few things they knew in those times in the way ofintellectual cultivation. But he also learned stern, strict obedience, such as it was impossible for him to forget. Then, when he had beenthere seven years, hard at work, standing behind the chair, andministering, he was advanced a step; and what was that step? He was madean esquire. He had his armour given him; he had to watch his armour inthe chapel all night, laying it on the altar in silent devotion to God. I do not say that all these things were carried out afterwards, but thiswas the idea of them. He was an esquire, and what was the duty of anesquire? More service; more important service. He still had to attend tohis master, the knight. He had to watch him; he had to groom his horsefor him; he had to see that his horse was sound; he had to clean hisarmour for him; to see that every bolt, every rivet, every strap, everybuckle was sound, for the life of his master was in his hands. Themaster, having to fight, must not be troubled with these things, andtherefore the squire had to attend to them. Then seven years after thata more solemn ceremony is gone through, and the squire is made a knight;but is he free of service then? No; he makes a solemn oath to helpeverybody who needs help, especially women and children, and so he ridesout into the world to do the work of a true man. There was a grand andessential idea of Christianity in that--no doubt wonderfully broken andshattered, but not more so than the Christian church has been;wonderfully broken and shattered, but still the essence of obedience;and I say it is recognized in our army still, and in every army; andwhere it is lost it is a terrible loss, and an army is worth nothingwithout it. You remember that terrible story from the East, that fearfuldeath-charge, one of the grandest things in our history, although one ofthe most blundering:--

 "Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die; Into the valley of death Rode the Six Hundred. "

So with the Christian man; whatever meets him, obedience is the thing. If he is told by his conscience, which is the candle of God within him, that he must do a thing, why he must do it. He may tremble from head tofoot at having to do it, but he will tremble more if he turns his back. You recollect how our old poet Spenser shows us the Knight of the RedCross, who is the knight of holiness, ill in body, diseased in mind, without any of his armour on, attacked by a fearful giant. What does hedo? Run away? No, he has but time to catch up his sword, and, tremblingin every limb, he goes on to meet the giant; and that is the thing thatevery Christian man must do. I cannot put it too strongly; it isimpossible. There is no escape from it. If death itself lies before us, and we know it, there is nothing to be said; it is all to be done, andthen there is no loss; everything else is all lost unto God. Look at ourLord. He gave his life to do the will of his Father, and on he went anddid it. Do you think it was easy for him--easier for him than it wouldhave been for us? Ah! the greater the man the more delicate and tenderhis nature, and the more he shrinks from the opposition even of hisfellowmen, because he loves them. It was a terrible thing for Christ. Even now and then, even in the little touches that come to us in thescanty story (though enough) this breaks out. "We are told by John thatat the Last Supper He was troubled in spirit, and testified. " And thenhow he tries to comfort himself as soon as Judas has gone out to do thething which was to finish his great work: "Now is the Son of Manglorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, Godshall also glorify him in himself. " Then he adds, --just gathering up hisstrength, --"I shall straightway glorify him. " This was said to hisdisciples, but I seem to see in it that some of it was said for himself. This is the grand obedience! Oh, friends, this is a hard lesson tolearn. We find every day that it is a hard thing to teach. We arecontinually grumbling because we cannot get the people about us, ourservants, our tradespeople, or whoever they may be, to do just what wetell them. It makes half the misery in the world because they will havesomething of their own in it against what they are told. But are we notalways doing the same thing? and ought we not to learn something offorgiveness for them, and very much from the fact that we are just inthe same position? We only recognize in part that we are put here inthis world precisely to learn to be obedient. He who is our Lord and ourGod went on being obedient all the time, and was obedient always; and Isay it is as divine for us to obey as it is for God to rule. As I havesaid already, God is ministering the whole time. Now, do you want toknow how to minister? Begin by obeying. Obey every one who has a rightto command you; but above all, look to what our Lord has said, and findout what he wants you to do out of what he left behind, and try whetherobedience to that will not give a consciousness of use, of ministering, of being a part of the grand scheme and way of God in this world. Infact, take your place in it as a vital portion of the divine kingdom, or--to use a better figure than that--a vital portion of the Godhead. Try it, and see whether obedience is not salvation; whether service isnot dignity; whether you will not feel in yourselves that you have begunto be cleansed from your plague when you begin to say, "I will seek nomore to be above my fellows, but I will seek to minister to them, doingmy work in God's name for them. "

 "Who sweeps a room as for Thy law, Makes that and the action fine. "

Both the room and the action are good when done for God's sake. That isdear old George Herbert's way of saying the same truth, for every manhas his own way of saying it. The gift of the Spirit of God to make youthink as God thinks, feel as God feels, judge as God judges, is just theone thing that is promised. I do not know anything else that is promisedpositively but that, and who dares pray for anything else with perfectconfidence? God will not give us what we pray for except it be good forus, but that is one thing that we must have or perish. Therefore, let uspray for that, and with the name of God dwelling in us--if this is nottrue, the whole world is a heap of ruins--let us go forth and do thisservice of God in ministering to our fellows, and so helping him in hiswork of upholding, and glorifying and saving all. 

THE FANTASTIC IMAGINATION

That we have in English no word corresponding to the German _Mährchen_, drives us to use the word _Fairytale_, regardless of the fact that thetale may have nothing to do with any sort of fairy. The old use of theword _Fairy_, by Spenser at least, might, however, well be adduced, werejustification or excuse necessary where _need must_. 

Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, _Read Undine: thatis a fairytale; then read this and that as well, and you will see whatis a fairytale_. Were I further begged to describe the _fairytale_, ordefine what it is, I would make answer, that I should as soon think ofdescribing the abstract human face, or stating what must go toconstitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face isjust a face; and of all fairytales I know, I think _Undine_ the mostbeautiful. 

Many a man, however, who would not attempt to define _a man_, mightventure to say something as to what a man ought to be: even so much Iwill not in this place venture with regard to the fairytale, for my longpast work in that kind might but poorly instance or illustrate my nowmore matured judgment. I will but say some things helpful to thereading, in right-minded fashion, of such fairytales as I would wish towrite, or care to read. 

Some thinkers would feel sorely hampered if at liberty to use no formsbut such as existed in nature, or to invent nothing save in accordancewith the laws of the world of the senses; but it must not therefore beimagined that they desire escape from the region of law. Nothing lawlesscan show the least reason why it should exist, or could at best havemore than an appearance of life. 

The natural world has its laws, and no man must interfere with them inthe way of presentment any more than in the way of use; but theythemselves may suggest laws of other kinds, and man may, if he pleases, invent a little world of his own, with its own laws; for there is thatin him which delights in calling up new forms--which is the nearest, perhaps, he can come to creation. When such forms are new embodiments ofold truths, we call them products of the Imagination; when they are mereinventions, however lovely, I should call them the work of the Fancy: ineither case, Law has been diligently at work. 

His world once invented, the highest law that comes next into play is, that there shall be harmony between the laws by which the new world hasbegun to exist; and in the process of his creation, the inventor musthold by those laws. The moment he forgets one of them, he makes thestory, by its own postulates, incredible. To be able to live a moment inan imagined world, we must see the laws of its existence obeyed. Thosebroken, we fall out of it. The imagination in us, whose exercise isessential to the most temporary submission to the imagination ofanother, immediately, with the disappearance, of Law, ceases to act. Suppose the gracious creatures of some childlike region of Fairylandtalking either cockney or Gascon! Would not the tale, however lovelilybegun, sink at once to the level of the Burlesque--of all forms ofliterature the least worthy? A man's inventions may be stupid or clever, but if he do not hold by the laws of them, or if he make one law jarwith another, he contradicts himself as an inventor, he is no artist. Hedoes not rightly consort his instruments, or he tunes them in differentkeys. The mind of man is the product of live Law; it thinks by law, itdwells in the midst of law, it gathers from law its growth; with law, therefore, can it alone work to any result. Inharmonious, unconsortingideas will come to a man, but if he try to use one of such, his workwill grow dull, and he will drop it from mere lack of interest. Law isthe soil in which alone beauty will grow; beauty is the only stuff inwhich Truth can be clothed; and you may, if you will, call Imaginationthe tailor that cuts her garments to fit her, and Fancy his journeymanthat puts the pieces of them together, or perhaps at most embroiderstheir button-holes. Obeying law, the maker works like his creator; notobeying law, he is such a fool as heaps a pile of stones and calls it achurch. 

In the moral world it is different: there a man may clothe in new forms, and for this employ his imagination freely, but he must invent nothing. He may not, for any purpose, turn its laws upside down. He must notmeddle with the relations of live souls. The laws of the spirit of manmust hold, alike in this world and in any world he may invent. It wereno offence to suppose a world in which everything repelled instead ofattracted the things around it; it would be wicked to write a talerepresenting a man it called good as always doing bad things, or a manit called bad as always doing good things: the notion itself isabsolutely lawless. In physical things a man may invent; in moral thingshe must obey--and take their laws with him into his invented world aswell. 

"You write as if a fairytale were a thing of importance: must it have ameaning?"

It cannot help having some meaning; if it have proportion and harmony ithas vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty may be plainer in itthan the truth, but without the truth the beauty could not be, and thefairytale would give no delight. Everyone, however, who feels the story, will read its meaning after his own nature and development: one man willread one meaning in it, another will read another. 

"If so, how am I to assure myself that I am not reading my own meaninginto it, but yours out of it?"

Why should you be so assured? It may be better that you should read yourmeaning into it. That may be a higher operation of your intellect thanthe mere reading of mine out of it: your meaning may be superior tomine. 

"Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?"

If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If youdo see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine workof art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it willmean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work ofart that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matterthat neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is therenot so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not evenwake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is notfor you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the namewritten under it will not serve you much. At all events, the business ofthe painter is not to teach zoology. 

But indeed your children are not likely to trouble you about themeaning. They find what they are capable of finding, and more would betoo much. For my part, I do not write for children, but for thechildlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five. 

A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it isnot an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit. Anallegory must be Mastery or Moorditch. 

A fairytale, like a butterfly or a bee, helps itself on all sides, sipsat every wholesome flower, and spoils not one. The true fairytale is, tomy mind, very like the sonata. We all know that a sonata meanssomething; and where there is the faculty of talking with suitablevagueness, and choosing metaphor sufficiently loose, mind may approachmind, in the interpretation of a sonata, with the result of a more orless contenting consciousness of sympathy. But if two or three men satdown to write each what the sonata meant to him, what approximation todefinite idea would be the result? Little enough--and that little morethan needful. We should find it had roused related, if not identical, feelings, but probably not one common thought. Has the sonata thereforefailed? Had it undertaken to convey, or ought it to be expected toimpart anything defined, anything notionally recognizable?

"But words are not music; words at least are meant and fitted to carry aprecise meaning!"

It is very seldom indeed that they carry the exact meaning of any userof them! And if they can be so used as to convey definite meaning, itdoes not follow that they ought never to carry anything else. Words arelive things that may be variously employed to various ends. They canconvey a scientific fact, or throw a shadow of her child's dream on theheart of a mother. They are things to put together like the pieces of adissected map, or to arrange like the notes on a stave. Is the music inthem to go for nothing? It can hardly help the definiteness of ameaning: is it therefore to be disregarded? They have length, andbreadth, and outline: have they nothing to do with depth? Have they onlyto describe, never to impress? Has nothing any claim to their use butthe definite? The cause of a child's tears may be altogetherundefinable: has the mother therefore no antidote for his vague misery?That may be strong in colour which has no evident outline. A fairytale, a sonata, a gathering storm, a limitless night, seizes you and sweepsyou away: do you begin at once to wrestle with it and ask whence itspower over you, whither it is carrying you? The law of each is in themind of its composer; that law makes one man feel this way, another manfeel that way. To one the sonata is a world of odour and beauty, toanother of soothing only and sweetness. To one, the cloudy rendezvous isa wild dance, with a terror at its heart; to another, a majestic marchof heavenly hosts, with Truth in their centre pointing their course, butas yet restraining her voice. The greatest forces lie in the region ofthe uncomprehended. 

I will go farther. --The best thing you can do for your fellow, next torousing his conscience, is--not to give him things to think about, butto wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things forhimself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods inwhich thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake butone thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does shemake any two men in the same place at the same moment think the samething? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is itnothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding--thepower that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinkingat work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and notafter many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: suchought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be. 

"But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you nevermeant!"

Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he willdraw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work ofart! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things; what matterwhether I meant them or not? They are there none the less that I cannotclaim putting them there! One difference between God's work and man'sis, that, while God's work cannot mean more than he meant, man's mustmean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there islayer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the samethought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God's things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified andadapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts;therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into suchcombinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, somany are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are therelations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in everysymbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for hewas dealing all the time with things that came from thoughts beyond hisown. 

"But surely you would explain your idea to one who asked you?"

I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSEunder what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imaginationwould be nearly, if not quite, as absurd. The tale is there, not tohide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open yourdoor to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say, "Roses! Boil them, or we won't have them!" My tales may not be roses, but I will not boil them. 

So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him. 

If a writer's aim be logical conviction, he must spare no logical pains, not merely to be understood, but to escape being misunderstood; wherehis object is to move by suggestion, to cause to imagine, then let himassail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an aeolian harp. Ifthere be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale ofmine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flashagain. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to aninsignificant, ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly. 

The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of ourintellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that partof us for whose sake it exists. We spoil countless precious things byintellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must--he cannot help himself--become a little man, that is, a dwarf. Hewill, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself avery large creature indeed. 

If any strain of my "broken music" make a child's eyes flash, or hismother's grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain.