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 Book -U 3 _ 
 
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 DAVID GRAY, AND OTHER ESSAYS, 
 CHIEFLY ON POETRY. 
 
Sing, Poet, small or mighty — hug to thyself 
 The luxury of seeing — sing, and die ! 
 'Tis the old story of the figleaf time : 
 A groping after beauty, a divine, 
 Aspiring, climbing, impulse, after God; — 
 Something far better than successful too — 
 Eternal ! 
 
DAVID GRAY, 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER ESSAYS, CHIEFLY ON 
 POET R Y. 
 
 li- 
 ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
 David Gray. 
 
 LONDON: 
 SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON, 
 
 MILTON HOUSE, LUDGATE HILL. 
 1868. 
 
 The right of translation is reserved. 
 
FIRST WORD. 
 
 T is from no desire to appear in a new 
 character that I publish the present 
 volume. The following Essays, in- 
 deed, are prose additions and notes 
 to my publications in verse, rather than mere at- 
 tempts at general criticism, for which, indeed, I 
 have little aptitude. They are my Confession of 
 Faith. I have here briefly touched on several 
 great and magnificent questions immediately 
 affecting the poetic personality : — on the nature 
 and character of the Poet par excellence, on the 
 Student's Vocation, on what is and what is not 
 moral in the Student's Utterance, slightly on reli- 
 gious light and truth ; illustrating my matter by 
 such sketches as that of Whitman, and such notes 
 as that on Uerrick's Hesperides. More would 
 have been added, and particularly an Essay on 
 " The Poetry of David Gray," had not my health 
 
vi FIRST WORD. 
 
 suddenly broken down just as the volume was 
 going to press. The book, however, is complete 
 as it stands, — an epitome of what may be said 
 hereafter in different ways. 
 
 The biography of David Gray is another 
 matter. A large portion of it appeared some 
 years ago in the " Cornhill Magazine," but the 
 additions, now first published, are very important. 
 It is a story known and told as only one could 
 know and tell it ; and will, I trust, send still 
 more readers to Gray's wonderful poems. The 
 little green-bound duodecimo, " The Luggie and 
 other Poems, by the late David Gray," was 
 wafted out unto the great world, heralded by a 
 kindly preface and a brief memoir. It excited 
 little or no comment. The exquisite music was 
 too low and tender to attract crowds, or to entice 
 coteries delighted with the scream of the whipper- 
 snapper. Nevertheless, a few rare spirits heard 
 and welcomed the truest, purest, tenderest 
 lyrical note that has floated to English ears this 
 half-century. 
 
 Robert Buchanan. 
 
 Sligachan, Isle of Skye, 
 Dec. 1, 1867. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Poet, ok Seer 
 
 II. David Gray 
 
 III. The Student, and his Vocation 
 
 IV. Waet Whitman . 
 V. Herrick's Hesperides . 
 
 VI. Literary Morality 
 
 VII. On a Passage in Heine 
 
 VIII. On my own Tentatives 
 
 Page 
 1 
 
 61 
 
 175 
 201 
 221 
 237 
 269 
 287 
 
I. 
 THE POET, OR SEER 
 
 A DEFINITION. 
 
He keeps, where there is lack of light, 
 Tlie loveliness of perfect sight. 
 Hark ! how his human heart anon 
 Leaps with the bliss he looks upon /— 
 Go forth, O perfect Heart and Eyes, 
 Stand in the crowd, and melodise ! 
 
THE POET, OE SEER. 
 
 HAT then is the Poet, or Seer, as dis- 
 tinguished from the philosopher, the 
 man of science, the politician, the 
 tale-teller, and others with whom he 
 has many points in common ? He is, indeed, a 
 student as other students are, but he is emphati- 
 cally the student who sees, who feels, who sings. 
 The Poet, briefly described, is he whose existence 
 constitutes a new experience — who sees life newly, 
 assimilates it emotionally, and contrives to utter 
 it musically. His qualities, therefore, are triune. 
 His sight must be individual, his reception of 
 impressions must be emotional, and his utterance 
 must be musical. Deficiency in any one of the 
 three qualities is fatal to his claims for office. 
 I. And first, as to the Glamour, the rarest 
 
4 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 and most important of all gifts ; so rare, indeed, 
 and so powerful, that it occasionally creates, in 
 very despite of nature, the other poetic qualities. 
 Yet that individual sight may exist in a character 
 essentially unpoetic, in a temperament purely in- 
 tellectual, might be proven by reference to more 
 than one writer — notably, to a leading novelist. 
 That proof, however, is immaterial. The point is, 
 how to detect this individual sight, this Glamour, 
 how to describe it, — how, in fact, to find a cri- 
 terion which will prove this or that person to be 
 or not to be a Seer. 
 
 The criterion is easily found and readily ap- 
 plied. We find it in the special intensity, the 
 daring reiteration, the unwearisome tautology, of 
 the utterance. The Seer is so occupied with his 
 vision, so devoted in the contemplation of the new 
 things which nature reserved for his special see- 
 ing, that he can only describe over and over 
 again — in numberless ways — in infinite moods of 
 grief, ecstasy, awe — the character of his sight. 
 He has discovered a new link, and his business is 
 to trace it to its uttermost consequences. He 
 beholds the world as it has been, but under a new 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 5 
 
 colouring. While small men are wandering up and 
 down the world, proclaiming a thousand discover- 
 ies, turning up countless moss-grown truths, the 
 Seer is standing still and wrapt, gazing at the 
 apparition, invisible to all eyes save his, holding 
 his hand upon his heart in the exquisite trouble of 
 perfect perception. And behold ! in due time, 
 his inspiration becomes godlike, insomuch as the 
 invisible relation is incorporated in actual types, 
 takes shape and being, and breathes and moves, 
 and mingles in tangible glory into the approven 
 culture of the world. 
 
 For, let it be noted, Nature is greedy of her 
 truths, and generally ordains that the perception 
 of one link in the chain of her relations is enough 
 to make man great and sacerdotal ; only twice, in 
 supreme moments, she creates a Plato and a 
 Shakespeare, proving the possibility, twice in time, 
 of a sight imperfect but demi-godlike. " Life 
 is a stream of awful passions, yet grandeur of 
 character is attainable if we dare the fatal 
 fury of the torrent." Thus said the Greek trage- 
 dians, but how variously ! The hopelessness of 
 the struggle, yet the grandeur of struggling at all, 
 
6 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 is uttered by all three — each, in his own fashion. 
 In despite of madness, adultery, murder, incest, 
 — in connection with all that is horrible, — in 
 defiance of the very gods, (Edipus, Ajax, Medea, 
 Orestes, Antigone, agonize divinely, and, perish- 
 ing, attain the repose of antique sculpture. The 
 same undertone pervades all this antique music, 
 but is never so obtruded as to be wearisome. Never 
 was the tyranny of circumstance, the inexorable 
 penalties enforced even on the innocent when 
 laws are broken, represented in such wondrous 
 forms. Under such penalties the innocent may 
 perish, but their reward is their very innocence. 
 Even when they lament aloud, when they exclaim 
 against the direness of their doom, these figures 
 lose none of their nobility. In the Philoctetes, 
 the very cries of physical pain are dignified ; in 
 the (Edipus, the bitterness of the blind sufferer is 
 noble ; in the Prometheus, the shriek of triumph- 
 ant agony is sublime. 
 
 These three dramatists uttered the truth as 
 they beheld it ; nor do they interfere in any wise 
 with higher interpretations of the same conditions. 
 They used the light of their generation ; and the 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 7 
 
 value of their revelation lies in the sincerity and 
 splendour of the contemporary utterance. The 
 same thing is not to be said again. It was a cry 
 heard early in time; it is an echo haunting the 
 temple of extinct gods. But its truth to humanity 
 is eternal. We have the same agonies to this day, 
 but we regard them differently. All that can be 
 said on the heathen side has been said supremely. 
 While the dramatist depicts the fortunes and 
 questionings of small groups and individuals, the 
 epic poet chronicles the history of the world. It is 
 not every day we can have an epic ; for only twice 
 or thrice in time are there materials for an epic. 
 Homer is the historian of the gods, and of the 
 social life under Jove and his peers ; through his 
 page blows the fresh breeze of morning, the white 
 tents glimmer on Troy plain, horses neigh and 
 heroes buckle on armour, — while aloft the heavens 
 open, showing the glittering gods on the snowy 
 shoulder of Olympus, Iris darting on the rainbow, 
 whose lower end reddens the grim features of 
 Poseidon, driving his chariot through the foam 
 of the Trojan sea. The passion of iihe Ibiad is 
 anger, the action, war ; in the Odyssey , we have 
 
8 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 the domestic side of the same life, the softer 
 touches of superstition, the milder influences of 
 gods and goddesses, heroes and their queens. 
 But the life is the same in both — large, primitive, 
 colossal — absorbing all the social and religious 
 significance of a period. 
 
 What Homer is to the polytheism of the early 
 Greeks, the Old Testament is to the monotheism 
 of the Hebrews. It is the epic of that life — the 
 wilder, weirder, more spiritual poem of a wilder, 
 weirder, more spiritual period. It is the utter- 
 ance of many mouths, the poem of many episodes, 
 but the theme is unique, pre-eminent — the spirit 
 of the one God, breathing on His chosen peoples, 
 and steadily moving on to fixed consummations 
 foreshadowed in the prophets. We have had no 
 such wondrous epic as this since, and can have 
 none such again. It is the poem of the one God, 
 when yet He was merely a voice in the thunder- 
 cloud, a breath between the coming and going 
 of the winds. 
 
 Where else, in Virgil's time, subsisted the mat- 
 ter for an epic ? To sing of ./Eneas and his for- 
 tunes was certainly patriotic, but the subject, at 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 9 
 
 the best, was merely local — a contemporary, not 
 an eternal, theme. The two great forms of early 
 European life had been phrased in the two great 
 early epics ; and till Christ taught, the time for 
 the third great poem of masses had not come. In 
 point of fact, the third great poem has not yet 
 been written. The New Testament, of course, is 
 didactic, not poetic ; and the Paradise Regained 
 of Milton is purely modern and academic. 
 
 The fourth European epic is the Divine Comedy 
 of Dante ; the fifth and last is the Paradise Lost 
 of Milton. It is scarcely necessary to describe in 
 detail the character of the vision in each of these 
 cases. Dante saw Roman Catholicism as no eye 
 ever saw it before, watched it to its uttermost re- 
 sults, made of it an image enduring by the very 
 intensity of its outlines, — framed of it the epic of 
 the early church. Milton's perfect sight pictured, 
 under latter lights, the wonders of the primeval 
 world. The theme was old, but the light was 
 new ; and no man had seen angels till Milton saw 
 them, having been first blinded, that his spiritual 
 sight might be unimpeded. 
 
 Thus, all these men, — Homer, the framers of 
 
10 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 the biblical epos, JSschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, 
 Dante, Milton, — were poets by virtue of having 
 seen some side of truth as no others saw it. If 
 some were greater than others, their materials 
 were perhaps greater. Not every one is so 
 situated in time as to see the subject of a new 
 epos, waiting to be sung. But the Seer " shines 
 in his place, and is content." Even Goethe had 
 his truth to utter, and was so far a Seer. He 
 was great in literature, by virtue of his spiritual 
 littleness. It needed such a man to see nature in 
 the cold light of self-worship, to betoken the 
 futility of pure artistic striving. Yet this, at the 
 best, was negative teaching, and so far, inferior. 
 
 But, it may be objected, these men surely ex- 
 pressed more than one truth in their generation. 
 In no wise, for each had but one point of view ; 
 there was no hovering, no doubting ; their gaze 
 was fixed as the gaze of stars. The object is 
 eternal, it is the point of view which changes. 
 Take Milton, for example ; the peculiarity of 
 Milton as a Seer is the angelic spirituality of his 
 sight, its rejection of all but perfectly noble types 
 for poetic contemplation. It would seem that, 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 11 
 
 from having once walked with angels, he sees 
 even common things in a divine white light. He 
 breathes the thin serene air of the mountain- top. 
 He seems calm and passionless ; his heart beats 
 in great glorified throb s, with no tremor; his 
 speech is stately and crystal clear ; he is for ever 
 referring man to his Maker ; for ever comparing 
 our stature with that of angels. Mark, further, 
 that his spiritual creatures are profoundly intel- 
 lectual creatures, strangely subtle and lofty 
 reasoners. He holds pure intellect so divine 
 a thing that, in spite of himself, he makes the 
 devil his hero. " The end of man," he says in 
 effect, "is to contemplate God, and enjoy Him 
 for ever." But he says this in a way which is 
 not final; there may be truth beyond Milton's 
 truth, but one does not belie the other; this 
 blind man saw as with the eye, and spake as 
 with the tongue, of angels. 
 
 Utterances such as these once attained, per- 
 ceptions so peculiar once welded into the culture 
 of the world, it behoves no man to re-utter them 
 in the reiterative spirit of their first discoverers. 
 He who looks at life exactly as Milton, or Keats, 
 
12 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 or Dante did, may be an excellent being, but he 
 is certainly too late to be a Seer. Yet each new 
 Seer is, of necessity, familiar with the discoveries 
 of his predecessors ; the white light of Milton's 
 purity chastens and solemnizes Wordsworth's 
 diction; while the glow of Elizabethan colour 
 tinges the pale cheek of Keats the lover. The 
 Seer is not the person of Goethe's epigram, — 
 
 Ein Quidam sagt : " Ich bin von keiner Schule ; 
 Kein Meister lebt mit dem ich buhle ; 
 Auch bin ich weit davon entfernt, 
 Dass ich von Todten was gelernt." 
 Das heisst, wenn ich ihn recht verstand — 
 " Ich bin ein Narr auf eigne Hand !" 
 
 Nay, as each great Poet sings, we again and 
 again catch tones struck by his predecessors — 
 Homer, iEschylus, Dante, Job, Solomon, Milton, 
 Goethe, and the rest, — but deeper, stronger, more 
 permanent than all, we catch the broken voice of 
 the man himself, saying a mystic thing that we 
 have never heard before. The later we come 
 down in time, the frequenter are the echoes ; they 
 are the penalty the modern pays for his privi- 
 leges. iEschylus and the rest echo Homer and 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 13 
 
 the minstrels. The Hebrew prophets, the heathen 
 poets, the Italian minstrels, — Homer, Moses, 
 Tasso, Dante, — reverberate in every page of 
 Milton ; yet they only add volume to the English 
 voice. Shakespeare catches cries from all the 
 poetic voices of Europe,* daringly translating into 
 his own phraseology the visions of other and 
 smaller singers, and mellowing his blank verse by 
 the study even of contemporaries. In Chaucer's 
 breezy song come odours from the Greek -ZEgean, 
 and whispers from Tuscany and Provence. Aris- 
 tophanes, again and again, inspires the poetically 
 humorous twinkle in the eyes of Moliere. But 
 the plagiarism of such writers is kingly plagiarism ; 
 the poets ennoble the captives they take in con- 
 quest ; refusing instruction from no voice, how- 
 ever humble ; accepting the matter as divinely 
 sent by nature, but never imitating the tones of 
 the medium which transmits the matter. 
 
 There is no better sign of unfitness for the high 
 
 * Note how he spiritualises still further what is already 
 spiritual in the poetic prose of Plutarch ; as an example, 
 compare with the original passage in the Life of Antony the 
 Speech of Enobarbus, descriptive of Cleopatra in her barge. 
 
14 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 poetic ministry than a too tricksy delight in imi- 
 tating other voices, however admirable. Eacine 
 caught the Greek stateliness so well that he has 
 scarcely an accent of his own, save, of course, the 
 mere general accentuation of his people. In 
 reading him, therefore, we have constantly before 
 our mind's eye the picture of a Frenchman on the 
 stage of the great amphitheatre ; we see the 
 masks, the fixed lineaments expressive of single 
 passions ; and we hear the high-pitched soliloquies 
 of Greece translated into a modern tongue. 
 Eacine, indeed, is better reading than any trans- 
 lator of the tragedians, but he is no Seer. On the 
 other hand, Moliere was nearly as much under 
 influence as Eacine, but the splendour of his in- 
 dividual vision lifted him high into the ranks of 
 poetic teachers. He was an arrant thief, robbing 
 the playwrights of all countries without mercy, 
 but the roguish gleam of the thief's eyes is never 
 lost under the load of stolen raiment. We think 
 of him, not of what he is stealing ; the dress 
 makes plainer, instead of hiding, the natural 
 peculiarities of the wearer. 
 
 There is, then, no danger in echoes, where 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 15 
 
 they do not drown the voice ; when they are too 
 audible, that is the case. The greatest artists 
 utter old truths with all the force of novelty ; not 
 in philosophy only, but in poetry also, are the 
 worn cries repeated over and over again. These 
 cries are common to all the race of Seers, and 
 may be described as the poetic u terminology." 
 
 According to the dignity of the revelation will 
 be the rank of the Seer in the Temple. The epic 
 poet is great, because his matter is great in the 
 first place, and because he has not fallen below the 
 level of his matter. The dramatist is great by 
 his truth to individual character not his own, and 
 his power of presenting that truth while spiritual- 
 izing into definite form and meaning some vague 
 situation in the sphere of actual or ideal life. The 
 lyric poet owes his might to the personal character 
 of the emotion aroused by his vision. Then, there 
 are ranks within ranks. Not an eye in the throng, 
 however, but has some object of its own, and some 
 peculiar sensitiveness to light, form, colour. To 
 Milton, a prospect of heavenly vistas, where 
 stately figures walk and cast no shade; but to 
 Pope (a seer, though low down in the ranks) the 
 
16 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 pattern of tea-cups, and the peeping of clocked 
 stockings under farthingales. While the rouge 
 on the cheek of modern love betrays itself to the 
 languid yet keen eyes of Alfred de Musset, 
 Robert Browning is proclaiming the depths of 
 tender beauty underlying modern love and its 
 rouge ; each is a Seer, and each is true, only one 
 sees a truth beyond the other's truth. After 
 Wordsworth has penetrated with solemn-sounding 
 footfall into the aisle of the Temple, David Gray 
 follows, and utters a faint cry of beautiful yearn- 
 ing as he dies upon the threshold. 
 
 One word, in this place, as to the end of Art — 
 poetic art particularly, and the mistaken ideas con- 
 cerning that end. That end has been described 
 from time immemorial as " pleasure." Now, 
 art is doubtless pleasant to the taste. It may be 
 said, further, that art, even when it uses the most 
 painful machinery, when it chronicles human 
 agony and pictures tears and despair, does so in 
 such a way as to cause a certain enjoyment. But 
 the pleasure thus produced is not the aim, but 
 an accompaniment of the aim, proportioned and 
 regulated by qualities existing in materials ex- 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 17 
 
 tracted from life itself. The aim of all life is 
 accompanied by pleasure, includes pleasure, in 
 the highest sense of that word. The specific aim 
 of art, in its definite purity, is spiritualization; 
 and pleasure results from that aim, because the 
 spiritualization of the materials of life renders 
 them, for subtle reasons connected with the soul, 
 more beautifully and deliciously acceptable to the 
 inner consciousness. Even in very low art we 
 find spiritualization of a kind. But pleasure, as 
 mere pleasure, is produced on every side of us by 
 the simplest and least intricate experiences of 
 existence itself. The woe and hopelessness of 
 the popular creed is that it thoroughly separates 
 art from utility. Pleasure, merely as pleasure, is 
 worthless to beings sent down on earth to seek 
 that euphrasy which purges the vision of the in- 
 ner eye — beings to whom art was given, not a 
 mere musical accompaniment to a dull drama, but 
 as the toucher of the mysterious chords of inquiry 
 which invest that drama with a grand and divine 
 signification. Nor must we confound the purify- 
 ing spirit of art with didactic sermonizing and 
 direct moral teaching. The spirit who seizes the 
 c 
 
18 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 forms of life, and passes their spiritual equivalents 
 into the minds of men on chords of exquisite sen- 
 sation, wears no academic gown, writes no formal 
 treatises in verse. The exquisite sensation is a 
 means, and not an end. It is a consequence of 
 the divine system on which she works, and she 
 produces it as much for its own sake as Nature 
 creates a butterfly for the sake of the down on 
 its wings. 
 
 The lower condition of the aim of art, if 
 I have stated that aim properly, places fresh 
 obstacles in the way of the construction of an 
 exact science of pleasure. What is one man's 
 delight is another man's aversion. One lady en- 
 joys the method of Miss Braddon, while her 
 neighbour even gets beyond George Eliot. Scores 
 of people absorb as much pleasure out of Long- 
 fellow as a solitary idealist extracts from Eichter. 
 But though pleasure emanates from all works 
 properly called artistic, ranks are apportioned in 
 the Temple of Worthies according to the amount 
 of spiritualization, not according to the amount of 
 pleasure involved. The higher the spiritualiza- 
 tion the less the need of direct teaching ; the 
 smaller the artist, the more his need to sermonize. 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 19 
 
 We admit " Lear" to be great art, because it ab- 
 sorbs, in one perfect spiritual form, picturesque, 
 emotional, musical, the amplest and most dramatic 
 elements of human existence. We call the Cenci 
 smaller art, because it spiritualizes elements in 
 themselves horrible and narrow as representing 
 humanity. And we call the amusing " Ingoldsby 
 Legends" no art at all, because their direct aim is 
 pleasure, and they spiritualize no form of life 
 whatever. 
 
 Contemporary critics are fond of affirming that 
 art, so far from having any moral purpose, has 
 nothing to do with morality. This is saying in 
 effect that nature has nothing to do with morality. 
 For art is the spiritual representation, the alter 
 ego, of nature ; and nothing that is true in nature 
 is false in art. Astronomy as much as morality, 
 concrete experiences as well as abstract ideas, 
 have their place in nature and in art ; they are a 
 part of the whole, which has two lives, the lower 
 and the higher, the real and the artistic. An 
 essentially immoral form, a bestiality, a lie, an in- 
 sincerity, is an outrage in life ;* but it has no 
 
 * See upres, the paper on " Literary Immortality." We 
 
20 THE POET, OB SEER. " 
 
 permanent place in art, because spiritualization is 
 fatal to its very perceptibility. The basest things 
 have their spiritual significance, but their base- 
 ness has evaporated when the significance is ap- 
 parent. The puddle becomes part of the rainbow. 
 It is necessary to understand these points 
 clearly ; for if pleasure were the end of art, and 
 art had nothing to do with morality, the purport 
 of this volume would be unintelligible. 
 
 II. The second essential peculiarity of the Poet 
 is that of emotional assimilation of impressions. 
 Where intellect coerces emotion, by however faint 
 an effort, the result is criticism of life, however 
 exquisite. Where emotion coerces intellect, the 
 result is poetry. 
 
 It is not enough, observe, to see vividly. Sir 
 Walter Scott could see as vividly as Keats, — 
 but he was incapable of such emotion. Scott, in- 
 deed, is the greatest modern writer who may un- 
 hesitatingly be described as unpoetic. He was 
 
 have modern instances of subjects chosen for artistic treat- 
 ment, which are abominable and false in nature — e. g. the 
 Sapphic passion. 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 21 
 
 true both to human types and to society. He 
 was able to clothe the bare outline of history with 
 vivid form and colour. Writing at a time when 
 individualism was at its height in England, ere 
 Whig and Tory had merged into one vacuous 
 nonentity, he could not fail to shadow forth those 
 higher aspirations which are the exclusive pro- 
 perty of individual men of genius. Yet no man 
 ever laboured to depict trifles with a more lofty 
 devotion to general truth. There was nofinicism 
 in the author of " Waverley." He depicted in 
 faithful aesthetic photography the manners and 
 qualities of ordinary or extraordinary men and 
 women. He was not always profound, nor always 
 noble. But over all his works lies the brilliant 
 radiance of the artistic sympathies, giving, to what 
 might otherwise have been simply a colourless 
 likeness, the marvellous beauty of an exquisite 
 literary painting. Scott, however, was no poet. 
 His very success in prose fiction, as well as the 
 failure of his metrical productions, betokens his 
 unpoetic nature. He saw, but was not moved 
 enough to sing. For there is this marked differ- 
 ence between poetic and all other utterance : it 
 
22 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 owes everything to concentration. Deep emotion 
 is invariably rapid in its manifestation, as we may 
 mark in the case of the ordinary cries of grief ; 
 and the temperament of the poet is so intense, so 
 keen, that nought but concentrated utterance 
 suffices him. Whereas, the true secret of novel- 
 writing is the power of expanding. 
 
 The apparence of pure coercive intellect varies, 
 of course, according to the nature of the singer. 
 In Sappho and Catullus, and all purely lyrical 
 Seers, the intellectual note is hardly heard at all ; 
 in Ovid and Chaucer, it is heard faintly; in the 
 subjective school of writers, such as Shelley, it is 
 painfully audible. But even in Shelley, where he 
 writes poetry, emotion prevails. " Queen Mab " 
 has justly been styled a pamphlet in verse, and 
 the "Kevolt of Islam" is only occasionally poetic. 
 
 It follows that we are, on the whole, more 
 powerfully moved by purely lyrical utterance than 
 by utterances of higher portent. Sappho troubles 
 us more than Sophocles, Keats more than Words- 
 worth. The personal cry, so sharp, so rapid, so 
 genuine, can never fail to find an echo in our 
 hearts. The manly exclamation of Burns, — 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 23 
 
 For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair, 
 Or my puir heart is broken ! 
 
 the fetid breath of Sappho, screaming, — 
 
 Cold shiverings o'er me pass, 
 
 Chill sweats across me fly ! 
 I am greener than grass, 
 
 And breathless seem to die ! 
 
 the passionate voice of Catullus, — 
 
 Coeli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia ilia, 
 
 Ilia Lesbia, quam Catullus unam 
 
 Plus quam se, atque suos amavit omnes ! 
 
 the tender lament of Spenser over Sidney, the 
 scream of Shelley, the warm sigh of Keats, all 
 move deeply in the region of melancholy and tears. 
 But the happy calls move us deliciously, although 
 truly " our sweetest songs are those that tell of 
 saddest thought." The lighter strains of Burns, 
 the songs of Tannahill, some verses of Horace, 
 others of Ovid, the lyrics of Drayton and George 
 Wither, and many other glad poems which will 
 occur rapidly to every student, possess the lyrical 
 light in great intensity and sweetness. 
 
 But not only in poems professedly lyrical is this 
 lyrical light to be found ; it is noticeable in poetry 
 
24 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 of any form, wherever there is extreme emotion, 
 and may invariably be looked for as the character- 
 istic of the true singer. (Edipus piteonsly ex- 
 claiming in his blindness, — 
 
 ri yap e^et fx opdv, 
 
 oto) y opcovn fxrjhev i\v Ihelv y\vicv ; 
 
 Dante, in the great joy of his divinely beloved 
 one, feeling his pale studious lips and cheeks turn 
 into rose-leaves.* Samson Agonistes groaning, — 
 
 dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, 
 Irrevocably dark, total eclipse, 
 
 Without all hope of day. 
 
 Macbeth' s last twilight murmur, — 
 
 1 have lived long enough ; my way of life 
 Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; 
 And that which should accompany old age, 
 As honour, love, obedience, troop3 of friends, 
 I must not look to have ! 
 
 Cleopatra in the heyday of her bliss ; the sad 
 shepherd, chasing the footsteps of his love, and 
 warbling in tuneful ecstasy, — 
 
 * Purgatory, xxx. 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 25 
 
 Here she was wont to go ! and here ! and here ! 
 Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow : 
 The world may find the spring by following her, 
 For other print her airy steps ne'er left ; 
 Her treading would not bend a blade of grass, 
 Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk ; 
 But like the soft west wind she shot along, 
 And where she went the flowers took thickest root, 
 As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot. 
 
 And Bernardo Cenci, in the horror and anguish 
 of that last parting, screaming, — 
 
 O life ! O world ! 
 Cover me ! let me be no more ! To see 
 That perfect mirror of pure innocence 
 Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good, 
 Shiver'd to dust ! To see thee, Beatrice, 
 Who made all lovely thou didst look upon — 
 Thee, light of life, dead, dark ! While I say " sister," 
 To hear I have no sister ; and thou, mother, 
 Whose love was a bond to all our loves, — 
 Dead ! the sweet bond broken ! 
 
 These utterances, one and all, sad or glad, are 
 essentially lyrical, only differing from the first 
 class of lyric utterances in belonging to fictitious 
 personages, not to the writer. Borneo and Juliet 
 swarms with lyrics ; every great play of Shake- 
 speare is more or less full of them . They betoken 
 
26 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 the true dramatic force, and are less distinct in 
 the lesser dramatist. They are plentiful in Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher, in Ford, in Webster; less 
 plentiful in Massinger ; scarcely audible at all in 
 Shirley and Ben Jonson. Where they should 
 appear in the bombastic tragedies of Dryden, 
 rhetoric and rhodomontade appear instead ; and 
 to come down to modern times, where shall we 
 look for the lyrical light in the pretentious ten- 
 tatives of Sheridan Knowles and Johanna Baillie ? 
 If these tentatives sometimes rise to dignity of 
 movement, that is the most which can be said of 
 them. We have powerful emotional situations, 
 and no emotion. 
 
 It is here that all professed " imitations " of 
 the classics fail. They reproduce the repose so 
 admirably, as in many cases to send the reader 
 to sleep. But we search in vain in them for the 
 representation of the great fires, the burning pas- 
 sions, of the originals.* Insensibly, as has been 
 
 * The " Philoctetes" of Mr. William Lancaster is to my 
 mind a fine attempt at classic reproduction. It is very 
 noble in parts. Mr. Swinburne's "Atalanta" is also fine, 
 but it seems, on the whole, less sincere. 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 27 
 
 shrewdly remarked, we derive our notions of 
 Greek art from Greek sculpture, and forget that 
 although calm evolution was rendered necessary 
 by the requirements of the great amphitheatre, it 
 was no calm life, no dainty passion, no subdued 
 woe, that was thus evolved. The lineaments of 
 the actor's mask were fixed, but what sort of ex- 
 pression did each mask wear ? — the glazed hope- 
 less stare of CEdipus, the white horror-stricken 
 look of Agamemnon, the stony glitter of the eyes 
 of Clytemnestra, the horridly distorted glare of 
 the Promethean furies, the sick, suffering, and 
 ghastly pale features of Philoctetes. Where was 
 the calm here ? The movement of the drama 
 was simple and slow, yet there was no calm in 
 the heart of the actors, each of whom must fit to 
 his mask a monotone — the sneer of Ulysses, the 
 blunted groan of Cassandra, the fierce shriek of 
 Orestes. The passion and power have made 
 these plays immortal; not the slow evolution, 
 the necessity of the early stage. They are full 
 of the lyrical light. 
 
 But though lyrical emotion is the intensest of all 
 written forms of emotion, and must invariably be 
 
28 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 attained wherever poetry interprets the keenest 
 Iranian feeling and passion, there are forms of emo- 
 tion wherein intellect is not coerced so strongly. 
 Two forms may be mentioned, and briefly illus- 
 trated here — emotional meditation, and emotional 
 ratiocination. Either of these forms is of subtler 
 and more mixed quality than the purely lyrical 
 form. 
 
 We have numberless examples of emotional 
 meditation in Wordsworth ; the thought is strong, 
 solemn, unmistakably intellectual, but it is spirit- 
 ualized withal by profound feeling. Observe, as 
 an example of this, the following portion of the 
 " Lines composed a few miles above Tintern 
 Abbey:"— 
 
 O sylvan Wye ! thou wanderer through the woods, 
 
 How often has my spirit turned to thee, 
 
 And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, 
 
 With many recognitions dim and faint, 
 
 And somewhat of a sad perplexity, 
 
 The picture of the mind revives again : 
 
 While here I stand, not only with the sense 
 
 Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts, 
 
 That in this moment there is life and food 
 
 For future years. And so I dare to hope, 
 
 Though changed, no doubt from what I was when first 
 
THE POET, OR SEEB. 29 
 
 I came among these hills ; when like a roe 
 
 I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides 
 
 Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, 
 
 Wherever nature led ; more like a man 
 
 Flying from something that he dreads, than one 
 
 Who sought the thing he loved. For Nature then 
 
 (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, 
 
 And their glad animal movements all gone by,) 
 
 To me was all in all. I cannot paint 
 
 What then I was. The sounding cataract 
 
 Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock, 
 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
 
 Their colours and their forms were then to me 
 
 An appetite ; a feeling and a love 
 
 That had no need of a remoter charm, 
 
 By thought supplied, or any interest 
 
 Unborrowed from the eye. That time is past, 
 
 And all its aching joys are now no more, 
 
 And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 
 
 Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur ; other gifts 
 
 Have followed, for such loss, I would believe, 
 
 Abundant recompense. For I have learned 
 
 To look on Nature, not as in the hour 
 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 
 Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 
 Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime 
 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 
30 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things. 
 
 By the side of this exquisite passage, let me 
 place another by the same great reflective 
 writer, — 
 
 When, as becomes a man who would prepare 
 For such an arduous work, I through myself 
 Make rigorous inquisition, the report 
 Is often cheering ; for I neither seem 
 To lack that first great gift, the vital soul, 
 Nor general truths, which are themselves a sort 
 Of elements and agents, under-powers, 
 Subordinate helpers of the living mind. 
 Nor am I naked of external things, 
 Forms, images, nor numerous other aids 
 Of less regard, though won perhaps with toil, 
 And needful to build up a poet's praise. 
 Time, place, and manners do I seek, and these 
 Are found in plenteous store, but nowhere such 
 As may be singled out with steady choice ; 
 No little band of yet remembered names 
 Whom I, in perfect confidence, might hope 
 To summon back from lonesome banishment, 
 And make them dwellers in the hearts of men 
 Now living, or to live in future years. 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 31 
 
 Sometimes the ambitious power of choice, mistaking 
 
 Proud spring- tide swellings for a regular sea, 
 
 Will settle on some British theme, some old 
 
 Romantic tale by Milton left unsung ; 
 
 More often turning to some gentle place 
 
 Within the groves of chivalry, I pipe 
 
 To shepherd swains, or seated, harp in hand, 
 
 Amid reposing knights, by a river side 
 
 Or fountain, listen to the grave reports 
 
 Of dire enchantments faced and overcome 
 
 By the strong mind, and tales of warlike feats, 
 
 Where spear encountered spear, and sword with sword 
 
 Fought, as if conscious of the blazonry 
 
 That the shield bore, so glorious was the strife, 
 
 Whence inspiration for a song that winds 
 
 Through ever-changing scenes of votive quest ; 
 
 Throngs to redress, harmonious tribute paid 
 
 To patient courage and umblemished truth, 
 
 To firm devotion, zeal unquenchable, 
 
 And Christian meekness hallowing faithful loves. 
 
 There can be no mistaking the qualities of these 
 two passages. The first is poetry, the second is 
 the merest prose ; the emotion in the first extract 
 so breathes on the thought as to fill it with exqui- 
 site music and subtle pleasure not to be coerced 
 by meditation. Yet the mood of both is a medita- 
 tive mood. In the " Prelude/' from which the above 
 extract is taken, and in the " Excursion/' prose and 
 
32 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 poetry alternate most significantly. "Where the 
 feeling is vivid and intense, the lines lose all 
 that cnmbronsness and pamphletude which have 
 blinded so many readers to the real merits of 
 these two compositions. 
 
 Wordsworth, too, has passages of emotional 
 ratiocination; so also has Milton. Bnt I can 
 better illustrate that mood of poetry by two ex- 
 tracts from Mr. Browning. The first is from the 
 " Epistle of Karsheesh," a poem wherein an Arab 
 leech details his encounter, during his travels, 
 with the case of Lazarus : — 
 
 He holds on firmly to some thread of life, 
 
 (It is the life to lead perforcedly,) 
 
 Which runs across some vast distracting orb 
 
 Of glory on either side that meagre thread 
 
 Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet, — 
 
 The spiritual life around the earthly life. 
 
 The law of that is known to him as this, 
 
 His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. 
 
 So is the man perplext with impulses, 
 
 Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on, 
 
 Proclaiming what is Right and Wrong across, 
 
 And not along this black thread through the blaze. 
 
 " It should be" balked by " here it cannot be," 
 
 And oft the man's soul springs into his face, 
 
 As if he saw again and heard again 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 33 
 
 His sage, that bade him " Rise," and he did rise. 
 
 Something, a word, a tick of the blood within 
 
 Admonishes; then back he sinks at once 
 
 To ashes, that was very fire before, 
 
 In sedulous recurrence to his trade 
 
 Whereby he earneth him the daily bread ; 
 
 And studiously the humbler for that pride, 
 
 Professedly the faultier that he knows 
 
 God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. 
 
 Indeed the especial marking of the man 
 
 Is prone submission to the Heavenly will, — 
 
 Seeing it, what is it, and why is it ? 
 
 Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last, 
 
 For that same death which must restore his being 
 
 To equilibrium, body loosening soul, 
 
 Divorced even now by premature full growth. 
 
 The second extract is from " A Death in the 
 Desert,," in which John the Evangelist is supposed 
 to detail his opinions of his contemporaries, and, in 
 a spirit impossibly prophetic, to review the argu- 
 ments, in the " Leben Jesu," against miracles : — 
 
 I say that man was made to grow, not stop ; 
 That help, he needed once, and needs no more, 
 Having grown up but an inch by, is withdrawn : 
 For he hath new needs, and new helps to these. 
 This imports solely, man should mount on each 
 New height in view ; the help whereby he mounts, 
 The ladder rung his foot has left, may fall, 
 Since all things suffer change save God the Truth. 
 
34 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 Man apprehends Him newly at each stage 
 
 Whereat earth's ladder drops, its service done ; 
 
 And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved. 
 
 You stick a garden plot with ordered twigs 
 
 To show inside lie germs of herbs unborn, 
 
 And check the careless step would spoil their birth ; 
 
 But when herbs wave, the guardian twigs may go, 
 
 Since should ye doubt of virtues, question kinds, 
 
 It is no longer for old twigs ye look, 
 
 Which proved once underneath lay store of seed, 
 
 But to the herb's self, by what light ye boast, 
 
 For what fruit's signs are. This book's fruit is plain, 
 
 Nor miracles need prove it any more. 
 
 Doth the fruit show ? Then miracles bade ware 
 
 At first of root and stem, saved both till now 
 
 From trampling ox, rough boar, and wanton goat. 
 
 What ? Was man made a wheel work to wind up, 
 
 And be discharged, and straight wound up anew ? 
 
 No ! — grown, his growth lasts ; taught, he ne'er forgets : 
 
 May learn a thousand things, not twice the same. 
 
 This might be pagan hearing : now hear mine. 
 
 I say, that as the babe you feed awhile 
 
 Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself, 
 
 So minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth : 
 
 When they can eat, babe's nurture is withdrawn. 
 
 I fed the babe whether it would or no : 
 
 I bid the boy or feed himself or starve. 
 
 I cried once, " That ye may believe in Christ, 
 
 Behold this blind man shall receive his sight !" 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 35 
 
 I cry now, " Urgest thou, for I am shrewd 
 
 And smile at stories how Johns word could cure — 
 
 Repeat that miracle and take my faith ? 
 
 I say, that miracle was duly wrought 
 
 When, save for it, no faith was possible. 
 
 Whether a change were wrought i' the shows o' the world, 
 
 Whether the change came from our minds which see 
 
 Of the shows of the world so much as and no more 
 
 Thau God wills for His purpose, — (what do I 
 
 See now, suppose you, there where you see rock 
 
 Kound us?) — I know not; such was the effect, 
 
 So faith grew, making void more miracles 
 
 Because too much ; they would compel, not help. 
 
 I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 
 All questions in the earth and out of it, 
 
 And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 
 
 Wouldst thou unprove this to reprove the proved ? 
 
 In life's mere minute, with power to use that proof, 
 
 Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung ? 
 
 Thou hast it ; use it and forthwith, or die ! 
 
 Both, these passages are ratiocinative ; yet one 
 is a poem, the other not even art. There is a 
 flash of ecstasy through the strangely cautious 
 description of Karsheesh; every syllable is 
 weighed and thoughtful, yet everywhere the lines 
 swell into perfect feeling. What shall be said, 
 however, to St. John on Strauss ? The violence 
 
36 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 of the imaginative effort to reach St. John's 
 views on miracles precludes all emotion ; and 
 because there is no emotion, false notes occur in 
 every page of the poem. The mind has forced 
 itself into a certain attitude, instead of suffering 
 itself to be coerced by powerful feeling. 
 
 All these moods, indeed, are but the conse- 
 quence of that first mood, wherein the Seer re- 
 ceives his impression. If that first mood be too 
 purely intellectual, if the Seer be not stirred ex- 
 tremely in the process of assimilation, there is a 
 certainty that, in spite of clear vision, he will pro- 
 duce prose, — as Milton did occasionally, as 
 Wordsworth did very often ; as Shakespeare sel- 
 dom or never does, and as Keats never did. 
 
 It is certain, then, that clear vision can exist in- 
 dependently of emotion; that, however, emotion is 
 generally dependent on clear vision ; and that, in 
 short, he who sees vividly will in most cases feel 
 deeply, but not in all cases. 
 
 Let me mention one more notable case in 
 point. I mean Crabbe, — the writer to whom 
 modern writers are fondest of alluding, and whom, 
 to judge from their blunders concerning him, 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 37 
 
 they appear to have been least fond of reading. 
 A careful study of his works has revealed to me 
 abundant knowledge of life, considerable sym- 
 pathy, little or no insight, and no emotion. The 
 poems are photographs, not pictures. There is no 
 spiritualization, none of that fine selective instinct 
 which invariably accompanies deep artistic feel- 
 ing. There is too constant a consciousness of the 
 " reader," too painful an attempt to gain force by 
 means of vivid details. Now, these are not the 
 poetic characteristique. The poet derives his 
 force from the vividness of the feeling awakened 
 by his subject or by his meditation ; he does not 
 betray himself by clumsy efforts to gain attention. 
 A thought — a touch — a gleam of colour — often 
 suffice for him. Whereas Crabbe betrays his 
 purely intellectual attitude at every step. He 
 describes every cranny of a cottage, every gable, 
 every crack in the wall, every kitchen utensil, — 
 when his story concerns the soul of the inmate. 
 He pieces out a churchyard like so much grocery, 
 into so many lives and graves. There is no 
 glamour in his eyes when he looks on death ; — he 
 is noting the bedroom furniture and the dirty 
 
38 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 sheets. There is no weird music in his ears 
 when he stands in a churchyard ; — he is recording 
 the quality of the coffin-wood, sliding off into an 
 account of the history of the parish beadle, and 
 observing whose sheep they are that browse in- 
 side the stone wall of the holy place. 
 
 III. I am now led directly to the discussion of 
 the third poetic gift, — that of music ; for metrical 
 speech is the most concentrated of all speech, and 
 proportions itself to the quality of the poetic 
 emotion. The most powerful form of emotion is 
 lyrical emotion, and the sweetest music is lyrical 
 music. 
 
 Poetic vision culminates in sweet sound, — 
 always inadequate, perhaps, to represent the 
 whole of sight, but interpenetrating through 
 the medium of emotion with the entire mystery of 
 life. Nothing, indeed, so distinguishes the variety 
 of Seers as their melody. It is the souPs perfect 
 speech. A break in the harmony not seldom be- 
 trays a dizziness of the eyes, an inactivity of the 
 heart. A false note betrays the false maestro. A 
 cold or forced expression indicates insincerity. 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 39 
 
 This music, this last wondrous gift, carries with 
 it its own significance and wisdom ; it has a won- 
 drous glamour of its own, like the dim light that 
 is in falling snow. What exquisite sound is this, 
 — where the thought and the emotion die away 
 into a murmur like the wash of a summer sea ? — 
 
 Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird ! 
 
 No hungry generations tread thee down ; 
 The voice I hear this passing night was heard 
 
 In ancient days by emperor and clown. 
 Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
 
 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
 She stood in tears among the alien corn ; 
 The same that oft-times hath 
 Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 
 
 Or this, — so perfect in its fleeting rapture : — 
 
 Sound of vernal showers, 
 
 On the twinkling grass, 
 Rain -awakened flowers, 
 
 All that ever was 
 Joyous, and clear, and sweet, thy music doth surpass. 
 
 Teach us, sprite or bird, 
 
 What sweet thoughts are thine : 
 
 I have never heard 
 Praise of love or wine 
 That panted forth a rapture so divine ! 
 
40 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 Teach me half the gladness 
 
 That thy brain must know, 
 Such harmonious madness 
 From my lips would flow, — 
 The world should listen then, as I am listening now. 
 
 Or these lines from the "Willow, Willow," of 
 Alfred de Musset: — 
 
 Mes chers amis, quand je mourrai, 
 
 Plantez un saule au cimetiere. 
 
 J'aime son feuillage eplore, 
 
 La paleur m'en est douce et chere, 
 
 Et son ombre sera legere 
 
 A la terre ou je dormirai. 
 
 I might fill pages with such quotations. 
 
 The examples just given are examples of purely 
 lyrical music, — from its personal nature, the most 
 concentrated of all music. For the sake of con- 
 trast, now, let me turn to the least concentrated 
 form of all, as it is represented in particular 
 writers. 
 
 At a first view, it would seem that epic poetry 
 is most apt to be unmelodious, on account of the 
 diffuse character of its materials as generally 
 conceived. But this is an error a priori. The 
 materials are not diffuse — they are only large and 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 41 
 
 various ; and the music is emotional and concen- 
 trated, though not to the extent noticeable in 
 less dignified forms of writing. Like dramatic 
 poetry, it is all-embracing, and includes in its 
 compass all elements, from lyrical feeling to emo- 
 tional meditation. The stateliness and constancy 
 of its movement do not preclude the sharp 
 lyrical cry or the deep meditative pause. Homer 
 is the most various of singers. His successors 
 are less various, precisely because they are less 
 great. Again and again in the sharp solemn 
 progress of Dante through Hell are we startled 
 by bursts of wilder melody. Even in " Paradise 
 Lost" there are some occasions when the deep 
 organ bass changes into a scream. 
 
 This is but saying what has been already said 
 of lyrical emotion. In brief, lyrical emotion and 
 lyrical music as its expression intersect all great 
 poetry, whatever its nature ; and the reason need 
 not be further explained. Lyric music is the ideal 
 speech of intense personal feeling; and that is 
 why the exquisite music of Greek tragedy is not 
 confined to the choruses. 
 
 But just as all emotion is not markedly per- 
 
42 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 sonal, all music is not lyrical. No music is so ex- 
 quisite, so profoundly interesting to men ; but 
 there are more complex kinds of expression, 
 sounds more variegated and diffuse. Take the 
 following passage from the " Paradise Lost " of 
 Milton : — 
 
 For now, and since first break of dawn, the Fiend, 
 
 Mere serpent in appearance, forth was come, 
 
 And on his quest, where likeliest he might find 
 
 The only two of mankind, but in them 
 
 The whole included race, his purpos'd prey. 
 
 In bower and field he sought where any kind 
 
 Of grove or garden plot more pleasant lay, 
 
 Their tendence or plantation for delight ; 
 
 By fountain or by shady rivulet 
 
 He sought them both, but wish'd his hnp might find 
 
 Eve separate ; he wish'd but not with hope 
 
 Of what so seldom chanc'd, when to his wish, 
 
 Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies, 
 
 Ve'iVd in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood, 
 
 Half spy d, so thick the roses blushing round 
 
 About her glowd, oft stooping to support 
 
 Each flower of slender stalk, whose head, though gay 
 
 Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold, 
 
 Hung drooping, unsu stain d ; them she upstays 
 
 Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while 
 
 Herself, tho' fairest unsupported flower, 
 
 From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh. 
 
 Nearer he drew, and many a walk travers'd 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 43 
 
 Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm, 
 Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen 
 Among thick-woven avborets and flowers 
 Imborder'd on each bank, the hand of Eve : 
 Spot more delicious than those gardens feign'd, 
 Or of reviv'd Adonis, or renown'd 
 Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son, 
 Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king- 
 Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse. 
 ***** 
 
 So spake the enemy of mankind, enclos'd 
 In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve 
 Address'd his way, not with indented wave, 
 Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear, 
 Circular base of rising folds, that towered 
 Fold above fold, a surging maze, his head 
 Crested aloft, and carbuncle his" eyes ; 
 With burnish' d neck of verdant gold, erect 
 Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass 
 Floated redundant ; pleasing was his shape 
 And lovely ; never since of serpent kind 
 Lovelier, not those that in Illyria chang'd 
 Hermione and Cadmus, or the God 
 In Epidaurus ; nor to which transform'd 
 Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline was seen 
 He with Olympias, this with her who bore 
 Scipio the height of Rome. With tract oblique 
 At first, as one who sought access, but fear'd 
 To interrupt, side-long he works his way : 
 As when a ship, by skilful steersman wrought 
 Nigh river's mouth, or foreland, where the wind 
 
44 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 Veers oft, as oft so steers and shifts her sail : 
 So varied he, and of his tortuous train 
 Curl'd many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve, 
 To lure her eye ; she, busied, heard the sound 
 Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as us'd 
 To such disport before her through the field, 
 From every beast, more duteous at her call 
 Than at Circean call the herd disguis'd. 
 He bolder now, uncall'd before her stood, 
 But as in gaze admiring : oft he bow'd 
 His turret crest, and sleek enamel'd neck, 
 Fawning, and lick'd the ground whereon she trod. 
 
 In these exquisite passages of pure description, 
 the music perfectly represents the subdued emo- 
 tion of the artist ; there is no excitement, but 
 vivid presentment ; — and we hear the very move- 
 ment of the snake in the involution and pictur- 
 esqueness of the lines. I cannot do better than 
 place by the side of the above a passage from the 
 same great poet, which seems to me especially 
 false and inharmonious. It is very brief: — 
 
 The Most High 
 Eternal Father, from his secret cloud, 
 Amidst in thunder utter' d thus his voice : 
 Assembled angels, and ye powers returned 
 From unsuccessful charge, be not dismay 'd, 
 Nor troubled at these tidings from the earth, 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 45 
 
 Which your sincerest care could not prevent, 
 
 Foretold so lately what would come to pass, 
 
 When first this Tempter cross'd the gulf from Hell. 
 
 I told ye then he should prevail and speed 
 
 On his bad errand, man should be seduc'd 
 
 And flatter'd out of all, believing lies 
 
 Against his Maker ; no decree of mine 
 
 Concurring to necessitate his fall, 
 
 Or touch with lightest moment of impulse 
 
 His free will, to her OAvn inclining left 
 
 In even scale. But fall'n he is, and now 
 
 What rests but that the mortal sentence pass 
 
 On his transgression, death denounc'd that day ? 
 
 Which he presumes already vain and void, 
 
 Because not yet inflicted, as he fear'd, 
 
 By some immediate stroke ; but soon shall find 
 
 Forbearance no acquittance ere day end. 
 
 Justice shall not return as bounty scorn'd. 
 
 But whom send I to judge them ? whom but thee 
 
 Vicegerent Son ? to thee I have transferr'd 
 
 All judgment, whether in Heaven, or Earth, or Hell. 
 
 Easy it may be seen that I intend 
 
 Mercy colleague with justice, sending thee 
 
 Man's friend, his mediator, his design'd 
 
 Both ransome and redeemer voluntary, 
 
 And destin'd man himself to judge men fall'n. 
 
 Where is the thunder here ? Where is the solemn 
 music ? Instead of awe-inspiring sound, we have 
 bald and turgid prose, pieced out clumsily into 
 
46 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 ten- syllable lines, every one of which limps like 
 Vnlcan. And why ? Precisely because Milton 
 had no spiritual glamour of the Highest, such as 
 he had of Satan, for example, — felt no real emo- 
 tion in recording His utterances, not even the 
 cold meditative emotion which just redeems many 
 other parts of " Paradise Lost" from sheer prose. 
 He was forcing his mind to hear a voice, attempt- 
 ing to represent the utterance of a personality 
 ungrasped by his imagination. 
 
 Mere rhetorical music is the least poetic of all, 
 although sometimes it has an exceeding charm, as 
 in Virgil's famous lines on Marcellus, and much 
 of the poetry of rhetorical periods in England. 
 
 Akin to such rhetorical music is the melody of 
 the ornate school of writers, singers who mar ex- 
 pression by too elaborate effort. Melody, indeed, as 
 represented in our true singers, may be divided 
 into three kinds, just as the singers themselves may 
 be divided into three classes, — the simple, the 
 ornate, and the grotesque. The first kind is the 
 sweetest and best ; we find it in the great lyrists, 
 from Sappho to Burns. Wherever Shelley sings per- 
 fectly, as in the " Ode to the Skylark," his music 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 47 
 
 loses all its insincerities and affectations. Ornate 
 and grotesque music have common faults, — the 
 first sacrifices the emotion and meaning by thinning 
 and straining them too carefully ; the second loses 
 in portent what it gains in mannerism ; and both, 
 therefore, betray that dangerous intellectual self- 
 consciousness which is a barrier to the production 
 of true poetry. A thing cannot be uttered too 
 briefly and simply if it is to reach the soul. Music 
 that conceals, instead of expressing, thought, 
 music that is nothing but sweet sounds and lus- 
 cious alliterations, is not poetry. We have the 
 sweet sounds everywhere, in fact : in the wash of 
 the sea, in the rustle of leaves, in the song of 
 birds, in the murmur of happy living things. The 
 world is full of them, its heart aches with them ; 
 they are mystical and they are homeless. It is 
 the office of poetry not barely to imitate them, 
 but to link them with the Soul, and by so doing 
 to use them as symbols of definite form and 
 meaning. They issue from the soul's voice with 
 a new wonder in their tones, and are then ready 
 to be used as man's perfect language and speech 
 to God. 
 
48 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 I need delay little more on this branch of poetic 
 power, which, indeed, contains matter for a whole 
 volume. It is clear that there is no poetry with- 
 out music, but that music varies extremely, ac- 
 cording to the quality and intensity of the emotion. 
 It may safely be affirmed that no subject is unfit 
 for poetic treatment which can be spiritualized to 
 this uttermost form of harmonious and natural 
 numbers. So closely is melody woven in with and 
 representative of emotion and of sight, that it has 
 been called the characteristique of the true Seer. 
 But let us never lose sight of the fact that music 
 is representative, and valuable, not for the sole 
 sake of its own sweetness, not for the sole sake 
 of the emotion it represents, but mainly and 
 clearly valuable for the sake of the poetic thought 
 and vision which it brings to completion. There 
 may be melodious sound without meaning, fine 
 versification without thought; but the most ex- 
 quisite melody and versification are those which 
 convey the most exquisite forms of poetic vision. 
 
 The tongue must be guided by the eye, if the 
 heart is to be reached by the ear ; a series of sighs 
 is not a poem. 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 49 
 
 Thus, then, have been briefly described the 
 qualities of the Poet. He is cardinally the Seer, 
 the man who beholds what others behold not, and 
 the consequence of his vision is deep emotion 
 finding its expression in beautiful music. None 
 of the gifts may be dispensed with ; how many a 
 pretender, how many a laurel- wearer, must truth 
 dethrone, because he lacks eyes. How many 
 must be set aside because, in spite of nearly per- 
 fect sight, they are too cold and impassive. A 
 number, too, must be rejected solely because they 
 cannot sing. Southey and Bowles are examples 
 of defective vision; Scott and Crabbe are ex- 
 amples of defective emotion ; Bacon and Walt 
 Whitman are examples of defective music. 
 
 Nor let it be conceived that vision can exist in 
 its highest splendour in other men than the born 
 Seers. The vision which moves so deeply as to 
 turn the very breath of the soul into music is 
 equalled by no other vision : its discoveries are the 
 most supreme, its significance the most divine. 
 The proof of perfect sight is perfect song ; other 
 men may see clearly, but the Poets are the dis- 
 coverers and watchmen of the world ; they stand 
 
 E 
 
50 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 on an eminence and see far into the nappy valleys. 
 There is, indeed, a growing tendency in modern 
 life to separate poetry from the poet ; but how 
 much is the effect of true song enhanced by the 
 solitary singer on the headland, his white robes 
 blowing in the wind. On such a headland the 
 poet should stand ; his face must shine — bright, 
 individual, beautiful — in the midst of his creations. 
 It is not entirely by the character of the vision 
 that we intuitively recognize a genuine " bit " by 
 Milton, or by Dante, or by Burns ; we recognize 
 them chiefly by the temper of the emotion, as ex- 
 pressed in the music ; and thus, through all great 
 and genuine poetry, runs that personal note which 
 we call the characteristique of the singer. He who 
 is wholly sunk in his art dies with his art. Arts do 
 die ; but the true history of literature is the life of 
 men. 
 
 The perfectly approven Seer is a sacer vates, a 
 priest in the great Temple of Poesy. What are his 
 priestly functions ? Is he merely a chaunter in the 
 great choirs of nature, — an intoner of responses, — 
 a swinger of incense before the altar. TsTay ; his 
 office is white and ministerial, fulfilling daily 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 51 
 
 functions of divine significance. He is a justifier 
 of the ways of God to men. Without that perfect 
 sight of his, why should God have selected him ? 
 Had not very God selected him, how should he 
 be so moved ? Were his voice unmusical, how 
 should men heark to his news ? But once invested, 
 once clearly persuaded that he is a vates, he finds 
 his task become easy to him. He has only to sing 
 aloud, and his heart is eased, and he is glad. 
 Whether his tidings be sad or merry, he is glad ; 
 for he is serving an exquisitely beautiful Master. 
 u It is," says Emerson, " dislocation and detach- 
 ment from God that makes things ugly." He 
 should have said seeming dislocation; no things 
 are quite separated from God, and it is the poet's 
 office to see the faint lines of communication. 
 Those lines detected, the ugly thing is ugly no 
 more, but is glorified in the strange and tender 
 sweetness issuing from God's eyes. 
 
 And here we have the clue to all these Proteus- 
 tricks in which the Seers, from Shakespeare 
 downwards, delight. Everything, everybody, 
 illustrates the poetic discovery. What the Seer 
 beholds as an idea he rushes to corroborate in life, 
 
52 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 and so creates ideals. He is certain of his truth, 
 but he is never tired of fresh verification. Again 
 and again he approaches us in disguise, — now he 
 is one man, then another man, now one woman, 
 then another woman ; but the same revelation is 
 heard, albeit qualified by the character of the per- 
 sonage. By one mouth or another he is bent on 
 reaching our souls. That is the dramatic forti- 
 tude, the vivida vis of song. But where one Seer 
 illustrates his truth by human beings, his brother 
 Seer seeks verification in nature, finds sermons 
 in stones, and corroborate wisdom in all things. 
 While Shakespeare plays Proteus, Wordsworth 
 calls hills and woods and streams to witness. 
 Seers there are also who gaze at one aspect of 
 nature, so lost in looking that they can only cry, 
 " See ! see ! " The light streams straight into their 
 eyes; they will not stir, lest it die away; — they 
 desire no verification beyond the tears on their 
 own cheeks, the ache in their own hearts. Such 
 an one was David Gray. 
 
 If Hamlet and the great voices cannot reach 
 us, cannot stir us, tongues have been given to the 
 very hills. If the hills and great forces cannot 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 53 
 
 move us, there are Seers translating the voice of 
 the running brook. If the running brook and 
 gentle powers have no spell upon us, the cry of a 
 departing voice shall warn us of our souls. Bless- 
 ings even on the childish voices, which utter tiny 
 truths in tender syllables, dulcet to ears not over 
 keen to the hearing of sounds from the world of 
 spirits. 
 
 Let this, moreover, be said, — the Seer never 
 lies. He is the man of truth, who cannot disturb 
 the order and inferences of things, however much 
 he may upset the order and inferences of idealists. 
 He will admit no prevarications, no tawdry in- 
 sincerities ; he is largely sane and beautiful, and 
 need not imitate the devices of the eyeless. 
 
 Is it objected that there have been great Poets 
 who have sung things which modern culture ad- 
 mits to be false, not true ? But eternal truth is one 
 matter, and contemporary truth is another. We 
 may not believe now in the terror and vengeful- 
 ness of the Lord God Avatar of the Hebrews, 
 although that belief dwelt in the thunder-cloud of 
 EzekiePs life, and issued from it in a lightning 
 flash of prophecy. We may not believe in Dante's 
 
54 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 Inferno, nor in Mahomet's Paradise, nor in the 
 seventy angels of a Mussulman, nor in Milton's 
 devil, — but these are great, either as contem- 
 porary or poetic facts, true spiritually. For it is 
 doubtless the business of the Seers to mark the 
 great epochs in the march of man ; and on each 
 occasion of chronicling, the Seer (being not God, 
 but the finite priest) deems in all sincerity that 
 the mystery of things is solved, and bursts into 
 rapturous song. The voice of Job, in- eternal wail, 
 sounds over the tracts of time, sounding the 
 weariness of human speculation. The spirit of 
 ^Eschylus darkly commemorates supernaturalism 
 at strife with intellect. Plato is an awful rumour 
 of all that the unassisted mind of man can con- 
 ceive of immortality. All these and such things 
 were new, and true ; and the intensity of the 
 contemporary revelation, acting through the splen- 
 dour of the eternal truth, has made them endure 
 for ever. I pin my faith on the Incarnation, but 
 I can admit the spiritual truth of other men who 
 deny the Incarnation, — Plotinus, Proclus, Vol- 
 taire, Rousseau, and all others. 
 
 For the Temple of jSature, where the poet minis- 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 55 
 
 ters, is a wondrous prism, in shining* through 
 which the perfect whiteness of God's truth is 
 merely turned into its constituent colours. None 
 of these colours are false, and none are quite true ; 
 here, then, before the prism, all creeds may join 
 the Poet. He may enter in, who knows any one of 
 the thousand names of God, which are scattered 
 for mysterious sounds up and down the earth. 
 Within the temple no blasphemy is heard. The 
 prismatic radiance of God strikes across the altar. 
 A medley of strange tongues is heard on every 
 side, — tongues of all lands, from China to Cana of 
 Galilee, crying together Ylarrjp 'AvSptLv te Gswv te ! 
 One understands as much of the white light as 
 the other understands. The fact that each can see, 
 is stirred, and sings exquisitely, is at least a sign 
 that their contradictions are countenanced by the 
 oracle. 
 
 It is in the weird pale circle of the moral law 
 that the Seers are bound to have a definite ter- 
 minology. No modern Seer, for example, can 
 possibly despise the poor, — or sympathize with 
 the scholastic views of Socrates' love for Alci- 
 biades, — or deny the equality of natural rights. 
 
56 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 His predecessors have not worked for nought. 
 Burns has at least taught that the poor are God's 
 creatures, full of noble qualities. Wordsworth has 
 at least shown wherein the lowly are approven by 
 the great combined forces of nature and the 
 human heart. Not to carry on these illustrations, 
 it is clear that no modern Poet dare lie against 
 the accumulated testimony of his predecessors. 
 He cannot without gross insincerity (which he 
 may call " culture " if he please) write precisely 
 as Sophocles wrote, much as he may recognize 
 the spiritual truth of such writing ; for he could 
 not do so without first believing as Sophocles be- 
 lieved, — in which case he would be behind his 
 age, and therefore unfit for priestly office at all. 
 Nor may he write as Chaucer, or as Milton, or as 
 Shelley wrote. We^are beyond that. So far 
 from being behind his age, he is far in advance of 
 his age.* He is a torch-holder, peering forward 
 into the dark To-come ; he is a singer, chaunting 
 his new discovery therein. The task, a special 
 
 * It might be curious to note in detail how far Browning's 
 orthodoxy is in advance even of our most liberal orthodoxy. 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 57 
 
 task, of circulating the old truths, showing them 
 in new lights, belong to quite another person, — to 
 the reproducer, not to the creator. 
 
 The class of reproducers is very large and very 
 useful, consisting of men deficient only in one 
 poetic quality, that of perfect individual vision. 
 The reproducer feels acutely, sings exquisitely, 
 but he is feeling and singing what has been dis- 
 covered for him by predecessors. His delicate 
 and sensitive eye at once appreciates the beauty 
 pointed out to him (provided it be not contempo- 
 rary or prospective beauty, which it is the nature of 
 his vision not to see at all) ; his exquisite voice 
 has been known to phrase the .discovery even 
 more charmingly than the Seer himself. The 
 mere artist may frequently outvie the Seer in 
 technical work. The following little poem by an 
 American poet illustrates this point clearly : — 
 
 The morning comes, but brings no sun ; 
 The sky with storm is overrun ; 
 And here I sit in my room alone, 
 And feel, as I hear the tempest moan, 
 Like one who hath lost the last and best, 
 The dearest dweller from his breast ! 
 For every pleasant sight and sound, 
 The sorrows of the sky have drowned ; 
 
58 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 The bell within the neighbouring tower, 
 
 Falls blurred and distant through the shower ; 
 
 Look where I will, hear what I may, 
 
 All, all the world seems far away ! 
 
 The dreary shutters creak and swing, 
 
 The windy willows sway and fling 
 
 A double portion of the rain 
 
 Over the weeping window pane. 
 
 But I, with gusty sorrow swayed, 
 
 Sit hidden here, like one afraid, 
 
 And would not on another throw 
 
 One drop of all this weight of woe ! 
 
 All that is exquisite, — more exquisite than 
 Wordsworth often is, — yet how instantly do we 
 feel that the poem could never have been written 
 save under Wordsworth's direct influence. A 
 volume might be filled with such examples. A 
 notable contemporary work of reproduction is Mr. 
 Morris's " Life and Death of Jason/' where 
 Homeric force and Chaucerian piteousness are 
 mingled into truly beautiful music. This is a case 
 of veritable reproduction, really good and notable 
 work, as distinguished from those insincere imi- 
 tations which now abound in literature. 
 
 Let me not be understood to imply that the 
 functions of the Seer do not include artistic and re- 
 
THE POET, OR SEER. 59 
 
 productive functions ; but in his case, the smaller 
 qua lit}' is lost in the greater, — the artist in the 
 maker. 
 
 It is necessary, in conclusion, to say a few 
 words on the training of the Seer. He must, as 
 has been frequently insisted upon, have all the 
 culture of his time : — no one-sided culture, — 
 none of that elaborate intellectuality which re- 
 jects all food but what nourishes self-conscious- 
 ness ; but a truer culture, implying simply fami- 
 liarity with what has been done by his prede- 
 cessors, and absorption of the truths which they 
 have introduced into poetic terminology. Phi- 
 losophy, history, science, must all be familiar in 
 their general bearings. Otherwise, how shall the 
 Seer know that he is better than a tinkling cymbal, 
 echoing what men have said in the world's morn- 
 ing ? Want of culture, properly so called, is at the 
 bottom of many poetic failures. In a word, the 
 Seer is made as well as born. He must know, as 
 well as see. Else he will be taking every cock- 
 chafer for an unknown species, or rushing into the 
 senate breathless with the discovery that the sun 
 is risen. 
 
60 THE POET, OR SEER. 
 
 Perfect culture is perfect character, — the 
 amplest development of natural gift and inspira- 
 tion. It means life and strife, and probationary 
 years of silence, and love of true literatures, and a 
 creed of some sort. In these modern days, it 
 must mean, above all, — Charity. ' ' Though I speak 
 with tongues of men and of angels, and have not 
 charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tink- 
 ling cymbal. And though I have the gift of 
 prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all 
 knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I 
 could remove mountains, and have not charity, I 
 am nothing." With these words written in his 
 heart, the Seer need fear no world, even if he is 
 compelled to look at souls through the dark glass 
 of his university. 
 
II. 
 
 DAVID GRAY. 
 
Two friends, in interchange of heart and soul; 
 But suddenly Death changed his countenance, 
 And graved him in the darkness, far from me. 
 
 The Luggie, by David Gray. 
 
 Quern Di diligunt, adolescens moritur. 
 
DAVID GRAY. 
 
 ITUATED in a by-road, about a 
 mile from the small town of Kirkin- 
 tilloch, and eight miles from the city 
 of Glasg-ow, stands a cottage one 
 storey high, roofed with slate, and surrounded by 
 a little kitchen-garden. A whitewashed lobby, 
 leading from the front to the back-door, divides 
 this cottage into two sections ; to the right, is a 
 roof fitted up as a hand-loom weaver's workshop ; 
 to the left is a kitchen paved with stone, and 
 opening into a tiny carpeted bedroom. 
 
 In the workshop, a father, daughter, and sons 
 worked all day at the loom. In the kitchen, a 
 handsome cheery Scottish matron busied herself 
 like a thrifty housewife, and brought the rest of 
 the family about her at meals. All day long the 
 
64 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 soft hum of the loom was heard in the workshop ; 
 but when night came, mysterious doors were 
 thrown open, and the family retired to sleep in 
 extraordinary mural recesses. 
 
 In this humble home, David Gray, a hand-loom 
 weaver, resided for upwards of twenty years, and 
 managed to rear a family of eight children — five 
 boys and three girls. His eldest son, David, 
 author of " The Luggie and other Poems," is the 
 hero of the present true history. 
 
 David was born on the 29th of January, 1838. 
 He alone, of all the little household, was destined 
 to receive a decent education. From early child- 
 hood, the dark-eyed little fellow was noted for his 
 wit and cleverness; and it was the dream of 
 his father's life that he should become a scholar. 
 At the parish-school of Kirkintilloch he learned 
 to read, write, and cast up accounts, and was, 
 moreover, instructed in the Latin rudiments. 
 Partly through the hard struggles of his parents, 
 and partly through his own severe labours as a 
 pupil-teacher and private tutor, he was afterwards 
 enabled to attend the classes at the Glasgow 
 University. In common with other rough country 
 
DAVID .GRAY. 65 
 
 lads, who live up dark alleys, subsist chiefly 
 on oatmeal and butter forwarded from home, and 
 eventually distinguish themselves in the class- 
 room, he had to fight his way onward amid 
 poverty and privation ; but in his brave pursuit 
 of knowledge nothing daunted him. It had been 
 settled at home that he should become a minister 
 of the Free Church of Scotland. Unfortunately, 
 however, he had no love for the pulpit. Early in 
 life he had begun to hanker after the delights of 
 poetical composition. He had devoured the poets 
 from Chaucer to Wordsworth. The yearnings thus 
 awakened in him had begun to express themselves 
 in many wild fragments — contributions, for the 
 most part, to the poet's-corner of a local news- 
 paper — " The Glasgow Citizen." 
 
 Up to this point there was nothing extraordi- 
 nary in the career or character of David Gray. 
 Taken at his best, he was an average specimen of 
 the persevering young Scottish student. But his 
 soul contained wells of emotion which had not yet 
 been stirred to their depths. When, at fourteen 
 years of age, he began to study in Glasgow, it 
 was his custom to go home every Saturday night 
 
66 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 in order to pass the Sunday with his parents. 
 
 These Sundays at home were chiefly occupied with 
 
 rambles in the neighbourhood of Kirkintullock ; 
 
 wanderings on the sylvan banks of the Luggie, 
 
 the beloved little river which flowed close to his 
 
 father's door. On Luggieside awakened one day 
 
 the dream which developed all the hidden beauty 
 
 of his character, and eventually kindled all the 
 
 faculties of his intellect. Had he been asked to 
 
 explain the nature of this dream, David would 
 
 have answered vaguely enough, but he would have 
 
 said something to the following effect: "I'm 
 
 thinking none of us are quite contented ; there's a 
 
 climbing impulse to heaven in us all that won't 
 
 let us rest for a moment. Just now I would be 
 
 happy if I hieiv a little more. I'd give ten years 
 
 of life to see Borne, and Florence, and Venice, 
 
 and the grand places of old ; and to feel that I 
 
 wasn't a burden on the old folks. I'll be a great 
 
 man yet ! and the old home, the Luggie and 
 
 Gartshore wood, shall be famous for my sake." 
 
 He could only measure his ambition by the love 
 
 he bore his home. " I was boru, bred, and 
 
 cared for here, and my folk are buried here. I 
 
DAVID GRAY. 67 
 
 know every nook and dell for miles around, and 
 they are all dear to me. My own mother and 
 father dwell here, and in my own wee room " (the 
 tiny carpeted bedroom above alluded to) " I first 
 learned to read poetry. I love my home ; and it 
 is for my home's sake that I love fame." 
 
 Nor were that home and its surroundings un- 
 worthy of such love. Tiny and unpretending as 
 is Luggie stream, upon its banks lie many nooks 
 of beauty, bowery glimpses of woodland, shady 
 solitudes, places of nestling green for poets made. 
 Not far off stretch the Campsie fells, with dusky 
 nooks between, where the waterfall and the cas- 
 cade make a silver pleasure in the heart of shadow ; 
 and beyond, there are dreamy glimpses of the 
 misty blue mountains themselves. Away to the 
 south-west, lies Glasgow in its smoke, most hideous 
 of cities, wherein the very clangour of church- 
 bells is associated with abominations. Into the 
 heart of that city David was to be slowly drawn, 
 subject to a fascination only death could dispel, — 
 the desire to make deathless music, and the dream 
 of moving therewith the mysterious heart of 
 man. 
 
68 DAVID GBAY. 
 
 At twenty- one years of age, when this dream 
 was strong within him, David was a tall young 
 man, slightly but firmly built, and with a stoop at 
 the shoulders. His head was small, fringed with 
 black curly hair. Want of candour was not his 
 fault, though he seldom looked one in the face ; 
 his eyes, however, were large and dark, full of 
 intelligence and humour, harmonizing well with 
 the long thin nose and nervous lips. The great 
 black eyes and woman's mouth betrayed the 
 creature of impulse ; one whose reasoning facul- 
 ties were small, but whose temperament was like 
 red-hot coal. He sympathized with much that 
 was lofty, noble, and true in poetry, and with 
 much that was absurd and suicidal in the poet. 
 He carried sympathy to the highest pitch of en- 
 thusiasm ; he shed tears over the memories 
 of Keats and Burns, and he was corybantic in 
 his execution of a Scotch " reel." A fine phrase 
 filled him with the rapture of a lover. He admired 
 extremes — from Rabelais to Tom Sayers. Thirst- 
 ing for human sympathy, which lured him in the 
 semblance of notoriety, he perpetrated all sorts of 
 extravagancies, innocent enough in themselves, 
 
DAVID GRAY. 69 
 
 but calculated to blind him to the very first prin- 
 ciples of art. Yet this enthusiasm, as I have 
 suggested, was his safeguard in at least one 
 respect. Though he believed himself to be a 
 genius, he loved the parental roof of the hand-loom 
 weaver. 
 
 And what thought the weaver and his wife of 
 this wonderful son of theirs ? They were proud 
 of him, proud in a silent undemonstrative fashion ; 
 for among the Scottish poor concealment of the 
 emotions is held a virtue. During his weekly 
 visits home, David was not overwhelmed with 
 caresses ; but he was the subject of conversation 
 night after night, when the old couple talked in 
 bed. Between him and his father there had arisen 
 a strange barrier of reserve. They seldom ex- 
 changed with each other more than a passing 
 word; but to one friend's bosom David would 
 often confide the love and tenderness he bore for 
 his over-worked, upright parent. When the boy 
 first began to write verses the old man affected 
 perfect contempt and indifference, but his eyes 
 gloated in secret over the poetVcorners of the 
 Glasgow newspapers. The poor weaver, though 
 
70 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 an uneducated man, had a profound respect for 
 education and cultivation in others. He felt his 
 heart bound with hope and joy when strangers 
 praised the boy, but he hid the tenderness of his 
 pride under a cold indifference. Although proud 
 of David's talent for writing verses, he was afraid 
 to encourage a pursuit which practical common 
 •sense assured him was mere trifling. At a later 
 date he might have spoken out, had not his tongue 
 been frozen by the belief that advice from him 
 would be held in no esteem by his better edu- 
 cated and more gifted son. Thus, the more 
 David's indications of cleverness and scholarship 
 increased, the more afraid was the old man to 
 express his gratification and give his advice. 
 Equally touching was the point of view taken by 
 David's mother, whose cry was, " The kirk, the 
 free kirk, and nothing but the kirk ! n She neither 
 appreciated nor underrated the abilities of her 
 boy, but her proudest wish was that he should 
 become a real live minister, with home and 
 " haudin' " of his own. To see David, — " our 
 David," — in a pulpit, preaching the Gospel out of 
 a big book, and dwelling in a good house to the 
 end of his days ! 
 
DAVID GRAY. 71 
 
 But meantime the boy was swiftly undermining 
 all such cherished plans. He had saturated his 
 heart and mind with the intoxicating wines of 
 poesy, — drunken deep of such syrups as only very 
 strong heads indeed can carry calmly. He dif- 
 fered from older and harder poets in this only, — 
 that he had not the trick of disguising his vanity, 
 knew not how to ape humility. The poor lad was 
 moved, maddened by the strange divine light in 
 his eyes, and he cried aloud : " The beauty of the 
 cloudland I have visited ! the ideal love of my 
 soul ! " Thus he expressed himself, much to the 
 amusement of his hearers. " Solitude," he ex- 
 claimed on. another occasion, " and an utter want 
 of all physical exercise, are working deplorable 
 ravages in my nervous system; the crows'-feet 
 are blackening about my eyes, and I cannot think 
 to face the sunlight. When I ponder over my 
 own inability to move the world, to move one heart 
 in it, no wonder that my face gathers blackness. 
 Tennyson beautifully and (so far) truly says, that 
 the face is 'the form and colour of the mind and 
 life/ If you saw me !" His verses written at that 
 period, although abounding with echoes of his 
 
72 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 two pet poets, show great intensity and the 
 sweetness of perfect feeling. Some of the lyrics 
 in his volume, printed among the Poems Named 
 and without Names, belong to this period. His 
 productions, however, were for the most part close 
 reproductions of the manner of Keats ; and so 
 conscious was he of this fact, that in one of these 
 pieces he expressly styled himself, " a foster son 
 of Keats, the dreamily divine." Wordsworth he 
 did not reproduce so much until a later and a 
 purer period. One of these unpublished pieces I 
 shall quote here, to show that David, even at 
 the crude assimilate period, showed " brains " and 
 vision noticeable in a youth of twenty. 
 
 Empedocles. 
 
 " He who to be deem'd 
 A god, leap'd fondly into iEtna flames, — 
 Empedocles." — Milton. 
 
 How, in the crystal smooth and azure sky, 
 Droop the clear, living sapphires, tremulous 
 And inextinguishably beautiful ! 
 How the calm irridescence of their soft 
 Ethereal fire contrasts with the wild flame 
 Rising from this doomed mountain like the noise 
 
DAVID GRAY. 73 
 
 Of ocean whirlwinds through the murky air ! 
 Alone, alone ! yearning, ambitious ever ! 
 Hope's agony ! O, ye immortal gods ! 
 Regally sphered in your keen-silvered orbs, 
 Eternal, where fled that authentic fire, 
 Stolen by Prometheus ere the pregnant clouds 
 Rose from the sea, full of the deluge ! Where 
 Art thou, white lady of the morning ; white 
 Aurora, charioted by the fair Hours 
 Through amethystine mists weeping soft dews 
 Upon the meadow, as Apollo heaves 
 His constellation through the liquid dawn ? 
 Give me Tithonus' gift, thou orient 
 Undying Beauty ! and my love shall be 
 Cherubic worship, and my star shall walk 
 The plains of heaven, thy punctual harbinger ! 
 O with thy ancient power prolong my days 
 For ever ; tear this flesh*thick cursed life 
 Enlinking me to this foul earth,'' the home 
 Of cold mortality, this nether hell ! 
 
 Rise, mighty conflagrations! and scare wild 
 These crowding shadows ! Far on the dim sea 
 Pale mariners behold thee, and the sails, 
 Shine purpled by thy glare, and the slow oars 
 Drop ruby, and the trembling human souls 
 Wonder affrighted as their pitchy barks, 
 Guided by Syrian pilots, ripple by 
 Hailing for craggy Calpe ; O, ye frail 
 Weak human souls, I, lone Empedocles, 
 Stand here unshivered as a steadfast god, 
 Scorning thy puny destinies. 
 
74 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 I float 
 To cloud-enrobed Olympus on the wings 
 Of a rich dream, swift as the light of stars, 
 Swifter than Zophiel or Mercury 
 Upon his throne of adamantine gold. — 
 Jove sits superior, while the deities 
 Tread delicate the smooth cerulean floors. 
 Hebe, (with twin breasts, like twin roes that feed 
 Among the lilies), in her taper hand 
 Bears the bright goblet, rough with gems and gold, 
 Filled with ambrosia to the lipping brim. 
 O, love and beauty and immortal life ! 
 O, light divine, ethereal effluence 
 Of purity ! 0, fragrancy of air, 
 Spikenard and calamus, cassia and balm, 
 With all the frankincense that ever fumed 
 From temple censers swung from pictured roofs. 
 Float warmly through the corridors of heaven. 
 
 Hiss ! moan ! shriek ! wreath thy livid serpentine 
 Volutions, O ye earth-born flames ! and flout 
 The silent skies with strange fire, like a dawn 
 Rubific, terrible, a lurid glare ! 
 Olympus shrinks beside thee ! I, alone, 
 Like deity ignipotent, behold 
 Thy playful whirls and thy weird melody 
 Hear undismayed. O gods ! shall I go near 
 And in the molten horror headlong plunge 
 Deathward, and that, serene immortal life 
 Discover ? Shriek your hellish discord out 
 Into the smoky firmament ! Down roll 
 
DAVID GRAY. 75 
 
 Your fat bituminous torrents to the sea, 
 Hot hissing ! Far away in element 
 Untroubled rise the crystal battlements 
 Of the celestial mansion, where to be 
 Is my ambition ; and far away 
 From this dull earth in azure atmospheres 
 My star shall pant its silvery lustre, bright 
 With sempiternal radiance, voyaging 
 On blissful errands the pure marble air. 
 
 O, dominations and life-yielding powers, 
 Listen my yearning prayer : To be of ye — 
 Of thy grand hierarchy and old race 
 Plenipotent, I do a deed that dares 
 The draff of men to equal. You have given 
 Immortal life to common human men 
 Who common deeds achieved ; nay, even for love 
 Some goddesses voluptuous have raised 
 Weak whiners from this curst sublunar world, 
 Pillowed them on snow bosoms in the bowers 
 Of Paradise ! And shall Empedocles, 
 Who from the perilous grim edge of life 
 Leaps sheer into the liquid fire and meets 
 Death like a lover, not be sphered and made 
 A virtue ministrant ? All you soft orbs 
 By pure intelligences piloted, 
 Incomprehensibly their glories show 
 Approving. O ye sparkle-moving fires 
 Of heaven, now silently above the flare 
 Of this red mountain shining, which of you 
 Shall be my home ? Into whose stellar glow 
 
76 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 Shall I arrive, bringing delight and life 
 
 And spiritual motion and dim fame ? 
 
 Hiss, fiery serpents ! Your sweet breathings warm 
 
 My face as I approach ye. Flap wild wings, 
 
 Ye dragons ! flaming round this mouth of hell, 
 
 To me the mouth of heaven. 
 
 The influence of Keats soon decayed, and 
 calmer influences supervened. He began a play- 
 on the Shakespearian model. This ambitious 
 effort, however, was soon relinquished for a dearer, 
 sweeter task, — the composition of a pastoral poem 
 descriptive of the scenery surrounding his home. 
 This subject, first suggested to him by a friend 
 who guessed his real power, grew upon him with 
 wondrous force, till the lines welled into perfect 
 speech through very deepness of passion. His 
 whole soul was occupied. The pictures that had 
 troubled his childhood, the running river, the 
 thymy Campsie fells, were now to live again 
 before his spirit ; and all the human sweetness and 
 trouble, the beloved faces, the familiar human 
 figures, stirred to the soft music of a flowing river 
 and the distant hum of looms from cottage doors. 
 The result was the poem entitled " The Luggie," 
 
DAVID GRAY. 77 
 
 which gives its name to the posthumous volume, 
 and which, though it lacked the last humanizing 
 touches of the poet, remains unique in contem- 
 porary literature. 
 
 But even while his heart was full of this ex- 
 quisite utterance, this babble of green fields and 
 silver waters, the influence of cities was growing 
 more and more upon him, and poesy was no more 
 the quite perfect joy that had made his boyhood 
 happy. It was not enough to sing now ; the 
 thirst for applause was deepening; and it is not 
 therefore extraordinary that even his fresh and 
 truthful pastoral shows here and there the hectic 
 flush of self-consciousness, — the dissatisfied glance 
 in the direction of the public. The natural result 
 of this was occasional merry-making, and grog- 
 drinking, and beating the big city during the 
 dark hours. There was high poetic pleasure in 
 singing songs among artizans in familiar public- 
 houses, flirting with an occasional milliner, and 
 singing her charms in broad Scotch, — even oc- 
 casionally coming to fisticuffs in obscure places, 
 possibly owing to a hot discussion on the character 
 of that demon of religious Scotch artizans, — the 
 
78 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 poet Shelley. I do not hesitate the least in men- 
 tioning these matters, because Gray has been too 
 frequently represented as a morbid, unwholesome 
 young gentleman, without natural weaknesses — a 
 kind of aqueous Henry Kirke White, brandied 
 faintly with ambition. He was nothing of the 
 kind. He was a young man, as other young men 
 are — foolish and wild in his season, though never 
 gross or disreputable. The very excess of his 
 sensitiveness led him into outbreaks against con- 
 vention. While pouring out the sweetness of his 
 nature in " The Luggie," he could turn aside again 
 and again, and relieve his excitement by such 
 doggrel as this, addressed to a companion, — 
 
 Let olden Homer, hoary, 
 
 Sing of wondrous deeds of glory, 
 
 In that ever-burning story, 
 
 Bold and bright, friend Bob ! 
 Ou?' theme be Pleasure, careless, 
 In all stirring frolics fearless, 
 In the vineyard, reckless, peerless, 
 
 Heroes dight, friend Bob ! 
 
 Be it noted, however, that there was in Gray's 
 nature a strange and exquisite femininity, — a 
 perfect feminine purity and sweetness. Indeed, 
 
DAVID GRAY. 79 
 
 till the mystery of sex be medically explained, I 
 shall ever believe that nature originally meant 
 David Gray for a female ; for besides the strangely 
 sensitive lips and eyes, he had a woman's shape, — 
 narrow shoulders, lissome limbs, and extraordi- 
 nary breadth across the hips. 
 
 Early in his teens David had made the ac- 
 quaintance of a young man of Glasgow, with 
 whom his fortunes were destined to be intimately 
 woven. That young man was myself. We spent 
 year after year in intimate communion, varying 
 the monotony of our existence by reading books 
 together, plotting great works, writing extrava- 
 gant letters to men of eminence, and wandering 
 about the country on vagrant freaks. Whole 
 nights and days were often passed in seclusion, in 
 reading the great thinkers, and pondering on 
 their lives. Full of thoughts too deep for utter- 
 ance, dreaming, David would walk at a swift 
 pace through the crowded streets, with face bent 
 down, and eyes fixed on the ground, taking no 
 heed of the human beings passing to and fro. 
 Then he would come to me crying, " I have had 
 a dream," and would forthwith tell of visionary 
 
80 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 pictures which had haunted him in his solitary 
 walk. This l ' dreaming/' as he called it, con- 
 sumed the greater portion of his hours of 
 leisure. 
 
 Towards the end of the year 1859, David be- 
 came convinced that he could no longer idle 
 away the hours of his youth. His work as 
 student and as pupil-teacher was ended, and he 
 must seek some means of subsistence. He 
 imagined, too, that his poor parents threw dull 
 looks on the beggar of their bounty. Having 
 abandoned all thoughts of entering' into the 
 Church, for which neither his taste nor his 
 opinions fitted him, what should he do in order 
 to earn his daily bread ? His first thought was 
 to turn schoolmaster ; but no ! the notion was an 
 odious one. He next endeavoured, without suc- 
 cess, to procure himself a situation on one of the 
 Glasgow newspapers. Meantime, while drifting 
 from project to project he maintained a voluminous 
 correspondence, in the hope of persuading some 
 eminent man to read his poem of " The Luggie." 
 
 Unfortunately, the persons to whom he wrote 
 were too busy to pay much attention to the solici- 
 
 
DAVID GRAY. 81 
 
 tations of an entire stranger. Repeated disap- 
 pointments only increased his self-assertion ; the 
 less chance there seemed of an improvement in 
 his position, and the less strangers seemed to 
 recognize his genius, the more dogged grew his 
 conviction that he was destined to be a great 
 poet. His letters were full of this conviction. 
 To one entire stranger he wrote : " I am a poet ; 
 let that be understood distinctly." Again : " I 
 tell you that, if I live, my name and fame shall 
 be second to few of any age, and to none of 
 my own. I speak this because I feel power." 
 Again : " I am so accustomed to compare my 
 own mental progress with that of such men as 
 Shakespeare, Goethe, and Wordsworth, that the 
 dream of my life will not be fulfilled, if my fame 
 equal not, at least, that of the latter of these 
 three !" This was extraordinary language, and 
 it is not surprising that little heed was paid to 
 it. Let some explanation be given here. "No 
 man could be more humble, reverent-minded, 
 self-doubting, than David was in reality. In- 
 deed, he was constitutionally timid of his own 
 abilities, and he was personally diffident. In 
 
 G 
 
82 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 his letters only lie absolutely endeavoured to 
 wrest from his correspondents some recognition 
 of his claim to help and sympathy. The moment 
 sympathy came, no matter how coldly it might be 
 expressed, he was all humility and gratitude. In 
 this spirit,, after one of his wildest nights of self- 
 assertion, he wrote : " When I read Thomson, I 
 despair." Again : " Being bare of all recommenda- 
 tions, I lied with my own conscience, deeming 
 that if I called myself a great man you were 
 bound to believe me." Again : " If you saw me 
 you would wonder if the quiet, bashful, boyish- 
 looking fellow before you was the author of all 
 yon blood and thunder." In a lengthy corres- 
 pondence with Mr. Sydney Dobell, who is also 
 known as a writer of verse, David wrote wildly 
 and boldly enough ; but he was quite ready to 
 plead guilty to silliness when the fits were over. 
 But the grip of cities was on him, and he was 
 far too conscious of outsiders. How sad and 
 pitiable sounds the following! "Mark!" he 
 cried, " it is not what I have done, or can now 
 do, but what I feel myself able and born to do, 
 that makes me so selfishly stupid. Your sentence, 
 
DAVID GRAY. 83 
 
 thrown back to me for reconsideration, would 
 certainly seem strange to any one but myself ; but 
 the thought that I had so written to you only 
 made me the more resolute in my actions, and 
 the wilder in my visions. What if I sent the 
 same sentence back to you again, with the quiet 
 stern answer, that it is my intention to be the 
 ' first poet of my own age/ and second only 
 to a very few of any age. Would you think 
 me f mad/ ' drunk/ or an ' idiot/ or my ' self- 
 confidence ' one of the c saddest paroxysms V 
 When my biography falls to be written, will not 
 this same self-confidence be one of the most 
 striking features of my intellectual development ? 
 Might not a poet of twenty feel great things ? In 
 all the stories of mental warfare that I have ever 
 read, that mind which became of celestial clear- 
 ness and godlike power did nothing for twenty 
 years but feel" The hand-loom weaver's son 
 raving about his "biography \" The youth that 
 could babble so deliriously of green fields looking 
 forward to the day when he would be anatomized 
 by the small critic and chronicled by the chroni- 
 clers of small beer ! It was not in this mood that 
 
84 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 he wrote his sweetest lines. The world was 
 already too much with him. 
 
 Here, if anywhere in his career,, I see signs 
 which console me for his bitter suffering and too 
 early death; signs that, had he lived, his fate 
 might have been an even sadder one. Saint 
 Beuve says, as quoted by Alfred de Musset : — 
 
 II existe, en un mot, chez les trois quarts des hommes, 
 Un poete mort jeune a, qui Thc-mme survit ! 
 
 A dead young poet whom the man survives ! 
 — and dead through that very poison which 
 David was beginning to taste. I dare not aver 
 that such would have been the result ; I dare not 
 say that David's poetic instinct was too weak to 
 survive the danger. But the danger existed — 
 clear, sparkling, deathly. Had David been hurried 
 away to teach schools among the hills, buried 
 among associations pure and green as those that 
 surrounded his youth and childhood, the poetic 
 instinct might have survived and achieved won- 
 drous results. But he went southward, — he im- 
 bibed an atmosphere entirely unfitted for his soul 
 at that period ; and — perhaps, after all, the gods 
 loved him and knew best. 
 
 For all at once there flashed upon David and 
 
DAVID GRAY. 85 
 
 myself the notion of going to London, and taking 
 the literary fortress by storm. Again and again 
 we talked the project over, and again and again 
 we hesitated. In the spring of 1860, we both 
 found ourselves without an anchorage ; each found 
 it necessary to do something for daily bread. 
 For some little time the London scheme had been 
 in abeyance ; but, on the 3rd of May, 1860, David 
 came to me, his lips firmly compressed, his eyes 
 full of fire, saying, " Bob, I'm off to London." 
 " Have you funds t" I asked. " Enough for one, 
 not enough for two," was the reply. " If you 
 can get the money anyhow, we '11 go together." 
 On parting, we arranged to meet on the evening 
 of the 5th of May, in time to catch the five o'clock 
 train. Unfortunately, however, we neglected to 
 specify which of the two Glasgow stations was 
 intended. At the hour appointed, David left 
 Glasgow by one line of railway, in the belief that 
 I had been unable to join him, but determined to 
 try the venture alone. With the same belief and 
 determination, I left at the same hour by the 
 other line of railway. We arrived in different 
 parts of London at about the same time. Had 
 we left Glasgow in company, or had we met im- 
 
86 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 mediately after our arrival in London, the story 
 of David's life might not have been so brief and 
 sorrowful. 
 
 Though the month was May, the weather 
 was dark, damp, cloudy. On arriving in the 
 metropolis, David wandered about for hours, 
 carpet-bag in hand. The magnitude of the 
 place overwhelmed him ; he was lost in that great 
 ocean of life. He thought about Johnson and 
 Savage, and how they wandered through London 
 with pockets more empty than his own; but 
 already he longed to be back in the little carpeted 
 bedroom in the weaver's cottage. How lonely 
 it seemed ! Among all that mist of human faces 
 there was not one to smile in welcome ; and how 
 was he to make his trembling voice heard above 
 the roar and tumult of those streets ? The very 
 policemen seemed to look suspiciously at the 
 stranger. To his sensitively Scottish ear the 
 lang*uage spoken seemed quite strange and foreign ; 
 it had a painful, homeless sound about it that 
 sank nervously on the heart-strings. As he 
 wandered about the streets he glanced into 
 coffee-shop after coffee-shop, seeing "beds" 
 
DAVID GRAY. 87 
 
 ticketed in each fly-blown window. His pocket 
 contained a sovereign and a few shillings, but he 
 would need every penny. Would not a bed be 
 useless extravagance ? he asked himself. Cer- 
 tainly. Where, then, should he pass the night ? 
 In Hyde Park ! He had heard so much about 
 this part of London that the name was quite 
 familiar to him. Yes, he would pass the night in 
 the park. Such a proceeding* would save money, 
 and be exceedingly romantic ; it would be just 
 the right sort of beginning for a poet's struggle 
 in London ! So he strolled into the great park, 
 and wandered about its purlieus till morning. In 
 remarking upon this foolish conduct, one must 
 reflect that David was strong, heartsome, full of 
 healthy youth. It was a frequent boast of his 
 that he scarcely ever had a day's illness. Whether 
 or not his fatal complaint was caught during this 
 his first night in London is uncertain, but some 
 few days afterwards David wrote thus to his 
 father: " By-the-bye, I have had the worst cold 
 I ever had in my life. I cannot get it away 
 properly, but I feel a great deal better to-day." 
 Alas ! violent cold had settled down upon his lungs, 
 
88 DAVTD GRAY. 
 
 and insidious death was already slowly approach- 
 ing him. So little conscious was he of his danger, 
 however, that I find him writing to a friend : 
 " What brought me here ? God knows, for I 
 don't. Alone in such a place is a horrible thing. 
 . . . People don't seem to understand me. . . . 
 Westminster Abbey ; I was there all day yester- 
 day. If I live I shall be buried there — so help 
 me God ! A completely denned consciousness of 
 great poetical genius is my only antidote against 
 utter despair and despicable failure." 
 
 I suppose his purposes in coming to Babylon 
 were about as definite as my own had been, 
 although he had the advantage of being qualified 
 as a pupil teacher. We tossed ourselves on the 
 great waters as two youths who wished to learn 
 to swim, and trusted that by diligent kicking we 
 might escape drowning. There was the prospect 
 of getting into a newspaper office. Again, there 
 was the prospect of selling a few verses. Thirdly, 
 if everything failed, there was the prospect of get- 
 ting into one of the theatres as supernumeraries.* 
 
 * Each of the friends, indeed, unknown to each other, 
 actually applied for such a situation ; and one succeeded. 
 
DAVID GRAY. 89 
 
 Beyond all this, there was of course the dim 
 prospect that London would at once, and with 
 acclamations, welcome the advent of true genius, 
 albeit with seedy garments and a Scotch accent. 
 It doubtless never occurred to either that besides 
 mere " consciousness" of power, some other things 
 were necessary for a literary struggle in London 
 — special knowledge, capability of interesting 
 oneself in trifles, and the pen of a ready writer. 
 What were David's qualifications for a fight in 
 which hundreds miserably fail year after year ? 
 Considerable knowledge of Greek, Latin, and 
 French, great miscellaneous reading, a clerkly 
 handwriting, and a bold purpose. Slender 
 qualifications, doubtless, but while life lasted, 
 there was hope. 
 
 We did not meet until upwards of a week after 
 our arrival in London, though each had soon been 
 apprised of the other's presence in the city. 
 Finally we came together. David's first impulse 
 was to describe his lodgings, situated in a by- 
 street in the Borough. ( ' A cold, cheerless bed- 
 room, Bob ; nothing but a blanket to cover me. 
 For God's sake get me out of it!" We were 
 
90 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 walking side by side in the neighbourhood of the 
 New Cut , looking about us with curious puzzled 
 eyes, and now and then drawing- each other's 
 attention to sundry objects of interest. " Have 
 you been well V 3 I inquired. " First-rate/' 
 answered David, looking as merry as possible. 
 ISTor did he show any indications whatever of ill- 
 ness ; he seemed hopeful, energetic, full of health 
 and spirits ; his sole desire was to change his 
 lodging. It was not without qualms that he sur- 
 veyed the dingy, smoky neighbourhood where I 
 resided. The sun was shedding dismal crimson 
 light on the chimney-pots, and the twilight was 
 slowly thickening. We climbed up three flights 
 of stairs to my bedroom; dingy as it was, this 
 apartment seemed, in David's eyes, quite a palatial 
 sanctum ; and it was arranged that we should 
 take up our residence together. As speedily as 
 possible I procured David's little stock of luggage ; 
 then, settled face to face as in old times, we made 
 very merry. 
 
 My first idea, on questioning David about his 
 prospects, was that my friend had had the best of 
 luck. You see, the picture drawn on either side 
 
DAVID GRAY. 91 
 
 was a golden one ; but the brightness soon melted 
 away. It turned out that David, on arriving in 
 London, had sought out certain gentlemen whom 
 he had formerly favoured with his correspondence, 
 among others Mr. Eichard Monckton Mimes, now 
 Lord Houghton. Though not a little astonished 
 at the appearance of the boy-poet, Mr. Milnes 
 had received him kindly, assisted him to the best 
 of his power, and made some work for him in the 
 shape of manuscript-copying. The same gentle- 
 man had also used his influence with literary 
 people, — to very little purpose, however. The 
 real truth turned out to be that David was dis- 
 appointed and low-spirited. (( It's weary work, 
 Bob ; they don't understand me ; I wish I was 
 back in Glasgow." It was now that David told 
 me all about that first day and night in London, 
 and how he had already begun a poem about 
 ' c Hyde Park ; " how Mr. Milnes had been good 
 to him, had said that he was " a poet/' but had 
 insisted on his going back to Scotland and be- 
 coming a minister. David did not at all like the 
 notion of returning home. He thought he had 
 every chance of making his way in London. 
 
92 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 About this time he was bitterly disappointed by 
 the rejection of " The Luggie " by Mr. Thackeray, 
 to whom Mr. Milnes had sent it, with a recom- 
 mendation that it should be inserted in the 
 " Cornhill Magazine." 
 
 Lord Houghton briefly and vividly describes 
 his intercourse with the young poet in London. 
 He had written to Gray strongly urging him 
 not to make the hazardous experiment of a 
 literary life, but to aim after a professional in- 
 dependence. "A few weeks afterwards," he 
 writes, u I was told that a young man wished to 
 see me, and when he came into the room I at once 
 saw that it could be no other than the young 
 Scotch Poet. It was a light, well-built, but some- 
 what stooping figure, with a countenance that at 
 once brought strongly to my recollection a cast of 
 the face of Shelley in his youth, which I had seen 
 at Mr. Leigh Hunt's. There was the same full 
 brow, out-looking eyes, and sensitive melancholy 
 mouth. He told me at once that he had come to 
 London in consequence of my letter, as from the 
 tone of it he was sure I should befriend him. I 
 was dismayed at this unexpected result of my 
 
DAVID GRAY. 93 
 
 advice, and could do no more than press him to re- 
 turn home as soon as possible. I painted as darkly 
 as I could the chances and difficulties of a literary 
 struggle in the crowded competition of this great 
 city, and how strong a swimmer it required to be 
 not to sink in such a sea of tumultuous life. c No, 
 he would not return/ I determined in my own 
 mind that he should do so before I myself left 
 town for the country, but at the same time I 
 believed that he might derive advantage from a 
 short personal experience of hard realities. He 
 had confidence in his own powers, a simple cer- 
 tainty of his own worth, which I saw would keep 
 him in good heart and preserve him from base 
 temptations. He refused to take money, saying 
 he had enough to go on with ; but I gave him 
 some light literary work, for which he was very 
 grateful. When he came to me again, I went 
 over some of his verse with him, and I shall not 
 forget the passionate gratification he showed when 
 I told him that, in my judgment, he was an un- 
 deniable poet. After this admission he was ready 
 to submit to my criticism or correction, though 
 he was sadly depressed at the rejection of one of 
 
94 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 his poems, over which he had evidently spent 
 much labour and care, by the editor of a distin- 
 guished popular periodical, to whom I had sent 
 it with a hearty recommendation. His, indeed, 
 was not a spirit to be seriously injured by a tem- 
 porary disappointment; but when he fell ill so 
 soon afterwards, one had something of the feeling 
 of regret that the notorious review of Keats 
 inspires in connection with the premature loss of 
 the author of ' Endymion/ It was only a few 
 weeks after his arrival in London, that the poor 
 boy came to my house apparently under the in- 
 fluence of violent fever. He said he had caught 
 cold in the wet weather, having been insufficiently 
 protected by clothing; but had delayed coming 
 to me for fear of giving me unnecessary trouble. 
 I at once sent him back to his lodgings, which 
 were sufficiently comfortable, and put him under 
 good medical superintendence. It soon became 
 apparent that pulmonary disease had set in, but 
 there were good hopes of arresting its progress. 
 I visited him often, and every time with increasing 
 interest. He had somehow found out that his 
 lungs were affected, and the image of the destiny 
 of Keats was ever before him." 
 
 
DAVin GRAY. 95 
 
 It has been seen that Mr. Milnes was the first to 
 perceive that the young adventurer was seriously 
 ill. After a hurried call on his patron one day in 
 May, David rejoined me in the near neighbour- 
 hood. " Milnes says I'm to go home and keep 
 warm, and he'll send his own doctor to me." This 
 was done. The doctor came, examined David's 
 chest, said very little, and went away, leaving 
 strict orders that the invalid should keep within 
 doors, and take great care of himself. Neither 
 David nor I liked the expression of the doctor's 
 face at all. 
 
 It soon became evident that David's illness was 
 of a most serious character. Pulmonary disease 
 had set in > medicine, blistering 1 , all the remedies 
 employed in the early stages of his complaint, 
 seemed of little avail. Just then David read the 
 " Life of John Keats," a book which impressed 
 him with a nervous fear of impending dissolution. 
 He began to be filled with conceits droller than 
 any he had imagined in health. " If I were to 
 meet Keats in heaven," he said one day, " I 
 wonder if I should know his face from his pic- 
 tures ? " Most frequently his talk was of labour 
 uncompleted, hope deferred; and he began to 
 
96 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 pant for free country air. " If I die," he said on 
 a certain occasion, " I shall have one consolation, — 
 Milnes will write an introduction to the poems " 
 At another time, with tears in his eyes, he re- 
 peated Burns' s epitaph. Now and then, too, he 
 had his fits of frolic and humour, and would laugh 
 and joke over his unfortunate position. It cannot 
 be said that Mr. Milnes and his friends were at 
 all lukewarm about the case of their young friend ; 
 on the contrary, they gave him every practical 
 assistance. Mr. Milnes himself, full of the most 
 delicate sympathy, trudged to and fro between 
 his own house and the invalid's lodging ; his 
 pockets laden with jelly and beef- tea, and his 
 tongue tipped with kindly comfort. Had cir- 
 cumstances permitted, he would have taken the 
 invalid into his own house. Unfortunately, how- 
 ever, David was compelled to remain, in company 
 with me, in a chamber which seemed to have 
 been constructed peculiarly for the purpose of 
 making the occupants as uncomfortable as possible. 
 There were draughts everywhere: through the 
 chinks of the door, through the windows, down 
 the chimney, and up through the flooring. When 
 
DAVID GRAY. 97 
 
 the wind blew, the whole tenement seemed on 
 the point of crumbling to atoms ; when the rain 
 fell, the walls exuded moisture; when the sun 
 shone, the sunshine only served to increase the 
 characteristic dinginess of the furniture. Occa- 
 sional visitors, however, could not be fully aware 
 of these inconveniences. It was in the night-time, 
 and in bad weather, that they were chiefly felt ; 
 and it required a few days' experience to test the 
 superlative discomfort of what David (in a letter 
 written afterwards) styled " the dear old ghastly 
 bankrupt garret." His stay in these quarters 
 was destined to be brief. Gradually, the invalid 
 grew homesick. Nothing would content him 
 but a speedy return to Scotland. He was care- 
 fully sent off by train, and arrived safely in his 
 little cottage-home far north. Here all was un- 
 changed as ever. The beloved river was flowing 
 through the same fields, and the same familiar 
 faces were coming and going on its banks ; but 
 the whole meaning of the pastoral pageant had 
 changed, and the colour of all was deepening 
 towards the final sadness. 
 
 Great, meanwhile, had been the commotion in 
 
 H 
 
98 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 the handloom weaver's cottage, after the receipt 
 of this bulletin : " I start off to-night at five o'clock 
 by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Kailway, right on 
 to London, in good health and spirits." A great 
 cry arose in the household. He was fairly " daft ; " 
 he was throwing away all his chances in the world ; 
 the verse- writing had turned his head. Father 
 and mother mourned together. The former, 
 though incompetent to judge literary merit of 
 any kind, perceived that David was hot-headed, 
 only half- educated, and was going to a place 
 where thousands of people were starving daily. 
 But the suspense was not to last long. The 
 darling son, the secret hope and pride, came 
 back to the old people, sick to death. All re- 
 buke died away before the pale sad face and 
 the feeble tottering body; and David was wel- 
 comed to the cottage hearth with silent prayers. 
 It was now placed beyond a doubt that the disease 
 was one of mortal danger ; yet David, surrounded 
 again by his old cares, busied himself with many 
 bright and delusive dreams of ultimate recovery. 
 Pictures of a pleasant dreamy convalescence in a 
 foreign clime floated before him morn and night, 
 
DAVID GRAY. 99 
 
 and the fairest and dearest of the dreams was 
 Italy. Previous to his departure for London he 
 had concocted a wild scheme for visiting Florence, 
 and throwing himself on the poetical sympathy of 
 Robert Browning. He had even thought of en- 
 listing" in the English Garibaldian corps, and by 
 that means gaining his cherished wish. " How 
 about Italy ? " he wrote to me, after returning 
 home. " Do you still entertain its delusive 
 notions ? Pour out your soul before me ; I am 
 as a child." All at once a new dream burst 
 upon him. A local doctor insisted that the 
 invalid should be removed to a milder climate, 
 and recommended Natal. In a letter full of 
 coaxing tenderness, David besought me, for the 
 sake of old days, to accompany him thither. 
 I answered indecisively, but immediately made 
 all endeavours to grant my friend's wish. Mean- 
 time I received the following : — 
 
 " Merkland, Kirkintollock, 
 
 " 10th November, 1860. 
 
 " Ever Deae Bob, 
 " Your letter causes me some uneasiness ; not but 
 that your numerous objections are numerous and 
 
 LofC. 
 
100 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 vital enough, but they convey the sad and firm 
 intelligence that you cannot come with me. It 
 is absolutely impossible for you to raise a sum 
 sufficient ! Now you know it is not necessary 
 that I should go to Natal ; nay, I have, in very 
 fear, given up the thoughts of it; but we — or 
 I — could go to Italy or Jamaica — this latter, as 
 I learn, being the more preferable. Nor has 
 there been any ' crisis ' come, as you say. I 
 would cause you much trouble (forgive me for 
 hinting this), but I believe we could be happy as 
 
 in the dear old times. Dr. (whose address 
 
 I don't know) supposes that I shall be able to 
 work(?) when I reach a more genial climate; 
 and if that should prove the result, why, it is a 
 consummation devoutly to be wished. But the 
 matter of money bothers me. What I wrote to 
 you was all hypothetical, i. e. things have been 
 carried so far, but I have not heard whether or 
 no the subscription had been gone on with. 
 And, supposing for one instant the utterly pre- 
 posterous supposition that I had money to carry 
 us both, then comes the second objection — your 
 dear mother ! I am not so far gone, though 
 
J) AVID GRAY. 101 
 
 I fear far enough, to ignore that blessed feeling. 
 But if it were for your good ? Before God, if I 
 thought it would in any way harm your health 
 (that cannot be) or your hopes, I would never 
 have mooted the proposal. On the contrary, 
 I feel from my heart it would benefit you ; and 
 how much would it not benefit me ? But I am 
 baking without flour. The cash is not in my 
 hand, and I fear never will be; the amount I 
 would require is not so easily gathered. 
 
 " Dobell * is again laid up. He is at the 
 Isle of Wight, at some establishment called the 
 Victoria Baths. I am told that his friends deem 
 his life in constant danger. He asks for your 
 address. I shall send it only to-day; wait until 
 you hear what he has got to say. He would 
 prefer me to go to Brompton Hospital. I would 
 
 * Sydney Dobell, author of " Balder," " The Roman," &c. 
 This gentleman's kindness to David, whom he never saw, 
 is beyond all praise. Nor was the invalid ungrateful. 
 " Poor, kind, half-immortal spirit here below," wrote 
 David, alluding to Dobell, " shall I know thee when we 
 meet new-born into eternal existence ? . . . Dear friend 
 Bob, did you ever know a nobler ? I cannot get him out of 
 my mind. I would write to him daily would it not pest him." 
 
102 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 go anywhere f or a change. If I don't get money 
 somehow or somewhere I shall die of ennui. A 
 weary desire for change, life, excitement of every, 
 any kind, possesses me, and without you what 
 am I ? There is no other person in the world 
 whom I could spend a week with, and thoroughly 
 enjoy it. Oh, how I desire to smoke a cigar, 
 and have a pint and a chat with you. 
 
 " By the way, how are you getting on ? Have 
 you lots to do ? and well paid for it ? Or is life 
 a lottery with you ? and the tea-caddy a vacuum ? 
 and — a snare ? and — a nightmare ? Do you 
 dream yet, on your old rickety sofa in the dear 
 old ghastly bankrupt garret at No. 66 ? Write 
 to yours eternally, „ David Qray „ 
 
 The proposal to go abroad was soon aban- 
 doned, partly because the invalid began to evince 
 a nervous home-sickness, but chiefly because it 
 was impossible to raise a sufficient sum of money. 
 Yet be it never said that this youth was denied 
 the extremest loving sympathy and care. As 
 I look back on those days it is to me a glad 
 wonder that so many tender faces, many of them 
 
DAVID GRAY. 103 
 
 quite strange, clustered round his sick-bed. When 
 it is reflected that he was known only as a poor 
 Scotch lad, that even his extraordinary lyric faculty 
 was as yet only half-guessed, if guessed at all, the 
 kindness of the world through his trouble is ex- 
 traordinary. Milnes, Dobell, DobelFs lady- friends 
 at Hampstead, tired never in devising plans for 
 the salvation of the poor consumptive invalid, — 
 goodness which sprang from the instincts of the 
 heart itself, and not from that intellectual bene- 
 volence which invests in kind deeds with a view 
 to a bonus from the Almighty. 
 
 The best and tenderest of people, however, can- 
 not always agree ; and in this case there was too 
 much discussion and delay. Some recommended 
 the long sea-voyage; one doctor recommended 
 Brompton Hospital; Milnes suggested Torquay 
 in Devonshire. Meantime, Gray, for the most 
 part ignorant of the discussions that were taking 
 place, besought his friends on all hands to come 
 to his assistance. Late in November he ad- 
 dressed the editor of a local newspaper with 
 whom he was personally acquainted, and who 
 had taken interest in his affairs : — 
 
104 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 " I write you in a certain commotion of mind, 
 and may speak wrongly. But I write to you be- 
 cause I know that it will take much to offend you 
 when no offence is meant ; and when the probable 
 offence will proceed from youthful heat and frantic 
 foolishness. It may be impertinent to address 
 you, of whom I know so little, and yet so much ; 
 but the severe circumstances seem to justify it. 
 
 " The medical verdict pronounced upon me is 
 certain and rapid death if I remain at Merhland. 
 That is awful enough, even to a brave man. But 
 there is a chance of escape ; as a drowning man 
 grasps at a straw I strive for it. Good, kind, 
 true Dobell writes me this morning the plans for 
 my welfare which he has put in progress, and 
 which most certainly meet my wishes. They are 
 as follows : Go immediately, and as a guest to the 
 house of Dr. Lane, in the salubrious town of 
 Richmond ; thence, when the difficult matter of 
 admission is overcome, to the celebrated Brompton 
 Hospital for chest diseases ; and in the Spring to 
 Italy. Of course, all this presupposes the con- 
 jectural problem that I will slowly recover. 
 ' Consummation devoutly to be wished ! ' Now„ 
 
DAVID GRAY. 105 
 
 you think, or say, what prevents you from taking 
 advantage of all these plans ? At once, and with- 
 out any squeamishness, money for an outfit. I did 
 not like to ask Dob ell, nor do I ask you ; but 
 hearing a ' subscription y had been spoken of, I 
 urge it with all my weak force. I am not in want 
 of an immense sum, but say £12 or £15. This 
 would conduce to my safety as far as human means 
 could do so. If you can aid me in getting this 
 sum, the obligation to a sinking fellow- creature 
 will be as indelible in his heart as the moral 
 law. 
 
 " I hope you will not misunderstand me. My 
 barefaced request may be summed thus : If your 
 influence set the affair a-going, quietly and quickly, 
 the thing is done, and I am off. Surely I am 
 worth £15 ; and for God's sake overlook the 
 strangeness and the freedom and the utter im- 
 pertinence of this communication. I would be 
 off for Richmond in two days, had I the money, 
 and sitting here thinking of the fearful proba- 
 bilities makes me half-mad." 
 
 It was soon found necessary, however, to act 
 with decision. A residence in Kirkintolloch 
 
106 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 throughout the winter was, on all accounts, to 
 be avoided. A lady, therefore, subscribed to 
 the Brompton Hospital for chest complaints for 
 the express purpose of procuring David admis- 
 sion. 
 
 One bleak wintry day, not long after the receipt 
 of the above letter, I was gazing out of my lofty 
 lodging- window when a startling vision presented 
 itself, in the shape of David himself, seated with 
 quite a gay look in an open Hansom cab. In a 
 minute we were side by side, and one of my first 
 impulses was to rebuke David for the folly of ex- 
 posing himself during such weather, in such a 
 vehicle. This folly, however, was on a parallel 
 with David's general habits of thought. Some- 
 times, indeed, the poor boy became unusually 
 thoughtful, as when, during his illness, he wrote 
 thus to me : " Are you remembering that you 
 will need clothes ? These are things you take no 
 concern about, and so you may be seedy without 
 knowing it. By all means hoard a few pounds 
 if you can (I require none) for any emergency 
 like this. Brush your excellent top-coat ; it is the 
 best and warmest I ever had on my back. Mind, 
 
DAVID GRAY. 107 
 
 you have to pay ready money for a new coat. A 
 seedy man will not get on if he requires, like you, 
 to call personally on his employers." 
 
 David had come to London in order to go 
 either to Brompton or to Torquay, — the hospital 
 at which last-named place was thrown open to him 
 by Mr. Milnes. Perceiving his dislike for the 
 Temperance Hotel, to which he had been con- 
 ducted, I consented that he should stay in the 
 w ghastly bankrupt garret," until he should depart 
 to one or other of the hospitals. It was finally 
 arranged that he should accept a temporary in- 
 vitation to a hydropathic establishment at Sud- 
 brook Park, Eichmond. Thither I at once con- 
 veyed him. Meanwhile, his prospects were 
 diligently canvassed by his numerous friends. 
 His own feelings at this time were well expressed 
 in a letter home : " I am dreadfully afraid of 
 Brompton ; living among sallow, dolorous, dying 
 consumptives is enough to kill me. Here I am 
 as comfortable as can be : a fire in my room all 
 day, plenty of meat, and good society, — nobody 
 so ill as myself; but there, perhaps, hundreds far 
 worse (the hospital holds 218 in all stages of the 
 
108 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 disease ; ninety of them died last report) dying 
 beside me, perhaps, — it frightens me." 
 
 Abont the same time he sent me the following, 
 containing more particulars : — 
 
 " Sudbrook Park, Kichmond, 
 Surrey. 
 " My Deae Bob, 
 
 " Your anxiety will be allayed by learning that I 
 am little worse. The severe hours of this estab- 
 lishment have not killed me. At 8 o' clock in 
 the morning a man comes into my bedroom with 
 a pail of cold water, and I must rise and get my- 
 self soused. This sousing takes place three times 
 a day, and Fm not dead yet. To-day I told the 
 bathman that I was utterly unable to bear it, and 
 refused to undress. The doctor will hear of it ; 
 that's the very thing I want. The society here 
 is most pleasant. No patient so bad as myself. 
 No wonder your father wished to go to the water 
 cure for a month or two ; it is the most pleasant, 
 refreshing thing in the world. But I am really 
 too weak to bear it. Eobert Chambers is here ; 
 Mrs. Crowe, the authoress ; Lord Brougham's 
 
DAVID GRAY. 109 
 
 son-in-law; and at dinner and tea the literary- 
 tittle-tattle is the most wonderful yon ever heard. 
 They seem to know everything about everybody 
 
 but Tennyson. Major (who has a beautiful 
 
 daughter here) was crowned with a laurel- wreath 
 for some burlesque verses he had made and read, 
 last night. Of course you know what I am among 
 them — a pale cadaverous young person, who sits 
 in dark corners, and is for the most part silent ; 
 with a horrible fear of being pounced upon by a 
 cultivated unmarried lady, and talked to. 
 
 " Seriously, I am not better. When the 
 novelty of my situation is gone, won't the old 
 days at Oakfield Terrace seem pleasant ? Why 
 didn't they last for ever ? 
 
 " Yours ever, 
 
 " David Gray." 
 
 All at once David began, with a delicacy pe- 
 culiar to him, to consider himself an unwarrantable 
 intruder at Sudbrook Park. In the face of all per- 
 suasion, therefore, he joined me in London, whence 
 he shortly afterwards departed for Torquay. 
 
 He left me in good spirits, full of pleasant an- 
 
110 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 ticipations of Devonshire scenery. But the second 
 day after his departure he addressed to me a wild 
 epistle, dated from one of the Torquay hotels. 
 He had arrived safe and sound, he said, and had 
 been kindly received by a friend of Mr. Milnes. 
 He had at first been delighted with the town, and 
 everything in it. He had gone to the hospital, 
 had been received by " a nurse of death " (as he 
 phrased it) , and had been inducted into the pri- 
 vileges of the place ; but on seeing his fellow- 
 patients, some in the last stages of disease, he had 
 fainted away. On coming to himself he obtained 
 an interview with the matron. To his request 
 for a private apartment, she had answered that to 
 favour him in that way would be to break written 
 rules, and that he must content himself with the 
 common privileges of the establishment. On 
 leaving the matron, he had furtively stolen from 
 the place, and made his way through the night to 
 the hotel. From the hotel he addressed the 
 following terrible letter to his parents : — 
 
 " Torquay, January 6, 1861. 
 
 " Dear Parents, 
 c( I am coming home — home-sick. I cannot 
 
DAVID GRAY. Ill 
 
 stay from home any longer. What's the good 
 of me being so far from home, and sick and ill ? 
 I don't know whether Fll be able to come back 
 — sleeping none at night — crying out for my 
 mother, and her so far away. Oh God, I wish I 
 were home never to leave it more ! Tell every- 
 body that I'm coming back — no better — worse, 
 worse. What's about climate — about frost or 
 snow or cold weather when one is at home ? I 
 wish I had never left it. 
 
 " But how am I to get back without money, 
 and my expenses for the journey newly paid yes- 
 terday ? I came here yesterday scarcely able to 
 walk. how I wish I saw my father's face — 
 shall I ever see it ? I have no money, and I 
 want to get home, home, home ! What shall I 
 do, God ? Father, I shall steal to see you 
 again, because I did not use you rightly — my 
 conduct to you all the time I was at home makes 
 me miserable, miserable, miserable ! Will you 
 forgive me ? — do I ask that ? forgiven, forgiven, 
 forgiven ! If I can't get money to pay for my box, 
 I shall leave box and everything behind. I shall 
 try and be at home by Saturday, January 12th. 
 
112 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 Mind the day — if I am not home — God knows 
 where I shall be. I have come through things 
 that would make your hearts ache for me — things 
 which I shall never tell to anybody but you, and 
 you shall keep them secret as the grave. Get 
 my own little room ready, quick, quick; have 
 it all tidy and clean and cosy against my home- 
 coming. I wish to die there, and nobody shall 
 nurse me, except my own dear mother, ever, ever 
 again. home, home, home ! 
 
 " I will try and write again, but mind the day. 
 Perhaps my father will come into Glasgow, if I 
 can tell him beforehand how, ivhen, and where I 
 shall be. I shall try all I can to let him know. 
 
 " Mind and tell everybody that I am coming 
 
 back, because I wish to be back, and cannot stay 
 
 away. Tell everybody; but I shall come back 
 
 in the dark, because I am so utterly unhappy. 
 
 No more, no more. Mind the day. 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 «D. G. 
 
 "Don't answer — not even think of answering."* 
 
 * While lingering at Torquay, however, his mood be- 
 came calmer, and he was able to relieve his overladen mind 
 
DAVID GRAY. 113 
 
 Before I had time to comprehend the state of 
 affairs, there came a second letter, stating that 
 David was on the point of starting for London. 
 " Every ring at the hotel bell makes me tremble, 
 fancying they are coming to take me away by 
 
 in the composition of these lines — deeply interesting, 
 apart from their poetic merit. 
 
 HOME SICK. 
 
 Lines written at Torquay, January, 1861. 
 
 Come to me, O my Mother ! come to me, 
 Thine own son slowly dying far away ! 
 Thro' the moist ways of the wide ocean, blown 
 By great invisible winds, come stately ships 
 To this calm bay for quiet anchorage ; 
 They come, they rest awhile, they go away, 
 But, O my Mother, never comest thou ! 
 The snow is round thy dwelling, the white snow, 
 That cold soft revelation pure as light, 
 And the pine-spire is mystically fringed, 
 Laced with encrusted silver. Here — ah me ! — 
 The winter is decrepit, underborn, 
 A leper with no power but his disease. 
 Why am I from thee, Mother, far from- thee ? 
 Far from the frost enchantment, and the woods 
 Jewelled from bough to bough ? Oh home, my home ! 
 O river in the valley of my home, 
 "With mazy-winding motion intricate, 
 I 
 
114 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 force. Had you seen the nurse ! Oh ! that I 
 were back again at home — mother ! mother ! 
 mother V* A few hours after I had read these 
 lines in miserable fear, arrived Gray himself, pale, 
 anxious, and trembling. He flung himself into 
 my arms with a smile of sad relief. "Thank 
 God \" he cried ; " that's over, and I am here \" 
 Then his cry was for home ; he would die if he 
 remained longer adrift ; he must depart at once. 
 I persuaded him to wait for a few days, and in 
 the meantime saw some of his influential friends. 
 The skill and regimen of a medical establishment 
 being necessary to him at this stage, it was 
 naturally concluded that he should go to Bromp- 
 ton ; but David, in a high state of nervous ex- 
 citement, scouted the idea. Disease had sapped 
 the foundations of the once strong spirit. He 
 was now bent on returning to the north, and 
 
 Twisting thy deathless music underneath 
 The polished ice-work — must I nevermore 
 Behold thee with familiar eyes, and watch 
 Thy beauty changing with the changeful day, 
 Thy beauty constant to the constant change? 
 
 M.S. 
 
 
DAVID GRAY. 115 
 
 wrote more calmly to his parents from my 
 lodgings : — 
 
 "London, Thursday. 
 
 " My very Dear Parents, 
 
 " Having arrived in London last night, my 
 friends have seized on me again, and wish me to 
 go to Brompton. But what I saw at Torquay was 
 enough, and I will come home, though it should 
 freeze me to death. You must not take literally 
 what I wrote you in my last. I had just ran away 
 from Torquay hospital, and didn't know what to 
 do or where to go. But you see I have got to 
 London, and surely by some means or other I 
 shall get home. I am really home- sick. They 
 all tell me my life is not ivorth a farthing candle if 
 I go to Scotland in this weather, hut what about 
 that. I wish I could tell my father when to come 
 to Glasgow, but I can't. If I start to-morrow I 
 shall be in Glasgow very late, and what am I to 
 do if I have no cash. If he comes into Glasgow 
 by the twelve train on Saturday, I may, if 
 possible, see him at the train, but I would not 
 like to say positively. Surely HI get home 
 
116 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 somehow. I don't sleep any at night now for 
 coughing and sweating — I am afraid to go to 
 bed. Strongly hoping to be with you soon. - 
 " Yours ever, 
 
 " David Gkay." 
 
 "Home — home — home!" was his hourly cry. jj 
 To resist these frantic appeals would have been 
 to hasten the end of all. In the midst of winter, 
 I saw him into the train at Euston Square. A 
 day afterwards, David was in the bosom of his i 
 father's household, never more to pass thence 
 alive. Not long after his arrival at home, he re- 
 pented his rash flight. " I am not at all con- 
 tented with my position. I acted like a fool ; 
 but if the hospital were the sine qua non again, 
 my conduct would be the same." Further, " I j; 
 lament my own foolish conduct, but what was , 
 that quotation about impellunt in Acheron? It> 
 was all nervous impulsion. However, I despair l 
 not, and, least of all, my dear fellow, to those 
 whom I have deserted wrongfully." 
 
 Ere long, poor David made up his mind that he 
 must die; and this feeling urged him to write 
 
 
DAVID GRAY. 117 
 
 something which would keep his memory green 
 for ever. " I am working away at my old poem, 
 Bob; leavening it throughout with the pure 
 beautiful theology of Kingsley." A little later : 
 f By-the-bye, I have about 600 lines of my poem 
 written, but the manual labour is so weakening 
 that- 1 do not go on." Nor was this all. In the 
 very shadow of the grave, he began and finished 
 a series of sonnets on the subject of his own 
 disease and impending death. This increased 
 literary energy was not, as many people imagined, 
 a sign of increased physical strength ; it was 
 merely the last flash upon the blackening brand. 
 Gradually, but surely, life was ebbing away from 
 the young poet. 
 
 In March, 1861, I formed the plan of visiting 
 Scotland in the spring, and wrote to David 
 accordingly. His delight at the prospect of a 
 fresh meeting — perhaps a farewell one — was as 
 great as mine. He wrote me the following, and 
 burst out into song :* — 
 
 * I subjoin the poem, not only as lovely in itself, but as 
 the last sad poetic memorial of our love and union. I find 
 
118 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 "Merkland, March 12, 1861. 
 "My Dear Bob, 
 " I am very glad to be able to write you to- 
 day. Best assured to find a change in your old 
 friend when you come down in April. And do, 
 old fellow, let it be the end of April, when the 
 evenings are cool and fresh, and these east-winds 
 have howled themselves to rest. When I think 
 of what a fair worshipful season is before you, I 
 advise you to remove to a little room at Hamp- 
 stead, where I only wish too, too much to be 
 
 it in his printed volume, among the sonnets entitled, " In 
 
 the Shadows :" — 
 
 Now, while the long-delaying ash assumes 
 
 Its delicate April green, and loud and clear 
 
 Thro' the cool, yellow, mellow twilight glooms, 
 
 The thrush's song enchants the captive ear ; 
 
 Now, while a shower is pleasant in the falling, 
 
 Stirring the still perfume that shakes around ; 
 
 Now that doves mourn, and, from the distance calling, 
 
 The cuckoo answers, with a sovereign sound — 
 
 Come, with thy native heart, O true and tried ! 
 
 But leave all books ; for what with converse high, 
 
 Flavoured with Attic wit, the time shall glide 
 
 On smoothly, as a river floweth by, 
 
 Or as on stately pinion, through the gray 
 
 Evening, the culver cuts his liquid way ! 
 
 
DAVID GRAY. 119 
 
 with you. Don't forget to come north since you 
 have spoken about it ; it has made me very 
 happy. My health is no better, — not having 
 been out of my room since I wrote, and for some 
 time before. The weather here is so bitterly 
 cold and unfavourable, that I have not walked 
 100 yards for three weeks. I trust your revivi- 
 fying presence will electrify my weary relaxed 
 limbs and enervated system. The mind, you 
 know, has a great effect on the body. Accept the 
 wholesome common place. . . . By- the- way, how 
 about Dobell ? Did your mind of itself, or even 
 against itself, recognize through the clothes a man 
 — a poet ? Young speaks well : — 
 
 i" never bowed but to superior woi'th, 
 Nor ever failed in my allegiance there. 
 
 Has he the modesty and make-himself-at-home 
 manner of Milnes ?" The remainder of this letter 
 is unfortunately lost. 
 
 In April, I saw him for the last time, and heard 
 him speak words which showed the abandonment 
 of hope. "I am dying," said David, leaning 
 back in his arm-chair in the little carpeted bed- 
 
120 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 room ; " I am dyings and Fve only two things to 
 regret : that my poem is not published, and that 
 I have not seen Italy." In the endeavour to in- 
 spire hope I spoke of the happy past, and of the 
 happy days yet to be. David only shook his 
 head with a sad smile. " It is the old dream — 
 only a dream, Bob — but I am content." He 
 spoke of all his friends with tenderness, and of 
 his parents with intense and touching love. Then 
 it was " farewell \" " After all our dreams of the 
 future," he said, " I must leave you to fight 
 alone ; but shall there be no more ' cakes and ale * 
 because I die ?" I returned to London ; and ere 
 long heard that David was eagerly attempting to 
 get " The Luggie " published. Delay after delay 
 occurred. " If my book be not immediately 
 gone on with, I fear I may never see it. Disease 
 presses closely on me. . . . The merit of my 
 MSS. is very little — mere hints of better things 
 — crude notions harshly languaged ; but that 
 must be overlooked. They are left not to the 
 world (wild thought!), but as the simple, pos- 
 sible, sad, only legacy I can leave to those who 
 have loved and love me." To a dear friend and 
 
DAVID GRAY. 121 
 
 fellow poet, William Freeland, then sub-editor of 
 the Glasgow Citizen, he wrote at this time : " I 
 feel more acutely the approach of that mystic dis- 
 solution of existence. The body is unable to 
 perform its functions, and like rusty machinery 
 creaks painfully to the final crash. . . . About my 
 poem, — it troubles me like an ever present demon. 
 Some day I'll burn all that I have ever written, — 
 yet no ! They are all that remain of me as a living 
 soul. Mimes offers £5 towards its publication. 
 I shall have it ready by Saturday first." And to 
 Freeland, who visited him every week, and 
 cheered his latter moments with a true poet's con- 
 verse, he wrote out a wild dedication, ending in 
 these words : " Before I enter that nebulous un- 
 certain land of shadowy notions and tremulous 
 wonderings — standing on the threshold of the 
 sun and looking back, I cry thee, beloved ! a 
 last farewell, lingeringly, passionately, without 
 tears." At this period I received the following : — 
 
 " Merldand, N. S., Sunday Evening. 
 
 " Deae, deae Bob, 
 " By all means and instantly, ' move in this mat- 
 
122 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 ter' of my book. Bo you really and without 
 any dream-work, think it could be gone about 
 immediately ? If not soon I fear I shall never 
 behold it. The doctors give me no hope, and with 
 the yellowing of the leaf ' changes ' likewise ' the 
 countenance ' of your friend. Freeland is in 
 possession of the MSS., but before I send them (I 
 love them in so great temerity) I would like to 
 see, and, if at all possible, revise them. Mean- 
 while, act and write. Above all, Bob, give me 
 (and my father) no hope unless on sound founda- 
 tion. Better that the rekindled desire should 
 die than languish, bringing misery. I cannot 
 sufficiently impress on you how important this 
 ' book/ is to me : with what ignoble trembling I 
 anticipate its appearance : how I shall bless you 
 should you succeed. 
 
 " Do not tempt me with your kindness. The 
 family have almost got over the strait, only my 
 father being out of work. It is, indeed, a ' golden 
 treasury ' you have sent me. Many thanks. My 
 only want is new interesting books. I shall 
 return it soon when I get Smith. Do not, like 
 a good fellow, disappoint an old friend by for- 
 
 
DAVID GRAY. 123 
 
 getting to send that work. With what interest 
 (thinking on my own probable volume) shall I 
 examine the print, &c. I am sure, sure to return it. 
 
 11 When you complain of physical discomfort I 
 believe. What is the matter ? Your letters now 
 are a mere provoking' adumbration of your con- 
 dition. I know positively nothing of you, but 
 that you are mentally and bodily depressed, and 
 that you will never forget Gray. In God's name 
 let us keep together the short time remaining. 
 
 " You tell me nothing ; write sooner too. Re- 
 collect I have no other pleasure. How is your 
 mother ? and all ? Are your editorial duties op- 
 pressive ? Is life full of hope and bright faith, yet, 
 yet ? Tell me, Bob, and tell me quickly. 
 
 " What a fair, sad, beautiful dream is Italy ! Do 
 you still entertain its delusive motions ? Pour 
 your soul before me ; I am as a child. 
 
 " Yours for ever, 
 
 " David Gray." 
 
 Still later, in an even sweeter spirit, he wrote 
 to an old schoolmate, Arthur Sutherland, with 
 whom he had dreamed many a boyish dream, 
 
124 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 when they were pupil teachers together at the 
 Normal school : — 
 
 " As my time narrows to a completion, you 
 grow dearer. I think of you daily with quiet 
 tears. I think of the happy, happy days we 
 might have spent together at Maryburgh; but 
 the vision darkens. My crown is laid in the dust 
 for ever. Nameless too ! God, how that troubles 
 me ! Had I but written one immortal poem, what 
 a glorious consolation ! But this shall be my 
 epitaph if I have a gravestone at all, — 
 
 'Twas not a life, 
 'Twas but a piece of childhood thrown away. 
 
 dear, dear Sutherland ! I wish I could spend 
 two healthy months with you ; we would make an 
 effort, and do something great. But slowly, in- 
 sidiously, and I fear fatally, consumption is doing 
 its work, until I shall be only a fair odorous 
 memory (for I have great faith in your affection 
 for me) to you — a sad tale for your old age. 
 
 Whom the gods love, die young. 
 
 Bless the ancient Greeks for that comfort. If I 
 was not ripe, do you think I would be gathered ? 
 
DAVID GRAY. 125 
 
 " Work for fame for my sake, dear Sutherland. 
 Who knows but in spiritual being I may send 
 sweet dreams to you — to advise, comfort, and 
 command ! who knows ? At all events, when I 
 am mooly, may you be fresh as the dawn. 
 
 " Yours till death, and I trust hereafter too, 
 
 "David Gray." 
 
 At last, chiefly through the agency of the un- 
 wearying Dobell, the poem was placed in the hands 
 of the printer. On the 2nd of December, 1861, a 
 specimen-page was sent to the author. David, 
 with the shadow of death even then dark upon 
 him, gazed long and lingeringly at the printed 
 page. All the mysterious past — the boyish 
 yearnings, the flash of anticipated fame, the black 
 surroundings of the great city — flitted across his 
 vision like a dream. It was " good news," he said. 
 The next day the complete silence passed over the 
 weaver's household, for David Gray was no more. 
 Thus, on the 3rd of December, 1861, in the 
 twenty-fourth year of his age, he passed tran- 
 quilly away, almost his last words being, " God 
 has love, and I have faith." The following epi- 
 
126 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 taph, written out carefully, a few months before 
 his decease, was found among his papers : — 
 
 My Epitaph. 
 
 Below lies one whose name was traced in sand — 
 
 He died, not knowing what it was to live : 
 
 Died while the first sweet consciousness of manhood 
 
 And maiden thought electrified his soul : 
 
 Faint beatings in the calyx of the rose. 
 
 Bewildered reader, pass without a sigh 
 
 In a proud sorrow ! There is life with God, 
 
 In other kingdom of a sweeter air ; 
 
 In Eden every flower is blown. Amen. 
 
 David Gray. 
 Sept. 27, 1861. 
 
 Draw a veil over the woe that day in the 
 weaver's cottage, the wild broodings over the 
 beloved face, white in the sweetness of rest after 
 pain. A few days later, the beloved dust was 
 shut for ever from the light, and carried a short 
 journey, in ancient Scottish fashion, on hand- 
 spokes, to the Auld Aisle Burial- Ground, a dull and 
 lonely square upon an eminence, bounden by a 
 stone wall, and deep with " the uncut hair of 
 graves." Here, in happier seasons, had David 
 often mused ; for here slept dust of kindred, and 
 hither in his sight the thin black line of rude 
 
DAVID GRAY. 127 
 
 mourners often wended with new burdens. Very 
 early, too, he blended the place with his poetic 
 dreams, and spoke of it in a sonnet not to be 
 found in his little printed volume : — 
 
 Old Aisle. 
 
 Aisle of the dead ! your lonely bell-less tower 
 Seems like a soul-less body, whence rebouncfs 
 
 No tones ear-sweetening, as if 'twere to embower 
 The Sabbath tresses with its soothing sounds. 
 
 In pity, crumbling aisle, thou lookest o'er 
 
 Your former sainted worshippers, whose bones 
 Lie mould'ring 'neath these nettle- girded stones, 
 
 Or 'neath yon rank grave weeds ! Now from afar 
 
 Is seen the sacred heavenward spire, which seems 
 An intercessor for the mounds below : 
 
 And doth it not speak eloquent in dreams ? 
 In dreams of aged pastors who did go 
 
 Up to the hallowed mount with homely tread : 
 
 While there, old men and simple maids and youths 
 Throng lovingly to hear the sacred truths 
 
 In gentle stream poured forth. But, he is dead ; 
 And in this hill of sighs he rests unknown, 
 As that wild flower that by his grave hath blown. 
 
 Standing on this eminence, one can gaze round 
 upon the scenes which it is no exaggeration to 
 say David has immortalized in song, — the Luggie 
 flowing, the green woods of Gartshore, the smoke 
 
128 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 curling from the little hamlet of Merkland, and 
 the faint blue misty distance of the Campsie Fells. 
 The place though a lonely is a gentle and happy 
 one, fit for a poet's rest ; and there, while he was 
 sleeping sound, a quiet company gathered ere 
 long to uncover a monument inscribed with his 
 name. The dying voice had been heard. Over 
 the grave now stands a plain obelisk, publicly 
 subscribed for, and inscribed with this epitaph, 
 written by Lord Houghton : — 
 
 THIS MONUMENT OF 
 
 AFFECTION, ADMIRATION, AND REGRET, 
 
 IS ERECTED TO 
 
 DAYID GRAY, 
 
 THE POET OF MERKLAND, 
 
 BY FRIENDS FAR AND NEAR, 
 
 DESIROUS THAT HIS GRAVE SHOULD BE REMEMBERED 
 
 AMID THE SCENES OF HIS RARE GENIUS 
 
 AND EARLY DEATH, 
 
 AND BY THE LUGGIE NOW NUMBERED WITH THE STREAMS 
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS IN SCOTTISH SONG. 
 BORN, 29TH JANUARY, 1838 ; DIED, 3RD DECEMBER, 1861. 
 
 Here all is said that should be said ; yet per- 
 haps the poet's own sweet epitaph, evidently pre- 
 pared with a view to such a use, would have been 
 more graceful and appropriate. 
 
DAVID GRAY. 129 
 
 " Whom the gods love die young/' is no mere 
 pagan consolation; it has a tenderness for all 
 forms of faith, and even when philosophically 
 translated, as by Wordsworth, who said sweetly 
 that " the good die first/' it still possesses balm 
 for hearts that ache over the departed. That 
 the young soul passes away in its strength, in its 
 prismatic dawn, with many powers undeveloped, 
 yet no power wasted, is the beauty and the pity 
 of the thought, the inference of the apotheosis. 
 The impulse has been upward, and the gods have 
 consecrated the endeavour. The thought hovers 
 over the death-beds of Keats and Robert Nicoll ; 
 it is repeated even by weary old men over those 
 poets' graves. No hope has been disappointed, 
 no eye has seen the strong wing grow feeble and 
 falter earthward, and the possibility of a future 
 beyond our seeing is boundless as the aspiration 
 of the spirit which escaped us. " Whom the 
 gods love die young," said the Athenians ; and 
 " bless the ancient Greeks for that comfort," 
 wrote David, with the thin, tremulous, consump- 
 tion-wasted hand. Beautiful, pathetically beau- 
 tiful, is the halo surrounding the head of a young 
 
130 DAVID GRAV. 
 
 poet as lie dies. We scarcely mourn him, — our 
 souls are so stirred towards the eternal. But 
 what comfort may abide when, from the frame 
 that still breathes, poesy arises like an exhalation, 
 and the man lives on. In life as well as in death 
 there is a Plutonian house of exiles, and they 
 abandon all hope who enter therein ; and that 
 man inhabits the same. How often does this 
 horror encounter us in our daily paths? The 
 change is rapid and imperceptible. "Without hope, 
 without peace, without one glimpse of the glory 
 the young find in their own aspirations, the 
 doomed one buffets and groans in the dark. 
 Which of the gods may he call to his aid ? 
 None ; for he believes in none. Better for him, 
 a thousand times better, that he slept unknown 
 in the shadow of the village where he was born. 
 The strong hard scholar, the energetic literary 
 man of business has a shield against the demons 
 of disappointment, but men like David have no 
 such shield. Picture the dark weary struggle 
 for bread which must have been his lot had he 
 lived. He had not the power to write to order, 
 to sell his wits for money , He sleeps in peace. 
 
DAVID GRAY. 131 
 
 He has taken his unchanged belief in things 
 beautiful to the very fountain-head of all beauty, 
 and will never know the weary strife, the poig- 
 nant heartache of the unsuccessful endeavourers. 
 The book of poems written, and the writer laid 
 quietly down in the auld aisle burying ground, 
 had David Gray wholly done with earth ? No ; 
 for he worked from the grave on one who loved 
 him with a love transcending that of woman. In 
 the weaver's cottage at Merkland subsisted ten- 
 der sorrow and affectionate remembrance ; but 
 something more. The shadow lay in the cot- 
 tage ; a light had departed which would never 
 again be seen on sea or land; and David Gray, 
 the handloom-weaver, the father of the poet, felt 
 that the meaning had departed out of his simple 
 life. There was a great mystery. The world 
 called his darling son a poet, — and he hardly knew 
 what a poet was ; all he did know was that the 
 coming of this prodigy had given a new com- 
 plexion to all the facts of existence. There was 
 a dream-life, it appeared, beyond the work in the 
 fields and the loom. His son, whom he had 
 thought mad at first, was crowned and honoured 
 
132 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 for the very things which his parents had thought 
 useless. Around hhn, vague, incomprehensible, 
 floated a new atmosphere, which clever people 
 called poetry ; and he began to feel that it was 
 beautiful — the more so, that it was so new and 
 wondrous. The fountains of his nature were 
 stirred. He sat and smoked before the fire o' 
 nights, and found himself dreaming too ! He was 
 conscious, now, that the glory of his days was 
 beyond that grave in the kirkyard. He was like 
 one that walks in a mist, his eyes full of tears. 
 But he said little of his griefs, — little, that is to 
 say, in the way of direct complaint. " We feel 
 very weary now David has gone ! " was all the 
 plaint I knew him to utter ; he grieved so silently, 
 wondered so speechlessly. The new life, brief 
 and fatal, made him wise. With the eager sensi- 
 tiveness of the poet himself he read the various 
 criticisms on David's book; and so subtle was 
 the change in him, that, though he was utterly 
 unlearned and had hitherto had no insight what- 
 ever into the nature of poetry, he knew by instinct 
 whether the critics were right or wrong, and felt 
 then suggestions to the very roots of his being. 
 
DAVID GRAY. 133 
 
 With this old man, in whom I recognized a 
 greatness and sweetness of soul that has broad- 
 ened my view of God's humblest creatures ever 
 since, I kept up a correspondence — at first for 
 David's sake, but latterly for my correspondent's 
 own sake. His letters, brief and simple as they 
 were, grew fraught with delicate and delicious 
 meaning; I could see how he marvelled at the 
 mysterious light he understood not, yet how fear- 
 lessly he kept his soul stirred towards the eternal 
 silence where his son was lying. " We feel very 
 weary now David has gone ! " Ah, how weary ! 
 The long years of toil told their tale now; the 
 thread was snapt, and labour was no longer a 
 perfect end to the soul and satisfaction to the 
 body. The little carpeted bedroom was a prayer- 
 place now. The Luggie flowing, the green woods, 
 the thymy hills, had become haunted; a voice un- 
 heard by other dwellers in the valley was calling, 
 calling, and a hand was beckoning ; and tired, 
 more tired, dazzled, more dazzled, grew the old 
 weaver. The very names of familiar scenes were 
 now a strange trouble ; for were not these names 
 echoing in David's songs ? Merkland, " the 
 
134 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 summer woods of dear Gartshire," the " fairy 
 glen of Wooilee," Criftin, " with his host of 
 gloomy pine-trees," all had their ghostly voices. 
 Strange rhymes mingled with the humming of 
 the loom. Mysterious " poetry/' which he had 
 once scorned as an idle thing, deepened and 
 deepened in its fascination for him. All he saw 
 and heard meant something strange in rhyme. 
 He was drawn along by music, and he could not 
 rest. 
 
 Beside him dwelt the mother. Her face was 
 quite calm. She had wept bitterly, but her 
 heart now was with other sons and daughters. 
 David was with God, and the minister said that 
 God was good — that was quite enough. None 
 of the new light had troubled her eyes. She 
 knew that her beloved had made a " heap o 3 
 rhyme," — that was all. A good loving lad had 
 gone to rest, but there were still bairns left, bless 
 God! 
 
 But the old man lingered on, with hunger in 
 his heart, wonder in his soul. This could not 
 last for ever. In the winter of 1864, he warned 
 me that he was growing ill; and although he 
 
DAVID GRAY. 335 
 
 attributed his illness to cold, his letters showed 
 me the truth. There was some physical malady, 
 but the aggravating cause was mental. It was 
 my duty, however, to do all that could be done 
 humanly to save him; and the first thing to 
 do was to see that he had those comforts which 
 sick men need. I placed his case before Lord 
 Houghton ; but generous as that man is, all men 
 are not so generous. " It is exceedingly difficult 
 to get people to assist a man of genius himself, - " 
 wrote Lord Houghton, gloomily ; " they won't 
 assist his relations." Lord Houghton, however, 
 personally assisted him, and was joined by a 
 kind colleague, Mr. Baillie Cochrane. 
 
 I felt then, and I feel now, that the condition 
 of the old man was even more deeply affecting 
 than the condition of David in his last moments, 
 as deserving of sympathy, as universal in its ap- 
 peal to human generosity ; and I felt a yearning, 
 moreover, to provide for the comfort of David's 
 mother, and for the education of David's brothers. 
 Who knew but that, among the latter, might be 
 another bright intellect, which a little schooling 
 might save for the world ? After puzzling myself 
 
136 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 for a plan, I at last thought that I could attain all 
 my wishes by publishing a book to be entitled 
 " Memorials of David Gray/' and to contain con- 
 tributions from all the writers of eminence whom 
 I could enlist in the good cause. Such a thing 
 would sell, and might, moreover, be worth buying. 
 The fine natures were not slow in responding to 
 the appeal, and I mention some names, that they 
 may gain honour. Tennyson promised a poem ; 
 Browning another ; George Eliot agreed to con- 
 tribute; Dickens, because he was too busy to write 
 anything more, offered me an equivalent in mo- 
 ney. All seemed well, when one or two objections 
 were raised on the score of propriety ; and it was 
 even suggested, that " it looked like begging for 
 the father on the strength of Gray's reputation." 
 Confused and perplexed, I determined to refer 
 the matter to one whose good sense is as great 
 as his heart, but (luckily for his friends) a great 
 deal harder. " Should I or should I not, under 
 the circumstances, go on with my scheme ? " 
 His answer being in the negative, the book 
 was not gone on with, and the matter dropped. 
 
 Meantime, the old man was getting worse. 
 On the 27th April I received this letter : — 
 
DAVID GRAY. 137 
 
 "Deab Me. Buchanan, " Merkland. 
 
 " We hope this will find you and Mrs. Buchanan 
 in good health. I am not getting any better. 
 The cough still continues. However, I rise every 
 day a while, but it is only to sit by the fire. 
 Weather is so cold I cannot go out, except some- 
 times I get out and walks round yard. I am 
 not looking for betterness. I have nothing par- 
 ticular to say, only we thought you would be 
 thinking us ungrateful in not writing soon. 
 " I remain, yours ever, 
 
 " David G-eay. 
 
 " I understand there is some movement with 
 David's stone* again." 
 
 On the 9th May, he wrote, "1 have Dr. Stewart 
 to attend me. He called on Sunday and sounded 
 me ; — he says I am a dying man, and dying fast. 
 You cannot imagine what a weak person I am ; 
 I am nearly bedfast." On the 16th May came 
 the last lines I ever received from him. They 
 are almost illegible, and their purport prevents 
 
 * The monument, not then erected. 
 
138 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 me from printing them here. A few days more, 
 and the old man was dead. His green grave lies 
 in the shadow of the obelisk which stands over 
 his beloved son. Father and child are side by 
 side. A little cloud, a pathetic mystery, came 
 between them in life ; but that is all over. The 
 old handloom- weaver, who never wrote a verse, 
 unconsciously reached his son's stature some time 
 ere he passed away. The mysterious thing called 
 " poetry/' which operated such changes in his 
 simple life, became all clear at last — in that final 
 moment when the world's meanings become 
 transparent, and nothing is left but to swoon 
 back with closed eyes into the darkness, con- 
 fiding in God's mercy, content either to waken 
 at His footstool, or to rest painlessly for ever- 
 more. 
 
 NOTE AND ADDENDA. 
 
 T the request of many friends, I append 
 to the biography of David Gray the two 
 poems which have reference to his life and poems, 
 
DAVID GRAY. 139 
 
 and which are to be found scattered among my 
 other writings. The first poem, however, must 
 not be read as literally interpreting all the facts 
 of Gray's life. It is merely a work of imagination, 
 with a true experience for its groundwork. 
 
 I. 
 POET ANDKEW. 
 
 O Loom, that loud art murmuring, 
 What doth he hear thee say or sing ? 
 Thou hummest o'er the dead one's songs, 
 
 He cannot choose but hark, 
 His heart with tearful rapture throngs, 
 
 But all his face grows dark. 
 
 O cottage Fire, that burnest bright, 
 What pictures sees he in thy light ? 
 A city's smoke, a white white face, 
 
 Phantoms that fade and die, 
 And last, the lonely burial-place 
 
 On the windy hill hard by. 
 
 IS near a year since Andrew went to sleep — 
 A winter and a summer. Yonder bed 
 Is where the boy was born, and where he died, 
 And yonder o'er the lowland is his grave : 
 
140 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 The nook of grass and gowans where in thought 
 I found you standing at the set o' sun . . . 
 The Lord content us — -'tis a weary world. 
 
 These five-and-twenty years Fve wrought and 
 
 wrought 
 In this same dwelling ; — hearken ! you can hear 
 The looms that whuzzle-whazzle ben the house, 
 Where Jean and Mysie, lassies in their teens, 
 And Jamie, and a neighbours son beside, 
 Work late and early. Andrew who is dead 
 Was our first-born ; and when he crying came, 
 With beaded een and pale old-farrant face, 
 Out of the darkness, Mysie and myse? 
 Were young and heartsome ; and his smile, be 
 
 sure, 
 Made daily toil the sweeter. Hey, his kiss 
 Put honey in the very porridge-pot ! 
 His smile strung threads of sunshine on the loom ! 
 And when he hung* around his mother's neck, 
 He decked her out in jewels and in gold 
 That even ladies envied ! . . . Weel ! ... in time 
 Came other children, newer gems and gold, 
 And Andrew quitted Mysie's breast for mine. 
 So years rolled on, like bobbins on a loom ; 
 
DAVID GRAY. 141 
 
 And Mysie and myseF had work to do, 
 And Andrew took his turn among the rest, 
 No sweeter, dearer ; till, one Sabbath day, 
 When Andrew was a curly-pated tot 
 Of sunny summers six, I had a crack 
 With Mister Mucklewraith the Minister, 
 Who put his kindly hand on Andrew's head, 
 Called him a clever wean, a bonnie wean, 
 Clever at learning, while the mannikin 
 Blushed red as any rose, and peeping up 
 Went twinkle-twinkle with his round black een ; 
 And then, while Andrew laughed and ran awa', 
 The Minister went deeper in his praise, 
 And prophesied he would become in time 
 A man of mark. This set me thinking, sir, 
 And watching, — and the mannock puzzled me. 
 
 Would sit for hours upon a stool and draw 
 Droll faces on the slate, while other lads 
 Were shouting at their play ; dumbly would lie 
 Beside the Lintock, sailing, piloting, 
 Navies of docken-leaves a summer day ; 
 Had learned the hymns of Doctor Watts by heart, 
 And as for old Scots songs, could lilt them a' — 
 
142 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 From Yarrow Braes to Bonnie Bessie Lee — 
 And where he learned them, only Heaven knew ; 
 And oft, although he feared to sleep his lane, 
 Would cowrie at the threshold in a storm 
 To watch the lightning, — as a birdie sits, 
 With fluttering fearsome heart and dripping wings, 
 Among the branches. Once, I mind it weel, 
 In came he, running, with a bloody nose, 
 Part tears, part pleasure, to his fluttering heart 
 Holding a callow mavis golden-billed, 
 The thin white film of death across its een, 
 And told us, sobbing, how a neighbour's son 
 Harried the birdie's nest, and how by chance 
 He came upon the thief beside the burn 
 Throwing the birdies in to see them swim, 
 And how he fought him, till he yielded up 
 This one, the one remaining of the nest ; — 
 And ' c the birdie 's dying ! " sobbed he sore, 
 ' ' The bonnie birdie 's dying ! " — till it died ; 
 And Andrew dug a grave behind the house, 
 Buried his dead, and covered it with earth, 
 And cut, to mark the grave, a grassy turf 
 Where blew a bunch of gowans. After that, 
 I thought and thought, and thick as bees the 
 thoughts 
 
DAVID GRAY. 143 
 
 Buzzed to the whuzzle- whazzling of the loom — 
 
 I could make naething of the mannikin ! 
 
 But by-and-by, when Hope was making hay, 
 
 And web-work rose, I settled it and said 
 
 To the good wife, " ; Tis plain that yonder lad 
 
 Will never take to weaving — and at school 
 
 They say he beats the rest at all his tasks 
 
 Save figures only : I have settled it : 
 
 Andrew shall be a minister — a pride 
 
 And comfort to us, Mysie, in our age ; 
 
 He shall to college in a year or twa 
 
 (If fortune smiles as now) at Edinglass." 
 
 You guess the wife opened her een, cried " Foosh \" 
 
 And called the plan a silly senseless dream, 
 
 A hopeless, useless castle in the air ; 
 
 But ere the night was out, I talked her o'er, 
 
 And here she sat, her hands upon her knees, 
 
 Glow'ring and hearkening, as I conjured up, 
 
 Amid the fog and reek of Edinglass, 
 
 Life's peaceful gloaming and a godly fame. 
 
 So it was broached, and after many cracks 
 
 With Mister Muckle wraith, we planned it a ; , 
 
 And day by day we laid a penny by 
 
 To give the lad when he should quit the bield. 
 
144 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 And years wore on ; and year on year was cheered 
 By thoughts of Andrew, drest in decent black, 
 Throned in a Pulpit, preaching out the Word, 
 A house his own, and all the country-side 
 To touch their bonnets to him. Weel, the lad 
 Grew up among us, and at seventeen 
 His hands were genty white, and he was tall, 
 And slim, and narrow-shouldered ; pale of face, 
 Silent, and bashful. Then we first began 
 To feel how muckle more he knew than we, 
 To eye his knowledge in a kind of fear, 
 As folk might look upon a crouching beast, 
 Bonnie, but like enough to rise and bite. 
 Up came the cloud between us silly folk 
 And the young lad that sat among his Books 
 Amid the silence of the night ; and oft 
 It' pained us sore to fancy he would learn 
 Enough to make him look with shame and scorn 
 On this old dwelling. ; Twas his manner, sir ! 
 He seldom lookt his father in the face, 
 And when he walkt about the dwelling, seemed 
 Like one superior ; dumbly he would steal 
 To the burnside, or into Lintlin Woods, 
 With some new-farrant book, — and when I peeped, 
 
DAVID GRAY. 145 
 
 Behold a book of jingling-j angling rhyme, 
 Fine-written nothings on a printed page ; 
 And, pressed between the leaves, a flower per- 
 chance, 
 Anemone or blue Forget-me-not, 
 Pluckt in the grassy woodland. Then I peeped 
 Into his drawer, among his papers there, 
 And found — you guess ? — a heap of idle rhymes, 
 Big-sounding, like the worthless printed book : 
 Some in old copies scribbled, some on scraps 
 Of writing-paper, others finely writ 
 With spirls and flourishes on big white sheets. 
 I clenched my teeth, and groaned. The beauteous 
 
 dream 
 Of the good Preacher in his braw black dress, 
 With house and income snug, began to fade 
 Before the picture of a drunken loon 
 Bawling out songs beneath the moon and stars, — 
 Of poet Willie Clay, who wrote a book 
 About King Eobert Bruce, and aye got fu', 
 And scattered stars in verse, and aye got fV, 
 Wept the world's sins, and then got fu' again, — 
 Of Ferguson, the feckless limb o' law, — 
 And Robin Burns, who gauged the whisky-casks 
 
 L 
 
143 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 And brake the seventh commandment. So at once 
 I up and said to Andrew, " You're a fool ! 
 You waste your time in silly senseless verse, 
 Lame as your own conceit : take heed ! take heed ! 
 Or, like your betters, come to grief ere long ! " 
 But Andrew fmsht and never spake a word, 
 Yet eyed me sidelong with his beaded een, 
 And turned awa', and, as he turned, his look — 
 Half scorn, half sorrow — stang me. After that, 
 I felt he never heeded word of ours, 
 And though we tried to teach him common-sense 
 He idled as he pleased ; and many a year, 
 After I spake him first, that look of his 
 Came dark between us, and I held my tongue, 
 And felt he scorned me for the poetry's sake. 
 This coldness grew and grew, until at last 
 We sat whole nights before the fire and spoke 
 No word to one another. One fine day, 
 Says Mister Mucklewraith to me, says he, 
 " So ! you've a Poet in your house ! " and smiled ; 
 " A Poet ? God forbid ! " I cried ; and then 
 It all came out : how Andrew slyly sent 
 Verse to the paper ; how they printed it 
 In Poets' Corner ; how the printed verse 
 
DAVID GRAY. 147 
 
 Had ca't a girdle in the callant's head ; 
 
 How Mistress Mucklewraith they thought half daft 
 
 Had cut the verses out and pasted them 
 
 In albums, and had praised them to her friends. 
 
 I said but little ; for my schemes and dreams 
 
 Were tumbling down like castles in the air, 
 
 And all my heart seemed hardening to stone. 
 
 But after that, in secret stealth, I bought 
 
 The papers, hunted out the printed verse, 
 
 And read it like a thief; thought some were good, 
 
 And others foolish havers, and in most 
 
 Saw naething, neither common-sense nor sound — 
 
 Words pottle-bellied, meaningless, and strange, 
 
 That strutted up and down the printed page, 
 
 Like Bailies made to bluster and look big. 
 
 ; Twas useless grumbling. All my silent looks 
 Were lost, all Mysie's flyting fell on ears 
 Choke-full of other counsel ; but we talked 
 In bed o' nights, and Mysie wept, and I 
 Felt stubborn, wrothful, wronged. It was to be ! 
 Butmind you, though we mourned, we ne'er forsook 
 The college scheme. Our sorrow, as we saw 
 Our Andrew growing cold to homely ways, 
 
148 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 And scornful of the bield, but strengthened more 
 Our wholesome wish to educate the lad, 
 And do our duty by him, and help him on 
 With our rough hands — the Lord would do the 
 
 rest, 
 The Lord would mend or mar him. So at last, 
 New-clad from top to toe in home-spun cloth, 
 With books and linen in a muckle trunk, 
 He went his way to college ; and we sat, 
 Mysie and me, in weary darkness here ; 
 For though the younger bairns were still about, 
 It seemed our hearts had gone to Edinglass 
 With Andrew, and were choking in the reek 
 Of Edinglass town. 
 
 It was a gruesome fight, 
 Both for oursel's at home, and for the boy, 
 That student life at college. Hard it was 
 To scrape the fees together, but beside, 
 The lad was young and needed meat and drink. 
 We sent him meal and bannocks by the train, 
 And country cheeses ; and with this and that, 
 Though sorely pushed, he throve, though now and 
 then 
 
DAVID GRAY. 149 
 
 With empty wame : spinning the siller out 
 By teaching grammar in a school at night. 
 Whiles he came home : weary old-farrant face 
 Pale from the midnight candle ; bring home 
 Good news of college. Then we shook awa' 
 The old sad load, began to build again 
 Our airy castles, and were hopeful Time 
 Would heal our wounds. But, sir, they plagued 
 
 me still — 
 Some of his ways ! When here, he spent his time 
 In yonder chamber, or about the woods, 
 And by the waterside, — and with him books 
 Of poetry, as of old. Mysel' could get 
 But little of his company or tongue ; 
 And when we talkt, atweel, a kind of frost, — 
 My consciousness of silly ignorance, 
 And worse, my knowledge that the lad himsel' 
 Felt sorely, keenly, all my ignorant shame, 
 Made talk a torture out of which we crept 
 With burning faces. Could you understand 
 One who was wild as if he found a mine 
 Of golden guineas, when he noticed first 
 The soft green streaks in a snowdrop's inner leaves ? 
 And once again, the moonlight glimmering 
 
150 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 Through watery transparent stalks of flax ? 
 A flower's a flower ! . . . But Andrew snooved 
 
 about, 
 Aye finding wonders,, mighty mysteries, 
 In things that ilka learless cottar kenned. 
 ]N"ow, 'twas the falling snow or murmuring rain ; 
 Now, 'twas the laverock singing in the sun, 
 And dropping slowly to the callow young ; 
 Now, an old tune he heard his mother lilt ; 
 And aye those trifles made his pallid face 
 Flush brighter, and his een flash keener far, 
 Than when he heard of yonder storm in France, 
 Or a King's death, or, if the like had been, 
 A city's downfall. 
 
 He was born with love 
 For things both great and small ; yet seemed to 
 
 prize 
 The small things best. To me, it seemed indeed 
 The callant cared for nothing for itsel', 
 But for some special quality it had 
 To set him thinking, thinking, or bestow 
 A tearful sense he took for luxury. 
 He loved us in his silent fashion weel ; 
 
DAVID GRAY. 151 
 
 But in our feckless ignorance we knew 
 
 'Twas when the humour seized him — with a sense 
 
 Of some queer power we had to waken up 
 
 The poetry — ay, and help him in his rhyme ! 
 
 A kind of patronising tenderness, 
 
 A pitying pleasure in our Scottish speech 
 
 And homely ways, a love that made him note 
 
 Both ways and speech with the same curious joy 
 
 As filled him when he watched the birds and flowers. 
 
 He was as sore a puzzle to us then 
 As he had been before. It puzzled us, 
 How a big lad, down-cheeked, almost a man, 
 Could pass his time in silly childish joys . . . 
 Until at last, a hasty letter came 
 From Andrew, telling he had broke awa' 
 From college, packed his things, and taken train 
 To London city, where he hoped (he said) 
 To make both fortune and a noble fame 
 Through a grand poem, carried in his trunk ; 
 How, after struggling on with bitter heart, 
 He could no longer bear to fight his way 
 Among the common scholars ; and the end 
 Bade us be hopeful, trusting God, and sure 
 
152 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 The light of this old home would guide him still 
 Amid the reek of evil. 
 
 Sae it was ! 
 We twa were less amazed than you may guess, 
 Though we had hoped, and feared, and hoped, sae 
 
 long ! 
 But it was hard to bear — hard, hard, to bear ! 
 Our castle in the clouds was gone for good ; 
 And as for Andrew — other lads had ta'en 
 The same mad path, and learned the bitter task 
 Of poortith, cold, and tears. She grat. I sat 
 In silence, looking on the ruffing fire, 
 Where streets and ghaistly faces came and went, 
 And London city crumbled down to crush 
 Our Andrew ; and my heart was sick and cold. 
 Ere long, the news across the country-side 
 Speak quickly, like the crowing of a cock 
 From farm to farm — the women talkt it o'er 
 On doorsteps, o'er the garden rails ; the men 
 Got £a' upon it at the public-house, 
 And whispered it among the fields at work. 
 A cry was quickly raised from house to house, 
 That all the blame was mine, and cankered een 
 
DAVID GRAY. 153 
 
 Lookt cold upon rae, as upon a kind 
 Of upstart. u Fie on pride ! " the whisper said, 
 The fault was Andrew's less than those who taught 
 His heart to look in scorn on honest work, — 
 Shame on them ! — but the lad, poor lad, would 
 
 learn ! 
 sir, the thought of this spoiled many a web 
 In yonder — tingling, tingling, in my ears, 
 Until I fairly threw my gloom aside, 
 Smiled like a man whose heart is light and young, 
 And with a future-kenning happy look 
 Threw up my chin, and bade them wait and see . . 
 But, night by night, these een lookt London ways, 
 And saw my laddie wandering all alone 
 'Mid darkness, fog, and reek, growing afar 
 To dark proportions and gigantic shape — 
 Just as a figure of a sheep-herd looms, 
 Awful and silent, through a mountain mist. 
 
 Ye aiblins ken the rest. At first, there came 
 Proud letters, swiftly writ, telling how folk 
 Now roundly called him " Poet," holding out 
 Bright pictures, which we smiled at wearily — 
 As people smile at pictures in a book, 
 
154 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 Untrue but bonnie. Then the letters ceased, 
 There came a silence cold and still as frost, — 
 We sat and hearkened to our beating hearts, 
 And prayed as we had never prayed before. 
 Then lastly, on the silence broke the news 
 That Andrew, far awa', was sick to death, 
 And, weary, weary of the noisy streets, 
 With aching head and weary hopeless heart, 
 Was coming home from mist and fog and noise 
 To grassy lowlands and the caller air. 
 
 'Twas strange, 'twas strange ! — but this, the 
 
 weary end 
 Of all our bonnie biggins in the clouds, 
 Came like a tearful comfort. Love sprang up 
 Out of the ashes of the household fire, 
 Where Hope was fluttering like the loose white 
 
 film ; 
 And Andrew, our own boy, seemed nearer now 
 To this old dwelling an our aching hearts 
 Than he had ever been since he became 
 Wise with book-learning. With an eager pain, 
 I met him at the train and brought him home ; 
 And when we met that sunny day in hairst, 
 
DAVID GRAY. 155 
 
 The ice that long had sundered us had thawed, 
 
 We met in silence, and our een were dim. 
 
 Och, I can see that look of his this night ! 
 
 Part pain, part tenderness — a weary look 
 
 Yearning for comfort such as God the Lord 
 
 Puts into parents' een. I brought him here. 
 
 Gently we set him here beside the fire, 
 
 And spake few words, and hushed the noisy house ; 
 
 Then eyed his hollow cheeks and lustrous een, 
 
 His clammy hueless brow and faded hands, 
 
 Blue veined and white like lily-flowers. The wife 
 
 Forgot the sickness of his face, and moved 
 
 With light and happy footstep but and ben, 
 
 As though she welcomed to a merry feast 
 
 A happy guest. In time, out came the truth : 
 
 Andrew was dying : in his lungs the dust 
 
 Of cities stole unseen, and hot as fire 
 
 Burnt — like a deil's red een that gazed at Death. 
 
 Too late for doctor's skill, though doctor's skill 
 
 We had in plenty ; but the ill had ta'en 
 
 Too sure a grip. Andrew was dying, dying : 
 
 The beauteous dream had melted like a mist 
 
 The sunlight feeds on : a' remaining now 
 
 Was Andrew, bare and barren of his pride, 
 
156 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 Stark of conceit, a weel-beloved child, 
 Helpless to help himself and dearer thus, 
 As when his yaumer* — like the corn-craik's cry 
 Heard in a field of wheat at dead o' night — 
 Brake on the hearkening darkness of the bield. 
 
 And as he nearer grew to God the Lord, 
 Nearer and dearer ilka day he grew 
 To Mysie and mysel' — our own to love, 
 The world's no longer. For the first last time, 
 We twa, the lad and I, could sit and crack 
 With open hearts — free-spoken, at our ease ; 
 I seemed to know as muckle then as he, 
 Because I was sae sad. 
 
 Thus grief, sae deep 
 It flowed without a murmur, brought the balm 
 Which blunts the edge of worldly sense and makes 
 Old people weans again. In this sad time, 
 We never troubled at his childish ways ; 
 We seemed to share his pleasure when he sat 
 Listening to birds upon the eaves ; we felt 
 
 * Yaume?\ a child's cry. 
 
DAVID GRAY. 157 
 
 Small wonder when we found him weeping o'er 
 His old torn books of pencilled thoughts and 
 
 verse ; 
 And if, outbye, I saw a bonnie flower, 
 I pluckt it carefully and bore it home 
 To my sick boy. To me, it somehow seemed 
 His care for lovely earthly things had changed — 
 Changed from the curious love it once had been, 
 Grown larger, bigger, holier, peacefuller ; 
 And though he never lost the luxury 
 Of loving beauteous things for poetry's sake, 
 His heart was God the Lord's, and he was calm. 
 Death came to lengthen out his solemn thoughts 
 Like shadows to the sunset. So no more 
 We wondered. What is folly in a lad 
 Healthy and hearts ome, one with work to do, 
 Befits the freedom of a dying man. . . 
 Mother, who chided loud the idle lad 
 Of old, now sat her sadly by his side, 
 And read from out the Bible soft and low, 
 Or lilted lowly, keeking in his face, 
 The old Scots songs that made his een so dim. 
 I went about my daily work as one 
 Who waits to hear a knocking at the door, 
 
158 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 Ere Death creeps in and shadows those that 
 
 watch ; 
 And seated here at e'en i 3 the ingleside, 
 I watched the pictures in the fire and smoked 
 My pipe in silence ; for my head was fa' 
 Of many rhymes the lad had made of old 
 (Rhymes I had read in secret, as I said) , 
 No one of which I minded till they came 
 Unsummoned, murmuring about my ears 
 Like bees among the leaves. 
 
 The end drew near. 
 Came Winter moaning, and the Doctor said 
 That Andrew couldna live to see the Spring ; 
 And day by day, while frost was hard at work, 
 The lad grew weaker, paler, and the blood 
 Came redder from the lung. One Sabbath day — 
 The last of winter, for the caller air 
 Was drawing sweetness from the barks of trees — 
 When down the lane, I saw to my surprise 
 A snowdrop blooming underneath a birk, 
 And gladly pluckt the flower to carry home 
 To Andrew. Ere I reached the bield, the air 
 Was thick wi' snow, and ben in yonder room 
 
 
DAVID GRAY. 159 
 
 I found him, Mysie seated at his side, 
 Drawn to the window in the old arm-chair, 
 Gazing wi' lustrous een and sickly cheek 
 Out on the shower, that wavered softly down 
 In glistening siller glamour. Saying nought, 
 Into his hand I put the year's first flower, 
 And turned awa' to hide my face ; and he . . 
 . . He smiled . . and at the smile, I knew, not why, 
 It swam upon us, in a frosty pain, 
 The end was come at last, at last, and Death 
 Was creeping ben, his shadow on our hearts. 
 We gazed on Andrew, called him by his name, 
 And touched him softly . . and he lay awhile, 
 His een upon the snow, in a dark dream, 
 Yet neither heard nor saw ; but suddenly, 
 He shook awa' the vision wi' a smile, 
 Raised lustrous een, still smiling, to the sky, 
 Next upon us, then dropt them to the flower 
 That trembled in his hand, and murmured low, 
 Like one that gladly murmurs to himseP — 
 u Out of the Snow, the Snowdrop — out of Death 
 Comes Life ;" then closed his eyes and made a 
 
 moan, 
 And never spake another word again. 
 
160 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 . . And you think weel of Andrew's book ? 
 
 You think 
 
 That folk will love him, for the poetry's sake, 
 
 Many a year to come ? We take it kind 
 
 You speak so weel of Andrew ! — As for me, 
 
 I can make naething of the printed book ; 
 
 I am no scholar, sir, as I have said, 
 
 And Mysie there can just read print a wee. 
 
 Ay ! we are feckless, ignorant of the world ! 
 
 And though 'twere joy to have our boy again 
 
 And place him far above our lowly house, 
 
 We like to think of Andrew as he was 
 
 When, dumb and wee, he hung his gold and gems 
 
 Round Mysie's neck ; or — as he is this night — 
 
 Lying asleep, his face to heaven — asleep, 
 
 Near to our hearts, as when he was a bairn, 
 
 Without the poetry and human pride 
 
 That came between us to our grief, langsyne. 
 
 From " Idyls and Legends of Inverburn" by 
 Robert Buchanan. 
 
DAVID GRAY. 161 
 
 II. 
 TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 
 
 % 
 
 111 
 
 ! the slow moon roaming 
 
 Through fleecy mists of gloaming, 
 Furrowing with pearly edge the jewel-powdered 
 sky! 
 Lo, the bridge moss-laden, 
 Arched like foot of maiden, 
 And on the bridge, in silence, looking upward, 
 you and I ! 
 Lo, the pleasant season 
 Of reaping and of mowing — 
 The round still moon above, — beneath, the river 
 duskily flowing ! 
 
 ii. 
 Violet-coloured shadows, 
 Blown from scented meadows, 
 Float o'er us to the pine- wood dark from yonder 
 dim corn-ridge ; 
 The little river gushes 
 
 M 
 
162 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 Through shady sedge and rushes, 
 And gray gnats murmur o'er the pools, beneath 
 the mossy bridge ; — 
 And you and I stand darkly, 
 O'er the keystone leaning, 
 And watch the pale mesmeric moon, in the time 
 of gleaners and gleaning. 
 
 in. 
 Do I dream, I wonder ? 
 As, sitting sadly under 
 A lonely roof in London, through the grim 
 square pane I gaze ? 
 Here of you I ponder, 
 In a dream, and yonder 
 The still streets seem to stir and breathe beneath 
 the white moon's rays. 
 By the vision cherished, 
 By the battle braved, 
 Do I but dream a hopeless dream, in the city that 
 slew you, David ? 
 
 IV. 
 
 Is it fancy also, 
 
 That the light which falls so 
 
 
 1 
 
TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 163 
 
 Faintly upon the stony street below me as I 
 write, 
 Near tall mountains passes 
 Through churchyard weeds and grasses, 
 Barely a mower's mile away from that small 
 bridge, to-night ? 
 And, where you are lying, — 
 Grass and flowers above you — 
 Is mingled with your sleeping face, as calm as 
 the hearts that love you ? 
 
 v. 
 Poet gentle-hearted, 
 Are you then departed, 
 And have you ceased to dream the dream we loved 
 of old so well ? 
 Has the deeply cherished 
 Aspiration perished, 
 And are you happy, David, in that heaven where 
 you dwell ? 
 Have you found the secret 
 We, so wildly, sought for, 
 And is your soul enswathed, at last, in the singing 
 robes you fought for ? 
 
164 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 VI. 
 
 In some heaven star-lighted, 
 Are you now united 
 Unto the poet-spirits that you loved, of English 
 race ? 
 Is Chatterton still dreaming ? 
 And, to give it stately seeming, 
 Has the music of his last strong song passed into; 
 Keats' s face ? 
 Is Wordsworth there ? and Spenser ? 
 . Beyond the grave's black portals, 
 Can the grand eye of Milton see the glory he sang 
 to mortals ? 
 
 VII. 
 
 You at least could teach me, 
 Could your dear voice reach me, 
 Where I sit and copy out for men my soul's Strang 
 speech, 
 Whether it be bootless, 
 Profitless, and fruitless, — 
 The weary aching upward strife to heights we 
 cannot reach, 
 The fame we seek in sorrow, 
 
TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 165 
 
 The agony we forego not, 
 The haunting singing sense that makes us climb 
 — whither we know not. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Must it last for ever, 
 The passionate endeavour, 
 Ay, have ye, there in heaven, hearts to throb and 
 still aspire ? 
 In the life you know now, 
 Rendered white as snow now, 
 Do fresher glory-heights arise, and beckon higher 
 — higher ? 
 Are you dreaming, dreaming, 
 Is your soul still roaming, 
 Still gazing upward as we gazed, of old in the 
 autumn gloaming ? 
 
 IX. 
 
 Lo, the book I hold here, 
 In the city cold here ! 
 I hold it with a gentle hand and love it as I may ; 
 Lo, the weary moments ! 
 Lo, the icy comments ! 
 
166 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 And lo, false Fortune's knife of gold swift-lifted 
 up to slay ! 
 Has the strife no ending ? 
 Has the song no meaning ? 
 Linger I, idle as of old, while men are reaping or 
 gleaning ? 
 
 x. 
 Upward my face I turn to you, 
 I long for you, I yearn to you, 
 The spectral vision trances me to utt'rance wild 
 and weak ; 
 It is not that I mourn you, 
 To mourn you were to scorn you, 
 For you are one step nearer to the beauty singers 
 
 But I want, and cannot see you, 
 I seek and cannot find you, 
 And, see ! I touch the book of sougs you tenderly 
 left behind you ! 
 
 XI. 
 
 Ay, me ! I bend above it, 
 With tearful eyes, and love it, 
 
TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 167 
 
 With tender hand I touch the leaves, but cannot 
 find you there ! 
 Mine eyes are haunted only 
 By that gloaming sweetly lonely, 
 The shadows on the mossy bridge, the glamour in 
 the air! 
 I touch the leaves, and only 
 See the glory they retain not — 
 The moon that is a lamp to Hope, who glorifies 
 what we gain not ! 
 
 XII. 
 
 The aching and the yearning, 
 The hollow undiscerning, 
 Uplooking want I still retain, darken the leaves I 
 touch — 
 Pale promise, with much sweetness 
 Solemnizing incompleteness, 
 But ah, you knew so little then — and now you 
 know so much ! 
 By the vision cherished, 
 By the battle braved, 
 Have you, in heaven, shamed the song, by a 
 loftier music, David ? 
 
1(38 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 I, who loved and* knew you, 
 In the city that slew you, 
 Still hunger on, and thirst, and climb, proud- 
 hearted and alone : 
 Serpent-fears enfold me, 
 Syren- visions hold me, 
 And, like a wave, I gather strength, and gather- 
 ing strength, I moan ; 
 Yea, the pale moon beckons, 
 Still I follow, aching, 
 And gather strength, only to make a louder moan, 
 in breaking ! 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Though the world could turn from you, 
 This, at least, I learn from you : 
 Beauty and Truth, though never found, are worthy 
 to be sought, 
 The singer, upward- springing, 
 Is grander than his singing, 
 And tranquil self-sufficing joy illumes the dark of 
 thought. 
 This, at least, you teach me, 
 
TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 169 
 
 In a revelation : 
 That gods still snatch, as worthy death, the soul 
 in its aspiration. 
 
 xv. 
 And I think, as you thought, 
 Poesy and Truth ought 
 Never to lie silent in the singer's heart on earth ; 
 Though they be discarded, 
 Slighted, unrewarded, 
 Though, unto vulgar seeming, they appear of little 
 worth, — 
 Yet tender brother-singers, 
 Young or not yet born to us, 
 May seek there, for the singer's sake, that love 
 which sweeteneth scorn to us ! 
 
 XVI. 
 
 While I sit in silence, 
 Conies from mile on mile hence, 
 From English Keats' s Eoman grave, a voice that 
 sweetens toil ! 
 Think you, no fond creatures 
 Draw comfort from the features 
 
170 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 Of Chatterton, pale Ph'aethon, hurled down to 
 sunless soil ? 
 Scorched with sunlight lying, 
 Eyes of sunlight hollow, 
 But, see ! upon the lips a gleam of the chrism of 
 Apollo ! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Noble thought produces 
 Noble ends and uses, 
 Noble hopes are part of Hope wherever she may 
 be, 
 Noble thought enhances 
 Life and all its chances, 
 And noble self is noble song, — all this I learn 
 from thee ! 
 And I learn, moreover, 
 'Mid the city's strife too, 
 That such faint song as sweetens Death can sweeten 
 the singer's life too ! 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Lo, my Book ! — I hold it 
 In weary hands, and fold it 
 Unto my heart, if only as a token I aspire ; 
 
TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 171 
 
 And, by song's assistance, 
 Unto your dim distance, 
 My soul uplifted is on wings, and beckoned higher, 
 nigher. 
 By the sweeter wisdom 
 You return unspeaking, 
 Though endless, hopeless, be the search, we exalt 
 our souls in seeking. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Higher, yet, and higher, 
 Ever nigher, ever nigher, 
 
 To the glory we conceive not, let us toil and strive 
 and strain !- — 
 The agonized yearning, 
 The imploring and the burning, 
 
 Grown awfuller, in tenser, at each vista we attain, 
 And clearer, brighter, growing, 
 Up the gulfs of heaven wander, 
 
 Higher, higher yet, and higher, to the Mystery 
 we ponder ! 
 
 xx. 
 Yea, higher yet, and higher, 
 Ever nigher, ever nigher, 
 
172 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 While men grow small by stooping and the reaper 
 piles the grain, — 
 Can it then be bootless, 
 Profitless and fruitless, 
 The weary aching upward search for what we never 
 gain ? 
 Is there not awaiting 
 Rest and golden weather, 
 Where, passionately purified, the singers may meet 
 together ? 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Up ! higher yet, and higher, 
 Ever nigher, ever nigher, 
 Through voids that Milton and the rest beat still 
 with seraph- wings ; 
 Out through the great gate creeping 
 Where God hath put his sleeping — 
 A- dewy cloud detaining not the soul that soars and 
 sings; 
 Up ! higher yet, and higher 
 Fainting nor retreating, 
 Beyond the sun, beyond the stars, to the far bright 
 realm of meeting ! 
 
TO DAVID IN HEAVEN. 173 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Mystery ! Passion ! 
 To sit on earth, and fashion, 
 What floods of music visibled may fill that fancied 
 place ! 
 To think, the least that singeth, 
 Aspireth and upspringeth, 
 May weep glad tears on Keats's breast and look in 
 Milton's face ! 
 When human power and failure 
 Are equalized for ever, 
 And the one great Light that haloes all is the 
 passionate bright endeavour ! 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 But ah, that pale moon roaming 
 Through fleecy mists of gloaming, 
 Furrowing with pearly edge the jewel-powdered 
 sky, 
 And ah, the days departed 
 With your friendship gentle-hearted, 
 And ah, the dream we dreamt that night, together, 
 you and I ! 
 
174 
 
 DAVID GRAY. 
 
 Is it fashioned wisely, 
 To help us or to blind us, 
 That at each height we gain we turn, and behold 
 a heaven behind us ? 
 
 Undertones, by Robert Buchanan. 
 
III. 
 
 THE STUDENT, AND HIS VOCATION. 
 
THE STUDENT AND HIS 
 VOCATION. 
 
 T is not so easy to be alone as it used 
 to be. Fresh dropt, as it were, from 
 the moon, and amazed at the hum and 
 roar of innumerable mortals similarly 
 bewildered, the mortal traveller finds it difficult 
 now to creep into a cave or to pitch a tent in the 
 desert. Even if beneficent Providence feed and 
 clothe him- free of trouble, the temptation to 
 action is almost certain to be too strong for him ; 
 when everybody is fighting, he is indeed cold- 
 blooded who does not seek a share of the blows 
 and the glory. He is pulled into the public 
 vortex — fights, debates, writes, studies by all 
 means to outwrestle his neighbours and to get a 
 head higher. Entering the city gates, greeted 
 N 
 
178 THE STUDENT AND 
 
 by a wail as shrill and sad as if lie were pene- 
 trating the middle circle of the Inferno, his heart is 
 stirred and he becomes a philanthropist. Ob- 
 serving the phenomena of society and the inex- 
 orable laws of trade, he turns political economist. 
 Marking the tendency of the race to equalization, 
 observing how much may be done even by tall 
 talk to commeasure freedom, he mounts the 
 rostrum and delivers political oracles. But he 
 is never alone. Once caught by the whirligig, he 
 is kept dancing round and round. He is doomed 
 to be a public man, big or little, one of the crowd, 
 — doomed in this fatal way, that once committed 
 to combined action with masses, no other action 
 contents him. With sword or with pen, in the 
 senate or in the pulpit, as constitution-conserver or 
 liberal elector, he is for ever on the move. Is it 
 to be wondered at that he soon loses his identity ? 
 The man is lost in the vocation ; we know him no 
 longer by his face and voice, but by his badge of 
 office . He is a wave in the great waters . His busi- 
 ness is public, and he is coerced by his associates. 
 
 The collective public opinion of this crowd of i 
 travellers is what may be termed " contemporary 
 
HIS VOCATION. 179 
 
 truth. " This, of necessity, changes from gene- 
 ration to generation. From Hindooism to the 
 pantheism of Greece and Rome, from that to the 
 Catholicism of the early Church, from that to the 
 fierce bigotry of the later Church, from that to 
 the sour eclecticism of France, contemporary truth 
 changes and changes. That which is true to 
 Julius Caesar is smiled at by Augustus ; what the 
 cowls approve the eighth Henry soon proves to 
 be ephemeral, until Henry, in his turn, is shown 
 to have only just begun the work of alteration. 
 It is the same in all other movements not re- 
 ligious. Now contemporary truth is for mo- 
 narchies, then for republics one and indivisible ; 
 now it insists upon the encyclopaedia as the 
 embodiment of all knowledge, again it indig- 
 nantly tears the encyclopaedia and burns the 
 e&i.gy of Yoltaire. Noisy, vehement, dogmatic, 
 yet earnest, beat the waters of opinion on the 
 heavenly shore, where the sun comes and goes, 
 and the stars keep vigil in the intervals of his 
 coming and going; and contemporary truth is 
 the barest froth thereof. The crowd roars, and 
 the angels are smiling at its oracles. 
 
180 THE STUDENT AND 
 
 Evermore , however, in all periods, in all cli- 
 mates and countries, there have been individuals 
 who cared neither to lead nor to be led, who grew 
 weary of action, however irresponsible, and who, 
 in a supreme moment, have crept away from the 
 mass and sought solitude. Yet in no selfish or 
 exclusive spirit have they sought to be alone, — 
 in no scorn of their fellows, in no fear of blows 
 or pain, in no wish to secure a monopoly of the 
 grand shows which nature makes in solitary 
 places. Spiritual astronomers, they discovered 
 early that it was their business to regard the 
 heavens, not to delve in the earth, nor build 
 cities, nor preach in the market-place. Star- 
 gazers, they speculate from what star they and 
 the other travellers have fallen. The tumult, the 
 glory, the wonder of the world electrifies, instead 
 of disturbing, their contemplation. These men are 
 the Students, — pale men, with melancholy eyes, 
 which seem to suffer from the burning light they 
 shed on fellow-mortals. 
 
 What, then, do the Students seek, turning 
 their eyes to these transmortal directions, troubled 
 evermore by the passage of wondrous lights across 
 
HIS VOCATION. 181 
 
 the heavenly shore ? They are seeking, not con- 
 temporary, but " eternal truth/' — the law beyond 
 local law, the religion beyond creeds, the holy 
 government beyond governments which come 
 and go. They are noting, in a word, not merely 
 the phenomena which are constantly changing, 
 but the truths which regulate such phenomena, 
 which are evermore recurring with fresh force and 
 novelty, and which may fairly be regarded as un- 
 changeable. Plato, the grand great brow, gleam- 
 ing divinely in the pale pure light of pagan sunset ; 
 Spinoza, shading his wondrous eyes under heavy 
 Jewish eyelids from a perfect glare and agony of 
 light ; Comte, consuming a frail body in the dis- 
 tress of too fixed a contemplation : these, all such 
 as these, and the host of lesser labourers, consti- 
 tute the class of Students, embracing in one fine 
 brotherhood metaphysicians, spiritualists, posi- 
 tivists, men of science, poets, painters, and musi- 
 cians. However much they differ in most 
 matters, however opposite they may be in per- 
 sonal hopes and aspirations, they have one great 
 point of contact : — their vocation is the study of 
 eternal, not contemporary truth, and, to perfect 
 
182 THE STUDENT AND 
 
 that vocation, they find it imperatively necessary 
 to live alone. 
 
 Thus, here and there, by the busy wayside, 
 the earthly traveller catches glimpses of faint foot- 
 paths, some leading to places of nestling green, 
 others winding up to the mountain-peaks, others 
 conducting to the brink of waste waters peopled 
 by the phantoms of the clouds. These paths wind 
 to the nooks where the students dwell, hearing 
 faintly from afar the tramp of busy feet and the 
 cry of voices. Not always, however, do the 
 Students remain apart. Ever and anon, at the 
 point where the footpath joins the highway, 
 appears a pale face, and a white hand is uplifted 
 demanding silence. The Student has stept down 
 with a message. Ere that message can be heard, 
 the crowd must still itself and pause, and in that 
 pause all loud cries are lost and the Student is 
 heard saying : " Rest awhile and listen to the 
 message I bring you ! I want you just for a 
 minute to turn with me to the infinite. Even if 
 my words be worthless, the pause will do you 
 good, and you will struggle along all the more 
 freshly afterwards." In these pauses is contained 
 
HIS VOCATION. 183 
 
 the history of all literatures and all arts. In them, 
 at intervals, the eternal calm steals strangely 
 upon the finite unrest. Throughout all these is 
 the whisper : " Contemporary truth is not final, 
 and there is a light, my brothers, beyond the light 
 of setting suns." 
 
 But the sore difficulty is how to get the crowd 
 to pause,* how to still the waters, for ever so 
 brief a period of listening. By only one charm is 
 the crowd won, and that charm is thorough disin- 
 terestedness — the very quality which is impossible 
 to the crowd itself, or any member of the crowd. 
 Just in so far as the Student is disinterested, will 
 the Student fascinate his hearers. They can get 
 stump-orators, singers for praise, fighters, German 
 prophets, every day, but they are spell-bound at 
 the novelty of the man who seeks no bonus. He 
 is a kind of angelic wonder, just dropt glittering 
 from cloudland. The sign of disinterestedness is 
 beneficence, true love for the species ; the selfish 
 crowd never mistake unselfishness ; not till that is 
 clear will they hearken. Therefore, we never 
 hear the true Student talk brutally of the black 
 man, nor mock the poor temporary Philistinism 
 
184 THE STUDENT AND 
 
 of people in earnest, nor solicit attention by use- 
 less ravings and insincerities. The Student is 
 calm. He knows he must win the crowd by dis- 
 interestedness, or by nothing. He will not bawl, 
 though their backs are to him. If they ignore 
 him for a time, he waits gently until they are 
 ready. And the further proof of his disinterested- 
 ness is this, — that, however much his message 
 is to shock the world, he will never say it 
 brutally or conceitedly, but lovingly and reve- 
 rently, always adding — " Mind, this message is 
 not final. It is the very nature of eternal truth 
 to evade a decisive definition; and although I 
 have seen something in that lofty region, and 
 wish to report what I have seen, I pretend to 
 settle nothing by authority." The exhibition of 
 contempt for the audience he addresses is the first 
 fatal sign of contempt for his vocation. The fool 
 proves himself unfit to be a messenger, by as- 
 suming the prevision of a god. 
 
 We need not go far to seek for an example of 
 a Student who despises his vocation. The last 
 wild utterance of Thomas Carlyle still rings in 
 our ears. 
 
HIS VOCATION. 185 
 
 This writer began reverently and gained hearers. 
 He read affectionately in books and in nature, 
 wrote nobly, aspired calmly to the contemplation 
 of eternal truth. He secured quiet, and was 
 recognized as a Student. Thus much, however, 
 did not content him ; and the first signs of dis- 
 content were certain false notes in the voice — 
 German guttural sounds, elaborate word-building, 
 wild mannerism. Clearly hungry for more in- 
 fluence, he wrote privately to a friend that he 
 would begin to " prophesy," and avowedly with a 
 view to widening his circle of hearers — as if true 
 prophet ever began by perceiving that there was 
 a public, and calculating how such public might 
 be stirred to emotion. He did prophesy. For a 
 time, the crowd listened, till slowly and painfully 
 his interestedness grew upon them. So thoroughly 
 had he begun to despise his vocation, that he no 
 longer took the trouble to utter his prophecies 
 beautifully. So completely did he despise his 
 public, that he deemed the g-rossest and least- 
 weighed brutalities amply good enough for them. 
 Instead of looking towards eternal truth, he 
 gazed with the vision of a contemporary. How 
 
186 THE STUDENT AND 
 
 has this ended? The pause he once secured is 
 broken. We merely hear his voice at intervals, and 
 then always in the midst of a roar of voices. He 
 has been whirled down into the crowd, and, 
 though he shriek his loudest, there is no standing 
 still to hear him. 
 
 It so happens in this case, that circumstances 
 have so arranged themselves as to prove that 
 Mr. Carlyle possessed very little prophetic vision. 
 His dismal prediction of anarchy and all sorts of 
 accompanying evils, as likely to result to England 
 because she disagreed with him as to the mights 
 of man, has by no means yet been realized, and 
 the " nigger" is free. Such a man was not 
 likely to be silenced even by the contemplation of 
 the grand American triumph of truth and human 
 beneficence. The more the crowd has roared 
 around about him, the louder he has screamed. 
 His last utterance, though uttered in a shriller 
 and fiercer key, embodies precisely what he has 
 been saying ever since he despised his vocation. 
 " Eagged dung-heap of a world ;" " the Almighty 
 Maker has appointed the Nigger to be a servant f 
 " servantship must become a contract of perma- 
 
HIS VOCATION. 187 
 
 nency f " in a limited time, say fifty years hence, 
 the Church, all churches and so-called religions, 
 the Christian religion itself, shall have deliquesced 
 into liberty of conscience, progress of opinion, pro- 
 gress of intellect, philanthropic movements, and 
 other aqueous residues of a vapid badly-scented 
 character;" "manhood suffrage, — horsehood, dog- 
 hood, not yet treated of;" "universal glorious 
 liberty — to sons of the devil in overwhelming 
 majority, as would appear." In these sentences 
 culminates the degradation of a Student stript of 
 his gown. How utterly he has become swamped 
 in the crowd, when the language he employs is 
 that of the wildest roughs and rowdies in the 
 swarm. 
 
 Now, if there be one true mark of the true 
 Student it is the endeavour to express himself 
 exquisitely. Plotinus defines the beautiful " as the 
 splendour of the good ;" and after this beautiful 
 — not merely good, but good glorified — the 
 Student aims. He studies the poetic termi- 
 nology, and culls all felicities of speech which 
 secure the radiant passage of meanings to the 
 minds of hearers. He shapes his glowing 
 
188 THE STUDENT AND 
 
 thoughts into melodious syllables, such as com- 
 mon men may not employ. Add to perfect dis- 
 interestedness, perfect sweetness of voice, — and 
 the people are spell-bound. Their souls are 
 raised, their ears delighted. Though liberalism 
 be their watchword, they will even listen to 
 the gospel according to the Tories, — calmly 
 hearken, I mean, to him who wishes to show that 
 eternal truth is on the Tory side. Had Carlyle 
 spoken in this fashion, his own reverence for 
 what he conceived true would have been his 
 safeguard and his honour. 
 
 For public men are even nowadays quite ready 
 to admit the services and honour the sincerity of 
 the private inquirer, — especially in his capacity 
 of reader of books. They say clearly, " We are 
 too busy to seek precedents or study tomes — we 
 have no time to collect learning — and we must 
 employ you to study in our place." So while the 
 public men are fighting keenly with a view to 
 making some truth or seeming truth live, the 
 Student familiarizes himself with history, philo- 
 sophy, religion, science, in order to see what 
 things have died in the past, or are dying in the 
 
HIS VOCATION. 189 
 
 present, and what things, having never been 
 known really to die, may now be fairly assumed 
 to be eternal. Busy people, too, are very grateful 
 when the Student brings to them at second-hand 
 the result of all this learned inquiry. They 
 hearken to it, commit it to memory, even pay for 
 it liberally ; not, however, until they are perfectly 
 satisfied of the calmness, disinterestedness, and 
 veracity of the person who supplies it. But when 
 the Student not only brings his message, but lards 
 it with follies and insolencies of his own, the public 
 retort is simple : — "The message you bring is a 
 lie." " Brutes ! idiots ! " perhaps screams the 
 Student ; " do ye dare to despise eternal truth ?" 
 And the public, justly exasperated, lynches the 
 fellow, crying, " Eternal truth is all very fine, but 
 we are now convinced of the contemporary truth 
 that you are a humbug and a ranter." 
 
 Nor will the public men, the stragglers en 
 masse, tolerate on the part of the Student any 
 vain affectation of superiority. They know very 
 well that the Student, from Pythagoras to 
 Goethe, has always been a human being, however 
 close his communication with the Olympian prin- 
 
 h 
 
190 THE STUDENT AND 
 
 cipalities ; and moreover, they know this — that 
 mere living, even physical living, is any day as 
 wondrous, as important, and as grand a thing as 
 mere thinking. What right has the professor to 
 bully the tradesman ? On what grounds does a 
 poet scorn an alderman, a philosopher despise a 
 member of parliament, a monk scowl at a milli- 
 ner ? It is quite another thing, however, to bid 
 the busy man, the man whose work is mean, the 
 toiler and moiler at the tag- ends of society, pause 
 occasionally, and inhale a sweet breath from the 
 solitude, — to see what the stargazer is seeing, to 
 hear what the minstrel is playing, to follow what 
 the theorizer is proving in stately terms. But 
 how lovingly, how reverently, does the true 
 Student communicate with the people ! — how 
 wisely does he defer to them in matters wherein 
 they even have their authority ! The fine af- 
 fectionate love for the species is in his eyes, and 
 every word he utters is vocal with the music of 
 humanity. The Man's face shines radiant under 
 the academic cowl, and the appeal at the best is 
 an appeal from a man's heart to the heart of men. 
 The sinner is dealt with tenderly, though the sin 
 
HIS VOCATION. 191 
 
 is never spared. The erring class is reasoned 
 with sweetly, while the error is unmercifully 
 turned inside out. And the contemporary strag- 
 glers, pausing to listen, feel how calm and tender 
 a thing, how loving and how beneficent, is that 
 eternal truth which scholiasts would lock up in 
 their secretaries, and scientific monkeys (the true 
 apes of Goethe's Witch's cave) seek in vain to 
 put in a crucible. 
 
 Here, certainly, is the true clue to the won- 
 drous influence of Mr. John Stuart Mill. Of all 
 our Students, this one has shown himself, not 
 the most profound, but the most reverent, the 
 most gentle, and the most unassuming. He 
 had the true philosophic calm, — the true rest 
 typical of the eternal. He had no gall. Merciless 
 in argument, he was tender and brotherly to 
 every antagonist. All this was true of Mr. Mill, 
 previous to his entry into parliament. The 
 Student has since been lost in the politician — the 
 pause difficult to secure — the influence scattered 
 and doubtful. That a thinker so acute and 
 thorough as this should have dreamt it possible 
 to reconcile eternal and contemporary truth — to 
 
192 THE STUDENT AND 
 
 be a student and a politician at the same time — 
 has been to me one of those mysteries which are 
 to be classed as insoluble. I have watched Mr. 
 Mill's career with deep and grateful interest, — 
 and thousands, as well as myself, felt bitter when 
 the Light was put under the bushel of the House 
 of Commons. How is it possible to connect 
 eternal truth with the bigotry and folly which 
 is represented to us by the reports in the daily 
 newspapers, — to think of philosophy in con- 
 nection with the blatant periods of Mr. Bright 
 and the polished pettiness of Mr. Lowe, — and to 
 associate calm and intellectual repose with the 
 juggling insincerities of each successive Chancel- 
 lor of the Exchequer ? 
 
 Mr. Mill has really done what is being every 
 day done by inferior men.* -Among the signs 
 which accompany the vast political crisis which is 
 at present agitating England, not least is the irri- 
 tating attitude of the Student, — the class of man 
 whose business it should be to mark, accompany, 
 and emphasise progress, instead of muddying the 
 stream of controversy. As I have suggested, the 
 Student is losing the fine old reverence for his 
 
HIS VOCATION. 193 
 
 own vocation, and wasting his energies in matters 
 over which he has really no concern. He would 
 be an authority in the world of action as well as in 
 the sphere of meditation, — claiming the privileges 
 of the politician, the historian, the man of science, 
 and the pamphleteer. He would decide great con- 
 troversies by private authority, instead of calmly 
 throwing the radiance of perfect private sight on 
 the tendencies of his time. Dogmatism and pup- 
 pyism supervene : — the Student no longer takes 
 the trouble to express himself exquisitely ; the 
 crudest utterance suffices ; the most listless loose- 
 ness of thought, consequent on a contempt for 
 his audience. Mr. Carlyle, as we have seen, 
 preaches brutalism in language as harsh as the 
 barking of Cerberus. Masters of Arts, Fellows 
 of Colleges, and all the tribe of people who 
 remain at school all their lives, imitate Mr. 
 Arnold's manner, even while disagreeing with his 
 opinions. The two sets of egotists join issue in 
 denouncing the tendencies of their period. Some 
 of ^hese men might secure real and lasting in- 
 fluence if they reverenced and clearly pursued 
 their own vocation. They claim double and irre- 
 o 
 
194 THE STUDENT AND 
 
 concilable privileges — the authority of the private 
 scholar, and the authority of the public leader. 
 
 Deep philosophic repose is the air inhaled on 
 the mountain tops, close to the stars, and must by 
 no means be confounded with vulgar conscious- 
 ness of calm. A person may step forward in an 
 academic gown, saying : ' ' My papa was so skilled 
 in developing the juvenile mind as to produce 
 out of fair materials a novelist at fourteen, a 
 philosopher two years later, and at eighteen an 
 authority on every question under the sun — a 
 wondrous little Salaputium, warranted perfect, 
 and certain never to grow any more. Oh, I am so 
 calm, and so clever. Yet see, how admirably I 
 hide my knowledge ; that is calm, that is restraint. 
 I am prepared to settle all questions by means of 
 an insect exterminator, which has never been 
 known to fail." But how does the public re- 
 ceive such a person. " The Student," it re- 
 plies, " evinces restraint and calm, does not talk 
 about them ; they are, in fact, merely personal 
 qualities. You fellows grow too quickly and 
 stop too soon, and your calm and restraint are 
 merely the inactivity and torpor consequent on a 
 
HIS VOCATION. 195 
 
 system of early forcing. You have by no means 
 lived enough to determine living questions, and 
 the best proof of that is the unmanliness of your 
 manner." And are the public wrong ? Do the 
 scholastic persons show any such real love for their 
 kind, any such ignoring of self, any such telling- 
 enthusiasm in great questions, as would soon win 
 the confidence of men and women who live in 
 the world outside the academy ? I fear not. 
 They are not Students, nor do they live alone. 
 Brought up in classes, inoculated with the usual 
 stuff very early, they hate solitude hugely. They 
 must think in bodies, or they are miserable.* 
 
 But the career of the true Student has been 
 two-fold, — a period of probation in the world of 
 action, previous to the period of retreat to the 
 sphere of thought. In that first period, no matter 
 
 * I must not be understood as underrating true scholar- 
 ship, — only as noting the vicious effect of schools. Why 
 should the scholar not be a Student ? Look at Clough ! He 
 had the true calm, and his religious hunger was a real 
 thing. He kept his own way, without being tempted into 
 exhibitions ; and for this very reason he will have in- 
 fluence, when more pretentious and noisy schoolmen are 
 forgotten. 
 
196 THE STUDENT AND 
 
 how short, a man not only learns what action is 
 and his unfitness for it, but gets such knowledge 
 of great busy powers as makes him treat power 
 wisely all the rest of his life. How should he 
 know that God meant him to be a Student, until ; 
 he ascertained his unfitness for aught else? 
 Hence the misfortune of early forcing. The 
 schoolboys are wise too soon. They begin reck- 
 lessly trading without capital ; evolving out of 
 their own inner consciousness, like the German, a 
 monster which they christen "man," and a number « 
 of little monsters which they label " facts," and 
 going wrong in everything, because their " facts " 
 and " man " are wrong at starting : — 
 
 Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam 
 Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas 
 Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum 
 Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne ; 
 Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, arnici ? 
 
 A little actual contact with men — not merely 
 with people teaching and people taught — would 
 save them, too, from regarding earth as one vast 1 
 seminary. They know this truth themselves in i 
 the end. We find them yearning* wildly for 
 
HIS VOCATION. 197 
 
 action, writing verses of discontent, longing for 
 the vague busy motion they have never ex- 
 perienced ; interspersing such dissatisfied mo- 
 ments by putting finishing touches to their own 
 intellectual beauty, with the complacence of a fine 
 lady putting on powder and rouge, and praying 
 to God as to a skilful professor passionately 
 attached to prodigies developed by early forcing. 
 
 Too much reducing of life to system will not 
 suit the Student. How should it, when he is 
 growing* grey in the vain search of b truth that is 
 absolutely final. He is the man that leaves mar- 
 gins. He is very careful, therefore, how he deals 
 even with contemporary superstitions, lest he 
 may imitate the French writers, who destroyed, 
 not only the superstitions themselves, but the 
 noble truths underlying them. Coming on 
 the highway, he steps among swarms of tiny 
 lives, and he cannot step too cautiously, if he 
 would avoid crushing something that is beautiful. 
 
 Clear on all sides of us, in the highways and 
 the byeways, in the crowd's voices, in the Students' 
 messages, rises one great belief, in which eternal 
 and contemporary truth seem to unite, — that we 
 
198 THE STUDENT AND 
 
 are moving on to multiplicity. The mass is 
 rising, rights are widening, mights are broaden- 
 ing. Meanwhile, some few alarmists shriek out 
 that we lack individuals and must die. Then the 
 reply is, " Let us die," if the vindication of eternal 
 principles is fatal. Never, to the thinking of 
 many, was there a time fraught with so much 
 hope to man. The emancipation of the slave, the 
 steps of Germany towards freedom, the extension 
 of the suffrage, are all signs and portents. Hence- 
 forth, freedom is vindicated as a personal right, 
 and every man is to be recognized as a respon- 
 sible citizen. 
 
 And what, in the face of these things, are the 
 cries of alarmists, the shrieks of classes, — what, 
 in fact, is the very threat of anarchy ? Eternal 
 truth seems saving " though ye perish, I will be 
 vindicated." Yet in honest truth, the danger is 
 perhaps exaggerated. When matters adjust 
 themselves there will be no lack of leaders, no 
 lack of Students. 
 
 If there be one truth which it behoves the 
 Student to illustrate noiv, it is this mighty one, — 
 God's preference of His beloved children to any 
 
HIS VOCATION. 199 
 
 one of His children. If there is one quality which 
 seems His, and His exclusively, it seems that 
 Divine philoprogenitiveness, that passionate love 
 of distribution and expansion into living forms. 
 He is exhaustless, a fountain. Every animal added 
 seems a new ecstasy to the Maker; every life added 
 a new embodiment of His love. He would stvarm 
 the earth with beings. There are never enough. 
 Life, life, life — faces gleaming, hearts beating, 
 must fill every cranny. Not a corner is suffered 
 to remain empty. The whole earth breeds, and 
 God glories. And here and everywhere, life, ab- 
 solute life, is the only thing which we universally 
 feel to be God's, and wholly sacred. 
 
 Because there is sin and misery in the world, 
 because hearts ache and bodies die, shall we turn 
 upon this sublimely exhaustless Being, and 
 demand explanation ? Is it not something to 
 know how He delights in making, in endless 
 creating, and that One who thus delights cannot 
 be cruel. The explanation will come. Meantime, 
 we move to multiplicity. Our selfish ascetics are 
 no longer thought to possess god-like qualities ; 
 but it is noticed everywhere that the sublimest 
 
200 THE STUDENT AND HIS VOCATION. 
 
 sign of perfect culture is divine philanthropy, 
 and that the nearer each man seems to approach 
 God, the more he seems to exhibit the mysterious 
 and god-like quality of love for the species. The 
 vocation of the Student is clear. He must aid the 
 work of the world, but not by noise and egotistical 
 prattling. He shall show to the crowd the nearest 
 human approach to the perfect disinterestedness, 
 sweetness, and exhaustless charity of God's 
 Eternal Truth ; and the people, listening at the 
 lifting of his hand, and charmed by the sweet- 
 ness .of his voice, will be happier by a message 
 sent to make still wider the activities of Law 
 and Love. 
 
IV. 
 
 W A L T WHITMA X. 
 
 ^H^ 
 
" Cantantes, my dear Burdett, minus via ladit. 
 
 Time; but bawling out the rights of man is not 
 sin£rin<r." — The Diversions of Purley. 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 HE grossest abuse on the part of the 
 majority, and the wildest panegyric 
 on the part of a minority, have for 
 many years been heaped on the 
 shoulders of the man who rests his claim for 
 judgment on the book of miscellanies noted 
 below.* Luckily, the man is strong enough, 
 sane enough, to take both abuse and panegyric 
 with calmness. He believes hugely in himself, 
 and in the part he is destined to take in American 
 affairs. He is neither to be put down by prudes, 
 nor tempted aside by the serenade of pipes and 
 timbrels. A large, dispassionate, daring, and 
 
 * Walt Whitman's " Leaves of Grass," " Drum -Taps, 
 etc. New York, 1867. 
 
204 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 splendidly-proportioned animal, he remains un- 
 moved, explanatory up to a certain point, but 
 sphinx-like when he is questioned too closely on 
 morality or religion. Yet when the enthusiastic 
 and credulous, the half-formed, the inquiring, 
 youth of a nation begin to be carried away by a 
 man's teachings, it is time to inquire what these 
 teachings are; for assuredly they are going to 
 exercise extraordinary influence on life and 
 opinion. Now, it is clear, on the best authority, 
 that the writer in question is already exercising 
 on the youth of America an influence similar to 
 that exercised by Socrates over the youth of 
 Greece, or by Ealeigh over the young chivalry of 
 England. In a word, he has become a sacer vates 
 — his ministry is admitted by palpable live dis- 
 ciples. What the man is, and what the ministry 
 implies, it will not take long to explain. Let it 
 be admitted at the outset, however, that I am 
 in concert with those who believe his to be a 
 genuine ministry, large in its spiritual manifesta- 
 tions, and abundant in capability for good. 
 
 Sprung from the masses, as he himself tells us, 
 Walt Whitman has for many years lived a vaga- 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 205 
 
 bond life, labouring as the humour seized him, 
 and invariably winning his bread by actual and 
 persistent industry. He has been alternately a 
 farmer, a carpenter, a printer. He has been a 
 constant contributor of prose to the republican 
 journals. He appears, moreover, at intervals, to 
 have wandered over the North American con- 
 tinent, to have worked his way from city to city, 
 and to have consorted liberally with the draff of 
 men on bold and equal conditions. Before the 
 outbreak of the war, he was to be found dwelling 
 in New York, on " fish-shape Paumanok," bask- 
 ing there in the rays of the almost tropical sun, 
 or sallying forth into the streets to mingle with 
 strange companions, — from the lodging-house 
 luminary and the omnibus- driver, down to the 
 scowling rowdy of the wharf bars. Having 
 written his first book, " Leaves of Grass," he set 
 it up with his own hands, in a printing-office in 
 Brooklyn. Some of my readers may dimly re- 
 member how the work was briefly noticed by 
 contemporary English reviews, in a way to leave 
 the impression that the writer was a mild maniac, 
 with morbid developments in the region of the os 
 
206 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 2)elvis. On the outbreak of the great rebellion, 
 he followed in the rear of the great armies, dis- 
 tinguishing himself by unremitting attention to 
 the wounded in the ambulance department, until, 
 on receiving a clerkship in the department of the 
 interior, he removed to Washington. Here, to 
 the great scandal of American virtue, he con- 
 tinued to vagabondise as before, but without 
 neglecting his official duties. At the street cor- 
 ner, at the drinking-bar, in the slums, in the 
 hospital wards, the tall figure of Walt Whitman 
 was encountered daily by the citizens of the 
 capital. He knew everybody, from the president 
 down to the crossing-sweeper. 
 
 "Well," said Abraham Lincoln, watching him 
 as he stalked by, " lie looks like a man." 
 
 Latterly his loafing propensities appear to have 
 grown too strong for American tolerance, and he 
 was ejected from his clerkship, on the pretext 
 that he had written " indecent verses," and was 
 a "free lover." His admirers, indignant to a 
 man at this treatment, have accumulated pro- 
 test upon protest, enumerating numberless in- 
 stances of his personal goodness and self-denial, 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 207 
 
 and laying powerful emphasis on certain deeds, 
 which, if truly chronicled, evince a width of sym- 
 pathy and a private influence unparalleled, per- 
 haps, in contemporary history. With all this 
 personal business we have no concern. His ad- 
 mirers move for a new trial on the evidence of 
 his written works, and to that evidence I must 
 proceed. 
 
 In about ten thousand lines of unrhymed verse, 
 very Biblical in form, and showing, indeed, on 
 every page, the traces of Biblical influence, Walt 
 Whitman professes to sow the first seeds of an 
 indigenous literature, by putting in music the 
 spiritual and fleshly yearnings of the cosmical 
 man, and, more particularly, indicating the great 
 elements which distinguish American freedom 
 from the fabrics erected by European politicians. 
 Starting from Paumanok, where he was born, he 
 takes mankind in review, and sees everywhere 
 but one wondrous life — the movement of the 
 great masses, seeking incessantly under the 
 sun for guarantees of personal liberty. He 
 respects no particular creed, admits no specific 
 morality prescribed by the civil law, but affirms 
 
208 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 in round terms the universal equality of men, 
 subject to the action of particular revolutions, 
 and guided en masse by the identity of particular 
 leaders. The whole introduction is a reverie on 
 the destiny of nations, with an undertone of fore- 
 thought on the American future, which is to con- 
 tain the surest and final triumph of the demo- 
 cratical man. A new race is to arise, dominating 
 previous ones, and grander far, with new contests, 
 new politics, new literatures and religions, new 
 inventions and arts. But how dominating ? By 
 the perfect recognition of individual equality, by 
 the recognition of the personal responsibility and 
 spiritual significance of each being, by the abro- 
 gation of distinctions such as set barriers in the 
 way of perfect private action — action responsible 
 only to the being of whom it is a consequence, 
 and inevitably controlled, if diabolic, by the com- 
 bined action of masses. 
 
 Briefly, "Walt Whitman sees in the American 
 future the grandest realization of centuries of 
 idealism — equable distribution of property, lu- 
 minous enlargement of the spiritual horizon, per- 
 fect exercise of all the functions ; no apathy, no 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 209 
 
 prudery, no shame, none of that worst absentee- 
 ism wherein the soul deserts its proper and ample 
 physical sphere, and sallies out into the regions 
 of the impossible and the unknown. Very finely, 
 indeed, does the writer set forth the divine func- 
 tions of the body — the dignity and the righteous- 
 ness of a habitation existing only on the condition 
 of personal exertion ; and faintly, but truly, does 
 he suggest how from that personal exertion issues 
 spirituality, fashioning literatures, dreaming re- 
 ligions, and perfecting arts. "I will make," he 
 exclaims, " the poems of materials, for I think 
 they are to be the most spiritual poems ; and I 
 will make the poems of my body and of mortality : 
 for I think I shall then supply myself with the 
 poems of my soul and of immortality." 
 
 This, I hear the reader exclaim, is rank ma- 
 terialism ; and, using the word in its big sense, 
 materialism it doubtless is. I shall observe, 
 further on, in what consists the peculiar value of 
 the present manifestation. In the meantime, let 
 me continue my survey of the work. 
 
 Having broadly premised, describing the great 
 movements of masses, Walt Whitman proceeds, 
 p 
 
210 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 in a separate "poem" or " book," to select a 
 member of the great democracy, representing 
 typically the privileges, the immunities, the con- 
 ditions, and the functions of all the rest. He 
 cannot, he believes, choose a better example than 
 himself; so he calls this poem iC Walt Whitman." 
 He is, for the time being, and for poetical pur- 
 poses, the cosmical man, an entity, a representa- 
 tive of the great forces.* He describes the de- 
 light of his own physical being, the pleasure of 
 the senses, the countless sensations through 
 which he communicates with the material uni- 
 verse. All, he says, is sweet — smell, taste, 
 thought, the play of his limbs, the fantasies of 
 his mind ; every attribute is welcome, and he is 
 ashamed of none. He is not afraid of death ; he 
 is content to change, if it be the nature of things 
 that he should change, but it is certain that he 
 cannot perish. He pictures the pageant of life 
 
 * Let it be understood, here and elsewhere, that I shall 
 attach my own significance to passages in themselves suf- 
 ficiently mystical. I may misrepresent this writer ; but, 
 apart from the present constructions, he is to me unintel- 
 ligible. 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 211 
 
 in the country and in cities; all is a fine pan- 
 orama, wherein mountains and valleys, nations 
 and religions, genre pictures and gleams of sun- 
 light, babes on the breast and dead men in 
 shrouds, pyramids and brothels, deserts and po- 
 pulated streets, sweep wonderfully by him. To 
 all those things he is bound : — wherever they 
 force him, he is not wholly a free agent ; but on 
 one point he is very clear — that, so far as he is 
 concerned, he is the most important thing of all. 
 He has work to do ; life is not merely a " suck or 
 a sell ;" nay, the whole business of ages has gone 
 on with one object only — that he, the democrat, 
 Walt Whitman, might have work to do. In 
 these very strange passages, he proclaims the 
 magnitude of the preparations for his private 
 action : — 
 
 Who goes there ? hankering, gross, mystical, nude ; 
 How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat ? 
 
 What is a man, anyhow ? What am I ? What are you ? 
 
 All I mark as my own, you shall offset it with your own, 
 Else it were time lost listening to me. 
 
 I do not snivel that snivel the world over, 
 That months are vacuums, and the ground but wallow and 
 filth; 
 
212 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the 
 end but threadbare crape, and tears. 
 
 Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids — ■ 
 
 conformity goes to the forth-removed ; 
 I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out. 
 
 Why should I pray ? Why should I venerate and be cere- 
 monious ? 
 
 Having pried through the strata, analysed to a hair, coun- 
 
 sel'd with doctors, and calculated close, 
 I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. 
 
 In all people I see myself — none more, and not one a bar- 
 leycorn less ; 
 And the good or bad I say of myself, I say of them. 
 
 And I know I am solid and sound ; 
 
 To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually 
 
 flow; 
 All are written to me, and I must get what the writing 
 
 means. 
 
 I know I am deathless ; 
 
 I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's 
 
 compass ; 
 I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a 
 
 burnt stick at night. 
 
 I know I am august ; 
 
 I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself, or be under- 
 stood ; 
 
 I see that the elementary laws never apologize ; 
 
 (I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my 
 house by. afrer all). 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 213 
 
 I exist as I am — that is enough ; 
 
 If no other in the world be aware, I sit content ; 
 
 And if each and all be aware, I sit content. 
 
 One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that 
 
 is myself; 
 And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand 
 
 or ten million years, 
 I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I 
 
 can wait. 
 
 My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite ; 
 I laugh at what you call dissolution ; 
 And I know the amplitude of time. 
 
 I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I am an encloser 
 of things to be. 
 
 My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs ; 
 
 On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between 
 
 the steps ; 
 All below duly travel'd, and still I mount and mount. 
 
 Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me ; 
 
 Afar down I see the huge first Nothing — I know I was 
 
 even there ; 
 I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic 
 
 mist, 
 And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. 
 
 Long I was hugg'd close — long and long. 
 
 Immense have been the preparations for me, 
 Faithful and friendly the arms that have help'd me. 
 
 Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful 
 boatmen ; 
 
214 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings ; 
 They sent influences to look after what was to hold me. 
 
 Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided 
 
 me; 
 My embryo has never been torpid — nothing could overlay 
 
 it. 
 
 For it the nebula cohered to an orb, 
 The long slow strata piled to rest it on, 
 Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 
 
 Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and de- 
 posited it with care. 
 
 All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and de- 
 light me ; 
 Now on this spot I stand with my robust Soul. 
 
 It is impossible in an extract to convey an idea 
 of the mystic and coarse, yet living, force which 
 pervades the poem called " Walt Whitman." 
 I have chosen an extract where the utterance 
 is unusually clear and vivid. But more extra- 
 ordinary, in their strong sympathy, are the por- 
 tions describing the occupations of men. In a 
 few vivid touches we have striking pictures ; the 
 writer shifts his identity like Proteus, but breathes 
 the same deep undertone in every shape. He can 
 transfer himself into any personality, however 
 base. " I am the man — I suffered — I was there." 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 215 
 
 He cares for no man's pride. He holds no man 
 unclean. 
 
 And afterwards, in the poem called " Children 
 of Adam/' he proceeds to particularise the privi- 
 leges of flesh, and to assert that in his own per- 
 sonal living body there is no uncleanness. He 
 sees that the beasts are not ashamed; why, 
 therefore, should he be ashamed ? Then comes 
 passage after passage of daring animalism; the 
 functions of the body are unhesitatingly described, 
 and the man asserts that the basest of them is 
 glorious. All the stuff which offended American 
 virtue is to be found here. It is very coarse and 
 silly, but, as we shall see, very important. It is 
 never, however, inhuman ; indeed, it is strongly 
 masculine — unsicklied by Lesbian bestialities and 
 Petronian abominations. It simply chronicles 
 acts and functions which, however unfit for art, 
 are natural, sane, and perfectly pure. I shall at- 
 tempt to show, further on, that Walt "Whitman is 
 not au artist at all, not a poet, properly so called ; 
 and that this grossness, offensive in itself, is 
 highly significant — an essential part of very im- ! 
 perfect work. The general question of literary 
 
216 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 immorality need not be introduced at all. ~No 
 one is likely to read the book who is not intel- 
 ligently chaste, or who is not familiar with num- 
 berless authors offensive to prudes — Lucretius, 
 Virgil, Dante, Goethe, Byron, among poets ; Ta- 
 citus, Eabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes, Sweden- 
 borg, among prose thinkers. 
 
 The remainder of" Leaves of Grass " is occupied 
 with poems of democracy, and general monotonous 
 prophecies. There is nothing more which it would 
 serve my present purpose to describe in detail, or 
 to interpret. The typical man continues his cry, 
 encouraging all men, — on the open road, in the 
 light of day, in the region of dreams. All is right 
 with the world, he thinks. For religion he 
 advises, te Reverence all things ; " for morality, 
 " Be not ashamed ; " for political wisdom among 
 peoples, "Resist much — obey little." He has 
 no word for art ; it is not in her temple that he 
 burns incense. His language, as even a short 
 extract has shown, is strong, vehement, instan- 
 taneously chosen ; always forcible, and some- 
 times even rhythmical, like the prose of Plato. 
 Thoughts crowd so thick upon him, that he has 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 217 
 
 no time to seek their artistic equivalent; he 
 utters his thought in any way, and his expres- 
 sions gain accidental beauty from the glamour of 
 his sympathy. As he speaks, we more than once 
 see a man's face at white heat, and a man's hand 
 beating down emphasis at the end of periods. 
 He is inspired, not angry ; yet as even inspira- 
 tion is not infallible, he sometimes talks rank 
 nonsense. 
 
 The second part of the volume, " Drum-Taps," 
 is a series of poetic soliloquies on the war. It is 
 more American and somewhat less mystical than 
 the " Leaves of Grass ; " but we have again the 
 old cry of democracy. Here, in proportion to 
 the absence of self-consciousness, and the pre- 
 sence of vivid emotion, we find absolute music, 
 culminating once or twice in poetry. The mo- 
 nody on the death of Lincoln — " when lilacs last 
 in the door-yard bloomed" — contains the three 
 essentials of poetic art — perfect sight, supreme 
 emotion, and true music. This, however, is un- 
 usual in Walt Whitman. Intellectual self-con- 
 sciousness generally coerces emotion, insincerities 
 and follies ensue, and instead of rising into poetry, 
 
218 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 the lines wail monotonously, and the sound drops 
 into the circle of crabbed prose. 
 
 For there is this distinction between Walt 
 Whitman and the poet — that Whitman is content 
 to reiterate his truth over and over again in the 
 same tones, with the same result ; while the poet, 
 having found a truth to utter, is coerced by his 
 artistic sympathies into seeking fresh literary 
 forms for its expression. "Bawling out the 
 rights of man," wrote Home Tooke, "is not 
 singing." Artistic sympathies Walt Whitman 
 has none; he is that curiously- crying bird — a 
 prophet with no taste. He is careless about 
 beautifying his truth : he is heedless of the new 
 forms — personal, dramatic, lyrical — in which an- 
 other man would clothe it, and in which his dis- 
 ciples will be certain to clothe it for him. He 
 sees vividly, but he is not always so naturally 
 moved as to sing exquisitely. He has the swag- 
 ger of the prophet, not the sweetness of the 
 musician. Hence all those crude metaphors and 
 false notes which must shock artists, those need- 
 less bestialities which repel prudes, that general 
 want of balance and that mental dizziness which 
 astonish most Europeans. 
 
 
WALT WHITMAN. 219 
 
 But when this has been said, all blame has 
 been said, — if, after all, a man is to incur blame 
 for not being quite another sort of being than 
 nature made him. Walt Whitman has arisen on 
 the States to point the way to new literatures. 
 He is the plain pioneer, pickaxe on shoulder, 
 working and " roughing." The daintier gentle- 
 men will follow, and build where he is delving. 
 
 "Whitman himself would be the first to de- 
 nounce those loose young gentlemen who admire 
 him vaguely because he is loud and massive, 
 gross and colossal, not for the sake of the truth 
 he is teaching, and the grandeur of the result 
 that may ensue. There are some men who can 
 admire nothing unless it is " strong ; " intellec- 
 tual dram-drinkers, quite as far from the truth as 
 sentimental tea-drinkers. Let it at once and un- 
 hesitatingly be admitted that Whitman's want of 
 art, his grossness, his tall talk, his metaphorical 
 word-piling are faults — prodigious ones; and 
 then let us turn reverently to contemplate these 
 signs which denote his ministry, his command of 
 rude forces, his nationality, his manly earnestness, 
 and, last and greatest, his wondrous sympathy with 
 
220 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 men as men. He emerges from the mass of un- 
 welded materials — in shape much like the earth- 
 spirit in " Faust." He is loud and coarse, like most 
 prophets, " sounding," as he himself phrases it, 
 " his barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." 
 He is the voice of which America stood most in 
 need — a voice at which ladies scream and whipper- 
 snappers titter with delight, but which clearly per- 
 tains to a man who means to be heard. He is the 
 clear forerunner of the great American poets, long 
 yearned for, now prophesied, but not perhaps to be 
 beheld till the vast American democracy has sub- 
 sided a little from its last and grandest struggle. 
 Honour in his generation is, of course, his due ; 
 but he does not seem to solicit honour. He is too 
 thoroughly alive to care about being tickled into 
 activity, too excited already to be much moved 
 by finding himself that most badgered of func- 
 tionaries, the recognized Sir Oracle. 
 
HEKRICK'S HESPEEIDES: 
 
 A NOTE ON AN OLD BOOK. 
 
Flowery rhymes that blossom free 
 In a tuft of greenery, 
 Smiled on by the snn, and bright 
 With the dews of lyric light. 
 
HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 
 
 OULD we quit Babylon, to while 
 away an hour in Fairyland, among 
 Titania and her maids of honour ? 
 We have only to take up the " Hes- 
 perides" of Robert Herrick. It is merely a piece 
 of sweet and careless dissipation — the poetical 
 epitome of a fanciful brain, and a tender, happy 
 heart. Its author squandered all his genius in 
 flower-painting, music-making, and sporting in 
 the shade with Amaryllis ; but his book exists, 
 full of the author and his peccadilloes ; a book 
 to be cherished by lovers of lyrics ; a pretty 
 souvenir of a jovial verse- writer who lived and 
 made innocent love in a cassock, who tippled 
 " Simon the King's" canary with Ben the 
 
224 HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 
 
 laureate and Selden the antiquary, and who 
 lived a hot-headed poet's life, not the life of a 
 philosopher, in the quiet woodland ways. It 
 teems with that luscious physical life which 
 abounded in the man who wrote it ; it is full of 
 his idle fancies, his naughty sayings, and his 
 wooings of women in the abstract. A more 
 exceptionable book than ' ' The Complete Angler," 
 its shortcomings spring, like the other's racy 
 morality, from a nature which means happiness 
 and candour. 
 
 The " Hesperides" is, perhaps, the most 
 musical collection of occasional verses in the 
 language. Pretty thoughts and sounds, con- 
 trolled and regulated by principles of most 
 magical harmony, wreathe magically from the 
 quaint old book, singing and dancing, smiling and 
 shining, perpetuating the memory of Herrick, 
 the kindly clerical Prospero who created them. 
 Glad verses, sad verses, mad verses, and (in a 
 strait-laced sense) bad verses, fill these pages, 
 melting and sighing and dying in a thousand 
 flats and sharps of melody. A book of all moods 
 and measures, a rainbow blended of a thousand 
 
HE BRICK'S HESPERIDES. 225 
 
 different colours ; a thing both of sable and of 
 tinsel, of beautiful shreds and patches. It is 
 redolent of ambrosia, nectar, and all the tipple of 
 the gods. In short, it is a green arbour book, 
 just as old Isaac's " Complete Angler," and 
 Cotton's ' e Montaigne " are green arbour books ; 
 it is to be opened at random, in fine weather, and 
 dreamed over. The cool flow of the syllables, 
 the jingle and glitter of the fancies, the little 
 hidden love- sentiments bubbling cheerily up at 
 the ends of the stanzas, make Herrick's Hip- 
 pocrene very refreshing to the parched literary 
 Arab, the over-worn philosopher, and the lover, 
 if not to the ambitious and metaphysical modern 
 Alastor. 
 
 Many familiar faces — smiling up, as it were, 
 through green leaves, daffodils, and daisies, — 
 peep out on me as I dip into the book. One of 
 these is the well-known " Night Piece," addressed 
 to Mistresse Julia, his inspiration — a poem 
 which every modern cavalier ought to have by 
 heart. Another, also pretty generally known, 
 is the sweet little song about " Daffodils." The 
 following lines are also unique: — 
 
 Q 
 
226 HERRICK'S HESPERIBES. 
 
 Delight in Disorder. 
 
 A sweet disorder in the dresse 
 
 Kindles in cloathes a wantonnesse ; 
 
 A lawn about the shoulders thrown 
 
 Into a fine distraction ; 
 
 An erring lace, which here and there 
 
 Enthralls a crimson stomacher ; 
 
 A cuffe neglectfull, and thereby 
 
 Ribbons to flow confusedly ; 
 
 A winning waves, deserving note, 
 
 In the tempestuous pettecoat ; 
 
 A careless shoe-string, in whoes tye 
 
 I see a wilde civility ; 
 
 Doe more bewitch me, than when art 
 
 Is too precise in every part. 
 
 The above is a fair specimen of Herrick's 
 usual manner. It is short, pithy, and unique, 
 characterized, like most of his verses, by quaint- 
 ness of subject as well as of treatment. Few of 
 the poems in the " Hesperides" are of much 
 length, and the shortest are much the best. 
 Some of the prettiest do not occupy half-a-dozen 
 lines ; but they prove the force of the hackneyed 
 aphorism about brevity. 
 
 
HERRICICS HESPERIDES. 227 
 
 Her Voice. 
 
 So small, so soft, so silvery is her voice, 
 As, could they hear, 'twould make the damn'd rejoice, 
 And listen to her, walking in her chamber, 
 Melting melodious words to lutes of amber ! 
 
 These lines are addressed to Mistresse Julia. 
 Who could have inspired them but a Julia or a 
 Sacharissa ? Who could have composed them 
 but a poet and a lover, unpretending though they 
 are ? Whenever he sings Julia's praises, all who 
 listen recognize a genuine singer. No matter 
 how slender the theme, let it be but connected 
 with his lady, and the poet's fine frenzy is sure 
 to issue forth in thoughts that breathe and words 
 that burn, — that burn even too brightly now and 
 then. Julia, in his eyes, is something to be. 
 worshipped and adored ; she is akin to cherubim ; 
 her form makes music of the poet's breath, like 
 an iEolian harp set in the summer wind. She is 
 the much-belauded heroine of the " Hesperides." 
 She is to Herrick what the Church was to 
 Solomon — the maker of a sweet minstrel. 
 
 Goddess, I do love a girl 
 Ruby-lipped and tooth' d with pearl ; 
 
228 HEBBICK'S HESPERIDES. 
 
 he cries, with eyes that twinkle merrily under- 
 neath his grey hairs. Her breath is likened to 
 " all the spices of the east," to the balm, the 
 myrrh, and the nard ; her skin is like a ' ' lawnie 
 firmament ;" her cheek like " cream and claret 
 commingled," or " roses blowing." But Julia, 
 although his favourite, was not his only lady- 
 love. If we are to believe his own assertion, he 
 was favourably disposed towards the whole sex — 
 at any rate, by no means prejudiced in favour of 
 one individual. He has scores of unpitying yet 
 flawless " mistresses," real and ideal, whom he 
 has transmitted to posterity under such eu- 
 phonious names as Silvia, Corinna, Electra, 
 Perinna, Perilla, and Dianeme. As a rule, he 
 sings their praises sweetly and modestly. His 
 sentimental morality was by no means of the 
 dull heavy kind ; on the contrary, it was brisk 
 and easy, like the religious morality of Herbert 
 and Wither. It was when making merry at the 
 feet of Venus that he felt most at home — when 
 he had nothing to do but fashion fanciful nose- 
 gays, and throw them, with a laugh, into the lap 
 of his lady. His songs suggest the picture of a 
 
HERRICICS HESPERIDES. 229 
 
 respectable British. Bacchus, stout and middle- 
 aged, lipping soft lyrics to the blushing Ariadne 
 at his side ; while, in the background of flowers 
 and green leaves, we catch a glimpse of Oberon 
 and Titania, walking through a stately minuet on 
 a close-shaven lawn, to the frolicking admiration 
 of assembled fairy-land. 
 
 Herrick's best things are his poems in praise 
 of the country life, and his worst things are his epi- 
 grams. Whenever he sings good-humouredly, as 
 in the former, he sings well and sweetly ; whenever 
 he sings ill-humouredly, as in the latter, he sings 
 falsely and harshly. His gladsome, mercurial 
 temper, had a great deal to do with the composi- 
 tion of his best lyrics ; for the parson of Dean 
 Prior was no philosopher, and his lightest, airiest 
 verses are his best. What Marmontel calls 
 " amiable ingenuity, undisguised openness," was 
 a part of his mental as well as of his moral 
 life ; shackled by conventionalism of any sort, he 
 lost all that happy naivete which is the principal, 
 perhaps the only, charm of his written works. 
 His was a happy, careless nature, throwing off 
 verses out of the fulness of a joyous heart, 
 
230 HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 
 
 rioting in a pleasant, sunny element. Out of his 
 own merry and magical circle lie is stiff, stupid, 
 and sophisticated. There was no ill-nature in 
 him ; his epigrams had no sting. The same im- 
 pulse which made him err a little induced him to 
 confess his errors honestly. Without these 
 errors, and the few poems in which he alludes to 
 them, neither his works nor himself can be pro- 
 perly understood. The epigrams I allude to are 
 interspersed with the other poems, and are after 
 the manner of Ben Jonson. The book would 
 have been better without them. 
 
 One or two of his fairy poems appear to me 
 the very perfection of musical excellence. He is 
 coarse enough here and there, without a doubt, 
 and now and then his elfin court entertains in- 
 discreet notions of social propriety. But his 
 fairies can be very engaging, very natural little 
 people, when their creator chooses to be strict 
 with them on the point of moral decorum ; in 
 other words, when they avoid all imitation of 
 the fairies at St. James's, and remain the genuine 
 little pixies of music, mischief, and moonlight. 
 Oberon has his temple, whither he retires for de- 
 
HERRICICS HESPERIDES. 231 
 
 votional purposes, cleansing himself with the 
 holy water contained in a nutshell, and bowing to 
 the altar " in a cloud of frankincense." He has 
 also his feasts, when mushroom tables groan 
 with steaming dainties, when dew-wine is 
 sweetened in goblets of " violets blew," and 
 when the gnat, the cricket, and the grasshopper 
 are court musicians. 
 
 The " pretty flowery and pastoral gale of 
 fancy," which Phillips, in his " Theatrum Poe- 
 tarum" gives Herrick credit for, was never 
 better employed than when bruiting abroad the 
 pleasures of a country life. The honest fellows 
 at Dean Prior (the Devonshire parish of which 
 he was vicar) loved their old ceremonies and 
 customs, and kept them up right heartily; and 
 no doubt the poet entered fully into the spirit of 
 the local enthusiasm. He would range the woods 
 on May morning with the maidens ; sit at wakes 
 with the old women; drink the Whitsun ale, 
 and drain the wassail bowl on Twelfth Nights, 
 with the men. Of all these pleasures he sang* 
 often and enthusiastically. His book is full of 
 pictures taken from that little Devonshire 
 
u 
 
 232 HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 
 
 vicarage. He found beauty in their old customs, 
 however riotously conducted, however plain and 
 homely. He tells us of the maypole, the morris- 
 dance, the shearing feast, and the chase ; singing 
 cheerily of the " nut-browne mirth and russit 
 wit" of such and sundry pastoral mummeries. 
 He pictures to us, with sweet music, the merry- 
 makings at the wake, with its creams and 
 custards, its pageantries of Eobin Hood and 
 Maid Marian, its cudgel-plays, its rustic quarrels, 
 " drowned in ale or drenched in beere." He 
 sings of St. Distaffs Day, when the flax and tow 
 of girls who " go a-spinning" is set on fire, when 
 plackets are scorched, and when the maidens 
 souse the men with pails of new-drawn water. 
 He celebrates the coming-in of the hock-cart, 
 crowned with ears of corn, surrounded by men 
 and women with garlands on their heads, and 
 drawn by horses <c clad in linen white as lilies." 
 He describes both pastoral May-day, when boys 
 and girls pluck the white-thorn boughs, when 
 " green gowns are given," when troths are 
 plighted ; and the Christmas festivities, when the 
 log blazes on the hearth, when " psalteries " are 
 
HERRICK'S HESPEEIDES. 233 
 
 played, when strong beer is quaffed and mince- 
 pies eaten. When he discourses of such homely 
 ceremonies, in his own soft inimitable way, I 
 know no writer of lyrics who equals him in love- 
 liness of music, sweetness of fancy, and luscious 
 warmth of colouring. 
 
 The greater part of the " Hesperides" was writ- 
 ten in Devonshire, when the poet was vicar of the 
 little parish of Dean Prior. He was preferred to 
 the living by Charles I. in the year 1629, having 
 been recommended by the Bishop of Exeter, to 
 whom he more than once makes affectionate allu- 
 sion. Herrick, then in his thirty-eighth year, 
 had already tasted the sweets of literary society, 
 and he did not fall in love with this same dull 
 little Dean Prior as readily as might be antici- 
 pated. Like Crabbe in Suffolk, and Sydney 
 Smith on Salisbury Plain, many years afterwards, 
 he grumbled and fretted in his solitude, de- 
 scribing his parishioners as a " rocky genera- 
 tion," " rude almost as rudest savages," and 
 "churlish as the seas." Probably these words 
 were written when the pulpit was new to him, 
 when the cassock on his shoulders felt uncom- 
 
234 HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 
 
 fortable, when the boisterous young squires in 
 the pews below him were taking his mental and 
 moral measure. He might have found some of 
 the country louts suspicious and surly; for a 
 country congregation is not always bonnet-in- 
 hand to the new pastor; he might have been 
 received coldly enough at first by the " wealthy 
 nobodies." By-and-bye, no doubt, when the 
 awkward feeling wore off on both sides, priest 
 and congregation fraternised. The verses ad- 
 dressed to Larr prove that he felt the parting, 
 when a Puritan was sent to take his place, 
 and he was turned out of house and home to 
 live on his fifths in London. At any rate, his 
 best verses were written in that west-country 
 vicarage : — 
 
 More discontents I never had, 
 
 Since I was born, than here ; 
 "Where I have been, and still am sad, 
 
 In this dull Devonshire. 
 Yet, justly too, I must confesse, 
 
 I ne'r invented such 
 Ennobled numbers for the presse, 
 
 Than where I loath' d so much. 
 
 It seems reasonable to suppose that this bilious 
 
HERRICICS HESPEJRIDES. 235 
 
 feeling wore off, and was absent when lie wrote 
 his sweet lyrics about rural felicity. 
 
 In reading his poems one obtains many a stray 
 peep at the domestic life of the poet ; plain allu- 
 sions are thrown out, which, when patched to- 
 gether, may form a decently consistent picture. 
 Although a universal lover, he never married. 
 His little household consisted of Mistress Pru- 
 dence Baldwin his housekeeper, himself, Trasy 
 his pet spaniel, Phill his tame sparrow, a few 
 chickens, a goose, a cat, and a pet lamb. Poor 
 old Mistress Prew, once pretty Miss Prudence, was 
 Robert HerricFs good angel ; and many are the 
 affectionate allusions he makes to her. Through 
 want and sickness, through sorrow and heartache, 
 she stood by the helpless old bachelor, taking 
 good care of his morals, and rendering his rural 
 home cheery and comfortable : — 
 
 These summer birds did with their master stay 
 The times of warmth, but then they fled away, 
 Leaving their poet, being now grown old, 
 Exposed to all the comming winter's cold. 
 But thou, kind Prew, didst with my fates abide 
 As well the winter's as the summer's tide. 
 
236 HERRICK'S HESPERIDES. 
 
 For which thy love, live with thy master here, 
 Not one, but all the seasons of the yeare. 
 
 Herrick is fully as sincere in other matters. 
 He is very poor, lie admits the fact ; but he has 
 his cates and beer, he thanks Heaven, and his life 
 is easy. He is not good-looking ; he is mope-eyed 
 and ungainly. He has lost a finger. He hates 
 Oliver Cromwell. Sooner than take the Cove- 
 nant against his convictions he will be thrust out 
 of his living. He is of opinion that a king can 
 do no wrong ; that Charles I. was a martyr, and 
 Charles II. is the very incarnation of virtue. 
 " Robert Herrick, Vickar," says the register, 
 " was buried on the 15th day of October, 1674." 
 How many true singers of lyrics has England 
 boasted since that date ? 
 
VI. 
 
 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 F by morality in literature,, I imply 
 merely the moral atmosphere to be 
 inhaled from certain written thoughts 
 of men and women, I would not be 
 understood as publicly pinning my faith on any 
 particular code of society, although such and such 
 a code may form part of the standard of my 
 private conduct; as confounding the cardinal 
 virtues with the maxims of a cardiphonia — 
 " omnia dicta factaque," as Petronius says, 
 " quasi papavere et sesamo sparsa." The con- 
 duct of life is to a great extent a private affair, 
 about which people will never quite agree. But 
 books are public property, and their effect is a 
 public question. It seems, at first sight, very 
 difficult to decide what books may be justly styled 
 
240 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 " immoral ; " in other words, what books have a 
 pernicious effect on readers fairly qualified to read 
 them. Starting, however, agreed upon certain 
 finalities — as is essential in every and any dis- 
 cussion — readers may come to a common under- 
 standing as to certain works. Two points of 
 agreement with the reader are necessary to my 
 present purpose ; and these are, briefly stated : — 
 (1) That no book is to be judged immoral by any 
 other rule than its effects upon the moral mind, 
 and (2) that the moral mind, temporarily defined, 
 is one consistent with a certain standard accepted 
 or established by itself, and situated at a decent 
 height above prejudice. Bigotry is not mo- 
 rality. 
 
 Morality in literature is, I think, far more in- 
 timately connected with the principle of sincerity 
 of sight than any writer has yet had the courage 
 to point out. Courage, indeed, is necessary, 
 since there is no subject on which a writer is so 
 liable to be misconceived. The subject, how- 
 ever, is not a difficult one, if we take sincerity 
 of sight into consideration. Wherever there is 
 insincerity in a book there can be no morality ; 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 241 
 
 and wherever there is morality, but without art, 
 there is no literature. 
 
 Nothing, we all know, is more common than 
 clever writing; very clever writing, in fact, is 
 the vice of contemporary literature. Everywhere 
 is brilliance not generally known to be Brum- 
 magem, — pasteboard marvels that glimmer like 
 jewels down Mr. Mudie's list. It is so easy to 
 get up a kaleidoscope ; a few bits of stained 
 glass, bright enough to catch the eye, and well 
 contrasted, are the chief ingredients. It is so 
 difficult to find a truth to utter ; and then, 
 when the truth is found, how hard it is to utter 
 it beautifully ! That is only a portion of the 
 labour besetting an earnest writer. Directly he 
 has caught his truth, and feels competent to 
 undertake the noble task of beautifying it, he 
 has to ask his conscience if there be not in 
 society some deeper truth against which the new 
 utterance may offend; and hence arise the per- 
 sonal demands, — " Have I a right to say these 
 things ? Do I believe in them with all my faculties 
 of belief? Is my heart in them, and am I sure 
 that I understand them clearly ? " The moral 
 
 R 
 
242 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 mind must answer. If that replies in the af- 
 firmative, the minor question, of whether the 
 truth will be palatable to society, is of no con- 
 sequence. Let the words be uttered at all 
 hazards, at all losses, and the gods will take 
 care of the rest. It may be remarked, that 
 what the writer believes to be a truth is in all 
 possibility a falsehood, immoral and dangerous. 
 The reply is, that Nature, in her wondrous wisdom 
 for little things, regulates the immorality and 
 the danger by a plan of her own, so delicate, so 
 beautiful, as to have become part of the spirit of 
 Art itself. A writer, for example, may believe 
 with all his might that the legalisation of prosti- 
 tution would be productive of good. He will do 
 no harm by uttering his belief, founded as it is 
 in his finest faculties, if he has weighed the 
 matter thoroughly ; and his book, though it may 
 offend scores of respectable people, will be a 
 moral book. If, on the other hand, the writer 
 be hasty, insincere, writing' under inadequate 
 motives, he will be certain to betray himself, and 
 every page of his book will offend against mo- 
 rality. For the conditions of expression are so 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 243 
 
 occult, that no man can write immorally without 
 being detected and exposed by the wise. His 
 insincerity of sight in matters of conduct will 
 betray itself in a hundred ways j for whatever be 
 his mental calibre, we are in no danger of mis- 
 conceiving the temper of his understanding. 
 This fact, which connects the author's morality 
 with the sincerity of his sight, is at once the 
 cultivated reader's salvation against immoral 
 effects from immoral books. What does not 
 affect us as literature cannot affect our moral 
 sensitiveness, and can therefore do no harm. So 
 distinctly does nature work, indeed, that what is 
 one writer's immorality, is the morality of another 
 writer; so delicately does she work, that what 
 shocks us in one book, plays lightly through the 
 meaning of another, and gives us pleasure. An 
 immoral subject, treated insincerely, leaves an 
 immoral effect on those natures weak enough to 
 be influenced by it at all. The same subject, 
 treated with the power of genius and the delicacy 
 of art, delights and exalts us ; in the pure white 
 light of the author's sincerity, and the delicate 
 tints of literary loveliness, the immoral point 
 
244 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 just shows distinctly enough to impress purely, 
 without paining. All deep lovers of art must 
 have felt this in the " Cenci." A moral idea, on 
 the other hand, — that is to say, an idea generally 
 recognized as connected with morality, — disgusts 
 us, if it be treated insincerely. Every nerve of 
 the reader is jarred ; there is no pleasure, no ex- 
 altation of the spirit or intellect ; and the moral 
 sense feels numbed and blunted proportionally. 
 
 The mere physical passion of man for woman 
 is a case in point. The description of this 
 passion in coarse hands is abominable ; yet how 
 many poems are alive with it, and with it alone ! 
 The early poems of Alfred de Musset are im- 
 moral and unreal, and consequently displeasing \ 
 some of the songs of Beranger are flooded with 
 sensuality ; yet, just because they are sincere, 
 they do not impress us sensually.* Iu Bums 
 
 * " I find a highly remarkable contrast to this Chinese 
 novel in the ' Chansons de BerangerJ which have almost 
 every one some immoral, licentious subject for their founda- 
 tion, which would be extremely odious to me if managed by 
 a genius inferior to Beranger ; he, however, has succeeded in 
 making them not only tolerable, but pleasing." — Goethe's 
 Conversations, i. p. 350. 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 245 
 
 and Beranger, even in some of their coarsest 
 moments, the physical passion is so real, that it 
 bring-s before us at once the presence of the Man ; 
 and, looking on Mm, we feel a thrill of finer 
 human sympathy, in which the passion he is ex- 
 pressing cannot offend us. In the insincere 
 writer, the passion is a gross thing ; in the sin- 
 cere writer, it becomes part of the life and colour 
 of a human being. Thus finely does Nature 
 prevent mere immorality from affecting* the 
 moral mind at all ; while, in dealing with men of 
 real genius, she makes the immoral sentiment, 
 saturated with poetry, breathe a fine aroma, 
 which stirs the heart not unpleasantly, and rapidly 
 purifies itself as it mounts up to the brain. 
 
 Certain books of great worth are of course 
 highly injurious to minds unqualified to read 
 them. Out of Boccaccio, whom our Chaucer 
 loved, and from whose writings our Keats drew 
 a comb of purest honey, many young men get 
 nothing but evil. He who has gained no 
 standard of his own, or whose ideas of life are 
 base and brutal, had better content himself with 
 Messrs. Chambers's expurgated Shakespeare, 
 
246 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 and the good books lent out of the local library. 
 But a true lover of books, though he be not a 
 mere student, may pass with clean feet through 
 any path of literature, as safe in the gloomy 
 region of Roman satire as in the bright land of 
 Una and the Milk-white Lamb : he knows well 
 that what is really shocking will not attract him, 
 because it is sure to be shockingly — i. e., inartis- 
 tically — uttered. He feels that what is not 
 abominable, but somewhat removed from his own 
 ideas of decency, will affect him merely in pro- 
 portion to the sincerity and delicacy of the reve- 
 lation, and cannot hurt him, because it is subdued 
 or kept at a distance by the mental emotion 
 which the sincerity and delicacy have imparted. 
 It will not disconcert him, but make him love 
 his own standard all the better. It is, in fact, 
 only on account of sensualists and fools that one 
 now and then wishes to throw some of his best 
 books in the fire. If poor Boccaccio could only 
 hear what Smith and Brown say about him ! If 
 La Fontaine only knew the moral indignation of 
 Gigadibs ! 
 
 The list of so-called immoral books is very 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 247 
 
 numerous. No writer, perhaps, is less spoken 
 about, and yet has more attraction for students, 
 than Petronius Arbiter. What is the effect of 
 Petronius on the moral mind ? Not, I fervently 
 believe, an immoral effect — if we set aside certain 
 passages which a reader " scunners" at, passes 
 over, and obliterates from his memory. Yet the 
 subject is impure in the highest degree : from 
 Gito to Trimalchio, every character in the satire 
 is wicked. The satire is saved from worth] ess- 
 ness by the sincerity of its object. It does not 
 carry us away as Juvenal does ; but it impresses 
 us with a picture of the times — painful, no doubt, 
 but no more likely to shock us than the history 
 of the reign of Charles II : then come the purer 
 passages, irradiating and cheering us ; and under 
 all flows the deep delicious stream of the Latinity. 
 Were the book not a satire, but a purposeless 
 work of imagination, it might influence us other- 
 wise, if we studied it at all. As it is, History 
 steps up, and makes Petronius moral. We end 
 it with a strange image of the times when it was 
 written ; but the passages which we do not 
 forget, or try to forget, are the pure ones, such 
 
248 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 as the delicious introductory speech on eloquence, 
 and the description of the wonderful feast of 
 Trimalchio. 
 
 Juvenal is as gross, but he influences us far 
 more splendidly. He carries us away, as I said 
 above. When, as in the second satire, he 
 launches his fierce blows at the Eoman philo- 
 sophers, who thinks of the coarser details ? who 
 is not full of the fiery energy which calls Vice by 
 her name, and drags her naked through the 
 Eoman mire ? When, in the sixth satire,* he 
 vents his thunderous spleen on women, who is 
 not hurried along to the end ? and who does not 
 feel that the cry, coming when it did, was a sin- 
 cere and salutary one ? 
 
 When I pass from the region of satire and 
 come to Catullus, my feeling changes. It may 
 sound very shocking to some of the hero-wor- 
 shippers, but the " lepidum novum lioellum" 
 seems to me really an immoral work, and I wish 
 that the dry pumice-stone had rubbed out at 
 
 * Which Dryden, a grand specimen of literary immo- 
 rality, only translated under protest. 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 249 
 
 least half of the poems. For there is sufficient 
 evidence in the purer portions to show that 
 Catullus was wholly insincere when he wrote the 
 fouler portions — that he was a man with splendid 
 instincts, and a moral sense which even repeated 
 indulgence in base things failed to obliterate. 
 Read the poems to Lesbia : 
 
 Lesbia ilia, 
 Ilia Lesbia, quam Catullus unam 
 Plus quam se, atque suos amavit omnes ! 
 
 Lesbia, whom (if we identify her with Clodia) 
 Cicero himself called " quadrantaria," and who 
 is yet immortal as Laura and Beatrice. This 
 one passion, expressed in marvellous numbers, 
 is enough to show what a heart was beating 
 in the poet's bosom. He who could make 
 infamy look so beautiful in the bright intensity 
 of his love was false and unreal when he stooped 
 to hurl filth at his contemporaries, from Caesar 
 down to the Yibenii. His grossness is all pur- 
 poseless, weak, insincere, adopted in imitation 
 of a society to which he was made immeasurably 
 superior by the strength of that one passion. 
 His love-poems to Lesbia, coarse as they are in 
 
250 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 parts, leave on the reader an impression very 
 different, — too pathetic, too beautiful, to be 
 impure. Whether he bewails in half- plaintive 
 irony the death of the sparrow, or sings in 
 rapturous ecstasy, as in the fifth poem, or cries in 
 agony to the gods, as in the lines beginning, — 
 
 Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas, 
 Est homini, quum se cogitat esse pium, 
 
 he is in earnest, exhibiting all the depths of a 
 misguided but noble nature. Only intense emo- 
 tion, only grand sincerity, could have made a 
 prostitute immortal : for immortality must mean 
 beauty. Thus with Catullus, as with others, 
 Nature herself delicately beautifies for the reader 
 subjects which would otherwise offend ; and dig- 
 nifies classical passion by the intensity of the 
 emotion which she causes it to produce. 
 
 It is an easy step from Catullus to La Fontaine. 
 Catullus was an immoral man — lived an immoral 
 life :— 
 
 Quisquis versibus exprimit Catullum 
 Raro moribus exprimit Catonem! 
 
 But what shall we say of the charming French- 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 251 
 
 man, the child of Nature, if ever child of Nature 
 existed ? If we want to understand him at all, 
 we must set English notions and modern pre- 
 judice to some extent aside. Look at the man — 
 a man, as M. Taine calls him, " peu moral, me- 
 diocrement digne, exempt de grands passions et 
 enclin au plaisir i" ' ' a trifler," as he is con- 
 temptuously styled by Macaulay. He sought to 
 amuse himself, and nothing more; loved good- 
 living, gambled, flirted, made verses, delighted 
 in " bons vins et gentilles Gauloises." He did 
 not even hide his infidelities from his wife. If 
 she was indignant, he treated her remarks 
 jocosely. He wrote to Madame de la Fontaine, 
 that immediately on entering a place, when 
 travelling, he inquired for the beautiful women ; 
 told of an amorous adventure in an alley; and 
 said, speaking of the- ladies of a certain town, 
 " Si je trouve quelqu'un de ces chaperons qui 
 couvre une jolie tete, je pourrai bien ni'y assurer 
 en passant et par curiosite seulement \" Like all 
 gay men, he had his "moments of despondency, 
 but he was without depth. In spite of all this, 
 he was capable of taking an independent attitude ; 
 
252 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 and his devotion to his friends was as great as 
 his infidelity to his wife. So he left behind him 
 his " Fables " and ' ' Tales/' — pride and glory of 
 the French nation. They are sincere — they are 
 charming ; they are full of flashes of true poetry ; 
 they are, in fact, the agreeable written patter of 
 La Fontaine himself. Is their effect immoral? 
 I think not. We are so occupied with the 
 manner of the teller — we are so amused with his 
 piquancy and outspokenness, that we do not 
 brood too long over the impure. The flashes of 
 poetry and wit play around the u gaudriole," and 
 purify it unconscientiously. La Fontaine sits 
 before us in his easy chair. We see the twinkling 
 of his merry eye, and we hear his wit tinkling 
 against his subject — like ice tapping on the side 
 of a beaker of champagne. We are brought up 
 with much purer notions, but we cannot help en- 
 joying the poet's society — he is so straight- 
 forward, so genuine. We would not like to 
 waste precious time in his company very often ; 
 but he is harmless. We must have a very poor 
 opinion of ourselves if we think our moral tone 
 can be hurt by such a shallow fellow. 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 253 
 
 It would prove no more to prolong examples of 
 this sort. As for modern French writers of the 
 " immoral" school, they are an imitative and 
 inferior set — -only competent to hurt schoolboys. 
 George Sand, because she is not always sincere, 
 has written immorally — in such trash as " Leone 
 Levi," for example ; but where she has conferred 
 literary splendour on illicit passion, where her 
 words burn with the reality of a fiery nature — 
 she has not shocked us — we have been so ab- 
 sorbed with the intensity of the more splendid 
 emotion growing out of and playing over a sub- 
 ject deeply felt. The pleasure we have derived 
 from her finer efforts in that direction has not 
 been immoral in any true sense of the word ; for 
 the sincerity of the writer has caused the revela- 
 tion of the agony, and made us feel glad that our 
 own standards are happier. Inferior writers may 
 grovel as much as they please, but we don't heed 
 them. We know their books are immoral, but 
 we know also that they are not literature. 
 
 A well-meaning and conscientious man will not 
 unfrequently disseminate immoral ideas through 
 deficiency of insight. The late Count de Yigny 
 
254 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 did so. In his translations of Shakespeare he 
 softened all the coarse passages, and in many 
 cases only rendered the indelicacy more insidious. 
 But he sinned most outrageously in his boldest 
 original effort, the play of ( l Chatterton" — "An 
 austere work/' he says, " written in the silence 
 of a labour of seventeen nights." The hero, of 
 course, is the young English poet. The play 
 is a plea for genius against society. The plea 
 sounds more affective in the highnown preface 
 than in the text which follows : — " When a man 
 dies in this way/' says De Vignv, " is he then a 
 suicide ? No ; it is society that flings him into 
 the fire ! . . . There are some things which kill 
 the ideas first and the man afterwards : hunger, 
 for example. ... I ask society to do no more 
 than she is capable of doing. I do not ask her 
 to cure the pains of the heart, and drive away 
 unhappy ideals — to prevent TTerther and Saint 
 Preux from lovin°* Charlotte and Julie d'Etano-es. 
 There are, I know, a thousand miserable ideas 
 over which society has no control. The more 
 reason, it seems to me, to think of those which 
 she can cure. . . . One should not suffer those 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 255 
 
 whose infirmity is inspiration to perish. They 
 are never numerous, and I cannot help thinking 
 they possess some value, since humanity is una- 
 nimous on the subject of their grandeur, and 
 declares their verse immortal — when they are 
 dead. . . . Let us cease to say to them, Despair 
 and die. It is for legislation to answer this 
 plea, one of the most vital and profound that 
 can agitate society." Unfortunately, poets starve 
 still, and apologists like De Vigny have not 
 made society one whit the kinder. As might 
 have been expected, the play is full of puerilities. 
 The " Chatterton" of De Vigny is a mere abstrac- 
 tion, cleverly conceived, no doubt, but no more 
 like the real person than the real person was like 
 a monk of the fifteenth century, or the French 
 " Child of the Age." He has been educated with 
 the young nobility at Oxford, has taken to litera- 
 ture, and has fallen in love with " Kitty Bell," 
 who has several children by a brute of a husband. 
 The only way he can devise to show his attach- 
 ment is to give Kitty a Bible, and the first act 
 ends with her soliloquy after receiving the same. 
 " Why," exclaims Mrs. Bell, " why, when I 
 
256 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 touched my husband/ s hand, did I reproach my- 
 self for keeping this book ? Conscience cannot 
 be in the wrong. (She stands dreaming.) I will 
 return it." In the opinion of the French drama- 
 tists, it is exceedingly pathetic to find a married 
 woman and London landlady falling in love with 
 her lodger, and vastly probable to make certain 
 lords go hunting, in Chatterton's time, on Prim- 
 rose Hill. Aggravated to frenzy by mingled 
 hunger and love, the poet determines to kill 
 himself; but is interrupted by the entrance of 
 " Le Quaker," a highly moral and sagacious per- 
 son, who makes a great figure in the play. The 
 two discourse on suicide. " What ! n cries the 
 Quaker at last, " Kitty Bell loves you ! Xow, 
 will you kill yourself ? " Whereas, in real life, 
 any sensible fellow, even a Frenchman, would 
 have said, " Far better kill yourself, my boy, 
 than continue in this infatuation for an elderly 
 married woman." Chatterton relents for the 
 time being. He is afterwards made desperate, 
 however, by Lord Mayor Beckford, a personage 
 of whose authority De Vigny had the most ex- 
 aggerated notions, and who offers the poor poet 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 257 
 
 a situation as footman. " my soul, I have 
 sold thee ! " cried Chatterton, when left to 
 himself; " I purchase thee back with this." 
 And he thereupon drinks the opium. He 
 then throws his manuscripts on the fire. " Go, 
 noble thoughts written for the ungrateful ! " he 
 exclaims; "be purified in the flame, and mount 
 to heaven with me ! " At this point Kitty Bell 
 enters the chamber, and much sweet sentiment 
 is spoken. " Listen to me," says the marvellous 
 boy. " You have a charming family : do you 
 love your children ? " e ' Assuredly — more than 
 life." " Love your life, then, for the sake of 
 those to whom you have given it." " Alas ! "'tis 
 not for their sakes that I love it." " What is 
 there more beautiful in the world, Kitty Bell ? " 
 asks Chatterton ; " with those angels on your 
 knees, you resemble divine Charity." He at last 
 tells her that he is a doomed man ; whereupon 
 she falls upon her knees, exclaiming, " Powers of 
 heaven, spare him." He falls dead. Then again 
 the Quaker makes his appearance, like the moral 
 incarnated ; and at his back John Bell, the brute 
 of a husband. Kitty dies by the side of Chat- 
 
258 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 terton ; and the curtain falls as the Quaker cries, 
 " In thine own kingdom, in thine own, Lord, 
 receive these two Maetyrs ! n 
 
 It would be tedious to point out the sickliness 
 of the story, or to show further how utterly the 
 simplicity of truth is destroyed by the false ele- 
 ments introduced to add to its pathos. So utterly 
 unreal are the circumstances, that they impress 
 Frenchmen as ludicrously as Englishmen; they 
 are immoral, but harmless through very silliness. 
 The play from beginning to end, in its feebleness 
 and falsehood, is a fair specimen of what an in- 
 competent man may do when dealing with a sub- 
 ject which he does not understand. He does not 
 feel the truth, and therefore introduces elements 
 to make it more attractive to his sympathies. 
 He thinks he is saying a fine thing when he is 
 uttering what merely awakens ridicule. He pro- 
 nounces Pan superior to Apollo, and gets the 
 asses' ears for his pains ; and the crown is so 
 palpable to the eyes of all men, that nobody 
 listens to his solemn judgments afterwards. 
 
 Wherever great sin has found truly literary 
 expression, that expression has contained the 
 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 259 
 
 thrill of pain which touches and teaches. Where- 
 ever a gay sincere heart has chosen immoral 
 subjects, and succeeded in making them (as 
 Goethe expressed it) not only tolerable but 
 pleasant, Nature has stepped in with the magic 
 of genius to spiritualise the impure. Where 
 there is sin in literature and no suffering, the 
 description is false, because in life the moral 
 implication of sin is suffering; and whether a 
 writer expresses the truth through actual expe- 
 rience, or mere insight, the effect is the same. 
 Where immoral subjects have been treated gaily, 
 in levity, without the purifying- literary spiritua- 
 lity, the result has been worthless, — it has minis- 
 tered neither to knowledge nor to pleasure. 
 And to what does all this, if admitted, lead ? 
 To the further admission that immoral writing 
 proceeds primarily from insincerity of sight, 
 and that nothing is worthy the name of 
 literature which is decided on fair grounds to be 
 immoral. 
 
 It is easy to apply the broad test to some of 
 our older authors, who have certainly used lan- 
 guage pretty freely. We shall not go very far 
 
260 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 wrong if we pronounce many of the Elizabethan 
 dramatists, and all the dramatists of the Restora- 
 tion, to be immoral. Yet Shakespeare is occa- 
 sionally as gross as any of his contemporaries ; 
 while Jonson, an inferior writer, through a straight- 
 forward and splendid nature, is singularly pure. 
 I do not fancy, for my own part, that we should 
 lose much if Congreve and Wycherly were thrown 
 on the fire. It is fortunate that few females read 
 Mrs. Behn. When we come to Swift we find a heap 
 of coarse stuff, both in prose and verse ; but is it 
 immoral ? As the bitter outpouring of a strangely 
 little spirit, it is disagreeable, but it is real — if 
 we except some of the worthless pieces and the 
 worst portions of Gulliver. The descriptions in 
 the latter part of Gulliver are immoral, because 
 they are obviously insincere, and are therefore 
 loathsome and injurious. 
 
 For critics should insist upon the fact that 
 literature is meant to minister to our finer mental 
 needs through the medium of spiritualized sensa- 
 tion. I do not think it possible to over-rate the 
 moral benefit to be gained by the frequent con- 
 templation of beautiful and ennobling literature. 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 261 
 
 But La Fontaine, as has been suggested, can 
 awaken the sentiment of beauty — in his own little 
 way, in his own degree. On the other hand, the 
 moral injury we receive, from the contemplation 
 of writings degrading and not beautiful, is also 
 inestimable. In reading books it is easy to no- 
 tice broad unrealities and indecencies, but very 
 difficult indeed to recognize the poison coated 
 with clean white diction. Mr. Tennyson might 
 write a poem to-morrow which would be essen- 
 tially immoral, and yet very hard to detect. In 
 point of fact, being a man of genius, he would 
 not do so ; but if the thing were done, not many 
 would be awake to it. It requires an occult 
 judgment now-a-days to find out immoral books. 
 If an Englishman of to-day were to write like 
 Catullus or Herrick, or to tell such tales as " La 
 Berceau" of La Fontaine, or the " Carpenter's 
 Wife" of Chaucer, we should hound him from 
 our libraries ; and justly, because no Englishman, 
 in the presence of our civilization, with the ad- 
 vantage of our decisive finalities as to the decencies 
 of language j could say to his conscience, " I have 
 a right to say these things ; I believe in them 
 
262 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 with all my faculties of belief; my heart is in 
 them, and I am sure that I understand them 
 clearly." Our danger just now does not lie in 
 that direction. There is no danger of our writers 
 indulging in indecencies. Whatever our private 
 life may be, our literature is singularly alive to 
 the proprieties. As our culture has grown, as 
 our ideas of decorum have narrowed, the immo- 
 rality of books has been more and more disguised ; 
 indeed, so well is it disguised at this time, that 
 the writers themselves often fancy they are mixing 
 up aperients, not doses of wormwood. A shower of 
 immoral books pours out yearly; many of them are 
 read by religious societies and praised by bishops, 
 and by far the larger number of them find favour 
 with Mr. Mudie. A new public has arisen, created 
 by new schools of writers; and now-a-days one 
 must be careful how he throws out a hard truth, 
 lest he hit the fretful head of the British matron. 
 The immorality is of a different kind, but it works 
 quite as perniciously in its own sphere as the 
 immorality of modern French writers of the 
 avowedly immoral school. 
 
 The immorality I complain of in modern books 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 263 
 
 is their untruth in matters affecting private con- 
 duct, their false estimates of character, the false 
 impressions they convey concerning modern life 
 in general, and especially with regard to the rela- 
 tions between the sexes. This immorality, of 
 course, shows itself mainly in our fiction ; though 
 from our fiction it has spread into our religious 
 writing and our philosophy. The main purpose 
 of fiction is to please ; and so widely is this felt, 
 that a novel with an avowedly didactic purpose 
 is very wisely avoided by the subscribers to the 
 circulating libraries. Scott, the greatest novelist 
 that ever lived, never stooped to so-called didactic 
 writing at all, directly or indirectly ; for he knew 
 that to do so would have been to deny the value 
 of fiction altogether, because true pictures need no 
 dry tag to make them impress and teach. Thacke- 
 ray was not quite so wise, being a so much smaller 
 writer and inferior artist ; he worked in his own 
 sickening and peculiar fashion ; yet he never pre- 
 tended to be a didactic teacher. Didactic writing 
 in novels, at the best, is like a moral printed 
 underneath a picture, describing the things which, 
 it is supposed, the reader ought to infer from the 
 
264 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 picture ; or, like the commentaries bound in with 
 some of the French translations of Goethe's 
 <f Faust" and Dante's "Inferno." When, there- 
 fore, we see the announcement as " A Novel with 
 a Purpose/' we may pretty safely infer that it 
 will serve no wise man's purpose to read that 
 novel. 
 
 Life is very hard and difficult, our personal 
 relations with each other are complicated enough 
 without the intrusion of puzzles and untruths from 
 the circulating library. If novelists would only 
 paint what they are convinced they thoroughly 
 understand, and critics would only convict 
 offenders more severely, we should soon be 
 more comfortable. Erroneous notions of men, 
 drawn from books, ruin many women yearly, 
 paralyse the understanding, numb the faculty 
 of insight just as it is going to accumulate its 
 own wisdom, confuse the whole prospect of life 
 at the very outset. Vulgar Virtue (hero No. 1) 
 turns out a brute daily, and chills the ethereal 
 temper of Sentimental Suffering (heroine Xo. 1), 
 who, in an hour of adoration, has allied herself 
 to him. Silent Endurance (hero Ts"o. 2) bears 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 265 
 
 so much that we are suspicious ; so we run 
 a pin into his heart, and the heart bleeds — vine- 
 gar. As men and women advance in life they 
 ascertain that happiness and beauty are not to 
 be produced by a single faculty, but by the 
 happy harmonious blending of all the faculties ; 
 that the hero in battle may make an atrocious 
 husband, that vulgar virtue becomes tiresome 
 when separated from spirituality, and that there 
 are some things which fine natures cannot endure 
 silently. This is not saying that a single faculty 
 may not be remarkable and pleasing, that a hero 
 is not a hero, that virtue is contemptible, that 
 control over the emotions is not desirable, and 
 even enviable. It means merely that the writers 
 in question describe faculties and not characters ; 
 abstractions, not realities ; not men and women, 
 but peculiarities of men and women. The whole 
 is lost in the part, and the effect is immoral in a 
 high degree. 
 
 A well-known instance in point may be given, 
 and then illustrations may cease. Some years 
 ago it was the custom for every novelist to make 
 his hero and heroine personally handsome. The 
 
266 LITERARY MORALITY. 
 
 appearance of (< Jane Eyre" was welcomed as a 
 salutary protest, and a revolution was the conse- 
 quence. For a considerable time afterwards ugly 
 heroes and heroines were the rage ; and the book- 
 shop poured forth immoral books — immoral be- 
 cause they lived against a natural truth, that 
 mere beauty is finer than mere ugliness, did not 
 prove that nobility of nature is finer than mere 
 beauty, did not tell that nobility of nature with- 
 out such beauty. At present the plan of many 
 novelists is very funny. They adopt a medium. 
 Ugly heroes and heroines, as well as handsome 
 ones, have gone out of fashion. A hero now is 
 " not what would strictly be termed beautiful ; 
 his features were faulty ; but there was — " any 
 novel-reader will complete the sentence. In the 
 same manner, a heroine, " although at ordinary 
 times she attracted little attention, because, under 
 the influence of emotion, so lovely that all the 
 faults of feature were forgotten." I fear I hardly 
 do the novel-writers justice in these matters of 
 description, but their own lively paintings are so 
 well known that my inability can cause them no 
 injury. 
 
LITERARY MORALITY. 267 
 
 Against immoral books of all kinds there is 
 but one remedy — severe and competent criticism. 
 If, as I have endeavoured to point out, morality 
 in literature is dependent on sincerity of sight, 
 and if all immoral writing betrays itself by its 
 insincerity, feebleness, and want of verisimilitude, 
 the work of criticism is pretty simple. To prove 
 a work immoral in any way but one, it would be 
 necessary to have endless discussion as to what 
 is, and what is not morality. The one way is to 
 apply the purely literary test, and convince the 
 public that the question of immorality need not 
 be discussed at all, since it is settled by the 
 decision that the work under review is not 
 literature. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The bulk of the preceding paper appeared some time 
 since in the Fortnightly Review, and attracted considerable 
 criticism. There are only a few words to be said in further 
 defence of a "theory" which never pretended to be ex- 
 haustive. Of the kindly critic {Spectator) who, citing 
 Goethe and others, alleged that sincere work is often 
 more insidious in its immorality than inferior and in- 
 sincere work, it may be asked — is he not setting up the 
 
268 NOTE. 
 
 final and arbitrary system of ethics which I disclaim at 
 the outset, — by which Goethe's " self-love" and the like is 
 to be adjudged " immoral?" How is a man's work.to be 
 proven immoral because it honestly clothes his natural 
 instincts in artistic language ? To another ingenious 
 writer {Contemporary Review) who, in rebuking what he 
 called my " love for the gaudriole" defined morality as 
 faithfulness to the tendencies of one's time, I have nothing 
 to reply save that a further examination of the preceding 
 may show him that we do not disagree so thoroughly as his 
 habit of dissecting cobwebs leads him to imagine. Other 
 and hastier critics have merely gone over objections which 
 had previously occurred to myself, and which are far too 
 numerous to be mentioned here. 
 
VII. 
 
 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 
 
 ^tK^ 
 
I am a pilgrim, on the quest 
 For the City of the Blest ; 
 Free from sin and free from pain, 
 When shall 1 that city gain ?" 
 
 When suns no longer set and rise, 
 When bishops' mitres star the shies, 
 When alms are dropt in all earth's streets, 
 And angels nod upon their seats, 
 
 O pilgrim, thou shalt take thy stand 
 Within the City yet unplannd, 
 And see beneath, with sleepy shrug, 
 The draff within the Pit undug." 
 
 Xew Soxg to an Old Tuhj 
 
ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE, 
 
 N the " Gestandisse " of Heinrich 
 Heine occurs a pregnant passage 
 concerning Hegel. " Generally/' 
 writes the bitter humourist, ' ' Hegel's 
 conversation was a sort of monologue, breathed 
 forth noiselessly by fits and starts ; the daily 
 quaintness of his words often impressed me, in- 
 somuch that many of them still cling to my 
 memory. One fine starlight evening, as we stood 
 looking out from the window, I, a young man of 
 twenty-fjve, having just dined ivell and drunk my 
 coffee, spoke enthusiastically concerning the stars, 
 and called them the homes of departed spirits. 
 ' The stars, hum ! hum !' muttered Hegel. ' The 
 stars are only a brilliant leprosy in heaven's face.' 
 ' In God's name, then, I exclaimed, ' is there no 
 
272 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 
 
 place of bliss above, where virtue meets with its 
 reward after death V But he, the master, glaring 
 at me with his pale eyes, said sharply, f So ! you 
 want a bonus for having taken care of your sick 
 mother, and refrained from poisoning your worthy 
 brother /' " It is in no profane spirit that I select 
 this grim and terrible passag-e for a brief com- 
 ment. The words in italics touch on the pro- 
 found mystery, but only make it more hopeless. 
 
 Feeble religion, clinging with slight hands of 
 flesh to every straw of counsel, may gain help and 
 comfort from the prospect of rewards, may cross 
 herself and groan at the brimstone jaws of the pit 
 of punishments ; but out of the clear white air of 
 theology, this doctrine of the booms drops like a 
 falling tear. There, at least, in that serene at- 
 mosphere, we cease to regard the Master merely 
 as an Almighty Pedagogue, dealing out prizes to 
 the good and whippings to the naughty, or as a 
 splendid Sentimentalist, making of widows' tears 
 and bairns' blood the rainbow of a heaven of 
 melancholy beauty. Humbly, as in a glass, dimly, 
 mystically, we behold something infinitely more — 
 a Spirit abiding by the wondrous fitness of life 
 
OX A PASSAGE IX HEIXE. 273 
 
 itself, and stooping to no prevarications with the 
 wicked or the unhappy. Life once given, the rest 
 is easy. We are to play our little comedy or 
 tragedy in our own fashion, and so effloresce into 
 beauty at once, or retreat again into the phases 
 of decay. But as for that new Jerusalem, perhaps 
 it is not yet built, and if it indeed be fashioned, 
 be sure that the foundation-stone of the city is 
 not to be laid in hell. Now and henceforth, 
 perfect bliss is a blank business, the point where 
 man and monkey shade off into the elements. If 
 I assassinate my father, it needs no hades to 
 adjust the matter ; and, here and elsewhere, heaven 
 will never go by mere finite merit. 
 
 It is natural for very pious people to be afraid 
 of theology — white light blinds quickest. But 
 a little more theology would do our religion no 
 harm. We find that even the tender-hearted, 
 who will by no means believe in the Pit, are quite 
 ready to pin their hopes on the Paradise. It is 
 very sad. Men who, like myself, believe in the 
 Redeemer, find it hard to follow Him beyond a 
 beautiful halting- place. We long so wearily for 
 sleep ; yet is it not barely possible that the sleep 
 
274 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 
 
 wherewith our life is rounded may refresh us 
 amply, so that we shall awake ready to go on and 
 on ? Waking and sleep, sleep and waking. The 
 tired dews of one life wiped away, the pilgrim 
 shall push forward till he is tired again. Another 
 sleep, another waking. At every stage, the 
 wonder deepening ; at every life, the faculty for 
 living intensifying. But eternal halt, no ! God 
 is exhaustless, and the soul thirsts everlastingly, 
 and the path ever winds onward. Who would 
 exchange this activity for howsoever sweet a 
 symposium ? 
 
 To the purpose, though with a far different 
 drift, wrote Moses Mendelssohn, in his new 
 Phoedo. " We may then," said Socrates, u with 
 good grounds assume that this struggle towards 
 completeness, this progress, this increase in in- 
 ward excellence, is the destination of rational 
 beings, and consequently, is the highest purpose 
 of creation. We may say that this immense 
 structure of the world was brought into being that 
 there may be rational beings which advance from 
 stage to stage, gradually increase in perfection, 
 and find their happiness in their progress; that 
 
ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 275 
 
 all these should be stopped in the middle of their 
 course, not only stopped, but at once pushed back 
 into the abyss of nothingness, and all the fruits of 
 their efforts lost, is what the Highest Being can- 
 not have accepted and adopted into the plan of 
 the universe." 
 
 This world, with its infinite gulfs of sorrow and 
 horror, its piteous lights, its ghostly sounds, 
 merely a prelude to a Paradise beyond the sunset? 
 How stale, flat, and unprofitable a business. If 
 that be all, a still small voice asks how easy for 
 Him to have abolished the preliminary agony and 
 given us the bliss at once. What is He ? The 
 giver of a bonus. What are we ? Strugglers 
 after a bonus. Something more ? Then sorely 
 that something more implies disinterestedness- — 
 contentedness to suffer a little for God's sake, 
 when diligently assured that suffering is in the 
 scheme. It may need these tears to give a zest 
 to living ; for I, at least, can conceive no life all 
 tears, or quite without them. By all tokens around 
 us, by the eyes of heaven over us, by the wail of 
 the earth under us, by life, by love, by sorrow, all 
 signs seem to imply that God by no means believes 
 
276 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 
 
 in perfect bliss. He has wept ere now, and bit- 
 terly; throned on the wondrous system of things, 
 He is not ever- smiling ; why, that irradiate light 
 would wither up our eyesight, and we should 
 stand piteously like blind men in the sun, for the 
 sake of its warmth ; whereas light was meant to 
 see by, as well as to quicken the vital principle of 
 pleasure. "All but philosophers," said Socrates to 
 his friends on that sad parting-day at Phlius, "All 
 but philosophers are courageous through fear and 
 brave through cowardice. So of men who attend 
 merely to decency ; they are temperate through 
 intemperance. They abstain from some pleasures 
 for the love of other pleasures; they call it in- 
 temperance to be the slaves of pleasure ; but it is 
 by serving some pleasures that they conquer 
 other pleasures ; and so, as I have said, they are 
 temperate from intemperance. But this kind of 
 barter, my excellent Simmias, is not the true 
 trade of virtue; this exchange of pleasures for 
 pleasures, and of pains for pains, and of fears for 
 fears, great against small, as when you take small 
 change for a large coin. The only genuine 
 wealth for which we ought to give away all other, 
 
ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 277 
 
 is true knowledge." By knowledge Plato means 
 Sight. 
 
 But our knowledge is not to make us vain- 
 glorious. What are we that we are to scream up 
 to God how virtuous we are, how wicked our 
 neighbours ! If there were heaven, and it were to 
 go by absolute merit, perhaps the man who 
 was hung* for murder yesterday would have as 
 good a chance as Shelley or Jeremy Bentham. 
 Virtue is a hard matter to mete, when we imply 
 by virtue something more than mere respect for 
 public opinion, than mere good fortune, than mere 
 good philosophy, than mere " ideas •" and vice is 
 often enough just natural shadow, which prevents 
 you from seeing the stilly quivering depths of a 
 brother's soul. There would be a terrible diffi- 
 culty as to passports. 
 
 Does it need heaven and hades to make death 
 bearable ? Alas, too often. Yet death is but the 
 glass, as it were, wherein souls may see them- 
 selves. What says the Delphic woman on the 
 tripod ? Hark to the oracle ! — 
 
 Hark, I shadow forth to ye 
 What the pure of sight will see ! 
 
278 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 
 
 Evermore, all human breath 
 Blows against the mirror, Death, 
 Evermore ye seek to know 
 Whence ye come, whither ye go ; 
 Evermore the hollow sky, 
 Full of voices, makes reply 
 With the echo of your cry. 
 
 As an ever-changing mist, 
 Moonshine-lit or sunshine-kiss'd, 
 Floats before and seeks to pass, 
 Some huge mirror made of glass, — 
 Rendering, do all it will, 
 Its reflection dimmer still, 
 And the mirror's inner light 
 Weirder, fainter, to the sight. 
 Even thus all human life, 
 Darkening in dusky strife, 
 Blows with unavailing breath 
 On the phantom mirror, Death, 
 In that phantom-mirror rolls 
 Mist on mist of human souls, 
 Mist on mist whose image seems 
 Beautifully weird as dreams ; 
 And among the phantasies 
 Few themselves can recognize, 
 And ye shudder, for your hearts 
 Know not their own counterparts. 
 Yet the more the mists that pass 
 Duskily before the glass, 
 Thicken into cloud and lose 
 
ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 279 
 
 Individual lights and hues, 
 More and more each special form 
 Loses shape and gathers storm, 
 More and more the mirror, Death, 
 Frights the gaze, and darkeneth. 
 
 Thus I shadow forth to ye 
 What the pure of sight will see ! 
 O'er the mass rich colours roll, 
 When some nobler-sighted soul, 
 Scorning lust of pomp and pelf, 
 In the mirror sees himself, 
 Sees his face, and knows it not, 
 Sees sweet joy, nor questions what ; 
 Pale with love and awe, he cries, 
 " Lo, the loveliness that lies 
 Far within the realm that we 
 Ever seek, yet dread to see ! " 
 All his fellows, more or less, 
 Recognize that loveliness, 
 All around him growing bright 
 With a reverent delight, 
 All the happiness partake, 
 While, for that one spirit's sake, 
 Death itself grows unaware 
 Glorious and divinely fair ! 
 
 Last, assure your heart that nought 
 Beautiful in deed or thought, 
 Beautiful and pure and wise, 
 
280 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 
 
 Ever wholly fades or dies ; 
 When one passionate soul in pride 
 Sees Death's mirror glorified, 
 Summoning his kind to see 
 What is clear to such as he, 
 Back to that one soul is given 
 Glorv he confers on heaven ! 
 
 If I turn my own soul to the glass, for ex- 
 am-pie, what happens ? I do not behold the 
 heaven of the preacher, — I do not, cannot, see 
 the blaze of a bonfire : but my eyes are troubled 
 with deep vistas, glimpses of beautiful lands, where 
 spirits wander to unearthly music, ever and anon 
 turning hitherward * faces sweetly troubled and 
 strangely human. My father is there, and another 
 whom I loved ; — the old familiar forms, the dear 
 familiar eyes, only just a little sweetened by the 
 light of the new knowledge. And turning to my 
 neighbour, I point out these things in the mirror ; 
 but his face is terribly distorted, and the reflection 
 of his poor soul yonder looks lurid, and he sees the 
 flame at the jaws of the Pit. " The pity of it, the 
 pity of it, Iago ! " It is little good to compare 
 notes with him. Why should he listen, indeed ? 
 An ordinary boyhood — a sweet friendship — a 
 
ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 281 
 
 struggle for bread — more than one death-bed 
 sorrow — what are such things that they should 
 reverberate poetical echoes ? and what interest has 
 this man and the world at large in another me- 
 moranda of himself? Other men must answer 
 these questions. Meanwhile let no man write 
 indefinitely. He will have done at least some- 
 thing who shows how heavily the burthen of life 
 presses, whenever our life, our love, our specula- 
 tion and our faith, become too personal ; that it 
 is only out in the world mortals find any peace ; 
 that it is often in the still depths of the soul the 
 devil sees himself best; and that, once and for 
 all, God's business is greater than our smiles 
 or tears. 
 
 Out of a young man's life, what a philosophy ! 
 what humour for the political economist ! what 
 mockery for the law-giver and the ready writer ! 
 Yet some of us can get no further, and see many 
 old men who have got no further. Human suf- 
 fering is inscrutable to me — my own suffering is 
 intolerable; yet I thank God for life. I do 
 not quite see why I should pray, or to whom I 
 should pray ; and yet pray I must. I can hope 
 
282 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 
 
 only for the best. Men, as I see them, differ so 
 little after all, and sin so little, and thrive so little, 
 that an entire democritical paradise often is in 
 my prospect. I feel myself so paltry, and find 
 others so paltry — I feel myself so grand, and 
 find others so grand — that I picture only one 
 sort of salvation, wherein kings, courtiers, pick- 
 pockets, assassins, and critics, would all get 
 spiritualized together. 
 
 There are compensations. Directly such things 
 are felt with all one's might, it is astonishing how 
 easy all life becomes. In the pure white light of 
 God's charity, we see our loved ones go away, and 
 grow quite calm in time beside their grave. In 
 that light I tolerate myself, love myself — the 
 being with whose unfitness for a pure heaven I 
 have most reason to be acquainted, and with all 
 my sins on me, I can look straight up at my 
 Master, saying, " I am safe in Thy care for all — 
 all will be well. Thou didst make me, and wilt 
 obliterate whatever is unfit in me." But it is only 
 in my meaner moments that I solicit the bonus ! 
 All men are sleepy occasionally, and cowardly, 
 and mean. But with the wondrous world around 
 
ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 283 
 
 me, with light playing sweetly on the green 
 cheek of the earth, with men coming and going, 
 with sonls growing, rights broadening, truths 
 purifying, I feel that life, mere life, is ample — 
 the gift of all gifts — the finish beyond which I 
 cannot go. If I shall live on, all is well. For this 
 life, as I know it, the twelfth chapter of Paul's 
 First Epistle to the Corinthians is my Gospel ; — 
 that is exhaustless ; charity to men and women, 
 and most of all to myself, is what sweetens me to 
 myself. Charity " beareth all things, belieyeth 
 all things, suffereth all things, endure th all things. 
 Charity never faileth : but whether there be pro- 
 phecies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, 
 they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, 
 it shall vanish away." Charity is all that men 
 lack; sin, knowledge, prayer, are nothing. All 
 is explained in those supreme moments when a 
 human soul irradiates a human body, and has no 
 scorn for its abode, and can look forth and see 
 the celestial inmates everywhere in fairer or viler 
 bodies, and feel the breath of God lying over all, 
 palpable, though unseen, like the air we breathe 
 and live by. 
 
284 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 
 
 Too much self-cogitation, I repeat, will not do ; 
 the fountain of love must be kept stirred, or it 
 will freeze. Who can conceive any modern 
 being, far less any modern poet, without abun- 
 dant sympathetic exercise and great charity ; 
 and the finer the charity, let us hope, the clearer 
 will be the music, — which music at least God 
 will hear and understand. The only hope is to 
 go forth into life and watch men and women — 
 high or low — exactly at that point, the highest 
 point of their spiritual life, where they contact 
 with that ideal of perfect disinterestedness, which 
 we call God. All contact with God somewhere. 
 Sin is spiritualized by personal ties — human ties 
 are invariably pathetic — and where the pathetic 
 essence is perceptible, God is not far away. 
 Once and for all, the danger of dangers is that 
 of attaching too sentimental or too sleepy a con- 
 struction to history or actual experience. Actual 
 physical life is as mysterious, as progressive, as 
 wonderful, as any of our fantastic theories or per- 
 sonal emotions, and the condition of perfect health 
 is the due exercise of all the functions. Let us 
 grow, and grow, and grow. Better annihilation 
 
ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 285 
 
 than the perfect bliss of the preacher. God is 
 eternal, and can never pause : — pause is death : — 
 and how should God die ? 
 
 THE HYMN". 
 
 K1 
 
 ORD, Thou hast given me life and breath, 
 Sleep and foreknowledge, too, of death ; 
 My eyes shall close, my span pass by, 
 
 Yet, Lord, I know I shall not die. 
 
 Lord, I shall live beyond the grave, 
 Made happier by Thy power to save ; 
 Yet, though I see a clime more fair, 
 I shall not quite cease weeping there. 
 
 Lord God, be with me day and night ! 
 Strengthen me ! give me clearer sight ! 
 And here and there, in life and death, 
 Strength to despise too easy breath. 
 
 For, Lord, I am so weak and low, 
 So pain'd to stay, so loath to go, 
 And most of all I need to gain 
 The flower and quintessence of pain. 
 
 Lord, make me great and brave and free ! 
 It is enough to breathe and be ! 
 Out of the blessed need to grow 
 Blossoms the thirst to love and know. 
 
286 ON A PASSAGE IN HEINE. 
 
 And in Thy season, Master blest, 
 Grant me a little sleep and rest ; 
 Then, wakening, — in a sweeter place, 
 Thy sunlight pouring on my face. 
 
 Lord, let me breathe ! Lord, let me be ! 
 Give me Thy light, and let me see ! 
 And now and then, to make me strong, 
 A little sleep, but not too long. 
 
 Thus, Lord, for ever let me range 
 Through pain, through tears, through strife, 
 
 through change, 
 Make me full blessed in Thy light, 
 But never at the price of Sight ! 
 
VIII. 
 
 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 ^p^ 
 
Hard hard, hold mine ! deep eyes, look into these ! 
 
 Strong soul, befriend a troubled moderns song ! 
 Thou poor man, beaten on by rain and breeze, 
 
 Thou who shalt rule the nations, make me stror/g" 
 An Invocation to Lazarus. 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 to 
 
 SHALL offer no apology for now en- 
 tering upon the discussion of so per- 
 sonal a matter as the purport of my 
 own poetical writings. If I am self- 
 conscious and interested here (and I by no means 
 hope wholly to escape misconstruction) I have 
 been so all along ; for while discussing the poetic 
 character, describing the Student's vocation, in- 
 quiring what is and what is not Literary Morality, 
 and finally bringing the whole matter to the test 
 of spiritual and theological light, I have been 
 steadily proceeding in this direction. Whom 
 should these thoughts guide, if they are not to be 
 as lamps to my own feet ? Whom should I dare 
 u 
 
290 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 to rebuke, if I were fearful of setting an example ? 
 I must utter my message at any cost— believing, 
 as I do, that, although I may utterly fail to 
 clothe my aspirations or opinions in artistic or 
 permanent forms, yet that those aspirations and 
 opinions are fraught with the deepest import- 
 ance, — are destined sooner or later to bear fruit 
 that will make art nobler, and deeply gladden the 
 spirits of men. 
 
 In three volumes of ambitious verse,* con- 
 sisting chiefly of tentative attempts to picture 
 contemporary scenes, I have been doing my best 
 to show that actual life, independent of accessories, 
 is the true material for poetic art ; that, further, 
 actual national life is the perfectly approven 
 material for every British poet ; and that, in a 
 word, the further the poet finds it necessary to 
 recede from his own time, the less trustworthy is 
 his imagination, the more constrained his sym- 
 pathy, and the smaller his chance of creating true 
 and durable types for human contemplation. The 
 
 * I do not here include "Undertones," which belongs to 
 a totally different category. 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 291 
 
 success of my writings with simple people may be 
 no sign of their possessing durable poetic worth, 
 but it at least implies that I have been labouring 
 in the right direction. On reviewing the history 
 of my three books I find that I have every reason 
 to congratulate myself on the sympathy of the 
 great body of public writers. My greatest oppo- 
 nents have been found among men of what is 
 called " literary culture" — an epithet implying 
 excellent education, vast reading, real intelligence, 
 and much respect for tradition. " You have evi- 
 dently gone to the life for your subjects," writes 
 a distinguished living critic, "but still I would 
 have you remember that if one, while going to the 
 life, chooses a subject which is naturally poetical, 
 one's chances of the best poetical success will be 
 increased tenfold." A gifted young contemporary, 
 who seems fond of throwing stones in my direction, 
 fiercely upbraids me for writing " Idyls of the 
 gallows and the gutter," and singing songs of 
 " costermongers and their trulls." Gentlemen 
 from the universities shake their heads over me 
 sadly, and complain, somewhat irrelevantly, I 
 think, that I am not Greek. Now, I am quite ready 
 
292 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 to credit all these gentlemen with perfect sincerity, 
 and, so far as taste is founded on tradition, with 
 perfect good taste. Whether from too elaborate 
 a collegiate education, or from class pride, or from 
 actual deficiency of imagination, they do really 
 associate vulgarity with a certain class of subjects, 
 they do really feel that contemporary life is not 
 naturally poetic, they do really breathe more freely 
 under the masks of the old drama, than when face 
 to face with the terrific commonplaces and sub- 
 lime vulgarities of great cities. Views of contem- 
 porary life, to please them, must be greatly ideal- 
 ized or subdued to the repose of Greek sculpture ; 
 but, for the most part, they would consign con- 
 temporary material to the comic writer, and re- 
 serve our ordinary daily surroundings for the use 
 of the manufacturers of Adelphi farces. In (C Pin- 
 dar and Poets unrivalled," they confine their 
 sympathy to tradition, and care most for sta- 
 tuesque woes and nude intellectualities moving on 
 a background of antique landscape. If they are to 
 find a poetic theme on the soil, they must go very 
 far back in the chronicle — say, as far as Boadicea. 
 The more misty the figures, the less their vul- 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 293 
 
 garity, in the eyes of those who wish to build 
 colleges on Parnassus, and who learn Greek in 
 order to address the Muses, forgetting that the 
 nine ladies now favour the moderns, and have 
 almost entirely forgotten their beautiful native 
 tongue. 
 
 However, the mania for false refinement, which 
 distinguishes educated vulgarity, must not blind 
 us to the truth that a large portion of the public, 
 and these highly intellectual people, are quite in- 
 capable of perceiving the poetry existing close to 
 their own thresholds. The little world in which 
 they move is so vulgar and sordid, or so artificial, 
 that the further they escape from its suggestions 
 they feel the freer. What they cannot feel in the 
 office or the drawing-room they try to feel in the 
 garden of Academus. Their daily life, their daily 
 knowledge and duty, is not earnest enough to 
 supply their spiritual needs, and they very natu- 
 rally conclude that the experience of their neigh- 
 bours is as mean as theirs. In the ranks of such 
 men we not seldom find the lost Student ; but 
 the majority call themselves cultured, as their 
 neighbours call themselves virtuous, — -just for 
 
294 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 want of some other spicier peculiarity to distin- 
 guish them from their fellows. 
 
 Let it be at once conceded that our modern 
 life is complex and irritating, and, at a superficial 
 glance, sadly deficient in picturesqueness . Streets 
 are not beautiful, and this is the age of streets ; 
 trade seems selfish and common, and this is the 
 age of trade; railways, educational establishments, 
 poor houses, debating societies, are not romantic, 
 and this is the age of all these. But if we strip 
 off the hard outer crust of these things, if we pass 
 from the unpicturesqueness of externals to the cur- 
 rents which flow beneath, who then shall say that 
 this life is barren of poetry ? Never, I think, did 
 such strange lights and shades glimmer on the 
 soul's depths, never was suffering more heroic, 
 or courage more sublime, never was the reticence 
 of deep emotion woven in so closely with the 
 mystery and the wonder of the world. Yet a very 
 brief glance at recent poetry will show how blind 
 our poets have been to this most legitimate 
 material. Of the poets of the last generation, 
 Wordsworth and Crabbe depicted actual life 
 as they beheld it ; Wordsworth dissecting silent 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 295 
 
 endurance with iron pathos, and Crabbe pro- 
 truding unpoetic details with the art of the parish 
 clerk. While Crabbers pictures are nearly worth- 
 less, poetically speaking, and have done much to 
 deepen the prejudice against the poetic treatment 
 of contemporary life, Words worth's are really 
 poetic, but are often too cold and academic in the 
 outline, too little disinterested, except where they 
 deal in mere emotions, to be quite satisfactory. 
 Hood, alone, once or twice caught the throb of 
 the great heart of modern time ; had his sym- 
 pathies been closelier concentrated, had his neces- 
 sities been less urgent, I believe this wonderful 
 and totally misunderstood genius might have 
 done much to revolutionize English poetry; for 
 he more than once evinced glimmers of sympathy, 
 sanity, insight, and single-hearted beneficence, 
 which it is difficult to discover even in Words- 
 worth. Among contemporaries there has been 
 shown a more earnest craving to do justice to 
 the present. Tennyson has given us a garden 
 philosopher's group of modern idyls, often signi- 
 ficant, sometimes deep, and always finely repre- 
 sentative of English elegance. "The Gardener's 
 
296 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 Daughter/' " The Miller's Daughter/' and " The 
 Brook/' * are exquisite attempts to paint Eng- 
 lish landscape, with the addition of a few deli- 
 cate figures ; but if we wish to perceive the full 
 amount of Tennyson's apprehensiveness towards 
 modern life, we must turn to " Maud/' which is 
 full of interest, in spite of its inferiority as a poem. 
 On the whole Tennyson does not, and cannot, 
 sympathise much with life not ornate, though he 
 has nobly striven to educate his eye and heart. 
 Clough endeavoured, with some success, to express 
 in verse much of the unsatisfied longing of middle- 
 class culture, but his instincts were scholastic, 
 not humanitarian. Mr. Arnold no sooner touches 
 the solid ground of contemporary thought, than all 
 his grace forsakes him, and his utterance becomes 
 the merest prose. Mr. Browning, of whose 
 
 * Of these three poems, the last is infinitely the highest, 
 because it draws its most touching force from a universal 
 spiritual chord — the contrast of the changefulness of human 
 life with the durability of natural objects. The " Grand- 
 mother" is fine for a similar reason. I confess, however, 
 that I am blind to the poetic merit of the " Northern 
 Farmer," however conscious of its force as a photograph. 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 297 
 
 moral and mental greatness there can be no 
 question, has only once or twice attempted 
 essentially English themes ; and, although this 
 writer's human sympathy is wondrously deep and 
 beautiful, it is often overcast by intellectualities 
 that deaden . the sense of life. Mrs. Browning, 
 alone, of all the recent poets, reached the deep 
 significance of her century. " Aurora Leigh" is 
 too wild and diffuse, too morbidly female, to be 
 called a great work of art, but it contains passages 
 newer, truer, and profounder than any other 
 modern poem. England has lost her greatest 
 modern light in Mrs. Browning. She has left 
 little behind her to represent her mighty sym- 
 pathy and capacity for apprehending, but she 
 stands unique in these days — specifically a poet — 
 one troubled by the great mystery of life, and 
 finding no speech adequate but song. Had she 
 survived, and been open to English influences, 
 she would have written her name on the fore- 
 head of her time, and forced the stream of English 
 poetry into a newer and a deeper channel. 
 
 But it is at least clear, from these examples, 
 that the poetry of humanity is newly dawning. 
 
298 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 To the preacher, to the poet, to the philosopher, 
 the people must look more constantly than here- 
 tofore for guidance. Religion and science have 
 their spheres denned for them: our singers are 
 but learning to define theirs. Genius, as much as 
 liberty, is the nation's birthright, and it misses 
 its aim when it confines its ministrations to any 
 section of the state. Poetic art has been tacitly re- 
 garded, like music and painting, as an accomplish- 
 ment for the refined, and it has suffered im- 
 measurably as an art, from its ridiculous fetters. 
 It has dealt with life in a fragmentary form, 
 and with the least earnest and least picturesque 
 phases of life. Yet the intensity of being (for 
 example) among those who daily face peril, who 
 are never beyond want, who have constant pre- 
 sentiments of danger, who wallow in sin and 
 trouble, ought to bring to the poet, as to the 
 painter, as lofty an inspiration as may be gained 
 from those living in comfort, who make lamen- 
 tation a luxury and invent futilities to mourn 
 over. The world is full of these voices, and the 
 poet has to set them into perfect speech. But 
 this truth has been little understood, and but 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 299 
 
 partially acted upon. Our earliest English poets 
 had some leanings towards the heroism of fate- 
 stricken men; and Chaucer could dwell on the 
 love of a hind with the same affection as upon 
 the devotion of a knight. The old poet had a 
 wholesome regard for merit unbiassed by acces- 
 sories ; but the broad light he wrote in has suf- 
 fered a long eclipse. 
 
 The risk of appearing self-credulous shall not 
 prevent me from explicitly expressing, in the 
 interests of art and artists, the principles which 
 have regulated my own tentative attempts at 
 this poetry of humanity. They may be briefly 
 enumerated. That the whole significance and 
 harmony of life is never to be lost sight of in 
 depicting any fragmentary form of life, and that, 
 therefore, the poet should free himself entirely 
 from all arbitrary systems of ethics and codes of 
 opinion, aiming, in a word, at that thorough dis- 
 interestedness which is our only means to the 
 true perception of God's creatures. That every 
 fragmentary form of life is not fit for song, but 
 that every form is so fit which can be spiritualized 
 without the introduction of false elements to the 
 
300 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 final literary form of harmonious numbers. That, 
 failing the heroic statue and the noble features, 
 almost every human figure becomes idealized 
 whenever we take into consideration the back- 
 ground of life, or picture, or sentiment on which 
 it moves; and that it is to this background a 
 poet must often look for the means of casting 
 over his picture the refluent colours of poetic 
 harmony. That the true clue to poetic success 
 in this kind is the intensity of the poet's own in- 
 sight, whereby a dramatic situation, however un- 
 dignified, however vulgar to the unimaginative, 
 is made to intersect through the medium of lyrical 
 emotion with the entire mystery of human life, 
 and thus to appeal with more or less force to 
 every heart that has felt the world. 
 
 Truth, then, to hit the sense of hearers, was to 
 be strangely spiritualized — spiritual truth being 
 truth seen through the peculiar medium of a man's 
 own individual soul. The poet's first task was to 
 purify the medium as much as possible, to drain it 
 of all prejudices in favour of special virtue, or 
 knowledge, or culture. It was the poet's business, 
 not to preach morality, not to inculcate intellec- 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 301 
 
 tuality, not to describe this or that form of life as 
 finally and significantly holy, but to be just with- 
 out judgment to the pathos and power of all he 
 saw or apprehended. The accessories must belaid 
 aside, the conventionalities disregarded, and the 
 deep human heart laid bare. The only bond in- 
 cumbent on the poet was the artistic one. It was 
 not enough merely to represent life, — it was 
 necessary that the representatives should be 
 beautiful. It was not enough to mirror truth, — 
 the truth must be spiritualized. It was not enough 
 to catch the speech of man or woman, — that 
 speech must be subtly set to music. 
 
 With these views, still faint, but strengthening 
 upon me ; I wrote the poems of {< Inverburn," — a 
 series of dramatic soliloquies put into the mouths 
 of certain poor folk, figures seen on the back- 
 ground of a familiar Scottish village, — 
 
 The clachan, with its humming sound of looms, 
 The quaint old gables, roofs of turf and thatch, 
 The glimmering spire that peeps above the firs, 
 The waggons in the lanes, the waterfall 
 With cool sound plunging in its wood-nest wild, 
 The stream whose soft blue arms encircle all, — 
 And in the background heathery norland hills, 
 
302 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 Hued like the azure of the dew-berrie, 
 And mingling with the regions of the Rain ! 
 
 I cannot, of course, say where I have perfectly 
 succeeded in realizing my own ideal in these 
 poems ; but I am at least conscious to some extent 
 where I have failed. In "Willie Baird" and 
 " Poet Andrew/' the speech, respectively, of an 
 old schoolmaster and a village weaver, I attempt 
 a perfect ideal background, the power and dreamy 
 influence of nature in the one case, and the intense 
 glow of great human emotion in the other. The 
 " English Housewife's Gossip " lacks the back- 
 ground, touches nowhere ou the great universal 
 chords of sympathy, and is insomuch unsuccessful 
 as a poem. The " Two Babes" is, even from my 
 own favourable stand-point, a mixed business, of 
 whose poetic merit I am by no means confident. 
 It is on poems like " Willie Baird " and " Poet 
 Andrew," and a few of the shorter pieces, that I 
 should take my stand if I were forced to point to 
 any of these poems as poetic successes, from the 
 lofty modern point of view that I am at present 
 taking. 
 
 In " London Poems," I was at least a great 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 303 
 
 deal juster to the rude forces of life, my sym- 
 pathy was bolder and more confident, my soul 
 clearer and more trustworthy as a medium, how- 
 ever poor might be my power of perfect artistic 
 spiritualization. As common life was approached 
 more closely, as the danger of vulgarity threat- 
 ened more and more to interfere with the reader's 
 sense of beauty, the stronger and tenderer was 
 the lyrical note needed. 
 
 Even in the unsung city's streets, 
 
 Seem'd quiet wonders meet for serious song, 
 
 Truth hard to phrase and render musical. 
 
 For ah ! the weariness and weight of tears, 
 
 The crying out to God, the wish for slumber, 
 
 They lay so deep, so deep ! God heard them all ; 
 
 He set them unto music of His own ; 
 
 But easier far the task to sing of kings, 
 
 Or weave weird ballads where the moon-dew glistens, 
 
 Than body forth this life in beauteous sound. 
 
 In writing such poems as " Liz " and " Nell/' 
 the intensest dramatic care was necessary to es- 
 cape vulgarity on the one hand, and false refine- 
 ment on the other. " Liz," although the offspring 
 of the very lowest social deposits, possesses great 
 natural intelligence, and speaks more than once 
 
304 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 with, a refinement consequent on strange purity 
 of thought. Moreover, she has been under 
 spiritual influences. She is a beautiful living 
 soul, just conscious of the unfitness of the at- 
 mosphere she is breathing ; but, above all, she is 
 a large-hearted woman, with wonderful capacity 
 for loving. She is on the whole quite an ex- 
 ceptional study, although in many of her moods 
 typical of a class. " Nell" is not so exceptional, 
 and since it is harder to create types than eccen- 
 tricities, her utterance was far more difficult 
 to spiritualize into music. She is a woman quite 
 without refined instincts, coarse, uncultured, im- 
 pulsive. Her love, though profound, is insuffi- 
 cient to escape mere commonplace ; and it was 
 necessary to breathe around her the fascination 
 of a tragic subject, the lurid light of an ever- 
 deepening terror. 
 
 In the language of both these poems I fol- 
 lowed nature as closely as possible ; so far as 
 poetic speech can follow ordinary speech. I had 
 to add nothing, but merely (as a sympathetic 
 critic happily expressed it) to " deduct whatever 
 hid, instead of expressing*, the natural meaning of 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 305 
 
 the speakers ; " for to obtrude slips of grammar, 
 mis-spellings, and other meaningless blotches, in 
 short, to lay undue emphasis on the mere lan- 
 guage employed, would have been wilfully to 
 destroy the artistic verisimilitude of such poems. 
 Every stronger stress, every more noticeable 
 trick of style, added after the speech was suffi- 
 cient to hint the quality of the speakers, was so 
 much over- truth, offending against the truth's 
 harmony. The object was, while clearly con- 
 veying the caste of the speakers, to afford an ar- 
 tistic insight into their souls, and to blend them 
 with the great universal mysteries of life and death. 
 Vulgarity obtruded is not truth spiritualized and 
 made clear, but truth still hooded and masked, 
 and little likely to reveal anything to the vision 
 of its contemplators. 
 
 By at least one critic I have been charged 
 with idealizing the speech a little too much. 
 Both "Liz" and "Nell," it is averred, occa- 
 sionally speak in a strain very uncommon in 
 their class. In reply to this I may observe how 
 much mis-pronunciations, vulgarisms, and the 
 like, have blinded educated people to the won- 
 
306 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 derful force and picturesqueness of the language 
 of the lower classes. They know nothing of the 
 educated luxury of using language in order to 
 conceal thought, but speak because they have 
 something to say, and try to explain themselves 
 as forcibly as possible. Take the talk of sailors, 
 for example, even of the common smacks-men 
 who live precarious lives upon our coasts. How 
 full of picture, emphasis, fervour — everything 
 but circumlocution. " There was a star i' the old 
 moon's weather horn this morning ; nor I didn't 
 much like the coppery clouds this dog-watch ." 
 The speech of the lower classes in cities is not 
 much less powerful and uncommon. Metaphor 
 abounds to an extraordinary degree, and words 
 are often chosen with a singular sense of sound. 
 "And then," said an old Irish apple-woman to 
 me, speaking of the death of her half-starved 
 baby, " God's hand gript me round the heart, 
 and sure I couldn't breathe or see." This, how- 
 ever, is a subject too elaborate for discussion 
 here, and must be reserved for a separate paper. 
 It is difficult to satisfy all critics. By some 
 my language has been thought over-refined ; by 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 307 
 
 others, it has been condemned as vulgar and 
 inharmonious. The style of the ornate school 
 of writers, where the melody of sweet syllables 
 is essayed without constant reference to emotion 
 or thought, has, I confess, but little fascination 
 for me. I have usually, and perhaps too im- 
 plicitly, trusted to the character of the emotion 
 in order to produce poetic harmony. I have 
 preferred the simplicity of truth, the vigor of 
 simple speech, to all habitual finesse or fantastic 
 elaboration. Words have been valuable to me 
 purely as a means of expressing meaning, nor 
 have I often introduced epithets or tricks of style, 
 merely to satisfy the vulgarity of schoolmen. 
 
 A far more serious charge than that concern- 
 ing any mere question of style has been brought 
 by genteel critics against poems such as those I 
 have been discussing. It has been said that, 
 under the form of dramatic soliloquy, the writer's 
 own subjective spectacles have been sometimes 
 put on the eyes of common-place people, thus 
 crediting the speakers with sentimentalisms which 
 have no existence out of the sphere of blind poetic 
 sympathy. The sensations of Liz during her 
 
308 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 one memorable visit to the country, the intense 
 loving tenderness of the coarse woman Nell to- 
 wards her brutal paramour, the exquisite delicacy 
 and line spiritual vision of the old village school- 
 master, the yearning for pastoral light and music 
 in the heart of the old ballad-maker, all these, 
 it is suggested, are over- elaborate sentimental- 
 isms, too tender emotions accorded to people who, 
 in reality, have very little sentiment or emotion 
 to boast of. Thus, in a strain of critical gentility, 
 writes the editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette," 
 criticising the " Ballad-maker :" " Our present 
 author would have us imagine that an exterior of 
 squalor and rudeness is inevitably and incessantly 
 accompanied by an abject arid querulous frame of 
 mind. He is unwilling even to believe that a 
 Londoner can for a moment forget or cease to be 
 sick of the smoke and the strange faces that sur- 
 round him. His imaginary sufferers moreover 
 have a childish and literally lack-a- daisy longing to 
 meet with the simplest country objects." !S"ow, of 
 all the city poems I have written, there are four 
 only which, from this profound point of view, can 
 be considered querulous and lack-a-daisy. Two of 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 309 
 
 these, "The Starling" and "The Linnet/' are 
 what I may call " bird poems/' companion pieces, 
 where, by natural laws of association, and in very 
 different ways, a caged starling and a caged 
 linnet are made to flash upon their owners 
 wild or bright glimpses of the outlying dis- 
 tricts from which they come. The third poem, 
 "The Ballad Maker," is clearly and avowedly 
 the story of a man translated from the country 
 to the town ; and naturally, being of a poetic and 
 dreamy turn of mind, strangely impressed with 
 the contrast. He is querulous : and why not ? 
 But where is the querulousness, where the 
 childish longing for country objects in Liz. Liz 
 breathes happily only in the deep miasma of the 
 city : a being possible only there ; knowing no- 
 thing of light or sunshine, and caring to know 
 nothing of these. She tries the country once, 
 because she thinks that life is easier there ; but 
 far from moving her to joy, the light and colour 
 trouble her to intensest pain. 
 
 I would not stay out yonder if I could, 
 
 For one feels dead, and all looks pure and good : 
 
 I could not bear a light so bright and still. 
 
310 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 With these four poems the catalogue of such 
 1 ' sentimentalities " may be brought to a close. 
 In what, for instance, consists the sorrow of the 
 Little Milliner who, far from drooping in the 
 city, found there a constant round of joy from 
 day to day : — 
 
 And London streets, with all their noise and stir, 
 
 Had many a pleasant sight to pleasure her. 
 
 There were the shops, where wonders ever new, 
 
 As in a garden, changed the whole year through. 
 
 Oft would she stand, and watch, with laughter sweet, 
 
 The punch and judy in the quiet street ; 
 
 Or look and listen while soft minuets 
 
 Play'd the street organ with the marionettes. 
 
 Or join the motley group of merry folks 
 
 Round the street huckster, with his wares and jokes. 
 
 Fearless and glad, she joined the crowd that flows 
 
 Along the streets at festivals and shows. 
 
 In summer time she loved the parks and squares, 
 
 Where fine folk drive their carriages and pairs. 
 
 In winter time her blood was in a glow, 
 
 At the white coming of the pleasant snow. 
 
 And in the stormy nights, when dark rain pours, 
 
 She found it pleasant, too, to sit in-doors, 
 
 And sing, and sew, and listen to the gales, 
 
 Or read the penny journal with the tales. 
 
 It was clearly my endeavour, in this poem, to 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 311 
 
 evolve the fine Arcadian feeling out of the dullest 
 obscurity, to show how even brick walls and 
 stone houses may be made to blossom, as it were, 
 into blooms and flowers ; — to produce by delicate 
 passion and sweet emotion an effect similar to 
 that which pastoral poets have produced by 
 means of greenery and bright sunshine. In 
 close connection with all that is dark and solitary 
 in London life, the little milliner was to walk in 
 a light such as lies on country fields, exhibiting, 
 as a critic happily phrases it, "all the passion 
 of youth, modulated by all the innocence of a 
 naked baby." 
 
 But my wish to vindicate certain artistic prin- 
 ciples must not betray me further into detailed 
 expositions of separate poems. I wish to offer 
 a general explanation, not special panegyrics. 
 One more word here, however, on the kind of 
 dramatic soliloquy I have adopted in these pieces. 
 In such individual utterance there is clearly a 
 danger of one-sidedness, of crediting the world 
 with the poet's own emotion, the more so as that 
 emotion must interpenetrate more or less con- 
 sciously with the actual emotion of the speaker, so 
 
312 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 as to result in a conscientious and moving picture, 
 with a faint though audible tone of lyric har- 
 mony. The reader must not only see the truth, 
 but see it through the novel medium of a poetic 
 individuality. It may be a truth old as the hills, 
 hoary with the snows of century after century, 
 but it is only a poetic truth so far as the new 
 mental light irradiates and transfigures it. If 
 the world sees such figures as Liz, Nell, Poet 
 Andrew, Meg Blane, through the troubled atmo- 
 sphere of the writer's soul, let not the world com- 
 plain that it sees them no longer under the dark 
 loveless shadow in which they were previously 
 perceived, if perceived at all. One cannot so 
 clear that atmosphere as to bring it to the 
 ambient purity and perfect veracity of God's 
 own air. The poet, be he great dramatist, like 
 Sophocles, or morbid dreamer, like Blake, cannot 
 free himself wholly from the disturbing forces of 
 his own heart. He has but one clue to the 
 mystery, and that is his own individuality. " It 
 is astonishing," says a loose but occasionally 
 felicitous writer, "how large a harvest of new 
 truths would be reaped simply through the acci- 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVE S. 313 
 
 dent of a man's feeling, or being made to feel 
 more deeply than other men. He sees the same 
 objects, neither more nor fewer, bnt he sees them 
 engraved in lines far stronger, and more deter- 
 minate, and the difference in the strength makes 
 the whole difference between consciousness and 
 sub-consciousness. And in questions of the 
 mere understanding, we see the same fact illus- 
 trated. The author who wins notice the most, 
 is not he that perplexes men by truths drawn 
 from fountains of absolute novelty — truths as yet 
 unsunned — and from that cause obscure; but he 
 that awakens into illuminated consciousness, 
 ancient lineaments of truth long slumbering in 
 the mind, although too faint to have extorted 
 attention." * And here is an explanation why, 
 through all truly good and sane poetic art, runs 
 that strange personal light which fascinates as 
 music or style, and is the invariable characteristic 
 of the true singer. 
 
 I must not be understood as insisting that 
 humble cotemporary life is the only legitimate 
 
 * De Quincey on Yvordsworth's Poetry, page 260. 
 
314 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 material of the modern poet. Strongly as I am 
 convinced that the mighty reserve force, the 
 ardent strength and sanity of this people, lies 
 little acknowledged in the ranks of that class 
 which is only just emerging into political power, 
 firmly as I would indicate how exotic teachers 
 have emasculated the youth and the flower of 
 our schools and universities, I would yet be 
 just to all co temporary life, social, political, 
 moral. "Religion," says Goethe, "stands in 
 the same relation to art as any other of the 
 higher interests of life. It is a subject, and its 
 rights are those of all other subjects/'' Yet 
 how scantily are morality and religion repre- 
 sented in modern art. Why, for instance, is our 
 Christianity forgotten as a subject? "Where is the 
 great poem, where the noble music built on that 
 wondrous theme ? Milton, with all his power, 
 is academic, not modern ; and, with the exception 
 of a few faint utterances of Wordsworth, all our 
 other religious poetry is conventional and in- 
 artistic. 
 
 We hear, indeed, the metallic periods of the 
 didactic teacher, and the feeble wail of the 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 315 
 
 religious enthusiast, but seldom indeed are our 
 nobler intellectual and spiritual strivings phrased 
 into perfect song. The reticence of false culture 
 steals over the lips of many who might instruct 
 us deeply by their experience, who, if they do 
 speak, are moved by the retrograde spirit of ano- 
 ther civilization, and use the formal periods of an 
 alien tongue. Why, in the name of our new gods, 
 are we still to be bound by the fetters of Pro- 
 metheus. We are, if not quite Celts, more Celts 
 than Greeks, and, thank heaven, not altogether 
 an intellectual nation. We have nothing in 
 common with the Athenian civilization. In the 
 same spirit that we demolished their monuments, 
 to transport them piecemeal to our museums, we 
 mutilate their language to carry it into our 
 schools. In our clumsy attempts to imitate 
 ancient art and literature, we seek in vain to hide 
 the gait of the barbarian. Even our strongest 
 natures fail at this task. They might be very 
 admirable Englishmen if they did not aspire to 
 be very intellectual Greeks. 
 
 There is reason to apprehend that this tra- 
 ditional intellectuality is melting away, and that 
 
316 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 clearer and nobler forces are beginning to operate 
 upon our young minds. <c Off, off, ye lendings ! " 
 We are a modern people, slightly barbaric in 
 matters of art ; but our natures have a glow of 
 emotion quite unknown to the frigid spirit of 
 Athenian inquiry. There is a great emotional 
 and spiritual life yet unrepresented, there are 
 rude forces not yet brought into play, but all of 
 which must sooner or later have their place in 
 art; and the indigenous product of our expe- 
 rience, however inferior to other civilizations, is 
 yet vastly superior to all exotics grafted on the 
 weathered trunk of what was once a noble tree. 
 In answer to thoughts like this, I have heard 
 it urged that Art is not local but cosmopolitan, 
 and that the artist should aim, as all great artists 
 have aimed, at universality. It is true that the 
 highest art owes its permanence to its universality, 
 but it is also true that the intensity of the local 
 insight, the keenness of the artist's apprehension 
 of his own time, is the very cause that his work 
 compasses universal truth ; since each man's 
 spiritual experience, if rightly depicted, must 
 correspond in numberless soul-touching particu- 
 
ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 317 
 
 lars, with the combined experience of the world. 
 There is no catholicity, no universality, no true 
 art, to be got by chill aiming at these things ; 
 they are the product of individual natures, acted 
 upon by the great forces of the world and the 
 period. It is nonsense to point to Greek art, 
 especially Greek sculpture, as ' c universal" in the 
 sense of non-nationality. Nothing can be more 
 Greek, and that is why nothing can be more 
 great. 
 
 But I must draw these remarks to the close. 
 The conclusion of the whole matter, as affecting 
 poets and poetry, is this, that although there 
 may be high and good poetry moving in a 
 limited range of sympathy, the very highest 
 and best poetry is the poetry which appeals to 
 most classes of the state, through those universal 
 chords which communicate with all hearts alike. 
 (Shakespeare, Chaucer, Burns) . A true poem of 
 this sort has a side for the uncultivated, another 
 for the refined ; a body and soul that reach down 
 to the heart's beatings, and up to the very heaven 
 of mysteries. It is virtually inexhaustible — large, 
 typical, human. I can congratulate myself on 
 
318 ON MY OWN TENTATIVES. 
 
 having attempted, however humbly,, to touch this 
 poetry of humanity ; but the appreciation of my 
 own mere tentatives in this direction is of far less 
 importance to me than the welfare of English art 
 generally, and the vindication of its place in 
 European progress. 
 
 Caetera, quae vaeuas tenuissent carmina mentis, 
 Omnia jam vulgata. Quis aut Eurysthea durum, 
 Aut illaudati nescit Busiridis aras ? 
 Cui non dictus Hylas puer, Latonia Delos ? 
 Hippodameque, humerdque Pelops insignis eburno, 
 Acer'equis ? Tentanda via est, qua me quoque possim 
 Tollere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora ! 
 
 Vir. Georg. III. 3. 
 
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List of Publications. 
 
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 THE STORY OF THE CHEVALIER BAYARD. From 
 
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 For ever, and to noble deeds give birth. 
 This is the happy warrior; this is he 
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 SAINT LOUIS, KING OF FRANCE. The curious and 
 
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 TABLE-TALK AND OPINIONS OF NAPOLEON THE 
 
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Sampson Low and Co.'s 
 
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 I. 
 THE GENTLE LIEE. Essays in Aid of the Formation of 
 Character of Gentlemen and Gentlewomen. Seventh Edition. 
 
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 set before the young Englishmen of 1713." — London Review. 
 
 '■'Altogether the book is sterling; admirable both for its sound sense, 
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 well as principle." — Literary Churchman. 
 
 II. 
 ABOUT IN THE WORLD. Essays by the Author of « The 
 
 Gentle Life." 
 
 " It is not easy to open it at any page icithout finding some happy idea." 
 Morning Post. 
 
 " Another characteristic merit of these essays is. that they make it their 
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 " More exquisite and finished writing, deeper and more subtle thought, 
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 'About in the World.'" — Public Opinion. 
 
 III. 
 FAMILIAR WORDS. An Index Verborum, or Quotation 
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 larged Edition. 
 
 " Tie most extensive dictionary of quotation we have met with.** — Notes 
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 — Daily News. 
 
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 "Almost every familiar quotation is to be found in this work, which 
 forms a book of reft rence absolutely indispensable to the literary man. and 
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List of Publications. 
 
 IV. 
 
 LIKE UNTO CHRIST. A new translation of the " Do Imita- 
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 from an Original Drawing by Sir Thomas Lawrence. 
 
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 of their closets." — Archbishop of York, at the Literary Fund, 1865. 
 
 " Could not be presented in a more exquisite form, for a mure sightly 
 volume was never seen." — Illustrated London News. 
 
 "An admirable version of an excellent book. Not only is the translation 
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 authorities; and interesting examples of various readings." — Reader. 
 
 " The preliminary essay is well-written, good, and interesting." — 
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 " Evinces independent scholarship, a profound feeling for the original, 
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 lator's aid." — Nonconformist. 
 
 V. 
 ESSAYS BY MONTAIGNE. Edited, Compared, Revised, and 
 
 Annotated by the Author of " The Gentle Life." With Vignette Portrait. 
 
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 homage to the good-humoured industry of the editor." — Illustrated Times 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE'S ARCADIA. Written 
 
 by Sir Philip Sidney. Edited, with Notes,by the Author of "The Gentle 
 Life." Dedicated, by permission, to the Earl of Derby. 7s. 6rf. 
 
 " All the best things in the Arcadia are retained intact in Mr. Frisivell's 
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 — Daily News. 
 
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 upon the text and its literary illustration. The subsequent additions to the 
 Arcadia by Sir W. Alexander, by W. B., and by Mr. Johnstone, are all 
 rejected. Other interpolations have been cut down, if not entirely cut out. 
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 much philological value as possible." — Literary Churchman. 
 
 "It icas in itself a thing so interesting as a development of English 
 literature, that ice are thankful to Mr. Friswellfor reproducing, in a very 
 elegant volume, the chief work of the gallant and chivalrous, the gay yet 
 learned knight, who patronized the muse of Spenser, and fell upon the 
 bloody fi eld of Zutphen, leaving behind him a light of heroism and humane 
 compassion which would shed an eternal glory on his name, though all he 
 ever wrote had perished with himself."— London Review. 
 
Sampson Low and Co.'s 
 
 VI. 
 THE GENTLE LIFE. Second Series. 
 
 " There is not a single thought in the volume that does not contribute in 
 some measure to the formation of a true gentleman." — Daily News. 
 
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 " These charming collection of essays." — London Review. 
 
 " There is the same mingled poiver and simplicity ichich makes the 
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 VIII. 
 VARIA : Readings from Rare Books. Reprinted, by permis- 
 sion, from the Saturday Review, Spectator, &c. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Contexts:— The Angelic Doctor, Nostradamus, Thomas a Kempis, 
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 George Psalmanazar, The Highwaymen, The Spirit World. 
 
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 able to the general reader:' — Observer. 
 
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 IX. 
 
 A CONCORDANCE OR VERBAL INDEX to the whole of 
 
 Milton's Poetical Works. Comprising upwards of 20.000 References. 
 By Charles D. Cleveland, LL.D. With Vignette Portrait of Milton. 
 1 vol. small post, printed on toned paper, at the Chiswick Press, tis. 
 
 *»* This work affords an immediate reference to any passage in any 
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 " An invahu'ible Index, which the publishers have done a public service 
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 word-book of the English language." — Record. 
 
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 venient." — Guardian. 
 
 THE SILENT HOUR. Essays for Sundav Reading, Original 
 and Selected. By the Author of " The Gentle Life." 
 
List of Publications. 
 
 LITERATURE, WORKS OF REFERENCE AND 
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 ^^ AVID GRAY, and other Essays on Poetry and Poets. 
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 Poems of the Inner Life. Selected chiefly from modern Authors, 
 
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 Life Portraits of Shakspeare ; with an Examination of the 
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Sampson Low and Co.'s 
 
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List of Publications. 
 
 The Clerical Assistant : an Elocutionary Guide to the Reading 
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 Latin-English Lexicon, by Dr. Andrews. New Edition. 8vo. 18s. 
 
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 " Ttie best Latin Dictionary, whether for the scholar or advanced stu- 
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 The Farm and Fruit of Old From Virgil. By a Market Gar- 
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 Usque ad Ccelum ; or, the Dwellings of the People. By Thomas 
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 Prince Albert's Golden Precepts. Second Edition, with Photo- 
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 the first time collected and carefully arranged. With an Index. Royal 
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 Our Little Ones in Heaven : Thoughts in Prose and Verse, se- 
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 Six Essays on Commons Preservation. Written in Competition 
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 By John M. Maidlow, M.D. Lincoln's Inn, Barrister at Law, (to whom the 
 first Prize was awarded). 
 William Phipson Beale, Lincoln's Inn, (to whom the second Frize was 
 
 awarded). 
 F. Octavius Crump, Middle Temple. 
 Henry Hicks Hocking, St. John's College, Oxford. 
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J Sampson Low and Co.'s 
 
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 a-j^-fc^ Last Rambles amongst the Indians beyond the Rocky 
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 Life amongst the Indians. An entirely New Edition, by the same 
 
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 Alwyn Morton ; his School and Schoolfellows. A Story of 
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 Also, Cheap Edition. Illustrated by Harvey. Fcap. 16mo. cloth extra, 
 2s. 6a!. 
 41 Of its kind one of the best books th \t wis ever written." 
 
 Quarterly Review, Jan. 1867. 
 
 The Marvels of Optics. Bv E. Marion. Translated and edited 
 by C. W. Quin. With 60 Illustrations. Small post &vo. cloth extra. 
 
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 Thunder and Lightning. Translated from the Erench of Le 
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 The Silver Skates 5 a Story of Holland Life. Edited by "VY. H. G. 
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 " This well-written, well-wrought book." — Athenaeum. 
 
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 The Fire Ships. A Story of the Fays of Lord Cochrane. 5s. 
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List of Publications. 11 
 
 The True History of Dame Perkins and her Grey Mare. Told 
 
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 How to Make Miniature Pumps and a Fire-Engine : a Book for 
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 Emily's Choice ; an Australian Tale. By Maud Jeanne Franc, 
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 " This rigorous Memoir of Count Gianluigi Fieschi. uritten in excellent 
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List of Publications. 1 3 
 
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14 Sampson Low and Oo.'s 
 
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 Brazil and the Brazilians. Pourtrayerl in Historical and Des- 
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List of Publications. 15 
 
 The Black Country and its Green Border Land ; or, Expedi- 
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16 Sampson Low and Co.'s 
 
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 INDIA, AMERICA, AND THE COLONIES. 
 
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List of Publications. 17 
 
 South Australia : its Progress and Prosperity. By A. Forster> 
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 Jamaica and the Colonial Office : Who caused the Crisis ? By 
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 The Cotton Kingdom : a Traveller's Observations on Cotton and 
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 Canada and its Resources. Two Prize Essays, by Hogan and 
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 SCIENCE AND DISCOVERY. 
 
 DICTIONARY of Photography, on the Basis of 
 
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18 Sampson Low and Co.'s 
 
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 Cyclopaedia of Mathematical Science, by Davies and Peck. 8vo. 
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 TRADE, AGRICULTURE, DOMESTIC 
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List of Publications. 19 
 
 The Bubbles of Finance : the Revelations of a City Man. Fcap. 
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 Coffee : A Treatise on its Nature and Cultivation. With some 
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 THEOLOGY. 
 
 >?£HE Origin and History of the Books of the New Testa- 
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 Apocryphal. 1 Designed to show what the 
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 " The author brings out forcibly the overwhelming manuscript evidence 
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 Christian Nurture. Is. 6d. 
 
 Character of Jesus. &d. 
 
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 Work and Play. 3s. 6d. 
 
20 Sampson Low and Co. 's 
 
 The Land and the Book, or Biblical Illustrations drawn from 
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 Missionary Geography for the use of Teachers and Missionary 
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 Faith's Work Perfected. The Rise and Progress of the Orphan 
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 A Short Method of Prayer; an Analysis of a Work so entitled 
 
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 Life and Experience of Madame de la Mothe Guyon. By Pro- 
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List of Publications. 21 
 
 LAW AND JURISPRUDENCE. 
 
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