11T
3   t
Zs




z1


1


OF TIE




'\        I
(-I,,     (,
Cl           I
**"IC,
I,












I




tbe wlorl's Classics
CCCLVIII
Pages from a Journal




OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMEN HOUSE, E.C. 4
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW
LEIPZIG NEW YORK TORONTO
MELBOURNE CAPETOWN BOMBAY
CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI
HUMPHREY MILFORD
PUBLISHER TO THE
UNIVERSITY




Pages
From a Journal
WITH OTHER PAPERS
By
MARK RUTHERFORD -"'


OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD




WILLIAM HALE WHITE (' MARK RUTHERFORD')
Born, High Street, Bedford.. 22 December, 1831
Died, Groombridge, Kent.. 14 March, 1913
' Pages from a yournal' was first published in i900.
In 'The World's Classics' it was first published in I930.


Printed in Great Britain at the University Press, Oxford
By John Johnson, Printer to the University




-//-' 4   -,.
Contents
PAGE
A VISIT TO CARLYLE...   I
EARLY MORNING IN JANUARY..  14
MARCH.....   6
JUNE.....   8
AUGUST.....  20
THE END OF OCTOBER...  22
NOVEMBER....  25
THE BREAK UP OF A GREAT DROUGHT.  28
SPINOZA.....  32
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON THE DEVIL.  58
INJUSTICE....  62
TIME SETTLES CONTROVERSIES..  64
TALKING ABOUT OUR TROUBLES..  66
FAITH.....  70
PATIENCE....  74
AN APOLOGY....  78
BELIEF, UNBELIEF, AND SUPERSTITION.  83
JUDAS ISCARIOT....  87
V




vi           CONTENTS
PAGE
SIR WALTER SCOTT'S USE OF THE SUPERNATURAL...  96
SEPTEMBER, I798...   99
SOME NOTES ON MILTON.. 110
THE MORALITY OF BYRON'S POETRY. " THE
CORSAIR".... 125
BYRON, GOETHE, AND MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD  1 33
A SACRIFICE.... I49
THE AGED TREE.... 152
CONSCIENCE...       153
THE GOVERNESS S STORY.. i6o
JAMES FORBES.... I70
ATONEMENT.... 174
MY AUNT ELEANOR... I8o
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN GEORGE LUCY,
M.A., AND HERMIONE RUSSELL, B.A. 200
MRS. FAIRFAX.... 218
LITTLE NELL... 284
A HOME-MADE RELIGION... 320
FAITH...,.  326
SOME LETTERS...        333




Pages from a Journal,
with other Papers.
A VISIT TO CARL YLE IN z868
(   N Saturday, the 22nd of March, i868, my
father and I called on Carlyle at 5,
Cheyne Row, Chelsea, with a message from one
of his intimate friends.
We were asked upstairs at once, and found
Carlyle at breakfast.  The room was large,
well-lighted, a bright fire was burning, and the
window was open in order to secure complete
ventilation.  Opposite the fireplace was a
picture of Frederick the Great and his sister.
There were also other pictures which I had not
time to examine. One of them Carlyle pointed
out. It was a portrait of the Elector of Saxony
who assisted Luther. The letters V.D.M.I.E.
("Verbum Dei Manet in AEternum ") were


358


I


B




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


round it. Everything in the room was in exact
order, there was no dust or confusion, and the
books on the shelves were arranged in perfect
evenness. I noticed that when Carlyle replaced
a book he took pains to get it level with the
others. The furniture was solid, neat, and I
should think expensive. I showed him the
letter he had written to me eighteen years ago.
It has been published by Mr. Froude, but it
will bear reprinting. The circumstances under
which it was written, not stated by Mr.
Froude, were these.   In  i850, when the
Latter-day Pamphlets appeared-how well I
remember the eager journey to the bookseller
for each successive number!-almost all the
reviews united in a howl of execration, criticism so called. I, being young, and owing so
much to Carlyle, wrote to him, the first and
almost the only time I ever did anything of
the kind, assuring him that there was at least
one person who believed in him. This was
his answer:"CHELSEA, 9th Mfarch, i850.
"MY GOOD YOUNG FRIEND,-I am       much
obliged by the regard you entertain for me;
2




A VISIT TO CARLYLE IN i868
and do not blame your enthusiasm, which well
enough beseems your young years.   If my
books teach you anything, don't mind in the
least whether other people believe it or not;
but do you for your own behoof lay it to heart
as a real acquisition you have made, more
properly, as a real message left with you, which
you must set about fulfilling, whatsoever others
do! This is really all the counsel I can give
you about what you read in my books or those
of others: practise what you learn there; instantly and in all ways begin turning the belief
into a fact, and continue at that-till you get
more and ever more beliefs, with which also
do the like. It is idle work otherwise to write
books or to read them.
"And be not surprised that 'people have no
sympathy with you'; that is an accompaniment that will attend you all your days if you
mean to lead an earnest life.  The 'people'
could not save you with their 'sympathy' if
they had never so much of it to give; a man
can and must save himself, with or without their
sympathy, as it may chance.
"And may all good be with you, my kind
young friend, and a heart stout enough for this
3




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL
adventure you are upon; that is the best
'good' of all.
"I remain, yours very sincerely,
"T. CARLYLE."
Carlyle had forgotten this letter, but said,
"It is undoubtedly mine. It is what I have
always believed... it has been so ever
since I was at college. I do not mean to say
I was not loved there as warmly by noble friends
as ever man could be, but the world tumbled
on me, and has ever since then been tumbling
on me rubbish, huge wagon-loads of rubbish,
thinking to smother me, and was surprised it
did not smother me-turned round with amazement and said, ' What, you alive yet?'...
While I was writing my Frederick my best
friends, out of delicacy, did not call. Those
who came were those I did not want to come,
and I saw very few of them.   I shook off
everything to right and left. At last the work
would have killed me, and I was obliged to
take to riding, chiefly in the dark, about fourteen miles most days, plunging and floundering
on. I ought to have been younger to have
undertaken such a task. If they were to offer
4




A VISIT TO CARLYLE IN 1868
me all Prussia, all the solar system, I would not
write Frederick again.  No bribe from God or
man would tempt me to do it."
He was re-reading his Frederick, to correct it
for the stereotyped edition. "On the whole I
think it is very well done. No man perhaps in
England could have done it better. If you
write a book though now, you must just pitch
it out of window and say, 'Ho! all you jackasses, come and trample on it and trample it
into mud, or go on till you are tired."' He
laughed heartily at this explosion. His laughter
struck me-humour controlling his wrath and in
a sense above it, as if the final word were by no
means hatred or contempt, even for the jackass.
"... No piece of news of late years has gladdened me like the victory of the Prussians over
the Austrians. It was the triumph of Prussian
over French and Napoleonic influence. The
Prussians were a valiant, pious people, and it
was a question which should have the most
power in Germany, they or Napoleon. The
French are sunk in all kinds of filth. Compare
what the Prussians did with what we did in the
Crimea. The English people are an incredible
people. They seem to think that it is not
5




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL
necessary that a general should have the least
knowledge of the art of war. It is as if you
had the stone, and should cry out to any travelling tinker or blacksmith and say, ' Here, come
here and cut me for the stone,' and he would
cut you! Sir Charles Napier would have been
a great general if he had had the opportunity. He was much delighted with Frederick. 'Frederick was a most extraordinary
general,' said Sir Charles, and on examination
I found out that all that Sir Charles had read of
Frederick was a manual for Prussian officers,
published by him about 1760, telling them
what to do on particular occasions. I was very
pleased at this admiration of Frederick by Sir
Charles.
" Sir John Bowring was one of your model
men; men who go about imagining themselves
the models of all virtues, and they are models of
something very different. He was one of your
patriots, and the Government to quiet him sent
him out to China. When he got there he went
to war with a third of the human race! He,
the patriot, he who believed in the greatesthappiness principle, immediately went to war
with a third of the human race!"   (Great
6




A VISIT TO CARLYLE IN I868
laughter from T.C.)  "And so far as I can
make out he was all wrong.
"The Frederick is being translated into
German. It is being done by a man whose
name I have forgotten, but it was begun by
one of the most faithful friends I ever had,
Neuberg. I could not work in the rooms in
the offices where lay the State papers I wanted
to use, it brought on such a headache, but Neuberg went there, and for six months worked all
day copying. He was taken ill, and a surgical
operation was badly performed, and then in
that wild, black weather at the beginning of
last year, just after I came back from Mentone, the news came to me one night he was
dead."
On leaving Carlyle shook hands with us both
and said he was glad to have seen us. " It was
pleasant to have friends coming out of the
dark in this way."
Perhaps a reflection or two which occurred
to me after this interview may not be out of
place. Carlyle was perfectly frank, even to us
of whom he knew but little.  He did not
stand off or refuse to talk on any but commonplace subjects. What was offered to us was
7




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


his best. And yet there is to be found in him
a singular reserve, and those shallow persons
who taunt him with inconsistency because he
makes so much of silence, and yet talks so
much, understand little or nothing of him.
In half a dozen pages one man may be guilty of
shameless garrulity, and another may be nobly
reticent throughout a dozen volumes. Carlyle
feels the contradictions of the universe as
keenly as any man can feel them. He knows
how easy it is to appear profound by putting
anew the riddles which nobody can answer; he
knows how strong is the temptation towards
the insoluble. But upon these subjects he also
knows how to hold his tongue; he does not
shriek in the streets, but he bows his head.
He has found no answer-he no more than the
feeblest of us, and yet in his inmost soul
there is a shrine, and he worships.
Carlyle is the champion of morals, ethics,
law-call it what you like-of that which says
we must not always do a thing because it is
pleasant. There are two great ethical parties
in the world, and, in the main, but two. One
of them asserts the claims of the senses. Its
doctrine is seductive because it is so right. It
8




A VISIT TO CARLYLE IN i868
is necessary that we should in a measure believe
it, in order that life may be sweet. But nature
has heavily weighted the scale in its favour; its
acceptance requires no effort. It is easily perverted and becomes a snare. In our day nearly
all genius has gone over to it, and preaching it
is rather superfluous. The other party affirms
what has been the soul of all religions worth
'having, that it is by repression and self-negation that men and States live.
It has been said that Carlyle is great because
he is graphic, and he is supposed to be summed
up in " mere picturesqueness," the silliest ot
verdicts. A man may be graphic in two ways.
He may deal with his subject from the outside,
and by dint of using strong language may
" graphically" describe an execution or a
drunken row in the streets. But he may be
graphic by ability to penetrate into essence,
and to express it in words which are worthy
of it. What higher virtue than this can we
imagine in poet, artist, or prophet?
Like all great men, Carlyle is infinitely
tender. That was what struck me as I sat and
looked in his eyes, and the best portraits in
some degree confirm  me.   It is not worth
9




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


while here to produce passages from his books
to prove my point, but I could easily do so,
specially from the Life of Sterling and the
Cromwell.     Much of his fierceness is an inverted tenderness.
His greatest book is perhaps the Frederick,
the biography of a hero reduced more than
once to such extremities that apparently nothing
but some miraculous intervention could save
him, and who did not yield, but struggled
on and finally emerged victorious. When we
consider Frederick's position during the last
part of the Seven Years' War, we must admit
that no man was ever in such desperate circumstances or showed such uncrushable determination. It was as if the Destinies, in order to
teach us what human nature can do, had ordained that he who had the most fortitude
should also encounter the severest trial of it.
' Since I868 the Reminiscences and his Life have
been published which put this estimate of him beyond all
doubt. It is much to be regretted that a certain theory,
a certain irresistible tendency to arrange facts so as to
prove preconceived notions, a tendency more dangerous
and unhistorical even than direct suppression of the truth
or invention of what is not true, should have ruined
Carlyle's biography. Professor Norton's edition of the
Reminiscences should be compared with Mr. Froude's.
IO0




A VISIT TO CARLYLE IN i868
Over and over again Frederick would have been
justified in acknowledging defeat, and we should
have said that he had done all that could be
expected even of such a temper as that with
which he was endowed. If the struggle of
the will with the encompassing world is the
stuff of which epics are made, then no greater
epic than that of Frederick has been written
in prose or verse, and it has the important
advantage of being true. It is interesting to
note how attractive this primary virtue of which
Frederick is such a remarkable representative is
to Carlyle, how moral it is to him; and, indeed,
is it not the sum and substance of all morality?
It should be noted also that it was due to no
religious motive: that it was bare, pure humanity. At times it is difficult not to believe that
Carlyle, notwithstanding his piety, loves it all
the more on that account. It is strange that
an example so salutary and stimulating to the
poorest and meanest of us should be set by an
unbelieving king, and that my humdrum existence should be secretly supported by "Frederick II. Roi de Prusse."
*      *      *g      *      *


II




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


Soon after Carlyle died I went to Ecclefechan
and stood by his grave. It was not a day that
I would have chosen for such an errand, for it
was cold, grey, and hard, and towards the afternoon it rained a slow, persistent, wintry rain.
The kirkyard in Ecclefechan was dismal and
depressing, but my thoughts were not there. I
remembered what Carlyle was to the young men
of thirty or forty years ago, in the days of that
new birth, which was so strange a characteristic
of the time. His books were read with excitement, with tears of joy, on lonely hills, by the
seashore and in London streets, and the readers
were thankful that it was their privilege to live
when he also was alive. All that excitement
has vanished, but those who knew what it was are
the better for it. Carlyle now is almost nothing,
but his day will return, he will be put in his
place as one of the greatest souls who have
been born amongst us, and his message will be
considered as perhaps the most important which
has ever been sent to us. This is what I
thought as I stood in Ecclefechan kirkyard,
and as I lingered I almost doubted if Carlyle
could be dead. Was it possible that such as he
could altogether die? Some touch, some turn,
12




A VISIT TO CARLYLE IN i868


I could not tell what or how, seemed all that
was necessary to enable me to see and to hear
him. It was just as if I were perplexed and
baffled by a veil which prevented recognition
of him, although I was sure he was behind it.


13




EARL Y MORNING IN AN UAR Y
A WARM, still morning, with a clear sky
and stars. At first the hills were almost
black, but, as the dawn ascended, they became
dark green, of a peculiarly delicate tint which
is never seen in the daytime. The quietude
is profound, although a voice from an unseen
fishing-boat can now and then be heard. How
strange the landscape seems! It is not a variation of the old landscape; it is a new world.
The half-moon rides high in the sky, and near
her is Jupiter. A little way further to the left
is Venus, and still further down is Mercury, rare
apparition, just perceptible where the deep blue
of the night is yielding to the green which foretells the sun. The east grows lighter; the birds
begin to stir in the bushes, and the cry of a gull
rises from the base of the cliff. The sea becomes
14




EARLY MORNING IN JANUARY
responsive, and in a moment is overspread with
continually changing colour, partly that of the
heavens above it and partly self-contributed.
With what slow, majestic pomp is the day
preceded, as though there had been no day
)efore it and no other would follow it!


I5




MARCH


IT is a bright day in March, with a gentle
south-west wind. Sitting still in the copse
and facing the sun it strikes warm. It has
already mounted many degrees on its way to its
summer height, and is regaining its power. The
clouds are soft, rounded, and spring-like, and
the white of the blackthorn is discernible here
and there amidst the underwood. The brooks
are running full from winter rains but are not
overflowing. All over the wood which fills up
the valley lies a thin, purplish mist, harmonising
with the purple bloom on the stems and
branches. The buds are ready to burst, there
is a sense of movement, of waking after sleep;
the tremendous upward rush of life is almost
felt. But how silent the process is! There is
no hurry for achievement, although so much has
I6




MARCH
to be done-such infinite intricacy to be unfolded and made perfect. The little stream
winding down the bottom turns and doubles on
itself; a dead leaf falls into it, is arrested by a
twig, and lies there content.




JUNE


IT is a quiet, warm day in June. The wind
is westerly, but there is only just enough
of it to waft now and then a sound from the faroff town, or the dull, subdued thunder of
cannon-firing from ships or forts distant some
forty miles or more. Massive, white-bordered
clouds, grey underneath, sail overhead; there
was heavy rain last night, and they are lifting
and breaking a little. Softly and slowly they go,
and one of them, darker than the rest, has
descended in a mist of rain, blotting out the
ships.  The surface of the water is paved
curiously in green and violet, and where the
light lies on it scintillates like millions of stars.
The grass is not yet cut, and the showers have
brought it up knee-deep. Its gentle whisper is
plainly heard, the most delicate of all the voices
18




JUNE


in the world, and the meadow bends into
billows, grey, silvery, and green, when a breeze
of sufficient strength sweeps across it. The
larks are so multitudinous that no distinct song
can be caught, and amidst the confused melody
comes the note of the thrush and the blackbird.
A constant under-running accompaniment is
just audible in the hum of innumerable insects
and the sharp buzz of flies darting past the ear.
Only those who live in the open air and watch
the fields and sea from hour to hour and day to
day know what they are and what they mean.
The chance visitor, or he who looks now and
then, never understands them. While I have
lain here, the clouds have risen, have become
more aerial, and more suffused with light; the
horizon has become better defined, and the
yellow shingle beach is visible to its extremest
point clasping the bay in its arms. The bay
itself is the tenderest blue-green, and on the
rolling plain which borders it lies intense sunlight chequered with moving shadows which
wander eastwards. The wind has shifted a
trifle, and comes straight up the Channel from
the illimitable ocean.


I9




AUGUST


A FEW days ago it was very hot. Afterwards we had a thunderstorm, followed
by rain from the south-west. The wind has
veered a point northerly, and the barometer
is rising. This morning at half-past five the
valley below was filled with white mist.
Above it the tops of the trees on the highest
points emerged sharply distinct. It was motionless, but gradually melted before the ascending sun, recalling Plutarch's "scenes in the
beautiful temple of the world which the gods
order at their own festivals, when we are
initiated into their own mysteries." Here was
a divine mystery, with initiation for those who
cared for it. No priests were waiting, no ritual
was necessary, the service was simple-solitary
adoration and perfect silence.
As the day advances, masses of huge, heavy
20




AUGUST


clouds appear. They are well defined at the
edges, and their intricate folds and depths are
brilliantly illuminated. The infinitude of the
sky is not so impressive when it is quite clear
as when it contains and supports great clouds,
and large blue spaces are seen between them.
On the hillsides the fields here and there are
yellow and the corn is in sheaves. The birds
are mostly dumb, the glory of the furze and
broom has passed, but the heather is in flower.
The trees are dark, and even sombre, and, where
they are in masses, look as if they were in
solemn consultation. A fore-feeling of the end
of summer steals upon me. Why cannot I
banish this anticipation? Why cannot I rest
and take delight in what is before me? If some
beneficent god would but teach me how to take
no thought for the morrow, I would sacrifice to
him all I possess.


21




THE END OF OCTOBER


IT is the first south-westerly gale of the
autumn. Its violence is increasing every
minute, although the rain has ceased for awhile.
For weeks sky and sea have been beautiful,
but they have been tame. Now for some unknown reason there is a complete change, and
all the strength of nature is awake.  It is
refreshing to be once more brought face to face
with her tremendous power, and to be reminded
of the mystery of its going and coming. It is
soothing to feel so directly that man, notwithstanding his science and pretentions, his subjugation of steam and electricity, is as nothing
compared with his Creator. The air has a freshness and odour about it to which we have long
been strangers. It has been dry, and loaded
with fine dust, but now it is deliciously wet and
22




THE END OF OCTOBER


clean.  The wind during the summer has
changed lightly through all the points of the
compass, but it has never brought any scent save
that of the land, nothing from a distance. Now
it is charged with messages from the ocean.
The sky is not uniformly overcast, but is
covered with long horizontal folds of cloud, very
dark below and a little lighter where they turn
up one into the other. They are incessantly
modified by the storm, and fragments are torn
away from them which sweep overhead. The
sea, looked at from the height, shows white
edges almost to the horizon, and although the
waves at a distance cannot be distinguished, the
tossing of a solitary vessel labouring to get
round the point for shelter shows how vast they
are. The prevailing colour of the water is
greyish-green, passing into deep-blue, and perpetually shifting in tint. A quarter of a mile
away the breakers begin, and spread. themselves
in a white sheet to the land.
A couple of gulls rise from the base of the
cliffs to a height of about a hundred feet above
them. They turn their heads to the south-west,
and hover like hawks, but without any visible
movement of their wings. They are followed
23




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


by two more, who also poise themselves in the
same way. Presently all four mount higher, and
again face the tempest. They do not appear to
defy it, nor even to exert themselves in resisting
it. What to us below is fierce opposition is to
them  a support and delight.    How  these
wonderful birds are able to accomplish this feat
no mathematician can tell us. After remaining
stationary a few minutes, they wheel round, once
more ascend, and then without any effort go off
to sea directly in the teeth of the hurricane.


24




NO VEMBER


A NOVEMBER day at the end of the
month-the country is left to those who
live in it. The scattered visitors who took
lodgings in the summer in the villages have all
departed, and the recollection that they have
been here makes the solitude more complete.
The woods in which they wandered are impassable, for the rain has been heavy, and the dry,
baked clay of August has been turned into a
slough a foot deep. The wind, what there is of
it, is from the south-west, soft, sweet and damp;
the sky is almost covered with bluish-grey
clouds, which here and there give way and
permit a dim, watery gleam to float slowly over
the distant pastures. The grass for the most
part is greyish-green, more grey than green
where it has not been mown, but on the rocky
25




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


and broken ground there is a colour like that of
an emerald, and the low sun when it comes out
throws from the projections on the hillside long
and beautifully shaped shadows. Multitudes of
gnats in these brief moments of sunshine are
seen playing in it. The leaves have not all
fallen, down in the hollow hardly any have
gone, and the trees are still bossy, tinted
with the delicate yellowish-brown and brown of
different stages of decay.  The hedges have
been washed clean of the white dust; the roads
have been washed; a deep drain has just begun
to trickle and on the meadows lie little pools of
the clearest rainwater, reflecting with added
loveliness any blue patch of the heavens disclosed above them. The birds are silent save
the jackdaws and the robin, who still sings his
recollections of the summer, or his anticipations
of the spring, or perhaps his pleasure in the late
autumn. The finches are in flocks, and whirl
round in the air with graceful, shell-like convolutions as they descend, part separating, for
no reason apparently, and forming a second
flock which goes away over the copse. There
is hardly any farm-work going on, excepting in
the ditches, which are being cleaned in readi26




NOVEMBER


ness for the overflow when the thirsty ground
shall have sucked its fill. Under a bank by the
roadside a couple of men employed in carting
stone for road-mending are sitting on a sack
eating their dinner. The roof of the barn beyond them is brilliant with moss and lichens; it
has not been so vivid since last February. It is
a delightful time. No demand is made for
ecstatic admiration; everything is at rest, nature
has nothing to do but to sleep and wait.


27




THE BREAK-UP OF A GREAT
DRO UGHT
OR three months there had been hardly a
F
drop of rain. The wind had been almost
continuously north-west, and from that to east.
Occasionally there were light airs from the
south-west, and vapour rose, but there was
nothing in it; there was no true south-westerly
breeze, and in a few hours the weather-cock
returned to the old quarter. Not infrequently
the clouds began to gather, and there was every
sign that a change was at hand. The barometer
at these times fell gradually day after day until
at last it reached a point which generally brought
drenching storms, but none appeared, and then
it began slowly to rise again and we knew that
our hopes were vain, and that a week at least
28




BREAK-UP OF A GREAT DROUGHT
must elapse before it would regain its usual
height and there might be a chance of declining.
At last the disappointment was so keen that
the instrument was removed. It was better not
to watch it, but to hope for a surprise. The
grass became brown, and in many places was
killed down to the roots; there was no hay;
myriads of swarming caterpillars devoured the
fruit trees; the brooks were all dry; water for
cattle had to be fetched from ponds and springs
miles away; the roads were broken up; the air
was loaded with grit; and the beautiful green of
the hedges was choked with dust. Birds like
the rook, which fed upon worms, were nearly
starved, and were driven far and wide for
strange food. It was pitiable to see them trying
to pick the soil of the meadow as hard as a
rock. The everlasting glare was worse than the
gloom of winter, and the sense of universal
parching thirst became so distressing that the
house was preferred to the fields. We were
close to a water famine! The Atlantic, the
source of all life, was asleep, and what if
it should never wake! We know      not its
ways, it mocks all our science. Close to us
lies this great mystery, incomprehensible, and
29




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


yet our very breath depends upon it. Why
should not the sweet tides of soft moist air cease
to stream in upon us? No reason could be
given why every green herb and living thing
should not perish; no reason, save a faith which
was blind. For aught we knew, the oceanbegotten aerial current might forsake the land
and it might become a desert.
One night grey bars appeared in the western
sky, but they had too often deluded us, and we
did not believe in them.  On this particular
evening they were a little heavier, and the
window-cords were damp. The air which came
across the cliff was cool, and if we had dared to
hope we should have said it had a scent of
the sea in it. At four o'clock in the morning
there was a noise of something beating against
the panes-they were streaming! It was impossible to lie still, and I rose and went out of doors.
No creature was stirring, there was no sound
save that of the rain, but a busier time there had
not been for many a long month. Thousands
of millions of blades of grass and corn were
eagerly drinking. For sixteen hours the downpour continued, and when it was dusk I again
went out. The watercourses by the side of the
30




BREAK-UP OF A GREAT DROUGHT
roads had a little water in them, but not a drop
had reached those at the edge of the fields, so
thirsty was the earth. The drought, thank God,
was at an end!


31




SPINOZA


NOW that twenty years have passed since
I began the study of Spinoza it is good
to find that he still holds his ground. Much
in him remains obscure, but there is enough
which is sufficiently clear to give a direction to
thought and to modify action. To the professional metaphysician Spinoza's work is already
surpassed, and is absorbed in subsequent systems. We are told to read him once because
he is historically interesting, and then we are
supposed to have done with him.     But if
"Spinozism," as it is called, is but a stage of
development there is something in Spinoza
which can be superseded as little as the Imilation of Christ or the Pilgrim's Progress, and
it is this which continues to draw men to him.
Goethe never cared for set philosophical sys32




SPINOZA


tems. Very early in life he thought he had
found out that they were useless pieces of construction, but to the end of his days he clung
to Spinoza, and Philina, of all persons in the
world, repeats one of the finest sayings in the
Ethic. So far as the metaphysicians are carpenters, and there is much carpentering in
most of them, Goethe was right, and the
larger part of their industry endures wind
and weather but for a short time. Spinoza's
object was not to make a scheme of the
universe. He felt that the things on which
men usually set their hearts give no permanent
satisfaction, and he cast about for some means
by which to secure "a joy continuous and
supreme to all eternity." I propose now, without attempting to connect or contrast Spinoza
with Descartes or the Germans, to name some
of those thoughts in his books by which he
conceived he had attained his end.
The sorrow of life is the rigidity of the
material universe in which we are placed. We
are bound by physical laws, and there is a
constant pressure of matter-of-fact evidence to
prove that we are nothing but common and
cheap products of the earth to which in a few


358


33


C




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


moments or years we return. Spinoza's chief
aim is to free us from this sorrow, and to free
us from it by thinking. The emphasis on this
word is important. He continually insists that
a thing is not unreal because we cannot imagine
it. His own science, mathematics, affords him
examples of what must be, although we cannot
picture it, and he believes that true consolation
lies in the region of that which cannot be
imaged but can be thought.
Setting out on his quest, he lays hold at the
very beginning on the idea of Substance, which
he afterwards identifies with the idea of God.
"By Substance I understand that which is
in itself and is conceived through itself; in
other words, that, the conception of which does
not need the conception of another thing from
which it must be formed."      "By God, I
understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to
say, substance consisting of infinite attributes,
each one of which expresses eternal and infinite
essence." 2  "God, or substance consisting of
infinite attributes, each one of which expresses,eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists." 3
Ethic, pt. I, def. 3.   2 Ibid., pt. I, def. 6.
3 Ibid., pt. I, prop. II.
34




SPINOZA


By the phrases "in itself" and "by itself,"
we are to understand that this conception
cannot be explained in other terms.     Substance must be posited, and there we must
leave it.   The demonstration   of the lastquoted proposition, the iith, is elusive, and
I must pass it by, merely observing that the
oojection that no idea involves existence,
and that consequently the idea of God
does not involve it, is not a refutation of
Spinoza, who might rejoin that it is impossible
not to affirm existence of God as the Ethic
defines him. Spinoza escapes one great theological difficulty. Directly we begin to reflect
we are dissatisfied with a material God, and the
nobler religions assert that God is a Spirit.
But if He be a pure spirit whence comes
the material universe? To Spinoza pure spirit
and pure matter are mere artifices of the
logical understanding. His God is the Substance with infinite attributes of which thought
and extension are the two revealed to man, and
he goes further, for he maintains that they are
one and the same thing viewed in different
ways, inside and outside of the same reality.
The conception of God, strictly speaking, is
35




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


not incomprehensible, but it is not circum-prehensible; if it were it could not be the true
conception of Him.
Spinoza declares that "the human mind possesses an adequate knowledge of the eternal and
infinite essence of God " '-not of God in His
completeness, but it is adequate. The demonstration of this proposition is at first sight
unsatisfactory, because we look for one which
shall enable us to form an image of God like
that which we can form of a triangle. But we
cannot have "a knowledge of God as distinct
as that which we have of common notions,
because we cannot imagine God as we can
bodies." "To your question," says Spinoza
to Boxel, " whether I have as clear an idea of
God as I have of a triangle? I answer, Yes.
But if you ask me whether I have as clear an
image of God as I have of a triangle I shall say,
No; for we cannot imagine God, but we can in
a measure understand Him. Here also, it is to
be observed that I do not say that I altogether
know God, but that I understand some of His
attributes-not all, nor the'greatest part, and it
is clear that my ignorance of very many does
Ethic, pt. 2, prop. 47.
36




SPINOZA


not prevent my knowledge of certain others.
When I learned the elements of Euclid, I very
soon understood that the three angles of a
triangle are equal to two right angles, and I
clearly perceived this property of a triangle,
although I was ignorant of many others." I
"Individual things are nothing but affections or modes of God's attributes, expressing
those attributes in a certain and determinate
manner," 2 and hence "the more we understand
individual objects, the more we understand
God." 3
The intellect of God in no way resembles
the human intellect, for we cannot conceive
Him as proposing an end and considering the
means to attain it. "The intellect of God, in
so far as it is conceived to constitute His
essence, is in truth the cause of things, both of
their essence and of their existence-a truth
which seems to have been understood by those
who have maintained that God's intellect, will,
and power are one and the same thing." 4
Letter 56 (Van Vloten and Land's ed.).
2 Ethic, pt. I, coroll. prop. 25.
3 Ibid., pt. 5, prop. 24.
4 Ibid., pt. I, schol. to prop. 17.
37




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


The whole of God is fact, and Spinoza denies
any reserve in Him of something unexpressed.
"The omnipotence of God has been actual
from eternity, and in the same actuality will
remain to eternity," I not of course in the sense
that everything which exists has always existed
as we now know it, or that nothing will exist
hereafter which does not exist now, but that in
God everything that has been, and will be,
eternally is.
The reader will perhaps ask, What has this
theology to do with the "joy continuous and
supreme "? We shall presently meet with some
deductions which contribute to it, but it is not
difficult to understand that Spinoza, to use his
own word, might call the truths set forth in
these propositions "blessed." Let a man once
believe in that God of infinite attributes of
which thought and extension are those by which
He manifests Himself to us; let him see that
the opposition between thought and matter is
fictitious; that his mind "is a part of the
infinite intellect of God "; that he is not a
mere transient, outside interpreter of the universe, but himself the soul or law, which is the
Ethic, pt. I, schol. to prop. I7.
38




SPINOZA


universe, and he will feel a relationship with
infinity which will emancipate him.
It is not true that in Spinoza's God there is
so little that is positive that it is not worth preserving. All Nature is in Him, and if the
objector is sincere he will confess that it is not
the lack of contents in the idea which is disappointing, but a lack of contents particularly
interesting to himself.
The opposition between the mind and body
of man as two diverse entities ceases with that
between thought and extension. It would be
impossible briefly to explain in all its fulness
what Spinoza means by the proposition: "The
object of the idea constituting the human mind
is a body "'; it is sufficient here to say that, just
as extension and thought are one, considered in
different aspects, so body and mind are one.
We shall find in the fifth part of the Ethic that
Spinoza affirms the eternity of the mind, though
not perhaps in the way in which it is usually
believed.
Following the order of the Ethic we now
come to its more directly ethical maxims.
Spinoza denies the freedom commonly assigned, Ethic, pt 2, prop. 13.
39




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


to the will, or perhaps it is more correct to say
he denies that it is intelligible. The will is
determined by the intellect. The idea of the
triangle involves the affirmation or volition that
its three angles are equal to two right angles.
If we understand what a triangle is we are not
"free" to believe that it contains more or less
than two right angles, nor to act as if it contained more or less than two. The only real
freedom of the mind is obedience to the reason,
and the mind is enslaved when it is under the
dominion of the passions.  "God does not act
from freedom of the will," I and consequently
"things could have been produced by God in
no other manner and in no other order than
that in which they have been produced." 2
If you will but reflect," Spinoza tells
Boxel, "that indifference is nothing but ignorance or doubt, and that a will always constant and in all things determinate is a virtue
and a necessary property of the intellect, you
will see that my words are entirely in accord
with the truth." 3 To the same effect is a
passage in a letter to Blyenbergh, " Our liberty
1 Ethic, pt. I, coroll. I, prop. 32.
2 Ibid., pt. I, prop. 33.     3 Letter 56.
40




SPINOZA


does not consist in a certain contingency nor
in a certain indifference, but in the manner of
affirming or denying, so that in proportion as
we affirm or deny anything with less indifference, are we the more free."' So also to
Schuller, " I call that thing free which exists
and acts solely from the necessity of its own
nature: I call that thing coerced which is
determined to exist and to act in a certain and
determinate manner by another."2 With regard
to this definition it might be objected that the
necessity does not lie solely in the person who
wills but is also in the object. The triangle as
well as the nature of man contains the necessity.
What Spinoza means is that the free man by
the necessity of his nature is bound to assert
the truth of what follows from the definition of
a triangle and that the stronger he feels the
necessity the more free he is. Hence it follows
that the wider the range of the intellect and the
more imperative the necessity which binds it,
the larger is its freedom.
In genuine freedom Spinoza rejoices. " The
doctrine is of service in so far as it teaches us
that we do everything by the will of God alone,
x Letter 2I.            2 Letter 58.
4I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


and that we are partakers of the divine nature
in proportion as our actions become more and
more perfect and we more and more understand
God. This doctrine, therefore, besides giving
repose in every way to the soul, has also this
advantage, that it teaches us in what our highest
happiness or blessedness consists, namely, in
the knowledge of God alone, by which we are
drawn to do those things only which love and
piety persuade." I In other words, being part of
the whole, the grandeur and office of the whole
are ours. We are anxious about what we call
".personality," but in truth there is nothing in
it of any worth, and the less we care for it the
more " blessed " we are.
"By the desire which springs from reason
we follow good directly and avoid evil indirectly"2: our aim should be the good; in
obtaining that we are delivered from evil. To
the same purpose is the conclusion of the fifth
book of the Ethic that "No one delights in
blessedness because he has restrained his
affects, but, on the contrary, the power of
restraining his lusts springs from blessedness
1 Ethic, pt. 2, schol. prop. 49.
2 Ibid., pt. 4, coroll. prop. 63.
42




SPINOZA


itself."' This is exactly what the Gospel says to
the Law.
Fear is not the motive of a free man to do
what is good. "A free man thinks of nothing
less than of death, and his wisdom is not a meditation upon death, but upon life."2 This is the
celebrated sixty-seventh proposition of the fourth
part. If we examine the proof which directly
depends on the sixty-third proposition of the
same part-"he who is led by fear, and does what
is good in order that he may avoid what is evil,
is not led by reason "-we shall see that Spinoza
is referring to the fear of the " evil" of hell-fire.
All Spinoza's teaching with regard to the
passions is a consequence of what he believes
of God and man. He will study the passions
and not curse them. He finds that by understanding them "we can bring it to pass that
we suffer less from them. We have, therefore,
mainly to strive to acquire a clear and distinct
knowledge of each affect." 3 "If the human
mind had none but adequate ideas it would
x Ethic, pt. 5, or pp. 42.
2 "Agis being asked on a time how a man might
continue free all his life; he answered, ' By despising
death.'" (Plutarch's " Morals." Laconic Apophthegms.)
3 Ethic, pt. 5, schol. prop. 4.
43




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


form  no notion of evil."' "The difference
between a man who is led by affect or opinion
alone and one who is led by reason " is that
"the former, whether he wills it or not, does
those things of which he is entirely ignorant,
but the latter does the will of no one but
himself." 2 They know not what they do.
The direct influence of Spinoza's theology is
also shown in his treatment of pity, hatred,
laughter, and contempt. "The man who has
properly understood that everything follows
from the necessity of the divine nature, and
comes to pass according to the eternal laws
and rules of nature, will in truth discover
nothing which is worthy of hatred, laughter, or
contempt, nor will he pity any one, but, so far
as human virtue is able, he will endeavour to
do well, as we say, and to rejoice." 3 By pity
is to be understood mere blind sympathy.
The good that we do by this pity with the eyes
of the mind shut ought to be done with them
open.   "He who     lives according to the
guidance of reason strives as much as possible
I Ethic, pt. 4, coroll. prop. 64.
2 Ibid., pt. 4, schol. prop. 66.
3 Ibid., pt. 4, schol. prop. 50.
44




SPINOZA


to repay the hatred, anger, or contempt of
others towards himself with love or generosity.... He who wishes to avenge injuries by
hating in return does indeed live miserably.
But he who, on the contrary, strives to drive
out hatred by love, fights joyfully and confidently, with equal ease resisting one man or
a number of men, and needing scarcely any
assistance from  fortune.  Those whom   he
conquers yield gladly, not from defect of
strength, but from an increase of it.",
"Joy is the passion by which the mind
passes to a greater perfection: sorrow, on the
other hand, is the passion by which it passes
to a less perfection." 2 "No God and no
human being, except an envious one, is
delighted by my impotence or my trouble, or
esteems as any virtue in us tears, sighs, fears,
and other things of this kind, which are signs
of mental impotence; on the contrary, the
greater the joy with which we are affected, the
greater the perfection to which we pass thereby;
that is to say, the more do we necessarily
I Ethic, pt. 4, prop. 46 and schol.
2 Ibid., pt. 3, schol. prop.  I.
45




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


partake of the divine nature."! It would be
difficult to find an account of joy and sorrow
which is closer to the facts than that which
Spinoza gives. He lived amongst people Roman
Catholic and Protestant who worshipped sorrow. Sorrow was the divinely decreed law of
life and joy was merely a permitted exception.
He reversed this order and his claim to be
considered in this respect as one of the great
revolutionary religious and moral reformers
has not been sufficiently recognised. It is
remarkable that, unlike other reformers, he
has not contradicted error by an exaggeration,
which itself very soon stands in need of contradiction, but by simple sanity which requires
no correction. One reason for this peculiarity
is that the Ethic was the result of long meditation. It was published posthumously and was
discussed in draft for many years before his
death. Usually what we call our convictions
are propositions which we have not thoroughly
examined in quietude, but notions which have
just come into our heads and. are irreversible to
us solely because we are committed to them.
Much may be urged against the Ethic and on
Ethic, pt. 4, schol. prop. 45.
46




SPINOZA


behalf of hatred, contempt, and sorrow. The
" other side" may be produced mechanically
to almost every truth; the more easily, the
more divine that truth is, and against no truths
is it producible with less genuine mental effort
than against those uttered by the founder of
Christianity. The question, however, if we are
dealing with the New Testament, is not whether
the Sermon on the Mount can be turned
inside out in a debating society, but whether it
does not represent better than anything which
the clever leader of the opposition can formulate the principle or temper which should
govern our conduct.
There is a group of propositions in the last
part of the Ethic, which, although they are
difficult, it may be well to notice, because they
were evidently regarded by Spinoza as helping
him to the end he had in view. The difficulty
lies in a peculiar combination of religious ideas
and scientific form. These propositions are
the following:- I
"The mind can cause all the affections of
the body or the images of things to be related
to the idea of God."
Ethic, pt. 5, props. I4-20.
47




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


"He who clearly and distinctly understands
himself and his affects loves God, and loves
Him better the better he understands himself
and his affects."
"This love to God above everything else
ought to occupy the mind."
"God is free from passions, nor is He
affected with any affect of joy or sorrow."
" No one can hate God."
"He who loves God cannot strive that God
should love him in return."
" This love to God cannot be defiled either
by the effect of envy or jealousy, but is the
more strengthened the more people we imagine
to be connected with God by the same bond of
love."
The proof of the first of these propositions,
using language somewhat different from that of
the text, is as follows:-There is no affection of
the body of which the mind cannot form some
clear and distinct conception, that is to say, of
everything perceived it is capable of forming a
clear and adequate idea, not exhaustive, as
Spinoza is careful to warn us, but an idea not
distorted by our personality, and one which is
in accordance with the thing itself, adequate as
48




SPINOZA


far as it goes. Newton's perception that the
moon perpetually falls to the earth by the same
numerical law under which a stone falls to it
was an adequate perception.   "Therefore,"
continues the demonstration (quoting the
fifteenth proposition of the first part-" Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can either be
or be conceived without God"), "the mind
can cause all the affections of the body to be
related to the idea of God." Spinoza, having
arrived at his adequate idea thus takes a
further step to the idea of God.  What is
perceived  is  not   an  isolated  external
phenomenon. It is a reality in God: it is
God: there is nothing more to be thought or
said of God than the affirmation of such
realities as these. The "relation to the idea of
God" means that in the affirmation He is
affirmed.  "Nothing," that is to say, no
reality " can be conceived without God."
But it is possible for the word "love " to be
applied to the relationship between man and
God. He who has a clear and adequate
perception passes to greater perfection, and
therefore rejoices. Joy, accompanied with the
idea of a cause, is love. By the fourteenth
49




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


proposition this joy is accompanied by the
idea of God as its cause, and therefore love
to God follows. The demonstration seems
formal, and we ask ourselves, What is the
actual emotion which Spinoza describes? It is
not new to him, for in the Short Treatise, which
is an early sketch for the Ethic, he thus writes: —
"Hence it follows incontrovertibly that it is
knowledge which is the cause of love, so that
when we learn to know God in this way, we
must necessarily unite ourselves to Him, for
He cannot be known, nor can He reveal Himself, save as that which is supremely great and
good. In this union alone, as we have already
said, our happiness consists. I do not say that
we must know Him adequately; but it is
sufficient for us, in order to be united with
Him, to know Him in a measure, for the
knowledge we have of the body is not of such a
kind that we can know it as it is or perfectly;
and yet what a union! what love!"
Perhaps it may clear the ground a little if we
observe that Spinoza often avoids a negative by
a positive statement. Here he may intend to
show us what the love of God is not, that it is
I Short Treatise, pt. 2, chap. 22.
o50




SPINOZA


not what it is described in the popular religion
to be. "The only love of God I know," we
may imagine him saying, "thus arises. The
adequate perception is the keenest of human
joys for thereby I see God Himself. That
which I see is not a thing or a person, but
nevertheless what I feel towards it can be called
by no other name than love. Although the
object of this love is not thing or person it is
not indefinite, it is this only which is definite;
'thing' and 'person' are abstract and unreal.
There was a love to God in Kepler's heart when
the three laws were revealed to him. If it was
not love to God, what is love to Him? "
To the eighteenth proposition, " No one can
hate God," there is a scholium which shows
that the problem of pain which Spinoza has
left unsolved must have occurred to him.
"But some may object that if we understand
God to be the cause of all things, we do for
that very reason consider Him to be the cause
of sorrow. But I reply that in so far as we
understand the causes of sorrow, it ceases to be
a passion (Prop. 3, pt. 5), that is to say
(Prop. 59, pt. 3) it ceases to be a sorrow; and
therefore in so far as we understand God to be




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


the cause of sorrow do we rejoice." The third
proposition of the fifth part which he quotes
merely proves that in so far as we understand
passion it ceases to be a passion. He replies
to those "who ask why God has not created all
men in such a manner that they might be controlled by the dictates of reason alone,"I
"Because to Him material was not wanting for
the creation of everything, from the highest
down to the very lowest grade of perfection;
or, to speak more properly, because the laws of
His nature were so ample that they sufficed for
the production of everything which can be
conceived by an infinite intellect." Nevertheless of pain we have no explanation. Pain is
not lessened by understanding it, nor is its
mystery penetrated if we see that to God
material could not have been wanting for the
creation of men or animals who have to endure
it all their lives. But if Spinoza is silent in
the presence of pain, so also is every religion
and philosophy which the world has seen.
Silence is the only conclusion of the Book of
Job, and patient fortitude in the hope of future
enlightenment is the conclusion of Christianity.
Ethic, pt. i, Appendix.
52




SPINOZA


It is a weak mistake, however, to put aside
what religions and philosophies tell us because
it is insufficient. To Job it is not revealed why
suffering is apportioned so unequally or why
it exists, but the answer of the Almighty from
the whirlwind he cannot dispute, and although
Spinoza has nothing more to say about pain
than he says in the passages just quoted and
was certainly not exempt from it himself, it
may be impossible that any man should hate
God.
We now come to the final propositions of
the Ethic, those in which Spinoza declares his
belief in the eternity of mind. The twentysecond and twenty-third propositions of the
fifth part are as follows:" In God, nevertheless, there necessarily
exists an idea which expresses the essence of
this or that human body under the form of
eternity."
"The human mind cannot be absolutely
destroyed with the body, but something of it
remains which is eternal."
The word "nevertheless" is a reference to
the preceding proposition which denies the
continuity of memory or imagination excepting
53




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


so long as the body lasts. The demonstration
of the twenty-third proposition is not easy to
grasp, but the substance of it is that although
the mind is the idea of the body, that is to say,
the mind is body as thought and body is
thought as extension, the mind, or essence of
the body, is not completely destroyed with the
body. It exists as an eternal idea, and by an
eternal necessity in God. Here again we must
not think of that personality which is nothing
better than a material notion, an image from
the concrete applied to mind, but we must
cling fast to thought, to the thoughts which
alone make us what we are, and these, says
Spinoza, are in God and are not to be defined
by time. They have always been and always
will be. The enunciation of the thirty-third
proposition is, "The intellectual love of God
which arises from the third kind of knowledge
is eternal." The "third kind of knowledge"
is that intuitive science which "advances from
an adequate idea of the formal essence of
certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things;  "No love


I Ethic, pt. 2, schol. 2, prop. 40.




SPINOZA


except intellectual love is eternal,"' and the
scholium to this proposition adds, "If we look
at the common opinion of men, we shall see
that they are indeed conscious of the eternity
of their minds, but they confound it with
duration, and attribute it to imagination or
memory, which they believe remain after death."
The intellectual love of the mind towards
God is the very "love with which He loves
Himself, not in so far as He is infinite, but in
so far as He can be manifested through the
essence of the human mind, considered under
the form of eternity; that is to say, the intellectual love of the mind towards GQd is part
of the infinite love with which God loves Himself." 2  "Hence it follows that God, in so far
as He'loves Himself, loves men, and consequently that the love of God towards men and
the intellectual love of the mind towards God
are one and the same thing." 3 The more
adequate ideas the mind forms "the less it
suffers from those affects which are evil, and
the less it fears death" because "the greater
X Ethic, pt. 5, coroll. prop. 34.
2 Ibid., pt. 5, prop. 36.
3 Ibid., pt. 5, prop. 36, coroll.
55




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


is that part which remains unharmed, and the
less consequently does it suffer from the
affects."  It is possible even "for the human
mind to be of such a nature that that part of it
which we have shown perishes with its body, in
comparison with the part of it which remains,
is of no consequence." I
Spinoza, it is clear, holds that in some wayin what way he will not venture to determinethe more our souls are possessed by the intellectual love of God, the less is death to be
dreaded, for the smaller is that part of us which
can die. Three parallel passages may be appended. One will show that this was Spinoza's
belief from early years and the other two that it
is not peculiar to him.  "If the soul is united
with some other thing which is and remains unchangeable, it must also remain unchangeable
and permanent." 2   "Further, this creative
reason does not at one time think, at another
time not think [it thinks eternally]: and when
separated from the body it remains nothing
but what it essentially is: and thus it is alone
I Ethic, pt. 5, prop. 38.
2 Short Treatise, pt. 2, chap. 23.
56




SPINOZA


immortal and eternal. Of this unceasing work
of thought, however, we retain no memory,
because this reason is unaffected by its objects;
whereas the receptive, passive intellect (which
is affected) is perishable, and can really think
nothing without the support of the creative
intellect."' The third quotation is from a great
philosophic writer, but one to whom perhaps
we should not turn for such a coincidence.
"I believe," said Pantagruel, "that all intellectual souls are exempt from the scissors of
Atropos. They are all immortal."2
I have not tried to write an essay on Spinoza,
for in writing an essay there is a temptation to
a consistency and completeness which are contributed by the writer and are not to be found
in his subject. The warning must be reiterated
that here as elsewhere we are too desirous, both
writers and readers, of clear definition where none
is possible. We do not stop where the object of
our contemplation stops for our eyes. For my
own part I must say that there is much in
Spinoza which is beyond me, much which I
cannot extend, and much which, if it can be
I Aristotle's Psychology (Wallace's translation), p. i6I.
2 Rabelais, Pantagruel, book 4, chap. 27.
57




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


extended, seems to involve contradiction. But
I have also found his works productive beyond
those of almost any man I know of that
acquiescentia mentis which enables us to live.
S UPPLEMENTAR Y NOTE ON
THE DE VIL
SPINOZA denies the existence of the Devil,
and says, in the Short Treatise, that if he
is the mere opposite of God and has nothing
from God, he is simply the Nothing. But
if a philosophical doctrine be true, it does
not follow that as it stands it is applicable to
practical problems.  For these a rule may
have to be provided, which, although it may
not be inconsistent with the scientific theorem,
differs from it in form.  The Devil is not
an invention of priests for priestly purposes,
nor is he merely a hypothesis to account for
facts, but he has been forced upon us in order
that we may be able to deal with them. Unless
we act as though there were an enemy to
58




NOTE ON THE DEVIL


be resisted and chained, if we fritter away
differences of kind into differences of degree,
we shall make poor work of life.  Spinoza
himself assumes that other commands than
God's may be given to us, but that we are
unhesitatingly to obey His and His only. " Ad
fidem ergo catholicam," he says, "ea solummodo pertinent, quae erga Deum obedientia
absolute ponit." Consciousness seems to testify
to the presence of two mortal foes within usone Divine and the other diabolic-and perhaps the strongest evidence is not the rebellion
of the passions, but the picturing and the mental
processes which are almost entirely beyond our
control, and often greatly distress us. We look
down upon them; they are not ours, and yet
they are ours, and we cry out with St. Paul
against the law warring with the law of our
minds. Bunyan of course knows the practical
problem and the rule, and to him the Devil is
not merely the tempter to crimes, but the great
Adversary. In the Holy War the chosen regiments of Diabolus are the Doubters, and notwithstanding their theologic names, they carried
deadlier weapons than the theologic doubters
of to-day. The captain over the Grace-doubters
59




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


was Captain Damnation; he over the Felicitydoubters was Captain Past-hope, and his
ancient-bearer was Mr. Despair. The nature
of the Doubters is "to put a question upon
every one of the truths of Emanuel, and
their country is called the Land of Doubting,
and that land lieth off and furthest remote
to the north between the land of Darkness and
that called the Valley of the Shadow of Death."
They are not children of the sun, and although
they are not sinners in the common sense of
the word, those that were caught in Mansoul
were promptly executed.
There is nothing to be done but to fight and
wait for the superior help which will come if we
do what we can.   Emanuel at first delayed
his aid in the great battle, and the first brunt
was left to Captain Credence. Presently, however, Emanuel appeared "with colours flying,
trumpets sounding, and the feet of his men
scarce touched the ground; they hasted with
such celerity towards the captains that were
engaged that... there was not left so much
as one Doubter alive, they lay spread upon
the ground dead men as one would spread
dung on the land."  The dead were buried
60




NOTE ON THE DEVIL
"lest the fumes and ill-favours that would arise
from them might infect the air and so annoy
the famous town of Mansoul.",ut it will be
a fight to the end for Diabolus, and the lords of
the pit escaped.
After Emanuel had finally occupied Mansoul
he gave the citizens some advice. The policy
of Diabolus was "to make of their castle a
warehouse." Emanuel made it a fortress and
a palace, and garrisoned the town.  "0 my
Mansoul," he said, " nourish my captains; make
not my captains sick, 0 Mansoul."




INJUSTICE


A NOTION, self-begotten in me, of the
limitations of my friend is answerable
for the barrenness of my intercourse with him.
I set him down as hard; I speak to hiri as if
he were hard and from that which is hard in
myself. Naturally I evoke only that which is
hard, although there may be fountains of tenderness in him of which I am altogether
unaware. It is far better in conversation not
to regulate it according to supposed capacities
or tempers, which are generally those of some
fictitious being, but to be simply ourselves.
We shall often find unexpected and welcome
response.
Our estimates of persons, unless they are
frequently revived by personal intercourse, are
apt to alter insensibly and to become untrue.
62




INJUSTICE


They acquire increased definiteness but they
lose in comprehensiveness.
Especially is this true of those who are dead.
If I do not read a great author for some time
my mental abstract of him becomes summary
and false. I turn to him again, all summary
judgments upon him become impossible, and
he partakes of infinitude. Writers, and people
who are in society and talk much are apt to be
satisfied with an algebraic symbol for a man of
note, and their work is done not with him but
with x.


63




TIME SETTLES CONTROVERSIES
W       E ought to let Time have his own way
in the settlement of our disputes. It
is a commonplace how much he is able to do
with some of our troubles, such as loss of
friends or wealth; but we do not sufficiently
estimate his power to help our arguments. If
I permit myself to dispute, I always go beyond
what is necessary for my purpose, and my
continual iteration and insistence do nothing
but provoke opposition. Much better would it
be simply to state my case and leave it. To
do more is not only t9 distrust it, but to distrust that in my friend which is my best ally,
and will more surely assist me than all my
vehemence. Sometimes-nay, often-it is better
to say nothing, for there is a constant tendency
64




TIME SETTLES CONTROVERSIES
in Nature towards rectification, and her quiet
protest and persuasiveness are hindered by
personal interference. If anybody very dear
to me were to fall into any heresy of belief or
of conduct, I am not sure that I ought to
rebuke him, and that he would not sooner be
converted by observing my silent respect for
him than by preaching to him.


358




TALKING ABOUT OUR TROUBLES
W E may talk about our troubles to those
persons who can give us direct help,
but even in this case we ought as much as
possible to come to a provisional conclusion
before consultation; to be perfectly clear to
ourselves within our own limits. Some people
have a foolish trick of applying for aid before
they have done anything whatever to aid
themselves, and in fact try to talk themselves
into perspicuity. The only way in which they
can think is by talking, and their speech consequently is not the expression of opinion
already and carefully formed, but the manufacture of it.
We may also tell our troubles to those
who are suffering if we can lessen their own.
It may be a very great relief to them to know
66




TALKING ABOUT OUR TROUBLES
that others have passed through trials equal
to theirs and  have survived.   There  are
obscure, nervous   diseases,  hypochondriac
fancies, almost uncontrollable impulses, which
terrify by their apparent singularity. If we
could believe that they are common, the worst
of the fear would vanish.
But, as a rule, we should be very careful for
our own sake not to speak much about what
distresses us. Expression is apt to carry with
it exaggeration, and this exaggerated form
becomes henceforth that under which we represent our miseries to ourselves, so that they are
thereby increased. By reserve, on the other
hand, they are diminished, for we attach less
importance to that which it was not worth
while to mention.  Secrecy, in fact, may be
our salvation.
It is injurious to be always treated as if
something were the matter with us. It is
health-giving to be dealt with as if we were
healthy, and the man who imagines his wits
are failing becomes stronger and sounder by
being entrusted with a difficult problem than
by all the assurances of a doctor.
They are poor creatures who are always




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


craving for pity. If we are sick, let us prefer
conversation upon any subject rather than upon
ourselves. Let it turn on matters that lie outside
the dark chamber, upon the last new discovery,
or the last new idea. So shall we seem still to
be linked to the living world. By perpetually
asking for sympathy an end is put to real
friendship. The friend is afraid to intrude
anything which has no direct reference to the
patient's condition lest it should be thought
irrelevant. No love even can long endure
without complaint, silent it may be, an invalid
who is entirely self-centred; and what an agony
it is to know that we are tended simply as a
duty by those who are nearest to us, and that
they will really be relieved when we have
departed!  From   this torture we may be
saved if we early apprentice ourselves to the
art of self-suppression and sternly apply the gag
to eloquence upon our own woes. Nobody
who really cares for us will mind waiting on us
even to the long-delayed last hour if we endure
in fortitude.
There is no harm in confronting our disorders
or misfortunes. On the contrary, the attempt is
wholesome. Much of what we dread is really
68




TALKING ABOUT OUR TROUBLES
due to indistinctness of outline. If we have
the courage to say to ourselves, What is this
thing, then? let the worst come to the worst, and
what then? we shall frequently find that after
all it is not so terrible. What we have to do is
to subdue tremulous, nervous, insane fright.
Fright is often prior to an object; that is to
say, the fright comes first and something is
invented or discovered to account for it. There
are certain states of body and mind which are
productive of objectless fright, and the most
ridiculous thing in the world is able to provoke it to activity. It is perhaps not too much
to say that any calamity the moment it is
apprehended by the reason alone loses nearly
all its power to disturb and unfix us. The conclusions which are so alarming are not those of
the reason, but, to use Spinoza's words. of the
"affects."


69




FAITH


FAITH is nobly seen when a man, standing
like Columbus upon the shore with a
dark, stormy Atlantic before him, resolves to
sail, and although week after week no land be
visible, still believes and still sails on; but it
is nobler when there is no America as the
goal of our venture, but something which is
unsubstantial, as, for example, self-control and
self-purification. It is curious, by the way,
that discipline of this kind should almost have
disappeared. Possibly it is because religion is
now a matter of belief in certain propositions;
but, whatever the cause may be, we do not
train ourselves day by day to become better as
we train ourselves to learn languages or science.
To return from this parenthesis, we say that
when no applause nor even recognition is
70




FAITH


expected, to proceed steadily and alone for its
own sake in the work of saving the soul is
truer heroism than that which leads a martyr
cheerfully to the stake.
Faith is at its best when we have to wrestle
with despair, not only of ourselves but of the
Universe; when we strain our eyes and see
nothing  but blackness   In  the  Gorgias
Socrates maintains, not only that it is always
better to suffer injustice than to commit it, but
that it is better to be punished for injustice
than to escape, and better to die than to do
wrong; and it is better not only because of the
effect on others but for our own sake. We
are naturally led to ask what support a
righteous man unjustly condemned could find,
supposing he were about to be executed, if he
had no faith in personal immortality and knew
that his martyrdom could not have the least
effect for good. Imagine him, for example, shut
up in a dungeon and about to be strangled in it
and that not a single inquiry will be made about
him-where will he look for help? what hope
will compose him? He may say that in a few
hours he will be asleep, and that nothing will
then be of any consequence to him, but that
7I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


thought surely will hardly content him. He
may reflect that he at least prevents the evil
which would be produced by his apostasy; and
very frequently in life, when we abstain from
doing wrong, we have to be satisfied with a
negative result and with the simple absence
(which nobody notices) of some direct mischief,
although the abstention may cost more than
positive well-doing. This too, however, is but
cold consolation when the cord is brought
and the grave is already dug.
It must be admitted that Reason cannot give
any answer. Socrates, when his reasoning
comes to an end, often permits himself to tell
a story. "My dialectic," he seems to say, "is
of no further use; but here is a tale for you,"
and as he goes on with it we can see his
satyr eyes gleam with an intensity which shows
that he did not consider he was inventing a
mere fable. That was the way in which he
taught theology. Perhaps we may find that
something less than logic and more than
a dream  may be of use to us. We may
figure to ourselves that this universe of souls
is the manifold expression of the One, and
that in this expression there is a purpose
72




FAITH


which gives importance to all the means of
which it avails itself. Apparent failure may
therefore be a success, for the mind which has
been developed into perfect virtue falls back
into the One, having served (by its achievements) the end of its existence. The potential
in the One has become actual, has become
real, and the One is the richer thereby.


73




PA TIENCE


W       HAT is most to be envied in really
religious people of the earlier type is
their intellectual and moral peace. They had
obtained certain convictions, a certain conception of the Universe, by which they could live.
Their horizon may have been encompassed
with darkness; experience sometimes contradicted their faith, but they trusted-nay,
they knew-that the opposition was not real
and that the truths were not to be shaken.
Their conduct was marked by a corresponding
unity. They determined once for all that there
were rules which had to be obeyed, and when
any particular case arose it was not judged
according to the caprice of the moment, but
by statute.
We, on the other hand, can only doubt. Sc
74




PATIENCE


far as those subjects are concerned on which
we are most anxious to be informed, we are
sure of nothing. What we have to do is to
accept the facts and wait. We must take care
not to deny beauty and love because we are
forced also to admit ugliness and hatred. Let
us yield ourselves up utterly to the magnificence
and tenderness of the sunrise, though the East
End of London lies over the horizon. That
very same Power, and it is no other, which
blasts a country with the cholera or drives the
best of us to madness has put the smile in a
child's face and is the parent of Love. It is
curious, too, that the curse seems in no way
to qualify the blessing.  The sweetness and
majesty of Nature are so exquisite, so pure,.that when they are before us we cannot imagine
they could be better if they proceeded from an
omnipotently merciful Being and no pestilence
had ever been known. We must not worry
ourselves with attempts at reconciliation. We
must be satisfied with a hint here and there,
with a ray of sunshine at our feet, and we must
do what we can to make the best of what we
possess. Hints and sunshine will not be wanting, and science, which was once considered to
75




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


be the enemy of religion, is dissolving by its
later discoveries the old gross materialism, the
source of so much despair.
The conduct of life is more important than
speculation, but the lives of most of us are
regulated by no principle whatever. We read
our Bible, Thomas a Kempis, and Bunyan, and
we are persuaded that our salvation lies in the
perpetual struggle of the higher against the
lower self, the spirit against the flesh, and that
the success of the flesh is damnation. We take
down Horace and Rabelais and we admit that
the body also has its claims. We have no
power to dominate both sets of books, and
consequently they supersede one another alternately. Perhaps life is too large for any code
we can as yet frame, and the dissolution of
all codes, the fluid, unstable condition of which
we complain, may be a necessary antecedent
of new and more lasting combinations. One
thing is certain, that there is not a single code
now in existence which is not false; that the
graduation of the vices and virtues is wrong,
and that in the future it will be altered. We
must not hand ourselves over to a despotism
with no Divine right, even if there be a risk of
76




PATIENCE


anarchy.  In the determination of our own
action, and in our criticism of other people,
we must use the whole of ourselves and not
mere fragments. If we do this we need not
fear.  We may suppose we are in danger
because the stone tables of the Decalogue
have gone to dust, but it is more dangerous
to attempt to control men by fictions. Better
no chart whatever than one which shows no
actually existing perils, but warns us against
Scylla, Charybdis, and the Cyclops. If we are
perfectly honest with ourselves we shall not
find it difficult to settle whether we ought to
do this or that particular thing, and we may
be content. The new legislation will come
naturally at the appointed time, and it is not
impossible to live while it is on the way.


77




AN APOLOGY


IN these latter days of anarchy and tumult,
when there is no gospel of faith or morals,
when democracy seems bent on falsifying every
prediction of earlier democratic enthusiasts by
developing worse dangers to liberty than any
which our forefathers had to encounter, and
when the misery of cities is so great, it appears
absurd, not to say wrong, that we should sit
still and read books. I am ashamed when I
go into my own little room and open Milton
or Shakespeare after looking at a newspaper or
walking through the streets of London. I feel
that Milton and Shakespeare are luxuries, and
that I really belong to the class which builds
palaces for its pleasure, although men and
women may be starving on the roads.
Nevertheless, if I were placed on a platform
I should be obliged to say, "My brethren, I
78




AN APOLOGY


plainly perceive the world is all wrong, but
I cannot see how it is to be set right," and I
should descend the steps and go home. There
may be others who have a clearer perception
than mine, and who may be convinced that
this way or that way lies regeneration. I do
not wish to discourage them; I wish them
God-speed, but I cannot help them nor become
their disciple. Possibly I am doing nothing
better than devising excuses for lotus-eating,
but here they are.
To take up something merely because I am
idle is useless. The message must come to
me, and with such urgency that I cannot help
delivering it. Nor is it of any use to attempt
to give my natural thoughts a force which is
not inherent in them.
The disease is often obvious, but the remedies
are doubtful. The accumulation of wealth in
a few hands, generally by swindling, is shocking,
but if it were distributed to-morrow we should
gain nothing.  The working man objects to
the millionaire, but would gladly become a
millionaire himself, even if his million could
be piled up in no other way than by sweating
thousands of his fellows.  The usurpation of
79




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


government by the ignorant will bring disaster,
but how in these days could a wise man reign
any longer than ignorance permitted him? The
everlasting veerings of the majority, without any
reason meanwhile for the change, show that,
except on rare occasions ot excitement, the
opinion of the voters is of no significance. But
when we are asked what substitute for elections
can be proposed, none can be found. So with
the relationship between man and woman, the
marriage laws and divorce. The calculus has
not been invented which can deal with such
complexities. We are in the same position as
that in which Leverrier and Adams would have
been, if, observing the irregularities of Uranus,
which led to the discovery of Neptune, they
had known nothing but the first six books of
Euclid and a little algebra.
There has never been any reformation as yet
without dogma and supernaturalism. Ordinary
people acknowledge no real reasons for virtue
except heaven and hell-fire. When heaven and
hell-fire cease to persuade, custom for a while
is partly efficacious, but its strength soon decays.
Some good men, knowing the uselessness of
rational means to convert or to sustain their
80




AN APOLOGY


fellows, have clung to dogma with hysterical
energy, but without any genuine faith in it.
They have failed, for dogma cannot be successful unless it be the inevitable expression of the
inward conviction.
The voices now are so many and so contradictory that it is impossible to hear any one
of them distinctly, no matter what its claim on
our attention may be. The newspaper, the
circulating library, the free library, and the
magazine are doing their best to prevent unity
of direction and the din and confusion of
tongues beget a doubt whether literature and
the printing press have actually been such a
blessing to the race as enlightenment universally
proclaims them to be.
The great currents of human destiny seem
more than ever to move by forces which tend
to no particular point.  There is a drift,
tremendous and overpowering, due to nobody
in particular, but to hundreds of millions of
small impulses. Achilles is dead, and the turn
of the Myrmidons has come.
" Myrmidons, race feconde
Myrmidons,
Enfin nous commandons:
81




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


Jupiter livre le monde
Aux Myrmidons, aux Myrmidons.
Voyant qu' Achille succombe,
Ses Myrmidons, hors des rangs,
Disent: Dansons sur sa tombe
Ses petits vont etre grands."
My last defence is that the Universe is an
organic unity, and so subtle and far-reaching
are the invisible threads which pass from one
part of it to another that it is impossible to
limit the effect which even an insignificant
life may have.     "Were    a single dust-atom
destroyed, the universe would collapse."
"... who of men can tell
That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would
swell
To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,
The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,
The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,
The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,
Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet
If human souls did never kiss and greet? "


82




BELIEF, UNBELIEF. AND SUPERS TITION
TRUE belief is rare and difficult. There
is no security that the fictitious beliefs
which have been obtained by no genuine mental
process, that is to say, are not vitally held, may
not be discarded for those which are exactly
contrary.  We flatter ourselves that we have
secured a method and freedom of thought
which will not permit us to be the victims of
the absurdities of the Middle Ages, but, in fact,
there is no solid obstacle to our conversion to
some new grotesque religion more miraculous
than Roman Catholicism. Modern scepticism,
distinguishing it from scholarly scepticism, is
nothing but stupidity or weakness. Few people
like to confess outright that they do not believe
in a God, although the belief in a personal devil
is considered to be a sign of imbecility. Never83




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


theless, men, as a rule, have no ground for
believing in God a whit more respectable than
for disbelief in a devil. The devil is not seen:
nor is God seen. The work of the devil is as
obvious as that of God. Nay, as the devil is a
limited personality, belief in him is n'ot encumbered with the perplexities which arise when we
attempt to apprehend the infinite Being. Belief
may often be tested; that is to say, we may be
able to discover whether it is an active belief or
not by inquiring what disbelief it involves. So
also the test of disbelief is its correspondent
belief.
Superstition is a name generally given to a
few only of those beliefs for which it is imagined
that there is no sufficient support, such as the
belief in ghosts, witches, and, if we are Protestants, in miracles performed after a certain
date. Why these particular beliefs have been
selected as solely deserving to be called superstitious it is not easy to discover. If the name
is to be extended to all beliefs which we have
not attempted to verify, it must include the
largest part of those we possess. We vote at
elections as we are told to vote by the newspaper which we happen to read, and our
84




BELIEF, UNBELIEF, SUPERSTITION
opinions upon a particular policy are based
upon no surer foundation than those of the
Papist on the authenticity of the lives of the
Saints.
Superstition is a matter of relative evidence.
A thousand years ago it was not so easy as it
is now to obtain rigid demonstration in any
department except mathematics.  Much that
was necessarily the basis of action was as incapable of proof as the story of St. George and
the Dragon, and consequently it is hardly fair
to say that the dark ages were more superstitious
than our own. Nor does every belief, even in
supernatural objects, deserve the name of superstition. Suppose that the light which struck
down St. Paul on his journey to Damascus was
due to his own imagination, the belief that it
came from Jesus enthroned in the heavens was
a sign of strength and not of weakness. Beliefs
of this kind, in so far as they exalt man, prove
greatness and generosity, and may be truer than
the scepticism which is formally justified in
rejecting them. If Christ never rose from the
dead, the women who waited at the sepulchre
were nearer to reality than the Sadducees, who
denied the resurrection.
85




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


There is a half-belief, which we find in Virgil
that is not superstition, nor inconstancy, nor
cowardice.  A  child - like faith in the old
creed is no longer possible, but it is equally
impossible to surrender it. I refer now not
to those who select from it what they think
to be in accordance with their reason, and
throw overboard the remainder with no remorse,
but rather to those who cannot endure to touch
with sacrilegious hands the ancient histories and
doctrines which have been the depositaries of
so much that is eternal, and who dread lest
with the destruction of a story something
precious should also be destroyed. The socalled superstitious ages were not merely
transitionary.  Our regret that they have departed is to be explained not by a mere
idealisation of the past, but by a conviction
that truths have been lost, or at least have been
submerged. Perhaps some day they may be
recovered, and in some other form may again
become our religion.


86




JUDAS- ISCARIOT-WHAT CAN
BE SAID FOR HIM?
JUDAS ISCARIOT has become to Christian
people an object of horror more loathsome
than even the devil himself. The devil
rebelled because he could not brook subjection
to the Son of God, a failing which was noble
compared with treachery to the Son of man.
The hatred of Judas is not altogether virtuous.
We compound thereby for our neglect of Jesus
and His precepts: it is easier to establish our
Christianity by cursing the wretched servant
than by following his Master. The heinousness
also of the crime in Gethsemane has been aggravated by the exaltation of Jesus to the Redeemership of the world. All that can be known of
Judas is soon collected. He was chosen one
87




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


of the twelve apostles, and received their high
commission to preach the kingdom of heaven, to
heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers,
and cast out devils. He was appointed treasurer
to the community. John in telling the story of
the anointing at Bethany says that he was a
thief, but John also makes him the sole objector
to the waste of the ointment. According to the
other evangelists all the disciples objected.
Since he remained in office it could hardly have
been known at the time of the visit to Bethany
that he was dishonest, nor could it have been
known at any time to Matthew and Mark, for
they would not have lost the opportunity of
adding such a touch to the portrait. The
probability, therefore, is that the robbery of the
bag is unhistorical. When the chief priests and
scribes sought how they might apprehend Jesus
they made a bargain with Judas to deliver Him
to them for thirty pieces of silver. He was
present at the Last Supper but went and betrayed his Lord. A few hours afterwards, when
he found out that condemnation to death
followed, he repented himself and brought
again the thirty pieces of silver to his employers,
declared that he had sinned in betraying
88




JUDAS ISCARIOT


innocent blood, cast down the money at their
feet, and went and hanged himself.
This is all that is discoverable about Judas,
and it has been considered sufficient for a
damnation deeper than any allotted to the
worst of the sons of Adam. Dante places him
in the lowest round of the ninth or last of the
hellish circles, where he is eternally " champed "
by Satan, " bruised as with ponderous engine,"
his head within the diabolic jaws and " plying
the feet without." In the absence of a biography with details, it is impossible to make
out with accuracy what the real Judas was.
We can, however, by dispassionate examination
of the facts determine their sole import, and if
we indulge in inferences we can deduce those
which are fairly probable.  As Judas was
treasurer, he must have been trusted. He
could hardly have been naturally covetous, for
he had given up in common with the other
disciples much, if not all, to follow Jesus. The
thirty pieces of silver-some four or five pounds
of our money-could not have been considered
by him as a sufficient bribe for the ignominy of
a treason which was to end in legal murder.
He ought perhaps to have been able to measure
89




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


the ferocity of an established ecclesiastical order
and to have known what would have been the
consequence of handing over to it perfect, and
therefore heretical, sincerity and purity, but
there is no evidence that he did know: nay,
we are distinctly informed, as we have just
seen, that when he became aware what was
going to happen his sorrow for his wicked deed
took a very practical shape.
We cannot allege with confidence that it was
any permanent loss of personal attachment to
Jesus which brought about his defection. It
came when the belief in a theocracy near at
hand filled the minds of the disciples. These
ignorant Galilean fishermen expected that in a
very short time they would sit on twelve thrones
judging the twelve tribes of Israel.  The
custodian of the bag, gifted with more common
sense than his colleagues, probably foresaw
the danger of a collision with Rome, and may
have desired by a timely arrest to prevent an
open revolt, which would have meant immediate
destruction of the whole band with women and
children. Can any position be imagined more
irritating that that of a careful man of business
who is keeper of the purse for a company of
90




JUDAS ISCARIOT


heedless enthusiasts professing complete indifference to the value of money, misunderstanding the genius of their chief, and looking
out every morning for some sign in the clouds,
a prophecy of their immediate appointment as
vicegerents of a power that would supersede
the awful majesty of the Imperial city? He
may have been heated by a long series of petty
annoyances to such a degree that at last they
may have ended in rage and a sudden flinging
loose of himself from the society. At any
rate, Judas was not guilty of cool, mercenary
treason, for he was impulsive exceedingly.
Matthew, and Matthew only, says that Judas
asked for money from the chief priests.
"What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you?" According to Mark,
whose account of the transaction is the same
as Luke's, "Judas... went unto the chief
priests to betray Him unto them. And when
they heard it, they were glad, and promised to
give him money." If the priests were the
tempters, a slight difference is established in
favour of Judas, but this we will neglect. The
sin of taking money and joining in that last
meal in any case is black enough, although, as
91




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


we have before pointed out, Judas did not at
the time know what the other side of the
bargain was. Admitting, however, everything
that can fairly be urged against him, all that
can be affirmed with certainty is that we are in
the presence of strange and unaccountable
inconsistency, and that an apostle who had
abandoned his home, who had followed Jesus
for three years amidst contempt and persecution, and who at last slew himself in selfreproach, could be capable of committing the
meanest of sins. Is the co-existence of irreconcilable opposites in human nature anything
new? The story of Judas may be of some
value if it reminds us that man is incalculable,
and that, although in theory, and no doubt in
reality, he is a unity, the point from which the
divergent forces in him rise is often infinitely
beyond our exploration; a lesson not merely in
psychology but for our own guidance, a warning
that side by side with heroic virtues there may
sleep in us not only detestable vices, but vices
by which those virtues are contradicted and
even for the time annihilated. The mode of
betrayal, with a kiss, has justly excited loathing,
but it is totally unintelligible. Why should he
92




JUDAS ISCARIOT


have taken the trouble to be so base when the
movement of a finger would have sufficed?
Why was any sign necessary to indicate one
who was so well known? The supposition that
the devil compelled him to superfluous villainy
in order that he might be secured with greater
certainty and tortured with greater subtlety is
one that can hardly be entertained except
by theologians.  It is equally difficult to
understand why Jesus submitted to such an
insult, and why Peter should not have smitten
down its perpetrator. Peter was able to draw
his sword, and it would have been safer and
more natural to kill Judas than to cut off the
ear of the high priest's servant. John, who
shows a special dislike to Judas, knows nothing
of the kiss. According to John, Jesus asked
the soldiers whom they sought, and then stepped
boldly forward and declared Himself. "Judas,"
adds John, "was standing with them." As John
took such particular notice of what happened,
the absence of the kiss in his account can
hardly have been accidental. It is a sound
maxim in criticism that what is simply difficult
of explanation is likely to be authentic. An
awkward reading in a manuscript is to be pre93




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


ferred to one which is easier. But an historical
improbability, especially if no corroboration of
it is to be found in a better authority, may be
set aside, and in this case we are justified in
neglecting the kiss. Whatever may have been
the exact shade of darkness in the crime of
Judas, it was avenged with singular swiftness,
and he himself was the avenger. He did not
slink away quietly and poison himself in a ditch.
He boldly encountered the sacred college, confessed his sin and the innocence of the man
they were about to crucify.  Compared with
these pious miscreants who had no scruples
about corrupting one of the disciples, but
shuddered at the thought of putting back into
the treasury the money they had taken from it,
Judas becomes noble. His remorse is so unendurable that it drives him to suicide.
If a record could be kept of those who have
abjured Jesus through love of gold, through
fear of the world or of the scribes and Pharisees,
we should find many who are considered quite
respectable, or have even been canonised, and
who, nevertheless, much more worthily than
Iscariot, are entitled to "champing" by the jaws
of Sathanas. Not a single scrap from Judas
94




JUDAS ISCARIOT


himself has reached us. He underwent no trial,
and is condemned without plea or excuse on
his own behalf, and with no cross-examination
of the evidence. No witnesses have been called
to his character. What would his friends at
Kerioth have said for him? What would Jesus
have said? If He had met Judas with the
halter in his hand would He not have stopped
him? Ah! I can see the Divine touch on the
shoulder, the passionate prostration of the repentant in the dust, the hands gently lifting
him, the forgiveness because he knew not what
he did, and the seal of a kiss indeed from the
sacred lips.


95




SIR WALTER SCOTT'S USE OF
THE S UPERNA TURAL IN THE
"BRIDE 'OF LAMMERMOOR"
THE supernatural machinery in Sir Walter
Scott's Monastery is generally and, no
doubt, correctly, set down as a mistake. Sir
Walter fails, not because the White Lady of
Avenel is a miracle, but because being miraculous, she is made to do what sometimes is not
worthy of her. This, however, is not always
true, for nothing can be finer than the change
in Halbert Glendinning after he has seen the
spirit, and the great master himself has never
drawn a nobler stroke than that in which he
describes the effect which intercourse with her
has had upon Mary. Halbert, on the morning
of the duel between himself and Sir Piercie
Shafton, is trying to persuade her that he intends
96




THE SUPERNATURAL IN SCOTT
no harm, and that he and Sir Piercie are going
on a hunting expedition. "Say not thus," said
the maiden, interrupting him, " say not thus to
me. Others thou may'st deceive, but me thou
can'st not. There has been that in me from
the earliest youth which fraud flies from, and
which imposture cannot deceive." The transforming influence of the Lady is here just what
it should be, and the consequence is that she
becomes a reality.
But it is in the Bride of Zammermoor more
particularly that the use of the supernatural is
not only blameless but indispensable. We begin
to rise to it in that scene in which the Master
of Ravenswood meets Alice. "Begone from
among them," she says, "and if God has
destined vengeance on the oppressor's house,
do not you be the instrument.... If you
remain here, her destruction or yours, or that
of both, will be the inevitable consequence of
her misplaced attachment." A little further on,
with great art, Scott having duly prepared us by
what has preceded, adds intensity and colour.
He apologises for the " tinge of superstition,"
but, not believing, he evidently believes, and
we justly surrender ourselves to him. The
Master of Ravenswood after the insult received
358               97              E




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


from Lady Ashton wanders round the Mermaiden's Well on his way to Wolf's Crag and
sees the wraith of Alice. Scott makes horse as
well as man afraid so that we may not immediately dismiss the apparition as a mere ordinary
product of excitement. Alice at that moment
was dying, and had "prayed powerfully that
she might see her master's son and renew her
warning." Observe the difference between this
and any vulgar ghost story. From the very first
we feel that the Superior Powers are against
this match, and that it will be cursed. The
beginning of the curse lies far back in the
hereditary temper of the Ravenswoods, in the
intrigues of the Ashtons, and in the feuds of
the times. When Love intervenes we discover
in an instant that he is not sent by the gods to
bring peace, but that he is the awful instrument
of destruction. The spectral appearance of
Alice at the hour of her departure, on the very
spot "on which Lucy Ashton had reclined
listening to the fatal tale of woe... holding
up her shrivelled hand as if to prevent his
coming more near," is necessary in order to
intimate that the interdict is pronounced not
by a mortal human being but by a dread,
supernal authority.
98




SEPTEMBER, I798. "THE
LYRICAL BALLADS."
T   HE year I798 was a year of great excitement: England was alone in the struggle
against Buonaparte; the mutiny at the Nore had
only just been quelled: the 3 per cent. Consols
had been marked at 49 or 50; the Gazettes were
occupied with accounts of bloody captures of
French ships; Ireland may be said to have been
in rebellion, and horrible murders were committed there; the King sent a message to Parliament telling it that an invasion might be expected
and that it was to be assisted by " incendiaries "
at home; and the Archbishop of Canterbury and
eleven bishops passed a resolution declaring that
if the French should land, or a dangerous insurrection should break out, it would be the
duty of the clergy to take up arms against an
enemy whom the Bishop of Rochester described
99




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL
as " instigated by that desperate malignity against
the Faith he has abandoned, which in all ages
has marked the horrible character of the vile
apostate."
In the midst of this raving political excitement
three human beings were to be found who,
although they were certainly not unmoved by it,
were able to detach themselves from it when they
pleased, and to seclude themselves in a privacy
impenetrable even to an echo of the tumult
around them.
In April or May, I798, the Nightingale was
written, and these are the sights and sounds
which were then in young Coleridge's eyes and
ears:"No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring: it flows silently,
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,
A balmy night! and tho' the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars."
We happen also to have Dorothy WordsI00




SEPTEMBER, I798


worth's journal for April and May. Here are a
few extracts from it:April 6th.-" Went a part of the way home
with Coleridge.... The spring still advancing
very slowly. The horse-chestnuts budding, and
the hedgerows beginning to look green, but
nothing fully expanded."
April 9th.-" Walked to Stowey...   The
sloe in blossom, the hawthorns green, the
larches in the park changed from black to
green in two or three days. Met Coleridge in
returning."
April I 2th.-"... The spring advances
rapidly, multitudes of primroses, dog-violets,
periwinkles, stitchwort."
April 27th.-"Coleridge breakfasted and
drank tea, strolled in the wood in the
morning, went with him in the evening
through the wood, afterwards walked on the
hills: the moon; a many-coloured sea and
sky."
May 6th, Sunday.-" Expected the painter,
and Coleridge. A rainy morning-very pleasant
in the evening. Met Coleridge as we were


z Hazlitt.
- I01




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


walking out. Went with him to Stowey; heard
the nightingale; saw a glow-worm."
What was it which these three young people
(for Dorothy certainly must be included as one
of its authors) proposed to achieve by their
book? Coleridge, in the Biograjhia Lileraria,
says (vol. ii. c. i): "During the first year that
Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our
conversations turned frequently on the two
cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting
the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of
giving the interest of novelty by the modifying
colours of imagination. The sudden charm,
which accidents of light and shade, which
moonlight or sunset diffused over a known and
familiar landscape, appeared to represent the
practicability of combining both. These are
the poetry of nature. The thought suggested
itself-(to which of us I do not recollect)-that
a series of poems might be composed of two
sorts. In the one, the agents and incidents
were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and
the excellence aimed at was to consist in the
interesting of the affections by the dramatic
truth of such emotions, as would naturally
102




SEPTEMBER, I798


accompany such situations, supposing them
real. And real in this sense they have been to
every human being who, from whatever source
of delusion, has at any time believed himself
under supernatural agency. For the second
class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary
life; the characters and incidents were to be
such as will be found in every village and its
vicinity, where there is a meditative and feeling
mind to seek after them, or to notice them,
when they present themselves.
"In this idea originated the plan of the
LYRICAL BALLADS; in which it was agreed,
that my endeavours should be directed to
persons and characters supernatural, or at least
romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward
nature a human interest and a semblance of
truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of
imagination that willing suspension of disbelief
for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to
propose to himself as his object, to give the
charm of novelty to things of everyday and to
excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural,'
by awakening the mind's attention to the
I Italics mine.-M. R.
103




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


lethargy of custom, and directing it to the
loveliness and the wonders of the world before
us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in
consequence of the film of familiarity and
selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears
that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor
understand.
"With this view I wrote THE ANCIENT
MARINER, and was preparing, among other
poems, THE DARK LADIE and the CHRISTABEL, in which I should more nearly have
realised my ideal, than I had done in my
first attempt."
Coleridge, when he wrote to Cottle offering
him the Lyrical Ballads, affirms that "the
volumes offered to you are, to a certain degree,
one work in kind"I (Reminiscences, p. I79); and
Wordsworth declares, "I should not, however,
have requested this assistance, had I not
believed that the poems of my Friend would
in a great measure have the same tendency as my
own,I and that though there would be found a
difference, there would be found no discordance
in the colours of our style; as our opinions
Italics mine.-M. R.
104




SEPTEMBER, 1798


on the subject of poetry do almost entirely
coincide" (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, i8oo).
it is a point carefully to be borne in mind
that we have the explicit and contemporary
authority of both poets that their aim was
the same.
There are difficulties in the way of believing
that The Ancient Mariner was written for the
Lyrical Ballads. It was planned in 1797 and
was originally intended for a magazine. Nevertheless, it may be asserted that the purpose of
The Ancient Mariner and of Christabel (which
was originally intended for the Ballads) was, as
their author said, truth, living truth. He was
the last man in the world to care for a story
simply as a chain of events with no significance,
and in these poems the supernatural, by interpenetration with human emotions, comes
closer to us than an event of daily life. In
return the emotions themselves, by means of
the supernatural expression, gain intensity. The
texture is so subtly interwoven that it is difficult
to illustrate the point by example, but take the
following lines:"Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
I05




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
*        *        *        *
The self-same moment I could pray:
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.
*        *        *        *
And the bay was white with silent light
Till rising from the same,
Full many shapes, that shadows were,
In crimson colours came.
A little distance from the prow
Those crimson shadows were:
I turned my eyes upon the deckOh, Christ! what saw I there!
Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
And, by the holy rood!
A man all light, a seraph-man,
On every corse there stood."
Coleridge's marginal gloss to these last
stanzas is "The angelic spirits leave the dead
bodies, and appear in their own forms of light."
io6




SEPTEMBER, 1798


Once more from Christabel:"The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone,
She nothing sees-no sight but one I
The maid, devoid of guile and sin,
I know not how, in fearful wise,
So deeply had she drunken in
That look, those shrunken serpent eyes,
That all her features were resigned
To this sole image in her mind:
And passively did imitate
That look of dull and treacherous hate."
What Wordsworth intended we have already
heard from Coleridge, and Wordsworth confirms
him. It was, says the Preface of i802, "to
present ordinary things to the mind in an
unusual way." In Wordsworth the miraculous
inherent in the commonplace, but obscured by
" the film of familiarity," is restored to it. This
translation is effected by the imagination, which
is not fancy nor dreaming, as Wordsworth is
careful to warn us, but that power by which we
see things as they are. The authors of The
Ancient Mariner and Simon Lee are justified in
claiming a common object.      It is to prove
that the metaphysical in Shakespeare's sense
of the word interpenetrates the physical, and
serves to make us see and feel it.
107




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL
Poetry, if it is to be good for anything,
must help us to live.   It is to this we
come at last in our criticism, and if it does
not help us to live it may as well disappear,
no matter what its fine qualities may be. The
help to live, however, that is most wanted is
not remedies against great sorrows. The chief
obstacle to the enjoyment of life is its dulness
and the weariness which invades us because
there is nothing to be seen or done of any
particular value. If the supernatural becomes
natural and the natural becomes supernatural,
the world regains its splendour and charm.
Lines may be drawn from their predecessors to
Coleridge and the Wordsworths, but the work
they did was distinctly original, and renewed
proof was given of the folly of despair even
when fertility seems to be exhausted. There is
always a hidden conduit open into an unknown
region whence at any moment streams may
rush and renew the desert with foliage and
flowers.
The reviews which followed the publication
of the Lyrical Ballads were nearly all unfavourable. Even Southey discovered nothing in The
Ancient Mariner but "a Dutch attempt at
io8




SEPTEMBER, I798


German sublimity."   A  certain learned pig
thought it " the strangest story of a cock and
bull that he ever saw on paper," and not a
single critic, not even the one or two who had
any praise to offer, discerned the secret of the
book. The publisher was so alarmed that he
hastily sold his stock. Nevertheless Coleridge,
Wordsworth, and his sister quietly went off to
Germany without the least disturbance of their
faith, and the Ballads are alive to this day.


o09




SOME NOTES ON MILTON
M    UCH of the criticism on Milton, if not
hostile, is apologetic, and it is considered
quite correct to say we " do not care " for him.
Partly this indifference is due to his Nonconformity.  The "superior" Englishman who
makes a jest of the doctrines and ministers of
the Established Church always pays homage to
it because it is respectable, and sneers at Dissent.
Another reason why Milton does not take his
proper place is that his theme is a theology
which for most people is no longer vital. A
religious poem if it is to be deeply felt must
embody a living faith. The great poems of
antiquity are precious to us in proportion
to our acceptance, now, as fact, of what
they  tell  us  about  heaven  and  earth.
There are only a few persons at present
nIo




SOME NOTES ON MILTON


who perceive that in substance the account
which was given in the seventeenth century of
the relation between man and God is immortal
and worthy of epic treatment.  A thousand
years hence a much better estimate of Milton
will be possible than that which can be formed
to-day. We attribute to him  mechanic construction in dead material because it is dead to
ourselves. Even Mr. Ruskin who was far too
great not to recognise in part at least Milton's
claims, says that " Milton's account of the most
important event in his whole system of the
universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently
unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that
it is wholly founded on, and in a great part
spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod's account
of the decisive war of the younger gods with the
Titans. The rest of his poem is a picturesque
drama, in which every artifice of invention is
visibly and consciously employed; not a single
fact being for an instant conceived as tenable
by any living faith " (Sesame and Lilies, section
iii.).
Mr. Mark Pattison, quoting part of this passage, remarks with justice, " on the contrary, we
shall not rightly apprehend either the poetry or
III




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


the character of the poet until we feel tha:
throughout Paradise Lost, as in Paradise Regained and Samson, Milton felt himself to be
standing on the sure ground of fact and reality"
(English Men of Letters-Milton, p. I86, ed
i879).
St. Jude for ages had been sufficient
authority for the angelic revolt, and in a sense
it was a reasonable dogma, for although it did
not explain the mystery of the origin of evil it
pushed it a step further backwards, and without
such a revolt the Christian scheme does not
well hold together. So also with the entrance
of the devil into the serpent. It is not expressly taught in any passage of the canonical
Scriptures, but to the Church and to Milton it
was as indisputable as the presence of sin in
the world. Milton, I repeat, believed in the
framework of his poem, and unless we can
concede this to him we ought not to attempt to
criticise him.  He was impelled to turn his
religion into poetry in order to bring it closer
to him. The religion of every Christian if it is
real is a poem. He pictures a background of
Holy Land scenery, and he creates a Jesus
who continually converses with him and reveals
II2




SOME NOTES ON MILTON


to him much more than is found in the fragmentary details of the Gospels. When Milton
goes beyond his documents he does not
imagine for the purpose of filling up: the
additions are expression.
Milton belonged to that order of poets whom
the finite does not satisfy. Like Wordsworth,
but more eminently, he was "powerfully
affected" only by that "which is conversant
with or turns upon infinity," and man is
to him a being with such a relationship to
infinity that Heaven and Hell contend over
him. Every touch which sets forth the eternal
glory of Heaven and the scarcely subordinate
power of Hell magnifies him. Johnson, whose
judgment on Milton is unsatisfactory because
he will not deliver himself sufficiently
to beauty which he must have recognised,
nevertheless  says of  the Paradise  Zost,
that "its end is to raise the thoughts
above sublunary cares," and this is true.
The other great epic poems worthy to be compared with Milton's, the Iliad, Odyssey, AEneid,
and Divine Comedy, all agree in representing
man as an object of the deepest solicitude to
the gods or God. Milton's conception of God
II3




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


is higher than Homer's, Virgil's, or Dante's, but
the care of the Miltonic God for his offspring is
greater, and the profound truth unaffected by
Copernican discoveries and common to all
these poets is therefore more impressive in
Milton than in the others.
There is nothing which the most gifted of
men can create that is not mixed up with earth,
and Milton, too, works it up with his gold.
The weakness of the Paradise Lost is not, as
Johnson affirms, its lack of human interest, for
the Prometheus Bound has just as little, nor is
Johnson's objection worth anything that the
angels are sometimes corporeal and at other
times independent of material laws.  Spirits
could not be represented to a human mind
unless they were in a measure subject to the
conditions of time and space. The principal
defect in Paradise Lost is the justification which
the Almighty gives of the creation of man with
a liability to fall. It would have been better if
Milton had contented himself with telling the
story of the Satanic insurrection, of its suppression, of its author's revenge, of the expulsion
from Paradise, and the promise of a Redeemer.
But he wanted to "justify the ways of God to
II4




SOME NOTES ON MILTON


man," and in order to do this he thought it was
necessary to show that man must be endowed
with freedom of will, and consequently could
not be directly preserved from yielding to the
assaults of Satan.
Paradise Regained comes, perhaps, closer
to us than Paradise Lost because its temptations are more nearly our own, and every
amplification which Milton introduces is designed to make them more completely ours
than they seem to be in the New Testament. It
has often been urged against Paradise Regained
that Jesus recovered Paradise for man by the
Atonement and not merely by resistance to the
devil's wiles, but inasmuch as Paradise was lost
by the devil's triumph through human weakness
it is natural that Paradise Regained should
present the triumph of the Redeemer's strength.
It is this victory which proves Jesus to be the
Son of God and consequently able to save us.
He who has now become incarnated for our
redemption is that same Messiah who, when He
rode forth against the angelic rebels,
" into terror chang'd
His count'nance too severe to be beheld,
And full of wrath bent on his enemies."
II5




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


It is lHe who
" on his impious toes right onward drove,
Gloomy as night: "
whose right hand grasped
" ten thousand thunders, which he sent
Before him, such as in their souls infix'd
Plagues."
(P. L. vi. 824-38.)
Now as Son of Man he is confronted with
that same Archangel, and he conquers by
"strong sufferance."  He comes with no fourfold visage of a charioteer flashing thick flames,
no eye which glares lightning, no Victory eaglewinged and quiver near her with three-bolted
thunder stored, but in "weakness," and with
this he is to " overcome satanic strength."
Milton sees in the temptation to turn the
stones into bread a devilish incitement to use
miraculous powers and not to trust the Heavenly
Father.
"Why dost thou then suggest to me distrust,
Knowing who I am, as I know who thou art? "
(P. R. i. 355-6.)
Finding his enemy steadfast, Satan disappears,
"bowing low
His gray dissimulation,"
(P. R. i. 497-8.)




SOME NOTES ON MILTON


and calls to council his peers. He disregards
the proposal of Belial to attempt the seduction
of Jesus with women.      If he is vulnerable it
will be to objects
" such as have more shew
Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise,
Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck'd;
Or that which only seems to satisfy
Lawful desires of Nature, not beyond."
(P. R. ii. 226-30.)
The former appeal is first of all renewed.
"Tell me," says Satan,
" 'if food were now before thee set,
Would'st thou not eat?' ' Thereafter as I like
The giver,' answered Jesus."
(P. R. ii. 320-22.)
A banquet is laid, and Satan invites Jesus to
partake of it.
" What doubts the Son of God to sit and eat?
These are not fruits forbidd'n."
(P. R. ii. 368-9.)
But Jesus refuses to touch the devil's meat"Thy pompous delicacies I contemn,
And count thy specious gifts no gifts, but guiles."
(P. R. ii. 390-1.)
So they were, for at a word
"Both table and provision vanish'd quite,
With sound of harpies' wings and talons heard."
(P. R. ii. 402-3.)
117




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


If but one grain of that enchanted food had
been eaten, or one drop of that enchanted
liquor had been drunk, there would have been
no Cross, no Resurrection, no salvation for
humanity.
The temptation on the mountain is expanded
by Milton through the close of the second
book, the whole of the third and part of the
fourth.  It is a temptation of peculiar strength
because it is addressed to an aspiration which
Jesus has acknowledged.
"Yet this not all
To which my spirit aspir'd: victorious deeds
Flam'd in my heart, heroic acts."
(P. R. i. 214-I6.)
But he denies that the glory of mob-applause
is worth anything.
"What is glory but the blaze of fame,
The people's praise, if always praise unmixt?
And what the people but a herd confus'd,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Things vulgar, and, well weigh'd, scarce worth the
praise?"
(P. R. iii. 47-5.)
To the Jesus of the New Testament this
answer is, in a measure, inappropriate. He
would not have called the people " a herd conII8




SOME NOTES ON MILTON


fus'd, a miscellaneous rabble." But although
inappropriate it is Miltonic. The devil then
tries the Saviour with a more subtle lure, an
appeal to duty.
"If kingdom move thee not, let move thee zeal
And duty; zeal and duty are not slow;
But on occasion's forelock watchful wait.
They themselves rather are occasion best,
Zeal of thy father's house, duty to free
Thy country from her heathen servitude."
(P. R. iii. 171-6.)
But zeal and duty, the endeavour to hurry
that which cannot and must not be hurried
may be a suggestion from hell.
"If of my reign prophetic writ hath told
That it shall never end, so when begin
The Father in His purpose hath decreed."
(P. R. iii. 184-6.)
Acquiescence, a conviction of the uselessness
of individual or organised effort to anticipate
what only slow evolution can bring, is characteristic of increasing years, and was likely enough
to be the temper of Milton when he had seen
the failure of the effort to make actual on earth
the kingdom of Heaven. The temptation is
developed in such a way that every point supposed to be weak is attacked. "You may be
II9




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


what you claim to be," insinuates the devil,
" but are rustic."
"Thy life hath yet been private, most part spent
At home, scarce view'd the Galilean towns,
And once a year Jerusalem."
(P. R. iii. 232-4.)
Experience and alliances are plausibly urged
as indispensable for success. But Jesus knew
that the sum total of a man's power for
good is precisely what of good there is in
him and that if it be expressed even in the
simplest form, all its strength is put forth and
its office is fulfilled. To suppose that it can be
augmented by machinery is a foolish delusion.
The
" projects deep
Of enemies, of aids, battles and leagues,
Plausible to the world "
(P. R. iii. 39I-3.)
are to the Founder of the kingdom not of this
world "worth naught."     Another side of the
mountain is tried. Rome is presented with
Tiberius at Capreae.     Could it possibly be
anything but a noble deed to
"expel this monster from his throne
Now made a sty, and in his place ascending,
A victor people free from servile yoke!"
(P. R. iv. IO0-I02.)
I20




SOME NOTES ON MILTON


"And with my help thou may'st."    With the
devil's help and not without can this glorious
revolution be achieved!    "For him," is the
Divine reply, " I was not sent." The attack
is then directly pressed.
"The kingdoms of the world, to thee I give;
For, giv'n to me, I give to whom I please,
No trifle; yet with this reserve, not else,
On this condition, if thou wilt fall down
And worship me as thy superior lord."
(P. R. iv. I63-7.)
This, then, is the drift and meaning of it all.
The answer is taken verbally from the gospel.
" ' Thou shalt worship
The Lord thy God, and only Him shalt serve."'
(P. 1R. iv. I76-7.)
That is to say, Thou shalt submit thyself
to God's commands and God's methods and
thou shalt submit thyself to no other.
Omitting the Athenian and philosophic
episode, which is unnecessary and a little unworthy even of the Christian poet, we encounter
not an amplification of the Gospel story but an
interpolation which is entirely Milton's own.
Night gathers and a new assault is delivered in
darkness. Jesus wakes in the storm which
rages round Him. The diabolic hostility is
12I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


open and avowed and He hears the howls and
shrieks of the infernals.   He cannot banish
them though He is so far master of Himself that
He is able to sit " unappall'd in calm and sinless peace." He has to endure the hellish
threats and tumult through the long black
hours
"till morning fair
Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray,
Who with her radiant finger still'd the roar
Of thunder, chas'd the clouds, and laid the winds,
And grisly spectres, which the Fiend had rais'd
To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire.
But now the sun with more effectual beams
Had cheer'd the face of earth, and dri'd the wet
From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds,
Who all things now beheld more fresh and green,
After a night of storm so ruinous,
Clear'd up their choicest notes in bush and spray
To gratulate the sweet return of morn."
(P. R. iv. 426-38.)
There is nothing perhaps in Paradise Zost
which possesses the peculiar quality of this
passage, nothing which like these verses brings
into the eyes the tears which cannot be repressed when a profound experience is set to
music.
The temptation on the pinnacle occupies but
a few lines only of the poem. Hitherto Satan
122




SOME NOTE' ON MILTON


admits that Jesus had conquered, but he had
done no more than any wise and good man
could do.
"Now show thy progeny; if not to stand,
Cast thyself down; safely, if Son of God;
For it is written, ' He will give command
Concerning thee to His angels; in their hands
They shall uplift thee, lest at any time
Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.'"
(P. R. iv. 554-9.)
The promise of Divine aid is made in
mockery.
"To whom thus Jesus: 'Also it is written,
Tempt not the Lord thy God.' He said, and stood:
But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell."
(P. R. iv. 560-2.)
It is not meant, " thou shalt not tempt me,"
but rather, "it is not permitted me to tempt
God." In this extreme case Jesus depends on
God's protection. This is the devil's final defeat
and the seraphic company for which our great
Example had refused to ask instantly surrounds
and receives him. Angelic quires
" the Son of God, our Saviour meek,
Sung victor, and from heavenly feast refresh't,
Brought on His way with joy; He unobserv'd,
Home to His mother's house private return'd."
(P. R. iv. 636-9.)
123




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


Warton wished to expunge this passage, considering it an unworthy conclusion. It is to be
hoped that there are many readers of Milton
who are able to see what is the value of these
four lines, particularly of the last.
It is hardly necessary to say more in order to
show how peculiarly Milton is endowed with
that quality which is possessed by all great poets
-the power to keep in contact with the soul of
man.


124




THE MORALITY OF BYRON'S
POETRY. "THE CORSAIR."
[This is an abstract of an essay four times as long written
many years ago. Although so much has been struck
out, the substance is unaltered, and the conclusion
is valid for the author now as then.]
BYRON above almost all other poets, at
least in our day, has been set down as
immoral.   In reality he is moral, using the
word in its proper sense, and he is so, not only
in detached passages, but in the general drift
of most of his poetry. We will take as an
example "The Corsair."
Conrad is not a debauched buccaneer. He
was not"by Nature sent
To lead the guilty-guilt's worst instrument."
He had been betrayed by misplaced confidence.
125




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


" Doom'd by his very virtues for a dupe,
He cursed those virtues as the cause of ill,
And not the traitors who betray'd him still;
Nor deem'd that gifts bestow'd on better men
Had left him joy, and means to give again,
Fear'd-shunn'd-belied-ere youth had lost her force,
He hated man too much to feel remorse,
And thought the voice of wrath a sacred call,
To pay the injuries of some on all."
Conrad was not, and could not be, mean and
selfish.  A    selfish  Conrad  would    be  an
absurdity. His motives are not gross"he shuns the grosser joys of sense,,a His mind seems nourished by that abstinence."
He is protected by a charm against undistinguishing lust"Though fairest captives daily met his eye,
He shunn'd, nor sought, but coldly pass'd them by; "
and even Gulnare, his deliverer, fails to seduce
him.
Mr. Ruskin observes that Byron makes much
of courage. It is Conrad, the leader, who undertakes the dangerous errand of surprising Seyd;
it is he who determines to save the harem.
His courage is not the mere excitement of battle.
When he is captured126




"THE CORSAIR"


"A conqueror's more than captive's air is seen,"
and he is not insensible to all fear.
"Each has some fear, and he who least betrays,
The only hypocrite deserving praise.
*        *       *        *        #
One thought alone he could not-dared not meet' Oh, how these tidings will Medora greet? '"
Gulnare announces his doom to him, but he is
calm.   He cannot stoop even      to pray.   He
has deserted his Maker, and it would be baseness now to prostrate himself before Him.
"I have no thought to mock his throne with prayer
Wrung from the coward crouching of despair;
It is enough-I breathe-and I can bear."
He has no martyr-hope with which to console
himself; his endurance is of the finest ordersimple, sheer resolution, a resolve that with no
reward, he will never disgrace himself. He
knows what it is
"To count the hours that struggle to thine end,
With not a friend to animate, and tell
To other ears that death became thee well,"
but he does not break down.
Gulnare tries to persuade him that the only
way by which he can save himself from tortures
I27




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


and impalement is by the assassination of Seyd,
but he refuses to accept the terms" Who spares a woman's seeks not slumber's life"and dismisses her. When she has done the
deed and he sees the single spot of blood upon
her, he, the Corsair, is unmanned as he had
never been in battle, prison, or by consciousness
of guilt.
"But ne'er from strife-captivity-remorseFrom all his feelings in their inmost forceSo thrill'd-so shudder'd every creeping vein,
As now they froze before that purple stain.
That spot of blood, that light but guilty streak,
Had banish'd all the beauty from her cheek!"
The Corsair's misanthropy had not destroyed
him. Small creatures alone are wholly converted into spite and scepticism by disappointment and repulse.     Those who     are larger
avenge themselves by devotion. Conrad's love
for Medora was intensified and exalted by his
hatred of the world.
"Yes, it was Love-unchangeable-unchanged,
Felt but for one from whom he never ranged;"
I28




"THE CORSAIR"


and she was worthy of him, the woman who
could sing"Deep in my soul that tender secret dwells,
Lonely and lost to light for evermore,
Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,
Then trembles into silence as before.
There, in its centre, a sepulchral lamp
Burns the slow flame, eternal-but unseen;
Which not the darkness of despair can damp,
Though vain its ray as it had never been."
He finds Medora dead, and" his mother's softness crept
To those wild eyes, which like an infant's wept."
If his crimes and love could be weighed in a
celestial balance, weight being apportioned to
the rarity and value of the love, which would
descend?
The points indicated in Conrad's character
are not many, but they are sufficient for its
delineation, and it is a moral character. We
must, of course, get rid of the notion that the
relative magnitude of the virtues and vices
according to the priest or society is authentic.
A reversion to the natural or divine scale has
been almost the sole duty preached to us by
358                 129                F




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


every prophet. If we could incorporate Conrad with ourselves we should find that the
greater part of what is worst in us would be
neutralised. The sins of which we are ashamed,
the dirty, despicable sins, Conrad could not
have committed; and in these latter days they
are perhaps the most injurious.
We do not understand how moral it is to
yield unreservedly to enthusiasm, to the impression which great objects would fain make
upon us, and to embody that impression in
worthy language. It is rare to meet now even
with young people who will abandon themselves
to a heroic emotion, or who, if they really feel it,
do not try to belittle it in expression. Byron's
poetry, above most, tempts and almost compels
surrender to that which is beyond the commonplace self.
It is not true that "The Corsair" is insincere.
He who hears a note of insincerity in Conrad
and Medora may have ears, but they must be
those of the translated Bottom who was proud
of having "a reasonable good ear in music."
Byron's romance has been such a power exactly
because men felt that it was not fiction and that
his was one of the. strongest minds of his day.
130




"THE CORSAIR"


He was incapable of toying with the creatures
of the fancy which had no relationship with
himself and through himself with humanity.
A word as to Byron's hold upon the people.
He was able to obtain a hearing from ordinary
men and women, who knew nothing even of
Shakespeare, save what they had seen at the
theatre. Modern poetry is the luxury of a small
cultivated class. We may say what we like of
popularity, and if it be purchased by condescension to popular silliness it is nothing.
But Byron secured access to thousands of
readers in England and on the Continent by
strength and loveliness, a feat seldom equalled
and never perhaps surpassed.  The present
writer's father, a compositor in a dingy printing
office, repeated verses from "Childe Harold"
at the case.  Still more remarkable, Byron
reached one of this writer's friends, an officer
in the Navy, of the ancient stamp; and the
attraction, both to printer and lieutenant, lay
in nothing lower than that which was best in
him.  It is surely a service sufficient to
compensate for many more faults than can
be charged against him that wherever there
was any latent poetic dissatisfaction with the
I3I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life he gave
it expression, and that he has awakened in the
people lofty emotions which, without him, would
have slept. The cultivated critics, and the refined persons who have schrecklich vie/l,geesenz,
are not competent to estimate the debt we owe
to Byron.


I32




BYRON, GOETHE. AND MR.
MA THE W ARNOLD
(Repirinted, with corrections, by permission from the
" Contemborary Review," August, I88I.)
M      R. MATTHEW    ARNOLD     has lately
published a remarkable essayr upon
Lord Byron. Mr. Arnold's theory about Byron
is, that he is neither artist nor thinker-that " he
has no light, cannot lead us from the past to
the future;" "the moment he reflects, he is a
child;" "as a poet he has no fine and exact
sense for word and structure and rhythm; he
has not the artist's nature and gifts." The
excellence of Byron mainly consists in his
" sincerity and strength; " in his rhetorical
power; in his "irreconcilable revolt and battle"
1 Poetry of Byron chosen and arranged by Matthew
Arnold-I88i.
133




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


against the political and social order of things
in which he lived. " Byron threw himself upon
poetry as his organ; and in poetry his topics
were not Queen Mab, and the Witch of the
Atlas, and the Sensitive Plant, they were the
upholders of the old order, George the Third
and Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington and Southey, and they were the canters and
tramplers of the great world, and they were his
enemies and himself."
Mr. Arnold appeals to Goethe as an authority
in his favour. In order, therefore, that English
people may know what Goethe thought about
Byron I have collected some of the principal
criticisms upon him which I can find in
Goethe's works. The text upon which Mr.
Arnold enlarges is the remark just quoted
which Goethe made about Byron to Eckermann:
"so bald er reflectirt ist er ein Kind"-as soon
as he reflects he is a child.
Goethe, it is true, did say this; but the
interpretation of the saying depends upon the
context, which Mr. Arnold omits. I give the
whole passage, quoting from Oxenford's translation of the Eckermann Conversations, vol. i.
p. I98 (edition i850):I34




BYRON AND GOETHE


" ' Lord Byron,' said Eckermann, 'is no wiser
when he takes 'Faust' to pieces and thinks you
found one thing here, the other there.' 'The
greater part of those fine things cited by Lord
Byron,' Goethe replied, 'I have never even read;
much less did I think of them when I was
writing " Faust." But Lord Byron is only great
as a poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child.
He knows not how to help himself against the
stupid attacks of the same kind made upon him
by his own countrymen. He ought to have
expressed himself more strongly against them.
'What is there is mine,' he should have said,
' and whether I got it from a book or from life
is of no consequence; the only point is,
whether I have made a right use of it.' Walter
Scott used a scene from my ' Egmont,' and he
had a right to do so; and because he did it
well, he deserves praise.'"
Goethe certainly does not mean that Byron
was unable to reflect in the sense in which Mr.
Arnold interprets the word. What was really
meant we shall see in a moment.
We will, however, continue the quotations
from the Eckermann."We see how the inadequate dogmas of the
135




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


Church work upon a free mind like Byron's
and how by such a piece (' Cain') he struggles to
get rid of a doctrine which has been forced
upon him" (vol. i. p. I29).
"The world to him was transparent, and he
could paint by way of anticipation" (vol. i.
p. I40).
" That which I call invention I never saw in
any one in the world to a greater degree than in
him " (vol. i. p. 205).
"Lord Byron is to be regarded as a man, as
an Englishman, and as a great talent. His
good qualities belong chiefly to the man, his
bad to the Englishman and the peer, his talent
is incommensurable. All Englishmen are, as
such, without reflection properly so-called;
distractions and party-spirit will not permit
them to perfect themselves in quiet. But they
are great as practical men. Thus, Lord Byron
could never attain reflection on himself, and on
this account his maxims in general are not successful.... But where he will create, he always
succeeds; and we may truly say that, with him,
inspiration supplies the place of reflection. He
was always obliged to go on poetizing, and then
everything that came from the man, especially
I36




BYRON AND GOETHE


from his heart, was excellent. He produced
his best things, as women do pretty children,
without thinking about it, or knowing how it
was done. He is a great talent, a born talent,
and I never saw the true poetical power greater
in any man than in him. In the apprehension
of external objects, and a clear penetration into
past situations, he is quite as great as Shakespeare. But as a pure individuality, Shakespeare
is his superior" (vol. i. p. 209).
We see now what Goethe means by "reflection." It is the faculty of self-separation, or
conscious consideration, a faculty which would
have enabled Byron, as it enabled Goethe, to
reply successfully to a charge of plagiarism. It
is not thought in its widest sense, nor creation,
and it has not much to do with the production
of poems of the highest order-the poems
that is to say, which are written by the impersonal thought.
But again"The English may think of Byron as they
please; but this is certain, that they can show
no poet who is to be compared to him. He is
different from all the others, and for the most
part, greater" (vol. i. p. 290).
I37




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


This passage is one which Mr. Arnold quotes,
and he strives to diminish its importance by
translating der ihm zu vergleichen wdre, by
"who is his parallel," and maintains that
Goethe "was not so much thinking of the
strict rank, as poetry, of Byron's production;
he was thinking of that wonderful personality of
Byron which so enters into his poetry." It is
just possible; but if Goethe did think this, he
used words which are misleading, and if the
phrase der ihm zu vergleichen wdre simply
indicates parallelism, it has no point, for in
that sense it might have been applied to Scott
or to Southey.
" I have read once more Byron's ' Deformed
Transformed,' and must say that to me his
talent appears greater than ever. His devil was
suggested by my Mephistopheles; but it is no
imitation-it is thoroughly new and original;
close, genuine, and spirited. There are no
weak passages-not a place where you could
put the head of a pin, where you do not find
invention and thought [italics mine]. Were it
not for his hypochondriacal negative turn, he
would be as great as Shakespeare and the
ancients" (vol. i. p. 294).
I38




BYRON AND GOETHE


Eckermann expressed his surprise. "Yes,"
said Goethe, "you may believe me, I have
studied him anew and am confirmed in this
opinion." The position which Byron occupies
in the Second Part of "Faust" is well known.
Eckermann talked to Goethe about it, and
Goethe said, "I could not make use of any man
as the representative of the modern poetical era
except him, who undoubtedly is to be regarded
as the greatest genius of our century " (vol. i.
p. 425).  Mr. Arnold translates this word
" genius " by " talent."  The word in the
original is talent, and I will not dispute with so
accomplished a German scholar as Mr. Arnold
as to what is the precise meaning of talent. In
both the English translations of Eckermann the
word is rendered "genius," and after the
comparison between Byron, Shakespeare, and
the ancients just quoted, we can hardly admit
that Goethe meant to distinguish scientifically
between the two orders of intellect and to assign
the lower to Byron.
But, last of all, I will translate Goethe's
criticism upon "Cain." So far as I know, it
has not yet appeared in English. It is to be
found in the Stuttgart and Tiibingen edition of
139




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


Goethe, 1840, vol. xxxiii. p. 157. Some portions
which are immaterial I have omitted:-,
" After I had listened to the strangest things
about this work for almost a year, I at last took
it myself in hand, and it excited in me astonishment and admiration; an effect which will
produce in the mind which is simply susceptible,
everything good, beautiful, and great.... The
poet who, surpassing the limit of all our conceptions, has penetrated with burning spiritual
vision the past and present, and consequently
the future, has now subdued new regions under
his limitless talent, but what he will accomplish
therein can be predicted by no human being.
His procedure, however, we can nevertheless in
a measure more closely determine. He adheres
to the letter of the Biblical tradition, for he
allows the first pair of human beings to exchange
their original purity and innocence for a guilt
mysterious in its origin; the punishment which
is its consequence descending upon all posterity.
The monstrous burden of such an event he lays
upon the shoulders of Cain as the representative
of a wretched humanity, plunged for no fault of
its own into the depths of misery.
"To this primitive son of man, bowed down
I40




BYRON AND GOETHE


and heavily burdened, death, which as yet he
has not seen, is an especial trouble; and
although he may desire the end of his present
distress, it seems still more hateful to exchange
it for a condition altogether unknown. Hence
we already see that the full weight of a dogmatic
system, explaining, mediating, yet always in
conflict with itself, just as it still for ever
occupies us, was imposed on the first miserable son of man. These contradictions, which
are not strange to human nature, possessed
his mind, and could not be brought to rest,
either through the divinely-given gentleness of
his father and brother, or the loving and
alleviating co-operation of his sister-wife. In
order to sharpen them to the point of impossibility of endurance, Satan comes upon the
scene, a mighty and misleading spirit, who
begins by unsettling him morally, and then
conducts him miraculously through all worlds,
causing him to see the past as overwhelmingly
vast, the present as small and of no account,
and the future as full of foreboding and void of
consolation.
"So he turns back to his own family, more
excited, but not worse than before; and finding
I41




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


in the family circle everything as he has left it,
the urgency of Abel, who wishes to make him
offer a sacrifice, becomes altogether insupportable. More say we not, excepting that the
motivation of the scene in which Abel perishes
is of the rarest excellence, and what follows is
equally great and priceless. There now lies
Abel! That now is Death-there was so much
talk about it, and man knows about it as little as
he did before.
"We must not forget, that through the
whole piece there runs a kind of presentiment of a Saviour, so that the poet at this
point, as well as in all others, has known
how to bring himself near to the ideas by
which we explain things, and to our modes
of faith.
"Of the scene with the parents, in which
Eve at last curses the speechless Cain, which
our western neighbour lifts into such striking
prominence, there remains nothing more for us
to say: we have to approach the conclusion
with astonishment and reverence.
"With regard to this conclusion, an intelligent and fair friend, related to us through
esteem for Byron, has asserted that everything
I42




BYRON AND GOETHE


religious and moral in the world was put into
the last three words of the piece."
We have now heard enough from Goethe
to prove that Mr. Arnold's interpretation of
" so bald er reflectirt ist er eiz Kinzd" is not
Goethe's interpretation of Byron. It is to be
remembered that Goethe was not a youth
overcome by Mr. Arnold's " vogue" when
he read Byron.   He was a singularly selfpossessed old man.
Many persons will be inclined to think that
Goethe, so far from putting Byron on a lower
level than that usually assigned to him, has
over-praised him, and will question the " burning spiritual vision" which the great German
believed the great Englishman to possess. But
if we consider what Goethe calls the " motivation " of Cain; if we reflect on what the poet
has put into the legend; on the exploration of
the universe with Lucifer as a guide; on its
result, on the mode in which the death of Abel
is reached; on the doom of the murderer-the
limitless wilderness henceforth and no rest; on
the fidelity of Adah, who, with the true instinct
" Adah.-Peace be with him (Abel).
Cain.-But with me! "
I43




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


of love, separates between the man and the
crrime; on the majesty of the principal character,
who stands before us as the representative of
the insurgence of the human intellect, so that,
if we know him, we know a whole literature; if
we meditate hereon, we shall say that Goethe
has not exaggerated. It is the same with the
rest of Byron's dramas. Over and above the
beauty of detached passages, there is in each
one of them a large and universal meaning, or
rather meaning within meaning, precisely the
same for no reader, but none the less certain,
and as inexhaustible as the meanings of Nature.
This is one reason why the wisdom of a selection
from Byron is so doubtful. The worth of
"Cain," of " Sardanapalus," of " Manfred," of
"Marino Faliero," is the worth of an outlook
over the sea; and we cannot take a sample of
the scene from a cliff by putting a pint of water
into a bottle. But Byron's critics and the
compilers tell us of failures, which ought not to
survive, and that we are doing a kindness to
him if we suppress these and exhibit him at his
best. No man who seriously cares for Byron
will assent to this doctrine. We want to know
the whole of him, his weakness as well as his
144




BYRON AND GOETHE


strength; for the one is not intelligible without
the other. A human being is an indivisible
unity, and his weakness is his strength, and his
strength is his weakness.
It is not my object now, however, to justify
what Mr. Arnold calls the Byronic "superstition." I hope I could justify a good part of
it, but this is not the opportunity. I cannot
resist, however, saying a word by way of conclusion on the manner in which Byron has
fulfilled what seems to me one of the chief
offices of the poet. Mr. Arnold, although he is
so dissatisfied with Byron because he "cannot
reflect," would probably in another mood admit
that " reflections " are not what we demand of
a poet. We do not ask of him a rhymed book
of proverbs. He should rather be the articulation of what in Nature is great but inarticulate.
In him the thunder, the sea, the peace of
morning, the joy of youth, the rush of passion,
the calm of old age, should find words, and men
should through him become aware of the unrecognised wealth of existence. Byron had the
power above most poets of acting as a kind of
tongue to Nature. His descriptions are on
everybody's lips, and it is superfluous to quote
145




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


them. He represented things not as if they
were aloof from him, but as if they were the
concrete embodiment of his soul. The woods,
the wilds, the waters of Nature are to him"the intense
Reply of hers to our intelligence."
His success is equally marked when he
portrays men or women whose character attracts
him.   Take, for example, the girl in     "The
Island ":"The sunborn blood suffused her neck, and threw
O'er her clear nutbrown skin a lucid hue,
Like coral reddening through the darkened wave,
Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.
Such was this daughter of the southern seas,
Herself a billow in her energies.
*        *       *        *        *
Her smiles and tears had pass'd, as light winds pass
O'er lakes to ruffle, not destroy, their glass,
Whose depths unsearch'd, and fountains from the hill,
Restore their surface, in itself so still."
Passages like these might be quoted without
end from Byron, and they explain why he is
and must be amongst the immortals. He may
have been careless in expression; he may have
been a barbarian and not a Evfv7cs, as Mr.
I46




BYRON AND GOETHE


Matthew Arnold affirms, but he was great.
This is the word which describes him. He was
a mass of living energy, and therefore he is
sanative. Energy, power, is the one thing after
which we pine in this sickly age. We do not
want carefully and consciously constructed poems
of mosaic. Strength is what we need and what
will heal us. Strength is true morality, and
true beauty. It is the strength in Byron that
falsifies the accusation of affectation and posing,
which is brought against him. All that is
meant by affectation' and posing was a mere
surface trick. The real man, Byron, and his
poems are perfectly unconscious, as unconscious as the wind. The books which have
lived and always will live have this unconsciousness in them, and what is manufactured, selfcentred, and self-contemplative will perish.
The world's literature is the work of men, who,
to use Byron's own words" Strip off this fond and false identity; "
who are lost in their object, who write because
they cannot help it, imperfectly or perfectly, as
the case may be, and who do not sit down to
fit in this thing and that thing from a common147




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


place book. Many novelists there are who
know their art better than Charlotte Bronte,
but she, like Byron-and there are more points
of resemblance between them than might at
first be supposed-is imperishable because she
speaks under overwhelming pressure, selfannihilated, we may say, while the spirit
breathes through her. The Byron "vogue"
will never pass so long as men and women are
men and women. Mr. Arnold and the critics
may remind us of his imperfections of form, but
Goethe is right after all, for not since Shakespeare
have we had any one der iintm zu vergleichen
ware.


148




A SACRIFICE


A FATAL plague devastated the city. The
god had said that it would continue to
rage until atonement for a crime had been
offered by the sacrifice of a man. He was
to be perfect in body; he must not desire to
die because he no longer loved life, or because
he wished for fame. A statue must not be
erected to his memory; no poem must be
composed for him; his name must not appear
in the city's records.
A few volunteers presented themselves, but
none of them satisfied all the conditions. At
last a young man came who had served as the
model for the image of the god in his temple.
There was no question, therefore, of soundness
of limb, and when he underwent the form of
examination no spot nor blemish was found on
149




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


him. The priest asked him whether he was in
trouble, and especially whether he was disappointed in love. He said he was in no
trouble; that he was betrothed to a girl to
whom he was devoted, and that they had
intended to be married that month. "I am,"
he declared, "the happiest man in the city."
The priest doubted and watched him that
evening, but he saw him walking side by side
with this girl, and the two were joyous as a
youth and a maiden ought to be in the height
of their passion. She sat down and sang to
him; he played to her, and they embraced one
another tenderly at parting.
The next morning was the day on which he
was to be slain. There was an altar in front
of the temple, and a great crowd assembled,
ranked round the open space. At the appointed
hour the priest appeared, and with him was the
youth, holding his beloved by the hand, but
she was blindfolded. He let go her hand, knelt
down, and in a moment the sacrificial knife
was drawn across his throat. His body was
placed upon the wood, and the priest was
about to kindle it when a flash from heaven
struck it into a blaze with such heat that when
I50




A SACRIFICE


the fire dropped no trace of the victim remained.
The girl, too, had disappeared, and was never
seen again.
In accordance with the god's decree, no
statue was erected, no poem was composed,
and no entry was made in the city records.
But tradition did not forget that the saviour of
the city was he who survived in the great image
on which the name of the god was inscribed.


15I




THE AGED TREE


AN aged tree, whose companions had gone,
having still a little sap in its bark and a
few leaves which grew therefrom, prayed it might
see yet another spring. Its prayer was granted:
and spring came, but the old tree had no leaves
save one or two near the ground, and a great
fungus fixed itself on its trunk. It had a dull
life in its roots, but not enough to know that its
moss and fungus were not foliage. It stood
there, an unlovely mass of decay, when the
young trees were all bursting. "That rotten
thing," said the master, " ought to have been
cut down long ago."


152




CONSCIENCE


C" CONSCIENCE," said I, "her conscience
I.   would have told her."
"Yes," said my father.  "The strongest
amongst the many objections to the Roman
Catholic doctrine of confession is that it
weakens our dependence on the conscience.
If we seek for an external command to do
what ought to be done in obedience to that
inward monitor, whose voice is always clear if
we will but listen, its authority will gradually
be lost, and in the end it will cease to speak."
"Conscience," said my grandmother musingly (turning to my father). "You will remember Phyllis Eyre? She was one of my
best friends, and it is now two years since she
died, unmarried. She was once governess to
the children of Sir Robert Walsh, but remained
in the house as companion to Lady Walsh long
153




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


after her pupils had grown up. She was, in
fact, more than a companion, for Lady Walsh
trusted her and loved her. She was by birth a
lady; she had been well educated, and, like
her mistress, she was devoutly and evangelically pious. She was also very handsome, and
this you may well believe, for, as you know,
she was handsome as an old woman, stately
and erect, with beautiful, undimmed eyes.
When Evelina Walsh, the eldest daughter, was
about one and twenty, Charles Fysshe, the
young heir to the Fysshe property, came to stay
with her brother, and Phyllis soon discovered,
or thought she discovered, that he was in love
with Evelina. He seemed to court her society,
and paid her attentions which could be explained
on one hypothesis only. Phyllis was delighted,
for the match in every way was most suitable,
and must gladden the hearts of Evelina's
parents. The young man would one day be
the possessor of twenty thousand acres; he had
already taken a position in the county, and his
soul was believed to be touched with Divine
grace. Evelina certainly was in loye with him,
and Phyllis was not backward in urging his
claims. She congratulated herself, and with
'54




CONSCIENCE


justice, that if the marriage should ever take
place, it would be acknowledged that she had
had a hand in it. It might even be doubted
whether Evelina, without Phyllis's approval,
would have permitted herself to indulge her
passion, for she was by nature diffident, and so
beset with reasons for and against when she
had to make up her mind on any important
matter, that a decision was always most difficult
to her.
" Charles stayed for about six weeks, and was
then called home. He promised that he would
pay another visit of a week in the autumn, when
Sir Robert was to entertain the Lord Lieutenant
and there were to be grand doings at the Hall.
Conversation naturally turned upon him during
his absence, and Phyllis, as usual, was warm in
his praise. One evening, after she had reached
her own room and had lain down to sleep, a
strange apparition surprised her. It was something more than a suspicion that she herself
loved Charles. She strove to rid herself of this
intrusion: she called to mind the difference in
their rank; that she was five years his senior,
and that if she yielded she would be guilty of
treachery to Evelina. It was all in vain; the
'55




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


more she resisted the more vividly did his
image present itself, and she was greatly distressed. What was the meaning of this outbreak of emotion, not altogether spiritual, of this
loss of self-possession, such as she had never
known before? Her usual remedies against
evil thoughts failed her, and, worst of all, there
was the constant suggestion that these particular
thoughts were not evil. Hitherto, when temptation had attacked her, she was sure. whence it
came, but she was not sure now. It might be
an interposition of Providence, but how would
it appear to Evelina? I myself, my dears, have
generally found that to resist the devil is not
difficult if I am quite certain that the creature
before me is the devil, but it does tax my wits
sometimes to find out if he is really the enemy
or not. When Apollyon met Christian he was
not in doubt for an instant, for the monster
was hideous to behold: he had scales like a
fish, wings like a dragon, feet like a bear, out
of his belly came fire and smoke, and his
mouth was as the mouth of a lion. After
some parleying he cast his dreadful dart, but
Christian, without more ado, put up his shield,
drew his sword, and presently triumphed   If
I56




CONSCIENCE


Satan had turned himself, from his head to
his ankles, into a man, and had walked by
Christian's side, and had talked with him, and
had agreed with him in everything he had to
say, the bear's claws might have peeped out,
but Christian, instead of fighting, would have
begun to argue with himself whether the evidence of the face or the foot was the stronger.
He would have been just as likely to trust the
face, and in a few moments he would have
been snapped up and carried off to hell. To
go on with my story: the night wore on in
sophistry and struggle, and no inner light
dawned with the sun. Phyllis was much agitated, for in the afternoon Charles was to return,
and although amidst the crowd of visitors she
might be overlooked, she could not help seeing
him. She did see him, but did not speak to
him. He sat next to Evelina at dinner, who
was happy and expectant. The next day there
was a grand meet of the hounds, and almost
all the party disappeared. Phyllis pleaded a
headache, and obtained permission to stay at
home. It was a lovely morning in November,
without a movement in the air, calm and cloudless, one of those mornings not uncommon
157




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


when the year begins to die. She went into
the woods at the outer edge of the park, and
had scarcely entered them, when lo! to her
astonishment, there was Charles. She could not
avoid him, and he came up to her.
"'Why, Miss Eyre, what are you doing
here?'
"' I had a headache; I could not go with
the others, and came out for a stroll.'
"' I, too, was not very well, and have been
left behind.'
" They walked together side by side.
" 'I wanted to speak to you, Miss Eyre. I
wonder if you have suspected anything lately.'
"' Suspected? I do not quite comprehend:
you are very vague.'
"' IWell, must I be more explicit? Have you
fancied that I care more for somebody you
know than I care for all the world besides? I
suppose you have not, for I thought it better to
hide as much as possible what I felt.'
"' I should be telling an untruth if I were to
say I do not understand you, and I trust you will
pardon me if I tell you that a girl more worthy
of you than Evelina, and one more likely to
make you happy, I have never seen.'
I58




CONSCIENCE


"' Gracious God! what have I done? what
a mistake! Miss Eyre, it is you I mean; it is
you I love.'
"There was not an instant's hesitation.
" ' Sir, I thank you, but I can answer at once.
_Never can I be yours. That decision is irrevocable. I admire you, but cannot love you.'
"She parted from him abruptly, but no
sooner had she left him than she was confounded, and wondered who or what it was
which gave that answer. She wavered, and
thought of going back, but she did not. Later
on in the day she heard that Charles had gone
home, summoned by sudden business. Two
years afterwards his engagement with Evelina
was announced, and in three years they were
married. It was not what I should call a happy
marriage, although they never quarrelled and
had five children. To the day of her death
Phyllis was not sure whether she had done right
or wrong, nor am I."


I59




THE GO VERNESS'S STORY
IN the year 1850 I was living as governess
in the small watering-place S., on the south
coast of England. Amongst my friends was a
young doctor, B., who had recently come to the
town. He had not bought a practice, but his
family was known to one or two of the principal
inhabitants, and he had begun to do well. He
deserved his success, for he was skilful, frank,
and gentle, and he did not affect that mystery
which in his elder colleagues was already suspected to be nothing but ignorance. He was
one of the early graduates of the University of
London, and representative of the new school
of medical science, relying not so much upon
drugs as upon diet and regimen. I was one of
his first patients. I had a severe illness lasting
for nearly three months; he watched over me
I6o




THE GOVERNESS'S STORY


carefully and cured me. As I grew better he
began to talk on other matters than my health
when he visited me. We found that we were
both interested in the same books: he lent me
his and I lent him mine. It is almost impossible, I should think, for a young man and a
young woman to be friends and nothing more,
and I confess that my sympathy with him in his
admiration of the Elizabethan poets, and my
gratitude to him for my recovery passed into
affection. I am sure also that he felt affection
for me. He became confidential, and told me
all his history and troubles. There was one
peculiarity in his conversation which was new
to me: he never talked down to me, and he
was not afraid at times to discuss subjects that
in the society to which I had been accustomed
were prohibited. Not a word that was improper
ever escaped his lips, but he treated me in a
measure as if I were a man, and I was flattered
that he should put me on a level with himself.
It is true that sometimes I fancied he was
so unreserved with me because he was sure he
was quite safe, for I was poor, and although I
was not ugly I was not handsome. However,
on the whole, I was very happy in his society,
358              i6i              G




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


and there was more than a chance that I should
become his wife.
After six months of our acquaintanceship
had passed, M., an old schoolfellow of mine,
took lodgings near me for the summer. She
was a remarkable girl. If she was not beautiful, she was better-looking than I was, and she
possessed a something, I know not what, more
powerful than beauty to fascinate men. Perhaps
it was her unconstrained naturalness. In walking, sitting, standing-whatever she did-her
movements and attitudes were not impeded or
unduly masked by artificial restrictions. I
should not have called her profound, but what
she said upon the commonest subjects was
interesting, because it was so entirely her own.
If she disliked a neighbour, she almost always
disliked her for a reason which we saw,
directly it was pointed out to us, to be just,
but it was generally one which had not been
given before. Her talk upon matters externally
trivial was thus much more to me than many
discourses upon the most important topics.
On moral questions she expressed herself without any regard to prejudices. She did not controvert the authenticity of the ordinary standards,
162




THE GOVERNESS'S STORY


but nevertheless behaved as if she herself were
her only law. The people in R., her little
native borough, considered her to be dangerous,
and I myself was once or twice weak enough to
wonder that she held on a straight course with
so little help from authority, forgetting that its
support, in so far as it possesses any vital
strength, is derived from the same internal
source which supplied strength to her.
When she came to S. she was unwell, and
consulted my friend B.  He did not at first
quite like attending her, and she reported to
me with great laughter how she had been told
that he had made some inquiries about her
from one of her neighbours at home with whom
he happened to be acquainted, and how he had
manceuvred in his visits to get the servants or
the landlady into the room. I met him soon
afterwards, and he informed me that he had a
new patient. When he heard that I knew her
-I did not say how much I knew-he became
inquisitive, and at last, after much beating about
the bush, knitting his eyebrows and lowering
his voice, he asked me whether I was aware
that she was not quite-quite above susfpicion /
My goodness, how I flamed up! I defended
i63




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


her with vehemence: I exaggerated her prudence and her modesty; I declared, what was
the simple truth, that she was the last person in
the world against whom such a scandalous
insinuation should be directed, and that she
was singularly inaccessible to vulgar temptation.
I added that notwithstanding her seeming lawlessness she was not only remarkably sensitive
to any accusation of bad manners, but that
upon certain matters she could not endure
even a joke. The only quarrel I remember to
have had with her was when I lapsed into some
commonplace jest about her intimacy with a
music-master who gave her lessons. The way
in which she took that jest I shall never forget.
If I had made it to any other woman, I should
have passed on, unconscious of anything inconsistent with myself, but she in an instant made
me aware with hardly half a dozen words that I
had disgraced myself. I was ashamed, not so
much because I had done what was in the
abstract wrong, but because it was something
which was not in keeping with my real character.
I hope it will not be thought that I am prosing
if I take this opportunity of saying that the
laws peculiar to each of us are those which we
i64




THE GOVERNESS'S STORY


are at the least pains to discover and those
which we are most prone to neglect. We think
we have done our duty when we have kept the
commandments common to all of us, but we
may perhaps have disgracefully neglected it.
Oh, how that afternoon with B. burnt itself
into my memory for ever! I was sitting on
my little sofa with books piled round me.
He removed a few of the books, and I removed the others.  He sat down beside me,
and, taking my hand, said he hoped I had forgiven him, and that I would remember that in
such a little place he was obliged to be very
careful, and to be quite sure of his patients, if
they were women. He trusted I should believe
that there was no other person in the world (the
emphasis on that word!) to whom he would
have ventured to impart such a secret. I was
appeased, especially when, after a few minutes'
silence, he took my hand and kissed it, the first
and last kiss. He said nothing further, and
departed. The next time I saw him he was
more than usually deferential, more than ever
desirous to come closer to me, and I thought
the final word must soon be spoken.
M. remained in S. till far into the autumn,
i65




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


but I did not see much of her. My work
had begun again.   B. continued to call on
me as my health was not quite re-established.
We had agreed to read the same author at
the same time, in order that we might discuss
him together whilst our impressions were
still fresh. Somehow his interest in these
readings began to flag; he informed me presently that I had now almost, entirely recovered,
and weeks often passed without meeting him.
One afternoon I was surprised to find M. in
my room when I returned from a walk with
my pupils. She had been waiting for me
nearly half an hour, and I could not at first
conjecture the reason.  Gradually she drew
the conversation towards B. and at last asked
me what I thought of him. Instantly I saw
what had happened. What I imagined was
once mine had been stolen, stolen perhaps unconsciously, but nevertheless stolen, my sole
treasure. She was rich, she had a father and
mother, she had many friends and would
certainly have been married had she never seen
B. I, as I have said, was almost penniless;
I was an orphan, with few friends; he was my
first love, and I knew he would be my last.
i66




THE GOVERNESS'S STORY


I was condemned, I foresaw, henceforth to solitude, and that most terrible of all calamities,
heart-starvation. What B. had said about M.
came into my mind and rose to my lips. I
knew, or thought I knew, that if I revealed it
to her she would be so angry that she would
cast him off. Probably I was mistaken, but in
my despair the impulse to disclose it was almost
irresistible. I struggled against it, however,
and when she pressed me, I praised him and
strove in my praise to be sincere. Whether it
was something in my tone, quite unintentional,
I know not, but she stopped me almost in the
middle of a sentence and said she believed I
had kept something back which I did not wish
her to hear; that she was certain he had talked
to me about her, and that she wished to know
what he had said. I protested he had never
uttered a word which could be interpreted as
disparaging her, and she seemed to be content.
She kissed me a little more vehemently than
usual, and went away. We ought always, I
suppose, to be glad when other people are
happy, but God knows that sometimes it is very
difficult to be so, and that their happiness is
hard to bear.
i67




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


The Elizabethan studies had now altogether
come to an end. In about a couple of months
I heard that M. and B. were engaged. M.
went home, and B. moved into a larger town.
In a twelvemonth the marriage took place,
and M. wrote to me after her wedding trip.
I replied, but she never wrote again. I heard
that she had said that I had laid myself out
to catch B. and that she was afraid that in so
doing I had hinted there was something against
her. I heard also that B. had discouraged his
wife's correspondence with me, no other reason
being given than that he would rather the acquaintanceship should be dropped. The interpretation of this reason by those to whom it
was given can be guessed. Did he fear lest I
should boast of what I had been to him or
should repeat his calumny? Ah, he little knew
me if he dreamed that such treachery was
possible to me!
I remained at the vicarage for three years.
The children grew up and I was obliged to
leave, but I continued to teach in different
families till I was about five-and-forty.  After
five-and-forty I could not obtain another
situation, and I had to support myself by
i68




THE GOVERNESS'S STORY


letting apartments at Brighton. My strength
is now failing; I cannot look after my servant
properly, nor wait upon my lodgers myself.
Those who have to get their living by a lodginghouse know what this means and what the end
will be. I have occasionally again wished I
could have seen my way partially to explain
myself to M., and have thought it hard to
die misrepresented, but I am glad I have not
spoken. I should have disturbed her peace,
and I care nothing about justification or misrepresentation now. With eternity so near,
what does it matter?
INSCRIPTION ON THE ENVELOPE.
"To M1Y NIECE JUDITH,-You have been so
kind to your aunt, the only human being, at
last, who was left to love her, that she could not
refrain from telling you the one passage in her
history which is of any importance or interest."


i69




JAMES FORBES
"  T is all a lie, and it is hard to believe that
the people who preach it do not know it
to be a lie."
So said James Forbes to Elizabeth Castleton,
the young woman to whom he was engaged.
She was the daughter of a clergyman, and
James, who had been brought up at Rugby
and Oxford, was now in his last year at a
London hospital, and was going to be a doctor.
" I am sure my father does not know it to be
a lie, and I do not myself know it to be a lie."
"I was not thinking of your father, but of
the clergy generally, and you do know it to be
a lie."
" It is not true of my brother, and, excepting
my father and brother, you have not been in
I70




JAMES FORBES


company with parsons, as you call them, for
half an hour in your life."
"Do you mean to tell me you have any
doubts about this discredited rubbish?"
"If I have I would rather not speak about
them now. Jim, dear Jim, let us drop the
subject and talk of something else."
He was walking by her side, with his hands
in his coat pockets. She drew out one of his
hands; he did not return the pressure, and
presently released himself.
"I thought you were to be my intellectual
companion. I have heard you say yourself
that a marriage which is not a marriage of mind
is no marriage."
"But, Jim, is there nothing in the world to
think about but this?"
" There is nothing so important. Are we to
be dumb all our lives about what you say is
religion?"
They separated and soon afterwards the
engagement was broken off. Jim had really
loved Elizabeth, but at that time he was furious
against what he called "creeds." He waited
for three or four years till he had secured a fair
practice, and then married a clever and hand171




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


some young woman who wrote poems, and had
captivated him by telling him a witty story from
Heine. Elizabeth never married.
Thirty years passed, and Jim, now a famous
physician, had to go a long distance down the
Great Western Railway to attend a consultation.
At Bath an elderly lady entered the carriage
carrying a handbag with the initials " E. C."
upon it. She sat in the seat farthest away from
him on the opposite side, and looked at him
steadfastly. He also looked at her, but no
word was spoken for a minute. He then
crossed over, fell on his knees, and buried his
head with passionate sobbing on her knees.
She put her hands on him and her tears fell.
" Five years," at last he said; "I may live
five years with care. She has left me. I will
give up everything and go abroad with you.
Five years; it is not much, but it will be something, everything. I shall die with your face
over me."
The train was slackening speed for Bristol;
she bent down and kissed him.
"Dearest Jim," she whispered, "I have
waited a long time, but I was sure we should
come together again at last. It is enough."
I72




JAMES FORBES


"You will go with me, then?"
Again she kissed him. " It must not be."
Before he could reply the train was stopping
at the platform, and a gentleman with a lady
appeared at the door. Miss Castleton stepped
out and was at once driven away in a carriage
with her companions.
He lived three years and then died almost
suddenly of the disease which he had foreseen would kill him.  He had no children,
but few relatives, and his attendant was a
hospital nurse.  But the  day  before  his
death a lady appeared who announced
herself as a family friend, and the nurse was
superseded. It was Elizabeth: she came to
his bedside, and he recognised her.
"Not till this morning," she said, "did I
hear you were ill."
"Happy," he cried, "though I die to-night."
Soon afterwards-it was about sundown-he
became unconscious; she sat there alone with
him till the morning broke, and then he passed
away, and she closed his eyes.


173




A TONEMENT
"X    OU ask -me how I lost my foot?  You
see that dog?"-an unattractive beast
lying before the fire-"well, when I tell you
how I came by him you will know how I
lost it;" and he then related the following
story:I was in Westmoreland with my wife and
children for a holiday and we had brought our
dog with us, for we knew he would be unhappy
with the strangers to whom we had let our
house.  The weather was very wet and our
lodgings were not comfortable; we were kept
indoors for days together, and my temper,
always irritable, became worse. My wife never
resisted me when I was in these moods and the
absence of opposition provoked me all the more.
I74




ATONEMENT


Had she stood up against me and told me I
ought to be ashamed of myself it would have
been better for me. One afternoon everything
seemed to go wrong. A score of petty vexations, not one of which was of any moment,
worked me up to desperation.  I threw my
book across the room, to the astonishment of
my children, and determined to go out, although
it was raining hard. My dog, a brown retriever,
was lying on the mat just outside the door, and
I nearly fell over him. "God damn you! " said
I, and kicked him. He howled with pain, but,
although he was the best of house-dogs and
would have brought down any thief who came
near him, he did not growl at me, and quietly
followed me. I am not squeamish, but I was
frightened directly the oath had escaped my
lips. I felt as if I had created something
horrible which I could not annihilate, and that
it would wait for me and do me some mischief.
The dog kept closely to my heels for about a
mile and I could not make him go on in front.
Usually the least word of encouragement or
even the mere mention of his name would send
him scampering with delight in advance. I
began to think of something else, but in about
175




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


a quarter of an hour I looked round and found
he was not behind me. I whistled and called,
but he did not come.   In a renewed rage,
which increased with every step I took, I turned
back to seek him. Suddenly I came upon him
lying dead by the roadside.  Never shall I
forget that shock-the reproach, the appeal of
that poor lifeless animal! I stroked him, I
kissed him, I whispered his name in his ear,
but it was all in vain. I lifted up his beautiful
broad paw which he was wont to lay on my
knee, I held it between my hands, and when I
let it go it fell heavily to the ground. I could
not carry him home, and with bitter tears and
a kind of dread I drew him aside a little way
up the hill behind a rock. I went to my
lodgings, returned towards dusk with a spade,
dug his grave in a lonely spot near the bottom
of a waterfall where he would never be disturbed, and there I buried him, reverently
smoothing the turf over him. What a night
that was for me! I was haunted incessantly
by the vivid image of the dead body and by
the terror which accompanies a great crime.
I had repaid all his devotion with horrible
cruelty. I had repented, but he would never
176




ATONEMENT


know it. It was not the dog only which I had
slain; I had slain Divine faithfulness and love.
That God damn yomz sounded perpetually in my
ears. The Almighty had registered and executed the curse, but it had fallen upon the murderer and not on the victim. When I rose in
the morning I distinctly felt the blow of the
kick in my foot, and the sensation lasted all
day. For weeks I was in a miserable condition.  A separate consciousness seemed to
establish itself in this foot; there was nothing
to be seen and no pain, but there was a dull
sort of pressure of which I could not rid
myself. If I slept I dreamed of the dog, and
generally dreamed I was caressing him, waking
up to the dreadful truth of the corpse on the
path in the rain. I got it into my head-for
I was half-crazy-that only by some expiation I
should be restored to health and peace; but
how to make any expiation I could not tell.
Unhappy is the wretch who longs to atone
for a sin and no atonement is prescribed to
him!
One night I was coming home late and heard
the cry of " Fire!" I ran down the street and
found a house in flames. The fire-escape was
I77




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


at the window, and had rescued a man, his wife
and child. Every living creature was safe, I
was told, save a dog in the front room on the
ground-floor.  I pushed the people aside,
rushed in, half-blinded with smoke, and found
him. I could not escape by the passage, and
dropped out of the window into the area with
him in my arms. I fell heavily on that foot,
and when I was helped up the steps I could
not put it to the ground. " You may have him
for your pains," said his owner to me; "he is a
useless cur. I wouldn't have ventured the singeing of a hair for him."  " May I? " I replied,
with an eagerness which must have seemed very
strange. 'He was indeed not worth half a
crown, but I drew him closely to me and took
him into the cab. I was in great agony, and
when the surgeon came it was discovered that
my ankle was badly fractured.  An attempt
was made to set it, but in the end it was
decided that the foot must be amputated. I
rejoiced when I heard the news, and on the
day on which the operation was performed I
was calm and even cheerful. Our own doctor
who came with the surgeon told him I had "a
highly nervous temperament," and both of them
I78




ATONEMENT


were amazed at my fortitude. The dog is a
mongrel, as you see, but he loves me. and if
you were to offer me ten thousand golden
guineas I would not part with him.


179




LE TTERS FR O6M Mf YA UNT ELEANOR'
TO HER DA UGHTER SOPHIA,
AND A FRAGMENT FROMf MY
A UNT'S DIAR Y.
January 3I, I837.
MY DEAREST CHILD,-It is now         a month
since your father died. It was a sore trial to
me that you should have broken down, and that
you could not be here when he was laid in his
grave, but I would not for worlds have allowed
you to make the journey.    I am glad I forced
My aunt Eleanor was thought to be a bit of a pagan
by the evangelical part of our family. My mother when
speaking of her to me used to say, " Your heathen aunt."
She was well-educated, but the better part of her education she received abroad after her engagement, which
took place when she was eighteen years old. She was
the only member of our family in the upper middle class.
Her husband was Thomas Charteris, junior partner in a
bank.
I80




LETTERS FROM AUNT ELEANOR
you away.   The doctor said he would not
answer for the consequences unless you were
removed. But I must not talk, not even to
you. I will write again soon.
Your most affectionate mother,
ELEANOR CHARTERIS.
February 5, 1837.
I have been alone in the library from morning
to night every day. How foolish all the books
look! There is nothing in them which can do
me any good. He is not: what is there which
can alter that fact? Had he died later I could
have borne it better. I am only fifty years old,
and may have long to wait. I always knew
I loved him devotedly; now I see how much I
depended on him. I had become so knit up
with him that I imagined his strength to be
mine. His support was so continuous and so
soft that I was unconscious of it. How clearheaded and resolute he was in difficulty and
danger! You do not remember the great fire?
We were waked up out of our sleep; the
flames spread rapidly; a mob filled the street,
shouting and breaking open doors. The man
in charge of the engines lost his head, but your




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


father was perfectly cool. He got on horseback, directed two or three friends to do the
same; they galloped into the town and drove
the crowd away. He controlled all the operations and saved many lives and many thousands
of pounds.  Is there any happiness in the
world like that of the woman who hangs on
such a husband?
February io, 1837.
I feel as if my heart would break if I do not
see you, but I cannot come to your Aunt's house
just now. She is very kind, but she would be
unbearable to me. Have patience: the sea air
is doing you good; you will soon be able to walk,
and then you can return. 0, to feel your head
upon my neck! I have many friends,. but I
have always needed a human being to whom
1 was everything. To your father I believe I
was everything, and that thought was perpetual
heaven to me. My love for him did not make
me neglect other people. On the contrary, it
gave them their proper value. Without it I
should have put them by. When a man is
dying for want of water he cares for nothing
around him.  Satisfy his thirst, and he can
i82




LETTERS FROM AUNT ELEANOR
then enjoy other pleasures.  I was his first
love, he was my first, and we were lovers to
the end. I know the world would be dark to
you also were I to leave it.  Perhaps it is
wicked of me to rejoice that you would suffer
so keenly. I cannot tell how much of me is
pure love and how much of me is selfishness.
I remember my uncle's death. For ten days
or so afterwards everybody in the house looked
solemn, and occasionally there was a tear, but at
the end of a fortnight there was smiling and at
the end of a month there was laughter. I was
but a child then, but I thought much about the
ease and speed with which the gap left by death
was closed.
February 20, 1837.
In a fortnight you will be here? The doctor
really believes you will be able to travel? I
am glad you can get out and taste the sea
air. I count the hours which must pass till
I see you. A short week, and then-" the day
after to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow
of that day," and so I shall be able to reach
forward to the Monday.  It is strange that
the nearer Monday comes the more impatient
I am.
183




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


March 3, I837.
With what sickening fear I opened your
letter! I was sure it contained some dreadful
news.  You have decided not to come till
Wednesday, because your cousin Tom    can
accompany you on that day. I know you are
quite right. It is so much better, as you are
not strong, that Tom should look after you,
and it would be absurd that you should make
the journey two days before him.  I should
have reproved you seriously if you had done
anything so foolish. But those two days are
hard to bear. I shall not meet you at the
coach, nor shall I be downstairs. Go straight
to the library; I shall be there by myself.
DIARY.
January i, 1838.-Three days ago she died.
Henceforth there is no living creature to whom
my existence is of any real importance. Crippled
as she was, she could never have married. I
might have held her as long as she lived. She
could have expected no love but mine. God
forgive me!   Perhaps I did unconsciously
rejoice in that disabled limb because it kept
her closer to me. Now He has taken her
i84




LETTERS FROM AUNT ELEANOR
from me. I may have been wicked, but has
He no mercy?    "I would speak to the
Almighty, and I desire to reason with God."
An answer in anger could better be borne
than this impregnable silence.
January 3rd.-A day of snow and bitter wind.
There were very few at the grave, and I should
have been better pleased if there had been
none.  What claim had they to be there?
I have come home alone, and they no doubt
are comforting themselves with the reflection
that it is all over except the half-mourning.
Her death makes me hate them. Mr. Maxwell,
our rector, told me when my child was ill to
remember that I had no right to her. "Right!"
what did he mean by that stupid word? How
trouble tries words! All I can say is that from
her birth I had owned her, and that now, when
I want her most, I am dispossessed.  "Self,
self"-I know the reply, but it is unjust, for I
would have stood up cheerfully to be shot if I
could have saved her pain. Doubly unjust, for
my passion for her was a blessing to her as well
as to me.
January 6th.-Henceforth I suppose I shall
I85




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


have to play with people, to pretend to take an
interest in their clothes and their parties, or,
with the superior sort, to discuss politics or
books. I care nothing for their rags or their
gossip, for Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel,
or Mr. James Montgomery. I must learn how
to take the tip of a finger instead of a hand,
and to accept with gratitude comfits when I
hunger for bread-I, who have known-but I
dare say nothing even to myself of my hours
with him-I, who have heard Sophy cry out in
the night for me; I, who have held her hand
and have prayed by her bedside.
January ioth.-I must be still. I have learned
this lesson before-that speech even to myself
does harm.  If I admit no conversation nor
debate with myself, I certainly will not admit
the chatter of outsiders. Mr. Maxwell called
again to-day. " Not a syllable on that subject,"
said I when he began in the usual strain. He
then suggested that as this house was too large
for me, and must have what he called " melancholy associations," I should move. He had
suggested this before, when my husband died.
How can I leave the home to which I was
J86




LETTERS FROM AUNT ELEANOR
brought as a bride? how can I endure the
thought that strangers are in our room, or
in that other room where Sophy lay?  Mr.
Maxwell would think it sacrilege to turn his
church into an inn, and it is a worse sacrilege
to me to permit the profanation of the sanctuary which has been consecrated by Love
and Death.   I do not know what might
happen to me if I were to leave. I have
been what I am through shadowy nothings
which other people despise. To me they are
realities and a law.  I shall stay where I
am.   "A villa," forsooth, on the outskirts of
the town! My existence would be fractured:
it will at least preserve its continuity here.
Across the square I can see the house in which
I was born, and I can watch the shadow of the
church in the afternoon slowly crossing the
churchyard. The townsfolk stand in the street
and go up and down it just as they did forty
years ago-not the same persons, but in a sense
the same people. My brother will call me
extravagant if I remain here. He buys a horse
and does not consider it extravagant, and my
money is not wasted if I spend it in the only
way in which it is of any value to me.
1* 87




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


January i 2th.-I had thought I could be
dumb, but I cannot. My sorrow comes in
rushes. I lift up my head above the waves for an
instant, and immediately I am overwhelmed" all Thy waves and Thy billows have gone over
me." My nights are a terror to me, and I fear
for my reason. That last grip of Sophy's hand
is distinctly on mine now, palpable as the
pressure of a fleshly hand could be. It is
strange that without any external circumstances
to account for it, she and I often thought the
same things at the same moment. She seemed
to know' instinctively what was passing in my
mind, so that I was afraid to harbour any
unworthy thought, feeling sure that she would
detect it. Blood of my blood was she. She
said "goodbye " to me with perfect clearness,
and in a quarter of an hour she had gone. In
that quarter of an hour there could not be the
extinction of so much. Such a creature as
Sophy could not instantaneously not be. I
cannot believe it, but still the volume of my
life here is closed, the story is at an end; what
remains will be nothing but a few notes on
what has gone before.


i88




LETTERS FROM AUNT ELEANOR
January 2ist.-I went to church to-day for
the first time since the funeral. Mr. Maxwell
preached a dull, doctrinal sermon. Whilst my
husband and Sophy lived, I was a regular
attendant at church, and never thought of
disputing anything I heard. It did not make
much impression on me, but I accepted it, and
if I had been asked whether I believed it, I
should have said, " Certainly." But now a new
standard of belief has been set up in me, and
the word " belief" has a different meaning.
February 3rd.-Whenever I saw anything
beautiful I always asked Tom or Sophy to look.
Now I ask nobody. Early this morning, after
the storm in the night, the sky cleared, and I
went out about dawn through the garden up to
the top of the orchard and watched the disappearance of the night in the west. The
loveliness of that silent conquest was unsurpassable. Eighteen months ago I should have
run indoors and have dragged Tom and Sophy
back with me. I saw it alone now, and
although the promise in the slow transformation
of darkness to azure moved me to tears, I felt
it was no promise for me.
i89




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


March ist.-Nothing that is prescribed does
me any good. I cannot leave off going to
church, but the support I want I must find out
for myself. Perhaps if I had been born two
hundred years ago, I might have been caught
by some strong enthusiastic organisation and
have been a private in a great army. A miserable time is this when each man has to grope
his way unassisted, and all the incalculable toil
of founders of churches goes for little or
nothing.... I do not pray for any more
pleasure: I ask only for strength to endure, till
I can lie down and rest. I have had more
rapture in a day than my neighbours and
relations have had in all their lives. Tom once
said to me that he would sooner have had
twenty-four hours with me as his wife than
youth and manhood with any other woman he
ever knew. He said that, not when we were
first married, but a score of years afterwards.
I remember the place and the hour. It was in
the garden one morning in July, just before
breakfast. It was a burning day, and massive
white clouds were forming themselves on the
horizon. The storm  on that day was the
heaviest I recollect, and the lightning struck
I90




LETTERS FROM AUNT ELEANOR
one of our chimneys and dashed it through the
roof. His passion was informed with intellect,
and his intellect glowed with passion. There
was nothing in him merely animal or merely
rational.... To endure, to endure! Can
there be any endurance without a motive? I
have no motive.
March ioth.-My sister and my brother-inlaw came to-day and I wished them away.
Now that my husband is dead I discover that
the frequent visitors to our house came to see
him and not me. There must be something
in me which prevents people, especially women,
from being really intimate with me. To be
able to make friends is a talent which
I do not possess, and if those who call
on me are prompted by kindness only, I
would rather be without them.  The only
attraction towards me which I value is that
which is irresistible. Perhaps I am wrong, and
ought to accept with thankfulness whatever is
left to me if it has any savour of goodness in it.
I have no right to compare and to reject....
I provide myself with little maxims, and a breath
comes and sweeps them away. What is perI9I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


manent behind these little flickerings is black
night: that is the real background of my life.
April 24th.-I have been to London, and on
Easter Sunday I went to High Mass at a
Roman Catholic Church. I was obliged to
leave, for I was overpowered and hysterical.
Were I to go often my reason might b.e
drowned, and I might become a devotee. And
yet I do not think I should. If I could
prostrate myself at a shrine I should want an
answer. When I came out into the open air I
saw again the plainznzess of the world: the skies,
the sea, the fields are not in accord with incense
or gorgeous ceremonies. Incense and ceremonies are beyond the facts, and to the facts
we must cleave, no matter how poor and thin
they may be.
May 5th.-If I am ill, I shall depend entirely
on paid service. God grant I may die suddenly
and not linger in imbecility. So much of me
is dead that what is left is not worth preserving.
Nearly everything I have done all my life has
been done for love. I shall now have to act
for duty's sake. It is an entire reconstruction
I92




LETTERS FROM       AUNT ELEANOR
of myself, the insertion of a new motive. I do
not much believe in duty, nor, if I read my
New Testament aright, did the Apostle Paul.
For Jesus he would do anything. That sacred
face would have drawn me whither the Law
would never have driven me.
May 7th.-It is painful to me to be so completely set aside. When Tom was alive I was
in the midst of the current of affairs. Few men,
except Maxwell, come to the house now. My
property is in the hands of trustees. Tom
continually consulted me in business matters.
I have nothing to look after except my house,
and I sit at my window and see the stream of
life pass without touching me. I cannot take
up work merely for the sake of taking it up.
Nobody would value it, nor would it content
me. How I used to pity my husband's uncle,
Captain Charteris! He had been a sailor;
he had fought the French; he had been in
imminent danger of shipwreck, and from his
youth upwards perpetual demands had been
made upon his resources and courage. At
fifty he retired, a strong, active man; and
having a religious turn, he helped the curate
358              I93            H




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


with school-treats and visiting. He pined away
and died in five years. The bank goes on. I
have my dividends, but not a word reaches me
about it.
October ioth.-Five months, I see, have
passed since I made an entry in my diary.
What a day this is! The turf is once more
soft, the trees and hedges are washed, the
leaves are turning yellow and are ready to fall.
I have been sitting in the garden alone, reading
the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis. I must
copy the closing verses. It does me good to
write them.
"And Jacob charged them, and said unto
them, I am to be gathered unto my people:
bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in
the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that
is in the field of Machpelah, which is before
Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham
bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for
a possession of a burying-place. There they
buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they
buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there
I buried Leah. The purchase of the field and
of the cave that is therein was from the children
194




LETTERS FROM AUNT ELEANOR
of Heth. And when Jacob had made an end
of commanding his sons, he gathered up his
feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and
was gathered unto his people." There is no
distress here: he gathers up his feet and
departs. Perhaps our wild longings are unnatural, and yet it seems but nature not to be
content with what contented the patriarch.
Anyhow, wherever and whatever my husband
and Sophy are I shall be. This at least is
beyond dispute.
October I2th.-I do not wish to forget past
joys, but I must simply remember them and
not try to paint them. I must cut short any
yearning for them.
October 2oth.-We do not say the same
things to ourselves with sufficient frequency. In
these days of book-reading fifty fine thoughts
come into our heads in a day, and the next
morning are forgotten. Not one of them becomes a religion. In the Bible how few the
thoughts are, and how incessantly they are
repeated! If my life could be controlled by
two or three divine ideas, I would burn my
195




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


library. I often feel that I would sooner be a
Levitical priest, supposing I believed in my
office, than be familiar with all these great men
whose works are stacked around me.
October 22nd.-Sometimes, especially at
night, the thought not only that I personally
have lost Tom and Sophy, but that the exquisite
fabric of these relationships, so intricate, so
delicate, so highly organised, could be cast
aside, to all appearance so wastefully, is almost
unendurable..... I went up to the moor on
the top of the hill this morning, where I could
see, far away, the river broaden and lose itself
in the Atlantic. I lay on the heather looking
through it and listening to it.
October 23rd.-The I3Ist Psalm came into
my mind when 1 was on the moor again.
"Neither do I exercise myself in great matters,
or in things too high for me. Surely I have
behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is
weaned of its mother: my soul is even as a
weaned child."
October 28th.-Tom once said to me that
i96




LETTERS FROM AUNT ELEANOR
reasoning is often a bad guide for us, and that
loyalty to the silent Leader is true wisdom.
Wesley, when he was in trouble, asked himself
"whether he should fight against it by thinking,
or by not thinking of it," and a wise man told
him "to be still and go on." A certain blind
instinct seems to carry me forward. What is
it? an indication of a purpose I do not comprehend? an order given by the Commander-inChief which is to be obeyed although the
strategy is. not understood?
November 3rd.-Palmer, my maid, who has
been with me ever since I began to keep house,
was very good-looking at one-and-twenty. When
she had been engaged to be married about a
twelvemonth, she burned her face and the burn
left a bad scar. Her lover found excuses for
breaking off the engagement. He must have
been a scoundrel, and I should like to have had
him whipped with wire. She was very fond of
him. She had an offer of marriage ten years
afterwards, but she refused.  I believe she
feared lest the scar, seen every day, would make
her husband loathe her. Her case is worse than
mine, for she never knew such delights as mine.
I97




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


She has subsisted on mere friendliness and
civility. "Oh," it is suggested at once to me,
"you are more sensitive than she is." How
dare I say that? How hateful is the assumption of superior sensitiveness as an excuse for
want of endurance!
November 4th.-Ellen Charteris, my husband's cousin, belongs to a Roman Catholic
branch of the family, and is an abbess. I remember saying to her that I wondered that she
and her nuns could spend such useless lives.
She replied that although she and all good
Catholics believe in the atonement of Christ,
they also believe that works of piety in excess of
what may be demanded of us, even if they are
done in secret, are a set-off against the sins of
the world. In this form the doctrine has not
much to commend itself to me, and it is assumed
that the nuns' works are pious. But in a sense
it is true. "The very hairs of your head are all
numbered." The fall of a grain of dust is
recorded.
November 7th. —A kind of peace occasionally visits me. It is not the indifference be198




LETTERS FROM AUNT ELEANOR
gotten of time, for my husband and my child
are nearer and dearer than ever to me. I care
not to analyse it. I return to my patriarch.
With Joseph before him, the father, who had
refused to be comforted when he thought his
son was dead, gathered up his feet into the
bed and slept.


19Q




CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN
GEORGE       LUCY,     Z.A.,   AND
HIS GODCHILD, HERMIONE
R USSELL,     B.A.
M      Y DEAR HERMIONE,-I have sent you
my little volume of verse translations
into English, and you will find appended a few
attempts at Latin and Greek renderings of
favourite English poems.  You must tell me
what you think of them, and you must not spare
a single blunder or inelegance. I do not expect
any reviews, and if there should be none it will
not matter, for I proposed to myself nothing
more than my own amusement and that of my
friends. I would rather have thoroughly good
criticism from you than a notice, even if it were
laudatory, from a magazine or a newspaper.
You have worked hard at your Latin and Greek
200




GEORGE LUCY AND HIS GODCHILD
since we read Homer and Virgil, and you have
had better instruction than I had at Winchester.
These trifles were published about three months
ago, but I purposely did not send you a copy
then. You are enjoying your holiday deep in
the country, and may be inclined to pardon
that incurable old idler, your godfather and
former tutor, for a waste of time which perhaps
you would not forgive when you are teaching in
London. Verse-making is out of fashion now.
Goodbye. I should like to spend a week with
you wandering through those Devonshire lanes
if I could carry my two rooms with me and
stick them in a field.
Affectionately,
G. L.
MIY DEAR GODFATHER,-The little MiusC
came safely. My love to you for them, and for
the pretty inscription. I positively refuse to
say a single syllable on your scholarship. I
have deserted my Latin and Greek, and they
were never good enough to justify me in criticising yours. I have latterly turned my attention to Logic, History, and Moral Philosophy,
and with the help of my degree I have obtained
20I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


a situation as teacher of these sciences. I confess I do not regret the change. They are
certainly of supreme importance. There is
something to be learned about them from
Latin and Greek authors, but this can be
obtained more easily from modern writers or
translations than by the laborious study of the
originals. Do not suppose I am no longer
sensible to the charm of classical art.  It is
wonderful, but I have come to the conclusion
that the time spent on the classics, both here
and in Germany, is mostly thrown away. Take
even Homer. I admit the greatness of the
Iliad and the Odyssey, but do tell me, my dear
godfather, whether in this nineteenth century,
when scores of urgent social problems are
pressing for solution, our young people ought to
give themselves up to a study of ancient
legends? What, however, are Horace, Catullus,
and Ovid compared with Homer? Much in
them is pernicious, and there is hardly anything
in them which helps us to live. Besides, we
have surely enough in Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, to say nothing of the poets
of this century, to satisfy the imagination of
anybody. Boys spend years over the Metamor202




GEORGE LUCY AND HIS GODCHILD
phoses or the story of the wars of AEneas, and
enter life with no knowledge of the simplest
facts of psychology. I look forward to a time
not far distant, I hope, when our whole poedagogic system will be remodelled. Greek and
Latin will then occupy the place which Assyrian
or Egyptian hieroglyphic occupies now, and
children will be directly prepared for the duties
which await them.
I have in preparation a book which I expect
soon to publish, entitled Positive Education. It
will appear anonymously, for society being constituted as it is, I am afraid that my name on
the title-page would prevent me from finding
employment. My object is to show how the
moral fabric can be built up without the aid of
theology or metaphysics. I profess no hostility
to either, but as educational instruments I
believe them to be useless. I begin with Logic
as the foundation of all science, and then
advance by easy steps (a) to the laws of external nature commencing with number, and (b)
to the rules of conduct, reasons being given for
them, with Historyand Biography as illustrations.
One modern foreign language, to be learned as
thoroughly as it is possible to learn it in this
203




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


country, will be included. I desire to banish
all magic in   school training.  Everything
taught shall be understood. It is easier, and
in some respects more advantageous, not to
explain, but the mischief of habituating children
to bow to the unmeaning is so great that I
would face any inconvenience in order to get
rid of it.  All kinds of objections, some of
them  of great weight, may be urged against
me, but the question is on which side do
they preponderate?  Is it no objection to
our present system that the simple laws most
necessary to society should be grounded on
something which is unintelligible, that we should
be brought up in ignorance of any valid obligation to obey moral precepts, that we should be
unable to give any account of the. commonest
physical phenomena, that we should never even
notice them, that we should be unaware, for
example, of the nightly change in the position
of planets and stars, and that we should nevertheless busy ourselves with niceties of expression
in a dead tongue, and with tales about Jupiter
and Juno? For what glorious results may we
not look when children from their earliest years
learn that which is essential, but which now,
204




GEORGE LUCY AND HIS GODCHILD
alas! is picked up unmethodically and by
chance? I cannot help saying all this to you,
for your AMisce arrived just as my youngest
brother came home from Winchester. He was
delighted with it, for he is able to write very fair
Latin and Greek. That boy is nearly eighteen.
He does not know why the tides rise and fall,
and has never heard that there has been any
controversy as to the basis of ethics.
Your affectionate godchild,
HERMIONE.
MY DEAR HERMIONE,-Your letter was something like a knock-down blow. I am sorry you
have abandoned your old friends, and I felt that
you intended to rebuke me for trifling. A great
deal of what you say I am sure is true, but I
cannot write about it. Whether Greek and
Latin ought to be generally taught I am unable
to decide. I am glad I learned them. My
apology for my little Musac must be that it is too
late to attempt to alter the habits in which I
was brought up. Remember, my dear child,
that I am an old bachelor with seventy years
behind me last Christmas, and remember also
my natural limits. I am not so old, neverthe205




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


less, that I cannot wish you God-speed in all
your undertakings.
Your affectionate godfather,
G. L.
MY DEAR GODFATHER,-What a blunderer I
am! What deplorable want of tact! If I
wanted your opinion on classical education or
my scheme I surely might have found a better
opportunity for requesting it. It is always the
way with me. I get a thing into my head, and
out it comes at the most unseasonable moment.
It is almost as important that what is said should
be relevant as that it should be true. Well, the
mistake is made, and I cannot unmake it. I
will not trouble you with another syllabledirectly at any rate-about Latin and Greek,
but I do want to know what you think about the
exclusion of theology and metaphysics from the
education of the young. I must have debate,
so that before publication my ideas may become
clear and objections may be anticipated. I
cannot discuss the matter with my father. You
were at college with him, and you will remember his love for Aristotle, who, as I think, has
enslaved him. If I may say so without offence,
206




GEORGE LUCY AND HIS GODCHILD
you are not a philosopher.  You are more
likely, therefore, to give a sound, unprofessional
opinion. You have never had much to do with
children, but this does not matter; in fact, it is
rather an advantage, for actual children would
have distorted your judgment.   What has
theology done? It is only half-believed, and
its rewards and punishments are too remote to
be of practical service. They are not seen
when they are most required. As to metaphysics, its propositions are too loose. They
may with equal ease be affirmed or denied.
Conduct cannot be controlled by what is
shadowy and uncertain. We have been brought
up on theology and metaphysics for centuries,
and we are still at daggers drawn upon matters
of life and death. We are as warlike as ever, and
not a single social problem has been settled by
bishops or professors. I wish to try a more direct
and, as I believe, a more efficient method. I wish
to see what the effect will be of teaching children
from their infancy the lesson that morality
and the enjoyment of life are identical; that if,
for example, they lie, they lose. I should urge
this on them perpetually, until at last, by association, lying would become impossible. Restraint
207




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


which is exercised in accordance with rational
principles, inasmuch as it proceeds from Nature,
must be more efficacious than an external prohibition. So with other virtues. I should
deduce most of them in the same way. If I
could not, I should let them go, assured that
we could do without them. Now, my dear godfather, do open, out to me, and don't put me off.
Your affectionate godchild,
HERMIONE.
MY DEAR HERMIONE,-You terrify me. These
matters are really not in my way. I have never
been able to tackle big questions. Unhappily
for me, all questions nowadays are big. I do
not see many people, as you know, and potter
about in my garden from morning to night, but
Mrs. Lindsay occasionally brings down her
friends from London, and the subjects of conversation are so immense that I am bewildered.
I admit that some people are too rich and others
are too poor, and that if I could give you a vote
you should have one, and that boys and girls
might be better taught, but upon Socialism,
Enfranchisement of Women, and Educational
Reform, I have not a word to say. Is not this
208




GEORGE LUCY AND HIS GODCHILD
very unsatisfactory? Nobody is more willing
to admit it than I am. It is so disappointing in
talking to myself or to others to stop short of
generalisation and to be obliged to confess that
sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. I bless
my stars that I am not a politician or a newspaper writer. When I was young these great
matters, at least in our village, were not such
common property as they are now. A man,
even if he was a scholar, thought he had done
his duty by living an honest and peaceable life.
He was justified if he was kind to his neighbours
and amused himself with his bees and flowers.
He had no desire to be remembered for any
achievement, and was content to be buried with
a few tears and then to be forgotten. All Mrs.
Lindsay's folk want to do something outside
their own houses or parishes which shall make
their names immortal..... I was interrupted
by a tremendous thunderstorm and hail. That
wonderful rose-bush which, you will recollect,
stood on the left-hand side of the garden door,
has been stripped just as if it had been scourged
with whips. If you have done, quite done with
the Orelli you borrowed about two years ago,
please let me have it. Why could you not
209




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


bring it? Mrs. Lindsay was saying only the
other day how glad she should be if you would
stay with her for a fortnight before you return to
town.
Your affectionate godfather,
G. L.
MY DEAR GODFATHER,- I have sent back
the Orelli. How I should love to come and
to wander about the meadows with you by the
river or sit in the boat with you under the
willows. But I cannot, for I have promised to
speak at a Woman's Temperance Meeting next
week, and in the week following I am going to
read a paper called "An Educational Experiment," before our Ethical Society. This, I
think, will be interesting. I have placed my
pupils in difficult historical positions, and have
made them tell me what they would have done,'
giving the reasons. I am thus enabled to
detect any weakness and to strengthen character
on that side.  Most of the girls are embarrassed by the conflict of motives, and I have
to impress upon them the necessity in life of
disregarding those which are of less importance
and of prompt action on the stronger. I have
210




GEORGE LUCY AND HIS GODCHILD
classified my results in tables, so that it may
be seen at a glance what impulses are most
generally operative.
But to go back to your letter. I will not
have you shuffle. You can say so much if you
like. Talk to me just as you did when we last
sat under the cedar-tree. I must know your
mind about theology and metaphysics.
Your affectionate godchild,
HERMIONE.
MY DEAR HERMIONE,-I am sorry you could
not come. I am sorry that what people call a
"cause" should have kept you away. If any
of your friends had been ill; if it had been a
dog or a cat, I should not have cared so much.
You are dreadful! Theology and metaphysics!
I do not understand what they are as formal
sciences. Everything seems to me theological
and metaphysical. What Shakespeare says now
and then carries me further than anything I
have read in the system-books into which I
have looked. I cannot take up a few propositions, bind them into faggots, and say,
"This is theology, and that is metaphysics."
211




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


There is much "discourse of God " in a May
blossom, and my admiration of it is "beyond
nature," but I am not sure upon this latter
point, for I do not know in the least what
vcis or Nature is.   We love justice and
generosity, and hate injustice and meanness,
but the origin of virtue, the life of the soul, is
as much beyond me as the origin of life in a
plant or animal, and I do not bother myself
with trying to find it out. I do feel, however,
that justice and generosity have somehow a
higher authority than I or any human being
can give them, and if I had children of my own
this is what I should try, not exactly to teach
them, but to breathe into them. I really, my
dear child, dare not attempt an essay on the
influence which priests and professors have had
upon the world, nor am I quite clear that
"shadowy" and "uncertain" mean the same
thing. All ultimate facts in a sense are
shadowy, but they are not uncertain. When
you try to pinch them between your fingers
they seem unsubstantial, but they are very
real. Are you sure that you yourself stand on
solid granite?
Your affectionate godfather,
G. L.
212




GEORGE LUCY AND HIS GODCHILD
MY   DEAR  GODFATHER,-You are     most
disappointing and evasive. I gave up the
discussion on Latin and Greek, but I did and
do want your reply to a most simple question.
If you had to teach children-you surely can
imagine yourself in such a position-would you
teach them what are generally known as theology
and metaphysics?-excuse the emphasis. You
have an answer, I am certain, and you may just
as well give it me. I know that you had rather,
or affect you had rather, talk about Catullus,
but I also know that you think upon serious
subjects sometimes. These matters cannot now
be put aside. We live in a world in which
certain problems are forced upon us and we are
compelled to come to some conclusion upon
them. I cannot shut myself up and determine
that I will have no opinion upon Education or
Socialism or Women's Rights. The fact that
these questions are here is plain proof that it is
my duty not to ignore them. You hate large
generalisations, but how can we exist without
them? They may never be entirely true, but
they are indispensable, and, if you never commit yourself to any, you are much more likely
to be practically wrong than if you use them.
213




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


Take, for example, the Local Veto. I admitted
in my speech that there is much to be
urged against it. It might act harshly, and it
is quite true that poor men in large towns
cannot spend their evenings in their filthy
homes; but I must be for it or against it, and I
am enthusiastically for it, because on the whole
it will do good. So with Socialism. The evils
of Capitalism are so monstrous that any remedy
is better than none. Socialism may not be the
direct course: it may be a tremendously
awkward tack, but it is only by tacking that we
get along. So with positive education, but I
have enlarged upon this already.  What a
sermon to my dear godfather! Forgive me,
but you will have to take sides, and do, please,
be a little more definite about my book.
Your affectionate godchild,
HERMIONE.
MY DEAR HERMIONE,-I haven't written for
some time, for I was unwell for nearly a month.
The doctor has given me physic, but my age is
really the mischief, and it is incurable. I
caught cold through sitting out of doors after
dinner with the rector, a good fellow if he
214




GEORGE LUCY AND HIS GODCHILD
would not smoke on my port. To smoke on
good port is a sin. He knows my infirmity,
that I cannot sit still long, and he excuses my
attendance at church. Would you believe it?
When I was very bad, and thought I might die,
I read Horace again, whom you detest. I often
wonder what he really thought upon many
things when he looked out on the
" taciturna noctis
signa."
Justice is not often done to him. He saw a
long way, but he did not make believe he saw
beyond his limit, and was content with it. A
rare virtue is intellectual content!
"Tu ne quoesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi
Finem dl dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
Tentaris numeros."
The rector was telling me about Tom Pavenham's wedding. He has married Margaret
Loxley, as you may perhaps have seen in the
paper I sent you. Mrs. Loxley, her mother,
was a Barfield, and old Pavenham, when he
was a youth, fell in love with her. She was
also in love with him. He was well-to-do, and
farmed about seven hundred acres, but he was.
215




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


not thought good enough by the elder Barfields,
who lived in what was called a park. They
would not hear of the match. She was sent to
France, and he went to Buenos Ayres. After
some years had passed he married out there,
and she married. His wife died when her first
child, a boy, was born. Loxley also died,
leaving his wife with an only daughter. Pavenham retired from business in South America,
and came back with his son to his native village,
where he meant to spend the rest of his days.
Tom and Margaret were at once desperately
smitten with.one another. The father and
mother have kept their own flame alive, and I
believe it is as bright as it ever was. It is
delightful to see them together. They called
on me with the children after the betrothal.
He was so courteous and attentive to her, and
she seemed to bask in his obvious affection. I
noticed how they looked at one another and
smiled happily as the boy and girl wandered
off together towards the filbert walk. The
rector told me that he was talking to old
Pavenham one evening, and said to him: "Jem,
aren't you sometimes sad when you think of
what ought to have happened?"   His voice
216




GEORGE LUCY AND HIS GODCHILD
shook a bit as he replied gently: "God be
thanked for what we have! Besides, it has all
come to pass in Tom and Margaret."
You must not be angry with me if I say
nothing more about Positive Education. It is
a great strain on me to talk upon such matters,
and when I do I always feel afterwards that I have
said much which is mere words. That is a sure
test; I must obey my daemon. I wish I could
give you what you want for what you have given
me; but when do we get what we want in
exchange for what we give? Our trafficking is
a clumsy barter. A man sells me a sheep, and
I pay him in return with my grandfather's old
sextant. This is not quite true for you and me.
Love is given and love is returned. A Dieunot adieu. Remember that the world is very
big, and that there may be room in it for a few
creatures like
Your affectionate godfather,
G. L


217




MRS. FA IRFA X


T   HE town of Langborough in I839 had
not been much disturbed since the
beginning of the preceding century. The new
houses were nearly all of them built to replace
others which had fallen into decay; there
were no drains; the drinking-water came from
pumps; the low fever killed thirty or forty
people every autumn; the Moot Hall still
stood in the middle of the High Street; the
newspaper came but once a week; nobody
read any books; and the Saturday market and
the annual fair were the only events in public
local history.  Langborough, being seventy
miles from London and eight from the main
coach-road, had but little communication with
the outside world. Its inhabitants intermarried
without crossing from other stocks, and men
determined their choice mainly by equality of
218




MRS. FAIRFAX


fortune and rank. The shape of the nose and
lips and colour of the eyes may have had some
influence in masculine selection, but not much:
the doctor took the lawyer's daughter, the
draper took the grocer's, and the carpenter
took the blacksmith's. Husbands and wives,
as a rule, lived comfortably with one another;
there was no reason why they should quarrel.
The air of the place was sleepy; the men
attended to their business, and the women were
entirely apart, minding their household affairs
and taking tea with one another.  In Langborough, dozing as it had dozed since the days
of Queen Anne, it was almost impossible that
any woman should differ so much from another
that she could be the cause of passionate
preference.
One day in the spring of 1839 Langborough
was stirred to its depths. No such excitement
had been felt in the town since the run upon
the bank in i825, when one of the partners
went up to London, brought down ten thousand
pounds in gold with him by the mail, and was
met at Thaxton cross-roads by a post-chaise,
which was guarded into Langborough by three
men with pistols. A circular printed in London
2I9




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


was received on that spring day in I839 by all
the respectable ladies in the town stating that
a Mrs. Fairfax was about to begin business in
Ferry Street as a dressmaker. She had taken
the only house to be let in Ferry Street. It
was a cottage with a front and back sittingroom, and belonged to an old lady in Lincoln,
who inherited it from her brother, who once
lived in it but had been dead forty years.
Before a week had gone by four-fifths of the
population of Langborough had re-inspected it.
The front room was the shop, and in the
window.was a lay-figure attired in an evening
robe of rose-coloured silk, the like of which for
style and fit no native lady had ever seen.
Underneath it was a card-" Mrs. Fairfax,
Milliner and Dressmaker." The circular stated
that Mrs. Fairfax could provide materials or
would make up those brought to her by her
customers.
Great was the debate which followed this
unexpected apparition. Who Mrs. Fairfax was
could not be discovered. Her furniture and
the lay-figure had come by the waggon, and the
only information the driver could give was that
he was directed at the " George and Blue Boar"
220




MRS. FAIRFAX


in Holborn to fetch them from Great Ormond
Street. After much discussion it was agreed
that Mrs. Bingham, the wife of the wine
merchant, should call on Mrs. Fairfax and
inquire the price of a gown. Mrs. Bingham
was at the head of society in Langborough, and
had the reputation of being very clever.  It
was hoped, and indeed fully expected, that she
would be able to penetrate the mystery. She
went, opened the door, a little bell sounded,
and Mrs. Fairfax presented herself.  Mrs.
Bingham's eyes fell at once upon Mrs. Fairfax's
dress. It was black, with no ornament, and
constructed with an accuracy and grace which
proved at once to Mrs. Bingham that its maker
was mistress of her art.   Mrs. Bingham,
although she could not entirely desert the
linendraper's wife, whose husband was a good
customer for brandy, had some of her clothes
made in London when she stayed with her
sister in town, and, to use her own phrase,
"knew what was what."
"Mrs. Fairfax?"
A bow.
" Will you please tell me what a gown would
cost made somewhat like that in the window?"
221




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


" For yourself, madam?"
"Yes."
" Pardon me; I am afraid that colour would
not suit you."
Mrs. Bingham was a stout woman with a
ruddy complexion.
" One colour costs no more than another?"
"No, madam: twelve guineas; that silk is
expensive. Will you not take a seat?"
" I am afraid you will find twelve guineas
too much for anybody here. Have you nothing
cheaper?"
Mrs. Fairfax produced some patterns and
fashion-plates.
" I suppose the gown in the window is your
own make?"
" My own make and design."
"Then you are not beginning business?"
" I hope I may say that I thoroughly under
stand it."
The door leading into the back parlour
opened, and a little girl about nine or ten
years old entered.
" Mother, I want  "
Mrs. Fairfax, without saying a word, gently
led the child into the parlour again.
222




MRS. FAIRFAX


"Dear me, what a pretty little girl! Is that
yours?"
" Yes, she is mine."
Mrs. Bingham noticed that Mrs. Fairfax did
not wear a widow's cap, and that she had a
wedding-ring on her finger.
"You will find it rather lonely here. Have
you been accustomed to solitude?"
"Yes.   That silk, now, would suit you
admirably. With less ornament it would be
ten guineas."
"Thank you: I must not be so extravagant
at present. May I look at something which
will do for walking? You would not, I suppose,
make a walking-dress for Langborough exactly
as you would have made it in London?"
"If you mean for walking about the roads
here, it would differ slightly from one which
would be suitable for London."
"Will you show me what you have usually
made for town?"
" This is what is worn now."
Mrs. Bingham was baffled but not defeated.
She gave an order for a walking-dress, and
hoped that Mrs. Fairfax might be more communicative.
223




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


"Have you any introductions here?"
" None whatever."
"It is rather a risk if you are unknown."
"Perhaps you have been exempt from risks:
some people are obliged constantly to encounter
them."
"' Exempt,' 'encounter,'" thought Mrs. Bingham: "she must have been to a good school."'
" When will you be ready to try on? "
"On Friday," and Mrs. Fairfax opened the
door.
As Mrs. Bingham went out she noticed a
French book lying on a side table.
The day following was Sunday, and Mrs.
Fairfax and her daughter were at church.
They sat at the back, and all the congregation
turned on entering, looked at them, and thought
about them during the service.  They went
out as soon as it was over, but Mrs. Harrop,
wife of the ironmonger, and Mrs. Cobb, wife of
the coal merchant, escaped with equal promptitude and were close behind them.
"There isn't a crease in that body," said
Mrs. Harrop.
On Monday Mrs. Bingham was at the postoffice. She took care to be there at the dinner
224




MRS. FAIRFAX


hour, when the postmaster's wife generally came
to the counter.
" A  newcomer, Mrs. Carter.   Have you
seen Mrs. Fairfax?"
" Once or twice, ma'am."
" Has she many letters? "
The door between the office and the parlour
was open.
"I've no doubt she will have, ma'am, if her
business succeeds."
"I wonder where she lived before she came
here. It is curious, isn't it, that nobody knows
her? Did you ever notice how her letters are
stamped? "
" Can't say as I have, ma'am."
Mrs. Carter shut the parlour door. "The
smell of those onions," she whispered to her
husband, "blows right in here."  She then
altered her tone a trifle.
"One of'em, Mrs. Bingham, had the Portsmouth postmark on it; but this is in the
strictest confidence, and  I should  never
dream of letting it out to anybody but you,
but I don't mind you, because I know you
won't repeat it, and if my husband was to
hear me he'd be in a fearful rage, for there
358              225              I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


was a dreadful row when I told Lady Caroline
at Thaxton Manor about the letters Miss
Margaret was getting, and it was found out
that it was me as told her, and some gentleman
in London wrote to the Postmaster-General
about it."
"You may depend upon me, Mrs. Carter."
Mrs. Bingham considered she had completely
satisfied her conscience when she imposed an
oath of secrecy on Mrs. Harrop, who was also
self-exonerated when she had imposed a similar
oath on Mrs. Cobb.
A fortnight after the visit to the post-office
there was a tea-party. Mrs. Harrop, Mrs. Cobb,
Mrs. Sweeting, the grocer's wife, and Miss
Tarrant, an elderly lady, living on a small
annuity, but most genteel, were invited to
Mrs. Bingham's. They began to talk of Mrs.
Fairfax directly they had tasted the hot buttered
toast. They had before them the following
facts: the carrier's deposition that the goods
came from Great Ormond Street; the lay-figure
and what it wore; Mrs. Fairfax's prices; the little
girl; the wedding-ring but no widow's weeds; the
Portsmouth postmark; the French book; Mrs.
Bingham's new gown, and lastly-a piece of infor226




MRS. FAIRFAX


mation contributed by Mrs. Sweeting and considered to be of great importance, as we shall see
presently-that Mrs. Fairfax bought her coffee
whole and ground it herself. On these facts,
nine in all, the ladies had to construct-it was
imperative that they should construct it-an
explanation of Mrs. Fairfax, and it must be confessed that they were not worse equipped than
many a picturesque and successful historian.
At the request of the company, Mrs. Bingham
went upstairs and put on the gown.
" Do you mind coming to the window, Mrs.
Bingham? " asked Mrs. Harrop.
Mrs. Bingham rose and went to the window.
Her guests also rose. She held her arms down
and then held them up, and was surveyed from
every point of the compass.
"I thought it was a pucker, but it's only the
shadow," observed Mrs. Harrop.
Mrs. Cobb stroked the body and shook the
skirt. Not a single depreciatory criticism was
ventured. Excepting the wearer, nobody present had seen such a masterpiece. But although
for half a lifetime we may have beheld nothing
better than an imperfect actual, we recognise
instantly the superiority and glory of the realised
227




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


Ideal when it is presented to us. Mrs. Harrop,
Mrs. Cobb, Mrs. Sweeting, and Miss Tarrant
became suddenly aware of possibilities of which
they had not hitherto dreamed. Mrs. Swanley,
the linendraper's wife, was degraded and deposed.
"She must have learned that in London,"
said Mrs. Harrop.
"London! my dear Mrs. Harrop," replied
Mrs. Bingham, "I know London pretty well,
and how things are cut there. I told you there
was a French book on the table. Take my
word for it, she has lived in Paris. She must
have lived there."
"Where is Great Ormond     Street, Mrs.
Bingham?" inquired Mrs. Sweeting.
"A great many foreigners live there; it is
somewhere near Leicester Square."
Mrs. Bingham knew nothing about the street,
but having just concluded a residence in Paris
from the French book, that conclusion led at
once to a further conclusion, clear as noonday,
as to the quality of the people who inhabited
Great Ormond Street, and consequently to the
final deduction of its locality.
"Did you not say, Mrs. Sweeting, that she
228




MRS. FAIRFAX


buys her coffee whole?" added Mrs. Bingham,
as if inspiration had flashed into her. "If you
want additional proof that she is French, there
it is."
" Portsmouth," mused Mrs. Cobb. " You say,
Mrs. Bingham, there are a good many officers
there. Let me see-1815-it's twenty-four years
ago since the battle. A captain may have picked
her up in Paris. I'll be bound that, if she ever was
married, she was married when she was sixteen
or seventeen.  They are always obliged to
marry those French girls when they are nothing
but chits, I've been told-those of them, leastways, that don't live with men without being
married. That would make her about forty,
and then he found her out and left her, and she
went back to, Paris and learned dressmaking."
" But he writes to her from Portsmouth," said
Mrs. Bingham, who had not been told that the
solitary letter from Portsmouth was addressed
in a man's handwriting.
"He may not have broken with her altogether," replied Mrs. Cobb. "If he isn't a
downright brute he'll want to hear about his
daughter."
" Well," said MIrs. Sweeting, twitching her
229




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


eyes as she was wont to do when she was about
to give an opinion which she knew would
disturb any of her friends, "you may talk
as you like, but the last thing Swanley made
for me looked as if it had been to the
wash and hung on me to dry. French or
English, captain or no captain, I shall go to
Mrs. Fairfax. Her character's got nothing to
do with her cut. Suppose she is divorced;
judging from that body of yours, Mrs. Bingham,
I shan't have to send back a pelisse half a
dozen times to get it altered. When it comes
to that you get sick of the thing, and may just
as well give it away."
Mrs. Sweeting occupied the lowest rank in
this particular section of Langborough society.
As a grocer Mr. Sweeting was not quite on a
level with the coal dealer, who was a merchant,
nor with the ironmonger, who repaired ploughs,
and he was certainly below  Mr. Bingham.
Miss Tarrant, never having been " connected
with trade "- her father was chief clerk in the
bank-considered herself superior to all her
acquaintances, but her very small income prevented her from claiming her superiority so
effectively as she desired.
230




MRS. FAIRFAX


" Mrs. Sweeting," she said, C" I am surprised
at you! You do not consider what the moral
effect on the lower orders of pat-ronisin, a
female of this kind will be, probably an abandoned woman. The child, no doubt, was not
born in wedlock. We are sinners ourselves if
we support sinners."
" Miss Tarrant," retorted Mrs. Sweeting,
"I'm the respectable mother of five children,
and I don't want any sermons on sin except
in church. If it wasn't a sin of Swanley to
charge me three guineas for that pelisse, and
wouldn't take it back, I don't know what sin
is."
Mrs. l3ingham, although she was accustomed
to tea-table disputes, and even enjoyed them,
was a little afraid of Mrs. Sweeting's tongue,
and thought it politic to interfere.
"I agree with you entirely, Mrs. Sweeting,
about the inferiority of Mrs. Swanley to this
newcomer, but we must consider Miss Tarrant's
position in the parish and her responsibilities. She is no doubt right from her point of
view."
So the conversation ended, but Mrs. Fairfax's
biography, which was to be published under
231




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


authority in Langborough, was now rounded off
and complete. She was a Parisian, father and
mother unknown, was found in Paris in 1815
by Captain Fairfax, who, by her intrigues and
threats of exposure, was forced into a marriage
with her. A few years afterwards he had grounds
for a divorce, but not wishing a scandal, consented to a compromise and voluntary separation.
He left one child in her custody, as it showed
signs of resemblance to its mother, to whom he
gave a small monthly allowance.  She had
been apprenticed as a dressmaker in Paris, had
returned thither in order to master her trade,
and then came back to England. In a very
little time, so clever was she that she learned
to speak English fluently, although, as Mrs.
Bingham at once noticed, the French accent
was very perceptible. It was a good, intelligible, working theory, and that was all that was
wanted. This was Mrs. Fairfax so far as her
female neighbours were concerned. To the
men in Langboroungh she was what she was to
the women, but with a difference. When she
went to Mr. Sweeting's shop to order her
groceries, Mr. Sweeting, notwithstanding the
canonical legend of her life, served her himself,




MRS. FAIRFAX


and was much entangled by her dark hair, and
was drawn down by it into a most polite bow.
Mr. Cobb, who had a little cabin of an office in
his coal-yard, hastened back to it from superintending the discharge of a lighter, when Mrs.
Fairfax called to pay her little bill, actually took
off his hat, begged her to be seated, and hoped
she did not find the last lot of coals dusty.
He was now unloading some of the best
Wallsend that ever came up the river, and
would take care that the next half ton should
not have an ounce of small in it.
"You'll find it chilly where you are living,
ma'am, but it isn't damp, that's one comfort.
The bottom of your street is damp, and down
here in a flood anything like what we had
fourteen years ago, we are nearly drowned.
If you'll step outside with me I'll show you
how high the water rose."  He opened the
door, and Mrs. Fairfax thought it courteous
not to refuse. He walked to the back of his
cabin bareheaded, although the morning was
cold, and pointed out to her the white paint
mark on the wall. She dropped her receipted
bill in the black mud and stooped to pick it up.
Mir. Cobb plunged after it and wiped it care233




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


fully on his silk pocket-handkerchief.  Mrs.
Cobb's bay window   commanded the whole
length of the coal-yard. In this bay window
she always sat and worked and nodded to
the customers, or gossiped with them as they
passed. She turned her back on Mrs. Fairfax
both when she entered the yard and when she
left it, but watched her carefully. Mr. Cobb
came into dinner, but his wife bided her time,
knowing that, as he took snuff, the handkerchief would be used. It was very provoking,
he was absent-minded, and forgot his usual
pinch before he sat down to his meal. For
three-quarters of an hour his wife was afflicted
with painfully uneasy impatience, and found it
very difficult to reply to Mr. Cobb's occasional
remarks.  At last the cheese was finished,
the snuff-box appeared, and after it the handkerchief.
"A pretty mess that handkerchief is in,
Cobb." She always called him simply " Cobb."
"Yes, it was an a-a-accident. I must have a
clean one. I didn't think it was so dirty."
" The washing of your snuffy handkerchiefs
costs quite enough as it is, Cobb, without using
them in that way."
234




MRS. FAIRFAX


"What way?" said Mr. Cobb weakly.
" Oh, I saw it all, going out without your hat
and standing there like a silly fool cleaning that
bit of paper. I wonder what the lightermen
thought of you."
It will already have been noticed that the
question what other people thought was always
the test which was put in Langborough whenever anything was done or anything happened
not in accordance with the usual routine, and
Mrs. Cobb struck at her husband's conscience
by referring him to his lightermen. She continued" And you know what she is as well as I do,
and if she'd been respectable you'd have been
rude to her, as you generally are."
"You bought that last new gown of her, and
you never had one as fitted you so well."
" What's that got to do with it? You may
be sure I knew my place when I went there.
Fit? Yes, it did fit; them sort of women, it
stands to reason, are just the women to fit you."
Mr. Cobb was silent. He was a mild man,
and he knew by much experience how unprofitable controversy with Mrs. Cobb was.
He could not forget Mrs. Fairfax's stooping
235




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


figure when she was about to pick up the bill.
She caused in all the Langborough males
an unaccustomed quivering and warmth, the
same in each, physical, perhaps, but salutary,
for the monotony of life was relieved thereby
and a deference and even a grace were
begotten which did not usually distinguish
Langborough manners.    Not one of Mrs.
Fairfax's admirers, however, could say that she
showed any desire for conversation with him,
nor could any direct evidence be obtained as to
what she thought of things in general. There
was, to be sure, the French book, and there
were other circumstances already mentioned
from which suspicion or certainty (suspicion,
as we have seen, passing immediately into
certainty in Langborough) of infidelity or
disreputable conduct followed, but no corroborating word from her could be adduced.
She attended to her business, accepted orders
with thanks and smiles, talked about the weather
and the accident to the coach, was punctual in
her attendance at church, calm and inscrutable
as the Sphinx. The attendance at church was, of
course, set down to " business considerations,"
and was held to be quite consistent with the
236




MRS. FAIRFAX


scepticism and loose morality deducible from
the French book and the unground coffee.
In speaking of the male creatures of the town
we have left out Dr. Midleton. He was fortyeight years old, and had been rector twenty
years. He had obtained high mathematical
honours at Cambridge, and became a tutor in a
grammar school, but was soon presented by his
college with the living of Langborough. He was
tall, spare, clean-shaven, grey-eyed, dark-haired,
thin-faced, his lips were curved and compressed,
and he stooped slightly. He was a widower with
no children, and the Rectory was efficiently
kept in order by an aged housekeeper. Tractarianism had not arisen in I839, but he
was High Church and an enemy to all kinds
of fanaticism, apt to be satirical, even in his
sermons, on the right of private judgment to
interpret texts as it pleased in ignorance of
Hebrew and Greek.   He was respected and
feared more than any other man in the parish.
He had a great library, and had taken up
archaeology as a hobby. He knew the history
of every church in the county, and more about
the Langborough records than was known by
237




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


the town clerk. He was chairman of a Board
of Governors charged with the administratration of wealthy trust for alms and schools.
When he first took office he found that this
trust was controlled almost entirely by a man
named Jackson, a local solicitor, whose salary
as clerk was ~40o a year and who had a large
private practice. The alms were allotted to
serve political purposes, and the headmaster of
the school enjoyed a salary of ~J8oo a year
for teaching forty boys, of whom twenty were
boarders.  Mr. Midleton -   he  was   Mr.
Midleton then - very soon determined to
alter this state of things. Jackson went about
sneering at the newcomer who was going to
turn the place upside down, and having been
accustomed to interfere in the debates in the
Board-room, interrupted the Rector at the third
or fourth meeting.
" You'll get yourself in a mess if you do that,
Mr. Chairman."
"Mr. Jackson," replied the Rector, rising
slowly, "it may perhaps save trouble if I
remind you now, once for all, that I am
chairman and you are the clerk. Mr. Bingham,
you were about to speak."
238




MRS. FAIRFAX


It was Dr. Midleton who obtained the new
Act of Parliament remodelling the trust, whereby a much larger portion of its funds was devoted to education. Jackson died, partly from
drink and partly from spite and vexation, and
the headmaster was pensioned. The Rector
was not popular with the middle class. He
was not fond of paying visits, but he never
neglected his duty, and by the poor was almost
beloved, for he was careless and intimate in his
talk with them and generous to real distress.
Everybody admired his courage. The cholera
in I831 was very bad in Langborough, and the
people were in a panic at the new disease,
which was fatal in many cases within six hours
after the first attack. The Rector through that
dark time was untouched by the contagious
dread which overpowered his parishioners, and
his presence carried confidence and health.
On the worst day, sultry, stifling, with no sun,
an indescribable terror crept abroad, and Mr.
Cobb, standing at his gate, was overcome by it.
In five minutes he had heard of two deaths, and
he began to feel what were called "premonitory
symptoms." He carried a brandy flask in his
pocket, brandy being then considered a remedy,
239




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


and he drank freely, but imagined himself
worse. He was about to rush indoors and tell
Mrs. Cobb to send for the surgeon, when the
Rector passed.
"Ah, Mr. Cobb! I was just about to call on
you; glad to see you looking so well when
there's so much sickness. We shall want you
on the School Committee this evening," and
then he explained some business which was
to be discussed. Mr. Cobb afterwards was,fond
of telling the story of this interview.
"Would you believe it?" said he. "He
spoke to me about nothing much but the trust,
but somehow my stomach seemed quieter at
once. The sinking-just here, you know-was
dreadful before he came up, and the brandy
was no good. It was a something in his way
that did it."
Dr. Midleton was obliged to call on Mrs.
Fairfax as a newcomer.   He found Mrs.
Harrop there, and Mrs. Fairfax asked him to
step into the back parlour, into which no one
in Langborough had hitherto been admitted.
Gowns were tried on in the shop, the door
being bolted and the blind drawn.    Dr.
Midleton found four little shelves of books
240




MRS. FAIRFAX


on the cupboard by the side of the fireplace.
Some were French, but most of them were
English. Although it was such a small collection, his book-lover's instinct compelled him
to look at it. His eyes fell upon a Reliio
Mfedici, and he opened it hastily. On the flyleaf was written "Mary Leighton, from R. L."
He had just time, before its owner entered, to
replace it and to muse for an instant.
"Richard Leighton of Trinity: it is not a
common name, but it cannot be he-have lost
sight of him for years; heard he was married,
and came to no good."
He was able to watch her for a minute as she
stood by the table giving some directions to
her child, who was sent on an errand.  In
that minute he saw her as she had not been
seen by anybody in Langborough. To Mrs.
Bingham and her friends Mrs. Fairfax was
the substratum of a body and skirt, with the
inestimable advantage over a substratum of
cane and padding that a scandalous history
of it could be invented and believed.  To
Langborough men, married and single, she
was a member of "the sex," as women were
called in those days, who possessed in a
24I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


remarkable degree the power of exciting that
quivering and warmth we have already observed. Dr. Midleton saw before him a lady,
tall but delicately built, with handsome face
and dark brown hair just streaked with grey,
and he saw also diffused over every feature a
light which in her eyes, forward-looking and
earnest, became concentrated into a vivid,
steady flame. The few words she spoke to
her daughter were sharply cut, a delightful
contrast in his ear to the dialect to which he
was accustomed, distinguished by its universal
vowel and suppression of the consonants.
How he inwardly rejoiced to hear the sound
of the second " t " in the word "distinct," when
she told her little messenger that Mr. Cobb had
been "distinctly" ordered to send the coals
yesterday.  He remained standing until the
child had gone.
"Pray be seated," she said. She went to
the fireplace, leaned on the mantelpiece, and
poked the fire. The attitude struck him. She
was about to put some coals in the grate, but
he interfered with an "Allow me," and performed the office for her. She thanked him
simply, and sat down opposite to him, facing
the light. She began the conversation.
242




MRS. FAIRFAX


"It is good of you to call on me; calling on
people, especially on newcomers must be an
unpleasant part of a clergyman's duty."
"It is so, madam, sometimes-there are not
many newcomers."
"It is an advantage in your profession that
you must generally be governed by duty. It is
often easier to do what we are obliged to do,
even if it be disagreeable, than to choose our
path by our likes and dislikes."
The bell rang, and Mrs. Fairfax went into
the shop.
"Who can she be?" said the Doctor to
himself. Such an experience as this he had
not  known   since  he  had  been  rector.
Langborough did not deal in ideas.  It was
content to affirm that Miss Tarrant now
and then gave herself airs, that Mrs. Sweeting
had a way of her own, that Mr. Cobb
lacked spirit and was downtrodden by his
wife.
She returned and sat down again.
"You know nobody in these parts, Mrs.
Fairfax? "
"Nobody."
"Yours is a bold venture, is it not?"
243




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


"It is-certainly. A good many plans were
projected, of which this was one, and there were
equal difficulties in the way of all.  When
that is the case we may almost as well draw
lots."
" Ah, that is what I often say to some of the
weaker sort among my parishioners. I said it
to poor Cobb the other day. He did not know
whether he should do this or do that. 'It
doesn't matter much,' said I, 'what you do,
but do something.    Do it, with all your
strength.'"
The Doctor was thoroughly Tory, and he slid
away to his favourite doctrine.
" Our ancestors, madam, were not such fools
as we often take them to be. They consulted
the sortes or lots, and at the last election-we
have a potwalloping constituency here-three
parts of the voters would have done better
if they had trusted to the toss-up of a penny
instead of their reason."
Mrs. Fairfax leaned back in her chair. Dr.
Midleton noticed her wedding-ring, and also a
handsome sapphire ring. She spoke rather
slowly and meditatively.
"Life is so complicated; so few of the con
244




MRS. FAIRFAX


sequences of many actions of the greatest
moment can be foreseen, that the belief in
the lot is not unnatural."
"You have some books, I see-Sir Thomas
Browne." He took down the volume.
"Leighton! Leighton! how odd! Was it
Richard Leighton?"
" Yes."
" Really; and you knew him?"
"He was a friend of my brother."
"Do you know what has become of him?
He was at Cambridge with me, but was
younger."
"I have not seen him for some time. Do
you mind if I open the window a little?"
" Certainly not."
She stood at the window for a moment,
looking out on the garden, with her hand on
the top of the sash. The Doctor had turned
his chair a little and his eyes were fixed on her
there with her uplifted arm. A picture which
belonged to his father instantly came back
to him.   He recollected it so well.  It
represented  a  woman  watching a young
man in a courtyard who is just mounting
his horse. We are every now and then
245




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


reminded of pictures by a group, an attitude,
or the arrangement of a landscape which,
thereby, acquires a new charm.
Suddenly the shop bell rang again, and Mrs.
Fairfax's little girl rushed into the parlour.
She had fallen down and cut her wrist terribly
with a piece of a bottle containing some hartshorn which she had to buy at the druggist's on
her way home from Mr. Cobb's. The blood
flowed freely, but Mrs. Fairfax, unbewildered,
put her thumb firmly on the wrist just above
the wound and instructed the doctor how to
use his pocket-handkerchief as a tourniquet.
As he was tying it, although such careful
attention to the operation was necessary, he
noticed Mrs. Fairfax's hands, and he almost
forgot himself and the accident.
"There is glass in the wrist," she said.
"Will you kindly fetch the surgeon? I do
not like to leave."
He went at once, and fortunately met him in
his gig.
On the third day after the mishap Dr.
Midleton thought he ought to inquire after
the child. The glass had been extracted and
she was doing well. Her mother was at work
246




MRS. FAIRFAX


in the back-parlour. She made no apology for
her occupation, but laid down her tools.
" Pray go on, madam."
"Certainly not. I am afraid I might make
a mistake with my scissors if I were to listen
to you; or, worse, if I were to pay attention to
them I should not pay attention to you."
He smiled. "It is an art, I should think,
which requires not only much attention but
practice."
She evaded the implied question. "It is
difficult to fit, but it is more difficult to please."
" That is true in my own profession."
"But you are not obliged to please."
"No, not obliged, I am happy to say. If
my parishioners do not hear the truth I have
no excuse. It must be rather trying to the
temper of a lady like yourself to humour the
caprices of the vulgar."
"No; they are my customers, and even if
they are unpleasant they are so not to me
personally but to their servant, who ceases to
be their servant when she ceases to be employed upon their clothes."
"You are a philosopher, madam; that
sentiment is worthy of Epictetus."
247




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


"I have read Epictetus in Mrs. Carter's
translation."
"You have read Epictetus?  That is remarkable! I should think no other woman in the
county has read him." He leaned forward
a little and his face was lighted up. "I
have a library, madam, a large library; I
should like to show it to you, if-if it can be
managed without difficulty."
"It will give me great pleasure to see it
some day. It must be a delightful solace to
you in a town like this, in which I daresay you
have but few friends. I suppose, though, you
visit a good deal?"
"No; I do not visit much. I differ from
my brother Sinclair in the next parish. He is
always visiting. What is the consequence?gossip and, as I conceive, a loss of dignity and
self-respect. I will go wherever there is trouble
or wherever I am wanted, but I will not go
anywhere for idle talk."
"I think you are right. A priest should not
make himself cheap and common. He should
be representative of sacred interests superior to
the ordinary interests of life."
"I am grateful to you, madam, very grateful
248




MRS. FAIRFAX


to you for these observations. They are as
just as they are unusual. I sincerely hope that
we-     " But there was a knock at the door.
"Come in." It was Mrs. Harrop.
"Your bell rang, Mrs. Fairfax, but maybe
you didn't hear it as you were engaged in conversation. Good morning, Dr. Midleton. I
hope I don't intrude?"
" No, you do not."
He bowed to the ladies, and as he went out,
the parlour-door being open, he moved the
outer door backwards and forwards.
" It would be as well, Mrs. Fairfax, to have
a bell hung there which would act properly."
"I don't know quite what Dr. Midleton
means," said Mrs. Harrop when he had gone.
"The bell did ring, loud enough for most people
to have heard it, and I waited ever so long."
He walked down the street with his customary firm step, and met Mr. Bingham who
stopped him, half smiling and not quite at
his ease.
"We are sorry, Doctor, you did not give
Hutchings your vote for the almshouse last
Thursday; we expected you would have gone
with us."
249




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


"You expected? Why?"
"Well, you see, sir, Hutchings has always
worked hard for our side."
"I am astonished, Mr. Bingham, that you
should suppose that I will ever consent to
divert the funds of a trust for party purposes."
Mr. Bingham, although he had just determined to give the Doctor a bit of his mind, felt
his strength depart from him. His sentences
lacked power to stand upright and fell
sprawling.  "No offence, Doctor, I merely
wanted you to know-not so much my own
views-difficulty to keep our friends together.
Short-you know Tom Short-was saying to
me he was afraid — "
"Pay no attention to fools. Good morning."
The Doctor came in that night from a
vestry meeting to which he went after dinner.
The clock was striking nine, the chimes played
their tune, and as the last note sounded the
housekeeper and servants filed into the study
for prayers.  Prayers over they rose and
went out, and he sat down. His habits were
becoming fixed and for some years he had
always read in the evening the friends of his
youth. No sermon was composed then; no
250




MRS. FAIRFAX


ecclesiastical literature was studied. Pope and
Swift were favourites and, curiously enough,
Lord Byron. Hiis case is not uncommon, for
it often happens that men who are forced into
reserve or opposition preserve a secret, youthful,
poetic passion and are even kept alive by it.
On this particular evening, however, Pope,
Byron, and Swift remained on his shelves. He
meditated.
"A wedding-ring on her finger; no widow's
weeds; he may nevertheless be dead-I believe
I heard he was-and she has discontinued that
frightful disfigurement.  Leighton  had the
thickest crop of black hair I ever saw on a
man: what thick, black hair that child has!
A lady; a reader of books; nobody to be
compared with her here."  At this point he
rose and walked about the room for a quarter
of an hour.  He sat down again and took
up an important paper about the Trust. He
had forgotten it and it was to be discussed
the next day. His eyes wandered over it but
he paid no attention to it; and somewhat
disgusted with himself he went to bed.
Mrs. Fairfax had happened to tell him that
she was fond of walking soon after breakfast
251




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


before she opened her shop, and generally
preferred the lane on the west side of the
Common.    From his house the direct road
to the lane lay down the High Street, but
about a fortnight after that evening in his
study he found himself one morning in Deadman's Rents, a narrow, dirty alley which led to
the east side of the Common. Deadman's
Rents was inhabited by men who worked in
brickyards and coalyards, who did odd jobs,
and by washerwomen and charwomen. It
contained also three beershops. The dwellers
in the Rents were much surprised to see the
Doctor amongst them at that early hour, and
conjectured he must have come on a professional errand. Every one of the Deadman
ladies who was at her door-and they were
generally at their doors in the daytimevigilantly watched him. He went straight
through the Rents to the Common, whereupon
Mrs. Wiggins, who supported herself by the
sale of firewood, jam, pickles, and peppermints,
was particularly disturbed and was obliged to go
over to the " Kicking Donkey," partly to communicate what she had seen and partly to ward
off by half a quartern of rum the sinking
252




MRS. FAIRFAX


which always threatened her when she was in
any way agitated.  When he reached    the
common it struck him that for the first time
in his life he had gone a roundabout way to
escape being seen. Some people naturally
take to side-streets; he, on the contrary, preferred the High Street; it was his quarter-deck
and he paraded it like a captain. " Was he
doing wrong? " he said to himself. Certainly
not; he desired a little intelligent conversation
and there was no need to tell everybody what
he wanted. It was unfortunate, nevertheless,
that it was necessary to go through Deadman's
Rents in order to get it. He soon saw Mrs.
Fairfax and her little girl in front of him. He
overtook her, and she showed no surprise at
seeing him.
"I have been thinking," said he, " about what
you told me "-this was a reference to an interview not recorded. " I am annoyed that Mrs.
Harrop should have been impertinent to you."
" You need not be annoyed. The import of
a word is not fixed. If anything annoying is
said to me, I always ask myself what it meansnot to me but to the speaker. Besides, as I have
told you before, shop insolence is nothing."
253




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


'"You may be justified in not resenting it,
but Mrs. Harrop cannot be excused. I am not
surprised to find that she can use such language,
but I am astonished that she should use it to
you. It shows an utter lack of perception.
Your Epictetus has been studied to some
purpose."
" I have quite forgotten him.  I do not
recollect books, but I never forget the lessons
taught me by my own trade."
"You have had much trouble?"
"I have had my share: probably not in
excess.  It is difficult for anybody to know
whether his suffering is excessive: there
is no means of measuring it with that of
others."
" Have you no friends with whom you can
share it? "
" I have known but one woman intimately,
and she is now dead.   I have known two
or three men whom I esteemed, but close
friendship between a woman and a man,
unless he is her husband, as a rule is
impossible."
"Do you really think so?"
"I am certain of it. I am speaking now of
254




MRS. FAIRFAX


a friendship which would justify a demand for
sympathy with real sorrows."
They continued their walk in silence for the
next two or three minutes,
" We are now near the end of the lane.
I must turn and go back."
" I will go with you."
" Thank you: I should detain you: I have
to make a call on business at the White House.
Good morning."
They parted.
Dr. Midleton presently met Mrs. Jenkins of
Deadman's Rents, who was going to the White
House to do a day's washing. A few steps
further he met Mr. Harrop in his gig, who
overtook Mrs. Fairfax. Thus it came to pass
that Deadman's Rents and the High Street
knew before nightfall that Dr. Midleton and
Mrs. Fairfax had been seen on the Common
that morning. Mrs. Jenkins protested, that "if
she was to be burnt alive with fuz-faggits and
brimstone, nothink but what she witnessed with
her own eyes should pass her lips, whatsomever
she might think, and although they were awalkin'-him with his arm round her waist
-she did not see him a-kissin' of her-how
255




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


could she when they were a hundred yards
off?"
The Doctor prolonged his stroll and reached
home about half-past eleven. A third of his life
had been spent in Langborough. He remembered the day he came and the unpacking of his
books. They lined the walls of his room, some
of them rare, all of them his friends. Nobody
in Langborough had ever asked him to lend a
single volume.  The solitary scholar never
forsook his studies, but at times he sighed over
them and they seemed a little vain. They were
not entirely without external effect, for Pope and
Swift in disguise often spoke to the vestry or
the governors, and the Doctor's manners even in
the shops were moulded by his intercourse with
the classic dead.  Their names, however, in
Langborough were almost unknown. He had
now become hardened by constant unsympathetic contact.  Suddenly a stranger had
appeared who was an inhabitant of his own
world and talked his own tongue.    The
prospect of genuine intercourse disclosed itself.
None but those who have felt it can imagine
the relief, the joyous expansion, which follow
the discovery after long years of imprisonment
256




MRS. FAIRFAX


with dull, decent people of a person before
whom it is unnecessary to stifle what we most
care to express. No wonder he was excited!
But the   stranger was a   woman.    He
meditated much that morning on her singular
aptitude for reflection, but he presently began
to dream over figure, hair, eyes, hands.  A
picture in the most vivid colours painted itself
before him, and he could not close his eyes to
it.  He was distressed to find himself the
victim of this unaccustomed tyranny. He did
not know that it is impossible for a man to
love a woman's soul without loving her body.
There is no such thing as a spiritual love apart
from a corporeal love, the one celestial and the
other earthly, and the spiritual love begets
a passion peculiar in its intensity.  He was
happily diverted by Mr. Bingham, who called
about a coming contested election for the
governorships.
Next week there was another tea-party at
Mrs. Cobb's.  The ladies were in high spirits,
for a subject of conversation was assured. If
there had been an inquest, or a marriage, or
a highway robbery before one of these parties,
or if the contents ot a will had just been


358


257


K




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


made known, or still better, if any scandal had
just come to light, the guests were always cheerful. Now, of course, the topic was Dr. Midleton
and Mrs. Fairfax.
"When I found him in that back parlour,"
said Mrs. Harrop, " I thought he wasn't there
to pay the usual call. Somehow it didn't seem
as if he was like a clergyman. I felt quite
queer: it came over me all of a sudden.
And then we know he's been there once or
twice since."
"I don't wonder at your feeling queer, Mrs.
Harrop," quoth Mrs. Cobb. "I'm sure I should
have fainted; and what brazen boldness to walk
out together on the Common at nine o'clock in
the morning. That girl who brought in the teait's my belief that a young man goes after herbut even they wouldn't demean themselves to
be seen at it just after breakfast."
"You don't mean to say as your Deborah
encourages a man, Mrs. Cobb! I don't know
what we are a-comin' to.  You've always been
so particular, and she seemed so respectable. I
am sorry."
Mrs. Cobb did not quite relish Mrs. Harrop's
pity.
258




MRS. FAIRFAX


"You may be sure, Mrs. Harrop, she was
respectable when I took her, and if she isn't I
shan't keep her. I am particular, more so than
most folk, and I don't mind who knows it."
Mrs. Cobb threw back her cap strings. The
denial that she minded who knew it may not
appear relevant, but desiring to be spiteful she
could not at the moment find a better way of
showing her spite than by declaring her
indifference to the publication of her virtues.
If there was no venom in the substance of the
declaration there was much in the manner of
it. Mrs. Bingham brought back the conversation to the point.
" I suppose you've heard what Mrs. Jenkins
says?  Your husband also, Mrs. Harrop, met
them both."
"Yes he did. He was not quite in time to
see as much as Mrs. Jenkins saw, and I'm glad
he didn't. I shouldn't have felt comfortable if
I'd known he had. A clergyman, too! it is
shocking. A nice business, this, for the Dissenters."
"Well," said Mrs. Bingham, "what are we to
do? I had thought of going to her and giving
her a bit of my mind, but she has got that
259




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


yellow gown to make. What is your opinion,
Miss Tarrant?"
"I would not degrade myself, Mrs. Bingham,
by any expostulations with her. I would have
nothing more to do with her. Could you not
relieve her of the unfinished gown? Mrs.
Swanley, I am sure, under the circumstances
would be only too happy to complete it for
you."
"Mrs. Swanley cannot come near her. I
should look ridiculous in her body and one of
Swanley's skirts."
"As to the Doctor," continued Miss Tarrant,
"I wonder that he can expect to maintain any
authority in matters of religion if he marries
a dressmaker of that stamp.  It would be
impossible even if her character were unimpeachable. I am astonished, if he wishes to
enter into the matrimonial state, that he does
not seek some one who would be able to support
him in his position and offer him the sympathy
which a man who has had a University education might justifiably demand."
Mrs. Sweeting had hitherto listened in silence.
Miss Tarrant provoked her.
"It's all a fuss about nothing, that's my
260




MRS. FAIRFAX


opinion. What has she done that you know to
be wrong? And as to the Doctor, he's got a
right to please himself. I'm surprised at you,
Miss Tarrant, for you've always stuck for him
through thick and thin.  As for that Mrs.
Jenkins, I'll take my Bible oath that the last
time she washed for me she stunk of gin enough
to poison me, and went away with two bits of
soap in her pocket.  You may credit what she
says: I don't, and never demean myself to
listen to her."
The ladies came to no conclusion.  Mrs.
Bingham said that.she had suggested a round
robin to Dr. Midleton, but that her husband
decidedly " discountenanced the proposal."
Within a fortnight the election of governors
was to take place. There was always a fight
at these elections, and this year the Radicals
had a strong list. The Doctor, whose term of
office had expired, was the most prominent of
the Tory and Church candidates, and never
doubted his success. He was ignorant of all
the gossip about him.   One day in that
fortnight he might have been seen in Ferry
Street. He went into Mrs. Fairfax's shop and
was invited as before into the back parlour.
261




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


" I have brought you a basket of pears, and
the book I promised you, the Utop'ia." He sat
down. "I am afraid you will think my visits
too frequent."
"They are not too frequent for me: they
may be for yourself."
" Ah! since I last entered your house I have
not seen any books excepting my own. You
hardly know what life in Langborough is like."
" Does nobody take any interest in archaeology?"
" Nobody within five miles. Sinclair cares
nothing about it: he is Low Church, as I have
told you."
"Why does that prevent his caring about
it?"
"Being Low Church he is narrow-minded,
or, perhaps it would be more correct to say,
being narrow-minded he is Low Church. He
is an indifferent scholar, and occupies himself
with his religious fancies and those of his flock.
He can reign supreme there. He is not troubled
in that department by the difficulties of learning
and is not exposed to criticism or contradiction."
" I suppose it is a fact of the greatest importance to him that he and his parishioners have
262




MRS. FAIRFAX


souls to be saved, and that in comparison with
that fact others are immaterial."
" We all believe we have souls to be saved.
Having set forth God's way of saving them we
have done all we ought to do. God's way is
not sufficient for Sinclair. He enlarges it out
of his own head, and instructs his silly, ignorant
friends to do the same. He will not be satisfied
with what God and the Church tell him."
"God and the Church, according to Dr.
Midleton's account, have not been very effective
in Langborough."
" They hear from me, madam, all I am commissioned to say, and if they do not attend I
cannot help it."
" I have read your paper in the Archaeological
Transactions on the history of Langborough
Abbey. It excited my imagination, which is
never excited in reading ordinary histories. In
your essay I am in company with the men who
actually lived in the time of Henry the Second
and Henry the Eighth. I went over the ruins
again, and found them much more beautiful
after I understood something about them."
"Yes: exactly what I have said a hundred
times: knowledge is indispensable."
263




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


"If you had not pointed it out, I should
never have noticed the Early English doorway
in the Chapter-house, so distinct in style from
the Refectory."
" You noticed the brackets of that doorway:
you noticed the quatrefoils in the head? The
Refectory is later by three centuries, and is exquisite, but is not equal to the Chapter-house."
"Yes, I noticed the brackets and quatrefoils
particularly. If knowledge is not necessary in
order that we may admire, its natural tendency
is to deepen our admiration. Without it we
pass over so much. In my own small way I
have noticed how my slight botanical knowledge
of flowers by the mere attention involved increases my wonder at their loveliness."
There was the usual interruption by the shopbell. How he hated that bell! Mrs. Fairfax
answered it, closing the parlour door. The
customer was Mrs. Bingham.
" I will not disturb you now, Mrs. Fairfax.
I was going to say something about the black
trimming you recommended. I really think
red would suit me better, but, never mind, I
will call again as I saw the Doctor come in. He
is rather a frequent visitor."
264




MRS. FAIRFAX


"Not frequent: he comes occasionally. We
are both interested in a subject which I believe
is not much studied in Langborough."
"Dear me! not dressmaking?"
"No, madam, archaeology."
Mrs. Bingham went out once more discomfited, and Mrs. Fairfax returned to the parlour.
" I am sure I am taking up too much of your
time," said the Doctor, " but I cannot tell you
what a privilege it is to spend a few minutes
with a lady like yourself."
Mrs. Fairfax was silent for a minute.
"Mrs. Bingham has been here, and I think I
ought to tell you that she has made some significant remarks about you. Forgive me if I
suggest that we should partially, at any rate,
discontinue our intercourse. I should be most
unhappy if your friendship with me were to do
you any harm."
The Doctor rose in a passion, planting his
stick on the floor.
"When the cackling of the geese or the
braying of the asses on Langborough Common
prevent my crossing it, then, and not till then,
will my course be determined by Mrs. Bingham
and her colleagues."
265




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


He sat down again with his elbow on the
arm of the chair and half shading his eyes with
his hand. His whole manner altered. Not a
trace of the rector remained in him: the
decisiveness vanished from his voice; it became
musical, low, and hesitating. It was as if some
angel had touched him, and had suddenly converted all his strength into tenderness, a transformation not impossible, for strength is
tenderness and tenderness is strength.
"I shall be forty-nine years old next birthday," he said. " Never until now have I been
sure that I loved a woman. I was married
when I was twenty-five. I had seen two or
three girls whom I thought I could love, and at
last chose one. It was the arbitrary selection
of a weary will. My wife died within two years
of her marriage. After her death I was thrown
in the way of women who attracted me, but I
wavered. If I made up my mind at night,
I shrank back in the morning. I thought my
irresolution was mere cowardice. It was not
so. It was a warning that the time had not
come. I resolved at 'last that there was to
be no change in my life, that I would resign
myself to my lot, expect no affection, and do
266




MRS. FAIRFAX


the duty blindly which had been imposed upon
me. But a miracle has been wrought, and I
have a perfectly clear direction: with you for
the first time in my life I am sure. You have
known what it is to be in a fog, unable to tell
which way to turn, and all at once the cold, wet
mist was lifted, the sun came out, the fields
were lighted up, the sea revealed itself to the
horizon, and your road lay straight before you
stretching over the hill. I will not shame myself by apologies that I am no longer young.
My love has remained with me. It is a passion
for you, and it is a reverence for a mind to
which it will be a perpetual joy to submit."
" God pardon me," she said after a moment's
pause, "for having drawn you to this! I did
not mean it. If you knew all you would forgive
me. It cannot, cannot be! Leave me." He
hesitated. " Leave me, leave me at once!" she
cried.
He rose, she took his right hand in both of
hers: there was one look straight into his eyes
from her own which were filling with tears, a
half sob, her hands after one more grasp fell,
and he found that he had left the house. He
went home. How strange it is to return to a
267




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


familiar chamber after a great event has happened! On his desk lay a volume of Cicero's
letters. The fire had not been touched and
was almost out: the door leading to the
garden was open: the self of two hours
before seemed to confront him. When the
tumult in him began to subside he was struck
by the groundlessness of his double assumption
that Mrs. Fairfax was Mrs. Leighton and that
she was free. He had made no inquiry. He
had noticed the wedding-ring, and he had come
to some conclusion about it which was supported by no evidence. Doubtless she could
not be his: her husband was still alive. At
last the hour for which unconsciously he had
been waiting had struck, and his true self, he
not having known hitherto what it was, had
been declared.  But it was all for nothing.
It was as if some autumn-blooming plant had
put forth on a sunny October morning the
flower of the year, and had been instantaneously
blasted and cut down to the root. The plant
might revive next spring, but there could be no
revival for him. There could be nothing now
before him but that same dull duty, duty to the
dull, duty without enthusiasm. He had no
268




MRS. FAIRFAX


example for his consolation. The Bible is the
record of heroic suffering: there is no story
there of a martyrdom to monotony and lifeweariness. He was a pious man, but loved
prescription and form: he loved to think of
himself as a member of the great Catholic
Church and not as an isolated individual, and he
found more relief in praying the prayers which
millions had prayed before him than in extempore effusions, humbly trusting that what he
was seeking in consecrated petitions was all
that he really needed. " In proportion as your
prayers are peculiar," he once told his congregation in a course of sermons on Dissent, "they
are worthless." There was nothing, though, in
the prayer-book which met his case. He was
in no danger from temptation, nor had he
trespassed. He was not in want of his daily
bread, and although he desired like all good
men to see the Kingdom of God, the advent ot
that celestial kingdom which had for an instant
been disclosed to him was for ever impossible.
The servant announced Mrs. Sweeting, who
was asked to come in.
"Sit down, Mrs. Sweeting. What can I do
for you? "
269




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


"Well, sir, perhaps you may remember-and
if you don't, I do-how you helped my husband
in that dreadful year i825. I shall never forget
that act of yours, Dr. Midleton, and I'd stick
up for you if Mrs. Bingham and Mrs. Harrop
and Mrs. Cobb and Miss Tarrant were to swear
against you and you a-standing in the dock.
As for that Miss Tarrant, there's that a-rankling
in her that makes her worse than any of them,
and if you don't know what it is, being too
modest, forgive me for saying so, I do."
" But what's the matter, Mrs. Sweeting?"
"Matter, sir! Why, I can hardly bring it out,
seeing that I'm only the wife of a tradesman,
but one thing I will say as I ain't like the serpent
in Genesis, a-crawling about on its belly and
spitting poison and biting people by their heels."
"You have not yet told me what is wrong."
"Dr. Midleton, you shall have it, but recollect I come here as your friend: leastways I
hope you'll forgive me if I call myself so, for if
you were ill and you were to hold up your
finger for me not another soul should come
near you night nor day till you were well again
or it had pleased God Almighty to take you to
Himself. Dr. Midleton, there's a conspiracy."
270




MRS. FAIRFAX


"A what?"
"A conspiracy: that's right, I believe. You
are acquainted with Mrs. Fairfax. To make a
long and a short of it, they say you are always
going there, more than you ought, leastways
unless you mean to marry her, and that she's
only a dressmaker, and nobody knows where she
comes from, and they ain't open and free: they
won't come and tell you themselves; but you'll
be turned out at the election the day after
to-morrow."
" But what do you say yourself? "
"Me, Dr. Midleton? Why, I've spoke up
pretty plainly. I told Mrs. Cobb it would be
a good thing if you were married, provided you
wouldn't be trod upon as some people's husbands are, and I was pretty well sure you never
would be, and that you knew a lady when you
saw her better than most folk; and as for her
being a dressmaker what's that got to do with it?"
"You are too well acquainted with me, Mrs.
Sweeting, to suppose I should condescend to
notice this contemptible stuff or alter my course
to please all Langborough. Why did you take
the trouble to report it to me? "
"Because, sir, I wouldn't for the world you
27I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


should think I was mixed up with them; and if
my husband doesn't vote for you my name isn't
Sweeting."
"I am much obliged to you. I see your
motives: you are straightforward and I respect
you."
Mrs. Sweeting thanked him and departed.
His first feeling was wrath. Never was there a
man less likely to be cowed. He put on his hat
and walked to his committee-room, where he
found Mr. Bingham.
" No doubt, I suppose, Mr. Bingham?"
"Don't know, Doctor; the Radicals have got
a strong candidate in Jem Casey. Some of our
people will turn, I'm afraid, and split their votes."
" Split votes! with a fellow like that! How
can there be any splitting between an honest
man and a rascal?"
"There shouldn't be, sir, but-" Mr. Bingham hesitated-" I suppose there may be personal considerations."
"Personal considerations! what do you mean?
Let us have no more of these Langborough
tricks. Out with it, Bingham! Who are the
persons and what are the considerations? "
"I really can't say, Doctor, but perhaps you
272




MRS. FAIRFAX


may not be as popular as you were. You've-"
but Mr. Bingham's strength again completely
failed him, and he took a sudden turn-" You've
taken a decided line lately at several of our
meetings."
The Doctor looked steadily at Mr. Bingham,
who felt that every corner of his pitiful soul was
visible.
"The line I have taken you have generally
supported. That is not what you mean. If I am
defeated I shall be defeated by equivocating
cowardice, and I shall consider myself honoured."
The Doctor strode out of the room. He
knew now that he was the common property of
the town, and that every tongue was wagging
about him and a woman, but he was defiant.
The next morning he saw painted in white paint
on his own wall"' My dearly beloved, for all you're so bold,
To-morrow you'll find you're left out in the cold;
And, Doctor, the reason you need not to ax,
It's because of a dressmaker-Mrs. F-fax."
He was going out just as the gardener was
about to obliterate the inscription.
" Leave it, Robert, leave it; let the filthy
scoundrels perpetuate their own disgrace."
273




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


The result of the election was curious. Two
of the Church candidates were returned at the
top of the poll. Jem Casey came next.  Dr.
Midleton and the other two Radical and Dissenting candidates were defeated. There were
between seventy and eighty plumpers for the
two successful Churchmen, and about five-andtwenty split votes for them and Casey, who
had distinguished himself by his coarse
attacks  on  the  Doctor.   Mr. Bingham
had a bad cold, and did not vote. On the
following Sunday the church was fuller than
usual. The Doctor preached on behalf of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. He
did not allude directly to any of the events of
the preceding week, but at the close of his
sermon he said-" It has been frequently
objected that we ought not to spend money
on missions to the heathen abroad as there is
such a field of labour at home. The answer
to that objection is that there is more hope
of the heathen than of many of our countrymen. This has been a nominally Christian
land for centuries, but even now many deadly
sins are not considered sinful, and it is an
easier task to save the savage than to convince
274




MRS. FAIRFAX


those, for example, whose tongue, to use the
words of the apostle, is set on fire of hell, that
they are in danger of damnation. I hope, therefore, my brethren, that you will give liberally."
On Monday Langborough was amazed to
find Mrs. Fairfax's shop closed. She had left
the town. She had taken a post-chaise on
Saturday and had met the up-mail at Thaxton
cross-roads. Her scanty furniture had disappeared. The carrier could but inform Langborough that he had orders to deliver her goods
at Great Ormond Street whence he brought
them. Mrs. Bingham went to London shortly
afterwards and called at Great Ormond Street
to inquire for Mrs. Fairfax. Nobody of that
name lived there, and the door was somewhat
abruptly shut in her face. She came back convinced that Mrs. Fairfax was what Mrs. Cobb
called " a bad lot."
"Do you believe," said she, "that a woman
who gives a false name can be respectable?
We want no further proof."
Nobody wanted further proof. No Langborough lady needed any proof if a reputation
was to be blasted.
"It's an alibi," said Mrs. Harrop. "That's
275




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


what Tom Cranch the poacher did, and ne was
hung."
" An alias, I believe, is the correct term," said
Miss Tarrant. " It means the assumption of
a name which is not your own. a most discreditable device, one to which actresses and
women to whose occupation I can only allude,
uniformly resort. How thankful we ought to
be that our respected Rector's eyes must now
be opened and that he has escaped the snare!
It was impossible that he could be permanently attracted by vice and vulgarity. It is
singular how much more acute a woman's perception often is than a man's. I saw through
this creature at once."
Eighteen months passed. The doctor one
day was unpacking a book he had bought at
Peterborough. Inside the brown paper was a
copy of the Stahnford Mercury, a journal which
had a wide circulation in the Midlands. He
generally read it, but he must have omitted to
see this number. His eye fell on the following announcement-" On the 24th June last,
Richard Leighton, aged 44 years." The notice
was late, for the date of the paper was the
276




MRS. FAIRFAX


i8th November. The next afternoon he was
in London. He had been to Great Ormond
Street before and had inquired for Mrs. Fairfax,
but could find no trace of her. He now called
again.
"You will remember," he said, " my inquiry
about Mrs. Fairfax: can you tell me anything
about Mrs. Leighton?" He put his hand in
his pocket and pulled out five shillings.
"She isn't here: she went away when her
husband died."
" He died abroad? "
"Yes."
" Where has she gone?"
"Don't know quite: her friends wouldn't
have anything to do with her. She said she
was going to Plymouth. She had heard of
something in the dressmaking line there."
He handed over his five shillings, procured
a substitute for next Sunday, and went to
Plymouth. He wandered through the streets
but could see no dressmaker's shop which
looked as if it had recently changed hands.
He walked backwards and forwards on the Hoe
in the evening: the Eddystone light glimmered
far away on the horizon; and the dim hope
277




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


arose in him that it might be a prophecy of
success, but his hope was vain. It came into
his mind that it was not likely that she would
be there after dusk, and he remembered her
preference for early exercise. The first morning
was a failure, but on the second-it was sunny
and warm-he saw her sitting on a bench
facing the sea. He went up unobserved and
sat down. She did not turn towards him till
he said "Mrs. Leighton!"   She started and
recognised him.  Little was spoken as they
walked home to her lodgings, a small private
house. On her way she called at a large shop
where she was employed and obtained leave of
absence until after dinner.
"At last! " said the doctor when the door
was shut.
She stood gazing in silence at the dull red
cinder of the dying fire.
" You put the advertisement in the Stamford
Mfercury? " he said.
"Yes."
"I did not see it until a day or two ago."
"I had better tell you at once. My husband,
whom you knew, was convicted of forgery, and
died at Botany Bay." Her eyes still watched
the red cinders.
278




MRS. FAIRFAX


The Doctor's countenance showed no surprise,
for no news could have had any power over the
emotion which mastered him. The long, slow
years were fulfilled. Long and slow and the
fulfilment late, but the joy it brought was the
greater. Youthful passion is sweet, but it is not
sweeter than the discovery when we begin to
count the years which are left to us, and to fear
there will be nothing in them better than in
those which preceded them that for us also
love is reserved.
Mrs. Leighton was obliged to go back to her
work in the afternoon, but she gave notice that
night to leave in a week.
In a couple of months Langborough was
astounded at the news of the Rector's marriage
with a Mrs. Leighton whom nobody in Langborough knew.   The advertisement in the
Stamford Mercury said that the lady was the
widow of Richard Leighton, Esq., and eldest
daughter of the late Marmaduke Sutton, Esq.
Langborough spared no pains to discover who
she was. Mrs. Bingham found out that the
Suttons were a Devonshire family, and she
ascertained from an Exeter friend that Mr.
Marmaduke Sutton was the son of an Honour279




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


able, and that Mrs. Leighton was consequently
a high-born lady. She had married as her first
husband a man who had done well at Cambridge, but who took to gambling and drink,
and treated her with such brutality that they
separated. At last he forged a signature and
was transported.  What became of his wife
afterwards was not known. Langborough was
not only greatly moved by this intelligence, but
was much perplexed. Miss Tarrant's estimate
of the Doctor was once more reversed. She
was decidedly of opinion that the marriage was
a scandal. A woman who had consented to
link herself with such a reprobate as the convict
must have been from the beginning could not
herself have possessed any reputation. Living
apart, too, was next door to divorce, and who
could associate with a creature who had been
divorced?  No  doubt she was physically
seductive, and the doctor had fallen a victim
to her snares. Miss Tarrant, if she had not
known so well what men are, would never have
dreamed that Dr. Midleton, a scholar and a
divine, could surrender to corporeal attractions.
She declared that she could no longer expect
any profit from his ministrations, and that she
280




MRS. FAIRFAX


should leave the parish. Miss Tarrant's friends,
however, did not go quite so far, and Mrs. Harrop
confessed to Mrs. Cobb that "she for one
wouldn't lay it down like Medes and Persians,
that we should have nothing to do with a woman
because her husband had made a fool of himself.  I'm not a Mede nor a Persian, Mrs.
Cobb. I say let us wait and see what she is
like."
Mrs. Bingham was of the same mind. She
dwelt much to herself on the fact that Mrs.
Midleton's great-grandfather must have been
a lord. She secretly hoped that as a wine merchant's wife she might obtain admission into a
'" sphere," as she called it, from which the other
ladies in the town might be excluded.  Mrs.
Bingham already foretasted the bliss of an invitation to the rectory to meet Lady Caroline
from Thaxton Manor; she already foretasted
the greater bliss of not meeting her intimate
friends there, and that most exquisite conceivable bliss of telling them afterwards all
about the party.
Mrs. Midleton and her husband returned on
a Saturday afternoon. The road from Thaxton
cross-roads did not lie through the town: the
281




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


carriage was closed and nobody saw her. When
they came to the rectory the Doctor pointed
to the verse in white paint on the wall, " It
shall be taken out," he said, " before to-morrow
morning: to-morrow is Sunday."   He was
expected to preach on that day and the church
was crammed a quarter of an hour before the
service began. At five minutes to eleven a lady
and child entered and walked to the rector's
pew. The congregation was stupefied with
amazement.   Mouths were agape, a hum of
exclamations arose, and people on the further
side of the church stood up.
It was Mrs. Fairfax! Nobody had conjectured that she and Mrs. Leighton were the
same person. It was unimaginable that a dressmaker should have had near ancestors in the
peerage. It was more than a year and a half
since she left the town. Mrs. Carter was
able to say that not a single letter had been
addressed to her, and she was almost forgotten.
A few days afterwards Mrs. Sweeting had a
little note requesting her to take tea with the
Rector and his wife. Nobody was asked to
meet her. Mrs. Bingham had called the day
before, and had been extremely apologetic.
282




MRS. FAIRFAX


" I am afraid, Mrs. Midleton, you must have
thought me sometimes very rude to you."
To which Mrs. Midleton replied graciously,
"I am sure if you had been it would have
been quite excusable."
"Extremely kind of you to say so, Mrs.
Midleton."
Mrs. Cobb also called.  "I'll just let her
see," said Mrs. Cobb to herself, and she put
on a gown which Mrs. Midleton as Mrs.
Fairfax had made for her.
"You'll remember this gown, Mrs. Midleton?"
"Perfectly well. It is not quite a fit on the
shoulders.  If you will let me have it back
again it will give me great pleasure to alter it
for you."
By degrees, however, Mrs. Midleton came to
be loved by many people in Langborough. Mr.
Sweeting not long afterwards died in debt, and
Mrs. Sweeting, the old housekeeper being also
dead, was taken into the rectory as her
successor, and became MArs. Midleton's trusted
friend.


283




LITTLE NELL


AN address delivered to the members of the Hesperus
Club at Hazelhurst, Sunday evening, June 7, 1908. Revised
by the lecturer.
T FEEL that my subject is not quite suited to
a Hazelhurst audience,-Hazelhurst, a model
village, red brick, white-balconied, with its philosophical club significantly and appropriately
named; but I could do no better. I dislike casting about for a subject, and Dickens happens to
be upon my mind.
The article on Dickens in the Diclionary of
National Biography was allotted to Sir Leslie
Stephen, who contributed also articles on Pope,
Dryden, Wordsworth, Coleridge, William Law,
and a dozen or more British worthies of diverse
quality. Sir Leslie, painstaking and laborious,
was about as well fitted to write the life of
284




LITTLE NELL


Dickens as he was to write the life of the author
of the Serious Call or of Kubla Khan, but he
expresses the judgement which a large part of
what is called the " cultivated class " has passed
on Dickens during the last twenty or thirty years.
Dickens showed "the command of the pathetic
"which fascinated the ordinary reader. The
"critic is apt to complain that he kills his chil"dren as if he liked it, and makes his victims
"attitudinize before the footlights.... If
"literary fame could be safely measured by
"popularity with the half-educated, he must
"claim the highest position amongst English
"novelists.... The criticism of more severe
" critics chiefly consists in the assertion that his
" merits are such as suit the half-educated....
" his pathos implies little real depth or tenderness
"of feeling" (!). As Sir Leslie in this matter is
representative it may be prudent before saying
anything on my own account about Little Nell
to excuse myself by some authority other than
that of the half-educated. I wish, by the way,
Sir Leslie would have given us one or two examples of the "wholly-educated," demonstrating
to us the completeness of their education and the
necessary superiority thereby given them as
285




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


judges of a story or a play. This is what Dr.
A. W. Ward, the Master of Peterhouse, says in
his monograph on Dickens in the English Men oJ
Letfers series:" In the Old Curiosify Shop, though it abounds
"in both grotesquely terrible and boisterously
"laughable effects, the key-note is that of an
"idyllic pathos. The sense of this takes hold of
"the reader at the very outset, as he lingers over
"the picture, with which the first chapter con"c ludes, of little Nell asleep through the solitary
"night in the curiosity-dealer's warehouse. It
"retains possession of him as he accompanies
"the innocent heroine through her wanderings,
"pausing with her in the churchyard, where all
"is quiet save the cawing of the satirical rooks,
or in the schoolmaster's cottage by the open
"window, through which is borne upon the
"evening air the distant hum of the boys at play
"upon the green, while the poor schoolmaster
"holds in his hand the small, cold one of the
"little scholar that has fallen asleep. Nor is it
"absent to the last when Nell herself lies at rest
"in her little bed. 'Her little bird-a poor
"' slight thing the pressure of a finger would have
" ' crushed-was stirring nimbly in its cage; and.086




LITTLE NELL


" 'the strong heart of its child-mistress was mute
"'and motionless for ever.' The hand which
"drew little Nell afterwards formed other figures,
"not less affecting, but none so essentially poetic.
"Like many such characters, this requires for its
"full appreciation, a certain tension of the mind;
"and those who will not or cannot, pass in some
"measure out of themselves, will be likely to
"tire of the conception, or to declare its execu' tion artificial."
I can hardly shelter myself behind a greater
name than that of Walter Savage Landor. Here
is the closing verse of a metrical letter from him
to Dickens:
" Write me few letters: I'm content
" With what for all the world is meant;
"Write then for all: but, since my breast
" Is far more faithful than the rest,
" Never shall any other share
"' With little Nelly nestling there."
"No character in prose fiction," says Forster,
" was a greater favourite with Landor. So inter" esting and pathetic did she seem to him that
"he thought upon her, for a moment, Juliet
"might have turned away her eyes from Romeo,
"and Desdemona found her hairbreadth escapes
"almost witching as Othello's."
287




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


It is impossible to talk about little Nell
without some notice of what lies beside her in
the story, but I will pick up only a few passages
which are directly connected with her in such
a way that their manner is of a piece with
the description of her. These dismissed, we can
attend to her alone. The humour must be left,
for it would need a separate lecture.
Almost at the beginning there is the description of Covent Garden Market at sunrise, which
drives " the dusky thrush, whose cage has hung
"outside a garret-window all night long, half
"mad with joy! Poor bird! the only neighbour" ing thing at all akin to the other little captives,
"some of whom, shrinking from the hot hands
"of drunken purchasers, lie drooping on the
"path already, while others, soddened by close
"contact, await the time when they shall be
"watered and freshened up to please more
" sober company, and make old clerks, who pass
"them on their road to business, wonder what
"has filled their breasts with visions of the
"country."  The reader must be " an old
clerk " to see the old clerk's vision, not a carpenter, bricklayer, labourer, shopkeeper, nor one
of the ladies and gentlemen who go to the Market
288




LITTLE NELL


to buy flowers and fruit-he must be a clerk,
an old clerk, an early old clerk, who, diverging
a little from the end of Tottenham Court Road,
takes the Market on his way to the law-stationers
in Carey Street or Chancery Lane. The old
clerk's occupation is monotonous, and age
with no change often makes him weak in his
consolations. The present lecturer knew one,
dead ages ago, who was generally at his dingy
office in Carey Street till ten o'clock at night.
When he went home he generally played for
half an hour with his window shut on the German
flute at a stand-up desk in his little bedroom
looking over a dark, narrow court near Portugal
Street. Do not laugh. With awe I remember
his simple piety to God and man.
At nearly our first introduction to the boy in
charge of Quilp's Wharf we find him standing
on his head, which Quilp punches as soon as
it is uppermost. Quilp goes on beating him,
and at last throws a rough piece of wood jagged
with iron at him. The boy in return chaffs
his master. Knowing what we know of Quilp,
it is singular that " Quilp would certainly suffer
"nobody to contradict him but the boy, and
"the boy would assuredly not have submitted
358             289              L




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


" to be so knocked about by anybody but Quilp,
"when he had the power to run away at any
"time he chose." It is also singular that at
the inquest on Quilp Tom wept and desired
to assault the jury which had returned a verdict
of suicide on his master and left him to be
buried with a stake through his heart in the
centre of four lonely roads. The toleration of
Tom by Quilp and the tenderness shewn to
Quilp by Tom are not a dab of colour consciously applied, and Dickens does not philosophize. He offers no explanation of this strange
relationship. It is an instinctive expression of
his own soul, and we had better not maul it
about. Let us ponder over it rather than reflect
on it. The two words have not quite the same
meaning.
In the old schoolmaster there are no complications of character which serve to give the
reader an opportunity for showing his skill in
dissection. He is merely a simple, harmless
man, whose heart is almost broken by the death
of a favourite pupil. I do not find him insipid.
Passion is considered to be interesting, and the
more interesting the less it is under control, but
in peace and subjugation real interest also
290




LITTLE NELL


lies. What has to be said on this matter can
be better said about Nell, but it may be observed here that in some sense most people
admit Dickens had genius, and therefore his
love for the old schoolmaster is worth
noting.
Nell is Kit's star. He adores her, but the
thought that she could ever be his was to him
absurd. His relationship to her is so different
from that to Barbara that he sees no reason
why they should not coexist. He is not capable
of understanding Nell. but he can recognize the
greatness of what is beyond him.  He can
worship Nell and love Barbara. He praises
Nell enthusiastically before Barbara, giving the
poor child many a twinge, and we sympathize
with her. Coming out of the theatre, she asks
Kit " if Miss Nell was as handsome as the lady
"who jumped over the ribbons? "
"'As handsome as her?' said Kit. ' Double
"'as handsome.'
"'Oh, Christopher! I'm sure she was the
"beautifullest creature ever was,' said Barbara.
" 'Nonsense!' returned Kit. ' She was well
"'enough, I don't deny that; but think how
"' she was dressed and painted, and what a dif29I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


"'ference that made. Why you are a good deal
"' better-looking than her, Barbara.'
"'Oh, Christopher!' said Barbara, looking
down.
" ' You are, any day,' said Kit; 'and so's your
"'mother.'
" Poor Barbara."
Affectionate, awkward, loyal cub! Poor Kit I
Mr. Swiveller, who finds the bank-note in
Kit's hat, takes an opportunity, while Kit is
under arrest and is marched through the street
to Bevis Marks, of urging him to confess
his guilt. If he would only just give a nod,
"and promise not to do so any more, he (Mr
"Swiveller) would connive at his kicking Samp"son Brass on the shins and escaping up a
"court." When Kit is in prison, and has not
confessed, Dick sends him his beer, and with it
comes this note:" Drink of this cup; you'll find there's a spell
"in its every drop 'gainst the ills of mortality.
"Talk of the cordial that sparkled for Helen!
" Her cup was a fiction, but this is a reality
"(Barclay & Co.'s). If they ever send it in
"a flat state, complain to the Governor. Yours
"R. S." We need not discuss whether or not
292




LITTLE NELL


Dick believed Kit to be guilty. Probably he
had no conviction either way. Many sounding
and virtuous deeds have been done on earth
which the recording angel has not marked with
so many crosses as those which mark Dick
Swiveller's commission to the turnkey for the
daily allowance of Barclay & Perkins-paid
for by Dick in cash.
So much for specimens of what, as I have
said, lies by the way.
The earlier history of Nell and her grandfather as told by his younger brother is as follows. Both the brothers loved the same girl,
but the elder was ignorant of the younger's
love. The younger was a sickly child, and the
elder tenderly nursed him till he left England
hoping to die abroad. He recovered his health,
became rich, and at last returned home. The
elder brother married the girl with whom he
was in love, but she soon died, leaving an only
daughter who married a hardhearted, extravagant scoundrel. Three weeks after his early
death she also died, bequeathing to her father's
care two children, one of whom is the little Nell
of our tale. Her broken-spirited grandfather,
whom his son-in-law had almost beggared, lived
293




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


in and for Nell alone, and was possessed with
a mad dread that she might come to want.
"It was a spectre in his house, and haunted
"him night and day." This spectre it was
which at last was the end both of him and Nell,
partly in his case wrecking the mind. He takes
to gambling with uncontrollable passion, and
after the play was over, at a public-house where
he had lost all Nell's money, he sat "poring
" over the cards, dealing them as they had been
"dealt before, and turning up the different
"hands to see what each man would have held
"if they had still been playing. He was quite
"absorbed in this occupation, when the child
"drew near and laid her hand upon his shoulder,
"telling him it was near midnight.
"'See the curse of poverty, Nell,' he said,
"pointing to the packs he had spread out on the
"table. ' If I could have gone on a little longer,
" 'only a little longer, the luck would have turned
':' on my side. Yes, it's as plain as the marks on
"'the cards. See here-and there-and here
"' again.'
" 'Put them away,' urged the child. 'Try to
"' forget them.'
"'Try to forget them!' he rejoined, raising
294




LITTLE NELL


"his haggard face to hers, and regarding her
"with an incredulous stare. ' To forget them!
"' How are we ever to grow rich if I forget them?'
" The child could only shake her head.
"'No, no, Nell,' said the old man, patting her
" cheek, 'they must not be forgotten. We
"' must make amends for this as soon as we can.
"'Patience, patience, and we'll right thee yet,
"' I promise thee. Lose to-day, win to-morrow.
"'And nothing can be won without anxiety and
"' care-nothing. Come, I am ready."' Such
was the work of the spectre!
Nell, at the time the story opens, is nearly
fourteen, and is devoted, miraculously one might
say, to her grandfather. Dickens does not analyze her devotion, but just puts it down as he
might have seen it.  Partly it is sorrow that his
insane thirst for money and the trouble to which
it leads should be caused by anxiety for her.
Partly it is duty, partly it is pure love; but the
elements of the combination are not to be enumerated, and it is a new thing cast into literature, a relationship between age and childhood
hitherto undelineated. The old man has a long
illness just before he left the shop, and his enfeebled intellect became weaker. He retains no
295




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


strength of brain which could attract his grandchild, but she never merely tolerates him. On
the evening of the flight he weeps, makes as if
he would fall on his knees, and beseeches the
child to forgive him. When he sees Punch and
Judy and the other puppets in the churchyard
he looks at the figures " with extreme delight,"
and as Codlin and Short move away he " keeps
" close to the box of puppets, in which he was
" quite absorbed." At Jarley's show he is very
"patient and willing, happy to execute any little
"task, and glad to be of use; but he was in the
"same listless state, with no prospect of improve"ment-a mere child-a poor, thoughtless, va"cant creature-a harmless, fond old man, sus"ceptible of tender love and regard for her, and
"of pleasant and painful impressions, but alive
" to nothing more." He robs Nell and consents
to rob his employer, but he is no common
criminal. Dickens without any preaching makes
condemnation impossible. Never was character
more subtly and awfully compounded by any
artist. What might have been a series of contrasts is a unity, and from every constituent of
this unity each act proceeds.  "Wild and rest"less.. feverish and intensely anxious... ter296




LITTLE NELL


"ribly eager... ravenous for the paltry stakes
"... gambling with such a savage thirst for gain
"as the most insatiable gambler never felt, he
"had not one selfish thought."   After that
horrible night at the Valiant Soldier, when her
grandfather has crept into her room and taken
her money, Nell goes down to his bedroom. He
lies "fast asleep. No passion in the face, no
"avarice, no anxiety, no wild desire-all gentle,
" all tranquil, all at peace. This was not the
" gambler, or the shadow in her room; this was
"not even the worn and jaded man whose face
"had so often met her own in the grey morning
"light; this was her dear old friend, her harm"less fellow-traveller, her good, kind grand" father."
Enough has not been made of Nell's strength
and equality with danger. She overhears the
conversation between her father and the gipsies
when, in order to continue the gambling, he
promises to break open Mrs. Jarley's money-box,
and the child's promptitude is that of a great
soldier. That same night, " half-undressed, and
"with her hair in wild disorder, she flew to the
"old man's bedside, clasped him by the wrist,
"and roused him from his sleep.
297




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


"' What's this?' he cried, starting up in bed,
"and fixing his eyes upon her spectral face.
"' I have had a dreadful dream,' said the child,
"with an energy that nothing but such terrors
"could have inspired-' a dreadful, horrible
"'dream! I have had it once before. It is a
"'dream of grey-haired men like you, in dark"' ened rooms by night, robbing the sleepers of
"'their gold. Up, up!' The old man shook
"in every joint, and folded his hands like one
"who prays.
" 'Not to me,' said the child, 'not to me-to
"'Heaven to save us from such deeds! This
"'dream is too real. I cannot sleep-I cannot
" 'stay here-I cannot leave you alone under
"'the roof where such dreams come. Up! we
"'must fly.'
" He looked at her as if she were a spirit- she
"might have been for all the look of earth she
"had-and trembled more and more.
"'There is no time to lose; I will not lose
" 'one minute,' said the child. 'Up! and away
"'with me!
"' To-night?' murmured the old man.
"'Yes, to-night,' replied the child.  'To"'morrow night will be too late. The dream
298




LITTLE NELL


" 'will have come again. Nothing but flight can
"' save us. Up! '"
Her courage is not masculine but womanly.
She " looked back on the sleeping town, deep in
"the valley's shade; and on the far-off river,
"with its winding track of light; and on the dis" tant hills; and as she did so, she clasped the
"hand she held less firmly, and bursting into
"tears, fell upon the old man's neck."  Then
follows the journey in the canal boat, which two
great artists whom I have had the privilege of
knowing considered to be one of the greatest
passages in modern English picture-story. Nell
is almost overmastered.  She does not know
whither she is flying. If she could have seen any
refuge in front of her she would have persevered
in hope, but at every halting-place only one certainty becomes clear in the darkness, that she
must increase the distance between her and the
horror behind her.  They are forced to take
shelter in a doorway from the rain at night. After
sleeping by an engine-furnace, they journey
through the dreadful suburbs of a manufacturing town, where "on every side, and as far as the
"eye could see into the heavy distance, tall
"chimnies, crowding on each other, and pre299




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


"senting that endless repetition of the same
"dull, ugly form which is the horror of oppres"sive dreams, poured out their plague of smoke,
"obscured the light, and made foul the melan"choly air."  They were obliged to lie down
at night by the roadside. She had no fear for
herself, "for she was past it now." Their food
during the day had been a penny loaf, and when
morning came their last penny was spent on
another loaf. She was too faint to touch it, but
her grandfather ate greedily, "which she was
"glad to see."  They dragged themselves on
till they came to a town, and had reached the
last street when "the child felt that the time
"was close at hand when her enfeebled powers
"would bear no more. There appeared before
"them at this juncture, going in the same direc"tion as themselves, a traveller on foot, who,
"with a portmanteau strapped to his back, leaned
"upon a stout stick as he walked, and read
"from a book which he held in his other hand.
"It was not an easy matter to come up with
"him and beseech his aid, for he walked fast,
"and was at a little distance in advance. At
" length he stopped, to look more attentively at
"some passage in his book.  Animated with
300




LITTLE NELL


"a ray of hope, the child shot on before her
"grandfather, and going close to the stranger
"without rousing him by the sound of her foot"steps, began, in a few faint words, to implore
"his help. He turned his head. The child
"clapped her hands together, uttered a wild
"shriek, and fell senseless at his feet."
He it was who befriended them when they had
fled from Codlin and Short and the horrors of
the racecourse. He had been appointed clerk
and schoolmaster in a distant village with a
salary of five-and-thirty pounds a year. He takes
the two travellers with him when Nell has recovered, and finds a home for them next to his
own. This is the turning-point. Here then is
the ancient gospel. From between the horns of
the wild oxen, between their horns, has she been
snatched. No nobler version of this gospel has
been given than that in the Old Curiosity Shop.
The Odyssey tells the same story when Ulysses
struggles for two days and nights in the Phceacian Sea, foreboding death, and is saved at his
last extremity by the scarf of Ino and the thought
which Athene put in his heart. Frederick the
Great was a believer in it after the battle of
Kunersdorf, although at the moment of defeat
30I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


he prayed somebody might put a bullet through
him; but Ulysses and Frederick were great
heroes, and little Nell was a tender girl. It
may be objected that the interposition of the
schoolmaster is a lucky miracle. Not more so
than the scarf of Ino, the thought from Athene,
or the death of Elizabeth of Russia. The miracle comes or the end comes. The end often
does come, the man is crushed; but often also
at his last gasp it is the miracle which comes.
I cannot pass by the journey in the waggon,
for it is a lovely picture of a time in which
the hurry was not so great as it is now, and
I can certify to its accuracy in every detail.
"What a soothing, luxurious, drowsy way of
" travelling, to lie inside that slowly moving
"mountain, listening to the tinkling of the
"horses' bells, the occasional smacking of the
"carter's whip, the smooth rolling of the great
"broad wheels, the rattle of the harness, the
" cheery good-nights of passing travellers jogging
"past on little short-stepped horses-all made
c" pleasantly indistinct by the thick awning, which
"seemed made for lazy listening under till one
"fell asleep! The very going to sleep, still with
"an indistinct idea, as the head jogged to and
302




LITTLE NELL


"fro upon the pillow, of moving onward with no
"trouble or fatigue, and hearing all these sounds
"like dreamy music, lulling to the senses-and
"the slow waking-up, and finding one's self
"staring out through the breezy curtain half"opened in the front, far up into the cold,
"bright sky with its countless stars, and down"wards at the driver's lantern dancing on like
"its namesake, Jack of the swamps and marshes,
"and sideways at the dark, grim trees, and for"ward at the long, bare road rising up, up, up,
"until it stopped abruptly at a sharp, high ridge,
"as if there were no more road, and all beyond
"was sky-and the stopping at the inn to bait,
"and being helped out, and going into a room
" with fire and candles, and winking very much,
"and being agreeably reminded that the night
"was cold, and anxious for very comfort's sake
"to think it colder than it was!-What a
"delicious journey was that journey in the
" waggon.
"Then the going on again-so fresh at first,
"and shortly afterwards so sleepy. The waking
"from a sound nap as the mail came dashing
" past like a highway comet, with gleaming lamps
"and rattling hoofs, and visions of a guard
3o3




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


"behind, standing up to keep his feet warm,
"and of a gentleman in a fur cap opening his
"eyes and looking wild and stupefied - the
"stopping at the turnpike, where the man was
"gone to bed, and knocking at the door until
"he answered with a smothered shout from
" under the bedclothes in the little room above
"where the faint light was burning, and pre"sently came down, nightcapped and shivering,
"to throw the gate wide open, and wish all
"waggons off the road except by day. The
"cold, sharp interval between night and morn"ing-the distant streak of light widening and
"spreading, and turning from grey to white, and
"from white to yellow, and from yellow to
"burning red-the presence of day, with all its
"cheerfulness and life-men and horses at the
"plough-birds in the trees and hedges, and
"boys in solitary fields, frightening them away
"with rattles. The coming to a town-people
"busy in the market; light carts and chaises
"round the tavern yard; tradesmen standing at
"their doors; men running horses up and down
"the street for sale; pigs plunging and grunting
"in the dirty distance, getting off with long
"strings at their legs, running into clean
304




LITTLE NELL


"chemists' shops, and being dislodged with
"brooms by 'prentices; the night-coach changing
"horses-the passengers cheerless, cold, ugly
"and discontented, with three months' growth
"of hair in one night-the coachman fresh as
"from a bandbox. and exquisitely beautiful by
"contrast, so much bustle, so many things in
"motion, such a variety-of incidents -when
" was there a journey with so many delights as
"that journey in a waggon?"
I have quoted this passage at length because
it is characteristic of Dickens. It shows what
pleasure he got out of common objects which
were not necessarily poetical. They were not
loved for the sake of any higher spiritual beauty
of which they were suggestive, but just because
they were waggons, turnpikes, pigs, and coaches
expressive in one way or another of life. If
we wish to diminish the dullness of ordinary
existence, this surely must be to us a great
merit in Dickens. Consider all the types of
character and all the things he has made interesting to us. Even a London fog is more endurable,
remembering its description at the opening of
Bleak House.
When the end of the journey is reached and
3~5




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


the schoolmaster is obliged to leave Nell and
her grandfather for a little while, he offers to
conduct them to the inn, but Nell prefers to
wait for him in the church porch, a stroke which
we may call a tint of colour in the western sky,
a precursor of sunset. A convent or monastery had once been attached to the church.
" Forming a part of the ruin which some pains
" had been taken to render habitable in modern
"times were two small dwellings with sunken
"windows and oaken doors, fast hastening to
"decay, empty and desolate." One of these
was to be the schoolmaster's and the other
Nell's and her grandfather's. A change which
had gradually stolen on her is completed in this
quiet place surrounded by death. "She thought
"as she sat one day in the church of the summer
"days and the bright springtime that would
"come-of the rays of sun that would fall in
"aslant upon the sleeping forms-of the leaves
"that would flutter at the window, and play in
"glistening shadows on the pavement-of the
"songs of birds, and growth of buds and blossoms
"out of doors-of the sweet air that would steal
"in, and gently wave the tattered banners over"head. What if the spot awakened thoughts
306




LITTLE NELL


"of death! Die who would, it would still re"main the same; these sights and sounds would
"still go on as happily as ever. It would be
"no pain to sleep amidst them."  Here again
is a creed to which we must come if we are
to find peace.  We must be content that
although we sleep the beauty of the world will
continue.
" Yet will the living Presence still subsist
"Victorious *  *  *    *   *:' And kindlings like the morning."
Observe that little Nell consoles herself
with a faith which is given to none but the
strongest, and that it is in harmony with her
life. From the common creeds she gets little
or nothing.
A great change was wrought in the grandfather towards the end.  One morning Nell
was weeding the graves with her grandfather.
The old bachelor who looked on asked her
if she was going to do more than weed
those of the children and young people,
and Nell replied simply "c We shall come to
"the others in good time, sir": "a slight
"incident," says Dickens. and he seems purposely to exaggerate its unimportance. But it
307




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


strangely affected the grandfather. He pressed
Nell to his side and bade her stop to rest.
"Something he had long forgotten appeared
"'to struggle faintly in his mind" which did
not pass away. He laid her head on his
arm, patted her cheek, and "muttered that
" she grew stronger every day and would be a
" woman soon..." " From that time there
" sprung up in the old man's mind a solicitude
"about the child which never slept or left
"him. There are chords in the human heart"strange, varying strings-which are only struck
"by accident; which will remain mute and
"senseless to appeals the most passionate and
"earnest, and respond at last to the slightest
"casual touch. In the most insensible or
"childish minds there is some train of reflection
"which art can seldom lead or skill assist, but
"which will reveal itself, as great truths have
" done, by chance, and when the discoverer
"has the plainest and simplest end in view
"From that time the old man never for a
" moment forgot the weakness and devotion of
"the child; from the time of that slight inci" dent. he who had seen her toiling by his side
" through so much difficulty and suffering, and
30o8




LITTLE NELL


" had scarcely thought of her otherwise than as
"the partner of miseries which he felt severely
"in his own person, and deplored for his own
"sake at least as much as hers, awoke to a sense
"of what he owed her, and what those miseries
"had made her. Never, no, never once in one
" unguarded moment from that time to the end,
"did any care for himself, any thought of his
"own comfort, any selfish consideration or re"gard, distract his thoughts from the gentle
"object of his love."
I wish to call your attention to this passage.
Some of the religious sects make much of what
is called conversion. It is not so prominent in
the Church of England, but amongst Dissenters
men and women who have led an irreligious or
even an immoral life often are, or perhaps it is
more correct to say often were, in times gone by,
suddenly turned from indifference, disbelief, and
evil ways to an earnest and practical faith in
Christianity. We have examples of this miraculous or semi-miraculous change in the New
Testament, the most striking perhaps being
that wrought in Saul of Tarsus who, breathing
threatening and slaughter against the disciples
of the Lord, was struck to the earth by a light
309




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


out of heaven and heard the voice of Him he
had persecuted; light and voice with no argument turning the persecutor into the Apostle
to the Gentiles.  The cause of the change
in the old man could not have been and
never can be really insufficient. It may in this
case have been a look, and we know that a look
can melt a man's heart. The conversion of the
grandfather is better than the conversion of the
sects. It is brought about by human means,
using the word human as it is commonly used,
and it is not a selfish anxiety for the salvation
of his own soul, but a disappearance of self in
love.
[The chairman, Miss Sybil Peck, rose and
said she hoped the lecturer would pardon
the interruption, but she was obliged to
warn him that by the rules of the Hesperus
Club theological subjects were prohibited.
He had not, strictly speaking, transgressed
at present, but he had almost assumed the
possibility of something happening which was
not the result of the operation of the common
laws of nature, and there were many amongst
his audience to whom such an assumption
would be offensive. The lecturer bowed and
3 0




LITTLE NELL


replied that he would be most careful not to
wound anybody's feelings, and would therefore
omit some remarks he had intended to make on
common and uncommon laws and common and
uncommon people, including two or three somewhat irrelevant observations on Mr. Browning's
Ned BratIs, or rather Mr. Browning's version of
Bunyan's Ned Bratts. These remarks and observations were of no particular importance, and
might not improve the reception of his address.]
Many of the readers of the Old Curiosity Shop
wished that Dickens would have saved Nell, but
of course he could not. I am incapable of quoting the last scenes, but I will dare to say, since
I have been anticipated by a critic who was not
given to excess of praise, that the exhibition by
the grandfather of the child's shoes kept in remembrance of her last journey and his directions
to note the holes where her cut and bruised feet
went bare on the ground, she walking behind
him that he might not see how lame she was,
is not unworthy of King Lear.  I have read
somewhere that Dickens cheats us of our tears.
If by this is meant that he uses artifices to procure emotion which is not genuine, the charge is
wickedly false. He makes us acknowledge what
3"I




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


we rarely feel and more rarely confess, and the
acknowledgement does us good. What Dickens
wrote he felt, every line of it.
" Fast shortening," says Forster, " as the life
"of little Nell was now, the dying year might
"have seen it pass away; but I never knew him
"wind up any tale with such a sorrowful reluct"ance as this. He caught at any excuse to
' hold his hand from it, and stretched to the
"utmost limit the time left to complete it in.
"Christmas interposed its delays too, so that
"Twelfth-night had come and gone when I wrote
"to him in the belief that he was nearly done.
"'Done!' he wrote back to me on Friday the
" 7th, ' Done!!!' 'Why, bless you, I shall not
" 'be done till Wednesday night. I only began
"'yesterday, and this part of the story is not to
" 'be galloped over, I can tell you.... but
"' I am the wretchedest of the wretched. It casts
"'the most horrible shadow upon me, and it is
"'as much as I can do to keep moving at all.
"' I tremble to approach the place a great deal
"'more than Kit; a great deal more than Mr.
"' Garland; a great deal more than the single
"'gentleman.  I shan't recover it for a long
"' time. Nobody will miss her like I shall. It
312




LITTLE NELL


"'is such a very painful thing to me, that I
"' really cannot express my sorrow. Old wounds
"' bleed afresh when I only think of the way of
" 'doing it; what the actual doing it will be, God
"' knows.'"
A few words in conclusion. The quotations
in my address may seem to have been too long,
but you will perhaps forgive me if you will call
to mind that my subject is not very familiar to
you. Had you been readers of Dickens I could
have relied on your memory. Besides, I think
it ought to be the object of lecturers or essayists,
talking or writing about a great man, to stimulate
people to read him, to show them in his own
words what he is, and not to use him as an
opportunity for displaying themselves. For my
own part, I have seldom found brilliant critical
essays of much use to me. I always look out
for the inverted commas. The writer imposes
his judgement on mine, and often he is not
sincere but perverted by eagerness for effect.
It may not be amiss in these days of selections,
of wide and rapid reading and of books upon
books, if I turn aside to caution you that you
cannot penetrate character until you have tried
to find out for yourselves everything, small as
313




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


well as great, which can be discovered about it.
The secret often lies in little facts, chance expressions upon which we stumble after months
or perhaps years of research. Dickens, as I
have said before, intends Nell to be not only
a pathetic but a heroic figure, and this heroic
figure is of the saintly type. Her history is
a Pilgrim's Progress. She, being a child, knows
nothing of Christian's temptations, but she has
her own trials which she surmounts; she has
to face the River, and she is received into the
Celestial City. She is ideal: you have never
met with such a child amongst the children
you know; but is that a reason why she should
not have been painted? Is she of no use to
you because she is without blemish and without spot? The angels and women of Botticelli,
Carpaccio, and Burne Jones are not wasted
canvas and paint.
It is remarkable that such an example of true
sentiment, the anticipation of Nell's death, should
be immediately followed by a specimen of
Mr. Swiveller's emotion.  He winds black
crape round his hat, pinning it like an undertaker's hatband, and laments his desertion by
Miss Sophy Wackles, the dear gazelle who
314




LITTLE NELL


married a market-gardener.  Mr. Swiveller's
sentiment casts no doubt on that of the preceding chapter. I must not now be tempted
to talk to you about this wonderful creature,
Dick. I should like to try to disentangle the
threads which draw us to love him, although
the art and complexity with which they are
woven would make the task difficult.  Observe, however, that in none of his books is
the humour of Dickens better than in the
Old Curiosity Shop; in none is there a more
refined tenderness, and yet in no part of the
story are we disturbed by contrast. We pass
without a jar from little Nell and her grandfather and the old schoolmaster to Codlin,
Short, Vuffin  and  his giants.  Sometimes
comedy and tragedy are inseparable, as for
example when Codlin and Short unpack their
box in the churchyard and Punch is stuck
crosslegged on a tombstone, "his nose and
" chin as hooked and his face as beaming as
" usual."
Much injustice is often done by setting up
a claim for people which they do not set up
for themselves, and criticizing them harshly
because they fall short of it. We should get
315




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


on much better with them and be much happier
if we did not worry them and worry ourselves
because they are not what they never can be,
and if we would but accept them for what they
were intended to be. The foolish and illegal
demand we make on them prevents us from
seeing their real intention and rejoicing in
it. The maxim may sound trite, but really it
is not trite. If you try to put it in practice
on child, friend, or servant you will find
it terribly original. It is true of books. The
Times newspaper, May 23, i908, says of
Tolstoy's War and Peace that the author has
"given a picture of the life of a whole nation
"such as no other hand has painted or could
"paint; a picture more real than Les Miserables,
"far truer and less limited than David Copper"field, and more comprehensive than Vanity
"Fair." We reply that Dickens never attempted
to give "a picture of the life of a whole nation,"
and would never have dreamed of competing
in any way with Tolstoy. Dickens was sent
into this world by the Almighty-[murmurs of
disapproval. The Chairman said this form of
expression had better be avoided]-came into
this world to do something which nobody had
316




LITTLE NELL


done before, and he did it well. Let us be
grateful and not churlishly disparage the gift
with a growl that it is not so good as the
Russian novel. Comparisons are such idle
work! In fact, of all the idle work done on
our planet they are the idlest. They are a
tempting opportunity for vanity. You will be
sure to get attention if you lecture or write an
essay on the contrast between Dryden and
Shelley, their points of resemblance, and the
superiority of one over the other; but you will
not contribute one iota to the understanding
of either.
This address, however, is not intended as
an argument to persuade you that the Old
Curiosity Shop is worth reading. The longer
I live the more fully I am convinced that
argument on almost any subject is folly, certainly argument whether a book is good or
bad, whether the stars, sea, or Turner's Fighting
Temeraire are worth looking at. The generation of opinions is an operation of Nature of
which, perhaps, in a less degree than any other
is it possible to discover the law. Nevertheless
the expression of our thoughts cannot be
avoided. It is an instinct which answers some
317




PAGES FROM A TOURNAL


unknown purpose, and I obey it in coming here
this evening.
Miss Sybil Peck who was in the chair, rose
and said she was sure they would all unite in
thanking the lecturer for his address. She was
bound to say it was interesting, although she
confessed she had not read much of Dickens'
and was not sympathetic with him. She would
like to hear what the lecturer had to say about
Ned Bratts. This work of a very great modern
poet was one amongst many others of his poems
which she did not understand, although she admired its pictorial power. She hoped they would
see the lecturer again, and that he would then be
able to expound some writer who deals with the
deeper passions and profounder problems which
agitate the hearts and minds of this century (ajpplause). She must protest against a remark on
pondering and reflecting. She thought it most
important, especially for young people, to cultivate
definite mental activity and to beware of what
the lecturer called pondering, which was in fact
nothing but dreaming. She was also compelled
to object to his observations on the description
of the journey in the waggon. It seemed to her
318




LITTLE NELL


that without ideas and the higher emotions
human life was not superior to that of a dog
(mutch applause). The poetical illustration of the
little girl's thoughts in the graveyard, although
it came from Tennyson ', a Victorian poet nonsignificant to her (Miss Sybil Peck), was at any
rate an attempt to express her own non-egoistic
creed and was welcome.
The vote of thanks was carried unanimously.
1 Miss Sybil Peck is mistaken; it is to be found in
Wordsworth's Prelude, Book V, 11. 34-36.


319




A HOME-MADE RELIGION
(Reiprinted by permission from the " Nation" of
January i, 9 10.)
SUSAN STAPLETON was the daughter of
a country doctor who practised at Haling,
in the Eastern Midlands. She was now about
five-and-forty years old. Her father died twentyfive years ago, and her mother had died ten
years earlier. After her father's death she found
she could no longer remain in Haling. Its
associations were painful, and she was obliged to
economise. She went to her old friends, Mr.
and Mrs. Barfield, of Lower Hatch Farm, about
two miles from Haling, and the visit, which at
first was to be for a month, had been lengthened,
until it was clear that, unless anything quite unforeseen happened, she would end her days there.
320




A HOME-MADE RELIGION


She had plenty to do, although she did not
encroach on Mrs. Barfield's domain of poultry
and butter. She looked after the linen, kept
Mr. Barfield's accounts, and did part of the
cooking, at which she was an expert.
Lower Hatch Farm was at the end of a narrow
lane, which expanded into three or four acres of
idle, grassy field or meadow, in which stood
three or four big elms. At the side was a large
pond, in which geese and ducks disported themselves. The silence of this remote corner of the
earth, save for the natural noises belonging to it,
was almost complete.  Miss Stapleton had a
quick ear, and with a south-west wind could distinguish the mill half a mile below. The music
of the brook falling on the overshot wheel and
escaping into the mill-pond rose and fell, at one
moment distinct and the next dying down to
nothing. At night, when the mill was not working, she could just hear the water tumbling over
the weir. Strange to say, considering this was
the first half of the last century, she slept with
her windows open.
Miss Stapleton read few books besides her
Bible. This she read thoroughly and believed
unhesitatingly.  It never entered her head to
358               321             M




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


inquire if it was true. There the Gospel was,
like the blessed sun and rain. The sun was
hot in summer and ripened the corn; the rain
quenched the thirst of the fields. She did not
ask whence the sun drew his heat, nor how the
rain was stored in the clouds. She made for
the New Testament a background out of
materials which lay near the farm. Capernaum
Lake and Haling Mere, for example, were
curiously shot in her mind, one with the other,
like some woven fabric of diverse but related
colours. Nothing in the New Testament was
foreign to the fields at Lower Hatch. At times
one might almost see Jesus kneeling on the hill at
the end of the Mere and praying Our Father.
One evening, just before harvest-time, Miss
Stapleton was walking home from Haling. The
footpath led through two cornfields, and she
thought of our Lord and of the disciples plucking
the ears of corn. The picture was wonderfully
bright. She saw herself behind Him, and yet
edging as near as possible, so that she might not
miss a word. He stopped and looked towards
the west, over the motionless wheat, and shaded
His eyes from the rays of the sun near to its
setting.  The vision reappeared  in all its
322




A HOME-MADE RELIGION


splendour and beauty every harvest-time when
she went through those fields. Nor was it
wholly confined to that season, but whenever
she sat on one of the stiles, although it might be
a still, gloomy day in November, and a wet fog
hung low, she could plainly discern the sun and
the ripening corn and her Master.
Haling Mere, Lower Hatch Farm, the harvest
fields, and her dreams of Jesus had something
to do, in Miss Stapleton's mind, with religion,
although she could not define what it was. When
she lived with them no evil came near her.
Miss Stapleton was not only contented, she
was happy, at the farm. If ever she went away
from it, she rejoiced like a child to return. Her
heart beat freely again when she was back in
her own bedroom. At last she was obliged to
go to town on some legal business, which kept
her there three or four days, including a Sunday. She did not know a soul in London, and
she put up at an hotel at which Mr. Barfield
had stayed years ago. He went with her, but
was obliged to go back the same day, for it was
haytime, and everybody was very busy. She
could not rest, and went out. She was bewildered, giddy, and hardly knew what she was
323




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


doing. The few people whom she now and
then met in Lower Hatch Lane were distinct
persons, and had personal errands. Here in
the streets there was no personality. She beheld a mass of humanity, driven like dust by
a desert storm. The place seemed mad. Her
head began to turn, and she wondered which was
the real world, Lower Hatch or Oxford Street.
She seldom thought of death at home, and it
never weighed upon her. When she did think
of it, she imagined herself dying in her own
bedroom, looking sunward across the front
garden and the farmyard. The voice of the
mill or the weir would come to her pillow, the
last sound she would hear in this world. In that
dingy hotel, confused and deafened, death laid
hold of her with a grip like that of a nightmare.
She had a New Testament in her bag, and
before she went down to breakfast the next
morning she read about Jesus walking by the
Sea of Galilee and calling Simon and Andrew,
James and John. She did not know what to
make of it. They straightway left their nets and
followed Hitm. It could never have been. She
looked out of the window. Where was Capernaum? How could she pray "Thy kingdom
324




A HOME-MADE RELIGION


come?" As already noticed, in the common
acceptation of the word, she did not doubt.
But London contradicted the gospels, and belief
had fled.
On Sunday she went to chapel, and found
a large and fashionable congregation.  The
preacher was eloquent, and his sermon was an
attempt to prove the necessary existence of God.
He evidently succeeded to the satisfaction of his
hearers, and everybody who listened was much
comforted. But Miss Stapleton could not comprehend a single sentence. She said to herself
that perhaps she was not a Christian. Perhaps
it required more brains than she possessed to be
one. The preacher not only did not help her
in any way, but afflicted her. She was troubled
to find that she was totally unmoved by an
exposition of her faith from an eminent minister
of God's word.
She went back to Lower Hatch next Saturday
morning, and lay in her own bed that night and
listened to the weir before she fell asleep.
Gradually, although it took a long time, she
came to herself. Without internal argument,
Capernaum and Jesus were restored to her, and
she was at peace.


325


WM 3




FAITH


(Reprinted, with corrections, by permission, from
the "VNalion" of April 2, 91 0.)
M    R. JAMES PARSONS, when he left off
watch and clockmaking in Cornhill,
retired to Axhaven, a little town on the seacoast. He had taken a fancy to Axhaven when
he was young. His watches and clocks were
known all over the world for the accuracy of
their performance. He was very proud of them,
and, although his business was profitable, refused to part with it. He had no son to whom
he could leave it. A handsome offer was made
for the use of his name, but he could not be
tempted. " No watch nor clock," said he, " shall
"bear my name which has not passed through
" my hands." He was only sixty years old when
326




FAITH


he bade farewell to Cornhill, but even then he
dreaded lest his later work should be found
unequal to his earlier. " Ah! if you can only get
"one of the watches or clocks he made before
"he began to fail a bit," was often in his ears.
His watch and clockmaking had led him to
take an interest in astronomy. He had a reflecting telescope, a transit instrument, and an
astronomical clock in his back garden at Stockwell, and he took them to Axhaven. Often
when not a sound was to be heard save the
mysterious salute of the owl far up the narrow
valley, he spent hours on clear nights with his
reflector, calmed and awed by the spectacle
which unfolded itself before him. He aimed at
no particular scientific results. He was content
merely to look.
The transit instrument was used for checking
the clock's rate. For thousands of years had
time been marked to a second by those eternal
stars for Chinese and Assyrians, Greeks, Romans,
and Arabians.
One day in August, Parsons set out for a walk
to a village five miles distant.  The shortest
road lay across the shallow basin of the outlet
to the river, which was so twisted at that point
327




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


that often it was quite calm inside when outside
it was rough. Within three hours of high water
the river was fordable. The middle of the
estuary, in consequence of a rise in the river
bed, was dry for some time after low water, and
was surmounted by a huge stone or smooth
rock, the top of which at neap tide was never
quite submerged. At a distance of about twenty
feet on each side ran a fairly deep channel.
When Parsons came to the river on his way
home, it was about half-past three in the afternoon, and the neap tide had just begun to flow.
It was intensely hot and sultry. He crossed the
first channel, and lay down to rest for a moment
on the sand under the rock. Alas! tired out
with his long tramp and the heat, he fell fast
asleep. When he woke it was dusk, and the sun
had just set. The water where he was sitting
had risen very nearly to his waistcoat pocket, or
almost to his knees when he stood up. Instantly
he waded to the edge of each channel. They
were both out of his depth, and he could not
swim. There was no house within a mile and a
half of him, and no chance of making himself
heard by any traveller. Nobody would be using
the road in that state of the tide. He retreated
328




FAITH


to the rock and began to think. He had found
before he started that it was high water at the
ford at 8.57 p.m. that day. Of course there
were small irregularities due to wind, but when
the water was so glassy calm as it was that
evening, you could always rely on the almanac.
His watch showed 7.30 p.m. He placed it in a
hollow in the stone on a level with his eyes. It
had bold, black figures, so that he could read it
in the faintest glimmer of light. If it was really
7.30, the tide would continue to rise for an hour
and twenty-seven minutes only, and he was certain that at the rate at which it was rising it
would not touch his lips. If the watch had
gained; if, say, it was actually 7.20, the tide
would flow for ten minutes longer and he might
possibly be drowned. He could trust the perfect little instrument unhesitatingly. He did
not suffer much from cold, for the water was
almost tepid, and he believed he could endure
without much difficulty. Up to eight o'clock
he was at peace.
Suddenly he was assaulted with horrible fears.
He had not taken an observation for six weeks,
and the watch might have gained. This was
a fact, a worthless fact, but the more worthless
329




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


the fact, the more the Devil delights in using
it. The watch had often gone for months
without alteration, and had never been wrong
by so much as a minute. Ten minutes in
less than an hour and a half was preposterous-but there was the fact! "You cannot
"get over it."  Again and again he tried to
repeat the reasons in favour of his watch. They
were overwhelming, but his nerves shook, his
brain was in confusion, and he made sure he
should faint and drop. A ghastly dread, such as
he had never known in his life, paralyzed him.
He pictured himself lying on the sand down
there; and then he saw himself carried home in
a cart to-morrow.
The stars had now appeared. There was the
great Bootes sloping silently to the west; and
there was Arcturus. The thought of his observatory stayed with him for a moment: that was
the same Bootes, the same Arcturus. He looked
again at his watch: it was 8.30, and the desperate struggle continued. With all his might
he fought: he stiffened himself, and drew his
arms rigidly down beside him. Lo! in an instant his faith was restored; the flutter of his
heart ceased; the adversary spread his wings
330




FAITH


and was seen no more. He was able to measure
mentally and near enough for assurance; the
water was exactly the height it ought to be. He
could now quietly watch the constellation and
the star declining. At 8.50 the tide was round
his neck, but he was undisturbed. He threw
back his head a trifle: at 8.58-it was within a
minute-the slow, upward, unruffled creep had
ceased. At 9.15 he heard the beat of oars. A
coastguard boat was coming down with the tide
and took him on board.
Parsons, when he told the story, used to say
the adventure was a trial of his faith. It was
rightly named. If he could have been asked in
the midst of his terror whether he believed in
his watch, he would have assented without hesitation. He must believe it. How could he
mistrust hundreds of tests. Doubt would be an
insult, almost a crime. Nevertheless his belief
was impotent. Faith was wanting. Faith is not
belief in fact, demonstration, or promise. It is
sensibility to the due influence of the fact, something which enables us to act upon it, the susceptibility to all the strength there is in the fact,
so that we are controlled by it. Nobody can
precisely define it. It was faith, asserting itself,
331




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


which saved the watchmaker. It was faith,
essentially the same, which brought Mackenzie
on the deck of the foundering " Pegasus," which
called the crew and passengers round him, which
hushed them all, facing death, which sang and
prayed with them till the vessel sank. All we
can say about it is that it comes by the grace of
God, and that failure to see the truth is not so
lamentable as failure to be moved by it.
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. If you
ever see a Parsons watch, buy it. Sell something
for it if you have not got the ready money.
When you have bought it, stand by it; train
yourself by never doubting it. Do not alter it
on the authority of any other watch nor of any
clock; no, not even if it be church or cathedral.


332




SOME LETTERS


MY DEAREST MIMI,-I am glad you are out
of the way of all the confusion. The bricklayers
have gone. They have smothered the books
with dust, and we have had to take them down,
brush them at the window, and wipe the shelves.
I was sick of the job and wished the whole
library, with the exception perhaps of two or
three presents and heirlooms, had been sold.
It has been gradually collected during the last
five-and-twenty years out of scanty savings, and
I have read every volume. I ask myself what
have they profited me? Certainly the profit now
to come will be next to nothing. They have
given me a multitude of ideas and fancies, but
one abolishes the other and I am no nearer
certainties of any consequence than I should
have been if I had stuck to my work and amused
myself with the newspaper or a novel. Soon
after you went I took up Hume's Dialogues on
333




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


atlural Religion. As a piece of dialectic there
is nothing superior to it, but when I lift up my
eyes from the printed page and look out of the
window at the hills far away, at the outline of
the tops of the trees round the field, the discussion seems irrelevant.  "By this argument,"
says Demea, " we may prove the Infinity of the
" divine attributes; " but what is Infinity? It is
a mere word, expressive, in the Dialogues at any
rate, of no reality, a verbal trick. The Dialogues
may have been useful in disturbing the " dogma" tic slumber " of tradition or conceit, but this is
not saying much for them.
I went for a long walk yesterday morning to
refresh myself for an hour or two with clear,
sweet air.  It was just the day for a stroll, not
too hot, and the hedges were washed with rain.
The peace of the fields was complete. At the
bottom of the hill where the footpath ends in
the lane that leads to Malden's Farm-you
know that corner-I sat on the stile by the
plank bridge close to the mill. The great overshot wheel went slowly round, the water from
the mill-pond passing through the trough on to
the top of the wheel, and then falling in the
brook and flowing with rippling content to the
river which will carry it to the sea. I gathered
334




SOME LETTERS


a bit of tall, flowering grass, and bethought myself that whatever I may doubt I am sure this is
beautiful. No scepticism can prevail against it.
Here is the Infinite, not in a void conception
of space or " attribute," but before my eyes,
included in what I hold in my hand.
0 Mimi! love also is " infinite," the love of
a man for a woman and of a woman for a man.
Mine is deeper, more mysterious now than it
was twenty years ago when the wedding-bells
were ringing and we drove to the railway station
at Hilding Fen on our way to Scoresby and
Cromer.   We had first-class tickets for that
journey, but could not get a carriage to ourselves
till we changed at the Junction. There we
found one empty. Do you recollect taking off
your glove and holding up to me the hand with
the wedding ring? Twenty years ago! and our
love is still profound, inexplicable.  It is not
to be resolved into passion or friendship; it is
simply love, immortal love*   *   *   " Strong as death."
*     *     *     *     *
"Many waters cannot quench love,
"Neither can the floods drown it."
I shall rejoice when you return, but meanwhile
you are better away. T.
335




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


DEAREST ToM,-Your letter was like yourself. You know what sort of a place my aunt's
is. She is as good as gold and most affectionate, but her way of life distracts me. I suppose
that in a country village it cannot be otherwise.
She has to visit all the people near her who are
considered to be on a level with her, and they
visit her. She does not care for any of them,
and I do not believe that one of them, excepting perhaps her old friend Mrs. Farmer, will be
sorry for more than ten minutes after hearing
of her death. You and I can hardly conceive
a world such as hers. Imagine, if possible, a
society of a score of well-to-do people who never
open a book, excepting the Prayer Book and
Bible on Sundays and a new novel now and
then on week-days, who have hardly heard the
name of any great English author, who have
never been arrested by a starry night, who have
never fought with a single mental or spiritual
difficulty, whose religion is that being sinners
Christ came to save them, and that if they
" believe," as they call it, they will go to heaven,
and if they do not believe they will go to
hell. Is not that plain and simple?  They
are kindly, and they are not stupid. I have
noticed over and over again that the heroines in
336




SOME LETTERS


stories and plays know nothing of philosophy
or art, and I admit that lack of acquaintance
with Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Turner ought
not to stand in the way of taking an interest in
my aunt's neighbours. Nevertheless, if ignorance
does not make them dull it adds to their dullness. I might be able to read about them, but
I could not live with them.
I do love the fields here. It is a corn-growing country. Yesterday I walked up the hill
to look at the wheat, which is to be carried tomorrow. It was in shocks, and the sheaves
leaned heavily against one another. The full
ripe ears bent down the straw, which is very
long this year, in curves of repose. Elsie took
some of the ears which "I must bring to papa."
They are to be tied up and put in the old blue
pot in your room. They will last through the
winter. She thinks " you will like that."
DEAREST MIMI,-It is good news that you
and the children are happy. The reason why
you find people interesting in books and plays
who are uninteresting in flesh and blood is that
in books and plays art comes in. Art, by the
way, has a use, although I do not like to talk
about a "use" of art. It shows us what we
337




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


might make of common objects. It teaches you
that you ought to see more in those trees, that
distance, those cows, barns, and labourers, than
you now see when you go out of doors.
You will not, perhaps, be surprised to hear
that Oakley and his wife are dead. The end
came somewhat suddenly, but he seemed to
have had a presentiment of it for some time.
You will remember that last autumn he spent
a day here with his wife. He and I sat in the
garden and smoked. He told me he had determined to set down as far as he could the truths
of the deeper kind 6f which he was assured;
not those of which he had been transiently sure,
but those which had worn well. He wanted to
have some record at hand to which he could
refer when he was getting old and weak, so that,
disregarding the impressions of inferior moments,
he might be able to say, thus I judged when 1
was better able to judge than I am now: this
I accept. He intended to include not only the
positive articles of his creed, but those which
are negative, such as denial of superstitions
which are apt to infect us when mental activity
slackens. We talked about the way in which
the book should be arranged, and he was going,
when he returned to London, to buy paper for
338




SOME LETTERS


it ruled in accordance with his directions and
also an index. I shall not easily forget that
afternoon. The great chestnut overshadowed
us; here and there in the wood below was a tinge
of golden brown on a beech changing for some
unknown reason in advance of its fellows, and
the sun had sunk so far that the clouds above
him were just touched with colour. Earth and
sky were fitting scenic surroundings to human,
tragic pathos.  I never saw him  again.  His
wife died last Wednesday.   She had been
ill, as you know, for weeks.  I have written
to her sister, but not a trace of the book can
be found, and perhaps it was never begun.
Oakley's scheme was admirable, although I
should not have been so careful as he would
have been to set down speculative propositions.
I should have considered lessons of experience
and what I have felt to be of greater moment.
For example, I would not have omitted one of
his observations that afternoon, which possibly
had some reference to his wife. Do not vex
yourself by trying to bend others to your own way,
especially those with whom you have to live. This
is not very original, but your mother told me
once that she used to pray God would preserve
her faith in the commonplace. I wish I had
339




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


tried to put into writing at the time certain
emotions of years ago. It would do me good
to warm myself at those fires. I have not forgotten the first sight of my Mimi before we had
spoken a word, but I should love a history in
detail of that day, a description of everything
that passed before me or within me. I know
you wore a dark blue gown, but, alas! I have
forgotten the rest of the company and what the
room was like. There are passages in our lives
of a different kind which we ought also to fix.
Every heroism of which we have been capable,
every victory over temptation ought to be enshrined. My brother, said Hopeful in the
dungeon of Giant Despair, rememberest thou not
how valiant thou hast been heretofore? Apollyon
could not crush thee, nor could all that thou didst
hear, or see, or feel in the Valley of the Shadow of
Death.
DEAREST TOM,-I am shocked to hear that
Oakley and his wife are dead. His projected
book is an immense loss if he could have told
the truth. I doubt if he could. His Roman
Catholic wife, I am sure, loved him dearly, and
he loved her. I think she became a convert
soon after her second child was born. What in340




SOME LETTERS


duced her to turn I never understood, although
we were intimate friends. People as a rule do
not take up with this or that religion through
any reasoning process, but their religion is
worth none the less because they do not.
Mrs. Leigh once said to me that she wondered
how Mr. and Mrs. Oakley, " holding such dif"ferent views, could get on together."  Mrs.
Leigh may have "views," but she has not got
beliefs, and therefore, I was about to add, is
just the kind of person to whom such a " view "
as that she expressed to me was natural. If
two persons disagree as to the truth of a particular, precise proposition, if the disagreement
follows on strenuous, solemn thought, and if the
proposition in itself is of enormous, daily and
eternal importance, it would be difficult for
these two persons to accommodate themselves
to one another. But religious truths, although
in a way so near, are so far away, a veil or
haze is over them and they cannot be sharply
defined.  Although he does not openly say
so, it is the substance which to the sincere
believer ennobles the form. Mrs. Oakley may
have become a Roman Catholic because she
found it impossible to obtain without the Catholic ritual something precious to her and equally
34'




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


precious to her husband, who called himself an
unbeliever.
DEAREST MIMI,-I enclose Jack's letter.
He is enthusiastic for what he calls Socialism,
but what he means by it or whether he knows
what he means I cannot say. The last time he
was here I asked him many questions, but he
could not answer them. The chief question
was whether, by any recombination of human
beings who were individually unchanged, he
confidently expected that much good would be
done. Would not the poor try to be rich?
would they hesitate to use, if they could, the
means to be rich which rich people use now?
The labourer in this village is as selfish as the
tradesman or the squire.  My objection, perhaps, would apply to'all attempts to improve
the world by political changes. I do not deny
that some of them may have been of service,
chiefly when they have relieved wrong which is
definite and can be once for all redressed; but
their efficacy has been exaggerated, and it is
foolish to expect them to cure evils which lie in
the very foundations of our nature.  At the
same time I am convinced that something which
goes by the name of Socialism will come. Un342




SOME LETTERS


til it is tried nobody can tell what it is. We do
not know what the simplest elements really are
till we have seen how they behave under vary
ing conditions.
I envy Jack's unhesitating ardour.  How
I curse this omnipresent doubt which gnaws the
root of action! I am not lazy or self-indulgent,
but I am paralyzed by scepticism. It is weakness, although it looks like wisdom. The greatest men are not affected by it. I sometimes
distrust my reason. Was it intended to be the
guide of life? Its main office seems to be the
generation of melancholy and despair. Possibly
impulse is surer than reason, impulse which pays
no attention to rational suggestion. The wave
does not hesitate to break upon the shore, but
hurls itself headlong in magnificent blindness.
The life of the cultivated class is a poor thing,
dreaming its day-dreams over Keats, Shelley,
and Byron. We are sicklied o'er with the pale
cast of thought. What should such fellows as
we do, crawling between earth and heaven? It
is not only in thinking but in doing that I am
so irresolute. Something presents itself which
looks as if it ought to be done, and immediately
afterwards it looks as if it ought not to be done,
or as if something else ought to be done first.
343




PAGES FROM A JOURNAL


DEAREST TOM,-I must come home. You
are in one of your moods. I am not conceited,
but I do know you get into them when I am
away. They are earth-fogs and will disappear
with a breath of wind. If you are going to carry
out what Oakley intended, I hope you will set
down disbelief in fogs. They are only a hundred or at most a few hundred yards thick, and
above them is the unclouded sun.  Patience,
patience; a little more climbing, and in a moment
when you least expect it they will lie beneath
you. I wish we could read fewer books. In
times past, when life was fuller and not so
narrowly circumscribed, they were not necessary as a means whereby men and women
might sharpen their wits. What is the use of
the endless presentations of the passion of love,
-thousands of volumes every year telling the
same story? When we have risen a little higher
books must in a great measure cease. Mere
book-convictions are unstable, and when we
imagine them to be sincere are not really so.
Hence the indecision and wavering of which
you so bitterly complain.  The convictions
which grow and grow out of life are seldom
reversed.




A LIST OF THE


WORLD'S
CLASSICS
Oxford University Press




THE WORLD'S CLASSICS
A SERIES in constant progress, containing over
four hundred volumes, and offering in a size
adapted for the pocket, and at a low price, the most
famous works in the English language, with more
than a few translations. Many of the volumes contain introductions by the best modern writers.
POCKET SIZE, 6 x 34 inches (as this list). Large
type, on thin opaque paper, in superfine art cloth.
A NUMBER of the volumes are also obtainable in
Pebble grain Moroccoette and in Natural grain
Morocco. These are specially recommended for
presentation.
THE VOLUMES are obtainable through any bookseller.
IN THE FOLLOWING LIST the books are classified as below:


Anthologies
Autobiography
Biography
Classics-Greek and Roman
Drama
Essays and Belles Lettres
Fiction (Short Stories are
grouped separately)
History


Letters
Literary Criticism
Philosophy and Science
Poetry
Politics, Political Theory,
and Political Economy
Religion
Short Stories
Travel and Topography


AN INDEX OF AUTHORS is given at the end of
the list.




THE
WORLD'S CLASSICS
PRINTED ON OXFORD INDIA PAPER
The following Works are obtainable in superfine
maroon cloth, gilt lettered on back,
gilt top, and marker.
TWO VOLUMES IN ONE
BORROW. Lavengro and Romany Rye.
MAUDE (AYLMER). Life of Tolstoy.
TOLSTOY. Anna Karenina. Translated by Louise
and Aylmer Maude.
TROLLOPE. Last Chronicle of Barset.,,     Orley Farm.
THREE VOLUMES IN ONE
DANTE. The Divine Comedy. Italian text and
translation by M. B. Anderson.
ENGLISH SHORT STORIES (Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries).
RABELAIS (FRANCOIS). Gargantua and Pantagruel.
TOLSTOY. War and Peace. Revised translation by
Louise and Aylmer Maude.




4             ' THE WORLD'S CLASSICS'
COMPLETE LIST OF THE SERIES
~ Anthologies
A BOOK OF AMERICAN VERSE. Selected and edited by A. C. VWard
(428).
A BOOK OF NARRATIVE VERSE. Compiled by V. H. Collins. Introduction by Edmund Blunden (350).
A BOOK OF SCOTTISH VFRSE. Compiled by R. L. Mlackie (417).
AMERICAN CRITICISM. Representative Literary Essays. Chosen
by Norman Foerster (354).,ENGLISH ESSAYS, chosen and arranged by W. Peacock (32).
ENGLISH ESSAYS, I600-1900, chosen by S. V. Makower and B. H.
Blackwell (172).
ENGLISH ESSAYS, MODERN. Two Series. Selected by H. S.
Milford (280, 406).
ENGLISH PROSE from MANDEVILLE to RUSKIN, chosen and arranged
by W. Peacock (45).
ENGLISH PROSE, chosen and arranged by W. Peacock in 5 volumes:
I, WYCLIFFE to CLARENDON; II, MILTON to GRAY; III, WALPOLE to LAMB; IV, LANDOR to HOLMES; V, MRS. GASKELL to
HENRY JAMES (219-23).
ENGLISH PROSE, Narrative, Descriptive, Dramatic (MALORY to
STEVENSON), compiled by H. A. Treble (204).
ENGLISH SONGS AND BALLADS, compiled by T. W. H. Crosland.
New edition, w;th the text revised, and additional poems (I3).
ENGLISH SHORT STORIES (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries),
selected by H. S. Milford. Three Series (I93, 228, 315).
ENGLISH VERSE. Edited by W. Peacock. 1, Early Lyrics to SHAKESPEARE (308); II, CAMPION to the Ballads (309); III, DRYDEN
to WORDSWORTH (3IO); IV, SCOTT to ELIZABETH BROWNING
(3II); V, LONGFELLOW to RUPERT BROOKE (312).
LETTERS WRITTEN IN WAR-TIME (Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries), selected and arranged by H. Wragg (202).
A MISCELLANY OF TRACTS AND PAMPHLETS. Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries. Edited by A. C. Ward (304).
PALGRAVE'S GOLDEN TREASURY, with i88 pages of additional poems
from LANDOR to BLUNDEN (133).
READING AT RANDOM. A 'World's Classics' Anthology (410).
~ Autobiography
AKSAKOFF (SERGHEI). Trans. byj. D. Duff. A Russian Gentleman
(241). Years of Childhood (242). A Russian Schoolboy (z26).
CELLINI (BENVENUTO) (300).
DE QUINCEY (THOMAS). Confessions of an Opium-Eater (23).
FRANKLIN (BENJAMIN). The Autobiography, edited from his
original manuscript by John Bigelow (250).
GIBBON (EDWARD). Autobiography. Introduction by J. B. Bury
(139).




AUTOBIOGRAPHY. BIOGRAPHY. THE 'CLASSICS' 5
HAYDON (BENJAMIN ROBERT). The Autobiography. Introduction and Epilogue by Edmund Blunden (314).
HUNT (LEIGH). Autobiography. Intro. Edmund Blunden (329).
MILL (JOHN STUART). Autobiography. Introduction by Harold 3'.
Laski (262).
TOLSTOY. A Confession, and What I believe. Translated by
Aylmer Maude (229).
TRELAWNY (E. J.). Adventures of a Younger Son. Introduction
by Ethel Colburn Mayne (289).
TROLLOPE   (ANTHONY).   Autobiography.   Introduction  by
Michael Sadleir (239).
~ Biography
CARLYLE. The Life of John Sterling. Introduction by W. Hale
White (' Mark Rutherford ') (144).
CRABBE, LIFE OF. By his Son. Introduction by E. M. Forster
(404).
DOBSON (AUSTIN). Four Frenchwomen: Charlotte Corday,
Madame Roland, Princess de Lamballe, Madame de Genlis
(248).
EMERSON. Representative Men. (With English Traits) (30).
FRANCIS OF AssISI (ST.). The Little Flowers; and The Life of
Brother Giles. Translated into English verse by James Rhoades
(265).
GASKELL (MRS.). The Life of Charlotte Bronte (214).
HOUGHTON (LORD). Life of Keats (364).
JOHNSON (SAMUEL). Lives of the Poets. 2 vols. (83, 84).
MAUDE (AYLMER). Life of Tolstoy. 2 vols. (383, 384).
SCOTT (SIR WALTER). Lives of the Novelists. Introduction by
Austin Dobson (94).
TREVELYAN (SIR G. 0.). Life of Macaulay. With a new Introduction by G. M. Trevelyan. 2 vols. (40I, 402).
WALTON (IZAAK). Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert,
Sanderson. Introduction by George Saintsbury (303).
~ The ' Classics ', Greek and Roman
AESCHYLUS. The Seven Plays. Translated into English Verse by
Lewis Campbell ( 117).
ARISTOPHANES. The Acharnians, Knights, Birds, and Frogs.
Translated by. Hookham Frere. Intro. W. W. Merry (I34).
HOMER. Translated by Pope. Iliad (I8). Odyssey (36).
SOPHOCLES. The Seven Plays. Translated into English Verse by
Lewis Campbell ( I 6).
VIRGIL. The Aeneid, Georgics, and Eclogues. Translated by
John Dryden (37).
- The Aeneid, Georgics, and Eclogues. Translated by
James Rhoades (227).




6             'THE WORLD'S CLASSICS '
~ Drama
BROWNING'(ROBERT). Poems and Plays, 1833-42 (58);
CONGREVE (WILLIAM). Complete Works. 2 vols. Introduction by
Bonamy Dobrde. I, The Comedies. II, The Mourning Bride,
with Letters, Poems, and Miscellanies (276, 277).
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY COMEDY. FARQUHAR'S Beaux' Stratagem,
STEELE'S Conscious Lovers, GAY'S Beggar's Opera, FIELDING'S
Tom Thumb, GOLDSMITH'S She Stoops to Conquer (292).
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, LESSER COMEDIES OF THE. Edited by
Allardyce Nicoll. The five comedies are ARTHUR MURPHY'S The
Way to keep him, GEORGE COLMAN'S The Jealous Wife, MRS.
INCHBALD'S Everyone has his Fault, THOMAS MORTON'S Speed
the Plough, and FREDERICK REYNOLDS'S The Dramatist (321).
FIVE ELIZABETHAN COMEDIES. Edited by A. K. Mcllwraith. Contains GREENE'S Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, PEELE'S The Old
Wives' Tale, LYLY'S Campaspe, DEKKER'S Shoemaker's Holiday,
and the anonymous Merry Devil of Edmonton (422).
FIVE PRE-SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDIES. Edited by F. S. Boas. Contains MEDWALL'S Fulgens and Lucrece, HEYWOOD'S The Four PP.,
UDALL'S Ralph Roister Doister,the anonymous Gamrnmer Gurton's
Needle, and GASCOIGNE'S Supposes (418).
GOETHE. Faust, Parts I and II. Translated by Bayard Taylor.
Intro. by Marshall Montgomery and notes by Douglas Yates (3 80).
MARLOWE'S Dr. Faustus (with GOFTHE'S Faust, Part I, trans.
J. Anster). Introduction by Sir A. W. Ward (I35).
RESTORArIONTRAGEDIES. DRYDEN'S All for Love, OTWAY'S Venice
Preserved, SOUTHERNE'S Oronooko, ROWE'S Fair Penitent, and
ADDISON'S Cato. Introduction by Bonamy Dobrde (313).
SHAKESPEARE. Plays and Poems. Preface by A. C. Swinburne.
Introductions by Edward Dowden. 9 vols. Comedies. 3 vols.
(100oo, 101, 102). Histories and Poems. 3 vols. (103, 104, 105).
Tragedies. 3 vols. (106, 107, io8).
SHAKESPEARE, Six Plays by Contemporaries of. DEKKER, The
Shoemaker's Holiday; WEBSTER, The White Devil; BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and
Philaster; WEBSTER, The Duchess of Malfi; MASSINGER, A
New Way to pay Old Debts. Edited by C. B. Wheeler (i99).
SHERIDAN. Plays. Introduction by Joseph Knight (79).
TOLSTOY. The Plays. Complete edition, including the posthumous plays. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (243).
~ Essays and Belles Lettres
BACON. The Essays, Civil and Moral (24).
BROWN (DR. JOHN). Horae Subsecivae (Rab and His Friends,
&c.). Introduction by Austin Dobson (118).
CARLYLE. On Heroes and Hero-Woiship (62). Past and Present.
Introduction by G. K. Chesterton (153). Sartor Resartus (19).




ESSAYS AND BELLES LETTRES                   7
DOBSON (AUSTIN). At Prior Park, &c. (259). Eighteenth-Century
Vignettes. Three Series (245-7). Four Frenchwomen (248).
Old Kensington Palace, &c.(258). A Paladin of Philanthropy, &c.
(256). Rosalba's Journal, &c. (260). Side-Walk Studies (257).
EMERSON. English Traits, and Representative Men (30). Essays,
Two Series tb).
ENGLISH CRITICAL ESSAYS. 3 volumes: I, Sixteenth to Eighteenth
Centuries; II, Nineteenth Century; III, Twentieth Century
(240, 206, 405).
ENGLISH ESSAkS, chosen and arranged by W. Peacock (32).
-      (A BOOK OF), i600-i900 (172).
-    MODERN. Two Series. Selected by H. S. Milford (280, 406).
ENGLISH PROSE. MANDEVILLE to RUSKIN. Chosen by W. Peacock
(45). Also a selection in 5 volumes by the same editor: I, WYCLIFFEtO CLARENDON (219); II, MILTON to GRAY (220); III, WALPOLE to LAMB (22 1 ); IV, LANDORtO HOLMES(222); V, MRS. GASKELL
to HENRY JAMES (223).
ENGLISH PROSE. Narrative, Descriptive, and Dramatic (204).
FROUDE(J. A.). Short Studies on Great Subjects. Series 1 (269).
HAZLITT (WILLIAM). Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (205).
The English Comic Writers (124). Sketches and Essays.
Essays on Men and Manners (IS5). Table-Talk (5). The Spirit
of the Age (57). Winterslow (25).
HOLMES (OLIVER WENDELL). The Autocrat of the BreakfastTable (6i). The Poet at the Breakfast-Table (95). The Professor at the Breakfast-Table (89).
HORNE (R. H.). A New Spirit of the Age (I27).
HUNT (LEIGH). Essays and Sketches (Ii5).
IRVING (WASHINGTON). The Sketch Book (173).
LAMB. Essays of hlia, and The Last Essays ot Elia (2).
LANDOR. Imaginary Conversations. Selected (x96).
MILTON. Selected Prose. Introduction by Malcolm W. Wallace
(293).
MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS. Florio's translation. 3 vols. (65, 70, 77).
REYNOLDS (SIR JOSHUA). The Discourses, &c. (149).
RUSKIN. (Ruskin House Editions, by arrangernmet with Messrs.
Allen &C Unwin, Ltd.) 'A Joy for Ever', and The Two Paths.
Illustrated (I47). Sesame and Lilies, and Ethics of the Dust
(145). ' ime and Tide, and The Crown of Wild Olive (I46).
Unto this Last, and Munera Pulveris (148).
RUTHERFORD (MARK). Pages from a Journal (358).
SMITH (ALEXANDER). Dreamthorp, &c. (200).
SMOLLETT. '1 ravels through France and Italy (90o).
STERNE (LAURENCE). A Sentimental Journey. Introduction by
Virginia Woolf (333).
STEVENSON (R. L.). Virginibus Puerisque, and Across the Plains
(296).
THACKERAY. The Book of Snobs, &c. (50).
THOREAU. Walden (68).
TOLSTOY. Trarslated by A. Maude. Essays and Letters (46).
' What is Art?' and Essays on Art (331).




8              ' THE WORLD'S CLASSICS'
TRACTS AND PAMPHLETS, from JOHN KNOX to H. G. WELLS (304).
WALTON and COTTON. The Compleat Angler. Introduction by
John Buchan (430).
WHITE (GILBERT). The Natural History of Selborne (22).
WHITMAN. Specimen Days in America (371).
~ Fiction (For SHORT STORIES see separate heading)
AINSWORTH (W. HARRISON). The Tower of London (r62).
AUSTEN (JANE). Emma (I29). Pride and Prejudice (335). Mansfield Park (345). Northanger Abbey (355). Persuasion (356).
Sense and Sensibility (389).
BLACKMORE (R. D.). Lorna Doone. Introduction by Sir Herbert
Warren (171).
BORROW (GEORGE). Lavengro (66). The Romany Rye (73).
BRONTE (ANNE). Agnes Grey (141). Tenant of Wildfell Hall
(67).
BRONTP (CHARLOTTE). Jane Eyre (I). Shirley(r4). Villette (47).
The Professor, and the Poems of the Brontes (78).
BRONTE (EMILY). Wuthering Heights (Io).
BUNYAN. The Pilgrim's Progress (I2). Mr. Badman (~38).
BUTLER (SAMUEL). The Way of all Flesh. With an Essay by
Bernard Shaw (438).
CERVANTES. Don Quixote. 2 volumes (I30, 131).
COBBOLD (REV. RICHARD). Margaret Catchpole (I i9).
COLLINS (WILKIE). The Moonstone. Introduction by T. S.
Eliot (316). The Woman in White (226).
COOPER (J. FENIMORE). The Last of the Mohicans (i63).
DEFOE. Captain Singleton (82). Robinson Crusoe. Part I (17).
DICKENS. Barnaby Rudge (286). Christmas Books (307). Edwin
Drood (263) Great Expectations (I28). Hard Times (264).
Old Curiosity Shop (270). Oliver Twist (8). Pickwick Papers.
2 volumes (120, 12I). Tale of Two Cities (38).
DISRAELI (BENJAMIN). Coningsby (38I). Sybil (291).
ELIOT (GEORGE). Adam Bede (63). Felix Holt (I79). The Mill
on the Floss (31). Romola (I78). Scenes of Clerical Life (I55).
Silas Marner, &c. (8o).
FIELDING. Jonathan Wild (382). Joseph Andrews (334).
GALT (JOHN). The Entail. Introduction by John Ayscough
(177).
GASKELL (MRS.). Cousin Phillis, and Other Tales, &c. (i68).
Cranford, The Cage at Cranford, and The Moorland Cottage
(I Io). Lizzie Leigh, The Grey Woman, and Other Tales, &c.
(I75). Mary Barton (86). North and South (154). Right at
Last, and Other Tales, &c. (203). Round the Sofa (i90).
Ruth t88). Sylvia's Lovers (156). Wives and Daughters (157).
GOLDSMITH. The Vicar of Wakefield (4).
HARRIS (JOEL CHANDLER). Uncle Remus (36I).
HAWTHORNE. House of the Seven Gables (273). The Scarlet
Letter (26). Tales (319).




FICTION                        9
HOLME (CONSTANCE). Beautiful End (43 ). Crump Folk going
Home (419). The Lonely Plough (390). The Old Road trom
Spain (400). The Splendid Fairing (4i6). The Things which
Belong- (425). The Trumpet in the Dust (409).
KINGSLEY (HENRY). Geoffry Hamlyn (27i). Ravenshoe (267);
Austin Elliot (407).
LA MOTTr FOUQUE. Undine, Sintram, &c. (408).
LE FANU(J. S.). Uncle Silas. Introduction by Montague R.James
(306).
LESAGE. Gil Blas. Edited J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly. 2 volumes (I5I,
152).
LYTTON. The Coming Race, &c. (327).
MARRYAT. Mr. Midshipman Easy (i6o). Jacob Faithful (439).
MELVILLE (HERMAN). Moby Dick (225). Typee (274). Om1oo
(275). White Jacket (253).
MORIER (J. J.). Hajji Baba (238). Hajji Baba in England (285).
PEACOCK (T. L.). Headlong Hall; and Nightmare Abbey (339).
Misfortunes of Elphin: and Crotchet Castle (244).
RABELAIS Gargantua and Pantagruel. Translated by Urquhart
and Motteux, with notes and map. 3 volumes (4 1-13).
SCOTT. Ivanhoe (29).
SMOLLETT. Roderick Random (353). Humphry Clinker (290).
STERNE. Sentimental Journey (333). Tristram Shandy (40).
STEVENSON (R. L.). Kidnapped; and Catriona (297). The Master
of Ballantrae (441). Treasure Island (t2S'.
STURGIS (HowARD). Belchamber. Introduction by GerardHopkins
(429).
SWIFT. Gulliver's Travels (20).
TAYLOR (MEADOWS). Confessions of a Thug (207);
THACKERAY. Henry Esmond (28).
TOLSTOY. Translated by Louise and Avinler Maude. Anna
Karenina. 2 volumes (210, 211). Childhood, Boyhood, and
Youth (352). The Cossacks, &c. (208). Ivan Ilych, and Hadji
Murad (432). The Kreutzer Sonata, &c. (266). Resurrection,
trans. by L. Maude (209). Twenty-three Tales (72). War and
Peace. 3 volumes (233-5).
TRELAWNY (E. J.). Adventures of a Younger Son (289).
TROLLOPE. American Senator (391). Ayala's Angel (342). Barchester Towers (268). The Belton Estate (25 i). The Claverings
(252). Cousin Henry (343). DoctorThorne 298). Dr. Wortle's
School (317). The Eustace Diamonds (3 57). Framley Parsonage
(305). The Kellys and the O'Kellys (341). Last Chronic!e of
Barset. 2 vols. (398, 399). Miss Mackenzie (278). Orley Farm.
2 vols. (423,424). Rachel Ray (279). Sir Harry Hotspur (336).
Tales or all Countries (397). The Three Clerks (140). The
Warden (217). The Vicar of Bullhampton (272).
WATTS-DUNTON (THEODOTE). Avlwin (5:).
WHARTON (EDITH). The House of Mirth. With a new Introduction by the Author (437).




lo             'THE WORLD'S CLASSICS'
~ History
BARROW (SIR JOHN). The Mutiny of the Bounty (I95).
BUCKLE. The History of Civilization. 3 volumes (41, 48, 53).
CARLYLE. The French Revolution. Introduction by C. R. L.
Fletcher. 2 volumes (125, I26).
FROUDE (J. A.). Short Studies on Great Subjects. Series I (269).
GIBBON. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. With Maps.
7 volumes (35, 44, 51, 55, 64, 69, 74).
IRVING (WASHINGTON). Conquest of Granada (150).
MACAULAY. History of England. 5 volumes (366-70).
MOTLEY. Rise of the Dutch Republic. 3 volumes (96, 97, 98).
PRESCOTT (W. H.). The Conquest of Mexico. 2 vols. (197, I98).
~ Letters
BURKE. Letters. Selected, with Introduction, by H. J. Laski (237).
CHESTERFIELD. Letters. Selected, with an Introduction, by
Phyllis M. Jones (347).
CONGREVE. Letters, in Volume II. See under Drama (277).
COWPER. Letters. Selected, with Intro., by E. V. Lucas (138);
DUFFERTN (LORD). Letters from High Latitudes. Illustrated (158).
ENGLISH LETTERS. Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries (192).
GRAY (THOMAS). Letters. Selected by John Beresford (283).
JOHNSON (SAMUEL). Letters. Selected, with Introduction, by
R. W. Chapman (282).
SOUTHEY. Selected Letters (I69).
TOLSTOY. Essays and Letters. Trans. by L. and A. Maude (46).
WHITE (GILBERT). The Natural History of Selborne (22).
~ Literary Criticism
AMERICAN CRITICISM. Representative Literary Essays. Chosen
by Norman Foerster (354).
COLERIDGE (S. T.) Lectures on Shakespeare (363).
ENGLISH CRITICAL ESSAYS. Selected and edited by Edmund D.
Jones. 2 volumes: I, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (240);
II, Nineteenth Century (206).
HAZLITT (WILLIAM). Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. Introduction by Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch (205). Lectures on the
English Comic Writers. Introduction by R. Brimley Johnson
(124). Lectures on.the English Poets (255). The Spirit of the
Age. (Essays on his contemporaries) (57).
HORNE (R. H.). A New Spirit of the Age (127).
JOHNSON (SAMUEL). Lives of the Poets. 2 volumes (83, 84).
SAINTE-BEUVE. Causeries du Lundi. (In English.) Two Series
(372-3).
SHAKESPEARE CRITICISM. (HEMINGE and CONDELL to CARLYLE.)
Selected and introduced by D. Nichol Smith (2I2).
SHAKESPEARE CRITICISM. (Twentieth Century.) Selected and
introduced by Anne Bradby (436).




SCIENCE AND POETRY                    II
~ Philosophy and Science
(For POLITICAL THEORY and RELIGION see separate headings)
AURELIUS (MARCUS). Thoughts. Translated by John Jackson(6o).
BACON. The Advancement of Learning, and the New Atlantis.
Introduction by Professor Case (93). Essays (24).
CARLYLE. Sartor Resartus (19).
DARWIN. The Origin of Species. With i new preface by Major
Leonard Darwin (ii). Voyage of a Naturalist (360).
REYNOLDS (SIR JOSHUA). Discourses, &c. Introduction byA.Dobson (s49).
TOLSTOY. What then must we do? Trans. by A. Maude (28i).
WHITE (GILBERT). The Natural History of Selborne (22).
~ Poetry
ARNOLD (MATTHEW). Poems, I849-67 (85).
BARHAM (RICHARD). The Ingoldsby Legends (9);
BLAKE (WILLIAM). Selected Poems (324).
BRONTE SISTERS, THE. The Professor, by CHARLOTTE BRONTE, and
Poems by CHARLOTTE, EMILY, and ANNE BRONTE (78).
BROWNING (ELIZABETH BARRETT). Poems. A Selection (176).
BROWNING (ROBERT). Poems and Plays, i833-42 (58). Poems,
I 842-64 (137).
BURNS (ROBERT). Poems (34). Complete and in large type.
BYRON. Poems. A Selection (80o).
CHAUCER, The Works of. 3 volumes: I (42); II (56); III, containing the whole of the Canterbury Tales (76).
COLERIDGE. Poems. Introduction by Sir A. T. Quiller-Couch (99).
CONGREVE (WILLIAM). Complete works in 2 volumes. Introductions by Bonamy Dobree. I, The Comedies (276); II, The
Mourning Bride, Poems, Miscellanies and Letters (277).
DANTE. Italian text and English verse-translation by Melville B.
Anderson, on facing pages, with notes. 3 vols. (392-4).
Translation only, with notes, in one volume (395).
DOBSON (AUSTIN). Selected Poems (249).
ENGLISH SONGS AND BALLADS. Compiled by T. W. H. Crosland.
New edition, with revised text and additional poems, I927 (13).
ENGLISH VERSE. Vols. I-V: Early Lyrics to SHAKESPEARE; CAMPION to the Ballads; DRYDEN to WORDSWORTH; SCOTT to E. B.
BROWNING; LONGFELLOW to RUPERT BROOKE. Edited by William
Peacock (308-312).
FRANCIS OF ASSISI (ST.). The Little Flowers of St. Francis.
Translated into English Verse by James Rhoades (265).
GOETHE. Faust, Parts I and II. Translated by Bayard Taylor.
Intro. by Marshall Montgomery and notes by Douglas Yates (380).
GOLDEN TREASURY, THE. With additional Poemns (1 33).
GOLDSMITH. Poems. Introduction by Austin Dobson (123).
HERBERT (GEORGE). Poems. Introduction by Arthur Waugh(i og).
HERRICK (ROBERT). Poems (i6).




I3             'THE WORLD'S CLASSICS '
HOMER. Translated by Pope. Iliad (i8). Odyssey (36).
HOOD. Poems. Introduction by Walter Jerrold (87).
KEATS. Poems (7).
KEBLE. The Christian Year (18i).
LONGFELLOW. Evangeline, The Golden Legend, &c. (39).
Hiawatha, Miles Standish, Tales of a Wayside Inn, &c. (174).
MACAULAY. Lays of Ancient Rome; Ivry; The Armada (27).
MARLOWE. Dr. Faustus (with GOETHE'S Faust, Part I, trans.
J. Anster). Introduction by Sir A. W. Ward (135).
MILTON. The English Poems (I82).
MORRIS (WILLIAM). The Defence of Guenevere, Life and Death
of Jason, and other Poems (183).
NARRATIVE VERSE, A BOOK OF. Compiled by V. H. Collins.
With an Introduction by Edmund Blunden (350).
NEKRASSOV. Trans. by Juliet Soskice. Who can be happy and free
in Russia? A Poem (213). Poems (340).
PALGRAVE. The Golden Treasury. With additional Poems (I33).
ROSSETTI (CHRISTINA). Goblin Market, &c. (184).
SCOTT (SIR WALTER). Selected Poems (i86).
SCOTTISH VERSA, A BOOK OF. Compiled by R. L. Mackie (4I7).
SHAKESPEARE. Plays and Poems. Preface by A. C. Swinburne.
Introductions by Edward Dowden. 9 volumes. Comedies. 3
volumes (ioo, I01, 102). Histories and Poems. 3 volumes
(103, 104, I05). Tragedies. 3 volumes (io6, 107, io8).
SHELLEY. Poems. A Selection (I87).
TENNYSON. Selected Poems. Intro. by Sir Herbert Warren (3).
VIRGIL. The Aeneid, Georgics, and Eclogues. Translated by
Dryden (37). Translated by James Rhoades (227).
WELLS (CHARL.ES). Joseph and his Brethren. A Dramatic Poem.
Intro. by A. C. Swinburne, and Note by T. Watts-Dunton ( 143).
WHITMAN. A Selection. Introduction by E. de Sdlincourt (218).
WHITTIER. Poems: A Selection (i 88).
WORDSWORTH. Poems: A Selection (189).
~ Politics, Political Economy, Political Theory
BAGEHOT (WALTER). The English Constitution. With an Introduction by the Earl of Balfour (330).
BUCKLE. The History of Civilization. 3 volumes (41, 48, 53).
BURKE (EDMUND). Letters. Selected, with an Introduction, by
Harold J. Laski (237). Works. 6 volumes. I: A Vindication of Natural Society; The Sublime and Beautiful, &c. (7I).
II: The Present Discontents; and Speeches and Letters on
America (8i). III: Speeches on India, &c. (I i). IV: Writings
on France, 1790-I (1 I2). V: Writings on Ireland, &c. ( I3). VI:
A Letter to a Noble Lord; and Letters on a Regicide Peace ( 14).
ENGLISH SIEECHES, from BURKE to GLADSTONE. Selected and
edited by E. R..ones (19i).
MACAULAY. Speeches. Selected, with Introduction and footnotes,
by G. M. Young (433).




POLITICS, RELIGION, ETC.               13
MACHIAVELLI. The Prince (43).
MAINE (SIR HENRY). Ancient Law (362).
MILL (JOHN SrUART). On Liberty, Representative Government,
and the subjection of Women (170).
MILTON (JOHN). Selected Prose. Intro. Malcolm W. Wallace (293).
RUSKIN. 'A Ioy for Ever', and The Two Paths. Illustrated (I47).
Time and Tide, and The Crown of Wild Olive (146). Unto
this Last, and Munera Pulveris (148).
SMITH (ADAM). The Wealth of Nations. 2 volumes (54, 59).
SPEECHES AND DOCUMENTS ON BRITISH COLONIAL POLICY (1763 -I917). Ed. A. B. Keith. 2 volumes (215, 2i6).
SPEECHES AND DOCUMENTS ON THE BRITISH DOMINIONS, I918-31.
Selected, with Introduction, by A. B. Keith (403).
SPEECHES AND DOCUMENTS ON INDIAN POLICY (1756-192I).
Edited, with Introduction, by A. B. Keith (231, 232).
SPEECHES ON BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY (1738-I914). Edited by
Edgar R. Yones, M.P. (201).
TRACTS AND PAMPHLETS, A Miscellany of. Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries. Edited by A. C. Ward (304).
TOLSTOY. What then must we do? Translated, with an Introduction, by Aylmer Maude (28I);
~ Religion
THE OLD TESTAMENT. Revised Version. 4 vols. (385-8).
APOCRYPHA, THE, in the Revised Version (294).
THE FOUR GOSPELS, AND THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. Authorized
Version (344).
THE NEW TESTAMENT. Revised Version (346).
A KEMPIS (THOMAS). Of the Imitation of Christ (49).
AURELIUS (MARCUS). Translated by John Jackson (60).
BUNYAN. The Pilgrim's Progress (12). Mr. Badman (338).
KORAN, THE. Translated by E. H. Palmer. Introduction by
Reynold A. Nicholson (328).
TOLSTOY. Translated by Aylmer Maude. A Confession, and
What I believe (229). On Life, and Essays on Religion (426).
~ Short Stories
AFRICA, STORIES OF. Chosen by E. C. Parnwell (359).
AUSTRIAN SHORT STORIES. Selected and translated by Marie
Busch (337).
CRIME AND DETECTION. Two Series (301, 351). Stories by H. c.
BAILEY, ERNEST BRAMAH, G. K. CHESTERTON SIR A. CONAN DOYLE,
R. AUSTIN FREEMAN, W. W. JACOBS, EDEN PHILPOTTS, 'SAPPER',
DOROTHY SAYERS, and others.
CZECH TALES, SELECTED. Translated by Marie Busch and Otto
Pick (288). Nine stories, including two by the BROTHERS
CAPEK.
DICKENS. Christmas Books (307).




14             'THE WORLD'S CLASSICS'
ENGLISH SHORT STORIES. Three Series. Selected by H. S.
Milford. Introduction by Prof. Hugh Walker in Vol. I (I93,
228, 315).
FRENCH SHORT STORIES. Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries.
Selected and translated by K. Rebillon Lambley (396).
GASKELL (MRS.). Introductions by Clement Shorter. Cousin
Phillis, and Other Tales (i68). Lizzie Leigh, The Grey
Woman, and Other Tales, &c. (175). Right at Last, and Other
Tales, &c. (203). Round the Sofa (i90).
GERMAN SHORT STORIES. Translated by E. N. Bennett, with an
Introduction by E. K. Bennett (415).
GHOSTS AND MARVELS and MORE GHOSTS AND MARVELS. Two
Selections of Uncanny Tales made by V. H. Collins. Introduction by Montague R. James in Series I. (284, 323.)
HARTE (BRET). Short Stories (318).
HAWTHORNE (NATHANIEL). Tales (3 9).
IRVING (WASHINGTON). Tales (320).
PERSIAN (FROM THE). The Three Dervishes, and Other Stories.
Translated from MSS. in the Bodleian by Reuben Levy (254).
POE (EDGAR ALLAN). Tales of Mystery and Imagination (21).
POLISH TALES BY MODERN AUTHORS. Translated by Else C. M.
Benecke and Marie Busch (230).
RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES. Chosen and translated by A. E. Chamot
(287).
SCOTT. Short Stories. With an Introduction by Lord David
Cecil (414).
SHORT STORIES OF THE SOUTH SEAS. Selected by E. C. Parnwell
(332).
SPANISH SHORT STORIES. Sixteenth Century. In contemporary
translations, revised, with an Introduction, by J. B. Trend
(326).
TOLSTOY. Nine Stories (i855-63) (420). Twenty-three Tales.
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (72).
TROLLOPE. Tales of all Countries (397).
~ Travel and Topography
BORROW (GEORGE). The Bible in Spain (75). Wild Wales(224).
Lavengro (66). Romany Rye (73).
DARWIN. Voyage of a Naturalist (360).
DUFFERIN (LORD). Letters trom High Latitudes (I58).
MELVILLE (HERMAN). Typee (294). Omoo (275).
MOR1ER (J. J.). Hajji Baba of Ispahan. Introduction by C. W.
Stewart, and a Map (238).
SMOLLETT (TOBIAS). Travels through France and Italy in 1765.
Introduction (lxii pages) by Thomas Seccombe (90).
STERNE (LAURENCE). A Sentimental Journey. With Introduction
by Virginia WoolJ (333).




INDEX OF AUTHORS, ETC.


Addison, 6.
Aeschylus, 5.
Africa, Stories of, 3, 13.
Ainsworth (W. Harrison), 8.
A Kempis (Thomas), 13.
Aksakurf (Serghei), 4.
American Criticism, 4, Io.
American Verse, 3, 4.
Ancient Law, I, I3.
Apocrypha, Tne (Revised Version), 13.
Arntophanes, 5.
Arnold (Matthew), ir.
Aurelius (Marcus), II, 13.
Austen (Jane), 8.
Austrian Short Stories, 13,
Bacon (Francis), II.
Bagehot (Walter), I2.
Barham (Richard), Ir.
Barrow (Sir John), Io.
Beaumont and Fletcher, 6.
Blackmore (R D.), 8.
Blake (Willam), I.
Borrow (George), 14.
British Colonial Policy, I3.
Fjreign Policy, 13.
Br.onte Sisters, 8, II.
Brown (Dr. John), 6.
Browning (Eliz. Barrett), II.
Browning (Robert), 6, II.
Buckle (T. H.), Io, I2.
Bunyan (John), 8.
Burke, 12.
Burns (Robert), II.
Butler, 3, 8.
Byron (Lord), II.
Carlyle (Thomas), 5, 6, Io.
Cellini (Benvenuto), 4.
Cervantes, 8.
Cnaucer, I I.
Chesterfield, 3, Io.
Cobbold (Richard), 8.
Coleridge (S. T.), IO, II.
Collins (Wilkie), 8.
Colman, 6.
Congreve (William), 6, II.
Cooper (J. Fenimore), 8
Cowper (Williamn), Io.
Crabbe, 5.
Crime and Detection, I3.
Critical Essays, 3, 7, Io.
Czech Tales, 13.
Dante, I I.
Darwin (Charles), II, I4.
Defoe (Daniel), 8.
Dekker, 6.


De Quincey (Thomas), 4.
D.cke.is (Charles), 8.
Disraeli (Benjamin), 8
Dobson (Austin), 5, 7, II.
Don Quixote, 8.
Dryden, 5, 6.
Dufferin (Lord), Io, I4.
Eighteenth-Century Comedies, 6.
Eliot (George), 8.
Elizabethan Comedies, 3, 6.
Emerson tA. S\.), 7.
English Critical Essays, 3, 7, Io.
E.ig'isn Essays, 3, 4.
English Prose, 4.
Eaglish Short Stories, 4, r4.
English Songs and Ballads, 4, II.
English Speeches, 3, I2.
English Verse, 4, II.
Farquhar, 6.
Fielding (Henry), 6, S.
Four Gospels, 13.
Francis (St.), 5, II.
Franklin (Benjamin), 4.
French Short Stories, 14.
Froude (J. A.), 7.
Gait (John), 8.
Gaskell (Mrs.), 5, 8, 14.
Gay, 6.
German Short Stories, 14.
Ghosts and Marvels, 14.
Giboon (Edward), 4, Io.
Gil Blas, o.
Goethe, 6, I, I2.
Goldsmith (Oliver), 6, 8, II.
Gray (Thomas), Io.
Harris (J. C.), 8.
Harte (Bret), r4.
Hawthorne (Nathanfel), 8, I4.
Haydon (B. R.), 5.
Hazlitt (William), 5, 7, Io.
Herbert (George), II.
Herrick (Robert), II.
Holme (Constance), 3, 9.
Hclmes (Oliver Wendeli), 7.
Homer, 5, 12.
Hood (Thomas), I2.
Horne (R. H.), 7.
Houghton (Lord), 5.
Hunt (Leigh), 5, 7.
Inchbald (Mrs.), 6.
Ingoldsby Legends, II.
Irving (Washington), 7, Io, I4.
Johnson (Samuel), 5, Io.




INDEX OF AUTHORS, ETC.


Keats, 12.
Keble (John), 12.
Keith (A. B.), 3, I3.
Kingsley (Henry), 9.
Koran, The, I3.
Lamb (Charles), 7
La Motte Fouque, 9.
Landor (W. S.), 7.
Le Fanu (J. S.), 9.
Lesage, 9.
Longfellow (H. W.), I2.
Lytton (Lord), 9.
Macaulay (T. B.), 3, to, 12.
Machiavelli, 13.
Maine, Sir Henry, I3.
Marcus Aurelius, I, 13.
Marlowe (Christopher), 6, 12.
Marryat (Captain), 3, 9.
Massinger, 6.
Maude (Aylmer), 5.
Meinhold (J. W.), )
Melville (Herman), 9, 14.
Mill (John Stuart), -  3.
Milton (John), 7, I2.
Montaigne, 7.
Morier (J. J.), e, 14.
Morris (W.), I2.
Morton, 6.
Motley (J. L.), Io.
Murphy, 6.
Narrative Verse, 4, I2,
Nekrassov, I2.
New Testament, 13.
Old Testament, 13.
Otway, 6.
Palgrave (F. T.), 4.
Pamphlets and Tracts, 4.
Peacock (T. L.), 9.
Peacock (W.), 4.
Persian (From the) 14.
Poe (Edgar Allan', I4.
Polish Tales, '4.
Prescott (W. H.), io.
Pre-Shakespearean Comedies, 3, 6.
Rabelais, 3, 9.
Reading at Random, 3, 4.
Restoration Tragedies, 6.
Reynolds (Frederick), 6.


Reynolds (Sir Joshua), 7.
Rossetti (Christina), I2.
Rowe, 6.
Ruskin (John), 7, 13.
Russian Shorl. Stories, I4.
Ruthernord (Mark), 7.
Sainte-Beuve, Io.
Scott (Sir W.), 3, 5, 9, i2, 14.
Scottish Verse, 3, 4, I2.
Shakespeare, h, I2.
Shakespeare Criticism, 3, IO.
Shakespeare's Predece-sors and
Contemporaries, 3, 6.
Shelley, 12.
Sheridan (R. B.), 6.
Smith (Adam), r3.
Smith (Alexander), 7.
Smollett (T.), 7, 9, I4.
Sophocles, 5.
Southerne, 6.
Southey (Robert), Io.
South Seas, Short Stories of, 3, 14.
Spanish Short Stories, 14.
Steele, 6.
Sterne (Laurence), 7, c, 14.
Stevenson (R. L.), 7, 9.
Sturgis, 9.
Switt (Jonathan), 9.
Taylor (Meadows), 9.
Tennyson (Lord), 12.
Thackeray (W. M.), 7, 9.
Thoreau (H. D.), 7.
Three Dervishes, The, 14.
Tolstoy, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, io, I r, 13, 14.
Tracts and Pamphlets, 4, 8.
Trelawny (E. J.), 5, 9.
Travelyan, 5.
Trollope (Anthony), 3, 5, 9, I4.
Virgil, 5, 12.
Walton (Izaak), 3, 5, 8.
Watts-Dunton (Theodore), 9.
Webster, 6.
Wells (Charles), 12.
Wells (H. G.), 4.
Wharton (Edith), 9.
White (Gilbert), 6, 10.
Whitman (Walt), 8, 23.
Whittier (J. G.) 12.
Wordsworth (William). I2.


Further Volumes are in preparation.


January I936


PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN




i




I