UC-NRLF m i *B 155 3b3 ELIZABETH CASS GODDARD. Edwin Arnold AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER CONTAINING AN EXAMINATION OF THE "LIGHT OF ASIA" FOR ITS LITERATURE AND FOR ITS BUDDHISM BY WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON FUNK & WAGNALLS NEW YORK : 1884. LONDON : 10 and 12 Dey Street. 44 Fleet Street. All Rights Reserved. Entered, according to Act of Congress, In the year 1884, by FUNK & WAGNALLS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. &?? K\ « >$ PUBLISHERS' NOTE. It is proper to say that the present volume, while essentially in original design, and formally still in execution, a critique, literary and doctrinal, on Mr. Arnold's very popular poem, offers, as now presented to the public, a criticism of Buddhism itself, in the ethical part of that great religion so-called. It contains material nowhere else to be found in a form accessible to the general reader, for a just independent judgment of the real ethical merits of a pagan creed that has been much vaunted of late among us. It is thus a substantial contribution, which will be appreciated especially by Christian teachers, to the current discussion of Comparative Religion. Ml£35?9 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/edwinarnoldaspoeOOwilkrich PREFACE. It certainly would seem hardly worth while to write a book, even a little book like the present, solely for the purpose of criticising such a production as Mr. Edwin Arnold's " Light of Asia." But that production has accomplished, is still perhaps in course of accomplishing, a mission in America of influence upon the public mind important quite out of proportion to any significance attaching to the poem by virtue of its own intrinsic character. The publication of Mr. Arnold's work happened to coincide in time with a singular development, both in America and in Europe, of popular curiosity and interest concerning ethnic religions, especially concerning Bud- dhism. The " Light of Asia" was well adapted to hit this transient whim of Occidental taste. So I account, in part, for the instantaneous American popularity of the poem. At any rate, Mr. Arnold has, no doubt, whether by merit or by fortune, been, beyond any other writer, the means of widening the American audience prepared to entertain with favor the pretensions of Buddha and his teachings. The effect is very observable. There has entered the general mind an unconfessed, a half unconscious, but a most shrewdly penetrative, misgiving that perhaps, after all, Christianity has not of right quite the exclusive claim that it was previously supposed to possess, upon the VI PREFACE. attention and reverence of mankind. A letting up in the sense of obligation, on the part of Christians, to christianize the world, has followed. Nay. the individ- ual Christian conscience itself has, if I mistake not, been disposed to wear more lightly its own yoke of exclusive loyalty to Jesus. In view of this state of the case, I have thought that it might not be amiss, if 1 should take occasion, by Mr. Arnold's book, to let in, from original sources, a little real light upon his subject, for the satisfaction of those readers of his who would like to know what is the actual truth underlying his representations of Buddha and of Buddhism. In achieving my purpose, I was naturally led to consider as well the literal, as the didactic, value of the " Light of Asia." Hence the anomaly of what, upon the face of it, is a literary cri- tique, appearing in the form of a book. My critique, while superficially of Mr. Arnold, becomes fundamentally of Mr. Arnold's subject not less. I will not disguise it, my true paramount motive throughout has been still more religious and Christian than literary. As already intimated, one marked feature of the fol- lowing discussion of Buddhism will be found to lie in the fact that it presents the system itself, in specimen, and not merely a single unfriendly critic's view of the system. Buddhism is given its chance to stand or to fall, with the reader, by its own inherent merits or demerits, and not by the praise or the blame of a per- haps prejudiced interpreter. The writer comments in- deed, but the text on which he comments is Buddhist literature itself placed visibly under the eye of the reader. The reader can thus condemn either the thing criticised, or the person criticising, in accordance with what seems to be the demand of justice in the case. PREFACE. VI 1 The present writer judges Buddhism by the words which it speaks. It is but right that he too should himself in turn be judged, as inevitably he will, out of his own mouth. FIRST R^RT. I. To admire is delightful. To admire wisely is well. But to admire unwisely is not well, however delightful. Those who admire Mr. Edwin Arnold's poetry, admire unwisely. This I purpose in the present essay to show. To do so will not be to me an agreeable, but it will, I may venture to trust, be by some readers accepted as a useful service. Most people of culture read, as indeed it is right that they should, to enjoy, rather than to criticise. They would naturally prefer to have that which they enjoy something intrinsically worthy to yield them enjoyment. Given, however, a book that is praised by authorities supposably both competent and candid, theirs, then, not to reason why, but theirs simply to read and relish. In this amiable class of readers, happily so large, there are numbered many minds capable of intellectual neutrality enough to welcome with good nature a study submitted to them of an author that they have over-hastily admired, which shall seek to show them that they have bestowed their admiration amiss. It is, in great part, to such people of culture as these, genial and open-hearted, but also judicious and open-minded, that I address myself in the critique of Mr. Arnold herewith placed before the public. These readers I treat with all respect ; a senti- ment on my part toward them necessarily quite sincere, for among them I count dear personal friends of my own, men and women not indeed much given to criticis- IS ; ( ; , '.",;: : / ."ElriyiN Arnold, ing closely for themselves, but abundantly capable of appreciating and enjoying the closest criticism applied by others ; these readers, I say, 1 here treat courteously — with that best courtesy, the truth which is their due — at the same time that I treat Mr. Arnold himself — well, treat him, in strict conscience and with strong self-re- straint, exactly as I think he, in his literary capacity, deserves. My own first acquaintance with Mr. Edwin Arnold's poetry was made through a long and laudatory review of " The Light of Asia " in the New York Daily Tribune. This review contained copious extracts from the poem. It was beautifully read aloud to me, in a voice, the exquisitely modulated tones of which might com- mend almost any literature, to the ear at least, if not to the judgment and the taste. Prepossessed through the praises of the critic, as additionally persuaded thus by the voice of the reader, I easily formed a somewhat favorable impression of the poem. With equal ease, however, I soon dismissed it from thought, as being evidently the work of a mind without strongly individual character of its own, a mind capable at best only of re- flecting light received from sources outside of itself. Meantime the " Light of Asia" was winning its audi- ence among American readers. One day, some months subsequently, a cherished friend of mine, a man of liberal culture, came to me with the volume, prompted in so coming by the generous thought of bringing me to share with himself the pleasure he experienced in its perusal. Naturally I was well inclined to enjoy the production appreciated in so genial a fellow- ship. "Is there a preface?" I asked. "There is." "Well, let us begin with that." My friend read the first sentence or two, I resting diffusely at ease meantime AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 13 to take my full comfort of the reading. With all loyal good feeling, in that perfect frankness of expression which the long relation of intimacy between us per- mitted, I raised to my friend now and then a question of doubt as to the quality of the writing. More and more, as the reading proceeded, I felt discomposed, refraining, however, as in courtesy bound, from further antipathetic expression. At length my friend, having doubtless been conscious all the time of skeptical effect, not intended, in my silence, spoke out : " There now, that, you will admit, is a fine sentence." To say truth, 1 had lost myself for a moment in alien meditation. " Let us have it again," 1 said. The first clause was repeated, when, " Pardon, just what does that mean?" 1 inter- rupted ; " I do not seem to get the sense of the words." My friend had a very bright wit, but he was charmingly frank, and, characteristically, after pausing a moment to ponder the point, he acknowledged outright that he did not understand it. " Go on," I said. Clause by clause, we challenged together that sentence of Mr. Arnold's for its meaning. We finally determined the literary quality of the whole preface to be — such as it will here- after be represented. His preface convinced me that I should not be pleased with Mr. Arnold's poetry. This may seem unreasonable. 1 was not forced to that conclusion of mine because the preface was ill written ; but because it was ill written in a certain way, a way to prove, as I thought, the writer to be not fundamentally sincere and genuine in his literary character. Still, I went forward to read the " Light of Asia" in company with my genial and cultivated friend. Point by point he made fight — as in good loyalty he felt com- mitted to do — to the limit of the possibility that existed, 14 EDWIN" ARNOLD, on behalf of the poet. The result finally was that we both w r ere quite of a mind concerning the merits of Mr. Arnold's work. We felt equally confident in making light of its claims to be recognized as a product either of true genius or of true art. Now, 1 take it, we two, my friend and I, probably very well represent the great majority of all Mr. Arnold's admirers. These need but some motive to ex- amine with heed the real quality of their poet's produc- tion, to see it at length in the same light as that in which it came to present itself to us. In this sentiment, the crit- icism following is offered to the readers that it may find. After the " Light of Asia " first appeared, it remained for a time uncertain what would be the fortune of the poem with the public. During that interval of doubt, serious criticism could judiciously be silent. The poem might not be admired. To prove, then, that it ought not to be admired, would be as barren as it would be dull. But the case now is widely otherwise. The public has been taken by storm — a kind of snow-storm, if, led by verbal suggestion, one may thus suddenly go for his metaphor from war to weather. The " Light of Asia," in its different editions, soon fairly blanketed the Eng- lish-speaking lands. And the clouds continued to thicken. Out of them descended the " Iliad of India." Next came " Pearls of the Faith." Latest, but, I grieve to fear, not last, " Indian Idylls" is upon us. It is clearly time to speak out. I am going to speak out. I shall be very frank. But 1 shall be not less candid. And I begin with freely admitting that, all things considered, Mr. Arnold's performance in the " Light of Asia" was certainly a very clever, as it was a very lucky, one. He was a journalist, and he wrote a poem, or what passed for a AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 15 poem, of some length, and he did it surprisingly quick. The poem was much praised, and it became, at least here in America, decidedly popular. The American " recep- tion" of it, the author himself was willing, in his printed letter to his American publishers, to admit, was " magnifi- cent" — a form of admission, to be sure, by no means so significant for a journalist, as it would be for a poet, to make. There are, in the world of letters, .two problems about equally difficult — one is to tell beforehand where popu- larity will strike, the other to tell afterward why it struck there. Literary popularity, in fact, is very much like lightning in this respect. The lightning, however, indisputably struck Mr. Arnold, and, on his own part, intelligent curiosity to know the cause, might well give way to unreserved enjoyment of the sensation. We, on our part, who remain astonished, but otherwise disin- terested, spectators of the " magnificent" phenomenon, may properly enough muse a little the reasons of it all. I accordingly submit herewith a volunteer conjecture of the reasons why the " Light of Asia " became suddenly so popular — for one would shoot howe'er in vain a ran- dom arrow from the brain. In the first place, then, there is the large class already referred to of cultivated people, hospitably disposed be- forehand toward good literature, and ready to be set in favor of any new book that seems suitably accredited with praise from the critics. That praise certainly was not wanting in the present instance from our American periodical organs of literature ; and although English voices in general preserved an instructive silence, there did not, as will presently be shown, fail at least one ap- parently authoritative utterance from England too in eulogy of Mr. Arnold's work. 16 EDWIX ARNOLD, In the second place, there are plenty of people, not exactly cultivated, who like stories, and do not mind if the stories are told in verse. These people, then, good- hnmoredly call this liking of theirs a liking for poetry. In the third place, those same people, together with a considerable number of others, are much pleased to accumulate information, or what they fondly suppose to be information, on all sorts of subjects. Of course, it is again no objection, if the information is conveyed in metrical form. In the fourth place, there is a still different class, made up partly from a contingent not so included, that find great satisfaction in being liberal in their views. It is emphatically no objection if the subject in question be religion. These people feel the pleasant pains of intel- lectual enlargement, as they doubt not, when they lay themselves freely open to let the " sympathy of re- ligions" ferment and expand within them. Once more, there are some that hate to hear Aristides forever called the just, and that therefore are only too glad to believe of Jesus that He is but one of many very nearly, if not quite, as " high and holy and gentle and beneficent" as He. These people know so little, at first hand, of Jesus, that they can read about Buddha in Mr. Arnold's poem, without once dreaming that what they think admirable in the Indian prince's personality and action as therein displayed, is largely Jesus made to mask under a pagan disguise. They can condescend to admire, when they would not submit to obey. If Jesus will be somebody else than Himself, and will go far enough away from them not to stand at the door and knock, they will almost worship — His counterfeit, for the sake of affronting — Him. If now we add that, a fashion of admiration toward a AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZEK. 17 particular work being once set, or bidding fair presently to be, an innumerable remainder of people to whom being out of the fashion, is being out of the world — if, I say, we add that the admirers of a successful literary production are sure to be reinforced and supported by the flocking in to their standard of an uncounted herd of such, why, there is, in the problem of the popularity of Mr. Edwin Arnold's " Light of Asia," little perhaps re- maining to be solved — and that little may fairly be re- ferred to the merits of the work for solution. The merits of the work are, prettiness, fluency, a fair degree of clearness, real Oriental color (this last conces- sion is subject to important exceptions) — and the fact that it was written by a journalist. » These favorable points I have sought to arrange in their true order of climax. It does indeed seem to me the chief praise of the poem, that the poem was written by a journalist. Not that it was written very rapidly by a journalist, not even that it was written by a journalist in u the brief intervals of days without leisure," but that it was written by a jour- nalist at all. This is no disparagement of Mr. Arnold's respectable profession. It is no disparagement of indi- vidual members of that profession. Among journalists are undoubtedly men of genius, as well as men of talent and character. William Cullen Bryant was an example in both classes at once. What I say simply recognizes the fact that journalism is so very different an affair from poetry, that long practice in it almost, not quite, hope- lessly disqualifies the subject for the " accomplishment of verse." Mr. Arnold could not, I judge, have been a poet, even if he had not been a journalist ; but that, being a journalist, he should have produced so success- ful an imitation of poetry, entitles him to praise. 1 could not honestly add simplicity to the enumeration of 18 EDWIN ARNOLD, Mr. Arnold's merits ; for the simplicity of style, which of course 1 recognize as present, is not a genuine sim- plicity. This will, 1 think, appear to every candid reader of sense, from a consideration of the style in which Mr. Arnold has written his preface. Here the author expresses himself in his own proper manner, and that manner, it will be seen, is as remote as possible from simplicity. In the very first sentence — but now I enter upon a lit- tle examination of Mr. Arnold's preface, which, though I myself think it important, some readers may think dull, and they therefore are entitled to skip it— Mr. Arnold says he has " sought by the medium,' ' etc. In the next sentence he writes, " which had existed and surpasses;" " any other form of creed ; " "followers " of a creed (for professors or adherents). In the third sentence, he tells us u four hundred and seventy millions of our race live and die in the tenets of Gautama." Leave out the word " live," and you have it stated that a certain definite large number of people " die" in the " tenets of Gautama." "Die" when, pray? "Within what limits of time ? We are left to conjecture. If he had said uncounted millions " have lived and died," that would have been intelligible, and then he might have added, " so many people are now living. " But no, this number of people, four hundred and seventy millions, are living and dying — " live and die" habitually, we may suppose, and alternately, as it might be said that they " eat and sleep." The next sentence in order, that is, the fourth, in- forms us that " the most characteristic habits and con- victions of the Hindus are clearly due to the benign in- fluence of Buddha's precepts." The form of expression here need not be objected to ; but what is it that we find AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 19 expressed ? If Mr. Arnold had said, " some of the best traits in Hindu character and belief," instead of saying " the most characteristic habits and convictions of the Hindus," he would have made a more credible assertion. The Hindu character should be admirable, very admirable, to have " the most characteristic habits and convictions of the Hindus" due to a" benign influence" of any sort, no matter what. Of what other race could it be said that their most characteristic habits and convictions are due to a " benign influence" of any sort ? Surely so broad a generalization in favor of an exceptionally high moral character in the Hindus, must awaken in the Occi- dental breast more of surprise than of conviction. Mr. Hardy, in his " Legends and Theories of the Buddhists," p. 205, says : u Among the millions of the Hindus, Buddha has not now a single worshipper. . . . The minister of the powerful Akbar, in the sixteenth cen- tury, could find no one in the wide dominions of his master, who could give him any explanation of the doc- trines of Gotama [Buddha]." Ungrateful Hindus, after having been regenerated to a degree beyond example by Buddhism, to have let Buddhism slip away from them, as they have done, and to have embraced Brahmanism instead ! A prognostic, by the way, not very favorable to that prospect of " immortality" for Buddhism which, as will presently be seen, Mr. Arnold very strongly claims in its behalf. Seriously, what is this Hindu national character, that it should be thus praised by Mr. Arnold ? But that is a question which may better be postponed to a later part of the essay. Let us pursue a little farther our inquisition into the quality of thought and expression that his pref- ace may lead us to expect from Mr. Arnold. The sentence next succeeding says that prince Gautama 20 EDWIN ARNOLD, Buddha's " personality," " though imperfectly revealed in the existing sources of information, cannot but appear the highest, gentlest, holiest, and most beneficent, with one exception, in the history of Thought." " In the history of Thought " — " Thought " — note the capital letter. But why, " history of Thought"? Why not just " history " ? A " personality," if that term means the personal character of a real historic person, belongs not to the " history of Thought," but to history. Per- haps Mr. Arnold intends to insinuate, in a manner not to offend sensibilities, that Buddha, and Jesus, are mere conceptions of the human mind. Apparently, however, not — for, farther on in the preface, he says : " The Buddha of this poem — if, as need not be doubted, he really existed. ' ' Still this too is inconclusive as to Mr. Arnold's true meaning, if he had any true meaning. The sentence is probably pure " journalism." "We skip to the sentence in which the journalistic rhetoric of the preface culminates : "In point of age, therefore, most other creeds are youthful [Mr. Arnold is provident to tell us it is ' in point of age, 5 that ' most other creeds ' are i youthful ' — we might otherwise have supposed it was in point of personal appearance !] com- pared with this venerable religion, which has in it the eternity of a universal hope, the immortality of a bound- less love, an indestructible element of faith in final good, and the proudest assertion ever made of human free- dom." First, observe the fine climax — existing in the contrary sense — from the " eternity of a universal hope," whatever that high-sounding phrase may mean, to " the proudest assertion ever made of human free- dom" ! Now what is it for a religion to have in it " the eternity of a universal hope"? I have seen a number of ingenious people work their brains over that single AS POETIZElt AND AS PAGANIZRR. 21 expression, more than Mr. Arnold probably worked his brain over the entire preface, to try what sense they could make it yield to their quest. The most satisfac- tory guess was this : Because Buddhism offers something that everybody would like to get, and somewhat expects to get, (" a universal hope"), therefore Buddhism will always continue to exist. A tine sense truly ! — the im- plication being that any religion will always continue to exist, if it only proposes, no matter on what evidence of its trustworthiness, to fulfil a hope that everybody cherishes ! The next phrase is nearly as grandiose, " the immor- tality of a boundless love." Besides being "eternal," this religion is also somehow " immortal " ! Its " eter- nity," however, springs from one cause, while its " im- mortality" springs from another. Buddhism is "eter- nal" because it offers something that everybody hopes to get, but Buddhism is "immortal" because — because — one is at a loss, it is something about " a boundless love" — whose the love may be, is not clear, probably Buddha's "love" — Buddhism is " immortal," let us say, because Buddha's " love" is, or was, " boundless." Next, Buddhism "has in it" "an indestructible element." We do not yet escape the idea of "eternity." The idea at least bids fair to be " eternal"— in Mr. Arnold's rhetoric. This time, however, it is not quite the reli- gion of Buddha itself that reappears as "eternal," or "immortal," or "indestructible." It is now some- thing in the religion, an " element" — namely, " faith in final good." The religion, then, exercises faith. This faith, exercised by the religion, is an "element" in the religion, and it is "an indestructible element," hence, probably, the religion which exercises the " in- itself "indestructible." One 22 EDWIN ARNOLD, would have been disposed, without further argument, to admit a religion, that had already been proved both " eternal" and "immortal," to be also "in- destructible" ; but reasons are as plenty as blackberries with Mr. Arnold, and nobody will deny that, in this case, the last reason has, on the score of pure merit, an equal right with the others to be mentioned. But be- sides being alike "eternal," "immortal," and "in destructible," this religion contains " the proudest asser- tion ever made of human freedom." This now might also have been turned into a reason for — let us see, pred- icates "eternity," "immortality," "indestructibility" provided for — well, into a reason for, say, the perma- nency of Buddhism ; we should then have had an "eternal," an " immortal," an " indestructible," and a " permanent" religion, with appropriate reasons sever- ally corresponding ; but the rule of " not too much" is absolute with Mr. Arnold, and he contents himself with simply stating his fact, not taking the trouble to indicate any relation whatever of his fact to the general tenor of the sentence. A proud assertion of human freedom, is a recommendation for Buddhism that will be appreciated by those who maybe in need of such a religion as merits the recommendation. It is a case much resembling the classic one famous by the fame of President Lincoln's wit. For those that like this sort of thing, this would be just about the sort of thing that they would like. I am bound now to add that one of my literary friends, a diviner, deep far beyond plummet of mine, in matters of mystical sense, insists with me that I have myself made a wide blunder in trying to comprehend Mr. Arnold in this sentence of his. The true meaning, as expounded by my friend, is something that I, with my thick organ of utterance, should vainly undertake to AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 23 express. I felt it but right, however, toward Mr. Arnold, to make this statement, even to my own con- fusion. I can truly say that my failure, if failure there has been, is one of the head and not of the heart ; for I sought diligently to understand my author right. In all candor, such writing as this of Mr. Arnold's — which, if my exegesis stands, hides in verbiage a mean- ing that instantly confutes itself, when simply expressed — is a sign of intellectual, not to say of moral, character in the writer, that no reader can wisely neglect. One sen- tence like the last sentence examined, is enough to settle it, at least to a very high degree of probability, that its author has nothing to say worth our paying attention to. It would be impossible for any good writer, in a sound state of mind, to produce such a sentence as that, and propose it seriously to the public. In truth, that sen- tence has almost the character of travesty. If it were travesty, deliberately designed, it would be less depress- ing than it is. It lacks genuineness ; that is, it fails to be the expression of any real thought or conviction of the writer. Now, in yeasty youth, a man destined to be eventually a good writer, may no doubt deliver himself of much nonsense, that he, at the time, considers to be iine writing, and that imposes itself for fine writing upon readers of a certain class. But the characteristic ten- dency of a fundamentally good writer is to become more and more genuine, as he advances in age and experience. Whatever may happen to him in respect of anything else, in respect of genuineness at least, the fundamentally good writer becomes better and better. He may fall under a sinister influence and degenerate in various minor respects, but in respect of genuineness, 1 repeat, the good writer, if he be fundamentally good, is certain to grow better, and not worse. Mr. Arnold is not a 24 EDWIN ARNOLD, young man. His faults are not the hopeful faults of youth. They are the faults of the man, and not the faults of a stage in the man's development. Any single characteristic sentence, accordingly, of his production enables the thoughtful judge of style to determine his true rank and worth in literature, with as much certainty as Cuvier felt in classifying an extinct animal on the basis of a single fossil bone. Let no reader misjudge me as delighting myself in pointing out minor faults in a piece of writing generally good. My criticism of this preface of Mr. Arnold's is no such barren, hard-hearted exercise on my part. On the contrary, it is, to such as may be pleased to follow it carefully, not a mere piece of petty carping, but a demonstration that the writer of that preface is a funda- mentally false writer — false, I mean, not in the sense of wilfully mendacious, but in the sense of not being con- sciously and conscientiously true in expression to some real thought, sentiment, conviction, fancy, existing in his mind. It will be agreed, 1 think, that Mr. Arnold's preface is a very unprepossessing piece of literary workmanship. It is exactly newspaper writing. It does not prepare you to expect to find the author of it a true poet. You read it, and you feel like the justice who, after hearing one side of the cause, declared himself bent on listening with condign impartiality to what the other side might have to urge in reply, but gave notice that in any case he should eventually decide against the defendant. You ponder Mr. Arnold's preface, and resolve with vir- tue not to read the poem in a prejudiced spirit ; but in spite of yourself you go on knowing perfectly well in your heart that at last you shall give your verdict against it. How could it be otherwise ? AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 25 1 have so entitled this critique as to bind myself to pay some attention to what Mr. Arnold has done in verse, apart from that which must be regarded as his principal work. My obligation in this particular is easily discharged. From his supplementary volume of verse, with great promptness thriftily put forth in the imme- diate wake of its fortunate predecessor, I select a repre- sentative short poem for a moment's examination. The piece is entitled " The Three Koses." Let us take it up at once. To do so will be no break to the unity and progress of the main criticism. On the contrary, it will be exactly in the line of what I found myself saying just now in comment upon the preface to the " Light of Asia." I was remarking on the lack of genuineness exemplified in Mr. Arnold's work. This lack of genuineness is betrayed in the undigested, confused, dis- cordant character of the conceptions upon which his poems generally are constructed. ' ' The Three Roses' ' seems to have been suggested by some lines of Mr. Aldrich, which Mr. Arnold prints as argument or preface to his own production. Mr. Aldrich mentions three roses bestowed, respectively, by a lover upon his beloved, by her paramour upon a har- lot, by a widowed mother upon her dead child. Mr. Arnold's poem has for its basis the conceit that these three roses experience translation to a spirit-world of roses where they contend for a "palm." Each rose prefers her own claim. Of their three several pleas, the poem consists. It is a paltry conceit at best, to serve as scheme for a poem. But observe the utter Lick of unity, of consistency, with which even this poor conceit is carried out. In the first place, it is not stated what the pre-eminence is, that the competitors strive, respec- tively, to establish for themselves. The first rose sets 26 EDWIN" ARNOLD, out : " I am the happiest flower." The palm of happi- ness therefore might seem to be that for which they contend. But then the second rose begins : " I am the wisest rose." Number one is for excellence in happi- ness, number two is for excellence in wisdom. A queer competition for " the palm " ! The third rose com- mences : " I was the blessed flower." " Was," now, instead of " am," as before ; but why, nobody but Mr. Arnold, if even he, could tell. The third rose is for excellence in blessedness. A most extraordinary conten- tion for " the palm " ! It is a case in which it would need Solomon come again to award the prize. There should of right have been three palms corresponding to the three claims of the competitors. Manifestly, how- ever, there was but one, for number three says : " Give back the crown, dear sisters." The " palm," it will be observed, has become the " crown." And there is but the one. However, the one crown is a very peculiar crown, for two, it seems, may have it together. How the two can manage to wear it — whether the crown is double, the several parts being attached to each other by a sufficiently long copula of some kind, or whether the distracted winners must content themselves with having it on their heads by turns — does not appear. Still, if the crown is double, it might as well be triple ; or, if, on the other hand, it is a single one worn successively by two different holders, it might be as well by three — and so unpleasant disappointment be avoided all around. Number three says, " Give back the crown." She, then, had once had " the crown." How she got it, or why she should have surrendered it, conscious as she was all the time of a right to it that would presently make her claim it back again — this is one of the many riddles that Mr. Arnold gives us no means of solving. AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 27 Be it noted, that the three roses seem to constitute in themselves at once the group of competitors, and the court of award. Number three, therefore, has twice, as judge, given away the prize which now in turn she, as competitor, demands to have restored to her. Is it not all prettily conceived ? But we must not delay ourselves with the multiplied minor inconsistencies, contradictions, and impossibilities, involved in this crude and chaotic representative little poem of Mr. Arnold's. The chief absurdity is still to be noted. Mr. Arnold gives to his readers the cue for interpreting his piece in these two introductory lines : " Three Roses (in the world we do not see) Strove for the palm. Thus spake the beauteous Three." In accordance with the information thus conveyed, whatever is said by the translated roses — it being said by them only to one another, and being said in that " world we do not see" — should of course properly have a char- acter congruous to these conditions. But this is far enough from being the case. " The Widow's Bose" says, describing her own experience in translation, to sister roses, who, by the hypothesis of the poem, had both of them enjoyed substantially the same experience : 1 ' There shine no sunbeams so on earth, There is no air blows in such wise As this that swept from Paradise And turned grave-gloom to grace and mirth." Now this, nobody can fail to see, is said as if the " Rose" were addressing herself to an earthly audience, and were imparting information to those who had not yet enjoyed an enlightening experience like her own. It is thus utterly inconsistent with the whole conception on 28 EDWIN ARNOLD, which the poem set out to be framed. The same rose goes on : " I saw him rise unspeakably." Now it was, so the next stanza represents, " clasped in that small hand," the hand of the widow's dead son, that this rose reached the spirit-world of roses. Very- well, " clasped" in that hand, how could she see him " rise unspeakably" ? Manifestly this too is said from a point of view entirely out of keeping with the very idea of the poem. A spectator remaining below might "see" such an " unspeakable" ascension. The rose, held fast within the shut hand, might " feel" the ascen- sion she was sharing; but to speak of " seeing" it would be contrary to the conception. But Mr. Arnold's oblivion of his plot becomes more declared and complete in the speech of the harlot's rose. This rose, with truly remarkable forgetfulness of where she is, does not hesitate to say : " In all this earth there is not one So desolate and so undone, Who hath not rescue if they knew A heart-cry goes the whole world through." This stanza, with its irreconcilable incongruity, its awkward construction, its harsh discord of tenses and other bad grammar, may stand for its own sufficient commentary. It need only be said that the other poems of the collection are worthy of their association with this. This is named, by a no less cultivated critical authority than the Atlantic Monthly, first, among three that are by it pronounced the " most noticeable and the best of the collection." The Atlantic Monthly review commits itself further to the judgment that Mr. Arnold AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 29 " is a thorough artist"! " Artist" indeed! I would almost rather call him a poet. I have nothing further to add about the miscellaneous poems of Mr. Arnold. I come back to his " Light of Asia." Before advancing, however, to the poem itself, let us still give attention to an instructive sentence or two more of the preface. " Finally," says Mr. Arnold, " in rever- ence to the illustrious Promulgator of this ' Light of Asia ' [whom, choice of words, the capital letters, and the quotation-marks being considered, can this expression properly designate but Mr. Arnold himself ? — for my own part, I am disposed to think that Mr. Arnold here was truer than he meant to be] and in homage to the many eminent scholars who have devoted noble labors to his memory for which both repose and ability are want- ing to me, I beg that the shortcomings of my too- hurried study may be forgiven." Now, just what happens, or is to happen, "in reverence to" (Mr.« Arnold, or) Gautama, and " in homage to the eminent scholars" alluded to, is a trifle indeterminate. Does Mr. Arnold " beg" "in reverence" and " in homage " ? Or is the forgiveness begged for to be granted " in reverence" and " in homage"? "Reverence to" Buddha might incite a man, conscious of that sentiment, to do his best in presenting Buddha favorably to an irreverent public ; the same emotion might incline such a man to seek forgiveness from Buddha for not succeed- ing to his own mind ; but I cannot see why " reverence to" Buddha should incline the man, with reference to people that do not care a button for Buddha as an object of worship, to beg pardon of these for not getting on better in his pious purpose. Mr. Arnold might well, as I think, and as I am about to show, pray to be forgiven for the literary faults of his work ; but that prayer on 30 EDWIN ARNOLD, his part should, in order to get its answer, be inspired by "reverence to," not Buddha, but the public against whom he has committed his sin. He may be sure that we, for our part, we presumptive Christians, shall not forgive him a moment the sooner, or a shade the more freely, because he begs us in " reverence to" Buddha. By "repose," Mr. Arnold probably means what other men would express by the word " leisure," or " oppor- tunity." Men do not generally speak of "repose" for " labors." The next sentence reads, " It has been com- posed in the brief intervals of days without leisure [?] but is inspired by an abiding desire to aid in the better mutual knowledge of East and West." The closing sentence of the preface is as follows : " The time may come, I hope, when this book and my ' Indian Song of Songs ' will preserve the memory of one who loved India and the Indian peoples." About every second man that reads, or that hears read, the preface, understands the expression " one who loved," to point out Gautama. The better interpretation has it that Mr. Arnold himself is the man intended. Now what definite future time Mr. Arnold could have had in mind " when" this preserva- tion of his own memory should take place, I have vainly tried to conceive. One accomplished friend suggests that the author's death is thus, with Attic politeness, alluded to. But this would represent Mr. Arnold as " hoping" for the time of his death, which he is not yet, I am persuaded, Buddhist enough to do. Does he mean a time when everything else that he may have done, or said, or written, shall have been forgotten, and nothing but these two poems of his shall be remembered ? That would leave him " hoping" that only these two poems of his will survive in human memory. Mr. Arnold's luck as a poet gives him excellent reason to be a hopeful man; AS POETIZER AND AS PAGAtflZER. 31 hut assuredly lie does not u hope'' either that he will die, or that everything of his work except these two poems of his will perish. By the way, can the mention of the " Indian Song of Songs' ' have been smuggled in just here, in the spirit of thrifty advertisement, to make admiring readers aware that the author of the " Light of Asia' ' had written another poem worthy to be named with that, as perhaps destined to preserve the poet's memory, after everything else that he had done, or should do, was soundly forgotten — forgotten, in fulfil- ment of his "hope" that the time might come when such should be the case ? " Loved India and the Indian peoples" — "India" first, and after India, the "Indian peoples" ! The journalistic sense of rhythm, one may guess, rather than any real meaning in the writer's mind, determined this duplicate form of expression. So much for Mr. Arnold's preface. Let us con- tinently turn away from it, leaving it still an unex- hausted mine of illustration for the journalistic, as con- trasted with the poetic, spirit. We come to the poem. II. The poem is narrative and exposition, mixed. It is divided into eight books. It is conceived as the produc- tion of a Buddhist votary. To what audience it is con- ceived to be addressed by this votary, I find it not easy to say. It might be a long-drawn rhapsodic soliloquy, but in just such a soliloquy as that which this poem would make, even a Buddhist votary could hardly be insane enough to indulge ; for the poem contains passages evidently designed to describe and explain, as for readers not familiar with things in the East. This consideration embarrasses one too in attempting to regard the poem as addressed to an Eastern audience. Probably Mr. Arnold had no definite conception in the matter. His votary narrates and expounds for whomsoever, anywhere in the world, he may get to read what he writes. The consequence is, that the Orientalisms of the poem are too much explained for the East, and too little explained for the West. In truth, wherever we read Mr. Arnold in his poetry, we discover the lack of whole and consistent conception. This characteristic of his I have already sufficiently illus- trated, in comment on one of his minor poems. He has no imagination. He abounds in conceits and fancies ; but one distinct conception of the imagination, I have yet to meet with in his work. Plot to his poem, there is almost none. The only machinery consists in his " imaginary Buddhist votary," and this person's part in AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 33 the poem is so little necessary that, except for Mr. Arnold's advertisement of it in the preface, the reader wonld scarcely suspect but it was " one who loved India and the Indian peoples" that was saying it all. The imaginary Buddhist votary is a very shadowy disguise. For the rest, the plan of the poem is baldness itself. Mr. Arnold simply goes through the mass of legends concerning Gautama, selects for relation incidents belong- ing to successive stages of that personage's experience, intersperses descriptions full of wearisome detail — which may be true to Oriental life, but which are not lighted by one ray of imaginative power — toward the last gives us, in laborious quatrains followed by a few couplets, an exposi- tion of the dreary plan of salvation proposed by Buddha, and closes all with an absurd invocation of that u Savior," in which the climax seems to be a little outlandish jargon, which, whether English readers guess it Sanscrit, Pali, or Singhalese, will of course be utterly unintelli- gible to them, and, worse, of such an effect in sound as to be rather ridiculous than impressive. There perhaps never was a poem of equal length more destitute of merit as respects invention. The only thing invented, in the way of plan for the poem, is, as I have said, the " imaginary Buddhist votary," and he " writes" — for the invention is so strangely poverty-stricken that there is even no contrivance to have the " votary" located any- where in time, space, circumstance, occasion — he does not speak, he " writes," when, where, why, to whom, I defy anybody to tell ; indeed, except, I believe, for one passage in the eighth book, you have to go out of the poem into the preface in order to learn that it is a " votary," and not Mr. Arnold himself, to whom you are giving attention. With respect, then, to that which is always the chief 34 EDWItf ARKOLD, thing in a poem, namely, the conception, the invention, of it as a whole, the " Light of Asia" is utterly wanting. It is here in fact incredibly cheap. It is a pleasantry, of the most Titanic proportions, to talk of this production as an " epic." At most, and at best, it is a series of idylls of the Buddh. The mere statement of the con- tents of the eight books into which the poem is divided, will suffice to show how destitute of imaginative, con- structive, creative, merit, how baldly mechanical, chronological, is the order of arrangement. Book I. deals with the birth and prodigious infancy of Gautama. Book II. treats of his effeminate youth and his mar- riage. Book III. describes his luxurious life as a young married prince. Book IY. relates his forsaking of his wife and son to become an ascetic. Book Y. details inci- dents of his ascetic life. Book YI. tells how his ascetic practices resulted in his becoming Buddh. Book YIL brings him back a Buddh to his father, his wife, his son, and his kindred. Book YI1I. contains a specimen of Buddha's preaching, or rather an exposition of his doctrine. There is little here that is not simple, servile following of the course of the legends. What Mr. Arnold has done is to cull a number of things out of the enormous mass of stories, mythical and other, concerning Gautama Buddha, and versify them for English-reading people. Has he done this well, as a matter of literary perform- ance ? Has he done it well, as a matter of just biographical and doctrinal representation ? These two questions, in their order, may divide for us the present discussion. I state them a second time in different words. Is the " Light of Asia" good poetry ? Is the " Light of Asia" good history ? These two questions are quite distinct. The " Light AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 35 of Asia" might be admirable as literature, while untrust- worthy as representation of fact. On the other hand, the " Light of Asia" might fail as literature, and be nevertheless valuable as a source of information. We will keep these two questions as separate from each other as possible in our investigation. Let us begin by granting to Mr. Arnold unlimited freedom as to matters of fact, that is, as to matters of principal fact. We will not for the present question the truth of his main narrative. "We will suppose it true. "We will make to him the same vast concession that we make to Homer, to Virgil, to Milton, concerning mere tale, plot, machinery. Given these things all entirely as Mr. Arnold would have them, has he used them well, has he made good poetry with them ? So far as, in our purely literary criticism, we may happen to deal with what purports to be expository of Buddhist teach- ing, we will still maintain the same attitude. We will stick at nothing. Buddhism shall be what Mr. Arnold says it is, and it shall merit all the enthusiasm he may think fit to bestow upon it. We will limit ourselves closely to asking, Has he presented this admirable thing admirably ? All this complaisance, on our part, is to be exercised strictly while we are considering the work as poetry. Afterward, we will challenge Mr. Arnold as freely as we please respecting his fidelity to the truth of history and of doctrinal exposition. But not now. Now we provisionally grant everything — save and ex- cept literary excellence. Respecting the matter of lit- erary excellence, we make our inquisition. We have already found reason to deny to this poem the chief praise that can be due to any poem — the praise of being one consistent, harmonious, imaginative whole. We need only repeat that denial here. The " Light of 36 EDWIN" ARNOLD, Asia," if it be pronounced good poetry at all, must be pronounced good poetry solely on the ground of fine exe- cution in detail. First, let us examine the versification. Versification is perhaps as completely external a characteristic as any- thing pertaining to a poem. That characteristic indeed is far from being completely external. The metre, the rhythm, the melody, the harmony, are as much of the poetry, as, according to the French phrase, the style is of the man. Still, technically and negatively considered, the versification of the " Light of Asia" might be good, and the poetry of the poem be poor. Or, on the other hand, the versification might be full of technical faults, and the poetry nevertheless be fine. What is the fact with reference to Mr. Arnold's book ? The fact, in one word, is, that the versification of the " Light of Asia" is not good. There are parts of the poem, especially the fifth, sixth, and seventh books, in which the versification is fairly correct, smooth, and fluent. It even becomes not seldom decidedly grateful to the ear. But generally it is mere metre, without any such variety in movement and pause as is needful to make metre more than metre — rhythm also, and harmony. This, where the metre is negatively good ; but the metre itself is often not simply not good in even a negative sense, but bad ; and not sim- ply bad, but flagrantly bad. I give examples — not in- deed of the prevalent mechanical character of the versi- fication — I should need to quote page after page for that — but of the positive faults. In citing instances, we may as well observe in general the order of the poem itself. It is hardly worth while to classify the faults. - And know | ing the | time come— for all things knew — " "Ing-the" — we are obliged thus to scan the line — is AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 37 an iambus that it would be impossible for a nice ear to admit into verse. " The portents troubled, till his dream-reader*." The enforced accent on the final syllable in " dream- readers" illustrates a favorite expedient of Mr. Arnold's for increasing the facility of versification. The effect is very whimsical on the sense trained to feel the delicacies of metre and rhythm. Let us so far classify here as to cluster a few more specimens of Mr. Arnold's freedom with unaccented syllables occurring at the close of his lines. The reader will of course observe that what I thus exemplify from Mr. Arnold, is not the well- authorized usage of adding here and there a hyper- metrical syllable without accent, after the verse is metri- cally complete. In Mr. Arnold the unaccented syllable is not hypermetrical. It belongs to the regular scansion of the verse. And its metrical position compels you to give it the accent. As if to make the effect as bad as possible, Mr. Arnold, oftener than otherwise, it will be noted, contrives to have his closing light syllable pre- ceded by a full weighted spondee : " Gaped on the sword-play ers and posturers." "The jugglers, charmers, swingers, rope-walkers." M Tokens of cave-men and the sea peoples." u Lord Buddha kept to all his schoolmasters." " Amid the blossoms of the rose-appZe." "But they who watched the prince at prize-gm;i0." " And always breathed sweet airs more joy-giving." " In tress of singing-girl or nautch-dan cer." " Gathered to watch some chattering snake-tamer." " By day and night here dwelt the World-honored." " A band of tinselled girls, the nautch-dancers.* ' 38 EDWIN" ARNOLD, " Now by that river dwelt a landholder.' ' " Of beauty and the rosy breast-blossoms." Mr. Arnold likes this trick of his own so well that he uses it sometimes elsewhere than at the close of lines. For instance, " He said, and what my dream-readers foretold." " The fish-tiger of that which it had seized." So much may suffice for display of one peculiarity in Mr. Arnold's art of verse. I have been tediously full in citation that readers may recognize the fault exemplified to be frequent and not rare. Now let us gather in heap other of his metrical peculiarities, to be assorted and arranged and labelled at their own pleasure by leisurely readers and admirers of this poet. I cite here, let it be remembered, simply in the way of illustrating Mr. Arnold's mastery of the versifying art. "Turkises, * evening-sky' tint, woven webs." (A " web" is defined in the dictionaries, " something woven." Mr. Arnold makes assurance doubly sure. These " woven articles" are " woven," he tells us.) "What hearer of the foregoing line would suspect that it was intended to be metrical ? "And life is woe, therefore in sev-en days." Consider that " seven" is a word of one syllable, the second e in it being silent. " Evening" too has its e after v silent, forming thus a word of two syllables. Now read, and admire the ear for metre which could let Mr. Arnold make the following line : "Which fell : for on the seventh e-ven-ing." AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 39 And this : " And see the peoples of the e-ven-ing." And these : " Lo ! all these sev-en fears are sev-en joys." " Therefore upon the sev-enth day, there went." " Wail desolate, for o-ven that must go." And these following, with their spasmodic interruptions of (^-sounds, which it would need a professional stutterer to give the full delicious effect of : " And in the wood they undivided died." " By blood ; nor gladden gods being good with blood." " Broad-spread to glide upon the free blue road." The last is a line intended to represent the " smooth - sliding' ' flight of the swan. The recurrence of ^-sounds in it, the over-abundance of consonants, the length of the syllables, but especially the unlucky combination, in the three closing words, of letters requiring laborious re- adjustment of vocal organs to pronounce them in succes- sion, would make this line a bad one for any purpose, un- less it were for the purpose of representing some baftied and obstructed movement. But for the purpose of rep- resenting the easy sailing of the swan in migration " through the azure deep of air," nothing could well be worse. Contrast Mr. Lowell's line, descriptive of a somewhat similar thing : To swim on sunshine masterless as wind. " Kich inlayingrs of lotus and of bird." " Otherwise housed than kings, otherwise fed." " Wove for me ; hot the strife waxed in that wood." 40 EDWIN" ARNOLD, " Nay, it may be some of the Gods are good." " And cheat his highness into happiness." " Thus filed they, one bright maid after another." " In the lovely court — her dark glance dim, her feet." " Where love was gaoler and deligh/s Us bars.'* .As I said, it would be quite out of the question to represent by instances the prevailingly mechanical char- acter that belongs to the versification throughout. There are plenty of pleasant words — or rather a limited number of pleasant words are repeated often enough — there are some musical combinations, there are a few lines that have a rhythm and movement of their own, there are long passages in which there is certainly a sweet flow of sound ; but of rich, varied, harmonious versification, worthy to be compared with Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Tennyson, even with Bryant, there is not an example. It will perhaps be fair, at this point of strong denial to Mr. Arnold, to give a passage in exemplification of his quality at its best. I select the passage descriptive of the circumstances under which Buddha delivered his teach- ing before the king (his own father) and the circle of his kindred. It was a signal occasion, and Mr. Arnold, feeling that he has now reached the point of culmination in his poem, exerts his powers to the utmost — with result as follows (the imaginary Buddhist votary speaks, or rather writes) : " I cannot tell A small part of the splendid lore which broke From Buddha's lips : I am a late-come scribe Who love the Master and his love of men, And tell this legend, knowing he was wise, But have not wit to speak beyond the books ; AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 41 And time hath blurred their script and ancient sense, Which once was new and mighty, moving all. A little of that large discourse I know Which Buddha spake on the soft Indian eve. Also I know it writ that they who heard Were more — lakhs more — crores more— than could be seen, For all the Devas and the Dead thronged there, Till heaven was emptied to the seventh zona And uttermost dark hells opened their bars ; Also the daylight lingered past its time In rose-leaf radiance on the watching peaks, So that it seemed Night listened in the glens And Noon upon the mountains ; yea ! they write, The evening stood between them like some maid Celestial, love- struck, rapt ; the smooth-rolled clouds Her braided hair ; the studded stars the pearls And diamonds of her coronal ; the moon Her forehead jewel, and the deepening dark Her woven garments. 'Twas her close-held breath Which came in scented sighs across the lawns While our Lord taught, and, while he taught, who heard — Though he were stranger in the land, or slave, High caste or low, come of tho Aryan blood, Or Mlech or jungle-dweller — seemed to hear What tongue his fellows talked. Nay, outside those Who crowded by the river, great and small, The birds and beasts and creeping things — 'tis writ — Had sense of Buddha's vast embracing love And took the promise of his piteous speech ; So that their lives— prisoned in shape of ape, Tiger, or deer, shagged bear, jackal, or wolf, Foul-feeding kite, pearled dove, or peacock gemmed, Squat toad, or speckled serpent, lizard, bat ; Yea, or of fish fanning the river- waves — Touched meekly at the skirts of brotherhood With man who hath less innocence than these ; And in mute gladness knew their bondage broke Whilst Buddha spake these things before the king. " I am now in the midst of a special examination of Mr. Arnold's versifying art. It would therefore violate the order of our discussion to enter here at large upon any 42 EDWIN" ARNOLD, general criticism of this passage considered as poetry. Considered as verse merely, the passage, with certain obvious exceptions, deserves to be praised for its pleasant and musical • flow. It is a movement decidedly grateful to the ear. We need to make exceptions for the line, " Were more— lakhs more — crores more — than could be seen," in which the strange words have an outlandish effect, and for the line, " Till heaven was emptied to the sev-enth zone," in which " seventh " is, according to Mr. Arnold's habit, made to do duty as a dissyllable ; but these apart, there is not very much to mar the melody of the verse. It is the ear, however, not the taste, or the judgment, that is pleased. And since this is avowedly a critical essay, and since it will be inconvenient to return here- after upon the present extract, I may guard myself against being suspected of gratuitously grudging whole- hearted praise to my author, by pointing out in part, as I pass, why I do not think the foregoing passage to be genuine poetry. To say nothing of the poor conceit about the evening's likeness to a " love-struck" maiden, with her various personal adornment — done, the whole of it, in the taste of a French hairdresser — there lacks, as usual with Mr. Arnold, the one integral conception that must always preside in order to secure unity, con- sistency, truth, in a poetical, or indeed in a merely rhetorical, representation. It was evening, daylight lingered, it was cloudy, it was starry, the moon shone, and the " dark" was " deepening." Now, as long as " daylight lingered," the darkness could not " deepen" ; and then, after daylight withdrew, as long as the moon AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 43 shone, the darkness could not " deepen." The darkness was necessary to carry out the details of the similitude to be enforced between the evening and a maiden ; imagi- nation slept, while fancy waked, in the writer, and hence there should be " deepening dark" at the same time that there was the double, but contradictory, brilliancy of day- light and moonlight. (By the way, is the " love-struck" maiden to be imagined as having been all the time in gradual process of getting her " woven garments" on? The " deepening dark" apparently was all the dress she wore, and this, during the interval of her greatest need — that is, while " daylight lingered " — must have been dis- tressingly inadequate.) The simple truth is, the picture is one that no mind can take in as a whole — for the reason that it does not constitute a whole. It is an assemblago of particulars that do not naturally go together. In a word, it is not a picture — an impossible picture — that Mr. Arnold here presents us, so much as something else not a picture at all, but a mass of bright color in blotches. The analogy between evening and a maiden is too deli- cate and elusive to be coarsely handled. Run it out into allegory, and you make it rather curious than suggestive, less pleasing than ridiculous. Contrast Wordsworth's one sufficing stroke of such comparison : It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ; The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration. That is poetry — the true article. For the difference between a literary decorator's massing of unharmonized details, and a real poet's picture of the imagination, contrast again Milton's description following : Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad ; 44 EDWIN ARNOLD, Silence accompany'd ; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale ; She all night long her amorous descant sung ; Silence was pleas'd : now glow'd the firmament With living sapphires ; Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw. The true is often by itself alone a sufficient touch- stone for the false. Milton of course described evening in progress, whereas Mr. Arnold is describing, or should be, evening in suspense. But between the two descrip- tions there remains nevertheless the radical difference of false and true. From this attention to Mr. Arnold's poetry as poetry (which has been in the nature of a digression), let us return to consider somewhat further the quality of his poetry as verse. The trick of versifying in Mr. Arnold, which imposes upon readers, not on their critical guard, to make them think that he does good work, is a mere trick, a mannerism, caught from many different sources, but mainly perhaps from Tennyson, as Tennyson writes in his (( Idylls of the King. " Take this line, for instance — who does not perceive at once how exactly it is fashioned, though not well fashioned, in rhythm, upon the model of Tennyson ? " Spread, and the world's heart throbbed, and a wind blew." Or this : " Splendid, six-rayed, in color rosy-pearl." Or this, with its manneristic repetition of " rule" : 11 Which gave him earth to rule, if he would rule." AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZKR. 45 Compare Tennyson's : The temples, and the people, and the shore, with Mr. Arnold's : 44 The temples, and the gardens, and the groves." It may justly be said that there are few, very few, lines, or even phrases, of rhythm, in Mr. Arnold's versification, that are at the same time good and original. Here, for example, is part of a line from the song sung to Gau- tama by the Devas, in "the voices of the wandering wind" — this song, by the way, is one of the very best passages in the whole poem ; it hardly misses being really good — " But life's way is the wind's way. " Longfellow has : A boy's will is the wind's will. The ear observant of rhythmical effects perceives that, quite apart from the similarity of thought in these two phrases, there is an almost absolute identity of move- ment in versification. The explanation of such coinci- dences probably is, that Mr. Arnold's musical sense instinctively notices and retains a peculiar passage of rhythm, but that this happens with him without active consciousness on his part. The instinct and the trained skill to create new effects are wanting to him. He is an amateur, nothing higher, in the art of verse. Let me run the risk of confuting myself before my readers, by giving here the song above alluded to. Mr. Arnold de- serves his chance, and he shall have it. Is not this that follows almost fine ? 46 EDWIN" ARNOLD. " We are the voices of the wandering wind, Which moan for rest and rest can never find; Lo ! as the wind is so is mortal life, A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife. " Wherefore and whence we are ye cannot know, Nor where life springs nor whither life doth go ; We are as ye are, ghosts from the inane, What pleasure have we of our changeful pain ? " What pleasure hast thou of thy changeless bliss ? Nay, if love lasted, there were joy in this ; But life's* way is the wind's way, all these things Are but brief voices breathed on shifting strings. "O Maya's son ! because we roam the earth Moan we upon these strings ; we make no mirth, So many woes we see in many lands, So many streaming eyes and wringing hands. " Yet mock we while we wail, for, could they know, This life they cling to is but empty show ; 'Twere all as well to bid a cloud to stand, Or hold a running river with the hand. " But thou that art to save, thine hour is nigh ! The sad world waiteth in its misery, The blind world stumbleth on its round of pain ; Bise, Maya's child ! wake ! slumber not again ! " We are the voices of the wandering wind : Wander thou too, O Prince, thy rest to find ; Leave love for love of lovers, for woe's sake Quit state for sorrow and deliverance make. " So sigh we, passing o'er the silver strings, To thee who know' st not yet of earthly things ; So say we ; mocking, as we pass away, These lovely shadows wherewith thou dost play." III. We now dismiss the matter of metrical form as ex- emplified in Mr. Arnold's work, to take up matters of more interior concern. Let us go inward, by gradual approaches, to the heart of the work. After considering the execution of a design in poetry as far as relates to mere correctness and elegance of metre and rhythm, we may naturally next inquire, How well has the poet done in point of diction and syntax ? Has he a rich and choice vocabulary, does he use words well, and are his constructions good ? I proceed to satisfy curiosity in this regard. It is a humble quest — an Aristarchian criticism, some may say ; but words and sentences are necessary to the expression of thought, and let us be patient. " Aho !" is a specimen of interjection from Mr. Arnold's mint. It comes in very finely at the end of a line. The passage is a pathetic one, and " Aho !" takes the burden and ictus of the pathos : " Whose happy music lulled me, but— aho ! — " Isn't it touching ? It recalls the famous, Oh, Sophonisba, Sophonisba, oh, of James Thomson, with its fatal echo from the gallery, Oh, Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, oh, but of course it has the merit, which that lacked, of 48 EDWIN" ARNOLD, something original in diction. " Dumbed" is a verb which Mr. Arnold thinks it w r ell to revive. " A- dead" is another happy coinage of our poet : " Lo ! as ye lie asleep so must ye lie A-dead." " A-swoon," " a-roast," are additional examples of Mr. Arnold's verbal invention, like in taste. The per- haps unconscious art with which, by antithesis or by metrical accentuation, the poet calls our attention to his prettier strokes, should not go unobserved. From sleep to death, and then from death to life, and back again, are such weaver's-shuttle movements with Mr. Arnold, that it is natural here to quote " ' Oh ye,' it said, The dead that are to live, the live who die." a The Uve" for "the living"! " A-down," as a matter of course. " "Wood-glooms" forms a " perfectly lovely" compound that would please the miss just entered upon her teens. " Blood-gouts" for " drops of blood " may not strike the young person so pleasantly. " Arithmic" for " arithmetic" is in Mr. Arnold's most Miltonic vein of diction. " II pstood," not for " stood up," in the sense of rising to the feet, but to mean "remained standing," occurs. Two trees " Siddartha's blade shred at one flashing stroke, Keen, but so smooth that the straight trunks upslood." " Keen, but so smooth" — as if there were opposition between the keenness and the smoothness — as if a blade did not, quite to the contrary, cut smooth, because of its being keen. But in Mr. Arnold's peculiar style, it is neither the blade that is "keen," nor the gash that AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZEE. 49 is " smooth." It is instead the " stroke" that is " keen, hut smooth.' ' It is, as the reader will have seen, hard work to keep one's shillelah to its true present mark, the show of head is everywhere so inviting in Mr. Arnold. We were attending to the matter of diction in our poet. Is the following a point of diction, or what is it ? Mr. Arnold makes his prince say : M Nay, if I had yon callow vulture's plumes — The carrion heir of wider realms than mine — How would I stretch for topmost Himalay, Light where the rose-gleam lingers on those snows And strain my gaze with searching what is round /" " Plumes" are feathers, and wings with feathers are instruments of flight. Feathers, however, are not instru- ments of flight — not even if you call them " plumes." But what is a "callow vulture"? It is a vulture not yet furnished with feathers — an unfledged, featherless, naked bird. We find, then, Mr. Arnold's Buddha sigh- ing for a particular style of " plumes" to fly with, they must be the plumes of a " callow vulture" — that is, the plumes of a vulture without plumes. Prince Buddha was vaporing to his wife at the time. If his wife had had half the wit of a common woman in these parts of the world, she would have said to her husband, " Plumes of a callow vulture, forsooth ! You needn't wait for them. You have got them already. That is just the kind of plumes you have on this moment ! Now 1 stretch ' away with them, as fast and as far as you please — good riddance and happy voyage to you, and don't trouble yourself to come back here again, I beg of you, till at least you get your pin-feathers out !" " Jewelled" is a fine adjective that Mr. Arnold likes. 50 EDWItf ARNOLD, He uses it no less than six times in his fourth book alone. The tawdry taste indicated by its being nsed at all, (Milton never uses it, Shakespeare never, Tennyson, save in that scornful line of the "Maud," " jewell'd mass of millinery," I believe never,) and the poverty, embarrassing the ambition, of style, indicated by its being used so frequently, suggests an instructive com- parison and contrast. I consult a copious verbal index to Milton's poetry. There, as I have indicated, 1 do not find the word " jewelled' ' occurring — that, nor any other word of like descriptive tone. The more general words of somewhat similar import (which we might of course look to see occur oftener) appear in Milton as follows : "Splendid," once in the whole of " Paradise Lost "; "stately," four times; "gorgeous," four times; " magnificent," three times. Such is the parsimony of real opulence. But poverty cannot afford to be parsi- monious. It must go " jewelled," lest it be counted poor. The bedizenment of adjectives, such as " sweet," " soft," " tender," "bright," "glad," "beauteous," "radiant," "rich," "stately," incessantly recurring, must strike every observant reader of the " Light of Asia.' ' A little arithmetic here will be useful. There is as yet no concordance to Mr. Arnold's poetry, and 1 have had to go laboriously about the business of getting my census. However, I was lucky enough to enlist some ready helpers w T ith young eyes, and have thus had ap- proximate count taken of the number of times that cer- tain words occur in the " Light of Asia." The results furnished me I myself tested for their correctness, by requiring that the local reference should invariably ac- company each time of a word's occurring reckoned in the list. I may not have got — probably I have not — all the places where the specified words do occur ; but cer- AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 51 tainly I have none where they do not occur. The com- parison with Milton and with Tennyson, as these poets are given in the verbal indexes to their works, is more than curious, and more than interesting —it is instruc- tive. The " Light of Asia" contains about forty-five hundred lines, against about ten thousand five hundred in the " Paradise Lost." In the " Light of Asia," the word " sweet,' ' inflected or compounded, occurs sixty- nine times — or once in every sixty-five lines ; in the " Paradise Lost" sixty-six times — or once in every one hundred and fifty-nine lines. Mr. Arnold, therefore, employs that word about two and a half times as often as Milton. The word " tender," with suffix, or in- flected, or compounded, appears twenty- five times in the " Light of Asia," against six times in the " Paradise Lost" — Mr. Arnold thus using that word nearly ten times as often as Milton. The word " soft," variously modi- fied, the " Light of Asia" contains forty-one times ; the " Paradise Lost" thirty- three times — that word being thus worked about three times as hard by Mr. Arnold as by Milton. Similar, perhaps even more striking, results would be exhibited by the comparison of Mr. Arnold with Tennyson. Tennyson, before the concordance was published of his poetry, had produced a volume of verse many times greater than that contained in the " Light of Asia." Consulting that concordance, 1 find that the common adjective " bright" is reported as occurring in the whole body of his poetry, the " Princess," the " In Memoriam," the " Idylls," and all the lesser pieces, twenty-eight times against twenty-four times in the " Light of Asia" alone ; "soft," twice in all Tennyson against twenty-four times in the " Light of Asia;" \ ' tender, ' ' seven times in Tennyson against thirteen times in the " Light of Asia," and so forth. 52 EDWIN ARNOLD, The explanation of these contrasts is very simple. Mr. Arnold deals in stock conceptions, and so stock words, especially stock adjectives, answer his purposes. Milton and Tennyson, on the other hand, have indi- vidual conceptions, conceptions differentiated according to the new occasions respectively arising, and these well-defined conceptions need, not stock words, but descriptive words, fitted to them with curious felicity, for their expression. For this reason, any good reader of Milton or of Tennyson will be able often, on challenge, to recall the line, or the connection, in which, for in- stance, some given, perhaps quite common, adjective occurs. The worn and common word becomes fresh — as if new-made — in a great master's use. Mr. Arnold, on the contrary, only rubs the trite word more trite in using it. He does not handle it carefully, docs not set it in a new light. It is the same old word — so much older now, issuing from his hands — become too smoothly familiar to carry any distinctive sense. There was no distinctive sense given it to carry. It had no feeling of individual responsibility impressed upon it from the user for a mes- sage that it was to deliver. It is naturally lifeless there- fore, and therefore naturally it delivers no message. Such is nearly everywhere the spiritless aspect and be- havior of Mr. Arnold's words. He uses words much as those young ladies do, with whom all things indiffer- ently are, on the one hand, " lovely," " splendid," and so forth, or, on the other hand, " perfectly horrid.' ' Let us make further study of his diction. He is describing an encounter of Buddha in the street with " an old, old man." " His dim orbs blear with rheum, ' ' is one of the descriptive phrases used. ' ' Blear' ' itself, without accompanying clause, means, as the dictionaries show, "dim with rheum." To say, then, AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 53 " his dim orbs blear," is to say " his dim orbs dim with rheum." Now add, as Mr. Arnold does, " with rheum" to that, and you have it stated that it was " with rheum that his dim orbs were dim with rheum," — a statement which, however overloaded, would seem exceedingly probable. In the luxurious picture of Gautama's pleasure-house with its multitude of queens asleep, this occurs : "... their glossy hair ****** In black waves down the shapely nape and neck/' " Nape" is defined, in the dictionaries, to be the " back of the neck." It was therefore down the u back of the neck and — neck," that the hair flowed. It would be quite endless to exhibit the solecisms and other faults in diction that swarm upon this poem. Let us stop abruptly here, and turn to something else. "We will allow ourselves to abandon strict analysis and be for a time as miscellaneous as we please. There is in the first book of the poem a curious story, for aught that I have discovered original with our poet, about Gautama's boyhood, designed, apparently, to illus- trate the " sweetness and light" of his character. The princely lad seeing once a wounded swan fall fluttering on the ground, took it tenderly on his " lap," calmed it, soothed it, plucked out the arrow still infixed, and healed the hurt. The little fellow — that is, the little prince — then toyed with the " arrow's barb," — the "arrow's point" would antecedently have seemed more probable — and the bright idea occurred to him that he would see how the sharp steel that had hurt the swan so would feel in his own flesh. He seems to have selected his wrist as an appropriate part to make his experiment upon, and 54 EDWIN AKNOLD, really he had the extreme quickness of wit to " wince" when he felt the steel-point " sting." This experience is represented by Mr. Arnold as the first occasion of Gautama's knowing pain, the cause, or the sensation. He was, it appears then, as susceptible to pain as children in general. But he had never, for example, bumped his head, or got pricked with a pin ! Now take the repre- sentation contained in this little figment of Mr. Arnold's fancy, and try construing it to your common-sense. Gautama sees the swan suffer, he knows what makes it suffer, and he relieves it — yet, " curiously, " "... all so little knew the boy of pain," he thrusts the steel barb just drawn from the wing of the swan into his own wrist, and " winces" to feel it " sting" ! Certainly this is an exhibition of precocity on the part of young Gautama, every way worthy to be — invented by Mr. Arnold. It yields such a pretty impres- sion of Gautama's promise as a juvenile savior ! " And Devadatta, cousin of the prince, Pointed his bow, and loosed a wilful shaft Which found the wide wing of the foremost swan Broad-spread to glide upon the free blue road, So that it fell—" The question here is, was it the " bow," or the " shaft," or the " wing, " or the " swan," or the "road," that "fell"? Again : "... among the palms The tinkle of the rippling water rang, •And where it ran the glad earth 'broidered it With balsams and the spears of lemon-grass." The " tinkle" " rang" — a thing so out of the common AS POETIZER AtfD AS PAGANIZER. 55 for " tinkle," that it deserved noting — and where it " ran" (Mr. Arnold's poetic mood teems so with music that rhymes and jingles roll out from him of their own accord), " the glad earth 'broidered it with balsams and the spears of lemon-grass." Well, it has never happen- ed to me to see tinkle running, and I have never seen tinkle " 'broidered," much less tinkle 'broidered while running, ('broidery under such circumstances ought to bo a rather nice trick,) but I do not know why, if running tinkle were to be 'broidered at all, it might not as well be 'broidered with balsams and the spears of lemon- grass as with anything. The effect of such " 'broidery" might, I should say, be quite unique. In the same passage, elaborately descriptive of rural life, from which the foregoing citation is taken, we find a very ambitious account of a kind of ploughing-match : '* All up and down the rich red loam, the steers Strained their strong shoulders in the creaking yoke Dragging the ploughs ; the fat soil rose and rolled In smooth dark waves back from the plough ; who drove Planted both feet upon the leaping share To make the furrow deep." Now, this has no doubt made the impression upon many hasty readers of being good description. And there are here, it need not be denied, some separate graphic strokes that answer their descriptive purpose very well. But consider the scene as a vision of the imagination. It is the office of the imagination to con- ceive a whole, great or small, as a whole, and then so to order the details which fill it out that they shall all be mutually consistent. Without such exercise of the imagination, on a writer's part, there can be no really good description. The soil ploughed is described as " rich red loam." " Loam" is an earthy mould yielding 56 EDWIN" ARNOLD, easily and evenly to the ploughshare. With this con- ception agrees the language, " the fat soil rose and rolled in smooth dark waves back from the plough" — by the way, an excellent stroke of description — but with this conception is utterly and irreconcilably at war the word " leaping," in what follows : " Who drove planted both feet upon the leaping share." The ploughshare would move steadily and equably through such a soil as that described. It would not " leap." There would be nothing to make it " leap." However swiftly it might move, it would, as to direction up and down, move uni- formly. What makes a ploughshare " leap" in moving, is some obstruction, like a root or a stone, encountered in its course. Then, however, it would require a degree of swiftness in the motion to make "leaping," used to describe it, other than an extravagant word. Now, any- body that has ever witnessed ploughing done with oxen, knows that it is far from being a matter of delirious speed. Oxen seldom tear along at a madcap rate drag- ging a plough. I cannot answer for the style of plough- ing fashionable in India at the somewhat indeterminate date of Mr. Arnold's narrative. But I should be sur- prised to learn that the ploughman then rode upon his plough, and still more to learn that, if he did so, he planted both his feet upon the " leaping share" The beam of the plough would be, as I should guess, decided- ly a more natural rest for the feet of the hilarious rider and driver. The share is the blade that divides the soil. An unusual attachment, especially adapted for such a purpose, would be required to render the share of a plough at all eligible as a support to the feet of a man borne " darkly, fearfully afar," after a pair of careering oxen, while these made the gleaming knife " leap" along the smoking furrow. AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 57 The simple fact seems to be that Mr. Arnold had it in his heart to write a fine description. lie thought he would have the soil " a rich red loam ;" that would sound well, and it would produce the general effect of a pleasing fertility. " Steers," " strained," " strong," would furnish alliteration. Spirit would be imparted to an action otherwise tame, if the ploughshare, buried deep in the yielding soil, should ' ' leap. " " Leap' ' there- fore it should — for no cause whatever, but solely out of its own jocund and salient mood. Such is Mr. Arnold's dominant idea of fine description ; for the present pas- sage is but an exemplification of his prevalent manner in describing. Now as to the truth in local color belonging to this description of ploughing in India. I quote from Ward's " India and the Hindoos," p. 196 : " The plough used by the farmer consists of two rude sticks, or one if sufficiently crooked, with an iron spike at the end, as a share, which the ploughman guides with one hand, while he uses the other in directing the movements of the cattle ; thus making a rut or scratch in the field similar to the movement just beneath the soil of a strong finger. Entering a village at an early hour of the day, you will see the farmer going to his toil, bearing upon his shoulder yoke and plough, which he steadies with one hand, while with the other he holds the rope-reins fastened to his tiny bullocks." Readers will probably feel that Mr. Arnold's descrip- tion was somewhat boldly idealized from the actual facts in the case. A discomposing suspicion is unavoidably engendered respecting the trustworthiness of a reporter that regards himself as warranted in dealing thus freely 58 EDWIN ARNOLD, with the truth of tilings. It will be curious to compare Mr. Arnold's own probable authority, Mr. R. Spence Hardy. From M,r. Hardy's " Manual of Budhism " (p. 153), an authoritative translation of the Singhalese version of the Buddhist legends, I take the following (there is a kind of bucolic festival in progress, attended and participated in by the king, Gautama's father) : " About a thousand ploughs start at once ; of these, "one hundred and eight are made of silver, and the " horns of the bullocks that draw them are tipped " with silver, and adorned with white flowers ; but the " plough held by the king is of gold, and the horns "of the bullocks attached are also tipped with gold. " The king takes the handle of the plough in his left " hand, and a golden goad in his right ; and the nobles " do the same with their ploughs and goads of silver. The " king makes one furrow, passing from east to west ; " the nobles make three ; and the rest of the plough- " men then contend with each other who shall perform " their work in the best manner." No indication here at least of the king's riding with both royal feet planted on the rearing and plunging share. Mr. Arnold must, one judges, have exercised his right as poet and transferred to ploughing the privi- lege enjoyed in these latter days by the happy charioteers of the J ohnston Harvester. (Readers are asked kindly to note that the last preced- ing extract is printed with quotation-marks at the begin- ning of every several line. This expedient of typography is adopted uniformly, throughout the present volume, to distinguish passages taken from the translated text of AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 59 Buddhist literature. Other extracts are quoted simply at the beginning and the end, according to printers' ordinary usage.) " Sitting with knees crossed, as Lord Buddha sits," is one description by Mr. Arnold of Buddha's traditional attitude ; " Under a jambu-tree, with ankles crossed," is another. The representations with which we are all familiar spread the consecrated knees as far apart as pos- sible. It was the exigency of the verse, I suspect, that " crossed " them in the " Light of Asia." Let anybody try the experiment of " sitting [on the ground] with knees crossed, as," according to Mr. Arnold, " Lord Buddha sits," and he will find himself necessarily strik- ing an attitude even less picturesque perhaps than the one conventionally attributed to Buddha. The account of Gautama's meeting with that " old, old man" deserves more admiration than we have yet bestowed upon it. The poor old gentleman was indeed in a sad case : " One skinny hand Clutched a worn staff to prop his quavering limbs And one was pressed upon the ridge of ribs." Both his hands thus are closely employed, but that, with Mr. Arnold, by no means prevents him from " stretch- ing," at the same time, his " palm" for alms. For, in the same passage, his cough is said to choke him, " but still he stretched his palm." One hand holding his crutch to stay his limbs, one hand pressed against his " ridge of ribs,' ' and " still " his " palm' ' " stretched " ! Pitiable person, he had three hands to suffer from the palsy with ! His third hand he "stretched" — lie 60 EDWIN ARNOLD, " stretched,' ' observe, not " stretched forth." Not "hand" either, but " palm" of the hand. This, we may conjecture, was to make the "palm" as large as possible for receiving alms. The "stretching" opera- tion, by the way, would, for aught I can see, require, to accomplish it, at least one hand, if not two, additional to the three-handed equipment already assigned to the party. Careful consideration, accordingly, gives this afflicted old gentleman, at the smallest reckoning, four hands. These, in his intervals of comparative ease, he could, animated by his palsy, employ in pairs shaking hands with himself with assiduous cordiality. Judicious permutation would secure considerable variety in this solitary social exercise. The manifestly legendary char- acter of the sufferer permits us to indulge such a consola- tory reflection. The suggestion even occurs, to be in- stantly put aside with reprobation, that this may have been a case of unworthy street mendicancy : the sly old rogue was forehanded, and did not need the alms im- plored. This relief, however, to our sympathy depends upon a pun — and a provincialism — and is to be pro- nounced illegitimate. The occasion was a festival display of virgin beauty devised by Gautama's father to entangle his son in the meshes of love : " So flocked Kapilavastu's maidens to the gate, Each with her dark hair newly smoothed and bound, Eyelashes lustred with the soorma-stick, Fresh-bathed and scented. " ]t is interesting to know from Mr. Arnold that these Indian damsels, about to present themselves in competi- tion for a prize of beauty, did not neglect their morning toilet. They " newly smoothed and bound their dark AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 61 hair," a thing, considering the circumstances, certainly very proper for them to do. " Lustred" is a coinage of Mr. Arnold's. But now what was it that was " fresh- bathed and scented"? Was it the " soorma-stick, ' ' the " eyelashes, " the "hair," the " gate," or the u maidens" ? If the " maidens, " one can but admire again the prudence of these young ladies in taking their bath that morning, as, one trusts, was their usual daily prac- tice. " Scenting" themselves was a bit of personal pains, on their part, occasional perhaps rather than habitual, and pardonable rather than commendable. The picture of Yasodhara, the destined wife of Gau- tama, coming up to the prince to claim her gift, is in- conceivably brazen, animal, and disgusting : " Eyes like a hind's in love-time, face so fair Words cannot paint its spell ; and she alone Gazed full— folding her palms across her breasts— On the boy's gaze." She " gazed," it seems, not on Gautama, not on Gau- tama's features, but on Gautama's " gaze." Later the young prince competes in athletic contests to win his bride. He subdues a horse untamable by others — u no rider yet had crossed him," is Mr. Arnold's way of expressing it. " Crossing" a horse — ? One rival of Gautama's " held his seat awhile" on the back of this beast, " Lashed the black flank and sfiook the bit, and held The proud jaws fast with grasp of master hand." Whether these several performances are to be conceived as consecutive to one another in the order named, or simultaneous, I will not venture to decide. If as con- secutive, then the rider, first, " held his seat awhile," 62 EDWLNT ARNOLD. perhaps grasping the mane and tail in his desperate pur- pose, (tltere was no saddle to cling to,) secondly, ventur- ing to let go the one or the other, " lashed the black flank," next, " shook the bit," and, finally, seized the animal's jaws with his hands, (this must have employed both hands,) thus completing a very striking series of equestrian manoeuvres. But then the manoeuvres would have been still more remarkable executed simultane- ously — which very likely they were, for, as we have already seen, Mr. Arnold's people are provided with hands to any number desirable. The details present some few minor difficulties to the imagination. " He shook the bit." Riders do, I believe, sometimes shake the bridle-reins, but shaking the hit ! How he managed to shake a bit already in the horse's mouth, 1 am pleased to say that 1 think I can explain. The " grasping" of the horse's jaws "with master-hand" must, I judge, have been for the purpose of getting at the " bit" so as to " shake" it in the animal's mouth. Why, however, this singular cavalier should have wished to " shake the bit," remains a deep mystery. It was probably mere and pure demonstration, horsemanship frisking out into wanton pranks, like the gargoyles of gamesome Gothic architecture. Gautama at last went through Mr. Rarey's manual of practice, and fairly conquered the animal. Gautama, at a later point in Mr. Arnold's narrative, tells how, in a former state of existence, when he and Yasodhara were both tigers, they two became mates. He fought for Yasodhara' s — hand, shall we say ? no, paw, fought for her paw. She, lovely creature, came, so Gautama relates, " Snarling past this and that torn forest-lord Which I had conquered, and with fawning jaws Licked niy quick-heaving flank." AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 63 " Jaws" are such pretty things to " fawn" with ! And then for the purpose of " licking," what so admirable as " jaws" ? The sweet tigress's tongue must have been, with much care on her part, folded up and withdrawn into the posterior chamber of the mouth, not to have interfered instinctively with the "jaws," while these exercised their exclusive privilege of " fawning" and "licking," — functions more naturally belonging to the organ that in this case practised, as would seem, a singu- lar self-denial. It will perhaps interest some readers to see what mate- rial, for several at least of the foregoing representa- tions, Mr. Arnold could find in Hardy's " Manual of Budhism." I accordingly transfer to these pages an ex- tract from that work, pp. 155-159 : " When the prince attained his sixteenth year, his 1 father, Sudhodana, sent to Supra-budha, King of ' Koli, to demand in marriage his daughter, Yasodhard- 1 dewi ; but that monarch thought that as Sidhartta ' [Gautama] was to become a recluse, his daughter ' would soon be left a widow ; and he therefore refused ' to send her to Kapilawastu. The princess, however, ' firmly declared that even if Sidhartta were to become ' a recluse on the day after his marriage, there was no 1 one else in the world to whom she would be united. 1 When the prince was made acquainted with the oppo- ' sition of Supra-budha, and with the reason upon which 1 it was founded, he said that he had no wish to receive 1 the kingdom though its rejection would include the ' loss of Yasodhard as his wife. But as Sudhodana was ' the lord paramount of the Sakya race, he went to Koli, * and notwithstanding the displeasure of her father, ' brought away the princess, with much state. On his 64 EDWIN ARNOLD, return to Kapilawastu, after this successful expedition, he appointed Yasodhara to be the principal queen of Sidhartta ; and placing them upon a mound of silver, he poured the oil of consecration upon them from three conches, one of gold, another of silver, and the third a shell opening to the right hand : after which he bound upon their heads the royal diadem, and de- livered over to them the whole of his kingdom. He then sent to all their relatives on both sides, command- ing them to bring their princesses, that they might be the inferior wives of Sidhartta, or remain as attendants in the private apartments of Yasodhara, but the rela- tives replied, ' The prince is very delicate ; he is also young ; even to this day he has not learnt a single sci- ence ; if hereafter there should be any war, he would be unable to contend with the enemy ; he has not the means of maintaining our daughters ; we cannot, therefore, consent to send them to one who is so utterly destitute of every endowment that he ought to possess.' When the prince heard this, he resolved to exhibit his real strength ; and caused it to be pro- claimed throughout the city by beat of drum, that whosoever might be wishful to see his prowess, was invited to come to the palace in seven days from that time. On the day appointed, an immense pavilion was erected, and a vast multitude assembled in the court of the palace. Surrounded by a countless ret- inue, and in the presence of 160,000 of his relatives, he took a bow that required the strength of a thousand men to bend it ; and placing the lower end on the nail of the great toe of his right foot, without standing up, he thrummed the string of the bow with his finger nail, as easily as if it were merely the bow by which cotton is cleaned. The sound produced by the vibration of AB POETIZER AND A8 PAGANIZER. 65 the string was so loud, that it rolled to the distance of a thousand yojanas ; and terror seized hold upon the inhabitants of Jambudwipa, as they supposed that it thundered, though it was not the season of rain. After this he placed four plantain trees at the corners of a square, and by one flight of the arrow pierced them all. Even in the dark he could send the arrow with so steady an aim as to split a hair from which anything was suspended. The prince also proved that he knew perfectly the eighteen silpas, though he had never had a teacher, and that he was equally well acquainted with many other sciences. The relatives were thus convinced by what they saw and heard that he was no ordinary being ; and soon afterwards 40,000 princesses were sent to remain in the apartments of the palace. " Whilst living in the midst of the full enjoyment of every kind of pleasure, Sidhartta one day commanded his principal charioteer to prepare his festive chariot ; and in obedience to his commands, four lily-white horses were yoked. The prince leaped into the chariot, and proceeded towards a garden at a little dis- tance from the palace, attended by a great retinue. On his way he saw a decrepid old man, with broken teeth, gray locks, and a form bending towards the ground, his trembling steps supported by a staif, as he slowly proceeded along the road. The dewas [divini- ties] had seen that the time was now approaching when he was to become Budha, and it was one of their num- ber who had assumed the appearance that was pre- sented to the prince ; but it was seen only by himself and the charioteer. The prince inquired what strange figure it was that he saw ; and he was informed that it was an old man. He then asked if he was born so, and 66 EDWIN" ARNOLD, " the charioteer answered that he was not, as he was once " young like themselves. i Are there,' said the prince, " ' many such beings in the world ? ' ' Your high- "ness,' said the charioteer, ' there are many.' The " prince again inquired, ' Shall I become thus old and " decrepit ? ' and he was told that it was a state at which " all beings must arrive. It was by the aid of the dewas " that the charioteer was enabled thus pertinently to an- " swer. The prince now saw that life is not to be de- " sired, if all must thus decay; and he therefore pro- " ceeded no further towards the garden, but returned to "the palace. When Sudhodana saw him, he inquired " why he had returned so soon ; and the prince informed " him that he had seen an old man, which had made him " resolve to become an ascetic ; but the king conjured " him to put away thoughts like these, and enjoy him- " self with the princesses of the palace ; and to prevent " him from carrying his resolution into effect, he placed " an additional number of guards, extending to the dis- " tance of eight miles round the city. " Four months after this event, as Sidhartta was one " day passing along the same path, he saw a dewa under " the appearance of a leper, full of sores, with a body " like a water- vessel, and legs like the pestle for pound- " ing rice ; and when he learnt from the charioteer what " it was that he saw, he became agitated, and returned " at once to the palace. The king noticed with sorrow " what had occurred, and extended the guards to the " distance of twelve miles round the city. "After the lapse of another period of four months, " the prince, on his way to the garden, saw a dead body, " green with putridity, with worms creeping out of the " nine apertures, when a similar conversation took place " with the charioteer, followed by the same consequence. AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 67 " The king now placed guards to the distance of sixteen u miles. M There are some Budhas that appear when the age of " man is immensely long, and in such instances the space " of one hundred years elapses between these appear- " ances. At the end of the next four months, on the " day of the full moon, in the month iEsala, Sidhartta " saw in the same road a recluse, clad in a becoming " manner, not looking further before him than the dis- " tance of a yoke, and presenting an appearance that in- 11 dicated much inward tranquillity. When informed by " the charioteer whom it was that he saw, he learnt with " much satisfaction that by this means successive exist- " ence might be overcome, and ordered him to drive on " towards the garden. That day he sported in the water, " put on his gayest apparel, and remained until the going " down of the sun. The nobles brought the 64 different " kinds of ornaments that are required in the complete u investiture of a king, and a vast retinue of courtiers " ministered to his pleasure. The throne of Sekra now " became warm, and when he looked to discover what " was the reason, he saw that it was the hour of the " array of Bodhisat [a being destined to become Buddh]. " He therefore called Wiswakarmma, and at his com- " mand that dewa" came to the garden in a moment of ''time, and arrayed Sidhartta in a celestial robe, more u beautiful than all his previous magnificence. The " prince knew that he was a dewd, and not a man, and " allowed himself to be enveloped in the robe. It was 4 ' of so fine a texture, that when folded it did not fill the 11 hand, and was indeed no larger than a sesamum flower ; M yet when opened out, it was 192 miles in length. It " was thrown round his body in a thousand folds, and a " crown of sparkling gems was placed upon his head ; 68 EDWIN ARNOLD, " the musicians were animated to play upon their instru- " ments in the most perfect time ; and the attendant " brahmans chaunted the song of victory ; after which " the prince ascended his chariot, that he might return " to the palace." The perfectly serene absurdity of exaggeration that characterizes the foregoing extract from the translated text of the Buddhist legends, will give readers but a very inadequate idea of the sense of utter release, not only from obligation to be true, but even from obligation to be probable, that pervades the whole portentous mass of these Eastern myths. There is in what precedes a certain repose of hyperbole that produces an almost poetic effect. For my own part, I like the original itself better than I like Mr. Arnold's version of the original. I find more simplicity, more self-consistency, more of the quietness of power, in the antique than in the modern. Perhaps my readers would be glad of the opportunity to judge, in one instance more, what addition of beauty Mr. Arnold's skill of workmanship imparts to the mate- rial for the "Light of Asia" already existing to the English poet's hand in the legendary literature of Buddh- ism. Mr. Arnold describes the phenomena that at- tended the earthly advent of Gautama Buddha, as fol- lows : " That night the wife of King Suddhodana, Maya the queen, asleep beside her lord, Dreamed a strange dream ; dreamed that a star from heaven — Splendid, six-rayed, in color rosy-pearl, Whereof the token was an elephant Six-tusked and whiter than Vahuka's milk — Shot through the void and, shining into her, Entered her womb upon the right. Awaked, Bliss beyond mortal mother's filled her breast, AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZES. 69 And over half the earth a lovely light Forewent the morn. The strong hills shook ; the waves Sank lulled ; all flowers that blow by day came forth As 'twere high noon ; down to the farthest hells Passed the queen's joy, as when warm sunshine thrills Wood-glooms to gold, and into all the deeps A tender whisper pierced. * Oh ye,' it said, 1 The dead that are to live, the live who die, Uprise, and hear, and hope ! Buddha is come 1 ' Whereat in Limbos numberless much peace Spread, and the world's heart throbbed, and a wind blew With unknown freshness over lands and seas. And when the morning dawned, and this was told, The gray dream-readers said ■ The dream is good ! The Crab is in conjunction with the Sun ; The queen shall bear a boy, a holy child Of wondrous wisdom, profiting all flesh, Who shall deliver men from ignorance, Or rule the world, if he will deign to rule.'" From Bishop Bigandet's " Life or Legend of Gau- tama, the Buddha of the Burmese," I take the follow- ing : " A light of an incomparable brightness illuminated 1 suddenly ten thousand worlds ; the blind, desirous, as ' it were, to contemplate the glorious dignity of Phra- ' laong, recovered their sight ; the deaf heard distinctly ' every sound ; the dumb spoke with fluency ; those t whose bodies were bent stood up in an erect position ; ' the lame walked with ease and swiftness ; prisoners ' saw their fetters unloosed, and found themselves re- 1 stored to liberty, the fires of hell were extinguished ; ' the ravenous cravings of the Pruthas were satiated ; ' animals were exempt from all infirmities ; all rational 1 beings uttered but words of peace, and mutual benev- ' olence ; horses exhibited signs of an excessive joy ; 1 elephants, with a solemn and deep voice, expressed 70 EDWIN ARNOfiD. " their contentment ; musical instruments resounded of " themselves with the most melodious harmony; gold " and silver ornaments worn at the arms and feet, with- " out coming in contact, emitted pleasing sounds ; all " places became suddenly filled with a resplendent light ; " refreshing breezes blew gently all over the earth ; " abundant rain poured from the skies during the hot " season, and springs of cool water burst out in every c ' place, carrying through prepared beds their gently " murmuring streams; birds of the air stood still, for- " getting their usual flight ; rivers suspended their " course, seized with a mighty astonishment ; sea water " became fresh ; the five sorts of lilies were to be seen " in every direction ; every description of flowers burst " open, displaying the richness of their brilliant colors ; " from the branches of all trees, and the bosom of the " hardest ro»ks, flowers shot forth, exhibiting all around " the most glowing, dazzling, and varied hues ; lilies, " seemingly rooted in the canopy of the skies, hung " down, scattering their embalmed fragrance ; showers of " flowers poured from the firmament on the surface of " the earth ; the musical tunes of the Nats were heard " by the rejoiced inhabitants of our globe ; hundred " thousands of worlds suddenly approached each other, " sometimes in the shape of an elegant nosegay, some- " times in that of a ball of flowers, or of a spheroid ; the " choicest essences embalmed the whole atmosphere that " encompasses this world. Such are the wonders that " took plaee at the time Phralaong entered his mother's 1 ' womb." Whichever shall be thought finer, Mr. Arnold or his Indian original, Buddhist legends, it certainly will be agreed, do better for poetry than they do for religion. IV. We laughed at Mr. Arnold in the immediately fore- going part of this essay, through a number of successive pages. There is " inextinguishable laughter," the mat- ter of it, still left treasured up in the poem. But I may already have made a mistake. Readers will perhaps think that I have been indulging an improper levity. I, for my part, candidly think that my levity is just pre- cisely proper. The " Light of Asia," considered as liter- ature, is not worthy of graver treatment. As regards Mr. Arnold himself, I cannot therefore accuse myself of indecorum. It is easier, however, to transgress the bounds of becoming respect toward Mr. Arnold's ad- mirers, especially those of them who have committed themselves to expressions of praise in print. I accord- ingly check myself. I stop laughing and become as honestly serious as under the circumstances 1 can. Here, for instance, is the Contemporary Review furnishing me reason for gravity. It says this of Mr. Arnold : " That a gentleman so preoccupied should find time to write an epic poem on one of the most difficult themes that ever exercised poetic ingenuity, is surprising enough. Even more strange, however, is the fact that he quite succeeds in escaping what we are perhaps justi- fied in calling the taint of his occupation. . . . There is between the literature of every morning and the literature of Mr. Arnold's fine poem a whole world of separation." 72 EDWIN ARNOLD, How accurately wrong the complaisance of this writer tempts him to be ! Complaisance it is that here exhibits itself rather than defect of critical insight — so I judge by the tone of the whole appreciation. But now that 1 have shown my readers this specimen of what has been said on the side opposite to my own regarding Mr. Arnold's poetry, I may as well go on and show them several specimens more. To do so will serve two useful pur poses. It will be fair toward Mr. Arnold ; and it will at the same time prove that exist- ing at least in the current state of critical opinion on the subject, if not in the intrinsic quality of the poetry criticised, there was reason enough for the publication of an essay like the present. Almost while I am writing this sentence, I chance upon a paragraph of literary news to the effect that in India two versions of the " Light of Asia" are promised, one, I believe, in Bengalee, (but perhaps 1 am wrong,) and the other in Sanscrit. In our own favored land, a " birthday book" is announced, to be made up of choice extracts from Mr. Arnold's verse. In England, there is preparing, so it is said, for lux- urious admirers and buyers of the " Light of Asia," a sumptuous illustrated edition of that lucky work. In view of indications such as these, and such as are here still further to be displayed, of the present popular ac- ceptance of Mr. Arnold's poem, some readers may in- deed tax me with temerity in doing what 1 now do, but none surely will say that I waste breath in cudgelling a man of straw. I subjoin a few additional specimens of notable critical expression contrary to my own concern- ing the literary merit of a production which, formidably praised as it may appear to be, I nevertheless pluck up courage to speak of freely with cheerful disrespect. AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 73 In the International Beview for October, 1879, no Jess weighty an authority than Oliver Wendell Holmes has a leading article of imposing length lauding the " Light of Asia" in terms of which the following sample sentences will afford but a very moderate idea : " It is a work of great beauty. It tells a story of in- tense interest which never flags for a moment ; its de- scriptions are drawn by the hand of a master, with the eye of a poet and the familiarity of an expert with the objects described ; its tone is so lofty that there is nothing with which to compare it but the New Testa- ment ; it is full of variety, now picturesque, now pathetic, now rising into the noblest realms of thought and aspiration, it finds language penetrating, fluent, elevated, impassioned, musical always, to clothe its varied thoughts and sentiments." Dr. Holmes further speaks of the poem as a " noble epic added to English literature." He refers to the rapidity with which this " most finished performance" was produced. He staggers you by saying, with the happiest antithesis to truth : " To lay down this poem and take up a book of pop- ular rhymes is like stepping from the carpet of a Per- sian palace upon the small tradesman's Kidderminster." With apparently unintentional frankness, Dr. Holmes, however, furnishes us the necessary co-eflicient of dis- count to be applied to his praises. He tells us that Mr. William Henry Channing sent him a copy of the book with a letter commending it highly, and adds that Mr. Channing was his classmate at college. He does not add, what I learn to be true, that Mr. William Henry Chan- 74 EDWIN" ARNOLD. ning is father-in-law to Mr. Arnold. The generous spirit of comradeship toward a fellow-student, we may imagine to have bribed the insight of Dr. Holmes to be willingly a little blind in judging a literary work to which that fellow-student had naturally so vital a rela- tion. The New Englander for March, 1880, says of the " Light of Asia" : " It will not be strange if the book takes hold of the present and of a long future, by a creative power of thought, which is the imagination of the insj)ired poets." As respectfully, in the face of these and like contrary expressions, as I can, I say again that the " Light of Asia" is, for its literary merits, not worthy of being criticised otherwise than mirthfully. With perfectly light-hearted confidence, I dismiss Mr. Arnold's poetry to that limbo of things " transitory and vain" to which, by its own irrepressible inherent levitation it seems to me manifestly to aspire. SECOND PA.RT In a mood somewhat different from that which prop- erly, as I maintain, has controlled the preceding pages, I go on from considering the literary, to consider points no longer literary, in Mr. Arnold's "Light of Asia." In short, 1 invite my readers to pass from examining the poem as literature to examining it as representation of fact — fact in biography and fact in doctrinal exposition. Who knows but it may turn out that the " Light of Asia" makes up in truth what it lacks in poetry ? Before making the proposed transition, however, it will be well — it perhaps is needful — to point out that the assays herein presented of Mr. Arnold's literary quality, although they have been presented with a degree of lightness in manner, have yet been presented with entire candor in spirit. I have done Mr. Arnold no wrong. He is what he is here represented to be. The things that I have offered in specimen, are fairly so offered. I leave behind, untouched, store of things in the poem as egregious as the most of those which I have brought forward to view. 1 should not have treated Mr. Arnold's poetry in criti- cism at all, if his poetry had been simply rather bad, and had been generally thought to be simply rather good. It is because Mr. Arnold's poetry has been thought very good, being in fact very bad, that I have been led to pay it the present attention. I should have liked to praise it more, while I blamed it, for that course would have 78 EDWIN AKNOLD, seemed more candid. But it would really have been less candid, for I believe in my heart that I have praised it as much as it deserves. A friend asks me, Could you not glean out of any poet's work, out of Tennyson's, for instance, faults equally capable of being set up for laughing- stocks to the public ? No, I promptly reply, 1 could not. Tennyson is a true poet. Slips he makes now and then, but he is not spurious through and through, like this writer. It is no mere trial of wit, the present criticism, to make a poet ridiculous. 1 do not make Mr. Arnold ridiculous. Mr. Arnold makes himself ridiculous. I simply give him a chance to show himself such as he is, — to a little better advantage. Let every reader fully understand, I have meant to be, and 1 have been, as just and candid in spirit, as I may have been jaunty and rallying in man- ner. I would not for the world make unfair game of any man. I believe in considerate and careful justice. I should be ashamed of myself to attempt presenting in a ludicrous light that whicli is not in itself suitable sub- ject of laughter. The true way to treat the " Light of Asia" is to laugh at it. That is, when you treat it on the ground of literary merit alone. On that ground, the " Light of Asia" is, for the most part, just a broad joke from beginning to end. Eegarding it as literature you may simply grin at it, and do so with perfect com- placency of conscience. You are doing quite the right thing — unless once in a while it may be your duty to press your two hands firmly against your two " ridges of ribs" and, so fortified, deliver yourself to unrestrained explosions of laughter. I say, regarding it as literature, you may behave yourself thus. But regarding it as a setting forth of Buddhist history and Buddhist doctrine, you are bound AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 79 to behave yourself differently. You must now be serious indeed. I bring against the " Light of Asia" the general accusation that, whether with intention or not, on the part of the author, it represents Buddhism un- truly. I do not mean merely that it idealizes Buddhism. This a poet might fairly be entitled to do. But the u Light of Asia" does more than idealize Buddhism — more, and other. It would be according to the privilege of a poet to take, for instance, Buddhism, and present it better than it is — if this be done in a certain way, and in obedience to a certain law. You must idealize along the line prescribed by the actual nature of the system. The system must not change its essential character. It must remain itself, though it may become itself purged of defect and heightened in merit. But what I charge is, that Mr. Arnold has not been loyal to this obvious law of just idealization. He has transgressed the law. He has consciously or unconsciously practised sleight of hand, and given us a supposititious something, that is not Buddhism at all, either as actually existing, or as ideal- ized from itself. In short, he has been untrue to the central truth of things. I repeat, I do not say purposely untrue. I have no right to say that. I will not pretend to explore Mr. Arnold's ultimate motives. I take what is indisput- able. I take the " Light of Asia" as it is. I raise no question how it became such. That is a matter of much concern indeed to Mr. Arnold himself, whether or not to anybody besides him very momentous, but, in either case, quite beyond the province of a fellow-man to deter- mine. To the common Judge of all of us — his own Mas- ter and ours alike, confessed such by us or not — he shall for me be left to stand or fall. With Mr. Arnold's motive in his work, then, let us have nothing whatever 80 EDWIN" ARNOLD, to do, but confine ourselves strictly and only to the work itself as we find it. Buddhism may be regarded as, in Mr. Arnold's repre- sentation, made up of two factors — Buddha the man, and Buddha's teaching. Of these two factors, the personal one — the man Buddha — is far the more important. It signifies far less what Buddha taught, than what Bndclha was. If Buddha was such as Mr. Arnold represents him to have been, or rather — for we must make the distinc- tion — such as Mr. Arnold evidently meant to represent him to be, then what Buddha taught demands attention from us. Otherwise, hardly — except such languid atten- tion as we give to matters of mere speculation and his- tory having no possible practical relation to any of our interests. Was Buddha what Mr. Arnold would have us understand him to have been ? Mr. Arnold would have us understand that Buddha was born a great prince (we need not press the prodigies that attended the prince's birth — these, even in the poem, do not have the air of sober history, being herein sharply differenced from the New Testament story of the birth of Jesus), that he lived in purity a life of luxurious ease, loving his wife with a love like the purified love of a Christian husband, that, against special temptation, felt at the moment, to continue this course of selfish enjoyment, he, on a memorable occasion, performed a great act of renunciation, giving up everything that was dear to him, in order, by a long series of incredible self-denials and hardships, to become Buddh, and so save the world. Such is the representation. Now, what are the facts ? Well, the facts assuredly are by no means easy to ascertain. We might fairly content oar- selves with alleging against Mr. Arnold that he makes the impression of having a right to march firmly, where AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 81 in fact the ground lie treads trembles, at every step, under Iris feet. On the question, for instance, of the historical reality of Buddha — the question, that is to say, whether such a person as Buddha ever in fact existed — the highest authorities in matters of Indian learning, are hopelessly divided. It 28, in its nature, a question as to which, at least in any Occidental breast, no wish that should bias the judgment either on the one side or on the other, need arise. An historical personage, or an ideal con- ception, merely, of the human mind, Buddha, with his legend wild or sober, with his teaching bad or good, is in the world, the product, the authentic product, equally in either case, of Indian civilization. If Buddha once really lived, why India is to be credited with him ; if he never really lived, but was only imagined, he was certainly imagined by India, and still India is to be credited with him. There is therefore nothing to create a prejudice in the Western mind either for or against the historical reality of Buddha. We might approach the problem to solve it, were it our ambition to solve it, without prejudice to warp us either this way or that. Mr. E. Spence Hardy, acknowledged to be an au- thority in Indian learning not second to any, expresses himself as follows upon the point of Buddha's actual existence ; I quote from his " Legends and Theories of the Buddhists," p. 187 : " In the preceding pages, I have spoken of Buddha as a real personage ; I have attributed to an individual words and acts, and have regarded the words and acts recorded in the Fitakas as said and done by that in- dividual ; but in this I have used the language of the Buddhist, and not that of my own conviction or belief. I 82 EDWIN ARNOLD, will not say that I think no such person as S&kya Singha ever existed ; but I affirm that we cannot know anything about him with certainty ; and that, as it is not possible to separate the myth from the truth, we cannot rely im- plicitly on any one statement that is made in relation to him, either in the Text or Commentary. There is doubt as to his birthplace, his race, and the age in which he lived ; and in a still greater degree, about almost every other event connected with his history. There are a few things said about him that we might be- lieve, because they are such as are common to man ; but even upon these we cannot look without suspicion from the overcrowding of the page that records them with the most glaring untruths ; and whether Gotama, prince and philosopher, ever existed or not, we are quite certain that the Gotama Buddha of the Pitakas is an imaginary being, and never did exist. " Mr. Hardy, in the foregoing extract, presents on the subject of Buddha's historical reality the view to which on the whole enlightened critical opinion now inclines. But this is a fashion merely, which the next age may see fit to change. No fault is to be found with Mr. Arnold for building his poem upon the hypothesis that Buddha was an historical person. But fault may justly be found with him if he makes out his hero to be an historical person with a history essentially different from that which the native legends attribute to Buddha. And this I find that Mr. Arnold does. His offence is therefore heavier than the offence of going beyond his evidence. It is not simply beyond his evidence, it is against his evidence, that he goes. He ostensibly gives us Buddha, as a Buddhist votary conceives him. What if he departs, in important points, from the general consent of Buddh- AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 83 ist legends ? Will not his work be in so far essentially false ? For example, and the example is capital in importance, Mr. Arnold anplies every resource of his rhetoric in describing the tenderness of the relation represented by him to subsist between Gautama and his wife. He even, in such description, permits himself a license of sensuousness that is saved to you from the grossness of sensuality, only as you make a huge allowance to the writer on the score of his dealing with an Oriental theme. Again and again, while you read, you are forced to use your very strongest timely recollection of extraordinary privilege belonging to the poet, in order to choke down an almost irrepressibly rising nausea and qualm of instinctive disgust, both at the ideas expressed, and at the language employed to express the ideas. Still, you feel all the time that the intention of Mr. Arnold, however ill achieved, is to portray to readers a conjugal relation between Gautama and his wife wholly sweet and pure, like the conjugal relation conceived by Paul in such a way as to be deemed by him worthy to stand for figure of the nuptial bond between Christ and His Church. Gautama is, according to Mr. Ar- nold himself, furnished with a countless harem of beautiful women, among whom he delights himself at will, and yet he is presented to us as loving his. wife and queen with the kind of elevated and exclusive affection that, under such conditions, we all know is, in the very nature of things, impossible. No man with ten thousand concubines, more or less— forty thou- sand is the legendary number — ever loved any one woman, as Mr. Arnold would lead us to believe Gautama loved his queen. (Or is the " very much" married Turkish Sultan sadly misunderstood among us in this 84 EDWIN ARNOLD, part of tlie world ? And the patriarch of Mormondom ?) No, the affection between Gautama and Yasodhara is all the figment of the English poet's fancy. This the poet himself amply supplies us with reason for believing. The conditions of life in which he places the prince, preclude all possibility of such love between the prince and his wife as, through page after page of the poem, he elaborately, with futile elaboration, portrays. It is another case of utterly inharmonious, impossible concep- tion on the part of Mr. Arnold. He has ineffectually attempted to force together two ideas that refuse to be wedded in thought — namely, pure conjugal love and a countless concubinage. So much might, from within the poem itself, legiti- mately be inferred to confute the representation of the poem. But we may go outside the poem to the sources from which the materials of the poem were drawn. Now who, that has got his ideas on the subject exclusively from the " Light of Asia," would guess that in all the legends of Gautama which Mr. Spence Hardy copiously translates from the Singhalese version of the original text, there is absolutely no hint or trace of that singular absorbing love between Gautama and his wife, made by Mr. Arnold to be such a salient feature in his work ? The very word i l love" is conspicuously rare on all Mr. Hardy's pages, and the thing love is no more familiar than the word. Barely once, 1 find mentioned the idea of kindred love on the part of Gautama. In that single case, the love spoken of is not for his wife, but for his infant son. On p. 159 of Mr. Hardy's book, it is told how at the birth of Gautama's son the father inti- mated that now " something proper for him to love was born." This, I repeat, is actually the sole mention of kindred " love" in Gautama, on which I light in all the AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 85 pages of Mr. Arnold's authority. As to Gautama's regard for his wife, represented by Mr. Arnold to have played so striking a part in Gautama's great renunciation, the only, quite the only, even indirect, hint in the original documents of this is contained in the statement that, when Gautama, on the eve of forsaking his queen, visited her chamber, (what for ? to have a pleasant word with her, or at least a farewell look at her ? not at all ; " in order that he might see his son") he refrained from taking up his boy lest the mother should wake and speak to him, u which might shake his resolution." Mr. Arnold : " I lay aside my youth, My throne, my joys, my golden days, my nights, My happy palace —and thine arms, sweet queen ! Harder to put aside than all the rest ! ******* So "with his brow he touched her feet, and bent The farewell of fond eyes, unutterable, Upon her sleeping face, still wet with tears ; And thrice around the bed in reverence, As though it were an altar, softly stepped, With clasped hands laid upon his beating heart, * For never, ' spake he, ' lie I there again ! ' And thrice he made to go, but thrice came back, So strong her beauty was, so large his love." Thus Mr. Arnold. Now the legend : " He thought, ' I can see my child after I become 11 Budha ; were I, from parental affection, to endanger " the reception of the Budhaship, how could the various " orders of being be released from the sorrows of ex- " istence ? ' "—Hardy's " Manual of Budhism," p. 162. I have somewhat carefully scanned Mr. Hardy's pages, 86 EDWIN ARNOLD, and 1 have tried here to give all the foundation supplied to Mr. Arnold in the original legends for the pretentious rhetorical fabric that he rears to the glorification of Gautama's love as a husband. Can any one fail to see that Mr. Arnold's poem is, in this particular at any rate, not properly idealization of Buddhism, but, instead, utter falsification of Buddhism ? Buddhism, whether sought in Buddha's life, or in Buddha's doctrine, knows nothing of love on the part of a husband like that which Mr. Arnold fulsomely attributes to Buddha as by him enter- tained for his wife. Such love is not at home in the Buddhist system. It is out of place there. It is an in- trusion. It is forced and foisted in from elsewhere. To make more plain the immensity of this falsification, 1 have had count taken of the recurrences of the word " love" in Mr. Arnold's poem. On an average, that single word, apart from inflected forms of it, occurs about once in every forty lines throughout the " Light of Asia." Indeed, the whole poem is fairly love-sick. And the original legends do not once even mention the idea of proper conjugal love ! Is not the perversion monstrous, incredible ? Although Mr. Arnold does indeed describe the volup- tuous life of Gautama with his innumerable concubines, he still describes it in a way to slur over the grossness and sensuality inextricably implied. You are led almost to forget but that the blameless prince is living among these lovely women, innocently, like a child among so many dolls. The horrid animalism of such a life is smothered with rhetoric, like a festering corpse covered over with flowers. By the hand of sober history, the glozing veil is withdrawn. 1 quote from the " History of India," by J. Talboys "Wheeler a work which cannot be sus- pected of Christian jealousy as toward Buddhism, which AS POETIZER AND AS PAGAKIZER. 87 in truth treats Buddhism with sympathy. Mr. Wheeler, p. 106, says : "It may be inferred that at this period of his life [early manhood after marriage] he [Gautama] plunged into every kind of pleasure, until at last he was oppressed with satiety and his old melancholy began to return." Mr. Wheeler subjoins a significant note : " The sensuality indicated in the text is almost in- credible. It is, however, quite in accordance with Kshatriya usages. A custom somewhat similar has always prevailed among the Kshatriya sovereigns of Burma, varying of course with the character and tem- perament of the reigning king. Bhodan-pra, who reigned a.d. 1781-1819 over the whole Burman empire, from the Bay of Bengal to the Chinese frontier, was un- bounded in his zenana indulgences. Every governor and feudatory was expected to send his fairest daughter or sister to serve in the palace as an attendant, or Royal Yirgin. If any such damsel obtained the favor of the king, she was elevated to the position of an inferior queen, and provided with a separate apartment and slaves for her own use. ' ' The fact, then, probably was that this prince, repre- sented by Mr. Arnold to have been blameless from his birth, was already in early youth an exhausted voluptu- ary. He " felt the fulness of satiety." When he be- came an ascetic, the renunciation was with him a reaction of disgust. He went from pleasures of which he had tired, and not from pleasures that he was still freshly capable of enjoying. Mr. Arnold's overcharged sensuous account of the prince's visit, at the crisis of his purposed renunciation, to his house of licentious pleasure, and of his finding there that population of sleeping queens, in 88 EDWIN ARNOLD, full display, to the young princely proprietor, of every charm that could appeal to the animal appetite of man — this, regarded in the light of mere description, is not simply a piece of bad morals and bad taste on the part of the poet ; beyond that, it is sheer falsification of his- tory. Mr. Arnold makes it for himself an evident trial of strength and skill to portray those fair young creatures of Gautama's lust, as sleeping in the unconscious beauty and charm of paradisaical innocence and love. All that temptation Gautama was to resist in achieving his self- sacrifice. Now, the legend says expressly the contrary of this. I cite presently the text of the legend. But first Mr. Arnold himself : " Within— Where the moo a glittered through tho lace- worked stone, Lighting the walls of pearl-shell and the floors Paved with veined marble— softly fell her beams On such rare company of Indian girls, It seemed some chamber sweet in Paradise Where Devis rested. All the chosen ones Of Prince Siddartha's pleasure-home were there, The brightest and most faithful of the court, Each form so lovely in the peace of sleep, That you had said, ' This is the pearl of all ! ' Save that beside her or beyond her lay Fairer and fairer, till the pleasured gaze Eoamed o'er that feast of beauty as it roams From gem to gem in some great goldsmith-work, Caught by each color till the next is seen. With careless grace they lay, their soft brown limbs Part hidden, part revealed ; their glossy hair Bound back with gold or flowers, or flowing loose In black waves down the shapely nape and neck. Lulled into pleasant dreams by happy toils, They slept no wearier than jewelled birds Which sing and love all day, then under wing Fold head till morn bids sing and love again. Lamps of chased silver swinging from the roof In silver chains, and fed with perfumed oils, AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 89 Made with the moonbeam's tender lights and shades, Whereby were seen the perfect lines of grace, The bosom's placid heave, the soft stained palms Drooping or clasped, the faces fair and dark, The great arched brows, the parted lips, the teeth Like pearls a merchant picks to make a string, The satin-lidded eyes, with lashes dropped Sweeping the delicate cheeks, the rounded wrists, The smooth small feet with bells and bangles decked, Tinkling low music where some sleeper moved, Breaking her smiling dream of some new dance Praised by the prince, some magic ring to find, Some fairy love-gift. Hero one lay full-length, Her vina by her cheek, and in its strings The little fingers still all interlaced — As when the last notes of her light song played Those radiant eyes to sleep and sealed her own. Another slumbered folding in her arms A desert antelope, its slender head Buried with back-sloped horns between her breasts Soft nestling ; it was eating — when both drowsed — Bed roses, and her loosening hand still held A rose half -mumbled, while a rose-leaf curled Between the deer's lips. Here two friends had dozed Together, weaving mogra-buds, which bound Their sister sweetness in a starry chain, Linking them limb to limb and heart to heart, One pillowed on the blossoms, one on her. Another, ere she slept, was stringing stones To make a necklet— agate, onyx, sard, Coral, and moonstone— round her wrist it gleamed A coil of splendid color, while she held, Unthreaded yet, the bead to close it up Green turkis, carved with goldeu gods and scripts. Lulled by the cadence of the garden stream, Thus lay they on the clustered carpets, each A girlish rose with shut leaves, waiting dawn To open and make daylight beautiful. This was the ante-chamber of the prince ; But at the purdah's fringe the sweetest slept — Gunga and Gotami — chief ministers In that still house of love," 90 EDWIN ARNOLD, Against this, the original legend, " Manual of Budh- ism," p. 160 : " On reaching the palace, Sidhartta reclined upon a i splendid couch, the lamps were filled with perfumed ' oil, and lighted, and around him were assembled his ' 40,000 queens. Some danced before him, whilst others ' played upon flutes, harps, and cymbals, and instru- 1 ments made of the legs of fowls or of animals ; whilst c others again beat the drum, performed various evolu- * tions, and tried in many ways to attract his attention ; ( but the prince paid no regard to them, and fell asleep. 1 The choristers and musicians, seeing that their attempts ' to amuse him were of no avail, placed their instruments c under their heads as pillows ; and they too fell asleep. 1 When Sidhartta awoke, he saw the altered appearance 6 of the revellers ; some were yawning, the dress of i others was in great confusion, whilst others again were 1 gnashing their teeth, or crying out in their sleep, or ' foaming at the mouth, or restlessly rolling their 1 bodies and placing themselves in unseemly postures ; ' so that the place which a little time previous appeared ' like one of the dewa-lokas, now seemed like a charnel- 1 house. Disgusted with what he saw, and roused to ' activity, like a man who is told that his house is on ' fire, he rose up from his couch, and resolved to enter ' at once upon the discipline it was necessary for him ( to pass through before he could become Budha." 1 have no disposition to disparage the merit of Gau- tama. But Gautama was not at all the man that Mr. Arnold describes him. He was essentially other. Mr. Arnold clothes Gautama with attributes that the char- acter of Gautama, such as, according to the legends, that AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZES. 91 character really was, could never have suggested to the mind. Mr. Arnold, borrowing from Christianity, gives to Buddhism, not so much what idealizes Buddhism, as what makes Buddhism something other than itself. I must, and 1 will, resist every temptation to charge Mr. Arnold with bad faith. 1 shall, therefore, not say that Mr. Arnold with deliberate purpose takes Biblical phrases consecrated to the Christian imagination and to the Christian heart by association with Jesus, and transfers these in application to Gautama, in order to cheat the surprised and bewildered mind into the only half-conscious suspicion that, after all, Jesus was but one in a class, larger or smaller, in which Gautama was another and a peer. This I must not say, and I will not. But I may say, and 1 will, that if Mr. Arnold had had such a sinister purpose, unconfessed, he could not have chosen a way better adapted than his actual to accom- plish it. The unwary and too-trustful reader is even led to suppose that perhaps the scriptures of Buddhism themselves furnish pregnant and pathetic expressions, parallel to those which Mr. Arnold, proudly making prize of them from the Bible, hands over to Buddha. The solemn saying of Simeon to Mary, " A sword shall pierce through thine own soul also," is seized by our author, and, suffering a change in his hands proper to his taste and his genius, is given to the mother of Gautama : " A sword must pierce thy bowels for this boy." The awful, " It is finished," of Calvary is similarly changed , and similarly transferred — "It is finished, finished" — the transference here being to certain Devas who speak of Buddha's final victory. The idea of vicariousness is deep-laid in the very con- stitution of human nature. The idea cannot, therefore, be said to have been surreptitiously brought from the 92 EDWIN ARNOLD, Bible for association with Buddha. Still, Mr. Arnold's representation of this idea in connection with Buddha is such as it could never have been, had it proceeded from the hand of any man not bred in the atmosphere and light of a Christian civilization. But the contrast is, to the thoughtful mind, far deeper than the resemblance. Gau- tama, according to the legends, had to toil and suffer in asceticism in order to redeem his own soul. He was him- self a sinful man — this, although Mr. Arnold, drawn per- haps beyond his wish or thought, by the analogy of the character of Jesus, fails to make Gautama's sinfulness ap- pear as it should — Gautama was himself a sinful man, and he had his own redemption to work out before he could be redeemer to others. And at last, his office of redeemer to others consisted simply in teaching them a moral code, and in setting them a good example. The toil and the suffering were not related to his re- deeming work as means to end. Proper vicariousness, therefore, there was none in Gautama's character or life. The contrast here between Gautama and Jesus is im- mense. But the unheeding reader is likely not to feel the contrast, in going through Mr. Arnold's representa- tion of the case. The present examination is but temporarily important during a temporary injurious influence exerted by this absurdly overrated book. 1 do not seek to be exhaustive. It may briefly be said that the " Light of Asia" is a veiy untrustworthy authority in Buddhist history and exposi- tion. Probably the great distinctive doctrine of " Nir- vana" itself is misapprehended by Mr. Arnold. So accom- plished and so profoundly sagacious an Orientalist as Dr. Judson, a man whose business it had been for forty years to understand Buddhism that he might help replace it with Christianity, pronounced it maturely and finally his AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZES. 93 judgment that " Nirvana" is nothing more nor less than a euphemism for annihilation. The urbane and polished Orientals would not say of Buddh that he was dead, or that he did not exist; he "reposed," they would pregnantly say. Blank annihilation, boldly self-con- fessed in frank terms, would not be an attractive prospect wherewith to commend Buddha to people hereabout. Mr. Arnold chooses the unintelligible alternative interpre- tation — that of an existence without passion of sorrow or of joy, unconscious, changeless, inert, a transcendental state not distinguishable, save in the name you give it, from absolute non-existence. The true antithesis to ex- istence is non-existence, and non-existence, pure annihi- lation, beyond doubt, the Buddhist Nirvana is. Such, forsooth, the " universal hope" that Buddhism becomes " eternal" by offering to fulfil ! 1 express myself thus positively on the real meaning of Nirvana in Buddhism, not because I find the weight of authority, though I do, to be on the side I take, but because the translated text of the Buddhist literature, as given by Mr. Hardy, leaves the point, in my judgment, beyond question. I however add one more specialist's opinion on the subject, to satisfy the curiosity of read- ers. Mr. Monier "Williams, a moderate and judicious writer, amply qualified to speak, uses, in his " Modern India and the Indians," p. 255, the following language : Buddha " was a great reformer of Hinduism ; but it is a mistake to suppose that he aimed at an entire aboli- tion of Brahmanism, with the philosophical side of which his system had really much in common. His mission was to abolish caste, to resist sacerdotal tyranny, to preach universal charity and love, and to enjoin self -mortifica- tion and self-suppression through perhaps millions of 94: EDWIN ARNOLD, existences, as the only means of getting rid of the evils of life and self -consciousness by an extinction of all being. He was himself the model of a perfect ascetic. He never claimed to be a god, but only the ideal of that perfection of knowledge and self-subjugation to which every man might attain. " The Buddha had himself passed through millions of births, and was about to become extinct ; but before his own attainment of Nirvana, or annihilation, he was en- abled by perfect knowledge of the truth, to reveal to the world the method of obtaining it. He died, and exists no more. He cannot, therefore, be worshipped. His memory only is revered. Temples are erected over his rel- ics, such as a hair or a tooth. The Dathavansa, a history of one of his teeth, has recently been translated from the Pali. In the same manner every man must pass through innumerable existences, rising or falling in the scale, ac- cording to his conduct, until he also attains Nirvana, and becomes extinct. The Buddha once pointed to a broom in a corner, which he said had, in a former birth, been a novice who had neglected to be diligent in sweeping out the Assembly Hall. " In Buddhism, then, there can be no God ; and if no God, then no prayer, no clergy, no priests. By l no God ' I mean no real God. Yet action is a kind of God. Action is omnipotent. Action is all-powerful in its ef- fects on future states of being. ' An evil act follows a man through a hundred thousand transmigrations, so does a good act.' By * no prayer ' I mean no real prayer. Yet there are two forms of words (meaning, when trans- lated, 'reverence to the jewel in the lotus,' 'honor to the incomparable Buddha') which repeated or turned in a wheel either once or millions of times, must produce in- evitable corresponding results in future existences by the AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZEB. 95 mere mechanical law of cause and effect. By ' no clergy,' I mean no real clergy. Yet there are monks and ascetics by thousands and thousands, banded together in mon- asteries, for the better suppression of passion and attain- ment of extinction. Many of these are religious teachers but not priests. "Has Buddhism, then, no morality? Yes — a lofty system of universal charity and benevolence. Yet extinc- tion is its ultimate aim. In this respect it is no improve- ment upon Brahmanism. The more the depths of these two systems are explored, the more clearly do they exhibit themselves in their true light as little better than dreary schemes excogitated by visionary philosophers, in the vain hope of delivering themselves from the evils and troubles of life — from all activity, self -consciousness, and personal existence. ' ' Again, ibid., p. 260, Mr. "Williams says : " Fourthly and lastly, Buddhism. What are its means of accomplishing its end ? Extinction of being is effected by self-mortification, by profound contemplation, and by abstinence from action. The Buddha himself is extinct. He cannot, therefore, of course be the source of eternal life. Nor can indeed eternal life ever be desired by those whose highest aim is to be blown out like a candle." II. Much is said nowadays, in a large way, as if wisely and philosophically, about the underlying mutual resem- blances that make the different religions of the world essentially one in fundamental character. But surely, between a religion which, like Buddhism, thus presents extinction of being as the chief human good, and a religion which, like Christianity, presents as the chief human good a conscious and glorious immortality of blessedness, — surely, 1 say, between two such religions there might, at many inferior points, exist striking features of mutual resemblance, while still, with such and so violent oppo- sition dividing them the one from the other, it would be false and misleading to speak of them as connected by any bond that could properly be called " sympathy." What I take to be the truth about the H sympathy of religions" so far as such sympathy may be supposed to hold between Buddhism and Christianity, is briefly this : Buddhism is partly true and Christianity is wholly true. Of course, then, wherein Buddhism is true, there may exist a " sympathy" (to allow the word — it seems to me a word not very fit to use) between it and Christian- ity ; which is much the same as saying that truth does not become falsehood by being adopted into Buddhism. (The effect of falsehood, however, truth so adopted comes very near indeed to producing.) Wherein Buddhism is false, there is still, it may be admitted, at points a certain fal- lacious resemblance remaining between it and Christian- EDWIN ARNOLD. 97 ity. Such remaining resemblance, however, is so far from being " sympathy," that it is antipathy, violent and extreme. But tbe resemblance, whatever it be — how account for it ? Christianity teaches the being and agency of a dev- il. The devil is the enemy of all good. The devil counter- works Christianity in every way, with craft and power in- definitely great. One of his ways, I should think, might be to create just the specious and delusive resemblance that is in fact to be recognized as existing between Chris- tianity and any false religion, for instance, Buddhism. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact, for fact it is, that there is resemblance, computably sufficient, and computa- bly not more than sufficient, between Christianity and Buddhism, to be accounted for by the supposition that Buddhism is in part a Satanic travesty of Christianity. Of course I am very well aware that this is not a sug- gestion original with myself. I know that, on the con- trary, it is a very old idea. I know too that to many minds it seems simply obsolete and ridiculous. Well, I will not assume to dogmatize, or even to philosophize very deeply. I can only judge the devil by what is taught of him in the Bible. There, I am sure, he is represented to be a compound of malicious cunning and malicious power. I am quite clear that if I were mj'self such a being as this, I should go about my object of defeating Jesus in His attempt to save the world, very much as the devil has in fact gone about that object, if we are at liberty to suppose that the devil has been largely the author of Buddhism. My friends may laugh at me if they will, but in all seriousness I insist that if I can at all divine the devil by myself, nothing in the world is more likely than that this prince of lies has been very busy indeed in getting up Buddhism. Goethe, I believe, once said that he felt 98 EDWIN ARNOLD, himself potentially capable of committing, under con- ceivable conditions of circumstance, any crime whatever of which he had ever heard. I grieve to confess that, in some such imaginative way, I discover in myself a considerable degree of instinct to understand the devil's probable method of working to deceive the world. In the most clairvoyant moods of this my hypothetical entrance into our arch-enemy's plans of operation, I have never yet conceived anything else half so well adapted to succeed, on a colossal scale, in baffling the attempt of Christianity to save mankind, as the grand scheme of preoccupying everywhere the ground with false religions speciously resembling the true. I by no means assert this to have been Satan's chosen plan. But I do assert that it would be exactly like him, and I assert moreover that this would very neatly explain the problem that confronts us in our study of the so-called u world-religions." A Satanic travesty of true religion, Buddhism does in- deed, in some of its features, seem to me to be. This the- ory at any rate, as I have said, accounts in a highly sensi- ble way for the curious coincidences that undeniably exist between Buddhism and Christianity. As to the contrast between the two — if I could incorporate here copious exemplification of the grotesque, the extravagant, the dreary, the inane, figments that make up the substance and mass of the Buddhist books, as represented in Mr. Hardy's scholarly translation, such exemplification alone would be sufficient to satisfy every enlightened and unprej- udiced mind concerning the enormous, the measureless, contrast that yawns between these two systems of religion. Buddhism would be seen in the comparison to have un- mistakably the character of burlesque and travesty. The sober, real, earnest quality of the Gospel histories, the moderation, in measure and in tone y with which the mirac- AS POETIZER AXD AS PAGANIZER. 99 ulous is presented, the superhuman self-restraint under which, in all respects, the writers express themselves, the intelligible adaptation of means to ends observable throughout — all these characteristics are such, in antithe- sis to the characteristics marking the Buddhist legends, that you instinctively feel the difference between the one and the other to be a difference, not in degree, but in kind. So far is the resemblance between the two sys- tems from being such as justly to stagger the faith of the Christian, the difference rather is such as tends to make the Christian's faith more firm. It would be quite like that father of lies who is revealed in the Bible as existent, and as malignantly active against our sinful race, to seek to merge and confound the truth that might save us among a thousand resemblances of error — re- semblances of error which, if not adapted quite to command our belief, are at least specious enough to involve everything else along with themselves in a common distrust and doubt. There is also — you per- ceive it all the time as you read these most mournful among the records of human device — a Mephistophelian strain of festive mockery and scorn, a leer on the face, a scoff in the voice, that compose as inseparable a trace of the devil, in the Buddhist books, as, on the other hand, in the Bible, the grave, faithful, sincere, truth-telling tone fur- nishes irrefutable evidence of the presence there of the holy and heavenly Spirit of Almighty God. It is service, not of Christ, but of the adversary rather, for any man to blur and obscure the contrast between truth that makes alive, and error that kills. Let us beware how, even un- consciously, or in the fond and vain conceit of harmless literary art, we serve the purposes of the devil and vol- unteer our feeble strength to countervail the working of that Lord Christ who will not fail nor be discouraged 100 EDWIN ARNOLD. till He have set judgment in the earth, that Lord Christ for whose law the isles, still waiting, have waited so long. Those who ally themselves with Christ will have, more surely, a longer date of human recollection in the future, than those who trust the preservation of their memory to poems in praise of a fading myth like the myth of the Buddh. How foolish to chant your ode to a meteor of the twilight, when the great sun himself already sits half -risen on the kindled limits of the morning ! Your misdirected ode might indeed conceivably live, by a virtue inherent in itself, after the flash that inspired it had faded into darkness. Such will not however be the fort- une of the " Light of Asia." That poem cannot live by Buddhism, for Buddhism swiftly perishes ; but much more it cannot live by itself, for the quick seed of decay is wrapped up inseparably in it. That the view thus suggested of the future awaiting Buddhism is not due to mere bigot and zealot blindness, the natural disqualification of a partisan Christian, let the following words, published only a few months ago in a Japanese daily newspaper, (the Jiji Shimpo, if you desire the name,) from a native writer, himself apparently Buddhist in sympathy, bear witness — I use the transla- tion furnished in the Japan Gazette, Yokohama, August 16, 1884: u ¥e regret to say it is our opinion that Buddhism cannot long hold its ground, and that Chris- tianity must finally prevail throughout all Japan. . . . Buddhism having reached the extreme of decay, in con- tending with the young, energetic Christianity, is just as if an old man at the point of death should undertake to contend with a lusty young man. Which of them would conquer, a three-year-old child could easily tell. " III. It does not belong to the plan of the present essay to go into any independent discussion of the merits of Buddh- ism. Indeed, I do not pretend to knowledge of the system adequate for such a purpose. I have simply made some predatory incursions into a field, that it would require specialist's addiction of a lifetime, and of a long lifetime, thoroughly to explore — the field of Buddhist legend and of Buddhist ethics ; a few such incursions only I have made, bringing off with me thence a small booty of results that, presented here, may help inquisitive and candid readers to reach for themselves a just conclusion as to the general trustworthiness of the representations on the subject of Buddhism expressed or implied in Mr. Arnold's " Light of Asia." A page or two back I ventured to say that Buddhism seemed to me a system possessing very much the charac- ter of a travesty of Christianity. There is resemblance, and there is difference, between the two, of just about the degree, and of just about the kind, that it would be nat- ural to expect, on the hypothesis that a consummately cunning foe to Christianity, like the devil, had had an im- portant part in contriving Buddhism. For putting salient- ly the points of coincidence between the one and the other, I cannot perhaps do better than enlist the volunteered service of Dr. O. TV. Holmes. That skilful literary workman commenced his article on the " Light of Asia," in the International Review , with the following remark- 103 , ; , 'EDWIN ARNOLD, able paragraph. One could not easily imagine anything better adapted to pique the curiosity, not to say stagger the faith, of a simple-hearted Christian reading it and thus making his first acquaintance with the ideas which it contains : "If one were told that many centuries ago a celestial ray shone into the body of a sleeping woman, as it seemed to her in her dream ; that thereupon the advent of a wondrous child was predicted by the soothsayers ; that angels appeared at this child' s birth ; that merchants came from afar, bearing gifts to him ; that an ancient recog- nized the babe as divine and fell at his feet and worshipped him ; that in his eighth year the child confounded his teachers with the amount of his knowledge, still showing them due reverence ; that he grew up full of compassion- ate tenderness to all that lived and suffered ; that to help his fellow-creatures he sacrificed every worldly prospect and enjoyment ; that he went through the ordeal of a ter- rible temptation, in which all the powers of evil were let loose upon him, and came out a conqueror over them all ; that he preached holiness and practised charity ; that he gathered disciples and sent out apostles, who spread hi3 doctrine over many lands and peoples ; that this ' Helper of the Worlds' could claim a more than earthly lineage and a lif e that dated from long before Abraham was — of whom would he think this wonderful tale was told ? Would he not say at once that this must be another version of the story of One who came upon our earth in a Syrian village, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, and died by violence during the reign of Tiberius ?" I am not engaged in criticising Dr. Holmes, and so I need not concern myself to ppint put hqw much conform- AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 103 ing of the Buddhist legend was necessary in order to make out the series of confessedly existing coincidences, in a manner so striking as is exemplified in the foregoing extract. It must at least be evident to readers, that resemblances too marked to be simply casual exist between legendary Buddhism and historical Christianity. A good- sized volume — more than one indeed — has lately been published in Germany, devoted to the purpose of dis- playing at large the coincidences between Buddhism and Christianity. A disposition evidently indulged by the writer, Rudolf Seydel, to make these coincidences numer- ous and striking, much impairs the value of the book for students in search of exact truth, truth as to the facts, and truth as to the impression legitimately produced by the facts. How the resemblances actually existing arose, it would be curious, but perhaps not very profitable, at any great length, to inquire. Professor Max Miiller, a living Orientalist of unsurpassed reputation, testifies, as I re- member an expression of his, which 1 am not at this mo- ment able to verify, that he has made it in vain a study of his lifetime to trace the historical connection between Buddhism and Christianity. Dr. Rhys Davids, another perhaps equally eminent specialist in Orientalism, gives it positively as his opinion that there is, between the two, no historical connection. The problem of account- ing for their resemblances is probably hopeless, unless indeed it has already been solved — by the hypothesis of diabolism herein suggested. 1 will not discuss the point. 1 am disposed rather, alongside of the resemblances, to show something of the differences co-existing with these. The differences and the resemblances studied together are very instructive. If there is any better hypothesis on which to account for them both at once, than the hypoth- esis of a Satanic agency in the business, why, I, for my 104 EDWIN ARNOLD, part, am not so besotted in favor of that, as not will- ingly to admit the better. Let the better be produced. Provisionally, 1 intend to hold by the Satanic theory. My readers are now entitled to get for themselves some glimpse of the reasons that I find for my view. I ask them, in examining what I shall spread before them from the Buddhist books, to consider whether it be not marked with much the character of malicious Mephistophelian mockery that should go along with literary and ethical machinations proceeding from the devil. If all is human, and nothing diabolic, in the sacred literature of Buddhism, at least the argument issuing is to me very convincing that, in the sacred literature of Christianity, with much that is human there must be mixed a large element that is authentically Divine. The chasm of contrast between the Buddhist sacred books and the Christian sacred books is too broad to stretch only from human to human. It must be, if not from partly diabolic, at least from hu- man, across to Divine. Take, for example, selected almost at random, first, a bit of highly specific description of Buddha's habitual manner of deporting himself. 1 must beg the reader to read the extract through. The quantity of this sort of thing is near- ly as important as the quality of it. Imagine this set forth in the way of spiritual edification ! Would it not be a fruitful result in character and in bearing — that which painstaking reproduction of the traits here mentioned as belonging to Buddha, might justly be expected to effectuate for any loving and venerating disciple of that sublime master ! — R. Spence Hardy's " Manual of Budh- ism," p. 384 fL : " There was a learned brahman, called Brahmayu, who " resided in the city of Mithila. To the same place came AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 105 " Gotama Budlia ; and when the brahman heard of his " arrival, knowing his fame, he commanded his disciple " Uttara to go and test his knowledge." The following is Uttara's report : " Uttara proceeded : When Budha walks, he places his 1 right foot first, whether he has been sitting, standing, ' or lying. He does not take wide strides, but walks at a 1 solemn pace ; nor does he take short steps ; even when ' late, he does not walk too quickly, but like a priest pass- ; ing along with the alms-bowl. He does not wait for the * priests when they have lagged behind ; he does not strike 1 his knees or his ankles against each other when he is ' walking; he does not lift his shoulders up, like a 1 man in the act of swimming ; nor does he throw them ' back, like the branch of a tree bent in the form of a < snare ; nor does he hold them stiffly, like a stake stuck 1 in the soft ground or a person who is afraid of falling ' when walking in a slippery place ; nor does he throw 1 them hither and thither like the movements of a doll 6 with wires. Only the lower part of his body moves ' when he walks, so that he appears like a statue in a 1 ship ; the upper part being motionless, those at a dis- ' tance cannot perceive that he moves. He does not ' throw his arms about, so as to cause perspiration or pro- 1 duce fatigue. When he wishes to see anything that is ' behind him, he does not turn his head merely, but at ' once turns round the whole body, like the royal ele- ' pliant. He does not look upward, like a man counting ' the stars, nor does he look downward, like a man search- 1 ing for some coin or other thing that he has lost. He i does not look about him, like a man staring at horses ' or elephants, nor does he look before him further than 106 EDWIN ARNOLD, " the distance of a plough or nine spans ; anything fur- " ther than this distance he sees only by his divine power, " not with the natural eye. When he enters any place, 6 ' he does not bend his body, nor carry it stiffly. When " about to sit down, moving gracefully, he does not place " himself at a greater or less distance from the seat than a " footstep ; he does not take hold of the seat with his "hand, like a person sick, nor does he go to seat him- "self like a person who has been fatigued by working, " but like a person who suspends something very carefully "or who puts down a portion of silk cotton. When " seated in any place, he does not remain doing something " foolish, like a priest playing with drops of water in the " rim of his alms-bowl, or twirling his fan. He does * ' not scrape his foot on the floor, nor does he put one "knee above the other. He does not place his chin 1 l upon his hand. He never appears as if he was in any "way afraid, or in any trouble. Some teachers, when "they see any one coming to them to make inquiries "upon religious subjects, are in doubt, not knowing " whether they will be able to answer them or not ; others "are in perplexity, not knowing whether they will " receive the necessary alms or not ; but Budha is subject " to none of these trials, as he is free from all the doubts " and fears to which others are subject. When receiving "gruel, or other liquid, he does not hold the alms-bowl ' ' too firmly, nor does he place it too high or too low, or " shake it ; holding it in both hands, he neither receives " too much nor too little, but the proper quantity. He " does not scrape the bowl when washing it, nor wash the "outside before the inside. He washes his hands at the "same time, and not after he has put down the bowl. " He does not throw the water to too great a distance ; * ' nor near his feet, so as to wet his robe. When receiving AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZEB. 107 " solid food, he holds the bowl in the same manner as when " receiving liquids. When eating, three parts are rice, " and only a fourth part condiment (curry). Some per- " sons, when eating, take more condiment than rice, and " others more rice than condiment ; but Budha never ex- " ceeds the proper proportion. The food taken into his " mouth he turns over two or three times ; not a single " grain is allowed to pass into the stomach without being " properly masticated, so that it is like flour ground in a "mill. No part is retained in his mouth ; nor does he " take more until the previous mouthful has been swallow- " ed. The dewas [supernatural beings] always give to his r< food a divine flavor, and it does not produce the same " consequences as in other men. He does not eat to " gratify his appetite, like the common people ; nor to in- " crease his size, like kings and other great ones ; nor to " render his body beautiful, like those who are licentious ; " nor to render his person agreeable, like dancers and " others. He merely eats to sustain existence, as a prop is " put to a falling house, or oil to the wheel of a wagon, or " salve to a wound, or medicine is taken by the sick, or a i l raft is used to cross the river, or a ship the sea. When he " has done eating, he does not put his alms-bowl by as if it " were a thing he cared about ; nor does he, like some per- " sons, wash it or dry it or fold it in his robe, to preserve it "from dust. His meal being finished, he remains a rao- "ment silent; unless he has to give the benediction in " favor of the person who has presented the food. There " are some priests who hurry over the bana [religious dis- u course] spoken as a benediction, if there be a child cry- " ing, or urgent business, or if they be suffering from hun- ger. There are some again who talk with the people " about sowing and ploughing, and such matters, instead of " saying bana. But Budha says it deliberately, and on no 108 EDWIN ARNOLD, ' account omits it. Nor when eating the food given him, ' does he wish for any other, or ask what kind of rice c it is, or disparage it. He does not say bana in such a way 1 as to make it appear as if he wished to be invited again ' the next day, or the day after ; nor when he sees any i one cooking does he begin to say bana with the hope 4 of receiving a portion when it is ready. Budha says bana ' that he may impart instruction. When passing from c one place to another, he does not go too fast, so as to c fatigue his attendants, nor too slowly ; but at a becom- ' ing pace. He does not let his robe come too high or ' fall too low. There are some priests who put the robe ( close to the chin, or let it come so low as to cover the ' ankles, or put it on awry, or so as not to cover the breast. ' Budha avoided these extremes ; he does not put on ' his robe so loosely as to allow it to be ruffled by the ' wind, nor so tightly as to cause perspiration. After ' walking, his feet are washed, unless he has walked 6 upon the pavement alone. lie then reflects on the in- ' spirated and expirated breath, and practises medita- 6 tion. When he enters a wihara [monastery], he de- ' livers his discourse to the priests in kindness. He ' does not address the great ones of the earth by high c titles, but speaks to them as to other men ; nor does ' he address any one in jest ; but speaks as if what he 1 says is of importance. His voice is pleasant in its tone, ' and his manner of speaking is free from hesitation ; ' his words come forth continuously, and being uttered ' from the navel they are loud, like the rolling thunder. " It will not be denied that the powers of observation possessed by the messenger in this case must have been thoroughly practiced, as well as naturally very acute. Buddha appears to have been a highly circumspect and de- AS POETIZEK AND AS PAGANIZER. 109 liberate gentleman, with many personal habits worthy, if not exactly of reverence, at least of entire approval and of general imitation. 1 hardly know, for instance, anything better for recommendation to children as a noble example of mastication in eating food, than the careful practice in this respect of Buddha. " Remember Buddha," I have heard a humorsome Christian father in America say at breakfast, with good effect, to his youngsters over-intent on satisfying at once the lusty appetite of childhood. These young people, from previous familiarity with the foregoing practical, low-flying fragment of Buddhist re- ligious lore, instantly understood the allusion intended. The admonition conveyed — owing to the brevity of the phrase, and to the muffled inward sound of the strange proper name, pronounced in a deep bass tone " from the navel," — will be found on experiment capable of being given with a very fine sombre and salutary effect. As respects the pattern furnished for posture and gesture — it must be admitted that to sit, stand, and move, with altogether the mathematical precision observed by Buddha, might occasion something a bit stiffish or so in carriage and gait ; but that surely would be better than vulgar and irreligious precipitancy. For the benefit of any ambitious American neophytes in Buddhism that may happen to do me -the honor to read my essay, 1 would particularly call attention to the sentence foregoing that 1 print in italics. It is full of marrow. Such persons as I have in mind could not do better than " reflect," after eating, on their " inspirated and expirated breath." That one hint, faithfully carried out, forms within itself a complete manual for successful introspection. The eyes should be directed somewhat downward and inward — in fact, toward the " navel." As the reflection pro- ceeds, the absorption of the subject becomes constantly 110 EDWIN" ARNOLD, more and more profound. The chin approaches the breast, the eyelids droop, the breath " reflected " upon grows delightfully regular, and the subject sinks into a suspense of consciousness closely resembling that nirvana which is his highest good. To say it all in a word, you are sound asleep before you know it. I have tried substantially this experiment scores perhaps of times, and seldom or never without gratifying results. If it fails as religion, it is sure to succeed as soporific. In sad sincerity now, compare such religious pabulum as this from the Buddhist books, with what you find in the Gospels about the behavior of Jesus. A casual coincidence between the Buddhist and the Christian records enables us to do this conveniently. John the Baptist once sent disciples of his to Jesus, and these messengers brought back to their Master a report of their observations : " "When the men were come unto him, they said, John Baptist hath sent us unto thee, saying, Art thou he that should come ? or look we for another ? And in the same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits ; and unto many that were blind he gave sight. Then Jesus, answering, said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard ; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." Is not the gulf of difference enormous ? "What do you suppose saved the Christian evangelists from lapse into the abyss of the grotesque and the inane that so swallowed up the writers of the Buddhist books ? Was it A8 POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. Ill not, partly at least, the circumstance that these men had fact, instead of fiction, to report ? I should be guilty of violating just international comity, besides exhibiting myself incapable of cosmopolitanism in spirit, were I to treat with misbecoming levity any foreign race's serious attempt to set forth, in literary representations, its ideal man. Buddha as a man, whether you regard him in the light of a real historical personage, or of a mere imaginative conception of the human mind, is in many points of his character, and at many points of his career, worthy of respect, respect tending to mount into the region of reverence. In whichever way regarded — whether as a once actually existing individual man, or as the product of a great race's best attempts at idealization of human nature — let him but be regarded simply as a man among men, and Buddha commands from me a sentiment of admiration, qualified, indeed, but sincere. But when I am asked to contemplate Buddha as author of a religion competing with Christianity for my suffrage, then I feel free to point out the ridiculousness of his claims. Everybody in America that knows anything whatever of Buddhism, knows that the doctrine of the transmigra- tion of souls is one of the distinctive features of the system. (Dr. Rhys Davids, indeed, if I understand him right, seeks to show that not true transmigration, but an endless succession of new and different beings — each in- dividual inheriting the merit or demerit acquired by his predecessor in the series — is what Buddhism teaches.) Buddha himself was entangled in the whirl and succes- sion of interminable metempsychosis. Perhaps some arithmetical reader of mine would like to know what was the approximately exact census of this particular person's alleged transmigrations of existence, previous to his final 112 EDWIN" ARNOLD, incarnation as Gantama Buddha. 1 can gratifiy him — out of Mr. Hardy. Mr. Hardy says, " Manual of Budh- ism," p. 102 : u At my request, my native pundit made an analysis of the number of times in which Gotama Bodhisat ap- peared in particular states of existence, as recorded in the Jatakas, and the following is the result. An ascetic, 83 times ; a monarch, 58 ; the dewa of a tree, 43 ; a religious teacher, 26 ; a courtier, 24 ; a prohita brahman, 24 ; a prince, 24 ; a nobleman, 23 ; a learned man, 22 ; the dewa Sekra, 20 ; an ape, 18 ; a merchant, 13 ; a man of wealth, 12 ; a deer, 10 ; a lion, 10 ; the bird hansa, 8 ; a snipe, 6 ; an elephant, 6 ; a fowl, 5 ; a slave, 5 ; a golden eagle, 5 ; a horse, 4 ; a bull, 4 ; the brahma Maha Brahma, 4 ; a peacock, 4 ; a serpent, 4 ; a potter, 3 ; an outcast, 3 ; a guana, 3 ; twice each a fish, an elephant-driver, a rat, a jackal, a crow, a wood- pecker, a thief, and a pig ; and once each a dog, a curer of snake bites, a gambler, a mason, a smith, a devil- dancer, a scholar, a silversmith, a carpenter, a water- fowl, a frog, a hare, a cock, a kite, a jungle-fowl, and a kindura. ' ' It rather discourages to have Mr. Hardy add, " It is evi- dent, however, that this list is imperfect." One would like to be sure one knew it all just right. I have myself the satisfaction of being able to supply one omission. Gautama was once a squirrel — whereby hangs a Buddhist tale now presently to follow. Yes, Dr. Holmes ! Accord- ing to the genealogy above given, Buddha could indeed " claim a more than earthly lineage and a life that dated from long before Abraham was." But the effect, how different ! of such a concatenation of pre-existences for AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 113 Buddha, and of Jesus's simple and sublime, " Before Abraham was, I am." From the moment, during any of his successive changes of form, that a being becomes a recognized and accepted candidate for future Buddhaship, he is called, Bodhisat. The Bodhisat must fulfil certain exacting conditions, which the sacred books, as translated by Mr. Hardy, " Manual of Budhism," pp. 106, 107, thus de- scribe : " 1. He must be a man and not a dewa. It is there- ' fore requisite that the Bodhisat continually keep the ' ten precepts, that he may have the merit to be born 1 as a man. 2. He must be a male, and not a female ; 1 and therefore the Bodhisat must avoid all sins that ' would cause him to be born as a woman. 3. He must ' have the merit that would enable him to become a ? rahat ; all evil desire must be destroyed. 4. There ' must be the opportunity of offering to a supreme 1 Budha, in whom also firm faith must be exercised. 5. 1 There must be the abandonment of the world, and the ' Bodhisat must become an ascetic. 6. He must possess ' the virtue derived from the practice of dhyana [a cer- 1 tain rite of Budhism] and other similar exercises, 1 nor can the assurance be received by one that is unjust 1 or wicked. 7. He must firmly believe that the 1 Budha with whom he communicates is free from ' sorrow, and that he himself will possess the same ' power ; and he must inquire at what period he will 1 receive the Buddhaship. 8. He must exercise a firm 1 determination to become a Budha ; and were he even i told that in order to obtain its exalted rank he must ' endure the pains of hell during four asankya-kap-lak- ' shas, he must be willing to suffer all this for its sake." 114 EDWIN ARNOLD, It is comfortable to know that over against these severe exactions from the Bodhisat, might be set down certain very considerable compensating advantages, thirteenin number, " Manual of Budhism," pp. 107, 108 : " 1. He is never born in any of the eight great hells ; " all other beings .receive this birth, but the Bodhisats " never. 2. He is never born in the Lokantarika hell. " 3. He is never born in the Nijhamatanha preta world. " 4. He never receives the khuppipasa preta birth, " though all other beings endure it. 5. He never re- " ceives the kalahanjanaka preta birth, though all other " beings are subject to it. 6. He is never born as any " kind of vermin ; he is never a louse, bug, ant, or " worm ; all other beings receive these births, but the " Bodhisat is never born less than a snipe ; nor is he ever ' i born as a serpent or as any other animal of a similar " species. 1. He is never born blind, dumb, deaf, a " cripple, or leprous. 8. He is never horn as a female. " 9. He is never born as one of doubtful sex. 10. lie " never commits any of the five great sins. 11. He is " never born in an arupa world, as in those states there is " no acquisition of merit. 12. There are other states of " existence in which he is not born, as the prince never " defiles his caste by entering the dwellings of common men. 13. He is never a sceptic. " a The following story, the promised story of the squirrel, is told in the Buddhist sacred books to illustrate the in- trepid resolution exhibited by Gautama Bodhisat. It will be seen from this that Buddha is not conceived of by the Buddhists as a sinless being, but as one that need- ed first to redeem himself before he could be redeemer to others. This is-a point of remove from Christianity AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 115 at which the two systems are separated by the " whole diameter of being." — " Manual of Budhism," p. 108 f. : " At a certain time Gotama Bodhisat was born as a squirrel, on account of some demerit of a former age. In the forest he was attentive to his young ones, pro- viding for them all that was necessary ; but a fearful storm arose, and the rivers overflowed their banks, so that the tree in which he had built his nest was thrown down by the current, and the little ones were carried along with it far out to sea. But Bodhisat determined that he would release them ; and for this purpose he dipped his tail in the waves, and sprinkling the water on the land, he thought in this manner to dry up the ocean. After he had persevered seven days, he was noticed by Sekra, who came to him and asked what he was doing. On being told, he said, i Good squirrel ! you are only an ignorant animal, and there- fore you have commenced this undertaking ; the sea is 84,000 yojanas in depth ; how then can you dry it up ? Even a thousand or a hundred thousand men would be unable to accomplish it, unless they were risliis.' The squirrel replied, ' Most courageous of men ! if the men were all like you, it would be just as you say, as you have let the extent of your courage be known by the declaration ; but I have no time just now to spend with such imbeciles as you, so you may be gone as soon as you please.' Then Sekra caused the young squirrels to be brought to the land, as he was struck with the indomitable courage of the parent." A good parable of spunk, this squirrel story makes, as it stands. Seven days did very well, but to me in- 116 EDWIN" ARNOLD, dividually it would be more entirely satisfactory, if the valiant little squirrel had been left to wag his tail a couple of hundred thousands of years or so, just to put his quality to proof worthy of Buddha. The very lib- eral estimates of time common in Buddhist chronology seem to warrant some such free probationary period as the one suggested. Here is a story of Buddhist consolation. I do not see that the wit of man unassisted could do better ; still, for consolation, it seems such irony, that to me I confess it reads a good deal more like the devil trying his hand at sympathy, than like that " God of all comfort" whom we know out of great-hearted Paul. The story of course is one concerning Buddha, " Manual of Budh- ism," pp. 109, 110 : " It came to pass that whilst Gotama Budha resided " in the wihara called Jetawana, near the city of Sewet, " he related the following Jataka, on account of an as- u cetic who had lost his father. In what way I Budha " having perceived that an ascetic who had lost his father " endured great affliction in consequence, and knowing " by what means he could point out the way of relief, " took with him a large retinue of priests, and proceeded " to the dwelling of the ascetic. Being honorably seat- " ed, he inquired, ' Why are you thus sorrowful, ascetic ? ' " to which the bereaved son replied, ' I am thus sorrow- " ful on account of the death of my father.' On hearing " this, Budha said, ' It is to no purpose to weep for the " dead ; a word of advice is given to those who weep " for the thing that is past and gone. ' In what manner ? " That which follows is the relation. "In a former age, when Brahmadatta was king of ' ' Benares, Bodhisat was born of a wealthy family, and AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZES. 117 " was called Sujata. The grandfather of Sujata sickened " and died, at which his father was exceedingly sorrow- " f ul ; indeed his sorrow was so great, that he removed " the hones from their burial-place, and deposited them "in a place covered with earth near his own house, 1 'whither he went thrice a day to weep. The sorrow " almost overcame him ; he ate not, neither did he drink. " Bodhisat thought within himself, that it was proper to " attempt the assuaging of his father's grief ; and there- " fore, going to the spot where there was a dead buffalo, "he put grass and water to its mouth and cried out, " ' Oh, buffalo, eat and drink ! ' The people perceived "his folly, and 6aid, ' What is this, Sujata ? Can a dead ** buffalo eat grass or drink water ? ' But without paying "any attention to their interference, he still cried out, " ' Oh, buffalo, eat and drink! ' The people concluded that " he was out of his mind, and went to inform his father ; " who, forgetting his parent from his affection for his " son, went to the place where he was, and enquired the " reason of his conduct. Sujata replied, ' There are the "feet and the tail, and all the interior parts of the " buffalo, entire ; if it be foolish in me to give grass and " water to a buffalo, dead, but not decayed, why do you, " father, weep for my grandfather, when there is no " part of him to be 6een ? ' [Greek Solon, sorrowful for " the loss of a son, to one consoling him with, * Weep- "ing will do no good,' said, ' That is what makes me " weep.' The Indian, it will be seen, was more consol- " able.] The father then said, ' True, my son ; what "you say is like the throwing of a vessel of water upon "fire ; it has extinguished my sorrow ; ' and thus say- " ing he returned many thanks to Sujata. " This Sujata Jataka is finished. 1, Budha, am the " person who was then born as the youth Sujata." 118 EDWItf ARNOLD, What a heaven of difference between this and Jesus's to Martha, " Thy brother shall rise again" ! Or Paul's to the Thessalonians : " But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus Christ died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord him- self shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God ; and the dead in Christ shall rise first ; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air ; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. "Wherefore, comfort one an- other with these words. " The difference between this and that, which every reader must feel, is not the difference between Oriental and Occidental ; for both are Oriental, the Buddhist Scripture and the Christian alike. It would be cruel to draw these contrasts, if the question were of Buddha simply as a poor Pagan groping in the dark and gath- ering dust and chaff. But Buddha is advanced now by some among us to rivalry and brotherhood with Jesus as a Saviour. It is well therefore to have the difference between the two not overlooked. Let it be seen that there is an antipathy, as well as a sym- pathy, of religions. Pathetic it is to me beyond AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 119 expression, to think of that noble and gentle spirit of ancient Indian paganism making his futile false motions to save a world, that could be saved by nothing short of a Saviour God ! Over Buddha himself one could weep, weep tears of admiration and of compassion — for his comparative moral height invites the one, while his miser- able failure compels the other ; but toward those who, dwelling in present noonday Christian light, talk, in the same breath, and with like homage, of Buddha and of Jesus, what emotion is fit ? For myself, I find it hard to refrain from an emotion that might be fit indeed toward such, were it an emotion fit toward any from disciples of Jesus. It is proper that I should make an explanation. The Buddhist stories that have here been given from Mr. Hardy's book, are from a comment on Buddha's sup- posed discourses, and not from the supposed discourses themselves. The comment, however, has been formally declared of equal authority with the discourses. It is far more popular than they, because far more entertaining, and it probably exerts quite as much teaching power. To the discourses proper we shall presently come ; but first let me still give Buddhism to my readers a little more at large, in the myths that really compose the sys- tem, as the system practically makes itself most felt in the lives of its adherents. It happened once to the much-enduring Buddha, among his many chances of transmigration, to be born monkey-king to a nation of 80,000 monkeys. Here is a sacred anecdote of Buddha in this interesting royal rela- tion of his, " Manual of Budhism," p. 116 : "In this birth, Bodhisat was the king of 80,000 " monkeys. The tribe lived in the forest of Himala 120 / EDWIN ARNOLD, " near a village, in which was a timbery tree laden with u fruit. The monkeys requested permission of their " king to go and seize the fruit ; but his majesty for- " bade them, when he learnt that the village was inhab- " ited. They, however, ascended the tree in the middle " of the night, and were busy at work, when one of the " villagers having occasion to rise, saw what they were ft about, and gave the alarm. The tree was soon sur- " rounded by people, armed with sticks, who were re- " solved to wait until the dawn, aud then kill the mon- " keys. Information was conveyed to the king that his " tribe were in this predicament ; so he immediately " went to the village, and set tire to the house of an old " woman. The people, of course, ran to extinguish the " flames, and thus the monkeys escaped." Now, does that not read like the devil himself making game of us poor human creatures willingly deluded ? True enough, if there is in fact no devil at all, why, then, of course, it easily follows that no devil at all could have had to do with this Buddhist business. But let it be supposed for the moment that the Bible tells the truth about the being of such a personage — say, does it not then seem like the very devil's own waggery, this tale of a human saviour's smartness as monkey ? There are, I understand, people of the Christian Occi- dent that have got themselves distended to liberality enough, and elated to enthusiasm enough, to become rapt disciples of Buddha. I have among my miscellanea of material gathered for this essay a newspaper paragraph of late date reciting how a Buddhist temple is about to be opened in Paris. It is the Buddhist piety, so we are given to believe, of a wealthy Englishwoman that pro- poses this work of devotion to the Indian saviour. I am AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 121 going now to introduce an extract from the Buddhist literature that may prove of practical value to any of my readers, like in faith with the aforesaid English lady, and having it in mind to attain a high degree in this attrac- tive pagan cult. I am going to introduce, translated for us by Mr. Hardy (in his " Legends and Theories of the Buddhists," p. 179 ff.), directions as to the proper steps for Buddhist votaries to take in securing final extinction of being. The passage about to be presented is conceived in a strain more serious and severe than has been illus- trated in the citations preceding. Prepare now for some- thing on which the pious soul may recruit its strength. 1 give one of the most exalted purely religious strains that I have found in Buddhist literature. This is Buddh- ism at its religious best : " The priest who intends to practise the dhydnas seeks "out a retired locality, as, the foot of a tree, a rock, a " cave, a place where dead bodies have been burned, or " an uncultivated and uninhabited part of the forest, and " prepares a suitable place with his robe or with straw. " He then seats himself, cross-legged, in an upright posi- " tion, with his mind free from attachment and all evil " thoughts, and with compassion towards all sentient " beings, putting away sluggishness and drowsiness, " possessed of wisdom and understanding, and leaving " all doubt, uncertainty, and questioning, purifies his u mind, and rejoices. Like a sick man who gains health, " he rejoices ; or a merchant who gain3 wealth, or a pris- " oner who gains liberty, or a slave who gains freedom, " or a traveller along a dangerous road who gains a " place of safety. Thus rejoicing, he is refreshed in "body; he has comfort ; and Ins mind is composed. " But he retains witairka, reasoning, and wichara, inves- 122 EDWIN" ARNOLD, " tigation. This rejoicing is diffused through his whole " body, as the wind entirely fills the bag that contains " it, or as the oil in which cotton has been dipped per- " vades every part ; it comes in contact with his " organized frame on all sides ; there is no part of his " body that does not feel it. Like an attendant who takes " a metal vessel, in which he puts some of the powder " used when bathing, and then mixes water with it, as " much as is required, working them together, within and " without, until the blending is complete ; so does this " rejoicing permeate through the whole body, and is " diffused throughout every part. " In the second dhyana, the priest has put away and " overcome reasoning and investigation, and attained to " clearness and fixedness of thought, so that his mind is " concentrated on one object, and he has rejoicing and " gladness. There is no part of him that does not enjoy " the pleasant result ; as a deep lake into which no river ' * flows, no rain falls, and no water springs up from " beneath, is filled and pervaded in every part by the " water, and is free from agitation. " In the third dhyana there is no rejoicing, no glad- u ness, and no sorrow ; but there is upekkha, tranquillity, ' c which is diffused through every part of his body, like "the water that nourishes the lotus, pervading every " part, and passing from the root to the petals, so that it " is saturated with water throughout its whole texture. " In the fourth dhyana, reasoning, investigation, joy, 1 1 and sorrow, are overcome, and he attains to freedom ' ' from attachment to sensuous objects, and has purity " and enlightenment of mind. These envelop him, as a " man when he is covered by a white cloth from head to " foot, leaving no part of his person exposed. (i The priest who has practised the four dhyanaa AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 123 ' aright has the power to bring into existence a figure ' similar to himself, with like senses and members ; but ' he knows that it is not himself, as a man who distin- 1 guishes one kind of grass from another, or a sword 1 from its scabbard, or a serpent from its cast-off skin. ' This priest has the power of irdhi, which is thus exer- 1 cised. " 1. Being one, he multiplies himself, and becomes * many ; being many, he individualizes himself, and be- ' comes one ; and he makes himself visible or invisible i at will. As one who goes into the water and comes 1 up again, so does he descend into the earth, and again ' rise out of it ; he walks on water as others walk on dry ' land ; as a bird he can rise into the air, sitting cross- ' legged ; he can feel, and touch, and grasp, the sun 6 and moon ; in any part of space, as high up as the ' brahma-lokas, he can do anything he likes with his ' body, like a potter who lias the power to fashion as he 1 likes the clay, or as a carver in ivory with his figures, ' or a goldsmith with his ornaments. " 2. By the possession of divine ears, he can distin- 1 guish the sounds made by men and dewas, that are not 1 audible to others, whether near or distant ; and he can 1 tell one sound from another, as a traveller, when he ' hears the sound of different drums and chanques, can ' distinguish the roll of the drum from the blast of the 1 trumpet, and the blast of the trumpet from the roll of ' the drum. M 3. By directing his mind to the thoughts of others, he ' can know the mind of all beings ; if there be attach- ' ment to sensuous objects, he can perceive it, and he ' knows whether it is there or not ; it is the same with 1 all other evils and ignorances ; and he knows who are ' firm or fixed, and who are unstable. This knowledge 124 edwlst arxold, 1 extends both to the rupa and arupa worlds, the worlds ' in which there is body and which there is not, and it ' obtains as to those who are about to enter nirwana, and ' are rahats. As a youth fond of pleasure, when he c looks into a mirror, or still water, learns therefrom all ' about his face and appearance, so the priest can distin- c guish the thoughts of others of whatever kind. " 4. By directing his mind to the remembrance of ' former births, he sees one, two, a hundred, a thou- 6 sand, ten thousand, and many kalpas, of existences ; 1 and thinks — I have been there, in such a place ; and ' my name, family, color, food, and circumstances, were ' of such a kind ; I went from this place, and was born ' in that place — tracing the manner of his existence 1 from one birth to another, and from one locality to ' another. As a man who has business in another ' village goes there, and on his return remembers, I ' stood there and I sat there ; there I spoke, and there i I was silent ; in the same way a man remembers his ' former births whether one thousand or ten thousand. " 5. By directing his mind to the attainment of 1 chakkhupassana-gnyana, or divine vision, he sees sen- 4 tient beings as they pass from one state of existence to ' another, and the position in which they are born, c whether they are mean or noble, ill-favored or good- ' looking. He sees that others, on account of errors ' they have embraced, or propagated, are born in hell, ' and that others again, on account of their merit and ' truthfulness, are born in some heavenly world. As a ' man with good sight, from the upper story of his ' house, sees the people in the street ; some entering ' the dwelling, and some coming out, and others riding ' in vehicles of different descriptions ; so the priest sees i the circumstances of other beings in all worlds. AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 125 " 6. By directing his mind to tlie four kinds of evil — "viz., anger, a desire for existence, ignorance, and " scepticism ; he knows that this is sorrow, this the " cause of sorrow, this the cessation of sorrow, and this " the cause of the cessation of sorrow ; and again that "this is evil, this the cause of evil, this the cessation " of evil, and this the cause of the cessation. His mind " is free from the four kinds of evil. He knows, I have M overcome the repetition of existence ; I have completed " my observance of the precepts ; that which is proper " to be done, I have done ; there is nothing further to " which 1 have to attend ; my work is completed and " ended. As a man who stands by the side of a lake, "when the water is clear and still, sees under the sur- " face different kinds of shells, stones, potsherds, and 1 ' fishes, some in motion and some at rest, and thinks, " Here are shells, here are stones, here are potsherds, " and here are fishes ; so the priest knows, I have over- " come the repetition of existence ; all that I have to do, " is done." " The above paragraphs," Mr. Hardy explains, " are taken from the Suttanta called Samanya Phala, or the advantages of the priesthood." Buddhism at its religious best, I called the foregoing extract. At its religious most characteristic, perhaps I should have said rather. The following will be by many considered better : " A rich merchant of the name of Purna had become " a convert to Buddha's teaching, and, renouncing all his " wealth, resolved to fix his abode among a neighboring "savage tribe, whom he wished to convert to the law. " Buddha at first tried to discourage him. 126 EDWIN ARNOLD, " ' The men of Sronaparanta, whither thou wilt go,' " he said to him, ' are violent, cruel, furious, and iusolent. " When thej utter wicked, gross, and insolent words to " thy face, when they grow angry with thee and abuse " thee, what wilt thou think ? ' " ' This is what 1 will think,' replied Purna, ' these " men are certainly good and kind, who do not strike " me either with their hands or with stones.' " ' But if they strike thee with their hands and with " stones, what wilt thou think of them ? ' " ' 1 will think that they are good and kind, as they " do not strike me with the sword.' " 'But if they strike thee with sticks or with the " sword, what wilt thou think of them ? ' " * I will think them good and kind, as they do not " take my life.' " ( But if they take thy life, what wilt thou think of "them?' " ' I will think the men of Sronaparanta good and "kind, to deliver me with so little pain from this body " full of vileness.' " c It is well,' replied Buddha, ' with such perfect " patience thou canst live among the Sronaparantas. Go " then, O Purna, delivered thyself, deliver others ; thy- "self arrived on the other shore, bring others there; "thyself consoled, do thou console; thyself arrived at "Nirvana, teach others the way.' " Purna, thus encouraged, went to dwell among that " tribe, and by his gentleness and resignation won them "from their savage customs to the law." The Rev. John Robson makes the foregoing contribu- tion to our fund of Buddhist anecdote. I take it from his " Hinduism and its Relations to Christianity." He AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 12? acknowledges, however, his indebtedness to M. St. Hilaire for this pretty garnish of story. M. St. Hilaire is a writer of excellent rank, but he is a Frenchman. Frenchmen love to tell a story well, and they know how. The present story lost nothing of point and feeling in passing through M. St. Hilaire's hands. Whether or not true (genuinely Buddhist it certainly is, for Mr. Hardy also has it, p. 268 — in a much less rhetorical form), at least it must be confessed well invented. Let us Christians be braced by it. IV. We have played long enough about the outside and border of Buddhism. Let us see if we can find our way into the heart of the system. It will be desirable to learn whether the " benignity" of its influence is, from its inherent, its inseparable character, likely to have been, and to be, such as Mr. Arnold represents it. As a religion, Buddhism is mysticism, if it is any- thing. God in it there is none. It is an infinitely tedious series of self -manipulations. You do not get out of yourself. You only get, as it were, more deeply into yourself. There is no hnman immortality in the system. The highest aim you have, as the object of a " universal hope," is to stop being. To be or not to be, that is not the question with the Buddhist. The Buddhist has that point settled for him out of hand and peremptorily. Existence to him is one long succession of ills. From these ills the sole escape is annihilation. " Sad cure" I This, in short, is Buddhism — the religious system. It is atheism — it is pessimism. Where, then, lies the merit of Buddhism ? Or has it no merit ? Yes, assuredly it has merit. But not as a religion. As a religion, it can have no merit, for it is not a religion. Essentially, it is a denial of the possi- bility of religion. Religion requires a god, and, as I have said, there is in Buddhism no god. But without being a religion, Buddhism is highly ethical. The ethics of Buddhism are, for us Occidentals, the heart of the system. Let us examine its ethics. EDWIN ARNOLD. 129 Without independent examination of my own, from prepossession merely, I was inclined beforehand to make, on the score of its ethics, large concessions to Buddhism. To that extent the influence now strangely everywhere abroad in the air, had wrought with me. 1 was willing — as, from what I had seen in writers, Christian, some of them, on comparative religion, I supposed myself war- ranted — to say that, beyond perhaps any other pagan race, the Indian people had, in Buddhism, shown for us the utmost capacity belonging to the unassisted human reason and conscience for the apprehension and discrim- ination of moral truth. What was not accomplished by Buddha in this field, would, I had thus presumed it safe to say, be found beyond the reach of human powers to accomplish. Buddha, in my preconception, was a great, perhaps — inspired peers apart — unequalled, ethical teach- er. His system of morality, both for height and for com- prehension, I was quite ready to regard as almost a mir- acle of human achievement. I found it agreeable to indulge these prepossessions. 1 love to be just, and I love to admire. I went farther, and said with myself, To the extent to which we may assume the Buddha of the legends to be a real personage, probably Buddha himself was the peer of the highest, the peer of Socrates, if not in intellectual, certainly in moral, character. If 1 did not go on to comparing him even with Jesus, it was because, as between Buddha and Jesus I felt the difference to be a difference less of degree, than of kind. For comparison, there need to be brought together individuals of the same kind. All this was before I had made independent inquisi- tion of my own into the essential character of Buddhist morality. I lament to say that I am forced now to take a much less favorable view of the system. 130 EDWIN" ARNOLD, Of the system, I say ; for, in seeking to do justice to Buddha, the man, as teacher of morals, I am con- fronted with an insurmountable difficulty. Let it be supposed certain that such a personage once existed, still there exists no trustworthy and authoritative repository of Buddha's ethical teaching. We only know what Buddhism teaches. We cannot know what Buddha taught. Buddha, if he lived at all, lived, say, fire hun- dred years before Christ. This is the highest antiquity that the best authorities will admit for Buddha. Two hundred years elapsed after he died, before his teachings were committed to writing. During this long interval, his teachings were preserved only in the memory of his disciples. The form, therefore, in which they now exist is a form possessing no just claim to be considered authentic. This is not a derogation from Buddhism. It is simple recognition of a fact. The fact is not, I believe, disputed by any one. The contrast is thus seen to be broad between the record of what Buddha taught and the record of what Jesus taught. The Gospels were, by general consent, the product of an age in which actual witnesses of the life of Jesus still moved among men. The character of the two records differs corre- spondingly. There is something fixed and definite in the narrative of the Gospels. In the legends of Buddha, everything is shadowy and vague. 1 can only try to be perfectly fair to Buddha the man. I am sure that, pro- vided my English authorities give me safe translations, I can, w T ith good endeavor, succeed in being perfectly fair to Buddhism, the system. The good endeavor at least shall not be wanting. I first give that ostensible compend, in metre, of the ethical system of Buddhism, with which Mr. Arnold closes his report of the discourse of Buddha contained in AS POETIZER AND AS PAGAN1ZER. 131 the last book of the u Light of Asia." The couplets, as will be seen, are characterized by a peculiar simplicity which it requires much discernment on the reader's part to distinguish from the quality of mere and pure doggerel : " Kill not— for pity's sake — and lest ye slay The meanest thing upon its upward way. " Give freely and receive, but take from none By greed, or force, or fraud, what is his own. " Bear not false witness, slander not, nor lie ; Truth is the speech of inward purity. " Shun drugs and drinks which work the wit abuse ; Clear minds, clean bodies, need no Soma juice. " Touch not thy neighbor's wife, neither commit Sins of the flesh unlawful and unfit." Whatever may be thought of this as poetry, it cer- tainly reads very well as morality. But let us see. In Mr. Hardy's " Manual of Budhism," confessed to be a trustworthy source of knowledge respecting the system, the concluding section, upward of fifty large and closely printed pages, is devoted to the subject of " The Ethics of Buddhism." Here we have what I believe to be faithful translations from the very text of the Buddh- ist books current in Ceylon, a representative Buddhist country — books constituting for that country the accepted canon of Buddhist sacred literature. We seem as little liable as, in the nature of things, we could hope to be, to do Buddhism any wrong, if we try Buddhist morality by its own supposed original expression. (What we shall do will be something like what it would be to try the Bible by our English version. For the Singhalese Buddhist books are translated by Mr. Hardy from a Pali original.) I go to the Buddhist decalogue, as we may call a list 132 EDWIN ARNOLD, of ten prohibitions that sum up, for Buddhists, the main points of moral obligation. There is really no such striking analogy, even superficial analogy, existing be- tween Moses and Buddha, as my use of the word deca- logue might seem to imply. Still, as the parallel is sometimes assumed, 1 have no objection to adopting it here, at least in name. In the first place, there is no mention of God in the Buddhist decalogue, none indeed anywhere in Buddhist literature. And God is not present silently in Buddh- ism, any more thau he is present there by open men- tion. As 1 have said, I say again, Buddhism knows no God. In the Buddhist decalogue, therefore, there is nothing whatever to correspond to the " first table" so- called of the Mosaic Ten Commandments. The first one among Buddha's ten prohibitions is of the taking of life. No life is to be taken. The Mosaic prohibition is in form similarly universal and absolute, " Thou shalt not kill." But the Mosaic prohibition is, by abundant context, qualified and limited, so that we know it relates to the taking of human life only, and only to the wrongful taking of human life. Moses was a legislator as well as a moralist. Under his code, human life might rightfully be taken in penalty for crime. Buddha, on the other hand, was purely a moral teacher. He taught morality under no sense of practical responsibility as a civil ruler. His prohibition of the taking of life made, therefore, so far as in Mr. Hardy's exhibition appears, no allowance for cases of capital pun- ishment by process of law. He prohibited absolutely and universally all taking of life, — of human life not only, but of animal life of every kind and every degree. Under the aegis of this indiscriminate prohibition, the smallest insect was as safe as the most exalted man — theo- AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 133 retically. (Practically, the most exalted man was hardly more safe than the smallest insect. This of course exag- gerates — as, said here, it also anticipates.) What a mild and peaceful world it would be — the world that would result from obedience to Buddha ! But stay, what about noxious creatures— insects, beasts, or reptiles ? These all could hardly be relied upon to obey Buddha in his precept against the taking of life, and they might even prey upon obedient and therefore unresisting, men, women and children. No matter — life was not to be taken. After all, then, the world would not be quite Eden come again, under such an arrange- ment. That I do not misrepresent the Buddhist teach- ing on this point, the following illustration, supplied in the text itself that accompanies to explain and enforce the precept, sufficiently witnesses/' Manual of Budhism," p. 480 : " In the village of Wadhamdna, near Danta, there " was an upasaka who was a husbandman. One of his " oxen having strayed, he ascended a rock that he might " look for it ; but whilst there he was seized by a ser- " pent. He had a goad in his hand, and his first im- " pulse was to kill the snake ; but he reflected that if he " did so he should break the precept that forbids the " taking of life. He therefore resigned himself to " death, and threw the goad away ; no sooner had he " done this, than the snake released him from its grasp, " and he escaped. Thus, by observing the precept, his " life was preserved from the most imminent danger.' ' Now, at first blush it might seem a merely harmless Quixotism of benevolence, for a moral teacher to run into such extravagances in prohibition of the taking of 134 EDWIN" ARNOLD, life. But a little reflection serves to show that moral inculcation wildly extravagant enough to be manifestly impracticable, ceases to be moral, and becomes flagrantly immoral, in tendency. In tendency immoral, — for my remark impugns not the good motive, but only the good sense, of Buddha. (If the devil were supposed really the moralist — the devil, masking under the per- sonality of Buddha — my remark would not impugn his good sense. The practical working of a moral system extravagant to the degree of impossibility, would be something exactly suited to the devil's thwarting pur- pose.) The crime of murder may, according to Buddha, be " committed by the body, as when weapons are used ; by word, as when a superior commands an inferior to take life ; or by the mind, as when the death of another is desired." Is not this last deep-going ? Listen again : " This crime is committed, not only when life is actually taken, but also when there is the indulgence of hatred or anger." Does not Buddha, in these expressions, strike a note strangely in chord with the profound morality of the New Testament ? Assuredly, should one cull and sever out only these, with kindred expressions — they are not many — and display them as characteristic and repre- sentative of Buddha, the natural effect would be to set Buddhism, before readers not otherwise more fully in- formed, in an apparent equality of competition with Christianity. But now take in connection with these searchingly spiritual pronunciations of Buddha, the casuistry that in the text where they occur accompanies and interprets them. Remember too that it is not of human murder that they speak, but of the taking of life in general. I have given my very closest candid atten- tion to that whq}e portion of Hardy's pfyapterj M The AS POETIZER AtfD AS PAGANIZER. 135 Ethics of Budhism," which treats of this subject ; and if the total resultant tendency of the doctrine be not, at best, pure nullity as to morals, then 1 am entirely at fault in judging of it. At best, I say, nullity — for at its nat- ural worst, the tendency would, I should decide, be positively immoral, and immoral in the highest degree. But my readers shall see and decide for themselves (p. 479): ' ' If the person who is , killed is the person who was " intended to be slain, the crime of murder has been " committed ; but if it is intended to take the life of a 1 ' particular person, by throwing a dart, or javelin, and u the weapon kill another, it is not murder. If it is in- tended to take life, though not the life of any partic- " ular person, and life be taken, it is murder. When a " blow is given with the intention of taking life, whether " the person who is struck die at that time or afterwards, " it is murder. " When a command is given to take the life of a par- " ticular person, and that person is killed, it is murder ; " but if another person be killed instead, it is not " murder. When a command is given to take the life " of a person at a particular time, whether in the morn- " ing or in the evening, in the night or in the day, and " he be killed at the time appointed, it is murder ; but " if he be killed at some other time, and not at the time " appointed, it is not murder. When a command is " given to take the life of a person at a particular place, " whether it be in the village, or city, or desert, on land, u or on water, and he be killed at the place appointed, " it is murder ; but if he be killed at some other place, " and not at the place appointed, it is not murder. " When a command is given to take the life of a person 136 EDWIN - ARNOLD, " in a particular position, whether it be walking, stand- t{ ing, sitting, or lying down, and he be killed whilst in " the position appointed, it is murder ; but if he be " killed whilst in some other position, and not in the " position appointed, it is not murder. When a com- " mand is given to take the life of a person by a par- " ticular weapon, whether it be sword or spear, and he " be killed by the weapon appointed, it is murder ; but " if he be killed by some other weapon, and not by the " weapon appointed, it is not murder." Now, maturely consider the foregoing. Observe how the severely high saying that murder is committed " when the death of another is desired," must be joined with, " If it is intended to take the life of a particular person . . . and the weapon kill another, it is not murder" — also with, " To constitute the crime of taking life . . . the life must be actually taken" (said elsewhere in close connection) — observe, I say, these confusing inconsisten- cies and contradictions jumbled inextricably together, and, tell me, what wholesome binding force for the conscience is left inhering in the doctrine ? Then, since to constitute the crime of murder, there must be con- curring of time, place, posture, circumstance, exactly as preconceived and predetermined by the person intend- ing the crime, what loophole, 1 ask, of escape from murderer's guilt could be desired by a murderer, that is not here abundantly provided ? Dull of wit, indeed, would the murderer be who, under such provisions as these, could not accomplish his murderous design with- out incurring the guilt of a murderer. I submit that the logical, the inevitable, practical result of such morality would be immeasurably to cheapen human life. This from antecedent probability inhering in the nature AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 137 of the case, and without reference to the historical facts bearing on the point ; but the historical facts most im- pressively agree. China is largely a Buddhist country ; and where is human life so abominably, so unutterably, cheap and vile as in China ? Thoughtful readers will not fail to perceive, in the melancholy casuistical hypotheses and determinations that thus conspire to make void the Buddhist precept against murder, a strange parallel — by anticipation — for Jesuit- ism. The fredkishness of Buddhist ethics is by no means a harmless trait. It is in fact almost as confusing and de- moralizing as are the more positive faults of the system. Take for example this (p. 478) : "When the life of a man is taken, the demerit in- " creases in proportion to the merit of the person slain ; " but he who slays a cruel man has greater demerit than u he who slays a man of a hind disposition." I have by no means fully represented, nay, I have not even at all adequately hinted, the foolishness of casuistry to which Buddhism condescends. "Condescends," I have said, but " condescends" is not the proper word to describe the relation held by Buddhism, as a total system, toward the wretched casuistry of Buddhist ethics. The relation is rather that of natural level between the one and the other. The casuistry suits exactly the trifling char- acter of the system taken as a whole. This trifling char- acter I am aware that 1 have not certified to the reader by sufficient citations. The sole reason for this default on my part has been a consideration of mercy toward the reader. To do justice to the topic by citations would involve the transfer to these pages of an intoler- 138 EDWIN ARNOLD, able mass of grotesque, but unamusing, frivolity, be- yond the power of the Occidental imagination, without dreary experience of it, to conceive. It was simply and peremptorily impossible to undertake an exhibition, in anything like its own redundant volume, of this element in Buddhism. The reader must take it on trust. Re- fusal so to take it would be severely punished by coercion to go through the proof that might be intermi- nably submitted. I repeat, that the sorry, and often worse than sorry, casuistry of Buddhist ethics is only in too good keeping with the mocking and cheating essential character of Buddhism as a system. Extraordinary is the contrast at this point between Buddhism and Christianity. Buddha would seem to have delighted in being drawn out, whether by disciple or by adversary, into trains of casuistical and sophistical refining. The firm refraining and refusing, of Christ and of his apostles, to yield to temptations of this sort, whether the temptations proceeded from within or from without, might escape our admiration but for the foil of contrast presented in false religious teachers like Buddha. There were not wanting occasions to Jesus. The Samaritan woman who met him at the well evidently sought to draw the Jewish stranger into a wrangle of words. Jesus declined the challenge by holding her firmly to the point that she found so disturbing to her own peace of conscience. I will not deny nor ignore that Buddha himself seemed sometimes to know how to be wisely reticent. But Jesus never, the apostles — after being inspired — never, forgot themselves. " How often shall we forgive V asked they once of their Master. What a tempting opportunity for supposing cases, for drawing distinctions, for introducing qualifications ! AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 139 " Till seven times? 1 ' asked Peter, drawing, as lie evidently thought, a very long bow. M I say not until seven times, but until seventy times seven," was the answer that estopped question, and left the teaching solidly stronger than before. u Shall we give tribute to Caesar?" " Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." How different this in moral impression from wire-drawing casuistry ! ' ' Who is my neighbor ?" asked of J esus certain who thus sought escape from the inevitable application to themselves of an unwelcome teaching of his. No nice definitions did Jesus vouchsafe. "With parable instead, he taught that, for purposes of moral obligation, any one was your neighbor whom you had it in your power to serve. Now, consider that this Syrian teacher was but a young man, with little experience of life and less com- munion of books, (apart from the Old Testament), to make him wise, and how do you account for it that such a difference stretches between him and Buddha, the two being compared as to their moral wisdom and as to their power of influencing the world ? What made that in- experienced young Syrian, author of no book, holder of no political, no social, position, doer of no remarkable deed (his miracles being set aside), simply speaker of chance words dropped here and there to people that did not understand them, that would not report them, that could not report them, or that could only misreport them — what, 1 ask, made this young Syrian, who summed up in three short years his whole life before the public, closing it with an ignominious death — what made Jesus the lord of the world, the lord of the foremost part of the world, that he has been ? Was it that he was but such another as the mythical Buddha ? This wanders. Let us return. We were observing 140 EDWIN ARNOLD, the absence of casuistry in the ethics of Christianity, as contrasted with the presence, and abundance, and mis- chievous character, of casuistry in Buddhism. Christian morality at least does not confuse itself, defeat itself, first with absurd exaggerations, and then with absurd extenuations, of requirement, or perhaps with subtle qualifying clauses ; and this, as has been seen, in its article on life-taking, and as I am about to show, in its article on lying, Buddhism undeniably does. Such as I have shown it, then, seen partially indeed, but seen truly in its own light, is the vaunted morality of Buddhism. Buddha's precept against killing forms an important portion of ' ' that wisdom which, ' ' as Mr. Arnold's Buddhist votary could say, " hath made our Asia mild !" Asiatic " mildness !" The pages of history, ancient and modern alike, furnish what a com- mentary on that word in that combination ! I do not pretend, I do not, for my argument, need to pretend, that as matter of cause and effect Buddhism produced Asiatic " mildness." But I submit that to such a cause it logically belonged to produce such an effect. There is another trait of Asiatic and specifically of Hindu character, not less distinctive than its " mild- ness." If the Hindu is " mild," he is, also and equally, truth-loving and truth-telling. To drop our sad irony, the Hindus are reputed to be in character both cruel and de- ceitful. We have already examined Buddhist morality in its relation to crime against life. Let us proceed to ex- amine it in its relation to crime against truth. We shall find here somewhat the same mingled character of good and bad, of bad defeating the good, bad turning the good into its own nature, as was observable in the Buddh- ist teaching on murder. First, however, perhaps my readers ought to see what sanctions in the way of prom- AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 141 ised reward, Buddha propounds, to secure obedience of the precept respecting the taking of life (p. 482) : " He who keeps the precept which forbids the taking " of life will be thus rewarded : — He will afterwards be " born with all his members perfect ; he will be tall and ' ' strong, and put his feet firmly to the ground when he " walks ; he will have a handsome person, a soft and clear " skin, and be fluent in speech ; he will have the respect " of his servants and friends ; he will be courageous, " none having the power to withstand him ; he will not " die by the stratagem of another ; he will have a large " retinue, good health, a robust constitution, and enjoy " long life." Lying is forbidden in Buddhist ethics, The following explanation is added : " Four things are necessary to constitute a lie : " 1. There must be the utterance of the thing that is " not. 2. There must be the knowledge that it is not. " 3. There must be some endeavor to prevent the person " addressed from learning the truth. 4. There must be " the discovery by the person deceived that what has been "told him is not true." — Hardy's " Manual of Budh- ism," p. 486. I have italicized the pregnant particular that closes the series of four things mentioned as necessary to constitute a lie. "What do my readers say to it ? 1 do not wonder that Mr. Hardy felt it necessary to support himself in his translation by giving in connection, for comparison by Singhalese scholars, the original phrase that expressed so incredible a sentiment. Dr. Khys Davids, in his com- 142 EDWIN" ARNOLD, pact and summary compend of Buddhism, having stated the bare precepts of morality inculcated by the system, remarks that the precepts are accompanied with such comments and explanations as moralists usually add to their injunctions ! It would seem that his vigilance must have winked, when he read the monstrous state- ment foregoing that I have italicized. And that state- ment has curiously escaped the attention of every admir- ing writer on comparative religion that 1 have found praising the exalted morality of Buddhism. Look at the statement again, and yet again. Ponder it well, and see if the gist of the matter be not this : You must not lie, but if you lie well enough not to be found out, you have not lied ! Who is there, pray, that lies expecting to be found out ? A premium is here put, not upon telling the truth, but upon lying expertly. It is like the case of the Spartan boys brought up to steal, and to think stealing disgraceful only when found out. I ask now, what would be the natural, the legitimate, the inevitable, ten- dency of such doctrine on the subject of lying ? Would it not be to produce a race of liars ? That in fact the Hindus are a race of liars, it is not mine to assert. 1 have no personal knowledge. That they have the repu- tation of being such, is as well known as is anything else whatever respecting the Hindus. I beg to have it stead- ily borne in mind that I charge upon no particular man, certainly not upon Gautama Buddha, the origination of the foregoing monstrous doctrine about what is necessary to constitute a lie. The doctrine may not be the doctrine of Buddha, but it is the doctrine of Buddhism ; and I in- sist that on Buddhism its own proper responsibility shall abide. That is an inseparable part of Buddhist morality. Let Buddhist morality swim, if it can, with such a mill- stone tied, in a knot that none will untie, about its neck. AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 143 But the doctrine revolts so ; it is almost impossible to believe it ever was taught. Is there not some possible ex- planation of the text that will avoid the doctrine ? May not the text mean only, You must not impute a lie, un- less you are sure f 1 answer, That is a violently improb- able interpretation to put upon the language employed. To me it seems an entirely inadmissible interpretation. But, even let it be admitted, the pernicious practical re- sult of the teaching would still be the same ; for the more natural interpretation would be certain to prevail. And 1 am dealing throughout with the moral tendency of a system, not with the moral purpose of a man. Would my readers like to see what inducements Buddha held out to disciples to secure their heed of his precept against lying ? Here they are. It will be ob- served that they chiefly respect personal appearance. Opinions will probably vary as to the degree of per- suasive effect to be justly expected from the rewards thus annexed to truth-telling. The rewards would have to operate against heavy counter inducements. There would be, in a case of temptation to depart from the truth, first the obvious present advantages to be hoped for from successful lying. There would then be joined the con- sideration, that in case the lie were successful, there would in fact be no lie at all. Again, unquestionably there would be the sceptical doubt in many minds whether the rewards promised were altogether as certain as they were desirable. But see here the rewards, such as they are (p. 488) : "He who keeps the precept that forbids the uttering " of that which is not true will in future births have all " his senses perfect, a sweet voice, and teeth of a proper "size, regular and clean ; he will not be thin, nor too 144 EDWIN ARNOLD. " tall nor too short ; his skin will smell like the lotus ; " he will have obedient servants and his word will be " believed ; he will have blue eyes, like the petal of ' ' the nelum, and a tongue red and soft like the petal of " the piyum ; and he will not be proud, though his " situation will be exalted." "Would you look with high confidence to see a race of truth-tellers bred on such moral teaching accompanied with such sanctions ? Would you not, on the whole, have more hope from the " Lie not one to another," " Speak every man truth with his neighbor," of Paul, backed up with wholesome " terrors of the Lord," such as, " Liars shall have their portion in the lake that burnetii with fire and brimstone" ? Historically, have not the results, under the latter influence, been better ? Y. I reach a point at which I find myself extremely em- barrassed. 1 am very loath to appear in the character of an evil speaker against a great mass of my fellow- creatures. Certainly I bear no ill-will against my brethren, the Hindus. I wish them only well. 1 wish them well to the extent of wishing them rid of every- thing wrong in their character. They are no longer Buddhists now. But they have exchanged Buddhism for what is equally bad, Brahmanism — equally bad or worse. They need Christianity. I am for giving them Christianity. 1 should like myself to exemplify and recommend Christianity in my manner of speaking of the Hindus here. How shall I do this ? By speaking the truth, and speaking it in love, is the express reply of Christianity itself. I will try to speak the truth, and I will promise to speak it in love. It is not then, as I believe, the truth, to say, with Mr. Edwin Arnold, of the Hindus, that their " most char- acteristic' J traits are due to the ''benign influence" of Buddhism, or to any "benign" influence whatever. The Hindus, like the rest of mankind, apart from the regenerating power of Christianity, are a depraved and wicked race. I do not say, I do not suppose, they are naturally more depraved and wicked than their brethren of other races. But they are not less so. The particular forms of their depravity and wickedness are perhaps different ; but whatever the difference, as it is not against them, so also it is not in their favor. 146 EDWIN ARNOLD, I say, the most characteristic traits of the Hindus are not due to the " benign influence" of Buddhism. They may not be due to any influence at all of Buddhism. Buddhism may be the product, rather than the producing cause, in the case. Buddhism very likely reflected the " most characteristic" traits of the Hindus, more than it created those traits. But at any rate there is a remark- able correspondence between the " most characteristic" Hindu traits and Buddhism. If any average person of intelligence were asked to name two traits of national character attaching by eminence to the Hindus, he would, I suppose, not hesi- tate a moment to say, as I have myself already virtually said, Deceit and cruelty. If further asked to give his authority, he might be less prompt with his answer. He might be reduced to answer, Common fame. That authority shall not be permitted to do for us here. We will demand in the way of testimony something more solid than common fame. The great work on the history of India, British India, is nearly seventy years old. The fact fhat, though thus old in date, and though challenged by numerous more recent competitors, it still keeps the field against them all as the standard work on the subject, sufficiently attests its high character. The author was James Mill, father to John Stuart Mill, but a man of much larger calibre than his more freshly famous, though not more famous, son. James Mill was a free spirit, not a Chris- tian, indeed a foe to Christianity, but for all that a man of high moral tone. While undoubtedly, on topics that engaged his moral sentiments, he wrote with some heat, he was truthful in aim, and he took great pains to be true in fact. 1 have examined with some care the long chapter in his History, in which Mill describes the Hindu AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 147 character. It is a dreadful indictment against the Indian race. Mill writes from . personal knowledge, for he was a long time in India, but he supports his indict- ment with ample confirmatory evidence from many different authorities. However, in order that what Mill says may be seen under a light the most favorable to the Hindus, 1 introduce it here, not directly from his own pages, but from the pages of Monier Williams's " India and the Indians,' ' p. 358, where it stands prefaced with a protest from this later and less passionate writer : u The great historian Mill, whose ' History of India ' is still a standard work, has done infinite harm by his unjustifiable blackening of the Indian national character. He has declared (I quote various statements scattered through his work) that ' the superior castes in India are generally depraved, and capable of every fraud and villainy ; that they more than despise their inferiors, whom they kill with less scruple than we do a fowl ; that the inferior castes are profligate, guilty on the slightest occasion of the greatest crimes, and degraded infinitely below the brutes ; that the Hindus in general are devoid of every moral and religious principle ; cunning and deceitful, addicted to adulation, dissimulation, deception, dishonesty, falsehood, and perjury ; disposed to hatred, revenge, and cruelty ; indulging in furious and malig- nant passions, fostered by the gloomy and malignant principles ; perpetrating villainy with cool reflection ; indolent to the point of thinking death and extinction the happiest of all states ; avaricious, litigious, insensible to the sufferings of others, inhospitable, cowardly ; con- temptuous and harsh to their women, whom they treat as slaves ; eminently devoid of filial, parental, and conjugal affection.' ' ? 148 EDWIN ARNOLD, Such is James Mill's judgment of the Hindu char- acter. The point on which he thus pronounces is, how- ever, an interesting one, and important. Some further attention to it may serve to throw a needed light upon the trustworthiness of Mr. Arnold as guide to correct views of the subject which, in his poem, he undertakes to treat. I therefore add here one or two extracts from other sources of information. Spry, in his " Modern India," vol. 2, p. 4, holds the following language : " I next proceed to offer some remarks on the present condition of the national character ; and, bad as every one must allow it to be, I do not consider it deserving that unqualified censure which has been so lavishly heaped upon it. With every respect for the authority of so great a name as Mill, 1 must say, that the conduct which has given occasion for the severity of his remarks, is not so much attributable, as he would lead us to sup- pose, to the inherent bad qualities of the mind of the people themselves, as to the selfish and unhealthy form of government under which they have been nurtured.' ' Spry further tells us, that "in a more favorable state of the human mind, that large portion of the field of action which it is impossible to reach with the terrors of the law, is protected by the sentiments of the people themselves ; but in India there is no moral character. Sympathy and antipathy are distributed by religious, not by moral, judgment. Ignorance, and its concomitant, gross superstition, an implicit faith in the efficacy of prayers, charms, and magic ; selfishness, low cunning, litigiousness, avarice, revenge, disregard for truth, and indolence, are the principal features to be traced." AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 149 "William Ward was one of that immortal triumvirate, Carey, Marshman, and Ward, who began the modern era of missions. He spent nearly a quarter of a century in immediate contact with the people of India, and he thus speaks of them : " The Kev. Mr. Maurice seems astonished that a people, so mild, so benevolent, so benignant as the Hindoos, ' who (quoting Mr. Orme) shudder at the very sight qf blood,' should have adopted so many bloody rites. But are these Hindoos indeed so humane ? — these men, and women too, who drag their dying relations to the banks of the river at all seasons, day .and night, and expose them to the heat and cold in the last agonies of death, without remorse ; — who assist men to commit self- murder, encouraging them to swing with hooks in their backs, to pierce their tongues and sides, to cast them- selves on naked knives, to bury themselves alive, throw themselves into rivers, from precipices, and under the cars of their idols ; — who murder their own children, by burying them alive, throwing them to the alligators, or hanging them up alive in trees for the ants and crows before their own doors, or by sacrificing them to the Ganges ; who burn alive, amidst savage shouts, the heart- broken widow, by the hands of her own son, and with the corpse of a deceased father ; — who every year butcher thousands of animals, at the call of superstition, covering themselves with their blood, consigning their carcases to the dogs, and carrying their heads in triumph through the streets ? — Are these ' the benignant Hindoos ' ? — a people who have never erected a charity school, an almshouse, nor an hospital ; who suffer their fellow- creatures to perish for want before their very doors, re- fusing to administer to their wants while living, or to 150 EDWIN" ARNOLD, inter their bodies, to prevent their being devoured by vultures and jackals, when dead ; who, when the power of the sword was in their hands, impaled alive, cut off the noses, the legs, and arms of culprits ; and inflicted punishments exceeded only by those of the followers of the mild, amiable, and benevolent Boodhu, in the Burman empire ! and who, very often, in their acts of pillage, murder the plundered, cutting off their limbs with the most cold-blooded apathy, turning the house of the murdered into a disgusting shambles ! — Some of these cruelties, no doubt, arise out of the religion of the Hindoos, and are the poisoned fruits of superstition, rather than the effects of natural disposition ; but this is equally true respecting the virtues which have been so lavishly bestowed on this people. At the call of the ehastru, the Hindoo gives water to the weary traveller during the month Voishakhu ; but he may perish at his door without pity or relief from the first of the following month, no reward being attached to such an act after these thirty days have expired. He will make weeds, pools of water, and build lodging-houses for pilgrims and travellers ; but he considers himself as making a good bargain with the gods in all these transactions. It is a fact, that there is not a road in the country made by Hindoos except a few which lead to holy places ; and had there been no future rewards held out for such acts of merit, even these would not have existed. Before the kulee-yoogu it was lawful to sacrifice cows ; but the man who does it now is guilty of a crime as heinous as that of killing a braurhun : he may kill a buffalo, how- ever, and Doorga will reward him with heaven for it. A Hindoo, by any direct act, should not destroy an in- sect, for he is taught that God inhabits even a fly ; but it is no great crime if he should permit even his cow to AS TOETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 151 perish with hunger ; and he beats it without mercy, though it be an incarnation of Bhuguvutee — it is enough, that he does not really deprive it of life ; for the in- dwelling Brumhu feels no stroke but that of death. The Hindoo will utter falsehood that would knock down an ox, and will commit perjuries so atrocious and dis- gusting, as to fill with horror those who visit the courts of justice ; but he will not violate his shastru by swear- ing on the waters of the Ganges. ' ' The Duke of Wellington/' truth -lover," "who never spoke against a foe," is quoted as saying of the Hindus (" Supplementary Despatches," 1797-1805) : " They are the most deceitful, mischievous race of people that 1 have ever seen or heard of. 1 have not yet met with a Hindu who had one good quality." I repeat that I, of course, on the subject of Hindu character, know nothing at all of my own personal knowledge. Anxious, however, not to misrepresent, I have carefully considered what Professor Max Muller in his "India: What Can it Teach Us?" under title " Truthful Character of the Hindus," is able, as advo- cate, to say on behalf of clients believed by him to be so unjustly accused. Professor Muller has produced an elaborate piece of special pleading ; but he has not, so it seems to me, materially changed the state of the evidence. However, it is not the Hindu national character that I am principally examining. Whether the reputation borne by the Hindus for lying be deserved or not, matters little to my main contention. All I need to say is that if, on the one hand, they did indeed become the liars they are generally and, as 1 believe, justly re- puted to be, that result was but the quite natural fruit of 152 EDWIN ARNOLD. Buddhist teaching on this central point in morals ; and if, on the other hand, they remained steadily truthful, it was in spite of ethical doctrine directly tending to make them false. Buddhism has been tried before us here, by its own words, and on this subject been found fatally wanting. It is, I think, tolerably clear that there re- mains reason enough for Christians to try to christianize the countries in which Buddhism prevails. Buddhism, during the centuries of its sway in India, did not perma- nently make the inhabitants of that region quite all that they ought to be. Buddhism is not making very rapid progress in regenerating the peoples of China, Japan, and Ceylon. Buddhism, in short, is not, after all, what its enthusiastic advocates represent it, namely, something about as good as Christianity, possibly even a little better. The missionary motive, for the case of Buddh- ists, is not yet exhausted for Christians. "We shall still have to take up missionary collections, observe missionary concerts of prayer, despatch and sustain missionaries for carrying the Gospel of Christ to Buddhist lands. (I hope, by the way, that the missionaries we send will be men themselves brought up, in our divinity schools, on the Gospel of Christ, and not on Comparative Keligion.) VI. We have now sunk shafts into the heart of Buddhism at two vital points of the system — with what product resulting, we have all of us seen. It is remarkably easy to plunge into the fog of Hindu cosmogony, Hindu ontology, Hindu theosophy, Hindu mythology, and lose our way, — perhaps lose our head too as well as our way, witness, for instance, that curious phenomenon, the book entitled " Esoteric Buddhism," of which more here- after. But there need be no such trouble experienced in striking a short path, here or there, into Hindu ethics. This, holding our Christian gospel clue fast in hand, we have already twice done, and got safe back to open day again. There is really no need of exploring further. A morality found forbidding murder indeed, but forbid- ding murder in such a way as offers immunity for mur- der, forbidding falsehood, but forbidding falsehood in such a way as sets a premium on skilful falsehood, is already sufficiently judged. Such a morality as that, no excellence in any other point, or in any number of other points, can possibly redeem. It is, by these faults alone, proved to be of the earth, earthy — worse, of the devil, devilish. Argument on the subject is precluded. The first step is the last step in any logical process you under- take about it. Indeed, you cannot undertake any logical process about it. You simply damn such morality out of hand, damn it with an instantaneous eruptive male- diction vented from your Christian moral sense. And there is an end of it. 154 EDWIN" ARNOLD, Still, there is another point in morals, both so vital in itself, and so central in Mr. Arnold's misrepresentation of Buddhism, that I think we had better at that point make one assay more of the moral quality belonging to this great system of superstition. The point in question concerns the mutual relation of the sexes. 1 * Touch not thy neighbor' s wife, neither commit Sins of the flesh unlawful and unfit," is Mr. Arnold's version of the Buddhist precept now to be considered. (The form which the precept assumes under Mr. Arnold's fatal hand is worth noting. Is the meaning, Do not commit such " sins of the flesh " as are 44 unlawful and unfit " — with the implication that such "sins of the flesh" as have not the misfortune to be " un- lawful and unfit " may be committed % Or is the mean- ing, Do not commit " sins of the flesh," for these are 14 unlawful and unfit " — with the implication that sins not 44 of the flesh " may be committed ? Or what is the mean- ing?) The original form, translated by Mr. Hardy, is both less comprehensive and less summary, " Manual of Budhism," p. 484: 44 When any one approaches a woman that is under 44 the protection of another, whether it be her father, 44 if her mother be dead ; or her mother, if her father " be dead ; or both parents ; or her brother, sister, or " other relative of either parent ; or the person to whom 44 she has been betrothed : the precept is broken that 44 forbids illicit intercourse with the sex. Whosoever 44 does this will be disgraced by the prince ; he will 44 have to pay a fine, or be placed in some mean situa- 44 tion, or have a garland of flowers put in derision 44 about his neck. AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 155 " There are twenty-one descriptions of women whom ' it is forbidden to approach. Among them are, a 1 woman protected by her relatives ; or bought witli 1 money ; or who is cohabiting with another of her own ' free will ; or works for another person for wages, 1 though she is not a slave ; or who is betrothed ; or a 1 slave living with her owner ; or working in her own i house ; or taken as a spoil in war. All these are to be 1 regarded as the property of another, and are therefore 1 not to be approached. " When anyone approaches a female who is the prop- ' erty of another, with the intent to commit evil, and * practises some deception to gain his end, and accom- ' plishes his purpose, he transgresses against the 1 precept. " Four things are necessary to constitute this crime : 1 — 1. There must be some one that it is unlawful to ' approach. 2. There must be the evil intention. 3. 6 There must be some act or effort to carry the intention 1 into effect. 4. There must be the accomplishment of 1 the intention. 11 The magnitude of this offence increases in propor- 6 tion to the merit of the woman's protector ; and when ' she has no protector, in proportion to her own merit." This, on examination, will not, to the considerate moralist, prove very satisfactory. " Thou shalt not commit adultery," " Flee fornication,'' are better. Observe : the principal and direct part of the Buddhist precept seems to concern exclusively " a woman who is under the protection of another." Only by inference, in a subsequent clause incidentally introduced, is the prohibition haltingly extended to a woman having " no protector," The offence is graduated in magnitude ac- 156 EDWIN ARNOLD, cording to the H merit" of the person trespassed against, which person, let it be noted, is not the woman herself, save in the exceptional case of her being a woman with- out protector. " There are twenty-one descriptions of women" not to be approached. A principle of prohibi- tion how vicious, to undertake enumeration of classes of women not to be approached ! Women outside of the enumeration would of course be understood to be outside of the application of the precept. " All these [the enumerated classes] are to be regarded as the property of another, and are therefore not to be approached." " Therefore !" To constitute the crime forbidden, there "must be the evil intention," and " the accomplish- ment of the intention." " Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart," was the condemnation pro- nounced by Jesus. No " accomplishment of the inten- tion" was necessary to constitute the crime in His sight. One fruit of the late truly curious development among us Westerns of public interest in Buddhism, has been a " Popular Life of Buddha," handsomely issued in Eng- land. The author is a vehement champion of his sub- ject and hero. Among the notable things urged by him in Buddha's favor, he claims that Buddha raised woman to peership with man. Does the foregoing precept read like it ? " Property of another," yet that other's equal? "Women are hasty, they are given to " quarrel, they exercise hatred, and are full of evil," is a general sentence, in a kind of obiter dictum, on the sex, delivered elsewhere by Buddha. Mr. Hardy gives it in his " Eastern Monachism," p. 159. Along with the preceding hard expression from Buddha about woman as woman, Mr. Hardy, on the same page of the same work, cites a further utterance of the great teacher, bearing on AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 157 this subject. Buddha is legislating for his scheme of monasteries : " The female recluse, though she be a hundred years "old, when she sees a samanera novice, though he be "only eight years old and just received, shall be obliged "to rise from her seat when she perceives him in the " distance ; go toward him, and offer him worship." With that, contrast Paul's instruction to Timothy : " Rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father ; and the younger men as brethren ; the elder women as mothers ; the younger as sisters, with all purity. " What a difference of tone ! And take this appeal from the same apostle to the same young preacher : " I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice." To which, to Buddhism, or to Christianity, does modern woman owe her debt ? Recall, further, from a page foregoing, the advantage promised in Buddhism to the Bodhisat, that he shall never he lorn a female. Does that put dignity upon the woman ? Harsh measure certainly toward woman we have found dealt out by the great pagan equalizer of woman and man. But we have not yet found his harshest : " Any woman whatever," said Buddha, " Eastern Monachism," p. 160, "if she have a proper opportu- " nity, and can doit in secret, and be enticed thereto, will 158 EDWIN ARNOLD, " do that which is wrong, however ugly the paramour "may be." How do these things sort with the representation of Buddha given us by Mr. Arnold in the "Light of Asia"? Undoubtedly there are many things said by Buddha to indicate his estimate of woman, less ungracious than those which have now been presented. But these latter stand ; and what do they imply ? Let me, however, be justly sensitive to the demands of fairness in the case, and redress the balance of my presentation. Here is what Buddha lays down for instruction to the husband concerning his duty to his wife. 1 draw again from Hardy's chapter entitled " Ethics of Budhism" (" Man- ual," p. 498) : " There are five ways in which the husband ought to " assist the wife : — 1. He must speak to her pleasantly, "and say to her, Mother, I will present you with gar- " ments, perfumes, and ornaments. 2. He must speak to " her respectfully, not using low words such as he would " use to a servant or slave. 3. He must not leave the " woman whom he possesses by giving to her clothes, " ornaments, etc., and go to a woman who is kept by an- " other. 4. If she does not receive a proper allowance of " food she will become angry; therefore she must be prop- "erly provided for, that this may be prevented. 5. He " must give her ornaments, and other similar articles, " according to his ability." This seems kindly conceived ; but the kindness incul- cated is the kindness of self-respect and condescension yielded as from a conscious superior. The instruction AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 159 rather denies, than implies, a dignity in woman equal with the dignity of man. How well would it satisfy the just wish, as to regard due from her husband, of a wife educated in Christian ideas ? In the long run of history, would such an ideal of the conjugal relation be likely to give woman her place side by side with man as his equal partner in life ? Would it build Wellesley College for women ? "Would it tend to produce a poem like " The Princess," for example, of Tennyson ? Would it go to- ward yielding us a Mrs. Browning ? In one word, is it Christian — or, if not identically Christian, still something else as good, possibly better? " Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them," was Paul's word. Would the author of that word, would Paul, have been capable of saying, like Buddha, and with Buddha's im- plication against his own mother's sex, "Any woman whatever will do that which is wrong' ' ? Was that said by Buddha — and yet did Buddha love his wife, as in the " Light of Asia" Mr. Arnold represents him to have loved her ? The contradiction in thought is monstrous, abhorrent. "Any woman whatever" — and Buddha the son of a woman, the husband of a woman ! In truth, here too, Mr. Arnold, according to that fatal habit of his mind, which vitiates all his imaginative work, has incorporated inseparably into the " Light of Asia," as a whole, ideas that repel each other with abso- lutely implacable mutual repugnance. He has made Buddha at the same time love Yasodhara with Christian love, and treat Yasodhara with pagan cruelty. " The Great Renunciation" is Mr. Arnold's alternative title for his poem. The great renunciation meant is Buddha's, and it consisted in his abandoning all for the sake of be- coming an ascetic to save, first, himself, and then the world. His abandoning of all included his abandoning 160 EDWIN" ARNOLD, of Yasodbara his wife. This particular abandonment in- deed is made by Mr. Arnold to be the capital point of . the whole great act. And abandon Yasodhara Buddha ' did. It was a bald, outright abandonment. He left her clandestinely in the night. He bade no good-bye. He might have taken her into the confidence of his plan, and invited her to share with him the great renunciation. She was worthy of this treatment, — according to Mr. Arnold, if not according to the legend. But no. He simply ran away from her. His heart tugged at him in the doing of this deed of hardness toward his wife. So Mr. Arnold represents — though the legends say nothing of this. But he forsook her and fled — this blameless prince of Mr. Arnold's ideal, " the highest, gentlest, holiest, and most beneficent, with one exception" ! The accomplished M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, by the way, is quoted by Mr. Arnold, (at second hand through Professor Max Miiller,) as giving to Buddha a stainless record of life. Was, then, Buddha's early licentiousness no stain ? Was his subsequent running away from his wife no stain ? We shall have to change our ideas of purity and honor. Pray keep your heads, ye eager encomiasts of paganism ! (Such indeed M. St. Hilaire is not, though in this particular concession he exceeds just bounds.) Say that Buddha was a good man, accord- ing to his light ; but do not let the new wine of this lib- eralism of yours make drunk altogether your reason, your conscience, and your common sense ! Before we quite dismiss from consideration the subject of woman's place and privilege under Buddhism, and her place and privilege in India with the not yet extin- guished Buddhist traditions of India, I have a contrast to present existing between Mr. Arnold's fancy on the one hand, and grim fact on the other. AS POETIZEE AND AS PAGANIZER. 161 Mr. Arnold draws a very cheerful picture of the Indian dancing-girls, and of their part in making life in India happy. You would, from what he says and im- plies, certainly gather that these were innocent, pretty " gay creatures of the element," go to speak, as to whom — according to the well-known American myth which the chief dramatic personage in it refused to spoil by contradicting — transcendental Margaret Fuller, witness- ing, with Emerson, their rhythmic motions, might say to him, " Waldo, this is poetry," he replying, " Margaret, this is religion." So trippingly, in Mr. Arnold's verse, do these dancing-girls move in and out, " Chiming light laughter round their restless feet." Would readers of the " Light of Asia" suppose that of those same dancing-girls could be true the following, which I take from Spry's " Modern India," vol. 1., p. 170. Mr. Spry is speaking of the low state of Indian women in general as to intellectual culture : " The Hindu dancing girls, on the other hand, whose occupations are avowedly devoted to public pleasure, are taught the use of letters, and are minutely instructed in the knowledge of every blandishment and art which can operate in communicating the sensual gratification of love. These women in former times were not obliged to seek shelter in private haunts, nor are they, on ac- count of their professional conduct, marked with any opprobrious epithet. No religious festival or ceremony is considered perfect without the presence of dancing women ; and during the Hindu and Mahomedan rule of Hindustan, they were, and are, even to this day, in those sovereignties independent of us, endowed with grants of public land for their maintenance. The mass of them 162 EDWIN" ARNOLD, however are now without this provision, and not a whit less dissolute in their habits than the fair Cyprians of the Western world." 1 even vindicate Buddhism — against Mr. Arnold. Buddhism expressly condemns dancing and the seeing of dancing. So much for one side of the contrast to be presented. Now for the other. Grim fact it will be, set against gay fancy. If any think that the Indian practice of dancing is but a frivolous affair at most for Buddha, or for me, to condescend to, no one certainly will deny that the Ind- ian practice of suttee is sufficiently grave. This is the name of that custom, in accordance with which a large part of "mild" Asia inflicts death, by burning alive, upon wives unfortunate enough to survive their husbands. Christianity and British government together have, within a hundred years past, done much to abolish this dreadful practice ; but early in the present century, Dr. Carey, the illustrious English Baptist missionary in India, gathered some statistics on the point, which may be ac- cepted as his contribution to the " social science " of that period. Here is part of what he has to report. Mr. Ward, Dr. Carey's associate, is my authority. 1 quote from his " Yiew of the History, Literature, Keligion of the Hindoos," p. 114 : " Some years ago, two attempts were made, under the immediate superintendence of Dr. Carey, to ascertain the number of widows burnt alive within a given time. The first attempt was intended to ascertain the number thus burnt within thirty miles of Calcutta, during one year — viz., in 1803. Persons, selected for the purpose, were sent from place to place through that extent, to en- AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 163 quire of the people of each town or village how many had been burnt within the year. The return made a total of four hundred and THiRTy-EiGHT. Yet very f ew places east or west of the river Hoogly were visited. To ascertain this matter with greater exactness, ten persons were, in the year 1804, stationed in the different places within the above-mentioned extent of country ; each per- son's station was marked out, and he continued on the watch for six months, taking account of every instance of a widow's being burnt which came under his observa- tion. Monthly reports were sent in ; and the result, though less than the preceding year's report, made the number between two and three hundred for the year ! If within so small a space several hundred widows were burnt alive in one year, how many thousands of these WIDOWS MUST BE MURDERED IN A YEAR IN SO EXTENSIVE a country as Hfndoost'han ! So that, in fact, the funeral pile devours more than war itself ! How truly shocking ! Nothing equal to it exists in the whole work of human cruelty ! What a tragic history would a complete detail of these burnings make !" Page 126 : " It is difficult to form an estimate of the number of Hindoos who perish annually, the victims of superstition ; and the author fears any reasonable conject- ure would appear to many as highly exaggerated, and intended to prejudice the public mind against the Hindoos as idolaters. He wishes to feel and avow a just abhorrence of idolatry, and to deplore it as one of the greatest scourges ever employed by a Being, terrible in anger, to punish nations who have rejected the direct and simple means which nature and conscience supply of knowing himself ; but he would use no unfair means of rendering even idolatry detestable ; and with this assur- 164 EDWIN ARNOLD, anee, he now enters on as correct a conjecture respecting the number of victims annually sacrificed on the altars of the Indian gods, as he is able : Widows burnt alive on the funeral pile, in Hindoost'hann 5,000 Pilgrims perishing on the roads and at sacred places 4,000 Persons drowning themselves in the Ganges, or buried or burnt alive 500 Children immolated, including the daughters of the raju-pootus 500 Sick persons whose death is haste ued on the banks of the Ganges 500 Total, 10,500 Rather gruesome details these, to illustrate one of those " most characteristic habits" of the Hindus which Mr. Arnold declares to be " clearly due to the benign influence of Buddha's precepts" ! Suttee is, indeed, not a Buddhist institution ; but it certainly is, or till lately was, one of the " most characteristic habits " of the Hindus. On this point, I rest, as the lawyers say. That is, as to the state of woman in India, 1 have presented my case. My readers can judge for themselves how well the facts really existing sustain Mr. Arnold's representations on the subject, expressed and implied in the " Light of Asia." They can judge also of the praise justly due to Buddhism for its influence on the fortunes of woman. Just now, while I have been writing these sentences, the daily pa- pers bring to my notice the alleged fact of a form of hus- band's discipline in present active use among the Hindus, AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 1G5 not, I should say, indicative either of very fine national character, on their part, or of a highly eligible position enjoyed by Indian women. Five recent cases are re- ported in Bombay of the cutting off of wives ' noses by their husbands. Very barbarous things are sometimes done by American husbands to their wives ; but I sub- mit that just this sort of practice, the cutting off of wives' noses, implies, in Hindu character and in Hindu estima- tion of woman, something widely different from what obtains in Christian lands. VII. In fact, with what has already been said, I rest, alto- gether and finally, on the whole subject of this volume. Fresh matter still I have in great plenty, but none that I need to introduce. My purpose was to be not exhaustive, but tentative. Out of the inimitably expansile cloud- land of Hindu philosophy so-called, I had no idea of cutting any section for showing to my readers. " Em- bracing cloud, Ixion-like," is an exercise far more satis- factory to the Oriental, than it is to the Occidental, mind. Hindu philosophy will always remain a " land of darkness as darkness itself, ' ' to the average American intellect. Possibly the time may come when to read and understand Hindu metaphysics and Hindu poetry, studied in the original Sanscrit, or in the original Pali, will be considered a good discipline for our youth in college classes. But as yet, the attempt to domesticate Hindu speculation among ns here in America, is decided- ly premature. There is Mr. Ram Chandra Bose's " Hindu Philosophy " already accessible to English readers ; and that admirable series of discussions must be accepted as all that is needed for the present on the subject. The perfect lucidity of the medium employed in this book — for Mr. Bose's English style is excellent — serves well to display the obstinate opacity of the thing itself that is shown us through the medium. Hindu speculative philosophy, therefore, with its monstrous cosmogony and its monstrous cosmology, and EDWIN ARNOLD. 167 all the rest of it, I have here eschewed. The Occidental mind is ill fitted to deal with it. With Buddhist ethics, however, 1 felt sure that we could do something. We could understand it and judge it. Esoteric Buddhism may presume to transcend questions of practical morals ; but the Occidental conscience, trained in- Christian ideas, at- taches as yet considerable importance to such points. To us Occidentals, Buddhism is good or bad, chiefly according to its ethics. Now, Buddhist ethics might be very good,, and — very worthless. For, however good, they might lack vital force to get themselves lived by. But they are not very good. They are fundamentally vicious. The good that is in them is powerless, through defect of energizing motive supplied to get the good practiced. The evil that is in them — alas ! that has behind it all the force of native human depravity to help it work its harm. The result is — what we see in Buddhist lands, and what we fail to find truthfully depicted in Mr, Arnold's " Light of Asia." VIII. I have just spoken of esoteric Buddhism. There are, and 1 have not been unmindful of the fact, two Buddh- isms very different the one from the other. There is exo- teric Buddhism, and there is esoteric Buddhism. Exo- teric Buddhism is contained in books. Esoteric Buddhism lives only from voice to voice. Exoteric Buddhism may be studied. Esoteric Buddhism must be learned without study through a process of pure intuition, — if it be learned at all. You may verify the results of your study in exoteric Buddhism. What you learn of esoteric Buddh- ism admits of no verification whatsoever. How trans- cendental in its nature, and how hopelessly confounding to the native wit of man, is esoteric Buddhism, may be guessed from this one statement, occurring in a work about to be named, a work of the highest authority on the subject, lately published in England : * " All the root- words transferred to popular literature from the secret doctrine have a sevenfold significance, at least for the initiate, while the uninitiated reader, natu- rally supposing that one word means one thing, and trying always to clear up its meaning by collating its va- rious applications, and striking an average, gets into the most hopeless embarrassment. " The same book speaks of " occult science' ' as " infiltrat- ing into the mind — no words at all being used to convey it." It is, I need not, after these quotations, say, the EDWIN ARNOLD. 169 humbler, the exoteric, or outside, Buddhism that I have sought in these pages partially to exhibit. Of esoteric Buddhism, I must content myself with simply remark- ing, that it is a system of " occult science" so-called, comprehensive and profound ludicrously beyond any measure of comparison supplied in other knowledge, or pretension to knowledge, existing among men. This occult science — or esoteric Buddhism, as it may more distinctively be called — is a mystery that has been hidden from ages and from generations — until the current eigh- teen hundred eighty-fifth year of — the Buddhist ? nay, indeed, ridiculous to say ! of the Christian era. It has now been revealed, after a sort, by Mr. A. P. Sinnett, " President of the Simla Eclectic Theosophical Society." This gentleman has written and published a book, " of immense importance to the world," he thinks, entitled " Esoteric Buddhism," in which, for absolutely the first time in innumerable cycles of aeons, the doctrines of f ( occult science" are put into forms of expression for profane eyes to read. These doctrines he does not prove ; not he, he simply announces them. The startling thing about it all, is that he does this in print. Hitherto, as already intimated, these doctrines have been merely the sacred oral tradition of teachers, from age to age. Never until now have they been cast down at risk before the promiscuous vulgar, as Mr. Sinnett casts them, like pearls before swine. It is no part of my purpose either to expound or to criticise Mr. Sinnett's book. I will barely say that I have read it with " clumsy and irreverent " wonder — wonder somewhat resembling, therefore, in spirit the criticism which the author feared might be visited upon his volume. Esoteric Buddhism, though very different from, is not necessarily contradictory to, exoteric Buddh- 170 EDWIN ARNOLD, ism. There is nothing, therefore, in the extracts from Buddhist literature contained in the preceding pages, that Mr. Sinnett would concern himself to repudiate. He would merely transcend them. Esoteric Buddhism is far too placid a thing ever to smile — otherwise Mr. Sinnett might possibly smile at some of my interpretations and discussions ; but my quotations he would not, for he could not, discredit. These stand, and my readers may judge, and fairly judge, Buddhism by them. Esoteric Buddhism, as set forth by Mr. Sinnett, deals with matters far too sublime to admit sublunary concerns like ethical questions to mingle with them. Of God, it is as little heedful as is exoteric Buddhism. Mr. Sin- nett expressly says respecting the " wondrously endowed representatives of occult science," that "they never occupy themselves at all with any conception remotely resembling the God of churches and creeds." Of " vice " and u virtue " Mr. Sinnett speaks, but he gives no indication as to what constitutes either " virtue " or " vice." By silence, therefore, esoteric Buddhism remands us to exoteric Buddhism to find out Buddhist principles of morality. In fact, Mr. Sinnett, p. 158, says : " Ceylon [our own authority, Mr. Hardy, writes and translates as from Ceylon] is saturated with exoteric, and Thibet with esoteric, Buddhism. Ceylon concerns it- self merely or mainly with the morality, Thibet, or rather the adepts of Thibet, with the science, of Buddhism." My readers have therefore gone with me to the right place to get pure Buddhist ethics. Our inquisition into the true moral quality of Buddhism is seen to be not at all the less in value for being confessedly exoteric. AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 171 It will tend to show what might be expected, in the way of moral fruit, from esoteric Buddhism, once trans- planted and flourishing here, and at the same time will throw a superfluous light on the ideal Hindu character, — if I quote, at this point, a few sentences from an earlier book of Mr. Sinnett's, entitled " The Occult World," (p. 7), a production even more curious perhaps than his " Eso- teric Buddhism" : " Ask any cultivated Hindoo if he has ever heard of Mahatmas [ 4 Adepts ' or ' Brethren'] and Yog Vidya or occult science, and it is a hundred to one that you will lind he has — and, unless he happens to be a hybrid prod- uct of an Anglo-Indian University, that he fully be- lieves in the reality of the powers ascribed to Yoga. It does not follow that he will at once say ' Yes ' to a European asking the question. He will probably say just the reverse, from the apprehension I have spoken of above ; but push your questions home, and you will discover the truth, as I did, for example, in the case of a very intelligent English-speaking native vakeel in an influential position, and in constant relations with high European officials, last year. At first my new acquaint- ance met my inquiries as to whether he knew anything about these subjects with a wooden look of complete ignorance, and an explicit denial of any knowledge as to what I meant at all. It was not till the second time I saw him in private, at my own house, that by degrees it grew upon him that I was in earnest, and knew some- thing about Yoga myself, and then he quietly opened out his real thoughts on the subject, and showed me that lie knew not only perfectly well what I meant all along, but was stocked with information concerning occurrences and phenomena of an occult or apparently supernatural 172 EDWIN ARNOLD, order, many of which had been observed in his own family and some by himself." The Christian conscience will instinctively revolt from such a standard of truth- telling as is thus fatuously exemplified by Mr. Sinnett, not to say in Mr. Sinnett. Occult science ought to have, for lovers of truth wherever found, no charms capable of overcoming this guardian in- stinctive first revolt and abhorrence. Continue to listen, after you know you are listening to a liar, and whom have you but yourself to blame, if you are brought under a strong delusion that you should believe a lie ? It should not be overlooked that what Mr. Sinnett re- lates as to the conduct of the " adept" native, exactly tallies with the ethical inculcation of Buddhism on* the subject of lying. The " wooden look of complete igno- rance" and the " explicit denial of any knowledge" — these, according to Buddhist morality, were not u lies," should they have the effect to deceive. After they evi- dently fail to have this effect they are no longer persisted in. Here you have Buddhist morality very happily ex- emplified in act by a Buddhist. Christians under stress may sometimes violate truth. But it will then be be- cause they disobey Christ — not because they obey Him ! This is the difference between Buddhism and Christi- anity. My mention of Mr. Sinnett's books will incidentally show that Buddhism, however alien a thing, and drearily void of interest, to most Western minds, is yet to some people among us a subject full of strange attraction. Mr. Arnold has probably increased the number of those susceptible to this attraction, but he is himself an au- thority too exoteric to be so much as mentioned by the esoteric Mr. Sinnett. AS POETIZER AND AS PAGAiNIZER. 173 Apropos of Mr. Sinnett's later book, I may perhaps assume that some at least of my readers will be interest- ed to know what last word esoteric Buddhism has to say on the moot-question of the real sense of the Buddhist term Nirvana. I shall be able to alternately satisfy and disappoint the adherents of the two contrary views cur- rent on the subject. According to esoteric Buddhism, Nirvana, in the first place, is not cessation of conscious existence and, in the second place, it is. Mr. Sinnett says, p. 163 : " All that words can convey is that Nir- vana is a sublime state of conscious rest in omniscience." But then again, less simply, he says, j). 182 : " Certainly it is not by reason of the grandeur of any human conceptions as to what would be an adequate reason for the existence of the universe, that such a con- summation can appear an insufficient purpose, not even if the final destiny of the planetary spirit himself, after periods to which his development from the mineral forms of primeval worlds is but a childhood in the rec- ollection of the man, is to merge his glorified individu- ality into that sum total of all consciousness, which esoteric metaphysics treat as absolute consciousness, which is non-consciousness" (The italics are the present writer's.) The ultimate human state, then, Nirvana, or para- Nirvana, is, after all, " non-conscious." Let those who please difference this from personal annihilation. We exoterics will have to think that the two, non-conscious- ness and personal non-existence, come practically to much the same thing. I must, in conclusion, once more remind my readers of a fact not to be neglected by them. The trust- 174 EDWIN ARNOLD, worthiness of the present discussion of Buddhism depends upon the trustworthiness of the authority chiefly relied upon, namely, Mr. Hardy. In order to furnish to each individual inquirer at least a partial basis for an intelli- gent opinion of his own respecting the value of this source of information, I give here some remarks made by Mr. Hardy in his preface : " In the preparation of the present Manual, I have kept one object steadily in view. It has been my simple aim, to answer the question, 4 What is Buddhism, as it is now professed by its myriads of votaries ? ' A deep interest in the subject ; intense application ; honesty of purpose ; a long residence in a country where the system is professed ; a daily use of the language from which I have principally translated ; and constancy of intercourse with the sramana priests, have been my personal ad- vantages to aid me in the undertaking. . „ . The concluding chapters present a compendium of the ontology and ethics of Buddhism, as they are under- stood by the modern priesthood, and now taught to the people. " In confining myself, almost exclusively, to transla- tion, I have chosen the humblest form in which to reap- pear as an author. I might have written an extended essay upon the system, as it presents a rich mine, com- paratively unexplored ; or have attempted to make the subject popular, by leaving out its extravagances, and weaving its more interesting portions into a continued narrative ; but neither of these modes would have ful- filled my intention. They would have enabled me only to give expression to an opinion, when I wish to present an authority. I have generally refrained from comment ; AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 175 but in order thereto, have had to lay aside matter that has cost me much thought in its preparation." * x *■ •* * ■* "lam not aware that I have omitted any great feature of the system ; unless it be, that I have not given suffi- cient prominence to the statements of my authorities on the anatomy of the body, and to their reflections on the offensive accompaniments of death. It is probable that a careful review of insulated portions of the work will discover errors in my translation, as in much of my labor 1 have had no predecessor ; but 1 have never wil- fully perverted any statement, and have taken all practi- cable methods to secure the utmost accuracy." These expressions have in them the note of sincerity, and, I will venture to add, of scholarly qualification on the author's part, for the task undertaken by him. 1 am not aware that either the good faith, or the adequate equip- ment in learning, of Mr. Hardy has ever been called in question. His u Manual of Budhism" is incessantly quot- ed from and referred to, always with respect, by writers of the best character and highest accomplishment, who deal with his subject. Professor Max Miiller and Dr. Hhys Davids may stand for examples. It would undoubt- edly have been satisfactory to collate Mr. Hardy's transla- tions, at the peculiarly vital point of ethical teaching, with the translations of other Oriental scholars. But it is at this very point, as it happens, that Mr. Hardy has apparently been a pioneer without companion or follower. At least I have looked carefully through the superb library of " Sacred Books of the East, " edited by Professor Max Miiller, without finding anything that 1 could place as a parallel alongside of Hardy's " Ethics of Buddhism." Volumes there are in that great collection, of translation 176 EDWIN" ARNOLD, from tlie original Pali, but the taste, or the judgment, or the fortune, of the learned translator has not, so far as I discover, led him to give us anything in the way of dis- tinctively ethical teaching on the part of Buddhism. Whether or not Pali originals shall yet be found and pro- duced in English to support Mr. Hardy's translations from Singhalese, matters little — to our purpose. Hardy shows us Buddhism as it exists in Ceylon. If, in some former age, and elsewhere than in Ceylon, Buddhism was better, it has but followed the tendency of things human to deteriorate with time. We are concerned here with what Buddhism certainly is, not with what Buddh- ism conjecturally was. It will be observed that Mr. Hardy is in no sense re- sponsible for the use here made by me of the material that he furnishes. 1 have taken strictly the Buddhist text supplied me in Mr. Hardy's translations from the Singhalese form of the original Pali, but I have freely chosen my own way in interpretative comment. Some one may bethink himself to inquire, But, Mr. Hardy's authority being supposed satisfactory, has the present writer represented Buddhism fairly and propor- tionately out of Mr. Hardy ? On this point, with all con- fidence I can say that Buddhism has no just cause to complain. So far from it, the system might easily, and that in consistency with truth, have been made to appear greatly more ridiculous than I have in fact made it appear. The proportion of monstrous and incredible belonging to it, is much larger in Mr. Hardy than it is in my pages. Buddhism is in truth here painted too bright rather than to black. If my picture of the system does not sustain Mr. Arnold, Mr. Arnold would surely look in vain for any- thing to sustain him in the original of my picture, namely, the system itself. AS POETIZER AND AS PAGANIZER. 177 Whether as literature, then, or as exposition of Buddhist doctrine and life, the " Light of Asia" must be pronounced unworthy to survive. As to the other pagan poems of Mr. Arnold, his " Pearls of the Faith," his "Indian Idylls," and his u Iliad of India," it is quite enough to say of these productions that they had from the first their only chance of immortality in parasitic attachment to the fortunes of the " Light of Asia." In due time, prin- cipal and parasite, they, "with the false religions of which they treat, will go to the limbo of things abortive, one and all of them confounded and forgotten together. ARCHIBALD MALMAISON. A New Novel. By Julian Hawthorne. Trice, paper, 15 cts.; cloth, extra paper, 75 cents. INDEPENDENT, N. Y. " Mr. Julian Hawthorne can choose no better com- pliment upon his new romance, * Archibald Malmaison,' than the assurance that he has at last put lorth a story which reads as if the manuscript, written in his father's indecipherable handwriting and signed ' Nathaniel Haw- thorne,' had lain shut into desk for twenty-five years, to be only just now pulled out and printed. It is a masterful romance ; short, compressed, terri- bly dramatic in its important situations, based upon a psychologic idea as weir I and susceptible of startling treatment as possible. It is a book to be read through in two hours, but to dwell in the memory forever. It so cleverly surpasses ' Garth' or 'Bressant in its sympathy with the style of the elder Hawthorne that it must remain unique among Mr. Julian Hawthorne's works — until he exceeds it. The emplo> ment of the central theme and the literary conduct of the plot is nearly beyond criticism. The frightful climax breaks upon the perception of the reader with surprise that he did not foresee it ; another tribute on his part to the unconventional ity which is one of the many touches of eminent art in Mr. Hawthorne's tale." X. H. STODDARD, IN NEW YORK MAIL AND EXPRESS. "The cli- max is so terrible, as the London Times h^s pointed out, and so dramatic in it-, intensity, that it is impossible to class it with any situation of modern fic- tion. . . Mr, Hawthorne is cleaily and easily the first of living romancers." THE CONTINENT, N. Y. "The most noteworthy story Mr. Julkm Haw- thorne has ever produced. . . No wilder romance has ever been imagined. • . A brilliant and intensely powerful work. . . It is certain that such power sets the author at the head of modern romancers.'' THE LONDON TIMES. " After perusal of this weird, fantastic tale (Archi- bald Malmaison), it must be admitted that upon the shoulders of Julian Hawthorne has descended in no small degree the mantle of his more illustri- ous father. The climax is so terrible, and so dramatic in iis intensity, that it is impossible to class it with any situation of modern fiction. There is much psychological ingenuity shown in some of the more subtle touches that lend an air of reality to this wild romance." THE LONDON GLOBE. " 'Archibald Malmaison,' is one of the most daring attempts to sit the wildest fancy masquerading in the cloak of science, which has ever, perhaps, been made. Mr. Hawthorne has managed to combine the almost perfect construction of a typical French novelist, with a more than typicaliy German power of conception. Genius is here of a kind more artistic- ally self-governed than Hoffman's, and less obviously self-consctous than Poe's. A strange sort of jesting humor gives piquancy to its grimne>s.'* THE ACADEMY. " Mr. Hawthorne has a more powerful imagination than any contemporary writer of fictien. He has the very uncommon gift of taking hold of the reader's attention at once, and the still more uncommon gift of maintaining his grasp when it is fixed." THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE.— PRINCE SA- RONPS WIFE. Two Novels. By Julian Hawthorne, one volume, i2mo, paper, 15 cents; cloth, extra paper, 75 cents. [In press.] CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. "The 'Pearl-Shell Necklace' is a story of permanent value, and stands quite alone for subtle blending of individual and general human interest, poetic and psychologic suggestion, and rare humor." SPECTATOR. " * The Pearl-Shell Necklace ' wherever found, would stamp ns author as a man of genius. Even the eider Hawthorne never produced more weird effects within anything like the same coaipass. Aud yet there is absolutely no imitation." FUNK & WAGN ALLS. Publishers, 10 & 13 Dey St., New York. HIMSELF AGAIN, A New Novel. By J. C. Goldsmith, i2tno, paper, 25 cts.; cloth, extra paper, $1.00. COMMENTS OF THE PRESS. THE BOSTON GLOBE. " Its peculiar qualities are its delineation of eccen- tt ic character which is notab.y free and bold, and its familiarity with many kinds of present American life and manners, and its original, realistic treat- ment. . . Beneath the sprightly dash with which the story is outlined and filled, there is conscious strong power. It is finely written, and of decided merit." THE EVENING POST, HARTFORD. " Unlike most novels, the first chap- ters of th.s remarkable story are the weakest. But let the reader persevere and he will find opened to him a wonderful world of novel and interesting charac- ters, avaluab e and unique philosophy, and an almost unsurpassed background of American cuy and country scenery, both land and water." BOSTON ADVERTISER. " The writer displays more than average insight into the workings of human nature, and the naturalness of his character draw- ing is 110 doubt the secret of the special attraction that lies in the book." CLEVELAND LEADER. " This is a purely American novel. . . and one ot the best we have seen. It is so vivid in its description of localities and personages that the reader hardly doubts that all is real. And in accom- plishing this t:-e author achieves a kind of charm that is as delightful as it is hard to define." RUTHERFORD, A New Novel. By Edgar Fawcett. Author cf "An Ambitious Woman," "A Gentleman of Leisure," " A Hopeless Case," " Tinkling Cymbals," etc. 12010, paper, 25 cts; cloth, extra paper, $1.00. MR. FAWCETT has of late been steadily and rapidly advancing toward the f,remost place among American novelists. He deals with ph ses of society that require the utmost skill ; but his quick insight into character, his ready sympathies, and his conscientious literary art, have proved mere than equal to t ie tasks he has undertaken. It is certain that many of the best critics are watcliing his co use with high anticipations. In ' Rutherford, his latent work, neither they nor the public will be disappointed. It is a novel of New York societv, and rarely has character been portrayed with more de'icate but effective touches than in the case of some of these representatives of Knicker- bocker cast". The story is by no mean3 confined to them however, but is en- riched to a very great degree by characters taken from lower social plnncs. Nothing the auchor has ever done, perhaps, surpasses his characterization cf * i'ansy ' one of the two sisters who have fallen from affluence to poverty. Through them he arouses the deepest sympathies, and shows a dramati: power that is full of promise. It is ncedles's, of course, to command the liter- ary finish of Mr. Fawcett's style. It is fast approaching perfection. FUNK & WAQNALLS, Publishers, 10 & is Dey St., New York. THE FORTUNES OF RACHEL. A New Novel. By Edward Everett Hale. 121110, paper, 25c; cloth, $1. CHRISTIAN UNION N. V ' Probably no American h s a mere d< voted constituency or readers than Mr Edward Everett Hule, and to all these his 1 te>t sioi y, • The Fortunes of Rachel, will bring genuine pleasure. Mr. Ha e is emphatically a natural write ; he loves to interpret common things and to deal with ..verage persons. He does t lis with such insight, with such noble conception of Hie and of 'his work, that he discovers that profound intere^ which belongs to the humblest as truly as to the most brilliant forms 01 life. . . '1 his story is a thoroughly American novel, full of incident, rich in tfrrjOg traits of character, and full of stimulating thought; it is wholesome and elevating." BOSTON JOURNAL. " The virtue of the book is the healthful, encouraging, Kindly spirit which pervades it, nnd which will help one to battle with adverse circumstances, as, indeed, all Mr. Hale's stories have helped." NEW YORK JOURNAL OF COMMERCE. "A purely American story, original all through, and Rachel is one of the pleasantest and most satisfactory of heroine-. She is a girl of the soil, unspoiled by foreign travels and con- ventionalities. After surfeiting on romances whose scenes are laid abroad, it is de.ightf jI to come across a healthy home product like this." BOSTON GLOBE " Every one knows that Mr. Hale is the prince of story- tellers." MUMU, AND THE DIAR Y OF A SUPERFLUOUS MAN. Two powerful novels descriptive of serf and upper-class life in Russia. By Ivan Turgenieff. 12100, paper, 15c; cloth, extra paper, 75c. N. Y. TRIBUNE. " His characters are vital; they suffer with a pathos that irresistibly touches the reader to sympathy. Those who would write in the same vein get merely his admirable manner, full of reserve, of self-restraint, ofjo\ less patience; but while under this surface with Turgenieff lie throbbing arteries and quivering flesh, his imitators offer us nothing more than Jay figures i 1 whose fortunes it is impossible to take any lively interest. I hey represent before us only poor phases of modern society, while Turgenieff t as exp'ained to us a nation ard shown the play of emotions that are as old M the world and as new as the hour in which they are born." LITERARY WORLD, Boston. " These two stories . . are unquestion- rb'ytobe ranked among their author's masterpieces. . . 'Mumu' will bear a great amount of study ; it marks out a whole method in fiction." THE MANHATTAN. "One of the most powerful and touching pictures of slave-li.e iu fed literature." LIPPINCOTTS MAGAZINE, Phila. "There are fome h a' f dozen of Tur- genieffs short stones abNolutely perfect each in its way, but none, perhaps, quite so exquisitely as Mumu ' shows the great artist's power to transfigure to our eyes the tenderness, passion, agonies, which lie bey nd speech and almost beyond sign, in tilU silent heart of a strong, simple man." CRITIC AND GOOD LITERATURE, N. Y. "How little material genius requires tor making a ' good thing/ TurgeniefFs ' Mumu ' is only the sketch ota deaf mute and a dog, but how beautifully told 1 There are touches of infinite gentleness as well as of skill." FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 10 & 12 Dey St., New York. George Eliot's Essays. THE ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT, Collected and Arranged, with an Introduction on her " Analysis of Motives." By Nathan Sheppard, author of " Shut up in Paris," " Readings from George Eliot," etc. Paper, 25 cents; fine cloth, #1.00. ( This is the first appearance of these Essays in book form in England or America.} '.Che Critic, New York: "Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls have done a real service to George Eliot's innumer- able admirers by reprinting in their popu- lar Standard Library the great novel- ist's occasional contributions to the period- ical press." New York Sun : "In the case of George Eliot especially, whose reviews were anonymous, and who could never have supposed that such fugitive ventures would ever be widely associated with the r.sme of a diflident and obscure young woman, we gain access in her early essays, as in no other of her published writings, o the sanctuary c f her deepest conviclbns, and to the intellectual workshop in which literary methods and processes were tested, discarded, or ap- proved, and literary tools fashioned and manipulated long before the author had discerned the large purposes to which they were to be applied. * * * Looking back over the whole ground covered by these admirable papers, we are at no loss to un- derstand why Gecrge Eliot should have made it a lule to read no criticisms on her own stories. She had nothing to learn from critics. She was justified in assum- ing that not one of those who took upon themselves to appraise her achievements had given half of the time, or a tithe of the intellect, to the determination cf the right aims and processes of the English novel, which, as these reviews attest, she had herself expended on that object before venturing upon that form of composition which Fielding termed the modern epic." Examiner, New York : "These essays ought to be read by any one who would understand this part cf George Eliot's career; and, indeed, they furnish the key to all her subsequent literary achievements." Evening Transcript, Boston. " No one who reads these essays will re- gret their publication, for they are of striking and varied ability, and add much to the completeness of our conception of Marian Evans' character. Critical and artistic power seldom go hand-in-hand. The most brilliant piece cf purely literary- work is the one on Heine and German wit. It is one which reaches the highest level of intellectual criticism, and stands unsurpassed by anything of Arnold or Lowell." Church Union, New York: " Nathan Siieppard, the collector of the ten essays in this firm, has written a hlgl.- ly laudatory but critical introduction to the boclc.cn her 'Analysis of Motives/ and, alter reading i*,it seems to us that every cne who would read her wcrl 3 prcfitab'y and truly should first have read it." Zion's Herald, Boston : " As remarkable illustrations of her ma-culine metaphysical ability as is evi* deuced in her strongest fictions." Episcopal Methodist, Baltimore: "Everybody of culture wants to reaA all George Eliot wrote." Hartford Evening Postt " They are admirable pieces of liter- ary workmanship, but they are much mor& than that. * * * These essays are tri- umphs of critical analysis combined witn epigrammatic pungency, subtle iruny f and a wit that never seems strained. " Christian Advocate, New York : " They show the versatility cf the great novelist. One en Evangelical Teaching w especially interesting." ALPHONSE DAUDET'S FAMOUS BOOK. L'EVANGELISTE. A ROMANCE. By ALPHONSE DAUDET. Founded on the Doings of the Salvation Army. " L'fivANofiLiSTE " is far out of the beaten track of fiction, and its originality is supplemented by intense power and interest ; in fact, it would be difficult to find a romance in which the interest is more absorbing. Nor is this interest the result, as is deplorably the case in so much French fiction, of highly spiced sentimental- ity or daring vulgarity. The book is clean, wholesome, refined, and is, moreover, founded on fact. It treats mainly of the acts and methods of that world-famouu organization, the Salvation Army, and the heroine, Eline Ebsen, is a Dane, living witn her mother in the Scandinavian colony in 1'aris. She is on the point of being married, and a happy life seems in store for her, but suddenly a disturbing influence appears in the shape of Madam Autheman, a wealthy banker's wife, who is given, to making religious converts. This woman hires Eline to translate some prayei- books, and during the execution of the woik the girl becomes filled with htr patron's enthusiasm. She breaks with her suitor and deserts her mother to serve as a preacher in the Salvation Army. This is the introduction to one of the mort; thrilling novels of the day, and from thence onward the plot absolutely enthralls the reader, each succeeding link riveting the chain the tighter. The incidents are strong in the highest degree, very dramatic, and pervaded by almid light of mysti- cism which augments the effect a thousand-fold. The gradual development in the young heroine of the fatal passion for proselytizing people is depicted as Alphonso Daudet alone of all the French novelists can depict an idea, and the struggles of the poor mother to recover her deluded daughter from the grasp of the rich Authe- mans, her vain appeals to the feeling of pity and the unsympathetic law, touch the heart of the reader to an extent the pen cannot depict, all the more so when one learns how the novel came to be written. Daudet had often observed the sad face of the lady who gave lessons in German to his eldest son. Surprising her one day, with tears in her eyes, he induced her to narrate the causes of her woe. The story of the woman forms the basis of this novel, in which she figures as Mme. Ebsen. WHAT CRITICS THINK OF DAUDET. HENRY JAMES, Jr., Bays, in the Century Magazine: "We have no one, either in England or America, to oppose to Alphonse Daudet. The appearance or anew novel by this admirable genius is to my mind the most delightful literary evnit that can occur just now ; in other words, Alphonse Daudet is at the head of his profession." JULES CLARETIE, the eminent French writer, says: "To-day Alnhon«e Daudet has arrived at the full measure of his renown. In fiction he is proclaimed The master. ... Is the most delicate, the most sympathetic, the most charming of all our contemporary writers of romance. . . . The poet of romance." JOAQUIN MILLER says, in a letter, April 3, '84 : "I had rather be Alphonse Daudet than any other living man now in literature, except two : one of these is Victor Hugo, and the other is— Joaquin Miller." Paper Cover, 50 cents. Cloth, $1.00. EJ" This is the ONLY Complete Edition of the Story published in America. About one half of the Story is published in one of the cheap Libraries of the day— a mere fragment. PUBLICATIONS OF FUNK <£ WAGNALLS, NEW YORK. ** The most important and practical worlz of tlto act on tha Pgftlms.'-SCHAFP. SIX VOLUMES NOW READY. -SPURCEON'S GREAT LIFE WORK- THE TREASURY OF DAVID! To be published in seven octavo volumes of about 470 pages each, uniformly bound, and making a library of 3,300 pages, in handy form for reading and reference. It is published simultaneously -with, and contains the exact matter of, the English Edition, which has sold at $4.00 per volume in this country — $28.00 for the work when com- pleted. Our edition is in every way pref- erable, and is furnished at ONE-HAU THE PRICE OP THE ENOLISH EDITION. Price, Per Vol, $2.00. "Messrs. Funk 6° Wagnalls have entered into an arrangement with me to reprint THE TREASUR V OF DA VID in the United States. 1 have every confidence in them that they will issue it correctly and worthily. It has been the great literary work of my life, and I trust it will be as kind'.y received in America as in England. I wish for Messrs. Funk sue-, eess in a venture which must involve a great risk and much outlay. "Dec. 8, 1881. C. II. S PUR G EON." Volumes L, IL, HL, IV., V. and VL are now ready; volume VIL, which completes the great work, is now under the hand of the author. Subscribers can consult their convenience by ordering all the volumes issued, or one volume at a time, at stated intervals, until the set is completed by the delivery of Volume VII. From the large number of hearty commendations of this import- ant work, we give the following to indicate the value set upon the same by EMINENT THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. Philip Schaff, t-'.D., the Eminent i tical \rork of the age on the Psalter is Commentator and the President of the ' The Treasury of David,' by Charles H American Bible Revision Committee, Spurgeon. It is full of the force and •ays: " The most important and prac- I genius of this celebrated preacher, and (over.) ttM~Thi abovt work* will be sent by mall, joiij-je fa: J, on rtctift of tk* price. PUBLIC A1TOIV 5 9* WNK <£ WAUNALJLS, NEW YORK. rfch in selections from the entire range H literature." Wiliam M. Vaylor. D.D., New York says: ' In the exposition of the heart 'The Tbeasury of David' is s u i gen ri», rich in experience and pre- em nently devotional. The exposition is iiwa s iresh. To the preacher it is ' eap^ially suggestive." John Hall, D.D., New Yovk, 3ays: ''There are two questions that mast interest every expositov of the Divine Word. What does a particular passage mean, and to what use is it to be applied in public teaching? In tbe department of the latter Mr. Spur- geon's great work on the Psalms is without an equal. Eminently practical in his own teaching, he has collected in these volumes the best thoughts of the best minds on the Psalter, and espe- cially of that great body .loosely grouped together as the Puritan divines. I am heartily glad that by arrangements, satisfactory to all concerned, tie Messrs. Funk & Wa jnalls are to bring inis great work within the roach oi ministers everywhere, as the English edition is necessarily expensive. I wish the highest success to the enterprise." William Ormiston, D.n.,Kew York, says: " I consider ' The Treasury of David' a work of surpassing excel- lence.of inestimable value to every stu- dent of the » Salter. It will prove a standard work on the Psalms for all time. The instructive introductions, the racy original expositions, the numerous qnaint illustrations gath- ered from wide and varied fields, and the suggestive sermonio hints, render the volumes invaluable to all preachers, and indispensable to every minister's library. All who delight in reading the PsaliiS— and what Christian does not? — will prize this werk. It is a rich cyclopaedia of the literature of tncse ancient odes." Then. Ii. Cnyler, D.D., Brook- lyn, says: " I have use 1 Mr. Spurgeon's •The Treasury of David' for three ▼ears, and found it worthy of its name. Whoso goeth in there will find ' rich spoils.' At both my visits to Mr. 8. he spoke with much enthusiasm of this undertaking as one of his favorite methods of enriching himself and others." Jes«e B. Thomas, D.D , Brook- lyn, says: '« I have the highest concep- tion ot the sterling worth of all Mr. Spurgeon's publications, and I incline to legard his Treasury of David* as having received more of his loving labor than any other. I regard its publication at a lower price as a *rt at service to American Bible btudents." New York Observer says: *« A rich compendium of suggestivo com- ment upon the richest devotional poetry ever given to mankind. ' Tha Congregatlonnlist, Bos- ton, says: " As a devout and spiritually suggestive work, it is meeting with the warmest approval and receiving the hearty commendation of the most distinguished divines." United Presbyterian, Pitts burg. Pa., says: "Itia unapproacheo. as a commentary on the Psalms. It is of equal value to ministers and lay- men—a quality that works of the kind rarely possess." North American, Philadelphia, Pa.: says: *• Will find a place in the library of every minister who knows how to appreciate a good thing." New York Indeper.d* nt rays: " He has ransacked evangelical litera- ture.and comes forth, like JesBica from her father's house, 'gilded with ducats' and rich plunder in the shape of good and helplul quotations.' New York Tribune says: "'For the great majority of readers who seek in the Psalms those practical lessons in which they are so rich, and those wonderful interpretations of heart-life and expression of emotion in which they anticipate ihe New Testament, we know of no book like this, nor as good. It is literally a ' Treasury.* " 8. S. Times says: "Mr. Rpurgeon'a style is simple, direct and perspicuous, otten reminding one of the matchless) prose of Bunyan." West'rn Christian Arfvo* ate, Cincinnati, O., says: "The price is ex- tremely moderate for so large and im- portant a work. * * * We have ex- ' amined this volnme with care, and we are greatly pleased with the plan of execution." Christian Herald says: "Con- tains more felicitous illustrations, more valuablo sermonic hints, than can be found in all other works on th« same book put together." JW The above vm-ks will be tent 6y mail, postage Paid, on receipt of the fnc* The Hoyt-Ward Encyclopaedia of Quotations, PROSE AND POETRY. 20,000 QUOTATIONS, 50,000 LINES OF CONCORDANCE. This full concordance of over 50,000 lines, is to quotations what Young's and Crndcu'a Concordances are to the Eiblc. A quotation, if but a word is re merabered, can easily be found by means of this great work. BOSTON POST. " The only s tandard book of quotations. For convenience and usefulness the work cannot, to our mind, be svrpassed, and it must long remain the standard among its kind, ranking side by side with, and being equally indispensable in every well-orde red library, as Worcester's or Webster's Dictionary, IlogeCs Tnc saurus, and CraWs Synonyms." GEORGE W. CURTIS: " A most serviceable c ompanion. " HON. JUDGE EDMUNDS, U. S. SENATOR: " TJie most complete and best work of tlie kind.' * GEN. STEWART L. WOODFORD : " The 'most complete and accurate book of the k ind. " MAJ.-GEN. GEO. B. McCLELLAN: ' A work tha t s/iould be in every library." GEORGE W. CHILDS: " Any one icho dips into it will at on ce make a place for it among his icell-chosen books." HENRY WARD BE- CHER: " Good all tJte way through.^ HON. ABRAM S. HEWITT: " The completeness of Us indices is simply asto nishing. " WENDELLS PHILLIPS (Just before his Death): "It is of rare value to the scholar ." Prices:— Royal, 8vo, over 900 pp., Heavy Paper, Cloth Binding, $5.00; Sheep, $6.50; Half Morocco, $8.00; Full Morocco, $10.00. PnlMers: FUNK & WAGNALLS, 10 k 12 Dej Street, New Yorfc rUHLICATIONS OF FUXK tfi WAGS ALLS, SEW YORK. Biblical Lights and Side Lights; or, Ten Thousand Biblical Illustrations, with Thirty Thousand Cross References, consisting of Facts, Incidents, and Remarkable Statements for the use of Public Speakers and Teachers ; and also for those in every kind of Profession, who for illustrative purposes desire ready access to the numerous and interesting narratives con- tained in the Bible. By Rev. Charles E. Little. 8vo, cloth. Price, $4.00. Biblical Notes and Queries. A general medium of communication regarding Biblical Criticism and Biblical Interpretation, Ecclesiastical History, An- tiquities, Biography and Theological Science, Reviews, etc. It answers thousands of questions constantly presented to the minds of clergymen and Sunday-school teachers. By Robert Young, LL.D., author of the Analytical Concordance to the Bible. Royal 8vo, cloth, 400 pp. Price, $1.75. Bible Work; or, Bible Readers' Commentary on the New Testament. The text arranged in Sections ; with Readings and Comments select- ed from the Choicest, most Illuminating and Helpful Thought of the Christian Centuries. In two volumes. Vol. I. The Fourfold Gospel. Vol. II. The Acts, Epistles and Revelation. With Maps, Illustrations and Diagrams. By J. Glentworth Butter, D.D. Royal 8vo, cloth, 800 pp., per vol., $5.00; sheep, $6,00; half morocco, $7.50; full morocco, gilt, #10.00. Blood of Jesus. By Rev. Wm. 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PUBLICATIONS OF FVNK dk WAGNALLS, NEW YORK. Conversion of Children. Can it be Effected? How Young? Will they Remain Steadfast? What Means to be Used? When to be Received and how Trained in the Church? By Rev. E. P. Hammond, the Chil- dren's Evangelist. Should be studied by all lovers and teachers of children. Paper, 30 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. Early Days of Christianity. By Canon Farrar, D.D., F.R.S. This standard work needs no commendation. Printed from imported plates without abridgment. Paper and press-work excellent. Substantially bound in brown or green cloth. Authorized Edition. 8vo, cloth, 75 cents ; paper, 40 cents. From Gloom to Gladness. Illustrations of Life from the Biography of Esther. By Rev. Joseph S. Van Dyke. A companion book to " Through the Prison to the Throne." Rich in suggestive and practical thoughts. l6mo, 254 pp., cloth, $1.00. Pulton's Replies. Punishment of Sin Eternal. Three Sermons in reply to Beecher, Farrar, and Ingersoll. By Justin D. 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Revised and Brought down to the Present Time by Thomas J. Conant, D.D., Member of the Old Testament Revision Commit- tee, and Translator for the American Bible Union Edition of the Scriptures. A Complete History of Bible Revision from the Wickliffe Bible to the Revised Version. 2 vols., paper, 8vo, 284 pp., 50 cents; I vol., 8vo, cloth, $1.00. KfThe abov» win be sent, post paid, on receipt qf price* PUBLICATIONS OF FUNK d WAQNALLS, NEW YORK. Inner Life of Christ. These Sayings of Mine. Sermons on St. Matthew's Gos- pel, Chaps. I.- V II. By Joseph Parker, D.D. With Introduction by Dr. Deems. 8vo, cloth, #1.50. Servant of All. Sermons on St. Matthew's Gospel, Chaps. VIII-XV. By Joseph Parker, D.D. A sequel to the above vol- ume. 8vo, cloth, $1.50. Things Concerning Himself. Sermons on St. Matthew's Gospel, Chaps. XVI-XVIII. A sequel to the above volumes. By Joseph Parker, D.D. 8vo, cloth, £1.50. Manual of Revivals. Practical Hints and Suggestions from the Histories of Re- vivals, and Biographies of Revivalists, with Themes for the use of Pastors, before, during, and after special services, including the Texts, Subjects, and Outlines of the Sermons of many distinguished Evan- gelists. By G. W. Hervey, A.M. i2mo, cloth, £1.25. Metropolitan Pulpit. The Metropolitan Pulpit, containing carefully prepared Condensations of Leading Sermons, preached in New York and Brooklyn, Outlines of Sermons preached elsewhere, and much other homiletic matter. Vol. I. Royal 8vo, cloth, 206 pp., #1.50. Vol. II., cloth, enlarged. (Metropolitan Pulpit and Homiletic Monthly.) 388 pp., $2.75. The set #4,00. Preacher's Cabinet. A Handbook of Illustrations. By Rev. Edward P. Thwing, author of "Drill- Book in Vocal Culture." Fourth Edilion % 2 vols., i2mo, paper, 50 cents. Popery. Popery the Foe of the Church and of the Republic. By Rev. Jos. S. 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Tribune, Dec. 31, 1883. Mumu. Diary of a Superfluous Man. Two Stories trans- lated from the liussian. Ready. .15 108 loan u ii Miller. Memorie and lCimc. Beady. .25 109 John P. Newman, D.D, Christianity Triumph- ant. Ready. .15 110 John Habberton. Author of " Helen's Babies." The Bnwsham Puzzle. Fiction. Ready. .25 111 H. R. Hawcis. Author of " Music and Morals," and "Amer- ican Humorists." My Musical Memories. Beady. .25 112 Julian Hawthorne. Archibald Malmaison. Fiction. Beady. Beady. .15 113 Sir Samuel Baker. In the Heart of Africa. Prepared from Baker's vari- ous books of travel. .25 114 Charles H. Spitrgeon. The Clew of the Maze. From advance sheets. Beady. Beady. .15 115 Edward Eierett Hale. The Fortunes of Rachel. Fiction. .25 116 Archibald Forbes. Chinese Gordon. Ready. .15 117 Jean Paul Richter. Wit, Wisdom and Phi- losophy. Himself Again. Fiction. Ready. Ready. .25 lis J C. Goldsmith. .25 119 Laura C. Hollo way. Homo in Poetry. Ready. .25 120 Dr. Joseph J. Pope, 3I.II.C.S. 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Ready. .15 RETURN TO the circulation desk of any University of California Library or to the NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station University of California Richmond, CA 94804-4698 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS • 2-month loans may be renewed by calling (510)642-6753 • 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books to NRLF • Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. DUE AS STAMPED BELOW - DEC 18 2002 2,000(11/95) yC l*8* 83 Ml.63579 4?r3 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 1 * •»