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ENGLISH STUDIES, 
 
WORKS BY MARY DARMESTETER. 
 
 FROISSABT, Translated by E. Frances Poynter. 
 15 full page illustrations. Cloth, los. 6d. 
 
 THE NEW ASCASIA : Being Idjlls of Country Life, 
 and other Poems. Paper covers, 3s. 6d. 
 
 SONGS, BAXLASS, AND A GABOEN PLAY. 
 
 Frontispiece of Durer's "Melancholia." Half- 
 bound, Japanese vellum, 5s. 
 
 In The Cameo Series. 
 
 LYEICS. Selected from 
 the Works of A. Mary 
 F. Robinson. Front. 
 
 EETROSPECT, and 
 
 other Poems. With 
 frontispiece. 
 
 Paper boards, 3s. 6d. each. 
 
 London: T. FISHER UNWIN. 
 
/^ayryneyli/^^ 
 
English Studies 
 
 JAMES DARMESTETER 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 MARY DARMESTETER 
 
 (A. Mary F. Robinson) 
 
 
 London 
 T. FISHER UN WIN 
 
Of/Mrp,, 
 
 [All Rights Reserved. 1 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface vii 
 
 Joan of Arc in England 3 
 
 The French Revolution and Wordsworth • • ■ 73 
 
 The Life of George Eliot 97 
 
 George Eliot's Letters m 
 
 Oliver Madox-Brown i53 
 
 The Poetry of Mary Robinson 171 
 
 Celtica 181 
 
 Irish Literature and Ossian 195 
 
 Irish Political Ballads 217 
 
 Calcutta 237 
 
 Two Indian Books 281 
 
 A Mage in Paris , 3°^ 
 
 189210 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Few Frenchmen, I believe, knew England so 
 intimately as my husband. He had surprised the 
 English character by a happy guess-work before 
 he set himself to study it. He looked at England 
 from within. All that is serious, poetic, and 
 unchangeably romantic in the heart of her was 
 revealed to him by its deep reflection in her poetry. 
 The England sprung from Shakespeare and the Bible, 
 the England of the Border Ballads and of George 
 Eliot's novels, this England of sincere romance and 
 stringent moral value, was known to him no less than 
 the vast, productive, outward England of industry, 
 commerce, politics, and colonisation. He interpreted 
 the soul of the one by the soul of the other, and 
 understood them both. Nay, of the two races, so 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 profoundly different, which divide the British Isles, 
 he understood the enthusiastic "viewy " English- 
 woman at least as well as the positive Englishman. 
 In short, that which he grasped most firmly was just 
 that which escapes us almost always in the analysis of 
 a foreign nation : — instinct, spirit, tradition ; all we 
 take for granted, all we leave unsaid, all the secret 
 impulse of our actions. This penetration of the 
 subject handled is the characteristic of these English 
 Studwies. 
 
 English poetry is like no other poetry. In the 
 world's great orchestra it is the -^olian harp. Its airy 
 delicate song, a bubble of light words, exquisitely 
 blended of half-tints and semitones, intimately 
 thrilled with the vibrations of the soul — all this rare 
 and immaterial loveliness, such as no other literature 
 possesses, can, none the less, swell its diapason to 
 the absolute cry of passion, — can fling up aloft a 
 jet of clearest, highest, purest thought. The sob of 
 Othello, the smile of the Lady of the Sensitive Plant ; 
 these represent the two poles of English poetry. 
 Between these two extremities what an unspeakable 
 world of visions and ideals, of passions and sensations, 
 often improbable, disordered, or fantastic, but always 
 sincere. Aye, there's the secret and the charm ! 
 Nowhere in Europe is there a literature where 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 convention is less dominant than in the poetry 
 of a people apparently in bondage to Mrs. Grundy, • 
 and weighed to earth by the tyranny of cant. 
 
 'Twas in 1877 that James Darmesteter first came to 
 England. He already knew a little English. Despite 
 his youth (he was twenty-eight years old) he was 
 known and marked in the limited circles of Oriental 
 scholars. Lately elected Professor of Zend and 
 Pehlvi in the Ecole des Hautes Etudes of Paris, he 
 had published some essays on points of the Avesta 
 which had attracted considerable notice. 'Twas at 
 this moment that Mr. Max Miiller asked him to 
 translate into English for the Clarendon Press, the 
 Zend original of the Vcndidad. James accepted with 
 alacrity. And yet it is not easy to translate into a 
 foreign tongue a dead language handed down to 
 us in transcripts whose imperfection verges upon 
 travesty. But that frail exterior, that sensitive 
 delicate spirit, concealed a mainspring of indomi- 
 table will. And all is possible to him whose force 
 of volition is equalled by the quality of his staying- 
 power. 
 
 Ah, if he could have yielded, it would never 
 have been because of the obstacles apparent in his 
 path ! The sirens sing of a far subtler seduction. 
 And when in the middle of his long arid labour, 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 James heard the unexpected voice of EngHsh poetry — 
 then, ah then, there was indeed a moment when 
 Zoroaster must have feared an instant apostasy, " I 
 "was once on the very point of hating science — I 
 '* longed to interpret EngHsh Hterature to France " : 
 so my dear one was to write to me one day. 
 
 But the temptation passed. James had too true a 
 devotion to his ideal of science for any caprice (or 
 any passion even) to dispel it. He did not sacrifice 
 his rare delight in English books ; but, since all his 
 actions converged towards one predetermined 
 aim, he found means to subordinate, and even to 
 make a use of, tastes which at one moment had 
 appeared to menace his career. Zoroaster lived to 
 profit by the flitting infidelities of his prophet. But 
 for his love of English, where were the admirable 
 style of the Oxford Vendidad, where the com- 
 pleteness and sincerity of those Indian Letters, out 
 of which was to spring the " Essay on the Afghan 
 Tongue ? " 
 
 And so James renounced the idea, once 
 cherished, of re-forging for a newer generation the 
 colossal work of Monsieur Taine. A dozen essays, 
 a little book on Shakespeare, an edition of "Childe 
 Harold," another of "Macbeth"— these, with the 
 exception of these few following pages, arc all that 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 he had time to glean from English fields. But, in 
 his leisure hours he ever loved to listen to the echo 
 of his dearest thoughts in any kindred English soul. 
 Thus he observed the posthumous adventures of 
 Joan of Arc in England. Thus he noted the 
 reflection of the French Revolution as mirrored in 
 the mind of Wordsworth. Such were the recreations 
 of his meditative spirit. But his study of George 
 Eliot was more than a recreation — it was a pro- 
 fession of faith. 
 
 For to James, born in 1849, George Eliot was all 
 that Tolstoi is to the children of the sixties, all that 
 Nietzsche threatens to become to a younger 
 generation : that is to say, less a great writer than 
 a moral symbol, of which the name is no longer a 
 mere proper noun, but, writ in shorthand, a whole 
 theory of altruism, pity or revolt. All that my 
 husband's soul contained of infinite and tender 
 commiseration for human sorrow ; all his faith in 
 duty and self-sacrifice ; all that sway which the 
 idea of Law exercised over his philosophic mind ; 
 no less than his conviction that our world is slowly 
 moving towards some diviner destiny, wherein a 
 new race shall really live at last ; this, and the 
 very temper of his mind, his large and gentle 
 indulgence for others, his uncomplaining patient 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 dignity, hiy desire for a personal code of ethics (unc 
 morale a mot), his dream of a new rehgion to be 
 engendered by the fusion of Faith and Science— all 
 these qualities of his, and all these convictions, 
 were included in his devotion to George Eliot. 
 
 Add to the whole his chivalry towards women. A 
 woman to him was ever a thing for mystery and 
 worship. Like Tacitus' Germans, he prized a 
 woman chiefly for what she ventured and what she 
 knew how to suffer ; and George Eliot had dared and 
 suffered " aboon the lave." So it came to pass that 
 her genius, her theory of life, and even her 
 individual experience, combined to make this woman, 
 whom he had never seen, a sort of symbol to my 
 husband of the ten-years'-long growth and movement 
 of his own mind. 
 
 Thus by intuition, by reflection, by the love of 
 books and the knowledge of men and women, this 
 Frenchman penetrated the secret of the English 
 soul. But if, as I have said, his knowledge of 
 England began from within, he did not on that 
 account neglect the vast and imposing externals of 
 the British Empire. He saw the nobler aspects of 
 her just but loveless rule. He admired that iron 
 yoke imposed with an impersonal equity upon 
 incalculable races and innumerable religions. The 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 peace of the British Colonies appeared to him 
 rigid and grandiose as ever was the Roman Peace. 
 Yet, if he hailed the rectitude of the strong, his 
 tenderer sympathies were evoked by the ineffectual 
 rebellion of the weak. His heart beat for the Celt 
 in Ireland, for the Indian in India, and all the 
 more warmly because he saw the uselessness of 
 an effort condemned to miss its aim for ever. He 
 pitied the bare breast so vainly, so courageously, 
 opposed to the keen edge of the naked sword. And, 
 while he pitied, he saw the superiority of the 
 English, tyrannical and intolerant though they be ; 
 he said that their inflexible rule was none the less 
 a liberal education for those who obey them ; he 
 recognised that the Fenian conspiring against the 
 Sassenach, and the Bengalee Baboo suffering with 
 a servile smile the inept disdain of the British 
 Civil Servant, are, in spite of all their grievances, 
 enviable and even happy, compared with that 
 which they would become, if freed from the 
 constraint which maintains them in the way of 
 progress. 
 
 It was in an hour of melancholy — of deep 
 and heavy melancholy, despite the most brilliant 
 exterior success— that James Darmesteter made up 
 his mind to spend a year in India, in order to learn 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 the last traditions of the Avesta among the 
 Parsees of Bombay ; and, having gathered these, 
 to pursue upon the north-west frontier his investi- 
 gation into the language and literature of the Afghan 
 tribes. The effort was great, his health of the 
 frailest ; but he was out of love with life, and 
 hoped to render one last service to Science, and 
 then to shuffle off this mortal coil. But, as it 
 turned out, this journey, undertaken in such sore 
 depression of spirits, was to be one of the rare and 
 dear delights which brightened up his brief existence. 
 Something of the magic and the miracle, some- 
 thing of the sheer delight and amazement of this 
 voyage into the Silver Land of Indian Nights, 
 lingers still in the enchanted pages of the Letircs 
 sur I'Indc. Everywhere he met with the kindest, 
 the most hospitable, reception. At Bombay he stayed 
 with the governor. Lord Reay ; the officers of 
 Abbottabad made him a Honorary Member of their 
 mess ; the learned mobcds of Bombay welcomed him 
 as a brother in Zoroaster ; and the most distinguished 
 mendicants of the Fair of Peshawur treated him as 
 a fellow of their rambling Academy of Afghan 
 Letters. He liked, admired, and understood all this 
 variegated universe of India. And I know not if he 
 were more at home in the salons of Government 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 House, or in the prison where some poet in tatters, 
 taken more or less red-handed, would sing him 
 some villainous, incendiary Poushtou ballad. The 
 Moonshis of Abbottabad, as they watched him come 
 and go, so light and quiet on his sedate old pony, 
 used to call him " Chota Padre Sahib " : the little 
 Missionary. But where is the missionary who 
 possesses his magic key for opening the heart and 
 secret of another race ? 
 
 'Twas in his Peshawur garden that he chanced to 
 read one day — in the long lazy Indian afternoon — 
 the " Italian Garden " of IMiss Mary Robinson. He 
 said to himself that, on his return from India, he 
 would make the acquaintance of the writer. It 
 is easy to understand how often I have paused and 
 wondered whether or no I should include in this 
 last sheaf of his English Studies the essay which 
 prefixed his subsequent translation of my verses. 
 That essay is far less the opinion of a critic, than the 
 ardent expression of a personal sympathy. But all 
 the more for that, perchance, it is one of the 
 most spontaneous and individual pages in this last 
 little garner of relics. The publishing of these fresh 
 emotional pages is at least an indiscretion ; but to 
 keep them back, to confiscate them, seems to me 
 almost a breach of trust. So let them stand among 
 
XVI PREF^ACE, 
 
 the others ; a few lyric lines of kindness and fellow- 
 feeling rather than of criticism. 
 
 The Indian year went by and waned : spring in 
 Bombay, summer in Peshawur, midsummer and 
 autumn on the Himalayan spurs, and then again 
 a winter in Bombay. At last comes the time for 
 turning home : "Adieu, I'lnde aux nuits d'argent." 
 The College of France, the publishing of his re- 
 searches, recalled the wanderer to Paris. But, back 
 at home, he never lost sight of his Indian friends. 
 A little later, our square white salon of the Rue 
 Bara was to grow familiar with the dusky Indian 
 faces. Ah, kind, grave, charming apparitions ! How 
 can I forget the Arch-priest Jivanjee Modi, whose 
 alert and curious mind moved so nimbly beneath the 
 rigid formula of his antique belief ? The venerable 
 Tahmuras was only known to me by correspondence. 
 But, if I forget the name, my fancy still evokes the 
 face — the brown, eager face — of a certain Gujerati 
 St. Francis despatched to the Paris Exhibition of 
 1889 by a section of the Brahmo Somaj. He 
 spoke no modern tongue save Gujerati, sprinkled 
 with some half-dozen words of English ; this sufficed 
 for interminable conversations with my husband 
 (each shouting louder than the other in the difficult 
 parts), but I was necessarily somewhat out of court. 
 
PREFACE. XVU 
 
 We could only exchange the simplest ideas. " You 
 "must find everything very dear in Paris ?" I said, 
 one day. 
 
 " Oh no," replied the sage. " Two sous of bread, 
 "three sous of milk, and that's enough." And 
 he re-opened the flood-gates of his illimitable 
 Gujerati. I wonder, has he ever published his 
 book ? He was writing (this Aryan ascetic) a 
 volume on the progress of civilisation in France, 
 profusely — and most diversely ! — illustrated by photo- 
 graphs picked up under the arcades of the Rue 
 de Rivoli. It was a quaint conception. 
 
 Of all these friends from over seas, the dearest to 
 my husband was Bahramjee Malabari. Many 
 English readers will doubtless know, otherwise than 
 by my husband's notice, that warm and apostolic 
 soul, that subtle, brilliant mind, pro .let and press- 
 man : an impossible combination, but it exists in 
 Malabari ! James did not live to add his remarks on 
 his friend Bahramjee's latest book. The Indian Eye 
 on English Life, and perhaps I alone know how 
 greatly he admired its large liberty of outlook and the 
 easy dignity of its expression — only I and Mr. 
 Malabari himself. For life afforded the two friends, 
 separated by more than half a world, one last day 
 together. In the end of September, 1894, Mr. 
 
Xvill PREFACE. 
 
 Malabari was in Paris, too ill to come to us in our 
 summer home in Seine-et-Oise, but eager for a 
 long conversation with my husband. 
 
 James, who never gave a thought to his own 
 fragile health, sped up to Paris and spent the day with 
 his old friend. " Never did two people say more in 
 " a single afternoon," he laughed to me on his return ; 
 and all that evening was bright with reminiscences, 
 with the plans, and the projects of Bahramjee Mala- 
 bari. Meanwhile, the Indian pursued his homeward 
 way. Arrived at Bombay, a few days after the 19th 
 October, he learned at the landing stage the news 
 of my husband's sudden death. Ah, how should 
 I forget the explosion of pity, of regret, of admiration 
 which that cruel news aroused in the heart of 
 India ! There was not, I think, a single Parsee of any 
 standing but signified his affection, his respect, 
 towards the memory of James : an affection, a 
 respect, which endure undiminished. At the 
 beginning of this year, Prince Henri d'Orleans 
 was to speak at the Dinshaw Petit Club, in Bombay. 
 On his arrival, he glanced over the list of members, 
 and read : President — Raines Darniesteter. " But 
 " he is dead," exclaimed the Prince. " Yes," replied 
 these faithful friends, "but he is still our President!" 
 
 " What shall we do for him ? " they, then, wrote 
 
PREFACE. XIX 
 
 to ask me. And I fancied they might give his name 
 to the precincts of some Zoroastrian Temple. But 
 Mr. Malabari, ever generous, has found a better 
 way. Thanks to his efforts, the Bombay Uni- 
 versity, of which my husband was a fellow, is about 
 to found a scholarship for Zoroastrian research, 
 which will bear the name of James Darmesteter. 
 And so the sound of that dear name — with 
 Burnouf's and Anquetil Duperron's — will hover still 
 above the flower-decked altars of Fort and Colaba. 
 And, for a long time yet, beside the shores of the 
 Indian Ocean, men will recall the deep learning, 
 the ardent gentle heart, the fragile person, the 
 dignified and loving manners, and all the exquisite 
 simplicity of him whom in Bombay they used to 
 call "our French Dastoor." 
 
 Mary James Darmesteter. 
 
ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
yoan of <Arc in England, 
 
 The posthumous fortunes of Joan of Arc in England 
 may be divided into three characteristic periods — 
 Witch, Heroine, Saint, in turn. She traversed two 
 hundred years of wrathful insult, then a century of 
 human justice, until, with the advent of 1793, she 
 touches the final stage of adoration, the apotheosis. 
 In the following pages I shall attempt to show, as 
 it were, the silhouette of these three great move- 
 ments of history. Let us arm ourselves with 
 courage, for my earlier outlines will show little that 
 is noble, little that is consoling. But as our road 
 winds on, the sky clears, the prospect brightens, till 
 the hooting of the angry crowd at Rouen (ever 
 further, ever fainter) changes to a hymn of worship 
 and glad honour. Nowhere in Europe has the 
 heavenly character of Joan been more exquisitely 
 felt, more amply proclaimed, than by the sons of 
 those who scouted her and burned her at the stake. 
 
 3 
 
ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 I.— The Witch. 
 
 The English lack contemporary witness as to Joan 
 of Arc. We must fain be content with a few 
 allusions scattered through the tomes of Rymer's 
 Foedera, or the pages of William of Worcester. All 
 we know of the immediate impression which 
 Joan produced on her enemies is its reflection 
 in the chronicles of her own country. When 
 on April, 1429, the Maid appeared before the 
 English camp, the terror of her name had preceded 
 her coming, and, thanks to this rumour, the long 
 months wasted by the petty jealousies of courtiers, 
 the Dauphin's unreadiness, the scruples of the 
 Church— the long barren months that separate 
 Domremy from Orleans — had not been entirely 
 fruitless after all, since the English had learned that 
 a new actor, of quite incalculable effect, was about 
 to enter on the stage. And they measured the Maid 
 by the enthusiasm which she aroused in the common 
 people, who at once, without proof, believed in her 
 and lifted their tired eyes towards hope. This new 
 sudden confidence, which in a moment animated 
 the apathetic French, this expectation of victory after 
 a hundred years' defeat, this revival, this throb of 
 suspense, begat a novel trouble in the self-confident 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 5 
 
 victor, too well used to supremacy to expect a 
 reverse. He felt none the less that vat^ue uneasiness 
 which is not as yet discouragement, but out of which 
 discouragement may leap into being at the first 
 serious check. 
 
 Towards the end of April, 1429, a body of French 
 troops had penetrated into Orleans heralding the 
 "Great Relief." At the same time the English 
 commanders received a missive from the Maid, 
 summoning them, by order of Heaven, to evacuate 
 the realm of France. " English archers, captains of 
 " adventure, noblemen and others ! All ye who are 
 " before Orleans, go home to your own country, in 
 "the name of God ! King of England ! know that 
 " if these obey me not, then wheresoever I lay 
 " hands upon thy men, I will send them spinning, 
 "willy nilly, for I am sent of God on high, the 
 " King of Heaven, to oust ye forth from France ! 
 "Obey then, and I will grant ye quarter ! But, and 
 "ye will not believe the words of God and Joan, 
 "wheresoe'er we may come across ye, so shall ye 
 " find we are strong i' the arm. And there shall be 
 "such a rising as there has not been in France these 
 " thousand years 1 " 
 
 She offered them peace, this bold un doubting 
 Maiden ; or even an alliance between her country 
 
6 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 and theirs, in order to effect the great aim of 
 Christendom : a last crusade. To secure Europe 
 against the atrocities of the Turk, to band the States 
 of Europe in a federation against a common enemy, 
 this is our modern expression for that crusade 
 which Europe at one time beheved possible, and 
 which she expected Joan to realise. But such 
 dreams visited not the English camp. There, the 
 commanders "holding Joan's epistle for a gibe," 
 kept her herald captive, and solaced themselves by 
 much bad language concerning her who sent him, 
 " calling her ribald, cowherd, with other ugly 
 " names, and threatening to burn her alive."* They 
 mocked at her, but they trembled, for a good 
 general knows the force of panic. When, on the 
 29th of April, the army of relief appeared before 
 their forts, chaunting the Veni Creator, with Joan at 
 its head, mounted on her white charger and bearing 
 her white banner with its angels and lilies, the 
 English looked on in silence and let the troops 
 defile in peace, as though, indeed, they beheld a 
 supernatural legion. On her entry into Orleans, 
 Joan addressed a second summons to the enemy 
 from the top of a tower facing the English forts. 
 Glansdale answered by a volley of oaths and insults. 
 
 * JoniJial da Siege d'Orle'ans. 
 
JOAX OF ARC IX EXGLAND. J 
 
 The Maid wept a moment, and then exclaimed : 
 " Aye, in spite of all, out ye go ! But thou, Glans- 
 dale, thou shalt not be there to see ! " 
 
 On the 7th of May, at the storming of the 
 Tournelles, the citizens of Orleans, in a transport of 
 piety, beheld St. Michael, the guardian of the Maid, 
 with St Aignan and St. Euverte, the patrons of the 
 the city, rush up on their white horses and head the 
 troops of France. The English, on their side, 
 thought they beheld an infinite multiplication of 
 their foes, " as though the whole universe were come 
 "together beneath their forts." Glansdale took 
 to flight. " Surrender 1 " cried Joan. " Yield ye to 
 "God in Heaven and I will grant ye peace I" But 
 the stalwart, obstinate Englishman gave no answer, 
 continuing his headlong rush across the drawbridge 
 which, at that very instant, a French cannon-volley 
 shattered into atoms, hurling into the pit below the 
 man who had defied the Maid. " Behold the finger 
 " of Providence ! " exclaimed the French. " Devil's 
 " work," echoed the English camp. But the thought 
 of all devilry armed against him carries small con- 
 solation and scant comfort to the soldier who has 
 seen hell as invincible as heaven itself. Thus, 
 whencesoever came her mysterious succour, the 
 Maid marched on from strength to strength. 
 
8 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Behold, Orleans delivered ; the unvanquished Talbot 
 a prisoner and defeated ; Champagne gained back to 
 France ; the Dauphin crowned King at Rheims. 
 Bedford, the English Regent in France, sends a 
 challenge to the King of France, denouncing his 
 abuse of unholy agents and calling him to the bar 
 of public opinion. Hath he noi: "seduced and 
 "deluded an ignorant people by the aid of super- 
 " stitious and suspicious persons such as a disorderly, 
 " yea, an infamous woman, dressed man-fashion, 
 "dissolute of conduct?"* 
 
 The Regent's manifesto was as bootless as his 
 arms. Hitherto, in the long wars against France, a 
 hundred English could hold at bay eight hundred 
 French. Now, owing to the unspeakable terror 
 inspired by Joan, a hundred French could put to 
 flight eight hundred Englishmen.! The fear of the 
 Maid crossed the Channel. Captains of adventure, 
 bound to the King of England, refuse to embark 
 when they learn the name of their opponent. In 
 May the Duke of Gloucester, Regent of England, is 
 compelled to issue a proclamation against those 
 "undutiful captains and soldiers who shirk their 
 " strict engagements through dread of the enchant- 
 
 Monstrelet. 
 t Journal dii Si^gc. 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 9 
 
 " ments of the Maid."* Cast into prison, their goods 
 confiscated, they serve as an example. But the bad 
 habit continues. In December, 1430, a new pro- 
 clamation stigmatises the " deserters who flee their 
 "posts through terror of the Maid."! In his report 
 to the King of England on the disastrous turn of 
 affairs in France, Bedford lays plaintive stress on 
 the superstitious shrinking of the army and "the 
 "enchantments of this diabolical wench." t "'Tis 
 " at Orleans that our evil day began, caused a great 
 "part, as I think, by a deplorable belief and most 
 "impious dread of a Disciple and Lyme of the 
 " Feende, called the Pucelle, that used fals enchant- 
 " ments and sorcerie . . . ." and this faith in her 
 power diminished the number of the English 
 troops and marvellously damped the courage of 
 the remnant. 
 
 But at last the English take her, bind her, hold 
 her fast in their clutches, "this fiend and restorer of 
 " the affairs of France." Still, from the depths of her 
 prison she lays a palsy on her captors. They dare 
 not lay siege to Louviers in his lifetime, so greatly 
 
 '' " Contra capitaneos et soldarios tergiversantes incantationibus 
 Puellre terrificatos." — Rymer, Pacta Fcedcra, X. May 3, 1430. 
 
 t "De fugitivis ab exercitu, quos terriculamenta Puelte examina- 
 verunt, arrestandis." — Ibid. December 12, 1430. 
 
 X Incantamentis diabolicre femina; quem Puellam nuncuparit. 
 
10 I<:XGLISII STT'DIES. 
 
 do their soldiers dread her spells. Then they tie 
 her to a stake and burn her. 
 
 Burnt, they must blast her memory lest it accuse 
 them : but they incur the reproach of Europe. For 
 not France alone has saluted the advent of the Maid ; 
 Germany has acclaimed her "the Sybil of the 
 " French " ; Italy has hailed her " the Messenger of 
 " Heaven." These powers must be speedily disabused. 
 So Bedford dictates to his secretaries a circular to the 
 Emperor, to the Kings and Princes of Europe, and to 
 the nobility and clergy of France. This precious deed 
 declares Joan's repudiation of the evil spirits who 
 had so long deluded her, and reproduces her dying 
 speeding, "humbly craving pardon of the English 
 " and Burgundians." 
 
 But the English conscience was ill at ease ; these 
 apologies did protest too much. Probably no 
 small section of the English public misdoubted the 
 version of the government. We know that during 
 the trial an English Lord had exclaimed, half 
 against his will : " The noble girl ! Why is she not 
 " an Englishwoman ! " Others had been much 
 moved by her demeanour at the stake. One English 
 soldier, who had sworn to bring a faggot to the 
 burning of her, came up at the moment when her 
 pure soul took flight. He reeled back fainting, and 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. II 
 
 afterwards declared lliat he had seen a white dove 
 flit upwards from her hps. One of the King of 
 England's secretaries, on his way home from the 
 execution, had been heard to say : '* We are un- 
 " done ; we have put to death a Saint ! " As disasters 
 accumulated on disasters, little by little, the English 
 saw the charm outlive the witch and the soul of 
 Joan spring up. Phoenix-wise, from her burnt ashes 
 flung abroad to the four winds of heaven. And 
 many must have pondered these things in their 
 hearts ; many must have said that, after all, God was 
 with her ; that England strove in this matter against 
 the express will of Heaven. Already the Wars of 
 the Roses thrust forth their first red promise. Who 
 knows if, in the guerilla warfare which preluded 
 the declaration of hostilities, the name of Joan 
 was not bandied between the opposing parties and 
 cast in the teeth of those who had burned her ? 
 The general of a lost cause is open to any accusation ; 
 a party in opposition exults in foreign glories when 
 they may serve to humiliate the government ; and 
 more than once civil enmity has dictated inter- 
 national justice. Vague surmises, which the absence 
 of evidence must ever leave obscure ! William of 
 Gloucester sums up Joan and all her story in one 
 line : " 1430. On the 23rd of May of this year, 
 
2 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " the English captured near the fort of Campeigne a 
 " woman called the Maid of God." 
 
 We must leap over fifty years till we come across 
 the name of Joan in Caxton's Chronicle. Caxton, the 
 English Gutenberg, was born in the same year as 
 Joan of Arc. An honest merchant, who had 
 prospered in haberdashery up till the age of sixty 
 years, Caxton retired from business, found his time 
 heavy on his hands. He took up printing as an old 
 man's hobby. One of his first editions was an 
 English chronicle, which he himself had completed 
 from earlier histories. This chronicle, published in 
 1480, contains a single page on Joan of Arc. Her 
 image is not yet disfigured by the spite and fury of 
 later historians. Caxton admires her courage, 
 although he admits a nasty story, perhaps contem- 
 porary with the trial, invented to explain the law's 
 delays. Joan, so runs the tale, had feigned to be 
 with child in order to postpone the date of her 
 execution : 
 
 " Aboute this tyme and afore the reame beynge in 
 " grete myserye and trybulacion, the Dolphyn with 
 " his partye began to make warre and gate certayne 
 " places, and made detrusses upon Englysshe men, 
 " by the meane of his capytaynes. That is to wyte La 
 " Heer and Poton de Satraylles. And in especyall a 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 13 
 
 ' mayde whiche they namyd La piicell de dieu. This 
 'mayde roode lyke a man. And was a valyaunt 
 'Capytayne amonge them. And loke up on her 
 * many and grete enterpryses. In so moche that they 
 ' had a bylewe te have recouered all theyre losses by 
 'her. Not ivstandynd at laste after many grete fayres 
 ' by helpe and prowesse of Syre Johan Luxembrydge 
 ' whiche was a noble capytayne of y^ dukes of Bur- 
 'goyne, and many Englysshe men, Pycardes, and 
 ' Burgonynos, whiche were of our partye before the 
 ' towne of Compyne, the thre and twentyest daye of 
 ' Maye, the sayd Pucell was take in the felde armyd 
 ' lyke a man, and many other capytayns with her. 
 ' And all brought to Roan and there she was juged 
 ' by the lawe to be brente. And thenne she sayde 
 'that she was with chylde, whereby she was re- 
 ' spyted a whyle. But in conclusyon it was founde 
 ' that she was not with chylde. And thenne she was 
 ' brente in Roan. And the other capytaynes were 
 ' put to raunsonne. And as men of warre ben 
 ' acustommed." — Liber idtimus capituliiiu, xviii., fol. 
 cccxxxv. 
 
 Note. — T/ie polychronicon conteynyng the Bcrynges 
 and Dedes of many Tymes was written by Ranulph 
 Higden, a Benedictine of the monastery of St. 
 Werburg, who died about 1300. It was translated into 
 English by John de Treina in 1357, from which Caxton 
 
14 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 The witness of Caxton is especially precious, for 
 it may be said to be that of a contemporary. 
 Although he writes fifty years after the event, 
 Caxton could himself remember the apparition of 
 the Maid. He had been a lad of twenty when she 
 met her martyrdom. It is therefore probable that 
 his account represents his own opinion, which again 
 may stand for the impression of the liberal and 
 educated English burgher of his times. Save for 
 the final dash of calumny — which an untravelled 
 Londoner had no means of controlling, but accepted 
 ready-made from the soldiers who had been through 
 the French campaign— the story is seemly and 
 impartial, at least in the degree possible in the 
 mouth of an enemy and a contemporary. 'Tis the 
 version of the Burgundian chronicles. 
 
 The scene shifts with the successors of Caxton. 
 Joan, to them, is a mere creature of legend, inter- 
 preted by a national prejudice, irate at the tone of 
 French historians. One sees that they were eager 
 to give their version, darkened to suit the hues of 
 contradiction. The story of Joan becomes a furious 
 
 made this version, adding an eighth book bringing it 
 down to 1460, printing it in 1480. It was textually 
 reprinted by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495, and paginally 
 reproduced by Peter de Treveris in 1527, from which 
 issue the above extract is made. 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 1 5 
 
 polemic against the chroniclers across the channel. 
 An alderman of London, Robert Fabyan, writing to- 
 wards the beginning of the sixteenth century, opens 
 fire with his N ewe Chronicles of England and France: 
 
 "In this tyme and season, many skirmishes were 
 " foiighten betweene the Englishe menne, and the 
 " Frenche menne, in divers partes of Fraunce. And 
 "greatly the Frenche menne prevailed, by thehelpe 
 " of a woman, whiche thei named the maiden of 
 "GOD. So that lastly she with her compaignie, 
 " came to a toune called Compeine, to the entent to 
 " remove the siege, laid there unto by the Duke of 
 " Burgoyne, and other of the Englishe capitaines. 
 " And thereupon the twentie and three dale of Male " 
 (hence as Caxton, but not literally). — The scnenth 
 parle, page 421. 
 
 But forthwith he turns to the French chroniclers, 
 such as Gaguin, who made so much to-do about the 
 woman. He gives their version of Joan's early years, 
 the scene of her recognition of the Dauphin, the 
 discovery of the mystic sword at Fierbois, whilst 
 suppressing certain details so obscure and fantastic 
 that he will not therewith soil his page. He 
 enregisters her victories only to exclaim with a cry 
 of relief that Almighty God, though permitting for a 
 season the triumph of magic and miracle-mongers, 
 
l6 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 yet showeth always His power in the end, and unveils 
 the unholy mysteries of darkness. So it was in this 
 case, he adds, for a Burgundian knight took the 
 woman, sent her to Rouen, and there she was burned 
 for her pains. 
 
 The honest alderman sounds the note of a score 
 of his successors. Copied by Stowe, he is writ large 
 by Hall, who wishes to say some words of this 
 strange venture, especially because the French, and 
 especially Jean Bouchet, have made too much of it : 
 
 " While he (the Dauphin) was studiyng and 
 '' compassyng this matter (the relief of Orlans), 
 "there happened to hym a straunge chaunce, of 
 " the whiche I will write a litle, because some of 
 "the Frenche aucthours and especially Ihon 
 " Boucher, of it writeth to muche. For as he and 
 " other sale, there came to hym beying at Chynon, 
 "a mayd of the age of xx yeres, and in mans 
 "apparell, named lone, borne in Burgoyne in a 
 " toune called Droymy, beside Vancolour, which 
 "was a greate space a chamberleyn in a common 
 "hostelrey, and was a rampe of suche boldnesse, 
 "that she would course horses and ride them to 
 "water, and do thynges other yong maidens bothe 
 " abhorred and wer ashamed to do : yet as some 
 " say, whether it wer because of her foule face, that 
 
JOAN OF ARC IX EXGLAXD. 1 7 
 
 "no man would desire it, either she had made a 
 
 " vowe to Hve chaste, she kept her maydenhed, and 
 
 "preserued her virginitie. She (as a monster) 
 
 "was sent to the Dolphin, by sir Robert Band- 
 
 "rencoit, capitain of Vancolour to who she declared, 
 
 "that she was sent fro GOD, bothe to aide the 
 
 " miserable citee of Orleaunce, and also to remit 
 
 "hym, to the possession of his realme, out of 
 
 " whiche he was expulsed and ouercomed : re- 
 
 "hersyng to hym, visions, trauses and fables, full 
 
 "of blasphemy, superstitio and hypocrisy, that I 
 
 " maruell muche that wise men did beleue her, and 
 
 " lerned clarkes would write such phantasies. What 
 
 "should I rehearse how thei sale, she knewe and 
 
 " called hym her kyng, whom she neuer saw before. 
 
 " What should I speake how she had by reuelacion 
 
 " a swerde, to her appointed in the churche of 
 
 "saincte Katheryn of Fierboys in Torayne where 
 
 "she neuer had been. What should I write, how 
 
 " she declared such priuy messages from GOD, our 
 
 " lady, and other sainctes, to the Dolphyn, that she 
 
 " made the teres ronne downe fro his iyes. So was 
 
 " he deluded, so was he blynded, so was he deceiued 
 
 " by the deuils meanes whiche suffred her to 
 
 "begynne her race, and in conclusion rewarded her 
 
 " with a shameful fal. But in the meane season 
 
 4 
 
1 8 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 "such credit was geuen to her, that she was 
 *' honoured as a sainct, of the rehgious, and beleued 
 " as one sent from GOD of the temporahtie, in so 
 " muche that she (armed at all poyntes) rode from 
 " Poytiers to Bloys found men of war, vitail, and 
 " municions, redy to be conveyed to Orleaunce." — 
 Hall's Chronicle, fol. cvij. 
 
 Hall then recounts the revictualling of Orleans, 
 the capture of Jargeaux, and the subsequent events 
 with but slight mention of Joan of Arc until fol. cxiij. : 
 "The duke of Burgoyne accompanied with the 
 " erles of Arundell and Suffolke and the lord Ihon 
 " of Luxenbrough, and with a geal puissaunce, be- 
 " sieged the toune of Champeigne, w^hich toune was 
 "well walled, manned and vitailed, so that the 
 "besiegers must either by assault or long tarriyng 
 " wery or famishe them within the toune. So thei caste 
 " trenches and made moynes, and studied al the waies 
 " that thei could deuise how to compasse their coquest 
 " and enterprise. And it happened on the night of the 
 " Assencion of our lorde, that Pothon of Xentraxles, 
 " lone the Puzell and five or sixe hundred men of 
 " armes, issued out of Chapeigne, by the gate of the 
 " bridge towarde Mowntededier [fol. cxiij], intending 
 " to set fire in the tentes and lodgynges of the lord 
 " of Baudo, whiche was then gone to Marigny, for 
 
JOA\ OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 19 
 
 " the Duke of Burgoyns affaires. At whiche tyme 
 '* Ihon of Luxenborogh with eight other gentlemen 
 " (whiche had riden aboute the toune to searche and 
 "vieue, in what place the toune might be moste 
 "aptly and conveniently assaulted and scaled) were 
 "comenereto the lodges of the lorde of Baudo," 
 &c. Skirmish takes place. " Sore was the fight, 
 "greate was the slaughter," — and the French fled. 
 " In whiche chase was taken lone the Puzell and 
 "diuers other : whiche lone was sent to the duke of 
 " Bedford to Roan wher (after log examinacio) she 
 " was brent to ashes. This wytch or manly woman 
 " (called the maide of GOD) the frenchemen greatly 
 "glorified and highly extolled, alledgyng that by her 
 " Orleaunce was vitailed : by her kyng Charles was 
 "sacred at Re3mes, and that by her the Englishemen 
 " wer often tymes put back and overthrowne. O 
 " Lorde what dispraise is this to the nobilitie of 
 " Fraunce ! What blot is this to the French 
 " nacion ! What more rebuke can be imputed to 
 " a renouned region, then to affirme, write and 
 "confesse, that all notable victorious and honour- 
 " able conquests whiche neither the Kyng with his 
 " power, nor the nobilitie with their valiauntness, 
 " nor the counsaill with their wit, nor the comon- 
 " alitie with ther strength could compasse or obtain, 
 
20 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " were gotten and achieved by a shepherdes daughter, 
 "a chamberlein in an hostehie, and a begger's brat." 
 — Ibid, fol. cxiiij. 
 
 The Reformation was to add to the old hereditary 
 enmity the pecuHar asperity of rehgioiis hatred. 
 Bishop Bale, well-named, most bilious of Anglican 
 saints, manifests a jealous care of the honour of his 
 neighbours. For the French are injured in their 
 proper pride, so he declares, by the scant sense of 
 their own chroniclers, who vaunt " as the saviour of 
 "her country — not witliout a signal slight to the 
 " princes thereof — a certain Joan of Domremy who 
 " herded swine first of all, and Frenchmen after- 
 " wards."* Methinks his Protestant Grace hath some- 
 what forgotten the manger in the stable at Bethlehem. 
 
 The end of the sixteenth century produced the 
 most popular of English chronicles — that of 
 Holinshed. 'Tis a general summary of the researches 
 
 Note. — Edward Hall's chronicle, or, to give it its 
 correct title, The Union of the Two Noble and Ilhis- 
 trious Families of Lancastre and Yorke^ was issued by 
 R. Grufton after the author's death. The first edition 
 is that of 1548, and from which the above is extracted. 
 
 * Joannam illam Dampremam, porcorum primo, postea Gallorum, 
 ductricem, quam eorum chronographi tarn crebro ab Anglorum 
 jugo liberatricem, non obs que insigni suorum principum igno- 
 minias, jactitant. — Scriptonim illtistriuin Majoris Bii tannics 
 Catalogiis, 1559. 
 
JOAX OF ARC IX ENGLAND. 21 
 
 of his predecessors, but in literary history it wears 
 a special grace, not only for its own ability, but 
 because it is the quarry where Shakespeare found 
 the material for his historical plays. Much of the 
 best of Holinshed survives word for word in Shakes- 
 peare, even as much of the best of the chronicler, 
 Jean le Beau, survives word for word in Froissart : 
 such a man may congratulate himself, that though 
 no peculiar Phoenix in his own person, he has been 
 the constant cause of genius in others, Holinshed 
 was not without a rare gift of historical sympathy. 
 He reproduces, with the appearance of a friendly 
 feeling, the version of the French chroniclers re- 
 garding Joan of Arc : 
 
 '* In the time of the siege of Orleance (French 
 "stories saie) the f^rst weeke in March, 1428, unto 
 "Charles the Dolphin, at Chinon as he was in verie 
 " great care and studie how to wrestle against the 
 " English nation, by one Peter Badrecourt, captaine 
 " of Vacolour (made after Marshall of France by 
 "the Dolphin's creation) was carried a yong wench 
 "of an eighteene yeares old, called Jone Arc, by 
 "name of her father (a sorie sheepheard James of 
 "Arc, and Isabell, her mother, brought up poorelie 
 " in their trade of keeping cattell, borne at Domprin 
 " (therefore reputed by Bale, Jone Domprin) upon 
 
2 2 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " Meuse in Lorraine, within the diocesse of Thoule. 
 " Of favour was she counted Hkesome, of person 
 " stronglie made and manhe, of courage great, 
 " hardie, and stout withal, an understander of 
 "counsells, though she were not at them, great 
 *' semblance of chastitie both of body and behaviour, 
 "the name of Jesus in her mouth about all her 
 " businesses, humble, obedient, and fasting diverse 
 "daies in the weeke. A person (as their bookes 
 *' make her) raised up by power divine, onlie for 
 "succour to the French estate, then deeplie in 
 " distresse, in whome, for planting a credit the 
 " rather, first the companie that toward the Dolphin 
 " did conduct her through places all dangerous, as 
 " holden by the English, where she neuer was afore, 
 "all the waie and by nighter-fall, safelie did she 
 " lead : then at the Dolphins sending by her 
 "assignment, from saint Katherines church of 
 " Fierbois in Touraine (where she neuer had beene 
 "and knew not) in a secret place there among old 
 " iron, appointed she hir sword to be sought out 
 "and brought hir, that with fine flour de lices was 
 "graven on both sides, wherewith she fought and 
 "did manie slaughters by hir oune hands. On 
 " warfare rode she in armour cap a pie and mustered 
 "as a man, before hir an ensigne all white wherein 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN EXGLAXD. 23 
 
 "was Jesus Christ painted with a floiire de Hce in his 
 "hand. Unto the Dolphin into his gallerie when 
 " first she was brought, and he shadowing himself 
 " behind, setting other gaie lords before him to trie 
 " hir cunning from all the companie, with a salu- 
 " tation (that indeed marz all the matter) she pickt 
 " him out alone, who thereupon had hir to the end 
 "of the gallerie where she held him an houre in 
 " secret and priuate talke, that of his priue chamber 
 " was thought verie long, and therefore would have 
 " broken it off ; but he made them a signe to let hir 
 "saie on. In which (among other) as likelie it was, 
 "she set out unto him the singular feats (forsooth) 
 " giuen her to understand by releuation diuine, that 
 " in vertue of that sword she should atchieue, which 
 "were, how with honor and victorie shee would 
 "raise the siege of Orleance, set him in state cf the 
 " crowne of France, and driue the English c ut of 
 "the countrie, thereby he to inioie the Kingdom 
 "alone. Hereupon he hartened at full, appointed 
 " hir a sufficient armie with absolute power to lead 
 "them, and they obedientlie to doo as she bad 
 " them. Then fell she to worke, and first defeated in- 
 " deed the siege of Orleance, by and by incouraged him 
 " to crowne himselfe King of France at Reims, that 
 "a little before from the English she had wonne. 
 
^ ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 *' Thus after pursued she manie bold enterprises 
 " to our great displeasure a two yeare togither, for 
 " the time she kept in state untill she were taken 
 " and for heresie and witcherie burned, as in 
 " particularities hereafter foUoweth." [Fol. 600.] 
 Here follows accounts of the siege of Orleans and its 
 relief, the coronation of King Charles, notice of King 
 Henry's letter to Charles, the events before Paris, 
 the siege of Laignie ''in which was the Pucell, her 
 "slaughter of Franques (May 1430);" and [fol. 609] 
 "after this the Duke of Burgoynie acompanied with 
 " the earles of Arundell and Suffolke, and the Lord 
 " John of Lutzenburg besieged the towne of Cam- 
 " piegne. ... At the vei-y time Campeigne was 
 "besieged sir John Lutzenburg with eight other 
 "gentlemen chanced to be neere unto the lodgings 
 " of the Lord Bawdo, where he espied the Frenchmen, 
 "which began to cut downe tents, over throw 
 " pauillions, and kill men in their beds : wherupon 
 " they with all speed assembled a great number of 
 "men, as well English as Burgognions, and 
 " coragiouslie set on the Frenchmen and in the end 
 "beat them backe into the towne, so that they fled 
 " so fast that one letted another, as they would have 
 "entered. In the chase and pursute was the Pusell 
 " taken, with diuerse other, besides those that were 
 
JOAN OK ARC IN ENGLAND. 25 
 
 "slaine, which were no small number. Diuerse were 
 " hurt also on both parts. Among the English, sir 
 "John Montgomerie had his arme broken, and 
 " sir John Steward was shot in the thigh with a 
 "quarell. 
 
 " As before ye have heard somewhat of this damsels 
 " strange beginning and proceedings, so sith the 
 " ending of ail such miraclemongers dooth for the 
 " most part piainlie decypher the vertue and power 
 " that they worke by hir shall ye be aduertised what 
 *' at last became of hir ; cast your opinions as ye may 
 ** haue cause. Of hir louers (the Frenchmen) reporteth 
 " one, how in Campeigne thus besieged Guillaume 
 "deFlaire the capteine hauing sold hir aforehand to 
 "the lord of Lutzenburg, under colour of hasting 
 " hir with a band out of the towne towards hir king, 
 " for him with speed to come and leauie the siege 
 " there, so gotten hir forth he shut the gates after 
 "hir, when anon, by the Burgognions set upon and 
 " overmatcht in the conflict she was taken : marie 
 " yet (all things accounted) to no small maruell how 
 " it could come so to passe, had she beene of any 
 " true deuotion or of true beleefe, and no false 
 " miscreant, but all holie, as she made it. For earlie 
 "that morning she gat hir to saint Jameses church, 
 " confessed hir, and recieved her maker (as the booke 
 
26 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 "termes it) ;ind after setting hirself to a pillar, manie 
 " of the townesmen that with five or sixe score of 
 " their children stood about there to see hir, unto to 
 "them (quod she) Good children and my deere 
 " freends, I tell you plaine one hath solde me. I am 
 "betraied and shortlie shall be deliuered to death. 
 " I beseech you praie to God for me, for I shall 
 " neuer haue more power to doo seruice either for 
 " the king or to the realme of France againe. 
 
 " Saith another booke, she was intercept by a Picard 
 "capteine of Soissons, who sold that citie to the 
 "duke of Burgognie, and he put it ouer into the 
 "hands of the lorde of Lutzenburg, so by that 
 " meanes the Burgognions approached and besieged 
 "Campaigne for succour whereof as damsell Joan 
 " with hir capteins from Laignie was thither come, 
 " and dailie to the English gave manie a hot 
 " skirmish, so happened it one dale in an outsallie 
 " that she made by a Picard of the lord of Lutzenburgs 
 " band, in the fiercest of the fight she was taken, and 
 " by him by and by to his lord presented, who sold 
 " hir ouer againe to the English who for witchcraft 
 " and sorcery burnt hir at Rone. Tillet telleth it 
 " thus, that she was caught at Campeigne by one of 
 " the earle of Ligneis soldiers, from him had to 
 " Beaureuoir castell, where kept a three months, 
 
JOAX OF ARC IX EXGLAXD. 27 
 
 "shee was after for ten thousand pcuinds in money 
 "and three hundred pound rent (all Turnois) sold 
 "into English hands. In which for hir pranks 
 " so oncouth and suspicious the lord regent by 
 " Peter Chauchon bishop of Beaunois (in whose 
 "diocesse she was taken) caused life and beleefe, 
 " after order of law to be inquired opon and examined. 
 " Wherein found though a virgin, yet first shame- 
 "fullie reiecting hir sex abominablie in acts and 
 " apparel to haue counterfeit mankind, and then all 
 " damnablie faithlesse, to be a pernicious instrument 
 "to hostilite and bloudshed in diuelish witchcraft 
 " and sorcerie, sentance accordinglie was pronounced 
 "against hir. Houbeit upon humble confession of 
 "hir iniquities, with a counterfeit contrition pre- 
 " tending a carefull sorow for the same, execution 
 " spared and all mollified into this, that from hence- 
 " foorth she should cast off hir onnatural wearing of 
 " mans abilliments, and keep her to garments of hir 
 " own kind, abiurc her pernicious practises of 
 "sorcerie and witcherie, and have life and leasure in 
 " perpetuall prison to bewaile hir misdeeds. Which to 
 "performe (according to the manner of abueration) 
 " a solemne oth verie gladly she tooke. But herein 
 " (God helpe us) she fullie afore possessed of the 
 "feend, not able to hold hir in any towardnesse of 
 
28 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 '' grace, falling straight waie into her former abomin- 
 " ations (and yet seeking to eetch out life as long as 
 " she might) stake not (though the shift were shame- 
 " full) to confesse hir selfe a strumpet, and (onmaried 
 "as she was) to be with child. For triall, the lord 
 "regents lenitie gaue hir nine moneths stale, at the 
 "end wherof she found as false as wicked in the 
 " rest, an eight dales after, opon a further delinitiue 
 "sentance declared against hir to be relapse and a 
 " renouncer of hir oth and repentance, was she there- 
 " upon deliuered ouer to secular power, and so execu- 
 " ted by consumption of fire in the old market place 
 "at Rone, in the selfe same steed where now saint 
 " Michaels church stands, hir ashes afterward without 
 " the towne wals shaken to the wind. Now recount- 
 "ing altogither hir pastorall bringing op, rude 
 " without any vertuous instruction, her campestrall 
 " conuersation with wicked spirits, whome in hir 
 " first salutation to Charles the Dolphin, she uttered 
 "to be our Ladie, saint Katharine and saint Annes, 
 " that in this behalfe came and gaue hir command- 
 "ments from GOD hir maker, as she kept hir fathers 
 " lambs in the fields (where saints in warres among 
 " christen men were (be we sure) never so parciall 
 " patrons or partners to maintenance of horrible 
 " slaughters, rapines and bloudshed) hereto hir 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 29 
 
 " murtherous mind in killing of Franquct, hir owne 
 "prisoner, hir tuo yeares continuance in hir 
 " abominations and deadlie miscliiefe without anie 
 " hir traucll or motion betueenc the princes for 
 " peace hir relapse at last and falling againe into hir 
 "abuired iniquities, by hir virginitie (if it were anie) 
 "by hir holy words, hir fasting and praiers what 
 "they might be sith satan (after S. Panic) can 
 " change himselfe into an angell of light, the deeplier 
 "to deceiue." — Holiiislicd, fol. 600-605. 
 
 Such was the verdict of history upon the Maid of 
 Orleans two hundred years after her martyrdom. 
 Such were the fables which fed the imagination of 
 England. With the sudden blossoming of the 
 dnuna, all this obscure vegetation of ignorance and 
 prejudice burst forth into a new importance under 
 the glamour of the stage. A melancholy specimen 
 of such iniquities is preserved still in the First Part 
 of Henry VI., attributed to Shakespeare. 
 
 This historical farce, written to catch the applause 
 
 Note. — Ralph Holinshed's Chronicles of Englande 
 Scotlandc, and Irelande, by Raphaell Holinshed, first 
 appeared 1577, folio, in two vols. ; a second edition 
 appeared in 1586-7 in three volumes, supervised and 
 enlarged by Abraham Fleming, with an elaborate index 
 compiled by liis brother, Samuel Fleming. It is from 
 this second edition that the above extracts ai e taken. 
 
30 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 of the gods in the gallery, is too well known, even 
 in France, to need description. Wc all remember 
 how, when the curtain rises, we find the Dauphin, 
 already crowned, laying siege to the English before 
 Orleans. Dunois introduces to him a Heaven-sent 
 maid, who convinces him, by single combat, of the 
 truth of her mission. She enters Orleans, only to be 
 driven forth again in the middle of the night. The 
 French leap over the battlements in their shirts, 
 leaving their clothes behind them. She takes Rouen 
 by stratagem, having disguised her men as innocent 
 country folk come to market with their corn. She 
 reconciles the Dauphin with Burgundy, who exclaims : 
 " She hath bewitched me with her words." Defeated 
 before Angers, she is taken prisoner in the act of 
 practising (but all in vain at last !) her charming 
 spells and periapts. Her father, the shepherd, comes 
 to embrace his " sweet daughter Joan," and to share 
 her "timeless, cruel death." But she, in disgust, 
 disowns the good man before all the camp and 
 proclaims herself a Herald Angel, a Royal Virgin, 
 "issued of the progeny of kings." Then, seeing 
 the English will not stand her bravado, she tacks 
 brusquely round and appeals to their pity, declaring 
 herself with child, first by Peter then by Paul, till 
 York exclaims : " There are so many, she knows not 
 
JOAN OK ARC IN ENGLAND. 3I 
 
 " well whom she may accuse ! " She is dragged to 
 
 the stake, vomiting imprecations. 
 
 " Break thou in pieces and consume to ashes, 
 Thou foul, accursed minister of Hell ! " 
 
 cries her indignant judge. And thus the scene 
 comes to an end, wallowing in vileness. 
 
 It has been proved of late that this poor play 
 is no reproach to the mighty mind of Shakespeare. 
 This is not the occasion to expound all the reasons 
 which, I think, prove the case to a moral certainty ; 
 but it is well known that, in his 'prentice days, 
 Shakespeare got his hand in as a mere adapter. He 
 rehandled the plays of other writers, sometimes 
 recasting them from end to end, sometimes simply 
 touching up here a phrase, and there a scene. The 
 First Part of Henry 17. belongs to the latter class. 
 The only visible trace of the master hand of 
 Shakespeare exists in the scene before Angers, 
 where Joan invokes her familiar spirits. 
 Enter La Pucelle. 
 
 Pile. The regent conquers, and the Frenchmen fly ! — 
 Now help, ye charming spells, and periapts ; 
 And ye choice spirits, that admonish me. 
 And give me signs of future accidents ! {Thunder.) 
 You, speedy helpers, that are substitutes 
 Under the lordly monarch of the North, 
 Appear, and aid me in this enterprise ! 
 [Enter Fiends.) 
 
32 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 This speedy quick appearance argues proof 
 
 Of your accustom'd dili.^encc to me. 
 
 Now, ye familiar spirits, that are culled 
 
 Out of the powerful regions under earth. 
 
 Help me this once, that France may get the field ! 
 
 {They ivalk about, and speak not.) 
 O, hold me not with silence over long ! 
 Where I was wont to feed you with my blood, 
 I'll lop a member off, and give it you 
 In earnest of a future benefit, 
 So you do condescend to help me now ! — 
 
 {They hang their Jieads.) 
 No hope to have redress ? — My body shall 
 Pay recompense, if you will grant my suit ! 
 
 {They shake their heads.) 
 Cannot my body nor blood sacrifice 
 Entreat you to your wonted furtherance ? 
 Then — take my soul, body, and soul, and all, — 
 Before that England give the French the foil ! 
 
 {They depart.) 
 See, they forsake me ! Now the time is come 
 That France must vail her lofty-plumed crest, 
 And let her head fall into England's lap ! 
 My ancient incantations are too weak, 
 And Hell too strong for me to buclde with : 
 Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust ! [Exit. 
 
 Despite its flatness of rhythm, its feebleness of 
 
 diction, this scene bears the imprint of a superior 
 
 genius. The oft-quoted encounter of Joan with 
 
 Burgundy barely rises above the commonplace. But 
 
 here a very great poet— still young, as yet no master 
 
 of his craft, as yet a mere inexperienced prejudiced 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND, 33 
 
 youth, but a great poet — shows himself touched by 
 that mysterious sympathy which heroism inspires in 
 genius. He has hfted to the height of his own soul 
 the hateful witch, the foul limb of the fiend, which 
 Joan of Arc appeared to him no less than to his 
 contemporaries. He divines the inner meaning of 
 her actions. His hand, though hostile, ennobles 
 and enlarges all its touches. Joan, as Shakespeare 
 sees her, is still a witch, but the Satan in her is sister 
 to Milton's Satan. Her familiar demon is the love 
 of country ; 'tis for her native land she sells herself, 
 body and soul and all. 
 
 " Then, take my soul — body, and soul, and all, 
 Before that England give the French the foil ! " 
 
 Two centuries later 'twill be the cry of Danton : 
 " Que ma memoire soit maudite, mais que la France 
 " soit sauvee." 
 
 Ah ! that last cry of despair of a devoted woman, 
 eager to immolate herself in an utter sacrifice — that 
 last sob when all is lost, when her nether deities 
 abandon her ! 'twas never found in the heart of the 
 miserable rhapsodist who penned the First Part of 
 Henry VI. The earliest rehabilitation of Joan of 
 Arc in English literature is due to the master hand 
 of Shakespeare. 
 
34 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 II.— The Heroine. 
 
 The First Pari of Henry VI. marks the culmi- 
 nating point in a long tradition of international 
 calumny. We have seen that, from a subtler point 
 of view, it may also be taken as the first sign of a 
 reaction towards a nobler ideal of the Maid. The 
 seventeenth century was not to hasten the hour of 
 reparation. The war with France embittered and 
 revived old memories. On the eve of the campaign 
 of La Rochelle, Michael Drayton prints his splendid 
 Ballad of Agincourt, full of the spirit of the elder 
 English drama. Yet, as after all the age was more 
 enlightened, 'tis not for her witchcraft that the 
 English chiefly blame the Maid. (There had been 
 witches enough in England at the beginning of the 
 century, but King James was so liberal with his 
 faggots that he burned them all, and faith in them died 
 out for lack of an object.) Sorcery, then, was no 
 longer so objectionable a crime ; but nothing is 
 easier than to find a good reason for hating. 
 Hypocrisy, charlatanism, and even, strange to say, 
 nullity, are the new offences charged against poor 
 Joan. 
 
 Some of the seventeenth century historians simply 
 suppress her. In William Martyn's Historic and 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 35 
 
 Lives of flic Kings of England the Maid is con- 
 spicuous by her absence. 'Tis the death of SaHsbury 
 at Orleans, the treachery of Burgundy, and, oddly 
 enough, the exceeding frivolity of the French, 
 which are held responsible for the expulsion of the 
 English. The French, out of sheer lightness of 
 heart, forsake their lawful sovereign for the spurious 
 Dauphin. The English are victors all along the line. 
 At Orleans the French are repulsed in great disorder, 
 and " flee like sheep before the wolf," so that, on 
 the morrow morning the Duke of Suffolk raises the 
 siege as no longer necessary. From triumpli to 
 triumph the English army marches (backwards from 
 choice) till it reaches the Channel coast and beholds 
 itself safe at home by the white cliffs of Albion. 
 Charles meanwhile, in his headlong flight and terror, 
 reaches Paris, shelters there, and wakes one morning 
 to find himself (Heaven knows how !) the King of 
 France. 
 
 The intrepid silence of honest William Martyn did 
 not find many imitators. In the succeeding chroni- 
 cles Joan reappears. Out of regard to the progress 
 of civilisation, she is no longer dubbed as a witch, 
 but a cliarlatan. As such she is portrayed in the 
 Chronicle of Sir Richard Baker, a venerable tome of 
 1640, which for more than a hundred years was to 
 
36 EN'GLISIl STUDIES. 
 
 remain the household treasure of the country squire. 
 We all remember how Sir Roger Coverley used to 
 doze over Baker in his hours of philosophic leisure. 
 'Twas indeed a book no gentleman's library could 
 be without, and, with a complete Shakespeare, a 
 Family Bible, a Pilgrim's Progiess, Foxes Book 
 of Marlyrs, and some useful work on farriery, it 
 formed the usual contents of the manorial book- 
 shelf. Baker gives the following account of Joan 
 of Arc : 
 
 "About this time (1429), in F/'rt/;cc a strange Im- 
 " poster ariseth : A maid called La Piicelle, taking 
 " upon her to be sent from God for the Good of 
 " France, and to expel the English ; and some Good 
 " indeed she did ; for by her subtil working, the 
 " King was recieved into CJiainpaigiie, and many 
 " Towns were rendred to him, whilst the Lord [p. 
 " 184] Longiieville took by Surprize the Castle of 
 " Annierle, and slew all the English that were in it. 
 " But all these were but petty Acquests to the King 
 " of France : There is a Knot of Friendship between 
 " the Dukes of Bedford and Bnrgoigne which must be 
 " broken, or he will never be able to compass his 
 "designs; he therefore labours by all Means pos- 
 " sible to disunite them ; wherein he so little 
 "prevailed, that the Duke of Burgolgne acquaints the 
 
JOAX OV ARC IX EXGLAND. 37 
 
 " Rei^ent with all the Practices ; who thereupon, 
 " with many thanks exhorteth him to continue firm, 
 " of which he should never have Cause to repent 
 " him ; And because Normandy was a principal Part 
 " of the English Strength in France, he goeth thither 
 "and by many Reasons pversuades them, as their 
 "Ancestors had always been, to be faithful to the 
 "Crown of England. In this Time of the Regent's 
 "Absence from Paris, i\\Q King of France drew all his 
 " Forces thither, using all Means possible, by Esca- 
 "lado, Battery, and burning the Gates to enter the 
 " City, but was so v^'ithstood by the Vigilance of the 
 " Citizens, that he was glad to sound a Retreat 
 "leaving his slain and maimed soldiers behind him, 
 *^ [x\\ hwi La Pucelle ; wlio being hurt in the Leg, 
 "and almost stifled with Mire in the Ditch, was bv 
 "a servant of the Duke of Alanson drawn up, and 
 " conveyed after the King to Berry, who by the Way 
 "recieved the Submission of the inhabitants of 
 " Lagny. Some other Services were performed on 
 "both sides, for the Duke of Snffolk, and Sir Thomas 
 '' Kyrriel, for the English ; by the Bastard of Orleans 
 "and Sir Stephen le Hye, for the FrencJi ; but of no 
 "great Importance. Till at lastly Pncelle (who a 
 "little before had caused an English Captain's Head 
 "to be cut oft", because he would not humble him- 
 
38 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 "self to her upon his knee) was by Sir Jolin of Lut- 
 "zenbiirgli taken and presented to the Duke of 
 " Boiii[<^oigiic, who sent her to the Regent, and he to 
 "the Bishop of the Diocese, who judicially proceed- 
 '' ing against her as a Sorceress, and Deceiver of 
 " King and liis Subjects, she was (after many Delays 
 " of Promise to discover secret Practice, and lastly 
 " of he feining to be with Child) publicly burnt at 
 "Roan." — -Baker's Chronicle, p. 183-184. 
 
 These are old stories, with but one word changed 
 to suit the spirit of the age : sorcery is now writ 
 down " imposture." The alteration is serious, and 
 Baker probably never realised how difficult a position 
 he had taken up. For to ascribe an almost mirac- 
 ulous victory to the imposture of a charlatan is 
 simply begging the question. The charge of sorcery 
 had been a homage in disguise to the more than 
 
 Note. — Sir Richard Baker's Chronicles of the Khigs 
 of England frojJi the time of the Roman Government to 
 the death of King James the First, was first published 
 in 164T ; the second set, 1653 ; third (with a continuation 
 by Edward Phillips), 1660 ; fourth, 1665 ; fifth, 1670 ; 
 sixth, 1672 ; seventh, 1679 ; eighth; 1684 ; ninth, 1669 ; 
 tenth, 1730-3, with two continuations, one being that of 
 Phillips' of 1660, and a second bringing it down to King 
 George I. Until it arrives at the seventeenth century, it 
 is not of much value, though evidently a very popular 
 work. The extracts are taken from the last of these 
 editions. 
 
JOAN OF ARC IX ENGLAND. 39 
 
 mortal grandeur of the Maid ; tlie marvel of her 
 deeds had been recognised by friends and foes 
 alike. To explain tiieir own defeat, the English 
 called up the powers of darkness. But if Joan was 
 not inspired by invincible demons — if her mission 
 was the mere, natural, human, personal action of 
 her own genius — then how immensely great she 
 appears, this girl under twenty, — surely, one of the 
 very greatest of all mortal men and women ! 
 
 In 1642, the very year before the publication of 
 Baker's Chronicle, there appeared a strange, gifted 
 book, in which the first of the English conscience 
 plainly work. The author, Thomas Fuller, was 
 triply eminent, as a theologian, as a writer, as one 
 of the most courageous defenders of Charles I. In 
 his Profane State he gives us a picture of Joan of 
 Arc. The book is a gallery of portraits, something 
 in the manner of Theophrastus, where each subject 
 is, so to speak, god-fathered by authentic historical 
 characters ; the sponsors for his fancy head of a 
 sorceress are the Witch of Endor and Joan of Arc. 
 Fuller, primed with his Bible, relies firmly on the 
 Witch of Endor, but he is not so sure of Joan of Arc. 
 He tells us, after the Sire de Haillan, how Joan was 
 invented by three French gentlemen, who kept the 
 ball rolling between them, thanks to the crass 
 
40 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 delusions of the ignorant. " P'ancy is the castle 
 " commanding the city, and if once men's heads be 
 " possessed with strange imaginations, the whole 
 " body will follow and be infinitely transported 
 " therewithal." 
 
 The French commanders took advantage of this 
 public transport, and used the general enthusiasm 
 to push their arms. But though, of a certain, man 
 knew how to make his profit by her, authors of 
 great judgment have declared Joan to be a saint of 
 Heaven. " Nnllinn memorabile nomen Fcviuenccv in 
 "pcena ; her former valour deserved praise, her 
 " present misery deserved pity ; captivity being no ill 
 " action, but ill success." But, notwithstanding his 
 bent towards mercy. Fuller cannot withold all blame. 
 
 " Two customs she had wliich can by no means 
 *' be defended. One was her constant going in 
 " man's clothes, flatly against Scripture. Yea, mark 
 " all the miracles in God's Word, wherein, though 
 " men's estate be often changed (poor to rich, bond 
 " to free, sick to sound ; yea, dead to living), yet we 
 "read of no old ^son made young, no woman 
 " Iphis turned to a man, or man Tiresias to a 
 ** woman ; but as for their age or sex, where nature 
 "places them there they stand, and miracle itself 
 " will not remove them. 
 
JOAN OF ARC IX ENGLAND. 4I 
 
 " Beside, she shaved her head in the fashion of a 
 " friar. Herein she had a smack of monkery, which 
 "makes all the rest more suspicious as being sent 
 "to maintain as well the friars as the French 
 "Crown." 
 
 The good Fuller is quite bewildered by so many 
 excellent authorities. She may have been a saint, 
 she may have been a witch ; no one can hope to 
 decide until the Last Day. Then we may hope to 
 know the truth about Joan of Arc. 
 
 The doubts of so judicious a historian inspire 
 circumspection in his successors. In 1679, Dr. 
 Howell pronounces simply : " The famous French 
 "shepherdess, Joanna of Lorraine, did great deeds 
 " in her day. We may laugh as we please at her 
 " challenges and call her a witch, if it suit our fancy, 
 " but none the less she captured the good town of 
 " Orleans, of which the English had heretofore 
 " been masters." The doctor is in advance of his 
 generation. A few 3'ears later an anonymous history 
 of England reproduces the text of his discourse, 
 but tacks on to his description of Joan's trial and 
 burning the old familiar calumny of her proven 
 dishonour. 
 
 Meanwhile, in France, the dawn of the encyclo- 
 pedia was illuminating the world. 'Twas an age 
 
42 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 of scepticism ; too enlightLMied to believe in the 
 Deity, not sufficiently enlightened to believe in the 
 Divine. As such it had scant justice and little 
 generosity for Joan, 
 
 The good, humdrum, common sense of the 
 eighteenth century, which admitted nothing above 
 its own level, in rejecting the supernatural rejected 
 also the superhuman. It had not, of course, con- 
 ceived the Uebcrmensch. The Frenchman's patriotism 
 no longer sought in heaven the source of the mission 
 of the Maid. By an inverse elTect, the same plain 
 common sense raised the position of Joan of Arc in 
 England. No one thought now of calling her a 
 witch. For the hrst time the two shores of the 
 Channel repeated her name in unison — in a middle 
 register, suitable to the spirit of the day. Behold 
 the Maid dejected from her ancient grandeur, 
 infernal or divine, uncrowned of her aureole of light, 
 her dim halo of cloud ! For the whole French 
 eighteenth century she is but an instrument in the 
 hands of unscrupulous but patriotic statesmen : an 
 instrument of superstition upon which to strike the 
 necessary siirsum conla ! Voltaire himself describes 
 her as the unconscious accomplice of a patriotic 
 France, deluding France to save her ; courageous 
 enough, intelligent enough, to render this pious fault 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 43 
 
 sublime; " ;i heroine worthy of the miracle she 
 " feigned."* 
 
 The English historians of this period, although 
 they take their tone from the French, show as a rule 
 a truer sentiment, a deeper sense of the real grandeur 
 of Joan of Arc. The religious spirit, more alive in 
 England, left even in the most incredulous, even at 
 this instant of temporary eclipse, something more 
 serious m the soul, and in the heart a feeling more 
 quick to vibrate in response to her momentum. The 
 mean and superficial theory of a simulated inspira- 
 tion, a patriotic iniposture — noble in its aim, but 
 smirched with lies at the origin — was never sympa- 
 thetic to the English. Baker had presented it to a 
 preceding generation ; Rapin de Thoyras, malignant 
 refugee, had developed it to its utmost bitterness ; 
 the Jacobite, Beville Higgins, comments upon it with 
 more reserve, accusing Joan herself less than ihe 
 French court, admiring her valour and execrating 
 her assassins ; it appears for the last time, 1 think, in 
 
 * Essai siir Ics tna-tirs. 'Tis to these pages the reader should turn 
 for the veritable opinion of Voltaire on Joan of Arc, not to his 
 unworthy poem. Here we find an estimate narrow but not impure. 
 This meagre and insufiicient interpretation of a career so extra- 
 ordinary was a tradition bequeathed to the eighteenth century by 
 its predecessor. We find all the essentials of the case in the pages 
 of ihe dull and pretentious De Ilaillan. 
 
44 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 an anonymous history of 1764.* This vohime sees 
 in Joan a myth invented by the Sire cle Baudricoiirt. 
 The king could no longer be saved but by a miracle, 
 real or feigned ; Baudricourt adopted the pseudo- 
 miracle and succeeded. He chose for his subject 
 the daughter of an innkeeper, whom he trained to 
 play the amazon and prophetess. He passed her off 
 as a maid of eighteen 3'ears, though she really owned 
 to twenty-seven. She was none the less a woman 
 of a virile energy and valour. 
 
 But the greater part of these writers, and even the 
 most free-thinking among them, whilst attributing 
 the success of the Maid to an audacious political 
 machination, disengage the noble character of Joan 
 from any conscious part in these unworthy calcu- 
 lations. According to Hume and Goldsmith the 
 French court adopts this country chambermaid, 
 converts her into a shepherdess as more poetic and 
 inspiring, and takes ten years off the age of its neat- 
 handed Phyllis to add to the romantic interest. 'Tis 
 then easy to excite in her a popular sentiment of 
 love and chivalry which is all grist to the patriotic 
 mill. Joan is a mere machine dc guerre. But the 
 machine itself is no party to the imposture and is a 
 
 * A History of England : in a series of Letters from a Nobleman 
 to his Son. 
 
 I 
 
JOAX OF ARC IX EXGLAXD. 45 
 
 thing all faith, all heroism, all self-sacrifice, all inspira- 
 tion, and so noble that we wonder whether such 
 unusual virtues might not have served as well 
 unmasked. The barbarity of the victors ties her to a 
 stake ; " the more generous superstition of the 
 "ancients would have erected her an altar." 
 
 This is the attitude of Hume (1754), of Robert 
 Henry (1785), of Bicknels (1794), Home (1796), 
 Spencer and Barnard (1805), and even of the 
 Catholic Lingard (1819). It was indeed inevitable 
 so long as the modern mind was still condemned to 
 feed only on the monotonous rechauffe of the 
 chronicles. Historians had not as yet disturbed the 
 dust upon the shelves of the arcliives ; no direct and 
 living document, no lirst-hand record, as yet 
 inspired them with a wider and truer illummation. 
 It is barely forty years since M. Jules Quicherat — 
 the man of all others who has best served Joan of 
 Arc — published the actual papers of her trial and 
 showed how, far from being a simple enthusiast in 
 the hands of political wire-pullers, Joan knew how 
 to assert herself and dominate, aye, transform, her 
 environment. 'Twas the political advisers of the 
 Dauphin who, willy nilly, became the instruments 
 of Joan. Her sovereign will, her imperious 
 instinct, saved the king in spite of himself, and 
 
46 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 dragged him, irresolute, to the final victory. Quich- 
 crat revealed, for the lirst time, all the tragic struggle 
 which Joan maintained unceasing against the 
 worldly wisdom of Court and Church, wounded to 
 the quick by the success of this mere country girl 
 who quite eclipsed them. All this torrent of sentiment 
 and enthusiasm ruined their afifairs and threatened 
 to swamp their petty projects and their petty profits. 
 Court and Church were ever in her path, ever prompt 
 to treason, and at the last they let her perish without a 
 word, without a sign. All this was left for Quicherat 
 to show us ; this no less than the purity, the spotless 
 disinterestedness of that pure conscience ; how she 
 turned, as from a thought of sacrilege, from the bare 
 idea of a personal miracle ; how far she kept herself 
 from the fetich ism of the crowd ; how she severed 
 herself from her most devoted followers* when she 
 detected them in any miracle-mongery. All this 
 beautiful and godlike story could only be fully 
 known to our own times ; the earlier centuries did 
 but divine it. 
 
 It was a Conservative, nay a Tory historian, who 
 first in England discovered the true Maid of 
 Orleans.! Religious writers, those who see the 
 
 * Brother Richard, 
 t A General History of England^ ^797- 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 47 
 
 hand ot God visible in history, are, in this case, by 
 the very particularity of their point of view, better 
 placed to comprehend the life of Joan. Statesmen 
 may prolit by a timely charlatan ; God cannot 
 interrupt the order of the universe with a card- 
 sharper's trick of loaded dice. William Guthrie 
 is scarce a second-rate author, a village Bossuet, 
 deplorably emphatic ; but he was a man of feeling, 
 he understood the impetus of the soul. " If Joan 
 '* had been an impostor," so he writes, " had she 
 "been capable of any such collusion, I believe she 
 "could never have accomplished her great deeds, 
 "nor the grand designs which she pursued. Only 
 " enthusiasm, which is the operation of a sincere, 
 " fervent, and disinterested spirit, could sustain her 
 " in her work ; the smallest proportion of artifice 
 " would have stifled her ardour ; the least breath 
 " of a lie would have snuffed out all her virtues." 
 In these few lines there is more philosophy than in 
 all the encyclopedia. With a profound sympathy, 
 Guthrie follows his heroine on the field of battle 
 and through the trial, where her native purity dis- 
 concerted the calculations of her judges — where, 
 "like true gold, she shone the brighter for every 
 " test." He concludes : " 1 shall make no reflec- 
 " tions on the circumstances of her death ; they cry 
 
48 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " to Heaven, and the voice of history has no need to 
 "swell their clamour. Hut il an all-wise Providence 
 " should ever deign to avenge the perfidy, cruelty, 
 "and injustice of private persons upon an entire 
 " nation, then may the English read in the woes 
 "which at that time shall befall them, the history of 
 " their chastisement for the death of this incomparable 
 " Maid, who, taken in fair fight, and born under a 
 " foreign flag, was not subject to their jurisdiction, 
 "and whose life they had no right to take away." 
 
 In 1775, John Wesley, the restorer of EngHsh 
 Christianity, wrote an abstract of Chiisiian History 
 in England, destined to show the continuous action 
 of Providence. He reproduces almost textually the 
 page of Guthrie upon Joan of Arc, adding to the 
 narration of her death these simple words : " She 
 "certainly did not deserve this end, whether we 
 " consider her as a sincere enthusiast or as a person 
 " raised up by God for the deliverance of her country." 
 
 These words were written three years before the 
 death of Voltaire. English thought had made a 
 notable stride in the hundred years behind him, and 
 stood, when the eighteenth century drew near its 
 end, far ahead of the culture of the French. English 
 historians asked themselves no longer : Was she an 
 impostor or was she an enthusiast ? The only question 
 
JOAX OF ARC IX EXGLAXD. 49 
 
 lay between a sincere enthusiasm and a divine mission, 
 humbly accepted, devoutly believed in. And thus 
 the best tradition of the fifteenth century chronicles 
 of France renews itself in the land and language 
 of them who put the Maid to death in torments. 
 
 Naturally there are, from time to time, brief retro- 
 gressions, lapses, sudden atavisms of the old Adam. 
 The course of civilization never did run smooth. 
 But, little by little, these unhappy vestiges subside 
 and disappear. The level of the public conscience 
 had risen. In the last years of Louis XVI. all 
 Paris streamed to see a glorification of the Maid of 
 Orleans — a sort of pantomime, given at the Theatre 
 Xicolet. It was in the mid-tide of the American 
 War : public feeling surged high between France 
 and England, and if Joan scored some of her 
 modish successes as the ejectress of the English, 
 across the Channel many were ready to jeer at anv 
 prodigy of the French. The lessee of the Covent 
 Garden Theatre rose to the occasion. He responded 
 with a rival pantomime, wherein, at the conclusion of 
 the last act, Joan, like Don Juan, is hurried off to hell 
 by a troop of demons. But the public rebelled, the 
 finale fell flat ; and a fortnight later it was replaced by 
 an elegant transformation scene : an angel descended 
 open-armed from heaven to save the Maid of Orleans. 
 
50 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 III.— The Saint. 
 
 The third period of Joan's Hterary Hfe in England 
 opens with the French Revolution and with Southey's 
 epic, " Joan of Arc." 
 
 Southey, first in date of the Lake-poets, was a 
 garrulous, fecund writer of much apparent imagina- 
 tion, chiefly gleaned in books. He may be remem- 
 bered as the inventor of local colour, but is no 
 longer read save in a few facile ballads. In his time 
 he was Poet-Laureate and author of live epic 
 poems — " which will be read (said Person) when 
 " Homer and Virgil are forgotten, but not before I" 
 An ardent Democrat in his salad days, later on a 
 Tory among the Tories, he began his career with 
 the daydream of an ideal republic on the banks of 
 the Susquehannah, and finished it as the well- 
 rewarded partisan of a Conservative Government. 
 A man of doubtful temper, lacking (to say the least 
 of it) in tact and measure, he piled insults on the 
 head of Lord Byron, who repaid them accordingly. 
 Southey was none the less a man of talent ; and 
 Byron himself wrote of him — in 1813, at the thick 
 of their difference — that his prose was perfect, his 
 gifts of the first rank, though opinions might differ 
 as to his verse ! There is too much of it (he went 
 
JOAN OF ARC IX EXGLAND. 51 
 
 on) for the present generation. Posterity may make 
 a choice and Hke it better. But so far, posterity has 
 left Robert Southey severely alone. 
 
 Of his five epic poems, "Joan of Arc " is the first and 
 the feeblest. He wrote it originally in six weeks, 
 from August to September, 1793, and then re-wrote 
 it on the proof-sheets in six months, in 1796. The 
 first rough copy was the impromptu ravings of a 
 clever lad of twenty, fresh from college, in all the fine 
 fervour of his new republicanism. In 1796 he was 
 still a red Radical, despite the reaction which Robes- 
 pierre and the Reign of Terror were beginning to 
 produce in England. His conversion — like that of 
 Coleridge and of Wordsworth — arose not from the 
 excesses but the foreign victories of the French Revo- 
 lution. Still, in 1796, it was an audacious idea to 
 choose the Maid of Orleans for the central figure of 
 an epic and one that betokened both independence 
 and magnanimity in the writer. Southey considers 
 the Maid of Orleans as a symbol of Young France, 
 of her right to live and to be free, of her duty to 
 break the chains which a foreign hand- — aye, were it 
 England's— should impose upon her. The author's 
 opinions are quite undisguised. A fiery dedication 
 to Liberty ; more than one tirade, in the most 
 approved Jacobin manner, against tyrants who tremble 
 
52 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 on their blood-cemented thrones, adequately explain 
 his point of view, (Needless to say, both dedication 
 and diatribes disappear from the later editions.) 
 The preface contains the following passage : 
 
 " It has been established as a necessary rule for 
 "the epic that the subject be national. To this 
 " rule I have acted in direct opposition and chosen 
 "for the subject of my poem the defeat of the 
 "English. If among my readers there be one who 
 "can wish success to an unjust cause because his 
 "country supported it, I desire not that man's ap- 
 " probation." These were two-edged words in 1796. 
 
 The poem succeeded at once, partly on account 
 of its ambitious proportions ('twas the first con- 
 siderable poetic effort which had been attempted for 
 many years), but above all as a political manifesto. 
 Fifty years later a sound Conservative, Southey was 
 to deplore this success as due to the republican 
 spirit in which his epic was conceived, a spirit, how- 
 ever, which he excuses as natural after all in a lad 
 bred up in Greek and Roman traditions, and 
 ignorant enough of history and of human nature to 
 imagine that the independence of the United States 
 had opened a better order of things, which the 
 French Revolution would accelerate. Although 
 Liberal opinions were not popular in England, the 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 53 
 
 reviewers, almost to a man, shared the enthusiasm 
 of revohitionary ideas. And 'twas as a poHtical 
 pamphlet that Southey's epic made its splash. A 
 certain Miss Seward, a Conservative muse, contri- 
 buted to the Morning Chronicle a copy of verses 
 inflamed with the liveliest admiration for the poem, 
 and with a not less lively horror of its political import. 
 The editor replied with a counter-protestation, which 
 made out Southey little less than a statesman. All 
 this was grist to the poet's mill, and made the pub- 
 lication of his epic almost a political event. Alas, it 
 could not make it a masterpiece ! 
 
 Southey so little comprehended the true grandeur 
 of his heroine, that he dismissed her in mid-triumph, 
 before the altar of the Cathedral of Rheims. There 
 she pronounces a revolutionary disquisition against 
 tyrants, and all is over ! He concludes the career 
 of Joan of Arc just when its tragic beauty begins 
 to appear — when a military triumph develops into 
 a passion, when the long agony commences. De 
 Quincey was swift to see the poverty of this concep- 
 tion. To him, as to all later historians, the veritable 
 excellence of the Maid was revealed at Rouen, not at 
 Rheims : " Never, from the foundation of the earth, 
 " was there such a trial, if it were laid open in all its 
 *' beauty of defence, and all its hcllishness of attack. 
 
54 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " O child of France, shepherdess, peasant girl, 
 " trodden under foot by all around thee, how I 
 " honour thy flashing intellect, quick as God's 
 " lightning and true as God's lightning to its mark, 
 " that ran before France and laggard Europe by many 
 " a century."* Something would have been lackmg 
 to Joan's perfection had she died amid the shouts of 
 victory, had the sublime fatality of human things not 
 accorded her the crown of martyrdom, and that 
 most noble aureole which comes from suffering, 
 unmerited and well-endured. Joan is in history 
 what Jesus is in sacred history ; and none the less 
 divine because she knew herself to be a mere mortal 
 woman ; more utterly abandoned, since neither 
 Magdalen nor Mary wept beneath her cross, since, 
 even more than He, she died sun-ounded by hate and 
 insult beyond measure. Behold her, most innocent, 
 so free of all bitterness, accepting the cup without a 
 word, never casting at her king the cry of reproach 
 and anguish, " Why hast thou forsaken me ? " To 
 me, a Jew, the stake of Rouen appears loftier than the 
 cross of Calvary. The night of the Mount of 
 Olives loomed again, fourteen centuries later, in the 
 poor little church of Compiegne, but it was suffered 
 with how sweet a sadness, how pure a resignation ! 
 * Dc Quincey : Joan of Arc. 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 55 
 
 A few days before she was taken, says the old 
 chronicle, the little children of the village clustered 
 round her as she leaned against a pillar of the 
 church : " My little ones," she said to them " I am 
 " betrayed, and soon I shall be handed over to the 
 " death. I entreat ye therefore, pray to God for me ; 
 " for never more shall 1 render service to the King, 
 "neither to the noble realm of France." The 
 militant and suffering Christ, bringing the sword and 
 bringing his own life with it, the ideal redeemer, 
 dreamed of by a dejected people longing for deliver- 
 ance, was at last in truth beheld upon our planet, 
 not in Galilee, not as men believed in the age of 
 Tiberius and of Herod, but fourteen hundred years 
 later, in the land of France, in the figure of a woman, 
 more marvellous thus in her achievement, and more 
 touching in her martyrdom. 
 
 This ideal divinity of the Maid, this true " Imitation 
 ''of Christ"— loftier, purer, than that 1-Kempis 
 dreamed of in the darkness and silence of his cells — this 
 inner Joan was unseen, unsuspected by Southey. We 
 cannot reproach him with a lack of understanding 
 shared to the full by Schiller, a more excellent poet. 
 Perhaps Joan of Arc is unfitted to make the heroine 
 of a poem : how should the author interpret her 
 thoughts ? There are souls so far above the range 
 
6 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 of humanity, soaring so out of reach of the noblest 
 imaginations, tliat it is a vain temerity in a poet to 
 attempt to touch them. History alone can attain 
 their level. No poet has added to the words of 
 Christ. No poet will add to the speech of Joan. 
 The Xoyta of the one, and the other remain intact, 
 intangible, to all eternity. The utmost permitted to 
 the art of a consummate artist, would be to enshrine 
 in a worthy setting the unforgetable speech of Joan, 
 those words unextinguishable as lightning which flash 
 through the immense and fathomless mediocrity of 
 the fifteenth century ; these, united in a book, would 
 certainly form one of the most elequent of living 
 pages. Not one of these miraculous sentences is to 
 be found in all Southey's epic poem ! True, he lets 
 his heroine give free play to her eloquence ; his epic 
 is a ceaseless flood of speech — she talks, talks, talks 
 sometimes as a Biblical prophetess, sometimes as one 
 of Cromwell's Puritans — a false note, but tolerable, 
 being sustained by the eloquence of Scripture, — 
 sometimes as a strong minded free-thinking Deist, 
 and sometimes as the man in the street. Her dis- 
 courses fill at least a quarter of the ten cantos of the 
 epic. She describes, in the manner of a Lake-poet, 
 her impressions of the Holy Well of Domremy ; 
 she dreams in the style of Beattie's Minstrel, of 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 57 
 
 storm and tempest ; she quotes, after the fashion of 
 a Roundhead Covenanter, select passages from the 
 Hebrew piophets. Three centuries in advance of 
 her time, she exposes Tindal's doctrine of rational 
 Christianity to the ecclesiastical Council of Poitiers, 
 not unjustifiably astonished. She discusses the Mass, 
 like the worthy Protestant she is ; but also, I regret to 
 say, she cavils at the dogma of original sin. Last, but 
 not least, she is in love — Platonic love, of course — 
 with a fellow countryman of hers, named Theodore. 
 
 Southey's work takes no great rank as literature, 
 but its conception makes an epoch in the history of 
 Joan of Arc in Enghmd. From the day when an 
 English poet could, with impunity and even with 
 success, adopt as the heroine of an epic poem the 
 accursed and loathsome sorceress of by-gone ages, 
 a whole past of international hate was for evermore 
 eclipsed. Henceforward the aureole shall not quit 
 the brow of foan. History bows down before her, 
 and she becomes the darling theme of poetry, 
 romance, and art. 
 
 " Joan will never be forgotten in England," wrote 
 Sharon Turner,* '* and we award her a liberal meed 
 " of that praise, and those tears which our forefathers, 
 " in the ardour of battle, too ungenerously refused 
 
 * Sharon Turner : A History of EiiiiUiiid, 1832. 
 
58 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " her." The most brilliant of the younger historians, 
 John Richard Green, sees in her the central figure of 
 her century, a figure of noble pureness detached 
 agamst a background of selfishness, greed, unfaith, 
 and lust. But, perhaps the finest page which history 
 has yet inspired in praise of Joan, comes from the 
 pen of the Rev, Joseph Stevenson, an erudite 
 searcher of archives, whose dry and learned doc- 
 trines become animate with poetry upon the appear- 
 ance of the Maid. Listen to him :* 
 
 " In putting Joan to death the Duke of Bedford 
 "terminated the English ascendency in France. 
 " Had she returned home with her parents from the 
 " coronation at Rheims, had she escaped from prison, 
 " or even had she been pardoned by her judges, it 
 " had been different. She would have become the 
 " heroine of romance instead of the heroine of 
 " history. But the Regent willed that it should be 
 " otherwise, and he crowned her work ; for her 
 " death was her triumph, and from the ashes of 
 " her execution-pile at Rouen arose the regenerated 
 " liberty of France. Although, in compassion to 
 " the weakness of her womanhood, the full truth, the 
 " terrible but necessary end to her mission, was 
 
 * J. Stevenson : The Wars of the English in France during the 
 reign o Henry VI. i vol. xii. 1861. 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 59 
 
 " never clearly revealed to herself until it was about 
 " to be realised, yet it had been marked out from 
 " the beginning. The two Saints, her ' Voices,' S. 
 "Catherine and S. Margaret, were both of them 
 " Virgins and Martyrs. To Orleans they promised 
 " deliverance, to Charles they promised that he should 
 " be crowned King at Rheims ; but for Joan they had 
 " no promise save this — that at the end, after a great 
 " victory, they would conduct her into Paradise." 
 
 We have not space to enumerate all those who in 
 the last fifty 3'ears have embalmed in English the 
 memory of Joan of Arc, from Lord Mahon to Miss 
 Harriet Parr, nor to take count of the cloud of her 
 witnesses in the form of anonymous histories, novels, 
 tales, tracts, &c. Of these, I will but mention first of 
 all a tale for girls, Joan of Arc published in Edin- 
 burgh in 1871, whose author, a Rationalist of the 
 pietistic sort, counsels her young readers against 
 believing in the visions of the ISIaid, and warns them 
 against the imitation of her actions ; they may love 
 God as fervently, but that is all ; and secondly, a 
 biography by the Rev, John Gurney, in his chapters 
 from French history. The reverend gentleman 
 -regrets to meet so frequently in Joan's career the 
 degrading traces of Roman Catholicism mingled 
 wtih the most truly pious sentiment, "associated 
 
6o ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " with which I should be ghid lo hear less often the 
 " names of the Holy Virgin, Saint Margaret and 
 " Saint Catherine." Here, at last, is a worthy 
 descendant of old Fuller, though it is ill to see how 
 the Maid of Orleans could have profited by the 
 inestimable blessings of the Reformation. 
 
 Yet these worthy souls olier homage, each after 
 their fashion. Others, more free, perhaps, from 
 religious prejudice, carry even in their admiration 
 a trace of national rancour. De Quincey in his 
 admirable pages on Joan of Arc — marred, alas ! by 
 a journalist's polemic against Michelet — De Quincey 
 himself indulges in an acrimonious triumph over 
 Voltaire's Pucelle. Carlyle, in his eloquence and his 
 venom, goes further still. He would transpierce the 
 French with the heroic lance of their redemptrix. 
 
 " Jeanne d'Arc must have been a creature of 
 "shadowy yet far-glancing dreams, of unutterable 
 " feelings, of * thoughts that wandered through 
 " eternity,' Who can tell the trials and the triumphs, 
 " the splendours and the terrors, of which her simple 
 "spirit was the scene. 'Heartless, sneering, God- 
 " forgetting French,' as old Suwarrow called them — 
 " they are not worthy of this noble maiden." * 
 
 We must believe they were, how^ever, since 'twas 
 
 * Life of Schiller. 
 
JOAN OF ARC IX EXGI.AXD, 6t 
 
 they who produced her. As to the disdain of the 
 Russian Suwarrow, France can hear it. Landor, in 
 the reproaches that he heaps upon servile France, 
 cowering at the feet of Bonaparte, shows a truer 
 appreciation of Joan, the Maid, 
 
 " To whom all maidens upon earth should bend." 
 
 More than once since Southey's epic, poetry has 
 touched the legend of Joan, but rarely with felicity. I 
 do not speak, of course, of Dibden's versified History, 
 which contains a chapter on the Maid. Dibden is an 
 honest fellow, but there are subjects which no man 
 should parody. The Joan o/' J/r of Mr. Simcox is 
 the error of a man of talent. 'Tis an inferior version 
 of Schiller's Joan of Arc, already so infinitely below 
 the reality. Schiller's heroine dies of a scruple, cannot 
 outlive the mere apprehension of a fault. Mr. Simcox's 
 Maid of Orleans sins — and survives. 
 
 Of these poetic eliforts, the sole one worth a 
 thought is the poem of that poor John Stirling, 
 familiar to all lovers of Carlyle. Stirling beheld in 
 Joan "the most wonderful, exquisite and complete 
 " personage in all the history of the world." His 
 heart prompts him when he writes with something 
 of the intensity of sentiment, and the tranquil faith 
 of Joan herself, and his work only lacks the spark of 
 
62 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 genius to be a thing of lasting beauty. Such as it is, 
 with all its faults upon its head, it contains more 
 true poetiy than the whole of Southey's epic ; and, 
 better than the lengthy Poet-Laureate, Stirling con- 
 ceives that noble heart in which, even in the stress of 
 battle, there dwells no bitterness nor hate. 
 
 " High amid the dead that give 
 Better life to those that live, 
 See where shines the Peasant Maid, 
 In her hallowed mail arrayed, 
 Whom the Lord of Peace and War 
 Sent as on a flaming car 
 From her father's fold afar. 
 Hers the calm, supernal faith, 
 Braving ghastliest looks of death ; 
 For, O loveliest woodland flower 
 Ever bruised in stormiest hour ! 
 Guardian saints have nerved thy soul 
 Battling nations to control . . . 
 Awful hands have marked thy brow, 
 And in lonely hours of prayer 
 'Mid the leafy forest air, 
 Boundless powers, eternal eyes. 
 Looks that made old prophets wise. 
 Have inspired thy solitude . . . 
 Race and country, daily speech. 
 That makes each man dear to each. 
 Friends and home and love of mother, 
 Grandsire's grave and slaughtered brother, 
 Fields familiar, native sky — 
 Voices these that on thee cry ! 
 Winds pursue with vocal might. 
 Stars will not be dumb at night. 
 
JOAN OF ARC IN ENGLAND. 63 
 
 Loud from God commanding thee : 
 * Go and set thy people free ! ' 
 
 Ne'er so smooth a brow before 
 Battle's darkening ensign wore ; 
 And 'twas still the gentle eye 
 Wont when evening veiled the sky, 
 In the whispering shades to see 
 Angels haunt the lonely tree." 
 
 She beholds them again at Rheims, her familiar 
 
 angels of Domremy, and wishes she might have 
 
 followed them to her old childish haunts : 
 
 '' And returned to green Lorraine, 
 Be a shepherd child again. 
 Now the crown of Charles is won ! 
 Now the work of God is done ! 
 Angels' wings, away, away ! 
 Lift her home by close of day, 
 And upon her mother's breast 
 Give her weary spirit rest." 
 
 A literature of novels, unparalleled in France, 
 clusters in England about the fame of Joan lof Arc. 
 It does not wear a high rank in the realm of letters, 
 but it shows a generous feeling. Let us look, and 
 pass, at the romantic chronicle of Mr. J. Robinson, 
 The Maid of Orleans, a sentimental caricature of 
 history, much admired, it is said, by His Majesty, 
 King Louis Philippe. Nor will I do more than 
 notice Miss Manning's novel, A Noble Aim, not un- 
 
64 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 readable and closer to the facts. But let us glance 
 an instant at Mrs. Charles' Joan of Arc, Deliverer of 
 France and England. Were the merit of a novel 
 co-equal with the fineness of its inspiration and the 
 character of its setting, this would be a remarkable 
 book. The framework is that of ^schylus' Pcrsa\ 
 Joan is described as seen from the English camp. 
 'Tis an enemy, Perceval the Welshman, who relates 
 the Maid's tragedy as he sees it, from her apparition 
 with floating white banners under the walls of 
 Orleans, to her last cry of agony from the blazing 
 stake at Rouen ; and there he falls upon his knees 
 conscience-stricken. The idea which inspires this 
 picturesque setting is that of Joan's signal service to 
 the English — to an England exhausted by a century 
 of foreign warfare — in preventing their absorption by 
 the continent which they had conquered. Had Joan 
 never lived, had Henry VI. reigned as King of France 
 and England, then the mother-isle had speedily be- 
 come a mere province of the larger inheritance. 
 
 Unfortunately, in this novel, all is excellent except 
 the execution. The inspiration is ill sustained. At 
 every step some modern anachronism breaks the 
 charm. The author has not penetrated far enough 
 into the heart of her creations ; their pulses do not 
 beat. The novel is for ever straying into the barren 
 
JOAX OK ARC IX EXGLAXD. 65 
 
 region of abstract ideas. It is vague and " viewy," 
 and, as is ever the case, where the author has in- 
 sufficiently reflected, the characters reflect too much. 
 
 Joan enters into art at the same moment as into 
 historv. In 1881, two Joans of Arc appeared upon the 
 waHs of the London exhibitions. And Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti has left us an armed Joan, with heroic eyes 
 and streaming golden hair. In 1877 Mr. Calderon 
 exhibited a "Joan of Arc listening to her Voices" ; 
 she is alone on a solitary rock, her gaze lost in the 
 sunset. But I will only speak of the earliest and 
 most considerable of these paintings, the colossal 
 trilogy of William Etty. 
 
 'Tis the career of Joan resumed in three acts : 
 the Vow ; the Victory ; the Martyrdom. The lirst 
 panel represents her at Fierbois, dedicating to her 
 God and her country the mysterious sword which 
 the angels had revealed ; the second, outside Orleans ; 
 the third, at the stake. The central scene, the second, 
 full of movement, of light, of armed knights 
 and prancing horses, is animated in the extreme — 
 save in the principal figure, dull and dead. Etty 
 has been led astray by a false idea of inspiration, 
 I N / to him. Joan is the almost unconscious instrument 
 I of the Divine power which leads her. Afraid of 
 
 7 
 
66 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 degrading her sublimity by an expression of passion, 
 he refines away the look of Hfe itself : Joan faces 
 us with eyes cast down. The third scene is the 
 truest, and has a tragic simplicity of its own. Joan 
 stands at the stake, her eyes raised to heaven in a 
 throe of anguish subdued bv faitli ; above her head, 
 the sky is clear and brilliant as the soul about to 
 take its flight upwards ; a white dove hovers ready 
 to escort it. In the background, the old houses of 
 the market place, copied with the exactest precision, 
 give to this ideal figure of faith, of anguish, and of 
 terror, the character of a poignant reality. 
 
 But the history of the triptych is perhaps more 
 interesting than the triptych itself, a production of 
 the exhausted old age of the artist. 'Tis the story of 
 a professed religious homage. 'Twas in 1839, at the 
 age of fifty-two, that the first conception of his picture 
 visited Etty. One day, in Henry Seventh's Chapel at 
 Westminster, among the trophies of knightly 
 banners, while the organ was playing, the painter, 
 his eyes fixed abstractedly on the great portal, saw, 
 as in a vision, Joan of Arc on horseback riding 
 towards the gates of Orleans. He set to work at 
 once. " Joan of Arc haunts me ! " he exclaimed. 
 Other pictures intervened ; but Etty did not forget. 
 In 1843, ^^ went to France to visit the houses and 
 
JOAX OF ARC IN KXGLAND. 67 
 
 haunts of his heroine. He sketched in Rouen the old 
 houses in the market-place, probably contemporary 
 with the martyrdom of Joan ; lie ransacked Orleans 
 for the trace of her passage, and dreamed upon the 
 bridge which she had crossed in triumph. "The 
 ** river was muddy in the wind and rain ; the weather 
 "was stormy as in the time of my poor Joan." On 
 his return to England, Etty turned animal-painter, 
 in order to draw the horses of the escort of the Maid. 
 Old age drew nigh, and he was lifty-nine. Sickness 
 followed in its wake. "Sometimes" — he writes in 
 1846 — "hard times quite lay me up. But I get the 
 " better of them and light side by side with my 
 " heroine. If I believe what people tell me, I may say 
 " I have done wonders. If God only grant me health, 
 " I hope to make my picture worthy of her." At last 
 after seven years of obstinate labour, he put the finish- 
 ing touch on a Saturday evening, Easter Eve. " I feel 
 " I must go to church to give thanks to the Almighty, 
 " who has shown me so much mercy. I went. Never 
 " had I found the glorious abbey so magnificent. The 
 "sun shone pure gold. The Dean preached on this 
 "text, * Let there be light, and there w\as light.' "* 
 
 * Gilchrist's Life of Etty, 1855. The subject was bought for 
 /2,Soo by a dealer, who showed it in a private exhibition. The 
 price made its success. People came up from the country to see 
 the picture that had fetched ;f 2,500. 
 
68 KXOLISH STCDIKS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Such is the history of the conversion of England to 
 the cult of Joan of Arc, a spontaneous and natural 
 conversion, proceeding wholly from within and being 
 so much the more remarkable. Of all homage ever 
 rendered to her sacred memory, this is the most 
 eloquent, being, as it were, rescued from a long past 
 of rancour and of pride. 'Tis at once the honour 
 of England and a witness to the invincible power of 
 the Ideal. The Ideal can afford to wait, sure of 
 eternity. 
 
 May we not find, we of France, a lesson in this 
 story ? Have we done for Joan all that we ought 
 to have done ? I know we have not been remiss in 
 external memorials of respect ; speech and marble 
 witness to her memory. Year after year, in Orleans, 
 her holiday and her eulogium are repeated, and will 
 repeat themselves so long as there exists a land of 
 France. Her statue stands in the streets of Orleans, 
 at Compeigne, at Paris, at Rouen and elsewhere. 
 Shall that be all ? Is that enough ? 
 
 Our poets can do nothing for her. Their instinct 
 shows I its delicacy by a homage of silence. Joan 
 may stand to foreigners for a heroine of poetry or 
 romance. To us, her plain history is more than 
 
JOA\ OK ARC I\ liXGLAXD. 69 
 
 poetry; no imagination can take breath at that level ! 
 Let her remain therefore oiu- Sybil of history, an 
 emblem of the past and an augury of the future. 
 Let France re-make herst^lf in tiie image of Joan of 
 Arc ! A nation lives by a book or a life : a book 
 which teaches it what it ought to do ; a life which 
 shows it what it may become. We have lost our 
 faith in the Book ; may the Life still abide with us ! 
 Now that the the national conscience is re-born in 
 a great effort towards a wide, wise, unsectarian and 
 universal education, may the life of Joan of Arc 
 to every Frenchman and every Frenchwoman be 
 something of the living lesson which the life of 
 Jesus and Mary is to every Catholic. 
 
 In e\'ery cottage, in every wharf or workshop, her 
 life should enter, her image should be seen. And 
 be sure that the generations reared under this holy 
 influence would be purer, wiser, stronger than those 
 grown to manhood under the fascination of Napo- 
 leon. Joan of Arc is moi-e than a historical personage, 
 she is a symbol. She belongs not only to the France 
 of yesterday, but to the France of to-day and to- 
 morrow. Under the catholic phrase of her simple 
 speech, the eternal truths of justice, love, self-sacriiice 
 beat in a living motion. In all our eighteen centuries 
 of historv we Fi^enchmen have only two august and 
 
70 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 unforgetable dates — 1429, 1789 : Joan of Arc and 
 the Revolution ! In each of these France was born 
 again ; the two of them contain the whole of France, 
 and by them shall her future be accomplished. 
 
 The spirit of the Revolution and the soul of Joan 
 of Arc ! Whoso shall unite them has solved the 
 secret of the coming age. To unite them must be 
 the dream of the dreamers and thinkers, of students 
 and statesmen. Artists, too, may find in that mystic 
 marriage what they have sought so long in vain — a 
 true image of the French Republic. Some years 
 ago, one 14th of July, the committee of a Parisian 
 arrondissement erected on the Boulevard de Vau- 
 girard the statue of a girl holding a drawn sword. 
 As I went by, two women of the people were gazing 
 and talking. " 'Tis the Republic," said one. " No," 
 replied the other "'tis Joan of Arc!" These two 
 poor housewives had settled the question which had 
 so long distressed the schools of art : they had 
 found a nobler successor to the stout Phr3^gian-capped 
 matron of whom we are so wear}^ in all our public 
 places. How should this robust Goddess of Reason 
 of 1794 continue to symbolise the ideal Republic of 
 the French ? 'Tis manifestly impossible ! Art can 
 only live by beauty. Let her then forswear this 
 meaningless image and impersonate the true Re- 
 
JOA\ OK ARC IN ENGLAND. 7I 
 
 public, beautiful as true, in the good shepherdess of 
 Domremy, " la bonne Loiraine," the first of all 
 French women, and the best, and the bravest. What 
 sculptor need ask a nobler inspiration ? At her feet 
 the past and the future shall meet at last in amity ; 
 the torn heart of France shall be healed by her 
 influence ; and the image of our pacified Republic 
 shall be a Joan of Arc holding aloft the Tricolour ! 
 
The French T^yolution arid 
 If'^orJsviforth. 
 
 The French Revolution has had no more enthusiastic 
 admirers, no enemies more implacable, than the 
 three creators of the Romantic school in England — 
 the three Lake-poets, Southey, Coleridge, and 
 Wordsworth. The revolutionary poets of the 
 succeeding generation, Byron and Shelley, are pitiless 
 in scorn of these turncoats. Shelley is especially 
 sensitive to the apostasy of Wordsworth, the greatest 
 among them, who was his poetic idol and perhaps, 
 in a sense, his master. 
 
 " Poet of nature, thou hast wept to laiow 
 
 That things depart which never may return ; 
 Childhood and youth, friendship, and love's lirst glow, 
 Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to niourn. 
 
 These common woes I feel. One loss is mine, 
 Which thou, too, feel'st, yet I alone deplore. 
 
 Thou wert as a lone star whose lit^ht did shine 
 On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar, 
 
 7^ 
 
74 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Thou onceUi.ist, like a rock-built refuge, stood 
 Above the bhud and batthng muUitude ; 
 In honoured poverty thy voice did weave 
 
 Songs consecrate to truth and hberty. 
 Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve 
 
 Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be." 
 
 Browning, in the flush of his youth, was to show 
 himself still bitterer, still sterner : 
 
 " Just for a handful of silver he left us ! " 
 
 'Tis untrue. Of the Lake-poets, Southey alone 
 might, at a stretch, be reproached with a traffic of his 
 muse : for, if he never sold his verses, he accepted the 
 price of them, and yet, even more than Wordsworth 
 and Coleridge, had he given the most ardent pledges 
 of his faith in the Revolution. The sincerity of 
 Wordsworth is above suspicion, and the history of the 
 development of his opinions is of striking interest 
 to the French reader. This history he has himself 
 consigned in an auto-biographical poem, The Prelude, 
 or The Growth of a Poet's Mind, composed between 
 1795 and 1805, but only given to the world after his 
 death in 1850. At the time of its composition 
 Wordsworth, then in his thirtieth year, was fully 
 conscious of his genius and of his poetic mission. 
 He hoped to raise a lasting monument in literature ; 
 and he wished to realise the development of his own 
 
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND WORDSWORTH. 75 
 
 powers and the influences which had gone to their 
 shaping. The French Revolution was one of these 
 forces, and the ninth, tenth and eleventli cantos of 
 his poem are concerned with it. The Prelude is 
 not, perhaps, very widely read in England ; it is 
 almost unknown in France, and its analysis may 
 not be superfluous. 
 
 'Twas in the summer vacation of 1790 that 
 Wordsworth, then in his second year at Cambridge, 
 for the first time saw France. He was only passing 
 through on his way to Switzerland on a holiday 
 excursion with a university friend. He tells us in 
 the Prelude how 
 
 " Europe at that time was thrilled with joy, 
 France standing" on the top of golden hours 
 And human nature seeming born again." 
 
 The two friends landed at Calais on the Festival of 
 
 the Federation. The town w^as but a small, mean 
 
 place — 
 
 " But there we saw 
 How bright a face is worn, when joy of one 
 Is joy for tens of millions." 
 
 They pursued their route directly southward through 
 towns and villages, still gaudy with the relics of 
 the Feast of Brotherhood ; garlands in every 
 window, and over every road a half-withered 
 
76 EXGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 arch of triumph. As they walked, clay after day, 
 
 throu^^h province after province, evei'ywhere they 
 
 found 
 
 '' Benevolence and blessedness 
 Spread like a fragrance everywhere where spring 
 Hath left no corner of the land untouched." 
 
 They sailed down the Rhone with a merry crowd of 
 Federals, delegates on their way home from Paris. 
 
 " Like bees they swarmed, gaudy and gay as bees 1 
 Some vapoured in the unruliness of joy, 
 And with their swords nourished, as if to tight 
 the saucy air." 
 
 Everywhere the foreigners were welcome, every- 
 where invited, to the banquet and the dance. 
 
 " (Quests, welcome almost as the angels were 
 To Abraham of old. . , . We bore a name 
 Honoured in France, the name of Englishmen, 
 And hospitably did they give us hail." 
 
 The English were then, in fact, at the zenith of their 
 popularity across the Channel, sainted everywhere 
 by good Liberals as their forerunners and examples in 
 the career of liberty. 
 
 After a few months passed in Sv.-itzerland, Words- 
 worth and his friend retraversed the same route on 
 their homeward way. They still found throughout 
 the kingdom the same effusion and expansiveness of 
 joy. 
 
THE FRKXCIl RKVOLL"TIOX AXU WORDSWOKTH. 77 
 
 " A glorious time. 
 A happy time that was ! Triunij-ihaut looks 
 Were then the eoip.nion language of all eves. 
 As if awakened from sleep, the nations hailed 
 Their great expectancy '' 
 
 i\nd the young men moved as in a new yet natural 
 element, in this atmosphere of millenium, where 
 custom, law, rule, habit were all suddenly, as it were, 
 in the twinkling of an eye caught up and trans- 
 figured from their old tame selves into an ideal of 
 romance. All Europe was thrilled, in a less or 
 greater degree, with the heart-beats of this strange 
 enthusiasm. In Switzerland the two friends had left 
 the cantons exalting in the liberty of France, and 
 on the frontier of Brabant they found the Belgian 
 armies mustering, full of confidence, in the same 
 sacred cause. 
 
 Wordsworth v.ent back to Cambridge to finish his 
 university career, which came to aii end in January, 
 1791. He passed ten months in London, where he 
 bored himself to death. F^^ance drew him with the 
 old attraction. He crossed the Cliannel a second 
 time in November, 1791. The Legislative Assembly 
 had just begun to sit. The second period of the 
 Revolution had opened, and already the dawn of 
 the Republic appeared on the horizon. Wordsworth 
 stayed but a few days in Paris, pocketed a stone of 
 
78 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 the Bastile as a relic, visited the Jacobins and the 
 
 Assembly, where the Revolution still swayed to and 
 
 fro, uncertain, like a vessel at anchor rocked by the 
 
 storm. Then he proceeded to Orleans, where he 
 
 meant to make some stay. He became intimate with 
 
 the officers of the t^arrison ; they were tine examples 
 
 of the Emigres at home, leagued with foreign powers 
 
 against their own country, each only waiting the 
 
 signal from Coblentz in order to reverse the existing 
 
 order of things. 
 
 "All 
 Were men well born ; the chivalry of France. 
 In age and temper differing, they had yet 
 One spirit ruling in each heart ; alike 
 (Save only one, hereafter to be named) 
 Were bent upon undoing what was done : 
 This was their rest and only hope ; therewith 
 No fear had they of bad becoming worse, 
 For worst to them was come ; nor would have stirred, 
 Or deemed it worth a moment's thought to stir, 
 In any thing, save only as the act 
 Looked thitherward. One, reckoning by years, 
 Was in the prime of manhood, and erewhile 
 He had sate lord in many tender hearts. 
 Though heedless of such honours now, and changed : 
 His temper was quite mastered by the times, 
 And they had blighted him, had eaten away 
 The beauty of his person, doing wrong 
 Alike to body and mind. His port. 
 Which once had been erect and open. 
 Now was stooping and contracted, and a face. 
 
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND WORDSWORTH. 79 
 
 Endowed by nature with her fairest gifts 
 
 Of symmetry, and hght, and bloom, expressed 
 
 As much as any that was ever seen : 
 
 A ravage out of season made by thoughts 
 
 Unhealthy and vexatious. With the hour 
 
 That from the press of Paris duly brought 
 
 Its freight of public news, the fever came, 
 
 A punctual visitant, to shake this man. 
 
 Disarmed his voice, and fanned his yellow cheek 
 
 Into a thousand colours. While he read 
 
 Or mused, his sword was haunted by his touch 
 
 Continually, like an uneasy place 
 
 In his own body." 
 
 Wordsworth could not share the passions of these 
 
 men. Born and bred in Cumberland, a poor district 
 
 still ripe with a certain quaint and ancient homeliness, 
 
 his boyhood had never encountered a class of men 
 
 set apart as specially honourable, merely on account 
 
 of the accidents of rank or fortune. On leaving 
 
 Cumberland, he had found at Cambridge the best 
 
 sort of republic, — that where distinction is ever open 
 
 to merit. Thus, the young Englishman, although 
 
 sedate of mind and temper, felt all his prejudices 
 
 muster none the less on the side of the Revolution. 
 
 The rising of the nation seemed to him the return 
 
 to a more natural order of things, and inspired him 
 
 in the beginning with a tranquil sympathy rather 
 
 than with enthusiasm. But the prejudices of these 
 
 young nobles at Orleans inflamed his ardour — and 
 
80 liXGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 their excess of partisanship scaring him off violently 
 
 to the opposite extreme. 'Twas an iiour of passion. 
 
 *' The soil of common life, was at that time 
 Too hot to tread upon." 
 
 'Twas an hour of farewells. The emotions were 
 perpetually excited by the spectacle of devoted leave- 
 takings, of cruel separations, of the heroism of men, 
 the fortitude of women, the universal enthusiasm of 
 all alike. Life went on to a sound of music and a 
 streaming of banners, :uk1 the secret music of things 
 seemed to thrill its siiisiini conia. A cause that made 
 the heart beat so quick, must be just, good, and pure. 
 Those who maintained the contrary must, to all 
 evidence, be monsters of depravity, egoism, mean- 
 ness, and injustice. So thought France, and so 
 thought William Wordsworth. 
 
 Among the officers of the garrison at Orleans, 
 there was one — and only one — who could sympathise 
 with the poet. He was a man of another mould 
 from his comrades, rejected by them as a patriot and 
 a Republican. He, like they, was of noble birth, 
 
 " But unto the poor 
 Among mankind he was in service bound 
 As by some tie, invisible oaths, professed 
 To some religious order." 
 
 A gentle, dreamy idealist, he wandered through the 
 passionate world of the Revolution as through some 
 
Tin-: KKKXCII KEVOH'TION AM) WORDSWORTH. ^1 
 
 fairy forest of romance ; amiable to the fierce, 
 ingratiating to the harsh and brutal, and letting the 
 fresh aroma of his nature breathe but the deeper 
 where it was wounded. *' A kind of radiant joy," 
 says Wordsworth " lingered about him." This brave 
 and courteous soldier — for he was no less brave than 
 gentle — was the General de Beaupuy, one of the 
 army of Mayence, who was to fall, at nine-and-thirty 
 years of age, in the Franco-German campaign of 
 1796.* 
 
 '* Most blessed 
 la this, that he the fate of later times 
 Lived not to see, nor what we now behold, 
 Who have as ardent hearts as he had then." 
 
 The soldier and the poet became sworn friends ; 
 often they strolled together along the broad banks 
 of the Loire at Orleans, discoursing of the change 
 in government, of the rights of man, and of his 
 noble nature. Beaupuy enlarged upon the miserable 
 condition of the mass of the people ; the arbitrari- 
 ness of justice, and the law's delays. He loved to 
 
 * Wordsworth makes him die in Vendee. 'Tis an error. He fought 
 in Vendee on his return from Mayence ; was wounded twice at 
 the passage of the Loire ; was carried in this state on to the ramparts 
 of Angers, where he received a third bullet. But he recovered from 
 all these honourable accidents, took part in the campaign against 
 Germany, and had his head carried off by a bullet at Emerdingen, 
 while retreating with Moreau's battalion (October 19, 1796). 
 
tS2 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 show the deep roots of that universal injustice, which 
 the young Revohition meant to cast out for ever. 
 
 In his academic conversations at Cambridge, 
 Wordsworth had never yet met with a soul so 
 devoted, a theme so fiery, an hour so impassioned. 
 All nature, then, was standing on the brink of a great 
 trial ; and, for or against the results of that trial, 
 every man was absolutely convinced or resolute. 
 There were no sceptics ; there were no doubters. 
 But each party, certain of the truth, felt that truth 
 itself widen, till it embraced hope and desire, and 
 all devotedness, wdthin its own essence. 
 
 On those banks of the Loire, as yet innocent of 
 carnage, the two young men remarked the monu- 
 ments of a courtlier age — relics of chivalry and 
 royal love, of corruption and of art, such as the 
 Renaissance has strewn broadcast along the historic 
 windings of that river — Blois, Chambord, Chenon- 
 ceaux, Azay, Amboise. The charm of their beauty 
 would lull for a moment the fanaticism of the 
 
 patriot. 
 
 " Monuments de la vieille France, 
 Passe plus frais que I'avenir, 
 Ou trouverai-je une esperance 
 Egale a votre souvenir ? " 
 
 Beaupuy would not have thus forsworn the future ; 
 but even (he and Wordsworth in a far greater degree) 
 
THE FKEXCH KEVOLUTION AND WOHDSWORTH. 83 
 
 felt the force of that royal tradition which had left 
 behind it such unfading mementoes. But one day, 
 on such a site, the two friends encountered a young 
 girl quite faint with hunger, leading a heifer in the 
 lane. The poor child could scarce drag one foot 
 before the other, yet her pallid hands never ceased 
 to ply the knitting needles, while over one feeble 
 arm she held the tether of the calf, which wandered 
 here and there, plucking a scanty meal from the 
 hedges. 'Twas a pathetic little picture of courage, 
 and want, and youth. Beaupuy lired up with a 
 noble indignation : " 'Tis against tlicit we are fighting," 
 lie exclaimed. " And I, too, believed," adds 
 Wordsworth — 
 
 '' That a benignant spirit was abroad 
 Which might not be withstood — that poverty, 
 Abject as this, would in a little time 
 Be found no more " 
 
 For the Revolution still continued arcadian and 
 paternal by the Loire. But the march of events 
 was swaft in Paris. 
 
 Thither W^ordsworth bent his steps in October. 
 One beautiful, silent October morning, he bade 
 farewell to Beaupuy and the gliding Loire. He 
 found the capital the scene of great excitement. 
 The King had fallen and lay in prison with his wife 
 
S4 FA'GLISH STrniES. 
 
 und children ; the Republican forces had beaten 
 
 back the invaders ; France liad challenged Europe, 
 
 and had thrown down in defiance the word : 
 
 " Republic." Hence an intoxication of pride and 
 
 courage in the air. There was, it is true, 
 
 something of a reverse to the medal. As Wordsworth 
 
 left his gay and pleasant maiisani, as he crossed the 
 
 sunny Square of the Carrousel, it would come over 
 
 him how, a few weeks before, the dead and the 
 
 dying had lain in heaps there. Doubts rose in his 
 
 honest heart. He looked at the brilliant city as at a 
 
 book written in an unknown language. 
 
 But one night suddenly the full horror burst 
 
 upon him. He sat in the high-perched, lonely room 
 
 he liked so much, just under the roof of a large 
 
 mansion. It was late at night, but the young poet 
 
 was still busy with his books. And then he felt, 
 
 suddenly, the full divorce between illusion and 
 
 reality : 
 
 " The fear gone by 
 Pressed on me almost like a fear to come. 
 I thought of those September massacres, 
 Divided from me by one little month. 
 Saw them and touched . . . 
 And in this way I wrought upon myself 
 Until I seemed to hear a voice that cried 
 To the whole city : S/eep no more I " 
 
 The trance fled with the echo of the voice which 
 
THE FRENCH KKVOLl'TIOX AND WOROSWOKTH. 85 
 
 had evoked it ; but not so the abiding impression of 
 
 honor. His cheerful mansard no longer appeared 
 
 to the wandering poet a pleasant high-perched nook 
 
 of peace and retirement, but rather 
 
 " A place uniit for the repose of night, 
 Defenceless as a wood where tigers roam." 
 
 From that moment the attitude of Wordsworth 
 was constrained. The Revolution no longer appeared 
 to him wholly as a happy waking dream, an augury 
 of the millenium. Party hate, treason, ferocity, met 
 him and daunted him with strange questionings. 
 On the verv morrow, as he was walking under the 
 arcades of the Palais Royal, he heard the shrill 
 voices of the hawkers bawling a " Denunciation of 
 the Crimes of Maximilien Robespierre." 'Twas the 
 audacious accusations of Louvet, who, alone of all 
 the Assembly, had dared to cast in the teeth of the 
 new tyrant his responsibility with regard to the 
 massacres of September. But Louvet had been 
 severely left alone ; one sole bold man, without a 
 follower, cannot change the face of things, and 
 Heaven refuses to lielp those who will not help 
 themselves. 
 
 So Robespierre remained supreme. Wordsworth, 
 linked by personal friendship to the party of the 
 Girondins, had felt a generous impulse to follow in 
 
80 ENGLISH STrOIES. 
 
 the steps of Loiivet, to attempt — a young inex- 
 perienced foreigner, uneloquent, completely obscure 
 — what no French patriot had the weight and force 
 to undertake at that moment. 
 
 " I revolved 
 How much the destiny of Man had still 
 Hung upon single persons.'' 
 
 One strong voice, one strong hand, might yet 
 dominate the unreasoning masses ; and Words- 
 worth, obscurely conscious of his own powers, 
 thought that voice, that hand, might perchance be 
 iiis. Louvet had failed, Mirabeau had failed, he 
 might succeed ! Had the young Englishman made 
 his desperate attempt, it would certainly have led 
 him straightway to the scaffold. But the fate of the 
 Girondins was spared him by a prosaic accident : 
 his family, fortunately, cut off the supplies. Words- 
 worth therefore returned to England, but his 
 heart was still in France, was still with France. 
 Then came the last cruellest cut of all. O 
 shame ! O pity ! England, free England, entered 
 the league against the Republic ! The poet 
 abjured his misguided country ; he triumphed 
 in his righteous joy when the English were 
 overthrown in their lliousands and their tens of 
 thousands. 
 
THK FRENCH REVOLfTIOX AND WORDSWORTH. 87 
 
 ''It was a grief — 
 Grief, call it not — 'twas anything hut that ! — 
 A conflict of sensations without name. 
 Of which lie only, who may love the sight 
 Of a village steeple as I do, can judge, 
 When, in the congregation bending all 
 To their great Father, prayers were offered up, 
 Or praises for our country's victories ; 
 And, 'mid the simple worshippers, perchance 
 I only, like an uninvited guest 
 Whom no one owned, sate silent — shall I add. 
 Fed on the day of vengeance yet to come ! " 
 
 Before the idea of universal justice, the idea of 
 country disappeai"ed, as the Precursor before tlie 
 infant God whose coming he proclaimed. And 
 apostasy was but the conversion to a truer, higher 
 faith. 
 
 In France, the war was po}nilai" among tiie 
 
 extremists. Tyranny felt her hands strengthened 
 
 b}^ external aggression, 
 
 " And thus, on every side beset with foes, 
 The goaded land waxed mad ; the crimes of few 
 Spread into madness of the many." 
 
 The guillotine was set up in ever}' town ; 
 detection lurked by every domestic hearth ; 
 murder became a public amusement, till head after 
 head, old, young, friend, enemy, love, perished, and 
 never heads enough for the spectators of that cruel 
 j?ame. 
 
88 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 "O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy 
 " name ! " the soul of Wordsworth echoed to the 
 cry of Madame Roland. He, no less lirmly than 
 that disenchanted woman, had believed in the 
 innocent authority of Liberty, in its sacred power 
 to transform the brute into man ; and behold, the 
 man was changed into the brute ! WiM-dsworth, a 
 Girondin in England, watched with dismay the 
 spread of the Reign of Terror. And yet his 
 sympathy was not wholly alienated from France. 
 He beheld with admiration the victories of the 
 young Republic, which he compares to the infant 
 Hercules strangling the snakes about his cradle. 
 That was well, and as it should be ; the invaders 
 fared as they deserved. But alas, if lie continued 
 to applaud the Republic without, the honest young 
 Englishman could no longer look with less than the 
 direst apprehension upon the fatal errors, the mad- 
 ness, of the Republic at home. 
 
 Nature alone, in the divine spectacle of lier 
 obedience to eternal law, nature relieved him, and 
 gave him back his dreams by day and his sleep of 
 nights. In a heart lifted up beyond the common 
 run of human days, yet not so high as to lose all 
 sight of them, passion and trouble, and doubt and 
 terror may blend together in a pacified and trustful 
 
THE FRENCH KEVOLUTION AND WORDSWORTH. 89 
 
 hope. Wordsworth, above all modern poets, pos- 
 sessed the gift of Lucretius. His religion also went 
 deeper than the shows of things and dwelt not in 
 rites and forms. 
 
 '' Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri." 
 He knew how to find beneath the thunder of the 
 whirlwind that music of the still small voice. And 
 amid all the excesses of the Revolution his heart 
 treasured up the sparks and gleams of human per- 
 fection, which were incessantly sent up towards 
 heaven from the very clash and contest of that great 
 disaster : 
 
 " Bright sparklings of all human excellence, 
 To which the silver wands of saints in heaven 
 Might point in rapturous joy." 
 
 So much fortitude, so much devotion, so much 
 
 courage, pleaded for the unhappy country which 
 
 exacted their sacrifice, and carried back the poet's 
 
 imagination to those bright early days when he had 
 
 first paced the enchanted soil of France. Again, 
 
 a dear companion at his side, he trod in fancy the 
 
 streets of Arras ; he saw the gay windows all hung 
 
 with garlands, and the rainbow-arch that spanned 
 
 the streets ; and his heart thrilled — how dolorously ! 
 
 — in tune to the old illusions, the brilliant promises, 
 
 which then accompanied with their deceiving 
 
OO ENGLISH STUDIES, 
 
 glamour tlie enthusiastic presence of the deputy 
 
 Robespierre. 
 
 And one dny, as he walked upon the shore of 
 
 Loch Leven, a passer by called out to him : " Robes- 
 
 " pierre is dead ! " 
 
 " Great was my transport, deep my gratitude 
 To everlasting justice, liy this feat 
 Made manifest. ' Come now ye golden times,' 
 Said I, forthponring on those open sands 
 A hymn of triumph, ' as the morning comes 
 From out the bosom of the night, come ye ! 
 Thus far our trust is verified. Behold ! 
 They who with clumsy desperation brought 
 A river of blood, and preached that nothing else 
 Could clean the Augean stable — by the might 
 Of their own helper have been swept away ! 
 Their madness stands declared and visible. 
 Elsewhere will safety now be sought, and earth 
 March hrmly towards righteousness and peace.' " 
 
 The Terror had ceased, in truth. Authority in 
 France put on a milder face, and, though the 
 Government was still weak and incoherent, Words- 
 worth felt all his old trust in the people revive anew. 
 He believed in the young Republic. He felt sure 
 that all her enemies were destined, sooner or later, 
 to perish. And again and again he proclaimed the 
 final triumph — great, irresistible, universal, and cer- 
 tain — of the sacred principles of '89, of the real 
 Republic, fashioned after the pattern of the earlier 
 
THK FREX'CH KEVOH'TIOX AND WORDSWORTH. 9I 
 
 Girondins. But behold ! scarce relieved of the yoke 
 of terror, the French, so lately oppressed, become in 
 their turn oppressors, exchange their defence of their 
 own soil for a war of aggression, losing sight of all 
 their earlier principles. Wordsworth, however 
 French in his sympathies, was backbone English, of 
 the stoutest Cumberland make. He had voted for 
 Liberty, not for Glory ; disappointment at their 
 apostasy towards liberty, alarm at the danger to 
 Europe of a conquering Republic — united in his 
 heart. Sick to the heart he turned awhile from the 
 spectacle of politics, buried himself in abstract ideas, 
 in nature, in poetry, in his profound domestic 
 affections. And when, from this inner peace, he 
 cast a glance abroad, true to his own soul, he did 
 not hesitate to condemn where he had once approved; 
 he saw 
 
 " A people 
 That once looked up in faith, as if to heaven 
 For manna, take a lesson from the dog 
 Returning to his vomit .... when to close 
 And seal up all the gains of France, a Pope 
 Is summoned in to crown an Emperor. 
 
 I read her doom 
 With anger vexed, with disappointment sore. 
 But not dismayed, nor takin.tj to the shame 
 Of a false jirophet 
 
gi ENGLISH STUDIKS. 
 
 In nature still 
 Glorying, I found a counterpoise in her, 
 Which, when the spirit of evil reached its height, 
 Maintained for me a secret happiness." 
 
 Such, in a brief summary, is this confession ; one 
 of the noblest, frankest, and most eloquent ever 
 written. France should not continue to ignore it, 
 for these pages hold many a lesson, for the history of 
 Europe no less than for the history of literature. 
 They present a picture of the army of '91, and of its 
 double principle, which is a masterpiece, and one 
 that could only have been drawn from the fresher 
 observation of a foreigner. 
 
 I would merely underline two important traits 
 alifecting the history of the Revolution as seen from 
 abroad. Firstly, let us mark, learn, and inwardly 
 digest this significant detail : the horror inspired by 
 the French Revolution in Europe is a result, not of 
 her crimes, but of her conquests ; the point of her 
 sword was more atrocious than the edge of her 
 guillotine. Wordsworth abjures the Terror, not in 
 '93, but in '99, after the victories of Xapoleon 
 Bonaparte ; and he does not stand alone. Southey, 
 the frantic Tory of 1808, preserves in the second 
 edition of his Joan of Arc, published in 1796, all the 
 revolutionary fervour of his preface to the edition of 
 
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND WORDSWORTH. 93 
 
 1793. In 1796 Coleridge chants the incarnate 
 demon Pitt, monarch of massacre and battle. 
 
 All the blood of the Terror did not shake the 
 enthusiasm insjiii-ed by the principles of '89. Not- 
 withstanding these excesses, at more than one 
 moment France might have made her peace with 
 her neighbours ; at more than one moment Europe 
 was ready to repress her involuntary shudder, and 
 to extend a not unsympathetic hand. But, without 
 fail, once and always, some fanatic of the tribune 
 would arise to brandish the torch of war, to dismiss 
 all promise of peace within and peace abroad. The 
 brood of wordy lawyers was disastrous to their 
 country — even then. 
 
 But, and this is our second lesson, France was not 
 alone in her responsibility for the deviations of the 
 Republic, and for a war whose fatal consequences 
 are not over yet. The English Government of 1793 
 must share the blame. In all Europe, England was 
 the sole country which the Revolution never 
 menaced. The invectives of the English Jacobins 
 did not endanger the Republic ; and at worst, if the 
 English Government and the French Government 
 came to words, there was no feeling of hatred, but 
 rather one of sympathy, between the two nations. 
 The intervention of England was a mistake. By 
 
94 KNGLISII STIUIKS. 
 
 doubling the risks of France, it increased the power 
 of the extremists. Violently dislodging the huge 
 machine of the Revolution from the moderate lines 
 on which it had commenced its career, England 
 sent it spinning down a groove of folly, endangering 
 thereby the peace of France and the peace of 
 Europe. Thenceforth, all common agreement be- 
 came impossible. And many generations must pass 
 before the envenomed memories of wrath and hatred 
 bequeathed to us by that fatal error shall quite have 
 passed away. That was an evil hoiu- when Pitt, 
 after a long resistance, yielded to the furious senti- 
 mentality of Burke's too-Irish eloquence, yielded to 
 the pressure of a public enamoured of the lachry- 
 mose, and sought to escape from the harass of 
 unsatisfactory home affairs by declaring a popular 
 war against the French Revolution. For the French 
 Revolution was the younger sister of the English 
 Revolution, and should have been, not opposed by 
 England, but directed in a course of wiser liberty. 
 No man has ever, more than he, done harm to the 
 cause of Europe and humanity. We will not say of 
 Pitt (though we might have an English warrant for 
 it) that he deserves the title given to the late Emperor 
 of the French after the coup d'Etat of 1852 — we will 
 not call him "the greatest scoundrel of his day." 
 
TIIK FRENCH KEVOLUTIOX AND WORDSWORTH. ()5 
 
 But we may admit that the execration heaped upon 
 liis memory by the advanced Liberals of England, 
 and by public opinion in France, is but the blind 
 expression, not ill founded, of a legitimate grievance 
 which history and the future still have against him. 
 He was sincere and he was honest. The excuse 
 may serve the man, but not the statesman. For the 
 statesman must stand or fall by the evil he has left 
 after him, and not by the good he may have meant. 
 That is an affair for those casuists of history, who 
 amuse their leisure and absolve the disaster of a 
 nation, by seeking in the story of a tragic blunder 
 the secret intention of the heart. 
 
Ths Life of (jsorgs Sliot. 
 
 Messrs. Allen in projecting their Euiinent Women 
 Series, must feel sure of their success. What subject 
 could be more appropriate to these days of feminine 
 agitation, when the rights of women are discussed, 
 not only with passion, but with so much intelligence ? 
 All the contributors to the Eminent Women Series 
 are to be ladies, more or less eminent themselves. 
 Behold the feminine Pantheon raised by feminine 
 hands ! 
 
 Ab Jnnone principium : the series naturally opens 
 with George Eliot. Her biographer is Miss 
 Mathilde Blind, a distinguished writer, known chiefly 
 by her poems, so individual and personal in their 
 accent. Although George Eliot had no great affec- 
 tion for her critics, she would, I think, have read 
 this little book with pleasure. She would have found 
 in it a ray of her own aureole and some of the 
 qualities which she must have preferred in other 
 people, since they are the stuff of which her genius 
 is made. I speak of a sympathy deep enough to 
 
 97 9 
 
98 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 penetrate the thoughts of another ; a wideminded- 
 ness which embraces the whole complexity of the 
 soul and life, a force and virility of expression 
 which in nowise diminishes the delicacy of the finer 
 shades. There is a harmony between George Eliot 
 and her biographer. Let me, in brief, follow Miss 
 Blind in her survey, not of the works, but of the life 
 of George Eliot. 
 
 'Tis a life apparently devoid of all adventure, and 
 whose sole romantic incident is not disclosed to 
 public curiosity — a life whose whole history might 
 seem to be resumed in a mere catalogue of titles — yet 
 not without its deep invisible convulsions, its pent-up 
 tempests, whose traces are manifest in the genius of 
 George Eliot. The principal charm of Miss Blind's 
 little volume is in its restitution of the soul's tragedy 
 of one of the noblest and most powerful women of 
 our century. This restitution, due in part to the 
 testimony of the great novelist's intimate friends, but 
 far more largely to the abiding witness of her work, 
 is a true piece of scientific criticism. 
 
 Mary Ann Evans, whom the world remembers as 
 George Eliot, was born in 1819, in Shakespeare's 
 Warwickshire. Her father was agent to a rich 
 county gentleman. Sir Roger Newdigate. Bred in 
 the garden of England, in daily contact with rural 
 
THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. 99 
 
 realities, she grew up a true child of nature, and from 
 her very cradle learned her two great secrets : her 
 deep intuition of the reality of things and her 
 sympathetic love of real life, however melancholy 
 and disenchanted it may appear on after thoughts. 
 If it be true that the work of every artist is but a 
 confession of his own life and feelings, one may say 
 that the writings of George Eliot are essentially 
 a confession of her childhood. The most living 
 characters of her novels, those who have a home in 
 all our memories, are sprung from the real men and 
 women of her early days. That is why they are so 
 veracious and so vivid. Nothing lives and endures 
 like the life and recollection of our very first impres- 
 sions, like the heart of the child which pulses in the 
 brain of the man. Her own child's heart is born 
 again to us in the adorable image of Maggie Tulliver, 
 the dear little girl, so oddly compact of day-dreams 
 and logic, of imaginative enthusiasm and serious 
 good feeling. 
 
 Mary Ann grew up early. Her school-fellows 
 worshipped her from a distance with mingled admira- 
 tion and respect. Far more than grown up men 
 and women, schoolchildren have the idea and the 
 instinct of genius. They feel the superiority of the 
 shy, solitary comrade who lives in a world of his own, 
 
100 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 peopled with dreams and visions, isolated — not 
 by any disdain for the happy games and passions 
 of his fellows, which often he watches with longing, 
 with a wistful envy, — but by the obscure tyranny 
 of the master-thought that dominates his young 
 ideas. 'Tis a mistake to suppose that children of 
 this nature are unpopular at school ; on the 
 contrary, their peculiar power is far more quickly, 
 far more spontaneously recognised among their 
 comrades in the class-room than everit will be in 
 later years. In this young, sincere, whole-hearted 
 audience the homage due to genius is not slurred 
 over by any base jealousy, cliquery, or envious 
 mediocrity ; and the gifted child himself is more 
 natural, more unconscious, feels his gift more 
 directly spring, like a flower, from the substance of 
 his soul, than it is likely to be the case when the 
 world shall have poisoned him with its mortal 
 influence ; when his happy days shall have felt the 
 deadly leaven of doubt and self-distrust. 
 
 When Mary Ann was fifteen years old she lost her 
 mother. Her elder sister and her brother both 
 married and went to live away from home. Separa- 
 tion followed separation, until the young girl found 
 herself almost alone in the world. The last and 
 hardest of all was to come : her estrangement, from 
 
THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. lOI 
 
 her brother Isaac ; for that was an enduring absence, 
 not only from the home but from the heart. Her 
 brother had been the idol and the guide of her child- 
 hood, but by some unhappy chance, they were not 
 kindred spirits. Isaac Evans, the original of the 
 striking and tragic figure of Tom Tulliver, was the 
 devoted brother and inexorable tyrant of his little 
 sister, the incarnation of conventionality and its laws 
 of honour, honest, upright, narrow, impeccable and 
 implacable. From his childhood he was rather a 
 Rhadamanthine personage, particularly clear and 
 positive on one point : that he would punish every- 
 body who deserved it. (" Why ! he wouldn't have 
 '' minded being punished himself if he deserved it ! 
 " but then, he never did deserve it.") The remem- 
 brance of this affection and this estrangement runs 
 like a sombre strand through all George Eliot's 
 work. She has thrilling tones to describe the 
 mingled attraction and repulsion, the united hearts 
 and divided brains, which breed so many a cruel 
 domestic situation, and the grief and pity of it when 
 we see eyes so like our mother's turn from us in 
 chill repulsion. 
 
 Mary Ann, or as her friends loved to call her, 
 Marian, lived alone with her father at Griff House 
 Farm for several years. She was a model farmer's 
 
102 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 daughter. She had remarkably beautiful hands: 
 one day she made one of her friends remark that 
 one of them was larger than the other, adding, with 
 a touch of pride, that the difference was due to the 
 quantity of cheese and butter it had turned out at 
 the farm. 
 
 In 1841, when she was twenty-two, her father 
 retired from the farm to Foleshill, near Coventiy. 
 A new life began for Marian. She had long, empty 
 days for reading, and chance brought her into rela- 
 tion with a group of singularly intellectual persons 
 established not far away, at Close Hill. The War- 
 wickshire Unitarians are widely known for their 
 intelligence, for their high standard of cultivation 
 in days before " culture " was a household word. A 
 study of the evidences of Christianity had led these 
 earnest inquirers to a respectful rationalism, which 
 admitted in religion little beyond the religious sen- 
 timent. Of such were Mr. Bray, his wife, and his 
 brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Mr. and Miss 
 Hennell. Marian had for years been a fervent 
 evangelical, almost a dissenter. A common friend, 
 counting on her talents and her ardour, introduced 
 her to the Brays, in the hope that she might bring 
 these wanderers to the fold. But lo ! the sheep-dog 
 followed the stray sheep. The first doubts lay 
 
THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. I03 
 
 already in hidden germ in Marian's fertile mind ; 
 her wide readings in ancient and modern literature 
 had done much to enforce them ; only the tender 
 associations, the clear remembrance, which held her 
 to her long-loved faith, kept her dumb and patient. 
 The new friends, whom she was charged to convert, 
 had littte trouble in her conversion. Religious 
 opinions were not then, as now, a part of individual 
 liberty. Marian's secession was followed by intimate 
 heart burnings, by family discord, by almost the 
 rupture of domestic ties. Many of her old friends 
 broke with her. Even her father, who declared she 
 she might think whatsoever she chose, burst forth in 
 anger when she would not go to Church. For a 
 moment Marian thought of leaving him, of going to 
 live alone in Coventry. It was the Brays themselves 
 — ^the very instruments of the arch-fiend — who 
 patched up the breach, and persuaded Marian into 
 an outward conformity with her father's tenets. 
 
 Marian thought she had found her path at last, 
 and took deep draughts of philosophy and theology. 
 'Twas the moment when Strauss had reduced the 
 life of Christ into a fine dust of impalpable myths, 
 and his Life of Jesus sent a shudder through the 
 theologians of two worlds. . A friend of Mr. 
 Hennell's — a Miss Brabant — had begun an English 
 
104 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 translation of the book by his advice ; but half way 
 through the first volume, she laid down her pen to 
 marry her adviser. Marian took up the interrupted 
 task and completed it. In order to fit herself for 
 this task, of which only the initiated can imagine all 
 the difficulty, her fine conscientiousness compelled 
 her to study not only German, but Hebrew. She 
 passed three years over this hard labour, for which 
 she received the sum of twenty pounds. From 
 Strauss she passed to Feuerbach, — from whom she 
 translated the Essence of Christiauify — from Feur- 
 bach to Spinoza and his De Deo. The vigour and 
 precision of these three translations established her 
 reputation among students of metaphysics, and were 
 to be the means of calling her to London. Dr. 
 Chapman, who had recently replaced J. S. Mill at 
 the head of the Westminster Review, offered her a 
 situation as co-editor. It was in the palmy days of 
 the Westtninsterj when Mill, Herbert Spencer, George 
 Lewes, Harriet Martineau — and all the profound 
 and brilliant group, who united the tradition of 
 Bacon to the tendency of Comte— were clustered in 
 their prime about its pages. 
 
 Miss Evans entered the office of the Wesiniinster 
 in 1852, at the age of three-and-thirty. Some of her 
 contributions have remained famous, especially 
 
THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. I05 
 
 those in which she let flood all her pent-up rancour 
 against the hypocrisy and hollowness of a Church 
 " as by law established " ; all that odd convention 
 which refuses to form morality out of the natural 
 order of things, but hangs it, so to speak, from the 
 edges of a star. The force and bitterness of these 
 essays reminds us of Pascal and the Provincialcs. 
 Of such was her article on the author of the 
 Night Thoughts, the perfect type of the approved 
 Anglican moralist, equally impressed with the 
 supreme importance of death— and of his funeral- 
 fees ; languishing at once for life eternal and a 
 good living here below ; ardently devoted to his 
 patrons, though after all preferring the Almighty ; 
 teaching with something more than an ofiticial con- 
 viction, the nothingness of earthly things, yet feeling 
 something more than a mere personal disgust, if his 
 praiseworthy efforts be not recompensed by a sub- 
 stantial benefice ; perfectly persuaded that, but for 
 heaven and hell, it would be agreeable, and prob- 
 ably salutary, to lead an immoral life, or, for 
 instance, assassinate one's parents ; and that, 
 putting his eternal welfare out of the question, the 
 man would be an idiot who was not a scoundrel. 
 She is unrelenting in her contempt for the Evan- 
 gelical divine. Given a man of mediocre under- 
 
I06 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 standing, of an average moral standard, a facile 
 rhetoric and ceaseless flow of speech ; what is the 
 career in which, without either rank or fortune, he 
 can easiest obtain a standing and a reputation in 
 English society ? Where is that Goshen of intel- 
 lectual mediocrity, where a tincture of education 
 passes for scientific depth, where platitudes are 
 wisdom, and bigotry a holy zeal ? Let the man 
 become an Evangelical preacher ! He will easily 
 conciliate a slender talent with a vast ambition, an 
 Average morality with the reputation of a saint. 
 Let him avoid extremes in practice, reserving them 
 for the domain of pure theory. Let him be strict 
 on predestination, but latitudinarian as to fast-days ; 
 inflexible as to eternal punishment, but timid as to 
 the necessity of retrenching the commodities of 
 daily life ; ardent in the description of Christ's 
 Second Coming, but lukewarm as to any nearer inno- 
 vation in the statu quo. Let him be hard and literal 
 only in polemic, but spiritualise into the finest 
 ether his special Christianity for the use of the nine- 
 teenth century. In this way, he will soon find him- 
 self a bishop— carriages will wait at his church door 
 as thickly packed as before the Opera House. His 
 prophetic sermons, bound in gold and lilac, will be 
 the light Sunday reading of many a boudoir, and 
 
THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. 107 
 
 the prettiest possible foreheads will pucker over his 
 brilliant comparison of the " grasshoppers which have 
 " their sting in their tail," to the horsetail standard of 
 a Turkish Aga, and will admire his analogy between 
 the French and the frogs, spoken of in the Apocalypse. 
 The long-repressed satirical humour of Miss 
 Evans, runs away with her sometimes ; but at the 
 bottom of all her sarcasms, there was already some- 
 thing more than satire, a personal morality, a theory 
 of life. We find it first expressed in the brilliant 
 essay which, borrowing a happy saying of Cole- 
 ridge's, she entitled " Worldliness and other World- 
 " liness." Already she begins to teach that our brief 
 mortal span requires no heavenly perspective to 
 lend it infinity, for earth may hold its heaven here. 
 Already she touches a new spring of moral emotions, 
 and brings out of the very sense that life is fleeting, 
 new, tenderer pities, a more heart-breaking pathos, 
 than older writers show. The thought that this brief 
 life, such as it is, often so cruelly incomplete, is all 
 that is accorded to those we love — to the innumerable 
 companions of our pangs and disappointments — 
 inspires her with an infinite charity. All the 
 bitterness, all the possible pitiful sweetness of this vein 
 of feeling, was to be brought to light by the future 
 novelist, in a manner wholly new and wholly hers, 
 
I08 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 But nothing as yet announced the novel-writer. 
 An essay published in the same year as her first 
 stories, so infinitely tender — a sarcastic, merciless 
 essay on "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" — shows us 
 at least that her conception of what the novel should 
 be is firm and finished. The writer has an object, 
 to paint the life of the people ; a principle, the 
 devotion to truth. Art is the nearest thing in the 
 world to life ; 'tis a fashion of enlarging our 
 experience and extending our contact with our 
 fellow creatures beyond the narrow limits of our 
 individual lot. The artist's task is not less sacred 
 when he labours to reproduce the life of the 
 common people. The least mistake here is more 
 fatal than when dealing with an artificial and 
 complete civilization. 'Tis a matter of comparatively 
 little consequence if our author deceives us in the 
 fashions and story of the hour, the exact nuance 
 and ton of fashionable society ; but 'tis serious, indeed, 
 if he mislead us when our sympathies are engaged 
 with the great elemental facts of life — if the joys, 
 struggles, tragedies, humour, he represents, are 
 falsified or perverted in his rendering. Already 
 she turns with preference to subjects dealing with 
 country life, a subject almost untouched in 1856, 
 when the countryman was still either Hodge or 
 
THE LIKE OK GEORGE ELIOT. I09 
 
 Corydon. She does not idealise her peasants, and 
 in this very article she has a striking passage on the 
 pastoral beauty of a field full of haymakers, the 
 golden light, the great waggon slowly moving 
 beneath its fragrant load, the line of bright green, 
 aftermath, gradually enlarging behind the mowers. 
 But approach ! the coarse laugh, the ribald jest of 
 the real living peasant will shock and disconcert us. 
 " The only realm of fancy and imagination known 
 " to the English countryman lies at the bottom of 
 " the third bottle." The rustic's honesty is no less 
 mythical than his delicacy in affairs of the heart 
 and fancy : a thresher will not, for reasons, commit 
 a forgery, but he will stuff his boots and his pockets 
 with his master's corn ; the harvester will not write 
 a begging letter, but he will coax the dairy-maid to 
 fill his bottle with the farmer's ale. The sight of 
 buttercups is no panacea for selfishness, and you 
 cannot make a man moral by turning him out to 
 grass. 
 
 Miss Evans was already fit to take up the pen of 
 the novel writer. She knew her art, but she did 
 not as yet know her own genius. She might have 
 continued to use her life in an effort unworthy of 
 her gifts, lofty though it be — she might have con- 
 tinued to squander in fleeting abundance all the 
 
no ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 treasures of her garner. More than one man or 
 woman of genius has thus gone down to his grave 
 exhausted, leaving no measure of his mind, for lack 
 of discerning the work for which he was born — for 
 lack of a friend to point out this predestined task. 
 George Eliot was to find this timely friend ; and 
 the divining-rod that was to indicate her hidden 
 treasure already quivered in the hands of Love. 
 
(jSorgs Eliot: 
 
 In her Letters to a Friend. 
 
 Letters are the very pulse of biography. They let 
 us into the daily detail of a life and the very core 
 of an individuality ; and this is truer of the letters of 
 a great writer than of any others. If they be written 
 in all sincerity — for the person to whom they are 
 addressed and not for a possible public — they 
 reveal moreover the exact relations of the character 
 of the man to his work, and the degree of truth 
 which animates his art. 
 
 The letters of George Eliot are still unpublished.* 
 Yet she was an abundant letter-writer, and had in 
 especial three constant friends with whom, during 
 all her thinking life, she exchanged a continual cor- 
 respondence. Mr. Cross has collected all these 
 papers, which form the materials of the monument 
 which he intends to raise to the lofty spirit that he 
 knew so well, and which, for a few brief months, 
 was called by his name among us. 
 
 * This essay was printed in the Dehats before the publication of 
 Mr. Cross's Life of George Eliol. 
 
112 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 One of these friends — the friend of thirty years — 
 (I speak of Mme. Bodichon) has done me the honour 
 to trust me with her share of George Eliot's corres- 
 pondence. I have her authority not only to study 
 it, but to extract what may touch or charm the 
 friends of George Eliot and of English literature in 
 France. The letters begin on the morrow of the 
 appearance of Adam Bcdc. Before letting the 
 reader into the author's confidence, let us recall to 
 him her debut as a novelist. 
 
 In the office of the Westminster Review Miss 
 Evans had made the acquaintance of George Henry 
 Lewes, the most alert, the most universal mind of 
 his generation, equally remarkable as a critic, as a 
 physiologist and as a philosopher, a brilliant talker, 
 whose dazzling wit played over an abyss of deep re- 
 flection. Miss Evans, who at first sight had not 
 greatly cared for Lewes (" a little Mirabeau," so she 
 describes him), soon fell under the charm : he was fas- 
 cinated. A domestic disaster shattered his hearth 
 and home ; she gave her life to repair the ruin, and a 
 union was formed which, in the situation of Mr. 
 Lewes, the law could not sanction, but which re- 
 mained unalterable during five-and-twenty years, till 
 death dissolved it, and which, little by little, imposed 
 itself upon the respect of thinking men and women. 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IX HER LETTERS TO A FRIEXD. II3 
 
 One ckiv Lewes, struck bv the prodigious observa- 
 tion of his wife, said to her : " My dear, you should 
 " write a novel ; it would be excellent." A few days 
 later. Miss Evans shut herself up in her room, and 
 wrote the first of the Scenes of Clerical Life : " The 
 Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton." Lewes 
 had divined the very secret of her nature : he had 
 revealed her to herself ; she had found the true 
 channel where she could let loose in deep 
 abundance all the thought which twenty years of 
 meditation had accumulated in her brain. And in 
 her novels she found again not only her own 
 thought, but all that she had gathered in of the 
 world's universal life : the harvest of her eye, the 
 harvest of her soul and heart, all she had loved, and 
 watched, and felt from her remotest infancy — aye, 
 long before the days when, going a-fishing with her 
 brother, the little dreamy girl would forget her line 
 " and never knew she had a bite unless Tom told 
 " her." The Scenes of Clerical Life, published 
 anonymously in 1857, immediately arrested the at- 
 tention of the reading public, who felt that a new 
 novelist had swum into their ken. Tw'o years later 
 Adam Bede appeared over the signature of George 
 Eliot. A few days later England had learned this 
 
 unknown name, never thenceforth to be forgotten. 
 
 10 
 
114 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 'Tis at this moment that our letter opens. Mme. 
 Bodichon took the most passionate interest in all 
 the literary questions of the day. She was herself a 
 landscape painter of a rare talent, of a penetrating 
 poetry, whose water-colours, well known in a limited 
 circle of connoisseurs, would have reached a far 
 wider public had she cared. She was one of the 
 most active pioneers of the higher education of 
 women, convinced that there lies at least one 
 answer to the social problem : lift up the woman 
 and, through her, lift up the man — as much as she 
 in need of such improvement. At the age of one- 
 and-twenty she had founded and endowed one of 
 the first London High Schools for Girls, which she 
 herself directed for many years. Later she became 
 one of the founders of Girton. 'Twas at London, 
 in the circle of the Westminster Revieiv, that 
 Mme. Bodichon met Miss Evans, in the month of 
 July, 1852. They had three great things in com- 
 mon : the same cultus for the intellectual life, the 
 same philosophic faith, the same ideal of social pro- 
 gress. They were not long in making friends, and 
 their friendship was as complete as it was sudden, 
 an entire community of thought and feeling. 
 
 These letters deal with the second period of 
 George Eliot's life, The time of endurance was 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IN HER LETTERS TO A FRIEND. II5 
 
 past and gone, the time of triumph had begun. 
 Of those earher days of trial as by fire — in a sense, the 
 most important of all, since they formed and fashioned 
 the spirit of George Eliot — we have no direct con- 
 fession in eitiier her novels or in this correspond- 
 ence, but the shadow of them passes across it more 
 than once. She had suffered through herself and 
 through others ; she had striven against herself and 
 against those she chiefly loved ; and she had come 
 out a conqueror, but at the price of her own peace. 
 She had watched the faith of her childhood die in 
 a long agony within her soul ; she had seen the 
 change of her opinions change the dearest affections 
 of her household ; she had watched her dear brother 
 pass her by with the chill, disapproving glance of a 
 stranger ; death had taVen her father from her in 
 her hour of need. Then, in the silence and apparent 
 calm of settled work, she had known all the vague, 
 incommunicable tortures of a lonely heart without 
 a guide, of a genius bewildered which has not found 
 its final path. And she had felt in her heart the dim 
 anguish of a love that dies for lack of an object. 
 And she had endured in her mind the painful 
 radiance of a thought which might have been a 
 light of the world, but which burnt, pent-in upon 
 itself, obscurely. Nor did she ignore the undefined 
 
Il6 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 remorse of feeling that God had made her, per- 
 chance, of His rare Elect, with a mission to fulfil 
 and a work of her own, but that, for lack of 
 guidance, she must disappear with all her task 
 undone, misunderstood and undervalued, not only 
 by the indifferent world, but by herself. Trouble 
 and doubt had marked their imprint on her worn, 
 irregular features, which an unearthly beam of 
 thought irradiated in conversation. Such was this 
 woman, still young, whose appearance recalled, it is 
 said, three great leaders of men, Savonarola, Dante, 
 and the traditional face of Christ. Moulded by 
 suffering, even her glory was not to come to her 
 without its own peculiar pang. More than once 
 the cant of the British public was to veil its face 
 before the courageous woman who, without the least 
 bravado, the faintest defiance, had quietly refused 
 to submit her conduct and her conscience to the 
 authority of convention. Years must pass, a 
 tyranny of universal admiration must persist, 
 before, in a certain set, the hypocrisy of social 
 decorum should acknowledge the superiority of one 
 of the noblest and purest spirits of the century. 
 
 The correspondence of Madame Bodichon is 
 concerned, as we have said, with George Eliot's 
 days of fame. It is doubtful if any letters of hers 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IN HER LETTERS TO A FRIEND. I17 
 
 will throw much light upon those earlier days of 
 inward strife. A part of her correspondence, dealing 
 with the rebuffs and affronts with which the world 
 saluted her union with Mr. Lewes, has been burned 
 long ago, at her request and desire : having forgiven, 
 she wished that all that might be forgotten. And 
 her other trials are of the sort that cannot be 
 written : the rare souls who undergo them are of 
 too proud a nature to confide them. At most, here 
 and there, one word, one lyric cry, reveals the abyss 
 within as by a flash of lightning. Always, and till 
 the end, despite her ardent need for sympathy, 
 — that hunger of the heart no less imperious than 
 that other hunger by which Nature forces us to wear 
 her yoke and change the face of the world— George 
 Eliot reserved her right to silence, her claim to an 
 inner solitude of joy and pain. In 1863, nine years 
 after her marriage, she writes to Madame Bodichon, 
 then at Algiers and much out of spirits : — 
 
 ** I am sorry to think of you without any artistic 
 " society to help you and feed your faith. It is hard 
 "to believe long together that anything is 'worth 
 " while' unless there is some eye to kindle in common 
 " with our own, some brief word uttered now and 
 "then, to imply that what is infinitely precious to us 
 " is precious alike to another mind. 1 fancy that to 
 
Il8 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " do without that guarantee one must be rather' 
 " insane, one must be a bad poet, or a spinner of im- 
 " possible theories, or an inventor of impossible 
 " machinery ; and yet in the most entire confidence, 
 "even of husband and wife, there is always the 
 " unspoken residue, the undlvincd residue, perhaps 
 " of what is most sinful, perhaps of what is most 
 "exalted and unselfish" (4th December, 1863). 
 
 There are a hundred and fifteen letters from 
 George Eliot to Madame Bodichon, and perhaps a 
 dozen from George Lewes. They extend over a 
 period ranging from the April 27, 1859, to April 
 18, 1880 ; the last preceding by some eight months 
 the death of George Eliot. 
 
 Adam Bede had just appeared under the pseu- 
 donym of George Eliot. The incognito had been 
 kept with the strictest care. The real name of the 
 author was not known even to the publisher, who 
 received the manuscript from the hands of Lewes. 
 The irresponsible reviewer, with his usual sagacity, 
 began ransacking the list of well-known writers to 
 find an author for so new a book. Dickens alone 
 declared the book was by a woman, but no one 
 believed him : there was more force and more 
 depth in Adam Bcdc than a masculine critic could 
 permit to the scribbling daughters of Eve. The 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IN HER LETTERS TO A F'RIEND. II9 
 
 brother of George Eliot, it appears, had recognised 
 in the earliest Scenes froin Clerical Life, the touch 
 of his sister, together with certain incidents, special 
 details, which only a member of their family could 
 know. But he kept his secret. The inhabitants of 
 Nuneaton, where George Eliot, under an altered 
 name had laid the scene of "Amos Barton," had 
 recognised their own streets and their acquaintance: 
 'twas true that none but a Nuneatonite could have 
 written " Amos Barton." Nuneaton gloried in the 
 possession of an university man, a certain Mr. 
 Liggins, late of Cambridge ; the book was fathered 
 on him, for who could associate a work of genius 
 with the little schoolgirl who, twenty years before, 
 had followed the course of Miss Lewes' seminary 
 for young ladies ? Mr. Liggins did not resist long. 
 He suffered a gentle violence to surprise his secret, 
 and sat mum when The Times declared, iirbi et orbi, 
 that here was the author of the most striking stories 
 of the hour. 
 
 Madame Bodichon, recently married to a French 
 physician well known in Algeria, was at the moment 
 living at Algiers. She was not in tlie secret, but 
 she had heard of Adam Bede—wds it not in every- 
 body's mouth ?— and had sent for it to London 
 on the strength of its reputation. When she 
 
120 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 opened the book she started, as before a well- 
 known face seen in a stranger's album ; she 
 recognised the fashion of the thought, the imagina- 
 tion, the style itself. " No one but Mary Ann could 
 "have written this !" she cried, audi mmediately she 
 sat down and sent to her friend over the sea the 
 testimony of her admiration. 
 
 George Eliot's answer is the second letter in the 
 packet that lies upon my desk. Thisi correspondence 
 opens in the midst of the excitement of success. 
 'Tis a long cry of delight and gratitude towards the 
 quick and kindly heart which had so instantly 
 divined the secret of her fame : 
 
 "God bless you, dearest Barbara, for your love 
 " and sympathy. You are the first friend who has 
 "given any symptom of knowing me — the first heart 
 "that has recognised me in a book which has come 
 " from my heart of hearts. But keep the secret 
 " solemnly till I give you leave to tell it, and give 
 " way to no impulses of triumphant affection. You 
 "have sense enough to know how important the 
 " incognito has been, and we are anxious to keep it 
 " up a few months longer. Curiously enough, my 
 " old Coventry friends, who have certainly read 
 "the Wcsfmmstcr and The Times, and have 
 " probably, by this time, read the book itself, have 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IN HEK LETTERS TO A FRIEND. 121 
 
 "given no sign of recognition. But a certain Mr. 
 " Lie-ins, whom rumour has fixed on as the author 
 "of my books, and whom they have beheved in, has 
 " probably screened me from their vision. I am a 
 " very blessed woman — am I not ? — to have all this 
 "reason for being glad that I have lived. I have 
 "had no time of exultation ; on the contrary, 
 "these last months have been sadder than usual 
 " to me ; and I have thought more of the future 
 "and the much work that remains to be done 
 " in life, than of anything that has been 
 "achieved. But I think your letter to-day gave 
 "me more joy, more heart-glow, than all the letters 
 "or reviews, or other testimonies of success, that 
 " have come to me since the evenings when 1 read 
 " aloud my manuscript to my dear, dear husband, and 
 " he laughed and cried alternately, and then rushed to 
 " me to kiss me. He is the prime blessing that has 
 "made all the rest possible to me, giving me a 
 " response to everything I have written — a response 
 " that I could confide in as a prouf that I had not 
 " mistaken my work." 
 
 Lewes adds an expansive postscript — 'tis the gay 
 treble in harmony with George Eliot's bass : 
 
 " My dear, you are adorable, and I always said so. 
 " I don't know if I ever let it out to you ; my 
 
122 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " constitutional timidity may have held me back as 
 " usual ; but I tell you now. You are the one person on 
 " whose sympathy we always counted ; and we could 
 "scarely retain our secret when it came to saying 
 " goodbye, but now we are delighted that you have 
 " found it out of yourself. The success of the book is 
 '• simply unheard of ; for once public opinion appears 
 " unanimous. The amusing part of it is, that with 
 " the exception of Dickens and those who hang on 
 " his dicta, everyone believes it to be by a man, and 
 "especially a clergyman; all the dons of Oxford 
 " and Cambridge add, an University man. If you 
 " know Polly, as I think you do, you can understand 
 " all the good, all the cordial good, your letter has 
 " done her." 
 
 But the crown of laurel hid a crown of thorns. 
 George Eliot had the strangest sensibility to criti- 
 cism — partly from an inner conviction of her 
 strength, partly from a womanish weakness. 
 Genius, when it is not infatuate of itself, genius 
 which has kept its cool good sense, is the only 
 competent judge of its own work. It alone knows all 
 the strength and all the weakness, for it alone knows 
 the intention and the aim and the distance between 
 them and the result. The incompetent opinions of 
 reviewers, however well meant, can but wound it, 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IN HER LETTERS TO A FRIEND. 123 
 
 not in the mere vanity of the man of letters, but in 
 the easily hurt sensitiveness of a highly-strung 
 nervous organisation, of all others the most depen- 
 dent on sympathy. Such natures, in order to give 
 their full measure, must feel another heart beat in 
 unison with their own ; must feel themselves 
 understood at the first word, or rather divined, 
 interpreted, for they suffer too much in explaining 
 themselves. When Lewes offered *' Amos Barton " 
 to Mr. Blackwood, the publisher, while accepting 
 the manuscript with high praise, had asked for 
 certain alterations, certain corrections. George 
 Eliot had been downcast and discouraged — she had 
 lost confidence in herself, and had not refound her 
 courage until she heard that Mr. Blackwood, informed 
 of the effect of his criticism, had come round to her 
 own views, and would print the story as it stood. 
 The only bitter lines in all George Eliot's letters 
 are provoked by the reviewers. The realism 
 of Adam Bedc had been the cause of numberless 
 polemics. Not content with identifying all the 
 places spoken of in the novel of the day, every 
 reader would have his say in fitting the characters 
 with the names of living persons. For instance 
 Dinah was declared to be a Methodist aunt of the 
 author, a Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, whose sermons must 
 
124 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 have been noted down and reproducedverbatijn by her 
 niece. Two literary pamphlets, or rather continua- 
 tions of the novel, on these lines, are thus summarily 
 dispatched by the indignant author : 
 
 "Seth Bede and Adam Bede, junior, are specula- 
 " tions of those who are always ready to fasten 
 " themselves like leeches on a popular fame." 
 
 Mr. Lewes, ever vigilant, decided to isolate his 
 gifted charge from all such irritating influences. He 
 intercepted them, and only let the serenest, the 
 benignest among them, reach the sensitive spirit of 
 their subject. Hence forward she dwelt in calm — 
 ignorant of the noises about her which disturbed a 
 lower sphere — alone with her art, in face of her 
 mission and her God. 
 
 " The rewards of the artist lie apart from every- 
 " thing that is narrow and personal : there is no 
 " peace until that lesson is thoroughly learned. 
 " I shall go on writing from my inward promptings 
 " — writing what I love and believe, what I feel to 
 *' be true and good, if I can only render it worthily — • 
 " and then leave all the rest to take its chance. * As 
 " it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be ' 
 " with those, who are to produce any art which will 
 " touch the generations of men " (December 5, 1859). 
 
 The difference between George Eliot and the 
 
geokgf: ELIOT : ix hek letters to a friend. 125 
 
 circle of novelists and lady-novelists who flourished 
 under the shelter of the five or six great names of 
 the fifties — the whole apocalyptic difference lay in 
 this fact, that every character in her novels had its 
 spring in her own experience. She had known them 
 all from childhood, she had seen them move about 
 her, she had heard them speak on a hundred matters ; 
 she invented nothing. 
 
 Fanciful invention is the trick of a morbid 
 imagination, the sign of the unsound mind. George 
 Eliot created : that is to say, she inspired or re- 
 inspired with life things which once had lived and 
 breathed, or which, at the very least, niigJit so have 
 lived. Her fancy followed the motions of a funda- 
 mental law. During the first period of her literary 
 career — the most brilliant, the most enduring — she 
 lived wholly on the treasure of accumulated emotion 
 which her youth and childhood had supplied her. 
 The Mill on the Floss, Silas Maniei; and even 
 Middlenmrch (so much later in date), are offsprings 
 of Griff and Nuneaton. Later, when she tried her 
 touch on the experience of more recent days, on the 
 less familiar London world of politics, art, society — 
 when she wrote Felix Holt, Daniel Deroncla, 
 Roinola, she produced work of a less lasting 
 quality. The gift of the thinker and the writer is 
 
126 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 fresh and vigorous as ever, but the material is the 
 fruit of study or of conscious observation ; it is, in 
 however slight and pure a degree, "copy" ; it is no 
 longer the lively, impromptu emotion, the first fresh 
 feelings that lie at the roots of life, and form the 
 very fibres of the heart. In Adam Bcdc she is in 
 the very flush of this happier first period ; eagerly 
 interested in the present, but drawing the source of 
 her inspiration from the past : 
 
 "... I do wish much to see more of human life : 
 " how can one see enough in the short 3^ears one 
 " has to stay in the world ? But I meant that at 
 " present my mind works with the most freedom 
 "and the keenest sense of poetry in my remotest 
 "past, and there are many strata to be worked 
 "through before I can begin to use artistically any 
 " material I may gather in the present." 
 
 'Tis the moment when she is planning the first 
 chapters of The Mllloii the Floss " in much anxiety 
 " and doubt about my new novel." 'Tis the 
 moment when she is living over again the first years 
 of Tom and Maggie, or rather of little Mary Ann 
 and Isaac, the dear beloved brother, lost now to her 
 though yet alive : and the old memories revive new 
 wounds — wounds that no time shall heal. " The 
 " emotion of the artist ! " cries Lewes, who finds his 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IN IlER LETTERS TO A FRIEMU. 127 
 
 wife in tears at her writing-table ; and he dashes off, 
 in his Hght, cheerful fashion : 
 
 " My wife is at present reddening her eyes and 
 " blackening her paper over the silly sorrows of two 
 "silly young persons of her imaginary acquaintance, 
 " and therefore cannot give her mind to correspond- 
 "ence. So under her orders, I take up my pen 
 " and undertake the serious part of this letter, leaving 
 "her just a little corner to put a word of sentiment." 
 In this little corner we find the tragic line : " I have 
 " been crying myself almost into stupor over visions 
 " of sorrow." The secret of her power lies there : 
 her work lives because she wrote it with her heart's 
 blood. 
 
 As ever happens with those who have greatly 
 suffered and who have consumed their sufferings in 
 meditation, the work into which she poured all her 
 matured and disciplined heart brought with it a sort 
 of sad optimism, a sort of impersonal serenity, which 
 beholds in the evil of the past but one of the many 
 fruits of life. She writes to a friend in trouble : " I 
 " shall expect you to be a heroine in the best sense, 
 " now you are happier after a time of suffering " 
 (April 10, 1866). 
 
 And what she expects of others, she expects of 
 herself. In 1868 on revisiting Matlock and the 
 
128 p:xglish studies. 
 
 country of her childhood, she writes with a cahn 
 joy tempered by melancholy : 
 
 " I recognised all the spots I had carried in my 
 "memory for more than five-and-twenty years. I 
 " drove through that region with my father when I 
 "was a young grig — not very full of hope about my 
 " woman's future. I am one of those, perhaps, excep- 
 "tional people whose early childish dreams were 
 " much less happy than the real outcome of life " 
 (Nov. i6, 1868). Weak in health, with a delicate 
 husband, ever anxious for the one and for the 
 other, she feels with every day the serene and 
 strengthening blessing which work, perservered in, 
 ever confers on life. 
 
 " We have both been as happy as usual ; some- 
 " times well, sometimes ill ; but always more and 
 " more happy. I am finishing a book {Felix Holt) 
 " which has been growing slowly like a sickly child, 
 " because of my own ailments. We are getting 
 " patriarchal, and think of old age and death as journeys 
 "not far off. All knowledge, all thought, all achieve- 
 "ment, seems more precious and enjoyable to me 
 "than it ever was before in life. But as soon as one 
 " has found the key of life * it opens the gate of death.' 
 " Youth has not learned the art of living, and we go 
 " on bungling till our experience can only serve us 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IN HER LETTERS TO A FRIEND. 1 29 
 
 '' for a very brief space. That is the ' external order ' 
 " we must submit to." 
 
 Few incidents, few events, vary the even tenor 
 of those days. All the drama is within ; its acts are 
 the work produced by the husband and the wife. 
 Lewes' Life of Goethe is to appear— a great affair. 
 Or else he is correcting the proofs of his Aristotle ^ 
 which occupies all their familiar circle. Clarke 
 of Cambridge is looking over the revises to make 
 all sure as to the accents, while Huxley and Tyndall 
 keep a sharp look-out for scientific heresies. 
 
 ''George is sitting in a comfortable room, enjoying 
 
 " the delicious pleasure of a complete immunity from 
 
 " barrel organs and street cries, while he pursues his 
 
 "studies for his History of Science. I am doing 
 
 " nothing but indulging myself — enjoying being 
 
 " petted very much, enjoying great books, enjoying 
 
 " our new quiet home. I sat taking deep draughts of 
 
 " reading — Politique Positive, Euripides, Latin Clirisl- 
 
 " ianity and so forth — and remaining in glorious 
 
 " ignorance of * current literature.' Such is our life, 
 
 "and you perceive that instead of being miserable 
 
 "as you imagine, I am rather following a wicked 
 
 "example, and saying to my soul : ' Soul, take thine 
 
 " ' ease ' " (Dec. 14, 1863). 
 
 They give to the world one day a week ; they 
 
 11 
 
130 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 love their double solitude and their dear studies too 
 much to accord it more. They find society what it 
 is everywhere : an elegant emptiness. 
 
 "You know all the news, public and private — all 
 "about the sad cattle plague, and the Reform Bill, 
 " and who is going to be married and who is dead. 
 "So I need tell you nothing. You will find the 
 " English world extremely like what it was when you 
 " left it, conversation more or less trivial and insincere, 
 " literature just now not much better, and politics 
 " worse than either. Bring some sincerity and energy 
 " to make a little draught of pure air in your particular 
 "world" (April 10, 1866). 
 
 After all, the world which amuses them the most 
 is the charming, unpolished world of the animals 
 in the Zoo, where they love to take their walks 
 abroad whenever they are tied to London. But 
 more and more they desire to spend a large part 
 of their time in the country. The love of the 
 fields and the open country which the habits of 
 all her youth had made a second nature in George 
 Eliot could never be stifled in her breast, and 
 grew more and more imperious with every year 
 of life in town. The streets give her the shudders. 
 The least of her friend's lovely sketches of 
 Algeria, some line in a letter merely, some hint 
 
GEORCxE ELIOT: IX HER LETTERS TO A FRIEND. 13I 
 
 of blue horizons and arching sky space, reawake the 
 old nostalgia. 
 
 " I knoiv how yon are enjoying the country. I 
 "have just been having the joy myself. The wide 
 " sky, the not London, makes a new creature of 
 "me in half an hour. 1 wonder then why I am 
 ** ever depressed— why I am so shaken by agitations. 
 " I come back to London, and again the air is full 
 *' of demons " (Aug. 19, 1863). 
 
 From time to time they venture on a Continental 
 tour ; once in Italy, another year in Spain. On the 
 way to Spain they stop in Paris to visit the salon 
 of Madame Mohl, where they meet " the Sherers 
 "and other interesting people," including M. Renan, 
 " an experience that we were glad to have." They 
 traverse Spain from San Sebastian to Seville, and 
 George Eliot notes many a detail for the SpanisJi 
 Gipsy, saluting, as she passes, " the famous Pam- 
 *' peluna, looking as beautiful as it did ages ago 
 "among the grand hills." She visits as in an 
 enchanted dream the southern Scotland of Aragon ; 
 admires the Moorish art of Andalusia ; but, in the 
 picture galleries of Madrid, and before the facade 
 of the Cathedral of Seville, acknowledges the full 
 superiority of the art of the West over the art of the 
 East. 
 
132 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 In 1869 her troubles begin. One of her hus 
 band's three boys — her own abopted children, to 
 whom she served as a second mother — died after a 
 long and painful illness. 
 
 "We are beginning to see our friends again, and 
 " to outward appearance our life is what it was before ; 
 " but I have the deep feeling in an inward change, 
 " and of a nearer and more permanent company 
 " with death." The love of travel has left the heart- 
 wearied pair ; George Eliot has lost her old pleasure 
 in moving house^ever in search of something 
 nearer the ideal : henceforward one only home 
 until the grave ! But by an effort of the will she 
 controls her constitutional melancholy : 
 
 " I am no longer one of those whom Dante found 
 " in hell-border because they had been sad under 
 " the blessed sun. I am uniformly cheerful now, 
 "feeling the preciousness of these moments in 
 "which I still possess life and thought" (July 17, 
 1874). 
 
 In 1874 a last journey takes them towards Italy. 
 But illness stops them at Aix-les-Bains, and they 
 come slowly homeward by Switzerland and the 
 Black Forest, where they stay at St. Blasien : " A 
 " Luftkurort, all green hills and pines, with their 
 " tops as still as if it were the abode of the gods. But 
 
GEORGE ELIOT : IN HER LETTERS TO A FRIEND. 133 
 
 " imagine how we enjoy being at home again in our 
 " own chairs, with the famihar faces giving us smiles 
 "which are not expecting change in franc pieces. 
 '' We are both pretty well, but of course not cured 
 "of all infirmities. Death is the only physician, the 
 " shadow of his valley the only journeying that will 
 "cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years. 
 " Still we are thoroughly lively and ' spry.' " Their 
 own liveliness sufficed the busy couple. Fashion- 
 able society stretched out eager hands to the woman 
 of genius, and was willing to condone the offence 
 to its social code. It was she who held back, disin- 
 clined to exchange her happy, well-occupied days 
 for an idle round of gaieties. 
 
 " On Wednesday," writes Lewes, " I was pre- 
 " sented to the King of the Belgians, at his request, 
 " not at mine, and we had an agreeable conversation 
 " in German, French, and English on the Life of 
 ^^ Goethe, on Italy, on Belgium and her relation to 
 " England, and on the unpronounceableness of 
 " English by foreigners. He is six feet two in 
 "height, is rather good-looking, and has pleasant 
 " manners. He expressed a particular desire to 
 " make the acquaintance of Madonna ; but the 
 "timid saint declined to come" (June 6, 1876). 
 
 The month of March, 1877, is one of quite 
 
134 ENGLISH STl'DIKS. 
 
 extraordinary dissipation. On Good Friday Tenny- 
 son comes to read his " Northern Farmer " to George 
 EHot ; on the 15th a dinner at the Goshens to meet 
 the Princess Louise who had expressed her desire to 
 make the acquaintance of the great novehst. Musical 
 soirees, Wagner recitals, receptions, and parties fill 
 her letters. " We are working a little too hard at 
 "pleasure just now," she writes, though pleasure had 
 its compensations in new friendships, such as that 
 which attracted both the Leweses to Madame Cosima 
 Wagner. "Tis long," writes he, ''since such a 
 " woman rose on our horizon." But old friendships 
 are the true society of their heart. Nothing replaces 
 the void they leave behind. In October, 1878, 
 George Eliot writes to Madame Bodichon, absent 
 from London through ill health : 
 
 " I miss so much the hope that I used always to 
 " have of seeing you in London and talking over 
 " everything just as we used to do, in the way that 
 " will never exactly come with anyone else. How 
 " unspeakably the lengthening of memories in com- 
 " mon endears our old friends ! The new are 
 " comparatively foreigners, with whom one's talk is 
 " hemmed in by mutual ignorance. The one cannot 
 " express, the other cannot divine." 
 
 And thus the hour arrived when the dearest link 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IX HER LETTERS TO A FRIEXD. 1 35 
 
 of all was to be riven. George Lewes died towards 
 the end of 1878. His widow passed some months 
 in utter solitude, alone with the memory of her dear 
 companion, in company with his manuscripts which 
 she meant to publish, " a bruised creature that 
 " shrinks even from the tenderest touch," A little 
 later she founded in memory of G. H. Lewes a 
 scholarship for physiological research. " I have 
 '' been determined in my choice by the idea of what 
 " would be a sort of prolongation of Jus life. That 
 " there should always, in consequence of his having 
 " lived, be a young man working in the way he 
 " would have liked to work, is a memorial of him 
 ** that comes nearest my feeling." Little by little, 
 time and the necessity for work, still half involuntary, 
 yet imposed by conscience and an inner force, 
 restored a sort of life to the desolate widow. " We 
 " can live and be useful v»-ithout happiness," she 
 writes. But happiness was not quite over for her 
 sensitive and thrilling nature. She was yet to know 
 a flash of summer. The last letter but one is dated 
 from Italy, whither she went with Mr. Cross upon 
 their wedding journey. Her power of observation, 
 her philosophic depth of thought, are strong as ever. 
 A psychologist of the historic school might envy her 
 these lines so profound in their simplicity. "We 
 
136 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " have been staying at Milan and enjoying the 
 " frescoes and a few other great things there. The 
 " great things are always by comparison few, and 
 " there is much everywhere one would like to keep 
 " seeing after it has once served to give one a notion 
 " of historical progression " (June i, 1880). 
 
 This is the last page but one of the book so soon 
 to be closed for ever. 
 
 II. 
 
 We have glanced at the course of George Eliot's 
 life as reflected in her letters. Let us now consider 
 what they show us of her opinions on social 
 questions, on philosophy, on politics. 
 
 Her theory of life is not always clear in her novels, 
 not clear, at least, to him who runs and reads, 
 because her power of s^anpath}' with every really 
 living sentiment makes her sometimes appear a 
 convert to beliefs which she comprehends to the 
 point of loving them, but not to the point of 
 accepting them as true. Thus a contemporary critic, 
 Mr. Kegan Paul, has asked how is it possible to 
 class George Eliot in the ranks of unbelievers ? Yet 
 we can be in no doubt as to this point. Her con- 
 victions, her personal intimate convictions, remain 
 in her articles for the Westminster Review, written 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IX HER LETTERS TO A FRIEND. 137 
 
 before the earliest of her novels. They are expressed 
 with an aggressive and sometimes with a cruel 
 lucidity. The pen which wrote the Provincialcs 
 might have served for her denunciations of the 
 Anglican spirit. None has ever criticised with a 
 more scathing subtlety the worldly after-thoughts 
 and delusions which go masked in the garb of 
 other-worldliness. 
 
 But, as years roll on, her resentment fades. Once 
 her personal independence asserted, like all really 
 lofty minds, George Eliot retains no animus in the 
 revolt of her reason against a religion found untrue. 
 Her personal denial leaves her room for all possible 
 tolerance, all pity, all sympathy for the dear consol- 
 ing faith, once so profoundly loved, which still sus- 
 tains, direct, enlightens the heart, if not the intelli- 
 gence, of her weaker brethren. In that she showed 
 herself superior to Lewes, who to the end maintained 
 the attitude of a personal enmity towards Christianity, 
 and strutted ever on his barricade, sword in hand. In 
 this connection, I recall a characteristic anecdote. A 
 young friend of the Leweses was describing an act 
 of self-sacriiice on the part of a common acquaint- 
 ance ; she concluded : 
 
 " Is not that quite Christ-like ? " 
 
 "Christ-like!" cried Lewes with his most indignant 
 
138 EXGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 flash. " Never say that again ! He do it ! He 
 '' would have told others to do it ! " 
 
 At bottom, there is moi-e than a sally in this wit- 
 ticism — a la Voltaire. 'Tis the humouristic con- 
 demnation of the very essence of Christianity — the 
 condemnation of faith by works. George Eliot 
 must have smiled — but without approving : 
 
 " Pray don't ever ask me again not to rob a man 
 " of his religious belief, as if you thought my mind 
 " tended to such robbery. 1 have too profound a 
 " conviction of the efficacy that lies in all sincere 
 " faith, and the spiritual blight that comes with no 
 " faith, to have an)^ negative propagandism in me. 
 " In fact, I have very little sympathy with Free- 
 " thinkers as a class, and have lost all interest in 
 " mere antagonism to religious doctrines. I care 
 " only to know, if possible, the lasting meaning that 
 " lies in all religious doctrine from the beginning till 
 " now " (November 26, 1862). 
 
 She is one of those minds with whom Freethinkers 
 succeed in discrediting free thoughts. 
 
 " I am terribly frightened about Mrs, — — . She 
 '* wrote to me telling me that .we were sure to suit 
 " each other, neither of us holding the opinions of 
 *' the Mouious dc Panurgc. Nothing could have 
 " been more decisive of the opposite prospect to me, 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IX HKH LETTERS TO A FRIEND. 139 
 
 " If there is one attitude more odious to me than 
 " any other of the many attitudes of ' knowingness," 
 " it is that air of superiority to the vulgar. However, 
 " she will soon find out that 1 am a very common- 
 " place woman." 
 
 What she seeks chiefly, what she prizes highest, is 
 the direct honesty of a mind which cannot rest short 
 of the truth, and seeks not to deceive itself with vain 
 illusions. She salutes the birth of Darwinism — not 
 as a discovery which will solve the dolorous riddle 
 of the earth, as certain thinkers seem to imagine — 
 but because it places boldly in the land of scientific 
 fact, a vital question hitherto confined to the airy 
 realms of argument : 
 
 *' We have been reading Darwin's book on the 
 " Origin of Species just now : it makes an epoch 
 '* as the expression of his thorough adhesion, after 
 ** longyears of study, to the Doctrine of Development 
 " — and not the adhesion of an anonym like the 
 " author of the ]\\';figes, but of a long celebrated 
 " naturalist. The book is sadly wanting in illustra- 
 " five facts, of which he has collected a vast number, 
 " but reserves them for a future book, of which this 
 " smaller one is the avant-coiireiir. Tliis will 
 " prevent the work from becoming popuhu- as tlie 
 *' Vestiges did, but it will have a great effect in the 
 
140 
 
 F.NGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " scientific world, causing a thoroni^h and open 
 " discussion of a question about which people 
 " have hitherto felt timid. So the world gets on, 
 " step by step, towards brave clearness, and honesty ! 
 " But to me, the development theory and all other 
 '' explanations of processes by which things came to 
 " be, produce a feeble impression compared with the 
 " mystery that lies under the processes " (December 
 S, 1859). 
 
 Thus, she goes through the world, searching in 
 everything the quality of reality in her faith as in her 
 life, in her life as in her art. Religion suflices her 
 no longer, since religion does not repose upon an 
 evident demonstrable truth ; yet she feels that 
 religion carries in her bosom the germ and the 
 presentment of the truth that is to be : 
 
 " God bless you — that is not a false word, how- 
 " ever many false ideas may have been hidden under 
 " it. No, not false ideas, but temporary ones — 
 " caterpillars and chyrsalides of future ideas " 
 (February 15, 1862). 
 
 Let us leave religion to those whom she contents, 
 and quit, not in unfaith, the ritual of our little hour 
 when our heart requires a wider outlook. 
 
 " As for forms and ceremonies I feel no regret that 
 ^' any should turn to them for comfort, if they can 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IN HEK LETTERS TO A FRIEND. 14I 
 
 " find comfort in them ; sympathetically, I enjoy 
 " them myself. But I have faith in the working out 
 " of higher possibilities than the Catholic Church, or 
 ** any other Church has presented ; and those who 
 " have strength to wait and endure, are bound to 
 " accept no formula which their whole souls — their 
 ** intellect as well as their emotions — do not embrace 
 " with entire reverence. The ' highest calling and 
 " 'election' is to do withoiil opiitni, and live through all 
 " our pain with conscious, clear-eyed endurance." 
 
 Thus in her mind the graft of stoicism is budded 
 in the stem of science. Truth examined becomes 
 capable of endurance. , 
 
 " I think the highest and best thing is rather .-. 
 " suffer with real suffering than to be happy in the 
 " imagination of an unreal good. I would rather 
 " know that the beings I love are in some trouble, 
 '* and suffer because of it, even though 1 can't help 
 " them, than be fancying them happy when they are 
 " not so, and making myself comfortable on the 
 " strength of that false belief. And so I am 
 " impatient of all ignorance and concealment " 
 (February 15, 1862). 
 
 Her idea of the universe, as it reveals itself in this 
 correspondence, is essentially one with that which 
 disengages itself from the fabric of her novels. 'Tis 
 
142 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 71 courageous and ardent pessimism, the sombre 
 vision of Hartmann enlightened by infinite beams 
 of tenderness and self-sacrifice. A reign of universal 
 misery — ignorance, pride, suffering, and above all, 
 those great fatalities which are the acts of God — 
 incessantly combatted by the loving and disinterested 
 effort of the great of soul ; 
 
 '' The benignant strength of one, transformed 
 To joy of many." 
 
 But for the pure goodness which flows noiselessly, 
 obscurely, beneath the vain tumult of things, she 
 would think this world of ours " the work of a 
 ** demon." Yet the tendency is persistently upward. 
 The strong, or even those who are only a little 
 stronger, must persevere in helping their more delicate 
 fellows along the difficult path : 
 
 " My impression of the good there is in all un- 
 " selfish effort is continually strengthened. Doubt- 
 " less, many a ship is drowned on expeditions of dis- 
 " covery or rescue, and precious freights lie buried. 
 ** But there was the good of manning and furnishing 
 " the ship with a great purpose before it set out." 
 
 Honest and effectual work is the ideal law of all 
 society. Nothing is more vulgar than our current 
 opinions on the relative values of functions and 
 employments. " Who sweeps a room as to God's 
 
georgp: ELIOT : in her letters to a friend. 143 
 
 " praise " fulfils his destiny with honour. She develops 
 her thoughts upon this matter in connection with the 
 higher education of women. A wider learning does 
 not necesarily imply a more imperious ambition. 
 Rather should it teach both men and women that 
 the very highest forms of work must always be 
 reserved and sacred to a few, who alone may 
 accomplish them hi all their fulness. The true 
 Gospel is that the worst form of dishonour consists 
 in shirking any work we have before us.* " What- 
 •* soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy 
 " might," said an elder Apostle. Above all, let none 
 devote himself or herself to a task for which he or she 
 is unfit. When women are more highly educated they 
 will grasp a wider scheme of things, they will 
 recognise the immense quantity of social unpro- 
 ductive labour which some one iiiitsf perform, and 
 which, in the present state of things, is either left 
 undone or done badly. They will, many of them, 
 devote themselves gladly to doing it well. The 
 
 * George Eliot put her theory in practice. All she undertook 
 was done in perfection. At Griff she had been a model farmer's 
 daughter ; to the end of her days she was an accomplished house- 
 keeper, " so delicate with her needle, and an admirable musician." 
 Her handwriting and her pronunciation were of the rarest clear- 
 ness, the index of a thought always desirous of expressing itself 
 with exactness ; for the hand and the voice have also their virtue 
 of honesty. It was only as an after-thought that one remarked the 
 elegance of the writing and the sweetness of the voice. 
 
144 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 peison;il example of George Eliot was, it is true, 
 better calculated to encourage a feminine ambition 
 than to point the truth of her maxims. She felt this, 
 and was always a little embarrassed in explaining her 
 theories on this subject. 
 
 " There are many points of this kind th^it want 
 " being urged, but they do not come well from me." 
 
 But she does not therefore cease to interest herself 
 in the cause. Her name figures in the list of the 
 the earliest benefactors of Girton College. In 1878 
 she announces in the same triumphant line the 
 victory of the Republican party in France, and the 
 opening of London University to women. 
 
 M. Dupin may thunder against the "frantic luxury 
 *' of ladies " and the futility of their tastes. He takes 
 the effect for the cause. George Eliot complains of 
 the tendency of life in the sixties, which pushed 
 with a detestable perseverance all the instincts of 
 women towards the sole development of personal 
 extravagance. " I feel half guilty when I buy a 
 " bonnet or a gown made anywhere near the fashion. 
 *' I am not sure but that we ought to invent some new 
 "sort of quakerism, as a protest and a reaction." 
 Higher education will give a broader scope to 
 women's energies, and therefore she welcomes it in 
 faith and hope. But her concern with the intellectual 
 
GE0KG1-: ELIOT: IX IIKH LK'ITKKS I'O A KKMKXI). 145 
 
 poverty, with the moral waste, which diminishes the 
 vakie of Hfe in the upper classes is not allowed to 
 blind her to the grosser misery of the poor. 
 
 " 1 have just l-»een reading with deep interest and 
 "heart-stirring article on the ' Infant Seamstresses ' 
 " in the Englislncoman's "Journal. . . I am writing at 
 "the end of the day, on the brink of sleep, too tired 
 "to think of anything but that picture of the little 
 "sleeping slop-worker who had pricked her tiny 
 "fingers so" (September 17, 1859). 
 
 Home politics occupy her relatively little. The 
 Conservative elections of 1874 leave her absolutely 
 indifferent. She is far more interested in foreign 
 affairs, which place more visibly in action, and in a 
 more forcible fashion, the passions, and forces, and 
 miseries of humanity. The spectacle of the universe, 
 as seen from the point of view of a Foreign-Office 
 philosopher, is melancholy enough and little to the 
 honour of the species. George Eliot looks on 
 sufficiently discouraged. As to the absurd paper 
 war between France and England, which succeeded 
 the Italian Risorgimento, and very nearly provoked 
 material hostilities between the two combatants, 
 she writes : 
 
 " It is a sad thing to contemplate such a return to 
 
 " savagery. One would like to feel one's life borne 
 
 12 
 
146 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " forwards on the advancing wave and not back- 
 " wards on the receding one ; one would Hke to 
 " move witli the flowing rather than the ebbing 
 "tide" (December 15, 1859). 
 
 The war of 1870 could not but impress profoundly 
 a nature at once so musing and so sensitive. In the 
 first months of the war her sympathies, as 'twas 
 general in England, went with the Germans. On 
 August 25 she writes to Madame Bodichon, who 
 was naturally firm for France : 
 
 " I am very sorry for the sufferings of the French 
 " nation ; but I think these sufferings are better for 
 " the moral welfare of the people than victory would 
 " have been. The war has been drawn down on 
 " them by an iniquitous government, but in a great 
 "portion of the French people there has been 
 " nourished a wicked glorification of selfish pride, 
 " excluding any true conception of what lies outside 
 "their own vain wishes. The Germans, it seems, 
 " were expected to stand like toy soldiers for the 
 " French to knock them down. It is quite true that 
 " the war is, in some respects, the conflict of two 
 " differing forms of civilization. But whatever charm 
 " we may see in the Southern Latin races, this ought 
 " not to blind us to the great contributions which 
 "German energies have made in all sorts of ways to 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IX HER LETTERS TO A FRIEND. 147 
 
 "the common treasure of mankind. And who that 
 "has any spirit of justice can help sympathising 
 " with them in their grand repulse of the French 
 "project to invade ruid divide them? 11 I were a 
 " Frenchwom in, much as 1 might wail over French 
 "sufferings, I cannot help believing that 1 should 
 " detest the French talk about the ' Prussians.' " 
 
 The war continues. Victorious Germany did not 
 hesitate to disabuse her friends. In a letter dated 
 October 10, 1870, George Eliot exclaims: "Oh, 
 what a lovely autumn is shining on those hideous 
 guns which are being hauled along to Paris ! 
 What novices in wickedness were Milton's devils ! " 
 
 And when the war is over, she follows with a 
 vigilant anguish that yet more cruel inner war, which 
 during seven years was to dispute the moral future 
 of France. She writes under the Ordre Moral : 
 " The saddest part of our life is reading the 
 " French telegrams in The Times." But the triumph 
 of legal liberty arrives and throws a bow of promise 
 across the sombre horizon of Europe : " Yes, it is a 
 "comfort to me that in the midst of so many 
 "dispiriting European signs, PYance has come so 
 "far through her struggle" (Jan. 17, 1873). 
 
148 ICXGLISII STlDIliS. 
 
 111. 
 
 The reader will naturally expect in these letters 
 many an interesting reference to the men and events 
 of the day. The anti-vivisectionists would not be 
 edified to read lunv Huxley speaks of their well- 
 intentioned championesses, and of the "profligate 
 " lying of virtuous women." A more flattering 
 notice is accorded to the hero of the hour, the 
 conqueror of the Ashantis : 
 
 " At Sir James Paget's 1 was much interested to 
 " find that a gentle-looking, clear-eyed, neatly-made 
 " man was Sir Garnet Wolseley ; and I had some 
 "talk with him which quite confirmed the impres- 
 "sion of him as one of those men who have a 
 " power of command by dint of their sweet temper, 
 " calm demeanour, and unswerving resolution." 
 
 Criticism of literary matters is far rarer than any 
 would expect. She is a great admirer of Lowell, 
 especially of his Study Wiiulows ; she praises the 
 Aiitobiogmphv of J. S. Mill, but would have liked 
 a different end. She goes to the play for the first 
 time after many years to see The Bells of 
 Erckmann - Chatrian. She finds Lcs Koumias- 
 sine, by Henry Greville, a pretty novel, but sees 
 nought but a certain theatric ability in her 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IK HEK LETTERS TO A FRIEXD. 149 
 
 Eprcuvcs dc Rassic. Her great friend in litera- 
 ture is Moliere, with whom she has, in truth, far 
 more affinity than with Shakespeare, though she is 
 continually compared to the Swan of Avon : 
 
 " It is nice to think of you reading our great, 
 "great favourite, Moliere, while, for the present, we 
 "are not taking him down from the shelves — only 
 " talking about him, as we do very often. I get a 
 "good deal of pleasure out of the sense that 
 "someone I love is enjoying my favourite writers. 
 " I think the Misanthrope the finest, most com- 
 "plete production of its kind in the world" (Dec. 
 5. 1859). 
 
 I have not vet spoken of the value of tiiese letters 
 as literature. I think they will be counted one of 
 the jewels in George Eliot's crown. They have 
 none of her faults ; even the latest in date are com- 
 pletely free from that too abstract and philosophic 
 style, that heaviness of phrase, that excess of detail, 
 which mar the last period of her novels. These 
 letters are as clear as fresh water welling from an 
 ample spring, flowing straight to its goal. Every 
 here and there the pleasant negligence of a hasty pen, 
 unembarrassed by the agreement of metapliors ; — 
 never a trace of affectation or tine writing. The 
 idea suggests the image ; the feeling finds its vent at 
 
150 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 random. Hence a poetry, a naturalness, of a rare 
 degree : 
 
 " Our dear Mrs. S. is laid up with illness. The 
 " doctor orders her to keep her bed for three or four 
 "years at least. She looks like a white angel in her 
 "little bed" (Sept. 16, 1874). 
 
 The heart and the genius of George Eliot are one 
 and indivisible : " Every kind of love that comes 
 " near me does me unspeakable good," she writes to 
 her friend in August, 1859. Hence her incom- 
 parable superiority. This century has borne as 
 powerful realists as she — Thackeray, Balzac, Flau- 
 bert — but no one of them has had her universal 
 touch, her deep completeness ; for none of them 
 has felt with the same intensity the full powers 
 of affection and sympathy ; none of them has built 
 his work as she does, directly on the very founda- 
 tions of the human soul ; none of them, like she, has 
 strung his instrument with heart-strings and thrilled 
 us with the very fibre of our own most intimate 
 nature. None of them — -however capable of tender 
 friendship — could have written to a friend just such 
 lines as these : 
 
 " I can enter into what you have felt about poor 
 
 "dear E 's illness; for serious illness, such as 
 
 "seems to bring death near, makes one feel the 
 
GEORGE ELIOT: IN HER LETTERS TO A FRIEND. 151 
 
 "simple brother and sisterhood so strongly, that 
 "those we were apt to think almost indifferent to us 
 " before, touch the very quick of our hearts. I 
 "suppose if we happened only to hold the hand of 
 "a hospital patient when she was dying, her face, 
 " and all the memories along with it, would seem to 
 "lie deeper in our experience than all we knew of 
 " many old friends and blood relations." 
 
 The same power of sympathy which makes her so 
 great an artist, render her also a profounder moralist 
 than her fellows. The scientific ethics of the 
 modern age contemplate a millennium of social 
 peace, and a perfected humanity, the result of the 
 victories of thought and science. But thought and 
 science will only arm us for the struggle of life ; they 
 can add no cubit to the stature of our souls, unless a 
 springing well of emotion gush beneath them. The 
 horrors of the American War reveal the inadequacy 
 of all purely industrial, material or scientific progress : 
 
 " It is a discouraging thing to see the low moral 
 " level, the barbarity of feeling — rendered still more 
 "ugly by the pretence of progress — which are shown 
 " in the acts and words of the Americans. . . . My 
 " best consolation is that an example on so tremen- 
 " dous a scale of the need of the education of mankind 
 " through the affections and sentiments as a basis for 
 
152 ENGLISH STL" DIES. 
 
 "true development, will have a strong influence on 
 ''all thinkers, and be a check to the arid, narrow 
 "antagonism wliich, in some quarters, is held to be 
 "the only form of liberal thought" (I-'eb. 15, 1862). 
 
 Such, in its essential outline, is this notable 
 correspondence. It may give an idea of what George 
 Eliot was in her relations to her friends. Her 
 letters, when published by her husband's piety, will 
 not, I believe, be found to modify the unanimous 
 judgment of her contemporaries : they will but 
 confirm and justify the high eminence accorded to 
 her work and to her personality. In her private 
 letters, as in her novel, she reveals that peculiar 
 union (perhaps unique in literature) of profound 
 reflective powers with an intense emotivity, of a 
 mind open to the widest teachings of modern 
 philosophy and science, with a heart ejuick to 
 sympathise with every phase, individual or social, of 
 our human destiny. It may be that the heart of 
 woman, richer in tenderness and self-sacrifice, is 
 more capable than ours of supporting with impunity 
 the melancholy and redoubtable privileges of the 
 psychologist. Non Jiere, non indigjiari, scd intelligerc, 
 is the last word of Spinoza ; and the device which 
 might be written on every page of George Eliot is ; 
 Couiprcndre et aimcf. 
 
Olhsr MadoX'Brovon. 
 
 The name of Madox-Brown, rendered illustrious by 
 a painter of genius whose influence has renewed the 
 artistic atmosphere of England, appeared at one 
 moment destined to surround itself with a second 
 aureole. The son of Eord Madox-Brown, Oliver, a 
 painter by heredity, a poet by vocation, promised a 
 great artist and a great writer to the future. 'Twas 
 but the gleam of an instant ; all their visions of 
 glory were extinguished for ever in his twentieth 
 year. Oliver Madox-Brown died a mere child ; but 
 he had lived long enough to leave behind him a 
 cherished memory, and in the hearts of those who 
 had loved him — even among the greatest of them — 
 an ineffaceable impression of strength, of power, of 
 gift, of something more than promise. Nine years 
 after his death the poor lad found still a poet to 
 bewail him, and a biographer to recount his brief 
 and brilliant story. 
 
 {■5? 
 
154 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Mr. John Ingram, to whom we owe the life of 
 OHver Brown, is also the biographer of Edgar Allan 
 Poe. It was no mere hazard of friendship, but a 
 real intellectual sympathy which induced him to 
 seek, in his second subject, as it were, an echo of the 
 past. The name of Edgar Allan Poc rises involun- 
 tarily to the lips of the reader of young Oliver's 
 " Reliquiae." Nor was this the first apparition, in 
 the family history of the Madox-Browns, of a like 
 spirit of fantasy and strangeness. Oliver's great- 
 grandfather was Dr. John Brown, the celebrated 
 Edinburgh physician, the precursor of Broussais, 
 who found in excitability the last secret of our vital 
 forces, as certainly it was the first and last explana- 
 tion of his own ardent and disordered destiny. 
 Oliver's father, Ford Madox-Brown, the great his- 
 torical painter, the Socialist of a school of Realism, 
 was the grandson of the famous mystical physician. 
 It is interesting to note this transmission of imagina- 
 tion and nervous force ; it explains how the young 
 Oliver came to be as original as he was precocious, 
 contrary to the rule of infant prodigies, who owe 
 their success, almost invariably, to their powers of 
 assimilation and imitation. 
 
 Oliver w'as born in London in 1855. Tradition 
 embellishes the childhood of remarkable children. 
 
OLIVER MADOX-BROWN. 155 
 
 especially when 'tis seen through a mist of parents' 
 tears. It is said that OHver's first word was the ad- 
 jective " beautiful," which he suddenly pronounced 
 while looking at some fine engravings. When the 
 child was two years old, he lost a little brother, and 
 was found alone in the nursery sobbing and saying, 
 " Arthur, shall I never see you any more?" This 
 first encounter with death marked him thenceforth 
 for ever ; towards the end of his short life he spoke 
 of the death of Arthur as his earliest memory. At 
 four years old, one of his father's friends was playing 
 with them one day, when the child began to describe 
 one of Mr. Madox-Brown's landscapes so faithfully, 
 so minutely, that his astonished interlocutor listened 
 as surprised " as if the cat had taken to talking." At 
 five years old his father painted him as "The English 
 "Boy"; the toys in the child's hands threw into 
 strong relief the depth and seriousness of the great 
 wide eyes. 
 
 At school he was chiefly remarkable for his 
 laziness, his cleverness, and his promptitude in find- 
 ing a quick repartee in difficulties. In 1867, at 
 twelve years old, he painted his first water colour : 
 "Margaret of An jou and the Robbers." The sub- 
 ject had been given by his father. The composition 
 is infantine, but the faces of a striking vivacity. At 
 
156 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 14, he exhibited at the Dudley Gallery a " Chiron 
 receiving the infant Jason," studied from the life. 
 The art-critics were struck by the life and passion 
 which redeemed the bad drawing and inexperience 
 of this early effort. Movement and force attracted 
 him above all things, and nothing so much as the 
 movement of horses and the sea. In 1870, barely 
 fifteen 3'ears old, he exhibited two pictures — the 
 marvellous " Obstinacy," where the horse resists his 
 rider who spurs him into the waves, and " Exercise," 
 an Arab breaking in his steed by the shore of the 
 sea. 
 
 In collaboration with his father he illustrated 
 Byron's poems, and his ''Mazeppa" is a living tempest. 
 Oliver's mother had once brought him from Tyne- 
 mouth to London through a fearful storm. The 
 small child, hidden away under a coil of ropes, had 
 stayed on deck all the time, despite the wind, the 
 rain, the lightning, the waves that washed the deck. 
 Admiration held him spellbound ; he had no time for 
 fear. And something of that storm at sea was to 
 haunt and possess the boy's imagination thenceforth 
 for ever. In 1871 he determined to paint that 
 tempest, and set to work on a romantic picture, 
 " Prospero and the child Miranda left to perish on the 
 Rotten Ship." The painter was still too much a child 
 
OLlVKlv: MADOX-liROWX. 157 
 
 himself to have seized the full spirit of Shakespeare, 
 for on Miranda's face, instead of the smile of exquisite 
 unconsciousness of Shakespeare's heroine, he has 
 depicted a look of appeal and fright. In 1872, after 
 some lessons from a l^'rcncli jxiintcr, M. Iiaithc, he 
 showed at the " Fiench Artists," in Bond Street, his 
 finest piece of work : " Silas Marner, with Efile in his 
 ''arms, discovering the body of Geoffrey's wife." In 
 this work the original invention and the dramatic 
 truth of P'ord Madox-Brown are conspicuous without 
 the faintest trace of the mere student's imitation. 
 The style and the coloration are wholly independent. 
 At seventeen years old the child was sure of his own 
 footing even on his father's field. 
 
 Although he was to live another two years, " Silas 
 " Marner" remains his last attempt at painting. His 
 literary vocation henceforth absorbed him. He had 
 begun to write sonnets at thirteen, to the astonish- 
 ment of his parents, who never supposed him aware 
 of the existence of sonnets. He tore them up as 
 fast as lie wrote them, annoyed at h2ivingthem shown 
 to strangers. Here, for once, was an infant prodigy 
 who disliked being shown off" as a prodigy. But 
 two of these childish sonnets remain ; original in 
 expression no less than in thought, I have never 
 been able to read them without a singular admiration. 
 
158 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 How Tennysonian in their harmony this quatrain 
 addressed to a lady dreaming : 
 
 " Or art thou listening to the gondolier 
 
 Whose song is dying o'er the waters wide, 
 Trying the faintly-sounding tune to hear 
 Before it mixes with the rippling tide ? " 
 
 The hero of the second sonnet, a Darwinian sonnet, 
 is the Chameleon, the sinister survivor of primeval 
 times, with his melancholy tired eyes, his pleated 
 skin, his look as of some unhappy old man to whom 
 Heaven has refused the boon of death, and who 
 lives on, after all his friends ,after all his joys, with 
 even the memory of them turned chilly and wan, 
 alone. The child who at thirteen could write such 
 verses and conceive such themes was of the race of 
 poets and thinkers. 
 
 After 1870, Oliver's literary studies were directed 
 by a M. Jules Andrieu, a Frenchman established in 
 London, at present French Consul in Jersey, a man 
 of letters and, what is more, a man of taste, who 
 seems to have exercised a considerable influence 
 upon his young pupil. Through the bitter winter 
 of 1870-71 Oliver would remain for hours shut up 
 in his bedroom without a fire ; he was composing 
 his first novel, the Black Sivaii. There is a French 
 novel called Lc Cygiie Noir: iiiie hainc a hord ; I 
 
OLIVER MADOX-BROWN. 1 59 
 
 do not know if Oliver had ever heard of it. In 
 his novel a hate and a love were both pent up on 
 board a ship. An Anglo-Australian, Gabriel Denver, 
 having made a mariagc dc raisoii with an heiress, 
 Dorothy, is bringing her home to England. She 
 loves him ; he is indifferent. One day, on board 
 the " Black Swan," Denver sees a young girl, a fellow- 
 passenger ; she is leaning in the cabin doorway, 
 her arms bare, a kerchief across her shoulders. In 
 an instant the vision has vanished, but his fate is 
 decided : he loves her ; his wife is dead to him 
 thenceforward. Laura returns his love. One 
 evening, in the midst of their guilty sweet confessions, 
 they see the figure of a woman detached from the 
 black mass of shade which the ship projects against 
 the luminous sky. The moonlight illuminates her ; 
 it is the outraged wife whose name is never spoken 
 between them, whose thought, like an obscure dread, 
 is always in their hearts^ One evening Dorothy 
 comes to the lovers' tryst in Laura's place. In the 
 dusk Gabriel stoops to kiss her, recognises her, and 
 recoils as though he had set his foot on a snake. 
 She burst out at length in a fury of insults, defies 
 him, dares him to throw her overboard. Maddened 
 by her goading, he is near to taking her at her 
 word when a waft of a love song wanders by them. 
 
l6o KXdLlSH STI'DIKS. 
 
 It is Luuni, come to her tryst. He is saved from :i 
 crime. Still rapt in wonder, in self-loathing, in 
 remorse, he has not yet moved from the spot when 
 he hears the cry of " Fire 1 " And see ! the vessel is 
 in flames 1 five days' steam from the Cape of Good 
 Hope, the nearest land. All sonls are lost save three 
 who are saved in a small boat, and these are, 
 naturally, the injured wife, the husband and his 
 love. Dorothy goes raving mad from drinking sea 
 water, and confesses in her last delirium her crime 
 of arson. The two lovers are thus set free, alone 
 together, on the verge of the abyss. A passing vessel 
 takes them up, but Laura dies of fatigue and ex- 
 haustion. In the evening, while the sailors prepare 
 her funeral, they see, towards the helm, a strange 
 silhouette — a man with a dead woman in his arms, 
 her head fallen back, dragged down by the weight 
 of the streaming hair, her white hands hanging inert 
 in the moonlight. An instant the two lovers were 
 seen together against the sky ; but in the twinkling 
 of an eye all was over ; the infinite waves of the sea 
 had closed above the dead and above the living. . . . 
 The publisher to whom Oliver showed the first 
 draught of this romance was struck by its power but 
 horrified by its immorality and lugubriousness, 
 neither of them, at that moment, selling qualities 
 
OLIVER MADOX-BROWN. l6l 
 
 with the British public. The young author was told 
 he must tone down and attenuate. Dorothy is no 
 longer an outraged wife, but a jealous cousin, and the 
 story is provided with a happy ending : the two 
 lovers marry, have a great many children, and live 
 happy ever after. All the cruel logic of necessitv, 
 all the fatal determinism, the poetic justice of 
 Oliver's ^shylean vision give place to an Adelphi 
 melodrama. The Black Sivaii, white as a whitened 
 sepulchre, was published under the title of Gabriel 
 Denver and obtained a decent success of esteem : 
 the central idea had vanished, but all the publisher's 
 cleverness had not purged the book of more passion 
 and psychology and picturesqueness than often fall 
 to the lot of a reviewer. The editors of Oliver's 
 collected works, his two brothers-in-law, Mr. Francis 
 Hueffer and Mr. W. M. Rossetti, have shown not 
 only piety to the dead but good taste in re-establish- 
 ing the earlier version. 
 
 Gabriel Denver is the only book by Oliver Madox- 
 Brown which appeared in his lifetime, and it is the 
 only one quite finished. Before he had completed it, 
 the beginnings of several others moved their shifting 
 woof on the unceasing loom of his young imagina- 
 tion. Most of them are inspired by his Devonshire 
 
 holidays of 1871. The few weeks he spent, listening 
 
 13 
 
l62 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 with all his cars to the county-people's legends, 
 studying the dialect, learning by heart the landscape, 
 were fruitful to his mind. Thence sprung his 
 unfinished novel Dwale BlitlJi (the Flower of 
 Madness), which in a different framework, half 
 legendary, half real, reproduces the stormy passions 
 of Gabriel Denver. The heroine, Helen Serpleton, 
 comes of the house of Tracy, descended from the 
 murderer of Thomas a Becket, whose dying curse 
 still clings about the doomed race. She loves a 
 blind poet, who returns her passion. But the part 
 of Dorothy is played by Helen's husband ; absent 
 lost, and long believed dead, but who returns to 
 separate his wife from her betrothed. She dies ; and 
 her poet comes to gather at her grave the scarlet and 
 purple clusters of the belladonna, whose sprays have 
 grown with Helen's life. In the intimate circle of 
 the Madox-Browns, it was known that the figure of 
 the blind poet was not entirely a fancy picture. 
 Oliver knew and loved him in real life, and many of 
 us still recall with emotion the brief, unhappy days 
 of Philip Bourke Marston. Oliver, fascinated by his 
 charm and his misfortunes, made a hero of his gifted 
 friend, and the survivor — himself long dead, alas ! — 
 the still young survivor, nine years after the death of 
 his friend, celebrated his Nightshade in beautiful 
 
OLIVER .MADOX-P,KO\V\. 163 
 
 verse ;ind sang the tragic destiny ot the marvellous 
 
 boy. 
 
 Oliver also liad tried his hand at verse. We have 
 
 spoken of his childhood's sonnets. A riper effort, 
 
 really fine in its passion and its music was found, 
 
 after his death, amid his papers : 
 
 " God, what a soul that woman had ! ah me. 
 My own grows chill within me ! There's no 
 
 standard 
 In heaven above or hell beneath o'er which 
 A woman's soul may not predominate — 
 May not aspire to — or degrade itself. 
 
 Once, she was almost beautiful. Her eyes 
 Shone glittering ; twin stars plucked from the abyss 
 Of God's most fathomless soul — twin mysteries, 
 So deep, your drowned brain whirled in them, so 
 
 bright 
 That even their colour seemed a mystery — 
 Whence the emotional keen spirit flashed forth 
 Its scintillant electricities. 
 
 Ah love, love, love ! 
 Whose unintelligible promptings lure 
 Earth's mightiest nerves to thraldom, whose deep 
 
 magic. 
 Too swift for timorous afterthought, too deep 
 For present doubt, makes blind the brain, whose 
 
 hands 
 Mould this man's heaven from that man's hell. 
 
 The stillness grew 
 So deep at last, that I could hear my heart 
 Throb like an echoing football. Once a thrush 
 
164 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Broke thro' the brambles with wild amorous cries ; 
 And, as I marked its startled flight, the trees 
 Reeled in my sight till all the foliage 
 
 Seemed whirling in a dream. How long I wandered 
 
 Dreaming my soul out thus, I know not ; only 
 
 I think a sudden rustle underfoot 
 
 Broke up my reverie at last ; and I 
 
 Stepped back o' the instant. Stretched across my 
 
 path 
 Swift-striped and sibilant-fanged a viper crawled 
 From one stone to another, and disappeared 
 Even as I watched it." 
 
 The date of these stanzas is autumn. Are they 
 the fancy of a child-poet conjuring up a meet subject 
 for his verse, or have we here the first authentic 
 thrill of a boy's fresh passion ? It matters little, 
 whether they come from the heart or the brain, these 
 strophes bear little likeness to the ordinary progeny 
 of calf love. The invocation to love has a ring of 
 IMusset in its music. But there is a gulf between 
 the two young men : the melancholy child of the 
 North, with his solemn inward vision, is a Musset, 
 who has encountered the ghost of Ulalume and 
 the night's Plutonian shore. 
 
 The visionary character of Oliver's genius grew 
 more and more accentuated. His odd fantasies and 
 strange ways became a cause of anxiety to his 
 friends and relations. Meanwhile, he had his share 
 
OLIVER MADOX-BROWN. 1 65 
 
 of literary disappointment. The editor of Cornhill, 
 who liad accepted liis Divale Blnth, subject to 
 revision, returned him the corrected manuscript with- 
 out a word of encouragement or excuse. His temper 
 grew sombre ; but his ardour for work remained as 
 strenuous as ever. He stayed in town, busy, when 
 his family took up its summer quarters at Margate, 
 in 1874. He meant to join them in September, but 
 he fell ill. From his lonely bedroom he wrote to 
 his friend Marston : 
 
 " I am in bed, and heavily stricken by the Lord 
 " to whom, &c., &c. For the moment I must put 
 " up with the pleasure of minutely observing the 
 " newly white-washed ceiling, under which I have 
 " the honour to lie awake at nights and say my 
 " lonely prayers. I am not a blasphemer at heart — 
 " quite the contrary. But I wish I were master of 
 " all creation for a few moments ! " 
 
 He got better, and was able to join his parents at 
 the sea ; but on his return he took to his bed again 
 — to rise no more. A fortnight later, all hope was 
 given up : Oliver was dying of blood-poisoning. 
 He worked to the last, dictating to his mother and 
 to his brother-in-law, the eminent art-critic William 
 Rossetti. He had dreamed of doing for London 
 what Balzac has done for Paris, for he was not of 
 
l66 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 those whom the crowd oppresses : Marston, in his 
 lament for Ohver, speaks finely of that city-passion of 
 his. As he lay a-clying, he invented the story of a little 
 street Arab, the spawn of an alley— such a hungry, 
 witty, ragged urchin, as Dickens would h'ave sketched 
 with sympathy. The child lives in the page with 
 his hunger and his irrepressible gaiety — we can 
 almost see him sitting in the midst of a row of 
 sparrows on some low parapet, kicking his heels, 
 and wondering which is the hungrier, the birds or 
 he. 
 
 As the fever ravaged the young delicate frame, the 
 imagination grew still more easily excited. Oliver 
 had read some story of a sick man whose real life 
 disappears in order to make place for a feverish 
 dream, of which the imaginary incidents become 
 substantial, become reality for him : 
 
 " Oh, if we had to live out our dreams, a strange 
 " lot we'd be, for certain," he had exclaimed in the 
 Yeth Hounds. And now the poor lad was con- 
 demned to live out his dreams. 
 
 The whole force of his poetic imagination flaring 
 up in one last brilliant flicker, made of Oliver Madox- 
 Brown's death-bed, a terrible, a sublime, a heart- 
 rending spectacle. All the incidents of his sickness, 
 travestied by iiis delirium, became so many chapters 
 
OLIVER MADOX-BROWN. 167 
 
 of a sinister romance, stranger, more unnatural than 
 the wildest of his fancies ; yet full of pity and terror, 
 whose cruel poetry fell in long tirades of free blank 
 verse from his exhausted lips. Death, death ever 
 nearing, filled his apprehension. The voung poet 
 imagined himself condemned to death hv law, and 
 not by nature. 
 
 It was but three years since the Commune, whose 
 history had passionately excited Oliver ; at the 
 beginning of his last illness, he had devoured the 
 French Rt'voliition of Carlyle. His delirium con- 
 founded the two great upheavals, and he believed 
 himself one of their victims. 
 
 He imagined himself accused before some 
 counter-revolutionary tribunal, of having set fire to 
 a church. Carlyle, in order to save himself, had 
 informed against Oliver — so said the Times. It 
 was a calumny of the Press ; so noble a heart as 
 Carlyle's was incapable of baseness. But he had 
 been brought to the bar, and in default of evidence 
 was sentenced to death. So young ; and a bullet 
 was to make an end of him and all his dreams of 
 greatness ! And yet if he had lived — if he could 
 but have lived — there was something in his head, 
 in his heart, that would have come out at last ! 
 He would have ranked amid the great ! Well, no 
 
l68 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 matter ! there was nothing to do now but face the 
 volley without flinching. And he shook his un- 
 happy father's hand, saying : 
 
 " Courage, father ; you will need all your courage 
 " to-morrow ! " 
 
 The doctor assured him he should not be shot. 
 When lie had left the room, Oliver said : 
 
 '' I know ; he has gone to ask my pardon from 
 "the Queen !" 
 
 But how should he send the Queen the ring 
 of redemption — Essex's ring. Ah, what new tor- 
 tures, what fresh anxieties ! Death came soon and 
 stilled the unquiet brain. 
 
 In the limbo of the paradise of poets, the souls of 
 children, floating in the mists of dawn, are frail, 
 uncertain visions with little individual feature. 
 Their aureole is made of the vague glimmer of the 
 future. They have done little and dreamed much ; 
 and in their dreams it is difficult to see how much 
 is all their own. Mostly they shine by a reflected 
 light. Oliver Madox-Brown is assuredly one of 
 the most vivid, one of the most personal, of these 
 touching phantoms. Chatterton was a prodigy, but 
 rather of assimilation than invention, an echo rather 
 than a voice. Oliver was a voice, a voice still 
 young, broken, uncertain. But he spoke true in his 
 
OLIVER MADOX-BROWN. 169 
 
 death agony. Had he lived he would have ranked 
 among the great. His qualities were those which 
 cannot be imitated : intensity of vision, dramatic 
 force, power of emotion. 
 
 At fourteen years old, haunted by the dream of 
 Clarence, he had sketched a picture of two men 
 crossing a stream ; but at its ford they meet a long 
 row of spectres, the ghosts of all those who have 
 been drowned there before their advent. Oliver, 
 also, was destined not to reach the other shore — the 
 happy and glorious shore of greatness realised. But 
 his shadow haunts the purlieus of the stream of 
 fame, and lingers in the memory of mortals. Quires 
 of poets have wept above his early grave, 
 
 '* Calling him master, though he was so young." 
 And there are destinies more cruel than the fate of 
 Marcellus. 
 
The Poetry of 3\dary T^binson, 
 
 These poems do not stand in need of any long 
 preamble. They speak for themselves ; they are 
 their own commentary, and even through the veil of 
 a translation they reveal their unique and indefinable 
 originality. Neither in England nor abroad has the 
 poetry of idealism shown itself more penetrating or 
 profounder. 
 
 The author is an idealist ; that is to say, the 
 universe, as it appears reflected upon her imagination, 
 is but a sign and a symbol ; a symbol of the poet's 
 soul or of the supreme soul of all. The whole scenery 
 of Nature, all her treasures of form and sound and 
 colour, all her visions, her music, all her perfumes, 
 are but the expresssion in a foreign tongue of the 
 ode and the drama of man's inmost soul, sometimes 
 vast and indeiinite as fate and the universe, some- 
 times limited and personal as an individual destiny. 
 
 Mysticism is the rock on which idealistic poetry is 
 perpetually shipwrecked. This continual interfusion 
 
172 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 of a conscious soul into an inert exterior world, of 
 mysterious nature into the unknowing soul, of the 
 human soul into the soul of the Cosmos ; this fluidity 
 of image entails a vagueness which often becomes a 
 void. But the distinctive character of the pages 
 open before us, their peculiar sign among idealistic 
 poems is their strict union of two gifts seldom seen 
 together — clearness of thought and intensity of 
 imagination. 
 
 For the soul of this poet is completed by a reflec- 
 tive and scientific mind. Poetry, Thought, Knowledge, 
 are the triple signs of the same imagination, infinitely 
 sensitive, profound and sincere. The author has 
 made her mark in history by essays, studied directly 
 from the document, which echo wath the unin- 
 terrupted vibration of reality. That which the 
 historian finds in the archives, the poet has found 
 in the movements of her heart. All her poems 
 spring directly from the source under the influence 
 of a personal emotion ; she knows nothing of the 
 artifice and system of the deliberate versifier, for she 
 has the great secret, so rare in our age of decadence, 
 the secret and charm of spontaniety, and the expres- 
 sion w^ells ever clear from the fulness of her heart 
 and mind. Hence the classic purity of her com- 
 position ; not a line, not a word but represents a 
 
THE POETRY OF MARY ROBINSON. 1 73 
 
 feeling or a thought ; no idle introduction. The 
 emotion or the idea is born with the first word, 
 and develops from heart-beat to heart-beat into its 
 linal strength. Her sentiment is too sincere not to 
 be sober, her impulse too powerful not to be direct. 
 Every poem is like a living plant which bursts into 
 instant growth from root to flower. No doubt, this 
 instinctive certainty of touch is a part of the talent 
 of Miss Robinson, a part of her frankness of feeling 
 and expression, but it has been chastened and 
 developed by her intimacy with the great poems of 
 Greece and Italy. This poetess so intensely northern 
 by the seriousness and the sincerity of her sentiment, 
 possesses none the less the purity and clarity of the 
 Grecian atmosphere. 'The northern blossom has 
 expanded in a southern breeze. 
 
 Many influences have educated her. Her first 
 notes echo the accent of Rossetti and the Pre- 
 raphaelites ; they sing of a world of old legends and 
 old music, light and love, with saints and angels in 
 adoration. But even in these pages, traced by so 
 girlish a hand, we find a poetic personality and in- 
 dependent imagination. All she takes from 
 Preraphaelitism is its purity of vision and the freedom 
 of its fancy. She leaves on one side its affectations, 
 its obscurities, its mannerism. Hers is the soul of 
 
174 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 tlic idealist without his mystic trance, the halo with- 
 out the haze. 
 
 Later came the turn of Greece, of Italy ; aye, 
 even of the East. But none of them subdued this 
 young imagination. Our poetess assimilated her 
 models ; they did not assimilate her. They lent her 
 their hues, their memories, their ideal visions, to 
 express , not their spirit, but her own soul. Thus a 
 procession of Dantesque phantoms whisper her the 
 gospel of neo-stoicism ; from a lost line of a Greek 
 sophist there gushes a love-letter worthy of Heloise ; 
 a common-place Oriental fairy-tale becomes a 
 dramatic allegory of human destiny. The very 
 spirit of the writers of the past, usually so tyrannical 
 in its influence over the strongest imaginations, is 
 tranquilly absorbed, and suffers a change, becomes 
 a part of the poet's own fancy, a flexible symbol, like 
 the stars or the moon, or any other of the forms 
 which the visible universe offers to the human soul 
 as metaphors for its expression. 
 
 This power of transforming all substances into 
 herself extends even into the material realm of 
 rhyme-rhythm ; in her mouth the artificial and 
 intricate forms of verse invented by an ingenious 
 Italy, take on a newer, simpler, more solemn meaning. 
 The sextina's monotonous and idle chime had rung 
 
THE POETRY OF MARY ROBINSON. 1 75 
 
 for six centuries its changes as a madrigal ; and lo ! 
 it becomes the haunting symbol of a philosophic 
 thought — some subtle obsession of the mind, ever 
 banished, ever returning — and rings out the refrain 
 of fatality. 
 
 In a translation, the verses I have chosen lose, of 
 necessity, a portion of their charm. For the rhythm 
 is refined and often subtle, in contrast with the 
 clearness of the idea, or the simplicity of its 
 expression. The author leaves nothing to chance 
 in the choice of her cadences or the colouring of 
 her vowel-sounds. Often the hidden harmony of 
 the verse projects, as it were, a reflected light on tlic 
 theme ; as often, when we speak, the accent and the 
 glance emphasise the afterthought of the words we 
 use. 
 
 Many difierent notes are heard in this concert ; 
 the same from the first of her poems to the last. 
 Dreaminess, passion and compassion, the anguish 
 of human destiny, these are the dominant motives 
 of her work. As time goes on, the poignant tone 
 of suffering becomes ever more and more the 
 keynote of her music ; but it never loses the 
 irrepressible grace of her earliest efforts, and her 
 bitterest tears keep the freshness of the dews of 
 dawn. In her two latest volumes, the Xciv Arcadia 
 
176 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 and the Italian Garden, anguish and beauty are met 
 and wedded together. In the one, all the cruelty of 
 social injustice and human error seen in the 
 exquisite setting of the English country : its lawn- 
 like meadows, its sombre purple heaths, its sun-shot 
 mists, and deep-blue distant haze ; in the 
 second, the sob of a broken heart heard in the 
 infinite sweetness of Italian spring. A poignant 
 pessimism underlies this sorcery of music and vague 
 dreaming ; the bitter cypress blossom buds on all 
 the branches of her "magic spring," but 'tis a 
 singular pessimism, most unlike the gospel according 
 to the Germans, nor akin to our own disheartened 
 doctrine, for instead of preaching the rights of self 
 and the triumph of force, or the virtues of inertia, it 
 proclaims an ardent credo of self-sacrifice : " Forget 
 " thy sorrow in the sorrows of others." 
 
 Beyond the sufferings of self, beyond the miseries 
 of society, there is a greater and more incurable evil, 
 the woe of the world, the universal Wclischtncrz ; a 
 triple desolation, shut out from all redress in the 
 future since the skies are void ; isolated in the 
 present by the incurable ill of personality ; a 
 prisoner of the past and of the thousand inherited 
 fatalities which make of any living soul the mere 
 unconscious sport of the vanished tendencies of its 
 
THE POETRY OF MARY ROBINSON. 1 77 
 
 ancestors. In this century of philosophic thought, 
 no poet has gone deeper into the abyss of moral 
 suffering ; but the habit of abstract reflection which 
 chills so many poetic thinkers, is rapt and vanished 
 away by the mood of ardent feeling which suffuses 
 this eager mind. 
 
 And Destiny ? Is the fate of man a thing for 
 tears ? Is there no hope ? " Yes," answers science, 
 which, having dashed the light from our beliefs, 
 suddenly illumines the dim Future with an un- 
 expected ray, and an idealistic Darwinism. A 
 development, not only of the physical, but the 
 psychic powers of man, inherits the consolations of 
 our ancestral faith. 
 
 U 
 
CELTIC A. 
 
Qeltica. 
 
 We all know the name of M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, 
 the great Celtic scholar. It is to him that we owe 
 the entry of Celtic studies into the programme of 
 the College de France ; before him they were 
 represented in France solely by the learned M. 
 Henri Gaidoz, the founder of the Revue Celtique, and 
 lecturer on Celtic Literature at the Ecoledes Hautes- 
 Etudes. When M. Henri Martin established for 
 M. d'Arbois de Jubainville the Professorship of 
 Celtic at the College de France, we all felt that a 
 master had appeared. Since then he has not ceased 
 an instant from his researches. With a talent and a 
 patience alike indefatigable he has tilled with 
 fecundity the vast uncultured province which he, 
 above all others, has contributed to bring within the 
 domain of science. Leaving on one side the 
 Gaulish remains of the time of Ca3sar — too rare, 
 too uniform, to furnish a wide base for theory — 
 passing by with wise neglect the modern dialects 
 of Wales, Brittany and Scotland, deformed and 
 
l82 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 corrupted from their primitive state, he has con- 
 centrated himself upon the study of Ireland. Ireland, 
 in fact, has the peculiar privilege of a history 
 continuous from the earliest centuries of our era 
 until the present day. She has preserved, in the 
 infinite wealth of her literature, a complete and 
 faithful picture of the ancient civilization of the 
 Celts. Irish literature is therefore the key which 
 opens the Celtic world. And in Irish literature M. 
 d'Arbois de Jubainville attaches a special importance 
 to the early epics and juridical texts, because they 
 bring us nearest, the one to the real social life of 
 their epoch, and to the soul, the instincts, the 
 imagination, the spirit of the race. 
 
 Do English readers remember the ardent accusa- 
 tion, the impassioned appeal, against the deadness 
 and sterility of higher education in France which 
 M. Lot launched some years ago, which M. Gaston 
 Paris — the honour of French science in the eyes of 
 Europe — echoed, in part, at least, only yesterday ? 
 The greatest instrument of scientific progress is a 
 school ; that is to say, a group of disciples working 
 under the direction of a master, whom they aid in 
 his task. It is this instrument which has wrought 
 the strength of scientific Germany, and enabled her 
 to produce a series of masterpieces which only the 
 
CELTICA. 1 8 
 
 J 
 
 brain of a man of genius could conceive, but which 
 the work and the time of one man are not sufficient 
 to execute. In many branches of science France 
 possesses scholars at least equal to the German, but 
 in very few does she possess a school. The numer- 
 ous and fecund group of Egyptologists who study 
 under M. Maspero are perhaps the most strikmg 
 example ; and M. Paris himself, despite his pessimism, 
 has trained a body of disciples, of whom many have 
 become masters in their turn. The volume which 
 we introduce to our readers proves that we have no 
 less a school of Celtic scholars. U Epopee Ccltique en 
 Irlandc is the product of M. d'Arbois de Jubainville's 
 lectures at the College de France, and due to the 
 collaboration of the professor and his pupils. 
 
 In his former works M. d'Arbois had already 
 drawn up a catalogue of Irish epics ; he had ex- 
 amined them and briefly defined their character 
 and their literary importance ; he had taught us 
 how to distinguish the cycle of Ulster, which 
 crystalised in the North of Ireland around the 
 heroic figure of King Conchobar or Conor ; the 
 cycle of Leinster, which celebrated in the east of 
 Ireland the deeds of Osson, or Ossian, as the moderns 
 have it ; and finally the mythological cycle, formed 
 in earth, sea and sky, around the conceptions of a 
 
184 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 religious imagination. He showed us how the two 
 Epics of the North and the East, artificially combined 
 and quite transformed from their rude, barbarous 
 and fierce antiquity, were idealised out of all 
 semblance by the rhetorical Macpherson till they 
 condensed anew into those pale, vague, nebulous 
 poems of Ossian which appeared so tremendous 
 a revelation of nature to the earlier Romantics. A 
 whole generation found in this mutilated paraphrase 
 a joy for ever. Napoleon, Goethe, Lamartine read 
 and raved of Ossian, as also Baour-Lormian. And 
 Werther was to write : " Ossian has supplanted 
 '' Homer in my heart." 
 
 i\I. d'Arbois and his collaborators, MM. Dottin, 
 Duvau and P'erdinand Grammont give, in the present 
 volume, numerous specimens of these various epochs, 
 which dwell, still unpublished, in the dusty seclusion 
 of libraries and archives. It is interesting to study 
 them, to turn from Macpherson to his models. Despite 
 his inferior value — for the copy is far below the original 
 — his versions merit our attention, not only on their 
 own merits and as the testimony, however ill- 
 reported, of a forgotten world, but for the indirect 
 and latent action which during more than fifty 
 years they continued to exercise upon the imagina- 
 tive literature of Europe. In two of the episodes 
 
CELTICA. 185 
 
 selected : the death of Derdrin and the death of 
 Cuchulain, the editors give, side by side with the 
 version of Ossian, a literal translation from the 
 original epic. One knows not which is the more 
 surprising, the audacity with which Macpherson has 
 drowned the brutal, savage, old legends in a vapour 
 of vague exclamations, or the innocent good faith 
 with which our romantic forefathers accepted these 
 tricked-out ecstasies and insipid, tame tirades, which 
 we have not the patience to read to the end of, as 
 the unsophisticated voice of Nature. It is a matter 
 to give pause to the advocates of an absolute 
 standard in criticism, a shaft the more in the quiver 
 of the impressionists, chl oggi han il grido, till a new 
 mode arise. 
 
 I will not for the moment discuss this volume, 
 sufficiently attractive to appeal, on the briefest recom- 
 mendation, to the large circle of readers which take 
 an interest in the fragile and mobile material of 
 national imagination. F'or I would say a few 
 words of another book of M. d'Arbois', severer in 
 aspect, more purely technical in intere-^t, and 
 which only appears to belong to a different branch 
 of studv. 
 
l86 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 II. 
 
 The present unhappy state of Ireland has evidently 
 much impressed M. d'Arbois, and has led him to 
 inquire what was the system of proprietorship in 
 ancient Gaul, and what its evolution in France. 
 The oonclusions to which this inquiry has led him 
 are of a novelty, a tranquil audacity, which aston- 
 ishes, while it impresses, the modern student ; which 
 the Celtic scholar of an earlier generation would 
 certainly have received with a pious shudder, and 
 which, with the sovereign impassibility of history, 
 quietly proceed to demolish the prejudices of 
 Political Economy and even of Socialism. 
 
 Some centuries before the Christian era, the 
 country known to us as Gaul was inhabited by tribes 
 known to the Greeks as Iberians and Ligurians. 
 Towards the fifth century B.C. the land w-as invaded 
 and conquered by the Gauls. The earlier popula- 
 tions faded from the face of the earth, and are now- 
 known to us only by their tombs, and by the frag- 
 ments buried there. Unless, indeed, we be acquainted 
 with them by other monuments "less distant 
 "and less funereal," in the words of M. d'Arbois, 
 " in fact, by ourselves ; since for the most part we, 
 " modern Frenchmen, are the descendants of those 
 
CELTICA. 187 
 
 " earlier and forgotten races whom the Gauls, our 
 " so-called ancestors, triumphed Over and enslaved 
 "before they themselves were conquered by the 
 " Romans. The mass of Frenchmen descend from 
 " these humble,, vanquished subjects, whom, in the 
 "time of C.xsar, the pride of Gaul treated as the 
 " Romans their slaves : pene senwnim habetiie loco." 
 In modern times, the right of conquest confers 
 upon the victor only the sovereignty and not the 
 property of the territory which he takes by force ; 
 the landowner remaining undisturbed in his domain. 
 Right of conquest, while affording the invader a 
 certain claim upon the personal chattels of the van- 
 quished (under the form of requisitions, war in- 
 demnities, and other compensations for free loot) 
 gives him no rights over his landed estate. It was 
 not thus in ancient times. The Gauls became 
 masters of the lands vacated by the vanquished 
 Iberians and Ligurians. But the Gauls had no 
 notion of individual property ; these lands belonged, 
 therefore, not to such-and-such a Gaul, but to the 
 tribe collectively. Still, in fact, and by the nature of 
 things, the enjoyment of the soil belonged necessarily 
 to the rich, to those who had considerable personal 
 property, whether acquired by booty or by heritage, 
 such as herds and droves, horses, or slaves ; for they 
 
l88 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 alone could support the expense of cultivation, they 
 alone could house and keep throughout the winter 
 months men and beasts in sufficiency to garner in the 
 harvest. Thus, whilst in theory the land belonged 
 to the nation, or rather to the tribe, in practice it 
 tended perpetually to become the individual posses- 
 sion of a few. 
 
 The Roman conquest confirmed this tendency. 
 Ca3sar had laid upon the Gauls a quota (tributum or 
 stipendkim) payable by the tribe or by the city, 
 which might distribute the tax as best it pleased. 
 Augustus (27 B.C.) replaced the collective tribute by 
 a personal tax — a cens. Thenceforth the city was no 
 longer sole possessor ; individuals were accounted 
 answerable for the fragments of its territories which 
 they farmed, and were considered, by the fact of 
 their responsibility, invested with a sort of right or 
 claim over these lands as vicars, so to speak, of the 
 tribe or of the city. 
 
 For the assessment of the taxes, Gaul was divided 
 into about sixty circumscriptions, or cities, answering 
 in some degree to our modern departments ; and 
 these so-called cities were further divided into a 
 certain number of pagi or cantons ; and the pagiis 
 itself mio fundi, which are the ancestors of the com- 
 munes of our times. 
 
CELTICA. 189 
 
 The names of a great number of these fundi are 
 still known to us ; some of them by the charts of 
 the Middle Ages, some of them by the actual names 
 of the communes, their descendants. Let us not 
 suppose that each of our thirty-six thousand modern 
 communes represents a G^wWsh fundus ; very many 
 of them are of quite recent origin, but several 
 thousand Gaulish fundi, whose names have been 
 handed down to us, are easily recognisable in their 
 modern substitutes, the name having suffered the 
 normal changes of phonetic law. And the immense 
 majority of these fundi are called by the name of a 
 man : Juliacus is the fundus of Julius ; Scvcriacus 
 the fundus of Severus ; Romiliacus the fundus of 
 Romulius, &c., &c. That is to say, the four com- 
 munes of Jnillac, the three Juille, the three JuUy, 
 the two Juilly and Jullic, each of them commemorate 
 a certain Julius who was their original possessor ; 
 and Civray, Civrac, Civrienx, Sivry, Scvrai, Sc7'rcy, 
 Sevry, and Sevcrac, each of them preserve the name 
 of some long-dead Severus, who had his manor there 
 of old ; while it is evident that some Romulius was 
 Lord of the several Roniille, Romilly, Rumilly, and 
 Reniilly. The reader will remark two noteworthy 
 points : firstly, the frequency with which the same 
 name appears as owner of lands disseminated over 
 
igO ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 all the surface of the Gaulish territory ; and secondly, 
 that the names of the greater part of these provincial 
 landowners are geiitilices, or Roman clan-names 
 rather than individual Gaulish ones. These two 
 facts are explained by a third ; namely, that the large 
 Gaulish landowners, rapidly Romanised, changed 
 their national names for Roman ones, and generally 
 adopted those of the great patrician families of whom 
 they were the clients, or of the Emperors who had 
 made them free of the city of Rome. M. d'Arbois 
 does not tell us if these Roman gentilices were all 
 worn by Romanised Gauls ; or if Rome had not 
 exercised the right of conquest and granted here and 
 there to her Roman veterans certain territories in 
 Gaul. Yet it seems established that Rome profited 
 by her victories with a laudable moderation, and, in 
 point of fact, inaugurated in Gaul the modern prin- 
 ciple which leaves intact the landed property of the 
 vanquished. But whatever be the proportion of 
 Roman to merely Romanised landowners, one fact 
 remains established : it is that, in opposition to 
 the feudal and Roman custom, which calls a 
 man by the name of his estates, in the Gallo- 
 Roman system the estate took the name of the 
 man ; and if all the names of all the antique 
 communes of France were preserved to us, we 
 
CELTICA. 191 
 
 should possess the Bhie-Book of the Gallo-Roman 
 landed gentry. 
 
 It is probable that it was the novel assessment of 
 taxes which, in conferring on the nobles the 
 property of the nation, rallied them to Rome, and 
 made of the caste which had opposed the most 
 redoubtable, the most ardent, resistance to Caesar 
 the most eager partisan of Roman rule. Two 
 centuries ago a similar revulsion created the agrarian 
 question in Ireland, but with very dilTerent results. 
 If Cromwell's soldiers had been content to exter- 
 minate the Irish chieftains and then to take their 
 place, we should long have ceased to hear of national 
 rancour. For, if they had purely and simply sub- 
 stituted themselves (as mere chieftains) to the 
 slaughtered Irish chieftains, the land would have 
 remained, as in the past, the collective property 
 of the tribe, the county or borough ; and the 
 individual chattels which had naturally accrued 
 in course of time to the agent who owned 
 the working stock of an estate — in theory, still 
 common land — and farmed it, would have continued 
 to increase without shock or change ; and, no doubt, 
 might have naturally developed, as with us in 1789, 
 into the eventual constitution of not merely indi- 
 vidual chattels but individual landed property. For 
 
192 liXGLISH STl'DIES. 
 
 the Revolution of 1789 was eminently conservative in 
 its essence, and in its broader features it merely 
 regularised and named a situation created by a long 
 and slow evolution, infinitely different from the 
 feudal system. But the inexpiate — the perhaps 
 inexpiable — error of the Roundheads was, in taking 
 the place of a chieftain, to substitute their individual 
 property for the collective property of the tribe. 
 The farmer was thus rudely uprooted from the 
 soil, of which, so to speak, he formed a part. It 
 was not merely the spoliation of a handful of chief- 
 tains, but the confiscation of the property of a nation. 
 
 Thus, when the just efforts of the British Govern- 
 ment to repair an ancient wrong are dubbed at 
 random socialism or communism, the speaker is the 
 dupe of his own terms for lack of a clearer 
 knowledge of the origins of history. 
 
 "Nothing is so ridiculous," writes M.d'Arbois, "as 
 " the reflections of a French pressman on a tour in 
 " Ireland. In Ireland, two centuries ago, by a revo- 
 " lution in the contrary sense to ours, the eminent 
 " domain, although of recent creation, absorbed the 
 " beneficial ownership, whose origin is lost in the 
 " mists of antiquity. To-day the generosity of the 
 " English Government attempts to re-establish the 
 " beneficial ownership for the advantage of the de- 
 
CELTICA, IQ: 
 
 " spoiled and ruined tenant. The ordinary French 
 *' traveller understands nothmg of all this and 
 " imagines that he beholds the realisation of the 
 "socialistic Utopias due to Continental theorists. 
 " Here the question is to afford to an entire nation 
 " an act of reparation, equivalent to that bestowed in 
 " France, some fifty years ago, on a few thousand 
 " persons dispossessed of their ancestral lands ; to 
 " apply to a whole people the Indcuinitc dcs Emigres." 
 Even so short a summary may show in how 
 striking a degree the volume before us is new, frank, 
 audacious in its originality. Perhaps sometimes M. 
 d'Arbois' scientific inductions resemble too closely a 
 deduction a priori. Because the cavalry of Vercin- 
 getorix amounted to fifteen thousand men, is it 
 absolutely certain that the Gaulish nobilit>' numbered 
 precisely sixty thousand souls ? The facts are too 
 few and too far for such authoritative conclusions ; 
 we have too poor materials to draw up the census of 
 nineteen hundred years ago. Yet, even in his 
 excesses, it is agreeable to study the course of one 
 of the noblest, most modest, and most powerful of 
 those minds which are the honour of philology 
 in France; a patient, deep, slow-moving spirit 
 which pursues its thought even to the utmost limit. 
 
 15 
 
Irish Literature and Ossian, 
 
 France, the land of Gaul, was the natural cradle of 
 Celtic studies ; but they died young, destroyed by 
 the absurdity of the Celtomaniac. The Celtomaniac 
 is, or rather was, the patriot who holds it an article 
 of faith that Primitive Man conversed in Bas-Breton. 
 The public, by its nature superficial and devoted to 
 routine, careless of the difference between a science 
 and its savants, englobed in the same disdain the 
 Celtomaniac and his Celtic studies. With the result 
 that when the creation of comparative philology 
 renewed linguistic studies, the reconstitution of 
 Celtic research took place, not in France, but in 
 Germany. The Bavarian Zeuss taught the descen- 
 dants of the ancient Celts the lesson of their origin, 
 Zei/? TrpcoTo^i yevero. Zeuss was the first, cried, after 
 Orpheus, his disciples in Italy, in France, and in 
 England. 
 
 The Grammaiica Celtica of Zeuss appeared in 1853, 
 but was little read in France, when Celtic studies 
 
196 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 began, none the less, to revive, but only in the 
 direction of archaeology. There were many to 
 collect and study the monuments, the coins, the in- 
 scriptions of Gaulish and Gaulo-Roman times ; 
 others edited these ancient texts which bore on our 
 national antiquities, and the distinguished labours of 
 MM. de Saulcy, de Barth^lemy, de Belloguet, with 
 their successors, MM. Bertrand, Mowat, &c., are 
 well and widely known. But the lessons of archae- 
 ology, however precious, however precise, are 
 necessarily limited : Clamabiint lapidcs, exclaims the 
 antiquary ; but the cry of a stone, even when we 
 understand it, is nothing but a cry ; and we need 
 wider information to write the continuous history of 
 a people. All the thousands of inscriptions of the 
 two Corpus, all the ruins of Rome and Athens, would 
 not permit the historian to do without Thucydides 
 and Li\7. And how infinitely poorer than he is 
 the student of Celtic inscriptions ? M. de la Ville- 
 marquee was the first to turn his attention towards 
 manuscripts. If he had so chosen, he might have 
 laid a wide and firm foundation for Celtic science in 
 France. He did not choose ; unfortunately, he was 
 too much in love with art to be a scholar ; he could 
 not resign himself to plain and simple erudition. It 
 is only fifteen years since Celtic history and philology 
 
IRISH LITERATURE AND OSSIAN. 197 
 
 have made any definite advance in France. And this 
 progress is ahnost entirely owing to two men — 
 M. Gaidoz and M. d'Arbois de Jubainville. Founded 
 by M. Gaidoz in 1870, the Revue Celtiqne soon 
 became an international authority, a trysting-place 
 for the Celtic scholars of Europe. A little later, 
 at the Ecole des Hautes-Etudes, he inaugurated 
 the first course of lectures on this subject ever 
 heard in France. And a few years ago, thanks to 
 the initiative of M. Henri Martin, these studies, 
 national above all others, entered with M. d'Arbois 
 de Jubainville, into the programme of the College 
 de France. 
 
 M. Gaidoz has especially contributed to Celtic 
 science by his creation of the Revue Celtique and by 
 his severe and trenchant criticism, pitiless to all 
 hypothesis. M. d'Arbois, on the other hand, has 
 chiefly merited by his original research in regions 
 hitherto unexplored, and by the mass of fresh in- 
 formation which he has placed at the disposal of the 
 public. The two first years of his professorship 
 were fruitful in two considerable works, as interest- 
 ing by the novelty of their facts as by the originality 
 of their conclusions. With their aid, 1 hope to give 
 my readers some idea of the Celtic Question. 
 
1^8 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 I. 
 
 Few people have wandered more about the world 
 than the Celts : colonisation was their specialty. 
 Natives of Asia, as we may suppose, like the other 
 Aryans of Europe, they populated Gaul and Britain, 
 swarmed in Spain, clustered in Northern Italy and 
 southern Germany, settled to the north of the 
 Danube, and even as far afield as the great plains of 
 Asia Minor. 
 
 They brooked the advent of Alexander, terrorised 
 Europe, threatened Rome, but only to recoil before 
 the advancing fortunes of the Roman armies. Rome 
 subdues them to its own colour ; Brennus dons the 
 toga ; Vercingetorix and his noble clansmen have 
 forgotten their own language and deck out their 
 native gods with Roman names. Rome and the 
 Roman tongue cross the Channel Straits ; and 
 the British Isles, the last refuge of the Breton race, 
 is menaced by the Latin contagion. They were, 
 however, assimilated, not by Rome, but by certain 
 Saxon and Teuton invaders ; yet only in part ; so 
 that the earlier civilization of the Celts remained 
 already recognisable in certain shreds and patches, 
 in Ireland especially, in Wales, Cornwall, and the 
 North of Scotland. In our times, the Celtic idiom 
 
(RISH LITERATURE AND OSSIAX. I99 
 
 formerly spoken from Ireland to the Black Sea, is 
 the tongue of scarce three millions of men, scattered 
 through the counties just cited, and along the Breton 
 march of France, whither in the early Middle Ages, 
 the English Bretons, fleeing before the Saxon uivader, 
 brought their language and their civilization. 
 
 The Celtic dialects still extant are divided into two 
 families ; the Breton and the Gaelic ; Wales and 
 Brittany belong to the first ; Ireland and the High- 
 lands to the second. This division, imposed by 
 philology, is further confirmed by history ; it is 
 known that the Bretons of France came from Wales, 
 the Celts of the Highlands from Ireland. In other 
 words, the two principal forms of speech, scattered 
 at present athwart the last Celtic fastnesses, are 
 derived from two older forms : that of Ireland, that 
 of England and Scotland. Too little remains of the 
 ancient tongue of Gaul for science to decide upon 
 its origin ; in all probability it formed a third 
 deviation, nearer to the Welsh and Breton than to 
 the Gaelic dialects. 
 
 As a rule, in studying a family of languages, the 
 philologist attaches an especial importance to the 
 oldest ; that whose texts and inscriptions date farthest 
 back in history. This tongue, rightly learned, will 
 help us to interpret the others, for is is probable that 
 
200 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 it has preserved the primitive forms, altered or worn 
 into insignificance in the kindred branches. It is 
 this pecuHar authority which gives its especial value 
 to the Sanscrit of the Vedas, among the Indo- 
 European languages. The inscriptions of Gaul, 
 were they but more numerous, would stand for the 
 Sanscrit of Celtic tongues. They are the family 
 title-deeds, and date from the first century of our 
 era, and even further back. In them the Celtic 
 language is intact and pure as Greek. But, alas, 
 they are rare as they are priceless. And Gaul being 
 almost mute, Ireland must be the spokeswoman. 
 In studying the texts of Ireland for the purposes of 
 science, the Celtic scholars of our time rediscovered 
 a fact almost forgotten : namely, that Ireland in her 
 day possessed a literature as rich, as cultivated, as 
 that of any civilized people ; that, in her hour of 
 glory, she was the light of Christendom, girt with 
 her cohort of bards, and her wealth of epics, at a 
 moment when everywhere else in Europe Art and 
 Letters appeared to droop, to fade. These poems, 
 almost entirely unpublished, remain in their thousands 
 on the shelves of the great libraries of Ireland. The 
 mere catalogue of manuscripts relating to epic 
 poetry, fills a whole volume recently published by 
 the M. d'Arbois de Jubainville, without exhausting 
 
IRISH LITERATURE AND OSSIAN. 201 
 
 the material. This hterature interests us especially 
 in its more ancient parts, because they most clearly 
 show us the life and manners of the ancient Celts. 
 
 The period of invention, the true creative ferment, 
 ceases with the seventh century of our era when the 
 triumph of Christianity was assured in Ireland. Then 
 began a second period of collecting, editing, system- 
 atising, the epic wealth of the preceding centuries. 
 The monks, who undertook this pious labour, 
 naturally baptized their antique heroes ; but their 
 thin veil of pietv is perfectlv transparent, the 
 rugged features of a primitive age appear behind 
 it. The Christian editors are not too exacting : 
 so soon as, by the aid of some fantastic genealogy, 
 thev have proved the kinship of their Celtic heroes 
 with Scota, Pharaoh's daughter, or with Phineas, 
 great-grandson of Japhct, their scruples are satisfied, 
 and the pagans of their story, sanctified by their 
 pious stock, may fortliwith conduct themselves m 
 pagan fashion. The h'ish clergy — in opposition to 
 the monks of Greece and Rome — showed themselves 
 ever clement to popular tradition. Their tolerance 
 was rewarded. Their religion was accepted as not 
 incompatible with the beloved ancient stories, which 
 had charmed the vigils of generations in every hut 
 or castle. The hish apostles, in their struggles 
 
 OF THE ^ 
 
 l^NIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
202 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 with the Druids, found a rod and a staff in 
 the popular poets ; and throughout the Middle 
 Ages, monks and minstrels were to hold together 
 against the secular clergy. Thus, by its welcome to 
 the national epic, Irish Catholicism ingratiated 
 itself yet further in the favour, in the heart, of a 
 people whose sensitive imagination it had never 
 ruffled. The Epic Poem, with its myths, its heroes, 
 its legends, thus survived the early faith of Ireland. 
 The hymns of the Church did not drown the ancient 
 harp in Tara's halls. The stories of the gods, sons 
 of Dana, of Conchobar and Ossian, continued to 
 ring along highway and byeway, round the peasant's 
 hearth, and in the great halls of the royal Duns. 
 
 It would be interesting to know the history of the 
 society which produced such a literature : we can 
 but guess at it, from the witness of the pages that 
 survive it. Real historical documents we have none 
 until the beginning of the decadence — a decadence 
 so glorious, that we might almost mistake it for a 
 Renaissance — since the old epic sap dries up only to 
 make place for a fresh budding and burgeoning, a 
 growth less original certainly, but scarcely less 
 wonderful, if we consider the condition of Con- 
 tinental Europe at that date. For the classic 
 tradition, to all appearance dead in Europe, burst 
 
fRISH LITERATURE AND OSSIAN. 20^ 
 
 out in fresh flower in the Isle of Saints, and the 
 Renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred years 
 before it was known in Italy. During three 
 centuries, Ireland was the asylum of the higher 
 learning which took sanctuary there from the un- 
 cultured states of Europe. At one moment Armagh, 
 the religious capital of Christian Ireland, was the 
 metropolis of civilization. While Gregory of Tours 
 is stumbling through his barbarous Latin, St. 
 Columba wields the Adonic strophe with elegance 
 and adorns his moralities with pagan reminiscences. 
 When Charlemagne wishes to educate his warriors, 
 it is to Ireland that he sends to seek the men who know. 
 In Ireland, even Greek, elsewhere absolutely vanished, 
 lost and gone, is read and cherished ; Scotus 
 Erigenus practises the classic muse and takes his 
 philosophy from the Timceiis. Alas, all this brilliant 
 and delicate efflorescence is fore-doomed to perish ! 
 Soon the invasions of Danes and Saxons, the raids 
 of pirates and barbarians, will destroy all before 
 them. Learned Ireland perishes, or crosses the sea 
 to Gaul. There Charles the Bald offers her an 
 honourable refuge. And a French monk has left on 
 record how "almost the whole of Ireland, disclaim- 
 " ing the perils of the seas, has settled on our shores 
 "with its bands of philosophers." Yet, in Ireland, 
 
204 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 even the barbarians who stamp out this miraculous 
 civilization will become its pupils. Mr. Sophus 
 Bugge, a valiant Scandinavian who has not feared to 
 seek truth in a perfect tempest of patriotic clamour, 
 has recently shown us that the poets of the Edda are 
 the disciples of the Irish File. They copied from 
 the monks and minstrels of Erin even their peculiar 
 metres, and, from the fragments of quaintly assorted 
 mythology and Bible history, which they picked up 
 around the fireside of the castles and convents of 
 Ireland, they constructed with ibarbaric ingenuity 
 a religion of their own, and a national Walhalla. 
 
 A people which lives against the background of 
 such a past, cannot appear entirely destitute of 
 nobility, however forlorn or even servile be the 
 present. Strange, that Ireland should have turned 
 her sad head from the visions of her glory, should 
 have waited for foreign scholars to reveal them to 
 her. Were the Nationalists really national, they 
 would long since have exhumed the abundant relics 
 of their literary grandeur, and thrown them in the 
 scales of fame, that Europe might judge of the 
 weight they add there to the old embittered differ- 
 ence between England and Ireland. 'Tis with the 
 glory of the past that a down trodden nation finds 
 means to build itself a future. 'Tis Homer and the 
 
IRISH LITKRATl'KE A\I) OSSIAX. 205 
 
 gods of Olympus who inspired the revival of Greece. 
 'Tis her scholars and her students who are responsible 
 for a United Germany ; and the same impulse is at 
 work in Hungary to-day. But unfortunately, in the 
 scientific re-constitution of early Irish literature and 
 history, the artisans are German, English, French, 
 with few exceptions. There will not be a United 
 Ireland until there be an Irish Philology. 
 
 II. 
 
 Years must pass ere it will be possible to draw up 
 so much as a catalogue of Irish letters in their 
 several branches of poetry, jurisprudence, history, 
 theology. I will only say a few words, after M. 
 d'Arbois de Jubainville, of our crown of jewels in this 
 abundant treasure : I speak of the Irish epics, and I 
 hope to show the interest which they offer, not only to 
 lovers of poetry, but to students of the history of 
 literature. 
 
 The Irish epics comprehend three great cycles : 
 the Mythic, the Heroic, the Legendary. The Mythic 
 cycle has for its object the origin and history of 
 the gods, of man, and of the world. The Heroic cycle 
 clusters round the adventures of Conchobar and 
 Cuchullin ; 'tis a subject born of the fusion of 
 ancient myths with historical traditions, and it treats 
 
o6 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 of the struggle which Ulster, the North, maintained 
 against the rest of Ireland. For the divisions of 
 Ireland, its quarrels of Orange and Green, date, under 
 other names, far earlier than the English conquest. 
 Tradition places the adventures of the two heroes 
 somewhere in the first ages of the Christian era. 
 Be that as it may, the Heroic epic gives us a faithful 
 picture of Irish manners and customs prior to the 
 conversion of the Isle of Saints. The third cycle, 
 the Legendary, celebrates the historical events of the 
 second and third centuries A.D., and sings of the 
 chivalry of Ireland and of the exploits of Finn (the 
 Fingal of MacPherson) and his Fenians, w^hose 
 name at least modern Ireland has resuscitated. 
 
 The fragments of the Mythic cycle are too rare, 
 too insufficiently edited, for us to gather a clear idea 
 of the religion of ancient Irish. Still, we perceive 
 that it was germane to the other Aryan mythologies 
 and composed of much the same naturalistic 
 elements and ritual. In Ireland, as elsewhere, the 
 war of light and darkness is the centre on which the 
 life of the universe depends ; as elsewhere, the 
 mystic powers of worship maintain the stars in the 
 courses, and are even stronger than the gods to 
 whom they are addressed. As in India, the world 
 was created by a god-made priest, by means of a 
 
IRISH LITERATURE AND OSSIAN. 207 
 
 burnt offering ; so in Ireland, the heaven, the earth, 
 the sea, and the stars, are the work of three Druids 
 older than any god. 
 
 All cosmology tends towards history. Myths, 
 infinite in form, identic in essence, gathering round 
 a sole central idea, inevitably, sooner or later, group 
 themselves in successive series. When a poet of 
 genius, or even merely fortunate in his choice, takes 
 up the vague material in his inspired hands, turns it 
 and forms it, makes it into shape, his production 
 imposes himself upon posterity, and he bequeaths a 
 chronology to future historians. Thus it befell in 
 Persia, when its mythology condensed into a dated 
 genealogy : heroes of a drama which represents 
 the wide extent of time and space, since they image 
 the immortal actors of the seas, and skies, and storms 
 for ever being born and dying, struggling, and 
 issuing in eternal renewal above the eyes of man — 
 these storm-gods and cloud-gods and sun-gods took 
 their earthly titles and their social ranks, played out 
 their parts as human kings and heroes, and became 
 the personages of the Iranian epics. Greece never 
 attained the point of this preciseness : her mythic 
 chronology remained a vague and floating thing, 
 since every tribe and every region had its different 
 mythology, and to fuse all these gracious fancies 
 
2o8 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 into one rigid system, was a wasteful and murderous 
 task, before which her poetic genius recoiled. Such 
 mythology is the middle term between the definite- 
 ness of Persia, and the filmier freedom of the 
 Greek. The Irish poets fix, more or less approxi- 
 mately, the order of their mythic dynasties ; races, 
 human and divine, succeed each other on the green 
 soil of Erin ; succeed each other, or, may be, jostle 
 each other, innocent and unastonished neighbours. 
 Thus they sing the destinies of Ireland, from the times 
 of the first colonist, Partholon or Nemed, until the last- 
 comers, Picts and Scots ; finding place between them 
 for the human tribe of the Fir-bolg, the demon-tribe 
 of the Fomere, the divine children of Dana, and the 
 Milesians who sailed thither from the realms of death. 
 With the historic period, begin the two heroic and 
 legendary cycles of Conchobar and Ossian, less un- 
 known to Europe than the reader may suppose, 
 since they it is, who furnished forth the elements of 
 those Poems of Ossian^ which some hundred odd 
 years ago lit up such a flame in the kindled imagina- 
 tions of our ancestors. The semi-forgeries of Mac- 
 Pherson, about which there has been so much to-do, 
 are now^ clear in all their details : they are the com- 
 bination of two independent epic cycles, welded 
 together against nature, transformed to suit the 
 
IRISH LITERATURE AND OSSIAN. 209 
 
 adaptor's pleasure, without heed of tlie veracity of his 
 representation, prettified and airified to suit eighteenth 
 century tastes and aspirations, weary, in truth, of a 
 classic convention, and in quest of a newer conven- 
 tion which it betitles : Nature. The rude, ferocious 
 half-barbaric heroes of Ireland appear as generous, 
 Paladins worthy of Tasso, with the delicate point 
 of honour and the chivalry of a knight-errant. To 
 give but one tvpical example of the procedure ot 
 MacPherson, let us examine, as a line exauiple <it 
 the essential distinction between Primitive poetry 
 and Romantic poetry — the story of the Irish Helen 
 whom the ancient epics call Derdrin and Mac- 
 Pherson, Derthula : 
 
 The men of Ulster are drinking in the house of 
 P'eidlimid, the file of King Conchobar. While the 
 horns of ale go round from hand to hand of the 
 drunken banqueters, the minstrel's wife looks on ; 
 she is big with child. As she goes out of the hall 
 the child in her womb gives a shout. The drinkers 
 look up astonished. 
 
 " Bring this woman before us," says Soncha the 
 Beautiful, Judge of Ulster. "Let her tell us the 
 meaning of the cry ! " 
 
 And she draws nigh. 
 
 "Woman," says her husband, llie ///t', "what is 
 
 16 
 
2IO KNGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " the meaning ol the cry whicli came from thy 
 ** womb ? " 
 
 And she says nothing. Then they fetch the king's 
 Druid, Cathbad. 
 
 " The cry," says the seer, " is the cry of a maid, witli 
 " fair hair, with charming" blue eyes, with cheeks deep- 
 " red on a hue of snow, with teeth hke fiawless pearls, 
 " w itli Hps clierry-ripe. For her and her fair face the 
 " heroes of Ulster shall be covered over with wounds. 
 " Great kings shall ask her in marriage. Great queens 
 " shall pale with envy of her beauty." 
 
 The Druid lays his hand on the woman's breast, 
 and the child begins to tremble. ** Yea, she is a 
 " woman-child ! Her name shall be Derdrin, and 
 " much evil shall come to pass because of her." 
 
 And then he tells the listening warriors how, on 
 account of this unborn babe, the children of Usnach 
 shall go out into exile ; that the sons of King 
 Conchobar shall die the death for her ; they and 
 many another. " For thou shalt be famous in story, 
 " O Derdrin ! " 
 
 " Kill her ! " cry the boon-companions. 
 
 " No ! " cries Conchobar. " She shall live and be 
 " my wife ! " 
 
 Derdrin is born, is bred by the king in a tower 
 where none may enter save her guardian, her nurse, 
 
IRISH LITERATURE AND OSSIAN. 21 1 
 
 and a woman called Lebarcham, to whom he had not 
 dared to forbid all access, since she was a poet and 
 composed satires of an enchanted force. 
 
 One winter's day the guardian was killing a calf on 
 the snow. The young girl looked on from her 
 tower ; a raven came to drink the red blood on the 
 snow. Suddenly she said to Lebarcham : 
 
 ■ " My lover shall have those three colours ; hair 
 " like the raven, cheeks red as blood, and a skin white 
 " as snow ! " 
 
 And the poetess answered : 
 
 " He whom thou lovest is thy neighbour. Noise, 
 "the son of Usnach." 
 
 "Ah!" cried the gn-1. "1 shall not be well in 
 " health till I have seen him ! " 
 
 She escapes to meet Noise in secret ; she offers 
 him her love. He refuses ; for he remembers the 
 prophecy of the Druid. Then Derdrin, creeping 
 softly up to him, takes his head in her two hands and 
 draws it close to her own : 
 
 " This head that I embrace is the head of a coward 
 " if thou do not wed me ! " 
 
 " Away, woman ! " 
 
 " No. I will be thme ! " 
 
 Noise goes into exile with Derdrin and his brothers, 
 fleeing from the wrath of Conchobar. After long 
 
2t2 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 adventures they return, called home by the king. 
 But his mercy is a feint. He sends Neoghan 
 to slaughter Noise at the landing place. Noise 
 perishes with all his brothers, and with a grandson of 
 Conchobar, who had cast his arms in vain round 
 Noise to protect the outraged guest. Derdrin, the 
 sole survivor is brought to the hall of Conchobar, 
 her hands tied behind her. She dwells there a year, 
 never smiling, never eating, never sleeping. 
 
 When she opens her lips it is to chant the praise 
 of her first husband. Conchobar gets little satisfac- 
 tion from his prey. 
 
 "Of all the men thou seest about thee, which is 
 " the direst to thy hate ? " he asks her one day. 
 " Thou first, then Eoghan." 
 
 " Thou hast lived a year with me. Now go, live a 
 " year w^ith Eoghan ! " 
 
 Derdrin, captive, follows her new master in his 
 chariot. But she has sworn that she will never live 
 to be the wife of two living husbands. A rock 
 stands in their road ; she leans out, dashes her 
 brains out against it, and dies. 
 
 Such was the Irish legend in its tragic beauty, 
 wdth its grandeur of superstition, its vivid bursts of 
 passion. All these details disappear in the rendering 
 of MacPherson. A contemporary of Voltaire had 
 
IRISH LITERATURE A\D OSSIAX. 213 
 
 never dared to introduce that opening scene of the 
 boon companions, the pregnant woman and the 
 Druid ; it disappears, and with it all the original 
 features of the character of Derdrin, so instinct with 
 the genius of popular poetry. The eighteenth 
 century was not as yet capable of understanding 
 such forceful and direct simplicity. Derdrin became 
 a pale and submissive creature — the prototype of all 
 the Haidees and all the Gulnares of Byron : 
 women who only knew how to surrender them- 
 selves and die. And tlie whole legend is reduced to 
 the merest love story. Derthula, beloved of Cairbar 
 (the Irish Conchobar) has seen Nathos, son of 
 Usnoth (Noise, son of Usnach), and loved him at 
 first sight. We still remember the vivid brutal 
 image which the primitive traced of her lover with 
 the hues of a raven, blood, and snow. Derthula 
 expresses herself more elegantly : 
 
 "O Nathos, thou wert fair in the sight of 
 " Derthula. Thy face was as the light of the morn- 
 '* ing. Thy locks like the raven's wing. Thy soul 
 " generous and gentle as the hour of sunset. Thy 
 " speech like the breeze in the reeds by the gliding 
 ** brook of Lora. But in the rage of battle, thou wast 
 "a sea in storm," &c. Nathos and Derthula elope 
 together. The treachery of the sea casts them upon 
 
214 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 the coasts of Ulster, hard by the camp of Cairbar. 
 Nathos and his brothers perish after a heroic struggle. 
 
 " Derthula, in silent sorrow, watched them fall, 
 " Not a tear in her eyes. Then came the sombre 
 " Cairbar : ' Where, now, is thy lover ? ' . . . The 
 " shield fell from the arm of Derthula and showed 
 "her snow-white bosom — and showed it dyed in 
 " blood. An arrow trembled in her side. And on 
 " Nathos fallen she fell like a snow-drift." 
 
 Season this summary with endless interjections and 
 apostrophes to moon and wind, and stars, with a pro- 
 digious consumption of moonshine, after this fashion : 
 " Daughter of Heaven, how beautiful thou art ! . . . 
 " The stars follow thine azure track in the East. The 
 " clouds rejoice because of thy presence, O Moon ! 
 "... Who is like unto thee in the heavens, O light 
 " of the silent night ? When dost thou rest from thy 
 " course ? Hast thou thy palaces even as Ossian ? 
 " Dost thou inhabit the shades of affliction ? Thy 
 " sisters, have they fallen from Heaven ? " &c. 
 
 How many, man}' fancies which the old bards, 
 whom MacPherson professes to translate, could 
 never have understood ! And, by a just return of 
 fate, how many things in their savage and rugged 
 epics, which remained as incomprehensible to the 
 elegant MacPherson ! 
 
IRISH LITERATURE AND OSSIAN. 215 
 
 in. 
 
 The liteniturc o\ liehind is the key of the Celtic 
 world. But it is not the whole of Celtic literature. 
 Brittanv contributes her store to the treasure, hut it 
 is less ancient and still comparatively unexplored. 
 We know that the Breton cycle is dominated by the 
 grand figure of King Arthur, who passed from Wales 
 into Brittany, and thence into France, whither all 
 Europe has come to do him homage and to sit among 
 his knights at the feasts of the Round Table. Gaul, no 
 less, we may suppose, had its own branch of letters, 
 lost be3'ond recovery. All we can do for Gaul is to 
 illuminate the scanty fragments which remain of her 
 perished culture by the borrowed lights of Ireland. 1 
 will quote one example of such unexpected revelations. 
 
 My readers may know already that the cities of 
 Gaul had made a purse together to raise at Lyons 
 a temple to the divinity of Caesar Augustus. On the 
 ist of August a festival was held there with annual 
 games, Caligula inaugurated a competition for a 
 Prize of Eloquence. It may be imagined that the 
 yearly feast was given on the ist August in homage 
 to the name of Augustus. But Irish poetry teaches 
 us that the ist of August was one of the three great 
 national holidays, held in honour of a divinity 
 named Lugu. Now Lyons, in Latin Lugdunum, or 
 
2l6 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 more anciently Ln^ai-Dunum, signifies "the Fortress 
 of Lui^u." It is, therefore, probable that the 
 1st of August had long been celebrated in honour of 
 Lugu, and had been the national festival of Lyons 
 for many generations before the Gallo-Romans 
 transferred their homage to the Emperor. In Ire- 
 land, at the annual feast of Lugu the file or poets 
 used to recite their poems old and new ; Caligula's 
 Rhetors are but the continuators of i\\Q file. Ireland 
 has not yet given up to us, in her texts and monu- 
 ments, any memorial of the Gaulish gods quoted in 
 classic antiquity. Yet one of them, the Hercules 
 Ogmios of Lucian, the God of Eloquence, is admitted 
 to be the Irish Ogme, inventor of the Ogam writing. 
 In an hour when national antiquities meet with 
 more attention in P'rance than has ever been paid to 
 them before, it is but just that the most considerable, 
 the most enduring, of the constituents of the French 
 character should receive its due ; but Gaul has dis- 
 appeared from the surface of the Gallic soil, 
 although abundantly treasured beneath it. To redis- 
 cover ancient Gaul, let us cross the Channel to 
 Ireland. And this is the reason why Irish archae- 
 ology and Irish philology should become a branch of 
 the study of our national antiquities. Ireland alone 
 remembers a portion of our forgotten past. 
 
Irish Political "Ballads. 
 
 (Nappkr Tandy and the "Shan Van Vocht.") 
 
 "They sing, so they will pay," said Mazarin. The 
 Fronde showed him his mistake : they sang, so they 
 did not pay. A man of the same century, the 
 Scotch Republican, Fletcher of Saltoun, said still 
 better, " Let who will make the laws if I may make 
 the ballads." England knows the danger of a 
 ballad, and that is why she leaves the Irish almost 
 unlimited liberty of speech — but not of song. Let 
 Mr. Davitt vent his most incendiary speeches, rather 
 than any echo bear her the refrain of the "Wearing of 
 the Green," or the " Shan Van Vocht." 
 
 L 
 
 Some while ago, in Paris, 1 heard a young English- 
 woman sing one of the proscribed ballads of 1798 : 
 "The Wearing of theGreen." In Desdemona's phrase, 
 
 '•An old thing 'twas, but it expressed her fortunes ;" 
 
 the fortunes of Ireland, of course. Poor in form, 
 simple in style, but with a magic of its own, all the 
 
2l8 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 greater when an English voice fills out with its 
 stronger passion the accents of grief and wrath, 
 ever somewhat vague and wavering, of Celtic fancy. 
 The air and the words haunted my ear long after, 
 and, as every general impression hangs, so to speak, 
 upon one central detail, there was one strange verse 
 which pursued me even closer than the others : 
 
 " I met with Napper Tandy, 
 
 And he took me by the hand, 
 And he said, ' How's poor old Ireland ? 
 And how does she stand ? ' " 
 
 In London, a few months later, I tried in vain to 
 get some information as to Napper Tandy and his 
 ballad, but nothing is more vain than to ask an 
 Englishman of letters a question in Irish history 
 or literature. Anything you like about China or 
 Assyria ; but when it comes to Ireland, the simplest 
 thing is to go there. 
 
 When you land at Larne, by the Northern route, 
 the first thing to do is to take the train to Portrush, 
 the last station before the Giant's Causeway. On 
 entering the "Sun" parlour at Portrush, I came upon 
 an Irish priest finishing his last spoonful of porridge. 
 He looked up, bowed and smiled, and as conversa- 
 tion is not slow to engage in Ireland, 1 began : 
 
 " A fine country, father ! " 
 
IRISH POLITICAL BALLADS. 219 
 
 " Yes ! a fine country, sure ! And it mi^lil be a 
 happy one were it not for the bad laws ! " 
 
 We were quick to confide, as you see. Tliere is 
 no one more open-hearted than an Irish Cathohc 
 priest. Imagine a peasant with a something of the 
 gentleman, but no smack of the cassock, no hint of 
 theology ! An Englishman is perhaps a heretic in 
 his eyes — I suppose so ! — but it is quite certain that 
 he is a foreigner. 
 
 After dinner we walked up a low hill, overlooking 
 the sea. My companion asked for news of Marshal 
 MacMahon, and seemed surprised to hear he was no 
 longer President of the Republic. He appeared to 
 think it a bad thing for France. Then he began to 
 tell me about the poverty of Ireland, and we soon 
 got on to Mr. Parnell (a demi-god in his eyes), and 
 to Invincibles (his pet abomination), and last of all 
 to Home Rule, whose advent he was eagerly ex- 
 pecting. The good priest entertained no dreams 
 of an Irish Republic ; he talked of a personal union 
 under the same sovereign. England might give the 
 hand to Ii'eland under Queen Victoria, even as 
 Hungary and Austria dwell in peace under Francis 
 Joseph. 
 
 Night drew on. Against the sombre sky to our 
 right stood out the vague, still darker mass of the 
 
220 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Giant's Causeway, a colossal amphitheatre. To the 
 left, lit up by the last rays of sunset, the fantastic 
 lacey outlines of Denv and Donegal. Before us, a 
 sea flecked with innumerable isles, which almost meet 
 the rugged arms of Scotland stretched out towards 
 them. And above, a sea of stars flecked with bars 
 of cloud, where the moon swims, vanishes, reappears, 
 and silvers for an instant the dim white of the sea. 
 
 " Do you know anything about Napper Tandy ?" 
 I asked of my companion. 
 
 " Look down, straight before you," he answered. 
 
 Across the sea a fitful light gleamed and was 
 eclipsed. 
 
 *^ 'Tis there the English confined him," said the 
 priest. 
 
 We had seen the revolving light of a lighthouse 
 established on a desolate rock called, I believe, Tory 
 Island. Napper Tandy, as my companion informed 
 me, was one of the leaders of the rising of 1798 ; after 
 the defeat of the Irish he had been shut up on Tory 
 Island. My companion knew little else of his story. 
 "'Tis you who should know all that/' he protested, 
 " since he was a Frenchman." 
 
 I protested that our histories do not preserve the 
 quaint name of Napper Tandy, and I left Portrush 
 little wiser than I came. 
 
IRISH I^OLITICAL BALLADS. 22t 
 
 In Dublin, the PlicL-nix Park — with its iininense 
 avenue, which, behind the statue of Lord Gough 
 that guards the entry, traverses a vast stretch of 
 wooded land, with green clumps of trees and 
 sleeping waters — appeared in the August sunlight as 
 peaceful, as radiant, as if no illustrious blood had 
 ever been treacherously spilt there. But of an 
 evening, when between the darkening woods the 
 avenue is drowned in the red sunset, then the 
 bronze horseman, bounding forward with drawn 
 sword, appears an exterminating angel, rushing 
 down from the open heavens to chastise the blood- 
 stained earth. 
 
 I found at Dublin the object of my search. There, 
 at least, they remembered Xapper Tandy. He was 
 an honest Dublin draper, a brave, simple patriot, 
 somewhat limited in outlook. He was the secretary 
 of that Association of United Irishmen, which, 
 between 1796 and 1798, expended more heroism 
 and greater energies in ruining the cause of Irish 
 independence than ever the Volunteers of Dungannon 
 had shown in its establishment. Sent to France on 
 a mission to the Dircctoire in the hopes of obtainmg 
 the armed alliance of the French, he returned in 
 1798 with one ship of war and a general's uniform 
 to undertake the conquest of Ireland. But at the 
 
222 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 moment ot landing he heard of Humbert's defeat, 
 and set sail for Hamburg. Hamburg handed hun 
 over to the EngHsh, who condemned him to death, 
 but commuted the sentence, deeming him scarcely 
 worth his shot. Pardoned, he went abroad, and died 
 at Bordeaux. But, in the destinies of Ireland there 
 had been one hour, one moment, when the heart of 
 a whole nation beat high with hope at the name of 
 Napper Tandy ; and that sole instant is sufficient for 
 a nation to lift its transitory hero into the immortality 
 of a ballad which shall last as long as the race. 
 
 I had rediscovered Napper Tandy. It was easier 
 to lay hands on the " Wearing of the Green." 
 
 Happily, Dublin is the paradise of political broad- 
 sheets. In all the more frequented streets, and 
 down a stretch of the quays that border the black 
 Liffey, at every stop of the fly in the breeze, they 
 litter the shop windows with a wealth of pamphlets 
 and ballads. I found quite half-a-dozen versions of 
 the "Wearing of the Green," but none of them 
 pleased me so well as the song I had heard in Paris. 
 Most of these copies adhered to it, for a part, at least, 
 of their stanzas, but the variations were a signal 
 falling off, trivial and commonplace, or academic to 
 frigidity. Which was the original text ? I do not 
 know. But in art the most beautiful version of a 
 
IRISH POLITICAL BALLADS. 223 
 
 subject is the true one, and so 1 write down here the 
 verses I so much admired. 
 
 The title of the song tells its story. Green is the 
 national and Catholic colour in Ireland, even as 
 orange is the hue dear to the " loyal " Protestant 
 boys. When Saint Patrick, Gospel in hand, preached 
 the Church to the pagan Irish, pitying their inca- 
 pacity to comprehend the doctrine of the Trinity, he 
 stooped, plucked a shamrock, and showed them the 
 triune leaf. 'Tis for that the shamrock will remain 
 in every Irish cap, the cockade of country and faith, 
 in despite of police regulations, in despite of Viceroy 
 and Castle : 
 
 " O Paddy, dear, and did you hear 
 The news that's goin' round ? 
 The shamrock is by law forbid 
 To grow on Irish ground. 
 
 Xo more Saint Patrick's day we'll keep, 
 
 His colours can't be seen, 
 And there's a cruel law agin 
 
 The Wearin' of the Green. 
 
 I met with Napper Tandy, 
 
 And he took me by the hand, 
 And he said : * How's poor old Ireland, 
 
 And how does she stand ? ' 
 
 She's the most distressful counthry 
 
 That ever yet was seen ; 
 For they're hanging men and women there. 
 
 For the Wearin' of the Green." 
 
224 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Oh ! if the colour \vc must bear 
 
 Is England's cruel red, 
 Let it remind you of the blood 
 
 That Ireland has shed. 
 
 Then pull the shamrock from your cap 
 
 And throw it on the sod, 
 And never fear 'twill take root there 
 
 Though under foot 'tis trod. 
 
 When laws can keep the blades of grass . 
 
 From growing as they grow. 
 And when the leaves in summer time 
 
 Their colour dare not show ; 
 
 Then I will change the colour 
 
 That I wear on my caurbeen, 
 Until that day, please God, I'll keep 
 
 To the Wearin' of the Green." 
 
 II. 
 About the same time another ballad, fiercely 
 enthusiastic, thrilling wuth hope, took its flight from 
 the heart of the nation ; 'tis the song of the " Poor 
 old Woman "—the " Shan Van Vocht." Here, too, the 
 people have multiplied their versions of a song, so 
 popular, that all would have a hand in it ; 1 chose 
 the best known as the finest, written, as I take it, 
 towards the end of 1796. It was Christmas time. 
 The French Republic, newly victorious in Vendee, 
 sent to the relief of the English Vendee the 
 conqueror of its PVench counterpart. The United 
 
IRISH rOLlTICAL BALLADS. 225 
 
 Irishmen, under Lord Edward Fitzgerald, were 
 waiting as the signal for a general rising, the appa- 
 rition of the sails of Hoche in the Bay of Bantry. A 
 shiver of hope ran from end to end of Ireland, and 
 in the new breeze of deliverance, the "Poor old 
 Woman " felt iier frozen blood grow young : 
 
 " Oh ! the French are on the sea, 
 
 Says the Shan Van Voclit ; 
 The French are on the sea. 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vochl. 
 Oh ! the French are in tlie Bay, 
 They'll be here by break of day, 
 And the Orange will decay, 
 
 Says the Shan Van VocJil. 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 Oh ! the French are in the Bay, 
 They'll be here by break of day, 
 And the Orange will decay, 
 Says the SJian Van VocJil. 
 
 And where will they have their camp ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vochl ; 
 Where will they have their camp ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vochl. 
 
 On the Curragh of Kildare, 
 
 The boys they will be there, 
 
 With their pikes in good repair, 
 Says the Shan Van Vochl ; 
 
 To the Curragh of Kildare 
 
 The boys they will repair, 
 
 And Lord Edward will be there. 
 Says the Shan Van Vochl ; 
 
 17 
 
226 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Then what will the yeomen do ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 What will the yeomen do ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 What should the yeomen do ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 But throw off the red and blue, 
 And swear that they'll be true 
 
 To the Shan Van Vocht. 
 
 And what colour will they wear ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 What colour will they wear ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 What colour should be seen 
 Where our fathers' bones have been, 
 But their own immortal green ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 
 And will Ireland then be free ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 Will Ireland then be free ? 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht ; 
 Yes ! Ireland shall be free 
 From the centre to the sea ; 
 Then hurrah for Liberty, 
 
 Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
 
 111. 
 
 It is the destiny of Ireland to be for ever sighting the 
 harbour, and for ever sucked back into the maelstrom 
 of the abyss. Her enchanted ship can never enter port. 
 The French fleet appeared in view of Bantry ; bonfires 
 
IRISH {'OT,ITICAL BALLADS. 227 
 
 flamed on all the crags in Kerry. But, as in tiic 
 days of the Armada, a storm watched the case for 
 England. The gusts and blasts of the ocean, "her 
 only unpaid allies," fought for her better than her 
 loreign mercenaries. On December 31, 1796, the 
 P'rench flag veered off and dropped below the 
 horizon, and the New Year arose, gloomier than 
 before, in front of the tragic eyes of the Shan Van 
 Vocht. The long-prepared rising burst forth, but in 
 vain ; abandoned to its sole resources, it showed 
 itself what it was : a forlorn hope. Lord Edward 
 Fitzgerald died of leading it. The following year 
 witnessed the defeat of General Humbert, and 
 saw the last chance of Ireland perish with Wolfe 
 Tone. And in the Irish Chamber, a bribed and 
 terrorised majority voted the Union of Erin to 
 the "Sister-Isle." Thence forward, the super- 
 annuated House of Parliament was handed over 
 to a banking establishment : a fit comment on the 
 sale of Ireland. 
 
 The "Wearing of the Green " and the " Shan Van 
 Vocht " close the era of the ballad in Ireland — of the 
 song which leaps in a moment of crisis to the lips of a 
 people, the song which everyone sings and no one 
 has made. The next generation wooed a lettered 
 muse, doomed to oblivion. Thomas Moore was the 
 
228 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 idol of this generation, and his songs may live for 
 the sake of the air, which is national, rather than 
 for the sake of the words, which are Tommy 
 Moore's. In the middle of the century the poets 
 of Young Ireland write the verses of pressmen and 
 historians. 
 
 The staff of the Nation — the organ of the new 
 party which lifted against the legal and Parliamentary 
 O'Connell the audacious standard of 1796 — the Nation 
 made a weapon of the political ballad. But this 
 movement was artificial, masmuch as the memories 
 of the past, and not the emotions of the present, fed 
 it and inflamed it ; and it is already alienate from 
 the heart and lips of the people, notwithstanding the 
 talent of Thomas Davis ; notwithstanding his gener- 
 ous dream of reconciling the Green and the Orange ; 
 noth withstanding his songs which keep a chord for 
 every Irish glory, from the coming of the Milesians 
 to the rising of Dungannon. He died at thirty, 
 exhausted and immature. 
 
 In a singing nation like the Irish, every new phase 
 of national politics begets a new poetic movement. 
 But the last of all is mute. The only poet of the 
 Land League is an Englishwoman, a mere tourist 
 in Ireland : I speak of Miss Taylor, the daughter of 
 the poet of Arteveldt. Her pen supplied the poems 
 
IRISH POLITICAL BALLADS. 229 
 
 to Mr. Parnell's paper.* As to Anarchist, Fenian 
 Ireland, what need of songs has she ? The whizzing 
 of the bullet, the burst of the bomb are dearer to 
 her ears, and the keenest rhymes have not so line a 
 point as Brady's dagger. To-day is less generous 
 than yesterday, and that is whv the harp is mute in 
 Tara's halls. 
 
 But if Ireland dai'es no longer sing the old songs, 
 and cares no longer to invent a fresh one, the old 
 dear forbidden ballads lilt their contraband music in 
 the bottom of her heart. I remember in St. James's 
 Hall, in London, an Irish audience assembled to hear 
 a speech by Davitt : the organ sounded the first notes of 
 "O Paddy, dear," and every hand went up, every cap 
 and hat were off, every eye beamed and moistened. A 
 French Republican audience, towards the end of the 
 Second Empire, could not have hearkened with a 
 dearer transport to the stirring high-treason of the 
 "Marseillaise." And, as you jolt along some country 
 road in Ireland, ask the Jehu of your jaunting-car 
 if he knows the "Shan Van Vocht." One look, half- 
 distrust, half-amazement, then a joyous smile twitch- 
 
 * Since this article was written, 1884, Home Rule has produced 
 its legion of poets, of whom two at least are distinguished by a 
 brilliant, subtle and tender gift : 1 speak of Mr. Yeats and Miss 
 Katherine Tynan, whose songs are read and sung all over Ireland, 
 —Ed. 
 
230 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 ing his quaint common Irish grin ; he has caught 
 
 the pass-word ! And with a great stifled laugh 
 
 which interrupts every word, he leans over and 
 
 whispers: "The ' Shan Van Yocht.' Ah yes, sure, 
 
 the 'Shan Van Vocht ' ! 
 
 ' Oh, the French are on the sea, 
 Says the Sliaii Van Vocht /...'" 
 
 IV. 
 
 Not far h'om the rocks whence the Shan Van Vocht 
 used to strain her eyes gazing seawards towards the 
 invisible French fleet, not far from Bantry, the 
 paradise of Ireland lies among the hills around the 
 lakes of Killarney. Before descending towards the 
 lake, climb towards the Muckross Waterfall — having 
 care to pay your shilling into the till of the millionaire 
 landlord, who puts, as it were, river, mountain, and 
 waterfall into his well-filled pocket. The cascade 
 rolls from rock to rock amid a mist of foam, through 
 strands of overhanging fern. Below, an immense 
 sheet of blue water, flecked with islands, barred with 
 promontories, at the foot of the purple mountains, 
 under an almost Italian sky. Taking the downward 
 path, turn towards the ruined abbey ; under the roof- 
 less walls of the ruin the moss grows on the sombre 
 tombstones, and on the monument of O'Donoghue, 
 
IRISH POLITICAL BALLADS. 23I 
 
 the demigod of the place, once king of the lake and 
 the mountain. Near these graves a cloister, still 
 intact, lifts its immortal columns. In the centre of 
 the cloister a colossal yew tree, whose immense 
 branches entirely cover the cloister garden with a 
 murmuring, shifting roof of shadow and foliage. Of 
 nights, when the moonlight pierces the boughs and 
 the arches with its silver shafts, what dreams must 
 visit the shadows of the monks of old, as they pace 
 to and fro, lost in retrospect. One would stay for 
 hours there beside the sleeping brothers, under the 
 stir and tremble of the yew. Memento mori is not 
 any menace, remembered in these courts of calm. 
 'Tis almost a hope, at least a promise. What sky 
 and what sunshine are worth this silence and this 
 restful gloom ! 
 
 A boat is on the lake. Two Irish boatmen, as 
 happy as kings, great vigorous creatures, are 
 rowing three young Englishmen, commercial 
 travellers or Liverpool shopmen 1 gather, rather 
 noisy than gay, ardent teetotalers. The boat puts 
 in to land. "Come on, sir, — there's room for six. 
 Are you French ? Look at this rock then ; those 
 four huge letters there, that 'pole,' is all that's 
 left of Napoleon." 
 
 And in fact some Napoleon— but of prince or 
 
232 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 emperor I know not whether — engraved his name 
 there in 1856, He may have thought that there at 
 least, if not in the memory of men, his name would 
 remain writ not in water. Since then storm and 
 rain and wind have battered the inscription ; they 
 have left a mere puzzle, undecipherable without its 
 commentary, enigmatic as the soul it records. Poor 
 Napoleon ! the rocks are not more clement than the 
 nations. 
 
 Our three Englishmen ask for a song ; and at once 
 the Irishmen set up the Irish adaptation of " John 
 Brown is marching on " : 
 
 " And we'll make the Saxons dance 
 As we are marching along. 
 Glory, Alleluia ! 
 Glory, Alleluia ! " 
 
 The three young Saxons are not, perhaps, pre- 
 cisely flattered by the promise, but a good Christian 
 cannot leave an " Alleluia" without response. After a 
 moment's hesitation they roll out the refrain bravely 
 enough. Perhaps they say in their hearts they will 
 only dance just as long as they please. And the 
 Irish chaunt away to their hearts' content. For quite 
 a quarter of an hour the echoes ring. " We'll make 
 the Saxons dance," shouts hilarious Ireland ; and 
 " Glory, Alleluia ! " answers England. 
 
IRISH POLITICAL BALLADS. 233 
 
 A sudden hush ! From another boat across the 
 waters come the note of a horn, the dear and sacred 
 notes : "O Paddy, dear." Divinely sad and sweet, they 
 breathe, and swell, and sob, and die away in the 
 distance at the far end of the lake. The two Irish- 
 men, paid to be merry at so much an hour, hired to 
 make the tourists laugh, stop their rollicking. The 
 cloud of a thought passes over their receding fore- 
 heads, too low, one would have said, to harbour a 
 mind ; the four foreigners feel the mysterious thrill 
 of a common emotion. They feel that the soul of a 
 nation is passing their way, is — who knows ? — per- 
 chance passing away in death. 
 
 According to the guide book we stop at the 
 cottage to buy the regulation views, and to stand a 
 bottle of beer to our boatmen. A ledger awaits our 
 observations. I look through it. Everywhere the 
 same echo of a melancholy sympathy. Whether he 
 will or no, so soon as he lands in Ireland, the 
 English tourist is moved to compassion. Sic Vosnoji 
 Vohis, writes one ; and another, God save Irclniul ! 
 But we will search for no subtle motto ; write 
 only the plaintive name of Ireland : Slum Win VocJit, 
 the poor old ivonian ! 
 
AN INDIAN MISCELLANY. 
 
Qalcutta. 
 
 Ix the year of grace 1636, the Honourable Com- 
 pany of East India Merchants had been estabhshed 
 for nearly five-and-twenty years in the town of 
 Surat, the great eastern port of India, when the 
 daughter of the Great Mogul fell sick. The physicians, 
 having sought the remedy in vain, contented 
 themselves with saying: "Allah alone dispenses 
 health !" The princess's father was that famous 
 Shah Jehan, who raised the Taj to the memory of 
 his beloved, the Queen Mumtaz Mahal. He loved 
 his daughter as he had loved his wife, and could 
 not face the fear of losing her. In his distress, he 
 bethought him of the Firanji, whose outlandish 
 doctors have a cure for every ill. He sent a courier 
 to Surat. The courier returned with a ship's doctor, 
 a Mr. Boughton, who, in fact, restored the princess 
 to life. The grateful emperor asked Boughton to 
 fix his own reward. The doctor, with the commer- 
 cial patriotism of an Englishman, asked that the 
 
 237 
 
238 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 East India Company might trade free of duty in 
 Bengal. The favour was accorded, and the fortunate 
 merchants estabHshed a warehouse at Hougli, a place 
 situated on the river of that name, one of the three 
 streams whicli form the delta of the Ganges. 
 
 Dr. Boughton had administered a famous tonic 
 to the Company. It flourished and fattened, and in 
 consequence, became arrogant, insolent, took on 
 conquering airs, and fain would have treated with 
 the Great Mogul on the terms of equal powers. 
 Unfortunately the Great Mogul at that moment was 
 Aureng-Zeb, the Louis-Quatorze of India, no easier 
 to hob-nob with, or patronise, than his great French 
 contemporary. John Company had taken a liberty ; 
 the indignant autocrat expelled him from his territory, 
 confiscated his properties, and only consented to 
 restore him to favour upon a "very humble and 
 penitent request that the crimes of the Company 
 might be pardoned." Even when this was granted, 
 our merchants did not return to Hougli. 
 
 In 1686, as soon as the situation of the Company 
 began to be imperilled, its president. Job Charnock, 
 moved from Hougli and set out down-stream, 
 seeking a safer refuge. Some thirty miles below 
 Hougli he remarked an immense fig tree, whose 
 spreading arms sheltered a hamlet. The peace, the 
 
CALCUTTA. 239 
 
 quiet of the spot, pleased the fugitive. There he 
 stopped his Httle fleet, and under the spreading fig- 
 tree set up his booths and barns. From that 
 transitory asylum sprang the Metropolis of the East. 
 
 Charnock died some six years later, still unaware 
 that he had been the Romulus of another Rome. 
 Gossip has it that he died converted to the faith 
 of the honest pagans with whom he traded, after 
 having rescued from the stake and married a young 
 widow whom her relations had compelled to the 
 pious act of Suttee. The Church would not believe 
 this tell-tale talk, and gave job Charnock six feet of 
 earth in her old cathedral, and a marble-slab above 
 his ashes with, writ in Latin, an inscription telling 
 how "Job Charnock, Esq., Englishman, and most 
 worthy Agent of the English in this Kingdom of 
 Bengal, after having sojourned a long time in 
 foreign places, returned to his eternal home, the loth 
 January, 1692." "Qui, posiquain in solo iioii siio 
 perigrinatus essct din, reversus est douiuui sno 
 cciernitatis, dccimo die Januarii, 1692." This is 
 the oldest carved stone in Calcutta. 
 
 At the present day, Sutunati forms the northern 
 quarter of Calcutta. The factory founded 
 several establishments in the neighbouring villages ; 
 one at Gorriedpur, on the site of the Esplanade of 
 
240 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 our contemporaries ; another at Calcutta, which has 
 given its name to the capital of India. 
 
 The village of Calcutta owed its name to a famous 
 temple of Kali — ^or Kali-Ghat — situated two or three 
 miles away. And Kali-Ghat in English speech 
 became Calcutta. Kali, that is to say, " She who is 
 Black," is one of the names of the formidable spouse 
 of Siva : Mahadevi, " the Great Goddess," she of a 
 thousand names and a thousand forms, who is 
 adored alternately as the Supreme Mind and the 
 power of creation and destruction ; perpetual object 
 of mystic adoration, bloody and obscene. This is 
 how her worship came to be established at Calcutta: 
 
 Dakcha had manied his daughter Parvati to Siva. 
 But, elevated by Brahma to the rank of chief of the 
 Prajapatis, Dakcha grew arrogant and waxed in 
 pride. He gave a great sacrifice and did not invite 
 Siva. In fact, he was meditating the best way to 
 drop — or at least to keep in the background — this 
 most undesirable son-in-law, this ranger of ceme- 
 teries, this madman with his collar of skulls, his face 
 smeared with human ashes, his cohort of ghosts and 
 "spooks." Meanwhile, Parvati sees all the gods 
 and goddesses going by in their carriages and asks 
 to what party are they all invited ? Siva replies, 
 " They are your father's guests. / have not been 
 
CALCUTTA. 241 
 
 invited." Outraged at the slii^ht on her husband, 
 Parvati goes to the house of festivity, " has it out " 
 with her parent, shakes the dust of his palace off her 
 feet, and finally, in order to avenge herself upon the 
 corporeal form which she owes to her peccant 
 father, gives up the ghost. Siva, inconsolable for 
 the loss of so good a wife, takes her corpse on his 
 shoulders and wanders up and down the earth 
 which groans under the weight of his sorrow. 
 Mankind, affrighted, calls on Vishnou for protection. 
 Vishnou rushes to the rescue, flings high in the air 
 his miraculous disc, which cuts the dead body of 
 Parvati into two-and-fifty morsels. The two-and- 
 lifty places where the fragments fell have since 
 become shrines of pilgrimage where the pious faith- 
 ful have erected temples. That of Kali-Ghat, for 
 instance, was raised on the precise spot hallowed by 
 the second toe of the left foot. 
 
 The temple is built on the border of the Tolly 
 River, called after an excellent English colonel, 
 whose country house stood on its banks. This humble, 
 dried-up nullah is nothing less — if tradition deceive us 
 not — than the original bed of the Ganges : the Adi 
 Ganges, hence its sacred character. The great 
 stream of Hougli is a mere profane and mundane 
 channel dug by the hand of man — so at least the 
 
 18 
 
242 KXGLISU STUDIES. 
 
 Indians say. The Adi Ganges is but a phantom— 
 in more than one place a faint depression of the 
 soil, a stagnant pool here and there, are all that 
 indicate its passage. Archaeologists trace out its 
 course by the ruins of sanctuaries, the remains of 
 water-stairs, which still show where the faithful 
 used to go down to the sacred river to make their 
 ablutions, or to burn their dead, who floated straight 
 to Paradise along the holy current. Of all these 
 stairs, or ghats, the most frequented was, and is, the 
 Ghat of Kali. It was, and is, a shrine of pilgrimage 
 for all Bengal. A royal road leads thither from 
 Murshidabad, the capital of the last century, 
 nmning through marsh and jungle then when it 
 was made, and now through the streets of Calcutta 
 which have usurped their place. Chauringhi, the 
 Oxford Street or Rue de Rivoli of Calcutta, is built 
 along the old pilgrims' way. The road is the same, 
 but the palm trees and the pippals are replaced by 
 rows of Corinthian columns, while ranks of C-spring 
 carriages, troops of pale, blonde babies with their 
 avahs, have succeeded to the bands of half -naked 
 men and women who hastened forwards, leaning on 
 their staves, towards the sacred shrine, from the 
 spurs of the Himalayas and the furthest limits of 
 Bengal. 
 
CALCUTTA. 243 
 
 The object of their pilgrimage is the sacred image 
 of Kah. She is black, as her name informs us. In 
 the gloom of her shrine, beneath the encumbrance 
 of her votive offerings, all we perceive of her is the 
 long golden streak of her tongue. She puts it out 
 at us, that long tongue of hers which falls between 
 her breasts. Let us be not too astonished at such 
 behaviour in a lady and a goddess ; everything can 
 be explained. Parvati, be it understood, had laid 
 upon herself the generous task of freeing the earth 
 from the monsters and demons which infested it. 
 When she had come to the end of her labours, she 
 danced again for joy upon her trophies : she danced 
 with such a vehement, fierce, fantastic toe that the 
 earth trembled, shivered, threatened to fall into 
 pieces. Whereupon Siva, to stay her fury of 
 pleasure, threw himself upon the ground among the 
 corpses of Parvati's victims. And she, beholding 
 her lord and master thus unduly humbled, stopped 
 short for very shame and put out her tongue, which 
 is the Indian translation of a bridal blush. In this 
 edifying attitude. Art and Religion have immor- 
 talised the goddess. 
 
 Even now, every day the pilgrims wind along the 
 road to the Kali-Ghat, but especially upon the 
 festivals consecrate to Siva : for instance upon the 
 
244 ENGLISH STCDIES. 
 
 day ol Sharak-Pooja, when the pious hack and slash 
 themselves in his honour while whirling round and 
 round in an infernal dance. But the feast of feasts 
 is, of course, the Kali-Pooja which lasts one night : 
 the darkest of the waning moon of the month of 
 Kartika. On that night, the temple is drowned out 
 with the blood of goats, sheep and buffaloes. 
 
 It is a nauseating, odious scene of butchery. The 
 worshipper leads up his victim ; the priest sprinkles 
 a little blood on the beast's head for consecration ; 
 the butcher seizes the animal, fixes its head in a sort 
 of frame, and slashes it off. Then the priest wets 
 his linger in the spout of steaming blood, smears 
 the idol therewith, pockets his fees (about sixpence 
 a head), and the pilgrim trundles off with the head- 
 less corpse, happy to have communicated with his 
 god, and confident that his vow, w^hatsoever it be, 
 will be granted by the powers above. 
 
 "What profit have I of the blood of goats and 
 heifers ? " 
 
 The Hindoo has not yet met with his Isaiah. 
 
 Once upon a time it was the blood of human 
 victims which smeared the temples of the goddess 
 Kali. So much as man is higher than the beast, by 
 so much is his blood a more delicious beverage in 
 heaven ; and the value of the victim exalts the virtue 
 
CALCUTTA. 245 
 
 of the sacriiice. Even at the beginning of our cen- 
 tury, under EngHsh rule, more than one devotee of 
 Kali, bent on expressing the full fervour of his piety, 
 has substituted for the customary goat — a living 
 child ; and Kali sent no angel to stay the sword at 
 the throat of Isaac. A whole caste, the caste of 
 assassins, the famous Thugs, were the avowed 
 servants of Kali. They prostrated themselves 
 before her altars each time ere they set out on 
 their dark and dubious courses, while, on their 
 return, they offered at her shrine a portion of their 
 ill-gotten gains, consecrating their murders by in- 
 voking, as they tightened the knot, her sacred name. 
 The temple which stands at Kali-Ghat to-day was 
 built, some three centuries ago, by a member of one 
 of the hrst families of Bengal, the Sabarna, who 
 endowed the shrine with the revenue of some two 
 hundred acres. The first priest was a Brahmin 
 called Chandibar. Under the title of Haldar, his 
 descendants are the present owners. The revenues 
 of the temple are immense : the polltax on the 
 victims alone would suffice to maintain it, for some 
 days there are thousands of them, and many days 
 there are hundreds. The Haldar family is at 
 present divided into several branches, which each 
 in turn receive the fees of sacrifice during a week at 
 
246 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 a time. But on days of especial festival all the 
 branches are represented and the receipts divided. 
 There are in the world few sanctuaries whose 
 money affairs are less complicated. 
 
 When Job Charnock built his factories at Suta- 
 nati, Govind, and Calcutta the Kali-Ghat was as 
 much frequented as it is now, only in those days 
 the pilgrims did not take the tram. The three 
 villages, at present confounded in one immense 
 metropolis, were lost in the forest — an immense 
 forest, infested with wild beasts and brigands, inter- 
 rupted only by pestilential marshes. The English 
 town supplanted it, without plan or design, accord- 
 ing to the hazard of the earlier clearings — without 
 much care either for the requirements of hygiene. 
 Certain quarters lie below the level of the river. 
 
 The jungle and the ricefields, interspersed with 
 vague marshy meadows, where here and there 
 showed the thatch of a native hut, lay all around 
 the European houses and enveloped them in an 
 atmosphere of malaria. The mortality was terrible ; 
 to run the risk of a residence in Calcutta one needed 
 the heroism of a merchant who has adopted the 
 device of "Death or Cent, per Cent !" It is said 
 that in one year one fourth of the European popu- 
 lation died of fever. In the port, in their leisure 
 
CALCUTTA. 247 
 
 moments, the more etymological of the sailors 
 declared the name of the place was derived from 
 Golgotha — ** the place of skulls." 
 
 Meanwhile the Mogul Empire mouldered into 
 fragments. 
 
 From the other end of the peninsula, from the 
 shores of the Indian Ocean, a new nation created by 
 the genius of the brigand Sivajee — the Mahrattas — 
 hurled their squadrons of freebooters at the gates 
 of Delhi, at the banks of the Ganges. In 1742, 
 their vancouriers were observed within sight of 
 Hougli. The Company began to dig a moat round 
 its domain — " the Mahratta Moat " — which, under 
 the name of the Circular Road, still forms a part 
 of the nominal boundary of Calcutta. In the 
 interior of the town the worthy merchants had 
 alreadv raised, some fifty years before, on the site 
 of the present post-office, a fort after the fashion 
 of Vauban, called Fort William, in honour of the 
 Dutch King of England. The Mahratta storm 
 drifted along the horizon and did not burst over 
 Calcutta ; the English merchants returned to their 
 counting-houses and continued to quarrel with all 
 their competitors, whether P'rench, Dutch, or 
 Danish, at Chandernagor, Chinsarah or Seram- 
 poor. 
 
248 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Fourteen years later, in 1756, the storm burst 
 indeed, but from an unexpected quarter. The 
 young Nawab of Bengal, Suraj Addaula, wounded 
 by a letter from Governor Drake, who refused 
 to demolish the lofty fortifications durmg the 
 French war, marched on Calcutta at the 
 head of an army. The Governor escaped with the 
 inhabitants and the treasure. The military com- 
 mandant followed his example and abandoned 
 Fort William. The deserted garrison elected a 
 chief, a Mr. Holwell, and maintained a resistance 
 of eight-and-forty hours ; by this time half of them 
 had succumbed ; and the remainder, having found 
 their way to the cellars, were dead drunk. Holwell 
 could not hold all alone against an army. He 
 raised the white flag ; but while he was parleying 
 with the enemy and making his own terms of 
 surrender, the foe entered by force and took the 
 fort. The night fell. What was to be done with 
 the prisoners, a hundred and forty-six of them in 
 all ? A native ofBcer suggested the guard-room, 
 a chamber some twenty feet square, with one 
 window. It was June : the heat in Calcutta was 
 overwhelming. The guard-room appeared an 
 adequate prison to the conqueror, who drove his 
 unhappy captives into the sweltering den at the 
 
CALCUTTA. 249 
 
 point of the sword. It was a scene of terror ; Dante's 
 Inferno holds no Bolgia more awful, more infamous 
 to all eternity, than the Black Hole of Calcutta. 
 
 All night long, the sharp short-drawn breath, the 
 fainting sighs, the tortures of the damned, a hundred 
 and forty-six of them, unhappy creatures, grew more 
 desperate, then fainter hour by hour. Next 
 morning, when the Indians opened the door of the 
 dungeon, three-and-twenty spectres crept gasping 
 forth. One hundred and twenty-three corpses lay 
 sprawling in the further corners or heaped up thick, 
 one over the other, near the sole small square 
 window. Already the Indian sun had begun its 
 work of putrefaction. The three-and-twenty survivors 
 had lived, thanks to this festering heap of dead and 
 dying, on to which they had climbed, and from 
 which they had been able to cling to the window- 
 bars, set in Oriental fashion, high up in the wall. 
 The Mussulmans remained seven months in Calcutta, 
 which they rebaptized Alinagar — the town of Ali — 
 triumphing in this new name over Europe and 
 Kali at one fell swoop. But the Black Hole of 
 Calcutta had not been endured in vain. The blood 
 of those martyrs was the seed of English rule in 
 India. Before the seven months were ended, Clive 
 had retaken the ruins of Calcutta ; and on |unc 
 
250 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 23» 1757 one year and two days after the tragedy 
 of the Black Hole, he cut the Nawab's army into 
 pieces on the battlefield of Plassey. 
 
 At the moment of the great disaster, Calcutta 
 counted seventy houses, all of them inhabited by 
 English people. Modern Calcutta dates from Clive 
 in 1757. The old fort was given over to the Customs 
 House and other offices. A new fort — the Fort 
 William of our times — was begun a little lower down 
 on the banks of the river. All round the forest was 
 cleared, and the site of metropolitan Calcutta was 
 commenced. A century ago, on the Cathedral Square 
 of to-day, Warren Hastings chased the tiger in the 
 jungle ; and servants engaged by day in houses near 
 the new clearings, used to strip themselves naked ere 
 going home o' nights for fear of meeting robbers on 
 the road. 
 
 But from 1757 on, the history of Calcutta is the 
 tale of its continual and prodigious development ; 
 even as the history of India is but the tale of the 
 progress of the English. At the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century Calcutta was still a dependence 
 of Madras ; in 1707 it established its independence, 
 and the three Presidencies of Madras, Bombay, and 
 Calcutta were on a footing of equality — that is to 
 say, in a state of anarchy. But Clive's hawk-eye had 
 
CALCUTTA. 251 
 
 seen tliat wealthy, weak Bengal was but a prey 
 awaiting its conqueror. From that moment Calcutta 
 became the centre of action for the English ; in 
 1773 it became practically the capital ; in 1834 the 
 Governor-General of Bengal becomes the Governor 
 of India ; in 1857, '"^^ the union of India to the 
 British Crown, he takes the title of Viceroy. The 
 splendour of the city kept pace with the magnifi- 
 cence of its political destiny. One man above all 
 others has left his mark upon Calcutta and has 
 bequeathed it its character of Empire, he was Lord 
 Wellesley, the brother of Wellington, less illustrious, 
 perhaps greater ; one of those pro-consuls of genius 
 which only belong to ancient Rome or modern 
 England. When he built the Government House 
 in 1800, he said, "India must be governed from a 
 " palace, not from a counting-house ; with the ideas 
 " of a prince and not with the theories of a dealer in 
 " muslin or indigo." And so Calcutta became the 
 " City of Palaces." 
 
 Calcutta is an English town, surrounded by an 
 immense Indian village of six hundred thousand 
 souls. It is not, like Delhi, Benares or Lahore, an 
 ancient Indian city, old as the oldest memories of 
 its country, with its own character and antiquities, 
 its art, its way of life, its special physiognomy, to 
 
252 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 which the European conquest has gradually adjoined 
 a wealthy English suburb built of gardens, villas, 
 and avenues. Here, on the contrary, the Indian 
 suburb is the off-shoot of the European town. 'Tis 
 the servant of the needs of the sahib, 'tis a vast 
 bazaar, in kind no different from those which spring 
 up all over India round every military station. And 
 therefore Calcutta, the largest of all Indian agglom- 
 erations, is the emptiest to the artist. He goes to 
 Agra to see the Taj, and at Delhi there is the Divan 
 of Aureng-Zeb, or the Pearl Mosque, or the Cyclo- 
 pean ruins of ancient Delhi ; and see at Benares the 
 tiers on tiers of temples dominating the curve of 
 the sacred river ! But only the due fear of his 
 neighbour can entice the traveller to Calcutta. Is it 
 not the capital ? And a tourist, of course, must have 
 seen the capital. 
 
 Calcutta is not a city : it is merely a capital. 
 Little is necessary wherewithal to manufacture a 
 capital — force of will and a certain number of 
 masons. But to build a city which will last, a living' 
 city, the stone must have been lifted by the spirit 
 of a nation ; the past must furnish its traditions and 
 memories, affections ; the future inspire its hopes, 
 its noble aspirations — an obscure tending towards an 
 ill-discerned but radiant development must fuse into 
 
CALCUTTA. 253 
 
 one common soul, the soul of the city, all those 
 individual lives which people it. And nature must 
 lend its silent aid, its mute peremptory appeal. P^ew 
 capitals in Europe are in this sense really cities: 
 Paris, Rome, Stamboul (if the Turks were well out 
 of it !). Tradition, nature, the future, have nothing 
 to say to Calcutta. She exists, because one night 
 Mr. Job Charnock chanced to pitch his tent there. 
 
 The English of the last two centuries have little 
 sense of the beautiful in architecture. Even in England 
 it is conspicuous by its frequent absence ; much 
 more so in a country where they sojourn as strangers 
 and pilgrims, just long enough to make their fortunes 
 and depart. They went to no great expense of fancy 
 in laying out Calcutta : Pseudo-Greek for the public 
 offices ; Pseudo-Gothic for the churches. Anglo- 
 Saxon Greek and Gothic cut a strange figure under 
 the Indian sky. But, with these poor materials, the 
 architect had unlimited space at his disposition ; 
 that ennobling element redeems the whole ; and 
 the grandeur of the proportions of these palaces 
 produce an effect which, though not that of beauty, 
 has a distinct impressiveness of its own. Sixty 
 palaces in a row, facing the immense esplanade 
 called the Chauringhi Road, occupy not less than a 
 mile in extent. Chill, regular, commonplace in 
 
254 ENGLISH STCDIKS. 
 
 detail, this vast frontage of palaces is noble in the 
 mass ; and there is a dignity not to be denied in this 
 strange aberration of classic art, doubly in exile, 
 since even in England it is an imported taste. 
 Travellers acquainted with St. Petersburg find them- 
 selves familiar with Calcutta. It has a certain 
 likeness also to the new quarters of Vienna, or to 
 Budapest, if one can imagine Budapest shorn of 
 its glorious horizon of the dying Alps. But no other 
 town gives the same impression, the same sense of 
 all the power and all the coldness of the Anglo- 
 Saxon genius. A Wellesley or so have said : " Let 
 there be palaces ! " and lo ! the palaces came into 
 existence. But they forgot to add : " Let there be 
 genius ! " and perhaps, even if they had remembered, 
 the powers of a Governor-General may have their 
 limits, when it comes to immaterial things. 
 
 And yet these monuments, despite their dull 
 monotony, have each their own peculiar interest ; 
 some historic memory is attached to each of them. 
 There is the sole real interest of Calcutta, the only 
 reason for a visit to the City of Palaces. For these 
 East India merchants, prosaic men of business, 
 have written in their ledgers the most marvellous 
 romance of their century, saving the adventures of 
 Napoleon ; and their novel, more fortunate than 
 
CALCUTTA. 255 
 
 Napoleon's, is still a story without an end. Let us 
 take a saunter through their chapters as we float 
 awhile upstream. 
 
 Suppose that we have reached the mouth of the 
 Houi^ii, steered thi-oui^h its reefs, its sandbars and 
 its quicksands, by the happy instinct of a Calcutta 
 pilot — the only man who can venture there in safety. 
 There are in all about forty of these pilots, with 
 their strange Ancient Mariner appearance, who can 
 tell, by the foam and the colour of the oncoming 
 wave, the last new shape of the dangers of the 
 shifting soil beneath, and who learn by heart, hour 
 by hour, and day by day, the deadly whims, the 
 unforeseen caprices of their unstable estuary. 
 
 Coasting, we pass the island of Sagara, the classic 
 soil of the tigers of Bengal. During nine months 
 of the year the island disappears from view, hidden 
 by the furious waves of the Gulf, which the wild 
 sou'-westers chase across it. It is none the less, one 
 of the most favoured of India's shrines of pilgrimage. 
 P'or it is here that the river Ganges, v.'ho is none 
 other than Siva's very spouse, to whom we have just 
 offered sacrifice under the name of Kali — she who, 
 in her maiden days, among the Himalayan peaks, was 
 honoured as Parvati — She, the ineffable She, in short, 
 here on this very island, summoned from heaven by 
 
256 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 the tempestuous prayers of Bhagiratha, came to repose 
 in the bosom of the Ocean. Passuig o'er the island, 
 by the mere virtue of her holy contact she 
 resuscitated the sixty thousand sons of Sagara, who 
 had been reduced to ashes by an outraged saint. 
 Here the water of the Ganges, sacred wherever it 
 flows, is peculiarly divine and potent. Whoso shall 
 bathe therein, lo ! all his sins shall be washed white 
 as wool, even as it happened to the sons of Sagara, 
 and like them, he shall be born anew into eternal 
 life. Every year, in Januarv, a flood of a hundred 
 thousand pilgrims inundates the abandoned isle, 
 infested with cholera and marshy fevers. All over 
 the unwholesome soil they pitch their odd tents, 
 covered by swathes and bands of calico. Many of 
 the pilgrims are old men or sick people, who come 
 there to die. For to die bathed in the waters of the 
 Ganges, is perfect felicity ; it is death accompanied 
 with the absolute remission of all guilt, death in a 
 state of baptismal purity — it is the eternal escape 
 from Sin, ever on the watch, laying his sly gins and 
 springes to catch the unwary, so soon as they leave 
 the sacred stream. 
 
 After a sail of some fifteen hours through the sea 
 of mud, which forms the delta of the Ganges, after 
 passing Tamluk, which was the port of the sacred 
 
CALCUTTA. 257 
 
 river some two thousand years ago, look, on the 
 horizon, that is Calcutta, those towers and spires 
 and masts beyond the windings of the river ! To 
 your left extend what but a year ago where the 
 gardens of the King of Oudh. In 1856, the 
 Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, under pretext of 
 the incapacity and ill-conduct of the young king, 
 declared his estates annexed to the British Crown, 
 and sent him to vegetate, on a pension of two 
 hundred thousand a year, at the gates of Calcutta. 
 While Lucknow was raising a rebellion to defend its 
 prince, while his old mother, the Begum, was travel- 
 ling to London in the forlorn hope of moving the 
 English to compassion — dying in Paris, one cold 
 January morning, of her vain fatigues — the young 
 king himself had turned philosopher. He had for- 
 gotten Lucknow among his buffoons, his musicians, 
 and his dancing girls, and consoled himself for the 
 loss of his crown by composing a menagerie, which, 
 until lately, formed the chief delight of the Calcutta 
 babies. Fifty thousand pigeons beat their wings in 
 his aviaries ; armies of monkeys chattered in the 
 trees (some of them most highly educated, dancing 
 to order) ; flocks of ducks and geese waddled 
 round the pools ; panthers and lions ; while in a 
 cavern underground, thousands of serpents fed 
 
 19 
 
258 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 on one another. If the prince should ever feel a 
 hankering for the life of courts he could find assorted, 
 in his own garden, all the grimaces, varieties, and 
 ferocities which it comports. Some years later, 
 by permission of the Government, he quitted India 
 and went to assure his Mussulman salvation at 
 Bagdad, in the land of the faithful, choosing that 
 town, no doubt, as not too far from the sacred soil 
 of the Kerbela. He died there, childless, three 
 years ago, leaving his possessions to the British 
 Government. In his will, he desired that his animals 
 and all his other chattels should be sold at a fair 
 price, but not by auction. " I do not want them to 
 " be handed about, and made the subject of good and 
 " bad jokes at a public sale, while the lookers-on hold 
 " their sides and laugh." 
 
 On the other bank of the river the Botanical 
 Gardens form an appropriate vis-d-vis to the men- 
 agerie of the King of Oudh. Founded in 1786 by 
 General Kyd, enlarged by a dynasty of botanical 
 proconsuls, whose names, from Roxburgh to 
 Hooker, have their place in the annals of science, 
 the Calcutta Gardens have become the nursery 
 whence the public horticulturists of Europe have 
 obtained most of their tropical specimens. In six 
 weeks, ere setting ofT on his botanical pilgrimage 
 
CALCUTTA. 259 
 
 through Hindustan, Jacquemont "made acquaintance 
 " there with the vegetable kingdom of India." And 
 not only Indian flora, but African, Oceanian, Ameri- 
 can, flourish there together in the open air as if in 
 their own native chmes. Only from time to time 
 the great enemy, the cyclone, comes and walks in this 
 Garden of Eden and leaves fell havoc there. In 
 1864, a whole avenue of mahoganies, planted near a 
 hundred years before by Roxburgh, were uprooted 
 in one storm ; another uncrowned the great baobab 
 of Senegal, whose trunk measured fifty feet in girth. 
 But it has not overthrown the great banyan, nor 
 damaged its forest of columns, whose tired branches 
 droop to earth, catch fresh life there, and spring up 
 toward heaven. Under this torrid sky, the plants of 
 our northern zone droop and languish like exiles 
 who feverishly try to grasp the language of a new 
 country, but cannot express themselves. Among 
 the banana trees, the palm trees, the mahoganies, see 
 how the melancholy little oaks wax feebly, astonished 
 at a climate which permits no winter sleep and 
 leaves no space between the fall of the leaf and the 
 burgeon of the bud. The garden extends for a mile 
 beside the river at the water level. Its alluvial soil 
 is ignorant of any eminence, and forbids the splen- 
 dour of a panorama. After the palace of the King 
 
26o ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 of Oudh, the bo;it follows the line of the Garden 
 Reach : a succession of villas and gardens which 
 extends till we reach Calcutta. It is the really 
 beautiful quarter of a town otherwise monotonous 
 in its grandeur ; and its beauty is no peculiar growth 
 of its tropic soil, but the spacious, branchy charm of 
 the innumerable Passys or Kensingtons of Anglo- 
 India. There also begins the life of the port — 
 Calcutta afloat, with its masts and sails, which fling 
 up in the sunshine their glory of coloured banners. 
 These trembling masts are the poetry of Calcutta, as 
 of every sunshiny sea-port. No architectural plan — 
 did Phidias design it — has the beauty of these 
 slender arms and wings, sketched against the moist 
 pale azure, rippling with sun and breeze. They 
 have the beauty of pure form, and also the beauty 
 of exquisite tremulous motion, and the imaginative 
 prestige of the evocation of far-off places, of a distant 
 country to the exile, of an unknown horizon, whither 
 they are bound, where — who knows ? — they may be 
 engulfed in shipwreck. A haze of mystery, danger, 
 poetry, adventure surrounds them. They are here 
 to-day, whither away to-morrow ? Here, below the 
 Garden Reach, our shipping companies cast anchor ; 
 a little higher up ride the fleets of the " P. & O.," 
 the most powerful shipping company in all the world. 
 
CALCUTTA. 261 
 
 The port of Calcutta extends for ten miles up the 
 Hougli, with space for a hundred and seventy 
 vessels. The river is over a mile broad, but the 
 channel occupies barely a quarter of this width : a 
 meagre road for the two thousand sailing vessels, the 
 two hundred and fifty steamers, which come and go 
 along it in the course of a year, not forgetting the four 
 thousand boats which ply up and down the river. 
 We pass the docks, leaving to the right the mouth 
 of the Tolly, which would take us back to the temple 
 of Kali, and we land at Prinsep's Ghat, whose stair 
 descends towards the river, just below Fort William. 
 Prinsep was a clerk in the Company's service, self- 
 taught, with no scientific preparation, who, in his 
 leisure moments, deciphered the alphabets of 
 antique India, and founded Sanscrit epigraphy. He 
 belonged to the good old times when a Company's 
 clerk had the right to interest himself in Indian 
 antiquities, to take a part in the moral life of the land 
 of his exile ; that right has been used, and more 
 than once. But the right to scientific genius is a 
 liberty which no wise civil servant would dare to take 
 in our days ; it would be remembered against him. 
 
 Fort W^illiam backs on to the river. On three 
 other sides it looks on to an immense esplanade, the 
 Maidan, bounded on one side by the river and on 
 
262 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 the other by the palace-fronts of the Chauringhi, 
 with, to the north, the vista of Esplanade Row and 
 its Government offices. The fort is an eight-rayed 
 star, with three points on the water and five on the 
 Esplanade. Its formidable dimensions reveal the 
 date of its erection, at an epoch when English rule 
 in India was still, so to speak, improvised and 
 insecure. When Clive laid the foundations of Fort 
 William, after the heroic field of Plassey, England 
 was still new enough to need such a tremendous 
 backer-up. The exodus of Charnock was still fresh 
 in men's minds ; it must never be renewed ; the 
 Black Hole must not be a possibility within reach of 
 any whim of any Great Mogul. Clive built a fort 
 which would shelter an army in retreat, where the 
 fortunes of England, in case of a reverse, might 
 still find an inexpugnable asylum. The immense 
 building is calculated to receive fifteen thousand 
 men ; ten thousand would be necessary for the 
 defence of its earthworks. The building of the fort 
 lasted sixteen years and cost fifty millions. None of 
 its six hundred cannons as yet has thrown a ball 
 upon an enemy ; not even in the Mutiny year. 
 For years past two thousand men and a battery of 
 artillery have sufficed to guard it. Before the river 
 gate rises the Gwalior monument, erected by Lord 
 
CALCUTTA. 263 
 
 EllenboroLigh in honour of the men and officers 
 who fell, in 1843, in the war with Sindia. The 
 monument is a poor example to the officers of 
 Fort William, for the victory of Maharajpoor is 
 more honourable to the troops than to the British 
 generals. Lord Ellenborough with all his court, 
 staff officers and ladies, came in great pomp, seated 
 on their elephants, to behold the defeat of the 
 enemy. The first charges of the Mahrattas changed 
 the character of the scene. The English officers 
 lost their head ; but the Sepoys broke loose, and, 
 oblivious of orders, dashed against the Mahrattas, 
 who, badly generalled also, but brave unto death, 
 met death round their cannons, after having fired 
 till every gunner was shot down. At the end of a 
 fierce and bloody battle, the Sepoys remained in 
 possession of the field. Lord Ellenborough, who 
 was bombast incarnate, maintained in the face of all 
 this carnage his inevitably heroic-comic attitude : 
 under the fire of the enemy he strolled across the 
 field of battle distributing oranges and half-pence to 
 the wounded. 
 
 The east and south frontage of the Esplanade is 
 occupied by the desert of the race-course. Never 
 venture there when the sun shines by noon, nor 
 during the blast of the cyclone which, from time to 
 
264 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 time, sweeps through Calcutta. All the life of the 
 Esplanade centres between the fort and the Row, 
 down Chauringhi. There stand the statues which 
 meagrely sprinkle the immense opening, recalling 
 the memQry of excellent officials transformed, by 
 the erection of a monument, into men of genius. 
 The process is as frequent in Calcutta as in Paris. 
 Inscriptions of a Macau layan emphasis — but un- 
 fortunately not due to the pen of a Macaulay — add 
 their splendour to the apotheosis. India is a 
 country where it is not necessary to be a great man 
 in order to do great things ; the material which lies 
 ready to the hand is so malleable that a strong will 
 is sufficient to mould it. Let us not linger before 
 the effigies of Lord Auckland, Lord Hardinge, Lord 
 Mayo, and Sir William Peel — intelligent and worthy 
 noblemen, no more. Outram, " the Bayard of the 
 East," is more interesting ; he was a man of honour. 
 The men who have done most to establish English 
 rule in India, from Clive to Lord Dalhousie, have 
 rarely been tormented by the excessive delicacy of 
 their scruples ; even the most Christian, the most 
 Puritan among them — aye, those, perhaps, least of 
 all ; they followed the law which seems so simple in 
 the East (and elsewhere), the good old law of 
 Napoleon and Bismarck — that Might makes Right. 
 
CALCUTTA. 265 
 
 Outran! was a brilliant exception. He refused to 
 have anything to do with the spoliation of the Emirs 
 of Sindh, one of the most villainous glories of the 
 British conquest ; he even rejected his share in the 
 loot, an example rare in the military history of India. 
 For once the Hero has inspired the Artist. Foley 
 speeds his Outram right forward, spurring his horse, 
 dashing on with drawn sword, his face turned 
 towards the absent troops, whom he cheers on to 
 the attack. The violence and life of the attitude 
 astonish us amid this dreary marble company : 
 Outram lives. Further on there is a column, some 
 hundred and fifty feet in height, diminished to 
 insignificance by the desert which surrounds it, but 
 from whose summit we have so fine a panorama of 
 the city. This column commemorates Sir David 
 Ochterlony, the mark of a tardy gratitude. After a 
 career of fifty years spent in the service, and which 
 stretched over nearly the whole span of the duration 
 of British rule, Ochterlony — the pacifier of the Ghour- 
 kas, transformed by him into the most valiant of 
 British soldiers — Ochterlony died of a broken heart, 
 disgraced by the Calcutta Government for having 
 kept a higher standard of English honour than suited 
 the official theories of the hour. 
 
 Between the fort and Esplanade Row, along the 
 
266 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 quay, extend the Eden Gardens, which owe their 
 name to no paradisal reminiscence, but to the sisters 
 of Lord Auckland — the Misses Eden. The band 
 plays there every evening. A stone's throw away is 
 the indispensable cricket ground, the centre of all 
 English life in India. At the fall of dusk, the pro- 
 cession of carriages along the Esplanade recalls the 
 Champs-Elysees, or, better still, Hyde Park, with the 
 added picturesqueness of palanquins, turbaned 
 sardars, white-robed baboos with black bags, humble 
 brechtis, watering the flower-beds with the contents 
 of their goatskins. Perched on the cornice line of the 
 surrounding palaces, the last bald-headed arghalis 
 gravely contemplate the scene. Glance up at them, 
 admire the look of herons or marabouts, profoundly 
 absorbed in their meditations. Suddenly a rush of 
 wings, a brusque, furious swoop ; they have settled 
 on some heap of the scavengery, which their little 
 red eyes are ever quick to note ; they are swelling 
 with nameless rottenness the loose sack below their 
 throats, which is of formidable elasticity. Of old the 
 arghalis were the patented scavengers of Calcutta. 
 They performed their office well, and showed the 
 city into the bargain that the solemnest philosophy 
 is reconcileable with violent appetites ; a lesson con- 
 firmed by the example of their brethren, the arghalis 
 
CALCUTTA. 267 
 
 of the English Church, no less than by the smaller 
 fry of baboos and moonshis, the koulins who are 
 priests, and the kayath who are scribes. 
 
 The arghalis prefer above all others the walls of 
 Government House, residence of the man who for 
 five long years incarnates the terrible, irresistible force 
 of the Sarkar. The Sarkar is the same thing, the 
 same mysterious and fatal divinity, which is fetich to 
 our own peasants under the name oile Goiivernement, 
 but intensified in India by the habit of impersona- 
 tion, by the instinctive veneration for the Avatar. 
 There is nothing peculiarly awe-inspiring about the 
 House of the Sarkar, although at the time of its 
 building the Sarkar was incarnate Lord Wellesley, 
 a man of taste and magnificence ; his architect 
 however. Captain Wyatt, simply reproduced Kedle- 
 stone Hall, in Derbyshire, a country seat built by 
 Robert Adam for Lord Scarsdale. The edifice 
 comprises a central hall with a magnificent double 
 staircase, whence four wings strike off east and south, 
 and north and west. 
 
 It is the residence of the Viceroy and his court, 
 the seat of the Legislative Council. Thence issue the 
 decrees which annex kingdoms, make and unmake 
 princes, ruin or enrich provinces, transform tlie 
 system which governs many millions of souls ; but 
 
268 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 above all, it is the ball-room of India, the Place of the 
 White Tie, where Champagne and Private Theatricals 
 exercise an empire more absolute than ever yet has 
 been theirs from pole to pole. The Viceregal 
 Palace has its tribes of statues more numerous and 
 still more commonplace than those upon the 
 Esplanade. All the Viceroys are there, in parian or 
 in porphyry, great and small, from Lord Wellesley 
 to Mr. John Adams, from Hastings to Lord Teign- 
 mouth. Among the crowd of these semi-illustrious, 
 one is astonished to meet the portraits of Louis XV., 
 and Marie Leczinska, and the busts of the twelve 
 Caesars. They are trophies of war, looted, a hundred 
 years ago, from a French ship. 
 
 West of Government House, nearer the river, 
 stand the Law Courts, a Gothic monument built 
 between 1870 and 1872, and inspired, I believe, by 
 the Hotel de Ville of Ypres. All the Chief Justices of 
 India are there in effigy, from Sir Elijah Impey down- 
 wards. In his days the function of an Indian Judge 
 was to serve the British Government ; he secured 
 the policy of Warren Hastings by hanging as high 
 as Haman the old Brahmin, Nandore Kousnar, in 
 the teeth of Junius. His successors have shown 
 themselves more scrupulous, worthier of the noble 
 title of Chief Justice, but less immortal. 
 
CALCUTTA. 269 
 
 Round the Viceregal Palace are grouped the 
 Public Offices ; the Town Hall with Doric columns ; 
 the Bengal Bank and the Mint, overlooking the 
 river. In Dalhousie Square, on the site ot the 
 original Fort William, stands the tremendous mass 
 of the Post Office ; in front, the Telegraph Office. 
 A slab before the Post Office marks the spot where 
 once stood the infamous Black Hole. But let 
 us leave this wilderness of palaces, all alike, of 
 which not a trace remains in mind or eye. Let 
 us pass the Anglo-Gothic of the churches ; the 
 tombs inside them will be precious for their in- 
 scriptions when the day comes to write a History of 
 England or India. A drive along Chauringhi and 
 the nearer suburbs will suffice to complete your 
 impressions of Calcutta. Notwithstanding their 
 lack of individuality, the outlying villas have their 
 charm— the charm of every Anglo-Indian bungalow, 
 with its large verandahs open to the air, its long, low 
 w4ngs, and, above all, the mass of greenery in which 
 it nestles. Remember, that a hundred years ago all 
 these porches and gardens were the happy hunting 
 grounds of Aranyani, the Goddess of the Jungle. 
 This reflection is a homage to Anglo-Saxon effort, 
 to Anglo-Saxon will. An energy so triumphant and 
 so creative, despite its inevitable alloy of egotism and 
 
270 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 liardness, comes nigh to genius and becomes almost 
 a virtue. 
 
 The contrast is striking between the White Town 
 and the Black. Calcutta has been hit off: "a city 
 of palaces in front, a city of pigsties behind." 
 North and east of the White Town the Black 
 settlement extends— an accumulation of bastis or 
 mud-hovel hamlets. If the English Calcutta lack 
 character and idiosyncrasy, the black, in these 
 respects, is yet a greater sinner ; for it is but a 
 parasite on the Anglo- Indian town, having no 
 individual life. It is no better and no worse than 
 the other ramshackle, servile, native stations that 
 fringe, for instance, Madras, or even Bombay. 
 There are, of course, the innumerable uiandars and 
 mosques, imperative to the souls of four hundred 
 Hindoos and two hundred thousand Mussulmans ; 
 but except the mosque in Dharmtola Street, it 
 would be impossible to single out in all this city one 
 single building of any artistic aim. This one thing 
 of beauty (or thereto approaching) was built in 1842 
 by the son of Tippoo Sahib, Prince Ghoolam 
 Mohammed, " in gratitude to God,, and in remem- 
 brance of the honourable Court of Directors which 
 awarded him the arrears of his pension in 1840." 
 What thunder-bolt would the Tiger of Mysore, if 
 
CALCUTTA. 271 
 
 in the Paradise of the Brave he might read this 
 singular inscription, find dire enough to hurl at his 
 placable descendant ? 
 
 Fever and cholera were of old endemic in 
 Calcutta. The municipality has done marvels in 
 improving the sanitary arrangements of the native 
 quarter ; large airy avenues ventilate the crowded 
 suburb ; a network of drainage, one hundred and , 
 fifty miles in extent, carries the refuse of the town out 
 to the Salt Lake; pumps, even a railway, are pressed into 
 the service ; for Calcutta is situate on so unfortunate 
 a slope, that otherwise the river would form a 
 natural drain. The police have forbidden the 
 throwing of dead bodies into the Ganges, in spite of 
 the delay they cause the souls who otherwise would 
 enter Paradise without any trouble on the frontier, 
 and although they deprive the British tourist of a 
 picturesque horror, which he misses very willingly, 
 I admit. Corpses are no longer burned, save at 
 certain specified ghats. The Hindoo is no longer free 
 to die, rot, and infect the living as he please, — and of 
 all his liberties it is perhaps the one he most regrets. 
 
 The Bazaar of Calcutta has none of the splendours 
 of Stamboul, none of the picturesqueness of Benares. 
 There is no native art in Calcutta ; it is a place of 
 business ; and the smoky suburb of Haourah across 
 
272 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 the river, with its two hundred thousand souls and 
 its thriving trade, is a place of European business. 
 The hideous factory chimneys make a little Man- 
 chester on the banks of the Ganges : it is there that 
 the jute-fibre is woven into cornsacks ; the machines 
 whirl and steam without cease to produce the ten 
 million hundredweight of the European demand. 
 Higher up the stream, at Kosipoor, there is a cannon 
 foundry. 
 
 The one interest of native Calcutta is its intellec- 
 tual and political fever. The Calcutta Hindoo is not a 
 creature of tradition. He came yesterday, at the 
 beck of the stranger ; and he represents a new 
 thing, as yet scarce disengaged from its environment : 
 he represents Young India — that is to say, India 
 under several layers of European varnish. The 
 supple Bengalee mind could not long remain in 
 contact with the civilization of Europe v.^ithout 
 receiving its imprint. European education, the 
 study of the classics, modern languages, all these, 
 descending from the university, have percolated into 
 the mass below, and have fermented there all sorts of 
 hitherto undreamed of ambitions and aspirations. 
 Thus a new class has sprung up, a class of Anglicised 
 Indians, which unfortunately is not, cannot, always 
 be recruited from the dite of the population ; the 
 
CALCUTTA. 273 
 
 higher castes, with their traditions and their pride of 
 race, remaining pretty generally faithful to the old 
 order of things. The mass which constitutes this 
 immense new class, has not been attracted to 
 European culture out of a pure intellectual curiosity, 
 a disinterested sense of its superiority ; it is a class 
 of place seekers. In order to enter as a baboo into 
 the thousand and one petty situations which England 
 reserves for the native, it is necessary that the 
 candidate should be able to read and write in 
 English. With this end in view, every Bengalee 
 who has in view a salary of thirty rupees a month 
 invades the governmental schools and universities. 
 Three hundred candidates for a situation of thirty 
 pounds a year ! What is to become of the two 
 hundred and ninety-nine sent empty away, unfitted 
 henceforth for the modest and simple life of their 
 fathers ? 
 
 They see only two courses : starvation, or the 
 career of a political agitator, and they choose the latter. 
 Infatuated by the superficial tincture of their uni- 
 versity education, big with European formulas — even 
 emptier here than in the European windbag — they 
 form an innumerable class of the Disclassed, 
 strangely like our own, as void, as null, as narrow, 
 
 as noisy, sometimes disinterested but always futile ; 
 
 20 
 
274 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 and the more so here, that the catchwords they 
 swear by are borrowed from an exotic civiHzation, 
 that for them there is a double abyss between the 
 letter and the spirit. That which they pursue in 
 reality is neither the hope of national independence 
 nor a local autonomy under an English protectorate, 
 it is simply the access to the higher administrative 
 functions, political sway over other Indian castes 
 under the protection of tlie British army. 
 
 But a generation should be judged, not by the 
 standard of its average, but by the attainments of its 
 chosen few. Everyvi-here the average is mediocre, 
 egotistic ; only the rare elect reveal all the capabilities 
 of a race. A few shining examples have shown 
 that the fusion of Europe and India does not 
 necessarily mean a product which inherits the vices 
 of both ; it may bring forth a new creation, original 
 and noble. If, so far, European culture in Asia has 
 mainly resulted in an innumerable brood of petty 
 journalists, politicians, barristers, the parodies of the 
 great Third-rate of Europe, let us not forget that the 
 same influences have none the less awakened in the 
 conscience of the chosen few a nobler, a more 
 disinterested ambition ; nay, it has raised up apostles 
 of a new religion which would wash clean the 
 Hindoo faith from every taint of superstition, from 
 
CALCUTTA. 275 
 
 all hardness and narrowness, and unite in a common 
 understanding — a vast fraternal religion — Europeans, 
 Mussulmans, Hindoo. This is the aim of the 
 Brahmo-Somaj or Brahmoism. The founder of 
 this new faith, or rather its precursor, was a 
 Brahmin, Ram Mohun Roy, who fancied that 
 Brahmanism was the corruption of a primitive Mono- 
 theism whose imprint was still to be found in the 
 Vedas, though misinterpreted by priests and com- 
 mentators. He therefore undertook to found, or, 
 as he imagined, to restore the doctrines of Theism 
 in India. His disciple and successor, Devendra- 
 Nath, on seeking in the Vedas the confirmation of 
 his master's theories, perceived, with terror, that 
 there was no such confirmation. The choice lay 
 between Reason and the Vedas ; he chose Reason, 
 and threw the Vedas overboard. It was he who 
 subsequently drew up the formula of the Brahma- 
 Dharma, a purely natural religion, and opened the 
 doors of his church to all castes, without distinction. 
 The one thing needful was an apostle, and 
 Keshub Chunder Sen appeared ; winning and elo- 
 quent in speech, armed with all the resources of 
 European thought and Oriental imagination, of 
 what had been till then a philosophic sect he consti- 
 tuted a religion. He broke with Devendra-Nath, a 
 
276 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 more timid nature, who, while rejecting the dogmas 
 of Brahmanism would fain preserve a portion of its 
 customs. He attacked the two social evils, the two 
 moral shames, of Indian society — child marriage, and 
 the perpetual celibacy of infant widows. For the first 
 time in the annals of India a religious movement 
 made itself felt, not an impulse towards quietism or 
 debauch, but by a moral reform and an exaltation of 
 human dignity. From end to end of India the 
 missionaries of the Brahmo-Somaj set forth to 
 preach the Word : in 1876, the new faith counted no 
 fewer than a hundred and twenty-eight communities. 
 Keshub Chunder Sen was, alas ! unfaithful to his 
 charge ; success turned his head. His contagious 
 enthusiasm replenished itself at the dangerous 
 springs of ecstasy ; he believed himself inspired by 
 Heaven, and next, according to the fatal bent of 
 Asia, even as the reformer had become the apostle, 
 so in turn the apostle became a god. Abandoned 
 by the healthier-minded of his followers, he founded 
 the New Dispensation, the Navavidhana, which con- 
 ciliates Christ and Vishnou, no longer in the unity 
 of conscience and ethics, but in the mystic unity of 
 an incarnation. He died at forty years of age, in 
 1886, at the moment of his new departure. Deprived 
 of his powerful personality, Brahmoism has done 
 
CALCUTTA. 277 
 
 little more than vegetate. Even at Calcutta, its 
 centre and its cradle, it counts a bare five hundred 
 sectaries. But a religion measures its force less by 
 the number of its adherents than by its action on 
 the masses, and by its influence on movements 
 beyond the sphere of its orbit. The aims and ideas 
 of Brahmoism, the social reforms, the reconstitution 
 of the Indian family, these dreams and aims outlive 
 the gospel of Keshub Chunder Sen. A Parsee, 
 Malabari, is the heir of these reforms ; his obstinate 
 and enthusiastic crusading spirit has already worked 
 wonders in this respect. For he has been able not 
 only to present the question to the English public, 
 but to impose it on the attention of English states- 
 men, ever eager to avoid the obscure domain of the 
 instincts and moral conscience of a foreign tribu- 
 tary. 
 
 In order to carry away a more cheerful impression 
 of Calcutta, visit the suburb of Mamktola on the 
 Baugmari Road. There died the only Indian poet 
 of our century — the poor little Torn Dutt, two-and- 
 twenty years of age. She had a certain claim on us 
 Frenchmen, for she went to school in France, 
 translated our poets, wrote a novel in our language, 
 wept for our misfortunes, and loved our country 
 with all her heart. Perhaps you still may find at 
 
278 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Baugmari the Casuarina that she loved so well ; in 
 wliose branches the wind used to wail while she 
 listened ; up whose trunk climbed the python-like 
 liana which she sang ; in whose branches sang the 
 nightingales whose voice her verse repeats : 
 
 " The garden overflows 
 With one sweet song that seems to have no close, 
 Sung darkling from our tree while we repose." 
 
 But it is time to quit Calcutta. It is not a city 
 from which it is difficult to tear one's self away, as 
 the Viceroys of India are well aware, for they spend 
 barely four months of the year in their metropolis 
 — the four dancing-months of the winter. During 
 the eight summer months the Government wiles 
 away its villegratura among the Himalayan peaks at 
 Simla, some thousand miles from the capital. In 
 vain the Calcutta tradesmen protest against this 
 ruinous exodus. The stifling heat, the malarious 
 swamps of Lower Bengal, do not commend them- 
 selves to the Viceroy's court in summer ; and if 
 Calcutta succeed in her endeavour to ruin her rival 
 Simla, it will be for the ultimate advantage of a 
 younger and a more happily situated capital — Bom- 
 bay, three days' journey nearer home, or Poona, the 
 City of Seven Hills. Calcutta has held the sceptre 
 for more than a hundred years, and a century of 
 
CALCUTTA. 279 
 
 rule is rare in the shifting soil of Bengal, where 
 nothing is stabler than the water almost underfoot. 
 How much longer will that quicksand support the 
 seat of empire ? The English have never been able 
 to raise a monument upon the field of Plassey where 
 Clive laid the foundation of their empire, for the 
 Ganges carried the battlefield bodily away and 
 lodged it, one vast sandbank, to block the estuary 
 of their capital. In vain trade and enterprise en- 
 gineer new channels, cut and bind the resistless 
 sand. Before another hundred years are over 
 Calcutta will inevitably rank amid the dead capitals 
 of India, with Goa and Paniya and Moorshidabad. 
 The "exodus" does but forestall a little the inevitable 
 decree of the Ganges. I know of one traveller who, 
 having spent three days at Calcutta, found no other 
 entry to make in his note book but these few 
 lines : * 
 
 " Calcutta. — The ancient Capital of the English in 
 " India. An antique custom requires that the Viceroy 
 " should dance there every winter." 
 
 * Lcitrcs siir I'Inde, par James Darmesteter. Lemerre, 1888. 
 
"Two Indian "Boo/^s. 
 
 "Visha-Vriksha, the Poison Tree," is a Bengalee 
 novel, written by the first Bengalee novelist of the 
 Presidency, Baboo Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. It 
 has made a great stir in Bengal as the first novel of 
 contempory manners ever written in those parts. It 
 is an unexpected fact that this audacious innovation 
 is made at the expense of Young Bengal, and to the 
 detriment of the freethinkers, deists, members of the 
 Brahmo-Somaj, and other would-be reformers who, 
 if we are to believe our novelist, shake off, together 
 with the trappings of their ancient faith, the trammels 
 of conventional morality. As you per ceive, Th 
 Poison Tree might have been written in Europe ! 
 So says Mrs. Knight, the translator, who, in her 
 delicate, quaint English, presents the Octave Feuillet 
 of Bengal to an European public. The Poison 
 Tree is something like the Jacques of Georges 
 Sand turned inside out. Nagendra and his wife, 
 Sarya Mukhi, have taken to their hearth a poor 
 orphan, Kunda Nandini. As might be expected. 
 
 281 
 
282 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Nagendra falls in love with his proUgl'e, who returns 
 his passion in secret. The poor Sarya becomes 
 aware of their unhappy love, resolves to sacrifice 
 herself to their happiness, and disappears, letting 
 herself be thought dead by those she loves and 
 leaves. Nagendra marries Kunda, and from that 
 hour their love is swallowed up in remorse. Nagen- 
 dra's love was the flash of a moment ; he hates the 
 woman who has supplanted Sarya ; he despises her, 
 and visits his own cowardice upon her. In the end 
 Sarya Mukhi is discovered, and Kunda poisons 
 herself, so that the true lovers may unite anew. 
 Such is the plot ; season it with an infinity of Indian 
 landscapes in the manner of the Kalidasa, with visions 
 and supernatural apparitions ; add a few striking 
 character sketches — one, that of Hira, the jealous 
 servant, who sows dissension between her mistresses, 
 is of a sombre and fatal beauty. Do not forget a 
 masterly portrait of the young Indian, the reformer 
 Debenda, the dandy, bred at Calcutta in all the vices 
 of the newer generation, who, back again in his 
 village, puts on the mantle of an apostle, opens a 
 Brahmo-Somaj, preaches the re-marriage of widows, 
 meditates a girls' school, and smokes meanwhile his 
 hookah as he drains his glass. 
 
 Much of all this is the mere infancy of polemics. 
 
TWO INDIAN BOOKS. 283 
 
 and more than once the Western reader cannot 
 suppress a smile. But beside these signs of inex- 
 perience, there are traits of a surprising sweetness, 
 a penetrating quaHty of soul. This is how the 
 author introduces Kunda : 
 
 " It was quite dark. In the ruined house Kunda 
 " Nandini sat beside the corpse of her father. She 
 *' cried, * Father ! ' No one answered. At first she 
 " thought he slept, then that he was dead, but she 
 " could not get to the bottom of that idea. At last 
 *' she had no more strength for calling or thinking. 
 " The fan still stirred in her hand in the direction of 
 "the corpse. And she said to herself he must certainly 
 " be asleep, for, if he mere dead, what ivoukl become 
 "ofherf" 
 
 She dies at the feet of Nagendra in a murmur of 
 soft reproaches. That day she was eloquent, for it 
 was her last day with him. " She said to him : * Fie ! 
 " ' can you think of nothing to tell me ? I shall not 
 " ' die happy unless I leave you smiling ! ' Sarya 
 " Mukhi had said the same words to him, for in the 
 "hour of death they are all alike." 
 
 Almost on every page such subtle touches move 
 us to overlook many a fault, and even the selfish- 
 ness of the hero, which the good Baboo does not 
 appear to suspect. In fact, according to Indian 
 
284 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 morality, what is more legitimate than the egoism 
 of the male, which affords his wife the opportunity 
 of exercising on his behalf her duties of limitless 
 devotedness and sacrifice ? Neither will we reproach 
 our author with the incoherence of his recital ; 
 or if we do so, 'tis but to hear him defend himself 
 with his anecdote of Kalidasa and the flower-girl : 
 
 " Kalidasa bought his flowers of a Malini. He 
 " was a Brahmin, but poor ; too poor to pay for his 
 " posies, so in return he read his poems to the flower 
 "girl. One day, in the Malini's pond, there sprang a 
 " lily of surpassing sweetness ; she plucked it and 
 "offered it to Kalidasa, who, in return, read her some 
 " verses of * Meghaduta, or the Herald Cloud.' This 
 " poem is an ocean of beauty ; but, as you know, the 
 " opening lines are poor. The Malini thought but 
 " little of them ; bored, she rose to her feet and 
 " prepared to move away. 
 
 " ' Friend flower-girl,' said Kalidasa, * are you 
 " * going ? ' 
 
 " 'There's no salt in your poem,' said the Malini. 
 
 "'Oh, Malini, you will never get to Heaven !' 
 
 " ' Why ? ' 
 
 " ' Because to reach high Heaven, you must go up a 
 " ' staircase of a million steps. My poem also has a 
 " 'staircase ; these insipid verses are the steps. And if 
 
TWO IXDIAX BOOKS. 285 
 
 " * you cannot take this lesser trouble, how will you 
 " * climb all the way to Heaven ? ' Then the Malini, 
 " fearful lest the curse of a Brahmin might really 
 " lose her Paradise, heard the 'Meghaduta' from be- 
 " ginning to the end. She duly admired the beauty of 
 " his poem, and on tlie morrow morning, having 
 "woven a garland in the name of the God of Love, 
 " she crowned therewith the brows of Kalidasa." 
 
 Within the last twenty years there has sprung up 
 an English literature of Hindoo origin. The higher 
 classes in India, whatever their feelings to the 
 English as a race, have frankly made the English 
 tongue their own. They speak, they write, not the 
 English of London, but something quite distinct 
 from a dialect or a broken language. This Hindoo- 
 English is easily recognisable, yet it is difficult to 
 specify the sign ; it is perhaps, a certain exotic 
 familiarity, the air of a stranger who enters society, 
 a salon of which he knows the habitues and the due 
 observances, but not the more special ways of the 
 house. In the obscure problem of the future of 
 India, this new generation educated in European 
 theories, in European knowledge, without European 
 manners and traditions, represents an unknown 
 quantity of formidable proportions. The semi- 
 diffusion of a Western education has created the 
 
286 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 host of the Disclassed, who are no longer Hindoos 
 in mind and soul, yet who certainly are not English, 
 whose sole ambition is to become a civil servant 
 at thirty rupees the month, and who, sooner or 
 later, inevitably swell the ranks of the political 
 agitators and of the extremists of the native press. 
 I speak of the mass. In some rare and chosen few, 
 the fusion of the spirits of India and Europe has 
 produced a mind of singular originality and 
 brilliance. Of such are Keshub Chunder Sen, the 
 apostle, the most eloquent religious reformer of our 
 century ; and the poor little Torn Dutt, gracious, 
 charming little Hindoo muse ; and Rajendralal 
 Mitra, the scholar — minds of whom any nation 
 might well be proud. 
 
 Among our contemporaries, Mr. Alalabari is the 
 most remarkable example of the New Hindoo. A 
 Parsee by birth, he represents the most advanced 
 party in Parseeism, which itself represents the 
 extremest point of India's progress towards Europe. 
 Brought up by Christian missionaries, whose example 
 was more striking than their precepts, his early 
 education has inspired him with a deep feeling of 
 respect for Christianity, whilst leaving him quite 
 unconvinced as to her dogmas. On leaving the 
 Christian school, Behramjee Malabari sought help 
 
TWO INDIAN BOOKS. 287 
 
 and counsel, first of Hindooism, then of Islamism, 
 the two great faiths of India ; and, as the result 
 of his rehgious wanderings, he then came back to 
 the first-known fold, convinced that it was not 
 worth while to forsake a religion so untrammeling 
 (to the lax) as the doctrine of Zoroaster ; and thus 
 found a final peace in an inoffensive deism, 
 predisposing to an universal tolerance. 
 
 Mr. Malabari, who is a little over thirty, began his 
 literary career nearly twenty years ago. He began, of 
 course, as a poet, at once in English and in Gujerati. 
 Gujerati is the language of the Parsees of Bombay 
 whose first Indian asylum was found at Gujerat 
 still the second among their cities. These poems 
 were acclaimed with enthusiasm by the fellow- 
 countrymen of the young poet, by Hindoos and 
 Parsees, especially by the Parsees (for was he not 
 their first poet ?), and were welcomed with much 
 sympathy by lovers of India in London as in 
 Hindoostan. Hinc cui Barbaries, atqiic illinc India 
 plaudit. 
 
 His second volume, Sitrode Ittifdq (Songs oi 
 Friendship), consists of a set of imitations of Lord 
 Tennyson, in which, according to the Gujerati 
 critics, the Poet - Laureate appears to unusual 
 advantage. But at bottom this young poet was 
 
208 ENGLISH STUDIES, 
 
 above all a man of action. He had found a noble, 
 a lofty ambition : he would interpret modern 
 science and modern civilization to his compatriots, 
 whilst in return, to England he would plead the 
 rights, the wrongs, and the sufferings of India. The 
 first of these tasks he undertook in a manner quite 
 his own in its mingled originality and elevation. 
 He determined to replenish the current of Hindoo 
 thought by translations into the different popular 
 dialects (some of them real languages rather than 
 dialects, and spoken by some five-and-twenty 
 millions) of the principal critiques of Indian religions 
 which have appeared in Europe. He began with 
 Prof. Max Muller's Hibbert Lectures, which are, as 
 everyone knows, a glorification of the faiths of India 
 and of the Hindoo spirit, considered as the purest 
 representative of the Aryan mind. The choice was 
 happy ; the book was well-inspired to please the 
 pride of India. Mr. Malabari determined to publish 
 translations of the Hibbert Lectures in Gujerati, 
 Sanscrit, Marathi, Bengalee, Hindoostanee, and 
 Tamul. It was his Samas pana, the great work of 
 his life. Listen in what religious tones he an- 
 nounces it : " Every man has his ambition : this is 
 "the aim of one part of my life. If this translation 
 ** bring peace to a few of my Aryan brothers in the 
 
TWO IXDIAX BOOKS. 289 
 
 *' midst of this troublous world ; if it recall to their 
 
 " memory the exploits of their illustrious ancestors ; 
 
 " if in my feeble efifort they find an aid to the under- 
 
 " standing of the Pammdnanda or Supreme Felicity, 
 
 " and the Pnraiiidlina who is die Supreme Being, the 
 
 "Uncreate, the Infinite, the Immortal, of whom one 
 
 "glance reflects the extent of the Universe ; if this 
 
 "attempt succeed in opening to my compatriots the 
 
 " mind of the incomparable Aryo-German, the Mooni 
 
 " Max Miiller, who has consecrated his whole life to 
 
 " the interpretation of the two grandest phenomena 
 
 " of human histoiy — the Aryan Faith and the Aryan 
 
 " Tongue— then I may truly feel the satisfaction of 
 
 " having attained my sacred aim." 
 
 So great an enterprise required capital, and to 
 
 raise that capital it was necessary to arouse the 
 
 interest of the Indian public. Mr. Malabari traversed 
 
 the peninsula from end to end, with a success 
 
 beyond his most sanguine dreams. The native press 
 
 spoke with one voice in favour of his generous 
 
 undertaking ; Keshub Chunder Sen and Rajendralal 
 
 Mitra backed him with the authority of their names ; 
 
 the Maharanee Surnomoye put herself down for a 
 
 thousand rupees ; and the expenses of the Gujerati 
 
 translation, the first to appear, were in great part 
 
 covered by the subscriptions of Bengal. For the first 
 
 21 
 
290 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 time, there was felt in India something of the 
 stirring of an united national spirit. Since then a 
 Mahratta translation has appeared, dedicated to the 
 Guikovar of Baroda. 
 
 "May these pages," writes Mr. Malabari in his 
 dedication, " have the privilege of fortifying in your 
 " Highness the notion of law and order, give your 
 " Highness a clearer conception of the Eternal and 
 " Infinite, conduct you to the study of your true self, 
 " confront you with the supreme and universal self, 
 " and inspire in you a life disengaged of egoism and 
 ** ever useful." 
 
 Will Mr. Malabari succeed in transforming the 
 popular dialects of India into so many languages 
 able to express abstract and scientific ideas ? Until 
 the present time science and philosophy in India 
 have had for their mouthpiece the choice of Sanscrit, 
 a dead language, and English, a foreign tongue. 
 The problem lies in the elimination of English by 
 raising the popular dialects to the abstract height of 
 Sanscrit. This is what Mr. Malabari has attempted. 
 He has borrowed from the Sanscrit his philosophic 
 vocabulary, and we in Europe have taken Greek and 
 Latin terms to express all ideas above the level of 
 the popular dialects which, in course of time, have 
 become the living languages of European nations. 
 
TWO INDIAN BOOKS. 291 
 
 "No language" says a Hindoo journal, "can 
 " boast a nobler destiny than the Anglo-Saxon 
 " tongue, yet we begin to feel that it is not fit that 
 " English become the national language of India. 
 " It is the dream of a dreamer, a dream that can 
 " never come to pass, and of which the fulfilment 
 "were unwise and prejudicial to the true interests of 
 " our people. India must have its own national 
 " language ; or, to speak properly, each province 
 " must have its own distinct dialect, even as it has 
 " its own distinct administration ; each of these 
 " dialects depending equally on the central tongue, 
 " Sanscrit, even as the government of every province 
 " depends upon one supreme authority." 
 
 So far we have followed Mr. Malabari in the first of 
 his self-imposed labours ; there remained the second: 
 to interpret India to England. With this object, he 
 founded a weekly paper, the Indian Spectator, which 
 has rapidly taken the first rank in the Indian press, 
 and which merits it, by the independence and 
 moderation of its ideas, the loftiness of its aims, the 
 frank energy of its style. Mr. Malabari is no hater 
 of the Saxon : he is " loyal." He is perfectly aware 
 that, for many a year to come, the English rule will 
 remain athing needful and, inadegree, even beneficial 
 to India ; he knows that, were this restraint removed, 
 
292 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 the vast peninsula would dissolve in an anarchy of 
 which the history of the last century in India offers 
 but a feeble image ; for to the ancient causes of 
 disruption, still in force, the imperfect diffusion of a 
 Western ideal of civilization has added new elements 
 of disturbance, by creating new ambitions, new 
 pretensions,! but no new moral force to moderate 
 them or direct them. But, if he be a loyal subject 
 of the Queen, Mr. Malabari knows how to see and 
 denounce the faults of her functionaries, the incivili- 
 ties of her civil servants, the pride and arrogance 
 of the British race in India. He is no Russophile ; 
 but, from the earliest days of the Afghan Question, 
 he saw that India must find its own defence in 
 India, that it was insensate to meet the Russians on 
 their own ground, that England must await them on 
 her Indian threshold and leave to them the task of 
 traversing the region of Afghan hostility. This 
 policy, finally adopted by England under pressure 
 of a moral defeat, had been advocated in the Indian 
 Spectator for two whole years, during which its 
 adoption need have implied no humiliation. So 
 much for the political acumen of the Spectator. 
 But it is, above all, in questions of social reform that 
 Mr. Malabari has taken a noble and general initia- 
 tive. The social questions of India are more 
 
TWO INDIAN BOOKS. 293 
 
 grievous still than ours. Infant marriage, perpetual 
 widowhood ; every day some little girl married at 
 ten years of age, a widow at twelve, finds herself 
 condemned to spend the rest of her life in social 
 humiliation, loneliness, and misery. She is a thing 
 of ill-omen, needed by no one, shunned by all. 
 Against the hard fate of the child-widow, against 
 the cruel consequence of infant marriage, Mr. 
 Malabari has raised an agitation which has aroused 
 a movement of ardent and dolorous sympathy 
 from one to the other end of India, and which in 
 the end, we trust, despite all the eloquence of the 
 author of the Visha-Vriksha, will bear its timely 
 fruit. 
 
 A few years ago IMr. Malabari published in 
 English a book of Sketches of Indian Life in 
 GnjeraL The book was a success ; it has recently 
 entered a second edition. 'Tis the first time, I 
 believe, that so large a sale has been attained by any 
 book written by an Indian author for the English 
 reader. The book is worthy of its popularity : the 
 author has a vision of his own of things and souls ; 
 his rendering is brief, keen, and subtle ; he has some 
 of the qualities of a man of genius. His indignant 
 humour often achieves eloquence, though eloquence 
 — real simple eloquence— is perhaps the rarest of 
 
294 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Indian qualities ; the pitfalls of rhetoric and decla- 
 mation lie in deadly wait for it, and perhaps Keshub 
 Chiinder Sen is the only Indian who has never been 
 taken unawares. Free from the prejudices of race 
 and caste, Mr. Malabari interprets to us impartially 
 Hindoo, and Mussulman, and Parsee, without conceal- 
 ing either their moral dearth or their redeeming 
 traits. What curious types, human enough and 
 indeed universal at bottom, but so novel by the fact 
 of their environment 1 Here is Marvari the Indian 
 Shylock, and Hajaam the village barber who, 
 despite his exotic soul, has the familiar soul of 
 Figaro. Here is Vakil, the agent — a strange wild 
 beast, to be seen in his cage any day for the sum of 
 three rupees— and the village doctor, who professes 
 under the name of Vaid if he slay you with a verse 
 of the Vedas, and under the name of Hakim if he 
 kill you with a text of the Koran : Vaid and 
 Hakim equally tenacious as to their fees. 
 
 Mr. Malabari has none of the European dislike to 
 Islam, and does not conceal the moral superiority 
 of the Mussulmans over their Hindoo compatriots. 
 Their aristocracy, proud of its descent from the 
 ancient sovereigns of India, has the virtues and the 
 foibles of decayed nobility, which treasures the 
 memory of its faded greatness. 
 
TWO INDIAN BOOKS. 295 
 
 "They would rather borrow than work, starve 
 " than beg." 
 
 They Hve in tlic perpetual hope of a return of 
 better days. 
 
 " Poor people ! As friends I have always found 
 "them faithful and true. Even in abject poverty 
 " they preserve an appearance of gentility to which 
 "they cling more than to life itself." 
 
 The pride of race has handed them over in 
 bondage to the Banian, the Indian general agent 
 and jobber, obsequious, rapacious, insinuating, an 
 Oriental Uriah Heep who fattens on the misfortunes 
 of his masters. Mr. Malabari has sketched the 
 portrait of one of this ill-omened race in his study 
 of Nyalchand, the steward of Mir Bakhtavar Khan. 
 It is the old, old story of the end of a heroic race, 
 in a practical law-abiding age of business. At 
 nineteen years of age the Mir married a wife, and 
 established Nyalchand as his steward. For he had 
 himself no turn for business, and if he could, he 
 would not have engrossed himself with matters so 
 far below his birth and dignity. 
 
 The Mir spent his time in the harem. He was so 
 passionately in love with his wife that he never gave 
 her a rival. All day long they sat and talked together 
 — the poor, infatuated bride and bridegroom in their 
 
296 ENGLISH STFDIKS. 
 
 fool's paradise — and Nyalchand, a Hindoo 
 bachelor, looked on with disappi'oval, and thought 
 stern things of the dignity of manhood. 
 
 The Mir never gave a thought to Nyalchand — unless 
 he was in need of ready money. A son and heir 
 was born to him ; great was the merry-making, and 
 more and more money was needed. Nyalchand 
 was always ready, with the key of the strong box 
 and a smile : 
 
 " Not a rupee passed through my hands, but some 
 " fraction of it found its way to my pocket. For a 
 " poor man must live, and it was clear that my master 
 "was rushing on his ruin." 
 
 Seven years went by. Money was less plentiful 
 than of old. Nyalchand was forced to sell the 
 family jewels, to mortgage here a house and there 
 a farm ; and one such he mortgaged to himself 
 under the name of a convenient man of straw. 
 Nyalchand himself married, and his master and 
 mistress defrayed the expense of the wedding 
 festivities : a trifle of three thousand rupees. What 
 though to pay the bill they were forced to rob their 
 jewel-caskets. "They got more satisfaction," said 
 Nyalchand " from my wedding-feast than from their 
 " jewels," and this philosophic reflection dispensed 
 him from the debt of gratitude. When the jewels 
 
TWO INDIAN BOOKS. 297 
 
 had all gone, the jevvel-hilted sabres, the illuminated 
 Persian manuscripts, all the ancestral treasures of a 
 noble house, found their way from the dwelling of 
 the Mir to N^^alchand's. 
 
 One day, the child fell ill. Night and day the 
 doctor watched by his sick bed ; night and day the 
 priest prayed his prayers ; and the mother slipped 
 her betrothal-ring from her finger and gave to 
 Nyalchand. But no sacrifice availed to save her son. 
 He died ; he must be buried. For the hrst time, 
 through all these years, the wife of the Mir appeared 
 in person before her steward : 
 
 " She stood there in her dressing-gown, divine in 
 " her loveliness, and all the lovelier because she was 
 " signed and sealed with the sacred trace of suffering 
 " which compels respect. I bowed down before her, 
 "and my heart beat with a thousand petty agitations. 
 
 " * You see, Nyalchand ' she said. ' We must save 
 "'your master's honour; we must give a fitting 
 " * funeral to my child. Is there nothing left — nothing 
 " ' we could sell ? ' . 
 
 " I had no money myself at that moment, and could 
 
 " not raise the sum required. There was but one thing 
 
 "to do. I went to see the old Mir — I told him of his 
 
 '" grandson's death. He was ill himself, and dying, but 
 
 " without a word he gave me a hundred rupees." 
 
298 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 A few days later the old Mir died, leaving twenty 
 thousand rupees to his son. When the debts were 
 all paid — debts in great part due to Nyalchand — 
 four thousand rupees were left to the Mir. The 
 death of his only son had overwhelmed him. He 
 remained a poor, weak, dazzled, incapable creature, 
 ruined and helpless. The steward a much richer 
 man than his master now, gives notice to his 
 mistress, who perfectly admits his right to look 
 after his own interests, " after all he had suffered in 
 " their service." The collapse of the young Mir lends 
 his wife an unaccustomed energy ; she writes, in 
 Persian, to the wife of the Governor a letter, narrating 
 their misfortunes and setting forth the ancient claims 
 of her husband's family upon the British Govern- 
 ment. She obtains for him a pension of five hundred 
 rupees. All that is some while ago. At present 
 Nyalchand is a wealthy merchant, greatly respected 
 by all who know him ; his master hardly recognises 
 him when he meets him in the street. It is said 
 that the Mir's wife has grown quite grey, but neither 
 premature age, nor trouble, nor anxiety, can diminish 
 her devotion for her husband. She lives with him 
 and for him ; she is his, the only servant of his 
 poverty. And she still; finds means to be charitable : 
 every Friday she gives her utmost in alms to the 
 
TWO INDIAN BOOKS. 299 
 
 poor. Sometimes Nyalchand is half uneasy when 
 he thinks of the difference between the present and 
 the past But, you see, a poor man must make his 
 way. . . . 
 
 Such is the history of Mir Bakhtavar Khan and 
 of the merchant Nvalchand of Ahmcdabad. 
 
zA 3VIa^e in T^aris, 
 
 o 
 
 Thk 'Jon nidi dcs Dcbcifs gave its readers, not 
 long ago, the benefit of the impressions of His 
 Iranian IVIajesty, Nasser-Eddin, the guest of the 
 French RepubHc during the Exhibition of 1889. 
 Here are the impressions of another Iranian, born 
 in Bombay, yet of an older Persian stock and a 
 purer race than the King of Kings, who, after all, 
 is only a Turk, if you come to that. A Turkish 
 Kadjar, while our special client is a Mage, yes a 
 real Mage, an authentic Wise Man of the East — no 
 connection with the Sar Peladan or even M. Richepin, 
 — but a true-born descendant of those priests of 
 Zoroaster, who, after the Arab conquest, set out for 
 India and sought on her hospitable shores, an 
 inviolable asylum for their sacred fires. Jivanjee 
 Jamshidjee Modi does not bind his brows with the 
 diamond-clustered koiila of the Shah-in-Shah ; he 
 wears the white mitre of the Mobed ; and from 
 under tliis different headdress he looks at a different 
 
 30 
 
302 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 Paris. The king, a man of action, is at heart a 
 romantic poet, struck by the brilhant surface of 
 things and their mantle of colour ; the priest analyses, 
 penetrates, divines. 
 
 The Mobed Jivanjee is the priest of the Agyari 
 or Temple of the Sacred Fire at Colaba — that thin, 
 long promontory which Bombay extends out to sea 
 beyond the port of Apollo. He is one of the most 
 active, the most intelligent, the most openminded, 
 of the new generation. About the same time that 
 the Shah left Teheran, he quitted Bombay, despite 
 the old tradition which forbids his caste to cross the 
 sea, and which, centuries ago, had arrested the Royal 
 Mage Tiridates, invited to the feasts of Ncron. 
 Jivanjee went straight from Bombay, not to Paris, 
 but to Stockholm, where at that moment the 
 Oriental Congress was being held. The Mage 
 Jivanjee was an Orient in himself. He was carried 
 in triumph, he and his white robes, by the enthusi- 
 astic students and other talibi ilui. Thence he went 
 to Paris, where he spent six weeks, conscientiously 
 seeing all the sights, listening to all the news, 
 stopping the children in the streets with five-penny 
 pieces proffered in exchange for their glees and 
 ballads, filling his note-book with Parisian folklore 
 for the edification of the ethnographic Mandli of 
 
A MAGE IN PARIS. 303 
 
 Bombay, offering himself a Catholic mass, said for 
 his benefit in the church of the Rue de Rennes, 
 reading Reports before the Institute of France; seeing, 
 in fact, all the facets of the brilliant city. Thence 
 he went to Vienna, to Constantinople, to Athens. 
 At Marathon he recited the Zoroastrian funeral 
 service with the Afrigan Dahman for the benefit of 
 the souls of his ancestors, who fell there beneath the 
 sword of Miltiades. And having visited the Pyramids 
 and interrogated the Sphinx, finally our Mage set 
 sail homewards for Bombay. On November 25, 
 1891, he gave a lecture on Paris at the Dinshaw 
 Petit Club, the society founded by the Parsees, in 
 1886, for the cultivation of the language and 
 literature of France. The lecture was in French, 
 as is the rule of the club, a little corner of exotic 
 France dropped by the shores of the Indian Ocean. 
 Our consul, M. Pernet, was in the chair. The 
 French of the Mage is not always of Parisian nice- 
 ness, but it is infinitely above the imperial French 
 of Teheran ; and I do not know many Frenchmen, 
 I may honestly admit, who could give as fluent a 
 reading in Gujerati. 
 
 Paris, says Mr. Modi, is as famous in modern 
 Europe as Samarcand or Boukhara in the traditions 
 of the East. You remember the verse of Hafiz ? — 
 
304 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 " If this beauty of Shiraz would take my heart in 
 " her hand, for the mole on her clieek 1 would give 
 " Samarcand and Boukhara." As the Mage recited 
 these verses one afternoon at a Parisian tea-table : 
 " But 'tis a plagiary from Moliere — your Hafiz ! " 
 cried his hostess— 
 
 " Si le roi m'avait donnc 
 Paris, sa grand' ville, 
 Et qu'il me fallut quitter 
 
 L'amour de ma mie, 
 Je dirais an roi Henri : 
 Reprenez votre Paris — 
 
 J'aime mieux ma mie, 6 gue, 
 J'aime mieux ma mie." 
 And this unexpected encounter between Moliere 
 and Hafiz softened the disposition of the Mage of 
 Colaba in favour of the Boukhara of the West. 
 
 For it was not without a certain prejudice that he 
 had set out for Paris. Paris, in truth, is a town 
 venerable to every Parsee, and especially to every 
 Zoroastrian priest, as the home of Anquetil-Duperron 
 and Burnouf, those two great Acthrapati who have 
 revived the half-extinguished science of the Avesta. 
 But Paris is the capital of a Republic. Now our 
 Mage is nothing if not loyal ; a royalist by education, 
 by religious tradition, by patriotic remembrance of 
 those great kings of yore — Cyrus and Darius, 
 Ardeshir, and the Khosroes. Moreover, he had 
 
A MAGE IX PARIS. 305 
 
 read in the newspapers that the French arc forever 
 on the verge of revolution ; that the French 
 Government is always playing some unexpected 
 trick, some undreamed of coup d'etat. But six 
 weeks in Paris modified onr Mage's opinions. 
 For, if it is true that in France the political parties are 
 always in a ferment as to which ought to be in 
 office, their quarrels suddenly cease, an instantaneous 
 bond unites them, so soon as there arises a question of 
 national honour. And Mr. Modi declined to believe 
 that the country which produced the Exhibition of 
 1889 could be in any imminent danger. "This 
 " Exhibition," said Mage, "is an eloquent, an honour- 
 " able answer to all the friends and all the enemies 
 " of France." 
 
 It is supposed, says Mr. Modi, tiiat Paris bears the 
 name of an insignificant Celtic tribe, tlie Parisii or 
 frontier people, which identifies Paris with the noble 
 word of Pchlvi, familiar to all lovers of the Persian 
 epic. In fifteen centuries the Celtic hamlet has 
 become a queen among cities, its present splendour 
 being chiefly due to Napoleon III. and the Baron 
 Haussmann, who stand in the same relation to 
 contemporary Paris as Arthur Crawfurd to Bombay. 
 
 Paris can boast both institutes of pleasure and 
 
 institutes of science ; the Mage has bestowed his 
 
 22 
 
3o6 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 impartial attention on them both. In the Bois de 
 Boulogne he admires "the extent to which man can 
 " blend his arts with nature for the pleasure of 
 ''mankind." He admires no less the "galaxy of 
 " beauty " which ascends and descends the Champs- 
 Elysees every Sunday afternoon at four o'clock : 
 " There you may meet the rank and fashion of 
 " Paris with his wife, in carriages, on horseback, 
 *' and on foot, with their children, intent on their 
 " marionettes." 
 
 He has frequented the theatres, so useful to 
 foreigners anxious to acquire a correct pronunciation. 
 He has visited the Opera House, whose cost may 
 be estimated at about two crores of rupees, and he 
 has walked on the Boulevard on a summer evening, 
 and has returned persuaded that the Divali is 
 celebrated every day. 
 
 Such is the Paris qui s' amuse, as it appears to the 
 eyes of our Mage, after six weeks of arduous 
 exploration. It is not at all, as you observe, the 
 impure and odious lair wliich the author of David 
 Greeve discovered in a week. As to the institutes of 
 science, the Mage has given most of his attention to 
 the Academy of Inscriptions and the College of 
 France. The College is an institution for the 
 encouragement and research into unstudied ques- 
 
A MAGE IN PARIS. 307 
 
 tions. When a chair becomes vacant, all tiie 
 professors meet and consider if its further main- 
 tenance be advisable : " For instance, if the chair 
 " of Egyptology be vacant, they consult as to whether 
 " the study of Egyptology be sufficiently advanced 
 " in France to take care of itself. If they decide in 
 "the affirmative, they convert the chair into a 
 " professorship, say, of Assyriology, or some other 
 " kindred subject, which needs and merits en- 
 " couragement." 
 
 Among literary societies, the Institute of France 
 is the most famous in the world. The Mage 
 attended the section of Inscriptions and Belles- 
 Lettres, and gave a reading before that Academy on 
 the ossuaries brought back from Susa by M. 
 Dieulafoy. He remarked with surprise that black 
 and abundant locks are rare in this Academy. A 
 yet stranger thing is the recruiting of this learned 
 body. 
 
 In England and in India, if there were a place 
 vacant in any illustrious assembly, nothing could 
 well appear in poorer taste than to go about and 
 personally apply for it. Yet this is the absolute 
 rule of admission to the Institute. The reason 
 given is inadequate enough : they say that the 
 Academv is a small friendly assembly where questions 
 
308 ENGLISH STUDIES. 
 
 are discussed, as in private, among intimates ; it is 
 necessary, therefore, that before entering this strict 
 and chosen circle, a man should be approved of by 
 those whom henceforth he will be so closely knit. 
 These sophistries will not sufBce us ; and yet, oddly 
 enough, the Academy so singularly recruited, per- 
 forms its office to admiration. The Institute of 
 Inscriptions, for example, followed with the keenest 
 interest the discovery of the Stela of Shaloof by the 
 Suez Canal, which clearly establishes the fact that that 
 important waterway was engineered by Darius of 
 Persia, some two thousand five hundred years 
 before M. de Lesseps. The Mage reserves some of 
 his approval for the Asiatic Society, presided by the 
 celebrated M. Renan. Before these philologists he 
 read a paper on the popular etymology of the 
 names of halting-places between Cabul and 
 Peshawur. Of the twelve members present four 
 were able to converse with him in Persian. 
 
 The Society of Students oft'ers a worthy model to 
 the associations of Bombay. Think what an extra 
 strength would accrue to the Persian Club, the 
 Medical Union, the Association of Graduates, the 
 Elphinstone Union, if, whilst keeping their indepen- 
 dence, they were grouped in an united corporation. 
 Although, by the statutes of the French Society of 
 
A MAGE IX PAKIS. 309 
 
 Students, politics are excluded from its sphere of 
 action, see what an influence it exercises even in 
 that forbidden zone ! Thus, some years ago, 
 relations were more than usually strained between 
 France and Italy, but fortunately at that moment 
 some Italian University, occupied with its jubilee, 
 invited the Association des Etudiants, as well as the 
 students of the other nations. The admirable 
 conduct of the Parisian delegation, its courtesy, its 
 good breeding, made such an impression upon the 
 Italian people, that, at present, as everybody knows, 
 the most perfect cordiality reigns between the two 
 countries. 
 
 Naturally, the Mage did not omit a visit to the 
 Bibliotheque Nationale, an important building which 
 contains twenty lacs of books, among which one lac 
 of manuscripts. There he handled with due 
 reverence the collection of Anquetil-Duperron and 
 the manuscript notes in his own handwriting, which 
 he took in 1760 at Surat, where he studied under the 
 Dastoor Darab. Mr. Modi also visited the Louvre 
 — so called from tiie abundance of wolves which 
 infested it in former times — and saw the archaeological 
 remains, so interesting to a Parsee, which M. and 
 Mme. Dieulafoy discovered and brought home from 
 Susa. He attended several churches, and came to the 
 
310 ENGLISH STUDIES, 
 
 conclusion that the Christian ritual and the rites of 
 Zoroaster are very much the same ; and finally, at 
 Versailles, at the Invalides, at Fontainebleau, he 
 invoked the memory of Napoleon, the Alexander of 
 our age. In a chamber of the Palace of Fontaine- 
 bleau he remarked a tapestry representing the 
 history of Queen Esther, a Jewess who, according to 
 the Bible, persuaded a Shah of Persia to massacre 
 the Persians. When the Shah visited Paris, the 
 complete furniture of this apartment was transported 
 to adorn his bedroom, and this was, as you may 
 take it, a strange coincidence or a delicate com- 
 pliment. 
 
 Macaulay has said that politeness is kindness in 
 little things. The French are past-masters in this 
 virtue, and our Mage would have brought back 
 from Paris an incomparable impression, but for one 
 strange particularity which filled him with a 
 melancholy amazement. The largest part of the 
 population of Paris remains in a state of celibacy. 
 Few things could be more shocking to the feelings 
 of a Parsee priest, who learns in his religion that 
 Ormuzd prefers a married man to a bachelor, and 
 the head of a family to the childless husband. May 
 the Parsees never borrow this evil habit from the 
 civilization of their namesakes the Parisians ! Is it 
 
A MAGE IN PARIS. 
 
 ;ii 
 
 not said in the Seventeenth Gate of the Sad-cler that 
 a son is the bridge over which we pass into Paradise 
 above the terrors of Hell flaming innocuous beneath ? 
 But when the bachelor arrives in sight of the other 
 world, the angels shall say to him : ** Who hast 
 " thou left in the world below to take thy place ? " 
 And they will leave him a prey to all the demons of 
 Ahriman ; and he shall be as a traveller pursued by 
 wolves, who flies to the river, and, shuddering at the 
 brink, cries out in his despair, " Alas, alas ! why did 
 I never throw a bridge across ! " 
 
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