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ESSAYS IN CEITICISM 
 
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON - BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
ESSAYS IN CEITICISM 
 
 FIEST SEEIES 
 
 BY 
 
 MATTHEW AENOLD 
 
 £ '5 
 
 JOSTON COLLEGE LI DR ARY 
 CHESTNUT HILL, KASS, 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 ST. AIARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1910 
 
First Edition {Extra Fcap. Zvd) 1865 
 Second 1868 , Third {Crown Zvo) 1875 , Fourth 1884 
 Reprinted 1886 , 1888 , 1891 , 1894 
 First printed in the Eversley Series 1895 
 Reprinted 1896 , 1898 , 1900 , 1902 , 1903 , 1905 , 1907 , 1910 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ( 1865 .) 
 
 Several of the Essays which are here collected and 
 reprinted had the good or the bad fortune to be 
 much criticised at the time of their first appearance. 
 I am not now going to inflict upon the reader a 
 reply to those criticisms ; for one or two explanations 
 which are desirable, I shall elsewhere, perhaps, be 
 able some day to find an opportunity; but, indeed, 
 it is not in my nature, — some of my critics would 
 rather say, not in my power, — to dispute on behalf 
 of any opinion, even my own, very obstinately. To 
 try and approach truth on one side after another, not 
 to strive or cry, nor to persist in pressing forward, on 
 any one side, with violence and self-will, — it is only 
 thus, it seems to me, that mortals may hope to gain 
 any vision of the mysterious Goddess, whom we shall 
 never see except in outline, but only thus even in 
 outline. He who will do nothing but fight impetu- 
 ously towards her on his own, one, favourite, parti- 
 cular line, is inevitably destined to run his head into 
 the folds of the black robe in which she is wrapped. 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 So it is not to reply to my critics that I write this 
 preface, but to prevent a misunderstanding, of which 
 certain phrases that some of them use make me 
 apprehensive. Mr. Wright, one of the many trans- 
 lators of Homer, has published a letter to the Dean 
 of Canterbury, complaining of some remarks of mine, 
 uttered now a long while ago, on his version of the 
 Iliad. One cannot be always studjdng one’s own 
 works, and I was really under the impression, till I 
 saw Mr. Wright’s complaint, that I had spoken of 
 him with all respect. The reader may judge of my 
 astonishment, therefore, at finding, from Mr. Wright’s 
 pamphlet, that I had “ declared with much solemnity 
 that there is not any proper reason for his existing.” 
 That I never said; but, on looking back at my 
 Lectures on translating Homer, I find that I did say, 
 not that Mr. Wright, but that Mr. Wright’s version 
 of the Iliad, repeating in the main the merits and 
 defects of Cowper’s version, as Mr. Sotheby’s repeated 
 those of Pope’s version, had, if I might be pardoned 
 for saying so, no proper reason for existing. Else- 
 where I expressly spoke of the merit of his version ; 
 but I confess that the phrase, qualified as I have 
 shown, about its want of a proper reason for existing, 
 I used. Well, the phrase had, perhaps, too much 
 vivacity ; we have all of us a right to exist, we and 
 our works ; an unpopular author should be the last 
 person to call in question this right. So I gladly 
 withdraw the offending phrase, and I am sorry for 
 having used it ; Mr. Wright, however, would perhaps 
 be more indulgent to my vivacity, if he considered 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 vii 
 
 that we are none of ns likely to be lively much longer. 
 My vivacity is but the last sparkle of flame before 
 we are all in the dark, the last glimpse of colour 
 before we all go into drab, — the drab of the earnest, 
 prosaic, practical, austerely literal future. Yes, the 
 world will soon be the Philistines’ ! and then, with 
 every voice, not of thunder, silenced, and the whole 
 earth filled and ennobled every morning by the 
 magnificent roaring of the young lions of the Daily 
 Telegraphy we shall all yawn in one another’s faces 
 with the dismallest, the most unimpeachable gravity 
 
 But I return to my design in writing this Preface. 
 That design was, after apologising to Mr. Wright for 
 my vivacity of five years ago, to beg him and others 
 to let me bear my own burdens, without saddling the 
 great and famous University to which I have the 
 honour to belong with any portion of them. What 
 I mean to deprecate is such phrases as, “his pro- 
 fessorial assault,” “his assertions issued ex cathedrdy” 
 “the sanction of his name as the representative of 
 poetry,” and so on. Proud as I am of my connection 
 with the University of Oxford,^ I can truly say, that 
 knowing how unpopular a task one is undertaking 
 when one tries to pull out a few more stops in that 
 powerful but at .present somewhat narrow -toned 
 organ, the modern Englishman, I have always sought 
 to stand by myself, and to compromise others as 
 little as possible. Besides this, my native modesty 
 is such, that I have always been shy of assuming the 
 
 ^ When the above was written the author had still the Chair 
 of Poetry at Oxford, which he has since vacated. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 viii 
 
 honourable style of Professor, because this is a title 
 I share with so many distinguished men, — Professor 
 Pepper, Professor Anderson, Professor Frickel, and 
 others, — who adorn it, I feel, much more than I do. 
 
 However, it is not merely out of modesty that 1 
 prefer to stand alone, and to concentrate on myself, 
 as a plain citizen of the republic of letters, and not 
 as an office-bearer in a hierarchy, the whole responsi- 
 bility for all I write ; it is much more out of genuine 
 devotion to the University of Oxford, for which I 
 feel, and always must feel, the fondest, the most 
 reverential attachment. In an epoch of dissolution 
 and transformation, such as that on which we are 
 now entered, habits, ties, and associations are inevit- 
 ably broken up, the action of individuals becomes 
 more distinct, the shortcomings, errors, heats, dis- 
 putes, which necessarily attend individual action, are 
 brought into greater prominence. Who would not 
 gladly keep clear, from all these passing clouds, an 
 august institution which was there before they arose, 
 and which will be there when they have blown over 1 
 
 It is true, the Saturday Review maintains that our 
 epoch of transformation is finished; that we have 
 found our philosophy; that the British nation has 
 searched all anchorages for the spirit, and has finally 
 anchored itself, in the fulness of perfected knowledge, 
 on Benthamism. This idea at first made a great 
 impression on me ; not only because it is so consoling 
 in itself, but also because it explained a phenomenon 
 which in the summer of last year had, I confess, a 
 good deal troubled me. At that time my avocations 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IX 
 
 led me travel almost daily on one of the Great Eastern 
 Lines, — the Woodford Branch. Every one knows 
 that the murderer, Muller, perpetrated his detestable 
 act on the North London Bail way, close by. The 
 English middle class, of which I am myself a feeble 
 unit, travel on the Woodford Branch in large numbers. 
 Well, the demoralisation of our class, — the class which 
 (the newspapers are constantly saying it, so I may 
 repeat it without vanity) has done all the great things 
 which have ever been done in England, — the demoral- 
 isation, I say, of our class, caused by the Bow tragedy, 
 was something bewildering. Myself a transcenden- 
 talist (as the Saturday Review knows), I escaped the 
 infection ; and, day after day, I used to ply my 
 agitated fellow-travellers with all the consolations 
 which my transcendentalism would naturally suggest 
 to me. I reminded them how Caesar refused to take 
 precautions against assassination, because life was not 
 worth having at the price of an ignoble solicitude for 
 it. I reminded them what insignificant atoms we all 
 are in the life of the world. “ Suppose the worst to 
 happen,” I said, addressing a portly jeweller from 
 Cheapside ; “ suppose even yourself to be the victim \ 
 il rCy a pas d’homuM ndcessaire. We should miss you 
 for a day or two upon the Woodford Branch ; but 
 the great mundane movement would still go on, the 
 gravel walks of your villa would still be rolled, 
 dividends would still be paid at the Bank, omnibuses 
 would still run, there would still be the old crush at 
 the corner of Fenchurch Street.” All was of no 
 avail Nothing could moderate, in the bosom of the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 great English middle-class, their passionate, absorb- 
 ing, almost blood-thirsty clinging to life. At the 
 moment I thought this over-concern a little un- 
 worthy ; but the Saturday Review suggests a touching 
 explanation of it. What I took for the ignoble cling- 
 ing to life of a comfortable worldling, was, perhaps, 
 only the ardent longing of a faithful Benthamite, 
 traversing an age still dimmed by the last mists of 
 transcendentalism, to be spared long enough to see 
 his religion in the full and final blaze of its triumph. 
 This respectable man, whom I imagined to be going 
 up to London to serve his shop, or to buy shares, or 
 to attend an Exeter Hall meeting, or to assist at the 
 deliberations of the Marylebone Vestry, was even, 
 perhaps, in real truth, on a pious pilgrimage, to obtain 
 from Mr. Bentham’s executors a secret bone of his 
 great, dissected master. 
 
 And yet, after all, I cannot but think that the 
 Saturday Review has here, for once, fallen a victim to 
 an idea, — a beautiful but deluding idea, — and that 
 the British nation has not yet, so entirely as the 
 reviewer seems to imagine, found the last word of its 
 philosophy. No, we are all seekers still ! seekers 
 often make mistakes, and I wish mine to redound to 
 my own discredit only, and not to touch Oxford. 
 Beautiful city ! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged 
 by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so 
 serene ! 
 
 ‘ ‘ There are our young barbarians, all at play ! ” 
 
 And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XI 
 
 her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from 
 her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, 
 who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, 
 keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of 
 us, to the ideal, to perfection, — to beauty, in a word, 
 which is only truth seen from another side ? — nearer, 
 perhaps, than all the science of Tubingen. Adorable 
 dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic ! who hast 
 given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and 
 to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines ! 
 home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and un- 
 popular names, and impossible loyalties ! what ex- 
 ample could ever so inspire us to keep down the 
 Philistine in ourselves, what teacher could ever so 
 save us from that bondage to which we are all prone, 
 that bondage which Goethe, in his incomparable lines 
 on the death of Schiller, makes it his friend’s highest 
 praise (and nobly did Schiller deserve the praise) to 
 have left miles out of sight behind him ; — the bond- 
 age of “ was uns alle hdTidigtj das gemeine /” She will 
 forgive me, even if I have unwittingly drawn upon 
 her a shot or two aimed at her unworthy son ; for 
 she is generous, and the cause in which I fight is, after 
 all, hers. Apparitions of a day, what is our puny 
 warfare against the Philistines, compared with the 
 warfare which this queen of romance has been wag- 
 ing against them for centuries, and will wage after we 
 are gone i 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ^ PAGE 
 
 i /\. The Function of Critjcism at the Present 
 
 Time ..... 1 
 
 IL The Literary Influence 'of Academies . 42 
 
 III. Maurice de Gu^:rin .... 8(X_ 
 
 IV. Eug^inie he Guerin .... 121 
 
 V. Heinrich Heine .... 156 
 
 VI. Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment . 194 
 
 VIL A Persian Passion Play . . . 223 
 
 l/ VlII. JOUBERT ...... 265 
 
 IX. Spinoza and the Bible . . . 307 
 
 ^ X. Marcus Aurelius .... 344 
 
I 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF CKITICISM AT THE 
 PEESENT TIME. 
 
 Many objections have been made to a proposition 
 which, in some remarks of mine on translating Homer, 
 
 I ventured to put forth ; a proposition about criticism, 
 and its importance at the present day. I said : “Of 
 the literature of France and Germany, as of the 
 intellect of Europe in general, the main effort, for 
 now many years, has been a critical effort; the 
 endeavour, in all branches of knowledge, theology, .y' 
 philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as 
 in itself it really is.” I added, that owing to the 
 operation in English literature of certain causes, 
 “almost the last thing for which one would come 
 to English literature is just that very thing which 
 now Europe most desires, — criticism ; ” and that the 
 power and value of English literature was thereby 
 impaired. More than one rejoinder declared that the 
 importance I here assigned to criticism was excessive, 
 and asserted the inherent superiority of the creative 
 effort of the human spirit over its critical effort. 
 
 VOL. % B 
 
2 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 n. 
 
 And the other day, having been led by a Mr. Shairp’s 
 excellent notice of Wordsworth ^ to turn again to his 
 biography, I found, in the words of this great man, 
 whom I, for one, must always listen to with the pro- 
 foundest respect, a sentence passed on the critic’s busi- 
 ness, which seems to justify every possible disparage- 
 ment of it. Wordsworth says in one of his letters: — 
 
 “ The writers in these publications ” (the Reviews), 
 “ while they prosecute their inglorious employment, 
 can not be supposed to be in a state of mind very 
 favourable for being affected by the finer influences 
 of a thing so pure as genuine poetry.” 
 
 And a trustworthy reporter of his conversation 
 quotes a more elaborate judgment to the same effect : — 
 
 “Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, 
 infinitely lower than the inventive; and he said 
 to-day that if the quantity of time consumed in 
 writing critiques on the works of others were given 
 to original composition, of whatever kind it might 
 be, it would bo much better employed; it would 
 make a man find out sooner his own level, and 
 it would do infinitely less mischief. A false or 
 
 * I cannot help thinking that a practice, common in England 
 during the last century, and still followed in France, of print- 
 ing a notice of this kind, — a notice by a competent critic, — to 
 serve as an introduction to an eminent author’s works, might 
 be revived among us with advantage. To introduce all 
 succeeding editions of Wordsworth, Mr. Shairp’s notice might, 
 it seems to me, excellently serve ; it is written from the point 
 of view of an admirer, nay, of a disciple, and that is right ; 
 but then the disciple must be also, as in this case he is, a critic, 
 u man of letters, not, as too often happens, some relation or friend 
 with no qualification for his task except affection for his author 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME, 3 
 
 malicious criticism may do much injury to the minds 
 of others, a stupid invention, either in prose or verse, 
 is quite harmless.” 
 
 It is almost too much to expect of poor human 
 nature, that a man capable of producing some effect 
 in one line of literature, should, for the greater good 
 of society, voluntarily doom himself to impotence and 
 obscurity in another. Still less is this to he expected 
 from men addicted to the composition of the “false 
 or malicious criticism” of which Wordsworth speaks. 
 However, everybody would admit that a false or 
 malicious criticism had better never have been written. 
 Everybody, too, would be willing to admit, as a gene- 
 ral proposition, that the critical faculty is lower than 
 the inventive. But is it true that criticism is really, 
 in itself, a baneful and injurious employment; is it 
 true that all time given to writing critiques on the 
 works of others would be much better employed if 
 it were given to original composition, of whatever 
 kind this may be 1 Is it true that Johnson had better 
 have gone on producing more Irenes instead of writing 
 his Lives of the Poets ; nay, is it certain that Words- 
 worth himself was better employed in making his 
 Ecclesiastical Sonnets than when he made his cele- 
 brated Preface, so full of criticism, and criticism of 
 the works of others! Wordsworth was himself a 
 great critic, and it is to be sincerely regretted that he 
 has not left us more criticism ; Goethe was one of 
 the greatest of critics, and we may sincerely con- 
 gratulate ourselves that he has left us so much 
 criticism. Without wasting time over the exaggera^ 
 
4 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [i 
 
 tion which Wordsworth’s judgment on criticism 
 clearly contains, or over an attempt to trace the 
 causes, — not difficult, I think, to be traced, — which may 
 have led Wordsworth to this exaggeration, a critic 
 may with advantage seize an occasion for trying his 
 own conscience, and for asking himself of what real 
 service at any given moment the practice of criticism 
 either is or may be made to his own mind and spirit, 
 and to the minds and spirits of others. 
 
 The critical power is of lower rank than the crea- 
 tive. True ; but in assenting to this proposition, one 
 or two things are to be kept in mind. It is undeni- 
 able that the exercise of a creative power, that a free 
 creative activity, is the highest function of man ; it is 
 proved to be so by man’s finding in it his true happi 
 ness. But it is undeniable, also, that men may have 
 the sense of exercising this free creative activity in 
 other ways than in producing great works of litera- 
 ture or art ; if it were not so, all but a very few men 
 would be shut out from the true happiness of all men. 
 They may have it in well-doing, they may have it in 
 learning, they may have it even in criticising. This 
 is one thing to be kept in mind. Another is, that 
 the exercise of the creative power in the production 
 of great works of literature or art, however high this 
 exercise of it may rank, is not at all epochs and under 
 all conditions possible ; and that therefore labour may 
 be vainly spent in attempting it, which might with 
 more fmit be used in preparing for it, in rendering 
 it possible. This creative power works with elements, 
 with materials; what if it has not those materials. 
 
£.] FUNCTION OF CKITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 5 
 
 those elements, ready for its use ? ''In that case it 
 must surely wait till they are ready. Now, in 
 literature, — I will limit myself to literature, for it 
 is about literature that the question arises, — the 
 elements with which the creative power works are 
 ideas; the best ideas on every matter which litera- 
 ture touches, current at the time. At any rate we 
 may lay it down as certain that in modern literature 
 no manifestation of the creative power not working 
 with these can be very important or fruitful. And I 
 say current at the time, not merely accessible at the 
 time ; for creative literary genius does not princi- 
 pally show itself in discovering new ideas, that is 
 rather the business of the philosopher. The grand 
 work of literary genius is a work of s^mthesis and 
 exposition, not of analysis and discovery; its gift 
 lies in the facidty of being hapjnly inspired by a 
 certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere, by a 
 certain order of ideas, when it find^ itself in them ; 
 of dealing divinely vdth these ideas, presenting them 
 in the most effective and attractive combinations, — 
 making beautifid works with them, in short. But it 
 must have the atmosphere, it must find itself amidst 
 the order of ideas, in order to work freely ; and these 
 it is not so easy to command. This is why great 
 creative epochs in literature are so rare, this is why 
 there is so much that is unsatisfactory in the produc 
 tions of many men of real genius ; because, for the 
 creation of a master-work of literature two powers 
 must concur, the power of the man and the power of 
 the moment, and the man is not enough without the 
 
6 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [1 
 
 moment ; the creative power has, for its happy exer 
 cise, appointed elements, and those elements are not 
 in its own control. 
 
 Nay, they are more within the control of the 
 critical power. It is the business of the critical 
 power, as I said in the words already quoted, “ in 
 all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, 
 history, art, science, to see the object as in itself it 
 /^really is.” Thus it tends, at last, to make an intel- 
 lectual situation of which the creative power can 
 profitably avail itself. It tends to establish an order 
 of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by com 
 parison with that which it displaces; to make the 
 best ideas prevail. Presently these new ideas reach 
 society, the touch of truth is the touch of life, and 
 there is a stir and gro’^vth everywhere ; out of this 
 stir and growth come the creative epochs of literature. 
 
 Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considera- 
 tions of the general march of genius and of society, — 
 considerations which are apt to become too abstract 
 and impalpable, — every one can see that a poet, for 
 instance, ought to know life and the world before 
 dealing with them in poetry ; and life and the world 
 being in modern times very complex things, the crea- 
 tion of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies a 
 great critical effort behind it ; else it must be a com- 
 paratively poor, barren, and short-lived affair. This 
 is why Byron’s poetry had so little endurance in it, 
 and Goethe’s so much ; both Byron and Goethe had 
 a great productive power, but Goethe’s was nourished 
 by a great critical effort providing the true materials 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 1 
 
 for it, and Byron’s was not ; Goethe knew life and 
 the world, the poet’s necessary subjects, much more 
 comprehensively and thoroughly than Byron. He 
 knew a great deal more of them, and he knew them 
 much more as they really are. 
 
 It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative 
 activity in our literature, through the first quarter of 
 this century, had about it in fact something pre- 
 mature ; and that from this cause its productions are 
 doomed, most of them, in spite of the sanguine hopes 
 which accompanied and do still accompany them, to 
 prove hardly more lasting than the productions of far 
 less splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes 
 from its having proceeded without having its proper 
 data, without sufficient materials to work with. In 
 other words, the English poetry of the first quarter 
 of this century, with plenty of energy, plenty of crea- 
 tive force, did not know enough. This makes Byron 
 so empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Words- 
 worth even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in com- 
 pleteness and variety. Wordsworth cared little for 
 books, and disparaged Goethe. I admire Wordsworth, 
 as he is, so much that I cannot wish him different ; 
 and it is vain, no doubt, to imagine such a man 
 difiPerent from what he is, to suppose that he could 
 have been different. But surely the one thing want- 
 ing to make Wordsworth an even greater poet than 
 he is, — his thought richer, and his influence of wider 
 application, — was that he should have read more 
 books, among them, no doubt, those of that Goethe 
 whom he disparaged without reading him. 
 
8 
 
 ESSAYS IN CEITICISM. 
 
 Cl 
 
 But to speak of books and reading may easily lead 
 to a misunderstanding here. It was not really books 
 and reading that lacked to our poetry at this epoch . 
 Shelley had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense 
 reading. Pindar and Sophocles — as we all say so 
 glibly, and often with so little discernment of the 
 real import of what we are saying — had not many 
 books ; Shakspeare was no deep reader. True ; but 
 in the Greece of Pindar and Sophocles, in the Eng-"^ 
 land of Shakspeare, the poet lived in a current of 
 ideas in the highest degree animating and nourishing 
 to the creative power ; society was, in the fullest 
 measure, permeated by fresh thought, intelligent and 
 alive. And this state of things is the true basis for 
 the creative power’s exercise, in this it finds its data, 
 its materials, truly ready for its hand ; all the books 
 and reading in the world are only valuable as they 
 are helps to this. Even when this does not actually 
 exist, books and reading may enable a man to con- 
 struct a kind of semblance of it in his own mind, a 
 world of knowledge and intelligence in which he may 
 live and work. This is by no means an equivalent 
 to the artist for the nationally diffused life and thought 
 of the epochs of Sophocles or Shakspeare; but, be- 
 sides that it may be a means of preparation for such 
 epochs, it does really constitute, if many share in it, 
 a quickening and sustaining atmosphere of great 
 value. Such an atmosphere the many-sided learning 
 and the long and widely-combined critical effort of 
 Germany formed for Goethe, when he lived and 
 worked. There was no national glow of life and 
 
l] function of criticism at present time. 9 
 
 thought there as in the Athens of Pericles or the 
 England of Elizabeth. That was the poet’s weak- 
 ness. But there was a sort of equivalent for it in 
 the complete culture and unfettered thinking of a 
 large body of Germans. That was his strength. In 
 the England of the first quarter of this century there 
 was neither a national glow of life and thought, such 
 as we had in the age of Elizabeth, nor yet a culture 
 and a force of learning and criticism such as were to 
 be found in Germany. Therefore the creative power 
 of poetry wanted, for success in the highest sense, 
 materials and a basis ; a thorough interpretation of 
 the world was necessarily denied to it. 
 
 At first sight it seems strange that out of the 
 immense stir of the French Eevolution and its age 
 should not have come a crop of works of genius equal 
 to that which came out of the stir of the great pro- 
 ductive time of Greece, or out of that of the Eenas- 
 cence, with its powerful episode the Eeformation. 
 But the truth is that the stir of the French Eevolu- 
 tion took a character which essentially distinguished 
 it from such movements as these. These were, in 
 the main, disinterestedly intellectual and spiritual 
 movements ; movements in which the human spirit 
 looked for its satisfaction in itself and in the increased 
 play of its own activity. The French Eevolution 
 took a political, practical character. The movement 
 which went on in France under the old regime, from 
 1700 to 1789, was far more really akin than that of 
 the Eevolution itself to the movement of the Eenas- 
 cence ; the France of Voltaire and Eousseau told 
 
10 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [i 
 
 far more powerfully upon the mind of Europe than 
 the France of the Eevolution. Goethe reproached 
 this last expressly with having “thrown quiet culture 
 back.” Nay, and the true key to how much in our 
 Byron, even in our Wordsworth, is this ! — that they 
 had their source in a great movement of feeling, not 
 in a great movement of mind. The French Revolu- 
 tion, however, — that object of so much blind love 
 and so much blind hatred, — found undoubtedly its 
 motive-power in the intelligence of men, and .not in 
 their practical sense ; this is what distinguishes it 
 from the English Revolution of Charles the First’s 
 time. This is what makes it a more spiritual event 
 than our Revolution, an event of much more powerful 
 and world -wide interest, though practically less 
 successful ; it appeals to an order of ideas which are 
 universal, certain, permanent. 1789 asked of a thing. 
 Is it rational? 1642 asked of a thing. Is it legal? or, 
 when it went furthest. Is it according to conscience ? 
 This is the English fashion, a fashion to be treated, 
 within its own sphere, with the highest respect ; for 
 its success, within its own sphere, has been prodigious. 
 But what is law in one place is not law in another , 
 what is law here to-day is not law even here to- 
 morrow; and as for conscience, what is binding on 
 one man’s conscience is not binding on another’s. 
 The old woman who threw her stool at the head of 
 the surpliced minister in St. Giles’s Church at Edin- 
 burgh obeyed an impulse to which millions of the 
 human race may be permitted to remain strangers. 
 But the prescriptions of reason are absolute, unchang- 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 11 
 
 ing, of universal validity ; to count hy tens is the easiest 
 way of counting — that is a proposition of which every 
 one, from here to the Antipodes, feels the force ; at 
 least I should say so if we did not live in a country 
 where it is not impossible that any morning we may 
 find a letter in the Times declaring that a decimal 
 coinage is an absurdity. That a whole nation should 
 have been penetrated with an enthusiasm for pure 
 reason, and with an ardent zeal for making its pre- 
 scriptions triumph, is a very remarkable thing, when 
 we consider how little of mind, or anything so v/orthy 
 and quickening as mind, comes into the natives 
 which alone, in general, impel great masses of men. 
 In spite of the extravagant direction given to this 
 enthusiasm, in spite of the crimes and follies in which 
 it lost itself, the French Revolution derives from the 
 force, truth, and universality of the ideas which it 
 took for its law, and from the passion with which it 
 could inspire a multitude for these ideas, a unique 
 and still living power; it is — it will probably long 
 remain — the greatest, the most animating event in 
 history. And as no sincere passion for the things of 
 the mind, even though it turn out in many respects 
 an unfortunate passion, is ever quite thrown away 
 and quite barren of good, France has reaped from 
 hers one fruit — the natural and legitimate fruit, 
 though not precisely the grand fruit she expected : 
 she is the country in Europe where the jyeople is most 
 alive. 
 
 But the mania for giving an immediate political 
 and practical application to all these fine ideas of the 
 
12 
 
 ESSAYS IN OIUTICISM. 
 
 [I 
 
 reason was fatal. Here an Englishman is in his 
 element : on this theme we can all go on for hours. 
 And all we are in the habit of saying on it has un- 
 doubtedly a great deal of truth. Ideas cannot be too 
 much prized in and for themselves, cannot be too 
 much lived with ; but to transport them abruptly into 
 the world of politics and practice, violently to revolu- 
 tionise this world to their bidding, — that is quite 
 another thing. There is the world of ideas and there 
 is the world of practice ; the French are often for 
 suppressing the one and the English the other ; but 
 neither is to be suppressed. A member of the House 
 of Commons said to me the other day : “ That a thing 
 is an anomaly, I consider to be no objection to it 
 whatever.” I venture to think he was wrong; that 
 a thing is an anomaly is an objection to it, but abso- 
 lutely and in the sphere of ideas : it is not necessarily, 
 under such and such circumstances, or at such and 
 such a moment, an objection to it in the sphere of 
 politics and practice. Joubert has said beautifully : 
 “ C’est la force et le droit qui r^glent toutes choses 
 dans le monde ; la force en attendant le droit.” 
 (Force and right are the governors of this world; 
 force till right is ready.) Force till right is ready ; and 
 till right is ready, force, the existing order of things, 
 is justified, is the legitimate ruler. But right is some- 
 thing moral, and implies inward recognition, free 
 assent of the will ; we are not ready for right , — rights 
 so far as we are concerned, is not ready , — until we have 
 attained this sense of seeing it and willing it. The 
 way in which for us it may change and transform 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 13 
 
 force, the existing order of things, and become, in its 
 turn, the legitimate ruler of the world, should depend 
 on the way in which, when our time comes, we see it 
 and will it. Therefore for other people enamoured 
 of their own newly discerned right, to attempt to 
 impose it upon us as ours, and violently to substitute 
 their right for our force, is an act of tyranny, and to 
 be resisted. It sets at nought the second great half 
 of our maxim, force till right is ready. This was the 
 grand error of the French Kevolution ; and its move- 
 ment of ideas, by quitting the intellectual sphere and 
 rushing furiously into the political sphere, ran, indeed, 
 a prodigious and memorable course, but produced no 
 such intellectual fruit as the movement of ideas of the 
 Renascence, and created, in opposition to itself, what 
 I may call an epoch of concentration. The great force 
 of that epoch of concentration was England ; and the 
 great voice of that epoch of concentration was Burke. 
 It is the fashion to treat Burke’s writings on the 
 French Revolution as superannuated and conquered 
 by the event; as the eloquent but unphilosophical 
 tirades of bigotry and prejudice. I will not deny 
 that they are often disfigured by the violence and 
 passion of the moment, and that in some directions 
 Burke’s view was bounded, and his observation there- 
 fore at fault. But on the whole, and for those who 
 can make the needful corrections, what distinguishes 
 these writings is their profound, permanent, fruitful, 
 philosophical truth. They contain the true philosophy 
 of an epoch of concentration, dissipate the heavy 
 atmosphere which its own nature is apt to engender 
 
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 14 
 
 [I. 
 
 round it, and make its resistance rational instead of 
 mechanical. 
 
 But Burke is so great because, almost alone in 
 England, he brings thought to bear upon politics, he 
 saturates politics with thought. It is his accident 
 that his ideas were at the service of an epoch of con- 
 centration, not of an epoch of expansion ; it is his 
 characteristic that he so lived by ideas, and had such 
 a source of them welling up within him, that he could 
 float even an epoch of concentration and English Tory 
 politics with them. It does not hurt him that Dr. 
 Price and the Liberals were enraged with him; it 
 does not even hurt him that George the Third and 
 the Tories were enchanted with him. His greatness 
 is that he lived in a world which neither English 
 Liberalism nor English Torpsm is apt to enter ; — the 
 world of ideas, not the world of catchwords and party 
 habits. So far is it from being really true of him that 
 he “to party gave up what was meant for mankind,” 
 that at the very end of his fierce struggle with the 
 French Revolution, after all his invectives against its 
 false pretensions, hollowness, and madness, with his 
 sincere conviction of its mischievousness, he can close 
 a memorandum on the best means of combating it, 
 some of the last pages he ever wrote, — the Thoughts 
 on French Affairs^ in December 1791, — with these 
 striking words : — 
 
 “The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists 
 The remedy must be where power, wisdom, and in- 
 formation, I hope, are more united with good inten 
 tions than they can be with me. I have done with 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 15 
 
 this subject, I believe, for ever. It has given me 
 many anxious moments for the last two years. If a 
 great change is to he made in human affairs^ the minds oj 
 men will he fitted to it ; the general opinions and feelings 
 will dram that way. Every fear, every hope will forward 
 it ; and then they v:ho persist in opposing this mighty 
 current in human affairs, will appear rather to resist the 
 decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. 
 They will not he resolute and firm, hut perverse and 
 obstinate.*^ 
 
 That return of Burke upon himself has always 
 seemed to me one of the finest things in English 
 literature, or indeed in any literature. That is what 
 I call living by ideas : when one side of a question 
 has long had your earnest support, when all your 
 feelings are engaged, when you hear all round you no 
 language but one, when your party talks this language 
 like a steam-engine and can imagine no other, — still 
 to be able to think, still to be irresistibly carried, if so 
 it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side 
 of the question, and, like Balaam, to be unable to 
 speak anything hut what the Lord has put in your mouth. 
 I know nothing more striking, and I must add that 1 
 ' know nothing more un-English. 
 
 For the Englishman in general is like my friend 
 the Member of Parliament, and believes, point-blank, 
 that for a thing to be an anomaly is absolutely no 
 objection to it whatever. He is like the Lord Auck 
 land of Burke’s day, who, in a memorandum on the 
 French Bevolution, talks of “ certain miscreants, 
 assuming the name of philosophers, who have pro* 
 
16 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [I. 
 
 sumed themselves capable of establishing a new system 
 of society.” The Englishman has been called a politi- 
 cal animal, and he values what is political and practical 
 so much that ideas easily become objects of dislike in 
 his eyes, and thinkers “ miscreants,” because ideas and 
 thinkers have rashly meddled with politics and practice. 
 This would be all very well if the dislike and neglect 
 confined themselves to ideas transported out of their 
 own sphere, and meddling rashly with practice ; but 
 they are ine\dtably extended to ideas as such, and tc 
 the whole life of intelligence ; practice is everything, 
 a free play of the mind is nothing. The notion of the 
 free play of the mind upon all subjects being a pleasure 
 in itself, being an object of desire, being an essential 
 provider of elements without which a nation’s spirit, 
 whatever compensations it may have for them, must, 
 in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into 
 an Englishman’s thoughts. It is noticeable that the 
 word curiosity, which in other languages is used in a 
 good sense, to mean, as a high and fine quality of 
 man’s nature, just this disinterested love of a free 
 play of the mind on all subjects, for its own sake, — it 
 is noticeable, I say, that this word has in our language 
 no sense of the kind, no sense but a rather bad and 
 disparaging one. But criticism, real criticism, is essen- 
 tially the exercise of this very quality. It obeys an 
 instinct prompting it to try to know the best that is 
 known and thought in the world, irrespectively of 
 practice, politics, and everything of the kind ; and to 
 value knowledge and thought as they approach this 
 best, without the intrusion of any other considerar 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CEITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 17 
 
 tions whatever. This is an instinct for which there 
 is, I think, little original sympathy in the practical 
 English nature, and what there was of it has under- 
 gone a long benumbing period of blight and suppres- 
 sion in the epoch of concentration which followed the 
 French Revolution. 
 
 But epochs of concentration cannot well endure 
 for ever ; epochs of expansion, in the due course of 
 things, follow them. Such an epoch of expansion 
 seems to be opening in this country. In the first 
 place all danger of a hostile forcible pressure of foreign 
 ideas upon our practice has long disappeared; like 
 the traveller in the fable, therefore, we begin to wear 
 our cloak a little more loosely. Then, with a long 
 peace, the ideas of Europe steal gradually and ami- 
 cably in, and mingle, though in infinitesimally small 
 quantities at a time, with our own notions. Then, 
 too, in spite of all that is said about the absorbing 
 and brutalising influence of our passionate material 
 progress, it seems to me indisputable that this pro- 
 gress is likely, though not certain, to lead in the end 
 to an apparition of intellectual life ; and that man, 
 after he has made himself perfectly comfortable and 
 has now to determine what to do with himself next, 
 may begin to remember that he has a mind, and that 
 the mind may be made the source of great pleasure. 
 I grant it is mainly the privilege of faith, at present, 
 to discern this end to our railways, our business, and 
 our fortune-making ; but we shall see if, here as else- 
 where, faith is not in the end the true prophet. Oui 
 ease, our travelling, and our unbounded liberty to 
 
 VOL. L 0 
 
18 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [I. 
 
 hold just as hard and securely as we please to the 
 practice to which our notions have given birth, all 
 tend to beget an inclination to deal a little more freely 
 with these notions themselves, to canvass them a 
 little, to penetrate a little into their real nature. 
 Flutterings of curiosity, in the foreign sense of the 
 word, appear amongst us, and it is in these that criti- 
 cism must look to find its account. Criticism first ; 
 a time of true creative activity, perhaps, — which, as I 
 have said, must inevitably be preceded amongst us by 
 a time of criticism, — hereafter, when criticism has 
 done its work. 
 
 It is of the last importance that English criticism 
 should clearly discern what rule for its course, in 
 order to avail itself of the field now opening to it, and 
 to produce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The 
 rule may be summed up in one word, — disinterestedness. 
 And how is criticism to show disinterestedness ? By 
 keeping aloof from what is called “ the practical view 
 of things ; ” by resolutely following the law of its own 
 natui-e, which is to be a free play of the mind on all 
 subjects which it touches. By steadily refusing to 
 lend itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical 
 considerations about ideas, which plenty of people 
 will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought 
 often to be attached to them, which in this country 
 at any rate are certain to be attached to them quite 
 / sufficiently, but which criticism has really nothing to 
 do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to 
 know the best that is known and thought in the 
 world, and by in its turn making this known, to create 
 
t.j FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 19 
 
 a current of true and fresh ideas. Its business is to 
 do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability ; but 
 its business is to do no more, and to leave alone all 
 questions of practical consequences and applications, 
 questions which will never fail to have due prominence 
 given to them. Else criticism, besides being really 
 false to its own nature, merely continues in the old 
 rut which it has hitherto followed in this country, and 
 will certainly miss the chance now given to it. For 
 what is at present the bane of criticism in this country! 
 It is that practical considerations cHng to it and stifle 
 it. It subserves interests not its own. Oui^ organs 
 of criticism are organs of men and parties having 
 practical ends to serve, and with them those practical 
 ends are the first thing and the play of mind the 
 second ; so much play of mind as is compatible with 
 the prosecution of those practical ends is all that is 
 wanted. An organ hke the Eeme des Defux Mondes^ 
 having for its main function to understand and utter 
 the best that is known and thought in the world, 
 existing, it may be said, as just an organ for a free 
 play of the mind, we have not. But we have the 
 Edinburgh Review^ existing as an organ of the old 
 Whigs, and for as much play of the mind as may suit 
 its being that ; we have the Quarterly Review ^ existing 
 as an organ of the Tories, and for as much play of 
 mind as may suit its being that ; we have the British 
 Quarterly Review^ existing as an organ of the political 
 Dissenters, and for as much play of mind as may suit 
 its being that ; we have the Times^ existing as an 
 organ of the common, satisfied, well-to-do English 
 
20 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [I. 
 
 man, and for as much play of mind as may suit its 
 being that. And so on through all the various frac- 
 tions, political and religious, of our society; every 
 fraction has, as such, its organ of criticism, but the 
 notion of combining all fractions in the common plea- 
 sure of a free disinterested play of mind meets with 
 no favour. Directly this play of mind wants to have 
 more scope, and to forget the pressure of practical 
 considerations a little, it is checked, it is made to feel 
 the chain. We saw this the other day in the extinc- 
 tion, so much to be regretted, of the Home and Foreign 
 Revieio. Perhaps in no organ of criticism in this 
 country was there so much knowledge, so much play 
 of mind ; but these could not save it. The Dublin 
 Review subordinates play of mind to the practical 
 business of English and Irish Catholicism, and Kves. 
 It must needs be that men should act in sects and 
 parties, that each of these sects and parties should 
 have its organ, and should make this organ subserve 
 the interests of its action ; but it would be well, too, 
 that there should be a criticism, not the minister of 
 these interests, not their enemy, but absolutely and 
 entirely independent of them. No other criticism 
 will ever attain any real authority or make any real 
 way towards its end, — the creating a current of true 
 and fresh ideas. 
 
 It is because criticism has so little kept in the pui’e 
 intellectual sphere, has so little detached itself from 
 practice, has been so directly polemical and contro- 
 versial, that it has so ill accomplished, in this country, 
 its best spiritual work ; which is to keep man from a 
 
i.J FUNCTION OF CillTICISM AT PKESENT TIME. 21 
 
 self-satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarising, to 
 lead him towards perfection, by making his mind 
 dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the abso- 
 lute beauty and fitness of things. A polemical prac- 
 tical criticism makes men blind even to the ideal 
 imperfection of their practice, makes them willingly 
 assert its ideal perfection, in order the better to secure 
 it against attack ; and clearly this is narrowing and 
 baneful for them. If they were reassured on the 
 practical side, speculative considerations of ideal 
 perfection they might be brought to entertain, and 
 their spiritual horizon would thus gradually widen. 
 Sir Charles Adderley says to the Warwickshire 
 farmers : — 
 
 “ Talk of the improvement of breed ! Why, the 
 race we ourselves represent, the men and women, 
 the old Anglo-Saxon race, are the best breed in the 
 whole world. . . . The absence of a too enervating 
 climate, too unclouded skies, and a too luxurious 
 nature, has produced so vigorous a race of people, and 
 has rendered us so superior to all the world.” 
 
 Mr. Roebuck says to the Sheffield cutlers : — 
 
 “ I look around me and ask what is the state of 
 England 1 Is not property safe 1 Is not every man 
 able to say what he likes ? Can you not walk from 
 one end of England to the other in perfect security \ 
 I ask you whether, the world over or in past history, 
 there is anything like it 1 Nothing. I pray that out 
 unrivalled happiness may last.” 
 
 Now obviously there is a peril for poor human 
 nature in words and thoughts of such exuberant sell 
 
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 22 
 
 ti 
 
 aatisfaction, until we find ourselves safe in the streets 
 of the Celestial City. 
 
 “ Das wenige verschwindet leicht dem Blicke 
 Der vorwarts sieht, wie viel nock iibrig bleibt — ” 
 
 says Goethe ; “ the little that is done seems nothing 
 when we look forward and see how much we have yet 
 to do.” Clearly this is a better line of reflection foi 
 weak humanity, so long as it remains on this earthly 
 field of labour and trial. 
 
 But neither Sir Charles Adderley nor Mr. Roebuck 
 is by nature inaccessible to considerations of this 
 sort. They only lose sight of them owing to the con- 
 troversial life we all lead, and the practical form 
 which all speculation takes mth us. They have in 
 view opponents whose aim is not ideal, but practical ; 
 and in their zeal to uphold their owm practice against 
 these innovators, they go so far as even to attribute 
 to this practice an ideal perfection. Somebody has 
 been wanting to introduce a six-pound franchise, or 
 to abolish church-rates, or to collect agricultural statis- 
 tics by force, or to diminish local self-government 
 How natural, in reply to such proposals, very likely 
 improper or ill-timed, to go a little beyond the mark 
 and to say stoutly, “ Such a race of people as we stand, 
 so superior to all the world ! The old Anglo-Saxon 
 race, the best breed in the whole world ! I pray that 
 our unrivalled happiness may last ! I ask you whether, 
 the world over or in past history, there is anything 
 like it 1” And so long as criticism answers this dithy- 
 ramb by insisting that the old Anglo-Saxon race 
 
ij njNCTlOli Oh OarriCISM at i*KESENT TIME. 2d 
 
 would be still more superior to all others if it had no 
 church-rates, or that our unrivalled happiness would 
 last yet longer with a six-pound franchise, so long will 
 the strain, “The best breed in the whole world!” 
 swell louder and louder, everything ideal and refining 
 will be lost out of sight, and both the assailed and 
 their critics will remain in a sphere, to say the truth, 
 perfectly unvital, a sphere in which spiritual pro- 
 gression is impossible. But let criticism leave church- 
 rates and the franchise alone, and in the most candid 
 spirit, without a single lurking thought of practical 
 innovation, confront with our dithyramb this para- 
 graph on which I stumbled in a newspaper immedi- 
 ately after reading Mr. Eoebuck : — 
 
 “ A shocking child murder has just been committed 
 at Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the work- 
 house there on Saturday morning with her young 
 illegitimate child. The child was soon afterwards 
 found dead on Mapperly Hills, having been strangled 
 Wragg is in custody.” 
 
 Nothing but that; but, in juxtaposition with the 
 absolute eulogies of Sir Charles Adderley and Mr. 
 Roebuck, how eloquent, how suggestive are those few 
 lines ! “ Our old Anglo-Saxon breed, the best in the 
 
 whole world ! ” — how much that is harsh and ill- 
 favoured there is in this best 1 Wragg ! If we are 
 to talk of ideal perfection, of “ the best in the whole 
 world,” has any one reflected what a touch of gross- 
 ness in our race, what an original shortcoming in the 
 more delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the 
 natural growth amongst us of such hideous names, 
 
24 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [I. 
 
 Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg ! In Ionia and Attica 
 they were luckier in this respect than “ the best race 
 in the world;” by the Ilissus there was no Wragg, 
 poor thing ! And “ our unrivalled happiness ; ” — 
 what an element of grimness, bareness, and hideous- 
 ness mixes with it and blurs it ; the workhouse, the 
 dismal Mapperly Hills, — how dismal those who have 
 seen them will remember ; — the gloom, the smoke, 
 the cold, the strangled illegitimate child ! “I ask 
 you whether, the world over or in past history, there 
 is anything like it ? ” Perhaps not, one is inclined to 
 answer ; but at any rate, in that case, the world is 
 very much to be pitied. And the final touch, — short, 
 bleak, and inhuman : TFragg is in custody. The sex 
 
 lost in the confusion of our unrivalled happiness ; or 
 (shall I say T) the superfluous Christian name lopped 
 off by the straightforward vigour of oiu* old Anglo- 
 Saxon breed ! There is profit for the spirit in such 
 contrasts as this ; criticism serves the cause of perfec- 
 tion by establishing them. By eluding sterile conflict, 
 by refusing to remain in the sphere where alone nar 
 row and relative conceptions have any worth and 
 validity, criticism may diminish its momentary im- 
 portance, but only in this way has it a chance of 
 gaining admittance for those wider and more perfect 
 conceptions to which all its duty is really owed. Mr. 
 Koebuck will have a poor opinion of an adversary 
 who replies to his defiant songs of triumph only by 
 murmuring under his breath, Wragg is in custody ; 
 but in no other way will these songs of triumph be 
 induced gradually to moderate themselves, to get rid 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 25 
 
 of what in them is excessive and offensive, and to 
 fall into a softer and truer key. 
 
 It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect 
 action which I am thus prescribing for criticism, and 
 that, by embracing in this manner the Indian virtue 
 of detachment and abandoning the sphere of practical 
 life, it condemns itself to a slow and obscure work. 
 Slow and obscure it may be, but it is the only proper 
 work of criticism. The mass of mankind will never 
 have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are ; 
 very inadequate ideas will always satisfy them. On 
 these inadequate ideas reposes, and must repose, the 
 general practice of the world. That is as much as 
 saying that whoever sets himself to see things as they 
 are will find himself one of a very small circle ; but 
 it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own 
 work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. 
 The rush and roar of practical life will always have a 
 dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected 
 spectator, and tend to draw him into its vortex ; 
 most of all will this be the case where that life is so 
 powerful as it is in England. But it is only by re- 
 maining collected, and refusing to lend himself to the 
 point of view of the practical man, that the critic can 
 do the practical man any service ; and it is only by 
 the greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and 
 by at last convincing even the practical man of his 
 sincerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which 
 perpetually threaten him. 
 
 For the practical man is not apt for fine distinc- 
 tions, and yet in these distinctions truth and the 
 
26 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM 
 
 [I. 
 
 highest culture greatly find their account. But it is 
 not easy to lead a practical man, — unless you reassure 
 him as to your practical intentions, you have no 
 chance of leading him, — to see that a thing which he 
 has always been used to look at from one side only, 
 which he greatly values, and which, looked at from 
 that side, quite deserves, perhaps, all the prizing and 
 admiring which he bestows upon it, — that this thing, 
 looked at from another side, may appear much less 
 beneficent and beautiful, and yet retain all its claims 
 to our practical allegiance. Where shall we find 
 language innocent enough, how shall we make the 
 spotless purity of our intentions evident enough, to 
 enable us to say to the political Englishman that the 
 British Constitution itself, which, seen from the prac- 
 tical side, looks such a magnificent organ of progress 
 and virtue, seen from the speculative side, — with its 
 compromises, its love of facts, its horror of theory, its 
 studied avoidance of clear thoughts, — that, seen from 
 this side, our august Constitution sometimes looks, — 
 forgive me, shade of Lord Somers ! — a colossal machine 
 for the manufacture of Philistines ? How is Cobbett 
 to say this and not be misunderstood, blackened as he 
 is with the smoke of a lifelong conflict in the field of 
 political practice 1 how is Mr. Carlyle to say it and 
 not be misunderstood, after his furious raid into this 
 field with his Latter-day Pamphlets ? how is Mr. Buskin, 
 after his pugnacious political economy? I say, the 
 critic must keep out of the region of immediate prac- 
 tice in the political, social, humanitarian sphere, if he 
 wants to make a beginning for that more free specu- 
 
r.] FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 27 
 
 lative treatment of things, which may perhaps one 
 day make its benefits felt even in this sphere, but in 
 a natural and thence irresistible manner. 
 
 Do what he will, however, the critic will still re^ 
 main exposed to frequent misunderstandings, and 
 nowhere so much as in this country. For here people 
 are particularly indisposed even to comprehend that 
 without this free disinterested treatment of things, 
 truth and the highest culture are out of the question. 
 So immersed are they in practical life, so accustomed 
 to tal^e all their notions from this life and its pro- 
 cesses, that they are apt to think that truth and 
 culture themselves can be reached by the processes 
 of this life, and that it is an impertinent singularity 
 to think of reaching them in any other. “We are 
 all terrce filii” cries their eloquent advocate ; “all 
 Philistines together. Away with the notion of pro- 
 ceeding by any other course than the course dear to 
 the Philistines ; let us have a social movement, let us 
 organise and combine a party to pursue truth and new 
 thought, let us call it the liberal party ^ and let us all 
 stick to each other, and back each other up. Let us 
 have no nonsense about independent criticism, and 
 intellectual delicacy, and the few and the many. 
 Don’t let us trouble ourselves about foreign thought ; 
 wo shall invent the whole thing for ourselves as we 
 go along. If one of us speaks well, applaud him ; if 
 one of us speaks ill, applaud him too ; we are all in 
 the same movement, we are all liberals, we are all in 
 pursuit of truth.” In this way the pursuit of truth 
 becomes really a social, practical, pleasurable affair, 
 
28 
 
 ESSAYS IN CKITICiSM. 
 
 [ 1 . 
 
 almost requiring a chairman, a secretary, and adver- 
 tisements ; with the excitement of an occasional 
 scandal, with a little resistance to give the happy 
 sense of difficulty overcome ; hut, in general, plenty 
 of bustle and very little thought. To act is so easy, 
 as Goethe says; to think is so hard! It is true that the 
 critic has many temptations to go with the stream, to 
 make one of the party movement, one of these terrcB 
 filii ; it seems ungracious to refuse to be a terrce Jilius, 
 when so many excellent people are ; but the critic’s 
 duty is to refuse, or, if resistance is vain, at least to 
 cry with Obermann : F4rissons en rSsistanf. 
 
 How serious a matter it is to try and resist, I had 
 ample opportunity of experiencing when I ventured 
 some time ago to criticise the celebrated first volume 
 of Bishop Colenso.^ The echoes of the storm which 
 was then raised I still, from time to time, hear grumb- 
 ling round me. That storm arose out of a misunder- 
 standing almost inevitable. It is a result of no little 
 culture to attain to a clear perception that science and 
 religion are two wholly different things. The multi- 
 
 1 So sincere is my dislike to all personal attack and contro- 
 versy, that I abstain from reprinting, at this distance of time 
 from the occasion which called them forth, the essays in which 
 I criticised Dr. Colenso’s book ; I feel bound, however, after all 
 that has passed, to make here a final declaration of my sincere 
 impenitence for having published them. Nay, I cannot forbear 
 repeating yet once more, for his benefit and that of his readers, 
 this sentence from my original remarks upon him ; There is 
 truth of science and truth of religion ; truth of science does not 
 become truth of religion till it is made religious. And I will add : 
 Let us have all the science there is from the men of science ; 
 from the men of religion let us have refigion. 
 
l] fukction of criticism at present time. 29 
 
 tude will for ever confuse them ; but happily that is 
 of no great real importance, for while the multitude 
 imagines itself to live by its false science, it does 
 really live by its true religion. Dr. Colenso, however, 
 in his first volume did all he could to strengthen the 
 confusion,^ and to make it dangerous. He did this 
 with the best intentions, I freely admit, and with the 
 most candid ignorance that this was the natural effect 
 of what he was doing; but, says Joubert, “Ignorance, 
 which in matters of morals extenuates the crime, is 
 itself, in intellectual matters, a crime of the first order.” 
 I criticised Bishop Colenso’s speculative confusion. 
 Immediately there was a cry raised : “ What is this 1 
 here is a liberal attacking a liberal. Do not you be- 
 long to the movement? are not you a friend of truth? 
 Is not Bishop Colenso in pursuit of truth? then speak 
 with proper respect of his book. Dr. Stanley is an- 
 other friend of truth, and you speak with propei 
 respect of his book ; why make these invidious differ- 
 ences? both books are excellent, admirable, liberal; 
 Bishop Colenso’s perhaps the most so, because it is 
 the boldest, and will have the best practical conse- 
 quences for the liberal cause. Do you want to 
 encourage to the attack of a brother liberal his, and 
 your, and our implacable enemies, the Church and 
 State Review or the Record ^ — the High Church rhino- 
 ceros and the Evangelical hyaena ? Be silent, there- 
 
 * It has been said I make it “a crime against literary criti- 
 cism and the higher culture to attempt to inform the ignorant.” 
 Need I point out that the ignorant are not informed by being 
 confirmed in a confusion ? 
 
30 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [t 
 
 fore ; or rather speak, speak as loud as ever you can I 
 and go into ecstasies over the eighty and odd pigeons.” 
 But criticism cannot follow this coarse and indis- 
 criminate method. It is unfortunately possible for a 
 man in pursuit of truth to write a book which reposes 
 upon a false conception. Even the practical conse- 
 quences of a book are to genuine criticism no recom- 
 mendation of it, if the book is, in the highest sense, 
 blundering. I see that a lady who herself, too, is in 
 pursuit of truth, and who writes vdth great ability, 
 but a little too much, perhaps, under the influence of 
 the practical spirit of the English liberal movement, 
 classes Bishop Colenso’s book and M Renan’s to- 
 gether, in her survey of the religious state of Europe, 
 as facts of the same order, works, both of them, of 
 “ great importance “ great ability, power, and skill 
 Bishop Colenso’s, perhaps, the most powerful ; at 
 least. Miss Cobbe gives special expression to her 
 gratitude that to Bishop Colenso “has been given 
 the strength to grasp, and the courage to teach, truths 
 of such deep import.” In the same way, more than 
 one popular writer has compared him to Luther. 
 Now it is just this kind of false estimate which the 
 critical spirit is, it seems to me, bound to resist. It 
 is really the strongest possible proof of the low ebb 
 at which, in England, the critical spirit is, that while 
 the critical hit in the religious literature of Germany 
 is Dr. Strauss’s book, in that of France M Renan’s 
 book, the book of Bishop Colenso is the critical hit 
 in the religious literature of England. Bishop Co- 
 lenso’s book reposes on a total misconception of the 
 
ij FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 31 
 
 essential elements of the religious problem, as that 
 problem is now presented for solution. To criticism, 
 therefore, which seeks to have the best that is known 
 and thought on this problem, it is, however well 
 meant, of no importance whatever. M. Renan’s book 
 attempts a new synthesis of the elements furnished to 
 us by the Four Gospels. It attempts, in my opinion, 
 a synthesis, perhaps premature, perhaps impossible, 
 certainly not successful. Up to the present time, at 
 any rate, we must acquiesce in Fleury’s sentence on 
 such recastings of the Gospel-story ; Quiconque sHma- 
 gine la pouvoir mieux dcrire, ne Ventend pas. M Renan 
 had himself passed by anticipation a like sentence on 
 his own work, when he said : “ If a new presentation 
 of the character of Jesus were offered to me, I would 
 not have it ; its very clearness would be, in my 
 opinion, the best proof of its insufficiency.” His 
 friends may with perfect justice rejoin that at the 
 sight of the Holy Land, and of the actual scene of 
 the Gospel -story, all the cuiTent of M. Renan’s 
 thoughts may have naturally changed, and a new 
 casting of that story irresistibly suggested itself to 
 him ; and that this is just a case for applying Cicero’s 
 maxim : Change of mind is not inconsistency — nemo 
 doctus unquam mutaiionem consilii inconstantiam dixit 
 esse. Nevertheless, for criticism, M. Renan’s first 
 thought must stiff be the truer one, as long as his 
 new casting so fails more fully to commend itself, 
 more fully (to use Coleridge’s happy phrase about 
 the Bible) to find us. Stiff M. Renan’s attempt is, 
 for criticism, of the most real interest and importance, 
 
32 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [I. 
 
 since, with all its difficulty, a fresh synthesis of the 
 New Testament data ^ — not a making war on them, in 
 Voltaire’s fashion, not a leaving them out of mind, in 
 the world’s fashion, but the putting a new construction 
 upon them, the taking them from under the old, 
 traditional, conventional point of view and placing 
 them under a new one, — is the very essence of the 
 religious problem, as now presented ; and only by 
 efforts in this direction can it receive a solution. 
 
 Again, in the same spirit in which she judges 
 Bishop Colenso, Miss Cobbe, like so many earnest 
 liberals of our practical race, both here and in 
 America, herself sets vigorously about a positive re- 
 construction of religion, about making a religion of 
 the future out of hand, or at least setting about 
 making it. We must not rest, she and they are 
 always thinking and saying, in negative criticism, we 
 must be creative and constructive; hence we have 
 such works as her recent Religious Duty, and works 
 still more considerable, perhaps, by others, which will 
 be in every one’s mind. These works often have 
 much ability; they often spring out of sincere con- 
 victions, and a sincere wish to do good ; and they 
 sometimes, perhaps, do good. Their fault is (if I 
 may be permitted to say so) one which they have in 
 common with the British College of Health, in the 
 New Boad. Every one knows the British College of 
 Health ; it is that building with the lion and the 
 statue of the Goddess Hygeia before it; at least I 
 am sure about the lion, though I am not absolutely 
 certain about the Goddess Hygeia. This building 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 33 
 
 does credit, perhaps, to the resources of Dr. Morrison 
 and his disciples ; but it falls a good deal short of 
 one’s idea of what a British College of Health ought 
 to be. In England, where we hate public inter- 
 ference and love individual enterprise, we have a 
 whole crop of places like the British College of 
 Health ; the grand name without the grand thing. 
 Unluckily, creditable to individual enterprise as they 
 are, they tend to impair our taste by making us for- 
 get what more grandiose, noble, or beautiful character 
 properly belongs to a public institution. The same 
 may be said of the religions of the future of Miss 
 Cobbe and others. Creditable, like the British Col- 
 lege of Health, to the resources of their authors, they 
 yet tend to make us forget what more grandiose, 
 noble, or beautiful character properly belongs to 
 religious constructions. The historic religions, with 
 all their faults, have had this ; it certainly belongs to 
 the religious sentiment, when it truly flowers, to 
 have this ; and we impoverish our spirit if we allow a 
 religion of the future without it. What then is the 
 duty of criticism here ? To take the practical point 
 of view, to applaud the liberal movement and all its 
 works, — its New Eoad religions of the future into the 
 bargain, — for their general utility’s sake? By no means; 
 but to be perpetually dissatisfied with these works, while 
 they perpetually fall short of a high and perfect ideal 
 For criticism, these are elementary laws ; but they 
 never can be popular, and in this country they have 
 been very little followed, and one meets with immense 
 obstacles in following them. That is a reason for 
 VOL. I. u 
 
34 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [l 
 
 asserting them again and again. Criticism must 
 maintain its independence of the practical spirit and 
 its aims. Even with well-meant efforts of the practical 
 spirit it must express dissatisfaction, if in the sphere 
 of the ideal they seem impoverishing and limiting. 
 It must not hurry on to the goal because of its 
 practical importance. It must be patient, and know 
 how to wait ; and flexible, and know how to attach 
 itself to things and how to withdraw from them. It 
 must be apt to study and praise elements that for the 
 fulness of spiritual perfection are wanted, even though 
 they belong to a power which in the practical sphere 
 may be maleficent. It must be apt to discern the 
 spiritual shortcomings or illusions of powers that in 
 the practical sphere may be beneficent. And this 
 without any notion of favouring or injuring, in the 
 practical sphere, one power or the other; without 
 any notion of playing off, in this sphere, one power 
 against the other. When one looks, for instance, at 
 the English Divorce Court, — an institution which 
 perhaps has its practical conveniences, but which in 
 the ideal sphere is so hideous ; an institution which 
 neither makes divorce impossible nor makes it decent, 
 which allows a man to get rid of his wife, or a wife 
 of her husband, but makes them drag one another 
 first, for the public edification, through a mire of 
 unutterable infamy, — when one looks at this charm- 
 ing institution, I say, with its crowded trials, its 
 newspaper reports, and its money compensations, this 
 institution in which the gross unregenerate British 
 Philistine has indeed stamped an image of himself, — - 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CKITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 35 
 
 one may be permitted to find the marriage theory of 
 Catholicism refreshing and elevating. Or when Pro- 
 testantism, in virtue of its supposed rational and 
 intellectual origin, gives the law to criticism too 
 magisterially, criticism may and must remind it that 
 its pretensions, in this respect, are illusive and do it 
 harm ; that the Eeformation was a moral rather than 
 an intellectual event; that Luther’s theory of grace 
 no more exactly reflects the mind of the spirit than 
 Bossuet’s philosophy of history reflects it ; and that 
 there is no more antecedent probability of the Bishop 
 of Durham’s stock of ideas being agreeable to perfect 
 reason than of Pope Pius the Ninth’s. But criticism 
 will not on that account forget the achievements of 
 Protestantism in the practical and moral sphere ; nor 
 that, even in the intellectual sphere, Protestantism, 
 though in a blind and stumbling manner, carried for- 
 ward the Kenascence, while Catholicism threw itself 
 violently across its path. 
 
 I lately heard a man of thought and energy con- 
 trasting the want of ardour and movement which he 
 now found amongst young men in this country with 
 what he remembered in his own youth, twenty years 
 ago. “ What reformers we were then ! ” he ex- 
 claimed ; “ what a zeal we had ! how we canvassed 
 every institution in Church and State, and were pre- 
 pared to remodel them all on first principles ! ” He 
 was inclined to regret, as a spiritual flagging, the lull 
 which he saw. I am disposed rather to regard it as 
 a pause in which the turn to a new mode of spiritual 
 progress is being accomplished. Everything wafi 
 
36 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [l 
 
 long seen, by the young and ardent amongst us, in 
 inseparable connection with politics and practical life. 
 We have pretty well exhausted the benefits of seeing 
 things in this connection, we have got all that can 
 be got by so seeing them. Let us try a more dis- 
 interested mode of seeing them ; let us betake our- 
 selves more to the serener life of the mind and spirit. 
 This life, too, may have its excesses and dangers; 
 but they are not for us at present. Let us think of 
 quietly enlarging our stock of true and fresh ideas, 
 and not, as soon as we get an idea or half an idea, be 
 running out with it into the street, and trying to 
 make it rule tliere. Our ideas will, in the end, shape 
 the world all the better for maturing a little. Per- 
 haps in fifty years’ time it will in the English House 
 of Commons be an objection to an institution that it 
 is an anomaly, and my friend the Member of Parlia- 
 ment will shudder in his grave. But let us in the 
 meanwhile rather endeavour that in twenty years’ 
 time it may, in English literature, be an objection to 
 a proposition that it is absurd. That will be a change 
 so vast, that the imagination almost fails to grasp it. 
 Ah integro scedorum nascitur or do. 
 
 If I have insisted so much on the course which 
 criticism must take where politics and religion are 
 concerned, it is because, where these burning matters 
 are in question, it is most likely to go astray. I have 
 wished, above all, to insist on the attitude which 
 criticism should adopt towards things in general ; on 
 its right tone and temper of mind. But then comes 
 another question as to the subject-matter which 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 37 
 
 literary criticism should most seek. Here, in general, 
 its course is determined for it by the idea which is 
 the law of its being ; the idea of a disinterested en- 
 deavour to learn and propagate the best that is 
 known and thought in the world, and thus to estab- 
 lish a current of fresh and true ideas. By the very 
 nature of things, as England is not all the world, 
 much of the best that is known and thought in the 
 world cannot be of English growth, must be foreign ; 
 by the nature of things, again, it is just this that we 
 are least likely to know, while English thought is 
 streaming in upon us from all sides, and takes ex- 
 cellent care that we shall not be ignorant of its 
 existence. The English critic of literature, therefore, 
 must dwell much on foreign thought, and with par- 
 ticular heed on any part of it, which, while significant 
 and fruitful in itself, is for any reason specially likely 
 to escape him. Again, judging is often spoken of as 
 the critic’s one business, and so in some sense it is ; 
 but the judgment which almost insensibly forms itself 
 in a fair and clear mind, along with fresh knowledge, 
 is the valuable one ; and thus knowledge, and ever 
 fresh knowledge, must be the critic’s great concern 
 for himself. And it is by communicating fresh 
 knowledge, and letting his own judgment pass along 
 with it, — but insensibly, and in the second place, not 
 the first, as a sort of companion and clue, not as an 
 abstract lawgiver, — that the critic will generally do 
 most good to his readers. Sometimes, no doubt, for 
 the sake of establishing an author’s place in literature, 
 and his relation to a central standard (and if this is 
 
 
 7 
 
38 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [l 
 
 not done, how are we to get at our best in the world ?) 
 criticism may have to deal with a subject-matter so 
 familiar that fresh knowledge is out of the question, 
 and then it must be all judgment; an enunciation 
 and detailed application of principles. Here the 
 great safeguard is never to let oneself become abstract, 
 always to retain an intimate and lively consciousness 
 of the truth of what one is saying, and, the moment 
 this fails us, to be sure that something is wrong. 
 Still, under all circumstances, this mere judgment 
 and application of principles is, in itself, not the most 
 satisfactory work to the critic ; like mathematics, it 
 is tautological, and cannot well give us, like fresh 
 learning, the sense of creative activity. 
 
 But stop, some one will say ; all this talk is of no 
 practical use to us whatever; this criticism of yours 
 is not what we have in our minds when we speak of 
 criticism ; when we speak of critics and criticism, we 
 mean critics and criticism of the current English 
 literature of the day ; when you offer to tell criticism 
 its function, it is to this criticism that we expect you to 
 address yourself. I am sorry for it, for I am afraid I 
 must disappoint these expectations. I am bound by 
 my own definition of criticism : a disinterested endear 
 vour to learn and propagate the best that is known and 
 thought in the world. How much of current English 
 literature comes into this “ best that is known and 
 thought in the world?” Not very much, I fear; 
 certainly less, at this moment, than of the current 
 literature of France or Germany. Well, then, am 
 I to alter my definition of criticism, in order to meet 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 39 
 
 the requirements of a number of practising English 
 critics, who, after all, are free in their choice of a 
 business 1 That would be making criticism lend itself 
 just to one of those alien practical considerations, 
 which, I have said, are so fatal to it. One may say, 
 indeed, to those who have to deal with the mass — so 
 much better disregarded — of current English litera- 
 ture, that they may at all events endeavour, in dealing 
 with this, to try it, so far as they can, by the standard 
 of the best that is known and thought in the world ; 
 one may say, that to get anywhere near this standard, 
 every critic should try and possess one great litera- 
 ture, at least, besides his own ; and the more unlike 
 his own, the better. But, after all, the criticism I am 
 really concerned with, — the criticism which alone can 
 much help us for the future, the criticism which, 
 throughout Europe, is at the present day meant, when 
 so much stress is laid on the importance of criticism 
 and the critical spirit, — is a criticism which regards 
 Europe as being, for intellectual and spiritual pur- 
 poses, one great confederation, bound to a joint action 
 and working to a common result ; and whose members 
 have, for their proper outfit, a knowledge of Greek, 
 Roman, and Eastern antiquity, and of one another. 
 Special, local, and temporary advantages being put 
 out of account, that modern nation will in the intel- 
 lectual and spiritual sphere make most progress, which 
 most thoroughly carries out this programme. And 
 what is that but saying that we too, all of us, as in- 
 dividuals, the more thoroughly we carry it out, shall 
 make the more progress ? 
 
40 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [I 
 
 There is so much inviting us ! — what are we to 
 take 'I what will nourish us in growth towards perfec- 
 tion 1 That is the question which, with the immense 
 field of life and of literature lying before him, the 
 critic has to answer; for himself first, and after- 
 wards for others. In this idea of the critic’s business 
 the essays brought together in the following pages 
 have had their origin ; in this idea, widely different 
 as are their subjects, they have, perhaps, their unity. 
 
 I conclude with what I said at the beginning : to 
 have the sense of creative activity is the great happi- 
 ness and the great proof of being alive, and it is not 
 denied to criticism to have it ; but then criticism 
 must be sincere, simple, flexible, ardent, ever widen- 
 ing its knowledge. Then it may have, in no con- 
 temptible measure, a joyful sense of creative activity ; 
 a sense which a man of insight and conscience will 
 prefer to what he might derive from a poor, starved, 
 fragmentary, inadequate creation. And at some 
 epochs no other creation is possible. 
 
 Still, in full measure, the sense of creative activity 
 belongs only to genuine creation ; in literature we 
 must never forget that. But what true man of letters 
 ever can forget it 1 It is no such common matter for 
 a gifted nature to come into possession of a current 
 of tme and living ideas, and to produce amidst the 
 inspiration of them, that we are likely to underrate 
 it. The epochs of ^schylus and Shakspeare make 
 us feel their pre-eminence. In an epoch like those is, 
 no doubt, the true life of literature ; there is the pro- 
 mised land, towards which criticism can only beckon. 
 
I.] FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT PRESENT TIME. 4i 
 
 That promised land it will not be ours to enter, and 
 we shall die in the wilderness : but to have desired 
 to enter it, to have saluted it from afar, is already, 
 perhaps, the best distinction among contemporaries , 
 it will certainly be the best title to esteem with 
 posterity. 
 
II 
 
 THE LITEEAEY INFLUENCE OF 
 ACADEMIES. 
 
 It is impossible to put down a book like the history 
 of the French Academy, by Pellisson and D’Olivet, 
 which M. Charles Livet has lately re-edited, without 
 being led to reflect upon the absence, in our own 
 country, of any institution like the French Academy, 
 upon the probable causes of this absence, and upon 
 its results. A thousand voices will be ready to tell 
 us that this absence is a signal mark of our national 
 superiority ; that it is in great part owing to this 
 absence that the exhilarating words of Lord Macaulay, 
 lately given to the world by his very clever nephew, 
 Mr. Trevelyan, are so profoundly true : “ It may 
 safely be said that the literature now extant in the 
 English language is of far greater value than all the 
 literature which three hundred years ago was extant 
 in all the languages of the world together.” I dare- 
 say this is so ; only, remembering Spinoza's maxim 
 that the two great banes of humanity are self-conceit 
 and the laziness coming from self-conceit, I think it 
 
n.] LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 43 
 
 may do us good, instead of resting in our pre-eminence 
 with perfect security, to look a little more closely 
 why this is so, and whether it is so without any 
 limitations. 
 
 But first of all I must give a very few words to the 
 outward history of the French Academy. About the 
 year 1629, seven or eight persons in Paris, fond of 
 literature, formed themselves into a sort of little club 
 to meet at one another’s houses and discuss literary 
 matters. Their meetings got talked of, and Cardinal 
 Eichelieu, then minister and all-powerful, heard of 
 them. He himself had a noble passion for letters, 
 and for all fine culture ; he was interested by what he 
 heard of the nascent society. Himself a man in the 
 grand style, if ever man was, he had the insight to 
 perceive what a potent instrument of the grand style 
 was here to his hand. It was the beginning of a 
 great century for France, the seventeenth ; men’s 
 minds were working, the French language was form- 
 ing. Eichelieu sent to ask the members of the new 
 society whether they would be willing to become a 
 body wfith a public character, holding regular meet- 
 ings. Not without a little hesitation, — for apparently 
 they found themselves very well as they were, and 
 these seven or eight gentlemen of a social and literary 
 turn were not perfectly at their ease as to what the 
 great and terrible minister could want with them, — 
 they consented. The favours of a man like Eichelieu 
 are not easily refused, whether they are honestly 
 meant or no ; but this favour of Eichelieu’s was meant 
 quite honestly. The Parliament, however, had its 
 
44 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [II. 
 
 doubts of this. The Parliament had none of Riche- 
 lieu’s enthusiasm about letters and culture ; it was 
 jealous of the apparition of a new public body in the 
 State ; above all, of a body called into existence by 
 Richelieu. The King’s letters -patent, establishing 
 and authorising the new society^, were granted early 
 in 1635 ; but, by the old constitution of France, these 
 letters-patent required the verification of the Parlia- 
 ment. It was two years and a half — towards the 
 autumn of 1637 — before the Parliament would give 
 it ; and it then gave it only after pressing solicitations, 
 and earnest assurances of the innocent intentions of 
 the young Academy. Jocose people said that this 
 society, with its mission to purify and embellish the 
 language, filled with terror a body of lawyers like the 
 French Parliament, the stronghold of barbai-ous jargon 
 and of chicane. 
 
 This improvement of the language was in truth 
 the declared grand aim for the operations of the 
 Academy. Its statutes of foundation, approved by 
 Richelieu before the royal edict establishing it was 
 issued, say expressly : “ The Academy’s principal 
 function shall be to work with all the care and all 
 the diligence possible at giving sui’e rules to our lan- 
 guage, and rendering it pure, eloquent, and capable 
 of treating the arts and sciences.” This zeal for 
 making a nation’s great instrument of thought, — its 
 language, — correct and worthy, is undoubtedly a sign 
 full of promise, — a weighty earnest of future power. 
 It is said that Richelieu had it in his mind that French 
 should succeed Latin in its general ascendency, as 
 
LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 
 
 45 
 
 XI. 1 
 
 Latin had succeeded Greek; if it was so, even this 
 wish has to some extent been fulfilled. But, at any 
 rate, the ethical influences of style in language, — its 
 close relations, so often pointed out, wdth character, 
 — are most important. Richelieu, a man of high 
 culture, and, at the same time, of great character, 
 felt them profoundly ; and that he should have 
 sought to regularise, strengthen, and perpetuate 
 them by an institution for perfecting language, is 
 alone a striking proof of his governing spirit and of 
 his genius. 
 
 This was not all he had in his mind, however. 
 The new Academy, now enlarged to a body of forty 
 members, and meant to contain all the chief literary 
 men of France, was to be a literary tribunal. The 
 works of its members were to be brought before it 
 previous to publication, were to be criticised by it, 
 and finally, if it saw fit, to be published with its 
 declared approbation. The works of other writers, 
 not members of the Academy, might also, at the 
 request of these writers themselves, be passed under 
 the Academy’s review. Besides this, in essays and 
 discussions the Academy examined and judged works 
 already published, whether by living or dead authors, 
 and literary matters in general. The celebrated 
 opinion on Corneille’s Cid^ delivered in 1637 by the 
 Academy at Richelieu’s urgent request, when this 
 poem, which strongly occupied public attention, had 
 been attacked by M. de Scud^ry, shows how fully 
 Richelieu designed his new creation to do duty as a 
 supreme court of literature, and how early it in fact 
 
46 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [iL 
 
 began to exercise this function. One^ who had known 
 Richelieu declared, after the Cardinal’s death, that he 
 had projected a yet greater institution than the 
 Academy, a sort of grand European college of art, 
 science, and literature, a Prytaneum, where the chief 
 authors of all Europe should be gathered together in 
 one central home, there to live in security, leisure, 
 and honour ; — that was a dream which will not bear 
 to be pulled about too roughly. But the project of 
 forming a high court of letters for France was no 
 dream ; Richelieu in great measure fulfilled it. This 
 is what the Academy, by its idea, really is; this is 
 what it has always tended to become ; this is what it 
 has, from time to time, really been; by being, or 
 tending to be this, far more than even by what it has 
 done for the language, it is of such importance in 
 France. To give the law, the tone to literature, and 
 that tone a high one, is its business. “Richelieu 
 meant it,” says M. Sainte-Beuve, “to be a haut jury^'^ 
 — a jury the most choice and authoritative that could 
 be found on all important literary matters in question 
 before the public ; to be, as it in fact became in the 
 latter half of the eighteenth century, “a sovereign 
 organ of opinion.” “ The duty of the Academy is,” 
 says M. Renan, niaintenir la delicatesse de V esprit frarv- 
 gais '^ — to keep the fine quality of the French spirit 
 unimpaired ; it represents a kind of “ mattrise en fait 
 de Ion ton ” — the authority of a recognised master in 
 matters of tone and taste. “ All ages,” says M. Renan 
 again, “ have had their inferior literature ; but the 
 ^ La Mesnardi^re. 
 
«.] LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 47 
 
 great danger of our time is that this inferior literature 
 tends more and more to get the upper place. No one 
 has the same advantage as the Academy for fighting 
 against this mischief;” the Academy, which, as he 
 says elsewhere, has even special facilities for “ creating 
 a form of intellectual culture which shall impose itselj 
 on all around” M. Sainte-Beuve and M. Renan are, 
 both of them, very keen -sighted critics; and they 
 show it signally by seizing and putting so prominently 
 forward this character of the French Academy. 
 
 Such an effort to set up a recognised authority, im- 
 posing on us a high standard in matters of intellect 
 and taste, has many enemies in human nature. We 
 all of us like to go our own way, and not to he forced 
 out of the atmosphere of commonplace habitual to 
 most of us ; — “ was uns alle hdndigt” says Goethe, “ das 
 Gemeine” We like to be sufifered to lie comfortably 
 in the old straw of our habits, especially of our intel- 
 lectual habits, even though this straw may not be very 
 clean and fine. But if the effort to limit this freedom 
 of our lower nature finds, as it does and must find, 
 enemies in human nature, it finds also auxiliaries in 
 it. Out of the four great parts, says Cicero, of the 
 honestum, or good, which forms the matter on which 
 officium, or human duty, finds employment, one is the 
 fixing of a modus and an oi'do^ a measure and an order, 
 to fashion and wholesomely constrain oim action, in 
 order to lift it above the level it keeps if left to itself, 
 and to bring it nearer to perfection. Man alone of 
 living creatures, he says, goes feeling after “ quid sii 
 ordo, quid sit quod deceat, in factis didisque qui modus 
 
48 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [n. 
 
 — the discovery of an order , a law of good taste, & 
 measure for his words and actions.” Other creatures 
 submissively follow the law of their nature ; man 
 alone has an impulse leading him to set up some other 
 law to control the bent of his nature. 
 
 This holds good, of course, as to moral matters, as 
 well as intellectual matters : and it is of moral matters 
 that we are generally thinking when we affirm it. 
 But it holds good as to intellectual matters too. Now, 
 probably, M. Sainte-Beuve had not these words of 
 Cicero in his mind when he made, about the French 
 nation, the assertion I am going to quote ; but, for 
 all that, the assertion leans for support, one may say, 
 upon the truth conveyed in those words of Cicero, 
 and wonderfully illustrates and confirms them. “ In 
 France,” says M. Sainte-Beuve, “ the first consideration 
 for us is not whether we are amused and pleased by 
 a work of ai*t or mind, nor is it whether we are 
 touched by it. What we seek above all to learn is, 
 whether we were right in being amused ^vith it, and ir 
 applauding it, and in being moved by it.” Those are 
 very remarkable words, and they are, I believe, in the 
 main quite true. A Frenchman has, to a considerable 
 degree, what one may call a conscience in intellectual 
 matters ; he has an active belief that there is a right 
 and a wrong in them, that he is bound to honour and 
 obey the right, that he is disgraced by cleaving to the 
 wrong. All the world has, or professes to have, this 
 conscience in moral matters. The word conscience has 
 become almost confined, in popular use, to the moral 
 sphere, because this lively susceptibility of feeling is, 
 
n.J 
 
 LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 
 
 49 
 
 in the moral sphere, so far more common than in the 
 intellectual sphere ; the livelier, in the moral sphere, 
 this susceptibility is, the greater becomes a man’s 
 readiness to admit a high standard of action, an ideal 
 authoritatively correcting his everyday moral habits ; 
 here, such willing admission of authority is due to 
 sensitiveness of conscience. And a like deference to 
 a standard higher than one’s own habitual standard 
 in intellectual matters, a like respectful recognition 
 of a superior ideal, is caused, in the intellectual sphere, 
 by sensitiveness of intelligence. Those whose intelli- 
 gence is quickest, openest, most sensitive, are readiest 
 with this deference ; those whose intelligence is less 
 delicate and sensitive are less disposed to it. Well, 
 now we are on the road to see why the French have 
 their Academy and we have nothing of the kind. 
 
 What are the essential characteristics of the spirit 
 of_ our. nation ? Not, certainly, an open and clear 
 mind, not a quick and flexible intelligence. Our 
 greatest admirers would not claim for us that we 
 have these in a pre-eminent degree ; they might say 
 that we had more of them than our detractors gave 
 us credit for; but they would not assert them to 
 be our essential characteristics. They would rather 
 allege, as . jour chief spiritual characteristics, energy 
 and hones ty ; and, if we are judged favourably and 
 positively, not invidiously and negatively, our chief 
 characteristics are, no doubt, these: — energy and 
 honesty, not an open and clear mind, not a quick and 
 flexible intelligence. Openness of mind and flexibility 
 of intelligence were very signal characteristics of the 
 
 VOL. L E 
 
60 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [n. 
 
 Athenian people in ancient times ; everybody will feel 
 that. Openness of mind and fle xi bility of in telligence 
 are remarkable characteristics of the French people in 
 modern times ; at any rate, they strikingly characterise 
 them as compared with us ; I think everybody, or 
 almost everybody, will feel that. I will not now ask 
 what more the Athenian or the French spirit has than 
 this, nor what shortcomings either of them may have 
 as a set-off against this ; all I want now to point out 
 is that they have this, and that we have it in a much 
 lesser degree. 
 
 Let me remark, however, that not only in the 
 moral sphere, but also in the intellectual and spiritual 
 sphere, energy and honesty are most important and 
 fruitful qualities ; that, for instance, of what we call 
 genius energy is the most essential part. So, by 
 assigning to a nation energy and honesty as its chief 
 spiritual characteristics, — by refusing to it, as at all 
 eminent characteristics, openness of mind and flexi- 
 bility of intelligence, — we do not by any means, as 
 some people might at first suppose, relegate its im- 
 portance and its power of manifesting itself with effect 
 from the intellectual to the moral sphere. We only 
 indicate its probable special line of successful activity 
 in the intellectual sphere, and, it is true, certain im- 
 perfections and failings to which, in this sphere, it 
 will always be subject. Genius is mainly an affair of 
 energy, and poetry is mainly an affair of genius ; 
 therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterised by 
 energy may well be eminent in poetry ; — and we have 
 Shakspeare. Again, the highest reach of science is, 
 
11. J LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 51 
 
 one may say, an inventive power, a faculty of divina- 
 tion, akin to the highest power exercised in poetry ; 
 therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterised by 
 energy may well be eminent in science ; — and we have 
 Newton. Shakspeare and Newton : in the intellectual 
 sphere there can be no higher names. And what that 
 energy,^ which is the life of genius, above everything 
 demands and insists upon, is freedom ; entire inde- 
 pendence of all authority, prescription, and routine, — 
 the fullest room to expand as it will. Therefore, a 
 nation whose chief spiritual characteristic is energy, 
 will not be very apt to set up, in intellectual matters, 
 a fixed standard, an autho rity, like an academy. By 
 this it certainly escapes certain real inconveniences 
 and dangers, and it can, at the same time, as we have 
 seen, reach undeniably splendid heights in poetry and 
 science. On the other hand, some of the requisites 
 of intellectual work are specially the affair of quick- 
 ness of mind and flexibility of intelhgence. The 
 form, the method of evolution, the precision, the pro- 
 portions, the relations of the parts to the whole, in 
 an intellectual work, depend mainly upon them. And 
 these are the elements of an intellectual work which 
 are really most communicable from it, which can most 
 be learned and adopted from it, which have, there- 
 fore, the greatest effect upon the intellectual per- 
 formance of others. Even in poetry, these requisites 
 are very important j and the poetry of a nation, not 
 eminent for the gifts on which they depend, will, 
 more or less, suffer by this shortcoming. In poetry, 
 however, they are, after all, secondary, and energy is 
 
52 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [II 
 
 tKe first thing ; but in prose they are of first-rate im- 
 portance. In its prose literature, therefore, and in 
 the routine of intellectual work generally, a nation 
 with no particular gifts for these will not be so suc- 
 cessful. These are what, as I have said, can to a 
 certain degree be learned and appropriated, while the 
 free activity of genius cannot. Academies consecrate 
 and maintain them, and, therefore, a nation with an 
 eminent turn for them naturally establishes academies. 
 So far as routine and authority tend to embarrass 
 energy and inventive genius, academies may be said 
 to be obstructive to energy and inventive genius, and, 
 to this extent, to the human spirit’s general advance 
 But then this evil is so much compensated by the 
 propagation, on a large scale, of the mental aptitudes 
 and demands which an open mind and a flexible in- 
 telligence naturally engender, genius itself, in the 
 long run, so greatly finds its account in this propaga- 
 tion, and bodies like the French Academy have such 
 power for promoting it, that the general advance of 
 the human spirit is perhaps, on the whole, rather 
 furthered than impeded by their existence. 
 
 How much greater is our nation in poetry than 
 prose ! how much better, in general, do the produc- 
 tions of its spirit show in the qualities of genius than 
 in the qualities of intelligence ! One may constantly 
 remark this in the work of individuals ; how much 
 more striking, in general, does any Englishman, — of 
 some vigour of mind, but by no means a poet, — seem 
 in his verse than in his prose ! His verse partly 
 sufi'ers from his not being really a poet, partly, no 
 
u.] LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 53 
 
 doubt, from the very same defects which impair hia 
 prose, and he cannot express himself with thorough 
 success in it. But how much more powerful a per- 
 sonage does he appear in it, by dint of feeling, and of 
 originality and movement of ideas, than when he is 
 writing prose ! With a Frenchman of like stamp, it 
 is just the reverse : set him to write poetry, he is 
 limited, artificial, and impotent ; set him to write 
 prose, he is free, natural, and eflective. The power 
 of French literature is in its prose- write rs, the power 
 oLIInglish literature is in its poets. Nay, many of 
 the celebrated French poets depend wholly for their 
 fame upon the qualities of intelligence which they 
 exhibit, — qualities which are the distinctive support 
 of prose ; many of the celebrated English prose- 
 writers depend wholly for their fame upon the quali- 
 ties of genius and imagination which they exhibit, — 
 qualities which are the distinctive support of poetry. 
 But, as I have said, the qualities of genius are less 
 transferable than the qualities of intelligence ; less 
 can be immediately learned and appropriated from 
 their product ; they are less direct and stringent in- 
 tellectual agencies, though they may be more beauti- 
 ful and divine. Shakspeare and our great Elizabethan 
 group were certainly more gifted writers than Corneille 
 and his group ; but what was the sequel to this great 
 literature, this literature of genius, as we may call it, 
 stretching from Marlowe to Milton What did it lead 
 up to in English literature? To our provincial and 
 second-rate literature of the eighteenth century 
 What on the other hand, was the sequel to the literar 
 
64 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 til. 
 
 ture of the French “ great century,” to this literature 
 of intelligence, as, by comparison with our Elizabethan 
 literature, we may call it; what did it lead up tol 
 To the French literature of the eighteenth century, 
 one of the most powerful and pervasive intellectual 
 agencies that have ever existed, — the greatest Euro- 
 pean force of the eighteenth century. In science, 
 again, we had Newton, a genius of the very highest 
 order, a type of genius in science, if ever there was 
 one. On the continent, as a sort of counterpart to 
 Newton, there was Leibnitz ; a man, it seems to me 
 (though on these matters I speak under correction), 
 of much less creative energy of genius, much less 
 power of divination than Newton, but rather a man 
 of admirable intelligence, a type of intelligence in 
 science, if ever there was one. Well, and what did 
 they each directly lead up to in science 1 What was 
 the intellectual generation that sprang from each of 
 them 1 I only repeat what the men of science have 
 themselves pointed out. The man of genius was con- 
 tinued by the English analysts of the eighteenth 
 century, comparatively powerless and obscure followers 
 of the renowned master. The man of intelligence 
 was continued by successors like Bemouilli, Euler, 
 Lagrange, and Laplace, the greatest names in modem 
 mathematics. 
 
 What I want the reader to see is, that the question 
 as to the utility of academies to the intellectual life 
 of a nation is not settled when we say, for instance : 
 “ Oh, we have never had an academy, and yet we 
 have, confessedly, a very great literature.” It still 
 
n J LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 55 
 
 remains to be asked : “ What sort of a great literature 1 
 a literature great in the special qualities of genius, or 
 great in the special qualities of intelligence?” If 
 in the former, it is by no means sure that either our 
 literature, or the general intellectual life of our nation, 
 has got already, without academies, all that academies 
 can give. Both the one and the other may very well 
 be somewhat wanting in those qualities of intelligence 
 out of a lively sense for which a body like the French 
 Academy, as I have said, springs, and which such a 
 body does a great deal to spread and confirm. Our 
 literature, in spite of the genius manifested in it, may 
 fall short in form, method, precision, proportions, 
 arrangement, — all of them, I have said, things where 
 intelligence proper comes in. It may be comparatively 
 weak in prose, that branch of literature where intelli- 
 gence proper is, so to speak, all in all. In this branch 
 it may show many grave faults to which the want of 
 a quick, flexible intelligence, and of the strict standard 
 which such an intelligence tends to impose, makes it 
 liable ; it may be full of hap-hazard, crudeness, pro- 
 vincialism, eccentricity, violence, blundering. It may 
 be a less stringent and effective intellectual agency, 
 both upon our own nation and upon the world at 
 large, than other literatures which show less genius, 
 perhaps, but more intelligence. 
 
 The right conclusion certainly is that we should 
 try, so far as we can, to make up our shortcomings ; 
 and that to this end, instead of always fixing our 
 thoughts upon the points in which our literature, and 
 our intellectual life generally, are strong, we should, 
 
66 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [II 
 
 from time to time, fix them upon those in which they 
 are weak, and so learn to perceive clearly what we 
 have to amend. What is our second great spiritual 
 characteristic, — our honesty, — good for, if it is not 
 good for this 1 But it Tvill, — I am sure it will, — more 
 and more, as time goes on, he found good for this. 
 
 Well, then, an institution like the French Academy, 
 — an institution owing its existence to a national bent 
 towards the things of the mind, towards culture, to- 
 wards clearness, correctness, and propriety in think- 
 ing and speaking, and, in its turn, promoting this 
 bent, — sets standards in a number of directions, and 
 creates, in all these directions, a force of educated 
 opinion, checking and rebuking those who fall below 
 these standards, or who set them at nought. Educated 
 opinion exists here as in France ; but in France the 
 Academy serves as a sort of centre and rallying-point 
 to it, and gives it a force which it has not got here. 
 Why is all the journeyman-work of literature, as I may 
 call it, so much worse done here than it is in France 1 
 I do not wish to hurt any one’s feelings ; but surely 
 this is so. Think of the dif ference between our books 
 oLjeference__a^nd. those pi , tl^ between our 
 
 biographical dictionaries (to take a striking instance) 
 and theirs ; think of the difference between the trans- 
 lations of the classics turned out for Mr. Bohn’s library 
 and those turned out for M. Nisard’s collection ! As 
 a general rule, hardly any one amongst us, who knows 
 French and German well, would use an English book 
 of reference when he could get a French or German 
 one ; or would look at an English prose translation 
 
a.] LITERARY INELUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 57 
 
 of an ancient author when he could get a French oi 
 German one. It is not that there do not exist in 
 England, as in I’rance, a number of people perfectly 
 well able to discern what is good, in these things, from 
 what is bad, and preferring what is good ; but they 
 are isolated, they form no powerful body of opinion, 
 they are not strong enough to set a standard, up to 
 which even the journey man- work of literature must 
 be brought, if it is to be vendible. Ignorance and 
 charlatanism in work of this kind are always trying 
 to pass off their wares as excellent, and to cry down 
 criticism as the voice of an insignificant, over-fastidious 
 minority; they easily persuade the multitude that 
 this is so when the minority is scattered about as it 
 is here ; not so easily when it is banded together as 
 in the French Academy. So, again, with freaks in 
 dealing with language ; certainly all such freaks tend 
 to impair the power and beauty of language ; and how 
 far more common they are with us than with the 
 French ! To take a very familiar instance. Every 
 one has noticed the way in which the Times chooses 
 to spell the word “ diocese it always spells it diocess,^ 
 deriving it, I suppose, from Zem and census. The 
 Journal des Dihais might just as well write “ diocess ” 
 instead of “ diocese,” but imagine the Journal des Ddhats 
 doing so ! Imagine an educated Frenchman indulg- 
 ing himself in an orthographical antic of this sort, in 
 face of the grave respect with which the Academy and 
 its dictionary invest the French language ! Some 
 
 ^ The Tirnes has now (1868) abandoned this spelling and 
 adopted the ordinary one. 
 
58 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [II 
 
 people will say these are little things; they are not, 
 they are of bad example. They tend to spread the 
 bane fid notion that there is no such thing as a high, 
 correct standard in intellectual matters; that every 
 one may as well take his own way ; they are at vari- 
 ance with the severe discipline necessary for all real 
 culture ; they confirm us in habits of 'wilfulness and 
 eccentricity, which hurt our minds, and damage our 
 credit with serious people. The late Mr. Donaldson 
 was certainly a man of great ability, and I, who am 
 not an Orientalist, do not pretend to judge his Jashar: 
 but let the reader observe the form which a foreign 
 Orientalist’s judgment of it naturally takes. M. 
 Renan calls it a tentative malheureuse, a failure, in 
 short ; this it may be, or it may not be ; I am no 
 judge. But he goes on : “ It is astonishing that a 
 recent article” (in a French periodical, he means) 
 “should have brought forward as the last word of 
 German exegesis a work like this, composed by a 
 doctor of the University of Cambridge, and univer- 
 sally condemned by German critics.” You see what 
 he means to imply : an extravagance of this sort 
 could never have come from Germany, where there is 
 a great force of critical opinion controlling a learned 
 man’s vagaries, and keeping him straight; it comes 
 from the native home of intellectual eccentricity of 
 all kinds,' — from England, from a doctor of the 
 I A critic declares I am wrong in saying that M. Renan’s 
 language implies this. I still think that there is a shade, a 
 muince of expression, in M. Renan’s language, which does imply 
 this ; but, I confess, the only person who can really settle each 
 a question is M. Renan himself. 
 
II. j LITERARY INELTJENCE OF ACADEMIES. 59 
 
 University of Cambridge : — and I daresay he would 
 not expect much better things from a doctor of the 
 University of Oxford. Again, after speaking of what 
 Germany and France have done for the history of 
 Mahomet: “America and England,” M. Renan goes 
 on, “ have also occupied themselves with Mahomet.” 
 He mentions AVashington Irving’s Life of Mahomet^ 
 which does not, he says, evince much of an historical 
 sense, sl sentiment hisiorique fort ilev^ ; “but,” he pro- 
 ceeds, “this book shows a real progress, when one 
 thinks that in 1829 Mr. Charles Forster published 
 two thick volumes, which enchanted the English 
 riv&rends^ to make out that Mahomet was the little 
 horn of the he-goat that figures in the eighth chapter 
 of Daniel, and that the Pope was the great horn. 
 Mr. Forster founded on this ingenious parallel a 
 whole philosophy of history, according to which the 
 Pope represented the Western corruption of Chris- 
 tianity, and Mahomet the Eastern ; thence the strik- 
 ing resemblances between Mahometanism and Popery.” 
 And in a note M. Renan adds ; “ This is the same 
 Mr. Charles Forster who is the author of a mystifica- 
 tion about the Sinaitic inscriptions, in which he 
 declares he finds the primitive language.” As much 
 as to say : “It is an Englishman, be surprised at no 
 extravagance.” If these innuendoes had no ground, 
 and were made in hatred and malice, they would not 
 be worth a moment’s attention ; but they come from 
 a grave Orientalist, on his own subject, and they 
 point to a real fact ; — the absence, in this country, of 
 any force of educated literary and scientific opinion, 
 
60 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [II. 
 
 making aberrations like those of the author of The 
 One Primeval Language out of the question. Not only 
 the author of such aberrations, often a very clevei 
 man, suffers by the want of check, by the not being 
 kept straight, and spends force in vain on a false road, 
 which, under better discipline, he might have used 
 with profit on a true one ; but all his adherents, both 
 “ reverends” and others, suffer too, and the general rate 
 of information and judgment is in this way kept low. 
 
 In a production which we have all been reading 
 lately, a production stamped throughout with a liter- 
 ary quality very rare in this country, and of which I 
 shall have a word to say presently — urbanity ; in this 
 production, the work of a man never to be named by 
 any son of Oxford without sjunpathy, a man who 
 alone in Oxford of his generation, alone of many 
 generations, conveyed to us in his genius that same 
 charm, that same ineffable sentiment which this ex- 
 quisite place itself conveys, — I mean Dr. Newman, — 
 an expression is frequently used which is more 
 common in theological than in literary language, but 
 which seems to me fitted to be of general service ; 
 the note of so and so, the note of catholicity, the note 
 of antiquity, the note of sanctity, and so on. Adopt- 
 ing this expressive word, I say that in the bulk of 
 the intellectual work of a nation which has no centre, 
 no intellectual metropolis like an academy, like M. 
 Sainte-Beuve’s “ sovereign organ of opinion,” like M. 
 Renan’s “ recognised authority in matters of tone and 
 taste,” — there is observable a note of provincmliiv. 
 Now to get rid of provinciality is a certain stage of 
 
II.] LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 61 
 
 culture ; a stage che positive result of which we must 
 not make of too much importance, but which is, 
 nevertheless, indispensable, for it brings us on to the 
 platform where alone the best and highest intellectual 
 work can be said fairly to begin. Work done after 
 men have reached this platform is classical ; and that 
 is the only work which, in the long run, can stand 
 All the scorice in the work of men of great genius 
 who have not lived on this platform are due to their 
 not having lived on it. Genius raises them to it by 
 moments, and the portions of their work which are 
 immortal are done at these moments ; but more of it 
 would have been immortal if they had not reached 
 this platform at moments only, if they had had the 
 culture which makes men live there. 
 
 The less a literature has felt the influence of a 
 supposed centre of correct information, correct judg- 
 ment, correct taste, the more we shall find in it this 
 note of provinciality. I have shown the note of pro- 
 vinciality as caused by remoteness from a centre of 
 correct infonnation. Of course the note of provin- 
 ciality from the want of a centre of correct taste is 
 still more visible, and it is also still more common. 
 For here great — even the greatest — powers of mind 
 most fail a man. Great powers of mind will make 
 him inform himself thoroughly, great powers of mind 
 will make him think profoundly, even with ignorance 
 and platitude all round him; but not even great 
 powers of mind will keep his taste and style perfectly 
 sound and sure, if he is left too much to himself, with 
 no “sovereign organ of opinion” in these matters 
 
62 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 III. 
 
 near him. Even men like Jeremy Taylor and Burke 
 suffer here. Take this passage from Taylor’s funeral 
 sennon on Lady Carbery : — 
 
 “ So have I seen a river, deep and smooth, passing 
 with a still foot and a sober face, and paying to the 
 /iscus^ the great exchequer of the sea, a tribute large 
 and full ; and hard by it a little brook, skipping and 
 making a noise upon its unequal and neighbour 
 bottom ; and after all its talking and bragged motion, 
 it paid to its common audit no more than the revenues 
 of a little cloud or a contemptible vessel : so have I 
 sometimes compared the issues of her religion to the 
 solemnities and famed outsides of another’s piety.” 
 That passage has been much admired, and, indeed, 
 the genius in it is undeniable. I should say, for my 
 part, that genius, the ruling divinity of poetry, had 
 been too busy in it, and intelligence, the ruling 
 divinity of prose, not busy enough. But can any 
 one, with the best models of style in his head, help 
 feeling the note of provinciality there, the want of 
 simplicity, the want of measure, the want of just the 
 qualities that make prose classicall If he does not 
 feel what I mean, let him place beside the passage of 
 Taylor this passage from the Panegyric of St. Paul, 
 by Taylor’s contemporary, Bossuet : — 
 
 “II ira, cet ignorant dans I’art de bien dire, avec cette 
 locution rude, avec cette phrase qui sent l’6tranger il 
 ira en cette Gr^ce polie, la m6re des philosophes et 
 des orateurs ; et malgr6 la resistance du monde, il y 
 etablira plus d’Eglises que Platon n’y a gagn4 dfe 
 disciples par cette eloquence qu’on a crue divine.” 
 
II. J LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 63 
 
 There we have prose without the note of provin- 
 ciality — classical prose, prose of the centre. 
 
 Or take Burke, our greatest English prose- writer, 
 as I think ; take expressions like this : — 
 
 “Blindfold themselves, like bulls that shut their 
 eyes when they push, they drive, by the point of 
 their bayonets, their slaves, blindfolded, indeed, no 
 worse than their lords, to take their fictions for cur- 
 rencies, and to swallow down paper pills by thirty- 
 four millions sterling at a dose.” 
 
 Or this : — 
 
 “They used it” (the royal name) “as a sort of 
 navel-string, to nourish their unnatural offspring from 
 the bowels of royalty itself. Now that the monster 
 can purvey for its own subsistence, it will only carry 
 the mark about it, as a token of its having torn the 
 womb it came from.” 
 
 Or this : — 
 
 “ Without one natural pang, he ” (Rousseau) “ casts 
 away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of 
 his disgustful amours, and sends his children to the 
 hospital of foundlings.” 
 
 Or this : — 
 
 “ I confess I never liked this continual talk of 
 resistance and revolution, or the practice of making the 
 extreme medicine of the constitution its daily bread. 
 It renders the habit of society dangerously valetu- 
 dinary; it is taking periodical doses of mercury 
 sublimate, and swallowing down repeated provocatives 
 of cantharides to our love of hberty.” 
 
 I say that is extravagant prose ; prose too much 
 
64 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [IL 
 
 suffered to indulge its caprices ; prose at too great a 
 distance from the centre of good taste; prose, in 
 short, with the note of provinciality. People may 
 reply, it is rich and imaginative ; yes, that is just it, 
 it is Asiatic prose, as the ancient critics would have 
 said ; prose somewhat barbarously rich and over- 
 loaded. But the true prose is Attic prose. 
 
 Well, but Addison’s prose is Attic prose. Where, 
 then, it may be asked, is the note of provinciality in 
 Addison 1 I answer, in the commonplace of his ideas. ^ 
 This is a matter worth remarking. Addison claims 
 to take leading rank as a moralist. To do that, you 
 must have ideas of the first order on your subject — 
 the best ideas, at any rate, attainable in your time — 
 as well as be able to express them in a perfectly 
 sound and sure style. Else you show your distance 
 from the centre of ideas by your matter; you are 
 provincial by your matter, though you may not be 
 
 ^ A critic says this is paradoxical, and urges that many 
 second-rate French academicians have uttered the most common- 
 place ideas possible. I agree that many second-rate French 
 academicians have uttered the most commonplace ideas possible ; 
 but Addison is not a second-rate man. He is a man of the 
 order, I will not say of Pascal, but at any rate of La Bruy^re 
 and Vauvenargues ; why does he not equal them ? I say be- 
 cause of the medium in which he finds himself, the atmosphere 
 in which he lives and woiks ; an atmosphere which tells un- 
 favourably, or rather (ends to tell unfavourably (for that is the 
 truer way of putting it) either upon style or else upon ideas ; 
 tends to make even a man of great ability either a Mr. Carlyle 
 or else a Lord Macaulay. 
 
 It is to be observed, however, that Lord Macaulay’s style has 
 in its turn suffered by his failure in ideas, and this cannot be 
 said of Addison’s. 
 
II,] LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 66 
 
 provincial by your style. It is comparatively a small 
 matter to express oneself well, if one will be content 
 with not expressing much, with expressing only trite 
 ideas ; the problem is to express new and profound 
 ideas in a perfectly sound and classical style. He is 
 the true classic, in every age, who does that. Now 
 Addison has not, on his subject of morals, the force 
 of ideas of the moralists of the first class — the classical 
 moralists ; he has not the best ideas attainable in or 
 about his time, and which were, so to speak, in the 
 air then, to be seized by the finest spirits ; he is not 
 to be compared for power, searchingness, or delicacy 
 of thought to Pascal or La Bruy^re or Vauvenargues ; 
 he is rather on a level, in this respect, with a man 
 like Marmontel. Therefore, I say, he has the note of 
 provinciality as a moralist; he is provincial by his 
 matter, though not by his style. 
 
 To illustrate what I mean by an example. Addison, 
 writing as a moralist on fixedness in religious faith, 
 says : — 
 
 “ Those who delight in reading books of controversy 
 do very seldom arrive at a fixed and settled habit of 
 faith. The doubt which was laid revives again, and 
 shows itself in new difficulties ; and that generally for 
 this reason, — because the mind, which is perpetually 
 tossed in controversies and disputes, is apt to forget 
 the reasons which had once set it at rest, and to 
 be disquieted with any former perplexity when it 
 appears in a new shape, or is started by a different 
 hand.” 
 
 It may be said, that is classical English, perfect in 
 
 voi. T. p 
 
66 ESSAY'S m CRITICISM. [n. 
 
 lucidity, measure, and propriety. I make no objec 
 tion ; but, in my turn, I say that the idea expressed 
 is perfectly trite and barren, and that it is a note of 
 provinciality in Addison, in a man whom a nation 
 puts forward as one of its great moralists, to have no 
 profounder and more striking idea to produce on this 
 great subject Compare, on the same subject, these 
 words of a moralist really of the first order, really at 
 the centre by his ideas, — Joubert : — 
 
 “ L’exp^rience de beaucoup d’opinions donne ^ 
 Tesprit beaucoup de flexibility et I’affermit dans celles 
 qu’il croit les meilleures.” 
 
 With what a flash of light that touches the subject ! 
 how it sets us thinking ! what a genuine contribution 
 to moral science it is ! 
 
 In short, where there is no centre like an academy, 
 if you have genius and powerful ideas, you are apt 
 not to have the best style going ; if you have pre- 
 cision of style and not genius, you are apt not to have 
 the best ideas going. 
 
 The provincial spirit, again, exaggerates the value 
 of its ideas for want of a high standard at hand by 
 which to try them. Or rather, for want of such a 
 standard, it gives one idea too much prominence at 
 the expense of others ; it orders its ideas amiss ; it is 
 hurried away by fancies ; it likes and dislikes too 
 passionately, too exclusively. Its admiration weeps 
 hysterical tears, and its disapprobation foams at the 
 mouth, feo we get the eruptive and the aggressive 
 manner in literature; the former prevails most in 
 oui' criticism, the latter in our newspapers. For, not 
 
a.] LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 67 
 
 having the lucidity of a large and centrally placed 
 intelligence, the provincial spirit has not its gracious- 
 ness ; it does not persuade, it makes war ; it has not 
 urbanity, the tone of the city, of the centre, the tone 
 which always aims at a spiritual and intellectual effect, 
 and not excluding the use of banter, never disjoins 
 banter itself from politeness, from felicity. But the 
 provincial tone is more violent, and seems to aim 
 rather at an effect upon the blood and senses than 
 upon the spirit and intellect; it loves hard-hitting 
 rather than persuading. The newspaper, with its 
 party spirit, its thorough-goingness, its resolute avoid- 
 ance of shades and distinctions, its short, highly- 
 charged, heavy - shotted articles, its style so unlike 
 that style lenis minim^que pertinax — easy and not too 
 violently insisting, — which the ancients so much ad- 
 mired, is its true literature ; the provincial spirit likes 
 in the newspaper just what makes the newspaper such 
 bad food for it, — just what made Goethe say, when he 
 was pressed hard about the immorality of Byron’s 
 poems, that, after all, they were not so immoral as 
 the newspapers. The French talk of the brutalite des 
 journaux anglais. What strikes them comes from the 
 necessary inherent tendencies of newspaper -writing 
 not being checked in England by any centre of in- 
 telligent and urbane spirit, but rather stimulated by 
 coming in contact with a provincial spirit. Even a 
 newspaper like the Saturday Review, that old friend of 
 all of us, *a newspaper expressly aiming at an immunity 
 from the common newspaper-spirit, aiming at being a 
 sort of organ of reason, — and, by thus aiming, it nierita 
 
68 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [U 
 
 great gratitude and has done great good, — even the 
 Satv/rday Review^ replying to some foreign criticism on 
 our precautions against invasion, falls into a strain of 
 this kind : — 
 
 “ To do this ” (to take these precautions) “ seems 
 to us eminently worthy of a great nation, and to talk 
 of it as unworthy of a great nation, seems to us 
 eminently worthy of a great fool.” 
 
 There is what the French mean when they talk of 
 the hrutaJiU de^journaux anglais; there is a style 
 certainly as far removed from urbanity as possible, — 
 a style with what I call the note of provinciality. 
 And the same note may not unfrequently be observed 
 even in the ideas of this newspaper, full as it is of 
 thought and cleverness : certain ideas allowed to be- 
 come fixed ideas, to prevail too absolutely. I will not 
 speak of the immediate present, but, to go a little 
 while back, it had the critic who so disliked the 
 Emperor of the French ; it had the critic who so dis- 
 liked the subject of my present remarks — academies \ 
 it had the critic who was so fond of the German 
 element in our nation, and, indeed, everywhere ; who 
 ground his teeth if one said Charlemagne instead of 
 Charles the Great, and, in short, saw all things in 
 Teutonism, as Malebranche saw all things in God 
 Certainly any one may fairly find faults in the Em- 
 peror Napoleon or in academies, and merit in the 
 German element ; but it is a note of the provincial 
 spirit not to hold ideas of this kind a little more 
 easily, to be so devoured by them, to sufifer them to 
 become crotchets. 
 
II.] LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 69 
 
 In England there needs a miracle of genius like 
 Shakspeare’s to produce balance of mind, and a miracle 
 of intellectual delicacy like Dr. Newman’s to produce 
 urbanity of style. How prevalent all round us is the 
 want of balance of mind and urbanity of style ! How 
 much, doubtless, it is to be found in ourselves, — in 
 each of us ! but, as human nature is constituted, every 
 one can see it clearest in his contemporaries. There, 
 above all, we should consider it, because they and we 
 are exposed to the same influences ; and it is in the 
 best of one’s contemporaries that it is most worth con- 
 sidering, because one then most feels the harm it does, 
 when one sees what they would be without it. Think 
 of the difference between Mr. Ruskin exercising his 
 genius, and Mr. Ruskin exercising his intelligence ; 
 consider the truth and beauty of this : — 
 
 “ Go out, in the spring-time, among the meadows 
 that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the 
 roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with 
 the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass 
 grows deep and free ; and as you follow the winding 
 mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and 
 dim with blossom, — paths that for ever droop and rise 
 over the green banks and mounds sweeping down iu 
 scented undulation, steep to the blue water studded 
 here and there with new-mown heaps, filling all the 
 air with fainter sweetness, — look up towards the 
 higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll 
 silently into their long inlets among the shadows of 
 the pines ” 
 
 There is what the genius, the feeling, the tempera^ 
 
70 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [U 
 
 ment in Mr. Ruskin, the original and incommunicable 
 part, has to do with ; and how exquisite it is ! All 
 the critic could possibly suggest, in the way of objec- 
 tion, would be, perhaps, that Mr. Ruskin is there 
 trying to make prose do more than it can perfectly 
 do ; that what he is there attempting he will never, 
 except in poetry, be able to accomplish to Ids own 
 entire satisfaction : but he accomplishes so much that 
 the critic may well hesitate to suggest even this 
 Place beside this charming passage another, — a passage 
 about Shakspeare’s names, where the intelligence and 
 judgment of Mr. Ruskin, the acquired, trained, com- 
 municable part in him, are brought into play, — and 
 see the difference : — 
 
 “ Of Shakspeare’s names I will afterwards speak at 
 more length ; they are curiously — often barbarously — 
 mixed out of various traditions and languages. Three 
 of the clearest in meaning have been already noticed. 
 Desdemona — * SvcrSaifxovLa^* miserable fortune — is also 
 plain enough. Othello is, I believe, ‘the careful;’ 
 all the calamity of the tragedy arising from the single 
 flaw and error in his magnificently collected strength. 
 Ophelia, ‘serviceableness,’ the true, lost wife of Hamlet, 
 is marked as having a Greek name by that of her 
 brother, Laertes; and its signification is once ex- 
 quisitely alluded to in that brother’s last word of her, 
 where her gentle preciousness is opposed to the use- 
 lessness of the churlish clergy : — ‘ A ministering angel 
 shall my sister be, when thou best howling.’ Hamlet 
 is, I believe, connected in some way with ‘ homely,’ 
 the entire event of the tragedy turning on betrayal 
 
a.] LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 71 
 
 of home duty. Hermione (ep/Jia), ‘ pillar-like ’ (rj efSos 
 eX^ XpvGrrjs ’A(f)po8iTrj^) ; Titania {rcT'qvT]), ‘the queen;’ 
 Benedick and Beatrice, ‘ blessed and blessing ; ’ Valen- 
 tine and Proteus, ‘enduring or strong’ (valens\ and 
 ‘changeful.’ lago and lachimo have evidently the 
 same root — probably the Spanish lago, Jacob, ‘the 
 supplanter.’ ” 
 
 Now, really, what a piece of extravagance all that 
 is ! I will not say that the meaning of Shakspeare’s 
 names (I put aside the question as to the correctness 
 of Mr. Buskin’s etymologies) has no effect at all, may 
 be entirely lost sight of ; but to give it that degree of 
 prominence is to throw the reins to one’s whim, to 
 forget all moderation and proportion, to lose the 
 balance of one’s mind altogether. It is to show in 
 one’s criticism, to the highest excess, the note of 
 provinciality. 
 
 Again, there is Mr. Palgrave, certainly endowed 
 with a very fine critical tact : his Golden Treasury 
 abundantly proves it. The plan of arrangement which 
 he devised for that work, the mode in which he fol- 
 lowed his plan out, nay, one might even say, merely 
 the juxtaposition, in pursuance of it, of two such 
 pieces as those of Wordsworth and Shelley which 
 form the 285th and 286th in his collection, show a 
 delicacy of feeling in these matters which is quite 
 indisputable and very rare. And his notes are full of 
 remarks which show it too. All the more striking, 
 conjoined with so much justness of perception, are 
 certain freaks and violences in Mr. Palgrave’s criticism, 
 mainly imputable. I think, to the critic’s isolated posi- 
 
72 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [a 
 
 tion in this country, to his feeling himself too much 
 left to take his own way, too much without any central 
 authority representing high culture and sound judg- 
 ment, by which he may be, on the one hand, confirmed 
 as against the ignorant, on the other, held in respect 
 when he himself is inclined to take liberties. I mean 
 such things as this note on Milton’s line, — 
 
 “The great Emathian conqueror bade spare” . . . 
 
 “ When Thebes was destroyed, Alexander ordered the 
 house of Pindar to be spared. He was as incapahle oj 
 appreciating the poet as Louis XIV. of appreciating Racine; 
 hut even the narrow and barbarian mind of Alexander 
 could understand the advantage of a showy act of homage 
 to poetry.” A note like that I call a freak or a violence; 
 if this disparaging view of Alexander and Louis XIV., 
 so unlike the current view, is wrong, — if the current 
 view is, after all, the truer one of them, — the note is 
 a freak. But, even if its disparaging view is right, 
 the note is a violence ; for, abandoning the true mode 
 of intellectual action — persuasion, the instilment of 
 conviction, — it simply astounds and irritates the hearer 
 by contradicting without a word of proof or prepara- 
 tion, his fixed and familiar notions ; and this is mere 
 violence. In either case, the fitness, the measure, the 
 centrality, which is the soul of all good criticism, is 
 lost, and the note of provinciality shows itself. 
 
 Thus, in the famous Handbook^ marks of a fine 
 power of perception are everywhere discernible, but 
 so, too, are marks of the want of sure balance, of the 
 check and support afforded by knowing one speaks 
 
li.] LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 73 
 
 before good and severe judges. When Mr. Palgrave 
 dislikes a thing, he feels no pressure constraining 
 him either to try his dislike closely or to express it 
 moderately ; he does not mince matters, he gives his 
 dislike all its own way ; both his judgment and his 
 style would gain if he were under more restraint. 
 “ The style which has filled London with the dead 
 monotony of Gower or Harley Streets, or the pale 
 commonplace of Belgravia, Tyburnia, and Kensing- 
 ton ; which has pierced Paris and Madrid with the 
 feeble frivolities of the Rue Rivoli and the Strada de 
 Toledo.” He dislikes the architecture of the Rue 
 Rivoli, and he puts it on a level with the architecture 
 of Belgravia and Gower Street ; he lumps them all 
 together in one condemnation, he loses sight of the 
 shade, the distinction, which is everything here ; the 
 distinction, namely, that the architecture of the Rue 
 Rivoli expresses show, splendour, pleasure, — unworthy 
 things, perhaps, to express alone and for their own 
 sakes, but it expresses them; whereas the architec- 
 ture of Gower Street and Belgravia merely expresses 
 the impotence of the architect to express anything. 
 Then, as to style : “ sculpture which stands in a 
 contrast with Woolner hardly more shameful than 
 diverting.” . . . ‘‘passing from Davy or Faraday to 
 the art of the m mntebank or the science of the spirit- 
 rapper.” ... “it is the old, old story with Maro- 
 chetti, the frog trying to blow himself out to bull 
 dimensions. He may puff and be puffed, but he will 
 never do it.” We all remember that shower of 
 amenities on poor M. Marochetti. Now, here Mr. 
 
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [U 
 
 Palgrave himself enables us to form a contrast which 
 lets us see just what the presence of an academy does 
 for style ; for he quotes a cnticism by M. Gustave 
 Planche on this very M. Marochetti. M. Gustave 
 Planche \vas a critic of the very first order, a man of 
 strong opinions, which he expressed with severity; 
 he, too, condemns M. Marochetti’s work, and Mr. 
 Palgrave calls him as a witness to back what he has 
 himself said ; certainly Mr. Palgrave’s translation will 
 not exaggerate M. Planche’s urbanity in dealing with 
 M. Marochetti, but, even in this translation, see the 
 difference in sobriety, in measure, between the critic 
 writing in Paris and the critic writing in London : — 
 
 “ These conditions are so elementary, that I am at 
 a perfect loss to comprehend how M. Marochetti has 
 neglected them. There are soldiers here like the 
 leaden playthings of the nursery : it is almost im- 
 possible to guess whether there is a body beneath the 
 dress. We have here no question of style, not even 
 of grammar ; it is nothing beyond mere matter of the 
 alphabet of art. To break these conditions is the 
 same as to be ignorant of spelling.” 
 
 That is really more formidable criticism than Mr. 
 Palgrave’s, and yet in how perfectly temperate a 
 style ! M. Planche’s advantage is, that he feels him- 
 self to be speaking before competent judges, that 
 there is a force of cultivated opinion for him to appeal 
 to. Therefore, he must not be extravagant, and he 
 need not storm ; he must satisfy the reason and 
 taste, — that is his business. Mr. Palgrave, on the 
 other hand, feels himself to be speaking before a pro- 
 
£ 1 .] LITERAKY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 75 
 
 miscuous multitude, with the few good judges so 
 scattered through it as to be powerless ; therefore, 
 he has no calm confidence and no self-control; he 
 relies on the strength of his lungs ; he knows that 
 big words impose on the mob, and that, even if he is 
 outrageous, most of his audience are apt to be a great 
 deal more so.^ 
 
 Again, the first two volumes of Mr. Kinglake’s 
 Invasion of the Crimea were certainly among the most 
 successful and renowned English books of our time. 
 Their style was one of the most renowed things 
 about them, and yet how conspicuous a fault in Mr. 
 Kinglake’s style is this over-charge of which I have 
 been speaking ! Mr. James Gordon Bennett, of the 
 New York Herald^ says, I believe, that the highest 
 achievement of the human intellect is what he calls 
 “ a good editorial.” This is not quite so ; but, if it 
 were so, on what a height would these two volumes 
 by Mr. Kinglake stand ! I have already spoken of 
 the Attic and the Asiatic styles ; besides these, there 
 is the Corinthian style. That is the style for “ a 
 good editorial,” and Mr. Kinglake has really reached 
 perfection in it. It has not the warm glow, blithe 
 movement, and soft pliancy of life, as the Attic style 
 has ; it has not the over-heavy richness and encum- 
 bered gait of the Asiatic style ; it has glitter without 
 warmth, rapidity without ease, effectiveness without 
 
 ^ When I wrote this I had before me the first edition of Mr. 
 Palgrave’s Handbook. I am bound to say that in the second 
 edition much strong language has been expunged, and what 
 remains, softened. 
 
76 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 In 
 
 charm. Its characteristic is, that it has no soul ; all 
 it exists for, is to get its ends, to make its points, to 
 damage its adversaries, to be admired, to triumph. A 
 style so bent on effect at the expense of soul, simplicity, 
 and delicacy ; a style so little studious of the charm 
 of the great models ; so far from classic truth and 
 grace, must surely be said to have the note of provin- 
 ciality. Yet Mr. Kinglake’s talent is a really eminent 
 one, and so in harmony vdth our intellectual habits and 
 tendencies, that, to the great bulk of English people, 
 the faults of his style seem its merits ; all the more 
 needful that criticism should not be dazzled by them. 
 
 We must not compare a man of Mr. Kinglake’s 
 literary talent with French writers like M. de Bazan- 
 court. We must compare him with M. Thiers. And 
 what a superiority in style has M. Thiers from being 
 formed in a good school, with severe traditions, 
 wholesome restraining influences ! Even in this age 
 of Mr. James Gordon Bennett, his style has nothing 
 Corinthian about it, its lightness and brightness make 
 it almost Attic. It is not quite Attic, however; it 
 has not the infallible sureness of Attic taste. Some- 
 times his head gets a little hot with the fumes of 
 patriotism, and then he crosses the line, he loses 
 perfect measure, he declaims, he raises a momentary 
 smile. France condemned ‘ k etre I’effi-oi du monde 
 dont elle pourrait ttre V amour ^ — Caesar, whose exquisite 
 simplicity M. Thiers so much admires, would not 
 have written like that. There is, if I may be allowed 
 to say so, the slightest possible touch of fatuity in 
 such language, — of that failure in good sense which 
 
II.] LITER AKY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 77 
 
 comes from too warm a self-satisfactioa But com- 
 pare this language with Mr. Kinglake’s Marshal St. 
 Amaud — “dismissed from the presence” of Lord 
 Raglan or Lord Stratford, “ cowed and pressed down ” 
 under their “ stern reproofs,” or under “ the majesty 
 of the great Elchi’s Canning brow and tight, merciless 
 lips ! ” The failure in good sense and good taste 
 there reaches far beyond what the French mean by 
 fatuity ; they would call it by another word, a word 
 expressing blank defect of intelligence, a word for 
 which we have no exact equivalent in English, — Ute. 
 It is the difference between a venial, momentary, 
 good-tempered excess, in a man of the world, of an 
 amiable and social weakness, — vanity ; and a serious, 
 settled, fierce, narrow, provincial misconception of the 
 whole relative value of one’s own things and the 
 things of others. So baneful to the style of even the 
 cleverest man may be the total want of checks. 
 
 In all I have said, I do not pretend that the 
 examples given prove my rule as to the influence of 
 academies ; they only illustrate it. Examples in 
 plenty might very likely be found to set against them ; 
 the truth of the rule depends, no doubt, on whether 
 the balance of all the examples is in its favour or 
 not ; but actually to strike this balance is always out 
 of the question. Here, as everywhere else, the rule, 
 the idea, if time, commends itself to the judicious, and 
 then the examples make it clearer still to them. This 
 is the real use of examples, and this alone is the pur- 
 pose which I have meant mine to serve. There is 
 also another side to the whole question, — as to the 
 
78 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 fn. 
 
 limiting and prejudicial operation wliicli academies 
 may have ; but this side of the question it rather 
 behoves the French, not us, to study. 
 
 The reader will ask for some practical conclusion 
 about the establishment of an Academy in this coun- 
 try, and perhaps I shall hardly give him the one he 
 expects. But nations have their own modes of acting, 
 and these modes are not easily changed; they are 
 even consecrated, when great things have been done 
 in them. When a literature has produced Shakspeare 
 and Milton, when it has even produced Barrow and 
 Burke, it cannot well abandon its traditions ; it can 
 hardly begin, at this late time of day, with an institu- 
 tion like the French Academy. I think academies 
 with a limited, special, scientific scope, in the various 
 lines of intellectual work, — academies like that of 
 Berlin, for instance, — we with time may, and probably 
 shall, establish. And no doubt they will do good ; 
 no doubt the presence of such influential centres of 
 correct information will tend to raise the standard 
 amongst us for what I have called the journeyman- 
 work of literature, and to free us from the scandal of 
 such biographical dictionaries as Chalmers’s, or such 
 translations as a recent one of Spinoza, or perhaps, 
 such philological freaks as Mr. Forster’s about the one 
 primeval language. But an academy quite like the 
 French Academy, a sovereign organ of the highest 
 literary opinion, a recognised authority in matters of 
 intellectual tone and taste, we shall hardly have, and 
 perhaps we ought not to wish to have it. But then 
 ery one amongst us with any turn for literature 
 
II.] 
 
 LITERARY INFI-UENCE OF ACADEMIES. 
 
 79 
 
 will do well to remember to what shortcomings and 
 excesses, which such an academy tends to correct, we 
 are liable; and the more liable, of course, for not 
 having it. He will do well constantly to try himself 
 in respect of these, steadily to widen his culture, 
 severely to check in himself the provincial spirit ; 
 and he will do this the better the more he keeps in 
 mind that all mere glorification by ourselves of our- 
 selves or our literature, in the strain of what, at the 
 beginning of these remarks, I quoted from Lord 
 Macaulay, is both vulgar, and, besides being vulgar 
 retarding. 
 
III. 
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 
 
 I wiLii not presume to say that I now know the 
 French language well ; but at a time when I knew it 
 even less well than at present, — some fifteen years 
 ago, — I remember pestering those about me with this 
 sentence, the rhythm of which had lodged itself in 
 my head, and which, with the strangest pronunciation 
 possible, I kept perpetually declaiming : “ Les dieux 
 jaloux 07i,t enfoui quelque part les Umoignages de la de- 
 scendance des choses ; mais au lord de quel 0c6an ont-ils 
 rouU la pierre qui les couvre^ d Macarde ! ” 
 
 These words come from a short composition called 
 the Centaur^ of which the author, Georges-Maurice de 
 Gu4rin, died in the year 1839, at the age of twenty- 
 eight, without having published anything. In 1840, 
 Madame Sand brought out the Centaur in the Revue 
 des Deux Mondes^ with a short notice of its author, and 
 a few extracts from his letters. A year or two after- 
 wards she reprinted these at the end of a volume ol 
 her novels ; and there it was that I fell in with them, 
 I was so much struck with the Centaw that I waited 
 
rii.] 
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 
 
 81 
 
 anxiously to hear something more of its author, and 
 of what he had left ; but it was not till the other day 
 — twenty years after the first publication of the Cen- 
 taur in the Revue des Deux Mondes, that my anxiety 
 was satisfied. At the end of 1860 appeared two 
 volumes with the title Maurice de Gu4rin, Reliquice, 
 containing the Centaur^ several poems of Guerin, his 
 journals, and a number of his letters, collected and 
 edited by a devoted friend, M. Trebutien, and pre- 
 ceded by a notice of Gu6rin by the first of living 
 critics, M. Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 The grand power of poetry is its interpretative 
 power ; by which I mean, not a power of drawing out 
 in black and white an explanation of the mystery of 
 the universe, but the power of so dealing with things 
 as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and inti- 
 mate sense of them, and of our relations with them. 
 When this sense is awakened in us, as to objects with- 
 out us, we feel ourselves to be in contact with the 
 essential nature of those objects, to be no longer be- 
 wildered and oppressed by them, but to have their 
 secret, and to be in harmony with them ; and this 
 feeling calms and satisfies us as no other can. Poetry, 
 indeed, interprets in another way besides this ; but 
 one of its two ways of interpreting, of exercising its 
 highest power, is by awakening this sense in us. I 
 will not now inquire whether this sense is illusive, 
 whether it can be proved not to be illusive, whether 
 it does absolutely make us possess the real nature of 
 things ; all I say is, that poetry can awaken it in us, 
 and that to awaken it is one of the highest powers ot 
 
 VOL. L Q 
 
82 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [ill. 
 
 poetry. The interpretations of science do not give 
 us this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations 
 of poetry give it ; they appeal to a limited faculty, 
 and not to the whole man. It is not Linnseus or 
 Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of 
 animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret 
 for us, who makes us participate in their life ; it it 
 Shakspeare, with his 
 
 “ daffodils 
 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty ; ” 
 
 it is Wordsworth, with his 
 
 “voice .... heard 
 In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird. 
 
 Breaking the silence of the seas 
 Among the farthest Hebrides ; ” 
 
 it is Keats, with his 
 
 ‘ ‘ moving waters at their priestlike task 
 Of cold ablution round Earth’s human shores ; ” 
 
 it is Chateaubriand, with his, “ cime inddtermin6e des 
 forUs ; ” it is Senancour, with his mountain birch-tree : 
 “ Cette dcorce Uanche, llsse et crevass4e ; cette tige agreste ; 
 ces branches qui s’inclinent vers la terre ; la moUliU des 
 feuilleSf et tout cet ahandoUy simplicity de la nature, attitude 
 des dherts.^' 
 
 Eminent manifestations of this magical power of 
 poetry are very rare and very precious : the composi- 
 tions of Gu6rin manifest it, I think, in singular emi- 
 nence. Not his poems, strictly so called, — his verse, 
 — so much as his prose ; his poems in general take 
 for their vehicle that favourite metre of French poetry, 
 
MAURICE DE GUl^RIN. 
 
 83 
 
 III.3 
 
 the Alexandrine; and, in my judgment, I confess 
 they have thus, as compared with his prose, a great 
 disadvantage to start with. In prose, the character 
 of the vehicle for the composer’s thoughts is not de- 
 termined beforehand; every composer has to make 
 his own vehicle ; and who has ever done this more 
 admirably than the great prose- writers of France, — 
 Pascal, Bossuet, F^nelon, Voltaire? But in verse the 
 composer has (with comparatively narrow liberty of 
 modification) to accept his vehicle ready-made ; it is 
 therefore of vital importance to him that he should 
 find at his disposal a vehicle adequate to convey the 
 highest matters of poetry. We may even get a deci- 
 sive test of the poetical power of a language and 
 nation by ascertaining how far the principal poetical 
 vehicle which they have employed, how far (in plainer 
 words) the established national metre for high poetry, 
 is adequate or inadequate. It seems to me that the 
 established metre of this kind in France, — the Alex- 
 andrine, — is inadequate ; that as a vehicle for high 
 poetry it is greatly inferior to the hexameter or to 
 the iambics of Greece (for example), or to the blank 
 verse of England. Therefore the man of genius who 
 uses it is at a disadvantage as compared with the man 
 of genius who has for conveying his thoughts a more 
 adequate vehicle, metrical or not. Eacine is at a dis- 
 advantage as compared with Sophocles or Shakspeare, 
 and he is likewise at a disadvantage as compared with 
 Bossuet. 
 
 The same may be said of our own poets of the 
 eighteenth century, a century which gave them as the 
 
84 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [III. 
 
 main vehicle for their high poetry a metre inadequate 
 (as much as the French Alexandrine, and nearly in 
 the same way) for this poetry, — the ten -syllable 
 couplet. It is worth remarking, that the English 
 poet of the eighteenth century whose compositions 
 wear best and give one the most entire satisfaction, 
 — Gray, — hardly uses that couplet at all : this absti- 
 nence, however, limits Gray’s productions to a few 
 short compositions, and (exquisite as these are) he is 
 a poetical nature repressed and without free issue. 
 For English poetical production on a great scale, for 
 an English poet deploying all the forces of his genius, 
 the ten-syllable couplet was, in the eighteenth century, 
 the established, one may almost say the inevitable, 
 channel. Now this couplet, admirable (as Chaucer 
 uses it) for story-telling not of the epic pitch, and 
 often admirable for a few lines even in poetry of a 
 very high pitch, is for continuous use in poetry of this 
 latter kind inadequate. Pope, in his Essay on MaUj 
 is thus at a disadvantage compared vdth Lucretius in 
 his poem on Nature : Lucretius has an adequate 
 vehicle, Pope has not. Nay, though Pope’s genius 
 for didactic poetry was not less than that of Horace, 
 while his satirical power was certainly greater, still 
 one’s taste receives, I cannot but think, a certain 
 satisfaction when one reads the Epistles and Satires 
 of Horace, which it fails to receive when one reads 
 the Satires and Epistles of Pope. Of such avail is 
 the superior adequacy of the vehicle used to compen- 
 sate even an inferiority of genius in the user ! In the 
 same way Pope is at a disadvantage as compared with 
 
MAURICE DE GUERIN. 
 
 85 
 
 in.3 
 
 Addison. The best of Addison’s composition (the 
 “Coverley Papers ” in the S;pectator, for instance) wears 
 better than the best of Pope’s, because Addison has 
 in his prose an intrinsically better vehicle for hia 
 genius than Pope in his couplet. But Bacon has no 
 such advantage over Shakspeare ; nor has Milton, 
 writing prose (for no contemporary English prose- 
 writer must be matched with Milton except Milton 
 himself), any such advantage over Milton v^Titing 
 verse : indeed, the advantage here is all the other 
 way. 
 
 It is in the prose remains of Guerin, — his jour- 
 nals, his letters, and the striking composition which 
 I have already mentioned, the Centaur^ — that his 
 extraordinary gift manifests itself. He has a truly 
 interpretative faculty \ the most profound and delicate 
 sense of the life of Nature, and the most exquisite 
 felicity in finding expressions to render that sense. 
 To all who love poetry, Gu6rin deserves to be some- 
 thing more than a name ; and I shall try, in spite of 
 the impossibility of doing justice to such a master of 
 expression by translations, to make English readers 
 see for themselves how gifted an organisation his was, 
 and how few artists have received from Nature a more 
 magical faculty of interpreting her. 
 
 In the winter of the year 1832 there was collected 
 in Brittany, around the well-known Abb6 Lamennais, 
 a singidar gathering. At a lonely place, La Chenaie, 
 he had founded a religious retreat, to which dis« 
 ciples, attracted by his powers or by his reputation. 
 
86 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [III. 
 
 repaired. Some came with the intention of preparing 
 themselves for the ecclesiastical profession ; others 
 merely to profit by the society and discourse of so 
 distinguished a master. Among the inmates were 
 men whose names have since become known to all 
 Europe, — Lacordaire and M. de Montalembert ; there 
 were others, who have acquired a reputation, not 
 Eui'opean, indeed, but considerable, — the Abb4 Ger- 
 bet, the Ahb4 Eohrbacher; others, who have never 
 quitted the shade of private life. The winter of 
 1832 was a period of crisis in the religious world of 
 France : Lamennais’s rupture with Eome, the con- 
 demnation of his opinions by the Pope, and his revolt 
 against that condemnation, were imminent. Some of 
 his followers, like Lacordaire, had already resolved 
 not to cross the Rubicon with their leader, not to go 
 into rebellion against Rome ; they were preparing to 
 separate from him. The society of La Clienaie was 
 soon to dissolve ; but, such as it is shown to us for a 
 moment, with its voluntary character, its simple and 
 severe life in common, its mixture of lay and clerical 
 members, the genius of its chiefs, the sincerity of its 
 disciples, — above all, its paramount fervent interest 
 in matters of spiritual and religious concernment, — 
 it offers a most instructive spectacle. It is not the 
 spectacle we most of us think to find in France, the 
 France we have imagined from common English 
 notions, from the streets of Paris, from novels ; it 
 shows us how, wherever there is greatness like that 
 of France, there are, as its foundation, treasures of 
 fervour, pure-mindedness, and spirituality somewhere, 
 
MAURICE DE GUERIR. 
 
 87 
 
 III.] 
 
 whether we know of them or not ; — a store of that 
 which Goethe calls Ilalt ; — since greatness can never 
 be founded upon frivolity and corruption. 
 
 On the evening of the 18th of December in this 
 year 1832, M. de Lamennais was talking to those 
 assembled in the sitting-room of La Chenaie of his 
 recent journey to Italy. He talked with all his usual 
 animation; “but,” writes one of his hearers, a Breton 
 gentleman, M. de Marzan, “ I soon became inattentive 
 and absent, being struck with the reserved attitude 
 of a young stranger some twenty-two years old, pale 
 in face, his black hair already thin over his temples, 
 with a southern eye, in which brightness and melan- 
 choly were mingled. He kept himself somewhat aloof, 
 seeming to avoid notice rather than to court it. All 
 the old faces of friends which I found about me at 
 this my re-entry into the circle of La Chenaie failed 
 to occupy me so much as the sight of this stranger, 
 looking on, listening, observing, and saying nothing.” 
 
 The unlmown was Maurice de Guerin. Of a noble 
 but poor family, having lost his mother at six years 
 old, he had been brought up by his father, a man 
 saddened by his wife’s death, and austerely religious, 
 at the chateau of Le Cayla, in Languedoc. His child- 
 hood was not gay ; he had not the society of other 
 boys ; and solitude, the sight of his father’s gloom, 
 and the habit of accompanying the cur6 of the parish 
 on his rounds among the sick and dying, made him 
 prematurely grave and familiar with sorrow. He 
 went to school first at Toulouse, then at the College 
 Stanislas at Paris, with a temperament almost as unfit 
 
88 
 
 essaVs in criticism. 
 
 tllL 
 
 as Shelley’s for common school life. His youth was 
 ardent, sensitive, agitated, and unhappy. In 1832 
 he procured admission to La Chenaie to brace hia 
 spirit by the teaching of Lamennais, and to decide 
 whether his religious feelings would determine them- 
 selves into a distinct religious vocation. Strong and 
 deep religious feelings he had, implanted in him by 
 nature, developed in him by the circumstances of his 
 childhood ; but he had also (and here is the key to 
 his character) that temperament which opposes itself 
 to the fixedness of a religious vocation, or to any 
 vocation of which fixedness is an essential attribute ; 
 a temperament mobile, inconstant, eager, thirsting for 
 new impressions, abhorring rules, aspiring to a 
 “ renovation without end ; ” a temperament common 
 enough among artists, but with which few artists, 
 who have it to the same degree as Gu4rin, unite a 
 seriousness and a sad intensity like his. After leav- 
 ing school, and before going to La Chenaie, he had 
 been at home at Le Cayla with his sister Eug6nie (a 
 wonderfully gifted person, whose genius so competent 
 a judge as M. Sainte-Beuve is inclined to pronounce 
 even superior to her brother’s) and his sister Eugenie’s 
 friends. With one of these friends he had fallen in 
 love, — a slight and transient fancy, but which had 
 already called his poetical powers into exercise ; and 
 his poems and fragments, in a certain green note-book 
 {le Caliier Vert) which he long continued to make the 
 depository of his thoughts, and which became famous 
 among his friends, he brought with him to La Chenaie. 
 There he found among the younger members of the 
 
III.] 
 
 MAURICE DE GUfiRIN. 
 
 89 
 
 Society several who, like himself, had a secret passion 
 for poetry and literature ; with these he became inti- 
 mate, and in his letters and journal we find him occu- 
 pied, now with a literary commerce established with 
 these friends, now with the fortunes, fast coming to 
 a crisis, of the Society, and now with that for the 
 sake of which he came to La Chenaie, — his religious 
 progress and the state of his souL 
 
 On Christmas-day, 1832, having been then three 
 weeks at La Chenaie, he writes thus of it to a friend 
 of his family, M. de Bayne : — 
 
 “ La Chenaie is a sort of oasis in the midst of the 
 steppes of Brittany. In front of the chateau stretches 
 a very large garden cut in two by a terrace with a 
 lime avenue, at the end of which is a tiny chapel. I 
 am extremely fond of this little oratory, where one 
 breathes a twofold peace, — the peace of solitude and 
 the peace of the Lord. When spring comes we shall 
 walk to prayers between two borders of flowers. On 
 the east side, and only a few yards from the chateau, 
 sleeps a small mere between two woods, where the 
 birds in warm weather sing all day long ; and then, 
 — right, left, on all sides, — woods, woods, everywhere 
 woods. It looks desolate just now that all is bare 
 and the woods are rust-colour, and under this Brittany 
 sky, which is always clouded and so low that it seems 
 as if it were going to fall on your head ; but as soon as 
 spring comes the sky raises itself up, the woods come 
 to life again, and everything will be full of charm.” 
 Of what La Chenaie will be when spring comes he 
 has a foretaste on the 3d of March. 
 
90 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [ill. 
 
 “ To-day’^ (he writes in his journal) ‘ has enchanted 
 me. For the first time for a long while the sun has 
 shown himself in all his beauty. He has made the 
 buds of the leaves and flowers swell, and he has waked 
 up in me a thousand happy thoughts. The clouds 
 assume more and more their light and graceful shapes, 
 and are sketching, over the blue sky, the most charm- 
 ing fancies. The woods have not yet got their leaves, 
 but they are taking an indescribable air of life and 
 gaiety, which gives them quite a new physiognomy. 
 Everything is getting ready for the great festival of 
 Nature.” 
 
 Storm and snow adjourn this festival a little longer. 
 On the 11th of March he writes : — 
 
 “ It has snowed all night. I have been to look at 
 oui* primroses ; each of them has its small load of 
 snow, and was bowing its head under its burdea 
 These pretty flowers, with their rich yellow colour, 
 had a charming effect under their white hoods. I saw 
 whole tufts of them roofed over by a single block 
 of snow ; all these laughing flowers thus shrouded and 
 leaning one upon another, made one think of a group 
 of young girls surprised by a shower, and sheltering 
 under a white apron.” 
 
 The bui’st of spring comes at last, though late. 
 On the 5th of April we find Gu6rin “ sitting in the 
 sun to penetrate himself to the very marrow with the 
 divine spring.” On the 3d of May, “one can actually 
 see the progress of the green ; it has made a start 
 from the garden to the shrubberies, it is getting the 
 upper hand all along the mere; it leaps, one may say, 
 
III.] 
 
 MaUKICE DE GUBKIN. 
 
 91 
 
 from tree to tree, from thicket to thicket, in the fields 
 and on the hill-sides ; and I can see it already arrived 
 at the forest edge and beginning to spread itself over 
 the broad back of the forest. Soon it will have over- 
 run everything as far as the eye can reach, and all 
 those wide spaces between here and the horizon will 
 be moving and sounding like one vast sea, a sea of 
 emerald.” 
 
 Finally, on the 16th of May, he writes to M. de 
 Bayne that “ the gloomy and bad days, — bad because 
 they bring temptation by their gloom, — are, thanks 
 to God and the spring, over ; and I see approaching a 
 long file of shining and happy days, to do me all the 
 good in the world. This Brittany of ours,” he con- 
 tinues, “ gives one the idea of the grayest and most 
 wrinkled old woman possible suddenly changed back 
 by the touch of a fairy’s wand into a girl of twenty, 
 and one of the loveliest in the world ; the fine weather 
 has so decked and beautified the dear old country.” 
 He felt, however, the cloudiness and cold of the “ dear 
 old country ” with all the sensitiveness of a child of 
 the South. “ What a difference,” he cries, “ between 
 the sky of Brittany, even on the finest day, and the 
 sky of our South ! Here the summer has, even on 
 its highdays and holidays, something mournful, over- 
 cast, and stinted about it. It is like a miser who is 
 making a show ; there is a niggardliness in his mag- 
 nificence. Give me our Languedoc sky, so bountiful 
 of light, so blue, so largely vaulted ! ” And somewhat 
 later, complaining of the short and dim sunlight of a 
 February day in Paris, “What a sunshine,” he ex* 
 
92 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [ill. 
 
 claims, “ to gladden eyes accustomed to all the wealth 
 of light of the South ! — aux larges et UMrales effusions de 
 lumihe du del du Midi” 
 
 In the long winter of La Chenaie his great resource 
 was literature. One has often heard that an educated 
 Frenchman’s reading seldom goes much beyond French 
 and Latin, and that he makes the authors in these 
 two languages his sole literary standard. This may 
 or may not be true of Frenchmen in general, but 
 there can be no question as to the width of the reading 
 of Guerin and his friends, and as to the range of their 
 literary sympathies. One of the circle, Hippolyte la 
 Morvonnais, — a poet who published a volume of verse, 
 and died in the prime of life, — had a passionate ad- 
 miration for Wordsworth, and had even, it is said, 
 made a pilgrimage to Rydal Mount to visit him ; and 
 in Gu4rin’s own reading I find, besides the French 
 names of Bernardin de St. Pierre, Chateaubriand, 
 Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, the names of Homer, 
 Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, and Goethe ; and he 
 quotes both from Greek and from English authors in 
 the original. His literary tact is beautifully fine and 
 true. “ Every poet,” he writes to his sister, “ has his 
 own art of poetry written on the ground of his own 
 soul ; there is no other. Be constantly observing 
 Nature in her smallest details, and then write as the 
 current of your thoughts guides you; — that is all.” 
 But with all this freedom from the bondage of forms 
 and rules, Gu6rin marks with perfect precision the 
 faults of the free French literature of his time, — the 
 litUrature fadUy — and judges the romantic school and 
 
III.] 
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 
 
 93 
 
 its prospects like a master : “ that youthful literature 
 which has put forth all its blossom prematurely, and 
 has left itself a helpless prey to the returning frost, 
 stimulated as it has been by the burning sun of our 
 century, by this atmosphere charged with a perilous 
 heat, which has over-hastened every sort of develop- 
 ment, and will most likely reduce to a handful of 
 grains the harvest of our age.” And the popular 
 authors, — those “whose name appears once and dis- 
 appears for ever, whose books, unwelcome to all 
 serious people, welcome to the rest of the world, to 
 novelty-hunters and novel-readers, fill with vanity 
 these vain souls, and then, falling from hands heavy 
 with the languor of satiety, drop for ever into the gulf 
 of oblivion;” and those, more noteworthy, “the writers 
 of books celebrated, and, as works of art, deserving 
 celebrity, but which have in them not one grain of 
 that hidden manna, not one of those sweet and whole- 
 some thoughts which nourish the human soul and 
 refresh it when it is weary,” — these he treats with 
 such severity that he may in some sense be described, 
 as he describes himself, as “ invoking with his whole 
 heart a classical restoration.” He is best described, 
 however, not as a partisan of any school, but as an 
 ardent seeker for that mode of expression which is 
 the most natural, happy, and true. He writes to his 
 sister Eugenie : — 
 
 “ I want you to reform your system of composition ; 
 it is too loose, too vague, too Lamartinian. Your 
 verse is too sing-song ; it does not talk enougL Form 
 for yourself a style of your own, which shall be your 
 
94 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM 
 
 [ill. 
 
 real expression. Study the French language by 
 attentive reading, making it your care to remark 
 constructions, turns of expression, delicacies of style, 
 but without ever adopting the manner of any master. 
 In the works of these masters we must learn our lan- 
 guage, hut wo must use it each in our own fashion.”^ 
 
 It was not, however, to perfect his literary judg- 
 ment that Gu4rin came to La Chenaie. The religious 
 feeling, which was as much a part of his essence as 
 the passion for Nature and the literary instinct, shows 
 itself at moments jealous of these its rivals, and 
 alarmed at their predominance. Like all powerful 
 feelings, it wants to exclude every other feeling and 
 to be absolute. One Friday in April, after he has 
 been delighting himself ^vith the shapes of the clouds 
 and the progress of the spring, he suddenly bethinks 
 himself that the day is Good Friday, and exclaims in 
 his diary : — 
 
 “ ]\Iy God, what is my soul about that it can thus 
 go running after such fugitive delights on Good Friday 
 on this day all filled with thy death and our redemp- 
 tion 1 There is in me I know not what damnable 
 spirit, that awakens in me strong discontents, and is 
 for ever prompting me to rebel against the holy exer- 
 cises and the devout collectedness of soul which are 
 the meet preparation for these great solemnities of 
 our faith. Oh how well can I trace here the old 
 
 ’ Part of tliese extracts date from a time a little after Guerin’s 
 residence at La Chenaie ; but already, amidst the readings and 
 • conversations of La Chenaie, his literary judgment was perfectly 
 formed. 
 
rii ] MAUKICE DE GUERIN. 95 
 
 leaven, from which I liave not yet perfectly cleared 
 my soul ! ” 
 
 And again, in a letter to M. de Marzan : “ Of 
 what, my God, are we made,” he cries, “ that a little 
 verdure and a few trees should be enough to rob ua 
 of our tranquillity and to distract us from thy love 
 And writing, three days after Easter Sunday, in his 
 journal, he records the reception at La Chenaie of a 
 fervent neophyte, in words which seem to convey a 
 covert blame of his own want of fervency : — 
 
 “ Three days have passed over our heads since the 
 great festival. One anniversary the less for us yet to 
 spend of the death and resurrection of our Saviour ! 
 Every year thus bears away with it its solemn festi- 
 vals ; when will the everlasting festival be here ? I 
 have been witness of a most touching sight ; Fran9ois 
 has brought us one of his friends whom he has gained 
 to the faith. This neophyte joined us in our exercises 
 during the Holy week, and on Easter day he received 
 the communion with us. Francois was in raptures. 
 It is a truly good work which he has thus done. 
 Fran9ois is quite young, hardly twenty years old ; M. 
 de la M. is thirty, and is married. There is some- 
 thing most touching and beautifully simple in M. dc 
 la M. letting himself thus be brought to God by quite 
 a young man ; and to see friendship, on Fran9ois’s 
 side, thus doing the work of an Apostle, is not less 
 beautiful and touching.” 
 
 Admiration for Lamennais worked in the same 
 direction with this feeling. Lamennais never appre- 
 ciated Guerin ; his combative, rigid, despotic natuie, 
 
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [iij 
 
 of which the characteristic was energy, had no affinity 
 with Guerin’s elusive, undulating, impalpable nature, 
 of which the characteristic was delicacy. He set little 
 store by his new disciple, and could hardly bring 
 himself to understand what others found so remark- 
 able in him, his own genuine feeling towards him 
 being one of indulgent compassion. But the intui- 
 tion of Gu6rin, more discerning than the logic of his 
 master, instinctively felt what there was commanding 
 and tragic in Lamennais’s character, different as this 
 was from his own ; and some of his notes are among 
 the most interesting records of Lamennais which 
 remain. 
 
 “ ‘ Do you know what it is,’ M. F6li ^ said to u& 
 on the evening of the day before yesterday, ‘which 
 makes man the most suffering of all creatures ? It is 
 that he has one foot in the finite and the other in the 
 infinite, and that he is tom asunder, not by four 
 horses, as in the horrible old times, but between two 
 worlds.’ Again he said to us as we heard the clock 
 strike : ‘ If that clock knew that it was to be destroyed 
 the next instant, it would still keep striking its hour 
 until that instant arrived. My children, be as the 
 clock ; whatever may be going to happen to you, 
 strike always your hour.’” 
 
 Another time Gu6rin wi’ites : 
 
 “ To-day M. F6li startled us. He was sitting behind 
 the chapel, under the two Scotch firs; he took his 
 3tick and marked out a grave on the turf, and said to 
 
 * The familiar name given to M. de Lamennais by his fob 
 lowers at La Chenaie. 
 
III.J 
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 
 
 97 
 
 Elie, ‘ It is there I wish to be buried, but no tomb- 
 stone ! only a simple hillock of grass. Oh, how well 
 I shall be there ! ' Elie thought he had a presentiment 
 that his end was near. This is not the first time he 
 has been visited by such a presentiment; when he 
 was setting out for Rome, he said to those here : ‘ I 
 do not expect ever to come back to you ; you must 
 do the good which I have failed to do.’ He is im- 
 patient for death.” 
 
 Overpowered by the ascendency of Lamennais, 
 Gu6rin, in spite of his hesitations, in spite of his 
 confession to himseli that, “after a three weeks’ close 
 scrutiny of his soul, in the hope of finding the pearl 
 of a religious vocation hidden in some comer of it,” 
 he had failed to find what ho sought, took, at the end 
 of August 1833, a decisive step. He joined the re- 
 ligious order which Lamennais had founded. But at 
 this very moment the deepening displeasure of Rome 
 with Lamennais detennined the Bishop of Rennes to 
 break up, in so far as it was a religious congregation, 
 the Society of La Chenaie, to transfer the novices to 
 Ploermel, and to place them under other superintend- 
 ence. In September, Lamennais, “ who had not yet 
 ceased,” writes M. de Marzan, a fervent Catholic, “ to 
 be a Christian and a priest, took leave of his beloved 
 colony of La Chenaie, with the anguish of a general 
 who disbands his army down to the last recruit, and 
 withdraws annihilated from the field of battle.” Gu4rin 
 went to Ploermel But here, in the seclusion of a real 
 religious house, ho instantly perceived how alien to a 
 spirit like his, — a spirit which, as he himself says 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
98 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 liii. 
 
 somewhere, “ had need of the open air, wanted to see 
 the sun and the flowers,” — was the constraint and 
 monotony of a monastic life, when Lamennais’s genius 
 was no longer present to enliven this life for him. 
 On the 7th of October he renounced the novitiate, 
 believing himself a partisan of Lamennais in his 
 quarrel with Eome, reproaching the life he had left 
 with demanding passive obedience instead of trying 
 “to put in practice the admirable alliance of order 
 with liberty, and of variety with unity,” and declaring 
 that, for his part, he preferred taking the chances of 
 a life of adventure to submitting himself to be “ garotU 
 par un rdglement , — tied hand and foot by a set of rules.” 
 In real truth, a life of adventure, or rather a life free 
 to wander at its o’wn will, was that to which his nature 
 irresistibly impelled him. 
 
 For a career of adventure, the inevitable field was 
 Paris. But before this career began, there came a 
 stage, the smoothest, perhaps, and the most happy in 
 the short life of Gu4rin. M. la Morvonnais, one of 
 his La Chenaie friends, — some years older than Gu4rin, 
 and married to a wife of singular sweetness and charm, 
 — had a house by the seaside at the mouth of one of 
 the beautiful rivers of Brittany, the Arguenon. He 
 asked Gu6rin, when he left Ploermel, to come and 
 stay with him at this place, called Le Val de 1’ Argue- 
 non, and Gu4rin spent the winter of 1833-4 there. I 
 grudge every word about Le Val and its inmates 
 which is not Gu4rin’s own, so charming is the picture 
 he draws of them, so truly does his talent find itself 
 in its best vein as he draws it. 
 
rii.J 
 
 MAUKTCE DE GUERIN. 
 
 99 
 
 “ How full of goodness ” (he writes in his journal 
 of the 7th of December) “is Providence to me ! For 
 fear the sudden passage from the mild and temperate 
 air of a religious life to the torrid clime of the world 
 should be too trying for my soul, it has conducted me, 
 after I have left my sacred shelter, to a house planted 
 on the frontier between the two regions, where, with- 
 out being in solitude, one is not yet in the world ; a 
 house whose windows look on the one side towards 
 the plain where the tumult of men is rocking, on the 
 other towards the wuldemess where the servants of 
 God are chanting. I intend to write down the record 
 of my sojourn here, for the days here spent are full 
 of happiness, and I know that in the time to come I 
 shall often turn back to the story of these past felicities. 
 A man, pious, and a poet ; a woman, whose spirit is 
 in such perfect sympathy with his that you w^ould say 
 they had but one being between them ; a child, called 
 Marie like her mother, and who sends, like a star, the 
 first rays of her love and thought through the white 
 cloud of infancy; a simple life in an old-fashioned 
 house ; the ocean, which comes morning and evening 
 to bring us its harmonies ; and lastly, a wanderer who 
 descends from Carmel and is going on to Babylon, 
 and who has laid down at this threshold his staff and 
 his sandals, to take his seat at the hospitable table ; — 
 here is matter to make a biblical poem of, if I could 
 only describe things as I can feel them ! ” 
 
 Every line written by Gu4rin during this stay at 
 Le Val is worth quoting, but I have only room for 
 one extract more : — 
 
100 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [ilL 
 
 “ Never ” (he writes, a fortnight later, on the 20th 
 of December), “ never have I tasted so inwardly and 
 deeply the happiness of home -life. All the little 
 details of this life, which in their succession make up 
 the day, are to me so many stages of a continuous 
 charm carried from one end of the day to the other. 
 The morning greeting, which in some sort renews the 
 pleasure of the first arrival, for the words with which 
 one meets are almost the same, and the separation at 
 night, through the hours of darkness and uncertainty, 
 does not ill represent longer separations ; then break- 
 fast, dui-ing which you have the fresh enjoyment of 
 having met together again; the stroll afterwards, 
 when we go out and bid Nature good-moming ; the 
 return and setting to work in an old panelled chamber 
 looking out on the sea, inaccessible to all the stir of 
 the house, a perfect sanctuary of labour; dinner, to 
 which we are called, not by a bell, which reminds one 
 too much of school or a great house, but by a pleasant 
 voice; the gaiety, the merriment, the talk flitting 
 from one subject to another and never dropping so 
 long as the meal lasts ; the crackling fire of dry 
 branches to which we draw our chairs directly after- 
 wards, the kind words that are spoken round the 
 warm flame which sings while we talk ; and then, if 
 it is fine, the walk by the seaside, when the sea has 
 for its visitors a mother with her child in her arms, 
 this child’s father and a stranger, each of these two 
 last with a stick in his hand ; the rosy lips of the 
 little girl, which keep talking at the same time with 
 the waves, — now and then tears shed by her and cries 
 
III.] 
 
 MAUKICE DE GUBKIN. 
 
 101 
 
 of childish flight at the edge of the sea ; our thoughts, 
 the father’s and mine, as we stand and look at the 
 mother and child smiling at one another, or at the 
 child in tears and the mother trjing to comfort it by 
 her caresses and exhortations; the Ocean, going on 
 all the while rolling up his waves and noises; the 
 dead boughs which we go and cut, here and there, 
 out of the copse-wood, to make a quick and bright 
 fire when we get home, — this little taste of the wood- 
 man’s calling which brings us closer to Nature and 
 makes us think of M. F^li’s eager fondness for the 
 same work; the hours of study and poetical flow 
 which carry us to supper-time; this meal, which 
 summons us by the same gentle voice as its pre- 
 decessor, and which is passed amid the same joys^ 
 only less loud, because evening sobers everything, 
 tones everything down ; then our evening, ushered in 
 by the blaze of a cheerful fire, and which with its 
 alternations of reading and talking brings us at last 
 to bed-time : — to all the charms of a day so spent add 
 the dreams which follow it, and your imagination will 
 still fall far short of these home-joys in their delight- 
 ful reality.” 
 
 I said the foregoing should be my last extract, but 
 who could resist this picture of a January evening on 
 the coast of Brittany ? — 
 
 “All the sky is covered over with gray clouds just 
 silvered at the edges. The sun, who departed a few 
 minutes ago, has left behind him enough light to 
 temper for awhile the black shadows, and to soften 
 down, as it were, the approach of night. The winds 
 
102 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [III. 
 
 are huslicd, and the tranquil ocean sends up bo me, 
 when I go out on the doorstep to listen, only a melo- 
 dious murmur, which dies away in the soul like a 
 beautiful wave on the beach. The birds, the first to 
 obey the nocturnal influence, make their way to- 
 wards the woods, and you hear the rustle of their 
 wings in the clouds. The copses which cover the 
 whole hill-side of Le Val, which all the day-time are 
 alive with the chirp of the wren, the laughing whistle 
 of the woodpecker,^ and the dififerent notes of a 
 multitude of birds, have no longer any sound in their 
 paths and thickets, unless it be the prolonged high 
 call of the blackbirds at play with one another and 
 chasing one another, after all the other birds have 
 their heads safe under their wings. The noise oi 
 man, always the last to be silent, dies gradually out 
 over the face of the fields. The general murmur 
 fades away, and one hears hardly a sound except 
 what comes from the villages and hamlets, in which, 
 up till far into the night, there are cries of children 
 and barking of dogs. Silence wraps me round; 
 everything seeks repose except this pen of mine, 
 which perhaps disturbs the rest of some living atom 
 asleep in a crease of my note-book, for it makes its 
 light scratching as it puts down these idle thoughts. 
 liCt it stop, then ! for all 1 write, have written, or 
 shall write, will never be worth setting against the 
 sleep of an atom.” 
 
 On the 1st of February we find him in a lodging 
 
 ^ “ The woodpecker laughs,''^ says White of Selborne ; and 
 here is Guerin, in Brittany, confirming hLs testimony. 
 
HI.] MAURICE DE GUtoN. 103 
 
 at Paris. “ I enter the world ” (such are the last 
 words written in his journal at Le Val) “with a 
 secret horror.” His outward history for the next 
 five years is soon told. He found himself in Paris, 
 poor, fastidious, and with health which already, no 
 doubt, felt the obscure presence of the malady of 
 which he died — consumption. One of his Brittany 
 acquaintances introduced him to editors, tried to 
 engage him in the periodical literature of Paris ; and 
 so unmistakable was Guerin’s talent that even his 
 first essays were immediately accepted. But Gu4rin’s 
 genius was of a kind which unfitted him to get his 
 bread in this manner. At first he was pleased with 
 the notion of living by his pen ; irCai qu’d, 
 he says to his sister, — “ I have only got to write.” 
 But to a nature like his, endued with the passion for 
 perfection, the necessity to produce, to produce con- 
 stantly, to produce whether in the vein or out of the 
 vein, to produce something good or bad or middling, 
 as it may happen, but at all events something ^ — is the 
 most intolerable of tortures. To escape from it he 
 betook himself to that common but most perfidious 
 refuge of men of letters, that refuge to which Gold- 
 smith and poor Hartley Coleridge had betaken them- 
 selves before him, — the profession of teaching. In 
 September 1834 he procured an engagement at the 
 College Stanislas, where he had himself been educated. 
 It was vacation-time, and all he had to do was to 
 teach a small class composed of boys who did not go 
 home for the holidays, — in his own words, “ scholars 
 left like sick sheep in the fold, while the rest of the 
 
104 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [Ill 
 
 flock are frisking in the fields.” After the vacation 
 he was kept on at the college as a supernumerary. 
 “ The master of the fifth class has asked for a month’s 
 leave of absence ; I am talking his place, and by this 
 work I get one hundred francs (£4). I have been 
 looking about for pupils to give private lessons to, 
 and I have found three or four. Schoolwork and 
 private lessons together fill my day from half-past 
 seven in the morning till half-past nine at night. 
 The college dinner serves me for breakfast, and I go 
 and dine in the evening at twenty-four sous, as a 
 young man beginning life should.” To better his 
 position in the hierarchy of public teachers it was 
 necessary that he should take the degree of agrigi Is- 
 lettres, corresponding to our degree of Master of Arts ; 
 and to his heavy work in teaching, there was thus 
 added that of preparing for a severe examination. 
 The drudgery of this life was very irksome to him, 
 although less insupportable than the drudgery of the 
 profession of letters ; inasmuch as to a sensitive man 
 like Gu4rin, to silence his genius is more tolerable 
 than to hackney it. Still the yoke wore him deeply, 
 and he had moments of bitter revolt ; he continued, 
 however, to bear it with resolution, and on the whole 
 with patience, for four years. On the 15th of Novem- 
 ber 1838 he married a yoimg Creole lady of some 
 fortune. Mademoiselle Caroline de Gervain, “ whom,” 
 to use his own words, “Destiny, who loves these 
 surprises, has wafted from the farthest Indies into 
 my arms.” The marriage was happy, and it ensured 
 to Guerin liberty and leisure ; but now “ the bh’nd 
 
III.] MAURICE DE GUERIN. 105 
 
 Fury with the abhorred shears ” was hard at hand. 
 Consumption declared itself in him: “I pass my life/^ 
 he writes, with his old playfulness and calm, to his 
 sister on the 8th of April 1839, “within my bed- 
 curtains, and wait patiently enough, thanks to Caro’s^ 
 goodness, books, and dreams, for the recovery which 
 the sunshine is to bring with it.” In search of this 
 sunshine he was taken to his native country, Langue- 
 doc, but in vain. He died at Le Cayla on the 19th 
 of July 1839. 
 
 The vicissitudes of his inward life during these 
 five years were more considerable. His opinions and 
 tastes underwent great, or what seem to be great, 
 changes. He came to Paris the ardent partisan of 
 Lamennais: even in April 1834, after Pome had 
 finally condemned Lamennais, — “To-night there will 
 go forth from Paris,” he writes, “ with his face set to 
 the west, a man whose every step I would fain follow, 
 and who returns to the desert for which I sigh. M. 
 F6li departs this evening for La Chenaie.” But in 
 October 1835, — “I assure you,” he writes to his 
 sister, “I am at last weaned from M. de Lamennais ; 
 one does not remain a babe and suckling for ever ; I 
 am perfectly freed from his influence.” There was a 
 greater change than this. In 1834 the main cause of 
 Guerin’s aversion to the literature of the French 
 romantic school, was that this literature, having had 
 a religious origin, had ceased to be religious : “it has 
 forgotten,” he says, “ the house and the admonitions 
 of its Father.” But his friend M. de Marzan tells us 
 
 ^ Hia wifft. 
 
106 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [lIL 
 
 of a “deplorable revolution” which, by 1836, had 
 taken place in him. Guerin had become intimate 
 with the chiefs of this very literature ; he no longer 
 went to church; “the bond of a common faith, in 
 which our friendship had its birth, existed between 
 us no longer.” Then, again, “this interregnum was 
 not destined to last.” Eeconverted to his old faith 
 by suffering and by the pious efforts of his sister 
 Eugenie, Gu4rin died a Catholic. His feelings about 
 society underwent a like change. After “entering 
 the world with a secret horror,” after congratulating 
 himself when he had been some months at Paris on 
 being “ disengaged from the social tumult, out of the 
 reach of those blows which, when I live in the thick 
 of the world, bruise me, irritate me, or utterly crush 
 me,” M. Sainte-Beuve tells us of him, two years after- 
 wards, appealing in society “a man of the world, 
 elegant, even fashionable; a talker who could hold 
 his own against the most brilliant talkers of Paris.” 
 
 In few natures, however, is there really such 
 essential consistency as in Gu4rin’s. He says of him- 
 self, in the very beginning of his journal : “I owe 
 everything to poetry, for there is no other name to 
 give to the sum total of my thoughts ; I owe to it 
 whatever I now have pure, lofty, and solid in my 
 soul ; I owe to it all my consolations in the past ; I 
 shall probably owe to it my future.” Poetry, the 
 poetical instinct, was indeed the basis of his nature ; 
 but to say so thus absolutely is not quite enough. 
 One aspect of poetry fascinated Gu4rin’s imagination 
 smd held it prisoner. Poetry is the interpretress of 
 
111.3 
 
 MAURICE DE GU^IN. 
 
 107 
 
 the natural world, and she is the interpretress of the 
 moral world it was as the interpretress of the natural 
 world that she had Gu4rin for her mouthpiece. To 
 make magically near and real the life of Nature, and 
 man’s life only so far as it is a part of that Nature, 
 was his faculty; a faculty of naturalistic, not of 
 moral interpretation. This faculty always has for its 
 basis a peculiar temperament, an extraordinary deli- 
 cacy of organisation and susceptibility to impressions ; 
 in exercising it the poet is in a great degree passive 
 (Wordsworth thus speaks of a wise passiveness)', he 
 aspires to be a sort of human .^olian harp, catching 
 and rendering every rustle of Nature. To assist at 
 the evolution of the whole hfe of the world is his 
 craving, and intimately to feel it all : 
 
 . . . “ the glow, the thrill of life, 
 
 Where, where do these abound * ” 
 
 is what he asks ; he resists being riveted and held 
 stationary by any single impression, but would be 
 borne on for ever down an enchanted stream. He 
 goes into religion and out of religion, into society 
 and out of society, not from the motives which impel 
 men in general, but to feel what it is all like ; he is 
 thus hardly a moral agent, and, like the passive and 
 ineffectual Uranus of Keats’s poem, he may say : 
 
 “ I am but a voice ; 
 
 Aly life is but the life of winds and tides ; 
 
 No more than winds and tides can I avail.” 
 
 He hovers over the tumult of life, but does not really 
 put his hand to it. 
 
108 ESSAFS IN CRITICISM. [ill 
 
 No one has expressed the aspirations of this tem- 
 perament better than Gu4rin himself. In the last 
 year of his life he wiites : — 
 
 “I return, as you see, to my old brooding over 
 the world of Nature, that line which my thoughts 
 irresistibly take; a sort of passion which gives me 
 enthusiasm, tears, bursts of joy, and an eternal food 
 for musing ; and yet I am neither philosopher nor 
 naturalist, nor anything learned whatsoever. There 
 is one word which is the God of my imagination, the 
 fcjTant, I ought rather to say, that fascinates it, lures 
 it onward, gives it work to do without ceasing, and 
 will finally carry it I know not where ; the word 
 
 And in one place in his journal he says : — 
 
 “My imagination welcomes every dream, every 
 impression, without attaching itself to any, and goes 
 on for ever seeking something new.” 
 
 And again in another : — 
 
 “The longer I live, and the clearer 1 discern 
 between true and false in society, the more does the 
 inclination to live, not as a savage or a misanthrope, 
 but as a solitary man on the frontiers of society, on 
 the outskirts of the world, gain strength and grow in 
 me. The birds come and go and make nests around 
 our habitations, they are fellow-citizens of our farms 
 and hamlets with us ; but they take their flight in 
 a heaven which is boundless, but the hand of God 
 alone gives and measures to them their daily food, 
 but they build their nests in the heart of the thick 
 bushes, or hang them in the height of the trees. 
 
ni.] MAURICE DE GUERIN. 109 
 
 So would I, too, live, hovering round society, and hav- 
 ing always at my back a field of liberty vast as the sky.” 
 
 In the same spirit he longed for travel. “ When 
 one is a wanderer,” he wites to his sister, “ one feels 
 that one fulfils the true condition of humanity.” And 
 the last entry in his joimnal is,~“ The stream of travel 
 is full of delight. Oh, who will set me adrift on this 
 Nile ! ” 
 
 Assuredly it is not in this temperament that the 
 active virtues have their rise. On the contrary, this 
 temperament, considered in itself alone, indisposes 
 for the discharge of them. Something morbid and 
 excessive, as manifested in Gudrin, it undoubtedly 
 has. In him, as in Keats, and as in another youth 
 of genius, whose name, but the other day unheard of. 
 Lord Houghton has so gracefully written in the his- 
 tory of English poetry, — David Gray, — the tempera- 
 ment, the talent itself, is deeply influenced by their 
 mysterious malady; the temperament is devouring; 
 it uses vital power too hard and too fast, paying the 
 penalty in long hours of unutterable exhaustion and 
 in premature death. The intensity of Gu6rin’s de- 
 pression is described to us by Guerin himself with 
 the same incomparable touch with which he describes 
 happier feelings; far oftener than any pleasurable 
 sense of his gift he has “the sense profound, near, 
 immense, of my misery, of my inward poverty.” 
 And again : “ My inward misery gains upon me ; I 
 no longer dare look within.” And on another day of 
 gloom he does look within, and here is the terrible 
 analysis : — 
 
110 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [iii 
 
 “Craving, unquiet, seeing only by glimpses, my 
 spirit is stricken by all those ills which are the sure 
 fruit of a youth doomed never to ripen into manhood. 
 I grow old and wear myself out in the most futile 
 mental strainings, and make no progress. My head 
 seems dying, and when the wind blows I fancy I feel 
 it, as if I were a tree, blowing through a number of 
 withered branches in my top. Study is intolerable 
 to me, or rather it is quite out of my power. Mental 
 work brings on, not drowsiness, but an irritable and 
 nervous disgust which drives me out, I know not 
 where, into the streets and public places. The 
 Spring, whose delights used to come every year 
 stealthily and mysteriously to charm me in my re- 
 treat, crushes me this year under a weight of sudden 
 hotness. I should be glad of any event which de- 
 livered me from the situation in which I am. If I 
 were free I would embark for some distant country 
 where I could begin life anew.” 
 
 Such is this temperament in the frequent hours 
 when the sense of its own weakness and isolation 
 crushes it to the ground. Certainly it was not for 
 Gu6rin’s happiness, or for Keats’s, as men count happi- 
 ness, to be as they were. Still the very excess and 
 predominance of their temperament has given to the 
 fruits of their genius a unique brilliancy and flavour. 
 I have said that poetry interprets in two ways; it 
 interprets by expressing with magical felicity the 
 physiognomy and movement of the outward world, 
 and it interprets by expressing, v/ith inspired convic- 
 tion, the ideas and laws of the inward world of man’s 
 
III.] MAURICE DE GU^.RIN. Ill 
 
 moral and spiritual nature. In other words, poetry 
 is interpretative both by having natural magic in it, 
 and by having moral profundity. In both ways it 
 illuminates man ; it gives him a satisfying sense of 
 reality ; it reconciles him with himself and the uni- 
 verse. Thus ^schylus’s “ Spda-avTL TraOdv ” and his 
 “ dv7]pL$fiov yiXaa-jxa ” are alike interpretative Shak- 
 speare interprets both when he says, 
 
 “ Full many a glorious morning have I seen, 
 
 Flatter the mountain-tops with sovran eye ; ” 
 
 and when he says, 
 
 “ There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, 
 
 Rough-hew them as we will.” 
 
 These great poets unite in themselves the faculty of 
 both kinds of interpretation, the naturalistic and the 
 moral. But it is observable that in the poets who 
 unite both kinds, the latter (the moral) usually ends 
 by making itself the master. In Shakspeare the two 
 kinds seem wonderfully to balance one another ; but 
 even in him the balance leans ; his expression tends 
 to become too little sensuous and simple, too much 
 inteUectualised. The same thing may be yet more 
 strongly affirmed of Lucretius and of Wordsworth. In 
 Shelley there is not a balance of the two gifts, nor 
 even a co-existence of them, but there is a passionate 
 straining after them both, and this is what makes 
 Shelley, as a man, so interesting : I will not now in- 
 quire how much Shelley achieves as a poet, but what- 
 ever he achieves, he in general fails to achieve natural 
 magic in his expression ; in Mr. Palgrave’s charming 
 
112 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [IIL 
 
 Treasury may be seen a gallery of his failures.^ But 
 in Keats and Gu4rin, in whom the faculty of natural- 
 istic interpretation is overpoweringly predominant, 
 the natural magic is perfect ; when they speak of the 
 world they speak like Adam naming by divine in 
 spiration the creatures; their expression corresponds 
 with the thing’s essential reality. Even between 
 Keats and Guerin, however, there is a distinction to 
 be drawn. Keats has, above all, a sense of what is 
 pleasurable and open in the life of nature ; for him 
 she is the Alma Parens : his expression has, therefore, 
 more than Gu4rin’s, something genial, outward, and 
 sensuous. Guerin has, above all, a sense of what there 
 is adorable and secret in the life of Nature ; for him 
 she is the Magna Parens; his expression has, there 
 fore, more than Keats’s, something mystic, inward., 
 and profound. 
 
 So he lived like a man possessed; with his eye 
 not on his own career, not on the public, not on 
 fame, but on the Isis whose veil he had uplifted. He 
 published nothing : “ There is more power and 
 beauty,” he writes, “ in the well-kept secret of one’s- 
 self and one’s thoughts, than in the display of a 
 
 ^ Compare, for example, his “Lines Written in the Euganean 
 Hills,” mth Keats’s “Ode to Autumn” {Golden Treasury, pp. 
 256, 284). The latter piece renders Nature ; the former tries to 
 render her. I will not deny, however, that Shelley has natural 
 magic in his rhythm; what I deny is, that he has it in hia 
 language. It always seems to me that the right sphere for 
 Shelley’s genius was the sphere of music, not of poetry ; the 
 medium of sounds he can master, biit to master the more diffi- 
 cult medium of words he has neither intellectuAl force enough 
 nor sanity enough 
 
rii.] MAUKICE DE GXJfiPJN. 113 
 
 whole heaven that one may have inside one.” “My 
 spirit,” he answers the friends who urge him to write, 
 “is of the home-keeping order, and has no fancy for 
 adventure ; literary adventure is above all distasteful 
 to it ; for this, indeed (let me say so without the 
 least self-sufficiency), it has a contempt. The literary 
 career seems to me unreal, both in its own essence 
 and in the rewards which one seeks from it, and 
 therefore fatally marred by a secret absurdity.” His 
 acquaintances, and among them distinguished men of 
 letters, full of admiration for the originality and de- 
 licacy of his talent, laughed at his self-depreciation, 
 warmly assured him of his powers. He received their 
 assurances with a mournful incredulity, which con- 
 trasts curiously with the self-assertion of poor David 
 Gray, whom I just now mentioned. “ It seems to 
 me intolerable,” he writes, “to appear to men other 
 than one appears to God. My worst torture at this 
 moment is the over-estimate which generous friends 
 form of me. We are told that at the last judgment 
 the secret of all consciences vill be laid bare to the 
 universe ; would that mine were so this day, and 
 that every passer-by could see me as I am ! ” “ High 
 
 above my head,” he says at another time, “ far, fai 
 away, I seem to hear the murmur of that world oi 
 thought and feeling to which I aspire so often, but 
 where I can never attain. I think of those of my 
 own age who have wings strong enough to reach it, 
 but I think of them without jealousy, and as men on 
 earth contemplate the elect and their felicity.” And, 
 criticising his own composition, “When I begin a 
 VOL. L I 
 
114 
 
 ESSAYS IK CRITICISM. 
 
 [ill. 
 
 subject, my self-conceit ” (nays this exquisite artist) 
 “ imagines I am doing wonders ; and when I have 
 finished, 1 see nothing but a wretched made-up imita' 
 tion, composed of odds and ends of colour stolen from 
 other people’s palettes, and tastelessly mixed together 
 on mine.” Such was his passion for perfection^ his 
 disdain for all poetical work not perfectly adequate 
 and felicitous. The magic of expression, to which by 
 the force of this passion he won his way, will make 
 the name of Maurice de Gu6rin remembered in litera- 
 ture. 
 
 I have already mentioned the Centaur^ a sort of 
 prose poem by Gu6rin, which Madame Sand published 
 after his death. The idea of this composition came 
 to him, M. Sainte-Beuve says, in the course of some 
 visits which he made with his friend, M. Trcbutien, a 
 learned antiquarian, to the Museum of Antiquities in 
 the Louvre. The free and wild life which the Greeks 
 expressed by such creations as the Centaur had, as 
 we might well expect, a strong charm for him ; under 
 the same inspiration he composed a Bacchante^ which 
 was meant by him to form part of a prose poem on 
 the adventures of Bacchus in India. Beal as was the 
 affinity which Guerin’s nature had for these subjects, 
 I doubt whether, in treating them, he would have 
 found the full and final employment of his talent 
 But the beauty of his Centaur is extraordinary ; in its 
 whole conception and expression this piece has in a 
 wonderful degree that natural magic of which I have 
 said so much, and the rhythm has a charm which 
 bewitches even a foreigner. An old Centaur on his 
 
III.] 
 
 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 
 
 115 
 
 mountain is supposed to relate to Melampus, a human 
 questioner, the life of his youth. Untranslatable as 
 the piece is, I shall conclude with some extracts from 
 it ; — 
 
 “ The Centaur. 
 
 “ I had my birth in the caves of these mountains. 
 Like the stream of this valley, whose first drops 
 trickle from some weeping rock in a deep cavern, the 
 first moment of my life fell in the darkness of a re- 
 mote abode, and without breaking the silence. When 
 our mothers draw near to the time of their delivery, 
 they withdraw to the caverns, and in the depth of 
 the loneliest of them, in the thickest of its gloom, 
 bring forth, without uttering a plaint, a fruit silent as 
 themselves. Their puissant milk makes us surmount, 
 without weakness or dubious straggle, the first difii- 
 culties of life ; and yet we leave our caverns later 
 than you your cradles. The reason is that we have 
 a doctrine that the early days of existence should be 
 kept apart and enshrouded, as days filled with the 
 presence of the gods. Nearly the whole term of my 
 growth was passed in the darkness where I was born. 
 The recesses of my dwelling ran so far under the 
 mountain that I should not have known on which 
 side was the exit, had not the winds, when they 
 sometimes made their way through the opening, sent 
 fresh airs in, and a sudden trouble. Sometimes, too, 
 my mother came back to me, having about her the 
 odoui’S of the valleys, or streaming from the waters 
 which were her haunt Her returning thus, without 
 
116 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [ill 
 
 a word said of the valleys or the rivers, but with the 
 emanations from them hanging about her, troubled 
 my spirit, and I moved up and down restlessly in my 
 darkness. ‘ What is it,’ I cried, ‘ this outside world 
 whither my mother is borne, and what reigns there 
 in it so potent as to attract her so often 1 ’ At these 
 moments my own force began to make me unquiet. I 
 felt in it a power which could not remain idle ; and 
 betaking myself either to toss my arms or to gallop 
 backwards and forwards in the spacious darkness of 
 the cavern, I tried to make out from the blows which 
 I dealt in the empty space, or from the transport of 
 my course through it, in what direction my arms 
 were meant to reach, or my feet to bear me. Since 
 that day, I have wound my arms round the bust of 
 Centaurs, and round the body of heroes, and round 
 the trunk of oaks ; my hands have assayed the rocks, 
 the waters, plants without number, and the subtlest 
 impressions of the air, — for I uplift them in the dark 
 and still nights to catch the breaths of wind, and to 
 draw signs whereby I may augur my road ; my feet, 
 - — look, 0 Melampus, how woin they are ! And yet, 
 all benumbed as I am in this extremity of age, . there 
 are days when, in broad sunlight, on the mountain-tops, 
 I renew these gallopings of my youth in the cavern, 
 and with the same object, brandishing my arms and 
 employing all the fleetness which yet is left to me. 
 
 “ 0 Melampus, thou who wouldst know the life of 
 the Centaurs, wherefore have the gods willed that 
 thy steps should lead thee to me, the oldest and most 
 
III.] 
 
 MAUEICE DE GUtoN. 
 
 117 
 
 forlorn of them all 1 It is long since I have ceased to 
 practise any part of their life. I quit no more this 
 mountain summit, to which age has confined me. 
 The point of my arrows now serves me only to uproot 
 some tough-fibred plant ; the tranquil lakes know me 
 still, but the rivers have forgotten me. I will tell 
 thee a little of my youth; but these recollections, 
 issuing from a worn memory, come like the drops of 
 a niggardly libation poured from a dam.aged um. 
 
 “ The course of my youth was rapid and full of 
 agitation. Movement was my life, and my steps 
 knew no bound. One day when I was following the 
 course of a valley seldom entered by the Centaurs, I 
 discovered a man making his way up the stream-side 
 on the opposite bank. He was the first whom my 
 eyes had lighted on : I despised him. ‘ Behold,’ I 
 cried, ‘ at the utmost but the half of what I am ! 
 How short are his steps ! and his movement how full 
 of laboiu- ! Doubtless he is a Centaur overthrown by 
 the gods, and reduced by them to drag himself along 
 thus.’ 
 
 “ Wandering along at my own will like the rivers, 
 feeling wherever I went the presence of Cybele, 
 whether in the bed of the valleys, or on the height 
 of the mountains, I bounded whither I would, like a 
 blind and chainless life. But when Night, filled with 
 the charm of the gods, overtook me on the slopes of 
 the mountain, she guided me to the mouth of the 
 caverns, and there tranquillised me as she tranquil- 
 lises the billows of the sea. Stretched across the 
 
118 
 
 ESSAYS m CRITICISM. 
 
 [ill. 
 
 threshold of my retreat, my flanks hidden Mdthin the 
 cave, and my head under the open sky, T watched 
 the spectacle of the dark. The sea-gods, it is said, 
 quit during the hours of darkness their palaces under 
 the deep ; they seat themselves on the promontories, 
 and their eyes wander over the expanse of the waves 
 Even so I kept watch, having at my feet an expanse 
 of life like the hushed sea. My regards had free 
 range, and travelled to the most distant points. Like 
 sea-heaches which never lose their wetness, the line of 
 mountains to the west retained the imprint of gleams 
 not perfectly wiped out by the shadows. In that 
 quarter still survived, in pale clearness, mountain- 
 summits naked and pure. There I beheld at one 
 time the god Pan descend, ever solitary ; at another, 
 the choir of the mystic divinities ; or I saw pass some 
 mountain nymph charm-struck b}’’ the night. Some- 
 times the eagles of Mount Olympus traversed the 
 upper sky, and were lost to view among the far-off 
 constellations, or in the shade of the dreaming forests. 
 
 “ Thou pursuest after wisdom, 0 Melampus, v/hich 
 is the science of the will of the gods ; and thou roam- 
 est from people to people like a mortal driven by the 
 destinies. In the times when I kept my night-watches 
 before the caverns, I have sometimes believed that I 
 was about to surprise the thought of the sleeping 
 Cybele, and that the mother of the gods, betrayed by 
 her dreams, would let fall some of her secrets ; but I 
 have never made out more than sounds which faded 
 away in the murmui- of night, or words inarticulate 
 aus the bubbling of the rivers. 
 
FII.J 
 
 MAUEICE DE GUERIN. 
 
 119 
 
 “ ‘ O Macareus/ one day said the great Chiron to 
 me, whose old age I tended ; ‘ we are, both of us. 
 Centaurs of the mountain ; but how different are our 
 lives ! Of my days all the study is (thou seest it) the 
 search for plants ; thou, thou art like those mortals 
 who have picked up on the waters or in the woods, 
 and carried to their lips, some pieces of the reed-pipe 
 throvTi away by the god Pan. From that hour these 
 mortals, having caught from their relics of the god a 
 passion for wild life, or perhaps smitten with some 
 secret madness, enter into the wilderness, plunge 
 among the forests, follow the course of the streams, 
 bury themselves in the heart of the mountains, rest- 
 less, and haunted by an unknown purpose. The 
 mares beloved of the winds in the farthest Scythia 
 are not wilder than thou, nor more cast down at 
 nightfall, when the North Wind has departed. Seek- 
 est thou to know the gods, 0 Macareus, and from 
 what source men, animals, and the elements of the 
 universal fire have their origin ? But the aged Ocean, 
 the father of all things, keeps locked within his own 
 breast these secrets ; and the nymphs, who stand 
 around, sing as they weave their eternal dance before 
 him, to cover any sound which might escape from his 
 lips half-opened by slumber. The mortals, dear to 
 the gods for their virtue, have received from theii 
 hands lyi’es to give delight to man, or the seeds of 
 new plants to make him rich ; but from their in- 
 exorable lips, nothing ! ’ 
 
 ** Such were the lessons which the old Chiron gave 
 
120 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [III. 
 
 me. Waned to the very extremity of life, the Centaur 
 yet nourished in his spirit the most lofty discourse. 
 
 “For me, 0 Melampiis, I decline into my last 
 days, calm as the setting of the constellations. I still 
 retain enterprise enough to climb to the top of the 
 rocks, and there I linger late, either gazing on the 
 wild and restless clouds, or to see come up from the 
 horizon the rainy Hyades, the Pleiades, or the great 
 Orion ; but I feel myself perishing and passing quickly 
 away, like a snow-wreath floating on the stream ; and 
 soon shall I be mingled with the waters which flow 
 in the vast bosom of Earth.” 
 
IV. 
 
 EUGENIE DE GUfiEIN. 
 
 Who that had spoken of Maurice de Gu4rin couid 
 refrain from speaking of his sister Eugenie, the most 
 devoted of sisters, one of the rarest and most beautiful 
 of souls? “There is nothing fixed, no duration, no 
 vitality in the sentiments of women towards one 
 another ; their attachments are mere pretty knots of 
 ribbon, and no more. In all the friendships of women 
 I observe this slightness of the tie. I know no instance 
 to the contrary, even in history. Orestes and Pylades 
 have no sisters.” So she herself speaks of the friend- 
 ships of her own sex. But Electra can attach herself 
 to Orestes, if not to Chrysothemis. And to her 
 brother Maurice, Eug6nie de Gu4rin was Pylades and 
 Electra in one. 
 
 The name of Maurice de Gu4rin, — that young man 
 so gifted, so attractive, so careless of fame, and so 
 early snatched away ; who died at twenty-nine ; who, 
 says his sister, “ let what he did be lost with a care- 
 lessness so unjust to himself, set no value on any 
 of his own productions, and departed hence without 
 
122 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 liv. 
 
 reaping the rich harvest which seemed his due ; ” 
 who, in spite of his immaturity, in spite of his fragility, 
 exercised such a charm, “ f amished to others so much 
 of that which all live by,” that some years after his 
 death his sister found in a country-house where he 
 used to stay, in the journal of a young girl who had 
 not known him, but who heard her family speak of 
 him, his name, the date of his death, and these words, 
 “ il etait lent vie ” (he was their life) ; whose talent, 
 exquisite as that of Keats, with much less of sunlight, 
 abundance, inventiveness, and facility in it than that 
 of Keats, but with more of distinction and power, had 
 “ that winning, delicate, and beautifully happy turn 
 of expression ” which is the stamp of the master, — is 
 beginning to be well known to all lovers of literature. 
 This establishment of Maurice’s name was an object 
 for which his sister Eugenie passionately laboured. 
 While he was alive, she placed her whole joy in the 
 flowering of this gifted nature; when he w^as dead, 
 she had no other thought than to make the world 
 know him as she knew him. She outlived him nine 
 years, and her cherished task for those years was to 
 rescue the fragments of her brother’s composition, to 
 collect them, to get them published. In pursuing this 
 task she had at first cheering hopes of success ; she 
 had at last baffling and bitter disappointment. Her 
 earthly business was at an end ; she died. Ten years 
 afterwards, it was permitted to the love of a friend, 
 M. Trebutien, to effect for Maurice’s memory what 
 the love of a sister had failed to accomplish. But 
 those who read, with delight and admiration, the 
 
IV.] 
 
 EUGfiNIE DE GTJ^RIN. 
 
 123 
 
 journal and letters of Maurice de Gu4rin, could not 
 but be attracted and touched by this sister Eug4nie, 
 who met them at every page. She seemed hardly 
 less gifted, hardly less interesting, than Maurice him- 
 self. And presently M. Trebutien did for the sister 
 what he had done for the brother. He published the 
 journal of Mdlle. Eugenic de Gu6rin, and a few (too 
 few, alas !) of her letters.^ The book has made a pro- 
 found impression in France ; and the fame which she 
 sought only for her brother now crowns the sister also. 
 
 Parts of Mdlle. de Guerin’s journal were several 
 years ago printed for private circulation, and a writer 
 in the National Review had the good fortune to fall in 
 with them. The bees of our English criticism do not 
 often roam so far afield for their honey, and this critic 
 deserves thanks for having flitted in his quest ol 
 blossom to foreign parts, and for having settled upon 
 a beautiful flower found there. He had the discern- 
 ment to see that Mdlle. de Gu6rin was well worth 
 speaking of, and he spoke of her with feeling and 
 appreciation. But that, as I have said, was several 
 years ago ; even a true and feeling homage needs to 
 be from time to time renewed, if the memory of its 
 object is to endure ; and criticism must not lose the 
 occasion offered by Mdlle. de Guerin’s journal being 
 for the first time published to the world, of direct- 
 ing notice once more to this religious and beautiful 
 character. 
 
 ^ A volume of these, also, has just been brought out by M. 
 Trebutien. One good book, at least, in the literature of the yeai 
 1865 1 
 
124 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [IV 
 
 Eug4nie de Gu4rin was born in 1805, at the chateau 
 of Le Cayla, in Languedoc. Her family, though re- 
 duced in circumstances, was noble ; and even when 
 one is a saint one cannot quite forget that one comes 
 of the stock of the Guarini of Italy, or that one counts 
 among one’s ancestors a Bishop of Senlis, who had the 
 marshalling of the French order of battle on the day 
 of Bouvines. Le Cayla was a solitary place, with its 
 terrace looking down upon a stream-bed and ^'alley ; 
 “ one may pass days there without seeing any living 
 thing but the sheep, without hearing any living thing 
 but the birds.” M. de Gu4rin, Eugenie’s father, lost 
 his wife when Eug6nie was thirteen years old, and 
 Maurice seven; he was left with four children, — 
 Eug6nie, Marie, Erembert, and Maurice, — of whom 
 Eugenie was the eldest, and Maurice was the youngest. 
 This yoimgest child, whose beauty and delicacy had 
 made him the object of his mother’s most anxious 
 fondness, was commended by her in dying to the care 
 of his sister Eugenie. Maurice at eleven years old 
 went to school at Toulouse; then he went to the 
 College Stanislas at Paris ; then he became a member 
 of the religious society which M. de Lamennais had 
 formed at La Chenaie in Brittany; afterwards he 
 lived chiefly at Paris, returning to Le Cayla, at the 
 age of twenty-nine, to die. Distance, in those days, 
 was a great obstacle to frequent meetings of the 
 separated members of a French family of narrow 
 means. Maurice de Gu4rin was seldom at Le Cayla 
 after he had once quitted it, though his few visits to 
 his home were long ones ; but he passed five years, — 
 
EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 
 
 125 
 
 rv.] 
 
 the period of his sojourn in Brittany, and of his first 
 settlement in Paris, — without coming home at all 
 In spite of the check from these absences, in spite of 
 the more serious check from a temporary alteration in 
 Maurice’s religious feelings, the union between the 
 brother and sister was wonderfully close and firm. 
 For they were knit together, not only by the tie of 
 blood and early attachment, but also by the tie of a 
 common genius. “We were,” says Eug4nie, “two 
 eyes looking out of one head.” She, on her part, 
 brought to her love for her brother the devotedness 
 of a woman, the intensity of a recluse, almost the 
 solicitude of a mother. Her home duties prevented 
 her from following the wish, which often arose in her, 
 to join a religious sisterhood. There is a trace, — just 
 a trace,— of an early attachment to a cousin ; but he 
 died when she was twenty-four. After that, she lived 
 for Maurice. It was for Maurice that, in addition to 
 her constant correspondence with him by letter, she 
 began in 1834 her journal, which was sent to him by 
 portions as it was finished. After his death she tried 
 to continue it, addressing it to “Maurice in heaven.” 
 But the eflfort was beyond her strength; gradually 
 the entries become rarer and rarer ; and on the last 
 day of December 1840 the pen dropped from her 
 hand : the journal ends. 
 
 Other sisters have loved their brothers, and it is 
 not her afifection for Maurice, admirable as this was, 
 which alone could have made Eug4nie de Gu6rin cele- 
 brated. I have said that both brother and sister had 
 genius : M, Sainte-Beuve goes so far as to say that 
 
126 ESSAYS m CRITICISM. [it. 
 
 the sister’s genius was equal, if not superior, to her 
 brother’s. No one has a more profound respect for 
 M. Sainte-Beuve’s critical judgments than I have , 
 but it seems to me that this particular judgment needs 
 to be a little explained and guarded. In Maurice’s 
 special talent, which was a talent for interpreting 
 nature, for finding words which incomparably render 
 the subtlest impressions which natui’e makes upon us, 
 which bring the intimate life of nature wonderfully 
 near to us, it seems to me that his sister was by 
 no means his equal. She never, indeed, expresses 
 herself without grace and intelligence ; but her words, 
 when she speaks of the life and appearances of nature, 
 are in general but intellectual signs ; they are not 
 like her brother’s — symbols equivalent with the thing 
 symbolised. They bring the notion of the thing de- 
 scribed to the mind, they do not bring the feeling of 
 it to the imagination. Writing from the Nivernais, 
 that region of vast woodlands in the centre of France : 
 “ It does one good,” says Eugenie, “ to be going about 
 in the midst of this enchanting nature, with flowers, 
 birds, and verdure all round one, under this large and 
 blue sky of the Nivernais. How I love the gracious 
 form of it, and those Kttle white clouds here and 
 there, like cushions of cotton, hung aloft to rest the 
 eye in this immensity !” It is pretty and graceful, but 
 how diflferent from the grave and pregnant strokes of 
 Maurice’s pencil ! “I have been along the Loire, and 
 seen on its banks the plains where nature is puissant 
 and gay ; I have seen royal and antique dwellings, all 
 marked by memories which have their place in the 
 
EUGENIE DE GUtoN. 
 
 127 
 
 fkJ 
 
 mournful legend of humanity, ^ — Chambord, Blois, 
 Amboise, Chenonceaux ; then the towns on the two 
 banks of the river, — Orleans, Tours, Saumur, Nantes ; 
 and at the end of it all, the Ocean rumbling. From 
 these I passed back into the interior of the country, 
 as far as Bourges and Nevers, a region of vast wood- 
 lands, in which miumurs of an immense range and 
 fulness ” (ce beau torrent de rumeurs, as, with an ex- 
 pression worthy of Wordsworth, he elsewhere calls 
 them) “prevail and never cease.” Words whose 
 charm is like that of the sounds of the murmuring 
 forest itself, and whose reverberations, like theirs, die 
 away in the infinite distance of the souL 
 
 Maurice’s life was in the life of nature, and the 
 passion for it consumed him ; it would have been 
 strange if his accent had not caught more of the soul 
 of nature than Eugenie’s accent, whose life was else- 
 where. “You will find in him,” Maui’ice says to 
 his sister of a friend whom he was recommending to 
 her, “you will find in him that which you love, and 
 which suits you better than anything else, — Vonction^ 
 V effusion, la mysticiW Unction, the pouring out of 
 the soul, the rapture of the mystic, were dear to 
 Maurice also ; but in him the bent of his genius gave 
 even to those a special direction of its own. In 
 Eug<^nie they took the direction most native and 
 familiar to them ; their object was the religious life. 
 
 And yet, if one analyses this beautiful and most 
 interesting character quite to the bottom, it is not 
 exactly as a saint that Eug6nie de Gu4rin is remark- 
 able. The ideal saint is a nature like Saint Fran 9 oie 
 
128 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [ly 
 
 de Sales or F4nelon ; a nature of inefiable sweetness 
 and serenity, a nature in which struggle and revolt is 
 over, and the whole man (so far as is possible to 
 human infirmity) swallowed up in love. Saint Ther- 
 esa (it is Mdlle. de Guerin herself who reminds us of 
 it) endured twenty years of unacceptance and of re- 
 pulse in her prayers ; yes, but the Saint Theresa 
 whom Christendom knows is Saint Theresa repulsed 
 no longer ! it is Saint Theresa accepted, rejoicing in 
 love, radiant with ecstasy. Mdlle. de Gu4rin is not 
 one of these saints arrived at perfect sweetness and 
 calm, steeped in ecstasy ; there is something primitive, 
 indomitable in her, which she governs, indeed, but 
 which chafes, which revolts. Somewhere in the 
 depths of that strong nature there is a struggle, 
 an impatience, an inquietude, an ennui, which en- 
 dures to the end, and which leaves one, when one 
 finally closes her journal, with an impression of pro- 
 found melancholy. “ There are days,” she writes to 
 her brother, “ when one’s nature rolls itself up, and 
 becomes a hedgehog. If I had you here at this mo- 
 ment, here close by me, how I should prick you ! hoT^ 
 sharp and hard ! ” “Poor soul, poor soul,” she cries 
 out to herself another day, “ what is the matter, what 
 would you have 1 Where is that which will do you 
 good 1 Everything is green, everything is in bloom, 
 all the air has a breath of flowers. How beautiful it 
 is ! well, I will go out. No, I should be alone, and 
 all this beauty, when one is alone, is worth nothing. 
 What shall I do then ? Eead, write, pray, take a 
 basket of sand on my head like that hermit-saint, and 
 
EUGBNIE DE GUfiRTN. 
 
 129 
 
 fv.] 
 
 walk with it 1 Yes, work, work ! keep busy the body 
 which does mischief to the soul ! I have been too little 
 occupied to-day, and that is bad for one, and it gives 
 a certain ennui which I have in me time to ferment.” 
 A certain ennui which I have in me : her wound is 
 there. In vain she follows the counsel of F4nelon : 
 “ If God tires you, tell him that he tires you” No 
 doubt she obtained great and frequent solace and 
 restoration from prayer : “ This morning I was suffer- 
 ing ; well, at present I am calm, and this I owe to 
 faith, simply to faith, to an act of faith. I can think 
 of death and eternity without trouble, without alarm. 
 Over a deep of sorrow there floats a divine calm, a 
 suavity which is the work of God only. In vain have 
 I tried other thiogs at a time like this : nothing 
 human comforts the soul, nothing human upholds 
 it : — 
 
 ‘ A I’enfant il faut sa mere, 
 
 A mon ame il faut mon Dieu.’ ” 
 
 Still the ennui reappears, bringing with it hours of 
 unutterable forlornness, and making her cling to her 
 one great earthly happiness, — her affection for her 
 brother, — with an intenseness, an anxiety, a despera- 
 tion in which there is something morbid, and by 
 which she is occasionally carried into an irritability, 
 a jealousy which she herself is the first, indeed, to 
 censure, which she severely represses, but which 
 nevertheless leaves a sense of pain. 
 
 Mdlle. de Gu4rin’s admirers have compared her to 
 Pascal, and in some respects the comparison is just 
 But she cannot exactly be classed with Pascal, any 
 VOL. I. K 
 
130 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [tv. 
 
 more than with' Saint Francois de Sales. Pascal is a 
 man, and the inexhaustible power and activity of his 
 mind leave him no leisure for ennui. He has not the 
 sweetness and serenity of the perfect saint; he is, 
 perhaps, “ der strenge, kranke Pascal — the severe^ 
 morbid Pascal” — as Goethe (and, strange to say, 
 Goethe at twenty-three, an age which usually feels 
 Pascal’s charm most profoundly) calls him. But the 
 stress and movement of the lifelong conflict waged in 
 him between his soul and his reason keep him full of 
 fire, full of agitation, and keep his reader, who wit- 
 nesses this conflict, animated and excited ; the sense 
 of forlornness and dejected weariness which clings to 
 Eug6nie de Gu4rin does not belong to Pascal. Eu- 
 genie de Gu4rin is a woman, and longs for a state of 
 firm happiness, for an aflfection in which she may re- 
 pose. The inward bliss of Saint Theresa or F^nelon 
 would have satisfied her ; denied this, she cannot rest 
 satisfied with the triumphs of self-abasement, with 
 the sombre joy of trampling the pride of life and of 
 reason underfoot, of reducing all human hope and joy 
 to insignificance ; she repeats the magnificent words 
 of Bossuet, words which both Catholicism and Pro- 
 testantism have uttered with indefatigable iteration ; 
 “ On trouve au fond de tout le vide et le n6ant — at the 
 bottom of everything one finds emptiness and nothingness^ 
 but she feels, as every one but the true mystic must 
 ever feel, their incurable sterility. 
 
 She resembles Pascal, however, by the clearness 
 and firmness of her intelligence, going straight and 
 instinctively to the bottom of any matter she is deal 
 
IV. J EUGENIE DE GU^N. 131 
 
 ing with, and expressing herself about it with incom- 
 parable precision ; never fumbling with what she has 
 to say, never imperfectly seizing or imperfectly pre- 
 senting her thought. And to this admirable precision 
 she joins a lightness of touch, a feminine ease and 
 grace, a flovdng facility which are her own. “ I do 
 not say,” writes her brother Maurice, an excellent 
 judge, “ that I find in myself a dearth of expression ; 
 but I have not this abundance of yours, this produc- 
 tiveness of soul which streams forth, which courses 
 along without ever failing, and always with an infinite 
 charm.” And writing to her of some composition of 
 hers, produced after her religious scruples had for a 
 long time kept her from the exercise of her talent ; 
 “ You see, my dear Tortoise,” he writes, “ that your 
 talent is no illusion, since after a period, I know not 
 how long, of poetical inaction, — a trial to which any 
 half-talent would have succumbed, — it rears its head 
 again more vigorous than ever. It is really hearts 
 breaking to see you repress and bind down, with I 
 know not what scruples, your spirit, which tends with 
 all the force of its nature to develop itself in this 
 direction. Others have made it a case of conscience, 
 for you to resist this impulse, and I make it one for 
 you to follow it.” And she says of herself, on one 
 of her freer days ; “It is the instinct of my life to 
 write, as it is the instinct of the fountain to flow.” 
 The charm of her expression is not a sensuous and 
 imaginative charm like that of Maurice, but rather 
 an intellectual charm ; it comes from the texture ol 
 the style rather than from its elements ; it is not so 
 
132 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [iv 
 
 much in the words as in the turn of the phrase, in 
 the happy cast and flow of the sentence. Kecluse as 
 she was, she had a great correspondence : every one 
 wished to have letters from her ; and no wonder. 
 
 To this strength of intelligence and talent of ex- 
 pression she joined a great force of character. Eeligion 
 had early possessed itself of this force of character, 
 and reinforced it : in the shadow of the Cevennes, in 
 the sharp and tonic nature of this region of Southern 
 France, which has seen the Albigensians, which has 
 seen the Camisards, Catholicism too is fervent and 
 intense. Eug4nie de Gu4rin was brought up amidst 
 strong religious influences, and they found in her a 
 nature on which they could lay firm hold. I have 
 said that she was not a saint of the order of Saint 
 Fran 9 ois de Sales or F6nelon ; perhaps she had too 
 keen an intelligence to sufi*er her to be this, too for- 
 cible and impetuous a character. But I did not mean 
 to imply the least doubt of the reality, the profound- 
 ness, of her religious life. She was penetrated by the 
 power of religion ; religion was the master-influence 
 of her life ; she derived immense consolations from 
 religion, she earnestly strove to conform her whole 
 nature to it ; if there was an element in her which 
 religion could not perfectly reach, perfectly transmute, 
 she groaned over this element in her, she chid it, she 
 made it bow. Almost every thought in her was 
 brought into harmony with religion ; and what few 
 thoughts were not thus brought into harmony were 
 brought into subjection. 
 
 Then she had her affection for her brother ; and 
 
IT.] EUGENIE DE GUtoN. 133 
 
 this, too, though perhaps there might be in it some- 
 thing a little over-eager, a little too absolute, a little 
 too susceptible, was a pure, a devoted affection. It 
 was not only passionate, it was tender. It was tender, 
 pliant, and self-sacrificing to a degree that not in one 
 nature out of a thousand, — of natures with a mind 
 and will like hers, — is found attainable. She thus 
 united extraordinary power of intelligence, extraor- 
 dinary force of character, and extraordinary strength 
 of affection ; and all these under the control of a deep 
 religious feeling. 
 
 This is what makes her so remarkable, so interest- 
 ing. I shall try and make her speak for herself, that 
 she may show us the characteristic sides of her rare 
 nature with her own inimitable touch. 
 
 It must be remembered that her journal is written 
 for Maurice only; in her lifetime no eye but his ever 
 saw it. “ Ced iCest pas pour le public” she writes ; 
 “cW de r intime, dest de Vdme, dest pour un” “This 
 is not for the public; it contains my inmost thoughts, 
 my very soul ; it is for one” And Maurice, this one, 
 was a kind of second self to her. “We see things 
 with the same eyes ; what you find beautiful, I find 
 beautiful; God has made our souls of one piece.” 
 And this genuine confidence in her brother’s sympathy 
 gives to the entries in her joui’nal a naturalness and 
 simple freedom rare in such compositions. She felt 
 that he would understand her, and be interested in 
 all that she wrote. 
 
 One of the first pages of her journal relates an in- 
 cident of the home-life of Le Cayla, the smallest detail 
 
134 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [IV. 
 
 of which Maurice liked to hear ; and in relating it she 
 brings this simple life before us. She is writing in 
 November, 1834 : — 
 
 “lam furious with the gray cat. The mischievous 
 beast has made away with a little half-frozen pigeon, 
 which I was trying to thaw by the side of the fire. 
 The poor little thing was just beginning to come 
 round ; I meant to tame him ; he would have grown 
 fond of me ; and there is my whole scheme eaten up 
 by a cat ! This event, and all the rest of to-day’s 
 history, has passed in the kitchen. Here I take up 
 my abode all the morning and a part of the evening, 
 ever since I am without IMimi.^ I have to superin- 
 tend the cook ; sometimes papa comes down, and I 
 read to him by the oven, or by the fireside, some bits 
 out of the Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church. 
 This book struck PierriP with astonishment. ‘ Qut 
 de mouts aqui didins I What a lot of words there are 
 inside it !’ This boy is a real original. One evening 
 he asked me if the soul was immortal ; then after- 
 wards, what a philosopher was? ’We had got upon 
 great questions, as you see. When I told him that a 
 philosopher was a person who was wise and learned : 
 ‘Then, mademoiselle, you are a philosopher.’ This 
 was said with an air of simplicity and sincerity which 
 might have made even Socrates take it as a compli- 
 ment ; but it made me laugh so much that my gravity 
 as catechist was gone for that evening. A day or two 
 ago Pierril left us, to his great sorrow : his time with 
 
 ^ The familiar name of her sister ilarie. 
 * A servant-boy at Le Cayla. 
 
EUG:6nIE DE GUERIN. 
 
 135 
 
 US was up on Saint Brice’s day. Now he goes about 
 with his little dog, truffle-hunting. If he comes this 
 way I shall go and ask him if he still thinks I look 
 like a philosopher.” 
 
 Her good sense and spirit made her discharge with 
 alacrity her household tasks in this patriarchal life of 
 Le Cayla, and treat them as the most natural thing 
 in the world. She sometimes complains, to be sure, 
 of burning her fingers at the kitchen-fire. But when 
 a literary friend of her brother expresses enthusiasm 
 about her and her poetical nature : “ The poetess,” 
 she says, “ whom this gentleman believes me to be, 
 is an ideal being, infinitely removed from the life 
 which is actually mine — a life of occupations, a life 
 of household-business, which takes up all my time. 
 How could I make it otherwise 1 I am sure I do not 
 know ; and, besides, my duty is in this sort of life, 
 and I have no wish to escape from it.” 
 
 Among these occupations of the patriarchal life of 
 the chatelaine of Le Cayla intercourse with the poor 
 fills a prominent place : — 
 
 “ To-day,” she writes on the 9th of December 
 1834, “ I have been w^arming myself at every fireside 
 in the village. It is a round which Mimi and I often 
 make, and in which I take pleasure. To-day we have 
 been seeing sick people, and holding forth on doses 
 and sick-room drinks. ‘ Take this, do that ; ’ and 
 they attend to us just as if we were the doctor. We 
 prescribed shoes for a little thing who was amiss from 
 having gone barefoot ; to the brother, who, with a 
 bad headache, was lying quite flat, we prescribed a 
 
136 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [iv. 
 
 pillow ; the pillow did him good, but I am afraid it 
 will hardly cure him. He is at the beginning of a 
 bad feverish cold : and these poor people live in the 
 filth of their hovels like animals in their stable ; the 
 bad air poisons them. When I come home to Le 
 Cayla I seem to be in a palace.” 
 
 She had books, too j not in abundance, not for the 
 fancying them ; the list of her library is small, and it 
 is enlarged slowly and with difficulty. The Letters oj 
 Saint Theresa, which she had long wished to get, she 
 sees in the hands of a poor servant girl, before she 
 can procure them for herself. “ What then ? ” is her 
 comment : “ very likely she makes a better use of 
 them than I could.” But she has the Imitation, the 
 Spiritual Worlcs of Bossuet and F4nelon, the Lives oj 
 the Saints, Corneille, Racine, Andr6 Chenier, and 
 Lamartine ; Madame de Stael’s book on Germany, 
 and French translations of Shakspeare’s plays, Ossian, 
 the Vicar of Wakefield, Scott’s Old Mortality and Red- 
 gauntlet, and the Promessi Sposi of Manzoni. Above 
 all, she has her own mind; her meditations in the 
 lonely fields, on the oak -grown hill -side of “The 
 Seven Springs ; ” her meditations and writing in her 
 own room, her chamhrette, her ddicieux chez moi, where 
 every night, before she goes to bed, she opens the 
 window to look out upon the sky, — the balmy moon- 
 lit sky of Languedoc. This life of reading, thinking, 
 and writing was the life she liked best, the life that 
 most truly suited her. “ I find writing has become 
 almost a necessity to me. Whence does it arise, this 
 impulse to give utterance to the voice of one’s spirit 
 
nr.J 
 
 EUGl^NIE DE GUERIN 
 
 137 
 
 to pour out my thoughts before God and one human 
 being? I say one human being, because I always 
 imagine that you are present, that you see what I 
 write. In the stillness of a life like this my spirit is 
 happy, and, as it were, dead to all that goes on up- 
 stairs or downstairs, in the house or out of the house. 
 But this does not last long. ‘ Come, my poor spirit,’ 
 I then say to myself, ‘ we must go back to the things 
 of this world.’ And I take my spinning, or a book, 
 or a saucepan, or I play with Wolf or Trilby. Such 
 a life as this I call heaven upon earth.” 
 
 Tastes like these, joined with a talent like Mdlle. 
 de Gu4rin’s, naturally inspire thoughts of literary 
 composition. Such thoughts* she had, and perhaps 
 she would have been happier if she had followed 
 them ; but she never could satisfy herself that to 
 follow them was quite consistent with the religious 
 life, and her projects of composition were gradually 
 relinquished : — 
 
 “ Would to God that my thoughts, my spirit, had 
 never taken their flight beyond the narrow roimd in 
 which it is my lot to live ! In spite of all that people 
 say to the contrary, I feel that I cannot go beyond 
 my needlework and my spinning without going too 
 far : I feel it, I believe it : well, then, I will keep in 
 my proper sphere ; however much I am tempted, my 
 spirit shall not be allowed to occupy itself with great 
 matters until it occupies itself with them in Heaven.” 
 
 And again : — 
 
 “ My journal has been untouched for a long while. 
 Do you want to know why I It is because the time 
 
138 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [nr. 
 
 seems to me misspent which I spend in writing it. 
 We owe God an account of every minute ; and is it 
 not a wrong use of our minutes to employ them in 
 writing a history of our transitory days 1 ” 
 
 She overcomes her scruples, and goes on writing 
 the journal ; but again and again they return to her. 
 Her brother tells her of the pleasure and comfort 
 something she has written gives to a friend of his in 
 affliction. She answers : — 
 
 “It is from the Cross that those thoughts come, 
 which your friend finds so soothing, so unspeakably 
 tender. None of them come from me. I feel my 
 own aridity ; but I feel, too, that God, when he will, 
 can make an ocean flow upon this bed of sand. It is 
 the same with so many simple souls, from which pro- 
 ceed the most admirable things ; because they are in 
 direct relation with God, without false science and 
 without pride. And thus I am gradually losing my 
 taste for books ; I say to myself : ‘ What can they 
 teach me wliich I shall not one day know in Heaven ? 
 let God be my master and my study here ! ’ I try tc 
 make him so, and I find myself the better for it. I 
 read little ; I go out little ; I plunge myself in the 
 inward life. How infinite are the sayings, doings, 
 feelings, events of that life ! Oh, if you could but 
 see them ! But what avails it to make them known 1 
 God alone should be admitted to the sanctuary of the 
 soul.” 
 
 Beautifully as she says all this, one cannot, I think, 
 read it without a sense of disquietude, without a pre- 
 sentiment that this ardent spirit is forcing itself from 
 
EUG^^IE DE GUBKIN. 
 
 m 
 
 nr.J 
 
 its natural bent, that the beatitude of the true mystic 
 will never be its earthly portion. And yet how simple 
 and charming is her picture of the life of religion 
 which she chose as her ark of refuge, and in which 
 she desired to place all her happiness : — 
 
 “ Cloaks, clogs, umbrellas, all the apparatus of 
 winter, went with us this morning to Andillac, where 
 we have passed the whole day ; some of it at the 
 curb’s house, the rest in church. How I like this life 
 of a country Sunday, with its activity, its journeys to 
 church, its liveliness ! You find all your neighbours 
 on the road ; you have a curtsey from every woman 
 you meet, and then, as you go along, such a talk 
 about the poultry, the sheep and cows, the good man 
 and the children ! My great delight is to give a kiss 
 to these children, and see them run away and hide 
 their blushing faces in their mother’s gown. They 
 are alarmed at las doumdisMos,^ as at a being of 
 another world. One of these little things said the 
 other day to its grandmother, who was talking of 
 coming to see us : ‘ Minino, you mustn’t go to that 
 castle ; there is a black hole there.’ What is the 
 reason that in all ages the noble’s chateau has been 
 an object of terror'? Is it because of the horrors 
 that were committed there in old times “? I sup- 
 pose so.” 
 
 This vague horror of the chateau, still lingering in 
 the mind of the French peasant fifty years after he 
 has stormed it, is indeed curious, and is one of the 
 thousand indications how unlike aristocracy on the 
 ^ The young lady. 
 
140 ESSAYS IN CKITICISM. [iv 
 
 Continent has been to aristocracy in England. But 
 this is one of the great matters with which Mdlle. de 
 Gu6rin would not have us occupied; let us pass to 
 the subject of Christmas in Languedoc : — 
 
 “ Christmas is come ; the beautiful festival, the one 
 I love most, and which gives me the same joy as it 
 gave the shepherds of Bethlehem. In real truth, 
 one’s whole soul sings with joy at this beautiful 
 coming of God upon earth, — a coming which here is 
 announced on all sides of us by music and by our 
 charming nadaleO Nothing at Paris can give you a 
 notion of what Christmas is with us. You have not 
 even the midnight-mass. We all of us went to it, 
 papa at our head, on the most perfect night possible. 
 Never was there a finer sky than ours was that mid- 
 night ; — so fine that papa kept perpetually throwing 
 back the hood of his cloak, that he might look up at 
 the sky. The groimd was white with hoar-frost, but 
 we were not cold ; besides, the air, as we met it, was 
 warmed by the bundles of blazing torchwood which our 
 servants carried in front of us to light us on our way. 
 It was delightful, I do assure you ; and I should like 
 you to have seen us there on our road to church, in 
 those lanes with the bushes along their banks as white 
 as if they were in flower. The hoar-frost makes the 
 most lovely flowers. We saw a long spray so beauti- 
 ful that we wanted to take it with us as a garland for 
 the communion-table, but it melted in our hands : all 
 flowers fade so soon ! I was very sorry about my 
 
 * A peculiar peal rung at Christmas -time by the church bells 
 of Languedoc. 
 
EUGENIE DE GG^RIN. 
 
 141 
 
 iV.] 
 
 garland; it was mournful to see it drip away, and 
 get smaller and smaller every minute.” 
 
 The religious life is at bottom everywhere alike ; 
 but it is curious to note the variousness of its setting 
 and outward circumstance. Catholicism has these so 
 dijQferent from Protestantism ! and in Catholicism 
 these accessories have, it cannot be denied, a noble- 
 ness and amplitude which in Protestantism is often 
 wanting to them. In Catholicism they have, from 
 the antiquity of this form of religion, from its preten- 
 sions to universality, from its really widespread pre- 
 valence, from its sensuousness, something European, 
 august, and imaginative : in Protestantism they often 
 have, from its inferiority in all these respects, some- 
 thing provincial, mean, and prosaic. In revenge, 
 Protestantism has a future before it, a prospect of 
 growth in alliance with the vital movement of modern 
 society ; while Catholicism appears to be bent on 
 widening the breach between itself and the modern 
 spirit, to be fatally losing itself in the multiplication 
 of dogmas, Mariolatry, and miracle-mongering. But 
 the style and circumstance of actual Catholicism is 
 grander than its present tendency, and the style and 
 circumstance of Protestantism is meaner than its tend- 
 ency. While I was reading the journal of Mdlle. de 
 Gu4rin there came into my hands the memoir and 
 poems of a young Englishwoman, Miss Emma Tatham ; 
 and one could not but be struck with the singular con- 
 trast which the two lives, — in their setting rather than 
 in their inherent quality, — present. Miss Tatham had 
 not, certainly, MdUe. de Guerin’s talent, but she had 
 
142 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [rv. 
 
 a sincere vein of poetic feeling, a genuine aptitude foi 
 composition. Both were fervent Christians, and, so 
 far, the two lives have a real resemblance ; but, in 
 the setting of them, what a difference ! The French- 
 woman is a Catholic in Languedoc ; the Englishwoman 
 is a Protestant at Margate ; Margate, that brick-and- 
 mortar image of English Protestantism, representing 
 it in all its prose, all its uncomeliness, — let me add, all 
 its salubrity. Between the external form and fashion 
 of these two lives, between the Catholic Mdlle. de 
 Gu4rin’s nadalet at the Languedoc Christmas, her 
 chapel of moss at Easter-time, her daily reading of 
 the life of a saint, carrying her to the most diverse 
 times, places, and peoples, — her quoting, when she 
 wants to fix her mind upon the staunchness which 
 the religious aspirant needs, the words of Saint 
 Macedonius to a hunter whom he met in the moun- 
 tains, “ I pursue after God, as you pursue after game,” 
 — her quoting, when she wants to break a village girl 
 of disobedience to her mother, the story of the ten 
 disobedient children whom at Hippo Saint Augustine 
 saw palsied ; — between all this and the bare, blank, 
 narrowly English setting of Miss Tatham’s Protes- 
 tantism, her “ union in church-fellowship with the 
 worshippers at Hawley Square Chapel, Margate ; ” her 
 “ singing with soft, sweet voice, the animating lines — 
 ‘ My Jesus to know, and feel His blood flow, 
 
 ’Tis life everlasting, ’tis heaven below ; ’ ” 
 
 her “ young female teachers belonging to the Sunday- 
 school,” and her “ Mr. Thomas Rowe, a venerable 
 class-leader,” — what a dissimilarity ! In the ground 
 
eugi?:nie de gu^rin. 
 
 143 
 
 of the two lives, a likeness ; in all their circumstance, 
 what unlikeness ! An unlikeness, it will be said, in 
 that which is non-essential and indifferent. Non- 
 essential, — yes ; indiflferent, — no. The signal want 
 
 of grace and charm in English Protestantism’s setting 
 of its religious life is not an indifferent matter ; it is 
 a real weakness. This might ye to have done^ and not to 
 have left the other undone. 
 
 I have said that the present tendency of Catho- 
 licism, — the Catholicism of the main body of the 
 Catholic clergy and laity,— seems likely to exaggerate 
 rather than to remove all that in this form of religion 
 is most repugnant to reason ; but this Catholicism 
 was not that of Mdlle. de Gu6rin. The insufficiency 
 of her Catholicism comes from a doctrine which Pro- 
 testantism, too, has adopted, although Protestantism, 
 from its inherent element of freedom, may find it 
 easier to escape from it; a doctrine with a certain 
 attraction for all noble natures, but, in the modem 
 world at any rate, incurably sterile, — the doctrine of 
 the emptiness and nothingness of human life, of the 
 superiority of renouncement to activity, of quietism 
 to energy ; the doctrine which makes effort for things 
 on this side of the grave a folly, and joy in things on 
 this side of the grave a sin. But her Catholicism is 
 remarkably free from the faults which Protestants 
 commonly think inseparable from Catholicism ; the 
 relation to the priest, the practice of confession, as- 
 sume, when she speaks of them, an aspect which is not 
 that under which Exeter Hall knows them, but which, 
 — unless one is of the number of those who prefer 
 
144 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [i» 
 
 regarding that by which men and nations die to re- 
 garding that by which they live, — one is glad to study. 
 “La confessions'^ she says twice in her journal, ^^n'esl 
 qu'une expansion du repentir dans V amour and her 
 weekly journey to the confessional in the little church 
 of Cahuzac is her cher pSlerinage the little church 
 is the place where she has ^Haiss6 tant de mishres." 
 
 “ This morning,” she writes one 28th of November 
 “ I was up before daylight, dressed quickly, said my 
 prayers, and started with Marie for Cahuzac. When 
 we got there, the chapel was occupied, which I was 
 not sorry for. I like not to be hurried, and to have 
 time, before I go in, to lay bare my soul before God. 
 This often takes me a long time, because my thoughts 
 are apt to be flying about like these autumn leaves. 
 At ten o’clock I was on my knees, listening to words 
 the most salutary that were ever spoken ; and I went 
 away, feeling myself a better being. Every burden 
 thrown off leaves us with a sense of brightness ; and 
 when the soul has laid down the load of its sins at 
 God’s feet, it feels as if it had wings. What an 
 admirable thing is confession ! What comfort, what 
 light, what strength is given me every time after I 
 have said, I have sinned." 
 
 This blessing of confession is the greater, she says, 
 “ the more the heart of the priest to whom we con- 
 fide our repentance is like that divine heart which 
 ‘has so loved us.’ This is what attaches me to M. 
 Bories.” M. Bories was the cur6 of her parish, a 
 man no longer young, and of whose loss, when he 
 was about to leave them, she thus speaks t — 
 
EUG^]NIE DE GUl^RIN. 
 
 145 
 
 “ What a grief for me ! how much I lose in losing 
 this faithful guide of my conscience, heart, and mind, 
 of my whole self, which God has appointed to be in 
 his charge, and which let itself be in his charge so 
 gladly ! He knew the resolves which God had put 
 in my heart, and I had need of his help to follow 
 them. Our new cur6 cannot supply his place : he is 
 so young ! and then he seems so inexperienced, so 
 undecided ! It needs firmness to pluck a soul out 
 of the midst of the world, and to uphold it 
 against the assaults of flesh and blood. It is Satur- 
 day, my day for going to Cahuzac ; I am just going 
 there, perhaps I shall come back more tranquil 
 God has always given me some good thing there, in 
 that chapel where I have left behind me so many 
 miseries.” 
 
 Such is confession for her when the priest is 
 worthy ; and, when he is not worthy, she knows how 
 to separate the man from the office : — 
 
 “ To-day I am going to do something which I dis- 
 hka ; but I will do it, with God’s help. Do not think 
 I am on my way to the stake ; it is only that I am 
 going to confess to a priest in whom I have not con- 
 fidence, but who is the only one here. In this act of 
 religion the man must always be separated from the 
 priest, and sometimes the man must be annihilated.” 
 The same clear sense, the same freedom from super- 
 stition, shows itself in all her religious life. She tells 
 us, to be sure, how once, when she was a little girl, 
 she stained a new frock, and on praying, in her alarm, 
 to an image of the Virgin which hung in her room, 
 VOL. I. L 
 
146 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [iv 
 
 saw the stains vanish : even the austerest Protestant 
 will not judge such Mariolatry as this very harshly. 
 But, in general, the Virgin Mary fills in the religious 
 parts of her journal no prominent place ; it is Jesus, 
 not Mary. “ Oh, how well has Jesus said : ‘ Come 
 unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.’ It 
 is only there, only in the bosom of God, that we can 
 rightly weep, rightly rid oui’selves of our burden.” 
 And again : “ The mystery of suflering makes one 
 grasp the belief of something to be expiated, some- 
 thing to be won. I see it in Jesus Christ, the Man of 
 Sorrows It was necessary that the Son of Man should 
 suffer. That is all we know in the ti-oubles and cala- 
 mities of life.” 
 
 And who has ever spoken of justification more 
 impressively and piously than Mdlle. de Gu6rin speaks 
 of it, when, after reckoning the number of minutes 
 she has lived, she exclaims : — 
 
 “ My God, what have we done with all these 
 minutes of ours, which thou, too, wilt one day reckon 1 
 Will there be any of them to count for eternal life ? 
 will there be many of them? will there be one of 
 them? ‘If thou, 0 Lord, wilt be extreme to mark 
 what is done amiss, 0 Lord, who may abide it ! ’ 
 This close scrutiny of our time may well make us 
 tremble, all of us who have advanced more than a 
 few steps in life ; for God will judge us otherwise 
 than as he judges the lilies of the field. I have never 
 been able to understand the security of those who 
 placed their whole reliance, in presenting themselves 
 before God, upon a good conduct in the ordinary 
 
IV.] 
 
 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 
 
 147 
 
 relations of human life. As if all our duties were 
 confined wthin the narrow sphere of this world ! To 
 be a good parent, a good child, a good citizen, a good 
 brother or sister, is not enough to procure entrance 
 into the kingdom of heaven. God demands other 
 things besides these kindly social virtues of him whom 
 he means to crown with an eternity of glory,” 
 
 And, with this zeal for the spirit and power of 
 religion, what prudence in her counsels of religious 
 practice ; what discernment, what measure ! She has 
 been speaking of the charm of the Lives of the Saints, 
 and she goes on : — 
 
 “ Notwithstanding this, the Lives of the Saints seem 
 to me, for a great many people, dangerous reading, 
 I would not recommend them to a young girl, or even 
 to some women who are no longer young. What one 
 reads has such power over one’s feelings ; and these, 
 even in seeking God, sometimes go astray. Alas, we 
 have seen it in poor C.’s case. What care one ought 
 to take vdth a young person ; with what she reads, 
 what she writes, her society, her prayers, — all of them 
 matters which demand a mother’s tender watchful- 
 ness ! I remember many things I did at fourteen, 
 which my mother, had she lived, would not have let 
 me do. I would have done anything for God’s sake j 
 I would have cast myself into an oven, and assuredly 
 things like that are not God’s will ; He is not pleased 
 by the hurt one does to one’s health through that 
 ardent but ill-regulated piety which, while it impairs 
 the body, often leaves many a fault flourishing. And, 
 therefore, Saint Fran9ois de Sales used to say to the 
 
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 148 
 
 [nr. 
 
 nuns who asked his leave to go bare-foot : Change 
 
 your brains and keep your shoes.’ ” 
 
 Meanwhile Maurice, in a five years’ absence, and 
 amid the distractions of Paris, lost, or seemed to his 
 sister to lose, something of his fondness for his home 
 and its inmates : he certainly lost his early religious 
 habits and feelings. It is on this latter loss that 
 Mdlle. de Gu6rin’s journal oftenest touches, — with 
 infinite delicacy, but with infinite anguish : — 
 
 “ Oh, the agony of being in fear for a soul’s salva- 
 tion, who can describe it ! That which caused our 
 Saviour the keenest suffering, in the agony of his 
 Passion, was not so much the thought of the torments 
 he was to endure, as the thought that these torments 
 would be of no avail for a multitude of sinners ; for 
 all those who set themselves against their redemption, 
 or who do not care for it. The mere anticipation of 
 this obstinacy and this heedlessness had power to 
 make sorrowful, even unto death, the divine Son of 
 Man. And this feeling all Christian souls, according 
 to the measure of faith and love granted them, more 
 or less share.” 
 
 Maurice returned to Le Cayla in the summer of 
 1837, and passed six months there. This meeting 
 entirely restored the union between him and his 
 family. “These six months with us,” writes his 
 sister, “he ill, and finding himself so loved by us all, 
 had entirely reattached him to us. Five years with- 
 out seeing us, had perhaps made him a little lose 
 sight of our affection for him ; having found it again, 
 he met it with all the strength of his own. He had 
 
rv.] EUG15NIE DE GUfiRIN. 149 
 
 SO firmly renewed, before he left us, all family-ties, 
 that nothing but death could have broken them.” 
 The separation in religious matters between the 
 brother and sister gradually diminished, and before 
 Maurice died it had ceased. I have elsewhere spoken 
 of Maurice’s religious feeling and his character. It is 
 probable that his divergence from his sister in this 
 sphere of religion was never so wide as she feared, 
 and that his reunion with her was never so complete 
 as she hoped. “ His errors were passed,” she says, 
 “ his illusions were cleared away ; by the call of his 
 nature, by original disposition, he had come back to 
 sentiments of order. I knew all, I followed each of 
 his steps ; out of the fiery sphere of the passions 
 (which held him but a little moment) I saw him pass 
 into the sphere of the Christian life. It was a beauti- 
 ful soul, the soul of Maurice.” But the illness which 
 had caused his return to Le Cayla reappeared after 
 he got back to Paris in the winter of 1837-8. Again 
 he seemed to recover ; and his marriage with a young 
 Creole lady, Mdlle. Caroline de Gervain, took place 
 in the autumn of 1838. At the end of September in 
 that year Mdlle. de Gu4rin had joined her brother 
 in Paris ; she was present at his marriage, and stayed 
 with him and his wife for some months afterwards. 
 Her journal recommences in April 1839. Zealously 
 as she had promoted her brother’s marriage, cordial 
 as were her relations with her sister-in-law, it is evi- 
 dent that a sense of loss, of loneliness, invades her, 
 and sometimes weighs her down. She writes in hei 
 journal on the 4th of May : — 
 
150 
 
 ESSAYS IN CKITICISM, 
 
 [IV. 
 
 “ God knows when we shall see one another again ! 
 My own Maurice, must it be our lot to live apart, to 
 find that this marriage which I had so much share in 
 bringing about, which I hoped would keep us so much 
 together, leaves us more asunder than ever 1 For the 
 present and for the future, this troubles me more than 
 I can say. My sympathies, my inclinations, carry me 
 more towards you than towards any other member of 
 our family. I have the misfortune to be fonder of 
 you than of anytliing else in the world, and my heart 
 had from of old built in you its happiness. Youth 
 gone and life declining, I looked for^vard to quitting 
 the scene with Maurice. At any time of life a great 
 affection is a great happiness ; the spirit comes to take 
 refuge in it entirely. 0 delight and joy which will 
 never be your sister’s portion ! Only in the direction 
 of God shall I find an issue for my heart to love as 
 it has the notion of loving, as it has the power of 
 loving.” 
 
 From such complainings, in which there is un- 
 doubtedly something morbid, — complainings which 
 she herself blamed, to which she seldom gave way, 
 but which, in presenting her character, it is not just 
 to put wholly out of sight, — she was called by the 
 news of an alarming return of her brother’s illness. 
 For some days the entries in the journal show her 
 agony of apprehension. “ He coughs, he coughs still ! 
 Those words keep echoing for ever in my ears, and 
 pursue me wherever I go ; I cannot look at the leaves 
 on the trees without thinking that the winter will 
 come, and then the consumptive die.” She went to 
 
nr.J MJGtoE DE GUfiRIN. 151 
 
 him, and brought him back by slow stages to Le 
 Cayla, dying. He died on the 19th of July 1839. 
 
 Thenceforward the energy of life ebbed in her^ 
 but the main chords of her being, the chord of affec 
 tion, the chord of religious longing, the chord of in- 
 telligence, the chord of sorrow, gave, so long as they 
 answered to the touch at all, a deeper and finer sound 
 than ever. Always she saw before her, “ that beloved 
 pale face ; ” “ that beautiful head, with all its different 
 expressions, smiling, speaking, suffering, dying,” re- 
 garded her always : — 
 
 “I have seen his coffin in the same room, in the 
 same spot where I remember seeing, when I was a 
 very little girl, his cradle, when I was brought home 
 from Gaillac, where I was then staying, for his 
 christening. This christening was a grand one, full 
 of rejoicing, more than that of any of the rest of us ; 
 specially marked. I enjoyed myself greatly, and went 
 back to Gaillac next day, charmed with my new little 
 brother. Two years afterwards I came home, and 
 brought with me a frock for him of my own making. 
 I dressed him in the frock, and took him out with me 
 along by the warren at the north of the house, and 
 there he walked a few steps alone, — his first walking 
 alone, — and I ran with delight to tell my mother the 
 news : ‘ Maurice, Maurice has begun to walk by him- 
 self ! ’ — Eecollections which, coming back to-day, break 
 one’s heart.” 
 
 The shortness and suffering of her brother’s life 
 filled her with an agony of pity. “Poor beloved 
 soul, you have had hardly any happiness here below ; 
 
152 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [lY. 
 
 your life has been so short, your repose so rare. 0 
 God, uphold me, establish my heart in thy faith ! 
 Alas, I have too little of this supporting me ! How 
 we have gazed at him and loved him, and kissed him, 
 — his wife, and we, his sisters ; he lying lifeless in his 
 bed, his head on the pillow as if he were asleep ! Then 
 we followed him to the churchyard, to the grave, to 
 his last resting-place, and prayed over him, and wept 
 over him ; and we are here again, and I am writing 
 to him again, as if he were staying away from home, 
 as if he were in Paris. My beloved one, can it be, 
 shall we never see one another again on earth 1 ” 
 
 But in heaven ? — and here, though love and hope 
 finally prevailed, the very passion of the sister’s long- 
 ing sometimes inspired tortuiing inquietudes : — 
 
 “ I am broken down with misery. I want to see 
 him. Every moment I pray to God to grant me this 
 grace. Heaven, the world of spirits, is it so far from 
 usl 0 depth, 0 mystery of the other life which 
 separates us ! I, who was so eagerly anxious about 
 him, who wanted so to know all that happened to 
 him, — wherever he may be now, it is over ! I follow 
 him into the three abodes ; I stop wistfully before the 
 place of bliss, I pass on to the place of suffering, — to 
 the gulf of fire. My God, my God, no ! Not there 
 let my brother be ! not there ! And he is not : his 
 soul, the soul of Maurice, among the lost . . . horrible 
 fear, no ! But in purgatory, where the soul is cleansed 
 by suffering, where the failings of the heart are ex- 
 piated, the doubtings of the spirit, the half-yieldings 
 to evil ? Perhaps my brother is there and suffers, and 
 
EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 
 
 153 
 
 rv-3 
 
 calls to us amidst his anguish of repentance, as he used 
 to call to us amidst his bodily suffering : ‘Help me, 
 you who love me.’ Yes, beloved one, by prayer. I 
 will go and pray ; prayer has been such a power to 
 me, and I will pray to the end. Prayer ! Oh ! and 
 prayer for the dead ; it is the dew of purgatory.” 
 
 Often, alas, the gracious dew would not fall ; the 
 air of her soul was parched; the arid wind, which 
 was somewhere in the depths of her being, blew. 
 She marks in her journal the 1st of May, “this return 
 of the loveliest month in the year,” only to keep up 
 the old habit ; even the month of May can no longer 
 give her any pleasure : ^^Tout est chmg't — all is changed.” 
 She is crushed by “ the misery which has nothing good 
 in it, the tearless, dry misery, which bruises the heart 
 like a hammer.” 
 
 “ I am dying to everything. I am dying of a slow 
 moral agony, a condition of unutterable suffering. 
 Lie there, my poor journal ! be forgotten with all this 
 world which is fading away from me. I will write 
 here no more until I come to life again, until God 
 re-awakens me out of this tomb in which my soul lies 
 buried. Maurice, my beloved ! it was not thus with 
 me when I had you ! The thought of Maurice could 
 revive me from the most profound depression : to 
 have him in the world was enough for me. With 
 Maurice, to be buried alive would have not seemed 
 dull to me.” 
 
 And, as a burden to this funereal strain, the old 
 tMc et ndant of Bossuet, profound, solemn, sterile : — 
 
 “ So beautiful in the morning, and in the evening, 
 
154 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [iv 
 
 that / how the thought disenchants one, and tum£ 
 one from the world ! I can understand that Spanish 
 grandee who, after lifting up the winding-sheet of a 
 beautiful queen, threw himself into the cloister and 
 became a great saint. I would have all my friends at 
 La Trappe, in the interest of their eternal welfare. 
 Not that in the world one cannot be saved, not that 
 there are not in the world duties to be discharged 
 as sacred and as beautiful as there are in the cloister, 
 but . . . .” 
 
 And there she stops, and a day or two afterwards 
 her journal comes to an end. A few fragments, a few 
 letters carry us on a little later, but after the 22d of 
 August 1845 there is nothing. To make known her 
 brother’s genius to the world was the one task she set 
 herself after his death ; in 1840 came Madame Sand’s 
 noble tribute to him in the Revue des Deux Mondes ; 
 then followed projects of raising a yet more enduring 
 monument to his fame, by collecting and publishing 
 his scattered compositions ; these projects I have 
 already said, were baffled ; — Mdlle. de Guerin’s letter 
 of the 22d of August 1845 relates to this disappoint- 
 ment. In silence, during nearly three years more, 
 she faded away at Le Cay la. She died on the 31st 
 of May 1848. 
 
 M. Trebutien has accomplished the pious task in 
 which Mdlle. de Gu4rin was baffled, and has estab- 
 lished Maurice’s fame; by publishing this journal 
 he has established Eugenie’s also. She was very 
 different from her brother; but she too, like him, 
 had that in her which preserves a reputation. Her 
 
EUG15NIE DE GUERIN. 
 
 155 
 
 nr.) 
 
 Boul had the same characteristic quality as his 
 talent, — distinction. Of this quality the world is im- 
 
 patient; it chafes against it, rails at it, insults it, 
 hates it ; — it ends by receiving its influence, and by 
 undergoing its law. This quality at last inexorably 
 corrects the world’s blunders, and fixes the world’s 
 ideals. It procures that the popular poet shall not 
 finally pass for a Pindar, nor the popular historian 
 for a Tacitus, nor the popular preacher for a Bossuet. 
 To the circle of spirits marked by this rare quality, 
 Maurice and Eugenie de Guerin belong ; they will 
 take their place in the sky which these inhabit, and 
 shine close to one another, hmda sidera. 
 
HEIlSrKICH HEIKK 
 
 ‘‘I KNOW not if I deserve that a laurel-wreath should 
 one day be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I 
 have loved it, has always been to me but a divine 
 plaything. I have never attached any great value to 
 poetical fame ; and I trouble myself very little whether 
 people praise my verses or blame them. But lay on 
 my coffin a sword ; for I was a brave soldier in the 
 Liberation War of humanity.” 
 
 Heine had his full share of love of fame, and cared 
 quite as much as his brethren of the genus irritabile 
 whether people praised his verses or blamed them. 
 And he was very little of a hero. Posterity will 
 certainly decorate his tomb with the emblem of the 
 laurel rather than with the emblem of the sword. 
 Still, for his contemporaries, for us, for the Europe 
 of the present century, he is significant chiefly for 
 the reason which he himself in the words just quoted 
 assigns. He is significant because he was, if not pre- 
 eminently a brave, yet a brilliant, a most effective 
 soldier in the Liberation War of humanity. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 157 
 
 r.] 
 
 To ascertain the master-current in the literature 
 of an epoch, and to distinguish this from all minor 
 currents, is one of the critic’s highest functions; in 
 discharging it he shows how far he possesses the 
 most indispensable quality of his office, — justness of 
 spirit. The living writer who has done most to make 
 England acquainted with German authors, a man of 
 genius, but to whom precisely this one quality of 
 justness of spirit is perhaps wanting, — I mean Mr. 
 Carlyle, — seems to me in the result of his labours on 
 German literature to afford a proof how very neces- 
 sary to the critic this quality is. Mr. Carlyle has 
 spoken admirably of Goethe ; but then Goethe stands 
 before all men’s eyes, the manifest centre of German 
 literature ; and from this central source many rivers 
 flow. Which of these rivers is the main stream! 
 which of the courses of spirit which we see active in 
 Goethe is the course which will most influence the 
 future, and attract and be continued by the most 
 powerful of Goethe’s successors 1 — that is the question. 
 Mr. Carlyle attaches, it seems to me, far too much 
 importance to the romantic school of Germany, — 
 Tieck, Novalis, Jean Paul Eichter, — and gives to 
 these writers, really gifted as two, at any rate, of 
 them are, an undue prominence. These writers, and 
 others with aims and a general tendency the same as 
 theirs, are not the real inheritors and continuators of 
 Goethe’s power ; the current of their activity is not 
 the main current of German literature after Goethe. 
 Far more in Heine’s works flows this main current, 
 Heine, far more than Tieck or Jean Paul Eichter, is 
 
158 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [y 
 
 the continuator of that which, in Goethe’s varied 
 activity, is the most powerful and vital ; on Heine, 
 of all GeiTaan authors who survived Goethe, incom- 
 parably the largest portion of Goethe’s mantle fell. 
 I do not forget that when Mr. Carlyle was dealing 
 with German literature, Heine, though he was clearly 
 risen above the horizon, had not shone forth with all 
 his strength ; I do not forget, too, that after ten or 
 twenty years many things may come out plain before 
 the critic which before were hard to be discerned by 
 him ; and assuredly no one would dream of imputing 
 it as a fault to l\Ir. Carlyle that twenty years ago he 
 mistook the central current in German literature, 
 overlooked the rising Heine, and attached undue im- 
 portance to that romantic school wliich Heine was to 
 destroy ; one may rather note it as a misfortune, sent 
 perhaps as a delicate chastisement to a critic, who, — 
 man of genius as he is, and no one recognises his 
 genius more admirably than I do, — has, for the func- 
 tions of the critic, a little too much of the self-will 
 and eccentricity of a genuine son of Great Britain. 
 
 Heine is noteworthy, because he is the most im- 
 portant German successor and continuator of Goethe 
 in Goethe’s most important line of activity. And 
 which of Goethe’s lines of activity is this 1 — His line 
 of activity as “a soldier in the war of liberation of 
 humanity.” 
 
 Heine himself would hardly have admitted this 
 affihation, though he was far too powerful-minded a 
 man to decry, with some of the vulgar Geniian 
 liberals, Goethe’s genius. “The wind of the Parisi 
 
HEnOUCH HEINE. 
 
 159 
 
 Revolution,” he writes after the three days of 1830, 
 “ blew about the candles a little in the dark night of 
 Germany, so that the red cui’tains of a German throne 
 or two caught fire ; but the old watchmen, who do 
 the police of the German kingdoms, are already 
 bringing out the fire engines, and will keep the 
 candles closer snuffed for the future. Poor, fast- 
 bound German people, lose not all heart in thy bonds ! 
 The fashionable coating of ice melts off from my 
 heart, my soul quivers and my eyes burn, and that is 
 a disadvantageous state of things for a wTiter, who 
 should control his subject-matter and keep himself 
 beautifully objective, as the artistic school would 
 have us, and as Goethe has done ; he has come to be 
 eighty years old doing this, and minister, and in good 
 condition : — poor German people ! that is thy greatest 
 man 1 ” 
 
 But hear Goethe himself : “ If I were to say what 
 I had really been to the Germans in general, and to 
 the young German poets in particular, I should say I 
 had been their liberator” 
 
 Modern times find themselves with an immense 
 system of institutions, established facts, accredited 
 dogmas, customs, rules, which have come to them 
 from times not modem. In this system their life 
 has to be carried forward ; yet they have a sense that 
 this system is not of their own creation, that it by no 
 means corresponds exactly with the wants of their 
 actual life, that, for them, it is customary, not rational. 
 The awakening of this sense is the awakening of the 
 modem spirit. The modern spirit is now awake 
 
160 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [v. 
 
 almost everywhere ; the sense of want of correspond- 
 ence between the forms of modem Europe and its 
 spirit, between the new wane of the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth centuries, and the old bottles of the 
 eleventh and twelfth centuries, or even of the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth, almost every one now per- 
 ceives ; it is no longer dangerous to affirm that this 
 want of correspondence exists; people are even be- 
 ginning to be shy of denying it. To remove this 
 want of correspondence is beginning to be the settled 
 endeavour of most persons of good sense. Dissolvents 
 of the old European system of dominant ideas and 
 facts we must all be, all of us who have any power 
 of working ; what we have to study is that we may 
 not be acrid dissolvents of it. 
 
 And how did Goethe, that grand dissolvent in an 
 age when there were fewer of them than at present, 
 proceed in his task of dissolution, of hberation of the 
 modern European from the old routine 1 He shall 
 tell us himself. “Through me the German poets 
 have become aware that, as man must live from 
 within outwards, so the artist must work from within 
 outwards, seeing that, make what contorHons he will, 
 he can only bring to light his own individuality. I 
 can clearly mark where this influence of mine has 
 made itself felt ; there arises out of it a kind of poetry 
 of nature, and only in this way is it possible to be 
 original.” 
 
 My voice shall never be joined to those which 
 decry Goethe, and if it is said that the foregoing is a 
 lame and impotent conclusion to Goethe’s declaration 
 
HEINKICH HEINE, 
 
 161 
 
 /.J 
 
 that he had been the liberator of the Germans in 
 general, and of the young German poets in particular, 
 
 I say it is not. Goethe’s profound, imperturbable 
 naturalism is absolutely fatal to all routine thinking; 
 he puts the standard, once for all, inside every man 
 instead of outside him ; when he is told, such a 
 thing must be so, there is immense authority and 
 custom in favour of its being so, it has been held to 
 be so for a thousand years, he answers with Olympian 
 politeness, “But is it so? is it so to Nothing 
 
 could be more really subversive of the foundations on 
 which the old European order rested ; and it may be 
 remarked that no persons are so radically detached 
 from this order, no persons so thoroughly modem, as 
 those who have felt Goethe’s influence most deeply. 
 If it is said that Goethe professes to have in this way 
 deeply influenced but a few persons, and those per- 
 sons poets, one may answer that he could have taken 
 no better way to secure, in the end, the ear of the 
 world; for poetry is simply the most beautiful, im- 
 pressive, and widely eflTective mode of saying things, 
 and hence its importance. Nevertheless the process 
 of liberation, as Goethe worked it, though sure, is 
 undoubtedly slow; he came, as Heine says, to be 
 eighty years old in thus working it, and at the end 
 of that time the old Middle-Age machine was still 
 creaking on, the thirty German courts and their cham- 
 berlains subsisted in all their glory ; Goethe himself 
 was a minister, and the visible triumph of the modem 
 spirit over prescription and routine seemed as far off 
 as ever. It was the year 1830 ; the German sove- 
 VOL. I. 
 
 M 
 
162 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [y. 
 
 reigns had passed the preceding fifteen years in 
 breaking the promises of freedom they had made to 
 their subjects when they wanted their help in the 
 final struggle with Napoleon. Great events were 
 happening in France ; the revolution, defeated in 
 1815, had arisen from its defeat, and was wresting 
 from its adversaries the power. Heinrich Heine, a 
 young man of genius, born at Hamburg,^ and with all 
 the culture of Germany, but by race a Jew; with 
 warm sympathies for France, whose revolution had 
 given to his race the rights of citizenship, and whose 
 rule had been, as is well known, popular in the Rhine 
 provinces, where he passed his youth ; with a pas- 
 sionate admiration for the great French Emperor, 
 with a passionate contempt for the sovereigns whc 
 had overthrown him, for their agents, and for their 
 policy, — Heinrich Heine was in 1830 in no humour 
 for any such gradual process of liberation from the 
 old order of things as that which Goethe had fol- 
 lowed. His counsel was for open war. Taking that 
 terrible modem weapon, the pen, in his hand, he 
 passed the remainder of his life in one fierce battle. 
 What was that battle ? the reader will ask. It was a 
 life and death battle with Philistinism. 
 
 Philistinism ! — we have not the expression in Eng- 
 lish. Perhaps we have not the word because we have 
 so much of the thing. At Soli, I imagine, they did 
 not talk of solecisms; and here, at the very head- 
 quarters of Goliath, nobody talks of Philistinism. 
 The French have adopted the term Spicier (grocer), to 
 designate the sort of being whom the Germans desig- 
 1 Heine’s birthplace was not Hamburg, but Diisseldorf. — E d. 
 
HEINKICH HEINE. 
 
 163 
 
 nate by the term Philistine ; but the French term, — 
 besides that it casts a slur upon a respectable class, 
 composed of living and susceptible members, while 
 the original Philistines are dead and buried long ago, 
 — is really, I think, in itself much less apt and ex- 
 pressive than the German term. Efforts have been 
 made to obtain in English some term equivalent to 
 Philister or Spicier; Mr. Carlyle has made several such 
 efforts : “ respectability with its thousand gigs,” he 
 says ; — well, the occupant of every one of these gigs 
 is, Mr Carlyle means, a Philistine. However, the 
 word respectable is far too valuable a word to be thus 
 perverted from its proper meaning; if the English are 
 ever to have a word for the thing we are speaking of, 
 — and so prodigious are the changes which the modern 
 spirit is introducing, that even we English shall per- 
 haps one day come to want such a word, — I think we 
 had much better take the term Philistine itself. 
 
 Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind 
 of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, 
 unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the 
 children of the light. The party of change, the would- 
 be remodellers of the old traditional European order, 
 the invokers of reason against custom, the representa- 
 tives of the modem spirit in every sphere where it is 
 applicable, regarded themselves, with the robust self- 
 confidence natural to reformers as a chosen people, as 
 children of the light. They regarded their adversaries 
 as humdrum people, slaves to routine, enemies to 
 light; stupid and oppressive, but at the same time 
 very strong. This explains the love which Heine. 
 
164 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [y 
 
 that Paladin of the modern spirit, has for France ; it 
 explains the preference which he gives to France over 
 Germany: “the French,” he says, “are the chosen 
 people of the new religion, its first gospels and dogmas 
 have been drawn up in their language; Paris ia 
 the new Jerusalem, and the Ehine is the Jordan 
 which divides the consecrated land of freedom from 
 the land of the Philistines.” He means that the 
 French, as a people, have shown more accessibility to 
 ideas than any other people ; that prescription and 
 routine have had less hold upon them than upon any 
 other people ; that they have shown most readiness 
 to move and to alter at the bidding (real or supposed) 
 of reason. This explains, too, the detestation which 
 Heine had for the English : “ I might settle in Eng- 
 land,” he says, in his exile, “ if it were not that I 
 should find there two things, coal-smoke and English- 
 men ; I cannot abide either.” What he hated in the 
 English was the “ achtbrittische Beschranktheit,” as he 
 calls it, — the genuine British narrowness. In truth, the 
 English, profoundly as they have modified the old 
 Middle-Age order, great as is the liberty which they 
 have secured for themselves, have in all their changes 
 proceeded, to use a familiar expression, by the rule of 
 thumb; what was intolerably inconvenient to them they 
 have suppressed, and as they have suppressed it, not 
 because it was irrational, but because it was practically 
 inconvenient, they have seldom in suppressing it ap- 
 pealed to reason, but always, if possible, to some pre- 
 cedent, or form, or letter, which served as a convenient 
 instrument for their purpose, and which saved theip 
 
V.] 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 166 
 
 from the necessity of recurring to general principles. 
 They have thus become, in a certain sense, of all 
 people the most inaccessible to ideas and the most im 
 patient of them; inaccessible to them, because of theii 
 want of familiarity with them; and impatient of them 
 because they have got on so well without them, that 
 they despise those who, not having got on as well as 
 themselves, still make a fuss for what they themselves 
 have done so well without. But there has certainly 
 followed from hence, in this country, somewhat of a 
 general depression of pure intelligence : Philistia has 
 come to be thought by us the true Land of Promise, 
 and it is anything but that ; the bom lover of ideas, 
 the bom hater of commonplaces, must feel in this 
 country, that the sky over his head is of brass and 
 iron. The enthusiast for the idea, for reason, values 
 reason, the idea, in and for themselves ; he values 
 them, irrespectively of the practical conveniences 
 which their triumph may obtain for him; and the 
 man who regards the possession of these practical 
 conveniences as something sufficient in itself, some- 
 thing which compensates for the absence or surrender 
 of the idea, of reason, is, in his eyes, a Philistine. 
 This is why Heine so often and so mercilessly attacks 
 the liberals ; much as he hates conservatism he hates 
 Philistinism even more, and whoever attacks conser- 
 vatism itself ignobly, not as a child of light, not in the 
 name of the idea, is a Philistine. Our Cobbett is thus 
 for him, much as he disliked our clergy and aristo- 
 cracy whom Cobbett attacked, a Philistine with six 
 fingers on every hand and on every foot six toes, four- 
 
166 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [V 
 
 and-twenty in number ; a Philistine, the staff of whose 
 spear is like a weaver’s beam. Thus he speaks of him : — 
 “ While I translate Cobbett’s words, the man him- 
 self comes bodily before my mind’s eye, as I saw him 
 at that uproarious dinner at the Crown and Anchor 
 Tavern, wdth his scolding red face and his radical 
 laugh, in which venomous hate mingles vdth a mock- 
 ing exultation at his enemies’ surely approaching 
 do^vnfall. He is a chained cur, who falls with equal 
 fury on every one whom he does not know, often 
 bites the best friend of the house in his calves, barks 
 incessantly, and just because of this incessantness of 
 his barking cannot get listened to, even when he barks 
 at a real thief. Therefore the distinguished thieves 
 who plunder England do not think it necessary to 
 throw the gr owling Cobbett a bone to stop his mouth. 
 This makes the dog furiously savage, and he shows 
 all his hungry teeth. Poor old Cobbett ! England’s 
 dog ! I have no love for thee, for every vulgar nature 
 my soul abhors ; but thou touchest me to the inmost 
 soul with pity, as I see how thou strainest in vain to 
 break loose and to get at those thieves, who make off 
 with their booty before thy very eyes, and mock at 
 thy fruitless springs and thine impotent howling.” 
 There is balm in Philistia as well as in Gilead. A 
 chosen circle of children of the modem spirit, per- 
 fectly emancipated from prejudice and commonplace, 
 regarding the ideal side of things in all its efforts for 
 change, passionately despising half-measures and con- 
 descension to human folly and obstinacy, — with a 
 bewildered, timid, torpid multitude behind, — conducts 
 
HEINKICH HEINE. 
 
 167 
 
 v^.] 
 
 a country to the government of Herr von Bismarck. 
 A nation regarding the practical side of things in ita 
 efforts for change, attacking not what is irrational, 
 but what is pressingly inconvenient, and attacking 
 this as one body, “moving altogether if it move at 
 all,” and treating children of light like the very 
 harshest of stepmothers, comes to the prosperity and 
 liberty of modem England. For all that, however, 
 Philistia (let me say it again) is not the tme promised 
 land, as we English commonly imagine it to be ; and 
 our excessive neglect of the idea, and consequent in- 
 aptitude for it, threatens us, at a moment when the 
 idea is beginning to exercise a real power in human 
 society, with serious future inconvenience, and, in the 
 meanwhile, cuts us off from the sympathy of other 
 nations, which feel its power more than we do. 
 
 But, in 1830, Heine very soon found that the fire- 
 engines of the German governments were too much 
 for his direct efforts at incendiarism. “ What demon 
 drove me,” he cries, “ to write my Beisebilderj to edit 
 a newspaper, to plague myself with our time and its 
 interests, to try and shake the poor German Hodge 
 out of his thousand years’ sleep in his hole ? What 
 good did I get by it 1 Hodge opened his eyes, only 
 to shut them again immediately ; he yawned, only to 
 begin snoring again the next minute louder than ever ; 
 he stretched his stiff ungainly limbs, only to sink 
 down again directly afterwards, and lie like a dead 
 man in the old bed of his accustomed habits. I must 
 have rest ; but where am I to find a resting-place 1 
 In Germany I can no longer stay.” 
 
168 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 fv. 
 
 This is Heine’s jesting account of his own efforts 
 to rouse Germany : now for his pathetic account of 
 them ; it is because he unites so much wit with so 
 much pathos that he is so effective a writer : — 
 
 “ The Emperor Charles the Fifth sate in sore straits, 
 in the Tyrol, encompassed by his enemies. All his 
 knights and courtiers had forsaken him; not one 
 came to his help. I know not if he had at that time 
 the cheese face with which Holbein has painted him 
 for us. But I am sure that under lip of his, with its 
 contempt for mankind, stuck out even more than it 
 does in his portraits. How could he but contemn the 
 tribe which in the sunshine of his prosperity had 
 fawned on him so devotedly, and now, in his dark 
 distress, left him all alone 1 Then suddenly his door 
 opened, and there came in a man in disguise, and, as 
 he threw back his cloak, the Kaiser recognised in him 
 his faithful Conrad von der Eosen, the court jester. 
 This man brought him comfort and counsel, and he 
 was the court jester ! 
 
 “ 0 German fatherland ! dear German people ! I 
 am thy Conrad von der Eosen. The man whose 
 proper business was to amuse thee, and who in good 
 times should have catered only for thy mirth, makes 
 his way into thy prison in time of need ; here, under 
 my cloak, I bring thee thy sceptre and crown ; dost 
 thou not recognise me, my Kaiser 1 If I cannot free 
 thee, I will at least comfort thee, and thou shalt at 
 least have one with thee who will prattle with thee 
 about thy sorest affliction, and whisper courage to 
 thee, and love thee, and whose best joke and best 
 
V.] 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 169 
 
 blood shall be at thy service. For thou, my people, 
 art the true Kaiser, the true lord of the land ; thy 
 will is sovereign, and more legitimate far than that 
 purple Tel est noire plaisivy which invokes a divine 
 right with no better warrant than the anointings of 
 shaven and shorn jugglers ; thy will, my people, is 
 the sole rightful source of power. Though now thou 
 liest down in thy bonds, yet in the end will thy right- 
 ful cause prevail ; the day of deliverance is at hand, 
 a new time is beginning. My Kaiser, the night is 
 over, and out there glows the ruddy dawn. 
 
 “ ‘ Conrad von der Eosen, my fool, thou art mis- 
 taken ; perhaps thou takest a headsman’s gleaming 
 axe for the sun, and the red of dawn is only blood.’ 
 
 “ ‘ No, my Kaiser, it is the sun, though it is rising 
 in the west ; these six thousand years it has always 
 risen in the east ; it is high time there should come a 
 change.’ 
 
 “ ‘ Conrad von der Eosen, my fool, thou hast lost 
 the bells out of thy red cap, and it has now such an 
 odd look, that red cap of thine ! ’ 
 
 " ‘ Ah, my Kaiser, thy distress has made me shake 
 my head so hard and fierce, that the fool’s bells have 
 dropped off my cap ; the cap is none the worse for that. ' 
 
 “ ‘ Conrad von der Eosen, my fool, what is that 
 noise of breaking and cracking outside there 1 ’ 
 
 “ ‘ Hush ! that is the saw and the carpenter’s axe, 
 and soon the doors of thy prison -will be burst open, 
 and thou wilt be free, my Kaiser ! ’ 
 
 “ ‘ Am I then really Kaiser 1 Ah, I forgot, it is 
 the fool who tells me so ! ’ 
 
170 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [t 
 
 ‘ Oh, sigh not, my dear master, the air of thy 
 prison makes thee so desponding ! when once thou 
 hast got thy rights again, thou wilt feel once more 
 the bold imperial blood in thy veins, and thou wilt 
 be proud like a Kaiser, and violent, and gracious, and 
 unjust, and smiling, and ungrateful, as princes are.’ 
 
 “ ‘ Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, when I am 
 free, what wilt thou do then 1 ’ 
 
 “ ‘ I will then sew new bells on to my cap.’ 
 
 “ ‘ And how shall I recompense thy fidelity T 
 “ ‘ Ah, dear master, by not leaving me to die in a 
 ditch!”’ 
 
 I wish to mark Heine’s place in modern European 
 literature, the scope of his activity, and his value. 
 I cannot attempt to give here a detailed account of 
 his life, or a description of his separate works. In 
 May 1831 he went over his Jordan, the Rhine, and 
 fixed himself in his new Jerusalem, Paris. There, 
 henceforward, he lived, going in general to some 
 French watering-place in the summer, but making 
 only one or two short visits to Germany during the 
 re^t of his life. His works, in verse and prose, suc- 
 ceeded each other without stopping ; a collected 
 edition of them, filling seven closely-printed octavo 
 volumes, has been published in America;^ in the 
 collected editions of few people’s works is there so 
 little to skip. Those who wish for a single good 
 specimen of him should read his first important 
 work, the work which made his reputation, the 
 Reisebildery or “Travelling Sketches:” prose and 
 1 A complete edition has at last appeared in Germany. 
 
V.] 
 
 HEINEICH HEINE. 
 
 171 
 
 verse, wit and seriousness, are mingled in it, and 
 the mingling of these is characteristic of Heine, and 
 is nowhere to be seen practised more naturally and 
 happily than in his Reisebilder. In 1847 his health, 
 which till then had always been perfectly good, gave 
 way. He had a kind of paralytic stroke. His 
 malady proved to be a softening of the spinal 
 marrow : it was incurable ; it made rapid progress. 
 In May 1848, not a year after his first attack, he 
 went out of doors for the last time ; but his disease 
 took more than eight years to kill him. For nearly 
 eight years he lay helpless on a couch, with the use 
 of his limbs gone, wasted almost to the proportions 
 of a child, wasted so that a woman could carry him 
 about; the sight of one eye lost, that of the other 
 greatly dimmed, and requiring, that it might be 
 exercised, to have the palsied eyelid lifted and held 
 up by the finger ; all this, and, besides this, suffering 
 at short intervals paroxysms of nervous agony. I 
 have said he was not pre-eminently brave; but in 
 the astonishing force of spirit with which he retained 
 his activity of mind, even his gaiety, amid all his 
 suffering, and went on composing with undiminished 
 fire to the last, he was truly brave. Nothing could 
 clog that aerial lightness. “Pouvez-vous siffler?” 
 his doctor asked him one day, when he was almost 
 at his last gasp ; — “ siffler,” as every one knows, has 
 the double meaning of to whistle and to hiss : — “ H4las ! 
 non,” v/as his whispered answer ; “ pas meme une 
 com4die de M. Scribe!” M. Scribe is, or was, the 
 favourite dramatist of the French Philistine. “ My 
 
172 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [V 
 
 nerves,” he said to some one who asked him about 
 them in 1855, the year of the great Exhibition in 
 Paris, “ my nerves are of that quite singularly 
 remarkable miserableness of nature, that I am con- 
 vinced they would get at the Exhibition the grand 
 medal for pain and misery.” He read all the medical 
 books which treated of his complaint. “ But,” said 
 he to some one who found him thus engaged, “ what 
 good this reading is to do me I don’t know, except 
 that it will qualify me to give lectures in heaven on 
 the ignorance of doctors on earth about diseases of 
 the spinal marrow.” What a matter of grim serious- 
 ness are our own ailments to most of us ! yet with 
 this gaiety Heine treated his to the end. That end, 
 so long in coming, came at last. Heine died on the 
 17th of February 1856, at the age of fifty-eight. By 
 his will he forbade that his remains should be trans- 
 ported to Germany. He lies buried in the cemetery 
 of Montmartre, at Paris. 
 
 His direct political action was null, and this is 
 neither to be wondered at nor regretted ; direct 
 political action is not the true function of literature, 
 and Heine was a bom man of letters. Even in his 
 favourite France the turn taken by public afiairs was 
 not at all what he wished, though he read French 
 politics by no means as we in England, most of us, 
 read them. He thought things were tending there 
 to the triumph of communism; and to a champion 
 of the idea like Heine, what there is gross and 
 narrow in communism was very repulsive. “It is 
 all of no use,” he cried on his death-bed, “ the future 
 
HEINKICH HEINE. 
 
 173 
 
 7.J 
 
 belongs to our enemies, the Communists, and Louis 
 Napoleon is their John the Baptist.” “And yet,” 
 — he added with all his old love for that remarkable 
 entity, so full of attraction for him, so profoundly 
 unknown in England, the French people, — “do not 
 believe that God lets all this go forward merely as 
 a grand comedy. Even though the Communists 
 deny him to-day, he knows better than they do, that 
 a time will come when they will learn to believe in 
 him.” After 1831, his hopes of soon upsetting the 
 German Governments had died away, and his pro- 
 pagandism took another, a more truly literary, char- 
 acter. It took the character of an intrepid applica- 
 tion of the modem spirit to literature. To the ideas 
 with which the burning questions of modern life filled 
 him, he made all his subject-matter minister. He 
 touched all the great points in the career of the 
 human race, and here he but followed the tendency 
 of the wide culture of Germany ; but he touched 
 them with a wand which brought them all under a 
 light where the modem eye cares most to see them, 
 and here he gave a lesson to the culture of Germany, 
 — so wide, so impartial, that it is apt to become slack 
 and powerless, and to lose itself in its materials for 
 want of a strong central idea round which to group 
 all its other ideas. So the mystic and romantic 
 school of Germany lost itself in the Middle Ages, 
 was overpowered by their influence, came to ruin by 
 its vain dreams of renewing them. Heine, with a 
 far profounder sense of the mystic and romantic 
 charm of the Middle Age than Goerres, or Brentauo, 
 
174 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [y. 
 
 or Amim., Heine the chief romantic poet of Germany, 
 is yet also much more than a romantic poet ; he is a 
 great modern poet, he is not conquered by the Middle 
 Age, he has a talisman by which he can feel, — along 
 with but above the power of the fascinating Middle 
 Age itself, — the power of modern ideas. 
 
 A French critic of Heine thinks he has said enough 
 in saying that Heine proclaimed in German countries, 
 with beat of drum, the ideas of 1789, and that at the 
 cheerful noise of his drum the ghosts of the Middle 
 Age took to flight. But this is rather too French an 
 account of the matter. Germany, that vast mine of 
 ideas, had no need to import ideas, as such, from any 
 foreign country ; and if Heine had carried ideas, as 
 such, from France into Germany, he would but have 
 been carrying coals to Newcastle. But that for which 
 France, far less meditative than Germany, is eminent, 
 is the prompt, ardent, and practical application of an 
 idea, when she seizes it, in all departments of human 
 activity which admit it. And that in which Germany 
 most fails, and by failing in which she appears so 
 helpless and impotent, is just the practical application 
 of her innumerable ideas. “WTien Candide,” says 
 Heine himself, “came to Eldorado, he saw in the 
 streets a number of boys who were playing with 
 gold-nuggets instead of marbles. This degree of 
 luxury made him imagine that they must be the 
 king’s children, and he was not a little astonished 
 when he found that in Eldorado gold-nuggets arc of 
 no more value than marbles are with us, and that the 
 schoolboys play with them. A similar thing happened 
 
r.] 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 175 
 
 to a friend of mine, a foreigner, when he came to 
 Germany and first read German books. He was 
 perfectly astounded at the wealth of ideas which he 
 found in them ; but he soon remarked that ideas in 
 Germany are as plentiful as gold-nuggets in Eldorado, 
 and that those writers whom he had taken for intel- 
 lectual princes, were in reality only common school- 
 boys.” Heine was, as he calls himself, a “ Child of 
 the French Revolution,” an “Initiator,” because he 
 vigorously assured the Germans that ideas were not 
 counters or marbles, to be played with for their own 
 sake ; because he exhibited in hterature modem ideas 
 applied with the utmost freedom, clearness, and origin- 
 ality. And therefore he declared that the great task 
 of his life had been the endeavour to establish a 
 cordial relation between France and Germany. It 
 is because he thus operates a junction between the 
 French spirit, and German ideas and German culture, 
 that he founds something new, opens a fresh period, 
 and deserves the attention of criticism far more than 
 the German poets his contemporaries, who merely 
 continue an old period till it expires. It may be 
 predicted that in the literature of other countries, 
 too, the French spirit is destined to make its influence 
 felt, — as an element, in alliance with the native spirit, 
 of novelty and movement, — as it has made its influ- 
 ence felt in German literature; fifty years hence a 
 critic will be demonstrating to our grandchildren how 
 this phenomenon has come to pass. 
 
 We in England, in our great burst of literature 
 during the first thirty years of the present century, 
 
176 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 Iv. 
 
 had no manifestation of the modern spirit, as this 
 spirit manifests itself in Goethe’s works or Heine’s, 
 And the reason is not far to seek. We had neither 
 the German wealth of ideas, nor the French enthu- 
 siasm for applying ideas. There reigned in the mass 
 of the nation that inveterate inaccessibility to ideas, 
 that Philistinism, — to use the German nickname, — 
 which reacts even on the individual genius that is 
 exempt from it. In our greatest literary epoch, that 
 of the Elizabethan age, English society at large was 
 accessible to ideas, was permeated by them, was 
 vivified by them, to a degree which has never been 
 reached in England since. Hence the unique great- 
 ness in English literature of Shakspeare and his con- 
 temporaries. They were powerfully upheld by the 
 intellectual life of their nation ; they applied freely 
 in literature the then modem ideas, — the ideas of the 
 Eenascence and the Eeformatioru A few years after- 
 wards the great English middle class, the kernel of 
 the nation, the class whose intelligent sympathy had 
 upheld a Shakspeare, entered the prison of Puritanism, 
 and had the key turned on its spirit there for two 
 hundred years. He enlargeth a nation^ says Job, and> 
 straiteneth it again. 
 
 In the literary movement of the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century the signal attempt to apply freely 
 the modern spirit was made in England by two mem- 
 bers of the aristocratic class, Byron and Shelley. 
 Aristocracies are, as such, naturally impenetrable by 
 ideas ; but their individual members have a high 
 courage and a turn for breaking bounds ; and a man 
 
V.] 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 177 
 
 of genius, who is the born child of the idea, happening 
 to be bom in the aristocratic ranks, chafes against the 
 obstacles which prevent him from freely developing 
 it. But Byron and Shelley did not succeed in their 
 attempt freely to apply the modern spirit in English 
 literature ; they could not succeed in it ; the resistance 
 to baffle them, the want of intelligent sympathy to 
 guide and uphold them, were too great. Their liter- 
 ary creation, compared with the literary creation of 
 Shakspeare and Spenser, compared with the literary 
 creation of Goethe and Heine, is a failure. The 
 best literary creation of that time in England pro- 
 ceeded from men who did not make the same bold 
 attempt as Byron and Shelley. What, in fact, was 
 the career of the chief English men of letters, theii 
 contemporaries ] The gravest of them, Wordsworth, 
 retired (in Middle-Age phrase) into a monastery. I 
 mean, he plunged himself in the inward life, he 
 voluntarily cut himself off from the modem spirit. 
 Coleridge took to opium. Scott became the historio- 
 grapher-royal of feudalism. Keats passionately gave 
 himself up to a sensuous genius, to his faculty for 
 interpreting nature ; and he died of consumption at 
 twenty-five. Wordsworth, Scott, and Keats have 
 left admirable works ; far more solid and complete 
 works than those which Byron and Shelley have left. 
 But their works have this defect, — they do not belong 
 to that which is the main current of the literature of 
 modern epochs, they do not apply modern ideas to 
 life ; they constitute, therefore, minor currents^ and all 
 other literary work of our day, however popular, 
 VOL I. N 
 
178 
 
 ESSAYS m CRITICISM. 
 
 [V. 
 
 which has the same defect, also constitutes but a 
 minor current. Byron and Shelley will long be re- 
 membered, long after the inadequacy of their actual 
 work is clearly recognised for their passionate, their 
 Titanic effort to flow in the main stream of modem 
 literature ; their names will be greater than their 
 writings ; stat magni nominis umbra. 
 
 Heine’s literary good fortune was superior to that 
 of Byron and Shelley. His theatre of operations was 
 Germany, whose Philistinism does not consist in her 
 want of ideas, or in her inaccessibility to ideas, for she 
 teems with them and loves them, but, as I have said, 
 in her feeble and hesitating application of modem 
 ideas to life. Heine’s intense modernism, his absolute 
 freedom, his utter rejection of stock classicism and 
 stock romanticism, his bringing all things under the 
 point of view of the nineteenth century, were under- 
 stood and laid to heart by Germany, through virtue 
 of her immense, tolerant intellectualism, much as 
 there was in all Heine said to aflront and wound 
 Germany. The wit and ardent modem spirit of 
 France Heine joined to the culture, the sentiment, 
 the thought of Germany. This is what makes him so 
 remarkable; his wonderful clearness, lightness, and 
 freedom, united with such power of feeling, and 
 width of range. Is there anywhere keener wit than 
 in his story of the French abb6 who was his tutor, 
 and who wanted to get from him that la religion is 
 French for der Glaube : “ Six times did he ask me the 
 question : ‘ Henry, what is der Glauibe in French ? ’ 
 and six times, and each time with a greater burst of 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 179 
 
 v.J 
 
 bears, did I answer him — ‘It is le crddit.' And at 
 the seventh time, his face purple with rage, the in- 
 furiated questioner screamed out : ‘ It is la religion ; ’ 
 and a rain of cuffs descended upon me, and all the 
 other boys burst out laughing. Since that day I have 
 never been able to hear la religion mentioned, without 
 feeling a tremor run through my back, and my cheeks 
 grow red with shame.” Or in that comment on the 
 fate of Professor Saalfeld, who had been addicted to 
 writing furious pamphlets against Napoleon, and who 
 was a professor at Gottingen, a great seat, according 
 to Heine, of pedantry and Philistinism : “ It is 
 curious,” says Heine, “ the three greatest adversaries 
 of Napoleon have all of them ended miserably. 
 Castlereagh cut his own throat ; Louis the Eighteenth 
 rotted upon his throne ; and Professor Saalfeld is 
 still a professor at Gottingen.” It is impossible to go 
 beyond that. 
 
 What wit, again, in that saying which every one 
 has heard : “ The Englishman loves liberty like his 
 lawful wife, the Frenchman loves her like his mistress, 
 the German loves her like his old grandmother.” 
 But the turn Heine gives to this incomparable saying 
 is not so well known ; and it is by that turn he shows 
 himself the bom poet he is, — full of delicacy and 
 tenderness, of inexhaustible resource, infinitely new 
 and striking : — 
 
 “ And yet, after all, no one can ever tell how 
 things may turn out. The grumpy Englishman, in 
 an ill-temper with his wife, is capable of some day 
 putting a rope round her neck, and taking her to 
 
180 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [V 
 
 be sold at Smithfield. The inconstant Frenchman 
 may become unfaithful to his adored mistress, and be 
 seen fluttering about the Palais Eoyal after another. 
 But the German will never quite abandon his old grand- 
 mother ; he will always keep for her a nook by the 
 chimney-corner, where she can tell her fairy stories 
 to the listening children.” 
 
 Is it possible to touch more delicately and happily 
 both the weakness and the strength of Germany ; — 
 pedantic, simple, enslaved, free, ridiculous, admirable 
 Germany 1 
 
 And Heine’s verse, — his Lieder ? Oh, the comfort, 
 after dealing with French people of genius, irresistibly 
 impelled to try and express themselves in verse, 
 launching out into a deep which destiny has sown 
 with so many rocks for them, — the comfort of coming 
 to a man of genius, who finds in verse his freest and 
 most perfect expression, whose voyage over the deep 
 of poetry destiny makes smooth ! After the rhythm, 
 to us, at any rate, with the German paste in oui 
 composition, so deeply unsatisfying, of — 
 
 “ Ah I que me dites-vous, et que vous dit mon S-me ? 
 
 Que dit le ciel ^ I’aube et la flamme k la flamme ? ” 
 
 what a blessing to arrive at rhythms like — 
 
 “ Take, oh, take those lips away, 
 
 That so sweetly were forsworn — ” 
 
 or— 
 
 Siehst sehr sterbeblasslich aus, 
 
 Doch getrost ! du hist zu Haus — ” 
 
 in which one’s soul can take pleasure ! The magic 
 of Heine’s poetical form is incomparable ; he chiefly 
 
V.] 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 181 
 
 uses a form of old German popular poetry, a ballad- 
 form which has more rapidity and grace than any 
 ballad-form of ours; he employs this form with the 
 most exquisite lightness and ease, and yet it has at 
 the same time the inborn fulness, pathos, and old- 
 world charm of all true forms of popular poetry. 
 Thus in Heine’s poetry, too, one perpetually blends 
 the impression of French modernism and clearness, 
 with that of German sentiment and fulness ; and to 
 give this blended impression is, as I have said, Heine’s 
 great characteristic. To feel it, one must read him ; 
 he gives it in his form as well as in his contents, and 
 by translation I can only reproduce it so far as his 
 contents give it. But even the contents of many of 
 his poems are capable of giving a certain sense of it. 
 Here, for instance, is a poem in which he makes his 
 profession of faith to an innocent beautiful soul, a 
 sort of Gretchen, the child of some simple mining 
 people having their hut among the pines at the foot 
 of the Hartz Mountains, who reproaches him with not 
 holding the old articles of the Christian creed : — 
 
 “ Ah, my child, while I was yet a little boy, while 
 I yet sate upon my mother’s knee, I believed in God 
 the Father, who rules up there in Heaven, good and 
 great ; 
 
 “ Who created the beautiful earth, and the beau- 
 tiful men and women thereon ; who ordained for sun, 
 moon, and stars their courses. 
 
 “When I got bigger, my child, I comprehended 
 yet a great deal more than this, and comprehended, 
 and grew intelligent ; and I believe on the Son also ; 
 
182 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 “ On the beloved Son, who loved us, and revealed 
 love to us ; and, for his reward, as always happens, 
 was crucified by the people. 
 
 “Now, when I am grown up, have read much, 
 have travelled much, my heart swells within me, and 
 with my whole heart I believe on the Holy Ghost. 
 
 “ The greatest miracles were of his working, and 
 still greater miracles doth he even now work ; he 
 burst in simder the oppressor’s stronghold, and he 
 burst in sunder the bondsman’s yoke. 
 
 “ He heals old death-wounds, and renews the old 
 right ; all mankind are one race of noble equals before 
 him. 
 
 “He chases away the evil clouds and the dark 
 cobwebs of the brain, which have spoilt love and joy 
 for us, which day and night have loured on us. 
 
 “ A thousand knights, well harnessed, has the Holy 
 Ghost chosen out to fulfil his will, and he has put 
 courage into their souls. 
 
 “Their good swords flash, their bright banners 
 wave ; what, thou wouldst give much, my child, to 
 look upon such gallant knights 1 
 
 “ Well, on me, my child, look ! kiss me, and look 
 boldly upon me ! one of those knights of the Holy 
 Ghost am I.” 
 
 One has only to turn over the pages of his 
 Eomancero , — a collection of poems written in the first 
 years of his illness, with his whole power and charm 
 still in them, and not, like his latest poems of all, 
 painfully touched by the air of his Mafrazzen-gruft, 
 his “ mattress-grave ” — to see Heine’s width of range 
 
HEINKICH HEINE. 
 
 183 
 
 ?.J 
 
 the most varied figures succeed one another, — Ehamp* 
 sinitus, Edith with the Swan Neck, Charles the First, 
 Marie Antoinette, King David, a heroine of Mahille, 
 Melisanda of Tripoli, Eichard Coeur de Lion, Pedro 
 the Cruel, Firdusi, Cortes, Dr. Dollinger; — but never 
 does Heine attempt to be hubsch objectiv, “ beautifully 
 objective,” to become in spirit an old Egyptian, or an 
 old Hebrew, or a Middle-Age knight, or a Spanish 
 adventurer, or an English royalist; he always remains 
 Heinrich Heine, a son of the nineteenth century. To 
 give a notion of his tone, I will quote a few stanzas at 
 the end of the Spanish Atridce^ in which he describes, 
 in the character of a visitor at the court of Henry of 
 Transtamare at Segovia, Henry’s treatment of the 
 children of his brother, Pedro the Cruel. Don Diego 
 Albuquerque, his neighbour, strolls after dinner 
 through the castle with him : 
 
 “ In the cloister-passage, which leads to the kennels 
 where are kept the king’s hounds, that with their 
 growling and yelping let you know a long way off 
 where they are, 
 
 “ There I saw, built into the wall, and with a strong 
 iron grating for its outer face, a cell like a cage. 
 
 “ Two human figures sate therein, two young boys; 
 chained by the leg, they crouched in the dirty straw. 
 
 “Hardly twelve years old seemed the one, the 
 other not much older ; their faces fair and noble, but 
 pale and wan with sickness. 
 
 “ They were all in rags, almost naked ; and their 
 lean bodies showed wounds, the marks of ill-usage ; 
 both of them shivered with fever 
 
184 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [V. 
 
 “ They looked up at me out of the depth of their 
 misery ; ‘ who,’ I cried in horror to Don Diego, ‘ are 
 these pictures of wretchedness?’ 
 
 “Don Diego seemed embarrassed; he looked round 
 to see that no one was listening; then he gave a deep 
 sigh ; and at last, putting on the easy tone of a man 
 of the world, he said : 
 
 “ ‘ These are a pair of king’s sons, who were early 
 left orphans; the name of their father was King 
 Pedro, the name of their mother, Maria de Padilla. 
 
 “ ‘ After the great battle of Navarette, when Henry 
 of Transtamare had relieved his brother. King Pedro, 
 of the troublesome burden of the crown, 
 
 “ ‘ And likewise of that still more troublesome 
 burden, which is called life, then Don Henry’s victo- 
 rious magnanimity had to deal with his brother’s 
 children. 
 
 “ ‘ He has adopted them, as an uncle should ; and 
 he has given them free quarters in his own castle. 
 
 “ ‘ The room which he has assigned to them is 
 certainly rather small, but then it is cool in summer, 
 and not intolerably cold in winter. 
 
 “ ‘ Their fare is rye-bread, which tastes as sweet 
 as if the goddess Ceres had baked it express for her 
 beloved Proserpine. 
 
 “‘Not unfrequently, too, he sends a scullion to 
 them with garbanzos, and then the young gentlemen 
 know that it is Sunday in Spain. 
 
 “ ‘ But it is not Sunday every day, and garbanzos 
 do not come every day ; and the master of the hounds 
 gives them the treat of his whip. 
 
HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 185 
 
 r.l 
 
 “ ‘ For the master of the hounds, who has under 
 his superintendence the kennels and the pack, and the 
 nephews’ cage also, 
 
 “‘Is the unfortunate husband of that lemon-faced 
 woman with the white ruff, whom we remarked to- 
 day at dinner. 
 
 “ ‘ And she scolds so sharp, that often her husband 
 snatches his whip, and rushes down here, and gives 
 it to the dogs and to the poor little boys. 
 
 “ ‘ But his majesty has expressed his disapproval 
 of such proceedings, and has given orders that for the 
 future his nephews are to be treated differently from 
 the dogs. 
 
 “ ‘ He has determined no longer to entrust the 
 disciplining of his nephews to a mercenary stranger, 
 but to carry it out with his own hands.’ 
 
 “Don Diego stopped abruptly; for the seneschal 
 of the castle joined us, and politely expressed his 
 hope that we had dined to our satisfaction.” 
 
 Observe how the irony of the whole of that, finish- 
 ing with the grim innuendo of the last stanza but one, 
 is at once truly masterly and truly modem. 
 
 No account of Heine is complete which does not 
 notice the Jewish element in him. His race he 
 treated with the same freedom with which he treated 
 everything else, but he derived a great force from it, 
 and no one knew this better than he himself. He 
 has excellently pointed out how in the sixteenth 
 century there was a double renascence, — a Hellenic 
 renascence and a Hebrew renascence, — and how both 
 have been great powers ever since. He himself had 
 
186 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [y 
 
 in him both the spirit of Greece and the spirit ol 
 Judaea ; both these spirits reach the infinite, which is 
 the true goal of all poetry and all art, — the Greek 
 spirit by beauty, the Hebrew spirit by sublimity. By 
 his perfection of literary form, by his love of clear- 
 ness, by his love of beauty, Heine is Greek ; by his 
 intensity, by his untamableness, by his “longing 
 which cannot be uttered,” he is Hebrew. Yet what 
 Hebrew ever treated the things of the Hebrews like 
 this — 
 
 “ There lives at Hamburg, in a one-roomed lodging 
 in the Baker’s Broad Walk, a man whose name is 
 Moses Lump; all the week he goes about in wind 
 and rain, with his pack on his back, to earn his few 
 shillings ; but when on Friday evening he comes 
 home, he finds the candlestick with seven candles 
 lighted, and the table covered with a fair white cloth, 
 and he puts away from him his pack and his cares, 
 and he sits down to table with his squinting wife and 
 yet more squinting daughter, and eats fish with them, 
 fish which has been dressed in beautiful white garlic 
 sauce, sings therewith the grandest psalms of King 
 David, rejoices with his whole heart over the de- 
 liverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt, 
 rejoices, too, that all the wicked ones who have done 
 the children of Israel hurt, have ended by taking 
 themselves off ; that King Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, 
 Haman, Antiochus, Titus, and all such people, are 
 well dead, while he, Moses Lump, is yet alive, and 
 eating fish with wife and daughter; and I can tell 
 you. Doctor, the fish is delicate and the man is happy. 
 
V.] 
 
 HEINEICH HEINE. 
 
 187 
 
 he has no call to torment himself about culture, he 
 sits contented in his religion and in his green bed- 
 gown, like Diogenes in his tub, he contemplates with 
 satisfaction his candles, which he on no account will 
 snuff for himself ; and I can tell you, if the candles 
 bum a little dim, and the snuffers -woman, whose 
 business it is to snuff them, is not at hand, and 
 Rothschild the Great were at that moment to come 
 in, with all his brokers, bill discounters, agents, and 
 chief clerks, wdth whom he conquers the world, and 
 Rothschild were to say : ‘ Moses Lump, ask of me 
 what favour you will, and it shall be granted you ; ’ — 
 Doctor, I am convinced, Moses Lump would quietly 
 answer : ‘ Snuff me those candles ! ’ and Rothschild 
 the Great would exclaim with admiration : ‘ If I were 
 not Rothschild, I would be Moses Lump.’ ” 
 
 There Heine shows us his own people by its comic 
 side ; in the poem of the Princess Sabbath he shows it 
 to us by a more serious side. The Princess Sabbath, 
 “ the tranquil Princess, pearl and flower of all beauty, 
 fair as the Queen of Sheba, Solomon’s bosom friend, 
 that blue stocking from Ethiopia, who wanted to 
 shine by her esprit, and with her wise riddles made 
 herself in the long run a bore ” (with Heine the sar- 
 castic turn is never far off), this princess has for her 
 betrothed a prince whom sorcery has transformed 
 into an animal of low^er race, the Prince Israel. 
 
 “ A dog wdth the desires of a dog, he wallows all 
 the week long in the filth and refuse of life, amidst 
 the jeers of the boys in the street. 
 
 “ But every Friday evening, at the twilight hour. 
 
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 188 
 
 [▼. 
 
 suddenly the magic passes off, and the dog becomes 
 once more a human being. 
 
 “A man with the feelings of a man, with head 
 and heart raised aloft, in festal garb, in almost clean 
 garb, he enters the halls of his Father. 
 
 “ Hail, beloved halls of my royal Father ! Ye tents 
 of Jacob, I kiss with my lips your holy door-posts ! ” 
 
 Still more he shows us this serious side in his 
 beautiful poem on Jehuda ben Halevy, a poet belong- 
 ing to “the great golden age of the Arabian, Old- 
 Spanish, Jewish school of poets,” a contemporary of 
 the troubadours : — 
 
 “ He, too, — the hero whom we sing, — Jehuda ben 
 Halevy, too, had his lady-love; but she was of a 
 special sort. 
 
 “ She was no Laura, whose eyes, mortal stars, in 
 the cathedral on Good Friday kindled that world- 
 renowned flame. 
 
 “ She was no chatelaine, who in the blooming glory 
 of her youth presided at tourneys, and awarded the 
 victor’s crown. 
 
 “No casuistess in the Gay Science was she, no 
 lady doctrinaire^ who delivered her oracles in the 
 judgmenLchamber of a Court of Love. 
 
 “She, whom the Rabbi loved, was a woe-begone 
 poor darling, a mourning picture of desolation . . 
 and her name was Jerusalem.” 
 
 Jehuda ben Halevy, like the Crusaders, makes his 
 pilgrimage to Jerusalem ; and there, amid the ruins, 
 sings a song of Sion which has become famous among 
 his people : — 
 
V'.] 
 
 HEINKICH HEINE. 
 
 189 
 
 “That lay of pearled tears is the wide-famed 
 Lament, which is sung in all the scattered tents of 
 Jacob throughout the world. 
 
 “ On the ninth day of the month which is called 
 Ab, on the anniversary of Jerusalem’s destruction by 
 Titus Vespasianus. 
 
 “ Yes, that is the song of Sion, which Jehuda ben 
 Halevy sang with his dying breath amid the holy 
 ruins of Jerusalem. 
 
 “Barefoot, and in penitential weeds, he sate there 
 upon the fragment of a fallen column ; down to his 
 breast fell, 
 
 “Like a gray forest, his hair; and cast a weird 
 shadow on the face which looked out through it, — his 
 troubled pale face, with the spiritual eyes. 
 
 “So he sate and sang, like unto a seer out of the 
 foretime to look upon ; Jeremiah, the Ancient, seemed 
 to have risen out of his grave. 
 
 “ But a bold Saracen came riding that way, aloft 
 on his barb, lolling in his saddle, and brandishing a 
 naked javelin ; 
 
 “ Into the breast of the poor singer he plunged his 
 deadly shaft, and shot away like a winged shadow. 
 
 “ Quietly flowed the Eabbi’s life-blood, quietly he 
 sang his song to an end ; and his last dying sigh was 
 Jerusalem ! ” 
 
 But, most of all, Heine shows us this side in a 
 strange poem describing a public dispute, before King 
 Pedro and his Court, between a Jewish and a Christian 
 champion, on the merits of their respective faiths. 
 In the strain of the Jew all the fierceness of the old 
 
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 190 
 
 [v. 
 
 Hebrew genius, all its rigid defiant MoDOtheism, 
 appear : — 
 
 “Our God has not died like a poor innocent 
 lamb for mankind ; he is no gushing philanthropist, 
 no declaimer. 
 
 “ Our God is not love, caressing is not his line ; 
 but he is a God of thunder, and he is a God of 
 revenge. 
 
 “The lightnings of his wrath strike inexorably 
 every sinner, and the sins of the fathers are often 
 visited upon their remote posterity. 
 
 “ Our God, he is alive, and in his hall of heaven 
 he goes on existing away, throughout all the 
 eternities. 
 
 “ Our God, too, is a God in robust health, no myth, 
 pale and thin as sacrificial wafers, or as shadows by 
 Cocytus. 
 
 “ Our God is strong. In his hand he upholds sun, 
 moon, and stars ; thrones break, nations reel to and 
 fro, when he knits his forehead. 
 
 “ Our God loves music, the voice of the harp and 
 the song of feasting ; but the sound of church-bells he 
 hates, as he hates the grunting of pigs.” 
 
 Nor must Heine’s sweetest note be unheard, — his 
 plaintive note, his note of melancholy. Here is a 
 strain which came from him as he lay, in the winter 
 night, on his “mattress-grave” at Paris, and let his 
 thoughts wander home to Germany, “ the great child, 
 entertaining herself with her Christmas-tree.” “ Thou 
 tookest,” — he cries to the German exile, — 
 
 “Thou tookest thy flight towards sunshine and 
 
HEINKICH HEINE. 
 
 191 
 
 
 happiness ; naked and poor returnest thou back. 
 German truth, German shirts, — one gets them worn 
 to tatters in foreign parts. 
 
 “ Deadly pale are thy looks, but take comfort, thou 
 art at home ! one lies warm in German earth, warm 
 as by the old pleasant fireside. 
 
 “Many a one, alas, became crippled, and could 
 get home no more ! longingly he stretches out his 
 arms ; God have mercy upon him ! ” 
 
 God have mercy upon him ! for what remain of 
 the days of the years of his Hfe are few and evil 
 “ Can it be that I still actually exist 1 My body is so 
 shrunk that there is hardly anything of me left but 
 my voice, and my bed makes me think of the melodi- 
 ous grave of the enchanter Merlin, which is in the 
 forest of Broceliand in Brittany, under high oaks 
 whose tops shine like green fiames to heaven. Ah, I 
 envy thee those trees, brother Merlin, and their fresh 
 waving ! for over my mattress-grave here in Paris no 
 green leaves rustle ; and early and late I hear nothing 
 but the rattle of carriages, hammering, scolding, and 
 the jingle of the piano. A grave without rest, death 
 without the privileges of the departed, who have no 
 longer any need to spend money, or to write letters, 
 or to compose books. What a melancholy situation ! ” 
 
 He died, and has left a blemished name ; with his 
 crying faults, — his intemperate susceptibility, his un- 
 scrupulousness in passion, his inconceivable attacks on 
 his enemies, his still more inconceivable attacks on 
 his friends, his want of generosity, his sensuality his 
 incessant mocking, — how could it be otherwise 1 Not 
 
192 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [v. 
 
 only was he not one of Mr. Carlyle’s “ respectable " 
 people, he was profoundly disrespectable ; and not 
 even the merit of not being a Philistine can make up 
 for a man’s being that. To his intellectual deliver- 
 ance there was an addition of something else wanting, 
 and that something else was something immense ; the 
 old-fashioned, laborious, eternally needful moral de- 
 liverance. Goethe says that he was deficient in love ; 
 to me his weakness seems to be not so much a defici- 
 ency in love as a deficiency in self-respect, in true 
 dignity of character. But on this negative side of 
 one’s criticism of a man of great genius, I for my 
 part, when I have once clearly marked that this negar 
 tive side is and must be there, have no pleasure in 
 dwelling. I prefer to say of Heine something posi- 
 tive. He is not an adequate interpreter of the modem 
 world. He is only a brilliant soldier in the Liberation 
 War of humanity. But, such as he is, he is (and 
 posterity too, I am quite sure, will say this), in the 
 European poetry of that quarter of a century which 
 follows the death of Goethe, incomparably the most 
 important figure. 
 
 What a spendthrift, one is tempted to cry, is 
 Nature ! With what prodigality, in the march of 
 generations, she employs human power, content to 
 gather almost always little result from it, sometimes 
 none ! Look at Byron, that Byron whom the present 
 generation of Englishmen are forgetting ; Byron, the 
 greatest natural force, the greatest elementary power, 
 I cannot but think which has appeared in our litera- 
 ture since Shakspeaxe. And what became of this 
 
V.] 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE. 
 
 193 
 
 wonderful production of nature 1 He shattered him- 
 self, he inevitably shattered himself to pieces against 
 the huge, black, cloud-topped, interminable precipice 
 of British Philistinism. But Byron, it may be said, 
 was eminent only by his genius, only by his inborn 
 force and fire ; he had not the intellectual equip- 
 ment of a supreme modern poet ; except for his genius 
 he was an ordinary nineteenth-century English gentle- 
 man, with little culture and with no ideas. Well, 
 then, look at Heine. Heine had all the culture of 
 Germany ; in his head fermented all the ideas of 
 modern Europe. And what have we got from Heine 1 
 A half-result, for want of moral balance, and of noble- 
 ness of soul and character. That is what I say ; 
 there is so much power, so many seem able to run 
 well, so many give promise of running well ; — so few 
 reach the goal, so few are chosen. Many are called, 
 few chosen. 
 
 VOL. L 
 
 o 
 
PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL EELIGIOUS 
 SENTIMENT. 
 
 I READ the other day in the Dublin Review : — “ We 
 Catholics are apt to be cowed and scared by the lordly 
 oppression of public opinion, and not to bear our 
 selves as men in the face of the anti-Catholic society 
 of England. It is good to have an habitual conscious- 
 ness that the public opinion of Catholic Europe looks 
 upon Protestant England with a mixture of impatience 
 and compassion, which more than balances the arro- 
 gance of the English people towards the Catholic 
 Church in these countries.” 
 
 The Holy Catholic Church, Apostolic and Roman, 
 can take very good care of herself, and I am not going 
 to defend her against the scorns of Exeter Hall. 
 Catholicism is not a great visible force in this country, 
 and the mass of mankind will always treat lightly 
 even things the most venerable, if they do not pre- 
 sent themselves as visible forces before its eyes. In 
 Catholic countries, as the Dublin Review itself says with 
 triumph, they make very little account of the greatr 
 
VI.] PAGAl^ k MEDIAEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 195 
 
 ness of Exeter Hall. The majority has eyes only for 
 the things of the majority, and in England the im- 
 mense majority is Protestant. And yet, in spite of 
 all the shocks which the feeling of a good Catholic, 
 like the writer in the Dublin Remew, has in this Pro- 
 testant country inevitably to undergo, in spite of the 
 contemptuous insensibility to the grandeur of Rome 
 which he finds so general and so hard to bear, hov/ 
 much has he to console him, how many acts of homage 
 to the gi'eatness of his religion may he see if he has 
 his eyes open ! I will tell him of one of them. Let him 
 go in London to that delightful spot, that Happy 
 Island in Bloomsbury, the reading-room of the Bri- 
 tish Museum. Let him visit its sacred quarter, the 
 region where its theological books are placed. I am 
 almost afraid to say what he will find there, for fear 
 Mr. Spurgeon, like a second Caliph Omar, should give 
 the library to the flames. He will find an immense 
 Catholic work, the collection of the Abb6 Migne, 
 lording it over that whole region, reducing to insigni- 
 ficance the feeble Protestant forces which hang upon 
 its skirts. Protestantism is duly represented, indeed . 
 the librarian knows his business too well to suffer it 
 to be otherwise; all the varieties of Protestantism are 
 there ; there is the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theo- 
 logy, learned, decorous, exemplary, but a little unin- 
 teresting ; there are the works of Calvin, rigid, mili- 
 tant, menacing ; there are the works of Dr. Chalmers, 
 the Scotch thistle valiantly doing duty as the rose of 
 Sharon, but keeping something very Scotch about it 
 all the time ; there are the works of Dr. Channing, 
 
196 ESSAYS IN CRITIOISM. [n. 
 
 the last word of religious philosophy in a land where 
 every one has some culture, and where superiorities 
 are discountenanced, — the flower of moral and intelli- 
 gent mediocrity. But how are all these divided against 
 one another, and how, though they were all united, 
 are they dwarfed by the Catholic Leviathan, their 
 neighbour ! Majestic in its blue and gold unity, this 
 fills shelf after shelf and compartment after compart- 
 ment, its right mounting up into heaven among the 
 white folios of the Acta Sanctorum, its left plunging 
 down into hell among the yellow octavos of the Law 
 Digest. Everything is there, in that immense Fatro- 
 logice Cursus Completus, in that Encyclopddie ThAologigue, 
 that Nouvelle Encyclopidie ThAologigue, that Troisi^me 
 Encyclopidie ThMogique; religion, philosophy, history, 
 biography, arts, sciences, bibliography, gossip. The 
 work embraces the whole range of human interests ; 
 like one of the great Middle-Age Cathedrals, it is in 
 itself a study for a life. Like the net in Scripture, 
 it drags everything to land, bad and good, lay and 
 ecclesiastical, sacred and profane, so that it be but 
 matter of human concern. Wide-embracing as the 
 power whose product it is ! a power, for history at 
 any rate, eminently the Chit/rch ; not, perhaps, the 
 Church of the future, but indisputably the Church of 
 the past and, in the past, the Church of the mul- 
 titude. 
 
 This is why the man of imagination — nay, and the 
 philosopher too, in spite of her propensity to bum 
 him — will always have a weakness for the Catholic 
 Church ; because of the rich treasures of human hfe 
 
VI. J PAGAN k MEDIAEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 197 
 
 which have been stored within her pale. The mention 
 of other religious bodies, or of their leaders, at once 
 calls up in our mind the thought of men of a definite 
 type as their adherents ; the mention of Catholicism 
 suggests no such special following. Anglicanism sug- 
 gests the English episcopate ; Calvin’s name suggests 
 Dr Candlish ; Chalmers’s, the Duke of Argyll ; Chan- 
 ning’s, Boston society ; but Catholicism suggests, — 
 what shall I say? — all the pell-mell of the men and 
 women of Shakspeare’s plays. This abundance the 
 Abb6 Migne’s collection faithfully reflects. People 
 talk of this or that work which they would choose, if 
 they were to pass their life with only one ; for my 
 part I think I would choose the Abb4 Migne’s collec- 
 tion. Quicquid agunt homines^ — everything, as I have 
 said, is there. Do not seek in it splendour of form, 
 perfection of editing ; its paper is common, its type 
 ugly, its editing indifferent, its printing careless. The 
 greatest and most baffling crowd of misprints I ever 
 met with in my life occurs in a very important page 
 of the introduction to the Dictionnaire des Apocryphes. 
 But this is just what you have in the world, — quan- 
 tity rather than quality. Do not seek in it impar- 
 tiality, the critical spirit ; in reading it you must do 
 the criticism for yourself ; it loves criticism as little 
 as the world loves it. Like the world, it chooses to 
 have things all its own way, to abuse its adversary, 
 to back its ovti notion through thick and thin, to put 
 forward all the pros for its own notion, to suppress all 
 the contras ; it does just all that the world does, and 
 all that the critical shrinks from. Open the Diction 
 
198 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vi 
 
 naire des Erreurs Sociales : “ The religions persecutions 
 of Henry the Eighth’s and Edward the Sixth’s time 
 abated a little in the reign of Mary, to break out 
 again with new fury in the reign of Elizabeth.” 
 There is a summary of the history of religious per- 
 secution under the Tudors ! But how unreasonable 
 to reproach the Abb6 Migne’s work with wanting a 
 criticism, which, by the very nature of things, it can- 
 not have, and not rather to be grateful to it for its 
 abundance, its variety, its infinite suggestiveness, its 
 happy adoption, in many a delicate circumstance, of 
 the urbane tone and temper of the man of the world, 
 instead of the acrid tone and temper of the fanatic ! 
 
 Still, in spite of their fascinations, the contents oi 
 this collection sometimes rouse the critical spirit within 
 one. It happened that lately, after I had been think- 
 ing much of Marcus Aurelius and his times, I took 
 down the Didionnaire des Origmes du Cliristianisme, to 
 see what it had to say about paganism and pagans. 
 I found much what I expected. I read the article, 
 RMation Evofogdigue, sa N6cessiU. There I found 
 what a sink of iniquity was the whole pagan world ; 
 how one Roman fed his oysters on his slaves, how 
 another put a slave to death that a curious friend 
 might see what dying was like ; how Galen’s mother 
 tore and bit her waiting-women when she was in a 
 passion vdth them. I found this account of the re- 
 ligion of paganism : “ Paganism invented a mob of 
 divinities with the most hateful character, and attri- 
 buted to them the most monstrous and abominable 
 crimes. It personified in them drunkenness, incest, 
 
FI.] PAGAN & MEDIAEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 199 
 
 kidnapping, adultery, sensuality, knavery, cruelty, 
 and rage.” And I found that from this religion there 
 followed such practice as was to he expected : “ What 
 must naturally have been the state of morals under 
 the influence of such a religion, which penetrated with 
 its own spirit the public life, the family life, and the 
 individual life of antiquity ? ” 
 
 The colours in this picture are laid on very thick, 
 and I for my part cannot believe that any human 
 societies, with a religion and practice such as those 
 just described, could ever have endured as the societies 
 of Greece and Rome endured, still less have done what 
 the societies of Greece and Rome did. We are not 
 brought far by descriptions of the vices of great cities, 
 or even of individuals driven mad by unbounded 
 means of self-indulgence. Feudal and aristocratic life 
 in Christendom has produced horrors of selfishness 
 and cruelty not surpassed by the grandee of pagan 
 Rome ; and then, again, in antiquity there is Marcus 
 Aurelius’s mother to set against Galen’s. Eminent 
 examples of vice and virtue in individuals prove little 
 as to the state of societies. What, under the first 
 emperors, was the condition of the Roman poor upon 
 the Aventine compared with that of our poor in Spital- 
 fields and Bethnal Green ? What, in comfort, morals, 
 and happiness, were the rural population of the Sabine 
 country under Augustus’s rule, compared with the 
 rural population of Hertfordshire and Buckingham- 
 shire under the rule of Queen Victoria ? 
 
 But these great questions are not now for me. 
 Without trying to answer them, I ask myself, when I 
 
200 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 Lvi 
 
 read such declamation as the foregoing, if I can find 
 anything that will give me a near, distinct sense of 
 the real difference in spirit and sentiment between 
 paganism and Christianity, and of the natural effect 
 of this difference upon people in general. I take a 
 representative religious poem of paganism, — of the 
 paganism which all the world has in its mind when it 
 speaks of paganism. To be a representative poem, it 
 must be one for popular use, one that the multitude 
 listens to. S uch a religious poem icmnd 
 
 the end of one of the best and ha ppiest of Theocritu s’s 
 idylls, the fifteentL In order that the reader may 
 the better go along with me in the line of thought I 
 am following, I will translate it ; and, that he may see 
 the medium in which religious poetry of this sort is 
 found existing, the society out of which it grows, the 
 people who form it and are formed by it, I will trans 
 late the whole, or nearly the whole, of the idyll (it 
 is not long) in which the poem occurs. 
 
 The idyll is dramatic. Somewhere about two 
 hundred and eighty years before the Christian era, 
 a couple of Syracusan women, staying at Alexandria, 
 agreed on the occasion of a great religious solemnity, 
 — the feast of Adonis, — to go together to the palace 
 of King Ptolemy Philadelphus, to see the image of 
 Adonis, which the queen Arsinoe, Ptolemy’s wife, had 
 had decorated with peculiar magnificence. A hymn, 
 by a celebrated performer, was to be recited over the 
 image. The names of the two women are Gorgo and 
 Praxinoe; their maids, who are mentioned in the 
 poem, are called Eunoe and Eutychis. Gorgo comes 
 
VI.] PAGAN A MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 201 
 
 by appointment to Praxinoe’s house to fetch her, and 
 there the dialogue begins : — 
 
 Gorgo. — Is Praxinoe at home? 
 
 Praxinoe, — My dear Gorgo, at last! Yes, here I 
 am. Eunoe, find a chair, — get a cushion for it. 
 
 Gorgo. — It will do beautifully as it is. 
 
 Praxinoe. — Do sit down. 
 
 Gorgo. — Oli, this gad-about spirit ! I could hardly 
 get to you, Praxinoe, through all the crowd and all 
 the carriages. Nothing but heavy boots, nothing but 
 men in uniform. And what a journey it is ! My 
 dear child, you really live too far off. 
 
 Praxinoe. — It is all that insane husband of mine, 
 lie has chosen to come out here to the end of the 
 world, and take a hole of a place, — for a house it is 
 not, — on purpose that you and I might not be neigh- 
 bours. He is always just the same ; — anything to 
 quarrel with one ! anything for spite ! 
 
 Gorgo. — My dear, don’t talk so of your husband 
 before the little fellow. Just see how astonished he 
 looks at you. Never mind, Zopyrio, my pet, she is 
 not talking about papa. 
 
 Praxinoe. — Good heavens ! the child does really 
 understand. 
 
 Gorgo. — Pretty papa I 
 
 Praxinoe . — That pretty papa of his the other day 
 (though I told him -beforehand to mind what he was 
 about), when I sent him to a shop to buy soap and 
 rouge, brought me home salt instead ; — stupid, great, 
 big, interminable animal ! 
 
 Gorgo. — Mine is just the fellow to him. , . . But 
 
202 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM 
 
 [VL 
 
 never mind now, get on your things and let us be off 
 to the palace to see the Adonis. I hear the Queen’s 
 decorations are something splendid. 
 
 Fraxinoe. — In grand people’s houses eveiy thing is 
 grand \Miat things you have seen in Alexandria ! 
 What a deal you will have to tell to anybody who has 
 never been here ! 
 
 Gorgo. — Come, we ought to be going. 
 
 Fraxinoe. — Every day is holiday to people who 
 have nothing to do. Eunoe, pick up your work ; and 
 take care, lazy girl, how you leave it lying about 
 again ; the cats find it just the bed they like. Come, 
 stir yourself, fetch me some water, quick ! I wanted 
 the water first, and the girl brings me the soap. 
 Never mind ; give it me. Not all that, extravagant ! 
 Now pour out the water ; — stupid ! why don’t you 
 take care of my dress 1 That wiU do. I have got 
 my hands washed as it pleased God. WTiere is the 
 key of the large wardrobe 1 Bring it here ; — quick ! 
 
 Gorgo. — Fraxinoe, you can’t think how well that 
 dress, made full, as you have got it, suits you. Tell 
 me, how much did it cost 1 — the dress by itself, I 
 mean. 
 
 Fraxinoe. — Don’t talk of it, Gorgo : more than 
 eight guineas of good hard money. And about the 
 work on it I have almost worn my life out 
 
 Gorgo. — Well, you couldn’t have done better. 
 
 Fraxinoe. — Thank you. Bring me my shawl, and 
 put my hat properly on my head ; — properly. No, 
 child {to her little hoy), I am not going to take you ; 
 there’s a bogy on horseback, who bites. Cry as much 
 
vk] pagan & MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 203 
 
 as you like ; Tm not going to have you lamed for 
 life. Now we’ll start. Nurse, take the little one and 
 amuse him ; call the dog in, and shut the street-door. 
 (They go out.) Good heavens ! what a crowd of 
 people ! How on earth are we ever to get through 
 all this 1 They are like ants : you can’t count them. 
 My dearest Gorgo, what ^vill become of us ? here are 
 the royal Horse Guards. My good man, don’t ride 
 over me ! Look at that bay horse rearing bolt up- 
 right ; w'hat a vicious one ! Eunoe, you mad girl, do 
 take care ! — that horse will certainly be the death of 
 the man on his back. How glad I am now, that I 
 left the child safe at home ! 
 
 Gorgo. — All right, Praxinoe, we are safe behind 
 them; and they have gone on to where they are 
 stationed. 
 
 Praxinoe. — Well, yes, I begin to revive again. 
 From the time I was a little girl I have had more 
 horror of horses and snakes than of anything in the 
 world. Let us get on ; here’s a great crowd coming 
 this way upon us. 
 
 Gorgo (to an old woman). — Mother, are you from the 
 palace ? 
 
 Old Woman. — Yes, my dears. 
 
 Gorgo. — Has one a tolerable chance of getting there 1 
 
 Old Woman. — My pretty young lady, the Greeks 
 got to Troy by dint of trying hard ; trying vill do 
 anything in this world. 
 
 Gorgo. — The old creature has delivered herself of 
 an oracle and departed. 
 
 Praxinoe. — Women can tell you everything about 
 
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 201 
 
 [VI. 
 
 everything, Jupiter’s marriage with Juno not ex 
 cepted. 
 
 Gorgo. — Look, Praxinoe, what a squeeze at the 
 palace gates ! 
 
 Praxinoe. — Tremendous ! Take hold of me, Gorgo , 
 and you, Eunoe, take hold of Eutychis ! — tight hold, 
 or you’ll be lost. Here we go in all together. Hold 
 tight to us, Eunoe ! Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! Gorgo, 
 there’s my scarf torn right in two. For heaven’s 
 sake, my good man, as you hope to be saved, take 
 care of my dress ! 
 
 Stranger. — I’ll do what I can, but it doesn’t depend 
 upon me. 
 
 Praxinoe. — What heaps of people ! They push 
 like a drove of pigs. 
 
 Stranger. — Don’t be frightened, ma’am, we are all 
 right. 
 
 Praxinoe. — May you be all right, my dear sir, to 
 the last day you live, for the care you have taken of 
 us ! What a kind, considerate man ! There is 
 Eunoe jammed in a squeeze. Push, you goose, push ! 
 Capital ! We are all of us the right side of the door, 
 as the bridegroom said when he had locked himself in 
 with the bride. 
 
 Gorgo. — Praxinoe, come this way. Do but look at 
 that work, how delicate it is ! — how exquisite ! Why, 
 they might wear it in heaven. 
 
 Praxinoe. — Heavenly patroness of needlewomen, 
 what hands were hired to do that work 1 Who de- 
 signed those beautiful patterns 1 They seem to stand 
 up and move about, as if they were real;- -as if they 
 
ri.] PAGAK k MEDLEY AL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 205 
 
 were living things, and not needlework. Well, man 
 is a wonderfiil creature ) And look, look, how charm- 
 ing he lies there on his silver couch, with just a soft 
 down on his cheeks, that beloved Adonis. — Adonis, 
 whom one loves even though he is dead ! 
 
 Another Stranger . — You wretched women, do stop 
 your incessant chatter ! Like turtles, you go on for 
 ever. They are enough to kill one with their broad 
 lingo, — nothing but a, u, a. 
 
 Gorgo. — Lord, where does the man come froml 
 What is it to you if we are chatterboxes? Order 
 about your own servants I Do you give orders to 
 Syracusan women ? If you want to know, we came 
 originally from Corinth, as Bellerophon did ; we speak 
 Peloponnesian. I suppose Dorian women may be 
 allowed to have a Dorian accent. 
 
 Praxinoe. — Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have 
 no more masters than the one we’ve got ! We don’t 
 the least care for you ; pray don’t trouble yourself for 
 nothing. 
 
 Gorgo . — Be quiet, Praxinoe ! That first-rate singer, 
 the Argive woman’s daughter, is going to sing the 
 Adonis hymn. She is the same who was chosen to 
 sing the dirge last year. We are sure to have some- 
 thing firsLrate from her. She is going through her 
 airs and graces ready to begin. — 
 
 So far the dialogue ; and, as it stands in the ori- 
 ginal, it can hardly be praised too highly. It is a 
 page torn fresh out of the book of human life. What 
 freedom ! "Wliat animation ! What gaiety ! What 
 naturalness ! It is said that Theocritus, in composing 
 
206 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [vi 
 
 this poem, borrowed from a work of Sophron, a poet 
 of an earlier and better time ; but, even if this is so, 
 the form is still Theocritus’s own, and how excellent 
 is that form, how masterly ! And this in a Greek 
 poem of the decadence ! — for Theocritus’s poetry, after 
 all, is poetry of the decadence. When such is Greek 
 poetry of the decadence, what must be Greek poetry 
 of the prime 1 
 
 Then the singer begins her hymn : — 
 
 “ Mistress, who loveth the haunts of Golgi, and 
 Idalium, and high-peaked Eryx, Aphrodite that play- 
 est with gold ! how have the delicate-footed Hours, 
 after twelve months, brought thy Adonis back to thee 
 from the ever-flowing Acheron ! Tardiest of the 
 immortals are the boon Hours, but all mankind wait 
 their approach with longing, for they ever bring some- 
 thing with them. 0 Cypris, Dione’s child ! thou 
 didst change — so is the story among men — Berenice 
 from mortal to immortal, by dropping ambrosia into 
 her fair bosom ; and in gratitude to thee for this, 0 
 thou of many names and many temples ! Berenice’s 
 daughter, Arsinoe, lovely Helen’s living counterpart, 
 makes much of Adonis with all manner of braveries. 
 
 “ All fruits that the tree bears are laid before him, 
 all treasures of the garden in silver baskets, and ala- 
 baster boxes, gold-inlaid, of Syrian ointment ; and all 
 confectionery that cunning women make on their 
 kneading-tray, kneading up every sort of flowers with 
 white meal, and all that they make of sweet honey 
 and delicate oil, and all winged and creeping things 
 are here set before him. And there are built for him 
 
<'!.] PAGAK & MEDIiEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 207 
 
 green bowers with wealth of tender anise, and little 
 boy-loves flutter about over them, like young night 
 ingales trying their new wings on the tree, from bough 
 to bough. Oh, the ebony, the gold, the eagle of white 
 ivory that bears aloft his cup-bearer to Cronos-born 
 Zeus ! And up there, see ! a second couch strewn 
 for lovely Adonis, scarlet coverlets softer than sleep 
 itself (so Miletus and the Samian wool -grower will 
 say) ; Cypris has hers, and the rosy-armed Adonis has 
 his, that eighteen or nineteen-year-old bridegroom. His 
 kisses will not wound, the hair on his lip is yet light. 
 
 “ Now, Cypris, good-night, we leave thee with thy 
 bridegroom ; but to-morrow moniing, with the ear- 
 liest dew, we will one and all bear him forth to where 
 the waves splash upon the sea-strand, and letting 
 loose our locks, and letting fall our robes, with bosoms 
 bare, we will set up this, our melodious strain : 
 
 “ ‘ Beloved Adonis, alone of the demigods (so men 
 say) thou art permitted to visit both us and Acheron ! 
 This lot had neither Agamemnon, nor the mighty 
 moon-struck hero Ajax, nor Hector the first-born of 
 Hecuba’s twenty children, nor Patroclus, nor Pyrrhus 
 who came home from Troy, nor those yet earlier 
 Lapithae and the sons of Deucalion, nor the Pelasgians, 
 the root of Argos and of Pelop’s isle. Be gracious to 
 us now, loved Adonis, and be favourable to us for the 
 year to come ! Dear to us hast thou been at this coming, 
 dear to us shalt thou be when thou comest again.’ ” 
 The poem concludes with a characteristic speech 
 from Gorgo : — 
 
 Praxinoe, certainly women are wonderful things 
 
208 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [VI 
 
 That lucky woman to know all that ! and luckier still 
 to have such a splendid voice ! And now we must 
 see about getting home. My husband has not had 
 his dinner. That man is all vinegar, and nothing 
 else ; and if you keep him waiting for his dinner, he’s 
 dangerous to go near. Adieu, precious Adonis, and 
 may you find us all well when you come next year ! ” 
 
 So, with the hymn still in her ears, says the incor- 
 rigible Gorgo. 
 
 But what a hymn that is ! Of religious emotion, 
 in our acceptation of the words, and of the comfort 
 springing from religious emotion, not a particle. And 
 yet many elements of religious emotion are contained 
 in the beautiful story of Adonis. Symbolically treated, 
 as the thoughtful man might treat it, as the Greek 
 mysteries undoubtedly treated it, this story was cap- 
 able of a noble and touching application, and could 
 lead the soul to elevating and consoling thoughts. 
 Adonis was the sun in his summer and in his winter 
 course, in his time of triumph and his time of defeat ; 
 but in his time of triumph still moving towards his 
 defeat, in his time of defeat still returning towards 
 his triumph. Thus he became an emblem of the 
 power of life and the bloom of beauty, the power of 
 human life and the bloom of human beauty, hasten- 
 ing inevitably to diminution and decay, yet in that 
 very decay finding 
 
 “Hope, and a renovation without end.” 
 
 But nothing of this appears in the story as prepared 
 for popular religious use, as presented to the multitude 
 
VI.] PAGAN & MEDLEY AL KELIGIODS SENTIMENT. 209 
 
 in a popular religious ceremony. Its treatment is 
 not devoid of a certain grace and beauty, but it 
 has nothing whatever that is elevating, nothing 
 that is consoling, nothing that is in our sense of the 
 word religious. The religious ceremonies of Christ- 
 endom, even on occasion of the most joyful and 
 mundane matters, present the multitude with strains 
 of profoundly religious character, such as the Kyrie 
 eleison and the Te Deum. But this Greek hymn to 
 Adonis adapts itself exactly to the tone and temper of 
 a gay and pleasime-loving multitude, — of light-hearted 
 people, like Gorgo and Pra,xinoe, whose moral nature 
 is much of the same calibre as that of Phillina in 
 Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, people who seem never 
 made to be serious, never made to be sick or sorry. 
 And, if they happen to be sick or sorry, what will 
 they do then ? But that we have no right to ask. 
 Phillina, within the enchanted bounds of Goethe’s 
 novel, Gorgo and Praxinoe, within the enchanted 
 bounds of Theocritus’s poem, never will be sick and 
 sorry, never can be sick and sorry. The ideal, cheer- 
 ful, sensuous, pagan life is not sick or sorry. No ; 
 yet its natural end is in the sort of life which Pompeii 
 and Herculaneum bring so vividly before us, — a Life 
 which by no means in itself suggests the thought of 
 horror and misery, which even, in many ways, grati- 
 fies the senses and the understanding ; but by the 
 very intensity and unremittingness of its appeal to 
 the senses and the understanding, by its stimulating 
 a single side of us too absolutely, ends by fatiguing 
 and revolting us ; ends by leaving us with a sense 
 VOL. L P 
 
210 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [vi 
 
 of confinement, of oppression, — with a desire for an 
 utter change, for clouds, storms, effusion, and relief. 
 
 In the beginning of the thirteenth century, when 
 the clouds and storms had come, when the gay sensu- 
 ous pagan life was gone, when men were not living 
 by the senses and underst anding, w hen they were 
 looking for the speedy coming of Antichrist, there 
 appeared in Italy, to the north of Rome, in the beau- 
 tiful Umbrian country at the foot of the Apennines, 
 a figure of the most magical power and charm, St 
 Francis. His century is, I think, the most interesting 
 in the history of Christianity after its primitive age, 
 more interesting than even the century of the Refor- 
 mation ; and one of the chief figures, perhaps the 
 very chief, to which this interest attaches itself, is Si 
 Francis. And why 1 Because of the profound popular 
 instinct which enabled him, more than any man since 
 the primitive age, to fit religion for popular use. 
 He brought religion to the people. He founded the 
 most popular body of ministers of religion that has 
 ever existed in the Church. He transformed mona- 
 chism by uprooting the stationary monk, delivering 
 him from the bondage of property, and sending him, 
 as a mendicant friar, to be a stranger and sojourner, 
 not in the wilderness, but in the most crowded haunts 
 of men, to console them and to do them good. This 
 popular instinct of his is at the bottom of his famous 
 marriage with poverty. Poverty and suffering are 
 the condition of the people, the multitude, the im- 
 mense majority of mankind ; and it was towards this 
 })e(yple that his soul yearned. “ He listens,” it was 
 
VI.] PAGAN & MEDIAEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 211 
 
 said of him, “ to those to whom God himself will not 
 listen.” 
 
 So in return, as no other man he was listened to. 
 When an Umbrian town or village heard of his 
 approach, the whole population went out in joyful 
 procession to meet him, with green boughs, flags, 
 music, and songs of gladness. The master, who 
 began with two disciples, could in his own lifetime 
 (and he died at forty-four) collect to keep WTiitsun- 
 tide with him, in presence of an immense multitude, 
 five thousand of his Minorites. And thus he found 
 fulfilment to his prophetic cry : “I hear in my ears 
 the sound of the tongues of all the nations who shall 
 come unto us; Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, 
 Englishmen. The Lord will make of us a great 
 people, even unto the ends of the earth.” 
 
 Prose could not satisfy this ardent soul, and he 
 made poetry. Latin was too learned for this simple, 
 popular nature, and he composed in his mother 
 tongue, in Italiaa beginnings of the mundane 
 
 poetry of the Italians are in Sicily, at the court of 
 kings'; the beginnings of their religious poetry are in 
 Umbria, with St. Francis. His are the humble upper 
 waters of a mighty stream ; at the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century it is St. Francis, at the end, Dante. 
 Now it happens that St. Francis, too, like the Alex- 
 andrian songstress, has his hymn for the sun, for Adonis. 
 Canticle of the Sun, Canticle of the Creatures , — the 
 poem goes by both names. Like the Alexandrian 
 hymn, it is designed for popular use, but not for use 
 by Kdng Ptolemy’s people ; artless in language, 
 
212 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [yi 
 
 irregular in rhythm, it matches with the childlike 
 genius that produced it, and the simple natures that 
 loved and repeated it : — 
 
 “0 most high, almighty, good Lord God, to thec 
 belong praise, glory, honour, and all blessing ! 
 
 “ Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures ; 
 and specially our brother the sun, who brings us the 
 day, and who brings us the light; fair is he, and 
 shining with a very great splendour: 0 Lord, he 
 signifies to us thee ! 
 
 “ Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and 
 for the stars, the which he has set clear and lovely in 
 heaven. 
 
 “ Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, 
 and for air and cloud, calms and all weather, by the 
 which thou upholdest in life all creatures. 
 
 “ Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is 
 very serviceable unto us, and humble, and precious, 
 and clean. 
 
 “ Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through 
 whom thou givest us light in the darkness ; and he is 
 bright, and pleasant, and very mighty, and strong. 
 
 “Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, 
 the which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth 
 forth divers fruits, and flowers of many colours, and 
 grass. 
 
 “Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon 
 one another for his love’s sake, and who endure weak- 
 ness and tribulation ; blessed are they who peaceably 
 shall endure, for thou, 0 most Highest, shalt give 
 them a crown 1 
 
?-i.J PAGAN & MEDIAEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 213 
 
 “Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of 
 the body, from whom no man escapetL Woe to 
 him who dieth in mortal sin ! Blessed are they who 
 are found walking by thy most holy will, for the 
 second death shall have no power to do them harm. 
 
 “ Praise ye, and bless ye the Lord, and give thanks 
 unto him, and serve him with great humility.” 
 
 It is natural that man should take pleasure in his 
 senses. But it is natural, also, that he should take 
 refuge in his heart and imagination from his misery. 
 And when one thinks what human life is for the vast 
 majority of mankind, how little of a feast for their 
 senses it can possibly be, one understands the charm 
 for them of a refuge offered in the heart and imagina- 
 tion. Above all, when one thinks what human life 
 R^as in the IMiddle Ages, one understands the charm 
 of such a refuge. 
 
 Now, the poetry of Theocritus’s hymn is poetry 
 treating the world according to the demand of the 
 senses; the poetry of St. Francis’s hymn is poetry 
 treating the world according to the demand of the 
 heart and imagination. The first takes the world by 
 its outward, sensible side ; the second by its inward, 
 symbolical side. The first admits as much of the 
 world as is pleasure - giving ; the second admits the 
 whole world, rough and smooth, painful and pleasure- 
 giving, all alike, but all transfigured by the power of 
 a spiritual emotion, all brought under a law of super- 
 sensual love, having its seat in the soul. It can thus 
 even say : “ Praised be my Lord for owr sister ^ the 
 death of the body.” 
 
214 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vi. 
 
 But these very words are, perhaps, an indication 
 that we are touching upon an extreme. When we see 
 Pompeii, we can put our finger upon the pagan senti- 
 ment in its extreme. And when we read of Monte 
 Alvemo and the stigmata; when we read of the 
 repulsive, because self-caused, sufferings of the end of 
 St. Francis’s life ; when we find him even saying, “ I 
 have sinned against my brother the ass,” meaning by 
 these words that he had been too hard upon his own 
 body ; when we find him assailed, even himself, by 
 the doubt “whether he who had destroyed himself 
 by the severity of his penances could find mercy in 
 eternity,” we can put our finger on^ the mediaeval 
 Christian sentiment in its extreme. t@uman nature 
 is neither all senses and understanding, nor all heart 
 and imaginatiorlA Pompeii was a sign that for 
 humanity at large the measure of sensualism had 
 been overpassed ; St. Francis’s doubt was a sign 
 that for humanity at large the measure of spirit- 
 ualism had been ovei'passed. Humanity, in its 
 violent rebound from one extreme, had swung from 
 Pompeii to Monte Alvemo; but it was sure not to 
 stay there. 
 
 The Renascence is, in part, a return towards the 
 pagan spirit, in the special sense in which I have been 
 using the word pagan ; a return towards the life of 
 the senses and the understanding. The Reformation, 
 on the other hand, is the very opposite to this; in 
 Luther there is nothing Greek or pagan ; vehemently 
 as he attacked the adoration of St. Francis, Luther 
 had himseli something of St. Francis in him ; he was 
 
71 .] PAGAN & MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 215 
 
 a thousand times more akin to St. Francis than to 
 Theocritus or to Voltaire. The Keformation — I do 
 not mean the inferior piece given under that name, 
 by Henry the Eighth and a second-rate company, in 
 this island, but the real Reformation, the German 
 Reformation, Luther’s Reformation — was a reaction 
 of the moral and spiritual sense against the carnal 
 and pagan sense ; it was a religious revival like St. 
 Francis’s, but this time against the Church of Rome, 
 not within her ; for the carnal and pagan sense had 
 now, in the government of the Church of Rome her- 
 self, its prime representative. But the grand reaction 
 against the nile of the heart and imaa^ation, the 
 strong return towards the rule of th^ senses and 
 understanding, is in the eighteenth centur^ And 
 this reaction has had no more brilliant champion than 
 a man of the nineteenth, of whom I have already 
 spoken ; a man who could feel not only the pleasur- 
 ableness but the poetry of the life of the senses (and 
 the life of the senses has its deep poetry) ; a man 
 who, in his very last poem, divided the whole world 
 into “ barbarians and Greeks,” — Heinrich Heine. No 
 man has reproached the Monte Alvemo extreme in 
 sentiment, the Christian extreme, the heart and 
 imagination subjugating the senses and understanding, 
 more bitterly than Heine ; no man has extolled the 
 Pompeii extreme, the pagan extreme, more raptur- 
 ously. 
 
 “ All through the Middle Age these sufferings, this 
 fever, this over-tension lasted ; and we modems still 
 feel in all our limbs the pain and weakness from them 
 
216 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [n. 
 
 Even those of us who are cured have still to live with 
 a hospital-atmosphere all around us, and find ourselves 
 as wretched in it as a strong man among the sick. 
 Some day or other, when humanity shall have got 
 quite well again, when the body and soul shall have 
 made their peace together, the fictitious quarrel which 
 Christianity has cooked up between them will appear 
 something hardly comprehensible. The fairer and 
 happier generations, offspring of unfettered unions, 
 that will rise up and bloom in the atmosphere of a 
 religion of pleasure, will smile sadly when they think 
 of their poor ancestors, whose life was passed in 
 melancholy abstinence from the joys of this beautiful 
 earth, and who faded away into spectres, from the 
 mortal compression which they put upon the warm 
 and glowing emotions of sense. Yes, with assurance 
 I say it, our descendants will be fairer and happier 
 than we are ; for I am a believer in progress, and I 
 hold God to be a kind being who has intended man 
 to be happy.” 
 
 That is Heine’s sentiment, in the prime of life, in 
 the glow of activity, amid the brilliant whirl of Paris. 
 I will no more blame it than I blamed the sentiment 
 of the Greek hynm to Adonis. I wish to decide 
 nothing as of my own authority ; the great art of 
 criticism is to get oneself out of the way and to let 
 humanity decide. Well, the sentiment of the “reli- 
 gion of pleasure” has much that is natural in itj 
 humanity will gladly accept it if it can live by it ; to 
 live by it one must never be sick or sorry, and the 
 old. ideal, limited, pagan world never, I have said, 
 
VI. J PAGAN & MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 217 
 
 was sick or sorry, never at least shows itself to us sick 
 or sorry ; — 
 
 “ What pipes and timbrels ! what wild ecstasy 1 ” 
 
 For our imagination, Gorgo and Praxinoe cross the 
 human stage chattering in their blithe Doric, — like 
 turtles^ as the cross stranger said, — and keep gaily 
 chattering on till they disappear. But in the new, 
 real, immense, post-pagan world, — in the barbarian 
 world, — the shock of accident is unceasing, the 
 serenity of existence is perpetually troubled, not even 
 a Greek like Heine can get across the mortal stage 
 without bitter calamity. How does the sentiment of 
 the “ religion of pleasure ” serve then ? does it help, 
 does it console 1 Can a man live by it 1 Heine again 
 shall answer ; Heine just twenty years older, stricken 
 with incurable disease, waiting for death : — 
 
 “ The great pot stands smoking before me, but I 
 have no spoon to help myself. What does it profit 
 me that my health is drunk at banquets out of gold 
 cups and in most exquisite wines, if I myself, while 
 these ovations are going on, lonely and cut off from 
 the pleasures of the world, can only just wet my lips 
 with barley-water 1 What good does it do me that 
 all the roses of Shiraz open their leaves and burn for 
 me with passionate tenderness 1 Alas ! Shiraz is some 
 two thousand leagues from the Rue d’ Amsterdam, 
 where in the solitude of my sick chamber all the 
 perfume I smell is that of hot towels. Alas ! the 
 mockery of God is heavy upon me ! The great 
 author of the universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, 
 has determined to make the petty earthly author, the 
 
218 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [VI. 
 
 so-called Aristophanes of Germany, feel to his heart’s 
 core what pitiful needle-pricks his cleverest sarcasms 
 have been, compared with the thunderbolts which his 
 divine humour can launch against feeble mortals ! . . . 
 
 “In the year 1340, says the Chronicle of Limburg, 
 all over Germany everybody was strumming and hum- 
 ming certain songs more lovely and delightful than 
 any which had ever yet been known in German coun- 
 tries ; and all people, old and young, the women par- 
 ticularly, were perfectly mad about them, so that from 
 morning till night you heard nothing else. Only, the 
 Chronicle adds, the author of these songs happened 
 to be a young clerk, afflicted with leprosy, and living 
 apart from all the world in a desolate place. The 
 excellent reader does not require to be told how hor 
 rible a complaint was leprosy in the Middle Ages, and 
 how the poor wretches who had this incurable plague 
 were banished from society, and had to keep at a dis- 
 tance from every human being. like living corpses, 
 in a graj’^ gown reaching down to the feet, and with 
 the hood brought over their face, they went about, 
 carrying in their hands an enormous rattle, called 
 Saint Lazarus’s rattle. With this rattle they gave 
 notice of their approach, that every one might have 
 time to get out of their way. This poor clerk, then, 
 whose poetical gift the Limburg Chronicle extols, was 
 a leper, and he sate moping in the dismal deserts of 
 his misery, whilst all Germany, gay and tuneful, was 
 praising his songs. 
 
 “ Sometimes, in my sombre visions of the night, I 
 imagine that I see before me the poor leprosy -stricken 
 
71.] PAGAN k MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 219 
 
 clerk of the Limburg Chronicle, and then from unde? 
 his gray hood his distressed eyes look out upon me 
 in a fixed and strange fashion ; but the next instant 
 he disappears, and I hear dying away in the distance, 
 like the echo of a dream, the dull creak of Saint 
 Lazarus’s rattle.” 
 
 We have come a long way from Theocritus there; 
 the expression of that has nothing of the clear, posi- 
 tive, happy, pagan character ; it has much more the 
 character of one of the indeterminate grotesques of 
 the suffering Middle Age. Profoundness and power 
 it has, though at the same time it is not tnily poetical ; 
 it is not natural enough for that, there is too much 
 waywardness in it, too much bravado. But as a con- 
 dition of sentiment to be popular, — to be a comfort 
 for the mass of mankind, under the pressure of cala- 
 mity, to live by, — what a manifest failure is this last 
 word of the religion of pleasure ! One man in many 
 millions, a Heine, may console himself, and keep him- 
 self erect in suffering, by a colossal irony of this sort, 
 by covering himself and the universe with the red 
 fire of this sinister mockery ; but the many millions 
 cannot, — cannot if they would. That is where the 
 sentiment of a religion of sorrow has such a vast 
 advantage over the sentiment of a religion of pleasure; 
 in its power to be a general, popular, religious senti- 
 ment, a stay for the mass of mankind, whose lives are 
 full of hardship. It really succeeds in conveying far 
 more joy, far more of what the mass of mankind are 
 so much without, than its rival. I do not mean joy 
 in prospect only, but joy in possession, actual enjoy- 
 
220 
 
 ESSAYS IN CKITICISM. 
 
 [VI 
 
 ment of the world. Medireval Christianity is re- 
 proached with its gloom and austerities ; it assigns 
 the material world, says Heine, to the devil. But 
 yet what a fulness of delight does St. Francis manage 
 to draw from this material world itself, and from its 
 commonest and most universally enjoyed elements, — 
 sun, air, earth, water, plants ! His hymn expresses a 
 far more cordial sense of happiness, even in the mate- 
 rial world, than the hymn of Theocritus. It is this 
 which made the fortune of Christianity, — its gladness, 
 not its sorrow ; not its assigning the spiritual world 
 to Christ, and the material world to the devil, but 
 its drawing from the spiritual world a source of joy 
 so abundant that it ran over upon the material world 
 and transfigured it. 
 
 I have said a great deal of harm of paganism ; and, 
 taking paganism to mean a state of things which it is 
 commonly taken to mean, and which did really exist, 
 no more harm than it well deserved. Yet I must not 
 end without reminding the reader, that before this 
 state of things appeared, there was an epoch in Greek 
 life, — in pagan life, — of the highest possible beauty 
 and value. That epoch by itself goes far towards 
 making Greece the Greece we mean when we speak 
 of Greece, — a countr y hard ly less important to man- 
 kind than Judsea. The poetry of^T^^r paganism J 
 lived by the senses and understanding ; the poetry 
 of mediaeval Christianity lived by the heart and 
 imagination. But the main element of the modem 
 spirits life is neither the senses and understanding, 
 nor the heart and imagination ; it is the imaginative 
 
71.] PAGAN & MEDIAEVAL EELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 221 
 
 reason. And there is a century in Greek life, — the 
 century preceding the Peloponnesian war, from about 
 the year 530 to the year 430 B.c., — in which poetry 
 made, it seems to me, the noblest, the most success- 
 ful effort she has ever made as the priestess of the 
 imaginative reason, of the element by which the 
 modern spirit, if it would live right, has chiefly to 
 live. Of this effort, of which the four great names 
 are Simonides, Pindar, ^schylus, Sophocles, I must 
 not now attempt more than the bare mention ; but 
 it is right, it is necessary, after all I have said, to 
 indicate it. No doubt that effort was imperfect. 
 Perhaps everything, take it at what point in its exist- 
 ence you will, carries within itself the fatal law of its 
 own ulterior development. Perhaps, even of the life 
 of Pindar’s time, Pompeii was the inevitable bourne. 
 Perhaps the life of their beautiful Greece could not 
 afford to its poets all that fulness of varied experience, 
 all that power of emotion, which 
 
 * . . . the heavy and the weaiy weight 
 Of all this unintelligible world ’ 
 
 aflfords the poet of after-times. Perhaps in Sophocles 
 the thinking-power a little overbalances the religious 
 sense, as in Dante the religious sense overbalances the 
 thinking -power. The present has to make its own 
 poetry, and not even Sophocles and his compeers, any 
 more than Dante and Shakspeare, are enough for it. 
 That I will not dispute ; nor will I set up the Greek 
 poets, from Pindar to Sophocles, as objects of blind 
 worship. But no other poets so well show to the 
 
222 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [vi 
 
 poetry of the present the way it must take ; no othei 
 poets have lived so much by the imaginative reason ; 
 no other poets have made their work so well balanced 
 no other poets, who have so well satisfied the thinking- 
 power, have so well satisfied the religious sense : — 
 
 “ Oh ! that my lot may lead me in the path of holy 
 innocence of word and deed, the path which august 
 laws ordain, laws that in the highest empyrean had 
 their birth, of which Heaven is the father alone, 
 neither did the race of mortal men beget them, nor 
 shall oblivion ever put them to sleep. The power of 
 God is mighty in them, and groweth not old.” 
 
 Let St. Francis, — nay, or Luther either, — beat 
 that ! 
 
VII. 
 
 A PEKSTAN PASSION PLAY. 
 
 Everybody has this last autumn^ been either seeing 
 the Ammergau Passion Play or hearing about it ; and 
 to find any one who has seen it and not been deeply 
 interested and moved by it, is very rare. The pea- 
 sants of the neighbouring country, the great and 
 fashionable world, the ordinary tourist, were all at 
 Ammergau, and were all delighted ; but what is said 
 to have been especially remarkable was the affluence 
 there of ministers of religion of all kinds. That 
 Catholic peasants, whose religion has accustomed 
 them to show and spectacle, should be attracted by an 
 admirable scenic representation of the great moments 
 in the history of their religion, was natural; that 
 tourists and the fashionable world should be attracted 
 by what was at once the fashion and a new sensation 
 of a powerful sort, was natural ; that many of the 
 ecclesiastics present should be attracted there, was 
 natural too. Roman Catholic priests mustered strong, 
 of course. The Protestantism of a great number of 
 1 1871 . 
 
224 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vii 
 
 the Anglican clergy is supposed to be but languid, 
 and Anglican ministers at Ammergau were sympa- 
 thisers to be expected. But Protestant ministers of 
 the most unimpeachable sort, Protestant Dissenting 
 ministers, were there, too, and showing favour and 
 sympathy ; and this, to any one who remembers the 
 almost universal feeling of Protestant Dissenters in 
 this country, not many years ago, towards Eome and 
 her religion, — the sheer abhorrence of Papists and 
 all their practices, — could not but be striking. It 
 agrees with what is seen also in literature, in the 
 writings of Dissenters of the younger and more pro 
 gressive sort, who show a disposition for regarding 
 the Church of Eome historically rather than polemic- 
 ally, a wish to do justice to the undoubted grandeur 
 ,f- certain institutions and men produced by that 
 Church, quite novel, and quite alien to the simple 
 belief of earlier times, that between Protestants and 
 Eome there was a measureless gulf fixed. Something 
 of this may, no doubt, be due to that keen eye for 
 Nonconformist business in which our great bodies of 
 Protestant Dissenters, to do them justice, are never 
 wanting; to a perception that the case against the 
 Church of England may be yet further improved by 
 contrasting her with the genuine article in her own 
 ecclesiastical line, by pointing out that she is neither 
 one thing nor the other to much purpose, by dilating 
 on the magnitude, reach, and impressiveness, on the 
 great place in history, of hen rival, as compared with 
 anything she can herself pretend to. Something of 
 this there is, no doubt, in some of the modem Pro- 
 
VII.] A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 225 
 
 testant sympathy for things Catholic. But in general 
 that sympathy springs, in Churchmen and Dissenters 
 alike, from another and a better cause, — from the 
 spread of larger conceptions of religion, of man, and 
 of history, than were current formerly. We have 
 seen lately in the newspapers, that a clergyman, who 
 in a popular lecture gave an account of the Passion 
 Play at Ammergau, and enlarged on its impressive- 
 ness, was admonished hy certain remonstrants, who 
 told him it was his business, instead of occupying 
 himself with these sensuous shows, to learn to walk 
 by faith, not by sight, and to teach his fellow-men to 
 do the same. But this severity seems to have excited 
 wonder rather than praise; so far had those wider 
 notions about religion and about the range of our 
 interest in rehgion, of which I have just spoken, con- 
 ducted us. To this interest I propose to appeal in 
 what I am going to relate. The Passion Play at 
 Ammergau, with its immense audiences, the serious- 
 ness of its actors, the passionate emotion of its spec- 
 tators, brought to my mind something of which I had 
 read an account lately; something produced, not in 
 Bavaria nor in Christendom at all, but far away in 
 that wonderful East, from which, whatever airs of 
 superiority Europe may justly give itself, all oiu- 
 religion has come, and where religion, of some sort or 
 other, has still an empire over men’s feelings such as 
 it has nowhere else. This product of the remote 
 East I wish to exhibit while the remembrance of 
 what has been seen at Ammergau is still fresh ; and 
 we will see whether that bringing together of strangers 
 VOL. L Q 
 
226 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vn 
 
 and enemies who once seemed to be as far aa the 
 poles asunder, which Ammergau in such a remarkable 
 way effected, does not hold good and find a parallel 
 even in Persia. 
 
 Count Gobineau, formerly Minister of France at 
 Teheran and at Athens, published, a few years ago, 
 an interesting book on the present state of religion 
 and philosophy in Central Asia. He is favourably 
 known also by his studies in ethnology. His accom- 
 plishments and intelligence deserve all respect, and in 
 his book on religion and philosophy in Central Asia 
 he has the great advantage of writing about things 
 which he has followed with his own observation and 
 inquiry in the countries where they happened. The 
 chief purpose of his book is to give a history of the 
 career of Mirza Ali Mahommed, a Persian religious 
 reformer, the original and the founder of Bdbism, 
 of which most people in England have at least heard 
 the name. Bab means gate, the door or gate of life ; 
 and in the ferment which now works in the Maho- 
 metan East, Mirza Ali Mahommed, — who seems to 
 have been made acquainted by Protestant missionaries 
 with our Scriptures and by the Jews of Shiraz with 
 Jewish traditions, to have studied, besides, the reli- 
 gion of the Ghebers, the old national religion of 
 Persia, and to have made a sort of amalgam of the 
 whole with Mahometanism, — presented himself, about 
 five -and -twenty years ago, as the door, the gate of 
 life; found disciples, sent forth writings, and finally 
 became the cause of disturbances which led to his 
 being executed on the 19th of July 1849, in the 
 
VII.] 
 
 A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 
 
 227 
 
 citadel of Tabriz. The Bab and his doctrines are a 
 theme on which much might be said ; but I pass 
 them by, except for one incident in the Bab’s life, 
 which I will notice. Like all religious Mahometans, 
 he made the pilgrimage to Mecca; and his medita- 
 tions at that centre of his religion first suggested his 
 mission to him. But soon after his return to Bagdad 
 he made another pilgrimage ; and it was in this pil 
 grimage that his mission became clear to him, and 
 that his life was fixed. “ He desired ” — I will give 
 an abridgment of Count Gobineau’s own words — “ to 
 complete his impressions by going to Kufa, that he 
 might visit the ruined mosque where Ali was assas- 
 sinated, and where the place of his murder is still 
 shown. He passed several days there in meditation. 
 The place appears to have made a great impression 
 on him; he was entering on a course which might 
 and must lead to some such catastrophe as had hap- 
 pened on the very spot where he stood, and where 
 his mind’s eye showed him the Imam Ali lying at his 
 feet, with his body pierced and bleeding. His fol- 
 lowers say that he then passed through a sort of 
 moral agony which put an end to all the hesitations of 
 the natural man within him. It is certain that when 
 he arrived at Shiraz, on his return, he was a changed 
 man. No doubts troubled him any more ; he was 
 penetrated and persuaded ; his part was taken.” 
 
 This Ali also, at whose tomb the Bab went through 
 the spiritual crisis here recorded, is a familiar name 
 to most of us. In general our knowledge of the East 
 goes but a very little way ; yet almost every one ha^ 
 
228 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [vn 
 
 at least heard the name of Ali, the Lion of God, 
 Mahomet’s young cousin, the first person, after his 
 wife, who believed in him, and who was declared by 
 Mahomet in his gratitude his brother, delegate, and 
 vicar. Ali was one of Mahomet’s best and most 
 successful captains. He married Fatima, the daughter 
 of the Prophet ; his sons, Hassan and Hussein, were, 
 as children, favourites with Mahomet, who had no 
 son of his own to succeed him, and was expected to 
 name Ali as his successor. He named no successor. 
 At his death (the year 632 of our era) Ali was passed 
 over, and the first caliph, or vicar and lieutenant of 
 Mahomet in the government of the state, was Abu 
 Bekr ; only the spiritual inheritance of Mahomet, the 
 dignity of Imam, or Primate^ devolved by right on 
 Ali and his children. Ali, lion of God as in war he 
 was, held aloof from politics and political intrigue, 
 loved retirement and prayer, was the most pious and 
 disinterested of men. At Abu-Bekr’s death he was 
 again passed over in favour of Omar. Omar was 
 succeeded by Othman, and still Ali remained tran- 
 quil. Othman was assassinated, and then Ali, chiefly 
 to prevent disturbance and bloodshed, accepted (a.d. 
 655) the caliphate. Meanwhile, the Mahometan 
 armies had conquered Persia, Syria, and Egypt; the 
 Governor of Syria, Moawiyah, an able and ambitious 
 man, set himself up as caliph, his title was recognised 
 by Amrou, the Governor of Eg 3 rpt, and a bloody and 
 indecisive battle was fought in Mesopotamia between 
 Ali’s army and Moawiyah’s. Gibbon shall tell the 
 rest : — “ In the temple of Mecca three Charegites or 
 
VII.] 
 
 A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 
 
 229 
 
 enthusiasts discoursed of the disorders of the church 
 and state ; they soon agreed that the deaths of Ali, 
 of Moawiyah, and of his friend Amrou, the Viceroy 
 of Egypt, would restore the peace and unity of re- 
 ligion. Each of the assassins chose his victim, 
 poisoned his dagger, devoted his life, and secretly 
 repaired to the scene of action. Their resolution 
 was equally desperate ; but the first mistook the 
 person of Amrou, and stabbed the deputy who 
 occupied his seat ; the prince of Damascus was 
 dangerously hurt by the second; Ali, the lawful 
 caliph, in the mosque of Kufa, received a mortal 
 wound from the hand of the third.” 
 
 The events through which we have thus rapidly 
 run ought to be kept in mind, for they are the ele- 
 ments of Mahometan history : any right understand- 
 ing of the state of the Mahometan world is impossible 
 without them. For that world is divided into the 
 two great sects of Shiahs and Sunis. The Shiahs are 
 those who reject the first three caliphs as usurpers, 
 and begin with Ali as the first lawful successor of 
 Mahomet ; the Sunis recognise Abu-Bekr, Omar, and 
 Othman, as well as Ali, and regard the Shiahs as 
 impious heretics. The Persians are Shiahs, and the 
 Arabs and Turks are Sunis. Hussein, one of Ali’s 
 two sons, married a Persian princess, the daughter 
 of Yezdejerd the last of the Sassanian kings, the 
 king whom the Mahometan conquest of Persia ex- 
 pelled ; and Persia, through this marriage, became 
 specially connected with the house of Ali. “ In the 
 fourth age of the Hegira,” says Gibbon, “ a tomb, a 
 
230 
 
 ESSAYS IN CKITICISM. 
 
 [vii 
 
 temple, a city, arose near the ruins of Kufa. Manji 
 thousands of the Shiahs repose in holy ground at the 
 feet of the vicar of God ; and the desert is vivified by 
 the numerous and annual visits of the Persians, who 
 esteem their devotion not less meritorious than the 
 pilgrimage of Mecca.” 
 
 But, to comprehend what I am going to relate 
 from Count Gobineau, we must push our researches 
 into Mahometan history a little further than the 
 assassination of Ali. Moawiyah died in the year 
 680 of our era, nearly fifty years after the death of 
 Mahomet. His son Yezid succeeded him on the 
 throne of the caliphs at Damascus. During the 
 reign of Moawiyah Ali’s two sons, the Imams, 
 Hassan and Hussein, lived with their families in 
 religious retirement at Medina, where their grand- 
 father Mahomet was buried. In them the character 
 of abstention and renouncement, which we have 
 noticed in Ali himself, was marked yet more 
 strongly; but, when Moawiyah died, the people of 
 Kufa, the city on the lower Euphrates where Ali 
 had been assassinated, sent offers to make Hussein 
 caliph if he would come among them, and to support 
 him against the Syrian troops of Yezid. Hussein 
 seems to have thought himself bound to accept the 
 proposal. He left Medina, and, with his family and 
 relations, to the number of about eighty persons, set 
 out on his way to Kufa. Then ensued the tragedy 
 so familiar to every Mahometan, and to us so little 
 known, the tragedy of Kerbela. “0 death,” cries 
 the bandit-minstrel of Persia, Kurroglou, in his last 
 
A PEKSIAN PASSION PLAY. 
 
 23) 
 
 m.) 
 
 song before his execution, “ 0 death, whom didst 
 thou spare ? Were even Hassan and Hussein, those 
 footstools of the throne of God on the seventh heaven, 
 spared by thee. No I thou madest them martyrs at 
 Kerhela” 
 
 We cannot do better than again have recourse to 
 Gibbon’s history for an account of this famous tragedy 
 “ Hussein traversed the desert of Arabia with a timo- 
 rous retinue of women and children ; but, as he ap- 
 proached the confines of Irak, he was alarmed by the 
 solitary or hostile face of the country, and suspected 
 either the defection or the ruin of his party. His 
 fears were just; Obeidallah, the governor of Kufa, 
 had extinguished the first sparks of an insurrection ; 
 and Hussein, in the plain of Kerbela, was encom- 
 passed by a body of 5000 horse, who intercepted his 
 communication with the city and the river. In a 
 conference with the chief of the enemy he proposed 
 the option of three conditions : — that he should be 
 allowed to return to Medina, or be stationed in a 
 frontier garrison against the Turks, or safely con- 
 ducted to the presence of Yezid. But the commands 
 of the caliph or his lieutenant were stem and abso- 
 lute, and Hussein was informed that he must either 
 submit as a captive and a criminal to the Commander 
 of the Faithful, or expect the consequences of his 
 rebellion. “Do you think,” replied he, “to terrify 
 me with death ?” And during the short respite of a 
 night he prepared, with calm and solemn resignation, 
 to encounter his fate. He checked the lamentations 
 of his sister Fatima, who deplored the impending 
 
232 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [vii 
 
 ruin of his house. “ Our trust,” said Hussein, “ k 
 in God alone. All things, both in heaven and earth, 
 must perish and return to their Creator. My brother, 
 my father, my mother, were better than I, and every 
 Mussulman has an example in the Prophet.” He 
 pressed his friends to consult their safety by a timely 
 flight ; they unanimously refused to desert or survive 
 their beloved master, and their courage was fortified 
 by a fervent prayer and the assurance of paradise. 
 On the morning of the fatal day he mounted on 
 horseback, with his sword in one hand and the Koran 
 in the other ; the flanks and rear of his party were 
 secured by the tent-ropes and by a deep trench, which 
 they had filled with lighted fagots, according to the 
 practice of the Arabs. The enemy advanced with 
 reluctance; and one of their chiefs deserted, with 
 thirty followers, to claim the partnership of inevit- 
 able death. In every close onset or single combat 
 the despair of the Fatimites was invincible ; but the 
 surrounding multitudes galled them from a distance 
 with a cloud of arrows, and the horses and men were 
 successively slain. A truce was allowed on both sides 
 for the hour of prayer ; and the battle at length ex- 
 pired by the death of the last of the companions of 
 Husseia” 
 
 The details of Hussein’s own death will come 
 better presently ; sufiice it at this moment to say ho 
 was slain, and that the women and children of his 
 family were taken in chains to the Caliph Yezid at 
 Damascus. Gibbon concludes the story thus ; “ In 
 a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the 
 
VII.] 
 
 A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY, 
 
 233 
 
 death of Hussein will awaken the sympathy of the 
 coldest reader. On the annual festival of his martyr- 
 dom, in the devout pilgrimage to his sepulchre, his 
 Persian votaries abandon their souls to the religious 
 phrenzy of sorrow and indignation.” 
 
 Thus the tombs of Ali and of his son, the Meshed 
 Ali and the Meshed Hussein, standing some thirty 
 miles apart from one another in the plain of the 
 Euphrates, had, when Gibbon wrote, their yearly 
 pilgrims and their tribute of enthusiastic mourning. 
 But Count Gobineau relates, in his book of which I 
 have spoken, a development of these solemnities 
 which was unknown to Gibbon. Within the present 
 century there has arisen, on the basis of this story of 
 the martyrs of Kerbela, a drama, a Persian national 
 drama, which Count Gobineau, who has seen and 
 heard it, is bold enough to rank with the Greek 
 drama as a great and serious affair, engaging the 
 heart and life of the people who have given birth to 
 it; while the Latin, English, French, and German 
 drama is, he says, in comparison a mere pastime or 
 amusement, more or less intellectual and elegant. 
 To me it seems that the Persian tazyas — for so these 
 pieces are called — find a better parallel in the Am- 
 mergau Passion Play than in the Greek drama. 
 They turn entirely on one subject — the sufferings of 
 the Family of the Tent, as the Imam Hussein and the 
 company of persons gathered around him at Kerbela 
 are called. The subject is sometimes introduced by 
 a prologue, which may perhaps one day, as the need of 
 variety is more felt, become a piece by itself ; but at 
 
234 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vii. 
 
 present the prologue leads invariably to the martyrs. 
 For instance : the Emperor Tamerlane, in his con- 
 quering progress through the world, arrives at Da- 
 mascus. The keys of the city are brought to him by 
 the governor; but the governor is a descendant of 
 one of the murderers of the Imam Hussein ; Tamer- 
 lane is informed of it, loads him with reproaches, and 
 drives him from his presence. The emperor pre- 
 sently sees the governor’s daughter splendidly dressed, 
 thinks of the sufferings of the holy women of the 
 Family of the Tent, and upbraids and drives her 
 away as he did her father. But after this he is 
 haunted by the great tragedy which has been thus 
 brought to his mind, and he cannot sleep and cannot 
 be comforted. He calls his vizier, and his vizier telle 
 him that the only way to soothe his troubled spirit is 
 to see a tazya. And so the tazya commences. Or, 
 again (and this will show how strangely, in the re- 
 ligious world which is now occupying us, what is most 
 familiar to us is blended with that of which we know 
 nothing) : Joseph and his brethren appear on the 
 stage, and the old Bible story is transacted. Joseph 
 is thrown into the pit and sold to the merchants, and 
 his blood-stained coat is carried by his brothers to 
 Jacjob; Jacob is then left alone, weeping and be- 
 wailing himself ; the angel Gabriel enters, and re- 
 proves him for his want of faith and constancy, 
 telling him that what he suffers is not a hundredth 
 part of what Ali, Hussein, and the children of Hus- 
 sein will one day suffer. J acob seems to doubt it ; 
 Gabriel, to convince him, orders the angels to per 
 
vw] A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 235 
 
 foim a tazya of what will one day happen at Kerbela. 
 A.nd so the tazya commences. 
 
 These pieces are given in the first ten days of the 
 month of Moharrem, the anniversary of the martyr- 
 dom at Kerbela. They are so popular that they now 
 invade other seasons of the year also ; but this is the 
 season when the world is given up to them. King 
 and people, every one is in mourning ; and at night 
 and while the tazyas are not going on, processions 
 keep passing, the air resounds with the beating of 
 breasts and with litanies of “ 0 Hassan ! Hussein ! ” 
 while the Seyids, — a kind of popular friars claiming 
 to be descendants of Mahomet, and in whose incessant 
 popularising and amplifying of the legend of Kerbela 
 in their homilies during pilgrimages and at the tombs 
 of the martyrs, the tazyas^ no doubt, had their origin, 
 — keep up by their sermons and hymns the enthusi- 
 asm which the drama of the day has excited. It 
 seems as if no one went to bed ; and certainly no one 
 who went to bed could sleep. Confraternities go in 
 procession with a black flag and torches, every man 
 with his shirt tom open, and beating himself with 
 the right hand on the left shoulder in a kind of 
 measured cadence to accompany a canticle in honour 
 of the martyrs. These processions come and take 
 post in the theatres where the Seyids are preaching. 
 Still more noisy are the companies of dancers, strik- 
 ing a kind of wooden castanets together, at one time 
 in front of their breasts, at another time behind their 
 heads, and marking time with music and dance to a 
 dirge set up by the bystanders, in which the names 
 
236 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [viL 
 
 of the Imams perpetually recur as a burden. Noisiest 
 of all are the Berbers, men of a darker skin and 
 another race, their feet and the upper part of their 
 body naked, who carry, some of them tambourines 
 and cymbals, others iron chains and long needles. 
 One of their race is said to have formerly derided the 
 Imams in their affliction, and the Berbers now appear 
 in expiation of that crime. At first their music and 
 their march proceed slowly together, but presently 
 the music quickens, the chain and needle-bearing 
 Berbers move violently round, and begin to beat 
 themselves with their chains and to prick their arms 
 and cheeks with the needles — first gently, then with 
 more vehemence ; till suddenly the music ceases, and 
 all stops. So we are carried back, on this old 
 Asiatic soil, where beliefs and usages are heaped 
 layer upon layer and ruin upon ruin, far past the 
 martyred Imams, past Mahometanism, past Chris- 
 tianity, to the priests of Baal gashing themselves 
 with knives and to the worship of Adonis, 
 
 The tekyas^ or theatres for the drama which calls 
 forth these celebrations, are constantly multiplying. 
 The king, the great functionaries, the towns, wealthy 
 citizens like the king’s goldsmith, or any private 
 person who has the means and the desire, provide 
 them. Every one sends contributions ; it is a reli- 
 gious act to furnish a box or to give decorations for a 
 tekya ; and as religious offerings, all gifts down to the 
 smallest are accepted. There are tekyas for not more 
 than three or four hundred spectators, and there are 
 tekyas for three or four thousand. At Ispahan there 
 
7II,] A PEKSIAl^ PASSION PLAY. 237 
 
 are representations which bring together more than 
 twenty thousand people. At Teheran, the Persian 
 capital, each quarter of the town has its tekyas, 
 every square and open place is turned to account for 
 establishing them, and spaces have been expressly 
 cleared, besides, for fresh tekyas. Count Gobineau 
 describes particularly one of these theatres, — a tekya 
 of the best class, to hold an audience of about four 
 thousand, — at Teheran. The arrangements are very 
 simple. The tekya is a walled parallelogram, with a 
 brick platform, sakou^ in the centre of it ; this sakou 
 is surrounded with black poles at some distance from 
 each other, the poles are joined at the top by hori- 
 zontal rods of the same colour, and from these rods 
 hang coloured lamps, which are lighted for the pray- 
 ing and preaching at night when the representation 
 is over. The sakou, or central platform, makes the 
 stage ; in connection with it, at one of the opposite 
 extremities of the parallelogram lengthwise, is a 
 reserved box, tdgnimd, higher than the sakou. This 
 box is splendidly decorated, and is used for peculiarly 
 interesting and magnificent tableaux, — the court of 
 the Caliph, for example — which occur in the course 
 of the piece. A passage of a few feet wide is left 
 free between the stage and this box ; all the rest of 
 the space is for the spectators, of whom the foremost 
 rows are sitting on their heels close up to this passage, 
 so that they help the actors to mount and descend 
 the high steps of the tdgnumd when they have to pass 
 between that and the sakou. On each side of the 
 tdgnumd are boxes, and along one wall of the en- 
 
238 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [vii 
 
 closure are other boxes with fronts of elaborate wood- 
 work, which are left to stand as a permanent part of 
 the construction ; facing these, with the floor and 
 stage between, rise tiers of seats as in an amphi- 
 theatre. All places are free ; the great people have 
 generally provided and furnished the boxes, and take 
 care to fill them ; but if a box is not occupied when 
 the performance begins, any ragged street-urchin or 
 beggar may walk in and seat himself there. A row 
 of gigantic masts runs across the middle of the space, 
 one or two of them being fixed in the sakm itself \ 
 and from these masts is stretched an immense awning 
 which protects the whole audience. Up to a certain 
 height these masts are hung with tiger and panther 
 skins, to indicate the violent character of the scenes 
 to be represented. Shields of steel and of hippo- 
 potamus skin, flags, and naked swords, are also at- 
 tached to these masts. A sea of colour and splendour 
 meets the eye aU round. Woodwork and brickwork 
 disappear imder cushions, rich carpets, silk hangings, 
 India muslin embroidered with silver and gold, 
 shawls from Kerman and from Cashmere. There are 
 lamps, lustres of coloured crystal, mirrors, Bohemian 
 and Venetian glass, porcelain vases of all degrees of 
 magnitude from China and from Europe, paintings 
 and engravings, displayed in profusion everywhere. 
 The taste may not always be soberly correct, but the 
 whole spectacle has just the effect of prodigality, 
 colour, and sumptuousness which we are accustomed 
 to associate with the splendours of the Arabian 
 Nights. 
 
VII.] 
 
 A PERSIA!! PASSION PLAY. 
 
 239 
 
 In marked contrast with this display is the poverty 
 of scenic contrivance and stage illusion. The subject 
 is far too interesting and too solemn to need them 
 The actors are visible on all sides, and the exits, en- 
 trances, and stage-play of our theatres are impossible ; 
 the imagination of the spectator fills up all gaps and 
 meets all requirements. On the Ammergau arrange- 
 ments one feels that the archaeologists and artists of 
 Munich have laid their correct finger ; at Teheran 
 there has been no schooling of this sort. A copper 
 basin of water represents the Euphrates ; a heap of 
 chopped straw in a comer is the sand of the desert of 
 Kerbela, and the actor goes and takes up a handful 
 of it, when his part requires him to thrown, in Oriental 
 fashion, dust upon his head. There is no attempt at 
 proper costume ; all that is sought is to do honour 
 to the personages of chief interest by dresses and 
 jewels which would pass for rich and handsome things 
 to wear in modern Persian life. The power of the 
 actors is in their genuine sense of the seriousness of 
 the business they are engaged in. They are, like the 
 public around them, penetrated with this, and so the 
 actor throws his whole soul into what he is about, the 
 public meets the actor halfway, and effects of extra- 
 ordinary impressiveness are the result. “ The actor 
 is under a charm,” says Count Gobineau ; “he is 
 under it so strongly and completely that almost 
 always one sees Yezid himself (the usurping caliph), 
 the wTetched Ibn-Said (Yezid’s general), the infamous 
 Shemer (Ibn-Said’s lieutenant), at the moment they 
 vent the cmellest insults against the Imams whom 
 
240 KSSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vii. 
 
 they are going to massacre, or against the women oi 
 the Imam’s family whom they are ill-using, burst into 
 tears and repeat their part with sobs. The public is 
 neither surprised nor displeased at this ; on the con- 
 trary, it beats its breast at the sight, throws up its 
 arms towards heaven with invocations of God, and 
 redoubles its groans. So it often happens that the 
 actor identifies himself with the personage he repre- 
 sents to such a degree that, when the situation carries 
 him away, he cannot be said to act, ho is with such 
 truth, such complete enthusiasm, such utter self-for- 
 getfulness, what he represents, that he reaches a 
 reality at one time sublime, at another terrible, and 
 produces impressions on his audience which it would 
 be simply absurd to look for from our more artificial 
 performances. There is nothing stilted, nothing false, 
 nothing conventional ; nature, and the facts repre- 
 sented, themselves speak” 
 
 The actors are men and boys, the parts of angels 
 and women being filled by boys. The children who 
 appear in the piece are often the children of the prin- 
 cipal families of Teheran; their appearance in this 
 religious solemnity (for such it is thought) being 
 supposed to bring a blessing upon them and their 
 parents. “ Nothing is more touching,” says Count 
 Gobineau, “ than to see these little things of three or 
 four years old, dressed in black gauze frocks with 
 large sleeves, and having on their heads small round 
 black caps embroidered with silver and gold, kneeling 
 beside the body of the actor who represents the 
 martyr of the day, embracing him, and with their 
 
TII.] A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 241 
 
 little hands covering themselves with chopped straw 
 for sand in sign of grief. These children evidently,” 
 he continues, “ do not consider themselves to be 
 acting ; they are full of the feeling that what they 
 are about is something of deep seriousness and im- 
 portance ; and though they are too young to compre- 
 hend fully the story, they know, in general, that it is 
 a matter sad and solemn. They are not distracted 
 by the audience, and they are not shy, but go through 
 their prescribed part with the utmost attention and 
 seriousness, always crossing their arms respectfully 
 to receive the blessing of the Imam Hussein ; the 
 public beholds them with emotions of the liveliest 
 satisfaction and sympathy.” 
 
 The dramatic pieces themselves are without any 
 author’s name. They are in popular language, such 
 as the commonest and most ignorant of the Persian 
 people can understand, free from learned Arabic 
 words, — free, comparatively speaking, from Oriental 
 fantasticality and hyperbole. The Sejdds, or popular 
 friars, already spoken of, have probably had a hand 
 in the composition of many of them. The Moollahs, 
 or regular ecclesiastical authorities, condemn the whole 
 thing. It is an innovation which they disapprove and 
 think dangerous ; it is addressed to the eye, and their 
 religion forbids to represent religious things to the 
 eye ; it departs from the limits of what is revealed 
 and appointed to be taught as the truth, and brings 
 in novelties and heresies ; — for these dramas keep 
 growing under the pressure of the actor’s imagination 
 and emotion, and of the imagination and emotion of 
 VOL. I. R 
 
242 
 
 ESSAYS IN CKITICISM. 
 
 [vii 
 
 the public, and receive new developments every day. 
 The learned, again, say that these pieces are a heap 
 of lies, the production of ignorant people, and have 
 no words strong enough to express their contempt for 
 them. Still, so irresistible is the vogue of these 
 sacred dramas that, from the king on the throne to 
 the beggar in the street, every one, except perhaps 
 the Moollahs, attends them, and is carried away by 
 them. The Imams and their families speak always 
 in a kind of lyrical chant, said to have rhythmical 
 effects, often of great pathos and beauty ; their per- 
 secutors, the villains of the piece, speak always in 
 prose. 
 
 The stage is under the direction of a choragus, 
 called oostad, or “ master,” who is a sacred personage 
 by reason of the functions which he performs. Some- 
 times he addresses to the audience a commentary on 
 what is passing before them, and asks their com- 
 passion and tears for the martyrs; sometimes in 
 default of a Seyid, he prays and preaches. He is 
 always Hstened to with veneration, for it is he who 
 arranges the whole sacred spectacle which so deeply 
 moves everybody. With no attempt at concealment, 
 with the book of the piece in his hand, he remains 
 constantly on the stage, gives the actors their cue, 
 puts the children and any inexperienced actor in theii 
 right places, dresses the martyr in his winding-sheet 
 when he is going to his death, holds the stirrup for 
 him to mount his horse, and inserts a supply of 
 chopped straw into the hands of those who are about 
 to want it Let us now see him at work. 
 
V^II.I A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 243 
 
 The theatre is filled, and the heat is great ; young 
 men of rank, the king's pages, officers of the army, 
 smart functionaries of State, move through the crowd 
 with water-skins slung on their hacks, dealing out 
 water all round, in memory of the thirst which on 
 these solemn days the Imams suffered in the sands of 
 Kerbela. Wild chants and litanies, such as we have 
 already described, are from time to time set up by a 
 dervish, a soldier, a workman in the crowd. These 
 chants are taken up, more or less, by the audience ; 
 sometimes they flag and die away for want of support, 
 sometimes they are continued till they reach a par- 
 oxysm, and then abruptly stop. Presently a strange, 
 insignificant figure in a green cotton garment, looking 
 like a petty tradesman of one of the Teheran bazaars, 
 mounts upon the sakou. He beckons with his hand 
 to the audience, who are silent directly, and addresses 
 them in a tone of lecture and expostulation, thus : — 
 
 “Well, you seem happy enough, Mussulmans, sitr 
 ting there at your ease under the awning ; and you 
 imagine Paradise already wide open to you. Do you 
 know what Paradise is? It is a garden, doubtless, 
 but such a garden as you have no idea of. You will 
 say to me: ‘Friend, tell us what it is like.’ I have 
 never been there, certainly ; but plenty of prophets 
 have described it, and angels have brought news of it 
 However, all I will tell you is, that there is room for 
 all good people there, for it is 330,000 cubits long. 
 If you do not believe, inquire. As for getting to be 
 one of the good people, let me tell you it is not 
 enough to read the Kor.an of the Prophet (the salva 
 
244 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [vii. 
 
 tion and blessing of God be upon him !) ; it is not 
 enough to do everything which this divine book en- 
 joins ; it is not enough to come and weep at the tazyas^ 
 as you do every day, you sons of dogs you, who know 
 nothing which is of any use ; it behoves, besides, that 
 your good works (if you ever do any, which I greatly 
 doubt) should be done in the name and for the love 
 of Hussein. It is Hussein, Mussulmans, who is the 
 door to Paradise ; it is Hussein, Mussulmans, who 
 upholds the world; it is Hussein, Mussulmans, by 
 whom comes salvation ! Cry, Hassan, Hussein ! ” 
 
 And all the multitude cry : “ 0 Hassan ! 0 Hus- 
 sein ! ” 
 
 “That is well; and now cry again.” And again 
 all cry : “ O Hassan ! 0 Hussein ! ” “ And now,” the 
 strange speaker goes on, “ pray to God to keep you 
 continually in the love of Husseia Come, make your 
 cry to God.” Then the multitude, as one man, throw 
 up their arms into the air, and with a deep and long- 
 drawn cry exclaim : “Pa Allah ! 0 God ! ” 
 
 Fifes, drums, and trumpets break out ; the hernas^ 
 great copper trumpets five or six feet long, give notice 
 that the actors are ready and that the tazya is to com- 
 mence. The preacher descends from the sakou^ and 
 the actors occupy it. 
 
 To give a clear notion of the cycle which these 
 dramas fill, we should begin, as on the first day of 
 the Moharrem the actors begin, with some piece re- 
 lating to the childhood of the Imams, such as, for 
 instance, the piece called The Children Digging. Ali 
 and Fatima are li^dng at Medina with their little sons 
 
VII.] 
 
 A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 
 
 246 
 
 Hassan and Hussein. The simple home and occupa- 
 tions of the pious family are exhibited ; it is morning, 
 Fatima is seated with the little Hussein on her lap, 
 dressing him. She combs his hair, talking caressingly 
 to him all the while. A hair comes out with the 
 comb ; the child starts. Fatima is in distress at hav- 
 ing given the child even this momentary uneasiness, 
 and stops to gaze upon him tenderly. She falls into 
 an anxious reverie, thinking of her fondness for the 
 child, and of the unknown future in store for him. 
 While she muses, the angel Gabriel stands before her. 
 He reproves her weakness : “ A hair falls from the 
 child’s head,” he says, “ and you weep ; what would 
 you do if you knew the destiny that awaits him, the 
 countless wounds with which that body shall one day 
 be pierced, the agony that shall rend your own soul ! ” 
 Fatima, in despair, is comforted by her husband Ali, 
 and they go together into the town to hear Mahomet 
 preach. The boys and some of their little friends 
 begin to play; every one makes a great deal of 
 Hussein ; he is at once the most spirited and the most 
 amiable child of them all. The party amuse them- 
 selves with digging, with making holes in the ground 
 and building mounds. Ali returns from the sermon 
 and asks what they are about ; and Hussein is made 
 to reply in ambiguous and prophetic answers, which 
 convey that by these holes and mounds in the earth 
 are prefigured interments and tombs. Ali departs 
 again ; there rush in a number of big and fierce boys, 
 and begin to pelt the little Imams with stones. A 
 companion shields Hussein with his own body, but he 
 
246 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [viL 
 
 is stmck down with a stone, and with another stone 
 Hussein, too, is stretched on the ground senseless. 
 Who are those boy-tyrants and persecutors ? They 
 are Ibn-Said, and Shemer, and others, the future 
 murderers at Kerbela. The audience perceive it with 
 a shudder ; the hateful assailants go off in triumph ; 
 Ali re-enters, picks up the stunned and wounded 
 children, brings them round, and takes Hussein back 
 to his mother Fatima. 
 
 But let us now come at once to the days of martyr- 
 dom and to Kerbela. One of the most famous pieces 
 of the cycle is a piece called the Marriage of Kassem^ 
 which brings us into the very middle of these crown- 
 ing days. Count Gobineau has given a translation of 
 it, and from this translation we will take a few ex- 
 tracts. Kassem is the son of Hussein’s elder brother, 
 the Imam Hassan, who had been poisoned by Yezid’s 
 instigation at Medina. Kassem and his mother are 
 with the Imam Hussein at Kerbela; there, too, are 
 the women and children of the holy family, 0mm- 
 Leyla, Hussein’s wife, the Persian princess, the last 
 child of Yezdejerd the last of the Sassanides ; Zeyneb, 
 Hussein’s sister, the offspring, like himself, of Ali and 
 Fatima, and the grand-daughter of Mahomet ; his 
 nephew Abdallah, still a little child; finally, his 
 beautiful daughter Zobeyda. W^hen the piece begins, 
 the Imam’s camp in the desert has already been cut 
 off from the Euphrates and besieged several days by 
 the Syrian troops under Ibn-Said and Shemer, and 
 by the treacherous men of Kufa. The Family of the 
 Tent were suffering torments of thirst. One of the 
 
A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 
 
 24? 
 
 fii.J 
 
 children had brought an empty water-bottle, and 
 thrown it, a silent token of distress, before the feet 
 of Abbas, the uncle of Hussein; Abbas had sallied 
 out to cut his way to the river, and had been slain. 
 Afterwards Ali-Akber, Hussein’s eldest son, had made 
 the same attempt and met with the same fate. Two 
 younger brothers of Ali-Akber followed his example, 
 and were likewise slain. The Imam Hussein had 
 rushed amidst the enemy, beaten them from the body 
 of Ali-Akber, and brought the body back to his tent ; 
 but the river was still inaccessible. At this point the 
 action of the Marriage of Kassem begins. Kassem, a 
 youth of sixteen, is burning to go out and avenge his 
 cousin. At one end of the saJcou is the Imam Hussein 
 seated on his throne ; in the middle are grouped all 
 the members of his family ; at the other end lies the 
 body of Ali-Akber, with his mother 0mm -Ley la, 
 clothed and veiled in black, bending over it. The 
 kernas sound, and Kassem, after a solemn appeal from 
 Hussein and his sister Ze}uieb to God and to the 
 founders of their house to look upon their great dis- 
 tress, rises and speaks to himself : 
 
 Kassem . — “Separate thyself from the women of 
 the harem, Kassem. Consider within thyself for a 
 little ; here thou sittest, and presently thou wilt see 
 the body of Hussein, that body like a flower, torn by 
 arrows and lances like thorns, Kassem. 
 
 “ Thou sawest Ali-Akber’s head severed from his 
 body on the field of battle, and yet thou livedst ! 
 
 “ Arise, obey that which is written of thee by thy 
 father ; to be slain, that is thy lot, Kassem ! 
 
24b 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 tviL 
 
 “Go, get leave from the son of Fatima, most 
 honourable among women, and submit thyself to thy 
 fate, Kassem.” 
 
 Hussein sees him approach. “ Alas,” he says, “ it 
 is the orphan nightingale of the garden of Hassan, my 
 brother ! ” Then Kassem speaks ; 
 
 Kassem. — “ 0 God, what shall I do beneath this 
 load of affliction 1 My eyes are wet with tears, my 
 lips are dried up with thirst. To live is worse than 
 to die. What shall I do, seeing what hath befallen 
 Ali-Akber ? If Hussein suffereth me not to go forth, 
 oh misery ! For then what shall I do, 0 God, in the 
 day of the resurrection, when I see my father Hassan 1 
 When I see my mother in the day of the resurrec- 
 tion, what shall I do, 0 God, in my sorrow and shame 
 before her? All my kinsmen are gone to appear 
 before the Prophet : shall not I also one day stand 
 before the Prophet ; and what shall I do, 0 God, in 
 that day ? ” 
 
 Then he addresses the Imam : — 
 
 “ Hail, threshold of the honour and majesty on 
 high, threshold of heaven, threshold of God ! In the 
 roll of martyrs thou art the chief; in the book of 
 creation thy story will live for ever. An orphan, a 
 fatherless child, downcast and weeping, comes to 
 prefer a request to thee.” 
 
 Hussein bids him teU it, and he answers ; — 
 
 “ 0 light of the eyes of Mahomet the mighty, 0 
 lieutenant of Ali the lion ! Abbas has perished, Ali- 
 Akber has suffered martyrdom. 0 my uncle, thou 
 hast no warriors left, and no standard-bearer I The 
 
VII.] 
 
 A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 
 
 249 
 
 roses are gone, and gone are their buds ; the jessamine 
 is gone, the poppies are gone. I alone, I am still left 
 in the garden of the Faith, a thorn, and miserable. 
 If thou hast any kindness for the orphan, suffer me to 
 go forth and fight.” 
 
 Hussein refuses. “My child,” he says, “thou wast 
 the light of the eyes of the Imam Hassan, thou art 
 my beloved remembrance of him ; ask me not this ; 
 urge me not, entreat me not ; to have lost Ali-Akber 
 is enough.” 
 
 Kassem answers : — “ That Kassem should live and 
 Ali-Akber be martyred — sooner let the earth cover 
 me ! 0 king, be generous to the beggar at thy gate. 
 
 See how my eyes run over with tears and my lips are 
 dried up with thirst. Cast thine eyes toward the 
 waters of the heavenly Euphrates ! I die of thirst ; 
 grant me, 0 thou marked of God, a full pitcher of 
 the water of life ! it flows in the Paradise which awaits 
 me.” 
 
 Hussein stiU refuses ; Kassem breaks forth in com- 
 plaints and lamentations, his mother comes to him 
 and learns the reason. She then says : — 
 
 “ Complain not against the Imam, light of my 
 eyes ; only by his order can the commission of mar- 
 tyrdom be given. In that commission are sealed 
 two-and-seventy witnesses, all righteous, and among 
 the two-and-seventy is thy name. Know that thy 
 destiny of death is commanded in the writing which 
 thou wearest on thine arm.” 
 
 This writing is the testament of his father Hassan. 
 He bears it in triumph to the Imam Hussein, who findf 
 
250 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. (viL 
 
 written there that he should, on the death-plain oi 
 Kerbela, suffer Kassem to have his will, but that he 
 should marry him first to his daughter Zobeyda. 
 Kassem consents, though in astonishment. “ Con- 
 sider,” he says, “ there lies Ali-Akber, mangled by 
 the enemies’ hands ! Under this sky of ebon black- 
 ness, how can joy show her face? Nevertheless if 
 thou commandest it, what have I to do but obey? 
 Thy commandment is that of the Prophet, and his 
 voice is that of God.” But Hussein has also to over- 
 come the reluctance of the intended bride and of all 
 the women of his family. 
 
 “ Heir of the vicar of God,” says Kassem’s mother 
 to the Imam, “ bid me die, but speak not to me of a 
 bridal If Zobeyda is to be a bride and Kassem a 
 bridegroom, where is the henna to tinge their hands, 
 where is the bridal chamber?” “Mother of Kassem,” 
 answers the Imam solemnly, “yet a few moments, 
 and in this field of anguish the tomb shall be for 
 marriage-bed, and the winding-sheet for bridal gar- 
 ment ! ” All give way to the will of their sacred 
 Head. The women and children surround Kassem, 
 sprinkle him with rose-water, hang bracelets and 
 necklaces on him, and scatter bon-bons around ; and 
 then the marriage procession is formed. Suddenly 
 drums and trumpets are heard, and the Syrian troops 
 appear. Ibn-Said and Shemer are at their head. 
 “ The Prince of the Faith celebrates a marriage in 
 the desert,” they exclaim tauntingly ; “we will soon 
 change his festivity into mourning.” They pass by, 
 and Kassem takes leave of his bride. “ God keep 
 
A PERSIAN PASSION PLAT. 
 
 251 
 
 ^ii.] 
 
 thee, my bride,” he says, embracing her, “ for I must 
 forsake thee ! ” “ One moment,” she says, “ remain 
 
 in thy place one moment ! thy countenance is as the 
 lamp which giveth us light ; suffer me to turn around 
 thee as the butterfly tumeth, gently, gently ! ” And 
 making a turn around him, she performs the ancient 
 Eastern rite of respect from a new-married wife to 
 her husband. Troubled, he rises to go : “ The reins 
 of my will are slipping away from me ! ” he murmurs. 
 She lays hold of his robe : “ Take off thy hand,” he 
 cries, “ we belong not to ourselves ! ” 
 
 Then he asks the Imam to array him in his wind- 
 ing-sheet. “ 0 nightingale of the divine orchard of 
 martyrdom,” says Hussein, as he complies with his 
 wish, “I clothe thee with thy winding-sheet, I kiss thy 
 face ; there is no fear, and no hope, but of God ! ” 
 Kassem commits his little brother Abdallah to the 
 Imam’s care. Omm-Leyla looks up from her son’s 
 corpse, and says to Kassem : “ When thou enterest 
 the garden of Paradise, kiss for me the head of Ali- 
 Akber ! ” 
 
 The Syrian troops again appear. Kassem rushes 
 upon them and they all go off flghting. The Family 
 of the Tent, at Hussein’s command, put the Koran on 
 their heads and pray, covering themselves with sand. 
 Kassem reappears victorious. He has slain Azrek, a 
 chief captain of the Syrians, but his thirst is intoler- 
 able. “ Uncle,” he says to the Imam, who asks him 
 what reward he wishes for his valour, “ my tongue 
 cleaves to the roof of my mouth ; the reward I wish 
 is water “ Thou coverest me with shame, Kassem,” 
 
252 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [yil 
 
 bis uncle answers ; “ what can I do ? Thou askest 
 water ; there is no water ! ” 
 
 Kassem . — “If I might but wet my mouth, I could 
 presently make an end of the men of Kufa.” 
 
 Hussein . — “ As I live, I have not one drop of 
 water ! ” 
 
 Kassem . — “ Were it but lawful, I would wet my 
 mouth with my own blood.” 
 
 Hussein . — “ Beloved child, what the Prophet for- 
 bids, that cannot I make lawful.” 
 
 Kassem . — “ I beseech thee, let my lips be but once 
 moistened, and I will vanquish thine enemies !” 
 Hussein presses his own lips to those of Kassem, 
 who, refreshed, again rushes forth, and returns bleed- 
 ing and stuck with darts, to die at the Imam’s feet in 
 the tent So ends the marriage of Kassem. 
 
 But the great day is the tenth day of the Mohar- 
 rem, when comes the death of the Imam himself. The 
 narrative of Gibbon well sums up the events of this 
 great tenth day. “ The battle at length expired by 
 the death of the last of the companions of Hussein. 
 Alone, weary, and wounded, he seated himself at the 
 door of his tent He was pierced in the mouth with 
 a dart He hfted his hands to heaven — they were 
 full of blood — and he uttered a funeral prayer for the 
 living and the dead. In a transport of despair, his 
 sister issued from the tent, and adjured the general of 
 the Kufians that he would not sufifer Hussein to be 
 murdered before his eyes. A tear trickled down the 
 soldier’s venerable beard ; and the boldest of his men 
 fell back on every side as the dying Imam threw him- 
 
7II.] A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 253 
 
 self among them. The remorseless Shemer — a name 
 detested by the faithful — reproached their cowardice ; 
 and the grandson of Mahomet was slain with three 
 and thirty strokes of lances and swords. After they 
 had trampled on his body, they carried his head to 
 the castle of Kufa, and the inhuman Obeidallah (the 
 governor) struck him on the mouth with a cane. 
 ‘ Alas ! ’ exclaimed an aged Mussulman, ‘ on those 
 lips have I seen the lips of the Apostle of God ! ’ ” 
 
 For this catastrophe no one tazya suffices ; all the 
 companies of actors unite in a vast open space ; booths 
 and tents are pitched round the outside circle for the 
 spectators ; in the centre is the Imam’s camp, and the 
 day ends with its conflagration. 
 
 Nor are there wanting pieces which caiTy on the 
 story beyond the death of Hussein. One which pro- 
 duces an extraordinary efiect is The Christian Damsel. 
 The carnage is over, the enemy are gone. To the 
 awe-struck beholders, the scene shows the silent plain 
 of Kerbela and the tombs of the martyrs. Their 
 bodies, full of wounds, and with weapons sticking in 
 them still, are exposed to view j but around them all 
 are crowns of burning candles, circles of light, to 
 show that they have entered into glory. At one end 
 of the sakou is a high tomb by itself ; it is the tomb of 
 the Imam Hussein, and his pierced body is seen 
 stretched out upon it. A briUiant caravan enters, 
 with camels, soldiers, servants, and a young lady on 
 horseback, in European costume, or what passes in 
 Persia for European costume. She halts near the 
 tombs and proposes to encamp. Her servants try to 
 
254 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [rih 
 
 pitch a tent ; but wherever they drive a pole into the 
 ground, blood springs up, and a groan of horror 
 bursts from the audience. Then the fair traveller, 
 instead of encamping, mounts into the tdgnumd, lies 
 down to rest there, and falls asleep. Jesus Christ 
 appears to her, and makes known that this is Ker- 
 bela, and what has happened here. Meanwhile, an 
 Arab of the desert, a Bedouin who had formerly re- 
 ceived Hussein’s bounty, comes stealthily, intent on 
 plunder, upon the sakou. He finds nothing, and in a 
 paroxysm of brutal fury he begins to ill-treat the 
 corpses. Blood flows. The feeling of Asiatics about 
 their dead is well known, and the horror of the audi- 
 ence rises to its height. Presently the ruffian assails 
 and wounds the corpse of the Imam himself, over 
 whom white doves are hovering; the voice of Hussein, 
 deep and mournful, calls from his tomb : “ There is 
 no God hut God / ” The robber flies in terror ; the 
 angels, the prophets, Mahomet, Jesus Christ, Moses, 
 the Imams, the holy women, all come upon the sakou, 
 press round Hussein, load him with honours. The 
 Christian damsel wakes, and embraces Islam, the 
 Islam of the sect of the Shiahs. 
 
 Another piece closes the whole story, by bringing 
 the captive women and children of the Imam’s family 
 to Damascus, to the presence of the Caliph Yezid. It 
 is in this piece that there comes the magnificent 
 tableau, already mentioned, of the court of the caliph. 
 The crown jewels are lent for it, and the dresses of 
 the ladies of Yezid’s court, represented by boys chosen 
 for their good looks, are said to be worth thousands 
 
A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 
 
 255 
 
 m.] 
 
 and thousands of pounds; but the audience see them 
 without favour, for this brilliant court of Yezid is 
 cruel to the captives of Kerbela. The captives are 
 thmst into a wretched dungeon under the palace 
 walls; but the Caliph’s wife had formerly been a 
 slave of Mahomet’s daughter Fatima, the mother of 
 Hussein and Ze 3 rueb. She goes to see Zeyneb in 
 prison, her heart is touched, she passes into an agony 
 of repentance, returns to her husband, upbraids him 
 with his crimes, and intercedes for the women of the 
 holy family, and for the children, who keep calling for 
 the Imam Hussein. Yezid orders his wife to be put to 
 death, and sends the head of Hussein to the children. 
 Sekyna, the Imam’s youngest daughter, a child of 
 four years old, takes the beloved head in her arms, 
 kisses it, and lies down beside it. Then Hussein 
 appears to h-er as in life : “ Oh ! my father,” she 
 cries, “ where wast thou ? I was hungry, I was cold, 
 I was beaten — where wast thou ? ” But now she sees 
 him again, and is happy. In the vision of her happi- 
 ness she passes away out of this troublesome life, she 
 enters into rest, and the piece ends with her mother 
 and her aunts burying her. 
 
 These are the martyrs of Kerbela ; and these are 
 the sufferings which awaken in an Asiatic audience 
 sympathy so deep and serious, transports so genuine 
 of pity, love, and gratitude, that to match them at all 
 one must take the feelings raised at Ammergau 
 And now, where are we to look, in the subject- 
 matter of the Persian passion-play, for the source of 
 oil tJiis emotion 1 
 
256 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vn 
 
 Count Gobineau suggests that it is to be found in 
 the feeling of patriotism; and that our Indo-European 
 kinsmen, the Persians, conquered by the Semitic Ara- 
 bians, find in the sufferings of Hussein a portrait 
 of their own martyrdom. “ Hussein,” says Count 
 Gobineau, “ is not only the son of Ali, he is the hus- 
 band of a princess of the blood of the Persian kings ; 
 he, his father Ali, the whole body of Imams taken 
 together, represent the nation, represent Persia, in- 
 vaded, ill-treated, despoiled, stripped of its inhabit- 
 ants, by the Arabians. The right which is insulted 
 and violated in Hussein, is identified with the right 
 of Persia. The Arabians, the Turks, the Afghans, — 
 Persia’s implacable and hereditary enemies, — recog- 
 nise Yezid as legitimate caliph ; Persia finds therein 
 an excuse for hating them the more, and identifies 
 herself the more with the usurper’s victims. It is 
 'patriotism therefore, which has taken the form, here, 
 of the drama to express itself.” No doubt there is 
 much truth in what Count Gobineau thus says ; and 
 it is certain that the division of Shiahs and Simis has 
 its true cause in a division of races, rather than in a 
 difference of religious belief. 
 
 But I confess that if the interest of the Persian 
 passion-plays had seemed to me to lie solely in the 
 curious evidence they afford of the workings of 
 patriotic feeling in a conquered people, I should 
 hardly have occupied myself with them at all this 
 length. I believe that they point to something much 
 more interesting. What this is, I cannot do more 
 than simply indicate ; but indicate it I will, in con- 
 
A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 
 
 257 
 
 m.] 
 
 elusion, and then leave the student of human nature 
 to follow it out for himself. 
 
 When Mahomet’s cousin Jaffer, and others of his 
 first converts, persecuted by the idolaters of Mecca, 
 fled in the year of our era 615, seven years before the 
 Hegira, into Abyssinia, and took refuge with the King 
 of that country, the people of Mecca sent after the 
 fugitives to demand that they should be given up to 
 them. Abyssinia was then already Christian. The 
 king asked Jafifer and his companions what was this 
 new religion for which they had left their country. 
 Jaffer answered : “We were plunged in the darkness 
 of ignorance, we were worshippers of idols. Given 
 over to all our passions, we knew no law but that of 
 the strongest, when God raised up among us a man 
 of our own race, of noble descent, and long held in 
 esteem by us for his virtues. This apostle called 
 us to believe in one God, to worship God only, to 
 reject the superstitions of our fathers, to despise 
 divinities of wood and stone. He commanded us to 
 eschew wickedness, to be truthful in speech, faithful 
 to our engagements, kind and helpful to our relations 
 and neighbours. He bade us respect the chastity of 
 women, and not to rob the orphan. He exhorted us 
 to prayer, alms-giving, and fasting. We believed in 
 his mission, and we accepted the doctrines and the 
 rule of life which he brought to us from God. For 
 this our countrymen have persecuted us ; and now 
 they want to make us return to their idolatry.” The 
 king of Abyssinia refused to surrender the fugitives, 
 and then, turning again to Jaffer, after a few more 
 
 VOL. L s 
 
258 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [viL 
 
 explanations, he picked up a straw from the ground, 
 and said to him : “ Between your religion and ours 
 there is not the thickness of this straw difference.” 
 That is not quite so ; yet thus much we may 
 affirm, that Jaffer’s account of the religion of Mahomet 
 is a great deal truer than the accounts of it which are 
 commonly current amongst us. Indeed, for the credit 
 of humanity, as more than a hundred millions of men 
 are said to profess the Mahometan religion, one is 
 glad to think so. To popular opinion everywhere, 
 religion is proved by miracles. All religions but a 
 man’s own are utterly false and vain ; the authors of 
 them are mere impostors ; and the miracles which are 
 said to attest them, fictitious. We forget that this is 
 a game which two can play at ; although the believer 
 of each religion always imagines the prodigies which 
 attest his own religion to be fenced by a guard 
 granted to them alone. Yet how much more safe is 
 it, as well as more fruitful, to look for the main con- 
 firmation of a religion in its intrinsic correspondence 
 with urgent wants of human nature, in its profound 
 necessity ! Differing religions will then be found to 
 have much in common, but this will be an additional 
 proof of the value of that religion which does most 
 for that which is thus commonly recognised as salutary 
 and necessary. In Christendom one need not go 
 about to establish that the religion of the Hebrews is 
 a better religion than the religion of the Arabs, or 
 that the Bible is a greater book than the Koran. The 
 Bible grew, the Koran was made; there lies the im 
 meuse difference in depth and truth between them \ 
 
TII.] A PERSIAN PASSION PLAT. 259 
 
 This very inferiority may make the Koran, for certain 
 pui’poses and for people at a low stage of mental 
 growth, a more powerful instrument than the Bible. 
 From the circumstances of its origin, the Koran has 
 the intensely dogmatic character, it has the perpetual 
 insistence on the motive of future rewards and punish- 
 ments, the palpable exhibition of paradise and hell, 
 which the Bible has not. Among the little known 
 and little advanced races of the great African con- 
 tinent, the Mahometan missionaries, by reason of the 
 sort of power which this character of the Koran gives, 
 are said to be more successful than ours. Neverthe- 
 less even in Africa it will assuredly one day be mani- 
 fest, that whereas the Bihle-people trace themselves 
 to Abraham through Isaac, and the Koran -people 
 trace themselves to Abraham* through Ishmael, the 
 difference between the religion of the Bible and the 
 religion of the Koran is almost as the difference be- 
 tween Isaac and Ishmael. I mean that the seriousness 
 about righteousness, which is what the hatred of 
 idolatry really means, and the profound and inex- 
 haustible doctrines that the righteous Eternal loveth 
 righteousness, that there is no peace for the wicked, 
 that the righteous is an everlasting foundation, are 
 exhibited and inculcated in the Old Testament with 
 an authority, majesty, and truth which leave the 
 Koran immeasurably behind, and which, the more 
 mankind grows and gains light, the more will be felt 
 to have no fellows. Mahomet was no doubt acquainted 
 Yidth the Jews and their documents, and gained 
 something from this source for his religion. But his 
 
260 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vii. 
 
 religion is not a mere plagiarism from Judea, any 
 more than it is a mere mass of falsehood. No ; in 
 the seriousness, elevation, and moral energy of him- 
 self and of that Semitic race from which he sprang 
 and to which he spoke, Mahomet mainly found that 
 scorn and hatred of idolatry, that sense of the worth 
 and truth of righteousness, judgment, and justice, 
 which make the real greatness of him and his Koran, 
 and which are thus rather an independent testimony 
 to the essential doctrines of the Old Testament, than 
 a plagiarism from them. The world needs righteous- 
 ness, and the Bible is the grand teacher of it, but for 
 certain times and certain men Mahomet too, in his 
 way, was a teacher of righteousness. 
 
 But we know how the Old Testament conception 
 of righteousness ceased with time to have the fresh- 
 ness and force of an intuition, became something 
 petrified, narrow, and formal, needed renewing. We 
 know how Christianity renewed it, carrying into these 
 hard waters of Judaism a sort of warm gulf-stream of 
 tender emotion, due chiefly to qualities which may 
 be summed up as those of inwardness, mildness, and 
 self-renouncement. Mahometanism had no such re- 
 newing. It began with a conception of righteousness, 
 lofty indeed, but narrow, and which we may call old 
 J ewish ; and there it remained. It is not a feeling 
 religion. No one would say that the virtues of 
 gentleness, mildness, and self-sacrifice were its virtues ; 
 and the more it went on, the more the faults of its 
 original narrow basis became visible, more and more 
 it became fierce and militant, less and less was it 
 
til] a PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 261 
 
 amiable. Now, what are Ali, and Hassan, and 
 Hussein and the Imams, but an insurrection of noble 
 and pious natures against this hardness and aridity of 
 the religion round them ? an insurrection making its 
 authors seem weak, helpless, and unsuccessful to the 
 world and amidst the struggles of the world, but 
 enabling them to know the joy and peace for which 
 the world thirsts in vain, and inspiring in the heart 
 of mankind an irresistible sympathy. “ The twelve 
 Imams,” says Gibbon, “ Ali, Hassan, Hussein, and 
 the lineal descendants of Hussein, to the ninth gen- 
 eration, without arms, or treasures, or subjects, suc- 
 cessively enjoyed the veneration of the people. 
 Their names were often the pretence of sedition and 
 civil war ; but these royal saints despised the pomp 
 of the world, submitted to the will of God and the 
 injustice of man, and devoted their innocent lives to 
 the study and practice of religion.” 
 
 Abnegation and mildness, based on the depth of 
 the inner life, and visited by unmerited misfortune, 
 made the power of the first and famous Imams, Ali, 
 Hassan, and Hussein, over the popular imagination. 
 “ 0 brother,” said Hassan, as he was dying of poison, 
 to Hussein who sought to find out and punish his 
 murderer, “0 brother, let him alone till he and I 
 meet together before God ! ” So his father Ali had 
 stood back from his rights instead of snatching at 
 them. So of Hussein himself it was said by his suc- 
 cessful rival, the usurping Caliph Yezid : “ God loved 
 Hussein, hit he would not suffer him to attain to anything." 
 They might attain to nothing, they were too pure, 
 
262 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vu 
 
 these great ones of the world as by birth they were ; 
 but the people, which itself also can attain to so little, 
 loved them all the better on that accoimt, loved them 
 for their abnegation and mildness, felt that they were 
 dear to God, that God loved them, and that they and 
 their lives filled a void in the severe religion of 
 Mahomet. These saintly self-deniers, these resigned 
 sufferers, who would not strive nor cry, supplied a 
 tender and pathetic side in Islam. The conquered 
 Persians, a more mobile, more impressionable, and 
 gentler race than their concentrated, narrow, and 
 austere Semitic conquerors felt the need of it most, 
 and gave most prominence to the ideals which satisfied 
 the need ; but in Arabs and Turks also, and in all the 
 Mahometan world, Ali and his sons excite enthusiasm 
 and affection. Eound the central sufferer, Hussein, 
 has come to group itself everything which is most 
 tender and touching. His person brings to the 
 Mussulman’s mind the most human side of Mahomet 
 himself, his fondness for children, — for Mahomet had 
 loved to nurse the little Hussein on his knee, and 
 to show him from the pulpit to his people. The 
 Family of the Tent is full of women and chil- 
 dren, and their devotion and sufferings, — blameless 
 and saintly women, lovely and innocent children. 
 There, too, are lovers with their story, the beauty 
 and the love of youth; and all follow the attrac- 
 tion of the pure and resigned Imam, all die for him. 
 The tender pathos from all these flows into the 
 pathos from him and enhances it, until finally there 
 arises for the popular imagination an immense ideal 
 
A PERSIAN PASSION PLAY. 
 
 263 
 
 VII ] 
 
 of mildness and self-sacrifice, melting and overpower- 
 ing the soul. 
 
 Even for us, to whom almost all the names are 
 strange, whose interest in the places and persons is 
 faint, who have them before us for a moment to-day, 
 to see them again, probably, no more for ever, — even 
 for us, unless I err greatly, the power and pathos of 
 this ideal are recognisable. What must they be for 
 those to whom every name is familiar, and calls up 
 the most solemn and cherished associations ; who have 
 had their adoring gaze fixed all their lives upon this 
 exemplar of self-denial and gentleness, and who have 
 no other? If it was superfluous to say to English 
 people that the religion of the Koran has not the 
 value of the religion of the Old Testament, still more 
 is it superfluous to say that the religion of the Imams 
 has not the value of Christianity. The character and 
 discourse of Jesus Christ possess, I have elsewhere 
 often said, two signal powers : mildness and sweet 
 reasonableness. The latter, the power which so puts 
 before our view duty of every kind as to give it the 
 force of an intuition, as to make it seem, — to make 
 the total sacrifice of our ordinary self seem, — the most 
 simple, natural, winning, necessary thing in the world, 
 has been hitherto applied with but a very limited 
 range, it is destined to an infinitely wider application, 
 and has a fruitfulness which will yet transform the 
 world. Of this the Imams have nothing, except so 
 far as all mildness and self-sacrifice have in them 
 something of sweet reasonableness and are its indis- 
 pensable preliminary. This they have, mildness and 
 
264 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 Ctil 
 
 self-sacrifice ; and we have seen what an attraction it 
 exercises. Could we ask for a stronger testimony to 
 Christianity 1 Could we wish for any sign more con- 
 vincing, that J esus Christ was indeed, what Christiana 
 call him, the desire of all nations? So salutary, so 
 necessary is what Christianity contains, that a religion, 
 — a great, powerful, successful religion, — arises with- 
 out it, and the missing virtue forces its way in ! 
 Christianity may say to these Persian Mahometans, 
 with their gaze fondly turned towards the martyred 
 Imams, what in our Bible God says by Isaiah to Cyrus, 
 their great ancestor: — I girded thee, though' thou hast 
 not known me” It is a long way from Kerbela to 
 Calvary; but the sufferers of Kerbela hold aloft to 
 the eyes of millions of our race the lesson so loved by 
 the sufferer of Calvary. For he said : “ Learn of me. 
 that I am mild, and lowly of heart ; and ye shall find 
 rest unto your souls” 
 
JOUBERT. 
 
 Why should we ever treat of any dead authors but 
 the famous ones 1 Mainly for this reason : because, 
 from these famous personages, home or foreign, whom 
 we all know so well, and of whom so much has been 
 said, the amount of stimulus which they contain for 
 us has been in a great measure disengaged; people 
 have formed their opinion about them, and do not 
 readily change it. One may write of them afresh, 
 combat received opinions about them, even interest 
 one’s readers in so doing; but the interest one’s 
 readers receive has to do, in general, rather with the 
 treatment than with the subject ; they are susceptible 
 of a lively impression rather of the course of the dis- 
 cussion itself, — its turns, vivacity, and novelty, — than 
 of the genius of the author who is the occasion of it. 
 And yet what is really precious and inspiring, in all 
 that we get from literature, except this sense of an 
 immediate contact with genius itself, and the stimulus 
 towards what is true and excellent which we derive 
 from it 1 Now in literature, besides the eminent men 
 
266 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vul 
 
 of genius who have had their deserts in the way of 
 fame, besides the eminent men of ability who have 
 often had far more than their deserts in the way of 
 fame, there are a certain number of personages who 
 have been real men of genius, — by which I mean, that 
 they have had a genuine gift for what is true and 
 excellent, and are therefore capable of emitting a life- 
 giving stimulus, — hut who, for some reason or other, 
 in most cases for very valid reasons, have remained 
 obscure, nay, beyond a narrow circle in their own 
 country, unknown. It is salutary from time to time 
 to come across a genius of this kind, and to extract 
 his honey. Often he has more of it for us, as I have 
 already said, than greater men ; for, though it is by 
 no means true that from what is new to us there is 
 most to be learnt, it is yet indisputably true that from 
 what is new to us we in general learn most. 
 
 Of a genius of this kind, Joseph Joubert, I am 
 now going to speak. His name is, I believe, almost 
 unknown in England ; and even in France, his native 
 country, it is not famous. IVL Sainte-Beuve has given 
 of him one of his incomparable portraits; but, — besides 
 that even M. Sainte-Beuve’s writings are far less known 
 amongst us than they deserve to be, — every country 
 has its own point of view from which a remarkable 
 author may most profitably be seen and studied. 
 
 Joseph Joubert was bom (and his date should be 
 remarked) in 1754, at Montignac, a little town in 
 P4rigord. His father was a doctor with small means 
 and a large family ; and Joseph, the eldest, had hia 
 own way to make in the world. He was for eight 
 
VIII.] 
 
 JOUBEKT. 
 
 267 
 
 years, as pupil first, and afterwards as an assistant- 
 master, in the public school of Toulouse, then managed 
 by the Jesuits, who seem to have left in him a most 
 favourable opinion, not only of their tact and address, 
 but of their really good qualities as teachers and 
 directors. Compelled by the weakness of his health 
 to give up, at twenty-two, the profession of teaching, 
 he passed two important years of his life in hard study, 
 at home at Montignac; and came in 1778 to try his 
 fortune in the literary world of Paris, then perhaps 
 the most tempting field which has ever yet presented 
 itself to a young man of letters. He knew Diderot, 
 D’Alembert, Marmontel, Laharpe; he became intimate 
 with one of the celebrities of the next literary genera- 
 tion, then, like himself, a young man, — Chateaubriand’s 
 friend, the future Grand Master of the University, 
 Fontanes. But, even then, it began to be remarked 
 of him, that M. Joubert s’inquUtait de perfection lien 
 plus que de gloire — cared far more about perfecting 
 himself than about making himself a reputation.” 
 His severity of morals may perhaps have been rendered 
 easier to him by the delicacy of his health ; but the 
 delicacy of his health will not by itself account for his 
 changeless preference of being to seeming, knowing 
 to showing, studying to publishing ; for what terrible 
 public performers have some invalids been ! This 
 preference he retained all through his life, and it is 
 by this that he is characterised. “ He has chosen,” 
 Chateaubriand (adopting Epicurus’s famous words) 
 said of him, hide his life^ Of a life which its 
 owner was bent on hiding there can be but little to 
 
268 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vin. 
 
 tell. Yet the only two public incidents of Joubert’a 
 life, slight as they are, do all concerned in them so 
 much credit that they deserve mention. In 1790 the 
 Constituent Assembly made the office of justice of 
 the peace elective throughout France. The people of 
 Montignac retained such an impression of the character 
 of their young townsman, — one of Plutarch’s men of 
 virtue, as he had lived amongst them, simple, studious, 
 severe, — that, though he had left them for years, they 
 elected him in his absence without his knowing any- 
 thing about it. The appointment little suited Joubert’s 
 wishes or tastes ; but at such a moment he thought 
 it wrong to decline it. He held it for two years, the 
 legal term, discharging its duties with a firmness and 
 integrity which were long remembered; and then, 
 when he went out of office, his fellow-townsmen re- 
 elected him. But Joubert thought that he had now 
 accomplished his duty towards them, and he went 
 back to the retirement which he loved. That seems 
 to me a little episode of the great French Eevolution 
 worth remembering. The sage who was asked by the 
 king, why sages were seen at the doors of kings, but 
 not kings at the doors of sages, replied, that it was 
 because sages knew what was good for them, and 
 kings did not. But at Montignac the king — for in 
 1790 the people in France was king with a vengeance 
 ■ — knew what was good for him, and came to the door 
 of the sage. 
 
 The other incident was this. When Napoleon, in 
 1809, reorganised the public instruction of France, 
 founded the University, and made M. de Fontanes 
 
Fill.] 
 
 JOUBERT. 
 
 269 
 
 its Grand Master, Fontanes had to submit to the 
 Emperor a list of persons to form the council or 
 governing body of the new University. Third on 
 his list, after two distinguished names, Fontanes 
 placed the unknown name of Joubert. .“This name,” 
 he said in his accompanying memorandum to the 
 Emperor, “is not known as the two first are; and 
 yet this is the nomination to which I attach most 
 importance. I have known M. Joubert all my life. 
 His character and intelligence are of the very highest 
 order. I shall rejoice if your Majesty will accept 
 my guarantee for him,” Napoleon trusted his Grand 
 Master, and Joubert became a councillor of th-e 
 University. It is something that a man, elevated to 
 the highest posts of State, should not forget his 
 obscure friends ; or that, if he remembers and places 
 them, he should regard in placing them their merit 
 rather than their obscurity. It is more, in the eyes 
 of those whom the necessities, real or supposed, of a 
 political system have long familiarised with such 
 cynical disregard of fitness in the distribution of office, 
 to see a minister and his master alike zealous, in 
 giving away places, to give them to the best men to 
 be found. 
 
 Between 1792 and 1809 Joubert had married. 
 His life was passed between ViUeneuve-sur-Yonne, 
 where his wife’s family lived, — a pretty little Bur- 
 gundian town, by which the Lyons railroad now 
 passes, — and Paris. Here, in a house in the Eue 
 St.-Honor6, in a room very high up, and admitting 
 plenty of the light which he so loved, — a room from 
 
270 ESSAYS IN CKinCISM. [viil. 
 
 which he saw, in his own words, “ a great deal of sky 
 and very little earth,” — among the treasures of a 
 library collected with infinite pains, taste, and skill, 
 from which every book he thought ill of was rigidly 
 excluded, — he never would possess either a complete 
 Voltaire or a complete Rousseau, — the happiest hours 
 of his life were passed. In the circle of one of those 
 women who leave a sort of perfume in literary his- 
 tory, and who have the gift of inspiring successive 
 generations of readers with an indescribable regret 
 not to have known them, — Pauline de Montmorin, 
 Madame de Beaumont, — he had become intimate 
 with nearly all which at that time, in the Paris world 
 of letters or of society, was most attractive and pro- 
 mising. Amongst his acquaintances one only misses 
 the names of Madame de Stael and Benjamin Con- 
 stant. Neither of them was to his taste, and with 
 Madame de Stael he always refused to become 
 acquainted ; he thought she had more vehemence 
 than truth, and more heat than light. 
 
 Years went on, and his friends became conspicuous 
 authors or statesmen ; but Joubert remained in the 
 shade. His constitution was of such fragility that 
 how he lived so long, or accomplished so much as he 
 did, is a wonder : his soul had, for its basis of opera- 
 tions, hardly any body at all : both from his stomach 
 and from his chest he seems to have had constant 
 sufiering, though he lived by rule, and was as ab- 
 stemious as a Hindoo. Often, after overwork in 
 thinking, reading, or talking, he remained for days 
 together in a state of utter prostration, — condemned 
 
7III.] 
 
 JOUBEKT. 
 
 271 
 
 to absolute silence and inaction; too happy if the 
 agitation of his mind would become quiet also, and 
 let him have the repose of which he stood in so much 
 need. With this weakness of health, these repeated 
 suspensions of energy, he was incapable of the pro- 
 longed contention of spirit necessary for the creation 
 of great works. But he read and thought immensely ; 
 he was an unwearied note-taker, a charming letter- 
 writer ; above all, an excellent and delightful talker. 
 The gaiety and amenity of his natural disposition 
 were inexhaustible ; and his spirit, too, was of 
 astonishing elasticity; he seemed to hold on to life 
 by a single thread only, but that single thread was 
 very tenacious. More and more, as his soul and 
 knowledge ripened more and more, his friends pressed 
 to his room in the Kue St. -Honors ; often he received 
 them in bed, for he seldom rose before three o’clock 
 in the afternoon; and at his bedroom -door, on his 
 bad days, Madame Joubert stood sentry, trying, not 
 always with success, to keep back the thirsty comers 
 from the fountain which was forbidden to flow. Fon- 
 tanes did nothing in the University without consult- 
 ing him, and Joubert’s ideas and pen were always at 
 his friend’s service. 
 
 When he was in the country, at Villeneuve, the 
 .young priests of his neighbourhood used to resort to 
 him, in order to profit by his library and by his con- 
 versation. He, like our Coleridge, was particularly 
 qualified to attract men of this kind and to benefit 
 them : retaining perfect independence of mind, he 
 was a religious philosopher. As age came on, his 
 
272 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vm. 
 
 infirmities became more and more overwhelming; 
 some of his friends, too, died ; others became so 
 immersed in politics, that Joubert, who hated politics, 
 saw them seldomer than of old ; but the morosenesa 
 of age and infirmity never touched him, and he never 
 quarrelled with a friend or lost one. From these 
 miseries he was preserved by that quality in him of 
 which I have already spoken ; a quality which is best 
 expressed by a word, not of common use in English, — 
 alas, we have too little in our national character of 
 the quality which this word expresses, — his inborn, 
 his constant amenity. He lived till the year 1824. 
 On the 4th of May in that year he died, at the age 
 of seventy. A day or two after his death M. de 
 Chateaubriand inserted in the Journal des D^hats a 
 short notice of him, perfect for its feeling, grace, and 
 propriety. On ne vit dans la m^moire du monde, he 
 says and says truly, que par des travanx pour le monde, 
 — “a man can live in the world’s memory only by 
 what he has done for the world.” But Chateaubriand 
 used the privilege which his great name gave him to 
 assert, delicately but firmly, Joubert’s real and rare 
 merits, and to tell the world what manner of man 
 had just left it 
 
 Joubert’s papers were accumulated in boxes and 
 drawers. He had not meant them for publication; 
 it was very difficult to sort them and to prepare them 
 for it. Madame Joubert, his widow, had a scruple 
 about giving them a publicity which her husband, she 
 felt, would never have permitted. But, as her own 
 end approached, the natural desire to leave of so 
 
VIII.] 
 
 JOUBERT. 
 
 273 
 
 remarkable a spirit some enduring memorial, some 
 memorial to outlast the admiring recollection of the 
 living who were so fast passing away, made her yield 
 to the entreaties of his friends, and allow the printing, 
 but for private circulation only, of a volume of his 
 fragments. Chateaubriand edited it ; it appeared in 
 1838, fourteen years after Joubert’s death. The 
 volume attracted the attention of those who were 
 best fitted to appreciate it, and profoundly impressed 
 them. M. Sainte-Beuve gave of it, in the Revue des 
 Deux MondeSj the admirable notice of which I have 
 already spoken; and so much curiosity was excited 
 about Joubert, that the collection of his fragments, 
 enlarged by many additions, was at last published for 
 the benefit of the world in general. It has since been 
 twice reprinted. The first or preliminary chapter 
 has some fancifulness and afiectation in it ; the reader 
 should begin with the second. 
 
 I have likened Joubert to Coleridge ; and indeed 
 the points of resemblance between the two men are 
 numerous. Both of them great and celebrated talkers, 
 Joubert attracting pilgrims to his upper chamber in 
 the Eue St. -Honors, as Coleridge attracted pilgrims 
 to Mr. Gilman’s at Highgate ; both of them desultory 
 and incomplete writers, — here they had an outward 
 likeness with one another. Both of them passionately 
 devoted to reading in a class of books, and to thinking 
 on a class of subjects, out of the beaten line of the 
 reading and thought of their day; both of them 
 ardent students and critics of old literature, poetry, 
 and the metaphysics of religion ; both of them curious 
 
 VOL. L T 
 
274 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vm. 
 
 explorers of words, and of the latent significance 
 hidden under the popular use of them ; both of 
 them, in a certain sense, conservative in religion 
 and politics, by antipathy to the narrow and shallow 
 foolishness of vulgar modem liberalism ; — here they 
 had their inward and real likeness. But that in 
 which the essence of their likeness consisted is this, 
 — that they both had from nature an ardent impulse 
 for seeking the genuine tmth on all matters they 
 thought about, and a gift for finding it and recog- 
 nising it when it was found. To have the impulse 
 for seeking this truth is much rarer than most people 
 think ; to have the gift for finding it is, T need not 
 say, very rare indeed. By this they have a spiritual 
 relationship of the closest kind with one another, and 
 they become, each of them, a source of stimulus and 
 progress for all of us. 
 
 Coleridge had less delicacy and penetration than 
 Joubert, but more richness and power; his produc- 
 tion, though far inferior to what his nature at first 
 seemed to promise, was abundant and varied. Yet 
 in all his production how much is there to dissatisfy 
 us ! How many reserves must be made in praising 
 either his poetry, or his criticism, or his philosophy ! 
 How little either of his poetry, or of his criticism, or 
 of his philosophy, can we expect peraianently to 
 stand ! But that which will stand of Coleridge is 
 this : the stimulus of his continual effort, — not a 
 moral effort, for he had no morals, — but of his con- 
 tinual instinctive effort, crowned often with rich 
 success, to get at and to lay bare the real truth of 
 
VIII.] 
 
 JOUBERT. 
 
 275 
 
 his matter in hand, whether that matter were literary, 
 or philosophical, or political, or religious ; and this in 
 a country where at that moment such an effort was 
 almost unknown ; where the most powerful minds 
 threw themselves upon poetry, which conveys truth, 
 indeed, but conveys it indirectly; and where ordi- 
 nary minds were so habituated to do without think- 
 ing altogether, to regard considerations of established 
 routine and practical convenience as paramount, that 
 any attempt to introduce within the domain of these 
 the disturbing element of thought, they were prompt 
 to resent as an outrage. Coleridge’s great usefulness 
 lay in his supplying in England, for many years and 
 under critical circumstances, by the spectacle of this 
 effort of his, a stimulus to all minds capable of profit- 
 ing by it ; in the generation which grew up around 
 him. His action will still be felt as long as the need 
 for it continues. When, with the cessation of the 
 need, the action too has ceased, Coleridge’s memory, 
 in spite of the disesteem — nay, repugnance — which 
 his character may and must inspire, will yet for ever 
 remain invested with that interest and gratitude 
 which invests the memory of founders. 
 
 M. de K6musat, indeed, reproaches Coleridge with 
 his jugements saugrenus ; the criticism of a gifted truth- 
 finder ought not to be saugrenu, so on this reproach 
 we must pause for a moment. Saugrenu is a rather 
 vulgar French word, but, like many other vulgar 
 words, very expressive; used as an epithet for a 
 judgment, it means something like impudently absurd. 
 The literary judgments of one nation about another 
 
276 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [viii. 
 
 are \ ery apt to be saugrenus. It is certainly true, aa 
 M. Sainte-Beuve remarks in answer to Goethe’s com- 
 plaint against the French that they have undervalued 
 Du Bartas, that as to the estimate of its own authors 
 every nation is the best judge ; the positive estimate 
 of them, be it understood, not, of course, the estimate 
 of them in comparison with the authors of other 
 nations. Therefore a foreigner’s judgments about 
 the intrinsic merit of a nation’s authors will gener- 
 ally, when at complete variance with that nation’s 
 own, be wrong ; but there is a permissible wrongness 
 in these matters, and to that permissible wrongness 
 there is a limit. When that limit is exceeded, the 
 wrong judgment becomes more than wrong, it be- 
 comes saugrenu^ or impudently absurd- For instance, 
 the high estimate which the French have of Eacine 
 is probably in great measure deserved ; or, to take a 
 yet stronger case, even the high estimate which 
 Joubert had of the A.bb4 Delille is probably in great 
 measure deserved ; but the common disparaging 
 judgment passed on Eacine by English readers is not 
 saugrenu, still less is that passed by them on the 
 Abb4 Delille saugrenu^ because the beauty of Eacine, 
 and of Delille too, so far as Delille’s beauty goes, is 
 eminently in their language, and this is a beauty 
 which a foreigner cannot perfectly seize ; — this 
 beauty of diction, apicihus verhorum ligatay as M. 
 Sainte-Beuve, quoting Quintilian, says of Chateau- 
 briand’s. As to Chateaubriand himself, again, the 
 common English judgment, which stamps him as a 
 mere shallow rhetorician, all froth and vanity, is 
 
JOUBEET. 
 
 27 ? 
 
 Till.] 
 
 certainly wrong , one may even wonder that we 
 English should judge Chateaubriand so wrongly, for 
 his power goes far beyond beauty of diction ; it is a 
 power, as well, of passion and sentiment, and this 
 sort of power the English can perfectly well appre- 
 ciate. One production of Chateaubriand’s, Ren4^ 
 is akin to the most popular productions of Byron, 
 — to the Childe Harold or Manfred ^ — in spirit, equal 
 to them in power, superior to them in form. But 
 this work, I hardly know why, is almost unread in 
 England. And only consider this criticism of 
 Chateaubriand’s on the true pathetic ! “ It is a 
 
 dangerous mistake, sanctioned, like so many other 
 dangerous mistakes, by Voltaire, to suppose that the 
 best works of imagination are those which draw most 
 tears. One could name this or that melodrama, which 
 no one would like to own having written, and which 
 yet harrows the feelings far more than the HJneid. 
 The true tears are those which are called forth by 
 the beauty of poetry ; there must be as much admira- 
 tion in them as sorrow. They are the tears which 
 come to our eyes when Priam says to Achilles, erAr^v 
 6’, oV OV7TO) . . . — ‘ And I have endured, — the like 
 whereof no soul upon the earth hath yet endured, — 
 to carry to my lips the hand of him who slew my 
 child;’ or when Joseph cries out: ‘I am Joseph 
 your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt.’” Who 
 does not feel that the man who wrote that was no 
 shallow rhetorician, but a born man of genius, with 
 the true instinct of genius for what is really admir- 
 able 1 Nay, take these words of Chateaubriand, an 
 
278 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [viii 
 
 old man of eighty, dying, amidst the noise and 
 bustle of the ignoble revolution of February 1848 : 
 “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, quand done, quand done 
 serai-je d6livr6 de tout ee monde, ee bruit; quand 
 done, quand done eela finira-t-iU” Who, with any 
 ear, does not feel that those are not the aeeents of 
 a trumpery rhetorieian, but of a rieh and puissant 
 nature, — the ery of the dying lion? I repeat it, 
 Chateaubriand is most ignorantly underrated in 
 England ; and we English are eapable of rating him 
 far more eorreetly if we knew him better. Still 
 Chateaubriand has sueh real and great faults, he 
 falls so decidedly beneath the rank of the truly 
 greatest authors, that the depreciatory judgment 
 passed on him in England, though ignorant and 
 wrong, can hardly be said to transgress the limits 
 of permissible ignorance ; it is not Sijugement saugrenu. 
 But when a critic denies genius to a literature which 
 has produced Bossuet and Moli^re, he passes the 
 bounds ; and Coleridge’s judgments on French 
 literature and the French genius are undoubtedly, 
 as M. de R6musat calls them, saugrenus. 
 
 And yet, such is the impetuosity of our poor 
 human nature, such its proneness to rush to a deci- 
 sion with imperfect knowledge, that his having de- 
 livered a saugrenu judgment or two in his life by no 
 means proves a man not to have had, in comparison 
 with his fellow-men in general, a remarkable gift for 
 truth, or disqualifies him for being, by virtue of that 
 gift, a source of vital stimulus for us. Joubert had 
 far less smoke and turbid vehemence in him than 
 
JOtJBEKT. 
 
 
 27b 
 
 Coleridge ; he had also a far keener sense of whal 
 was absurd. But Joubert can write to M. Mol4 (the 
 M. Mol4 who was afterwards Louis Philippe’s well- 
 known minister) : “ As to your Milton, whom the 
 merit of the Abb6 Delille ” (the Abb6 Delille trans- 
 lated Paradise Lost) “makes me admire, and with 
 whom I have nevertheless still plenty of fault to find, 
 why, I should like to know, are you scandalised that 
 I have not enabled myself to read himi I don’t 
 understand the language in which he writes, and I 
 don’t much care to. If he is a poet one cannot put 
 up with, even in the prose of the younger Kacine, am 
 I to blame for that ? If by force you mean beauty 
 manifesting itself with power, I maintain that the Abb(^ 
 Delille has more force than Milton.” That, to be 
 sure, is a petulant outburst in a private letter ; it is 
 not, like Coleridge’s, a deliberate proposition in a 
 printed philosophical essay. But is it possible to 
 imagine a more perfect specimen of a saugrenu judg- 
 ment ? It is even worse than Coleridge’s, because it is 
 saugrenuynih. reasons. That, however, does not prevent 
 Joubert from having been really a man of extraordinary 
 ardour in the search for truth, and of extraordinary 
 fineness in the perception of it; and so was Coleridge. 
 
 Joubert had around him in France an atmosphere 
 of literary, philosophical, and religious opinion as 
 alien to him as that in England was to Coleridge. 
 This is what makes Joubert, too, so remarkable, and 
 it is on this account that I begged the reader to 
 remark his date. He was born in 1754; he died in 
 1824. He was thus in the fulness of his powers at 
 
280 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [viii. 
 
 the beginning of the present century, at the epoch ol 
 Napoleon’s consulate. The French criticism of that 
 day — the criticism of Laharpe’s successors, of Geoff- 
 roy and his • colleagues in the Journal des Debats — 
 had a dryness very unlike the telling vivacity of the 
 early Edinburgh reviewers, their contemporaries, but 
 a fundamental narrowness, a want of genuine insight, 
 much on a par with theirs. Joubert, like Coleridge, 
 has no respect for the dominant oracle; he treats his 
 Geoffroy with about as little deference as Coleridge 
 treats his Jeffrey. “ Geoffroy,” he says in an article 
 in the Journal des D4bats criticising Chateaubriand’s 
 G4nie du Ghristianisme — “Geoffroy in this article 
 begins by holding out his paw prettily enough ; but 
 he ends by a volley of kicks, which lets the whole 
 world see but too clearly the four iron shoes of the 
 four-footed animal.” There is, however, in France a 
 sympathy with intellectual activity for its own sake, 
 and for the sake of its inherent pleasurableness and 
 beauty, keener than any which exists in England; 
 and Joubert had more effect in Paris, — though his 
 conversation was his only weapon, and Coleridge 
 wielded besides his conversation his pen, — than Cole- 
 ridge had or could have in London. I mean, a more 
 immediate, appreciable effect ; an effect not only upon 
 the young and enthusiastic, to whom the future belongs, 
 but upon formed and important personages to whom the 
 present belongs, and who are actually moving society. 
 He owed this partly to his real advantages over 
 Coleridge. If he had, as I have already said, less 
 power and richness than his English parallel, he had 
 
VIII.] 
 
 JOXJBERT. 
 
 281 
 
 more tact and penetration. He was more possible 
 than Coleridge; his doctrine was more intelligible 
 than Coleridge’s, more receivable. And yet with 
 Joubert, the striving after a consummate and attrac- 
 tive clearness of expression came from no mere frivo- 
 lous dislike of labour and inability for going deep, but 
 was a part of his native love of truth and perfection. 
 The delight of his life he found in truth, and in the 
 satisfaction which the enjojdng of truth gives to the 
 spirit ; and he thought the truth was never really and 
 worthily said, so long as the least cloud, clumsiness, 
 and repulsiveness hung about the expression of it. 
 
 Some of his best passages are those in which he 
 upholds this doctrine. Even metaphysics he would 
 not allow to remain difficult and abstract : so long 
 as they spoke a professional jargon, the language of 
 the schools, he maintained, — and who shall gainsay 
 him ? — that metaphysics were imperfect ; or, at any 
 rate, had not yet reached their ideal perfection. 
 
 “ The true science of metaphysics,” he says, “ con- 
 sists not in rendering abstract that which is sensible, 
 but in rendering sensible that which is abstract; ap- 
 parent that which is hidden ; imaginable, if so it may 
 be, that which is only intelligible; and intelligible, 
 finally, that which an ordinary attention fails to seize.” 
 And therefore : — 
 
 “ Distrust, in books on metaphysics, words which 
 have not been able to get currency in the world, and 
 are only calculated to form a special language.” 
 
 Nor would he suffer common words to be em- 
 ployed in a special sense by the schools : — 
 
282 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [vui 
 
 “ Wliich is the best, if one wants to be useful 
 and to be really understood, to get one’s words in 
 the world, or to get them in the schools. I main- 
 tain that the good plan is to employ words in their 
 popular sense rather than in their philosophical 
 sense ; and the better plan still, to employ them in 
 their natural sense rather than in their popular sense. 
 By their natural sense, I mean the popular and uni- 
 versal acceptation of them brought to that which in 
 this is essential and invariable. To prove a thing by 
 definition proves nothing, if the definition is purely 
 philosophical; for such definitions only hind him 
 who makes them. To prove a thing by definition, 
 when the definition expresses the necessary, inevit- 
 able, and clear idea which the world at large attaches 
 to the object, is, on the contrary, all in all ; because 
 then what one does is simply to show people what 
 they do really think, in spite of themselves and with- 
 out knoTvdng it. The rule that one is free to give to 
 words what sense one will, and that the only thing 
 needful is to be agreed upon the sense one gives 
 them, is very well for the mere purposes of argumen- 
 tation, and may be allowed in the schools where this 
 sort of fencing is to be practised ; but in the sphere 
 of the true-born and noble science of metaphysics, 
 and in the genuine world of literature, it is good for 
 nothing. One must never quit sight of realities, and 
 one must employ one’s expressions simply as media, 
 — as glasses, through which one’s thoughts can be best 
 made evident. I know, by my own experience, how 
 hard this rule is to follow ; but I judge of its import 
 
JOUBERT. 
 
 283 
 
 nil.] 
 
 ance by the failure of every system of metaphysics. 
 Not one of them has succeeded ; for the simple reason, 
 that in every one ciphers have been constantly used 
 instead of values, artificial ideas instead of native 
 ideas, jargon instead of idiom.” 
 
 I do not know whether the metaphysician will ever 
 adopt Joubert’s rules ; but I am sure that the man 
 of letters, whenever he has to speak of metaphysics, 
 will do well to adopt them. He, at any rate, must 
 remember : — 
 
 “ It is by means of familiar words that style takes 
 hold of the reader and gets possession of him. It is 
 by means of these that great thoughts get currency 
 and pass for true metal, like gold and silver which 
 have had a recognised stamp put upon them. They 
 beget confidence in the man who, in order to make 
 his thoughts more clearly perceived, uses them ; for 
 people feel that such an employment of the language 
 of common human life betokens a man who knows 
 that life and its concerns, and who keeps himself in 
 contact with them. Besides, these words make a 
 style frank and easy. They show that an author has 
 long made the thought or the feeling expressed his 
 mental food ; that he has so assimilated them and 
 familiarised them, that the most common expressions 
 suffice him in order to express ideas which have 
 become every-day ideas to him by the length of time 
 they have been in his mind And lastly, what one 
 says in such words looks more true ; for, of all the 
 words in use, none are so clear as those which we call 
 common words ; and clearness is so eminently one of 
 
284 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. iviii 
 
 the characteristics of truth, that often it even passes 
 for truth itself.” 
 
 These are not, in Joubert, mere counsels of rhetoric; 
 they come from his accurate sense of perfection, from 
 his haring clearly seized the fine and just idea that 
 beauty and light are properties of truth, and that 
 truth is incompletely exhibited if it is exhibited with- 
 out beauty and light : — 
 
 “Be profound with clear terms and not with 
 obscure terms. What is difiicult will at last become 
 easy; but as one goes deep into things, one must 
 still keep a charm, and one must carry into these 
 dark depths of thought, into which speculation has 
 only recently penetrated, the pure and antique clear- 
 ness of centuries less learned than ours, but with 
 more light in them.” 
 
 And elsewhere he speaks of those “ spirits, lovers 
 of light, who, when they have an idea to put forth, 
 brood long over it first, and wait patiently till it 
 shines^ as Bufibn enjoined, when he defined genius to 
 be the aptitude for patience; spirits who know by 
 experience that the driest matter and the dullest 
 words hide within them the germ and spark of some 
 brightness, like those fairy nuts in which were found 
 diamonds if one broke the shell and was the right 
 person ; spirits who maintain that, to see and exhibit 
 things in beauty, is to see and show things as in their 
 essence they really are, and not as they exist for the 
 eye of the careless, who do not look beyond the out- 
 side ; spirits hard to satisfy, because of a keen-sighted- 
 ness in them, which makes them discern but too 
 
JOUBERT. 
 
 285 
 
 mi.] 
 
 clearly both the models to be followed and those to 
 be shunned; spirits active though meditative, who 
 cannot rest except in solid truths, and whom only 
 beauty can make happy; spirits far less concerned 
 for glory than for perfection, who, because their art 
 is long and life is short, often die without leaving a 
 monument, having had their own inward sense of life 
 and fruitfulness for their best reward. ” 
 
 No doubt there is something a little too ethereal 
 in all this, something which reminds one of Joubert’s 
 physical want of body and substance ; no doubt, if a 
 man wishes to be a great author, it is to consider too 
 curiously, to consider as Joubert did ; it is a mistake 
 to spend so much of one’s time in setting up one’s 
 ideal standard of perfection, and in contemplating it. 
 Joubert himself knew this very well : “I cannot 
 build a house for my ideas,” said he ; “I have tried 
 to do without words, and words take their revenge 
 on me by their difficulty.” “If there is a man upon 
 earth tormented by the cursed desire to get a whole 
 book into a page, a whole page into a phrase, and this 
 phrase into one word, — that man is myself.” “ I can 
 sow, but I cannot build.” Joubert, however, makes 
 no claim to be a great author ; by renouncing all 
 ambition to be this, by not trying to fit his ideas into 
 « house, by making no compromise with words in 
 spite of their difficulty, by being quite single-minded 
 in his pursuit of perfection, perhaps he is enabled to 
 get closer to the truth of the objects of his study, and 
 to be of more service to us by setting before us ideals, 
 than if he had composed a celebrated work. I doubt 
 
286 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [VIIL 
 
 whether, in an elaborate work on the philosophy oi 
 religion, he would have got his ideas about religion 
 to shine, to use his own expression, as they shine when 
 he utters them in perfect freedouL Penetration in 
 these matters is valueless without soul, and soul is 
 valueless without penetration ; both of these are deli- 
 cate qualities, and, even in those who have them, 
 easily lost ; the charm of Joubert is, that he has and 
 keeps both. Let us try and show that he does. 
 
 “ One should be fearful of being wrong in poetry 
 when one thinks differently from the poets, and in 
 religion when one thinks differently from the saints. 
 
 “There is a great difference between taking for 
 idols Mahomet and Luther, and bowing down before 
 Rousseau and Voltaire. People at any rate imagined 
 they were obeying God when they followed Mahomet, 
 and the Scriptures when they hearkened to Luther. 
 And perhaps one ought not too much to disparage 
 that inclination which leads mankind to put into the 
 hands of those whom it thinks the friends of God 
 the direction and government of its heart and mind. 
 It is the subjection to irreligious spirits which alone 
 is fatal, and, in the fullest sense of the word, 
 depraving. 
 
 “May I say it? It is not hard to know God, 
 provided one will not force oneself to define him. 
 
 “ Do not bring into the domain of reasoning that 
 which belongs to our innermost feeling. State truths 
 of sentiment, and do not try to prove them. There 
 is a danger in such proofs ; for in arguing it is neces- 
 aary to treat that which is in question as something 
 
VIII.] 
 
 JOUBERT. 
 
 287 
 
 problematic : now that which we accustom ourselves 
 to treat as problematic ends by appearing to us as 
 really doubtful In things that are visible and palp- 
 able, never prove what is believed already ; in things 
 that are certain and mysterious, — mysterious by their 
 greatness and by their nature, — make people believe 
 them, and do not prove them; in things that are 
 matters of practice and duty, command, and do not 
 explain. ‘Fear God,’ has made many men pious; 
 the proofs of the existence of God have made many 
 men atheists. From the defence springs the attack ; 
 the advocate begets in his hearer a wish to pick 
 holes ; and men are almost always led on, from the 
 desire to contradict the doctor, to the desire to con- 
 tradict the doctrine. Make truth lovely, and do not 
 try to arm her ; mankind will then be far less inclined 
 to contend with her. 
 
 “ Why is even a bad preacher almost always heard 
 by the pious with pleasure ? Because he talks to them 
 about what they love. But you who have to expound 
 religion to the children of this world, you who have 
 to speak to them of that which they once loved per- 
 haps, or which they would be glad to love, — remember 
 that they do not love it yet, and to make them love 
 it take heed to speak with power. 
 
 “ You may do what you like, mankind will believe 
 no one but God ; and he only can persuade mankind 
 who believes that God has spoken to him. No one 
 can give faith unless he has faith ; the persuaded per- 
 suade, as the indulgent disarm. 
 
 “ The only happy people in the world are the good 
 
288 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [thi. 
 
 man, the sage, and the saint ; but the saint is happiei 
 than either of the others, so much is man by his nature 
 formed for sanctity.” 
 
 The same delicacy and penetration which he here 
 shows in speaking of the inward essence of religion, 
 Joubert shows also in speaking of its outward form, 
 and of its manifestation in the world : — 
 
 “Piety is not a religion, though it is the soul of 
 all religions. A man has not a religion simply by 
 having pious inclinations, any more than he has a 
 country simply by having philanthropy. A man has 
 not a country until he is a citizen in a state, until he 
 undertakes to follow and uphold certain laws, to obey 
 certain magistrates, and to adopt certain ways of living 
 and acting. 
 
 “ Eeligion is neither a theology nor a theosophy ; 
 it is more than all this; it is a discipline, a law, a 
 yoke, an indissoluble engagement.” 
 
 Who, again, has ever shown with more truth and 
 beauty the good and imposing side of the wealth and 
 splendour of the Catholic Church, than Joubert in 
 the following passage 1 — 
 
 “The pomps and magnificence with which the 
 Church is reproached are in truth the result and the 
 proof of her incomparable excellence. From whence, 
 let me ask, have come this power of hers and these 
 excessive riches, except from the enchantment into 
 which she threw all the world 1 Eavished with her 
 beauty, millions of men from age to ago kept loading 
 her with gifts, bequests, cessions. She had the talent 
 of making herself loved, and the talent of making men 
 
7Ui.] JOUBERT. 289 
 
 happy. It is that which wrought prodigies for her j 
 it is from thence that she drew her power.” 
 
 “She had the talent of making herself feared ^ — 
 one should add that too, in order to be perfectly just; 
 but Joubert, because he is a true child of light, can 
 see that the wonderful success of the Catholic Church 
 must have been due really to her good rather than to 
 her bad qualities ; to her making herself loved rather 
 than to her making herself feared. 
 
 How striking and suggestive, again, is this remark 
 on the Old and New Testaments : — 
 
 “ The Old Testament teaches the knowledge of good 
 and evil; the Gospel, on the other hand, seems written 
 for the predestinated ; it is the book of innocence. 
 The one is made for earth, the other seems made for 
 heaven. According as the one or the other of these 
 books takes hold of a nation, what may be called the 
 religious Tiumowrs of nations differ.” 
 
 So the British and North American Puritans are 
 the children of the Old Testament, as Joachim of 
 Flora and St. Francis are the children of the New. 
 And does not the following maxim exactly fit the 
 Church of England, of which Joubert certainly never 
 thought when he was writing it ? — “ The austere sects 
 excite the most enthusiasm at first; but the temperate 
 sects have always been the most durable.” 
 
 And these remarks on the Jansenists and Jesuits, 
 interesting in themselves, are still more interesting 
 because they touch matters we cannot well know at 
 first-hand, and which J oubert, an impartial observer, 
 had had the means of studying closely. We are apt 
 VOL. I. u 
 
290 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [viiL 
 
 to think of the Jansenists as having failed by reason 
 of their merits ; Joubert shows us how far their failure 
 was due to their defects : — 
 
 “We ought to lay stress upon what is clear in 
 Scripture, and to pass quickly over what is obscure ; 
 to light up what in Scripture is troubled, by what is 
 serene in it ; what puzzles and checks the reason, by 
 what satisfies the reason. The Jansenists have done 
 just the reverse. They lay stress upon what is un- 
 certain, obscure, afflicting, and they pass lightly over 
 all the rest ; they eclipse the luminous and consoling 
 truths of Scripture, by putting between us and them 
 its opaque and dismal truths. For example, ‘Many 
 are called;’ there is a clear truth : ‘Few are chosen;’ 
 there is an obscure truth. ‘ We are children of wrath ; ’ 
 there is a sombre, cloudy, terrifying truth : ‘We are 
 all the children of God;’ ‘I came not to call the 
 righteous, but sinners to repentance ;’ there are truths 
 which are full of clearness, mildness, serenity, light. 
 The Jansenists trouble our cheerfulness, and shed no 
 cheering ray on our trouble. They are not, however, 
 to be condemned for what they say, because what they 
 say is true ; but they are to be condemned for what 
 they fail to say, for that is true too, — truer, even, than 
 the other ; that is, its truth is easier for us to seize, 
 fuller, rounder, and more complete. Theology, as the 
 Jansenists exhibit her, has but the half of her disk.” 
 
 Again : — 
 
 “ The Jansenists erect ‘ grace ’ into a kind of fourth 
 person of the Trinity. They are, without thinking or 
 intending it, Quaternitarians. St. Paul and St. Augus- 
 
JOUBERT 
 
 291 
 
 nil.] 
 
 tine, too exclusively studied, have done all the mis^ 
 chief. Instead of ‘ grace,’ say help, succour, a divine 
 influence, a dew of heaven ; then one can come to a 
 right understanding. The word ‘ grace ’ is a sort of 
 talisman, all the baneful spell of which can be broken 
 by translating it. The trick of personifying words is 
 a fatal source of mischief in theology.” 
 
 Once more : — 
 
 “The Jansenists tell men to love God; the Jesuits 
 make men love him. The doctrine of these last is full 
 of loosenesses, or, if you will, of errors ; still, — singu- 
 lar as it may seem, it is undeniable, — they are the 
 better directors of souls. 
 
 “The Jansenists have carried into religion more 
 thought than the Jesuits, and they go deeper; they 
 are faster bound with its sacred bonds. They have 
 in their way of thinking an austerity which incessantly 
 constrains the will to keep the path of duty ; all the 
 habits of their understanding, in short, are more 
 Christian. But they seem to love God without 
 affection, and solely from reason, from duty, from 
 justice. The Jesuits, on the other hand, seem to 
 love him from pure inclination; out of admiration, 
 gratitude, tenderness; for the pleasure of loving 
 him, in short. In their books of devotion you find 
 joy, because with the Jesuits nature and religion go 
 hand in hand. In the books of the Jansenists there is a 
 sadness and a moral constraint, because with the Jan- 
 senists religion is for ever trying to put nature in bonds. ’ 
 
 The Jesuits have suffered, and deservedly suffered, 
 plenty of discredit from what Joubert gently calls 
 
ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 292 
 
 [viii. 
 
 their “loosenesses let them have the merit of their 
 amiability. 
 
 The most characteristic thoughts one can quote 
 from any writer are always his thoughts on matters 
 like these; but the maxims of Joubert are purely 
 literary subjects also, have the same purged and 
 subtle delicacy ; they show the same sedulousness in 
 him to preserve perfectly true the balance of his soul. 
 Let me begin with this, which contains a truth too 
 many people fail to perceive : — 
 
 “ Ignorance, which in matters of morals extenuates 
 the crime, is itself, in matters of literature, a crime of 
 the first order.” 
 
 And here is another sentence, worthy of Goethe, 
 to clear the air at one’s entrance into the region of 
 literature : — 
 
 “With the fever of the senses, the delirium of the 
 passions, the weakness of the spirit ; with the storms 
 of the passing time and with the great scourges of 
 human life, — hunger, thirst, dishonour, diseases, and 
 death, — authors may as long as they like go on making 
 novels which shall harrow our hearts ; but the soul 
 says all the while, ‘ You hurt me.’ ” 
 
 And again : — 
 
 “ Fiction has no business to exist unless it is more 
 beautiful than reality. Certainly the monstrosities of 
 fiction may be found in the booksellers’ shops ; you 
 buy them there for a certain number of francs, and 
 you talk of them for a certain number of days ; but 
 they have no place in literature, because in litera- 
 ture the one aim of art is the beautiful. Once 
 
7III.] 
 
 JOUBERT. 
 
 293 
 
 lose sight of that, and you have the mere frightful 
 reality.” 
 
 That is just the right criticism to pass on these 
 “ monstrosities : ” they have no place in literature^ and 
 those who produce them are not really men of letters. 
 One would think that this was enough to deter from 
 such production any man of genuine ambition. But 
 most of us, alas ! are what we must be, not what we 
 ought to be, — not even what we know we ought to be. 
 
 The following, of which the first part reminds one of 
 Wordsworth’s sonnet, “ If thou indeed derive thy light 
 from heaven, ’’excellently defines the true salutary func- 
 tion of literature, and the limits of this function : — 
 
 “ Whether one is an eagle or an ant, in the intel- 
 lectual world, seems to me not to matter much ; the 
 essential thing is to have one’s place marked there, 
 one’s station assigned, and to belong decidedly to a 
 regular and wholesome order. A small talent, if it 
 keeps within its limits and rightly fulfils its task, may 
 reach the goal just as well as a greater one. To 
 accustom mankind to pleasures which depend neither 
 upon the bodily appetites nor upon money, by giving 
 them a taste for the things of the mind, seems to me, 
 in fact, the one proper fruit which nature has meant 
 our literary productions to have. When they have 
 other fruits, it is by accident, and, in general, not for 
 good. Books which absorb our attention to such, a 
 degree that they rob us of all fancy for other books, 
 are absolutely pernicious. In this way they only 
 bring fresh crotchets and sects into the world ; they 
 multiply the great variety of weights, rules, and 
 
294 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [viiL 
 
 measures already existing ; they are morally and 
 politically a nuisance.” 
 
 AVho can read these words and not think of the 
 limiting effect exercised by certain works in certain 
 spheres and for certain periods; exercised even by 
 the works of men of genius or virtue, — by the works 
 of Rousseau, the works of Wesley, the works of 
 Swedenborg ? And what is it which makes the Bible 
 so admirable a book, to be the one book of those who 
 can have only one, but the miscellaneous character of 
 the contents of the Bible 1 
 
 Joubert was all his life a passionate lover of Plato , 
 I hope other lovers of Plato will forgive me for saying 
 that their adored object has never been more truly 
 described than he is here : — 
 
 “ Plato shows us nothing, but he brings brightness 
 with him; he puts light into our eyes, and fills us 
 with a clearness by which all objects afterwards be- 
 come illuminated. He teaches us nothing; but he 
 prepares us, fashions us, and makes us ready to know 
 all. Somehow or other, the habit of reading him 
 augments in us the capacity for discerning and enter- 
 taining whatever fine truths may afterwards present 
 themselves. Like mountain-air, it sharpens our organs, 
 and gives us an appetite for wholesome food.” 
 
 “ Plato loses himself in the void ” (he says again) ; 
 “ but one sees the play of his wings, one hears their 
 rustle.” And the conclusion is : “ It is good to breathe 
 his air, but not to live upon him.” 
 
 As a pendant to the criticism on Plato, this on the 
 French moralist Nicole is excellent : — 
 
nil.] 
 
 JOUBERT. 
 
 295 
 
 “ Nicole is a Pascal without style. It is not what 
 he says which is sublime, but what he thinks; he 
 rises, not by the natural elevation of his own spirit, 
 but by that of his doctrines. One must not look to 
 the form in him, but to the matter, which is exquisite. 
 He ought to be read with a direct view of practice.” 
 English people have hardly ears to hear the praises 
 of Bossuet, and the Bossuet of Joubert is Bossuet at 
 his very best ; but this is a far truer Bossuet than the 
 “declaimer” Bossuet of Lord Macaulay, himself a 
 bom rhetorician, if ever there was one : — 
 
 “Bossuet employs all our idioms, as Homer em 
 ployed all the dialects. The language of kings, of 
 statesmen, and of warriors ; the language of the 
 people and of the student, of the country and of the 
 schools, of the sanctuary and of the courts of law ; 
 the old and the new, the trivial and the stately, the 
 quiet and the resounding, — he turns all to his use ; 
 and out of all this he makes a style, simple, grave, 
 majestic. His ideas are, like his words, varied, — 
 common and sublime together. Times and doctrines 
 in all their multitude were ever before his spirit, as 
 things and words in all their multitude were ever 
 before it. He is not so much a man as a human 
 nature, with the temperance of a saint, the justice of 
 a bishop, the prudence of a doctor, and the might of 
 a great spirit.” 
 
 After this on Bossuet, I must quote a criticism on 
 Racine, to show that Joubert did not indiscriminately 
 worship all the French gods of the grand century : — 
 “ Those who find Racine enough for them are poor 
 
296 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. Lviit 
 
 souls and poor wits ; they are souls and wits which 
 have never got beyond the callow and boarding-school 
 stage. Admirable, as no doubt he is, for his skill in 
 having made poetical the most humdrum sentiments 
 and the most middling sort of passions, he can yet 
 stand us in stead of nobody but himself. He is a 
 superior writer ; and, in literature, that at once puts 
 a man on a pinnacle. But he is not an inimitable 
 writer.” 
 
 And again : “ The talent of Eacine is in his works, 
 but Eacine himself is not there. That is why he 
 himself became disgusted with them.” “Of Eacine, 
 as of his ancients, the genius lay in taste. His ele- 
 gance is perfect, but it is not supreme, like that of 
 Virgil” And, indeed, there is something supreme in 
 an elegance which exercises such a fascination as 
 Virgil’s does ; which makes one return to his poems 
 again and again, long after one thinks one has done 
 with them; which makes them one of those books 
 that, to use Joubert’s words, “lure the reader back to 
 them, as the proverb says good wine lures back the 
 wine-bibber.” And the highest praise Joubert can 
 at last find for Eacine is this, that he is the Virgil of 
 the ignorant ; — “ Racine est le Virgile des ignorants.'^ 
 
 Of Boileau, too, Joubert says : “Boileau is a power- 
 ful poet, but only in the world of half poetry.” How 
 true is that of Pope also ! And he adds : “ Neither 
 Boileau’s poetry nor Eacine’s fiows from the fountain- 
 head.” No Englishman, controverting the exag- 
 gerated French estimate of these poets, could desire 
 to use fitter words. 
 
VIII.] 
 
 JOUBERT. 
 
 297 
 
 I will end with some remarks on Voltaire and 
 Rousseau, remarks in which Joubert eminently shows 
 his prime merit as a critic, — the soundness and com- 
 pleteness of his judgments. I mean that he has the 
 faculty of judging -with all the powers of his mind 
 and soul at work together in due combination ; and 
 how rare is this faculty ! how seldom is it exercised 
 towards writers who so powerfully as Voltaire and 
 Rousseau stimulate and call into activity a single side 
 in us ! 
 
 “Voltaire’s wits came to their maturity twenty 
 years sooner than the wdts of other men, and remained 
 in full vigour thirty years longer. The charm which 
 our style in general gets from our ideas, his ideas get 
 from his style. Voltaire is sometimes afflicted, some- 
 times strongly moved ; but serious he never is. His 
 very graces have an effrontery about them. He had 
 correctness of judgment, liveliness of imagination, 
 nimble wits, quick taste, and a moral sense in ruins. 
 He is the most debauched of spirits, and the worst 
 of him is that one gets debauched along with him. 
 If he had been a wise man, and had had the self- 
 discipline of wisdom, beyond a doubt half his wit 
 would have been gone ; it needed an atmosphere of 
 licence in order to play freely. Those people who 
 read him every day, create for themselves, by an in- 
 vincible law, the necessity of liking him. But those 
 people who, having given up reading him, gaze 
 steadily down upon the influences which his spirit 
 has shed abroad, find themselves in simple justice and 
 duty compelled to detest him. It is impossible to 
 
298 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [tiil 
 
 be satisfied with him, and impossible not to be fasci- 
 nated by him.” 
 
 The literary sense in us is apt to rebel against so 
 severe a judgment on such a charmer of the literary 
 sense as Voltaire, and perhaps we English are not 
 v^ery liable to catch Voltaire’s vices, while of some of 
 his merits we have signal need ; still, as the real 
 definitive judgment on Voltaire, Joubert’s is un- 
 doubtedly the true one. It is nearly identical with 
 that of Goethe. Joubert’s sentence on Rousseau is 
 in some respects more favourable : — 
 
 “That weight in the speaker (auctorifas) which 
 the ancients talk of, is to be found in Bossuet more 
 than in any other French author ; Pascal, too, has it, 
 and La Bruy^re ; even Rousseau has something of it, 
 but Voltaire not a particle. I can understand how a 
 Rousseau — I mean a Rousseau cured of his faults — 
 might at the present day do much good, and may 
 even come to be greatly wanted ; but under no cir- 
 ciunstances can a Voltaire be of any use.” 
 
 The peculiar power of Rousseau’s style has never 
 been better hit oflf than in the following passage : — 
 
 “ Rousseau imparted, if I may so speak, bowels oj 
 feeling to the words he used {donna des entrailles b, tons 
 les mots\ and poured into them such a charm, sweet- 
 ness so penetrating, energy so puissant, that his writ 
 ings have an effect upon the soul something like that 
 of those illicit pleasures which steal away our taste 
 and intoxicate our reason.” 
 
 The final judgment, however, is severe, and justly 
 
 severe : — 
 
mi.j 
 
 JOUEEKT. 
 
 299 
 
 “ Life without actions ; life entirely resolved into 
 affections and half-sensual thoughts ; do-nothingness 
 setting up for a virtue ; cowardliness with voluptuous- 
 ness ; fierce pride with nullity underneath it ; the 
 strutting phrase of the most sensual of vagabonds, 
 who has made his system of philosophy and can give 
 it eloquently forth : there is Kousseau ! A piety in 
 which there is no religion ; a severity which brings 
 conmption with it ; a dogmatism which serves to ruin 
 all authority : there is Rousseau’s philosophy ! To 
 all tender, ardent, and elevated natures, I say : Only 
 Rousseau can detach you from religion, and only true 
 religion can cure you of Rousseau,” 
 
 I must yet find room, before I end, for one at least 
 of Joubert’s sayings on political matters ; here, too, 
 the whole man shows himself ; and here, too, the 
 affinity with Coleridge is very remarkable. How 
 true, how true in France especially, is this remark 
 on the contrasting direction taken by the aspira- 
 tions of the community in ancient and in modem 
 states ; — 
 
 “ The ancients were attached to their country by 
 three things, — their temples, their tombs, and their 
 forefathers. The two great bonds which united them 
 to their government were the bonds of habit and 
 antiquity. With the modems, hope and the love of 
 novelty have produced a total change. The ancients 
 said our forefathers^ we say posterity : we do not, like 
 them, love our patria, that is to say, the country and 
 the laws of our fathers, rather we love the laws and 
 the country of oui* children ; the charm we are most 
 
300 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [viu 
 
 sensible to is the charm of the future, and not the 
 charm of the past” 
 
 And how keen and true is this criticism on the 
 changed sense of the word “ liberty” : — 
 
 “ A great many words have changed their mean- 
 ing. The word liherty^ for example, had at bottom 
 among the ancients the same meaning as the word 
 dominion. I would he free meant, in the mouth of the 
 ancient, I would take part in governing or administering 
 the State ; in the mouth of a modem it means, I would 
 he independent. The word liberty has with us a moral 
 sense ; with them its sense was purely political.” 
 
 Joubert had lived through the French Eevolution, 
 and to the modem cry for liberty he was prone to 
 answer : — 
 
 “ Let your cry be for free souls rather even than 
 for free men. Moral liberty is the one vitally im- 
 portant liberty, the one liberty which is indispensable ; 
 the other liberty is good and salutary only so far as 
 it favours this. Subordination is in itself a better 
 thing than independence. The one implies order 
 and arrangement ; the other implies only self-suffi- 
 ciency with isolation. The one means harmony, the 
 other a single tone ; the one is the whole, the other 
 is but the part.” 
 
 “ Liberty ! liberty ! ” he cries again ; “in all things 
 let us have justice^ and then we shall have enough 
 liberty.” 
 
 Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough 
 liberty ! The wise man will never refuse to echo 
 those words ; but then, such is the imperfection of 
 
VIII.] 
 
 JOUBERT. 
 
 301 
 
 human governments, that almost always, in order to 
 get justice, one has first to secure liberty. 
 
 I do not hold up J oubert as a very astonishing and 
 powerful genius, but rather as a delightful and edify- 
 ing genius. I have not cared to exhibit him as a 
 sayer of brilliant epigrammatic things, such things as 
 “ Notre vie est du vent tissu . . . . les dettes abr6- 
 gent la vie ... . celui qui a de Timagination sans 
 Erudition a des ailes et n’a pas de pieds {Owr life is 
 woven wind .... debts take from life the man 
 
 of imagination without learning has wings and no feet)f 
 though for such sayings he is famous. In the first 
 place, the French language is in itself so favourable a 
 vehicle for such sayings, that the making them in it 
 has the less merit ; at least half the merit ought to 
 go, not to the maker of the saying, but to the French 
 language. In the second place, the peculiar beauty 
 of Joubert is not there ; it is not in what is exclusively 
 intellectual, — it is in the union of soul with intellect, 
 and in the delightful, satisfying result which this 
 union produces. “Vivre, c’est penser et sentir son 
 ame . . . . le bonheur est de sentir son ame bonne 
 .... toute v4rit4 nue et crue n’a pas assez pass4 par 
 Tame .... les hommes ne sont justes qu’envers 
 ceux qu’ils aiment {The essence of life lies in thinking and 
 being conscious of onds soul .... happiness is the sense 
 of one’s soul being good , . . > if a truth is nude and 
 crude, that is a proof it has not been steeped long enough 
 in the soul ; . man cannot even be just to his neigh- 
 
 bour, unless he loves him) it is much rather in sayings 
 like these that Joubert’s best and innermost nature 
 
302 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [viil 
 
 manifests itself. He is the most prepossessing and 
 convincing of witnesses to the good of loving light. 
 Because he sincerely loved light, and did not prefer 
 to it any little private darkness of his own, he found 
 light; his eye was single, and therefore his whole 
 body was full of light. And because he was full of 
 light, he was also full of happiness. In spite of his 
 infirmities, in spite of his sufierings, in spite of his 
 obscurity, he was the happiest man alive ; his life 
 was as charming as his thoughts. For certainly it is 
 natural that the love of light, which is already, in 
 some measure, the possession of light, should irradiate 
 and beatify the whole life of him who has it. There 
 is something unnatural and shocking where, as in the 
 case of Coleridge, it does not. Joubert pains us by 
 no such contradiction ; “ the same penetration of 
 spirit which made him such delightful company to his 
 friends, served also to make him perfect in his own 
 personal life, by enabling him always to perceive and 
 do what was right ; ” he loved and sought light till 
 he became so habituated to it, so accustomed to the 
 joyful testimony of a good conscience, that, to use his 
 own words, “he could no longer exist without this, 
 and was obliged to live without reproach if he would 
 live without misery.” 
 
 Joubert was not famous while he lived, and he will 
 not be famous now that he is dead. But, before we 
 pity him for this, let us be sure what we mean, in lite- 
 rature, by famous. There are the famous men of genius 
 in literature, — the Homers, Dantes, Shakspeares: 
 of them we need not speak ; their praise is for ever 
 
JOUBERT. 
 
 303 
 
 ▼'ll!.] 
 
 and ever. Then there are the famous men of ability 
 in hterature : their praise is in their own generation. 
 And what makes this difference ? The work of the 
 two orders of men is at the bottom the same , — a criti- 
 cism of life. The end and aim of all literature, if one 
 considers it attentively, is, in truth, nothing but that. 
 But the criticism which the men of genius pass upon 
 human life is permanently acceptable to mankind ; 
 the criticism which the men of ability pass upon 
 human life is transitorily acceptable. Between Shak- 
 speare’s criticism of human life and Scribe’s the differ- 
 ence is there ; — the one is permanently acceptable, 
 the other transitorily. Whence then, I repeat, this 
 difference? It is that the acceptableness of Shak- 
 speare’s criticism depends upon its inherent truth ; the 
 acceptableness of Scribe’s upon its suiting itself, by 
 its subject-matter, ideas, mode of treatment, to the 
 taste of the generation that hears it. But the taste 
 and ideas of one generation are not those of the next. 
 This next generation in its turn arrives ; — first its 
 sharpshooters, its quick-witted, audacious light troops ] 
 then the elephantine main body. The imposing array 
 of its predecessor it confidently assails, riddles it with 
 bullets, passes over its body. It goes hard then with 
 many once popular reputations, with many authorities 
 once oracular. Only two kinds of authors are safe in 
 the general havoc. The first kind are the great 
 abounding fountains of truth, whose criticism of life 
 is a source of illumination and joy to the whole human 
 race for ever, — the Homers, the Shakspeares. These 
 are the sacred personages, whom all civilised warfare 
 
304 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [viii 
 
 respects. The second are those whom the out-skir- 
 mishers of the new generation, its forerunners, — quick- 
 witted soldiers, as I have said, the select of the army, 
 — recognise, though the bulk of their comrades be- 
 hind might not, as of the same family and character 
 with the sacred personages, exercising like them an 
 immortal function, and like them inspiring a permanent 
 interest. They snatch them up, and set them in a 
 place of shelter, where the on-coming multitude may 
 not overwhelm them. These are the Jouberts. They 
 will never, like the Shakspeares, command the hom- 
 age of the multitude ; but they are safe ; the multi- 
 tude will not trample them down. Except these two 
 kinds, no author is safe. Let us consider, for example, 
 Joubert’s famous contemporary. Lord Jeffrey. All 
 his vivacity and accomplishment avail him nothing ; 
 of the true critic he had in an eminent degree no 
 quality, except one, — curiosity. Curiosity he had, 
 but he had no gift for truth; he cannot illuminate 
 and rejoice us; no intelligent out-skirmisher of the 
 new generation cares about him, cares to put him in 
 safety ; at this moment we are all passing over his 
 body. Let us consider a greater than J effrey, a critic 
 whose reputation still stands firm, — will stand, many 
 people think, for ever, — the great apostle of the 
 Philistines, Lord Macaulay. Lord Macaulay was, as 
 I have already said, a bom rhetorician; a splendid 
 rhetorician doubtless, and, beyond that, an English 
 rhetorician also, an honest rhetorician ; still, beyond 
 the apparent rhetorical truth of things he never could 
 penetrate ; for their vital trath, for what the French 
 
VIII.] 
 
 JOUBERT 
 
 305 
 
 call the vraie vM6^ he had absolutely no organ; 
 therefore his reputation, brilliant as it is, is not secure. 
 Khetoric so good as his excites and gives pleasure ; 
 but by pleasure alone you cannot permanently bind 
 men’s spirits to you. Truth illuminates and gives 
 joy, and it is by the bond of joy, not of pleasure, that 
 men’s spirits are indissolubly held. As Lord Mac- 
 aulay’s own generation dies out, as a new generation 
 arrives, without those ideas and tendencies of its pre- 
 decessor which Lord Macaulay so deeply shared and 
 so happily satisfied, will he give the same pleasure 1 
 and, if he ceases to give this, has he enough of light 
 in him to make him last 1 Pleasure the new genera- 
 tion will get from its own novel ideas and tendencies ; 
 but light is another and a rarer thing, and must be 
 treasured wherever it can be found. Will Macaulay 
 be saved, in the sweep and pressure of time, for his 
 light’s sake, as Johnson has already been saved by 
 two generations, Joubert by one? I think it very 
 doubtful. But for a spirit of any delicacy and dig- 
 nity, what a fate, if he could foresee it ! to be an 
 oracle for one generation, and then of little or no 
 account for ever. How far better, to pass with scant 
 notice through one’s own generation, but to be singled 
 out and preserved by the very iconoclasts of the next, 
 then in their turn by those of the next, and so, like 
 the lamp of life itself, to be handed on from one 
 generation to another in safety ! This is Joubert’s 
 lot, and it is a very enviable one. The new men of 
 the new generations, while they let the dust deepen 
 on a thousand Laharpes, will say of him : “ He lived 
 VOL. L X 
 
306 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [VIIL 
 
 in the Philistine’s day, in a place and time when 
 almost every idea current in literature had the mark 
 of Dagon upon it, and not the mark of the children 
 of light. Nay, the children of light were as yet 
 hardly so much as heard of : the Canaanite was then 
 in the land. Still, there were even then a few, who, 
 nourished on some secret tradition, or illumined, 
 perhaps, by a divine inspiration, kept aloof from the 
 reigning superstitions, never bowed the knee to the 
 gods of Canaan ; and one of these few was called 
 JoubsTt. ” 
 
IX. 
 
 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 •' By the sentence of the angels, by the decree of the 
 saints, we anathematise, cut off, curse, and execrate 
 Baruch Spinoza, in the presence of these sacred books 
 with the six hundred and thirteen precepts which are 
 written therein, with the anathema wherewith Joshua 
 anathematised Jericho ; with the cursing wherewith 
 Elisha cursed the children ; and with all the cursings 
 which are written in the Book of the Law : cursed he 
 he by day, and cursed by night ; cursed when he 
 lieth down, and cursed when he riseth up ; cursed 
 when he goeth out, and cursed when he cometh in ; 
 the Lord pardon him never ; the wrath and fury of 
 the Lord burn upon this man, and bring upon him all 
 the curses which are written in the Book of the Law. 
 The Lord blot out his name under heaven. The 
 Lord set him apart for destruction from all the 
 tribes of Israel, with all the curses of the firmament 
 which are written in the Book of this Law. . . , 
 There shall no man speak to him, no man write 
 to him, no man show him any kindness, no man stay 
 
308 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [ix 
 
 under the same roof with him, no man come nigh 
 him.” 
 
 With these amenities, the current compliments of 
 theological parting, the Jews of the Portuguese syna- 
 gogue at Amsterdam took in 1656 (and not in 1660, 
 as has till now been commonly supposed) their leave 
 of their erring brother, Baruch or Benedict Spinoza. 
 They remained children of Israel, and he became a 
 child of modern Europe. 
 
 That was in 1656, and Spinoza died in 1677, at 
 the early age of forty-four. Glory had not found 
 him out. His short life — a life of unbroken diligence, 
 kindliness, and purity — was passed in seclusion. But 
 in spite of that seclusion, in spite of the shortness of 
 his career, in spite of the hostility of the dispensers 
 of renown in the 18th century, — of Voltaire’s dis- 
 paragement and Bayle’s detraction, — in spite of the 
 repellent form which he has given to his principal 
 work, in spite of the exterior semblance of a rigid 
 dogmatism alien to the most essential tendencies of 
 modem philosophy, in spite, finally, of the immense 
 weight of disfavour cast upon him by the long- 
 repeated charge of atheism, Spinoza’s name has 
 silently risen in importance, the man and his work 
 have attracted a steadily increasing notice, and bid 
 fair to become soon what they deserve to become, — 
 in the history of modem philosophy the central point 
 of interest. An avowed translation of one of his 
 works, — his Tractatus Theologico-Politicm ^ — has at last 
 made its appearance in English. It is the principal 
 work which Spinoza published in his lifetime ; his 
 
SPINOZA AND THE BIBLK 
 
 309 
 
 «.] 
 
 book on ethics, the work on which his fame rests, is 
 posthumous. 
 
 The English translator has not done his task well 
 Of the character of his version there can, I am afraid, 
 be no doubt ; one such passage as the following is 
 decisive : — 
 
 “ I confess that, while with them (the theologians) 1 
 have never been able sufficiently to admire the unfathomed 
 mysteries of Scripture, I have still found them giving 
 utterance to nothing but Aristotelian and Platonic specu- 
 lations, artfully dressed up and cunningly accommo- 
 dated to Holy AVrit, lest the speakers should show 
 themselves too plainly to belong to the sect of the 
 Grecian heathens. Nor was it enough for these men to 
 discourse with the Greeks; they have further taken to 
 raving with the Hebrew prophets. ” 
 
 This professes to be a translation of these words 
 of Spinoza : “ Fateor, eos nunquam satis mirari 
 potuisse Scripturae profundissima mysteria ; attamen 
 praeter Aristotelicorum vel Platonicorum speculationes 
 nihil docuisse video, atque his, ne gentiles sectari 
 viderentur, Scripturam accommodaverunt. Non satis 
 his fuit cum Graecis insanire, sed prophetas cum iis- 
 dem delira visse voluerunt.” After one such specimen 
 of a translator’s force, the experienced reader has a 
 sort of instinct that he may as well close the book at 
 once, with a smile or a sigh, according as he happens 
 to be a follower of the weeping or of the laughing 
 philosopher. If, in spite of this instinct, he persists 
 in going on with the English version of the Tractatus 
 Theologico-PoliticuSy he will find many more such 
 
310 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [ix. 
 
 specimens. It is not, however, my intention to fill 
 my space with these, or with strictures upon their 
 author. I prefer to remark, that he renders a service 
 to literary history by pointing out, in his preface, how 
 “ to Bayle may be traced the disfavour in which the 
 name of Spinoza was so long held ; ” that, in his 
 observations on the system of the Church of England, 
 he shows a laudable freedom from the prejudices of 
 ordinary English Liberals of that advanced school to 
 which he clearly belongs ; and lastly, that, though he 
 manifests little familiarity with Latin, he seems to 
 have considerable familiarity with philosophy, and to 
 be well able to follow and comprehend speculative 
 reasoning. Let me advise him to unite his forces 
 with those of some one who has that accurate know- 
 ledge of Latin which he himself has not, and then, 
 perhaps, of that union a really good translation of 
 Spinoza will be the result. And, having given him 
 this advice, let me again turn, for a little, to the 
 Tractatus Theologico-FoUticus itself. 
 
 This work, as I have already said, is a work on 
 the interpretation of Scripture, — it treats of the 
 Bible. What was it exactly which Spinoza thought 
 about the Bible and its inspiration ^ That will be, at 
 the present moment, the central point of interest for 
 the English readers of his Treatise. Now, it is to be 
 observed, that just on this very point the Treatise, 
 interesting and remarkable as it is, will fail to satisfy 
 the reader. It is important to seize this notion quite 
 firmly, and not to quit hold of it while one is reading 
 Spinoza’s work. The scope of that work is this. 
 
rx.] SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 311 
 
 Spinoza sees that the life and practice of Christian 
 nations professing the religion of the Bible, are not 
 the due fruits of the religion of the Bible ; he sees 
 only hatred, bitterness, and strife, where he might 
 have expected to see love, joy, and peace in believing ; 
 and he asks himself the reason of this. The reason 
 is, he says, that these people misunderstand their 
 Bible. Well, then, is his conclusion, I will write a 
 Tractatus Theologico-Foliticus. I will show these people, 
 that, taking the Bible for granted, taking it to be all 
 which it asserts itself to be, taking it to have all the 
 authority which it claims, it is not what they imagine 
 it to be, it does not say what they imagine it to say. 
 I will show them what it really does say, and I will 
 show them that they will do well to accept this real 
 teaching of the Bible, instead of the phantom with 
 which they have so long been cheated. I will show 
 their governments that they will do well to remodel 
 the national churches, to make of them institutions 
 informed with the spirit of the true Bible, instead of 
 institutions informed with the spirit of this false 
 phantom. 
 
 The comments of men, Spinoza said, had been 
 foisted into the Christian religion ; the pure teaching 
 of God had been lost sight of. He determined, there- 
 fore, to go again to the Bible, to read it over and 
 over with a perfectly unprejudiced mind, and to 
 accept nothing as its teaching which it did not clearly 
 teach. He began by constructing a method, or set of 
 conditions indispensable for the adequate interpreta- 
 tion of Scripture. These conditions are such, he 
 
312 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [IX. 
 
 points out, that a perfectly adequate interpretation ol 
 Scripture is now impossible. For example, to under- 
 stand any prophet thoroughly, we ought to know the 
 life, character, and pursuits of that prophet, under 
 what circumstances his book was composed, and in 
 what state and through what hands it has come down 
 to us ; and, in general, most of this we cannot now 
 know. Still, the main sense of the Books of Scrip- 
 ture may be clearly seized by us. Himself a Jew 
 with all the learning of his nation, and a man of the 
 highest natural powers, Spinoza had in the difficult 
 task of seizing this sense every aid which special 
 knowledge or pre-eminent faculties could supply. 
 
 In what then, he asks, does Scripture, interpreted 
 by its own aid, and not by the aid of Rabbinical 
 traditions or Greek philosophy, allege its own divinity 
 to consists In a revelation given by God to the 
 prophets. Now all knowledge is a divine revelation ; 
 but prophecy, as represented in Scripture, is one of 
 which the laws of human nature, considered in them- 
 selves alone, cannot be the cause. Therefore nothing 
 must be asserted about it, except what is clearly 
 declared by the prophets themselves; for they are 
 our only source of knowledge on a matter which does 
 not fall within the scope of our ordinary knowing 
 faculties. But ignorant people, not knowing the 
 Hebrew genius and phraseology, and not attending to 
 the circumstances of the speaker, often imagine the 
 prophets to assert things which they do not. 
 
 The prophets clearly declare themselves to have 
 received the revelation of God through the means of 
 
cxj SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 313 
 
 words and images ; — not, as Christ, through imme* 
 diate communication of the mind with the mind of 
 God. Therefore the prophets excelled other men by 
 the power and vividness of their representing and 
 imagining faculty, not by the perfection of their 
 mind. This is why they perceived almost everything 
 through figures, and express themselves so variously, 
 and so improperly, concerning the nature of God. 
 Moses imagined that God could be seen, and attri- 
 buted to him the passions of anger and jealousy ; 
 Micaiah imagined him sitting on a throne, with the 
 host of heaven on his right and left hand ; Daniel as 
 an old man, with a white garment and white hair ; 
 Ezekiel as a fire ; the disciples of Christ thought they 
 saw the Spirit of God in the form of a dove ; the 
 apostles in the form of fiery tongues. 
 
 Whence, then, could the prophets be certain of the 
 truth of a revelation which they received through the 
 imagination, and not by a mental process ? — for only 
 an idea can carry the sense of its own certainty along 
 with it, not an imagination. To make them certain 
 of the truth of what was revealed to them, a reason- 
 ing process came in ; they had to rely on the testi- 
 mony of a sign ; and (above all) on the testimony of 
 their own conscience, that they were good men, and 
 spoke for God’s sake. Either testimony was incom- 
 plete without the other. Even the good prophet 
 needed for his message the confirmation of a sign ; 
 but the bad prophet, the utterer of an immoral 
 doctrine, had no certainty for his doctrine, no truth 
 in it, even though he confirmed it by a sign. The 
 
314 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [IX. 
 
 testimony of a good conscience was, therefore, the 
 prophet’s grand source of certitude. Even this, how- 
 ever, was only a moral certitude, not a mathematical ; 
 for no man can be perfectly sure of his own goodness. 
 
 The power of imagining, the power of feeling 
 what goodness is, and the habit of practising good- 
 ness, were therefore the sole essential qualifications 
 of a true prophet. But for the purpose of the 
 message, the revelation, which God designed him to 
 convey, these qualifications were enough. The sum 
 and substance of this revelation was simply : Believe 
 in God, and lead a good life. To be the organ of this 
 revelation, did not make a man more learned ; it left 
 his scientific knowledge as it found it. This explains 
 the contradictory and speculatively false opinions 
 about God, and the laws of nature, which the patri- 
 archs, the prophets, the apostles entertained. Abra- 
 ham and the patriarchs knew God only as El Sadai, 
 the power which gives to every man that which 
 sufiices him; Moses knew him as Jehovah, a self- 
 existent being, but imagined him with the passions of 
 a man. Samuel imagined that God could not repent 
 of his sentences; Jeremiah, that he could. Joshua, 
 on a day of great victory, the ground being white 
 with hail, seeing the daylight last longer than usual, 
 and imaginatively seizing this as a special sign of the 
 help divinely promised to him, declared that the sun 
 was standing still. To be obeyers of God themselves, 
 and inspired leaders of others to obedience and good 
 life, did not make Abraham and Moses metaphysi- 
 cians, or Joshua a natural philosopher. His revelation 
 
IX.] 
 
 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 315 
 
 no more changed the speculative opinions of each 
 prophet, than it changed his temperament or style. 
 The wrathful Elisha required the natural sedative of 
 music, before he could be the messenger of good 
 fortune to Jehoram. The high-bred Isaiah and 
 Nahum have the style proper to their condition, and 
 the rustic Ezekiel and Amos the style proper to 
 theirs. We are not therefore bound to pay heed to 
 the speculative opinions of this or that prophet, for 
 in uttering these he spoke as a mere man : only in 
 exhorting his hearers to obey God and lead a good 
 life was he the organ of a divine revelation. 
 
 To know and love God is the highest blessedness 
 of man, and of all men alike ; to this all mankind are 
 called, and not any one nation in particular. The 
 divine law, properly so named, is the method of life 
 for attaining this height of human blessedness : this 
 law is universal, written in the heart, and one for all 
 mankind. Human law is the method of life for 
 attaining and preserving temporal security and pro- 
 sperity : this law is dictated by a lawgiver, and every 
 nation has its own. In the case of the Jews, this 
 law was dictated, by revelation, through the prophets ; 
 its fundamental precept was to obey God and to keep 
 his commandments, and it is therefore, in a secondary 
 sense, called divine ; but it was, nevertheless, framed 
 in respect of temporal things only. Even the truly 
 moral and divine precept of this law, to practise for 
 God’s sake justice and mercy towards one’s neigh- 
 bour, meant for the Hebrew of the Old Testament 
 his Hebrew neighbour only, and had respect to the 
 
316 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [ix 
 
 concord and stability of the Hebrew commonwealth 
 The Jews were to obey God and to keep his corn* 
 mandments, that they might continue long in the land 
 given to them, and that it might be well with them 
 there. Their election was a temporal one, and lasted 
 only so long as their State. It is now over ; and the 
 only election the Jews now have is that of the pious^ 
 the remnant which takes place, and has always taken 
 place, in every other nation also. Scripture itself 
 teaches that there is a universal divine law, that this 
 is common to all nations alike, and is the law which 
 truly confers eternal blessedness. Solomon, the wisest 
 of the Jews, knew this law, as the few wisest men in 
 all nations have ever known it ; but for the mass of 
 the Jews, as for the mass of mankind everywhere, 
 this law was hidden, and they had no notion of its 
 moral action, its vera vita which conducts to eternal 
 blessedness, except so far as this action was enjoined 
 upon them by the prescriptions of their temporal law. 
 When the ruin of their State brought with it the ruin 
 of their temporal law, they would have lost altogether 
 their only clue to eternal blessedness. 
 
 Christ came when that fabric of the Jewish State, 
 for the sake of which the Jewish law existed, was 
 about to fall ; and he proclaimed the universal divine 
 law. A certain moral action is prescribed by this 
 law, as a certain moral action was prescribed by the 
 Jewish law : but he who truly conceives the universal 
 divine law conceives God’s decrees adequately as 
 eternal truths, and for him moral action has liberty 
 and self-knowledge ; while the prophets of the Jewish 
 
IX.] 
 
 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 317 
 
 law inadequately conceived God’s decrees as mere 
 rules and commands, and for them moral action had 
 no liberty and no self-knowledge. Christ, who beheld 
 the decrees of God as God himself beholds them, — 
 as eternal truths, — proclaimed the love of God and 
 the love of our neighbour as commands^ only because 
 of the ignorance of the multitude : to those to whom 
 it was “ given to know the mysteries of the kingdom 
 of God,” he announced them, as he himself perceived 
 them, as eternal truths. And the apostles, like Christ, 
 spoke to many of their hearers “ as unto carnal not 
 spiritual ; ” presented to them, that is, the love of God 
 and their neighbour as a divine command authenticated 
 by the life and death of Christ, not as an eternal idea 
 of reason carrying its own warrant along with it. 
 The presentation of it as this latter their hearers 
 “were not able to bear.” The apostles, moreover, 
 though they preached and confirmed their doctrine by 
 signs as prophets, wrote their Epistles, not as prophets, 
 but as doctors and reasoners. The essentials of their 
 doctrine, indeed, they took not from reason, but, like 
 the prophets, from fact and revelation ; they preached 
 belief in God and goodness of life as a catholic religion, 
 existing by virtue of the passion of Christ, as the pro- 
 phets had preached belief in God and goodness of life 
 as a national religion existing by virtue of the Mosaic 
 covenant : but while the prophets announced their 
 message in a form purely dogmatical, the apostles 
 developed theirs with the forms of reasoning and 
 argumentation, according to each apostle’s ability and 
 way of thinking, and as they might best commend 
 
318 ESSAYS m CRITICISM. [ix. 
 
 their message to their hearers; and for their reasonings 
 they themselves claim no divine authority, submitting 
 them to the judgment of their hearers. Thus each 
 apostle built essential religion on a non-essential 
 foundation of his own, and, as St. Paul says, avoided 
 building on the foundations of another apostle, which 
 might be quite different from his own. Hence the 
 discrepancies between the doctrine of one apostle and 
 another, — between that of St. Paul, for example, and 
 that of St. James ; but these discrepancies are in the 
 non-essentials not given to them by revelation, and 
 not in essentials. Human churches, seizing these dis- 
 crepant non-essentials as essentials, one maintaining 
 one of them, another another, have filled the world 
 with unprofitable disputes, have “ turned the Church 
 into an academy, and religion into a science, or rather 
 a wrangling,” and have fallen into endless schism. 
 
 What, then, are the essentials of religion according 
 both to the Old and to the New Testaments Very 
 few and very simple. The precept to love God and 
 our neighbour. The precepts of the first chapter of 
 Isaiah: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the 
 evil of your doings from before mine eyes ; cease to 
 do evil ; learn to do weU ; seek judgment ; relieve the 
 oppressed; judge the fatherless; plead for the widow.” 
 The precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, which add 
 to the foregoing the injunction that we should cease 
 to do evil and learn to do well, not to our brethren 
 and fellow-citizens only, but to all mankind. It is by 
 following these precepts that belief in God is to be 
 shown ; if we believe in him, we shall keep his com- 
 
IX.] 
 
 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 319 
 
 mandment ; and this is his commandment, that we 
 love one another. It is because it contains these pre- 
 cepts that the Bible is properly called the Word of 
 God, in spite of its containing much that is mere 
 history, and, like all history, sometimes true, some 
 times false; in spite of its containing much that is 
 mere reasoning, and, like all reasoning, sometimes 
 sound, sometimes hollow. These precepts are also 
 the precepts of the universal divine law written in 
 our hearts ; and it is only by this that the divinity of 
 Scripture is established ; — by its containing, namely, 
 precepts identical with those of this inly- written and 
 self-proving law. This law was in the world, as St. 
 John says, before the doctrine of Moses or the doctrine 
 of Christ. And what need was there, then, for these 
 doctrines ? Because the world at large “ knew not ” 
 this original divine law, in which precepts are ideas, 
 and the belief in God the knowledge and contempla- 
 tion of him. Reason gives us this law, reason tells 
 us that it leads to eternal blessedness, and that those 
 who follow it have no need of any other. But reason 
 could not have told us that the moral action of the 
 universal divine law, — followed not from a sense of 
 its intrinsic goodness, truth, and necessity, but simply 
 in proof of obedience (for both the Old and New 
 Testament are but one long discipline of obedience), 
 simply because it is so commanded by Moses in virtue 
 of the covenant, simply because it is so commanded 
 by Christ in virtue of his life and passion, — can lead 
 to eternal blessedness, which means, for reason, eternal 
 knowledge. Reason could not have told us this, and 
 
320 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [rt 
 
 this is what the Bible tells us. This is that “ thing 
 which had been kept secret since the foundation of 
 the world.” It is thus that by means of the foolish- 
 ness of the world God confounds the wise, and with 
 things that are not brings to nought things that are. 
 Of the truth of the promise thus made to obedience 
 without knowledge, we can have no mathematical 
 certainty ; for we can have a mathematical certainty 
 only of things deduced by reason from elements which 
 she in herself possesses. But we can have a moral 
 certainty of it ; a certainty such as the prophets had 
 themselves, arising out of the goodness and pureness 
 of those to whom this revelation has been made, and 
 rendered possible for us by its contradicting no prin- 
 ciples of reason. It is a great comfort to believe it ; 
 because “ as it is only the very small minority who 
 can pursue a virtuous life by the sole guidance of 
 reason, we should, unless we had this testimony of 
 Scripture, be in doubt respecting the salvation of 
 nearly the whole human race.” 
 
 It follows from this that philosophy has her own 
 independent sphere, and theology hers, and that 
 neither has the right to invade and try to subdue the 
 other. Theology demands perfect obedience, philo- 
 sophy perfect knowledge : the obedience demanded 
 by theology and the knowledge demanded by philo- 
 sophy are alike saving. As speculative opinions about 
 God, theology requires only such as are indispensable 
 to the reality of this obedience ; the belief that God 
 is, that he is a rewarder of them that seek him, and 
 that the proof of seeking him is a good life. These 
 
SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 321 
 
 rx.] 
 
 are the fundamentals of faith, and they are so clear 
 and simple that none of the inaccuracies provable in 
 the Bible narrative the least affect them, and they 
 have indubitably come to us uncorrupted. He who 
 holds them may make, as the patriarchs and prophets 
 did, other speculations about God most erroneous, 
 and yet their faith is complete and saving. Nay, 
 beyond these fundamentals, speculative opinions are 
 pious or impious, not as they are true or false, but as 
 they confirm or shake the believer in the practice of 
 obedience. The truest speculative opinion about the 
 nature of God is impious if it makes its holder re- 
 bellious ; the falsest speculative opinion is pious if it 
 makes him obedient. Governments should never render 
 themselves the tools of ecclesiastical ambition by pro- 
 mulgating as fundamentals of the national Church’s 
 faith more than these, and should concede the fullest 
 liberty of speculation. 
 
 But the multitude, which respects only what 
 astonishes, terrifies, and overwhelms it, by no means 
 takes this simple view of its own religion. To the 
 multitude, religion seems imposing only when it is 
 subversive of reason, confirmed by miracles, conveyed 
 in documents materially sacred and infallible, and 
 dooming to damnation all without its pale. But this 
 religion of the -multitude is not the religion which a 
 true interpretation of Scripture finds in Scripture. 
 Reason teUs us that a miracle, — understanding by a 
 miracle a breach of the laws of natime, — is impossible, 
 and that to think it possible is to dishonour God ; for 
 the laws of nature are the laws of God, and to say 
 
 VOLu I. 
 
 Y 
 
322 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [itl 
 
 that God violates the laws of nature is to say that 
 he violates his own nature. Eeason sees, too, that 
 miracles can never attain their professed object, — 
 that of bringing us to a higher knowledge of God; 
 since our knowledge of God is raised only by perfect- 
 ing and clearing our conceptions, and the alleged 
 design of miracles is to baffle them. But neither 
 does Scripture anywhere assert, as a general tmth, 
 that miracles are possible. Indeed, it asserts the 
 contrary; for Jeremiah declares that Nature follows 
 an invariable order. Scripture, however, like Nature 
 herself, does not lay down speculative propositions 
 {Scriptum definitiones non iradit, ut nec etiam natura). 
 It relates matters in such an order and with such 
 phraseology as a speaker (often not perfectly instructed 
 himself) who wanted to impress his hearers with a 
 lively sense of God’s greatness and goodness would 
 naturally employ; as Moses, for instance, relates to 
 the Israelites the passage of the Eed Sea without any 
 mention of the east wind which attended it, and 
 which is brought accidentally to our knowledge in 
 another place. So that to know exactly what Scrip- 
 ture means in the relation of each seeming miracle, 
 we ought to know (besides the tropes and phrases of 
 the Hebrew language) the circumstances, and also, — 
 since every one is swayed in his manner of presenting 
 facts by his own preconceived opinions, and we have 
 seen what those of the prophets were, — the precon- 
 ceived opinions of each speaker. But this mode of 
 interpreting Scripture is fatal to the vulgar notion of 
 its verbal inspiration, of a sanctity and absolute truth 
 
rx.] 
 
 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 323 
 
 in all the words and sentences of which it is com- 
 posed. This vulgar notion is, indeed, a palpable 
 error. It is demonstrable from the internal testimony 
 of the Scriptures themselves, that the books from the 
 first of the Pentateuch to the last of Kings were put 
 together, after the first destruction of Jerusalem, by 
 a compiler (probably Ezra) who designed to relate 
 the history of the Jewish people from its origin to 
 that destruction; it is demonstrable, moreover, that 
 the compiler did not put his last hand to the work, 
 but left it with its extracts from various and conflict- 
 ing sources sometimes unreconciled, left it with errors 
 of text and unsettled readings. The prophetic books 
 are mere fragments of the prophets, collected by the 
 Rabbins where they could find them, and inserted in 
 the Canon according to their discretion. They, at 
 first, proposed to admit neither the Book of Proverbs 
 nor the Book of Ecclesiastes into the Canon, and only 
 admitted them because there were found in them 
 passages which commended the law of Moses. Ezekiel 
 also they had determined to exclude ; but one of 
 their number remodelled him, so as to procure his 
 admission. The Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, 
 and Daniel are the work of a single author, and were 
 not written till after Judas Maccabeus had restored 
 the worship of the Temple. The Book of Psalms 
 was collected and arranged at the same time. Before 
 this time, there was no Canon of the sacred writings, 
 and the great synagogue, by which the Canon was 
 fixed, was first convened after the Macedonian con- 
 quest of Asia. Of that synagogue none of the pro- 
 
324 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [ix. 
 
 phets were members ; the learned men who composed 
 it were guided by their own fallible judgment. In 
 like manner the uninspired judgment of human coun- 
 cils determined the Canon of the New Testament. 
 
 Such, reduced to the briefest and plainest terms 
 possible, stripped of the developments and proofs 
 with which he delivers it, and divested of the meta- 
 physical language in which much of it is clothed by 
 him, is the doctrine of Spinoza’s treatise on the inter- 
 pretation of Scripture. By the whole scope and 
 drift of its argument, by the spirit in which the sub- 
 ject is throughout treated, his work undeniably is 
 most interesting and stimulating to the general culture 
 of Europe. There are errors and contradictions in 
 Scripture ; and the question which the general culture 
 of Europe, well aware of this, asks with real interest 
 is : What then 1 What follows from all this ? What 
 change is it, if true, to produce in the relations of 
 mankind to the Christian religion ? If the old theory 
 of Scripture inspiration is to be abandoned, what 
 place is the Bible henceforth to hold among books I 
 What is the new Christianity to be like 1 How are 
 governments to deal with National Churches founded 
 to maintain a very different conception of Christianity! 
 Spinoza addresses himself to these questions. All 
 secondary points of criticism he touches with the 
 utmost possible brevity. He points out that Moses 
 could never have written ; “ And the Canaanite was 
 then in the land,” because the Canaanite was in the 
 land still at the death of Moses. He points out that 
 
itl ] SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 325 
 
 Moses could never have written : “ There arose not a 
 prophet since in Israel like unto Moses.” He points 
 out how such a passage as, “ These are the kings that 
 reigned in Edom before there reigned any king over the 
 children of Israel,” clearly indicates an author writing 
 not before the times of the Kings. He points out 
 how the account of Og’s iron bedstead : “ Only Og 
 the king of Bashan remained of the remnant of 
 giants ; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron ; 
 is it not in Eabbath of the children of Ammon ? ” — 
 probably indicates an author writing after David had 
 taken Eabbath, and found there “ abundance of spoil,” 
 amongst it this iron bedstead, the gigantic relic of 
 another age. He points out how the language of 
 this passage, and of such a passage as that in the 
 Book of Samuel : “ Beforetime in Israel, when a man 
 went to inquire of God, thus he spake : Come and 
 let us go to the seer ; for he that is now called pro- 
 phet was aforetime called seer” — is certainly the 
 language of a writer describing the events of a long- 
 past age, and not the language of a contemporary. 
 But he devotes to all this no more space than is 
 absolutely necessary. He apologises for delaying 
 over such matters so long : non est cur circa hoec diu 
 detinear — nolo tcediosd lectione lector era detinere. For 
 him the interesting question is, not whether the 
 fanatical devotee of the letter is to continue, for a 
 longer or for a shorter time, to believe that Moses 
 sate in the land of Moab writing the description of 
 his own death, but what he is to believe when he 
 does not believe this. Is he to take for the guidance 
 
826 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [ix 
 
 of his life a great gloss put upon the Bible by theo- 
 logians, who, “ not content with going mad themselves 
 wdth Plato and Aristotle, want to make Christ and 
 the prophets go mad with them too,” — or the Bible 
 itself 1 Is he to be presented by his national church 
 ■^vith metaphysical formularies for his creed, or with 
 the real fundamentals of Christianity ? If with the 
 former, religion will never produce its due fruits. A 
 few elect will still be saved ; but the vast majority of 
 mankind will remain without grace and without good 
 works, hateful and hating one another. Therefore 
 he calls urgently upon governments to make the 
 national church what it should be. This is the con- 
 clusion of the whole matter for him ; a fervent appea; 
 to the State, to save us from the untoward generation 
 of metaphysical Article - makers. And therefore, 
 anticipating Mr. Gladstone, he called his book Tht 
 Church in Us Relations vnth the State. 
 
 Such is really the scope of Spinoza’s work. He 
 pursues a great object, and pursues it with signal 
 ability. But it is important to observe that he 
 nowhere distinctly gives his o'wn opinion about the 
 Bible’s fundamental character. He takes the Bible as 
 it stands, as he might take the phenomena of nature, 
 and he discusses it as he finds it. Revelation differs 
 from natural knowledge, he says, not by being more 
 divine or more certain than natural knowledge, but 
 by being conveyed in a different way ; it differs from 
 it because it is a knowledge “ of which the laws of 
 human nature considered in themselves alone cannot 
 be the cause.” What is really its cause, he says, we 
 
IX.J SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 32 ? 
 
 need not here inquire {verum nec nobis jam opus est pro- 
 pheiicce cognitionis causam scire), for we take Scripture, 
 which contains this revelation, as it stands, and do not 
 ask how it arose {documentorum causas nihil curamus). 
 
 Proceeding on this principle, Spinoza leaves the 
 attentive reader somewhat baffled and disappointed, 
 clear, as is his way of treating his subject, and re- 
 markable as are the conclusions with which he pre- 
 sents us. He starts, we feel, from what is to him 
 a hypothesis, and we want to know what he really 
 thinks about this hypothesis. His greatest novelties 
 are all within limits fixed for him by this hypothesis. 
 He says that the voice which called Samuel was an 
 imaginary voice ; he says that the waters of the Eed 
 Sea retreated before a strong wind ; he says that the 
 Shunammite’s son was revived by the natural heat of 
 Elisha’s body ; he says that the rainbow which was 
 made a sign to Noah appeared in the ordinary course 
 of nature. Scripture itself, rightly interpreted, says, 
 he affirms, all this. But he asserts that the divine 
 voice which uttered the commandments on Mount 
 Sinai was a real voice, vera vox. He says, indeed, that 
 this voice could not really give to the Israelites that 
 proof which they imagined it gave to them of the 
 existence of God, and that God on Sinai was dealing 
 with the Israelites only according to their imperfect 
 knowledge. Still he asserts the divine voice to have 
 been a real one; and for this reason, that we do 
 violence to Scripture if we do not admit it to have 
 been a real one {nisi Scripturce vim inferre velimus, 
 omnino concedendum est, Tsraelitas veram vocem audivisse). 
 
326 E8SAYS IN CRITICISM. U^i 
 
 The attentive reader wants to know what Spinoza, 
 himself thought about this vera 'vox and its possibility ; 
 he is much more interested in knowing this than in 
 knowing what Spinoza considered Scripture to affirm 
 about the matter. 
 
 The feeling of perplexity thus caused is not dimin- 
 ished by the language of the chapter on miracles. 
 In this chapter Spinoza broadly affirms a miracle to 
 be an impossibility. But he himself contrasts the 
 method of demonstration h priori, by which he claims 
 to have established this proposition, with the method 
 which he has pursued in treating of prophetic revela- 
 tion. “ This revelation,” he says, “ is a matter out of 
 human reach, and therefore I was bound to take it as 
 I found it.” Alonere volo, me alid prorsus methodo circa 
 miracula processisse, quam circa prophefiam . . . quod 
 etiam consulto feci, quia de prophet id, quandoquidem ipsa 
 captum humanum superat et qnoestio mere iheologica est, 
 nihil affirmare, neque etiam scire pioteram in quo ipsa 
 potissimum constiterit, nisi ex fundamentis revelatis. The 
 reader feels that Spinoza, proceeding on a hypothesis, 
 has presented him with the assertion of a miracle, 
 and afterwards, proceeding a priori, has presented 
 him with the assertion that a miracle is impossible. 
 He feels that Spinoza does not adequately reconcile 
 these two assertions by declaring that any event really 
 miraculous, if found recorded in Scripture, must be “ s 
 spurious addition made to Scripture by sacrilegious 
 men.” Is, then, he asks the vera vox of Mount Sinai in 
 Spinoza’s opinion a spurious addition made to Scripture 
 by sacrilegious men; or, if not, how is it not miraculous’ 
 
DC.1 SPINOZA AND THE 329 
 
 Spinoza, in his o'wn mind, regarded the Bible as a 
 vast collection of miscellaneous documents, many of 
 them quite disparate and not at all to be harmonised 
 with others ; documents of unequal value and of 
 varying applicability, some of them conveying ideas 
 salutary for one time, others for another. But in 
 the Tradatus Theologico-Politicus he by no means 
 always deals in this free spirit with the Bible. Some- 
 times he chooses to deal with it in the spirit of the 
 veriest worshipper of the letter; sometimes he chooses 
 to treat the Bible as if all its parts were (so to speak) 
 equipollent ; to snatch an isolated text which suits 
 his purpose, vdthout caring whether it is annulled by 
 the context, by the general drift of Scripture, or by 
 other passages of more weight and authority. The 
 great critic thus becomes voluntarily as uncritical 
 as Exeter Hall. The Epicurean Solomon, whose 
 Ecdesiastes the Hebrew doctors, even after they had 
 received it into the canon, forbade the young and 
 weak - minded among their community to read, 
 Spinoza quotes as of the same authority with the 
 severe Moses; he uses promiscuously, as documents 
 of identical force, without discriminating between 
 their essentially different character, the softened 
 cosmopolitan teaching of the prophets of the capti- 
 vity and the rigid national teaching of the instmctors 
 of Israel’s youth. He is capable of extracting, from 
 a chance expression of Jeremiah, the assertion of a 
 speculative idea which Jeremiah certainly never en- 
 tertained, and from which he would have recoiled in 
 dismay, — the idea, namely, that miracles are impos- 
 
330 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [m 
 
 sible; just as the ordinary Englishman can extract 
 from God’s words to Noah, Be fruitful and multiply^ 
 an exhortation to himself to have a large family. 
 Spinoza, I repeat, knew perfectly well what this 
 verbal mode of dealing with the Bible was worth : 
 but he sometimes uses it because of the hypothesis 
 from which he set out ; because of his having agreed 
 “ to take Scripture as it stands, and not to ask how it 
 arose.” 
 
 No doubt the sagacity of Spinoza’s rules for 
 Biblical interpretation, the power of his analysis of 
 the contents of the Bible, the interest of his reflec- 
 tions on Jewish history, are, in spite of this, very 
 great, and have an absolute worth of their own, in- 
 dependent of the silence or ambiguity of their author 
 upon a point of cardinal importance. Few candid 
 people will read his rules of interpretation vdthout 
 exclaiming that they are the very dictates of good 
 sense, that they have always believed in them ; and 
 without adding, after a moment’s reflection, that 
 they have passed their lives in violating them. And 
 what can be more interesting, than to find that per- 
 haps the main cause of the decay of the Jewish polity 
 was one of which from our English Bible, which en- 
 tirely mistranslates the 26th verse of the 20th chapter 
 of Ezekiel, we hear nothing, — the perpetual reproach 
 of impurity and rejection cast upon the priesthood of 
 the tribe of Levil What can be more suggestive, 
 after Mr. Mill and Dr. Stanley have been telling us 
 how great an element of strength to the Hebrew 
 nation was the institution of prophets, than to hear 
 
i3Lj SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 331 
 
 from the ablest of Hebrews how this institution 
 seems to him to have been to his nation one of 
 her main elements of weakness ? No intelligent 
 man can read the Tractatus Theologico-PoUtims without 
 being profoundly instructed by it : but neither can 
 he read it without feeling that, as a speculative work, 
 it is, to use a French military expression, in the air ; 
 that, in a certain sense, it is in want of a base and in 
 want of supports ; that this base and these supports 
 are, at any rate, not to be found in the work itself, 
 and, if they exist, must be sought for in other works 
 of the author. 
 
 The genuine speculative opinions of Spinoza, which 
 the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus but imperfectly re- 
 veals, may in his Ethics and in his Letters be found 
 set forth clearly. Tt is, however, the business of 
 criticism to deal with every independent work as with 
 an independent whole, and, instead of establishing 
 between the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and the 
 Ethics of Spinoza a relation which Spinoza himself 
 has not established, — to seize, in dealing with the 
 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus^ the important fact that 
 this work has its source, not in the axioms and defi- 
 nition of the Ethics, but in a hypothesis. The Ethics 
 are not yet translated into English, and I have not 
 here to speak of them. Then will be the right time 
 for criticism to try and seize the special character and 
 tendencies of that remarkable work, when it is deal 
 ing with it directly. The criticism of the Ethics is 
 far too serious a task to be undertaken incidentally, 
 ind merely as a supplement to the criticism of the 
 
332 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [IX 
 
 Tractatus Theologico-Politiats. Nevertheless, on certain 
 governing ideas of Spinoza, which receive their syste- 
 matic expression, indeed, in the Ethics, and on which 
 the Tractatus Theologico-Foliticus is not formally based, 
 but which are yet never absent from Spinoza’s mind 
 in the composition of any work, which breathe 
 through all his works, and fill them Avith a peculiar 
 effect and power, I have a word or two to say. 
 
 A philosopher’s real power over mankind resides 
 not in his metaphysical formulas, but in the spirit 
 and tendencies which have led him to adopt those 
 formulas. Spinoza’s critic, therefore, has rather to 
 bring to light that spirit and those tendencies of his 
 author, than to exhibit his metaphysical formulas. 
 Propositions about substance pass by mankind at 
 large like the idle wind, which mankind at large 
 regards not ; it will not even listen to a word about 
 these propositions, unless it first learns what their 
 author was driving at with them, and finds that this 
 object of his is one with which it sympathises, one, at 
 any rate, which commands its attention. And man- 
 kind is so far right that this object of the author is 
 really, as has been said, that which is most important, 
 that which sets all his work in motion, that which is 
 the secret of his attraction for other minds, which, 
 by different ways, pursue the same object. 
 
 Mr. Maurice, seeking for the cause of Goethe’s 
 great admiration for Spinoza, thinks that he finds it 
 in Spinoza’s Hebrew genius. “ He spoke of God,” 
 says Mr. Maurice, “as an actual being, to those who 
 had fancied him a name in a book. The child of the 
 
IX.] 
 
 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 333 
 
 circumcision had a message for Lessing and Goethe 
 which the pagan schools of philosophy could not 
 bring.” This seems to me, I confess, fanciful An 
 intensity and impressiveness, which came to him 
 from his Hebrew nature, Spinoza no doubt has ; but 
 the two things which are most remarkable about him, 
 and by which, as I think, he chiefly impressed 
 Goethe, seem to me not to come to him from his 
 Hebrew nature at all, — I mean his denial of final 
 causes, and his stoicism, a stoicism not passive, but 
 active. For a mind like Goethe’s, — a mind pro- 
 foundly impartial and passionately aspiring after the 
 science, not of men only, but of universal nature, — 
 the popular philosophy which explains all things by 
 reference to man, and regards universal nature as 
 existing for the sake of man, and even of certain 
 classes of men, was utterly repulsive. Unchecked, 
 this philosophy would gladly maintain that the 
 donkey exists in order that the invalid Christian may 
 have donkey’s milk before breakfast ; and such views 
 of nature as this were exactly what Goethe’s whole 
 soul abhorred. Creation, he thought, should be 
 made of sterner stuff ; he desired to rest the donkey’s 
 existence on larger grounds. More than any philo- 
 sopher who has ever lived, Spinoza satisfied him here. 
 The full exposition of the counter-doctrine to the 
 popular doctrine of final causes is to be found in the 
 Ethics ; but this denial of final causes was so essen- 
 tial an element of all Spinoza’s thinking that we 
 shall, as has been said already, find it in the work 
 with which we are here concerned, the Tradaim 
 
334 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 tiX 
 
 Theologico-Politicus, and, indeed, permeating that worl< 
 and all his works. From the Tractatus Theologico- 
 Politicus one may take as good a general statement of 
 this denial as any which is to be found in the Ethics : — 
 “ Deus naturam dirigit, prout ejus leges univer- 
 sales, non autem prout humanse naturae particularea 
 leges exigimt, adeoque Deus non solius human! 
 generis, sed totius naturae rationem habet. {God 
 directs mture, according as the universal laws of nature^ 
 hut not according as the particular laws of human nature 
 require ; and so God has regard^ not of the human race 
 only, hut of entire nature . )” 
 
 And, as a pendant to this denial by Spinoza of 
 final causes, comes his stoicism : — 
 
 “ Non studemus, ut natura nobis, sed contra ut nos 
 uaturae pareamus. {Our desire is not that nature may 
 obey us, hut, on the contrary, that we may obey nature.)” 
 Here is the second source of his attractiveness for 
 Goethe ; and Goethe is but the eminent representa- 
 tive of a whole order of minds whose admiration has 
 made Spinoza’s fame. Spinoza first impresses Goethe 
 and any man like Goethe, and then he composes him ; 
 first he fills and satisfies his imagination by the width 
 and grandeur of his view of nature, and then he 
 fortifies and stills his mobile, straining, passionate 
 poetic temperament by the moral lesson he draws 
 from his view of nature. And a moral lesson not of 
 mere resigned acquiescence, not of melancholy quiet- 
 ism, but of joyful activity .within the limits of man’s 
 true sphere : — 
 
 “ Ipsa hominis essentia est conatus quo imusquis' 
 
rx.] SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE 33f> 
 
 que suum esse conservare conatur. . . . Virtus homi- 
 nis est ipsa hominis essentia, quatenus a solo conatu 
 suum esse conservandi definitur. . . . Felicitas in eo 
 consistit quod homo suum esse conservare potest. . . . 
 Laetitia est hominis transitio ad majorem perfectionem 
 . . . Tristitia est hominis transitio ad minorem per- 
 fectionem. {MavJs very esserice is the effort wherewith 
 each man strives to maintain his own being. . . . Man's 
 virtue is this very essence^ so far as it is defined by this 
 single effort to maintain his own being. . . . Happiness 
 consists in a man's being able to maintain his own being. 
 . . . Joy is man's passage to a greater perfection. . . . 
 Sorrow is man's passage to a lesser perfection.)" 
 
 It seems to me that by neither of these, his grand 
 characteristic doctrines, is Spinoza truly Hebrew or 
 truly Christian. His denial of final causes is essenti- 
 ally alien to the spirit of the Old Testament, and his 
 cheerful and self-sufficing stoicism is essentially alien 
 to the spirit of the New. The doctrine that “God 
 directs nature, not according as the particular laws of 
 human nature, but according as the universal laws of 
 nature require,” is at utter variance with that Hebrew 
 mode of representing God’s dealings, which makes 
 the locusts visit Egypt to punish Pharaoh’s hardness 
 of heart, and the falling dew avert itself from the 
 fleece of Gideon. The doctrine that “ all sorrow is a 
 passage to a lesser perfection ” is at utter variance 
 with the Christian recognition of the blessedness of 
 sorrow, working “repentance to salvation not to be 
 repented of;” of sorrow, which, in Dante’s words, 
 “ remarries us to God.” 
 
336 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISI4, 
 
 [dl 
 
 Spinoza’s repeated and earnest assertions that the 
 love of God is man’s summum bonum do not remove 
 the fundamental diversity between his doctrine and 
 the Hebrew and Christian doctrines. By the love of 
 God he does not mean the same thing which the 
 Hebrew and Christian religions mean by the love of 
 God. He makes the love of God to consist in the 
 knowledge of God ; and, as we know God only through 
 his manifestation of himself in the laws of all nature, 
 it is by knowing these laws that we love God, and 
 the more we know them the more we love him. This 
 may be true, but this is not what the Christian means 
 by the love of God. Spinoza’s ideal is the intellectual 
 life ; the Christian’s ideal is the religious life. Be- 
 tween the two conditions there is all the difference 
 which there is between the being in love, and the 
 following, with delighted comprehension, a reasoning 
 of Plato. For Spinoza, undoubtedly, the crown of 
 the intellectual life is a transport, as for the saint the 
 crown of the religious life is a transport ; but the two 
 transports are not the same. 
 
 This is true ; yet it is true, also, that by thus 
 crowning the intellectual life with a sacred transport, 
 by thus retaining in philosophy, amid the discontented 
 murmurs of all the army of atheism, the name of God, 
 Spinoza maintains a profound affinity with that which 
 is truest in religion, and inspires an indestructible 
 interest. One of his admirers, M. Van Vloten, has 
 recently published at Amsterdam a supplementary 
 volume to Spinoza’s works, containing the interesting 
 document of Spinoza’s sentence of excommunication, 
 
IX.] 
 
 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 337 
 
 from which I have already quoted, and containing, 
 besides, several lately found works alleged to be 
 Spinoza’s, which seem to me to be of doubtful authen- 
 ticity, and, even if authentic, of no great importance. 
 M. Van Vloten (who, let me be permitted to say in 
 passing, writes a Latin which would make one think 
 that the art of writing Latin must be now a lost art in 
 the country of Lipsius) is very anxious that Spinoza’s 
 unscientific retention of the name of God should not 
 afflict his readers with any doubts as to his perfect 
 scientific orthodoxy ; — 
 
 “It is a great mistake,” he cries, “to disparage 
 Spinoza as merely one of the dogmatists before Kant. 
 By keeping the name of God, while he did away 
 with his person and character, he has done himself 
 an injustice. Those who look to the bottom of things 
 will see, that, long ago as he lived, he had even then 
 reached the point to which the post-Hegelian philo- 
 sophy and the study of natural science has only just 
 brought our own times. Leibnitz expressed his ap- 
 prehension lest those who did away with final causes 
 should do away with God at the same time. But it 
 is in his having done away with final causes, and 
 with God along with them^ that Spinoza’s true merit 
 consists.” 
 
 Now it must be remarked that to use Spinoza’s 
 denial of final causes in order to identify him with 
 the Coryphaei of atheism, is to make a false use of 
 Spinoza’s denial of final causes, just as to use his as- 
 sertion of the all-importance of loving God to identify 
 him with the saints would be to make a false use of 
 
 VOI^ L 
 
338 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [ix 
 
 his assertion of the all-importance of loving God. He 
 is no more to be identified with the post-Hegelian philo- 
 sophers than he is to be identified with St. Augustine. 
 Unction, indeed, Spinoza’s writings have not; that 
 name does not precisely fit any quality which they 
 exliibit. And yet, so all-important in the sphere of 
 religious thought is the power of edification, that in 
 this sphere a great fame like Spinoza’s can never be 
 founded without it. A court of literature can never 
 be very severe to Voltaire : with that inimitable wit 
 and clear sense of his, he cannot write a page in 
 which the fullest head may not find something 
 suggestive : still, because, handling religious ideas, 
 he yet, with all his wit and clear sense, handles 
 them wholly without the power of edification, his 
 fame as a great man is equivocal, Strauss has treated 
 the question of Scripture miracles with an acuteness 
 and fulness which even to the most informed minds 
 is instructive ; but because he treats it almost wholly 
 without the power of edification, his fame as a serious 
 thinker is equivocal. But in Spinoza there is not a 
 trace either of Voltaire’s passion for mockery or of 
 Strauss’s passion for demolitiom His whole soul was 
 filled with desire of the love and knowledge of God, 
 and of that only. Philosophy always proclaims herself 
 on the way to the summum honum ; but too often on 
 the road she seems to forget her destination, and 
 suffers her hearers to forget it also. Spinoza never 
 forgets his destination : “ The love of God is man’s 
 highest happiness and blessedness, and the final end 
 and aim of all human actions;” — “The supreme re- 
 
SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 
 
 339 
 
 ijl] 
 
 ward for keeping God’s Word is that Word itself — 
 namely, to know him and with free will and pure 
 and constant heart love him : ” these sentences are 
 the keynote to all he produced, and were the inspira- 
 tion of all his labours. This is why he turns so 
 sternly upon the worshippers of the letter, — the 
 editors of the Masora, the editor of the Record , — 
 because their doctrine imperils our love and know- 
 ledge of God. “What!” he cries, “our knowledge 
 of God to depend upon these perishable things, which 
 Moses can dash to the ground and break to pieces 
 like the first tables of stone, or of which the originals 
 can be lost hke the original book of the Covenant, 
 like the original book of the Law of God, like the 
 book of the Wars of God ! . . . which can come 
 to us confused, imperfect, mis -written by copyists, 
 tampered with by doctors I And you accuse others 
 of impiety I It is you who are impious, to believe 
 that God would commit the treasure of the true 
 record of himself to any substance less enduring than 
 the heart ! ” 
 
 And Spinoza’s life was not unworthy of this elevated 
 strain. A philosopher who professed that knowledge 
 was its own reward, a devotee who professed that the 
 love of God was its own reward, this philosopher and 
 this devotee believed in what he said. Spinoza led a 
 life the most spotless, perhaps, to be found among the 
 lives of philosophers ; he lived simple, studious, even- 
 tempered, kind; declining honoims, declining riches, 
 declining notoriety. He was poor, and his admirer 
 Simon de Vries sent him two thousand florins ; — he 
 
340 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [ix 
 
 refused them. The same friend left him his fortune ; 
 —he returned it to the heir. He was asked to dedi- 
 cate one of his works to the magnificent patron of 
 letters in his century, Louis the Fourteenth; — he 
 declined. His great work, his Ethics, published after 
 his death, he gave injunctions to his friends to publish 
 anonymously, for fear he should give his name to a 
 school. Truth, he thought, should hear no man’s 
 name. And finally, — “ Unless,” he said, “ I had 
 known that my writings would in the end advance 
 the cause of true religion, I would have suppressed 
 them, — tacuissem.’’ It was in this spirit that he lived; 
 and this spirit gives to all he writes not exactly unction, 
 — I have already said so, — but a kind of sacred so- 
 lemnity. Not of the same order as the saints, he yet 
 follows the same service ; Doubtless thou art our Father, 
 though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge 
 us not. 
 
 Therefore he has been, in a certain sphere, edifying, 
 and has inspired in many powerful minds an interest 
 and an admiration such as no other philosopher has 
 inspired since Plato. The lonely precursor of German 
 philosophy, he still shines when the light of his suc- 
 cessors is fading away ; they had celebrity, Spinoza 
 has fame. Not because his peculiar system of philo- 
 sophy has had more adherents than theirs ; on the 
 contrary, it has had fewer. But schools of philosophy 
 arise and fall ; their bands of adherents inevitably 
 dwindle ; no master can long persuade a large body 
 of disciples that they give to themselves just the same 
 account of the world as he does ; it is only the very 
 
IX.] SPIi^OZA AND THE BIBLE. 341 
 
 young and the very enthusiastic who can think them' 
 selves sure that they possess the whole mind of Plato, 
 or Spinoza, or Hegel, at all. The very mature and 
 the very sober can even hardly believe that these 
 philosophers possessed it themselves enough to put it 
 all into their w^orks, and to let us know entirely how 
 the world seemed to them. What a remarkable 
 philosopher really does for human thought, is to 
 throw into circulation a certain number of new and 
 striking ideas and expressions, and to stimulate with 
 them the thought and imagination of his century or 
 of after-times. So Spinoza has made his distinction 
 between adequate and inadequate ideas a current 
 notion for educated Europe. So Hegel seized a single 
 pregnant sentence of Heracleitus, and cast it, with a 
 thousand striking applications, into the world of 
 modern thought. But to do this is only enough to 
 make a philosopher noteworthy ; it is not enough to 
 make him great. To be great, he must have some- 
 thing in him which can influence character, which is 
 edifying ; he must, in short, have a noble and lofty 
 character himself, a character, — to recur to that much- 
 criticised expression of mine, — in the grand style. 
 This is what Spinoza had ; and because he had it, he 
 stands out from the multitude of philosophers, and 
 has been able to inspire in powerful minds a feeling 
 which the most remarkable philosophers, without this 
 grandiose character, could not inspire. “ There is no 
 possible view of life but Spinoza’s,” said Lessing. 
 Goethe has told us how ho was calmed and edified by 
 Him in his youth, and how he again went to him for 
 
342 
 
 ESSAYS IN CKITICISM. 
 
 [iz. 
 
 support in his maturity. Heine, the man (in spite oi 
 his faults) of tmest genius that Germany has produced 
 since Goethe, — a man with faults, as I have said, im- 
 mense faults, the greatest of them being that he could 
 reverence so little, — reverenced Spinoza. Hegel’s 
 influence ran off him like water : “ I have seen Hegel,” 
 he cries, “seated with his doleful air of a hatching 
 hen upon his unhappy eggs, and I have heard his 
 dismal clucking. — How easily one can cheat oneself 
 into thinking that one understands everything, when 
 one has learnt only how to construct dialectical for- 
 mulas ! ” But of Spinoza, Heine said : “ His life was 
 a copy of the life of his divine kinsman, Jesus Christ.” 
 And therefore, when M. Van Yloten violently 
 presses the parallel with the post-Hegelians, one feels 
 that the parallel with St. Augustine is the far truer 
 one. Compared with the soldier of irreligion M. Van 
 Vloten would have him to be, Spinoza is religious. 
 “It is true,” one may say to the wise and devout 
 Christian, “Spinoza’s conception of beatitude is not 
 yours, and cannot satisfy you , but whose conception 
 of beatitude would you accept as satisfying? Not 
 even that of the devoutest of your fellow-Christians. 
 Fra Angelico, the sweetest and most inspired of devout 
 souls, has given us, in his great picture of the Last 
 Judgment, his conception of beatitude. The elect 
 are going round in a ring on long grass under laden 
 fruit-trees; two of them, more restless than the others, 
 are flying up a battlemented street, — a street blank 
 with all the ennui of the Middle Ages. Across a gulf 
 is visible, for the delectation of the saints, a blazing 
 
fS..] SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 343 
 
 caldron in which Beelzebub is sousing the damned. 
 This is hardly more your conception of beatitude than 
 Spinoza’s is. But ‘in my Father’s house are many 
 mansions;’ only, to reach any one of these mansions, 
 there are needed the wings of a genuine sacred trans- 
 port, of an ‘ immortal longing.’ ” These wings 
 Spinoza had ; and, because he had them, his own 
 language about himself, about his aspirations and his 
 course, are true : his foot is in the v&ra vita, his eye 
 on the beatific vision. 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 Mh, Mill says, in his hook on Liberty, that “Cliris- 
 tian morality is in great part merely a protest against 
 paganism ; its ideal is negative rather than positive, 
 passive rather than active.” He says, that, in certain 
 most important respects, “ it falls far below the best 
 morality of the ancients.” Now, the object of 
 systems of morality is to take possession of human 
 life, to save it from being abandoned to passion or 
 allowed to drift at hazard, to give it happiness by 
 establishing it in the practice of virtue ; and this 
 object they seek to attain by prescribing to human 
 life fixed principles of action, fixed rules of conduct. 
 In its uninspired as well as in its inspired moments, 
 in its days of languor and gloom as well as in its 
 days of sunshine and energy, human life has thus 
 always a clue to follow, and may always be maldng 
 way towards its goal. Christian morality has not 
 failed to supply to human life aids of this sort. It 
 has supplied them far more abundantly than many 
 of its critics imagine. The most exquisite document 
 
X.] 
 
 MAKCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 345 
 
 after those of the New Testament, of all the docu- 
 ments the Christian spirit has ever inspired, — the 
 Imitation^ — by no means contains the whole of Chris- 
 tian morality ; nay, the disparagers of this morality 
 would think themselves sure of triumphing if one 
 agreed to look for it in the Imitation only. But even 
 the Imitation is full of passages like these : “ Vita 
 sine proposito languida et vaga est ; ” — “ Omni die 
 renovare debemus propositum nostrum, dicentes : nunc 
 hodi^ perfects incipiamus, quia nihil est quod hactenus 
 fecimus;” — “Secundum propositum nostrum est cursus 
 profecths nostri;” — “Earo etiam unum vitium per- 
 fects vincimus, et ad quofidianum profectum non ac- 
 cendimur;” — “Semper aliquid certi proponendum est;” 
 — “ Tibi ipsi violentiam frequenter fac : ” (A life with- 
 out a purpose is a languid^ drifting thing ; — Every day 
 we ought to renew our purpose^ saying to ourselves : This 
 day let us make a sound beginning, for what we have 
 hitherto done is nought ; — Our improvement is in propor- 
 tion to our purpose ; — We hardly ever manage to get com- 
 pletely rid even of one fault, and do not set our hearts on 
 daily improvement ; — Always place a definite purpose 
 before thee ; — Get the habit of mastering thine inclination . ) 
 These are moral precepts, and moral precepts of the 
 best kind. As rules to hold possession of our con- 
 duct, and to keep us in the right course through out- 
 ward troubles and inward perplexity, they are equal 
 to the best ever furnished by the great masters of 
 morals — Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius. 
 
 But moral rules, apprehended as ideas first, and 
 then rigorously followed as laws, are, and must be, 
 
346 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 u 
 
 for the sage only. The mass of mankind have neithei 
 force of intellect enough to apprehend them clearly as 
 ideas, nor force of character enough to follow them 
 strictly as laws. The mass of mankind can be carried 
 along a course full of hardship for the natural man, 
 can be borne over the thousand impediments of the 
 narrow way, only by the tide of a joyful and bound- 
 ing emotion. It is impossible to rise from reading 
 Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of con- 
 straint and melancholy, without feeling that the 
 burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he 
 can bear. Honour to the sages who have felt this, 
 and yet have borne it ! Yet, even for the sage, this 
 sense of labour and sorrow in his march towards the 
 goal constitutes a relative inferiority ; the noblest 
 souls of whatever creed, the pagan Empedocles as 
 well as the Christian Paul, have insisted on the neces- 
 sity of an inspiration, a joyful emotion, to make 
 moral action perfect; an obscure indication of this 
 necessity is the one drop of truth in the ocean of 
 verbiage with which the controversy on justification 
 by faith has flooded the world. But, for the ordinary 
 man, this sense of labour and sorrow constitutes an 
 absolute disqualification ; it paralyses him ; under the 
 weight of it, he cannot make way towards the goal at 
 all. The paramount virtue of religion is, that it has 
 lighted up morality ; that it has supplied the emotion 
 and inspiration needful for carrying the sage along 
 the narrow way perfectly, for carrying the ordinary 
 man along it at all. Even the religions with most 
 dross in them have had something of this virtue ; but 
 
&L1RCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 347 
 
 £.3 
 
 the Christian religion manifests it with unexampled 
 splendour. “ Lead me, Zeus and Destiny !” says the 
 prayer of Epictetus, “ whithersoever I am appointed 
 to go ; I will follow without wavering ; even though 
 I turn coward and shrink, I shall have to follow all 
 the same.” The fortitude of that is for the strong, 
 for the few ; even for them the spiritual atmosphere 
 with which it surrounds them is bleak and gray. 
 But, “Let thy loving spirit lead me forth into the 
 land of righteousness — “ The Lord shall be unto 
 thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory ; ” — 
 “ Unto you that fear my name shall the sun of right- 
 eousness arise with healing in his wings,” says the Old 
 Testament ; “ Born, not of blood, nor of the will of 
 the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God;” — 
 “ Except a man be bom again, he cannot see the 
 kingdom of God ; ” — “ Whatsoever is born of God, 
 overcometh the world,” says the New. The ray of 
 sunshine is there, the glow of a divine warmth ; — the 
 austerity of the sage melts away under it, the paralysis 
 of the weak is healed ; he w^ho is vivified by it renews 
 his strength ; “all things are possible to him ; ” “he 
 is a new creature.” 
 
 Epictetus says: “Every matter has two handles, 
 one of which will bear taking hold of, the other not. 
 If thy brother sin against thee, lay not hold of the 
 matter by this, that he sins against thee ; for by this 
 handle the matter will not bear taking hold of. Bui 
 rather lay hold of it by this, that he is thy brother, 
 thy born mate ; and thou wilt take hold of it by what 
 will bear handling.” Jesus, being asked whether a 
 
348 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 man is bound to forgive his brother as often as seven 
 times, answers : “ I say not unto thee, until seven 
 times, but until seventy times seven.” Epictetus 
 here suggests to the reason grounds for forgiveness of 
 injuries which Jesus does not ; but it is vain to say 
 that Epictetus is on that account a better moralist 
 than Jesus, if the warmth, the emotion, of Jesus’s 
 answer fires his hearer to the practice of forgiveness 
 of injuries, while the thought in Epictetus’s leaves 
 him cold. So with Christian morality in general : its 
 distinction is not that it propounds the maxim, “ Thou 
 shalt love God and thy neighbour,” with more de- 
 velopment, closer reasoning, truer sincerity, than 
 other moral systems ; it is that it propounds this 
 maxim with an inspiration which wonderfully catches 
 the hearer and makes him act upon it. It is because 
 Mr. Mill has attained to the perception of truths of 
 this nature, that he is, — instead of being, like the 
 school from which he proceeds, doomed to sterility, — 
 a writer of distinguished mark and influence, a writer 
 deserving all attention and respect ; it is (I must be 
 pardoned for saying) because he is not suflSciently 
 leavened with them, that he falls just short of being 
 a great writer. 
 
 That which gives to the moral writings of the 
 Emperor Marcus Aurelius their peculiar character 
 and charm, is their being suflFused and softened by 
 something of this very sentiment whence Christian 
 morality draws its best power. Mr. Long has 
 recently published in a convenient form a trans 
 lation of these writings, and has thus enabled English 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 349 
 
 X-] 
 
 readers to judge Marcus Aurelius for themselves ; 
 he has rendered his countrymen a real service by 
 so doing. Mr. Long’s reputation as a scholar is a 
 sufficient guarantee of the general fidelity and accu- 
 racy of his translation ; on these matters, besides, I 
 am hardly entitled to speak, and my praise is of no 
 value. But that for which I and the rest of the 
 unlearned may venture to praise Mr. Long is this ; 
 that he treats Marcus Aurelius’s WTitings, as he 
 treats all the other remains of Greek and Roman 
 antiquity which he touches, not as a dead and dry 
 matter of learning, but as documents with a side of 
 modem applicability and living interest, and valuable 
 mainly so far as this side in them can be made clear ; 
 that as in his notes on Plutarch’s Roman Lives he 
 deals with the modern epoch of Caesar and Cicero, 
 not as food for schoolboys, but as food for men, and 
 men engaged in the current of contemporary life and 
 action, so in his remarks and essays on Marcus 
 Aurelius he treats this truly modern striver and 
 thinker not as a Classical Dictionary hero, but as 
 a present source from which to draw “ example of 
 life, and instruction of manners.” Why may not a 
 son of Dr. Arnold say, what might naturally here be 
 said by any other critic, that in this lively and fruit- 
 ful way of considering the men and aflfairs of ancient 
 Greece and Rome, Mr. Long resembles Dr. Arnold 1 
 One or two little complaints, however, I have 
 against Mr. Long, and I will get them off my mind 
 at once. In the first place, why could he not have 
 found gentler and juster terms to describe the trans- 
 
350 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [x. 
 
 lation of his predecessor, Jeremy Collier, — the re- 
 doubtable enemy of stage plays, — than these : “ a 
 most coarse and vulgar copy of the original As a 
 matter of taste, a translator should deal leniently 
 with his predecessor; but putting that out of the 
 question, Mr. Long’s language is a great deal too 
 hard. Most English people who knew Marcus 
 Aurelius before Mr. Long appeared as his intro- 
 ducer, knew him through Jeremy Collier. And 
 the acquaintance of a man like Marcus Aurelius is 
 such an imperishable benefit, that one can never 
 lose a peculiar sense of obligation towards the man 
 who confers it. Apart from this claim upon one’s 
 tenderness, however, Jeremy Collier’s version de- 
 serves respect for its genuine spirit and vigour, 
 the spirit and vigour of the age of Dry den. Jeremy 
 Collier too, like Mr. Long, regarded in Marcus 
 Aurelius the living moralist, and not the dead 
 classic ; and his warmth of feeling gave to his style 
 an impetuosity and rhythm which from Mr. Long’s 
 style (I do not blame it on that account) are absent. 
 Let us place the two side by side. The impressive 
 opening of Marcus Aurelius’s fifth book, Mr. Long 
 translates thus : — 
 
 “In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, 
 let this thought be present : I am rising to the 
 work of a human being. MTiy then am I dissatis- 
 fied if I am going to do the things for which I 
 exist and for which I was brought into the world 1 
 Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed 
 clothes and keep myself warmf — But this is more 
 
X.] 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 351 
 
 pleasant. — Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, 
 and not at all for action or exertion 
 Jeremy Collier has : — 
 
 “ When you find an unwillingness to rise early in 
 the morning, make this short speech to yourself : “I 
 am getting up now to do the business of a man ; and 
 am I out of humour for going about that which I was 
 made for, and for the sake of which I was sent into 
 the world? Was I then designed for nothing but to 
 doze and batten beneath the counterpane ? I thought 
 action had been the end of your being.’” 
 
 In another striking passage, again, Mr. Long 
 has : — 
 
 “No longer wonder at hazard; for neither wilt 
 thou read thy own memoirs, nor the acts of the 
 ancient Eomans and Hellenes, and the selections 
 from books which thou wast reserving for thy old 
 age. Hasten then to the end which thou hast 
 
 before thee, and, throwing away idle hopes, come 
 to thine own aid, if thou carest at all for thyself, 
 while it is in thy power.” 
 
 Here his despised predecessor has : — 
 
 “Don’t go too far in your books and overgrasp 
 yourself. Alas, you have no time left to peruse 
 yom* diary, to read over the Greek and Eoman 
 history ; come, don’t flatter and deceive yourself ; 
 look to the main chance, to the end and design of 
 reading, and mind life more than notion : I say, if 
 you have a kindness for your person, drive at the 
 practice and help yourself, for that is in your own 
 power.” 
 
352 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [X. 
 
 It seems to me that here for style and force 
 Jeremy Collier can (to say the least) perfectly stand 
 comparison \vith Mr. Long. Jeremy Collier’s real 
 defect as a translator is not his coarseness and vul- 
 garity, but his imperfect acquaintance with Greek; 
 this is a serious defect, a fatal one ; it rendered a 
 translation like Mr. Long’s necessary. Jeremy 
 Collier’s work will now be forgotten, and Mr. Long 
 stands master of the field ; but he may be content, 
 at any rate, to leave his predecessor’s grave un- 
 harmed, even if he will not throw upon it, in passing, 
 a handful of kindly earth. 
 
 Another complaint I have against Mr. Long is, 
 ihat he is not quite idiomatic and simple enough. 
 It is a little formal, at least, if not pedantic, to say 
 Ethic and Dialectic, instead of Ethics and Dialectics, 
 and to say Hellenes and Romans” instead of 
 Greeks and Romans.” And why, too, — the name 
 of Antoninus being preoccupied by Antoninus Pius, 
 — will Mr. Long call his author Marcus Antoninus 
 instead of Marcus Aurelius f Small as these matters 
 appear, they are important when one ha^ to deal 
 with the general public, and not with a small circle 
 of scholars; and it is the general public that the 
 translator of a short masterpiece on morals, such as 
 is the book of Marcus Aurelius, should have in 
 view ; his aim should be to make Marcus Aurelius’s 
 work as popular as the Imitation, and Marcus Aure- 
 lius’s name as familiar as Socrates’s. In rendering or 
 naming liirn, therefore, punctilious accuracy of phrase 
 is not so much to be sought as accessibility and cur 
 
X.] 
 
 MAKCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 353 
 
 rency ; everything which may best enable the Em- 
 peror and his precepts volitare 'per ora virUm. It is 
 essential to render him in language perfectly plain 
 and unprofessional, and to call him by the name by 
 which he is best and most distinctly known. The 
 translators of the Bible talk of pence and not denari% 
 and the admirers of Voltaire do not celebrate him 
 under the name of Arouet. 
 
 But, after these trifling complaints are made, one 
 must end, as one began, in unfeigned gratitude to 
 Mr. Long for his excellent and substantial reproduc- 
 tion in English of an invaluable work. In general 
 the substantiality, soundness, and precision of Mr. 
 Long’s rendering are (I will venture, after all, to give 
 my opinion about them) as conspicuous as the living 
 spirit with which he treats antiquity; and these 
 qualities are particularly desirable in the translator of 
 a work like that of Marcus Aurelius, of which the 
 language is often corrupt, almost always hard and 
 obscure. Any one who wants to appreciate Mr. Long’s 
 merits as a translator may read, in the original and 
 in Mr. Long’s translation, the seventh chapter of the 
 tenth book ; he will see how, through all the dubious- 
 ness and involved manner of the Greek, Mr. Long has 
 firmly seized upon the clear thought which is certainly 
 at the bottom of that troubled wording, and, in dis- 
 tinctly rendering this thought, has at the same time 
 thrown round its expression a characteristic shade of 
 painfulness and difficulty which just suits it. And 
 Marcus Aurelius’s book is one which, when it is ren- 
 dered so accurately as Mr. Long renders it, even those 
 
 VOL. L 2 A 
 
354 ESSAYS IN CEITICISM. [y, 
 
 who know Greek tolerably well may choose to read 
 rather in the translation than in the original. For not 
 only are the contents here incomparably more valuable 
 than the external form, but this form, the Greek of a 
 Roman, is not exactly one of those styles which have a 
 physiognomy, which are an essential part of their 
 author, which stamp an indelible impression of him on 
 the reader’s mind. An old Lyons commentator finds, 
 indeed, in Marcus Aurelius’s Greek, something charac- 
 teristic, something specially firm and imperial ; but I 
 think an ordinary mortal will hardly find this : he will 
 find crabbed Greek, without any great charm of distinct 
 physiognomy. The Greek of Thucydides and Plato 
 has this charm, and he who reads them in a trans- 
 lation, however accurate, loses it, and loses much in 
 losing it ; but the Greek of Marcus Aurelius, like the 
 Greek of the New Testament, and even more than 
 the Greek of the New Testament, is wanting in it. 
 If one could be assured that the English Testament 
 were made perfectly accurate, one might be almost 
 content never to open a Greek Testament again ; and, 
 Mr. Long’s version of Marcus Aurelius being what it 
 is, an Englishman who reads to live, and does not 
 live to read, may henceforth let the Greek original 
 repose upon its shelf. 
 
 The man whose thoughts Mr. Long has thus faith- 
 fully reproduced, is perhaps the most beautiful figure 
 in history. He is one of those consoling and hope- 
 inspiring marks, which stand for ever to remind our 
 weak and easily discouraged race how high human 
 goodness and perseverance have once been carried, 
 
X.] 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 355 
 
 and may be carried again. The interest of mankind 
 is peculiarly attracted by examples of signal goodness 
 in high places; for that testimony to the worth of 
 goodness is the most striking which is borne by those 
 to whom all the means of pleasure and self-indulgence 
 lay open, by those who had at their command the 
 kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Marcus 
 Aurelius was the ruler of the grandest of empires ; 
 and he was one of the best of men. Besides him, 
 history presents one or two sovereigns eminent for 
 their goodness, such as Saint Louis or Alfred. But 
 Marcus Aurelius has, for us moderns, this great supe- 
 riority in interest over Saint Louis or Alfred, that he 
 lived and acted in a state of society modern by its 
 essential characteristics, in an epoch akin to our own, 
 in a brilliant centre of civilisation. Trajan talks of 
 “ our enlightened age ” just as glibly as the Times 
 talks of it. Marcus Aurelius thus becomes for us a 
 man like ourselves, a man in all things tempted as we 
 are. Saint Louis inhabits an atmosphere of mediaeval 
 Catholicism, which the man of the nineteenth century 
 may admire, indeed, may even passionately wish to 
 inhabit, but which, strive as he will, he cannot really 
 inhabit. Alfred belongs to a state of society (I say 
 it with all deference to the Saturday Review critic who 
 keeps such jealous watch over the honour of our 
 Saxon ancestors) half barbarous. Neither Alfred nor 
 Saint Louis can be morally and intellectually as near 
 to us as Marcus Aurelius. 
 
 The record of the outward life of this admirable 
 man has in it little of striking incident. He was 
 
356 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [x. 
 
 born at Kome on the 26th of April, in the year 121 
 of the Christian era. He was nephew and son-in-law 
 to his predecessor on the throne, Antoninus Pius. 
 When Antoninus died, he was forty years old, hut 
 from the time of his earliest manhood he had assisted 
 in administering public affairs. Then, after his uncle’s 
 death in 161, for nineteen years he reigned as emperor. 
 The barbarians were pressing on the Eoman frontier, 
 and a great part of Marcus Aurelius’s nineteen years 
 of reign was passed in campaigning. His absences 
 from Eome were numerous and long. We hear of 
 him in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Greece ; but, above 
 all, in the countries on the Danube, where the war 
 with the barbarians was going on, — in Austria. 
 Moravia, Hungary. In these countries much of his 
 J ournal seems to have been written ; parts of it are 
 dated from them ; and there, a few weeks before his 
 fifty -ninth birthday, he fell sick and died.^ The 
 record of him on which his fame chiefly rests is 
 the record of his inward life, — his Journal^ or Com- 
 mentaries, or Meditations, or Thoughts, for by all these 
 names has the work been called. Perhaps the most 
 interesting of the records of his outward life is that 
 which the first book of this work supplies, where he 
 gives an account of his education, recites the names 
 of those to whom he is indebted for it, and enumerates 
 his obligations to each of them. It is a refreshing 
 and consoling picture, a priceless treasure for those, 
 who, sick of the “ wild and dreamlike trade of blood 
 and guile,” which seems to be nearly the whole of 
 ^ He died on the 17th of March, a.d. 180. 
 
X.J 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 357 
 
 what history has to offer to our view, seek eagerly for 
 that substratum of right thinking and well-doing 
 which in all ages must surely have somewhere existed, 
 for without it the continued life of humanity would 
 have been impossible. “ From my mother I learnt 
 piety and beneficence, and abstinence not only from 
 evil deeds but even from evil thoughts ; and further, 
 simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the 
 habits of the rich.” Let us remember that, the next 
 time we are reading the sixth satire of Juvenal. 
 “From my tutor I learnt” (hear it, ye tutors of princes !) 
 “ endurance of labour, and to want little, and to work 
 with my own hands, and not to meddle with other 
 people’s affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander.” 
 The vices and foibles of the Greek sophist or rhetori- 
 cian — the Grcecuhis esuriens — are in everybody’s mind ; 
 but he who reads Marcus Aurelius’s account of his 
 Greek teachers and masters, will understand how it 
 is that, in spite of the vices and foibles of individual 
 Grceculi, the education of the human race owes to 
 Greece a debt which can never be overrated. The 
 vague and colourless praise of history leaves on the 
 mind hardly any impression of Antoninus Pius : it is 
 only from the private memoranda of his nephew that 
 we learn what a disciplined, hard-working, gentle, 
 wise, virtuous man he was ; a man who, perhaps, in- 
 terests mankind less than his immortal nephew only 
 because he has left in writing no record of his inner 
 life , — card quia vate sacro. 
 
 Of the outward life and circumstances of Marcus 
 Aurelius, beyond these notices which he has himself 
 
358 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 
 supplied, there are few of much interest and import- 
 ance. There is the fine anecdote of his speech when 
 he heard of the assassination of the revolted Avidius 
 Cassius, against whom he was marching ; he was sorry^ 
 he said, to he deprived of the pleasure of pardoning him. 
 And there are one or two more anecdotes of him 
 which show the same spirit. But the great record 
 for the outward life of a man who has left such a 
 record of his lofty inward aspirations as that which 
 Marcus Aurelius has left, is the clear consenting voice 
 of all his contemporaries, — high and low, friend and 
 enemy, pagan and Christian, — in praise of his sincerity, 
 justice, and goodness. The world’s charity does not 
 err on the side of excess, and here was a man occupy- 
 ing the most conspicuous station in the world, and 
 professing the highest possible standard of conduct ; — 
 yet the world was obliged to declare that he walked 
 worthily of his profession. Long after his death, his 
 bust was to be seen in the houses of private men 
 through the wide Eoman empire. It may be the 
 vulgar part of human nature which busies itself with 
 the semblance and doings of living sovereigns, it is 
 its nobler part which busies itself with those of the 
 dead ; these busts of Marcus Aurelius, in the homes 
 of Gaul, Britain, and Italy, bear witness, not to the 
 inmates’ frivolous curiosity about princes and palaces, 
 but to their reverential memory of the passage of a 
 great man upon the earth. 
 
 Two things, however, before one turns from the 
 outward to the inward life of Marcus Aurelius, force 
 themselves upon one’s notice, and demand a word of 
 
X.] 
 
 MAKCUS AUKELIUS. 
 
 359 
 
 comment ; he persecuted the Christians, and he had 
 for his son the vicious and brutal Commodus. The 
 persecution at Lyons, in which Attains and Pothinus 
 suffered, the persecution at Smyrna, in which Polycarp 
 suffered, took place in his reign. Of his humanity, 
 of his tolerance, of his horror of cruelty and violence, 
 of his wish to refrain from severe measures against 
 the Christians, of his anxiety to temper the severity 
 of these measures when they appeared to him indis- 
 pensable, there is no doubt : but, on the one hand, it 
 is certain that the letter, attributed to him, directing 
 that no Christian should be punished for being a 
 Christian, is spurious ; it is almost certain that his 
 alleged answer to the authorities of Lyons, in which 
 he directs that Christians persisting in their profession 
 shall be dealt with according to law, is genuine. Mr. 
 Long seems inclined to try and throw doubt over 
 the persecution at Lyons, by pointing out that the 
 letter of the Lyons Christians relating it, alleges it 
 to have been attended by miraculous and incredible 
 incidents. “ A man,” he says, “ can only act consist- 
 ently by accepting all this letter or rejecting it all, 
 and we cannot blame him for either.” But it is con- 
 trary to all experience to say that because a fact is 
 related with incorrect additions, and embellishments, 
 therefore it probably never happened at all ; or that 
 it is not, in general, easy for an impartial mind to 
 distinguish between the fact and the embellishments. 
 I cannot doubt that the Lyons persecution took place, 
 and that the punishment of Christians for being 
 Christians was sanctioned by Marcus Aurelius. But 
 
360 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [r 
 
 then 1 must add that nine modem readers out of ten, 
 when they read this, will, I believe, have a perfectly 
 false notion of what the moral action of Marcus 
 Aurelius, in sanctioning that punishment, really was. 
 They imagine Trajan, or Antoninus Pius, or Marcus 
 Aurelius, fresh from the perusal of the Gospel, fully 
 aware of the spirit and holiness of the Christian saints 
 ordering their extermination because he loved dark- 
 ness rather than light. Far from this, the Christianity 
 which these emperors aimed at repressing was, in 
 their conception of it, something philosophically con- 
 temptible, politically subversive, and morally abomin- 
 able. As men, they sincerely regarded it much as 
 well-conditioned people, with us, regard Mormonism ; 
 as rulers, they regarded it much as Liberal statesmen, 
 with us, regard the Jesuits. A kind of Mormonism, 
 constituted as a vast secret society, with obscure aims 
 of political and social subversion, was what Antoninus 
 Pius and Marcus Aurelius believed themselves to be 
 repressing when they punished Christians. The early 
 Christian apologists again and again declare to us 
 under what odious imputations the Christians lay, 
 how general was the belief that these imputations 
 were well-grounded, how sincere was the horror which 
 the belief inspired. The multitude, convinced that 
 the Christians were atheists who ate human flesh and 
 thought incest no crime, displayed against them a 
 fury so passionate as to embarrass and alarm their 
 rulers. The severe expressions of Tacitus, exitiabilis 
 super stitio — odio humani generis convicti, show how 
 deeply the prejudices of the multitude imbued the 
 
X.] 
 
 MAKCTJS AUEELIUS. 
 
 361 
 
 educated class also. One asks oneself with astonish- 
 ment how a doctrine so benign as that of Jesus Christ 
 can have incurred misrepresentation so monstrous. 
 The inner and moving cause of the misrepresentation 
 lay, no doubt, in this, — that Christianity was a new 
 spirit in the Eoman world, destined to act in that 
 world as its dissolvent ; and it was inevitable that 
 Christianity in the Eoman world, like democracy in 
 the modern world, like every new spirit with a similar 
 mission assigned to it, should at its first appearance 
 occasion an instinctive shrinking and repugnance in 
 the world which it was to dissolve. The outer and 
 palpable causes of the misrepresentation were, for the 
 Eoman public at large, the confounding of the Chris- 
 tians with the Jews, that isolated, fierce, and stubborn 
 race, whose stubbornness, fierceness, and isolation, 
 real as they were, the fancy of a civilised Eoman yet 
 further exaggerated ; the atmosphere of mystery and 
 novelty which surrounded the Christian rites ; the 
 very simplicity of Christian theism. For the Eoman 
 statesman, the cause of mistake lay in that character 
 of secret assemblages which the meetings of the 
 Christian community wore, under a State-system as 
 jealous of unauthorised associations as is the State- 
 system of modern France. 
 
 A Eoman of Marcus Aurelius’s time and position 
 could not well see the Christians except through the 
 mist of these prejudices. Seen through such a mist, 
 the Christians appeared with a thousand faults not 
 their own ; but it has not been sufficiently remarked 
 that faults really their own many of them assuredly 
 
362 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [x- 
 
 appeared with besides, faults especially likely to 
 strike such an observer as Marcus Aurelius, and to 
 confirm him in the prejudices of his race, station, and 
 rearing. We look back upon Christianity after it has 
 proved what a future it bore within it, and for us the 
 sole representatives of its early struggles are the pure 
 and devoted spirits through whom it proved this ; 
 Marcus Aurelius saw it with its future yet unshown, 
 and with the tares among its professed progeny not 
 less conspicuous than the wheat. Who can doubt 
 that among the professing Christians of the second 
 century, as among the professing Christians of the 
 nineteenth, there was plenty of folly, plenty of rabid 
 nonsense, plenty of gross fanaticism ? who will even 
 venture to affirm that, separated in great measure 
 from the intellect and civilisation of the world for one 
 or two centuries, Christianity, wonderful as have been 
 its fruits, had the development perfectly worthy of its 
 inestimable germ ? Who will venture to affirm that, 
 by the alliance of Christianity with the virtue and 
 intelligence of men like the Antonines, — of the best 
 product of Greek and Roman civilisation, while Greek 
 and Roman civilisation had yet life and power, — 
 Christianity and the world, as well as the Antonines 
 themselves, would not have been gainers ? That 
 alliance was not to be. The Antonines lived and 
 died with an utter misconception of Christianity ; 
 Christianity grew up in the Catacombs, not on the 
 Palatine. And Marcus Aurelius incurs no moral 
 reproach by having authorised the punishment of the 
 Christians ; he does not thereby become in the least 
 
X.] 
 
 MAKCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 363 
 
 what we mean by a persecutor. One may concede 
 that it was impossible for him to see Christianity as 
 it really was ; — as impossible as for even the moderate 
 and sensible Fleury to see the Antonines as they 
 really were; — one may concede that the point of 
 view from which Christianity appeared something 
 anti-civil and anti-social, which the State had the 
 faculty to judge and the duty to suppress, was in- 
 evitably his. Still, however, it remains true that 
 this sage, who made perfection his aim and reason his 
 law, did Christianity an immense injustice and rested 
 in an idea of State -attributes which was illusive. 
 And this is, in truth, characteristic of Marcus Aurelius, 
 that he is blameless, yet, in a certain sense, unfor- 
 tunate ; in his character, beautiful as it is, there 
 is something melancholy, circumscribed, and in- 
 effectual. 
 
 For of his having such a son as Commodus, too, 
 one must say that he is not to be blamed on that 
 account, but that he is unfortunate. Disposition and 
 temperament are inexplicable things ; there are 
 natures on which the best education and example are 
 thrown away ; excellent fathers may have, without 
 any fault of theirs, incurably vicious sons. It is to be 
 remembered, also, that Commodus was left, at the 
 perilous age of nineteen, master of the world ; while 
 his father, at that age, was but beginning a twenty 
 years’ apprenticeship to wisdom, labour, and self- 
 command, under the sheltering teachership of his 
 uncle Antoninus. Commodus was a prince apt to be 
 led by favourites ; and if the story is true which saya 
 
364 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [x. 
 
 that he left, all through his reign, the Christians un- 
 troubled, and ascribes this lenity to the influence of 
 his mistress Marcia, it shows that he could be led to 
 good as well as to evil. But for such a nature to be 
 left at a critical age with absolute power, and wholly 
 without good counsel and direction, was the more 
 fatal. Still one cannot help wishing that the example 
 of Marcus Aurelius could have availed more with his 
 own only son. One cannot but think that with such 
 virtue as his there should go, too, the ardour which 
 removes mountains, and that the ardour which re- 
 moves mountains might have even won Commodus. 
 The word ineffectual again rises to one’s mind ; Marcus 
 Aurelius saved his own soul by his righteousness, and 
 he could do no more. Happy they who can do this ! 
 but still happier, who can do more 1 
 
 Yet, when one passes from his outward to his in- 
 ward life, when one turns over the pages of his 
 Meditations ^ — entries jotted down from day to day, 
 amid the business of the city or the fatigues of the 
 camp, for his own guidance and support, meant for 
 no eye but his own, without the slightest attempt at 
 style, with no care, even, for correct writing, not to 
 be surpassed for naturalness and sincerity, — all dis- 
 position to carp and cavil dies away, and one is over- 
 powered by the charm of a character of such purity, 
 delicacy, and virtue. He fails neither in small things 
 nor in great ; he keeps watch over himself both that 
 the great springs of action may be right in him, and 
 that the minute details of action may be right also. 
 How admirable in a hard-tasked ruler, and a ruler. 
 
X.J 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 365 
 
 boo, with a passion for thinking and reading, is such 
 a memorandum as the following : — 
 
 “ Not frequently nor without necessity to say to 
 any one, or to write in a letter, that I have no 
 leisure ; nor continually to excuse the neglect of 
 duties required by our relation to those with whom 
 we live, by alleging urgent occupation.” 
 
 And, when that ruler is a Eoman emperor, what 
 an “ idea ” is this to be written down and meditated 
 by him ; — 
 
 “ The idea of a polity in which there is the same 
 law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal 
 rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a 
 kingly government which respects most of all the 
 freedom of the governed.” 
 
 And, for all men who “ drive at practice,” what 
 practical rules may not one accumulate out of these 
 Meditations : — 
 
 “ The greatest part of what we say or do being 
 unnecessary, if a man takes this away, he will have 
 more leisure and less uneasiness. Accordingly, on 
 every occasion a man should ask himself : ‘ Is this 
 one of the unnecessary things V Now a man should 
 take away not only unnecessary acts, but also un- 
 necessary thoughts, for thus superfluous acts will not 
 follow after.” 
 
 And again : — 
 
 “We ought to check in the series of our thoughts 
 everything that is without a purpose and useless, but 
 most of all the over curious feeling and the malignant ; 
 and a man should use himself to think of those 
 
366 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [x 
 
 things only about which if one should suddenly ask, 
 ‘ What hast thou now in thy thoughts V with perfect 
 openness thou mightest immediately answer, ‘ This oi 
 That so that from thy words it should be plain that 
 everything in thee is simple and benevolent, and such 
 as befits a social animal, and one that cares not for 
 thoughts about sensual enjoyments, or any rivalry 
 or envy and suspicion, or anything else for which thou 
 wouldst blush if thou shouldst say thou hadst it in 
 thy mind.” 
 
 So, with a stringent practicalness worthy of 
 Franklin, he discourses on his favourite text, Let 
 nothing he done without a purpose. But it is when he 
 enters the region where Franklin cannot follow him, 
 when he utters his thoughts on the ground-motives 
 of human action, that he is most interesting ; that he 
 becomes the unique, the incomparable Marcus Aurelius. 
 Christianity uses language very liable to be misunder- 
 stood when it seems to tell men to do good, not, cer- 
 tainly, from the vulgar motives of worldly interest, or 
 vanity, or love of human praise, but “ that their 
 Father which seeth in secret may reward them 
 openly.” The motives of reward and punishment 
 have come, from the misconception of language of 
 this kind, to be strangely overpressed by many Chris- 
 tian moralists, to the deterioration and disfigurement 
 of Christianity. Marcus Aurelius says, truly and 
 nobly ; — 
 
 “ One man, when he has done a service to another, 
 is ready to set it down to his account as a favour con- 
 ferred. Another is not ready to do this, but still in 
 
X.] 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 367 
 
 his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor, and 
 he knows what he has done. A third in a manner 
 does not even know what he has done, hut he is like a 
 vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing 
 more after it has once produced its proper fruit. As a 
 horse when he has run, a dog when he has caught the 
 game, a bee when it has made its honey, so a man 
 when he has done a good act, does not call out for 
 others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, 
 as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in 
 season. Must a man, then, be one of these, who in a 
 manner acts thus without observing it 1 Yes.” 
 
 And again ; — 
 
 “What more dost thou want when thou hast done 
 a man a service ? Art thou not content that thou 
 hast done something conformable to thy nature, and 
 dost thou seek to be paid for it, just as if the eye 
 demanded a recompense for seeing, or the feet for 
 walking 
 
 Christianity, in order to match morality of this 
 strain, has to correct its apparent offers of external 
 reward, and to say : The kingdom of God is within 
 you. 
 
 I have said that it is by its accent of emotion that 
 the morality of Marcus Aurelius acquires a special 
 character, and reminds one of Christian morality. 
 The sentences of Seneca are stimulating to the intel- 
 lect ; the sentences of Epictetus are fortifying to the 
 character; the sentences of Marcus Aurelius find 
 their way to the soul. I have said that religious 
 emotion has the power to light up morality : the 
 
368 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [x. 
 
 emotion of Marcus Aurelius does not quite light up 
 his morality, but it suffuses it ; it has not power to 
 melt the clouds of effort and austerity quite away, but 
 it shines through them and glorifies them ; it is a 
 spirit, not so much of gladness and elation, as of 
 gentleness and sweetness ; a delicate and tender 
 sentiment, which is less than joy and more than 
 resignation. He says that in his youth he learned 
 from Maximus, one of his teachers, “ cheerfulness in 
 all circumstances as well as in illness ; and a just ad- 
 mixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity 
 and it is this very admixture of sweetness with his 
 dignity which makes him so beautiful a moralist. It 
 enables him to carry even into his observation of 
 nature, a delicate penetration, a sympathetic tender- 
 ness, worthy of Wordsworth ; the spirit of such a 
 remark as the following has hardly a parallel, so far 
 as my knowledge goes, in the whole range of Greek 
 and Eoman literature : — 
 
 “ Figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open ; and 
 in the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being 
 near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit. 
 And the ears of corn bending down, and the lion’s 
 eyebrows, and the foam which flows from the mouth 
 of wild boars, and many other things, — though they 
 are far from being beautiful, in a certain sense, — still, 
 because they come in the course of nature, have a 
 beauty in them, and they please the mind ; so that if 
 a man should have a feeling and a deeper insight with 
 respect to the things which are produced in the uni 
 verse, there is hardly anything which comes in the 
 
X.] 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 369 
 
 course of nature which will not seem to him to be in 
 a manner disposed so as to give pleasure.” 
 
 But it is when his strain passes to directly moral 
 subjects that his delicacy and sweetness lend to it 
 the greatest charm. Let those who can feel the 
 beauty of spiritual refinement read this, the reflec- 
 tion of an emperor who prized mental superiority 
 highly 
 
 “ Thou sayest, ‘ Men cannot admire the sharpness 
 of thy wits.’ Be it so; but there are many other 
 things of which thou canst not say, ‘ I am not formed 
 for them by nature.’ Show those qualities, then, 
 which are altogether in thy power, — sincerity, gravity, 
 endurance of labour, aversion to pleasure, contentment 
 with thy portion and with few things, benevolence, 
 frankness, no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling, 
 magnanimity. Dost thou not see how many qualities 
 thou art at once able to exhibit, as to which there is 
 no excuse of natural incapacity and unfitness, and yet 
 thou still remainest voluntarily below the mark ? Or 
 art thou compelled, through being defectively fur- 
 nished by nature, to murmur, and to be mean, and 
 to flatter, and to find fault "vvitb thy poor body, and 
 to try to please men, and to make great display, and 
 to be so restless in thy mind ? No, indeed ; but thou 
 mightest have been delivered from these things long 
 ago. Only, if in truth thou canst be charged with 
 being rather slow and dull of comprehension, thou 
 must exert thyself about this also, not neglecting nor 
 yet taking pleasure in thy dulness.” 
 
 The same sweetness enables him to fix his mind, 
 
 VOL. 1. 2 b 
 
370 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [x. 
 
 when he sees the isolation and moral death caused by 
 sin, not on the cheerless thought of the misery of this 
 condition, but on the inspiriting thought that man is 
 blest with the power to escape from it : — 
 
 “ Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the 
 natural unity, — for thou wast made by nature a part, 
 but now thou hast cut thyself oflP, — yet here is this 
 beautiful provision, that it is in thy power again to 
 unite thyself. God has allowed this to no other part, 
 — after it has been separated and cut asunder, to 
 come together again. But consider the goodness with 
 which he has privileged man ; for he has put it in his 
 power, when he has been separated, to return and to 
 be united and to resume his place.” 
 
 It enables him to control even the passion for 
 retreat and solitude, so strong in a soul like his, to 
 which the world could offer no abiding city : — 
 
 “Men seek retreat for themselves, houses in the 
 country, seashores, and mountains ; and thou, too, 
 art wont to desire such things very much. But this 
 is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, 
 for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to 
 retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more 
 quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire 
 than into his own soul, particularly when he has 
 within him such thoughts that by looking into them 
 he is immediately in perfect tranquillity. Constantly, 
 then, give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyseK ; 
 and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, 
 which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, vdll be 
 sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send 
 
X.] 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 371 
 
 thee back free from all discontent with the things to 
 which thou returnest.” 
 
 Against this feeling of discontent and weariness, 
 so natural to the great for whom there seems nothing 
 left to desire or to strive after, but so enfeebling to 
 them, so deteriorating, Marcus Aurelius never ceased 
 to struggle. With resolute thankfulness he kept in 
 remembrance the blessings of his lot ; the true bless- 
 ings of it, not the false : — 
 
 “ I have to thank Heaven that I was subjected to 
 a ruler and a father (Antoninus Pius) who was able 
 to take away all pride from me, and to bring me to 
 the knowledge that it is possible for a man to live in 
 a palace without either guards, or embroidered dresses, 
 or any show of this kind ; but that it is in such a 
 man’s power to bring himself very near to the fashion 
 of a private person, without being for this reason 
 either meaner in thought or more remiss in action 
 with respect to the things which must be done for 
 public interest. ... I have to be thankful that my 
 children have not been stupid nor deformed in body ; 
 that I did not make more proficiency in rhetoric, 
 poetry, and the other studies, by which I should per- 
 haps have been completely engrossed, if I had seen 
 that I was making great progress in them ; . . . that 
 I knew Apollonius, Eusticus, Maximus ; . . . that I 
 received clear and frequent impressions about living 
 according to nature, and what kind of a life that is, 
 so that, so far as depended on Heaven, and its gifts, 
 help, and inspiration, nothing hindered me from forth- 
 with living according to nature, though I still fall short 
 
 VOL. I. 2 B 2 
 
372 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [x. 
 
 of it through my own fault, and through not observing 
 the admonitions of Heaven, and, I may almost say, its 
 direct instructions ; that my body has held out so long 
 in such a kind of life as mine ; that though it was my 
 mother’s lot to die young, she spent the last years of 
 her life with me ; that whenever I wished to help any 
 man in his need, I was never told that I had not the 
 means of doing it ; that, when I had an inclination to 
 philosophy, I did not fall into the hands of a sophist.” 
 And, as he dwelt with gratitude on these helps and 
 blessings vouchsafed to him, his mind (so, at least, it 
 seems to me) would sometimes revert with awe to the 
 perils and temptations of the lonely height where he 
 stood, to the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domi- 
 tian, in their hideous blackness and ruin ; and then 
 he wrote down for himself such a warning entry as 
 this, significant and terrible in its abruptness : — 
 
 “ A black character, a womanish character, a stub- 
 born character, bestial, childish, animal, stupid, counter- 
 feit, scurrilous, fraudulent, tyrannical ! ” 
 
 Or this : — 
 
 “About what am I now employing my souH On 
 every occasion I must ask myself this question, and 
 enquire. What have I now in this part of me which 
 they call the ruling principle, and whose soul have I 
 now "I — that of a child, or of a young man, or of a 
 weak woman, or of a tyrant, or of one of the lower 
 animals in the service of man, or of a wild beast ? ” 
 The character he wished to attain he knew well, 
 and beautifully he has marked it, and marked, too, 
 his sense of shortcoming : — 
 
X.] 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 373 
 
 “When thou hast assumed these names, — good, 
 modest, true, rational, equal-minded, magnanimous, — 
 take care that thou dost not change these names ; and, 
 if thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to them. 
 If thou maintainest thyself in possession of these 
 names without desiring that others should call thee 
 by them, thou wilt be another being, and wilt enter 
 on another life. For to continue to be such as thou 
 hast hitherto been, and to be tom in pieces and defiled 
 in such a life, is the character of a very stupid man, 
 and one overfond of his life, and like those half- 
 devoured fighters with wild beasts, who though 
 covered with wounds and gore still entreat to be 
 kept to the following day, though they will be ex- 
 posed in the same state to the same claws and bites. 
 Therefore fix thyself in the possession of these few 
 names ; and if thou art able to abide in them, abide 
 as if thou wast removed to the Happy Islands.” 
 
 For all his sweetness and serenity, however, man’s 
 point of life “ between two infinities ” (of that expres- 
 sion Marcus Aurelius is the real owner) was to him 
 anything but a Happy Island, and the performances 
 on it he saw through no veils of illusion. Nothing is 
 in general more gloomy and monotonous than declama- 
 tions on the hollowness and transitoriness of human 
 life and grandeur : but here, too, the great charm of 
 Marcus Aurelius, his emotion, comes in to relieve the 
 monotony and to break through the gloom ; and even 
 on this eternally used topic he is imaginative, fresh, 
 and striking : — 
 
 “Consider, for example, the times of Vespasian. 
 
374 
 
 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 
 
 [X 
 
 Thou wilt see all these things, people marrying, 
 bringing up children, sick, dying, warring, feasting, 
 trafficking, cultivating the ground, flattering, obstin- 
 ately arrogant, suspecting, plotting, wishing for some* 
 body to die, grumbling about the present, loving, 
 heaping up treasure, desiring to be consuls or kings. 
 Well then that life of these people no longer exists 
 at all. Again, go to the times of Trajan. All is again 
 the same. Their life too is gone. But chiefly thou 
 shouldst think of those whom thou hast thyself known 
 distracting themselves about idle things, neglecting to 
 do what was in accordance with their proper constitu- 
 tion, and to hold firmly to this and to be content 
 with it.” 
 
 Again : — 
 
 “The things which are much valued in life are 
 empty, and rotten, and trifling ; and people are like 
 little dogs, biting one another, and little children quar- 
 relling, crying, and then straightway laughing. But 
 fidelity, and modesty, and justice, and truth, are fled 
 
 * Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.* 
 
 What then is there which still detains thee here ? ” 
 And once more : — 
 
 “ Look down from above on the countless herds of 
 men, and their countless solemnities, and the infinitely 
 varied voyagings in storms and calms, and the differ- 
 ences among those who are born, who live together, 
 and die. And consider too the life lived by others in 
 olden time, and the life now lived among barbarous 
 nations, and how many know not even thy name, and 
 
MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 375 
 
 X.] 
 
 how many will soon forget it, and how they who per- 
 haps now are praising thee will very soon blame thee, 
 and that neither a posthumous name is of any value, 
 nor reputation, nor anything else.” 
 
 He recognised, indeed, that (to use his own words) 
 “the prime principle in man’s constitution is the 
 social and he laboured sincerely to make not only 
 his acts towards his fellow-men, but his thoughts also, 
 suitable to this conviction : — 
 
 “When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of 
 the virtues of those who live with thee ; for instance, 
 the activity of one, and the modesty of another, and 
 the liberality of a third, and some other good quality 
 of a fourtL” 
 
 Still, it is hard for a pure and thoughtful man to 
 live in a state of rapture at the spectacle afforded to 
 him by his fellow-creatures; above all it is hard, 
 when such a man is placed as Marcus Aurelius was 
 placed, and has had the meanness and perversity of 
 his fellow-creatures thrust, in no common measure, 
 upon his notice, — has had, time after time, to expe- 
 rience how “ within ten days thou wilt seem a god to 
 those to whom thou art now a beast and an ape.” 
 His true strain of thought as to his relations with his 
 fellow -men is rather the following. He has been 
 enumerating the higher consolations which may sup- 
 port a man at the approach of death, and he goes 
 on : — 
 
 “ But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of com- 
 fort which shall reach thy heart, thou wilt be made 
 best reconciled to death by observing the objects from 
 
376 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [x 
 
 which thou art going to be removed, and the morals 
 of those with whom thy soul will no longer be mingled. 
 For it is no way right to be offended vuth men, but 
 it is thy duty to care for them and to bear with them 
 gently ; and yet to remember that thy departure will 
 not be from men who have the same principles as 
 thyself. For this is the only thing, if there he any, 
 which could draw us the contrary way and attach us 
 to life, to be permitted to live with those who have 
 the same principles as ourselves. But now thou seest 
 how great is the distress caused by the difference of 
 those who live together, so that thou mayest say : 
 ‘Come quick, 0 death, lest perchance I too should 
 forget myself.’ ” 
 
 0 faithless and perverse generation ! how long shall 1 
 be with you ? how long shall I suffer you 7 Sometimes 
 this strain rises even to passion : — 
 
 “ Short is the little which remains to thee of life. 
 Live as on a mountain. Let men see, let them know, 
 a real man, who lives as he was meant to live. If 
 they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that 
 is better than to live as men do.” 
 
 It is remarkable how little of a merely local and 
 temporary character, how little of those scoriae which 
 a reader has to clear away before he gets to the pre- 
 cious ore, how little that even admits of doubt or 
 question, the morality of Marcus Aurelius exhibits. 
 Perhaps as to one point we must make an exception. 
 Marcus Aurelius is fond of urging as a motive for 
 man’s cheerful acquiescence in whatever befaUs him, 
 that “ whatever happens to every man is for the in- 
 
X.] 
 
 MARCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 377 
 
 tefrest of the universal that the whole contains nothing 
 which is not for its advantage ; that everything which 
 happens to a man is to be accepted, “ even if it seems 
 disagreeable, because it leads to the health of the universe.^' 
 And the whole course of the universe, he adds, has a 
 providential reference to man’s welfare : all other 
 
 things have been made for the sake of rational beings” 
 Eeligion has in all ages freely used this language, and 
 it is not religion which will object to Marcus Aurelius’s 
 use of it ; but science can hardly accept as severely 
 accurate this employment of the terms interest and 
 advantage. To a sound nature and a clear reason the 
 proposition that things happen “ for the interest of 
 the universal,” as men conceive of interest, may seem 
 to have no meaning at all, and the proposition that 
 “ all things have been made for the sake of rational 
 beings ” may seem to be false. Yet even to this lan- 
 guage, not irresistibly cogent when it is thus absolutely 
 used, Marcus Aurelius gives a turn which makes it 
 true and useful, when he says : “ The ruling part of 
 man can make a material for itself out of that which 
 opposes it, as fire lays hold of what falls into it, and 
 rises higher by means of this very material;” — when 
 he says : “ What else are all things except exercises 
 for the reason 1 Persevere then until thou shalt have 
 made all things thine own, as the stomach which is 
 strengthened makes all things its own, as the blazing 
 fire makes flame and brightness out of everything 
 that is thrown into it;” — when he says : “Thou wilt 
 not cease to be miserable till thy mind is in such a 
 condition, that, what luxury is to those who enjoy 
 
378 ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. [x. 
 
 pleasure, such shall be to thee, in every matter which 
 presents itself, the doing of the things which are 
 conformable to man’s constitution ; for a man ought 
 to consider as an enjoyment everything which it is in 
 his power to do according to his own nature, — and it 
 is in his power everywhere.” In this sense it is, in- 
 deed, most true that “ all things have been made for 
 the sake of rational beings;” that “all things work 
 together for good.” 
 
 In general, however, the action Marcus Aurelius 
 prescribes is action which every sound nature must 
 recognise as right, and the motives he assigns are 
 motives which every clear reason must recognise as 
 valid. And so he remains the especial friend and 
 comforter of all clear-headed and scrupulous, yet pure- 
 hearted and upward striving men, in those ages most 
 especially that walk by sight, not by faith, but yet 
 have no open vision. He cannot give such souls, 
 perhaps, all they yearn for, but he gives them much; 
 and what he gives them, they can receive. 
 
 Yet no, it is not for what he thus gives them that 
 such souls love him most ! it is rather because of the 
 emotion which lends to his voice so touching an accent, 
 it is because he too yearns as they do for something 
 unattained by him. What an affinity for Christianity 
 had this persecutor of the Christians ! The effusion 
 of Christianity, its relieving tears, its happy self- 
 sacrifice, were the very element, one feels, for which 
 his soul longed ; they were near him, they brushed 
 him, he touched them, he passed them by. One feels, 
 too, that the Marcus Aurelius one reads must still 
 
MAKCUS AURELIUS. 
 
 379 
 
 have remained, even had Christianity been fully 
 known to him, in a great measure himself ; he would 
 have been no Justin; — but how would Christianity 
 have affected him? in what measure would it have 
 changed him ? Granted that he might have found, 
 like the Alogi of modern times, in the most beautiful 
 of the Gospels, the Gospel which has leavened Chris- 
 tendom most powerfully, the Gospel of St. John, too 
 much Greek metaphysics, too much gnosis; granted 
 that this Gospel might have looked too like what he 
 knew already to be a total surprise to him: what, 
 then, would he have said to the Sermon on the Mount, 
 to the twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew 1 What 
 would have become of his notions of the exitiabilis 
 sujperstitio, of the “ obstinacy of the Christians ” ? 
 Vain question ! yet the greatest charm of Marcus 
 Aurelius is that he makes us ask it. We see him 
 wise, just, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless; 
 yet, with all this, agitated, stretching out his arms for 
 something beyond, — tendentemque manus ripce ulierioris 
 amore. 
 
 THE END 
 
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