The Humour of Homer and Other Essays

IntroductionBy R. A. Streatfeild

The nucleus of this book is the collection of essays by SamuelButler, which was originally published by Mr. Grant Richards in 1904under the title Essays on Life, Art and Science, and reissued by Mr. Fifield in 1908. To these are now added another essay, entitled"The Humour of Homer, " a biographical sketch of the author kindlycontributed by Mr. Henry Festing Jones, which will add materially tothe value of the edition, and a portrait in photogravure from aphotograph taken in 1889--the period of the essays. 

[Photograph of Samuel Butler. Caption reads: From a photographmade by Pizzetta in Varallo in 1889. Emery Walker Ltd. , ph. Sc. Butler. Jpg]

"The Humour of Homer" was originally delivered as a lecture at theWorking Men's College in Great Ormond Street on the 30th January, 1892, the day on which Butler first promulgated his theory of theTrapanese origin of the Odyssey in a letter to the Athenaeum. Laterin the same year it was published with some additional matter byMessrs. Metcalfe and Co. Of Cambridge. For the next five yearsButler was engaged upon researches into the origin and authorship ofthe Odyssey, the results of which are embodied in his book TheAuthoress of the "Odyssey, " originally published by Messrs. Longmanin 1897. Butler incorporated a good deal of "The Humour of Homer"into The Authoress of the "Odyssey, " but the section relating to theIliad naturally found no place in the later work. For the sake ofthis alone "The Humour of Homer" deserves to be better known. Written as it was for an artisan audience and professing to dealonly with one side of Homer's genius, "The Humour of Homer" mustnot, of course, be taken as an exhaustive statement of Butler'sviews upon Homeric questions. It touches but lightly on importantpoints, particularly regarding the origin and authorship of theOdyssey, which are treated at much greater length in The Authoressof the "Odyssey. "

Nevertheless, "The Humour of Homer" appears to me to have a specialvalue as a kind of general introduction to Butler's more detailedstudy of the Odyssey. His attitude towards the Homeric poems ishere expressed with extraordinary freshness and force. What thatattitude was is best explained by his own words: "If a person wouldunderstand either the Odyssey or any other ancient work, he mustnever look at the dead without seeing the living in them, nor at theliving without thinking of the dead. We are too fond of seeing theancients as one thing and the moderns as another. " Butler did notundervalue the philological and archaeological importance of theIliad and the Odyssey, but it was mainly as human documents thatthey appealed to him. This, I am inclined to suspect, was the rootof the objection of academic critics to him and his theories. Theydid not so much resent the suggestion that the author of the Odysseywas a woman; they could not endure that he should be treated as ahuman being. 

Of the remaining essays two were originally delivered as lectures;the others appeared first in The Universal Review in 1888, 1889 and1890. I should perhaps explain why two other essays which alsoappeared in The Universal Review are not included in thiscollection. The first of these, entitled "L'Affaire Holbein-Rippel, " relates to a drawing of Holbein's "Danse des Paysans" inthe Basle Museum, which is usually described as a copy, but whichButler believed to be the work of Holbein himself. This essayrequires to be illustrated in so elaborate a manner that it wasimpossible to include it in a book of this size. The second essay, which is a sketch of the career of the sculptor Tabachetti, waspublished as the first section of an article, entitled "A Sculptorand a Shrine, " of which the second part is here given under thetitle "The Sanctuary of Montrigone. " The section devoted to thesculptor contains all that Butler then knew about Tabachetti, butsince it was written various documents have come to light, principally through the investigations of Cavaliere Francesco Negri, of Casale Monferrato, which negative some of Butler's conclusions. Had Butler lived, I do not doubt that he would have revised hisessay in the light of Cavaliere Negri's discoveries, the value ofwhich he fully recognized. As it stands the essay requires so muchrevision that I have decided to omit it altogether and to postponegiving English readers a full account of Tabachetti's career until asecond edition of Butler's "Ex Voto, " in which Tabachetti's work isdiscussed in detail, is required. Meanwhile I have given a briefsummary of the main facts of Tabachetti's life in a note (p. 195) tothe essay on "Art in the Valley of Saas. " Anyone who desiresfurther details concerning the sculptor and his work will find themin Cavaliere Negri's pamphlet "Il Santuario di Crea" (Alessandria, 1902). 

The three essays grouped together under the title The Deadlock inDarwinism may be regarded as a postscript to Butler's four books onevolution, viz. Life and Habit, Evolution Old and New, UnconsciousMemory, and Luck or Cunning? When these essays were first publishedin book form in 1904, I ventured to give a brief summary of Butler'sposition with regard to the main problem of evolution. I need nowonly refer readers to Mr. Festing Jones's biographical sketch and, for fuller details, to the masterly introduction contributed byProfessor Marcus Hartog to the new edition of Unconscious Memory (A. C. Fifield, 1910), and recently reprinted in his Problems of Lifeand Reproduction (John Murray, 1913), in which Butler's work in thefield of biology and his share in the various controversiesconnected with the study of evolution are discussed with theauthority of a specialist. 

R. A. STREATFEILD. July, 1913. 

Sketch of the Life of Samuel ButlerAuthor of Erewhon(1835-1902)by Henry Festing Jones

Note

This sketch of Butler's life, together with the portrait which formsthe frontispiece to this volume, first appeared in December, 1902, in The Eagle, the magazine of St. John's College, Cambridge. Irevised the sketch and read it before the British HomoeopathicAssociation at 43 Russell Square, London, W. C. , on the 9th February, 1910; some of Butler's music was performed by Miss Grainger Kerr, Mr. R. A. Streatfeild, Mr. J. A. Fuller Maitland, and Mr. H. J. T. Wood, the secretary of the Association. I again revised it and readit before the Historical Society of St. John's College, Cambridge, in the combination room of the college on the 16th November, 1910;the Master (Mr. R. F. Scott), who was also Vice-Chancellor of theUniversity, was in the chair, and a vote of thanks was proposed byProfessor William Bateson, F. R. S. 

As the full Memoir of Butler on which I am engaged is not yet readyfor publication, I have again revised the sketch, and it is herepublished in response to many demands for some account of his life. 

H. F. J. August, 1913. 

Sketch of the Life of Samuel ButlerAuthor of Erewhon (1835-1902)

Samuel Butler was born on the 4th December, 1835, at the Rectory, Langar, near Bingham, in Nottinghamshire. His father was the Rev. Thomas Butler, then Rector of Langar, afterwards one of the canonsof Lincoln Cathedral, and his mother was Fanny Worsley, daughter ofJohn Philip Worsley of Arno's Vale, Bristol, sugar-refiner. Hisgrandfather was Dr. Samuel Butler, the famous headmaster ofShrewsbury School, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield. The Butlers arenot related either to the author of Hudibras, or to the author ofthe Analogy, or to the present Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. 

Butler's father, after being at school at Shrewsbury under Dr. Butler, went up to St. John's College, Cambridge; he took his degreein 1829, being seventh classic and twentieth senior optime; he wasordained and returned to Shrewsbury, where he was for some timeassistant master at the school under Dr. Butler. He married in 1832and left Shrewsbury for Langar. He was a learned botanist, and madea collection of dried plants which he gave to the Town Museum ofShrewsbury. 

Butler's childhood and early life were spent at Langar among thesurroundings of an English country rectory, and his education wasbegun by his father. In 1843, when he was only eight years old, thefirst great event in his life occurred; the family, consisting ofhis father and mother, his two sisters, his brother and himself, went to Italy. The South-Eastern Railway stopped at Ashford, whencethey travelled to Dover in their own carriage; the carriage was puton board the steamboat, they crossed the Channel, and proceeded toCologne, up the Rhine to Basle and on through Switzerland intoItaly, through Parma, where Napoleon's widow was still reigning, Modena, Bologna, Florence, and so to Rome. They had to drive wherethere was no railway, and there was then none in all Italy exceptbetween Naples and Castellamare. They seemed to pass a freshcustom-house every day, but, by tipping the searchers, generally gotthrough without inconvenience. The bread was sour and the Italianbutter rank and cheesy--often uneatable. Beggars ran after thecarriage all day long and when they got nothing jeered at thetravellers and called them heretics. They spent half the winter inRome, and the children were taken up to the top of St. Peter's as atreat to celebrate their father's birthday. In the Sistine Chapelthey saw the cardinals kiss the toe of Pope Gregory XVI, and in theCorso, in broad daylight, they saw a monk come rolling down astaircase like a sack of potatoes, bundled into the street by a manand his wife. The second half of the winter was spent in Naples. This early introduction to the land which he always thought of andoften referred to as his second country made an ineffaceableimpression upon him. 

In January, 1846, he went to school at Allesley, near Coventry, under the Rev. E. Gibson. He seldom referred to his life there, though sometimes he would say something that showed he had notforgotten all about it. For instance, in 1900 Mr. Sydney C. Cockerell, now the Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, showed him a medieval missal, laboriously illuminated. He foundthat it fatigued him to look at it, and said that such books oughtnever to be made. Cockerell replied that such books relieved thetedium of divine service, on which Butler made a note ending thus:

Give me rather a robin or a peripatetic cat like the one whoseloss the parishioners of St. Clement Danes are still deploring. When I was at school at Allesley the boy who knelt opposite me atmorning prayers, with his face not more than a yard away frommine, used to blow pretty little bubbles with his saliva which hewould send sailing off the tip of his tongue like miniature soapbubbles; they very soon broke, but they had a career of a foot ortwo. I never saw anyone else able to get saliva bubbles rightaway from him and, though I have endeavoured for some fifty yearsand more to acquire the art, I never yet could start the bubbleoff my tongue without its bursting. Now things like this reallydo relieve the tedium of church, but no missal that I have everseen will do anything except increase it. 

In 1848 he left Allesley and went to Shrewsbury under the Rev. B. H. Kennedy. Many of the recollections of his school life at Shrewsburyare reproduced for the school life of Ernest Pontifex atRoughborough in The Way of All Flesh, Dr. Skinner being Dr. Kennedy. 

During these years he first heard the music of Handel; it wentstraight to his heart and satisfied a longing which the music ofother composers had only awakened and intensified. He became as oneof the listening brethren who stood around "when Jubal struck thechorded shell" in the Song for Saint Cecilia's Day:

Less than a god, they thought, there could not dwellWithin the hollow of that shellThat spoke so sweetly and so well. 

This was the second great event in his life, and henceforward Italyand Handel were always present at the bottom of his mind as a kindof double pedal to every thought, word, and deed. Almost the lastthing he ever asked me to do for him, within a few days of hisdeath, was to bring Solomon that he might refresh his memory as tothe harmonies of "With thee th' unsheltered moor I'd trace. " Heoften tried to like the music of Bach and Beethoven, but foundhimself compelled to give them up--they bored him too much. Nor washe more successful with the other great composers; Haydn, forinstance, was a sort of Horace, an agreeable, facile man of theworld, while Mozart, who must have loved Handel, for he wroteadditional accompaniments to the Messiah, failed to move him. Itwas not that he disputed the greatness of these composers, but hewas out of sympathy with them, and never could forgive the last twofor having led music astray from the Handel tradition and paved theroad from Bach to Beethoven. Everything connected with Handelinterested him. He remembered old Mr. Brooke, Rector of Gamston, North Notts, who had been present at the Handel Commemoration in1784, and his great-aunt, Miss Susannah Apthorp, of Cambridge, hadknown a lady who had sat upon Handel's knee. He often regrettedthat these were his only links with "the greatest of all composers. "

Besides his love for Handel he had a strong liking for drawing, and, during the winter of 1853-4, his family again took him to Italy, where, being now eighteen, he looked on the works of the old masterswith intelligence. 

In October, 1854, he went into residence at St. John's College, Cambridge. He showed no aptitude for any particular branch ofacademic study, nevertheless he impressed his friends as beinglikely to make his mark. Just as he used reminiscences of his ownschooldays at Shrewsbury for Ernest's life at Roughborough, so heused reminiscences of his own Cambridge days for those of Ernest. When the Simeonites, in The Way of All Flesh, "distributed tracts, dropping them at night in good men's letter boxes while they slept, their tracts got burnt or met with even worse contumely. " ErnestPontifex went so far as to parody one of these tracts and to get acopy of the parody "dropped into each of the Simeonites' boxes. "Ernest did this in the novel because Butler had done it in reallife. Mr. A. T. Bartholomew, of the University Library, has found, among the Cambridge papers of the late J. Willis Clark's collection, three printed pieces belonging to the year 1855 bearing on thesubject. He speaks of them in an article headed "Samuel Butler andthe Simeonites, " and signed A. T. B. In the Cambridge Magazine, 1stMarch, 1913; the first is "a genuine Simeonite tract; the other twoare parodies. All three are anonymous. At the top of the secondparody is written 'By S. Butler, March 31. '" The article givesextracts from the genuine tract and the whole of Butler's parody. 

Besides parodying Simeonite tracts, Butler wrote various otherpapers during his undergraduate days, some of which, preserved byone of his contemporaries, who remained a lifelong friend, the Rev. Canon Joseph M'Cormick, now Rector of St. James's, Piccadilly, arereproduced in The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912). 

He also steered the Lady Margaret first boat, and Canon M'Cormicktold me of a mishap that occurred on the last night of the races in1857. Lady Margaret had been head of the river since 1854, CanonM'Cormick was rowing 5, Philip Pennant Pearson (afterwards P. Pennant) was 7, Canon Kynaston, of Durham (whose name formerly wasSnow), was stroke, and Butler was cox. When the cox let go of thebung at starting, the rope caught in his rudder lines, and LadyMargaret was nearly bumped by Second Trinity. They escaped, however, and their pursuers were so much exhausted by their effortsto catch them that they were themselves bumped by First Trinity atthe next corner. Butler wrote home about it:

11 March, 1857. Dear Mamma: My foreboding about steering was onthe last day nearly verified by an accident which was moredeplorable than culpable the effects of which would have beenruinous had not the presence of mind of No. 7 in the boat rescuedus from the very jaws of defeat. The scene is one which nevercan fade from my remembrance and will be connected always withthe gentlemanly conduct of the crew in neither using opprobriouslanguage nor gesture towards your unfortunate son but treatinghim with the most graceful forbearance; for in most cases when anaccident happens which in itself is but slight, but is visitedwith serious consequences, most people get carried away with theimpression created by the last so as to entirely forget theaccidental nature of the cause and if we had been quite bumped Ishould have been ruined, as it is I get praise for coolness andgood steering as much as and more than blame for my accident andthe crew are so delighted at having rowed a race such as neverwas seen before that they are satisfied completely. All thespectators saw the race and were delighted; another inch and Ishould never have held up my head again. One thing is safe, itwill never happen again. 

The Eagle, "a magazine supported by members of St. John's College, "issued its first number in the Lent term of 1858; it contains anarticle by Butler "On English Composition and Other Matters, " signed"Cellarius":

Most readers will have anticipated me in admitting that a manshould be clear of his meaning before he endeavours to give itany kind of utterance, and that, having made up his mind what tosay, the less thought he takes how to say it, more than briefly, pointedly and plainly, the better. 

From this it appears that, when only just over twenty-two, Butlerhad already discovered and adopted those principles of writing fromwhich he never departed. 

In the fifth number of the Eagle is an article, "Our Tour, " alsosigned "Cellarius"; it is an account of a tour made in June, 1857, with a friend whose name he Italianized into Giuseppe Verdi, throughFrance into North Italy, and was written, so he says, to show howthey got so much into three weeks and spent only 25 pounds; they didnot, however, spend quite so much, for the article goes on, afterbringing them back to England, "Next day came safely home to dearold St. John's, cash in hand 7d. " {19}

Butler worked hard with Shilleto, an old pupil of his grandfather, and was bracketed 12th in the Classical Tripos of 1858. CanonM'Cormick told me that he would no doubt have been higher but forthe fact that he at first intended to go out in mathematics; it wasonly during the last year of his time that he returned to theclassics, and his being so high as he was spoke well for theclassical education of Shrewsbury. 

It had always been an understood thing that he was to follow in thefootsteps of his father and grandfather and become a clergyman;accordingly, after taking his degree, he went to London and began toprepare for ordination, living and working among the poor as layassistant under the Rev. Philip Perring, Curate of St. James's, Piccadilly, an old pupil of Dr. Butler at Shrewsbury. {20} Placedamong such surroundings, he felt bound to think out for himself manytheological questions which at this time were first presented tohim, and, the conclusion being forced upon him that he could notbelieve in the efficacy of infant baptism, he declined to beordained. 

It was now his desire to become an artist; this, however, did notmeet with the approval of his family, and he returned to Cambridgeto try for pupils and, if possible, to get a fellowship. He likedbeing at Cambridge, but there were few pupils and, as there seemedto be little chance of a fellowship, his father wished him to comedown and adopt some profession. A long correspondence took place inthe course of which many alternatives were considered. There areletters about his becoming a farmer in England, a tutor, ahomoeopathic doctor, an artist, or a publisher, and thepossibilities of the army, the bar, and diplomacy. Finally it wasdecided that he should emigrate to New Zealand. His passage waspaid, and he was to sail in the Burmah, but a cousin of his receivedinformation about this vessel which caused him, much against hiswill, to get back his passage money and take a berth in the RomanEmperor, which sailed from Gravesend on one of the last days ofSeptember, 1859. On that night, for the first time in his life, hedid not say his prayers. "I suppose the sense of change was sogreat that it shook them quietly off. I was not then a sceptic; Ihad got as far as disbelief in infant baptism, but no further. Ifelt no compunction of conscience, however, about leaving off mymorning and evening prayers--simply I could no longer say them. "

The Roman Emperor, after a voyage every incident of which interestedhim deeply, arrived outside Port Lyttelton. The captain shouted tothe pilot who came to take them in:

"Has the Robert Small arrived?"

"No, " replied the pilot, "nor yet the Burmah. "

And Butler, writing home to his people, adds the comment: "You mayimagine what I felt. "

The Burmah was never heard of again. 

He spent some time looking round, considering what to do and how toemploy the money with which his father was ready to supply him, anddetermined upon sheep-farming. He made several excursions lookingfor country, and ultimately took up a run which is still calledMesopotamia, the name he gave it because it is situated among thehead-waters of the Rangitata. 

It was necessary to have a horse, and he bought one for 55 pounds, which was not considered dear. He wrote home that the horse's namewas "Doctor": "I hope he is a Homoeopathist. " From this, and fromthe fact that he had already contemplated becoming a homoeopathicdoctor himself, I conclude that he had made the acquaintance of Dr. Robert Ellis Dudgeon, the eminent homoeopathist, while he was doingparish work in London. After his return to England Dr. Dudgeon washis medical adviser, and remained one of his most intimate friendsuntil the end of his life. Doctor, the horse, is introduced intoErewhon Revisited; the shepherd in Chapter XXVI tells John Higgsthat Doctor "would pick fords better than that gentleman could, Iknow, and if the gentleman fell off him he would just stay stockstill. "

Butler carried on his run for about four and a half years, and theopen-air life agreed with him; he ascribed to this the good healthhe afterwards enjoyed. The following, taken from a notebook he keptin the colony and destroyed, gives a glimpse of one side of his lifethere; he preserved the note because it recalled New Zealand sovividly. 

April, 1861. It is Sunday. We rose later than usual. There arefive of us sleeping in the hut. I sleep in a bunk on one side ofthe fire; Mr. Haast, {22} a German who is making a geologicalsurvey of the province, sleeps upon the opposite one; my bullock-driver and hut-keeper have two bunks at the far end of the hut, along the wall, while my shepherd lies in the loft among the teaand sugar and flour. It was a fine morning, and we turned outabout seven o'clock. 

The usual mutton and bread for breakfast with a pudding made offlour and water baked in the camp oven after a joint of meat--Yorkshire pudding, but without eggs. While we were at breakfasta robin perched on the table and sat there a good while peckingat the sugar. We went on breakfasting with little heed to therobin, and the robin went on pecking with little heed to us. After breakfast Pey, my bullock-driver, went to fetch the horsesup from a spot about two miles down the river, where they oftenrun; we wanted to go pig-hunting. 

I go into the garden and gather a few peascods for seed till thehorses should come up. Then Cook, the shepherd, says that a firehas sprung up on the other side of the river. Who could have litit? Probably someone who had intended coming to my place on thepreceding evening and has missed his way, for there is no trackof any sort between here and Phillips's. In a quarter of an hourhe lit another fire lower down, and by that time, the horseshaving come up, Haast and myself--remembering how Dr. Sinclairhad just been drowned so near the same spot--think it safer toride over to him and put him across the river. The river wasvery low and so clear that we could see every stone. On gettingto the river-bed we lit a fire and did the same on leaving it;our tracks would guide anyone over the intervening ground. 

Besides his occupation with the sheep, he found time to play thepiano, to read and to write. In the library of St. John's College, Cambridge, are two copies of the Greek Testament, very fullyannotated by him at the University and in the colony. He also readthe Origin of Species, which, as everyone knows, was published in1859. He became "one of Mr. Darwin's many enthusiastic admirers, and wrote a philosophic dialogue (the most offensive form, exceptpoetry and books of travel into supposed unknown countries, thateven literature can assume) upon the Origin of Species" (UnconsciousMemory, close of Chapter I). This dialogue, unsigned, was printedin the Press, Canterbury, New Zealand, on 20th December, 1862. Acopy of the paper was sent to Charles Darwin, who forwarded it to a, presumably, English editor with a letter, now in the CanterburyMuseum, New Zealand, speaking of the dialogue as "remarkable fromits spirit and from giving so clear and accurate an account of Mr. D's theory. " It is possible that Butler himself sent the newspapercontaining his dialogue to Mr. Darwin; if so he did not disclose hisname, for Darwin says in his letter that he does not know who theauthor was. Butler was closely connected with the Press, which wasfounded by James Edward FitzGerald, the first Superintendent of theProvince, in May, 1861; he frequently contributed to its pages, andonce, during FitzGerald's absence, had charge of it for a shorttime, though he was never its actual editor. The Press reprintedthe dialogue and the correspondence which followed its originalappearance on 8th June, 1912. 

On 13th June, 1863, the Press printed a letter by Butler signed"Cellarius" and headed "Darwin among the Machines, " reprinted in TheNote-Books of Samuel Butler (1912). The letter begins:

"Sir: There are few things of which the present generation is morejustly proud than of the wonderful improvements which are dailytaking place in all sorts of mechanical appliances"; and goes on tosay that, as the vegetable kingdom was developed from the mineral, and as the animal kingdom supervened upon the vegetable, "so now, inthe last few ages, an entirely new kingdom has sprung up of which weas yet have only seen what will one day be considered theantediluvian types of the race. " He then speaks of the minutemembers which compose the beautiful and intelligent little animalwhich we call the watch, and of how it has gradually been evolvedfrom the clumsy brass clocks of the thirteenth century. Then comesthe question: Who will be man's successor? To which the answer is:We are ourselves creating our own successors. Man will become tothe machine what the horse and the dog are to man; the conclusionbeing that machines are, or are becoming, animate. In 1863 Butler'sfamily published in his name A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, which, as the preface states, was compiled from his letters home, his journal and extracts from two papers contributed to the Eagle. These two papers had appeared in the Eagle as three articlesentitled "Our Emigrant" and signed "Cellarius. " The proof sheets ofthe book went out to New Zealand for correction and were sent backin the Colombo, which was as unfortunate as the Burmah, for she waswrecked. The proofs, however, were fished up, though so nearlywashed out as to be almost undecipherable. Butler would have beenjust as well pleased if they had remained at the bottom of theIndian Ocean, for he never liked the book and always spoke of it asbeing full of youthful priggishness; but I think he was a littlehard upon it. Years afterwards, in one of his later books, afterquoting two passages from Mr. Grant Allen and pointing out why heconsidered the second to be a recantation of the first, he wrote:"When Mr. Allen does make stepping-stones of his dead selves hejumps upon them to some tune. " And he was perhaps a little inclinedto treat his own dead self too much in the same spirit. 

Butler did very well with the sheep, sold out in 1864 and returnedvia Callao to England. He travelled with three friends whoseacquaintance he had made in the colony; one was Charles Paine Pauli, to whom he dedicated Life and Habit. He arrived in August, 1864, inLondon, where he took chambers consisting of a sitting-room, abedroom, a painting-room and a pantry, at 15 Clifford's Inn, secondfloor (north). The net financial result of the sheep-farming andthe selling out was that he practically doubled his capital, that isto say he had about 8000 pounds. This he left in New Zealand, invested on mortgage at 10 per cent, the then current rate in thecolony; it produced more than enough for him to live upon in thevery simple way that suited him best, and life in the Inns of Courtresembles life at Cambridge in that it reduces the cares ofhousekeeping to a minimum; it suited him so well that he neverchanged his rooms, remaining there thirty-eight years till hisdeath. 

He was now his own master and able at last to turn to painting. Hestudied at the art school in Streatham Street, Bloomsbury, which hadformerly been managed by Henry Sass, but, in Butler's time, wasbeing carried on by Francis Stephen Gary, son of the Rev. HenryFrancis Gary, who had been a school-fellow of Dr. Butler at Rugbyand is well known as the translator of Dante and the friend ofCharles Lamb. Among his fellow-students was Mr. H. R. Robertson, who told me that the young artists got hold of the legend, which isin some of the books about Lamb, that when Francis Stephen Gary wasa boy and there was a talk at his father's house as to whatprofession he should take up, Lamb, who was present, said:

"I should make him an apo-po-pothe-Cary. "

They used to repeat this story freely among themselves, being, nodoubt, amused by the Lamb-like pun, but also enjoying the maliciouspleasure of hinting that it might have been as well for their arteducation if the advice of the gentle humorist had been followed. Anyone who wants to know what kind of an artist F. S. Cary was cansee his picture of Charles and Mary Lamb in the National PortraitGallery. In 1865 Butler sent from London to New Zealand an articleentitled "Lucubratio Ebria, " which was published in the Press of29th July, 1865. It treated machines from a point of view differentfrom that adopted in "Darwin among the Machines, " and was one of thesteps that led to Erewhon and ultimately to Life and Habit. Thearticle is reproduced in The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912). 

Butler also studied art at South Kensington, but by 1867 he hadbegun to go to Heatherley's School of Art in Newman Street, where hecontinued going for many years. He made a number of friends atHeatherley's, and among them Miss Eliza Mary Anne Savage. Therealso he first met Charles Gogin, who, in 1896, painted the portraitof Butler which is now in the National Portrait Gallery. Hedescribed himself as an artist in the Post Office Directory, andbetween 1868 and 1876 exhibited at the Royal Academy about a dozenpictures, of which the most important was "Mr. Heatherley'sHoliday, " hung on the line in 1874. He left it by his will to hiscollege friend Jason Smith, whose representatives, after his death, in 1910, gave it to the nation and it is now in the National Galleryof British Art. Mr. Heatherley never went away for a holiday; heonce had to go out of town on business and did not return till thenext day; one of the students asked him how he had got on, saying nodoubt he had enjoyed the change and that he must have found itrefreshing to sleep for once out of London. 

"No, " said Heatherley, "I did not like it. Country air has nobody. "

The consequence was that, whenever there was a holiday and theschool was shut, Heatherley employed the time in mending theskeleton; Butler's picture represents him so engaged in a corner ofthe studio. In this way he got his model for nothing. Sometimes hehung up a looking-glass near one of his windows and painted his ownportrait. Many of these he painted out, but after his death wefound a little store of them in his rooms, some of the early onesvery curious. Of the best of them one is now at Canterbury, NewZealand, one at St. John's College, Cambridge, and one at theSchools, Shrewsbury. 

This is Butler's own account of himself, taken from a letter to SirJulius von Haast; although written in 1865 it is true of his mode oflife for many years:

I have been taking lessons in painting ever since I arrived, Iwas always very fond of it and mean to stick to it; it suits meand I am not without hopes that I shall do well at it. I livealmost the life of a recluse, seeing very few people and goingnowhere that I can help--I mean in the way of parties and soforth; if my friends had their way they would fritter away mytime without any remorse; but I made a regular stand against itfrom the beginning and so, having my time pretty much in my ownhands, work hard; I find, as I am sure you must find, that it isnext to impossible to combine what is commonly called society andwork. 

But the time saved from society was not all devoted to painting. Hemodified his letter to the Press about "Darwin among the Machines"and, so modified, it appeared in 1865 as "The Mechanical Creation"in the Reasoner, a paper then published in London by Mr. G. J. Holyoake. And his mind returned to the considerations which haddetermined him to decline to be ordained. In 1865 he printedanonymously a pamphlet which he had begun in New Zealand, the resultof his study of the Greek Testament, entitled The Evidence for theResurrection of Jesus Christ as given by the four Evangelistscritically examined. After weighing this evidence and comparing oneaccount with another, he came to the conclusion that Jesus Christdid not die upon the cross. It is improbable that a man officiallyexecuted should escape death, but the alternative, that a manactually dead should return to life, seemed to Butler moreimprobable still and unsupported by such evidence as he found in thegospels. From this evidence he concluded that Christ swooned andrecovered consciousness after his body had passed into the keepingof Joseph of Arimathaea. He did not suppose fraud on the part ofthe first preachers of Christianity; they sincerely believed thatChrist died and rose again. Joseph and Nicodemus probably knew thetruth but kept silence. The idea of what might follow from beliefin one single supposed miracle was never hereafter absent fromButler's mind. 

In 1869, having been working too hard, he went abroad for a longchange. On his way back, at the Albergo La Luna, in Venice, he metan elderly Russian lady in whose company he spent most of his timethere. She was no doubt impressed by his versatility and charmed, as everyone always was, by his conversation and original views onthe many subjects that interested him. We may be sure he told herall about himself and what he had done and was intending to do. Atthe end of his stay, when he was taking leave of her, she said:

"Et maintenant, Monsieur, vous allez creer, " meaning, as heunderstood her, that he had been looking long enough at the work ofothers and should now do something of his own. 

This sank into him and pained him. He was nearly thirty-five, andhitherto all had been admiration, vague aspiration and despair; hehad produced in painting nothing but a few sketches and studies, andin literature only a few ephemeral articles, a collection ofyouthful letters and a pamphlet on the Resurrection; moreover, tonone of his work had anyone paid the slightest attention. This wasa poor return for all the money which had been spent upon hiseducation, as Theobald would have said in The Way of All Flesh. Hereturned home dejected, but resolved that things should be differentin the future. While in this frame of mind he received a visit fromone of his New Zealand friends, the late Sir F. Napier Broome, afterwards Governor of Western Australia, who incidentally suggestedhis rewriting his New Zealand articles. The idea pleased him; itmight not be creating, but at least it would be doing something. Sohe set to work on Sundays and in the evenings, as relaxation fromhis profession of painting, and, taking his New Zealand article, "Darwin among the Machines, " and another, "The World of the Unborn, "as a starting point and helping himself with a few sentences from AFirst Year in Canterbury Settlement, he gradually formed Erewhon. He sent the MS. Bit by bit, as it was written, to Miss Savage forher criticism and approval. He had the usual difficulty aboutfinding a publisher. Chapman and Hall refused the book on theadvice of George Meredith, who was then their reader, and in the endhe published it at his own expense through Messrs. Trubner. 

Mr. Sydney C. Cockerell told me that in 1912 Mr. Bertram Dobell, second-hand bookseller of Charing Cross Road, offered a copy ofErewhon for 1 pounds 10s. ; it was thus described in his catalogue:"Unique copy with the following note in the author's handwriting onthe half-title: 'To Miss E. M. A. Savage this first copy of Erewhonwith the author's best thanks for many invaluable suggestions andcorrections. '" When Mr. Cockerell inquired for the book it wassold. After Miss Savage's death in 1885 all Butler's letters to herwere returned to him, including the letter he wrote when he sent herthis copy of Erewhon. He gave her the first copy issued of all hisbooks that were published in her lifetime, and, no doubt, wrote aninscription in each. If the present possessors of any of themshould happen to read this sketch I hope they will communicate withme, as I should like to see these books. I should also like to seesome numbers of the Drawing-Room Gazette, which about this timebelonged to or was edited by a Mrs. Briggs. Miss Savage wrote areview of Erewhon, which appeared in the number for 8th June, 1872, and Butler quoted a sentence from her review among the press noticesin the second edition. She persuaded him to write for Mrs. Briggsnotices of concerts at which Handel's music was performed. In 1901he made a note on one of his letters that he was thankful there wereno copies of the Drawing-Room Gazette in the British Museum, meaningthat he did not want people to read his musical criticisms;nevertheless, I hope some day to come across back numbers containinghis articles. 

The opening of Erewhon is based upon Butler's colonial experiences;some of the descriptions remind one of passages in A First Year inCanterbury Settlement, where he speaks of the excursions he madewith Doctor when looking for sheep-country. The walk over the rangeas far as the statues is taken from the Upper Rangitata district, with some alterations; but the walk down from the statues intoErewhon is reminiscent of the Leventina Valley in the Canton Ticino. The great chords, which are like the music moaned by the statues, are from the prelude to the first of Handel's Trois Lecons; he usedto say:

"One feels them in the diaphragm--they are, as it were, the groaningand labouring of all creation travailing together until now. "

There is a place in New Zealand named Erewhon, after the book; it ismarked on the large maps, a township about fifty miles west ofNapier in the Hawke Bay Province (North Island). I am told thatpeople in New Zealand sometimes call their houses Erewhon andoccasionally spell the word Erehwon which Butler did not intend; hetreated wh as a single letter, as one would treat th. Among othertraces of Erewhon now existing in real life are Butler's Stones onthe Hokitika Pass, so called because of a legend that they were inhis mind when he described the statues. 

The book was translated into Dutch in 1873 and into German in 1897. 

Butler wrote to Charles Darwin to explain what he meant by the "Bookof the Machines": "I am sincerely sorry that some of the criticsshould have thought I was laughing at your theory, a thing which Inever meant to do and should be shocked at having done. " Soon afterthis Butler was invited to Down and paid two visits to Mr. Darwinthere; he thus became acquainted with all the family and for someyears was on intimate terms with Mr. (now Sir) Francis Darwin. 

It is easy to see by the light of subsequent events that we shouldprobably have had something not unlike Erewhon sooner or later, evenwithout the Russian lady and Sir F. N. Broome, to whose promptings, owing to a certain diffidence which never left him, he was perhapsinclined to attribute too much importance. But he would not haveagreed with this view at the time; he looked upon himself as apainter and upon Erewhon as an interruption. It had come, like oneof those creatures from the Land of the Unborn, pestering him andrefusing to leave him at peace until he consented to give it bodilyshape. It was only a little one, and he saw no likelihood of itshaving any successors. So he satisfied its demands and then, supposing that he had written himself out, looked forward to afuture in which nothing should interfere with the painting. Nevertheless, when another of the unborn came teasing him he yieldedto its importunities and allowed himself to become the author of TheFair Haven, which is his pamphlet on the Resurrection, enlarged andpreceded by a realistic memoir of the pseudonymous author, JohnPickard Owen. In the library of St. John's College, Cambridge, aretwo copies of the pamphlet with pages cut out; he used these pagesin forming the MS. Of The Fair Haven. To have published this bookas by the author of Erewhon would have been to give away the ironyand satire. And he had another reason for not disclosing his name;he remembered that as soon as curiosity about the authorship ofErewhon was satisfied, the weekly sales fell from fifty down to onlytwo or three. But, as he always talked openly of whatever was inhis mind, he soon let out the secret of the authorship of The FairHaven, and it became advisable to put his name to a second edition. 

One result of his submitting the MS. Of Erewhon to Miss Savage wasthat she thought he ought to write a novel, and urged him to do so. I have no doubt that he wrote the memoir of John Pickard Owen withthe idea of quieting Miss Savage and also as an experiment toascertain whether he was likely to succeed with a novel. The resultseems to have satisfied him, for, not long after The Fair Haven, hebegan The Way of All Flesh, sending the MS. To Miss Savage, as hedid everything he wrote, for her approval and putting her into thebook as Ernest's Aunt Alethea. He continued writing it in theintervals of other work until her death in February, 1885, afterwhich he did not touch it. It was published in 1903 by Mr. R. A. Streatfeild, his literary executor. 

Soon after The Fair Haven Butler began to be aware that his letterin the Press, "Darwin among the Machines, " was descending withfurther modifications and developing in his mind into a theory aboutevolution which took shape as Life and Habit; but the writing ofthis very remarkable and suggestive book was delayed and thepainting interrupted by absence from England on business in Canada. He had been persuaded by a college friend, a member of one of thegreat banking families, to call in his colonial mortgages and to putthe money into several new companies. He was going to make thirtyor forty per cent instead of only ten. One of these companies was aCanadian undertaking, of which he became a director; it wasnecessary for someone to go to headquarters and investigate itsaffairs; he went, and was much occupied by the business for two orthree years. By the beginning of 1876 he had returned finally toLondon, but most of his money was lost and his financial positionfor the next ten years caused him very serious anxiety. Hispersonal expenditure was already so low that it was hardly possibleto reduce it, and he set to work at his profession moreindustriously than ever, hoping to paint something that he couldsell, his spare time being occupied with Life and Habit, which wasthe subject that really interested him more deeply than any other. 

Following his letter in the Press, wherein he had seen machines asin process of becoming animate, he went on to regard them as livingorgans and limbs which we had made outside ourselves. What wouldfollow if we reversed this and regarded our limbs and organs asmachines which we had manufactured as parts of our bodies? In thefirst place, how did we come to make them without knowing anythingabout it? But then, how comes anybody to do anything unconsciously?The answer usually would be: By habit. But can a man be said to doa thing by habit when he has never done it before? His ancestorshave done it, but not he. Can the habit have been acquired by themfor his benefit? Not unless he and his ancestors are the sameperson. Perhaps, then, they are the same person. 

In February, 1876, partly to clear his mind and partly to tellsomeone, he wrote down his thoughts in a letter to his namesake, Thomas William Gale Butler, a fellow art-student who was then in NewZealand; so much of the letter as concerns the growth of his theoryis given in The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912) and a resume ofthe theory will be found at the end of the last of the essays inthis volume, "The Deadlock in Darwinism. " In September, 1877, whenLife and Habit was on the eve of publication, Mr. Francis Darwincame to lunch with him in Clifford's Inn and, in course ofconversation, told him that Professor Ray Lankester had writtensomething in Nature about a lecture by Dr. Ewald Hering of Prague, delivered so long ago as 1870, "On Memory as a Universal Function ofOrganized Matter. " This rather alarmed Butler, but he deferredlooking up the reference until after December, 1877, when his bookwas out, and then, to his relief, he found that Hering's theory wasvery similar to his own, so that, instead of having something sprungupon him which would have caused him to want to alter his book, hewas supported. He at once wrote to the Athenaeum, calling attentionto Hering's lecture, and then pursued his studies in evolution. 

Life and Habit was followed in 1879 by Evolution Old and New, wherein he compared the teleological or purposive view of evolutiontaken by Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck with the view takenby Charles Darwin, and came to the conclusion that the old wasbetter. But while agreeing with the earlier writers in thinkingthat the variations whose accumulation results in species wereoriginally due to intelligence, he could not take the view that theintelligence resided in an external personal God. He had done withall that when he gave up the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from thedead. He proposed to place the intelligence inside the creature("The Deadlock in Darwinism" post). 

In 1880 he continued the subject by publishing Unconscious Memory. Chapter IV of this book is concerned with a personal quarrel betweenhimself and Charles Darwin which arose out of the publication byCharles Darwin of Dr. Krause's Life of Erasmus Darwin. We need notenter into particulars here, the matter is fully dealt with in apamphlet, Charles Darwin and Samuel Butler: A Step towardsReconciliation, which I wrote in 1911, the result of acorrespondence between Mr. Francis Darwin and myself. Before thiscorrespondence took place Mr. Francis Darwin had made several publicallusions to Life and Habit; and in September, 1908, in hisinaugural address to the British Association at Dublin, he didButler the posthumous honour of quoting from his translation ofHering's lecture "On Memory, " which is in Unconscious Memory, and ofmentioning Butler as having enunciated the theory contained in Lifeand Habit. 

In 1886 Butler published his last book on evolution, Luck or Cunningas the Main Means of Organic Modification? His other contributionsto the subject are some essays, written for the Examiner in 1879, "God the Known and God the Unknown, " which were re-published by Mr. Fifield in 1909, and the articles "The Deadlock in Darwinism" whichappeared in the Universal Review in 1890 and are contained in thisvolume; some further notes on evolution will be found in The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912). 

It was while he was writing Life and Habit that I first met him. For several years he had been in the habit of spending six or eightweeks of the summer in Italy and the Canton Ticino, generally makingFaido his headquarters. Many a page of his books was written whileresting by the fountain of some subalpine village or waiting in theshade of the chestnuts till the light came so that he could continuea sketch. Every year he returned home by a different route, andthus gradually became acquainted with every part of the Canton andNorth Italy. There is scarcely a town or village, a point of view, a building, statue or picture in all this country with which he wasnot familiar. In 1878 he happened to be on the Sacro Monte aboveVarese at the time I took my holiday; there I joined him, and nearlyevery year afterwards we were in Italy together. 

He was always a delightful companion, and perhaps at his gayest onthese occasions. "A man's holiday, " he would say, "is his garden, "and he set out to enjoy himself and to make everyone about him enjoythemselves too. I told him the old schoolboy muddle about SirWalter Raleigh introducing tobacco and saying: "We shall this daylight up such a fire in England as I trust shall never be put out. "He had not heard it before and, though amused, appeared preoccupied, and perhaps a little jealous, during the rest of the evening. Nextmorning, while he was pouring out his coffee, his eyes twinkled andhe said, with assumed carelessness:

"By the by, do you remember?--wasn't it Columbus who bashed the eggdown on the table and said 'Eppur non si muove'?"

He was welcome wherever he went, full of fun and ready to play whiledoing the honours of the country. Many of the peasants were oldfriends, and every day we were sure to meet someone who rememberedhim. Perhaps it would be an old woman labouring along under aburden; she would smile and stop, take his hand and tell him howhappy she was to meet him again and repeat her thanks for the emptywine bottle he had given her after an out-of-door luncheon in herneighbourhood four or five years before. There was another who hadrowed him many times across the Lago di Orta and had never been in atrain but once in her life, when she went to Novara to her son'swedding. He always remembered all about these people and asked howthe potatoes were doing this year and whether the grandchildren weregrowing up into fine boys and girls, and he never forgot to inquireafter the son who had gone to be a waiter in New York. At Civiascothere is a restaurant which used to be kept by a jolly old lady, known for miles round as La Martina; we always lunched with her onour way over the Colma to and from Varallo-Sesia. On one occasionwe were accompanied by two English ladies and, one being ateetotaller, Butler maliciously instructed La Martina to make thesabbaglione so that it should be forte and abbondante, and to saythat the Marsala, with which it was more than flavoured, was nothingbut vinegar. La Martina never forgot that when she looked in to seehow things were going, he was pretending to lick the dish clean. These journeys provided the material for a book which he thought ofcalling "Verdi Prati, " after one of Handel's most beautiful songs;but he changed his mind, and it appeared at the end of 1881 as Alpsand Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino with more thaneighty illustrations, nearly all by Butler. Charles Gogin made anetching for the frontispiece, drew some of the pictures, and putfigures into others; half a dozen are mine. They were all redrawnin ink from sketches made on the spot, in oil, water-colour, andpencil. There were also many illustrations of another kind--extracts from Handel's music, each chosen because Butler thought itsuitable to the spirit of the scene he wished to bring before thereader. The introduction concludes with these words: "I havechosen Italy as my second country, and would dedicate this book toher as a thank-offering for the happiness she has afforded me. "

In the spring of 1883 he began to compose music, and in 1885 wepublished together an album of minuets, gavottes, and fugues. Thisled to our writing Narcissus, which is an Oratorio Buffo in theHandelian manner--that is as nearly so as we could make it. It is amistake to suppose that all Handel's oratorios are upon sacredsubjects; some of them are secular. And not only so, but, whateverthe subject, Handel was never at a loss in treating anything thatcame into his words by way of allusion or illustration. As Butlerputs it in one of his sonnets:

He who gave eyes to ears and showed in soundAll thoughts and things in earth or heaven above--From fire and hailstones running along the groundTo Galatea grieving for her love--He who could show to all unseeing eyesGlad shepherds watching o'er their flocks by night, Or Iphis angel-wafted to the skies, Or Jordan standing as an heap upright--

And so on. But there is one subject which Handel never treated--Imean the Money Market. Perhaps he avoided it intentionally; he wastwice bankrupt, and Mr. R. A. Streatfeild tells me that the BritishMuseum possesses a MS. Letter from him giving instructions as to thepayment of the dividends on 500 pounds South Sea Stock. Let us hopehe sold out before the bubble burst; if so, he was more fortunatethan Butler, who was at this time of his life in great anxiety abouthis own financial affairs. It seemed a pity that Dr. Morell hadnever offered Handel some such words as these:

The steadfast funds maintain their wonted stateWhile all the other markets fluctuate. 

Butler wondered whether Handel would have sent the steadfast fundsup above par and maintained them on an inverted pedal with all theother markets fluctuating iniquitously round them like the sheepthat turn every one to his own way in the Messiah. He thoughtsomething of the kind ought to have been done, and in the absence ofHandel and Dr. Morell we determined to write an oratorio that shouldattempt to supply the want. In order to make our libretto asplausible as possible, we adopted the dictum of Monsieur Jourdain'sMaitre a danser: "Lorsqu'on a des personnes a faire parler enmusique, il faut bien que, pour la vraisemblance, on donne dans labergerie. " Narcissus is accordingly a shepherd in love withAmaryllis; they come to London with other shepherds and lose theirmoney in imprudent speculations on the Stock Exchange. In thesecond part the aunt and godmother of Narcissus, having died at anadvanced age worth one hundred thousand pounds, all of which she hasbequeathed to her nephew and godson, the obstacle to his union withAmaryllis is removed. The money is invested in consols and all endshappily. 

In December, 1886, Butler's father died, and his financialdifficulties ceased. He engaged Alfred Emery Cathie as clerk, butmade no other change, except that he bought a pair of new hairbrushes and a larger wash-hand basin. Any change in his mode oflife was an event. When in London he got up at 6. 30 in the summerand 7. 30 in the winter, went into his sitting-room, lighted thefire, put the kettle on and returned to bed. In half an hour he gotup again, fetched the kettle of hot water, emptied it into the coldwater that was already in his bath, refilled the kettle and put itback on the fire. After dressing, he came into his sitting-room, made tea and cooked, in his Dutch oven, something he had bought theday before. His laundress was an elderly woman, and he could nottrouble her to come to his rooms so early in the morning; on theother hand, he could not stay in bed until he thought it right forher to go out; so it ended in his doing a great deal for himself. He then got his breakfast and read the Times. At 9. 30 Alfred came, with whom he discussed anything requiring attention, and soonafterwards his laundress arrived. Then he started to walk to theBritish Museum, where he arrived about 10. 30, every alternatemorning calling at the butcher's in Fetter Lane to order his meat. In the Reading Room at the Museum he sat at Block B ("B for Butler")and spent an hour "posting his notes"--that is reconsidering, rewriting, amplifying, shortening, and indexing the contents of thelittle note-book he always carried in his pocket. After the noteshe went on till 1. 30 with whatever book he happened to be writing. 

On three days of the week he dined in a restaurant on his way home, and on the other days he dined in his chambers where his laundresshad cooked his dinner. At two o'clock Alfred returned (having beenhome to dinner with his wife and children) and got tea ready forhim. He then wrote letters and attended to his accounts till 3. 45, when he smoked his first cigarette. He used to smoke a great deal, but, believing it to be bad for him, took to cigarettes instead ofpipes, and gradually smoked less and less, making it a rule not tobegin till some particular hour, and pushing this hour later andlater in the day, till it settled itself at 3. 45. There was nowater laid on in his rooms, and every day he fetched one can fullfrom the tap in the court, Alfred fetching the rest. When anyoneexpostulated with him about cooking his own breakfast and fetchinghis own water, he replied that it was good for him to have a changeof occupation. This was partly the fact, but the real reason, whichhe could not tell everyone, was that he shrank from inconveniencinganybody; he always paid more than was necessary when anything wasdone for him, and was not happy then unless he did some of the workhimself. 

At 5. 30 he got his evening meal, he called it his tea, and it waslittle more than a facsimile of breakfast. Alfred left in time topost the letters before six. Butler then wrote music till about 8, when he came to see me in Staple Inn, returning to Clifford's Inn byabout 10. After a light supper, latterly not more than a piece oftoast and a glass of milk, he played one game of his own particularkind of Patience, prepared his breakfast things and fire ready forthe next morning, smoked his seventh and last cigarette, and went tobed at eleven o'clock. 

He was fond of the theatre, but avoided serious pieces. Hepreferred to take his Shakespeare from the book, finding that thespirit of the plays rather evaporated under modern theatricaltreatment. In one of his books he brightens up the old illustrationof Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark by putting it thus: "If thecharacter of Hamlet be entirely omitted, the play must suffer, eventhough Henry Irving himself be cast for the title-role. " Anyonegoing to the theatre in this spirit would be likely to be lessdisappointed by performances that were comic or even franklyfarcical. Latterly, when he grew slightly deaf, listening to anykind of piece became too much of an effort; nevertheless, hecontinued to the last the habit of going to one pantomime everywinter. 

There were about twenty houses where he visited, but he seldomaccepted an invitation to dinner--it upset the regularity of hislife; besides, he belonged to no club and had no means of returninghospitality. When two colonial friends called unexpectedly aboutnoon one day, soon after he settled in London, he went to thenearest cook-shop in Fetter Lane and returned carrying a dish of hotroast pork and greens. This was all very well once in a way, butnot the sort of thing to be repeated indefinitely. 

On Thursdays, instead of going to the Museum, he often took a dayoff, going into the country sketching or walking, and on Sundays, whatever the weather, he nearly always went into the countrywalking; his map of the district for thirty miles round London iscovered all over with red lines showing where he had been. Hesometimes went out of town from Saturday to Monday, and for overtwenty years spent Christmas at Boulogne-sur-Mer. 

There is a Sacro Monte at Varallo-Sesia with many chapels, eachcontaining life-sized statues and frescoes illustrating the life ofChrist. Butler had visited this sanctuary repeatedly, and was agreat favourite with the townspeople, who knew that he was studyingthe statues and frescoes in the chapels, and who remembered that inthe preface to Alps and Sanctuaries he had declared his intention ofwriting about them. In August, 1887, the Varallesi brought mattersto a head by giving him a civic dinner on the Mountain. Everyonewas present, there were several speeches and, when we were comingdown the slippery mountain path after it was all over, he said tome:

"You know, there's nothing for it now but to write that book aboutthe Sacro Monte at once. It must be the next thing I do. "

Accordingly, on returning home, he took up photography and, immediately after Christmas, went back to Varallo to photograph thestatues and collect material. Much research was necessary and manyvisits to out-of-the-way sanctuaries which might have contained workby the sculptor Tabachetti, whom he was rescuing from oblivion andidentifying with the Flemish Jean de Wespin. One of these visits, made after his book was published, forms the subject of "TheSanctuary of Montrigone, " reproduced in this volume. Ex Voto, thebook about Varallo, appeared in 1888, and an Italian translation byCavaliere Angelo Rizzetti was published at Novara in 1894. 

"Quis Desiderio . . . ?" the second essay in this volume, wasdeveloped in 1888 from something in a letter from Miss Savage nearlyten years earlier. On the 15th of December, 1878, in acknowledgingthis letter, Butler wrote:

I am sure that any tree or flower nursed by Miss Cobbe would bethe _very_ first to fade away and that her gazelles would dielong before they ever came to know her _well_. The sight of thebrass buttons on her pea-jacket would settle them out of hand. 

There was an enclosure in Miss Savage's letter, but it isunfortunately lost; I suppose it must have been a newspaper cuttingwith an allusion to Moore's poem and perhaps a portrait of MissFrances Power Cobbe--pea-jacket, brass buttons, and all. 

On the 10th November, 1879, Miss Savage, having been ill, wrote toButler:

I have been dipping into the books of Moses, being sometimes at aloss for something to read while shut up in my apartment. Youknow that I have never read the Bible much, consequently there isgenerally something of a novelty that I hit on. As you do knowyour Bible well, perhaps you can tell me what became of Aaron. The account given of his end in Numbers XX is extremely ambiguousand unsatisfactory. Evidently he did not come by his deathfairly, but whether he was murdered secretly for the furtheranceof some private ends, or publicly in a State sacrifice, I can'tmake out. I myself rather incline to the former opinion, but Ishould like to know what the experts say about it. A very nice, exciting little tale might be made out of it in the style of thepolice stories in All the Year Round called "The Mystery of MountHor or What became of Aaron?" Don't forget to write to me. 

Butler's people had been suggesting that he should try to earn moneyby writing in magazines, and Miss Savage was falling in with theidea and offering a practical suggestion. I do not find that he hadanything to tell her about the death of Aaron. On 23rd March, 1880, she wrote:

Dear Mr. Butler: Read the subjoined poem of Wordsworth and letme know what you understand its meaning to be. Of course I havemy opinion, which I think of communicating to the WordsworthSociety. You can belong to that Society for the small sum of 2/6per annum. I think of joining because it is cheap. 

"The subjoined poem" was the one beginning: "She dwelt among theuntrodden ways, " and Butler made this note on the letter:

To the foregoing letter I answered that I concluded Miss Savagemeant to imply that Wordsworth had murdered Lucy in order toescape a prosecution for breach of promise. 

Miss Savage to Butler. 

2nd April, 1880: My dear Mr. Butler: I don't think you see allthat I do in the poem, and I am afraid that the suggestion of aDARK SECRET in the poet's life is not so very obvious after all. I was hoping you would propose to devote yourself for a fewmonths to reading the Excursion, his letters, &c. , with a view tofollowing up the clue, and I am disappointed though, to say thetruth, the idea of a _crime_ had not flashed upon me when I wroteto you. How well the works of _great_ men repay attention andstudy! But you, who know your Bible so well, how was it that youdid not detect the plagiarism in the last verse? Just refer tothe account of the disappearance of Aaron (I have not a Bible athand, we want one sadly in the club) but I am sure that the wordsare identical [I cannot see what Miss Savage meant. 1901. S. B. ] Cassell's Magazine have offered a prize for setting the poemto music, and I fell to thinking how it could be treatedmusically, and so came to a right comprehension of it. 

Although Butler, when editing Miss Savage's letters in 1901, couldnot see the resemblance between Wordsworth's poem and Numbers XX. , he at once saw a strong likeness between Lucy and Moore's heroinewhom he had been keeping in an accessible pigeon-hole of his memoryever since his letter about Miss Frances Power Cobbe. He now sentLucy to keep her company and often spoke of the pair of them asprobably the two most disagreeable young women in Englishliterature--an opinion which he must have expressed to Miss Savageand with which I have no doubt she agreed. 

In the spring of 1888, on his return from photographing the statuesat Varallo, he found, to his disgust, that the authorities of theBritish Museum had removed Frost's Lives of Eminent Christians fromits accustomed shelf in the Reading Room. Soon afterwards HarryQuilter asked him to write for the Universal Review and he respondedwith "Quis Desiderio . . . ?" In this essay he compares himself toWordsworth and dwells on the points of resemblance between Lucy andthe book of whose assistance he had now been deprived in a passagewhich echoes the opening of Chapter V of Ex Voto, where he pointsout the resemblances between Varallo and Jerusalem. 

Early in 1888 the leading members of the Shrewsbury ArchaeologicalSociety asked Butler to write a memoir of his grandfather and of hisfather for their Quarterly Journal. This he undertook to do when heshould have finished Ex Voto. In December, 1888, his sisters, withthe idea of helping him to write the memoir, gave him hisgrandfather's correspondence, which extended from 1790 to 1839. Onlooking over these very voluminous papers he became penetrated withan almost Chinese reverence for his ancestor and, after getting theArchaeological Society to absolve him from his promise to write thememoir, set about a full life of Dr. Butler, which was not publishedtill 1896. The delay was caused partly by the immense quantity ofdocuments he had to sift and digest, the number of people he had toconsult and the many letters he had to write, and partly bysomething that arose out of Narcissus, which we published in June, 1888. 

Butler was not satisfied with having written only half of this work;he wanted it to have a successor, so that by adding his two halvestogether, he could say he had written a whole Handelian oratorio. While staying with his sisters at Shrewsbury with this idea in hismind, he casually took up a book by Alfred Ainger about Charles Lamband therein stumbled upon something about the Odyssey. It was yearssince he had looked at the poem, but, from what he remembered, hethought it might provide a suitable subject for musical treatment. He did not, however, want to put Dr. Butler aside, so I undertook toinvestigate. It is stated on the title-page of both Narcissus andUlysses that the words were written and the music composed by bothof us. As to the music, each piece bears the initials of the onewho actually composed it. As to the words, it was necessary firstto settle some general scheme and this, in the case of Narcissus, grew in the course of conversation. The scheme of Ulysses wasconstructed in a more formal way and Butler had perhaps rather lessto do with it. We were bound by the Odyssey, which is, of course, too long to be treated fully, and I selected incidents thatattracted me and settled the order of the songs and choruses. Forthis purpose, as I out-Shakespeare Shakespeare in the smallness ofmy Greek, I used The Adventures of Ulysses by Charles Lamb, which weshould have known nothing about but for Ainger's book. Butleracquiesced in my proposals, but, when it came to the wordsthemselves, he wrote practically all the libretto, as he had done inthe case of Narcissus; I did no more than suggest a few phrases anda few lines here and there. 

We had sent Narcissus for review to the papers, and, as aconsequence, about this time, made the acquaintance of Mr. J. A. Fuller Maitland, then musical critic of the Times; he introduced usto that learned musician William Smith Rockstro, under whom westudied medieval counterpoint while composing Ulysses. We hadalready made some progress with it when it occurred to Butler thatit would not take long and might, perhaps, be safer if he were tolook at the original poem, just to make sure that Lamb had notmisled me. Not having forgotten all his Greek, he bought a copy ofthe Odyssey and was so fascinated by it that he could not put itdown. When he came to the Phoeacian episode of Ulysses at Scheriahe felt he must be reading the description of a real place and thatsomething in the personality of the author was eluding him. Formonths he was puzzled, and, to help in clearing up the mystery, setabout translating the poem. In August, 1891, he had preceded me toChiavenna and on a letter I wrote him, telling him when to expectme, he made this note:

It was during the few days I was at Chiavenna (at the HotelGrotta Crimee) that I hit upon the feminine authorship of theOdyssey. I did not find out its having been written at Trapanitill January, 1892. 

He suspected that the authoress in describing both Scheria andIthaca was drawing from her native country and searched on theAdmiralty charts for the features enumerated in the poem; this ledhim to the conclusion that the country could only be Trapani, MountEryx, and the AEgadean Islands. As soon as he could after thisdiscovery he went to Sicily to study the locality and found it inall respects suitable for his theory; indeed, it was astonishing howthings kept turning up to support his view. It is all in his bookThe Authoress of the Odyssey, published in 1897 and dedicated to hisfriend Cavaliere Biagio Ingroja of Calatafimi. 

His first visit to Sicily was in 1892, in August--a hot time of theyear, but it was his custom to go abroad in the autumn. He returnedto Sicily every year (except one), but latterly went in the spring. He made many friends all over the island, and after his death thepeople of Calatafimi called a street by his name, the Via SamuelButler, "thus, " as Ingroja wrote when he announced the event to me, "honouring a great man's memory, handing down his name to posterity, and doing homage to the friendly English nation. " Besides showingthat the Odyssey was written by a woman in Sicily and translatingthe poem into English prose, he also translated the Iliad, and, inMarch, 1895, went to Greece and the Troad to see the country thereindescribed, where he found nothing to cause him to disagree with thereceived theories. 

It has been said of him in a general way that the fact of an opinionbeing commonly held was enough to make him profess the opposite. Itwas enough to make him examine the opinion for himself, when itaffected any of the many subjects which interested him, and if, after giving it his best attention, he found it did not hold water, then no weight of authority could make him say that it did. Thismatter of the geography of the Iliad is only one among many commonlyreceived opinions which he examined for himself and found no reasonto dispute; on these he considered it unnecessary to write. 

It is characteristic of his passion for doing things thoroughly thathe learnt nearly the whole of the Odyssey and the Iliad by heart. He had a Pickering copy of each poem, which he carried in his pocketand referred to in railway trains, both in England and Italy, whensaying the poems over to himself. These two little books are now inthe library of St. John's College, Cambridge. He was, however, disappointed to find that he could not retain more than a book ortwo at a time and that, on learning more, he forgot what he hadlearnt first; but he was about sixty at the time. Shakespeare'sSonnets, on which he published a book in 1899, gave him less troublein this respect; he knew them all by heart, and also their order, and one consequence of this was that he wrote some sonnets in theShakespearian form. He found this intimate knowledge of the poet'swork more useful for his purpose than reading commentaries by thosewho were less familiar with it. "A commentary on a poem, " he wouldsay, "may be useful as material on which to form an estimate of thecommentator, but the poem itself is the most important document youcan consult, and it is impossible to know it too intimately if youwant to form an opinion about it and its author. "

It was always the author, the work of God, that interested him morethan the book--the work of man; the painter more than the picture;the composer more than the music. "If a writer, a painter, or amusician makes me feel that he held those things to be lovable whichI myself hold to be lovable I am satisfied; art is only interestingin so far as it reveals the personality of the artist. " Handel was, of course, "the greatest of all musicians. " Among the painters hechiefly loved Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Rembrandt, Holbein, Velasquez, and De Hooghe; in poetry Shakespeare, Homer, and the Authoress of the Odyssey; and in architecture theman, whoever he was, who designed the Temple of Neptune at Paestum. Life being short, he did not see why he should waste any of it inthe company of inferior people when he had these. And he treatedthose he met in daily life in the same spirit: it was what he foundthem to be that attracted or repelled him; what others thought aboutthem was of little or no consequence. 

And now, at the end of his life, his thoughts reverted to the twosubjects which had occupied him more than thirty years previously--namely, Erewhon and the evidence for the death and resurrection ofJesus Christ. The idea of what might follow from belief in onesingle supposed miracle had been slumbering during all those yearsand at last rose again in the form of a sequel to Erewhon. InErewhon Revisited Mr. Higgs returns to find that the Erewhonians nowbelieve in him as a god in consequence of the supposed miracle ofhis going up in a balloon to induce his heavenly father to send therain. Mr. Higgs and the reader know that there was no miracle inthe case, but Butler wanted to show that whether it was a miracle ornot did not signify provided that the people believed it to be one. And so Mr. Higgs is present in the temple which is being dedicatedto him and his worship. 

The existence of his son George was an after-thought and gaveoccasion for the second leading idea of the book--the story of afather trying to win the love of a hitherto unknown son by riskinghis life in order to show himself worthy of it--and succeeding. 

Butler's health had already begun to fail, and when he started forSicily on Good Friday, 1902, it was for the last time: he knew hewas unfit to travel, but was determined to go, and was lookingforward to meeting Mr. And Mrs. J. A. Fuller Maitland, whom he wasto accompany over the Odyssean scenes at Trapani and Mount Eryx. But he did not get beyond Palermo; there he was so much worse thathe could not leave his room. In a few weeks he was well enough tobe removed to Naples, and Alfred went out and brought him home toLondon. He was taken to a nursing home in St. John's Wood where helay for a month, attended by his old friend Dr. Dudgeon, and wherehe died on the 18th June, 1902. 

There was a great deal he still wanted to do. He had intended torevise The Way of All Flesh, to write a book about Tabachetti, andto publish a new edition of Ex Voto with the mistakes corrected. Also he wished to reconsider the articles reprinted in this volumeand was looking forward to painting more sketches and composing moremusic. While lying ill and very feeble within a few days of theend, and not knowing whether it was to be the end or not, he said tome:

"I am much better to-day. I don't feel at all as though I weregoing to die. Of course, it will be all wrong if I do get well, forthere is my literary position to be considered. First I writeErewhon--that is my opening subject; then, after modulating freelythrough all my other books and the music and so on, I returngracefully to my original key and write Erewhon Revisited. Obviously, now is the proper moment to come to a full close, make mybow and retire; but I believe I am getting well after all. It'svery inartistic, but I cannot help it. "

Some of his readers complain that they often do not know whether heis serious or jesting. He wrote of Lord Beaconsfield: "Earnestnesswas his greatest danger, but if he did not quite overcome it (asindeed who can? it is the last enemy that shall be subdued), hemanaged to veil it with a fair amount of success. " To veil his ownearnestness he turned most naturally to humour, employing it in aspirit of reverence, as all the great humorists have done, toexpress his deepest and most serious convictions. He was aware thathe ran the risk of being misunderstood by some, but he also knewthat it is useless to try to please all, and, like Mozart, he wroteto please himself and a few intimate friends. 

I cannot speak at length of his kindness, consideration, andsympathy; nor of his generosity, the extent of which was very greatand can never be known--it was sometimes exercised in unexpectedways, as when he gave my laundress a shilling because it was "such abeastly foggy morning"; nor of his slightly archaic courtliness--unless among people he knew well he usually left the room backwards, bowing to the company; nor of his punctiliousness, industry, andpainstaking attention to detail--he kept accurate accounts not onlyof all his property by double entry but also of his dailyexpenditure, which he balanced to a halfpenny every evening, and hishandwriting, always beautiful and legible, was more so at sixty-sixthan at twenty-six; nor of his patience and cheerfulness duringyears of anxiety when he had few to sympathize with him; nor of thestrange mixture of simplicity and shrewdness that caused one whoknew him well to say: "II sait tout; il ne sait rien; il estpoete. "

Epitaphs always fascinated him, and formerly he used to say heshould like to be buried at Langar and to have on his tombstone thesubject of the last of Handel's Six Great Fugues. He called this"The Old Man Fugue, " and said it was like an epitaph composed forhimself by one who was very old and tired and sorry for things; andhe made young Ernest Pontifex in The Way of all Flesh offer it toEdward Overton as an epitaph for his Aunt Alethea. Butler, however, left off wanting any tombstone long before he died. In accordancewith his wish his body was cremated, and a week later Alfred and Ireturned to Woking and buried his ashes under the shrubs in thegarden of the crematorium, with nothing to mark the spot. 

The Humour of Homer {59}

The first of the two great poems commonly ascribed to Homer iscalled the Iliad--a title which we may be sure was not given it bythe author. It professes to treat of a quarrel between Agamemnonand Achilles that broke out while the Greeks were besieging the cityof Troy, and it does, indeed, deal largely with the consequences ofthis quarrel; whether, however, the ostensible subject did notconceal another that was nearer the poet's heart--I mean the lastdays, death, and burial of Hector--is a point that I cannotdetermine. Nor yet can I determine how much of the Iliad as we nowhave it is by Homer, and how much by a later writer or writers. This is a very vexed question, but I myself believe the Iliad to beentirely by a single poet. 

The second poem commonly ascribed to the same author is called theOdyssey. It deals with the adventures of Ulysses during his tenyears of wandering after Troy had fallen. These two works have oflate years been believed to be by different authors. The Iliad isnow generally held to be the older work by some one or two hundredyears. 

The leading ideas of the Iliad are love, war, and plunder, thoughthis last is less insisted on than the other two. The key-note isstruck with a woman's charms, and a quarrel among men for theirpossession. It is a woman who is at the bottom of the Trojan waritself. Woman throughout the Iliad is a being to be loved, teased, laughed at, and if necessary carried off. We are told in one placeof a fine bronze cauldron for heating water which was worth twentyoxen, whereas a few lines lower down a good serviceable maid-of-all-work is valued at four oxen. I think there is a spice of malicioushumour in this valuation, and am confirmed in this opinion by notingthat though woman in the Iliad is on one occasion depicted as a wifeso faithful and affectionate that nothing more perfect can be foundeither in real life or fiction, yet as a general rule she is drawnas teasing, scolding, thwarting, contradicting, and hoodwinking thesex that has the effrontery to deem itself her lord and master. Whether or no this view may have arisen from any domesticdifficulties between Homer and his wife is a point which again Ifind it impossible to determine. 

We cannot refrain from contemplating such possibilities. If we areto be at home with Homer there must be no sitting on the edge ofone's chair dazzled by the splendour of his reputation. He wasafter all only a literary man, and those who occupy themselves withletters must approach him as a very honoured member of their ownfraternity, but still as one who must have felt, thought, and actedmuch as themselves. He struck oil, while we for the most partsucceed in boring only; still we are his literary brethren, and ifwe would read his lines intelligently we must also read betweenthem. That one so shrewd, and yet a dreamer of such dreams as havebeen vouchsafed to few indeed besides himself--that one so geniallysceptical, and so given to looking into the heart of a matter, should have been in such perfect harmony with his surroundings as tothink himself in the best of all possible worlds--this is notbelievable. The world is always more or less out of joint to thepoet--generally more so; and unfortunately he always thinks it moreor less his business to set it right--generally more so. We are allof us more or less poets--generally, indeed, less so; still we feeland think, and to think at all is to be out of harmony with muchthat we think about. We may be sure, then, that Homer had his fullshare of troubles, and also that traces of these abound up and downhis work if we could only identify them, for everything thateveryone does is in some measure a portrait of himself; but herecomes the difficulty--not to read between the lines, not to try anddetect the hidden features of the writer--this is to be a dull, unsympathetic, incurious reader; and on the other hand to try andread between them is to be in danger of running after every Will o'the Wisp that conceit may raise for our delusion. 

I believe it will help you better to understand the broad humour ofthe Iliad, which we shall presently reach, if you will allow me tosay a little more about the general characteristics of the poem. Over and above the love and war that are his main themes, there isanother which the author never loses sight of--I mean distrust anddislike of the ideas of his time as regards the gods and omens. Nopoet ever made gods in his own image more defiantly than the authorof the Iliad. In the likeness of man created he them, and the onlyexcuse for him is that he obviously desired his readers not to takethem seriously. This at least is the impression he leaves upon hisreader, and when so great a man as Homer leaves an impression itmust be presumed that he does so intentionally. It may be almostsaid that he has made the gods take the worse, not the better, sideof man's nature upon them, and to be in all respects as weourselves--yet without virtue. It should be noted, however, thatthe gods on the Trojan side are treated far more leniently thanthose who help the Greeks. 

The chief gods on the Grecian side are Juno, Minerva, and Neptune. Juno, as you will shortly see, is a scolding wife, who in spite ofall Jove's bluster wears the breeches, or tries exceedingly hard todo so. Minerva is an angry termagant--mean, mischief-making, andvindictive. She begins by pulling Achilles' hair, and later on sheknocks the helmet from off the head of Mars. She hates Venus, andtells the Grecian hero Diomede that he had better not wound any ofthe other gods, but that he is to hit Venus if he can, which hepresently does 'because he sees that she is feeble and not likeMinerva or Bellona. ' Neptune is a bitter hater. 

Apollo, Mars, Venus, Diana, and Jove, so far as his wife will lethim, are on the Trojan side. These, as I have said, meet withbetter, though still somewhat contemptuous, treatment at the poet'shand. Jove, however, is being mocked and laughed at from first tolast, and if one moral can be drawn from the Iliad more clearly thananother, it is that he is only to be trusted to a very limitedextent. Homer's position, in fact, as regards divine interferenceis the very opposite of David's. David writes, "Put not your trustin princes nor in any child of man; there is no sure help but fromthe Lord. " With Homer it is, "Put not your trust in Jove neither inany omen from heaven; there is but one good omen--to fight for one'scountry. Fortune favours the brave; heaven helps those who helpthemselves. "

The god who comes off best is Vulcan, the lame, hobbling, oldblacksmith, who is the laughing-stock of all the others, and whoseexquisitely graceful skilful workmanship forms such an effectivecontrast to the uncouth exterior of the workman. Him, as a man ofgenius and an artist, and furthermore as a somewhat despised artist, Homer treats, if with playfulness, still with respect, in spite ofthe fact that circumstances have thrown him more on the side of theGreeks than of the Trojans, with whom I understand Homer'ssympathies mainly to lie. 

The poet either dislikes music or is at best insensible to it. Great poets very commonly are so. Achilles, indeed, does on oneoccasion sing to his own accompaniment on the lyre, but we are nottold that it was any pleasure to hear him, and Patroclus, who was inthe tent at the time, was not enjoying it; he was only waiting forAchilles to leave off. But though not fond of music, Homer has avery keen sense of the beauties of nature, and is constantlyreferring both in and out of season to all manner of homelyincidents that are as familiar to us as to himself. Sparks in thetrain of a shooting-star; a cloud of dust upon a high road;foresters going out to cut wood in a forest; the shrill cry of thecicale; children making walls of sand on the sea-shore, or teasingwasps when they have found a wasps' nest; a poor but very honestwoman who gains a pittance for her children by selling wool, andweighs it very carefully; a child clinging to its mother's dress andcrying to be taken up and carried--none of these things escape him. Neither in the Iliad nor the Odyssey do we ever receive so much as ahint as to the time of year at which any of the events described arehappening; but on one occasion the author of the Iliad really hastold us that it was a very fine day, and this not from a businesspoint of view, but out of pure regard to the weather for its ownsake. 

With one more observation I will conclude my preliminary remarksabout the Iliad. I cannot find its author within the four cornersof the work itself. I believe the writer of the Odyssey to appearin the poem as a prominent and very fascinating character whom weshall presently meet, but there is no one in the Iliad on whom I canput my finger with even a passing idea that he may be the author. Still, if under some severe penalty I were compelled to find him, Ishould say it was just possible that he might consider his own lotto have been more or less like that which he forecasts for Astyanax, the infant son of Hector. At any rate his intimate acquaintancewith the topography of Troy, which is now well ascertained, andstill more his obvious attempt to excuse the non-existence of agreat wall which, according to his story, ought to be there andwhich he knew had never existed, so that no trace could remain, while there were abundant traces of all the other features hedescribes--these facts convince me that he was in all probability anative of the Troad, or country round Troy. His plausibly concealedTrojan sympathies, and more particularly the aggravated exaggerationwith which the flight of Hector is described, suggest to me, comingas they do from an astute and humorous writer, that he may have beena Trojan, at any rate by the mother's side, made captive, enslaved, compelled to sing the glories of his captors, and determined so tooverdo them that if his masters cannot see through the irony otherssooner or later shall. This, however, is highly speculative, andthere are other views that are perhaps more true, but which I cannotnow consider. 

I will now ask you to form your own opinions as to whether Homer isor is not a shrewd and humorous writer. 

Achilles, whose quarrel with Agamemnon is the ostensible subject ofthe poem, is son to a marine goddess named Thetis, who had renderedJove an important service at a time when he was in greatdifficulties. Achilles, therefore, begs his mother Thetis to go upto Jove and ask him to let the Trojans discomfit the Greeks for atime, so that Agamemnon may find he cannot get on without Achilles'help, and may thus be brought to reason. 

Thetis tells her son that for the moment there is nothing to bedone, inasmuch as the gods are all of them away from home. They aregone to pay a visit to Oceanus in Central Africa, and will not beback for another ten or twelve days; she will see what can be done, however, as soon as ever they return. This in due course she does, going up to Olympus and laying hold of Jove by the knee and by thechin. I may say in passing that it is still a common Italian formof salutation to catch people by the chin. Twice during the lastsummer I have been so seized in token of affectionate greeting, onceby a lady and once by a gentleman. 

Thetis tells her tale to Jove, and concludes by saying that he is tosay straight out 'yes' or 'no' whether he will do what she asks. Ofcourse he can please himself, but she should like to know how shestands. 

"It will be a plaguy business, " answers Jove, "for me to offend Junoand put up with all the bitter tongue she will give me. As it is, she is always nagging at me and saying I help the Trojans, still, goaway now at once before she finds out that you have been here, andleave the rest to me. See, I nod my head to you, and this is themost solemn form of covenant into which I can enter. I never goback upon it, nor shilly-shally with anybody when I have once noddedmy head. " Which, by the way, amounts to an admission that he doesshilly-shally sometimes. 

Then he frowns and nods, shaking the hair on his immortal head tillOlympus rocks again. Thetis goes off under the sea and Jove returnsto his own palace. All the other gods stand up when they see himcoming, for they do not dare to remain sitting while he passes, butJuno knows he has been hatching mischief against the Greeks withThetis, so she attacks him in the following words:

"You traitorous scoundrel, " she exclaims, "which of the gods haveyou been taking into your counsel now? You are always trying tosettle matters behind my back, and never tell me, if you can helpit, a single word about your designs. "

"'Juno, ' replied the father of gods and men, 'you must not expect tobe told everything that I am thinking about: you are my wife, it istrue, but you might not be able always to understand my meaning; inso far as it is proper for you to know of my intentions you are thefirst person to whom I communicate them either among the gods oramong mankind, but there are certain points which I reserve entirelyfor myself, and the less you try to pry into these, or meddle withthem, the better for you. '"

"'Dread son of Saturn, ' answered Juno, 'what in the world are youtalking about? I meddle and pry? No one, I am sure, can have hisown way in everything more absolutely than you have. Still I have astrong misgiving that the old merman's daughter Thetis has beentalking you over. I saw her hugging your knees this very self-samemorning, and I suspect you have been promising her to kill anynumber of people down at the Grecian ships, in order to gratifyAchilles. '"

"'Wife, ' replied Jove, 'I can do nothing but you suspect me. Youwill not do yourself any good, for the more you go on like that themore I dislike you, and it may fare badly with you. If I mean tohave it so, I mean to have it so, you had better therefore sit stilland hold your tongue as I tell you, for if I once begin to lay myhands about you, there is not a god in heaven who will be of thesmallest use to you. '

"When Juno heard this she thought it better to submit, so she satdown without a word, but all the gods throughout Jove's mansion werevery much perturbed. Presently the cunning workman Vulcan tried topacify his mother Juno, and said, 'It will never do for you two togo on quarrelling and setting heaven in an uproar about a pack ofmortals. The thing will not bear talking about. If such counselsare to prevail a god will not be able to get his dinner in peace. Let me then advise my mother (and I am sure it is her own opinion)to make her peace with my dear father, lest he should scold herstill further, and spoil our banquet; for if he does wish to turn usall out there can be no question about his being perfectly able todo so. Say something civil to him, therefore, and then perhaps hewill not hurt us. '

"As he spoke he took a large cup of nectar and put it into hismother's hands, saying, 'Bear it, my dear mother, and make the bestof it. I love you dearly and should be very sorry to see you get athrashing. I should not be able to help you, for my father Jove isnot a safe person to differ from. You know once before when I wastrying to help you he caught me by the foot and chucked me from theheavenly threshold. I was all day long falling from morn to eve, but at sunset I came to ground on the island of Lemnos, and therewas very little life left in me, till the Sintians came and tendedme. '

"On this Juno smiled, and with a laugh took the cup from her son'shand. Then Vulcan went about among all other gods drawing nectarfor them from his goblet, and they laughed immoderately as they sawhim bustling about the heavenly mansion. "

Then presently the gods go home to bed, each one in his own housethat Vulcan had cunningly built for him or her. Finally Jovehimself went to the bed which he generally occupied; and Jove hiswife went with him. 

There is another quarrel between Jove and Juno at the beginning ofthe fourth book. 

The gods are sitting on the golden floor of Jove's palace anddrinking one another's health in the nectar with which Hebe fromtime to time supplies them. Jove begins to tease Juno, and toprovoke her with some sarcastic remarks that are pointed at herthough not addressed to her directly. 

"'Menelaus, ' he exclaimed, 'has two good friends among thegoddesses, Juno and Minerva, but they only sit still and look on, while Venus on the other hand takes much better care of Paris, anddefends him when he is in danger. She has only just this momentbeen rescuing him when he made sure he was at death's door, for thevictory really did lie with Menelaus. We must think what we are todo about all this. Shall we renew strife between the combatants orshall we make them friends again? I think the best plan would befor the City of Priam to remain unpillaged, but for Menelaus to havehis wife Helen sent back to him. '

"Minerva and Juno groaned in spirit when they heard this. They weresitting side by side, and thinking what mischief they could do tothe Trojans. Minerva for her part said not one word, but satscowling at her father, for she was in a furious passion with him, but Juno could not contain herself, so she said--

"'What, pray, son of Saturn, is all this about? Is my trouble thento go for nothing, and all the pains that I have taken, to saynothing of my horses, and the way we have sweated and toiled to getthe people together against Priam and his children? You can do asyou please, but you must not expect all of us to agree with you. '

"And Jove answered, 'Wife, what harm have Priam and Priam's childrendone you that you rage so furiously against them, and want to sacktheir city? Will nothing do for you but you must eat Priam with hissons and all the Trojans into the bargain? Have it your own waythen, for I will not quarrel with you--only remember what I tellyou: if at any time I want to sack a city that belongs to anyfriend of yours, it will be no use your trying to hinder me, youwill have to let me do it, for I only yield to you now with thegreatest reluctance. If there was one city under the sun which Irespected more than another it was Troy with its king and people. My altars there have never been without the savour of fat or ofburnt sacrifice and all my dues were paid. '

"'My own favourite cities, ' answered Juno, 'are Argos, Sparta, andMycenae. Sack them whenever you may be displeased with them. Ishall not make the smallest protest against your doing so. It wouldbe no use if I did, for you are much stronger than I am, only I willnot submit to seeing my own work wasted. I am a goddess of the samerace as yourself. I am Saturn's eldest daughter and am not onlynearly related to you in blood, but I am wife to yourself, and youare king over the gods. Let it be a case, then, of give and takebetween us, and the other gods will follow our lead. Tell Minerva, therefore, to go down at once and set the Greeks and Trojans by theears again, and let her so manage it that the Trojans shall breaktheir oaths and be the aggressors. '"

This is the very thing to suit Minerva, so she goes at once andpersuades the Trojans to break their oath. 

In a later book we are told that Jove has positively forbidden thegods to interfere further in the struggle. Juno thereforedetermines to hoodwink him. First she bolted herself inside her ownroom on the top of Mount Ida and had a thorough good wash. Then shescented herself, brushed her golden hair, put on her very best dressand all her jewels. When she had done this, she went to Venus andbesought her for the loan of her charms. 

"'You must not be angry with me, Venus, ' she began, 'for being onthe Grecian side while you are yourself on the Trojan; but you knowevery one falls in love with you at once, and I want you to lend mesome of your attractions. I have to pay a visit at the world's endto Oceanus and Mother Tethys. They took me in and were very good tome when Jove turned Saturn out of heaven and shut him up under thesea. They have been quarrelling this long time past and will notspeak to one another. So I must go and see them, for if I can onlymake them friends again I am sure that they will be grateful to mefor ever afterwards. '"

Venus thought this reasonable, so she took off her girdle and lentit to Juno, an act by the way which argues more good nature thanprudence on her part. Then Juno goes down to Thrace, and in searchof Sleep the brother of Death. She finds him and shakes hands withhim. Then she tells him she is going up to Olympus to make love toJove, and that while she is occupying his attention Sleep is to sendhim off into a deep slumber. 

Sleep says he dares not do it. He would lull any of the other gods, but Juno must remember that she had got him into a great scrape oncebefore in this way, and Jove hurled the gods about all over thepalace, and would have made an end of him once for all, if he hadnot fled under the protection of Night, whom Jove did not venture tooffend. 

Juno bribes him, however, with a promise that if he will consent shewill marry him to the youngest of the Graces, Pasithea. On this heyields; the pair then go up to the top of Mount Ida, and Sleep getsinto a high pine tree just in front of Jove. 

As soon as Jove sees Juno, armed as she for the moment was with allthe attractions of Venus, he falls desperately in love with her, andsays she is the only goddess he ever really loved. True, there hadbeen the wife of Ixion and Danae, and Europa and Semele, andAlcmena, and Latona, not to mention herself in days gone by, but henever loved any of these as he now loved her, in spite of his havingbeen married to her for so many years. What then does she want?

Juno tells him the same rigmarole about Oceanus and Mother Tethysthat she had told Venus, and when she has done Jove tries to embraceher. 

"What, " exclaims Juno, "kiss me in such a public place as the top ofMount Ida! Impossible! I could never show my face in Olympusagain, but I have a private room of my own and"--"What nonsense, mylove!" exclaims the sire of gods and men as he catches her in hisarms. On this Sleep sends him into a deep slumber, and Juno thensends Sleep to bid Neptune go off to help the Greeks at once. 

When Jove awakes and finds the trick that has been played upon him, he is very angry and blusters a good deal as usual, but somehow oranother it turns out that he has got to stand it and make the bestof it. 

In an earlier book he has said that he is not surprised at anythingJuno may do, for she always has crossed him and always will; but hecannot put up with such disobedience from his own daughter Minerva. Somehow or another, however, here too as usual it turns out that hehas got to stand it. "And then, " Minerva exclaims in yet anotherplace (VIII. 373), "I suppose he will be calling me his grey-eyeddarling again, presently. "

Towards the end of the poem the gods have a set-to among themselves. Minerva sends Mars sprawling, Venus comes to his assistance, butMinerva knocks her down and leaves her. Neptune challenges Apollo, but Apollo says it is not proper for a god to fight his own uncle, and declines the contest. His sister Diana taunts him withcowardice, so Juno grips her by the wrist and boxes her ears tillshe writhes again. Latona, the mother of Apollo and Diana, thenchallenges Mercury, but Mercury says that he is not going to fightwith any of Jove's wives, so if she chooses to say she has beatenhim she is welcome to do so. Then Latona picks up poor Diana's bowand arrows that have fallen from her during her encounter with Juno, and Diana meanwhile flies up to the knees of her father Jove, sobbing and sighing till her ambrosial robe trembles all around her. 

"Jove drew her towards him, and smiling pleasantly exclaimed, 'Mydear child, which of the heavenly beings has been wicked enough tobehave in this way to you, as though you had been doing somethingnaughty?'

"'Your wife, Juno, ' answered Diana, 'has been ill-treating me; allour quarrels always begin with her. '"

* * * * *

The above extracts must suffice as examples of the kind of divinecomedy in which Homer brings the gods and goddesses upon the scene. Among mortals the humour, what there is of it, is confined mainly tothe grim taunts which the heroes fling at one another when they arefighting, and more especially to crowing over a fallen foe. Themost subtle passage is the one in which Briseis, the captive womanabout whom Achilles and Agamemnon have quarrelled, is restored byAgamemnon to Achilles. Briseis on her return to the tent ofAchilles finds that while she has been with Agamemnon, Patroclus hasbeen killed by Hector, and his dead body is now lying in state. Sheflings herself upon the corpse and exclaims--

"How one misfortune does keep falling upon me after another! I sawthe man to whom my father and mother had married me killed before myeyes, and my three own dear brothers perished along with him; butyou, Patroclus, even when Achilles was sacking our city and killingmy husband, told me that I was not to cry; for you said thatAchilles himself should marry me, and take me back with him toPhthia, where we should have a wedding feast among the Myrmidons. You were always kind to me, and I should never cease to grieve foryou. "

This may of course be seriously intended, but Homer was an acutewriter, and if we had met with such a passage in Thackeray we shouldhave taken him to mean that so long as a woman can get a newhusband, she does not much care about losing the old one--asentiment which I hope no one will imagine that I for one momentendorse or approve of, and which I can only explain as a piece ofsarcasm aimed possibly at Mrs. Homer. 

* * * * *

And now let us turn to the Odyssey, a work which I myself think ofas the Iliad's better half or wife. Here we have a poem of morevaried interest, instinct with not less genius, and on the whole Ishould say, if less robust, nevertheless of still greaterfascination--one, moreover, the irony of which is pointed neither atgods nor woman, but with one single and perhaps intercalatedexception, at man. Gods and women may sometimes do wrong things, but, except as regards the intrigue between Mars and Venus justreferred to, they are never laughed at. The scepticism of the Iliadis that of Hume or Gibbon; that of the Odyssey (if any) is like theoccasional mild irreverence of the Vicar's daughter. When Jove sayshe will do a thing, there is no uncertainty about his doing it. Juno hardly appears at all, and when she does she never quarrelswith her husband. Minerva has more to do than any of the other godsor goddesses, but she has nothing in common with the Minerva whom wehave already seen in the Iliad. In the Odyssey she is the fairygod-mother who seems to have no object in life but to protectUlysses and Telemachus, and keep them straight at any touch and turnof difficulty. If she has any other function, it is to be patronessof the arts and of all intellectual development. The Minerva of theOdyssey may indeed sit on a rafter like a swallow and hold up heraegis to strike panic into the suitors while Ulysses kills them; butshe is a perfect lady, and would no more knock Mars and Venus downone after the other than she would stand on her head. She is, infact, a distinct person in all respects from the Minerva of theIliad. Of the remaining gods Neptune, as the persecutor of thehero, comes worst off; but even he is treated as though he were avery important person. 

In the Odyssey the gods no longer live in houses and sleep in four-post bedsteads, but the conception of their abode, like that oftheir existence altogether, is far more spiritual. Nobody knowsexactly where they live, but they say it is in Olympus, where thereis neither rain nor hail nor snow, and the wind never beats roughly;but it abides in everlasting sunshine, and in great peacefulness oflight wherein the blessed gods are illumined for ever and ever. Itis hardly possible to conceive anything more different from theOlympus of the Iliad. 

Another very material point of difference between the Iliad and theOdyssey lies in the fact that the Homer of the Iliad always knowswhat he is talking about, while the supposed Homer of the Odysseyoften makes mistakes that betray an almost incredible ignorance ofdetail. Thus the giant Polyphemus drives in his ewes home fromtheir pasture, and milks them. The lambs of course have not beenrunning with them; they have been left in the yards, so they havehad nothing to eat. When he has milked the ewes, the giant letseach one of them have her lamb--to get, I suppose, what strippingsit can, and beyond this what milk the ewe may yield during thenight. In the morning, however, Polyphemus milks the ewes again. Hence it is plain either that he expected his lambs to thrive on onepull per diem at a milked ewe, and to be kind enough not to sucktheir mothers, though left with them all night through, or else thatthe writer of the Odyssey had very hazy notions about the relationsbetween lambs and ewes, and of the ordinary methods of procedure onan upland dairy-farm. 

In nautical matters the same inexperience is betrayed. The writerknows all about the corn and wine that must be put on board; thestore-room in which these are kept and the getting of them aredescribed inimitably, but there the knowledge ends; the other thingsput on board are "the things that are generally taken on boardships. " So on a voyage we are told that the sailors do whatever iswanted doing, but we have no details. There is a shipwreck, whichdoes duty more than once without the alteration of a word. I haveseen such a shipwreck at Drury Lane. Anyone, moreover, who readsany authentic account of actual adventures will perceive at oncethat those of the Odyssey are the creation of one who has had nohistory. Ulysses has to make a raft; he makes it about as broad asthey generally make a good big ship, but we do not seem to have beenat the pains to measure a good big ship. 

I will add no more however on this head. The leadingcharacteristics of the Iliad, as we saw, were love, war, andplunder. The leading idea of the Odyssey is the infatuation of man, and the key-note is struck in the opening paragraph, where we aretold how the sailors of Ulysses must needs, in spite of everywarning, kill and eat the cattle of the sun-god, and perishedaccordingly. 

A few lines lower down the same note is struck with even greateremphasis. The gods have met in council, and Jove happens at themoment to be thinking of AEgisthus, who had met his death at thehand of Agamemnon's son Orestes, in spite of the solemn warning thatJove had sent him through the mouth of Mercury. It does not seemnecessary for Jove to turn his attention to Clytemnestra, thepartner of AEgisthus's guilt. Of this lady we are presently toldthat she was naturally of an excellent disposition, and would neverhave gone wrong but for the loss of the protector in whose chargeAgamemnon had left her. When she was left alone without an adviser--well, if a base designing man took to flattering and misleadingher--what else could be expected? The infatuation of man, with itscorollary, the superior excellence of woman, is the leading theme;next to this come art, religion, and, I am almost ashamed to add, money. There is no love-business in the Odyssey except the returnof a bald elderly married man to his elderly wife and grown-up sonafter an absence of twenty years, and furious at having been robbedof so much money in the meantime. But this can hardly be calledlove-business; it is at the utmost domesticity. There is a charmingyoung princess, Nausicaa, but though she affects a passingtenderness for the elderly hero of her creation as soon as Minervahas curled his bald old hair for him and tittivated him up all over, she makes it abundantly plain that she will not look at a single oneof her actual flesh and blood admirers. There is a leading younggentleman, Telemachus, who is nothing if he is not [Greek], orcanny, well-principled, and discreet; he has an amiable and mostsensible young male friend who says that he does not like crying atmeal times--he will cry in the forenoon on an empty stomach as muchas anyone pleases, but he cannot attend properly to his dinner andcry at the same time. Well, there is no lady provided either forthis nice young man or for Telemachus. They are left high and dryas bachelors. Two goddesses indeed, Circe and Calypso, do one afterthe other take possession of Ulysses, but the way in which heaccepts a situation which after all was none of his seeking, andwhich it is plain he does not care two straws about, is, I believe, dictated solely by a desire to exhibit the easy infidelity ofUlysses himself in contrast with the unswerving constancy andfidelity of his wife Penelope. Throughout the Odyssey the men donot really care for women, nor the women for men; they have topretend to do so now and again, but it is a got-up thing, and thegeneral attitude of the sexes towards one another is very much thatof Helen, who says that her husband Menelaus is really not deficientin person or understanding: or again of Penelope herself, who, onbeing asked by Ulysses on his return what she thought of him, saidthat she did not think very much of him nor very little of him; infact, she did not think much about him one way or the other. True, later on she relents and becomes more effusive; in fact, when sheand Ulysses sat up talking in bed and Ulysses told her the story ofhis adventures, she never went to sleep once. Ulysses never had tonudge her with his elbow and say, "Come, wake up, Penelope, you arenot listening"; but, in spite of the devotion exhibited here, thelove-business in the Odyssey is artificial and described by one whohad never felt it, whereas in the Iliad it is spontaneous andobviously genuine, as by one who knows all about it perfectly well. The love-business in fact of the Odyssey is turned on as we turn onthe gas--when we cannot get on without it, but not otherwise. 

A fascinating brilliant girl, who naturally adopts for her patronessthe blue-stocking Minerva; a man-hatress, as clever girls so oftenare, and determined to pay the author of the Iliad out for histreatment of her sex by insisting on its superior moral, not to sayintellectual, capacity, and on the self-sufficient imbecility of manunless he has a woman always at his elbow to keep him tolerablystraight and in his proper place--this, and not the musty fusty oldbust we see in libraries, is the kind of person who I believe wrotethe Odyssey. Of course in reality the work must be written by aman, because they say so at Oxford and Cambridge, and they knoweverything down in Oxford and Cambridge; but I venture to say thatif the Odyssey were to appear anonymously for the first time now, and to be sent round to the papers for review, there is not even aprofessional critic who would not see that it is a woman's writingand not a man's. But letting this pass, I can hardly doubt, forreasons which I gave in yesterday's Athenaeum, and for others that Icannot now insist upon, that the poem was written by a native ofTrapani on the coast of Sicily, near Marsala. Fancy what theposition of a young, ardent, brilliant woman must have been in asmall Sicilian sea-port, say some eight or nine hundred years beforethe birth of Christ. It makes one shudder to think of it. Nightafter night she hears the dreary blind old bard Demodocus drawl outhis interminable recitals taken from our present Iliad, or from someother of the many poems now lost that dealt with the adventures ofthe Greeks before Troy or on their homeward journey. Man and hisdoings! always the same old story, and woman always to be treatedeither as a toy or as a beast of burden, or at any rate as anincubus. Why not sing of woman also as she is when she isunattached and free from the trammels and persecutions of thistiresome tyrant, this insufferably self-conceited bore and booby, man?

"I wish, my dear, " exclaims her mother Arete, after one of theselittle outbreaks, "that you would do it yourself. I am sure youcould do it beautifully if you would only give your mind to it. "

"Very well, mother, " she replies, "and I will bring in all about youand father, and how I go out for a washing-day with the maids, "--andshe kept her word, as I will presently show you. 

I should tell you that Ulysses, having got away from the goddessCalypso, with whom he had been living for some seven or eight yearson a lonely and very distant island in mid-ocean, is shipwrecked onthe coast of Phaeacia, the chief town of which is Scheria. Afterswimming some forty-eight hours in the water he effects a landing atthe mouth of a stream, and, not having a rag of clothes on his back, covers himself up under a heap of dried leaves and goes to sleep. Iwill now translate from the Odyssey itself. 

"So here Ulysses slept, worn out with labour and sorrow; but Minervawent off to the chief town of the Phaeacians, a people who used tolive in Hypereia near the wicked Cyclopes. Now the Cyclopes werestronger than they and plundered them, so Nausithous settled them inScheria far from those who would loot them. He ran a wall roundabout the city, built houses and temples, and allotted the landsamong his people; but he was gathered to his fathers, and the goodking Alcinous was now reigning. To his palace then Minerva hastenedthat she might help Ulysses to get home. 

"She went straight to the painted bedroom of Nausicaa, who wasdaughter to King Alcinous, and lovely as a goddess. Near her thereslept two maids-in-waiting, both very pretty, one on either side ofthe doorway, which was closed with a beautifully made door. Shetook the form of the famous Captain Dumas's daughter, who was abosom friend of Nausicaa and just her own age; then coming into theroom like a breath of wind she stood near the head of the bed andsaid--

"'Nausicaa, what could your mother have been about to have such alazy daughter? Here are your clothes all lying in disorder, yet youare going to be married almost directly, and should not only bewell-dressed yourself, but should see that those about you lookclean and tidy also. This is the way to make people speak well ofyou, and it will please your father and mother, so suppose we maketo-morrow a washing day, and begin the first thing in the morning. I will come and help you, for all the best young men among your ownpeople are courting you, and you are not going to remain a maid muchlonger. Ask your father, then, to have a horse and cart ready forus at daybreak to take the linen and baskets, and you can ride too, which will be much pleasanter for you than walking, for the washingground is a long way out of the town. '

"When she had thus spoken Minerva went back to Olympus. By and bymorning came, and as soon as Nausicaa woke she began thinking abouther dream. She went to the other end of the house to tell herfather and mother all about it, and found them in their own room. Her mother was sitting by the fireside spinning with her maids-in-waiting all around her, and she happened to catch her father just ashe was going out to attend a meeting of the Town Council which thePhaeacian aldermen had convened. So she stopped him and said, 'Papa, dear, could you manage to let me have a good big waggon? Iwant to take all our dirty clothes to the river and wash them. Youare the chief man here, so you ought to have a clean shirt on whenyou attend meetings of the Council. Moreover, you have five sons athome, two of them married and the other three are good-looking youngbachelors; you know they always like to have clean linen when theygo out to a dance, and I have been thinking about all this. '"

You will observe that though Nausicaa dreams that she is going to bemarried shortly, and that all the best young men of Scheria are inlove with her, she does not dream that she has fallen in love withany one of them in particular, and that thus every preparation ismade for her getting married except the selection of the bridegroom. 

You will also note that Nausicaa has to keep her father up toputting a clean shirt on when he ought to have one, whereas heryoung brothers appear to keep herself up to having a clean shirtready for them when they want one. These little touches are solifelike and so feminine that they suggest drawing from life by afemale member of Alcinous's own family who knew his character frombehind the scenes. 

I would also say before proceeding further that in some parts ofFrance and Germany it is still the custom to have but one or at mosttwo great washing days in the year. Each household is provided withan enormous quantity of linen, which when dirty is just soaked andrinsed, and then put aside till the great washing day of the year. This is why Nausicaa wants a waggon, and has to go so far afield. If it was only a few collars and a pocket-handkerchief or two shecould no doubt have found water enough near at hand. The big springor autumn wash, however, is evidently intended. 

Returning now to the Odyssey, when he had heard what Nausicaa wantedAlcinous said:

"'You shall have the mules, my love, and whatever else you have amind for, so be off with you. '

"Then he told the servants, and they got the waggon out andharnessed the mules, while the princess brought the clothes downfrom the linen room and placed them on the waggon. Her mother gotready a nice basket of provisions with all sorts of good things, anda goatskin full of wine. The princess now got into the waggon, andher mother gave her a golden cruse of oil that she and her maidsmight anoint themselves. 

"Then Nausicaa took the whip and reins and gave the mules a touchwhich sent them off at a good pace. They pulled without nagging, and carried not only Nausicaa and her wash of clothes, but the womenalso who were with her. 

"When they got to the river they went to the washing pools, throughwhich even in summer there ran enough pure water to wash anyquantity of linen, no matter how dirty. Here they unharnessed themules and turned them out to feed in the sweet juicy grass that grewby the river-side. They got the clothes out of the waggon, broughtthem to the water, and vied with one another in treading upon themand banging them about to get the dirt out of them. When they hadgot them quite clean, they laid them out by the seaside where thewaves had raised a high beach of shingle, and set about washing andanointing themselves with olive oil. Then they got their dinner bythe side of the river, and waited for the sun to finish drying theclothes. By and by, after dinner, they took off their head-dressesand began to play at ball, and Nausicaa sang to them. "

I think you will agree with me that there is no haziness--no milkingof ewes that have had a lamb with them all night--here. The writeris at home and on her own ground. 

"When they had done folding the clothes and were putting the mulesto the waggon before starting home again, Minerva thought it wastime Ulysses should wake up and see the handsome girl who was totake him to the city of the Phaeacians. So the princess threw aball at one of the maids, which missed the maid and fell into thewater. On this they all shouted, and the noise they made woke upUlysses, who sat up in his bed of leaves and wondered where in theworld he could have got to. 

"Then he crept from under the bush beneath which he had slept, brokeoff a thick bough so as to cover his nakedness, and advanced towardsNausicaa and her maids; these last all ran away, but Nausicaa stoodher ground, for Minerva had put courage into her heart, so she keptquite still, and Ulysses could not make up his mind whether it wouldbe better to go up to her, throw himself at her feet, and embraceher knees as a suppliant--[in which case, of course, he would haveto drop the bough] or whether it would be better for him to make anapology to her at a reasonable distance, and ask her to be goodenough to give him some clothes and show him the way to the town. On the whole he thought it would be better to keep at arm's length, in case the princess should take offence at his coming too nearher. "

Let me say in passing that this is one of many passages which haveled me to conclude that the Odyssey is written by a woman. A girl, such as Nausicaa describes herself, young, unmarried, unattached, and hence, after all, knowing little of what men feel on thesematters, having by a cruel freak of inspiration got her hero intosuch an awkward predicament, might conceivably imagine that he wouldargue as she represents him, but no man, except such a woman'stailor as could never have written such a masterpiece as theOdyssey, would ever get his hero into such an undignified scrape atall, much less represent him as arguing as Ulysses does. I supposeMinerva was so busy making Nausicaa brave that she had no time toput a little sense into Ulysses' head, and remind him that he wasnothing if not full of sagacity and resource. To return--

Ulysses now begins with the most judicious apology that his unaidedimagination can suggest. "I beg your ladyship's pardon, " heexclaims, "but are you goddess or are you a mortal woman? If youare a goddess and live in heaven, there can be no doubt but you areJove's daughter Diana, for your face and figure are exactly likehers, " and so on in a long speech which I need not further quotefrom. 

"Stranger, " replied Nausicaa, as soon as the speech was ended, "youseem to be a very sensible well-disposed person. There is noaccounting for luck; Jove gives good or ill to every man, just as hechooses, so you must take your lot, and make the best of it. " Shethen tells him she will give him clothes and everything else that aforeigner in distress can reasonably expect. She calls back hermaids, scolds them for running away, and tells them to take Ulyssesand wash him in the river after giving him something to eat anddrink. So the maids give him the little gold cruse of oil and tellhim to go and wash himself, and as they seem to have completelyrecovered from their alarm, Ulysses is compelled to say, "Youngladies, please stand a little on one side, that I may wash the brinefrom off my shoulders and anoint myself with oil; for it is longenough since my skin has had a drop of oil upon it. I cannot washas long as you keep standing there. I have no clothes on, and itmakes me very uncomfortable. "

So they stood aside and went and told Nausicaa. Meanwhile (I amtranslating closely), "Minerva made him look taller and strongerthan before; she gave him some more hair on the top of his head, andmade it flow down in curls most beautifully; in fact she glorifiedhim about the head and shoulders as a cunning workman who hasstudied under Vulcan or Minerva enriches a fine piece of plate bygilding it. "

Again I argue that I am reading a description of as it were aprehistoric Mr. Knightley by a not less prehistoric Jane Austen--with this difference that I believe Nausicaa is quietly laughing ather hero and sees through him, whereas Jane Austen takes Mr. Knightley seriously. 

"Hush, my pretty maids, " exclaimed Nausicaa as soon as she sawUlysses coming back with his hair curled, "hush, for I want to saysomething. I believe the gods in heaven have sent this man here. There is something very remarkable about him. When I first saw himI thought him quite plain and commonplace, and now I consider himone of the handsomest men I ever saw in my life. I should like myfuture husband [who, it is plain, then, is not yet decided upon] tobe just such another as he is, if he would only stay here, and notwant to go away. However, give him something to eat and drink. "

Nausicaa now says they must be starting homeward; so she tellsUlysses that she will drive on first herself, but that he is tofollow after her with the maids. She does not want to be seencoming into the town with him; and then follows another passagewhich clearly shows that for all the talk she has made about gettingmarried she has no present intention of changing her name. 

"'I am afraid, ' she says, 'of the gossip and scandal which may beset on foot about me behind my back, for there are some very ill-natured people in the town, and some low fellow, if he met us, mightsay, 'Who is this fine-looking stranger who is going about withNausicaa? Where did she pick him up? I suppose she is going tomarry him, or perhaps he is some shipwrecked sailor from foreignparts; or has some god come down from heaven in answer to herprayers, and she is going to live with him? It would be a goodthing if she would take herself off and find a husband somewhereelse, for she will not look at one of the many excellent youngPhaeacians who are in love with her'; and I could not complain, forI should myself think ill of any girl whom I saw going about withmen unknown to her father and mother, and without having beenmarried to him in the face of all the world. '"

This passage could never have been written by the local bard, whowas in great measure dependent on Nausicaa's family; he would neverspeak thus of his patron's daughter; either the passage isNausicaa's apology for herself, written by herself, or it is pureinvention, and this last, considering the close adherence to theactual topography of Trapani on the Sicilian Coast, and a great dealelse that I cannot lay before you here, appears to me improbable. 

Nausicaa then gives Ulysses directions by which he can find herfather's house. "When you have got past the courtyard, " she says, "go straight through the main hall, till you come to my mother'sroom. You will find her sitting by the fire and spinning her purplewool by firelight. She will make a lovely picture as she leans backagainst a column with her maids ranged behind her. Facing herstands my father's seat in which he sits and topes like an immortalgod. Never mind him, but go up to my mother and lay your hands uponher knees, if you would be forwarded on your homeward voyage. " Fromwhich I conclude that Arete ruled Alcinous, and Nausicaa ruledArete. 

Ulysses follows his instructions aided by Minerva, who makes himinvisible as he passes through the town and through the crowds ofPhaeacian guests who are feasting in the king's palace. When he hasreached the queen, the cloak of thick darkness falls off, and he isrevealed to all present, kneeling at the feet of Queen Arete, towhom he makes his appeal. It has already been made apparent in apassage extolling her virtue at some length, but which I have notbeen able to quote, that Queen Arete is, in the eyes of the writer, a much more important person than her husband Alcinous. 

Every one, of course, is very much surprised at seeing Ulysses, butafter a little discussion, from which it appears that the writerconsiders Alcinous to be a person who requires a good deal ofkeeping straight in other matters besides clean linen, it is settledthat Ulysses shall be feted on the following day and then escortedhome. Ulysses now has supper and remains with Alcinous and Areteafter the other guests are gone away for the night. So the threesit by the fire while the servants take away the things, and Areteis the first to speak. She has been uneasy for some time aboutUlysses' clothes, which she recognized as her own make, and at lastshe says, "Stranger, there is a question or two that I should liketo put to you myself. Who in the world are you? And who gave youthose clothes? Did you not say you had come here from beyond theseas?"

Ulysses explains matters, but still withholds his name, neverthelessAlcinous (who seems to have shared in the general opinion that itwas high time his daughter got married, and that, provided shemarried somebody, it did not much matter who the bridegroom mightbe) exclaimed, "By Father Jove, Minerva, and Apollo, now that I seewhat kind of a person you are and how exactly our opinions coincideupon every subject, I should so like it if you would stay with usalways, marry Nausicaa, and become my son-in-law. " Ulysses turnsthe conversation immediately, and meanwhile Queen Arete told hermaids to put a bed in the corridor, and make it with red blankets, and it was to have at least one counterpane. They were also to puta woollen nightgown for Ulysses. "The maids took a torch, and madethe bed as fast as they could: when they had done so they came upto Ulysses and said, 'This way, sir, if you please, your room isquite ready'; and Ulysses was very glad to hear them say so. "

On the following day Alcinous holds a meeting of the Phaeacians andproposes that Ulysses should have a ship got ready to take him homeat once: this being settled he invites all the leading people, andthe fifty-two sailors who are to man Ulysses' ship, to come up tohis own house, and he will give them a banquet--for which he kills adozen sheep, eight pigs, and two oxen. Immediately after gorgingthemselves at the banquet they have a series of athleticcompetitions, and from this I gather the poem to have been writtenby one who saw nothing very odd in letting people compete in sportsrequiring very violent exercise immediately after a heavy meal. Such a course may have been usual in those days, but certainly isnot generally adopted in our own. 

At the games Alcinous makes himself as ridiculous as he always does, and Ulysses behaves much as the hero of the preceding afternoonmight be expected to do--but on his praising the Phaeacians towardsthe close of the proceedings Alcinous says he is a person of suchsingular judgment that they really must all of them make him a veryhandsome present. "Twelve of you, " he exclaims, "are magistrates, and there is myself--that makes thirteen; suppose we give him eachone of us a clean cloak, a tunic, and a talent of gold, "--which inthose days was worth about two hundred and fifty pounds. 

This is unanimously agreed to, and in the evening, towards sundown, the presents began to make their appearance at the palace of KingAlcinous, and the king's sons, perhaps prudently as you willpresently see, place them in the keeping of their mother Arete. 

When the presents have all arrived, Alcinous says to Arete, "Wife, go and fetch the best chest we have, and put a clean cloak and atunic in it. In the meantime Ulysses will take a bath. "

Arete orders the maids to heat a bath, brings the chest, packs upthe raiment and gold which the Phaeacians have brought, and adds acloak and a good tunic as King Alcinous's own contribution. 

Yes, but where--and that is what we are never told--is the 250pounds which he ought to have contributed as well as the cloak andtunic? And where is the beautiful gold goblet which he had alsopromised?

"See to the fastening yourself, " says Queen Arete to Ulysses, "forfear anyone should rob you while you are asleep in the ship. "

Ulysses, we may be sure, was well aware that Alcinous's 250 poundswas not in the box, nor yet the goblet, but he took the hint at onceand made the chest fast without the delay of a moment, with a bondwhich the cunning goddess Circe had taught him. 

He does not seem to have thought his chance of getting the 250pounds and the goblet, and having to unpack his box again, was sogreat as his chance of having his box tampered with before he got itaway, if he neglected to double-lock it at once and put the key inhis pocket. He has always a keen eye to money; indeed the wholeOdyssey turns on what is substantially a money quarrel, so this timewithout the prompting of Minerva he does one of the very fewsensible things which he does, on his own account, throughout thewhole poem. 

Supper is now served, and when it is over, Ulysses, pressed byAlcinous, announces his name and begins the story of his adventures. 

It is with profound regret that I find myself unable to quote any ofthe fascinating episodes with which his narrative abounds, but Ihave said I was going to lecture on the humour of Homer--that is tosay of the Iliad and the Odyssey--and must not be diverted from mysubject. I cannot, however, resist the account which Ulysses givesof his meeting with his mother in Hades, the place of departedspirits, which he has visited by the advice of Circe. His mothercomes up to him and asks him how he managed to get into Hades, beingstill alive. I will translate freely, but quite closely, fromUlysses' own words, as spoken to the Phaeacians. 

"And I said, 'Mother, I had to come here to consult the ghost of theold Theban prophet Teiresias, I have never yet been near Greece, norset foot on my native land, and have had nothing but one long run ofill luck from the day I set out with Agamemnon to fight at Troy. But tell me how you came here yourself? Did you have a long andpainful illness or did heaven vouchsafe you a gentle easy passage toeternity? Tell me also about my father and my son? Is my propertystill in their hands, or has someone else got hold of it who thinksthat I shall not return to claim it? How, again, is my wifeconducting herself? Does she live with her son and make a home forhim, or has she married again?'

"My mother answered, 'Your wife is still mistress of your house, butshe is in very great straits and spends the greater part of her timein tears. No one has actually taken possession of your property, and Telemachus still holds it. He has to accept a great manyinvitations, and gives much the sort of entertainments in returnthat may be expected from one in his position. Your father remainsin the old place, and never goes near the town; he is very badlyoff, and has neither bed nor bedding, nor a stick of furniture ofany kind. In winter he sleeps on the floor in front of the firewith the men, and his clothes are in a shocking state, but insummer, when the warm weather comes on again, he sleeps out in thevineyard on a bed of vine leaves. He takes on very much about yournot having returned, and suffers more and more as he grows older:as for me I died of nothing whatever in the world but grief aboutyourself. There was not a thing the matter with me, but myprolonged anxiety on your account was too much for me, and in theend it just wore me out. '"

In the course of time Ulysses comes to a pause in his narrative andQueen Arete makes a little speech. 

"'What do you think, ' she said to the Phaeacians, 'of such a guestas this? Did you ever see anyone at once so good-looking and soclever? It is true, indeed, that his visit is paid moreparticularly to myself, but you all participate in the honourconferred upon us by a visitor of such distinction. Do not be in ahurry to send him off, nor stingy in the presents you make to one inso great need; for you are all of you very well off. '"

You will note that the queen does not say "_we_ are all of _us_ verywell off. "

"Then the hero Echeneus, who was the oldest man among them, added afew words of his own. 'My friends, ' he said, 'there cannot be twoopinions about the graciousness and sagacity of the remarks thathave just fallen from Her Majesty; nevertheless it is with HisMajesty King Alcinous that the decision must ultimately rest. '

"'The thing shall be done, ' exclaimed Alcinous, 'if I am still kingover the Phaeacians. As for our guest, I know he is anxious toresume his journey, still we must persuade him if we can to staywith us until to-morrow, by which time I shall be able to gettogether the balance of the sum which I mean to press on hisacceptance. '"

So here we have it straight out that the monarch knew he had onlycontributed the coat and waistcoat, and did not know exactly how hewas to lay his hands on the 250 pounds. What with piracy--for wehave been told of at least one case in which Alcinous had looted atown and stolen his housemaid Eurymedusa--what with insufficientchanges of linen, toping like an immortal god, swaggering at large, and open-handed hospitality, it is plain and by no means surprisingthat Alcinous is out at elbows; nor can there be a better example ofthe difference between the occasional broad comedy of the Iliad andthe delicate but very bitter satire of the Odyssey than the way inwhich the fact that Alcinous is in money difficulties is allowed tosteal upon us, as contrasted with the obvious humour of the quarrelsbetween Jove and Juno. At any rate we can hardly wonder at Ulysseshaving felt that to a monarch of such mixed character the unfastenedbox might prove a temptation greater than he could resist. Toreturn, however, to the story--

"If it please your Majesty, " said he, in answer to King Alcinous, "Ishould be delighted to stay here for another twelve months, and toaccept from your hands the vast treasures and the escort which youare go generous as to promise me. I should obviously gain by doingso, for I should return fuller-handed to my own people and shouldthus be both more respected and more loved by my acquaintance. Still to receive such presents--"

The king perceived his embarrassment, and at once relieved him. "Noone, " he exclaimed, "who looks at you can for one moment take youfor a charlatan or a swindler. I know there are many of theseunscrupulous persons going about just now with such plausiblestories that it is very hard to disbelieve them; there is, however, a finish about your style which convinces me of your gooddisposition, " and so on for more than I have space to quote; afterwhich Ulysses again proceeds with his adventures. 

When he had finished them Alcinous insists that the leadingPhaeacians should each one of them give Ulysses a still furtherpresent of a large kitchen copper and a three-legged stand to set iton, "but, " he continues, "as the expense of all these presents isreally too heavy for the purse of any private individual, I shallcharge the whole of them on the rates": literally, "We will repayourselves by getting it in from among the people, for this is tooheavy a present for the purse of a private individual. " And whatthis can mean except charging it on the rates I do not know. 

Of course everyone else sends up his tripod and his cauldron, but wehear nothing about any, either tripod or cauldron, from KingAlcinous. He is very fussy next morning stowing them under theship's benches, but his time and trouble seem to be the extent ofhis contribution. It is hardly necessary to say that Ulysses had togo away without the 250 pounds, and that we never hear of thepromised goblet being presented. Still he had done pretty well. 

I have not quoted anything like all the absurd remarks made byAlcinous, nor shown you nearly as completely as I could do if I hadmore time how obviously the writer is quietly laughing at him in hersleeve. She understands his little ways as she understands those ofMenelaus, who tells Telemachus and Pisistratus that if they like hewill take them a personally conducted tour round the Peloponnese, and that they can make a good thing out of it, for everyone willgive them something--fancy Helen or Queen Arete making such aproposal as this. They are never laughed at, but then they arewomen, whereas Alcinous and Menelaus are men, and this makes all thedifference. 

And now in conclusion let me point out the irony of literature inconnection with this astonishing work. Here is a poem in which thehero and heroine have already been married many years before itbegins: it is marked by a total absence of love-business in suchsense as we understand it: its interest centres mainly in the factof a bald elderly gentleman, whose little remaining hair is red, being eaten out of house and home during his absence by a number ofyoung men who are courting the supposed widow--a widow who, if shebe fair and fat, can hardly also be less than forty. Can anysubject seem more hopeless? Moreover, this subject so initiallyfaulty is treated with a carelessness in respect of consistency, ignorance of commonly known details, and disregard of ordinarycanons, that can hardly be surpassed, and yet I cannot think that inthe whole range of literature there is a work which can bedecisively placed above it. I am afraid you will hardly acceptthis; I do not see how you can be expected to do so, for in thefirst place there is no even tolerable prose translation, and in thesecond, the Odyssey, like the Iliad, has been a school book for overtwo thousand five hundred years, and what more cruel revenge thanthis can dullness take on genius? The Iliad and Odyssey have beenused as text-books for education during at least two thousand fivehundred years, and yet it is only during the last forty or fiftythat people have begun to see that they are by different authors. There was, indeed, so I learn from Colonel Mure's valuable work, aband of scholars some few hundreds of years before the birth ofChrist, who refused to see the Iliad and Odyssey as by the sameauthor, but they were snubbed and snuffed out, and for more than twothousand years were considered to have been finally refuted. Canthere be any more scathing satire upon the value of literarycriticism? It would seem as though Minerva had shed the same thickdarkness over both the poems as she shed over Ulysses, so that theymight go in and out among the dons of Oxford and Cambridge fromgeneration to generation, and none should see them. If I am right, as I believe I am, in holding the Odyssey to have been written by ayoung woman, was ever sleeping beauty more effectually concealedbehind a more impenetrable hedge of dulness?--and she will have tosleep a good many years yet before anyone wakes her effectually. But what else can one expect from people, not one of whom has beenat the very slight exertion of noting a few of the writer's maintopographical indications, and then looking for them in an Admiraltychart or two? Can any step be more obvious and easy--indeed, it isso simple that I am ashamed of myself for not having taken it fortyyears ago. Students of the Odyssey for the most part are soengrossed with the force of the zeugma, and of the enclitic particle[Greek]; they take so much more interest in the digamma and in theAEolic dialect, than they do in the living spirit that sits behindall these things and alone gives them their importance, that, naturally enough, not caring about the personality, it remains andalways must remain invisible to them. 

If I have helped to make it any less invisible to yourselves, let meask you to pardon the somewhat querulous tone of my concludingremarks. 

Quis Desiderio . . . ? {99}

Like Mr. Wilkie Collins, I, too, have been asked to lay some of myliterary experiences before the readers of the Universal Review. Itoccurred to me that the Review must be indeed universal before itcould open its pages to one so obscure as myself; but, nothingdaunted by the distinguished company among which I was for the firsttime asked to move, I resolved to do as I was told, and went to theBritish Museum to see what books I had written. Having refreshed mymemory by a glance at the catalogue, I was about to try and diminishthe large and ever-increasing circle of my non-readers when I becameaware of a calamity that brought me to a standstill, and indeed bidsfair, so far as I can see at present, to put an end to my literaryexistence altogether. 

I should explain that I cannot write unless I have a sloping desk, and the reading-room of the British Museum, where alone I cancompose freely, is unprovided with sloping desks. Like every otherorganism, if I cannot get exactly what I want I make shift with thenext thing to it; true, there are no desks in the reading-room, but, as I once heard a visitor from the country say, "it contains a largenumber of very interesting works. " I know it was not right, andhope the Museum authorities will not be severe upon me if any ofthem reads this confession; but I wanted a desk, and set myself toconsider which of the many very interesting works which a gratefulnation places at the disposal of its would-be authors was bestsuited for my purpose. 

For mere reading I suppose one book is pretty much as good asanother; but the choice of a desk-book is a more serious matter. Itmust be neither too thick nor too thin; it must be large enough tomake a substantial support; it must be strongly bound so as not toyield or give; it must not be too troublesome to carry backwards andforwards; and it must live on shelf C, D, or E, so that there needbe no stooping or reaching too high. These are the conditions whicha really good book must fulfil; simple, however, as they are, it issurprising how few volumes comply with them satisfactorily;moreover, being perhaps too sensitively conscientious, I allowedanother consideration to influence me, and was sincerely anxious notto take a book which would be in constant use for reference byreaders, more especially as, if I did this, I might find myselfdisturbed by the officials. 

For weeks I made experiments upon sundry poetical and philosophicalworks, whose names I have forgotten, but could not succeed infinding my ideal desk, until at length, more by luck than cunning, Ihappened to light upon Frost's Lives of Eminent Christians, which Ihad no sooner tried than I discovered it to be the very perfectionand ne plus ultra of everything that a book should be. It lived inCase No. 2008, and I accordingly took at once to sitting in Row B, where for the last dozen years or so I have sat ever since. 

The first thing I have done whenever I went to the Museum has beento take down Frost's Lives of Eminent Christians and carry it to myseat. It is not the custom of modern writers to refer to the worksto which they are most deeply indebted, and I have never, that Iremember, mentioned it by name before; but it is to this book alonethat I have looked for support during many years of literary labour, and it is round this to me invaluable volume that all my own havepage by page grown up. There is none in the Museum to which I havebeen under anything like such constant obligation, none which I canso ill spare, and none which I would choose so readily if I wereallowed to select one single volume and keep it for my own. 

On finding myself asked for a contribution to the Universal Review, I went, as I have explained, to the Museum, and presently repairedto bookcase No. 2008 to get my favourite volume. Alas! it was inthe room no longer. It was not in use, for its place was filled upalready; besides, no one ever used it but myself. Whether the ghostof the late Mr. Frost has been so eminently unchristian as tointerfere, or whether the authorities have removed the book inignorance of the steady demand which there has been for it on thepart of at least one reader, are points I cannot determine. All Iknow is that the book is gone, and I feel as Wordsworth is generallysupposed to have felt when he became aware that Lucy was in hergrave, and exclaimed so emphatically that this would make aconsiderable difference to him, or words to that effect. 

Now I think of it, Frost's Lives of Eminent Christians was very likeLucy. The one resided at Dovedale in Derbyshire, the other in GreatRussell Street, Bloomsbury. I admit that I do not see theresemblance here at this moment, but if I try to develop myperception I shall doubtless ere long find a marvellously strikingone. In other respects, however, than mere local habitat thelikeness is obvious. Lucy was not particularly attractive eitherinside or out--no more was Frost's Lives of Eminent Christians;there were few to praise her, and of those few still fewer couldbring themselves to like her; indeed, Wordsworth himself seems tohave been the only person who thought much about her one way or theother. In like manner, I believe I was the only reader who thoughtmuch one way or the other about Frost's Lives of Eminent Christians, but this in itself was one of the attractions of the book; and asfor the grief we respectively felt and feel, I believe my own to beas deep as Wordsworth's, if not more so. 

I said above, "as Wordsworth is generally supposed to have felt";for anyone imbued with the spirit of modern science will readWordsworth's poem with different eyes from those of a mere literarycritic. He will note that Wordsworth is most careful not to explainthe nature of the difference which the death of Lucy will occasionto him. He tells us that there will be a difference; but there thematter ends. The superficial reader takes it that he was very sorryshe was dead; it is, of course, possible that he may have actuallybeen so, but he has not said this. On the contrary, he has hintedplainly that she was ugly, and generally disliked; she was only likea violet when she was half-hidden from the view, and only fair as astar when there were so few stars out that it was practicallyimpossible to make an invidious comparison. If there were as manyas even two stars the likeness was felt to be at an end. IfWordsworth had imprudently promised to marry this young personduring a time when he had been unusually long in keeping to goodresolutions, and had afterwards seen someone whom he liked better, then Lucy's death would undoubtedly have made a considerabledifference to him, and this is all that he has ever said that itwould do. What right have we to put glosses upon the masterlyreticence of a poet, and credit him with feelings possibly the veryreverse of those he actually entertained?

Sometimes, indeed, I have been inclined to think that a mystery isbeing hinted at more dark than any critic has suspected. I do nothappen to possess a copy of the poem, but the writer, if I am notmistaken, says that "few could know when Lucy ceased to be. ""Ceased to be" is a suspiciously euphemistic expression, and thewords "few could know" are not applicable to the ordinary peacefuldeath of a domestic servant such as Lucy appears to have been. Nomatter how obscure the deceased, any number of people commonly canknow the day and hour of his or her demise, whereas in this case weare expressly told it would be impossible for them to do so. Wordsworth was nothing if not accurate, and would not have said thatfew could know, but that few actually did know, unless he was awareof circumstances that precluded all but those implicated in thecrime of her death from knowing the precise moment of itsoccurrence. If Lucy was the kind of person not obscurely portrayedin the poem; if Wordsworth had murdered her, either by cutting herthroat or smothering her, in concert, perhaps, with his friendsSouthey and Coleridge; and if he had thus found himself releasedfrom an engagement which had become irksome to him, or possibly fromthe threat of an action for breach of promise, then there is not asyllable in the poem with which he crowns his crime that is notalive with meaning. On any other supposition to the general readerit is unintelligible. 

We cannot be too guarded in the interpretations we put upon thewords of great poets. Take the young lady who never loved the deargazelle--and I don't believe she did; we are apt to think that Mooreintended us to see in this creation of his fancy a sweet, amiable, but most unfortunate young woman, whereas all he has told us abouther points to an exactly opposite conclusion. In reality, he wishedus to see a young lady who had been a habitual complainer from herearliest childhood; whose plants had always died as soon as shebought them, while those belonging to her neighbours had flourished. The inference is obvious, nor can we reasonably doubt that Mooreintended us to draw it; if her plants were the very first to fadeaway, she was evidently the very first to neglect or otherwisemaltreat them. She did not give them enough water, or left the doorof her fern-case open when she was cooking her dinner at the gasstove, or kept them too near the paraffin oil, or other like folly;and as for her temper, see what the gazelles did; as long as theydid not know her "well, " they could just manage to exist, but whenthey got to understand her real character, one after another feltthat death was the only course open to it, and accordingly diedrather than live with such a mistress. True, the young lady herselfsaid the gazelles loved her; but disagreeable people are apt tothink themselves amiable, and in view of the course invariably takenby the gazelles themselves anyone accustomed to weigh evidence willhold that she was probably mistaken. 

I must, however, return to Frost's Lives of Eminent Christians. Iwill leave none of the ambiguity about my words in which Moore andWordsworth seem to have delighted. I am very sorry the book isgone, and know not where to turn for its successor. Till I havefound a substitute I can write no more, and I do not know how tofind even a tolerable one. I should try a volume of Migne'sComplete Course of Patrology, but I do not like books in more thanone volume, for the volumes vary in thickness, and one never canremember which one took; the four volumes, however, of Bede inGiles's Anglican Fathers are not open to this objection, and I havereserved them for favourable consideration. Mather's Magnalia mightdo, but the binding does not please me; Cureton's Corpus Ignatianummight also do if it were not too thin. I do not like takingNorton's Genuineness of the Gospels, as it is just possible someonemay be wanting to know whether the Gospels are genuine or not, andbe unable to find out because I have got Mr. Norton's book. Baxter's Church History of England, Lingard's Anglo-Saxon Church, and Cardwell's Documentary Annals, though none of them as good asFrost, are works of considerable merit; but on the whole I thinkArvine's Cyclopedia of Moral and Religious Anecdote is perhaps theone book in the room which comes within measurable distance ofFrost. I should probably try this book first, but it has a fatalobjection in its too seductive title. "I am not curious, " as MissLottie Venne says in one of her parts, "but I like to know, " and Imight be tempted to pervert the book from its natural uses and openit, so as to find out what kind of a thing a moral and religiousanecdote is. I know, of course, that there are a great manyanecdotes in the Bible, but no one thinks of calling them eithermoral or religious, though some of them certainly seem as if theymight fairly find a place in Mr. Arvine's work. There are somethings, however, which it is better not to know, and take it allround I do not think I should be wise in putting myself in the wayof temptation, and adopting Arvine as the successor to my belovedand lamented Frost. 

Some successor I must find, or I must give up writing altogether, and this I should be sorry to do. I have only as yet written abouta third, or from that--counting works written but not published--toa half of the books which I have set myself to write. It would notso much matter if old age was not staring me in the face. Dr. Parrsaid it was "a beastly shame for an old man not to have laid down agood cellar of port in his youth"; I, like the greater number, Isuppose, of those who write books at all, write in order that I mayhave something to read in my old age when I can write no longer. Iknow what I shall like better than anyone can tell me, and writeaccordingly; if my career is nipped in the bud, as seems only toolikely, I really do not know where else I can turn for presentagreeable occupation, nor yet how to make suitable provision for mylater years. Other writers can, of course, make excellent provisionfor their own old ages, but they cannot do so for mine, any morethan I should succeed if I were to try to cater for theirs. It isone of those cases in which no man can make agreement for hisbrother. 

I have no heart for continuing this article, and if I had, I havenothing of interest to say. No one's literary career can have beensmoother or more unchequered than mine. I have published all mybooks at my own expense, and paid for them in due course. What canbe conceivably more unromantic? For some years I had a littleliterary grievance against the authorities of the British Museumbecause they would insist on saying in their catalogue that I hadpublished three sermons on Infidelity in the year 1820. I thought Ihad not, and got them out to see. They were rather funny, but theywere not mine. Now, however, this grievance has been removed. Ihad another little quarrel with them because they would describe meas "of St. John's College, Cambridge, " an establishment for which Ihave the most profound veneration, but with which I have not had thehonour to be connected for some quarter of a century. At last theysaid they would change this description if I would only tell themwhat I was, for, though they had done their best to find out, theyhad themselves failed. I replied with modest pride that I was aBachelor of Arts. I keep all my other letters inside my name, notoutside. They mused and said it was unfortunate that I was not aMaster of Arts. Could I not get myself made a Master? I said Iunderstood that a Mastership was an article the University could notdo under about five pounds, and that I was not disposed to gosixpence higher than three ten. They again said it was a pity, forit would be very inconvenient to them if I did not keep to somethingbetween a bishop and a poet. I might be anything I liked in reason, provided I showed proper respect for the alphabet; but they had gotme between "Samuel Butler, bishop, " and "Samuel Butler, poet. " Itwould be very troublesome to shift me, and bachelor came beforebishop. This was reasonable, so I replied that, under thosecircumstances, if they pleased, I thought I would like to be aphilosophical writer. They embraced the solution, and, no matterwhat I write now, I must remain a philosophical writer as long as Ilive, for the alphabet will hardly be altered in my time, and I mustbe something between "Bis" and "Poe. " If I could get a volume of myexcellent namesake's Hudibras out of the list of my works, I shouldbe robbed of my last shred of literary grievance, so I say nothingabout this, but keep it secret, lest some worse thing should happento me. Besides, I have a great respect for my namesake, and alwayssay that if Erewhon had been a racehorse it would have been got byHudibras out of Analogy. Someone said this to me many years ago, and I felt so much flattered that I have been repeating the remarkas my own ever since. 

But how small are these grievances as compared with those enduredwithout a murmur by hundreds of writers far more deserving thanmyself. When I see the scores and hundreds of workers in thereading-room who have done so much more than I have, but whose workis absolutely fruitless to themselves, and when I think of theprompt recognition obtained by my own work, I ask myself what I havedone to be thus rewarded. On the other hand, the feeling that Ihave succeeded far beyond my deserts hitherto, makes it all theharder for me to acquiesce without complaint in the extinction of acareer which I honestly believe to be a promising one; and once moreI repeat that, unless the Museum authorities give me back my Frost, or put a locked clasp on Arvine, my career must be extinguished. Give me back Frost, and, if life and health are spared, I will writeanother dozen of volumes yet before I hang up my fiddle--if soserious a confusion of metaphors may be pardoned. I know from longexperience how kind and considerate both the late and presentsuperintendents of the reading-room were and are, but I doubt howfar either of them would be disposed to help me on this occasion;continue, however, to rob me of my Frost, and, whatever else I maydo, I will write no more books. 

Note by Dr. Garnett, British Museum. --The frost has broken up. Mr. Butler is restored to literature. Mr. Mudie may make himself easy. England will still boast a humorist; and the late Mr. Darwin (towhose posthumous machinations the removal of the book was owing)will continue to be confounded. --R. GARNETT. 

Ramblings in Cheapside {110}

Walking the other day in Cheapside I saw some turtles in Mr. Sweeting's window, and was tempted to stay and look at them. As Idid so I was struck not more by the defences with which they werehedged about, than by the fatuousness of trying to hedge that in atall which, if hedged thoroughly, must die of its own defencefulness. The holes for the head and feet through which the turtle leaks out, as it were, on to the exterior world, and through which it againabsorbs the exterior world into itself--"catching on" through themto things that are thus both turtle and not turtle at one and thesame time--these holes stultify the armour, and show it to have beendesigned by a creature with more of faithfulness to a fixed idea, and hence one-sidedness, than of that quick sense of relativeimportances and their changes, which is the main factor of goodliving. 

The turtle obviously had no sense of proportion; it differed sowidely from myself that I could not comprehend it; and as this wordoccurred to me, it occurred also that until my body comprehended itsbody in a physical material sense, neither would my mind be able tocomprehend its mind with any thoroughness. For unity of mind canonly be consummated by unity of body; everything, therefore, must bein some respects both knave and fool to all that which has not eatenit, or by which it has not been eaten. As long as the turtle was inthe window and I in the street outside, there was no chance of ourcomprehending one another. 

Nevertheless, I knew that I could get it to agree with me if I couldso effectually buttonhole and fasten on to it as to eat it. Mostmen have an easy method with turtle soup, and I had no misgiving butthat if I could bring my first premise to bear I should prove thebetter reasoner. My difficulty lay in this initial process, for Ihad not with me the argument that would alone compel Mr. Sweeting tothink that I ought to be allowed to convert the turtles--I mean Ihad no money in my pocket. No missionary enterprise can be carriedon without any money at all, but even so small a sum as half a crownwould, I suppose, have enabled me to bring the turtle partly round, and with many half-crowns I could in time no doubt convert the lot, for the turtle needs must go where the money drives. If, as isalleged, the world stands on a turtle, the turtle stands on money. No money no turtle. As for money, that stands on opinion, credit, trust, faith--things that, though highly material in connection withmoney, are still of immaterial essence. 

The steps are perfectly plain. The men who caught the turtlesbrought a fairly strong and definite opinion to bear upon them, thatpassed into action, and later on into money. They thought theturtles would come that way, and verified their opinion; on this, will and action were generated, with the result that the men turnedthe turtles on their backs and carried them off. Mr. Sweetingtouched these men with money, which is the outward and visible signof verified opinion. The customer touches Mr. Sweeting with money, Mr. Sweeting touches the waiter and the cook with money. They touchthe turtle with skill and verified opinion. Finally, the customerapplies the clinching argument that brushes all sophisms aside, andbids the turtle stand protoplasm to protoplasm with himself, to knoweven as it is known. 

But it must be all touch, touch, touch; skill, opinion, power, andmoney, passing in and out with one another in any order we like, butstill link to link and touch to touch. If there is failure anywherein respect of opinion, skill, power, or money, either as regardsquantity or quality, the chain can be no stronger than its weakestlink, and the turtle and the clinching argument will fly asunder. Of course, if there is an initial failure in connection, throughdefect in any member of the chain, or of connection between thelinks, it will no more be attempted to bring the turtle and theclinching argument together, than it will to chain up a dog with twopieces of broken chain that are disconnected. The contactthroughout must be conceived as absolute; and yet perfect contact isinconceivable by us, for on becoming perfect it ceases to becontact, and becomes essential, once for all inseverable, identity. The most absolute contact short of this is still contact by courtesyonly. So here, as everywhere else, Eurydice glides off as we areabout to grasp her. We can see nothing face to face; our utmostseeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowdedpocket. 

Presently my own blind finger-ends fished up the conclusion, that asI had neither time nor money to spend on perfecting the chain thatwould put me in full spiritual contact with Mr. Sweeting's turtles, I had better leave them to complete their education at someoneelse's expense rather than mine, so I walked on towards the Bank. As I did so it struck me how continually we are met by this meltingof one existence into another. The limits of the body seem welldefined enough as definitions go, but definitions seldom go far. What, for example, can seem more distinct from a man than his bankeror his solicitor? Yet these are commonly so much parts of him thathe can no more cut them off and grow new ones, than he can grow newlegs or arms; neither must he wound his solicitor; a wound in thesolicitor is a very serious thing. As for his bank--failure of hisbank's action may be as fatal to a man _as_ failure of his heart. Ihave said nothing about the medical or spiritual adviser, but mostmen grow into the society that surrounds them by the help of thesefour main tap-roots, and not only into the world of humanity, butinto the universe at large. We can, indeed, grow butchers, bakers, and greengrocers, almost ad libitum, but these are low developments, and correspond to skin, hair, or finger-nails. Those of us againwho are not highly enough organized to have grown a solicitor orbanker can generally repair the loss of whatever social organizationthey may possess as freely as lizards are said to grow new tails;but this with the higher social, as well as organic, developments isonly possible to a very limited extent. 

The doctrine of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls--adoctrine to which the foregoing considerations are for the most parteasy corollaries--crops up no matter in what direction we allow ourthoughts to wander. And we meet instances of transmigration of bodyas well as of soul. I do not mean that both body and soul havetransmigrated together, far from it; but that, as we can oftenrecognize a transmigrated mind in an alien body, so we not lessoften see a body that is clearly only a transmigration, linked on tosomeone else's new and alien soul. We meet people every day whosebodies are evidently those of men and women long dead, but whoseappearance we know through their portraits. We see them going aboutin omnibuses, railway carriages, and in all public places. Thecards have been shuffled, and they have drawn fresh lots in life andnationalities, but anyone fairly well up in medieval and last-century portraiture knows them at a glance. 

Going down once towards Italy I saw a young man in the train whom Irecognized, only he seemed to have got younger. He was with afriend, and his face was in continual play, but for some little timeI puzzled in vain to recollect where it was that I had seen himbefore. All of a sudden I remembered he was King Francis I ofFrance. I had hitherto thought the face of this king impossible, but when I saw it in play I understood it. His great contemporaryHenry VIII keeps a restaurant in Oxford Street. Falstaff drove oneof the St. Gothard diligences for many years, and only retired whenthe railway was opened. Titian once made me a pair of boots atVicenza, and not very good ones. At Modena I had my hair cut by ayoung man whom I perceived to be Raffaelle. The model who sat tohim for his celebrated Madonnas is first lady in a confectioneryestablishment at Montreal. She has a little motherly pimple on theleft side of her nose that is misleading at first, but onexamination she is readily recognized; probably Raffaelle's modelhad the pimple too, but Raffaelle left it out--as he would. 

Handel, of course, is Madame Patey. Give Madame Patey Handel's wigand clothes, and there would be no telling her from Handel. It isnot only that the features and the shape of the head are the same, but there is a certain imperiousness of expression and attitudeabout Handel which he hardly attempts to conceal in Madame Patey. It is a curious coincidence that he should continue to be such anincomparable renderer of his own music. Pope Julius II was the lateMr. Darwin. Rameses II is a blind woman now, and stands in Holborn, holding a tin mug. I never could understand why I always foundmyself humming "They oppressed them with burthens" when I passedher, till one day I was looking in Mr. Spooner's window in theStrand, and saw a photograph of Rameses II. Mary Queen of Scotswears surgical boots and is subject to fits, near the Horse Shoe inTottenham Court Road. 

Michael Angelo is a commissionaire; I saw him on board the GlenRosa, which used to run every day from London to Clacton-on-Sea andback. It gave me quite a turn when I saw him coming down the stairsfrom the upper deck, with his bronzed face, flattened nose, and withthe familiar bar upon his forehead. I never liked Michael Angelo, and never shall, but I am afraid of him, and was near trying to hidewhen I saw him coming towards me. He had not got hiscommissionaire's uniform on, and I did not know he was one till Imet him a month or so later in the Strand. When we got to Blackwallthe music struck up and people began to dance. I never saw a mandance so much in my life. He did not miss a dance all the way toClacton, nor all the way back again, and when not dancing he wasflirting and cracking jokes. I could hardly believe my eyes when Ireflected that this man had painted the famous "Last Judgment, " andhad made all those statues. 

Dante is, or was a year or two ago, a waiter at Brissago on the LagoMaggiore, only he is better-tempered-looking, and has a moreintellectual expression. He gave me his ideas upon beauty: "Tuttoch' e vero e bello, " he exclaimed, with all his old self-confidence. I am not afraid of Dante. I know people by their friends, and hewent about with Virgil, so I said with some severity, "No, Dante, ilnaso della Signora Robinson e vero, ma non e bello"; and he admittedI was right. Beatrice's name is Towler; she is waitress at a smallinn in German Switzerland. I used to sit at my window and hearpeople call "Towler, Towler, Towler, " fifty times in a forenoon. She was the exact antithesis to Abra; Abra, if I remember, used tocome before they called her name, but no matter how often theycalled Towler, everyone came before she did. I suppose they spelther name Taula, but to me it sounded Towler; I never, however, metanyone else with this name. She was a sweet, artless little hussy, who made me play the piano to her, and she said it was lovely. Ofcourse I only played my own compositions; so I believed her, and itall went off very nicely. I thought it might save trouble if I didnot tell her who she really was, so I said nothing about it. 

I met Socrates once. He was my muleteer on an excursion which Iwill not name, for fear it should identify the man. The moment Isaw my guide I knew he was somebody, but for the life of me I couldnot remember who. All of a sudden it flashed across me that he wasSocrates. He talked enough for six, but it was all in dialetto, soI could not understand him, nor, when I had discovered who he was, did I much try to do so. He was a good creature, a trifle given tostealing fruit and vegetables, but an amiable man enough. He hadhad a long day with his mule and me, and he only asked me fivefrancs. I gave him ten, for I pitied his poor old patched boots, and there was a meekness about him that touched me. "And now, Socrates, " said I at parting, "we go on our several ways, you tosteal tomatoes, I to filch ideas from other people; for the rest--which of these two roads will be the better going, our father whichis in heaven knows, but we know not. "

I have never seen Mendelssohn, but there is a fresco of him on theterrace, or open-air dining-room, of an inn at Chiavenna. He is notcalled Mendelssohn, but I knew him by his legs. He is in thecostume of a dandy of some five-and-forty years ago, is smoking acigar, and appears to be making an offer of marriage to his cook. Beethoven both my friend Mr. H. Festing Jones and I have had thegood fortune to meet; he is an engineer now, and does not know onenote from another; he has quite lost his deafness, is married, andis, of course, a little squat man with the same refractory hair thathe always had. It was very interesting to watch him, and Jonesremarked that before the end of dinner he had become positivelyposthumous. One morning I was told the Beethovens were going away, and before long I met their two heavy boxes being carried down thestairs. The boxes were so squab and like their owners, that I halfthought for a moment that they were inside, and should hardly havebeen surprised to see them spring up like a couple of Jacks-in-the-box. "Sono indentro?" said I, with a frown of wonder, pointing tothe boxes. The porters knew what I meant, and laughed. But thereis no end to the list of people whom I have been able to recognize, and before I had got through it myself, I found I had walked somedistance, and had involuntarily paused in front of a second-handbookstall. 

I do not like books. I believe I have the smallest library of anyliterary man in London, and I have no wish to increase it. I keepmy books at the British Museum and at Mudie's, and it makes me veryangry if anyone gives me one for my private library. I once heardtwo ladies disputing in a railway carriage as to whether one of themhad or had not been wasting money. "I spent it in books, " said theaccused, "and it's not wasting money to buy books. " "Indeed, mydear, I think it is, " was the rejoinder, and in practice I agreewith it. Webster's Dictionary, Whitaker's Almanack, and Bradshaw'sRailway Guide should be sufficient for any ordinary library; it willbe time enough to go beyond these when the mass of useful andentertaining matter which they provide has been mastered. Nevertheless, I admit that sometimes, if not particularly busy, Istop at a second-hand bookstall and turn over a book or two frommere force of habit. 

I know not what made me pick up a copy of AEschylus--of course in anEnglish version--or rather I know not what made AEschylus take upwith me, for he took me rather than I him; but no sooner had he gotme than he began puzzling me, as he has done any time this fortyyears, to know wherein his transcendent merit can be supposed tolie. To me he is, like the greater number of classics in all agesand countries, a literary Struldbrug, rather than a true ambrosia-fed immortal. There are true immortals, but they are few and farbetween; most classics are as great impostors dead as they were whenliving, and while posing as gods are, five-sevenths of them, onlyStruldbrugs. It comforts me to remember that Aristophanes likedAEschylus no better than I do. True, he praises him by comparisonwith Sophocles and Euripides, but he only does so that he may rundown these last more effectively. Aristophanes is a safe man tofollow, nor do I see why it should not be as correct to laugh withhim as to pull a long face with the Greek Professors; but this isneither here nor there, for no one really cares about AEschylus; themore interesting question is how he contrived to make so many peoplefor so many years pretend to care about him. 

Perhaps he married somebody's daughter. If a man would get hold ofthe public ear, he must pay, marry, or fight. I have neverunderstood that AEschylus was a man of means, and the fighters donot write poetry, so I suppose he must have married a theatricalmanager's daughter, and got his plays brought out that way. The earof any age or country is like its land, air, and water; it seemslimitless but is really limited, and is already in the keeping ofthose who naturally enough will have no squatting on such valuableproperty. It is written and talked up to as closely as the means ofsubsistence are bred up to by a teeming population. There is not asquare inch of it but is in private hands, and he who would freeholdany part of it must do so by purchase, marriage, or fighting, in theusual way--and fighting gives the longest, safest tenure. Thepublic itself has hardly more voice in the question who shall haveits ear, than the land has in choosing its owners. It is farmed asthose who own it think most profitable to themselves, and smallblame to them; nevertheless, it has a residuum of mulishness whichthe land has not, and does sometimes dispossess its tenants. It isin this residuum that those who fight place their hope and trust. 

Or perhaps AEschylus squared the leading critics of his time. Whenone comes to think of it, he must have done so, for how is itconceivable that such plays should have had such runs if he had not?I met a lady one year in Switzerland who had some parrots thatalways travelled with her and were the idols of her life. Theseparrots would not let anyone read aloud in their presence, unlessthey heard their own names introduced from time to time. If thesewere freely interpolated into the text they would remain as still asstones, for they thought the reading was about themselves. If itwas not about them it could not be allowed. The leaders ofliterature are like these parrots; they do not look at what a manwrites, nor if they did would they understand it much better thanthe parrots do; but they like the sound of their own names, and ifthese are freely interpolated in a tone they take as friendly, theymay even give ear to an outsider. Otherwise they will scream himoff if they can. 

I should not advise anyone with ordinary independence of mind toattempt the public ear unless he is confident that he can out-lungand out-last his own generation; for if he has any force, peoplewill and ought to be on their guard against him, inasmuch as thereis no knowing where he may not take them. Besides, they have stakedtheir money on the wrong men so often without suspecting it, thatwhen there comes one whom they do suspect it would be madness not tobet against him. True, he may die before he has out screamed hisopponents, but that has nothing to do with it. If his scream waswell pitched it will sound clearer when he is dead. We do not knowwhat death is. If we know so little about life which we haveexperienced, how shall we know about death which we have not--and inthe nature of things never can? Everyone, as I said years ago inAlps and Sanctuaries, is an immortal to himself, for he cannot knowthat he is dead until he is dead, and when dead how can he knowanything about anything? All we know is, that even the humblestdead may live long after all trace of the body has disappeared; wesee them doing it in the bodies and memories of those that comeafter them; and not a few live so much longer and more effectuallythan is desirable, that it has been necessary to get rid of them byAct of Parliament. It is love that alone gives life, and the truestlife is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously inothers, and with which we have no concern. Our concern is so toorder ourselves that we may be of the number of them that enter intolife--although we know it not. 

AEschylus did so order himself; but his life is not of thatinspiriting kind that can be won through fighting the good fightonly--or being believed to have fought it. His voice is the echo ofa drone, drone-begotten and drone-sustained. It is not a tone thata man must utter or die--nay, even though he die; and likely enoughhalf the allusions and hard passages in AEschylus of which we canmake neither head nor tail are in reality only puffs of some of theliterary leaders of his time. 

The lady above referred to told me more about her parrots. She waslike a Nasmyth's hammer going slow--very gentle, but irresistible. She always read the newspaper to them. What was the use of having anewspaper if one did not read it to one's parrots?

"And have you divined, " I asked, "to which side they incline inpolitics?"

"They do not like Mr. Gladstone, " was the somewhat freezing answer;"this is the only point on which we disagree, for I adore him. Don't ask more about this, it is a great grief to me. I tell themeverything, " she continued, "and hide no secret from them. "

"But can any parrot be trusted to keep a secret?"

"Mine can. "

"And on Sundays do you give them the same course of reading as on aweek-day, or do you make a difference?"

"On Sundays I always read them a genealogical chapter from the Oldor New Testament, for I can thus introduce their names withoutprofanity. I always keep tea by me in case they should ask for itin the night, and I have an Etna to warm it for them; they take milkand sugar. The old white-headed clergyman came to see them lastnight; it was very painful, for Jocko reminded him so strongly ofhis late . . . "

I thought she was going to say "wife, " but it proved to have beenonly of a parrot that he had once known and loved. 

One evening she was in difficulties about the quarantine, which wasenforced that year on the Italian frontier. The local doctor hadgone down that morning to see the Italian doctor and arrange somedetails. "Then, perhaps, my dear, " she said to her husband, "he isthe quarantine. " "No, my love, " replied her husband. "Thequarantine is not a person, it is a place where they put people";but she would not be comforted, and suspected the quarantine as anenemy that might at any moment pounce out upon her and her parrots. So a lady told me once that she had been in like trouble about theanthem. She read in her Prayer Book that in choirs and places wherethey sing "here followeth the anthem, " yet the person with this mostmysteriously sounding name never did follow. They had a choir, andno one could say the church was not a place where they sang, forthey did sing--both chants and hymns. Why, then, this persistentslackness on the part of the anthem, who at this juncture shouldfollow her papa, the rector, into the reading-desk? No doubt hewould come some day, and then what would he be like? Fair or dark?Tall or short? Would he be bald and wear spectacles like papa, would he be young and good-looking? Anyhow, there was somethingwrong, for it was announced that he would follow, and he never didfollow; therefore there was no knowing what he might not do next. 

I heard of the parrots a year or two later as giving lessons inItalian to an English maid. I do not know what their terms were. Alas! since then both they and their mistress have joined themajority. When the poor lady felt her end was near she desired (andthe responsibility for this must rest with her, not me) that thebirds might be destroyed, as fearing that they might come to beneglected, and knowing that they could never be loved again as shehad loved them. On being told that all was over, she said, "Thankyou, " and immediately expired. 

Reflecting in such random fashion, and strolling with no greatermethod, I worked my way back through Cheapside and found myself oncemore in front of Sweeting's window. Again the turtles attracted me. They were alive, and so far at any rate they agreed with me. Nay, they had eyes, mouths, legs, if not arms, and feet, so there wasmuch in which we were both of a mind, but surely they must bemistaken in arming themselves so very heavily. Any creature ongetting what the turtle aimed at would overreach itself and belanded not in safety but annihilation. It should have no communionwith the outside world at all, for death could creep in wherever thecreature could creep out; and it must creep out somewhere if it wasto hook on to outside things. What death can be more absolute thansuch absolute isolation? Perfect death, indeed, if it wereattainable (which it is not), is as near perfect security as we canreach, but it is not the kind of security aimed at by any animalthat is at the pains of defending itself. For such want to havethings both ways, desiring the livingness of life without itsperils, and the safety of death without its deadness, and some of usdo actually get this for a considerable time, but we do not get itby plating ourselves with armour as the turtle does. We tried thisin the Middle Ages, and no longer mock ourselves with the weight ofarmour that our forefathers carried in battle. Indeed the moredeadly the weapons of attack become the more we go into the fightslug-wise. 

Slugs have ridden their contempt for defensive armour as much todeath as the turtles their pursuit of it. They have hardly morethan skin enough to hold themselves together; they court death everytime they cross the road. Yet death comes not to them more than tothe turtle, whose defences are so great that there is little leftinside to be defended. Moreover, the slugs fare best in the longrun, for turtles are dying out, while slugs are not, and there mustbe millions of slugs all the world over for every single turtle. Ofthe two vanities, therefore, that of the slug seems mostsubstantial. 

In either case the creature thinks itself safe, but is sure to befound out sooner or later; nor is it easy to explain this mockerysave by reflecting that everything must have its meat in due season, and that meat can only be found for such a multitude of mouths bygiving everything as meat in due season to something else. This islike the Kilkenny cats, or robbing Peter to pay Paul; but it is theway of the world, and as every animal must contribute in kind to thepicnic of the universe, one does not see what better arrangementcould be made than the providing each race with a hereditaryfallacy, which shall in the end get it into a scrape, but whichshall generally stand the wear and tear of life for some time. "Dout des" is the writing on all flesh to him that eats it; and nocreature is dearer to itself than it is to some other that woulddevour it. 

Nor is there any statement or proposition more invulnerable thanliving forms are. Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon oneanother just like living forms. They support one another as plantsand animals do; they are based ultimately on credit, or faith, rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction. The whole universeis carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence onwhich it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapseimmediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based onvague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passesinto will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh:it is meteoric--suspended in mid-air; it is the baseless fabric of avision so vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no base can seem morebroad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bringit about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails, a systembased on faith fails also. 

Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is aninflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is anothermatter. If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragablecertainty for everything that they have taken hitherto as papermoney on the credit of the bank of public opinion, is there moneyenough behind it all to stand so great a drain even on so great areserve? Probably there is not, but happily there can be no suchpanic, for even though the cultured classes may do so, theuncultured are too dull to have brains enough to commit suchstupendous folly. It takes a long course of academic training toeducate a man up to the standard which he must reach before he canentertain such questions seriously, and by a merciful dispensationof Providence university training is almost as costly as it isunprofitable. The majority will thus be always unable to afford it, and will base their opinions on mother wit and current opinionrather than on demonstration. 

So I turned my steps homewards; I saw a good many more things on myway home, but I was told that I was not to see more this time than Icould get into twelve pages of the Universal Review; I musttherefore reserve any remark which I think might perhaps entertainthe reader for another occasion. 

The Aunt, the Nieces, and the Dog {127}

When a thing is old, broken, and useless we throw it on the dust-heap, but when it is sufficiently old, sufficiently broken, andsufficiently useless we give money for it, put it into a museum, andread papers over it which people come long distances to hear. Byand by, when the whirligig of time has brought on another revenge, the museum itself becomes a dust-heap, and remains so till afterlong ages it is rediscovered, and valued as belonging to a neo-rubbish age--containing, perhaps, traces of a still older paleo-rubbish civilization. So when people are old, indigent, and in allrespects incapable, we hold them in greater and greater contempt astheir poverty and impotence increase, till they reach the pitch whenthey are actually at the point to die, whereon they become sublime. Then we place every resource our hospitals can command at theirdisposal, and show no stint in our consideration for them. 

It is the same with all our interests. We care most about extremesof importance and of unimportance; but extremes of importance aretainted with fear, and a very imperfect fear casteth out love. Extremes of unimportance cannot hurt us, therefore we are welldisposed towards them; the means may come to do so, therefore we donot love them. Hence we pick a fly out of a milk-jug and watch withpleasure over its recovery, for we are confident that under noconceivable circumstances will it want to borrow money from us; butwe feel less sure about a mouse, so we show it no quarter. Thecompilers of our almanacs well know this tendency of our natures, sothey tell us, not when Noah went into the ark, nor when the templeof Jerusalem was dedicated, but that Lindley Murray, grammarian, died January 16th, 1826. This is not because they could not find somany as three hundred and sixty-five events of considerable interestsince the creation of the world, but because they well know we wouldrather hear of something less interesting. We care most about whatconcerns us either very closely, or so little that practically wehave nothing whatever to do with it. 

I once asked a young Italian, who professed to have a considerableknowledge of English literature, which of all our poems pleased himbest. He replied without a moment's hesitation:

"Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon;The little dog laughed to see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon. "

He said this was better than anything in Italian. They had Danteand Tasso, and ever so many more great poets, but they had nothingcomparable to "Hey diddle diddle, " nor had he been able to conceivehow anyone could have written it. Did I know the author's name, andhad we given him a statue? On this I told him of the young lady ofHarrow who would go to church in a barrow, and plied him withwhatever rhyming nonsense I could call to mind, but it was no use;all of these things had an element of reality that robbed them ofhalf their charm, whereas "Hey diddle diddle" had nothing in it thatcould conceivably concern him. 

So again it is with the things that gall us most. What is it thatrises up against us at odd times and smites us in the face again andagain for years after it has happened? That we spent all the bestyears of our life in learning what we have found to be a swindle, and to have been known to be a swindle by those who took money formisleading us? That those on whom we most leaned most betrayed us?That we have only come to feel our strength when there is littlestrength left of any kind to feel? These things will hardly muchdisturb a man of ordinary good temper. But that he should have saidthis or that little unkind and wanton saying; that he should havegone away from this or that hotel and given a shilling too little tothe waiter; that his clothes were shabby at such or such a garden-party--these things gall us _as_ a corn will sometimes do, thoughthe loss of a limb may not be seriously felt. 

I have been reminded lately of these considerations with more thancommon force by reading the very voluminous correspondence left bymy grandfather, Dr. Butler, of Shrewsbury, whose memoirs I amengaged in writing. I have found a large number of interestingletters on subjects of serious import, but must confess that it isto the hardly less numerous lighter letters that I have been mostattracted, nor do I feel sure that my eminent namesake did not sharemy predilection. Among other letters in my possession I have onebundle that has been kept apart, and has evidently no connectionwith Dr. Butler's own life. I cannot use these letters, therefore, for my book, but over and above the charm of their inspiredspelling, I find them of such an extremely trivial nature that Iincline to hope the reader may derive as much amusement from them asI have done myself, and venture to give them the publicity herewhich I must refuse them in my book. The dates and signatures have, with the exception of Mrs. Newton's, been carefully erased, but Ihave collected that they were written by the two servants of asingle lady who resided at no great distance from London, to twonieces of the said lady who lived in London itself. The aunt neverwrites, but always gets one of the servants to do so for her. Sheappears either as "your aunt" or as "She"; her name is not given, but she is evidently looked upon with a good deal of awe by all whohad to do with her. 

The letters almost all of them relate to visits either of the auntto London, or of the nieces to the aunt's home, which, fromoccasional allusions to hopping, I gather to have been in Kent, Sussex, or Surrey. I have arranged them to the best of my power, and take the following to be the earliest. It has no signature, butis not in the handwriting of the servant who styles herselfElizabeth, or Mrs. Newton. It runs:--

"MADAM, --Your Aunt Wishes me to inform you she will be glad ifyou will let hir know if you think of coming To hir House thissmonth or Next as she cannot have you in September on a kount ofthe Hoping If you ar coming she thinkes she had batter Go toLondon on the Day you com to hir House she says you shall haveeverry Thing raddy for you at hir House and Mrs. Newton to meetyou and stay with you till She returnes a gann. 

"if you arnot Coming thiss Summer She will be in London beforethiss Month is out and will Sleep on the Sofy As She willnot bein London more thann two nits. And She Says she willnot trubleyou on anny a kount as She Will returne the Same Day before Shewill plage you anny more. But She thanks you for asking hir toLondon. But She says She cannot leve the house at prassant Shesayhir Survants ar to do for you as she cannot lodge yours norshe willnot have thim in at the house anny more to brake anddestroy hir thinks and beslive hir and make up Lies by hir andSkandel as your too did She says she mens to pay fore 2 Nits andone day, She says the Pepelwill let hir have it if you ask thimto let hir: you Will be so good as to let hir know sun: wishShe is to do, as She says She dos not care anny thing a bout it. Which way tiss she is batter than She was and desirs hir Love tobouth bouth. 

"Your aunt wises to know how the silk Clocks ar madup [how thesilk cloaks are made up] with a Cape or a wood as she is a gointo have one madeup to rideout in in hir littel shas [chaise]. 

"Charles is a butty and so good. 

"Mr & Mrs Newton ar quite wall & desires to be remembered toyou. "

I can throw no light on the meaning of the verb to "beslive. " Eachletter in the MS. Is so admirably formed that there can be noquestion about the word being as I have given it. Nor have I beenable to discover what is referred to by the words "Charles is abutty and so good. " We shall presently meet with a Charles who"flies in the Fier, " but that Charles appears to have been inLondon, whereas this one is evidently in Kent, or wherever the auntlived. 

The next letter is from Mrs. Newton:--

"DER MISS ---, I Receve your Letter your Aunt is vary Ill andLowspireted I Donte think your Aunt wood Git up all Day if MySister Wasnot to Persage her We all Think hir lif is twomonopolous. You Wish to know Who Was Liveing With your Aunt. That is My Sister and Willian --- and Cariline --- as Cock andOld Poll Pepper is Come to Stay With her a Littel Wile and Ihoped [hopped] for Your Aunt, and Harry has Worked for your Auntall the Summer. Your Aunt and Harry Whent to the Wells Races andSpent a very Pleasant Day your Aunt has Lost Old Fanney Sow SheDied about a Week a Go Harry he Wanted your Aunt to have herkilled and send her to London and Shee Wold Fech her 11 poundsthe Farmers have Lost a Great Deal of Cattel such as Hogs andCows What theay call the Plage I Whent to your Aunt as you WishMee to Do But She Told Mee She Did not wont aney Boddy She ToldMee She Should Like to Come up to see you But She Cant Come knowfor she is Boddyley ill and Harry Donte Work there know But he Goup there Once in Two or Three Day Harry Offered is self to Go upto Live With your Aunt But She Made him know Ancer. I hav Beenup to your Aunt at Work for 5 Weeks Hopping and Ragluting YourAunt Donte Eat nor Drink But vary Littel indeed. 

"I am Happy to Say We are Both Quite Well and I am Glad no hearyou are Both Quite Well

"MRS NEWTON. "

This seems to have made the nieces propose to pay a visit to theiraunt, perhaps to try and relieve the monopoly of her existence andcheer her up a little. In their letter, doubtless, the dog motiveis introduced that is so finely developed presently by Mrs. Newton. I should like to have been able to give the theme as enounced by thenieces themselves, but their letters are not before me. Mrs. Newtonwrites:--

"MY DEAR GIRLS, --Your Aunt receiv your Letter your Aunt will Bevary glad to see you as it quite a greeable if it tis to you andShee is Quite Willing to Eair the beds and the Rooms if you Liketo Trust to hir and the Servantes; if not I may Go up there asyou Wish. My Sister Sleeps in the Best Room as she allways Didand the Coock in the garret and you Can have the Rooms the sameas you allways Did as your Aunt Donte set in the Parlour SheContinlery Sets in the Ciching. Your Aunt says she Cannot Partfrom the dog know hows and She Says he will not hurt you for heis Like a Child and I can safeley say My Self he wonte hurt youas She Cannot Sleep in the Room With out him as he allWay Sleepin the Same Room as She Dose. Your Aunt is agreeable to Git inWhat Coles and Wood you Wish for I am know happy to say your Auntis in as Good health as ever She Was and She is happy to hear youare Both Well your Aunt Wishes for Ancer By Return of Post. "

The nieces replied that their aunt must choose between the dog andthem, and Mrs. Newton sends a second letter which brings herdevelopment to a climax. It runs:--

"DEAR MISS --- I have Receve your Letter and i Whent up to yourAunt as you Wish me and i Try to Perveal With her about the DogBut she Wold not Put the Dog away nor it alow him to Be Tied upBut She Still Wishes you to Come as Shee says the Dog Shall notinterrup you for She Donte alow the Dog nor it the Cats to Go inthe Parlour never sence She has had it Donup ferfere of Spoilingthe Paint your Aunt think it vary Strange you Should Be so varyMuch afraid of a Dog and She says you Cant Go out in London ButWhat you are up a gance one and She says She Wonte Trust the Dogin know one hands But her Owne for She is afraid theay Will notfill is Belley as he Lives upon Rost Beeff and Rost and BoilMoutten Wich he Eats More then the Servantes in the House thereis not aney One Wold Beable to Give Sattefacktion upon thataccount Harry offerd to Take the Dog But She Wood not Trust himin our hands so I Cold not Do aney thing With her your Aunt youseto Tell Me When we was at your House in London She Did not knowhow to make you amens and i Told her know it was the Time to Doit But i Considder She sets the Dog Before you your Aunt keepknow Beer know Sprits know Wines in the House of aney Sort Oneleya Little Barl of Wine I made her in the Summer the Workmen andservantes are a Blige to Drink wauter Morning Noon and Night yourAunt the Same She Donte Low her Self aney Tee nor Coffee But isLoocking Wonderful Well

"I Still Remane your Humble Servant Mrs Newton

"I am vary sorry to think the Dog Perventes your Comeing

"I am Glad to hear you are Both Well and we are the same. "

The nieces remained firm, and from the following letter it is plainthe aunt gave way. The dog motive is repeated pianissimo, and isnot returned to--not at least by Mrs. Newton. 

"DEAR MISS ---, I Receve your Letter on Thursday i Whent to yourAunt and i see her and She is a Greable to everry thing i askedher and seme so vary Much Please to see you Both Next Tuseday andshe has sent for the Faggots to Day and she Will Send for theColes to Morrow and i will Go up there to Morrow Morning and Makethe Fiers and Tend to the Beds and sleep in it Till you Come Downyour Aunt sends her Love to you Both and she is Quite well yourAunt Wishes you wold Write againe Before you Come as she maExpeckye and the Dog is not to Gointo the Parlor a Tall

"your Aunt kind Love to you Both & hopes you Wonte Fail in Comingaccording to Prommis

"MRS NEWTON. "

From a later letter it appears that the nieces did not pay theirvisit after all, and what is worse a letter had miscarried, and theaunt sat up expecting them from seven till twelve at night, andHarry had paid for "Faggots and Coles quarter of Hund. Faggots Halftun of Coles 1l. 1s. 3d. " Shortly afterwards, however, "She" againtalks of coming up to London herself and writes through herservant:--

"My Dear girls i Receve your kind letter & I am happy to hear youar both Well and I Was in hopes of seeing of you Both Down at MyHouse this spring to stay a Wile I am Quite well my self in HelthBut vary Low Spireted I am vary sorry to hear the Misforting ofPoor charles & how he cum to flie in the Fier I cannot think. Ishould like to know if he is dead or a Live, and I shall come toLondon in August & stay three or four daies if it is agreable toyou. Mrs. Newton has lost her mother in Law 4 day March & I hopeyou send me word Wather charles is Dead or a Live as soon aspossible, and will you send me word what Little Betty is for Icannot make her out. "

The next letter is a new handwriting, and tells the nieces of theiraunt's death in the following terms:--

"DEAR MISS ---, It is my most painful duty to inform you thatyour dear aunt expired this morning comparatively easy as Hannahinforms me and in so doing restored her soul to the custody ofhim whom she considered to be alone worthy of its care. 

"The doctor had visited her about five minutes previously and hadapplied a blister. 

"You and your sister will I am sure excuse further details atpresent and believe me with kindest remembrances to remain

"Yours truly, &c. "

After a few days a lawyer's letter informs the nieces that theiraunt had left them the bulk of her not very considerable property, but had charged them with an annuity of 1 pound a week to be paidto Harry and Mrs. Newton so long as the dog lived. 

The only other letters by Mrs. Newton are written on paper of adifferent and more modern size; they leave an impression of havingbeen written a good many years later. I take them as they come. The first is very short:--

"DEAR MISS ---, i write to say i cannot possiblely come onWednesday as we have killed a pig. Your's truely, "ELIZABETH NEWTON. "

The second runs:--

"DEAR MISS ---, i hope you are both quite well in health & yourLeg much better i am happy to say i am getting quite well again ihope Amandy has reached you safe by this time i sent a smallparcle by Amandy, there was half a dozen Pats of butter & theCakes was very homely and not so light as i could wish i hope bythis time Sarah Ann has promised she will stay untill next mondayas i think a few daies longer will not make much diferance and asher young man has been very considerate to wait so long as he hasi think he would for a few days Longer dear Miss --- I wash forWilliam and i have not got his clothes yet as it has been delayedby the carrier & i cannot possiblely get it done before Sundayand i do not Like traviling on a Sunday but to oblige you i wouldcome but to come sooner i cannot possiblely but i hope Sarah Annwill be prevailed on once more as She has so many times i feelsure if she tells her young man he will have patient for he is avery kind young man

"i remain your sincerely

"ELIZABETH NEWTON. "

The last letter in my collection seems written almost withinmeasurable distance of the Christmas-card era. The sheet is headedby a beautifully embossed device of some holly in red and green, wishing the recipient of the letter a merry Xmas and a happy newyear, while the border is crimped and edged with blue. I know notwhat it is, but there is something in the writer's highly finishedstyle that reminds me of Mendelssohn. It would almost do for thewords of one of his celebrated "Lieder ohne Worte":--

"DEAR MISS MARIA, --I hasten to acknowledge the receipt of yourkind note with the inclosure for which I return my best thanks. I need scarcely say how glad I was to know that the volumessecured your approval, and that the announcement of theimprovement in the condition of your Sister's legs afforded meinfinite pleasure. The gratifying news encouraged me in the hopethat now the nature of the disorder is comprehended her legswill--notwithstanding the process may be gradual--ultimately getquite well. The pretty Robin Redbreast which lay ensconced inyour epistle, conveyed to me, in terms more eloquent than words, how much you desired me those Compliments which the littlemissive he bore in his bill expressed; the emblem is sweetlypretty, and now that we are again allowed to felicitate eachother on another recurrence of the season of the Christian'srejoicing, permit me to tender to yourself, and by you to yourSister, mine and my Wife's heartfelt congratulations and warmestwishes with respect to the coming year. It is a common beliefthat if we take a retrospective view of each departing year, asit behoves us annually to do, we shall find the blessings whichwe have received to immeasurably outnumber our causes of sorrow. Speaking for myself I can fully subscribe to that sentiment, anddoubtless neither Miss --- nor yourself are exceptions. Miss ---'s illness and consequent confinement to the house has been asevere trial, but in that trouble an opportunity was afforded youto prove a Sister's devotion and she has been enabled to realisea larger (if possible) display of sisterly affection. 

"A happy Christmas to you both, and may the new year prove aCornucopia from which still greater blessings than even those wehave hitherto received, shall issue, to benefit us all bycontributing to our temporal happiness and, what is of higherimportance, conducing to our felicity hereafter. 

"I was sorry to hear that you were so annoyed with mice and rats, and if I should have an opportunity to obtain a nice cat I willdo so and send my boy to your house with it. 

"I remain, "Yours truly. "

How little what is commonly called education can do after alltowards the formation of a good style, and what a delightful volumemight not be entitled "Half Hours with the Worst Authors. " Why, thefinest word I know of in the English language was coined, not by mypoor old grandfather, whose education had left little to desire, norby any of the admirable scholars whom he in his turn educated, butby an old matron who presided over one of the halls, or houses ofhis school. This good lady, whose name by the way was Bromfield, had a fine high temper of her own, or thought it politic to affectone. One night when the boys were particularly noisy she burst likea hurricane into the hall, collared a youngster, and told him he wasthe "rampingest-scampingest-rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest boyin the whole school. " Would Mrs. Newton have been able to set theaunt and the dog before us so vividly if she had been more highlyeducated? Would Mrs. Bromfield have been able to forge and hurl herthunderbolt of a word if she had been taught how to do so, or indeedbeen at much pains to create it at all? It came. It was her[Greek]. She did not probably know that she had done what thegreatest scholar would have had to rack his brains over for many anhour before he could even approach. Tradition says that havingbrought down her boy she looked round the hall in triumph, and thenafter a moment's lull said, "Young gentlemen, prayers are excused, "and left them. 

I have sometimes thought that, after all, the main use of aclassical education consists in the check it gives to originality, and the way in which it prevents an inconvenient number of peoplefrom using their own eyes. That we will not be at the trouble oflooking at things for ourselves if we can get anyone to tell us whatwe ought to see goes without saying, and it is the business ofschools and universities to assist us in this respect. The theoryof evolution teaches that any power not worked at pretty highpressure will deteriorate: originality and freedom from affectationare all very well in their way, but we can easily have too much ofthem, and it is better that none should be either original or freefrom cant but those who insist on being so, no matter whathindrances obstruct, nor what incentives are offered them to seethings through the regulation medium. To insist on seeing thingsfor oneself is to be an [Greek], or in plain English, an idiot; nordo I see any safer check against general vigour and clearness ofthought, with consequent terseness of expression, than that providedby the curricula of our universities and schools of publicinstruction. If a young man, in spite of every effort to fit himwith blinkers, will insist on getting rid of them, he must do so athis own risk. He will not be long in finding out his mistake. Ourpublic schools and universities play the beneficent part in oursocial scheme that cattle do in forests: they browse the seedlingsdown and prevent the growth of all but the luckiest and sturdiest. Of course, if there are too many either cattle or schools, theybrowse so effectually that they find no more food, and starve tillequilibrium is restored; but it seems to be a provision of naturethat there should always be these alternate periods, during whicheither the cattle or the trees are getting the best of it; and, indeed, without such provision we should have neither the one northe other. At this moment the cattle, doubtless, are in theascendant, and if university extension proceeds much farther, weshall assuredly have no more Mrs. Newtons and Mrs. Bromfields; butwhatever is is best, and, on the whole, I should propose to letthings find pretty much their own level. 

However this may be, who can question that the treasures hidden inmany a country house contain sleeping beauties even fairer thanthose that I have endeavoured to waken from long sleep in theforegoing article? How many Mrs. Quicklys are there not living inLondon at this present moment? For that Mrs. Quickly was aninvention of Shakespeare's I will not believe. The old woman fromwhom he drew said every word that he put into Mrs. Quickly's mouth, and a great deal more which he did not and perhaps could not makeuse of. This question, however, would again lead me far from mysubject, which I should mar were I to dwell upon it longer, andtherefore leave with the hope that it may give my readers absolutelyno food whatever for reflection. 

How to Make the Best of Life {142}

I have been asked to speak on the question how to make the best oflife, but may as well confess at once that I know nothing about it. I cannot think that I have made the best of my own life, nor is itlikely that I shall make much better of what may or may not remainto me. I do not even know how to make the best of the twentyminutes that your committee has placed at my disposal, and as forlife as a whole, who ever yet made the best of such a colossalopportunity by conscious effort and deliberation? In little thingsno doubt deliberate and conscious effort will help us, but we arespeaking of large issues, and such kingdoms of heaven as the makingthe best of these come not by observation. 

The question, therefore, on which I have undertaken to address youis, as you must all know, fatuous, if it be faced seriously. Lifeis like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrumentas one goes on. One cannot make the best of such impossibilities, and the question is doubly fatuous until we are told which of ourtwo lives--the conscious or the unconscious--is held by the asker tobe the truer life. Which does the question contemplate--the life weknow, or the life which others may know, but which we know not?

Death gives a life to some men and women compared with which theirso-called existence here is as nothing. Which is the truer life ofShakespeare, Handel, that divine woman who wrote the Odyssey, and ofJane Austen--the life which palpitated with sensible warm motionwithin their own bodies, or that in virtue of which they are stillpalpitating in ours? In whose consciousness does their truest lifeconsist--their own, or ours? Can Shakespeare be said to have begunhis true life till a hundred years or so after he was dead andburied? His physical life was but as an embryonic stage, a comingup out of darkness, a twilight and dawn before the sunrise of thatlife of the world to come which he was to enjoy hereafter. We alllive for a while after we are gone hence, but we are for the mostpart stillborn, or at any rate die in infancy, as regards that lifewhich every age and country has recognized as higher and truer thanthe one of which we are now sentient. As the life of the race islarger, longer, and in all respects more to be considered than thatof the individual, so is the life we live in others larger and moreimportant than the one we live in ourselves. This appears nowhereperhaps more plainly than in the case of great teachers, who oftenin the lives of their pupils produce an effect that reaches farbeyond anything produced while their single lives were yetunsupplemented by those other lives into which they infused theirown. 

Death to such people is the ending of a short life, but it does nottouch the life they are already living in those whom they havetaught; and happily, as none can know when he shall die, so none canmake sure that he too shall not live long beyond the grave; for thelife after death is like money before it--no one can be sure that itmay not fall to him or her even at the eleventh hour. Money andimmortality come in such odd unaccountable ways that no one is cutoff from hope. We may not have made either of them for ourselves, but yet another may give them to us in virtue of his or her love, which shall illumine us for ever, and establish us in some heavenlymansion whereof we neither dreamed nor shall ever dream. Look atthe Doge Loredano Loredani, the old man's smile upon whose face hasbeen reproduced so faithfully in so many lands that it can neverhenceforth be forgotten--would he have had one hundredth part of thelife he now lives had he not been linked awhile with one of thoseheaven-sent men who know che cosa e amor? Look at Rembrandt's oldwoman in our National Gallery; had she died before she was eighty-three years old she would not have been living now. Then, when shewas eighty-three, immortality perched upon her as a bird on awithered bough. 

I seem to hear someone say that this is a mockery, a piece ofspecial pleading, a giving of stones to those that ask for bread. Life is not life unless we can feel it, and a life limited to aknowledge of such fraction of our work as may happen to survive usis no true life in other people; salve it as we may, death is notlife any more than black is white. 

The objection is not so true as it sounds. I do not deny that wehad rather not die, nor do I pretend that much even in the case ofthe most favoured few can survive them beyond the grave. It is onlybecause this is so that our own life is possible; others have maderoom for us, and we should make room for others in our turn withoutundue repining. What I maintain is that a not inconsiderable numberof people do actually attain to a life beyond the grave which we canall feel forcibly enough, whether they can do so or not--that thislife tends with increasing civilization to become more and morepotent, and that it is better worth considering, in spite of itsbeing unfelt by ourselves, than any which we have felt or can everfeel in our own persons. 

Take an extreme case. A group of people are photographed byEdison's new process--say Titiens, Trebelli, and Jenny Lind, withany two of the finest men singers the age has known--let them bephotographed incessantly for half an hour while they perform a scenein Lohengrin; let all be done stereoscopically. Let them bephonographed at the same time so that their minutest shades ofintonation are preserved, let the slides be coloured by a competentartist, and then let the scene be called suddenly into sight andsound, say a hundred years hence. Are those people dead or alive?Dead to themselves they are, but while they live so powerfully andso livingly in us, which is the greater paradox--to say that theyare alive or that they are dead? To myself it seems that their lifein others would be more truly life than their death to themselves isdeath. Granted that they do not present all the phenomena of life--who ever does so even when he is held to be alive? We are held tobe alive because we present a sufficient number of living phenomenato let the others go without saying; those who see us take the partfor the whole here as in everything else, and surely, in the casesupposed above, the phenomena of life predominate so powerfully overthose of death, that the people themselves must be held to be morealive than dead. Our living personality is, as the word implies, only our mask, and those who still own such a mask as I havesupposed have a living personality. Granted again that the casejust put is an extreme one; still many a man and many a woman has sostamped him or herself on his work that, though we would gladly havethe aid of such accessories as we doubtless presently shall have tothe livingness of our great dead, we can see them very sufficientlythrough the masterpieces they have left us. 

As for their own unconsciousness I do not deny it. The life of theembryo was unconscious before birth, and so is the life--I amspeaking only of the life revealed to us by natural religion--afterdeath. But as the embryonic and infant life of which we wereunconscious was the most potent factor in our after life ofconsciousness, so the effect which we may unconsciously produce inothers after death, and it may be even before it on those who havenever seen us, is in all sober seriousness our truer and moreabiding life, and the one which those who would make the best oftheir sojourn here will take most into their consideration. 

Unconsciousness is no bar to livingness. Our conscious actions area drop in the sea as compared with our unconscious ones. Could weknow all the life that is in us by way of circulation, nutrition, breathing, waste and repair, we should learn what an infinitesimallysmall part consciousness plays in our present existence; yet ourunconscious life is as truly life as our conscious life, and thoughit is unconscious to itself it emerges into an indirect andvicarious consciousness in our other and conscious self, whichexists but in virtue of our unconscious self. So we have also avicarious consciousness in others. The unconscious life of thosethat have gone before us has in great part moulded us into such menand women as we are, and our own unconscious lives will in likemanner have a vicarious consciousness in others, though we be deadenough to it in ourselves. 

If it is again urged that it matters not to us how much we may bealive in others, if we are to know nothing about it, I reply thatthe common instinct of all who are worth considering gives the lieto such cynicism. I see here present some who have achieved, andothers who no doubt will achieve, success in literature. Will oneof them hesitate to admit that it is a lively pleasure to her tofeel that on the other side of the world someone may be smilinghappily over her work, and that she is thus living in that personthough she knows nothing about it? Here it seems to me that truefaith comes in. Faith does not consist, as the Sunday School pupilsaid, "in the power of believing that which we know to be untrue. "It consists in holding fast that which the healthiest and mostkindly instincts of the best and most sensible men and women areintuitively possessed of, without caring to require much evidencefurther than the fact that such people are so convinced; and for myown part I find the best men and women I know unanimous in feelingthat life in others, even though we know nothing about it, isnevertheless a thing to be desired and gratefully accepted if we canget it either before death or after. I observe also that a largenumber of men and women do actually attain to such life, and in somecases continue so to live, if not for ever, yet to what ispractically much the same thing. Our life then in this world is, tonatural religion as much as to revealed, a period of probation. Theuse we make of it is to settle how far we are to enter into another, and whether that other is to be a heaven of just affection or a hellof righteous condemnation. 

Who, then, are the most likely so to run that they may obtain thisveritable prize of our high calling? Setting aside such luckynumbers, drawn as it were in the lottery of immortality, which Ihave referred to casually above, and setting aside also the chancesand changes from which even immortality is not exempt, who on thewhole are most likely to live anew in the affectionate thoughts ofthose who never so much as saw them in the flesh, and know not eventheir names? There is a nisus, a straining in the dull dumb economyof things, in virtue of which some, whether they will it and know itor no, are more likely to live after death than others, and who arethese? Those who aimed at it as by some great thing that they woulddo to make them famous? Those who have lived most in themselves andfor themselves, or those who have been most ensouled consciously, but perhaps better unconsciously, directly but more oftenindirectly, by the most living souls past and present that haveflitted near them? Can we think of a man or woman who grips usfirmly, at the thought of whom we kindle when we are alone in ourhonest daw's plumes, with none to admire or shrug his shoulders, canwe think of one such, the secret of whose power does not lie in thecharm of his or her personality--that is to say, in the wideness ofhis or her sympathy with, and therefore life in and communion withother people? In the wreckage that comes ashore from the sea oftime there is much tinsel stuff that we must preserve and study ifwe would know our own times and people; granted that many a deadcharlatan lives long and enters largely and necessarily into our ownlives; we use them and throw them away when we have done with them. I do not speak of these, I do not speak of the Virgils and AlexanderPopes, and who can say how many more whose names I dare not mentionfor fear of offending. They are as stuffed birds or beasts in amuseum; serviceable no doubt from a scientific standpoint, but withno vivid or vivifying hold upon us. They seem to be alive, but arenot. I am speaking of those who do actually live in us, and move usto higher achievements though they be long dead, whose life thrustsout our own and overrides it. I speak of those who draw us evermore towards them from youth to age, and to think of whom is to feelat once that we are in the hands of those we love, and whom we wouldmost wish to resemble. What is the secret of the hold that thesepeople have upon us? Is it not that while, conventionally speaking, alive, they most merged their lives in, and were in fullestcommunion with those among whom they lived? They found their livesin losing them. We never love the memory of anyone unless we feelthat he or she was himself or herself a lover. 

I have seen it urged, again, in querulous accents, that the so-called immortality even of the most immortal is not for ever. I seea passage to this effect in a book that is making a stir as I write. I will quote it. The writer says:--

"So, it seems to me, is the immortality we so glibly predicate ofdeparted artists. If they survive at all, it is but a shadowylife they live, moving on through the gradations of slow decay todistant but inevitable death. They can no longer, as heretofore, speak directly to the hearts of their fellow-men, evoking theirtears or laughter, and all the pleasures, be they sad or merry, of which imagination holds the secret. Driven from the market-place they become first the companions of the student, then thevictims of the specialist. He who would still hold familiarintercourse with them must train himself to penetrate the veilwhich in ever-thickening folds conceals them from the ordinarygaze; he must catch the tone of a vanished society, he must movein a circle of alien associations, he must think in a languagenot his own. " {150}

This is crying for the moon, or rather pretending to cry for it, forthe writer is obviously insincere. I see the Saturday Review saysthe passage I have just quoted "reaches almost to poetry, " andindeed I find many blank verses in it, some of them very aggressive. No prose is free from an occasional blank verse, and a good writerwill not go hunting over his work to rout them out, but nine or tenin little more than as many lines is indeed reaching too near topoetry for good prose. This, however, is a trifle, and might passif the tone of the writer was not so obviously that of cheappessimism. I know not which is cheapest, pessimism or optimism. One forces lights, the other darks; both are equally untrue to goodart, and equally sure of their effect with the groundlings. The oneextenuates, the other sets down in malice. The first is the moreamiable lie, but both are lies, and are known to be so by those whoutter them. Talk about catching the tone of a vanished society tounderstand Rembrandt or Giovanni Bellini! It is nonsense--the foldsdo not thicken in front of these men; we understand them as well asthose among whom they went about in the flesh, and perhaps better. Homer and Shakespeare speak to us probably far more effectually thanthey did to the men of their own time, and most likely we have themat their best. I cannot think that Shakespeare talked better thanwe hear him now in Hamlet or Henry the Fourth; like enough he wouldhave been found a very disappointing person in a drawing-room. People stamp themselves on their work; if they have not done so theyare naught, if they have we have them; and for the most part theystamp themselves deeper on their work than on their talk. No doubtShakespeare and Handel will be one day clean forgotten, as thoughthey had never been born. The world will in the end die; mortalitytherefore itself is not immortal, and when death dies the life ofthese men will die with it--but not sooner. It is enough that theyshould live within us and move us for many ages as they have andwill. Such immortality, therefore, as some men and women are bornto achieve, or have thrust upon them, is a practical if not atechnical immortality, and he who would have more let him havenothing. 

I see I have drifted into speaking rather of how to make the best ofdeath than of life, but who can speak of life without his thoughtsturning instantly to that which is beyond it? He or she who hasmade the best of the life after death has made the best of the lifebefore it; who cares one straw for any such chances and changes aswill commonly befall him here if he is upheld by the full andcertain hope of everlasting life in the affections of those thatshall come after? If the life after death is happy in the hearts ofothers, it matters little how unhappy was the life before it. 

And now I leave my subject, not without misgiving that I shall havedisappointed you. But for the great attention which is being paidto the work from which I have quoted above, I should not havethought it well to insist on points with which you are, I doubt not, as fully impressed as I am: but that book weakens the sanctions ofnatural religion, and minimizes the comfort which it affords us, while it does more to undermine than to support the foundations ofwhat is commonly called belief. Therefore I was glad to embracethis opportunity of protesting. Otherwise I should not have been soserious on a matter that transcends all seriousness. LordBeaconsfield cut it shorter with more effect. When asked to give arule of life for the son of a friend he said, "Do not let him tryand find out who wrote the letters of Junius. " Pressed for furthercounsel, he added, "Nor yet who was the man in the iron mask"--andhe would say no more. Don't bore people. And yet I am by no meanssure that a good many people do not think themselves ill-used unlesshe who addresses them has thoroughly well bored them--especially ifthey have paid any money for hearing him. My great namesake said, "Surely the pleasure is as great of being cheated as to cheat, " andgreat as the pleasure both of cheating and boring undoubtedly is, Ibelieve he was right. So I remember a poem which came out somethirty years ago in Punch, about a young lady who went forth inquest to "Some burden make or burden bear, but which she did notgreatly care, oh Miserie. " So, again, all the holy men and womenwho in the Middle Ages professed to have discovered how to make thebest of life took care that being bored, if not cheated, should havea large place in their programme. Still there are limits, and Iclose not without fear that I may have exceeded them. 

The Sanctuary of Montrigone {153a}

The only place in the Valsesia, except Varallo, where I at presentsuspect the presence of Tabachetti {153b} is at Montrigone, alittle-known sanctuary dedicated to St. Anne, about three-quartersof a mile south of Borgo-Sesia station. The situation is, ofcourse, lovely, but the sanctuary does not offer any features ofarchitectural interest. The sacristan told me it was founded in1631; and in 1644 Giovanni d'Enrico, while engaged in superintendingand completing the work undertaken here by himself and GiacomoFerro, fell ill and died. I do not know whether or no there was anearlier sanctuary on the same site, but was told it was built on thedemolition of a stronghold belonging to the Counts of Biandrate. 

The incidents which it illustrates are treated with even more thanthe homeliness usual in works of this description when not dealingwith such solemn events as the death and passion of Christ. Exceptwhen these subjects were being represented, something of thelatitude, and even humour, allowed in the old mystery plays waspermitted, doubtless from a desire to render the work moreattractive to the peasants, who were the most numerous and mostimportant pilgrims. It is not until faith begins to be weak that itfears an occasionally lighter treatment of semi-sacred subjects, andit is impossible to convey an accurate idea of the spirit prevailingat this hamlet of sanctuary without attuning oneself somewhat to themore pagan character of the place. Of irreverence, in the sense ofa desire to laugh at things that are of high and serious import, there is not a trace, but at the same time there is a certainunbending of the bow at Montrigone which is not perceivable atVarallo. 

The first chapel to the left on entering the church is that of theBirth of the Virgin. St. Anne is sitting up in bed. She is not atall ill--in fact, considering that the Virgin has only been bornabout five minutes, she is wonderful; still the doctors think it maybe perhaps better that she should keep her room for half an hourlonger, so the bed has been festooned with red and white paperroses, and the counterpane is covered with bouquets in baskets andin vases of glass and china. These cannot have been there duringthe actual birth of the Virgin, so I suppose they had been inreadiness, and were brought in from an adjoining room as soon as thebaby had been born. A lady on her left is bringing in some moreflowers, which St. Anne is receiving with a smile and most graciousgesture of the hands. The first thing she asked for, when the birthwas over, was for her three silver hearts. These were immediatelybrought to her, and she has got them all on, tied round her neckwith a piece of blue silk ribbon. 

Dear mamma has come. We felt sure she would, and that any littlemisunderstandings between her and Joachim would ere long beforgotten and forgiven. They are both so good and sensible, if theywould only understand one another. At any rate, here she is, inhigh state at the right hand of the bed. She is dressed in black, for she has lost her husband some few years previously, but I do notbelieve a smarter, sprier old lady for her years could be found inPalestine, nor yet that either Giovanni d'Enrico or Giacomo Ferrocould have conceived or executed such a character. The sacristanwanted to have it that she was not a woman at all, but was aportrait of St. Joachim, the Virgin's father. "Sembra una donna, "he pleaded more than once, "ma non e donna. " Surely, however, inworks of art even more than in other things, there is no "is" butseeming, and if a figure seems female it must be taken as such. Besides, I asked one of the leading doctors at Varallo whether thefigure was man or woman. He said it was evident I was not married, for that if I had been I should have seen at once that she was notonly a woman but a mother-in-law of the first magnitude, or, as hecalled it, "una suocera tremenda, " and this without knowing that Iwanted her to be a mother-in-law myself. Unfortunately she had noreal drapery, so I could not settle the question as my friend Mr. H. F. Jones and I had been able to do at Varallo with the figure of Evethat had been turned into a Roman soldier assisting at the captureof Christ. I am not, however, disposed to waste more time uponanything so obvious, and will content myself with saying that wehave here the Virgin's grandmother. I had never had the pleasure, so far as I remembered, of meeting this lady before, and was glad tohave an opportunity of making her acquaintance. 

Tradition says that it was she who chose the Virgin's name, and ifso, what a debt of gratitude do we not owe her for her judiciousselection! It makes one shudder to think what might have happenedif she had named the child Keren-Happuch, as poor Job's daughter wascalled. How could we have said, "Ave Keren-Happuch!" What wouldthe musicians have done? I forget whether Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz wasa man or a woman, but there were plenty of names quite asunmanageable at the Virgin's grandmother's option, and we cannotsufficiently thank her for having chosen one that is so euphoniousin every language which we need take into account. For this reasonalone we should not grudge her her portrait, but we should try todraw the line here. I do not think we ought to give the Virgin'sgreat-grandmother a statue. Where is it to end? It is like Mr. Crookes's ultimissimate atoms; we used to draw the line at ultimateatoms, and now it seems we are to go a step farther back and haveultimissimate atoms. How long, I wonder, will it be before we feelthat it will be a material help to us to have ultimissimissimateatoms? Quavers stopped at demi-semi-demi, but there is no reason tosuppose that either atoms or ancestresses of the Virgin will be socomplacent. 

I have said that on St. Anne's left hand there is a lady who isbringing in some flowers. St. Anne was always passionately fond offlowers. There is a pretty story told about her in one of theFathers, I forget which, to the effect that when a child she wasasked which she liked best--cakes or flowers? She could not yetspeak plainly and lisped out, "Oh fowses, pretty fowses"; she added, however, with a sigh and as a kind of wistful corollary, "but cakesare very nice. " She is not to have any cakes just now, but as soonas she has done thanking the lady for her beautiful nosegay, she isto have a couple of nice new-laid eggs, that are being brought herby another lady. Valsesian women immediately after theirconfinement always have eggs beaten up with wine and sugar, and onecan tell a Valsesian Birth of the Virgin from a Venetian or aFlorentine by the presence of the eggs. I learned this from aneminent Valsesian professor of medicine, who told me that, thoughnot according to received rules, the eggs never seemed to do anyharm. Here they are evidently to be beaten up, for there is neitherspoon nor egg-cup, and we cannot suppose that they were hard-boiled. On the other hand, in the Middle Ages Italians never used egg-cupsand spoons for boiled eggs. The medieval boiled egg was alwayseaten by dipping bread into the yolk. 

Behind the lady who is bringing in the eggs is the under-under-nursewho is at the fire warming a towel. In the foreground we have theregulation midwife holding the regulation baby (who, by the way, wasan astonishingly fine child for only five minutes old). Then comesthe under-nurse--a good buxom creature, who, as usual, is feelingthe water in the bath to see that it is of the right temperature. Next to her is the head-nurse, who is arranging the cradle. Behindthe head-nurse is the under-under-nurse's drudge, who is just goingout upon some errands. Lastly--for by this time we have got allround the chapel--we arrive at the Virgin's grandmother's body-guard, a stately, responsible-looking lady, standing in waiting uponher mistress. I put it to the reader--is it conceivable that St. Joachim should have been allowed in such a room at such a time, orthat he should have had the courage to avail himself of thepermission, even though it had been extended to him? At any rate, is it conceivable that he should have been allowed to sit on St. Anne's right hand, laying down the law with a "Marry, come up" here, and a "Marry, go down" there, and a couple of such unabashed collarsas the old lady has put on for the occasion?

Moreover (for I may as well demolish this mischievous confusionbetween St. Joachim and his mother-in-law once and for all), themerest tyro in hagiology knows that St. Joachim was not at home whenthe Virgin was born. He had been hustled out of the temple forhaving no children, and had fled desolate and dismayed into thewilderness. It shows how silly people are, for all the time he wasgoing, if they had only waited a little, to be the father of themost remarkable person of purely human origin who had ever beenborn, and such a parent as this should surely not be hurried. Thestory is told in the frescoes of the chapel of Loreto, only aquarter of an hour's walk from Varallo, and no one can have known itbetter than D'Enrico. The frescoes are explained by writtenpassages that tell us how, when Joachim was in the desert, an angelcame to him in the guise of a fair, civil young gentleman, and toldhim the Virgin was to be born. Then, later on, the same younggentleman appeared to him again, and bade him "in God's name becomforted, and turn again to his content, " for the Virgin had beenactually born. On which St. Joachim, who seems to have been ofopinion that marriage after all _was_ rather a failure, said that, as things were going on so nicely without him, he would stay in thedesert just a little longer, and offered up a lamb as a pretext togain time. Perhaps he guessed about his mother-in-law, or he mayhave asked the angel. Of course, even in spite of such evidence asthis, I may be mistaken about the Virgin's grandmother's sex, andthe sacristan may be right; but I can only say that if the ladysitting by St. Anne's bedside at Montrigone is the Virgin's father--well, in that case I must reconsider a good deal that I have beenaccustomed to believe was beyond question. 

Taken singly, I suppose that none of the figures in the chapel, except the Virgin's grandmother, should be rated very highly. Theunder-nurse is the next best figure, and might very well beTabachetti's, for neither Giovanni d'Enrico nor Giacomo Ferro wassuccessful with his female characters. There is not a single reallycomfortable woman in any chapel by either of them on the Sacro Monteat Varallo. Tabachetti, on the other hand, delighted in women; ifthey were young he made them comely and engaging, if they were oldhe gave them dignity and individual character, and the under-nurseis much more in accordance with Tabachetti's habitual mentalattitude than with D'Enrico's or Giacomo Ferro's. Still there areonly four figures out of the eleven that are mere otiose supers, andtaking the work as a whole it leaves a pleasant impression as beingthroughout naive and homely, and sometimes, which is of lessimportance, technically excellent. 

Allowance must, of course, be made for tawdry accessories andrepeated coats of shiny oleaginous paint--very disagreeable where ithas peeled off and almost more so where it has not. What work couldstand against such treatment as the Valsesian terra-cotta figureshave had to put up with? Take the Venus of Milo; let her be done interra-cotta, and have run, not much, but still something, in thebaking; paint her pink, two oils, all over, and then varnish her--itwill help to preserve the paint; glue a lot of horsehair on to herpate, half of which shall have come off, leaving the glue stillshowing; scrape her, not too thoroughly, get the village drawing-master to paint her again, and the drawing-master in the nextprovincial town to put a forest background behind her with thebrightest emerald-green leaves that he can do for the money; letthis painting and scraping and repainting be repeated several timesover; festoon her with pink and white flowers made of tissue paper;surround her with the cheapest German imitations of the cheapestdecorations that Birmingham can produce; let the night air andwinter fogs get at her for three hundred years, and how easy, Iwonder, will it be to see the goddess who will be still in greatpart there? True, in the case of the Birth of the Virgin chapel atMontrigone, there is no real hair and no fresco background, but timehas had abundant opportunities without these. I will conclude mynotice of this chapel by saying that on the left, above the doorthrough which the under-under-nurse's drudge is about to pass, thereis a good painted terra-cotta bust, said--but I believe on noauthority--to be a portrait of Giovanni d'Enrico. Others say thatthe Virgin's grandmother is Giovanni d'Enrico, but this is even moreabsurd than supposing her to be St. Joachim. 

The next chapel to the Birth of the Virgin is that of theSposalizio. There is no figure here which suggests Tabachetti, butstill there are some very good ones. The best have no taint ofbarocco; the man who did them, whoever he may have been, hadevidently a good deal of life and go, was taking reasonable pains, and did not know too much. Where this is the case no work can failto please. Some of the figures have real hair and some terra-cotta. There is no fresco background worth mentioning. A man sitting onthe steps of the altar with a book on his lap, and holding up hishand to another, who is leaning over him and talking to him, isamong the best figures; some of the disappointed suitors who arebreaking their wands are also very good. 

The angel in the Annunciation chapel, which comes next in order, isa fine, burly, ship's-figurehead, commercial-hotel sort of beingenough, but the Virgin is very ordinary. There is no real hair andno fresco background, only three dingy old blistered pictures of nointerest whatever. 

In the Visit of Mary to Elizabeth there are three pleasingsubordinate lady attendants, two to the left and one to the right ofthe principal figures; but these figures themselves are notsatisfactory. There is no fresco background. Some of the figureshave real hair and some terra-cotta. 

In the Circumcision and Purification chapel--for both these eventsseem contemplated in the one that follows--there are doves, butthere is neither dog nor knife. Still Simeon, who has the infantSaviour in his arms, is looking at him in a way which can only meanthat, knife or no knife, the matter is not going to end here. AtVarallo they have now got a dreadful knife for the Circumcisionchapel. They had none last winter. What they have now got would dovery well to kill a bullock with, but could not be usedprofessionally with safety for any animal smaller than a rhinoceros. I imagine that someone was sent to Novara to buy a knife, and that, thinking it was for the Massacre of the Innocents chapel, he got thebiggest he could see. Then when he brought it back people said"chow" several times, and put it upon the table and went away. 

Returning to Montrigone, the Simeon is an excellent figure, and theVirgin is fairly good, but the prophetess Anna, who stands justbehind her, is by far the most interesting in the group, and isalone enough to make me feel sure that Tabachetti gave more or lesshelp here, as he had done years before at Orta. She, too, like theVirgin's grandmother, is a widow lady, and wears collars of a cutthat seems to have prevailed ever since the Virgin was born sometwenty years previously. There is a largeness and simplicity oftreatment about the figure to which none but an artist of thehighest rank can reach, and D'Enrico was not more than a second orthird-rate man. The hood is like Handel's Truth sailing upon thebroad wings of Time, a prophetic strain that nothing but the oldexperience of a great poet can reach. The lips of the prophetessare for the moment closed, but she has been prophesying all themorning, and the people round the wall in the background are inecstasies at the lucidity with which she has explained all sorts ofdifficulties that they had never been able to understand till now. They are putting their forefingers on their thumbs and their thumbson their forefingers, and saying how clearly they see it all andwhat a wonderful woman Anna is. A prophet indeed is not generallywithout honour save in his own country, but then a country isgenerally not without honour save with its own prophet, and Anna hasbeen glorifying her country rather than reviling it. Besides, therule may not have applied to prophetesses. 

The Death of the Virgin is the last of the six chapels inside thechurch itself. The Apostles, who of course are present, have all ofthem real hair, but, if I may say so, they want a wash and a brush-up so very badly that I cannot feel any confidence in writing aboutthem. I should say that, take them all round, they are a goodaverage sample of apostle as apostles generally go. Two or three ofthem are nervously anxious to find appropriate quotations in booksthat lie open before them, which they are searching with eagerhaste; but I do not see one figure about which I should like to saypositively that it is either good or bad. There is a good bust of aman, matching the one in the Birth of the Virgin chapel, which issaid to be a portrait of Giovanni d'Enrico, but it is not known whomit represents. 

Outside the church, in three contiguous cells that form part of thefoundations, are:--

1. A dead Christ, the head of which is very impressive, while therest of the figure is poor. I examined the treatment of the hair, which is terra-cotta, and compared it with all other like hair inthe chapels above described; I could find nothing like it, and thinkit most likely that Giacomo Ferro did the figure, and got Tabachettito do the head, or that they brought the head from some unusedfigure by Tabachetti at Varallo, for I know no other artist of thetime and neighbourhood who could have done it. 

2. A Magdalene in the desert. The desert is a little coal-cellarof an arch, containing a skull and a profusion of pink and whitepaper bouquets, the two largest of which the Magdalene is huggingwhile she is saying her prayers. She is a very self-sufficientlady, who we may be sure will not stay in the desert a day longerthan she can help, and while there will flirt even with the skull ifshe can find nothing better to flirt with. I cannot think that herrepentance is as yet genuine, and as for her praying there is noobject in her doing so, for she does not want anything. 

3. In the next desert there is a very beautiful figure of St. Johnthe Baptist kneeling and looking upwards. This figure puzzles memore than any other at Montrigone; it appears to be of the fifteenthrather than the sixteenth century; it hardly reminds me ofGaudenzio, and still less of any other Valsesian artist. It is awork of unusual beauty, but I can form no idea as to its authorship. 

I wrote the foregoing pages in the church at Montrigone itself, having brought my camp-stool with me. It was Sunday; the church wasopen all day, but there was no Mass said, and hardly anyone came. The sacristan was a kind, gentle, little old man, who let me dowhatever I wanted. He sat on the doorstep of the main door, mendingvestments, and to this end was cutting up a fine piece of figuredsilk from one to two hundred years old, which, if I could have gotit, for half its value, I should much like to have bought. I sat inthe cool of the church while he sat in the doorway, which was stillin shadow, snipping and snipping, and then sewing, I am sure withadmirable neatness. He made a charming picture, with the archedportico over his head, the green grass and low church wall behindhim, and then a lovely landscape of wood and pasture and valleys andhillside. Every now and then he would come and chirrup aboutJoachim, for he was pained and shocked at my having said that hisJoachim was someone else and not Joachim at all. I said I was verysorry, but I was afraid the figure was a woman. He asked me what hewas to do. He had known it, man and boy, this sixty years, and hadalways shown it as St. Joachim; he had never heard anyone but myselfquestion his ascription, and could not suddenly change his mindabout it at the bidding of a stranger. At the same time he felt itwas a very serious thing to continue showing it as the Virgin'sfather if it was really her grandmother. I told him I thought thiswas a case for his spiritual director, and that if he feltuncomfortable about it he should consult his parish priest and do ashe was told. 

On leaving Montrigone, with a pleasant sense of having madeacquaintance with a new and, in many respects, interesting work, Icould not get the sacristan and our difference of opinion out of myhead. What, I asked myself, are the differences that unhappilydivide Christendom, and what are those that divide Christendom frommodern schools of thought, but a seeing of Joachims as the Virgin'sgrandmothers on a larger scale? True, we cannot call figuresJoachim when we know perfectly well that they are nothing of thekind; but I registered a vow that henceforward when I calledJoachims the Virgin's grandmothers I would bear more in mind than Ihave perhaps always hitherto done, how hard it is for those who havebeen taught to see them as Joachims to think of them as somethingdifferent. I trust that I have not been unfaithful to this vow inthe preceding article. If the reader differs from me, let me askhim to remember how hard it is for one who has got a figure wellinto his head as the Virgin's grandmother to see it as Joachim. 

A Medieval Girl School {166}

This last summer I revisited Oropa, near Biella, to see whatconnection I could find between the Oropa chapels and those atVarallo. I will take this opportunity of describing the chapels atOropa, and more especially the remarkable fossil, or petrified girlschool, commonly known as the Dimora, or Sojourn of the Virgin Maryin the Temple. 

If I do not take these works so seriously as the reader may expect, let me beg him, before he blames me, to go to Oropa and see theoriginals for himself. Have the good people of Oropa themselvestaken them very seriously? Are we in an atmosphere where we need beat much pains to speak with bated breath? We, as is well known, love to take even our pleasures sadly; the Italians take even theirsadness allegramente, and combine devotion with amusement in amanner that we shall do well to study if not imitate. For this bestagrees with what we gather to have been the custom of Christhimself, who, indeed, never speaks of austerity but to condemn it. If Christianity is to be a living faith, it must penetrate a man'swhole life, so that he can no more rid himself of it than he can ofhis flesh and bones or of his breathing. The Christianity that canbe taken up and laid down as if it were a watch or a book isChristianity in name only. The true Christian can no more part fromChrist in mirth than in sorrow. And, after all, what is the essenceof Christianity? What is the kernel of the nut? Surely commonsense and cheerfulness, with unflinching opposition to thecharlatanisms and Pharisaisms of a man's own times. The essence ofChristianity lies neither in dogma, nor yet in abnormally holy life, but in faith in an unseen world, in doing one's duty, in speakingthe truth, in finding the true life rather in others than inoneself, and in the certain hope that he who loses his life on thesebehalfs finds more than he has lost. What can Agnosticism doagainst such Christianity as this? I should be shocked if anythingI had ever written or shall ever write should seem to make light ofthese things. I should be shocked also if _I_ did not know how tobe amused with things that amiable people obviously intended to beamusing. 

The reader may need to be reminded that Oropa is among the somewhatinfrequent sanctuaries at which the Madonna and infant Christ arenot white, but black. I shall return to this peculiarity of Oropalater on, but will leave it for the present. For the generalcharacteristics of the place I must refer the reader to my book Alpsand Sanctuaries. I propose to confine myself here to the ten or adozen chapels containing life-sized terra-cotta figures, painted upto nature, that form one of the main features of the place. At afirst glance, perhaps, all these chapels will seem uninteresting; Iventure to think, however, that some, if not most of them, thoughfalling a good deal short of the best work at Varallo and Crea, arestill in their own way of considerable importance. The first chapelwith which we need concern ourselves is numbered 4, and shows theConception of the Virgin Mary. It represents St. Anne as kneelingbefore a terrific dragon or, as the Italians call it, "insect, "about the size of a Crystal Palace pleiosaur. This "insect" issupposed to have just had its head badly crushed by St. Anne, whoseems to be begging its pardon. The text "Ipsa conteret caput tuum"is written outside the chapel. The figures have no artisticinterest. As regards dragons being called insects, the reader mayperhaps remember that the island of S. Giulio, in the Lago d'Orta, was infested with insetti, which S. Giulio destroyed, and whichappear, in a fresco underneath the church on the island, to havebeen monstrous and ferocious dragons; but I cannot remember whethertheir bodies are divided into three sections, and whether or no theyhave exactly six legs--without which, I am told, they cannot be trueinsects. 

The fifth chapel represents the Birth of the Virgin. Havingobtained permission to go inside it, I found the date 1715 cut largeand deep on the back of one figure before baking, and I imagine thatthis date covers the whole. There is a Queen Anne feelingthroughout the composition, and if we were told that the sculptorand Francis Bird, sculptor of the statue in front of St. Paul'sCathedral, had studied under the same master, we could very wellbelieve it. The apartment in which the Virgin was born is spacious, and in striking contrast to the one in which she herself gave birthto the Redeemer. St. Anne occupies the centre of the composition, in an enormous bed; on her right there is a lady of the GeorgeCruikshank style of beauty, and on the left an older person. Bothare gesticulating and impressing upon St. Anne the enormousobligation she has just conferred upon mankind; they seem also to beimploring her not to overtax her strength, but, strange to say, theyare giving her neither flowers nor anything to eat and drink. Iknow no other birth of the Virgin in which St. Anne wants so littlekeeping up. 

I have explained in my book Ex Voto, but should perhaps repeat here, that the distinguishing characteristic of the Birth of the Virgin, as rendered by Valsesian artists, is that St. Anne always has eggsimmediately after the infant is born, and usually a good deal more, whereas the Madonna never has anything to eat or drink. The eggsare in accordance with a custom that still prevails among thepeasant classes in the Valsesia, where women on giving birth to achild generally are given a sabaglione--an egg beaten up with alittle wine, or rum, and sugar. East of Milan the Virgin's motherdoes not have eggs, and I suppose, from the absence of the eggs atOropa, that the custom above referred to does not prevail in theBiellese district. The Virgin also is invariably washed. St. Johnthe Baptist, when he is born at all, which is not very often, isalso washed; but I have not observed that St. Elizabeth has anythinglike the attention paid her that is given to St. Anne. What, however, is wanting here at Oropa in meat and drink is made up inCupids; they swarm like flies on the walls, clouds, cornices, andcapitals of columns. 

Against the right-hand wall are two lady-helps, each warming a towelat a glowing fire, to be ready against the baby should come out ofits bath; while in the right-hand foreground we have the levatrice, who having discharged her task, and being now so disposed, hasremoved the bottle from the chimney-piece, and put it near somebread, fruit and a chicken, over which she is about to discuss theconfinement with two other gossips. The levatrice is a verycharacteristic figure, but the best in the chapel is the one of thehead-nurse, near the middle of the composition; she has now theinfant in full charge, and is showing it to St. Joachim, with anexpression as though she were telling him that her husband was amerry man. I am afraid Shakespeare was dead before the sculptor wasborn, otherwise I should have felt certain that he had drawnJuliet's nurse from this figure. As for the little Virgin herself, I believe her to be a fine boy of about ten months old. Viewing thework as a whole, if I only felt more sure what artistic merit reallyis, I should say that, though the chapel cannot be rated very highlyfrom some standpoints, there are others from which it may be praisedwarmly enough. It is innocent of anatomy-worship, free fromaffectation or swagger, and not devoid of a good deal of homelynaivete. It can no more be compared with Tabachetti or Donatellothan Hogarth can with Rembrandt or Giovanni Bellini; but as it doesnot transcend the limitations of its age, so neither is it wantingin whatever merits that age possessed; and there is no age withoutmerits of some kind. There is no inscription saying who made thefigures, but tradition gives them to Pietro Aureggio Termine, ofBiella, commonly called Aureggio. This is confirmed by their strongresemblance to those in the Dimora Chapel, in which there is aninscription that names Aureggio as the sculptor. 

The sixth chapel deals with the Presentation of the Virgin in theTemple. The Virgin is very small, but it must be remembered thatshe is only seven years old and she is not nearly so small as she isat Crea, where though a life-sized figure is intended, the head ishardly bigger than an apple. She is rushing up the steps with openarms towards the High Priest, who is standing at the top. For herit is nothing alarming; it is the High Priest who appearsfrightened; but it will all come right in time. The Virgin seems tobe saying, "Why, don't you know me? I'm the Virgin Mary. " But theHigh Priest does not feel so sure about that, and will make furtherinquiries. The scene, which comprises some twenty figures, isanimated enough, and though it hardly kindles enthusiasm, still doesnot fail to please. It looks as though of somewhat older date thanthe Birth of the Virgin chapel, and I should say shows more signs ofdirect Valsesian influence. In Marocco's book about Oropa it isascribed to Aureggio, but I find it difficult to accept this. 

The seventh, and in many respects most interesting chapel at Oropa, shows what is in reality a medieval Italian girl school, as nearlylike the thing itself as the artist could make it; we are expected, however, to see in this the high-class kind of Girton College foryoung gentlewomen that was attached to the Temple at Jerusalem, under the direction of the Chief Priest's wife, or some one of hisnear female relatives. Here all well-to-do Jewish young womencompleted their education, and here accordingly we find the Virgin, whose parents desired she should shine in every accomplishment, andenjoy all the advantages their ample means commanded. 

I have met with no traces of the Virgin during the years between herPresentation in the Temple and her becoming head girl at TempleCollege. These years, we may be assured, can hardly have been otherthan eventful; but incidents, or bits of life, are like livingforms--it is only here and there, as by rare chance, that one ofthem gets arrested and fossilized; the greater number disappear likethe greater number of antediluvian molluscs, and no one can say whyone of these flies, as it were, of life should get preserved inamber more than another. Talk, indeed, about luck and cunning; whata grain of sand as against a hundredweight is cunning's share hereas against luck's. What moment could be more humdrum and unworthyof special record than the one chosen by the artist for the chapelwe are considering? Why should this one get arrested in its flightand made immortal when so many worthier ones have perished? Yetpreserved it assuredly is; it is as though some fairy's wand hadstruck the medieval Miss Pinkerton, Amelia Sedley, and others who doduty instead of the Hebrew originals. It has locked them up assleeping beauties, whose charms all may look upon. Surely the hoursare like the women grinding at the mill--the one is taken and theother left, and none can give the reason more than he can say whyGallio should have won immortality by caring for none of "thesethings. "

It seems to me, moreover, that fairies have changed their practicenow in the matter of sleeping beauties, much as shopkeepers havedone in Regent Street. Formerly the shopkeeper used to shut up hisgoods behind strong shutters, so that no one might see them afterclosing hours. Now he leaves everything open to the eye and turnsthe gas on. So the fairies, who used to lock up their sleepingbeauties in impenetrable thickets, now leave them in the most publicplaces they can find, as knowing that they will there most certainlyescape notice. Look at De Hooghe; look at The Pilgrim's Progress, or even Shakespeare himself--how long they slept unawakened, thoughthey were in broad daylight and on the public thoroughfares all thetime. Look at Tabachetti, and the masterpieces he left at Varallo. His figures there are exposed to the gaze of every passer-by; yetwho heeds them? Who, save a very few, even know of their existence?Look again at Gaudenzio Ferrari, or the "Danse des Paysans, " byHolbein, to which I ventured to call attention in the UniversalReview. No, no; if a thing be in Central Africa, it is the glory ofthis age to find it out; so the fairies think it safer to concealtheir proteges under a show of openness; for the schoolmaster ismuch abroad, and there is no hedge so thick or so thorny as thedulness of culture. 

It may be, again, that ever so many years hence, when Mr. Darwin'searth-worms shall have buried Oropa hundreds of feet deep, someonesinking a well or making a railway-cutting will unearth thesechapels, and will believe them to have been houses, and to containthe exuviae of the living forms that tenanted them. In themeantime, however, let us return to a consideration of the chapel asit may now be seen by anyone who cares to pass that way. 

The work consists of about forty figures in all, not countingCupids, and is divided into four main divisions. First, there isthe large public sitting-room or drawing-room of the College, wherethe elder young ladies are engaged in various elegant employments. Three, at a table to the left, are making a mitre for the Bishop, asmay be seen from the model on the table. Some are merely spinningor about to spin. One young lady, sitting rather apart from theothers, is doing an elaborate piece of needlework at a tambour-framenear the window; others are making lace or slippers, probably forthe new curate; another is struggling with a letter, or perhaps atheme, which seems to be giving her a good deal of trouble, butwhich, when done, will, I am sure, be beautiful. One dear littlegirl is simply reading Paul and Virginia underneath the window, andis so concealed that I hardly think she can be seen from the outsideat all, though from inside she is delightful; it was with greatregret that I could not get her into any photograph. One mostamiable young woman has got a child's head on her lap, the childhaving played itself to sleep. All are industriously and agreeablyemployed in some way or other; all are plump; all are nice-looking;there is not one Becky Sharp in the whole school; on the contrary, as in "Pious Orgies, " all is pious--or sub-pious--and all, if notgreat, is at least eminently respectable. One feels that St. Joachim and St. Anne could not have chosen a school morejudiciously, and that if one had a daughter oneself this is exactlywhere one would wish to place her. If there is a fault of any kindin the arrangements, it is that they do not keep cats enough. Theplace is overrun with mice, though what these can find to eat I knownot. It occurs to me also that the young ladies might be kept alittle more free of spiders' webs; but in all these chapels, bats, mice, and spiders are troublesome. 

Off the main drawing-room on the side facing the window there is adais, which is approached by a large raised semicircular step, higher than the rest of the floor, but lower than the dais itself. The dais is, of course, reserved for the venerable Lady Principaland the under-mistresses, one of whom, by the way, is a little moremondaine than might have been expected, and is admiring herself in alooking-glass--unless, indeed, she is only looking to see if thereis a spot of ink on her face. The Lady Principal is seated near atable, on which lie some books in expensive bindings, which Iimagine to have been presented to her by the parents of pupils whowere leaving school. One has given her a photographic album;another a large scrapbook, for illustrations of all kinds; a thirdvolume has red edges, and is presumably of a devotional character. If I dared venture another criticism, I should say it would bebetter not to keep the ink-pot on the top of these books. The LadyPrincipal is being read to by the monitress for the week, whose dutyit was to recite selected passages from the most approved Hebrewwriters; she appears to be a good deal outraged, possibly at thefaulty intonation of the reader, which she has long tried vainly tocorrect; or perhaps she has been hearing of the atrocious way inwhich her forefathers had treated the prophets, and is explaining tothe young ladies how impossible it would be, in their own moreenlightened age, for a prophet to fail of recognition. 

On the half-dais, as I suppose the large semicircular step betweenthe main room and the dais should be called, we find, first, themonitress for the week, who stands up while she recites; andsecondly, the Virgin herself, who is the only pupil allowed a seatso near to the august presence of the Lady Principal. She isostensibly doing a piece of embroidery which is stretched on acushion on her lap, but I should say that she was chiefly interestedin the nearest of four pretty little Cupids, who are all trying toattract her attention, though they pay no court to any other younglady. I have sometimes wondered whether the obviously scandalizedgesture of the Lady Principal might not be directed at these Cupids, rather than at anything the monitress may have been reading, for shewould surely find them disquieting. Or she may be saying, "Why, bless me! I do declare the Virgin has got another hamper, and St. Anne's cakes are always so terribly rich!" Certainly the hamper isthere, close to the Virgin, and the Lady Principal's action may bewell directed at it, but it may have been sent to some other younglady, and be put on the sub-dais for public exhibition. It looks asif it might have come from Fortnum and Mason's, and I half expectedto find a label, addressing it to "The Virgin Mary, Temple College, Jerusalem, " but if ever there was one the mice have long since eatenit. The Virgin herself does not seem to care much about it, but ifshe has a fault it is that she is generally a little apathetic. 

Whose the hamper was, however, is a point we shall never nowcertainly determine, for the best fossil is worse than the worstliving form. Why, alas! was not Mr. Edison alive when this chapelwas made? We might then have had a daily phonographic recital ofthe conversation, and an announcement might be put outside thechapels, telling us at what hours the figures would speak. 

On either side of the main room there are two annexes opening outfrom it; these are reserved chiefly for the younger children, someof whom, I think, are little boys. In the left annex, behind theladies who are making a mitre, there is a child who has got a cake, and another has some fruit--possibly given them by the Virgin--and athird child is begging for some of it. The light failed socompletely here that I was not able to photograph any of thesefigures. It was a dull September afternoon, and the clouds hadsettled thick round the chapel, which is never very light, and isnearly 4000 feet above the sea. I waited till such twilight as madeit hopeless that more detail could be got--and a queer ghostly placeenough it was to wait in--but after giving the plate an exposure offifty minutes, I saw I could get no more, and desisted. 

These long photographic exposures have the advantage that one iscompelled to study a work in detail through mere lack of otheremployment, and that one can take one's notes in peace without beingtempted to hurry over them; but even so I continually find I haveomitted to note, and have clean forgotten, much that I want lateron. 

In the other annex there are also one or two younger children, butit seems to have been set apart for conversation and relaxation morethan any other part of the establishment. 

I have already said that the work is signed by an inscription insidethe chapel, to the effect that the sculptures are by Pietro AureggioTermine di Biella. It will be seen that the young ladies areexceedingly like one another, and that the artist aimed at nothingmore than a faithful rendering of the life of his own times. Let usbe thankful that he aimed at nothing less. Perhaps his wife kept agirls' school; or he may have had a large family of fat, good-natured daughters, whose little ways he had studied attentively; atall events the work is full of spontaneous incident, and cannot failto become more and more interesting as the age it renders fallsfarther back into the past. It is to be regretted that manyartists, better-known men, have not been satisfied with the humblerambitions of this most amiable and interesting sculptor. If he hasleft us no laboured life-studies, he has at least done something forus which we can find nowhere else, which we should be very sorry notto have, and the fidelity of which to Italian life at the beginningof the eighteenth century will not be disputed. 

The eighth chapel is that of the Sposalizio, is certainly not byAureggio, and I should say was mainly by the same sculptor who didthe Presentation in the Temple. On going inside I found the figureshad come from more than one source; some of them are constructed soabsolutely on Valsesian principles, as regards technique, that itmay be assumed they came from Varallo. Each of these last figuresis in three pieces, that are baked separately and cemented togetherafterwards, hence they are more easily transported; no more clay isused than is absolutely necessary; and the off-side of the figure isneglected; they will be found chiefly, if not entirely, at the topof the steps. The other figures are more solidly built, and do notremind me in their business features of anything in the Valsesia. There was a sculptor, Francesco Sala, of Locarno (doubtless thevillage a short distance below Varallo, and not the Locarno on theLago Maggiore), who made designs for some of the Oropa chapels, andsome of whose letters are still preserved, but whether the Valsesianfigures in this present work are by him or not I cannot say. 

The statues are twenty-five in number; I could find no date orsignature; the work reminds me of Montrigone; several of the figuresare not at all bad, and several have horsehair for hair, as atVarallo. The effect of the whole composition is better than we havea right to expect from any sculpture dating from the beginning ofthe eighteenth century. 

The ninth chapel, the Annunciation, presents no feature of interest;nor yet does the tenth, the Visit of Mary to Elizabeth. Theeleventh, the Nativity, though rather better, is still notremarkable. 

The twelfth, the Purification, is absurdly bad, but I do not knowwhether the expression of strong personal dislike to the Virginwhich the High Priest wears is intended as prophetic, or whether itis the result of incompetence, or whether it is merely a smile gonewrong in the baking. It is amusing to find Marocco, who has notbeen strict about archaeological accuracy hitherto, complain herethat there is an anachronism, inasmuch as some young ecclesiasticsare dressed as they would be at present, and one of them actuallycarries a wax candle. This is not as it should be; in works likethose at Oropa, where implicit reliance is justly placed on theearnest endeavours that have been so successfully made to thoroughlyand carefully and patiently ensure the accuracy of the minutestdetails, it is a pity that even a single error should have escapeddetection; this, however, has most unfortunately happened here, andMarocco feels it his duty to put us on our guard. He explains thatthe mistake arose from the sculptor's having taken both his generalarrangement and his details from some picture of the fourteenth orfifteenth century, when the value of the strictest historicalaccuracy was not yet so fully understood. 

It seems to me that in the matter of accuracy, priests and men ofscience whether lay or regular on the one hand, and plain peoplewhether lay or regular on the other, are trying to play a differentgame, and fail to understand one another because they do not seethat their objects are not the same. The cleric and the man ofscience (who is only the cleric in his latest development) aretrying to develop a throat with two distinct passages--one thatshall refuse to pass even the smallest gnat, and another that shallgracefully gulp even the largest camel; whereas we men of the streetdesire but one throat, and are content that this shall swallownothing bigger than a pony. Everyone knows that there is no sucheffectual means of developing the power to swallow camels asincessant watchfulness for opportunities of straining at gnats, andthis should explain many passages that puzzle us in the work both ofour clerics and our scientists. I, not being a man of science, still continue to do what I said I did in Alps and Sanctuaries, andmake it a rule to earnestly and patiently and carefully swallow afew of the smallest gnats I can find several times a day, as thebest astringent for the throat I know of. 

The thirteenth chapel is the Marriage Feast at Cana of Galilee. This is the best chapel as a work of art; indeed, it is the only onewhich can claim to be taken quite seriously. Not that all thefigures are very good; those to the left of the composition arecommonplace enough; nor are the Christ and the giver of the feast atall remarkable; but the ten or dozen figures of guests andattendants at the right-hand end of the work are as good as anythingof their kind can be, and remind me so strongly of Tabachetti that Icannot doubt they were done by someone who was indirectly influencedby that great sculptor's work. It is not likely that Tabachetti wasalive long after 1640, by which time he would have been about eightyyears old; and the foundations of this chapel were not laid tillabout 1690; the statues are probably a few years later; they canhardly, therefore, be by one who had even studied under Tabachetti;but until I found out the dates, and went inside the chapel to seethe way in which the figures had been constructed, I was inclined tothink they might be by Tabachetti himself, of whom, indeed, they arenot unworthy. On examining the figures I found them more heavilyconstructed than Tabachetti's are, with smaller holes for taking outsuperfluous clay, and more finished on the off-sides. Marocco saysthe sculptor is not known. I looked in vain for any date orsignature. Possibly the right-hand figures (for the left-hand onescan hardly be by the same hand) may be by some sculptor from Crea, which is at no very great distance from Oropa, who was penetrated byTabachetti's influence; but whether as regards action and concertwith one another, or as regards excellence in detail, I do not seehow anything can be more realistic, and yet more harmoniouslycomposed. The placing of the musicians in a minstrels' galleryhelps the effect; these musicians are six in number, and the otherfigures are twenty-three. Under the table, between Christ and thegiver of the feast, there is a cat. 

The fourteenth chapel, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, is withoutinterest. 

The fifteenth, the Coronation of the Virgin, contains forty-sixangels, twenty-six cherubs, fifty-six saints, the Holy Trinity, theMadonna herself, and twenty-four innocents, making 156 statues inall. Of these I am afraid there is not one of more than ordinarymerit; the most interesting is a half-length nude life-study ofDisma--the good thief. After what had been promised him it wasimpossible to exclude him, but it was felt that a half-length nudefigure would be as much as he could reasonably expect. 

Behind the sanctuary there is a semi-ruinous and wholly valuelesswork, which shows the finding of the black image, which is now inthe church, but is only shown on great festivals. 

This leads us to a consideration that I have delayed till now. Theblack image is the central feature of Oropa; it is the raison d'etreof the whole place, and all else is a mere incrustation, so tospeak, around it. According to this image, then, which was carvedby St. Luke himself, and than which nothing can be betterauthenticated, both the Madonna and the infant Christ were as blackas anything can be conceived. It is not likely that they were asblack as they have been painted; no one yet ever was so black asthat; yet, even allowing for some exaggeration on St. Luke's part, they must have been exceedingly black if the portrait is to beaccepted; and uncompromisingly black they accordingly are on most ofthe wayside chapels for many a mile around Oropa. Yet in thechapels we have been hitherto considering--works in which, as weknow, the most punctilious regard has been shown to accuracy--boththe Virgin and Christ are uncompromisingly white. As in the shopsunder the Colonnade where devotional knick-knacks are sold, you canbuy a black china image or a white one, whichever you like; so withthe pictures--the black and white are placed side by side--pagandoil danaro si puo scegliere. It rests not with history or with theChurch to say whether the Madonna and Child were black or white, butyou may settle it for yourself, whichever way you please, or ratheryou are required, with the acquiescence of the Church, to hold thatthey were both black and white at one and the same time. 

It cannot be maintained that the Church leaves the matter undecided, and by tolerating both types proclaims the question an open one, forshe acquiesces in the portrait by St. Luke as genuine. How, then, justify the whiteness of the Holy Family in the chapels? If theportrait is not known as genuine, why set such a stumbling-block inour paths as to show us a black Madonna and a white one, both ashistorically accurate, within a few yards of one another?

I ask this not in mockery, but as knowing that the Church must havean explanation to give, if she would only give it, and as myselfunable to find any, even the most far-fetched, that can bring whatwe see at Oropa, Loreto and elsewhere into harmony with modernconscience, either intellectual or ethical. 

I see, indeed, from an interesting article in the Atlantic Monthlyfor September, 1889, entitled "The Black Madonna of Loreto, " thatblack Madonnas were so frequent in ancient Christian art that "someof the early writers of the Church felt obliged to account for it byexplaining that the Virgin was of a very dark complexion, as mightbe proved by the verse of Canticles which says, 'I am black, butcomely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem. ' Others maintained that shebecame black during her sojourn in Egypt. . . . Priests, of to-day, say that extreme age and exposure to the smoke of countless altar-candles have caused that change in complexion which the more naivefathers of the Church attributed to the power of an Egyptian sun";but the writer ruthlessly disposes of this supposition by pointingout that in nearly all the instances of black Madonnas it is theflesh alone that is entirely black, the crimson of the lips, thewhite of the eyes, and the draperies having preserved their originalcolour. The authoress of the article (Mrs. Hilliard) goes on totell us that Pausanias mentions two statues of the black Venus, andsays that the oldest statue of Ceres among the Phigalenses wasblack. She adds that Minerva Aglaurus, the daughter of Cecrops, atAthens, was black; that Corinth had a black Venus, as also theThespians; that the oracles of Dodona and Delphi were founded byblack doves, the emissaries of Venus, and that the Isis Multimammiain the Capitol at Rome is black. 

Sometimes I have asked myself whether the Church does not intend tosuggest that the whole story falls outside the domain of history, and is to be held as the one great epos, or myth, common to allmankind; adaptable by each nation according to its own severalneeds; translatable, so to speak, into the facts of each individualnation, as the written word is translatable into its language, butappertaining to the realm of the imagination rather than to that ofthe understanding, and precious for spiritual rather than literaltruths. More briefly, I have wondered whether she may not intendthat such details as whether the Virgin was white or black are ofvery little importance in comparison with the basing of ethics on astory that shall appeal to black races as well as to white ones. 

If so, it is time we were made to understand this more clearly. Ifthe Church, whether of Rome or England, would lean to some such viewas this--tainted though it be with mysticism--if we could see eithergreat branch of the Church make a frank, authoritative attempt tobring its teaching into greater harmony with the educatedunderstanding and conscience of the time, instead of trying tofetter that understanding with bonds that gall it daily more andmore profoundly; then I, for one, in view of the difficulty andgraciousness of the task, and in view of the great importance ofhistorical continuity, would gladly sink much of my own privateopinion as to the value of the Christian ideal, and would gratefullyhelp either Church or both, according to the best of my very feebleability. On these terms, indeed, I could swallow not a few camelsmyself cheerfully enough. 

Can we, however, see any signs as though either Rome or England willstir hand or foot to meet us? Can any step be pointed to as thougheither Church wished to make things easier for men holding theopinions held by the late Mr. Darwin, or by Mr. Herbert Spencer andProfessor Huxley? How can those who accept evolution with anythoroughness accept such doctrines as the Incarnation or theRedemption with any but a quasi-allegorical and poeticalinterpretation? Can we conceivably accept these doctrines in theliteral sense in which the Church advances them? And can theleaders of the Church be blind to the resistlessness of the currentthat has set against those literal interpretations which she seemsto hug more and more closely the more religious life is awakened atall? The clergyman is wanted as supplementing the doctor and thelawyer in all civilized communities; these three keep watch on oneanother, and prevent one another from becoming too powerful. I, whodistrust the doctrinaire in science even more than the doctrinairein religion, should view with dismay the abolition of the Church ofEngland, as knowing that a blatant bastard science would instantlystep into her shoes; but if some such deplorable consummation is tobe avoided in England, it can only be through more evident leaningon the part of our clergy to such an interpretation of the SacredHistory as the presence of a black and white Madonna almost side byside at Oropa appears to suggest. 

I fear that in these last paragraphs I may have trenched ondangerous ground, but it is not possible to go to such places asOropa without asking oneself what they mean and involve. As for theaverage Italian pilgrims, they do not appear to give the matter somuch as a thought. They love Oropa, and flock to it in thousandsduring the summer; the President of the Administration assured methat they lodged, after a fashion, as many as ten thousand pilgrimson the 15th of last August. It is astonishing how living thestatues are to these people, and how the wicked are upbraided andthe good applauded. At Varallo, since I took the photographs Ipublished in my book Ex Voto, an angry pilgrim has smashed the noseof the dwarf in Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary, for no other reasonthan inability to restrain his indignation against one who washelping to inflict pain on Christ. It is the real hair and thepainting up to nature that does this. Here at Oropa I found a paperon the floor of the Sposalizio Chapel, which ran as follows:--

"By the grace of God and the will of the administrative chapter ofthis sanctuary, there have come here to work --- ---, mason, --- ---, carpenter, and --- ---, plumber, all of Chiavazza, on the twenty-first day of January, 1886, full of cold (pieni di freddo). 

"They write these two lines to record their visit. They pray theBlessed Virgin that she will maintain them safe and sound fromeverything equivocal that may befall them (sempre sani e salvi daogni equivoco li possa accadere). Oh, farewell! We reverentlysalute all the present statues, and especially the Blessed Virgin, and the reader. "

Through the Universal Review, I suppose, all its readers are toconsider themselves saluted; at any rate, these good fellows, in theeffusiveness of their hearts, actually wrote the above in pencil. Iwas sorely tempted to steal it, but, after copying it, left it inthe Chief Priest's hands instead. 

Art in the Valley of Saas {188}

Having been told by Mr. Fortescue, of the British Museum, that therewere some chapels at Saas-Fee which bore analogy to those atVarallo, described in my book Ex Voto, I went to Saas during thislast summer, and venture now to lay my conclusions before thereader. 

The chapels are fifteen in number, and lead up to a larger andsingularly graceful one, rather more than half-way between Saas andSaas-Fee. This is commonly but wrongly called the chapel of St. Joseph, for it is dedicated to the Virgin, and its situation is ofsuch extreme beauty--the great Fee glaciers showing through the openportico--that it is in itself worth a pilgrimage. It is surroundedby noble larches and overhung by rock; in front of the portico thereis a small open space covered with grass, and a huge larch, the stemof which is girt by a rude stone seat. The portico itself containsseats for worshippers, and a pulpit from which the preacher's voicecan reach the many who must stand outside. The walls of the innerchapel are hung with votive pictures, some of them very quaint andpleasing, and not overweighted by those qualities that are usuallydubbed by the name of artistic merit. Innumerable wooden and waxenrepresentations of arms, legs, eyes, ears and babies tell of thecures that have been effected during two centuries of devotion, andcan hardly fail to awaken a kindly sympathy with the long dead andforgotten folks who placed them where they are. 

The main interest, however, despite the extreme loveliness of theSt. Mary's Chapel, centres rather in the small and outwardlyunimportant oratories (if they should be so called) that lead up toit. These begin immediately with the ascent from the level groundon which the village of Saas-im-Grund is placed, and contain scenesin the history of the Redemption, represented by rude but spiritedwooden figures, each about two feet high, painted, gilt, andrendered as life-like in all respects as circumstances would permit. The figures have suffered a good deal from neglect, and are stillnot a little misplaced. With the assistance, however, of the Rev. E. J. Selwyn, English Chaplain at Saas-im-Grund, I have been able toreplace many of them in their original positions, as indicated bythe parts of the figures that are left rough-hewn and unpainted. They vary a good deal in interest, and can be easily sneered at bythose who make a trade of sneering. Those, on the other hand, whoremain unsophisticated by overmuch art-culture will find them fullof character in spite of not a little rudeness of execution, andwill be surprised at coming across such works in a place so remotefrom any art-centre as Saas must have been at the time these chapelswere made. It will be my business therefore to throw what light Ican upon the questions how they came to be made at all, and who wasthe artist who designed them. 

The only documentary evidence consists in a chronicle of the valleyof Saas written in the early years of this century by the Rev. PeterJos. Ruppen, and published at Sion in 1851. This work makesfrequent reference to a manuscript by the Rev. Peter Joseph ClemensLommatter, cure of Saas-Fee from 1738 to 1751, which hasunfortunately been lost, so that we have no means of knowing howclosely it was adhered to. The Rev. Jos. Ant. Ruppen, the presentexcellent cure of Saas-im-Grund, assures me that there is noreference to the Saas-Fee oratories in the "Actes de l'Eglise" atSaas, which I understand go a long way back; but I have not seenthese myself. Practically, then, we have no more documentaryevidence than is to be found in the published chronicle abovereferred to. 

We there find it stated that the large chapel, commonly, but asabove explained, wrongly called St. Joseph's, was built in 1687, andenlarged by subscription in 1747. These dates appear on thebuilding itself, and are no doubt accurate. The writer adds thatthere was no actual edifice on this site before the one now existingwas built, but there was a miraculous picture of the Virgin placedin a mural niche, before which the pious herdsmen and devoutinhabitants of the valley worshipped under the vault of heaven. {190} A miraculous (or miracle-working) picture was always more orless rare and important; the present site, therefore, seems to havebeen long one of peculiar sanctity. Possibly the name Fee may pointto still earlier pagan mysteries on the same site. 

As regards the fifteen small chapels, the writer says theyillustrate the fifteen mysteries of the Psalter, and were built in1709, each householder of the Saas-Fee contributing one chapel. Headds that Heinrich Andenmatten, afterwards a brother of the Societyof Jesus, was an especial benefactor or promoter of the undertaking. One of the chapels, the Ascension (No. 12 of the series), has thedate 1709 painted on it; but there is no date on any other chapel, and there seems no reason why this should be taken as governing thewhole series. 

Over and above this, there exists in Saas a tradition, as I was toldimmediately on my arrival, by an English visitor, that the chapelswere built in consequence of a flood, but I have vainly endeavouredto trace this story to an indigenous source. 

The internal evidence of the wooden figures themselves--nothinganalogous to which, it should be remembered, can be found in thechapel of 1687--points to a much earlier date. I have met with noschool of sculpture belonging to the early part of the eighteenthcentury to which they can be plausibly assigned; and the suppositionthat they are the work of some unknown local genius who was not ledup to and left no successors may be dismissed, for the work is tooscholarly to have come from anyone but a trained sculptor. I referof course to those figures which the artist must be supposed to haveexecuted with his own hand, as, for example, the central figure ofthe Crucifixion group and those of the Magdalene and St. John. Thegreater number of the figures were probably, as was suggested to meby Mr. Ranshaw, of Lowth, executed by a local wood-carver frommodels in clay and wax furnished by the artist himself. Those whoexamine the play of line in the hair, mantle, and sleeve of theMagdalene in the Crucifixion group, and contrast it with the greaterpart of the remaining draperies, will find little hesitation inconcluding that this was the case, and will ere long readilydistinguish the two hands from which the figures have mainly come. I say "mainly, " because there is at least one other sculptor who maywell have belonged to the year 1709, but who fortunately has left uslittle. Examples of his work may perhaps be seen in the nearestvillain with a big hat in the Flagellation chapel, and in twocherubs in the Assumption of the Virgin. 

We may say, then, with some certainty, that the designer was acultivated and practised artist. We may also not less certainlyconclude that he was of Flemish origin, for the horses in theJourney to Calvary and Crucifixion chapels, where alone there areany horses at all, are of Flemish breed, with no trace of the Arabblood adopted by Gaudenzio at Varallo. The character, moreover, ofthe villains is Northern--of the Quentin Matsys, Martin Schongauertype, rather than Italian; the same sub-Rubensesque feeling which isapparent in more than one chapel at Varallo is not less evidenthere--especially in the Journey to Calvary and Crucifixion chapels. There can hardly, therefore, be a doubt that the artist was aFleming who had worked for several years in Italy. 

It is also evident that he had Tabachetti's work at Varallo well inhis mind. For not only does he adopt certain details of costume (Irefer particularly to the treatment of soldiers' tunics) which arepeculiar to Tabachetti at Varallo, but whenever he treats a subjectwhich Tabachetti had treated at Varallo, as in the Flagellation, Crowning with Thorns, and Journey to Calvary chapels, the work atSaas is evidently nothing but a somewhat modified abridgment of thatat Varallo. When, however, as in the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and other chapels, the work at Varallo is byanother than Tabachetti, no allusion is made to it. The Saas artisthas Tabachetti's Varallo work at his finger-ends, but betrays noacquaintance whatever with Gaudenzio Ferrari, Gio. Ant. Paracca, orGiovanni d'Enrico. 

Even, moreover, when Tabachetti's work at Varallo is being mostobviously drawn from, as in the Journey to Calvary chapel, the Saasversion differs materially from that at Varallo, and is in somerespects an improvement on it. The idea of showing other horsemenand followers coming up from behind, whose heads can be seen overthe crown of the interposing hill, is singularly effective assuggesting a number of others that are unseen, nor can I conceivethat anyone but the original designer would follow Tabachetti'sVarallo design with as much closeness as it has been followed here, and yet make such a brilliantly successful modification. Thestumbling, again, of one horse (a detail almost hidden, according toTabachetti's wont) is a touch which Tabachetti himself might add, but which no Saas wood-carver who was merely adapting from areminiscence of Tabachetti's Varallo chapel would be likely tointroduce. These considerations have convinced me that the designerof the chapels at Saas is none other than Tabachetti himself, who, as has been now conclusively shown, was a native of Dinant, inBelgium. 

The Saas chronicler, indeed, avers that the chapels were not builttill 1709--a statement apparently corroborated by a date now visibleon one chapel; but we must remember that the chronicler did notwrite until a century or so later than 1709, and though indeed, hisstatement may have been taken from the lost earlier manuscript of1738, we know nothing about this either one way or the other. Thewriter may have gone by the still existing 1709 on the Ascensionchapel, whereas this date may in fact have referred to arestoration, and not to an original construction. There is nothing, as I have said, in the choice of the chapel on which the dateappears, to suggest that it was intended to govern the others. Ihave explained that the work is isolated and exotic. It is by onein whom Flemish and Italian influences are alike equallypredominant; by one who was saturated with Tabachetti's Varallowork, and who can improve upon it, but over whom the other Varallosculptors have no power. The style of the work is of the sixteenthand not of the eighteenth century--with a few obvious exceptionsthat suit the year 1709 exceedingly well. Against suchconsiderations as these, a statement made at the beginning of thiscentury referring to a century earlier and a promiscuous date uponone chapel, can carry but little weight. I shall assume, therefore, henceforward, that we have here groups designed in a plasticmaterial by Tabachetti, and reproduced in wood by the best localwood-sculptor available, with the exception of a few figures cut bythe artist himself. 

We ask, then, at what period in his life did Tabachetti design thesechapels, and what led to his coming to such an out-of-the-way placeas Saas at all? We should remember that, according both to Fassolaand Torrotti (writing in 1671 and 1686 respectively), Tabachetti{195} became insane about the year 1586 or early in 1587, afterhaving just begun the Salutation chapel. I have explained in ExVoto that I do not believe this story. I have no doubt thatTabachetti was declared to be mad, but I believe this to have beendue to an intrigue, set on foot in order to get a foreign artist outof the way, and to secure the Massacre of the Innocents chapel, atthat precise time undertaken, for Gio. Ant. Paracca, who was anItalian. 

Or he may have been sacrificed in order to facilitate the return ofthe workers in stucco whom he had superseded on the Sacro Monte. Hemay have been goaded into some imprudence which was seized upon as apretext for shutting him up; at any rate, the fact that when in 1587he inherited his father's property at Dinant, his trustee (he beingexpressly stated to be "expatrie") was "datif, " "dativus, " appointednot by himself but by the court, lends colour to the statement thathe was not his own master at the time; for in later kindred deeds, now at Namur, he appoints his own trustee. I suppose, then, thatTabachetti was shut up in a madhouse at Varallo for a considerabletime, during which I can find no trace of him, but that eventuallyhe escaped or was released. 

Whether he was a fugitive, or whether he was let out from prison, hewould in either case, in all reasonable probability, turn his facehomeward. If he was escaping, he would make immediately for theSavoy frontier, within which Saas then lay. He would cross theBaranca above Fobello, coming down on to Ponte Grande in the ValAnzasca. He would go up the Val Anzasca to Macugnaga, and over theMonte Moro, which would bring him immediately to Saas. Saas, therefore, is the nearest and most natural place for him to makefor, if he were flying from Varallo, and here I suppose him to havehalted. 

It so happened that on the 9th of September, 1589, there was one ofthe three great outbreaks of the Mattmark See that have from time totime devastated the valley of Saas. {196} It is probable that thechapels were decided upon in consequence of some grace shown by themiraculous picture of the Virgin, which had mitigated a disasteroccurring so soon after the anniversary of her own Nativity. Tabachetti, arriving at this juncture, may have offered to undertakethem if the Saas people would give him an asylum. Here, at anyrate, I suppose him to have stayed till some time in 1590, probablythe second half of it; his design of eventually returning home, ifhe ever entertained it, being then interrupted by a summons to Creanear Casale, where I believe him to have worked with a few briefinterruptions thenceforward for little if at all short of half acentury, or until about the year 1640. I admit, however, that theevidence for assigning him so long a life rests solely on thesupposed identity of the figure known as "Il Vecchietto, " in theVarallo Descent from the Cross chapel, with the portrait ofTabachetti himself in the Ecce Homo chapel, also at Varallo. 

I find additional reason for thinking the chapels owe their originto the inundation of 9th September, 1589, in the fact that the 8thof September is made a day of pilgrimage to the Saas-Fee chapelsthroughout the whole valley of Saas. It is true the 8th ofSeptember is the festival of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, sothat under any circumstances this would be a great day, but the factthat not only the people of Saas, but the whole valley down to Visp, flock to this chapel on the 8th of September, points to the beliefthat some special act of grace on the part of the Virgin wasvouchsafed on this day in connection with this chapel. A beliefthat it was owing to the intervention of St. Mary of Fee that theinundation was not attended with loss of life would be very likelyto lead to the foundation of a series of chapels leading up to theplace where her miraculous picture was placed, and to the morespecial celebration of her Nativity in connection with this spotthroughout the valley of Saas. I have discussed the subject withthe Rev. Jos. Ant. Ruppen, and he told me he thought the fact thatthe great fete of the year in connection with the Saas-Fee chapelswas on the 8th of September pointed rather strongly to thesupposition that there was a connection between these and therecorded flood of 9th September, 1589. 

Turning to the individual chapels they are as follows:--

1. The Annunciation. The treatment here presents no more analogyto that of the same subject at Varallo than is inevitable in thenature of the subject. The Annunciation figures at Varallo haveproved to be mere draped dummies with wooden heads; Tabachetti, eventhough he did the heads, which he very likely did, would take nointerest in the Varallo work with the same subject. TheAnnunciation, from its very simplicity as well as from thetranscendental nature of the subject, is singularly hard to treat, and the work here, whatever it may once have been, is now no longerremarkable. 

2. The Salutation of Mary by Elizabeth. This group, again, bearsno analogy to the Salutation chapel at Varallo, in whichTabachetti's share was so small that it cannot be considered as inany way his. It is not to be expected, therefore, that the Saaschapel should follow the Varallo one. The figures, four in number, are pleasing and well arranged. St. Joseph, St. Elizabeth, and St. Zacharias are all talking at once. The Virgin is alone silent. 

3. The Nativity is much damaged and hard to see. The treatmentbears no analogy to that adopted by Gaudenzio Ferrari at Varallo. There is one pleasing young shepherd standing against the wall, butsome figures have no doubt (as in others of the chapels)disappeared, and those that remain have been so shifted from theiroriginal positions that very little idea can be formed of what thegroup was like when Tabachetti left it. 

4. The Purification. I can hardly say why this chapel shouldremind me, as it does, of the Circumcision chapel at Varallo, forthere are more figures here than space at Varallo will allow. Itcannot be pretended that any single figure is of extraordinarymerit, but amongst them they tell their story with excellent effect. Two, those of St. Joseph and St. Anna (?), that doubtless were oncemore important factors in the drama, are now so much in corners nearthe window that they can hardly be seen. 

5. The Dispute in the Temple. This subject is not treated atVarallo. Here at Saas there are only six doctors now; whether or nothere were originally more cannot be determined. 

6. The Agony in the Garden. Tabachetti had no chapel with thissubject at Varallo, and there is no resemblance between the Saaschapel and that by D'Enrico. The figures are no doubt approximatelyin their original positions, but I have no confidence that I haverearranged them correctly. They were in such confusion when I firstsaw them that the Rev. E. J. Selwyn and myself determined torearrange them. They have doubtless been shifted more than oncesince Tabachetti left them. The sleeping figures are all good. St. James is perhaps a little prosaic. One Roman soldier who is cominginto the garden with a lantern, and motioning silence with his hand, does duty for the others that are to follow him. I should thinkmore than one of these figures is actually carved in wood byTabachetti, allowance being made for the fact that he was working ina material with which he was not familiar, and which no sculptor ofthe highest rank has ever found congenial. 

7. The Flagellation. Tabachetti has a chapel with this subject atVarallo, and the Saas group is obviously a descent with modificationfrom his work there. The figure of Christ is so like the one atVarallo that I think it must have been carved by Tabachetti himself. The man with the hooked nose, who at Varallo is stooping to bind hisrods, is here upright: it was probably the intention to emphasizehim in the succeeding scenes as well as this, in the same way as hehas been emphasized at Varallo, but his nose got pared down in thecutting of later scenes, and could not easily be added to. The manbinding Christ to the column at Varallo is repeated (longointervallo) here, and the whole work is one inspired by that atVarallo, though no single figure except that of the Christ isadhered to with any very great closeness. I think the nearermalefactor, with a goitre, and wearing a large black hat, is eitheran addition of the year 1709, or was done by the journeyman of thelocal sculptor who carved the greater number of the figures. Theman stooping down to bind his rods can hardly be by the same hand aseither of the two black-hatted malefactors, but it is impossible tospeak with certainty. The general effect of the chapel isexcellent, if we consider the material in which it is executed, andthe rudeness of the audience to whom it addresses itself. 

8. The Crowning with Thorns. Here again the inspiration is derivedfrom Tabachetti's Crowning with Thorns at Varallo. The Christs inthe two chapels are strikingly alike, and the general effect is thatof a residuary impression left in the mind of one who had known theVarallo Flagellation exceedingly well. 

9. Sta. Veronica. This and the next succeeding chapels are themost important of the series. Tabachetti's Journey to Calvary atVarallo is again the source from which the present work was taken, but, as I have already said, it has been modified in reproduction. Mount Calvary is still shown, as at Varallo, towards the left-handcorner of the work, but at Saas it is more towards the middle thanat Varallo, so that horsemen and soldiers may be seen coming upbehind it--a stroke that deserves the name of genius none the lessfor the manifest imperfection with which it has been carried intoexecution. There are only three horses fully shown, and one partlyshown. They are all of the heavy Flemish type adopted by Tabachettiat Varallo. The man kicking the fallen Christ and the goitred man(with the same teeth missing), who are so conspicuous in the VaralloJourney to Calvary, reappear here, only the kicking man has muchless nose than at Varallo, probably because (as explained) the nosegot whittled away and could not be whittled back again. I observethat the kind of lapelled tunic which Tabachetti, and onlyTabachetti, adopts at Varallo, is adopted for the centurion in thischapel, and indeed throughout the Saas chapels this particular formof tunic is the most usual for a Roman soldier. The work is still avery striking one, notwithstanding its translation into wood and thedecay into which it has been allowed to fall; nor can it fail toimpress the visitor who is familiar with this class of art as comingfrom a man of extraordinary dramatic power and command over thealmost impossible art of composing many figures together effectivelyin all-round sculpture. Whether all the figures are even now asTabachetti left them I cannot determine, but Mr. Selwyn has restoredSimon the Cyrenian to the position in which he obviously ought tostand, and between us we have got the chapel into something morelike order. 

10. The Crucifixion. This subject was treated at Varallo not byTabachetti but by Gaudenzio Ferrari. It confirms therefore myopinion as to the designer of the Saas chapels to find in them notrace of the Varallo Crucifixion, while the kind of tunic which atVarallo is only found in chapels wherein Tabachetti worked againappears here. The work is in a deplorable state of decay. Mr. Selwyn has greatly improved the arrangement of the figures, but evennow they are not, I imagine, quite as Tabachetti left them. Thefigure of Christ is greatly better in technical execution than thatof either of the two thieves; the folds of the drapery alone willshow this even to an unpractised eye. I do not think there can be adoubt but that Tabachetti cut this figure himself, as also those ofthe Magdalene and St. John, who stand at the foot of the cross. Thethieves are coarsely executed, with no very obvious distinctionbetween the penitent and the impenitent one, except that there is afiend painted on the ceiling over the impenitent thief. The onehorse introduced into the composition is again of the heavy Flemishtype adopted by Tabachetti at Varallo. There is great difference inthe care with which the folds on the several draperies have beencut, some being stiff and poor enough, while others are done verysufficiently. In spite of smallness of scale, ignoble material, disarrangement and decay, the work is still striking. 

11. The Resurrection. There being no chapel at Varallo with any ofthe remaining subjects treated at Saas, the sculptor has struck outa line for himself. The Christ in the Resurrection Chapel is acarefully modelled figure, and if better painted might not beineffective. Three soldiers, one sleeping, alone remain. Therewere probably other figures that have been lost. The sleepingsoldier is very pleasing. 

12. The Ascension is not remarkably interesting; the Christ appearsto be, but perhaps is not, a much more modern figure than the rest. 

13. The Descent of the Holy Ghost. Some of the figures along theend wall are very good, and were, I should imagine, cut byTabachetti himself. Those against the two side walls are not sowell cut. 

14. The Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The two large cherubs hereare obviously by a later hand, and the small ones are not good. Thefigure of the Virgin herself is unexceptionable. There weredoubtless once other figures of the Apostles which have disappeared;of these a single St. Peter (?), so hidden away in a corner near thewindow that it can only be seen with difficulty, is the solesurvivor. 

15. The Coronation of the Virgin is of later date, and has probablysuperseded an earlier work. It can hardly be by the designer of theother chapels of the series. Perhaps Tabachetti had to leave forCrea before all the chapels at Saas were finished. 

Lastly, we have the larger chapel dedicated to St. Mary, whichcrowns the series. Here there is nothing of more than commonartistic interest, unless we except the stone altar mentioned inRuppen's chronicle. This is of course classical in style, and is, Ishould think, very good. 

Once more I must caution the reader against expecting to find highlyfinished gems of art in the chapels I have been describing. Awooden figure not more than two feet high clogged with many coats ofpaint can hardly claim to be taken very seriously, and even thosefew that were cut by Tabachetti himself were not meant to haveattention concentrated on themselves alone. As mere wood-carvingthe Saas-Fee chapels will not stand comparison, for example, withthe triptych of unknown authorship in the Church of St. Anne atGliss, close to Brieg. But, in the first place, the work at Glissis worthy of Holbein himself; I know no wood-carving that can sorivet the attention; moreover it is coloured with water-colour andnot oil, so that it is tinted, not painted; and, in the secondplace, the Gliss triptych belongs to a date (1519) when artists heldneither time nor impressionism as objects, and hence, though greatlybetter than the Saas-Fee chapels as regards a certain Japanesecuriousness of finish and naivete of literal transcription, itcannot even enter the lists with the Saas work as regards elan anddramatic effectiveness. The difference between the two classes ofwork is much that between, say, John Van Eyck or Memling and Rubensor Rembrandt, or, again, between Giovanni Bellini and Tintoretto;the aims of the one class of work are incompatible with those of theother. Moreover, in the Gliss triptych the intention of thedesigner is carried out (whether by himself or no) with admirableskill; whereas at Saas the wisdom of the workman is rather of Ober-Ammergau than of the Egyptians, and the voice of the poet is not alittle drowned in that of his mouthpiece. If, however, the readerwill bear in mind these somewhat obvious considerations, and willalso remember the pathetic circumstances under which the chapelswere designed--for Tabachetti when he reached Saas was no doubtshattered in body and mind by his four years' imprisonment--he willprobably be not less attracted to them than I observed were many ofthe visitors both at Saas-Grund and Saas-Fee with whom I had thepleasure of examining them. 

I will now run briefly through the other principal works in theneighbourhood to which I think the reader would be glad to have hisattention directed. 

At Saas-Fee itself the main altar-piece is without interest, as alsoone with a figure of St. Sebastian. The Virgin and Child above theremaining altar are, so far as I remember them, very good, andgreatly superior to the smaller figures of the same altar-piece. 

At Almagel, an hour's walk or so above Saas-Grund--a village, thename of which, like those of the Alphubel, the Monte Moro, and morethan one other neighbouring site, is supposed to be of Saracenicorigin--the main altar-piece represents a female saint with foldedarms being beheaded by a vigorous man to the left. These twofigures are very good. There are two somewhat inferior elders tothe right, and the composition is crowned by the Assumption of theVirgin. I like the work, but have no idea who did it. Two bishopsflanking the composition are not so good. There are two otheraltars in the church: the right-hand one has some pleasing figures, not so the left-hand. 

In St. Joseph's Chapel, on the mule-road between Saas-Grund andSaas-Fee, the St. Joseph and the two children are rather nice. Inthe churches and chapels which I looked into between Saas andStalden, I saw many florid extravagant altar-pieces, but nothingthat impressed me favourably. 

In the parish church at Saas-Grund there are two altar-pieces whichdeserve attention. In the one over the main altar the arrangementof the Last Supper in a deep recess half-way up the composition isvery pleasing and effective; in that above the right-hand altar ofthe two that stand in the body of the church there are a number ofround lunettes, about eight inches in diameter, each containing asmall but spirited group of wooden figures. I have lost my notes onthese altar-pieces and can only remember that the main one has beenrestored, and now belongs to two different dates, the earlier datebeing, I should imagine, about 1670. A similar treatment of theLast Supper may be found near Brieg in the church of Naters, and nodoubt the two altar-pieces are by the same man. There are, by theway, two very ambitious altars on either side the main arch leadingto the chancel in the church at Naters, of which the one on thesouth side contains obvious reminiscences of Gaudenzio Ferrari'sSta. Maria frescoes at Varallo; but none of the four altar-piecesin the two transepts tempted me to give them much attention. Asregards the smaller altar-piece at Saas-Grund, analogous work may befound at Cravagliana, half-way between Varallo and Fobello, but thislast has suffered through the inveterate habit which Italians haveof showing their hatred towards the enemies of Christ by mutilatingthe figures that represent them. Whether the Saas work is by aValsesian artist who came over to Switzerland, or whether theCravagliana work is by a Swiss who had come to Italy, I cannot saywithout further consideration and closer examination than I havebeen able to give. The altar-pieces of Mairengo, Chiggiogna, and, Iam told, Lavertezzo, all in the Canton Ticino, are by a Swiss orGerman artist who has migrated southward; but the reverse migrationwas equally common. 

Being in the neighbourhood, and wishing to assure myself whether thesculptor of the Saas-Fee chapels had or had not come lower down thevalley, I examined every church and village which I could hear of ascontaining anything that might throw light on this point. I wasthus led to Vispertimenen, a village some three hours above eitherVisp or Stalden. It stands very high, and is an almost untouchedexample of a medieval village. The altar-piece of the main churchis even more floridly ambitious in its abundance of carving andgilding than the many other ambitious altar-pieces with which theCanton Valais abounds. The Apostles are receiving the Holy Ghost onthe first storey of the composition, and they certainly arereceiving it with an overjoyed alacrity and hilarious ecstasy ofallegria spirituale which it would not be easy to surpass. Abovethe village, reaching almost to the limits beyond which there is nocultivation, there stands a series of chapels like those I have beendescribing at Saas-Fee, only much larger and more ambitious. Theyare twelve in number, including the church that crowns the series. The figures they contain are of wood (so I was assured, but I didnot go inside the chapels): they are life-size, and in some chapelsthere are as many as a dozen figures. I should think they belongedto the later half of the eighteenth century, and here, one wouldsay, sculpture touches the ground; at least, it is not easy to seehow cheap exaggeration can sink an art more deeply. The only thingsthat at all pleased me were a smiling donkey and an ecstatic cow inthe Nativity chapel. Those who are not allured by the prospect ofseeing perhaps the very worst that can be done in its own line, neednot be at the pains of climbing up to Vispertimenen. Those, on theother hand, who may find this sufficient inducement will not bedisappointed, and they will enjoy magnificent views of the Weisshornand the mountains near the Dom. 

I have already referred to the triptych at Gliss. This is figuredin Wolf's work on Chamonix and the Canton Valais, but a larger andclearer reproduction of such an extraordinary work is greatly to bedesired. The small wooden statues above the triptych, as also thoseabove its modern companion in the south transept, are not lessadmirable than the triptych itself. I know of no other like work inwood, and have no clue whatever as to who the author can have beenbeyond the fact that the work is purely German and eminentlyHolbeinesque in character. 

I was told of some chapels at Rarogne, five or six miles lower downthe valley than Visp. I examined them, and found they had beenstripped of their figures. The few that remained satisfied me thatwe have had no loss. Above Brieg there are two other like series ofchapels. I examined the higher and more promising of the two, butfound not one single figure left. I was told by my driver that theother series, close to the Pont Napoleon on the Simplon road, hadbeen also stripped of its figures, and, there being a heavy storm atthe time, have taken his word for it that this was so. 

Thought and Language {209}

Three well-known writers, Professor Max Muller, Professor Mivart, and Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, have lately maintained that thoughthe theory of descent with modification accounts for the developmentof all vegetable life, and of all animals lower than man, yet thatman cannot--not at least in respect of the whole of his nature--beheld to have descended from any animal lower than himself, inasmuchas none lower than man possesses even the germs of language. Reason, it is contended--more especially by Professor Max Muller inhis Science of Thought, to which I propose confining our attentionthis evening--is so inseparably connected with language, that thetwo are in point of fact identical; hence it is argued that, as thelower animals have no germs of language, they can have no germs ofreason, and the inference is drawn that man cannot be conceived ashaving derived his own reasoning powers and command of languagethrough descent from beings in which no germ of either can be found. The relations therefore between thought and language, interesting inthemselves, acquire additional importance from the fact of theirhaving become the battle-ground between those who say that thetheory of descent breaks down with man, and those who maintain thatwe are descended from some apelike ancestor long since extinct. 

The contention of those who refuse to admit man unreservedly intothe scheme of evolution is comparatively recent. The greatpropounders of evolution, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck--not tomention a score of others who wrote at the close of the last andearly part of this present century--had no qualms about admittingman into their system. They have been followed in this respect bythe late Mr. Charles Darwin, and by the greatly more influentialpart of our modern biologists, who hold that whatever loss ofdignity we may incur through being proved to be of humble origin, iscompensated by the credit we may claim for having advanced ourselvesto such a high pitch of civilization; this bids us expect stillfurther progress, and glorifies our descendants more than it abasesour ancestors. But to whichever view we may incline on sentimentalgrounds the fact remains that, while Charles Darwin declaredlanguage to form no impassable barrier between man and the loweranimals, Professor Max Muller calls it the Rubicon which no brutedare cross, and deduces hence the conclusion that man cannot havedescended from an unknown but certainly speechless ape. 

It may perhaps be expected that I should begin a lecture on therelations between thought and language with some definition of boththese things; but thought, as Sir William Grove said of motion, is aphenomenon "so obvious to simple apprehension that to define itwould make it more obscure. " {210} Definitions are useful wherethings are new to us, but they are superfluous about those that arealready familiar, and mischievous, so far as they are possible atall, in respect of all those things that enter so profoundly andintimately into our being that in them we must either live or bearno life. To vivisect the more vital processes of thought is tosuspend, if not to destroy them; for thought can think abouteverything more healthily and easily than about itself. It is likeits instrument the brain, which knows nothing of any injuriesinflicted upon itself. As regards what is new to us, a definitionwill sometimes dilute a difficulty, and help us to swallow thatwhich might choke us undiluted; but to define when we have once wellswallowed is to unsettle, rather than settle, our digestion. Definitions, again, are like steps cut in a steep slope of ice, orshells thrown on to a greasy pavement; they give us foothold, andenable us to advance, but when we are at our journey's end we wantthem no longer. Again, they are useful as mental fluxes, and ashelping us to fuse new ideas with our older ones. They present uswith some tags and ends of ideas that we have already mastered, onto which we can hitch our new ones; but to multiply them in respectof such a matter as thought, is like scratching the bite of a gnat;the more we scratch the more we want to scratch; the more we definethe more we shall have to go on defining the words we have used inour definitions, and shall end by setting up a serious mental raw inthe place of a small uneasiness that was after all quite endurable. We know too well what thought is, to be able to know that we knowit, and I am persuaded there is no one in this room but understandswhat is meant by thought and thinking well enough for all thepurposes of this discussion. Whoever does not know this withoutwords will not learn it for all the words and definitions that arelaid before him. The more, indeed, he hears, the more confused hewill become. I shall, therefore, merely premise that I use the word"thought" in the same sense as that in which it is generally used bypeople who say that they think this or that. At any rate, it willbe enough if I take Professor Max Muller's own definition, and saythat its essence consists in a bringing together of mental imagesand ideas with deductions therefrom, and with a corresponding powerof detaching them from one another. Hobbes, the Professor tells us, maintained this long ago, when he said that all our thinkingconsists of addition and subtraction--that is to say, in bringingideas together, and in detaching them from one another. 

Turning from thought to language, we observe that the word isderived from the French langue, or tongue. Strictly, therefore, itmeans tonguage. This, however, takes account of but a very smallpart of the ideas that underlie the word. It does, indeed, seize afamiliar and important detail of everyday speech, though it may bedoubted whether the tongue has more to do with speaking than lips, teeth and throat have, but it makes no attempt at grasping andexpressing the essential characteristic of speech. Anything donewith the tongue, even though it involve no speaking at all, istonguage; eating oranges is as much tonguage as speech is. Theword, therefore, though it tells us in part how speech is effected, reveals nothing of that ulterior meaning which is neverthelessinseparable from any right use of the words either "speech" or"language. " It presents us with what is indeed a very frequentadjunct of conversation, but the use of written characters, or thefinger-speech of deaf mutes, is enough to show that the word"language" omits all reference to the most essential characteristicsof the idea, which in practice it nevertheless very sufficientlypresents to us. I hope presently to make it clear to you how andwhy it should do so. The word is incomplete in the first place, because it omits all reference to the ideas which words, speech orlanguage are intended to convey, and there can be no true wordwithout its actually or potentially conveying an idea. Secondly, itmakes no allusion to the person or persons to whom the ideas are tobe conveyed. Language is not language unless it not only expressesfairly definite and coherent ideas, but unless it also conveys theseideas to some other living intelligent being, either man or brute, that can understand them. We may speak to a dog or horse, but notto a stone. If we make pretence of doing so we are in reality onlytalking to ourselves. The person or animal spoken to is half thebattle--a half, moreover, which is essential to there being anybattle at all. It takes two people to say a thing--a sayee as wellas a sayer. The one is as essential to any true saying as theother. A. May have spoken, but if B. Has not heard there has beennothing said, and he must speak again. True, the belief on A. 'spart that he had a bona fide sayee in B. , saves his speech qua him, but it has been barren and left no fertile issue. It has failed tofulfil the conditions of true speech, which involve not only that A. Should speak, but also that B. Should hear. True, again, we oftenspeak of loose, incoherent, indefinite language; but by doing so weimply, and rightly, that we are calling that language which is nottrue language at all. People, again, sometimes talk to themselveswithout intending that any other person should hear them, but thisis not well done, and does harm to those who practise it. It isabnormal, whereas our concern is with normal and essentialcharacteristics; we may, therefore, neglect both deliriousbabblings, and the cases in which a person is regarding him orherself, as it were, from outside, and treating himself as though hewere someone else. 

Inquiring, then, what are the essentials, the presence of whichconstitutes language, while their absence negatives it altogether, we find that Professor Max Muller restricts them to the use ofgrammatical articulate words that we can write or speak, and deniesthat anything can be called language unless it can be written orspoken in articulate words and sentences. He also denies that wecan think at all unless we do so in words; that is to say, insentences with verbs and nouns. Indeed, he goes so far as to sayupon his title-page that there can be no reason--which I imaginecomes to much the same thing as thought--without language, and nolanguage without reason. 

Against the assertion that there can be no true language withoutreason I have nothing to say. But when the Professor says thatthere can be no reason, or thought, without language, his opponentscontend, as it seems to me, with greater force, that thought, thoughinfinitely aided, extended and rendered definite through theinvention of words, nevertheless existed so fully as to deserve noother name thousands, if not millions of years before words hadentered into it at all. Words, they say, are a comparatively recentinvention, for the fuller expression of something that was alreadyin existence. 

Children, they urge, are often evidently thinking and reasoning, though they can neither think nor speak in words. If you ask me todefine reason, I answer as before that this can no more be done thanthought, truth or motion can be defined. Who has answered thequestion, "What is truth?" Man cannot see God and live. We cannotgo so far back upon ourselves as to undermine our own foundations;if we try to do so we topple over, and lose that very reason aboutwhich we vainly try to reason. If we let the foundations be, weknow well enough that they are there, and we can build upon them inall security. We cannot, then, define reason nor crib, cabin andconfine it within a thus-far-shalt-thou-go-and-no-further. Who candefine heat or cold, or night or day? Yet, so long as we hold fastby current consent, our chances of error for want of betterdefinition are so small that no sensible person will consider them. In like manner, if we hold by current consent or common sense, whichis the same thing, about reason, we shall not find the want of anacademic definition hinder us from a reasonable conclusion. Whatnurse or mother will doubt that her infant child can reason withinthe limits of its own experience, long before it can formulate itsreason in articulately worded thought? If the development of anygiven animal is, as our opponents themselves admit, an epitome ofthe history of its whole anterior development, surely the fact thatspeech is an accomplishment acquired after birth so artificiallythat children who have gone wild in the woods lose it if they haveever learned it, points to the conclusion that man's ancestors onlylearned to express themselves in articulate language at acomparatively recent period. Granted that they learn to think andreason continually the more and more fully for having done so, willcommon sense permit us to suppose that they could neither think norreason at all till they could convey their ideas in words?

I will return later to the reason of the lower animals, but will nowdeal with the question what it is that constitutes language in themost comprehensive sense that can be properly attached to it. Ihave said already that language to be language at all must not onlyconvey fairly definite coherent ideas, but must also convey them toanother living being. Whenever two living beings have conveyed andreceived ideas, there has been language, whether looks or gesturesor words spoken or written have been the vehicle by means of whichthe ideas have travelled. Some ideas crawl, some run, some fly; andin this case words are the wings they fly with, but they are onlythe wings of thought or of ideas, they are not the thought or ideasthemselves, nor yet, as Professor Max Muller would have it, inseparably connected with them. Last summer I was at an inn inSicily, where there was a deaf and dumb waiter; he had been born so, and could neither write nor read. What had he to do with words orwords with him? Are we to say, then, that this most active, amiableand intelligent fellow could neither think nor reason? One day Ihad had my dinner and had left the hotel. A friend came in, and thewaiter saw him look for me in the place I generally occupied. Heinstantly came up to my friend and moved his two forefingers in away that suggested two people going about together, this meant "yourfriend"; he then moved his forefingers horizontally across his eyes, this meant, "who wears divided spectacles"; he made two fierce marksover the sockets of his eyes, this meant, "with the heavy eyebrows";he pulled his chin, and then touched his white shirt, to say that mybeard was white. Having thus identified me as a friend of theperson he was speaking to, and as having a white beard, heavyeyebrows, and wearing divided spectacles, he made a munchingmovement with his jaws to say that I had had my dinner; and finally, by making two fingers imitate walking on the table, he explainedthat I had gone away. My friend, however, wanted to know how long Ihad been gone, so he pulled out his watch and looked inquiringly. The man at once slapped himself on the back, and held up the fivefingers of one hand, to say it was five minutes ago. All this wasdone as rapidly as though it had been said in words; and my friend, who knew the man well, understood without a moment's hesitation. Are we to say that this man had no thought, nor reason, norlanguage, merely because he had not a single word of any kind in hishead, which I am assured he had not; for, as I have said, he couldnot speak with his fingers? Is it possible to deny that a dialogue--an intelligent conversation--had passed between the two men? Andif conversation, then surely it is technical and pedantic to denythat all the essential elements of language were present. The signsand tokens used by this poor fellow were as rude an instrument ofexpression, in comparison with ordinary language, as going on one'shands and knees is in comparison with walking, or as walkingcompared with going by train; but it is as great an abuse of wordsto limit the word "language" to mere words written or spoken, as itwould be to limit the idea of a locomotive to a railway engine. This may indeed pass in ordinary conversation, where so much must besuppressed if talk is to be got through at all, but it isintolerable when we are inquiring about the relations betweenthought and words. To do so is to let words become as it were themasters of thought, on the ground that the fact of their being onlyits servants and appendages is so obvious that it is generallyallowed to go without saying. 

If all that Professor Max Muller means to say is, that no animal butman commands an articulate language, with verbs and nouns, or isever likely to command one (and I question whether in reality hemeans much more than this), no one will differ from him. No dog orelephant has one word for bread, another for meat, and another forwater. Yet, when we watch a cat or dog dreaming, as they oftenevidently do, can we doubt that the dream is accompanied by a mentalimage of the thing that is dreamed of, much like what we experiencein dreams ourselves, and much doubtless like the mental images whichmust have passed through the mind of my deaf and dumb waiter? Ifthey have mental images in sleep, can we doubt that waking, also, they picture things before their mind's eyes, and see them much aswe do--too vaguely indeed to admit of our thinking that we actuallysee the objects themselves, but definitely enough for us to be ableto recognize the idea or object of which we are thinking, and toconnect it with any other idea, object, or sign that we may thinkappropriate?

Here we have touched on the second essential element of language. We laid it down, that its essence lay in the communication of anidea from one intelligent being to another; but no ideas can becommunicated at all except by the aid of conventions to which bothparties have agreed to attach an identical meaning. The agreementmay be very informal, and may pass so unconsciously from onegeneration to another that its existence can only be recognized bythe aid of much introspection, but it will be always there. Asayer, a sayee, and a convention, no matter what, agreed uponbetween them as inseparably attached to the idea which it isintended to convey--these comprise all the essentials of language. Where these are present there is language; where any of them arewanting there is no language. It is not necessary for the sayee tobe able to speak and become a sayer. If he comprehends the sayer--that is to say, if he attaches the same meaning to a certain symbolas the sayer does--if he is a party to the bargain whereby it isagreed upon by both that any given symbol shall be attachedinvariably to a certain idea, so that in virtue of the principle ofassociated ideas the symbol shall never be present withoutimmediately carrying the idea along with it, then all the essentialsof language are complied with, and there has been true speech thoughnever a word was spoken. 

The lower animals, therefore, many of them, possess a part of ourown language, though they cannot speak it, and hence do not possessit so fully as we do. They cannot say "bread, " "meat, " or "water, "but there are many that readily learn what ideas they ought toattach to these symbols when they are presented to them. It is idleto say that a cat does not know what the cat's-meat man means whenhe says "meat. " The cat knows just as well, neither better norworse than the cat's-meat man does, and a great deal better than Imyself understand much that is said by some very clever people atOxford or Cambridge. There is more true employment of language, more bona fide currency of speech, between a sayer and a sayee whounderstand each other, though neither of them can speak a word, thanbetween a sayer who can speak with the tongues of men and of angelswithout being clear about his own meaning, and a sayee who canhimself utter the same words, but who is only in imperfect agreementwith the sayer as to the ideas which the words or symbols that heutters are intended to convey. The nature of the symbols counts fornothing; the gist of the matter is in the perfect harmony betweensayer and sayee as to the significance that is to be associated withthem. 

Professor Max Muller admits that we share with the lower animalswhat he calls an emotional language, and continues that we may calltheir interjections and imitations language if we like, as we speakof the language of the eyes or the eloquence of mute nature, but hewarns us against mistaking metaphor for fact. It is indeed meremetaphor to talk of the eloquence of mute nature, or the language ofwinds and waves. There is no intercommunion of mind with mind bymeans of a covenanted symbol; but it is only an apparent, not areal, metaphor to say that two pairs of eyes have spoken when theyhave signalled to one another something which they both understand. A schoolboy at home for the holidays wants another plate of pudding, and does not like to apply officially for more. He catches theservant's eye and looks at the pudding; the servant understands, takes his plate without a word, and gets him some. Is it metaphorto say that the boy asked the servant to do this, or is it notrather pedantry to insist on the letter of a bond and deny itsspirit, by denying that language passed, on the ground that thesymbols covenanted upon and assented to by both were uttered andreceived by eyes and not by mouth and ears? When the lady drank tothe gentleman only with her eyes, and he pledged with his, was thereno conversation because there was neither noun nor verb? Eyes areverbs, and glasses of wine are good nouns enough as between thosewho understand one another. Whether the ideas underlying them areexpressed and conveyed by eyeage or by tonguage is a detail thatmatters nothing. 

But everything we say is metaphorical if we choose to be captious. Scratch the simplest expressions, and you will find the metaphor. Written words are handage, inkage and paperage; it is only bymetaphor, or substitution and transposition of ideas, that we cancall them language. They are indeed potential language, and thesymbols employed presuppose nouns, verbs, and the other parts ofspeech; but for the most part it is in what we read between thelines that the profounder meaning of any letter is conveyed. Thereare words unwritten and untranslatable into any nouns that arenevertheless felt as above, about and underneath the gross materialsymbols that lie scrawled upon the paper; and the deeper the feelingwith which anything is written the more pregnant will it be ofmeaning which can be conveyed securely enough, but which losesrather than gains if it is squeezed into a sentence, and limited bythe parts of speech. The language is not in the words but in theheart-to-heartness of the thing, which is helped by words, but isnearer and farther than they. A correspondent wrote to me once, many years ago, "If I could think to you without words you wouldunderstand me better. " But surely in this he was thinking to me, and without words, and I did understand him better. . . . So it isnot by the words that I am too presumptuously venturing to speak to-night that your opinions will be formed or modified. They will beformed or modified, if either, by something that you will feel, butwhich I have not spoken, to the full as much as by anything that Ihave actually uttered. You may say that this borders on mysticism. Perhaps it does, but there really is some mysticism in nature. 

To return, however, to terra firma. I believe I am right in sayingthat the essence of language lies in the intentional conveyance ofideas from one living being to another through the instrumentalityof arbitrary tokens or symbols agreed upon and understood by both asbeing associated with the particular ideas in question. The natureof the symbol chosen is a matter of indifference; it may be anythingthat appeals to human senses, and is not too hot or too heavy; theessence of the matter lies in a mutual covenant that whatever it isshall stand invariably for the same thing, or nearly so. 

We shall see this more easily if we observe the differences betweenwritten and spoken language. The written word "stone, " and thespoken word, are each of them symbols arrived at in the firstinstance arbitrarily. They are neither of them more like the otherthan they are to the idea of a stone which rises before our minds, when we either see or hear the word, or than this idea again is likethe actual stone itself, but nevertheless the spoken symbol and thewritten one each alike convey with certainty the combination ofideas to which we have agreed to attach them. 

The written symbol is formed with the hand, appeals to the eye, leaves a material trace as long as paper and ink last, can travel asfar as paper and ink can travel, and can be imprinted on eye aftereye practically ad infinitum both as regards time and space. 

The spoken symbol is formed by means of various organs in or aboutthe mouth, appeals to the ear, not the eye, perishes instantlywithout material trace, and if it lives at all does so only in theminds of those who heard it. The range of its action is no widerthan that within which a voice can be heard; and every time a freshimpression is wanted the type must be set up anew. 

The written symbol extends infinitely, as regards time and space, the range within which one mind can communicate with another; itgives the writer's mind a life limited by the duration of ink, paperand readers, as against that of his flesh and blood body. On theother hand, it takes longer to learn the rules so as to be able toapply them with ease and security, and even then they cannot beapplied so quickly and easily as those attaching to spoken symbols. Moreover, the spoken symbols admit of a hundred quick and subtleadjuncts by way of action, tone and expression, so that no one willuse written symbols unless either for the special advantages ofpermanence and travelling power, or because he is incapacitated fromusing spoken ones. This, however, is hardly to the point; the pointis that these two conventional combinations of symbols, that are asunlike one another as the Hallelujah Chorus is to St. Paul'sCathedral, are the one as much language as the other; and wetherefore inquire what this very patent fact reveals to us about themore essential characteristics of language itself. What is thecommon bond that unites these two classes of symbols that seem atfirst sight to have nothing in common, and makes the one raise theidea of language in our minds as readily as the other? The bondlies in the fact that both are a set of conventional tokens orsymbols, agreed upon between the parties to whom they appeal asbeing attached invariably to the same ideas, and because they arebeing made as a means of communion between one mind and another--fora memorandum made for a person's own later use is nothing but acommunication from an earlier mind to a later and modified one; itis therefore in reality a communication from one mind to another asmuch as though it had been addressed to another person. 

We see, therefore, that the nature of the outward and visible signto which the inward and spiritual idea of language is attached doesnot matter. It may be the firing of a gun; it may be an oldsemaphore telegraph; it may be the movements of a needle; a look, agesture, the breaking of a twig by an Indian to tell someone that hehas passed that way: a twig broken designedly with this end in viewis a letter addressed to whomsoever it may concern, as much asthough it had been written out in full on bark or paper. It doesnot matter one straw what it is, provided it is agreed upon inconcert, and stuck to. Just as the lowest forms of lifenevertheless present us with all the essential characteristics oflivingness, and are as much alive in their own humble way as themost highly developed organisms, so the rudest intentional andeffectual communication between two minds through theinstrumentality of a concerted symbol is as much language as themost finished oratory of Mr. Gladstone. I demur therefore to theassertion that the lower animals have no language, inasmuch as theycannot themselves articulate a grammatical sentence. I do notindeed pretend that when the cat calls upon the tiles it uses whatit consciously and introspectively recognizes as language; it sayswhat it has to say without introspection, and in the ordinary courseof business, as one of the common forms of courtship. It no moreknows that it has been using language than M. Jourdain knew he hadbeen speaking prose, but M. Jourdain's knowing or not knowing wasneither here nor there. 

Anything which can be made to hitch on invariably to a definite ideathat can carry some distance--say an inch at the least, and whichcan be repeated at pleasure, can be pressed into the service oflanguage. Mrs. Bentley, wife of the famous Dr. Bentley of TrinityCollege, Cambridge, used to send her snuff-box to the collegebuttery when she wanted beer, instead of a written order. If thesnuff-box came the beer was sent, but if there was no snuff-boxthere was no beer. Wherein did the snuff-box differ more from awritten order, than a written order differs from a spoken one? Thesnuff-box was for the time being language. It sounds strange to saythat one might take a pinch of snuff out of a sentence, but if theservant had helped him or herself to a pinch while carrying it tothe buttery this is what would have been done; for if a snuff-boxcan say "Send me a quart of beer, " so efficiently that the beer issent, it is impossible to say that it is not a bona fide sentence. As for the recipient of the message, the butler did not probablytranslate the snuff-box into articulate nouns and verbs; as soon ashe saw it he just went down into the cellar and drew the beer, andif he thought at all, it was probably about something else. Yet hemust have been thinking without words, or he would have drawn toomuch beer or too little, or have spilt it in the bringing it up, andwe may be sure that he did none of these things. 

You will, of course, observe that if Mrs. Bentley had sent thesnuff-box to the buttery of St. John's College instead of Trinity, it would not have been language, for there would have been nocovenant between sayer and sayee as to what the symbol shouldrepresent, there would have been no previously establishedassociation of ideas in the mind of the butler of St. John's betweenbeer and snuff-box; the connection was artificial, arbitrary, and byno means one of those in respect of which an impromptu bargain mightbe proposed by the very symbol itself, and assented to withoutprevious formality by the person to whom it was presented. Morebriefly, the butler of St. John's would not have been able tounderstand and read it aright. It would have been a dead letter tohim--a snuff-box and not a letter; whereas to the butler of Trinityit was a letter and not a snuff-box. You will also note that it wasonly at the moment when he was looking at it and accepting it as amessage that it flashed forth from snuff-box-hood into the light andlife of living utterance. As soon as it had kindled the butler intosending a single quart of beer, its force was spent until Mrs. Bentley threw her soul into it again and charged it anew by wantingmore beer, and sending it down accordingly. 

Again, take the ring which the Earl of Essex sent to QueenElizabeth, but which the queen did not receive. This was intendedas a sentence, but failed to become effectual language because thesensible material symbol never reached those sentient organs whichit was intended to affect. A book, again, however full of excellentwords it may be, is not language when it is merely standing on abookshelf. It speaks to no one, unless when being actually read, orquoted from by an act of memory. It is potential language as alucifer-match is potential fire, but it is no more language till itis in contact with a recipient mind, than a match is fire till it isstruck, and is being consumed. 

A piece of music, again, without any words at all, or a song withwords that have nothing in the world to do with the ideas which itis nevertheless made to convey, is very often effectual language. Much lying, and all irony depends on tampering with covenantedsymbols, and making those that are usually associated with one setof ideas convey by a sleight of mind others of a different nature. That is why irony is intolerably fatiguing unless very sparinglyused. Take the song which Blondel sang under the window of KingRichard's prison. There was not one syllable in it to say thatBlondel was there, and was going to help the king to get out ofprison. It was about some silly love affair, but it was a letterall the same, and the king made language of what would otherwisehave been no language, by guessing the meaning, that is to say, byperceiving that he was expected to enter then and there into a newcovenant as to the meaning of the symbols that were presented tohim, understanding what this covenant was to be, and acquiescing init. 

On the other hand, no ingenuity can torture "language" into being afit word to use in connection with either sounds or any othersymbols that have not been intended to convey a meaning, or again inconnection with either sounds or symbols in respect of which therehas been no covenant between sayer and sayee. When we hear peoplespeaking a foreign language--we will say Welsh--we feel that thoughthey are no doubt using what is very good language as betweenthemselves, there is no language whatever as far as we areconcerned. We call it lingo, not language. The Chinese letters ona tea-chest might as well not be there, for all that they say to us, though the Chinese find them very much to the purpose. They are acovenant to which we have been no parties--to which our intelligencehas affixed no signature. 

We have already seen that it is in virtue of such an understoodcovenant that symbols so unlike one another as the written word"stone" and the spoken word alike at once raise the idea of a stonein our minds. See how the same holds good as regards the differentlanguages that pass current in different nations. The letters p, i, e, r, r, e convey the idea of a stone to a Frenchman as readily ass, t, o, n, e do to ourselves. And why? because that is thecovenant that has been struck between those who speak and those whoare spoken to. Our "stone" conveys no idea to a Frenchman, nor his"pierre" to us, unless we have done what is commonly calledacquiring one another's language. To acquire a foreign language isonly to learn and adhere to the covenants in respect of symbolswhich the nation in question has adopted and adheres to. Till wehave done this we neither of us know the rules, so to speak, of thegame that the other is playing, and cannot, therefore, playtogether; but the convention being once known and consented to, itdoes not matter whether we raise the idea of a stone by the words"lapis, " or by "lithos, " "pietra, " "pierre, " "stein, " "stane" or"stone"; we may choose what symbols written or spoken we choose, andone set, unless they are of unwieldy length, will do as well asanother, if we can get other people to choose the same and stick tothem; it is the accepting and sticking to them that matters, not thesymbols. The whole power of spoken language is vested in theinvariableness with which certain symbols are associated withcertain ideas. If we are strict in always connecting the samesymbols with the same ideas, we speak well, keep our meaning clearto ourselves, and convey it readily and accurately to anyone who isalso fairly strict. If, on the other hand, we use the samecombination of symbols for one thing one day and for another thenext, we abuse our symbols instead of using them, and those whoindulge in slovenly habits in this respect ere long lose the poweralike of thinking and of expressing themselves correctly. Thesymbols, however, in the first instance, may be anything in the wideworld that we have a fancy for. They have no more to do with theideas they serve to convey than money has with the things that itserves to buy. 

The principle of association, as everyone knows, involves thatwhenever two things have been associated sufficiently together, thesuggestion of one of them to the mind shall immediately raise asuggestion of the other. It is in virtue of this principle thatlanguage, as we so call it, exists at all, for the essence oflanguage consists, as I have said perhaps already too often, in thefixity with which certain ideas are invariably connected withcertain symbols. But this being so, it is hard to see how we candeny that the lower animals possess the germs of a highly rude andunspecialized, but still true language, unless we also deny thatthey have any ideas at all; and this I gather is what Professor MaxMuller in a quiet way rather wishes to do. Thus he says, "It iseasy enough to show that animals communicate, but this is a factwhich has never been doubted. Dogs who growl and bark leave nodoubt in the minds of other dogs or cats, or even of man, of whatthey mean, but growling and barking are not language, nor do theyeven contain the elements of language. " {230}

I observe the Professor says that animals communicate without sayingwhat it is that they communicate. I believe this to have beenbecause if he said that the lower animals communicate their ideas, this would be to admit that they have ideas; if so, and if, as theypresent every appearance of doing, they can remember, reflect upon, modify these ideas according to modified surroundings, andinterchange them with one another, how is it possible to deny themthe germs of thought, language, and reason--not to say a good dealmore than the germs? It seems to me that not knowing what else tosay that animals communicated if it was not ideas, and not knowingwhat mess he might not get into if he admitted that they had ideasat all, he thought it safer to omit his accusative case altogether. 

That growling and barking cannot be called a very highly specializedlanguage goes without saying; they are, however, so much diversifiedin character, according to circumstances, that they place aconsiderable number of symbols at an animal's command, and heinvariably attaches the same symbol to the same idea. A cat neverpurrs when she is angry, nor spits when she is pleased. When sherubs her head against anyone affectionately it is her symbol forsaying that she is very fond of him, and she expects, and usuallyfinds that it will be understood. If she sees her mistress raiseher hand as though to pretend to strike her, she knows that it isthe symbol her mistress invariably attaches to the idea of sendingher away, and as such she accepts it. Granted that the symbols inuse among the lower animals are fewer and less highly differentiatedthan in the case of any known human language, and therefore thatanimal language is incomparably less subtle and less capable ofexpressing delicate shades of meaning than our own, thesedifferences are nevertheless only those that exist between highlydeveloped and inchoate language; they do not involve those thatdistinguish language from no language. They are the differencesbetween the undifferentiated protoplasm of the amoeba and our owncomplex organization; they are not the differences between life andno life. In animal language as much as in human there is a mindintentionally making use of a symbol accepted by another mind asinvariably attached to a certain idea, in order to produce that ideain the mind which it is desired to affect--more briefly, there is asayer, a sayee, and a covenanted symbol designedly applied. Our ownspeech is vertebrated and articulated by means of nouns, verbs, andthe rules of grammar. A dog's speech is invertebrate, but I do notsee how it is possible to deny that it possesses all the essentialelements of language. 

I have said nothing about Professor R. L. Garner's researches intothe language of apes, because they have not yet been so far verifiedand accepted as to make it safe to rely upon them; but when he laysit down that all voluntary sounds are the products of thought, andthat, if they convey a meaning to another, they perform thefunctions of human speech, he says what I believe will commenditself to any unsophisticated mind. I could have wished, however, that he had not limited himself to sounds, and should have preferredhis saying what I doubt not he would readily accept--I mean, thatall symbols or tokens of whatever kind, if voluntarily adopted assuch, are the products of thought, and perform the functions ofhuman speech; but I cannot too often remind you that nothing can beconsidered as fulfilling the conditions of language, except avoluntary application of a recognized token in order to convey amore or less definite meaning, with the intention doubtless of thuspurchasing as it were some other desired meaning and consequentsensation. It is astonishing how closely in this respect money andwords resemble one another. Money indeed may be considered as themost universal and expressive of all languages. For gold and silvercoins are no more money when not in the actual process of beingvoluntarily used in purchase, than words not so in use are language. Pounds, shillings and pence are recognized covenanted tokens, theoutward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual purchasingpower, but till in actual use they are only potential money, as thesymbols of language, whatever they may be, are only potentiallanguage till they are passing between two minds. It is the powerand will to apply the symbols that alone gives life to money, and aslong as these are in abeyance the money is in abeyance also; thecoins may be safe in one's pocket, but they are as dead as a logtill they begin to burn in it, and so are our words till they beginto burn within us. 

The real question, however, as to the substantial underlyingidentity between the language of the lower animals and our own, turns upon that other question whether or no, in spite of animmeasurable difference of degree, the thought and reason of man andof the lower animals is essentially the same. No one will expect adog to master and express the varied ideas that are incessantlyarising in connection with human affairs. He is a pauper as againsta millionaire. To ask him to do so would be like giving a street-boy sixpence and telling him to go and buy himself a founder's sharein the New River Company. He would not even know what was meant, and even if he did it would take several millions of sixpences tobuy one. 

It is astonishing what a clever workman will do with very modesttools, or again how far a thrifty housewife will make a very smallsum of money go, or again in like manner how many ideas anintelligent brute can receive and convey with its very limitedvocabulary; but no one will pretend that a dog's intelligence canever reach the level of a man's. What we do maintain is that, within its own limited range, it is of the same essential characteras our own, and that though a dog's ideas in respect of humanaffairs are both vague and narrow, yet in respect of canine affairsthey are precise enough and extensive enough to deserve no othername than thought or reason. We hold moreover that they communicatetheir ideas in essentially the same manner as we do--that is to say, by the instrumentality of a code of symbols attached to certainstates of mind and material objects, in the first instancearbitrarily, but so persistently, that the presentation of thesymbol immediately carries with it the idea which it is intended toconvey. Animals can thus receive and impart ideas on all that mostconcerns them. As my great namesake said some two hundred yearsago, they know "what's what, and that's as high as metaphysic witcan fly. " And they not only know what's what themselves, but canimpart to one another any new what's-whatness that they may haveacquired, for they are notoriously able to instruct and correct oneanother. 

Against this Professor Max Muller contends that we can know nothingof what goes on in the mind of any lower animal, inasmuch as we arenot lower animals ourselves. "We can imagine anything we like aboutwhat passes in the mind of an animal, " he writes, "we can knowabsolutely nothing. " {234} It is something to have it in evidencethat he conceives animals as having a mind at all, but it is noteasy to see how they can be supposed to have a mind, without beingable to acquire ideas, and having acquired, to read, mark, learn andinwardly digest them. Surely the mistake of requiring too muchevidence is hardly less great than that of being contented with toolittle. We, too, are animals, and can no more refuse to inferreason from certain visible actions in their case than we can in ourown. If Professor Max Muller's plea were allowed, we should have todeny our right to infer confidently what passes in the mind ofanyone not ourselves, inasmuch as we are not that person. We never, indeed, can obtain irrefragable certainty about this or any othermatter, but we can be sure enough in many cases to warrant ourstaking all that is most precious to us on the soundness of ouropinion. Moreover, if the Professor denies our right to infer thatanimals reason, on the ground that we are not animals enoughourselves to be able to form an opinion, with what right does heinfer so confidently himself that they do not reason? And how, ifthey present every one of those appearances which we are accustomedto connect with the communication of an idea from one mind toanother, can we deny that they have a language of their own, thoughit is one which in most cases we can neither speak nor understand?How can we say that a sentinel rook, when it sees a man with a gunand warns the other rooks by a concerted note which they all showthat they understand by immediately taking flight, should not becredited both with reason and the germs of language?

After all, a professor, whether of philology, psychology, biology, or any other ology, is hardly the kind of person to whom we shouldappeal on such an elementary question as that of animal intelligenceand language. We might as well ask a botanist to tell us whethergrass grows, or a meteorologist to tell us if it has left offraining. If it is necessary to appeal to anyone, I should preferthe opinion of an intelligent gamekeeper to that of any professor, however learned. The keepers, again, at the Zoological Gardens, have exceptional opportunities for studying the minds of animals--modified, indeed, by captivity, but still minds of animals. Grooms, again, and dog-fanciers, are to the full as able to form anintelligent opinion on the reason and language of animals as anyUniversity Professor, and so are cat's-meat men. I have repeatedlyasked gamekeepers and keepers at the Zoological Gardens whetheranimals could reason and converse with one another, and have alwaysfound myself regarded somewhat contemptuously for having even askedthe question. I once said to a friend, in the hearing of a keeperat the Zoological Gardens, that the penguin was very stupid. Theman was furious, and jumped upon me at once. "He's not stupid atall, " said he; "he's very intelligent. "

Who has not seen a cat, when it wishes to go out, raise its forepaws on to the handle of the door, or as near as it can get, andlook round, evidently asking someone to turn it for her? Is itreasonable to deny that a reasoning process is going on in the cat'smind, whereby she connects her wish with the steps necessary for itsfulfilment, and also with certain invariable symbols which she knowsher master or mistress will interpret? Once, in company with afriend, I watched a cat playing with a house-fly in the window of aground-floor room. We were in the street, while the cat was inside. When we came up to the window she gave us one searching look, and, having satisfied herself that we had nothing for her, went on withher game. She knew all about the glass in the window, and was surewe could do nothing to molest her, so she treated us with absolutecontempt, never even looking at us again. 

The game was this. She was to catch the fly and roll it round andround under her paw along the window-sill, but so gently as not toinjure it nor prevent it from being able to fly again when she haddone rolling it. It was very early spring, and flies were scarce, in fact there was not another in the whole window. She knew that ifshe crippled this one, it would not be able to amuse her further, and that she would not readily get another instead, and she likedthe feel of it under her paw. It was soft and living, and thequivering of its wings tickled the ball of her foot in a manner thatshe found particularly grateful; so she rolled it gently along thewhole length of the window-sill. It then became the fly's turn. Hewas to get up and fly about in the window, so as to recover himselfa little; then she was to catch him again, and roll him softly allalong the window-sill, as she had done before. 

It was plain that the cat knew the rules of her game perfectly well, and enjoyed it keenly. It was equally plain that the fly could notmake head or tail of what it was all about. If it had been able todo so it would have gone to play in the upper part of the window, where the cat could not reach it. Perhaps it was always hoping toget through the glass, and escape that way; anyhow, it kept prettymuch to the same pane, no matter how often it was rolled. At last, however, the fly, for some reason or another, did not reappear onthe pane, and the cat began looking everywhere to find it. Herannoyance when she failed to do so was extreme. It was not onlythat she had lost her fly, but that she could not conceive how sheshould have ever come to do so. Presently she noted a small knot inthe woodwork of the sill, and it flashed upon her that she hadaccidentally killed the fly, and that this was its dead body. Shetried to move it gently with her paw, but it was no use, and for thetime she satisfied herself that the knot and the fly had nothing todo with one another. Every now and then, however, she returned toit as though it were the only thing she could think of, and shewould try it again. She seemed to say she was certain there hadbeen no knot there before--she must have seen it if there had been;and yet, the fly could hardly have got jammed so firmly into thewood. She was puzzled and irritated beyond measure, and keptlooking in the same place again and again, just as we do when wehave mislaid something. She was rapidly losing temper and dignitywhen suddenly we saw the fly reappear from under the cat's stomachand make for the window-pane, at the very moment when the catherself was exclaiming for the fiftieth time that she wondered wherethat stupid fly ever could have got to. No man who has been huntingtwenty minutes for his spectacles could be more delighted when hesuddenly finds them on his own forehead. "So that's where youwere, " we seemed to hear her say, as she proceeded to catch it, andagain began rolling it very softly without hurting it, under herpaw. 

My friend and I both noticed that the cat, in spite of herperplexity, never so much as hinted that we were the culprits. Thequestion whether anything outside the window could do her good orharm had long since been settled by her in the negative, and she wasnot going to reopen it; she simply cut us dead, and though herannoyance was so great that she was manifestly ready to lay theblame on anybody or anything with or without reason, and though shemust have perfectly well known that we were watching the wholeaffair with amusement, she never either asked us if we had happenedto see such a thing as a fly go down our way lately, or accused usof having taken it from her--both of which ideas she would, I amconfident, have been very well able to convey to us if she had beenso minded. 

Now what are thought and reason if the processes that were goingthrough this cat's mind were not both one and the other? It wouldbe childish to suppose that the cat thought in words of its own, orin anything like words. Its thinking was probably conducted throughthe instrumentality of a series of mental images. We so habituallythink in words ourselves that we find it difficult to realizethought without words at all; our difficulty, however, in imaginingthe particular manner in which the cat thinks has nothing to do withthe matter. We must answer the question whether she thinks or no, not according to our own ease or difficulty in understanding theparticular manner of her thinking, but according as her action doesor does not appear to be of the same character as other action thatwe commonly call thoughtful. To say that the cat is notintelligent, merely on the ground that we cannot ourselves fathomher intelligence--this, as I have elsewhere said, is to makeintelligence mean the power of being understood, rather than thepower of understanding. This nevertheless is what, for all ourboasted intelligence, we generally do. The more we can understandan animal's ways, the more intelligent we call it, and the less wecan understand these, the more stupid do we declare it to be. Asfor plants--whose punctuality and attention to all the details androutine of their somewhat restricted lines of business is as obviousas it is beyond all praise--we understand the working of their mindsso little that by common consent we declare them to have nointelligence at all. 

Before concluding I should wish to deal a little more fully withProfessor Max Muller's contention that there can be no reasonwithout language, and no language without reason. Surely when twopractised pugilists are fighting, parrying each other's blows, andwatching keenly for an unguarded point, they are thinking andreasoning very subtly the whole time, without doing so in words. The machination of their thoughts, as well as its expression, isactual--I mean, effectuated and expressed by action and deed, notwords. They are unaware of any logical sequence of thought thatthey could follow in words as passing through their minds at all. They may perhaps think consciously in words now and again, but suchthought will be intermittent, and the main part of the fighting willbe done without any internal concomitance of articulated phrases. Yet we cannot doubt that their action, however much we maydisapprove of it, is guided by intelligence and reason; nor shouldwe doubt that a reasoning process of the same character goes on inthe minds of two dogs or fighting-cocks when they are striving tomaster their opponents. 

Do we think in words, again, when we wind up our watches, put on ourclothes, or eat our breakfasts? If we do, it is generally aboutsomething else. We do these things almost as much without the helpof words as we wink or yawn, or perform any of those other actionsthat we call reflex, as it would almost seem because they are donewithout reflection. They are not, however, the less reasonablebecause wordless. 

Even when we think we are thinking in words, we do so only in halfmeasure. A running accompaniment of words no doubt frequentlyattends our thoughts; but, unless we are writing or speaking, thisaccompaniment is of the vaguest and most fitful kind, as we oftenfind out when we try to write down or say what we are thinkingabout, though we have a fairly definite notion of it, or fancy thatwe have one, all the time. The thought is not steadily andcoherently governed by and moulded in words, nor does it steadilygovern them. Words and thought interact upon and help one another, as any other mechanical appliances interact on and help theinvention that first hit upon them; but reason or thought, for themost part, flies along over the heads of words, working its ownmysterious way in paths that are beyond our ken, though whether someof our departmental personalities are as unconscious of what ispassing, as that central government is which we alone dub with thename of "we" or "us, " is a point on which I will not now touch. 

I cannot think, then, that Professor Max Muller's contention thatthought and language are identical--and he has repeatedly affirmedthis--will ever be generally accepted. Thought is no more identicalwith language than feeling is identical with the nervous system. True, we can no more feel without a nervous system than we candiscern certain minute organisms without a microscope. Destroy thenervous system, and we destroy feeling. Destroy the microscope, andwe can no longer see the animalcules; but our sight of theanimalcules is not the microscope, though it is effectuated by meansof the microscope, and our feeling is not the nervous system, thoughthe nervous system is the instrument that enables us to feel. 

The nervous system is a device which living beings have graduallyperfected--I believe I may say quite truly--through the will andpower which they have derived from a fountain-head, the existence ofwhich we can infer, but which we can never apprehend. By the helpof this device, and in proportion as they have perfected it, livingbeings feel ever with great definiteness, and hence formulate theirfeelings in thought with more and more precision. The higherevolution of thought has reacted on the nervous system, and theconsequent higher evolution of the nervous system has again reactedupon thought. These things are as power and desire, or supply anddemand, each one of which is continually outstripping, and being inturn outstripped by the other; but, in spite of their closeconnection and interaction, power is not desire, nor demand supply. Language is a device evolved sometimes by leaps and bounds, andsometimes exceedingly slowly, whereby we help ourselves alike togreater ease, precision, and complexity of thought, and also to moreconvenient interchange of thought among ourselves. Thought foundrude expression, which gradually among other forms assumed that ofwords. These reacted upon thought, and thought again on them, butthought is no more identical with words than words are with theseparate letters of which they are composed. 

To sum up, then, and to conclude. I would ask you to see theconnection between words and ideas as in the first instancearbitrary. No doubt in some cases an imitation of the cry of somebird or wild beast would suggest the name that should be attached toit; occasionally the sound of an operation such as grinding may haveinfluenced the choice of the letters g, r, as the root of many wordsthat denote a grinding, grating, grasping, crushing action; but Iunderstand that the number of words due to direct imitation iscomparatively few in number, and that they have been mainly coinedas the result of connections so far-fetched and fanciful as toamount practically to no connection at all. Once chosen, however, they were adhered to for a considerable time among the dwellers inany given place, so as to become acknowledged as the vulgar tongue, and raise readily in the mind of the inhabitants of that place theideas with which they had been artificially associated. 

As regards our being able to think and reason without words, theDuke of Argyll has put the matter as soundly as I have yet seen itstated. "It seems to me, " he wrote, "quite certain that we can anddo constantly think of things without thinking of any sound or wordas designating them. Language seems to me to be necessary for theprogress of thought, but not at all for the mere act of thinking. It is a product of thought, an expression of it, a vehicle for thecommunication of it, and an embodiment which is essential to itsgrowth and continuity; but it seems to me altogether erroneous toregard it as an inseparable part of cogitation. "

The following passages, again, are quoted from Sir William Hamiltonin Professor Max Muller's own book, with so much approval as to leadone to suppose that the differences between himself and hisopponents are in reality less than he believes them to be. 

"Language, " says Sir W. Hamilton, "is the attribution of signs toour cognitions of things. But as a cognition must have already beenthere before it could receive a sign, consequently that knowledgewhich is denoted by the formation and application of a word musthave preceded the symbol that denotes it. A sign, however, isnecessary to give stability to our intellectual progress--toestablish each step in our advance as a new starting-point for ouradvance to another beyond. A country may be overrun by an armedhost, but it is only conquered by the establishment of fortresses. Words are the fortresses of thought. They enable us to realize ourdominion over what we have already overrun in thought; to make everyintellectual conquest the base of operations for others stillbeyond. "

"This, " says Professor Max Muller, "is a most happy illustration, "and he proceeds to quote the following, also from Sir WilliamHamilton, which he declares to be even happier still. 

"You have all heard, " says Sir William Hamilton, "of the process oftunnelling through a sandbank. In this operation it is impossibleto succeed unless every foot, nay, almost every inch of our progressbe secured by an arch of masonry before we attempted the excavationof another. Now language is to the mind precisely what the arch isto the tunnel. The power of thinking and the power of excavationare not dependent on the words in the one case or on the mason-workin the other; but without these subsidiaries neither could becarried on beyond its rudimentary commencement. Though, therefore, we allow that every movement forward in language must be determinedby an antecedent movement forward in thought, still, unless thoughtbe accompanied at each point of its evolutions by a correspondingevolution of language, its further development is arrested. "

Man has evolved an articulate language, whereas the lower animalsseem to be without one. Man, therefore, has far outstripped them inreasoning faculty as well as in power of expression. This, however, does not bar the communications which the lower animals make to oneanother from possessing all the essential characteristics oflanguage, and, as a matter of fact, wherever we can follow them wefind such communications effectuated by the aid of arbitrary symbolscovenanted upon by the living beings that wish to communicate, andpersistently associated with certain corresponding feelings, statesof mind, or material objects. Human language is nothing more thanthis in principle, however much further the principle has beencarried in our own case than in that of the lower animals. 

This being admitted, we should infer that the thought or reason onwhich the language of men and animals is alike founded differs asbetween men and brutes in degree but not in kind. More than thiscannot be claimed on behalf of the lower animals, even by their mostenthusiastic admirer. 

The Deadlock in Darwinism: Part I {245}

It will be readily admitted that of all living writers Mr. AlfredRussel Wallace is the one the peculiar turn of whose mind best fitshim to write on the subject of natural selection, or theaccumulation of fortunate but accidental variations through descentand the struggle for existence. His mind in all its more essentialcharacteristics closely resembles that of the late Mr. CharlesDarwin himself, and it is no doubt due to this fact that he and Mr. Darwin elaborated their famous theory at the same time, andindependently of one another. I shall have occasion in the courseof the following article to show how misled and misleading boththese distinguished men have been, in spite of their unquestionablefamiliarity with the whole range of animal and vegetable phenomena. I believe it will be more respectful to both of them to do this inthe most outspoken way. I believe their work to have been asmischievous as it has been valuable, and as valuable as it has beenmischievous; and higher, whether praise or blame, I know not how togive. Nevertheless I would in the outset, and with the utmostsincerity, admit concerning Messrs. Wallace and Darwin that neithercan be held as the more profound and conscientious thinker; neithercan be put forward as the more ready to acknowledge obligation tothe great writers on evolution who had preceded him, or to place hisown developments in closer and more conspicuous historicalconnection with earlier thought upon the subject; neither is themore ready to welcome criticism and to state his opponent's case inthe most pointed and telling way in which it can be put; neither isthe more quick to encourage new truth; neither is the more genial, generous adversary, or has the profounder horror of anything evenapproaching literary or scientific want of candour; both display thesame inimitable power of putting their opinions forward in the waythat shall best ensure their acceptance; both are equally unrivalledin the tact that tells them when silence will be golden, and when onthe other hand a whole volume of facts may be advantageously broughtforward. Less than the foregoing tribute both to Messrs. Darwin andWallace I will not, and more I cannot pay. 

Let us now turn to the most authoritative exponent of latter-dayevolution--I mean to Mr. Wallace, whose work, entitled Darwinism, though it should have been entitled Wallaceism, is still so farDarwinistic that it develops the teaching of Mr. Darwin in thedirection given to it by Mr. Darwin himself--so far, indeed, as thiscan be ascertained at all--and not in that of Lamarck. Mr. Wallacetells us, on the first page of his preface, that he has no intentionof dealing even in outline with the vast subject of evolution ingeneral, and has only tried to give such an account of the theory ofnatural selection as may facilitate a clear conception of Darwin'swork. How far he has succeeded is a point on which opinion willprobably be divided. Those who find Mr. Darwin's works clear willalso find no difficulty in understanding Mr. Wallace; those, on theother hand, who find Mr. Darwin puzzling are little likely to beless puzzled by Mr. Wallace. He continues:--

"The objections now made to Darwin's theory apply solely to theparticular means by which the change of species has been broughtabout, not to the fact of that change. "

But "Darwin's theory"--as Mr. Wallace has elsewhere proved that heunderstands--has no reference "to the fact of that change"--that isto say, to the fact that species have been modified in course ofdescent from other species. This is no more Mr. Darwin's theorythan it is the reader's or my own. Darwin's theory is concernedonly with "the particular means by which the change of species hasbeen brought about"; his contention being that this is mainly due tothe natural survival of those individuals that have happened by someaccident to be born most favourably adapted to their surroundings, or, in other words, through accumulation in the common course ofnature of the more lucky variations that chance occasionallypurveys. Mr. Wallace's words, then, in reality amount to this, thatthe objections now made to Darwin's theory apply solely to Darwin'stheory, which is all very well as far as it goes, but might havebeen more easily apprehended if he had simply said, "There areseveral objections now made to Mr. Darwin's theory. "

It must be remembered that the passage quoted above occurs on thefirst page of a preface dated March, 1889, when the writer hadcompleted his task, and was most fully conversant with his subject. Nevertheless, it seems indisputable either that he is stillconfusing evolution with Mr. Darwin's theory, or that he does notknow when his sentences have point and when they have none. 

I should perhaps explain to some readers that Mr. Darwin did notmodify the main theory put forward, first by Buffon, to whom itindisputably belongs, and adopted from him by Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and many other writers in the latter half of the eighteenthcentury and the earlier years of the nineteenth. The earlyevolutionists maintained that all existing forms of animal andvegetable life, including man, were derived in course of descentwith modification from forms resembling the lowest now known. 

Mr. Darwin went as far as this, and farther no one can go. Thepoint at issue between him and his predecessors involves neither themain fact of evolution, nor yet the geometrical ratio of increase, and the struggle for existence consequent thereon. Messrs. Darwinand Wallace have each thrown invaluable light upon these last twopoints, but Buffon, as early as 1756, had made them the keystone ofhis system. "The movement of nature, " he then wrote, "turns on twoimmovable pivots: one, the illimitable fecundity which she hasgiven to all species: the other, the innumerable difficulties whichreduce the results of that fecundity. " Erasmus Darwin and Lamarckfollowed in the same sense. They thus admit the survival of thefittest as fully as Mr. Darwin himself, though they do not make useof this particular expression. The dispute turns not upon naturalselection, which is common to all writers on evolution, but upon thenature and causes of the variations that are supposed to be selectedfrom and thus accumulated. Are these mainly attributable to theinherited effects of use and disuse, supplemented by occasionalsports and happy accidents? Or are they mainly due to sports andhappy accidents, supplemented by occasional inherited effects of useand disuse?

The Lamarckian system has all along been maintained by Mr. HerbertSpencer, who, in his Principles of Biology, published in 1865, showed how impossible it was that accidental variations shouldaccumulate at all. I am not sure how far Mr. Spencer would consentto being called a Lamarckian pure and simple, nor yet how far it isstrictly accurate to call him one; nevertheless, I can see noimportant difference in the main positions taken by him and byLamarck. 

The question at issue between the Lamarckians, supported by Mr. Spencer and a growing band of those who have risen in rebellionagainst the Charles-Darwinian system on the one hand, and Messrs. Darwin and Wallace with the greater number of our more prominentbiologists on the other, involves the very existence of evolution asa workable theory. For it is plain that what Nature can be supposedable to do by way of choice must depend on the supply of thevariations from which she is supposed to choose. She cannot takewhat is not offered to her; and so again she cannot be supposed ableto accumulate unless what is gained in one direction in onegeneration, or series of generations, is little likely to be lost inthose that presently succeed. Now variations ascribed mainly to useand disuse can be supposed capable of being accumulated, for use anddisuse are fairly constant for long periods among the individuals ofthe same species, and often over large areas; moreover, conditionsof existence involving changes of habit, and thus of organization, come for the most part gradually; so that time is given during whichthe organism can endeavour to adapt itself in the requisiterespects, instead of being shocked out of existence by too suddenchange. Variations, on the other hand, that are ascribed to merechance cannot be supposed as likely to be accumulated, for chance isnotoriously inconstant, and would not purvey the variations insufficiently unbroken succession, or in a sufficient number ofindividuals, modified similarly in all the necessary correlations atthe same time and place to admit of their being accumulated. It isvital therefore to the theory of evolution, as was early pointed outby the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin and by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that variations should be supposed to have a definite and persistentprinciple underlying them, which shall tend to engender similar andsimultaneous modification, however small, in the vast majority ofindividuals composing any species. The existence of such aprinciple and its permanence is the only thing that can be supposedcapable of acting as rudder and compass to the accumulation ofvariations, and of making it hold steadily on one course for eachspecies, till eventually many havens, far remote from one another, are safely reached. 

It is obvious that the having fatally impaired the theory of hispredecessors could not warrant Mr. Darwin in claiming, as he mostfatuously did, the theory of evolution. That he is still generallybelieved to have been the originator of this theory is due to thefact that he claimed it, and that a powerful literary backing atonce came forward to support him. It seems at first sightimprobable that those who too zealously urged his claims wereunaware that so much had been written on the subject, but when wefind even Mr. Wallace himself as profoundly ignorant on this subjectas he still either is, or affects to be, there is no limitassignable to the ignorance or affected ignorance of the kind ofbiologists who would write reviews in leading journals thirty yearsago. Mr. Wallace writes:--

"A few great naturalists, struck by the very slight differencebetween many of these species, and the numerous links that existbetween the most different forms of animals and plants, and alsoobserving that a great many species do vary considerably in theirforms, colours and habits, conceived the idea that they might be allproduced one from the other. The most eminent of these writers wasa great French naturalist, Lamarck, who published an elaborate work, the Philosophie Zoologique, in which he endeavoured to prove thatall animals whatever are descended from other species of animals. He attributed the change of species chiefly to the effect of changesin the conditions of life--such as climate, food, etc. ; andespecially to the desires and efforts of the animals themselves toimprove their condition, leading to a modification of form or sizein certain parts, owing to the well-known physiological law that allorgans are strengthened by constant use, while they are weakened oreven completely lost by disuse. . . . 

"The only other important work dealing with the question was thecelebrated Vestiges of Creation, published anonymously, but nowacknowledged to have been written by the late Robert Chambers. "

None are so blind as those who will not see, and it would be wasteof time to argue with the invincible ignorance of one who thinksLamarck and Buffon conceived that all species were produced from oneanother, more especially as I have already dealt at some length withthe early evolutionists in my work Evolution, Old and New, firstpublished ten years ago, and not, so far as I am aware, detected inserious error or omission. If, however, Mr. Wallace still thinks itsafe to presume so far on the ignorance of his readers as to saythat the only two important works on evolution before Mr. Darwin'swere Lamarck's Philosophie Zoologique and the Vestiges of Creation, how fathomable is the ignorance of the average reviewer likely tohave been thirty years ago, when the Origin of Species was firstpublished? Mr. Darwin claimed evolution as his own theory. Ofcourse, he would not claim it if he had no right to it. Then by allmeans give him the credit of it. This was the most natural view totake, and it was generally taken. It was not, moreover, surprisingthat people failed to appreciate all the niceties of Mr. Darwin's"distinctive feature" which, whether distinctive or no, wasassuredly not distinct, and was never frankly contrasted with theolder view, as it would have been by one who wished it to beunderstood and judged upon its merits. It was in consequence ofthis omission that people failed to note how fast and loose Mr. Darwin played with his distinctive feature, and how readily hedropped it on occasion. 

It may be said that the question of what was thought by thepredecessors of Mr. Darwin is, after all, personal, and of nointerest to the general public, comparable to that of the mainissue--whether we are to accept evolution or not. Granted that Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck bore the burden and heat of the daybefore Mr. Charles Darwin was born, they did not bring people roundto their opinion, whereas Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace did, and thepublic cannot be expected to look beyond this broad and indisputablefact. 

The answer to this is, that the theory which Messrs. Darwin andWallace have persuaded the public to accept is demonstrably false, and that the opponents of evolution are certain in the end totriumph over it. Paley, in his Natural Theology, long since broughtforward far too much evidence of design in animal organization toallow of our setting down its marvels to the accumulation offortunate accident, undirected by will, effort and intelligence. Those who examine the main facts of animal and vegetableorganization without bias will, no doubt, ere long conclude that allanimals and vegetables are derived ultimately from unicellularorganisms, but they will not less readily perceive that theevolution of species without the concomitance and direction of mindand effort is as inconceivable as is the independent creation ofevery individual species. The two facts, evolution and design, areequally patent to plain people. There is no escaping from either. According to Messrs. Darwin and Wallace, we may have evolution, butare on no account to have it as mainly due to intelligent effort, guided by ever higher and higher range of sensations, perceptions, and ideas. We are to set it down to the shuffling of cards, or thethrowing of dice without the play, and this will never stand. 

According to the older men, cards did indeed count for much, butplay counted for more. They denied the teleology of the time--thatis to say, the teleology that saw all adaptation to surroundings aspart of a plan devised long ages since by a quasi-anthropomorphicbeing who schemed everything out much as a man would do, but on aninfinitely vaster scale. This conception they found repugnant aliketo intelligence and conscience, but, though they do not seem to haveperceived it, they left the door open for a design more true andmore demonstrable than that which they excluded. By making theirvariations mainly due to effort and intelligence, they made organicdevelopment run on all-fours with human progress, and withinventions which we have watched growing up from small beginnings. They made the development of man from the amoeba part and parcel ofthe story that may be read, though on an infinitely smaller scale, in the development of our most powerful marine engines from thecommon kettle, or of our finest microscopes from the dew-drop. 

The development of the steam-engine and the microscope is due tointelligence and design, which did indeed utilize chancesuggestions, but which improved on these, and directed each step oftheir accumulation, though never foreseeing more than a step or twoahead, and often not so much as this. The fact, as I have elsewhereurged, that the man who made the first kettle did not foresee theengines of the Great Eastern, or that he who first noted themagnifying power of the dew-drop had no conception of our presentmicroscopes--the very limited amount, in fact, of design andintelligence that was called into play at any one point--this doesnot make us deny that the steam-engine and microscope owe theirdevelopment to design. If each step of the road was designed, thewhole journey was designed, though the particular end was notdesigned when the journey was begun. And so is it, according to theolder view of evolution, with the development of those livingorgans, or machines, that are born with us, as part of theperambulating carpenter's chest we call our bodies. The older viewgives us our design, and gives us our evolution too. If it refusesto see a quasi-anthropomorphic God modelling each species fromwithout as a potter models clay, it gives us God as vivifying andindwelling in all His creatures--He in them, and they in Him. If itrefuses to see God outside the universe, it equally refuses to seeany part of the universe as outside God. If it makes the universethe body of God, it also makes God the soul of the universe. Thequestion at issue, then, between the Darwinism of Erasmus Darwin andthe neo-Darwinism of his grandson, is not a personal one, noranything like a personal one. It not only involves the existence ofevolution, but it affects the view we take of life and things in anendless variety of most interesting and important ways. It isimperative, therefore, on those who take any interest in thesematters, to place side by side in the clearest contrast the views ofthose who refer the evolution of species mainly to accumulation ofvariations that have no other inception than chance, and of thatolder school which makes design perceive and develop still furtherthe goods that chance provides. 

But over and above this, which would be in itself sufficient, thehistorical mode of studying any question is the only one which willenable us to comprehend it effectually. The personal element cannotbe eliminated from the consideration of works written by livingpersons for living persons. We want to know who is who--whom we candepend upon to have no other end than the making things clear tohimself and his readers, and whom we should mistrust as having anulterior aim on which he is more intent than on the furthering ofour better understanding. We want to know who is doing his best tohelp us, and who is only trying to make us help him, or to bolsterup the system in which his interests are vested. There is nothingthat will throw more light upon these points than the way in which aman behaves towards those who have worked in the same field withhimself, and, again, than his style. A man's style, as Buffon longsince said, is the man himself. By style, I do not, of course, meangrammar or rhetoric, but that style of which Buffon again said thatit is like happiness, and vient de la douceur de l'ame. When wefind a man concealing worse than nullity of meaning under sentencesthat sound plausibly enough, we should distrust him much as weshould a fellow-traveller whom we caught trying to steal our watch. We often cannot judge of the truth or falsehood of facts forourselves, but we most of us know enough of human nature to be ableto tell a good witness from a bad one. 

However this may be, and whatever we may think of judging systems bythe directness or indirectness of those who advance them, biologists, having committed themselves too rashly, would have beenmore than human if they had not shown some pique towards those whodared to say, first, that the theory of Messrs. Darwin and Wallacewas unworkable; and secondly, that even though it were workable itwould not justify either of them in claiming evolution. Whenbiologists show pique at all they generally show a good deal ofpique, but pique or no pique, they shunned Mr. Spencer's objectionabove referred to with a persistency more unanimous and obstinatethan I ever remember to have seen displayed even by professionaltruth-seekers. I find no rejoinder to it from Mr. Darwin himself, between 1865 when it was first put forward, and 1882 when Mr. Darwindied. It has been similarly "ostrichized" by all the leadingapologists of Darwinism, so far at least as I have been able toobserve, and I have followed the matter closely for many years. Mr. Spencer has repeated and amplified it in his recent work The Factorsof Organic Evolution, but it still remains without so much as anattempt at serious answer, for the perfunctory and illusory remarksof Mr. Wallace at the end of his Darwinism cannot be counted assuch. The best proof of its irresistible weight is that Mr. Darwin, though maintaining silence in respect to it, retreated from hisoriginal position in the direction that would most obviate Mr. Spencer's objection. 

Yet this objection has been repeatedly urged by the more prominentanti-Charles-Darwinian authorities, and there is no sign that theBritish public is becoming less rigorous in requiring people eitherto reply to objections repeatedly urged by men of even moderateweight, or to let judgment go by default. As regards Mr. Darwin'sclaim to the theory of evolution generally, Darwinians are beginningnow to perceive that this cannot be admitted, and either say withsome hardihood that Mr. Darwin never claimed it, or after a fewsaving clauses to the effect that this theory refers only to theparticular means by which evolution has been brought about, implyforthwith thereafter none the less that evolution is Mr. Darwin'stheory. Mr. Wallace has done this repeatedly in his recentDarwinism. Indeed, I should be by no means sure that on the firstpage of his preface, in the passage about "Darwin's theory, " which Ihave already somewhat severely criticized, he was not intendingevolution by "Darwin's theory, " if in his preceding paragraph he hadnot so clearly shown that he knew evolution to be a theory ofgreatly older date than Mr. Darwin's. 

The history of science--well exemplified by that of the developmenttheory--is the history of eminent men who have fought against lightand have been worsted. The tenacity with which Darwinians stick totheir accumulation of fortuitous variations is on a par with thelike tenacity shown by the illustrious Cuvier, who did his best tocrush evolution altogether. It always has been thus, and alwayswill be; nor is it desirable in the interests of Truth herself thatit should be otherwise. Truth is like money--lightly come, lightlygo; and if she cannot hold her own against even grossmisrepresentation, she is herself not worth holding. Misrepresentation in the long run makes Truth as much as it marsher; hence our law courts do not think it desirable that pleadersshould speak their bona fide opinions, much less that they shouldprofess to do so. Rather let each side hoodwink judge and jury asbest it can, and let truth flash out from collision of defence andaccusation. When either side will not collide, it is an axiom ofcontroversy that it desires to prevent the truth from beingelicited. 

Let us now note the courses forced upon biologists by thedifficulties of Mr. Darwin's distinctive feature. Mr. Darwin andMr. Wallace, as is well known, brought the feature forwardsimultaneously and independently of one another, but Mr. Wallacealways believed in it more firmly than Mr. Darwin did. Mr. Darwinas a young man did not believe in it. He wrote before 1839, "Nature, by making habit omnipotent and its effects hereditary, hasfitted the Fuegian for the climate and productions of his country, "{259a} a sentence than which nothing can coincide more fully withthe older view that use and disuse were the main purveyors ofvariations, or conflict more fatally with his own subsequentdistinctive feature. Moreover, as I showed in my last work onevolution, {259b} in the peroration to his Origin of Species, hediscarded his accidental variations altogether, and fell back on theolder theory, so that the body of the Origin of Species supports onetheory, and the peroration another that differs from it toto coelo. Finally, in his later editions, he retreated indefinitely from hisoriginal position, edging always more and more continually towardsthe theory of his grandfather and Lamarck. These facts convince methat he was at no time a thoroughgoing Darwinian, but was throughoutan unconscious Lamarckian, though ever anxious to conceal the factalike from himself and from his readers. 

Not so with Mr. Wallace, who was both more outspoken in the firstinstance, and who has persevered along the path of Wallaceism justas Mr. Darwin with greater sagacity was ever on the retreat fromDarwinism. Mr. Wallace's profounder faith led him in the outset toplace his theory in fuller daylight than Mr. Darwin was inclined todo. Mr. Darwin just waved Lamarck aside, and said as little abouthim as he could, while in his earlier editions Erasmus Darwin andBuffon were not so much as named. Mr. Wallace, on the contrary, atonce raised the Lamarckian spectre, and declared it exorcized. Hesaid the Lamarckian hypothesis was "quite unnecessary. " The giraffedid not "acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage ofthe more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its neck for thispurpose, but because any varieties which occurred among itsantitypes with a longer neck than usual at once secured a freshrange of pasture over the same ground as their shorter-neckedcompanions, and on the first scarcity of food were thus enabled tooutlive them. " {260}

"Which occurred" is evidently "which happened to occur" by somechance of accident unconnected with use and disuse. The word"accident" is never used, but Mr. Wallace must be credited with thisinstance of a desire to give his readers a chance of perceiving thataccording to his distinctive feature evolution is an affair of luck, rather than of cunning. Whether his readers actually did understandthis as clearly as Mr. Wallace doubtless desired that they should, and whether greater development at this point would not have helpedthem to fuller apprehension, we need not now inquire. What wasgained in distinctness might have been lost in distinctiveness, andafter all he did technically put us upon our guard. 

Nevertheless, he too at a pinch takes refuge in Lamarckism. Inrelation to the manner in which the eyes of soles, turbots, andother flat-fish travel round the head so as to become in the endunsymmetrically placed, he says:--

"The eyes of these fish are curiously distorted in order that botheyes may be upon the upper side, where alone they would be of anyuse. . . . Now if we suppose this process, which in the young iscompleted in a few days or weeks, to have been spread over thousandsof generations during the development of these fish, those usuallysurviving _whose eyes retained more and more of the position intowhich the young fish tried to twist them_ [italics mine], the changebecomes intelligible. " {261} When it was said by Professor RayLankester--who knows as well as most people what Lamarck taught--that this was "flat Lamarckism, " Mr. Wallace rejoined that it wasthe survival of the modified individuals that did it all, not theefforts of the young fish to twist their eyes, and the transmissionto descendants of the effects of those efforts. But this, as I saidin my book Evolution, Old and New, is like saying that horses areswift runners, not by reason of the causes, whatever they were, thatoccasioned the direct line of their progenitors to vary towards evergreater and greater swiftness, but because their more slow-goinguncles and aunts go away. Plain people will prefer to say that themain cause of any accumulation of favourable modifications consistsrather in that which brings about the initial variations, and in thefact that these can be inherited at all, than in the fact that theunmodified individuals were not successful. People do not becomerich because the poor in large numbers go away, but because theyhave been lucky, or provident, or more commonly both. If they wouldkeep their wealth when they have made it they must exclude luckthenceforth to the utmost of their power and their children mustfollow their example, or they will soon lose their money. The factthat the weaker go to the wall does not bring about the greaterstrength of the stronger; it is the consequence of this last and notthe cause--unless, indeed, it be contended that a knowledge that theweak go to the wall stimulates the strong to exertions which theywould not otherwise so make, and that these exertions produceinheritable modifications. Even in this case, however, it would bethe exertions, or use and disuse, that would be the main agents inthe modification. But it is not often that Mr. Wallace thusbackslides. His present position is that acquired (as distinguishedfrom congenital) modifications are not inherited at all. He doesnot indeed put his faith prominently forward and pin himself to itas plainly as could be wished, but under the heading "The Non-Heredity of Acquired Characters, " he writes as follows on p. 440 ofhis recent work in reference to Professor Weismann's Theory ofHeredity:--

"Certain observations on the embryology of the lower animals areheld to afford direct proof of this theory of heredity, but they aretoo technical to be made clear to ordinary readers. A logicalresult of the theory is the impossibility of the transmission ofacquired characters, since the molecular structure of the germ-plasmis already determined within the embryo; and Weismann holds thatthere are no facts which really prove that acquired characters canbe inherited, although their inheritance has, by most writers, beenconsidered so probable as hardly to stand in need of direct proof. 

"We have already seen in the earlier part of this chapter that manyinstances of change, imputed to the inheritance of acquiredvariations, are really cases of selection. "

And the rest of the remarks tend to convey the impression that Mr. Wallace adopts Professor Weismann's view, but, curiously enough, though I have gone through Mr. Wallace's book with a special view tothis particular point, I have not been able to find him definitelycommitting himself either to the assertion that acquiredmodifications never are inherited, or that they sometimes are so. It is abundantly laid down that Mr. Darwin laid too much stress onuse and disuse, and a residuary impression is left that Mr. Wallaceis endorsing Professor Weismann's view, but I have found itimpossible to collect anything that enables me to define hisposition confidently in this respect. 

This is natural enough, for Mr. Wallace has entitled his bookDarwinism, and a work denying that use and disuse produced anyeffect could not conceivably be called Darwinism. Mr. HerbertSpencer has recently collected many passages from The Origin ofSpecies and from Animals and Plants under Domestication, " {263}which show how largely, after all, use and disuse entered into Mr. Darwin's system, and we know that in his later years he attachedstill more importance to them. It was out of the question, therefore, that Mr. Wallace should categorically deny that theireffects were inheritable. On the other hand, the temptation toadopt Professor Weismann's view must have been overwhelming to onewho had been already inclined to minimize the effects of use anddisuse. On the whole, one does not see what Mr. Wallace could do, other than what he has done--unless, of course, he changed histitle, or had been no longer Mr. Wallace. 

Besides, thanks to the works of Mr. Spencer, Professor Mivart, Professor Semper, and very many others, there has for some time beena growing perception that the Darwinism of Charles Darwin wasdoomed. Use and disuse must either do even more than is officiallyrecognized in Mr. Darwin's later concessions, or they must do agreat deal less. If they can do as much as Mr. Darwin himself saidthey did, why should they not do more? Why stop where Mr. Darwindid? And again, where in the name of all that is reasonable did hereally stop? He drew no line, and on what principle can we say thatso much is possible as effect of use and disuse, but so much moreimpossible? If, as Mr. Darwin contended, disuse can so far reducean organ as to render it rudimentary, and in many cases get rid ofit altogether, why cannot use create as much as disuse can destroy, provided it has anything, no matter how low in structure, to beginwith? Let us know where we stand. If it is admitted that use anddisuse can do a good deal, what does a good deal mean? And what isthe proportion between the shares attributable to use and disuse andto natural selection respectively? If we cannot be told withabsolute precision, let us at any rate have something more definitethan the statement that natural selection is "the most importantmeans of modification. "

Mr. Darwin gave us no help in this respect; and worse than this, hecontradicted himself so flatly as to show that he had very littledefinite idea upon the subject at all. Thus in respect to thewinglessness of the Madeira beetles he wrote:--

"In some cases we might easily put down to disuse modifications ofstructure, which are wholly or mainly due to natural selection. Mr. Wollaston has discovered the remarkable fact that 200 beetles, outof the 550 species (but more are now known) inhabiting Madeira, areso far deficient in wings that they cannot fly; and that of the 29endemic genera no less than 23 have all their species in thiscondition! Several facts--namely, that beetles in many parts of theworld are frequently blown out to sea and perish; that the beetlesin Madeira, as observed by Mr. Wollaston, lie much concealed untilthe wind lulls and the sun shines; that the proportion of winglessbeetles is larger on the exposed Desertas than in Madeira itself;and especially the extraordinary fact, so strongly insisted on byMr. Wollaston, that certain large groups of beetles, elsewhereexcessively numerous, which absolutely require the use of theirwings are here almost entirely absent;--these several considerationsmake me believe that the wingless condition of so many Madeirabeetles is mainly due to the action of natural selection, _combinedprobably with disuse_ [italics mine]. For during many successivegenerations each individual beetle which flew least, either from itswings having been ever so little less perfectly developed or fromindolent habit, will have had the best chance of surviving, from notbeing blown out to sea; and, on the other hand, those beetles whichmost readily took to flight would oftenest have been blown to sea, and thus destroyed. " {265}

We should like to know, first, somewhere about how much disuse wasable to do after all, and moreover why, if it can do anything atall, it should not be able to do all. Mr. Darwin says: "Any changein structure and function which can be effected by small stages iswithin the power of natural selection. " "And why not, " we ask, "within the power of use and disuse?" Moreover, on a later page wefind Mr. Darwin saying:--

"_It appears probable that disuse has been the main agent inrendering organs rudimentary_ [italics mine]. It would at firstlead by slow steps to the more and more complete reduction of apart, until at last it has become rudimentary--as in the case of theeyes of animals inhabiting dark caverns, and of the wings of birdsinhabiting oceanic islands, which have seldom been forced by beastsof prey to take flight, and have ultimately lost the power offlying. Again, an organ, useful under certain conditions, mightbecome injurious under others, as _with the wings of beetles livingon small and exposed islands_; and in this case natural selectionwill have aided in reducing the organ, until it was renderedharmless and rudimentary [italics mine]. " {266}

So that just as an undefined amount of use and disuse was introducedon the earlier page to supplement the effects of natural selectionin respect of the wings of beetles on small and exposed islands, wehave here an undefined amount of natural selection introduced tosupplement the effects of use and disuse in respect of the identicalphenomena. In the one passage we find that natural selection hasbeen the main agent in reducing the wings, though use and disusehave had an appreciable share in the result; in the other, it is useand disuse that have been the main agents, though an appreciableshare in the result must be ascribed to natural selection. 

Besides, who has seen the uncles and aunts going away with theuniformity that is necessary for Mr. Darwin's contention? We knowthat birds and insects do often get blown out to sea and perish, butin order to establish Mr. Darwin's position we want the evidence ofthose who watched the reduction of the wings during the manygenerations in the course of which it was being effected, and whocan testify that all, or the overwhelming majority, of the beetlesborn with fairly well-developed wings got blown out to sea, whilethose alone survived whose wings were congenitally degenerate. Whosaw them go, or can point to analogous cases so conclusive as tocompel assent from any equitable thinker?

Darwinians of the stamp of Mr. Thiselton Dyer, Professor RayLankester, or Mr. Romanes, insist on their pound of flesh in thematter of irrefragable demonstration. They complain of us for notbringing forward someone who has been able to detect the movement ofthe hour-hand of a watch during a second of time, and when we failto do so, declare triumphantly that we have no evidence that thereis any connection between the beating of a second and the movementof the hour-hand. When we say that rain comes from the condensationof moisture in the atmosphere, they demand of us a rain-drop frommoisture not yet condensed. If they stickle for proof and cavil onthe ninth part of a hair, as they do when we bring forward what wedeem excellent instances of the transmission of an acquiredcharacteristic, why may not we, too, demand at any rate someevidence that the unmodified beetles actually did always, or nearlyalways, get blown out to sea, during the reduction above referredto, and that it is to this fact, and not to the masterly inactivityof their fathers and mothers, that the Madeira beetles owe theirwinglessness? If we begin stickling for proof in this way, ouropponents would not be long in letting us know that absolute proofis unattainable on any subject, that reasonable presumption is ourhighest certainty, and that crying out for too much evidence is asbad as accepting too little. Truth is like a photographicsensitized plate, which is equally ruined by over and by underexposure, and the just exposure for which can never be absolutelydetermined. 

Surely if disuse can be credited with the vast powers involved inMr. Darwin's statement that it has probably "been the main agent inrendering organs rudimentary, " no limits are assignable to theaccumulated effects of habit, provided the effects of habit, or useand disuse, are supposed, as Mr. Darwin supposed them, to beinheritable at all. Darwinians have at length woke up to thedilemma in which they are placed by the manner in which Mr. Darwintried to sit on the two stools of use and disuse, and naturalselection of accidental variations, at the same time. The knell ofCharles-Darwinism is rung in Mr. Wallace's present book, and in thegeneral perception on the part of biologists that we must eitherassign to use and disuse such a predominant share in modification asto make it the feature most proper to be insisted on, or deny thatthe modifications, whether of mind or body, acquired during a singlelifetime, are ever transmitted at all. If they can be inherited atall, they can be accumulated. If they can be accumulated at all, they can be so, for anything that appears to the contrary, to theextent of the specific and generic differences with which we aresurrounded. The only thing to do is to pluck them out root andbranch: they are as a cancer which, if the smallest fibre be leftunexcised, will grow again, and kill any system on to which it isallowed to fasten. Mr. Wallace, therefore, may well be excused ifhe casts longing eyes towards Weismannism. 

And what was Mr. Darwin's system? Who can make head or tail of theinextricable muddle in which he left it? The Origin of Species inits latest shape is the reduction of hedging to an absurdity. Howdid Mr. Darwin himself leave it in the last chapter of the lastedition of the Origin of Species? He wrote:--

"I have now recapitulated the facts and considerations which havethoroughly convinced me that species have been modified during along course of descent. This has been effected chiefly through thenatural selection of numerous, successive, slight, favourablevariations; aided in an important manner by the inherited effects ofthe use and disuse of parts, and in an unimportant manner--that is, in relation to adaptive structures whether past or present--by thedirect action of external conditions, and by variations which seemto us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously. It appears that Iformerly underrated the frequency and value of these latter forms ofvariation, as leading to permanent modifications of structureindependently of natural selection. "

The "numerous, successive, slight, favourable variations" abovereferred to are intended to be fortuitous, accidental, spontaneous. It is the essence of Mr. Darwin's theory that this should be so. Mr. Darwin's solemn statement, therefore, of his theory, after hehad done his best or his worst with it, is, when stripped ofsurplusage, as follows:--

"The modification of species has been mainly effected byaccumulation of spontaneous variations; it has been aided in animportant manner by accumulation of variations due to use anddisuse, and in an unimportant manner by spontaneous variations; I donot even now think that spontaneous variations have been veryimportant, but I used once to think them less important than I donow. "

It is a discouraging symptom of the age that such a system shouldhave been so long belauded, and it is a sign of returningintelligence that even he who has been more especially the alter egoof Mr. Darwin should have felt constrained to close the chapter ofCharles-Darwinism as a living theory, and relegate it to theimportant but not very creditable place in history which it musthenceforth occupy. It is astonishing, however, that Mr. Wallaceshould have quoted the extract from the Origin of Species justgiven, as he has done on p. 412 of his Darwinism, without betrayingany sign that he has caught its driftlessness--for drift, other thana desire to hedge, it assuredly has not got. The battle now turnson the question whether modifications of either structure orinstinct due to use or disuse are ever inherited, or whether theyare not. Can the effects of habit be transmitted to progeny at all?We know that more usually they are not transmitted to anyperceptible extent, but we believe also that occasionally, andindeed not infrequently, they are inherited and even intensified. What are our grounds for this opinion? It will be my object to putthese forward in the following number of the Universal Review. 

The Deadlock in Darwinism: Part II {271}

At the close of my article in last month's number of the UniversalReview, I said I would in this month's issue show why the opponentsof Charles-Darwinism believe the effects of habits acquired duringthe lifetime of a parent to produce an effect on their subsequentoffspring, in spite of the fact that we can rarely find the effectin any one generation, or even in several, sufficiently marked toarrest our attention. 

I will now show that offspring can be, and not very infrequently is, affected by occurrences that have produced a deep impression on theparent organism--the effect produced on the offspring being such asleaves no doubt that it is to be connected with the impressionproduced on the parent. Having thus established the generalproposition, I will proceed to the more particular one--that habits, involving use and disuse of special organs, with the modificationsof structure thereby engendered, produce also an effect uponoffspring, which, though seldom perceptible as regards structure ina single, or even in several generations, is nevertheless capable ofbeing accumulated in successive generations till it amounts tospecific and generic difference. I have found the first point asmuch as I can treat within the limits of this present article, andwill avail myself of the hospitality of the Universal Review nextmonth to deal with the second. 

The proposition which I have to defend is one which no one tillrecently would have questioned, and even now those who look mostaskance at it do not venture to dispute it unreservedly; they everynow and then admit it as conceivable, and even in some casesprobable; nevertheless they seek to minimize it, and to make outthat there is little or no connection between the great mass of thecells of which the body is composed, and those cells that are alonecapable of reproducing the entire organism. The tendency is toassign to these last a life of their own, apart from, andunconnected with that of the other cells of the body, and to cheapenall evidence that tends to prove any response on their part to thepast history of the individual, and hence ultimately of the race. 

Professor Weismann is the foremost exponent of those who take thisline. He has naturally been welcomed by English Charles-Darwinians;for if his view can be sustained, then it can be contended that useand disuse produce no transmissible effect, and the ground is cutfrom under Lamarck's feet; if, on the other hand, his view isunfounded, the Lamarckian reaction, already strong, will gain stillfurther strength. The issue, therefore, is important, and is beingfiercely contested by those who have invested their all ofreputation for discernment in Charles-Darwinian securities. 

Professor Weismann's theory is, that at every new birth a part ofthe substance which proceeds from parents and which goes to form thenew embryo is not used up in forming the new animal, but remainsapart to generate the germ-cells--or perhaps I should say "germ-plasm"--which the new animal itself will in due course issue. 

Contrasting the generally received view with his own, ProfessorWeismann says that according to the first of these "the organismproduces germ-cells afresh again and again, and that it producesthem entirely from its own substance. " While by the second "thegerm-cells are no longer looked upon as the product of the parent'sbody, at least as far as their essential part--the specific germ-plasm--is concerned; they are rather considered as something whichis to be placed in contrast with the tout ensemble of the cellswhich make up the parent's body, and the germ-cells of succeedinggenerations stand in a similar relation to one another as a seriesof generations of unicellular organisms arising by a continuedprocess of cell-division. " {274a} On another page he writes:--

"I believe that heredity depends upon the fact that a small portionof the effective substance of the germ, the germ-plasm, remainsunchanged during the development of the ovum into an organism, andthat this part of the germ-plasm serves as a foundation from whichthe germ-cells of the new organism are produced. There is, therefore, continuity of the germ-plasm from one generation toanother. One might represent the germ-plasm by the metaphor of along creeping root-stock from which plants arise at intervals, theselatter representing the individuals of successive generations. "{274b}

Mr. Wallace, who does not appear to have read Professor Weismann'sessays themselves, but whose remarks are, no doubt, ultimatelyderived from the sequel to the passage just quoted from page 266 ofProfessor Weismann's book, contends that the impossibility of thetransmission of acquired characters follows as a logical result fromProfessor Weismann's theory, inasmuch as the molecular structure ofthe germ-plasm that will go to form any succeeding generation isalready predetermined within the still unformed embryo of itspredecessor; "and Weismann, " continues Mr. Wallace, "holds thatthere are no facts which really prove that acquired characters canbe inherited, although their inheritance has, by most writers, beenconsidered so probable as hardly to stand in need of direct proof. "{275}

Professor Weismann, in passages too numerous to quote, shows that herecognizes this necessity, and acknowledges that the non-transmission of acquired characters "forms the foundation of theviews" set forth in his book, p. 291. 

Professor Ray Lankester does not commit himself absolutely to thisview, but lends it support by saying (Nature, December 12, 1889):"It is hardly necessary to say that it has never yet been shownexperimentally that _anything_ acquired by one generation istransmitted to the next (putting aside diseases). "

Mr. Romanes, writing in Nature, March 13, 1890, and opposing certaindetails of Professor Weismann's theory, so far supports it as to saythat "there is the gravest possible doubt lying against thesupposition that any really inherited decrease is due to theinherited effects of disuse. " The "gravest possible doubt" shouldmean that Mr. Romanes regards it as a moral certainty that disusehas no transmitted effect in reducing an organ, and it should followthat he holds use to have no transmitted effect in its development. The sequel, however, makes me uncertain how far Mr. Romanes intendsthis, and I would refer the reader to the article which Mr. Romaneshas just published on Weismann in the Contemporary Review for thiscurrent month. 

The burden of Mr. Thiselton Dyer's controversy with the Duke ofArgyll (see Nature, January 16, 1890, et seq. ) was that there was noevidence in support of the transmission of any acquiredmodification. The orthodoxy of science, therefore, must be held asgiving at any rate a provisional support to Professor Weismann, butall of them, including even Professor Weismann himself, shrink fromcommitting themselves to the opinion that the germ-cells of anyorganisms remain in all cases unaffected by the events that occur tothe other cells of the same organism, and until they do this theyhave knocked the bottom out of their case. 

From among the passages in which Professor Weismann himself shows adesire to hedge I may take the following from page 170 of his book:--

"I am also far from asserting that the germ-plasm which, as I hold, is transmitted as the basis of heredity from one generation toanother, is absolutely unchangeable or totally uninfluenced byforces residing in the organism within which it is transformed intogerm-cells. I am also compelled to admit it as conceivable thatorganisms may exert a modifying influence upon their germ-cells, andeven that such a process is to a certain extent inevitable. Thenutrition and growth of the individual must exercise some influenceupon its germ-cells . . . "

Professor Weismann does indeed go on to say that this influence mustbe extremely slight, but we do not care how slight the changesproduced may be, provided they exist and can be transmitted. On anearlier page (p. 101) he said in regard to variations generally thatwe should not expect to find them conspicuous; their frequency wouldbe enough, if they could be accumulated. The same applies here, ifstirring events that occur to the somatic cells can produce anyeffect at all on offspring. A very small effect, provided it can berepeated and accumulated in successive generations, is all that eventhe most exacting Lamarckian will ask for. 

Having now made the reader acquainted with the position taken by theleading Charles-Darwinian authorities, I will return to ProfessorWeismann himself, who declares that the transmission of acquiredcharacters "at first sight certainly seems necessary, " and that "itappears rash to attempt to dispense with its aid. " He continues:--

"Many phenomena only appear to be intelligible if we assume thehereditary transmission of such acquired characters as the changeswhich we ascribe to the use or disuse of particular organs, or tothe direct influence of climate. Furthermore, how can we explaininstinct as hereditary habit, unless it has gradually arisen by theaccumulation, through heredity, of habits which were practised insucceeding generations?" {277}

I may say in passing that Professor Weismann appears to suppose thatthe view of instinct just given is part of the Charles-Darwiniansystem, for on page 389 of his book he says "that many observers hadfollowed Darwin in explaining them [instincts] as inherited habits. "This was not Mr. Darwin's own view of the matter. He wrote:--

"If we suppose any habitual action to become inherited--and I thinkit can be shown that this does sometimes happen--then theresemblance between what originally was a habit and an instinctbecomes so close as not to be distinguished. . . . But it would bethe most serious error to suppose that the greater number ofinstincts have been acquired by habit in one generation, and thentransmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations. It can beclearly shown that the most wonderful instincts with which we areacquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, couldnot possibly have been thus acquired. "--[Origin of Species, ed. 1859, p. 209. ]

Again we read: "Domestic instincts are sometimes spoken of asactions which have become inherited solely from long-continued andcompulsory habit, but this, I think, is not true. "--Ibid. , p. 214. 

Again: "I am surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrativecase of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of inheritedhabit, as advanced by Lamarck. "--[Origin of Species, ed. 1872, p. 233. ]

I am not aware that Lamarck advanced the doctrine that instinct isinherited habit, but he may have done so in some work that I havenot seen. 

It is true, as I have more than once pointed out, that in the latereditions of the Origin of Species it is no longer "the _most_serious" error to refer instincts generally to inherited habit, butit still remains "a serious error, " and this slight relaxation ofseverity does not warrant Professor Weismann in ascribing to Mr. Darwin an opinion which he emphatically condemned. His tone, however, is so off-hand, that those who have little acquaintancewith the literature of evolution would hardly guess that he is notmuch better informed on this subject than themselves. 

Returning to the inheritance of acquired characters, ProfessorWeismann says that this has never been proved either by means ofdirect observation or by experiment. "It must be admitted, " hewrites, "that there are in existence numerous descriptions of caseswhich tend to prove that such mutilations as the loss of fingers, the scars of wounds, etc. , are inherited by the offspring, but inthese descriptions the previous history is invariably obscure, andhence the evidence loses all scientific value. "

The experiments of M. Brown-Sequard throw so much light upon thequestion at issue that I will quote at some length from the summarygiven by Mr. Darwin in his Variation of Animals and Plants underDomestication. {279} Mr. Darwin writes:--

"With respect to the inheritance of structures mutilated by injuriesor altered by disease, it was until lately difficult to come to anydefinite conclusion. " [Then follow several cases in whichmutilations practised for many generations are not found to betransmitted. ] "Notwithstanding, " continues Mr. Darwin, "the aboveseveral negative cases, we now possess conclusive evidence that theeffects of operations are sometimes inherited. Dr. Brown-Sequardgives the following summary of his observations on guinea-pigs, andthis summary is so important that I will quote the whole:--

"'1st. Appearance of epilepsy in animals born of parents havingbeen rendered epileptic by an injury to the spinal cord. 

"'2nd. Appearance of epilepsy also in animals born of parentshaving been rendered epileptic by the section of the sciatic nerve. 

"'3rd. A change in the shape of the ear in animals born of parentsin which such a change was the effect of a division of the cervicalsympathetic nerve. 

"'4th. Partial closure of the eyelids in animals born of parents inwhich that state of the eyelids had been caused either by thesection of the cervical sympathetic nerve or the removal of thesuperior cervical ganglion. 

"'5th. Exophthalmia in animals born of parents in which an injuryto the restiform body had produced that protrusion of the eyeball. This interesting fact I have witnessed a good many times, and I haveseen the transmission of the morbid state of the eye continuethrough four generations. In these animals modified by heredity, the two eyes generally protruded, although in the parents usuallyonly one showed exophthalmia, the lesion having been made in mostcases only on one of the corpora restiformia. 

"'6th. Haematoma and dry gangrene of the ears in animals born ofparents in which these ear-alterations had been caused by an injuryto the restiform body near the nib of the calamus. 

"'7th. Absence of two toes out of the three of the hind leg, andsometimes of the three, in animals whose parents had eaten up theirhind-leg toes which had become anaesthetic from a section of thesciatic nerve alone, or of that nerve and also of the crural. Sometimes, instead of complete absence of the toes, only a part ofone or two or three was missing in the young, although in the parentnot only the toes but the whole foot was absent (partly eaten off, partly destroyed by inflammation, ulceration, or gangrene). 

"'8th. Appearance of various morbid states of the skin and hair ofthe neck and face in animals born of parents having had similaralterations in the same parts, as effects of an injury to thesciatic nerve. '

"It should be especially observed that Brown-Sequard had bred duringthirty years many thousand guinea-pigs from animals which had notbeen operated upon, and not one of these manifested the epileptictendency. Nor has he ever seen a guinea-pig born without toes, which was not the offspring of parents which had gnawed off theirown toes owing to the sciatic nerve having been divided. Of thislatter fact thirteen instances were carefully recorded, and agreater number were seen; yet Brown-Sequard speaks of such cases asone of the rarer forms of inheritance. It is a still moreinteresting fact, 'that the sciatic nerve in the congenitallytoeless animal has inherited the power of passing through all thedifferent morbid states which have occurred in one of its parentsfrom the time of the division till after its reunion with theperipheric end. It is not, therefore, simply the power ofperforming an action which is inherited, but the power of performinga whole series of actions, in a certain order. '

"In most of the cases of inheritance recorded by Brown-Sequard onlyone of the two parents had been operated upon and was affected. Heconcludes by expressing his belief that 'what is transmitted is themorbid state of the nervous system, ' due to the operation performedon the parents. "

Mr. Darwin proceeds to give other instances of inherited effects ofmutilations:--

"With the horse there seems hardly a doubt that exostoses on thelegs, caused by too much travelling on hard roads, are inherited. Blumenbach records the case of a man who had his little finger onthe right hand almost cut off, and which in consequence grewcrooked, and his sons had the same finger on the same hand similarlycrooked. A soldier, fifteen years before his marriage, lost hisleft eye from purulent ophthalmia, and his two sons weremicrophthalmic on the same side. "

The late Professor Rolleston, whose competence as an observer no oneis likely to dispute, gave Mr. Darwin two cases as having fallenunder his own notice, one of a man whose knee had been severelywounded, and whose child was born with the same spot marked orscarred, and the other of one who was severely cut upon the cheek, and whose child was born scarred in the same place. Mr. Darwin'sconclusion was that "the effects of injuries, especially whenfollowed by disease, or perhaps exclusively when thus followed, areoccasionally inherited. "

Let us now see what Professor Weismann has to say against this. Hewrites:--

"The only cases worthy of discussion are the well-known experimentsupon guinea-pigs conducted by the French physiologist, Brown-Sequard. But the explanation of his results is, in my opinion, opento discussion. In these cases we have to do with the apparenttransmission of artificially produced malformations. . . . Allthese effects were said to be transmitted to descendants as far asthe fifth or sixth generation. 

"But we must inquire whether these cases are really due to heredity, and not to simple infection. In the case of epilepsy, at any rate, it is easy to imagine that the passage of some specific organismthrough the reproductive cells may take place, as in the case ofsyphilis. We are, however, entirely ignorant of the nature of theformer disease. This suggested explanation may not perhaps apply tothe other cases; but we must remember that animals which have beensubjected to such severe operations upon the nervous system havesustained a great shock, and if they are capable of breeding, it isonly probable that they will produce weak descendants, and such asare easily affected by disease. Such a result does not, however, explain why the offspring should suffer from the same disease asthat which was artificially induced in the parents. But this doesnot appear to have been by any means invariably the case. Brown-Sequard himself says: 'The changes in the eye of the offspring wereof a very variable nature, and were only occasionally exactlysimilar to those observed in the parents. '

"There is no doubt, however, that these experiments demand carefulconsideration, but before they can claim scientific recognition, they must be subjected to rigid criticism as to the precautionstaken, the nature and number of the control experiments, etc. 

"Up to the present time such necessary conditions have not beensufficiently observed. The recent experiments themselves are onlydescribed in short preliminary notices, which, as regards theiraccuracy, the possibility of mistake, the precautions taken, and theexact succession of individuals affected, afford no data on which ascientific opinion can be founded" (pp. 81, 82). 

The line Professor Weismann takes, therefore, is to discredit thefacts; yet on a later page we find that the experiments have sincebeen repeated by Obersteiner, "who has described them in a veryexact and unprejudiced manner, " and that "the fact"--(I imagine thatProfessor Weismann intends "the facts")--"cannot be doubted. "

On a still later page, however, we read:--

"If, for instance, it could be shown that artificial mutilationspontaneously reappears in the offspring with sufficient frequencyto exclude all possibilities of chance, then such proof [i. E. Thatacquired characters can be transmitted] would be forthcoming. Thetransmission of mutilations has been frequently asserted, and hasbeen even recently again brought forward, but all the supposedinstances have broken down when carefully examined" (p. 390). 

Here, then, we are told that proof of the occasional transmission ofmutilations would be sufficient to establish the fact, but on p. 267we find that no single fact is known which really proves thatacquired characters can be transmitted, "_for the ascertained factswhich seem to point to the transmission of artificially produceddiseases cannot be considered as proof_. " [Italics mine. ] Perhaps;but it was mutilation in many cases that Professor Weismannpractically admitted to have been transmitted when he declared thatObersteiner had verified Brown-Sequard's experiments. 

That Professor Weismann recognizes the vital importance to his owntheory of the question whether or no mutilations can be transmittedunder any circumstances, is evident from a passage on p. 425 of hiswork, on which he says: "It can hardly be doubted that mutilationsare acquired characters; they do not arise from any tendencycontained in the germ, but are merely the reaction of the body undercertain external influences. They are, as I have recently expressedit, purely somatogenic characters--viz. Characters which emanatefrom the body (soma) only, as opposed to the germ-cells; they are, therefore, characters that do not arise from the germ itself. 

"If mutilations must necessarily be transmitted" [which no one thatI know of has maintained], "or even if they might occasionally betransmitted" [which cannot, I imagine, be reasonably questioned], "apowerful support would be given to the Lamarckian principle, and thetransmission of functional hypertrophy or atrophy would thus becomehighly probable. "

I have not found any further attempt in Professor Weismann's book todeal with the evidence adduced by Mr. Darwin to show thatmutilations, if followed by diseases, are sometimes inherited; and Imust leave it to the reader to determine how far Professor Weismannhas shown reason for rejecting Mr. Darwin's conclusion. I do not, however, dwell upon these facts now as evidence of a transmittedchange of bodily form, or of instinct due to use and disuse orhabit; what they prove is that the germ-cells within the parent'sbody do not stand apart from the other cells of the body socompletely as Professor Weismann would have us believe, but that, asProfessor Hering, of Prague, has aptly said, they echo with more orless frequency and force to the profounder impressions made uponother cells. 

I may say that Professor Weismann does not more cavalierly waveaside the mass of evidence collected by Mr. Darwin and a host ofother writers, to the effect that mutilations are sometimesinherited, than does Mr. Wallace, who says that, "as regardsmutilations, it is generally admitted that they are not inherited, and there is ample evidence on this point. " It is indeed generallyadmitted that mutilations, when not followed by disease, are veryrarely, if ever, inherited; and Mr. Wallace's appeal to the "ampleevidence" which he alleges to exist on this head, is much as thoughhe should say that there is ample evidence to show that the days arelonger in summer than in winter. "Nevertheless, " he continues, "afew cases of apparent inheritance of mutilations have been recorded, and these, if trustworthy, are difficulties in the way of thetheory. " . . . "The often-quoted case of a disease induced bymutilation being inherited (Brown-Sequard's epileptic guinea-pigs)has been discussed by Professor Weismann and shown to be notconclusive. The mutilation itself--a section of certain nerves--wasnever inherited, but the resulting epilepsy, or a general state ofweakness, deformity, or sores, was sometimes inherited. It is, however, possible that the mere injury introduced and encouraged thegrowth of certain microbes, which, spreading through the organism, sometimes reached the germ-cells, and thus transmitted a diseasedcondition to the offspring. " {286}

I suppose a microbe which made guinea-pigs eat their toes off wascommunicated to the germ-cells of an unfortunate guinea-pig whichhad been already microbed by it, and made the offspring bite itstoes off too. The microbe has a good deal to answer for. 

On the case of the deterioration of horses in the Falkland Islandsafter a few generations, Professor Weismann says:--

"In such a case we have only to assume that the climate which isunfavourable, and nutriment which is insufficient for horses, affectnot only the animal as a whole but also its germ-cells. This wouldresult in the diminution in size of the germ-cells, the effects uponthe offspring being still further intensified by the insufficientnourishment supplied during growth. But such results would notdepend upon the transmission by the germ-cells of certainpeculiarities due to the unfavourable climate, which only appear inthe full-grown horse. "

But Professor Weismann does not like such cases, and admits that hecannot explain the facts in connection with the climatic varietiesof certain butterflies, except "by supposing the passive acquisitionof characters produced by the direct influence of climate. "

Nevertheless, in his next paragraph but one he calls such cases"doubtful, " and proposes that for the moment they should be leftaside. He accordingly leaves them, but I have not yet found whatother moment he considered auspicious for returning to them. Hetells us that "new experiments will be necessary, and that he hashimself already begun to undertake them. " Perhaps he will give usthe results of these experiments in some future book--for that theywill prove satisfactory to him can hardly, I think, be doubted. Hewrites:--

"Leaving on one side, for the moment, these doubtful andinsufficiently investigated cases, we may still maintain that theassumption that changes induced by external conditions in theorganism as a whole are communicated to the germ-cells after themanner indicated in Darwin's hypothesis of pangenesis, is whollyunnecessary for the explanation of these phenomena. Still we cannotexclude the possibility of such a transmission occasionallyoccurring, for even if the greater part of the effects must beattributable to natural selection, there might be a smaller part incertain cases which depends on this exceptional factor. "

I repeatedly tried to understand Mr. Darwin's theory of pangenesis, and so often failed that I long since gave the matter up in despair. I did so with the less unwillingness because I saw that no one elseappeared to understand the theory, and that even Mr. Darwin'swarmest adherents regarded it with disfavour. If Mr. Darwin meansthat every cell of the body throws off minute particles that findtheir way to the germ-cells, and hence into the new embryo, this isindeed difficult of comprehension and belief. If he means that therhythms or vibrations that go on ceaselessly in every cell of thebody communicate themselves with greater or less accuracy orperturbation, as the case may be, to the cells that go to formoffspring, and that since the characteristics of matter aredetermined by vibrations, in communicating vibrations they in effectcommunicate matter, according to the view put forward in the lastchapter of my book Luck or Cunning, then we can better understandit. I have nothing, however, to do with Mr. Darwin's theory ofpangenesis beyond avoiding the pretence that I understand either thetheory itself or what Professor Weismann says about it; all I amconcerned with is Professor Weismann's admission, made immediatelyafterwards, that the somatic cells may, and perhaps sometimes do, impart characteristics to the germ-cells. 

"A complete and satisfactory refutation of such an opinion, " hecontinues, "cannot be brought forward at present"; so I suppose wemust wait a little longer, but in the meantime we may again remarkthat, if we admit even occasional communication of changes in thesomatic cells to the germ-cells, we have let in the thin end of thewedge, as Mr. Darwin did when he said that use and disuse did a gooddeal towards modification. Buffon, in his first volume on the loweranimals, {288} dwells on the impossibility of stopping the breachonce made by admission of variation at all. "If the point, " hewrites, "were once gained, that among animals and vegetables therehad been, I do not say several species, but even a single one, whichhad been produced in the course of direct descent from anotherspecies; if, for example, it could be once shown that the ass wasbut a degeneration from the horse--then there is no farther limit tobe set to the power of Nature, and we should not be wrong insupposing that with sufficient time she could have evolved all otherorganized forms from one primordial type. " So with use and disuseand transmission of acquired characteristics generally--once showthat a single structure or instinct is due to habit in precedinggenerations, and we can impose no limit on the results achievable byaccumulation in this respect, nor shall we be wrong in conceiving itas possible that all specialization, whether of structure orinstinct, may be due ultimately to habit. 

How far this can be shown to be probable is, of course, anothermatter, but I am not immediately concerned with this; all I amconcerned with now is to show that the germ-cells not unfrequentlybecome permanently affected by events that have made a profoundimpression upon the somatic cells, in so far that they transmit anobvious reminiscence of the impression to the embryos which they gosubsequently towards forming. This is all that is necessary for mycase, and I do not find that Professor Weismann, after all, disputesit. 

But here, again, comes the difficulty of saying what ProfessorWeismann does, and what he does not, dispute. One moment he givesall that is wanted for the Lamarckian contention, the next he deniescommon sense the bare necessaries of life. For a more exhaustiveand detailed criticism of Professor Weismann's position, I wouldrefer the reader to an admirably clear article by Mr. Sidney H. Vines, which appeared in Nature, October 24, 1889. I can only saythat while reading Professor Weismann's book, I feel as I do when Iread those of Mr. Darwin, and of a good many other writers onbiology whom I need not name. I become like a fly in a window-pane. I see the sunshine and freedom beyond, and buzz up and down theirpages, ever hopeful to get through them to the fresh air without, but ever kept back by a mysterious something, which I feel butcannot either grasp or see. It was not thus when I read Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck; it is not thus when I read sucharticles as Mr. Vines's just referred to. Love of self-display, andthe want of singleness of mind that it inevitably engenders--these, I suppose, are the sins that glaze the casements of most men'sminds; and from these, no matter how hard he tries to free himself, nor how much he despises them, who is altogether exempt?

Finally, then, when we consider the immense mass of evidencereferred to briefly, but sufficiently, by Mr. Charles Darwin, andreferred to without other, for the most part, than off-handdismissal by Professor Weismann in the last of the essays that havebeen recently translated, I do not see how anyone who brings anunbiased mind to the question can hesitate as to the side on whichthe weight of testimony inclines. Professor Weismann declares that"the transmission of mutilations may be dismissed into the domain offable. " {290} If so, then, whom can we trust? What is the use ofscience at all if the conclusions of a man as competent as I readilyadmit Mr. Darwin to have been, on the evidence laid before him fromcountless sources, is to be set aside lightly and without giving theclearest and most cogent explanation of the why and wherefore? Whenwe see a person "ostrichizing" the evidence which he has to meet, asclearly as I believe Professor Weismann to be doing, we shall innine cases out of ten be right in supposing that he knows theevidence to be too strong for him. 

The Deadlock in Darwinism: Part III

Now let me return to the recent division of biological opinion intotwo main streams--Lamarckism and Weismannism. Both Lamarckians andWeismannists, not to mention mankind in general, admit that thebetter adapted to its surroundings a living form may be, the morelikely it is to outbreed its compeers. The world at large, again, needs not to be told that the normal course is not unfrequentlydeflected through the fortunes of war; nevertheless, according toLamarckians and Erasmus-Darwinians, habitual effort, guided by ever-growing intelligence--that is to say, by continued increase of powerin the matter of knowing our likes and dislikes--has been so muchthe main factor throughout the course of organic development, thatthe rest, though not lost sight of, may be allowed to go withoutsaying. According, on the other hand, to extreme Charles-Darwiniansand Weismannists, habit, effort and intelligence acquired during theexperience of any one life goes for nothing. Not even a littlefraction of it endures to the benefit of offspring. It dies withhim in whom it is acquired, and the heirs of a man's body take nointerest therein. To state this doctrine is to arouse instinctiveloathing; it is my fortunate task to maintain that such a nightmareof waste and death is as baseless as it is repulsive. 

The split in biological opinion occasioned by the deadlock to whichCharles-Darwinism has been reduced, though comparatively recent, widens rapidly. Ten years ago Lamarck's name was mentioned only asa byword for extravagance; now, we cannot take up a number of Naturewithout seeing how hot the contention is between his followers andthose of Weismann. This must be referred, as I implied earlier, togrowing perception that Mr. Darwin should either have gone farthertowards Lamarckism or not so far. In admitting use and disuse asfreely as he did, he gave Lamarckians leverage for the overthrow ofa system based ostensibly on the accumulation of fortunateaccidents. In assigning the lion's share of development to theaccumulation of fortunate accidents, he tempted fortuitists to tryto cut the ground from under Lamarck's feet by denying that theeffects of use and disuse can be inherited at all. When the publichad once got to understand what Lamarck had intended, and whereinMr. Charles Darwin had differed from him, it became impossible forCharles-Darwinians to remain where they were, nor is it easy to seewhat course was open to them except to cast about for a theory bywhich they could get rid of use and disuse altogether. Weismannism, therefore, is the inevitable outcome of the straits to whichCharles-Darwinians were reduced through the way in which theirleader had halted between two opinions. 

This is why Charles-Darwinians, from Professor Huxley downwards, have kept the difference between Lamarck's opinions and those of Mr. Darwin so much in the background. Unwillingness to make thisunderstood is nowhere manifested more clearly than in Dr. FrancisDarwin's life of his father. In this work Lamarck is sneered atonce or twice and told to go away, but there is no attempt to statethe two cases side by side; from which, as from not a little else, Iconclude that Dr. Francis Darwin has descended from his father withsingularly little modification. 

Proceeding to the evidence for the transmissions of acquired habits, I will quote two recently adduced examples from among the many thathave been credibly attested. The first was contributed to Nature(March 14, 1889) by Professor Marcus M. Hartog, who wrote:--

"A. B. Is moderately myopic and very astigmatic in the left eye;extremely myopic in the right. As the left eye gave such bad imagesfor near objects, he was compelled in childhood to mask it, andacquired the habit of leaning his head on his left arm for writing, so as to blind that eye, or of resting the left temple and eye onthe hand, with the elbow on the table. At the age of fifteen theeyes were equalized by the use of suitable spectacles, and he soonlost the habit completely and permanently. He is now the father oftwo children, a boy and a girl, whose vision (tested repeatedly andfully) is emmetropic in both eyes, so that they have not inheritedthe congenital optical defect of their father. All the same, theyhave both of them inherited his early acquired habit, and needconstant watchfulness to prevent their hiding the left eye whenwriting, by resting the head on the left forearm or hand. Imitationis here quite out of the question. 

"Considering that every habit involves changes in the proportionaldevelopment of the muscular and osseous systems, and hence probablyof the nervous system also, the importance of inherited habits, natural or acquired, cannot be overlooked in the general theory ofinheritance. I am fully aware that I shall be accused of flatLamarckism, but a nickname is not an argument. "

To this Professor Ray Lankester rejoined (Nature, March 21, 1889):--

"It is not unusual for children to rest the head on the left forearmor hand when writing, and I doubt whether much value can be attachedto the case described by Professor Hartog. The kind of observationwhich his letter suggests is, however, likely to lead to resultseither for or against the transmission of acquired characters. Anold friend of mine lost his right arm when a schoolboy, and has eversince written with his left. He has a large family andgrandchildren, but I have not heard of any of them showing adisposition to left-handedness. "

From Nature (March 21, 1889) I take the second instance communicatedby Mr. J. Jenner-Weir, who wrote as follows:--

"Mr. Marcus M. Hartog's letter of March 6th, inserted in last week'snumber (p. 462), is a very valuable contribution to the growingevidence that acquired characters may be inherited. I have longheld the view that such is often the case, and I have myselfobserved several instances of the, at least I may say, apparentfact. 

"Many years ago there was a very fine male of the Capra megaceros inthe gardens of the Zoological Society. To restrain this animal fromjumping over the fence of the enclosure in which he was confined, along and heavy chain was attached to the collar round his neck. Hewas constantly in the habit of taking this chain up by his horns andmoving it from one side to another over his back; in doing this hethrew his head very much back, his horns being placed in a line withthe back. The habit had become quite chronic with him, and was verytiresome to look at. I was very much astonished to observe that hisoffspring inherited the habit, and although it was not necessary toattach a chain to their necks, I have often seen a young malethrowing his horns over his back and shifting from side to side animaginary chain. The action was exactly the same as that of hisancestor. The case of the kid of this goat appears to me to beparallel to that of child and parent given by Mr. Hartog. I thinkat the time I made this observation I informed Mr. Darwin of thefact by letter, and he did not accuse me of 'flat Lamarckism. '"

To this letter there was no rejoinder. It may be said, of course, that the action of the offspring in each of these cases was due toaccidental coincidence only. Anything can be said, but the questionturns not on what an advocate can say, but on what a reasonablyintelligent and disinterested jury will believe; granted they mightbe mistaken in accepting the foregoing stories, but the world ofscience, like that of commerce, is based on the faith or confidencewhich both creates and sustains them. Indeed the universe itself isbut the creature of faith, for assuredly we know of no otherfoundation. There is nothing so generally and reasonably accepted--not even our own continued identity--but questions may be raisedabout it that will shortly prove unanswerable. We cannot so testevery sixpence given us in change as to be sure that we never take abad one, and had better sometimes be cheated than reduce caution toan absurdity. Moreover, we have seen from the evidence given in mypreceding article that the germ-cells issuing from a parent's bodycan, and do, respond to profound impressions made on the somaticcells. This being so, what impressions are more profound, whatneeds engage more assiduous attention than those connected withself-protection, the procuring of food, and the continuation of thespecies? If the mere anxiety connected with an ill-healing woundinflicted on but one generation is sometimes found to have soimpressed the germ-cells that they hand down its scars to offspring, how much more shall not anxieties that have directed action of allkinds from birth till death, not in one generation only but in alonger series of generations than the mind can realize to itself, modify, and indeed control, the organization of every species?

I see Professor S. H. Vines, in the article on Weismann's theoryreferred to in my preceding article, says Mr. Darwin "held that itwas not the sudden variations due to altered external conditionswhich become permanent, but those slowly produced by what he termed'the accumulative action of changed conditions of life. '" Nothingcan be more soundly Lamarckian, and nothing should more conclusivelyshow that, whatever else Mr. Darwin was, he was not a Charles-Darwinian; but what evidence other than inferential can from thenature of the case be adduced in support of this, as I believe, perfectly correct judgment? None know better than they who clamourfor direct evidence that their master was right in taking theposition assigned to him by Professor Vines, that they cannotreasonably look for it. With us, as with themselves, modificationproceeds very gradually, and it violates our principles as much astheir own to expect visible permanent progress, in any singlegeneration, or indeed in any number of generations of wild specieswhich we have yet had time to observe. Occasionally we can findsuch cases, as in that of Branchipus stagnalis, quoted by Mr. Wallace, or in that of the New Zealand Kea whose skin, I was assuredby the late Sir Julius von Haast, has already been modified as aconsequence of its change of food. Here we can show that in even afew generations structure is modified under changed conditions ofexistence, but as we believe these cases to occur comparativelyrarely, so it is still more rarely that they occur when and where wecan watch them. Nature is eminently conservative, and fixity oftype, even under considerable change of conditions, is surely moreimportant for the well-being of any species than an over-ready powerof adaptation to, it may be, passing changes. There could be nosteady progress if each generation were not mainly bound by thetraditions of those that have gone before it. It is evolution andnot incessant revolution that both parties are upholding; and thisbeing so, rapid visible modification must be the exception, not therule. I have quoted direct evidence adduced by competent observers, which is, I believe, sufficient to establish the fact that offspringcan be and is sometimes modified by the acquired habits of aprogenitor. I will now proceed to the still more, as it appears tome, cogent proof afforded by general considerations. 

What, let me ask, are the principal phenomena of heredity? Theremust be physical continuity between parent, or parents, andoffspring, so that the offspring is, as Erasmus Darwin well said, akind of elongation of the life of the parent. 

Erasmus Darwin put the matter so well that I may as well give hiswords in full; he wrote:--

"Owing to the imperfection of language the offspring is termed a newanimal, but is in truth a branch or elongation of the parent, sincea part of the embryon animal is, or was, a part of the parent, andtherefore, in strict language, cannot be said to be entirely new atthe time of its production; and therefore it may retain some of thehabits of the parent system. 

"At the earliest period of its existence the embryon would seem toconsist of a living filament with certain capabilities ofirritation, sensation, volition, and association, and also with someacquired habits or propensities peculiar to the parent; the formerof these are in common with other animals; the latter seem todistinguish or produce the kind of animal, whether man or quadruped, with the similarity of feature or form to the parent. " {299}

Those who accept evolution insist on unbroken physical continuitybetween the earliest known life and ourselves, so that we both areand are not personally identical with the unicellular organism fromwhich we have descended in the course of many millions of years, exactly in the same ways as an octogenarian both is and is notpersonally identical with the microscopic impregnate ovum from whichhe grew up. Everything both is and is not. There is no such thingas strict identity between any two things in any two consecutiveseconds. In strictness they are identical and yet not identical, sothat in strictness they violate a fundamental rule of strictness--namely, that a thing shall never be itself and not itself at one andthe same time; we must choose between logic and dealing in apractical spirit with time and space; it is not surprising, therefore, that logic, in spite of the show of respect outwardlypaid to her, is told to stand aside when people come to practice. In practice identity is generally held to exist where continuity isonly broken slowly and piecemeal; nevertheless, that occasionalperiods of even rapid change are not held to bar identity, appearsfrom the fact that no one denies this to hold between themicroscopically small impregnate ovum and the born child thatsprings from it, nor yet, therefore, between the impregnate ovum andthe octogenarian into which the child grows; for both ovum andoctogenarian are held personally identical with the new-born baby, and things that are identical with the same are identical with oneanother. 

The first, then, and most important element of heredity is thatthere should be unbroken continuity, and hence sameness ofpersonality, between parents and offspring, in neither more nor lessthan the same sense as that in which any other two personalities aresaid to be the same. The repetition, therefore, of itsdevelopmental stages by any offspring must be regarded as somethingwhich the embryo repeating them has already done once, in the personof one or other parent; and if once, then, as many times as therehave been generations between any given embryo now repeating it, andthe point in life from which we started--say, for example, theamoeba. In the case of asexually and sexually produced organismsalike, the offspring must be held to continue the personality of theparent or parents, and hence on the occasion of every freshdevelopment, to be repeating something which in the person of itsparent or parents it has done once, and if once, then any number oftimes, already. 

It is obvious, therefore, that the germ-plasm (or whatever the fancyword for it may be) of any one generation is as physically identicalwith the germ-plasm of its predecessor as any two things can be. The difference between Professor Weismann and, we will say, Heringians consists in the fact that the first maintains the newgerm-plasm when on the point of repeating its developmentalprocesses to take practically no cognisance of anything that hashappened to it since the last occasion on which it developed itself;while the latter maintain that offspring takes much the same kind ofaccount of what has happened to it in the persons of its parentssince the last occasion on which it developed itself, as people inordinary life take things that happen to them. In daily life peoplelet fairly normal circumstances come and go without much heed asmatters of course. If they have been lucky they make a note of itand try to repeat their success. If they have been unfortunate buthave recovered rapidly they soon forget it; if they have sufferedlong and deeply they grizzle over it and are scared and scarred byit for a long time. The question is one of cognisance or non-cognisance on the part of the new germs, of the more profoundimpressions made on them while they were one with their parents, between the occasion of their last preceding development and the newcourse on which they are about to enter. Those who accept thetheory put forward independently by Professor Hering of Prague(whose work on this subject is translated in my book UnconsciousMemory) and by myself in Life and Habit, believe in cognisance as doLamarckians generally. Weismannites, and with them the orthodoxy ofEnglish science, find non-cognisance more acceptable. 

If the Heringian view is accepted, that heredity is only a mode ofmemory, and an extension of memory from one generation to another, then the repetition of its development by any embryo thus becomesonly the repetition of a lesson learned by rote; and, as I haveelsewhere said, our view of life is simplified by finding that it isno longer an equation of, say, a hundred unknown quantities, but ofninety-nine only, inasmuch as two of the unknown quantities prove tobe substantially identical. In this case the inheritance ofacquired characteristics cannot be disputed, for it is postulated inthe theory that each embryo takes note of, remembers and is guidedby the profounder impressions made upon it while in the persons ofits parents, between its present and last preceding development. Tomaintain this is to maintain use and disuse to be the main factorsthroughout organic development; to deny it is to deny that use anddisuse can have any conceivable effect. For the detailed reasonswhich led me to my own conclusions I must refer the reader to mybooks Life and Habit and Unconscious Memory, the conclusions ofwhich have been often adopted, but never, that I have seen, disputed. A brief resume of the leading points in the argument isall that space will here allow me to give. 

We have seen that it is a first requirement of heredity that thereshall be physical continuity between parents and offspring. Thisholds good with memory. There must be continued identity betweenthe person remembering and the person to whom the thing that isremembered happened. We cannot remember things that happened tosomeone else, and in our absence. We can only remember having heardof them. We have seen, however, that there is as much bona-fidesameness of personality between parents and offspring up to the timeat which the offspring quits the parent's body, as there is betweenthe different states of the parent himself at any two consecutivemoments; the offspring therefore, being one and the same person withits progenitors until it quits them, can be held to remember whathappened to them within, of course, the limitations to which allmemory is subject, as much as the progenitors can remember whathappened earlier to themselves. Whether it does so remember canonly be settled by observing whether it acts as living beingscommonly do when they are acting under guidance of memory. I willendeavour to show that, though heredity and habit based on memory goabout in different dresses, yet if we catch them separately--forthey are never seen together--and strip them there is not a mole norstrawberry-mark nor trick nor leer of the one, but we find it in theother also. 

What are the moles and strawberry-marks of habitual action, oractions remembered and thus repeated? First, the more often werepeat them the more easily and unconsciously we do them. Look atreading, writing, walking, talking, playing the piano, etc. ; thelonger we have practised any one of these acquired habits, the moreeasily, automatically and unconsciously, we perform it. Look, onthe other hand, broadly, at the three points to which I calledattention in Life and Habit:--

I. That we are most conscious of and have most control over suchhabits as speech, the upright position, the arts and sciences--whichare acquisitions peculiar to the human race, always acquired afterbirth, and not common to ourselves and any ancestor who had notbecome entirely human. 

II. That we are less conscious of and have less control over eatingand drinking [provided the food be normal], swallowing, breathing, seeing, and hearing--which were acquisitions of our prehumanancestry, and for which we had provided ourselves with all thenecessary apparatus before we saw light, but which are still, geologically speaking, recent. 

III. That we are most unconscious of and have least control overour digestion and circulation--powers possessed even by ourinvertebrate ancestry, and, geologically speaking, of extremeantiquity. 

I have put the foregoing very broadly, but enough is given to showthe reader the gist of the argument. Let it be noted thatdisturbance and departure, to any serious extent, from normalpractice tends to induce resumption of consciousness even in thecase of such old habits as breathing, seeing, and hearing, digestionand the circulation of the blood. So it is with habitual actions ingeneral. Let a player be never so proficient on any instrument, hewill be put out if the normal conditions under which he plays aretoo widely departed from, and will then do consciously, if indeed hecan do it at all, what he had hitherto been doing unconsciously. Itis an axiom as regards actions acquired after birth, that we neverdo them automatically save as the result of long practice; thestages in the case of any acquired facility, the inception of whichwe have been able to watch, have invariably been from a nothingnessof ignorant impotence to a little somethingness of highly self-conscious, arduous performance, and thence to theunselfconsciousness of easy mastery. I saw one year a poor blindlad of about eighteen sitting on a wall by the wayside at Varese, playing the concertina with his whole body, and snorting like achild. The next year the boy no longer snorted, and he played withhis fingers only; the year after that he seemed hardly to knowwhether he was playing or not, it came so easily to him. I know noexception to this rule. Where is the intricate and at one timedifficult art in which perfect automatic ease has been reachedexcept as the result of long practice? If, then, wherever we cantrace the development of automatism we find it to have taken thiscourse, is it not most reasonable to infer that it has taken thesame even when it has risen in regions that are beyond our ken?Ought we not, whenever we see a difficult action performedautomatically, to suspect antecedent practice? Granted that withoutthe considerations in regard to identity presented above it wouldnot have been easy to see where a baby of a day old could have hadthe practice which enables it to do as much as it doesunconsciously, but even without these considerations it would havebeen more easy to suppose that the necessary opportunities had notbeen wanting, than that the easy performance could have been gainedwithout practice and memory. 

When I wrote Life and Habit (originally published in 1877) I said inslightly different words:--

"Shall we say that a baby of a day old sucks (which involves thewhole principle of the pump and hence a profound practical knowledgeof the laws of pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenizes itsblood--millions of years before anyone had discovered oxygen--seesand hears, operations that involve an unconscious knowledge of thefacts concerning optics and acoustics compared with which theconscious discoveries of Newton are insignificant--shall we say thata baby can do all these things at once, doing them so well and soregularly without being even able to give them attention, and yetwithout mistake, and shall we also say at the same time that it hasnot learnt to do them, and never did them before?

"Such an assertion would contradict the whole experience ofmankind. "

I have met with nothing during the thirteen years since theforegoing was published that has given me any qualms about itssoundness. From the point of view of the law courts and everydaylife it is, of course, nonsense; but in the kingdom of thought, asin that of heaven, there are many mansions, and what would beextravagance in the cottage or farm-house, as it were, of dailypractice, is but common decency in the palace of high philosophy, wherein dwells evolution. If we leave evolution alone, we may stickto common practice and the law courts; touch evolution and we are inanother world; not higher, nor lower, but different as harmony fromcounterpoint. As, however, in the most absolute counterpoint thereis still harmony, and in the most absolute harmony stillcounterpoint, so high philosophy should be still in touch withcommon sense, and common sense with high philosophy. 

The common-sense view of the matter to people who are not over-curious and to whom time is money, will be that a baby is not a babyuntil it is born, and that when born it should be born in wedlock. Nevertheless, as a sop to high philosophy, every baby is allowed tobe the offspring of its father and mother. 

The high-philosophy view of the matter is that every human being isstill but a fresh edition of the primordial cell with the latestadditions and corrections; there has been no leap nor break incontinuity anywhere; the man of to-day is the primordial cell ofmillions of years ago as truly as he is the himself of yesterday; hecan only be denied to be the one on grounds that will prove him notto be the other. Everyone is both himself and all his directancestors and descendants as well; therefore, if we would belogical, he is one also with all his cousins, no matter how distant, for he and they are alike identical with the primordial cell, and wehave already noted it as an axiom that things which are identicalwith the same are identical with one another. This is practicallymaking him one with all living things, whether animal or vegetable, that ever have existed or ever will--something of all which may havebeen in the mind of Sophocles when he wrote:--

"Nor seest thou yet the gathering hosts of illThat shall en-one thee both with thine own selfAnd with thine offspring. "

And all this has come of admitting that a man may be the same personfor two days running! As for sopping common sense it will be enoughto say that these remarks are to be taken in a strictly scientificsense, and have no appreciable importance as regards life andconduct. True they deal with the foundations on which all life andconduct are based, but like other foundations they are hidden out ofsight, and the sounder they are, the less we trouble ourselves aboutthem. 

What other main common features between heredity and memory may wenote besides the fact that neither can exist without that kind ofphysical continuity which we call personal identity? First, thedevelopment of the embryo proceeds in an established order; so mustall habitual actions based on memory. Disturb the normal order andthe performance is arrested. The better we know "God save theQueen, " the less easily can we play or sing it backwards. Thereturn of memory again depends on the return of ideas associatedwith the particular thing that is remembered--we remember nothingbut for the presence of these, and when enough of these arepresented to us we remember everything. So, if the development ofan embryo is due to memory, we should suppose the memory of theimpregnate ovum to revert not to yesterday, when it was in thepersons of its parents, but to the last occasion on which it was animpregnate ovum. The return of the old environment and the presenceof old associations would at once involve recollection of the coursethat should be next taken, and the same should happen throughout thewhole course of development. The actual course of developmentpresents precisely the phenomena agreeable with this. For fullertreatment of this point I must refer the reader to the chapter onthe abeyance of memory in my book Life and Habit, already referredto. 

Secondly, we remember best our last few performances of any givenkind, so our present performance will probably resemble some one orother of these; we remember our earlier performances by way ofresiduum only, but every now and then we revert to an earlier habit. This feature of memory is manifested in heredity by the way in whichoffspring commonly resembles most its nearer ancestors, butsometimes reverts to earlier ones. Brothers and sisters, each as itwere giving their own version of the same story, but in differentwords, should generally resemble each other more closely than moredistant relations. And this is what actually we find. 

Thirdly, the introduction of slightly new elements into a methodalready established varies it beneficially; the new is soon fusedwith the old, and the monotony ceases to be oppressive. But if thenew be too foreign, we cannot fuse the old and the new--natureseeming to hate equally too wide a deviation from ordinary practiceand none at all. This fact reappears in heredity as the beneficialeffects of occasional crossing on the one hand, and on the other, inthe generally observed sterility of hybrids. If heredity be anaffair of memory, how can an embryo, say of a mule, be expected tobuild up a mule on the strength of but two mule-memories? Hybridismcauses a fault in the chain of memory, and it is to this cause thatthe usual sterility of hybrids must be referred. 

Fourthly, it requires many repeated impressions to fix a methodfirmly, but when it has been engrained into us we cease to have muchrecollection of the manner in which it came to be so, or indeed ofany individual repetition, but sometimes a single impression ifprolonged as well as profound, produces a lasting impression and isliable to return with sudden force, and then to go on returning tous at intervals. As a general rule, however, abnormal impressionscannot long hold their own against the overwhelming preponderance ofnormal authority. This appears in heredity as the normal non-inheritance of mutilations on the one hand, and on the other astheir occasional inheritance in the case of injuries followed bydisease. 

Fifthly, if heredity and memory are essentially the same, we shouldexpect that no animal would develop new structures of importanceafter the age at which its species begins ordinarily to continue itsrace; for we cannot suppose offspring to remember anything thathappens to the parent subsequently to the parent's ceasing tocontain the offspring within itself. From the average age, therefore, of reproduction, offspring should cease to have anyfurther steady, continuous memory to fall back upon; what memorythere is should be full of faults, and as such unreliable. Anorganism ought to develop as long as it is backed by memory--that isto say, until the average age at which reproduction begins; itshould then continue to go for a time on the impetus alreadyreceived, and should eventually decay through failure of any memoryto support it, and tell it what to do. This corresponds absolutelywith what we observe in organisms generally, and explains, on theone hand, why the age of puberty marks the beginning of completeddevelopment--a riddle hitherto not only unexplained but, so far as Ihave seen, unasked; it explains, on the other hand, the phenomena ofold age--hitherto without even attempt at explanation. 

Sixthly, those organisms that are the longest in reaching maturityshould on the average be the longest-lived, for they will havereceived the most momentous impulse from the weight of memory behindthem. This harmonizes with the latest opinion as to the facts. Inhis article of Weismann in the Contemporary Review for May, 1890, Mr. Romanes writes: "Professor Weismann has shown that there isthroughout the metazoa a general correlation between the naturallifetime of individuals composing any given species, and the age atwhich they reach maturity or first become capable of procreation. "This, I believe, has been the conclusion generally arrived at bybiologists for some years past. 

Lateness, then, in the average age of reproduction appears to be theprinciple underlying longevity. There does not appear at firstsight to be much connection between such distinct and apparentlydisconnected phenomena as 1, the orderly normal progress ofdevelopment; 2, atavism and the resumption of feral characteristics;3, the more ordinary resemblance inter se of nearer relatives; 4, the benefit of an occasional cross, and the usual sterility ofhybrids; 5, the unconsciousness with which alike bodily developmentand ordinary physiological functions proceed, so long as they arenormal; 6, the ordinary non-inheritance, but occasional inheritanceof mutilations; 7, the fact that puberty indicates the approach ofmaturity; 8, the phenomena of middle life and old age; 9, theprinciple underlying longevity. These phenomena have no conceivablebearing on one another until heredity and memory are regarded aspart of the same story. Identify these two things, and I know nophenomenon of heredity that does not immediately become infinitelymore intelligible. Is it conceivable that a theory which harmonizesso many facts hitherto regarded as without either connection orexplanation should not deserve at any rate consideration from thosewho profess to take an interest in biology?

It is not as though the theory were unknown, or had been condemnedby our leading men of science. Professor Ray Lankester introducedit to English readers in an appreciative notice of ProfessorHering's address, which appeared in Nature, July 13, 1876. He wroteto the Athenaeum, March 24, 1884, and claimed credit for having doneso, but I do not believe he has ever said more in public about itthan what I have here referred to. Mr. Romanes did indeed try tocrush it in Nature, January 27, 1881, but in 1883, in his MentalEvolution in Animals, he adopted its main conclusion withoutacknowledgment. The Athenaeum, to my unbounded surprise, called himto task for this (March 1, 1884), and since that time he has giventhe Heringian theory a sufficiently wide berth. Mr. Wallace showedhimself favourably enough disposed towards the view that heredityand memory are part of the same story when he reviewed my book Lifeand Habit in Nature, March 27, 1879, but he has never since betrayedany sign of being aware that such a theory existed. Mr. HerbertSpencer wrote to the Athenaeum (April 5, 1884), and claimed thetheory for himself, but, in spite of his doing this, he has never, that I have seen, referred to the matter again. I have dealtsufficiently with his claim in my book Luck or Cunning. Lastly, Professor Hering himself has never that I know of touched his owntheory since the single short address read in 1870, and translatedby me in 1881. Everyone, even its originator, except myself, seemsafraid to open his mouth about it. Of course the inference suggestsitself that other people have more sense than I have. I readilyadmit it; but why have so many of our leaders shown such a stronghankering after the theory, if there is nothing in it?

The deadlock that I have pointed out as existing in Darwinism will, I doubt not, lead ere long to a consideration of Professor Hering'stheory. English biologists are little likely to find Weismannsatisfactory for long, and if he breaks down there is nothing leftfor them but Lamarck, supplemented by the important and elucidatorycorollary on his theory proposed by Professor Hering. When the timearrives for this to obtain a hearing it will be confirmed, doubtless, by arguments clearer and more forcible than any I havebeen able to adduce; I shall then be delighted to resign thechampionship which till then I shall continue, as for some yearspast, to have much pleasure in sustaining. Heretofore mysatisfaction has mainly lain in the fact that more of our prominentmen of science have seemed anxious to claim the theory than torefute it; in the confidence thus engendered I leave it to anyfuller consideration which the outline I have above given mayincline the reader to bestow upon it. 

Footnotes:

{19} I am indebted to one of Butler's contemporaries at Cambridge, the Rev Dr. T. G. Bonney, F. R. S. , and also to Mr. John F. Harris, both of St. John's College, for help in finding and dating Butler'syouthful contributions to the Eagle. 

{20} This gentleman, on the death of his father in 1866, became theRev. Sir Philip Perring, Bart. 

{22} The late Sir Julius von Haast, K. C. M. G. , appointed ProvincialGeologist in 1860, was ennobled by the Austrian Government andknighted by the British. He died in 1887. 

{59} A lecture delivered at the Working Men's College, Great OrmondStreet, 30th January, 1892. 

{99} Published in the Universal Review, July, 1888. 

{110} Published in the Universal Review, December, 1890. 

{127} Published in the Universal Review, May, 1889. As I haveseveral times been asked if the letters here reprinted were notfabricated by Butler himself, I take this opportunity of statingthat they are authentic in every particular, and that the originalsare now in my possession. --R. A. S. 

{142} An address delivered at the Somerville Club, February 27th, 1895. 

{150} The Foundations of Belief, by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour. Longmans, 1895, p. 48. 

{153a} Published in the Universal Review, November, 1888. 

{153b} Since this essay was written it has been ascertained byCavaliere Francesco Negri, of Casale Monferrato, that Tabachettidied in 1615. If, therefore, the Sanctuary of Montrigone was notfounded until 1631, it is plain that Tabachetti cannot have workedthere. All the latest discoveries about Tabachetti's career will befound in Cavaliere Negri's pamphlet Il Santuario di Crea(Alessandria, 1902). See also note on p. 195. --R. A. S. 

{166} Published in the Universal Review, December, 1889. 

{188} Published in the Universal Review, November, 1890. 

{190} M. Ruppen's words run: "1687 wurde die Kapelle zur hohenStiege gebaut, 1747 durch Zusatz vergrossert und 1755 mit Orgelnausgestattet. Anton Ruppen, ein geschickter Steinhauer undMaurermeister leitete den Kapellebau, und machte darin das kleinereAltarlein. Bei der hohen Stiege war fruher kein Gebetshauslein; nurein wunderthatiges Bildlein der Mutter Gottes stand da in einerMauer vor dem fromme Hirten und viel andachtiges Volk unter freiemHimmel beteten. 

"1709 wurden die kleinen Kapellelein die 15 Geheimnisse des Psaltersvorstellend auf dem Wege zur hohen Stiege gebaut. Jeder Haushalterdes Viertels Fee ubernahm den Bau eines dieser Geheimnisskapellen, und ein besonderer Gutthater dieser frommen Unternehmung warHeinrich Andenmatten, nachhet Bruder der Gesellschaft Jesu. "

{195} The story of Tabachetti's insanity and imprisonment is verydoubtful, and it is difficult to make his supposed visit to Saas fitin with the authentic facts of his life. Cavaliere Negri, to whosepamphlet on Tabachetti I have already referred the reader, mentionsneither. Tabachetti left his native Dinant in 1585, and from thatdate until his death he appears to have lived chiefly at Varallo andCrea. In 1588 he was working at Crea; in 1590 he was at Varallo andagain in 1594, 1599, and 1602. He died in 1615, possibly during avisit to Varallo, though his home at the time was at Costigliole, near Asti. --R. A. S. 

{196} This is thus chronicled by M. Ruppen: "1589 den 9 Septemberwar eine Wassergrosse, die viel Schaden verursachte. DieThalstrasse, die von den Steinmatten an bis zur Kirche am Ufer derVisp lag, wurde ganz zerstort. Man ward gezwungen eine neue Strassein einiger Entfernung vom Wasser durch einen alten Fusswegauszuhauen welche vier und einerhalben Viertel der Klafter, oder 6Schuh und 9 Zoll breit sollte" (p. 43). 

{209} A lecture delivered at the Working Men's College in GreatOrmond Street, March 15th, 1890; rewritten and delivered again atthe Somerville Club, February 13th, 1894. 

{210} Correlation of Forces, Longmans, 1874, p. 15. 

{230} Three Lectures on the Science of Language, Longmans, 1889, p. 4. 

{234} Science of Thought, Longmans, 1887, p. 9. 

{245} Published in the Universal Review, April, May, and June, 1890. 

{259a} Voyages of the "Adventure" and "Beagle, " iii. P. 237. 

{259b} Luck or Cunning, pp. 170, 180. 

{260} Journals of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society (Zoology, vol. Iii. ), 1859, p. 62. 

{261} Darwinism (Macmillan, 1889), p. 129. 

{263} See Nature, March 6, 1890. 

{265} Origin of Species, sixth edition, 1888, vol. I. P. 168. 

{266} Origin of Species, sixth edition, 1888, vol. Ii. P. 261. 

{271} Mr. J. T. Cunningham, of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Plymouth, has called my attention to the fact that I have ascribedto Professor Ray Lankester a criticism on Mr. Wallace's remarks uponthe eyes of certain flat-fish, which Professor Ray Lankester was, inreality, only adopting--with full acknowledgment--from Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham has left it to me whether to correct myomission publicly or not, but he would so plainly prefer my doing sothat I consider myself bound to insert this note. Curiously enough, I find that in my book Evolution, Old and New I gave what Lamarckactually said upon the eyes of flat-fish, and, having been led toreturn to the subject, I may as well quote his words. He wrote:--

"Need--always occasioned by the circumstances in which an animal isplaced, and followed by sustained efforts at gratification--can notonly modify an organ--that is to say, augment or reduce it--but canchange its position when the case requires its removal. 

"Ocean fishes have occasion to see what is on either side of them, and have their eyes accordingly placed on either side of their head. Some fishes, however, have their abode near coasts on submarinebanks and inclinations, and are thus forced to flatten themselves asmuch as possible in order to get as near as they can to the shore. In this situation they receive more light from above than frombelow, and find it necessary to pay attention to whatever happens tobe above them; this need has involved the displacement of theireyes, which now take the remarkable position which we observe in thecase of soles, turbots, plaice, etc. The transfer of position isnot even yet complete in the case of these fishes, and the eyes arenot, therefore, symmetrically placed; but they are so with theskate, whose head and whole body are equally disposed on either sidea longitudinal section. Hence the eyes of this fish are placedsymmetrically upon the uppermost side. "--Philosophie Zoologique, tom. I. Pp. 250, 251. Edition C. Martins. Paris, 1873. 

{274a} Essays on Heredity, etc. , Oxford, 1889, p. 171. 

{274b} Ibid. , p. 266. 

{275} Darwinism, 1889, p. 440. 

{277} Page 83. 

{279} Vol. I. P. 466, etc. Ed. 1885. 

{286} Darwinism, p. 440. 

{288} Tom. Iv. P. 383. Ed. 1753. 

{290} Essays, etc. , p. 447. 

{299} Zoonomia, 1794, vol. I. P. 480.