AMONG FAMOUS BOOKS BY JOHN KELMAN, D. D. HODDER AND STOUGHTONLONDON; NEW YORK; TORONTO _Printed in 1912_ PREFACE The object of the following lectures is twofold. They were delivered inthe first place for the purpose of directing the attention of readers tobooks whose literary charm and spiritual value have made themconspicuous in the vast literature of England. Such a task, however, tends to be so discursive as to lose all unity, depending absolutelyupon the taste of the individual, and the chances of his experience inreading. I have accordingly taken for the general theme of the book that constantstruggle between paganism and idealism which is the deepest fact in thelife of man, and whose story, told in one form or another, provides thematter of all vital literature. This will serve as a thread to givecontinuity of thought to the lectures, and it will keep them near tocentral issues. Having said so much, it is only necessary to add one word more by way ofexplanation. In quest of the relations between the spiritual and thematerial, or (to put it otherwise) of the battle between the flesh andthe spirit, we shall dip into three different periods of time: (1)Classical, (2) Sixteenth Century, (3) Modern. Each of these has acharacter of its own, and the glimpses which we shall have of them oughtto be interesting in their own right. But the similarity between thethree is more striking than the contrast, for human nature does notgreatly change, and its deepest struggles are the same in allgenerations. CONTENTS LECTURE I The Gods of Greece LECTURE II Marius the Epicurean LECTURE III The Two Fausts LECTURE IV Celtic Revivals of Paganism LECTURE V John Bunyan LECTURE VI Pepys' Diary LECTURE VII Sartor Resartus LECTURE VIII Pagan Reactions LECTURE IX Mr. G. K. Chesterton's Point of View LECTURE X The Hound of Heaven LECTURE I THE GODS OF GREECE It has become fashionable to divide the rival tendencies of modernthought into the two classes of Hellenistic and Hebraistic. The divisionis an arbitrary and somewhat misleading one, which has done less thanjustice both to the Greek and to the Hebrew genius. It has associatedGreece with the idea of lawless and licentious paganism, and Israel withthat of a forbidding and joyless austerity. Paganism is an interestingword, whose etymology reminds us of a time when Christianity had won thetowns, while the villages still worshipped heathen gods. It is difficultto define the word without imparting into our thought of it the idea ofthe contrast between Christian dogma and all other religious thought andlife. This, however, would be an extremely unfair account of the matter, and, in the present volume, the word will be used without referenceeither to nationality or to creed, and it will stand for thematerialistic and earthly tendency as against spiritual idealism of anykind. Obviously such paganism as this, is not a thing which has died outwith the passing of heathen systems of religion. It is terribly alive inthe heart of modern England, whether formally believing or unbelieving. Indeed there is the twofold life of puritan and pagan within us all. Arecent well-known theologian wrote to his sister: "I am naturally acannibal, and I find now my true vocation to be in the South SeaIslands, not after your plan, to be Arnold to a troop of savages, but tobe one of them, where they are all selfish, lazy, and brutal. " It isthis universality of paganism which gives its main interest to such astudy as the present. Paganism is a constant and not a temporary orlocal phase of human life and thought, and it has very little to do withthe question of what particular dogmas a man may believe or reject. Thus, for example, although the Greek is popularly accepted as the typeof paganism and the Christian of idealism, yet the lines of thatdistinction have often been reversed. Christianity has at times becomehard and cold and lifeless, and has swept away primitive nationalidealisms without supplying any new ones. The Roman ploughman must havemissed the fauns whom he had been accustomed to expect in the thicket atthe end of his furrow, when the new faith told him that these werenothing but rustling leaves. When the swish of unseen garments besidethe old nymph-haunted fountain was silenced, his heart was left lonelyand his imagination impoverished. Much charm and romance vanished fromhis early world with the passing of its pagan creatures, and indeed itis to this cause that we must trace the extraordinarily far-reaching andvaried crop of miraculous legends of all sorts which sprang up in earlyCatholic times. These were the protest of unconscious idealism againstthe bare world from which its sweet presences had vanished. "In th' olde dayes of the King Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye. The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede; This was the olde opinion, as I rede. But now can no man see none elves mo. For now the grete charitee and prayeres Of limitours and othere holy freres, * * * * * This maketh that there been no fayeryes. For ther as wont to walken was an elf, Ther walketh now the limitour himself. " Against this impoverishment the human revolt was inevitable, and itexplains the spirit in such writers as Shelley and Goethe. Children ofnature, who love the sun and the grass, and are at home upon the earth, their spirits cry for something to delight and satisfy them, nearer thanspeculations of theology or cold pictures of heaven. Wordsworth, in hisfamous lines, has expressed the protest in the familiar words:-- "Great God, I'd rather be A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. " The early classic thought which found its most perfect expression in themythology of Greece was not originally or essentially pagan. It washumanistic, and represented the response of man's spirit to that freeand beautiful spirit which he found in nature around him. All suchsymbolism of Greek religion as that of the worship of Dionysus andCeres, shows this. In these cults the commonest things of life, the wineand corn wherewith man sustained himself, assumed a higher and richermeaning. Food and drink were not mere sensual gratifications, but divinegifts, as they are in the twenty-third Psalm; and the whole materialworld was a symbol and sacrament of spiritual realities and blessings. Similarly the ritual of Eleusis interpreted man's common life into awonderful world of mystic spirituality. Thus there was a great fund ofspiritual insight of the finest and most beautiful sort in the veryheart of that life which has thoughtlessly been adopted as the type ofpaganism. Yet the history of Greece affords the explanation and even thejustification of the popular idea. The pagan who is in us all, tendsever to draw us downwards from sacramental and symbolic ways of thinkingto the easier life of the body and the earth. On the one hand, for bloodthat is young and hot, the life of sense is overwhelming. On the otherhand, for the weary toiler whose mind is untrained, the impression ofthe world is that of heavy clay. Each in his own way finds idealismdifficult to retain. The spirituality of nature floats like a dreambefore the mind of poets, and is seen now and then in wistful glimpsesby every one; but it needs some clearer and less elusive form, as wellas some definite association with conscience, if it is to be defendedagainst the pull of the green earth. It has been well said that, for theGreek, God was the view; but when the traveller goes forward into theview, he meets with many things which it is dangerous to identify withGod. For the young spirit of the early times the temptation toearthliness was overwhelming. The world was fair, its gates were open, and its barriers all down. Men took from literature and from religionjust as much of spirituality as they understood and as little as theydesired, and the effect was swift and inevitable in that degenerationwhich reached its final form in the degraded sensuality of the laterRoman Empire. The confusing element in all such inquiry lies in the fact that one cannever get an unmixed paganism nor a perfect idealism. Just as the claimsof body and spirit are in our daily life inextricably interwoven, so theGreek thought hung precariously between the two, and was always more orless at the mercy of the individual interpreter and of the relativestrength of his tastes and passions. So we shall find it all through thecourse of these studies. It would be preposterous to deny some sort ofidealism to almost any pagan who has ever lived. The contrast betweenpagan and idealist is largely a matter of proportion and preponderatingtendency: yet the lines are clear enough to enable us to work with thisdistinction and to find it valuable and illuminating. The fundamental fact to remember in studying any of the myths of Greeceis, that we have here a composite and not a simple system of thought andimagination. There are always at least two layers: the primitive, andthe Olympian which came later. The primitive conceptions were thoseafforded by the worship of ghosts, of dead persons, and of animals. MissJane Harrison has pointed out in great detail the primitive elementswhich lingered on through the Olympian worship. Perhaps the moststriking instance which she quotes is the Anthesteria, or festival offlowers, at the close of which the spirits were dismissed with theformula, "Depart, ye ghosts, the revels now are ended. " Mr. Andrew Langhas suggested that the animals associated with gods and goddesses (suchas the mouse which is found in the hand, or the hair, or beside the feetof the statues of Apollo, the owl of Minerva, etc. ) are relics of theearlier worship. This would satisfactorily explain much of thedisreputable element which lingered on side by side with the noblethoughts of Greek religion. The Olympians, a splendid race of gods, representing the highest human ideals, arrived with the Greeks; but forthe sake of safety, or of old association, the primitive worship wasretained and blended with the new. In the extreme case of humansacrifice, it was retained in the form of surrogates--little woodenimages, or even actual animals, being sacrificed in lieu of the oldervictims. But all along the line, while the new gods brought theirspiritual conceptions, the older ones held men to a cruder and morefleshly way of thinking. There is a similar blend of new and old in allsuch movements as that of the Holy Grail and the Arthurian legends, where we can see the combination of Christian and pagan elements soclearly as to be able to calculate the moral and spiritual effect ofeach. Thus we have in the early Greek mythology much of real paganisminvolved in the retention of the old and earth-bound gods which attachedthemselves to the nobler Olympians as they came, and dragged them downto the ancient level. This blending may be seen very clearly in the mythology of Homer andHesiod. There it has been so thorough that the only trace ofsuperposition which we can find is the succession of the dynasties ofChronos and Jupiter. The result is the most appalling conception of themorality of celestial society. No earthly state could hope to continuefor a decade upon the principles which governed the life of heaven; andman, if he were to escape the sudden retributions which must inevitablyfollow anything like an imitation of his gods, must live more decentlythan they. Now Homer was, in a sense, the Bible of the Greeks, and as societyimproved in morals, and thought was directed more and more fearlesslytowards religious questions, the puzzle as to the immoralities of thegods became acute. The religious and intellectual developments of thesixth century B. C. Led to various ways of explaining the old stories. Sophocles is conciliatory, conceiving religion in a sunny good temperwhich will make the best of the situation whatever it is. Æschylus issombre and deeply tragic, while yet he remains orthodox on the side ofthe gods. But Euripides is angry at the old scandals, and in the name ofhumanity his scepticism rises in protest. It may be interesting, at this point, to glance for a little at thevarious theories which have been brought forward to explain the myths. The commonest of all such theories is that the divine personalitiesstand for the individual powers of nature. Most especially, the gods andgoddesses symbolise the sun, moon, and stars, night and morning, summerand winter, and the general story of the year. No one will deny that thepersonification of Nature had a large share in all mythology. TheOriental mythologies rose to a large extent in this fashion. The Baalsof Semitic worship all stood for one or other of the manifestations ofthe fructifying powers of nature, and the Chinese dragon is the symbolof the spiritual mystery of life suggested by the mysterious and proteancharacteristics of water. It is very natural that this should be so, andevery one who has ever felt the power of the sun in the East willsympathise with Turner's dying words, "The sun, he is God. " As a key to mythology this theory was especially associated with thename of Plutarch among ancient writers, and it has been accepted more orless completely by a vast number of moderns. In the late Sir GeorgeCox's fascinating stories it was run to utter absurdity. The story isbeautifully told in every case, and when we have enjoyed it and feltsomething of the exquisiteness of the conception and of the variety andrange of thought exhibited in the fertile minds of those who had firsttold it, Sir George Cox draws us back sharply to the assertion that allwe have been hearing really meant another phase of sunset or sunrise, until we absolutely rebel and protest that the effect is unaccountableupon so meagre a cause. It is an easy method of dealing with folk-lore. If you take the rhyme of Mary and her little lamb, and call Mary the sunand the lamb the moon, you will achieve astonishing results, both inreligion and astronomy, when you find that the lamb followed Mary toschool one day. This nature element, however, had undoubtedly a veryconsiderable part in the origin of myths, and when Max Müller combinesit with philology it opens a vast field of extraordinarily interestinginterpretations resting upon words and their changes. A further theory of myths is that which regards them as the stories ofraces told as if they had been the lives of individuals. This, as iswell known, has had permanent effects upon the interpretation not onlyof Greek but of Hebrew ancient writings, and it throws light upon someof those chapters of Genesis which, without it, are but strings offorgotten and unpronounceable names. But beyond all such explanations, after we have allowed for them inevery possible way, there remains a conviction that behind thesefascinating stories there is a certain irreducible remainder of actualfact. Individual historic figures, seen through the mists of time, walkbefore our eyes in the dawn. Long before history was written men livedand did striking deeds. Heroic memories and traditions of suchdistinguished men passed in the form of fireside tales from onegeneration to another through many centuries. Now they come to us, doubtless hugely exaggerated and so far away from their originals as tobe unrecognisable, and yet, after all, based upon things that happened. For the stories have living touches in them which put blood into theglorious and ghostly figures, and when we come upon a piece of genuinehuman nature there is no possibility of mistaking it. This thing hasbeen born, not manufactured: nor has any portrait that is lifelike beendrawn without some model. Thus, through all the mist and haze of thepast, we see men and women walking in the twilight--dim and uncertainforms indeed, yet stately and heroic. Now all this has a bearing upon the main subject of our present study. Meteorology and astronomy are indeed noble sciences, but the properstudy of mankind is man. While, no doubt, the sources of all earlyfolk-lore are composite, yet it matters greatly for the student of thesethings whether the beginnings of religious thought were merely in theclouds, or whether they had their roots in the same earth whereon welive and labour. The heroes and great people of the early days areeternal figures, because each new generation gives them a resurrectionin its own life and experience. They have eternal human meanings, beneath whatever pageantry of sun and stars the ancient heroes passedfrom birth to death. Soon everything of them is forgotten except theideas about human life for which they stand. Then each of them becomesthe expression of a thought common to humanity, and therefore secure ofits immortality to the end of time; for the undying interest is thehuman interest, and all ideas which concern the life of man are immortalwhile man's race lasts. In the case of such legends as those we arediscussing, it is probable that beyond the mere story some such ideal ofhuman life was suggested from the very first. Certainly, as time wenton, the ideal became so identified with the hero, that to thoughtful menhe came to stand for a particular idealism of human experience. ThusPater speaks of Dionysus as from first to last a type of second birth, opening up the hope of a possible analogy between the resurrections ofnature and something else, reserved for human souls. "The beautiful, weeping creatures, vexed by the wind, suffering, torn to pieces, andrejuvenescent again at last, like a tender shoot of living green out ofthe hardness and stony darkness of the earth, becomes an emblem or idealof chastening and purification, and of final victory through suffering. "This theory would also explain the fact that one nation's myths are notonly similar to, but to a large extent practically identical with, thoseof other nations. There is a common stock of ideas supplied by thecommon elements of human nature in all lands and times; and these, whenfinely expressed, produce a common fund of ideals which will appeal tothe majority of the human race. Thus mythology was originally simple storytelling. But men, even in thetelling of the story, began to find meanings for it beyond the merenarration of events; and thus there arose in connection with all storiesthat were early told, a certain number of judgments of what was high andadmirable in human nature. These were not grounded upon philosophical orscientific bases, but upon the bed-rock of man's experience. Out ofthese judgments there grew the great ideals which from first to lasthave commanded the spirit of man. In this connection it is interesting to remember that in Homer the menwere regarded as the means of revealing ideas and characters, and not asmere natural objects in themselves. The things among which they livedare described and known by their appearances; the men are known by theirwords and deeds. "There is no inventory of the features of men, or offair women, as there is in the Greek poets of the decline or in modernnovels. Man is something different from a curious bit of workmanshipthat delights the eye. He is a 'speaker of words and a doer of deeds, 'and his true delineation is in speech and action, in thought andemotion. " Thus, from the first, ideas are the central and importantelement. They spring from and cling to stories of individual humanlives, and the finest of them become ideals handed down for the guidanceof the future race. The myths, with their stories of gods and men, andtheir implied or declared religious doctrines, are but the forms inwhich these ideals find expression. The ideals remain, but the forms oftheir expression change, advancing from cruder to finer and from morefanciful to more exactly true, with the advance of thought and culture. Meanwhile, the ideals are above the world, --dwelling, like Plato's, inheaven, --and there are always two alternatives for every man. He may goback either with deliberate intellectual assent, or passion-led insensual moods, to the powers of nature and the actual human stories intheir crude and earthly form; or he may follow the idealisation of humanexperience, and discover and adopt the ideals of which the earthlystories and the nature processes are but shadows and hints. In theformer case he will be a pagan; in the latter, a spiritual idealist. Inwhat remains of this lecture, we shall consider four of the most famousGreek legends--those of Prometheus, Medusa, Orpheus, and Apollo--in thelight of what has just been stated. Prometheus, in the early story, is a Titan, who in the heavenly war hadfought on the side of Zeus. It is, however, through the medium of thelater story that Prometheus has exercised his eternal influence upon thethought of men. In this form of the legend he appears constantly livingand striving for man's sake as the foe of God. We hear of him making menand women of clay and animating them with celestial fire, teaching themthe arts of agriculture, the taming of horses, and the uses of plants. Again we hear of Zeus, wearied with the race of men--the new divinitymaking a clean sweep, and wishing to begin with better material. Zeus isthe lover of strength and the despiser of weakness, and from the earthwith its weak and pitiful mortals he takes away the gift of fire, leaving them to perish of cold and helplessness. Then it is thatPrometheus climbs to heaven, steals back the fire in his hollow cane, and brings it down to earth again. For this benefaction to the despisedrace Zeus has him crucified, fixed for thirty thousand years on a rockin the Asian Caucasus, where, until Herakles comes to deliver him, thevulture preys upon his liver. Such a story tempts the allegorist, and indeed the main drift of itsmeaning is unmistakable. Cornutus, a contemporary of Christ, explainedit "of forethought, the quick inventiveness of human thought chained tothe painful necessities of human life, its liver gnawed unceasingly bycares. " In the main, and as a general description, this is quiteunquestionable. Prometheus is the prototype of a thousand other figuresof the same kind, not in mythology only, but in history, which tell thestory of the spiritual effort of man frustrated and brought to earth. Itis the story of Tennyson's youth who "Rode a horse with wings that would have flown But that his heavy rider bore him down. " Only, in the Prometheus idea, it is not a man's senses, as in Tennyson'spoem, but the outward necessity of things, the heavy and cruel powers ofnature around him, that prove too much for his aspirations. In thisrespect the story is singularly characteristic of the Greek spirit. Thatspirit was always daring with truth, feeling the risks of knowledge andgladly taking them, passionately devoted to the love of knowledge forits own sake. The legend has, however, a deeper significance than this. One of themost elemental questions that man can ask is, What is the relation ofthe gods to human inquiry and freedom of thought? There always has beena school of thinkers who have regarded knowledge as a thing essentiallyagainst the gods. The search for knowledge thus becomes a phase ofTitanism; and wherever it is found, it must always be regarded in thelight of a secret treasure stolen from heaven against the will ofcontemptuous or jealous divinities. On the other hand, knowledge isobviously the friend of man. Prometheus is man's champion, and no figurecould make a stronger appeal than his. Indeed, in not a few respects heapproaches the Christian ideal, and must have brought in some measurethe same solution to those who were able to receive it. Few touches inliterature, for instance, are finer than that in which he comforts thedaughters of Ocean, speaking to them from his cross. The idea of Titanism has become the commonplace of poets. It is familiarin Milton, Byron, Shelley, and countless others, and Goethe tells usthat the fable of Prometheus lived within him. Many of the Titanicfigures, while they appeared to be blaspheming, were really fighting fortruth and justice. The conception of the gods as jealous andcontemptuous was not confined to the Greek mythology, but has appearedwithin the pale of Christian faith as well as in all heathen cults. Nature, in some of its aspects, seems to justify it. The great powersappear to be arrayed against man's efforts, and present the appearanceof cruel and bullying strength. Evidently upon such a theory somethingmust go, either our faith in God or our faith in humanity; and whenfaith has gone we shall be left in the position either of atheists or ofslaves. There have been those who accepted the alternative and went intothe one camp or the other according to their natures; but the Greeklegend did not necessitate this. There was found, as in Æschylus, a hintof reconciliation, which may be taken to represent that conviction sodeep in the heart of humanity, that there is "ultimate decency inthings, " if one could only find it out; although knowledge must alwaysremain dangerous, and may at times cost a man dear. The real secret lies in the progress of thought in its conceptions ofGod and life. Nature, as we know and experience it, presents indeed anappalling spectacle against which everything that is good in usprotests. God, so long as He is but half understood, is utterlyunpardonable; and no man yet has succeeded in justifying the ways of Godto men. But "to understand all is to forgive all"--or rather, it is toenter into a larger view of life, and to discover how much there is in_us_ that needs to be forgiven. This is the wonderful story which wastold by the Hebrews so dramatically in their Book of Job; and the phasesthrough which that drama passes might be taken as the completestcommentary on the myth of Prometheus which ever has been or can bewritten. In two great battlegrounds of the human spirit the problem raised byPrometheus has been fought out. On the ground of science, who does notknow the defiant and Titanic mood in which knowledge has at times beensought? The passion for knowing flames through the gloom and depressionand savagery of the darker moods of the student. Difficulties arecontinually thrust into the way of knowledge. The upper powers seem tobe jealous and outrageously thwarting, and the path of learning becomesa path of tears and blood. That is all that has been reached by many agrim and brave student spirit. But there is another possibleexplanation; and there are those who have attained to a persuasion thatthe gods have made knowledge difficult in order that the wise may alsobe the strong. The second battleground is that of philanthropy. Here also there hasbeen an apparently reasonable Titanism. Men have struggled in vain, andthen protested in bitterness, against the waste and the meaninglessnessof the human _débâcle_. The only aspect of the powers above them hasseemed to many noble spirits that of the sheer cynic. He that sitteth inthe heavens must be laughing indeed. In Prometheus the Greek spirit putsup its daring plea for man. It pleads not for pity merely, but for theworth of human nature. The strong gods cannot be justified in oppressingman upon the plea that might is right, and that they may do what theyplease. The protest of Prometheus, echoed by Browning's protest ofIxion, appeals to the conscience of the world as right; and, kindling anoble Titanism, puts the divine oppressor in the wrong. Finally, theredawns over the edge of the ominous dark, the same hope that Prometheusvaguely hinted to the Greek. To him who has understood the story ofCalvary, the ultimate interpretation of all human suffering is divinelove. That which the cross of Prometheus in all its outrageous crueltyyet hints as in a whisper, the Cross of Christ proclaims to the end oftime, shouting down the centuries from its blood and pain that God islove, and that in all our affliction He is afflicted. Another myth of great beauty and far-reaching significance is that ofMedusa. It is peculiarly interesting on account of its double edge, forit shows us both the high possibilities of ideal beauty and the deepestdepths of pagan horror. Robert Louis Stevenson tells us how, as he hungbetween life and death in a flooded river of France, looking around himin the sunshine and seeing all the lovely landscape, he suddenly feltthe attack of the other side of things. "The devouring element in theuniverse had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by arunning stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I hadheard some of the hollow notes of _Pan's_ music. Would the wicked riverdrag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time?"It was in this connection that he gave us that striking and mostsuggestive phrase, "The beauty and the terror of the world. " It is thiscombination of beauty and terror for which the myth of Medusa stands. Itfinds its meaning in a thousand instances. On the one hand, it is seenin such ghastly incidents as those in which the sheer horror of nature'saction, or of man's crime, becomes invested with an illicit beauty, andfascinates while it kills. On the other hand, it is seen in all of themany cases in which exquisite beauty proves also to be dangerous, or atleast sinister. "The haunting strangeness in beauty" is at once one ofthe most characteristic and one of the most tragic things in the world. There were three sisters, the Gorgons, who dwelt in the Far West, beyondthe stream of ocean, in that cold region of Atlas where the sun nevershines and the light is always dim. Medusa was one of them, the onlymortal of the trio. She was a monster with a past, for in her girlhoodshe had been the beautiful priestess of Athene, golden-haired and verylovely, whose life had been devoted to virgin service of the goddess. Her golden locks, which set her above all other women in the desire ofNeptune, had been her undoing: and when Athene knew of the frailty ofher priestess, her vengeance was indeed appalling. Each lock of thegolden hair was transformed into a venomous snake. The eyes that hadbeen so love-inspiring were now bloodshot and ferocious. The skin, withits rose and milk-white tenderness, had changed to a loathsome greenishwhite. All that remained of Medusa was a horrid thing, a mere grinningmask with protruding beast-like tusks and tongue hanging out. Sodreadful was the aspect of the changed priestess, that her face turnedall those who chanced to catch sight of it to stone. There is a degreeof hideousness which no eyes can endure; and so it came to pass that thecave wherein she dwelt, and all the woods around it, were full of menand wild beasts who had been petrified by a glance of her, --grim fossilsimmortalised in stone, --while the snakes writhed and the red eyesrolled, waiting for another victim. This was not a case into which any hope of redemption could enter, andthere was nothing for it but to slay her. To do this, Perseus set outupon his long journey, equipped with the magic gifts of swiftness andinvisibility, and bearing on his arm the shield that was also a mirror. The whole picture is infinitely dreary. As he travels across the darksea to the land where the pillars of Atlas are visible far off, toweringinto the sky, the light decreases. In the murky and dangerous twilighthe forces the Graiai, those grey-haired sisters with their miserablefragmentary life, to bestir their aged limbs and guide him to theGorgons' den. By the dark stream, where the yellow light broodedeverlastingly, he reached at last that cave of horrors. Well was it thenfor Perseus that he was invisible, for the snakes that were Medusa'shair could see all round. But at that time Medusa was asleep and thesnakes asleep, and in the silence and twilight of the land where thereis "neither night nor day, nor cloud nor breeze nor storm, " he held themagic mirror over against the monster, beheld her in it without changeor injury to himself, severed the head, and bore it away to place it onAthene's shield. It is very interesting to notice how Art has treated the legend. It wasnatural that so vivid an image should become a favourite alike withpoets and with sculptors, but there was a gradual development from theold hideous and terrible representations, back to the calm repose of abeautiful dead face. This might indeed more worthily record the maiden'stragedy, but it missed entirely the thing that the old myth had said. The oldest idea was horrible beyond horror, for the darker side ofthings is always the most impressive to primitive man, and sheerugliness is a category with which it is easy to work on simple minds. The rudest art can achieve such grotesque hideousness long before it candepict beauty. Later, as we have seen, Art tempered the face to beauty, but in so doing forgot the meaning of the story. It was the old storythat has been often told, of the fair and frail one who had fallen amongthe pitiless. For her there was no compassion either in mortals or inimmortals. It was the tragedy of sweet beauty desecrated and lost, thepetrifying horror of which has found its most unflinching modernexpression in Thomas Hardy's _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_. _Corruptiooptimi pessima_. To interpret such stories as these by any reference to the rising sun, or the rivalry between night and dawn, is simply to stultify the scienceof interpretation. It may, indeed, have been true that most of those whotold and heard the tale in ancient times accepted it in its own right, and without either the desire or the thought of further meanings. Yet, even told in that fashion, as it clung to memory and imagination, itmust continually have reminded men of certain features of essentialhuman nature, which it but too evidently recorded. Here was one of thesad troop of soulless women who appear in the legends of all the racesof mankind. Medusa had herself been petrified before she turned othersto stone. The horror that had come upon her life had been too much tobear, and it had killed her heart within her. So far of passion and the price the woman's heart has paid for it. Butthis story has to do also with Athene, on whose shield Medusa's headmust rest at last. For it is not passion only, but knowledge, that maypetrify the soul. Indeed, the story of passion can only do this when thedazzling glamour of temptation has passed, and in place of it has comethe cold knowledge of remorse. Then the sight of one's own shame, and, on a wider scale, the sight of the pain and the tragedy of the world, present to the eyes of every generation the spectacle of victimsstanding petrified like those who had seen too much at the cave's mouthin the old legend. It is peculiarly interesting to contrast the story of Medusa with itsHebrew parallel in Lot's wife. Both are women presumably beautiful, andboth are turned to stone. But while the Greek petrifaction is the resultof too direct a gaze upon the horrible, the Hebrew is the result of tooloving and desirous a gaze upon the coveted beauty of the world. Nothingcould more exactly represent and epitomise the diverse genius of thenations, and we understand the Greek story the better for the strongcontrast with its Hebrew parallel. To the Greek, ugliness was dangerous;and the horror of the world, having no explanation nor redress, couldbut petrify the heart of man. To the Hebrew, the beauty of the world wasdangerous, and man must learn to turn away his eyes from beholdingvanity. The legend of Medusa is a story of despair, and there is little room init for idealism of any kind; and yet there may be some hint, in thereflecting shield of Perseus, of a brighter and more heartening truth. The horror of the world we have always with us, and for all exquisitespirits like those of the Greeks there is the danger of their beingmarred by the brutality of the universe, and made hard and cold in rigidpetrifaction by the too direct vision of evil. Yet for such spiritsthere is ever some shield of faith, in whose reflection they may see thedarkest horrors and yet remain flesh and blood. Those who believe inlife and love, whose religion--or at least whose indomitable clinging tothe beauty they have once descried--has taught them sufficient couragein dwelling upon these things, may come unscathed through any suchordeal. But for that, the story is one of sheer pagan terror. It cameout of the old, dark pre-Olympian mythology (for the Gorgons are thedaughters of Hades), and it embodied the ancient truth that the sorrowof the world worketh death. It is a tragic world, and the earth-bound, looking upon its tragedy, will see in it only the _macabre_, and feelthat graveyard and spectral air which breathes about the haunted pagansepulchre. Another myth in which we see the contrast between essential paganism andidealism is that of Orpheus. The myth appears in countless forms andwith innumerable excrescences, but in the main it is in three successiveparts. The first of these tells of the sweet singer loved by all thecreatures, the dear friend of all the world, whose charm nothing thatlived on earth could resist, and whose spell hurt no creature whom itallured. The conception stands in sharp contrast to the ghastly statuarythat adorned Medusa's precincts. Here, with a song whose sweetnesssurpassed that of the Sirens, nature, dead and living both (for alllived unto Orpheus), followed him with glad and loving movement. Nay, not only beasts and trees, but stones themselves and even mountains, felt in the hard heart of them the power of this sweet music. It is oneof the most perfect stories ever told--the precursor of the legends thatgathered round Francis of Assisi and many a later saint and artist. Itis the prophecy from the earliest days of that consummation of whichIsaiah was afterwards to sing and St. Paul to echo the song, when natureherself would come to the perfect reconciliation for which she had beengroaning and travailing through all the years. The second part of the story tells of the tragedy of love. Such a man asOrpheus, if he be fortunate in his love, will love wonderfully, andEurydice is his worthy bride. Dying, bitten by a snake in the grass asshe flees from danger, she descends to Hades. But the surpassing love ofthe sweet singer dares to enter that august shadow, not to drink theWaters of Lethe only and to forget, but also to drink the waters ofEunoe and to remember. His music charms the dead, and those who have thepower of death. Even the hard-hearted monarch of hell is moved forOrpheus, who "Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, And made hell grant what love did seek. " But the rescue has one condition. He must restrain himself, must notlook upon the face of his beloved though he bears her in his arms, untilthey have passed the region of the shadow of death, and may see oneanother in the sunlight of the bright earth again. The many versions ofthe tragic disobedience to this condition bear eloquent testimony, notcertainly to any changing phase of the sky, but to the manifold aspectsof human life. According to some accounts, it was the rashness ofOrpheus that did the evil--love's impatience, that could not wait thefitting time, and, snatching prematurely that which was its due, sacrificed all. According to other accounts, it was Eurydice who temptedOrpheus, her love and pain having grown too hungry and blind. Howeverthat may be, the error was fatal, and on the very eve of victory all waslost. It was lost, not by any snatching back in which strong hands ofhell tore his beloved from the man's grasp. Within his arms the form ofEurydice faded away, and as he clutched at her his fingers closed uponthe empty air. That, too, is a law deep in the nature of things. It isby no arbitrary decree that self-restraint has been imposed on love. Inthis, as in all other things, a man must consent to lose his life inorder to find it; and those who will not accept the conditions, will bevisited by no melodramatic or violent catastrophe. Love which has brokenlaw will simply fade away and vanish. The third part of the story is no less interesting and significant. Maddened with this second loss, so irrevocable and yet due to soavoidable a cause, Orpheus, in restless despair, wandered about thelands. For him the nymphs had now no attractions, nor was there anythingin all the world but the thought of his half-regained Eurydice, now lostfor ever. His music indeed remained, nor did he cast away his lute; butit was heard only in the most savage and lonely places. At length wildThracian women heard it, furious in the rites of Dionysus. They desiredhim, but his heart was elsewhere, and, in the mad reaction of theirsavage breasts, when he refused them they tore him limb from limb. Hewas buried near the river Hebrus, and his head was thrown into thestream. But as the waters bore it down, the lips whose singing hadcharmed the world still repeated the beloved name Eurydice to the watersas they flowed. Here again it is as if, searching for the dead in some ancientsepulchre, we had found a living man and friend. The symbolism of thestory, disentangled from detail which may have been true enough in alesser way, is clear to every reader. It tells that love is strong asdeath--that old sweet assurance which the lover in Canticles alsodiscovered. Love is indeed set here under conditions, or rather it hasperceived the conditions which the order of things has set, and theseconditions have been violated. But still the voice of the severed head, crying out the beloved name as the waters bore it to the sea, speaks inits own exquisite way the final word. It gives the same assurance withthe same thrill which we feel when we read the story of Herakleswrestling with death for the body of Alkestis, and winning the womanback from her very tomb. But before love can be a match for death, it first must conquer life, and the early story of the power of Orpheus over the wild beasts, restoring, as it does, an earthly paradise in which there is nothing butgentleness, marks the conquest of life by love. All life's wildness andsavagery, which seem to give the lie to love continually, are after allconquerable and may be tamed. And the lesson of it all is the greatpersuasion that in the depth of things life is good and not evil. Whenwe come to the second conflict, and that love which has mastered lifenow pits itself against death, it goes forward to the greater adventurewith a strange confidence. Who that has looked upon the face of onedearly beloved who is dead, has not known the leap of the spirit, not somuch in rebellion as in demand? Love is so great a thing that itobviously ought to have this power, and somehow we are all persuadedthat it has it--that death is but a puppet king, and love the master ofthe universe after all. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is but afaltering expression of this great assurance, yet it does express it. For it explains to all who have ears to hear, what are the real enemiesof love which can weaken it in its conflict with death. The Thracianwomen, those drunken bacchanals that own no law but their desires, standfor the lawless claim and attack of the lower life upon the higher. Theybut repeat, in exaggerated and delirious form, the sad story of theforfeiture of Eurydice. It is the touch of lawlessness, of haste, ofselfishness, that costs love its victory and finally slays it, so far aslove can be slain. In this wonderful story we have a pure Greek creation in the form of oneof the finest sagas of the world. The battle between the pagan and idealaspects of life is seen in countless individual touches throughout thestory; but the whole tale is one continuous symbolic warning againstpaganism, and a plea for idealism urged in the form of a mightycontrast. Love is here seen in its most spiritual aspect. Paganismenters with the touch of lawlessness. On the large scale the battle wasfought out some centuries later, in the days of the Roman Empire, forall the world to see. The two things which give their character to thecenturies from Augustus to Constantine are the persistent cry of man forimmortality, and the strong lusts of the flesh which silenced it. On thesmaller scale of each individual life, men and women will understand tothe end of time, from their own experience, the story of Orpheus. It is peculiarly interesting to remember that the figure of the sweetsinger grew into the centre of a great religious creed. The cult ofOrphism, higher and more spiritual than that of either Eleusis orDionysus, appears as early as the sixth century B. C. , and reaches itsgreatest in the fifth and fourth centuries. The Orphic hymns proclaimthe high doctrine of the divineness of all life, and open, at least forthe hopes of men, the gates of immortality. The secret societies whichprofessed the cult had the strongest possible influence upon the thoughtof early Athens, but their most prominent effect is seen in Plato, whoderived from them his main doctrines of pre-existence, penance, reincarnation and the final purification of the soul. Even the earlyChristians, who hated so bitterly many of the myths of paganism, andfound in them nothing but doctrines of devils, treated this storytenderly, blended the picture of Orpheus with that of their own GoodShepherd, and found it edifying to Christian faith. One more instance may be given in the story of Apollo, in which, moreperhaps than in any other, there is an amazing combination of bad andgood elements. On the one hand there are the innumerable immoralitiesand savageries that are found in all the records of mythology. On theother hand, he who flays Marsias alive and visits the earth with plaguesis also the healer of men. He is the cosmopolitan god of the brotherhoodof mankind, the spirit of wisdom whose oracle acknowledged and inspiredSocrates, and, generally, the incarnation of the "glory of the Lord. " We cannot here touch upon the marvellous tales of Delos and of Delphi, nor repeat the strains that Pindar sang, sitting in his iron chairbeside the shrine. This much at least we may say, that both the Apolloof Delos and the Apollo of Delphi are foreign gods, each of whomappropriated to his own use a sacred place where the ancient earth-boundreligion had already established its rites. The Greeks brought with thema splendid god from their former home, but in his new shrine he wasidentified with a local god, very far from splendid; and this seems tobe the most reasonable explanation of the inconsistency between therevolting and the beautiful elements in his worship. Pindar at leastrepudiated the relics of the poorer cult, and cried concerning suchstories as were current then, "Oh, my tongue, fling this tale from thee;it is a hateful cleverness that slanders gods. " No one who has realisedthe power and glory of the Eastern sun, can wonder at the identificationboth of the good and bad symbolism with the orb of day. Sun-worship isindeed a form of nature-worship, and there are physical reasons obviousenough for its being able to incorporate both the clean and unclean, both the deadly and the benign legends. Yet there is a splendour in itwhich is seen in its attraction for such minds as those of Aurelian andJulian, and which is capable of refinement in the delicate spiritualityof Mithra, that worship of the essential principle of light, the soul ofsunshine. In the worship of Apollo we have a combination, than whichnone on record is more striking, of the finest spirituality with thecrudest paganism. Here then, in the magical arena of the early world of Greece, we see inone of its most romantic forms the age-long strife between paganism andspirituality. We have taken at random four of the most popular storiesof Greece. We have found in each of them pagan elements partlybequeathed by that earlier and lower earth-bound worship which precededthe Olympians, partly added in decadent days when the mind of man wasturned from the heights and grovelling again. But we have seen a deepermeaning in them, far further-reaching than any story of days and nightsor of years and seasons. It is a story of the aspiring spirit which isever wistful here on the green earth (although that indeed is pleasant), and which finds its home among high thoughts, and ideas which dwell inheaven. We shall see many aspects of the same twofold thought and life, as we move about from point to point among the literature of later days. Yet we shall seldom find any phase of the conflict which has not beenprophesied, or at least foreshadowed, in these legends of the dawn. Thelink that binds the earliest to the latest page of literature is justthat human nature which, through all changes of country and of time, remains essentially the same. It is this which lends to our subject itsindividual as well as its historical interest. The battle is for each ofus our own battle, and its victories and defeats are our own. LECTURE II MARIUS THE EPICUREAN Much has been written, before and after the day of Walter Pater, concerning that singularly pure and yet singularly disappointingcharacter, Marcus Aurelius, and his times. The ethical and religiousferment of the period has been described with great fullness andsympathy by Professor Dill. Yet it may be said, without fear ofcontradiction, that no book has ever been written, nor is likely ever toappear, which has conveyed to those who came under its spell a moreintimate and familiar conception of that remarkable period and man thanthat which has been given by Walter Pater's _Marius the Epicurean_. Opinion is divided about the value of Pater's work, and if it be truethat some of his admirers have provoked criticism by their unqualifiedpraise, it is no less true that many of his detractors appear never tohave come in contact with his mind at all. Born in 1839, he spent thegreater part of his life in Queen's College, Oxford, where he died in1894. As literary critic, humanist, and master of a thoroughly originalstyle, he made a considerable impression upon his generation from thefirst; but it may be safely said that it is only now, when readers areable to look upon his work in a more spacious and leisurely way, that heand his contribution to English thought and letters have come to theirown. The family was of Dutch extraction, and while the sons of hisgrandfather were trained in the Roman Catholic religion, the daughterswere Protestants from their childhood. His father left the RomanCatholic communion early in life, without adopting any other form ofChristian faith. It is not surprising that out of so strongly marked andwidely mingled a heredity there should have emerged a writer prone tosymbolism and open to the sense of beauty in ritual, and yet toocosmopolitan to accept easily the conventional religious forms. Beforehis twentieth year he had come under the influence of Ruskin's writings, but he soon parted from that wayward and contradictory master, whosebrilliant dogmatism enslaved so thoroughly, but so briefly, the taste ofyoung England. Ruskin, however, had awakened Pater, although to a styleof criticism very different from his own, and for this service we owehim much. The environment of Oxford subjected his spirit to two widelydifferent sets of influences. On the one hand, he was in contact withsuch men as Jowett, Nettleship, and Thomas Hill Green: on the otherhand, with Swinburne, Burne-Jones, and the pre-Raphaelites. Thus theawakened spirit felt the dominion both of a high spiritual rationalism, and of the beauty of flesh and the charm of the earth. A visit to Italyin company with Shadwell, and his study of the Renaissance there, madehim an enthusiastic humanist. The immediate product of this secondawakening was the _Renaissance_ Essays, a very remarkable volume of hisearly work. Twelve years later, _Marius the Epicurean_, his second book, appeared in 1885. In Dr. Gosse, Pater has found an interpreter of raresympathy and insight, whose appreciations of his contemporaries are, intheir own right, fine contributions to modern literature. The characteristics of his style were also those both of his thought andof his character. Dr. Gosse has summed up the reserve and shy reticenceand the fastidious taste which always characterise his work, in sayingthat he was "one of the most exquisite, most self-respecting, the mostindividual prose writers of the age. " Even in the matter of style heconsciously respected his own individuality, refusing to read eitherStevenson or Kipling for fear that their masterful strength might leadhim out of his path. Certainly his bitterest enemies could not accusehim of borrowing from either of them. Mr. Kipling is apt to sacrificeeverything to force, while Pater is perhaps the gentlest writer of ourtime. In Stevenson there is a delicate and yet vigorous human passion, but also a sense of fitness, a consciousness of style that is all hisown. He is preaching, and not swearing at you, as you often feel Mr. Kipling to be doing. To preach at one may be indeed to take a greatliberty, but of course much will depend upon whether the preaching isgood preaching. Be that as it may, Pater is distinctive, and borrowsnothing from any writer whose influence can be traced in his work. Heneither swears nor preaches, but weaves about his reader a subtle filmof thought, through whose gossamer all things seem to suffer a curiouschange, and to become harmonious and suggestive, as dark andquiet-coloured things often are. The writer does not force himself uponhis readers, nor tempt even the most susceptible to imitate him; ratherhe presupposes himself, and dominates without appearing. His reticence, to which we have already referred, is one of his most characteristicqualities. Dr. Gosse ascribes it to a somewhat low and sluggish vitalityof physical spirits. For one in this condition "the first idea in thepresence of anything too vivacious is to retreat, and the most obviousform of social retreat is what we call affectation. " That Pater's stylehas impressed many readers as affected there can be no question, and itis as unquestionable that Dr. Gosse's explanation is the true one. His style has been much abused by critics who have found it easy to saysmart things about such tempting peculiarities. We may admit at oncethat the writing is laboured and shows constant marks of the tool. Thesame criticism applies, for that matter, to much that Stevenson haswritten. But unless a man's style is absolutely offensive, which Pater'semphatically is not, it is a wise rule to accept it rather as arevelation of the man than as a chance for saying clever things. As onereads the work of some of our modern critics, one cannot but perceiveand regret how much of pleasure and of profit their cleverness has costthem. Acknowledging his laboriousness and even his affectation, we stillmaintain that the style of Walter Pater is a very adequate expression ofhis mind. There is a calm suggestive atmosphere, a spirit half-childishand half-aged about his work. It is the work of a solemn and sensitivechild, who has kept the innocence of his eye for impressions, and yetbrought to his speech the experience, not of years only, but ofcenturies. He has many things to teach directly; but even when he is notteaching so, the air you breathe with its delicate suggestion of faintodours, the perfect taste in selection, the preferences and shrinkingsand shy delights, all proclaim a real and high culture. And, after all, the most notable point in his style is just its exactness. Over-preciseit may be sometimes, and even meticulous, yet that is because it is theexact expression of a delicate and subtle mind. In his _Appreciations_he lays down, as a first canon for style, Flaubert's principle of thesearch, the unwearied search, not for the smooth, or winsome, orforcible word as such, but, quite simply and honestly, for the word'sadjustment to its meaning. It will be said in reply to any such defencethat the highest art is to conceal art. That is an old saying and a hardone, and it is not possible to apply its rule in every instance. Pater'simmense sense of the value of words, and his choice of exactexpressions, resulted in language marvellously adapted to indicate thealmost inexpressible shades of thought. When a German struggles for theutterance of some mental complexity he fashions new compounds of words;a Frenchman helps out his meaning by gesture, as the Greek long ago didby tone. Pater knows only one way of overcoming such situations, andthat is by the painful search for the unique word that he ought to use. One result of this habit is that he has enriched our literature with alarge number of pregnant phrases which, it is safe to prophesy, willtake their place in the vernacular of literary speech. "Hard gem-likeflame, " "Drift of flowers, " "Tacitness of mind, "--such are somememorable examples of the exact expression of elusive ideas. The houseof literature built in this fashion is a notable achievement in thearchitecture of language. It reminds us of his own description of atemple of Æsculapius: "His heart bounded as the refined and daintymagnificence of the place came upon him suddenly, in the flood of earlysunshine, with the ceremonial lights burning here and there, and withall the singular expression of sacred order, a surprising cleanlinessand simplicity. " Who would not give much to be able to say the thing hewants to say so exactly and so beautifully as that is said? Indeed thelove of beauty is the key both to the humanistic thought and to thesimple and lingering style of Pater's writing. If it is not alwaysobviously simple, that is never due either to any vagueness or confusionof thought, but rather to a struggle to express precise shades ofmeaning which may be manifold, but which are perfectly clear to himself. A mind so sensitive to beauty and so fastidious in judging of it andexpressing it, must necessarily afford a fine arena for the conflictbetween the tendencies of idealism and paganism. Here the great strugglebetween conscience and desire, the rivalry of culture and restraint, thechoice between Athens and Jerusalem, will present a peculiarlyinteresting spectacle. In Walter Pater both elements are stronglymarked. The love of ritual, and a constitutional delight in solemnitiesof all kinds, was engrained in his nature. The rationalism of Green andJowett, with its high spirituality lighting it from within, drove offthe ritual for a time at least. The result of these various elements isa humanism for which he abandoned the profession of Christianity withwhich he had begun. Yet he could not really part from that earlierfaith, and for a time he was, as Dr. Gosse has expressed it, "not allfor Apollo, and not all for Christ. " The same writer quotes asapplicable to him an interesting phrase of Daudet's, "His brain was adisaffected cathedral, " and likens him to that mysterious face of MonaLisa, of whose fantastic enigma Pater himself has given the mostbrilliant and the most intricate description. From an early Christianidealism, through a period of humanistic paganism, he passed graduallyand naturally back to the abandoned faith again, but in readopting it henever surrendered the humanistic gains of the time between. He acceptedin their fullness both ideals, and so spiritualised his humanism andhumanised his idealism. Anything less rich and complete than this couldnever have satisfied him. Self-denial is obviously not an end in itself;and yet the real end, the fulfilment of nature, can never by anypossibility be attained by directly aiming at it, but must ever involveself-denial as a means towards its attainment. It is Pater's clear sightof the necessity of these two facts, and his lifelong attempt toreconcile them, that give him, from the ethical and religious point ofview, his greatest importance. The story of this reconciliation is _Marius the Epicurean_. It is aspiritual biography telling the inner history of a Roman youth of thetime of Marcus Aurelius. It begins with an appreciative interpretationof the old Roman religion as it was then, and depicts the familycelebrations by which the devout were wont to seek "to produce anagreement with the gods. " Among the various and beautiful tableaux ofthat Roman life, we see the solemn thoughtful boy reading hard andbecoming a precocious idealist, too old already for his years, butrelieving the inward tension by much pleasure in the country and theopen air. A time of delicate health brings him and us to a temple ofÆsculapius. The priesthood there is a kind of hospital collegebrotherhood, whose teaching and way of life inculcate a mysteriouslysacramental character in all matters of health and the body. Like all other vital youths, Marius must eat of the tree of knowledgeand become a questioner of hitherto accepted views. "The tyrannousreality of things visible, " and all the eager desire and delight ofyouth, make their strong appeal. Two influences favour the temptation. First there is his friend, Flavian the Epicurean, of the school thatdelights in pleasure without afterthought, and is free from the burdenand restraint of conscience; and later on, _The Golden Book_ ofApuleius, with its exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche, and its searchfor perfectness in the frankly material life. The moral of its mainstory is that the soul must not look upon the face of its love, nor seekto analyse too closely the elements from which it springs. Spiritualitywill be left desolate if it breaks this ban, and its wiser course is toenjoy without speculation. Thus we see the youth drawn earthwards, yetwith a clinging sense of far mystic reaches, which he refuses as yet toexplore. The death of Flavian rudely shatters this phase of hisexperience, and we find him face to face with death. The section beginswith the wonderful hymn of the Emperor Hadrian to his dying soul-- Dear wanderer, gipsy soul of mine, Sweet stranger, pleasing guest and comrade of my flesh, Whither away? Into what new land, Pallid one, stoney one, naked one? But the sheer spectacle and fact of death is too violent an experiencefor such sweet consolations, and the death of Flavian comes like a finalrevelation of nothing less than the soul's extinction. Not unnaturally, the next phase is a rebound into epicureanism, spiritual indeed in thesense that it could not stoop to low pleasures, but living wholly in thepresent none the less, with a strong and imperative appreciation of thefullness of earthly life. The next phase of the life of Marius opens with a journey to Rome, during which he meets a second friend, the soldier Cornelius. This verydistinctly drawn character fascinates the eye from the first. In him wemeet a kind of earnestness which seems to interpret and fit in with theaustere aspects of the landscape. It is different from that disciplinedhardness which was to be seen in Roman soldiers as the result of theirmilitary training; indeed, it seems as if this were some new kind ofknighthood, whose mingled austerity and blitheness were strangelysuggestive of hitherto unheard-of achievements in character. The impression made by Rome upon the mind of Marius was a somewhatmorbid one. He was haunted more or less by the thought of its passingand its eventual ruin, and he found much, both in its religion and itspleasure, to criticise. The dominant figure in the imperial city wasthat of Marcus Aurelius the Emperor, so famous in his day that for twohundred years after his death his image was cherished among the Penatesof many pious families. Amid much that was admirable in him, there was acertain chill in his stoicism, and a sense of lights fading out into thenight. His words in praise of death, and much else of his, had of coursea great distinction. Yet in his private intercourse with MarcusAurelius, Marius was not satisfied, nor was it the bleak sense that allis vanity which troubled him, but rather a feeling of mediocrity--of atoo easy acceptance of the world--in the imperial philosophy. For in thecompanionship of Cornelius there was a foil to the stoicism of MarcusAurelius, and his friend was more truly an aristocrat than his Emperor. Cornelius did not accept the world in its entirety, either sadly orotherwise. In him there was "some inward standard . .. Of distinction, selection, refusal, amid the various elements of the period and thecorrupt life across which they were moving together. " And, apparently asa consequence of this spirit of selection, "with all the severity ofCornelius, there was a breeze of hopefulness--freshness andhopefulness--as of new morning, about him. " Already, it may be, thequick intelligence of the reader has guessed what is coming. JesusChrist said of Himself on one occasion, "For distinctions I am come intothe world. " Marius' criticism of the Emperor reached its climax in hisdisgust at the amusements of the amphitheatre, which also MarcusAurelius accepted. There follows a long account of Roman life and thought, with muchspeculation as to the ideal commonwealth. That dream of the philosophersremains for ever in the air, detached from actual experiences andinstitutions, but Marius felt himself passing beyond it to something inwhich it would be actually realised and visibly localised, "the unseenRome on high. " Thus in correcting and supplementing the philosophies, and in insisting upon some actual embodiment of them on the earth, he isgroping his way point by point to Christ. The late Dean Church has said:"No one can read the wonderful sayings of Seneca, Epictetus, or MarcusAurelius, without being impressed, abashed perhaps, by their grandeur. No one can read them without wondering the next moment why they fell sodead--how little response they seem to have awakened round them. " It isprecisely at this point that the young Christian Church found itsopportunity. Pagan idealisms were indeed in the air. The Christianidealism was being realised upon the earth, and it was this with whichMarius was now coming into contact. So he goes on until he is led up to two curious houses. The first ofthese was the house of Apuleius, where in a subtle and brilliant systemof ideas it seemed as if a ladder had been set up from earth to heaven. But Marius discovered that what he wanted was the thing itself and notits mere theory, a life of realised ideals and not a dialectic. Thesecond house was more curious still. Much pains is spent upon thedescription of it with its "quiet signs of wealth, and of a nobletaste, " in which both colour and form, alike of stones and flowers, seemed expressive of a rare and potent beauty in the personality thatinhabited them. There were inscriptions there to the dead martyrs, inscriptions full of confidence and peace. Old pagan symbols were therealso--Herakles wrestling with death for possession of Alkestis, andOrpheus taming the wild beasts--blended naturally with new symbols suchas the Shepherd and the sheep, and the Good Shepherd carrying the sicklamb upon his shoulder. The voice of singers was heard in the house ofan evening singing the candle hymn, "Hail, Heavenly Light. " Altogetherthere seemed here to be a combination of exquisite and obvious beautywith "a transporting discovery of some fact, or series of facts, inwhich the old puzzle of life had found its solution. " It was none other than the Church of the early Christian days thatMarius had stumbled on, under the guidance of his new friend; andalready in heart he had actually become a Christian without knowing it, for these friends of comeliness seemed to him to have discovered thesecret of actualising the ideal as none others had done. At such amoment in his spiritual career it is not surprising that he shouldhesitate to look upon that which would "define the criticalturning-point, " yet he looked. He saw the blend of Greek and Christian, each at its best--the martyrs' hope, the singers' joy and health. Inthis "minor peace of the Church, " so pure, so delicate, and so vitalthat it made the Roman life just then "seem like some stifling forest ofbronze-work, transformed, as if by malign enchantment, out of thegenerations of living trees, " he seemed to see the possibility ofsatisfaction at last. For here there was a perfect love andself-sacrifice, outwardly expressed with a mystic grace better than theGreek blitheness, and a new beauty which contrasted brightly with theRoman insipidity. It was the humanism of Christianity that so satisfiedhim, standing as it did for the fullness of life, in spite of all itsreadiness for sacrifice. And it was effective too, for it seemed to bedoing rapidly what the best paganism was doing very slowly--attaining, almost without thinking about it, the realisation of the noblest ideals. "And so it came to pass that on this morning Marius saw for the firsttime the wonderful spectacle--wonderful, especially, in its evidentialpower over himself, over his own thoughts--of those who believe. Therewere noticeable, among those present, great varieties of rank, of age, of personal type. The Roman _ingenuus_, with the white toga and goldring, stood side by side with his slave; and the air of the wholecompany was, above all, a grave one, an air of recollection. Coming thusunexpectedly upon this large assembly, so entirely united, in a silenceso profound, for purposes unknown to him, Marius felt for a moment as ifhe had stumbled by chance upon some great conspiracy. Yet that couldscarcely be, for the people here collected might have figured as theearliest handsel, or pattern, of a new world, from the very face ofwhich discontent had passed away. Corresponding to the variety of humantype there present, was the various expression of every form of humansorrow assuaged. What desire, what fulfilment of desire, had wrought sopathetically on the features of these ranks of aged men and women ofhumble condition? Those young men, bent down so discreetly on thedetails of their sacred service, had faced life and were glad, by somescience, or light of knowledge they had, to which there had certainlybeen no parallel in the older world. Was some credible message frombeyond 'the flaming rampart of the world'--a message of hope regardingthe place of men's souls and their interest in the sum ofthings--already moulding anew their very bodies, and looks, and voices, now and here? At least, there was a cleansing and kindling flame at workin them, which seemed to make everything else Marius had ever known lookcomparatively vulgar and mean. " The spectacle of the Sacrament adds its deep impression, "bread and wineespecially--pure wheaten bread, the pure white wine of the Tusculanvineyards. There was here a veritable consecration, hopeful andanimating, of the earth's gifts, of old dead and dark matter itself, nowin some way redeemed at last, of all that we can touch and see, in themidst of a jaded world that had lost the true sense of such things. " The sense of youth in it all was perhaps the dominating impression--theyouth that was yet old as the world in experience and discovery of thetrue meaning of life. The young Christ was rejuvenating the world, andall things were being made new by him. This is the climax of the book. He meets Lucian the aged, who for amoment darkens his dawning faith, but that which has come to him hasbeen no casual emotion, no forced or spectacular conviction. He does notleap to the recognition of Christianity at first sight, but very quietlyrealises and accepts it as that secret after which his pagan idealismhad been all the time groping. The story closes amid scenes of plagueand earthquake and martyrdom in which he and Cornelius are takenprisoners, and he dies at last a Christian. "It was the same people who, in the grey, austere evening of that day, took up his remains, andburied them secretly, with their accustomed prayers; but with joy also, holding his death, according to their generous view in this matter, tohave been of the nature of a martyrdom; and martyrdom, as the Church hadalways said, was a kind of Sacrament with plenary grace. " Such is some very brief and inadequate conception of one of the mostremarkable books of our time, a book "written to illustrate the highestideal of the æsthetic life, and to prove that beauty may be made theobject of the soul in a career as pure, as concentrated, and as austereas any that asceticism inspires. _Marius_ is an apology for the highestEpicureanism, and at the same time it is a texture which the author hasembroidered with exquisite flowers of imagination, learning, andpassion. Modern humanism has produced no more admirable product thanthis noble dream of a pursuit through life of the spirit of heavenlybeauty. " Nothing could be more true, so far as it goes, than thisadmirable paragraph, yet Pater's book is more than that. The main driftof it is the reconciliation of Hellenism with Christianity in theexperience of a man "bent on living in the full stream of refinedsensation, " who finds Christianity in every point fulfilling the idealsof Epicureanism at its best. The spiritual stages through which Marius passes on his journey towardsthis goal are most delicately portrayed. In the main these are three, which, though they recur and intertwine in his experience, yet may befairly stated in their natural order and sequence as normal types ofsuch spiritual progress. The first of these stages is a certain vague fear of evil, which seemsto be conscience hardly aware of itself as such. It is "the sense ofsome unexplored evil ever dogging his footsteps, " which reached itskeenest poignancy in a constitutional horror of serpents, but which is avery subtle and undefinable thing, observable rather as an undertone tohis consciousness of life than as anything tangible enough to be definedor accounted for by particular causes. On the journey to Rome, the vaguemisgivings took shape in one definite experience. "From the steep slopea heavy mass of stone was detached, after some whisperings among thetrees above his head, and rushing down through the stillness fell topieces in a cloud of dust across the road just behind him, so that hefelt the touch upon his heel. " That was sufficient, just then, to rouseout of its hiding-place his old vague fear of evil--of one's "enemies. "Such distress was so much a matter of constitution with him, that attimes it would seem that the best pleasures of life could but besnatched hastily, in one moment's forgetfulness of its dark besettinginfluence. A sudden suspicion of hatred against him, of the nearness ofenemies, seemed all at once to alter the visible form of things. Whentempted by the earth-bound philosophy of the early period of hisdevelopment, "he hardly knew how strong that old religious sense ofresponsibility, the conscience, as we call it, still was within him--abody of inward impressions, as real as those so highly valued outwardones--to offend against which, brought with it a strange feeling ofdisloyalty, as to a person. " Later on, when the "acceptance of things"which he found in Marcus Aurelius had offended him, and seemed to markthe Emperor as his inferior, we find that there is "the loyal consciencewithin him, deciding, judging himself and every one else, with awonderful sort of authority. " This development of conscience from avague fear of enemies to a definite court of appeal in a man's judgmentof life, goes side by side with his approach to Christianity. The paganidealism of the early days had never been able to cope with that senseof enemies, nor indeed to understand it; but in the light of his growingChristian faith, conscience disentangles itself and becomes clearlydefined. Another element in the spiritual development of Marius is that which maybe called his consciousness of an unseen companion. Marius wasconstitutionally _personel_, and never could be satisfied with the drylight of pure reason, or with any impersonal ideal whatsoever. For himthe universe was alive in a very real sense. At first, however, this wasthe vaguest of sentiments, and it needed much development before itbecame clear enough to act as one of the actual forces which played uponhis life. We first meet with it in connection with the philosophy ofMarcus Aurelius and his habit of inward conversation with himself, madepossible by means of the _Logos_, "the reasonable spark in man, commonto him with the gods. " "There could be no inward conversation withoneself such as this, unless there were indeed some one else aware ofour actual thoughts and feelings, pleased or displeased at one'sdisposition of oneself. " This, in a dim way, seemed a fundamentalnecessity of experience--one of those "beliefs, without which lifeitself must be almost impossible, principles which had their sufficientground of evidence in that very fact. " So far Marcus Aurelius. But theconviction of some august yet friendly companionship in life beyond theveil of things seen, took form for Marius in a way far more picturesque. The passage which describes it is one of the finest in the book, and maybe given at length. "Through a dreamy land he could see himself moving, as if in anotherlife, and like another person, through all his fortunes and misfortunes, passing from point to point, weeping, delighted, escaping from variousdangers. That prospect brought him, first of all, an impulse of livelygratitude: it was as if he must look round for some one else to sharehis joy with: for some one to whom he might tell the thing, for his ownrelief. Companionship, indeed, familiarity with others, gifted in thisway or that, or at least pleasant to him, had been, through one oranother long span of it, the chief delight of the journey. And was itonly the resultant general sense of such familiarity, diffused throughhis memory, that in a while suggested the question whether there had notbeen--besides Flavian, besides Cornelius even, and amid the solitudewhich in spite of ardent friendship he had perhaps loved best of allthings--some other companion, an unfailing companion, ever at his sidethroughout; doubling his pleasure in the roses by the way, patient ofhis peevishness or depression, sympathetic above all with his gratefulrecognition, onward from his earliest days, of the fact that he wasthere at all? Must not the whole world around have faded away for himaltogether, had he been left for one moment really alone in it?" One cansee in this sense of constant companionship the untranslated and indeedthe unexamined Christian doctrine of God. And, because this God isresponsive to all the many-sided human experience which reveals Him, itwill be an actual preparation not for Theism only, but for thatcomplexity in unity known as the Christian Trinity. Nothing could bettersummarise this whole achievement in religion than Pater's apt sentence, "To have apprehended the _Great Ideal_, so palpably that it definedpersonal gratitude and the sense of a friendly hand laid upon him amidthe shadows of the world. " The third essential development of Marius' thought is that of the Cityof God, which for him assumes the shape of a perfected and purifiedRome, the concrete embodiment of the ideals of life and character. Thisis indeed the inevitable sequel of any such spiritual developments asthe fear of enemies and the sense of an unseen companion. Man movesinevitably to the city, and all his ideals demand an embodiment insocial form before they reach their full power and truth. In that houseof life which he calls society, he longs to see his noblest dreams finda local habitation and a name. This is the grand ideal passed from handto hand by the greatest and most outstanding of the world's seers--fromPlato to Augustine, from Augustine to Dante--the ideal of the City ofGod. It is but little developed in the book which we are nowconsidering, for that would be beside the purpose of so intimate andinward a history. Yet we see, as it were, the towers and palaces of this"dear City of Zeus" shining in the clear light of the early Christiantime, like the break of day over some vast prospect, with the new City, as it were some celestial new Rome, in the midst of it. These are but a few glimpses at this very significant and far-reachingbook, which indeed takes for its theme the very development from paganto Christian idealism with which we are dealing. In it, in countlessbright and vivid glances, the beauty of the world is seen with virgineye. Many phases of that beauty belong to the paganism which surroundsus as we read, yet these are purified from all elements that would makethem pagan in the lower sense, and under our eyes they free themselvesfor spiritual flights which find their resting-place at last and becomeat once intelligible and permanent in the faith of Jesus Christ. LECTURE III THE TWO FAUSTS It may seem strange to pass immediately from the time of Marcus Aureliusto Marlowe and Goethe, and yet the tale upon which these two poetswrought is one whose roots are very deep in history, and which revivesin a peculiarly vital and interesting fashion the age-long story ofman's great conflict. Indeed the saga on which it is founded belongsproperly to no one period, but is the tragic drama of humanity. Ittells, through all the ages, the tale of the struggle between earth andthe spiritual world above it; and the pagan forms which are introducedtake us back into the classical mythology, and indeed into still moreancient times. The hero of the story must be clearly distinguished from Fust theprinter, a wealthy goldsmith of Mayence, who, in the middle of thefifteenth century, was partner with Gutenberg in the new enterprise ofprinting. Robert Browning, in _Fust and his Friends_, tells us, withgreat vivacity, the story of the monks who tried to exorcise the magicspirits from Fust, but forgot their psalm, and so caused an awkwardpause during which Fust retired and brought out a printed copy of thepsalm for each of them. The only connection with magic which this Fusthad, was that so long as this or any other process was kept secret, itwas attributed to supernatural powers. Faust, although a contemporary of Fust the printer, was a very differentcharacter. Unfortunately, our information about him comes almostentirely from his enemies, and their accounts are by no means sparing inabuse. Trithemius, a Benedictine abbot of Spanheim in the early part ofthe sixteenth century, writes of him with the most virulent contempt, asa debauched person and a criminal whose overweening vanity arrogated toitself the most preposterous supernatural powers. It would appear thathe had been some sort of travelling charlatan, whose performing horseand dog were taken for evil spirits, like Esmeralda's goat in VictorHugo's _Notre Dame_. Even Melanchthon and Luther seem to have shared thecommon view of him, and at last there was published at Frankfurt the_Historie of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faustus_. The date of this work is 1587, and a translation of it appeared inLondon in 1592. It is a discursive composition, founded uponreminiscences of some ancient stroller who lived very much by his wits;but it took such a hold upon the imagination of the time that, by thelatter part of the sixteenth century, Faust had become the necromancer_par excellence_. Into the Faust-book there drifted endless necromanticlore from the Middle Ages and earlier times. It seems to have had someconnection with Jewish legends of magicians who invoked the _Satanim_, or lowest grade of elemental spirits not unlike the "elementals" ofmodern popular spiritualism. It was the story of a Christian selling hissoul to the powers of darkness, and it had behind it one of the poems ofHrosvitha of Gandersheim which relates a similar story of an archdeaconof Cilicia of the sixth century, and also the popular tradition of PopeSylvester the Second, who was suspected of having made the same bargain. Yet, as Lebahn says, "The Faust-legend in its complete form was thecreation of orthodox Protestantism. Faust is the foil to Luther, whoworsted the Devil with his ink-bottle when he sought to interrupt thesacred work of rendering the Bible into the vulgar tongue. " This legend, by the way, is a peculiarly happy one, for Luther not only aimed hisink-bottle at the Devil, but most literally and effectively hit him withit, when he wrote those books that changed the face of religious Europe. The _Historie_ had an immense and immediate popularity, and until wellinto the nineteenth century it was reproduced and sold throughoutEurope. As we read it, we cannot but wonder what manner of man it reallywas who attracted to himself such age-long hatred and fear, and held theinterest of the centuries. In many respects, doubtless, his story waslike that of Paracelsus, in whom the world has recognised the struggleof much good with almost inevitable evil, and who, if he had been bornin another generation, might have figured as a commanding spiritual orscientific authority. Christopher Marlowe was born at Canterbury in 1564, two months beforeShakespeare. He was the son of a shoemaker, and was the pupil of Kett, afellow and tutor of Corpus Christi College. This tutor was probablyaccountable for much in the future Marlowe, for he was a mystic, and wasburnt for heresy in 1589. After a short and extremely violent life, thepupil followed his master four years later to the grave, having beenkilled in a brawl under very disgraceful circumstances. He only livedtwenty-nine years, and yet he, along with Kyd, changed the literature ofEngland. Lyly's Pastorals had been the favourite reading of the peopleuntil these men came, keen and audacious, to lead and sing their "brief, fiery, tempestuous lives. " When they wrote their plays and created theirvillains, they were not creating so much as remembering. Marlowe's playswere four, and they were all influential. His _Edward the Second_ wasthe precursor of the historical plays of Shakespeare. His other playswere _Tamburlaine the Great_, _Dr. Faustus_, and _The Jew of Malta_(Barabbas). These three were all upon congenial lines, expressing thatTitanism in revolt against the universe which was the inspiring spiritof Marlowe. But it was the character of Faust that especially fascinatedhim, for he found in the ancient magician a pretty clear image of hisown desires and ambitions. He was one of those who loved "the dangerousedge of things, " and, as Charles Lamb said, "delighted to dally withinterdicted subjects. " The form of the plays is loose and broken, andyet there is a pervading larger unity, not only of dramatic action, butof spirit. The laughter is loud and coarse, the terror unrelieved, andthe splendour dazzling. There is no question as to the greatness of thiswork as permanent literature. It has long outlived the amazingdetractions of Hallam and of Byron, and will certainly be read so longas English is a living tongue. The next stage in this curious history is a peculiarly interesting one. In former days there sprang up around every great work of art a forestof slighter literature, in the shape of chap-books, ballads, and puppetplays. By far the most popular of the puppet plays was that founded uponMarlowe's _Faust_. The German version continued to be played in Germanyuntil three hundred years later. Goethe constructed his masterpiecelargely by its help. English actors travelling abroad had brought backthe story to its native land of Germany, and in every town the bands ofstrolling players sent Marlowe's great conception far and wide. InEngland also the puppet play was extremely popular. The drama had movedfrom the church to the market-place, and much of the Elizabethan dramaappeared in this quaint form, played by wooden figures upon diminutiveboards. To the modern mind nothing could be more incongruous than theidea of a solemn drama forced to assume a guise so grotesque andchildish; but, according to Jusserand, much of the stage-work wasextremely ghastly, and no doubt it impressed the multitude. There iseven a story of some actors who had gone too far, and into the midst ofwhose play the real devil suddenly descended with disastrous results. Itmust, however, be allowed that even the serious plays were not withoutan abundant element of grotesqueness. The occasion for Faustus' finalspeech of despair, for instance, was the lowering and raising before hiseyes of two or three gilded arm-chairs, representing the thrones inheaven upon which he would never sit. It does not seem to have occurredto the audience as absurd that heaven should be regarded as a kind ofdrawing-room floating in the air, and indeed that idea is perhaps notyet obsolete. However that may be, it is quite evident that suchmachinery, ill-suited though it was to the solemnities of tragedy, musthave been abundantly employed in the puppet plays. The German puppet play of _Faust_ has been transcribed by Dr. Hamm andtranslated by Mr. Hedderwick into English. It was obtained at first withgreat difficulty, for the showmen kept the libretto secret, and couldnot be induced to lend it. Dr. Hamm, however, followed the play round, listening and committing much of it to memory, and his version wasfinally completed when his amanuensis obtained for a day or two theoriginal manuscript after plying one of the assistants with much beerand wine. It was a battered book, thumb-marked and soaked with lamp oil, but it has passed on to posterity one of the most remarkable pieces ofdramatic work which have come down to us from those times. In all essentials the play is the same as that of Marlowe, except forthe constant interruptions of the clown Casper, who intrudes with hisabsurdities even into the most sacred parts of the action, and entirelymars the dreadful solemnity of the end by demanding his wages from Faustwhile the clock is striking the diminishing intervals of the last hour. It was through this curious intermediary that Goethe went back toMarlowe and created what has been well called "the most mystic poeticwork ever created, " and "the _Divina Commedia_ of the eighteenthcentury. " Goethe's _Faust_ is elemental, like _Hamlet_. Readers of_Wilhelm Meister_ will remember how profound an impression _Hamlet_ hadmade upon Goethe's mind, and this double connection between Goethe andthe English drama forms one of the strongest and most interesting of allthe links that bind Germany to England. His _Faust_ was the directutterance of Goethe's own inner life. He says: "The marionette folk of_Faust_ murmured with many voices in my soul. I, too, had wandered intoevery department of knowledge, and had returned early enough, satisfiedwith the vanity of science. And life, too, I had tried under variousaspects, and always came back sorrowing and unsatisfied. " Thus _Faust_lay in the depths of Goethe's life as a sort of spiritual pool, mirroring all its incidents and thoughts. The play was begun originallyin the period of his _Sturm und Drang_, and it remained unpublisheduntil, in old age, the ripened mind of the great poet took it overpractically unchanged, and added the calmer and more intellectual parts. The whole of the Marguerite story belongs to the earlier days. There is nothing in the whole of literature which could afford us afiner and more fundamental account of the battle between paganism andidealism in the soul of man, than the comparison between the _Fausts_ ofMarlowe and of Goethe. But before we come to this, it may be interestingto notice two or three points of special interest in the latter drama, which show how entirely pagan are the temptations of Faust. The first passage to notice is that opening one on Easter Day, where thedevil approaches Faust in the form of a dog. Choruses of women, disciples, and angels are everywhere in the air; and although the dogappears first in the open, yet the whole emphasis of the passage is uponthe contrast between that brilliant Easter morning with its sunshine andits music, and the close and darkened study into which Faust has shuthimself. It is true he goes abroad, but it is not to join with the restin their rejoicing, but only as a spectator, with all the superiority aswell as the wistfulness of his illicit knowledge. Evidently theimpression intended is that of the wholesomeness of the crowd and theopen air. He who goes in with the rest of men in their sorrow and theirrejoicing cannot but find the meaning of Easter morning for himself. Itis a festival of earth and the spring, an earth idealised, whose spiritis incarnate in the risen Christ. Faust longs to share in that, and onEaster Eve tries in vain to read his Gospel and to feel its power. Butthe only cure for such morbid introspectiveness as his, is to castoneself generously into the common life of man, and the refusal to dothis invites the pagan devil. Another point of interest is the coming of the _Erdgeist_ immediatelyafter the _Weltschmerz_. The sorrow that has filled his heart with itsmelancholy sense of the vanity and nothingness of life, and thethousandfold pity and despondency which go to swell that sad condition, are bound to create a reaction more or less violent towards that sheerworldliness which is the essence of paganism. In Bunyan's _Pilgrim'sProgress_ it is immediately after his floundering in the Slough ofDespond that Christian is accosted by Mr. Worldly Wiseman. Precisely thesame experience is recorded here in Faust, although the story is subtlerand more complex than that of Bunyan. The _Erdgeist_ which comes to thesaddened scholar is a noble spirit, vivifying and creative. It is theworld in all its glorious fullness of meaning, quite as true an idealismas that which is expressed in the finest spirit of the Greeks. But forFaust it is too noble. His morbid gloom has enervated him, and the callof the splendid earth is beyond him. So there comes, instead of it, afigure as much poorer than that of Worldly Wiseman as the _Erdgeist_ isricher. Wagner represents the poor commonplace world of the whollyunideal. It is infinitely beneath the soul of Faust, and yet for thetime it conquers him, being nearer to his mood. Thus Mephistophelesfinds his opportunity. The scholar, embittered with the sense thatknowledge is denied to him, will take to mere action; and the actionwill not be great like that which the _Erdgeist_ would have prompted, but poor and unsatisfying to any nobler spirit than that of Wagner. The third incident which we may quote is that of _Walpurgis-Night_. Somecritics would omit this part, which, they say, "has naught of interestin bearing on the main plot of the poem. " Nothing could be more mistakenthan such a judgment. In the _Walpurgis-Night_ we have the play endingin that sheer paganism which is the counterpart to Easter Day at thebeginning. Walpurgis has a strange history in German folklore. It issaid that Charlemagne, conquering the German forests for the Christianfaith, drove before him a horde of recalcitrant pagans, who took a lastshelter among the trees of the Brocken. There, on the pagan May-day, inorder to celebrate their ancient rites unmolested, they dressedthemselves in all manner of fantastic and bestial masks, so as tofrighten off the Christianising invaders from the revels. The Walpurgisof _Faust_ exhibits paganism at its lowest depths. Sir Mammon is thehost who invites his boisterous guests to the riot of his festive night. The witches arrive on broomsticks and pitchforks; singing, not withoutsignificance, the warning of woe to all climbers--for here aspiration ofany sort is a dangerous crime. The Crane's song reveals the fact thatpious men are here, in the Blocksberg, united with devils; introducingthe same cynical and desperate disbelief in goodness which NathanielHawthorne has told in similar fashion in his tale of _Young GoodmanBrown_; and the most horrible touch of all is introduced when Faust indisgust leaves the revel, because out of the mouth of the witch withwhom he had been dancing there had sprung a small red mouse. Throughoutthe whole play the sense of holy and splendid ideals shines at itsbrightest in lurid contrast with the hopeless and sordid dark of thepagan earth. Returning now to our main point, the comparison of Marlowe's play withGoethe's, let us first of all contrast the temptations in the two. Marlowe's play is purely theological. Jusserand finely describes theunderlying tragedy of it. "Faust, like Tamburlaine, and like all theheroes of Marlowe, lives in thought, beyond the limit of the possible. He thirsts for a knowledge of the secrets of the universe, as the otherthirsted for domination over the world. " Both are Titanic figuresexactly in the pagan sense, but the form of Faustus' Titanism is therevolt against theology. From the early days of the Christianpersecutions, there had been a tendency to divorce the sacred from thesecular, and to regard all that was secular as being of the flesh andessentially evil. The mediæval views of celibacy, hermitage, and themonastic life, had intensified this divorce; and while many of the monkswere interested in human secular learning, yet there was a feeling, which in many cases became a kind of conscience, that only the divinelearning was either legitimate or safe for a man's eternal well-being. The Faust of Marlowe is the Prometheus of his own day. The new knowledgeof the Renaissance had spread like fire across Europe, and those who sawin it a resurrection of the older gods and their secrets, unhesitatinglycondemned it. The doctrine of immortality had entirely supplanted theold Greek ideal of a complete earthly life for man, and all that wassensuous had come to be regarded as intrinsically sinful. Thus we havefor background a divided universe, in which there is a great gulf fixedbetween this world and the next, and a hopeless cleavage between thelife of body and that of spirit. In this connection we may also consider the women of the two plays. Charles Lamb has asked, "What has Margaret to do with Faust?" and hasasserted that she does not belong to the legend at all. Literally, thisis true, in so far as there is no Margaret in the earlier form of theplay, whose interest was, as we have seen, essentially theological. YetMargaret belongs to the essential story and cannot be taken out of it. She is the "eternal feminine, " in which the battle between the spiritand the flesh, between idealism and paganism, will always make its laststand. Even Marlowe has to introduce a woman. His Helen is, indeed, amere incident, for the real bride of the soul must be either theologicalor secular science; and yet so essential and so poignant is the questionof woman to the great drama, that the passage in which the incident ofHelen is introduced far surpasses anything else in Marlowe's play, andindeed is one of the grandest and most beautiful in all literature. "Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, And burned the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. * * * * * O, thou art fairer than the evening air, Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars. " Still, Marlowe's _motif_ is not sex but theology. The former hereticswhom we named had been saved--Theophilus by the intervention of theBlessed Virgin Mary, and Pope Sylvester snatched from the very jaws ofhell--by a return to orthodoxy. That was in the Roman Catholic days, butthe savage antithesis between earth and heaven had been taken over bythe conscience of Protestantism, making a duality which rendered lifealways intellectually anxious and almost impossible. It is thiscondition in which Marlowe finds himself. The good and the evil angelsstand to right and left of his Faustus, pleading with him for andagainst secular science on the one side and theological knowledge on theother. For that is the implication behind the contest between magic andChristianity. "The Faust of the earlier Faust-books and ballads, dramas, puppet shows, which grew out of them, is damned because he prefers thehuman to the divine knowledge. He laid the Holy Scriptures behind thedoor and under the bench, refused to be called Doctor of Theology, butpreferred to be called Doctor of Medicine. " Obviously here we findourselves in a very lamentable _cul-de-sac_. Idealism has floated apartfrom the earth and all its life, and everything else than theology iscondemned as paganism. Goethe changes all that. In the earlier _Weltschmerz_ passages sometraces of it still linger, where Faust renounces theology; but eventhere it is not theology alone that he renounces, but philosophy, medicine, and jurisprudence as well, so that his renunciation isentirely different from that of Marlowe's Faustus. In Goethe it is nolonger one doctrine or one point of view against another doctrine oranother point of view. It is life, vitality in all its forms, againstall mere doctrine whatsoever. "Grey, dearest friend, is every theory, But golden-green is the tree of life. " Thus the times had passed into a sense of the limits of theology such ashas been well expressed in Rossetti's lines-- "Let lore of all theology Be to thee all it can be, But know, --the power that fashions man Measured not out thy little span For thee to take the meting-rod In turn and so approve on God. " So in Goethe we have the unsatisfied human spirit with its infinitecravings and longings for something more than earth can give--something, however, which is not separated from the earth, and which is entirelydifferent from theological dogma or anything of that sort. In this, Goethe is expressing a constant yearning of his own, which illuminatedall his writings like a gentle hidden fire within them, hardly seen inmany passages and yet always somehow felt. It is _through_ the fleshthat he will find the spirit, _through_ this world that he will find thenext. The quest is ultimately the same as that of Marlowe, but the formof it is absolutely opposed to his. Goethe is as far from Marlowe'stheological position as _Peer Gynt_ is, and indeed there is aconsiderable similarity between Ibsen's great play and Goethe's. As thedrama develops, it is true that the love of Faust becomes sensual andhis curiosity morbid; but the tragedy lies no longer in the belief thatsense and curiosity are in themselves wrong, but in the fact that Faustfails to distinguish their high phases from their low. We have alreadyseen that the _Erdgeist_ which first appeals to Faust is too great forhim, and it is there that the tragedy really lies. The earth is not anaccursed place, and the _Erdgeist_ may well find its home among theideals; but Wagner is neither big enough nor clean enough to be man'sguide. The contrast between the high and low ideals comes to its finest andmost tragic in the story of Margaret. Spiritual and sensual lovealternate through the play. Its tragedy and horror concentrate round thefact that love has followed the lower way. Margaret has little to giveto Faust of fellowship along intellectual or spiritual lines. She is avillage maiden, and he takes from her merely the obvious and lower kindof love. It is a way which leads ultimately to the dance of the witchesand the cellar of Auerbach, yet Faust can never be satisfied with these, and from the witch's mouth comes forth the red mouse--the climax ofdisgust. In Auerbach's cellar he sees himself as the pagan man in himwould like to be. In Martha one sees the pagan counterpart to the pureand simple Margaret, just as Mephistopheles is the pagan counterpart toFaust. The lower forms of life are the only ones in which Martha andMephistopheles are at home. For Faust and Margaret the lapse into thelower forms brings tragedy. Yet it must be remembered also that Faustand Mephistopheles are really one, for the devil who tempts every man isbut himself after all, the animal side of him, the dog. The women thus stand for the most poignant aspect of man's greattemptation. It is not, as we have already said, any longer a conflictbetween the secular and the sacred that we are watching, nor even theconflict between the flesh and the spirit. It is between a higher and alower way of treating life, flesh and spirit both. Margaret stands forall the great questions that are addressed to mankind. There are forevery man two ways of doing work, of reading a book, of loving a woman. He who keeps his spiritual life pure and high finds that in all thesethings there is a noble path. He who yields to his lower self willprostitute and degrade them all, and the tragedy that leads on to themad scene at the close, where the cries of Margaret have no parallel inliterature except those of Lady Macbeth, is the inevitable result ofchoosing the pagan and refusing the ideal. The Blocksberg is the paganheaven. A still more striking contrast between the plays meets us when weconsider the respective characters of Mephistopheles. When we comparethe two devils we are reminded of that most interesting passage inProfessor Masson's great essay, which describes the secularisation ofSatan between _Paradise Lost_ and the _Faust_ of Goethe:-- "We shall be on the right track if we suppose Mephistopheles to be whatSatan has become after six thousand years. .. . Goethe's Mephistopheles isthis same being after the toils and vicissitudes of six thousand yearsin his new vocation: smaller, meaner, ignobler, but a million timessharper and cleverer. .. . For six thousand years he has been pursuing thewalk he struck out at the beginning, plying his self-selected function, dabbling devilishly in human nature, and abjuring all interest in thegrander physics; and the consequence is, as he himself anticipated, thathis nature, once great and magnificent, has become small, virulent, andshrunken. He, the scheming, enthusiastic Archangel, has been soured andcivilised into the clever, cold-hearted Mephistopheles. " Marlowe's devil is of the solemn earlier kind, not yet degraded into theworldling whom Goethe has immortalised. Marlowe's Mephistophilis isessentially the idealist, and it is his Faust who is determined for theworld. One feels about Mephistophilis that he is a kind of religiouscharacter, although under a cloud. The things he does are done to organmusic, and he might be a figure in some stained-glass window of old. Notonly is he "a melancholy devil, with a soul above the customary hell, "but he actually retains a kind of despairing idealism which somehowranks him on the side rather of good than of evil. The puppet playcuriously emphasises this. "Tell me, " says Faust, "what would you do ifyou could attain to everlasting salvation?" "Hear and despair! Were I toattain to everlasting salvation, I would mount to heaven on a ladder, though every rung were a razor edge. " The words are exactly in thespirit of the earlier play. So sad is the devil, so oppressed with asense of the horror of it all, that, as we read, it almost seems as ifFaust were tempting the unwilling Mephistophilis to ruin him. "Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it; Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God, And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss? O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, Which strike a terror to my fainting soul!" To which Faust replies-- "What, is great Mephistophilis so passionate For being deprived of the joys of heaven? Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude, And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess. " Goethe's Mephistopheles near the end of the play taunts Faust in thewords, "Why dost thou seek our fellowship if thou canst not go throughwith it?. .. Do we force ourselves on thee, or thou on us?" And one hasthe feeling that, like most other things the fiend says, it is anapparent truth which is really a lie; but it would have been entirelytrue if Marlowe's devil had said it. The Mephistopheles of Goethe is seldom solemnised at all. Once indeed onthe Harz Mountains he says-- "Naught of this genial influence do I know! Within me all is wintry. * * * * * How sadly, yonder, with belated glow, Rises the ruddy moon's imperfect round!" Yet there it is merely by discomfort, and not by the pain and hideoussorrow of the world surrounding him, that he is affected. He is likeSatan in the Book of Job, except that he is offering his victim luxuriesinstead of pains. In the prologue in Heaven he speaks with such a jauntyair that Professor Blackie's translation has omitted the passage asirreverent. He is the spirit that _denies_--sceptical and cynical, theanti-Christian that is in us all. His business is to depreciatespiritual values, and to persuade mortals that there is no realdistinction between good and bad, or between high and low. We have seenin the character of Cornelius in _Marius the Epicurean_ "some inwardstandard . .. Of distinction, selection, refusal, amid the variouselements of the period. " Here is the extreme opposite. There is nodivine discontent in him, nor longing for happier things. He would neverhave said that he would climb to heaven upon a ladder of razor edges. There is nothing of the fallen angel about him at all, for he is aspirit perfectly content with an intolerable past, present, and future. Before the throne of God he swaggers with the same easy insolence as inMartha's garden. He is the very essence and furthest reach of paganism. So we have this curious fact, that Marlowe's Faust is the pagan andMephistophilis the idealist; while Goethe reverses the order, makingpaganism incarnate in the fiend and idealism in the nobler side of theman. It is a far truer and more natural story of life than that whichhad suggested it; for in the soul of man there is ever a hunger andthirst for the highest, however much he may abuse his soul. At theworst, there remains always that which "a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose. " One more contrast marks the difference of the two plays, namely, thefate of Faust. Marlowe's Faust is utterly and irretrievably damned. Onthe old theory of an essential antagonism between the secular and thesacred, and upon the old cast-iron theology to which the intellect ofman was enjoined to conform, there is no escape whatsoever for therebel. So the play leads on to the sublimely terrific passage at theclose, when, with the chiming of the bell, terror grows to madness inthe victim's soul, and at last he envies the beasts that perish-- "For, when they die, Their souls are soon dissolved in elements; But mine must live still to be plagued in hell. Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me! No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven. " Goethe, with his changed conception of life in general, could not haveaccepted this ending. It was indeed Lessing who first pointed out thatthe final end for Faust must be his salvation and not his doom; butGoethe must necessarily have arrived at the same conclusion even ifLessing had not asserted it. It is clearly visible throughout the play, by touches here and there, that Faust is not "wholly damnable" as Marthais. His pity for women, relevant to the main plot of the play, breaksforth in horror when he discovers the fate of Margaret. "The misery ofthis one pierces me to the very marrow, and harrows up my soul; thou artgrinning calmly over the doom of thousands!" And these words followimmediately after an outbreak of blind rage called forth byMephistopheles' famous words, "She is not the first. " Such a Faust asthis, we feel, can no more be ultimately lost than can theMephistophilis of Marlowe. As for Marlowe's Faust, the plea for hisdestruction is the great delusion of a hard theology, and the onlyreally damnable person in the whole company is the Mephistopheles ofGoethe, who seems from first to last continually to be committing thesin against the Holy Ghost. The salvation of Faust is implicit in the whole structure and meaning ofthe play. It is worked out mystically in the Second Part, along lines ofhuman life and spiritual interest far-flung into the sphere thatsurrounds the story of the First. But even in the First Part, the happyissue is involved in the terms of Faust's compact with the devil. Onlyon the condition that Mephistopheles shall be able to satisfy Faust andcheat him "into self-complacent pride, or sweet enjoyment, " only "If ever to the passing hour I say, So beautiful thou art! thy flight delay"-- only then shall his soul become the prey of the tempter. But from thefirst, in the scorn of Faust for this poor fiend and all he has tobestow, we read the failure of the plot. Faust may sign a hundred suchbonds in his blood with little fear. He knows well enough that a spiritsuch as his can never be satisfied with what the fiend has to give, norlie down in sleek contentment to enjoy the earth without afterthought. It is the strenuous and insatiable spirit of the man that saves him. Itis true that "man errs so long as he is striving, " but the great word ofthe play is just this, that no such errors can ever be final. The deadlyerror is that of those who have ceased to strive, and who havecomplacently settled down in the acceptance of the lower life with itsgratifications and delights. But such striving is, as Robert Browning tells us in _Rabbi ben Ezra_and _The Statue and the Bust_, the critical and all-important point inhuman character and destiny. It is this which distinguishes pagan fromidealist in the end. Faust's errors fall off from him like a discardedrobe; the essential man has never ceased to strive. He has gone indeedto hell, but he has never made his bed there. He is saved by want ofsatisfaction. LECTURE IV CELTIC REVIVALS OF PAGANISM OMAR KAYYÁM AND FIONA MACLEOD It is extremely difficult to judge justly and without prejudice theliterature of one's own time. So many different elements are pouringinto it that it assumes a composite character, far beyond the power ofdefinition or even of epigram to describe as a whole. But, while this istrue, it is nevertheless possible to select from this vast amalgamcertain particular elements, and to examine them and judge them fairly. The field in which we are now wandering may be properly included underthe head of ancient literature, although in another sense it is the mostmodern of all. The two authors whom we shall consider in this lecture, although they have come into our literature but recently, yet representvery ancient thought. There is nothing whatsoever that is modern aboutthem. They describe bed-rock human passions and longings, sorrowingsand consolations. Each may be claimed as a revival of ancient paganism, but only one of them is capable of translation into a useful idealism. OMAR KAYYÁM In the twelfth century, at Khorassán in Persia Omar Kayyám the poet wasborn. He lived and died at Naishápúr, following the trade of atent-maker, acquiring knowledge of every available kind, but withastronomy for his special study. His famous poem, the _Rubáiyát_, wasfirst seen by Fitzgerald in 1856 and published in 1868. So great was thesensation produced in England by the innovating sage, that in 1895 theOmar Kayyám Club was founded by Professor Clodd, and that club has sincecome to be considered "the blue ribbon of literary associations. " In Omar's time Persian poetry was in the hands of the Súfis, orreligious teachers of Persia. He found them writing verses whichprofessed to be mystical and spiritual, but which might sometimes besuspected of earthlier meanings lurking beneath the pantheistic veil. Itwas against the poetry of such Súfis that Omar Kayyám rose in revolt. Loving frankness and truth, he threw all disguises aside, and became theexponent of materialistic epicureanism naked and unashamed. A fair specimen of the finest Súfi poetry is _The Rose Garden of Sa'di_, which it may be convenient to quote because of its easy accessibility inEnglish translation. Sa'di also was a twelfth-century poet, although ofa later time than Omar. He was a student of the College in Baghdad, andhe lived as a hermit for sixty years in Shiraz, singing of love and war. His mind is full of mysticism, wisdom and beauty going hand in handthrough a dim twilight land. Dominating all his thought is the primaryconviction that the soul is essentially part of God, and will return toGod again, and meanwhile is always revealing, in mysterious hints andhalf-conscious visions, its divine source and destiny. Here and thereyou will find the deep fatalism of the East, as in the lines-- "Fate will not alter for a thousand sighs, Nor prayers importunate, nor hopeless cries. The guardian of the store-house of the wind Cares nothing if the widow's lantern dies. " These, however, are relieved by that which makes a friend of fate-- "To God's beloved even the dark hour Shines as the morning glory after rain. Except by Allah's grace thou hast no power Nor strength of arm such rapture to attain. " It was against this sort of poetry that Omar Kayyám revolted. He had notany proof of such spiritual assurances, and he did not want that ofwhich he had no proof. He understood the material world around him, bothin its joy and sorrow, and emphatically he did not understand any otherworld. He became a sort of Marlowe's Faust before his time, andprotested against the vague spirituality of the Súfis by an assertion ofwhat may be called a brilliant animalism. He loved beauty as much asthey did, and there is an oriental splendour about all his work, albeitan earthly splendour. He became, accordingly, an audacious epicurean who"failed to find any world but this, " and set himself to make the best ofwhat he found. His was not an exorbitant ambition nor a fiery passion ofany kind. The bitterness and cynicism of it all remind us of theinscription upon Sardanapalus' tomb--"Eat, drink, play, the rest is notworth the snap of a finger. " Drinking-cups have been discovered withsuch inscriptions on them--"The future is utterly useless, make the mostof to-day, "--and Omar's poetry is full both of the cups and theinscription. The French interpreter, Nicolas, has indeed spiritualised his work. Inhis view, when Omar raves about wine, he really means God; when hespeaks of love, he means the soul, and so on. As a matter of fact, noman has ever written a plainer record of what he means, or has left hismeaning less ambiguous. When he says wine and love he means wine andlove--earthly things, which may or may not have their spiritualcounterparts, but which at least have given no sign of them to him. Thesame persistent note is heard in all his verses. It is the grape, andwine, and fair women, and books, that make up the sum total of life forOmar as he knows it. "Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing. A Book of verses underneath the Bough, A jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness-- Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! We are no other than a moving row Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go Round with the sun-illumined Lantern held In Midnight by the Master of the Show. " It would show a sad lack of humour if we were to take this tooseriously, and shake our heads over our eastern visitor. The cult ofOmar has been blamed for paganising English society. Really it came inas a foreign curiosity, and, for the most part, that it has remained. When we had a visit some years ago from that great oriental potentate LiHung Chang, we all put on our best clothes and went out to welcome him. That was all right so long as we did not naturalise him, a course whichneither he nor we thought of our adopting. Had we naturalised him, itwould have been a different matter, and even Mayfair might have foundthe fashions of China somewhat _risqué_. One remembers that introductorynote to Browning's _Ferishtah's Fancies_--"You, Sir, I entertain you forone of my Hundred; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments: youwill say they are Persian; but let them be changed. "[1] The only safeway of dealing with Omar Kayyám is to insist that his garments be _not_changed. If you naturalise him he will become deadly in the West. TheEast thrives upon fatalism, and there is a glamour about its mostmaterialistic writings, through which far spiritual things seem toquiver as in a sun-haze. The atmosphere of the West is different, andfatalism, adopted by its more practical mind, is sheer suicide. Not that there is much likelihood of a nation with the history and theliterature of England behind it, ever becoming to any great extentmaterialistic in the crude sense of Omar's poetry. The danger issubtler. The motto, "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die, " iscapable of spiritualisation, and if you spiritualise that motto itbecomes poisonous indeed. For there are various ways of eating anddrinking, and many who would not be tempted with the grosser appetitesmay become pagans by devoting themselves to a rarer banquet, the feastof reason and the flow of soul. It is possible in that way also to takethe present moment for Eternity, to live and think without horizons. Mr. Peyton has said, "You see in some little house a picture of a cottage ona moor, and you wonder why these people, living, perhaps, in the heartof a great city, and in the most commonplace of houses, put such apicture there. The reason for it is, that that cottage is for them thesignal of the immortal life of men, and the moor has infinite horizons. "That is the root of the matter after all--the soul and horizons. He whosays, "To-day shall suffice for me, " whether it be in the highintellectual plane or in the low earthly one, has fallen into the gripof the world that passeth away; and that is a danger which Omar's adventhas certainly not lessened. The second reason for care in this neighbourhood is that epicureanism isonly safe for those whose tastes lie in the direction of the simplelife. Montaigne has wisely said that it is pernicious to those who havea natural tendency to vice. But vice is not a thing which any man lovesfor its own sake, until his nature has suffered a long process ofdegradation. It is simply the last result of a habit of luxuriousself-indulgence; and the temptation to the self-indulgent, the presentworld in one form or another, comes upon everybody at times. There aremoods when all of us want to break away from the simple life, and feelthe splendour of the dazzling lights and the intoxication of the strangescents of the world. To surrender to these has always been, and alwayswill be, deadly. It is the old temptation to cease to strive, which wehave already found to be the keynote of Goethe's _Faust_. Kingsley, inone of the most remarkable passages of _Westward Ho!_ describes two ofAmyas Leigh's companions, settled down in a luscious paradise of earthlydelights, while their comrades endured the never-ending hardships of themarch. By the sight of that soft luxury Amyas was tempted of the devil. But as he gazed, a black jaguar sprang from the cliff above, andfastened on the fair form of the bride of one of the recreants. "O LordJesus, " said Amyas to himself, "Thou hast answered the devil for me!" It does not, however, need the advent of the jaguar to introduce theelement of sheer tragedy into luxurious life. In his _Conspiracy ofPontiac_, Parkman tells with rare eloquence the character of the OjibwaIndians: "In the calm days of summer, the Ojibwa fisherman pushes outhis birch canoe upon the great inland ocean of the North; . .. Or helifts his canoe from the sandy beach, and, while his camp-fire crackleson the grass-plot, reclines beneath the trees, and smokes and laughsaway the sultry hours, in a lazy luxury of enjoyment. .. . But when winterdescends upon the North, sealing up the fountains . .. Now the hunter canfight no more against the nipping cold and blinding sleet. Stiff andstark, with haggard cheek and shrivelled lip, he lies among thesnow-drifts; till, with tooth and claw, the famished wild-catstrives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his limbs. " Meredith tells of a bird, playing with a magic ring, and all the timetrying to sing its song; but the ring falls and has to be picked upagain, and the song is broken. It is a good parable of life, thatimpossible compromise between the magic ring and the simple song. Thosewho choose the earth-magic of Omar's epicureanism will find that thesong of the spirit is broken, until they cease from the vain attempt atsinging and fall into an earth-bound silence. Thus Omar Kayyám has brought us a rich treasure from the East, ofsplendid diction and much delightful and fascinating sweetness ofpoetry. All such gifts are an enrichment to the language and adecoration to the thought of a people. When, however, they are takenmore seriously, they may certainly bring plague with them, as otherEastern things have sometimes done. FIONA MACLEOD To turn suddenly from this curious Persian life and thought to the stillmore curious life and thought of ancient Scotland is indeed a violentchange. Nothing could be more dissimilar than the two types of paganismout of which they spring; and if Fiona Macleod's work may have itsdangers for the precarious faith of modern days, they are certainlydangers which attack the soul in a different fashion from those of Omar. The revelation of Fiona Macleod's identity with William Sharp came uponthe English-reading world as a complete surprise. Few deaths have beenmore lamented in the literary world than his, and that for many reasons. His biography is one of the most fascinating that could be imagined. Hispersonality was a singularly attractive one, --so vital, soindefatigable, --with interests so many-sided, and a heart so sound inall of them. It is characteristic of him that in his young days he ranaway for a time with gipsies, for he tells us, "I suppose I was a gipsyonce, and before that a wild man of the woods. " The two great influencesof his life were Shelley and D. G. Rossetti. The story of his literarystruggles is brimful of courage and romance, and the impression of thebook is mainly that of ubiquity. His insatiable curiosity seems to haveled him to know everybody, and every place, and everything. At length Fiona Macleod was born. She arose out of nowhere, so far asthe reading public could discover. Really there was a hidden shy self inSharp, which must find expression impossible except in some secret way. We knew him as the brilliant critic, the man of affairs, and the wideand experienced traveller. We did not know him, until we discovered thathe was Fiona, in that second life of his in the borderland where fleshand spirit meet. First there came _Pharais_ in 1893, and that was the beginning of much. Then came _The Children of To-morrow_, the forerunner of Fiona Macleod. It was his first prose expression of the subjective side of his nature, together with the element of revolt against conventionalities, which wasalways strongly characteristic of him. It introduced England to thehidden places of the Green Life. The secret of his double personality was confided only to a few friends, and was remarkably well kept. When pressed by adventurous questioners, some of these allies gave answers which might have served for models inthe art of diplomacy. So Sharp wrote on, openly as William Sharp, andsecretly as Fiona Macleod. Letters had to reach Fiona somehow, and so itwas given out that she was his cousin, and that letters sent to himwould be safely passed on to her. If, however, it was difficult to keepthe secret from the public, it was still more difficult for one man tomaintain two distinct personalities. William Sharp of course had tolive, while Fiona might die any day. Her life entailed upon him anotherburden, not of personification only, but of subject and research, and hewas driven to sore passes to keep both himself and her alive. For eachwas truly alive and individual--two distinct people, one of whom thoughtof the other as if she were "asleep in another room. " Even the doublecorrespondence was a severe burden and strain, for Fiona Macleod had herown large post-bag which had to be answered, just as William Sharp hadhis. But far beyond any such outward expressions of themselves as these, the difficulty of the double personality lay in deep springs ofcharacter and of taste. Sharp's mind was keenly intellectual, observant, and reasoning; while Fiona Macleod was the intuitional and spiritualdreamer. She was indeed the expression of the womanly element in Sharp. This element certainly dominated him, or rather perhaps he was one ofthose who have successfully invaded the realm of alien sex. In hisearlier work, such as _The Lady of the Sea_, --"the woman who is in theheart of woman, "--we have proof of this; for in that especially he so"identified himself with woman's life, seeing it through her own eyesthat he seems to forget sometimes that he is not she. " So much was thisthe case that Fiona Macleod actually received at least one proposal ofmarriage. It was answered quite kindly, Fiona replying that she hadother things to do, and could not think of it; but the little incidentshows how true the saying about Sharp was, that "he was always in lovewith something or another. " This loving and love-inspiring element inhim has been strongly challenged, and some of the women who have judgedhim, have strenuously disowned him as an exponent of their sex. Yet thefact is unquestionable that he was able to identify himself in a quiteextraordinary degree with what he took to be the feminine soul. It seems to have something to do with the Celtic genius. One can alwaysunderstand a Scottish Celt better by comparing him with an Irish one ora Welsh; and it will certainly prove illuminative in the present case toremember Mr. W. B. Yeats while one is thinking of Fiona Macleod. To thepresent writer it seems that the woman-soul is apparent in both, andthat she is singing the same tune; the only difference being, as itwere, in the quality of the voice, Fiona Macleod singing in highsoprano, and Mr. Yeats in deep and most heart-searching contralto. The Fiona Macleod side of Sharp never throve well in London. Hers wasthe fate of those who in this busy world have retained the faculty andthe need for dreaming. So Sharp had to get away from London--driven ofthe spirit into the wilderness--that his other self might live andbreathe. One feels the power of this second self especially in certainwords that recur over and over again, until the reader is almosthypnotised by their lilting, and finds himself in a kind of sleep. Thatdreaming personality, with eyes half closed and poppy-decorated hair, could never live in the bondage of the city cage. The spirit must getfree, and the longing for such freedom has been well called "a barbaricpassion, a nostalgia for the life of the moor and windy sea. " There are two ways of loving and understanding nature. Meredith speaksof those who only see nature by looking at it along the barrel of a gun. The phrase describes that large company of people who feel the call ofthe wild indeed, and long for the country at certain seasons, but mustalways be doing something with nature--either hunting, or camping out, or peradventure going upon a journey like Baal in the Old Testament. Butthere is another way, to which Carlyle calls attention as characteristicof Robert Burns, and which he pronounces the test of a true poet. Thetest is, whether he can wander the whole day beside a burn "and no'think lang. " Such was Fiona's way with nature. She needed nothing tointerest her but the green earth itself, and its winds and its waters. It was surely the Fiona side of Sharp that made him kiss the grassy turfand then scatter it to the east and west and north and south; or liedown at night upon the ground that he might see the intricate patternsof the moonlight, filtering through the branches of the trees. In all this, it is needless to say, Mr. Yeats offers a close parallel. He understands so perfectly the wild life, that one knows at once thatit is in him, like a fire in his blood. Take this for instance-- "They found a man running there; He had ragged long grass-coloured hair; He had knees that stuck out of his hose; He had puddle water in his shoes; He had half a cloak to keep him dry, Although he had a squirrel's eye. " Such perfect observation is possible only to the detached spirit, whichis indeed doing nothing to nature, but only letting nature do her work. In the sharp outline of this imagery, and in the mind that saw and theheart that felt it, there is something of the keenness of the squirrel'seye for nature. Fiona's favourite part of nature is the sea. That great and many-sidedwonder, whether with its glare of phosphorescence or the stillness ofits dead calm, fascinates the poems of Sharp and lends them its spell. But of the prose of Fiona it may be truly said that everything ". .. Doth suffer a sea-change, Into something rich and strange. " These marvellous lines were never more perfectly illustrated than here. As we read we behold the sea, now crouching like a gigantic tiger, nowmoaning with some Celtic consciousness of the grim and loathsometreasures in its depths, ever haunted and ever haunting. It is probablethat Sharp never wrote anything that had not for his ear an undertone ofthe ocean. Sitting in London in his room, he heard, on one occasion, thesound of waves so loud that he could not hear his wife knocking at thedoor. Similarly in Fiona Macleod's writing seas are always rocking andswinging. Gulfs are opening to disclose the green dim mysteries of thedeeper depths. The wind is running riot with the surface overhead, andthe sea is lord in all its mad glory and wonder and fear. Mr. Yeats has the same characteristic, but again it is possible to drawa fantastic distinction like that between the soprano and the alto. Itis lake water rather than the ocean that sounds the under-tone of Mr. Yeats' poetry-- "I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavement grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. " The oldest sounds in the world, Mr. Yeats tells us are wind and waterand the curlew: and of the curlew he says-- "O curlew, cry no more in the air, Or only to the waters of the West; Because your crying brings to my mind Passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair That was shaken out over my breast: There is enough evil in the crying of wind. " In all this you hear the crying of the wind and the swiftly borne screamof the curlew on it, and you know that lake water will not be far away. This magic power of bringing busy city people out of all theirsurroundings into the green heart of the forest and the moorland, andletting them hear the sound of water there, is common to them both. Fiona Macleod is a lover and worshipper of beauty. Long before her, theGreeks had taught the world their secret, and the sweet spell hadpenetrated many hearts beyond the pale of Greece. It was Augustine whosaid, "Late I have loved thee, oh beauty, so old and yet so new, late Ihave loved thee. " And Marius the Epicurean, in Pater's fine phrase, "wasone who was made perfect by love of visible beauty. " It is a directinstinct, this bracing and yet intoxicating love of beauty for its ownsake. Each nation produces a spiritual type of it, which becomes one ofthe deepest national characteristics, and the Celtic type is easilydistinguished. No Celt ever cared for landscape. "It is loveliness Iask, not lovely things, " says Fiona; and it is but a step from this tothat abstract mystical and spiritual love of beauty, which is the verysoul of the Celtic genius. It expresses itself most directly in colours, and the meaning of them is far more than bright-hued surfaces. The palegreen of running water, the purple and pearl-grey of doves, still morethe remote and liquid colours of the sky, and the sad-toned or the gaygarments of the earth--these are more by far to those who know theirvalue than pigments, however delicate. They are either a sensuousintoxication or else a mystic garment of the spirit. Seumas, the oldislander, looking seaward at sunrise, says, "Every morning like this Itake my hat off to the beauty of the world. " And as we read we think ofMr. Neil Munro's lord of Doom Castle walking uncovered in the nightbefore retiring to his rest, and with tears welling in his eyesexclaiming that the mountains are his evening prayer. Such mystics asthese are in touch with far-off things. Sharp, indeed, was leddefinitely to follow such leading into regions of spiritualism where notmany of his readers will be able or willing to follow him, but FionaMacleod left the mystery vague. It might easily have defined itself insome sort of pantheistic theory of the universe, but it never did so. "The green fire" is more than the sap which flows through the roots ofthe trees. It is as Alfred de Musset has called it, the blood thatcourses through the veins of God. As we realise the full force of thatimaginative phrase, the dark roots of trees instinct with life, and theroyal liquor rising to its foam of leaves, we have something very likeFiona's mystic sense of nature. Any extreme moment of human experiencewill give an interpretation of such symbolism--love or death or the merespringtide of the year. It is not without significance that Sharp and Mr. Yeats and Mr. Symonsall dreamed on the same night the curious dream of a beautiful womanshooting arrows among the stars. All the three had indeed the beautifulwoman in the heart of them, and in far-darting thoughts and imaginationsshe was ever sending arrows among the stars. But Mr. Yeats is calmer andless passionate than Fiona, as though he were crooning a low song allthe time, while the silent arrows flash from his bow. Sometimes, indeed, he will blaze forth flaming with passion in showers of light of thegreen fire. Yet from first to last, there is less of the green fire andmore of the poppies in Mr. Yeats and it is Fiona who shoots mostconstantly and farthest among the stars. _Haunted_, that is the word for this world into which we have entered. The house without its guests would be uninhabitable for such poets asthese. The atmosphere is everywhere that of a haunted earth wherestrange terrors and beauties flit to and fro--phantoms of spectral liveswhich seem to be looking on while we play out our bustling parts uponthe stage. They are separate from the body, these shadows, and belong tosome former life. They are an ancestral procession walking ever behindus, and often they are changing the course of our visible adventures bythe power of sins and follies that were committed in the dim andremotest past. Certainly the author is, as he says, "Aware of things andliving presences hidden from the rest. " "The shadows are here. " Thespirits of the dead and the never born are out and at large. These orothers like them were the folk that Abt Vogler encountered as he playedupon his instrument--"presences plain in the place. " One of the most striking chapters in that very remarkable book of Mr. Fielding Hall's, _The Soul of a People_, is that in which he describesthe nats, the little dainty spirits that haunt the trees of Burmah. Butit is not only the Eastern trees that are haunted, and Sharp is alwaysseeing tree-spirits, and nature-spirits of every kind, and talking withthem. Now and again he will give you a natural explanation of them, butthat always jars and sounds prosaic. In fact, we do not want it; weprefer the "delicate throbbing things" themselves, to any facts you cangive us instead of them, for to those who have heard and seen beyond theveil, they are far more real than any of your mere facts. Here we thinkof Mr. Yeats again with his cry, "Come into the world again wild bees, wild bees. " But he hardly needed to cry upon them, for the wild beeswere buzzing in every page he wrote. A world haunted in this fashion has its sinister side, allied with thedecaying corpses deep in the earth. When passion has gone into the worldbeyond that which eye hath seen and ear heard, it takes, in presence ofthe thought of death, a double form. It is in love with death and yet ithates death. So we come back to that singular sentence of Robert LouisStevenson's, "The beauty and the terror of the world, " which soadequately describes the double fascination of nature for man. Her spellis both sweet and terrible, and we would not have it otherwise Themenace in summer's beauty, the frightful contrast between the laughingearth and the waiting death, are all felt in the prolonged and deepsense of gloom that broods over much of Fiona's work, and in thesecond-sight which very weirdly breaks through from time to time, forcing our entrance into the land from which we shrink. Mr. Yeats is not without the same sinister and moving undergloom, although, on the whole, he is aware of kindlier powers and of a timidaffection between men and spirits. He actually addresses a remonstranceto Scotsmen for having soured the disposition of their ghosts andfairies, and his reconstructions of the ancient fairyland are certainlyfull of lightsome and pleasing passages. Along either lane you mayarrive at peace, which is the monopoly neither of the Eastern nor of theWestern Celt, but it is a peace never free from a great wistfulness. "How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true; But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face. " That there is much paganism in all this must be obvious to any one whohas given any attention to the subject. The tale of _The Annir-Choille_confesses it frankly enough, where the young Christian prince is broughtback by the forest maiden from his new faith to the ancient pagan world. Old gods are strewn everywhere upon the waysides down which Fiona leadsus, and there are many times when we cannot disentangle the spiritualfrom the material, nor indeed the good from the evil influences. Dr. John Brown used to tell the story of a shepherd boy near Biggar, who oneday was caught out on the hill in a thunder-storm. The boy could notremember whether thunder-storms were sent by God or Satan, and so to bequite safe, he kept alternately repeating the ejaculations, "Eh, guidGod, " and "Eh, bonny deil. " One often thinks of Fiona in connection withthat story. You are seldom quite sure whether it is a Christian or apagan deity whom you are invoking, but there is no question as to thepaganism of the atmosphere which you often breathe. As a matter of fact, William Sharp began in frank and avowed paganism, and passed from that through various phases into a high spirituality. His early utterances in regard to Art, in which he deprecated anyconnection between Art and a message, and insisted upon its being mereexpression, were of course sheer paganism. In 1892, before Fiona wasborn, he published one of those delightful magazines which run through ashort and daring career and then vanish as suddenly as they arose. Infact his magazine, _The Pagan Review_, from first to last had only onenumber. It was edited by Mr. Brooks and William Sharp, and its articleswere contributed by seven other people. But these seven, and Mr. Brooksas well, turned out eventually all to be William Sharp himself. It was"frankly pagan; pagan in sentiment, pagan in convictions, pagan inoutlook. .. . The religion of our forefathers has not only ceased for uspersonally, but is no longer in any vital and general sense a sovereignpower in the realm. " He finished up with the interesting phrase, "Sictransit gloria Grundi, " and he quotes Gautier: "'Frankly I am in earnestthis time. Order me a dove-coloured vest, apple-green trousers, a pouch, a crook; in short, the entire outfit of a Lignon shepherd. I shall havea lamb washed to complete the pastoral. .. . ' This is the lamb. " The magazine was an extraordinarily clever production, and the fact thathe was its author is significant. For to the end of her days Fiona was apagan still, albeit sometimes a more or less converted pagan. In _TheAnnir-Choille_, _The Sin-Eater_, _The Washer of the Ford_, and theothers, you never get away from the ancient rites, and there is onestory which may be taken as typical of all the rest, _The Walker in theNight_:-- "Often he had heard of her. When any man met this woman his fatedepended on whether he saw her before she caught sight of him. If shesaw him first, she had but to sing her wild strange song, and he wouldgo to her; and when he was before her, two flames would come out of hereyes, and one flame would burn up his life as though it were dry tinder, and the other would wrap round his soul like a scarlet shawl, and shewould take it and live with it in a cavern underground for a year and aday. And on that last day she would let it go, as a hare is let go afurlong beyond a greyhound. Then it would fly like a windy shadowfrom glade to glade, or from dune to dune, in the vain hope to reach awayside Calvary: but ever in vain. Sometimes the Holy Tree would almostbe reached; then, with a gliding swiftness, like a flood racing down avalley, the Walker in the Night would be alongside the fugitive. Now andagain unhappy nightfarers--unhappy they, for sure, for never does wealremain with any one who hears what no human ear should hearken--would bestartled by a sudden laughing in the darkness. This was when some suchterrible chase had happened, and when the creature of the night hadtaken the captive soul, in the last moments of the last hour of the lastday of its possible redemption, and rent it this way and that, as a hawkscatters the feathered fragments of its mutilated quarry. " We have said that nature may be either an intoxication or a sacrament, and paganism might be defined as the view of nature in the former ofthese two lights. But where you have a growing spirituality like that ofWilliam Sharp, you are constantly made aware of the hieratic orsacramental quality in nature also. It is this which gives its peculiarcharm and spell to Celtic folklore in general. The Saxon song of Beowulfis a rare song, and its story is the swinging tale of a "pagan gentlemanvery much in the rough, " but for the most part it is quite destitute ofspiritual significance. It may be doubted if this could be said truly ofany Celtic tale that was ever told. Fiona Macleod describes _The ThreeMarvels_ as "studies in old religious Celtic sentiment, so far as thatcan be recreated in a modern heart that feels the same beauty andsimplicity in the early Christian faith"; and there is a constant sensethat however wild and even wicked the tale may be, yet it has itsChristian counterpart, and is in some true sense a strayed idealism. At this point we become aware of one clear distinction between WilliamSharp and Fiona Macleod. To him, literature was a craft, laboured atmost honestly and enriched with an immense wealth both of knowledge andof cleverness; but to her, literature was a revelation, with divineinspirations behind it--inspirations authentically divine, no matter bywhat name the God might be called. So it came to pass that _The PaganReview_ had only one number. That marked the transition moment, whenFiona Macleod began to predominate over William Sharp, until finally shecontrolled and radically changed him into her own likeness. He passes onto the volume entitled _The Divine Adventure_, which interprets thespirit of Columba. Nature and the spiritual meet in the psychic phaseinto which Sharp passed, not only in the poetic and native sense, but ina more literal sense than that. For the Green Life continually leadsthose who are akin to it into opportunities of psychical research amongobscure and mysterious forces which are yet very potent. With a naturelike his it was inevitable that he should be eventually luredirresistibly into the enchanted forest, where spirit is more and morethe one certainty of existence. For most of us there is another guide into the spirit land. In theregion of the spectral and occult many of us are puzzled and ill atease, but we all, in some degree, understand the meaning of ordinaryhuman love. Even the most commonplace nature has its magical hours nowand then, or at least has had them and has not forgotten; and it is lovethat "leads us with a gentle hand into the silent land. " This may form abond of union between Fiona Macleod and many who are mystified ratherthan enlightened by psychic phenomena in the technical meaning of thephrase. Here, perhaps, we find the key to the double personality whichhas been so interesting in this whole study. It was William Sharp whochose for his tombstone the inscription, "Love is more great than weconceive, and death is the keeper of unknown redemptions. " Fiona's work, too, is full of the latent potency of love. Like Marius, she hasperceived an unseen companion walking with men through the gloom andbrilliance of the West and North, and sometimes her heart is so fullthat it cannot find utterance at all. In the "dream state, " that whichis mere nature for the scientist reveals itself, obscurely indeed andyet insistently, as very God. God is dwelling in Fiona. He is smiling inall sunsets. He is filling the universe with His breath and holding usall in His "Mighty Moulding Hand. " The relation in which all this stands to Christianity is a very curiousquestion. The splendour, beauty, and spirituality of it all are evidentenough, but the references to anything like dogmatic or definiteChristian doctrine are confusing and obscure. Perhaps it was impossiblethat one so literally a child of nature, and who had led such anopen-air life from his childhood, could possibly have done otherwisethan to rebel. It was the gipsy in him that revolted againstChristianity and every other form and convention of civilised life, andclaimed a freedom far beyond any which he ever used. We read that in hissixth year, when already he found the God of the pulpit remote andforbidding, he was nevertheless conscious of a benign and beautifulpresence. On the shore of Loch Long he built a little altar of roughstones beneath a swaying pine, and laid an offering of white flowersupon it. In the college days he turned still more definitely againstorthodox Presbyterianism; but he retained all along, not only belief inthe central truths that underlie all religions, but great reverence andaffection for them. It is probable that towards the close he was approaching nearer toformal Christianity than he knew. We are told that he "does notreverence the Bible or Christian Theology in themselves, but for thebeautiful spirituality which faintly breathes through them like a vaguewind blowing through intricate forests. " His quarrel with Christianitywas that it had never done justice to beauty, that it had a gloom uponit, and an unlovely austerity. This indeed is a strange accusation fromso perfect an interpreter of the Celtic gloom as he was, and the retort_tu quoque_ is obvious enough. There have indeed been phases ofChristianity which seemed to love and honour the ugly for its own sake, yet there is a rarer beauty in the Man of Sorrows than in all thesmiling faces of the world. This is that hidden beauty of which thesaints and mystics tell us. They have seen it in the face more marredthan any man's, and their record is that he who would find a lastingbeauty that will satisfy his soul, must find it through pain conqueredand ugliness transformed and sorrow assuaged. The Christ Beautiful cannever be seen when you have stripped him of the Crown of Thorns, nor isthere any loveliness that has not been made perfect by tears. Thusthough there is truth in Sharp's complaint that Christianity has oftendone sore injustice to beauty as such, yet it must be repeated that thisexponent of the Celtic heart somehow missed the element in Christianitywhich was not only like, but actually identical with, his own deepesttruth. Sharp often reminds one of Heine, with his intensely human love of life, both in its brightness and in its darkness. Where that love is sointense as it was in these hearts, it is almost inevitable that itshould sometimes eclipse the sense of the divine. Thus Sharp tells usthat "Celtic paganism lies profound still beneath the fugitive drift ofChristianity and civilisation, as the deep sea beneath the coming andgoing of the tides. " He was indeed so aware of this underlying paganism, that we find it blending with Christian ideas in practically the wholeof his work. Nothing could be quoted as a more distinctive note of hisgenius than that blend. It is seen perhaps most clearly in such storiesas _The Last Supper_ and _The Fisher of Men_. In these tales ofunsurpassable power and beauty, Fiona Macleod has created the GaelicChrist. The Christ is the same as He of Galilee and of the Upper Room inJerusalem, and His work the same. But he talks the sweet Celticlanguage, and not only talks it but _thinks_ in it also. He walks amongthe rowan trees of the Shadowy Glen, while the quiet light flames uponthe grass, and the fierce people that lurk in shadow have eyes for thehelplessness of the little lad who sees too far. Such tales are full ofa strange light that seems to be, at one and the same time, the Celticglamour and the Light of the World. All the lovers of Mr. Yeats must have remembered many instances of thesame kind in his work. "And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less than thisdilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find noexpression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodiesof men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks? Let us goforth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart longsfor, and have no fear. " Mr. Yeats is continually identifying these apparently unrelated things;and youth and peace, faith and beauty, are ever meeting in converginglines in his work. No song of his has a livelier lilt than the _Fiddlerof Dooney_. "I passed my brother and cousin: They read in their books of prayer; I read in my book of songs I bought at Sligo fair. When we come at the end of time, To Peter sitting in state, He will smile on the three old spirits, But call me first through the gate. And when the folk there spy me, They will all come up to me, With, 'Here is the fiddler of Dooney!' And dance like a wave of the sea. " In a few final words we may try to estimate what all this amounts to inthe long battle between paganism and idealism. There is no question thatFiona Macleod may be reasonably claimed by either side. Certainly it istrue of her work, that it is pure to the pure and dangerous to those whotake it wrongly. Meredith's great line was never truer than it is here, "Enter these enchanted woods, ye who dare. " The effect upon the mind, and the tendency in the life, will depend upon what one brings to thereading of it. All this bringing back of the discarded gods has its glamour and itsrisk. Such gods are excellent as curiosities, and may provide thequaintest of studies in human nature. They give us priceless fragmentsof partial and broken truth, and they exhibit cross-sections of theevolution of thought in some of its most charming moments. Besides allthis, they are exceedingly valuable as providing us with that generalsense of religion, vague and illusive, which is deeper than all dogma. But, for the unwary, there is the double danger in all this region thatthey shall, on the one hand, be tempted to worship the old gods; orthat, on the other hand, even in loving them without definite worship, the old black magic may spring out upon them. As to the formeralternative, light minds will always prefer the wonderfully coloured butmore or less formless figure in a dream, to anything more definite andcommanding. They will cry, "Here is the great god"; and, intoxicated bythe mystery, will fall down to worship. But that which does not commandcan never save, and for a guiding faith we need something more sure thanthis. Moreover, there is the second alternative of the old black magic. Adiscarded god is always an uncanny thing to take liberties with. Whilethe earth-spirit in all its grandeur may appeal to the jaded andperplexed minds of to-day as a satisfying object of faith, the resultwill probably be but a modern form of the ancient Baal-worship. It willin some respects be a superior cult to its ancient prototype. Itsdevotees will not cut themselves with knives. They will cut themselveswith sweet and bitter poignancies of laughter and tears, when the sunshines upon wet forests in the green earth. This, too, is Baal-worship, hardly distinguishable in essence from that cruder devotion to thefructifying and terrifying powers of nature against which the prophetsof Israel made their war. In much that Fiona Macleod has written we feelthe spirit struggling like Samson against its bonds of green withes, though by no means always able to break them as he did; or lying down inan earth-bound stupor, content with the world that nature produces andsustains. Here, among the elemental roots of things, when the heart issatisfying itself with the passionate life of nature, the red flowergrows in the green life, and the imperative of passion becomes the finallaw. On the other hand, a child of nature may remember that he is also achild of the spirit; and, even in the Vale Perilous, the spirit may bean instinctive and faithful guide. Because we love the woods we need notworship the sacred mistletoe. Because we listen to the sea we need notreject greater and more intelligible voices of the Word of Life. And themention of the sea, and the memory of all that it has meant in FionaMacleod's writing, reminds us strangely of that old text, "Born of waterand of the Spirit. " While man lives upon the sea-girt earth, the voicesof the ocean, that seem to come from the depths of its green heart, willalways call to him, reminding him of the mysterious powers and theterrible beauties among which his life is cradled. Yet there are deepersecrets which the spirit of man may learn--secrets that will still betold when the day of earth is over, when the sea has ceased from herswinging, and the earth-spirit has fled for ever. It is well that a manshould remember this, and remain a spiritual man in spite of every formof seductive paganism. Sharp has said in his _Green Fire_:-- "There are three races of man. There is the myriad race which loses all, through (not bestiality, for the brute world is clean and sane)perverted animalism; and there is the myriad race which denounceshumanity, and pins all its faith and joy to a life the very conditionsof whose existence are incompatible with the law to which we aresubject; the sole law, the law of nature. Then there is that smalluntoward class which knows the divine call of the spirit through thebrain, and the secret whisper of the soul in the heart, and for everperceives the veils of mystery and the rainbows of hope upon our humanhorizons: which hears and sees, and yet turns wisely, meanwhile, to thelife of the green earth, of which we are part, to the common kindred ofliving things, with which we are at one--is content, in a word, to live, because of the dream that makes living so mysteriously sweet andpoignant; and to dream, because of the commanding immediacy of life. " There are indeed the three races. There is the pagan, which knows onlythe fleshly aspect of life, and seeks nothing beyond it. There is thespiritual, which ignores and seeks to flee from that to which its bodychains it. There is also that wise race who know that all things aretheirs, flesh and spirit both, and who have learned how to reap theharvests both of time and of eternity. LECTURE V JOHN BUNYAN We have seen the eternal battle in its earlier phases surging to and frobetween gods of the earth that are as old as Time, and daring thoughtsof men that rose beyond them and claimed a higher inheritance. Betweenthat phase of the warfare and the same battle as it is fought to-day, weshall look at two contemporary men in the latter part of the seventeenthcentury who may justly be taken as examples of the opposing types. JohnBunyan and Samuel Pepys, however, will lead us no dance among theelemental forces of the world. They will rather show us, with veryfascinating _naïveté_, true pictures of their own aspirations, nourishedin the one case upon the busy and crowded life of the time, and in theother, upon the definite and unquestioned conceptions of a complete andsystematic theology. Yet, typical though they are, it is easy toexaggerate their simplicity, and it will be interesting to see how JohnBunyan, supposed to be a pure idealist, aloof from the world in which helived, yet had the most intimate and even literary connection with thatworld. Pepys had certain curious and characteristic outlets upon thespiritual region, but he seems to have closed them all, and becomeincreasingly a simple devotee of things seen and temporal. Bunyan comes upon us full grown and mature in the work by which he isbest known and remembered. His originality is one of the standingwonders of history. The _Pilgrim's Progress_ was written at a time whenevery man had to take sides in a savage and atrocious ecclesiasticalcontroversy. The absolute judgments passed on either side by the other, the cruelties practised and the dangers run, were such as to lead thereader to expect extreme bitterness and sectarian violence in everyreligious writing of the time. Bunyan was known to his contemporaries asa religious writer, pure and simple, and a man whose convictions hadcaused him much suffering at the hands of his enemies. Most of the firstreaders of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ had no thought of any connectionbetween that book and worldly literature; and the pious people who shooktheir heads over his allegory as being rather too interesting for atreatise on such high themes as those which it handled, might perhapshave shaken their heads still more solemnly had they known how much ofwhat they called the world was actually behind it. Bunyan was avoluminous writer of theological works, and the complete edition of themfills three enormous volumes, closely printed in double column. But itis the little allegory embedded in one of these volumes which has madehis fame eternal, and for the most part the rest are remembered now onlyin so far as they throw light upon that story. One exception must bemade in favour of _Grace Abounding_. This is Bunyan's autobiography, inwhich he describes, without allegory, the course of his spiritualexperience. For an understanding of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ it isabsolutely necessary to know that companion volume. It is very curious to watch the course of criticism as it was directedto him and to his story. The eighteenth century had lost the keenness offormer controversies, and from its classic balcony it looked down uponwhat seemed to it the somewhat sordid arena of the past. _The Examiner_complains that he never yet knew an author that had not his admirers. Bunyan and Quarles have passed through several editions and pleased asmany readers as Dryden and Tillotson. Even Cowper, timidly appreciativeand patronising, wrote of the "ingenious dreamer"-- "I name thee not, lest so despised a name Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame, " --lines which have a pathetic irony in them, as we contrast the anxiousCowper, with the occasional revivals of interest and the age-long toneof patronage which have been meted out to him, with the robust andsturdy immortality of the man he shrank from naming. Swift discoveredBunyan's literary power, and later Johnson and Southey did him justice. In the nineteenth century his place was secured for ever, and Macaulay'sessay on him will probably retain its interest longer than anything elsethat Macaulay wrote. We are apt to think of him as a mere dreamer, spinning his cobwebs ofimagination wholly out of his own substance--a pure idealist, whosewriting dwells among his ideals in a region ignorant of the earth. Inone of his own apologies he tells us, apparently in answer toaccusations that had been made against him, that he did not take hiswork from anybody, but that it came from himself alone. Doubtless thatis true so far as the real originality of his work is concerned, itsgeneral conception, and the working out of its details point by point. Yet, to imagine that if there had been no other English literature the_Pilgrim's Progress_ would have been exactly what it is, is simply toignore the facts of the case. John Bunyan is far more interesting justbecause his work is part of English literature, because it did feel theinfluences of his own time and of the past, than it could ever have beenas the mere monstrosity of detachment which it has been supposed to be. The idealist who merely dreams and takes no part in the battle, refusingto know or utilise the writing of any other man, can be no fair judge ofthe life which he criticises, and no reliable guide among its facts. Bunyan might very easily indeed have been a pagan of the most worldlytype. It was extremely difficult for him to be a Puritan, not only onaccount of outward troubles, but also of inward ones belonging to hisown disposition and experience. Accepting Puritanism, the easiest coursefor him would have been that of fanaticism, and had he taken that coursehe would certainly have had no lack of companions. It was far moredifficult to remain a Puritan and yet to keep his heart open to thebeauty and fascination of human life. Yet he was interested in what menwere writing or had written. All manner of songs and stories, heard inearly days in pot-houses, or in later times in prison, kept sounding inhis ears, and he wove them into his work. The thing that he meant tosay, and did say, was indeed one about which controversy and persecutionwere raging, but, except in a very few general references, his writingshows no sign of this. His eye is upon far-off things, the things of thesoul of man and the life of God, but the way in which he tells thesethings shows innumerable signs of the bright world of English books. It is worth while to consider this large and human Bunyan, who has beenvery erroneously supposed to be a mere literary freak, detached from allsuch influences as go to the making of other writers. He tells us, indeed, that "when I pulled it came, " and that is delightfully true. Yet, it came not out of nowhere, and it is our part in this essay toinquire as to the places from which it did come. As we have said, itcame out of two worlds, and the web is most wonderfully woven andcoloured, but our present concern is rather with the earthly part of itthan the heavenly. No one can read John Bunyan without thinking of George Herbert. Few ofthe short biographies in our language are more interesting reading thanIsaac Walton's life of Herbert. That master of simplicity is alwaysfascinating, and in this biography he gives us one of the most beautifulsketches of contemporary narrative that has ever been penned. Herbertwas the quaintest of the saints. He lived in the days of Charles theFirst and James the First, a High Churchman who had Laud for his friend. Shy, sensitive, high-bred, shrinking from the world, he was at the sametime a man of business, skilful in the management of affairs, and yet aman of morbid delicacy of imagination. The picture of his life at LittleGidding, where he and Mr. Farrer instituted a kind of hermitage, orprivate chapel of devotion, in which the whole of the Psalms were readthrough once in every twenty-four hours, grows peculiarly pathetic whenwe remember that the house and chapel were sacked by the parliamentaryarmy, in which for a time John Bunyan served. No two points of view, itwould seem, could be more widely contrasted than those of Bunyan andHerbert, and yet the points of agreement are far more important than thedifferences between them, and _The Temple_ has so much in common withthe _Pilgrim's Progress_ that one is astonished to find that thelikenesses seem to be entirely unconscious. Matthew Henry is perpetuallyquoting _The Temple_ in his Commentary. Writing only a few yearsearlier, Bunyan reproduces in his own fashion many of its thoughts, butdoes not mention its existence. In order to know Bunyan's early life, and indeed to understand the_Pilgrim's Progress_ at all adequately, one must read _Grace Abounding_. It is a short book, written in the years when he was already growingold, for those whom he had brought into the fold of religion. From thisautobiography it has usually been supposed that he had led a life of thewildest debauchery before his Christian days; but the more one examinesthe book, and indeed all his books, the less is one inclined to believein any such desperate estimate of the sins of his youth. The measure ofsin is the sensitiveness of a man's conscience; and where, as inBunyan's case, the conscience is abnormally delicate and subject toviolent reactions, a life which in another man would be a pattern ofinnocence and respectability may be regarded as an altogetherblackguardly and vicious one. It was, however evidently a life of strongand intense worldly interest stepping over the line here and there intopositive wrong-doing, but for the most part blameworthy mainly onaccount of its absorption in the passing shows of the hour. What then was that world which interested Bunyan so intensely, and costhim so many pangs of conscience? No doubt it was just the life of theroad as he travelled about his business; for though by no means a tinkerin the modern sense of the word, he was an itinerant brazier, whosebusiness took him constantly to and fro among the many villages of thedistrict of Bedford. He must have heard in inns and from waysidecompanions many a catch of plays and songs, and listened to many alively story, or read it in the chap-books which were hawked about thecountry then. It must also be remembered that these were the days ofpuppet shows. The English drama, as we have already mentioned inconnection with _Faust_, was by no means confined to the boards ofactual theatres where living actors played the parts. Little mimicstages travelled about the country in all directions reproducing theplays, very much after the fashion of Punch and Judy; and even thesolemnest of Shakespeare's tragedies were exhibited in this way. Thereis no possibility of doubt that Bunyan must have often stood agape atthese exhibitions, and thus have received much of the highest literatureat second hand. As to how much of it he had actually read, that is a different question. One is tempted to believe that he must have read George Herbert, but ofthis there is no positive proof. We are quite certain about five books, for which we have his own express statements. His wife brought him asher dowry the very modest furniture of two small volumes, Baily's_Practice of Piety_ and Dent's _The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven_. Thefirst is a very complicated and elaborate statement of Christian dogma, which Bunyan passes by with the scant praise, "Wherein I also found somethings that were somewhat pleasing to me. " The other is a much morevital production. Even to this day it is an immensely interesting pieceof reading. It consists of conversations between various men who standfor types of worldling, ignoramus, theologian, etc. , and there are veryclear traces of it in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, especially in the talksbetween Bunyan's pilgrims and the man Ignorance. Another book which played a large part in Bunyan's life was the shortbiography of Francis Spira, an Italian, who had died shortly beforeBunyan's time. Spira had been a Protestant lawyer in Italy, but hadfound it expedient to abate the open profession of Protestantism withwhich he began, and eventually to transfer his allegiance to the RomanChurch. The biography is for the most part an account of his death-bedconversation, which lasted a long time, since his illness was even moreof the mind than of the body. It is an extremely ghastly account of amorbid and insane melancholia. It was the fashion of the time to takesuch matters spiritually rather than physically, and we read that manypersons went to his death-bed and listened to his miserable cries andgroanings in the hope of gaining edification for their souls. How thebook came into Bunyan's hands no one can tell, but evidently he hadfound it in English translation, and many of the darkest parts of _GraceAbounding_ are directly due to it, while the Man in the Iron Cage quotesthe very words of Spira. Another book which Bunyan had read was Luther's _Commentary on theGalatians_. The present writer possesses a copy of that volume dated1786, at the close of which there are fourteen pages, on which longlists of names are printed. The names are those of weavers, shoe-makers, and all sorts of tradesmen in the western Scottish townsof Kilmarnock, Paisley, and others of that neighbourhood, who hadsubscribed for a translation of the commentary that they might read itin their own tongue. This curious fact reminds us that the book hadamong the pious people of our country an audience almost as enthusiasticas Bunyan himself was. Another of his books, and the only one quoted byname in the _Pilgrim's Progress_ or _Grace Abounding_, with theexception of Luther on Galatians, is Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_, traces ofwhich are unmistakable in such incidents as the trial and death ofFaithful and in other parts. In these few volumes may be summed up the entire literary knowledgewhich Bunyan is known to have possessed. He stands apart from merebook-learning, and deals with life rather through his eyes and earsdirectly than through the medium of books. But then those eyes and earsof his were no ordinary organs; and his imagination, whose servants theywere, was quick to enlist every vital and suggestive image and idea forits own uses. Thus the rich store of observation which he had alreadylaid up through the medium of puppet plays, fragments of song andpopular story, was all at his disposal when he came to need it. Further, even in his regenerate days, there was no dimming of the imaginativefaculty nor of the observant. The whole neighbourhood in which he livedwas an open book, in which he read the wonderful story of life in manytragic and comic tales of actual fact; and in the prison where he spenttwelve years, he must often have heard from his fellow-prisoners suchfragments as they knew and remembered, with which doubtless they wouldbeguile the tedium of their confinement. That would be for the most partin the first and second imprisonments, extending from the years 1660 to1672. The third imprisonment was a short affair of only some ninemonths, spent in the little prison upon the bridge of Bedford, wherethere would be room for very few companions. The modern bridge crossesthe river at almost exactly the same spot; and if you look over theparapet you may see, when the river is low, traces of what seem to bethe foundations of the old prison bridge. When we would try to estimate the processes by which the great allegorywas built up, the first fact that strikes us is its extreme aloofnessfrom current events which must have been very familiar to him. In othersof his works he tells many stories of actual life, but these are of aprivate and more or less gossiping nature, many of them fantastic andgrotesque, such as those appalling tales of swearers, drunkards, andother specially notorious sinners being snatched away by thedevil--narratives which bear the marks of crude popular imagination indetails like the actual smell of sulphur left behind. In the whole_Pilgrim's Progress_ there is no reference whatever to the Civil War, inwhich we know that Bunyan had fought, although there are certain partsof it which were probably suggested by events of that campaign. Theallegory is equally silent concerning the Great Fire and the GreatPlague of London, which were both fresh in the memory of every livingman. The only phrase which might have been suggested by the Fire, isthat in which the Pilgrim says, "I hear that our little city is to bedestroyed by fire"--a phrase which obviously has much more directconnection with the destruction of Sodom than with that of London. Theonly suggestions of those disastrous latter years of the reign ofCharles the Second, are some doubtful allusions to the rise and fall ofpersecution, few of which can be clearly identified with any particularevents. There are several interesting indications that Bunyan made use of recentand contemporary secular literature. The demonology of the _Pilgrim'sProgress_ is quite different from that of the _Holy War_. It used to besuggested that Bunyan had altered his views in consequence of thepublication of Milton's _Paradise Regained_, which appeared in 1671. That was when it was generally supposed that he had written the_Pilgrim's Progress_ in his earlier imprisonment. If, as is nowconceded, it was in the later imprisonment that he wrote the book, thistheory loses much of its plausibility, for Milton published his_Paradise Regained_ before the first edition of the _Pilgrim's Progress_was penned. It is, of course, always possible that between the_Pilgrim's Progress_ and the _Holy War_ Bunyan may have seen Milton'swork, or may have been told about it, for he certainly changed hisdemonology and made it more like Milton's. Again, there are certainpassages in Spenser's _Faerie Queene_ which bear so close a resemblanceto Bunyan's description of the Celestial City, that it is difficult notto suppose that either directly or indirectly that poem had influencedBunyan's creation; while in at least one of his songs he approaches sonear both the language and the rhythm of a song of Shakespeare's as tomake it very probable that he had heard it sung. [2] These suppositions are not meant in any way to detract from theoriginality of the great allegory, but rather to link the writer in withthat English literature of which he is so conspicuous an ornament. Theyare no more significant and no less, than the fact that so much of thegeography of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ seems not to have been created byhis imagination, but to have been built up from well-rememberedlandscapes. From his prison window he could not but see the ruins of oldBedford Castle, which stood demolished upon its hill even in his time. This, together with Cainhoe Castle, only a few miles away, may well havesuggested the Castle of Despair in Bypath Meadow near the River of God. Again, memories of Elstow play a notable part in the story. A crossstood there, at the foot of which, when he was playing the game of catupon a certain Sunday, the voice came to his soul with its tremendousquestion, "Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven or have thy sinsand go to hell?" There stood the Moot Hall as it stands to-day, inwhich, during his worldly days, he had danced with the rest of thevillagers and gained his personal knowledge of Vanity Fair. There, as hetells us expressly, is the wicket gate, the rough old oak and iron gateof Elstow parish church. Close beside it, just as you read in the story, stands that great tower which suggested a devil's castle beside thewicket gate, whence Satan showered his arrows on those who knockedbelow. Not only so, but there was a special reason why for Bunyan thatancient church tower may well have been symbolic of the stronghold ofthe devil; for it had bells in it, and he was so fond of bell-ringingthat it got upon his conscience and became his darling sin. It is easyto make light of his heart-searchings about so innocent an employment, but doubtless there were other things that went along with it. We haveall seen those large drinking-vessels, known as bell-ringers' jugs; andthese perhaps may suggest an explanation of the sense of sin whichburdened his conscience so heavily. Anyhow, there the tower stands, andin the Gothic doorway of it there are one or two deeply cut grooves, obviously made by the ropes of the bell-ringers when, instead ofstanding below their ropes, they preferred the open air, and drew theropes through the archway of the door, so as to cut into its moulding. The little fact gains much significance in the light of Bunyan's ownconfession that he was so afraid that the bell would fall upon him andkill him as a punishment from God, that he used to go outside the doorto ring it. Then again there was the old convent at Elstow, where, longbefore Bunyan's time, nuns had lived, who were known to tradition as"the ladies of Elstow. " Very aristocratic and very human ladies theyseem to have been, given to the entertainment of their friends in theintervals of their tasteful devotion, and occasionally needing a rebukefrom headquarters. Yet it seems not improbable that there is someglorified memory of those ladies in the inhabitants of the HouseBeautiful, which house itself appears to have been modelled uponHoughton House on the Ampthill heights, built by Sir Philip Sidney'ssister but a century before. The silver mine of Demas might seem to havecome from some far-off source in chap-book or romance, until we rememberthat at the village of Pulloxhill, which had been the original home ofthe Bunyan family, and near which Bunyan was arrested and brought forexamination to the house of Justice Wingate, there are the actualremains of an ancient gold mine whose tradition still lingers among thevillagers. All these things seem to indicate that the great allegory is by no meansso remote from the earth as has sometimes been imagined; and perhaps themost touching commentary upon this statement is the curious and veryunlovely burying-ground in Bunhill fields, cut through by a straightpath that leads from one busy thoroughfare to another. A few yards tothe left of that path is the tomb and monument of John Bunyan, while atan equal distance to the right lies Daniel Defoe. The _Pilgrim'sProgress_ and _Robinson Crusoe_ are perhaps the two best-known storiesin the world, and they are not so far remote from one another as theyseem. Nor was it only in the outward material with which he worked that JohnBunyan had much in common with the romance and poetry of England. Hecould indeed write verses which, for sheer doggerel, it would bedifficult to match, but in spite of that there was the authentic note ofpoetry in him. Some of his work is not only vigorous, inspiring, andfull of the brisk sense of action, but has an unconscious strength andworthiness of style, whose compression and terseness have fulfilled atleast one of the canons of high literature. Take, for example, the lineson Faithful's death-- "Now Faithful, play the man, speak for thy God: Fear not the wicked's malice, nor their rod: Speak boldly, man, the truth is on thy side; Die for it, and to life in triumph ride. " Or take this as a second example, from his _Prison Meditations_-- "Here come the angels, here come saints, Here comes the Spirit of God, To comfort us in our restraints Under the wicked's rod. This gaol to us is as a hill, From whence we plainly see Beyond this world, and take our fill Of things that lasting be. We change our drossy dust for gold, From death to life we fly: We let go shadows, and take hold Of immortality. " This whole poem has in it not merely the bright march of a very vigorousmind, but also a great many of the elements which long before had builtup the ancient romances. In it, and in much else that he wrote, he findsa congenial escape from the mere middle-class respectability of histime, and ranges himself with the splendid chivalry both of the past andof the present. There is an elfin element in him as there was inChaucer, which now and again twinkles forth in a quaint touch of humour, or escapes from the merely spiritual into an extremely interesting humanregion. In _Grace Abounding_ he very pleasantly tells us that he could havewritten in a much higher style if he had chosen to do so, but that forour sakes he has refrained. He does, however, sometimes "step into" hisfiner style. There is some exquisite pre-Raphaelite work that comesunexpectedly upon the reader, in which he is not only a poet, but awriter capable of seeing and of describing the most highly coloured andminute detail: "Besides, on the banks of this river on either side weregreen trees, that bore all manner of fruit. .. . " "On either side of theriver was also a meadow, curiously beautified with lilies; and it wasgreen the year long. " At other times he affrights us with a suddenoutburst of the most terrifying imagination, as in the close of the poemof _The Fly at the Candle_-- "At last the Gospel doth become their snare, Doth them with burning hands in pieces tear. " His imagination was sometimes as quaint and sweet as at other times itcould be lurid and powerful. _Upon a Snail_ is not a very promisingsubject for a poem, but its first lines justify the experiment-- "She goes but softly, but she goeth sure; She stumbles not, as stronger creatures do. " He can adopt the methods of the stately poets of nature, and break intosplendid descriptions of natural phenomena-- "Look, look, brave Sol doth peep up from beneath, Shews us his golden face, doth on us breathe; Yea, he doth compass us around with glories, Whilst he ascends up to his highest stories, Where he his banner over us displays, And gives us light to see our works and ways. " Again in the art of childlike interest and simplicity he can write suchlines as these-- OF THE CHILD WITH THE BIRD ON THE BUSH "My little bird, how canst thou sit And sing amidst so many thorns? Let me but hold upon thee get, My love with honour thee adorns. 'Tis true it is sunshine to-day, To-morrow birds will have a storm; My pretty one, come thou away, My bosom then shall keep thee warm. My father's palace shall be thine, Yea, in it thou shalt sit and sing; My little bird, if thou'lt be mine, The whole year round shall be thy spring. I'll keep thee safe from cat and cur, No manner o' harm shall come to thee: Yea, I will be thy succourer, My bosom shall thy cabin be. " The last line might have been written by Ben Jonson, and the descriptionof sunrise in the former poem might almost have been from Chaucer's pen. Yet the finest poetry of all is the prose allegory of the _Pilgrim'sProgress_. English prose had taken many centuries to form, in themoulding hands of Chaucer, Malory, and Bacon. It had come at last toBunyan with all its flexibility and force ready to his hand. He wrotewith virgin purity, utterly free from mannerisms and affectations; and, without knowing himself for a writer of fine English, produced it. The material of the allegory also is supplied from ancient sources. Onecurious paragraph in Bunyan's treatise entitled _Sighs from Hell_, givesus a broad hint of this. "The Scriptures, thought I then, what are they?A dead letter, a little ink and paper, of three or four shillings price. Alack! what is Scripture? Give me a ballad, a news-book, _George onHorseback_ or _Bevis of Southampton_. Give me some book that teachescurious Arts, that tells old Fables. " In _The Plain Man's Pathway toHeaven_ there is a longer list of such romances as these, including_Ellen of Rummin_, and many others. As has been already stated, thesetales of ancient folklore would come into his hands either by recitationor in the form of chap-books. The chap-book literature of Old Englandwas most voluminous and interesting. It consisted of romances and songs, sold at country fairs and elsewhere, and the passing reference which wehave quoted proves conclusively, what we might have known without anyproof, that Bunyan knew them. _George on Horseback_ has been identified by Professor Firth with the_Seven Champions of England_, an extremely artificial romance, which maybe taken as typical of hundreds more of its kind. The 1610 edition of itis a very lively book with a good deal of playing to the gallery, suchas this: "As for the name of Queen, I account it a vain title; for I hadrather be an English lady than the greatest empress in the world. " Thereis not very much in this romance which Bunyan has appropriated, althoughthere are several interesting correspondences. It is very courtly andconventional. The narrative is broken here and there by lyrics, quite inBunyan's manner, but it is difficult to imagine Bunyan, with his directand simple taste, spending much time in reading such sentences as thefollowing: "By the time the purple-spotted morning had parted with hergrey, and the sun's bright countenance appeared on the mountain-tops, St. George had rode twenty miles from the Persian Court. " On the otherhand, when Great-Heart allows Giant Despair to rise after his fall, showing his chivalry in refusing to take advantage of the fallen giant, we remember the incident of Sir Guy and Colebrand in the _SevenChampions_. "Good sir, an' it be thy will, Give me leave to drink my fill, For sweet St. Charity, And I will do thee the same deed Another time if thou have need, I tell thee certainly. " St. George, like Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, traverses an Enchanted Vale, and hears "dismal croakings of nightravens, hissing of serpents, bellowing of bulls, and roaring ofmonsters. "[3] St. Andrew traverses a land of continual darkness, theVale of Walking Spirits, amid similar sounds of terror, much as thepilgrims of the Second Part of Bunyan's story traverse the EnchantedGround. And as these pilgrims found deadly arbours in that land, tempting them to repose which must end in death, so St. David wastempted in an Enchanted Garden, and fell flat upon the ground, "when hiseyes were so fast locked up by magic art, and his waking senses drownedin such a dead slumber, that it was as impossible to recover himselffrom sleep as to pull the sun out of the firmament. " _Bevis of Southampton_ has many points in common with St. George in the_Seven Champions_. The description of the giant, the escape of Bevisfrom his dungeon, and a number of other passages show how much wascommon stock for the writers of these earlier romances. There is thesame rough humour in it from first to last, and the wonderful swing andstride of vigorous rhyming metre. Of the humour, one quotation will beenough for an example. It is when they are proposing to baptize themonstrous giant at Cologne, whom Bevis had first conquered and thenengaged as his body-servant. At the christening of Josian, wife ofBevis, the Bishop sees the giant. "'What is, ' sayde he, 'this bad vysage?' 'Sir, ' sayde Bevys, 'he is my page-- I pray you crysten hym also, Thoughe he be bothe black and blo!' The Bysshop crystened Josian, That was as white as any swan; For Ascaparde was made a tonne, And whan he shulde therein be done, He lept out upon the brenche And sayde: 'Churle, wylt thou me drenche? The devyl of hel mot fetche the I am to moche crystened to be!' The folke had gode game and laughe, But the Bysshop was wrothe ynoughe. " There is a curious passage which is almost exactly parallel to theaccount of the fight with Apollyon in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, andwhich was doubtless in Bunyan's mind when he wrote that admirable battlesketch-- "Beves is swerde anon upswapte, He and the geaunt togedre rapte; And delde strokes mani and fale, The nombre can i nought telle in tale. The geaunt up is clubbe haf, And smot to Beves with is staf, But his scheld flegh from him thore, Three acres brede and somedel more, Tho was Beves in strong erur And karf ato the grete levour, And on the geauntes brest a-wonde That negh a-felde him to the grounde. The geaunt thoughte this bataile hard, Anon he drough to him a dart, Throgh Beves scholder he hit schet, The blold ran doun to Beves' fet, The Beves segh is owene blod Out of his wit he wex negh wod, Unto the geaunt ful swithe he ran, And kedde that he was doughti man, And smot ato his nekke bon; The geant fel to grounde anon. " It is part of his general sympathy with the spirit of the romances thatBunyan's giants were always real giants to him, and he evidently enjoyedthem for their own sake as literary and imaginative creations, as wellas for the sake of any truths which they might be made to enforce. Despair and Slay-Good are distinct to his imagination. His interestremains always twofold. On the one hand there is allegory, and on theother hand there is live tale. Sometimes the allegory breaks through andconfuses the tale a little, as when Mercy begs for the great mirror thathangs in the dining-room of the shepherds, and carries it with herthrough the remainder of her journey. Sometimes the allegory has to stopin order that a sermon may be preached on some particular point oftheology, and such sermons are by no means short. Still the story is sotrue to life that its irresistible simplicity and naturalness carry iton and make it immortal. When we read such a conversation as thatbetween old Honest and Mr. Standfast about Madam Bubble, we feel thatthe tale has ceased to be an allegory altogether and has become a novel. This is perhaps more noticeable in the Second Part than in the First. The First Part is indeed almost a perfect allegory; although even there, from time to time, the earnestness and rush of the writer's spiritoversteps the bounds of consistency and happily forgets the moralbecause the story is so interesting, or forgets for a moment the storybecause the moral is so important. In the Second Part the two charactersfall apart more definitely. Now you have delightful pieces of crudehuman nature, naïve and sparkling. Then you have long and intricatetheological treatises. Neither the allegorical nor the narrative unityis preserved to anything like the same extent as on the whole is thecase in Part I. The shrewd and humorous touches of human nature areespecially interesting. Bunyan was by no means the gentle saint whoshrank from strong language. When the gate of Doubting Castle isopening, and at last the pilgrims have all but gone free, we read that"the lock went damnable hard. " When Great-Heart is delighted with Mr. Honest, he calls him "a cock of the right kind. " The poem _On ChristianBehaviour_, which we have quoted, contains the lines-- "When all men's cards are fully played, Whose will abide the light?" These are quaint instances of the way in which even the questionableparts of the unregenerate life of the dreamer came in the end to servethe uses of his religion. There are many gems in the Second Part of the _Pilgrim's Progress_ whichare full of mother-wit and sly fun. Mr. Honest confesses, "I came fromthe town of Stupidity; it lieth about four degrees beyond the City ofDestruction. " Then there is Mr. Fearing, that morbidly self-consciouscreature, who is so much at home in the Valley of Humiliation that hekneels down and kisses the flowers in its grass. He is a man who cannever get rid of himself for a moment, and who bores all the companywith his illimitable and anxious introspection. Yet, in Vanity Fair, when practical facts have to be faced instead of morbid fancies andinflamed conscience, he is the most valiant of men, whom they can hardlykeep from getting himself killed, and for that matter all the rest ofthem. Here, again, is an inimitable flash of insight, where Simple, Sloth, and Presumption have prevailed with "one Short-Wind, oneSleepy-Head, and with a young woman, her name was Dull, to turn out ofthe way and become as they. " Every now and then these natural touches of portraiture rise to a truesublimity, as all writing that is absolutely true to the facts of humannature tends to do. Great-Heart says to Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, "Let mesee thy sword, " and when he has taken it in his hand and looked at itfor awhile, he adds, "Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade. " That swordlingers in Bunyan's imagination, for, at the close of Valiant's life, part of his dying speech is this "My sword I give to him that shallsucceed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that canget it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me thatI have fought His battles. " Bunyan is so evidently an idealist and a prince of spiritual men, thatno one needs to point out this characteristic of the great dreamer, norto advertise so obvious a thing as his spiritual idealism. We haveaccordingly taken that for granted and left it to the reader torecognise in every page for himself. We have sought in this to show whathas sometimes been overlooked, how very human the man and his work are. Yet his humanism is ever at the service of the spirit, enlivening hisbook and inspiring it with a perpetual and delicious interest, but neverfor a moment entangling him again in the old yoke of bondage, from whichat his conversion he had been set free. For the human as opposed to thedivine, the fleshly as the rival of the spiritual, he has an open andprofound contempt, which he expresses in no measured terms in suchpassages as that concerning Adam the First and Madam Wanton. These arefor him sheer pagans. At the cave, indeed, which his pilgrim visits atthe farther end of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we read that Popeand Pagan dwelt there in old time, but that Pagan has been dead many aday. Yet the pagan spirit lives on in many forms, and finds an abidingplace and home in Vanity Fair. As Professor Firth has pointed out, BenJonson, in his play _Bartholomew Fair_, had already told the adventuresof two Puritans who strayed into the Fair, and who regarded the wholeaffair as the shop of Satan. There were many other Fairs, such as thatof Sturbridge, and the Elstow Fair itself, which was instituted by thenuns on the ground close to their convent, and which is held yearly tothe present day. Such Fairs as these have been a source of muchtemptation and danger to the neighbourhood, and represent in its popularform the whole spirit of paganism at its worst. All the various elements of Bunyan's world live on in the England ofto-day. Thackeray, with a stroke of characteristic genius, has expandedand applied the earlier conception of paganism in his great novel whosetitle _Vanity Fair_ is borrowed from Bunyan. But the main impression ofthe allegory is the victory of the spiritual at its weakest over thetemporal at its mightiest. His descriptions of the supper and bedchamber in the House Beautiful, and of the death of Christiana at theend of the Second Part, are immortal writings, in the most literalsense, amid the shows of time. They have indeed laid hold of immortalitynot for themselves only, but for the souls of men. Nothing could sum upthe whole story of Bunyan better than the legend of his flute told byMr. S. S. M'Currey in his book of poems entitled _In Keswick Vale_. Thestory is that in his prison Bunyan took out a bar from one of the chairsin his cell, scooped it hollow, and converted it into a flute, uponwhich he played sweet music in the dark and solitary hours of the prisonevening. The jailers never could find out the source of that music, forwhen they came to search his cell, the bar was replaced in the chair, and there was no apparent possibility of flute-playing; but when thejailers departed the music would mysteriously recommence. It is veryunlikely that this legend is founded upon fact, or indeed that Bunyanwas a musician at all (although we do have from his pen one touching andbeautiful reference to the finest music in the world being founded uponthe bass), but, like his own greater work, the little legend is anallegory. The world for centuries has heard sweet music from Bunyan, andhas not known whence it came. It has seemed to most men a miracle, andindeed they were right in counting it so. Yet there was a flute fromwhich that music issued, and the flute was part of the rough furnitureof his imprisoned world. He was no scholar, nor delicate man of _belleslettres_, like so many of his contemporaries. He took what came to hishand; and in this lecture we have tried to show how much did come thusto his hand that was rare and serviceable for the purposes of hisspirit, and for the expression of high spiritual truth. LECTURE VI PEPYS' DIARY It is doubtful whether any of Bunyan's contemporaries had so strong ahuman interest attaching to his person and his work as Samuel Pepys. There is indeed something in common to the two men, --little or nothingof character, but a certain _naïveté_ and sincerity of writing, whichmakes them remind one of each other many times. All the more because ofthis does the contrast between the spirit of the two force itself uponevery reader; and if we should desire to find a typical pagan to matchBunyan's spirituality and idealism, it would be difficult to go pastSamuel Pepys. There were, as everybody knows, two famous diarists of the Restorationperiod, Pepys and Evelyn. It is interesting to look at the portraits ofthe two men side by side. Evelyn's face is anxious and austere, suggesting the sort of stuff of which soldiers or saints are made. Pepysis a voluptuous figure, in the style of Charles the Second, with regularand handsome features below his splendid wig, and eyes that are bothkeen and heavy, penetrating and luxurious. These two men (who, in thecourse of their work, had to compare notes on several occasions, andbetween whom we have the record of more than one meeting) were among themost famous gossips of the world. But Evelyn's gossip is a succession ofsolemnities compared with the racy scandal, the infantile and insatiablecuriosity, and the incredible frankness of the pagan diarist. Look at his face again, and you will find it impossible not to feel acertain amount of surprise. Of all the unlikely faces with which historyhas astonished the readers of books, there are none more surprising thanthose of three contemporaries in the later seventeenth century. Claverhouse, with his powerful character and indomitable will, with hisTitanic daring and relentless cruelty, has the face of a singularlybeautiful young girl. Judge Jeffreys, whose delight in blood was onlyequalled by the foulness and extravagance of his profanity, looks in hispicture the very type of spiritual wistfulness. Samuel Pepys, whoselarge oval eyes and clear-cut profile suggest a somewhat voluptuous andvery fastidious aristocrat, was really a man of the people, sharp to amiracle in all the detail of the humblest kind of life, and apparentlyunable to keep from exposing himself to scandal in many sorts of meanand vulgar predicament. Since the deciphering and publication of his Diary, a great deal hasbeen written concerning it. The best accounts of it are Henry B. Wheatley's _Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived in_, and Robert LouisStevenson's little essay in his _Short Studies of Men and Books_. Theobject of the present lecture is not to give any general account of thetime and its public events, upon which the Diary touches at a thousandpoints, but rather to set the spirit of this man in contrast with thatof John Bunyan, which we have just considered. The men are very typical, and any adequate conception of the spirit of either will give a truecross-section of the age in which he lived. Pepys, it must be confessed, is much more at home in his times than Bunyan ever could be. One mighteven say that the times seem to have been designed as a background forthe diarist. There is as little of the spirit of a stranger and pilgrimin Pepys, even in his most pathetic hours, as there is in John Bunyanthe spirit of a man at home, even in his securest. It was a very pagantime, and Pepys is the pagan _par excellence_ of that time, the brightand shining example of the pagan spirit of England. His lot was cast in high places, to which he rose by dint of greatability and indomitable perseverance in his office. He talks with theKing, the Duke of York, the Archbishop, and all the other great folks ofthe day; and no volume has thrown more light on the character of Charlesthe Second than his. We see the King at the beginning kissing the Bible, and proclaiming it to be the thing which he loves above all otherthings. He rises early in the morning, and practises others of the lessimportant virtues. We see him touching all sorts of people for theKing's evil, a process in which Pepys is greatly interested at first, but which palls when it has lost its novelty. Similarly, the diarist isgreatly excited on the first occasion when he actually hears the Kingspeak, but soon begins to criticise him, finding that he talks very muchlike other people. He describes the starvation of the fleet, the countrysinking to the verge of ruin, and the maudlin scenes of drunkenness atCourt, with a minuteness which makes one ashamed even after so long aninterval. However revolting or shameful the institution may be, the factthat it is an institution gives it zest for the strange mind of Pepys. He is, however, capable also of moralising. "Oh, that the King wouldmind his business!" he would exclaim, after having delighted himself andhis readers with the most droll accounts of His Majesty's frivolities. "How wicked a wretch Cromwell was, and yet how much better and safer thecountry was in his hands than it is now. " And often he will end thebewildering account with some such bitter comment as the assertion "thatevery one about the Court is mad. " In politics he had been a republican in his early days, and when Charlesthe First's head fell at Whitehall, he had confided to a friend thedangerous remark that if he were to preach a sermon on that event hewould choose as his text the words, "The memory of the wicked shallrot. " The later turn of events gave him abundant opportunities forrepenting of that indiscretion, and he repents at intervals all throughhis Diary. For now he is a royalist in his politics, having in him not alittle of the spirit of the Vicar of Bray, and of Bunyan's Mr. By-ends. The political references lead him beyond England, and we hear withconsternation now and again about the dangerous doings of theCovenanters in Scotland. We hear much also of France and Holland, andstill more of Spain. Outside the familiar European lands there is afringe of curious places like Tangier, which is of great account at thattime, and is destined in Pepys' belief to play an immense part in thehistory of England, and of the more distant Bombain in India, which heconsiders to be a place of little account. Here and there the terror ofa new Popish plot appears. The kingdom is divided against itself, andthe King and the Commons are at drawn battle with the Lords, while everyone shapes his views of things according as his party is in or out ofpower. Three great historic events are recorded with singular minuteness andinterest in the Diary, namely, the Plague, the Dutch War, and the Fireof London. As to the Plague, we have all the vivid horror of detail with whichDefoe has immortalised it, with the additional interest that here noconsecutive history is attempted, but simply a record of dailyimpressions of the streets and houses. On his first sight of the redcross upon a door, the diarist cries out, "Lord, have mercy upon us, " ingenuine terror and pity. The coachman sickens on his box and cannotdrive his horses home. The gallant draws the curtains of a sedan chairto salute some fair lady within, and finds himself face to face with thedeath-dealing eyes and breath of a plague-stricken patient. Few peoplemove along the streets, and at night the passenger sees and shuns thedistant lights of the link-boys guiding the dead to their burial. Acowardly parson flies upon some flimsy excuse from his dangerous post, and makes a weak apology on his first reappearance in the pulpit. Altogether it is a picture unmatched in its broken vivid flashes, inwhich the cruelty and wildness of desperation mingle with the despairingcry of pity. The Dutch War was raging then, not on the High Seas only, but at thevery gates of England; and Pepys, whose important and responsibleposition as Clerk of the Acts of the Navy gave him much first-handinformation, tells many great stories in his casual way. We hear theguns distinctly and loud, booming at the mouth of the Thames. Thepress-gang sweeps the streets, and starving women, whose husbands havebeen taken from them, weep loudly in our ears. Sailors whose wages havenot been paid desert their ships, in some cases actually joining theDutch and fighting against their comrades. One of the finest passagesgives a heartrending and yet bracing picture of the times. "About adozen able, lusty, proper men came to the coach-side with tears in theireyes, and one of them that spoke for the rest began, and said to Sir W. Coventry, 'We are here a dozen of us, that have long known and loved, and served our dead commander, Sir Christopher Mings, and have now donethe last office of laying him in the ground. We would be glad we had anyother to offer after him, and in revenge of him. All we have is ourlives; if you will please to get His Royal Highness to give us afire-ship among us all, here are a dozen of us, out of all which, chooseyou one to be commander; and the rest of us, whoever he is, will servehim; and, if possible, do that which shall show our memory of our deadcommander, and our revenge. ' Sir W. Coventry was herewith much moved, aswell as I, who could hardly abstain from weeping, and took their names, and so parted. " Perhaps, however, the finest work of all is found in the descriptions ofthe Fire of London. From that night when he is awakened by the red glareof the fire in his bedroom window, on through the days and weeks ofterror, when no man knew how long he would have a home, we follow by thelight of blazing houses the story of much that is best and much that isworst in human nature. The fire, indeed, cleanses the city from the lastdregs of the plague which are still lingering there, but it also stirsup the city until its inhabitants present the appearance of ants upon adisturbed ant-hill. And not the least busy among them, continuallyfussing about in all directions, is the diarist himself, eagerlyplanning for the preservation of his money, dragging it hither andthither from hiding-place to hiding-place in the city, and finallyburying it in bags at dead of night in a garden. Nothing is too smallfor him to notice. The scrap of burnt paper blown by the wind to alady's hand, on which the words are written, "Time is, it is done, " isbut one of a thousand equally curious details. His own character, as reflected in the narrative of these events, isoften little to his credit, and the frank and unblushing selfishness ofhis outlook upon things in general is as amusing as it is shameful. Andyet, on the other hand, when most men deserted London, Pepys remained init through the whole dangerous time of the plague, taking his life inhis hand and dying daily in his imagination in spite of the quaintprecautions against infection which he takes care on every occasion todescribe. Through the whole dismal year, with plague and fire ragingaround him, he sticks to his post and does his work as thoroughly as thedisorganised circumstances of his life allow. If we could get back tothe point of view of those who thought about Pepys and formed a judgmentof him before his Diary had been made public, we should be confrontedwith the figure of a man as different from the diarist as it is possiblefor two men to be. His contemporaries took him for a great Englishman, aman who did much for his country, and whose character was a mirror ofall the national and patriotic ideals. His public work was by no meansunimportant, even in a time so full of dangers and so critical for thedestinies of England. Little did the people who loved and hated him inhis day and afterwards dream of the contents of that small volume, socarefully written in such an unintelligible cipher, locked nightly withits little key, and hidden in some secure place. When at last thewriting was deciphered, there came forth upon us, from the august andhonourable state in which the Navy Commissioner had lain so long, thisflood of small talk, the greatest curiosity known to English literature. Other men than Pepys have suffered in reputation from the yapping ofdogs and the barn-door cackle that attacked their memories. Englandblushed as she heard the noise when the name of Carlyle became thecentre of such commotion. But if Samuel Pepys has suffered in the sameway he has no one to thank for it but himself; for, if his ownhand-writing had not revealed it, no one could possibly have guessedit from the facts of his public career. Yet what a rare show it is, thatmultitude of queer little human interests that intermingle with the talkabout great things! It may have been quite wrong to translate it, andundoubtedly much of it was disreputable enough for any man to write, yetit will never cease to be read; nor will England cease to be glad thatit was translated, so long as the charm of history is doubled by touchesof strange imagination and confessions of human frailty. Pepys' connection with literature is that rather of a virtuoso than of astudent in the strict sense of the term. He projected a great History ofthe Navy, which might have immortalised him in a very different fashionfrom that of the immortality which the Diary has achieved. But his lifewas crowded with business and its intervals with pleasures. The weaknessof his eyes also militated against any serious contribution toliterature, and instead of the History, for which he had gathered muchmaterial and many manuscripts, he gave us only the little volumeentitled _Memoirs of the Navy_, which, however, shows a remarkable graspof his subject, and of all corresponding affairs, such as could onlyhave been possessed by a man of unusually thorough knowledge of hisbusiness. He collected what was for his time a splendid library, consisting of some three thousand volumes, now preserved in his College(Magdalene College, Cambridge), very carefully arranged and catalogued. We read much of this library while it is accumulating--much more aboutthe mahogany cases in which the books were to stand than about the booksthemselves, or his own reading of them. The details of their arrangementwere very dear to his curious mind. He tells us that where the bookswould not fit exactly to the shelves, but were smaller than the space, he had little gilded stilts made, adjusted to the size of each book, andplaced under the volumes, which they lifted to the proper height. Littletime can have been left over for the study of at least the stiffer worksin that library, although there are many notes which show that he was insome sense a reader, and that books served the same purpose as eventsand personalities in leading him up and down the byways of what healways found to be a curious and interesting world. But the immortal part of Pepys is undoubtedly his Diary. Among others ofthe innumerable curious interests which this man cultivated was that ofstudying the secret ciphers which had been invented and used by literarypeople in the past. From his knowledge of these he was enabled to inventa cipher of his own, or rather to adopt one which he altered somewhat toserve his uses. Having found this sufficiently secret code, he was nowable to gratify his immense interest in himself and his inordinatepersonal vanity by writing an intimate narrative of his own life. TheDiary covers nine and a half years in all, from January 1660 to May1669. For nearly a century and a half it lay dead and silent, until Rev. J. Smith, with infinite diligence and pains, discovered the key to it, and wrote his translation. A later translation has been made by Rev. Mynors Bright, which includes some passages by the judgment of theformer translator considered unnecessary or inadvisable. Opinions differ as to the wisdom, and indeed the morality, of forcingupon the public ear the accidentally discovered secrets which a dead manhad guarded so carefully. There is, of course, the possibility that, assome think, Pepys desired that posterity should have the complete recordin all its frankness and candour. If this be so, one can only say thatthe wish is evidence of a morbid and unbalanced mind. It seems much moreprobable that he wrote the Diary for the luxury of reading it tohimself, always intending to destroy it before his death. But a piece ofwork so intimate as this is, in a sense, a living part of the man whocreates it, and one can well imagine him putting off the day of itsdestruction, and grudging that it should perish with all its power ofawakening old chords of memory and revitalising buried years. For hisown part he was no squeamish moralist and if it were only for his owneyes he would enjoy passages which the more fastidious public mightjudge differently. So it comes to pass that this amazing _omnium gatherum_ of a book isamong the most living of all the gifts of the past to the present, telling everything and telling it irresistibly. His hat falls through ahole, and he writes down all about the incident as faithfully as hedescribes the palace of the King of France, and the English war withHolland. His nature is amazingly complicated, and yet our judgment of itis simplified by his passion for telling everything, no matter howdiscreditable or how ignoble the detail may be. He is a great man and agreat statesman, and he is the liveliest of our English crickets on thehearth. One set of excerpts would present him as the basest, another setas the pleasantest and kindliest of men; and always without anyexception he is refreshing by his intense and genial interest in thefacts of the world. Of the many summaries of himself which he has givenus, none is more characteristic than the following, with which he closesthe month of April of the year 1666: "Thus ends this month; my wife inthe country, myself full of pleasure and expence; in some trouble for myfriends, and my Lord Sandwich, by the Parliament, and more for my eyes, which are daily worse and worse, that I dare not write or read almostanything. " He is essentially a virtuoso who has been forced bycircumstances into the necessity of being also a public man, and hasdeveloped on his own account an extraordinary passion for theobservation of small and wayside things. At the high table of thosetimes, where Milton and Bunyan sit at the mighty feast of Englishliterature, he is present also: but he is under the table, a mischievousand yet observant child, loosening the neckerchiefs of those who are toodrunk, and picking up scraps of conversation which he will retailoutside. There is something peculiarly pathetic in the whole picture. One remembers Defoe, who for so many years lived in the reputation ofhonourable politics and in the odour of such sanctity as Robinson Crusoecould give, until the discovery of certain yellow papers revealed thebase political treachery for which the great island story had been akind of anodyne to conscience. So Samuel Pepys would have passed for agreat naval authority and an anxious friend of England when her foeswere those of her own household, had he only been able to make up hismind to destroy these little manuscript volumes. Why did he write them, one still asks? Readers of Robert Browning'spoems, _House_ and _Shop_, will remember the scorn which that poet poursupon any one who unlocks his heart to the general public. And thesenarrations of Pepys' are certainly of such a kind that if he intendedthem to be read by any public in any generation of England, he must beset down as unique among sane men. Stevenson indeed considers that therewas in the Diary a side glance at publication, but the proof which headduces from the text does not seem sufficient to sustain so remarkablea freak of human nature, nor does the fact that on one occasion Pepysset about destroying all his papers except the Diary, appear to provevery much one way or another. Stevenson calls it inconsistent andunreasonable in a man to write such a book and to preserve it unless hewanted it to be read. But perhaps no writing of diaries is quitereasonable; and as for his desire to have it read by others thanhimself, we find that his Diary was so close a secret that he expressesregret for having mentioned it to Sir William Coventry. No other manever heard of it in Pepys' lifetime, "it not being necessary, nor maybeconvenient, to have it known. " Why, then, did he write it? Why does anybody write a diary? Probably theanswer nearest to the truth will be that every one finds himselfinteresting, and some people have so keen an interest in themselves thatit becomes a passion, clamorous to be gratified. Now as Bacon tells us, "Writing maketh an exact man, " and the writing of diaries reduces to thekeenest vividness our own impressions of experience and thoughts aboutthings. Pepys was, above all other men, interested in himself. He wasintensely in love with himself. The beautiful, jealous, troublesome, andyet inevitable Mrs. Pepys was but second in her husband's affectionsafter all. He was his own wife. One remembers fashionable novels of thetime of _Evelina_ or the _Mysteries of Udolpho_, and recollects how theladies there speak lover-like of their diaries, and, when writing them, feel themselves always in the best possible company. For Pepys, hisDiary does not seem to have been so much a refuge from daily cares andworries, nor a preparation for the luxury of reading it in his old age, as an indulgence of intense and poignant pleasure in the hour ofwriting. His interest in himself was quite extraordinary. When his library wascollected and his books bound and gilded they were doubtless a treasuredpossession of which he was hugely proud. But this was not so much apossession as it was a kind of _alter ego_, a fragment of his livingself, hidden away from all eyes but his own. No trifle in his life istoo small for record. He cannot change his seat in the office from oneside of the fireplace to another without recording it. The gnats troublehim at an inn in the country. His wig takes fire and crackles, and he ismighty merry about it until he discovers that it is his own wig that isburning and not somebody else's. He visits the ships, and, rememberingformer days, notes down without a blush the sentence, "Poor ship, that Ihave been twice merry in. " Any one could have written the Diary, so faras intellectual or even literary power is concerned, though perhaps fewwould have chosen precisely Pepys' grammar in which to expressthemselves. But nobody else that ever lived could have written it withsuch sheer abandonment and frankness. He has a positive talent, nay, agenius for self-revelation, for there must be a touch of genius in anyman who is able to be absolutely true. Other men have struggled hard togain sincerity, and when it is gained the struggle has made it tooconscious to be perfectly sincere. Pepys, with utter unconsciousness, issincere even in his insincerities. Some of us do not know ourselves andour real motives well enough to attempt any formal statement of them. Others of us may suspect ourselves, but would die before we wouldconfess our real motives even to ourselves, and would fiercely deny themif any other person accused us of them. But this man's barriers are alldown. There is no reserve, but frankness everywhere and to an unlimitedextent. There is no pose in the book either of good or bad, and it isone of the very few books of which such a statement could be made. Hehas been accused of many things, but never of affectation. The badactions are qualified by regrets, and the disarmed critic feels thatthey have lost any element of tragedy which they might otherwise havehad. The good actions are usually spoiled by some selfish _addendum_which explains and at the same time debases them. Surely the man whocould do all this constantly through so many hundreds of pages, must bein his way a unique kind of genius, to have so clear an eye and solittle self-deception. The Diary is full of details, for he is the most curious man in theworld. One might apply to him the word catholicity if it were not fartoo big and dignified an epithet. The catholicity of his mind is that ofthe _Old Curiosity Shop_. The interest of the book is inexhaustible, because to him the whole world was just such a book. His world wasindeed So full of a number of things He was sure we should all be as happy as kings. Like Chaucer's Pardoner he was "meddlesome as a fly. " Now he lights upona dane's skin hung in a church. Again, upon a magic-lantern. Yet againupon a traitor's head, and the prospect of London in the distance. Hewill drink four pints of Epsom water. He will learn to whistle like abird, and he will tell you a tale of a boy who was disinherited becausehe crowed like a cock. He will walk across half the country to seeanything new. His heart is full of a great love of processions, raree-shows of every kind, and, above all, novelty. His confession thatthe sight of the King touching for the evil gave him no pleasure becausehe had seen it before, applies to most things in his life. For such aman, this world must indeed have been an interesting place. We join him in well-nigh every meal he sits down to, from the first dayswhen they lived so plainly, on to the greater times of the end, when hegives a dinner to his friends, which was "a better dinner than theyunderstood or deserved. " He delights in all the detail of the table. Thecook-maid, whose wages were £4 per annum, had no easy task to satisfyher fastidious master, and Mrs. Pepys must now and then rise at four inthe morning to make mince-pies. Any new kind of meat or drink especiallydelights him. He finds ortolans to be composed of nothing but fat, andhe often seems, in his thoughts on other nations, to have for his firstpoint of view the sight of foreigners at dinner. But this is only partof the insatiable and omnivorous interest in odds and ends which iseverywhere apparent. The ribbons he has seen at a wedding, the starvingseamen who are becoming a danger to the nation, the drinking of winewith a toad in the glass, a lightning flash that melted fetters from thelimbs of slaves, Harry's chair (the latest curiosity of thedrawing-rooms, whose arms rise and clasp you into it when you sit down), the new Messiah, who comes with a brazier of hot coals and proclaims thedoom of England--these, and a thousand other details, make up thefurniture of this most miscellaneous mind. Everything in the world amuses him, and from first to last there is animmense amount of travelling, both physical and mental. With him wewander among companies of ladies and gentlemen walking in gardens, orare rowed up and down the Thames in boats, and it is always exciting anddelightful. That is a kind of allegory of the man's view of life. Butnothing is quite so congenial to him, after all, as plays at thetheatre. One feels that he would never have been out of theatres had itbeen possible, and in order to keep himself to his business he has tomake frequent vows (which are generally more or less broken) that hewill not go to see a play again until such and such a time. When the vowis broken and the play is past he lamentably regrets the waste ofresolution, and stays away for a time until the next outburst comes. Theplays were then held in the middle of the day, and must have cut inconsiderably upon the working-time of business men; although, to besure, the office hours began with earliest morning, and by the afternoonthings were growing slacker. The light, however, was artificial, and theflare of the candles often hurt his eyes, and gave him a sufficientphysical reason to fortify his moral ones for abstention. His taste inthe dramatic art would commend itself to few moderns. He has no patiencewith Shakespeare, and speaks disparagingly of _Twelfth Night_, _Midsummer Night's Dream_, and _Othello_; while he constantly informs usthat he "never saw anything so good in his life" as the nowlong-forgotten productions of little playwrights of his time. He would, we suspect, prefer at all times a puppet show to a play; partly, nodoubt, because that was the fashion, and partly because that type ofdrama was nearer his size. Throughout the volumes of the Diary there arefew things of which he speaks with franker and more enthusiastic delightthan the enjoyment which he derives from punchinello. Next to the delight which he derived from the theatre must be mentionedthat which he continually found in music. He seems to have made anexpert and scientific study of it, and the reader hears continually thesound of lutes, harpsichords, violas, theorbos, virginals, andflageolets. He takes great numbers of music lessons, but quarrels withhis teacher from time to time. He praises extravagantly such music as hehears, or criticises it unsparingly, passing on one occasion thedesperate censure "that Mrs. Turner sings worse than my wife. " His interest in science is as curious and miscellaneous as his interestin everything else. He was indeed President of the Royal Society of histime, and he is immensely delighted with Boyle and his new discoveriesconcerning colours and hydrostatics. Yet so rare a dilettante is he, in this as in other things, that we find this President of the RoyalSociety bringing in a man to teach him the multiplication table. He hasno great head for figures, and we find him listening to long lecturesupon abstruse financial questions, not unlike the bimetallismdiscussions of our own day, which he finds so clear, while he islistening, that nothing could be clearer, but half an hour afterwards hedoes not know anything whatever about the subject. Under the category of his amusements, physic must be included; for, likeother egoists, he was immensely interested in his real or imaginaryailments, and in the means which were taken to cure them. On some dayshe will sit all day long taking physic. He derives an immense amount ofamusement from the process of doctoring himself, and still more fromwriting down in all their detail both his symptoms and their treatment. His pharmacopoeia is by no means scientific, for he includes within itcharms which will cure one of anything, and he always keeps a hare'sfoot by him, and will sometimes tell of troubles which came to himbecause he had forgotten it. He is constantly passing the shrewdest of judgments upon men and things, or retailing them from the lips of others. "Sir Ellis Layton is, for aspeech of forty words, the wittiest man that ever I knew in my life, butlonger he is nothing. " "Mighty merry to see how plainly my Lord and Povydo abuse one another about their accounts, each thinking the other afool, and I thinking they were not either of them, in that point, muchin the wrong. " "How little merit do prevail in the world, but onlyfavour; and that, for myself, chance without merit brought me in; andthat diligence only keeps me so, and will, living as I do among so manylazy people that the diligent man becomes necessary, that they cannot doanything without him. " "To the Cocke-pitt where I hear the Duke ofAlbemarle's chaplain make a simple sermon: among other things, reproaching the imperfection of humane learning, he cried, 'All ourphysicians cannot tell what an ague is, and all our arithmetique is notable to number the days of a man'--which, God knows, is not the fault ofarithmetique, but that our understandings reach not the thing. " "Theblockhead Albemarle hath strange luck to be loved, though he be, andevery man must know it, the heaviest man in the world, but stout andhonest to his country. " "He advises me in what I write to him, to be asshort as I can, and obscure. " "But he do tell me that the House is insuch a condition that nobody can tell what to make of them, and, hethinks, they were never in before; that everybody leads and nobodyfollows. " "My Lord Middleton did come to-day, and seems to me but adull, heavy man; but he is a great soldier, and stout, and a needyLord. " A man who goes about the world making remarks of that kind, wouldneed a cipher in which to write them down. His world is everything tohim, and he certainly makes the most of it so far as observation andremark are concerned. If Pepys' curiosity and infinitely varied shrewdness and observation maybe justly regarded as phenomenal, the complexity of his moral characteris no less amazing. He is full of industry and ambition, reading for hisfavourite book Bacon's _Faber Fortunæ_, "which I can never read toooften. " He is "joyful beyond myself that I cannot express it, to see, that as I do take pains, so God blesses me, and has sent me masters thatdo observe that I take pains. " Again he is "busy till night blessingmyself mightily to see what a deal of business goes off a man's handswhen he stays at it. " Colonel Birch tells him "that he knows him to be aman of the old way of taking pains. " This is interesting in itself, and it is a very marked trait in hischaracter, but it gains a wonderful pathos when we remember that thisinfinite taking of pains was done in a losing battle with blindness. There is a constantly increasing succession of references in the Diaryto his failing eyesight and his fears of blindness in the future. Thereferences are made in a matter-of-fact tone, and are as free fromself-pity as if he were merely recording the weather or the date. Allthe more on that account, the days when he is weary and almost blindwith writing and reading, and the long nights when he is unable to read, show him to be a very brave and patient man. He consults Boyle as tospectacles, but fears that he will have to leave off his Diary, sincethe cipher begins to hurt his eyes. The lights of the theatre becomeintolerable, and even reading is a very trying ordeal, notwithstandingthe paper tubes through which he looks at the print, and which affordhim much interest and amusement. So the Diary goes on to its patheticclose:--"And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do withmy own eyes in the keeping of my Journal, I being not able to do it anylonger, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every timethat I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, whatever comes of it, Imust forbear; and, therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to haveit kept by my people in long-hand, and must be contented to set downno more than is fit for them and all the world to know; or, if there beanything, I must endeavour to keep a margin in my book open, to add, here and there, a note in shorthand with my own hand. "And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as tosee myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts thatwill accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me!--S. P. " It is comforting to know that, in spite of these fears, he did not growblind, but preserved a certain measure of sight to the end of hiscareer. In regard to money and accounts, his character and conduct present thesame extraordinary mixture as is seen in everything else that concernshim. Money flows profusely upon valentines, gloves, books, and everysort of thing conceivable; yet he grudges the price of his wife's dressalthough it is a sum much smaller than the cost of his own. He allowsher £30 for all expenses of the household, and she is immensely pleased, for the sum is much larger than she had expected. The gift to her of anecklace worth £60 overtops all other generosity, and impresses himselfso much that we hear of it till we are tired. A man in such a positionas his, is bound to make large contributions to public objects, both inthe forms of donations and of loans; but caution tempers his publicspirit. A characteristic incident is that in which he records hisgenuine shame that the Navy Board had not lent any money towards theexpenses caused by the Fire and the Dutch War. But when the loan isresolved upon, he tells us, with delicious naïveté, how he rushes in tobegin the list, lest some of his fellows should head it with a largersum, which he would have to equal if he came after them. He hatesgambling, --it was perhaps the one vice which never tempted him, --and herecords, conscientiously and very frequently, the gradual growth of hisestate from nothing at all to thousands of pounds, with constant thanksto God, and many very quaint little confessions and remarks. He was on the one hand confessedly a coward, and on the other hand a manof the most hasty and violent temper. Yet none of his readers candespise him very bitterly for either of these vices. For he disarms allcriticism by the incredibly ingenious frankness of his confessions; andthe instances of these somewhat contemptible vices alternate with bitsof real gallantry and fineness, told in the same perfectly natural andunconscious way. His relations with his wife and other ladies would fill a volume inthemselves. It would not be a particularly edifying volume, but itcertainly would be without parallel in the literature of this or anyother country for sheer extremity of frankness. Mrs. Pepys appears tohave been a very beautiful and an extremely difficult lady, disagreeableenough to tempt him into many indiscretions, and yet so virtuous as tofill his heart with remorse for all his failings, and still more withvexation for her discoveries of them. But below all this surface play ofpretty disreputable outward conduct, there seems to have been a deep andgenuine love for her in his heart. He can say as coarse a thing abouther as has probably ever been recorded, but he balances it withabundance of solicitous and often ineffective attempts to gratify hercapricious and imperious little humours. These curious mixtures of character, however, are but byplay comparedwith the phenomenal and central vanity, which alternately amazes anddelights us. After all the centuries there is a positive charm aboutthis grown man who, after all, never seems to have grown up intomanhood. He is as delighted with himself as if he were new, and asinterested in himself as if he had been born yesterday. He prefersalways to talk with persons of quality if he can find them. "Mighty gladI was of the good fortune to visit him (Sir W. Coventry), for it keepsin my acquaintance with him, and the world sees it, and reckons myinterest accordingly. " His public life was distinguished by one greatspeech made in answer to the accusations of some who had attacked himand the Navy Board in the House of Commons. That speech seems certainlyto have been distinguished and extraordinarily able, but it certainlywould have cost him his soul if he had not already lost that in otherways. Every sentence of flattery, even to the point of being told thathe is another Cicero, he not only takes seriously, but duly records. There is an immense amount of snobbery, blatant and unashamed. A certainCaptain Cooke turns out to be a man who had been very great in formerdays. Pepys had carried clothes to him when he was a littleinsignificant boy serving in his father's workshop. Now Captain Cooke'sfortunes are reversed, and Pepys tells us of his many and carefulattempts to avoid him, and laments his failure in such attempts. Hehates being seen on the shady side of any street of life, and isparticularly sensitive to such company as might seem ridiculous orbeneath his dignity. His brother faints one day while walking with himin the street, on which his remark is, "turned my head, and he wasfallen down all along upon the ground dead, which did put me into agreat fright; and, to see my brotherly love! I did presently lift him upfrom the ground. " This last sentence is so delightful that, were it notfor the rest of the Diary, it would be quite incredible in any humanbeing past the age of short frocks. All this side of his characterculminates in the immense amount of information which we have concerninghis coach. He has great searching of heart as to whether it would begood policy or bad to purchase it. All that is within him longs to havea coach of his own, but, on the other hand, he fears the jealousy of hisrivals and the increased demands upon his generosity which such a luxurymay be expected to bring. At last he can resist no longer, and the coachis purchased. No sooner does he get inside it than he assumes the air ofa gentleman whose ancestors have ridden in coaches since the beginningof time. "The Park full of coaches, but dusty, and windy, and cold, andnow and then a little dribbling of rain; and what made it worse, therewere so many hackney coaches as spoiled the sight of the gentlemen's. " A somewhat amazing fact in this strange and contradictory character isthe constant element of subtlety which blends with so much frankness. Hewants to do wrong in many different ways but he wants still more to doit with propriety, and to have some sort of plausible excuse which willexplain it in a respectable light. Nor is it only other people whom heis bent on deceiving. Were that all, we should have a very simple typeof hypocritical scoundrel, which would be as different as possible fromthe extraordinary Pepys. There is a sense of propriety in him, and aconscience of obeying the letter of the law and keeping up appearanceseven in his own eyes. If he can persuade himself that he has done that, all things are open to him. He will receive a bribe, but it must begiven in such a way that he can satisfy his conscience with ingeniouswords. The envelope has coins in it, but then he opens it behind hisback and the coins fall out upon the floor. He has only picked them upwhen he found them there, and can defy the world to accuse him of havingreceived any coins in the envelope. That was the sort of consciencewhich he had, and whose verdicts he never seems seriously to havequestioned. He vows he will drink no wine till Christmas, but isdelighted to find that hippocras, being a mixture of two wines, is notnecessarily included in his vow. He vows he will not go to the playuntil Christmas, but then he borrows money from another man and goeswith the borrowed money; or goes to a new playhouse which was not openwhen the vow was made. He buys books which no decent man would own tohaving bought, but then he excuses himself on the plea that he has onlyread them and has not put them in his library. Thus, along the wholecourse of his life, he cheats himself continually. He prefers the way ofhonour if it be consistent with a sufficient number of otherpreferences, and yet practises a multitude of curiously ingeniousmethods of being excusably dishonourable. On the whole, in regard topublic business and matters of which society takes note, he keeps hisconduct surprisingly correct, but all the time he is remembering, notwithout gusto, what he might be doing if he were a knave. It is acurious question what idea of God can be entertained by a man who playstricks with himself in this fashion. Of Pepys certainly it cannot besaid that God "is not in all his thoughts, " for the name and theremembrance are constantly recurring. Yet God seems to occupy a quitehermetically sealed compartment of the universe; for His servant inLondon shamelessly goes on with the game he is playing, and appears totake a pride in the very conscience he systematically hoodwinks. It is peculiarly interesting to remember that Samuel Pepys and JohnBunyan were contemporaries. There is, as we said, much in common betweenthem, and still more in violent contrast. He had never heard of theTinker or his Allegory so far as his Diary tells us, nor is it likelythat he would greatly have appreciated the _Pilgrim's Progress_ if ithad come into his hands. Even _Hudibras_ he bought because it was theproper thing to do, and because he had met its author, Butler; but henever could see what it was that made that book so popular. Bunyan andPepys were two absolutely sincere men. They were sincere in oppositeways and in diametrically opposite camps, but it was their sincerity, the frank and natural statement of what they had to say, that gave itschief value to the work of each of them. It is interesting to rememberthat Pepys was sent to prison just when Bunyan came out of it, in theyear 1678. The charge against the diarist was indeed a false one, andhis imprisonment cast no slur upon his public record: while Bunyan'scharge was so true that he neither denied it nor would give any promisenot to repeat the offence. Pepys, had he known of Bunyan, would probablyhave approved of him, for he enthusiastically admired people who wereliving for conscience' sake, like Dr. Johnson's friend, Dr. Campbell, ofwhom it was said he never entered a church, but always took off his hatwhen he passed one. On the whole Pepys' references to the Fanatiques, ashe calls them, are not only fair but favourable. He is greatlyinterested in their zeal, and impatient with the stupidity and brutalityof their persecutors. In regard to outward details there are many interesting little points ofcontact between the Diary and the _Pilgrims Progress_. We hear of Pepyspurchasing Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_; Bartholomew and Sturbridge Fairscome in for their own share of notice; nor is there wanting adescription of such a cage as Christian and Faithful were condemned toin Vanity Fair. Justice Keelynge, the judge who condemned Bunyan, ismentioned on several occasions by Pepys, very considerably to hisdisadvantage. But by far the most interesting point that the two have incommon is found in that passage which is certainly the gem of the wholeDiary. Bunyan, in the second part of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, introduces a shepherd boy who sings very sweetly upon the DelectableMountains. It is the most beautiful and idyllic passage in the wholeallegory, and has become classical in English literature. Yet Pepys'passage will match it for simple beauty. He rises with his wife a littlebefore four in the morning to make ready for a journey into the countryin the neighbourhood of Epsom. There, as they walk upon the Downs, theycome "where a flock of sheep was; and the most pleasant and innocentsight that ever I saw in my life. We found a shepherd and his little boyreading, far from any houses or sight of people, the Bible to him; so Imade the boy read to me, which he did. .. . He did content himselfmightily in my liking his boy's reading, and did bless God for him, themost like one of the old patriarchs that ever I saw in my life, and itbrought those thoughts of the old age of the world in my mind for two orthree days after. " Such is some slight conception, gathered from a few of many thousands ofquaint and sparkling revelations of this strange character. Over againstthe "ingenious dreamer, " Bunyan, here is a man who never dreams. He isthe realist, pure and unsophisticated; and the stray touches of pathos, on which here and there one chances in his Diary, are written withoutthe slightest attempt at sentiment, or any other thought than that theyare plain matters of fact. He might have stood for this prototype ofmany of Bunyan's characters. Now he is Mr. Worldly Wiseman, now Mr. By-ends, and Mr. Hold-the-World; and taken altogether, with all hisgood and bad qualities, he is a fairly typical citizen of Vanity Fair. There are indeed in his character exits towards idealism andpossibilities of it, but their promise is never fulfilled. There is, forinstance, his kindly good-nature. That quality was the one andall-atoning virtue of the times of Charles the Second, and it wassupposed to cover a multitude of sins. Yet Charles the Second's was areign of constant persecution, and of unspeakable selfishness in highplaces. Pepys persecutes nobody, and yet some touch of unblushingselfishness mars every kindly thing he does. If he sends a haunch ofvenison to his mother, he lets you know that it was far too bad for hisown table. He loves his father with what is obviously a quite genuineaffection, but in his references to him there is generally a significantremembrance of himself. He tells us that his father is a man "who, besides that he is my father, and a man that loves me, and hath everdone so, is also, at this day, one of the most careful and innocent menof the world. " He advises his father "to good husbandry and to be livingwithin the bounds of £50 a year, and all in such kind words, as not onlymade both them but myself to weep. " He hopes that his father may recoverfrom his illness, "for I would fain do all I can, that I may have himlive, and take pleasure in my doing well in the world. " Similarly, whenhis uncle is dying, we have a note "that he is very ill, and so God'sWill be done. " When the uncle is dead, Pepys' remark is, "sorry in onerespect, glad in my expectations in another respect. " When hispredecessor dies, he writes, "Mr. Barlow is dead; for which God knows myheart, I could be as sorry as is possible for one to be for a stranger, by whose death he gets £100 per annum. " Another exit towards idealism of the Christian and spiritual sort mightbe supposed to be found in his abundant and indeed perpetual referencesto churches and sermons. He is an indomitable sermon taster and critic. But his criticisms, although they are among the most amusing of all hisnotes, soon lead us to surrender any expectation of escape from paganismalong this line. "We got places, and staid to hear a sermon; but it, being a Presbyterian one, it was so long, that after above an hour of itwe went away, and I home, and dined; and then my wife and I by water tothe Opera. " This is not, perhaps, surprising, and may in some measureexplain his satisfaction with Dr. Creeton's "most admirable, good, learned, and most severe sermon, yet comicall, " in which the preacher"railed bitterly ever and anon against John Calvin, and his brood, thePresbyterians, " and ripped up Hugh Peters' preaching, calling him "theexecrable skellum. " One man preaches "well and neatly"; another "in adevout manner, not elegant nor very persuasive, but seems to mean well, and that he would preach holily"; while Mr. Mills makes "an unnecessarysermon upon Original Sin, neither understood by himself nor the people. "On the whole, his opinion of the Church is not particularly high, and heseems to share the view of the Confessor of the Marquis de Caranen, "that the three great trades of the world are, the lawyers, who governthe world; the Churchmen who enjoy the world; and a sort of fellows whomthey call soldiers, who make it their work to defend the world. " It must be confessed that, when there were pretty ladies present andwhen his wife was absent, the sermons had but little chance. "ToWestminster to the parish church, and there did entertain myself with myperspective glass up and down the church, by which I had the greatpleasure of seeing and gazing at a great many very fine women; and whatwith that, and sleeping, I passed away the time till sermon was done. "Sometimes he goes further, as at St. Dunstan's, where "I heard an ablesermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty, modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand; but she would not, but gotfurther and further from me; and, at last, I could perceive her to takepins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again--which, seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design. " He visits cathedrals, and tries to be impressed by them, but moreinteresting things are again at hand. At Rochester, "had no mind to staythere, but rather to our inne, the White Hart, where we drank. " AtCanterbury he views the Minster and the remains of Beckett's tomb, butadds, "A good handsome wench I kissed, the first that I have seen agreat while. " There is something ludicrously incongruous about the ideaof Samuel Pepys in a cathedral, just as there is about his presence inthe Great Plague and Fire. Among any of these grand phenomena he isaltogether out of scale. He is a fly in a thunderstorm. His religious life and thought are an amazing complication. He canlament the decay of piety with the most sanctimonious. He remembers Godcontinually, and thanks and praises Him for each benefit as it comes, with evident honesty and refreshing gratitude. He signs and seals hislast will and testament, "which is to my mind, and I hope to the likingof God Almighty. " But in all this there is a curious consciousness, asof one playing to a gallery of unseen witnesses, human or celestial. Ona fast-day evening he sings in the garden "till my wife put me in mindof its being a fast-day; and so I was sorry for it, and stopped, andhome to cards. " He does not indeed appear to regard religion as a mattermerely for sickness and deathbeds. When he hears that the Prince, whenin apprehension of death, is troubled, but when told that he willrecover, is merry and swears and laughs and curses like a man in health, he is shocked. Pepys' religion is the same in prosperous and adversehours, a thing constantly in remembrance, and whose demands a gentlemancan easily satisfy. But his conscience is of that sort which requires anaudience, visible or invisible. He hates dissimulation in other people, but he himself is acting all the time. "But, good God! what an age isthis, and what a world is this! that a man cannot live without playingthe knave and dissimulation. " Thus his religion gave him no escape from the world. He was a man whollygoverned by self-interest and the verdict of society, and his religionwas simply the celestial version of these motives. He has conscienceenough to restrain him from damaging excesses, and to keep him withinthe limits of the petty vices and paying virtues of a comfortable man--aconscience which is a cross between cowardice and prudence. We areconstantly asking why he restrained himself so much as he did. It seemsas if it would have been so easy for him simply to do the things whichhe unblushingly confesses he would like to do. It is a question to whichthere is no answer, either in his case or in any other man's. Why areall of us the very complex and unaccountable characters that we are? Pepys was a pagan man in a pagan time, if ever there was such a man. Thedeepest secret of him is his intense vitality. Here, on the earth, he isthoroughly alive, and puts his whole heart into most of his actions. Heis always in the superlative mood, finding things either the best or theworst that "he ever saw in all his life. " His great concern is to bemerry, and he never outgrows the crudest phases of this desire, butcarries the monkey tricks of a boy into mature age. He will draw hismerriment from any source. He finds it "very pleasant to hear how theold cavaliers talk and swear. " At the Blue Ball, "we to dancing, andthen to a supper of French dishes, which yet did not please me, and thento dance and sing; and mighty merry we were till about eleven or twelveat night, with mighty great content in all my company, and I did, as Ilove to do, enjoy myself. " "This day my wife made it appear to me thatmy late entertainment of this week cost me above £12, an expence which Iam almost ashamed of, though it is but once in a great while, and is theend for which, in the most part, we live, to have such a merry day onceor twice in a man's life. " The only darkening element in his merriment is his habit of examining ittoo anxiously. So greedy is he of delight that he cannot let himself go, but must needs be measuring the extent to which he has achieved hisdesire. Sometimes he finds himself "merry, " but at other times only"pretty merry. " And there is one significant confession in connectionwith some performance of a favourite play, "and indeed it is good, though wronged by my over great expectations, as all things else are. "This is one of the very few touches of anything approaching to cynicismwhich are to be found in his writings. His greed of merriment overleapsitself, and the confession of that is the deepest note in all his music. Thus all the avenues leading beyond the earth were blocked. Other menescape along the lines of kindliness, love of friends, art, poetry, orreligion. In all these avenues he walks or dances, but they lead himnowhere. At the bars he stands, an absolute worldling and pagan, full ofan insatiable curiosity and an endless hunger and thirst. There is notouch of eternity upon his soul: his universe is Vanity Fair. LECTURE VII SARTOR RESARTUS We now begin the study of the last of the three stages in the battlebetween paganism and idealism. Having seen something of its primitiveand classical forms, we took a cross section of it in the seventeenthcentury, and now we shall review one or two of its phases in our owntime. The leap from the seventeenth century to the twentieth necessarilyomits much that is vital and interesting. The eighteenth century, in itsstately and complacent fashion, produced some of the most deliberate andfinished types of paganism which the world has seen, and these wereopposed by memorable antagonists. We cannot linger there, however, butmust pass on to that great book which sounded the loudest bugle-notewhich the nineteenth century heard calling men to arms in this warfare. Nothing could be more violent than the sudden transition from SamuelPepys, that inveterate tumbler in the masque of life, whose absurditiesand antics we have been looking at but now, to this solemn andtremendous book. Great in its own right, it is still greater when weremember that it stands at the beginning of the modern conflict betweenthe material and spiritual development of England. Every student of thefourteenth century is familiar with two great figures, typical of thetwo contrasted features of its life. On the one hand stands Chaucer, with his infinite human interest, his good-humour, and his inexhaustibledelight in man's life upon the earth. On the other hand, dark in shadowsas Chaucer is bright with sunshine, stands Langland, colossal in hissadness, perplexed as he faces the facts of public life which are stillour problems, earnest as death. There is no one figure which correspondsto Chaucer in the modern age, but Carlyle is certainly the counterpartof Langland. Standing in the shadow, he sends forth his great voice tohis times, now breaking into sobs of pity, and anon into shrieks ofhoarse laughter, terrible to hear. He, too, is bewildered, and he comesamong his fellows "determined to pluck out the heart of themystery"--the mystery alike of his own times and of general human lifeand destiny. The book is in a great measure autobiographical, and is drawn from deepwells of experience, thought, and feeling. Inasmuch as its writer was avery typical Scotsman, it also was in a sense a manifesto of thenational convictions which had made much of the noblest part of Scottishhistory, and which have served to stiffen the new races with whichScottish emigrants have blended, and to put iron into their blood. It isa book of incalculable importance, and if it be the case that it findsfewer readers in the rising generation than it did among their fathers, it is time that we returned to it. It is for want of such strong meat asthis that the spirit of an age tends to grow feeble. The object of the present lecture is neither to explain _SartorResartus_ nor to summarise it. It certainly requires explanation, and itis no wonder that it puzzled the publishers. Before it was finallyaccepted by Fraser, its author had "carried it about for some two yearsfrom one terrified owl to another. " When it appeared, the criticismspassed on it were amusing enough. Among those mentioned by ProfessorNichol are, "A heap of clotted nonsense, " and "When is that stupidseries of articles by the crazy tailor going to end?" A book which couldcall forth such abuse, even from the dullest of minds, is certainly inneed of elucidation. Yet here, more perhaps than in any other volume onecould name, the interpretation must come from within. The truth which ithas to declare will appeal to each reader in the light of his ownexperience of life. And the endeavour of the present lecture will simplybe to give a clue to its main purpose. Every reader, following up thatclue for himself, may find the growing interest and the irresistiblefascination which the Victorians found in it. And when we add thatwithout some knowledge of _Sartor_ it is impossible to understand anyserious book that has been written since it appeared, we do notexaggerate so much as might be supposed on the first hearing of soextraordinary a statement. The first and chief difficulty with most readers is a very obvious andelementary one. What is it all about? As you read, you can entertain nodoubt about the eloquence, the violent and unrestrained earnestness ofpurpose, the unmistakable reserves of power behind the detonating wordsand unforgettable phrases. But, after all, what is it that the man istrying to say? This is certainly an unpromising beginning. Other greatprophets have prophesied in the vernacular; but "he that speaketh in anunknown tongue speaketh not unto men but unto God; for no manunderstandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries. " Yetthere are some things which cannot convey their full meaning in thevernacular, thoughts which must coin a language for themselves; andalthough at first there may be much bewilderment and even irritation, yet in the end we shall confess that the prophecy has found its properlanguage. Let us go back to the time in which the book was written. In the latetwenties and early thirties of the nineteenth century a quiteexceptional group of men and women were writing books. It was one ofthose galaxies that now and then over-crowd the literary heavens withstars. To mention only a few of the famous names, there were Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, Dickens, Tennyson, and the Brownings. It fills onewith envy to think of days when any morning might bring a new volumefrom any one of these. Emerson was very much alive then, and was alreadycorresponding with Carlyle. Goethe died in 1832, but not before he hadfound in Carlyle one who "is almost more, at home in our literature thanourselves, " and who had penetrated to the innermost core of the Germanwritings of his day. At that time, too, momentous changes were coming upon the industrial andpolitical life of England. In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railwaywas opened, and in 1832 the Reform Bill was passed. Men were standing inthe backwash of the French Revolution. The shouts of acclamation withwhich the promise of that dawn was hailed, had been silenced long ago bythe bloody spectacle of Paris and the career of Napoleon Buonaparte. Theday of Byronism was over, and polite England was already settling downto the conventionalities of the Early Victorian period. The romanticschool was passing away, and the new generation was turning from it toseek reality in physical science. But deep below the conventionality andthe utilitarianism alike there remained from the Revolution its legacyof lawlessness, and many were more intent on adventure than onobedience. It was in the midst of this confused _mêlée_ of opinions and impulsesthat Thomas Carlyle strode into the lists with his strange book. On theone hand it is a Titanic defence of the universe against the stageTitanism of Byron's _Cain_. On the other hand it is a revolt of realityagainst the empire of proprieties and appearances and shams. In ageneration divided between the red cap of France and the coal-scuttlebonnet of England Carlyle stands bareheaded under the stars. Along withhim stand Benjamin Disraeli, combining a genuine sympathy for the poorwith a most grotesque delight in the aristocracy; and John Henry Newman, fierce against the Liberals, and yet the author of "Lead, kindly Light. " The book was handicapped more heavily by its own style than perhaps anybook that ever fought its way from neglect and vituperation toidolatrous popularity. There is in it an immense amount of gag andpatter, much of which is brilliant, but so wayward and fantastic as togive a sense of restlessness and perpetual noise. The very title isprovoking, and not less so is the explanation of it--the pretendeddiscovery of a German volume upon "Clothes, their origin and influence, "published by Stillschweigen and Co. , of Weissnichtwo, and written byDiogenes Teufelsdröckh. The puffs from the local newspaper, and thecorrespondence with Hofrath "Grasshopper, " in no wise lessen the oddsagainst such a work being taken seriously. Again, as might be expected of a Professor of "Things in General, " thebook is discursive to the point of bewilderment. The whole progeny of"aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial devils" breaks loose upon us just aswe are about to begin such a list of human apparel as never yet waspublished save in the catalogue of a museum collected by a madman. A dogwith a tin kettle at his tail rushes mad and jingling across the street, leaving behind him a new view of the wild tyranny of Ambition. A greatpersonage loses much sawdust through a rent in his unfortunate nethergarments. Sirius and the Pleiades look down from above. The book iseverywhere, and everywhere at once. The _asides_ seem to occupy morespace than the main thesis, whatever that may be. Just when you thinkyou have found the meaning of the author at last, another display ofthese fireworks distracts your attention. It is not dark enough to seetheir full splendour, yet they confuse such daylight as you have. Yet the main thesis cannot long remain in doubt. Through whateveramazement and distraction, it becomes clear enough at last. Clothes, which at once reveal and hide the man who wears them, are an allegory ofthe infinitely varied aspects and appearances of the world, beneathwhich lurk ultimate realities. But essential man is a naked animal, nota clothed one, and truth can only be arrived at by the most drasticstripping off of unreal appearances that cover it. The Professor willnot linger upon the consideration of the lord's star or the clown'sbutton, which are all that most men care to see: he will get down to theessential lord and the essential clown. And this will be more than aninteresting literary occupation to him, or it will not long be that. Truth and God are one, and the devil is the prince of lies. Thisphilosophy of clothes, then, is religion and not _belles lettres_. Thereason for our sojourn on earth, and the only ground of any hope for afurther sojourn elsewhere, is that in God's name we do battle with thedevil. The quest of reality must obviously be wide as the universe, but if weare to engage in it to any purpose we must definitely begin it_somewhere_. A treatise on reality may easily be the most unreal ofthings--a mere battle in the air. So long as it is a discussion oftheories it has this danger, and the first necessity is to bring thesearch down to the region of experience and rigorously insist on itsremaining there. For this end the device of biography is adopted, and wesee the meaning of all that apparent byplay of the six paper bags, andof the Weissnichtwo allusions which drop as puzzling fragments into BookI. The second book is wholly biographical. It is in human life andexperience that we must fight our way through delusive appearances toreality; and Carlyle constructs a typical and immortal biography. To the childless old people, Andreas and Gretchen Futteral, leadingtheir sweet orchard life, there comes, in the dusk of evening, astranger of reverend aspect--comes, and leaves with them the "invaluableLoan" of the baby Teufelsdröckh. Thenceforward, beside the littleKuhbach stream, we watch the opening out of a human life, from infancyto boyhood, and from boyhood to manhood. The story has been told amillion times, but never quite in this fashion before. For roughdelicacy, for exquisitely tender sternness, the biography is unique. From the sleep of mere infancy the child is awakened to theconsciousness of creatorship by the gift of tools with which to makethings. Tales open up for him the long vistas of history; and thestage-coach with its slow rolling blaze of lights teaches him geography, and the far-flung imaginative suggestiveness of the road; while theannual cattle-fair actually gathers the ends of the earth about hiswondering eyes, and gives him his first impression of the variety ofhuman life. Childhood brings with it much that is sweet and gentle, flowing on likethe little Kuhbach; and yet suggests far thoughts of Time and Eternity, concerning which we are evidently to hear more before the end. Theformal education he receives--that "wood and leather education"--callsforth only protest. But the development of his spirit proceeds in spiteof it. So far as the passive side of character goes, he doesexcellently. On the active side things go not so well. Already he beginsto chafe at the restraints of obedience, and the youthful spirit isbeating against its bars. The stupidities of an education which onlyappeals to the one faculty of memory, and to that mainly by means ofbirch-rods, increase the rebellion, and the sense of restraint isbrought to a climax when at last old Andreas dies. Then "the darkbottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, had yawned open; the palekingdoms of Death, with all their innumerable silent nations andgenerations, stood before him; the inexorable word NEVER! nowfirst showed its meaning. " The youth is now ready to enter, as such a one inevitably must, upon thelong and losing battle of faith and doubt. He is at the theorising stageas yet, not having learned to make anything, but only to discuss things. And yet the time is not wasted if the mind have been taught to think. For "truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness canhave. " The immediate consequence and employment of this unripe time ofhalf-awakened manhood is, however, unsatisfactory enough. There is muchreminiscence of early Edinburgh days, with their law studies, andtutoring, and translating, in Teufelsdröckh's desultory period. Theclimax of it is in those scornful sentences about Aesthetic Teas, towhich the hungry lion was invited, that he might feed on chickweed--wellfor all concerned if it did not end in his feeding on the chickensinstead! It is an unwholesome time with the lad--a time of sullencontempt alternating with loud rebellion, of mingled vanity andself-indulgence, and of much sheer devilishness of temper. Upon this exaggerated and most disagreeable period, lit by "red streaksof unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the blackness of darkness, " therecomes suddenly the master passion of romantic love. Had this adventureproved successful, we should have simply had the old story, which endsin "so they lived happily ever after. " What the net result of all theformer strivings after truth and freedom would have been, we need notinquire. For this is another story, equally old and to the end of timeever newly repeated. There is much of Werther in it, and still more ofJean Paul Richter. Its finest English counterpart is Longfellow's_Hyperion_--the most beautiful piece of our literature, surely, that hasever been forgotten--in which Richter's story lives again. But never hasthe tale been more exquisitely told than in _Sartor Resartus_. For onesweet hour of life the youth has been taken out of himself and paledoubt flees far away. Life, that has been but a blasted heath, bloomssuddenly with unheard-of blossoms of hope and of delight. Then comes theend. "Their lips were joined, their two souls, like two dewdrops, rushedinto one, --for the first time, and for the last! Thus was Teufelsdröckhmade immortal by a Kiss. And then? Why, then--thick curtains of Nightrushed over his soul, as rose the immeasurable Crash of Doom; andthrough the ruins as of a shivered Universe was he falling, falling, towards the Abyss. " The sorrows of Teufelsdröckh are but too well known. Flung back upon hisformer dishevelment of mind from so great and calm a height, the crashmust necessarily be terrible. Yet he will not take up his life where heleft it to follow Blumine. Such an hour inevitably changes a man, forbetter or for worse. There is at least a dignity about him now, evenwhile the "nameless Unrest" urges him forward through his darkenedworld. The scenes of his childhood in the little Entepfuhl bring noconsolation. Nature, even in his wanderings among her mountains, isequally futile, for the wanderer can never escape from his own shadowamong her solitudes. Yet is his nature not dissolved, but only"compressed closer, " as it were, and we watch the next stage of thisdevelopment with a sense that some mysteriously great and splendidexperience is on the eve of being born. Thus we come to those three central chapters--chapters so fundamentaland so true to human life, that it is safe to prophesy that they will befamiliar so long as books are read upon the earth--"The Everlasting No, ""Centre of Indifference" and "The Everlasting Yea. " In "The Everlasting No" we watch the work of negation upon the soul ofman. His life has capitulated to the Spirit that denies, and theunbelief is as bitter as it is hopeless. "Doubt had darkened intoUnbelief; shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till you havethe fixed, starless, Tartarean black. " "Is there no God, then; but atbest an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at theoutside of his Universe, and _seeing_ it go? Has the word Duty nomeaning?" "Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, andreceive no Answer but an Echo. " Faith, indeed, lies dormant but alivebeneath the doubt. But in the meantime the man's own weakness paralysesaction; and, while this paralysis lasts, all faith appears to havedeparted. He has ceased to believe in himself, and to believe in hisfriends. "The very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much asbelieve in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurableSteam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind men limbfrom limb. O, the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death!" He is saved from suicide simply by the after-shine of Christianity. The religion of his fathers lingers, no longer as a creed, but as apowerful set of associations and emotions. It is a small thing to clingto amid the wrack of a man's universe; yet it holds until the appearanceof a new phase in which he is to find escape from the prison-house. Hehas begun to realise that fear--a nameless fear of he knows notwhat--has taken hold upon him. "I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; tremulous, pusillanimous. " Fear affects men in widelydifferent ways. We have seen how this same vague "sense of enemies"obsessed the youthful spirit of Marius the Epicurean, until it cleareditself eventually into the conscience of a Christian man. ButTeufelsdröckh is prouder and more violent of spirit than the sedate andpatrician Roman, and he leaps at the throat of fear in a wild defiance. "What _art_ thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou foreverpip and whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! Whatis the sum-total of the worst that lies before thee? Death? Well, Death:and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, will or can do against thee! Hast thou not a Heart; canst thou notsuffer whatsoever it be; and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee? Let itcome, then; I will meet it and defy it!" This is no permanent or stable resting-place, but it is the beginning ofmuch. It is the assertion of self in indignation and wild defiance, instead of the former misery of a man merely haunted by himself. This isthat "Baphometic Fire-baptism" or new-birth of spiritual awakening, which is the beginning of true manhood. The Everlasting No had said:"Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine (theDevil's); to which my whole Me now made answer: I am not thine, butFree, and forever hate thee!" The immediate result of this awakening is told in "Centre ofIndifference"--_i. E. _, indifference to oneself, one's own feelings, andeven to fate. It is the transition from subjective to objectiveinterests, from eating one's own heart out to a sense of the wide andliving world by which one is surrounded. It is the same process which, just about this time, Robert Browning was describing in _Paracelsus_ and_Sordello_. Once more Teufelsdröckh travels, but this time howdifferently! Instead of being absorbed by the haunting shadow ofhimself, he sees the world full of vital interests--cities of men, tilled fields, books, battlefields. The great questions of theworld--the true meanings alike of peace and war--claim his interest. Thegreat men, whether Goethe or Napoleon, do their work before hisastonished eyes. "Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, look away from his own sorrows, over the many-coloured world, andpertinently enough note what is passing there. " He hasreached--strangely enough through self-assertion--the centre ofindifference to self, and of interest in other people and things. Andthe supreme lesson of it all is the value of _efficiency_. Napoleon "wasa Divine Missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through thecannon's throat, that great doctrine, _La carrière ouverte aux talens_(the tools to him that can handle them). " This bracing doctrine carries us at once into The Everlasting Yea. It isnot enough that a man pass from the morbid and self-centered mood to aninterest in the outward world that surrounds him. That might transformhim simply into a curious but heartless dilettante, a mere tourist ofthe spirit, whose sole desire is to see and to take notes. But thatcould never satisfy Carlyle; for that is but self-indulgence in its morerefined form of the lust of the eyes. It was not for this that theEverlasting No had set Teufelsdröckh wailing, nor for this that he hadrisen up in wrath and bidden defiance to fear. From his temptation inthe wilderness the Son of Man must come forth, not to wanderopen-mouthed about the plain, but to work his way "into the highersunlit slopes of that Mountain which has no summit, or whose summit isin Heaven only. " In other words, a great compassion for his fellow-men has come upon him. "With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow-man: with aninfinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thounot tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thoubear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, myBrother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tearsfrom thy eyes!" The words remind us of the famous passage, occurringearly in the book, which describes the Professor's Watchtower. It wassuggested by the close-packed streets of Edinburgh's poorer quarter, asseen from the slopes of the hills which stand close on her eastern side. Probably no passage ever written has so vividly and suggestively massedtogether the various and contradictory aspects of the human tragedy. One more question, however, has yet to be answered before we have solvedour problem. What about happiness? We all cry aloud for it, and make itspresence or absence the criterion for judging the worth of days. Teufelsdröckh goes to the heart of the matter with his usual directness. It is this search for happiness which is the explanation of all theunwholesomeness that culminated in the Everlasting No. "Because theTHOU (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared-for? Foolish soul! What Act ofLegislature was there that _thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little while agothou hadst no right to _be_ at all. What if thou wert born andpredestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy! Art thou nothing otherthan a Vulture, then, that fliest through the Universe seeking aftersomewhat to _eat_; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is notgiven thee? Close thy _Byron_; open thy _Goethe_. " In effect, happinessis a relative term, which we can alter as we please by altering theamount which we demand from life. "Fancy that thou deservest to behanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot:fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be aluxury to die in hemp. " Such teaching is neither sympathetic enough nor positive enough to be ofmuch use to poor mortals wrestling with their deepest problems. Yet inthe very negation of happiness he discovers a positive religion--thereligion of the Cross, the Worship of Sorrow. Expressed crudely, thisseems to endorse the ascetic fallacy of the value of self-denial for itsown sake. But from that it is saved by the divine element in sorrowwhich Christ has brought--"Love not Pleasure; love God. This is theEVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved: whereinwhoso walks and works, it is well with him. " This still leaves us perilously near to morbidness. The Worship ofSorrow might well be but a natural and not less morbid reaction from theformer morbidness, the worship of self and happiness. From that, however, it is saved by the word "works, " which is spoken with emphasisin this connection. So we pass to the last phase of the Everlasting Yea, in which we return to the thesis upon which we began, viz. , that "Doubtof any sort cannot be removed except by action. " "Do the Duty which_lies nearest thee_, which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Dutywill already have become clearer. .. . Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here ornowhere is thy Ideal; work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. .. . Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimalfraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thouhast in thee; out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth todo, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for theNight cometh, wherein no man can work. " Thus the goal of human destiny is not any theory, however true; not anyhappiness, however alluring. It is for practical purposes that theuniverse is built, and he who would be "in tune with the universe" mustfirst and last be practical. In various forms this doctrine hasreappeared and shown itself potent. Ritschl based his system onpractical values in religion, and Professor William James has proclaimedthe same doctrine in a still wider application in his Pragmatism. Theessential element in both systems is that they lay the direct stress oflife, not upon abstract theory but upon experience and vital energy. This transference from theorising and emotionalism to the prompt andvigorous exercise of will upon the immediate circumstance, is Carlyle'sunderstanding of the word Conversion. When it comes to the particular question of what work the Professor isto do, the answer is that he has within him the Word Omnipotent, waitingfor a man to speak it forth. And here in this volume upon Clothes, this_Sartor Resartus_, is his deliberate response to the great demand. Atfirst he seems here to relapse from the high seriousness of the chapterswe have just been reading, and to come with too great suddenness toearth again. Yet that is not the case; for, as we shall see, the rest ofthe volume is the attempt to reconstruct the universe on the principleshe has discovered within his own experience. The story to which we havebeen listening is Teufelsdröckh's way of discovering reality; now we areto have the statement of it on the wider planes of social and otherphilosophy. This we shall briefly review, but the gist of the book is inwhat we have already found. To most readers the quotations must havebeen old and well-remembered friends. Yet they will pardon thereappearance of them here, for they have been amongst the most powerfulof all wingéd words spoken in England for centuries. The reason for thepopularity of the book is that these biographical chapters are therecord of normal and typical human experience. This, or something likethis, will repeat itself so long as human nature lasts; and men, growndiscouraged with the mystery and bewilderment of life, will find heartfrom these chapters to start "once more on their adventure, brave andnew. " This, then, is Teufelsdröckh's reconstruction of the world; and theworld of each one of us requires some such reconstruction. For life isfull of deceptive outward appearances, from which it is the task ofevery man to come back in his own way to the realities within. Theshining example of such reconstruction is that of George Fox, who sewedhimself a suit of leather and went out to the woods with it--"Everystitch of his needle pricking into the heart of slavery, andworld-worship, and the Mammon god. " The leather suit is an allegory ofthe whole. The appearances of men and things are but the fantasticclothes with which they cover their nakedness. They take these clothesof theirs to be themselves, and the first duty and only hope of a man isto divest himself of all such coverings, and discover what manner of manhe really is. This process of divesting, however, may yield either of two results. Aman may take, for the reality of himself, either the low view of humannature, in which man is but "a forked straddling animal with bandylegs, " or the high view, in which he is a spirit, and unutterableMystery of Mysteries. It is the latter view which Thomas Carlylechampions, through this and many other volumes, against thematerialistic thought of his time. The chapter on Dandies is a most extraordinary attack on the keeping upof appearances. The Dandy is he who not only keeps up appearances butactually worships them. He is their advocate and special pleader. Hisvery office and function is to wear clothes. Here we have the illusionstripped from much that we have taken for reality. Sectarianism is aprominent example of it, the reading of fashionable novels is another. In the former two are seen the robes of eternity flung over one veryvulgar form of self-worship, and in the latter the robe of fashionablesociety is flung over another. The reality of man's intercourse withEternity and with his fellow-men has died within these vestures, but theeyes of the public are satisfied, and never guess the corpse within. Sectarianism and Vanity Fair are but common forms of self-worship, inwhich every one is keeping up appearances, and is so intent upon thatexercise that all thought of reality has vanished. A shallower philosopher would have been content with exposing these andother shams; and consequently his philosophy would have led nowhere. Carlyle is a greater thinker, and one who takes a wider view. He is noenemy of clothes, although fools have put them to wrong uses and madethem the instruments of deception. His choice is not between worshippingand abandoning the world and its appearances. He will frankly confessthe value of it and of its vesture, and so we have the chapter onAdamitism, in defence of clothes, which acknowledges in great andingenious detail the many uses of the existing order of institutions. But still, through all such acknowledgment, we are reminded constantlyof the main truth. All appearance is for the sake of reality, and alltools for expressing the worker. When the appearance becomes asubstitute for the reality, and the tools absorb the attention thatshould be devoted to the work for whose accomplishment they exist, thenwe have relapsed into the fundamental human error. The object of thebook is to plunge back from appearance to reality, from clothes to himwho wears them. "Who am I? What is this ME?. .. Some embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal Mind. " This swift retreat upon reality occurs at intervals throughout the wholebook, and in connection with every conceivable department of human lifeand interest. In many parts there is little attempt at sequence ororder. The author has made voluminous notes on men and things, and thewhole fantastic structure of _Sartor Resartus_ is a device forintroducing these disjointedly. In the remainder of this lecture weshall select and displace freely, in order to present the main teachingsof the book in manageable groups. 1. _Language and Thought. _--Language is the natural garment of thoughts, and while sometimes it performs its function of revealing them, it oftenconceals them. Many people's whole intellectual life is spent in dealingwith words, and they never penetrate to the thoughts at all. Still morecommonly, people get lost among words, especially words which have cometo be used metaphorically, and again fail to penetrate to the thought. Thus the _Name_ is the first garment wrapped around the essentialME; and all speech, whether of science, poetry, or politics, issimply an attempt at right naming. The names by which we call things areapt to become labelled pigeon-holes in which we bury them. Havingcatalogued and indexed our facts, we lose sight of them thenceforward, and think and speak in terms of the catalogue. If you are a Liberal, itis possible that all you may know or care to know about Conservatism isthe name. Nay, having catalogued yourself a Liberal, you may seldom evenfind it necessary to inquire what the significance of Liberalism reallyis. If you happen to be a Conservative, the corresponding risks willcertainly not be less. The dangers of these word-garments, and the habit of losing all contactwith reality in our constant habit of living among mere words, naturallysuggest to Carlyle his favourite theme--a plea for silence. We all talktoo much, and the first lesson we have to learn on our way to reality isto be oftener silent. This duty of silence, as has been wittilyremarked, Carlyle preaches in thirty-seven volumes of eloquent Englishspeech. "SILENCE and SECRECY! Altars might still be raised to them (werethis an altar-building time) for universal worship. Silence is theelement in which great things fashion themselves together; that atlength they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight ofLife, which they are thenceforth to rule. .. . Nay, in thy own meanperplexities, do thou thyself but _hold thy tongue for one day_: on themorrow how much clearer are thy purposes and duties. " Andreas, in hisold camp-sentinel days, once challenged the emperor himself with thedemand for the password. "Schweig, Hund!" replied Frederich; andAndreas, telling the tale in after years would add, "There is what Icall a King. " Yet silence may be as devoid of reality as words, and most minds requiresomething external to quicken thought and fill up the emptiness of theirsilences. So we have symbols, whose doctrine is here most eloquentlyexpounded. Man is not ruled by logic but by imagination, and a thousandthoughts will rise at the call of some well-chosen symbol. In itself itmay be the poorest of things, with no intrinsic value at all--a cloutedshoe, an iron crown, a flag whose market value may be almost nothing. Yet such a thing may so work upon men's silences as to fill them withthe glimmer of a divine idea. Other symbols there are which _have_ intrinsic value--works of art, lives of heroes, death itself, in all of which we may see Eternityworking through Time, and become aware of Reality amid the passingshows. Religious symbols are the highest of all, and highest among thesestands Jesus of Nazareth. "Higher has the human Thought not yet reached:this is Christianity and Christendom; a symbol of quite perennial, infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be anewenquired into, and anew made manifest. " In other words, Jesus stands forall that is permanently noble and permanently real in human life. Such symbols as have intrinsic value are indeed perennial. Time atlength effaces the others; they lose their associations, and become butmeaningless lumber. But these significant works and personalities cannever grow effete. They tell their own story to the succeedinggenerations, blessing them with visions of reality and preserving themfrom the Babel of meaningless words. 2. _Body and Spirit. _--Souls are "rendered visible in bodies that tookshape and will lose it, melting into air. " Thus bodies, and not spirits, are the true apparitions, the souls being the realities which they bothreveal and hide. In fact, body is literally a garment of flesh--agarment which the soul has for a time put on, but which it will layaside again. One of the greatest of all the idolatries of appearance isour constant habit of judging one another by the attractiveness of thebodily vesture. Many of the judgments which we pass upon our fellowswould be reversed if we trained ourselves to look through the vesturesof flesh to the men themselves--the souls that are hidden within. The natural expansion of this is in the general doctrine of matter andspirit. Purely material science--science which has lost the faculty ofwonder and of spiritual perception--is no true science at all. It is buta pair of spectacles without an eye. For all material things are butemblems of spiritual things--shadows or images of things in theheavens--and apart from these they have no reality at all. 3. _Society and Social Problems. _--It follows naturally that a changemust come upon our ways of regarding the relations of man to man. Ifevery man is indeed a temple of the divine, and therefore to be revered, then much of our accepted estimates and standards of social judgmentwill have to be abandoned. Society, as it exists, is founded on classdistinctions which largely consist in the exaltation of idleness andwealth. Against this we have much eloquent protest. "Venerable to me isthe hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunningvirtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerabletoo is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rudeintelligence; for it is the face of a Man living man like. " How far awaywe are from all this with our mammon-worship and our fantastic socialunrealities, every student of our times must know, or at least must haveoften heard. He would not have heard it so often, however, had notThomas Carlyle cried it out with that harsh voice of his, in this andmany others of his books. It was his gunpowder, more than any otherexplosive of the nineteenth century, that broke up the immensecomplacency into which half England always tends to relapse. He is not hopeless of the future of society. Society is the truePhoenix, ever repeating the miracle of its resurrection from the ashesof the former fire. There are indestructible elements in the race ofman--"organic filaments" he calls them--which bind society together, andwhich ensure a future for the race after any past, however lamentable. Those "organic filaments" are Carlyle's idea of Social Reality--the realthings which survive all revolution. There are four such realities whichensure the future for society even when it seems extinct. First, there is the fact of man's brotherhood to man--a fact quiteindependent of man's willingness to acknowledge that brotherhood. Second, there is the common bond of tradition, and all our debt to thepast, which is a fact equally independent of our willingness toacknowledge it. Third, there is the natural and inevitable fact of man'snecessity for reverencing some one above him. Obedience and reverenceare forthcoming, whenever man is in the presence of what he _ought_ toreverence, and so hero-worship is secure. These three bonds of social reality are inseparable from one another. The first, the brotherhood of man, has often been used as the watchwordof a false independence. It is only possible on the condition ofreverence and obedience for that which is higher than oneself, either inthe past or the present. "Suspicion of 'Servility, ' of reverence forSuperiors, the very dog-leech is anxious to disavow. Fools! Were yourSuperiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for themwere even your only possible freedom. " These three, then, are the socialrealities, and all other social distinctions and conventionalities arebut clothes, to be replaced or thrown away at need. But there is a fourth bond of social reality--the greatest and mostpowerful of all. That reality is Religion. Here, too, we mustdistinguish clothes from that which they cover--forms of religion fromreligion itself. Church-clothes, indeed, are as necessary as any otherclothes, and they will harm no one who remembers that they are butclothes, and distinguishes between faith and form. The old forms arealready being discarded, yet Religion is so vital that it will alwaysfind new forms for itself, suited to the new age. For religion, in oneform or in another, is absolutely essential to society; and, being agrand reality, will continue to keep society from collapse. 4. From this we pass naturally to the great and final doctrine in whichthe philosophy of clothes is expounded. That doctrine, condensed into asingle sentence, is that "the whole Universe is the Garment of God. "This brings us back to the song of the _Erdgeist_ in Goethe's _Faust_:-- "In Being's floods, in Action's storm, I walk and work, above, beneath, Work and weave in endless motion! Birth and Death, An infinite ocean; A seizing and giving The fire of Living: 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by. " This is, of course, no novelty invented by Goethe. We find it in Mariusthe Epicurean, and he found it in ancient wells of Greek philosophy. Carlyle's use of it has often been taken for Pantheism. In so mystic aregion it is impossible to expect precise theological definition, andyet it is right to remember that Carlyle does not identify the garmentwith its Wearer. The whole argument of the book is to distinguishappearance from reality in every instance, and this is no exception. "What is Nature? Ha! why do I not name thee God? Art thou not the'living garment of God'? O Heavens, is it in very deed He, then, thatever speaks through thee? that lives and loves in thee, that lives andloves in me?. .. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-housewith spectres: but godlike and my Father's. " "This fair Universe, wereit in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed Cityof God; through every star, through every grass-blade, and mostthrough every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. ButNature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish. " Such is some very broken sketch of this great book. It will at leastserve to recall to the memory of some readers thoughts and words whichlong ago stirred their blood in youth. No volume could so fitly bechosen as a background against which to view the modern surge of theage-long battle. But the charm of _Sartor Resartus_ is, after all, personal. We go back to the life-story of Teufelsdröckh, out of whichsuch varied and such lofty teachings sprang, and we read it over andover again because we find in it so much that is our own story too. LECTURE VIII PAGAN REACTIONS In the last lecture we began the study of the modern aspects of oursubject with Carlyle's _Sartor Resartus_. Now, in a rapid sketch, weshall look at some of the writings which followed that great book; and, with it as background, we shall see them in stronger relief. It isimpossible to over-estimate the importance of the influence which waswielded by Carlyle, and especially by his _Sartor Resartus_. His was agigantic power, both in literature and in morals. At first, as we havealready noted, he met with neglect and ridicule in abundance, butafterwards these passed into sheer wonder, and then into a wide anddevoted worship. Everybody felt his power, and all earnest thinkers wereseized in the strong grip of reality with which he laid hold upon histime. The religious thought and faith both of England and of Scotland felthim, but his mark was deepest upon Scotland, because of two interestingfacts. First of all, Carlyle represented that old Calvinism which hadalways fitted so exactly the national character and spirit; and second, there were in Scotland many people who, while retaining the Calvinisticspirit, had lost touch with the old definite creed. Nothing could bemore characteristic of Carlyle than this Calvinism of the spirit whichhad passed beyond the letter of the old faith. He stands like an oldCovenanter in the mist; and yet a Covenanter grasping his father's ironsword. It is because of these two facts _Sartor Resartus_ has taken soprominent a place in our literature. It stands for a kind of consciencebehind the manifold modern life of our day. Beneath the shrieks and thelaughter of the time we hear in it the boom of great breakers. Neveragain can we forget, amidst the gaieties of any island paradise, thesolemn ocean that surrounds it. Carlyle's teaching sounds and recursagain and again like the Pilgrims' March in _Tannhäuser_ breakingthrough the overture, and rivalling until it vanquishes the music of theVenusberg. Yet it was quite inevitable that there should be strong reaction fromany such work as this. To the warm blood and the poignant sense of thebeauty of the world it brought a sense of chill, a forbidding sombrenessand austerity. Carlyle's conception of Christianity was that of theworship of sorrow; and, while the essence of his gospel was labour, yetto many minds self-denial seemed to be no longer presented, as in theteaching of Jesus, as a means towards the attainment of furtherspiritual ends. It had become an end in itself, and one that few woulddesire or feel to be justified. In the reaction it was felt thatself-development had claims upon the human spirit as well asself-denial, and indeed that the happy instincts of life had no right tobe so winsome unless they were meant to be obeyed. The beauty of theworld could not be regarded as a mere trap for the tempting of people, if one were to retain any worthy conception of the Powers that governthe world. From this point of view the Carlylians appeared to enter intolife maimed. That, indeed, we all must do, as Christ told us; but theyseemed to do it like the beggars of Colombo, with a deliberate andsomewhat indecent exhibition of their wounds. Carlyle found many men around him pagan, worshipping the earth withoutany spiritual light in them. He feared that many others were about to goin the same direction, so he cried aloud that the earth was too small, and that they must find a larger object of worship. For the earth hesubstituted the universe, and led men's eyes out among the immensitiesand eternities. Professor James tells a story of Margaret Fuller, theAmerican transcendentalist, having said with folded hands, "I accept theuniverse, " and how Carlyle, hearing this, had answered, "Gad, she'dbetter!" It was this insistence upon the universe, as distinguished fromthe earth, which was the note of _Sartor Resartus_. The reactionaries took Carlyle at his word. They said, "Yes, we shallworship the universe"; but they went on to add that Carlyle's universeis not universal. It is at once too vague and too austere. There areother elements in life besides those to which he calledattention--elements very definite and not at all austere--and they toohave a place in the universe and a claim upon our acceptance. Many ofthese are in every way more desirable to the type of mind that rebelledthan the aspects of the universe on which Carlyle had insisted, and sothey went out freely among these neglected elements, set them overagainst his kind of idealism, and became themselves idealists of othersorts. Matthew Arnold, the apostle of culture, found his idealism in the purelymental region. Rossetti was the idealist of the heart, with its wholeworld of emotions, and that subtle and far-reaching inter-play betweensoul and body for which Carlyle had always made too little allowance. Mr. H. G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw, proclaiming themselves idealists ofthe social order, have been reaching conclusions and teaching doctrinesat which Carlyle would have stood aghast. These are but random examples, but they are one in this, that each has protested against thatone-sidedness for which Carlyle stood. Yet each is a one-sided protest, and falls again into the snare of setting the affections upon thingswhich are not eternal, and so wedding man to the green earth again. Thus we find paganism--in some quarters paganism quite openlyconfessed--occupying a prominent place in our literature to-day. Beforewe examine some of its aspects in detail a word or two of preliminarywarning may be permissible. It is a mistake to take the extremer formsof this reaction too seriously, although at the present time this isvery frequently done. One must remember that such a spirit as this is tobe found in every age, and that it always creates an ephemeralliterature which imagines itself to be a lasting one. It is nothing new. It is as old and as perennial as the complex play of the human mind andhuman society. Another reason for not taking this phase too seriously is that it wasquite inevitable that some such reaction should follow upon the hugesolemnities of Carlyle. Just as in literature, after the classicformality of Johnson and his contemporaries, there must come thereaction of the Romantic School, which includes Sir Walter Scott, Byron, and Burns; so here there must be an inevitable reaction from austerityto a daring freedom which will take many various forms. From Carlyle'ssolemnising liturgy we were bound to pass to the slang and colloquialismof the man in the street and the woman in the modern novel. Body andspirit are always in unstable equilibrium, and an excess of either atonce swings the fashion back to the other extreme. Carlyle had his daylargely in consequence of what one may call the eighteenth-centuryglut--the Georgian society and its economics, and the Byronic element inliterature. The later swing back was as inevitable as Carlyle had been. Perhaps it was most clearly noticed after the deaths of Browning andTennyson, in the late eighties and the early nineties. But both beforeand since that time it has been very manifest in England. But beyond all these things there is the general fact that before anyliterature becomes pagan the land must first have been paganised. Ofcourse there is always here again a reaction of mutual cause and effectbetween literature and national spirit. Carlyle himself, in his doctrineof heroes, was continually telling us that it is the personality whichproduces the _zeitgeist_, and not _vice versa_. On the other hand it isequally certain that no personality is independent of his age and thebacking he finds in it, or the response which he may enlist for hisrevolt from it. Both of these are true statements of the case; as towhich is ultimate, that is the old and rather academic question ofwhether the oak or the acorn comes first. We repeat that it isimpossible, in this double play of cause and effect, to say which is theultimate cause and which the effect. The controversy which was waged inthe nineteenth century between the schools of Buckle and Carlyle islikely to go on indefinitely through the future. But what concerns us atpresent is this, that all paganism which finds expression in aliterature has existed in the age before it found that expression. Theliterature is indeed to some extent the creator of the age, but to a fargreater extent it is the expression of the age, whose creation is due toa vast multiplicity of causes. Among these causes one of the foremost was political advance andfreedom--the political doctrines, and the beginnings of Socialisticthought, which had appeared about the time when _Sartor Resartus_ waswritten. The Reform Bill of 1832 tended to concentrate men's attentionupon questions of material welfare. Commercial and industrial prosperityfollowed, keeping the nation busy with the earth. In very strikinglanguage Lord Morley describes this fact, in language specially strikingas coming from so eminently progressive a man. [4] "Far the mostpenetrating of all the influences that are impairing the moral andintellectual nerve of our generation, remain still to be mentioned. Thefirst of them is the immense increase of material prosperity, and thesecond is the immense decline in sincerity of spiritual interest. Theevil wrought by the one fills up the measure of the evil wrought by theother. We have been, in spite of momentary declensions, on a flood-tideof high profits and a roaring trade, and there is nothing like a roaringtrade for engendering latitudinarians. The effect of many possessions, especially if they be newly acquired, in slackening moral vigour, is aproverb. Our new wealth is hardly leavened by any tradition of publicduty such as lingers among the English nobles, nor as yet by any commoncustom of devotion to public causes, such as seems to live and grow inthe United States. Under such conditions, with new wealth come luxuryand love of ease and that fatal readiness to believe that God has placedus in the best of possible worlds, which so lowers men's aims andunstrings their firmness of purpose. Pleasure saps high interests, andthe weakening of high interests leaves more undisputed room forpleasure. " "The political spirit has grown to be the strongest elementin our national life; the dominant force, extending its influence overall our ways of thinking in matters that have least to do with politics, or even nothing at all to do with them. There has thus been engenderedamong us the real sense of political responsibility. In a correspondingdegree has been discouraged . .. The sense of intellectualresponsibility. .. . Practically, and as a matter of history, a society isseldom at the same time successfully energetic both in temporals andspirituals; seldom prosperous alike in seeking abstract truth andnursing the political spirit. " The result of the new phase of English life was, on the one hand, industrialism with its material values, and on the other hand thebeginnings of a Socialism equally pagan. The motto of both schools wasthat a man's life consisteth in the abundance of the things that hepossesseth, that you should seek first all these things, and that theKingdom of God and His righteousness may be added unto you, if you haveany room for them. Make yourself secure of all these other things; seekcomfort whether you be rich or poor; make this world as agreeable toyourself as your means will allow, and seek to increase your means ofmaking it still more agreeable. After you have done all that, anythingthat is left over will do for your idealism. Your God can be seen toafter you have abundantly provided for the needs of your body. Nothingcould be more characteristic paganism than this, which makes materialcomfort the real end of life, and all spiritual things a residualelement. It is the story which Isaiah tells, with such sublimity ofsarcasm, of the huntsman and craftsman who warms his hands and cries tohimself, "Aha! I am warm. I have seen the fire. " He bakes bread androasts flesh, and, with the residue of the same log which he has usedfor kindling his fire, he maketh a god. So this modern god of England, when England had become materialised, was just that ancient fire-worshipand comfort-worship in its nineteenth-century phase. In the first demandof life there is no thought of God or of idealism of any kind. These, ifthey appear at all, have to be made out of what is left. "Of the residuehe maketh a god. " It is by insidious degrees that materialism invades a nation's life. Atfirst it attacks the externals, appearing mainly in the region of work, wealth, and comfort. But, unless some check is put upon its progress, itsteadily works its way to the central depths, attacking love and sorrow, and changing them to sensuality and cynicism. Then the nation's day isover, and its men and women are lost souls. Many instances might bequoted in which this progress has actually been made in the literatureof England. At present we are only pointing to the undoubted fact thatthe forces of materialism have been at work among us. If proof of thiswere needed, nothing could afford it more clearly than our loss of peaceand dignity in modern society. Many costly luxuries have becomenecessities, and they have increased the pace of life to a rush and furywhich makes business a turmoil and social life a fever. A symbolicembodiment of this spirit may be seen in the motor car and the aeroplaneas they are often used. These indeed need not be ministers of paganism. The glory of swift motion and the mounting up on wings as eagles reachvery near to the spiritual, if not indeed across its borderland, asexhilarating and splendid stimuli to the human spirit. But, on the otherhand, they may be merely instruments for gratifying that insane humanrestlessness which is but the craving for new sensations. Along thewhole line of our commercial and industrial prosperity there runs onegreat division. There are some who, in the midst of all change, havepreserved their old spiritual loyalties, and there are others who havesubstituted novelty for loyalty. These are the idealists and the pagansof the twentieth century. Another potent factor in the making of the new times was the scientificadvance which has made so remarkable a difference to the whole outlookof man upon the earth. Darwin's great discovery is perhaps the mostepoch-making fact in science that has yet appeared upon the earth. Thefirst apparent trend of evolution seemed to be an entirely materialisticreaction. This was due to the fact that believers in the spiritual hadidentified with their spirituality a great deal that was unnecessary andmerely casual. If the balloon on which people mount up above the earthis any such theory as that of the six days' creation, it is easy to seehow when that balloon is pricked the spiritual flight of the timeappears to have ended on the ground. Of course all that has long passed by. Of late years Haeckel has beencrying out that all his old friends have deserted him and have gone overto the spiritual side--a cry which reminds one of the familiar jurymanwho finds his fellows the eleven most obstinate men he has ever known. The conception of evolution has long since been taken over by theidealists, and has become perhaps the most splendidly Christian andidealistic idea of the new age. When Darwin published his _Origin ofSpecies_, Hegel cried out in Germany, "Darwin has destroyed design. "To-day Darwin and Hegel stand together as the prophets of theunconquerable conviction of the reality of spirit. From the days ofHuxley and Haeckel we have passed over to the days of Bergson and SirOliver Lodge. The effect of all this upon individuals is a very interesting phenomenonto watch. Every one of us has been touched by the pagan spirit which hasinvaded our times at so many different points of entrance. It has becomean atmosphere which we have all breathed more or less. If some one wereto say to any company of British people, one by one, that they werepagans, doubtless many of them would resent it, and yet more or less itwould be true. We all are pagans; we cannot help ourselves, for everyone of us is necessarily affected by the spirit of his generation. Nobody indeed says, "Go to, I will be a pagan"; but the old story ofAaron's golden calf repeats itself continually. Aaron, when Mosesrebuked him, said naïvely, "There came out this calf. " That exactlydescribes the situation. That calf is the only really authentic exampleof spontaneous generation, of effect without cause. Nobody expected it. Nobody wanted it. Everybody was surprised to see it when it came. It wasthe Melchizedek among cattle--without father, without mother, withoutdescent. Unfortunately it seems also to have been without beginning ofdays or end of life. Every generation simply puts in its gold and therecomes out this calf--it is a way such calves have. Thus it is with our modern paganism. We all of us want to be idealists, and we sometimes try, but there are hidden causes which draw us backagain to the earth. These causes lie in the opportunities that occur oneby one: in politics, in industrial and commercial matters, in scientifictheories, or by mere reaction. The earth is more habitable than once itwas, and we all desire it. It masters us, and so the golden calfappears. We shall now glance very rapidly at a few out of the many literaryforces of our day in which we may see the various reactions fromCarlyle. First, there was the Early Victorian time, the eighteenthcentury in homespun. It was not great and pompous like that century, butit lived by formality, propriety, and conventionality. It was horriblyshocked when George Eliot published _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _AdamBede_ in 1858 and 1859. Outwardly it was eminently respectable, and itsrespectability was its particular method of lapsing into paganism. Itwas afraid of ideals, and for those who cherish this fear the worship ofrespectability comes to be a very dangerous kind of worship, and itsidol is perhaps the most formidable of all the gods. Meanwhile that glorious band of idealists, whose chief representativeswere Tennyson, Browning, and Ruskin, to be joined later by GeorgeMeredith, were fighting paganism in the spirit of Arthur's knights, keento drive the heathen from the land. Tennyson, the most popular of themall, probably achieved more than any other in this conflict. Ruskin wastoo contradictory and bewildering, and so failed of much of his effect. Browning and Meredith at first were reckoned unintelligible, and had towait their day for a later understanding. Still, all these, and manyothers of lesser power than theirs, were knights of the ideal, warringagainst the domination of dead and unthinking respectability. Matthew Arnold came upon the scene, with his great protest against thepreponderance of single elements in life, and his plea for wholeness. Inthis demand for whole and not one-sided views of the world, he is morenearly akin to Goethe than perhaps any other writer of our time. Hisgreat protest was against the worship of machinery, which he believed tobe taking the place of its own productions in England. He conceived ofthe English people as being under a general delusion which led them tomistake means for ends. He spoke of them as "Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace, " according to the rank in life they held; and accused themof living for such ends as field sports, the disestablishment of theChurch of England, and the drinking of beer. He pointed out that, so faras real culture is concerned, these can at best be but means towardsother ends, and can never be in themselves sufficient to satisfy thehuman soul. He protested against Carlyle, although in the main thesisthe two are entirely at one. "I never liked Carlyle, " he said; "healways seemed to me to be carrying coals to Newcastle. " He took Carlylefor the representative of what he called "Hebraism, " and he desired tobalance the undue preponderance of that by insisting upon the necessityof the Hellenistic element in culture. Both of these are methods ofidealism, but Arnold protested that the human spirit is greater than anyof the forces that bear it onwards; and that after you have said allthat Carlyle has to say, there still remains on the other side theintellect, with rights of its own. He did not exclude conscience, for heheld that conduct made up three-fourths of life. He was the idealist ofa whole culture as against all one-sidedness; but curiously, by flinginghimself upon the opposite side from Carlyle, he became identified in thepopular mind with what it imagined to be Hellenic paganism. This waspartly due to his personal idiosyncrasies, his fastidiousness of taste, and the somewhat cold style of the _exquisite_ in expression. Thesedeceived many of his readers, and kept them from seeing how great andprophetic a message it was that came to England beneath Arnold'smannerisms. Dante Gabriel Rossetti appeared, and many more in his train. He, moreperfectly than any other, expressed the marriage of sense and soul inmodern English poetry. He was the idealist of emotion, who, in thefar-off dim borderlands between sense and spirit, still preserved thespiritual search, nor ever allowed himself to be completely drugged withthe vapours of the region. There were others, however, who tendedtowards decadence. Some of Rossetti's readers, whose sole interest layin the lower world, claimed him as well as the rest for their guides, and set a fashion which is not yet obsolete. There is no lack ofsolemnity among these. The scent of sandalwood and of incense is upontheir work, and you feel as you read them that you are worshipping insome sort of a temple with strange and solemnising rites. Indeed theyinsist upon this, and assiduously cultivate a kind of lethargic andquasi-religious manner which is supposed to be very impressive. Buttheir temple is a pagan temple, and their worship, however much they mayborrow for it the language of a more spiritual cult, is of the earth, earthy. Mr. Thomas Hardy was the inevitable sequel to George Eliot. Everybodyknows how beautiful and how full of charm his lighter writings can be;and in his more tragic work there is much that is true, terrificallyexpressed. Yet he has got upon the wrong side of the world, and cannever see beyond the horror of its tragedy. Consequently in him we haveanother form of paganism, not this time that which the seductive earthwith its charms is suggesting, but the hopeless paganism which sees theearth only in its bitterness. In _The Return of the Native_ he says:"What the Greeks only suspected we know well; what their Aeschylusimagined our nursery children feel. That old-fashioned revelling in thegeneral situation grows less and less possible as we uncover the defectsof natural laws, and see the quandary man is in by their operation. " Itis no wonder that he who expressed the spirit of the modern age in thesewords should have closed his well-known novel with the bitter sayingthat the upper powers had finished their sport with _Tess_. "To havelost the God-like conceit that we may do what we will, and not to haveacquired a homely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of temperwhich cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it denotes a mind that, though disappointed, forswears compromise. " Here is obviously a man whowould love the highest if he saw it, who would fain welcome and proclaimthe ideals if he could only find them on the earth; but who has foundinstead the bitterness of darkness, the sarcasm and the sensationalismof an age that the gods have left. He is too honest to shout _pourencourager les autres_ when his own heart has no hope in it; and hisgreater books express the wail and despair of our modern paganism. Breaking away from him and all such pessimistic voices came the gladsoul of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose old-fashioned revelling in thesituation is the exact counter-blast to Hardy's modernism, and is one ofthose perennial human things which are ever both new and old. It is notthat Stevenson has not seen the other side of life. He has seen it andhe has suffered from it deeply, both in himself and in others; yet stillindomitably he "clings to his paddle. " "I believe, " he says, "in anultimate decency of things; ay, and if I woke in hell, should stillbelieve it. " Then there came the extraordinary spirit of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Atfirst sight some things that he has written appear pagan enough, andhave been regarded as such. The God of Christians seems to inhabit andpreside over an amazing Valhalla of pagan divinities; and indeedthroughout Mr. Kipling's work the heavens and the earth are mingled in amost inextricable and astonishing fashion. It is said that not long ago, during the launch of a Chinese battleship at one of our British yards, they were burning papers to the gods in a small joss-house upon thepier, while the great vessel, fitted with all the most modern machinery, was leaving the stocks. There is something about the tale that remindsus of Mr. Kipling. Now he is the prophet of Jehovah, now the Corybanticpagan priest, now the interpreter of the soul of machines. He iseverything and everybody. He knows the heart of the unborn, and, tellingof days far in the future, can make them as living and real as the hoursof to-day. It was the late Professor James who said of him, "Kipling iselemental; he is down among the roots of all things. He is universallike the sun. He is at home everywhere. When he dies they won't be ableto get any grave to hold him. They will have to bury him under apyramid. " In our reckoning such a man hardly counts. It would be mostinteresting, if it were as yet possible, to speculate as to whether hispermanent influence has been more on the side of a kind of a wildTitanic paganism, or of that ancient Calvinistic God whom Macandrewworships in the temple of his engine-room. We now come to a later phase, for which we may take as representativewriters the names of Mr. H. G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw. Science, forthe meantime at least, has disentangled herself from her formermaterialism, and a nobly ideal and spiritual view of science has comeagain. It may even be hoped that the pagan view will never be able againto assert itself with the same impressiveness as in the past. But socialconditions are to-day in the throes of their strife, and from thatquarter of the stage there appear such writers as those we are now toconsider. They both present themselves as idealists. Mr. Wells haspublished a long volume about his religion, and Mr. Shaw prefaces hisplays with essays as long or even longer than the plays themselves, dealing with all manner of the most serious subjects. The surfaceflippancy both of prefaces and plays has repelled some readers in spiteof all their cleverness, and tended towards an unjust judgment that heis upsetting the universe with his tongue in his cheek all the time. Later one comes to realise that this is not the case, that Mr. Shaw doesreally take himself and his message seriously, and from first to lastconceives himself as the apostle of a tremendous creed. Among many otherthings which they have in common, these writers have manifested thetendency to regard all who ever went before them as, in a certain sense, thieves and robbers; at least they give one the impression that thepresent has little need for long lingering over the past. Mr. Wells, forinstance, cannot find words strong enough to describe the emancipationof the modern young man from Mr. Kipling with his old-fashionedinjunction, "Keep ye the law. " There are certain laws which Mr. Wellsproclaims on the housetops that he sees no necessity for keeping, and soMr. Kipling is buried under piles of opprobrium--"the tumult and thebullying, the hysteria and the impatience, the incoherence and theinconsistency, " and so on. As for Mr. Bernard Shaw, we all know his ownview of the relation in which he stands to William Shakespeare. Mr. Wells has written many interesting books, and much could be said ofhim from the point of view of science, or of style, or of social theory. That, however, is not our present concern, either with him or with Mr. Shaw. It is as idealist or pagan influences that we are discussing themand the others. Mr. Wells boasts a new morality in his books, and Mr. Shaw in his plays. One feels the same startling sense of a _volte face_in morality as a young recruit is said to do when he finds all theprecepts of his childhood reversed by the ethics of his firstbattlefield. Each in his own way falls back upon crude and primitiveinstincts and justifies them. [5] Mr. Wells takes the change with zest, and seems to treat the adoption ofa new morality in the same light-hearted spirit as he might consider thebuying of a new hat. From the first he has a terrifying way of dealingfamiliarly with vast things. Somehow he reminds one of those jugglerswho, for a time, toss heavy balls about, and then suddenly astonish theaudience by introducing a handkerchief, which flies lightly among itsponderous companions. So Mr. Wells began to juggle with worlds. He haslatterly introduced that delicate thing, the human soul and conscience, into the play, and you see it precariously fluttering among theimmensities of leaping planets. He persuades himself that the commonmorality has not gripped people, and that they really don't believe init at all. He aims at a way of thinking which will be so great as to befree from all commonplace and convention. Honesty is to be practicallythe only virtue in the new world. If you say what you mean, you willearn the right to do anything else that you please. Mr. Wells in this isthe counterpart of those plain men in private life so well known to usall, who perpetually remind us that they are people who call a spade aspade. Such men are apt to interpret this dictum as a kind of charterwhich enables a man to say anything foolish, or rude, or bad that mayoccur to him, and earn praise for it instead of blame. Some of us failto find the greatness of this way of thinking, however much we may beimpressed by its audacity. Indeed there seems to be much smallness in itwhich masquerades as immensity. This smallness is due first of all to sheer ignorance. When a man tellsus that he prefers Oliver Goldsmith to Jesus Christ, he merely showsthat upon the subject he is discussing he is not educated, and does notknow what he is talking about. A second source of pettiness is to befound in the mistake of imagining that mere smartness of diction andagility of mind are signs of intellectual keenness. The mistake is asobvious as it is unfortunate. Smartness can be learned with perhaps theleast expenditure of intellect that is demanded by any literary exerciseof the present day. It is a temptation which a certain kind of cleverman always has to face, and it only assumes a serious aspect when itleads the unthinking to mistake it for a new and formidable element ofopposition to things which he has counted sacred. The whole method is not so very subtle after all. Pick out a vice or adeformity. Do not trouble to acquaint yourself too intimately with thehistory of morals in the past, but boldly canonise your vice or yourdeformity with ritual of epigram and paradox. Proclaim loudly andeloquently that this is your faith, and give it a pathetic aspect bydwelling tenderly upon any trouble which it may be likely to cost thosewho venture to adopt it. It is not perhaps a very admirable way to dealwith such subjects. The whole world of tradition and the wholeconstitution of human nature are against you. Men have wrestled withthese things for thousands of years, and they have come to certainconclusions which the experience of all time has enforced upon them. Bya dash of bold imagination you may discount all that laborious past, andleave an irrevocable stain upon the purity of the mind of a generation. Doubtless you will have a following--such teachers have ever had thosewho followed them--and yet time is always on the side of greattraditions. If enlightened thought has in any respect to change them, itchanges them reverently, and knowing what their worth has been. Sooneror later all easy ignoring of them is condemned as sheer impertinence. There is singularly little reason for being impressed by this hasty, romantic, and loud-sounding crusade against Christian morality and itsIdeal. In Mr. George Bernard Shaw we have a very different man. Nobody deniesMr. Shaw's cleverness, least of all Mr. Shaw himself. He is depressinglyclever. He exhibits the spectacle of a man trying to address hisaudience while standing on his head--and succeeding. He has been singularly fortunate in his biographer, Mr. Chesterton, andone of the things that make this biography such pleasing reading is thepersonal element that runs through it all. The introduction ischaracteristic and delightful: "Most people either say that they agreewith Bernard Shaw, or that they do not understand him. I am the onlyperson who understands him, and I do not agree with him. " It is notunnatural that he should take his friend a little more seriously thanmost of us will be prepared to do. It really is a big thing to stand onthe shoulders of William Shakespeare, and we shall need time to considerit before we subscribe to the statue. For there is here an absolutely colossal egotism. There are certainnewspapers which usually begin with a note of the hours of sunrise andsunset. During the recent coal strike, some of these newspapers insertedfirst of all a notice that they would not be sent out so early as usual, and then cheered our desponding hearts by assuring us that the sun risesat 5. 37 notwithstanding--as if by permission of the newspaper. Mr. Shawsomehow gives us a similar impression. Most things in the universe seemto go on by his permission, and some of them he is not going to allow togo on much longer. He will tilt without the slightest vestige ofhumility against any existing institution, and the tourney is certainlyone of the most entertaining and most extraordinary of our time. No one can help admiring Mr. Shaw. The dogged persistence which hascarried him, unflinching, through adversity into his present fame, without a single compromise or hesitation, is, apart altogether from thequestion of the truth of his opinions, an admirable quality in a man. Wecannot but admire his immense forcefulness and agility, the fertility ofhis mind, and the swiftness of its play. But we utterly refuse to falldown and worship him on account of these. Indeed the kind of awe withwhich he is regarded in some quarters seems to be due rather to theeccentricities of his expression than to the greatness of his message orthe brilliance of his achievements. There is no question of his earnestness. The Puritan is deep in Mr. Shaw, in his very blood. He has indeed given to the term Puritan anumber of unexpected meanings, and yet no one can justly question hisright to it. His _Plays for Puritans_ are not exceptional in thismatter, for all his work is done in the same spirit. His favouriteauthor is John Bunyan, about whom he tells us that he claims him as theprecursor of Nietzsche, and that in his estimation John Bunyan's lifewas one long tilt against morality and respectability. The claim issufficiently grotesque, yet there is a sense in which he has a right toJohn Bunyan, and is in the same line as Thomas Carlyle. He is tryingsincerely to speak the truth and get it spoken. He appears as another ofthe destroyers of shams, the breakers of idols. He may indeed be claimedas a pagan, and his influence will certainly preponderate in thatdirection; and yet there is a strain of high idealism which runsperplexingly through it all. The explanation seems to be, as Mr. Chesterton suggests, that the man isincomplete. There are certain elementary things which, if he had everseen them as other people do, would have made many of his positionsimpossible. "Shaw is wrong, " says Mr. Chesterton, "about nearly all thethings one learns early in life while one is still simple. " Among thosethings which he has never seen are the loyalties involved in love, country, and religion. The most familiar proof of this in regard toreligion is his extraordinary tirade against the Cross of Calvary. It isone of the most amazing passages in print, so far as either taste orjudgment is concerned. It is significant that in this very passage heactually refers to the "stable at Bethany, " and the slip seems toindicate from what a distance he is discussing Christianity. It ispossible for any of us to measure himself against the Cross and Him whohung upon it, only when we have travelled very far away from them. Whenwe are sufficiently near, we know ourselves to be infinitesimal incomparison. Nor in regard to home, and all that sanctifies and defendsit, does Mr. Shaw seem ever to have understood the real morality that isin the heart of the average man. The nauseating thing which he quotes asmorality is a mere caricature of that vital sense of honour andimperative conscience of righteousness which, thank God, are still aliveamong us. "My dear, " he says, "you are the incarnation of morality, yourconscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybodynames. " Similar, and no less unfortunate, is his perversion of thatinstinct of patriotism which, however mistaken in some of itsexpressions, has yet proved its moral and practical worth during many acentury of British history. There is the less need to dwell upon this, because those who discard patriotism have only to state their caseclearly in order to discredit it. We do not fear greatly the permanent influence of these fundamentalerrors. The great heart of the civilised world still beats true, and ishealthy enough to disown so maimed an account of human nature. Yet thereis danger in any such element in literature as this. Mr. Shaw'sbiographer has virtually told us that in these matters he is but a childin whom "Irish innocence is peculiar and fundamental. " The pleadings ofthe nurse for the precocious and yet defective infant are certainly verytouching. He may be the innocent creature that Mr. Chesterton takes himfor, but he has said things which will exactly suit the views oflibertines who read him. Such pleadings are quite unavailing to excuseany such child if he does too much innocent mischief. His puritanism andhis childlikeness only make his teaching more dangerous because morepiquant. It has the air of proceeding from the same source as the tencommandments, and the effect of this upon the unreflecting is alwaysconsiderable. If a child is playing in a powder magazine, the morechildish and innocent he is the more dangerous he will prove; and theexplosion, remember, will be just as violent if lit by a child's hand asif it had been lit by an anarchist's. We have in England borne longenough with people trifling with the best intentions among explosives, moral and social, and we must consider our own safety and that ofsociety when we are judging them. As to the relation in which Mr. Shaw stands to paganism, his relationsto anything are so "extensive and peculiar" that they are alwaysdifficult to define. But the later phase of his work, which has becomefamous in connection with the word "Superman, " is due in large part toNietzsche, whose strange influence has reversed the Christian ideals formany disciples on both sides of the North Sea. So this idealist, who, in_Major Barbara_, protests so vigorously against paganism, has become oneof its chief advocates and expositors. One of his characters somewheresays, "I wish I could get a country to live in where the facts were notbrutal and the dreams were not unreal. " It may be admitted that thereare many brutal facts and perhaps more unreal dreams; but, for our part, that which keeps us from becoming pagans is that we have found factsthat are not brutal and dreams which are the realest things in life. LECTURE IX MR. G. K. CHESTERTON'S POINT OF VIEW There is on record the case of a man who, after some fourteen years ofrobust health, spent a week in bed. His illness was apparently due to aviolent cold, but he confessed, on medical cross-examination, that thereal and underlying cause was the steady reading of Mr. Chesterton'sbooks for several days on end. No one will accuse Mr. Chesterton of being an unhealthy writer. On thecontrary, he is among the most wholesome writers now alive. He isirresistibly exhilarating, and he inspires his readers with a constantinclination to rise up and shout. Perhaps his danger lies in that veryfact, and in the exhaustion of the nerves which such sustainedexhilaration is apt to produce. But besides this, he, like so many ofour contemporaries, has written such a bewildering quantity ofliterature on such an amazing variety of subjects, that it is no wonderif sometimes the reader follows panting, through the giddy mazes of thedance. He is the sworn enemy of specialisation, as he explains in hisremarkable essay on "The Twelve Men. " The subject of the essay is theBritish jury, and its thesis is that when our civilisation "wants alibrary to be catalogued, or a solar system discovered, or any trifle ofthat kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything donewhich is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standinground. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder ofChristianity. " For the judging of a criminal or the propagation of thegospel, it is necessary to procure inexpert people--people who come totheir task with a virgin eye, and see not what the expert (who has losthis freshness) sees, but the human facts of the case. So Mr. Chestertoninsists upon not being a specialist, takes the world for his parish, andwanders over it at will. This being so, it is obvious that he cannot possibly remember all thathe has said, and must necessarily abound in inconsistencies and evencontradictions. Yet that is by no means always unconscious, but is duein many instances to the very complex quality and subtle habit of hismind. Were he by any chance to read this statement he would deny itfiercely, but we would repeat it with perfect calmness, knowing that hewould probably have denied any other statement we might have made uponthe subject. His subtlety is partly due to the extraordinary rapiditywith which his mind leaps from one subject to another, partly to thefact that he is so full of ideas that many of his essays (like Mr. Bernard Shaw's plays) find it next to impossible to get themselvesbegun. He is so full of matter that he never seems to be able to saywhat he wants to say, until he has said a dozen other things first. The present lecture is mainly concerned with his central position, asthat is expounded in _Heretics_ and _Orthodoxy_. Our task is not tocriticise, nor even to any considerable extent to characterise hisviews, but to state them as accurately as we can. It is a remarkablephenomenon of our time that all our literary men are bent on giving ussuch elaborate and solemnising confessions of their faith. It is an agenotorious for its aversion to dogma, and yet here we have Mr. Huxley, Mr. Le Gallienne, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Wells (to mention only a few of many), who in this creedless age proclaim in the market-place, each his ownprivate and brand-new creed. Yet Mr. Chesterton has perhaps a special right to such a proclamation. He believes in creeds vehemently. And, besides, the spiritual biographyof a man whose mental development has been so independent and sointeresting as his, must be well worth knowing. Amid the many weirdtheologies of our time we have met with nothing so startling, soarresting, and so suggestive since Mr. Mallock published his _NewRepublic_ and his _Contemporary Superstitions_. There is somethingcommon to the two points of view. To some, they come as emancipating andmost welcome reinforcements, relieving the beleaguered citadel of faith. But others, who differ widely from them both, may yet find in them somuch to stimulate thought and to rehabilitate strongholds heldprecariously, as to awaken both appreciation and gratitude. Mr. Chesterton's political opinions do not concern us here. It is acurious fact, of which innumerable illustrations may be found in pastand present writers, that political radicalism so often goes along withconservative theology, and _vice versa_. Mr. Chesterton is no exceptionto the rule. His orthodoxy in matters of faith we shall find to bealtogether above suspicion. His radicalism in politics is never longsilent. He openly proclaims himself at war with Carlyle's favouritedogma, "The tools to him who can use them. " "The worst form of slavery, "he tells us, "is that which is called Cæsarism, or the choice of somebold or brilliant man as despot because he is suitable. For that meansthat men choose a representative, not because he represents them butbecause he does not. " And if it be answered that the worst form ofcruelty to a nation or to an individual is that abuse of the principleof equality which is for ever putting incompetent people into falsepositions, he has his reply ready: "The one specially and peculiarlyun-Christian idea is the idea of Carlyle--the idea that the man shouldrule who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is Christian, this isheathen. " But this, and much else of its kind, although he works it into hisgeneral scheme of thinking, is not in any sense an essential part ofthat scheme. Our subject is his place in the conflict between thepaganism and the idealism of the times, and it is a sufficiently largeone. But before we come to that, we must consider another matter, whichwe shall find to be intimately connected with it. That other matter is his habit of paradox, which is familiar to all hisreaders. It is a habit of style, but before it became that it wasnecessarily first a habit of mind, deeply ingrained. He disclaims it sooften that we cannot but feel that he protesteth too much. Heacknowledges it, and explains that "paradox simply means a certaindefiant joy which belongs to belief. " Whether the explanation is or isnot perfectly intelligible, it must occur to every one that a writer whofinds it necessary to give so remarkable an explanation can hardly bejustified in his astonishment when people of merely average intelligenceconfess themselves puzzled. His aversion to Walter Pater--almost theonly writer whom he appears consistently to treat with disrespect--islargely due to Pater's laborious simplicity of style. But it was agreater than either Walter Pater or Mr. Chesterton who first pointed outthat the language which appealed to the understanding of the common manwas also that which expressed the highest culture. Mr. Chesterton'shabit of paradox will always obscure his meanings for the common man. Hehas a vast amount to tell him, but much of it he will never understand. Paradox, when it has become a habit, is always dangerous. Introduced onrare and fitting occasions, it may be powerful and even convincing, butwhen it is repeated constantly and upon all sorts of subjects, we cannotbut dispute its right and question its validity. Its effect is notconviction but vertigo. It is like trying to live in a house constructedso as to be continually turning upside down. After a certain time, during which terror and dizziness alternate, the most indulgent readeris apt to turn round upon the builder of such a house with someasperity. And, after all, the general judgment may be right and Mr. Chesterton wrong. Upon analysis, his paradox reveals as its chief and most essentialelement a certain habit of mind which always tends to see and appreciatethe reverse of accepted opinions. So much is this the case that it ispossible in many instances to anticipate what he will say upon asubject. It is on record that one reader, coming to his chapter on OmarKhayyám, said to himself, "Now he will be saying that Omar is not drunkenough"; and he went on to read, "It is not poetical drinking, which isjoyous and instinctive; it is rational drinking, which is as prosaic asan investment, as unsavoury as a dose of camomile. " Similarly we aretold that Browning is only felt to be obscure because he is toopellucid. Such apparent contradictoriness is everywhere in his work, butalong with it goes a curious ingenuity and nimbleness of mind. He cannotthink about anything without remembering something else, apparently outof all possible connection with it, and instantly discovering someclever idea, the introduction of which will bring the two together. Christianity "is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather likea shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right angles, and is in thepattern of the cross. " In all this there are certain familiar mechanisms which constitutealmost a routine of manipulation for the manufacture of paradoxes. Onesuch mechanical process is the play with the derivatives of words. Thushe reminds us that the journalist is, in the literal and derivativesense, a _journalist_, while the missionary is an eternalist. Similarly"lunatic, " "evolution, " "progress, " "reform, " are etymologicallytortured into the utterance of the most forcible and surprising truths. This curious word-play was a favourite method with Ruskin; and it hasthe disadvantage in Mr. Chesterton which it had in the earlier critic. It appears too clever to be really sound, although it must be confessedthat it frequently has the power of startling us into thoughts that arevaluable and suggestive. Another equally simple process is that of simply reversing sentences andideas. "A good bush needs no wine. " "Shakespeare (in a weak moment, Ithink) said that all the world is a stage. But Shakespeare acted on themuch finer principle that a stage is all the world. " Perhaps the mostbrilliant example that could be quoted is the plea for the combinationof gentleness and ferocity in Christian character. When the lion liesdown with the lamb, it is constantly assumed that the lion becomeslamblike. "But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part ofthe lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion, instead of thelion eating the lamb. " By this process it is possible to attain results which areextraordinarily brilliant in themselves and fruitful in suggestion. Itis a process not difficult to learn, but the trouble is that you have tolive up to it afterwards, and defend many curious propositions which mayhave been arrived at by its so simple means. Take, for instance, thesentence about the stage being all the world. That is undeniably clever, and it contains an idea. But it is a haphazard idea, arrived at by ashort-cut, and not by the high road of reasonable thinking. Sometimes atruth may be reached by such a short-cut, but such paradoxes areoccasionally no better than chartered errors. Yet even when they are that, it may be said in their favour that theystartle us into thought. And truly Mr. Chesterton is invaluable as aquickener and stimulator of the minds of his readers. Moreover, byadopting the method of paradox, he has undoubtedly done one remarkablething. He has proved what an astonishing number of paradoxical surprisesthere actually are, lying hidden beneath the apparent commonplace of theworld. Every really clever paradox astonishes us not merely with thesense of the cleverness of him who utters it, but with the sense of howmany strange coincidences exist around us, and how many sentences, whenturned outside in, will yield new and startling truths. However much wemay suspect that the performance we are watching is too clever to betrustworthy, yet after all the world does appear to lend itself to suchtreatment. There is, for example, the paradox of the love of the world--"Somehowone must love the world without being worldly. " Again, "Courage isalmost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live takingthe form of a readiness to die. " The martyr differs from the suicide inthat he cherishes a disdain of death, while the motive of the suicide isa disdain of life. Charity, too, is a paradox, for it means "one of twothings--pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving unlovable people. "Similarly Christian humility has a background of unheard-of arrogance, and Christian liberty is possible only to the most abject bondsmen inthe world. This long consideration of Mr. Chesterton's use of paradox is morerelevant to our present subject than it may seem. For, curiously enough, the habit of paradox has been his way of entrance into faith. At the ageof sixteen he was a complete agnostic, and it was the reading of Huxleyand Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh which brought him back to orthodoxtheology. For, as he read, he found that Christianity was attacked onall sides, and for all manner of contradictory reasons; and thisdiscovery led him to the conviction that Christianity must be a veryextraordinary thing, abounding in paradox. But he had already discoveredthe abundant element of paradox in life; and when he analysed the twosets of paradoxes he found them to be precisely the same. So he became aChristian. It may seem a curious way to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who areaccustomed to regard the strait gate as of Gothic architecture may beshocked to find a man professing to have entered through thisAlhambra-like portal. But it is a lesson we all have to learn sooner orlater, that there are at least eleven gates besides our own, and thatevery man has to enter by that which he finds available. Paradox is theonly gate by which Mr. Chesterton could get into any place, and theKingdom of Heaven is no exception to the rule. His account of this entrance is characteristic. It is given in the firstchapter of his _Orthodoxy_. There was an English yachtsman who set outupon a voyage, miscalculated his course, and discovered what he thoughtto be a new island in the South Seas. It transpired afterwards that hehad run up his flag on the pavilion of Brighton, and that he haddiscovered England. That yachtsman is Mr. Chesterton himself. Sailingthe great sea of moral and spiritual speculation, he discovered a landof facts and convictions to which his own experience had guided him. Onthat strange land he ran up his flag, only to make the further and moreastonishing discovery that it was the Christian faith at which he hadarrived. Nietzsche had preached to him, as to Mr. Bernard Shaw, hisgreat precept, "Follow your own will. " But when Mr. Chesterton obeyed hearrived, not at Superman, but at the ordinary old-fashioned morality. That, he found, is what we like best in our deepest hearts, and desiremost. So he too "discovered England. " He begins, like Margaret Fuller, with the fundamental principle ofaccepting the universe. The thing we know best and most directly ishuman nature in all its breadth. It is indeed the one thing immediatelyknown and knowable. Like R. L. Stevenson, he perceives how tragically andcomically astonishing a phenomenon is man. "What a monstrous spectre isthis man, " says Stevenson, "the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hairlike grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a thingto set children screaming;--and yet looked at nearlier, known as hisfellows know him, how surprising are his attributes!" In like manner Mr. Chesterton discovers man--that appalling mass of paradox andcontradiction--and it is the supreme discovery in any spiritual search. Having discovered the fundamental fact of human nature, he at once givesin his allegiance to it. "Our attitude towards life can be betterexpressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms ofcriticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The worldis not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it ismiserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on theturret, and the more miserable it is, the less we should leave it. " There is a splendid courage and heartiness in his complete acceptance oflife and the universe. In a time when clever people are so busycriticising life that they are in danger of forgetting that they have tolive it, so busy selecting such parts of it as suit their taste thatthey ignore the fact that the other parts are there, he ignores nothingand wisely accepts instead of criticising. Mr. Bernard Shaw, as we haveseen, will consent to tolerate the universe _minus_ the three loyaltiesto the family, the nation, and God. Mr. Chesterton has no respectwhatever for any such mutilated scheme of human life. His view of theinstitution of the family is full of wholesome common sense. Heperceives the immense difficulties that beset all family life, and heaccepts them with immediate and unflinching loyalty, as essential partsof our human task. His views on patriotism belong to the region ofpolitics and do not concern us here. In regard to religion, he finds themodern school amalgamating everything in characterless masses ofgeneralities. They deny the reality of sin, and in matters of faithgenerally they have put every question out of focus until the wholepicture is blurred and vague. He attacks this way of dealing withreligion in one of his most amusing essays, "The Orthodox Barber. " Thebarber has been sarcastic about the new shaving--presumably in referenceto M. Gillett's excellent invention. "'It seems you can shave yourselfwith anything--with a stick or a stone or a pole or a poker' (here Ibegan for the first time to detect a sarcastic intonation) 'or a shovelor a----' Here he hesitated for a word, and I, although I knew nothingabout the matter, helped him out with suggestions in the same rhetoricalvein. 'Or a button-hook, ' I said, 'or a blunderbuss or a battering-ramor a piston-rod----' He resumed, refreshed with this assistance, 'Or acurtain-rod or a candlestick or a----' 'Cow-catcher, ' I suggestedeagerly, and we continued in this ecstatic duet for some time. Then Iasked him what it was all about, and he told me. He explained the thingeloquently and at length. 'The funny part of it is, ' he said, 'that thething isn't new at all. It's been talked about ever since I was a boy, and long before. '" Mr. Chesterton rejoins in a long and eloquent andmost amusing sermon, the following extracts from which are not withoutfar-reaching significance. "'What you say reminds me in some dark and dreamy fashion of somethingelse. I recall it especially when you tell me, with such evidentexperience and sincerity, that the new shaving is not really new. Myfriend, the human race is always trying this dodge of making everythingentirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing itshifts on to another. .. . It would be nice if we could be shaved withouttroubling anybody. It would be nicer still if we could go unshavedwithout annoying anybody-- "'But, O wise friend, chief Barber of the Strand, Brother, nor you nor I have made the world. Whoever made it, who is wiser, and we hope better than we, made it understrange limitations, and with painful conditions of pleasure. .. . Butevery now and then men jump up with the new something or other and saythat everything can be had without sacrifice, that bad is good if youare only enlightened, and that there is no real difference between beingshaved and not being shaved. The difference, they say, is only adifference of degree; everything is evolutionary and relative. Shavedness is immanent in man. .. . I have been profoundly interested inwhat you have told me about the New Shaving. Have you ever heard of athing called the New Theology?' He smiled and said that he had not. " In contrast with all this, it is Mr. Chesterton's conviction that thefacts must be unflinchingly and in their entirety accepted. Withcharacteristic courage he goes straight to the root of the matter andbegins with the fact of sin. "If it be true (as it certainly is) that aman can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religiousphilosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny theexistence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present unionbetween God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem tothink it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat. " It is as ifhe said, Here you have direct and unmistakable experience. A man knowshis sin as he knows himself. He may explain it in either one way oranother way. He may interpret the universe accordingly in terms eitherof heaven or of hell. But the one unreasonable and impossible thing todo is to deny the experience itself. It is thus that he treats the question of faith all along the line. Ifyou are going to be a Christian, or even fairly to judge Christianity, you must accept the whole of Christ's teaching, with all itscontradictions, paradoxes, and the rest. Some men select his charity, others his social teaching, others his moral relentlessness, and so on, and reject all else. Each one of these aspects of the Christian faith isdoubtless very interesting, but none of them by itself is an adequaterepresentation of Christ. "They have torn the soul of Christ into sillystrips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled byHis insane magnificence and His insane meekness. They have parted Hisgarments among them, and for His vesture they have cast lots; though thecoat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. " The characteristic word for Mr. Chesterton and his attitude to life is_vitality_. He has been seeking for human nature, and he has found it atlast in Christian idealism. But having found it, he will allow nocompromise in its acceptance. It is life he wants, in such wholeness asto embrace every element of human nature. And he finds that Christianityhas quickened and intensified life all along the line. It is the greatsource of vitality, come that men might have life and that they mighthave it more abundantly. He finds an essential joy and riot in creation, a "tense and secret festivity. " And Christianity corresponds to thatriot. "The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that whileit had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was togive room for good things to run wild. " It has let loose the wandering, masterless, dangerous virtues, and has insisted that not one or anotherof them shall run wild, but all of them together. The ideal of wholenesswhich Matthew Arnold so eloquently advocated, is not a dead mass oftheories, but a world of living things. Christ will put a check on noneof the really genuine elements in human nature. In Him there is nocompromise. His love and His wrath are both burning. All the separateelements of human nature are in full flame, and it is the only ultimateway of peace and safety. The various colours of life must not be mixedbut kept distinct. The red and white of passion and purity must not beblended into the insipid pink of a compromising and consistentrespectability. They must be kept strong and separate, as in the blazingCross of St. George on its shield of white. Chaucer's "Daisy" is one of the greatest conceptions in all poetry. Ithas stood for centuries as the emblem of pure and priceless womanhood, with its petals of snowy white and its heart of gold. Mr. Chestertononce made a discovery that sent him wild with joy-- "Then waxed I like the wind because of this, And ran like gospel and apocalypse From door to door, with wild, anarchic lips, Crying the very blasphemy of bliss. " The discovery was that "the Daisy has a ring of red. " Purity is not theenemy of passion; nor must passion and purity be so toned down and blentwith one another, as to give a neutral result. Both must remain, andboth in full brilliance, the virgin white and the passionate blood-redring. In the present age of reason, the cry is all for tolerance, and forredefinition which will remove sharp contrasts and prove that everythingmeans the same as everything else. In such an age a doctrine like thisseems to have a certain barbaric splendour about it, as of a crusaderrisen from the dead. But Mr. Chesterton is not afraid of theconsequences of his opinions. If rationalism opposes his presentation ofChristianity, he will ride full tilt against reason. In recent years, from the time of Newman until now, there has been a recurring habit ofdiscounting reason in favour of some other way of approach to truth andlife. Certainly Mr. Chesterton's attack on reason is as interesting asany that have gone before it, and it is even more direct. Even on such aquestion as the problem of poverty he frankly prefers imagination tostudy. In art he demands instinctiveness, and has a profound suspicionof anybody who is conscious of possessing the artistic temperament. As aguide to truth he always would follow poetry in preference to logic. Heis never tired of attacking rationality, and for him anything which isrationalised is destroyed in the process. In one of his most provokingly unanswerable sallies, he insists that thetrue home of reason is the madhouse. "The madman is not the man who haslost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything excepthis reason. " When we say that a man is mad, we do not mean that he isunable to conduct a logical argument. On the contrary, any one who knowsmadmen knows that they are usually most acute and ingeniously consistentin argument. They isolate some one fixed idea, and round that they buildup a world that is fiercely and tremendously complete. Every detail fitsin, and the world in which they live is not, as is commonly supposed, aworld of disconnected and fantastic imaginations, but one of iron-boundand remorseless logic. No task is more humiliating, nor more likely toshake one's sense of security in fundamental convictions, than that ofarguing out a thesis with a lunatic. Further, beneath this rationality there is in the madman a profoundbelief in himself. Most of us regard with respect those who trust theirown judgment more than we find ourselves able to trust ours. But not themost confident of them all can equal the unswerving confidence of amadman. Sane people never wholly believe in themselves. They are liableto be influenced by the opinion of others, and are willing to yield tothe consensus of opinion of past or present thinkers. The lunatic caresnothing for the views of others. He believes in himself against theworld, with a terrific grip of conviction and a faith that nothing canshake. Mr. Chesterton applies his attack upon rationality to many subjects, with singular ingenuity. In the question of marriage and divorce, forinstance, the modern school which would break loose from the ancientbonds can present their case with an apparently unassailable show ofrationality. But his reply to them and to all other rationalists is thatlife is not rational and consistent but paradoxical and contradictory. To make life rational you have to leave out so many elements as to makeit shrink from a big world to a little one, which may be complete, butcan never be much of a world. Its conception of God may be a completeconception, but its God is not much of a God. But the world of humannature is a vast world, and the God of Christianity is an Infinite God. The huge mysteries of life and death, of love and sacrifice, of the wineof Cana and the Cross of Calvary--these outwit all logic and pass allunderstanding. So for sane men there comes in a higher authority. Youmay call it common sense, or mysticism, or faith, as you please. It isthe extra element by virtue of which all sane thinking and all religiouslife are rendered possible. It is the secret spring of vitality alike inhuman nature and in Christian faith. At this point it may be permissible to question Mr. Chesterton's use ofwords in one important point. He appears to fall into the old error ofconfounding reason with reasoning. Reason is one thing and argumentanother. It may be impossible to express either human nature orreligious faith in a series of syllogistic arguments, and yet both maybe reasonable in a higher sense. Reason includes those extra elements towhich Mr. Chesterton trusts. It is the synthesis of our whole powers offinding truth. Many things which cannot be proved by reasoning may yetbe given in reason--involved in any reasonable view of things as awhole. Thus faith includes reason--it _is_ reason on a larger scale--andit is the only reasonable course for a man to take in a world ofmysterious experience. If the matter were stated in that way, Mr. Chesterton would probably assent to it. Put crudely, the fashion ofpitting faith against reason and discarding reason in favour of faith, is simply sawing off the branch on which you are sitting. The result isthat you must fall to the ground at the feet of the sceptic, who asks, "How can you believe that which you have confessed there is no reason tobelieve?" We have abundant reason for our belief, and that reasonincludes those higher intuitions, that practical common sense, and thatview of things as a whole, which the argument of the mere logiciannecessarily ignores. With this reservation, [6] Mr. Chesterton's position in regard to faithis absolutely unassailable. He is the most vital of our modernidealists, and his peculiar way of thinking himself into his idealismhas given to the term a richer and more spacious meaning, which combinesexcellently the Greek and the Hebrew elements. His great ideal is thatof manhood. Be a man, he cries aloud, not an artist, not a reasoner, notany other kind or detail of humanity, but be a man. But then that means, Be a creature whose life swings far out beyond this world and itsaffairs--swings dangerously between heaven and hell. Eternity is in theheart of every man. The fashionable modern gospel of Pragmatism istelling us to-day that we should not vex ourselves about the ultimatetruth of theories, but inquire only as to their value for life here andnow, and the practical needs which they serve. But the most practical ofall man's needs is his need of some contact with a higher world thanthat of sense. "To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say thathe is a man. " In the scale of differences between important andunimportant earthly things, it is the spiritual and not the materialthat counts. "An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men ofscience; but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance ofthe other world, but from ignorance of this world. " "The moment anymatter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for everspoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurablymysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality. " Here we begin to see the immense value of paradox in the matter offaith. Mr. Chesterton is an optimist, not because he fits into thisworld, but because he does not fit into it. Pagan optimism is contentwith the world, and subsists entirely in virtue of its power to fit intoit and find it sufficient. This is that optimism of which Browningspeaks with scorn-- "Tame in earth's paddock as her prize, " and which he repudiates in the famous lines, "Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!" Mr. Chesterton insists that beyond the things which surround us here onthe earth there are other things which claim us from beyond. The higherinstincts which discover these are not tools to be used for making themost of earthly treasures, but sacred relics to be guarded. He is anidealist who has been out beyond the world. There he has found a wholeuniverse of mysterious but commanding facts, and has discovered thatthese and these alone can satisfy human nature. The question must, however, arise, as to the validity of those spiritualclaims. How can we be sure that the ideals which claim us from beyondare realities, and not mere dream shapes? There is no answer but this, that if we question the validity of our own convictions and the realityof our most pressing needs, we have simply committed spiritual suicide, and arrived prematurely at the end of all things. With the habit ofquestioning ultimate convictions Mr. Chesterton has little patience. Modesty, he tells us, has settled in the wrong place. We believe inourselves and we doubt the truth that is in us. But we ourselves, thecrude reality which we actually are, are altogether unreliable; whilethe vision is always trustworthy. We are for ever changing the vision tosuit the world as we find it, whereas we ought to be changing the worldto bring it into conformity with the unchanging vision. The very essenceof orthodoxy is a profound and reverent conviction of ideals that cannotbe changed--ideals which were the first, and shall be the last. If Mr. Chesterton often strains his readers' powers of attention byrapid and surprising movements among very difficult themes, he certainlyhas charming ways of relieving the strain. The favourite among all suchmethods is his reversion to the subject of fairy tales. In "The Dragon'sGrandmother" he introduces us to the arch-sceptic who did not believe inthem--that fresh-coloured and short-sighted young man who had a curiousgreen tie and a very long neck. It happened that this young man hadcalled on him just when he had flung aside in disgust a heap of theusual modern problem-novels, and fallen back with vehement contentmenton _Grimm's Fairy Tales_. "When he incidentally mentioned that he didnot believe in fairy tales, I broke out beyond control. 'Man, ' I said, 'who are you that you should not believe in fairy tales? It is mucheasier to believe in Blue Beard than to believe in you. A blue beard isa misfortune; but there are green ties which are sins. It is far easierto believe in a million fairy tales than to believe in one man who doesnot like fairy tales. I would rather kiss Grimm instead of a Bible andswear to all his stories as if they were thirty-nine articles than sayseriously and out of my heart that there can be such a man as you; thatyou are not some temptation of the devil or some delusion from thevoid. '" The reason for this unexpected outbreak is a very deep one. "Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wildand full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full ofroutine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of thefairy tale is--what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? Theproblem of the modern novel is--what will a madman do with a dull world?In the fairy tale the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. Inthe modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffersfrom the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos. " In other words, the ideals, the ultimate convictions, are thetrustworthy things; the actual experience of life is often matter notfor distrust only but for scorn and contempt. And this philosophy Mr. Chesterton learned in the nursery, from that "solemn and star-appointedpriestess, " his nurse. The fairy tale, and not the problem-novel, is thetrue presentment of human nature and of life. For, in the first place itpreserves in man the faculty most essential to human nature--the facultyof wonder, without which no man can live. To regain that faculty is tobe born again, out of a false world into a true. The constant repetitionof the laws of Nature blunts our spirits to the amazing character ofevery detail which she reproduces. To catch again the wonder of commonthings-- "the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower" --is to pass from darkness into light, from falsehood to truth. "All thetowering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimatelyupon one assumption: a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thinggoes on repeating itself it is probably dead: a piece of clockwork. " Butthat is mere blindness to the mystery and surprise of everything thatgoes to make up actual human experience. "The repetition in Natureseemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angryschoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemedsignalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemedbent on being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose athousand times. " That is one fact, which fairy tales emphasise--the constant demand forwonder in the world, and the appropriateness and rightness of thewondering attitude of mind, as man passes through his lifelong galleryof celestial visions. The second fact is that all such vision isconditional, and "hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal thingsconceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirlingthings that are let loose depend upon one thing which is forbidden. "This is the very note of fairyland. "You may live in a palace of goldand sapphire, _if_ you do not say the word 'cow'; or you may livehappily with the King's daughter, _if_ you do not show her an onion. "The conditions may seem arbitrary, but that is not the point. The pointis that there always _are_ conditions. The parallel with human life isobvious. Many people in the modern world are eagerly bent on having thereward without fulfilling the condition, but life is not made that way. The whole problem of marriage is a case in point. Its conditions arerigorous, and people on all sides are trying to relax them or to do awaywith them. Similarly, all along the line, modern society is seeking tolive in a freedom which is in the nature of things incompatible with theenjoyment or the prosperity of the human spirit. There is an _if_ ineverything. Life is like that, and we cannot alter it. Quarrel with theseemingly arbitrary or unreasonable condition, and the whole fairypalace vanishes. "Life itself is as bright as the diamond, but asbrittle as the window-pane. " From all this it is but a step to the consideration of dogma and theorthodox Christian creed. Mr. Chesterton is at war to the knife withvague modernism in all its forms. The eternal verities which producegreat convictions are incomparably the most important things for humannature. No "inner light" will serve man's turn, but some outer light, and that only and always. "Christianity came into the world, firstly inorder to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm adivine company and a divine captain. " This again is human nature. No mancan live his life out fully without being mastered by convictions thathe cannot challenge, and for whose origin he is not responsible. Themost essentially human thing is the sense that these, the supremeconditions of life, are not of man's own arranging, but have been andare imposed upon him. At almost every point this system may be disputed. Mr. Chesterton, whonever shrinks from pressing his theories to their utmost length, scoffsat the modern habit of "saying that such-and-such a creed can be held inone age, but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, wascredible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed onMondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of aview of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but notsuitable to half-past four. " That is precisely what many of us do say. Our powers of dogmatising vary to some extent with our moods, and to astill greater extent with the reception of new light. There are manydays on which the dogmas of early morning are impossible and even absurdwhen considered in the light of evening. But it is not our task to criticise Mr. Chesterton's faith nor his wayof dealing with it. Were we to do so, most of us would probably strike abalance. We would find many of his views and statements unconvincing;and yet we would acknowledge that they had the power of forcing the mindto see fresh truth upon which the will must act decisively. The mainpoint in his orthodoxy is unquestionably a most valuable contribution tothe general faith of his time and country. That point is the adventurewhich he narrates under the similitude of the voyage that ended in thediscovery of England. He set out to find the empirical truth of humannature and the meaning of human life, as these are to be explored inexperience. When he found them, it was infinitely surprising to him tobecome aware that the system in which his faith had come at last to restwas just Christianity--the only system which could offer any adequateand indeed exact account of human nature. The articles of its creed herecognised as the points of conviction which are absolutely necessary tothe understanding of human nature and to the living of human life. Thus it comes to pass that in the midst of a time resounding with paganvoices old and new, he stands for an unflinching idealism. It is themark of pagans that they are children of Nature, boasting that Nature istheir mother: they are solemnised by that still and unresponsivematernity, or driven into rebellion by discovering that the so-calledmother is but a harsh stepmother after all. Mr. Chesterton loves Nature, because Christianity has revealed to him that she is but his sister, child of the same Father. "We can be proud of her beauty, since we havethe same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. " It follows that two worlds are his, as is the case with all trueidealists. The modern reversion to paganism is founded on thefundamental error that Christianity is alien to Nature, setting upagainst her freedom the repellent ideal of asceticism, and frowning uponher beauty with the scowl of the harsh moralist. For Mr. Chesterton thebleakness is all on the side of the pagans, and the beauty with theidealists. They do not look askance at the green earth at all. They gazeupon it with steady eyes, until they are actually looking through it, and discovering the radiance of heaven there, and the sublime brightnessof the Eternal Life. The pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, are painfully reasonable and often sad. The Christian virtues are faith, hope, and charity--each more unreasonable than the last, from the pointof view of mere mundane common sense; but they are gay as childhood, andhold the secret of perennial youth and unfading beauty, in a world whichupon any other terms than these is hastening to decay. LECTURE X THE HOUND OF HEAVEN In bringing to a close these studies of the long battle between paganismand idealism, --between the life which is lived under the attraction ofthis world and which seeks its satisfaction there, and that wistful lifeof the spirit which has far thoughts and cannot settle down to the greenand homely earth, --it is natural that we should look for some literarywork which will describe the decisive issue of the whole conflict. Sucha work is Francis Thompson's _Hound of Heaven_, which is certainly oneof the most remarkable poems that have been published in England formany years. To estimate its full significance it is necessary in a few words torecapitulate the course of thought which has been followed in thepreceding chapters. We began with the ancient Greeks, and distinguishedthe high idealism of their religious conceptions from the paganism intowhich these declined. The sense of the sacredness of beauty, forced uponthe Greek spirit by the earth itself, was a high idealism, without whichno conception of life or of the universe can be anything but a maimedand incomplete expression of their meaning. Yet, for lack of somesufficiently powerful element of restraint and some sufficiently daringfaith in spiritual reality, Hellenism sank back upon the mere earth, andits dying fires lit up a world too sordid for their sacred flame. In_Marius the Epicurean_ the one thing lacking was supplied by the faithof early Christianity. The Greek idealism of beauty was not onlyconserved but enriched, and the human spirit was revived, by that heroicfaith which endured as seeing the invisible. The two _Fausts_ revealedthe struggle at later stages of the development of Christianity. Marlowe's showed it under the light of mediæval theology and Goethe'sunder that of modern humanism, with the curious result that in theformer tragedy the man is the pagan and the devil the idealist, while inthe latter this order is reversed. Omar Khayyám and Fiona Macleodintroduce the Oriental and the Celtic strains. In both there is the cryof the senses and the strong desire and allurement of the green earth;but in Fiona Macleod there is the dominant undertone of the eternal andthe spiritual, never silent and finally overwhelming. The next two lectures, in a cross-section of the seventeenth century, showed John Bunyan keenly alive to the literature and the life of theworld of Charles the Second's time, yet burning straight flame ofspiritual idealism with these for fuel. Over against him stood SamuelPepys, lusty and most amusing, declaring in every page of his _Diary_the lengths to which unblushing paganism can go. Representative of modern literature, Carlyle comes first with his_Sartor Resartus_. At the ominous and uncertain beginning of our modernthought he stood, blowing loud upon his iron trumpet a great blast ofharsh but grand idealism, before which the walls of the pagan Jerichofell down in many places. Yet such an inspiring challenge as his wasbound to produce _reactions_, and we have them in many forms. MatthewArnold presses upon his time, in clear and unimpassioned voice, theclaim of neglected Hellenism. Rossetti, with heavy, half-closed eyes, hardly distinguishes the body from the soul. Mr. Thomas Hardy, the Titanof the modern world, whose heart is sore with disillusion and thebitterness of the earth, and yet blind to the light of heaven that stillshines upon it, has lived into the generation which is reading Mr. Wellsand Mr. Shaw. These appear to be outside of all such distinctions aspagan and idealist; but their influence is strongly on the pagan side. Mr. Chesterton appears, with his quest of human nature, and he finds itnot on earth but in heaven. He is the David of Christian faith, come tofight against the heretic Goliaths of his day; and, so far as his styleand literary manner go, he continues the ancient rôle, smiting Goliathwith his own sword. Francis Thompson's _Hound of Heaven_ is for many reasons a fitting closeand climax to these studies. He is as much akin to Shelley and Swinburneas Mr. Chesterton is akin to Mr. Bernard Shaw. From them he has gatherednot a little of his style and diction. He is with them, too, in hispassionate love of beauty, without which no idealist can possibly be afair judge of paganism. "With many, " he tells us in that _Essay onShelley_ which Mr. Wyndham pronounces the most important contribution toEnglish letters during the last twenty years--"with many the religion ofbeauty must always be a passion and a power, and it is only evil whendivorced from the worship of the Primal Beauty. " In this confession weare brought back to the point where we began. The gods of Greece wereideals of earthly beauty, and by them, while their worship remainedspiritual, men were exalted far above paganism. And now, as we aredrawing to a close, it is fitting that we should again remind ourselvesthat religious idealism must recover "the Christ beautiful, " if it is toretain its hold upon humanity. In this respect, religion has greatly anddisastrously failed, and he who can redeem that failure for us willindeed be a benefactor to his race. Religion should lead us not merelyto inquire in God's holy place, but to behold the beauty of the Lord;and to behold it in all places of the earth until they become holyplaces for us. Christ, the Man of Sorrows, has taught the world thatwild joy of which Mr. Chesterton speaks such exciting things. It remainsfor Thompson to remind us that he whose visage was more marred than anyman yet holds that secret of surpassing beauty after which the poets'hearts are seeking so wistfully. Besides all this, we shall find here something which has not as yet beenhinted at in our long quest. The sound of the age-long battle dies away. Here is a man who does not fight for any flag, but simply tells us themysterious story of his own soul and ours. It is a quiet and a fittingclose for our long tale of excursions and alarums. But into the quietending there enters a very wonderful and exciting new element. We havebeen watching successive men following after the ideal, which, like somereceding star, travelled before its pilgrims through the night. Here theideal is no longer passive, a thing to be pursued. It halts for itspilgrims--"the star which chose to stoop and stay for us. " Nay, more, itturns upon them and pursues them. The ideal is alive and aware--a realand living force among the great forces of the universe. It is out aftermen, and in this great poem we are to watch it hunting a soul down. Thewhole process of idealism is now suddenly reversed, and the would-becaptors of celestial beauty are become its captives. As has been already stated, we must be in sympathetic understanding withthe pagan heart in order to be of any account as advocates of idealism. No reader of Thompson's poetry can doubt for a moment his fitness here. From the days of Pindar there has been a brilliant succession of singersand worshippers of the sun, culminating in the matchless song ofShelley. In Francis Thompson's poems of the sun, the succession is takenup again in a fashion which is not unworthy of the splendours ofpaganism at its very highest. "And the sun comes with power amid the clouds of heaven, Before his way Went forth the trumpet of the March Before his way, before his way, Dances the pennon of the May! O Earth, unchilded, widowed Earth, so long Lifting in patient pine and ivy-tree Mournful belief and steadfast prophecy, Behold how all things are made true! Behold your bridegroom cometh in to you Exceeding glad and strong!" The great song takes us back to the days of Mithra and the _solinvictus_ of Aurelian. That outburst of sunshine in the evening of theRoman Empire, rekindling the fires of Apollo's ancient altars for menwho loved the sunshine and felt the wonder of it, is repeated withalmost added glory in Thompson's marvellous poems. Yet for Francis Thompson all this glory of the sun is but a symbol. Theworld where his spirit dwells is beyond the sun, and in nature itdisplays itself to man but brokenly. In the bloody fires of sunset, inthe exquisite white artistry of the snow-flake, this supernaturalworld is but showing us a few of its miracles, by which the miracles ofChristian faith are daily and hourly matched for sheer wonder andbeauty. The idealist claims as his inheritance all those things in whichthe pagan finds his gods, and views them as the revelations of theMaster Spirit. It is difficult to write about Thompson's poetry without writing mainlyabout himself. In _The Hound of Heaven_, as in much else that he haswritten, there is abundance of his own experience, and indeed his poemsoften remind us of the sorrows of Teufelsdröckh. That, however, is notthe purpose of this lecture; and, beyond a few notes of a general kind, we shall leave him to reveal himself. Except for Mr. Meynell'silluminative and all too short introduction to his volume of _Thompson'sSelected Poems_, there are as yet only scattered articles in magazinesto tell his strange and most pathetic story. His writings are few, comprising three short books of poetry, his prose _Essay on Shelley_, and a _Life of St. Ignatius_, which is full of interest and almostoverloaded with information, but which may be discounted from the listof his permanent contributions to literature or to thought. Yet thatsmall output is enough to establish him among the supreme poets of ourland. Apart from its poetic power and spiritual vision, his was an acute andvivid mind. On things political and social he could express himself inlittle casual flashes whose shrewd and trenchant incisiveness challengecomparison with Mr. Chesterton's own asides. His acquaintance withscience seems to have been extensive, and at times he surprises us withallusions and metaphors of an unusually technical kind, which he somehowrenders intelligible even to the non-scientific reader. These are doublyilluminative, casting spiritual light on the material world, andstrengthening with material fact the tenuous thoughts of the spiritual. The words which he used of Shelley are, in this respect, applicable tohimself. "To Shelley's ethereal vision the most rarefied mental orspiritual music traced its beautiful corresponding forms on the sand ofoutward things. " His style and choice of words are an achievement in themselves, asdistinctive as those of Thomas Carlyle. They, and the attitude of mindwith which they are congruous, have already set a fashion in our poetry, and some of its results are excellent. In _Rose and Vine_, and in otherpoems of Mrs. Rachel Annand Taylor, we have the same blend of power andbeauty, the same wildness in the use of words, and the same languor andstrangeness as if we had entered some foreign and wonderfully colouredworld. In _Ignatius_ the style and diction are quite simple, ordinary, and straightforward, but that biography is decidedly the least effectiveof his works. It would seem that here as elsewhere among really greatwritings the style is the natural and necessary expression of theindividual mind and imagination. The _Life of Shelley_, which iscertainly one of the masterpieces of English prose, has found for itsexpression a style quite unique and distinctive, in which there areconstant reminders of other stylists, yet no imitation of any. Thepoetry is drugged, and as we read his poems through in the order oftheir publication, we feel the power of the poppy more and more. At lastthe hand seems to lose its power and the will its control, though inflashes of sheer flame the imagination shows wild and beautiful as ever. His gorgeousness is beyond that of the Orient. The eccentric andarresting words that constantly amaze the ear, bring with them a senseof things occult yet dazzling, as if we were assisting at some mysticrite, in a ritual which demanded language choice and strange. Something of this may be due to narcotics, and to the depressing tragedyof his life. More of it is due to Shelley, Keats, and Swinburne. Butthese do not explain the style, nor the thoughts which clothedthemselves in it. Both style and thoughts are native to the man. What heborrows he first makes his own, and thus establishes his right toborrow--a right very rarely to be conceded. Much that he has learnedfrom Shelley he passes on to his readers, but before they receive it, ithas become, not Shelley's, but Francis Thompson's. To stick alotos-flower in our buttonhole--harris-cloth or broadcloth, it does notmatter--is an impertinent folly that makes a guy of the wearer. But thisman's raiment is his own, not that of other men, and Shelley himselfwould willingly have put his own flowers there. Those who stumble at the prodigality and licence of his style, and theunchartered daring of his imagination, will find a most curious andbrilliant discussion of the whole subject in his _Essay on Shelley_, which may be summed up in the injunction that "in poetry, as in theKingdom of God, we should not take thought too greatly wherewith weshall be clothed, but seek first--seek _first_, not seek _only_--thespirit, and all these things will be added unto us. " He discusses hisown style with an unexpected frankness. His view of the use ofimagination is expressed in the suggestive and extraordinary words--"Tosport with the tangles of Neæra's hair may be trivial idleness orcaressing tenderness, exactly as your relation to Neræa is that ofheartless gallantry or of love. So you may toy with imagery in mereintellectual ingenuity, and then you might as well go write acrostics;or you may toy with it in raptures, and then you may write a _SensitivePlant_. " If a man is passionate, and passion is choosing her ownlanguage in his work, he may be forgiven much. If he chooses strangewords deliberately and in cold blood, there is no reason why we shouldforgive him anything. So much has been necessary as an introduction, but our subject isneither the man Francis Thompson nor his poetry in general, but the onepoem which is at once the most characteristic expression of hispersonality and of his poetic genius. _The Hound of Heaven_ has for itsidea the chase of man by the celestial huntsman. God is out after thesoul, pursuing it up and down the universe. God, --but God incarnate inJesus Christ, whose love and death are here the embodiment andrevelation of the whole ideal world. The hunted one flees, as men soconstantly flee from the Highest, and seeks refuge in every possibleform of earthly experience--at least in every clean and noble form, forthere is nothing suggestive of low covert or the mire. It is simply thesecond-best as a refuge from the best that is depicted here--the earthat its pagan finest, in whose charm or homeliness the soul would fainhide itself from the spiritual pursuit. And the Great Huntsman isremorseless in his determination to win the soul for the very best ofall. The soul longs for beauty, for interest, for comfort; and in thebeautiful, various, comfortable life of the earth she finds them. Theinner voice still tells of a nobler heritage; but she understands andloves these earthly things, and would fain linger among them, shy of thefurther flight. The whole conception of the poem is the counterpart of Browning's_Easter Day_, where the soul chooses and is allowed to choose the sameregions of the lesser good and beauty for its home. In that poem thesoul is permitted to devote itself for ever to the finest things thatearth can give--life, literature, scientific knowledge, love. Thepermission sends it wild with joy, and having chosen, it settles downfor ever to the earth-bound life. But eternity is too long for the earthand all that is upon it. It wears time out, and all the desire of ourmortality ages and grows weary. The spirit, made for immortal thoughtsand loves and life, finds itself the ghastly prisoner of that which isinevitably decaying; but its immortality postpones the decent andappropriate end to an eternal mockery and doom. At last, in thetremendous close, it wakens to the unspeakable blessedness of _not_being satisfied with anything that earth can give, and so proves itselfadequate for its own inheritance of immortality. In Thompson's poem thesoul is never allowed, even in dream, to rest in lower things untilsatiety brings disillusion. The higher destiny is swift at her heels;and ever, just as she would nestle in some new covert, she is torn fromit by the imperious Best of All that claims her for its own. There is no obvious sequence of the phases of the poem, nor any logicalorder connecting them into a unity of experience. They may or may not bea rescript of Thompson's own inner life, but every detail might beplaced in another order without the slightest loss to the meaning or thetruth. The only guiding and unifying element is a purely artisticone--that of the Hound in full cry, and the unity of the poem is butthat of a day's hunting. One would like to know what remote origin it isto which we owe the figure. Thompson was a Greek scholar, and some suchlegend as that of Actæon may well have been in his mind. But the chaseof dogs was a common horror in the Middle Ages, and many of the mediævalfiends are dog-faced. In those days, when conscience had as yet receivednone of our modern soporifics, and men believed in hell, many a guiltysinner knew well the baying of the hell-hounds, masterless andbloody-fanged, that chased the souls of even good men up to the verygates of heaven. Conscience and remorse ran wild, and the Hound of Hellwas a characteristic part of the machinery that made the tragedy of lifeso terrific in those old days. But here, by a _tour de force_ in whichis summed up the entire transformation from ancient to modern thought, the hell-hounds are transformed into the Hound of Heaven. That somethingor some one is out after the souls of men, no man who has understood hisinner life can question for a moment. But here the great doctrine isproclaimed, that the Huntsman of the soul is Love and not Hate, eternalGood and not Evil. No matter what cries may freeze the soul with horrorin the night, what echoes of the deep-voiced dogs upon the trail ofmemory and of conscience, it is God and not the devil that is pursuing. The poem, by a strange device of rhythm, keeps up the chase in the mostvividly dramatic realism. The metre throughout is irregular, and theverses swing onward for the most part in long, sweeping lines. But fivetimes, at intervals in the poem, the sweep is interrupted by a stanza ofshorter lines, varied slightly but yet in essence the same-- "But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbèd pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat--and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet-- All things betray thee, who betrayest Me. " By this device of rhythm the footfall of the Hound is heard in all thepauses of the poem. In the short and staccato measures you hear thepatter of the little feet padding after the soul from the unseendistance behind. It is a daring use of the onomatopoeic device inpoetry, and it is effective to a wonder, binding the whole poem into theunity of a single chase. The first nine lines are the story of a soul subjective as yet andself-absorbed. The first covert in which it seeks to hide is its ownlife--the thoughts and tears and laughter, the hopes and fears of a man. This is in most men's lives the first attempt at escape. The verses heregive the inner landscape, the country of a soul's experience, withwonderful compression. Then comes the patter of the Hound's feet, andfor the rest we are no longer in the thicket of the inner life, but inthe open country of the outer world. This is but the constantly repeatedtransition which, as we have already seen, Browning illustrates in his_Sordello_, the turning-point between the early introspective and thelater dramatic periods. Having gained the open country of the outward and objective world, theinevitable first thought is of love as a refuge from spiritual pursuit. The story is shortly told in nine lines. The human and the divine loveare rivals here; pagan _versus_ ideal affection. The hunted heart is notallowed to find refuge or solace in human love. The man knows that it isLove that follows him: yet it is the warm, red, earthly passion that hecraves for, and the divine pursuer seems cold, exacting, and austere. Finding no refuge in human love from this "tremendous Lover, " he seeksit next in a kind of imaginative materialism, half-scientific, half-fantastic. He appeals at "the gold gateways of the stars" and at"the pale ports o' the moon" for shelter. He seeks to hide beneath thevague and blossom-woven veil of far sky-spaces, or, in lust of swiftmotion, "clings to the whistling mane of every wind!" Here is a choiceof paganism at its most modern and most impressive. The cosmicimagination, revelling in the limitless fields of time and space, willsurely be sufficient for a man's idealism, without any insistence uponfurther definition. Here are Carlyle's Eternities and Immensities--arethey not enough? The answer is that these are but the servants of Onemightier than they. Incorruptible and steadfast in their allegiance, they will neither offer pity nor will they allow peace to him who is notloyal to their Master. And the hunted soul is stung by a fever ofrestlessness that chases him back across "the long savannahs of theblue" to earth again, with the recurring patter of the little feetbehind him. Doubling upon the course, the quarry seeks the surest refuge to be foundon earth. Children are still here, and in their simplicity and innocencethere is surely a hiding-place that will suffice. Here is no danger ofearthly passion, no Titanic stride among the vast things of theuniverse. Are they not the true idealists, the children? Are they notthe authentic guardians of fairyland and of heaven? Francis Thompson isan authority here, and his love of children has expressed itself in muchexquisite prose and poetry. "Know you what it is to be a child? It is tobe something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have aspirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe inlove, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be solittle that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turnpumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, andnothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in itsown soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king ofinfinite space. " "To the last he [Shelley] was the enchanted child. .. . He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops towatch, and his playthings are those which the gods give their children. The universe is his box of toys. He dabbles his fingers in the day-fall. He is gold-dusty with tumbling amidst the stars. He makes brightmischief with the moon. The meteors nuzzle their noses in his hand. Heteases into growling the kennelled thunder, and laughs at the shaking ofits fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of heaven; its flooris littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over the fields ofether. He chases the rolling world. " He who could write thus, and whocould melt our hearts with _To Monica Thought Dying_ and its refrain, "A cup of chocolate, One farthing is the rate, You drink it through a straw, a straw, a straw" --surely he must have had some wonderful right of entrance into theinnocent fellowships of childhood. Still more intimate, daring in itsincredible humility and simpleness, is his _Ex Ore Infantium_:-- "Little Jesus, wast Thou shy Once, and just as small as I? And what did it feel like to be Out of Heaven, and just like me?. .. Hadst Thou ever any toys, Like us little girls and boys? And didst Thou play in Heaven with all The angels, that were not too tall?. .. So, a little Child, come down And hear a child's tongue like Thy own; Take me by the hand and walk, And listen to my baby-talk. " But not even this refuge is open to the rebel soul. "I turned me to them very wistfully; But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair With dawning answers there, Their angel plucked them from me by the hair. " Driven from the fairyland of childhood, he flees, as a last resort, toNature. This time it is not in science that he seeks her, but in pureabandonment of his spirit to her changing moods. He will be one withcloud and sky and sea, will be the brother of the dawn and eventide. "I was heavy with the even, When she lit her glimmering tapers Round the day's dead sanctities. I laughed in the morning's eyes, I triumphed and I saddened with all weather. " Here again Francis Thompson is on familiar ground. If, like Mr. Chesterton, he holds the key of fairyland, like him also he can retainthrough life his wonder at the grass. His nature-poetry is nearerShelley than anything that has been written since Shelley died. In it "The leaves dance, the leaves sing, The leaves dance in the breath of spring, " or-- "The great-vanned Angel March Hath trumpeted His clangorous 'Sleep no more' to all the dead-- Beat his strong vans o'er earth and air and sea And they have heard; Hark to the _Jubilate_ of the bird. " These, and such exquisite detailed imagery as that of the poem _To aSnowflake_--the delicate silver filigree of verse--rank him among themost privileged of the ministrants in Nature's temple, standing veryclose to the shrine. Yet here again there is repulse for the flyingsoul. This fellowship, like that of the children, is indeed fair andsheltering, but it is not for him. It is as when sunset changes theglory from the landscape into the cold and dead aspect of suddenlyfallen night. Nature, that seemed so alive and welcoming, is dead tohim. Her austerity and aloofness change her face; she is not friend butstranger. Her language is another tongue from his-- "In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek, " --and the padding of the feet is heard again. Thus has he compassed the length and breadth of the universe in the vainattempt to flee from God. Now at last he finds himself at bay. God hasbeen too much for him. Against his will, and wearied out with the vainendeavour to escape, he must face the pursuing Love at last. "Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke! My harness piece by piece thou hast hewn from me, And smitten me to my knee. I am defenceless utterly. " So, faced by ultimate destiny in the form of Divine Love at last, heremembers the omnipotence that once had seemed to dwell in him, when "In the rash lustihead of my young powers, I shook the pillaring hours And pulled my life upon me, " and, "The linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist. " All that is gone, and he is face to face with the grim demands of God. There follows a protest against those demands. To him it appears thatthey are the call for sheer sacrifice and death. He had soughtself-realisation in every lovely field that lay open to the earth. Butnow the trumpeter is sounding, "from the hid battlements of Eternity, "the last word and final meaning of human life. His is a dread figure, "enwound with glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned. " His demand isfor death and sacrifice, calling the reluctant children of the greenearth out from this pleasance to face the awful will of God. It is the Cross that he has seen in nature and beyond it. Long ago itwas set up in England, that same Cross, when Cynewulf sang his _Christ_. On Judgment Day he saw it set on high, streaming with blood and flametogether, amber and crimson, illuminating the Day of Doom. Thompson hasfound it, not on Calvary only, but everywhere in nature, and by _tour deforce_ he blends the sunset with Golgotha and finds that the lips ofNature proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the garden of themonastery there stands a cross, and the sun is setting over it. "Thy straight Long beam lies steady on the Cross. Ah me! What secret would thy radiant finger show? Of thy bright mastership is this the key? Is _this_ thy secret then, and is it woe? Thou dost image, thou dost follow That king-maker of Creation Who ere Hellas hailed Apollo Gave thee, angel-god, thy station; Thou art of Him a type memorial. Like Him thou hangst in dreadful pomp of blood Upon thy Western rood; And His stained brow did veil like thine to night. Now, with wan ray that other sun of Song Sets in the bleakening waters of my soul. One step, and lo! the Cross stands gaunt and long 'Twixt me and yet bright skies, a presaged dole. Even so, O Cross! thine is the victory, Thy roots are fast within our fairest fields; Brightness may emanate in Heaven from Thee: Here Thy dread symbol only shadow yields. " This is ever the first appearance of the Highest when men see it. And, to the far-seeing eyes of the poet, nature must also wear the sameaspect. Apollo, when his last word is said, must speak the same languageas Christ. Paganism is an elaborate device to do without the Cross. Yetit is ever a futile device, for the Cross is in the very grain andessence of all life; it is absolutely necessary to all permanent andsatisfying gladness. Francis Thompson is not the first who has shrunkback from the bitter truth. Many others have found the bitterness of theCross a lesson too dreadful for their joyous or broken hearts to learn. Who are we that we should judge them? Have we not all rebelled at thisbitter aspect of the Highest, and said, in our own language-- "Ah! is Thy love indeed A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?" Finally we have the answer of Christ to the soul He has chased downafter so long a following-- "Strange, piteous, futile thing! Wherefore should any set thee love apart? Seeing none but I makes much of nought (He said), And human love needs human meriting: How hast thou merited-- Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot? Alack, thou knowest not How little worthy of any love thou art! Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, Save Me, save only Me? All which I took from thee I did but take, Not for thy harms, But just that thou mightst seek it in My arms. All which thy child's mistake Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: Rise, clasp my hand, and come. " And the poem ends upon the patter of the little feet-- "Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest! Thou drovest love from thee, who drovest Me. " It is a perfect ending for this very wonderful song of life, and ittells the old and constantly repeated story of the victory of the Crossover the pagan gods. It is through pain and not through indulgence thatthe ideals gain for themselves eternal life. Until the soul has beentransformed and strengthened by pain, its attempt to fulfil itself andbe at peace in a pagan settlement on the green earth must ever be invain. And in our hearts we all know this quite well. We really desirethe Highest, and yet we flee in terror from it always, until the day ofthe wise surrender. This is perhaps the greatest of all our paradoxesand contradictions. As has been already pointed out, the new feature which is introduced tothe aspect of the age-long conflict by _The Hound of Heaven_ is that theparts are here reversed, and instead of the soul seeking the Highest, the Highest is out in full cry after the soul. In this the whole questcrosses over into the supernatural, and can no longer be regarded simplyas a study of human nature. Beyond the human region, out among thoseEternities and Immensities where Carlyle loved to roam, there is thatwhich loves and seeks. This is the very essence of Christian faith. TheGood Shepherd seeketh the lost sheep until He find it. He is found ofthose that sought Him not. Until the search is ended the silly sheep mayflee before His footsteps in terror, even in hatred, for the bewilderedhour. Yet it is He who gives all reality and beauty even to those thingswhich we would fain choose instead of Him--He alone. The deep wisdom ofthe Cross knows that it is pain which gives its grand reality to love, so making it fit for Eternity, and that sacrifice is the ultimate secretof fulfilment. Truly those who lose their life for His sake shall findit. Not to have Him is to renounce the possibility of having anything:to have Him is to have all things added unto us. So far we have considered this poem as a record of personal experience, but it may be taken also as a message for the age in which we live. Regarded so, it is an appeal to pagan England to come back from all itsidols, from its attempt to force upon the earth a worship which sherepudiates: "Worship not me but God, the angels urge. " The angels of earth say that, as well as those of heaven--the angels ofnature and the open field, of homes and the love of women and of men, oflittle children and of grave science and all learning. The desire of thesoul is very near it, nay, is pursuing it with patient and remorselessfootsteps down every quiet and familiar street. The land of heart'sdesire is no strange land, nor has heaven been lifted from about ourheads. "Not where the whirling systems darken, And our benumbed conceiving soars!-- The drift of pinions, would we hearken, Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors. The angels keep their ancient places;-- Turn but a stone, and start a wing! 'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces, That miss the many-splendoured thing. But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry;--and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross. Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry;--clinging Heaven by the hems; And lo, Christ walking on the water, Not of Genesareth, but Thames. "[7] _Printed by_ MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, _Edinburgh_ FOOTNOTES: [1] _King Lear_, Act III. Scene vi. [2] Compare the song of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth beginning, "Who would true valour see" with Shakespeare's "Who doth ambition shun. " _As You Like It_, II. V. [3] For these and other points of resemblance, cf. Professor Firth'sLeaflet on Bunyan (_English Association Papers_, No. 19). [4] _On Compromise_, published 1874. [5] In his latest volume (_Marriage_), Mr. Wells has spoken in adifferent tone from that of his other recent works. It is a welcomechange, and it may be the herald of something more positive still, andof a wholesome and inspiring treatment of the human problems. But behindit lie _First and Last Things_, _Tono Bungay_, _Ann Veronica_, and _TheNew Macchiavelli_. [6] Mr. Chesterton perceives this, though he does not always express itunmistakably. He tells us that he does not mean to attack the authorityof reason, but that his ultimate purpose is rather to defend it. [7] These verses, probably unfinished and certainly left rough forfuture perfecting, were found among Francis Thompson's papers when hedied.