iMMMMM FREDERICK YORK POWELL A LIFE AND A SELECTION FR03I HIS LETTERS AND OCCASIONAL WRITINGS BY OLIVER ELTON IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II: OCCASIONAL WRITINGS OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 190G HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH NEW YORK AND TORONTO CONTENTS OF VOL. II CATALOGUE OF WRITINGS Page vii HISTORY, HISTORIANS, AND THE TEACHING OF HISTORY y A General Survey of Modern History 1 History in London 13 Machiavelli 14 Mazzini .... . 22 Gibbon . 23 Bollinger .... 27 Freeman . . 27 Gardiner . . 37 Lecky . 46 Creighton . . 50 John Richard Green . . 52 Grant Allen 68 Taine .... 79 The Study of History in Universities . 80 History for Boys . 95 II PORTRAITS Napoleon ........ 99 Joan of Arc .... 104 jCatherina Sforza 107 Mary Queen of Scots and Knox 109 Philip II op Spain 110 Elizabethan Sailors . 112 The Sidneys .... 114 Ralegh ..... 119 DiGBY ..... 121 Madame de Krudener . 124 ^ iv CONTENTS III SURVEYS Page Parthia 126 Sicily • • 127 A Page of Byzantine History 128 Mahomet . • • • I 131 Saracens . • ■ 133 Gierke: Mediaeval Theories 187 The Mediaeval Jew 142 St. Ignatius Loyola 146 Portugal . 149 Austria-Hungary . 151 The Renaissance 153 Winchester 156 The Georges 158 Cardinal Wolsey's Hat 159 An Aspect of the Eighteenth Century 163 The Queen's Reign : A Survey . 172 Armenia • • • , . 194 IV ALFRED . 201 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY Teutonic Heathendom ..... 221 Tradition and its Conditions .... 242 Beowulf ........ 253 Nibelunqenlied ....... 254 A Finnish Epic ....... 256 The Kalevipoeg : Hero of Esthonia . . . 260 GfsLi THE Outlaw ...... 262 VI OTHER LITERATURE Some Words on Allegory in England Daniel Defoe .... Irish Influence on English Literature Meinuold ..... Turgueniev .... 271 281 297 802 309 CONTENTS A Personal winburne .... Kipling ..... The Real Emerson Fairy Tales and Fairies Miss Pamela Colman Smith's Drawings: Impression . . . . . . VII SOCIAL AND POLITICAL John Ruskin ...... ^ Thoughts on Democracy .... VIII TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS The Grimms ViGFUSSON . X Richard Shute c. l. dodgson Gleeson White IX VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS Page 811 313 318 319 321 324 334 341 344 350 361 367 ORIGINAL VERSE A Note on Omar ...... 373 Quatrains from Omar . . 379 Lines after Omar . 384 The two Tent-makers . . 385 To Camoens . 386 By the Graveside of James Sime . 386 An Impression . .387 Afternoon, Early November . . 388 Ambleteuse : from an Album . . 388 Ambleteuse .... . 389 The Road to Ambleteuse . 389 Ambleteuse looking Seaward . 390 New Year, 1894 . . 391 Weary Wood . 391 Fragment .... . 392 At a Certain Auction in 1897 . 393 Regnante Carolo . 393 Monorhymed Sonnet : a Dialogue . 394 vi CONTENTS TRANSLATIONS Page The Ballad of Sir Ogie ..... 395 Ballad of Sigmund ...... 400 Icelandic Ballad-refrains . . . . . 407 Icelandic Couplets and Ditties .... 408 From the French, Thirteenth Century . . . 410 From Gerald of Bornello : The Dawn-Song . .411 From Giovanni Guidiccioni ..... 412 From the ' Romance del Marinero ' : Ballad of the Sailor-Lad and the Devil .... 413 From Ronsard ....... 413 From Verlaine : ' Le Ciel est par-dessus le toit ' . 414 From Maeterlinck's ' Douze Chansons ' : The Last Words 414 From Maeterlinck : The Pilgrim of Love . . . 415 From A. Angellier : The Rose-Tree .... 416 From Camille Mauclair's 'Sonatines d'Automne' . 416 From the French of Paul Fort .... 417 A Ballad of the Sea : a Song from the French of Paul Fort ....... 417 From the Irish: The Queer Man .... 419 The Dead Mother : from a Danish Ballad gathered BY E. T. Kristensen ..... 421 INDEX 423 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II Frederick York Powell, (et. 36 . . . Frontispiece From an oil painting by H. M. Paget. Facsimile of Signatures, . . . To face page 163 Designs for Alphabet, by F. York Powell „ „ 367 From Alphahets, by E. F. Strange, pp. 222-3. Facsimile op Handwriting ... „ „ 414 Verse translation from Verlaine. CATALOGUE OF WRITINGS [Thia list includes a large number of Powell's signed or initialled reviews. Of his unsigned reviews it only names those that are reprinted partly or wholly in the present volumes. An asterisk * is affixed to writings of which he was part-author, a dagger f to articles, addresses, verses, &c., from which reprints or extracts are made in these volumes. M. G. - Manchester Guardian. P. M. G.= Pall Mall Ga::ette.] 1876 Early England up to the Norman Conquest. With four maps. (In Epochs of English History, edited by Bishop Creighton.) Longmans. 8vo. Fourteenth impression, 1902. 1878 ♦Sturlunga Saga, including the Islendinga Saga of Lawman Sturla Thordsson, and other works. Edited, with Prolegomena, Appendices, Tables, Indices, and Notes, by Dr. Gud- brand Vigfiisson. Two vols. Clar. Press. 8vo. Powell's share is noted in the preface. See too App. A to our vol. i. 1881 *An Icelandic Prose Reader, with Notes, Grammar, and Glossary, by Dr. Gudbrand Vigfiisson and F. York Powell, M.A. Clar. Press. 8vo. Icelandic Literature and History and Language. [Encycl. Brit., vol. xii.) 1882 Old Stories from British History. {English Histonj Reading Books.) Longmans. 8vo. Third and enlarged edition, 1885 ; new impression, 1903. 1883 ♦Corpus Poeticum Boreale : the Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the earliest times to the thir- teenth CENTURY. Edited, classified, and translated, with In- troduction, Excursus, and Notes, by Gudbrand Vigfiisson, M.A., and F. York Powell, M.A. Two vols. Clar. Press. 8vo. Specially signed by F. Y. P. or denoted as his are Introduction, § 19, t ' The Translation, its Purport and Design ' (largely quoted in our vol. i, pp. 58-62) and ' A Note on Ballad Poetry,' Corpus, vol. i, pp. 503-7. A Few Notes on Sir Tristrem. {Englische Studien, vol. vi.) Henninger, Heilbronn. 8vo. * Preface to Part I of the Subject Catalogue of the Oxford Union Society [C. Oman and F. Y. P.]. Oxford. 1884 Notes on Death and Liffe. {Englische Studien, vol. vii.) Henninger. Heilbronn. 8vo. VIU CATALOGUE OF WRITINGS 1885 History of England foe the use of Middle Forms of Schools. Part I. From the Earliest Times to the Death of Henry VII. Rivingtons, 8vo. The work was transferi-ed to Longmans, Green, & Co., on the cessa- tion of Rivingtons. Revised edition, 1898. The phrase 'for the use of Middle Forms of Schools ' was dropped out of the title in impressions later than 1899. New impression, 1902. Parts II and III, completing the Histoiy, were written by Prof. T. F. Tout. The three parts were also issued in one vol. 1886 *Grimm Centenary : Sigfred-Arminius and other Papers. By Gudbrand Vigfusson, M.A., Is]., and F. York Powell, M.A., Brit. Clar. Press. 8vo. Contributions by F. Y. P. : VI. f The Ballad of Sir Ogie : VII. Traces of Old Law in the Eddie Lays : also t Epilogue in Oxford. Review of Michell's History of the Scottish Exx>edition to Norway in 1612. (Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. i, July.) Review of J. Parker's Early History of Oxford. {Acad., May 19, 1886.) 1887 A Brief Statement of the Case for the Proposed Final School of Modern Language and Literature. Oxford. English History by Contemporary Writers [edited by F. Y. P.]. Eight volumes by various writers, with the same short introductory note, prefixed by the Editor to each. Extracts from the Chronicles, State Papers, and Memoirs of each Period, with Tables, Maps, Illustra- tions, &c. Nutt. 16°. Review of The Forty-sixth Annual Report of the Deputy-Keeper of the Public Records. [Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. ii, Oct.) 1888 Review of The Tenth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission Appendix. Part IV. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. iii, Jan.) Review of John Rhys's On the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom. [Hibbert Lectures, 1886.] {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. iii, July.) t Brief Memoir of Richard Shute, prefixed to R. Shute's Essay, On the History of the Process hy which the Aristotelian Writings arrived at their present form. Clar. Press. 8vo. Sketches from British History for Standard IV. Long- mans. 8vo. Note on The Cliff of the Dead among Teutons. {Acad., Oct.) Syllabus for the Home Study of Dante. Third ed., 1891. Alden : Oxford. 1889 A Northern Legend of the English Conquest. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. iv, Jan.) CATALOGUE OF WRITINGS ix 'tGudbrancl Vigfusson. (Acad., vol. xxxv, Feb. 25.) Review of Aldis Wright's edition of The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. iv, April.) Reviews of J. W. Ebsworth's edition of The Roxburghe Ballads, J) arts xvi-xix. (Acad., April 18 and Aug. 28.) Review of A. Nutt's Studies of the Leqends of the Holy Grail. [Acad., Aug. 14.) Syllabus for the Home Study of Shakespeare. Oxford. 1890 tReview of D. MacRitchie's Fiaiis, Fairies, and Picts. [M. G., Jan. 12.) Review of C. F. Keary's Catalogue of English Coins in the British Museum (Anglo-Saxon Coins, vol. i). {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. v, Jan.) Review of Fencing, Boxing, Wrestling [by various authors] in The Badminton Library. (Oxf. Mag., March 5.) tTeutonic Heathendom. {In Religious Systems of the World. Swan Sonnenschein & Co.) A Lectui-e in South Place Institute. Eighth ed., 1905 (revised in one of the intei-vening editions.) Review of Toulmin Smith's and Paul Meyer's ed. of Les Contes de Bozon. {Acad., June 21.) Scottish History by Contemporary Writers [edited by F. Y. P.]. A series of four vols, by various writers, with editorial note, as in the companion series supra, English History by Contemporary Writers. Nutt, 16°. Prefatory Note to The Book of Los, by William Blake (1795). {Tlie Century Guild Hobby Horse, No. 19, July.) Also Text of the poem, printed for first time by F. Y. P. See Memoir, vol. i, p. 133. 1891 Review of J. Rhys's and J. G. Evans's edition of The Text of the BrutSjfrom the Red Booh of Hergest. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. vi, Jan.) tReview of L. A. Burd's edition of Machiavelli's II Principe. {Nat. Obs., Sept. 11.) 1892 Review of C. F. Keary's The Vikings in Western Christendom, 789- 888. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. vii, Jan.) tReview of Villari's Life and Times of Machiavelli. {Nat. Obs., Feb. 6.) t The Late Professor Freeman : Impressions and Reminiscences by one of his Pupils. {St. James's Gaz., March 18.) tA Recollection of Professor Freeman. {Speaker, March 26.) Review of W. Foerster's and Johann Trost's edition of Wistasse le Moine. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. vii, July.) tCauseries du Vendredi : No. VI. The Real Emerson. {The Spirit Lamp, vol. ii, No. 1, Oct. 2.) X CATALOGUE OF WRITINGS 1898 Review of F. Liebermann's Ueber ostengliscJie GeschichtsqueUen des 12., 13., 14. Jahrhtindeiis, besonders den falschen Ingulf. {Eng. Hist. Eev., vol. viii, Jan.) Review of L. 0. Pike's edition of the Year' Books of the Reign of Edivard III. Year XV. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. viii, Jan.) Review of F. Liebermann's Edition of Quadripartitus, ein englisches Rechtsbuch von 1114, nachgewiesen und so tceit bisher ungednicht. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. viii, April.) Review of Stopford Brooke's History of Early English Literature to the Accession of King Alfred. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. viii, Oct.) Review of Paul Meyer's UHistoire de Guillaume le Marechal, Comte de Striguil, et de Pembroke, Regent d'Angleterre de 1216 a 1219. Tome I. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. viii, Oct.) English History to the Death of John. {Special Courses Magazine of the National Home Reading Union, Dec. 1893— Jan. 1894.) Nine articles, reprinted in the same Magazine, Dec. 1897 to June 1898, and again by the N. H. K. U. as Supplementary Course, No. 5. English Histoiy from the Death of John. (Ibid., Oct.— Nov. 1894.) Nine articles, reprinted ibid., Oct. — Nov. 1898, and again as Supple- mentary Course, No. 6. 1894 *The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus, translated by Oliver Elton. With some Considera- tions on Saxo's Sources, Historical Methods, and Folklore, by F. York Powell, M.A., F.S.A. Nutt. 8vo. Issued by the Folklore Society as their extra publication for 1893. The sections of the Introduction numbered 7 (Folklore Index, with eleven sub-headings) ; 8, Saxo's Materials and Methods ; and 9, Saxo's Mythology, are by F. Y. P. : also Aftermath of Notes, many notes to the text, note after Appendix II on Saxo's Hamlet ; Appendix III, Genealogy of Saxo ; and Appendix IV, Last News of Starcad. Dedicated ' To the Memory of Gudbrand Vigfiisson '. +0n the Oxford Vote in Favour of a Final English School. {Journ. of Educ, Jan.) Saga-Growth. {Folklore, vol. v, June.) Review of A. Lang's Cock Lane and Common Sense. {Acad., July 28.) tReview of J. K. Laughton's State Papers relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada. {M. G., Oct. 9.) 1895 tReview of W. F. Kirby's The Hero of Esthonia. {M. G., Jan. 22.) The Decline of the Roman Power : Britain under the English : The Danish Invasion : Domesday Book. {Social England, vol. i.) Cassell. tReview of F. Harrison's The Meaning of History. {M. G., April 23.) tinaugural Address at Oxford. {Acad., vol. xlvii, May 11 : from Oxford Chronicle.) tA Lecture by Letter to the Boys of St. Clare. {St. Clare, July.) CATALOGUE OF WRITINGS xi Some Words on Allegoryin England. In Privately Printed Opuseula Issued To Members Of The Sette Of Odd Volumes, no. xxxviii. Allegory in England. Verses precede, vere dicunt sapientes, kc, signed B[ernard] Q[uaritch]. Dated ' London, Sept. 25, 1895.' 1896 tReview of Dean Stephens's Life and Letters of E. A. Freeman. {Pall Mall Gaz., Jan. 30.) Review of G. Wyndham's edition of North's Plutarch. {Acad., Feb. 1.) Address at University Extension College, Reading, March 7. (Report in Berkshire Chivnicle, March 14.) Review of Paul Meyer's VHlstoire de Guillaume le Mare'chal, vol. ii. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xi, April.) tReview of J. B. Bury's edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall. {M. G., April.) Review of Kuno Meyer's edition of TJie Voi/age of Bran, Son of Febal, to the Land of the Limng. {Folklore, vol. vii, June.) tWilhelm Meinhold. {Pageant.) Review of H. A. Grueber's and C. F. Keary's Catalogue of English Coins in the British Museum {Anglo-Saxon Coins, vol. ii). {Eng. Hist. Bev., vol. xi, Oct.) The Tale of Thrond of Gate, commonly called F^reyinga Saga : Englished by F. York Powell, Regius Professor [&c.] . . . Nutt. 8vo. Vol. ii of The Northern Library. Contains tBallad of Sig- mund, translated : and full tintroduction, pp. xl. Dedication : ' To Henry George Liddelland Henry Stone.' Motto on title-page, : Such are the golden Hopes of iron Days.' 1897 1-Quatrains from Omar. {Pageant.) Quatrains i-xxiv. See 1901. The £cole des Chartes and English Records. {Trans. Royal Hist. Sac, vol. xi.) tReview of Baring-Gould's Life of Napoleon. {M. G., Jan. 1.) tReview of J. Murray's Autohiographies of Gibbon and Lord Sheffield's Life and Letters of Gibbon. {M. G., Jan. 14.) tReview of G. Schlumberger's V Epopee Byzantine. {M. G., Feb. 15.) tReview of Ameer Syed All's Short History of the Saracens. {M. G., Feb. 15.) Review of W. P. Ker's Einc and Romance. {Acad., March 20.) tReview of I. Abrahams's The Mediaeval Jew. {M. G., April 16.) tReview of Martin A. S. Hume's Sir Walter Ralegh. {M. G., Sept. 14.) Review of A. Nutt's The Celtic Doctrine of Re-biiih. {Folklore, vol. viii, Dec.) Articles on four names Sihtric or Sigtryggr (d. 871, d. 927, fl. 962, and d. 1042). {Diet. Nat. Biog., vol. Hi.) James Sime. (Ibid.) xii CATALOGUE OF WRITINGS 1898 tPreface to W. Rothenstein's Paul Verlaine. Hacon and Ricketts. tReview of Halperine-Kaminsky's Turgueniev and his French Circle. {M. G., Jan. 18.) Reviews of W. L. Clowes's TJie Royal Navy and D. Hannay's Short History of the Royal Navy. (Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xiii, April.) tLecture on King Alfred, delivered at Winchester. (Report in Hampshire Clironicle, June 18.) The Alleged Attack on King Milan. {M. G., July 28.) A defence of Professor Vesnitch, the Servian scholar. Review of L. J. Vogt's Dublin Som NorsJc By. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xiii, Oct.) Letter on ' Dr. Vigfusson and Dr. Gislason '. {Athenaeum, Oct. 5.) See vol. i. p. 36- tDaniel Defoe. {The Quaiio, vol. iv.) Christ Church fragments of Mediaeval French Discourses on the True Vine and on the Paternoster. [Mod. Lang. Quarterly.) tReview of Count Pier D. Pasolini's Catherina Sforza, trans, by P. Sylvester. {M. G., Oct. 22.) 1899 tReview of D. Comparetti's Traditional Poetry of the Finns, trans, by I. Anderson. {M. G., Jan. 25.) Some Hints on Richard Cceur de Lion. {General Courses Magazine of National Home Reading Union, Feb.) The Death of Warin of Lorraine. (Windmill, April.) A long passage of translation from the old French romance, Garin le Loherain, into rigidly literal bhxnk verse. Review of J. S. Corbett's Paj;er.s relating to the Navy during the Spanish War, 1585-1587. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xiv, April.) Introduction to catalogue of the late Gleeson White's librai*y (L. Isaacs ; dated May 19). Review of Eleanor Hull's The Ciichullin Saga in Irish Literature. {Folklore, vol. x, June.) Reviews of S. Bugge's TJie Home of the Eddie Poems ; W. A. Ci-aigie's Scandinavicm Folklore; Jon Thorkelsson's ^iddsogur oy Munnmceli ; Nytt Safn. Part I. {Folklore, vol. x, Dec.) Gudbrand Vigfusson. {Diet. Nat. Biog., vol. Ixvi.) tReview of P. Sidney's Memoirs of the Sidney Family. {Morning Post, Aug. 17.) tPreface to G. Berry's Translation of Langlois' and Seignobos' Introduction to the Study of History. Duckworth. 8vo. tReview of A. W. Ward's Greed Britain and Hanover. {M. G., Sept. 29.) tPreface to (Mrs.) L. M. Elton's translation of A. Nazarbek's Through the Storm. Murray. 8vo. Review of J. Fitzmaurice Kelly's Segunda Parte del Don Quijote de la Mancha. {Morning Post, Dec. 28.) CATALOGUE OF WRITINGS xiii 1900 Review of H. M. Chadwick's Cult ofOthin. {Folklore, vol. xi, March.) tJohn Ruskin. {Saint George, vol. iii, April.) Keprinted with Tlioughts on Democracy, 1905, q. v. +The Pretty Maid : from the French of Paul Fort. {Tlie Quad.) Again in Broad Sheet, 1902. Review of R. C. Boer's Edition of Grettis Saga Asmundarsonar. Note on the Life Index. {Folklore, vol. xi, Dec.) Review of Lord Rosebery's Napoleon ; the Last Phase. {M. G., Nov. 7.) tLetter on Grant Allen in Edward Clodd's Life of Grant Allen. Grant Richards. 8vo. tPreface to Miss B. H. Barmby's G/'sli Surssoii : a Drama, &c. Constable. 8vo. 1901 tMandell Creighton, Bishop of London. (Obituary notice.) {M. G., Jan. 18.) Review of L. 0. Pike's Year Books of the Reign of Edward III. Year xvi. Part II. (Eug. Hist. Rev., vol. xvi. Jan.) tReview of F. W. Maitland's trans, of Gierke's Political Theones of the Middle Ages. {M. G., Feb. 25.) Review of H. A. Grueber's Handbook of Coins of Great Britain and Ireland in the British Muyeum. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xvi, A^jril.) William Stubbs. {M. G., April 23.) (Obituary.) +The Alfred Millenary of 1901. {North American Rev., vol. clxxiii, Oct. 15.) Beowulf and Watanabe-no-Tsuna. (In An English Miscellany pre- sented to Dr. Furnivall. Clar. Press.) A brief note comparing the two demon-stories. tAn Impression (Verses in The Book of the Horace Club. Black- well : Oxford.) tPreface to Grant Allen's Country and Town Life in England. Grant Richards. 8vo. tPreface to Charles Beard's The Industrial Revolution. Reprinted with John Ruskin, 1905, q. v. Sonnenschein. tQuATRAlNS FROM Omar Khayyam, rendered into English by F. York Powell ; together with preface, A Note on Omar. The quatrains as in Pageant, 1897 ; the Note is new. iThe Queen's Reign Swveyed. {M. G., 1901.) See Memoir, ch. vi. Published in an edited form. Partially re- printed in vol. ii, now for the first time in tlie author's form and witli his later MS. corrections. 1902 tThe Pretty Maid : from the French of Paul Fort. {Broad Sheet, Feb.) See 1900. tJohn Richard Green. {Qua>i. Rev., vol. cxcv, April.) Portion by F. Y. P. of an article ' Two Oxford Historians '. xiv CATALOGUE OF WRITINGS tSamuel Rawson Gardiner. (.1/. G., Feb. 25.) (Obituary.) •t Samuel Rawson Gardiner. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xvii, April.) tirish Influence on English Literature. {Freeman's Journal, April 8.) Eepox't of Lecture given to Nat. Lit. Soc, April 7. +The Sailor and the Shark : from Paul Fort. (Broad Sheet, May.) Ancient Rites and Modern Symbols. [M. G., June 11.) Article on coronation I'obes, regalia, &c. tLord Acton. (M. G., June 21.) (Obituary.) tThe Study of History in Universities ; Address to the University College of North Wales, Bangor. Bangor. Review of Historical Essays by Members of the Owens College, Man- chester. {M. G., April 14.) Review of Creighton's Historical Essays and Revietvs. (M. G., Nov. 10.) Gudbrand Vigfusson. {Enci/cl. Brit, vol. xxxiii.) 1903 Review of A. Lang's History of Scotland, vol. ii. (M. G., Jan. 3.) tThe Dead Mother: from a Danish Ballad. (Broad Sheet, March.) Review of Jlie Cambridge Modern History, vol. i : The Renaissance. (P. M. G., March 28.) t Algernon Charles Swinburne. (Eng. Illust. Mag., vol. xxx, April.) Review of W. G. Collingwood's and J. Stefansson's Life and Death of Cormac the Skald. (M. G., April 11.) Review of E. Pears's Destniction of the Greek Empire. (P. M. G., May 2.) Charles Godfrey Leland. (Folklore, vol. xiv, June.) Reviews of A. Kippenberg's Die Sage vom Herzog von Luxemburg ; of M. Maclean's Tlie Literature of the Celts ; and of C. Roessler's Les Influences celtiques avant et apres Colnmbau. (Ibid.) tReview of The Cambridge Modern History, vol. vii : The United States. (P. M. G., July 13.) Review of F. Seebohm's Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Laio. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xviii, Oct.) tA General Survey of Modern History. (M. 6?., Oct. 5; abridged report of lecture.) tReview of J. L. Mclntyre's Giordano Bruno. (P. M. G., Oct. 15.) tMr. Lecky as Historian and Philosopher. {M. G., Oct. 24.) Review of A. W. Ward's Tlie Electress Sophia. (M. G., Oct. 27.) fPamela Colman Smith's Drawings : a Personal Impression (pre- face, dated Nov. 9, to catalogue of drawings). Review of A. Lang's llie VahVs Tragedy. (P. M. G., Nov. 11.) •iRudyard Kipling. (Eng. Illust. Mag., vol. xxx, Dec.) CATALOGUE OF WRITINGS xv 1904 Review of A. J. Carlyle's Mediaeval Political Theories and H. Sidg- •wick's European Polity. (P. M. G., Jan. 20.) Review of L. 0. Pike's edition of Year Books of the Reign of Edward III, Year xvii-xviii. {Eng. Hist. Rev., vol. xix, Jan.) tReview of The Cambridge Modern History, vol. ii : The Reformation. (P. M. G., Feb. 2.) tTradition and its Conditions : Presidential Address to Folklore Society ; in Folklore, vol. xv, March. Posthumously Printed. tSonnet, 'Warm, gusty showers.' {Daily Mail, May 20.) tA Horror of the House of Dreams. (Greensheaf, No. 13 (edited). Printed, ante, vol. i. pp. 124-7, as ' The Little Man ', with correct text.) 1905 *Oeigines Islandicae : A Collection of the moke impor- tant Sagas and other Native Writings relating to the Settlement and Early History of Iceland. Edited and translated by Gudbrand Vigfiisson and F. York Powell. Two vols. Clar. Press. 8vo. Dedication : ' Hoc opus Gudbrando Vigfusson Frederico York Powell et amicitia etstudiorumcommunitate coniunctis litterarum Islandicarum peritissimis dedicant Delegati Preli Univ. Oxon. desiderii observantiae testimonium.' Prefatory Note unsigned : not by G. V. or F. Y. P. List of Corri- genda, mostly by F. Y. P. John Ruskin and Thoughts on Democracy. Saint George Press, Bournville; and George Allen. See 1900 and 1901. 4to. 1906 [Chief writings first printed from MS. in the present volumes.] Prose. A General Survey of Modem History. Cardinal Wolsey's Hat. An Aspect of the Eighteenth Centuiy. C. L. Dodgson. Gudbrand Vigfusson. Original Verse. Quatrains from Omar, Nos. xxv-xxix. Lines after Omar. The Two Tent-makers. To Cam ens. By the Graveside of James Sime. Ambleteuse : ' From an Album.' Ambleteuse : ' A Stretch of Sea.' xvi CATALOGUE OF WRITINGS Ambleteuse : ' Across the Buckthorn's tangled brake.' Ambleteuse looking Seaward. New Year, 1894. Weary Wood. At a certain Auction in 1897. Fragment : ' Sails on the Summer Sea.' Regnante Carolo. Monorhymed Sonnet. To the Well-skilled Translatresse. In a Copy of Andy Shirref s Poems. To an Admirer of Chaucer. Translations in Verse. Icelandic Ballad-Refrains. Icelandic Couplets and Ditties. From the French, thirteenth century. From Gerald de Bornello. From Giovanni Guidiccioni. From Verlaine's Sagesse : ' Le Ciel est par-dessus le toit.' From Maeterlinck's Douze Chansons : The Last Words. From Maeterlinck : The Pilgrim of Love. From A. Angellier : The Rose-Tree. From Camille Mauclair's Sonathies d' Automne. Chief Obituary Articles (1904). Times, May 10. Morning Post, May 10 (article and leader). Manchester Giianlian, May 10. Oxford Chronicle, May 13 ; Oxford Titnes, May 13. (Account of burial in both.) Oxford Magazine, May 18. New Age, May 26 ; by J[oseph] C[layton]. Monthly Review, June ; by Theodore Cook. United Irishman, July 16 ; by J. B. Yeats. Folk-lore, June ; by Edward Clodd. Blackwood's Magazine, June, 1904 ; in ' Musings without Method ' (unsigned) are paragraphs on ' Professor York Powell '. English Historical Review, July ; by R. S. Rait. Church Quarterly Review, Oct., pp. 111-14, on F. Y. P. in ' The Oxford School of Historians '. Note. — The paper on A)i Aspect of the Eighteenth Century, of which the occasion is described on p. 163 of this volume as unknown, was ^ delivered on Jan. 15, 1896, at the Rainbow Tavern, Fleet Street, to a club of journalists and othei's called 'The Cemented Bricks'. HISTORY, HISTORIANS, AND THE TEACHING OF HISTORY A GENERAL SURVEY OF MODERN HISTORY [Though addressed to an unprofessional audience, consisting largely of working men, this Survey is in the forefront of Powell's writings on the aim, scope, and achievements of written history. Done in the year before his death, it is his deliberate and final pronouncement on the subject, and his type-written copy is carefully corrected, amplified, and signed 3 Oct. 1903. Next day the lecture was read at the New Islington Hall, Ancoats, Manchester, in the author's absence. The little note on History in London is inserted, as the hope it utters is so far little fulfilled save by the work of the London School of Economics.] I SHALL premise that I am not speaking for any one but myself, and you must not make my friend, who has been good enough to undertake to read my lecture, responsible for any opinion I may express. Well then, to begin with, I am going to interpret the title * Modern History ', which Mr. Rowley has printed for my lecture, in my own way. He is not here and I am quite safe in so doing. Modern History to-day, then, shall mean what might perhaps be called the New History, as distinct from the Old History. The New History is history written by those who believe that history is not a department of belles lettres and just an elegant, instructive, and amusing narrative, but a branch of science. This science, like many other sciences, is largely the creation of the nineteenth century. It deals with the condition of masses of mankind living in a social state. It seeks to discover the laws tliat govern these conditions and bring about the changes we call Progress T. P. II , B 2 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS and Decaj^, and Development and Degeneracy — to under- stand the processes that gradually or suddenly make up and break up those political and economic agglomerations we call States — to find out the circumstances affecting the various tendencies that show their power at different times. Style and the needs of a popular audience have no more to do with history than with law or astronomy. Now, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the science of history was what we might call the prae-Kepler stage. We had amassed observations, but we had not been able to correlate them or to draw definite conclusions from them. Since the old Greek days when Thucydides, Aristotle, and Polybios founded the science, it had produced but few masters (Machiavelli, Sarpi, Adam Smith, and Gibbon being perhaps the only ones of real note), but now history at last came to its own. And it was not in Germany but in England that the greatest of modern historians appeared, Charles Darwin. His work gave historians as well as biologists and physicists the key they had long been hunting for, and just missing, as in Adam Smith's case and Malthus', by an hair's breadth. With his key, for instance, the complications of Institutional History were clearly and luminously unravelled once and for ever. Again, we had begun to collect and register facts with something like the correctness of a third-class botanist or second-class entomologist, but we had no calculus, no proper mathematical method, till the great Belgian Quetelet arose. And here it is worth remarking that, as a State producing men of worth, Belgium is as much a success as Switzerland is a hopeless failure. Belgium indeed, as regards art, prose, literature, and poetry, holds a far higher position to-day than the huge empire of Germany. Let me add further, as a side- note, that it was to Palmerston, of all modern statesmen, that the existence of Belgium as a separate entity is due, a fact which even the proverbial ingratitude of the Belgians has not wholly forgotten. It was Quetelet, closely followed by an Englishman of singular talent, Dr. Farr, that founded the science of vital and historical statistics. Darwin and A SURVEY OF MODERN HISTORY 3 Quetelet gave us the means and the method that enabled such men as Mr. Charles Booth, Mr. Rowntree, Dr. Karl Pearson, and a multitude of other quiet, steady, useful workers, to be now building up one great side of history on a mathe- matical and physical basis. The whole worth of Buckle (a brilliant man born out of due time) lies in the fact that he saw clearly and said boldly that history was not a matter of Chance or Fortune, or of what the Church calls the Finger of Providence, but of Law, Law that works exactly as it does in Hydraulics or Botany. There are so many sides to history that when one talks of history one can easily be misunderstood. For instance, to Thucydides and Machiavelli, and largely to Sarpi, history meant a scie7itific study of politics, a most interesting and important branch of history indeed, and worthy of the attention of such men of genius — all of them persons, too, to whom the art of politics and its practice were well known by experience, and who sought to discover the bases and conditions on which those kinds of human action which we call politics really depend. But, of course, there are many other sides to history, and the art of practical politics, whether it be the winning of elections or the carrying of bills, is not really a part of the science of history at all. To Plutarch again, as to Aubrey, to Brantome, to Johnson, and to Carlyle, history was biography — the lives of great men and women, to be studied not only from an historical but from an ethical point of view. Of course biography is a department of history, and stands to it as the life-history of a plant or an animal does to general biology : but its ethical purport has nothing whatever to do with history. All things are written for our learning, but we must make the applica- tion. Plutarch, the greatest of all prae-christian biographers, wanted to make good citizens, as Mr. George Wyndham has shown in the wise and beautiful essay he prefixed to Mr. Henley's noble edition of North's Plutarch — (the book that both Shakespeare and Gordon knew and liked) : but it is not the business of History to make good citizens; its B a 4 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS business is to discover the laws by which mankind in political masses acts and is acted upon. The practical development of conduct is a matter of Ethics, not of History. History only deals with the effects of conduct. The historian can help those that wish to learn conduct from biography, by seeing that bio- graphies are exact and accurate, that facts and dates are not misstated. For the method of history, of course, is just the method of every science ; it collects and sifts facts, gets them down as correctly as it can, classifies them, and then, making hypotheses, tests and tries these till it arrives at conclusions that stand every test and trial it can apply. Based on these sound conclusions, it reaches higher to new collections of facts, new hypotheses, and new and broader conclusions. The historian, in fact, must work exactly like the astrono- mer or the chemist. But in the collection of facts as well as in the discovery of new methods the nineteenth century has made glorious and astonishing progress. First, a Frenchman, a great and modest man of science, Boucher de Perthes of Abbeville, a friend of such Englishmen as Blacklock of Salisbury (one of his first disciples and believers), and of Lyell (who first really laid his views before the English puljlic), founded by his great discovery the study of primitive man, which has in the face of much idle, dishonest, and bigoted opposition deeply and healthily influenced modern thought, and created a totally new branch of history. This branch of history is one of the greatest creations of the nineteenth century, and its development under later scholars both at home and abroad has been extraordinarj^ Closely connected with it are the study oi folk-lore, the study of scientific archaeology, the study of the conditions of barbaric and savage life, in which such enormous progress has been made both by scliolars and explorers, progress in which Englishmen have done their full share, and done it (one is proud to remember) without any expectancy of the reward or even compensation tliat any foreign Government would have been proud to give to its distinguished sons. A SURVEY OF MODERN HISTORY 5 Let us particularize : the scientific study of archaeology has simply restored to us thousands of years of human history ; it has made the past of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Asia Minor, and Greece, open books, not to be read without difficulty, but still readable by those who will give their time and pains to it. This, too, has been largely English work : for Egy^pt, Young, followed by the great Frenchman Champol- lion and by a succession of devoted investigators, down to our living friends. Flinders Petrie and Grenfell and Hunt ; for Assyria, Layard and Rawlinson and George Smith ; for Greece, Schliemann (a noble German enthusiast), whose work has been followed up by a crowd of investigators, of whom not the least distinguished is my colleague, Arthur Evans, the discoverer of Knossos ; for Persia the Dieulafoys have gone on with the work of Rawlinson. We have recovered the very mummy of Rameses, the actual library of Nebuchadnezzar, the authentic archives of Sargon. We have recovered dictionaries, grammars, hymns, epics, romances, contracts, charms, diplomatic correspon- dence, mathematical tables, astronomical observations of thousands of years ago, set down before the call of Abraham or the birth of Moses. We can read epics written down long before Homer, and psalms composed long before David, creation-stories earlier than the Book of Genesis or the poem of Hesiod. The palaces of Minos and Priam, Agamemnon and Sardanapalus, have been discovered and unearthed ; we can handle objects of ivory and metal that they may have used, we have the pictures of the Pharaohs and the Great Kings, and can see with our own eyes their versions of their exploits in war and in the hunting field ; we can reconstruct the life of men five thousand and seven thousand years ago, as we can those of the days of Pericles, Ah^xander, and Caesar. We are gradually filling up the long blank periods that used to lie between the times of tlie savage, with his sticks and bone weapons and unpolished flint knives, and the men who built the Pyramids and founded Babel, and burnt Troy and established Rome. The well-worn Hebrew history has been 6 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS interpreted and enlightened by the scientific criticism of the old documents in which it is enshrined. In European archaeology great strides, too, have been taken. We are gradually getting back the true story of the colonization of Europe by our own ancestors and the tale of their progress towards civilization. Philology and archaeology have gone hand in hand here, and the proper interpretation of our ancient records, poems, and traditions, for which Wilhelni Grimm did so much, has helped the man with the spade to interpret his finds. With all this there remains much, very much, to be done. There are many libraries still to be unearthed, the position of which (and even some of their contents) are known. Masses of inscriptions are yet to be collected and copied, hundreds of historic sites are still to be explored. Hercula- neum, for instance, where two houses yielded such surprising results to the explorer, must be richer even than Pompeii in its revelations of the life of those who trod the earth in the first century of our era. What has been discovered in the last few years at Silchester and Glastonbury has already thrown new light on the Roman occupation of Britain, and the civilization this occupation brought with it. And all this mass of new facts has been recovered in one century of isolated and almost haphazard effort. There is an abundant harvest waiting. Each discovery adds new links to the yet imperfect chain of historical consequence. Only a few years back the Dieulafoys brought back for us that exquisite work from the old Persian palaces which now adorns the Louvre, work that shows how the traditions of Assyrian art were filtering down to the time when Greek influence was to bring fresh impvdses into Persia, impulses that passed through Persia to India and to further India, and thence to ' far Cathay and Zipangu ', and can be seen now in the wonderful masterpieces of Chinese and Japanese art by those who will look rightly. Again, it was a famous French scholar who lived the most fruitful part of his life in England, Terrien de Lacouperie, A SURVEY OF MODERN HISTORY 7 that discovered the origins of Chinese art and civilization and traced the influences of the early Mesopotamian civilization upon the wandering immigrant tribes that built China up out of a score of various brown hordes. Chinese civilization through Corea has again helped to build up the great Japanese nation, just as Indian civilization has been the basis of the civilization and art and religion of Burma, Siam, and Java. A number of devoted scholars have worked out from the native sources the history of the spread of Buddhist influence, so important in art, religion, and thought, from North India over half the Asiatic world. Mr. Rhys Davids^ last book will show the general reader the immense changes that Buddhism has made and is making in the world, how it touches us practically as a nation in all our dealings with the Farther East. The enormous mass of history recovered for us in Asia alone from northern inscriptions, from Pai'thian and Bactrian coins, from the Asoka tablets, from the annals of nation after nation, discovered, copied, printed, and explained, is wonderful, and this is all one century's work. From Prinsep and the great Hungarian pioneer in Tibet down to Thomsen of Copenhagen, and Dickson, the first scientific student of Japanese history, there is an unbroken record of patient, laborious, and successful research unparalleled in any former time. Truly we historical students of the nineteenth century have reason to be proud of our masters. Nor has European histoiy been neglected : it is not too much to say that more has been done for it in the nineteenth century than in any century since the birth of Christ. We have not only produced plenty of work upon the history of our own times, but we have searched the old Scriptures as they never have been searched before. Ducange and the great Benedictines and our own Coke and Prynne were giants. But giants' work has been done by men of our day — Freeman and Stubbs and Gardiner and Acton and Maitland, to name English scholars only. The lead given by Niei)uhr and Wilhehn Grimm, fathers of the new criticism, has been eagerly pursued j 8 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS and the right use of sources, and the careful examination and estimation of authorities as the necessary basis of all historical inquiry, have produced astonishing results in European history. The Dark and the Middle Ages as well as Early Rome and Early Teutonia have been made compre- hensible by patient and minute study, mere names have become living persons, mere archaic survivals have been found highly significant facts. The romantic history of our old institutions has been unravelled and explained, and though a good many fables have been exploded, the truth has turned out, as it often does, to be more interesting, more suggestive, than any fiction could be. The ecclesiastical history of Christianity has been almost reconstructed by faithful criticism of the early monuments of the Church, and we find that neither ignorant piety nor ignorant scepticism has given us the truth as it reveals itself more and more clearly, that Voltaire^s witty and super- ficial scoffs and Bossuet's absurd official credulity are both far beside the mark, and that the true story is more wonder- ful than hitherto accepted fiction. But a mere catalogue of results tends to be wearisome, and I pass to another part of my subject, hoping that I have been able to convey to you something of the enormous difference there is between the old histories of the world accessible when I began to read in the 'fifties^, and the histories now within reach of every school boy or girl in the town free library, or in the library of any well-equipped sciiool, in this year of grace 1903. The next thing I want to talk about is the importance of history. What does all this matter to me ? all this knowledge of old times, of old things, of old people passed away ? That is a fair question, and I will tell you one thing as part of my answer. Bulgarians would not be blowing up Greeks with dynamite, or Greeks joining Turks to cut the throats of Bulgarians and keep Servians out of Macedonia to-day, but for history, written history. My old friend Morse Stephens (the historian of the French Revolution) used to say that A SURVEY OF MODERN HISTORY 9 Portugal was raised from the dead by Hercolano, a mere historian. It is true, and the world and Portugal are the better for it, and owe Hercolano no small debt. It is history, written history, that has raised the Baltic nations, that has made Roumania and Hungary important European factors, that has set Bohemia on her feet again, and is making a nation of Albania, that is keeping Polish patriotism alive, that has given little Finland the national spirit that Russia, the pretended champion of Christianity, in spite of the most solemn engagements, is doing her vilest to crush. In far-off Georgia there is a resurrection of national feeling against Russian perjury and oppression that ought to be respected. It is history that is largely responsible for the unity of Germany and for the very making of the Italian nation. This nationalism has, of course, its shady as well as its sunny side, and the too common sight of paid demagogues masking as patriots and flourishing on imposture and ignor- ance is a sorry one, but one we have seen plenty of, both in and out of Parliament, for the last half century. But all this is an index of the tremendous power of sentiment that can be and has been roused by written history. It is this sentiment that keeps the Alsatians French at heart, that keeps the Swiss, whether they be speakers of German, French, Italian, or Latin, all patriotic Swiss. It is this historic sentiment, far more than economic difference or religious fanaticism, that sets Kurd against Armenian and Russian against Jew. Race-hate is largely a creation of cherished historic sentiment maintained by ignorance long after the conditions on which it is supposed to rest have departed. A great deal of the newspaper and committee and parliamentary patriotism of the Balkans is based upon false history and patriotic lies. But it is obvious that where the Greeks, tlie Servians, the Bulgarians, each severally regard themselves as heirs to the whole of the peninsula that is now left in the hands of the Turk, each founding tiieir separate claims on historic grounds, there is likely to be a difficulty which Russia will try to solve in her own way, as 10 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS the Greeks already clearly perceive. I am not talking politics, nor preaching in favour of the heirs of Solomon the Bulgarian, or Dushan the Servian, or the great Basil himself, or standing up for the sons of Othman ; but simply showing you how the reading of history for political motives some- times leads to political difficulties. It is obvious that if Italy and Germany were unified largely because the pro- fessional historians and their pupils preached unity as the result of their researches, and made the dreams of Dante and Rienzi come true (dreams founded on the very imperfect study of former history), that History cannot be safely neglected. A true history of Ireland, for instance, ought to have a calming influence on Irish politics. The false history taught and talked on both sides is simply a foul and fruitful heritage of evil — Catholics reviling (in complete ignorance of the history of Celtic Ireland) the Saxon and attributing all the miseries of Ireland to his presence ; Protestants refusing to examine the circumstances and institutions and ideas that have made the Catholic Celt for good or for evil what he is : the greatest opposition from both sides to the unpalatable but salutary truth, and every endeavour made to prevent it from emerging from the well to which it has now been confined for centuries. It is far better to have no idea of the past at all than to have such false ideas of it as prevail over most of Ireland, owing to the fond cherishing of ignor- ance and prejudice and the persistent obliquity caused by party politics and greedy superstition, and kept up by those who gain a profit from both : while the publication of the records of the past, the quiet patient research into the dark- ness of old times, is neglected save by a small residue, a faithful few, and the miserable old threadbare lies are hawked about, in the pulpit, on the platform, in the newspaper, shameless, baseless, full of hatred, malice, and all uncharitable- ness. We cannot afford to neglect history. If we look round upon the great movements that characterized politics in the nine- teenth century, and are influencing us now one way or another. A SURVEY OF MODERN HISTORY 11 we shall notice, if we care to, that they are largely the effect of historic or pseudo-historic teaching. The poisonous rubbish of Rousseau was based on false history, and Darwin has ex- ploded it, but its miserable effects are not all yet destroyed. The nationalist movement, as we have seen, is based on historic teaching, true and false ; the reform movements that have influenced every Christian Church have their basis in history. Strauss and Renan and Colenso and Wellhausen, DoUinger and Smith and Cheyne, have not laboured in vain. Even the Oxford movement of 1830 was largely a renaissance, a curious counterpart of that pleasure in the rediscovery of the Middle Ages that Walter Scott roused all through Europe, that in- spired Victor Hugo and the French Romanticists, as it earlier inspired Macpherson and Blake. The study of the Elizabethans, that was a passion with Charles Lamb and Wells and Keats, and their successors Rossetti and William Morris and Madox Brown, was an historic renaissance. It was upon historic study that Adam Smith founded his great book. It was upon historic study that the German socialists' Bible by Marx was based. It was upon the study of history that Moltke and Bismarck, practical men both, fed themselves with a view to the work that lay before them. The story of our rule in India shows the immense practical importance of history : in the question of land-tenure alone the lives of mil- lions of ryots, Indian peasants, have been affected by the different historic views of earnest and energetic Indian administrators. The influence of History is everywhere about us. History has had her say in Art, in Religion, in practical politics, all through the century. No — Me cannot afford to neglect history, but history is not a study that it is necessary for every one to take up ; we do not expect every one to be acquainted with the very important study of the higher geometry, or to pursue the investigation of the X-rays for himself. It is sufficient if we provide for such specialists as wisii to give their lives to the study ; but then we for our parts must determine not to neglect their results. We want teachers to teach our teachers in the schools, in the 12 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS press, on tlie platform, in the pulpit, and even in the bar- parlour. And we want to secure that every scrap of evidence that has come down to us from the past should be noted, preserved, and made use of. We want to see our historic monuments cared for, the stone-work, wood-work, metal-work, and glass-work of old times, as well as its parchments and papers, cherished and preserved, so that our descendants may make better use of them (as they ought) than we do. There is very little left of the past that has not its story to tell us, that will not help \is to understand what our forefathers hoped and feared, loved and hated, had and wanted to have. It is part of our own history indeed, for we also are the creatures of their impulses. Every one need not read or write history, but he can make history by doing his work, and he can help history by taking a pride in and preserving what remains of old and interesting in his town or neighbourhood, by fighting vandalism and holding out against the silly craze for replacing sober old work by bad flash new work, b)' opposing reck- less restoration, by seeing that the local records are properly housed and indexed, by setting down himself in ink (printers' ink is best) any scrap of old tradition or local knowledge he may have gathered. History then, if I may sum up, is a science : it must be worked on scientific methods, or it becomes worthless gossip. It is important to have in every nation students of history to supply true history ; not false history, therefore there must be facilities for such students at Universities and great libraries, and they must be employed by the State to work at the mass of materials that luckily exists for the study of national his- tory. They must study and give us their results. We need not be afraid that their results will lack practical use. Such men will not be expensive : they only need the wages of going on ; but among them there have been and there will be men whom England may be proud of. And now a practical sug- gestion or two, and this is where you come in. You must not starve research — it does not pay to do so ; you must help to build up great libraries for other ends than your own A SURVEY OF MODERN HISTORY 13 recreation, and great Universities for other ends than your own forwarding in life. You must buy books for them tluit few of you will ever want to read yourselves, and you must pay for the support of those people whose work you will not be able yourselves thoroughly to appreciate ; but all this will be necessary to maintain the students that will be digging out results for you, results that will in the end profit you, often in some strange and unexpected way that you can hardly un- derstand. Most of you believe in democracy : if there is one thing the study of history shows to be certain, it is that an ignorant democracy cannot last long. HISTOEY IN LONDON^ With the prophecy of a great historic harvest from France we thoroughly agree. The young American who goes to Germany for history nowadays is behind his age. The lamp of history passed from Germany to France after the war. Whether the ' milliards ' were worth the sacrifice is perhaps matter of doubt. Already in such workers as Sorel, Th^venin, Bemont, the new French school is well to the front. Fustel de Coulanges^ example has done what Taine's vaunted recipe failed to do ; it has founded a school of vigorous, exact, and methodic workers. We laugh, and justly, at Victor Hugo and his Pai'is-Pensee, Paris-Univers, and are ready to crush him with our mammoth Nineveh, with its area covering a county, its population larger than that of many a kingdom, its trade exceeding that of whole empires of old ; but we forget that London has never been a centre of thought, while never since the tiiirteenth century has Paris ceased to rear and foster teachers, thinkers, and artists whose influence has been evident and unmistakable in Europe. The only cities worthy to stand beside her as ' workshops of thought ', ' lighthouses of the mind ', are Florence, Bologna, Geneva, and Oxford. And yet, save * From a review dated 1893. 14 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS Rome and Constantinople, there are few sites in which so much of the history of a nation is concrete as London. PoUtically London has had immense weight. It is the city of ^ self-government \ of ^ Parliaments ', of the ^ common law ' par excellence. The palaces, the prisons, the courts, the records of the great kings and statesmen and prelates that helped to build up the British Empire, are there. When the man comes that will worthily organize the study of history in London there will be no lack of that local stimulus without which it is difficult to keep enthusiasm. [The applications of these ideas are first and best seen in the judgements passed on other historians, classic and contemporary, to whom the double test is regularly applied :— first, of their power to state and order the real facts, scientifically ; secondly, the power to see the meaning of the facts by a process of equally scientific, because verified hypothesis. ' Truth ', Powell would say, ' comes in flashes ' ; and the flashes, he would say also, come in their place at the moment when the hypothesis is formed which the historian then proceeds to assay. His own working hypotheses, as well as his method and spirit, were more influenced by Machiavelli than by any other writer ; Machiavelli, to whom he often returns, may therefore come first. The fragments are chiefiy from presswork of 1891-2— about the date when Powell's non-ethical views of history clearly define them- selves in print ; and the repetitions of these views are purposely retained. Two of the pieces are from notices of Mr. Burd's edition oi II Principe ; the third, possibly edited as to some phrases by Mr. Henley, is interesting for its personal sallies. Once for all, it must be borne in mind that these and most of our later extracts are journalism, not systematic writing ; but they are high journalism, they are Powell's written talk— cast forth in fervour, but giving his settled thoughts and convictions probably better than treatise work could have given them.] MACHIAVELLI With regard to Machiavel, on the other hand, [this author's] work strikes one as entirely inadequate ; he con- ^ From a review of 1898. MACHIAVELLI 15 demns the man (no doubt with justice from his [own] standard), and in so doing he seems to suppose that he has disposed of the writer. It is not Machiavel's private principles or practice that are really in question— we may leave them to the psychologist or the professor of ethics ; nor even his plaj^s. which the literary man will judge as he chooses ; but it is his scientific value that has to be considered. He was essentially no moralist ; we might as well look for ethical principles in Newton's Principia as in The Prince ; he was a scientific student of politics, and as such he must be ultimately condemned or acquitted. If his study is sound, if the chief scientific theories he advances in his Commentary on Livy's Ten Books (of which The Prince is merely a partial epitome) can be maintained, his position as a great observer and a precise thinker, next only to the Aristotle of the Politics^ is assured. And it is on this ground his adversaries must meet him ; but if they can defeat him here, the defeat is final. IP The best English edition of a great classic. From the days of Henry VIII to those of Victoria the name of Machiavelli has been honoured and defamed, for the most part ignorantly. Yet when one notes that of Cromwell Earl of Essex and Prince Bismarck alike it has been said that they were ' pupils of Machiavelli ' it seems worth while for the ' general reader ' to get a correct idea of what Machiavelli's most famous work means and to understand what Machiavellism is. Lord Acton's brilliant preface, a storehouse of the best and wisest opinions of thinkers, historians, and statesmen upon Machiavelli, will at least help to clear the ground, and Mr. Burd's most helpful edition, with his excellent historical abstract of Machiavelli's times and life and his learned and interesting introduction, ' II Principe. By Niccolo Machiavelli. Edited by L. A. Burd. 1891. 16 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS will put his reader in possession of the means for mastering the subject in a thorough and methodical way. And indeed this book, The Prince, needs elucidation, for though it is a masterpiece of clear exposition, a very model of that bello stile of which the great Italians seem to have held the secret, a style classic in simplicity, force, and beauty, yet its object and its lessons are apt to puzzle those who come to it without preparatory knowledge. Machiavelli, a civil servant of Florence, a clever poet and dramatist, a good scholar and a true patriot, aimed at the freedom of Italy. Italy must at all events be cleared of foreign foes and begin to work out its Unity. That Unity was like to come about, not through an Emperor (as Dante had hoped), nor even through a Pope (as many had desired), but through some Italian-born prince with ambition, foresight, persever- ance, patience, skill in arms, and knowledge of statesmanship, a man who knew how to win power and how to hold it when won. Such was Machiavelli's forecast, and it has been in our own days fulfilled to the letter. An Italian prince has won and held and left to his son an Italian kingdom, one and indivisible as France herself, precisely as Machiavelli expected. Borgia failed, with all his talent in camp and court and all the Papacy's influence at his back, by pure mischance when the prize was almost in his grasp, but Vittorio Emanuele had better luck and reached the goal, thanks to his own stubborn hereditary grit and the talents and devotion of Garibaldi, Cavour, and Mazzini. Machia- velli had studied Borgia's startling career minutely, and in The Prince he takes up the problem of how a prince may win and hold power in his own lands and in lands that have not before been under his sway. This problem he treats practically ; it is not a matter of ethics with him ; he is not concerned with conduct, but with practical politics and dynamics ; and just as a Treatise on the Art of War does not begin with a discussion upon the righteousness or unrighteousness of war, so we must not expect Machiavelli to discuss moral problems in this connexion. The subtlety, MACHIAVELLI 17 the ingenuity, the grasp of principle and knowledge of detail with which the problem is handled are beyond all discussion wonderful, and have made the book a textbook for politicians. And yet it is probably not Machiavelli's greatest work. His Art of War, with its searching exposition of the principles and practice that made the Spanish swordsmen the masters of continental Europe a few years later, and his Discourses on Livy, which range over the greater part of the wide field of politics, are even more astonishing books, but the handy form, the logical completeness, and the brutal frankness of The Prince have secured it hundreds of readers where the greater works have proved caviare to the general. Nor are Machiavelli's dramas to be despised ; his literary talents would have kept his name in a high rank had they alone survived to prove his powers. His letters are, of course, of high interest. But though The Prince be not his greatest work, his admirers will be content that he be judged on that ; they may truly say that since the Politics of Aristotle there has not appeared any study of statesmanship so profound and prescient. Great statesmen have seldom wished or cared to record the results of their experience in book form, and probably since Machiavelli's death there have not lived ten men who could have dealt with politics as directly, scientifi- cally, and calmly as he did. Talleyrand and Pombal, Richelieu and Mirabeau, are certainly among those few, Bolingbroke and Retz possibly ; but Mazzini, when all is said and done, comes nearest in genius (though of a very different type of mind) to tiie great predecessor whose aspirations he helped so eagerly and unselfishly to fulfil. Machiavelli's personality is interesting. Montaigne long ago told us, and his own correspondence vouches for it, that he read the classics in his dress-clothes, and that he found refuge from the folly and fickleness of a vain world in the honoured society ' of the learned dead '. It gives one an unpleasant twinge to know that, according to tlie ordinary accidents of the times, this great man was actually tortured by his political opponents that they might get at certain T. P. II C 18 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS knowledge which it was supposed he had, but the fall of an administration for many a year after Machiavelli was dead and gone meant the fall of heads even in peaceful England ; and the times, if they were Epicurean in one aspect, required the courage of Stoicism in one who meddled with matters that touched politics or religion. Small wonder that the wisest man of the age preferred to teach his fellows under the garb of folly the primary lessons of freedom, tolerance, honesty, and science. But Rabelais was a citizen of the world, and Machiavelli was bred and born an Italian patriot and by profession a politician. Most Englishmen know Machiavelli through Macaulay, but that is not enough. Macaulay is not Machiavelli ; nor was he by nature or training qualified to appreciate entirely a genius so alien to his own. Those who care to make the acquaintance of a famous book and a famous man have now in Mr. Burd's admirable work the best means of so doing. IIP Few men have so thoroughly 'cleared their minds of cant* as Machiavel. He saw clearly that there was a practical political art, that it had its principles, its processes, its problems, and that these could be studied more easily and effectively when the subject was stripped of the thick ethical envelope that had hitherto obscured its phenomena. This was a great advance, and, like most intellectual departures, it met with bitter resistance. On all sides fools and knaves, and clever bodies with stupid prejudices, and honest persons blind with bigotry, raised a chorus against the man of science who dared to treat of human conduct without allowing any religious or political bias to interfere with the course of his argument. Of course there was some ground for the outcry : there generally is in such cases. It was felt that Machiavel's method had its dangers, that the anethic politician does not ' From review in National Obsetver (Sept. 11, 1891) of the same edition of B Principe. MACHIAVELLI 19 really exist any more than the economic man. But both creatures, like certain mathematical conceptions, are merely used for certain definite schemes of calculation, and, so used, are by no means unprofitable. Yet it needed a man of nerve to calmly compose the Discourses, and to work out a part of the new science in a treatise like The Prince. Machiavel was no book-worm : he knew life on both its sides, he could easily foresee the obloquy that would assail him ; but he had the strongest possible motive to induce him to disregard it, and courage enough to permit him to face it. His pathetic struggle for Italian unity in a long service of diplomacy during which his warnings had been persistently disregarded by his shortsighted employers and invariably fulfilled to their dis- comfort, had not disgusted him with his ideal nor led him to despair. And so, with a hope worthy of Dante himself, when he had seen the brilliant adventurer, whom he had long watched eagerly, fall helpless when the prize was wellnigh in his grasp, he turned to his study to gather up for future Borgias the lessons of the first one's failure. The career of Napoleon furnishes in many ways the finest commentary upon Machiavel's theories and conclusions, his mistakes being as accurately anticipated by the Florentine as his successes. The series of steps which enabled Cavour and his master to ' realize ' at last the Italian nationality are laid down, or can be drawn as corollaries from propositions laid down, by Machiavel. And then the man's style is so excellent : clear and concise and conclusive as Caesar's own, and wholly void of that grotesque awkwardness which mars some of our best Elizabethan work. You have but to compare Machiavel's work to the petty prosy cunning and poor quibbling and shuffling of the good Comines, or contrast it with the pompous pretension and liackneyed aphorismic eloquence tiiat mark the more * Polonial ' utterances of Bacon, to see how the Italian towers above the other politicians of the Renaissance. C 2 20 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS IV 1 Macaulay (sinking Clapham Whiggery) has justly praised The Mandrake (which Voltaire sniggered over). La Fontaine did himself the honour of imitating Belfagor\ and, despite the attacks of certain ^ capuchins ', there are few now but admit to the full the extraordinary scientific and historic worth of the Discourses, The Prince, and the Art of War, which, to borrow the words of a great critic, * ne traictent que gestes heroiques, choses grandes, matieres ardues, graves et difficiles, et le tout en rhetorique armoisine et cramoisine/ Criticism on the Master is therefore not needed here ; let them that desire it read Lord Acton's preface to Burd's edition of The Prince, and be content. As to the Professor, his best chapters are probably those on the Florentine History and its composition, on the friendship and intercourse between Guicciardini and Machiavel, and on the rivals and imitators of Machiavel. The book, in fact, is one not to read through save once, but to turn to for notes on fifteenth-century literature and history. The fifteenth century is without doubt one of the most en- chanting of eras ; the Reformation (badly as it may have been needed) had not yet come to ruin art and divide society ; rich and poor spoke one tongue, had the same feelings and sympathies and the same appreciations ; cruelty, dirt, ignorance, and misery, of course, there were in plenty, and no lack of greed and selfishness ; but even such hypocrites as Cosimo and Richard of Gloucester were not so vile, to our notions, as the hypocrites of later ages. Tartufe was not born ; Rodriguez Borgia, with all his faults, was no Pecksniff; and his son's frankness in evil is mei'ely surprising because ourselves are used to sanctimonious and philanthropic pretence. And were the Poltronismus rerum Italicarum, labolenus de cosinographia Puryatorii, and other dull works of the day, ^ The Life and Times of Niccolo MachiavelU. By Professor Pasqualo Villari. Translated by Linda Villari. Review from National Observer, Feb. 6, 1892. MACHIAVELLI 21 half as (lull as the theological novel or as those treatises on the possibility of serving both God and Mammon, or on the art of keeping up friendly relations with religion and science at once, which seem to interest what in courtesy and mendacity is called the reading public ? And if we must judge centuries by their fruits, surely Teofilo Folengo, Alcofribas Nasier, and Nicholas Machiavel present you plenty of good matter, well sauced with excellent wit, smacking of garlic at times, and hot in the mouth, but not too strong for a healthy palate. Those meetings in the Oricellarii Gardens in the early years of the sixteenth century must have been pleasant. Cosimino the gentle cripple, Nardi the historian, Trissino and Alamanni, scholars and poets, Buondelmonti (to whom the Discorsi were dedicated by their author), the Diacceto and the Diaccettino, Grecians both : these were the men that Machiavel met and talked with in that delightful Academia. It was for their and his pleasure that he composed in a ^ new style ^ his life of Castruccio, borrowing freely from Diodorus, Laertius, Xenophon, and others, his aim being not so much to adorn the tale as to point the moral — the scientific management of conduct, the laws and method of statecraft, of economy, of war. But it would be quite untrue to picture him as the cold man of pure reason, the crocodile-skinned ^scientist ^ : he was flesh and blood like ourselves, and, unlike ourselves, in no way ashamed of it. He could joke about the vermin on his prison wall — ' so big and swollen, they look like moths ' — when he was lying with a pair of jesses about his ankles and the aches of six turns of the rack in his shoulders, in the midst of a stench ^ such as never was in Roncesval nor there in Cer- daigne' (so we read it) * through the bushes'. He could be happy bawling over cards or draughts with craftsmen and peasants at a village tavern. He loved a comely face. He was a kind father, and helped his kinsmen, even when it cost him trouble. He had the sense and luck to wed a good, honest woman, who clearly loved babies better than books, and could bring him healthy children. 22 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS MAZZINI 1 [In counterpoise, not in contradiction, some words on Mazzini, written also in 1891, should be given. The sentence placing him above Machiavelli might not have been so phrased by Powell ten years later. But he thought of the two men as working, with different but equally practical means and canons, to the same end.] The words and life of a man like Mazzini are of abiding interest. He was one of those rare spirits that rise now and again in history to regenerate their people. He belongs to that class of which his great forerunner Dante is perhaps the most striking example since the prophets of the exile. Greater than Garibaldi, because he was wiser ; greater than Cavour, because he saw deeper into the future ; greater than Machia- velli, because he never gave way to the temptation that besets the politician of stooping to evil as a means to good ; simple, sincere, unselfish, Mazzini is one of the noblest, as he is cer- tainly one of the most important, figures of this century. Yet this man, the peer of the greatest European statesmen, passed most of his life in exile and danger, hunted by spies and police, and bespattered with the cruellest calumnies by hirelings and apostates. But now that all parties acknow- ledge the judgement and skill of his political life, even where they differ from him in his ideals, it is time to look carefully into the man's own words and works. We must not let the curious antithetic declamatory style of '48, which we know so well from Hugo's grand but unequal rhetoric, blind us to the scientific truth of m\ich that seems at first in an English translation mere eloquence. Mazzini was nothing if not practical ; he knew his audience : they looked for rhetoric in their leader's discourses, hortatory or condemnatory. But when Mazzini is giving orders or planning operations he writes like an engineer — briefly, exactly, to the point. His paper on guerilla warfare in the first volume might do credit to Montecuculi. Interesting biographical details, a good deal ^ Life and Writings of Mazzini. 1891. MAZZINI 23 of ethical discussion, and much historic matter, make up the bulk of the instalment of the whole six volumes now before us. The tale of the liberation of Italy, so full of romance, of glorious sacrifice, of obscure effort and unknown and silent devotion, has been told by George Meredith and sung by Swinburne and Carducci, and it remains the most splendid episode of this century. It was the work of many hands, but none did as much as Mazzini. [There is, unhappily, no passage of any length on Sarpi, whom Powell incidentally honours in company with Machiavelli, Thucydides, and other truth-finders of the first rank. With these he would often associate Gibbon, of whom he had occasion to speak more than once, when reviewing Mr. Bury's edition of the Decline and Fall and Mr. Murray's and Mr. R. Prothero's of the Life and Letters. The third jjas- sage, from a different article, written during the same years, 1896-7, serves, when pieced with the others, to balance his judgement upon Gibbon.] GIBBON The extraordinary power that Gibbon still maintains over his audience was shown by the late celebration of his centenary, when students and men of letters united to do honour to his memory, and it is hardly possible to question the justice of the favour he enjoys. He has deserved his honours. One may disagree with the very title he chose for his great work ; one may point out his deliberate refusal (as it seems) to explain, or try to explain, the vast phenomena he describes, the success of a new set of beliefs and their influence upon the older and newer nations of Europe ; one may regret that he should have declined to point out the way in which our modern society, scarcely inferior even in Gibbon's day to the Imperial system he deplored, has developed under Roman traditions from the hopeless ruin that, to his eyes, followed the overthrow of the old superstitions by the new ; but while we would fain have had him supply us with more than he 24 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS chose to give us, we cannot quarrel with the quality of the work he has been willing to leave us. He has no small portion of that genius of common sense which was the most precious endowment, the most coveted gift, of the greatest eighteenth-century writers. Neither his cynicism nor his contempt for enthusiasm (that has so often in tlie past proved akin to superstition and cruelty) has affected his respect for facts, his earnest endeavour to keep his judgement clear and unbiassed and his observations exact. To the man of science his book is as valuable as it is delightful to the man of letters. It is perhaps the sole post-Renaissance history that takes permanent rank as a classic by reason not only of its form but of its substance. Beside its clear majestic amplitude and firm well-reasoned periods Macaulay's work shows but as a forensic display and Michelet's as brilliant but incoherent compositions. Whether as a writer or a thinker, Livy must be placed far below him, and it is only as a stylist that Gibbon could be adjudged a lower place than Tacitus, who is certainly his inferior in judgement and critical power. Carlyle's highest work is rather historical than a history, and refuses comparison. Bossuet and Voltaire are far surpassed by their pupil. Knox's and De Thou's partial histories and the amazing fragment of Raleigh's great design are in their various degrees classic also, as is perhaps Lamartine's masterpiece. But they no more than the modern Germans can pretend to Gibbon's rank. II Strange that this little puffy baby-like figure of the silhouette (here duly given as a frontispiece), with its polite and ready snuff-box, was the grotesque human vesture of the man who first, since Machiavel and Raleigh and Sarpi (and perhaps Campanella), really dared to treat history scientifically. He took the history of the foundations of modern Western civili- zation and treated it under the aspect of the fall of the classic society and the reconstruction of the ruins into a new shape by the Church and the mediaeval Empire working through GIBBON 25 barbarian settlers. He may have neglected the Teutonic element and sneered at the Hebraic influences, but he dared to accomplish a great work in a scientific spirit and show the working of a few continuous human institutions through long and troubled ages. He used the labours of his predecessors as quarries affording blocks for his chisel. He especially admired Pascal, and despaired of imitating Hume, but, imitating neither, hammered out a style of his own that not only admirably suited his purposes of expression, but has compelled the attention and admiration of the whole intelligent world ever since the first instalment of the Decline and Fall appeared. He heartily loathed and strove to expose sham and imposture, while he was not of a mind or temper to be led astray by raw enthusiasm or passing frenzies. The worst that can be urged against him is an occasional Sterne-like lapse of taste in dealing with matters which the present fashion is to leave unnoticed as far as possible. His irony is sometimes bitter and for the most part deservedly applied, but it is never coarse or openly irreverent or pushed to extremes. He had the good fortune to win the fame he deserved in his lifetime ; but he would have been an historian if he had looked for no applause but his own, so strong was the natural bent of his genius. His anxiety for exactitude and his laborious pursuit of truth are worthy of all praise, for such cares do not beset them that strive only for applause ; they are the sufferings appointed for those who endeavour to bring light into darkness, make order where old chaos reigned, and, like Milton or Dante, struggle in their own day and their own way to interpret to themselves and others some of the cryptic leaves of the great book of science. * Back to Gibbon ' is all very well, and Gibbon was a master of history, but he was deficient precisely in the quality ^ The Meaning of Jlistonj, and other Historical Pieces. By Frederic Harrison. 1896. 26 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS Mr. Harrison is always calling for — the consciousness of human evolution. Polybios, poor stylist as he was, yet understood that the future of Europe lay with Rome, while Gibbon, ridden by the prejudice of his age, chose deliberately to call his book the ' Decline and Fall ', whereas it was really with the rise of the Christian nations of Europe and of their Churches that he was dealing. Hence he dwarfs the part of the Eastern Empire, belittles the influences and energies that have made modern Europe what it is, for good or ill, and fails to anticipate the great changes in which his eulogist so openly rejoices, though he stood so close to them. Such a man may be a great literary artist, but he is not an historian of the first class, not to be placed with Thucydides and Machiavel as one who understood the drift of the events he gave the best part of his life to describing. Mommsen's comparative neglect of the Jews and the German tribes in his Roman history, his contempt for the very forces that were to metamorphose the face of history, supplies, as Vigfusson once pointed out to me, an instructive parallel to Gibbon's handling of his great subject. [More ample are the views on contemporary historians, chiefly English. Several of these Powell had long known personally : his tributes and verdicts were in most cases printed when they were dead ; some of them are in the nature of generous garlands on the grave; but all had been weighed and balanced, and represent what Powell thought and wished to be the permanent verdict upon each author. The first note, from a review of Dollinger's Studies in European History (1890), shows how the historian in Powell contained a poet. It is clear how Freeman and Gardiner are nearest to his heart and mind ; and how the justice done to Lecky implies reserves, not as to his impartiality, but as to the ethical prepossessions and theories under which he avowedly wrote. The remarks on Taine, to whom less than equity is dealt, treat of one who violated the first article of Powell's historical faith. Both articles on Freeman, and both on Gardiner, are reprinted (despite a few repetitions), seeing that all four were written unhurriedly and at leisure, and that there is fresh matter in each of them.] BOLLINGER 27 DOLLINGEE, ^ The Sarpi of our time. Indeed, in his judicious but in- tense mental attitude, his catholic hopes and fears, his firm and brave position towards the great retrograde councils, he cannot fail to recall his illustrious predecessor, and [by] his un- availing but noble stand against that assembly, when, if ever, 'the seamless coat was sorest rent', to the grief of countless pious souls both then and since. But it must be admitted that in power, grasp, and knowledge, in gifts that make a great historian, the Bavarian Doctor has far surpassed the industrious and statesmanlike Venetian. ... It is noteworthy that in touching such subjects as the Jews of Europe, the origins of the Eastern question, and the house of Wittenberg, Dollinger is never the historian of the dead but always of the living ; his province is all history, man and his thoughts and deeds. Whether he has lived in the crannogues of some misty lake over which Rome's eagles never flew, or haunted the bright forum of some famous city of the classic lands:; whether he has dwelt deep in the forest glades of the free Teutonic world, or groped about in the foul, prison-like ghetto of some close mediaeval town ; whether he is now living and stirring on the Boulevards or under the Lindens, [mankind] is equally a subject for the historian's thought and pen and sympathy. FEEEMAN 12 Had he never written a line Professor Freeman would have been a remarkable man. His vast capacity for work, his ability, his devotion to the truth as he knew it, his upright- ness, courage, and kindness of heart, would have distinguished ' Dollinger, Studies in Euivpean History. 1890. » The Speaker, March 26, 1892. 28 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS nini among his contemporaries. His fine patriarchal head, his powerful voice, and his robust physique (not unlike that of Mr. William Morris) were the evident external signs of his vigour and energetic personality. It was good to be with him ; his very presence and speech were a stimulus to what was good and hearty within one, and one was irresistibly driven, not only to admire and love him, but to endeavour to deserve the confidence and generosity with which he treated his friends. He had his own ways, of course, and they were not those of all the world ; but he was always willing to do what he could to accommodate himself to those about him whenever he was conscious of the least difficulty. His patience and kindness (with which he was too rarely credited) were continually evident, and he was anxious especially not to offend ^ the little ones'. His fondness for children and dumb animals, who reciprocated his attachment and at once made friends with him, was always a very marked feature in his character. Many of his often-quoted sayings alone, cut apart from their circumstances and contexts, give a wholly false idea of the man. He had a bluff, pithy power of expression which made what he said stick in people's minds, and the reports of his conversation or phrases were usually coloured by the reporter so as to convey a very different impression from that intended or produced when they were uttered. His sharp, Dantesque scorn of idle work, of shams, of lying, of sophistry and humbug, was instant and outspoken, and naturally bitterly resented by those he detected and gibbeted. But there was no bitterness in his real nature, and his humour, which was as spontaneous and as naive as that of a child, often gave point and edge to a remark which from other lips would have fallen harmless, unsteeled, and ineffective. Of things he did not care for — painting, poetry save Macaulay and Homer, philosophy, fiction save Scott, Axisten, and a few other favourites — he would not talk at all, but his interest was by no means narrow, and his memory was so clear and strong that there was a wide diversity of topics in his conversation. And he was ready to learn of FREEMAN 29 any one and eager to question about things or persons which had the slightest interest for him. His life was exceedingly simple and orderly, and the love of his family had, with the most watchful and affectionate care, managed so that he had the fullest disposal of his time, free from any interruption or distraction that would hinder or trouble him in the slightest ; so that, down to his death-day, when he passed away from their unfailing but unavailing love, he was happy in the continual presence of those ivhom he loved and who loved him. He was happy, too, in his friendships, and the sincere and generous way in which he always spoke of his friends was but a slight evidence of the pleasure he felt and the devotion he showed in his intercourse with them. His house at Somerleaze was of his own choosing, and partly of his own building ; and there was no other spot he took such delight in. He had ridden a good deal in his middle life, but of late years his sole exercise was to walk over the country round — a country he had explored so thoroughly that there was not an old house, or an orchard, or field, or hillside that he did not know and remember. At Oxford, the big red-blinded, stone house in St. Giles was like Somerleaze — a rendezvous of his friends ; and scarce an afternoon passed but he had some guest anxious to get half an hour of his talk or advice. He was very exact in all his University work, and though he sometimes groaned over the calls committees made on his time, he would get his committee work regularly done. His public lectures speak for themselves, but besides these he gave courses of lectures on textbooks which illustrated in a very interesting way his methods of study and work. He took a vigorous share in University controversies, and though he would not accept the system by which men are ' prepared for the Schools ' nowa- days at Oxford, and did not fail to express his decided and outspoken dissent from the system and its advocates and conductors, those whom he most flatly opposed will not fail to acknowledge the advantage which their subject lias gained 30 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS directly, and perhaps even more indirectly, from his presence among them. If he made adversaries among his opponents, he made many friends, and his example of devoted industry was no slight encouragement to every one who cared for the increase of knowledge, and believed that an English University required a higher ideal than even that of the conscientious and hard-working college tutor. His work ranged — ^as it had done all his life — over political letters, magazine articles, contributions to historical, literary, and popular journalism, as well as over those fields of more esoteric learning which he had made his own. He found rest and pleasure in varying his work, and the several big tables — each with its separate apparatus — bore witness to the way in which he parcelled out his long working day, that often stretched far into the night and began before the rest of the household was astir. But it is by his strictly historical books that he would have wished to be judged, and they are, indeed, a splendid example of industry, learning, and well-directed intelligence of a high order. They have won him a place in the bede-roll of this century's English writers which even his remarkable powers as a controversialist and his great political knowledge could not have gained for him. They mark a distinct stage in the course of English historical study. They have led students to an intelligent study of the documents, in vellum and stone alike, upon which our knowledge of much of the past must necessarily rest. His treatment, for example, of the various copies of the Old English Chronicle is a masterly specimen of the way in which the scanty relics of a bygone age can be made to testify to the facts they so fragmentarily record. He took up a dark and little-appreciated, though important, period of our history in iiis Norman Conquest and Rufiis, and he has fairly made it live again. We may not agree with his views of Godwin and Harold, with all his conception of the constitutional or social position of their days, but we have in much that he has written in tiiese noble volumes firm ground for advances in future investigations, and a series of FREEMAN 31 well-based conclusions from which to step on to future knowledge. He has shown the way in which the work may be done; he has been the pioneer of his generation to English students of history, as Niebuhr and Arnold and Grote and Gibbon were to theirs. His grasp of historical geography was unrivalled even by Munch. ^I have not written of any town which I have not seen save Ardres only/ he said with reference to one of the last of that grand series of local studies which has made the history of France and Italy and Dalmatia so interesting and instructive to the most untrained reader. His architectural work, never wholly interrupted for half a century, is of exceeding value. To him a building was, as it were, a living organism, and he had so vast a store of well-remembered types of Gothic and Roman- esque at his command that it was rare indeed for him to fail in putting an intelligible interpretation to any strange and unique example of either style that came in his way. Within the last few months he made a journey to see certain early churches that he had visited and sketched more than a generation ago. The last day he was out of doors he sat enjoying the view of the * acropolis ' of Alicante that was to mark and guard his last resting-place. His grasp of general principles and the true perspective of the history of Europe are manifest in every page he wrote, and no matter whether his audience were, as in his Old English History, children, or, as in his General Sketches, the unskilled reader, or, as in his Sicily, the student and admirer of the classics he knew so well, he managed to convey a sense of proportion of the true aspects of the great world-history in a manner which has rarely been equalled. His work on constitutional history, and his splendid fragment on Federal Government (which has been the admiration of politicians of every school and country), show his wide knowledge and accurate observation, and a wealth and courage of thought and treatment none but he could have supplied. As to his style, opinions will, of course, differ, but many pages of the Conquest and the Sicily are surely wonder- 32 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS ful examples of robust English prose, the phraseology firm and serious, as well as truthful and exact. He has shown that it is possible to write with scientific precision and common grammar, and at the same time with an eye to the significance of words as well as to the sound and colour of the sentence. One habit of style he had which has injured his reputation as a writer among the casual skimmers of books who abound in print nowadays, to wit, the way he drives home and clinches his ideas by well-directed repetitions. You must understand his view clearly if he has to give it you three times over. But it is this habit that had brought his convictions to the common knowledge of most of us. A truth that was worth learning he thought worth repeating, and there are therefore few of us but were in possession of his opinions on the great questions of the past and present. He loved comparisons, and his illustrations by likeness and difference were often most striking and suggestive, though of course they necessitated the employment of the names of persons known and unknown, to the general reader's continued exasperation, until in very anger he felt himself bound to seek further information — a task he probably resented in many cases. His historical portraits compare with those of Stubbs and Clarendon for life and vigour — the Red King (for whom he had a secret affection, in spite of his own judgement almost), the Conqueror, stark and wise and just, the saintly and irritable Confessor, that noble knight Helias, the crafty Papal diplomat who foiled Rufus and his bishops, the meek and stubborn Anselm, the truly unscrupulous Flambard, and many more figures that appear with Hals-like distinction upon his varied historical canvases. He was keen as a contro- versialist, and could indite a ' Grimthorpe ' with the best, but his doughty strokes were dealt in good faith, and he cared more for his cause than for the overthrowing of the enemy's champions ; and though he enjoyed the fray, he was often unconscious of the wounds he gave by a stinging epithet or a fiery phrase. He never deliberately inflicted pain, and he FREEMAN 33 was often surprised at the auger his plain-spoken words caused. But in his own firmly held conviction he could hardly imagine it possible that the opposite opinion could be honestly maintained, and hence he did not always stay his hand in his zeal to put his own case clearly. His love of accuracy was part of his inmost nature : names meant facts to him, and he knew how easily people were misled by the careless use of words. Hence the scrupulous care, for which he has been most unjustly rebuked by those who cannot understand that it is almost as easy (and much better in the end) to use the right term as the wrong one. He was — often excessively — annoyed by criticism that he thought unfair or careless ; but no man welcomed more earnestly any real rectification of his words or views. His care in revising his work was continual and scrupulous. He was eager to seek information from every quarter, and he would spend hours in searching for any detail which he regarded as in the slightest degree bearing on any opinion or statement he had made. He planned out his work with great care, thought out the details, and noted carefully any authority he could get at before he wrote ; and it is worth recording that it was his way to write, not to dictate ; dictation he rarely made use of, and then for some special purpose. He verified every reference, and he went over his proof-sheets with minute care. And it is quite wrong to suppose that he wrote carelessly or without constant correction, though his ' copy ' was singularly clear and good, and his firm, characteristic handwriting was, though a little difficult at first, easy to follow by reason of its unvarying form. On no work had he lavished more thought and industry than on his last — doomed, alas ! to remain incomplete. It is impossible to perceive any loss of grip or falling off in the last pages he pemied. ' I think I write better than I did ; I am sure my judgement is as clear, only my verbal memory is not as good as it was*, was his verdict on himself but a month or so ago. And it must be a source of constant regret that he should not have lived to finish this masterpiece^ T. P. II D 34 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS for the history of Sicily, that * inn of strange meetings ', is a subject on which, of all others, he was perhaps best qualified to write. It dealt with movements he had long studied, with peoples whose past and present he had followed with interest all his life. The Greek, the Roman, the Phoenician, the Saracen, the Norman, the Lombard, the Frenchman, the Spaniard, and even the Englishman, have each played a part in this strange and eventful island's history. But it was not granted him to grasp his ideal, and the soil of the Protestant graveyard of Alicante covers the dust of the greatest English historian of this century, snatched by too sudden a death from the midst of the friends, the kindred, and the labours he loved. Spain guards the sepulchres of few worthier Englishmen, though many have found death beneath her cloudless skies. Those (and they are many) who only heard of Freeman as (f)povboKT6vos, as a fierce debater at antiquarian meetings, as an impassioned speaker at St. James's Hall, as an inditer of ' Grimthorpes ', will perhaps be a little surprised to find this burly, rough-tongued fighting man to have been also a warm friend, an aHection-dte paterfainilias, a zealous magistrate, an amiable host, a considerate landlord, a person of singularly simple life and unaffected piety, and a man with a great deal of boyishness in him to the last. These characteristics naturally show through his correspondence. One sees therein his pleasure in his own queer schoolboy jargon (made up of funny epithets, tags of Greek and Latin, scraps of misquotations that had caught his eye) ; his cheery habit of finding his task amusing, however dry it might seem, and enjoying it as if he were at play ; his delight in the little daily trifles of his quiet country life, eager over the babies, the beasts, the house gossip ; his pleasure in discussing his work with his friends of kindred taste, his inability to care at all for things that did ' Review of Dean Stephens's Life and Letters of E. A. Freeman, in Pall Mall Gazette, January 30, 1896. FREEMAN 35 not interest him, his frankness and confidence towards his friends, and abiding interest in their welfare. Of the bluntness without compromise and the rough speech that not seldom in his earlier daj^s showed his impatience with what he thought was idle folly or indefensible ignorance or knavish insincerity, there is very little in the letters here printed ; more often, especially in later years, a boyish grumble at a galling instance of ineptitude, or silly policy, or wild statement in quarters where better things were to be looked for. Of course, there is plain speaking, but very little ill-temper. And, indeed, he was not an irritable or impatient man. And he had a strong desire to do and speak justly, but if he once ' found out* an unrepentant and need- less offender he was not sparing in his efforts to punish him and deter others from the ' corrupt following' of such a one. It is pleasant to know that his zeal was not in vain, though it may not always have been wisely restrained. He and his younger friend, the bishop, really founded a school of history, which insisted upon certain canons that had been forgotten by the ordinary practitioners and ignored by the crowd of dabblers and guessers that imagined themselves to be historical students. They insisted on careful study of the originals, on which every conclusion we draw, however *new and brilliant', must be based. They insisted on the necessity for wide as well as deep reading, on the benefit of the ' comparative method ' ; they looked on history as a scientific study of the past conduct of man in his political aspects, and not as the propagation of special pleading in favour of some institution, person, or creed which they favoured ; they dwelt on the importance of accuracy even in details, they condemned the hurtfulness of misleading, slipshod phraseology. This faith Freeman preached continually, both in example and precept. Being human he sometimes made mistakes, and these, being really anxious for the truth, and al)ove the petty vanity that dooms a man never to admit himself wrong, he was glad to correct and anxious to prevent. As for his style, his chief model was Macaulay ; and he paid the closest attention to D 2 36 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS making what he had to say clear^ so that he did not fear repeating himself where he thought there was a danger of his statement being misunderstood or ignored ; but he was also ever anxious for plain words, loving rather such English as Defoe's or Swift's than Dr. Browne's or Dr. Johnson's, and loving every now and then to revive some honest old home- spun expression and to get rid of a longer and less expressive word or phrase. He had the gift (for it seems a special endowment) of greatly irritating certain of his adversaries by some of his harmless peculiarities that, indeed, had nothing to do with what he was saying or with its correctness ; and he was often puzzled by the fierce opposition that was roused by such a habit as writing proper names by a rule or rules of his own, which he had adopted after some consideration and often in agreement with previous and accepted writers. The early life of the man, as unfolded in this memoir, accounts for many of his idiosyncrasies : the grave, lonely, quiet country life, the precocious pleasure in books and bookish talk and in matters ecclesiastic, the innocent schoolboy fun, the serious ambitions and premature earnestness, the love of things olden and interest therein, the quickly-developed historic imagination that could make dead men live, raise dead causes, espy the true connexion between far-off phenomena, and trace the politics of the day back till they had become history, the politics of the past. At Oxford the hard-working youth took pleasure in the ecclesiastic disputes and pursuits then the fashion of the place, and became an authority upon what Willis aptly called ' architectural history ', a study which gave him much enjoy- ment and much instruction all his life, as he was always glad to acknowledge. He was already too much of an historian, too proud, too sensible, to be inveigled into those curious * subterranean ' vagaries and mole-like methods into which many weak heads were at that time seduced. He remained the 'old-fashioned Churchman' to the last, singularly attentive always to the religious observances he had always cherished, but free from religious bigotry to a veiy rare degree. FREEMAN 37 and with a belief that just so far as a man upheld truth and right, and strove to do his duty to his neighbour, so near was he to the kingdom of God. Hence, though he had a distinct prejudice in favour of the Eastern Christian, and a distinct dislike for ^ the Jew ' and ' the Turk ', it was not in him to condone any wrongdoing by Greek or Russian, or to pass over righteousness in an Israelite or Mohammedan. He had firm friends of many creeds and uncreeds, marvelling some- times how men without the beliefs he held could live decent, honourable lives, yet freely acknowledging that they did. His antipathies he cherished, as Johnson did. ' Pliilosophy' he did not esteem ; he thought Plato would have been better employed in the quarries than in the Grove. He loved no poetry but the epic, and indeed considered prose rhetoric the proper expression for emotions we usually account peculiarly suited to the lyric muse. Scientific method he fully recognized, but for its application in mathematics and the so-called * natural ' sciences, except geology, he cared nothing — save (as in the Vivisection controversy) when they touched ethics, whereof he took great heed. To art, other than architectural, he paid no attention. He loved a fair prospect, but had no sense of colour whatever. GARDINER P There have been few instances since that of Gibbon of long-continued historical work so carefully planned, so steadily pursued, and so successfully carried out as the history of England during the best part of the seventeenth century, that we owe to the single-handed industry of the historian whose name is in many mouths to-day. Dr. Gardiner's life is an unbroken record of quiet, unpretentious, and continual work. He shrunk from no toil of research, visiting far-off archives, inspecting historic sites, perusing myriads of manuscripts and ' Feb, 25, 1902. 38 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS thousands of pamphlets, making French, Dutch, Spanish, and German collections of State papers yield all they contained that could throw light on the subjects he was treating, aiming at and attaining a most rare impartiality, and gradually, during the long years that he gave up to his self- set task, teaching himself to write a style that, void of all ornament and wholly innocent of rhetorical device, was yet able without unnecessary clumsiness or heaviness to convey a clear and definite meaning. It is possible that to attain the adequate expression of his thoughts cost him more trouble than all the rest of his work put together. For his orderly mind and industrious habits made him refuse no part of his task because of its aridity or obscurity, and he would as cheerfully go into dockyard accounts or investigate the details of taxation as he would follow the progress of a great diplomatic or military campaign or describe one of the striking historic scenes that are so characteristic of the period. When he was yet young he deliberately made history his life-work, and nothing was suffered needlessly to interrupt this. His sound health and regular life permitted him to anticipate, and made the undertaking of such an enterprise as the detailed history of England from 1603 to 1660 by no means foolhardy, even though he knew that the necessity of earning a living would largely encroach upon the time he could devote to it. But Gardiner was of tlie same strenuous stamp as Littre. Day after day he would come up to business from his home near London like any City man, do his full day's work at the British Museum Reading-room, at that well-known table loaded with books and MSS., and return home, where other work often awaited him. He took no more holidays than were strictly needed for health's sake, and he was so chary of his time that, after six hours of examining at Oxford, he has gone on to work in tiie Bodleian till the evening. Indeed he was most happy when in full work, as he more than once said, and it was a happiness that he did not think it wrong to allow himself. So, without pressing and without ceasing, he dutifully laboured while his GARDINER 39 light held out. It is sad to remember that the bigotry of the law at first rendered him unable to receive the endowment that the Dean of Christ Church would fain have bestowed upon him. But it is pleasant to know that when those intolerant laws were abolished Christ Church bestowed on him the highest honour in her gift, and All Souls and Merton Colleges rejoiced in being able to help to endow so splendid and successful an example of wisely directed research. . . . Compare Gardiner's life-work with that of Macaulay, who has been for two generations the most popular and typical of English historians, and it will be at once felt that, save in the grace and power of style (to which alone, be it remembered, Macaulay owes his popularity), Gardiner has proved his superior in every respect. He has read more, he has thought more, he knows more. He is a competent scientific in- vestigator, whereas at best Macaulay is a brilliant party pamphleteer, a rhetorical essayist, a man who was never able to see beyond the petty formulae in which he had been brought up, and who had no real love for the naked truth at all ; a man who did not think it below the dignity of an historian to try and make the worse appear the better cause. If we compare Gardiner with Froude — who was a bigger- brained man than Macaulay, but wholly incapable of any approach to exact investigation or correct reasoning, who wrote best when he followed his instinct and openly sought acceptance by the allurement of his plausible style, — tiie judge- ment is still more definite ; we must class the one as a literary man, the other as a man of science. For, strange as it seems to say so, judging from the surprising attacks such remarks call forth, history is not a matter of beautiful expression but of absolute science, whose results are attained only by careful observation, correct reasoning, and proper methods of investi- gation. History may be used as a collection of specimens for ethical disquisition, or it may be called on to furnish matter for impassioned political and partisan orations, but it is not a branch of ethics nor a department of belles-lettres. It is 40 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS • a branch of concrete science dealing with the definite organic phenomena concerned with human development and human retrogression. ' The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ' would seem ridiculous as a motto to anything that Macaulay or Froude has written (valuable in its own way as their work has undoubtedly been), but it is the motto of the scientific historian, and it is the motto that Gardiner lived up to. He had, as all men have, predilections and partialities of his own, but while one can sometimes detect in the turn of a phrase which way his natural sympathy lay, there is no instance where he can for a moment be thought to have misled his reader by suppression, exaggeration, or colouring ; of the plain fact. We may not agree with Gardiner in his i estimate (arrived at after long and close thought and with j extensive and minute knowledge of all the extant evidence, (' be it remembered) of the peace policy of James or the \ character of Charles I or Cromwell, but we know that he is giving his verdict with all the weight of a well-stored and scrupulously judicial mind, and that he has himself been most eager to supply us with every means of arriving at a conclusion for ourselves. ( . This is so rare that, save Lecky and Ranke, we know of no ( historian of the nineteenth century that has exhibited an / ..... I equally scrupulous impartiality. The astonishing and blind partisanship of men like Mommsen and Fustel do Coulanges, the abominable endeavours to mislead posterity out of ^patriotic' motives that disgrace Von Sybel and Thiers, the unconcealed malignity of Treitschke and the like, abide as sad iand memorahle instances of scholars descending from the pursuit of truth to the lower methods of the 'ward politician', of the religious controversialist, or the quack advertiser. Gardiner set aside without effort every temptation to treat history in any but a scientific spirit. It would have seemed as dishonourable to him to use a question-begging adjective as to tell a lie or suppress a fact. Hence it is not only interesting to watch him dealing with a worthy subject, but highly instructive to see how, as his own horizon of knowledge GARDINER 41 widened, his treatment of men and things broadened, so that it became possible for him to think of Charles as a man worthy of respect and of Cromwell as a man that followed where duty and wisdom led, without being unduly swayed by the undoubted deceits of the one and the illegalities of the other, though he himself was the most sincere and law-abiding of men and loathed lies and law-breaking more than most men do. If at times we seem to detect a disposition in the historian to expect his characters to act with fundamental consistency, we can easily reckon the bearing of this mani- festation of the personal equation ; and surely to expect an average consistency is a good M'orking rule for the student of human nature, who is thus the better kept alive to the numerous deviations from the normal that he is certain to encounter sooner or later in any prolonged investigation. Many of us look on Cromwell as essentially an opportunist I (and the more English so), which would be too sweeping ( a conclusion probably for Dr. Gardiner to assent to. There ' are those that despise Vane, but Dr. Gardiner would be disposed to take a view more in consonance with Milton's. For a few of us Rupert is a more important personage than he appears to Dr. Gardiner, but Dr. Gardiner's view of the measure of his effectiveness can be supported by many arguments of weight. Moreover, Dr. Gardiner has forestalled a large number of objections by giving them prompt con- sideration as they naturally arose ; he has solved an immense number of difficulties by the express testimony of the crowds of new witnesses whom he has discovered and produced ; he has even been able to rid himself from the besetting British temptation of delivering ethical judgements, which is an occupation clean outside the historian's province and an occupation for which he has seldom either adequate training or sufficient knowledge to justify him in undertaking it. The practical bent of his mind has saved Dr. Gardiner from many pitfalls and led him to follow the sound rules of evidence, so that he escapes from fallacies that have ere now deluded scholars of high rank but imperfect grasp of method and of 43 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS logic. His superiority to Ranke, where they meet, lies in the fact that, first, he understood Parliament and what it means better than the famous German, and secondly that he knew the internal course of the politics of England, in and out of Parliament, as well as the inwardness of all the foreign nego- tiations that were being carried on here in the seventeenth century. The absence of literature (save the early works of Milton and the poetiy of Vaughan, Traherne, and one or two more) and of book help other than tracts, newsletters, sermons, satires, proclamations, exhortations, commentaries, and narrations, often false, mostly dry, and frequently useless, that swarm and pullulate during the period, has not been so inimical to Dr. Gardiner as it would have been to an historian with greater feeling for literary work and expression. This has made his toil more irksome, possibly, but at all events he has not been distracted. The great work will be a model for those who, we hope at no distant date, will undertake the history of the British Isles and plantations under the various kings of the House of Brunswick and their still more important ministers. Their task will be easier but longer, their problems less perplexing but more frequent, the characters they must consider will be more intricate, of less bold modelling and more various in colour. The social and political side of politics will absorb much of their attention. But they will have the advantage of a model in this noble history of Dr. Gardiner's, a history not surpassed in its kind, or indeed fairly equalled, by the work of any Continental scholar of this century or the last. . . . His fame rests securely on his big history, the book in which this English Polybios reveals the passions and prejudices, the instincts and motives, the virtues and the capabilities, the political actions and thoughts of a famous generation of a mighty people ' mewing a mighty youth'. ' Comely indeed and refreshing ' is the veracious record of such an era, not because of the eloquence of its presentment or the dazzling of its rhetoric or the poetry of its expressions, but by reason of its accuracy, its fidelity, its exactness, the completeness of its GARDINER 43 evidence, the judicial treatment of its phenomena; and though an able and highly trained man should give his life, as this man has, to such a subject, shall we not esteem him highly fortunate in his success and deem that he at least has deserved well of the country whose past he has so wisely and faithfully studied ? IP Of his monographs, his Cromwell (in which he paid much attention to the manner as well as to the matter) is perhaps the best, and it proves that he had made himself master of a plain nervous style admirably fitted to the subjects he was treating. His editions of original documents are exact, straightforward, and businesslike, without parade of learning or pomp of useless annotation. In his big book he had to choose between giving time to style or to research, and he (wisely, as I think) determined that his first duty was to get at his results and set them forth as plainly and clearly as he could, knowing that he would not be able to furnish his book forth with a bravery meant to attract, save at the cost of much pains better spent on investigation. He found difficulty in his earlier volumes in getting his results down vividly, but he learnt much of the art of writing by continual practice, and there are not a few pages in his later volumes that deserve selection among the best typical pieces of English historical prose. Like Polybios he was ever greatly desirous to get at the knowledge of things he held to be important and to give that knowledge as he got it to his readers, but he sought only an audience that would be content with an accurate state- ment and could dispense with rhetoric. It is not too much to say that Gardiner found the story of the first Stewarts and Cromwell legend, and has left it history. The reign of James was untilled ground, the reign of Charles a plot choked with warring weeds, the Common- wealth unexplored country till he came. James's policy and ' English Historical Review, April, 1902. 44 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS theories, Charles's character and aims, the position of Buckingham and Pym and Strafford, the foreign influences operating upon court, church, and people, the financial position from year to year (which Gardiner was the first to investigate), the varying fortunes of the war and the causes that determined the changes, the exact political meaning that the religious question assumed from year to year, the precise constitutional or unconstitutional attitude of the different jjarties and their ideals, the aims and achievements and in- complete enterprises of Cromwell, the Scottish difficulties (never dealt with so broadly and impartially before), the Irish imbroglios and the Settlement, even the military and naval history of the period, as far as we now know them on good evidence — we know from evidence collected, marshalled, and weighed by Gardiner. He was sometimes surprised at the unforeseen results that gradually worked out under his eyes as he proceeded with his orderly and minute investigation of the evidence for each successive year of the period, and he could test every step forward as thoroughly as the material admitted, his fine memory and his aptitude for chronology standing him in good stead and helping him to make the best use of his full notes. That he was by blood connected with the Puritan party was a source of satisfaction to him person- ally ; but I know also that it put him on his guard lest he should by natural partiality be led to press unduly against the other side. The immense care he took to try to under- stand the men of the seventeenth century gave him, as he went on, a fine historic instinct, and enabled him to grasp facts at once that earlier he could only have understood with difficulty ; for he was by nature a man of singleness of mind and dis- position, and it was a cunning and complex world, in many ways different from the world of Ids own experience, that he had undertaken to explore. But his good common sense upheld him, and his grasp of character and theory of motive became keen and searching long before he reached the end of his labours. No man that I have known worked more unflinchingly up to his highest ideals. And it has been GARDINER 45 given to him to write the history of those dark years of struggle and unrest that have largely moulded British history — years in which many mighty men went down to the Un- seen fighting for the portion of truth that they had managed to get a glimpse of — years of costly sacrifice, but sacrifice not to be accounted wholly vain. Charles died as honour- ably and usefully as Hampden, Strafford and Montrose as nobly and unselfishly as Falkland ; Herbert's ideals were as true as Milton's, though not so splendid ; and the mystic Vaughan was as near to the verities as the homely Bunyan. Hobbes and Filmer (unequal pair) alike shared in the ' making of England ' ; even Cromwell's work as it fell from his dying hand was taken up by the ministers of his royal successor. It is possible to take a broader and wider view now that Gardiner has cleared the path up the heights to which he himself painfully but surely won his way in half a century's steady toil. Magna est Veritas et praevalebit, and Gardiner no less than Green had the firmest faith in the old Oxford device they both admired. He has been our Master Interpreter; he has toiled year after year that his countrymen might understand what their forebears really thought and did, when they failed, where they succeeded. He has made it possible for us to under- stand the curious warp or twist in the regular development of this nation that has made it different from other European nations in its political and social life — a warp of a strange, possibly not wholly beneficial, kind, but a warp the conditions of which can now to some extent be made out. He has done for us as to Cromwell's day what Stubbs has done for us as to the days of Henry FitzEmpress and Earl Simon and Edward I, and he has done it by enormous toil, and by a well-devised and consistent method. Knowledge can only be achieved by rightly directed and unselfish effort. Gardiner knew this, and in the security and helpfulness of his results he had the sole reward he sought or valued. Personally, as a friend of a score of years, I cannot but here record my abiding sense of gratitude to the man that 46 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS has gone, as I remember his patient and gentle kindness, his friendly help and ready counsel, the simplicity and sincerity of his life, the unflagging enthusiasm that lightened the I drudgery of perusing thousands and thousands of the dullest I of pages in print and manuscript that he was bound to go through in his self-imposed task, the scrupulous care with which he formed and examined his own conclusions, and the unfeigned and brotherly delight with which he welcomed every fresh recruit to the small army of English historians. These things dwell in one's memory, and must dwell as long as memory remains. ' It is no light thing to have known wise and good men ', and certainly this man was both wise and good. LECKY 1 Mr. Lecky began at an early age to devote himself to the studies that occupied the greater part of his life. His first work, Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, issued anony- mously in 1861, when he was twenty-three, was of high promise, and though it passed comparatively unnoticed at the time, by some freak of the fortune that affects the sale of books, it was seen by good judges to be a remarkable achievement. Wide reading, close reasoning, sympathy joined to a remarkably cool judgement, and great and praiseworthy impartiality, combined with a clear and effective style to delight the intelligent reader. The sketch of O'Connell in particular is a little masterpiece of its kind. From the province of biography Mr. Lecky turned to a wider and even more difficult branch of history, the progress of reason in Western Europe as applied to the main matters of general social concern, and here his studiously moderate language, his lofty standpoint, and his command of facts gained favour for a book that by no means supported the popular ideas that then held » Oct. 24, 1903. LECKY 47 favour in the British press and in British society. It is amusing to compare the cahii but not cold statements of Lecky in his History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (1865) with the shrewd and biting onslaughts of Buckle upon the same superstitious and false ideals. It is probable that Mr. Lecky was by no means the least effective in the attack upon the delusions he so quietly but unflinchingly exposed. Without committing himself to any system such as that of Mill or Comte, Mr. Lecky was content to show the illusory nature of the popular beliefs on many important subjects ; he appealed to reason, to quiet thought and reflection ; he left his reader to convince himself. He half unconsciously but evidently applies the doctrine of development and evolution in the sphere of human conduct ; he refuses to prejudice his case by violent words, by over-statement, by specious rhetoric ; he is content with a plain but exceedingly skilful exposition, lucid, orderly, well supported by acknowledged facts. The book has done good service, and its influence has been wider than perhaps even its writer knew. It was in a sense completed by the History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagfie (1869). A certain immature Puritanism natural to the man and the time in which it was written is to be noticed in this work, which, though it does not hinder the historical exposition, shows that the writer had not yet grasped a rational theory of the origin of human ethic. It was perhaps a consciousness of the lack of the scientific groundwork necessary for a full treatment of the history of ethic that turned Mr. Lecky's attention to later political history, in the critique and sources of which he was thoroughly at home. His admirable History of England in the Eigh- teenth Century (1878-1890) is a monument of learning and exposition, and is completed by the History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, which concludes with the Union. In these two books, while he notices that in the face of a mass of material the historian can only hope to produce a mosaic picture, he has nevertheless written many pages of reflection 48 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS and conclusions forced upon him by the systematic study of the huge array of evidence before him. We may agree or not with the views he expresses, but we cannot quarrel with the narrative of facts so scrupulously and judiciously compiled. We may not judge Clare or Tone as he has judged them, but the accuracy of his relation of the events of their lives we cannot question. His effort to be fair and just is so scrupulous and so successful that at times it seems to have almost stayed his hand and fettered the free expression of his feelings ; but then he is not writing for the sake of success, of literary fame, but for the sake of truth, and he attains at times the stately judicial manner we have admired in great judges — a manner surely, after all, higher than the dazzling and misleading rhetoric of many a famous advocate. In his Democracy and Liberty he has made a scientific study of the influence of modern * democratic ' Governments in the direction of restraint. It was written after his History of the Eighteenth Century, a study by which he rightly believed that he had gained certain * kinds of knowledge and methods of reasoning ' that might be of use in the discussion of contemporary questions. The book met, naturally enough, with opposition, but it is the kind of book that students of politics must value highly. It deals with tendencies ; it weighs these, and attempts to show the dangers and difficulties likely to be met with in the almost uncharted sea of the future. It frankly recognizes that the democratic experiment will be tried, rightly or wrongly, and that the success or failure of the experiment will depend upon tiie sagacity of the executive and the common sense of the body for which they act. That there is anything like a divine right of democracy or that there is any finality about a democratic system Mr. Lecky would naturally refuse to admit ; yet lie is not dealing with theory here, but with practical matters. * You who work this experiment will have such and such difficulties ; they cannot be met in such and such ways; wherefore perpend ! ' This is the kind of attitude he assumes in Democracy and Liberty. He examines the ordinary falla- LECKY 49 cies in the loose talk only too prevalent over politics, he shows the insidious approaches tyranny continues to make toward overthrowing the measure of liberty that democracy claims to afford to all ; he notices the real claims democracy makes upon every citizen, claims not always wholly acknow- ledged by those most loud in calling for democratic institutions of the most uncompromising type. He must not, therefore, be classed as a reactionary; the true friends of democracy are those who, like Ruskin, Carlyle, and Lecky, point out the perils ahead. In his autobiographic books, his poems, and his Map of Life, he reveals himself as of a sober, kindly, not unhumorous nature ; he shows that he trained himself to be reasonable in expectation, steady in face of the inevitable shocks and disappointments of life, and kindly towards those who are his co-mates in the little raft floating between the two immensities. His creed is that of a quiet, reflective, dutiful man, who faces life, as he understands it and has known it, squarely, without exultation or depression. Of the joie de vivre in the full sense he does not show much experience. His life of pre- dilection is that of // Penseroso, though he is firmly con- vinced that it is the duty of every man, whether inclined by temperament or not, to play his part as a citizen for the benefit of his fellow creatures, his country, and even of himself. He makes but slight calls on Faith or Hope, but he admits to the full the rights of Charity. It is per- haps a little colourless, his scheme of life, but it is clear, sensible, reasonable as far as it goes, and a man who lived up to it would be of use to his country and a credit to himself. He made himself by careful practice a good, fluent speaker, with a gift for a kind of gentle irony that was often ex- ceedingly telling and humorous. His voice and intonation were clear and pleasant. He had not the faults of the ordinary public speaker. He was not a master of common- place, nor one that plastered over an inconvenient issue with a daub of futile generalities. He was not grotesque or weak T. P. II E 50 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS in style or expression. He understood and studied his audience. His business was reason, not rhetoric, but he was not therefore careless of the form. His tall, spare figure and characteristic carriage and face will be remembered by many to whom he is only known as a member of Parliament — the least, perhaps, of his titles to memory. As an historian he ranks rather with Gardiner on the one hand and with Mill on the other. It is idle to expect of a scientific man, even of Newton or Darwin, that his work will be final, but it will probably be long before his work on British and Irish history of the eighteenth century can be replaced ; and his earlier work can only be superseded by one who has added to his wide reading a deeper knowledge of the evolutionary process of intellectual development than is found save in the foremost thinkers of to-day. CEEIGHTON ^ In 1894 came out the last instalment of this elegant and well-based study of a difficult but fascinating epoch. His cool judgement, the complete mastery of the condi- tions, the ready comprehension of the problems that faced the men of whom he was writing, the quick grasp of character, and the honourable impartiality with which the bitter and perennial religious and political controversies are handled, make it a work of permanent value. One might have wished, perhaps, that he had been less severe upon himself, and given his amusing wit and ironic humour a little more play. The dignity of history would scarce have suffered, and we should have been richer by a complete literary masterpiece. But, no doubt for reasons he felt to be good, he refused to stir from the cold and decorous style that at least does not betray its follower into the pitfalls that are set — not in vain always — for those who choose their own paths and paces. One felt ' Jan. 15, 1901. CREIGHTON 51 in his work a sense of restrained power, and one knew that he could have made an instant reputation by style but preferred to remain faithful to the more obvious and binding duties incumbent on the historian. And this History of the Papacy during the Reformation is the only first-rate piece of Church history in narrative form that the nineteenth century has produced in English. The rare capacity for appreciating foreign art, and art of an extremely conventional style, was of material service to its author in the repeated visits that he paid to Italy during the progress of the work, and it was by reason of his instinctive aesthetic feeling that he was able to solve many difficulties, that commonly resist the Teutonic mind to the wonder of the Latin critic. There was always something of the Renaissance about Mandell Creighton. He would have been at his ease in a cardinal's hat, whether he had to sit with the scholarly and travelled Pius II or that great patron of arts and letters Sixtus IV, or to march with that ^ martial restorer of the Papacy ' Julius II, or whether he had to attend Councils or manage Congregations or govern or pacify one of the more turbulent States of the Church. His historic imagination, his pleasure in tracing out the complex tangles of political struggles and noting their results, his intense appreciation of intellectual force and of the skilful play of a master statesman, are qualities that less frequently adorn our English historians, though they some- times furnish the greater part of the Southern historian's equipment. It was this historic imagination, and the tact that was one of his most notable gifts too, that helped to make his mission to Russia to represent the Anglican Church at the Tsar's coronation something more than a piece of gracious courtesy paid by one Christian community to another. While at Peterborough he also wrote his brilliant aperqu of the reign and personality of the great Queen, whom such men as Spenser and Ralegh delighted to honour, the Queen who made England the foremost Protestant power, whose navy set bounds to the cherished Spanish dreams of world- E 7, 52 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS empire, in whose days an Englishman reached the * topmost heights of that poetic momit^ which none but Dante liad scaled since Greek ceased to be the tongue of civilized man- kind. It was no easy theme, but it was so handled that something better than a mere pleasing piece of popular literature was produced. . . . In the Bishops of London and Oxford the Anglican Church, faithful to the scholarly fashion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has secured historians whose equals no other European Church can point to among their hierarchy, and this must be counted to her credit. It is curious that in France and Italy, Spain and Germany, it should now be left to simple priests, professors, and abbes to uphold the traditions of learning that men like Jerome and Augustine, Ximenes and Isidore, to name only a few characteristic teachers, implanted in the higher ranks of the Christian organizations of their day. True, there is a gap between Collier and Fuller and the Anglican historians of this reign, but it is a gap that is not entirely bare. As an historian of learning and judge- ment, as a bishop of unwonted sagacity, as a man of great personal charm and influence, Mandell Creighton has left a mark on his generation and a sympathetic memory among his many friends. JOHN RICHARD GREEN ^ The author of the Short History of the English People was a man whose attractive and brilliant personality will be of interest to a large circle of readers ; and this personality is admirably displayed in the work which stands first on our list. Mr. Leslie Stephen has modestly called his memoir the Letters of J. R. Green, though he might fairly have called it a * Life \ for the letters and bits of autobiography and talk are so artfully pieced together, with concise and ^ Quarterli/ Review, April, 1902. GREEN 53 luminous elucidations, that the whole constitutes a biography which for completeness and justness of presentment may well be compared with Dykes Campbell's L//e of Coleridge. Green, like Coleridge, has been allowed, so far as may be, to speak for himself ; and the reader is placed face to face with the living man, not with an interpretation of him, that, how- ever faithful, must lack the intimacy and individuality of the original. Mr. Stephen's studied and masterly brevity is a most laudable quality in these days, when every one thinks he has a licence to write at length on any subject. He has I also followed Carlyle's advice and given three most helpful ' portraits of his subject. Very characteristic is the frank square face, defiant, humorous, alert, and determined, of the photograph taken at Florence in 1869. A second portrait, from a collodion print, shows him at a later stage, when resolution has taken the place of mere determination, steadfast- ness of defiance, and a keen pilot-like look has come into the face, in lieu of the careless boyish humour of tiie earlier presentation. Again, in Mr. Sandys' delicately drawn and finely engraved head, there is a marked refinement that comes of sorrow well borne, replacing the cubic strength of former years. The ironies of life have left their subtle but unmistakable traces on the face. There is wit and kindliness as well as eager courage in the look of this bright-eyed nervous man, with the seal of his doom on his drawn temples and hollowed cheeks. It is not very complex. Green's life-story, though it is by no means void of interest even to those who are not con- cerned with the studies that occupied most of it. Born of an old and respected Oxford family at 5 St. John Street, Oxford, in 1837, John Richard Green was the first son of his parents. His father and grandfather were both robe- makers and (like Webster's father) parish-clerks, serving the city church of St. Martin. His mother, a woman of marked musical al)ility, came of another well-known Oxford family. His father was a man of intelligence, of artistic tastes, and of a sunny, gentle, and unselfish nature. Green was sent to 54 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS Magdalen College School when he was only eight years old, a precocious, weakly, tiny boy, whose chief pleasures were reading the few books within his reach, and revelling in the antiquities, alive or dead, of his native city. He was a lonely little fellow, for he had no one but his father to sympathize with his particular tastes, and was always more engrossed by his own theories of politics, history, and religion, than with the games of his schoolfellows, though he by no means disdained to take his share in these. His father, who died in 1852, had resolved to send him to college; and in 1854 he gained an open scholarship at Jesus. At school he had already won the notice of two men who were to be his friends in after-life — Mr. Sidney J. Owen, whose history prize he carried off, and to whom he was indebted, not only for advice as io his reading of history, but also for the loan of books; and Mr. E. A. Freeman, to whom he was introduced by Mr. Owen, and to whom he was specially recommended by his thorough study of the Gothic mouldings and sculpture of the diocese, acquired by half-holiday excursions to all the old churches within reach of Oxford. He came up to Jesus, a zealous antiquary, with leanings towards Tractarian views, which he was only beginning, by help of his history-books, to reason over. The college was not very active or very wisely managed ; and its atmosphere was not at all congenial to the eager, restless, intelligent, and ambitious lad. Save for three friends, Mr. Trevor Owen, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Boyd Dawkins, he found few who cared even to discuss the ideas that occupied the greater part of his time. ^ Partly from ill-health, partly from disgust at my college, I had* (he says in a notable letter to Dean Stanley) *cut myself off from society within or without it. I rebelled doggedly against the systems around me. I would not work, because work was the Oxford virtue. I tore myself from history, which I loved, and plunged into the trifles of archaeology, because they had no place in the University course. ... It was the same with religion. High Churchism fell with a great crash and left nothing behind — nothing but GREEN 55 a vague reverence for goodness, however narrow and bigoted in form, which kept me as far from the shalloM^ of the current Oxford Liberalism as I had ah-eady drifted from tlie Mansel- orthodoxy. I saw only religious parties, unjust to one another, as I stood apart, unjust to them all. I had with- drawn myself from Oxford work, and I found no help in Oxford theology. I was utterly miserable when I wandered into your lecture-room, and my recollection of what followed is not so much of any definite words as of a great un- burthening. ... Of course there were other influences — Carlyle helped me to work — above all Montaigne helped me to fairness. But the personal impression of a living man must always be greater and more vivid than those of books.* His diaries, often minute and always carefully written, show him as a hard worker, interested in the people, things, and books about him, delighting in congenial talk, and full of hopes and aims for the future. During his student days he wrote, for the Oxford Chronicle, his admirable Oxford sketches, a brilliant set of articles on the Oxford of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from the times of Anthony Wood and Aubrey to the days of the last Nonjurors. These articles show him already the possessor of a picturesque style, a vivid imagination, and a certain decision of view over a wide tract of varied material — qualities characteristic of his literary and historic work to the very last. After all, though he felt bitterly that the opportunities which the college possessed were not properly used by either dons or undergraduates, he saw that he had gained by his college career ; and, as he looked back after he had achieved his degree in physical science (for he persisted in flouting his college tutors and throwing up the certainty of brilliant honours in modern history), he could write : — * These four years have been the Medea's kettle from whence I came out renewed. Oh, how I laugh at myself as I came up — that little restless animal in black, co^'etous of applause, of society, of ambition, and only hesitating whether my choice should make me a Pitt or a Fox ; prating of Love, with the self-conscious air of an expert ; sharp, sarcastic, bustling, pressing to tlie front — and now ! ' 56 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS He decided, after due deliberation, and against his kins- folk's wishes, for the Church rather than the Bar. He wanted leisure for the historical work which he was feeling to be more and more his duty, and he had absorbed the Broad-Church Liberal views of the school of Maurice, for which clerical duties among the poor formed a natural and satisfactory practical outlet. After a short stay at Theale, learning geology from his friend and pupil Dawkins, whom he coached for his ' Smalls ', making plans for the opus magnum, and relishing to the full the pleasant society he was in, he passed his qualifying examination and was ordained deacon. His youth was at an end ; he was conscious of his own powers and his own shortcomings, and keen to plunge into the battle of life. Poor, ambitious — for his work at least, if not for himself — intensely appreciative of all that was beautiful to hear or see, he was yet unselfish beyond his years, and willing to sacrifice much to make a home for his younger brother and unmarried sister. Impatient of formulas, intensely sincere, and as honest with himself as he was with others, difficult to turn in argument, but open enough to the logic of facts, he was at the same time eager for friendship and companionship, clinging to those he had once made his friends with an admirable fidelity not always fully repaid. Regarding cheerfulness as a duty, he triumphed over ill- health and physical weakness ; and a combination of moral and intellectual strength made him sounder in his judgements than most men of twice his years. For nine years he spent two-thirds of his waking time as a hard-working, practical, stirring, East-end clergyman, and the other third as a patient, methodical, historical student, and an active and versatile journalist. He overtaxed his strength in his zeal for work and in the conscientious fulfil- ment of his clerical duties. He allowed himself far too few holidays for his health, though he was always longing for the breath of the country and the sight of the green of the Oxford water-meadows, as he laboured in the murkiest and GREEN 57 most miserable parts of Hoxton and Stepney. One thing he gained by his London exile ; he made a new friend, whose value to him he felt he could never overrate, in Mrs. Ward, the wife of his vicar, a woman of saintly and beautiful nature, wise, tender, instinctively unselfish, beneficent and sympa- thetic, patient and hard-working. Her loss, after an acquaintance of little more than two years, was one of the great griefs of his life. In a funeral sermon, that has in it some memorable phrases, he speaks of her as one in whom 'were fused in an admirable unity qualities and gifts the most various and opposed . . . for hers was a mind of no common order, a rare nature, and a rarer grace. . . . Noble- ness was the characteristic of her life, the nobleness of high longings, of a sublime reaching forward to all that was lofty and true, an instinctive scorn for all that was base and mean, a quiet indifference to the pettiness of the world's common converse, a resolute aversion for the trivial gossip that eats away truthfulness and charity. . . . Over all, like the silver haze of dawn, brooded the reserve of a gentle melancholy, broken indeed by gleams of childlike playfulness, a sunny humour . . . the natural blitheness of a heart chastened but not darkened by the sad discipline of her life.' It is a privilege to have known such high and gentle souls ; and Green was especially open to the wholesome and refining influence they exert. His gratitude was shown in his touching care for the interests and welfare of her children. Next perhaps in importance to him was his friendship with the Von Glehn family, to which he often gratefully alludes in his correspondence. In 1862, at a meeting of the Somerset Archaeological Society at Wellington, he renewed acquaintance with Freeman, whom he had not seen since his schoolboy days. * I read in great fear and trembling my Si. Dunstan. It " took ", was much applauded ; and the critic I so much dreaded took me by the hand as I came down, and congratu- lated me. " You remember me, do you ? " "I remember little Jolmny Green ! . . . You not only read your books well, but you know how to use them." I really was very proud of the praise. He followed it up by requesting me to write for the Saturday' 38 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS Henceforward they were friends to the end. One of the hist messages Green sent from his death-bed was to Freeman. When Green was gone there was scarce a day but Freeman would talk of ' Johnny '. * Ah, what a Johnny it was ! ' * No, there was never any one like Johnny ! ' ' Do you know what Johnny said about that ? ' were phrases most familiar to his friends and household. Through Freeman too he came to know his great fellow-workman Stubbs, and other friends and pupils of the Somerleaze historian. The Saturday work was of great help to him. It paid ; and he was not •well off, and yet the most generous of men. It gave him an opportunity of getting into shape many ideas he had set down in his notes ; it taught him to write brightly, to use every sentence and word, for space might not be wasted, and the reader's attention must be held. It allowed him to record his observations on society, to do for his day what the essayists he loved and knew so well had done for theirs. And though he possibly thought too highly of his essay-work, as Freeman probably thought too low of it, it certainly did him no harm, even if it only confirmed him in his persistent habit of watching curiously and closely the track of the currents of popular thought, the shape of the passing traits that show change as it sweeps over a community. To him facts that, isolated, looked trivial, were often significant because he knew how to correlate them with others and gauge their meaning. His humour saved him from extra- vagance in pushing his conclusions too far. His historic studies were now gradually shaping themselves toward definite ends. He had been greatly attracted toward the critical history of early Irish Christianity ; but after much work he relinquished this because he saw that it could only be properly achieved by a well-trained Irish scholar ; and it was not easy in 1860 to learn old Irish, even if time and inclination were present and unlimited. Plan after plan was taken up and dropped, till at last he settled upon a monograph on the Angevin Kings and Earls, or, 'what the book is in reality, " England and the Great Charter j a history of the GREEN 59 final formation of the English people and the final settlement of English liherty and the English Constitution ; in three volumes."^ For this he had read wide and deep, but he never lived to print his results. Another project gradually takhig shape was a brief but comprehensive sketch of the development of the English nation ; and this in time became the Short History. At the end of the year 1865 Green was made incumbent of St. Philip's, Stepney, a parish of 16,000 people, with a nominal stipend of 300/., which ' various deductions reduce to two-thirds of that amount \ It meant independent M'ork, and as much of it as there was time for in the day. However, he was now able, for the first time, to take holidays abroad. His journeys with Freeman to the places they knew so well from the chronicles were luminous episodes to Green. His companion marvelled at his enthusiasm and the flair with which he tracked out the things in which he was especially interested, and used to laugh at his enthusiasm for Italian municipal buildings — ' Johnny houses ', as he called them ; while Green would reproach Freeman with caring more for German emperors than for Italian free cities. Some of the best work of both travellers was the result of their French and Italian journeys; and Freeman thanked Green in his own way both then and years after. 'Now, O Johnny, as I have been rambling over endless cities, telling the towers thereof, let me once more thank you for having first taught me to do a town as something having a being of itself, apart from the churches, castles, &c., within it.^ Meanwhile Green's health was getting worse ; and it was becoming borne in ujjon him that he would not be able to stand the strain of his double work. The experience of human nature that his East-end incumbency enforced, and the deepening knowledge of the past that he had gained in his historical studies, were ripening his critical faculties. The Voysey judgement stirred him deeply, and possibly quickened the revolution that would have been inevitable in any case 60 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS by reason of the serious state of his lungs. It was without much of a struggle that he resigned his incumbency. The offer of the Lambeth librarianship (a titular office once held by Stubbs) was a graceful acknowledgement of his talent and his good services that he thankfully appreciated and accepted. He now had liberty and leisure ; but the question before him, in the face of Clark's serious verdict, was whether he could maintain his strength long enough to do even a part of the work he had been preparing for years. There was a curious irony about his position. At the age of thirty-two he was face to face with the chief work of his life, without a settled income, and without hope of advance- ment to one of those canonries tiiat represent, in a haphazard way, the endowment of research in the English Church, with impaired health and the need of spending at least a quarter of every year away from libraries, with but few books at hand. But he faced it all cheerily, rejoicing, as he said, in the good side of his picture, and meeting the bad side without bitterness or illusion. He was going to write a history in his own way. * I shall never be content till I have superseded Hume, and I believe I shall supersede him — not because I am so good a writer, but because, being an adequate writer, I have a larger and grander conception than he had of the organic life of a nation as a whole. If I fail I have at any rate fought.' Through Macmillan's acceptance of his ' offer of a Short History of the English Peojyie (600 pp. 8vo), which might serve as an introduction to better things if I lived, and might stand for some work done if I didn't . . . for 350/. down and 100/. if 2000 copies sell in six months after publication ', he was able to drop most of his Saturday Review work and give his whole time to the work he wished to do. He could not get the right pitch of Little Book (as he called it) at first, and he wrote and rewrote till he was better satisfied, in spite of his poor health and his isolation, for San GREEN 61 Remo was not at its brightest during the winter of 1870-71. But he made the best of it all in his letters home ; his wonderful spirits kept him up, and he made progress. By- October, 1872, he had reached the end of ' The New Learning'. ' I must own ' (he writes to Freeman from Florence) ' the more I have worked and thought over our own story as a whole — and I shall always thank Little Book for making me do this — the more its political history has seemed to me to spring out of and be moulded into form by the " social and religious" history you like to chaff me about. You see I shall die in my sins.^ In March, 1873, he was in Capri, home-sick, lonely, by no means reconciled to an invalid life, but cheery and helpful as ever to his beloved correspondents. * I brighten up at the thought of a really merry companion. Why are people so grave, so solemn, so afraid of laughter, of fun, of irony, of quiz, of nonsense in all its delicious forms ? ... I wonder whether there will be another world where the people will be very amusing ? It might make up a little for this.' By August, 1873, he was able to say, ' I have now only about a chapter and a half to do, so far as writing goes, and about half the book is in type, and the rest printing fast.' Only the loneliness oppressed him, Italy and its blessed sunshine were in themselves delightful; but, to get this healing bliss, he must be an exile, and his thoughts were much with his friends at home. Success, at times, even accomplishment of his life's task, seemed small beside the common joys denied to him. ' With me Happiness means simply a Home and a wife and some wee things. If I don't get tliese I don't care for anything else, except a few friends and a little sunshine ; and H. and W. and W. T. I shan't get.' During the progress of his Short History he paid earnest attention to the criticisms (not always just) he got from friends who read his sheets, and he corrected freely. * I have always said to myself that . . . the book may 62 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS utterly fail, and that I ought not to grumble if it does. I give English History in the only way in which it is intelli- gible or interesting to me, but it does not follow that others will find my rendering of it interesting or inteUigible ... It is quite likely people may turn away from a story which strives to put facts on a philosophical basis and to make events the outcome of social or religious currents of thought. Then, too, others may quite fairly feel that, however interesting the attempt to work in literary and moral influences may be, it is safer and less confusing to stick to a purely political mode of viewing things. I put aside . . . people who will condemn it as " superficial " because it is picturesque ; or as partisan . . . because no party finds itself really represented in its pages.' At last the Short History was finished and published in 1874. It was successful far beyond its author's hopes. As Mr. Bryce said, ^It was philosophical enough for scholars and popular enough for schoolboys.' It interested every one that took it up. It sold largely on the railway bookstalls. It M'as read in trains and hotels as popular novels are read. And it deserved its popularity. Stubbs's verdict is worth citing. * Green combined ... a complete and firm grasp of the subject in its unity and integrity, with a wonderful command of details and a thorough sense of perspective and propor- tion. All his work was real and original work ; few people besides those who knew him well would see, under the charming ease and vivacity of his style, the deep research and sustained industry of the laborious student. But it was so ; there was no department of our national records that he had not studied, and I think I may say, mastered. . . . Like other people, he made mistakes sometimes ; but scarcely ever does the correction of his mistakes affect either the essence of the picture or the force of the argument.' Nor was Stubbs alone among good judges in his admiration of the book. The general view is that of a Whig writer; and here and there, as in the story of the American Rebellion, the Tories are maltreated ; it is not, however, the book of a doctrinaire, but of a fair-minded man with strong opinions, trying to judge justly in matters that touch him nearly. GREEN 63 There is no bigotrj^ about it. It remains the best general history of England, and, when it comes to be superseded, it will be by a history on the lines of Green rather than on the lines of his critics. The new book will have to be a con- structive history also, not merely an unco-ordinated array of facts. No history-book since Macaulay^s had been so successful in England. A well-deserved chorus of praise greeted it from the Press. Mr. J. Rowley's articles in Fraser (intended as a damaging attack from a partisan of Froude upon one who was regarded as of the school of Freeman) were only effective in so far as they supplied (not without mistakes of their own) a useful list of errata for Green's next edition. An enlarged Library Edition was at once called for and put in hand, while new editions of the Short History itself have followed each other rapidly from that time till now. Green had toiled for fifteen years, and had at last won an acknowledged position as an historian, and the probability of a competence. His success pleased him, though he took it coolly enough. The ' poor curate ' of yesterday was elected to the Athenaeum, under * rule ii ' ; made an honorary fellow (along with his friend Dawkins and a far less illustrious person) in the college where he had suffered much in his struggling and sensitive youth ; and created LL.D. by the generous and timely appreciation of Edinburgh University. He met all attacks upon his writings with admirable temper, but without budging from his own historic standpoint. In February, 1876, he analyses his critics thus: — ' There is, for one thing, the natural reaction against success; then there are my own faults, which I strive to correct, but of which plenty are sure to remain ; then there is the ill-will of the people who identify me with the " Freeman School '' ; then there is the inevitable hostility of the " prag- matic historians ". . . . The rest I can bear, but I shall feel keenly the condemnation of these last, such as Gardiner. . . . I respect the men, and I know and have always owned how good and valuable their work is, nor do I think them at all unjust in denouncing me. It is very natural that, working 64 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS as they do to bring out the actual political facts and clear away loose talk, they should look jealously at what is in effect a protest against their outside conception of history, and what must look, to many of them, an attempt to bring the loose talk back again. . . . For me, however lonely I feel at times when I think of this, ^' I can no other". . . . Every word I have written, . . . through the last ten years, went to the same point, to a protest, that is, against the tendency to a merely external political view of human affairs, and to a belief that political history, to be intelligible and just, must be based on social history in its largest sense. ... I don't doubt that the English ideal of history will in the long run be what Gibbon made it in his day, the first in the world ; because it can alone combine the love of accuracy and external facts with the sense that government and outer facts are but the outcome of individual men, and men what body, mind, and spirit make them.' This is, surely, the real justification of the Short History. It has, no doubt, its shortcomings, its lacunae, even errors, as its author knew well enough. ^ I shall do far better work than Little Booh before I die. ... It is full of faults, unequal, careless, freakish, with audacity often instead of a calm power, only rising when the subject caught me, and hurrying over topics I didn't fancy. There is a good deal of me in it ; but I shall have a nobler, a juster, a calmer me to reflect in other books.* The style of the book is sometimes flamboyant ; there are too many phrases and expressions that smack of the news- paper office rather than the study. * All through the earlier part,' says Green, ' I see the indelible mark of the essayist, "the want of long breath", as the French say, the tendency to "little vignettes", the jerkiness. ... I learnt my trade as I wrote on. . . . You see I should make a harsher critic of my own work than any of my reviewers. 1 hope I always shall. But I love it too, though I see its faults.' He perceived, in fact, that there is a fire, a life in the book ; it is an organic whole ; it gives a consistent picture of the development of the English nation, drawn by a sympathetic and judicious hand. GREEN 65 In 1877, at the age of forty, Green married Miss Alice Stopford, and in her love and companionship he found his stay and support during the rest of his too short life. His health had lately been better, and he was hopeful himself; but he had been trying himself too hard. He never could work save with his might. The Mediterranean winters were not always as mild as they should have been, and he was feeling the long annual exile more and more. His friends hardly understood how much his friendship for them meant to him, how greatly he desired their presence, how delighted he was with their letters, what interest he took in all they were doing. It was everything to him to have the most devoted of companions always with him ; and it was really her tireless care and affection and his own courage that kept him alive and working month after month to the wonder of his doctors. At last, when he could no longer hold the pen, his wife took to writing at his dictation. The long-continued exertion brought on writer's cramp; but still they both persevered, and, in spite of all difficulties. The Making of England (his detailed study of the genesis of the English state) came out, to his great joy. Its companion volume, The Conquest of England, was all but completed ; but before it appeared the author himself had passed away. * He died learning ' was his chosen epitaph ; and it was a true one. We have lost at least one great book by his untimely death ; and the flaws he most deplored in the work he left were largely the results of the illness that dogged him and crippled his hours of work for so many years. But, even as it WHS, his output was remarkable, both in amount and quality. The Short History, the Oxford Studies, the Making and the Conquest of England, represent much toil and much thought rightly directed. They are the outcome of a mind active, well-trained, perspicuous, reasonable ; they give their author a settled place among English historians ; and they are the fruit of scarce more than half an average working life. Green not only loved history himself, but he loved to see T, p. II ¥ 66 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS others working in that great and scantily-tilled field. So far back as 1867 he planned out a Historical Review ; and some years later he was offered the editorship of such a periodical by Mr. Macmillan, who was willing to start it if he would take charge ; but he declined, modestly fearing that the opposition which his leadership might rouse would injure the journal's success. So it was not till three years after his death that a little band of Oxford students got Dr. Creighton to co-operate with them, to promise to be editor, and to find a publisher for what in Green's words was to be 'a, purely scientific organ of historical criticism and means of informa- tion as to the progress of historical study at home and abroad \ The English Historical Review has justified Green's aim, and done credit to those who carried out his ideas. The Oxford Historical Society was started not long before Green's death, on lines he had laid down years before. The series of Primers of History and Literature that he edited and organized has been a great and legitimate success, bringing home to the poorest teacher or student the results of the best scholars' work in many directions, and preparing a reading public to receive and welcome books of more detailed information. He was indeed, throughout his life, a man with practical aims, who saw much more clearly than most students the right way to teach pupils who have never been taught, the right way to make them care about the subjects he cared about and knew to be important, the right way to make them think out things honestly for themselves, without prejudice and without credulity. His series was successful because it deserved success. His diaries and notebooks show how observant he was ; how patiently he noted facts and thoughts that would, he felt, be useful to him ; how he studied character (not forgetting his own) ; how he trained himself to write by writing on many different topics — from a country walk to a problem of ethics, a journey or a conversation — as brightly and concisely as he could. A description of the field of Senlac, written on the spot in one of his notebooks, is GREEN 67 a model of clear topographic exposition ; and a set of rough notes on a * town-and-gown ' gives the best sketch yet put down of the aimless, disconnected, sporadic turbulence of an Oxford fifth of November in the sixties or seventies. It is but just to touch on his remarkable critical powers. Of his brilliancy, of his quickness, his laborious study of his authorities and his clear head, there can be no question. But he had also a potent sense of justice that often curbed his wit and made him restrain his gleeful humour lest he should do an injustice or cause another pain. He took the trouble to think ; and so, though some of his verdicts are quite wrong — for he was fallible as the rest of us — many of them are quite excellent. If he undoubtedly misjudges Seeley badly and mistakes Gardiner's attitude towards his subject, he is in no error about Ranke's shortcomings or Mommsen's. His analysis of historic personages often shows remarkably fine handling. Mr. Stephen cites his pictures of Cromwell and of Madame Roland. He thoroughly under- stood persons so different as Stubbs and Garibaldi, and was enthusiastic about both. He is even fair to that bogey of the advanced Whigs, Napoleon HI, though he cannot help rejoicing at his fall. His keen insight, his skill in controversy, his power of hard hitting made him a formidable antagonist; but he disliked wasting labour on disputes that do not convince. Again and again he strove to get his friend Freeman to be content and cease from further attacks on foes no longer formidable or dangerous. He never feared offending his best friends by remonstrating where he thought friendship required him to speak plainly ; and yet, to him who loved those friends so dearly, this was by no means a congenial obligation. Self- sacrifice was an integral part of his daily life, and yet he was one to whom the joie de vivre appealed far more strongly than to most. One can see from his letters how he loved and made good talk ; but he was capable of renouncing the insidious pleasures of conversation in order to drudge, not only for the purposes he had set before him as his life's work, F a 68 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS but also to provide those who had but scant claims on him with extra pleasures. One lays down the book of Greenes Letters with some pain. There is revealed in them a personality never allowed its full development. This fine spirit was capable of far more than it was allotted to it to accomplish. Ill-health, scant means, small leisure, many cares could not, however, prevent him from doing in his brief life more than would have taxed to the fullest the powers of most of his con- temporaries. If he had not been, as he was, a scholar of mark, he would still have been distinguished in his genera- tion, a conversationalist of quite abnormal wit and power, a man of most sympathetic and luminous nature, a sincere friend, a true follower of the best, a champion of all that was good and made for higher things, an abiding memory to all who knew him. As he held, a man should be content if, when he dies, he can be said truly to have done good work and to have had an inmost place in his friends' hearts ; and he, at least, knew, long ere his own swift death came, that he had achieved so much. GRANT ALLEN The map of England is an epitome of English history, but it wants reading. This little book is an attempt by a man who had studied it lovingly to help others to get in the way of understanding it for themselves. The local story of an English county or town shows one many things that the ordinary history-books do not and often cannot attempt to notice. It makes their dry bones live. It gives meaning to a number of isolated and unconsidered facts. It has a charm of its own that attracts many who have not the opportunity of doing good historical work on a larger scale. * Prefatory Note to Grant Allen's County and Town in England. 1901. GRANT ALLEN 69 Grant Allen had special gifts for writing such a guide to local English history as this hook really is. He had a good eye for the ^ lie of the land ' ; he was a perpetual observer, and a born expositor and interpreter. He had a first-hand knowledge of many of the documents on which much of our early history rests. He wrote brightly and clearly without seeking to efface his own individuality. He loved his subject for itself, and had thought it over in his many journeys and resting-places all over England. It was a pleasant thing to go a walk with him. The country was to him a living being, developing under his eyes, and the history of its past was to be discovered from the conditions of its present. He would put himself into this past, as an historian must do, and could recognize the lines along which the changes had gone and were going. He could read much of the palimpsest before him. He was keen to note the survivals that are the key to so much that has now disappeared but that once existed. He was persevering and would keep a problem before him for years, watching for fresh evidence or seeking for better explanation of the evidence he already possessed. He never forgot or allowed you to forget that there is a great mass of extant historic evidence not to be found in books or even in vellums or papers. The object-lesson was dear to him, and he could make it a real means of education. Plants, trees, birds, beasts, insects, rocks and rivers, braes and banks, moors and marshes, the sea-shore and the high fells, each and all had a tale to tell, and he could translate more of the tale than most men. He had also the charm of being singularly wide-minded in historical matters (for, after all, history is a science, though a science in a rather rudimentary stage), and he was ready to test his most cherished theories and reject them if he found they would not stand the trial. Like Freeman, he was always open to conviction, and grateful to any one who would give him fresh light. None of his books can give the whole effect of his educative quality ; for the good teacher must be face to face with his 70 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS pupil if he would exert his full influence ; but they give an idea of the pains he took to see things truly himself and make others see them for themseh^es. I know that I learnt much from him, and that I shall always regret that we had so few opportunities of late years of talking things over together. He was the first English historian to put forward in a con- vincing way the fact that the Teutonic element is not the only important element (perhaps not even the chief element) in the present population. He welcomed the arrival of the ' prae-Celtic theory', which he had foreseen. He first showed his generation clearly that the results of archaeology and anthropology must take their due place even in our English school histories and ^ popular ' history books. He had nothing of the acute Teutonismus or Morbus Germanicus that came of the too absolute acceptance as oracles of certain antigallic North German historians. He cared greatly about the economic and social conditions that have such immense weight as determinants in the progress of a nation. His strong political views and his Spencerian religion did not hamper him in historical matters, such as those with which this book is concerned, though they sometimes manifest themselves in a kind of appendicular form, as when he condemns his own college, Merton, and Christ Church, the college of many of his friends (on grounds I consider wholly mistaken), or when he eulogizes the imaginary manufacturer at the expense of the equally imaginary landed proprietor, typifying one as a Nabal, the other as an Abigail (a conclusion to the making of which there has obviously gone much debatable matter) . But those little ' excursions and alarums ', idiosyncrasies which I have scrupulously left as they stood (though I dare say if Allen had edited his own book he would have left them out in his riper judgement), have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the chapters in which they occur, or with the investigations on which the whole work is based. The first two parts of this book, Towns and Counties, are complete as far as they go, though the tale of a few counties GRANT ALLEN 71 and of many towns is not told, as I hoped while Allen lived that it might have been ; but he never found time to write more, nor opportunity of making the needful personal ac- quaintance with the places he had determined to MTite upon. For he would not write of a place without having seen it, sharing in this the practice of Freeman, who once told me he had never written in detail of a place he had not seen save Ardres, where, as he said, he accordingly made mistakes that five minutes^ eyesight would have saved him from. But the places Allen had seen were so varied, were, in fact, such * typical developments ', that it will be an easy task for those with the requisite local knowledge and trained enthusiasm to carry out his work on its present scale to the few remaining counties and the rest of the big and famous towns of England. The Chronicles of Churnside, with which this volume ends, is a piece of reconstruction such as Viollet-le-Duc once worked out for a typical North French stronghold, but it had never, I think, been attempted for an English district by an English historian. The sketch-map will show the reader the particular district chosen by Allen, a district with which he was peculiarly well acquaint. The harmless device of fancy names was necessary to the plan he had formed ; which was not to give a history of part of Dorset, but to set forth a typical specimen of an English countryside in its gradual development from savage times to Victorian days. To do this in a series of short articles was not at all easy, but it seems to me that this Chronicle is a successful achievement of what it was meant to be — a piece of popular scientific exposition. It is the kind of work that a reader who cares at all about the past of his own country will certainly find stimulating ; it should make him ask himself a lot of questions, it must show him gaps in his local knowledge and in the sources of knowledge he has at his command. It is intended, indeed, to make him think, and if it does this it will do what Allen wished it to do. The teacher's office is, as he conceived it, first to make his pupils see and then to make them think correctly on 72 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS what they see and remember, and he was never weary of teaching. He had his message and he delivered it. He could not help it. Hence his scientific writing never sank into the second-hand stale stuff that is so plentifully retailed : it was always based on personal convictions acquired by his own work or by his own testing of other men's work, and he would not write in a way or on a thing he did not really care about. He preferred, if money had to be earned, to earn it by regular fiction rather than by second-hand or make-believe science. The ease with which his writing can be read is by no means an index of the amount of work on which these vivid chapters are founded. It cost their author thought and pains to make his readers' task plain and pleasant, and he never grudged taking trouble. He was not a superficial man. Though this present book and his Anglo-Saxon Britain are alone left to attest his interest in the history of his country, one feels sure that, had he possessed the necessary time and means, he would have materially advanced certain portions of this great and wide subject. I can remember long talks in which he was full of suggestions ; lively discussions wherein difficulties were at least thoroughly faced ; critical disquisi- tions, serious and subtle, upon the authorities ; hard questions eagerly and honestly debated. The stealing hours of time slipped swiftly by with Allen when the talk was of history. He had the real worker's sympathy with any one who was trying to push on his subject, and things often seemed clearer and more hopeful after an hour or two with him even when he had been able to give no direct help to the solving of the problem on hand : — My sorrow for the friend that is gone. And there remains to me only his shadow, the memory of him ! The chapters that make up this book were first printed in the Pall Mall Gazette, 1881-82. I asked Grant Allen more than once to reprint them, and he would have done so had he lived to complete them. We must all regret that he has not been able even to prepare them for publication. It GRANT ALLEN 73 has been left to me to see them through the press, and I have done so without making any changes save those marked by brackets. These only touch points which, in my judgement, could not have been left in the text without stereotyping certain errors that the author would surely have corrected as a matter of course. Where theories merely are in question I have left the text as it stood, sometimes adding a bracketed query to warn the reader. I have not even removed a certain number of the repetitions made inevitable by the originally serial mode of production, for to do so would be to recast the work rather than edit it. Editing, like translation, must often be a compromise. I want my friend's work to stand as he left it ; but I also want it to stand as he would have left it had he been printing it now. Several sentences, I know, he meant to alter, as I have done, duly marking the change. History moves, hypotheses that hold the field to-day may be overthrown as fancies or established as verities to-morrow ; new evidence crops up and compels attention, dim features in our reconstruction of the past become more clear, or fruitful relations between isolated facts are discovered. But ' corrections ' are few. I have not been able to identify every spot in the Chronicles, but the rough map will enable the reader to see the general lie of the land, the direction of the roads, and the old sites in the neighbourhood. For an index there is no need, as the table of contents will in this case supply its place exactly enough. Notes I have not added, nor do I see that they are wanted. Allen Mas careful not to overload his explanations, he liked to make his points sharply and leave a definite impression in each paragraph and cbapter. To try and do more than he saw fit to do would, it seems to me, alter the character of the book. He wrote these studies for the general reader, and he knew the general reader well, and esteemed him more than most writers do : and it is to the general reader that I confidently commend his book, which, for my own part, I have found both suggestive and interesting. 74 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS It is not needful that I should keep the reader, if indeed he be one of the courteous and wise minority that peruses prefaces, any longer from the book itself. I am glad to have done what very slight service I could for the work of a man whose generous, sincere, and unselfish qualities I admired, in whose friendship I delighted, and of whom I shall not cease to cherish the remembrance. We Men, who in our morn of youth defied The elements, must vanish ; — be it so ! Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour. Ill Here are some scraps that linger in my memory touching G. A. The first time I met him was in Bromley^s rooms in 1869, 1 believe. He was, of course, wholly unlike the average British undergraduate, and it was his pleasure to accentuate the differences with a kind of defiance, quiet but real, of the conventions that the Philistine worships. He was never afraid of being himself; he was not ashamed to seem gro- tesque if he chose. This was almost incredible originality in the undergraduate of the seventies and sixties. Of course, he talked openly, but we all did that, and confidently, as most of us did, upon the many questions that interested us — theo- logic, philosophic, social, political. He was of the most ^advanced^ type of the sixties, and I think he was that to the end. The bent of his mind was logical, orderly, accepting only the appeal to reason, but at the same time caring (too much, as I thought) for completeness of ' system'. At first he struck one a little unpleasantly perhaps, for he would never allow a man to think he agreed with him if he didn't, and so he used to state his own position very sharply and irrevocably ; but one soon got to see through the confident doctrinaire the kindly, gentle, generous, and sympathetic friend and comrade, who could differ without bitterness, and would treat any ^ Letter in E. Clodd's Memoir of Grant Allen. 1900. GRANT ALLEN 75 honest and unselfish belief he did not hold himself as wrong certainly, but never as discreditable to the holder's heart, though he must often have considered our crude theories as damaging to any trust in the soundness of our heads. I remember he was interested in my raw joy in Biichner, the fashionable, popular materialist of the day, and once or twice we discussed Comte ; but we neither of us gave him the position that the preceding generation had allowed him, and when a man could read Darwin and Spencer we both felt there was no further need for such as him. When Allen got hold of Spencer I don't know exactly, I think as early at least as '69, but he was a whole-souled disciple. He had naturally a bent toward dogmatic, and he welcomed the comprehensive system that at once satisfied his scientific bent, his love of logical order, and his desire for com- pleteness of theory. I remember many arguments over Spencer both in the seventies and later. When Richard Shute, my philosopher friend, got to know Allen, they often argued grandly, Shute taking the extreme sceptical position and attacking wittily and vigorously, and Allen defending the whole Spencerian stronghold with boundless ingenuity and tireless perseverance, the rest of us putting in a query or a word or two of encouragement or deprecation whenever we got a chance. I remember, too, solitary walks and talks with Allen, especially about the river below Oxford, and above it in the fields by Godstow, after he had taken his degree. He was a great lover of the quiet, soft, meadowy landscape of the Thames valley, and he often used to refer to a stray remark of mine, made one superb summer afternoon at Iffley, that I doubted after all * whether the Tropics were more lovely', and would say that his tropical experiences had de- cided him that they were not. He had a keen eye for the character and *make' of landscape, but he could never draw a line, and I don't remember him ever attending to any but 'local colour' in the scenery. I think he saw nature as a naturalist rather than as a painter. 1 remember being presented to his first wife — a gentle, quiet. 76 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS soft-speaking woman, in poor health even then in the early days of their wedded life — and noticing the tenderness and care with which he anticipated her wishes, and spared her all fatigue or trouble, while it was delightful to see how she ap- preciated in her silent, grateful way his affectionate attention and guardianship. The last scene of the early prae-Jamaican days of Allen at Oxford was a jolly oyster-lunch that he gave at the Mitre. There were a lot of men there, for he made it a kind of fare- well feast to all his Oxford friends. Esme Gordon, the lad he had been 'coaching' for a time, was there, and there was a strange mixture of riding, reading, and rowing men, all for the hour united happily in Allen's glad hospitality. Every one was struck with the originality and success of this inno- vation of an oyster-lunch at Oxford, but I don't remember it being imitated. Oxford undergraduate and bachelor life is excessively governed by routine, and shuns even new forms of feasting unless they are regarded as required by fashion. After his second most fortunate marriage and long stay in Jamaica we used often to meet, and I found him a far happier man than I had ever known him before, but as kindly, as keen, as clear-headed, and as enthusiastic and zealous for re- forms in ethic and politic as ever. He had learned a lot in the Tropics ; he had thought out a valuable thesis on colour- sense ; he was on the way to several discoveries in botany ; he was full of energetic plans for the future. His conversa- tion was as delightful as ever, more full of instances, widened by experience, but still steadfast to orthodox Spencerism, and definitely radical. In his accent, his attitude, his looks, his judicious parcelling of his time, his wise care for the future, his humane and ceaseless care for others, his pleasure in talking and walking, his love for Swinburne's Poems and Ballads^ and his reverence for Spencer and Darwin, he was still essentially the same man I had parted from early in the seventies with so much regret when he left England for Jamaica, and the same he remained in all essentials to the last. I learned a lot from him always. The phlegmatic dullness and GRANT ALLEN 77 self-satisfaction of the * average Englishman % who hates to think at all save when at business on business matters, and in everything else gives full swing to prejudice and custom, re- fusing to believe that any 'foreigner' can ever (save perhaps in the matter of sauces, or piano-playing, or sculpture) teach him anything — the vulgar dullness of such an one exasperated his clear Gallic mind, and he would gibe and mock at the shams we English profess to believe in and are pleased to occa- sionally do public homage to (especially in our 'cant news- paper phrases ') in a most amusing and effective way of his own. He was determined whenever he had the opportunity to speak out and plainly attack the tyrannous and stupid conventionalities that are allowed to do their worst to choke healthy life in England. And it is a satisfaction to me to know that he had his knife deep into many of them before he died. His kindness was delicate and unfailing, and I and mine have often experienced it; he was really pleased to do a friend a service, and he could spend time and take trouble in such a care ungrudgingly. When Grant Allen died I had known him for thirty years without a shade of difference ever arising between us, and cer- tainly he was one of the best and truest friends a man could have — generous, fair-minded, and unforgetful of the old com- radeship ; so that though he was always able down to the last to make new friends, I do not think he ever lost one of his old friends, save those whom death too soon removed. I do not see how such a straightforward, sympathetic, enthusiastic nature as Allen's can have passed through the world \vithout influencing those he came in contact with very definitely for the better. His patience, affection, and practical wisdom in facing the inevitable with a brave politeness, made one ashamed of one's own lesser troubles, and helped one to meet the difficulties in one's own path. Few men I have known well have cared more for the essentials than Grant Allen. Truth, Justice, Pity, Love, Gratitude, and Sympathy were to him throughout his life real things to be upheld at all hazards. His Faith was always great; his Hope was 78 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS continually and wonderfully sustained; his Charity was invincible. I must leave other people to speak about his fiction and his study of the natural sciences. The first I could not, save in the short stories, appreciate ; the latter skilled specialists must finally appraise ; but it is impossible to avoid noticing its ingenuity, its basis of research (often long and hard), the clear and pleasing style in which the arguments are given. His folk-lore studies, though I think he was a little apt to recognize fewer factors than I should have postulated, deserve most careful attention, so suggestive and so ingenious are their hypotheses and conclusions. He had the keen, quick, fear- less mental temper and the acute memory so often associated with the power of making scientific discoveries. I consider that he was among the first to really expose the weak points of the Teutonic School of early English history, and to show that prae-Teutonic elements must be fully acknowledged and their forces allowed for by every historian of these islands. His historical writing was distinguished by many of the qualities that mark the best work of J. R. Green. He pos- sessed the historic imagination ; he could see what had been im- possible in the past and was mere bad guessing on the part of moderns ; he could frame reasonable hypotheses, good working theories ; he was not easily diverted from his track by argu- ments based on 'authority^ or prejudice or rhetoric. He was a born teacher, an excellent and painstaking instructor, never sparing himself, remindful of his own difficulties in learning, and careful to explain things clearly that could be explained clearly, and to acknowledge that there were things that as yet were not capable of satisfactory explanation. His little Anglo-Saxon Britain marked a distinct advance when it came out, and connected the bookman again with the spade-man in the task of interpreting the early days of Teutonic coloniza- tion in Britain. Of his verse, I admire the faithful and polished Attys translation above the rest. His guide-books seem to me both fresh and excellent, truly educational and admirably practical. GRANT ALLEN 79 There are certain favourite spots in the Isis meadows and banks, certain oft-trodden walks near Dorking, a hillside in Wales, that will always be associated in my mind with Grant Allen. I used to think he talked best in the open air, and that the fireside was not his real coign of vantage. The walk was the crown and pinnacle of his day, the pleasure to look forward to and to look back on ; every copse and hedgerow was a living museum to him, every roadside or field corner a botanical garden. He loved observing far better than read- ing, and he never shrank from thinking things out as far as he could. Hence there was perpetual interest in his talk and life. But if he had been blind and unlettered I should have loved and respected him, for he was ever a close follower of Truth, and walked in noble companionship with Pity and Courage. TAINE 1 It was inevitable that the Napoleonic studies of the late M. Taine should again bring up the chief questions connected with that extraordinary man. Of all possible publicists the worst qualified to judge of a man with whose disposition, acts, and character he could not sympathize was the austere and narrow doctrinaire, wedded to method, and believing that out of a classification of facts truth must necessarily spring (much as flies do out of a manure heap), the precisian whose fine qualities as a teacher were precisely his disqualifications as a researclier, whose canons of criticism were seen to be almost ludicrously inept when they were applied to any but third-rate litterateurs, whose knowledge of history was based upon a few hard-and-fast but inexact theorems, and supported with immense industry and a persevering and ceaseless search for quotations that would fit his notions ; a man honest and hardworking, but painfully stiff, and with his historic eye- sight strictly limited by the blinkers of his unyielding maxims 1 1894. 80 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS and his unbending method. And this is no fancy picture of M. Taine, as those who have known him personally will admit. He was a fine trainer of young men, who could see his faults, and yet appreciate his earnestness, his zeal, his adherence through evil and good to the thoughts and things he honoured and believed. But such a man was about as well qualified to judge Napoleon as he was to understand Shakespeare. [Next, before passing to Powell's own notes on Napoleon, and his other historical miniatures and surveys, his thoughts on the teaching of history, and the ordering of this and kindred studies, must be heeded. These are chiefly to be found in his pastoral addresses to younger or elder students. They are set out with method in his address, given at the University College of North Wales in Bangor, at the closing ceremony of the session, on June 20, 1902 ; the earlier one, delivered at Reading in 1896 is touched on in the Memoir, ch. v, supra ; but room should be found for the charming and limpid ' lecture by letter ' written for the young boys of his old school ' by an old boy ', and printed in the school magazine : see Memoir, ch. i.] THE STUDY OF HISTORY IN ' UNIVERSITIES There are times when the teacher's daily work seems to be so unyielding, so unfruitful, so barren of all result but weariness, that one falls to thinking how it should be if one could have one's will : if one could be Khalifeh of Education for a -month or two and remodel one's business to one's liking. I think these day-dreams are sometimes prophetic as morning-dreams are said to be, and it is some reveries I am putting before you for a few minutes to-day. I may also premise that I am going to speak as a student and teacher to students and teachers without attempt at orna- ment or desire to compliment, and that, therefore, I shall not shrink from saying a good deal that you all probably know and accept already, when I think it is really important enough to bear repetition. And if I seem to be pleading STUDY OF HISTORY IN UNIVERSITIES 81 overmuch, you must remember you have brought me here to make a discourse ; and though I know well that one of the qualities Welsh people admire least in English people is their irritating habit and endless power of giving advice, you must also remember that I am as much Welsh in blood as most of you, and that I make it a rule (which I keep as well as I can) only to give advice on occasions like these when I am asked for it. I have limited my subject to the teaching of History at a University not because I have not thought, and even spoken and written, on the teaching of History for younger pupils, but because the whole subject is vast and the time and your patience, as I conclude, finite. But I shall say so much with respect to History in schools that, to my notion, children should not be taught much history as history, though they may be taught a good deal of history as ethic in the good and well-approved fashion of Plutarch, through the lives of great men and women, and that only in the upper forms should the main tabular facts that form the skeleton of post- archaic history be taught, and that all kinds of history teaching should be made as real as possible by association with actual objects, and pictures and plans and models of objects, with the portraits of notable persons, with local buildings of various ages, and the like. It would be hard for an ordinary child to avoid remembering some of the best passages of the good Readers that are now in use in most schools, and in the school library or at home tales more or less connected with striking episodes of English history are by no means scarce. Kingsley, Scott, Thackeray, Marryat, Dickens (not to speak of Cooper, Ainsworth, Grant, and Lever) at least furnish vivid pictures of notable persons and events, while, judging from one's own experience, they put things in a way not unwelcome to the boy or girl who likes at times a quiet corner with a good story. It was the custom at my old school, Rugby, under Temple, for our form-masters to give us as a holiday task during the long summer vacation a history book of some sort to read and get up ; such as Y. p. u G 82 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS Helps, Southey, Prescott, or chosen parts of Napier, Motley, Michelet, or Carlyle, and these were certainly not devoid of interest or information. We may then fairly require of pupils that come up to a University some working knowledge of the successive eras of British history, and the careers of leading Englishmen, a certain number of fixed dates (a couple of dozen would probably suffice), and a sound idea of the order of the main events of real consequence. If to this we add an acquaint- ance with some portion of the history of other peoples, whether of Hebrews, Greeks, or Romans, or French, Italian, Spanish, or even German, so much the better. We should not want more, and in acquiring so much boys and girls would have had plenty of time left for other subjects and things that (as modern languages, for instance) are an abso- lutely necesaary equipment for modern life, whether it be the contemplative life of tiie man of science or literature or the active life of the professional or commercial man. And here I would plainly state that no person, to my thinking, should be allowed to matriculate at any University unless he or she can prove a sufficient knowledge of at least two languages other than the native speech, so far as to enable him or her to read fluently and correctly translate a book of no more than average difficulty, and, in the case of a modern tongue, to write to dictation and to be capable of speaking with decent pronunciation. This, to my mind, is an irreducible minimum, and it is not too much to require of schoolmasters that in the eight or ten years they have had the teaching of pupils they shall be able to impart so much knowledge to those of their charges who are fit to enter a University. One would further expect those who wish to take up a University course to be able to make a decent precis and to know how to make and use notes, and I should like them to know the elementary facts of geology and geography, as taught by any of the many accredited manuals. I should rejoice to know that those who M'ere about to become Uni- STUDY OF HISTORY IN UNIVERSITIES 83 versity students had been abroad if only for a few weeks, a matter which in these days is not so hard for schoohiiasters and parents to arrange for as it was some twenty- five years ago : and I should hope that they had seen some of the famous sights in their own country. A noble building, a mountain range, a great seaport are within the reach of almost every boy or girl. I do not see the slightest good in entrance examinations or entrance scholarships including history as a subject. If we secure young men and women that know two languages besides their own, that can write sensible English correctly and clearly, that can make a good precis and take notes properly, that is enough equipment as far as Arts go ; but I suppose a modicum of Mathematics will be requisite for the professional student, such a modicum as an intelligent boy or girl can attain during an ordinary school career, and no doubt it will be of help to such as are going to work at many of the most important branches of history, branches that are likely in the future to be of even more importance than they are now. Well, supposing we have our zealous and intelligent student up at the University eager to begin the definite study of history, what work shall we set him at ? Now the Uni- versity's business lies with advanced education and with research. For the greater number probably of its students, its duty is done when it has done its best to educate them, to bring out all the mental and bodily qualities they have, and to enable them to use them to the best advantage themselves. I am not one of those that rate the general study of History very high for purely educational purposes, e. g. for what is technically known as pass-work. And 1 should myself much prefer that other branches be used for this purpose. LaiOy for instance, which has many and marked educational advan- tages ; it teaches exactness in the use of words, closeness of reasoning, brevity and precision of statement, the principles of evidence and the need of careful and accurate examina- tion of facts and arguments. Logic again affords a useful G 2, 84 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS g)^mnastic largely of the mathematical kind, and the elements of that branch of history that we classically call Political Economy is, as I know from experience, a really good subject for pass pupils. But though I am convinced that the pass student ought to leave History alone, as he ought to leave alone many other subjects that are only suited for what we call honour students, I am equally certain that for real honour students History is an appropriate study. In his work at Historj^', the student ought to learn how to collect and classify facts, how to put down the results of his work in a concise and orderly way with scrupulous exactness, how to judge of the accuracy and judgement of other men's statements ; he should acquire the elements of textual criticism and of palaeography; he must learn how to read a map, how to make a simple plan or diagram, how to draw up a pedigree; and he should acquire the elements of statistics. Of course such a training is centred round the study of a certain number of important texts in the original, and of certain definite subjects. This is not a bad educational course, and the lessons learnt in dealing with the facts of the past may help to fit a student to deal with the facts of his own day. Still this training, useful as it is, is still Gymnastic, and the University has another function to fulfil in Research, and it seems to me that the organization and practice of historical research is one of the most useful and necessary objects of a British University. And I hold that students in their later undergraduate terms who really care about that branch of science which we call History, and are sufficiently trained to pursue it to advantage, might and should be encouraged to undertake research work in History. There is plenty for such students to do, e.g. the collection and tabulation of scattered but related facts, the transcribing, editing, and annotation of unpublished, inedited, or rare texts ; the calendaring and docketing of documents ; such tasks as every working historian must have had to do more than once. And this work, while yielding great results and STUDY OF HISTORY IN UNIVERSITIES 85 furnishing new and valid material, is also so educational that my old master, Gudbrand Vigfiisson, used to say that every man who wanted to do real work in history should have copied and edited at least one old text. The student who will transcribe accurately and edit sensibly an old Church Register, or a set of Guild Accounts or Sessions' Records, who will calendar properly the papers of a College or other public institution or Trade society, who will patiently collect and sift the facts relating to some definite district, and set them down in order of time, who will index historical items in the past issues of the local press, who will give a useful account of the trade history of a particular place, or trace the growth of a particular industry, who will compile a bibliography of a given town or district, will certainly have preserved and stored material that future workers will find of value, will have made discoveries, small it may be (but every discovery advances knowledge), and will have learnt by practice to pursue the scientific method, which must be pursued if History is to be anything more than an orna- mental and often untrustworthy literary comment on certain political aspects of the past. I confess I do not look on History as a branch of Litera- ture or a province of Ethic, but as a branch of Science dealing with man under political and social and economic conditions, and my conception of History makes it the necessary com- plement to Biology and Anthropology. I consider Adam Smith as perhaps the greatest scientific English historian before Darwin, and I see in Stubbs's Constitutional History not only an admirable legal textbook but one of the finest examples of the process of evolution ever worked out. I think that men like the brothers Mayhew, Charles Booth, and Rowntree, who have shown us the value of collected facts, and Farr, who taught us in England how to use statistics in Anthropology and History, have done more to advance History than all the descriptive and brilliant de- scribers who have been content with aiming at rhetorical distinction and the popular applause of the general public. 86 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS They too have their uses as they have their reward, but they are literary artists, not historians, and their aim is to excite emotion, to stir the imagination, or to gain adherents to the particular school of ethics or politics to which they belong ; but these aims, legitimate as they are, are not scientific ones and do not at all concern History as a science. But Mobile I should infinitely prefer to have Livy's authorities before me to having Livy himself, and while for the date of an event I prefer the authority of a contemporary inscription to that of Thucydides, I go to Thucydides for what is more important still, for evidence as to the inner feelings and desires, the political and social outlook of a great Athenian of the great Athenian age, as I go to Dante or to Machiavelli when I want to know what politics meant to an Italian of the time of that saintly knight Henry VII, or of the master of the Renaissance, Michel Angelo. Of course Dante and Machiavelli are each men of science, but I am thinking here of the Commedia and of the literary works of Machiavelli rather than the original and magnificent scientific treatise on Politics which is known as the Discorsi, together with the detached monograph // Principe. So though one must not expect from Tacitus a true and complete account of the early Caesars and the empire they ruled, one does get from him a superb picture of the political passions, the literary culture, the ethical ideas of a Roman of the conservative senatorial party, such as is of infinite value in estimating the civilization and ideas of the age. As to Ethics, I must continue to diflfer wholly from Lord Acton, my distinguished Cambridge colleague, and profess that it is not the Historian's duty to try and estimate the exact degree of damnation that should be meted out to that dauntless captain and bold statesman Cesare Borgia, or even to his capable but unpriestly father, or to play the moral judge to such men as Thomas or Oliver Cromwell, or * that great King Harry the Eighth ', or Napoleon. I must leave such work to the professors of Ethic, to whom History at any rate supplies plenty of examijles. We have no lack of STUDY OF HISTORY IN UNIVERSITIES 87 philosophers, let us hear them ! Of course, the historian must deal with the History of Moral Ideas as he must with the History of Religions, he must trace the circumstances under which all mental phenomena (healthy or otherwise) of the body politic originate and spread, and are furthered or combated, but he is the observer not the preacher, the biolo- gist not the surgeon or physician. His work must be done in the library, not in the tribune or the pulpit. He must leave * the advice-giving art ' to the statesman and churchman and pressman, all of whom he is willing enough to furnish with facts, if indeed they will take them (as they will not always), in preference to pseudo-facts of their own manu- facture. We may say then that the historian's business is first, to classify facts according to the best working theory at hand, and we will take it that so to do may well form a considerable part of every undergraduate's University work, in which the teacher may be of great help ; and second, to get at the meaning of the facts, and every one who learns to do this must have more or less taught himself to do so. And further, we may as well frankly allow that it is not every trained student that can do this kind of work, for whether a student does anything to advance his science in this part of his work depends on his power of constructing hypotheses and of co- ordinating observations. This is a rare and precious faculty, a faculty priceless in its higher developments, so precious that the greatness and progress of nations depend on the number of healthy persons within them possessing it. We cannot expect many students at any University who will be so rarely gifted, but it is in the power of any University to insist that every student shall have done some piece of actual useful work before he or she is honoured by one of the higher degrees. The History student ought to concern himself with his documents and facts precisely as his fellow students, chemists, physicists, or biologists, do with the objects in their labora- tories ; he must not neglect observation in his daily life 88 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS (Stubbs used to say that serving on committees taught him the dynamic of institutions as he could have learnt it from no book or description), he must organize his own powers so as to get the best out of the time and wits and strength he has, neither insisting upon grappling problems too deep for his experience (a mistake that has led to some sad failures within my own observation) or neglecting all precautions against error when things seem clear. If we can correct the analysis of air after nearly two centuries of careful inves- tigation, if we have had to wait till 1861 for a working theory of the main determinants in the process of evolution of living things, it is obvious that the discovery of great scientific facts and laws is one that does not happen every day. But the humblest work along true and honest lines may be building up a magazine of ascertained observations that the great theorist can confidently use. Many discoveries have been delayed for lack of accurate observations that could be safely used. We have read how the priority of Adams's discovery of Neptune was hindered and obscured owing to the grudging obstinacy of Airy and to the lack of sets of observations such as now at last exist in photographic form. It is the work of men like Mr. Tegetmeier, whose keen eye for facts and scientific instincts of observation drew from his amusement as a pigeon-fancier such significant facts as enabled Darwin to base and test his hypothesis, that is of real use. As I conceive it, the history work of my ideal History faculty at my ideal British University will begin with testing the proficiency of those who wish to enter it. This must be done by some proof such as teachers' certificates or a University entrance examination. The student when ad- mitted will carry on his work under teachers who will not only * drill ' him, but will enter him as soon as he is suffi- ciently ^ set up ' to the kind of work for which he is found to be fitted, who will practise him in the simpler processes he must understand in order to do his work intelligently and critically, who will supervise and check each piece of work that he turns out. This kind of instruction, much of which STUDY OF HISTORY IN UNIVERSITIES 89 is done now by devoted teachers in spite of the obstacles of the foolish Examination System (a system rendered neces- sary, like railway tickets and other nuisances, by the dis- honesty and stupidity of the minority) should take the place of the wasteful class lectures that are rendered necessary by the existence of the sham honours student (who should be pitilessly excluded from the Faculty work), and of the mass of useless ' memorizing ' and the deliberate ' cramming ' that chokes and overgrows the time and powers of those who have to teach History in our Universities. We have no right to cumber the history schools of any University with a number of worthy persons who have to be pap-taught because they will not or cannot learn properly, and must be forced through their degree without their being able to gain any accession of real knowledge or training of their reasoning powers whatever, or even being able to acquire the sure con- viction they should have of their complete ignorance. The careful study and criticism of certain texts must, as I have said, form part of the historic curriculum, but the teacher will not have to act as a cheaper and easier manual, wasting himself on elementary lectures in subjects the average student can perfectly well learn for himself if he desires to take the trouble, but will have time to dii*ect his pupils' studies, to advise them as to their reading, to show them the reasonable way of dealing with their material. All this takes much time and calls for all the teacher's energy, but it is not time or energy wasted. We must give up all thought of large classes, of lecture-room eloquence, of crowds of dilet- tanti and dilettante pleased with the '^ soft option'. The change would mean fewer and better pupils who would be led instead of driven, who would be led to definite achieve- ment and not to the examination schools. You must allow me to speak plainly : and the fact is that more than half of our educational troubles are due to humhiig and make-believe. We go on doing things we know to be almost useless, we go on teaching persons who do not want to learn, and who sit under us simply because degrees are 90 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS supposed to mean money, and parents want degrees. We grant degrees to people who are intellectual incapables and turn them loose to humbug others with their supposed attain- ments. We scrape together large roomfuls of unfit and inapt persons whom we dub ^ students^. We refrain from weeding out what sportsmen call the ^ crocks ' under our training, the worst of the worst, because we are afraid of losing fees or interfering in some other way with the Machine, or of being suspected of infidelity towards that British Juggernaut, the Jumping Cat. We are terribly afraid of making people pay properly for education, so we tax imbe- ciles and cumber ourselves with the elaborate, cumbrous, and pretentious teaching qf unteachables, in order to retain a few rays of honesty to cloak our naked and shivering consciences. All this must be reformed if the Way of Knowledge is to be enlarged in our Universities. And I think in our hearts we all acknowledge this necessity, even though we palter and procrastinate * a little longer, and then ' ; but the ^ then ' gets farther off instead of nearer by our delays. We do not want all the Lord's people to be Men and Women of the Book or of the Tongue or of the Laboratory or the Studio — they could not be if we wished ever so ; but we do want to make sure that the picked ones, whose busi- ness it is to teach the nation, to provide and to promote sound vital knowledge, shall be trained without waste of time, and shall busy themselves with better things than examinations and degrees. Strange as it may seem to the British parent, perhaps to many a British teacher, examina- tions and degrees are not really the ends for ivhich Univer- sities exist. I can even imagine noble Universities in which neither have ever [existed] or shall ever exist. The University I have seen in my waking dreams was good to the History student. She gave him a large, well- arranged, well-catalogued, accessible library, witii properly fitted work-rooms wherein he would find ready to his hand the texts and comments and the learned periodicals, British, American, European, that he needed for his studies. She STUDY OF HISTORY IN UNIVERSITIES 91 supplied him with access to a good historic museum arranged for the student, not for the Whit-Monday gaper, with work- rooms also where he might study the objects he needed to understand, and with a representative and retrospective gallery of applied art in which he might observe and inves- tigate the handicraft of various epochs and eras. She did more, she gave those of her students that could profit by her bounty opportunities for wider observation, she sent them forth, those picked ones, as Darwin and Bates and Wallace went forth, as Gill and Codrington and Bleek and Callaway have gone forth to study in other lands where people are still living and toiling and playing in other ways than we use. She did not restrain her students' wanderings for knowledge to the civilized lands of the past or the present, but she even granted travelling scholarships or fellowships to those of her alumni and alumnae who cared, as Mary Kingsley cared, to understand the black people and the yellow people and the brown people, so many of whom are our yoke-fellows under the flag of the world-Empire we are so proud, so justly proud of. The State provides Governance for these peoples as for us, the Universities of the future must provide Men and Women whose duty it will be to understand the present and past of those people who have developed along lines often parallel but never quite identical with our own. We could not rightly know what we know of the human structure without knowing something of the structure of animals often strangely dissimilar at first view ; and we cannot understand our past history rightly without some use of the Comparative Method which such pioneers as Montesquieu and Maine have induced us to make use of. The advantages, monetary, political, social, and the increase of knowledge to be reaped by such investigations and study, are incalculable. I need not labour this point. Nor need I elaborate the profit gained by the students and teacbers of our Universities visiting civilized lands, and trying to understand the great moiuunents and great movements of the past and present. The economic 92 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS and social questions that are pressing upon all civilization can often be studied abroad for a time to more advantage than at home. Nor did the University of my dream allow the study of British history to be neglected. We owe to an American, Dr. Charles Gross, the first comprehensive study of the main institutions of our old times since the classic treatise by Madox. We owe to a Russian, Professor Vinogradoff, the first adequate investigation into our mediaeval villeinage, to a German Hebrew, Liebermann, the best edition of our Old English Laws, to a Dane, Dr. Steenstrup, the only history of the settlement of the Northmen in our islands, to a Frenchman, M. Paul Meyer, the discovery and publication in masterly form of the biography of one of the greatest of Englishmen, William the Marshall. If foreigners find so much to do there must be plenty for us to busy ourselves with. The Historical MSS. Commission is only just indi- cating what rich sources of knowledge of the past lie un- heeded in our midst. The French nation, bearing almost twice our load of taxation, are far more generous in giving national aid to research into national history. Yet our British history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is as yet unwritten. Then there is the historic lore of our various districts to be worked, and this is a task which only natives can properly achieve. And local field-names, folk-tales, dialects, buildings, ruins, earthworks, old memories and memorials of all kinds, afford plenty of opportunity for University students of his- tory, for the work done by the Archaeological Societies already is but a small part of what remains. There is much more to be garnered than is generally supposed. E. T. Kristenssen, the model collector of our days, has picked up enough from the peasantry of his own land to fill a score of volumes. The work of men like Campbell of Islay, Dr. Douglas Hyde, Dr. John Rhys, Mr. Carmichael, shows tiie value of such collecting within the last half century. A young English lady within the last few years got in the Isle STUDY OF HISTORY IN UNIVERSITIES 93 of Axholme half a dozen new folk-tales of the most primitive and archaic type yet recorded in the British Isles. The history of British Applied Art is yet to be written. There was, for instance, a mediaeval school of East Anglian limners, that won William Morris's highest praise, of which no record, save their unclassified work, remains. There were schools of West-country wood-carving, and North-country stone-workers, whose art and history deserve to be traced and illustrated. Of Eiiglish Domestic Architecture only partial and in- adequate accounts are yet printed ; though much material still exists, in spite of the destruction waged year by year upon all good old work. Indices of published material are much needed. The history of our Institutions is not yet settled with, though much has been accomplished by Dr. Stubbs, Dr. Maitland, Sir William Anson, and Dr. Dicey of late years. But the County, the Manor, the J.P., the Local Officials, the Privy Council (on which Mr. Dasent has done good work), even the great modern Government Departments and Services, are subjects still needing adequate treatment. For our Economic History, in spite of good examples (such as Mr. and Mrs. S. Webb's valuable work), little is yet accomplished, but happily its study is now organized in London with adequate library and funds, better organized in fact than any branch of British History whatever. It is a subject of vital importance. Its study should prevent such stupid delusions as the ^ silver crusade ' in the United States and the 'fallacy of commending waste ^, as preached and practised far too widely in these islands, not to speak of other yet more dangerous economic superstitions. In short, for a History faculty that is not content with drill and parade, but means fighting, there is plenty to do for hundreds of students for hundreds of years, and much of the work ought to be done as soon as may be. We cannot afford to wait for it. But the money needed for all this ? The money now being wasted in keeping persons examining and being ex- 94 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS amined, and being taught to be examined ; the money thrown away in paying for the University career of people not fit for book-work or head-work at all, who might be engaged in the more mechanical byways of trade or professions, or busied in nobler and more useful outdoor occupations at the farm, or at the bench, or even at the stone-heap — the money, in fact, spent in shams, is quite sufficient by any calculation I can make to provide for the realities I want to see pro- vided. You must remember that bad history, prejudice, false witness as to past and present facts, delusions of the most mischievous and far-reaching kind, can only be properly met and destroyed by the historian. Dishonest history is a dangerous curse. To Treitschke, a brilliant but wholly unscrupulous and prejudiced man, is owing no little of that unprovoked and bitter envy and hate that has been the inspi- ration of the ignorant German press and the blind German politician for the last twenty-five years. The historian who can catch the public ear wields a force that unless used rightly will land his silly followers in catastrophes. Thiers is responsible for much of the blatant French chauvinisme that brought on the debacle that ended in the Treaty of Versailles. No nation can afford to neglect history and to trust to chance for getting a true knowledge of it. The historian may help to make as well as to mar. The revival of Italy, of Portugal, of Germany, of the Balkan States is largely due to the influence of a few historians. The political theories that have moved European statesmen ever since 1793 were theories (often false, I am bound to admit) started by historians. History is not a quantite negligeable but a factor of weight. The times are serious, more serious than most English people as yet suspect. We cannot afford any longer to mis- apply our forces, we cannot afford to let such brains as we have lie fallow, we cannot afford any longer to bow to popular fallacies masked in fine words, tamely to accept the existing perilous situation, if we mean, as we surely do mean. STUDY OF HISTORY IN UNIVERSITIES 95 to hold and better the heritage our fathers' sweat and blood secured for us. Those concerned with Education, whether as teachers or learners, must wake up as those concerned with Trade and National Defence have been summoned to. And in very deed, Education is the first line of any real system of National Defence and National Progress. ^ Brains with a sound heart and a sound body must tell every time.' Do not think I am at all despondent. I am not, though I am rightly impatient, for I see we caimot safely dally with this matter. I know that at the three Universities in which I have been honoured with work to do, the three I know the best therefore, Oxford, Cambridge, and London, the History Faculties are doing to-day better work than they were doing before. I see former pupils producing good books (not merely good manuals and class-books, though those are most necessary). I see the English Historical Review under Dr. R. L. Poole's care keeping as high a standard as any historic periodical I know of in any country. I see young students, men and women, capable of doing the research work that I consider it the special function of our Universities to en- courage and promote in every way. I think I see, also, that the small band of English historians are conscientious enough to strive to keep free of prejudice and party and sectarian feeling, knowing that for the Historian there is but one goal, one test, one point of honour — the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth— the truth, if needs be — as your own device has it — against the world.^ HISTORY FOR BOYS^ One of my hobbies is history, and I am allowed to write a few lines on it here, as I cannot just now come and speak. It is possible for boys not only to learn history, but also to help towards making history — a much more important 1 In this article the initial capitals, etc., that Powell sometimes favoured, have been kept as characteristic. 2 In St. Clare, July, 1895. 96 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS thing. It is also possible for boys to help those whose business it is to write history. For instance, there are many old buildings, old fragments of buildings, pieces of old furniture, or armour, or dress, and the like, which are as much bits of history as an old parchment record, or even an old chronicle. How many of these old bits of histoiy are allowed to perish without any one caring to preserve even their outward aspect ! What I want is, that boys who can draw in pencil or colour, or photograph, should begin to take drawings or plates of such old houses, or old chests, or ironwork, or panelling as they can find in their neighbour- hood, and, writing on the back or mount the date of their drawing or photograph, give the facts they know of the thing they have drawn or photographed. If such drawings or photos were mounted on cards of regular size, and num- bered and indexed, they would soon form a most valuable part of a school museum. There are old houses pulled down every year ; nearly every one has some detail, some aspect, that is beautiful or interesting. People have put their life and thought into them, and they still reflect some of it to us so long as they exist. When they cease to exist all this is lost unless some faithful record is kept. In the case of a house or room a plan should always be added to the description, and reference made to the Ordnance map, which, I have no doubt, will be found in Mr. Murray's keeping. I know a man, a famous scholar and writer, who used, when he was travelling, to sketch any plan or district that took his fancy, as well as he could in broad pencil lines on quarto paper. Then he would ink in these pencil lines when he got to his inn at night, so that the pencil might not be rubbed out by accidents of travel, and write the date and name of the place. In time, these quarto half-sheets came to a goodly pile, and he found that he had in this way, in the course of forty years or more, been able to get a record of the original state of many buildings, since injured by time, or restoration, or even altogether demolished. Another thing that I should like to suggest is that a good search HISTORY FOR BOYS 97 should be organized in likely spots for ' remains ', whether flint instruments or Roman pottery, or mediaeval crockery, that these all might, with due register of place and date, find their shelf in a school museum. The fun of relic hunting is not to be despised, and the places it takes one to are often beautiful and always interesting. I know that there are a good many boys (and men too) to whom history seems a dry subject, names and dates, and tables, and maps hard to remember. These people I can sympathize with, but I should like to tell them that there is a great deal more in history than this, and if they will read such books as Stevenson's Kidnapped, or Scott's Rob Roy, or Kingsley's Westward Ho !, they will find history can be interesting. And then, if they go and get hold of G. C. Macaulay's Froissart, and North's Plutarch in English, and Joinville's Life of St. Louis, and Rawlinson's Herodotus in English (they can buy the Froissart and borrow the others) they will begin to find that not only modern history (such as the Mutiny and the Crimean War, and General Gordon's noble career, of which they can get people to tell them who have known of them), but ancient and mediaeval history can be delightful to read and think upon. Miss Yonge's Extracts from Chroniclers and Historians are good, but the little book on the Crusade of Richard I that Mr. Archer put together, and Mr. Ashley's Wars of Edward III, and Mr. Button's Simon of Montfort, all three made up of accurate translations from the old mediaeval chronicles of the times, are better still, and they cost very little. M. Zeller has treated French history (in French) after the same fashion in little books one can stuff in one's pocket, and I recom- mend them to any St. Clare boys that can read a little French and are travelling in France, or looking forward to doing so. Books about books are usually rubbish, but the old books themselves are nearly always wise and useful, and pleasant to read. Now I have lectured enough. I only mean to tell you that what I have found it most useful to know through my T. P. II H ^8 HISTORY AND HISTORIANS life of the things one learns at school has been languages old and modern. One cannot learn or teach history properly without French and Latin, and one ought to add Greek and probably German. The other tongues one can learn later. It is not only useful in one's work to know languages, but it makes life abroad twice as enjoyable to be able to under- stand the people about one. The time and pains spent in learning French and Latin are well spent certainly. Every Englishman has a duty to fulfil to his country in training himself to be a good citizen, and unless he knows something of what wise people have done and thought in the past, and of what wise people abroad are doing and thinking now, he is doing his work and giving his vote on great issues half in the dark. You have a noble name for your school. St. Clare was a good unselfish woman in her day, and such persons are worth remembering with honour. I hope you Mill all have as happy memories of St. Clare as I have of the Old Manor House. II PORTRAITS [Under this title are covered many of Powell's finer contributions to critical journalism. As already said, they represent the governing bent of his mind as an historical artist, as distinct from his spade-work, marshalling of evidence, and narrative. They rank with the best things of the same kind in his Northern studies or his English history-book ; indeed, they often flash keen brief lights on world- figures, or open sudden vistas into woi-ld-history, after a fashion that the theme or plan of his completed works prohibited. They are taken from his reviews, but can often be shredded away from his com- ments upon the particular book before him. There are frequently rehandlings, which he contrives shall not jade his pen ; his ideas were definite, but alive and not petrified. These portraits are chosen out of scores that he struck ofi", and show the range of his interests. They are set here, like the Surveys of the next section, which take his favourite panoramic or processional form, in rough chronological order of subject. But the passages on Napoleon come first ; they, above all, apply Powell's canon of the attitude of the historian, who must rise above a narrow code-reading of men and things to a higher insight, and will so furnish, as he would perhaps have given leave to say, the material for a truer ethic. The first extract is occasioned by a partisan biography of Napoleon.] NAPOLEON II [The author] distinctly attempts to whitewasli his hero by aptly chosen citations, jflid he is so far successful that it is perfectly evident to any one who can read a little between the ^ 1894. H a 100 PORTRAITS lines and keep in mind the value of the authorities he is citing that the charges of gross selfishness towards ' the family ', of unnecessary harshness towards his subordinates, of unbounded personal avarice, of lack of patriotism, and of ingratitude, must be withdrawn. Napoleon may not have been indulgent because he was of a kindly and forgiving disposition, as [this writer] wishes us to believe ; he may have been indulgent and generous out of policy ; but that he was indulgent and generous there is no doubt. It may have been his fault or his misfortune that many of his subordinates were men incapable of honesty, gratitude, or honour, but that he had to deal with such persons is certain, and that he dealt with them in a magnanimous and humane and even unselfish manner is true. No man met with baser ingratitude, no man did more for his family. It may be that the favours he showered upon unworthy persons were but the fruits of his own usurpation and that his motives were Machiavellian ; still the facts remain that the dogs bit the hand that fed them, and that Napoleon was betrayed by those of his own blood and affinity over and over again out of mere greed and malice. We are not dealing in the book before us with the political aims and practice of Napoleon, but with his personal traits and character. That there was a charm about the man that impressed even his enemies is undeniable ; the jealous and dishonest Bourrienne, the noble and faithful Polish lady, the fair-minded observant English sea-captain, the cold- blooded Austrian Archduchess, the old grognards of his Guard, all witness to the magnetism of his presence, the power of his smile, the exceeding attractiveness of his character when he exerted his powers of pleasing. That he esteemed an honest man above any other may be taken as a proof of his wisdom, but that bravery and honesty and honour were precious to him even in an enemy there is plenty of proof. That he felt pity and gratitude and showed both in unexpected ways is also certain. In fact he was a man, not a monster. It may be absurd to worship him as Hazlitt NAPOLEON 101 did, but it is just as ridiculous to treat him as a second Crouchback, a rawhead-and-bloody-bones. It was wise policy no doubt to send a man so dangerous, so capable, so ambitious to a far captivity, away from all he held dear, under a gaoler whose petty soul could see nothing but buckram rules, but it came dangerously near making a martyr of him. The callous treason of Marie Louise, un- softened by any touch of humanity, was a sore punishment to the man who had never forgotten her comfort and whims even in the middle of the most difficult and dangerous and most brilliant of his campaigns. The great fall gave dignity and pathos to the career of this 'parvenu among kings '. It is no use blinking facts ; ' tyrants ' (as Mr. Freeman preferred to call such persons as Napoleon) are not always bad men in the ordinary sense ; they may have persuaded themselves that they have the right, as they have the power, to break and sweep away the laws intended to bind them. They are not seldom affectionate in their families, of warm sympathies, of artistic tendencies, of delightful conversation, of business capacities ; they can take broad views, and at the same time care for detail with unwearied patience. They have numbered among them poets and philosophers, generals who have saved as well as ruled their countries. Sicily owed her safety more than once to tyrants, and tyrants have long ere this saved Europe from Asiatic despotism as well as aristocratic slavery. We have seen * tyrants * of no great capacity who were personally neither cruel nor unsympathetic, though they inflicted great damage upon their country and deep M'rongs upon innocent and upright individuals. For such offenders Nemesis waits, but Rhadamanthus is just. Human nature is a very complex thing and circumstances are perplexing ; historical ethic is by no means as yet a science ; let historical students follow the safer method of trying to get at the facts and leaving the ethical consequences and verdict to philosophers and the poets, who often judge more surely than the sages. Who would not take the opinion of Goethe and Byron and Shelley on a great man rather than the views of Sybel and 102 PORTRAITS Taine and Alison and Lanfrey ? Has not Aeschylus given us the spirit of the great age-long rivalry of Greek and Persian better than Thucydides himself? Comprehension is more powerful than apprehension. IP Another point that deserves more consideration than it gets from English and German historians is the vast improvement in law and civil administration, due largely to Napoleon's own influence, though not always to his initiative. The Directory's plans were carried out by their successor. Germany was even a greater gainer by Napoleon's victories than France. Switzerland may date an era of real progress from the General's mediation; even Spain, which rightly spurned foreign rule, and curiously preferred ignorance and the Inquisition to reform under alien compulsion, profited more than it lost by the frightful and cruel partisan warfare that laid villages waste and gave whole towns over to flame and felony. Napoleon, like Julius and Alexander, was a builder as well as a destroyer. What he destroyed was rightly and efficiently destroyed ; what he built up was built to last. To us he was (as Julius to our British ancestors) a foe dangerous and implacable, an ambitious adversary, but to his subjects he was on the whole a beneficent tyrant. ' Perhaps,' as he said, ' too fond of war,' but conquering in order to organize, to civilize, to improve. If he had less excuse than Alexander he had as much as Julius. Without him the work of the Revolution had been wofuUy incomplete. That the teeth of the Inquisition were drawn, that the abominable criminal law of the States of Germany was swept away, that the heavy and dull despotism that was crushing the life out of Italy was torn forcibly from its exhausted quarry for a while, so that it never secured so firm a hold again, was owing to Najjoleon, the true heir of '93 and '89. The absurd but almost ex- ^ Life of Napoleon. By the Rev. S. Baring-Gould. 1897. NAPOLEON 103 cusable abuse of patriotic Prussian historians has blinded them to the merits of the man that shot Pahn and Hofer, but EngUshmen can afford to judge fairly the deeds of the man they overthrew thrice. Mr. Baring-Gould has not condoned the petty side of the great man's character, and he recounts enough of the St. Helena exile to show its un- satisfactory effect upon his hero, already smitten by the approaches of the disease that was to kill him. He is not blind to the defects of his character, the extraordinary fluctuations of the Emperor's moods; but he sometimes seems to forget the pressure of the immense toil that he daily accomplished. The Emperor had three or four kingdoms to govern, besides the direction of six or seven armies, of a fleet, and of a difficult mass of foreign negotiations. He had few real friends (save ' the soldiers and the common people ', as he once pathetically declared) ; he had many open, many secret foes, even [in] his own household ; the woman he loved he had been obliged to abandon, the child he loved was too young even to know the depth of his father's affection, his mother (like Cromwell's) was too full of forebodings to give him real help of any kind ; the companions of his youth had become his rivals or restless and jealous aspirants for his favour. His life was inevitably lonely, and it was when absorbed in hard and continual brainwork that he was probably most happy. Such men are, after all, by no means adequately paid for their labour if they persist in their altruistic work, and even when they have enough self-restraint to retire from their place at the world's helm of their free will they probably regret it ; and we need not fancy that Diocletian's Spalato was much happier than Najjoleon's Elba, or that Sulla (though his cynical humour and selfish callosity exceeded the self-centred indifference of Napoleon) was better content with his successor's doings than is Bismarck. We must not judge Napoleon by his temper at St. Helena. The man was a person of the most splendid physical health, the healthiest, soundest brain ; he had received the education of adversity, undergone all the misery of hope deferred, of 104 PORTRAITS unrecognized ability. He had known but little affection or gratitude, but he was certainly the most kindly and humane, the wisest, and the most clear-sighted of all great European rulers since the Reformation, with the possible exceptions of Gustavus the Great, William the Silent, and our own Cromwell. JOAN OF AEC^ In all the long conflict between Israel and her foes the character of the fierce little twin kingdoms is frequently so difficult to sympathize with that it is on record of a well- known cleric that he could never bring himself to side with the Jews 'save in the case of Samson \ In the secular struggle between England and France there is but one epoch when one would rather have been serving beneath the lilies and the ' white banner with Jesu-Maria upon it in great gold letters ' than following the blood-red cross of St. George, the martlets of the Confessor, or the crowns of our English St. Sebastian, and that is when Joan of Arc was by her courage, her generalship, and her renown driving us out of our 'French inheritance'. Typical English heroes have often been very English : the Iron Duke, Henry V, Gordon, are all highly developed forms of acknowledged insular types, though in the case of Shelley we produced a most un-English character. So in France persons like Chenier, Ney, rran9ois I, and Bayard are easily recognized as typically French; but in two of the great mediaeval personages, the sainted Louis and the saintly Joan, there appears a most un-national type. St. Louis and Jehanne d'Arc have all the simplicity, absence of boasting, absolute purity of body and mind, strict and steadfast adherence to truth and duty, and utter disregard of glory and worldly pleasure which we expect in our ideal heroes and heroines, but which are by no means necessary in the chivalrous ideals ^JoattofArc. By Lord R. Gower. 1893. JOAN OF ARC 105 of the average Frenchman. Hence, of all the brave and devoted men and women of France — and there have been many, from Bishop Gregory and Charles Martel to the nameless moblots and federaux that met death willingly for la patrie or la commune, and the faithful priests and nuns that sealed their testimony with their blood in the far-off East but a few years back, — of all these heroes and heroines none are so comprehensible to us as these two, one of whom was the friend of our great Edward and the foe of our greater Simon, while the other was sent by the mighty English Cardinal before the judgement-seat of a hireling renegade and burnt under the authority of English nobles and gentlemen while English men-at-arms looked on. We have sinned both in deed and word against this noblest of women, and it is but a poor excuse for the ribaldry of Greene (or whoever it was that left his legacy of shame to Shakespeare) that his patriotism blinded him. There was a time when the rich and great, the French King (a monster of ingratitude), the English Council in their cold political hate, could not see what was felt instinctively by those poor Norman peasants and bur- gesses that knelt in prayer round the prison when the Maid was receiving the last services of her Church, and by that low, foul-mouthed sacrilegious student-burglar, who even in the depths of his reckless misery kept pure thoughts and noble verses for his poor old mother and for the ' good Maid of Lorrain whom the English burnt at Rouen '. Even in the last century the philosopher (and Lord Ronald Gower charitably supposes that Joan would have forgiven him as she did the traitor ecclesiastic Loiseleur) showed the most grievous ignorance and blindness when he chose the heroine as the butt of his filthy ape-like mockery, while the simpleton he derided at least offered an honest homage. The Roman Church still hesitates, in spite of the Rehabilitation suit of 1456 (the result of political considerations, as Lord Ronald clearly shows), to undo as far as may be the crime of Cauchon by affirming the sainthood of the Maid. And surely, if miracle be proof of sanctity, Joan's career was 106 PORTRAITS miraculous. She found her country perishing, her lord hesitating whether he should give up his cause and leave his kingdom to his foes ; she left her country far on the way to complete restoration of peace and prosperity, with a certainty implanted in every French heart of the speedy expulsion of the powerful invaders. Joan's anticipations were invariably accurate, her prophetic words fulfilled to the letter. We can understand the elements of her character better than might have been possible a generation ago, for we have seen in Gordon's life and words much that is closely parallel to her speech and action, even down to minute details. There were the same high purpose and fatalistic reliance on the Higher Powers, the same reluctance to shed blood, the same power of stern rebuke, the same marked love for little children, the same profound pity and helpfulness for the weak, the wounded, and the poor, the same mysticism. Joan's sayings often recall a bit of the Journals ; for instance, when she affirms, ^ My Saviour has a book in which no one has ever read, however learned a scholar he may be,' one cannot but remember the English soldier's firm but humble assur- ance. And if men so alien in dogmatic faith as Burton and Power felt a certain sympathy for Gordon, we are not surprised to find La Hire and Anjou touched by Joan's noble character, a character so intense that for a time it even influenced for good that most abominable of maniacs, the Seigneur des Rais himself, and drew from one of the canonists that sat at the Rouen trial the cry which Shake- speare has put into the mouth of a poor, heartbroken, dis- reputable, but far less guilty sinner ^. * [Possibly a comparison is intended between the exclamation ' Nous avons brule une sainte ' and some of the last words of Othello, ' less guilty ' than des Rais.— Ed.] CATHERINA SFORZA 107 CATHERINA SFORZA i Catherina Sforza is one of those historical figures that, like Mary Queen of Scots (whom she greatly resembles), are essentially romantic ; figures that excite the sympathy and rouse the partisanship of all that become acquainted with them. As brave and defiant as Black Agnes of Dunbar herself, as skilful and provident as Elizabeth, as politic as her namesake of the Medici, beautiful, gracious, a good com- mander in the field, a shrewd counsellor in the hall, a firm friend and a bitter foe, Catherina, daughter of the Sforza and mother of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, Lady of Forli and Imola, ancestress of our own Queen and many other royal and noble persons, was famous and remarkable in her own day, and there have been few women rulers since who have surpassed her in personal qualities and political and military talents. She embodied almost the ideal of Brantosme, Machiavel admired her, Caesar Borgia long feared her. She lived in most tragic and picturesque times, when Fortune's wheel turned passing swiftly, and death was ever lurking behind the pictured arras or in the silver cup. Murderers hemmed her about ; her father, her husband, her eldest son had all been privy to assassinations. War was seldom far from her doors. There was never a time since her first marriage but she had chiefly to depend on her own good heart and shrewd brain if she would keep her position, and even her life ; and when her first husband was slain it was solely owing to her astuteness and courage that she and her little children were not driven forth as penniless exiles. Like Queen Mary's, her reign was full of perils of all kinds ; like Mary, too, the Lady of Forli must sometimes have regretted not to have been born a man ; like Mary, she loved to ride armed amid a company of stout spearmen or skilled imnts- men ; and, like Mary, she was ever for bold enterprises, for the strong hand and the ready blade ratiier than the glozing * Catherina Sforza. By Count Pier D. rasolini. 1898. 108 PORTRAITS tongue and the crabbed parchment. She knew no bounds in her vengeance, and allowed nothing to sever her from those she loved. Her generosity, beauty, and valour roused the deepest devotion and provoked the most unreasonable fear and hate ; though it was her misfortune that her friends were not so faithful to their affection for her as her enemies to their antipathy. Her letters, the correspondence of the time, contemporary reports and diaries, give the fullest materials for the life of Catherina, and Count Pasolini uses them ex- cellently. The many-sided activities of his heroine are made manifest ; we know her tastes, we hear of her needlework, her love of sport, her jewellery, her dress (always in excellent taste), her piety, for she was a good ante-Lutheran Catholic of the Renaissance type, in whom the grace of faith was rather more frequently made manifest than the gift of charity. Her Receipt-book shows that she had a penchant for what one might call domestic chemistry ; she dabbled in alchemy also ; for practical purposes she was a good builder, a careful economist, an admirable administrator, a sagacious com- mander, a woman of extraordinary personal distinction ; a beauty in an age and among a people that worshipped beauty, an able ruler at a time when the possessor of political power was put to the most severe tests, a captain whose exploits the most experienced and gallant soldiers of her day admired and envied. Catherina seems, moreover, to have been possessed of a stoic greatness of soul that forbade her to look on her frightful misfortunes as capricious decrees of fate, and made the very ills she suffered stepping-stones, as it were, to repentance, to resolution, to higher aims. With vast capacity for happiness, she seems to have thoroughly enjoyed the pleasant days of her life and to have wasted no time in regretting them when they were past. Her delight was in action, and as long as life remained it was its opportunities for action that she chiefly prized. It is the blackest stain on Caesar Borgia's career that he could treat such a woman as Catherina with cruelty and dishonour. Among all those noble Amazons and glorious ladies of Villon's most famous CATHERINA SFORZA 109 ballad there is none more worthy of remembrance as a paragon at once of beauty and bravery than this Italian countess, part of whose life overlapped the poet's. MAEY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND KNOX ^ The only trace of Mr. Fleming's own predilections that we have been able to detect in the book is perhaps a slight leaning towards Knox, whom he defends in one instance when he is certainly wrongly accused. For moral turpitude the murders of the Cardinal and of Darnley seem not very dissimilar. One was justified on grounds of religion, the other on those of personal honour. Nor was Mary at all less brave than Knox himself, or less persistent in her plans. She had a penchant for brave men, and sometimes allowed this to interfere with her policy, whereas Knox's platonic relations with his female admirers do not seem to have stood in his path. Knox was to the full as superstitious, as bigoted, as pitiless, and as proud as any Guise of them all. It is true that the besetting sins of the Guises were not his, but he was not brought up in a walk of life where these particular sins were likely to tempt him. One can respect Knox for his courage, admire him for the pithy vigour of his style (surely the best Scots prose that was ever penned), one may be grateful for the incidental good that his fierce bigotry and keen energy brought about ; but he is not a lovable figure, this grim, red-handed patriarch of the Reformation in Scotland. The curious thing about Mary is that one may be firmly convinced of what her opponents call her ^ guilt' and yet be able to feel the persistent charm of her personality. She is as fascinating as Cleopatra, and not, as Cleoi)atra was, more than half 'sensual, devilish'. She played with her own life, if she risked others ; this wanton Egyptian princess ^ Ma^-y Queen of Scots, from her Birth to her Flight into England. By David Hay Fleming. 1897. no PORTRAITS feared the triumph to which the Roman meant to drag her, and found a coquette's pleasure in thwarting him. Mary spoke once of suicide, but she never gave up the struggle, and her last letters are full of gratitude and revenge, for, like the dying David, she never forgot an enemy, though, unlike him, she had never betrayed a real friend. Mary would never have fled as Cleopatra did, for she loved danger for itself, as some men have loved it, and few women. Mary will never be sainted, for her religion was to her a matter of honour, of policy, of breeding, no more and no less. She had little cause to love the Reformed party, that had insulted and opposed her and was bent on her death ; she knew that the dagger and the pistol, aye and the bowl too, were not the monopolies of the Guises or the Medici. While one perceives that she was capable of making very great mistakes (and, in fact, she did make such bad mistakes as led to her ruin), one is not the less persuaded of her great ability and cool power of will. But, to come back to Mr. Fleming, this is the best book yet written upon Mary Queen of Scots ; it gives the material, it does not pretend to judge, it leaves the reader to draw his own conclusions. It is not the province of history to deal with ethics, but those who care to make judgements have here the means of forming a fair verdict. PHILIP II OF SPAIN 1 This is the first reasonable account of Philip II that has appeared in English. It is founded on full knowledge of the sources and written without prejudice. Its purpose is [to consider the causes of Philip's failure]. The reasons Mr. Hume considers as, partly, his great heritage, which brought him into the spheres of many conflicting interests and hampered rather than helped his ^ Fhilip II of Spain. By Martin A. S. Hume. 1897. PHILIP II OF SPAIN 111 foreign policy; partly liis hereditary qualities, bigotry, devotion, caution, and melancholy, which were the conse- quences of the close interbreeding of which he sprung, and were not balanced by strength of body or quick energy of mind ; so that, while he was patient and persevering, he was always too late in making up his mind and too willing to disbelieve what was told him till the news was belated and useless. He was brave, courteous, kindly, and humane to those about him ; relentless (but not a lover of cruelty) where either the cause of Spain or the faith which was Spain's lever to move the world with was concerned ; admirably self-controlled in adversity, never losing faith in himself or his cause, a true Spaniard to the core. Even the torments of his long agony of fifty-three days did not wring from him an impatient word or shake in the slightest his firm faith and resignation to what he considered the Higher Will. Fate was against him ; the obvious and necessary condition of his success rested upon a strong and hearty English alliance ; but this soon became impossible, and with England against him the Low Countries were able to hold their own and the Catholic cause was debarred from further progress. Campanella's dream was, luckily, never to be fulfilled. And Philip's failure meant the speedy fall of Spain from the first place in Europe, and probably in the world, to the level of a second-class or third-class power. The Spain of Velasquez and Murillo, the Spain of Cervantes and Calderon and Quevedo, swiftly vanished, and a Spain poverty-stricken, anti- progressive, letterless, leaderless, given over to obscurantism, to corruption, to animal torpor, became the Spain of generation after generation, till foreign invasion and colonial revolt closed the sad record, and the beginnings of a New Spain again showed themselves in the present century, when men like Goya and Gayangos, in their respective paths, attest the power and \ngour of the great Iberian stock. . . . One cannot help reflecting that it was a 'great mercy 'for England that Sidonia rather than Recaldeor Oquendo led the Armada. It will astonish most English readers to know that 112 PORTRAITS Philip was a generous and intelligent patron of art, but there is no doubt of this. One of the few relaxations this slave of duty allowed himself was to watch his artists, painters, sculptors, architects, designers during the twenty years of work that finished that splendid monument the Escorial, in the vault of which his body was in due time to be laid, where it has rested ' through three centuries of detraction and misunderstanding'. Philip loved children and flowers, music and birds ; he was not at all the cold, inhuman personage we have been taught to think him, but merely ' a naturally good man cursed with mental obliquity and a lack of due sense of proportion \ Bigot, yes ; hypocrite, no. One recalls the famous poem, one of the gems of that very heterogeneous and incongruous collection the Legende des Siecles, where, in the long alleys of Aranjuez, beside the fountain, stands the little pink princess, in all the childish glory that Velasquez could give, and behind her, at the window, the dark, marble- faced king, patiently, tacitly watching, while the shiver of a western gust sweeps coldly down the ranks of elms, and ruifles the calm water of the marble basin, on which the petals of the rose, dropped from the child's fingers, are idly strewn, till one by one, to the little girl's astonishment and her father's boding dread, they sink in the bright ripples. Nowhere has the tragedy of Philip's long and painful life been better expressed. ELIZABETHAN SAILORS ^ . . . And then the documents themselves, the plmn speech, the courtly greetings, the undaunted resolution, the skill and foresight and industry of all concerned, the brotherly conduct of the English commanders, their zeal and heartiness in doing their duty, their genuine affection for the Queen, their sound contempt for the mariners of Spain, and their respect for her ' State Papers relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Artnada, 1588, Edited by J. K. Laughton. 2 vols. 1894. (Navy Record Society.) ELIZABETHAN SAILORS 113 soldiers ! The characters of the men are written broad and firm in their letters and reports — the Admiral, Charles Lord Howard, wise, dutiful, ready to take counsel of men of more experience than himself, attentive to every minute detail that could ensure success, not grudging to praise those under his command, sure of his men, wroth with traitors, ever anxious for the Queen's personal safety ; Seymour, active, busy, vigilant ; Drake, bluff, plain, the longest-headed of them all, a commander who knew the infinite value of time, and could plan a campaign, divining as by instinct the purposes and faults of his enemy, ever eager to * wressyll a poull ' with the Spaniard, and with a good trust so to handle him at their meeting that * the Duke of Sidonia shall wish himself at St. Mary Port among his orange trees ' ; Hawkins, the best practical seaman of the bunch, resourceful, energetic, having every point of his craft ready for use, a thrifty, perceptive- minded man, that honest men believed in and knaves misliked ; Fenner, who finds more difficulty in writing a letter of two pages than in engaging a Spanish galleasse ; Darell, indefatigable worker; Borough, shifty, untrustworthy, voluble, but useful in his way of science, a man plainly incapable of high command or office at sea (as Drake half contemptuously points out in a parenthesis), and wisely left to ride off the Nore and survey the mouth of the London river in the Bonavolia galley, while better fighters were running up Channel at the heels of the hunted Armada, 'which went always before the English army like sheep ' ; Palavicino, the Genoese banker, who left the Court to go off to the fleet ' to embark and join the Lord Admiral, where I hope to be present in the battle, and thereby a partaker in the victory or to win an honourable death, thus to testify to the whole world my fidelity to Her Majesty ' ; Leicester, proud, con- tentious, dissatisfied, but apparently capable and thoroughly in earnest ; Salman, patriotic Master of the Trinity House, ' careful of his duty,' helpful, and a man of resource ; Cely, a much-travelled man, with an eye to the main chance, ' one that hath had his losses, too, marry', and *one that hath been 114 PORTRAITS brought up ^v^thout learning, and one that hath but a patched carcass ' by reason of ' thirty-two sundry torments in the Inquisition with the apretados [racked] . . . and eight years in prison, lacking but two months. I take it was for Her Majesty's sake and her subjects . . . and, God I take to witness, without desert, more than that they approved that I was her sworn man. Truth is, I did strike their secretary as I was before the Inquisidores, they sitting in judgement. I had great reason to do it. Let these things pass.' Ever intent, this much-enduring mariner, upon his secret plan for ' abating the malicious intention of the Spaniard', which he is verily persuaded the Queen only rejected because she feared lest he might ^ come to any foil, for that I am assured ', writes he, *Her Majesty doth love me.' Then there was Winter, canny, strenuous, one who loved a fat buck withal and did not forget to ask for it, while he was keeping the narrow seas all weathers against danger from Parma and the Armada combined ; not to be forgotten, either, is good William Coxe, of Limehouse, who brought news from the Spanish coast in February, and, having * showed himself most valiant in the face of his enemies at the hottest of the encounter' on the 23rd July, ^afterwards lost his life in the service with a great shot,' as is supposed, a few days later off Gravelines. Such are the men whose words and deeds fill this volume. [The following review, of Mr, Philip Sidney's Memoirs of the Sidney Family, printed in the Morning Post on Aug. 17, 1899, and signed, is a good example of Powell's most natural and favourite form of writing, the gallery of historic miniatures, which form a kind of pageant when thus ranged together.] THE SIDNEYS One cannot help thinking that it would have been better for Mr. Sidney to re-edit the Sidney Papers than to strive ' to combine within the covers of a handy volume a concise and correct biography of the Sidneys of Penshurst from the THE SIDNEYS 115 time of Sir William the Chamberlain to Henry VHI, down to the death of Lord Romney, in the reign of Queen Anne ', especially as he has been obliged to curtail his account of the campaign of Sir Henry Sidney in Ireland, to omit a full dis- cussion of the literary career of Sir Philip, and to refrain ^ from entering upon, from a legal point of view, a sufficiently detailed description of the trial of Algernon Sidney ', as he duly notices 'v\ath an apology. But as the author has preferred to give us an epitome of the Sidney history during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that may, he hopes, ' humbly claim to rank as a useful footnote to the history of Great Britain,' we must judge him by his performance. Now the history of the Sidney Family would be worth writing in full, as the sketch pedigrees at the end of this little book sufficiently prove, and there is plenty of material for it. It is one of the most interesting of the great families that rose under the Tudors. It has produced more than its share of noble men and fair women. There is a romance about it that makes Penshurst, as it were, a place of pilgrimage. In its blood there were strange strains, but the breed was none the worse ; the bold, ambitious, selfish, and capable Dudleys ; the gallant, swaggering Brandons ; the proud, reckless, and stubborn Percys ; beside less known but respectable Pagen- hams, Oakeys, and Gamages. There were marriages into the great Elizabethan families of Cecil and Walsingham, and alliances with the noble Elizabethan earldoms of Sussex and Pembroke. The crown of England had been seized by the Dudleys on Philip Sidney's uncle's behalf; the crown of Poland was offered to Philip himself. His father had ruled as Viceroy in Ireland and Wales ; his uncle was the most influential man in England while he lived, and two genera- tions later it was Algernon Sidney that was Charles the Second's most dangerous foe. It was Philip Sidney, his elder brother, that sat and helped Cromwell to rule Great Britain ; it was to Henry Sidney, the younger brother, that (perhaps more than to any otiier man) the crowning of Dutch William was due. Waller's cold mistress ^ Sacharissa ' (though she never I 2 116 PORTRAITS could have rivalled her aunt Mary, ^Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother') was yet the paragon of her own days, and a woman that had tasted both of prosperity and adversity, for the husband of her youth was snatched from her by an unlooked- for fate, and she lived to hear of the brother she chiefly loved and reverenced meeting his death at the block. Her husband died in the name of the King whose son sent her brother to his death. So her life, too, like Mary Sidney's, closed in sorrow. But it was in Philip himself that the house of Sidney showed most nobly and bravely. Round him are grouped the glorious figures of the first generation of great Elizabethans. Hubert Languet and Giordano Bruno were his teachers, Edmund Spenser and Fulke Greville were his brother poets, Drake and Essex followed his hearse as they had companioned him in life. Ralegh and Frobisher and the early colonists and pioneers of this notable age were his associates in their schemes ; among his literary acquaintances were Marlowe, Jonson, and Shakespeare ; he had conversed with the chief poet of the Catholic revival, Tasso ; he had sat to Veronese ; vtdth Du Plessis Mornay he was on terms of close friendship. He had dared to check Elizabeth herself ; he had won praise at the Imperial Court and at the Curia itself. William the Silent openly admired his character and gifts, and his godfather Philip spoke of him in proud and chivalrous appreciation, though he well knew his anti-Spanish policy. Even envy was stilled by the sudden glory of his death. Nor were the laments that rang over his grave undeserved or exaggerated, for his life had meant much to his country. He was wise, he was fearless, he had an influential and devoted following, and he could hardly have failed to wield a great and useful influence in the counsels of his royal mistress. But it was not to be, and it is by favour of his 'Contemplation' rather than of his 'Active Life' that Astrophel, that ' most heroic spirit ', still lives. Books, as he desired, are his memorial, and the defender of ' Poesie ', the lover of Stella, the patron of Spenser, the author of Arcadia^ enjoys the fame that death forbade him to earn as THE SIDNEYS 117 a discoverer, a general, and a statesman. Beside him the figure of Algernon, heroic in its way also, must pale, though this later Sidney, like his greater kinsman, knew, as one of Plutarch's men, both how to live uprightly and how to die worthily. Without agreeing with the attacks of our author and of his distinguished predecessor in his strictures on the trial and condemnation of this martyr of the Good Old Cause — for there is no doubt that Sidney had done his utmost to upset the existing form of government, and thereby became technically a traitor — not the most bigoted Royalist would deny that he bore himself as became his name, and that he had never faltered in his zeal for what he considered the good of his country. He was a politician in times when men risked their heads for their party, and, while he had no party scruples with regard to taking Louis's gold for his own party and England's good, as he supposed, or to using the indulgence of the Government to plan its overthrow, or to planning an armed invasion to put his own party in power, he was not the man to permit Cromwell to override what he believed to be his lawful rights unchecked, nor had he recoiled before the anger of Gustavus. He set his life at hazard generously and played cunningly and boldly, but he lost, and one can hardly, from the political point of view, blame those that advised Charles to exact the stakes, though when Algernon Sidney died a great and sincere Englishman and a strenuous writer was lost to his country. The ideal of Sidney was not and has not become the ideal of this nation, but it was not an ignoble ideal, and there was the same spirit of reason, of pride, and of austere virtue in him as glows through the sublime steadfastness of Samson Agonistes. Such are the golden hopes of iron days ! Those goodly couples, Philip and Mary, Algernon and Dorothy, were elect souls, moving on high planes, filled with that heroic mania that has ever filled the noblest of each age'^ and of them, their doings, their words, and their praises we do 118 PORTRAITS not readily tire. But there were other Sidneys whose careers would furnish matter for romance and narrative enough. There was Henry and his good and human-hearted wife, the patient and sorely-tried servants of Gloriana. There was Robin, the light-hearted friend of Charles II, and his capable and successful brother Henry, who avenged their brother Algernon's blood on the Duke of York. The changeful career of this latter Henry is to be traced, and full of interest it is, though it was neither by Helicon nor from ' Sion Hill nor in Siloa's Brook that flowed fast by the Oracle of God' that this Sidney sought inspiration. With an epitome of the brief meteor track of Monmouth (whom he believes to have been Robert Sidney's son), and the arrival at power and office of Lord Romney, our author closes his book. He might have included Sacharissa's son, the statesman Sunderland, in the next generation, the seventh from Nicholas, whose wits, at least, did not belie his Sidney blood. If this book is meant to whet the curiosity of those who wish to hear more of Stella, of Sir Henry's labours, and Lord Rodney's adventures, of the courting of Waller, of the pity that made Sacharissa wed a second time, of the gay company that Robin kept abroad, and all the gossip and incident that clings about these vigorous personalities, it will probably fulfil its purpose, and some who have never known more of the Sidneys than the death of Philip may be directed by it to books that will tell them much of them that bore his honoured name, and such reading will not be idleness. It has been suggested that in the Sidney ' pheon ', or barbed javelin head, we have the origin of the * broad arrow' that distinguishes all royal states; but however that may be there is no doubt but that Sir Philip Sidney left his mark on the nation. His life, his death, his conversation, his love of lofty things, of whatsoever things were of good report, were not without effect; they set a standard that was needed and that was looked up to, so tiiat to men even a generation later the Court of which Sidney had been the glory was looked back to as a place of culture, of wisdom, of bravery, and of nobility, surpassing any English THE SIDNEYS 119 Sovereign's Court before and since. The poets did well to mourn their patron Astrophel, for he above all men it was that fostered Letters in England, so that he made it the fashion at Court to care for poetry and to favour the players. And though Arcadia appeared but pretty fanciful unreality to Milton, and lacking in those qualities that could fit a book for the reading of a Christian man in his distress, there is proof enough that its influence was neither hurtful to art nor morals, and that it set a higher ideal of English prose than had been before held up for imitation. Till Waller and Dryden and the new French taste, witty, commonplace, rhetorical, and neat, swept away the towering and glowing extravagances of diction (that delighted Johnson when he read Browne), and with it much of the depth and richness and humour and colour that characterized the Tudor prose and verse, the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia was deemed an honoured book wherein is much wisdom, many beautiful and true and gentle sayings, and a certain peculiar, gracious, and old-world gravity of its own ; though it is in his sonnets that Philip Sidney shows his highest powers, and he that looks therein may (as the poet tells us of his author's picture) behold there : Love's truest Majesty, And the soft Image of departed Grace. There may be read unfeign'd Humility, And golden Pity, born of heav'nly brood. Unsullied thoughts of Immortality, And musing Virtue, prodigal of blood. EALEGH 1 Again a life of Sir Walter Ralegh, the last, but also, for the purposes of the general reader, distinctly the best ; written with full cognizance of all that the labours of Oldys and Edwards, Gardiner and Stebbing, have gleaned for us, and ^ Sir Walter Ralegh and the British Dominion of the West. By Martin A. S. Hume. 1897. 120 PORTRAITS with a first-hand knowledge of the Spanish papers that place beyond doubt the shameful and disgusting behaviour by which James, fooled to the top of his bent by the cunning Gondomar, sacrificed his noblest subject to his desire to curry favour M'ith Spain. Mr. Hume has put his book together well; he has set forth in their due proportion the divers elements of his hero's varied and extraordinary life. He has shown a true comprehension of his wonderful and incongruous character. He has understood that the ' real Ralegh ' was a man who with persistent purposes could show chameleon colours, that, like Napoleon, he could bend to seek grace of the graceless, to grovel in despair, to shuffle and equivocate, not from fear of death or love of life, but because he felt himself called to great issues, because he had wide ends in view which no man but himself could compass. He under- stands that one must judge the details and passing fashions of Ralegh's style and behaviour by the standards of his day, translating them to comprehend them out of their gold-laced, pearl-strewn extravagance into our grey homespun prose. He gives Ralegh full credit for his high intents and far-sighted plans. He is not unduly shocked at his pride, his subtlety, his tortuous manoeuvres. There was much in Ralegh for the moralist to blame, but no unprejudiced judge can account him less than a great man, or other than a true and wise- minded lover of his country. The severest critic must pass favourable judgement on the classic grandeur of his prose and the earnest grace of much of his poetry. Misunderstood as Ralegh was in the greater part of his life, compassed about by false friends and foolish confidants, struggling with the obstacles placed in his way by his unscrupulous rivals and his own unquenchable pride, his plans were necessarily greater than his achievements, and his achievements less than, with ordinary good fortune, they might have been. His Cadiz exploits are those of a Nelson, his colonization schemes were worthy of Wakefield, his amazing power of work and fertile knowledge of detail remind one of Napoleon himself. That * wise white head ' foresaw, as Ralegh's acquaintance Shake- RALEGH 121 speare had foreseen, the wider Britain, the new nations of the future. Only in his own stately prose could the tragedy of Ralegh's fall be fittingly depicted when, purged by suffering and sickness, the loss of his darling son, the overthrow of his dearest hopes, the man came forth as calmly and merrily as good Master More himself to die for the love of England. When the White King met his doom (as bravely but not so innocently) the guiltless blood of Ralegh was barely avenged. James's vanity had sacrificed a better man than him whose head was sacrificed to the weak fears and helplessness of Charles. Mr. Hume's book draws on the reader not only with the attraction of its subject but by the clear and lively presentation of the story from the Plutarchan point of view, the only true one in such a case as this. . . . The motto for such a patriotic book is excellently chosen. Who but Milton of Ralegh's successors could write in a score or so of words a prayer such as the great Elizabethan might have penned or breathed, in his greatness or in his despair ? DIGBY 1 Kenelm Digby — there is something proudly romantic in the very name — was worthy of his descendant's pious care, and there are many who will delight in the beautifully illustrated, prettily covered, well-printed and graceful book. Its compiler has gone to the right sources, especially the private memoirs of his hero; he has put his material together with rare impartiality, and while one feels he loves the man he is writing about, one feels also that he will never stoop to excuse a failing or pass over a blot — the truth must out ; the portrait will not be the more unpleasant l)ut the more human for the little irregulari- ties of feature, the scars of old wounds, the wrinkles of painful thought. This is the spirit of the Digby to whom we owe those ' handbooks of seventeenth-century chivalry ' — * The Life of Kenelm Digby. By T. L., one of his descendants. 1896. 122 PORTRAITS the Broad Stone of Honour and its companion volumeSj and it has its reward. The reader learns to respect both the author and his subject, and to think more kindly, and more justly too, of those whose foibles may be exceedingly antipathetic to his own. Kenelm Digby was a notable man in his da)'^, handsome, of enormous strength — he would do the feat that Stepniak in our day could repeat, that of raising a man seated in a chair to the height of a table-top with one hand, — of high culture, of charming and sympathetic manners, true to his friends, courteous even to his foes, a lover of what was beautiful throughout the whole visible universe, faithful to the memory of that dead lady whom in her life he adored, brave, energetic, proud, and versed in the ways of political and ' curial ' life. On the other hand he was subtle, pursu- ing his own designs under colour of other projects, secret, diplomatic, restless in intrigue, loving the subterranean labyrinth of seventeenth-century statecraft, looking more carefully to acts than words, not meticulous as to those complimentary expressions that were the current money of the stately politeness of those days ; friend of Laud, courtier of Charles, chancellor to Henrietta Maria, agent accredited to Cromwell, envoy to Rome, conspirator in Italy and peace- maker in England, captain at sea, alchemist at home — the man was so versatile, so dazzling in his harlequin activity, so generous in his impulses, so free from any vice but the naif kind of vanity which rather delights one in a friend, that it is impossible almost to judge him in cold blood. His biograj)her seems to us to lay far too much stress on expres- sions of Digby's that read nowadays as serious affirmations of intent, whereas they were really mere but necessary compliments, a dangerous custom requiring expressions of lifelong devotion where we are content to subscribe poor assurances of our fidelity, truth, and sincerity. We may accjuit Digby of double-dealing. Cromwell knew his man and what he meant by his euphemistic politeness. It is easier to deny his effectiveness than to question his honour. He was always in action, but his political career resulted, DIGBY 123 so far as can be seen at present, in insignificant achieve- ment. As a thinker and experimenter he was by no means in advance of his learned contemporaries. But he was a gallant privateer, a fine swordsman, and a most exemplary lover. His memoirs enshrine in romantic form the record of a very true and pathetic love-story. He loved Venetia, *brave Venetia Stanley,^ from childhood; he refused for her a queen's favours, for her he braved scandal and calumny, and though he is so frank as to admit that it was the lady's munificent and unselfish generosity that finally made * his heart yield ' against ' the dissuasions of some of his friends, particularly of his mother ', it was for her, we cannot doubt, that he made his famous voyage, in order to win the honour and wealth that would enable him the better to take a high hand with the world and set the lady he loved in a position above the tongue of slander ; for her he followed one of her traducers to Italy, and ' cowed him into silence in his own paddock' ; for her he mourned not only in sable suit and flowing hair, but in heart, hoping still for a final and infinite reunion with the generous gentle lady who had died — * suddenly snatched in her sleep by the relentless claws of Vulture Death ' — in the full bloom of her wonderful beauty. Venetia was mourned by grateful poets whom she or her lord had befriended — Randolph and his master Jonson, Habington, Townshend, and others. And Sir Kenelm himself wrote a touching and expressive poem over her. It was not till 1665, thirty-two years after his Venetia's death, that Sir Kenelm departed this life, after about a year's illness. He was buried beside his wife in the gorgeous tomb he had reared for them both, and Ferrar made him a sonorous epitaph. And so we may turn from Sir Kenelm and his pious biographer, with sympathy for the former and gratitude to the hitter, in that his very agreeable, if not over-critical, volume has the power of recalling remem- brances of two noble persons of singular gifts, extraordinary attraction, and romantic lives. 124 PORTRAITS MADAME DE KEUDENER^ A PRETTY German woman of Lithuania, essentially volatile, vain, energetic, fascinating, and kindly, who rivalled Lady Hamilton in the shawl-dance and Madame de Stael in the art of romance, who retained her husband's respectful con- sideration in spite of her open infidelities, who, moved by sudden impulse and the sentimental maunderings of a char- latan and a fanatic, gave up the delights of the world when they were first beginning to pall, and took up sentimental Evangelism with the greatest success and delight, reaching at fifty years of age the summit of success as the pious Egeria of the weakminded and amiable Alexander I, and as the inspirer of that ridiculous document which revolted the good sense of Wellington, roused the suspicions of Metternich, and served as the outward sign of a hateful and useless policy for nearly a generation. . . . Madame de Krudener is, indeed, an interesting figure in modern history, the first of a line of ladies whose psychology we have learned something of in the pages of Tolstoi and Turgueniev and the autobiography of Mademoiselle Bashkirtsef. Not even the eclipse of her later years, when, full of unfulfilled prophecies and of rancid religious phraseology, she delighted in the society of a set of stupid enthusiasts, only her undying vanity and her ungrudging generosity surviving in the extinction of her beauty, her sense, and her health, can entirely alienate from her the reverence and affection of her admirers. Sainte-Beuve had as near a grande passion for this long-dead lady as a Voltairean and academic critic could be expected to feel for any one of his most lively and beautiful contemporaries, and the shock he experienced when he realized that his idol has feet of unmistakable clay is almost incredible in the case of so fleshly a sceptic. . . . Madame de Krudener, we must confess, does not fascinate us, as she perhaps ought to ; her letters are too strongly ^ Life and Letters of Madame de Krudener. By C. Ford. 1893. MADAME DE KRUDENER 125 redolent of selfishness and vanity, and of that peculiarly revolting pietism in which Lady Byron delighted ; but as a ' subject' she is, of course, distinctly precious and interest- ing. The workings of an able woman's heart and head are laid bare in her in a remarkable way. Thackeray would have revelled in the minute but exquisite skill by which in the days of her vanity she wheedled the ' puff preliminary ' out of academicians and scientists, and rejoiced in the delicate but indicative way in which she covers under high motive her inconsiderate and relentless selfishness. Her insatiable self-love is obvious in spite of protean disguises, and accompanies her from the beginning of her career to the end. Yet her courage and her lavish generosity were as inseparably companions of her life. Altogether, it is easier to blame than to condemn Madame de Krudener.^ ^ In a letter of April, 1893, Powell wrote: 'I have a screed on Madame de Krudener. She is a woman I don't like, but can't bring myself to despise or hate, damn her. What does Mrs. think of her? I should like a woman's judgement of her. I have tried to be as fair as possible, and just daub as I see, and not conclude. Joan, my other subject, was a saint if ever there was one.' Ill SUEYEYS [These extracts are not so much fragments as brief sketches, entire in themselves for the most part, easily detached from the reviews that incited them ; they are sudden pageants, populous with historic faces and sometimes splendid in colour; perhaps, in their own way, the best examples of Powell's historic sense and imagination, duly controlled and also working into shapely form.] PARTHI A 1 What painter of the school of Gerome could resist the Triumph over Crassus — the two semi-barbaric kings, in the full glow of high festival, sitting with their attendants and people in a vast theatre looking on at Euripides' famous play of The Bacchantes ? As Agave enters with the train of frenzied ladies the heralds of victory burst in, travel-stained and mad with joy, bearing the head of the proud and greedy foe, the erst-mighty Crassus himself, to prove to the Parthian monarch the success of his arms. The head is thrown to the player on the stage who sets it on the thyrsus in lieu of the semblance borne before, and parades it before the encircling and applauding multitude, and raises with redoubled energy the thrilling chorus : ' From the mountain to the hall, new- clipt tendril, see, we bring blessed prey !' Again, the Treachery of Caracalla is a most dramatic event. The Roman Emperor with his legions, fully armed and marching in regular order, is approaching the Parthian court. The road is lined with rejoicing throngs, garlanded, gay of raiment, with song and dance and music of flute and 1 1893. PARTHIA 127 pipe and drum and tabor. The Parthian warriors had dis- mounted from their horses, laid aside their deadly bows, and were carousing at ease as they watched their foreign friends. Their own king, in noblest array, with all the splendour of a rich Asiatic court, is coming forth to meet the man who was, by a self-sought honour, to become his son-in-law. Suddenly, as Dio tells, the perfidious Roman gave the signal to his men to fall on and massacre the barbarians. Artabanos, the beguiled king, is hurried off by his faithful guards at the cost of their lives ; the multitude, helpless, disarmed, encumbered by their flowing festal raiment, falls a miserable prey to the cowardly onslaught of the steel-clad legionaries, who slay M'ithout mercy, for they have a long roll of unavenged defeats to wreak upon the dangerous foe now delivered defenceless into their hands. SICILY 1 Glorious were the days of Gelon and Hieron ; mighty builders they were, founders of cities, raisers of moles and walls and palaces and temples, great champions at the Hellenic games, great patrons of poets who repaid them with noble verse, 'fathers of strangers,^ brave captains of men-at-arms, hereditary priests, bountiful benefactors to their subjects and neighbours. Theirs were the days of Simonides, comjjoser of the noble elegies on the valiant Greeks that fell in battle ; of Pindar, the Theban eagle, whose odes best recall to us those stirring times which were to Greece what great Eliza- beth's age was to England ; of Aeschylus, whose patriotic plays were acted at Hieron's court, and who met his strange death by the white waters of Gela, in Sicily, far away from Marathon, where he had smitten the ' short-cropped Mede ' in the day of his pride. But tyrannies, glorious though tiiey may be, are short-lived, and not long after Himera and Cyme Hieron died. Within a few years all the tyrants had been 1 1891. 128 SURVEYS driven out or slain, and the restoration of the Syracusan Commonwealth and the Feast of Freedom ushered in a new era. But still Sicilian prosperity increased by leaps and bounds. There was plenty of corn and wine and oil, plenty of fish and meat; there were Rabelaisian feastings, and gorgeous pageants and illuminations at banquets and bridals and arvals ; and there was no lack of mirth for the eye and ear, for the pantomimes and comedies which sprang from the holiday games of the native islanders were eagerly adopted by the Greeks. Ships were built, magazines and arsenals were equipped, and temple-building went on, and the raising of walls and fortifications was not checked. And there were still great men in the land, Empedocles, the reformer, of whom Matthew Arnold has had his say ; Gorgias, the teacher, whom Plato has drawn for us ; Gellias, the witty citizen ; Antiochus, the historian ; and Damophilos, the father of the great school of Greek painting. A PAGE OF BYZANTINE HISTOEY ^ The interest of the present volume is largely political, of course ; but politics are not always uninteresting, and the characters of the foremost statesmen and generals of the day are remarkable. There are the two Basils — the sage, ambitious, harsh, and crafty old giant, who loved power for its own sake, and hated (as later politicians have) to see his marvellous pupil, the younger Basil, emancipate himself from the long guardianship that had formed his education, and, shaking himself free of the pleasures that gilded his youth, become the enduring, never-ceasing defender of the Christian empire, wise and cunning, brave and stout-hearted, soldier, general, emperor, worthy to stand beside the great heathen imperatores, who marched over half the world at the head of L'Epoj)(^e hyzantine a la Fin du dixieme Siecle (969-989). Par G. Schlumberger. 1897. A PAGE OF BYZANTINE HISTORY 129 the armies, who brought peace and order and tillage wherever the eagle was planted. There is the gallant Otho, a very Coeur de Lion for adventure, with as faithful followers and more chivalrous foes. There are the Churchmen — the stern but practical patriarch Polyeuctes, who used the crimes of his penitent to the benefit of the Church, and spared Aigisthos while he was relentless to Klytaimnestra, after the wont of his kind ; and the old ascetic Neilos, a saint with that common sense which distinguished St. Teresa de Jesu and St. Francis. There are the barbarians — the last great Bulgarian Caesar, struggling with greater skill, but far less luck, than Bruce or Scanderbeg himself against overwhelming odds, and after all enabling his kingdom and nation to fall nobly, conquered but unshamed, before the union of the two great Powers that have ever since held the supremacy over the Slavonic races ; and the first Christian Russian Caesar, wedding (like our Ethel- bert) a Christian princess, whose union with him was to lead to the conversion of himself and all his people, persuaded by the excessive glory of the cathedrals of the * white city of the Emperors protected by God % and the splendour of his greatest rival Basil himself, that the way of Christendom was the way of material progress and of earthly as well as heavenly glory. Wonderful tragedies, too, pass before us — the headlong fall of the beautiful traitress Theophano ; the death of Bardas ; the terrible alternations of prosperity and adversity at the Byzantine Court ; the varying fortunes of war, when the best heavy cavalry of the world, the Roman cuirassed lancers, went out to battle against the finest heavy infantry then alive, the Warangian, with his javelin and broadaxe ; when the dashing Armenian line regiments met the magni- ficent Arab light horsemen, and the fate of empires as well as of emperors hung upon the result of the day. It was hard work for a Caesar of By/antium to hold his own. The marvellous riches of the Asiatic and Balkan provinces before the destroying hand of the Turk had withered their prosperit)'^, the accumulated treasures of centuries of civilization, the T. p. II K 130 SURVEYS abiding force of a skilled and well-formed regular army, the prestige of tlie empire that was the most enlightened, the most iiumanCj the most progressive of the great governments earth had yet seen, still upheld the Cross on the Bosphorus. But the pressure of taxation, the vile intolerance and crass and increasing ignorance of the clergy, and the breakdown of the old land system, were, with other less prominent causes, to sap the strength of the Eastern Empire and give it a prey to the Turk, though his victory was delayed long enough to make that victory the last great and successful effort for centuries of the Asiatic regime against the European system. The heroic age of Byzantine history is, indeed, a fascinating piece of history, and one could hardly study it under better guidance than M. Schlumberger has given in the book before us. It is the first book that has rendered accessible to Western readers the vast industry (sometimes almost over-patriotic in its manifestations) of the present generation of Russian scholars on the mediaeval history of Eastern Christendom. It will remind some who have almost forgotten that the Turk did not always rule at the Golden Horn, that there was a time when the only mosque in Constantinople existed by favour of a Christian Emperor at request of a Khalif residing at Cairo. It will also perhaps prove, again, a much neglected but certain fact, that there was only one realm in Eui-ope where anything beyond the elements of civilization existed in the tenth century, where people were polite, cleanly, lettered, commercial, and capable of understanding the remains of prae-Christian learn- ing that survived, where sound money was struck, trading corporations flourished, sport was organized on a gigantic scale, while regularly drilled armies supplied with engineers and an artillery of high efficiency were kept on foot, and that this realm was the domain not of the Karling or the Capetian or the sons of Frey or Woden, but of the Greek-speaking Macedonian dynasty that ruled the Eastern Empire. Those students whose scope extends not beyond their own islands will get some interesting information and references touching the origin of the Warangian guard (first known to most of us A PAGE OF BYZANTINE HISTORY 131 from Count Robert of Paris), the guard of 6,000 Northmen, Russians, and Englishmen in which that Harold who fell at Stamford Bridge and fought at Athens and in Sicily had served, as well as the younger brother of Grettir the Strong, the famous Kolskegg, the magnificent Bolli, and a host of self-exiled Englishmen ' flying from tlie overbearing of William the Norman ' to the service of the ' throne-king '. When the Turk departs and the beautiful city is free again, there are few of its past monarchs that have better deserved the honours that will be accorded them than Nicephorus, John, and Basil, the three heroes whose lives M. Schlumberger has so well written. MAHOMET II As with Dante, one must judge the man chiefly in the light of his own work, and a thorough appreciation of the work is an absolute necessity. Gentleness, generosity, and courteous sympathy, mingled with a terrific sense of justice, an overpowering and intense faitii, and a scorn and hatred of certain sins and certain sinners, mark both men's characters, and must be acknowledged clearly if we are to try to under- stand how Dante could doom his friends and kinsmen to endless woe, could realize the mortal sin of Francesca, and 'pitying, still condemn', in consonance, as he believed, with that divine righteousness and love that laid the foundations of the dolorous city itself ; or if we are to try and comprehend how Mahomet, the man who loved children and cared for dumb beasts, and neither siiowed pride nor lack of politeness to any human being, and whose tears were ever ready to mingle with those of the mourner, could sit by while his judge sent eight himdrcd of his chained foes to ignoble death, could praise the traitor that slew his foster-brother in his arms, * Fragments from three separate reviews, 1891-6. K i 132 SURVEYS and approve the assassin of a woman sleeping with her babe on her breast, in blind reliance on what he felt to be the avenging arm of the 'Lord of the Kaaba'. There are many parts of the Koran, many parts of the Commedia, that strike us painfully, that jar horribly on wliat we consider our wider and more highly developed humanity. But before we can judge the men who could make themselves stark enough to do or command deeds at which we shrink we must try humbly and sincerely to understand their circumstances and ideas and temperaments. There was no callous cruelty nor love of torment about these two, no selfish sacrifice of others to their passions or desires, and yet they commended acts that to most of us are horribly criminal as agreeable to the divine orders and the highest law. Here is no common difficulty, and it must be faced ; it goes right down to the bed-i-ock of the depths of Ethic. It is no light matter t(j differ with these righteous men, as we do and must. To condemn them hastily is out of the question ; they knew what they were doing, and we have to realize their position. It is hard enough to get at facts in history, but to get at the meaning of the facts when we have them is harder still. The ideal historian must be a student of life as well as of books, and it is this that makes the pages of Machiavel more helpful than the volumes of Gibbon and places Aristotle above Ducange. ' By the going down of the sun : veril}^ man busieth himself in that which will prove of loss, except they that believe and do that which is right and mutually recommend the truth and mutually recommend perseverance unto each other.' II Islam is certainly not dead. The inevitable question comes, Is it for the benefit of mankind that Islam should persist? No absolute answer can as yet be given by the historian, though the theologian in the street of course has his reply pat enough ; but it is [certain] that, for whatever MAHOMET 133 reasons, Islam has a singular conservative power of resisting what we in the West call progress. The community that adopts the Mohammedan faith has generally taken a great step forward in civilization, hut it seems all the more difficult for it to take any further step. However, as it is not till the present century, according to good judges, that we ourselves surpassed the material progress of the ancient Romans (so dear to Miss Blimber), we may yet prove that Islam is no greater obstacle to the advancement of knowledge than (say) the European systems of the sixteenth century. Ill We have to do with powerful forces and impulses ^hich we can only control by understanding them, and not the least important work done by Burton was that he gave Englishmen a means of getting deeper into the mind of the Mohammedan world than was possible before. ... It is certain that, from the lowest commercial point of view, we are losing thousands of pounds every year by ignorance, stupid avoidable ignorance, of the East, and it is because such books as the one before us help to lessen this ignorance that we cordially commend them to English readers. SARACENS 1 A HISTORY of the Saracens by a Mohammedan, a grave and intelligent attempt to give the general public a history of Islam from the point of view of a pious but rationalist follower of the Prophet, is a new thing, but it is certainly not unwelcome. Such a book if written by one who shared neither the prejudices of Rome nor Mecca, by a scientific and scholarly investigator such as Noldeke, Mould of course have ' A Shoii History of the Saracens, from the Earliest Times to the Destruction of Bagdad and the Expulsion of Moors fivm Spain. By Ameer AH Syed. 1899. 134 SURVEYS been of still greater use. But it is highly interesting to see how Islam appears to a well-educated nineteenth-century Indian Mohammedan. The Syed glides gently over many horrors, much bloodshed, disgraceful treason, abominable persecutions, and shocking examples of vice in the way with which we are familiar in our own historians, who if Catholics too often deal gently with Dominic and Philip and palliate the brutality of Crusaders and inquisitors, and if Protestants are anxious to make all possible excuses for the sins of Calvin and the Huguenot, and the shortcomings of Reformers and Covenanters. * A religion is not responsible for the crimes of those who profess it ; ' 'We must not judge people of the past by our present standard ; ' ' The people who were persecuted were, after all, very wicked and ill-living persons and hardly deserve our pity .' These apologies are familiar to us in such cases, and though the Syed uses them for the benefit of Islam instead of against it, he is really trying to give what he himself would probably consider a fair history of the rise and progress of the faith as revealed to Mahomet, down to the fall of Bagdad and the expulsion of Boabdil, the kittle king'. . . . The romance of Antar and the Biographic Dictionary of Ibn Khallikan, the short sui'as of the Quran, and the poems of the ' times of darkness ', the Assemblies of Hariri, and the Thousand Nights and One, all books accessible to the English reader, will give him a truer knowledge of the inner life and feelings of Oriental Moslems than this History of the Saracens would, taken alone ; but it has its value as a handy epitome of the story of the great Arab conquerors that swept Persian Chosroes and Greek emperors and Berber princesses and Gothic princes before them, and set up and maintained a higher standard of culture and comfort and social life than was to be found elsewhere in the world in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, there are three vices that persistently haunt Oriental courts, and against which even Berber fanaticism and Arab asceticism are not proof — lust, bigotry, and cruelty, — and it is these, conjoined with the selfish greed which Dante describes in its essence as ' Avarizia ', that so SARACENS 135 determinedly hamper the efforts at progress enlightened men and even enlightened dynasties have made. But Islam has never been absolutely rigid or motionless. As a missionary faith it has continually advanced ; it has had its rationalist and mystic schools and sects, if it has had its puritan and devotee revivals. The Persian Mohammedan has never been able to accept the Semite religion Avithout change ; neither Snfi nor Babi nor philosophic Epicurean (such as Omar) is possible among pure Ai*abs. To the negro of the Nile or Congo Islam means something quite different from what it did to Masudi or the Founders of the Four FoUowings. Nationality tinges the faith, but the prayers, the pilgrimage, and the book manage to keep up a theoretic and even practical unity among non-Aryan Mohammedans that the convokers of Christian Oecumenic Councils have never been able to attain to. Western Europe, however, is now as much in advance of the Mohammedan world as it was in the Middle Ages behind it. Science has as yet no votaries in Islam. Men seek faith rather than truth at Al Azhar, in spite of recent symptoms that point to better ideals at the great Moslem University. The Japanese and Rajputs, the Red Indians and the Zulus, prove that strong ideas of honour, extraordinary courage and endurance, and other vigorous qualities of mind, may be found under religions that have not a trace either of Islam or of Christianity ; but still the claim of those that look on Mahomet as the ' last of the Prophets ' to have a ' manly faith ', a faith that gives confidence to the believer, that disposes him to endure without complaint and to hope when things seem most desperate, that enables him to despise suicide as cowardice and to regard himself as a chosen vessel reserved for honour as long as he keeps the faith, though in this life he may be of all men most miserable — the claim that this religion is one a man can hold without his best qualities being injured, a religion ^such as befits a gentleman', maybe conceded by the impartial historian. Islam is a step in religious development ; there is real truth in those burning 136 SURVEYS denunciations of falsehood and sham and all vile and mean tilings that thunder through the Quran, and the men that died at Ohod were martyrs for the truth as well as those that died at Mohacs or Thermopylae or Salamis. So much and no more may be granted to Ameer Ali, who, as a skilled and veteran apologist for Islam, knows very well the weakness and strength of his case. As a rationalist he deplores the bigotry that fettered Islam so early, and has hopes of an awakening, a return to the ideals that were in the Prophet's own mind, ideals that undoubtedly would admit of progressive development. Whether the Arab and African and Malay Mohammedan will care for such a renaissance, if it ever comes, is a difficult question to answer. For the Indian, Afghan, and Persian Mohammedan the strict Semitic traditions are bonds to be broken or slipped off, and no doubt among them are many ripe for a more rational system than that which is generally received as orthodox and respectable by the doctors of the law, whether Sunni or Shiah. There are few who have lived long among Mohammedans without acquiring respect for their higher qualities, and a hope that when once the reign of formality is over the intellect of Islam may be liberated once for all from the miserable traditionalism that is the flaw of Semitic forms of belief. It is a great and engrossing theme, the glories of Bagdad and Cordova and Cairo and the generations that raised and maintained them, and not easy to tell without confusion or vain repetition in one handy volume, but this the Syed has been able to do. If one might suggest so much, the addition of a chapter on the state of Arabia immediately before Mahomet, when the best of the Arab poets lived, when the seven best of their poems, the Muallakat, were composed, would add value to a useful and interesting little book and give a better setting to the noble figure of the son of Abdallah, whose word is still law to millions and whose book is reverenced from the Atlantic to the Pacific. When the English were but emerging from barbarism and taking Christianity upon them, in the very lifetime of the apostle of SARACENS 137 Kent, the spirit of the young Arab was moved ^vith a great pity for his people and a great zeal for the truth beyond the south-eastern confines of the empire that had only lately surrendered Britain to its own fate. And of the nations that have changed the face of the world since those days, thirteen centuries back, it has been the Arabs and the Enghsh that have perhaps done most for human progress, in spite of many errors in thought and deed. It is probable that an English Christian will be more likely to sympathize with the conquests of Musa and Khalid and with the fate of Ali and the fall of Jaafar than either a Buddhist or a Brahman, though he would scarcely sympathize with the later Islam, when the Turk shouldered out of power and place the degenerate Arab of Bagdad and Bussorah and the Kirghiz captives took possession of the land of the Ptolemies. From the days when rigid orthodoxy strangled thought and despotism took the place of Arab independence there have been grave and deep evils in the Moslem world, but we may hope with the Syed that these are not inherent to the races that have so easily and warmly accepted Islam, even if we cannot, like our author, put faith in the teachings of Mahomet as final revelations containing all that is necessary for the perfect and effective guidance of human conduct. GIERKE : MEDIAEVAL THEORIES ' Professor Maitlaxd has given us here a splendid and comprehensive textbook to the mediaeval theories on politics and political science, in a translation of part of Gierke's great book on the Germanic corporation law, or fellowship law. Das Deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht. Those who have read the Song of Lewes (probably some Oxford student's plea for the cause of Montfort and reform), and the far greater ^ Political Theories of the Middle Age. By Otto Gierke. Translated by F. W. Maitland. Vol. i. 1901. 138 SURVEYS number who have been puzzled and disconcerted by Dante's De Monorchia, will have wished often for some handj^ book Mhich should guide them to the mediaeval ' publicists ' and their treatises and theories. They want to know where Ockham and Marsilius stand with regard to the questions raised or debated by Dante ; they want to know how far Thomas of Aquino would have repudiated his pupil's con- clusions ; they wish to know how men such as they that deposed Edward II and Richard II and resisted John and Henry III by force of arms justified their conduct to them- selves on grounds arguable in those days. They would like to understand the attitude of Wyclif and Gerson, and to see how far it was original, how far merely a development of the positions of earlier thinkers and teachers. They would welcome information as to the precise claims that the English nobles repudiated in the case of Sigismund, as to the precise authority exercised by or acknowledged to reside in the Pope by his supporters and opponents in such cases as that of Boniface VIII, and as to how far the Schism upset or dis- arranged men's theories of the Papacy. Mediaeval opinion on such subjects as representation (the great political invention of the Middle Ages), tyrannicide, and transfer of power and territory, explains much in mediaeval history that at first eludes one. All this and a great deal more will be found, with full references, in this handy and well-printed volume, furnished with a most attractive and informative introduction by Professor Maitland, the historian of our English law. . Those M'ho are little concerned with the Middle Ages will also find their account in this book. Persons like Cajetanus, Miinzer, Machiavelli, and Campanella (not to speak of Calvin and Sarpi, Cranmer and Bodinus, Grotius and Selden, Locke and Hobbes) did not start from a blank and make something out of nothing ; they started with the ideas of their time, the ideas that the Middle Ages had taught, and these they had to metamorphose or controvert in an acceptable manner. The theory of the Social Contract was not Hobbes's invention; theories of Acquisition and Dominion troubled Wyclif before GIERKE : MEDIAEVAL THEORIES 139 they were handled by Grotius ; the theory that would have the State a mere servant of the Church was held and fought for long before Calvin and Knox tried to raise a *godlie politic ' in Switzerland and Scotland ; the theory which Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth enforced as to their Royal Supremacy was a theory that had its roots in the Imperial law-books, and it was as standing in the place of Augustus, Constantine, and Justinian that our ' high and mightie Princesse' Gloriana stood out at once against the protestations of the iconoclast and rebellious Puritans and the anti-imperial and usurped tyranny of 'the Bishop of Rome' who presumed to put her imder the ban of the Church. It was mediaeval theory as much as compassion and kinship that held the hand of Elizabeth for years from putting her cousin Queen Mary to death. Protestant assassins such as slew the Guise and Catholic assassins such as murdered William of Orange were moved to strike by a faith tliat was buttressed up by such mediaeval theories as Gerson urged in his famous apology for the ' taking off ' of Orleans. The famous comparison of the body politic to the human body, to which Mr. Herbert Spencer has devoted one of his most instructive essays, goes back, of course, to the ancients, but it was never more characteristically made use of than by Cusanus and certain of his mediaeval jJredecessors and after- comers, persons to whom Mr. Spencer has not even thought it worth while to refer his readers. Tlie curious idea of the triplicity of the Christian State, as it relates to faith, know- ledge, or political needs, with imjierium, siudium, and sacer- dotium reigning respectively at Aachen, Paris, and Rome, and under the care resiJectively of the German, French, and Italian nations, is one of several interesting conceptions started by mediaeval philosophers. The famous contro\'ersies that raged over the Papal pretensions as regards the Empire, the question of poverty and the property of the Church, the (piestion of Conciliar supremacy, brought forward many acute and ingenious writers who went into every quarter of the matter and built up ingenious schemes of demonstration 140 SURVEYS on premisses universally admitted then but since discovered to be wholly or in great part illusory. The passion for order, for unity, for logical completeness which must, in the eyes of the mediaeval schoolman, be the characteristic marks of creation, is responsible, of course, for much absurdity, for long resistance to obvious truth, and for neglect of experiment and observation ; but it brought out a number of most ingenious theories and exercised the wits of many generations of persons of high mental ability. That * Order is Heaven's first Law ' is, on the whole, an axiom that befits Dante rather than Pope, and it led to a forcible maiming of facts to make them square with the * inspired authorities '. Just as cultured Mohammedans of to-day have difficulties in reconciling observed ' scientific truths ' with the poetic diction of the Quran or the Traditions, and find small sympathy with their less well-read co-religionists (whose schoolmen have furnished them with logical systems that cannot be refuted save by attacking the bed-rock of ortho- doxy on which they rest), so there was no place or peace for the observer, but great honour for the dialectician, in the Middle Ages ; and while Abelard was condemned and Roger Bacon imprisoned, the great system-mongers were revered and sainted, or at least rewarded and read in the ' schools ' of the time. It must be remembered that Aquinas and Anselm, Marsilius and Wyclif, were well-trained persons of exception- ally powerful brain, possessing wonderful grasp of the instruments they used and an inventive ingenuity that has rarely been excelled. In tlieir small space, with their few lawful counters, they juggled to perfection, they did astonish- ing feats, they showed mental resource of the highest order. That they advanced so little is partly because they were living in an age and under conditions tliat did not allow thought to wander freely, but confined and limited it to a tiny circle within which alone it might play ; and partly because the plane of circumstance in Avhich they dwelt had not been disturbed for ages and was regarded as final. Plausible answers had been supplied to every question that a man was GIERKE : MEDIAEVAL THEORIES 141 likely to ask, and there was nothing that forced him absolutely to doubt the solidity of the enormous and beautifully con- structed system of which he himself was a part. When the bases were once attacked it crumbled quickly, and so swiftly were its fragments seized and built up into other novel and rival constructions on similar bases that the true plan of the original mediaeval system was almost forgotten, and it has been left to Dr. Gierke to reconstruct it in its entirety in the course of a gigantic book on a subject of which the con- sideration of mediaeval political theories is only a portion. The English lawyer will read with particular interest Professor M aitland's admirably lucid account of the discussions, legal and political, fraught with important practical results and consequences (of which Dr. Gierke's book is one famous outcome), that have long been waged abroad, especially in Germany, over the legal conception of ^artificial personalities' and ' corporate bodies ' and the like. The German solution has not been in practice quite the same as the solution which a good deal of mother-wit and a little pinch of theory suggested to our lawyers and men of business, but it is evident that the trend of business and opinion is gradually leading lawyers all over the civilized world toward a treatment of the question that will be generally acceptable. Our peculiar (and often healthy) aversion to theory has saved us from some bad mistakes, but it has landed us in several errors by which we have lost a part of our heritage and raised dangerous obstacles where a little more attention to theory would have smoothed them away. Dr. Gierke's work is above praise now ; its value is generally acknowledged. But one cannot help noticing especially his immense superiority in style, in method, in concise and scientific statement, to the men, not excepting even Gneist, who have hitherto dealt with constitutional theory and history in Germany. Here is a worthy successor of the Grimms, indeed — and, moreover, one who has sprung from a school of savage Teutonizers, but who has here wisely cast aside all that offensive apparatus of brag and sentiment in which a blatant and ignorant Patriot- 142 SURVEYS ismus delights to masquerade, and (unlike Treitschke and the rest) chooses to write soberly and plainly, as a man of science should. And Dr. Gierke has his reward. It is a pleasure (a pleasure not at all diminished in Professor Maitland's skilful and adequate translation) to read what is in effect a lucid and illuminating summary of an enormous amount of reading, set forth with a classic precision that recalls the great lawyers of old, in a style of scrupulous exactitude and of unadorned but evident force. Professor Maitland is doing manful work in reviving in England the study of mediaeval law, a study which, save for the brilliant exception of Mr. Nichols, the editor of Britton, and a small number of scholars who are editing year-books and chartularies, has been suffered to fall for nearly two centuries into unmerited neglect. Without a knowledge of mediaeval law, lay and cleric, the Middle Ages will be mis- understood inevitably, and there are few great mediaeval authors — certainly neither Langland nor Dante — but have been misconstrued by those who did not comprehend the huge space filled by law in mediaeval life. It is significant that it was not possible for Chaucer to think of a typical mediaeval company of Englishmen without a Serjeant-at-Law and a Summoner, besides such local legalities as aldermen, justices of the peace, reeves may well represent. One hopes that this treatise may be the forerunner of a series that may render accessible to English readers other important studies by leading Continental legists. THE MEDIAEVAL JEW ' There are few subjects of real interest of which so little is generally known as of this which Mr. Abrahams has chosen. And he has been well advised in choosing it, for he has the power and taste to deal adequately with it. He is no bigot, ^ Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. By I. Abrahams. 1897. THE MEDIAEVAL JEW 143 he is learned, he writes in a graceful and simple style, without extravagance and with conspicuous and rai'e fairness. All that he gives us in this book is good reading, and most of it will be new to the general reader, even to him that has had a little glimpse (through the medium of Heine) into some phases of Jewish life and feeling, and knows how much family and faith and the remembrance of past glory and hope of future restoration meant to the despised and persecuted exile or the envied and hated alien. But here Mr. Abrahams has given a pretty complete picture of Jewish life in Western Europe from the beginning to the close of the Middle Ages : — of the synagogue and its organization, the home life before and after the Jewry became a kind of perpetual quarantine, the occupations, trades, and professions, the costume and badge, the pastimes, the Jewish drama, the Jewish poetry, the Jewish system of education, and the intercourse between learned Jews and their Christian friends and patrons. The spread of the Jews westward began this chapter in their history, a chapter closed by their expulsion from Britain and Spain and their enforced isolation and semi-servitude, degrading and deteriorating in its effects, rousing the bigotry that condemned Spinoza and the vulgarity that has injured modern society ; largely destroying, apparently, the art sense as expressed in other terms than those of music and the drama, and hindering the progress of learning by forbidding criticism and confining Hebrew studies to absurd mysticism, or delivering it over to stupid and childish credulity — a policy from which Europe has deeply (though deservedly) suffered. The reception of the Spanish exiles by the Protestant nations is a bright spot in a record that became very dark in the middle of the fifteenth century, and remained dark till the French Revolution scotched the power of the persecutor and gave once more an open career to men like Marx, Lassalle, Darmesteter, Rciiuich, Disraeli, Gambetta, and the great banker dynasties that have now to be reckoned with in the politics of both sides of the Atlantic. And yet in the last century there were big Christian towns 144 SURVEYS where, by the unholy alliance of a despotic State and an ignorant and retrograde Church, Jews were burnt alive for the dreadful crime of being Jews. If we follow, with Mr. Abrahams, the Jews through the Middle Ages, it is astonishing how important an element we shall find them in mediaeval society. Jewish doctors kept alight the faint flicker of science in spite of the cold blasts of dogma. Jewish translators interpreted the ancient classics to the barbarian world, and were the accepted teachers alike of Christian and Moslem philosophers. Jewish merchants and bankers helped to build up the trade that civilized the western kingdoms, gave to commerce instruments of credit, and laid the foundations of that vast system of international intercourse which has almost uniformly been an influence making for peace and enlightenment. The Jews were great travellers, able, thanks to their exceptional position and faith, to voyage freely, though not untaxed, over the Mohammedan and Ciiristian parts of the world, and even among the heathen and Buddhists of India and China. They were great chart-makers too. Juseff Faquin should rank with Masudi and Marco ; and it is a tradition that it was one of Columbus's Jewish sailors who first saw the New World. Jurists and commentators abounded. Of poets and poetesses of fine inspiration there was never any lack. For generosity, for charity, for steadfastness against any argument but reason, for fair and gentle family life, the Jews were a bright example to the rough, brutal, ignorant, and often selfish society around them. There is not a chapter in this book but gives new, amusing, and pathetic descriptions of mediaeval Jewish life. There were boy-rabbin like the boy-bishops, and a close time for school children when ' not even a strap might be used', as the Shulchan Aruch puts it ; there was a children's patron for little Jews, ' Sandalphon, lord of the forest,' the Boy Angel, just as Dunstan of Canterbury and good St. Nicholas were scholars' saints with our ancestors. In their humanity the Jews eschewed hunting (a sport beloved by Nimrod, Esau, and llerod), but they were fine runners, fond of games and THE MEDIAEVAL JEW 145 dances, great lovers of pageants, and chess-players (using silver pieces on the Sabbath). They rejoiced in the gay rich mediaeval clothing that lit up the mediaeval streets. They were especially proud of dressing their women and children richly. ' You go like the coalman's ass, while your wives prance about in fair rich harness like the Pope's mule,' said the King of Castile. For this reason, amongst others, the badge, be it Innocent the Third's * circle' or the English 'two tables' or the French and German 'wheel' or the 'Judenhut', red with twisted rims, was especially hateful, and it is noticeable that it was not adopted in Spain, which was then ' fresh with breezes of perpetual inter-sectarian friendliness ', much to the scandal of the Catholic Church ; ' indeed, the happier lot of the Jews in mediaeval Spain did much to preserve the rest of their brethren from demoralization.' The gradual enforcement of monogamy (custom overriding law) soon differentiated the Western from the Eastern Jews, and generally the moral tone among Jews was far higher than among the Christians that surrounded them. Few Christians would scruple to try and outwit a Jew, but the Rabbis absolutely laid it down plainly that a Jew did worse when he robbed a Christian than when he robbed his brother in faith, because he not only broke the law but profaned the name of God. ' Ah, Ariel, Ariel ! Shall men say there is no God in Israel ? ' But enough has been said to show the character and contents of this good and original book, well written, well referenced, well indexed, and well printed — a book that can hardly fail to do good work in helping to break down those ignoble prejudices that prevent Jew and Gentile from understanding each other fully, and in sweeping away those barriers of bigotry that should have been abolished long ago. In Great Britain and France, at all events, the benefit of Jewish emancipation and the gratitude evoked by the bestowal of perfect political e(}uality has never been doubted byany one who has examined the facts, though it has been one of the evil fashions of the ' neo-Catholic revival ' in Paris and the still sillier pseudo-patriotism of Berlin and V. p. n L 146 SURVEYS Vienna to appeal to the greed and envy of those who would certainly be among the first to suffer were the inhuman cry of * Hep ! Hep ! ' to be raised again. ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA ^ This is a charming book. Written from the point of view of a broad-minded and conscientious Catholic, but with the utmost fairness to opponents, it gives a most interesting account of the life of one of the most remarkable leaders of men that have yet appeared in modern Europe ; for since the days of St. Francis of Assisi there had not arisen a man of such influence over his followers and the world at large, while in his own day the only person who approached him in power of organization, in logical determination and zeal for what he held to be the truth, was the ^ Tyrant of Geneva \ John Calvin. The Spiritual Exercises is one of the most important devotional books which the Western Church has produced, and none save the Imitation of Christ (which was Ignatius's favourite reading, as it was Gordon^s) has exer- cised the same deep influence over men's minds and characters. It is a work of genius; founded on personal experience and on a most carefully thought-out basis, no less a person than De Sales could say of it that it had saved a soul for every letter it contained. But Ignatius not only gave his Company its ^ Drill-book', but he raised the Company itself, and it is the Company that is his most enduring monument. There is no human organization that wields such influence as is exercised by the Generals in whose hands has lain for the greater part of this century the direction of the policy of the Church of Rome. It is certainly worth while to study the foundation of a system which has not only * carried the Cross to the very ends of the earth ' and produced * thousands upon thousands of martyrs ' in Japan ^ St. Ignatius Loyola. By Stewart Rose. 1891. ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA 147 and China, and thousands upon thousands of converts in the midst of the American forests, but has upheld in most difficult and dangerous times the tottering authority of the Papal Chair in Europe, stopping the Protestant attack at the time when that attack was most vigorous, and completely arresting the spread of the reformed doctrine in Latin Europe. What the Company has done for geography, for medical science, for philology, for education, is not a little, and dwellers in the Dominion do not forget that they owe the foundation of their country to Jesuit zeal. To examine the origin of such a vast and active body as the Society of Jesus must have an abiding interest for a number of persons, and even those who know little of the Company save through the polished invective of Pascal or the less bitter mockery of Voltaire, and possibly even those who are haunted by the continual fear of Mr. Gladstone's being received into the Order, and who regard nearly every political phenomenon as the outward and visible sign of Jesuit influ- ences working underneath, like the fabled South American 'earth-snake', may be glad to have the opportunity of reading so accurate and vivid an account as Mr. Stewart Rose has compiled of the life and work of Ignatius and his companions. Up in the bosom of the great Pyrenean hills, that recall Wales to the British traveller, there still stands Ignatius's birthplace, a simple old Basque mansion, foursquare, with blind lower stories and rows of upper \dndows under its pantiled roof. But, untouched as is the ' Santa Casa ' itself, it is now enwalled by the wing of the noble range of build- ings whose centre is the Marble Church, that looks down the valley to the characteristic town of Azpeitia, one of the chief centres of Carlist influence in the last wars. From the family estate the younger son, Ignatius, went out to take up the profession of arms, and a bold and gallant cavalier he proved — punctilious, proud, brave to rashness and loyal to frenzy, sharing his devotion between his lady, his king, his family honour, and his Church. To the old house he 148 SURVEYS was brought back from Pamplona, wounded horribly through both legs by a cannon-ball and splinters, and in the old house, as he lay through weary months of dreadful and constant suffering, a change came over his mind, the perusal of the old Saints' Lives first leading him to think of devoting himself to God's service. An earthquake and a vision con- firmed his resolves. Leaving his home again as soon as he was able to travel, he went to Montserrat, where he dedicated himself to be God's knight. But it was at Manresa (where the cave of his hermit retirement is annually visited by numerous pilgrims) that, after greater austerities and terrible mental agony, he at last resolved on the details of what was to be the work of his life, and perfected the chief instrument by which such extraordinary results were to be obtained — his Spiritual Exercises. But before this foundation could be built on much was to be done. Ignatius went on a pilgi-image to the Holy Land and travelled all over Western Europe, studying at Alcala, Salamanca, and Paris, picking up a little knot of true friends who were to be the apostles of his mission, and encountering with unflagging purpose the envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness which, with the accompaniment of poverty and great physical discomfort, for long pursued him. After twelve years of preparatoiy work and training, Ignatius and six friends — Xavier, Lefevre, Lainez, Rodriguez, Bobadilla, and Salmeron — took solemn vows at Montmartre Chapel. Three years later Ignatius was ordained priest. But it was not till 1538 tliat the 'Institute' which formed tlie basis of the new Order was finally drawn up, and the Bull which approved of it having issued in 1540 after great difficulties had been surmounted, Ignatius was elected General, and the Society of Jesus started on its wonderful career in April, 1542. The toil of twenty years had been rewarded, and Ignatius entered upon his new duties in his fiftieth year. Fourteen years longer he lived, guiding the institution he had so carefully founded through the anxious days of its weakness and youth with unvarying success. At his death tlie new Order was already a power wherever the ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA 149 Catholic Church was established, and even beyond its admitted sphere. Very interesting are the many notices of Ignatius^s personal character and ways — his love of order, his honour, his wonderful penetration into men's minds and intuitive skill in judging of their qualities and capabilities, his immovable faith and absolute devotion^ his patience with the young and headstrong, his sympathy and thoughtfulness, his power of inspiring unquestioning affection and securing obedience, his practical mastery of the smallest details, his contiimal and watchful discipline over himself and others, his dauntless courage and endurance, and a hundred other traits that make up the personality of this wonderful man, the ' greatest Spaniard since the Cid '. . . . That in the midst of a brilliant and self-indulgent society, such as that of Ignatius's day, an appeal to self- sacrifice so absolute as was made by the Order should have met with such astonishing success, is a fact to which many of our statesmen and politicians would do well to pay con- siderable heed. The goal of mere prosperity will in time even become repulsive to an * Australian working man, full of beef and bread', as he has been lately described. There are higher tests of progress than Mr. Giffen can tabulate, and it is one of the most hopeful omens for the future that unselfishness — -even when, as most of us believe, largely mistaken in its aims and ends — should have been capable of such high organization and productive of such durable results as are patent in the history of the ' forlorn hope of the Church militant here on earth', which Ignatius mustered and drilled so wisely and led so gallantly. PORTUGAL ' At last we have a handy and correct popular history of Portugal. ... In spite of the work of Sir Richard Burton, Mr. Latouche,^ M. Aubertin, and a few more, there is a ' Poiiugal. By H. Morse Stephens. 1891. ^ Pseudonym for Mr. Oswald Crawford. 150 SURVEYS deep ignorance respecting Portugal and her history and ideas in this country, and it is pretty certain that the present mis- vinderstandings over the African question might have been for the most part avoided had our public men had a better knowledge of the peculiar position and susceptibilities of those that lead opinion at Lisbon. The slightest knowledge of the past of Portugal will suffice to show that her foreign policy has been, and must in the future be, chiefly influenced not only by the commercial position and outlook of her own colonies, and notably of Brazil, the sister transmarine State, but also by the condition of affairs in Spain, by the legitimate and long-continued connexion with her biggest customer. Great Britain, and by the antagonistic pressure of French diplomacy, ever fiercely jealous (according to an old but bad tradition) of English influence, and ever striving to make Portugal a French outpost directed by French ideas and subservient to French direction. Portugal, a poor and in- dustrious country, very susceptible to trade crises and com- mercial disturbances, is obliged to walk warily, playing off the varying ' interests ' of the great foreign Powers one against the other, and striving the while to ensure steady and peaceful progress within her own borders ; and it is impossible that she should not at times regretfully recall those glorious days of Portuguese greatness to which the notable beginnings of the Dutch Republic and the Eliza- bethan splendours of England alone supply a parallel. Portugal has indeed one of the most romantic of histories. There were those early struggles in which the border lord- ships, hardly won back from Mohammedan invaders by native valour, aided (as often later) by foreign help from France and England, became the ^ headstone of the corner of Christendom ', * the coronet of general Europe,' as Camoens puts it. The kingdom, founded amidst most picturesque episodes by warlike ladies and devoted knightly Orders, passes, amidst crusades and civil wars, down to the time when a race of great kings of English blood reaped the harvest that the ' first pilots ', headed by Prince Henry the Navigator PORTUGAL 151 himself, had just put sickle to, and to the later and yet prouder period when PortugaPs great discoverers and vice- roys ruled empires in far-off continents. Then within a little space of Camoens^ ^ own death (happy only in that it took place before the great catastrophe) came the most sudden eclipse that perhaps ever overtook a noble nation, the fatal field of Alcacer, where Sebastian cast away his crown and his country for a ^ false, fantastic dream of glory', a day more fatal than Flodden to the great houses of Portugal. Then came the Spanish captivity, with all its degradation and decay of enterprise and destruction of commerce that accompanies a nation's slavery. Again, it was a woman that freed Portugal and set the House of Braganza at the head of the emancipated country ; but the work of regenera- tion was the task of ' the great Marquis ', Pombal, who faced earthquakes and Jesuits, Court conspiracies, and popular fanaticism with the equanimity and alacrity of a Richelieu. True, Pombal's work was only half done when he was hurled from office, and the miserable monarchs that followed his dead patron did little for their subjects' benefit. One almost sympathizes with the few who preferred the rough soldier Junot to the cowardly fugitive who left his crown to foreigners to defend. Wellington finally checked Napoleon's aggression on Portuguese soil, and Torres Vedras became a household word to our grandfathers. The story closes for the time with the final severance of the last great Latin colony from the mother-country, but a few months ago, and the exile of the scholar-Emperor. AUSTKIA-IIUNGARY ^ We know very little about Austria-Hungary, because in the first place the Austrians do not write much themselves, and in the second place those who visit the Eastern kingdom ^ See the sonnet on Camoens, printed post, p. 386. ^ The Realm of the Habsburgs. By Sidney Whitman. 1893. 152 SURVEYS are seldom qualified either by knowledge or experience to explain or consider the phenomena before them, Mr. Mere- dith has shown that things Austrian are worth thought, but most persons of mark who have understood the interest of the Habsburg realm have looked at their subject from the side of dynamic rather than of static. Here we have a bright, shrewd analysis of the actual present conditions of the Austrian Empire and of the elements that compose this most puzzling of States. Here is a government which rests upon the popularity in one of the capitals and in some of the country districts of a royal house, supported by a rich landed nobility. Catholic, exclusive, brave, and profoundly contemptuous of everything but courage and good blood, and by a Church which, while it secures the conservatism of the peasants, is by no means disposed to yield its help without an adequate return. Here is a monarchy, consti- tutional in parts and unconstitutional in other parts of its domains ; a monarchy ruling by a variety of titles, and even of usurpations, over a number of different kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and counties made up of antagonistic and heterogeneous races and tongues ; an empire the most modern in Europe, held by a family that has ruled the Roman Empire for nearly three centuries ; a monarch whom no series of blunders, or even crimes, can deprive of the love of his hereditary subjects, [nor can they] add to the distrust of [him felt in] his elective dominions. Here is a capital, the most pleasant to the * average sensual man ' of any in Europe, and yet the most artistic, in many respects even distancing Paris, where art is less a part of popular instinct than it was forty, or even twenty years ago ; an army with the finest cavalry and the best sharp- shooters in Europe, officered by a brave but half-educated and prejudiced set of officers, and hitherto hampered by the badness of its staff and the incompetence of the majority of its commanders — an army which under good leaders has beaten every force opposed to it, and under bad ones has undergone a series of crushing defeats without AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 153 demoralization. Austria after Austerlitz never knew the degradation of Prussia after Jena. Waldstein was the worthy rival, as far as military genius goes, of Gustavus himself. Had Benedek been supported as Moltke was the results of 1866 might have worked out differently. Here is a navy which can point with pride to a victory won over superior and better-trained forces. Here is a bureaucracy which is one of the most stupid, lazy, ignorant, and prejudiced in existence, managing to carry on a government with far less oppression than in Russia and less unpopularity than in Italy. There is, indeed, no end to the curious contrasts which this extraordinary confederacy presents. Hungary, a nation of peasants rising by virtue of self-help from a miserable pro- vince to an important kingdom within half a century, with railways, savings banks, agricultural shows, and a number of flourishing towns furnished with newspapers, literary socie- ties, musical unions, and all the modern appliances ; Bohemia, the scene of a fierce political struggle between the rising Slav nationality and the Germans, who had hitherto usurped all rule and culture ; Herzegovina and Bosnia, where a series of secret but bloody campaigns have transferred a Slav principality from the yoke of the Turk to the yoke of the Habsburg ; an Italian province flourishing by its situa- tion, so admirably adapted for trade, but continually con- vulsed by the desire for reunion with a poorer but more progressive State and one more seductive in its ideals. THE RENAISSANCE' I / We are too apt to regard the Renaissance period in Italy entirely from the external and picturesque point of view, and thus to lose sight of those substantial underlying phenomena that gave rise to the Catholic Reformation. We forget that the mass of the Italian people were but slightly affected by ' 1898. 154 SURVEYS Rafael or Michel Angelo, by Machiavel or Aretin, by Caesar Borgia or Vittoria Colonna, by Leonardo or Mirandola. We ignore the fact that the Novellieri and Epistolarii do not pretend to picture the quiet everyday life, but rather the brilliant Court movements and the light talk and startling episodes that for the moment attracted local attention. We should not judge of England in the latter half of the four- teenth century by Chaucer and Froissart alone, neglecting the testimony of Wyclif and Langland. The steady, sober stream of life in Florence was, after all, not deeply affected either by Savonarola or Lorenzo or the beloved Sandro. The Courtier of Castiglione was for courtiers, and its ideals, however acceptable to the cultured coteries of France and Spain and England, were not, and could not be, those of the trading or working classes. The Catholic, enthusiastic, allegorical Tasso was as popular as that cynical and free- thinking humorist and romancer Ariosto. Full of pagan influences as it was, the Italian Renaissance, by its very limitations, by its dependence on clerical patronage, by the character of its chief exponents, remained Christian in its essentials. Those developments — such as Michel Angelo's masterpieces of sculpture, as La Tete de Cire (the glory of the Lille Museum), as the bust of Lorenzo at the Ashmolean, as the noblest medallions and a few drawings and pictures of wholly exceptional character — that are really classic in feeling (a very different thing from being classic in the intention of their authors), are all manifestly exceptional and outside the main current of Renaissance work. We must not judge the age by these rare and exceptional works, note- worthy and influential as they seem to us now, but often rather curious than admirable to their own times. IP It [1525-1555] is an interesting period, when it was still uncertain what the permanent strength of the two contending ' 1903. THE RENAISSANCE 155 parties would prove. The real hero is not Luther, but the Emperor vainly struggling for unity, peace, and order. One grows into sympathy with this self-controlled, sagacious, much-troubled man, set in the midst of a mass of selfish, greedy, and unscrupulous factions, with enemies on every hand. Small wonder if the burden of the crowns grew heavier and heavier, till when the worst of the work was over he was glad to resign them to his kinsmen, knowing that by his self-sacrifice of ease and health for many dark years he had at least assured his heritage to those whom he made his heirs. Francis I appears in an unpleasant light, and indeed there is not very much to be said for him. He loved splendour and glory as much as our Henry VHI did. But he was defeated in open fight ; he shrank from a wager of battle that he had provoked ; he was not ashamed to commit perjury after perjury in order to try and outwit the foe he dared not face and regain the liberty he had forfeited by his ignorant foolhardiness ; he saw his once despised rival justly honoured as the victorious champion of Christendom, while he, the eldest son of the Churcli, tlie descendant of Charlemagne, was fawning upon the Grand Turk to get help against the last great Crusader. There is another and rather better side to Francis, his real love of art and letters; but even that is dimmed by the callous cruelty with which he, who scrupled not to call in the infidel upon Christians, salved his con- science by condemning men for * errors ' he had neither the wit nor the courage to fall into or to maintain. It was a sorry world upon its political side, yet it was a world that held many very white souls and some singularly sane per- sons, such as Desiderius and Master Francis ; some good scholars, many valiant gentlemen, many gentle ladies, and a company of glorious artists, a noble army of martyrs, and a great deal of warm charity in the midst of a seething mass of hypocrisy, cruelty, lust, and ignorance, which made a very evil and conspicuous show in the Vanity Fair of that day. 156 SURVEYS WINCHESTER ^ The Dean of Winchester, who has done so much for the repair of his Cathedral and for the preservation and order of the Chapter records, has in this little book furnished a read- able and clear account of the city of Winchester — the town which once seemed much more likely than London to be- come the capital of England ; the town which was at once the Rheims and the St. Denis of our old English kings ; the town where the English Chronicle was first compiled by Alfred's order ; a city adorned with three palaces, sanctified by three great minsters and numerous churches, fortified by a magnificent castle, furnished with schools which wellnigh became a university, with guild-halls and knights' halls, and enriched by a crowded fair ; a city which was far renowned even in the eleventh century for the riches, politeness, beauty, and behaviour of its inhabitants. From 900 to 1300 Win- chester kept its leading position in South England ; it was the favourite sojourning place of our restless Norman and Angevin kings, the seat of the richest bishopric in England, the place of courts and councils and government offices ; and then, owing to a variety of causes not altogether easy to explain, the town slowly lost its power and pride of place, its roll of citizens dwindled, its fair fell off, its trade decayed, the great plague smote it sorely, till, in the fifteentli centurj^, its taxation had to be reduced by reason of its lack of population and the many deserted houses it contained. Still the beautiful minsters, the famous school, and the quiet cloistered peace remained witli it untouched. Even the Reformation at first affected it but little, though it led to the destruction of two of the splendid abbeys that joined the Close, where St. Swithin's great cathedral (now renamed Trinity Church) was left almost unharmed. It was the eighteenth century, with its ignorant and short-sighted zeal for doubtful ^improve- ^ Winchester. By Dean Kitcbin. 1890. WINCHESTER 157 ments ', that did away with old Winchester, attempting even to sweep away the venerable Butter Cross, pulling down many noble old buildings, turning Alfred's last resting-place into a county bridewell, carting his bones away as manure, and turning his very coffin into a drinking-trough for horses, an instance of ungrateful iconoclasm almost unparalleled in history. Winchester was ' the Queens' City ' par excellence, the dower and dwelling-place of the beautiful Norman lady, Emma, wife of two English kings ; the chosen home of the good Queen Maud, the stronghold of Matilda the Empress, and the court of Eleanor, the Duchess of Aquitaine, some- time Queen of France and long years Queen and Dowager Queen of the English, a generous patroness of jongleurs and troubadours, as were her two most famous sons. It was also the chosen spot where Mary, first sole Queen of England, married the greatest prince in Europe. There are, of course, numerous picturesque bits of history bound up with Win- chester, beautiful legends of Saints Frithstan, Eadburh, Dunstan, and Anselm; quarrels between bishops and bishops- elect, monks and citizens, on points of precedence and law ; rivalry between the citizens of London and Winchester at coronations and State banquets ; trials such as that of Sir Walter Ralegh ; armed occupations — by the French Prince Louis, who all but won the English crown ; by Cromwell, who won it but would not wear it ; by Stephen, who won it and wore it, but could not keep it safe ; stormy scenes, such as that when Henry, the Lion of Justice, punished the guilty moneyers, and that when his descendant, Henry of Win- chester, angrily rebuked liis fellow citizens for the brigandage by which the needier of them (many of whom were unpaid Government officers) eked out their scanty incomes, to the distress and detriment of pedlar and pilgrim, traveller and trader. 158 SURVEYS THE GEOEGESi Dr. Ward treats the Georges, as they are seldom treated, with fairness, because he understands their position, their dispositions, and the ends of their actions. The ill- informed and vulgar clap-trap of Thackeray's too famous lectures has been allowed far too much weight, and people have talked of two respectable kings and conscientious statesmen as if they were persons wholly beneath contempt. Had they been fools they could not have kept their throne ; had they been knaves they would have lost both kingdom and electorate. The continuance of their rule meant oppor- tunity for prosperity, for progress, for empire, for the Greater Britain. They had deplorable taste, save in music ; their mistresses were neither as handsome, as well-dressed, nor as witty as those of Charles II or his brother; they were grotesque at times, and never possessed any of the personal magnetism of the Young Chevalier ; they had no pleasure in speaking English or in reading English books ; but they were brave, honest, practical, preferring reason to sentiment — their own realities to other people's ideals ; they were not bigoted in religion, or cruel, or perfidious ; they were capable of perseverance carried to obstinacy and fortitude carried to callousness, and they kept their personal extravagances within the decent bounds enjoined by considerations of expense and reputation. There was nothing about them that could personally offend Squire Western or Parson Adams ; they would not have repelled Tom Jones or even Sophia. They were not generous, but they lived plainly ; they were not gracious, but they were not ungrateful ; they were slow to forget or forgive offences, but they seldom allowed their rancour to interfere with their duty, as they conceived it ; their family lives were not altogether affectionate or amiable, but much allowance must be made for circumstances in ' Great Britain and Hanover: Some Aspects of the Personal Union. (Ford Lectures, 1899.) By A. W. Ward. THE GEORGES 159 which public considerations were often inconsistent with private affection, the position of the heir in especial being surrounded with difficulties that prevented that union between him and the actual wearer of the crown which would have been otherwise possible and was of course desirable. We may dislike persons of the type above described, but we cannot despise them or refuse to acknowledge the force and even wisdom of their characters. Nay, we may even go further in the case of the first two Georges, and acknowledge their faithful stewardship of a great and onerous trust, and reflect that both in their virtues and their defects they exhibited what may be fairly called the Hogarthian character- istics that all observers have agreed to consider essentially British. CARDINAL WOLSEY'S HAT [This little essay of the pensively humorous historical kind, which exists in MS. corrected as if for press, is to be saved as a scrap of Powell's nicer miniature work, here completed ; whether it was ever printed or delivered has not been traced.] The great lord Cardinal's great red hat ! — Ingoldsby Legends. A HAT, and a beautiful hat too, eighteen inches from brim to brim, about five inches high at the tip of the rounded crown, lined with white silk, made of the finest and most exquisite cherry red cloth, cloth that has faded to a more delicious colour than the original red that we know from the old illuminations. This hat, now in the big Library at Christ Church, has a good pedigree too. It had lain long in the royal wardrobe so safe and so secluded, so forgotten, in fact, tluit neither Presbyterian, Protector, nor Parliamentary dis- turbed its repose or injured its substance. From the days when the greatest of English Cardinals fell from place and power, the hat he left in the Royal Wardrobe remained there apparently till after Reformation and Rebellion, Restoration 160 SURVEYS and Revolution. Bishop Burnet, Clerk of the Closet, came upon the relic, which was now no longer a hateful symbol, reminding men that it was ' never merry in England ' since priests were allowed to rule the roast, but merely a curious waif cast high and dry by the ebbing tide, that might well rouse curiosity and stimulate memories of the past. Burnet was not likely to get his offer of a red hat as Laud had done, nor did he feel a whit the less proud as a prelate because he had no chance of being dubbed a Cardinal of Rome. The poor Pope was not in a very influential position in the eighteenth century. Burnet seems to have had no doubt the hat he found was Wolsey's. It could only have been Pole's or Wolsey's, and there was probably a tradition that it was Wolsey's. Wolsey was my lord cardinal for years ; Pole was not long in Eng- land, and though tradition would naturally have gathered about Wolsey, whom Shakespeare and Fletcher had immor- talized, rather than Pole, who had left no popular tradition, yet if there was a cardinal's hat in the Wardrobe known as Wolsey's hat, it is not impossible or improbable that this hat was really the hat of Henry's great minister. At all events Burnet, who had the best means of knowing, seems to have believed it, and we know no reason to the contrary if he did. From Burnet, as a note affixed to the crown of the hat itself tells us, it passed to his son Judge Burnet, who left it ' to his Housekeeper, who gave it to the Countess of Albemarle's Butler' (the names of these two notable domestics are not given), 'who gave it to his Lady, and her Ladyship to Mr. Horace Walpole in 1776.' Not a bad pedigree for a per- sonal relic, far better than many that are universally credited. Thenceforward all is plain. Mr. Horace Walpole's collections at length, as most collections use, came to the hammer, and the hammer they came to was wielded by that prince or emperor of auctioneers, George Robins, of whose ' flourish- ing ' eulogies so many amusing tales are told. He was in his element in disposing of the Strawberry Hill collections. His soul was as the soul of Horace Walpole. He rejoiced in CARDINAL WOLSEY'S HAT 161 bric-a-brac, his heart went out to curios, he delighted in that kind of object that collectors value for its associations, he had a pretty fancy of his own and no doubt dreamed of battle-axes and partizans, helmets barred and barded steeds, just as often as the noble author of the Castle of Otranto or Jeames de la Pluche himself. His preface to the Catalogue of the Walpole collections is immense and well worthy of citation, but ^ *tis not of him Pm going to sing ', but of his hat, the red hat that Burnet believed to be Wolsey^s. Now Charles Kean, anxious as always for good informa- tion as to costume, — he was the Irving of his day and spent great sums in mounting his plays in as near an approach to the ^ costumes of the olden times ' as the public of his day would stand, — Charles Kean, of course, attended this sale, and bought the hat for £36, as the great auctioneer's own catalogue marked with the prices certifies. Mr. Oxford has been good enough to look it up so as to make sure of every step in the descent of the relic. Mr. Charles Kean possessed the hat, very possibly wore it, certainly copied it when he played Wolsey, undoubtedly rejoiced in its possession. When he died it went with his estate, and on the death of his daughter Mrs. Logic, last year, it came for the second time to the hammer. A patriotic Christ Church man, Mr. Oxford, was good enough to warn those interested at the Cardinal's own college, and by his generous aid and the coti- sations of several other generous Housemen the hat was bought and presented to Christ Church, where it is hoped it may long rest, the symbol of the first founder, side by side with his great illuminated Lectionary, which is among the most valued possessions of the House. The case in which the hat rests is interesting in its way. It bears an inscription referring to Kean's ownership of the hat it contains, and it is of curious ^churchwarden gothic' design, plasterwork on wood, painted and gilt, most prob- ably from some design of Horace himself, the chief begetter of those monstrosities of sham design which indicated the regretful aspirations of the British antiquary in a mediaeval Y.P. II ]J|f 162 SURVEYS direction, touching in their naive and horrible immediaevality. However, it is itself a piece of history, it marks in its own funny way the dawn of the Gothic Renaissance, and it does its work of preserving the hat quite creditably, after more years have passed over it than such flimsy plasterwork can fairly be called upon to endure without much reparation. Its wooden substructure is solid, its timber unwormed, its royal blue cloth lining unfretted by the worm. What strange diversity of fortune and dispositions has existed between the different owners of this hat, from the time when the Pope sent it to Wolsey, who received it but as an earnest of the tiara he never had the luck to don, though it was temptingly near his hand more than once, till the day when Mr. Oxford and his friends restored it to the college that is the true heir of this great minister's hopes, the college that, like Virginia, can boast above all other colleges of being the * mother of statesmen ', who rule as Wolsey ruled, though with even greater responsibilities, and in face of even greater dangers. Burnet, the practical, shrewd, unspiritual prelate ; Walpole, the dilettante gossip, fooling away the time he knew not and cared not and probably was unable to apply better ; Kean, the last of a name that the genius of the great Edmund (greatest of actors since the little David) had rendered illustrious. It were vain to speculate as to the Countess of Albemarle's butler, most generous of serving-men, or that even more judicious housekeeper of Mr. Justice Burnet, though ' they too were God's creatures ^, and there is no doubt that any historian worth his salt would give more for a few hours of still-room gossip between these two worthy souls than for all that my lord Nadab ever Avrote or the good Justice ever put on record. W^alpole at least would have preferred such Pepysian confidences to all the State papers penned to persuade and mislead, to serve as excuses or apologies, or to preserve extinguished negotia- tions and keep in mind the stages of disputes long since dead. The stage, the court, Westminster Hall, my lady's pantry. I && SIX OF YORK POWELL'S SIGNATURES; THE TWO UNDATED WERE WRITTEN ON MAY 3, 1889, AND OCTOBER I9, 1894. CARDINAL WOLSEY'S HAT 163 the private miiseunij the auction-room, the quiet library, these have been very various stages in the Red Hat's progress. As long as Christ Church endures Englishmen will look back with respect and gratitude to the last great English Cardinal, to the buildei-'s son that dreamed of building a college and a school that should have no peer in Christendom, and whose patriotic dream was not wholly unfulfilled. [These Surveys may well include a paper which has not been printed, so far as has been discovered ; nor is the occasion of its delivery known ; but it must not be lost, in spite of the great difficulty of accurately transcribing some of its pages that are roughly noted in coloured pencil. Some passages have been given up as hopeless, and not all the names have been identified : to check them has been used, not Mr. Jackson's edition, but that of 1824, by ' Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin, attorneys-at-law ' : in some cases the name has been made out through Powell's description and carefully-picked epithets, or by the branch of crime favoured by the owner.] AN ASPECT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY The most important age for us of to-day has not yet received its due consideration. It stands to the nineteenth century, now so near the end of its wonderful career, as the fifteenth century stood to the sixteenth. It was not only an age of revolution but an age of preparation. It is near ourselves, we can read its utterances without difficulty, we know its pictures, we live amid its buildings — for it was frankly iconoclastic and replaced many relics, which we would fain it had spared, by its own creations. The grand- fathers of some of us were born in it : we have most of us known people who remcml)ered it, who lived in it, and were of it. But yet how far it all seems ! The days before Napoleon was emperor, the days before the revolution, the days when Johnson was alive, the autocrat of English M 2 164 SURVEYS letters, the days when Defoe was hiding in North London, the days of '45 and '15, when waggons were replacing panniers and when canals were only a-making, and steam-engines [were displacing the] infant machinery for pumping. The Western M'orld had but just reached, if indeed it had even done so, the level of the Roman Empire at its best. Agriculture was beginning to struggle out of a state of things generally inferior to that described in Vergil's Georgics and Bucolics. Science, in spite of Bacon's inspiring call and Newton's illuminative energy, was but just emerging from its mediaeval swaddling-bands. Constituted party government was a new institution on its trial, and the larger part of the globe was unexplored and uncolonized by civilized powers. America, even India, was to that age as Africa and the Australias have been to us, the prizes civilization won from savagery and barbarism. Russia was revealing herself as a gigantic power still half-barbaric. Germany was, like Italy, a geographic expression. Poland was failing fast. Turkey had hardly ceased to be formidable to Europe. France M'as still the most powerful, the most civilized, and the most cultured of nations, though her government was transforming itself too slowly to keep pace with the new demands and requirements of a progressive era. China was almost a land of fable, Japan a garden sealed. But it is with Great Britain only that I am going to deal to-night. Of the history of its policy and constitution during the period you all know something. The great names of Marl- borough and Bolingbroke, Walpole and Carteret, Chatham and Wolfe, Pitt and Fox and Burke, Clive and Hastings and Wellesley, Rodney and Jarvis, Hawke and Nelson, are among those cut deepest in our memories and our history. Of the economic history much has been written and much remains to be written, though Defoe and Adam Smith and Laurence have not written without effect ; nor have Arkwright and Watt laboured in vain. The outward aspect of the age has been presented to us by portrait-painters of the highest excellence, Reynolds and Gainsborough ; and, like its land- AN ASPECT OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 165 scape, survives in the naive and powerful early water-colour masters who founded a new form of pictorial art^ one pecu- liarly English. Steele and Addison and Defoe and Swift, succeeded by Johnson and Goldsmith, and the great English makers of that new and universal medium of expression, the modern novel, Fielding, Richardson, and Sterne, and Smollett, have given us the very spirit of the age. Hogarth and Rowlandson were our pictorial satirists ; as Pope and Churchill and Young were our literary censors. The third literary Renaissance Europe had known, the rediscoveiy of the work and thought of our forefathers, was beginning with Chatterton and Percy and Blake and the antiquaries. Memoirs, letters, and papers exist in abundance, printed and unprinted. The newspaper, though young, was vigorous, the press active. But though we know so much of this great period, it is difficult, across the gap of wellnigh one hundred years of change, to realize it. When one follows Boswell through a conversation, or looks at the portrait of some beautiful great-grandmother or handsome great-grandfather of the present generation, one feels the reality of this past, a past distinct from other pasts. But just as trivial things help us to recall one's own past most distinctly, so there is a book of no account, a vulgar common book, a set of biographies written in a simple slipshod style, by a person of no distinc- tion, a mere hack, for the profit of a common bookseller, that seems to myself to give something of the reality of this century as scarce anything else does, and I am going to try and interpret its evidence. This book is the Newgate Calendar. There are many editions. The one I have used is, ' The New Newgate Calendar or Malefactor^ s Universal Register. Published with Universal Applause. Printed for and sold wliolesale and retail by Alex. Hogg & Co. at the King's Arms, No. 16 Paternoster Row, and by William Jackson, Esq., of Inner Temple Bar; along with the Rev. Mr. Priestley's New, cheap, and elegant Evangelical Family Bible, Granger's New, Original, and Complete Wonderful Magazine, and Dr. Durham's New 166 SURVEYS Domestic Medicine, improved by D. Walter; and other improving and useful works.' It is illustrated by near an hundred ^ elegant copperplates ', queer stiff things. It goes from 1700 to 1808, and is in seven volumes. Each narrative of crime is followed, after the fashion adopted from it by Mrs. Sherwood in her delightful Fairchild Family, by moral reflections, which are as empty and useless as most moral reflections, and equally full of platitude and assumption. Dr. Watts and Mr. Addison are the favoured poets, and are cited, more or less to the purpose, in order to round off a period with elegance and propriety. In his narrative, Mr. Jackson, this Plutarch of the kennel (we may keep to him), confines himself to the depositions, with an occasional copy of a letter, or citation from the Ordinary of Newgate or other respectable authority. He is not without a certain skill in giving the circumstance and setting under which the various unhappy persons, whose biography he has to set forth, brought themselves into the clutches of old father Antic the law. He is businesslike here, unaffected, interested himself in what he writes, anxious to judge fairly, content to own his ignorance of unknown facts without useless speculation. His knowledge of the law saves him and his readers many difficulties. He is in political creed centre gauche, intensely respectable and strictly law- abiding, but an advocate of popular education, desiring to make convicts do useful work (holding with Sir Thomas More that it was better to enslav^e than slay prisoners who were not quite past praying for) ; desirous of severer punish- ment for some offences and milder ones for others; rather troubled about the facts of heredity, seeing that they are apt to run counter to his belief in the perfectibility of human nature by proper training and education ; with a weakness for and at the same time a tendency to criticize the nobility and gentry of high degree ; and a kindly but vevy firm attitude towards the lower classes. He goes so far as to expect criminals to repent and ])ehave with cheerful resignation at the gallows, and is a little discontented when they do not come up to his AN ASPECT OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 167 standard, but ^ preserve a surly demeanour ' or ' show feeling unbefitting to the solemn occasion ' ; and is quite angry if in their pride or agony they anticipate execution by suicide. He is ready for minor practical reforms and greater humanity. He is obviously a kind-hearted man^ but timid, and afraid of facing the intellectual effort, so hard to Englishmen, of considering larger measures, broader and deeper amendments. He hated cruelty, but was blind to the horror of such legal processes as pressing to death, and the painful and disgusting punishment of treason, while proudly maintaining that torture is unknown to Englishmen. An honest and not unsympathetic reporter, in fact. And his report ! A panorama of wide range, if of some- what dark scheme of colour. There is shown the heroism of Balmerino, the noble eloquence of Emmet, the ironic courage of Lovat, the resignation of Kilmarnock, the stoicism of Despard ; the warlike energy of Russell ; martyrs all of lost causes. And side by side with these, the baseness of spies like Hannay and Delamotte, the callousness of Picton, the hard- heartedness of Wall, the abominable degradation of Charteris and Home and Baltimore, the brutal madness of Ferrers — most debased types. The beautiful resignation of Sarah Lloyd, the reckless impulse of Bosavern Penlez, the honesty of Francis Brightwell, the accomplished grenadier, ^too good for this wicked world,^ are set off by the foul life of sucii wretches as Jack Ketch, Catherine Hayes, the Meteyards, and the Brownriggs. There are pirates : Gow, cunningly entrapped by High- landers ; and highwaymen : [illegible ^] desperate rogue and skilful scrieve, who died with a flower in his mouth ; the comely and brutal Turpin, the genial but unlucky King ; William Page, actor and lady-robber ; Boulter and his kins- 1 [William Hawke, whose ' behaviour was such as may be called decent rather than penitential', suffered at Tyburn, July 1, 1774, with a flower in his buttonhole, where he ' with great composure /' placed it '. It does not appear if he was skilled in handwriting. — Ed.] 168 SURVEYS man, bold Harrj^; Gentleman Harry (Simms); Galloping Dick (Ferguson of Hereford), Abershaw's friend ; Sixteen- string Jack (Rann, the coachman) ; Jas. Macfarlane, who robbed Horace Walpole; Isaac Darking, the Duval of his time. Pickpockets : Peter McCloud, captain of a gang of thieves, like the famous Captain Jack ; Dick Oaky, who repented of stealing a will from a lady's pocket ; Jenny Diver ; Jane Gibbs ; Barrington, the most noted of cly-fakers ; and Jumping Jo, whose wife, Mrs. Louisa, uttered the famous query, ' If there were no flats, how would the sharps live ? ' Swindlers : the false Duke of Ormonde, Henry Griffin, poet and bravo ; another poet. Major Semple the shoplifter ; and two more poets, T. Conner to the Duchess of Queens- berry, and Usher Gahagan to George III, who wrote [the lines] ' Hail, little Cato ' . . . ' Ned, thy little Juba ' ^ ; Will the sailor, who wore a sword and acted the duelling trick ; his lady, who practised the ' you'll be run over ' dodge ; the boys who made a living by the Spanish lay and the marble fake; the Long Firm (always with us), waggon-robbing, cutting reins on the far side. Jail-breakers : like French ; Jack Sheppard and T. Mountain, epical heroes, to whom a crooked nail M'as a ^ [The lines referred to are Gahagan's to George III, and open as follows : — . . . ' tuus jam regnat Apollo.' — Vikg. Hail, little Cato, taught to tread the stage, Awful as Cato of the former age ! How vast the hopes of thy maturer years. When in the boy such manly power appears ! . . . What rapture warm'd thy princely father's breast ! AVhat joy thy sceptred grandsire then confest, Beholding thee, a Tyro from the school, Foreshow the wisdom of thy future rule, And Ned, thy little Juba, play his part, Half-form'd by Nature in Bellona's art 1 Neivgate Cal., ed. Knapp and Baldwin, vol. ii. p. 28. — Ed. ] AN ASPECT OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 169 skeleton key, and any iron bar as the finest steel jemmy; the sullen desperate Blueskin (Jo Blake) ; Jack Hall, defiant ; and W. Fairall, who broke into Poole Custom-house, and, not without poetrjr, remarked, ' We shall be swinging in the sweet air while you are rotting in your grave/ The forgers : most famous of all these, save Old Patch, [were] Perreau, Dan and Robert, who were hanged, while Mrs. Rudd escaped. . . . There are instances of extraordinary' courage, humanity, and unselfishness, side by side with every kind of wicked act and impulse : the dreadful misfortunes of the innocent convicts Clench and Mackley, the innocent Colman; [also] the notable and clever apolog\' of Dodd, the fashion- able preacher and philanthrope (composed by Dr. Johnson, as they say), the unavailing and ingenious pleading of Aram, the simple sincerity of Baretti's defence, and the selfish but not actually ignoble letters of Hackman. We have raked enough. It were too long to cite more. Let us close Mr. Jackson with a word of thanks. There are adventures by sea and land, by road and by river, in quiet country homes and upland farm and cottage, and in grand town mansions and miserable dens of vice. There are women of all ranks come on the stage, the innocent and the guilty, young and old, wise and foolish, good and bad, sailors and soldiers and merchants and country folk, shopkeepers and vagabonds, a motley crew, passing through the temple of Justice under Mr. Jackson's observing eye. [What is] the impression that comes from the whole panorama as he drew it ? Life is more simple, more stable ; adventurers may travel, change occupation, drift from trade to trade, but the bulk of Englislnnen have a station in life and keep to it without desire of change respecting them- selves and their occupation. There is little government and less police. Sir John Fielding was a very efficient person, but the ordinary watch gave but little help or protection in London to the harmless and injured citizens. The law was broken continually, but there was a law. It was generally 170 SURVEYS obeyed, and upheld vigorously whenever necessary. The country was never impatient of law, never defied it, never tried to set Lynch law in its place, though the clumsy cruelty of the system or non-system which Bentham exposed, and by his influence remedied, might have been an excuse. There was a humanity even about our ' high toby ' men, which led them to think it wrong to injure those they robbed. The law was strong against the sword, and the risk prevented in England the continual duels that took place abroad. The press-gang and its violent ways, the extreme roughness of the manners of the service, are responsible for some of the crueller brutality that appears. People of fashion behaved themselves even more scandalously than at present. Gambling and drinking were fashionable, and half the sudden tragedies came from the overheating of young heads by strong drink — the Mohun and Byron trage- dies for instance. The filth, the disease, the darkness and discomfort of the slums were a more legitimate excuse than idleness for the drunkenness of the poor. The whole scale of things was smaller, as it were, than it is to-day with the huge towns that were just beginning to grow. The country is far less changed, though the conditions of agriculture and trade have wrought vast differences. There was far less culture, and life was certainly harder and rougher. Long dangerous drives and rides were the part of every one who travelled : safe transport is an invention of this century. Medicine and hygiene were rudimentary. The poor law was by no means efficient. Jails were in the state described by Howard, and but slowly mended — nurseries of crime, hotels where the befriended criminal was not so badly off, while the poor and unfriended starved and suffered and languished of ague and fever. The Ordinary, who was the one functionary the State supplied in token that prisoners' minds should be attached as well as their bodies, seems to have regarded the condemned convicts as his chief care, desiring to get them into a satisfactory state of mind before they finished their career at Tyburn. With everyday prisoners AN ASPECT OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 171 he seems to have done nothing. They might feast and drink (some of them were hanged drunk) and see their disreputable friends as much as they liked. Newgate was indeed managed much as we may suppose a Turkish prison or Chinese prison is managed to-day. Powerful interest could do even more than it can to-day. It could save a doomed man's life and fortune, bring him jjosition, employment, wealth. But it could also hinder an honest man's advancement, wreck his fortunes, and even procure his death. The richest nobles, with all their wealth, fine clothes, and state, and the reverence paid them, were without comforts within the reach of us all. Family ties were less strict ; hence violent revolts against marital and parental tyranny, and occasional tragedies. Were people happier? Possibly we shall never know. Happiness does not depend upon comfort and safety, rather on health and spirits and activity. At all events they complain less than we do. Taedium vitae was not a fre- quent ailment among them. How should it be, when they were daily in danger ? That we should have been unhappy in their shoes is no proof that they were unhappy in their own. We seem to be pretty safe, however, in drawing some conclusions that are to our advantage. We have made, under the leadership of Bentham, and the brave advocacy of Romilly and Clarkson, efforts to do away with some evils — the slave trade, slavery. We have set ourselves to try and grapple with the grave problems of crime and ignorance. We have done something towards training the young, for it is not learning but training that is really needed. We can teach ourselves occupation or book-learning if we are trained to steady habits, but we have hard work unaided to train ourselves to anything. Our army and navy are better officered, better paid, better cared for, than in those old days, and the discipline is firmer, more reasonable, and less cruel. There is a little less superstition, though superstition has a way of escaping the glance of science. 172 SURVEYS THE QUEEN'S REIGN : A SURVEY [The occasion of this Survey of the reign of Victoria is told in the Memoir. It will be clear from that account that much in the article now printed sees the light for the first time, embodying not only the first draft but manuscript changes made in the Scrap- book. Though only a portion of the Surrey (the narrative itself being omitted for reasons given), this chapter is a comprehensive distant view of the first years of the reign in their larger drift and features.] The passing away of a monarch whose dominions occupy a great part of this planet's surface, whose people exceed in numbers and prosperity and power the subjects of any other earthly potentate, is an event of mark, and the close of a reign longer than that of any former ruler of these islands a memorable moment. It is impossible not to look back over the greater part of a century to that anxious hour when, in the midst of many causes for care at home and much vmeasiness to be feared from over seas, the young heiress of vast hopes and vast possibilities came to the throne she has so long and so worthily filled. Many and great things have happened since the morning when the Princess Victoria was awakened to be told of the glorious and grave responsi- bilities that had fallen to her. How the Queen fulfilled her trusteeship we all know. She at least laboured bravely, wisely, ungrudgingly, and without ceasing, giving a long life to the noble cares of the broad Empire whose crown she wore. Nor was her service vain. And she had among those she presided over no few helpers, not only in war, but in peace ; men and women of all sorts and conditions who have toiled and suffered, many of them even bestowing their lives generously and without complaint, that they miglit leave their country better than they found it, and make the lot of those that were to come after them safer and happier and lighter. It is difficult for us as yet to estimate the value of all their THE QUEEN'S REIGN 173 exertions, to count up the gain they have won for us, but those whose memories can take them back beyond the middle of this most memorable century are at one in testifying to great and beneficial changes that have come about under their own eyes. Politically and socially, and commercially as well as intellectually, the England of Victoria is a different place in many ways from the England of George IV and George III. Our views, our aims, our hopes are not the same as those of our grandfathers were on the day that William IV was alive and dead. Whether we ourselves are wiser or more dutiful in our generation than they in theirs is a question that might easily be argued but hardly decided. They, at all events, faced their difficulties with undaunted courage and decided success ; we cannot boast to have done more. If we have been able to pay off their debts, we have reaped the golden harvests of fields enriched by their blood ; if we have held the vastest sea-empire this earth has known, it was they that drove our rivals off the water and left the Atlantic an * English lake ' ; if we have raised and kept going a body of industries and manufactures miraculous in its immense output and marvellous in its efficiency, and if we have made England the 'workshop of the world' and carried British trade to the very ends of earth, it was their keen invention, their patient skill, their quenchless energy that gave us the means of such incredible developments of production. If our homes are on the whole healthier, our lives on the average longer and less liable to disease, if the cruel pressure of poverty is less, the shameful burden of crime lighter, the horrid blackness of folly and ignorance largely dispersed, it is to our forefathers' wisdom and prudence that we owe the possibilities of the advances we have undoubtedly made. England was but a little nation when she was not afraid single-handed to cope with the ablest autocrat and tlie greatest general since the great Julius himself, with all the men and money of the greater ])art of Europe at his hack. We are richer, more numerous, quicker at book-learning, better fed, but when Me have to go down into the lists to 174 SURVEYS fight for our national existence and to settle the place our tongue and flag are to take in the future of the world — and the stake is no less when the real danger comes — we cannot, after all, desire better fortune than that we should not disgrace the traditions of the men of the days of Trafalgar and Waterloo. Affairs in 1837. At the time of the Queen's accession the nation was in the process of recovering from the terrible drains of men and money caused by the war, and from the distress springing from the disastrous fall of prices that accompanied the long- desired but expensive peace. Long arrears of reform must be made up, for though some beginning had been made towards setting the nation's house in order, there was still not a branch of the law but obviously called for severe amendment, not a department of the Government but needed to be overhauled from top to bottom. Truly horrible and hopeless was the situation in which a large proportion of the badly paid and truck-cheated working-class was condemned by bad custom, stupid law, and ignorant selfishness to lead their brief and maimed lives. Abominable and sordid was the cruel industrial slavery that fettered and crippled and slaughtered their children in the factory and the agricultural gang, striking at the very roots of national existence. Dis- graceful and dangerous had been the swift increase of pauperism, stinting the means and eating into the wholesome habits of the struggling worker, and actually laying waste the land like a plague. An enormous national debt required heavy taxation, and the burdensome and clumsy revenue system, if so unsystematic a set of exactions, the creature of the hasty expediency that war permits, can be so styled, was only gradually being alleviated. The new Poor Law had only just begun, amid much ignorant and much factious opposition, to do its beneficent work in its own somewhat ungracious but very salutary fashion. A lengthy era of municipal jobbery and dull misgovernment had at length been brought THE QUEEN'S REIGN 175 to a close by the Act that restored to local administration the possibility of clean-handed and clear-headed action. The crowding of urban populations, fed with bad and insufficient food, supplied only with foul water or adulterated liquor, smothered in dirt, too ignorant of, or too helpless to carry out, the most simple sanitary rules, had formed dangerous forcing-beds of foul disease, that compelled attention, but could not as yet be adequately dealt with even according to the rudimentary hygienic knowledge of that day. As for the problem of Crime, the beneficent labours of many earnest workers and shrewd observers had only begun to show profit, and the new police and the transportation system could only help to cope with the worst sides of a state of things for M'hich ignorance, neglect, foolish laws, and bad social con- ditions were largely responsible. Necessary Irish reforms were still delayed by bigotry, oligarchic interests, and the unfortunate but usual way in which all Irish questions became the playthings of party. Education as a national requisite was hardly envisaged save by a few enlightened theorists, whose isolated efforts were wonderfully intelligent and effective, but, of course, inadequate to the demand upon them, for the greater part of generation after generation of English children had been suffered to grow up without the elementary discipline and instruction that a primary school affords, the instructive example of Scotland was almost unheeded, and the eagerness of the Irish peasant for teaching was mocked by disingenuous attempts at proselytism carried out by careless and incompetent bigots. Nothing but the imminent danger of an ignorant and gullible electorate could finally force the English public to a settlement, hindered so long and dangerously by the cowardly fears of political tricksters and the low cunning of religious disputants. The Penny Post, with its potent educational influences, was still a projector's dream, paper was heavily taxed, avowedly to prevent the spread of knowledge, and books were dear. The Press, potent though it was, was yet in its youth. The measureless activity that has made the map of England 176 SURVEYS a gridiron of railways, metamorphosed the face of every English borough, turned country towns into huge cities, and London from a city into a huge province richer and more popidous than some European nations of age and repute, was at work with a fervid impatience that led to heavy speculation and its consequences. The Empire had expanded ; the little kingdom that was its centre was undergoing rapid change ; the ^ full tide of British prosperity ' had begun to flow in spite of adverse winds and currents ; for good or for evil, the Industrial Revolution, with all its inevitable and intricate train of consequences, consequences whose manifold issues we have by no means outlived, was definitely accom- plished. Agriculture became subordinate to manufacture and trade ; the great majority of English men and women came to seek their livelihood in towns ; machinery replaced hand-labour. The England over sea was still but a set of small, if promising, communities. In the West, Canada was in a disturbed and uneasy state, caused by the incapacity of the home Government and the domestic, constitutional, and social difficulties created by increased immigration. The West Indies were still in the first flush of the artificial state of things brought about by the compensated emancipation, while the notorious system of apprenticeship was obviously a failure, and not about to last. In the South, such of the Australian colonies as were settled were still in their callow and somewhat ignoble youth ; New Zealand, finally secured to us by one man's unrewarded prudence, was scarcely in its infancy. The energy of a few vigorous and shrewd men was laying the foundations of new Australasian nations, obscurely and hopefully, without encouragement from Government, or any support save that perforce extended to them when, as British subjects, they claimed the establish- ment of that order and protection of industry that follows the British flag. In Africa, the Cape was not, though increasing in population, in a very satisfactory state ; troubles with the Kaffirs were ahead, and the Dutch population, angry at not being allowed to treat the natives as animals domestic THE QUEEN'S REIGN 177 or noxious, were sulky and disaffected. In India troubles were brewing on the North-West Frontier, but for the present quiet and progressive government was doing its work. The Chinese Government, faithless, ignorant, obstinate, short- sighted, and antagonistic as ever, was steadily set on destroying all trade with England, a course that was bound to end in our armed interference on behalf of our injured and legitimate interests. Abroad, the ambitious and persistent but unavoidable advances of Russia were for the moment checked by the remembrances of the disastrous incompetence of 1828, by the recollection of the troubles that marked the beginning of Nicholas's reign, by the compulsory arrangements that con- firmed the new and virtually independent dynasty in Egypt, and by our opportunist diplomacy, that postponed or evaded real difficulties, trusting to the beneficence of time and chance. France was amused with the bootless but plausible schemes of the veteran intriguer that had wormed himself into his incompetent and bigoted cousin's place, and occupied with the perpetual stir kept up by the gathering forces of industrial, literary, and political revolution. Spain was exhausted by a civil war forced upon her while she was still smarting from her colonial losses ; Germany and Austria were still under the heel of the rulers the Holy Alliance had given and maintained. The United States were suffering from the ridiculous mismanagement of their currency, the unchecked follies of their financial institutions, and the gross political ignorance of their electorate ; but they were growing. The civilized world was recovering slowly from the economic effects of the great war and the greater revolution, and slowly absorbing the elements of the new industrial system that had put England in a more commanding economic position than she had ever occupied. It was a somewhat oppressive breathing-space. Y. p. n N 178 SURVEYS Thought, Letters, and Arts in 1837. In the world of thought and opinion new forces were active, though not very apparent to contemporaries. The swift victories of steam were giving opportunities for the rise of a great body of professional engineers, to whose brain work and handiwork every country in the world was ere long to testify. But electricity was an infant science, and its mighty possibilities scarcely dreamt of as yet, though many of the practical uses of the electric current were already known, and the telegraph existed. Modern chemistry, raised upon the foundations laid by the English experimentalists and theorists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was being modestly but eagerly built up by Davy's great successor, Faraday, at home, and such men as Berzelius, Dumas, and Liebig abroad. The immense value of the results of this study to agriculture, to manufacture, and to our knowledge of the world in which we live, and of the processes of life itself, has since been manifested. The modern science of physics — a mighty and largely an English creation — was being founded. The new mathematic, Avith its wider range and more powerful methods, was being pursued both in England and abroad by some notable students. Geology, almost an English science at the beginning, interested many, and, with the palaeontologic researches that accompanied its development, was pointing toward conclusions that were soon to enlarge in marvellous fashion man's knowledge of his own past and the life-history of his dwelling-place. Political economy, which had never lacked keen students since Adam Smith's masterpiece appeared, was largely given over at this time to doctrinaire theorists, whose views, though sound on revenue questions, were often grotesquely imperfect on other important topics. But Science had made as yet exceedingly little impression on the mass of educated thought, which was not at a high level in this country, where the clerical control of the higher THE QUEEN^S REIGN 179 education instinctively objected, as far as possible, to the permeation of new ideas among the youth of the well- to-do classes, and, as long as possible, prevented the new sciences from taking their due place in the higher courses of study. Education was at a low ebb generally both in its theory and practice, and the ignorance of the average ' educated man ' was a great obstacle to every kind of improvement, and left society a prey to dull and hypo- critical conventions on the one hand, and on the other to the unrestrained vices and vulgar excesses that were a reaction from the 'cant' of respectability. The valiant efforts at spreading exact knowledge and sounder social ideas by the progressive party of the day, the men who clustered about Bentham and his disciples, the associates of Brougham, and the more advanced disciples of the French philosophers and English deists, did something to dispel this disastrous obscurantism, and the triumphant foundation of London University and of other educational bodies was already the encouraging outcome of their efforts. In the Established Church a petty academic dispute at Oxford had been the first outward sign of the general reaction within the Church itself against the stupid and unpleasant school of respectable Evangelicals that had succeeded to the rule of the Church, which their forerunners, the Evangelical reformers, had fairly earned, as well as against the small but powerful rationalizing school of theologians that, inspired by German teaching, were endeavouring on their side to breathe fresh life into the old formulae, with but slight regard to traditional interpretation. The narrow but earnest High Church movement was greatly helped by the mediaeval Renaissance Scott had fostered, that overran Europe as the preceding Byronism had done, and that, finding such ex- ponents as Victor Hugo and John Ruskin, was largely to influence the thought and art of the century. But the Anglican movement not only, in its turn, helped on the establishment of a new view of art and destroyed the aesthetic canons of the Georgian period, but was destined to change N a 180 SURVEYS for the better the clerical personnel of the Church, to naiTow and cramp its intellectual aspects, to revive its popularity, and largely increase its influence and prestige. At the opening of the reign the Oxford Movement was being violently opposed by the mass of bishops and clerg}', and it only succeeded little by little in attracting the average lay Churchman, whose legitimate suspicions of Poperj^ and hearty contempt for ritual it took long to remove. In Scotland the ten-year-long dispute that led to the Disruption was simmering on. The Nonconformist churches in England had succeeded in attacking for the first time with success the intolerable grievances of the tithe, the church rates, and the compulsory church marriage, and were largely interested in the various liberal and progressive movements of the day, naturally attractive as they were to men who considered themselves the heirs of those who had maintahied both with pen and sword the Good Old Cause. But there was a singular dearth of learning and intellectual eminence throughout English religious bodies. The poets, as ever, seem to have caught most surely the permanent impulses that were stirring the century. Byron, Shelley, and Scott enjoyed popularity among all classes that could read ; Keats was the poets' poet, unknown save to a few; Wordsworth and Coleridge were the teachers of the more intellectual. Keble was the expression of the spirit of the Oxford Movement in its earlier phases, the popular and prosaic link between the quainter and more spiritual fabric of George Herbert and the more exquisite and intense de- votional work of Christina Rossetti. Many of the names that were to mark the Victorian era had already emerged — the Brownings, expressing the progressist feelings of their day ; Tennyson, Keats's foremost pupil ; Carlyle, interpreter of Goethe and prophet of sincerity ; Dickens, most English of humorists, and his polished compeer Thackeray ; Michael Scott and Marryat, who carried on the traditions of Smollett ; Bulwer, the fashionable litterateur ^ Disraeli, whose novels were manifestations, pronunciamientos in harlequin garb j THE QUEEN^S REIGN 181 Howitt, most delightful of those who in this century have written of rural life in England. The Northern School, represented by Wilson, sturdy critic and humane if narrow observer of life and letters ; the portentous De Quincey (Beethoven of English prose), as well as Southey and Barham, characteristic but far inferior figures, perhaps belong rather to the preceding generation than to the Victorian age. Palgrave, a florid but industrious student; Kemble, a man of rare talent, who, with all his industry, hardly did himself justice ; Hallam, an elegant and interesting but superficial compiler ; Thirl wall, a robust, judicious, and learned scholar of high order, were our representative historians. Faraday, in succession to his master Davy, was almost the sole * scientific ' man of his day whose words as well as deeds had power to interest. Gladstone was about his first clever and worthless book ; Arnold was busy over his classic and robust Roman History ; Lady Guest was translating the Mabinogion, a book that was to Tennyson and many more an inspired revelation of the true Celtic spirit ; Newman was beginning the literary career which was to endow English prose with some glorious oases of spontaneous diction set in wastes of arid ineptitudes; Tupper, that strange shapeless wooden idol of the lower middle-class for two generations, was about to start on his long career of undeserved popu- larity. As for art, music, generally considered as a mere trivial amusement or at best as a handy domestic accomplishment, was naturally at a low ebb in England. At the theatre there was a genuine and notable school of comic actors, a good deal of hack farce writing, and a popular and incredibly childish melodrama. The opera, then highly popular, was wholly a foreign importation. There were a few actors of talent, but none of genius since Edmund Kean's death. All kinds of decorative art were living on the dregs of an exhausted tradition, and, save where a little school of designers such as Haite had grown up round certain en- 182 SURVEYS lightened manufacturers, there was no knowledge left of the principles of applied art. Art sculptural could scarcely be said to exist, in spite of a few degraded monstrosities that disfigured the very cemeteries. In pictorial art England still ranked high, and deservedly so. The great Constable and his most distinguished fellow townsmen Cotman and Crome were at once the worthy heirs of the great Dutch tradition and the progenitors of the best side of European landscape painting of to-day. Turner, in his full titanic furore, was producing his masterpieces. Portrait-painting had died away with the loss of Raeburn, but indigenous landscape schools of considerable excellence flourished as they had never done before since the heyday of the Dutch. In lithography Prout in his own way produced prints of rare sensibility, and architectural draughtsmen like Joseph Nash and George Scharf did interesting and useful work. The last and probably greatest artist of the Bewick school of wood engravers, Samuel Williams, was in the plenitude of his delightful and peculiarly English art, which has preserved the aspect of this country before railways perhaps more perfectly, certainly with greater art and insight, than any one else. But art really interested only the few, and the few, though certainly not less appreciative, were fewer then than now. Printing and bookbinding were poor and bad in design. Some traditional craftsmanship lingered here and there in the unmachined trades in spite of the rococo fashion. Ordinary plain furniture and crockery were as good or better than they are now. There was a flourishing school of English pottery living on the Flaxman tradition, and the grotesque pieces the old school still turned out had a homely charm of their own. Jewellery and silver work, like lace and needlework, were of very inferior design. The arts of comfort were understood by the middle-class household better than in any country of Europe save perhaps Holland. THE QUEEN^S REIGN 183 The Situation in 1837. Politics, as ever, were the chief factor in the daily mind- stir of the Englishman, but the broader Imperial statesman- ship of the great houses and their nominees was giving way at this time and politics were growing more and more parochial ; our leading men were taking smaller and shorter views in their insular ignorance, in the absence of actual danger from without, and in consequence of the obvious need for dealing with a mass of petty details that required seeing to. Fussy opportunists, unreasoning Tories, and interested obstructionists found their occasion and conspired to put off as long as they could questions that they knew must be faced. Disappointment bitter and widespread was following closely upon the inevitable failure of the extravagant expecta- tions and over-heated hopes which the agitation for Parlia- mentary reform had kindled. Formidable-looking but really futile agitations were exciting fresh enthusiasms, and '^ The Charter ' and ' Repeal ' were cries that survived the manufac- turers' successful crusade in favour of cheap corn against the landed interest. Such, as it now appears to us across the in- tervening span of years, was the situation of Great Britain at the time of the Queen's sudden but not unexpected accession. The picture looks dark at first sight, but it must be remembered that alongside of much misery, ignorance, and cruelty there was much simple, wise, peaceful happiness, that there was in England none of the violent class-hatred (save between a certain number of manufacturers and their workmen, and then only to a less degree) that destroyed the ancien regime in France ; that there was a career open to every shrewd, hard-working, and energetic man who could profit by his opportunities ; that wise men were trying to put things in better order throughout the country, and were prepared to sacrifice much to effect this ; and that England, with all her faults, was incontestably leading the world. The first fifteen years of the reign (1837-1852) were busy ones. Chartism, Repeal, the Free Trade struggles. Colonial Reforms, and beneficial changes of the statute law took up 184 SURVEYS much well-employed time. And all the while the rapid increase and improvement of the railway system, of steam navigation, of the electric telegraph, and the mighty develop- ment of all kinds of manufacture (improved processes and better machinery being continually introduced) went on with- out a break. There was much building of all kinds, especially in toMTis, much railway-making and ship and engine building, plenty of employment, and rapid and continued increase of population. Wages, which had reached their lowest level when the reign began, rose but slightly and slowly in most occupations, rents were high and rising, and the whole con- dition of labour extremely unfavourable to the employed classes ; though the exertions of those who got Parliament to put bounds to the selfishness of the employer, and the efforts of the more intelligent workmen themselves in the formation of strong trade unions, were gradually but with great difficulty changing it for the better. Agriculture profited largely by the increased area drained, the use of foreign and chemical manures, the discovery of labour-saving machines, and the pains bestowed upon the breeding and feeding of stock. But this did not benefit the agricultural labourer, who was in a worse position than before the great war, and whose scanty pittance was still severely shortened by the high price of bread, sugar, and tea. The Leaders. The chief personage with whom the conduct of affairs rested in England at this time was Lord Melbourne, most able, amiable, and charming of men, endowed with greater power for influencing individuals than managing a party. He was the leader of the Reformers, and the tutor of the young Queen, who practically learned from him her rights and duties as a constitutional monarch, and became familiar, imder his tactful guidance, with the complex business of government, and acquainted with the aims, opinions, and characters of tiiose who had to carry out the policy of the day. His most gifted colleague was undoubtedly Palmerston, THE QUEEN'S REIGN 185 a brilliant young Irish gentleman, with a real talent for foreign affairs, a personality of importance in Europe, active, obstinate, bold, and determined, bent above all upon making the name of Englishman respected as the name of Roman had been all over the civilized world, and not at all afraid of finessing or of playing his cards out. He understood the machinery of English public life, was well skilled in party management, could wheedle and persuade or make a blunt, brief speech that would turn public opinion on his side. Being absolutely free from ' cant ', the ' unco guid ' and punctilious disliked him secretly, and he hardly ever secured the whole-hearted support of his more timid colleagues, while his way of taking responsibility on his own shoulders and committing his Government to a policy before they had made up their minds was never quite pleasing at Court, especially after the Queen's marriage, when she began to take a very close interest in German politics. He was no admirer of democracy, and by no means in haste to carry out or pass new measures of importance. In the country and in the House his genial, witty, sportsmanlike behaviour and the manifest pluck and ability with which he * scored off his own bat ' won and kept him an increasing popularity. Peel, the Tory leader, was a man of business capacity, of an open but limited mind, and a tender conscience, stiff and silent, and by no means winning on casual acquaintance, but one who commanded respect and, though he did not disdain the ordinary manoeuvres of party warfare, was capable on occasion of facing obloquy and unpopularity in order to do his duty to the country, although his proud and sensitive feelings suffered deeply under such a trial. His honesty and single-mindedness, his high principles and well-cultivated intellect, were of essential service at a difficult time, when a difficult question had to be faced. His colleague in the Lords, the Duke of Wellington, was now a veteran, with opinions unchanged, but a mind always awake to the possible need of shelving them, and of acquiescing, before it was too late, in the inevitable. He was a trusted and valuable 186 SURVEYS adviser, but he was precluded by prejudices too strong for him (and perhaps a little deterred also by the natural dislike of a veteran for any but the most needful changes) from carrying out even those reforms which the army needed before it was in a condition to take the field in Europe, though he did what he could to ensure discipline and to keep his regiments well officered. His experience of war and dis- turbance made him averse to all thorough reforms, but equally determined that civil strife must be avoided at almost any cost. His name was respected throughout Europe, and his opinions carried great weight in his own coimtry ; and though he had incurred the temporary hatred of the extreme party, he was the man of all others of whom the mass of Englishmen were most proud. His foreign policy, though at bottom directed only with a view to the advantage of this country, led him to sympathize with strong absolute govern- ments and to favour the Holy Alliance and the Bourbons in France, while Palmerston belonged to the school of Canning rather than that of Castlereagh. Lord John Russell, a nimble-witted man of little real knowledge or ability, full of restless, meddlesome activity, untrustworthy and fond of intrigue, inflated with self-con- fidence, and unabashed by repeated failure ; ineradicably convinced of his own wisdom and tact; was a mere politician, with the ordinary views of tlie Whigs, with whom he had a hereditary connexion. He maintained his position by his cunning and self-assertion, and, like other mediocrities, profited by the failings of better, wiser, and stronger men. His impudent courage from time to time gained him the half-amused encouragement of the public, but no one save himself ever seriously believed in him. He is by far the meanest figure among English Ministers of this century, as Lord Aberdeen is probably the most helpless. The latter was one of those well-meaning, higlily moral, indecisive, gullible, and unobservant gentlemen who may manage to pass through private life respectably without great cata- strophe, but are positively dangerous in any position of trust THE QUEEN'S REIGN 187 or command, for they may awake to their own imbecility at the wrong moment and drift rudderless to ruin. Lord Stanley was a model English statesman of the aristocratic type, a scholar and a gentleman, a fine debater, a man of vigour, culture, and sense, a capable practical leader, and one who, though far too reluctant to mend for fear of marring, seldom knowingly subordinated the interests of his country to mere party considerations. Of the younger men, the most curious figure was that of the brilliant Jewish adven- turer Disraeli. Seeing his opportunity for rising to a condition that he felt himself called to, and which he had trained him- self to fill with credit, he did not allow punctilios of behaviour to prevent him from using party weapons for his own purposes, or from attacking those he knew to be in the right in order to make his own position better. A man without scruples, but not without honour, with legitimate ambitions and a definite policy and distinct purpose, who felt himself justified in going great lengths to get hold of the leverage by which he intended to move the world, good-natured, cynical, a mocker by nature, never slow to indulge his wit at the expense of the heavy respectability, stupid ^ cant ', pompous pretence, and snobbish exclusiveness that surged about him ; an idealist, seeing many truths hidden from the dull nonentities he despised, with a delight in the Mosaic, and a half-veiled but fierce pride in his own people very characteristic of the modern Jew ; he was a dangerous antagonist whether in debate or diplomatic intercourse, for he took wide views and lacked neither courage, wit, nor cunning. Of his chief rival, the young Liverpool man, the hope of the Tories, the ardent supporter of the New Oxford party, the faithful follower and pupil of Peel, the character was already revealed, though the rare capabilities had not yet been exercised on a great scale. His splendid personality, his Parliamentary ability, his noble and persuasive elo(juence, his high ideals, his power of convincing himself and otiiers, his strong, unfounded, and narrow religious opinions, his unblemished life, his complete blindness to much that he 188 SURVEYS ought to have seen, his limited views, his generous sympathies and power of evoking enthusiasm, as well as his unshaken conviction of the justice of his cause and the correctness of the opinions he was for the moment supporting — these qualities were soon obvious. Nor were those wanting who mistrusted both his great powers and the deficiencies they thought they perceived in his character, and argued that Gladstone would never make a safe Minister. Lord Ashley was a characteristic personage of the time. Personally courageous and of fair intellect, he was of the extreme Evangelical school in religion, but while he believed in their dogmas and followed their methods and fashions of life he was a keen social reformer. He took up the cause of the unhappy white mill-hands when no one else would pay atten- tion to anything but the more fashionable and romantic black slave, who, cruelly ill-treated as he often was, upon the whole suffered far less in the West Indies than in his native land, or to the convict, who, though his lot was not a happy one, was often better clothed and fed in prison than he was when at liberty. To the untiring exertions of this young lord and his two good friends, Mr. Sadler and Mr. Oastler, is due the stopping of the worst and most dangerous oppression ever exercised by one class upon another in this country. It was Lord Ashley's foible to talk Math evangelical unction, to worry over bishops (whom Lord Palmerston humorously and ironically gave over to his charge), and to suspect the direct influence of Jesuits and the Pope in every move of the Anglican party ; but there was hardly a man in his generation who deserved better of his country, or did his duty, as he conceived it, with stricter fidelity. His opponent, John Bright, ' the greatest English orator of this century,' as Mr. Gladstone has styled him (though he himself always awarded the palm to his panegyrist), was also one of the most successful of English agitators. It is as the fighting Quaker, the champion of his own class — the northern manufacturers, — the successful prophet of Free Trade and the cheap loaf, the friend of Cobden and Gladstone, THE QUEEN'S REIGN 189 that we must regard him, rather than as the ignorant political doctrinaire, the prejudiced and callous opponent of the Factory- Acts, the defender of dishonest trade, the foolish herald of ^ peace at any price ', and the vehement opposer of every measure for redress of grievances that did not come within the narrow bounds of his own sympathy. It was never given to him, save as touching Free Trade, to speak for the nation, but he won the respect of many of his earlier foes when time had tamed his tongue and the bold, selfish, reckless dema- gogue had become the cautious, conservative, and loyal statesman. A man of far deeper insight and broader views was Thomas Drummond, the Irish permanent Under Secretary, who saw that definite economic causes underlay Irish misery, crime, and agitation, and dared to remind the Irish landlords, the class that had misgoverned their country for a hundred and fifty years, that ' property had its duties as well as rights ', and to work hand in glove with O'Connell in endeavouring to secure such social reforms as would relieve the worst evils. Later years have justified a policy which political passion and the influence of the landlords and the alien Church would not allow to have a fair trial. But Drummond, like his Liberal colleague Lord Normanby, ' the best of Viceroys', sought his satisfaction in the advance of the nation he served. Of O'Connell, a force apart, it is more difficult to judge. His strong Liberal sympathies, his ardent personal loyalty, his tremendous oratorical powers, his engaging personality, his instinctive knowledge of Irish character, would have made him remarkable in any party. As the Irish leader who had carried Catholic Emancipation single-handed against the British Government, who was a power in the House of Commons as he was on Tara Hill, the ' Liberator' is a great figure, never quite understood by the English public, who mistrusted him as a pious Catholic, a born agitator, and a cun- ning politician, and instinctively dreaded a policy that might loosen the bands of Empire. He iuid his faults, but ' it was not for the ordinary politician to judge him', the accepted 190 SURVEYS leader for two generations of his own countrymen, who, with a continual weighty responsibility resting all that time upon his shoulders, without funds save those he raised by voluntary subscription, without organization save that he created, without a policy save that which he himself worked out in the midst of factious and unscrupulous opposition, was able to do much to make Irishmen happier and much to raise their respect for themselves. That he was not young or strong enough to support the burden longer or to control the wretched flatterers and hangers-on that squabbled over his succession before his death and kept honest men from approaching him at the last ; that he sinned like Eli ; is not so much his fault as Ireland's lasting misfortune. Without him the national idea could hardly have survived as a great political force in Ireland. . . . Literary Summary (1837-1850). It was a time of great and vigorous growth. Mill, the most distinguished and influential of Bentham's disciples, got a wide hearing, while Spencer began to give the results of the new science to a small public of specialists. Bentham's lessons were absorbed completely, and scarce a legal reform — and there were many — but was owing to his initiative. The Broad Church party sympathized with the sufferings of the voiceless farm hands and helpless, truck-paid, and cruelly sweated urban workers ; Carlyle's deep and noble voice was preaching the gospel of Sincerity and Work, and exposing the culpable weakness for ' cant ' and ^ sham ' and * shoddy ', that was the crying sin of the English middle class, in a way far more powerful than even Byron had done. Ruskin brought the younger generation to see the importance and significance of Art, and did for the aesthetic what his master Carlyle was doing for the political and social sides of English life. Arnold was continuing Niebuhr's work with splendid vigour, and Kemble and Palgrave were founding on the German methods a new school of English history. Napier was writing his fine prose epic of our six years' war in Spain, Finlay compiling his THE QUEEN'S REIGN 191 scientific story of the greater and later Hellenic governments. Freeman working historically at architecture, Macaulay turn- ing out his brilliant, specious, and untrustworthy essays. In poetry Browning and Tennyson were on novel methods carry- ing on the work of Wordsworth and Keats — Browning speak- ing to the restless young that were dissatisfied with the bald * philosophy ' and cut-and-dry ethics of the Benthamites with a sincere and sympathetic, if not very clear, note ; while Tennyson, with his exquisite Virgilian charm, his pious pathos, and his thin, conventional thought, appealed to a larger public, which could not fail to enjoy his beautiful art, to ignore his inability to write narrative, and to appreciate his insular respectability. Arnold was the most faitlif ul of Wordsworth's disciples, adding to his master's habit of mind a classic form unseen before in his generation. The striking work of the Mast of the Elizabethans', Wells and Beddoes and Darley, and of Keats's friend, the able Reynolds, passed unperceived save by a few connoisseurs. Poe's curious power, too often stained by vulgarity, could not pass unappreciated. Mac- aulay's resonant ' ballads ' gained lawful popularity and many followers, of whom Aytoun and Martin were the best ; but the Corn-law Rliymer Elliot and the sentimentalists appealed to a larger public still, and Clough, in poor verse but convinced phrase, expressed the feelings of ' earnest ' academic youth. Strain, poor rhythm, and cheap rhetoric and sentiment characterize most of the minor poetry of the day, which still strove to copy Moore and Byron. But there was still amongst the work of Peacock, Ebenezer Jones, Hood, and Mrs. Browning verse that, besides being character- istic of the time, was also personal and poetic. The last of the Lake School, Hartley Coleridge, was no unworthy scion of a poetic sire. Landor stood alone and unrivalled in his best work, as did Emily Bronte, the highest English poetess of her day. The influence of Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson, Ruskin, and the Mediaeval Renaissance was prominently shown in The Germ, tiie first naive manifestation of a little knot of painters and poets destined to make deep impressions 192 SURVEYS upon the England of their riper years. And the man who was to become the greatest of English novelists came before the public first in a little book of verse that was the forerunner of such a masterpiece as the ' Modern Love ' sonnets. The desire for purer and more flexible form will be found over against great laxity (save in Tennyson and Arnold) and even carelessness in practice : imaginative expression tinctured with local colour, often mock-archaic, over against bald flatness of diction : a mawkish piety over against the aspiration to enshroud the newest scientific conclusions in verse. These things mark the transition period and the diverse leanings of the younger and older schools. In Ireland, which more or less closely followed the flow of literary English taste, only Mangan, most exquisite in cadence and poignant in expression, and a long way after him Davis, whose vehement rhetoric once or twice touched actual poetry, and Ferguson, who sometimes, as in his paraphrastic versions and original ballads, soars for a while above the respectable commonplace, deserve mention. In Scotland, Nicholson, Burns's best disciple, was the most poetic figure. The colonies, like the United States — for the Sunday-school stuff of Whittier and the trivial verse of Longfellow (whose translations are, however, far better than his own inventions) do not rise to poetry, — had not yet ' answered to the call of the highest Muses ', if, indeed, their material preoccupations allowed them to hear it. Foreign models had but little influence ; Goethe, the German balladists, and Beranger had perhaps the widest. But the prae-Raphaelites, owing to the special Italian culture of the Rossettis, knew something of Dante. The general ' insularity ' of English poetry during this period is marked : its best is untranslatable, its worst hopelessly banal and provincial ; hence its highest messages have reached the Continental world of letters through other and often inferior voices. In the province of prose fiction only France could rival us, though neither Gautier, Hugo, nor Balzac had as yet the slightest influence here. There was Dickens, rising to THE aUEEN'S REIGN 193 the greatest Elizabethans in his characters and sinking to the lowest Victorian melodrama in his plots — a humorist, a humane man, understanding through a keen sympathy, often slipshod, never a great stylist save in dialogue ; not a clear reasoner, but for all that an artist whose want of form has not prevented his dramatic power from asserting itself, and rightly securing him European popularity such as has fallen to no English novelist since Scott, and to none of his literary contemporaries save Macaulay and Poe. There was Thackeray, keen dissector of social folly, pious and sensitive beneath his affected cynicism, a poor critic save as regards a few favourites, often abominably mannered in phrase and diction, but a man of wit and talent, who never perhaps did himself full justice, greatly dreading the snobbish public he despised, but succeeding in creating two or three of those characters that we know better than we do many of our personal friends, though he never could lay claim to that peculiar cos- mopolitan quality which gave Dickens a world-wide audience. Bulwer and Disraeli continued, as they had begun, to please. Marryat, ' that prose Dibdin,' went on with his honest, simple, humorous work. Lever, the * Irish Dumas ', was writing in his first boyish comic vein. Two men of distinction and rare attractiveness, George Borrow and Herman Melville, began their best books, which secured them the delighted attention of a small but choice circle of readers. The Brontes brought in the analytical novel. Emily's tragic power and Charlotte's feminine susceptibility and satiric sharpness compelled attention. Mrs. Gaskell introduced the new novel of social life outside * society', and is more judicial and generally observant than * Currer Bell ', whose introspective power far excelled hers. Trollope, Collins, Kingsley, and Reade belong to the next generation, which they so widely influenced, though it was in this one that they began ' trying their wings first in Fancy's gusty air'. A crowd of second-class humorists and third-class 'society' novelists — Douglas Jerrold, S. Warren, A. Smith, and Co. — jostled the harmless and Adelphian Ainsworth in competition for the public favour. The liowitts T. p. II o 194 SURVEYS went on with their quiet, beautiful work ; North dashed off his noisy but often pathetic and poetic dialogues ; numerous essayists of the fourth class crowded the magazines and quarterlies, which received work of higher quality from men like Whewell and Sydney Smith. Periodicals, such as The Penny Magazine and The Saturday Magazine, brought much literary and aesthetic writing into quarters which such work had never before reached, but where it was eagerly appreciated. A respectable comic weekly journal afforded welcome outlet to men like Thackeray and Jerrold, and an opportunity that some of our best illustrators soon seized ; while The Illustrated London News, largely served by foreign engravers and draughtsmen at first, afterwards became, like The Graphic in the next generation, a school for black and white artists. The newspaper press, as its legal encum- brances were swept away, grew exceedingly, and the profes- sional journalist, if he did not correspondingly prosper in pocket, became an acknowledged power in the land. Delane, the editor of The Times, not only followed but to some extent guided public opinion, and his voice was to the Continent as the voice of England herself. The Fourth Estate had indeed come of age. AEMENIA [This note is a preface to a series of scenes of Armenian life entitled Through the Storm (Murray, 1899), and written by Mr. Avetis Nazarbek, the Armenian poet and revolutionary patriot. The occasion of the book is explained in Powell's words, which, brief as they are, may be thought well to illustrate his historical temper, sympathetic yet detached, in dealing with recent politics.] The case of Armenia obviously claims attention, and it is for the purpose of forwarding this claim to the attention of the Western European and American public that the author of this book has written. He has a right to speak, for he is familiar with the facts of the matter, and has an ARMENIA 195 almost unique knowledge of the causes, progress, and aims of the late revolt of a large section of his countrymen against the Turkish government. Whether the solutions he pro- poses for the Eastern question, as far as it touches Armenia, are correct or not, does not affect the value of his book, which is intended to give pictures of life in Armenia during the darkest part of her long and troubled history. He writes frankly from the Armenian point of view, but his stories are none the less firmly based upon fact. He has known personally most of the characters he draws ; the opinions they express are those they actually held ; the adventures they go through are real experiences of his friends and kinsfolk. He has deliberately chosen the form of his book, a series of incidents and aspects of Armenia in time of terror, connected together as it were by the black and red threads of persecution and revolt which run through the whole book. It was impossible for him at present, for obvious reasons, to write do\^ai the plain story with particulars — the story is not yet finished, many of the characters are still in danger. The form he has chosen seemed therefore to him the best mode of expression at his command. It has allowed him to express himself freely without compromising any friend or publishing any matter better unpublished. It has enabled him to deal with his facts from different sides, and given him, as he believes, a wider range of facts to present before his readers. Mr. Nazarbek is anxious that his readers should judge for themselves whether, given the facts — the mere facts of misgovernment tempered bj^ massacre — there is not sufficient ground for some interference of the Western powers on behalf of his persecuted people. Wliat are the facts in the simplest form ? They appear to be these — There are in Asia Minor, bordering upon the frontiers of Russia, Turkey, Persia, and Syria, some millions of an ancient historic people, speaking an Aryan tongue, belonging to a vcneral)le form of the Christian belief. This people has had a noble history and a high civilization in the past; its members o 2 196 SURVEYS have shown themselves eminent alike in peace and war, persistent in the struggle for life, steadfast beyond the average in their aims, practical, conservative in their lives, with a remarkably intense family life, and a complete grasp of the economic principles that make for success in the commercial world — a people in some of their modern aspects resembling their Parsee cousins, and in others recalling the heroic persistency of their more distant Swiss relations. This people, for the more part, dwells under the Turkish rule, which has been and is still of the ordinary Moslem type, tolerable only to those who are of Islam, and often oppressive even to them, but regularly and irregularly oppressive to its Christian subjects. The Armenian, being found useful to the government, was often able formerly to purchase exemption from the worst exactions and illegali- ties of the government's officials ; his importance as a banker and trader made him a resource not to be neglected, but one which it was wiser to treat with tolerance. But as Asiatic Turkey, owing to a variety of causes, ceased to prosper, while its misgovernment increased and checked the possi- bility of recovery, the Armenian, tired of unavailing sub- mission and becoming penetrated with the * Western spirit of revolt', began to resist outrage, and even to avenge it. The Turk, long unthwarted, proud of what he considered his truer faith, and of what he knew to be his superior power, grew furious when it was forced upon him that the * faithful nation ' had its own hopes and ideals, and that those were not based upon the acceptance of the eternal supremacy of the Ottoman ; that Armenia, in fact, was bent upon securing at least as good treatment as Samos, and would hardly be content in the end with less local independence than Bulgaria. Regardless of the folly of crushing a nationality which might, if encouraged, form the best and surest ultimate bulwark to the Russian advance, the Porte met the revolt with those horrii)le methods of suppression that have always formed part of Oriental prac- tical politics, but which in our days cannot fail to startle ARMENIA 197 and shock civilized powers, even when their own immediate interests, as they understand them, forbid more than verbal remonstrance. England, hampered by many and serious cares, and unable to reach that part of Armenia which was the scene of the chief Turkish barbarities, found herself reduced to the exhibition of strong rebuke, which hardly did more, as it seemed, than irritate the Porte. France was hoodwinked, and her people duped as to the facts by her complaisance towards her Slavonic ally. Germany had no means of enforcing her advice, and consequently did not tender it. The United States M^ere not armed. Russia might have interfered with instant success, but her states- men cynically avowed their acquiescence in a process which could only tend to the removal of an obstacle in the way of their advance south-west when the time came ; for, obviously, a strong Armenian nationality, with an older civilization than that of Russia, could resist Russification, and the ancient Armenian Church would yield hardly to the measures by which the Orthodox Synod ^compels' those not of its peculiar communion to ' come in '. The Armenians were left to their fate, thousands perished, thousands did their best to avenge their brethren, thousands managed to hold out, as the men of Zeitun did, and some- how, though contrary to all probability, to weather the storm at its fiercest, and secure some slight measure of temporary amelioration ; at what a cost of blood and tears may be easily understood, when one recollects how many gallant lives it cost merely to secure that news of the fortunes of Zeitun should reach tlie wide world west of the Armenian highlands. The men of Zeitun are surely as worthy of respect as the men of Montenegro, M'hether we think them wise to have taken up arms, or foolish not to have agreed with a notoriously brutal adversarj^ quickly. Surely it is to the interest of Western Europe (though not of Russia) that an Eastern Switzerland sliould be allowed to grow up on the east of Asia Minor, a power that ought to be suffered to have its own internal development, to show 198 SURVEYS the energy that is in it, and allow the possibilities that seem to the best observers latent in the Armenian character the scope they are believed to need. A national intellect and character, so strong in their past developments, so persistent in spite of all obstacles, must not be lost to the world.' It is perfectly useless for England or any other state to threaten the Porte, until such time as she is able to carry out her threats promptly and decisively. When that moment arrives, the Porte will, as in the past, give way gracefully. Germany might probably, as matters now stand, interfere diplomatically with considerable success. If she has con- vinced herself that it will profit her to secure the goodwill of the Armenians, she will not fail to do so. Moltke's words as to the suitability of Asia Minor as a sphere of German interest are certainly not yet forgotten. Those who profess to hate the Turk because he is a Turk will find little encouragement in this book. The Turk, too, suffers under bad government : the difference between him and the Armenian is, that in the case of the Turk the government is his own, not that of aliens. The Turkish government is bad, because of an evil condition and practice, because of the obstacles, ignorance, bigotry, corruption, the hatred to change however beneficial, obstacles not unknown in the West, but flourishing in less civilized states, where cruelty is not yet normally discouraged, and ignorance still abnormally fostered, when corruption is the only step to advancement, and bigotry the condition of office. The Turk is, perhaps, no worse governed than the Persian or the Cliinese, but the Armenian suffers more than any of these. There is no necessity that he should suffer, and it seems, to say the least, the general interest of mankind that he should not suffer. Nor is it right to attribute the bad government from which the Armenian suffers to Islam. Jewish and Bud- dhist governments have been quite as cruel ; Confucian, or even Christian principles, do not necessarily imply justice. ARMENIA 199 mercy, or truth in them that practise them. Spain, in the West Indies, employed methods which vie with those of the Ottoman, when she was most Catholic ; neither ' monkery ' nor the ^ holy office ' have ever flourished under Islam. It is because the Turk is half civilized that his government is so bad ; he does not feel the necessity yet for ^ ending or mending^ the institutions he endures; he has a loyalty such as that of the Frenchman of the seventeenth century felt for his sovereign ; he is as callous as a Spartan to the way his helots are treated. He can often be roused to the foulest, cruellest outrages by the passion of bigotry and the incitement of plunder. The natural excellences, however great, of a semi-civilized people do not fit them to rule over a more cultured race. Such a state of things is generally felt to be intolerable when the subject race is proud, capable, and progressive, and only needs numbers and combination to make good its claims to self-rule and an unfettered national career. The wisdom of Europe, after no slight delay, has put the Cretans in the way of working out their own salvation, if they are capable of so doing. What those who know the Armenians best desire is that they may be given the same chance. Precisely how this may be done is a question on which few know enough to speak with authority. Meanwhile it is a service to his own people and, it would appear, to Europe generally, that Mr. Nazarbek has done in expressing the wishes and aspirations of a considerable section of his nation, and in showing the conditions of Armenian life under the stress of the struggle between the government and the advanced Armenian party. Mr. Nazarbek has not desired me to write as an advocate, nor, indeed, should I have wished to do so. He is rightly content to let his book speak for itself. I have simply tried to put down the case as I have been able to understand it. I am only anxious that those who will interest themselves in this question should be induced to look honestly into the matter for themselves without sentiment or prejudice. It 200 SURVEYS is because I think this book may, by its intrinsic interest, induce people to do this, that, in spite of my belief that good wine needs no bush, and that few general readers ever even skim a preface, I have done as Mr. Nazarbek asked me, and penned so much by way of prefix to his work. He is not responsible in any degree for my opinions or the way in which they are expressed. It has, at all events, been a pleasure to me to vouch to his wide knowledge of things Armenian ; to the labour he has given to this national question, which has indeed occupied him, day and night, for years ; to his absolute devotion to what he believes to be the highest and best aims of his own people. IV ALFRED [One of the few articles done in form and at length by Powell on a great personage of history is here reprinted from the Noiih American Review, Oct. 15, 1901 : on The Alfred Millenary of 1901. At Winchester, three years before, when the movement for the Commemoration was being started, Powell had lectured at length on Alfred, and for the report in the Hampshire Chwnicle of June 18, 1898, see Memoir for that year. In some ways it is fresher and less strictly narrative than the article, though less authoritative : and one passage, on the youth of Alfred, is added here, as it is not echoed in the article, as well as a sentence or two from the peroration. A number of reviews, not here given, mostly on millenary books that seem to task his generosity, show the erudite work that lies behind these popular expositions. The proper names in these articles have been left in the special forms Powell used.] On the 18th, 19th, and 20th of September this year in the old, famous, and beautiful city of Winchester there was held a solemn Commemoration of the millenary of King Alfred's death. A huge bronze statue of the hero by Thornycroft has been set up and unveiled ; there were lectures and addresses delivered by notabilities in Church and State, in learning and letters. The town that Alfred loved was in high festival, her honoured guests were warmly welcomed, and the great occasion signalized by processions, illumina- tions, and banquetings in which all sorts and conditions, from the children in the schools to the aged poor from the workhouse, had their share. Nor were the citizens and the Guildhall allowed to bear the responsibility alone ; the bishop of the ancient diocese, the dean and canons of the Cathedral of St. Swithin, the head master of the famous and ancient College of St. Mary, did their part. Soldiers, sailors, and marines were present to line the streets and furnish the glad 202 ALFRED music of their bands. The historic sites preserved in the modern county town that succeeds without a break to the little market-fort of the Belgae were all in turn visited and reviewed — the remains of the abbeys, new and old, of the episcopal palace of Wolvesey, what is left of the castle of the king, the venerable west gate of the city. The pleasant and antique hospitality of St. Cross was as freely dispensed as ever. The playing fields of Wykeham's College, the paradise and close of the exquisite cathedral, once dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, now to the Trinity ; the beautiful view from the King^s House which led Charles II with characteristic feeling for art to plan a series of gardens that should rival Versailles in magnificence and outstrip it in the beauty of their surroundings, were all duly admired. Win- chester is determined to do her best to honour him whom Gibbon was not afraid to style *the greatest of English kings ', one, too, especially associated with her own history. The callous and stupid neglect of the past is to be amply atoned for, and the generation that is of all since Alfred's most unlike his is prepared to do the highest honour to his name and fame. Delegates from the English, Scottish, and Irish univer- sities were, of course, present, and with them stood scholars especially sent from the sister universities of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India, as well as from the leading universities of the United States. Manj'^ of the list of leading Englishmen that form the committee for the Celebration also took part in the proceedings. The Lord Mayor of London and the mayors and provosts of many other towns attended in their old-world and picturesque panoply. The Commemoration was indeed one that appeals to the whole of the English-speaking world. It is almost a new thing in modern England (common though it be abroad) to seek to do honour in this public way to heroes of the far past; we have not been, of late cen- turies, a people greatly given to pageants, our middle classes had almost lost the taste for public spectacles, though a few ALFRED 203 survivals such as the Lord Mayor's Show and the like were always keenly relished by the populace. We are getting rid of our awkward self-conscious dislike of the visible signs of public magnificence or national joy or grief. The great Guildhall masque showed that we could rival Vienna or Paris when we really set about a celebration of an artistic kind. The reviving taste for beautiful pageantry is, how- ever, undoubtedly strong, and it naturally tends to reflect the prevalent feelings of the time. We English are now acutely conscious that our empire, so long at peace within, has been most dangerously attacked by a cunning and malignant foe. We know that our envious enemies on the Continent are many and powerful, we are coming to under- stand the truth of the maxim that 'only the strong man armed can keep his house and his goods ', and we are making up our minds slowly, but surely, to the sacrifice of interests and prejudices that we see to be necessary. We delight intensely in the comradeship of our colonies, and are proud of the ready and unselfish way in which they sprung to our assistance the moment the unity of the empire and the future of British South Africa was seen to be at stake. Hence to us to-day the career of Alfred appeals in a way it could not have appealed a generation ago. Alfred had to deliver and reorganize the England of his day as our states- men have to deliver and reorganize the empire to-day. The example of men Hke Nelson, Drake, Henry VHI, Montfort, William the Marshal, a long line headed by Alfred himself, that saved England from the dominion of the alien, is becoming a real influence again. We may have to face Europe as our great grandfathers faced it, and we are glad to remember the proud and profitable lessons of the past. Again, Alfred's literary work is far better known and appreciated now than it could be at the last Alfred cele- bration, half a century ago. The tongue he spoke and wrote is understood now as it was not then, iiis versions and his originals have been studied since to no small purpose. We look back fondly to the king that helped so greatly to make 204 ALFRED the mother-tongue we speak fit for high and deep thought, apt to record exact facts, able to express all that can be expressed in language ; to the painful student who did so much in his far-off day to make the rough speech of two or three millions of yeomen and fishermen the noble tongue of more than a hundred million of their descendants in the two most power- ful and progressive nations of the world, and half-a-dozen rising English commonwealths, and the business and political tongue of some two hundred million more of other blood and other races. Again, the details and the significance of Alfred's life and actions are probably better understood now than ever before since his own days and the days of his son. We can really estimate the importance of his work and the difficulties in his way, perhaps, even better than Gibbon himself, certainly more completely than William of Malmesbury. Our very distance from him brings his greatness out ; he towers among his contemporaries and we see him afar off at his full height, the mighty tree that tops its fellows in the distant forest. Of course, Alfred has never been forgotten, no child that reads but knows his name as that of a gentle king that met adver- sity bravely and gave peace and justice to his country. Not all our long line of English rulers from Egbert to Victoria have left their names in the popular memory ; local memory has preserved a few, the Confessor will not be forgotten at Westminster, nor Henry II at Woodstock, nor Henry VI at Eton, but King Canute, King John, old King Harry, Queen Bess, Oliver, good Queen Anne, Dutch William, and honest George III are known through the length and breadth of their land. In Alfred's case fond legendary remembrance of 'The Truth-Teller, England's shepherd and Englishmen's darling^, is amply justified by historic facts, clear and well attested. The last fifty years have given us accurate and scientific editions of Alfred's own books and of the early books about him — Dr. Sweet's Orosius and Pastoral, Dr. Sedgefield's Boethius, the Laws edited by Dr. Liebermann and Dr. Turk, ALFRED 205 the Dialogue by Professor Napier, Asser by Mr. W. H. Stevenson, and the Old English Chronicles by Dr. Earle and Mr. Plummer, as well as the many rich materials furnished by the editions of the Latin and French Chronicles to be found in the Rolls Series, the British Museum charters, and Mr. Keary's Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Coins. Let us resume the results. Alfred's grandfather Egbert, son of Alhmund king in Kent, was one of the new genera- tion of princes that stand grouped about Charles the Great, who was the leader of what might well be called the great Ninth Century Renaissance. Egbert was banished from his own country as a dangerous pretender in the way of the Mercian overlord and took refuge at the court of Charles the Frank, who was now, after his triumphs over the Lom- bards and Saxons, obviously the greatest ruler in Christendom. There he had noted the leading lines of the Frankish king's policy, he had seen him deal with the stubborn Saxons (men of his own blood), he had shared probably in his great campaigns against the heathen Huns, the dreaded pirates of the Steppes, he had possibly witnessed the proceedings of the council of Frankfort that condemned image worship and made a reform that it was hoped would purify and revivify the Christian Church. He had seen the old alliance between the Pope and the King of the Franks culminate in the crown- ing of Charles emperor of the Romans by Leo the Third on Christmas Day, 800. He knew how Charles had made new capitularies and established the reign of law among the Franks; he had marked how greatly he cared for justice, how minutely royal officers Avatched and checked the local feudatories. He was aware of the care Charles took to foster trade, to keep up the roads and to ensure undisturbed markets. He met him, followed him in his marches ; he may well have stood by him in battle and watched his generalship ; he certainly knew the swift and stern punish- ment he dealt out to disturbers of his realm from within or from without. He must have met his learned countryman, Alhwin, and the band of foreign scholars that Charles 206 ALFRED gathered about him to teach in his palace school and in his own acadeni)'. And Egbert surely knew, as Charles himself knew, that not only from the east and from the south, but also from the north, danger was rising, and that the Roman empire, east or west, nay, Christendom itself, could only be saved by the utmost exertions of the Roman emperor and the Christian people under him. In good time the royal exile came back to his own land and put in practice much that he had learnt during his thirteen years with Charles. He climbed swiftly to the imstable West-Saxon throne, a lucky and acceptable claimant, but when he died he held the strongest and widest domain that any English-speaking king had yet held in Britain. He had defeated the jealous and restless Welsh princes upon his borders, he had overcome his Mercian rivals, he had secured the overlordship of the Northumbrians, he had met and defeated the formidable Danes who had already made the Pictish kings' position precarious and ravaged and occu- pied great part of Ireland. He had made a close alliance with the Church at Canterbury, whose ruler was, in truth, the English patriarch and a prelate ever in close touch with the great Frankish churchmen and the Pope. But when Egbert died, though his skill and energy had exalted the West-Saxon crown, the outlook for his nation and his family was not so bright as when he came back from exile well- nigh forty years before. The grandsons of Charles were quarrelling with their father ; the Saracens were gaining ground in the Mediter- ranean islands and on the Italian mainland and in the East, though Barcelona was still the western bulwark of Frankish Christendom ; the Northmen were growing stronger and bolder both in the North Sea and in the Baltic ; the Bul- garians and the Paulicians in the East seemed to be en- dangering the creed and the temporal power of Christendom ; the insane quarrels of the families that ruled at Aix and Byzantium weakened the Christian cause, though the Frankish and Roman armies were still superior to any orga- ALFRED 207 nized force in the world. Egbert's son Ethelwulf, pious and brave and eager to do well, yet, like Charles's son Lewis, showed a certain ^weakness at times that threatened to end in family dissensions, but for all that he met the Northmen handsomely in the field, drove back their Welsh allies, and endeavoured to strengthen his position by marrying his daughter Ethelswith to the Mercian king, Burhred; by visiting the gallant Pope, who had just saved Rome from the swarming Saracens by his own exertion ; and by allying himself to the daughter of Charles the Bald, who was busy resisting the inroads of the Northmen and the incursions of the Saracens of Spain and Africa. When he died the danger was nearer, but he had done his best to prepare to meet it. His sons were wiser than Lewis's. They agreed to take up the royal burden one after the other. In eight years' time the two elder had ruled and died. England had been threatened, but was not yet seriously attacked, though Winchester had been stormed and sacked by a sudden raid and the Northmen were active along the coast. In 866, when the third brother, Ethelred, a young man of little more than twenty-one, came to the throne, the storm burst, and the great host from combined fleets under Northern and Danish leaders determined to carve out new kingdoms in the Britains, as for the time the Franks had become too hot for them to meddle with ; hoping, perhaps, also that with a fair base in Britain they would be able to secure what of Gaul they wished when the time was come and their prey was riper. Northumberland bore the first brunt of their deadly attack ; her rival kings united for a brief space to resist the invaders, but were swiftly borne doM'n and slain ; the Mercian king (brother-in-law of the West-Saxon princes) called earnestly for their help against the cunning and prowess of the sons of Lodbroc, most dreaded of all sea-kings of their day, who were believed to have a particular feud against the English in the north. And now it is that we see Alfred the Etlieling 208 ALFRED taking his place at his brother's side and entering public life as his trusty lieutenant and counsellor. Of the young prince's early life a few significant facts are noted. He came of a fine stock on his mother's side, for Osburh, the daughter of Oslac, the king's cup-bearer, was well born, and a good woman. He was born at the royal estate of Wantage, in Berkshire, 848, not many miles from Oxford. His childhood was remarkable. He was first sent at the age of five to Rome to Leo IV by his father, probably with the idea that the special papal benediction and con- secration of this, his favourite and most promising son, would mark him out by evident tokens for the eventual succession, and so secure that the brothers should succeed each other rather than that the realm should fall into the hands of a child-king. The boy was but seven years old when he journeyed home with his father, who had brought him out a second time in 855 to the Pope, his kindly god- father. They passed through Gaul and visited the western emperor, and at Verberie Alfred saw Ethelwulf take the child Judith to wife as a pledge of alliance between him and the King of the Romans. Alfred had looked on much that was noteworthy at an age when clever children will notice much — the visible splendour of papal and imperial majesty, the sacred and strange glory of the great stone palaces and basilicas of Italy and Gaul, the stately etiquette and afflu- ence of the foreign courts, the orderly array of imperial and papal hierarchy, the mighty works of the warrior Pope, his benefactor, the hosts of Italy and Gaul and Germany, armed and disciplined after the Roman traditions of New Rome, wonders of art, a multitude of things that contrasted with the circumstances in which his own life was to be passed. These he could hardly forget, and his love of the arts and crafts, the ready welcome he gave to strangers, his generous acknowledgement of his debt to the churches abroad for the prayers and skill and learning with which they endowed Christendom, his eager willingness to learn and teach, his conviction of the necessity of knowledge and thought for ALFRED 209 the nobles and prelates, leaders temporal and spiritual, of his people, his broad prudence and just foresight, seem to be the final fruits of impulses set going by this memorable time. Cadwalla and Ine had gone to Rome to learn to die, as many more English pilgrims had done ; Rome helped Alfred to learn to live. That he loved the old songs and traditions of his own people, that he was original enough to try and make his own speech a classic tongue instead of trying to force Latin upon an unwilling people as a vehicle for knowledge, that he ever busied himself much with hounds and horses and hawks, that he was keenly interested in art and handicrafts and those that exercised them, that he made himself skilful in law and good at his weapons : — shows that he had a bent of his own. The fatherless child of ten throve under the care, probably, of his mother^s kin. His own estates were in the south-west, but we know he must have moved about from place to place, whether he dwelt with his brethren the kings or no. By the time he had reached his twentieth year and took to himself a wife, Ealswith, daughter of Alderman Ethelred Mucil of the Gainas, a woman of Mercian royal blood on the side of her mother, Eadburh, he was already apt for the duties of his rank as a big landowner and a gentleman of the blood royal. His biographer and friend tells us that he was already of a pious and dutiful mind, and that he had been for some years sorely afflicted by a tiresome and painful chronic malady that troubled him most by threatening to hinder him in his life's work ; but (as he believed in answer to his prayers) this disease now passed from him to give place to another that, though it gave him pain, did not interfere with his daily business. The call to the active public life for which he had prepared came very soon after his wedding, and from this year, 868, till he died, thirty-two years after, Alfred was ceaselessly busy. It was the distress of Burhred assailed by Ingwar and Hubba that brought him forward. The swift march of the young brothers. King and Etheling, seems to liave surprised the Northmen, who were driven into Nottingham, an easy place y. p. II. p 210 ALFRED to defend if they were provisioned, but a close blockade forced them to seek for peace. Tricked by Ingwar's cunning Ethelred gave the invaders favourable terms instead of making up his mind to crush them at all costs. Burhred was left tottering on his throne, and the enemy's next move was to attack Edmund, the young king of the East English, \vho was defeated, captured in flight, and cruelly martyred on the 20th of November, 870. Guthrum the Dane reigned in his stead ; Halfdan, one of Lodbroc's sons, was king in York over Northumbria ; both there and in East England the invaders began to settle and till the land. The Midlands bought off the Danes for a time after the foolish Prankish fashion, but now the West-Saxon kingdom itself was to be assailed. The northern host, the eastern host, and the hosts from the midlands, two kings and seven earls, the pick of three or four Wicking fleets, crossed the Thames in 871 and took up their post at Reading, whence they could move down the Thames or up the Kennet Valley and south into the dales of Hampshire, or along the ridge into the western shires to the very heart of Ethelred's land. Battle after battle was fought with much stubborn slaughter but no conclusive result ; even the famous fight at Ashdown, where the White Horse now gleams, when the broken Danes fled and fell mile after mile, till the remnant reached their earth- work between the Thames and Kennet, failed to stop the invaders. Both English and Northmen soon rallied in force, fresh levies came up from the West-Saxon shires, and fresh crews from the Danish fleet ; the invaders forced their way over the downs, battle after battle was fought, and at one, fought at Marden, Wiltshire, Ethelred was wounded to the death, and Alfred at twenty-three was left to take up the troublous crown in the midst of the campaign. He fought on, and at last the Danes withdrew sullenly from Wessex, The wretched Burhred, cut off from his friends, was forced to make peace on what terms he could get, and soon, hope- less of the future of his kingdom and his kindred, he left his country and went to Rome to seek peace. There he ALFRED 211 soon died, and the puppet king set up for a short while in his place was the last Mercian king of English blood. A few years later, after many fierce engagements by land and sea, the Danes, who now occupied the greater part of the midlands as well as the north and east, determined on a fresh attack on Wessex, aiming at the south-west, for if that were subdued the West-Saxon realm must fall into their hands. The heathen fleet and army moved in concert along the Roman roads and along the coast. The fleet, having wintered in South Wales, suddenly sailed south-east, about to attack the important border city of Exeter, while the army under Guthrum dealt with the cities of the Severn and Avon plains, and a huge stronghold of well-planned earthworks was raised at Chippenham as a centre from which to raid. But the fleet under Hubba was defeated with heavy loss, and that leader's death by the good men of Devon, and the taking of his enchanted raven banner, was regarded by English and Northmen alike as an evil omen for the cause of Lodbroc's sons. Alfred, however, met with poor support at first against Guthrum ; many of his best men had fallen in the former campaign, many distrusted his powers, many, tired of the struggle, had followed Burhred's example and fled abroad. Until the king could gain the confidence of the western levies he was obliged to take refuge in the Isle of Athelney among the Parret marshes with a small guard and a few personal followers. But now, in 878, after weeks of quiet work, the levies were ready to follow him, the south- west rallied cheerily to the beacon fire that was the signal for the English muster. The battle of Edington drove the Danes into Cliippenham, which was cut off from all succour by Alfred's able tactics. A few days' hunger forced Guthrum to surrender at discretion, and the treaty that followed was the first step since Egbert's alliance with the Archbisliop of Canterbury toward the building up of an English kingdom of all England. A modus vivendi was arranged between Guthrum and his Danes and the Englisli king, limits M'ere fixed, arrangements were made for trade, the elements of p 2 212 ALFRED border law, that should provide for peaceful intercourse, were agreed to. Above all, Guthrum and his men were to accept the Christian faith. The terms were fairly well kept by the Danes, and Wessex was again freed of their un- welcome presence. In 879 Alfred was able to begin his task of reorganization, in which he spent twelve years^ busy and fruitful work. The old Teutonic system (long disused in a country where local feuds had taken the place of regular wars), by which half the shire-levy was to be ready to muster while the other half remained at home to till the fields, a convenient and traditional usage, was now revived. New shires were formed in the English midlands by the rearrangement of groups of hundreds round carefully selected and garrisoned strongholds, chosen by reason of their situation and command of country. Fortresses were marked out to be raised in convenient and defensible spots along the coast ; a fleet was built and largely manned by hired Frisian seamen, on a new model of the king's own, the ships bigger and more seaworthy than the flat one- decked thirty-oared Danish keels, that were fit for coasting and bay-fishing, but often unequal to the stormy season on the main sea and to the rough currents of our uncharted tidal waters. Local magnates of trust and experience were set as aldermen over the new shires, and their behaviour as judges and lawyers carefully looked to. The old custumals and novellae of Ethelbert and Ine were republished and a number of new statutes passed by the Wise Men, at Alfred's initiative, were added to them. The king himself, one of whose main ends as a lawgiver was to substitute the 'law of court ' for the ' law of feud and vendetta *, made continual progresses through his own kingdom, while Alderman Ethel- red, a Mercian of notable gifts, acted as his lieutenant over the part of his dead brother-in-law's kingdom that had now fallen to him. The broken communication with the churches of the East and of Rome was resumed, London was resettled, its wall repaired and placed in Ethelred's charge, to secure the mouth of the Thames and the Lea, and to take up again ALFRED 213 the interrupted trade with Gaul and the Rhinelands. The king procured teachers from Wales, from Gaul, and the Midlands for himself and the Palace School, which he now established after Charles the Great's model. The revenue was carefully estimated and assigned, and the court service organized on a new footing, the servants and guards being parcelled out in three four-month shifts, which succeeded each other in attendance on the king. Foreigners who could bring knowledge or skill of any kind were welcomed and maintained at the king's expense. And now, in the brief leisure secured by an exact arrangement of the day's duties, Alfred and his scholars set to work to translate into English, for clerks and laymen alike, the books the king thought would be of most use — Orosius, his sketch of the world's history and geography, to which the king added the voyages of Othere the Helgolander and Wolfstan the Englishman ; the Consolation of Boethius, with many reflections of the king's own interspersed among the chapters of the last Roman philosopher ; the Herd Book of Pope Gregory (a copy for each bishopric), and his Dialogues and the Blooms, selec- tions from the Soliloquies of Augustine, Baeda's English Church History (translated by one of his Mercian scholars), and, lastly, the Chronicles drawn up under his eye, partly, perhaps, at his dictation, as we can hardly doubt, at Win- chester. His own last work, a translation of the Psalms, he was not granted time to finish. In every department of Alfred's work difficulties met him — ignorance, indolence, prejudice — but he persevered ; what he had to do was necessary and must be done. Much was achieved before the even tenor of his labours was again interrupted. In 891 the Danes met with a crushing blow in tlieir defeat by the Dyle, in the Low Countries, at the hands of the gallant Carling king Arnold. Haesten, the boldest, wildest, and most determined of their leaders, resolved to attempt the conquest of Wessex, and secured the assistance of many of the Wickings that were drawing off from the Frankish 214 ALFRED domains, hopeless of further success there. The attack was well planned and cleverly and boldly carried out ; full advan- tage was taken of the foolish neglect of the Kentish men who had left unclosed the forts that were meant to guard the south-east coast ; but the fate of England was secure as long as Alfred, or the son and daughter he had trained care- fully in his ways and set to work to carry out his policy, should remain at the helm of England. Haesten and the fleet leaders made repeated raids and dangerous incursions, but they were defeated in detail, pursued on their marches, beset in their strongholds ; the whole kingdom was confident in the king ; his aldermen, his bishops, and the shire-levies stood by him manfully. Haesten fought well ; he was desperate ; it was his last cast for a great prize. The settled Danes forswore their obligations in favour of their kinsfolk, and gave succour, and supplied soldiers to the invaders ; but the inevitable end came, and Haesten and his followers were forced out of the kingdom. He went off to Iceland to found a family there and make a new home. Other Wickings tried to settle for a time in Ireland or Scotland ; some went back to Norway to be met by the stern rule and heavy hand of Fairhair and forced to live peaceably or fly to settle in the new-found lands of the far north-west. By 896 the king was free again to go on with the ordinary labours of his toilsome life. The losses of the war in money, stock, and men (made heavier by the murrain and plague that had lately afflicted the land) had to be repaired. Councils were held, the whole business of peace was resumed. Four more years of toil, and then, worn out, as we may suppose, by his unceasing exertions and by the inroads of the disease that had weakened his hardly-tried frame, Alfred fell ill, and died on October 26, 900. He had begun the task of reabsorbing the Danish settlements in South Britain into his own all-English kingdom, but he was not to live to see more than the beginning of the successful progress by which his children and grandchildren realized his idea. It is not easy to overrate Alfred's achievements as com- ALFRED 215 mander. The conditions of the Danish war were such as the English organization was ill-fitted to meet ; the heathen fleets composed of scores of boats, manned by forty or fifty warriors each, could move far faster along the coast with a fair wind than the English levies could follow. The crew of such a fleet, disciplined, hardy, veteran fighters, accustomed to face emergencies deftly and to act swiftly at word of command, were more than a match for the disorderly and unskilled levies of any single shire. These fleets could com- bine and separate easily, their captains could plan simul- taneous attacks on various quarters at a given time. They would land in a convenient estuary, run up a stockade to defend their ships, raid the neighbourhood of horses and cattle, slaves and spoil, sally forth mounted on the stolen English horses, riding by night and day along their chosen roads, to fall upon defenceless districts and outflank the slower defenders. They were hard to fight with, difficult to keep in touch with, dangerous to attack. By means of two or three fortified stations on the coast they were able to master broad stretches of country, whence they could draw supplies in safety, while they were able at any time to sally forth swiftly and silently upon the lands beyond. They were as bad to treat with as to fight with. They broke again and again the solemn oaths they had sworn. They found well- wishers among the jealous Welsh and traitors even among the despairing English, some of whom chose rather to obey a Danish king than risk all they had in a struggle they had begun at one time to look upon as hopeless. The Danes lived on the country and made great profit out of the war, trading away cargoes of slaves and loads of precious booty to the Jewish merchants in Gaul, who supplied them with arms and cloth and wine and ornaments. They were traders as well as fighters, they struck money in great quantities, and they were well served by their agents and spies, who profited by the commerce they created. In skill and courage, infinite sailorly resource and cool contempt of death, they were beyond any fighting men of their day ; they wcrcj 216 ALFRED indeed, the very flower of the finest of the Teuton race. A spirit of adventure akin to that of the Crusaders, of the Conquistador es, of the EUzabethan seamen, filled their souls ; but they had another side to their minds, and it was on their practical wisdom and shrewd grasp of fact that Alfred based his hopes when he treated with Guthrum. The Danes could see the advantage of strong, orderly rule ; they frankly acknowledged the English as their closest kinsmen. Both sang of the same heroes and traced their royal blood back to the same gods. They were not averse to the manifold attractions of the new faith and accepted it readily, as sensible men awake to the advantages it offered. In a few genera- tions they became good Englishmen, though they kept their own names and their own peculiar laws and customs, which, after all, were as close as possible to those of the English themselves. They feared and respected the spiritual power and order which was the greatest legacy that pagan Rome left the Western world. To many a settled Northman it seemed easier to live under a West-Saxon king than under Fairhair. The third choice was a far voyage and a rough life in unknown lands. Most of those who were not of noble blood preferred the strong peace of the West-Saxon king, and many of high rank were won over by the wisdom of Alfred, by the possibilities that opened before them in the new England which he was building up, and by the manifold attractions of the Christian civilization of Western Europe. The reign that had begun in the darkness of a black night ended in the light of dawn ; the future loomed fair ; English- men and their leaders had gained confidence ; they had been tried and not found wanting. In the north, beyond the English border, the stronger Scottish kings had succeeded to the weaker Picts ; and Constantine's defeat of the Northmen in 904 had, possibly, almost as much to do with the coloniza- tion of Iceland as Fairhair's earlier and more famous victory at Hafrsfiord. The settlement of the last of the Wickings, — like Alfred himself, one of our Queen Victoria's ancestors, — Hrolf, son of Rognwold, Earl of Moere, on the valley of tiie ALFRED 217 Seine and the coast rivers of Neustria, and the succession of liis half-brother Einar to the earldom of the Orckneys, closed the Wickingtide. New and great developments came of the stir and activity of that fierce epoch. And these new de- velopments Alfred had largely helped to shape. Of Alfred's bodily presence and features we have no ac- count, his biographei-'s unfinished sketch of him does not help us, but of the character and bent of his mind there is much evidence in his own words. He thought boldly and clearly on intellectual things as he did in practical matters ; he had devised for himself a clothes philosophy long before Carlyle ; his Theory of Nobility, namely, that the right nobility is in the mind, was the one which afterward found warm acceptance from Sordello and from his pupil, Dante ; he had grasped the law of causation with as great dialectic skill as the later schoolmen and divines ; to better ethical purpose, in thoughts more elevated he reasoned high Of providence, fore-knowledge, will, and fate. He conceived as spiritually of God as did the Eastern Sage of old. ' He is wisdom, He is reason itself,' he said. To the statesman and warrior that saved his own country in her hour of need, preserved her national individuality, and paved the way to her future unity ; to the scholar and man of letters that first made of our English tongue an avenue to all the knowledge of the past, a vehicle for the highest expression of human thought that the world was then capable of ; that raised his vernacular to the rank of a classic lan- guage, is due, at least, the gratitude of those whom he has benefited. Alfred's life was not an easy one : ' Hardship and grief not a king but would desire to be free of if he could, but I know that he cannot.' He bade a man do his duty and look to no reward but God, but the good report of his fellows was dear to him as it was to the greatest of his time. A northern contemporary, one of his foemen, possibly, has put this strong Teutonic feeling in a simple and direct way : — O) 218 ALFRED Cattle die, kinsfolk die, Land and lea are wasted, One thing that never dies I know — Men's judgement on the dead. Cattle die, kinsfolk die, And man himself dies. But never dies good report Away fi'om him that won it. And Alfred himself has recorded in well-known words his heart's desire : ' This I can now most truly say, that I have desired to live worthily while I lived, and after my life to leave to the men that should be after me a remembrance in good works.' Surely to grant this man his wish that his good works should be held in loving memory by his own people is but a plain and grateful duty, and certainly his example is not one that we in England, or you in the United States, can at any time or in any way afford to neglect. And to bring Alfred's good works and noble example clearly before the English-speaking world is, I take it, the real object of this Millenary Commemoration. II It is therefore possible to get at the man himself, to know how he looked at the world around him, what he thought of his own life and office, and to understand his times. We can perceive the dangers and difficulties against which he waged constant and continuous wars. We have, put before us by himself, the pains and perils that he braved in the cause of duty to humanity. The man's own words have a ring of absolute veracity; they rouse one to instant sympathy, they are so frank and so obviously spoken from the heart, so simple and modest, and meant indeed for the helping and furtherance of those who would be heartened in their own struggle to hear the encouraging voice of a fellow swimmer across the dark waters. This English king a thousand years ago faced his foes with all the patience and perseverance of the Iron Duke ALFRED 219 himself, with all the devotion and skill of Nelson, with all the simple and trusting faith of Gordon. Of such a man it is surely good to know something, and to such a man it is surely well to pay as much honour as possible. Alfred, though his life was of that kind which to all that knew it seemed to be a pattern, an ideal realized, a model set up on high, was by no means a Pharisee ; he was a humble-minded man in his ways and his works. He like others had been torn by temptations and marred by faults ; he had gone through his dark hours and deep disappointments ; he had suffered not only from pains of the mind, but pains of the body. He was doomed never in his life to get that ready and swift obedience, that intelligent co-operation, that he longed for from his people, even though the objects he set before them were their own security and prosperity, and he was no doubt often impatient of their folly. We must not suppose that his youth had been free from the faults of youth ; indications seemed to point to the fact that he, like others placed in any high position, had been attacked by pride and desire, that he had had a struggle to master himself ; but he went early and young to that schoolmaster whose lessons are always im- pressive — adversity — and learnt these lessons. From his own words we know that at the time he was chosen king he had set clearly before him the duties and requirements of the arduous office he was about to undertake, and that he took up the office with no light heart. We know that he had already pierced the brightly coloured glamour that gathers about young souls, that he had already found out what mere pride and power were, that he had felt already how little man is in the presence of the warring elements that conspire against our frail endeavours, that he had made the talisman of duty his star of honour, and had formed tlie fixed deter- mination to deal honourably and kindly with his fellow men. His mind was already stored with fruitful impressions, and prone to plan out schemes at once practicable and hard to carry out, plans of great profit, that would take great toil to complete in action. . . . 220 ALFRED He had done as much as it was possible for him to do in the time, and then, worn out before his time with toil and anxiety and physical pain, the great king fell before the foe that none could long resist. He was but little more than fifty years old, but in those hard days he had aged swiftly. At all events he had not lived in vain ; what he did is with us still, for this man saved England. But for him England would not have been England now, nor would the speech of Langland, and Shakespeare, and Bunyan have been spoken half the world over. The unity of this coimtry, unity it took Scotland, and France, and Spain, and Germany so long to win, was won easily here, thanks to Alfred. That English trade and commerce began to flourish is largely Alfred's work, that the West-Saxon princes of the tenth century were the very flower of great princes — men of honour, of courage, and of humanity — was chiefly due to his example and precept. His own son and daughter owed all to his training. His grandson, whose greatness he foresaw as Leo had foreseen his own, had his noble memory to look back on. The ministers he had trained, the policy he had set on foot, the measures he had promoted, went on doing daily good for two generations at least after his death. This man indeed was to his country what Charles the Great had been to Gaul, more than Peter the Great was to Russia ; he was, undoubtedly, as pious as St. Louis, without his superstitions ; as earnest for the truth as Simeon the Righteous, without his over-fondness for his kinsfolk and his over-harshness to his foes ; as good a soldier as William the Norman or Richard the Lion Heart, but with far more scrupulous principles. He was as laborious a statesman as Henry the Second, without his ambition ; as true a lover of justice as the great Edward himself, but less stern and passionate. To paraphrase Beowulf — 'There is no king we know of wiser, worthier, or more useful to his people.^ MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY [The following papers elucidate or supplement many of Powell's views which are to be found in the books written with Vigfiisson on Northern themes, in the preface to Saxo, in the translation of Fcereyinga Saga, and in reviews and remarks in the pages of Folklore. The paper on Teutonic Heathendom was contributed in 1889 to the volume Religious Systems of the World (Sonnenschein) : it is a clear summary of Powell's conclusions, and is noteworthy for the translations of the ITirymskvida and Sonatorrek, which are in some few points of interpretation as well as in style different from those in the Corpus Poeticum Boreale. Originally a lecture, it was expanded for print. The article, Tradition and its Conditions, was the presidential address to the Folklore Society in January, 1904, and was Powell's last substantial piece of writing. Here, too, may be added the preface to the late Miss Barmby's nobly-executed drama founded on the Gislasaga, and some notes taken from reviews on the heroic verse, Finnish and other, which is of popular source as to its substance.] TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM Now, God be praised, that to believing Souls Gives Light in Darkness, Comfort in Despair! 2 Hen. VI, ii. 1. It can hardly be denied that there is an enduring interest in the subject of this lecture — the beliefs of the heathen Teutons. No one who cares for the history of the thought of our race but must feel an interest in tracing back to their springs the courses of such mighty rivers. But though on this voyage of discovery the way becomes darker and darker, and difficulties crowd around as one nears these sources, yet some part of the voyage is already mapped out. The material existing includes, first, written evidence, which, apart from the fragmentary notices preserved by Tacitus, Dio, Vellcius, Florus, the Augustan historians. 222 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY Marcellinus, and other classical authors, together with the scraps furnished hy the later Christian chroniclers, such as Eginhard, Prudentius, Asser, and Adam of Bremen, consists mainly of exact and excellent accounts of heathen ways and customs, preserved by an Icelandic priest named Are, born in 1067, who took a great interest in the antiquities of his race, and wrote books (c. 1100-25), in which are preserved a number of most curious traditions. Then there is a collection of old songs or lays, the so-called Older Edda, which, it is believed, was compiled in the twelfth century in the Orkney or Shetland Islands, by some Icelander who retained an interest in the old heathen legends which but for him had died out of memory. He has preserved some twenty or thirty fragmentary poems. The Younger Edda, really a gradus or poetic dictionary, was compiled by Snorre Sturlason, 1178-1241, the Icelandic historian, and other scholars and poets, for the benefit of those who intended to compose vernacular verse, for Icelandic poets (like our own poets of last century), even after the acceptance of Christianity, were accustomed to make allusions to old mythological gods. Next comes the Latin Historia Danica of Saxo, the monk of Lund (about 1215), who not only wrote a good history of his own time, but out of ancient songs and traditions — many furnished to him by Icelanders, and persons familiar with other western Scandinavian colonies — put together a curious account of the mythic days of Denmark, working after the fashion of our Geoffrey of Monmouth.^ ^ The chief works of Are, Landndma-boc (The Book of Settlements), Libellus Islandonim, and the Story of the Conversion of Iceland, have been edited by Dr. Vigfusson and translated by myself, and will shortly appear [as Origines Islandicae, 1905]. The Elder Edda poems have been edited and translated by the same in Corpus Poeticum Boreale (Oxford, 1883). The first two jjarts of the prose or Younger Edda have been several times translated into English, by Sir 6. Da»ent and others. Are's Ynglinga-tal is translated (from a Danish version) by Laing in his Sea-kings of Nortcay. [Mythical Books (i-ix) of Saxo translated for Folklore Society, 1884.] TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM 223 Besides these main authorities there are a vast number of valuable little stories, hints and allusions to heathen habits and beliefs, scattered through the vast mediaeval literature of England, France, and Germany. These have been for the most part collected and arranged in his masterly and de- lightful way by Jacob Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology , now accessible to all in Mr. Stallybrass's excellent and accurate translation. This book may be supplemented by M. Rydberg's study of Saxo, entitled Teutonic Mythology , and translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1889). Jacob Grimm and his brother William also set the example of collecting and using oral evidence, fairy tales and folklore of all kinds, which still linger upon the lips of the people in country places, as material for the history of mythology and thought of the past. Much has been done by Germans, Icelanders, Scandinavians, and something by such English- men as Halliwell and Campbell, to work this great mine of popular tradition ; and recent scholars, especially Mr. A. Lang, Mr. Nutt, and Mr. Frazer, have shown the use to which it can be put in elucidating some of the more important problems of the history of man's past. Such being, roughly, our materials, how are we to study them ? What trains of thought may be most profitably followed ? First of all, it must be acknowledged that it is useless to attempt to solve the problem by one key, to explain the religion of the past by one principle. Our early Teuton forefathers were influenced by anthropo- morphism, and animism, and thought that inanimate objects, as stones, stars, the elements, and organisms such as trees, fishes, birds, and beasts, were possessed of spirits akin to their own ; they believed in dreams, and used them largely as a means of foretelling the future ; they worshipped the dead and treated their deceased ancestors as gods ; they held the doctrine of correspondences, i. e. that things which had a superficial likeness had a deeper resemblance — from which last doctrine there grew up some of the earlier systems of 224. MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY medicine : while the wizard^ with his use of hypnotism, mania, poison, jugglery, and medicine, was dreaded and sometimes punished. In fact, there is hardly a superstitious use or observance which a modern missionary may note in the barbarous Central African, or South American, or Poly- nesian tribe he is endeavouring to civilize and raise, but we may find its analogue among the practices or beliefs of our Teutonic forefathers. These things are a part of the general history of mankind, they make up a mental stage through which progressive nations pass — a stage of false but shrewd reasoning, of clever but mistaken guesses, of erroneous but plausible conclusions, a stage such as individually we all go through in infancy and childhood. Our minds are of little better quality than our ancestors', but we profit by the vast mass of accepted, tested, and recorded information which they had not. We start higher up the ladder, and consequently ought to get a little higher on the climb to knowledge. Again, it is important that we should at once throw aside the idea that there was any system, any organized pantheon, in the religion of these peoples. Their tribes were small and isolated, and each had its own peculiar gods and observances, although the mould of each faith was somewhat similar. Hence there were varieties of religious customs among the Goths, Swedes, Saxons, and Angles. The same thing was the case in ancient Greece, and it must occur in all civiliza- tions at the stage before small clans and tribes have combined into great leagues and centi'alized nations. Hence we shall find many parallel versions of leading myths, many alterna- tive forms of the same tale, many widespread legends attri- buted to different persons in different places. Then, too, one perceives that round the actual living flesh-and-blood hero of the day the stories of former heroes crystallize. Thus the stories related about King Arthur once belonged to earlier heroes — Gwyn and others ; precisely as I was once told by a friend that in a country-part of Italy he had heard a story of Garibaldi, which has been referred for many hundreds of years to an old Semitic hero. Garibaldi was in the hills with TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM 225 a small band of men, pursued closely by the cruel White- coats. > The fugitives had been marching hour after hour in the burning sun without a drop of water ; it was high noon, and in the agony of thirst several of the general's little band threw themselves down on the ground declaring they could go no farther. Garibaldi ordered a little mountain gun he had to be brought up. This gun he aimed himself at a con- spicuous cliff, not far off, and fired. Scarcely had the smoke of the gun passed away when a glittering thread of water was seen trickling from the rock precisely where the shot had smitten it. The thirsty Redshirts drank their fill, marched on refreshed, and escaped their foes. In the light of this story it is easy to see how upon Theodric, the famous East Gothic king, there descended legends which belonged to an earlier and divine Theodric, as Professor Rhys has pointed out ; how upon Beowulf the Jute, and upon Sigofredos-Arminius the Cheruscan, there have fastened tales of dragon-slaying which belonged to more mythical heroes. With such preliminary note, one may proceed to touch on some of the beliefs of the heathen Teuton world. With regard to cosmogony three or four different opinions have reached us, the oldest being, as we should suppose, extremely childish. It was that originally there was nothing but a huge giant, who nearly filled all space. Some heroic persons killed the giant, and from his body they made the world, sun, moon, &c. At first this was firmly believed in, then doubted, and afterwards told to children as a fairy tale. It is, of course, common among Aryan nations. There were also tales of the earth-goddess and the sky-god, of the god of day, of the sun-goddess and the moon-god, very like those in the classic, Polynesian, and Semitic mythologies. Then, there was a tale of the first man and woman being made by the gods out of two trees, ash and elder, that grew on the seashore. Kings and heroes were always supposed to be the actual descendants of the gods, and became gods themselves when they died. The world was looked upon as a huge plain, a belief which Y. P. II. Q 226 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY existed in Greece and other countries. Man lived near the edge of this earth-plain, outside was the ocean-stream, as in Homer's cosmogony. Beyond this, again, was a belt of frozen land, the boundaries of which were indefinite, where dwelt giants and demons. All the primitive arts and culture came from the under- world, won by the clever tricks and devices of heroes. Swans and bees came from a paradise, somewhere underground, where the Fates lived. Sheep and oxen were also believed to be gifts from the underworld. Eager was the sea-god and Ran his wife. Rode the wind-god, and Loke the evil-plotting giant who brings trouble among gods and men. Man obtained inspiration by some hero getting from the giants or dwarfs a certain potent liquid, which gave to him that quaffed it the power of poetry, prophecy, and memory. As to the origin of Jire, Woden was the Prometheus of the Teutonic race, as Heimdal was its culture-god, and Sheaf the Triptolemos who taught men to sow corn and make bread. Frey and Tew were the chief gods of the Swedes and Franks, Thunder (Thorr) of the Reams and Thro wends in West Norway. As a good example of the form in which the legends of the gods have come down, I give here an exact trans- lation of one of the most famous of the Eddie lays, dating probably from the ninth century. It is entitled * The Story of Thrym ', and runs thus : — Wroth was Wing-Thor when he wakened. And missed that mighty hammer of his ; He began to shake his beard, he began to toss his locks ^. The Son of Earth was groping about him ; And this was the foremost word that he spoke : * Hearken now, Loke, to what I am telling thee ^, A thing never heard of on earth aforetime Or in heaven above. The god^s hammer^ is stolen!' ^ Thor has long red beard and locks, with a dark scar between his brows. '' Loke is a cunning mischievous god. It is his fault that the hammer got into Thrym's keeping. ' The hammer is of stone or bronze, short-hafted. It was made for Thor by the dwarfs. TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM 227 They walked to the town of Freya the fair, And this was the foremost word that he spoke : * Thy feather-fell wilt thou lend me, Freya, That I may be able my hammer to find?^ Then spake Freya : ' Yea, I would give it thee though it were golden. And grant it to thee although it were silver/ Then away fled Loke, the feather-fell rattled Till he won out of the town of the gods. And till he won into the land of the Ettins [giants]. Thrym, the giants' king, on a grave-mound was sitting. Plaiting the leashes of gold for his greyhound; Trimming the manes of his horses so even. Spake Thrym : ' How goes it with the gods ? How goes it with the Elves ? Why art thou come alone to the land of the Ettins ? ' Loke spake : ' It goes ill with the gods ! It goes ill with the Elves ! Hast thou hidden the Charioteer's hammer?' Thrym spake : ' I have hidden the Charioteer's hammer Eight leagues deep beneath the earth. No man shall ever get it again, Save he fetch me Freya to wife.' Then away fled Loke, the feather-fell rattled Till he won out of the land of the Ettins, Till he won into the town of the gods. There met him Thor, in the midst of the gate. And this was the foremost word that he spake: ^ Hast thou tidings for thy errand ? Tell me all thy tidings aloft as thou fliest ! For he that speaks sitting oft stumbles in speech. And he that speaks lying down oft tricks men with lies.' Loke spake : ' I have tidings for my errand. Thrym hath thine hammer — the king of the giants. No man shall ever get it again Save he fetch him Freya to wife.' They walked to the town of Freya the fair, And this was the foremost word that he spake : * Wrap thee, Freya, in the bride's veil ; We two must drive ^ to the land of the Ettins.* ^ The driving in a car was a necessary part of the wedding ceremony. Q 2, 228 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY Wroth grew Freya then, and snorted with rage. The hall of the gods all trembled beneath. The Brismgs' great necklace ^ snapped asunder. Freya spake : ' Sure I should seem man-maddest of women If I drove with thee to the land of the Ettins ! ' Then all the gods held a moot together. And all the goddesses a parley ; The mighty gods took council together How they might win back the Charioteer's hammer. Then spake Hamdal, the whitest of gods^, Great foresight had he, as all the Wanes have : ^ Let us wrap Thor in the bride's veil ! Let him have the Brisings' great necklace ! Let the bunch of keys rattle at his girdle. And a woman's coat fall about his knees ! Let us fasten the broad-stones ^ on his breast. And wind the hood deftly about his head ! ' Then up spake Thor the doughty god : ^ Lewd felloM', surely, the gods will call me. If I let myself be wrapped in a bride's veil ! ' Then up spake Loke Laufey's son : ' Spare such speaking, Thor ! Soon shall the Ettins be dwelling in Godboro', Save thou canst win thine hammer back ! ' Then they wrapped about Thor the bride's veil. And put on him the Brisings' great necklace. They let the bunch of keys rattle at his girdle. And a woman's coat fall about his knees. They fastened the broad-stones on his breast. And wound the hood deftly about his head. Then up spake Loke Laufey's son : ' I will go with thee as thine handmaid ; We two will drive to Giant-land ! ' ^ The Brisings' necklace was a dwarf-made magic necklace that, like Eriphyle's necklace, was a curse to any mortal that owned it, and like the cestus that Hera borrowed, a love-chain when the goddess wore it. ^ Hamdal, the ancestor of men, the bringer of culture from the underworld, warder of the gods, a huge white ram-headed deity with gold teeth ; he sits over the rainbow-snake. He belonged to a set of the gods called Wanes, as did Niord and Frey. ' These are the two ornamented brooches of oval shape worn by ladies on the breast. TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM 229 Then the goats were driven home^. Harnessed to the couplings. Off they ran ! The rocks were rent, blazed earth in flame. As Woden's son drove to Giant-land ! Then spake Thrym, the king of the giants: ' Stand up, Ettins, and strew the benches. Now they are bringing me Freya to wife — ■ Niaord's daughter of Noatown ! There, walk here in the yard, good horned kine. Oxen all black for the joy of the giants' lord. Treasures a many I have, jewels many have I, I lack nought but Freya alone.' The bench was set for the women that evening, And ale borne round in the house to the Ettins. An ox whole, eight salmon. All the dainties cooked for the women, Sif's husband [Thor] ate, and drank three vats of mead. Then spake Thrym, king of the giants: ' Was ever bride so sharply set ? Did ever bride take bigger mouthfuls? Did ever maid of mead drink deeper ? ' The handmaid, all-wise one, sat by the couple. And found answer to the Ettin's speech. ' Freya hath not eaten for eight nights, So eager was she for the land of the Ettins ! ' He bowed under the veil, he longed to kiss her. But he sprang back the whole hall's length — * Why are Freya's eyes so awful. It seems as if fire were flaming from her eyes ? ' The handmaid, all-wise one, sat by the couple. She found an answer to the Ettins' speech. * Freya hath not slept for eight nights. So eager was she for the land of the Ettins ! ' In came the Ettins' aged sister. She boldly begged for a bridal fee. 'Take the red rings off thine arms. If thou art minded to win my love — My love and my good-will ^\■ithal ! Then spake Thrym, king of the giants: ' Bring up the iiammer to hallow tiie bride ! ^ The goats are Thor's team, that draw his thunder-car. 230 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY Lay the Miller^ on the maiden's knee! Hallow us twain together by wedlock's hand ! ' The Charioteei*'s heart laughed in his breast When he felt the hard hammer in his hands. First he slew Thrym, the king of the giants. And battered the whole breed of Ettins; He slew the Ettins' aged sister ; She got a pound instead of pence, And hammer strokes instead of rings. This is how Woden's son won back his hammer. There is a rough naive humour in this ballad-like poem that reflects the tone of the primitive stages of society in which such legends sprung up. Thor was specially the god of the fisher-farmer and farmer-fishers of the west coast of Norway, whence came the bulk of the emigrants that peopled great part of Great Britain and Ireland, and the whole coasts of Iceland, the Faroes, and West Greenland. All natural phenomena were ascribed to the agency of the gods or demons ; storm and bad weather were wrought by spirits ; frost and cold were the work of giants and much to be feared. Thunder was looked upon as a beneficent god — killing demons, bringing back the sunlight and fructifying rain. Pearls and amber were the tears of goddesses ^. These beliefs were childish ; but their explanations were the beginning of science. They only differ from many of our hypotheses in their greater ambition and simplicity. We are content nowadays to try and make out the how without trying to explain the why. As to ritual, animal and human sacrifices were offered. Instances are recorded of the sacrifice of kings for good seasons, and of launches of war-ships sanctified by human blood (as in New Zealand of old). Nevertheless, human * Miller, the name of the hammer. "^ It is probal)le from a curious story in the Kalevala that the nodules of white flint in the white chalk were looked on by the Fins as the clotted, hardened milk of some spiritual being, and that this belief was afterwards used to explain the origin of the later-known metals. TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM 231 sacrifices seem to have been always regarded with a kind of horror and awe. A great temple was at once treasury, storehouse, and meeting-place. Once or twice a year there were great sacrifices of cattle, persons were sprinkled with the blood, auguries were taken with hallowed apple-twigs, and afterwards the sacrificed beasts formed the material for feasts. They had village feasts, holiday feasts, Easter feasts welcoming the Summer, Midsummer and Christmas feasts. The Teutons — differing in this from the Western Prae- Celtic race, and those Celts who had adapted their customs and beliefs — do not seem to have had a regular priesthood, though special persons were, by hereditary right, charged with the service of certain shrines. The greatest fanes we know of were situated at the head- quarters of the great tribes, or tribal leagues ; thus at Upsala, the High-Hall in Sweden, the cult of Yngwe-Frey flourished ; at his grave-mound were a temple, a treasury, and a sacrificial place, and an oracle where folks sought, by various kinds of divination, to gain from the god a morsel of his prescience. ^Now we will speak a little of the superstition of the Swedes. That folk have a very noble temple, which is called Ubsola, placed not far from the city Sictona [Sigtan]. Near this temple is a very great tree, stretching wide its branches, ever-green summer and winter ; of what kind it is no man knoweth. There also is a spring, where sacrifices of the heathen are wont to be made, and a live man drowned. . . . In this temple, which is all adorned with gold (for a golden chain goeth about the temple hanging over the top of the house, and shineth from afar upon those that come thitlier, for this same fane standeth in a plain, and hath hills stand- ing about it after the manner of a theatre), the people worshippeth the likenesses of their gods, whereof the mightiest, Thor, hath his station in the midst of the hall, and Wodan and Fricco have places on either side, the significance of which is after this manner: "Thor," say they, " ruleth hi the air, and governeth thunder and light- ning, wind and showers, clear weather and good crops. The second, Wodan (that is. Madness), wageth wars, and giveth man strength of heart against Ids enemy. The third is Fricco, that bestoweth peace and pleasure upon men, \^ hose 232 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY similitude they make with the emblem of generation. But Wodan they carve as an armed man, as we do Mars, but Thor is made to appear with the sceptre of Jove. They also worship gods made out of men, whom they endow with immortality by reason of their mighty deeds, as in the life of St. Anscar we read that they did with King Heric [a famous Swedish king deified after his death]. And all these gods have their special priests, who offer the sacrifices of the people. If plague or famine be at hand, offering is made to Thor ; if war, to Wodan ; if wedding is to be kept, to Fricco. More- over, after nine years' span, a common feast of all the provinces of Sweden is held at Ubsola, from which feast none may be excused ; kings and people, all and singular, send gifts to Ubsola, and what is crueller than all, they that have already put on Christendom must redeem themselves from those ceremonies. Now the sacrifice is on this wise. From all living beings, that are males, nine heads are offered, by whose blood it is the custom that the gods be propitiated ; their bodies are hung in the grove which is next the temple. This same grove is so holy to the heathen that every tree in it is held divine, by reason of the death or blood of those offered. There also hounds and horses hang with men, whose bodies, hung together, a certain Christian told me that he had seen. For nine days common feasts and sacri- fices of this kind are held ; every day they offer one man, and one of each different kind of beast with him (so that in nine days seventy-two beasts are offered). This sacrifice takes place about the spring equinox. But the follies which are wont to be used in this rite of sacrifice are many and foul, so that it is better they be not told.'' ' So speaks Adam of Bremen (iv. 26-8) about the greatest of heathen Teutonic temples, a sacred spot for centuries, the Tara of Sweden. In England the word Harrow marks a heathen * high place '. There was always a temple at the place where the High Court of Parliament or Folk-moot of a tribe was held, and the court-field was hallowed, and order kept there by the hereditary priests of the place (chaplains of these earliest Houses of Lords and Commons). Heligoland, that tiny North Sea island, lately much in folk's minds, but long famous only as a station for ' bird- TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM 233 men \ and a watering-place for north-west Germany, was once a famous fane and sanctuary. Adam of Bremen (iv. 3) speaks of it thus : ^Now the Archbishop [Adalbert] ordained from among his clerks, to Sleswick, Ratolf; to Seland, William; to Funen, Egilbert, who, they say, flying from pirates, first lit upon the island Farria, which lies out in the Ocean some way off from the mouth of the Elbe, and built a monastery there, and made it to be dwelt in. This island lies over against Hadeley. It is about three days' row from England, and it is near the land of the Frisians, or our Wirrahe, so that it can be seen lying on the sea. Its length stretches barely eight miles, its breadth four ; men use straw and morsels of ships for fire. The story is, that if pirates take any prey thence, even the very least, they either perish by shipwreck or are slain by some one, for none can get home unpunished. Wherefore they are wont to offer to the hermits living there a tithe of tlieir plunder with great devout- ness. Moreover, this island is most fertile in crops, most rich in birds, and a foster-mother of flocks ; it has only one hill, no tree ; it is shut in by very rugged cliffs, with no entrance but one, where is also a spring of sweet water, a place to be honoured by all seamen, but especially by pirates, whereby it took its name, and was called Holy Land. In the life of St. Willebrord we learn that it used to be called Foseti's land. In the life of St. Liudger it is told that a certain man named Landricus was baptized there by the bishop in the days of Charles [the Great].' In the temples and holy places no weapon could be worn, no unhallowed act performed, under penalty of the god's high displeasure, as we learn from Bede's story of the con- verted heathen priest, Coifi (Coibhe), who, mounted on a horse and fully armed, rode into the sacred temple-enclosure and hurled his spear in defiance of the god to which the temple belonged, at Godmundingham, hard by York. With regard to death and tiie future life, there were two pretty distinct sets of ideas. The older seems to have been that at death man's spirit dwelt in the grave where his body lay. These graves — tumuli — were the resting-places of the dead who inhabited them, just as the living inhabit houses. 234 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY With the deceased were always buried those things which it was thought would be useful to him in his spirit-life. No one was supposed to die naturally ; it was always some spirit, such as Weird or Fate, or the War-goddess, or the Fever-spirit, or some spirit sent by witchcraft, which destroyed a man, and then Death, a kind of psychopomp (like Hermeias in ancient Hellas, or Charon in modern Greece), led his spirit away. Again, there was among the old English a belief that at death man took a long journey and plunged into a great abyss, where dwelt a black goddess, from whom the name of Hell in other religious systems is obtained. If the departed were clever enough to elude the demons there, they passed on into a happier sphere. This is, in some of its later forms, a kind of heathen reflex of the Christian idea, but in its earlier forms it resembles certain Polynesian beliefs. Some of the Teutons seem (in the eighth century, at least) to have believed in the transmigration of souls, in a dead hero being born again in his descendant. Hence, when Hakon the Good — our Athelstane's foster-son — came back to Nor- way, men said : ' It is Harold Fairhair come again ! ' And the soul of Helge the Good was — according to a fine tenth- century poem — twice re-incarnated in heroes named Helge. As to punishment after death, as early as the eighth cen- tury there was a widespread belief that evildoers, perjurers, murderers, persons of foul life, and traitors, would meet a fit recompense in the next world ; and Christians in England, and Germany, and Scandinavia, and France, throughout the Middle Ages, had their ideas of judgement and the next world deeply coloured by these old heathen beliefs. But, till the infiltration of Christian ideas, in the ninth century, they had not arrived at any idea of a great day of doom. The elaborate Walhalla pantheon found in the later Edda was put together by scholars after the heathen days, and the eschutology, with its Ragnarok, is largely drawn from one TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM 235 poem, the Wolo-spd, or Sibyl's Prophecy, which bears evident traces of Christian influence. One of the most important of their religious institutions, but one which we can only reconstruct by piecing together bits of scattered fact, was the clan or totem system, an insti- tution very widespread and very important in the early history of many races, both of the Old and New Worlds. The pattern of nomenclature among the Teutons seems to point to the system being in full vigour down to pretty recent times. But it fell rapidly before the economic and social changes brought about by an altered mode of life, and by the change of thought consequent upon contact with Chris- tianity. The members of a clan probably could not inter- marry ; they traced descent originally through the mother ; they bore the name of their totem, or ancestor, as part of their own name ; and, no doubt, they had certain common legal rights, and performed certain religious rites, in common. The wolf, the bear, the horse, the war-goddess, the chief god of the tribe under many epithets, the rock, the spear, the blade, the helm, the home-land, the day, the sun, the shrine, are the chief totems used by the early Teutons. The yEthel- ings, who ruled South England in the ninth and tenth centuries, the Gothic Amalings and Balthings, the Choruscan Sigelings, are examples of famous royal clans. Witchcraft, of a type resembling that of the Obi or Voodoo black-magic cult, was met with among the early Teutons, and was to them, even as heathens, a thing hateful and horrible, loathsome to gods and men ; though seers, and weather- prophets, soothsayers and men of second sight, augurs and dream-readers, were reverenced and treated as specially favoured by the gods, who gave them part of their own knowledge ; and white magic was often appealed to, to frustrate the wicked assaults of witches and wizards. Turning from ritual and the creed of Teutonic heathendom to its ethical system, an immense superiority is manifest. There were no 'Ten Commandnionts', but good manners and morals were taught in songs, and given to the young in 236 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY the form of story. One old poetic Dialogue between Father and Son contains many precepts — as, how to behave as a guest, friend, and householder — and much wisdom in the form of proverbs. The first virtue is bravery, the next is manliness. Uprightness of life, cleanness of living, were enforced. Sincerity and generosity were directed. Silence was a virtue. Reverence was much enjoined, and, indeed, no people can advance far without a high regard being paid to this virtue. Reverence was paid, not so much to the gods as to those things that were worthy of respect — to family life, the political organization, to the king, to the aged, to women and children. There was also a high ideal of duty to kindred, lord, and comrade ; among the free classes a high standard of self-respect. History and geography and statecraft were taught by the heroic lays, which recorded the deeds and deaths of great kings and champions of old. The songs about Attila were made in Greenland in the eleventh century, six hundred years after him. Alongside of such excellent principles as the old poems teach and testify to, there were great shortcomings : harsh- ness, deceit, and cruelty towards all who were not kinsfolk or friends (for only these were considered as within the ethical circle; all the rest of the world was outside with the animals) ; pride and self-complacency, false ideas of honour, weakness in face of superstitious fears ; though we find noble examples in which men, of their own truth and sweetness of nature, refused and scorned sins which those around them commended and committed. With such good ethical principles, and such poor creed and ritual, it is not to be wondered that the heathen beliefs and faith went down before Christianity without any com- pulsion, and that in England and Scandinavia Christianity was accepted willingly and readily by king and people. There were many gains accruing from the adoption of the new system. First, kindliness was enforced instead of brutality to slaves, paupers, and persons not of [the same] family. Next, there was greater truthfulness and stricter TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM 237 keeping of covenants, which rendered higher political progress possible. Third, the importance of self-sacrifice to duty was more decidedly enjoined. Fourth, the cruel terrors and foul superstitions connected with witchcraft were put away. Fifth, the greater simplicity and reasonableness of the New Faith opened the way to further progress in thought. Last, the New Faith brought its Teutonic votaries into touch with other European nations, with anterior civilizations, and with a certain amount of knowledge won from nature by wise men in the past. After this brief and necessarily imperfect sketch of a great subject — every paragraph in which might be illustrated by numerous examples and instances, and sustained by lengthy argument and copious exposition — it may be well to conclude by giving a faithful and plain version of a poem composed in the last days of Teutonic heathendom by a warrior and poet, named Egil, who had served our own King Athelstan, had wandered over many northern lands and seas, and settled down at last, after all his chequered career abroad, in his father's house in the new colony of Iceland, looking for peace. But he met with a series of misfortunes in his old age ; and, worst of all, came the death of his two eldest and best beloved sons. The first, Gunnere, had died of fever; the second was drowned. It is told that, when the news of the last calamity came upon him, Egil rode to the shore to seek his son's body, and came right upon it, and took it up and set it across his knees, and rode with it to the grave of his own father. Then he had the grave opened, and laid his son therein by the side of his grandfather. And the grave was not closed again till about sunset. Then Egil rode straight home and went in and shut himself up in his own room and lay down. There he lay, speechless, and neither eating nor drinking all that night and next day, and no one dared to speak to him or reason with him. But on the third niorning his wife sent a man on horseback off to fetch Thorberg, iiis favourite daughter, who was living some way off with her husband. She at once started for her 238 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY father's house, and rode all the evening and through the night without halting till she reached it. Then she alighted, and went into the hall. Her mother greeted her : ' Have ye eaten by the way ? ' Says Thorberg : ' I have taken neither bit nor sup, nor will I till I sup with Woden's wife [the goddess] ; I will follow my father and brother.' Then she went to her father's door and cried : ^ Come, father ; for I wish us both to go the same way ! ' And Egil opened the door to her, saying : ' Thou hast done well, daughter, to wish to die with thy father. Is it likely I could live after such sorrow ? ' But Thorberg did this that she might by some stratagem get her father to break his fast and live, and this she cunningly brought about, and then said : * Now our plan of starving is over, and perhaps it is better, for I should like us to live a little longer, father, that thou mightest make a dirge over thy son. For there is no one else that could do so fitly.' And Egil said he would try to do as she wished. And as he made the dirge he grew better, and when it was finished he rose up and recited it to his wife and daughter and kinsfolk, and then sat down in his seat and ate and drank and held the funeral feast over his son in heathen fashion. And he sent his daughter home again with costly gifts and much love. And this is [part of] the dirge, and it is called THE SONS' WRECK. It is hard for me to raise my tongue, the steel-yard of sound, within my mouth ; Little hope have I of winning Woden's spoil [poesy], nor is it lightly drawn from the hiding-places of my mind, • •••••• The heaviness of mv woe is the cause thereof. For my race hath come down to the stock like the burnt trunk of the trees in the forest ! No hearty man is he that must bear in his arms the corse of his kinsman from his house ! TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM 239 First I will with my song-blade [tongue] hew this matter out in the hall of memories [my breast] ; Yea, this verse-timber, leafed with speech, shall pass out of the word-fane [my mouth]. Cruel was the breach the billow made in my father's fence of kinsmen ! I can see it standing unfilled and unclosed, the gap, left by my son, which the Sea caused me ! Ran [the ocean-giantess] hath handled me very roughly : I am utterly reft of my loving friends : The Sea hath cut the bonds of my race its hard-spun strands that lay about me. How shall I take up my cause with the sword against the Brewer of all the Gods [the Sea God] ? How shall I make war upon the awful Maids of the Storm [billows] or fight a wager of battle with the wife of Eager [the Sea God]? Moreover I know that I am not strong enough to cope with the slayer of my son, for manifest to the eyes of all the people is the helplessness of me, an old man ! The Ocean hath spoiled me sorely : it is a hard thing to tell over the slaughter of kinsfolk ! • •••••• The second matter of my Song shall be how the Friend of the Gauts [Woden] raised up to Godham the Sapling of my race [Gunnere], that sprung from me, the tendril of the kin of my wife. • •••••• Yea, he is gone to be a guest at the city of the Hive [Paradise]. • •••••• I know very well that in my son was the making of a goodly gentleman : if that fruitful branch had been left to ripen ere the Lord of Hosts [Woden] laid hands on him. He ever held fast to his father's word though the whole congregation spake against it : and upheld my cause at Wal-rock [the Moot-hill] and was the greatest stay to my strength. 240 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY There cometh often longing into my mind for the brotherhood of Arinbeorn [the best friend of his youth] : reft of my friends, when the battle is waxing high, that bold baron, I think on him ! What other man that loves me well will stand by my side against my foes' counsels ? I often lack the strong pinions that upheld me. I go with drooping flight for my friends are dropping away. It is right hard to find a man to trust among all the congregation beneath the gallows of Woden [the World-tree]. It is a proverb that no man can get full recompense for his own son ; nor can one born of another kin stand to a man in the place of a brother. • •••••• I was friendly with the King of Spears [Woden] and I put my trust in him believing in his plighted peace : till he broke, the Lord of the Wain, the Judge of Victory, his friendship with me : Wherefore I do not worship the brother of Wile [Woden] the Prince of the Gods, nor look yearningly upon him : yet the Friend of Mim [Woden] hath bestowed upon me recompense for my wrongs, if I am to count up his better deeds to me. The war- wont Foe of the Wolf [Woden] hath given me the blameless art: yea, the poet's song, by which I may turn open foes into well-wishers. Now the Wreck of my Two Sons is sung to the end. Night standeth near at hand : but I gladly and with a good will and without dread await Death ! This poem, badly preserved in a corrupt and incomplete text, necessarily loses in translation much of its character, its metrical harmony, its fine concise rhythm, its powerful flow ; but I do not think I could have chosen a more typical or nobler TEUTONIC HEATHENDOM 241 utterance of old Teutonic heathendom than these lines, in- stinct with deep grief and wrath, but all-inspired with a courage which never let the man sink to despair or mockery but enabled him to beat (mt in the very furnace of affliction a poem which for its beauty and strength is as wrought Damascus steel. Human nature is everywhere much the same. Grief touches the same chords in us as it did in our heathen fore- fathers of our long ago, or, and as it did long ago in those better-remembered heroes whose sorrow is enshrined in the Homeric laments over Patroclus and Hector, or that Song of the Bow which David taught his people. Their primitive faith, clumsy and childish as it was, yet represented the higher instincts of their nature, the sympathy they felt for their fellows, and the awe that was upon them by reason of the unknown forces that compassed them about : our faith can do no more for us. It is not in a man^s creed but in his deeds, not in his knowledge but in his wisdom, not in his power but in his sympathy, that there lies the essence of what is good and what will last. Note. It is beside my purpose here to note the affinities of Teutonic Heathenism. The mythology is largely of the general Aryan type. There are many close parallels to the Celtic mythology in particular, and apparently also to Slavonic heathendom. This was of course to be expected. I do not believe that there are any traces of borrownngs from the Latin or Greek mythology in extant old Teutonic myths, though it is not impossil)le that older Oriental mythologies may have affected all these systems. It must be remembered that among tlie fairy-tales of modern Teutonic nations are many which do not go back to the heathen days, but are drawn from foreign sources during or since the Middle Ages. T. p. u 242 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY TRADITION AND ITS CONDITIONS It is Tradition, the oral handing on of oral knowledge, that is the means by which the most of our folk-lore material has been and is being preserved. Tradition as a pz'ocess deserves examination. We ought to know what are its conditions, its limits, its possibilities. Little has been done, as far as I know, to investigate these matters. They have been left vague. The Benthamite, content with citing Russian scandal, is wont to deny the possibility of accurate tradition at all. The credulous sentimentalist of the Bernard Burke kind will set no bounds to the process. It has been gravely argued that because one of the names of Seirios may be interpreted the traverser there is in this title a remembrance of the time, more than thirty thousand years ago, when Seirios was crossing the Milky Way, which, as Euclid would say, is absurd. And yet there are materials for the more accurate determination of the scope of oral tradition, as I hope to show by certain examples. Now it is first to be noted that in many unlettered, that is, in my sense, bookless communities, there are special means, pieces of social machinery, devised and practised for the pre- servation of the knowledge of the events and culture of the past. What Caesar tells us about the Druid school of the Gauls in his day is but an earlier description of what Dr. Hyde and Dr. Joyce tell us from mediaeval Irish MSS. about the schools of ancient and mediaeval Erin. Says Caesar, ^The Druids are not accustomed to take part in battle, nor do they pay taxes with other people. They are exempt from military service and everything they have is immune. Roused by the certainty of such privileges many congregate to their course of life of their own will or are sent there by their kinsfolk and neighbours. They are said to learn a great number of verses, and some remain in their course as long as twenty years, nor do they think it right to commit these things to writing, although in other business both private and public they make use of Greek letters.' Caesar guessed that they did this TRADITION AND ITS CONDITIONS 243 because they wanted to keep their lore secret, and also because they wanted to assure good memories in their pupils. But this is merely his rationalistic theory. He goes on to say the Druids taught ' that souls do not perish, but after death pass from one set of persons to another, and this', says he, ' they think a great incital to righteousness, seeing that the fear of death is put away. Besides this they hold much reasoning over the stars and their motions, over the universe and the size of various countries, over the beginning of things, the power and the rule of the gods that die not, and all this they deliver or hand on to the youth they teach.' ^ Here we have a regular pagan University in which by memorial verse during a course of many years a whole system of philosophy, mythology, and history is carefully handed down orally from generation to generation. The Vedic schools of India, where the early Vedas have been handed down from the days of the collection of the Rishis' songs, long before Alexander and Buddha, to our own days by the carefully trained memories of master and pupil is an example of the possibility of exact transmission in a stable society for many generations. Exact dates in the uncertain state of Indian chronology are hard to get. The secular or bardic schools of mediaeval Ireland com- ^ ' Illi rebus diuinis intersunt, sacrificia publica ac priuata procurant, religiones interpretantur ; ad hos magnus adulescentium numerus disciplinae causa concurrit, magnoque hi sunt apud eos honore. . . . Druides a bello abesse cousuenint, neque tributa una cum reliquis pendunt ; militiae uacationem omniumque rerum habent immuni- tatem. Tantia excitati praemiis et sua sponte multi in disciplinam conueniunt et a parentibus propinquisque mittuntur. Magnum ibi numerum uersuum ediscere dicuntur. Itaque annos non nulli xx in disciplina permanent. Neque fas esse existimant ea litteris mandare, cum in reliquis fere rebus, publicis priuatisque rationibus, Graecis litteris utantur. ... In primis hoc uolunt persuadere, non interire animas sed ab aliis post mortem tninsire ad alios, atque hoc maxima ad uirtutem excitari putant, metu mortis neglecto. Multa praeterea de sideribus atque eorum motu, de mundi ac terrarum magnitudine, de rerum natura, de deorum immortalium ui ac potestate disjiutant et iuueututi tradunt.' [De Bell. Gall. vi. 13-14.] R 2 244 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY prise a twelve years' course, that is to say, a pupil could not compass it in less than twelve years. These schools are undoubtedly the successors of the kind of school that Caesar's Druids kept. We have some certain information as to the work they did.^ In the first year the pupil's memory was tested by the learning of twenty tales in prose, seven as Ollamh, three as Taman, ten as Drisac, so that when he became Fochluc he had learnt elementary grammar, certain poems, and ten more tales, and was regarded as a person capable of the minor kinds of poetry. In his third year, as Mac Fuirmedh, he went on with grammar, philosophy, poetry, and ten new tales. In his fourth year as Doss he began law, learnt twenty more difficult poems and ten more tales. As Cana, in his fifth year, he went on with his gram- mar and learnt ten more tales. As Cli, in his sixth year, he learnt forty-eight poems, ten tales, and began to study the difficulties of the oldest Irish poetry. He now became Anradh (something like a Master of Arts), and was qualified as a Bard or ordinary poet. For three years he learnt poetry, acquired old Gaelic, and had to compose in various * Dr. D. Hyde, Literary History of Ireland, p, 528, &c., gives, from the Memoirs of Clanrickard, London, 1722, an account of a bardic school in the later day. It began at Michaelmas, and lasted till March 25, The pupils all brought gifts to the chief Ollamh. Those who could not read and write Irish well or had bad memories were at once sent away. The rest were divided into classes according to their proficiency and past studies, the juniors to be taught by inferior professors, the seniors by the head Ollamh himself. They were only taught at night by artificial light ; they composed and memorized each in his own dark, windowless room, where was only a bed, a clothes-rail, and two chairs. Hence luidhe i leabaibh sgol, to lie in the beds of the schools, meant to be studying to become a poet. Before the supper candles were brought round for the student to wiite down what he had composed. They then took their compositions to the hall, where they supped and talked till bed-time. On Satur- days and holidays they went out of the schools into the country, quartering themselves on the country people, who supplied their food and that of their professors. Obviously there are remains of the older discipline still to be recognized in this description. TRADITION AND ITS CONDITIONS 245 difficult metres and to learn 105 tales. For his last three years he was studying to be received as Ollamh (equivalent to our Doctor's degree), and to be known as File (a poet) or Eces (a learned man). He had now mastered 100 poems of the highest class and 175 tales (making 350 in all), which he is prepared to repeat accurately at the call of his audience. The degree was conferred by the king on the report of the examining doctor. The Ollamh thus knew poetry, history, law, and the older language, which had now passed into another stage and was becoming rapidly unintelligible. He had learnt the geography, history, and mythology of his native land. He had acquired great privileges, the musical branch corresponding to his degree, of gold as Doctor, of silver as Master, and of bronze for the lower grades. He was entitled to carry the riding-whip of state, to wear white garments and a mantle, in the case of a chief poet made of birds' feathers, white and partly coloured from the girdle down, and upward green-blue made from the necks and crests of drakes, a very old-fashioned species of honorary clothing. He had a right to entertainment and guerdon, and even as Anradh had a train of twelve persons and rode on horseback. At the banquet the head-poet's portion was the haunch. His worth-fine was that of a king or bishop, he was free from all taxation, he was believed to possess many of the supernatural powers the Druid or magus had possessed. His satire could bring out black, red, or white blisters on the face of his victim. His poetic curse, per- formed in heathen fashion, with one foot, one hand, one eye, and one breath, could cause death. He was an augur and could interpret dreams and find lucky days. He could hide his clients from their foes under magic fogs or by means of shape-changing. He could make a lethe-drink, could raise the elements, and by his magic wisp, the dlui fulle, he could cause insanity or idiocy.^ The privileges of the poets were •• It 18 curious, but not at all wonderful, that much of the reverence and fear felt for the magus in Ireland has descended upon the priest, who is firmly believed to ' know the word ', and to be able to make any 246 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY so great, and full advantage was taken of them, that they were twice publicly attacked, and only saved by powerful intercession. Public banquets were made in honour of the poets as late as 1451, and their circuits were continual sources of easy emolument. There was every encouragement for a man of good birth and fine wit to enter the Ollamh's school, and become historian, poet, taleteller, or judge to his clan.^ For from the ranks of trained scholars the hereditary poets and judges {brehons) were chosen. Remnants of this organization went on to the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it passed away after at least 1800 years of existence from the days of Caesar to those of James I. The oral teaching in the little dark huts of the scholars that flocked from various quarters, the system of memorizing vast masses of verse and prose, dealing with various natural and human phenomena deemed of the highest importance, the privileges of the doctors and the generous maintenance of the scholars, were alike under the discipline of the Druid and in the Bardic schools of distracted Ireland in the sixteenth century. Irish mediaeval manuscripts have preserved to us only a small part of the lore of the schools, but the legal Tracts, the Dinsenchus, the Dialogue of the Ancients, the many fragmentary Tales (often jotted down merely as memoranda), are specimens of the kind of traditional matter handed down by the organization. But it is evident that the acceptance one he wishes to afflict insane, or paralytic, or epileptic, or to 'change' him, and the fear of the priest's anger and secret powers is no small element in the veneration and obedience he unquestionably gets. In mid-England I know of a case in which a village wizard was believed to be able to cause the falling sickness, and have heard of an instance of his power. ' It was not till the days of the high-king Conchobhar Mac Nessa, at the beginning of the Christian era, that the office of poet no longer of necessity carried with it the position of hrehon or judge, in conse- quence of the obscure pleadings of Ferchertne and Neide when they contended for the office of High Ollamh of Erin before the Kings of P]rin. TRADITION AND ITS CONDITIONS 247 of Christianity must have profoundly disturbed the subject- matter and importance of the Pagan schools, so that for the last twelve centuries before the end came the greater part of the old teaching must have been modified or omitted ; but though many of the spells and stories of the gods and the mass of heathen cosmogony and eschatology vanished, the method remained, and we have still much genealogy, law, romance, history, and poetry of the old days. The place of the heathen religious matter was filled by the sacred history of the Church schools, where the interpretation and language of the sacred books of the Christians and the rules and law of the Church Catholic were assiduously taught, where reading was, of course, permitted, and the degree attained was that of Sai or Doctor of Divinity. But it is in the antipodes that by far the best example of the heathen university for an unlettered people is to be found. In the excellent and invaluable Maori history of John White, we have an account of a system of schools by which all valuable knowledge was accurately and orally handed down. Chief of these was the Red House, IVhare-kura, raised in a sacred place, consecrated by a living sacrifice in which need-fire was employed ; the sons of priests, having had spells recited over them, occupied this place from nightfall to dawn in the autumn, and studied from sunset to midnight for four or five months in succession. They were fed at the public expense, they were strictly disciplined, they were kept apart from the rest of the people, so that no distraction should interrupt the effort of memory. Spells and legends formed the greater part of the course, much of which consisted in the learning of verse. No man could become a teacher in less than three years, inapt pupils were at once dismissed, which with constant tests secured efficiency. Besides the Red House there was a School of Star-lore, where priests and chiefs of tiie highest rank taught the omens, the calendar, proper times and observances connected with feasts, hunting, and the times at which crops should be planted and reaped. The teaching time was always night, the school was under 248 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY tabu and opened and closed ceremoniously like the Red House. There was also a less formal establishment which one might call a School of Agriculture, where people of all classes learnt the necessary knowledge for the procuring of vegetable food and the incantations which secured good supplies. We have both in the Irish and Maori tales many examples of the regular formulae that helped the reciter, just as the regular lines that so often recur in the Homeric poems and the Chansons de geste descriptive of common operations helped the '>'hapsode and the trouvere. Among the Eddie poems we find examples of the poetic Dialogue form of Didactic compositions, dating from the last days of Scandinavian heathendom in the ninth century, giving instruction of the kind then deemed most impor- tant. These poems prove that the Scandinavians had also their method of handing down folk-lore, though there w^ere no Medicine-men or Druids in the heathen North, and though Scandinavia was never greatly given to superstition, admodum dedita religionibus, like the Gaul of Caesar^s time. What comes out of all this (and there is much more that could be said on these archaic arrangements for securing the correct transmission of knowledge and science without the use of letters) is that unless interrupted by a revolution such as the incoming of new religion and culture, conquest from abroad or enforced emigration, a certain number of traditions (larger probably than we should commonly expect) may be handed down in a form little changed for several centuries at least. Each New Zealand tribe remembered the canoe of settlers from which it took its descent as far back as the twelfth century or earlier, if we may judge from genealogies numerous enough to afford fairly safe means of comparison. For if we get sufficient pedigrees running side by side, with traditions dependent from each step, in one or another synchronisms will become apparent that will help us to ascertain within a few years the date of a battle or the TRADITION AND ITS CONDITIONS 249 accession of a chief.^ It is these synchronisms that in Mangaia (the biggest of the Hervey Islands) enabled Mr. Gill to get back to within a few years of the dates or occur- rences that took place as far back as the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, though the Hervey Islanders were wholly unlettered and had no special means save their dramas for preserving tradition.^ These dramas of theirs are exceed- ingly remarkable — they are dramas persistent in the precise stage of that the Greek drama had reached before the coming of Aischylos ; dramas performed by means of a reciter, a chorus leader, and a large chorus ; dramas dealing with history and mythology, with the tragedies of kings and gods and famous men and women, death-songs and celebrations or remembrances of striking occurrences. These dramas Avere composed by regular poets, hundreds of people took part in the performances, and if the drama was successful it was learnt and remembered by hundreds more. So that in the middle of the nineteenth century Mr. Gill was able to collect from his cultured converts a great number (probably the finest) of these plays. They were performed at night only, in time of peace, after preparations that sometimes took more than a year. They were played in groups, and some twenty would be played between sunset and sunrise by the light of fires and torches. They seldom extend beyond 100 or 200 lines. They are as allusive as the Odes of ^ It waa by these synchronisms in the parallel pedigrees of Landndma-hdc that Dr. Vigfiisson was able to solve the puzzle of Are Frode's chronology. ^ Basil Thomson concludes that the people of Nine must have been established on that island before 1300 because they have no ' certain tradition ' of their origins, and the only clues to their provenance are their customs, such as mock circumcision, absence of tattoo, a moko token, kava preserved for the priests alone, &c., and the prevalence of certain definite racial types, one like the Cook islanders, wavy- haired Polynesian, one lank-haired Malayo-Micronesian (not more than 10 per cent.), one in the SW. in Avatele with some Melanesian characteristics. He would, therefore, believing traditions, oral and unassisted, to go back no further than 600 years, put the arrival of the first settlers on Nine as earlier than five centuries ago. 250 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY Pindar himself : the explanation of many of the oldest could only be given by chiefs and priests who were constrained to become acquainted with the legends centring round the religious functions which formed their daily duties. That the Play of Captain Cook and Omai (made soon after their arrival in 1777) should be remembered a hundred years later is not surprising, though the accuracy of the native tradition as tested by Cook's own journals is noteworthy ; but we have earlier instances proving the accuracy and scope of native tradition. At the end of the sixteenth century, in the time of Shakespeare and Elizabeth, Tekaraka was exiled with his family and friends in two large double canoes on the advice of the oracle-priest of the god Motoro. Nothing was known of the fate of these outlaws, until, after the conversion of the islands, certain New Zealanders, Christians, were able to visit in peace a land that had always shown itself especially inhospitable to strangers. These Maoris brought the news of Tekaraka's landing in their islands, where many persons traced their descent to him, and where many places kept the old Mangaian names he brought there. Nearly fift)' years later Iro of the Tongan tribe raised a great conspiracy against the leading chiefs of his day, the plot was discovered, and he too was condemned by the priest of Motoro to exile. With plenty of provisions he and his friends, forty souls, sailed in tiieir two double canoes from the west of the island on their uncertain voyage, and lost sight of their native land lit up that night by the torches of their sorrowing friends. No tidings of the exiles reached Mangaia for 155 years, but Iro's sad fate was the subject of a drama, by the famous poet Koroa, played as late as 1791, amid the sympathy of a great audience. In 1826, when Christianity had just been introduced to the Harvey group, a Raratongan who came with John Williams the missionary to Mangaia told the Harvey people that Iro's canoe had reached Raratonga, where a cliief named Kainuku had given tliem a home and a welcome, repaid by their raising Kainuku's tribe to regal position through their wonderful TRADITION AND ITS CONDITIONS 251 valour in battle, so that this tribe alone could eat turtle and royal fish, the prerogative of the chiefs only in other tribes. Iro left behind him in Mangaia a message of vengeance, and before many years were out his friends revenged themselves upon those who had forced this famous and popular hero into outlawry. Here are instances where corroboration exists to prove the facts tradition has preserved. This corroboration cannot be looked for in every case, but here is an authentic example of events accurately recorded and handed down for eight generations without special means of record, for if the dramas preserved facts, yet the facts in this case had to be remem- bered without letters or even regular oral teaching. There may have been earlier dramas on the subject than those of Koroa (composed many generations after the exile of Iro), but analogy does not point to this as a necessity. Most of the dramas date from the eighteenth century, though there are dramatic songs of far older date and obscure by reason of the old language. At the end of the eleventh and the early part of the twelfth century long poems, based on oral tradition, were being composed in France and England on events and persons of the eighth and ninth centuries ; while, in the thirteenth century, a vast body of romance grew up round oral legends attached to persons who, if they existed, must, some of them, have lived and died in the sixth century. In both these cases the foundation of the new literature was certainly oral. For the ' Britannic book ', like the ' British History^, can but have contained the substance of oral traditions. It is true, as Carlyle said, that beyond a limited time (no greater perhaps than three centuries) all the past tends to be viewed as on one plane. These are the old times, — Far in the pristine days of former yore, as the parody has it, — but even then a certain order is remembered ; the two Cromwclls may be confused, but they are known to be later than the Danes, and the Danes them- 252 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY selves younger than the *old Romans'. In the far-off landscape, only a few peaks catch the sun, only a few names survive, but we must remember that with us since the Conversion, which began in the late sixth century, there has been no systematic tradition, no organization that secured the handing down of that great mass of heathen history and knowledge which the Teutonic settlers must have brought across the North Sea in the fifth century. Kings, like Alfred and his exemplar, Charles, may have busied themselves with the collection of the old songs, but the change in religion, in language, and in culture, and the long disgrace under which all that had affinity to the Old Faith had so long lain, must have prevented their collections, of which so little now remain, from being at all adequately representa- tive of the vast mass of tradition that belonged to the past. Spells have survived in out-of-the-way places, and a few curious penmen (to whom we owe great gratitude) took the trouble to write down some few compositions in which they were personally interested. It is to such a stray collector that the preservation of the two collections of the Eddie poems is due. But the mass of old lore in Britain has perished, and in the field of folk-lore it is only from tiny fragments that we can gain a knowledge of how far our ancestors were able to maintain and transmit their own knowledge of the past. Personally I think the transmission-power of tradition has been very much undervalued ^, since we, in modern days, * If I may be permitted to refer to the Gnmm Centenm-y Papers (Oxford, 1886), I believe that my master, Dr. Vigfiisson, made it most likely that the recollection of Sigfred was 1,000 years old when the Northern colonist in Greenland made a Lay about the tragedy of the revenge taken for him, and when in these ' Western Isles ' of Britain Northern colonists made the Lays that deal with his fall, his wife's widowhood, and the death of his murderers. I have not alluded to the well-known case of the gold-clad giant of Mold, a tradition that lived through several centuries at least orally, and the remarkable preservation of place-names in England through many centuries (frequently more than ten) merits special notice here. TRADITION AND ITS CONDITIONS 253 have so little experience of its possibilities and scope. Unlettered tradition will always be at the mercy of a slight cataclysm. It is not till tradition is committed to letters that its preservation is at all definitely assured. And this is a truth that, even in this century, is not sufficiently recog- nized. Societies such as ours must be the recorders. Our function as Recorders and Remembrancers is even more important than our function as Interpreters. Our oppor- tunities for record are swiftly and silently slipping past. There will always be time for the systematizers, but at present the Duty of Collection is to my mind paramount. Bi:0 WULF ' Easy to understand is the abiding interest of Beowulf, a noble work of art, in spite of faults due largely to the scniples of the composer through whose hands the heathen traditions passed and came forth robbed of many features of interest, scarred by omissions, but loaded with heavy moraliz- ings. There rings throughout the poem a noble tone, and not a few passages that appeal now as strongly as ever to the deepest and highest human feelings. Not Wordsworth at his best felt more truly that close fellowship with nature, that intense sympathy with mother Earth and all her children, that deep sense of the glory and pathos of human life, that sturdy faith face to face with the immensities, than did this old-world singer, so far from us in time, so close in heart ; though centuries have passed over this land since he and the heroes he sung of were numbered with the dead, and, as he himself says in a famous passage : — The horsemen are sleeping. The brave in the grave ; there is no sound of harp there. No mirth in the courts, as was wont there of yore. » 1898. 254 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY NIBELUNGENLIED ^ The Nibelungenlied is assuredly not one of the great poems of the world, not even one of the great epics ; it is inferior to Roland, to the best of the William of Orange cycle, to Beowulf, perhaps to the Aryonauticon, none of which can be placed in the first rank. It is enormously in- ferior to the little Scandinavian epics that deal with the same subject. It has many faults of construction, of execution, of tone. But it is a powerful and readable mediaeval poem with a fairly well-arranged plot, and its obvious defects — the stanzaic measure, the long-winded narrative, the flat conventional colouring, the useless and childish exaggerations — are not such as interfere too much with the reader^s enjoyment. Its most obvious blemish to the modern — the mediaeval aspect in which a prae-mediaeval tale and characters are draped — does occasionally jar a little, but it is a necessary factor of much good mediaeval work, and must be frankly accepted. Its strong points are its simplicity, the unaffected sympathy of the poet for the people he is singing about, the skill with which he often manages his own peculiar metre, maintaining the rolling swing of his lines, as of billow following billow, with the endless variety of cadence of the North Sea waves ; his lack of sentimentality (even in the matter of the blameless Margrave), and the interesting little personal touches in which he makes his own reflections ; his ' asides ' to the audience upon the action as it proceeds, his obvious sense of the bitter reality of the whole thing, his real power (even concentration at times) in tragic moments ; his true, if imcouth and rough, humour when matters wax grimmest, lighting up and so really intensifying the horrid gloom. Let us take a few specimens, and two stanzas of the memorable and well-known induction first, which might be roughly but pretty closely rendered : — To us in stories olden is many a marvel told Of heroes highly holden, of deeds both great and bold. Of joys and merry makings, of weeping and of wail. Of noble warriors' battles, marvels shall ye now hear tell, ^ 1897. NIBELUNGENLIED 255 There grew up in Burgundy a noble maiden free, In no land on earth could fairer damsel be, Kriemhild her name was; she became a beauteous wife; Many a noble vassal for her sake must lose his life. . . . For further instance we might give that notable passage where Dancwart ' walks proudly to court ', which might stand in pretty close English : — When the doughty Dancwart ^neath the hall-gate was come. The vassals of King Attila he bade them give him room ; Not one of his garments but was dripping all with gore. And a great and mighty weapon drawn in his hand he bore. Across the hall he shouted, in a loud voice and strong, * Hagen ! Brother Hagen ! ye be sitting here too long ! To you and God in heaven I commend me in our need ; Your knights and squires are lying all in their lodging dead/ . . . The good knight who made it is at his very best here; even his epic formulae seem no longer pieces of style, but true enhancement, not to be spared if the impression is to be complete. How impressive it is — the feast at its height, the great hall gay with colour and metal, and the sudden hasty entrance of this big man, sword in hand, shieldless, dyed in blood, with his loud stern appeal, the death-knell of well-nigh every soul there, in that vast gathering of the starkest warriors of the world ! Again, let us take the opening of the fine scene of the night-watch, when the two veterans are cheerily keeping guard over their doomed kinsmen and friends ; we may render it thus : — ' Chill grow the mail-rings on me,' Volker spake and said. * Full well I know from over us the night will soon be sped. By the sky 1 tell 'twill soon be open day ! ' Then they woke up their company that still a-sleeping lay. Again, we may translate : — There was full mighty glory left lying there dead, The people all were falling to wailing and to need ; The King's high feast had ended in bitter grief enow. As ever Love to Loathing at the last must go ! 256 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY What later befell there I cannot unfold ; Knights and ladies weeping there were to behold, And noble squires likewise, for their dear kinsmen dead. Here hath this story ending ! This is the Nibelung's Need! The thirteenth-century Norwegian author used sources much more archaic than, if not quite so poetic as, the Austrian Nibelungenlied of a century earlier. The earlier Scandinavian versions of the tenth and eleventh centuries are accessible to English readers in Dr. Vigfusson's text; and there is William Morris's poem. A FINNISH EPIC ^ The Finns have a literary life of their own ; one that, like their music, is drawn from popular sources and is of recent development. The history of the movement by which an imlettered people, whose ideal of culture had been imitation of Swedish literature and the acquisition of Swedish and Latin as modes of expression, turned to the cultivation of their own tongue, the garnering of their own unwritten poetry and traditions, and upon this foundation proceeded to build up a national literature and an adaptation of the national spoken language to the purposes of a * book-tongue ' — all this is a piece of recent history, the course of which is known and its different stages traced. It has been in great part told clearly and pleasantly by Professor Comparetti, the well- known Italian scholar and 'folk-lorist', in the apt and careful translation before us, to which Mr. Lang (who is entitled to speak upon the Homeric problem, long one of his favourite subjects) contributes a learned and readable preface, wherein he shows what he takes to be the bearings of the story of the Kalevala upon the composition of the vulgate texts of Homer. ^ The Traditional Poetry of the Finns. By Domenico Comparetti. Translated by Isabella M. Anderton, 1899. A FINNISH EPIC 257 Now, the story of the way the Kahvala, now the national epic of Finland, was put together is an interesting and also a significant one. In 1835 Lonnrot, a native Finn, a doctor and lover of popular poetry and folk-lore of his country-folk, published, through the Finnish Literary Society (which he had helped to found four years earlier) at Helsingfors, an epic, which he had woven together out of various folk-songs or, as the Finns call them, ininos, and entitled it Kalevala, after the name of one of the heroic beings appearing in it. This Kalevala was a distinct composition by a clever and poetic- minded man, well trained in the cadences and characteristics of Finnish popular unwritten poetry, of which he had accumulated a vast store taken down from the lips of the most famous folk-singers of his time. Out of this store or treasury of living song the worthy doctor chose those lays that dealt with the myths of Vainamoinen and of the quest for the magic Sampo, the tragedy of fair Aino, the wooing of the sea-god's daughter by Kaukomoinen and other of his adventures, the wooing of the maiden that sits on the rainbow by the children of the Host of Heaven, the tragedy of Kojonen, who slew his wife and himself, the origin of the kantele or Finnish zither (upon which the music needed by the reciters of those folk-ballads and folk-epics is played) ; certain magic songs, such as the song of Fire, of tlie Bear- killer, of the healing of sickness; the lays of the Virgin Mary and of the judgement of Vainamoinen and his self-banish- ment in his sorrow and anger at the advent of Kullervo, Kalervos's son, and the sad end of Tunro (?), for the horror of which we must seek a full parallel among our own North- country ballads or those Russian byliny that tell of Aljoscha Popovic, whence, indeed, Tunro's story is in all probability derived. These various lays he fitted together so as to make, as far as he could, a connected story, not scrupling to add verses of his own to effect the junctures of the various incon- gruous pieces of material he used, not scrupling to give his heroes adventures that really belonged to others, nor even to modify and alter his matter to suit his purpose. In the lays Y. P. II 8 ^58 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY he used he did not follow a single text, but combined variants as he thought fit. He arranged, retouched, and as far as possible unified the various elements at his disposal, while on the whole he took care that the mass of the long epic produced should consist of matter and verse that were essentially tradi- tional and folk-born. The result was a poem that not only caught the fancy of the patriotic Finnish public, just awaking to a feeling of nationality, but attracted the admiring attention of foreigners such as Jacob Grimm. The Finns at once accepted Kalevala with pride as the exponent of its own genius and embodiment of its own national qualities. The doctor's composition became a European classic. It is an inorganic compound, but the factors were natural products. There was not so much ' fake ' in it as there was in Ossian, less, indeed, of the compiler himself than there is of the Austrian knight in the Nibelungenlied. If some worthy Spaniard or Russ were to put together the separate cycles of by liny or romances and weave them into a long and connected whole, the result would be comparable to that of Lonnrot. Now the origin of the long Homeric epic and Hindu epic is a matter much debated. In the case of the Niflung epic we have separate short lays made by Scandinavians in the ninth and tenth centuries in their colonies from Great Britain to Greenland ; we have also three centuries later a regular composition in many thousand lines in which a South German litterateur has endeavoured to tell the old story in his own way. But he does not use the Scandinavian short epics or ballads as his material. The question is, as to Homer, somewhat of this kind. No one now doubts that the Iliad and Odyssey, as we have them, are artificial book-poems made of several kinds of material. They were ' composed ' as we have them by a * literary ' rather than a popular process ; persons at least as ' civilized ' and ' modern ' as Dr. Lonnrot himself have been at work in ancient Hellas, and their achievement, but not their raw material, has reached us. It is quite possible to detect variations of style and dialect, variations of matter A FINNISH EPIC 259 and thought, underlying the vulgate Iliad and Odyssey, and so to get at some conclusions respecting the material out of which they were composed. The tale of the ^ Home- coming of Odusseus* has, it must be confessed, a poor skimpy ending attached to it to eke out the twenty-four books ; but at its best it is perhaps the noblest part of all Homer, and rests on good genuine traditional stuff. The Phaeacian episode is poor, thin, and artificial in comparison, and wholly modern in tone ; the * Sinbad the Sailor ' adventures rest on popular stories that had probably been attached to travellers older and other than the son of Laertes. Again, the Odyssey does not tell the whole history of its hero ; there must have been poems, surely, dealing with the Beguiling of Philoctetes, with the contest in which the hero strove gainfully with the brawny Aias, the search for Achilles, the stealing of the Luck of Troy, and many other notable adventures. Yet no line of these has reached us. The necessity for symmetry, the exigencies of space (twenty-four books), the Greek dislike of heavy clumsiness have confined the Odyssey to definite bounds. The process that has given us Kalevala and the Odyssey is (apart from the question of exact amount of modification of material) the same essentially. Only the Odyssey is, of course, a far finer poem than Kalevala. In the Odyssey the result is probably immensely superior to the separate factors. In the case of Kalevala the material is so very slightly modified that there is but little difference between elements and compound. Mr. Lang will hardly admit that the process is the same in the case of the Odyssey and the Kalevala, because the result is so different. It is different because the material dealt with is different, because the lays about Odusseus were very much more beautiful, more artistic, more elaborate than the half- barbarous Finnish ballads about Viiinamoincn and Ilniarinen and the mysterious Sampo. It is, however, perfectly possible to find out Lonnrot's process by analysis ; that is to say, the skilled critic could have discovered from Kalevala itself that it was made up of various elements. And the analysis s a 260 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY of Kalevala does not at all invalidate the conclusions critics have reached respecting the Hexateuch or the Homeric poems. As to the quality of the Kalevala and of the ballads out of which it was woven, Mr. Lang quite rightly says that it has a true charm, that of the ' magical handling of nature . . . the expression of early humanity, above all, among races, isolated, remote, defeated, abiding in the solitude of hills and forests, culling its songs " from the plumes of the fir trees, the winds in the woods, the music of many waters^". It may be well to remind those who may care to study Dr. Comparetti's book en pleine connaissance de cause that there is a fair translation of the Kalevala by Mr. Crawford published in the United States, and that there is an excellent grammar of Finnish by Mr. Eliot, of the diplomatic service, brought out under the auspices of the Clarendon Press. The notes, bibliographic and literary, of Dr. Comparetti's book will give the reader a good notion of what has been done for the Finnish folk-literature by European scholarship. Those who have an opportunity of travelling in Finland will find Helsingfors University the centre of a very vigorous and intelligent Finnish culture. THE KALEVIPOEG : HERO OF ESTHONIA ' To most readers this curious epic, almost more formless than the gigantic and amorphous Hindu poems of Vyasa and Valmiki, but as simple as the finer Irish or Scandinavian poems, yet possesses a curious glamour, a misty iridescence, as it were, of a spring morning, that has a charm of its own. The rustic or the elfin nymphs, sad or merry, that are seen from time to time in the glades of this epic ; the wicked old hags, as of some Polynesian tale ; the powerful sorceress, the * The Hero of Esthonia, and other Studies in the Romantic Literature of that Country. Compiled from Esthonian and German sources by W. F. Kirby. 1895. THE KALEVIPOEG 261 mighty smiths, and the cunning Loke-like demons: — these form a kind of setting which displays the central figure, the huge, hurly young hero, yeoman-like as young Gamlyn, the ideal of a peasant's song, with all the animality, the recklessness, the thirst for adventure that becomes him, now performing gigantic feats ; wading wan waters ; Thor-like, carrying huge loads; Samson-like, fighting with rocks and fists and monstrous pine-tree club ; like Renouard himself, laughing with the girls, drinking with the men, and sleeping for days and even weeks after his bouts of superhuman exertion. The character recalls most clearly the Heracles of Aristophanes and of Euripides, the champion of primitive order against the disorder of the surrounding world, the forest-clearer, the monster-slayer, the jolly trencherman, the generous toper, kindly, friendly, fear- less, easily roused to wrath or soothed to friendship, the only mortal that ever won a throw against that master-wrestler Death himself. The Kalevide's journeys into the lower world, where he plunders Old Horny's domains, are pretty close parallels to ThorkelPs voyages as told by Saxo. There is something Gargantuan about it all, and the sea voyage reminds one now of St. Brandan, now of that questing company that ' passed Beyond' and attained unto the nymph- kept shrine and the hallowed fount, entering at the jasper portals by the light of that lantern ' than which there was no better or more divine in all the region of Lanternitia '. But there is no allegory about our Esthonian epic ; its force is natural, elemental, even childish in parts, but never lacking in a strong simplicity. * The curse that fell on Kalev's mighty son ' was a curse he brought on himself, and he perished by his own sword, yet there is work for him even after death, and he is set to keep Hell-gates, and so preserve the earth from the invasions of the cruel subterranean hosts. 262 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY GiSLI THE OUTLAW This little volume was unhappily not fated to get its last revision and preface from its author's hand, and those who loved her have taken upon them the last cares of bringing it into print. It has fallen to me to write a few words of introduction. It was Miss Barmby's pleasure, during many long hours that would otherwise have passed heavily and often painfully, to busy herself with the Old Northern tongue and literature. She taught herself Icelandic, and she entered gladly and sympathetically into the wonderful scenes and landscapes to which that speech is the key. The fruit of part of her joy in and fellow-feeling for the heroic age of Iceland as revealed by the sagas is the content of this book. It falls into three parts : first the play, next the original poems suggested by Icelandic subjects, and thirdly versions of Old Northern poetry of different times. The story of Gisli, on which Miss Barmby's drama is firmly and wisely based, is perhaps, of all Icelandic stories dealing with Ice- landers, the best fitted for regular dramatic treatment. She felt this instinctively, and her choice of a subject is abun- dantly justified by her working out. Indeed, of all the plays I have read founded upon the sagas — and there are not a few in various tongues — hers seems to me the best, and my judgement is not in this case singular. She has understood how to treat her original, both by selecting only those incidents that are of dramatic value and by interfering with these parts of the original as little as possible ; so that Gisli, the hero, stands clearly out in her play without exaggeration or modern elaboration. His character, with its sympathetic and poetic temperament, allied to a constant obedience to justice and duty in*espective of all risk and all temptations, was one that doomed him to much suffering, to much ingratitude, and to a tragic fate, but brought him ' Preface to Gisli Sursson : a Drama. By Beatrice Helen Barmby. 1900. GfSLI THE OUTLAW 263 much love and the honour of even his foes. When at the last the clouds that had shattered his life and vexed his mind were lifted, and the issues that had wrung his generous, dutiful heart were clear for ever, he met death as bravely as he had faced life, wishful only to thank his noble wife for the patient and loving care and courage that had upheld him in his long and haunted outlawry. Such a death and such a life as his in all their sadness yet did not stand for failure, and this is clear to the reader. Gisli has ' dreed his weird ', but the doom has made a hero of him ; he has stood up for all that makes true life. He has really lived and lived nobly, and death snatches him from pain, from wander- ing, from the horror of darkness and the terror of night, from old age and sickness and the weakness that comes so cruelly to strong men. In his death-fight it was noted that his last blow was as sure and hard as his first, and of all those great encounters when famous heroes fought at bay, there was none remembered so wonderful as his stand, out on the hillside with his brave wife looking on and his dead foes at his feet. Like Gunnar, Gisli, * gentlest of outlaws,' has a tenderness, a sense of the lurking caprice of life, a plain and cheery patience, and an unquestioning generosity that were fitted for companionship with nobler souls than the bulk of those about him. But the lesser personages of the tragedy are not less dis- tinctly set forth in Miss Barmby's play : Aud, an ideal wife ^ brave, shrewd, never-failing, the one person that alv^ ays from the very beginning is aware of the full worth and beauty of Gisli's character and treats him as he deserves to be treated, cheerfully facing exile, insult, and death for him ; Thorkel, vain, selfish, ambitious, a man to be stirred easily enough by greed or hate or jealousy, but never to be deeply moved by love or pity or gratitude, a formalist in his very aifection, a calculator in his most impulsive moments, but with the handsome face and careless good nature tiiat have marked ^ Only in the Nut-hroum Maid, I think, have we precisely such a character fully drawn in English literature. 264 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY other selfish men and won for them the enduring and patient kindnesses of men and women far better than themselves ; Vestein, bright, courteous and true, fit friend for Gisli, fit brother for Aud, and fit father for the boys whose simple rectitude and naive guile brought them both death and success, on the path that duty, as they saw it, led them ; Asgerd, proud and wilful ; Gest, with the uncanny pre- science that he would fain control, knowing that his words could never avert the storms he foretold, and that must out ; Gudrid, grateful and impulsive, to whom even the very shadow of dishonour is intolerable ; Thorgrim, who hates Gisli because he knows he is a better man than himself, but who never fears to risk his own skin to sate his brutal, sullen temper ; Eyjolf, base-hearted and purse-proud, callous of others, careful of himself, foul-minded, vile instrument of chance, most shameful and odious in his successes, so that his plotted triumphs turn to his foul dishonour and bring the open mockery of his very hireling upon him. The required effects, the fatal moments of the action as it inexorably proceeds step by step to the end, are obtained by a broad, simple treatment, a straightforward construction, and plain and suitable diction. The * repeat^ tluit is used with such excellent and legitimate effect in several modern plays is here admirably and naturally employed. The whole story is envisaged as a tragedy that, like Beowulf, and for that matter Hamlet, turns on the pivot of duty. Gisli, like the son of Ecgtheow, and unlike the son of Gertrude, accepts the burden and bears it manfully. His hauntings are not the gnawing of the uneasy conscience, the torments of irresolution, but the results of the cruel buffetings of cold, of long watchfulness and dark loneliness and stark hunger, and of brooding sorrow for the well-beloved slain in inno- cence, the enemy's worst injury. Gisli's whole career is indeed an implicit but plain acknowledgement that though life is good and pleasant there are far worse things than death, and the play is accordingly a signal expression of that Northern stoicism that was to our English and Scandinavian GISLI THE OUTLAW 265 ancestors the true way of manliness and womanliness. And this, it will seem to the hearer and reader, I am sure, Miss Barmby has essentially expressed. She has felt the tragedy herself, and she has been able to convey its poignancy, The inborn sense of tears in human things, in a new medium. It is seldom that a work of art so perfect in one shape can be with so little change transported into a new form, but, to my mind, this rare transformation has been triumphantly accomplished here. The play was meant for acting, and it is evidently actable. I do not remember any other play of late years by an Eng- lish hand that has dealt with an heroic subject and yet dealt with it dramatically. If it had been written by a Danish woman or a French man it would have been represented ere this with all the adjuncts that the actor's art could supply. It is certainly not in any way inferior to those plays of Ibsen's earlier period that have in their day met with much applause. It is far less stagey, far more dramatic, and a hundred times more artistic than those classic plays that the Germans listen to with such patient and undeserved attention because they were written by men held famous. It is a serious and genuine tragedy, moving with the direct- ness of a Greek piece, and not, like a Greek piece, neces- sarily stripped of action. It needs no apology. It deserves a respectful hearing. Over the rest of the volume, which, in its way, is little less remarkable than this play of Gisli, it is permissible to linger for a little. The poems of which it is made up exhibit several phases of the classic Icelandic literature, skilfully garbed in our English tongue, so that he that runs may read. That they were translated out of the pure pleasure of translating is evident, and that they deserve printing, not only from the merit of their subjects, but from the deft ability of the translatress, is surely clear also. Miss Barmby was greatly affected by the work of Sturla, a notable writer, who is the last of the Icelandic classic masters of prose, and tells the tale of the Civil Wars that wrecked the 266 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY commonwealth, with a power and simplicity that are unsur- passed, as any one that has read the history of his own time in his own words wOl testify. Miss Barmby has grasped Sturla's character, has appreciated his style, and been stirred by the deep poetry of his histories. She has been well advised to take out episodes and treat them in her own way, preserving the essence, but not troubling to dwell on the non-essentials. Her Burning of Flugumyr is an excellent ballad, in which the story of the outrage is told as it presents itself to the ballad-maker. She does not go over the story line by line like the Rimur-makers, or old Parker, or our later St. Giles's bards, but she seizes on the significants and enforces those. She will leave out the silver belt and the whey-butts which befit Defoe's prose, but are not needful to her verse ; but she dwells on the haste of Eyjolf, the pride of the bride, the mock of Kolbein, the lament of Earl Gizur and the curse he laid upon those that slew his nearest and dearest : — * I may not weep for my gold and gear, nor the shame that's done to me. But for my wife and my three sons that never the day may see. ' For I may build my halls,' he said, * and gather my company. But never build up the Hawkdale House that finds its end in me. ' There shall never be men in Iceland more, from the Heaths to the Silent Sea, But they shall remember the deed that 's done and the ven- geance that yet shall be ! ' This is the right stuff. In Bolli and Gudriln, again, that grim meeting between the lady, who in her venomous pride and bitter jealousy plotted the murder of the only man she loved, and the murderer who betrayed his best friend, is not unworthily treated, though it was no easy thing to handle rightly. I greatly prefer Miss Barmby 's verse here to the same passage in Morris's Lovers of Gudriin. Morris is GISLI THE OUTLAW 267 sentimental in Tennysonian fashion. For once he does not dare to face the direct truth, he softens away the facts, he writes in the genteel spirit of the Idylls, misled by his master apparently; he makes a real mistake in his story-telling — a rare thing with him, and a thing almost incredible in his later work ; but Miss Barmby has not recoiled from the cruel pity of it, and she has her reward. In Glum the Poet a stray and suggestive allusion is ad- mirably worked up into a ballad of the style of those weird predictions of the fourteenth century that centre round the Wee Man and True Thomas. In Springday and Menglad the latest and most romantic of the Eddie tales is treated in the German fashion, which well beseems it, for we have not the tale in its older form. But the older Eddie poems are better represented in the Waking of Angantyr, where there is some of the fateful force of Gray, though the verses have not, in all probability, received their final polish, and in the careful Lay of Atli, that in the original, maimed and curtailed as it is, is yet the most splendid of all the poems that the Fall of the Burgundians has inspired. It was a right instinct that led Miss Barmby to rejoice over verses such as these — Rin seal ra^a rog-malmi scatna. • •••••• 1 veltanda vatni lysask val-baugar heldr an a haondom goU skini Huna baornom^ — which have a pomp and glory of diction that none of these old Scandinavian poems can rival. The Sons' Loss is a fine rendering of what is left of Egil's greatest and most pathetic poem, where in a prophetic strain, with passionate figures that recall the fierce old Hebrew Dirges and Complaints, the undaunted patriarch faces the Death that had done her worst upon his house. The later mediaeval knight-errantry ' [' The Rhine shall possess the strife-begetting treasure of the heroes. . . . The great rings shall gleam in the rolling waters rather than they shall shine on the hands of the sons of the Huns.' Corp. Poet. Bor., vol. i. p. 49. — Ed.] 268 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY which left its traces in Snorri's later Kings' Lives is well brought out in the song of Harald Hardrede, wherein the old simple Wicking-life of battle and storm and the old mocking scorn of the soft stay-at-homes, that Cormac long ago voiced, are mingled with a most un-Norwegian desire to gain a proud lady's favour by the flattery of song : — We were sixteen lads a-baling together, O lady gay. And the sea grew high and the billows on the bark ])roke grim and grey ; Little the loitering laggard would haste to such a play, Yet gold-decked Gerda of Russia has naught but scorn for me ! I was born where far in the Uplands men bend the twanging bow, But now I sweep past the skerries, and the farmers my galley know. And wide, since I first sped seaward, I have cloven the sea with my prow. Yet gold-decked Gerda of Russia has naught but scorn for me ! In the meditations oiEyvind the Poe/ and Raven Oddsson Miss Barmby has taken Browning for her master, and tried to sum up in soliloquy the character and situation of two singular and marked characters. I am not so much drawn to these poems as to her translations, though I can see that they are skilful and in some ways effective, as I do not care for the medium chosen and mistrust its capabilities perhaps too much. I feel the same kind of objection to Eyvind Scarred-face and The Night be/ore Stiklastad, which are more purely imaginative and do not seem to me to express ancient reality, but a modern point of view — legitimate, I confess, but to me personally not sympathetic ; Tep-nvov 8' iv av6p(a7TOis 1(tov eaaerat ovhlv. I feel, on the other hand, that in the Dirge of Erling the gentleness of Sighwat, his spiritual courage and his fidelity, the very qualities that made the holy king love him and provoked poor loving Thormod's jealousy, are cleverly and GISLI THE OUTLAW 269 surely expressed, without any touch that is not in keeping with the spirit of the original. Whereas in Eyvind Scarred- face we have a story of mediaeval invention, due in all probability to the zeal of some bigoted clerk, dwelling on heathen obstinacy of the stupid Pharaonic or Neronian style, turned into an appeal for toleration. It is allowable to use a story in this way, I admit, but its device and treatment jar, to my feeling, with the clear sharp note of the best of the ballads that Miss Barmby has here translated or originated. Paul Vidalin's and Johti Thorldkssoii' s ditties have the true mint-mark of the old poetry about them — a deftness, a laconism, an absence of the lack-lustre, blurred reflections that the muddy thinking of poets with less brains than melody has made too tolerable to us. The translatress has perceived their true quality and gone far to render it. It is because Miss Barmby was so frankly awake to the true charm of the Northern dream-ladies, to the joy of songs and tales that could enthral men of action and brain-power, skilful sailors, stubborn soldiers, crafty statesmen, that her work, though one must regret it has often lacked the last touches of her skilled hand, will, I think, at its best remain to witness, for many who can never attain to the originals, faithfully and sympathetically to the masterpieces of the greatest literature the Teutonic peoples produced till the days of the English Wickings came, and Philip shivered, like his forebear Charles the Great, to hear of the Northern rovers that disturbed his proud dreams of world-empire, when men whose blood and speech were akin to those of Egil and Sturla once more came to their heritage and ruled the realm of song as they ruled the sea. Upon the writer of tliis little book the ' unfriendly night ' came down too soon, and it has been a real regret to me that I never had speech of her. Her work seems to me to show gifts that had not yet attained their full perfection (in spite of what I regard as the astonishing achievement of this play of Gisli) when the end fell upon the ' poet captive '. I can only be glad that the piety of friends has rescued these 270 MYTH, SAGA, AND HEROIC POETRY poems from time, and given them as a memorial of the undaunted courage, the fine skill, the busy curious brain, and the brave gentle heart of their writer, and I am glad to have been able to set in these few lines my stone to the cairn of her remembrance — 7roTi(f)opoi 8' ayadolcn ^iicrdos ovroy. VI OTHER LITERATURE [The paper on English Allegoi-y leads the way from the mediaeval scholarship of the last section to Powell's three finished appreciations of modern literature. It was read on July 5, 1895, to a private society, the ' Sette of Odd "Volumes ', and printed by them. The verses are in the form of a dialogue between one of the members termed the ' Playwright ', and Powell himself, ' Brother Ignoramus', so called a nihil ignorando. Defoe was published in the very limited issue of The Quarto, 1891, and Meinhold in The Pageant for 1896, soon out of print. All of them show Powell's inborn and impassioned sense for that kind of style which is nearest the quintessence of living, often homely speech, and yet is magically discriminated and sifted therefrom by the artist's instinct— a sense that is rooted not in any literary theory, but in the feeling for life itself. We may remember what he says of Bunyan in a letter : ' His prose intoxicates me with pleasure. I read bits over and over again ; they sound to me something of exquisite rusticity, like an old country song.' The appended note on fairy-tale writing is in spirit akin ; but the same kind of joy in rougher phrase that comes straight from the life informs the article on Mr. Kipling. From a different region are the judgements upon Turgueniev and Mr. Swinburne, with the latter of which should be compared the words in the letter printed in Memoir, p. 21. The lecture on the influence of the Irish genius, given in Dublin on April 7, 190'2, is pasted in the Scrap-book, as a press report.. It survives in that form alone, but is here turned back from reported speech, with a few verbal corrections. It is clearly some- what shortened, but is well worth saving.] SOME WORDS ON ALLEGORY IN ENGLAND Dixit Frater Ignoramus — Piscibus copertus liainvs Valde mordax ac mortalis Est AUegoria talis ! 272 OTHER LITERATURE Ast respondit Dramatista Tu ne crede, frater, ista ! Te decipiunt verba, quia Non est sic Allegoria ; Est Matrona pulchra, decens, Cui origo non est recenSy Cvjus lingua bene pendit, Ac mens omnia prehendit, Velata admodum Vestalis, Est Allegoria talis! Causam, fratres, judicata Et victori plausum date. Allegory has long been with us, it forms part of our speech and part of our thoughts, its power for good and evil has been manifest often enough in human history, it is difficult indeed to keep clear of its influence, even where it is possible to do so, and we are reduced to the use of symbols if we would escape the magic of what is itself but a sym- bolization. In a famous passage, which I shall here English, of his best known epistle, that to Can Grande, introducing his great poem, Dante sets forth the meaning of the term Allegory as he understood it. ' And according to the testi- mony to be spoken it must be understood that of this work there is not merely one single meaning or significance, but rather, it should be called polyseme, that is, of many meanings, for there is one significance of the letter and an- other significance of the meaning of the letter ; and the first is called literal, but the second allegoric or mystic. Which kind of process, that it may be the better set forth, may be considered with regard to this verse. When Israel went out of Egypt and the house of Israel from among a strange people, Judah became his holiness and Israel his pwwer. For if we look at the letter alone, there is set forth the coming up out of Egypt of the sons of Israel in the days of Moses ; if into the Allegory, there is set forth to us our Redemption, through Christ. If into the moral or ethical meaning, there is set forth to us the conversion of the Soul from the struggle and ALLEGORY IN ENGLAND 273 wretchedness of sin to a state of grace. If into the anagogic sense, there is set forth the issue of the holy Soul from the slavery of this Corruption into the freedom of Glory Ever- lasting ; and though these mystic senses be called by divers names they may all be called generally allegoric, for allegory is called from the Greek alleon, which in Latin is called aliene or diverse.' This is plain enough, and I would define allegory for my purposes as a literary representation of qualities by beings and objects ; an algebra, as it were, of the mind, long used by great thinkers and poets to set forth more vividly and passionately their imaginings and conclusions. England in especial has had many famous allegorists, Long Will of Langland, good Master Robert Henryson, Edmund Spenser, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swih ; and there are modern masters of the art allegoric, whose names will readily recur to every reader. The flowers are ours and the fruit, but the seed was fetched from over the sea. The Romance of the Rose, a grave, pretty tale of love, left unfinished by William of Lorris, to receive after a long interval a marvellous and encyclopaedic completion by John Clopinel of Meun, most weighty, most cynical and most humorous of mediaeval ethical teachers : the Pilgrimage of Deguilleville, the best-known example of a type of allegory that has gone far since his day : above all, the noblest book the Middle Ages have left us, vast and lofty as a great Gothic cathedral, as elaborate in detail and as holy in purpose — the Divine Comedy, portraying the pro- gress of the Human Soul towards the Divine. Such were the models in the hands of our fourteenth and fifteenth century writers. The makers of the models themselves, French and Italian alike, had woven their beautiful dreams after the pattern of the heathen Roman's Dream of Scipio, of the Consolation of Wisdom (whicli our Alfred englisiicd) by the wise and much-enduring Booce, and of the fantastic Marriage of Philology by Marcianus (Saxo's master in style). Y. r. II T 274 OTHER LITERATURE These, and besides these, that curious series of symbolic Christian Visions, Adamnan's, Fursey^s, Tungdal's, which Bede and later hagiographers have preserved for us — wild horrors of the brain and heart, sprung from the vast Oriental imaginations of fasting seers and prophets, grafted on yet older and more primitive theories and crude myths of heathen magicians and medicine-men — all these lie at the stem of our famous English allegories. But beyond these too, far back as literature exists at all, aye, as far as words and sentences have sound, the roots of Allegory stretch into the primaeval darkness that broods over our human beginnings. We cannot win back so far to-night : we must be content to begin with Langland, a name as unknown five and twenty years ago as it was well known five centuries earlier. An earnest, sorrowful personage, that had learnt his wisdom in the hard school of the world, as well as out of crabbed vellums, with the Malvern Hills for his Ecclefechan and the busy, squalid, slimy hithe by Thames Street for the orderly peace of Cheyne Walk ; the Carlyle of his time, and with no less influence ; scornful, pitiful, hopeful, though few stars pierced the black night through which he was steering. With less impatience than tormented * true Thomas ' and none of that childish make-believe that seems to be a part of Tolstoi's nature, Langland perceived, long before the famous Scot or notorious Russian, that the faithful, simple, hard- working Piers Plowman, peasant or fisherman, taught of earth and sea, comes perhaps nearer the apostolic life preached and jjractised in Galilee than any other we know. This poor, proud, lean, long-legged clerk, stalking silent and self-absorbed to his chantry, along the merry, noisy, dirty, bright-coloured, stinking Eastcheap of Richard H's day, was indeed the wisest man then alive'in England. One cannot forget his bold Apologue of the rats that would bell the cat ; his keen etching of the sluggish, servile Parliament ' that dreaded Dukes and forsook Do-Well ' ; his miniatures of Lady Meed and her supporters in Church and State ; his Hogarthian picture of the seven Deadly Sins portrayed as ALLEGORY IN ENGLAND 275 seven English types of his day : — the tavern braggart, Pride ; the meagre backbiting merchant, Envy ; the mischievous convent cook, Ire ; the drunken village whoremonger, Lechery ; the ragged tradesman. Avarice ; the ale-house sot. Glutton, who when he set out for home at night ' could neither step nor stand till he had a staff, and then he began to go like a gleeman's bitch, sometimes aside sometimes arear, as a man that is laying lines to catch larks ' ; and last and least, the idle, gossiping, ungrateful, poaching priest. Sloth. Nor of less interest is his clear chart of the pilgrim's Path to Truth through Meekness to Conscience across the brook of Natural Piety, by the side of Swear- not to the croft of Covet-not, past the stocks Steal-not and Slay-not on the left to the park of Lie-not, where, in the field of Say-sooth there stands the manor house of Truth himself, with its moat of Mercy, its walls of Wisdom, its embrasures of Baptism, its buttresses of Belief, its roofing of Love and Loyal Speech, its bars of Brotherhood, its bridge of Prayer, its doorposts of Penance, its hinges of Almsdeeds, where the porter is Grace and seven sisters that keep the posterns — Abstinence, Humility, Charity, Chastity, Patience, Peace, and Largesse. And as William has his Pilgrim's Progress, so he has his Holy War. My Lady Soul lives in Fleshy Castle, guarded by the castellan Conscience and his sons the Five Senses, assailed at all points by the Evil Ones, Pride and his mighty Meiny, and holpen of the high host of Heaven. The burning questions of his time, Free-Will, Poverty, the possible Salva- tion of heretics and heathen, the Right Life, and the coming Reform of the Church, William debates in long, tangled, rambling * visions', always with power and often with poetical force, in that rough, tumbling metre that the mass of Englishmen, in spite of Chaucer's fine new-fangled French measures, long continued to prefer to any other. Let us turn from the misty Malvern Hills and the foggy banks of tiie London river to the wild shaws and desert heaths of the North to seek the Abbey schoolmaster of Dunfermline, with his delicate and humorous anticipation of T 2 276 OTHER LITERATURE that greatest of fabulists. La Fontaine, his exquisite para- phrase of Adam's exquisite French pastoral, and for us, above all, the dainty little poem that describes the mystic raiment of the Ideal Woman, and that strong and concise allegory, the Bluidy Sark, surpassing even Southwell in its plain pathos as it tells of the True Knight that for our sakes (as a contemporary allegorist put it) ' jousted at Jerusalem ' with ' Death the Joyless ' and won the victory through great tribulation. Well may Dunbar have regretted such a singer and thinker as Robert Henryson. Leaving learned Douglas and courtly Lindsay unnoticed now, and passing South again, we omit those worthy Tudor practitioners of the Mystery of Similitudes, gallant out- spoken George Gascoigne and simple Stephen Hawes (as we must neglect even the Fletchers, whose mastership Milton was to acknowledge, and that Welsh Dante, Ellis Wyn, to whose weird power George Borrow eagerly testified), and come at once to Spenser. Never was allegory more elaborately worked out than in that glorious and typical Elizabethan fragment, the Faery Queene. The theme is worthy — the construction of a perfect character, the ideal of highest humanity, with materials drawn alike from Plato and St. Augustine ; and it is decked with all the jewelled splen- dour the Renaissance could offer, enriched out of the solid wealth of the re-opened classic mines, adorned with great store of the naive and romantic broidery of the Middle Ages; while always double, sometimes triple, the red thread of allegory runs through the gorgeous fabric, and the whole design is wrought upon the ever-varied, ever-graceful, if over- elaborate pattern of the stanza its author especially devised for his immortal work. Spenser's art must astonish every- one that has served apprenticeship, however brief, to the poet's craft — his Mantegnan processions, his Botticellian idylls, his Diirer-like grotesques, his wild landscapes recalling those of the old Lombard line-engravers, his grand personifica- tions, such as Michelangelo himself has scarcely surpassed; and yet, with this astonishing variety, the poet still keeps ALLEGORY IN ENGLAND 277 within the bounds of that particular Italian epic style he learnt from Ariosto and for the first and only time naturalized in England. The palace of Spenser was, like other less lasting but bulkier buildings of the Renaissance time, never finished ; but what remains is perfect in itself, the full plan can be seen, the proportions realized, only the details of the unbuilt wing are to seek. The ethical, political, and religious allegory can be traced by the patient and affectionate student beneath the plain story that in itself yields sufficient pleasure to prevent hundreds of readers from diving deeper into this fair-flowing stream of English poetry. The adventures of the Red Cross Knight and Prince Arthur, Britomart and Una, Guyon and Artegal, Scudamour and Hellenore, the encounters with the false Duessa and the wicked magician, with cruel, cowardly, braggart pagan knights, and strange and terrific monsters of sea and land, are interesting in themselves ; and it is not until one reads the poet's preface with the attention it merits that one feels there is more to be got from his poem than the story that delights. The greatest allegories have always drawn to them scores of pleasure-hunters for one profit-seeker. Even Dante and Milton, who would fain have justified God to Man, will be read, when their philosophy shall be acknowledged as infantile as their science, by thousands whom their poetry must stir to finer issues through those outward and visible signs, which, after all, are every whit as spiritual as the inward grace. Spenser may be denied a statue as, to our shame, Cromwell was, by those that mislike his patriotism, or loathe his views, political or religious ; but as a master of allegory, as the man next after Dante, who has most effectively presented the symbolic and real together, as the most exact exponent of the ethic theory of his day, and, certainly, as the greatest of English Platonists, he must ever claim our gratitude and respect. It is far from Spenser's strong but ill-omened tower in Ireland, far from the rich arras-clad banqueting halls of the 278 OTHER LITERATURE peerless Gloriana where Sidney sung and Shakespeare acted, to the dark noisome jail, where the simple but sore distracted spirit of the humble Bedfordshire tinker was able to bring forth from its deep treasury things new and old. The Pilgrim's Progress has passed through the whole world like Robinson Crusoe or Gulliver's Travels, and is one of that dozen of English classics that are almost as well known in Paris and Moscow as they are in London or New York. The Damascus watchman used the book as a touchstone of his fellows' worth, and who loved the Pilgrim was to him a true man. Founded on an old motif, crammed with Scriptural citations, filled with reminiscences of Foxe's Martyrs, the book is above all others fresh, personal, and novel. One is attracted at the very outstart by the natural beauty of the style, which is throughout as pithy, homely, and quaint as Sancho's at his best, and as noble, as unworldly and dutiful as his master's. Who but relishes the earnest doggerel ? Who has not felt the power of those apt parables, the Soul that took the Kingdom of Heaven by violence ; the contrasted pair of children. Passion and Patience; the robin and the spider; the man with the muck-rake ? We have all longed for those fleeting glimpses from the Shepherds' outlook on the Moun- tain Delectable, of the fair golden City towering above the cold black River. We remember the Temptation, Trial, and Martyrdom in Vanity Fair. We have shuddered at the doubtful combat with Apollyon ; at the grim horrors of the pit, of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, of the by-way to Hell. We have felt the haunting fear of Doubting Castle and of that dim glen beside it where the blind are left to stumble among the tombs. We have followed Christian through the Slough of Despond and up the hill Difficulty. And then the characters, everlasting types, but as human as Dickens or Defoe could have made them — the fearf ulness of Faint-Heart ; the sturdy courage of Greatheart, and Faithful, of Mr. Steadfast and Old Honesty, in whom the King's Champion delighted, Jbr he loved one greatly that he found to be a man of his hands, and Valiant for the Truth ; the brave matronly tenderness of ALLEGORY IN ENGLAND 279 Christiana ; the serene Quakerlike charm of gentle Mercy ; the carnal smiles of Madam Bubble; the wiles of Lady Wanton and her kindred ; the vanity of that * very pretty man^ Mr. Talkative, of Prating Rovi^; the easy confidence of Demas and Ignorance ; the cozenage of Mr. By-Ends and his followers ; the rancour of that haughty Jeffreys, My Lord Hategood, and the servile malice of his jury; the comfortable presence of the Shining Ones and the pitiless perseverance of the Prince of Evil — a gallery of portraits we all have learnt to know. There are those who would scarce scruple to place the Puritan preacher's Iliad, the Holy War, as high as his Odyssey, the Pilgrim's Progress, and there is something to be said for this, even if we must firmly decline to elevate the realistic Mr. Badman to a front place among English alle- gories. The scenes in and round Mansoul (drawn from Bunyan's own experience of civic strife) are notable indeed, the beleaguered town, the siege, the sallies, the relief, the judgement of the victor on the traitors, the secret councils of spies and enemies, the reconciliation of the Lord of the city with the repentant citizens ; and they make up a piece of work comparable even to Milton's two Epics for the contrast of bitter and base malignity set over against most patient justice and profoundest mercy. The very muster- roll of the army of fiends marshalled for the great assault is full of that simple matter-of-fact horror dear to all of us, and ever immensely impressive to the natural British mind. It were too long to attempt to exhaust the broad realms of English allegory, but for a last stage we may halt a moment to survey the rich but storm-scarred domain of Jonathan Swift. If his Gulliver be beyond our scope to-night, we may at least consider his Tale of a Tub, a most pregnant story which cost its author a bishopric it had richly earned him, and gave to English letters one of our notable prose-writers, William Cobbett. Still green beneath the summer sky, unencumbered by encroaching bricks and mortar, stretches beside Thames the broad meadow where in the early morning 280 OTHER LITERATURE the pool* country boy threw himself down in the grass to read the tiny book, whose satiric spell woke the fire of genius in him, for he too was born to bear witness in his own wayward fashion against the wrongs and follies of the world, as the Dean had done before him. Swift united Voltaire's fine skill of wit with the clear, sharp, stinging, ironic force of Pascal and the rich idiomatic expression of Quevedo. Rascality and folly show in their worst aspects under the Avhite heat of his compressed fury. The tragedy of his own life fitted him for the role he played ; there was a depth of pity and sympathy in the lonely-hearted man, and this pity and sympathy only made the world, as he scanned it, the more terrible to his eyes. We know his achievements. If the love of love seems sometimes to have been denied him, Swift was indeed dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn. His satirical allegory is a piercing sermon on the pitiful squabbles and the ignorant intolerance that divided and still divide Christendom, and he bore so hard on the ugly malice and vulgar pride of the contending factions that, as in the case of Defoe's famous pamphlet, those who loved to believe that the filthy parasites, the dead leaves and rotten fruit, were essential parts of the living tree, were bitterly offended and took care to revenge themselves in their own scurvy way. And here I would fain have spoken of one more book, that most original, most philosophic, and most searching of modern allegories, Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece, as I hold. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; but it is well to pause, not for lack of subject-matter, but for the sake of them that have sat at meat with us. A last question intrudes itself : ' Why have we Englisii so excelled in this branch of Art ? ' It were probably hard fully to answer. We are reticent. We exaggerate by understate- ment, we like to set forth our case without seeming to attack our adversary, to indulge in imagination without it being flatly forced upon us that we are departing from the strictly practical. We dearly love literature with a purpose and we ALLEGORY IN ENGLAND 281 have tried to write it so often that we have sometimes succeeded gloriously in spite of the absurd difficulty of the enterprise. The form in fact suits us^ hence our excellence therein. To-night you have allowed me to lead you swiftly along a path that passed from the secular pines of Ravenna, through the pleached arbours of the old French Rose-garden, over quiet English hills and rough Scottish moors, till we lingered among the hazel coppices of Bedfordshire, and stood for a moment in the old Deanery at Dublin. The guide may have been a worse cicerone than you looked for, but he has surely not erred in trying for a brief space to recall memories of happy hours spent spellbound at the feet of the veiled dream-lady Allegory. DANIEL DEFOE We all know one book of Defoe's, and have come under his spell long before we came to think of him as a person, or to mark his place in English letters. Yet his life and aims have their interest too, though, like all real writers, he put his best into his work, and let his peccant humours infect only his own mortality. Defoe not only wrote Robinson Crusoe, the outcome whereof was many and many ensuing novels of adventure, and so planted a branch of letters that has flourished exceedingly (for what are boys' stories, from Stevenson back to Marryat, but prolific seedlings of his golden bough ?), but he founded our modern biographical novel in his story of the Blessed Woman (for so that artful unregenerate, the old apple-seller of Lavengro's youth, tenderly christened iier), and laid open the track that Fielding and Richardson, Austen :ind Thackeray and Dickens, and more beyond reckoning, have travelled to their profit and ours. Further, he was the originator in England of that curious type of essay to which Steele and 282 OTHER LITERATURE Addison owe their lasting fame, and Goldsmith and Charles Lamb most of their perennial charm. Nor is his distinction as a romancer and essayist his sole claim to our gratitude, for his incessant and multifarious activities cover the whole sphere of journalism and popular instruction. He was, indeed, never wearied of trying to enlighten and amuse his public. He would turn you out, in the captivating form of narrative, whole treatises on African and South American geography, in which Madagascar and Patagonia were pointed out as fields for British enterprise ; he would put together the best gazetteer of his native country that had yet been projected or executed, all compiled from personal knowledge, during fifteen circuits, three complete tours, and five visits to Scotland and the North. He under- stood and made use of the attraction of history put into literary form. He wrote a practical guide to business, such as Cobbett himself could not surpass. He was active in practical matters. He got a Copyright Bill and a Bankruptcy Act passed. He had much to say, and said it vigorously and yet inoffensively, on education (higher and lower) for women as well as men, on temperance, on charity organization, on pauperism, on hygiene and police ; and it was not his fault if statesmen left these ques- tions almost untouched till they were forced on them in later days by blatant and unpleasant facts. The science of con- duct interested and concerned him greatly. His views on courtship, marriage, and family life, while often narrow and sometimes wholly mistaken, are not to be passed over as the idle suggestions of amateur philanthropy, but must be looked on as the sober conclusions of an earnest and observant, if limited mind. As to his political industry, it was immense. For more than forty years he fought in the forefront of the battle, not without shrewd scars and sore peril, for he was the most powerful pamphleteer of his time, whether in prose or verse, wielding the pen political as effectively in his day as Swift, and as Junius and Burke in theirs. He did genuine service DANIEL DEFOE 283 for his hero, William the Deliverer ; he advocated wisely and in no narrow spirit the cause of English trade at home and abroad ; he wrote and talked and worked on behalf of the parliamentary union with Scotland; he stood up valiantly for free speech, for toleration as a right. He upheld, in a hundred ways, the cause of common sense and fair play so plainly, so persistently, so plausibly, that in spite of Pope's cowardly and mendacious sneer, the pillory became to him an everlasting honour, and to his persecutors an enduring disgrace. Wellnigh the whole field of the Vita Activa was covered by his restless energj^, and what he did he did with his might. In the sphere of the Vita Contemplativa, Defoe was not quite so happily placed. His religious speculations and ethical theories are strangely childish, though but little more so than those of his contemporaries ; for, to speak the truth (as he would say), he never got beyond the ordinary moral and theological standpoint of an intelligent and consistent eighteenth-century nonconformist. In spite of a slight lean- ing to mysticism, a mighty curiosity as to the mythology of his creed, and a firm belief in a daimon (not unlike that of Socrates) that warned him and counselled him, a psychologic phenomenon that was part of his curious personality and of a kind one is not yet quite ready to explain, Defoe's soul was, as it were, earth-bound. Of his life, in spite of his cunning reticence, we know something, thanks to the industry of a succession of devoted admirers, who have pieced together scattered scraps of testi- mony into something like a complete biography. Born in Fore Street, Cripplegate, into a Puritan household — his parents (of whom one at least had the Low-country blood in him) were grave, careful, God-fearing folks, who wished to train their clever son for the office of minister in the peculiar form of Christianity they preferred. The sturdy children with whom he played and fought, as he tells us, learnt liim one lesson he remembered, that of never hitting a man when he is down. The school at Stoke Newington, where he passed 284 OTHER LITERATURE five years, was kept by that notable rank Independent, and '^polite and profound scholar^, Charles Morton (later Vice- president of Harvard College), who, like a sensible man, taught his pupils their work in the shortest way, discarding all pedantry, and especially drilling them soundly in mathe- matics and the tongues ancient and modern, so that they might at least possess the keys of knowledge. In 1676 came the choice of a calling, when, refusing steadily (for what reason we know not, but wisely, as one can see) to take up the ministry, the young fellow, though he had overcome the difficulties that bar the way to the learned professions, chose to go into trade, whereby, after he had learnt his business, he became a wholesale hosier. He married on New Year's Day, 1684, at St. Botolph's, Aldgate, one Mary Tuffley, a woman who seems to have been unable to suit herself wholly to his temper, but who bore him a family of whom at least one daughter was always very near to his heart. He commenced authorship as soon as he was his own master, and being a zealous partisan was concerned in the movement that all hot Whigs were favouring, Mon- mouth's ill-managed rising. By lying quiet for a while, travelling abroad and busying himself with trade, he had the luck to escape the fate of several of his friends and former schoolfellows ; but he soon began pamphleteering again, both in prose and verse. He founded a chapel at Tooting, in 1688, and when the Revolution relieved the Whigs from their bigoted oppressors, his devotion and gratitude to the Dutch king were freely and openly expressed. But too great generosity, met, as often, by treachery, now brought disaster, and in 1692 Defoe was bankrupt for £17,000, a large sum for those days. His courage never flagged ; he resolved to pay his creditors, and soon did so ; he took up new enter- prises, was busy over big tileworks at Chadwell near Tilbury in 1694, and over his new house and garden at Hackney. And still his interest in the world, political and social, never flagged ; he wrote year after year, month after month, verse and prose ; his best poem, ' The True-born Englishman,' DANIEL DEFOE 285 gained him the personal friendship of the king he justly admired and bravely defended ; while his best piece of political prose, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, brought him to the pillory and prison in 1703. But his room at Newgate was but an editor's sanctum to Defoe, who met all fortunes with a smiling face and a cool head, and his famous journal, the Review, was then set afoot. Out again in 1704, he was kept continually busy with his paper, his plans of reform, his projects. He had become a power, his tongue and pen were valuable. His pretty turn for controversy is admirably shown in his passage with my lord Haversham, * the dog that bayed at the moon that gave him light,' the man that was * raised without merit and advanced without honour ', a miserable stinking blue-bottle embalmed in the translucent amber of Defoe's prose. Government could not but make use of such a staunch and strong ally. Harley employed him to forward the cause of the parliamentary union with Scotland, and he was soon busy, paying repeated visits to Edinburgh, to the very great advantage of his country, his party, and his patron. Then, at home again, we find him attacking Sacheverell, ' doing his duty,' as he says, * in exposing doctrines that oppose God and the Revolution, such as Passive Obedience to Tyrants and Non-resistance in cases of Oppression.' The definite importance of his political work is shown by the fact that Harley, who knew what he was about, paid him on a higher scale than he did Swift ; but he was not a whit the more puffed up. He had l)y this time gained plenty of enemies, inspired by envy and paltry prejudice, and by that malicious ignorance that accompanies these. And he had (as he says) seen the rough side of the world as well as the smooth, — • No man has tasted different fortunes more. And thirteen times I have been rich and poor. About the end of 1711 Defoe went to Bristol, and tlierc, at Dr. Damain Daniel's house in St. James's Square, had a momentous meeting with a Scottish sailor named Mr. Alex- 286 OTHER LITERATURE ander Selcraig, or Selkirk, who had been marooned on Juan Fernandez, and passed four years and four months there alone till he was brought home that October by Dampier, the well-remembered navigator. Selkirk sold his papers to Defoe, who set them aside for future use. For there was peril at the door ; the very probable Jacobite succession, and all that it meant to a man of Defoe's faith and views, was a matter that must be dealt with swiftly and sharply, and Defoe buckled on his armour readily enough ; three damaging pamphlets raked the Highflyers cruelly. But again his irony betrayed him ; his friends mistook, or pretended to mistake, his intent; he was arrested (not without difficulty) and clapped into Newgate once more, this time under sentence for libel, as a favourer of the Pretender, April 22, 1713. But this second imprisonment was over in eight months, busy months ; his Mercator and Flying Post continued the mission of the Review ; a sharp tussle with Swift (not to Swift's advantage), and a set of letters in which Defoe played the congenial part of a Quaker, kept his pen and his colleague's (for he had one, as he tells us) in constant employment, while he dabbled, as usual, risking his interest and money, in trade or specu- lation. He was in no small danger as the crisis drew to a head, and was actually committed to prison for warning his country- men against the Jacobite plan for getting control of the Irish army, when the queen died and the unready Tories lost their one great chance. The strain had been severe, no doubt, and at the end of 1714 Defoe had a rather severe apoplectic attack. On his recovery he entered Townshend's employ, under whom he served till 1726 as a Government spy and agent among the Jacobites, working at Mist's Journal. All he wrote hitherto had been capably and keenly planned and well thought out, and he had proved himself a journalist of more than ordinary powers, the ablest journalist in England if you will, but no more. Had he died in 1714 he would hardly have anticipated his name surviving among the notable names of our literature. He would have been DANIEL DEFOE 287 left with Ward, and Brown, and Tutchin, the good Tryon, and a host of other publicists and gazetteers of the day, to the contemptuous eyeglass of the weary historian trying to study his period in contemporary sources. It is strange this — that a busy, hardworking journalist with a strong interest in speculative trade, a man that had ' had his losses too ', a working politician, deep in the confi- dence of ministers, with an unrivalled knowledge of the many evershifting currents of public opinion, a person whose every moment was occupied with exciting business, should, after a long career, suddenly develop new and unexpected powers and proceed, at the age of sixty, to create a new branch of literature, with a masterpiece ! Yet this was what happened. In 1719 Robinson Crusoe came out, founded on the old Selkirk papers obtained in 1711 ; and then, for more than a decade, volume after volume, two or three a year, of astonishing and varied interest, manifested their author's complete and fully developed powers. Biography, adventure, history, geography, practical conduct of life, — Defoe deals with all and does well in each : Duncan Campbell, Memoirs of a Cavalier, Captain Singleton, 1720 ; Moll Flanders ; Religious Courtship, A Journal of the Plague Year, Colonel Jack, Cartouche the Highway Robber, 1722 ; Peter the Great, Rob Roy, 1723 ; Roxana, and A Tour thro' the whole Island (f Great Britain, divided into Circuits or Journies, giving a particular and diverting account of whatever is curious and worth observation ; Letters on the Behaviour of Servants, Jack Sheppard the Prison-breaker, all in 1724; Wild the Thief-taker, Gow the Pirate, A New Voyage round the World, The Complete English Tradesman, in 1725. In 1726 The Political History of the Devil, A General History of Discoveries and Improvements in Useful Arts; in 1727 a Treatise on Matrimony, an Essay on Apparitions, Augusta Triumphans (schemes for London improvements), A Plan of the English Commerce, in 1728; the Compleat English Gentleman, a Treatise on the Needs and Possibilities of Education for the Upper Classes, in 1729. In 1730 Defoe, 288 OTHER LITERATURE who had been in trouble from his enemies ever since 1726, when some of his secret political dealings were discovered and used to his discredit, fearing lest his family should suffer by any attacks which might injure his property, made over his estate and belongings to his son Daniel in trust for his mother and sisters, and went into hiding. Daniel behaved badly, and the old man, with health threatened by a quartan, and with affections sorely wounded, felt, perhaps for the first time, that death was at hand and not unwelcome. ^ I am so near my journey's end, and am hastening to the place where the weary are at rest and the wicked cease to trouble ; be it that the voyage is rough and the day stormy, but what way soever He please to bring me to the end of it, I desire to finish life with this temper of soul in all cases, Te Deum Laudamus.^ He had not long to wait. He died in 1731, in the parish he was born in. Mr. [William] Lee's big list of over two hundred works, beside seven newspapers and forty pamphlets and the like, shows Defoe's industry, an industry with which it is hard to keep pace. Many of his writings, of course, treated of the politics, home and foreign, of the day, and much of their in- terest is gone, but among the rest there are Robinson Crusoe, the three great novels of life, the Histories of the Cavalier and of the Plague, the Tour thro Great Britain, The Complete Tradesman, and the two little ghost stories of Mrs. Veal and Dorothy Dingley ; his two best poems, 'The True-born English- man ' and ' Jure Divino ', and his famous pamphlet. The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. A goodly mass of literary baggage for one man, all, as Lamb said, 'good kitchen read- ing,' and all vivid and interesting. His homespun style has a peculiar charm, and I must confess I am disposed to judge his prose (of his verse I shall speak later) more favourably than some competent critics have done. I can see the blemishes, of course, the careless sentences, the superfluity of words, the useless repetition, the long-winded explanations, the fond love of details, even when they are useless, the faiblesse for didactic, for like a true-born Englishman, Defoe yielded too often to DANIEL DEFOE 289 the sin that most easily besets us, our darling English sin of * preaching \ the sin that has earned us an unpleasant national reputation for cant which clings to us in spite of certain well- meant and vigorous efforts made of late years to escape from the taint. Defoe could not write a long story, he flags as Scott does, and begins to lose his own interest. Further, he can be dull though he is never stupid. Yet granting all these defects, how little they affect his hold on us. He was an artist, and his art seldom entirely forsook him. How delightful, even to a boy or girl, his charming familiarity, his cunning naivete, his prosy but enticing garrulity, his pet phrases, his apt and singular anecdotes and occasional bits of autobiography ! How terse he can be, how lightly he slips in a touch that gives colour as it were to a whole page ; how excellently in keeping is the whole composition and play of motive ! What a living reality there is in the man's work ! The careless mariner, wrecked and alone, is a plain man with his workaday deeds and his simple thoughts, yet the record of his life is so intense that it almost becomes an allegory in the reader's mind, as indeed Defoe claims it to be. The ' gentlest of savages \ the courtly Spaniard, the selfish brutal British ruffian, who is brought at last under Fate's strict discipline and turned into a very decent fellow, the fervent but tolerant young priest — who can forget them any more than the unfading incidents of the solitary life before Friday came ? Less known, but as wonderful, are such pieces in the other books, as the childlife of the pretty spoilt little girl * that would be a gentlewoman ' ; and of the ragged, keen- witted street arab Hhat slept in the glass-house' and earned his precarious living as a very honest, kindly, innocent little thief : there is the poor wretch cast for the gallows, laughing and singing in her reckless despair; there is the good-hearted old * fence'; the lazy squireen who had not even wit to make a successful highwayman ; the lovely adventuress displaying her finery and accomplishments with excusable and graceful vanity before indulgent royalty ; the servant maid with her careless, luckless fidelity. Tiiere are scenes in France, in Y. P. 11 U 290 OTHER LITERATURE Virginia, on shipboard, in London, in country towns ; that northern ride of the two young scamps is more interesting than Master Naylor's famous gallop. Heathen, Moslim, Catholics, Quakers, landlords, ostlers, pirates, sea captains, soldiers, sailors, merchants, planters, slaves, Jews, poor folk, noblemen, honest and dishonest, good and bad, jostle each other in Defoe's pages as they do in real life. He had a beautiful humane interest in life ; he watched, with sym- pathy far more tender than his official religious views would have admitted, the ups and downs of fortune, and sadly but surely spied out the tiny chink that lets Fate creep into the best-guarded and most carefully built citadel of happiness. He had all Balzac's fondness for circumstantial detail and business transactions, and he knew as well as Adam Smith that love of gain is one of the main springs of the brisk action going on so restlessly around us. He was quick to note the significance of little traits of character, of small events that at first sight seem meaningless. He had read his own heart narrowly, and could understand the force of temptation, the false security of self-deceit, the slow rise of character and the sudden fall of those that seem to stand as rocks earth-fast ; and while he condemns, for the sake of his ethical theories and for example, he is not the man to with- hold a brotherly hand even from those whom he believes (often wrongly) to have sinned most deeply. As an advocate he shows skill almost matchless among British controversialists, his eye ever on the jury whose weaknesses and prejudices he has fathomed at the first glance ; nor will he close his case without a spice of sound, hard reasoning to suit the bench whose favour he does not mean to lose. Now he is full of consideration for his adver- sary, now he is gently ironic, now he diverts the issue by a little kindly banter or chatter. Then, in a moment, he draws himself up, plain-spoken and peremptory, and with swift and sharp decision of word and gesture, drives his point home to the hilt ; but through it all, never, in his anxiety to get his verdict, overstepping the limit of fair play and good DANIEL DEFOE 291 manners, never for an instant losing the respect of his audience or of himself. We trust, and rightly trust, — To Truth, to Nature, and Defoe. As an historian he chiefly excels in seizing and presenting the essential colour and temper of the times he describes, and in skilful use of tiny scraps of significant evidence, of bits of reminiscence, of morsels of oral tradition, so that he gives us more than fact, and enables us to get a glimpse at motive and the direction of the forces at work. Only the greater his- torians have done this, and they have not always been among the best writers of their age. As a journalist he was as keen for ' copy ', as pushing and as crafty in the matter of advertisement and reclame, as the most modern of his successors. He meant to hold the market, if good writing and a quick perception of the public taste could do it, and he was successful. He never let any- thing slip that he fancied might turn up useful. He would visit Jack Sheppard in Newgate, journey to Bristol to see Mr. Alexander Selkirk, search out the particulars of the lives of those he came across in the chances of his journeys, in his prisons, in the tavern, in the minister's cabinet, at court, on change, or among his suburban or country neigh- bours. Not the least of his feats, nor the least popular, are his biographies of notorious criminals, which seem, indeed, to have led to the production of that veritable social history of eighteenth-century England, the Newgate Calendar. And, indeed, as Defoe was interested in every plane of life, and had the power of interesting others, he was never at a loss for attractive matter. As a writer of didactic and satiric verse Defoe has perhaps been undervalued ; his ear is so faulty, his lines are st) uncouth, he hammers away at the same thought so long ; but he has been freely imitated, and plenty of his vigorous couplets have passed into general circulation. Of course he was not a poet in one sense at all ; the Muses never loved him, he was deaf to the lyric cry, never touched by the divine u a 292 OTHER LITERATURE frenzy. He simply got hold of a subject which he felt the rhetorical force of his couplet would drive into his readers' heads, and he hacked away quickly and roughly enough at his material till he put it into couplet shape, and, his copy of verses so done, red-hot to print it went, and when it came out it did not fail of its desired effect. The man who could pen his best lines dwelt no further from Parnassus than Cicero or Voltaire, and though his ear was not as good as Oldham's or Johnson's, his performance was often not below their level. He had something to say, and he managed, in spite of his difficulty with metre, to say it, so that there can be no mistake about it. He may have been wrong to write verse at all, but he chose it practically, as Theognis chose it, as the vehicle that would carry his ideas the most widely. His heroics and Bunyan's doggerel alike served their authors' ends. ' What was the man's standpoint ? What were the ideas he held and proclaimed ? ' ' What is his significance in his time ? ' When Defoe began to write, the Elizabethan Italian- ate tide had ebbed, and the Caroline French flood was coming up swiftly. Waller and Butler had set the new fashion in verse that Rochester (a man of fine talent, as Defoe rightly held) and Dryden (a master of full, robust diction) had brought to smooth perfection. Milton's notorious pamphlets and the paper wars of the time, chiefly carried on over political and religious questions, in numberless sermons and tracts, had brought in a new prose, a prose that Dryden and the great authors again had learnt to write with careless and comely ease ; though they are, I think, far excelled by Bunyan's homely and classic pith. For the poor tinker's style is the more natural, and, to my mind, the most delightful English of his century. Defoe's instruments lay all ready to his liand. Shaftes- bury, the father of all Whiggery, had systematized the ideas that Defoe and the great party of progress maintained and cherished for more than a century. Locke had followed Bacon's lead, and put the search for knowledge on a higher DANIEL DEFOE 293 footing. The dazzling genius of Newton was soon to compel the assent of the educated to the New Science. The long and fierce religious struggle was over, the dirty destructive flood of bigotry was draining slowly but surely away, and, though the stagnant sloughs and noisome puddles of prejudice still marked its passage, the dry land was appearing. In every direction fresh interests were getting hold of the younger generation ; to clever, quick-brained, busy, shrewd people, everywhere, the possibilities of trade and commerce were more attractive than the old theological squabbles whose bitter fruit they knew too well. The fathers had eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth, happily for them, were set on edge. The sects, one and all, had failed in their promises. The reign of the saints had proved as intolerable as the old way of Canaan. Tacitly, if not openly, the aged contro- versies were allowed to drop, so far as they affected theory ; there were more hopeful fields for energy ahead. It was the Dutch and English that first grasped the facts, saw their possibilities, and pushed out boldly, risking blood and gold in the lottery that the lands of the Pagan, the mis- believer, and the Catholic king presented to the merchant adventurer and his supporters, devoting time and toil to the patient task of enlarging trade, increasing and cheapening production, destroying mediaeval barriers, that, once useful and defensive, were now but fetters to the interests whose healthy growth they dangerously compressed. Spain was no longer a dreaded rival ; France might be outstripped in the race; those must win that first make up their minds to count the cost, that cast off all the silly prepossessions and ignorances that cumber new enterprises, and so prepared, put it boldly to the touch. Defoe saw and felt all this, and made it his business to do for his generation what Alfred the king had tried to do for his. He gave it the means of self-culture, and so supplied the c(iuipment it needed. He knew the time was coming when it would depend upon the shrewdness, thrift, honesty, perseverance, and self-restraint of Englishmen, 294 OTHER LITERATURE whether or no they would distance their rivals, seize their full sliare of the trade and commerce of the world, and set up those establishments that were to knit the far-off continents east and west to our little archipelago in the North Atlantic. The task was, of course, not uncongenial. Defoe loved to preach (even in the midst of his romances and lives of robbers) like any Newgate Ordinary ; but the burden of his parable was not ignoble, he insisted that life was real, that men and women had largely the shaping of their own future, here and (as he supposed) hereafter ; that much is possible to courage, wit, knowledge, and perseverance ; that wickedness, laziness, and folly are pretty svu-e to meet their punishment even in this world, and (as Stevenson wisely said) * generally folly first '. Of these maxims Defoe never had the slightest doubt, and with a sturdy reliance on himself, a strong preju- dice in favour of fair play, and an unshaken trust in tlie absurdly wooden Puritan God in whom he beheved, they formed his own simple, but exceedingly practical philosophy of life, a creed perhaps easier to believe in than to act up to. The effect of his work was probably greater than we can easily admit, for the man had energy and faith enough to move men and mountains. How many sluggish brains has he not roused, how many young minds has he not stimulated, how many weak ones has his charitable, friendly counsel heartened up, to how many mean ones has he not shown the advantages of truth, mercy, and charity ? The spirit in which he did his own work comes out in his own words. There have been plenty of honest men in England with a love of preaching, whose work has done harm in every way, by its incurable dullness, by the idiocy of its expression, as well as by the folly of its substance. This man was a good preacher because he M^as a fine artist, not because he felt strongly, or because his general notions were true. It is necessary to state this plainly because the popular creed of Gath and Askalon formulates the absolute necessity of hold- ing the opposite opinion. To his own generation Defoe was a very Diderot, an DANIEL DEFOE 295 indefatigable encyclopaedist, providing, as far as he could, sound useful knowledge ; but when he found that what interested him was also of interest to others, and brought grist to the mill, he was not unready to give free play to his artistic instinct. No one, save the specialist, reads Diderot's gigantic Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, written before steam-driven machinery, and there is no need to reprint Defoe's practical books, there are later volumes of greater use on the same subjects ; but one is never tired of that truly Shakespearian creation Le neveu de Rameau, and as long as there is a boy with a boyish mind left, Robinson Crusoe must be a favourite. Nor is it unsafe to predict that as long as English novelists read novels there will always be an appreciative, if more restricted, audience for the fortunes and misfortunes of the ' truly honourable Colonel Jack ', the * famous Mrs. Flanders', and the notorious ^Mademoiselle de Belau, called afterwards the Countess of Wintselsheim, in Germany '. Surely none but Meinhold has equalled him in reproducing the tone of the past life he is describing. And the man himself that did all this work ? Curiously enough, we know his outward form best from the proclama- tion in which a reward was offered for his arrest. It describes him as of middle size and spare build, with dark complexion and hair beneath the wig, grey eyes, hook nose, sharp chin, with a large wen near the mouth. We are told that he bore a striking resemblance to William III, his patron and admira- tion ; but, unlike William, he was a healthy man, of sound constitution — singularly active of body, a good rider, a fine fencer (once at least he fought and felled his man, and, like O'Connell, repented ever after). That he was capal)le of bearing fatigue and labour well we can easily^believe. Of his habits and tastes his works reveal much ; we know he was a great reader and had a fine library of his own ; not a great talker, save probably on occasion, when his love of quotation and his great range of book-learning was marked. Of a healthy palate, no smoker, a lover of fine dress, exceeding neat and clean, a good waterman (he kept his own pleasure- 296 OTHER LITERATURE boat), an excellent gardener, chosen to help Queen Mary to lay out her gardens at Kensington. He liked a good house and everything roomy, plain, and comfortable about him. His writing is remarkably neat, clear, upright, and round, with a certain elegance that bespeaks his complete mastery of his fingers. He used shorthand and many contractions, for he was a man that had large masses of copy to turn out, and could depend, for the most part, on no one but himself. That he was restless and would be always stirring, that he was passing curious to see and hear of new inventions, new discoveries, new arts and processes, that he took huge delight in the significant details of all manner of crafts and occupa- tions, is very evident. His temper and character, too, are plainly self-revealed ; cool and hopeful in danger, he was little afraid of what man could do to him ; obstinate and reserved, generous but not lavish, careful but also adventurous and loving to run risks, courteous and honest but not over-particular as to those minute and delicate points of honour that would perhaps have troubled a man not used to trade as he was. In his subterfuges he was ready to meet guile with guile, though ever and wholly unwilling to take what he considered an unfair advantage, or to decline to make terms favourable to himself. Affectionate in a deep, if mostly silent way ; careful of his family's interest, and even of their comfort ; though restless, freakish, and determined to have his will in house- hold affairs. A great mystifier, mole-like, working fiercely underground, and enjoying the concealment of his proceed- ings — a taste that his harassed and hunted condition for great part of his life must have intensified. Vain of his gifts, but minded never to degrade them, proud of his knowledge, but eager to use it for others ; a man that would often spare others but seldom himself ; a constant courtier and most de- voted subject of Her whom he calls * that most serene, most invincible, most illustrious princess, Reason, first Monarch of the World, Empress of the East, West, North, and South, Hereditary Director of Mankind, Guide of the Passions, Lady DANIEL DEFOE 297 of the vast continent of Human Understanding, Mistress of all the Islands of Science, Governess of the fifteen provinces of Speech, Image of and Ambassador Extraordinary from the Maker of all things, the Almighty's Representative and Resident in the Souls of Men, and one of Queen Nature's most honourable Privy Council '. Defoe proved himself more than once as willing to suffer for his country as to serve her well for fair wages. He studied his fellow men carefully and judged them gently, with a sym- pathy and impartiality seldom found in one of his creed or of his satiric gifts. If he had not attained to the Publican's humility there was nothing of the Pharisee about him, and he was the last man to have passed by with the priest and Levite on the other side. His limitations were those of his nature and his faith, his talents he had dutifully put out to usury ; he worked hard all his life, and at the end, when he was old and solitary, ill and persecuted, he could praise his God as honestly and heartily as in the years of his health and prosperity. An effective politician and statesman, a prose writer almost supreme in his own style, a novelist and biographer of high rank, he was that contradiction in terms, a bourgeois genius. But though he dwelt in Ashdod, at least he paid but small homage to Dagon, and seldom failed to succour the outlaws of Israel. How can we look on him but as one of the noblest Philistines that ever lived ? IRISH INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH LITERATURE It must have been a beautiful passage in one of the lectures of Eugene O'Curry that first led me to think of putting together a few thoughts on the subject of Irish influence on English literature. O'Curry told of a mighty singer of his 298 OTHER LITERATURE youth, one Anthony O'Brien, chanting the ballads of Ossian on a boat on a quiet summer evening with such power and sweetness that the haymakers from the shores of Clare and Limerick came down to the Shannon bank to listen to the noble strains. O'Curry told too of the lovely old hymn to the Virgin that his own father was wont to sing to its ancient music. The old metres and the old tunes have come down to us, and are still sung, set to new and far less beautiful music, it is true, but still bearing with them something of their antique charm. Traditional airs have survived in England, and are sung to-day, having come down from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some years ago, in a study I was making of English songs of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, I came to the conclusion that there is an element in them which is not drawn from abroad, and which is not English. This element began to show itself clearly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in popular songs ; and after an examination of Irish metres and such Irish songs as I could get at, I came to the conclusion that this element is certainly Irish, and that in fact popular metres founded on old Irish stanzas have been introduced by Irish- men into English literature. Much has been written on the subject of the influence of French, Italian, Spanish, and even German and Russian writers upon English literature. But the Irish influence has been ignored. This is not altogether the fault of the English, for to estimate it finally should be the work of a trained Irish scholar; and it would be an interesting investigation. I find that not only were the Irish metres used by Irishmen writing songs in English, but that a good many Gaelic songs were turned into English by them. In the broadsheet collections printed in England there are still a few of them to be obtained. Under the Stuarts, especially after the Restoration, numbers of Irishmen found employment and occupation in England, in the Court, the army, the stage, and the press. This emigration to England has been very much less noticed than the great emigration abroad ; but it has been very important in its effects, both to IRISH INFLUENCE ON OUR LITERATURE 299 Ireland and to England. Irish emigrants into England found voice first on the stage and secondly in the press ; and it was through the press and the stage that the Irish influences were constantly kept alive during the whole of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I have noticed that Irishmen and Irish- women, having, from their political and religious circumstances, been thrown much more into contact with the Catholic people of Western Europe, had given evidence of this contact by their special power and facility in translation. Mangan was by no means the earliest, and he will not be the last of the great Irish translators. Some of the most prominent persons who have translated the great foreign writers into English have been Irishmen. Dante had first been translated into English by Henry Boyd, an Irishman. Cary, who made the Miltonic translation of Dante, was of Irish birth ; and there were a great many Irish translators from the classics. The extraordinary skill which has been shown by translators from Irish into English is a great feature in English literature. The most famous translation of the nineteenth century is the work of Edward Fitzgerald, an Irishman. The best prose translation of Omar is that by Justin Huntly M'Carthy ; and it is also worthy of note that Miss Hickey is the best and most poetical translator of old English poetry, and that she, too, is an Irishwoman. The next thing that I notice is the very strong and marked penchant of the Irish writers for the stage. Not only did Ireland supply actors and actresses and singers many and notable to the English stage, but also playwrights and libretto-writers ; and this began very early indeed, with Boyle and Denham, and continued without break right down through the days of (loldsmith and Sheridan to the present day, when, of the many stock plays that hold the British stage, the most popular and the most certain to draw are the work of Irish- men. The stage and the press were in the beginning very closely connected. There was not much distance between Drury Lane and Grub Street in those days. The rapid development of the press in England is very largely owing to 300 OTHER LITERATURE Irishmen. Irishmen seem to have peculiar aptitudes for the daily press as well as for the stage. Their characteristics as writers are great quickness of apprehension, very great vividness of presentment, a very full and ready vocabulary, and a fondness for a rhetorical style. All these are just the qualities that are calculated to arrest the attention of the public, which requires to be amused and to be interested, which requires to have its attention first called to a matter and just kept there while one says what he wants to say and with as little effort as possible. When the history of the English press comes to be written the characteristics of the Irish pressmen will be shown in the English press much more distinctly than I am able to trace them on this occasion. I do not doubt but that the formation of the ordinary literary English, what in its higher form is known as ^good English ', and in its lower form as ' newspaper English ', is largely owing to Irishmen, and largely, in the beginning at all events, to the bilingual Irishmen. Literary English has really a vocabulary of its own, its own syntax, its own idioms, and its own stock phrases. Sometimes it is a little stiff and a little pretentious when it is dealing with ordinary sub- jects, and a little over-rhetorical when it is aiming at pathos ; and if sometimes it sinks down to a heavy level it is also capable of rising to very clear heights, and, when we want, to a brilliant exposition, and it possesses great force of denunciation. It is largely owing to Irishmen that the public grew accus- tomed to, and even enjoyed, a style more in consonance with the foreign ideal of the seventeenth centurj' than with the plain humdrum style of the Elizabethan age. The ex- travaganza and the burlesque have been developed on the English stage almost entirely by Irishmen. Just as in American comic periodicals, which are sad things to have to examine even for serious purposes, we can trace side by side with the heavy, trickling river of German humour a certain light and quicker wit, which is evidently of Irish origin, so in the early English stage we can trace this bright, quick, alert IRISH INFLUENCE ON OUR LITERATURE 301 element alongside the rougher, heavier, and more clownish English comedy. The stage Irishman is one of those curious mimicries which depart more and more from the original as time goes on, so I do not think it necessary to notice him at all. There is so little trace of the real Irishman in the stage Irishman, that the former is not recognizable in the latter. In fiction Irish influence has had a decided weight and power. A great deal of the work done by English novelists is very bald work indeed. But I cannot help thinking that it would have been a good deal duller and poorer were it not for the Celt. In the domain of poetry the great success of Irishmen, undoubtedly, is the lyric. A great number of the best, the most singable songs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been produced by Irishmen. In the ideal Irish biographical dictionary, which we all hope to see some day, the Irish song-writers will occupy a prominent place. Yet, little as I have been able to work on the Celtic side of Irish literature, there is one thing I am confident about, and that is that the very best that Irish- men have been able to do in English is necessarily inferior to what Irishmen have done in Irish. The greatest names in Irish literature in the future, when we shall judge better of it than we can to-day, will be the names of persons very little known at present, even to the majority of people of Irish blood and Irish names. This points to the fact that the first study of literary importance for an Irishman is the real Irish literature. It is only from the real Irish literature that the Irishman can draw the inspiration which differen- tiates him and makes his impress on literature really peculiar and valuable, and I think that the influence which the Irish people have had upon English literature has been owing to their Celtic characteristics, and not to any others. 302 OTHER LITERATURE MEINHOLD The historic novel might be set aside as wholly inartistic and impossible were it not for a few examples of distinct beauty and power in this singular form. Defoe^s Memoirs of a Cavalier, though not one of his finest works, is yet excellent in parts. Balzac has greatly triumphed in this style. Scott does not approach the intensity of Balzac, though his historic novels made an epoch, and are, of course, remarkable. With Dumas the local colour is barely more than a convention. The essence of the Three Musketeers is not their costume, but the play of incident and character. Some of our modern English hands have essayed the adven- tures of the historic romance with quite respectable success, but scarcely with complete victory. As far as we know, neither in Italy nor Spain has any man gone near these in excellence ; but, and this is passing strange, considering the signal badness of German novels (that most miserable Ekke- hart, for example), a Pomeranian pastor of this century has written two of the very fii'st rank. Naturally, with German taste as it is — and as, in spite of French and Norwegian influence, it is likely to be for some time — Meinhold has been little honoured in his own country, though Goethe gave him sound advice when he asked for it; and Frederick William IV of Prussia not only imderstood the wonderful power of his work, but with princely courtesy printed one of his two great stories for him unasked. The Bavarian king has earned the poet's praise and the musician's love by his real sympathy with the highest art, but cases such as this and that of Riickert should plead favourably for the Hohen- zollem. Wilhelm Meinhold's was a curious personality : fiercely individual as Beddoes, with an instinct that brought him not only to assimilate details, but to enter easily into the very life and feeling of the past, as it has been given to few men to do. One, too, that saw through the vulgar popular ideas MEINHOLD 303 of his day, and took refuge from cant and noisy insincerity and cowardly lack of patriotism in historic studies and intel- lectual interests, not without turning occasionally to smite the yelping curs he despised. Small wonder that a man of his sympathies, who of course scorned the futilities of Lutheran apologetic, should have felt drawn toward the old Church of the West, with its more antique, more dignified, more mysterious associations. He wanted an atmosphere more highly charged with the supernatural than the hard, dry, cast-iron traditions of his own sect could supply. The portrait (prefixed to the edition of 1846 of his collected works) shows a type not uncommon in Ireland : round head domed up from a fine brow ; keen level eyes behind the student's glasses ; straight well-shaped nose, not of the largest; good firm mouth, and well-turned chin. Shrewd, obstinate, not to be convinced save by himself, persistent, observant, and keen in feeling and word and deed — so one would judge the nature from the face. That Meinhold should have deigned to use his two notable inventions as controversial Aveapons against his uncritical and bemused adversaries is curious enough, but it is not necessary to suppose that Sidonia and Maria were composed for the sole purpose of puzzling the Sadducees. In the case of the Cloister Witch, he had the story in hand as far back as 1831, and two of his early poems come from the drama he had first written ; while the censor, with instinctive dread of true talent, of course withheld his favour from the Pastor's Daughter, a play founded on the plot that was to grow into the Amber Witch. It was not till after a fair amount of poetical and contro- versial work that our author, in 1843, issued his Amber Witch in book-form, and had the wonderful luck to find a gifted woman to clothe it in appropriate Englisli. There is lying at my hand a little pocket Tasso, with the pretty autograph, ' Lucie Duff Gordon, Wurtzburg, 1844,' a relic of the girl whose pen naturalized at once a work that is probably more widely known here, and far better appreciated. 304 OTHER LITERATURE thanks to her, than in Germany. Meinhold gracefully appre- ciated his translator's skill, and Sidonia was dedicated, on its first appearance in 1848, to der jungen geistreichen Uebersetzerin der Bernstein-Hexe. It was not Sarah Austin's daughter, but Mrs. R. W. Wilde, the Speranza of the Nation, who turned the Cloister Witch into English, and she, too, had well earned a dedication if the novelist had lived to complete his last work — ' Der getreue Ritter oder Sigismund Hager von und zu Altensteig und die Reformation, in Briefen an die Grafin Julia von Oldofredi-Hager in Lemberg ' — which was issued at Regens- burg in 1852, with a preface by Aurel, his son, and has not yet, to our knowledge, found a translator. So much for the circumstances and the man. As to his two famous romances, it would be difficult to over-praise them ; within their limits they are almost perfect ; and of what work of art can more be said ? The life of Maria Schweidler, the Amber Witch, is supposed to be told by her father — a kindly, cowardly, honest old creature, who writes an account of the providential escape of his beautiful, brave, and clever daughter from the fiendish malice of her enemies, at the time of the Thirty Years' War. It follows the simple scheme of an English melodrama (as Mr. Jacobs has noticed), where villainy uses occasions to drive an innocent heroine into dire stresses, till the lover, long delayed, manages to rescue her at the eleventh hour. It is, however, necessaiy that the plot should be simple and easy to grasp, when there is so much action in the detail. Appropriate setting, delicate touches of character, most skilfully enhance the nol)ility of the helpless innocent child, and draw the warmest sympathy from us for her unmerited suffering from the ignorance, envy, and lust of her persecutors, who urge her charity, her learning, and her courage against her as proofs of the horrid guilt of which they accuse her. The pretty episodes of the glorious Swedish king, and of the ring of Duke Philippus, MEINHOLD 305 the grim matter-of-fact narrative of the famine, are in Defoe's vein ; but the serious, beautiful charm of the girl is somewhat beyond his range, though the method by which it is indicated is one of which the author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders was a past master. It would be inter- esting to learn what knowledge of his famous predecessor Meinhold possessed ; he must at least have read of ^ poor Robin '. But the Pomeranian has qualities the ' True Briton ^ never possessed; Defoe's ghosts and spirits are vulgar, and he cannot deal with the supernatural so as to arouse horror or terror ; he does not meddle save with sordid crime, which remains sordid under his hand. Meinhold has the true Elizabethan power of shocking the reader's soul with the repulsion and the sympathy he can arouse by his presentment of depths of sin and abysses of dread. And this without Tourneur's extravagance, without the mere sham and unreal taste for blood and bogeys that long haunted the childish Teutonic mind, and inspired the absurdities of the German romantic drama. This man is no Walpole, with vapid, ill-begotten rococo invention ; no Monk Lewis with crude, Surrey-side imaginings. He is of the true stock of Kyd and Shakespeare. He can mix you broad humour with horror, and banal incident with the most pitiful tragedy, so that the relief shall enable the catastrophe to tell the more surely and vividly. Sidonia is far more ambitious, certainly in some respects finer, than the Amber Witch, illustrating its author's rare qualities in fuller measure. Astonishing for breadth and power is the conception of Sidonia herself — the true adven- turess nature — with a perpetual hatred for the pretences about her ; proud of her own birth, and full of disdain for those below her, with eager greed and envy for all that was out of her reach but had come to others without an effort ; and armed in that selfish, revengeful cruelty and callousness for others' sufferings that belong to the habitual criminal, who urges pretended right to punish a society so constituted as to show symptoms of not existing mainly for his ease V. p. n X 306 OTHER LITERATURE and comfort. There is something of Becky in her petty- malignity, her indomitable courage, her elaborate and long- prepared schemes, her quick change of plan when it becomes obvious she is on the wrong track, her contempt for plain- dealing and honesty, which she accounts crass animal stu- pidity. Yet Meinhold rises higher than Thackeray ever soared ; the little Mayfair tragedy shrinks beside the monstrous crime of Saatzig; even Regan or Goneril might have recoiled from ordering the merciless torment that Sidonia never scrupled to inflict. It is a feat to have imagined and put into being a creature so devilish and yet so human as the Cloister Witch. For such is Meinhold's marvellous skill that he forces us to pity her, and to rejoice that Diliana's pleading won a painless death for the wretched old sinner who had suffered so terribly, both in soul and body, before the inevitable end came. Dr. Theodorus Plcinnies, the simple narrator, is a less pronounced figure than Pastor Schweidler, and this rightly, for the story he has to relate is twice as long as the Caserow cleric's, and the adventures of his incomparable heroine fill the canvas ; but his dogged fidelity to the bestial hog-like brood of dukes that reign over Pomerania, and his infantile credulity, are distinctly marked. The book comprises chapter after chapter of wonderful graphic force, ingeniously various in tone, but always lit with that spark of humour which alone could make so much horror endurable : one recalls the swift and unforeseen end of the mighty young standard-bearer on the ice ; the aimless beery revolt of the town rascalry ; the squalid encounters on the boat by which the outraged father and the brutal paramour are brought to their deaths ; the devout ending of young Appelmann ; the boisterous horseplay of the castle, with death ever close at the heels of drunken idle mirth ; the futile squabbles of the peasants and the hangman over the gipsy witch ; the bear-hunt ; the ridiculous fray with the treacherous malignant Jews, followed by the impressive conjuration of the Angel of the Sun ; the bits of half-comic, squalid convent-life ; the liaughty ceremonies MEINHOLD 307 of the feudal court ; the cruel martyrdom of the innocent * dairy-mother \ and the vulgar quarrels of the girls in the ducal harem. But wherever the unconquerable Sidonia comes on his scene, the author rises to tragic heights, and his work grows in power and gains in colour. Admirably rendered is the mischievous fooling and insolent mockery of the wanton artful beauty who brings lust and hate and impiety in her train, withering all that is good wherever her influence spreads, so that, till accident foils her, she pulls the wires of the wooden-headed court-puppets, defies Her silly Grace and the honest chamberlain, and is blessed by the very victims she has bespelled. That midnight incident should surely find an illustrator where the brave-hearted maiden, cross in hand, has chased the werewolf out of the church into the churchyard, and lo ! at the touch of the holy symbol, the foul beast has suddenly disappeared, and there stands Sidonia trembling, with black and bloody lips, in the clear thin moonlight, beside an open grave. The climax of her career is reached with the coffin-dance, when the ' devil's harlot' sang the 109th Psalm, and took her revenge while the hymn was pealing through the church above, and the plank beneath her feet quivering with the death-agony of the girl-mother who had stood her friend in the midst of her disgrace, when even her own kinsfolk had cast her off. ^ Nor is it possible to forget Sidonia, crouching in her wretched cell in the witches' tower, with the black, scorched, half-roasted head and cross-bones of her miserable accom- plice flung on the floor beside her; Sidonia writhing and shrieking in impotent rage and agony on the rack at Oder- burg ; Sidonia, perhaps even more pitiful to remcmlier, as she curses and blasphemes in her despair over her lost beauty and ruined life, when the court painter, Mattliias Eller, brings the portrait of her youth to be completed by the likeness, at sixty years' interval, of her hideous senility. Sidonia, it is always Sidonia ! She haunts the mind and shakes the imagination, long after one has laid down the book that has created her. She is complete; her awful life X a 308 OTHER LITERATURE from childhood to age one unbroken tissue of dusky and fiendish wickedness, with only the gleams of courage and wit and recklessness, and instinctive loathing for pretentious folly, to lighten its dark web. Once only is she repentant ; for a brief moment she pities the little child she has orphaned. But her end is a relief, when, not without the kind of dignity which Dekker or Webster can bestow upon the foulest criminal, Meinhold's fearful heroine makes her last exit. *At length the terrible sorceress herself appears in sight, accompanied by the school, chanting the death-psalm. She wore a white robe seamed with black [the death-shift that her worst sin had brought her]. She walked barefoot, and round her head a black fillet flowered with gold, beneath which her long white hair fluttered in the wind.^ So she passes to her doom. After which, most fit and congruous is the epilogue, wherein, with true Shakespearian craft, Meinhold soothes his readers' tense nerves with soft melancholy, and shows us the faithful servant by his master's coffin in the vaults of the castle-church of Stettin on the anniversary of his burial, with the paper bearing the record of that burial in his hand. ' But my poor old Pomeranian heart could bear no more ; I placed the paper again in the coffin, and, while the tears poured from my eyes as I ascended the steps, these beautiful old verses came into my head, and I could not help reciting them aloud : — So must human pride and state In the grave lie desolate ; He who wore the kingly crown With the base worm lieth down, Ermined robe and purple pall Leaveth he at Death's weird call. Fleeting, cheating, human life. Souls are perilled in thy strife ; Yet the pomps in which wc trust. All must perish ! — dust to dust : God alone will ever be; Who serves Him reigns eternally.' MEINHOLD 309 Has such weird tragedy been written in Europe since the EUzabethan stage was silenced by the Puritan, as this of Sidonia ? When we compare it with Victor Hugo's Notre- Dame de Paris, the Frenchman's raw colouring is almost ludicrous, and his coarse conventional scene-painting ceases to impress. Scott's diablerie and magic is child's play, mere gossamer, beside Meinhold's firm, strong, natural work. Marryat has produced some rough half-wrought effects in this kind ; Barham and Stevenson have done well within restrained limits ; Poe is too fantastic and vulgar, for all his talent; Emily Bronte had the requisite power, but hardly attained to the exquisite art. Not Michelet, with the splendid glow of his romantic effects, nor Flaubert for all his rich and elaborate prose, nor Huysmans with his artful chameleon embroidery of phrase and shrill neurotic narrative, has been able to attain to Meinhold's marvellous creations. Only Balzac's Succube, ' ceste ange froissee par de meschans hommes' — a tale (like Maria Schweidler's) of pitiful charity brutally betrayed to torture and death, — this tiny master- piece of a great master, is fit to stand beside them. It would seem that upon this German pastor of the nineteenth century there had descended the skirt of Marlowe's mantle. He who drew the pride of Tamerlane, the ambition of Faust, the greed of Barabas, was the true ancestor of the creator of Sidonia, and we must go back to the time of Ford to find a right parallel among English men of letters to him that portrayed the meekly borne sufferings and soft courage of the Amber Witch. TURGU^NIEV 1 A MORE difficult matter to dispose of than that of the novelist's character is the position of his work. As a critic he was delicate and useful in examining those works that he felt to be within his sympathy ; of those outside his some- » 1898. 310 OTHER LITERATURE what narrow range he was no just judge — for instance, he could not read and did not like Balzac. As an original author of the school of Gogol and Sand, he is entitled to a place that, though far below that claimed for him by his first readers and admirers, is still respectable. In the first place, he is a fine observer of the ' nuances ', he is a good craftsman, sincere with his art, caring greatly (like his comrade Flaubert and his young friend Maupassant) to get the right word in the right place, impatient of inaccuracies, of small faults, of blurs and blots. In the next place, he is sane and wholesome. He saw through the cant of the windy talk supposed to show * progress ' and * purpose ' in Russian circles in the fifties and sixties. He saw through the silly formulae that entrap weak souls. He not only saw the wrong path and knew to where it led, but he saw the right path and pointed it out, a trifle sardonically perhaps, but still with kindly intent. This naturally caused the babblers to accuse him (as they accused Goethe before him) of being a bad patriot, a turncoat, an anti-progressive, and so on. He was strong enough (though a sensitive man) to stand against the current of abuse that broke against him for years. He disdained to bid for popularity, and was content to wait till his position was proven true by the hard calculus of fact. All this must be counted to him for righteousness. The man must, of course, be judged largely by his books, by the impressions that he produced on his friends (as such valuable documents as the Goncourt journals demonstrate), as well as by his authentic letters. The gentle giant, a little sad, a little ironic, a little capricious in ordinary things; careless with money; detached from places, attached to people ; severe in self-analysis, not unsympathetic, but searching in his analysis of others; a gentleman and an artist to the finger-tips. This is the man who loved his friends and despised his enemies, who pitied himself (and others), who left liis own land to follow his own art; who loved rather the truth in exile than the sham with the applause of ignorance and the rewards that it brings, a man early disillusioned but never soured, a character that TURGU^NIEV 311 could not but be fascinating to the few whom he admitted to his intimate friendship, and rather enigmatic to those outside this circle. SWINBURNE 1 ^^ It was certainly a moment of the keenest mental, almost bodily pleasure, when, nearly forty years ago, in the sixties, one first heard and felt the fresh harmonies of the Atalanta and the Poems and Ballads. Mr. Swinburne had created a new paradise of English poetry, full of marvellous melody, melody hitherto undiscovered and unsung. It was enchanted ground, and the glamour that it cast about us then clings to it still. It will always be hard for any of us who hailed the triumphant advent of the new poet, when both he and we were young, to judge his achievements calmly. We are and must be content to admire. Certainly the new poems were no less pleasing to us then in that their exquisite workmanship carried ideas that were, to our minds, full of high and holy truths — ideas some of which certainly have not all the same charm to-day, though the verse that enshrines them is as beautiful, as admirable as ever. We felt warmly toward Hugo both as poet and politician, we loathed the French emperor's coujt d'etat and the false and cowardly truckling to the clericals that brought about the Halt before Rome, we venerated the great conspirator Mazzini, and the greater liberator Garibaldi, and to have lofty verse concerning these made by a poet, whose mastery in technique already raised our high enthusiasm, was doubly delightful. His joy and deep knowledge in, and exquisite interpretation of, the Greek singers and Mediaeval makers also gave us intense and sympathetic pleasure. He loved the Elizabethans and the Border Ballads as we had learned to do. With his attitude toward the manifestations * English Illustrated Magazine, April, 1903. 7 312 OTHER LITERATURE of official Christianity at Rome and Moscow we were in whole-hearted sympathy. How were we not to rejoice in such a poet ? Of course, after a while we began, some of us at least, to differ with the poet in degree ; we did not prize all Hugo's verse and prose as he did, M^e could not always feel such strong disgust or admiration as he expressed towards the objects of his praise or blame, we did not care for some of his later subjects as much as he did, we loyally but keenly regretted certain violent utterances, we began to make dis- tinctions, especially when the poet wrote in prose — bu t th e spell of his finest verse was still upon us, and so it remains. As for myself, if I may speak of my own feelings in this critical matter, what of his I read and re-read and what I know by heart, is to be found neither in his longer narra- tive, nor in his later dramatic verse, but in the work of his lyrical or pensive moods, in the just and magnificent sonnets on the Elizabethans ; in poems filled, as is Hesperia, with the august music of the sea; in the Hellenic beauty and poignancy of Anactoria and the Sapphics; above all in the exquisite haunting melodies of the Ballad of Dreamland and of that inimitable piece The Forsaken Garden. There are exquisite songs for singing, noble elegies and dedica- tions, superb passages in the narratives, and golden lines in the dramas, that do not fail to delight as they did at first, but the purely lyrical and pensive poems are those that seem to grow even more lovely as the years pass. A sincere passion for the Sea in all her moods, and as true a love for England, give peculiar nobility to much of Mr. Swinburne's most impressive work, deepening the thought and strengthening the music, and imposing on the elaborate craftsmanship a sovran and serene simplicity of purpose. But English as he is, it is not only in his own country that he has been a living voice to his generation. He has found honour and admiration in the land of Villon and Baudelaire, of Hugo and Gautier, in that realm of France of which he and George Meredith of all our English poets have written SWINBURNE 313 most generously. And he is known as a master-poet in the land all English poets from Chaucer to Landor have loved, the land of Carducci, of Leopardi, of Bruno, and of Dante — a land he has honoured only less than his own. He has written much, and much he has written well; and surely, when his time comes, this man, having woven for himself an immortal robe of honour, shall be summoned to the fellowship of those great poets he has worthily praised, and like them Pass not crownless to Persephone. KIPLING^ Mr. Kipling is a force in politics as in letters. But this makes it harder to judge him fairly. Some of his least artistic work is wholly sound in feeling : ' Paj^, Pay, Pay ' is not his best poem, but as an effectual piece of writing it had a deserved success, and helped many that would have fared ill but for such an appeal. For myself, I do not greatly admire his Hymns, and I find the talking ponies and machinery of the kind tiresome, but these Hymns and animal stories and the less inspired ' Just So ' tales are favourites with many both young and old, and certainly the moral is excellent. As a teacher, indeed, Mr. Kipling is undeniably effective. I am profoundly grateful for many of his sermons, and gladly acknowledge the good he has done. We English cannot help preaching ; it is one of our most notable charac- teristics to the foreigner's eye that we must be eternally giving advice, advice generally unasked. To my mind Mr. Kipling is very Englisii (if I may differ, as I regret to do, from Mr. Chesterton) ; he loves the didactic, he dallies gladly with allegorj', he has, like Defoe, practical ends. He is an artist born, but he is also a born preacher, tiiough it is only fair to say that he does not make himself a missionary, and his ^ English Illustrated Magazine, Dec. 1903. 314 OTHER LITERATURE ministrations are confined to his own countrymen^ who have need of his advice. He preaches Faith, Hope, and Charity. He has enforced, again and again, the necessary lesson of sympathy with everything that lives. He has made us feel that there is a common humanity between us and the in- scrutable ' native \ He has made the most stupid of us understand that there is an abiding interest in the thoughts and ways of the wholesome plain man and woman doing their daily work and rejoicing in it. He has got close to the inwardness of the soldier and the sailor, and the engineer, the civilian, and the fisherman. The whole life and mind of the newspaper man, whether editor, compositor, printer's devil, reporter, or correspondent, is open to him, and revealed by him to us. He is a perpetual and patient and swift observer, ever on the look-out for the vital and distinctive among the mass of phenomena that surrounds us all. He has not a little of Maupassant's gift of giving the local colour and the personal impression without waste of words, though he was trained in a far less artistic studio, and was some time before he worked free of the tricks of the school of Dickens and Sala and the Kingsleys, and reached the higher simplicities of finished art. Dumas has influenced him, as he influenced Stevenson, wholly for good, in the spirit and not in the letter. He has the delight Gautier so often expressed for technical detail, he sees its importance ; he knows what the engine is to the engineer and the ship to the sailor. He can paint moods by a very different method to that of Henry James, but one as legitimate, and more Meredithian, discovering the instinct by the act, marking the play of incident on the character. It is not his business to endeavour to trace out, according to the miraculous and unique method of the greatest of American novelists, the whole working of the tangled current of will as it is contorted by circumstance. His prose is straightforward, concise, untrammelled l)y useless ornament, and, as he develops, less and less dis- turbed by those episodic appeals to the reader which Defoe KIPLING 315 rightly disdained, but which spoil much of Thackeray's work. His reader is never unfairly dealt with by Mr. Kipling: if he cannot move him with a 'plain tale' he will not strive by such illegitimate efforts to stimulate his stolid brain and dull heart. With a fine descriptive gift, never sliding into the dangerous catalogue style (which, though it was nobly employed by Balzac, was not seldom abused by Zola), he gets his effect by a careful but spon- taneous-looking selection of the touches that really tell. I often wonder whether he does not practise in letters the method Phil May used in design, and write into his first sketch much more than he means to have printed, cutting out all but the really significant lines and leaving them to speak out clearly, unhampered by those that would only fill up and dull the impression he has already secured. He can create characters that help to people the world that each of us has in his brain ; a world where Falstaff and Mrs. Gamp are as real as one's flesh-and-blood acquaintance. Mrs. Hauksbee and Private Ortheris, Dick and the red-haired girl, Terence and Dinah, the engineer's wife and Kim's old bonze. The Infant, Strickland, Torpenhow, Badalia and Judson, Jakin and Dan, are not paper things, but move, and talk, and laugh, and suffer, and breathe, and bleed, as mere puppets never can. For plot and situation he has, of course, a most rare and singular gift ; such tales as The Man that Was, The Brush- wood Boy, The Strange Ride, and a score more tliat might be named, attest tliis power to the full. He has had, of course, scores of imitators, and not a few that have been inspired by him to do good work of their own (like Mr. London, whose Call of the Wild is far the best book Mr. Kipling's beast tales have brought into existence) : but even his imitators have not made the originals stale. For his verse, there is much that is imperfect in it. He has let far too many poems be printed and reprinted tliat do not fairly represent him, that are imperfect, innnaturo, unbalanced, unfinished. He has not yet the heart to prune his verse as he prunes his prose. He is too content with labouring and 316 OTHER LITERATURE re-labouring inside the same circles of thought and expression. He injures some of his best poems by leaving ugly flaws that could easily be removed, by imperfect rhymes, extra-metrical lines (a bad fault this because it irritates), jarring discords, superfluity of expression, and above all by labouring the idea overmuch as Victor Hugo too often did. This laxity is the sin of Eli, and it is deadly if a man do not repent and forswear it. Prose may be ' let go at that ', but not verse ; it is not Splaying the game\ But when all is said, Mr. Kipling is a vigorous and sincere poet. His best verse has music in it, and there are wings to his words. He has learnt much from Mr. Swinburne's early work, but it is the more massive qualities of his master's rhythm rather than the deli- cacies of his more elaborate craftsmanship that have chiefly pleased him. Mr. Kipling has the essential gift that the poet of children and the crowd must have, the gift of correct time and clear flow of melody, but he has more than that : there is a soul as well as a body in the finest of his poems, they cling, they haunt the mind, as they satisfy the ear. Some of his scraps of verse set at the heads of chapters are in this kind admirable. He is also, as few modern poets are, a real song- writer : he makes verse that calls for a singer, that demands the baritone and the tinkle of the strings and the full-mouthed chorus. What he has written in slang is wonderfully good, full of movement, and never commonplace, as so much dialect verse tends to be. There are excellent specimens: Piet, M. I., and Me in his last volume. He is exceptionally strong in allegory, a vein rarely touched of late, but which he has worked to purpose. The Galletj, The Three-decker, The Truce of the Bear, The Dykes, and True Thomas, are notable examples. Neither Tennyson nor (as I think) Browning could write a good ballad, but Mr. Kipling can. Fisher's Boarding-house, The Bolivar, The Last Suttee, and Denny Deever, for instance, are real 'little epics '. For the full, rich, rolling verse in which he excels, perhaps the best are : The Last Chantey, The Dirge of the Dead Sisters, Et Dona Ferentes, The Long Trail, The Jollies, The Anchor ^ow^, though KIPLING 317 there are a fair number nearly as good in manner or matter. But if these alone existed Mr. Kipling would go down to posterity with ' a full and proper kit of song ', to use his own words. His limitations are obvious, but they are the consequence of his peculiar gifts, and we do not look to him to rival the work of thinkers like Mr. Meredith, to walk with the dreamers like Mr. Yeats or ' A. E.', or to touch the poignant personal note of such poets as Mr. Blunt or the best verse of Mrs. Watson and T. E. Brown. Henley's finest work was much more subjective than Mr. Kipling's is or can be. But there are many mansions in the House of Apollo, and to one of these his title is writ clear enough. It is pleasant to write about good work, but Mr. Kipling's work does not need much explanation — it speaks for itself. He is yet young and strong, and in full power : one may hope for more prose and more verse from him. He will never lack subjects. He evidently loves his work, and like the artists in heaven of his Envoy, he would do it for the pure pleasure of it were there neither fame nor reward in it. He has deserved well of England, and well of the Empire. He has never hesitated to speak plainly to his countrymen, and some of them, at least, have taken his lesson to heart. He has been faithful to Art also, and his devotion has not been thrown away. He has always been a learner, and though at first one feared that he would be too easily satisfied, the increasing finish of his prose style (for his verse does not improve perceptibly) shows that he has constantly striven for more perfect expression. His leniency toM^ards his past work is, though regrettable, not hard to understand. Perhaps no English man of letters since Byron has seen his ideas and his manner of conveying them so widely welcomed among the reading public of his countrymen. Unlike Byron in most things, he resembles him in this, that he commands the attention of the public because he can be easily understood, because his manner is that which his age admires and recognizes, because he has something new to say, which he must say plainly, and does say well. 318 OTHER LITERATURE THE REAL EMERSON [This article appeared in a sportive Young Oxford magazine, The Spirit Lamp, in Oct. 1892, as a Causerie du Vendredi. The quotation heads the article. A volley against American literature and civilization follows, of a conversational character : we quote the remainder. Mr. P. H. Emerson's Caoba and other books were also favourites of Powell's.] ' I drank it, and say, " Ah, look here, chummy, that is beer, that different stuff what you went and got t'mornin' ".' — A Son of the Fens. . . . Poor Emerson ! he had at least the consciousness (which the rest of the babbHng Boston minikins have never had) that all was not right in the * Great Western Republic \ Once^ too, on a pathetic occasion he wrote a sad and touching little piece of verse — a great sorrow struck a spark of poetry out of his flint. But enough of this honest fellow and his hopeless commonplace copy-book stuff. He never was, and is not, this fleeting down-east phantasm, this angular New England evanescence. But, curiously enough, there is an Emerson, a real Emerson, a man who can write and does write, whose book, A Son of the Fens, is one of the English novels of this century. Realist, in that his subject is taken from simple, actual, infinite life, ^ drawn from the quicke ' ; impressionist, in that he strives for justice of tone, for the harmony that there always is in an aspect of nature ; Mr. Emerson has given us a simple record, autobiographic in form, of an East Anglian life, a hearty, wholesome, useful life, with the common ups and downs that befall dozens of good east- country * mash men ' and fishermen ; but it is all somehow deeply interesting. You can fancy yourself, you cannot help fancying yourself sitting in the brick cottage by the mill over pipes and mugs of homebrewed as the plain man tells his plain tale, ' backing and fetching ', and * tacking down a long reach,^ but still getting on, in that natural artless way that is the perfection of art. The verisimilitude THE REAL EMERSON 319 of the Avhole thing is almost magic : the unfolding of character is admirable and sure, the detail correct to a hair's- breadth. Miss Dobree and Miss Ingram and Mrs. Riddell are artists all three, and they have written admirable records, but of lives that are not in the least idyllic — cramped, mutilated, adulterated, civilized, middle-class lives : lives not lived but poorly shambled through. But this rough countryman^s life is an idyll. And then Mr. Emerson never moralizes, he judges not, he is the true chronicler, he records as well as he can what is to be recorded, and he leaves it. Nor does he cumber his drama with elaborate superfluous scenery, he is as free from the need of scene-painting as Homer or a Sagaman. The extraordinary force of the book is felt by a moment's comparison with the work of such worthy people as Black- more. Beside A Son of the Fens, how unreal, flat, sen- timental, is a tale like Lorna Doone ! And yet Lorna Doone has much more merit and labour in it than the vast bulk of English-made noveltry. Nor has Mr. Emerson the excited forced note which sometimes spoiled a fine page of Jefferies, or the hopeless bitterness that scarred Runciman's best work. He is not feverish, he reminds one of Valles at his best, he has the same idiomatic aptness of phrase, definite clear memory, restraint, accurate adjustment of colour, and unprejudiced sympathy. Mr. Emerson has worked hard at his East Anglian, his earlier tales are often careful, accurate, poetic, drastic, but this Son of the Fens is a little master- piece. Into that worshipful company of immortals created by man there has entered one Dick Windmill, and his pardner Jo and his wife Jenny are with him. * Night you go, old Dicka ! ' FAIRY TALES AND FAIRIES ^ It is not so easy as it seems to write a fairy tale. In reality it is impossible ; fairy tales are * born, not made \ Give a great writer the skeleton of a real old fairy tale, and ^ 1891-2 : from two reviews. 320 ~ OTHER LITERATURE he will clothe the dry bones and breathe the breath of life into the hollow ribs and start the creature forth as a new avatar. Andersen may be cited as example of the modern fairy-tale maker, but he could not invent a fairy tale. The Tin Soldier is a ' mime \ an * idyll ', of fairyland, but not a fairy tale. Lewis Carroll has invented a new branch of literature in his Alice, but however we may christen his curious, whimsical, topsy-turvy, dream-like medleys, they are not fairy tales. The burlesque fairy tale is to many of us (in spite of The Rose and the Ring) a piece of bad taste, generally detestable to children, and is liked by those who can appreciate a genuine folk-tale. The elements of vul- garity and ignorance in Hawthorne (so ably concealed in several of his other books) are shown up as soon as he begins to deal with the Greek myths. Southey has produced an admirable folk-tale, the Three Bears, but it must have been founded on a traditional foundation. Froude has turned out an excellent beast-fable of no little humour and couched in the true spirit of Eastern didacticism. Mr. Howard Pyle has hashed up old fairy tales into new dishes with much skill, and illustrated them with unrivalled grace and power and absolute fitness. And Mr. Proctor has done some very striking and adequate cuts to a set of popular books of rare literary qualities which bear the same relation to the real fairy tales they copy and follow as Amadis of Gaul, Tirant le Blanc, and Palmerin of England do to Lancelot, Tristan, and Perceval. The old stories may be retold by men of talent in each generation, as Mr. Harris has retold the beast stories in his Uncle Remus, but to invent a fairy tale seems beyond the power of civilized man. ... If it is impossible, as most of us find it, to believe with Blake that the fairies exist — and even he saw a fairy funeral, omen, as it seems, of their extinction, completed by the telephone and begun by the church bells — it is at least consolatory to think that they once existed, that they lived under the green hillocks, that they tended and milked their fairy cattle, danced in their fairy rings by moonlight. FAIRY TALES AND FAIRIES 321 and were small, hairy, merry, quick-tempered, swift-footed, clever-handed, grateful little beings, who have probably left some of their blood with us to prolong in our much-mixed race the elfin virtues of mirth, industry, craftsmanship, and gratitude. These dead races and what they have bequeathed us yield matter for reflection, and one begins to doubt whether even a high religious authority was quite wise in sneering at ^old wives^ tales'. At all events, Shakespeare treats the old lore in a more Christian sympathy and a wiser prescience of its essential truthfulness. MISS PAMELA COLMAN SMITH'S DRAWINGS A PERSONAL IMPRESSION [Here follows a prefatory note to an exhibition by a living artist ; the preference shown by Powell for child-like truth and charm, or for fanciful but keen observation, in line and colour, recalls his love in literature for simple or homely phrase.] There are two sorts of pictorial art, both, as it seems to me, noble and la\\'ful, and both acceptable after their kind. One is concerned with what we call real things^ things that have existed, or do or may exist in this three-dimensional workaday world of ours. The other is busy with the things of Dreamland, the things that never have been and never are, and perhaps never will be. I am not going to settle which of these two kinds of art is the nobler, or to confess which I prefer, though that would be an easier matter. I am only going to try to give my impressions of the work of an artist who seeks and finds subjects in both worlds, but most often in the World of Dream. Miss Pamela Smith's Dreamland is a Dreamland that I like to visit through her painted visions of it. Some painters' Dreamlands I wholly refuse to enter or even to look at over the wall ; they are alien to any Dreamland I have ever cared to travel in ; but I find her Dreamland full of interest, as I walk slowly past the giant liills and giantess » ' I like real things best.' [F. Y. P. ; MS. note.] V. p. II Y 322 OTHER LITERATURE crags, and peer into the deep caves, look up to the high rocks, pore down into the deep pools, or gaze up on the big rolling clouds sped by the warm west wind, or wait to see the fall of the towering wave, and the sudden leap of the glittering fountain. It pleases me to get glimpses of the floating fairy- ladies with their tall crowns of gold and their trailing em- broidered jewel-beaded robes, to peep at the little trooping pixies, hurrying past with their swaying leaf-banners and long cloaks, to discover wan, shadowy forms, encysted in the immemorial rocks, to watch tall figures in sober raiment, grouped silently, or moving to stately rhythms. For there is, as in all natural compositions, a musical effect in these pictures. The varying shades of green and purple, and faint blues and yellows, the specks of gold and silver, are pleasant to the eye and appropriate to the whole atmosphere of the vision. There is a phantasy and imagination in the very placing and pattern that makes the tiny scenes impressive. For these translations of dreams into form and colour are manifestly sincere and simple. Not a few indeed are recollections of actual dreams. The direct style, the un- affected handling and swift, child-like conventions of the drawing befit the subjects. And here it is allowable to say that Mr. Whistler — no indulgent critic — spoke in generous praise of the execution of these drawings by Miss Smith, insisting that over-care and high finish, and academic rigidity and exactness, would have been completely out of place in them, and not at all in keeping with those gleaming inter- pretations of the fairy world, where the air is thin and fine and the colour iridescent, and all is unstable and fluent, dissolving and recomposing and perpetually changing before the wondering eye. Only the swift impression can be put down, and it must be recorded as quickly as possible, for the vapour that veils this airy universe may cover it all in another moment. But there are other sides to Miss Pamela Smith's art. She likes to play with the funny old-fashioned little children and listen to the graceful beskirted mammas and delightful PAMELA COLMAN SMITHES DRAWINGS 323 aunties, old and young, of the days of Mrs. Barbauld, and of Anne and Jane Taylor, and here she has a little province of her own. Of her illustrations, especially the admirable Golden Vanity, and the original and delightful Annancy Stories, I must not speak now. Her landscape is to me especially delightful. Its conventions are well and aptly adapted to her individual feelings and impressions ; excellent in them- selves, always expressive, sometimes really masterly in their simplicity and force. They have style. The composition is easy and eloquent, the frugal colour finely chosen. They are intensely personal too, and to me they seem to possess the kind of charm that I find in George Wilson's landscape work, though they are usually joyous and have none of the rich Keats-like melancholy of that distinguished painter's pictures. Of course these drawings will not appeal to every one that sees them. One person's drawings are not necessarily interesting to another. But those that feel the personal note there is in all Miss Pamela Smith's drawings, who can accept her convictions, understand her point of view, and grasp her scheme of interpretation, will take a great deal of pleasure in them, and for these persons they have been wrought. To me there is a grace about them akin to the grace of childhood, a grace hard to describe but easy to feel. The true visionary is always young, for the years he passes in Dreamland do not count, and he always sees and feels as a child — as Blake did even upon his death-bed. That Miss Pamela Smith's work is original and absolutely sincere is obvious ; that she has found a natural and harmonious mode of expression is clear also. She comes before us with a set of fresh and vivid transcripts from her own peculiar outlook into Nature and Memory that are not only new, but, as I think, often beautiful, with a singular beauty of their own. That is all I claim for her, but I claim it decidedly, and if I am right in my claim surely she has deserved well of those that love and care for Art. Y 2 VII SOCIAL AND POLITICAL [Thoughts on Democracy appeared first as a preface to Mr. C. Beard's Industrial Revolution, and then as part of a pamphlet (see Catalogue ofWritings), in which was also reprinted the article on Buskin, itself originally issued in the Ruskinian organ, St. George.] JOHN EUSKIN At sunset, on the 20th Januarj^, 1900, died a man who has done much for his countrymen and would fain have done more. For years and years he prophesied to us of faith and hope and charity, and of judgement to come. He kept high ideals before us ; he was charitable, kind, and unselfish in his own life. Like Carlyle, his master, he hated shams : ' appearances ' or ' custom ', or ' what is expected ' or 'what must be profitable', were excuses of no avail in his eyes. ' Is the thing true ? ' was his test, and it seems to me that though in applying this touchstone we shall often go wrong, such is human ignorance, we shall not be so likely to go wrong in the long run as if we took another. Like Carlyle, too, he was a great preacher, preaching to a nation that has known and required many great preachers from the days of King Alfred and of Langland until to-day. Moreover, he was a popular preacher, but he was no hireling loving to prophesy smooth things, flattering under the simulation of rebuke or craftily apologizing for and cunningly glossing over mean and petty but well-cherished national sins. He was a statesman sometimes, but never a politician. It was emphatically not his humour to worship the ugly idol of expediency, nor could he stoop to cajole fools in order to JOHN RUSKIN 325 gain place or popularity. He was an intensely religious man, but he never put on the garb of a sect or pretended for a moment to share the dogmatic beliefs that are the delight of the churches, though such acquiescence would have secured him powerful sympathies for his life's work. Priding himself to be the son of an honourable merchant, his morality would never have allowed him to inform the House of Commons that 'adulteration was a mere form of competition'. He was not willing to tell working-men that they are wise in matters of which they are ignorant, honest when he knew that they are too often lazy and stupid, fine fellows when they are obviously, too many of them, more drunken, brutal, and dirty than they need be : though to no man in England was the cause of the poor ever nearer, and few public men, whom we have known, have thought and worked more earnestly and usefully on behalf of those who labour with their hands or have held good handiwork in more complete respect. Like Carlyle, too, he was one of the first English thinkers to discover and expose the hopeless but most delusive fallacies of the old school of political economy, thougli all he got for many years in this national service was shallow mockery. But the political economy of to-day is the political economy of John Ruskin, and not the political economy of John Bright or even of John Stuart Mill. There was a time when, as he said himself, Carlyle and he stood ahnost alone against a world that listened greedily to the babble of party politicians and the chatter of popular journalists, to all the meaningless, deceptive buzzing of the ephemerals, in fact. But how does it stand now? What was essential in the creed of these two teachers is now largely a matter of faith (though unhappily not always of practice) among thinking men and women wherever English is spoken. I am not claiming for Joim Ruskin the infalli- bility that belongs to no man, were he even Isaiah or Dante or Shakespeare, but I do say this, that in the midst of an evil generation that laboured busily with the muck-rake, delighting in its filthy toil and refusing any other work, he 326 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL was not content to live meanly or think meanly or act meanly ; and that like Meredith (the greatest now left to us of the foremost English teachers this dying half-century has known) he never ceased to point out the evil of the headlong national pursuit of riches and rank, followed to the reckless damage of body and soul, and to the callous and wanton injury of every beautiful place and beautiful thing in these islands. I confess it is this side of the man that chiefly appeals to me in his writings, though I can see perfectly well that he was not talking idly when he complained that he was taken away from his own proper work because upon him (as upon William Morris later) it was borne in that no one but himself could or would give to his fellows the message he had learnt. For Ruskin was both an artist and a teacher of art. His own art work was twofold : he wrought with pencil and with pen, with line and colour and with words. His drawings are always delicate and conscientious, often gently and delightfully expressive. His art criticism is admittedly of high order. In fact, he has anticipated much of the most modern aesthetic teaching now received wherever art is really followed. It is not such a slight thing that he was able to teach himself by patient painstaking to understand and appreciate the work of a man who was neither understood nor appreciated before, though he had in highest measure the divine gift of nobly rendering natural colour and form, and of clothing his vision of reality with such a garment of glory as had never till then seemed possible or credible to an English painter. If, like all critics, Ruskin was no judge of the works of art he did not love, at least he deeply under- stood those that he did love. He was blind, wholly blind to the genius of Whistler, but he was also one of the first and best appreciators of one important side at least of Turner, and though there are certain high technical qualities in Turner's work that are (as some good judges hold) even to-day insufficiently apprehended, yet there must be, as a result of Ruskin's generous partisanship, many careful JOHN RUSKIN 327 students of this great artist who were first led to study his prints and pictures by reading Modern Painters, It was Ruskin, too, who placed the study of mediaeval art on its true historical basis. It was Ruskin^s championship that helped prae-Raphaelites in their long struggle, and Ruskin's writings furnished them with a store of arguments for the positions they had taken up. His philosophy of art and ethic largely became theirs. In the battle where Millais by his illustrations, Morris by his handicraft, Rossetti by his colour, and Swinburne by his verse overthrew the armies of the aliens, Ruskin did his allies yeoman service. That he was unable to see that beyond these men and their work there were new men and fresh possibilities to come ; that he could hardly conceive a great architecture save in terms of Medi- aeval Venetian or North French Ogivale ; that he could neither appreciate ' classic style ' nor the imitations and paraphrases thereof — to say this is to say that he had marked and dis- tinctive likes and dislikes, and that, possessing the artistic temperament, he was frankly and sharply intolerant of all that did not seem likely to satisfy his personal ideals even in the work of those he most venerated. It is certain that Turner would have differed totally from him in his prejudiced view of the Dutch school ; and a system of criticism that mis- understands and practically ignores the greatest of masters, Rembrandt and Velasquez, treats with contempt and dislike the most beautiful and most subtle developments of Japanese art, and has high praise for certain inferior artists and pictures, can never be accepted as in any way a complete view of the subject. Still few critics have had the power to transfer to others so much of the effect, that a favourite work of visual art produces on themselves after prolonged and intelligent study, as Ruskin had. He would sometimes dwell far too long and fancifully, as many of us believe, on the subject, or the ideal that was conjured up by the picture he was admiring, but he could also feel acutely the (piality of the painting, the charm of the pattern, the satisfactory play of the lines, and the power of the colouring, whenever 328 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL the picture was of the kind he could understand. He did his best to educate his public to art ; whether in this he did well or ill, who shall yet decide ? It has been held by tiiose who do not speak lightly, that to awaken any one to the Delight of the Eye is to do him an immense service ; and that even though such an one have but small art aptitudes, those tiny aptitudes were better increased than left to diminish by disuse. The influence of Ruskin's teaching really marks the difference in English art between 1880 and 1860, and there is scarcely a street, indeed, or a house in England that does not bear some trace of Ruskin's influence. Though Mock- Venetian has become an abomination in the dirty hands of the jerry-builder, though Postlethwaite has prattled nauseously of Botticelli and of much else, though much foolishness has been said and done by those who have made the following of Ruskin a symptom of fashion instead of a matter of conviction, though even among honest followers of the Master there has been much blind bigotry and plenty of silly partisanship, all this does not really destroy the value of the good he has done, working at first entirely single- handed and long almost alone. We must remember, too, all that is really essential in his art-teaching has been gener- ally absorbed ; we only stop now to discuss points where we differ from it, tacitly accepting its main axioms — the necessity of sincerity, patience, observation — and agreeing implicitly with his rejection of machine-made decoration, dishonest use of material, needless ornament, useless detail, and all fashionable falsities that can never become tolerable or even excusable to the true artist. His own handiwork was patient, careful, miimte ; he was a fine draughtsman (so fine that few, save artists, seem to me to have really appreciated the beautiful and attractive character of his most sensitive work) ; he had a subtle feeling for colour in itself ; but he would not understand what the critics meant by * composition ', and he did not try to grapple with or to comprehend the colour-problems that men like Manet and Degas have set themselves to solve as far as may JOHN RUSKIN 329 be. Those natural iridescent effects, for instance, that Turner saw and grappled with so boldly, as Mr. Stevenson has pointed out, a whole generation before other men dreamed of trying to reproduce them, were negligible phenomena to him. He did not often care or even notice whether a picture was ' true ^ in colour, provided it really satisfied him in other respects, as his criticism on Turner's water-colours plainly shows. He too often mixed ethical matters that do not concern art at all with his art criticism, always to the intense delight of the Philistines, but not to the satisfaction of the rightly- trained artist. But, apart from this acknowledged mistake, it is certain that in treating of the social aspects of art he did great service, and fearlessly and rightly took up the consideration of difficulties that had not been overcome or even fairly attacked since the days of Plato. He was often fantastically feminine, he was not seldom unduly whimsical, he was at times obstinate in his first expression of opinion. We may freely allow all this, and yet the man was so forceful that we shall detract little from the great mass of benefit he did, and it must never be forgotten that he was the first person to convince English people, other than artists, that art is a matter of real importance, that art must above all things express the artist's real feeling, that there is no such thing as ^middling well' in art, that only the human hand can produce a piece of art — all axioms, platitudes almost, now, but all condemned as absolute paradoxes when he first wrote them down. I have said that Ruskin was a prophet — that is, in its true sense, a forth-speaker — a man who stood up to speak the truth as he felt it to his generation ; he was also a prophet in our common sense — a fore-teller. How many of the measures he recommended, when the kindly Thackeray was compelled by the angry outcry of the orthodox economists of the day to close the Cornhill to his articles, are now practical politics ! National Education, National Hygiene, National Dealing with the housing of the poor, even National Succour for those who fall by the way in the toilsome 330 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL march of the Army of Labour, National Dealing with Land, National Dealing with Trade, with Colonization, with all the real National Interests — all these measures, so long denounced without distinction by the old sham political economy of the past, he advocated, and now they are within or at our doors. No European statesman of this generation or the last (save perhaps Bismarck) has set out with such a programme and seen so much of it carried through in his lifetime ; and this, though he was a mere private man, not in Parliament, belonging to no creed, no party, attached to no newspaper, possessing not the gift of platform oratory, loathing the demagogic arts, opposed by the idols of the day — Gladstone, Bright, Mill and Company, only welcomed by the young enthusiasts who read his books and flocked to his lectures, only appreciated by a few honest workers, such as Thomas Dixon and Charles Rowley, and supported by a few wise friends such as Carlyle. And it is this man, laughed at for years as a sentimentalist, scorned as an idle dreamer by the ' big editors ', ' able journalists ', whom he wholly abhorred, who has proved himself almost alone in his generation a great, practical English reformer. But Soothsayer though he essentially was, born to the office, he was also the Knight of art consecrated to the quest in which he spent most of his life. His message was delivered in the most enchanting melody. Every sentence of his best work is a beautiful morsel in itself fitted aptly and justly into the particular mosaic he is constructing. He uses that most difficult and beautiful of musical instru- ments known to us — the English language — with all the mastery that long and careful self -training, that minute observance of the older masters, that an inborn sense of rhythm and an exquisite variety of expression all his own have given him. Whether he speaks of things homely and peaceful, as in his Praeterita ; or of things antique and higli, as in his books on Italian and English Art; or of things deep and pathetic and sternly imminent, as in his works on Society and Economy, one cannot choose but listen to the JOHN RUSKIN 331 strain, though there is in it no siren music, no wanton piping of vain musicians, but the right melody that Milton loved and used, now simple and winning as a child's talk, now high and clear and compelling as if an angel spoke. His fair, winged words catch the listeners up into the beautiful, wild places of the earth, lead them through the fair cities and minsters of old, waft them to the shore of the sounding, sunlit sea : and whether the seer chooses to speak of the air of the earth, of the fires of the heaven, or of the waters of the firmament, he enchants all those who hear him. Even the works and deeds of great men as he tells of them seem to glow more brightly by reason of his words. But in the midst of his loving care for the glories of Art, and his perpetual sorrow for the fair things that he saw neglected and destroyed around him, it seemed as if he could never for an hour forget that there were possibilities of fairer things on earth in this common world of men than any that painter or sculptor imagined. It was Ruskin's rooted belief that to bring beauty into life was the artist's supreme task. He was never tired of proclaiming that the grime and pretence and squalor, all the dull, stupid, vulgar horror of the modern city, were the results above all of ignorance and greed and lack of truth, and he never ceased to declare that it needed only the self-sacrifice and thoughtful effort of those who really loved higher things, if they would but band together against the evil that encompassed them, to bring about the Great Conversion, and make the workaday world we live in a place fit for human beings and happy, living things, instead of allowing it to remain the inferno that it is now to far too many of our fellow creatures in this England of to-day. Of all the Englishmen of this century, both rich and 1' gifted, surely this man put his talents to tlie best account. His great wealth he spent wisely and generously, he sought for no base returns, he did not require or look for gratitude, he merely desired to see what he liad bestowed was put to the best use. That he neither sought for nor attained selfish 332 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL happiness we know, for we know from his own lips of his frugal childhood, his solitary youth, his sad manhood, his old age darkened by the knowledge that though his teaching was a real force for good, it could scarcely be accepted before some sudden calamity, searching and significant, should force his countrymen to pause in their blind race for wealth and steadfastly to consider other aims. But his own personal sorrows never soured him, he continued pitiful for others, grateful to his friends, steadfast in the path he had chosen to pursue. Such a character is surely worthy of honour ; above all, of the honour of patient attention. Faults, shortcomings, errors, and prejudices he had, of course — are they not set forth in his writings ? But in what man of his intellectual rank are these faults so little hurtful, so easily recognized, so simply avoided ? for sure as he was of the business he had to do, he lets us see everywhere in his work that these dust-specks on the mirror are but momentary blurs in its clear reflections. Ruskin was right where most thinking men held him wrong, and only wrong where most thinking men, of his time and ours, have been right. If he was one who never faltered in his arraignment of sins and sinners, of fools and foolishness, he was not eager to quench the smoking flax, nor slow to acknowledge his own mistakes. JVhen he saw the multitude he pitied them, so that he has left many behind him who bless his memory, and there are not a few to-day who have cause to deplore, full of years and of achievement as his life has been, the death of a righteous man. In conclusion, let me state once more in the briefest way the central thoughts that John Ruskin, as every one of our English prophets before him, has desired to impress upon us as a nation. They have not told us to tire ourselves out in saving our own miserable souls, or even the miserable souls of other people ; they have set small store by dogma ; they have not tried to bind us down to rigid rules of ritual observ- ance ; they have uniformly insisted upon deeds rather than words, upon the necessity of taking the trouble to think, and JOHN RUSKIN 333 upon the duty of every Englishman wholly abjuring for himself the crying national sins of cant, pharisaism, snobbishness, love of money, and the pride of stupidity ; and upon the duty of every Englishman cherishing at all costs the national virtues of fair-play, patience, courage, and perseverance. They have all seen and told us plainly that the people who possesses the greatest number of healthy, honourable, cheer- ful, and wise men and women is, and must be, the greatest nation on earth. It behoves all of us to pay heed to John Ruskin^s message, and especially at this hour when the outlook is by no means unclouded. If we mean to secure for our race the high and worthy future we have dreamed of, nay, if we would secure the useful and honourable position we now hold in the world, we must set our house in order while there is yet time to do so. We must forthwith determine, as we can, if we will, that we at least will be, at any material cost, a people of truth-lovers and lie-haters, of healthy bodies and clear minds. Luck that has so long favoured us we cannot command ; riches are deceitful, bravery vnthout brains has never saved an animal, much less a nation, from extinction. As a nation, or as individuals, we can only depend, as Ruskin has warned us that we must depend, on hard-bought wisdom, and self- control, and the power that lies in strong muscles and wisely- trained brains. We are, every English soul of us (and we ought to feel that we are), in the position of the Roman of old whose paramount and perpetual duty it was to take care that his commonwealth came to no hurt. There are few of us who do not wish to hand on this goodly heritage our forefathers' blood has bought for us unimpaired to our children, proud in the faith that they will not misuse it or waste it, but till it to the general advantage of all that is good and beautiful on earth. It is not that the path of duty, the way of the right life, is unknown to us — it is merely that it is difficult to walk in. But it is only by the effort, strenuous, if small, of individuals, each in his own sphere, that we can so forward matters that 334 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL a man may come to look forward, as John Ruskin was able to do, in a full and, as he believed, a well-founded confidence, to times that we can never see, but that our efforts (feeble as they must often be) may possibly bring nearer to our children's children, when for Earth's severed multitudes of the Wicked and the Weary, there shall be holier reconcilia- tion than that of the narrow home, and calm economy, where the Wicked cease — not from trouble, but from troubling — and the Weary are at rest. THOUGHTS ON DEMOCEACY The classes that labour with their hands for weekly wages have now entrusted to them much of the power possessed by the Government of this country. The future of this country, and the parts of the world dependent on it, must be largely settled by the use, wise or foolish, good or evil, they will be making of this power. Their own future depends on it. If they refuse to think, if they choose to listen to fools' advice, if they do not take advantage of the opportunities they have for making themselves better, morally, physically, and in- tellectually, the world will pass them by speedily and inevitably. Goodwill is no excuse in face of facts ; only good deeds will count. Knowledge and the will to use it, and the courage and perseverance required to use it rightly, these are the neces- sities of progress and of well-being of any kind. Ignorance that may be felt (but that may by honest effort be destroyed) is the cause of many more of our troubles than we like to admit. Science, not Creed, is the Deliverer, if we will only take the trouble to follow it. There will be plenty of mistakes on the way, but if a man means to learn by his former mistakes, he nearly always has the chance, and the advance, though slow, will be continuous. Democracy is no heaven-born institution. There is no right divine about it. Darwin has dismissed the fatal. THOUGHTS ON DEMOCRACY 335 poisonous absurdities of Rousseau to the limbo of lost rubbish. If democracy cannot do its work, it will, and must, go as other political methods and expedients have gone. If this country is not healthier, stronger, wiser, happier, and better off in the highest sense under a democracy than it was under an oligarchy, democracy will have failed, and some other plan of government will be tried, whether people like it or not. Democracy is on its trial. If it is worked by wise men and honest men, it may do well ; if it is worked by ignorant, prejudiced, gullible, and selfish persons, it will not do well. The greatest enemy of the democracy is the lie- maker, the flatterer, and the person who tries to persuade the voter that dishonesty is not always the worst policy, and that a bit of boodle for himself cannot hurt him or any one else. A democracy, of all governments, is the least able to afford to listen to lies, or to grow corrupt, or to remain self- indulgent or ignorant. Its stability depends upon the persons it trusts ; if it trusts the wrong persons, it falls sooner or later — generally sooner. These are commonplaces, but they are not sufficiently attended to. Democracy is a good or bad thing as they are remembered and attended to or not. It is worse and more unpleasant and more dangerous to be ruled by many fools than by one fool or a few fools. The tyranny of an ignorant and cowardly mob is a worse tyranny than the tyranny of an ignorant and cowardly clique or individual. Rulers are not wise by reason of their number or their poverty, or their reception of a weekly wage instead of a monthly salary or yearly income. Again, workers are not respectable or to be considered because they work more with their hands or feet than with their brains, but because the work they do is good. If it is not good work they do, they are as unprofitable as any other wasters. A plumber is not a useful or admirable creature because he plumbs (if he pluml)8 ignorantly or dis- honestly he is often either a manslayer or a murderer), but because he plumbs well, and saves the community from danger 336 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL and damp, disease, and fire and water. Makers of useless machine-made ornaments are, however ' horny-handed', really 'anti-social persons', baneful to the community as far as their bad work goes ; more baneful, possibly, than the con- sumers of these bad articles, quite as baneful as the entre- preneurs who employ them. We 'practical English' spend millions on machine-made ornaments, and so-called art which is not art. Every furniture-maker's shop is crowded with badly-made, badly-ornamented stuff which ought never to have been made, and would never be sold if people only took the trouble to try to understand the difference between real art and sham art ; if they only knew so much as that a machine can only copy, it cannot make or create a beautiful thing at all. The hand of man, worked by the brain of man, is needed for that. A Windsor chair is an honest piece of work, acceptable ; the pieces of the wretched * drawing-room suite ' the women are so proud to put in their front parlours are vile to look at, and degrading to live with. The wax flowers you see in the front windows of ' respectable artisans' ' houses, and the detestable 'painted vases' they set on their chimney-pieces ('mantels' they call them), are horrible to look at, and pure waste to make. They do not please the eye; they merely puff up a silly and anti-social conceit. They are symbols of snobbery. The dreadful waste on sham art and bad ornament is bad and anti-progressive. People who cheat themselves into liking, or pretending to like, bad art are blind to good art, blind to natural beauty, and cannot understand what true art is. This is a degrading state to be in for any person or set of persons. We must not be deceived by words. We talk of 'doing well' when we only mean 'getting rich', which is a very different thing in many cases. The only good institutions are those that do good work ; the only good work done is that which produces good results, whether they be direct, as the ploughman's, or navvy's, or sailor's ; or indirect, as the policeman, or the schoolmaster, or the teacher of good art, or the writer of books that are worth reading. A man THOUGHTS ON DEMOCRACY 337 is no better or wiser than others by reason of his position or lack of position, but by reason of his stronger body, wiser head, better skill, greater endurance, keener courage. Know- ledge teaches a community to breed better children, to bring them up better, to employ them better, to encourage them to behave better, and work better, and play better, and in their turn breed children who shall have better chances than them- selves — not necessarily better chances to grow rich or to become idle, but better chances to become honourable, wise, strong-bodied, and strong-brained able men and women. No system of government, no set of formulas, can save a state unless the people who work the system or formulas are Mise and honest and healthy. A nation with too large a proportion of stunted, unhealthy, besotted, irritable, excitable, ignorant, vain, self-indulgent persons cannot endure in the world- struggle. It must and ought to be swept away, and the sooner the better. What we call Nature does not indulge in sentimental pity ; she puts her failures out of their pain as quickly as she can. She does not keep idiot asylums. In the competition for trade that is upon us, nay, in the very ' struggle for life ', we can only hold our own by greater physical and intellectual power. We must put ourselves in training ; we must throw off the * anti-social ' habits that hinder our efficiency ; we must beware of the quack mixtures of the demagogue and the superstition-monger, and accept only what satisfies trained reason. We must put off Senti- mentality, which means the wholesome feeling for humanity gone rancid and turbid and unwholesome, and is an expensive and dangerous folly. W^e must take deliberate and cahn judgements, and we must look ahead. The record of progress in this little l)ook is largely the record of the success of men who with honest material objects worked in many ways wisely and prosperously, and made England the richest place on earth ; but this is not ail, it is the record also of a great sacrifice, a sacrifice of health and happiness and vitality — a needless sacrifice offered up to Mammon. The English people never by any plague or y. r, II 2 338 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL famine or war suffered such a deadly blow at its vitality as by the establishment of the factory system without the proper safeguards. Napoleon's wars crippled France (though not as badly as his legislation), but the factory system threatened to sap the very existence of our people, because those who could have helped it (both employers and employed) at that time were too greedy, too ignorant, and too callous to understand the full evil they were doing, and the governing classes above them too foolish to see that the remedy must be swiftly applied. Ignorance and the blindness caused by greed are deadly enemies that we can only meet by knowledge and by honesty. And it must be remembered, though it is often forgotten, that the acquisition of knowledge does not mean book- learning, which is only a very little part of it. It is no good reading a book without understanding it, and no good under- standing it unless one profits by it, and makes the principle or the piece of wisdom or fact a part of our mental store, ready for use when the proper time comes. A man may be book-learned and very ignorant. There is a time, perhaps, when ignorance may be tolerated, but this is emphatically not the time. We have to set our house in order, as every one knows who has a grain of sense left, but it cannot be done unless we choose the right men to do our political and economic work, trust them wisely, back them wisely, and resolve not only that the nation, but every town, every village, every workshop, and every house be made healthier, be better managed, and the causes that check progress and security be done away with. We cannot afford to sit down and rub our bellies and think how fat we are. Disease and crime can be tackled, and would be if we were in earnest. It requires probably less effort to keep ourselves and our children healthy and out of the dock than to save money and leave it to fools, or buy an annuity, and it is a great deal more necessary to the nation. It is not a sin to break some old Hebrew tabu that has no utility left in it, but it is a sin to be diseased when you can be healthy j to be THOUGHTS ON DEMOCRACY 339 ignorant when you can, at a little trouble, learn the truth of a matter; to be dishonest when you can, at the cost of a Kttle effort, speak and act truly. Adulteration, again, is criminal and vile in all its aspects and results, and honest men will have nothing to do with it. It is one of the worst symptoms in the body social when adulterations and shams are tolerated. Adulteration is simply a low and vile form of larceny practised treacherously by persons who pretend to be respectable (like the bakers and brewers who poison their customers by the careless use of adulterants) upon persons who are often unable to detect or avoid the deceit and injur)^ The reading of good books without thinking things out is a mere debauching amusement, and reading for pastime is not a respectable thing, when it is pushed to extremes, at all, any more than over-eating or over-drinking. The ^ habit of reading ^ is no better than the ' habit of snuffing \ unless the reading which the habitue does is good reading — reading that gives noble pleasure or that helps directly to progress, mental or physical, or trains one to practical ends. Waste of time is not only folly, but it is anti-progressive, and means de- generation, just like waste of money over bad or foolish things, or waste of work over ugly shams or false ornaments or dishonest productions of any kind. The world is ' full of a number of things \ as R. L. Steven- son says, and we have only learnt to make use of a few of these. There seem almost endless possibilities open, but they are only open to those who mean to take advantage of them, who mean to make themselves and do make themselves able to see the things that the ignorant and the lazy miss and always will miss. Our trade rivals have learnt all they knew till a few years ago from us — we can surely afford to take a lesson from our own ancestors ; but we must be prepared to strip off prejudice and renounce hollow formulas. Even if such a sacred institution as a trades-union stands in the way of real progress, it must change or go. Good work, not sham work ; good art, not bad nor even mediocre art ; good food, not the bad bread (one of the worst Z 2 340 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL disgraces of this countr}^) and the bad beer, but good bread and good beer ; plain, good clothes, not ^ fashionably cut * shoddy; good news, not party lies and foolish flattery and idle or malicious gossip ; real information (which need not be cheap, and cannot be easy, for knowledge is not an easy thing to get, but a hard thing both to win and hold), not chopped-up rubbish and dirty garbage; as much fresh air, and clean water, and out-of-door exercise as we can do with. These are things within our grasp, and we have not got them yet, though we have thousands of things we do not want or really enjoy at all, but which we are fooled, or fool ourselves, into paying for through the nose. The end of work is to produce useful things, beautiful things, necessary things ; but the end of life is not merely work, nor what people look for in exchange for work — riches. Riches without health or security, or the knowledge of how to use them, are merely a danger and a daily reproach to an individual. They are also a danger and a daily reproach when unused, ill-used, or wasted, to a nation. Health and wisdom are not incom- patible with wealth, but worn-out vitality and blind ignorance quite certainly are. Only the strong man armed and healthy of brain can keep his house. Healthy people look to the future, sick people are content to linger through the day, or ready to sink into oblivion ; the mark of a healthy nation is that it looks forward, prepares for the future, learns from the past, gets rid of its parasites, shakes off its social diseases, and walks resolutely in the service of her whom Defoe celebrated as that ^ Most Serene, Most Invincible, Most Illustrious Princess, Reason % and whom, long before him, Solomon, and the son of Sirach, lauded as the Chief of Things, the very emanation and breath of their God Himself. YIII TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS [This section includes some memorial notices and artistic judge- ments that are not easily grouped under the other headings. The Giimms is the epilogue to the centenary volume of 1886. The sketch of Vigfljsson was written for The Academy not long after his death in 1889. The memoir of Shute is prefixed to his posthumous History of the Aristotelian Wntings, 1884. Powell's words on Gleeson White preceded a catalogue of his friend's library.] THE GRIMMS There are no Germans, save perhaps Luther and Goethe, so well known and so well beloved among English-speaking peoples as the Brothers Grimm. On the little child's nursery-shelf tlieir well-thumbed Household Stories stand side by side with those dear old favourites, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, The Arabian Nights, and Poor Jack. One cannot help feeling differently toward such books to what one does towards all others. They are the good-natured friends who would talk to us pleasantly, when other folks were too busy to attend to us. They were never tired of telling us the same stories over and over again in the same familiar and wel- come words, and we were never tired of listening to their quiet voices. Hans and Klaus, and the master thief, and the magic fiddler, and the valiant tailor, and the too hilarious bean are and have been part and parcel of the dream-world of millions of English children. And if to have devoted and 343 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS delighted readers everywhere is the authoi'^s meed, surely the Brothers Grimm have their reward. It must have come as a great surprise to many others, as it came to me, when I found out, after I had known the Brothers Grimm for years as well as I knew the gardener, and the gardener's boy, and the children who came and played with us in the garden, that these old friends were great people, known and honoured by the wisest and greatest of grown-up folk ; that they were Wise Men who had written learned books and made wonderful discoveries ; that they had even busied themselves with composing grammars and dictionaries, books which it must surely need the most deadly perseverance and the most abstruse knowledge to compose, judging from the infinite pains, both physical and mental, it cost most of us to master our daily portions of the Accidence and Syntax of the classic tongues. When one grew older still and came to have some acquaintance for oneself with these bigger books of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm one's love and reverence for them did not at all grow less. It surprised one indeed at times, that one felt the same fascination in listening to their wondrous tale of Teutonic Grammar and Old-time Laws and Faiths and Customs, as one had felt in hearkening to the Household Stories long before. And when one came to know that these charming books — in which eveiy fact seemed to stand in its natural place and in which by the most minute study principles of the widest range were fixed and laid down so surely and steadily — were the first and earliest of their kind, and that their authors had been pioneers working in the Wood of Error, bringing Order out of Chaos, timbering houses and barns, and tilling the ground to good purpose, where before all was dark overhead and clogged and slippery underfoot, a mighty maze without a plan, a forest wild and vast as that where Sigfred fought and Varus fell — one marvelled more and more. Englishmen are clumsy in the way they show gratitude and affection, but they are sincere ; a grip of the hand says THE GRIMMS 343 more than an illuminated address, and a silent look of admiration is really more flattering than all the applause of the Claque. But I do not know that foreigners ought to be expected to understand this, and indeed I find that sometimes they set us down as cold and ungrateful, because we prefer, like so many Red Indians, to conceal our emotions, and have no better words of thanks than the Ugh of a Mohican or a Sioux. If it were not for this national characteristic of ours, the love and reverence that are felt among us all, both here and in the Colonies and States, for the Brothers Grimm would have been manifested abundantly enough. The little child and the grey-bearded scholar are equally their debtors and would have taken appropriate part in their Centenary Cele- bration. But such demonstrations, natural and proper as they seem to foreigners, do not come naturally to us nowa- days. Our public statues and tasteless state ceremonials show how awkwardly our feelings are apt to express them- selves. And I think it is better that no celebration of the Grimms' Centenary was attempted in England. Perhaps ere the next we may have learned to conduct such a festival with grace and dignity — we cannot do so nov/. After all, the best plan to honour such men is to try and walk in their ways, though certainly it is not the easiest. For these Brothers led an upright, manly, industrious scholar's life, in word and deed, holding nothing too childish for their notice, but ever aiming at great things, and by no means contented, as others use, to bombast it about bigly over trifles, and to shrink abashed and helpless before the very notion of a great task. The example is not one we can afford to neglect nowadays, hard though it be to copy. To conclude, this little pamphlet must not be taken as more than the mere personal expression of our own gratitude, though like the floating thistle-down it may perhaps serve to show which way the wind is blowing, and so to bear witness that neither the Brothers Grimm nor their favourite studies are forgotten in Oxford. 344 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS The poet shall have the last word — Call it by what you will, the Day is Theirs, And here, I hope, is none that envies it. In framing an Artist, Art hath thus decreed To make some good, but others to exceed, And these are her labour'd Scholars — Their presence glads our days : Honour we love ; For who hates Honour hates the Gods above. VIGFtlSSON ' GuDBRAND ViGFUssoN, the greatest Scandinavian scholar of our century, was born [in 1827] in the district of Broadforth, Iceland, of a good family. He was brought up in the north- west of the island by his foster-mother and kinswoman, Katrin Vigfusdottir, to whom (as he thankfully recorded) he owed ' not only that he became a man of letters, but almost everj'thing '. After passing some time with a tutor in whose house he stayed, he went to the high school, then at Bessastad, and when it was moved (wrongly, as he held), to Reykjavik. In 1849 he left, and, by the help of friends, went to Copen- hagen University, which he entered in 1850. There a scholarship at the Regentsen and a subse(j[uent appointment as Stipendiarius under the Arna-Magnaean Commission enabled him to enter on the course of study in the literature of his own people which he had marked out for himself. The Arna-Magnaean Library, where he passed so many hours, was not yet moved from the quarters in the large loft of the church to which it had been hastily shifted after the fire of Copenhagen, and it was, as he described it, a curious and interesting place to work in. During the fifties and the first years of the sixties he not only made himself familiar with every scrap of vellum in the library, and got to know every paper-copy and its value, but also made collations and notes, which he was able to use as a firm basis for further investi- ^ The Academy, February, 1889. VIGFUSSON 345 gation. Among his chief friends, other than Icelanders, at the University were H. Larpent (the gifted translator of Tartvffe and other of Moliere's plays, whose early death Vigfusson often deplored) and K. Dahlenborg. In his first work, Timatal, written at full speed, from October 1854 to April 1855, was seen the debut of a master. It deals, in detail and methodicallj^, with the chronology of the whole body of the Islendinga Sogur, and its results have not been disturbed save by his own corrections made in the Corpus Boreale and the Origines Islandicae. His first lite- rary work — the account of a tour in Norway with his friend Unger — appeared in Ny Felagsrit in 1855, and it shows him to have already possessed a singular gift of style and a power of writing pure unaffected Icelandic seldom approached by his countrymen. Englishmen will be able to judge of his style from his admirable letters to The Academy and other journals, and from the striking ^ Visit to Jacob Grimm ' in the Grimm Centenary pamphlet (1886). He wrote for several Icelandic periodicals during the succeeding ten years — Ny Felagsrit (of which, in 1868, he appears as one of the committee of editors), Thjodolf, and Skirnir. Perhaps the most notable of these communications, besides those on critical subjects, was the account of the ' Tour in Germany ' in 1859, when he visited Maurer and Mobius. This tour was a consequence of a visit to Iceland in 1858 (the last he ever paid to his own country), when he met Maurer at Reykjavik and the two came back together in the same ship. But his main business during these ten years lay in editing the Sagas ; and his achievements in this line have served as a model for all that has since been done in this direction by others. The last part of Biskupa Sogur I appeared in 1858. The preface (the first of a wonderful series of prefaces in which the diplomatic history of the Icelandic literature is summed up) was written in April and May of that year. In this volume are already apparent his marvellous knowledge of MSS., generous labour in transcription (he always made his own copies), and keen eye for every fact that might throw light 346 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS upon the genesis and history of any classic work. In 1860 came forth Bdrdarsaga at Copenhagen and Forn-Sogur (with Mobius) at Leipzig; in 1862, the preface to Jon Arnason's mddsdgur (Folk-tales) ; in 1864, Eyrbyggja Saga at Leipzig, dedicated to Jon Sigurdsson, his warm colleague and friend. But the greatest task of these years was, perhaps, the edition of Flateyjarbdk {ISeO, 1862, 1868), every word of which giant codex (now bound in two huge volumes) he copied out with his own hand, Unger, his fellow editor, seeing the sheets carefully through the press, the three volumes being com- pleted by a masterly preface dated October 1868. In 1864 opened a new chapter in his life. He was induced by Sir G. W. Dasent to come to London to undertake the Icelandic-English Lexicon projected by Richard Cleasby. After a stay of some months in London he came to Oxford, where, in 1866 — the Dictionary having finally been undertaken by the University Press — he began in earnest a task which kept him continuously employed for seven years, till, in 1873, the last of four fascicules appeared, with the grammar and index of literature. To the making of this great book— one of the most perfect and readable of existing dictionaries — there had gone no little labour. The materials furnished were miserably inadequate, and form less than one-third of the bulk of the complete work ; but his own wide and full reading, and the help which in many directions he got from Fritzner's labours (help he always generously acknowledged) enabled him to supply their shortcomings. The method — one of its chief merits— he worked out with the help of the Dean [Liddell] of Christ Church, whose own long experience in lexicon-making was freely and ungrudgingly placed at Dr. Vigfusson^s disposal. It should be added that the whole work was done single-handed, without transcribers or assistants. While engaged on the Dictionary he lived, first, at Clifton Villas, Cowley Road, and next at North Parade, whence he moved later to the well-known rooms at No. 2 St. John's Villas, which most of his Oxford friends will always associate with his kindly presence. He used occasionally to spend VIGFI^SSON 347 part of the vacation at Bessborough Gardens, London, and there I first met him in 1869. Though he lived a retired and laborious life, and never relished the ' long English dinner ', he had made many firm friends already in England : in London — Carlyle and his family, Mr. G. Wilkinson, Lord Sherbrooke, Sir Edmund Head (who read Icelandic with him), Mr. H. Ward ; in Oxford — Mr. Coxe, Sir Henry Acland, the Dean [Kitchin] of Winchester, Prof. Price, Prof. Earle, and Mr. Bernard were those he saw most of at this time ; nor must the name of Mr. Pembrey, the reader of every Icelandic work that has gone through the Clarendon Press, be forgotten. The taking of transcripts at Copenhagen and Stockholm in 1874-5 was part of the preparation for the Rolls Series editions of Orkneyinga and Hdconar Saga, and resulted in the discovery of parts of a fuller text of the former than was before known. These texts were printed, but, owing to causes not under the editor's control, not published for ten years, when, with prefaces added, they were at last given to the world in 1887. His next work was an edition of Sturlunga Saga for the Clarendon Press, a huge complex body of Sagas, giving the history of the latter years of the commonwealth in Iceland, and of the great Sturling family and its various fortunes. To these texts, published in two burly volumes in 1878, he prefixed, under the modest title Prolegomena, the complete history of the classic literature of Iceland and the MS. materials upon which it rests. This history (which no one but himself could have done) forms [1889] a worthy appendix to his Dictionary, and should certainly be prefixed to any fresh edition of it. It was on the Prolegomena that I first began to work with him; and from the day that I began taking notes at his dictation, in 1877, till the day he died, I passed more time with him than with any other friend I had. In Oxford we used to work together at his rooms two or three afternoons a week and often of evenings at my rooms. In the vacations 348 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS he used to take lodgings near where I lived in London^ and we worked from 10 till 7.30 or later in my house (breaking off only for meals and a brisk afternoon walk) for weeks together, for almost three months of each year. In this way we finished the Prolegomena, and then set to work on the Icelandic Prose Reader (it was while we were on this that I stayed six weeks with him at St. John's Villas one Long Vacation). The Reader came out in 1879; and the next three years were devoted to the preparation of the Corpus Poeticum Boreale — one of the most important of his works, in which the whole body of classic Old Northern poetry is examined, edited, and translated, with full notes, &c. It marks a new epoch in Scandinavian studies ; being an attempt to assign date, place, and circumstance to a body of literature which had never before been critically grappled with. This work was followed in 1886 by the Grimm Centenary pamphlet (in which, as in the Corpus and Reader, I took part), wherein he woi'ked out several points of interest suggested during further study ; and several small papers in the English Historical Review and the Oxford Philological Society's Transactions may be referred to as dealing with like subjects. The next enterprise, one upon which Dr. Vigfusson was engaged till within a few days of his death, was the Origines Islandicae, to contain critical texts and translations of the Landndma-boc, LibeUus, Early Bishops' Lives, and Islendinga Sogur, upon which the history of the migration to, settle- ment in, and early constitutional history of, Iceland rests. Much of this is in print, and it is hoped that it will appear this year [1889]. A long stay at Copenhagen — during a few days of which I was with him — and a mass of transcripts were necessitated by this work ; and it was at this time that he showed me his old quarters in Regentsen College, that we visited W. Finsen and others of his valued friends, and that we went over all the vellums and important paper copies in the Arna-Magnaean Collection together. In 1886 he went for a few days to the Isle of Man, which resulted in ' A Re- VIGFUSSON 349 reading of the Manx Runes* and papers thereon, written with his friend, Mr. E. Savage, in the Manx Note-Book. He also, in 1887, paid a visit to Downton to see the Moot- stead there, and in 1888 made his last journej'- to the Orkneys and Shetland, taking care to inspect the old Thing-steads in those islands. It was after this journey that the first symptoms of ill- health began to be apparent, and they increased during the Michaelmas Term, 1888, till he determined to lie up for a while at the Acland Nursing Home, Oxford. There the fatal nature of his malady — cancer of the stomach and liver — was soon ascertained ; and after a few weeks of painless, but wearying, illness, borne with a serene and unclouded mind, he died quietly in sleep, January 31, 1889. On February 3 round his grave at St. Sepulchre's Cemetery, Oxford, but a few steps from the house he had long lived in, was assembled a large gathering of his Oxford colleagues and friends — a list too long to cite here — of all classes anxious to pay the last public honours to a great scholar and a wise and good man. Public distinction he never sought ; but he had received the honorary Oxford M.A. in 1871, the centenary doctorate of Upsala in 1877 (and his visit to Sweden to receive this was a source of long pleasure to him), and the order of the Dannebrog in 1885. He held since 1884 the office of lector in Icelandic and kindred subjects in the University of Oxford — a position created for him. Handsome as a young man, he was of striking appearance in ripe age — a fine brow, shaded by thick brown hair, scarcely threaded by grey ; well-shaped features ; rather prominent and expressive blue eyes and colourless skin ; a spare uprigiit figure, the head only stooping when meditative; characteristics well given in the oil portrait taken of him in 1885 by his friend, Mr. H. M. Paget. He had a clear ringing voice and a happy smile ever ready to respond to a pregnant or witty remark. He was remarkably plain and simple in all his tastes. His handwriting, fine, regular, and characteristic, was 350 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS unspoilt by the miles which his pen had so surely traversed in the masses of beautiful transcripts he had made. Those who knew him will not need my testimony to his strong, sincere, and generous character, his extraordinary and well-controlled memory, his wide learning in many tongues, his eager and unwearied industry, and his fine literary taste. For myself, I can only say that the longer I knew him the more I honoured, trusted, and loved him. RICHAED SHUTE Erat in Ricardo Shute ardor animi, ingenii vis, disputandi sub- tilitas, morum summa mansuetudo. Veritatem et amabat magno opere et librum de ea investiganda scripsit. H. R. In the words above written an impartial judge summed up in brief the life of Richard Shute ; but it has been thought well by his friends that a few pages set here side by side with his last work should recall such remembrances as might convey to others a little more fully the impression he made on them. He was the posthumous son of Richard Shute of High Park, North Devon, Captain in the Hannover Garde du Corps, and of Mary Power, and was born at Sydenham, Nov. 6, 1849. He was brought up in the country, where he came by that love of birds and beasts which was always strong in him. He never forgot his delight in his first pony, Silver-tail, and would often talk of the dogs he knew as a child. With poor health, as sometimes happens, the thinking faculties quicken early, and as a little boy he was full of quaint fancies and shrewd self-constructed theories which he used to apply with varied success to life. Being always bent on doing things and thinking out difficulties in his own fashion, he was naturally a puzzle to some of those who had to do with him. RICHARD SHUTE 351 For instance, he got a liking for mathematics in reading the first three books of Euclid by himself, at hours when he ought to have been learning his Greek accidence, with the result that his good tutor, knowing nothing of his real task and wondering at his invincible ignorance of his grammar, gave up his case, reporting him as an amiable but hopeless pupil, with but a poor chance of any future mental awakening — a verdict which the lad accepted with some wonder, but without attempting any vindication. He had luckily plenty of books in his way, and, tutored or tutorless, he read what he liked when he liked, and as he had a fine memory and good natural taste, his reading of course became his real education. He was happy too in his companions, for his sisters were children of more than ordinary ability and appreciation, and there was plenty of bright talk with them and his mother over books and things, and no lack of eager ventures in verse and prose in imitation of favourite models or in expression of favourite thoughts. By the time he went to school he had a turn for mathe- matics, some knowledge of French and Italian, the power of ready composition in English, and a large store of English verse in his head, so that his master's criticism was confined to the fact that his handwriting was barbarous, and that he was as inaccurate in minutiae as self-taught scholars often are. Owing to a severe illness of nervous character which caused his removal from a preparatory school, he did not go to Eton till late, in 1864. He was then more than a fair scholar (though he had not read as many Latin or Greek books as his contemporaries), and still kept up his love for mathematics, wherein he showed considerable promise. At Eton he was happy enough to come under the care of Mr. William Cory, whom he often spoke of with affection as the first teacher whose words and help really influenced him. After an ordeal that would have been 'enough to daunt a boy of less than his strong mind', he got into the full current of school life, took eagerly to work and play, and battled bravely 352 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS against his own weak health and the lack of exact training that marred some of his best work. His exercises were warmly spoken of by Mr. Cory (one of the most exacting of living critics), who noted boldness and passion in the lad^s verse, and once wrote of him, ' He is in Latin an original author.^ At play too he held his own, was a good runner, and a fair swimmer and sculler. He was elected in 1867 to the famous Eton Debating Society {' an unwonted tribute to intellect,' as his tutor remarked), and did a good deal of literary prentice-work in The Adventurer, a school magazine, and in several of the London monthlies. His endurance and courage, the originality of his thought, his unselfishness and his genuine sympathy for all that needed it, made him many friends in spite of his strong individuality and the uncom- promising way in which he stood by his colours on every point. From Eton he went to Trinity Hall, having gained an exhibition there in 1868; thence he migrated to Caius College. He read a good deal of literature at Cambridge in a desultoiy way, and did not wholly put aside his regular work at mathematics and classics. But he had ^ not come up to read', he said, and he spent many a happy day with the hounds, or attending country steeple-chases, at coursing- meetings, or on Newmarket Heath, fleeting his time carelessly enough. But after a few such golden terms he made up his mind that he ought to read, and seeing that it would be difficult for him to change his mode of life at Cambridge, he resolved to break it off short and come to Oxford. Here he settled down quietly at New Inn Hall in 1869, and gave himself almost wholly to hard work. I had met him once before at Newmarket, but it was now that I came to know him well. I can remember how after a long spell of reading he would dash with a shout into some lazy friend's room, where two or three of us were pretty sure to be found, and join eagerly in the talk, no matter what the topic. We were astonished and delighted at his quick, bright, restless conversation, studded with happy quotations, bristling RICHARD SHUTE 353 with cunning paradox. For he dearly loved dialectic, and would take up in his play the most indefensible positions, and defy us to drive him out of them, not unfrequently coping single-handed and successfully with a loud and eager band of assailants. Of his tastes I remember his especial fondness for poetry, especially that of the musical sort (which with him indeed took the place of music itself). I have seen him rocking to and fro in his seat crooning verse to himself like an Arab. His chief favourite at Eton had been Shelley, but at Oxford Swinburne^s verse was most often in his mouth, and he had a special fondness for some of his French poems, though I think he read Browning more than anything else. He greatly delighted in comic verse, and possessed a goodly store thereof, old and new. He was a sound judge of style, and was seldom deceived by those eccentricities of second-rate writers which unduly charm one in youth. He had got to vn*ite a legible hand, but it was a curious script, much like type, and he ' painted his letters ', as it were, with a quill pen. Perhaps in consequence of his early difficulties in writing, he was able to compose whole pages in his head and set them down in their final form on paper, so that his MS. was remarkably clear. He did not care for most indoor amusements, but he was a good whist-player, and a quick and awkward adversary at ecarte. He was fond, all his life, of training animals to tricks, and in his exceeding patience was usually successful. He had travelled in France and Italy, and spent some time in Florence and Rome, and he liked talking about those countries and their peoples, admiring especially the absence among Italians of that pretence and uneasy self-consciousness which he greatly objected to in his own country men. Among us there were those who were no judges of his mental gifts, but they too were attracted to him by his hearty companionship, his love and knowledge of sport, and his unflinching gameness. He was ready for a sj)in or a row almost any afternoon, but though lie would drive he would not ride, because he said if he did he should have a struggle Y. p. II A a 354 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS to stick to reading. In the long Sunday walks of thirty or forty miles and in the punishing runs he would take every now and then, he staved off this craving for what he always held the most noble of open-air exercises. He never spared himself, bore pain like an Indian, and though singularly quick to sympathize with another's trouble, would never let any grief of his own show in his face or bearing. We used to notice that he was much more tolerant than most of us of other people's ways and even views. His long-suffering with those he cared for or felt he ought to look after was really remarkable, and he had devotion enough for his friends to tell them when he thought they had got on the wrong path, and he would manage this with singular tact, so that a man, however young and vain, could hardly feel his raw self-respect hurt, even though Shute spoke plainly enough to show him his full folly. Not many men of his years have courage to help their friends in spite of themselves. He had high spirits, was always cheery, and there was a quaint wild spirit of fun in him which rarely slept, and many ludicrous adventures and extravagant jests this led him into. The presence of striking incongruity was always an attraction to him, and this was a joy most of his friends could share with him. Altogether Shute was a very characteristic person to his comrades. I can remember watching him many an evening as we all sat talking and smoking, or listening to his talk (he never smoked) ; and the grave kindly face, the tall spare grey-clad figure loosely flung across a big chair, the restless hands ever in abrupt action, the broken force of his speech, are all vividly present to me. Unforgotten too is his favourite Gordon setter ^Lill', his constant out-of-doors companion, Avhom we all, probably rightly, treated as a distinguished person of higher sagacity than our own. In deep silent thought she would shuffle on at his heel as he strode along, and never leave him save for some exceptional bait of unwonted fragrance ; after such lapse her repentance and his forgiveness, not without due penance, were also to be RICHARD SHUTE 355 remembered. The best portrait of him as a young man is a photograph in which he and Lill are taken together. And I am sure he would not like the memory of Lill's broad honest black head, handsome eyes, and beautiful tan points to be left out in any notice of his undergraduate life. The Schools found Shute overstrained by his effort to do more work than there had been time for in his two years' space. He was threatened by a return of his old nervous malady, and had one or two sharp and disquieting bouts of it in the evenings after the paper-work, but he pulled through by sheer strength of will. We all felt that if he could only stay out the examination, the result would not be doubtful, though, as ev'er, he was distrustful of his own ability, and imderestimated his progress. He was placed in the First Class in the Honour School of Literae Humaniores in 1872, and a little later gained a Senior Studentship at Christ Church after a severe open competition. This was the beginning of a new sphere of life for him. But in all essentials his character was formed, it seemed indeed to have been formed before he came to Oxford. Intellectually he had no doubt made progress, he had gone carefully over much new and some old ground during the training for his degree, and he had had the advantage of hearing the problems he was wrestling with handled by those who at Oxford had studied them most deeply. In especial, his taste for philosophy (which he had dabbled with even at school) grew with his work, and he began to form definite plans of future research in metaphysic. He entered on his new life and duties with zest, and won as great regard and affection from his colleagues and pupils as he had secured from his old companions. There was not the shadow of pretence or vanity about him : he was hard to movcM'hen he had made up his mind, but he usually contrived to resist the teacher's temptation to dogmatize, and rarely forced his theories as fundamental maxims on others. He would often leap at the solution of a difficulty, and he never lacked a ready answer, and a fair argument to support it if A a 3 356 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS he was posed with a problem ; but he seldom let himself be deceived by his own ingenuity, and would witness its ex- posure with good-natured and amused interest. He used to state his own serious opinions very directly, but he would take great pains to enter thoroughly into the views of those from whom he differed most widely, and towards an opponent he was always scrupulously and generously fair. The old talks went on, when the day^s work was over and accident gave him an evening to spare, or he wished to discuss some question that interested him, and which he fancied some friend might help him to unravel. Far into the small hours I remember these talks prolonging their devious and curiously chequered course, and I am sure that it was a gain to those of us who knew him well and saw him often to hear his hearty dutiful views of life, and to listen to the half comic but always logical analysis to which he subjected many a respectable fallacy, many a highly supported theory, with results eminently satisfactory but not always expected by his hearers. He was a good man of business too, and altogether had more experience than falls to most young men in the management of his own concerns, so that he could and would give useful practical advice. His friend Mr. C. L. Dodgson's photograph gives the happiest and truest likeness of him as a grown man : an enlarged copy of it is to be seen at Christ Church in the Undergraduates' Reading Room, a place the success of which he had much at heart. He had not settled to stay at Oxford, and had determined to get called to the Bar, before deciding upon his future career. Accordingly in 1874 he began reading English and Roman Law with a certain enjoyment, appreciating heartily the peculiar mental training and the legal habit of mind it induces. In 1875 came a break in his work ; he took the Professor- ship of Logic and Moral Philosophy in the Bombay Pre- sidency. He considered this step carefully, though it turned out a mistake. We bade him good-bye and good-speed, and RICHARD SHUTE 357 had a few hopeful notes from India. But he soon found that his health could never stand the strain he put upon it in that climate, for he tried to work as hard as he had been able to do in England. He was ordered home by the doctors within the year. In 1876 Shute took his place again at Christ Church, and was shortly appointed Tutor, but it was not till 1878 that he quite threw away legal ambition, gave up all thought of other work, and determined to stay as teacher and student at Oxford. The work of the last ten years of his short life falls naturally into lines that may be shortly traced. Always persuaded that a teacher must, to keep up his own power, be a learner too, he began to follow out a regular course of philosophic study. In 1876 he brought out Truth in Extremis, a little pamphlet on the question of Endowment of Research, called forth by Dr. Appleton's volume and much earnest discussion on the subject, which is of permanent interest at Oxford. In a few pages of more logic, of less bitterness, and certainly of greater cogency than one looks for in such controversial matter, he drew out his own ideas of the student^s life and aims, and the dangers of Endowment. In 1877 he published the book he had written the year before, A Discourse on Truth, a singularly suggestive and ingenious essay in a direction which has been neglected in England of late years. This treatise, which is eminently readable and has some- thing of the man's own humour in its plan and structure, was taken up abroad, and resulted amongst other influences in [Karl] Uphues' Grundlehren der Logik nach Richard Shute's * Discourse on Truth ' bearbeitet, Breslau, 1883. It was in 1877, after this book was out of hand, that he spent part of his Long Vacation on a canoe tour in the north- west of France. His craft, the Eremia, was built at Oxford on his own plan, and proved strong and handy. He set her afloat on the Ranee in July, went along the Vilaine, the Loire, the Cher, and the Seine, and ended his cruise at Paris. 358 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS He did some long paddles, one of seventy miles (after which he had to be lifted out of the canoe, for he could not stand), and kept a regular log of his voyage. And in spite of his over-exertion, the Eremia brought him the first real holiday he had had for years and did him good, for though he had his law-books in his fore-locker, he could not often open them. In 1882 appeared A Collation of Aristotle's Physics, Book VII, Anecdota Oxoniensia, Classical Series, vol. i. pt. 3 ; Clarendon Press, Oxford — a work which had occupied much of his time in 1880 and 1881. The present unfinished treatise was his last work, and it shows that his intention had been to go over in a thorough way the bases of Aristo- telian study. He had got beyond the results here published, but had not had time to correct them or record his later impressions and acquisitions. It is not for me to judge of the value of these philosophic studies, but I can testify to the steady zeal and careful pre- paration with which he laboured, and to his utter scorn of secondhand or botched work. To his earlier boyish essays, to his numerous bits of verse, to his novel (written in my room in the evenings of one term in the year 1879 as a mere relief from the pressure of matters which he felt were then trying him too hard), he attached no weight whatever, and they are only mentioned here as a proof of Shute's versatility, though one fancied there was in his English writing promise of more than ordinary kind j and since Landor's one has not often seen such real and interesting Latin verse as he would now and then dash ofp on a happy impulse, and throw away, when it cumbered his desk, without remorse. He was much concerned with all sides of College business, into which he threw his accustomed energy, and those best qualified to speak have repeatedly acknowledged the high value they set upon his ready and efficient help. With drafting the new Statutes for the House he had a good deal to do. In the year 1886 he was chosen Proctor by Christ RICHARD SHUTE 359 Church, and was as assiduous in the service of the University as he had been in the service of the House. But the main part of his time and trouble was lavished upon his teaching, and to estimate his method and success here I shall borrow the words of his tutor, friend, and colleague, Mr. J. A. Stewart (in Mind, Jan. 1887). He is speaking of Shute's personal work with his pupils. * *' He riddled through one's seeming knowledge/' as one who was once his pupil has expressed it. This was the first effect of his conversations. Beginners were often discouraged, and thought that there was no truth to be obtained on the subjects discussed. But when they came to know Shute better they began to suspect that he was even enthusiastic about the truth. His enthu- siasm was perhaps all the more catching that it was, at first, only suspected ; at any rate, his pupils followed his singularly lucid expositions addressed studiously to the logical under- standing, with the growing feeling that it is a solemn duty which a man owes to himself, as a rational being, to try to be clear-headed. Intellectual clearness, as such, seemed to be presented as a duty. But his more intimate pupils and friends came to see that he valued intellectual clearness not merely for its own sake, but as indicating that ideas incapable of logical handling were being kept out of discussion and left to reign in their own proper sphere. These pupils and friends observed that in his philosophical conversations (as in his ordinary talk) he held mucli in reserve. He was reticent — almost ironically so — about those ideas which may be summarily described as ** moral and religious", when others were tempted to discuss them and hope by discussion to make them clearer. This, those who knew him well had learned to understimd, was not because these ideas did not interest him, but because he felt they were not objects of speculation but practical principles of life. And he showed how deeply they interested him by his own life. The acute dialectician never asked himself " the reason why " he siiould spend his failing strength in doing his best for the mental improvement of his pupils. He simply assumed that it was worth doing, and that was his " metaphysic of ethic ".' 360 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS This picture is exact ; all I can add to it is my remem- brance of the cost at which this work was done — his never- satisfied desire to do better still, his anxiety when he fancied his teaching in any particular case was not as fruitful as he could have hoped, his thrifty economy of his own time in order to lavish the hours he could save upon his pupils. He could never do enough for them. The method of teaching he used in ^getting men to think' (as he called it) is one which is perhaps in the end the most trying to the teacher, to him it was especially exhausting. But as long as he had life in him sufficient to keep at his post, he would not bate a jot of his effort or spare himself a whit. In 1882 he married Edith Letitia Hutchinson, younger daughter of Colonel Frederick Hutchinson and Amelia Gordon, and went out of college to live in a house he had planned out himself at the north of Oxford. We all rejoiced in his great happiness and the helpful and true companionship he had gained, and we hoped that he would now see that the work he was doing must, if it was to be continued long, be done at a slower pace and with less stress. But he would not allow him- self greater rest than odd fag-ends of vacations, and toiled on as before. A threatening attack forced him to greater care for a while in 1884 ; but in 1885 he felt it his duty to act as ex- aminer in the School of Literae Humaniores, and the prolonged strain did him no good. In 1886 the Proctorship tried him still more, and before the end of his first term of office he was taken suddenly ill. He bore his four months' illness with serene self-control and gentle fortitude, though he knew very soon that, in spite of all the loving care bestowed on him, it could have but one end, and was fully conscious of all that parting must mean to him and those nearest him. In one of his last letters he wrote to his friend Mr. W. O. Burrows, * I think that man is happiest who is taken while his hand is still warm on the plough, who has not lived long enough to feel his strength failing him, and his work every day worse done,' And these words his wife has had engraved on his tomb. RICHARD SHUTE 361 He died on the 2^nd September, 1886, and was buried at Woking, hard by the grave which he himself had chosen for a sister who predeceased him. On the wall of the north aisle of the Cathedral at Oxford is a memorial brass to him, set up by his College friends and pupils, with a Latin inscription written by the Dean. Those who knew the man best had looked forward to his * future success' confidently and with assurance, but though his studies lie unfinished, surely he has done his work. His influence must be a lasting one on those who knew him. No teacher that I have known had a higher ideal than Richard Shute, and I have known none that lived closer to his ideal ; I have met few men as unselfish and fair-minded, and no one of more absolute and fearless courage, or more earnest in the pursuit and love of Truth — and ' this ', in the words of an old writer, I say * not in flattery. I loved him in life and I love him none the less in death j for what I loved in him is not dead \ C. L. DODGSON [This letter on ' Lewis Carroll ' was found in MS. with the first pages missing. The form and the conclusion show that it was meant for the press, but it seems never to have gone there : inquiry has failed to trace it. It must have been written in support of the memorial to Dodgson, which took the form of a cot in the Children's Hospital, Great Ormond Street. It would therefore be dated 1897.] He was a born inventor ; he invented a memoria technica for the calendar, so as to be able to calculate week-days in past years when the month-day was given without needing writing materials; and many other * dodges' of the kind: he invented logical signs, mathematical expressions, games with and without pieces, methods of calculating, of account- keeping, of sorting out weekly bills, and a thousand other devices for lightening the labour of keeping one's things and 362 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS papers in order. Some of these were over-ingenious, of course, but he did not mind that, and he would smile over the recollection of having once induced a body to which he belonged to try a method of election which would have ended, if it had not been promptly renounced, in a result entirely against everj^ one's wishes or expectations : though to the end of his life, I believe, he clung to the idea that every vote must be regarded as an individual expression of opinion and not as a means to the desired end. He had an almost pious devotion to the vulgate ^ Euclid ', maintained that it was the best introduction to geometry, and carried on more than one controversy in its defence. He was a great worker but not a very great reader. His library was full of the unexpected. At one time he had the first editions of most of G. Meredith's books (to my intense envy), but I believe he parted with them in one of those clearances by which he sternly kept the number of his books within bounds. He had many of the rarer first editions of Tennyson, but he was never a bibliophile, and ignored all questions of original shape, keeping of covers, uncut paper, &c. He admired Tennyson's poetry greatly and once made a useful index to In Memoriam, copies of which he gave to many friends. He loved Notes and Queries and had a good complete set. He was fond of dictionaries of quotations and the like. He bought no books except to read, and most of these, once read, he would get rid of at clearing-times. He was a reader of medical books, knew his ' bones ', and had a good layman's knowledge of the main medical facts. He had a love of pictures rather than a taste for art : his favourites were Sir Noel Paton, Sir J. Tenniel, Miss Thomp- son, and Holiday. His criterion was the drawing of a pretty young English girl-child, and provided the face was sweet and the figure in proportion he did not ask for more. He liked Frost's humorous drawings, preferred Leech to Keene and Sambourne to both, and admired (very rightly) Miss Greenaway's wee toddlers in their old-fashioned garb. He was an exceptionally good after-dinner speaker, but it was C. L. DODGSON 363 rarely one could get him to undertake the unthankful task, and then he would only do it when inter amicos. The whimsical thought, the gentle satire, the delicate allusions to the various characteristic ways of his hearers, the pleasant kindness that somehow showed through the veil of fun, made his few post-prandial orations memorable. He seldom preached, but those who heard him spoke of his preaching as remarkable for its simple earnestness and apt cleverness of phrase. His last books were the outcome of his idea that perhaps he had not made full use of his opportunities to enforce what he held to be important truths. To the stage he was greatly attracted, and loved what he thought a good play, but the slightest infraction of the strictest decorum or a word that sounded * irreverent ' to his ears would ensure such a rebuke, public or private, as he thought best fitted for the occasion. His faith was of the old-fashioned evangelical school, and he was shocked at the playing of cricket on Sunday, which was encouraged by some worthy and sensible country parsons of his acquaintance. He was a man who thought it right to see that his charity was well bestowed, and he took care to see that what he gave was given in quarters where it would reach those he wished to benefit. He was especially alive, as might be expected, to the duties we owe to children, both the helpless and the poor and those who, though better off, are unduly neglected ; and he was so anxious to care for the little ones that one feels in penning these lines that the cause for which they are written would excuse those biographic details that he would have thought best withheld. He remembers the amusement caused by the Oxford skits, that, both before and after Alice, delighted the whole University. It is probable that the awful controversy as to Jowett's salary (which Freeman cleverly settled with the late Dean of Christ Church's help) will be chiefly remembered by the famous tract in which the elimination of ' 7r ' was discussed. And the demands, incessant though no doubt legitimate, of the scientific men upon the University funds were never so 364 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS funnily criticized as in his pamphlet where the necessity of a small plot for the cultivation of ' roots ^ was set forth. The fun of his ' Hiawatha the photographer ', * that would be like the sea,^ his burlesque of ' The Two Voices/ would have placed him beside Calverley : but the originality of his Alice parodies, the inimitable quality of his Jabberwock, and the invention of the ' Waterford ', as his ' found again ' scheme of verse epigram (first published in Sylvie and Bruno) has been called, give him an entirely unique place among the fun-makers of this century. He reminded one at times in his topsy-turvy, unexpected, whimsy fancies of Lamb, but he was never so widely ap- preciative, so catholic as ' Charles the Great '. He never forgot his cloth, he had neither the weaknesses nor the pathetic gleams of the man whose criticism was the soundest and most sympathetic, and whose autobiographic sketches were the finest, of any written in his generation. Dodgson never forgot the realities, he never played at being other than he was — a cleric, a don, a Christian clergyman with sworn duties, a Student of the House. Consequently, while his range was necessarily limited and his self-correction and self-examination necessarily severe, he wisely chose a sphere of literature, small but his own, in which he could move freely, and he preferred to write for children, innocent and happy and intelligent, [rather] than for the world of grown- up men and women, with the weight of sorrow and sin on them, and the consciousness of the cares of this world and (as he thought) of the world to come weighing on them. For them he could preach and pray, for the children he could write and all his wonderful gifts of fun and fancy he used for their pleasure and profit. He took marvellous trouble to get his books printed, illustrated, and bound exactly as he thought best. He was a most careful and expensive proof-corrector. He had an ideal for every illustration, which he would press on the artist till he was satisfied with the result. He studied such details as ink and type and paper, for any book he issued, regardless C. L. DODGSON 365 of cost or expense of time. Hence the wonderful correctness of his text, and the unity of letterpress and illustration that prevails in his books. His life at Oxford was simple in the extreme. He rose early, worked nearly all day standing at his desk, with the barest apology for lunch ; a brief smart walk now and then in the afternoon, or call at some friend's house, were his only diversion. Hall-dinner and a chat with a friend in his own room afterward, with more work after, till he went to bed. He rarely dined out, and only occasionally invited particular friends to dine with him. He wanted all his time for his work, he said, and he often told us he found the days too short. He had very good health and was seldom out of sorts for a day. His vacations he spent partly at the seaside, where he took some part of the work he had in hand, and often made much progress. But he would give himself some leisure away from his Oxford room, which was his home and his workshop. The quiet humour of his voice, a very pleasant voice, the occasional laugh, — he was not a man that often laughed, though there was often a smile playing about his sensitive mouth, — and the slight hesitation that whetted some of his wittiest sayings, — all those that knew him must remember ; but his kindly sympathies, his rigid rule of his own life, his unselfish love of the little ones, whose liegeman he was, his dutiful discharge of every obligation that was in the slightest degree incumbent on him, his patience with his younger colleagues, who were sometimes a little ignorant and impatient of the conditions under which alone Common-room life must be in the long run ruled, his rare modesty, and the natural kindness which preserved him from the faintest shadow of conceit, and made him singularly courteous to every one, high or low, he came across in his quiet academic life, — these his less-known characteristics will only remain in the memories of his colleagues and conteniporaries. Dodgson and Liddon long made the House Common-room a resort where the weary brain-worker found harmless mirth and 366 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS keen but kindly wit. Liddon, on his days, was a fine talker, full of humour and observation, an excellent mimic, a maker of beautiful and fine-coloured phrase, a delightful debater, Dodgson was a good teller of anecdote, a splendid player at the game of guodlibet, which St. Louis commended as an after-dinner sport, a fantastic weaver of paradox and pro- pounder of puzzle, a person who never let the talk flag, but never monopolized it, who had rather set others talking than talk himself, and was as pleased to hear a twice-told tale as to retail his own store of reminiscence ; a quality egregious, but, as all know, rare. That this kind, conscientious lover of children should be commemorated not in glass or brass or marble, but in a way that should be actively useful in the relief of children's suffering and sorrow, would have surely pleased his soul. And though he shrank from all publicity, and led his modest dutiful life in quiet academic shade, the books that en- shrined so much of his best thought and most sympathetic work have made him the intimate and playmate of many little ones in many homes, and they will not be sorry to know that their unknown friend was a man that they could respect as well as love. It may be true that his art is especially that of a day, exclusively nineteenth century, peculiarly Victorian and insular, and even Church of England : tant mietuK : here is a production that can never be really imitated or in any Avay cheapened by the future, a curious little piece of fantasy such as will never be wrought out again, a thing per se : and it is none the less valuable because it is as frankly modern as the ' turn-out ' of our newest novelist or last-arrived draughtsman. Dodgson and the talented and humane author of ' Struwwelpeter ' were contemporaries and died within a few months of each other. If to their names we add the greater names of Marryat and Grimm and Stevenson and the lower name of Andersen, we shall have gone over the roll of those who have made English nurseries happy by their genius, and struck those chords that find harmonious echoes in the delicate, sensitive, sympathetic I'lnmn' eczA. OocoeDF EBKLH AMWVy Hxnv DESIGNED BY YORK POWELL : FKOM ALPHABHTii, BY E. F. STRANGE (1895). C. L. DODGSON 367 minds of childhood. It is no little privilege to have earned the love of these little ones, and it is a pleasure, surely, to help to honour in so becoming a way as you. Sir, have suggested, the memory of one that had worthily won this distinction. GLEESON WHITE There are some men whose companionship is eminently helpful, their sympathy being so wide, their judgement so broad, their temper so fine, that one is lifted as it were on to a higher plane into serener air while one is with them. Such a man was Gleeson White. It was a refreshment to pass an hour with him : one came away from him with more hope, faith, and charity. The secret of his influence lay in his sincerity, his single-mindedness, the sensitive feelings that enabled him to understand and appreciate the aims and achievements of others, while his amazing and accurate acquaintance with the various means of expression that are employed in literature and the arts enabled him to see precisely what was the line along which any individual development was proceeding. His wit lit up the most serious discussions, and his absolute freedom from all the sordid motives that so often clog men's opinions, his lack of jealousy, and generous delight in other men's work whether in his own or others' fields, gave his conversation qualities exceptionally rare and valuable to his friends. He was also notably patient, and this patience for so quick- witted a man must have been an acquirement ; he was even too long-suffering, allowing people who had no claims on his time or attention to take up both, rather than hurt their feelings or run the risk of not being able to help them in some way. He was never in a hurry ; hence, what facts and knowledge he won, he had always ready for use. He was 368 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS eminently teachable, always desirous of learning more, of seeing more, of getting to understand more minutely the things and persons in whom he was interested. He had a great power of work, and here he was probably over-conscientious, exhausting himself over labour often less than moderately paid, and doing the most ordinary work in the most careful and elaborate way. But he could not bear to do less than his best, and he would sacrifice strength and time ungrudgingly to act up to his ideal. He never grumbled, and was able, though a sensitive man, to bear his troubles with a brave and unmoved face, but one can guess how the effort tried him. A man of such qualities is no ordinary person : and after getting to know him personally one was not long in making out how it was he won in so few years the exceptional position in the world of art and literature that he held at his death. A quiet life of nearly forty years in a beautiful little country town, where he made full use of the opportunities for self-culture that lay open to him, where he came to know all the living and moving elements that made for good, and where he enjoyed to the full the musical art that was always one of his chief pleasures, prepared him for the resolution he took to come up to London in 1891. A year in America gave him an insight into the business methods that underlie the conduct of artistic and literary production on a large scale. He got too to understand the modern town public with its insatiable craving for novelty, its eager attraction towards interesting work, its instability of taste, its limited but still not quite hopeless capability for being taught to distinguish between good and bad in matters of art and literature, the feverish and acute agitation by which it tries to turn the quiet way of the artist into a black cinder-path filled with shouting competitors, and the ignorant stupidity that allows dozens of poor and worthless imitators to do their best to degrade and hackney every new ideal or idea. He learnt the necessity of trained and sincere criticism as the only true and constant support of those who are doing GLEESON WHITE 369 honest work and the only effective foe to impostors, pre- tenders, and shams of all kinds. When he came back to London he soon entered on the work that occupied him till his death — the art of designing and the practice of criticism. His influence was quickly felt, he had plenty of ideas, ideas that could be carried out ; for he would not waste time over the unattainable, there was for him plenty to do that could be done and was worth doing, and to this he gave his whole heart. He set himself especially to encourage the young who were capable of doing well, who had thoughts of their own and wanted to be allowed to work them out in their own way : for them he had always a word of the sympathy that understands, a phrase of the encouragement that is so welcome when the struggle seems at its worst. He was always ready, too, to stand up for those whose achievements had been passed over without due acknowledgement, the modest proud men who knew that they had done well, but despaired of getting their due or anything like it from a fickle and hasty generation that is easily led away by profuse advertisement and unblush- ing self-assertion. To praise a thing that deserved praise was to Gleeson White a true pleasure, and, kindly and amiable as he was, he was too wise to lavish encomia; he certainly did not desire the death of a sinner, but he could speak clearly enough when there was need of discrimination and of distinguishing between the reality and the make- believe, and he was not easily deceived by the imposture that masks itself so deftly and cunningly beneath a show of words or an affectation of form or colour. Hence his praise was justly valued and his blame keenly felt, gently as it was always expressed. The surroundings of the man (like his face and hands) were markedly expressive ; statuettes, enamels, drawings, etchings, engravings, prints, books, the things he liked to have about him, in that pleasant and well-romcmbered work-room of his, were things of a real distinction, however tiny and simple. His library was of course (since he was Y. p. n B b 370 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS essentially a bookman, familiar with books from his childhood, with an inherited love that his own life had only strengthened) an index of his taste and leanings. Putting aside the large section of it that repi-esented gifts from friends and aspirants to literary rank (an interesting and characteristic set of books proving the catholicity of his influence and the value attached to his verdicts), there were several special collections of carefully chosen books, chief, perhaps, those of the illustrators of the ^ sixties ', Keene, Houghton, Pinwell, Watson, Walker, Hughes, Leighton, Lawson, Millais, Whistler, Solomon, Sandys, and a host of lesser lights, a collection that formed the base of his well-known study of this distinguished English school of wood engraving. Of the older wood schools, as original and native and as distinguished in their way, that of Williams, Harvey, Foster, Bewick and his l^upils, Palmer, Calvert, and their contemporaries, he was also a collector, and it is one of the present writer's lasting regrets that a projected study by him of Samuel Williams (a remarkable and now little-known draughtsman) will never appear ; that and many other projects, certain, but for fate's decree, to have been wrought out to good purpose, having been untimely checked and finally frustrated. Of later draughtsmen of individuality and original workmanship he possessed many examples, notably of Aubrey Beardsley, (whose promise Gleeson White was indeed one of the first to detect), of Mr. Sime (of whose notable and truly grotesque fancies he instantly acknowledged the power), of Mr. Nichol- son, of Mr. Maj^, and others whose names are now widely and deservedly known, he was among the first admirers and laudators. His collection of book-plates was an eclectic one and based on artistic rather than bibliographic tastes. His Japanese prints and pattern-books he had chosen with an eye to their decorative qualities and uses rather tlian with regard to historic or illustrative considerations. He had a fine feeling for the canons that go to the building up of a beautiful printed page, and he had brought together a good many examples, old and new^ that showed various classes of GLEESON WHITE 371 arrangement and type. Being himself a master of poetic form, a subject that always profoundly interested him, he had naturally collected a quantity of books in which the ballade, the triolet, and the hundred conventional shapes of minor verse were illustrated, many of them having helped to furnish him material for that memorable little volume in which so many of Mr. Henley's little masterpieces and a very notable introductory essay of his own are included. Gleeson White's library was a working library as well as a collector's treasury. He bought his books because he loved them and because he used them. He would choose out its appropriate book-plate (of which he had a plentiful and remarkable variety) for each volume, he would take pleasure in fixing its fitting place in his shelves alongside of kindred volumes, he would keep it carefully dusted and free from stain or scar. He handled books as a born book-lover should. Hence one feels that something personal clings to these pets and proteges of his, one cherishes a book he cherished as a relic of a friend, as well as a thing of beauty or use in itself. It is not every collector whose books became his own as Gleeson White's did, and many a book-plate is simply an index of the wealth that could endow a library and not a revelation of the former possessor's individual and personal likings or sympathies. For the impersonal collector is a mere conduit pipe : he has never really owned a book at all : he has simply become a channel between one owner and another, a mere fiction of conveyance. But this little library of Gleeson White was a part of his life, and though one would have been glad perhaps had it passed in bulk into the control of some public institution, which would have permitted its free use to all that cared about the art or letters that it represented ; yet one cannot be sorry that it will be distributed among friends to whom the books will have a double value owing to their 2)rovenance, and for whom they will recall and in a way represent the tastes and sympatiiies and knowledge of their former owner. It is at best a sad thing, the disposal of the gatherings of lib 2 372 TRIBUTES AND APPRECIATIONS an earnest lifetime ; but here one feels that Gleeson White himself would have been satisfied that his friends and acquaintances, known and unknown, should share among them the things he had valued ; for he was ever one to whom it was a pleasure that anything he had should minister to others' service or delight. Those who never knew this simple, unpretending man in the flesh will find it not so easy to understand, in spite of the perusal of his writings, how great a space he filled in the hearts and minds of those who knew him, and it is difficult, however faithfully one tries, to succeed in giving anything like a clear or defined portraiture of the qualities that drew one so warmly to him. There is such complexity in life ; the mixture of characteristics, the evanescent play of circum- stance upon temperament, the Werden that is always more important than the Sein^ these, like the passing play of light on the features, are hard to seize and set down in due keeping and proportion so as to reproduce somewhat of the effect the living man produced on his friends. It is one of the inevitable sadnesses of human existence, trite though the observation be, that as the years go on, it is not so much our own personal losses, weaknesses, short- comings, disappointments that affect us, as the abstractions, sudden often, always sad and freshly sad, of those who have been comrades, co-mates, and fellow-travellers. One stumbles on, but one's heart is the heavier for the thought of those that have fallen by the way, although we know that for them the toil is assuredly over and the struggle ended in a great peace. Those that knew Gleeson White will never forget him, his memorial will stand within them clear and distinct and unblurred till the soft darkness falls upon them also. To them, as long as they are permitted to recall the past, he will remain a perpetual example of a truthful, gifted, far-seeing, and gentle-hearted friend whom to know was a privilege and to remember an encouragement and an enduring and happy influence. IX VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS [The Quatrains from Omar lead here : with their preface, the most personal confession of belief that Powell ever printed or wrote ; xxv- xxix are added from MS. The sequel, derived from a letter, is a sally in the same form and spirit. The other original verses speak for them- selves. The translations from Icelandic, Italian, and French are in some cases reprints ; the Norse ones, of verses on infantine things, coming from a child's book on Iceland written long ago by a friend ; while the ballad of * Sir Ogie ', like the refrains of dancing songs, is from the Grimm Centenary, and that of ' Sigmund ' from the version of Fcereyinga Saga. For more see separate headnotes.] A NOTE ON OMAR When FitzGerald put Omar into English he did more than he knew. He revealed to us in fixed and memorable form a white, broad tract of thought many moderns and a few ancients had descried, but onl}^ in vague and cloudy delinea- tion. Here at last it lay plain in the Persian sunlight — a field a few men have loved to stray into at times, and fewer have chosen as their camping-place. A varied field of various aspects, for Omar has many moods. Sometimes he zanders restless in the starlit night; sometimes he meditates in the chill fresh dawn till the stir of life breaks in upon his reveries ; sometimes he dreams in the hot slumberous noon when all is hushed save the cicada ; sometimes when tiie sun has set and the moon has risen in the pleasant evening, M'ith the ripple of the brook in his ears, and the scent of tlie roses in his nostrils, he sings. Often he is alone with his heart ; at other times he is in grave society with sages and 'seekers ; and now and 374 VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS again he is the centre of a merry company, where the saki sees to it that the ghisses are not long left empty, while the singing- girl vies with the nightingale. Consistency is not the pride of his philosophy ; only through his moods he is ever true to himself, so that though there are many facets to the jewels of his thought, the jewels themselves are all strung upon the thread of sincerity. Hence many have found sympathy in his verse and have felt that he expressed for them the secret of their own souls. Omar is not often a preacher, seldom a prophet, occasion- ally a frank counsellor, always a friend. He had learnt to be content to accept men and things as they are. He would have men charitable and sincere. He had no ethical advice beyond this. He recognized that the ultimate explanation is beyond our comprehension, though he did not trouble himself to doubt its existence. He had done with systems and uni- versal theories. He laughed at creeds and mocked at super- stitions, but he welcomed facts with a gentle and humorous smile. He had no malice, no grudge against life. He was companionable in his hours, never inhuman. Of the hermit or the ascetic there was no trace in him. He was not the man to shudder at the beauty of women or the splendours of the earth and heavens, because Mutability has set her seal upon them all. He had no brain-made golden age to look upon with a sigh, no air-built Utopia to yearn for in vain. Ho knew that in himself were the limits and possibilities of his own hapjoiness, and that fate must be faced. He only re- gretted that life, man's little capital, was often so ill and unprofitably invested. He would not be cajoled into despising this workaday world ; the homely, simple joys within reach (not the least exquisite) should be freely and deftly grasped. The wise man is not a sad man. Man is made for happiness as well as for grief ; both nmst needs come, and when they come they must be frankly and fearlessly met. On his thought he set no fetters : wherever Reason leads, whither Fancy dances, he will follow, exploring ctu'iously and calmly, with firm step, amused at his discoveries but never condescending A NOTE ON OMAR 375 to be decoyed by the golden tale of El Dorado or the feverish quest of Bimini. Duty he did not talk much about because he practised it instinctively, for the tent-maker of Naishapur was more at one with the pilgrim Abdii el Yezdi than the latter supposed when he wrongly condemned Omar as one that prescribed merely sensual pleasures, which must all at last pall upon the voluptuary. For the truth is that the exhortation — Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die — is only the half of Omar's wisdom ; the rest seems to me precisely the same as that of the Kasidah : Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause ; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws. All other Life is living Death, a world where none but Phantoms dwell, A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the camel- bell. Such a man as this Shakespeare and Rabelais and Goethe would have understood and loved. Such a man Lucretius must surely have envied ; for while he himself had obtained freedom with a great price, Omar was born free, and his struggles had been wrestling with intellectual problems, not sharp pangs and searchings of heart. Omar was, like Lucretius, a savant, trained by the practice of research and disciplined by science ; hence he does not shrink from the touch of reality, nor does he cherish illusion for its own sake. Clear-brained and sane, he consoled himself for the rubs of fortune with a stroke of humour instead of seeking satisfaction in bitter scorn and self-destroying contempt. He was too healthy to permit the eternal verities to crush him into wanhope and gloom. But Omar was also a poet, and he knew that the Real Life is not wholly intellectual. He had gone through his journey witbout losing zest. He was at ease in the fellowship of Youth and Mirth and Love, though he saw their frailty. The littleness of Life, clearly as he acknowledged it, could not 376 VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS really poison his enjoyment^ but rather enhanced the glow of its fleeting charm. Timor mortis troubled poor Dunbar's aching morrows^ but could not disturb Omar's morning dreams. He was alive to Opportunity. To-day, if ye will hear his voice ! To-day ! Will not the future be the better and richer for memories of past pleasure ? So surely must the sane man feel. Those also who would make of Omar a Sufi, such as Jilal- ad-din, or a Hedonist, such as Rochester, are as much at fault as those who would make of Rabelais a crusader or a drunkard. Omar had gone beyond empty phrases and passed the marshy reek of mysticism by ; he lived far above the haunts of the mere hog-philosophy. His palate was too keen, his senses too exquisite, his brain too healthy and active to allow him to find complete satisfaction in animal pleasures only. These same animal pleasures he does not by any means despise. They are natural, to be enjoyed and fully enjoyed in their seasons, but there are others. Even Mr. Wilkes (a true epicure) leashed together tlie pleasure of generosity, delight in the contemplation of nature, and the love of woman, as com- bining to his highest enjoyment. And for Omar the Persian there were many gratifications, and among them those that thrill, and rightly, the bodily senses. He was no despiser of the common joys of mankind, he acknowledged their blessed- ness. For him, as for Blake, Earth was a beautiful place ; like brother Martin, he loved wine and song and woman. The perpetual miracle of the spring did not appeal to him in vain. The odour of roses came to him as a very breath from heaven. But his paradise was not as simple as Muhammad's. Toward his fellows he was largely tolerant. He abhorred hypocrisy, but he was not too stern with the hypocrite ; he loathed bigotry, but yet he did not deeply condemn the bigot who yearned to murder him. He revolted openly at the cruelties and tragedies of life, but he did not wholly accuse the Universe that baffled him. A man could never be prevented from doing his duty. He would not allow the A NOTE ON OMAR 377 Unknowable to confound him, and his humour does not quail before any imaginable thing or being. There is a frank courage about him ; he dealt with life as with his mathematics. He was no quietist. We cannot steer our drifting raft, nor stem the resistless current ; but we have it in our power to behave decently, to share the meagre stock of victuals fairly as long as they last, to take the good and evil as it comes, and even to hope, if we choose to do so, for a fair haven. Omar has no heaven to offer, no hell to threaten with. His appeal is not to spiritualities, his deity is more faineant than even the gods of Epicurus. To Omar the fair mirage is but a bright reflection, and he will not mistake it for the city that is very far off. He is a plain, downright man, and his ^ message ' is only a friendly whisper to them that care to sit near him, bidding them trust to the real and front life squarely. So I read Omar, ranging him as to his standpoint with Shakespeare and those who take the same kindly half-ironic dutiful view of life. Rabelais and Whitman are of the com- pany. There are plenty of lines among the best-accredited verses of Omar that seem to me to give just this notion of him, and I do not think it is inconsistent with what is known of his life. But among the verses that pass under his name are some that can scarcely be reconciled with this view, and these I cannot believe to be his. Tiiey belong to another character, to a man who had within him a wittier and a more malicious Heinesque mockery, but a man also capable of ardent mystical religious adoration. Such men have appeared ere now both in the east and west. One can hardly imagine the agony of earnest piety, that imdoubtedly at times thrilled Verlaine, and the impudent, reckless, cruel gaminerie, that Villon often gives way to, coexisting in the same man with the calm science, deep humour, and kindly tolerance of Shakespeare and Rabelais. We know that much heretical verse and much repentant self-reproach expressed in memorable lines were 378 VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS cast by the copyists into the collections they attributed to Omar and mixed up with his genuine verse. In the quatrains that follow, for instance, there seems to be a distinct discrepancy between that numbered xii, beauti- ful though the original may be, and the nobler verses that conclude the selection ; and xii is not wholly inconsistent with VII and in. Again i (where FitzGerald's rendering is rather restored than altered) is perhaps rather on than by Omar. The best is Omar's pretty certainly, and the impression of a selection of the best quatrains taken from, say, Mr. Payne's version (where the patient skill of the translator is seeking to render as closely as may be the original form) will, to my fancy, be that I have attempted to sketch above. The real Omar seems to emerge, and it is the Omar that FitzGerald recalled from limbo and transfigured for us occidentals in his immortal version. The form of his raiment is indeed slightly changed, but the man is little altered. He is visibly a manifest poet of our own race, more Aryan perhaps than Lucretius himself. There is nothing of the Arab about him : he does not raise high debate like the schoolmen of Islam on predestination and the prae-creation of the Quran, nor does he try to rival the Seven titan poets of the clans of the Days of Darkness. He is far closer to us than that high questioner Job, or even that loneliest of pessimists the Preacher in Jerusalem. There is nothing about him of the glittering, often tawdry, geo- metrical filagree dear to the alien Hindoo. Here is a Hellene beyond the Greek pale, a classic of our own blood, a modern too, albeit he is separated from us by eight centuries' space, and is in name a follower of the Quraish prophet, and in garb a barbarian. Nor can one forget that his tongue is, after all, a sister tongue to our own. It is FitzGerald's great claim to a loftier meed than befits the mere translator, that he felt this close kinship and took care to make his version poetry first and next English, leaving just enough local colour in his reproduction to help his readers' imagination, declining firmly to allow himself to be hampered A NOTE ON OMAR 379 by too rigorous fidelity to metre or metaphor. Omar is as yet the one Persian poet (besides Hafiz) that an Englishman can comprehend and feel at ease with, and even Hafiz, able as his translators have been, strikes most of us primarily as an oriental and secondly as a poet. Mr. Greene's Latin version of FitzGerald is worthy of its original, and has a harmonious pomp and a concise felicity proper to the language of Lucretius. One would like to have a version in Aeolic Greek by as good and poetic a scholar. Here surely, as Antarah puts it, there is a place for a patch, a purple patch in the long embroidered garment of a western poesy. As for the ensuing quatrains, they were turned into English on the familiar model from M. Nicolas' and Mr. Justin McCarthy's versions, for the pleasure of a friend of whose kindness they form but an inadequate acknowledgement. They were first printed in The Pageant, 1897, at the instance of its editor, Mr. Gleeson White. They have been impudently misprinted by a pirate in the United States, where the laws as yet permit such dishonest and uncivil dealings. They are now reprinted because, as they have been circulated widely in an incorrect form, they may as well appear in their own shape. They only hope to be considered humble appendices to the rendering of Omar by FitzGerald, for verily, as Harith sang of Amru long ago : He is a king that hath brought all under his subjection. Nor is there among them his peer in his gifts. Christ Church, Oxford, March the twentieth, 1901. QUATRAINS FROM OMAR I Khayyam, that used to stitch the tents of Thought, Lito Grief's furnace dropt, was burnt to naught; The shears of Fate his Life's tent-ropes liave cut ; Yea, Hope's sharp Broker sold liim — nor got aught. 380 VERSES AND TRANSLATIONS II The World gains naught that I live here below. And my Departure will not mar its show; No man has told me yet, nor do I know TVhy I came here, or where/or hence I go. Ill The Day is breaking, let us welcome him With glasses crimson-beaded to the brim; And as for Name and Fame and Blame and Shame, What are they all? — mere Talk and idle Whim. IV Why at the Dawning must the cock still crow? It is that by his crowing he may show That one more Night has slid from out thy Life: And thou art lying asleep and dost not know. Life's caravan speeds strangely swift — take care; It is thy youth that^s fleeting — Friend, beware; Nor vex thyself for Woe to come, in vain. For lo, the Night rolls on and Dawn breaks bare. VI The Spheres that turn have brought no luck to thee. What matter how the Years or Seasons flee ? Two Days there are to which I pay no heed — The Day that's gone, the Day that is to be. VII Above thine head looms Heaven's Bull Parwin ; Beneath thy feet a Bull bears Earth unseen; Open the eyes of Knowledge, and behold This drove of Asses these two Bulls between. QUATRAINS FROM OMAR 381 VIII The Rose saith, ^1