iui i!ini!ii}{! 
 
 totae*. 
 
 n ! 
 
 
 LITERARY AND SCIENT1 FIG 
 CIRCLE 
 
 LITERARY LEADERS 
 OF MODERN ENGLAND 
 
 WILLIAM J. DAWSON
 
 f 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 (UNIVERSITY OF 
 , CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIGO 
 
 presented to the 
 
 LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 
 
 by 
 FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY 
 
 Mrs. Edwin W. Meise 
 
 donor
 
 Literary Leaders of 
 Modern England 
 
 BY 
 
 W. J. DAWSON 
 
 SELECTED CHAPTERS FROM "THE MAKERS OF MODERN 
 
 POETRY," AND "THE MAKERS OF MODERN PROSE," 
 
 BY PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER, 
 
 THOS. WHITTAKER, NEW YORK 
 
 NEW YORK CHAUTAUQUA SPRINGFIELD 
 
 Cfje <Ef)autau(ju 
 
 MCMII
 
 The Lakeside Press, Chicago, III., U. S. A. 
 R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 i. 
 ii. 
 
 in. 
 
 IV. 
 
 v. 
 
 VI. 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XL 
 
 XII. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WORDSWORTH'S 
 LIFE AND His POETRY 
 
 WORDSWORTH'S VIEW OF NATURE AND MAN 
 
 WORDSWORTH'S PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL 
 POEMS 
 
 WORDSWORTH'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH CONCLUDING SUR- 
 VEY 
 
 LORD TENNYSON GENERAL CHARACTERIS- 
 TICS - 
 
 TENNYSON'S TREATMENT OF NATURE 
 
 TENNYSON LOVE AND WOMAN 
 
 TENNYSON'S VIEW OF LIFE AND SOCIETY 
 
 IDYLLS AND THE "IDYLLS OF THE KING " 
 
 TENNYSON'S "!N MEMORIAM" 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF BROWNING'S RELIGION 
 
 BROWNING'S ATTITUDE TO CHRISTIANITY 
 CONCLUDING SURVEY 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 CARLYLE'S TEACHING 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 THE TEACHING OF RUSKIN 
 
 RUSKIN'S IDEAL OF WOMEN 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i 
 
 10 
 19 
 
 30 
 42 
 
 61 
 
 70 
 
 82 
 
 96 
 
 108 
 
 119 
 
 143 
 
 153 
 
 163 
 
 173 
 189 
 207 
 218 
 228 
 240 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM WORDSWORTH, TENNYSON, BROWN- 
 ING, CARLYLE, AND RUSKIN - 251-274
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The following essays, dealing with five great liter- 
 ary leaders of modern England, are taken from the 
 two volumes by Dr. William J. Dawson, entitled, 
 "The Makers of Modern Poetry" and "The Makers 
 of Modern Prose." A few typical selections from 
 each writer ,are added. These are intended to sup- 
 plement the quotations in the text, and it is hoped 
 that they will lead the reader to extend still further 
 his acquaintance with the works of the authors.
 
 LITERARY LEADERS OF 
 MODERN ENGLAND 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 Born at Cockermouth, April 7, 1770. Poems first published 
 1798. Became Poet Laureate 1843. Died at Rydal Mount, 
 April 23, 1850. 
 
 In many respects, and those the most essential, the 
 influence of William Wordsworth is the most powerful 
 and abiding poetic influence of the Victorian period. 
 During his lifetime his fame was comparatively restricted, 
 and during the greater part of his career his very claim to 
 be a poet was eagerly disputed, and widely and vehemently 
 denied. Lord Jeffrey's verdict that he was a driveling 
 idiot, and wouldn't do, has become historical, and is a 
 memorable example of the ineptitude and virulence of that 
 criticism which prevailed in the palmy days of the Edin- 
 burgh Review. By a curious chastisement of fate, the 
 ancient criticism is chiefly remembered to-day by its con- 
 temptuous hostility to Byron, its brutal attack on Keats, 
 and its undiscerning violence of hatred for Wordsworth. 
 Sydney Smith said he wou'd be glad to be as sure of any- 
 thing as Macaulay was of everything, and the dogmatical 
 criticism of Macaulay was typical of the criticism of the 
 time. It possessed neither justice nor urbanity; its weap-
 
 2 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 ons were the bludgeon and the tomahawk; and it knew no 
 mean between extravagant laudation and merciless abuse. 
 Some one has spoken of Macaulay as "stamping" through 
 the fields of literature, and the phrase admirably pictures 
 the energetic Philistinism of the critical dogmatist. It 
 was in this spirit that England first received the poetry 
 of a man who has been, and is, one of the noblest voices 
 in the literary life of the century. The critics simply 
 "stamped" upon his writings; and not merely howled 
 derision on them, but taught his countrymen everywhere 
 to receive his name with guffaws of brutal ridicule. 
 
 In considering the works and influence of Wordsworth, 
 we are bound to take full cognizance of the peculiarities 
 of his own character and the events of his own life. 
 With all poets it is necessary to do this, but with Words- 
 worth most of all, because everything he has written is 
 deeply colored with his own individuality. He has writ- 
 ten little that is impersonal; across almost every page 
 there is projected the huge shadow of his own peculiar 
 personality. While other poets have gone to history or 
 mythology for their themes, Wordsworth found his within 
 himself, or in the simple surroundings of one of the sim- 
 plest and most uneventful of lives. He brooded over the 
 "abysmal deeps of personality," and from them he drew 
 the inspiration of his noblest poetry. Sometimes this 
 superb egotism of Wordsworth is irritating, and often he 
 becomes tedious by attaching enormous importance to the 
 very slightest influences which have helped to form his 
 mind, or the most trivial incidents which have composed 
 its record. "The Prelude," which is one of his longest 
 poems, simply describes the growth of an individual mind, 
 and, among many passages of profound thought and
 
 William Wordsworth 3 
 
 beauty, contains others that are both tedious and trivial, 
 and are tedious because they are trivial. It is because 
 Wordsworth always found the impulse of poetry within 
 himself that it is impossible to understand his writings 
 without a clear understanding of the significance of his 
 life. He boldly declared that he must be taken as a 
 teacher or as nothing. He was no fitful singer of an idle 
 day; he believed he had a message to deliver, as truly as 
 ever ancient seer or prophet had. For this reason Words- 
 worth fulfills, more perfectly than any other modern poet, 
 the ideal conception of the bard. According to some 
 philologists, "minister" and "minstrel" spring from the 
 same root, and convey the same idea. The true poet is 
 the bard, the seer, the minister; he has a divine ordina- 
 tion and is sacred by a divine anointing; he is a 
 consecrated spirit, selected and commissioned for the 
 performance of a divine behest. This was Wordsworth's 
 view of the function of the poet, and he endeavored to 
 fulfill it. This is what he meant when he said that vows 
 were made for him, and that he must be considered as a 
 teacher or nothing. This is the secret of that prophetic 
 force which throbs in his best verses, and which gives 
 them a subtle and enduring charm. They are the expres- 
 sion of an austere and separated soul, of a spirit which 
 dwells amid inaccessible heights of devout vision, and 
 speaks with the accent of one who knows the peace of 
 lofty and satisfying purposes. 
 
 This claim of Wordsworth's to be considered as a 
 teacher or as nothing was a new claim to the critics of 
 fifty years ago, and was undoubtedly one cause, and per- 
 haps the main cause, of their prolonged and bitter hostility. 
 We shall see hereafter precisely what Wordsworth meant
 
 4 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 by the claim and how he has built up a philosophy which 
 is its justification. But in the first instance the claim 
 was based almost as much upon the literary form of his 
 work as on its philosophic qualities and upon a theory of 
 literary composition which he himself has stated and devel- 
 oped in his prefaces with great fullness. What was that 
 theory? Briefly put, it amounted to this: Wordsworth 
 complained that the commonly accepted theory of poetry 
 was both false and vicious. It had practically invented a 
 dialect of its own, which was as far as possible removed 
 from the ordinary dialect of the common people. It was 
 artificial and stilted the cant of a coterie, and not the 
 language of ordinary life. Its spirit also was wholly 
 wrong and mistaken: it had lost hold on common life, and 
 scorned it as low and mean; it had lost hold on nature, 
 because it did not know how to speak of her except in 
 ancient rhetorical phrases, which were the bronze coinage 
 of poetry, defaced by use, and whatever might once have 
 been true or just about them was now depraved and muti- 
 lated by unthinking use. Wordsworth held that there was 
 sufficient interest in common life to inspire the noblest 
 achievements of the poet, and that nature must be observed 
 with unflinching fidelity if she was to be described with 
 truth or freshness. He asks why should poetry be 
 
 A history only of departed things, 
 
 Or a mere fiction of what never was ? 
 
 For the discerning intellect of Man, 
 
 When wedded to this goodly universe 
 
 In love and holy passion, shall find these 
 
 A simple produce of the common day. 
 
 1, long before the blissful hour arrives, 
 
 Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal hour 
 
 Of this great consummation ; and, by words
 
 William Wordsworth 5 
 
 Which speak of nothing more than what we are, 
 Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep 
 Of Death, and win the vacant and the vain 
 To noble raptures ; while my voice proclaims 
 How exquisitely the individual mind 
 (And the progressive powers perhaps no less 
 Of the whole species) to the external world 
 Is fitted ; and how exquisitely too 
 Theme this but little heard of among men 
 The external world is fitted to the mind. 
 
 In this noble passage from the "Recluse," the gist of 
 Wordsworth's peculiar view of poetry is to be found. He 
 announces a return to simplicity, to simple themes and 
 simple language, and teaches that in the simplest sights of 
 life and nature there is sufficient inspiration for the true 
 poet. He speaks of nothing more than what we are, and 
 is prepared to write nothing that is not justified by the 
 actual truth of things. He sets himself against that 
 species of poetry which finds its impulse and its public in 
 theatrical passion and morbid or exaggerated sentiment. 
 To him the "meanest flower that blows can give thoughts 
 that do often lie too deep for tears," and by preserving 
 his soul in austere simplicity he aims at producing a 
 species of poetry which will affect men by its truth rather 
 than its passion, and will affect even the lowliest of men, 
 because it is expressed in the plain and unadorned language 
 of common life. 
 
 How truly Wordsworth adhered to the great principles 
 here enunciated his life and work declare, but it will also 
 be apparent that his theory of poetic expression hopelessly 
 broke down after a short trial. It may be said, indeed, 
 that occasionally even his theory of poetry itself breaks 
 down. In the attempt to be simple he becomes childish,
 
 6 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 and in his selection of the commonest themes he more 
 than once has selected themes which no human genius 
 could make poetic. In the main, however, the principles 
 of thought which he enunciated he strictly observed 
 throughout a long life, and his noblest effects have been 
 produced within the limitations he invented, and which he 
 was content to obey. But when we consider the ques- 
 tion of his literary expression, we at once perceive that he 
 does not use the language of common life, nor was it pos- 
 sible that he should. The vocabulary of the educated 
 man is far wider than the vocabulary of the illiterate, and 
 the vocabulary of the great poet is usually the fullest of 
 all. Wordsworth simply could not help himself when he 
 used forms of expression which the ploughman and peddler 
 could never have used. It was in vain that he said: "I 
 have proposed to myself to imitate, and as far as is pos- 
 sible to adopt, the very language of men. I have taken 
 as much pains to avoid what is usually called poetic diction 
 as others ordinarily take to produce it." In poems like 
 "The Idiot Boy," or "The Thorn," he certainly fulfills 
 this purpose; he has so entirely succeeded in avoiding 
 poetic diction that he has produced verses which by no 
 stretch of literary charity could be called poetry at all. 
 Wordsworth's noblest poetry is noble in direct contra- 
 vention of his own theory of poetry, and is a pertinent 
 illustration of the futility of all such theories to bind men 
 of real genius. His theory is, that true poetry should be 
 merely "the language really spoken by men, with meter 
 superadded," and he asks us, "What other distinction 
 from prose would we have ? ' ' We reply that from the 
 true poet we expect melody and magic of phrase the gift 
 of musical expression which can make words a power
 
 William Wordsworth 7 
 
 equal to music, in producing exquisite sensations on the 
 ear, and which is a still higher power than music, because 
 it can directly produce noble thoughts and passions in the 
 soul. If Wordsworth had only given us the language of 
 prose with meter superadded, we should not be reading 
 his pages to-day with ever- fresh delight. It is because 
 he discards his own theory of poetic expression, and has 
 given us many verses written in language unmatched for 
 purity and melody of phrase, and wholly different from 
 the "language really spoken by men," that we have judged 
 him a great poet. 
 
 When we consider the vehemence of that ridicule with 
 which Wordsworth was greeted, and the virulence of that 
 criticism with which he was pursued for nearly half a 
 century, it is necessary, therefore, to bear in mind how 
 absurd this theory of poetic expression is, and how doubly 
 absurd it must have seemed to those who were the critical 
 authorities of his day. And it must also be recollected 
 that Wordsworth pressed his theory in season and out of 
 season. The temper of mind which made him attach an 
 overweening importance to the slightest incidents in his 
 own intellectual development made him also blind to the 
 relative values of his poems. He deliberately chose poems 
 like "The Idiot Boy" which were written in his worst 
 style and solemnly insisted on their significance as illus- 
 trative of his theory. If he had had any sense of humor, 
 he would have perceived how absurd this was; but in 
 humor Wordsworth was singularly deficient. There was 
 a stiffness of controversial temper about him which refused 
 any parley with the enemy. The consequence was, that 
 the more strenuously Wordsworth insisted on the value of 
 his worst poems, the more blind men became to the
 
 8 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 supreme excellence of his best. They accepted his worst 
 poems as typical of his genius, and it was easy to turn 
 them into ridicule. If poetry were, indeed, only prose 
 with meter superadded, it was obvious that any prose-man 
 could become a poet at will; and the facile retort rose to 
 the lips that Wordsworth had justified his theory by writ- 
 ing prose under the delusion that it was poetry. The 
 astonishing thing is, that men of genuine critical ability 
 were so slow to recognize that among many poems which 
 were little better than prose cut up into metrical lengths, 
 there were other poems of great and enduring excellence, 
 which the greatest poets of all time might be proud to 
 claim. However, a truce has long since been called to 
 such contentions. No one cares much to-day what par- 
 ticular poetic fads Wordsworth may have advocated; the 
 fact that has gradually grown clear and clearer to the 
 world is, that in Wordsworth we possess a poet of pro- 
 found originality and of supreme genius, and his greatness 
 is generally recognized. It is also generally recognized 
 that, more than any other modern poet, Wordsworth has 
 expressed in his poems a noble philosophy; and it is to 
 the study of that philosophy that I invite those who would 
 read Wordsworth with a seeing eye and an understanding 
 heart. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. How was the poetry of Wordsworth received by the 
 critics of his day? 
 
 2. Why is it very necessary to study Wordsworth's life in 
 connection with his poetry? 
 
 3. What was Wordsworth's idea of the function of a poet? 
 
 4. What fault did he find with much of the poetry of his 
 time?
 
 William Wordsworth 9 
 
 5. What were his theories as to what poetry should be? 
 
 6. How did he fall short of his own theory of poetic expres- 
 sion? 
 
 7. How does this explain in some measure the views of his 
 critics? 
 
 8. What important qualities of his work did many of his 
 critics fail to see? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Ward's English Poets. Vol. IV. Essay by R. W. Church, 
 and Selections. 
 
 The Poets and the Poetry of the Century. A. H. Miles. 
 Vol. I. 
 
 Wordsworth. F. W. H. Myers. (English Men of Letters 
 Series.) 
 
 Wordsworthiana. Papers read to the Wordsworth Society. 
 Edited by Wm. Knight. 
 
 Poems of Wordsworth. Chosen and selected, with intro- 
 ductory essay, by Matthew Arnold. (Golden Treasury Series.) 
 
 Wordsworth's Complete Poetical Works. \ Vol. Edited 
 by John Morley. 
 
 William Wordsworth. A biographical sketch, with selec- 
 tions from his writings. A. J. Symington. 
 
 Wordsworth's Poetry. Francis Jeffrey. (Contributions to 
 the Edinburgh Review, 1807-1814. These are the most famous 
 of the early attacks on Wordsworth.)
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WORDS- 
 WORTH'S LIFE AND HIS POETRY 
 
 I have already said that with Wordsworth, more than 
 with most poets, the life of the poet must be considered 
 in connection with his poetry. Let us now look at this 
 subject a little more closely. Wordsworth was born on 
 the borders of that Lake Country which he loved so well, 
 at Cockermouth, on April 7, 1770. From his boyhood 
 he was familiar with English mountain scenery, and the 
 subduing spirit of its beauty touched his earliest life. He 
 himself tells us 
 
 Nothing at that time 
 So welcome, no temptation half so dear 
 As that which urged me to a daring feat. 
 Deep pools, tall trees, black chasms and dizzy crags, 
 And tottering towers : I loved to stand and read 
 Their looks forbidding, read and disobey. 
 
 It is a vivid picture of the wild child of Nature, awed and 
 yet exhilarated in her presence, which Wordsworth paints 
 in these lines. The boyish Wordsworth described in the 
 "Recluse" is a true boy, touched more perhaps than a 
 boy should be with a sense of mystery in nature, but not 
 distinguished by any unwholesome precocity or unnatural 
 meditativeness. The awe of nature seems to have been a 
 feeling early developed in him, and it never left him. He 
 tells us how one day while nutting he penetrated into a
 
 Wordsworth's Life and His Poetry 1 1 
 
 distant solitude of the wood, where the silence and sense 
 of sacredness were so profound that he hastily retreated, 
 with the feeling that he had invaded a sanctuary. But in 
 other passages, such as the above, the idea left upon the 
 mind is of a sturdy youth, rejoicing in his strength of limb 
 and sureness of foot, and taking a thoroughly healthy 
 delight in outdoor life. He has the wholesome blood of 
 the Cumberland dalesman in his veins, and loves the moun- 
 tains as only those love them whose life has thriven beneath 
 their shadows ; and even as a boy he learned to feel some- 
 thing of that healing serenity which Nature breathes into 
 the soul that loves her. He felt that "whatever of high- 
 est he can hope, it is 'hers to promise; all that is dark in 
 him she must purge into purity; all that is failing in him 
 she must strengthen into truth; in her, through all the 
 world's warfare, he must find his peace"; or, to quote his 
 own memorable words: 
 
 But me hath Nature tamed, and bade to seek 
 For other agitations, or be calm ; 
 Hath dealt with me as with a turbulent stream, 
 Some nursling of the mountains, which she leads 
 Through quiet meadows, after he has learnt 
 His strength, and had his triumph and his joy, 
 His desperate course of tumult and of glee. 
 
 The first noticeable thing, therefore, is that Words- 
 worth was a true "nursling of the mountains," and the 
 influence of natural beauty and pastoral life was one of 
 the earliest influences which shaped his mind. He had 
 no love of cities, and knew little of them. When he spoke 
 of them it was with reluctance and compassion; he 
 brooded
 
 12, Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Above the fierce confederate storm 
 Of sorrow, barricadoed ever more 
 Within the walls of cities; 
 
 for it seemed to him that cities were the natural homes of 
 sorrow, and the open fields the true abodes of peace. He 
 had a passionate love for an outdoor life, and his mind 
 naturally lent itself to that deep meditativeness which is a 
 common characteristic of those who spend many hours of 
 every day in the loneliness of nature. Strangely enough, 
 in one who is known to fame as a man of letters, it was 
 nevertheless true that the three things most difficult for 
 him to do, to the very end of his life, were reading, writ- 
 ing, and the toil of literary composition. When he is a 
 young man of thirty-three, he writes to Sir George Beau- 
 mont that he never has a pen in his hand for five minutes 
 without becoming a bundle of uneasiness, and experiencing 
 an insufferable oppression. "Nine-tenths of my verses," 
 he writes forty years later, "have been murmured out in 
 the open air." When a visitor at Rydal Mount asked to 
 see Wordsworth's study, the reply was that he could see 
 his "library, where he keeps his books, but his study is 
 out of doors." The peculiarities thus described are the 
 typical peculiarities of the sturdy dalesman, and such in 
 many respects Wordsworth was to the end of his days. 
 When he described the peasants and farmers of the moun- 
 tains, it was no fanciful love that attracted him to them: 
 he spoke of men whom he thoroughly understood, because 
 he was physically akin to them. The sturdy fiber of his 
 mind, his intellectual honesty, his independence, his power 
 of contemplation, his sufficiency not the coarse sufficiency 
 of the vulgar egoist, but the habitual sufficiency of a well- 
 poised and self-reliant nature all these were the distin-
 
 Wordsworth's Life and His Poetry 13 
 
 guishing characteristics of his neighbors, but touched in 
 him with a loftier spirit, and put to higher purposes. 
 Even in his face and figure in the ruggedness of the one 
 and the firmness and sturdiness of the other much of this 
 was discernible. It was a figure that showed worst in 
 drawing-rooms, as though consciously alien to them; a 
 face that seemed almost vacant to the nimble-minded 
 dwellers in cities, but which glowed with true illumination 
 and nobility among the sounds and visions of his native 
 country-side. The mold in which Wordsworth was cast 
 was a strong one. His nature was slow, and deep, and 
 steadfast; what he was at thirty he practically was at 
 seventy, save that there had been an inevitable stiffening 
 of ideas, and an equally inevitable growth of self-reliant 
 sufficiency. 
 
 Let any one try to picture to himself the leading char- 
 acteristics of the life of a Cumbrian dalesman, and, if he 
 pleases, let him go to the poems of Wordsworth himself 
 for materials, and he will find that the life so outlined will 
 be, above all things, independent, self-respecting, and self- 
 sufficient, frugal without parsimony, pious without formal- 
 ity, and simple without boorishness. It is a wholesome 
 life of humble industries and simple pleasures, and such a 
 life was not merely to Wordsworth the ideal life, but it 
 was an ideal which he himself perfectly fulfilled. And 
 let any one think again of the sort of life which found 
 favor with the poets of his day, and the sort of life they 
 themselves lived Byron with his bitter misanthropy, 
 Shelley with his outraged sensitiveness, Keats with his 
 recoil from a sordid world to the ideal paradise of Greek 
 mythology, Moore with his cockney glitter, Coleridge with 
 his remote and visionary splendor let him think of this,
 
 14 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 and he will see how strange a thing it was to such a world 
 that a Cumbrian dalesman's life should have been thrust 
 before it as an ideal human life, and that, too, by a man 
 who had himself chosen such a life for himself, and had 
 found in it tranquillity and satisfaction. In that age there 
 were only two poets who had shown any genuine love of 
 Nature in her daily and common manifestations, and had 
 written verses which might have "been murmured out in 
 the open air." These were Burns and Scott, and it is 
 noticeable that for both Wordsworth felt a deep attraction. 
 In both there is a supreme healthfulness, a sense of robust 
 enjoyment in fresh air and simple sights. When Scott 
 describes nature it is always with a true eye for color, and 
 Burns 's poems touch us by their artless rusticity not less 
 than by their artistic beauty. Wordsworth himself has 
 told us how "admirably has Burns given way to these 
 impulses of nature, both with reference to himself and in 
 describing the condition of others"; and it was the simple 
 humanness of the Ayrshire farmer that endeared him to a 
 poet who valued more than anything else simplicity and 
 virtue in human nature. But where Wordsworth differed 
 from all other poets of his day was that he had a conscious 
 ideal of what human life might be made, through simplicity 
 of desire and communion with nature, and he resolutely 
 set himself to the fulfillment of his ideal. Especially was 
 the dalesman's independence and self-sufficiency marked 
 in him. He knew what it was to be a law unto himself, 
 and found in his own nature the true impulses of action. 
 And so he writes: "These two things, contradictory as 
 they seem, must go together manly dependence and manly 
 independence, manly reliance and manly self-reliance." 
 And again: "Let the poet first consult his own heart, as
 
 Wordsworth's Life and His Poetry 15 
 
 I have done, and leave the rest to posterity to, I hope, 
 an improving posterity. I have not .written down to the 
 level of superficial observers or unthinking minds." The 
 spirit of these words reveals the man, and the man so 
 revealed could only have thriven in a region where sim- 
 plicity, and manliness, and rugged honesty were the prime 
 virtues and common heritage of daily life. 
 
 The great turning-point in the life of Wordsworth was 
 the year 1795, when his sister Dora joined him and 
 became henceforth the chosen comrade of his intellectual 
 life, not less than the confidant of his emotions. The 
 period preceding had been spent somewhat aimlessly, and 
 is memorable only for the foreign travel Wordsworth had 
 indulged in, his hopes of France, and his subsequent dis- 
 illusionment and despair. Like every poet of his day, save 
 Keats and Scott, he was violently affected by the French 
 Revolution, and was caught within the whirl of its frantic 
 fascination. But with the Reign of Terror his hopes of 
 world-wide regeneration perished, and a sullen and im- 
 penetrable despair fell upon him. He was indeed slow to 
 give up hope, and when England declared war upon 
 France he flamed out in indignant denunciation of what 
 seemed to him a disgraceful outrage. The effect of these 
 events on his poetry we shall best see when we come to 
 consider his patriotic poems. In the mean time, what we 
 have to observe is that in 1795 Wordsworth was as un- 
 settled as man could well be, and was without any true 
 aim or work in life. He was, to quote Mr. F.W. H. Myers, 
 "a rough and somewhat stubborn young man, who, in 
 nearly thirty years of life, had seemed alternately to idle 
 without grace and to study without advantage, and it 
 might well have seemed incredible that he could have any-
 
 1 6 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 thing new or valuable to communicate to mankind." It 
 was from this state of lethargic aimlessness that Dora 
 Wordsworth redeemed him. She revealed to him the true 
 bent of his nature, and discovered to him his true powers. 
 She led him back to the healing solitude of nature, where 
 alone, as she justly perceived, his mind could find a fit 
 environment, and his powers could ripen into greatness. 
 She understood him better than he understood himself. 
 She knew that he was unfitted for public life, or the con- 
 duct of affairs, but that there was in him that which might 
 be of infinite service to the world, if fitting opportunity 
 were given for its development. And she judged that 
 nowhere so well as in the beloved environment of his native 
 mountains would that spark of ethereal fire which pos- 
 sessed him be kindled into a living and animating flame. 
 Some years were yet to elapse before he finally settled at 
 Grasmere, but they were years passed in seclusion, during 
 which he gradually gave himself up to that appointed task 
 of poetic toil to which he felt himself divinely consecrated. 
 It meant for him a practical renunciation of the world. 
 He had but the scantiest means of subsistence, and knew 
 well that such a life as he now contemplated must be 
 almost a peasant's life, lived upon a peasant's frugal fare 
 and in a peasant's mean surroundings. When he turned 
 his back upon great cities, and steadily set his face toward 
 the English mountains, he resolutely shut the door upon 
 all hopes of brilliant worldly success, upon all the natural 
 hopes of advancement in life which a man of culture and 
 education may legitimately entertain. 
 
 His only guide in this most difficult hour was the need 
 and impulse of his own nature. He felt that in the soli- 
 tude of nature there was peace, and there only was a life
 
 Wordsworth's Life and His Poetry 17 
 
 of plain living and high thinking possible. All he knew 
 was that the common ideals of life did not satisfy him, 
 and he exclaimed: 
 
 The weaJthiest man amongst us is the best ; 
 No grandeur now in nature or in book 
 Delights us. 
 
 He had learned the great lesson of living, not for things 
 temporal, but for things eternal; he had set himself above 
 all to be true to his own self, and he had the rare daring 
 of being absolutely faithful to the voice of this supreme 
 conviction. Any greatness which attaches to Words- 
 worth's character directly springs from this spiritual hon- 
 esty of purpose. The noblest qualities of his poetry, all 
 the qualities indeed which differentiate and distinguish it, 
 and give it a lofty isolation in English literature, were the 
 natural result of this temper of spirit and method of life. 
 There, far from the fevered life of cities, where the free 
 winds blew, and the spacious silence taught serenity; 
 there, in the daily contemplation of simple life and natural 
 beauty among his own mountains the bonds of custom 
 fell from Wordsworth's spirit, and he became enfranchised 
 with a glorious liberty. Strength returned to him, clear- 
 ness and resoluteness of spirit, sanity and joy of mind. 
 The great lesson which he was consecrated to expound 
 was the nobleness of unworldly and simple life, and such 
 lessons could only be learned, much less taught, by a life 
 which was itself infinitely removed from the vulgar scram- 
 ble for wealth and the insane thirst for social power. It 
 is not too much to say that it is to Dora Wordsworth that 
 England owes the precious gift of her brother's genius. 
 She recognized it when he himself was dubious; she
 
 1 8 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 taught him how to collect his powers and develop them; 
 she encouraged him when almost every other voice was 
 hostile, and finally, she taught him that serene confidence 
 in himself and in his mission, which made him say to his 
 few friends when the public contempt and apathy of his 
 time seemed universal and unbearable: "Make yourselves 
 at rest respecting me; I speak the truths the world must 
 feel at last." 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. How was Wordsworth's youth influenced by his sur- 
 roundings? 
 
 2. In what respects was he a part of the rural society in 
 which he lived? 
 
 3. How did Wordsworth's ideal of life compare with that 
 of his fellow-poets? 
 
 4. Why was Wordsworth especially attracted to Burns and 
 Scott? 
 
 5. How was he affected by the events of the French Revo- 
 lution? 
 
 6. What important influence did Dora Wordsworth have 
 upon him? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Ward' 's English Poets. Vol. IV. Essay by R.W. Church, 
 and Selections. 
 
 Dorothy Wordsworth. Edmund Lee. 
 
 Wordsworth. F. W. H. Myers. (English Men of Letters 
 Series.) 
 
 Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. Edited by William 
 Knight. 
 
 Hours in a Library. (Wordsworth's Ethics.) Third Series. 
 Leslie Stephen.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WORDSWORTH'S VIEW OF NATURE AND 
 
 MAN 
 
 I have spoken of Wordsworth as having a new and 
 original philosophy to unfold, a new and individual view 
 of nature to expound. What, then, was that view ? The 
 love of nature is to be found in all the English poets, from 
 Chaucer downward. In Wordsworth's own day both 
 Byron and Shelley were writing poems thoroughly impreg- 
 nated with the love of nature. If we eliminated from 
 English poetry all the passages which deal with the charm 
 and glory of nature, we should have destroyed all that is 
 sweetest, freshest, and most characteristic in it. What 
 is there, then, in Wordsworth's treatment of nature which 
 differs from the poetry of those who have gone before 
 him ? It is perilous to be too positive where many fine 
 and delicate distinctions are involved; but, speaking 
 generally, it may be said that Wordsworth differs from all 
 other poets in the stress he puts upon the moral influences 
 of nature. To Byron nature was the great consoler in 
 the hour of his revolt against the folly of man, and he 
 found in her, not merely hospitality, but a certain exhila- 
 ration which fed the fierce defiance of his heart and 
 armed him with new strength for the fight. To Shelley 
 nature is more of a personality than to Byron, but it is an 
 ethereal and lovely presence, a veiled splendor, kindling 
 sweet ardor in the heart and exercising an intoxicating 
 
 19
 
 2O Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 magic on the mind. But with Wordsworth the idea of 
 the living personality of Nature is a definite reality. He 
 loves her as he might love a mistress, and communes with 
 her as mind may commune with mind. To him she is a 
 vast embodied thought, a presence not merely capable 
 of inspiring delightful ardor, but of elevating man by 
 noble discipline. Take, for instance, his "Sonnet on 
 Calais Beach": 
 
 It is a beauteous evening, calm and free; 
 The holy time is quiet as a nun 
 Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun 
 
 Is sinking down in its tranquillity; 
 
 The gentleness of heaven is on the sea: 
 Listen! the mighty Being is awake, 
 And doth with his eternal motion make 
 
 A sound like thunder everlastingly. 
 
 Or take his conception of human life in the presence of 
 the everlastingness of nature: 
 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
 Of the eternal silence. 
 
 Or ponder the spirit of the well-known verses: 
 
 The outward shows of sky and earth, 
 
 Of hill and valley he has viewed ; 
 And impulses of deeper birth 
 
 Have come to him in solitude. 
 
 In common things that round us lie 
 Some random truths he can impart 
 
 The harvest of a quiet eye 
 That broods and sleeps on his own heart. 
 
 Or mark how he replies to the restlessness of life which is 
 divorced from habitual intercourse with nature:
 
 Wordsworth's View of Nature and Man 21 
 
 Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum 
 
 Of things forever speaking, 
 That nothing of itself will come, 
 
 But we must still be seeking ? 
 
 Nor less I deem that there are powers 
 Which of themselves our minds impress; 
 
 That we can feed this mind of ours 
 Into a wise passiveness. 
 
 And hark! how blithe the throstle sings ; 
 
 He, too, is no mean preacher ; 
 Come forth into the light of things 
 
 Let Nature be your teacher. 
 
 One impulse of a vernal wood 
 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 
 Than all the sages can. 
 
 In these verses what most strikes us is the vividness of 
 Wordsworth's conception of nature as endowed with per- 
 sonality "the mighty Being," and the emphasis with 
 which he declares that nature is a teacher whose wisdom 
 we can learn if we will, and without which any human life 
 is vain and incomplete. 
 
 An artist, who is also a teacher of art, has laid down 
 the rule that in painting landscape what we want is not the 
 catalogue of the landscape, but the emotion of the artist 
 in painting it. This is the artistic theory of the impres- 
 sionist school, and it may be said that in this sense Words- 
 worth was an impressionist. Such a poet as Thomson 
 gives us in his "Seasons" the mere catalogue of nature, 
 and as a catalogue it is excellent. If the effects of nature 
 were to be put up to auction, no catalogue could serve us 
 better than Thomson's "Seasons." But what Thomson 
 cannot give us, and what Wordsworth does give us, is the
 
 22 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 impression which nature produces on his own spirit. He 
 teaches us that between man and nature there is mutual 
 consciousness and mystic intercourse. It is not for noth- 
 ing God has set man in this world of sound and vision: it 
 is in the power of nature to penetrate his spirit, to reveal 
 him to himself, to communicate to him divine instruc- 
 tions, to lift him into spiritual life and ecstasy. The poem 
 of "The Daffodils" is simply a piece of lovely word-paint- 
 ing till we reach the lines 
 
 They flash upon the inward eye, 
 Which is the bliss of solitude ; 
 
 and it is in those lines the real spirit of the poem speaks. 
 There was something in that sight of the daffodils, dan- 
 cing in jocund glee, that kindled a joy, an intuition, a hope 
 in the poet's mind, and through the vision an undying 
 impulse of delight and illumination reached him. Words- 
 worth does not indulge in the "poetic fallacy." He does 
 not take his mood to Nature and persuade himself that she 
 reflects it; but he goes to Nature with an open mind, and 
 leaves her to create the mood in him. He does not ask 
 her to echo him; but he stands docile in her presence, and 
 asks to be taught of her. To persuade ourselves that 
 Nature mirrors our mood, giving gray skies to our grief, 
 and the piping of glad birds in answer to the joy-bells of 
 our hope, is not to take a genuine delight in Nature. It is 
 to make her our accomplice rather than our instructress; 
 our mimic, not our mistress. Many poets have done this, 
 and nothing is commoner in current poetry. The original- 
 ity of Wordsworth is, that he never thinks of Nature in 
 any other way than as a mighty presence, before whom 
 he stands silent, like a faithful high-priest, who waits in
 
 Wordsworth's View of Nature and Man 23 
 
 solemn expectation for the whisper of enlightenment and 
 wisdom. 
 
 Let us turn to one of his earliest poems, the "Lines 
 Composed at Tintern Abbey, " July 13, 1798, and we shall 
 see how clearly defined in Wordsworth's mind this con- 
 ception of nature was, even at the commencement of his 
 career. Wordsworth was not yet thirty, and had not yet 
 recognized his true vocation in life; but nevertheless, all 
 that he afterward said about nature is uttered in outline 
 in these memorable lines. He speaks of the "tranquil 
 restoration," the sensations sweet, "felt in the blood and 
 felt along the heart," which nature had already wrought 
 in him. He has peace, 
 
 While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of song, 
 We see into the life of things. 
 
 The mere boyish love of nature, when the sounding cata- 
 ract haunted him like a passion, he characterizes as one of 
 the "glad animal movements" of the boy; now he has 
 perceived how nature not merely works delight in the 
 blood, but flashes illumination on the soul. 
 
 For I have learned 
 
 To look on Nature, not as in the hours 
 Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ;
 
 24 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 
 And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
 
 A lover of the meadows, and the woods, 
 
 And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
 
 From this round earth ; and of all the mighty world 
 
 Of eye and ear, both what they half create 
 
 And what perceive ; well pleased to recognize 
 
 In Nature and the language of the sense 
 
 The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
 
 The guide, the guardian of my heart and soul, 
 
 Of all my moral being. 
 
 We have only to compare this passage with such poems 
 as Byron's "Address to the Ocean" or Shelley's "Ode 
 to the West Wind" to see how great is the difference 
 between Wordsworth's view of nature and theirs, and how 
 profoundly original Wordsworth's view is. There is a 
 subtle power in Wordsworth's verses which seems to 
 breathe the very spirit of Nature, and to interpret her. 
 We entirely lose sight of the revealer in the revelation; 
 we pass out of the sphere of Wordsworth's mood into the 
 very mood and heart of Nature; we feel the presence of 
 something deeply interfused through all the inanimate 
 world. The world indeed is no longer dead to us, but 
 animate, and we feel the spirit and motion of Nature like 
 the actual contact of a living and a larger soul. Words- 
 worth is thus not so much the poet as the high-priest of 
 Nature, and the feeling he creates in us is not so much 
 delight as worship. 
 
 One effect of this ardent love of nature in Wordsworth 
 is, that he excels all other poets in the fidelity of his 
 descriptions, the minute accuracy of his observation of 
 natural beauty. His eye for nature is always fresh and
 
 Wordsworth's View of Nature and Man 25 
 
 true, and what he sees he describes with an admirable 
 realism. His sense of form and color is also perfect, and 
 in nothing is he so great an artist as in his power of con- 
 veying in a phrase the exact truth of the things he sees. 
 When he speaks of the voice of the stock-dove as "buried 
 among trees," he uses the only word that could completely 
 convey to us the idea of seclusion, the remote depth of 
 greenwood in which the dove loves to hide herself. The 
 star-shaped shadow of the daisy cast upon the stone is 
 noted also with the same loving accuracy, and can only be 
 the result of direct observation. Nothing escaped his 
 vigilance, and his sense of sound was as perfect as his 
 power of vision. The wild wind-swept summit of a moun- 
 tain-pass could hardly be better painted than in this word- 
 picture : 
 
 The single sheep, and that one blasted tree, 
 And the bleak music of that old stone wall. 
 
 We hear, as we read these lines, the wind whistling 
 through the crevices of the stone walls of Westmoreland, 
 and by the magic of this single phrase we feel at once the 
 desolation of the scene, and we catch its spirit. For, 
 after all, it is not in the power of the most accurate 
 description of itself to create emotion in us; it is the emo- 
 tion of the poet we need to interpret for us the spirit of 
 what he sees, and this is just what Wordsworth does for 
 us. He scorned what he called taking an inventory of 
 nature, and said that nature did not permit it. His com- 
 ment on a brilliant poet was: "He should have left his 
 pencil and note-book at home, fixed his eye as he walked 
 with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him, and 
 taken all into a heart that could understand and enjoy.
 
 26 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 He would have discovered that while much of what he had 
 admired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely 
 obliterated; that which remained the picture surviving 
 in his mind would have presented the ideal and essential 
 truth of the scene, and done so in a large part by discard- 
 ing much which, though in itself striking, was not charac- 
 teristic." This was Wordsworth's own method. Though 
 unsurpassed in the fidelity of his observation, he never 
 relies on observation alone for his interpretation of nature. 
 When he has observed he allows the picture of what he 
 has seen to sink quietly into the memory, and he broods 
 above it in silent joy. The result is, that when the hour 
 comes to combine his materials in a poem, they are already 
 sifted for us, and are saturated with sentiment. Many of 
 the noblest passages in Wordsworth might be thus de- 
 scribed as observation touched with emotion unusually 
 accurate observation touched with the finest and purest 
 emotion. 
 
 Another direct effect of Wordsworth's view of nature 
 is his view of man. He began life with the most ardent 
 hopes for the moral regeneration of mankind, and it was 
 only with bitter reluctance he renounced them, in the 
 frantic recoil which the excesses of the French Revolution 
 produced. From the bitterness of that trouble, as we have 
 seen, he was rescued by his sister Dora, and going back 
 to the calm of nature, he found a truer view of mankind. 
 He believed that he had put his finger on the real secret of 
 the unsatisfied passions and misery of mankind when he 
 taught that man, divorced from living intercourse with 
 nature, could not but be restless and unhappy. Man was 
 set in this world of nature because the world of nature 
 was necessary to his well-being, nor were spiritual sanity
 
 Wordsworth's View of Nature and Man 27 
 
 and delight possible without contact with nature. In this 
 view he was confirmed when he found that in the remote 
 dales of the English Lake District human life attained a 
 robust virtue denied to the dwellers in great cities. He 
 saw that the essentials of a really lofty and happy life 
 were few, and that they were found in the greatest profu- 
 sion where life was simplest and contact with nature was 
 habitual. His faith in mankind returned, and man again 
 became 
 
 An object of delight, 
 Of pure imagination and of love. 
 
 Set in his proper environment of nature, breathing clear 
 air, looking on refreshing visions of glory and delight, 
 Wordsworth saw that man was at his best, and he regarded 
 him with genuine reverence. His panacea for the healing 
 of his country was a return to nature, and it was in pathetic 
 reproach he wrote: 
 
 The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours ! 
 
 We have given away our hearts, a sordid boon ! 
 
 There is no poet who shows so great a reverence for man 
 as man. Lowliness and poverty cannot hide from him the 
 great qualities of heart and character, which the selfish and 
 unthinking never see. He sings the homely sanctities and 
 virtues of the poor. Human nature is to him a sacred 
 thing, and even in its frailest and humblest forms is re- 
 garded with gentleness and sympathy. And the real source 
 of Wordsworth's reverence for man lies in his reverence 
 for nature. It is the constant and purging vision of nature 
 which enables him to perceive how mean are the cares with
 
 28 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 which those who are rich burden themselves, and how 
 noble, and even joyous, men can be under the stress of 
 penury and labor, if they let nature lead them and exalt 
 them. 
 
 The spirit of this teaching is nowhere more happily 
 expressed than in the lovely lines which occur in the con- 
 clusion of the "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle": 
 
 Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ; 
 
 His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
 The silence which is in the starry sky, 
 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills. 
 
 These were the agencies which had softened, soothed, 
 and tamed the fiery heart of Clifford, and it was by the 
 same simple ministration he himself had been led into 
 settled peace. 
 
 It may, indeed, be doubted whether it is possible to 
 understand the full significance of Wordsworth's poetry in 
 any other environment than that in which it was produced. 
 So at least thought James Macdonell, when he wrote: 
 "What blasts of heavenly sunshine, as if blown direct from 
 the gates of some austerely Puritan paradise ! What gusts 
 of air, touched with the cold rigor of the mountain peak! 
 What depth of moralizing, touched with the hues of a 
 masculine gloom! What felicity of diction, clothing in 
 immortal brevity of phrase the deepest aspirations of the 
 brave! Never did I read Wordsworth with such full 
 delight, because never had I so charged my mind with the 
 spirit of the mountains which were the food of his soul." 
 
 What Burns did for the Scotch peasant, Wordsworth 
 has done for the shepherds and the husbandmen of Eng- 
 land, But he has done more than illustrate the virtues of
 
 Wordsworth's View of Nature and Man 29 
 
 a class: from the study of peasant life, set amid the splen- 
 dor, and vivified by the influence of nature, he attained a 
 profound faith in man himself, and a reverent understand- 
 ing of the inherent grandeur of all human life. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. How did Byron's and Shelley's views of nature differ 
 from that of Wordsworth? 
 
 2. Give illustrations of his idea of nature as a personality? 
 
 3. Compare his view of nature with that of Thomson. 
 
 4. What is the difference between the idea of nature as an 
 "accomplice" and as a "mighty presence"? 
 
 5. Illustrate this from the "Lines Composed at Tintern 
 Abbey." 
 
 6. Illustrate the faithfulness of his descriptions of nature. 
 
 7. What was his comment on a poet who " took an inventory 
 of nature"? 
 
 8. What did he teach as to man's need of close contact with 
 nature? 
 
 9. Why does Wordsworth's poetry reveal more than the 
 virtues of a class? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Ward's English Poets. Vol. IV. Essay by R. W. Church, 
 and Selections. 
 
 Wordsworth. F. W. H. Myers. (English Men of Letters 
 Series.) 
 
 Wordsworthiana. Papers read to the Wordsworth Society. 
 Edited by Wm. Knight. 
 
 Poetic Interpretation of Nature. (Wordsworth.) J. C. 
 Shairp.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 WORDSWORTH'S PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL 
 POEMS 
 
 An excellent and eloquent critic, Professor Dowden, 
 has spoken of Wordsworth's "uncourageous elder 
 years," and has founded the phrase upon this sentence 
 of Wordsworth's: "Years have deprived me of cour- 
 age, in the sense which the word bears when applied 
 by Chaucer to the animation of birds in springtime." 
 A little reflection will, I think, show that this confes- 
 sion of the poet hardly justifies the phrase of the critic. 
 Nevertheless, it is a general impression that Wordsworth 
 began life an ardent Radical and ended it as a stanch 
 Conservative. If this were all, the phrase might be 
 allowed to pass, but the impression such a phrase creates 
 is, that Wordsworth not merely renounced his early hopes 
 and creed, but grew apathetic toward the great human 
 causes which stirred his blood in youth. Browning's fine 
 poem of the "Lost Leader" has often been applied to 
 Wordsworth, and it has been assumed in many quarters, 
 with what degree of truth we do not know, that Browning 
 had Wordsworth in his mind when he wrote that powerful 
 and pathetic indictment. However this may be, nothing 
 is commoner than the assumption that one result of 
 Wordsworth's remote seclusion from the great stress of 
 life was that he lost interest in public affairs, and cared 
 little for the great movements of his day. Than this 
 
 30
 
 Wordsworth's Patriotic and Political Poems 3 1 
 
 assumption nothing can be falser. To say nothing of the 
 prose writings of Wordsworth, few poets have given us a 
 larger body of patriotic poetry, and poetry impregnated 
 with politics, than Wordsworth. Perhaps it is because 
 the finest poems of Wordsworth are those that deal with 
 the emotions of man in the presence of nature that com- 
 paratively little interest attaches to his patriotic poetry. 
 Such poetry, however, Wordsworth wrote throughout his 
 life, and if he was not altogether a political force, it is 
 quite certain that he never ceased to take a keen interest 
 in politics. He had national aims, and was full of the 
 most ardent love of country. It may be well to recall to 
 the minds of my readers this aspect of Wordsworth's life 
 and influence. 
 
 As regards the earlier part of his life, Wordsworth has 
 left an abundant record of his thoughts in his prose writ- 
 ings. No poet save Milton has written with so large a 
 touch upon national affairs and has displayed so lofty 
 a spirit. His prose does not indeed glow with so intense a 
 passion, nor is it so gorgeous as Milton's, but it is ani- 
 mated and inspired by the same spirit. And in its more 
 passionate passages something of Milton's pomp of style 
 is discernible something of his overwhelming force of 
 language and cogency of thought. Wordsworth's tract 
 on the "Convention of Cintra" belongs to the same class 
 of writings as Milton's "Areopagitica," and while not its 
 equal in sustained splendor of diction, it is distinguished 
 by the same breadth of view and eager patriotism. 
 Wordsworth has himself defined excellence of writing as 
 the conjunction of reason and passion, and judged by this 
 test, Wordsworth's occasional utterances on politics attain 
 a rare excellence. It would have been singular in such an
 
 32 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 age if any man who possessed emotion enough to be a poet 
 had nothing to say upon the great events which were alter- 
 ing the map of Europe. Wordsworth from the first never 
 concealed his opinions on these subjects. He went as far 
 as he could in apologizing for the errors of the French 
 Revolution, when he said truly that "revolution is not the 
 season of true liberty. ' ' The austerity which characterized 
 his whole life characterizes the very temper of his apology 
 for the excesses of the Revolution. He shed no tears over 
 the execution of Louis. He laments a larger public calam- 
 ity, "that any combination of circumstances should have 
 rendered it necessary or advisable to veil for a moment the 
 statutes of the laws, and that by such emergency the cause 
 of twenty-five millions of people, I may say of the whole 
 human race, should have been so materially injured. Any 
 other sorrow for the death of Louis is irrational and 
 weak." He is even ardent republican enough to argue 
 for equality, and to say that in the perfect state "no dis- 
 tinctions are to be admitted but such as have evidently for 
 their object the general good." This last sentence strikes 
 the keynote in much of the philosophy of Wordsworth. 
 "Simplification was," as John Morley has observed, "the 
 keynote of the revolutionary time." That lesson Words- 
 worth thoroughly learned, and never forgot. It is the 
 very essence of the democratic spirit to pierce beneath the 
 artificial distinctions of a time and grasp the essential; to 
 take man for what he is, not for what he seems to be; 
 to reverence man wherever he is found, and to reverence 
 not least the man who toils in the lowliest walks of life. 
 If this be the spirit of democracy, then Wordsworth kept 
 the democratic faith whole and undefiled. So far from 
 repudiating the political creed of his life, he spiritualized
 
 Wordsworth's Patriotic and Political Poems 33 
 
 it, and lived in obedience to its essential elements all his 
 life. That in later life he manifested an incapacity for 
 the rapid assimilation of new ideas; that his notions 
 stiffened, and his perceptions failed; that he opposed 
 Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill is merely to 
 say, in other words, that Wordsworth grew old. It is a 
 rare spectacle, perhaps the rarest, to see a great mind 
 resist the stiffening of age and retain its versatility and 
 freshness of outlook in the last decades of life. Words- 
 worth was never a versatile man and never had any marked 
 capacity for the assimilation of new ideas. But how very 
 far Wordsworth was from ever being a fossilized Tory we 
 may judge by his own saying in later life: "I have no 
 respect whatever for Whigs, but I have a good deal of the 
 Chartist in me." However his political insight may have 
 failed him in his apprehension of the party measures of 
 his later life, it cannot be seriously questioned that Words- 
 worth always remained true at heart to the cause of the 
 people, and never swerved in his real reverence for man 
 as man. 
 
 The urgency of the political passion in Wordsworth 
 can be felt all through the days of the great war, and per- 
 haps the noblest record of that period is in the long series 
 of sonnets which Wordsworth wrote between the years 
 1803 and 1816. In the year 1809 he wrote scarcely any- 
 thing that was not related to the life of nations. It was 
 then that he apostrophized Saragossa and lamented over 
 the submission of the Tyrolese. And if few poets have 
 written so largely on the current events of their day, it 
 may certainly be added that no poet has showed a more 
 cosmopolitan spirit. .It was indeed a time when England 
 was in closer touch with the struggling nationalities of the
 
 34 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Continent than ever before. A common calamity had 
 drawn together all the peoples of Europe who still loved 
 liberty. England had never breathed the spirit of so large 
 a life as in those troublous days. She had never known 
 a period of such intense suspense and united enthusiasm. 
 The beacon-fire was built on every hill ; every village green 
 resounded to the clang of martial drill; every port had its 
 eager watchers, who swept the waste fields of sea with 
 restless scrutiny. Children were sent to bed with all their 
 clothes neatly packed beside them, in case the alarm of 
 war should break the midnight silence; and invasion was 
 for months an hourly fear. It was one of those moments 
 of supreme peril and passion which come rarely in the 
 life of nations one of those great regenerating moments 
 when factions perish and a nation rises into nobler life, 
 and the stress of that great period is felt in every line that 
 Wordsworth wrote. His patriotism was of that diviner 
 kind which founds itself on principles of universal truth 
 and righteousness. It was no splendid prejudice, no insu- 
 larity of thought, no mere sentimental love of country; it 
 gathered in its embrace the passions of Europe and 
 pleaded in its strenuous eloquence the cause of the op- 
 pressed throughout the world. This breadth of view 
 which characterized Wordsworth's patriotism is its noblest 
 characteristic. It is a catholic love of liberty which gives 
 him spiritual comradeship with every man who has toiled 
 or suffered for his country. And this spirit can find no 
 fuller exemplification than in his noble sonnet, written in 
 1 802:
 
 Wordsworth's Patriotic and Political Poems 35 
 
 TO TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE. 
 
 Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men! 
 
 Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough 
 
 Within thy hearing, or thy head be now 
 Pillowed in some dark dungeon's earless den; 
 O miserable Chieftain! where and when 
 
 Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not! do thou 
 
 Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow; 
 Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, 
 Live, and take comfort! Thou hast left behind 
 
 Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies; 
 There's not a breathing of the common wind 
 
 That will forget thee. Thou hast great allies; 
 
 Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 
 And love, and man's unconquerable mind. 
 
 But catholic as Wordsworth's patriotic sympathies 
 were, the noblest expressions of his patriotism are his 
 addresses and appeals to his own countrymen. If in later 
 life he did not discern the true spirit of his times, and 
 unconsciously resisted the august spirit of progress, it was 
 in part because his honest pride of country grew with his 
 growth and strengthened with his age. He was loth to 
 admit faults and flaws in a form of government which 
 seemed to meet every just demand of liberty and order. 
 Besides, the great hindrance to democratic development 
 was to Wordsworth not discoverable in any error or 
 defect of government, but in the defective method of life 
 which his countrymen adopted. When he is called upon 
 to judge the political measures of his day, his touch is not 
 sure nor his discrimination wise; but when he estimates 
 the tendencies of the social life of England he is always 
 clear, cogent, and convincing. His social grasp is always 
 surer than his political, and his finest sonnets are those in
 
 36 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 which he combines his social insight with patriotic pas- 
 sion. Such a sonnet is this: 
 
 When I have borne in memory what has tamed 
 Great nations, how ennobling thoughts depart 
 When men change swords for ledgers, and desert 
 
 The student's bower for gold, some fear unnamed 
 
 I had, my country! am I to be blamed ? 
 Now when I think of thee, and what thou art, 
 Verily in the bottom of my heart 
 
 Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed. 
 
 For dearly must we prize thee, we who find 
 In thee a bulwark for the cause of men; 
 
 And I by my affection was beguiled. 
 What wonder if a poet now and then, 
 
 Among the many movements of his mind, 
 
 Felt for thee as a lover or a child ? 
 
 And this is a note which is struck again and again. In 
 the hour of peril his countrymen rose to the supreme 
 daring of the occasion. What he fears is, that the relax- 
 ation of that intense moral strain may mean that national 
 life may lose its saving salt of lofty purpose and sink into 
 carnal contentment and repose. "Getting and spending 
 we lay waste our powers, ' ' is the thought that frequently 
 recurs in his later poems. He fears the enervation of 
 prosperity more than the buffeting of adversity. When 
 nations are surfeited with victory and peace, they are too 
 apt to lose the Spartan temper of austere devotion to their 
 country which made them great in warlike days. And 
 why Wordswoth so often recurs to this thought is that 
 his pride in his country has no bounds. For the nation 
 which has saved the liberties of Europe to fall into inglori- 
 ous self-indulgence would be the last calamity in the pos- 
 sible tragedy of nations. It is in the hour when such
 
 Wordsworth's Patriotic and Political Poems 37 
 
 fears beset him that he appeals to "Sidney, Marvel, 
 Harrington," who 
 
 Knew how genuine glory is put on, 
 
 Taught us how rightfully a nation shone 
 
 In splendor, what strength was that would not bend 
 
 But in magnanimous meekness. 
 
 It is then also he thinks of Milton, whose "soul was as a 
 star and dwelt apart," and invokes that mighty shade 
 which haunts the Puritan past of England 
 
 We are selfish men ; 
 O, raise us up, return to us again, 
 And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. 
 
 And it is when the memory of that heroic past of Eng- 
 land is most vivid to his mind that he touches his highest 
 note of dignified and haughty pride, and scorns the 
 thought 
 
 That this most famous stream in bogs and sands 
 Should perish! and to evil and to good 
 Be lost forever. In our halls is hung 
 
 Armoury of the invincible knights of old ; 
 We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
 
 That Shakespeare spake ; the faith and morals hold 
 Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung 
 
 Of earth's first blood ; have titles manifold. 
 
 The patriotism of Wordsworth is not violent or fren- 
 zied; it is comparatively restrained; but, for that very 
 reason, in the moments of its highest utterance there is a 
 depth and force in it such as few writers display. When 
 habitually calm men break the barriers of reserve, there is 
 something strangely impressive in their passion. There 
 is nothing more impressive in Wordsworth, as indica- 
 tive of the strength of his emotions, than these occasional
 
 38 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 bursts of exalted patriotism, and their force is heightened 
 by the contrast they furnish to his habitual serenity of 
 temper. 
 
 There is one poem of Wordsworth's which stands out 
 in particular prominence as the greatest of all his poems 
 which express the spirit of patriotism; that is, the "Happy 
 Warrior." This poem was written in the year 1806, and 
 was inspired by the death of Nelson. It was in the 
 autumn of the previous year that Nelson had fallen on the 
 deck of the Victory, and the shock of sorrow and con- 
 sternation which passed over England has never been 
 equaled by any similar public calamity. Certainly the 
 death of no individual has ever called forth so spontaneous 
 and general a lamentation. Nelson was to the England 
 of his day the very incarnation of manly courage and 
 heroic virtue. The fascination of his name affected every 
 class of society. He seemed to sum up in himself that 
 reverence for duty which is so characteristic a feature of 
 the English race. Between Nelson and Wordsworth 
 there could be little in common save this bond of ardent 
 patriotism, but that was sufficient to call forth from 
 Wordsworth one of his finest poems. Just as we can 
 specify certain poems which constitute the high-water 
 mark of Wordsworth's genius in philosophic or lyric 
 poetry, so we can confidently take this poem as his matur- 
 est word in patriotic poetry. It breathes the very spirit 
 of consecrated heroism. Some points of the poem were 
 suggested by a more private sorrow the loss at sea of his 
 brother John; but it was out of the larger emotion occa- 
 sioned by the death of Nelson that the poem originated. 
 It is the idealized Nelson who stands before us in these 
 verses:
 
 Wordsworth's Patriotic and Political Poems 39 
 
 But who, if he be called upon to face 
 
 Some awful moment, to which Heaven has joined 
 
 Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 
 
 Is happy as a Lover, and attired 
 
 With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired : 
 
 And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law 
 
 In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw ; 
 
 Or if an unexpected call succeed, 
 
 Come when it will, is equal to the need. 
 
 He who, though thus endued as with a sense 
 
 And faculty for storm and turbulence, 
 
 Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans 
 
 To homefelt pleasures, and to gentler scenes. 
 
 This is the Happy Warrior, this is He 
 
 That every man in arms should wish to be. 
 
 When we read these words we are reminded of a passage 
 in the "Recluse," in which Wordsworth tells us he could 
 never read of two great war-ships grappling without a 
 thrill of emulation more ardent than wise men should 
 know. It is a passage which throws a new light upon the 
 nature of Wordsworth. If he was serene, it was not 
 because he was lethargic; if he urged the blessedness of 
 regulated passions, it was not because his own heart was 
 cold; he, too, had a passionate nature and heroic fiber in 
 him, and that courageous and soldierly temper is fitly vin- 
 dicated and expressed in the lofty spirit of his patriotic 
 poems. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. Why has it been supposed that Wordsworth lost interest 
 in political life? 
 
 2. How did he set forth in his works the true spirit of 
 democracy? 
 
 3. What is true of his political views in the later years of 
 his life?
 
 4o Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 4. How was England affected by the fear of Napoleon? 
 
 5. How do Wordsworth's writings of this period show the 
 breadth of his patriotism? 
 
 6. With what still higher purpose does he appeal to his 
 own countrymen? 
 
 7. Give illustrations of such expressions. 
 
 8. What circumstances called forth the " Happy Warrior"? 
 
 9. What light is thrown on Wordsworth's character by his 
 allusion to the " two great war-ships grappling "? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Ward's English Poets. Vol. IV. Essay by R. W. Church, 
 and Selections. 
 
 Wordsworth. F. W. H. Myers. (English Men of Letters 
 Series.) 
 
 Among My Books. (Wordsworth.) James Russell Lowell. 
 
 French Revolution and the English Poets. A. E. Hancock.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 WORDSWORTH'S PERSONAL CHARACTER- 
 ISTICS 
 
 When we put down the works of a poet, we are natu- 
 rally inclined to ask what the poet himself was like in actual 
 life, and to seek some authentic presentment of him as he 
 moved among men. In the case of Wordsworth we have 
 many partial portraits, but it can hardly be said that we 
 have any true and finished picture. The seclusion of 
 Wordsworth's life saved him from the scrutiny of that 
 social world where every little trait of character is indel- 
 ibly photographed on some retentive memory, and the 
 trifles of unconsidered conversation are gathered up and 
 often reproduced after many days in diaries and reminis- 
 cences. Considering the literary force which Wordsworth 
 was, few men have had such scanty dealings with the liter- 
 ary circles of their time. If Wordsworth had died at fifty, 
 it is pretty certain that beyond the reminiscences of per- 
 sonal friends like Coleridge and Southey there would 
 have been little to guide us to a true understanding of his 
 person and character. Gradually, however, as the tide 
 set in his favor, the quiet house at Rydal Mount became 
 more and more a place of pilgrimage, and few visitors of 
 eminence came away without noting down certain impres- 
 sions, more or less instructive, of the great Lake Poet. 
 
 First of all there come naturally the testimonies of 
 those men of letters who formed a little colony beside the 
 
 41
 
 42 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 English lakes, and whose names are inseparably associ- 
 ated with Wordsworth's. Southey's sense of Words- 
 worth's powers may be measured by his enthusiastic 
 verdict, that there never was and never would be a greater 
 poet. Coleridge conveys his impression of Wordsworth's 
 strength of character, not less than of his genius, in the 
 pathetic lines written in the days of his own eclipse and 
 sorrow, and here quoted: 
 
 O great Bard! 
 
 Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air, 
 With steadfast eye I viewed thee in the choir 
 Of ever-enduring men. 
 Ah! as I listened with a heart forlorn, 
 The pulses of my being beat anew. 
 
 The quality in Wordsworth which struck Coleridge most 
 was naturally the quality in which he himself was most 
 deficient the robustness and sufficiency of the poet's 
 nature. De Quincey, in his sketch, observes the same 
 characteristic, and probably this was the first and deepest 
 impression which Wordsworth created. He struck all 
 who knew him as a solid, indomitable man, somewhat 
 taciturn, save when the theme inspired him and the com- 
 pany was fitting; a man who knew in what he had be- 
 lieved, and knew how to stand true to himself and his 
 convictions, amid evil report and good report. That there 
 should be something of childlike vanity and harmless ego- 
 tism about him was perhaps the natural consequence of 
 his lack of humor and his secluded life. When Emerson 
 visited him he was much amused to see Wordsworth 
 solemnly prepare himself for action, and then declaim like 
 a school-boy his latest sonnet on Fingal's Cave. If Words- 
 worth had had any of the elements of humor in him, he
 
 Wordsworth's Personal Characteristics 43 
 
 himself would have been too conscious of the ludicrous 
 side of the proceeding to have indulged in it. But Words- 
 worth united in himself philosophic seriousness and child- 
 like simplicity, and was singularly insensible to humor. 
 His neighbors said they never heard him laugh, and 
 remarked that you could tell from his face there was no 
 laughter in his poetry. He took life seriously, and, to 
 quote Mrs. Browning's fine phrase, poetry was to him "as 
 serious as life." He once told Sir George Beaumont that 
 in his opinion "a man of letters, and indeed all public men 
 of every pursuit, should be severely frugal." The Puritan 
 discipline which he applied to his life molded his character, 
 and a constant life of plain living and high thinking left 
 little room for the casual graces of persiflage and banter. 
 Of mere cleverness, the airy agility of shallow brains and 
 ready tongues, he was destitute. He was not suave, not 
 fascinating, scarcely prepossessing. But if he was calm 
 it was not with any natural coldness of temperament; his 
 calm was the fruit of long discipline and fortitude. One 
 acute observer speaks of the fearful intensity of his feel- 
 ings and affections, and says that if his intellect had been 
 less strong they would have destroyed him long ago. De 
 Quincey in like manner noted his look of premature age,* 
 "the furrowed and rugged countenance, the brooding 
 intensity of the eye, the bursts of anger at the report of 
 evil doings" the signs of the passionate forces which 
 worked within him. He himself in his many self-revela- 
 tions conveys the same impression of a nature hard to 
 govern, of violent passions disciplined with difficulty, of 
 wild and tumultuous desires conquered only by incessant 
 
 * De Quincey says that when Wordsworth was thirty-nine his age was 
 guessed at over sixty.
 
 44 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 vigilance. He bore upon himself the marks of a difficult 
 life, and it was a touch of genuine insight which led Cole- 
 ridge to describe him by the brief and pregnant phrase 
 an "ever-enduring man." 
 
 The picture which Harriet Martineau gives of Words- 
 worth as she knew him in his old age does not err on the 
 side of adulation, but it cannot conceal the essential noble- 
 ness of his character. Harriet Martineau thought little 
 of his writings, and says so with caustic frankness. 
 According to her view the view be it remembered of an 
 incessantly busy woman Wordsworth suffered from hav- 
 ing nothing to do; and he suffered yet more in his old age 
 from the adulation of the crowd of visitors who poured 
 toward Rydal Mount during the tourist season. To each 
 of these idle visitors, and they averaged five hundred a 
 season, Wordsworth behaved much in the same way. He 
 politely showed them round his grounds, explained at what 
 particular spot certain poems were written, and then 
 politely bowed them out. He had no reticence either in 
 reciting his poems or talking of them; indeed, he often 
 spoke of them in an impersonal sort of way, as though 
 they had no relation to himself, and he criticised them as 
 freely as though some one else had written them. Thus 
 he told Harriet Martineau that the "Happy Warrior" did 
 not "best fulfill the conditions of poetry, but it was a 
 chain of extremely valooable thoughts," a criticism which 
 Miss Martineau indorses as "eminently just." In these, 
 and in many similar proceedings, we recognize the naive 
 simplicity of the man He solemnly advised Miss Marti- 
 neau to give nothing but tea to her visitors, and if they 
 wanted meat let them pay for it themselves, that having 
 been his own method of proceeding in his early days of
 
 Wordsworth's Personal Characteristics 45 
 
 penury at Grasmere. That this frugal suggestion did not 
 spring from any inhospitable meanness is abundantly evi- 
 dent from the larger generosities of Wordsworth's life. 
 His treatment of poor Hartley Coleridge is above praise. 
 Miss Martineau met Hartley only five times, and on each 
 occasion he was drunk. Wordsworth treated him as an 
 erring son, and when all hope of reclaiming him was over, 
 paid for his lodgings, cared for his wants, and smoothed 
 his passage to the grave. There are few more touching 
 pictures than that of the old poet standing bareheaded by 
 the grave of Hartley on the bleak winter morning when 
 all that was mortal of that unhappy genius was laid to rest 
 in the quiet God's-acre which was soon to receive the dust 
 of Wordsworth. 
 
 An equally beautiful picture is painted by Miss Marti- 
 neau of the poet as she often met him, "attended perhaps 
 by half a score of cottagers' children, the youngest pulling 
 at his cloak or holding by his trousers, while he cut ash 
 switches out of the hedge for them." This little touch of 
 nature may be paired off with Mr. Rawnsley's story of 
 how a pastor in a far-away parish was asked by a very 
 refined, handsome-looking woman on her death-bed to read 
 over to her and to her husband the poem of "The Pet 
 Lamb," and how she had said at the end, "That was 
 written about me; Mr. Wordsworth often spoke to me, 
 and patted my head when a child," and had added with 
 a sigh, "Eh, but he was such a dear kind old man!" 
 Miss Martineau also strongly confirms the impression of 
 Wordsworth's isolation from the main streams of life, the 
 solitary self-containedness of his character, when she says 
 that his life was "self-enclosed," and that he had scarcely 
 any intercourse with other minds, in books or conversation.
 
 46 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Another source of information about Wordsworth is 
 found in the reminiscences of him among the peasantry, 
 which have been so excellently collated by Mr. Rawnsley. 
 These have a unique value as the only record we possess 
 of the impression which Wordsworth created, not on culti- 
 vated minds, but on the minds of the simple dales-people 
 whose virtues he so strenuously sang. The northern mind 
 has two distinguishing qualities a certain quickness of 
 imagination which finds expression in the use of singularly 
 vivid phrases, and a certain shrewd touch of humor which 
 delights in exaggerative travesty. Making allowance for 
 these conditions, we may construct a remarkably lifelike 
 portrait from these observations of Wordsworth's humble 
 neighbors. We are face to face with Wordsworth in the 
 prime of his power and force, when we are told he was 
 "a plainish-faaced man, but a fine man leish [active], and 
 almost always upon the road. He wasn't a man of many 
 words, would walk by you times enuff wi'out sayin' owt, 
 specially when he was in study. He was always a-study- 
 ing, and you might see his lips a-goin' as he went along 
 the road." Another speaks of him as "a vara practical- 
 eyed man, a man as seemed to see aw that was stirrinV 
 He walked in later days with "a bit of a stoop," which 
 somewhat diminished the sense of his real height, which 
 was about six feet. When he was making a poem, "he 
 would set his head a bit forward, and put his hands behint 
 his back. And then he would start a-bumming, and it 
 was bum, bum, bum, stop; and then he'd set down, and 
 git a bit o' paper out, and write a bit. However, his lips 
 were always goan' whoale time he was upon gress walk. 
 He was a kind mon, there's no two words about that; if 
 any one was sick i' the plaace, he wad be off to see til'
 
 Wordsworth's Personal Characteristics 47 
 
 'em." His only recreations were walking and skating. 
 He was first upon the ice, and 
 
 Wheeled about 
 
 Proud and exulting like an untired horse, 
 That cares not for his home. 
 
 He had very little care for personal appearance. He usu- 
 ally wore a wide-awake and an old blue cloak. "Niver seed 
 him in a boxer in my life," says one witness, with pathetic 
 reproach. He had even been known to ride in a dung- 
 cart upon his longer excursions: "Just a dung-cart, wi' a 
 seat-board in front, and bit o' bracken in t' bottom, com- 
 fortable as owt." He had a deep bass voice, and when 
 he was "bumming" away in some remote part at nightfall, 
 the casual passenger was almost terrified. He constituted 
 himself by common consent general custodian of the 
 beauties of the district, and prevented many a copse from 
 being cut down and superintended the building of many 
 a cottage. Not a companionable man, however a 
 remoteness about him which awed men rather than 
 attracted them. Indeed, their one complaint about him 
 was, that he had no convivial tendencies, like Hartley 
 Coleridge, who came very much nearer the rustic ideal of 
 a poet than the solitary of Rydal Mount. He was "a 
 desolate-minded man; as for his habits, he had noan; 
 niver knew him with a pot i' his hand or a pipe i' his 
 mouth." He "was not lovable in the faace, by noa 
 means" the face was too rugged and austere to be fasci- 
 nating. So one rustic observer after another bears his 
 witness, the net result being a sufficiently luminous picture 
 of a strong and somewhat taciturn man, buried in his own 
 thoughts, passing up and down among his fellows with a
 
 48 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 certain awe-inspiring unapproachableness, and yet a man 
 of warm heart and quick sympathy; not a cheerful man, 
 but a man who, after long battle, has won the secret of 
 peace, and walks a solitary path, clothed with silence and 
 winning from others the reverence due to the hermit and 
 the sage. 
 
 Stiff and awkward as Wordsworth often was in con- 
 versation, yet there were times when he created a sincere 
 admiration by his talk. Haydon says: "Never did any 
 man so beguile the time as Wordsworth. His purity of 
 heart, his kindness, his soundness of principle, his infor- 
 mation, his knowledge, and the intense and eager feelings 
 with which he pours forth all he knows affect, interest, 
 and enchant one." But among all the various literary 
 portraits which we possess of Wordsworth, there is none 
 so subtle and so potent as Carlyle's. Carlyle thought little 
 of Wordsworth's writings, but after he had met him he 
 says: "He talked well in his way; with veracity, easy 
 brevity, and force. His voice was good, frank, sonorous; 
 though practically clear, distinct, forcible, rather than 
 melodious; the tone of him business-like, sedately confi- 
 dent, no discourtesy, yet no anxiety about being courteous; 
 a fine wholesome rusticity, fresh as his mountain breezes, 
 sat well on the stalwart veteran, and on all he said and 
 did. You would .have said he was a usually taciturn man, 
 glad to unlock himself, to audience sympathetic and intelli- 
 gent, when such offered itself. His face bore marks of 
 much, not always peaceful, meditation; the look of it not 
 bland or benevolent so much as close, impregnable, and 
 hard; a man multa tacere loquive paratus, in a world where 
 he had experienced no lack of contradictions as he strode 
 along. The eyes were not very brilliant, but they had a
 
 Wordsworth's Personal Characteristics 49 
 
 quiet clearness; there was enough of brow, and well 
 shaped. He was large-boned, lean, but still firm-knit, 
 tall, and strong-looking when he stood; a right good old 
 steel-gray figure, with a fine rustic simplicity and dignity 
 about him, and a veracious strength looking through him, 
 which might have suited one of those old steel-gray Mark- 
 grafs whom Henry the Fowler set up to ward the 
 marches and do battle with the intrusive heathen in a 
 stalwart and judicious manner." The last phrase recalls to 
 us Wordsworth's confession in the "Prelude" to his early 
 love of battle histories and thirst for a life of heroic 
 action. A man who had not had something of the fighter 
 in him could never have defied the world as he defied it. 
 His imaginative faculty made him a poet; but under all 
 his intellectual life there throbbed the difficult pulse of a 
 valorous restlessness, and he had in him the pith and sinew 
 of the hero. Poets have too often been the victims of 
 their own sensitiveness, but Wordsworth stands among 
 them as a man of stubborn strength, an altogether sturdy 
 and unsubduable man. "Out of this sense of loneliness," 
 a friend once wrote to Harriet Martineau, "shall grow 
 your strength, as the oak, standing alone, grows and 
 strengthens with the storm; whilst the ivy, clinging for 
 protection to the old temple wall, has no power of self- 
 support." Doubtless the loneliness of Wordsworth's life 
 fed his strength, and no finer image than that of the oak 
 could be found to describe the resolute vigor of Words- 
 worth's character. He certainly was no weak spray of ivy 
 clinging to a temple wall; but he never forgot the temple 
 and its sanctities notwithstanding; and if he was an oak, 
 it was an oak that had its roots in sacred soil and cast the 
 shadow of its branches on the doorways of the sanctuary.
 
 50 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. Why is the material relating to Wordsworth's personal 
 life somewhat meager? 
 
 2. How was he regarded by the different members of the 
 Lake school of poets? 
 
 3. What did his contemporaries say of his seriousness and 
 intensity of character? 
 
 4. What qualities of Wordsworth are shown in his treat- 
 ment of Hartley Coleridge? 
 
 5. What incidents illustrate his kindly relations with chil- 
 dren? 
 
 6. How is his personality described by the peasantry among 
 whom he lived? 
 
 7. What pictures are given of him by Haydon and Carlyle? 
 
 8. In what respects is the oak a fine image of Wordsworth's 
 character? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Ward's English Poets. Vol. IV. Essay by R. W. Church, 
 and Selections. 
 
 Wordsworth. F. W. H. Myers. (English Men of Letters 
 Series.) 
 
 Literary Associations of the English Lakes. H. D. Rawnsley. 
 
 Studies in Poetry and Philosophy. (Wordsworth, the poet 
 and the man.) J. C. Shairp. 
 
 Biographia Literaria. Coleridge. (Bohn Library.) 
 
 Recollections of Coleridge and Wordsworth. De Quincey.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH CONCLUDING 
 SURVEY 
 
 It is evident to the reader who has followed this imper- 
 fect study of Wordsworth with any degree of care that 
 his merits and defects are alike great, and in concluding 
 our survey it is well to recapitulate them. In few poets 
 are the profound and trivial found in such close proximity, 
 and this is his chief defect. Like Browning, for many 
 years Wordsworth had few readers, and consequently 
 wrote more for his own pleasure than with the artistic 
 restraint and carefulness which the sense of public praise 
 and criticism impose. Such criticism as he received was 
 little better than insane or spiteful vituperation, and its 
 only effect was to increase in a man of Wordsworth's 
 temperament a stubborn dependence on himself. It is 
 hard to say which acts with worse effect upon a poet, the 
 adulation of an undiscerning or the apathy of an indiffer- 
 ent public. It seems likely, however, that if Wordsworth 
 had received any public encouragement early in life, it 
 would have acted beneficially, in leading him to perceive 
 his own faults of style, and perhaps to correct them. 
 There are various passages in Wordsworth's letters which 
 prove that, while he braced himself to endure public hos- 
 tility with uncomplaining stoicism, yet he would not the 
 less have valued public encouragement. But as years 
 wore away, and his circle of readers still continued to be
 
 52 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 of the narrowest, he cared less and less to write with any 
 definite attempt to gain the public ear. He wrote for his 
 own delectation, and, as we have seen, often attached false 
 values to his poems. He failed, as every solitary writer 
 must fail, to discriminate between the perfect and imperfect 
 work of his genius. The result is, that to-day the perfect 
 work of Wordsworth is hampered by its association with 
 the imperfect. His readers often fail to take a just meas- 
 urement of the noble qualities of his genius, because it is 
 so easy for them to pass from his greatest poems to pas- 
 sages of verse-writing which are dull, trivial, bald, and in 
 every way unworthy of him. This fact has been amply 
 recognized by Matthew Arnold, and he has endeavored to 
 remedy the defect by his admirable selection from the 
 works of Wordsworth. Few poets bear the process of 
 selection so well, and certainly none have so much to gain 
 by it. 
 
 There is something of pathos, indeed, in the recollec- 
 tion of the relation which Wordsworth bore to the litera- 
 ture of his day. He came in the wake of Byron, and 
 uttered a note so different that it is scarcely surprising 
 that the multitude who read Byron had no ear for Words- 
 worth. For every thousand who bought "Childe Harold" 
 there was perhaps one who bought the "Lyrical Ballads." 
 When contempt and hostility had slowly passed into grate- 
 ful recognition, his fame was menaced from another quarter. 
 By that time Tennyson was making himself heard, and 
 Tennyson soon passed Wordsworth in the race for fame. 
 Wordsworth never knew the joy of unrivaled and indis- 
 putable pre-eminence. His star rose unperceived in the 
 firmament where Byron reigned in splendor, and before 
 the fading afterglow of Byron had left a space for his
 
 William Wordsworth Concluding Survey 53 
 
 modest light to spread, it was again eclipsed by the grow- 
 ing beams of Tennyson. The one poet had the vehement 
 personality, and the other the rich and ornate style, which 
 Wordsworth lacked. Each appealed to the popular ear 
 as he did not; the one with a more masterful, the other 
 with a more musical, note. It seemed part of the irony 
 of fate that Wordsworth should nurture his heart in soli- 
 tary endurance to the end, and should never know what it 
 was to reap the full harvest of his toils. Perhaps also 
 there is a law of compensation at work which has insured 
 to Wordsworth a more solid fame than Byron seems likely 
 to enjoy or Tennyson is likely to attain. The sureness 
 which we usually associate with slowness has certainly 
 marked the growth of Wordsworth's fame; and it may be 
 confidently said that at no period since the appearance of 
 the "Lyrical Ballads" has Wordsworth been so widely 
 read as now. Can as much be said of Byron? Will as 
 much be said in a hundred years of Tennyson ? Of Byron 
 at least it is true that he has decreased while Wordsworth 
 has increased. While the star of Byron has gradually 
 receded, the star of Wordsworth has risen into dominance 
 and burns with an enduring and immitigable flame. If 
 the verdict of universal criticism goes for anything, it is 
 clear that Wordsworth has come to stop. 
 
 There are, of course, some dissentients to this judg- 
 ment, but one hardly pays much attention nowadays to 
 the erratic criticisms of Mr. Swinburne, and still less to 
 Mr. Oscar Wilde when he writes contemptuously of "Mr. 
 Wordsworth," or Mr. Andrew Lang when he is good 
 enough to inform us that he does not care "very much for 
 Mr. William Wordsworth." These are merely the small 
 impertinences of criticism, meant to excite laughter, but
 
 54 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 likelier to inspire contempt, and in no case worthy of any 
 serious resentment. Nor can one quarrel seriously with 
 so genial a humorist as Edward Fitzgerald, when he is 
 provoked by the almost irritating respectability of Words- 
 worth to write of him as "my daddy." It is more to the 
 purpose to recollect that Coleridge placed Wordsworth 
 "nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton, 
 yet in a kind perfectly unborrowed and his own." If this 
 be regarded as the unconsidered praise of enthusiastic 
 friendship, we have also to recollect that Matthew Arnold, 
 who was always frugal in his praise, and never guilty of 
 untempered adulation, has practically indorsed this ver- 
 dict. With Shakespeare and Milton he will not compare 
 him, but next to these august names he ranks Wordsworth 
 as the man who has contributed most to the permanent 
 wealth of English poetry since the Elizabethan age. Nor 
 does Mr. John Morley, the latest critic of Wordsworth, 
 contest the justice of this criticism. He cannot grant him 
 Shakespeare's vastness of compass, nor Milton's sublimity, 
 nor Dante's "ardent force of vision"; but he admits 
 Wordsworth's right to comparison, and admirably states 
 Wordsworth's peculiar gift when he says: "What Words- 
 worth does is to assuage, to reconcile, to fortify. Words- 
 worth, at any rate, by his secret of bringing the infinite 
 into common life, as he invokes it out of common life, has 
 the skill to lead us, so long as we yield ourselves to his 
 influence, into inner moods of settled peace; to touch 'the 
 depth and not the tumult of the soul'; to give us quiet- 
 ness, strength, steadfastness, and purpose, whether to do 
 or to endure." He would be a daring man who contested 
 a verdict indorsed by the three most eminent names of 
 modern criticism, and it is pretty safe to assume that on all
 
 William Wordsworth Concluding Survey 55 
 
 the main issues this verdict is decisive, and is not likely to 
 be seriously impugned. 
 
 Any final survey ot Wordsworth's work would be in- 
 complete without mention of what may, after all, be taken 
 as his noblest single poem, the "Ode on Intimations of 
 Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." 
 This poem was written when Wordsworth was at the 
 prime of his powers (1803-6), and is rich in his peculiar 
 excellences. It also sums up much that is most charac- 
 teristic in his philosophy. The starting-point of his 
 philosophy is, that man has in himself all the elements of 
 perfect life, if he will but learn how to adjust himself to 
 the environment in which he finds himself: 
 
 The Child is father of the Man, 
 
 I could wish my days to be 
 
 Bound each to each in natural piety. 
 
 The evils of life spring from the perverse disregard of 
 his true instincts, to which man is prone. The child loves 
 nature, and is happiest in contact with nature, and it is for 
 that reason Wordsworth urges the absolute need for com- 
 munion with nature in the perfect human life. In the 
 natural instincts of the child's heart we have, if we only 
 knew it, the true indications of the highest possible devel- 
 opment of human nature. They are the pointer stars by 
 which we can measure the firmament of human life and 
 ascertain the true bearings and infinite courses of human 
 destiny. But behind this assumption another question 
 lies. We ask, what is there to prove to us that these 
 instincts are right, and whence do they spring? The 
 answer to this question Wordsworth gives in this great 
 ode. As usual, he probes the mystic depths of his own
 
 56 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 experiences, and from that depth rescues the clue which 
 interprets to him the whole mystery and circumference of 
 human destiny. He tells us that as a child he had no 
 notion of death, nor could he bring himself to realize it as 
 a state applicable to his own being. He felt within him- 
 self the movements of a spirit that knew nothing of decay 
 or death. He even felt it difficult to realize the fact of 
 an external world, so absorbed was he in the rapture 
 of idealism. "Many times," he says, "while going to 
 school, have I grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself 
 from this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that time 
 I was afraid of such processes. In later periods of life I 
 have deplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation 
 of an opposite character, and have rejoiced over the re- 
 membrances," as is expressed in the lines: 
 
 Obstinate questionings 
 Of sense and outward things, 
 Fallings from us, vanishings, 
 Blank misgivings of a Creature, 
 
 Moving about in worlds not recognized, 
 High instincts, before which our mortal nature 
 
 Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised. 
 
 He recalls the "dream-like vividness and splendor which 
 invests objects of sight in childhood," and then asks, 
 what is the interpretation of this sense of wonder and 
 strangeness which is the earliest recollection of childhood 
 in the presence of external nature? His reply is, that in 
 the child's spiritual aloofness from the world, in his sense 
 of the foreignness of life as he finds it, is the intimation of 
 his previous existence in the purer realms of spirit, and 
 of his ultimate return to a spiritual existence. He is a 
 spirit clothed with fleshy apparel for a moment, but im-
 
 William Wordsworth Concluding Survey 57 
 
 mortal in himself, and moving through the darkened ways 
 of mortality with the primal fire of immortality burning in 
 his heart, and trembling upward to the source from which 
 it sprang. The world is his prison-house, and the great 
 end of life is not to be reconciled to the prison-house, but 
 to retain and strengthen the divine desires which haunt 
 him with the sense of something lost and something 
 higher. Mere shadowy recollections they may be, and 
 yet they are 
 
 The fountain light of all our day, 
 Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 
 
 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
 Of the eternal silence ; truths that wake 
 
 To perish never ; 
 Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, 
 
 Nor Man nor Boy, 
 Nor all that is at enmity with joy 
 Can utterly abolish or destroy! 
 
 This poem is the noblest of all testimony to the profound 
 religiousness of Wordsworth's spirit. It breathes some- 
 thing more than the peace, it trembles with the rapture of 
 the loftiest piety. It purges, it transforms, it exalts us. 
 We catch a spiritual glow as we listen, we see before us 
 the unfolding vision of glory beyond glory, such as he 
 saw who stood on Patmos and beheld the heavens opened, 
 and the infinite cycles of immeasurable divine purposes 
 fulfilling themselves. Prisoners though we be, stifled in a 
 world of sense, weighed upon with fetters of ignoble cus- 
 tom, yet as we climb the solitary peak of contemplation 
 where Wordsworth stands like a seer lost in vision
 
 58 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 
 Which brought us thither, 
 
 Can in a moment travel hither, 
 And see the children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 
 
 And last, it may be noted that in literary finish and preg- 
 nancy of phrase Wordsworth never surpassed this poem. 
 It marks the complete culmination of his power. Phrase 
 after phrase, such as, 
 
 Faith that looks through death, 
 
 In years that bring the philosophic mind ; 
 
 or, 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
 
 or, 
 
 To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears, 
 
 has passed into the currency of literature unnoticed, by 
 reason of some unforgettable quality of thought or expres- 
 sion which stamps itself upon the universal memory. 
 Longer poems, full of passages of memorable insight or 
 emotion, Wordsworth has written, but his great qualities 
 find no nobler display than in this poem. Nowhere does 
 he more nearly approach to "Milton's sublime and unflag- 
 ging strength and Dante's severe, vivid, ardent force of 
 vision." It is, in fact, one of the few great odes of Eng- 
 lish literature, and is in itself sufficient to give Wordsworth 
 rank among the few greatest poets who stand secure above 
 the transience of human taste 
 
 The great of old, 
 
 The dead but sceptered sov'reigns, who still rule 
 Our spirits from their urns.
 
 William Wordsworth Concluding Survey 59 
 
 Finally, we note that Wordsworth is not the poet of 
 youth, but of maturity. There is poetry, as there is art, 
 which does not dazzle us with wealth of color, but which 
 deals in cool and silvery grays, unnoticed by the taste 
 which seeks startling and sensational effects, but infinitely 
 refreshing to tired eyes which have long since turned from 
 the sensational in resentment and something of disgust. 
 Perhaps it is not until we have been surfeited with gaudy 
 art that we learn fully to appreciate this very different art. 
 Then is the time for the cool gray; then it is that these 
 softer and soberer tones of color soothe the eye and satisfy 
 the brain. It is, in the same way, precisely when the 
 poets of our youth cease to allure us that the charm of 
 Wordsworth begins to be most keenly felt. To the mature 
 man, who has wearied of the theatrical glitter of Byron, 
 or the cloying sweetness of Keats, Wordsworth comes like 
 the presence of Nature herself. He does not captivate the 
 taste with casual brilliance, but he subdues it with a sense 
 of infinite tranquillity and refreshment. He satisfies the 
 heart, he inspires and stimulates the thought. We read 
 him not once, but many times, and as life advances we 
 find that he is one of the few poets we need not cast aside. 
 He ennobles and invigorates us. He advances with us as 
 we pass into those shadows which lie about the doorways 
 of mortality, and his voice never falters in its encourage- 
 ment and pious hope. He becomes to us more than a 
 poet he is our guide, philosopher, and friend ; and when 
 many other guides of youth are shaken off, the mature 
 mind grows more and more sympathetic to Wordsworth, 
 and finds in him a spiritual comradeship such as no other 
 poet has it in his power to give.
 
 60 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. What is the chief defect in Wordsworth's work as a 
 whole, and to what circumstances is this due? 
 
 2. How was his recognition hindered by his nearness to 
 Byron and Tennyson? 
 
 3. Give the estimation in which he is held by leading modern 
 critics. 
 
 4. What is his greatest poem, and what the starting-point 
 of its philosophy? 
 
 5. Give the thought underlying the poem. 
 
 6. In what respects does this poem mark the culmination of 
 Wordsworth's power? 
 
 7. Why is Wordsworth the poet, not of youth, but of 
 maturity? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Ward's English Poets. Vol. IV. Essay by R. H. Church, 
 and Selections. 
 
 Essays in Criticism. Second Series. Matthew Arnold. 
 
 Wordsworth. F. W. H. Myers. (English Men of Letters 
 Series.) 
 
 Wordsworthiana. Papers read to the Wordsworth Society. 
 Edited by Wm. Knight. 
 
 Literary Studies. (Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning.) 
 Walter Bagehot. 
 
 Appreciations. (Wordsworth.) Walter Pater.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 LORD TENNYSON GENERAL CHARACTER- 
 ISTICS 
 
 Born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, August 5, 1809. "Poems by 
 Two Brothers," published by J. Jackson, Louth, 1827. 
 " Poems," chiefly lyrical, published 1830. " Poems," in two 
 volumes (Moxon), 1842. The "Princess," 1847. "In Me- 
 moriam," 1850. Became Poet Laureate in the same year. 
 "Maud," 1855. The "Idylls of the King," 1859; completed 
 1885. " Enoch Arden," 1864. Offered and accepted a 
 Peerage, 1883. 
 
 When we come to the name of Tennyson we do well 
 to pause, for in his many-sidedness he represents more 
 fully than any other poet of our day the complex thought 
 and activities of the century in which his lot has been 
 cast. Seldom has a poet's fame grown more slowly or 
 securely, and never has a poet's career been crowned with 
 a larger degree of worldly success. It is now more than 
 half a century since his first slender volume of poems 
 appeared. At that date Christopher North, otherwise 
 Professor Wilson, and the Edinburgh reviewers were in 
 the full heyday of their power, and exercised a dominance 
 in criticism which it is difficult for us to understand to-day. 
 A new poet in those days had to fear ridicule more than 
 indifference, a position which may now be said to be 
 entirely reversed. By turning to that section of the com- 
 plete works of Tennyson headed Juvenilia, we can our- 
 selves judge what was the character of the claim which 
 
 61
 
 62 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 the young poet in 1830 made upon the public attention. 
 The volume is not merely slender in bulk, but equally 
 slight in quality. The influence of Keats is apparent 
 everywhere. There is a femininity of tone and a sensu- 
 ousness of word-painting which are in the exact manner of 
 Keats. The triviality of Keats's worst style is as appar- 
 ent as the magic phrasing of his best. Take, for instance, 
 this stanza from "Claribel" 
 
 The slumbrous wave outdwelleth, 
 
 The babbling runnel crispeth, 
 
 The hollow grot replieth, 
 
 Where Claribel low-lieth. 
 
 This is weak with the peculiar weakness of Keats; the 
 straining after effect by the use of uncommon and affected 
 forms of speech. Nor do the other poems in the little 
 volume rise to anything like a high average. 
 
 There are, however, splendid indications of true and 
 genuine power amid much that is weak and imitative. 
 "Mariana" is a piece of powerful painting, done with 
 excellent artistic taste, intention, and finish. Finer still 
 is the "Recollections of the Arabian Nights." It is rich, 
 almost too rich indeed, in its coloring, but no one can fail 
 to feel the charm of words in such lines as these: 
 
 At night my shallop rustling thro' 
 
 The low and blooming foliage, drove 
 
 The fragrant glistening deeps, and clove 
 The citron-shadows in the blue: 
 By garden-porches on the brim, 
 
 The costly doors flung open wide, 
 Gold glittering hrough lamplight dim, 
 
 And broidered sofas on each side; 
 In sooth it was a goodly time, 
 For it was in the golden prime 
 
 Of good Haroun Alraschid.
 
 Lord Tennyson General Characteristics 63 
 
 But in fineness of workmanship and depth of feeling the 
 "Deserted House," the "Dying Swan," and "Oriana," 
 take an easy precedence. In the second of these poems 
 there is that which goes farther to insure a poet the atten- 
 tion of the public than anything else there is distinctive- 
 ness and originality. The "Dying Swan" was sufficient 
 at once to stamp Tennyson as an original poet. In its 
 perfectly accurate depiction of nature it may remind us 
 somewhat of Wordsworth, but it is a mere suggestion, 
 and the style is wholly different. Wordsworth's has been 
 described as the pure style in poetry; Tennyson's as the 
 ornate. The bond of likeness is in the fidelity of each 
 poet to the actual facts of nature. Wordsworth never 
 drew a picture of mountain solitude or lake scenery more 
 simply true to fact than the picture this young Lincoln- 
 shire poet gives of the great open spaces of the fen coun- 
 try, with their breadth of sky and far-stretching solitude, 
 which is almost desolation, and their gleaming water- 
 courses fretting everywhere, like silver threads, the waste 
 of green. 
 
 The plain was grassy, wild, and bare, 
 
 Wide, wild, and open to the air, 
 
 Which had built up everywhere 
 
 An under-roof of doleful gray. 
 
 Ever the weary wind went on, 
 And took the reed-tops as it went. 
 
 One willow o'er the river wept 
 And shook the wave as the wind did sigh; 
 
 Above in the wind was the swallow, 
 Chasing itself at its own wild will, 
 And far thro' the marish green, and still 
 
 The tangled watercourses slept, 
 Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.
 
 64 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 The sense of desolation is complete. It is not con- 
 veyed to the mind by a single vivid touch, in the manner 
 of Wordsworth, but by a series of cumulative effects, 
 which are equally striking. It is not wonderful that a 
 poem like this should arrest the attention of a mind like 
 Christopher North's. The first volume of a poet has 
 rarely contained anything so full of conscious strength, 
 and so complete in its mastery of the art of poetry, as this 
 pathetic picture of the dying swan. 
 
 Christopher North "rusty, crusty Christopher" as 
 Tennyson afterward called him was perhaps more con- 
 scious of the weakness of the young poet than of his 
 strength. In 1832, when the famous "Blackwood" 
 criticism appeared, Wordsworth was still a rock of offense 
 to the critics, and gibes and insult had not yet ceased to 
 follow him to his solitude at Grasmere. Seven years were 
 to elapse before Oxford was to recognize his greatness, 
 eleven years before the laureateship was his. It was an 
 unpropitious hour for poets. There had come a great 
 ebb-tide in poetry, perhaps a natural result of that extraor- 
 dinary outburst of lyric splendor with which the names 
 of Shelley and Keats are associated. Robert Southey was 
 laureate, and an age which had enthroned Southey as 
 laureate might well turn a deaf ear to the voice of Tenny- 
 son. Upon the whole it is greatly to the credit of Profes- 
 sor Wilson that he had discrimination enough to see 
 anything at all in the humble volume of poems by Alfred 
 Tennyson, which was sent him for review; and he took 
 occasion to give the young poet some excellent advice, for 
 which he had the humility and discernment to be thankful. 
 
 The cardinal error of these early poems Professor Wil- 
 son was keen enough to discern at once. It was what he
 
 Lord Tennyson General Characteristics 65 
 
 called "puerility." There was a sort of unwholesome 
 sadness about them, a distasteful melancholy, a mawkish- 
 ness of tone and subject. It may be added, that the note 
 of restrained and tender melancholy has always been one 
 of the chief features of Tennyson's poetry. It is not 
 obtrusive, but it is pervasive; it is rarely bitter or synical, 
 but it is always there. It is apparent in the choice of 
 subject, even in these early poems. Death and change 
 strike the keynote of the volume. Mariana "in the 
 moated grange" cries 
 
 I am aweary, aweary, 
 Would God that I were dead! 
 
 One of the sweetest of the songs is 
 Of the mouldering flowers; 
 
 The air is damp, and hushed, and close, 
 As a sick man's room when he taketh repose 
 An hour before death. 
 
 The fine ballad of "Oriana" is a ballad of death, and 
 the "Dying Swan," although it rises into a voice of noble 
 music in its close, is nevertheless a poem of desolation and 
 sorrow. And over and above all this, a large part of the 
 volume, no fewer than five poems indeed, are devoted to 
 the depiction of various types of womanhood. Sweetness 
 there is in the volume, but not strength; and the sweet- 
 ness is cloying rather than piercing. It is not the voice 
 of the strong and hopeful man, but of the poet touched 
 with an incurable melancholy of thought and outlook. 
 Yet if melancholy strikes the keynote of the whole, it is 
 not less true that the melody is really new and striking. 
 The first poem bears the under-title of "A Melody," and
 
 66 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 in the word Tennyson shows an exact appreciation of his 
 own powers. Melodious he always is. No poet has ever 
 had a profounder knowledge of the laws of metrical music. 
 It is the melody of his phrase that carries it home to the 
 memory, not less than its felicity. Any student of Tenny- 
 son can recall at will scores of lines which cling to the 
 memory by the charm of their own exquisite music. 
 
 Take such examples as these 
 
 From "Tithonus": 
 
 While Ilion like a mist rose into towers. 
 
 From "Ulysses": 
 
 And drunk delight of battle with my peers 
 Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. 
 
 From the "Princess": 
 
 Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, 
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
 And murmuring of innumerable bees. 
 
 In these last lines there is an overpowering imaginative 
 charm, something almost magical in its bewitchment, 
 which makes us think of the words of Keats, that to him 
 a fine phrase was an intoxicating delight. It is melody, 
 the finest and most magical melody of which words are 
 capable. There is nothing in the early poems of Tenny- 
 son to match such exquisite phrasing as this, but there are 
 nevertheless sure indications of where the real power of 
 the poet lay. It was the advent of an intensely artistic 
 mind, palpitatingly alive to the vision and power of 
 beauty, touched with the artist's ecstasy, and with the 
 artist's corresponding melancholy, keen, subtle, delicately 
 poised, possessing the secret of loveliness rather than of
 
 Lord Tennyson General Characteristics 67 
 
 rude vigor; it was the advent of such a mind into the 
 world of English poetry which was signalized by that 
 slender volume of Poems by Alfred Tennyson, published 
 in 1830. 
 
 But bright as were the indications of poetic genius in 
 the earliest work of Tennyson, few could have dared to 
 augur from them the height of excellence to which the 
 poet has now attained. A yet severer critic than Wilson 
 was Lockhart, who reviewed the 1833 poems in the Quar- 
 terly Review of that year, and it is noticeable that almost 
 every suggestion of Lockhart was thereafter adopted by 
 Tennyson. He had the sense to take the advice of his 
 critics, to rid himself of puerilities, to be patient, to dare 
 to investigate and grapple with his own faults, to enter 
 upon a course of arduous labor and invincible watchful- 
 ness, to practice not merely the earnest culture of art, but 
 also to seek the self-restraint of art; and he has fully justi- 
 fied their presage that he had in him the making of a great 
 poet. Poetry has not been to him a pastime, but the 
 supreme passion and toil of life. Again and again he has 
 polished and remolded his earlier poems, not always, per- 
 haps, to their advantage, but always with the intent of 
 making them more perfect in metrical harmony, and more 
 complete and concise in poetic workmanship. The melody 
 has grown with the years; it has become more subtle, 
 more penetrating, more magical. He has carried the art 
 of metrical construction to a height of perfection never 
 before attempted in English poetry. It is difficult to find 
 a false rhyme, a slovenly stanza, or a halting meter in all 
 the great bulk of his completed works. As an example 
 of the infinite laboriousness of true poetic art there can 
 be no finer example. And in variety of subject he has
 
 68 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 but one rival. He has treated the romantic, the antique, 
 the domestic life of the world with equal skill. History 
 and theology, art and science, legendary lore, and modern 
 social problems find constant reflection and presentment 
 in his poetry. Some of his poems are so clearly hewn 
 that they are like mighty fragments of the antique; some 
 treat of English peasant life; some of fairy-lore; some of 
 religious fancy; some of social dreams and yearnings; in 
 some the theme is slight, but the slightness of the theme 
 is forgotten in the excellence of the workmanship; in 
 some the theme is as solemn as life and death, and touches 
 issues which are as old as human thought. "Rapt nuns," 
 it has been said, "English ladies, peasant girls, artists, 
 lawyers, farmers in short, a tolerably complete repre- 
 sentation of the miscellaneous public of the present day," 
 jostle one another in his picture galleries. True, the 
 cosmopolitan note of Browning is wanting; but if Tenny- 
 son has not the catholic sympathies of Browning, he has 
 succeeded in touching with the utmost felicity many 
 aspects of English life which his great rival has ignored. 
 And his mood and style are as various as his themes. In 
 such poems as "Dora" we have a Wordsworthian sim- 
 plicity of diction, a coolness and purity of coloring almost 
 cold in its severity. In such poems as "Maud" and 
 "Locksley Hall" we have the utmost elaboration of ornate 
 imagery and effect. He can be severely simple and 
 chastely sensuous, classic and grotesque, subtle and pas- 
 sionate, passing with the ease of perfect mastery from 
 love to dialectics, from the wail of a somber pessimism to 
 the exaltation and rapture of the triumphant lover. He 
 can even be humorous, and excellently humorous, too, as 
 in such a poem as the "Northern Farmer." It is prob-
 
 Lord Tennyson General Characteristics 69 
 
 ably in this diversity of gifts that the great secret of 
 Tennyson's wide popularity is to be found. He touches 
 many classes of readers, many varieties of mind. Of his 
 limitations, his peculiarities of view and outlook, his atti- 
 tude to religion and politics, his pervading melancholy and 
 the causes of it, we shall see more as we devote more 
 particular attention to his works; but enough has been 
 said to explain why it is that he has won not merely wide 
 but sound popularity; and not merely popularity, but fame 
 and success such as no other English poet has ever enjoyed 
 in the brief period during which his work was actually 
 being done, and when the fruits of success were keenest 
 to the taste and most alluring to the ambition. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. What kind of criticism and from what sources did the 
 writers of Tennyson's time have to meet? 
 
 2. How is the influence of Keats shown in Tennyson's 
 earliest work? 
 
 3. What indications of Tennyson's ability are shown in his 
 early poems? 
 
 4. Illustrate this by the " Dying Swan." 
 
 5. Why was Tennyson's youth " an unpropitious hour for 
 poets"? 
 
 6. What was the chief error of his earlier poems? 
 
 7. How did these poems indicate the direction in which lay 
 his real power? 
 
 8. How did Tennyson profit by the advice of his critics? 
 
 9. What is the probable reason for Tennyson's wide 
 popularity? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Alfred Lord Tennyson. By His Son. 2 Volumes. 
 
 The Poetry of Tennyson. Henry Van Dyke. 
 
 Tennyson, His Art and Relation to Modern Life. Stopford 
 A. Brooke. 
 
 Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning. Anne Thack- 
 eray Ritchie. 
 
 The Victorian Poets. Edmund Clarence Stedman.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 TENNYSON'S TREATMENT OF NATURE 
 
 The variety of Tennyson's work makes the task of 
 arranging it more than usually difficult. Certain portions 
 of his work are directly philosophical, and are meant to 
 be elucidations or solutions of some of the deepest prob- 
 lems of humanity. Others are surcharged with mournful- 
 ness, and might be called lamentations; dirges over dead 
 hopes, lost glories of chivalry, or the bitter presage of 
 future trouble traveling towards us in the development of 
 social perils. Others are purely fanciful, lyrics finished 
 with airy grace, or poems breathing the enchantment of 
 fairy-lore. But such a classification as this is incomplete 
 and fails to yield the result which a just criticism desires. 
 Broadly speaking, there are certain great subjects on 
 which all true poets have something to say. These sub- 
 jects are nature, woman, life, politics, and religion. 
 Nature needs no definition; under the head of woman we 
 must include all that pertains to love and chivalry; under 
 the head of life, the general view of human action and 
 society which distinguishes a poet; under politics, the 
 poet's view of progress and the future of the race; under 
 religion, what the poet has to say about the devout long- 
 ings of humanity, its sorrows and their solution, the future 
 and its promises. It will be found that under this classifi- 
 cation the works of all great poets can be readily placed. 
 It is the view of nature which is the distinguishing feature 
 
 70
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Nature 71 
 
 in Wordsworth; it is the view of woman gross, carnal, 
 callous which is the damning feature in Byron; it is the 
 view of religion which lends such paramount interest to 
 the poetry of Arnold and Browning. Let us begin, then, 
 by examining what Tennyson has to say about Nature. 
 
 We have already seen that to Shelley Nature was some- 
 thing more than an abstract phrase: she was something 
 alive, a radiant and potent spirit, a glorious power filling 
 the mind with infinite delight, and drawing out the spirit 
 of man in ecstatic communion. The first thing we note 
 about Tennyson is, that Nature is not to him what she was 
 to either Shelley or Wordsworth. He nowhere regards 
 Nature as a living presence. He at no time listens for her 
 voice as for the voice of God. To Shelley Nature was 
 love; to Wordsworth she was thought; to Tennyson she 
 is neither. He does not habitually regard Nature as 
 the vesture of the Highest the outward adumbration of 
 the invisible God. He does not even regard her with the 
 purely sensuous delight of Keats. And the reason for 
 this lies in the fact that the sympathies of Tennyson are 
 so various that there is no excess in any; it is the full play 
 of an exquisitely balanced mind that we see, rather than 
 the fine ecstasy of an enthusiastic artist. To Wordsworth 
 Nature was everything, and on the solitary hills he wor- 
 shiped before her altars, and in the voice of the winds 
 and waters he heard her breathings and caught the mes- 
 sage of her wisdom. Apart from men, in solemn loneli- 
 ness, incurious about the crowded life of cities or the 
 vast movements of the troubled sea of human thought, he 
 stood, silent and entranced, waiting for revelations of that 
 Eternal Power whose splendor glowed upon the hills at 
 dawn, and whose mind uttered itself out of the starry
 
 72 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 spaces of the wind-swept heavens at night. But Tenny- 
 son has never professed himself incurious about the 
 progress of human opinion or indifferent to the life of cities. 
 Wordsworth's was the priestly temperament, Tennyson's 
 is the artistic. The great drama of human life has not 
 been permitted to pass him unnoticed. He has found joy 
 in the refinements of wealth, interest in the progress of 
 society, passionate absorption in the theological contro- 
 versies of his time. A certain dramatic interest has always 
 drawn him toward the tragic realities of past history and 
 of present life. He has the quick eye of the scientific 
 observer or of the artistic draughtsman, but little of the 
 rapt contemplation of the seer. Thus it follows that, 
 while Nature perpetually colors his writings, he has noth- 
 ing new to say about her. 
 
 There is, however, one quality which distinguishes his 
 view of nature from that of other poets, viz., the scien- 
 tific accuracy of his observation. Nature to him is neither 
 love nor thought: she is law. He is full of the modern 
 scientific spirit. He sees everywhere the movement of 
 law and the fulfillment of vast purposes which are part of 
 a universal order. He is under no delusion as to the 
 meaning of Nature; so far from being love, she is "red in 
 tooth and claw with rapine." The conclusions of modern 
 science Tennyson has accepted with unquestioning faith, 
 and the only factor which preserves him from an unpoeti- 
 cal view of nature is the religious faith which makes him 
 perceive nature, not as a mechanical engine of fate, but as 
 a process of law leading to nobler life and larger being. 
 That is the mission of law: not to slay, but to make alive; 
 not to fulfill a blind course, but to work out a divine pur- 
 pose and a diviner life for man, in those far-distant cycles
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Nature 73 
 
 which eye hath not seen, nor hath it entered into the heart 
 of man to conceive. 
 
 Then comes the statelier Eden back to men; 
 
 Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm; 
 
 Then springs the crowning race of human kind. 
 
 In other words, Tennyson sees Nature with the eye of 
 the evolutionist, and traces through all her processes the 
 fulfillment of a divine wisdom which means well toward 
 man and all that it has made 
 
 One God, one law, one element, 
 
 And one far-off Divine event 
 
 To which the whole creation moves. 
 
 On the other hand, because Tennyson says little that is 
 new about Nature, it must not be assumed that he does 
 not love her. On the contrary, he has studied her with 
 unwearied fidelity, for which his knowledge of science has 
 probably given him sharpened instinct and patience. It 
 would be a curiously interesting study to mark the wide 
 difference between even Shelley's broad generalizations of 
 nature, accurate as they are, and the minute patience 
 which Tennyson has devoted to every little touch of depic- 
 tion in which clouds, or birds, or woods are represented 
 to us. Tennyson's mind is not merely exquisitely sensi- 
 tive to natural beauty, but it is deeply tinged with the 
 characteristics of that scenery in which his early manhood 
 was passed. The gray hillside, the "ridged wolds," the 
 wattled sheepfold, the long plain, the misty mornings on 
 the fens, the russet coloring of autumn this is scenery 
 such as England abounds in, and is especially characteris- 
 tic of Lincolnshire. Even more distinctly drawn from the 
 fen scenery are such lines as these:
 
 74 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 And the creeping mosses, and clambering weeds, 
 And the willow branches, hoar and dank, 
 And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds, 
 And the silvery marish-flowers that throng 
 The desolate creeks and pools among 
 Were flooded over with eddying song. 
 
 In this single poem of the "Dying Swan," as we have 
 seen, there is an extraordinary accumulation of effects, 
 drawn from the sadness of nature, and used with perfect 
 skill to enhance the pathos of the picture; and the sough- 
 ing of the wind in the Lincolnshire reeds is to be heard in 
 many another poem with equal sadness and distinctness. 
 
 It is not without interest to remark that so great a poet 
 as Tennyson is educated, not amid the wonderful dawns 
 and cloud scenery of the Lake district, but under the 
 "doleful under-roof of gray" built up everywhere above a 
 flat country, where no doubt the tourist if such, indeed, 
 ever ventures into such solemn solitudes would aver that 
 there is nothing picturesque or striking. For a poet who 
 was to express the sadness and satiety of the nineteenth 
 century, however, it may be doubted if a more appropriate 
 cradle-land could be discovered. 
 
 No doubt it is in part to these natural influences which 
 surrounded his boyhood that the extraordinary fidelity of 
 Tennyson's descriptions of nature is to be attributed. 
 Where there was little to describe it was natural that the 
 power of observation should be trained to minute accuracy. 
 Miss Thackeray tells us that he once asked her to notice 
 whether the skylark did not come down sideways on the 
 wing. This is extremely characteristic of Tennyson's 
 habit in the observation of nature. He never coins a false 
 phrase about the humblest flower that blows, for the sake
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Nature 75 
 
 of the felicity of the phrase and at the expense of the tints 
 of the flower. He tells us precisely what he has seen. If 
 he tells us that in the spring "a fuller crimson comes upon 
 the robin's breast," and a "livelier iris changes on the 
 burnished dove, " we may be quite sure that he has watched 
 the robin and the dove, and written with his eyes on them 
 rather than on the paper. The sidelong descent of the 
 lark is a thing to be noted, that when he comes to speak 
 of it he may use a phrase that even the scientific naturalist 
 would approve. The consequence of this fidelity to 
 nature is, that Tennyson is constantly startling us with the 
 vivid accuracy of his descriptions. We say again and 
 again, "That is so; I have seen it," and the picture is 
 ineffaceably stamped upon the memory. Sometimes it is 
 done with a single phrase, or even a concentrated word. 
 The writer will not soon forget how throughout one autumn 
 he was haunted by the phrase 
 
 All in a death-dumb, autumn-dripping gloom. 
 
 Again and again, as he climbed the Dorsetshire hills, the 
 line met him at the summit: for there lay the death-dumb 
 land, the long plain with its dim wisps of fog already 
 beginning to rise, without voice or sound; the stillness of 
 the dying season like the silence of a death-chamber; and 
 just perceptible in the near hedgerow the constant drip of 
 the dew, like the falling of unavailing tears. Let any one 
 choose a very quiet, gray day in late autumn, when there 
 has been a previous night of fog, and stand in a solitary 
 place and listen, as the night begins to fill the land, and 
 he will feel how exquisite is the truth of the description of 
 Arthur coming home and climbing slowly to his castle 
 
 All in a death-dumb, autumn-dripping gloom.
 
 j6 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 The same vivid pictorial power is illustrated in many 
 other passages which will readily occur to the Tennysonian 
 student. How admirable a touch of depiction is this: it 
 is the hour of sunset on the marshes, when 
 
 The lone hern forgets his melancholy, 
 
 Lets down his other leg, and, stretching, dreams 
 
 Of goodly supper in the distant pools. 
 
 "A full sea, glazed with muffled moonlight," is the per- 
 fect vignette of what he once saw at Torquay ; a waterfall 
 "slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn," a sketch taken on 
 the Pyrenees; "a great black cloud draw inward from the 
 deep," an etching made upon the top of Snowdon. From 
 boyhood he loved the sea and studied it in all its moods, 
 with the result that his sea-pictures are always exquisitely 
 truthful. In those hours of "wise passiveness" he 
 
 marked 
 
 The curled white of the coming wave 
 Glass'd in the slippery sand before it breaks, 
 
 and how 
 
 The wild wave in the wide north-sea, 
 Green-glimmering toward the summit, bears with all 
 Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies 
 Down on a bark, and overbears the bark 
 And him that helms it. 
 
 It would be difficult for words to attain to higher pictorial 
 art than this: these two verses are two perfect pictures of 
 the summer and the winter sea. 
 
 The main point to observe, therefore, about Tennyson 
 is, that in him we have the scientific observer and the 
 artist rather than the interpreter of nature. Wordsworth 
 interprets; Tennyson describes. He is vivid, pictorial,
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Nature 77 
 
 picturesque; but he has no fresh insight into the soul of 
 things, save such as his science furnishes him. But if he 
 has no new gospel to preach us from the book of nature, 
 we may at least rejoice in the oerfect finish and enchant- 
 ment of his pictures. 
 
 To this it may be added that these pictures are for the 
 most part essentially English in tone, atmosphere,* and 
 subject. Now and again, but with great rareness, he has 
 depicted foreign scenery, as in the " Daisy "- 
 
 How faintly flushed, how phantom-fair, 
 Was Monte Rosa, hanging there, 
 A thousand shadowy penciled valleys 
 And snowy dells in a golden air. 
 
 And the picture is perfect both in glamour and fidelity. 
 But it is in English pictures he excels. Who that has 
 seen the land of Kent does not recognize this? 
 
 The happy valleys, half in light, and half 
 Far shadowing from the west, a land of peace; 
 Gray halls alone among their massive groves; 
 Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower 
 Half lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat; 
 The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas;" 
 A red sail or a white; and far beyond, 
 Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. 
 
 Or who does not feel the truth of this touch of rural life 
 in England? 
 
 The golden autumn woodland reels 
 Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. 
 
 Nor is it only such peaceful scenes as these that Tennyson 
 can invest with the magic of his art; he knows how to 
 grasp the larger effects of nature, the mountain gloom, the
 
 78 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 cloud grandeur, the dawn of day or night of tempest, and 
 touch them off with an imaginative skill and power of 
 phrase which stamp them indelibly on the memory. For 
 let him who has watched the pageant of the dying day say 
 if any human art could more grandly fix in words the 
 western cloud effects than this 
 
 Yonder cloud, 
 That rises upward, always higher 
 
 And topples round the dreary west, 
 A looming bastion fringed with fire. 
 
 Or let him who has studied the warfare of wind and cloud 
 and the wild upheaval and terror of gathering tempest say 
 if this is not a picture such as Turner would have delighted 
 to paint, and only he could have painted in all its stern 
 magnificence 
 
 The forest cracked, the waters curl'd, 
 
 The cattle huddled on the lea ; 
 
 And wildly dashed on tower and tree 
 The sunbeam strikes along the world. 
 
 Nor could any angry morning after tempest be better 
 painted than in this one pregnant line 
 
 All in a fiery dawning, wild with wind. 
 
 Nor could the savage splendor of Alpine fastnesses, where 
 precipice and glacier rise tier above tier, in shattered 
 beauty and unvanquishable strength, be better brought 
 home to the imagination than in this touch of solemn 
 
 imagery 
 
 The monstrous ledges slope, and spill 
 Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke 
 That like a ruined purpose waste in air. 
 
 Nor has the breaking up of a stormy sky, when the clouds 
 suddenly lift as though withdrawn upon invisible pulleys,
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Nature 79 
 
 and there is light at eventide, ever been represented better 
 than in one of the earliest of all these poems, the immature 
 and unequal "Eleanore"- 
 
 As thunder-clouds, that hung on high, 
 Roof'd the world with doubt and fear, 
 Floating thro' an evening atmosphere, 
 
 Grow golden all about the sky. 
 
 And for imaginative intensity, such as the great Greek 
 poets would have delighted in, and indeed wholly in their 
 manner, it is hard to excel the phrase in which Tithonus 
 describes the glory of the dawn 
 
 And the wild team 
 
 Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise 
 And shake the darkness from their loosened manes, 
 And beat the twilight into flakes of fire. 
 
 Or the farewell of Ulysses, when he cries: 
 
 Come, my friends, 
 
 '-Tis not too late to seek a newer world, 
 Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite 
 The sounding furrows ; for my purpose holds 
 To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
 Of all the western stars until I die. 
 
 These are but random samples of the perfection to 
 which Tennyson has wrought his art in the faithful and 
 accurate depiction of nature. Every word tells: it tells 
 because it is true, because it expresses the very spirit of 
 the scene that he would paint, not less than its external 
 show. The labor and culture which lie behind such per- 
 fect phrases as these are immense. Not infrequently the 
 source of some fine image is to be found in some remote 
 page of the older poets; and part of the charm of the 
 Tennysonian phrase is, that it is often reminiscent a sub-
 
 8o Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 tie echo, as it were, of a more ancient music, which does not 
 offend, but fascinates. Thus the image of the "ploughed 
 sea" is one of the very oldest since the dawn of language, 
 and the picture of the dawn in "Tithonus" has its counter- 
 part in Marston's noble lines 
 
 But see, the dapple-gray coursers of the morn 
 Beat up the light with their bright silver hoofs, 
 And chase it through the sky.* 
 
 But the more enduring element of beauty in such lines is 
 their delightful truthfulness. "The sounding furrows" is 
 an exact representation to ear and eye of what happens 
 when the heaving waters are suddenly smitten with the 
 level sweep of oars. The darkness trampled into flakes of 
 fire is the precise effect of the instantaneous irruption of 
 the splendor of the dawn, when the thin clouds that lie 
 across the east are broken up into floating fragments, and 
 hang quivering, like golden flames, in the lucid air, when 
 the world lies still and windless, waiting for the day. 
 "The fiery dawn," the great burst of streaming yellow, 
 not graduated into crimson or purple, but all vast and 
 lurid, like an angry conflagration in the east, is a spectacle 
 which the seaman knows too well, when the night has been 
 "wild with wind," and the storm pauses at the dawn, only 
 to gather strength for the riotous havoc of the day. It is 
 the exact truth of nature which is fixed in phrases like 
 these. It is the truth Turner painted, the vision of the 
 miracle of nature which he strove with infinite toil and true 
 inspiration to retain in his immortal canvases. And 
 because it is true art, therefore it is fine art. Much that 
 might be said of nature, Tennyson has not said; to much 
 
 * Vide Lamb's " Specimens of Elizabethan Poetry."
 
 Tennyson's Treatment of Nature 8 1 
 
 that others have said he is indifferent. But this at least 
 he has done: he has approached nature, not with the hot 
 and hasty zeal of the impressionist, but with the cool eye 
 of the consummate artist; and every sketch of nature 
 which he has given us, whether of the commonplace or 
 the extraordinary, is finished with admirable skill, and has 
 the crowning merit of absolute fidelity, accuracy, and 
 truth. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. What great subjects are discussed by all the eminent 
 poets ? 
 
 2. Illustrate this in the case of several English poets. 
 
 3. How is the view of nature as held by Shelley and Words- 
 worth different from that of Tennyson ? 
 
 4. How did Tennyson's life in the fen country influence his 
 study of nature ? 
 
 5. Show how exquisitely truthful are his descriptions of 
 the sea. 
 
 6. What is true of his descriptions of English scenery ? 
 
 7. Give other examples of his skill in portraying nature. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Alfred Tennyson: His Life and Works. W. E. Wace, 
 Alfred Tennyson. Andrew Lang. 
 
 Tennyson : His A rt and Relation to Modern Life. Stopf ord 
 A. Brooke. 
 
 The Poetry of Tennyson. Henry Van Dyke.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 TENNYSON LOVE AND WOMAN 
 
 Just as one of the most crucial points about a poet is 
 his treatment of nature, so again his view of womanhood 
 affords a key to the character of his mind arid the quality 
 of his genius. The love poetry of the world is one of its 
 most fascinating inheritances and ranges through many 
 keys. Love has always furnished the impulse to poetry 
 and has often been its staple. It would be difficult to find 
 any poet who has nothing to say of love; it would be easy 
 to find many poets who have never written exquisitely till 
 they became lovers. The new divine warmth of the heart 
 has liberated the faculties of the intellect and has given 
 inspiration and insight to the soul. Even when the warmth 
 has been sensuous rather than divine, it has not the less 
 had some effect in the liberation of the mind. Burns dis- 
 plays his highest genius in his love lyrics. Some of the 
 Elizabethan poets are famous only by a single stanza, or 
 a single poem, which expresses the passion of the human 
 heart with such felicity, such delicate skill, such fire and 
 tenderness, that the world cannot forget their phrases. 
 Rossetti lives in the vision of womanhood, with every 
 sense perpetually tingling to the keen delight of passion. 
 Even Wordsworth kindles at the vision of love: he sees 
 the ideal woman glowing before him, not with any heat of 
 passion indeed, but with a calm and spiritual radiance, 
 which is to him as a sacred flame, searching the spirit and 
 
 82
 
 Tennyson Love and Woman 83 
 
 purifying the heart. Perhaps the poet of our day least 
 affected by the enchantment of love is Matthew Arnold. 
 He is too reticent for passion, is too sadly philosophical to 
 sing the rapture of the lover. But even Arnold has writ- 
 ten love verses not inspired lyrics like Burns 's, but never- 
 theless, verses which have sprung from a lover's yearning. 
 Tennyson is so far from an exception, that love forms the 
 great motive in all his larger poems. Everywhere he 
 testifies to the pre-eminence and influence of woman. He 
 has been an ardent student of womanhood, and has struck 
 out with admirable skill and genuine artistic feeling many 
 typical portraits of womanhood. He has mastered the 
 difficult secret of how to write voluptuously and yet retain 
 the bloom of a delicate and almost virginal purity. He 
 knows how to be passionate, but his passion never passes 
 into that sensuous extravagance which is the sign of weak- 
 ness. There is always a gravity and earnestness about it 
 which preserves him from an excess which becomes ridicu- 
 lous. In this he stands nearer to Wordsworth than to 
 either Keats or Burns. But whereas in Wordsworth 
 woman has no commanding position, and is almost for- 
 gotten and obliterated in the presence of nature, in 
 Tennyson woman is always pre-eminent, and the fas- 
 cination of woman is at least as strong as the charm of 
 nature. 
 
 And here again we cannot help tracing the treatment 
 of woman in Tennyson's poetry to the early influences 
 which surrounded his boyhood. He was never cast upon 
 the world, to sink or swim as he could, in the great seeth- 
 ing whirlpools of sensual temptation. He carried with 
 him no evil heritage of passionate blood, as did Byron; he 
 was not brought face to face with any daring theories of
 
 84 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 free love, as was Shelley; he was not dependent on the 
 coarse orgies of village society for recreation, as was 
 Burns. He breathed an atmosphere of refinement from 
 the very first. He was trained by every sight and influ- 
 ence of early life into that fastidious purity which charac- 
 terizes him. He grew into vigor in what might be called 
 the cloistral calm of clerical life in a remote English vil- 
 lage. The baser side of human life was not seen; the 
 carnal meanings of love never so much as named; the 
 coarser aspects of passion were smothered in flowers and 
 fragrances. Behind all the love lyrics of Tennyson one 
 sees the picture of a calmly ordered home, where domestic 
 love moves like a shining presence, with hands busy in 
 silent ministrations and heart full of the tenderness of a 
 pure devotion. The portrait of Tennyson's mother is the 
 key to his reverence for womanhood. It is a beautiful 
 and tender face, delicately molded, lighted with a spiritual 
 radiance of sympathy and hope, and yet, too, bearing 
 pathetic traces of resigned sadness and sorrowful experi- 
 ence. We can understand how Tennyson was preserved 
 from the fatality of recklessness, how it is he has worn 
 the white flower of a blameless life, and has ruled himself 
 with chivalrous regard for womanhood, when we study 'his 
 mother's face. What such a woman must have been in 
 the home, and what sort of home it must have been 
 where she moved like a ministering spirit, we can readily 
 imagine. And how divinely pure and penetrating may 
 be the influence of such a woman Tennyson has told 
 us in a passage of the "Princess," which might without 
 much risk of misinterpretation be taken as a personal 
 reminiscence
 
 Tennyson Love and Woman 85 
 
 I loved her: one 
 
 Not learned, save in gracious household ways, 
 Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 
 No angel, but a dearer being, all dipt 
 In angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
 Who looked all native to her place, and yet 
 On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphere 
 Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce 
 Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved, 
 And girdled her with music. Happy he 
 With such a mother! faith in womankind 
 Beats in his blood, and trust in all things high 
 Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall 
 He shall not blind his soul with clay. 
 
 The first point to be noted, therefore, in Tennyson's treat- 
 ment of love is its conspicuous purity. It is the love of 
 the chivalrous knight, not of the Bohemian profligate, 
 which he paints. His whole conception of love is rever- 
 ential. It is a spiritual passion, not an earthly. He per- 
 ceives it in its spiritual working, and not in its fleshly. 
 With rare exceptions he shuns altogether the fleshly 
 aspects of love. One exception is found among the early 
 poems in the striking ballad called "The Sisters," but this 
 is an obvious imitation of the ancient ballad poetry, in 
 which passion is indeed a prime motive, but is always 
 treated with a healthy frankness. But the poem partially 
 fails as a perfect imitation of the ancient ballad, simply 
 because Tennyson cannot allude to unchaste passion with- 
 out a burst of terrible denunciation 
 
 She died: she went to burning flame, 
 She mixed her ancient blood with shame, 
 The wind is howling in turret and tree. 
 
 He leaps upon the desecrator of human love with a bitter 
 wrath, and with words like the sword-flash of an avenging
 
 86 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 angel. The other great example of Tennyson's treatment 
 of the baser side of love is the unlawful love of Guinevere. 
 But even here again he manifests the same sternness of 
 avenging purity. Not by one touch, one veiled hint or 
 half a word, does he seek to move the springs of evil con- 
 cupiscence in his reader. What he sees again is not the 
 fleshly side of unlawful passion, but the spiritual. From 
 the sin of Guinevere springs the ruin of an empire. Her 
 outrage upon purity is avenged in the downfall of that 
 great kingdom of chivalry which Arthur had built up with 
 infinite toil. The great purpose of that kingdom was that 
 it should be God's kingdom on earth. The work of its 
 great knights was 
 
 To ride abroad redressing human wrongs. 
 Their rule of conduct was 
 
 To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, 
 To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, 
 To love one maiden only, cleave to her, 
 And worship her by-years of noble deeds 
 Until they won her. 
 
 And now what happened? Arthur tells her she has spoilt 
 the purpose of his life 
 
 Well is it that no child is born of thee. 
 
 The children born of thee are sword and fire, 
 
 Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws. 
 
 The carnal sin of one guilty woman has shattered into 
 utter ruin the noblest kingdom ever built upon the earth. 
 That is the one awful fact which Tennyson sees, and that 
 is the keynote to the whole poem. Where other poets 
 might have seen a subject on which they could lavish all 
 the wealth of sensuous imagery, he sees not the manner
 
 Tennyson Love and Woman 87 
 
 of the sinning, and is not careful to paint it, but the infi- 
 nite consequences of the sin streaming on, like a loosened 
 flood of flame, working havoc and infinite wreck upon 
 every side. Just as it is the spiritual cleansing of love 
 which he paints when he tells us 
 
 Love took up the harp of Life, and struck on all the chords 
 
 with might, 
 Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music out 
 
 of sight 
 
 so it is the spiritual and moral effect of the base selfish- 
 ness of unchaste passion which he describes, when he 
 paints the breaking up of the Round Table, and Arthur 
 turning sadly away to lead his disheartened hosts 
 
 Far down to that great battle in the west. 
 
 It is this perfect and pellucid purity of Tennyson's 
 mind which has enabled him to do many things impossible 
 to others. Take, for instance, such a poem as "Godiva." 
 A subject more difficult of handling it would be hard to 
 find. The slightest prurience of thought would have been 
 ruinous. So difficult and delicate is the theme that the 
 merest feather-weight of over-description, a word too 
 much, a shade of color too warm, a hint only of human heat, 
 would upset the balance and turn a poem which sparkles 
 with a crystal purity into a poem brilliant only with the 
 iridescence of corrupt conception. Such a theme could 
 not have been intrusted to Rossetti; scarcely, indeed, to 
 Keats; absolutely not to Swinburne. To make it accept- 
 able, not merely the most delicate lightness of touch was 
 needed, but the most pellucid freshness of thought. 
 Both Keats and Rossetti would have over-colored the 
 picture, and left upon the taste the taint of an unwhole-
 
 88 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 some voluptuousness. What Swinburne would have made 
 of it needs no sort of explanation. But Tennyson is able 
 to treat it nobly, with simplicity and severity of touch, and 
 he does so in sheer virtue of his own purity of heart. 
 There is about him something of that divine quality which 
 Guinevere discovers in King Arthur 
 
 The pure severity of perfect light. 
 
 He has no cunning eye to discern anything in the sub- 
 ject which can minister to the baser man. What he sees 
 is a noble woman performing an heroic deed. He de- 
 scribes her in imagery which clothes her as with a garment 
 of light- 
 She lingered, looking like a summer moon 
 Half-dipt in cloud : anon she shook her head, 
 And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee ; 
 Unclad herself in haste ; adown the stair 
 Stole on ; and, like a creeping sunbeam slid 
 From pillar unto pillar. 
 Then she rode forth clothed only with chastity. 
 
 It is the moral significance of the scene which fasci- 
 nates Tennyson the spectacle of a woman sacrificing her- 
 self for the people's good, and so building for herself an 
 everlasting name. "Godiva" is a short poem, but it is 
 invaluable as an index to the purity of Tennyson's genius, 
 for no poet who was not penetrated by the utmost rever- 
 ence for womanhood could have treated such a subject 
 with such daring or such conspicuous success. 
 
 This reverence of Tennyson for womanhood is marked 
 in all his poems, and is an influence more or less apparent 
 throughout his work. The early poems no less than the 
 later abound in evidence of its sincerity. The very fact 
 that so many of his poems describe women, and bear the
 
 Tennyson Love and Woman 89 
 
 names of women, is in itself significant. He bears con- 
 stant testimony to the "finer female sense," and is careful 
 that he shall not offend it by his "random string." 
 Woman, as he conceives her, is the divinely purifying 
 element in human life. Chivalry to woman is no mere 
 romantic echo of the past: it is the sign manual of every 
 noble soul. The apprehensions of woman are more deli- 
 cate than man's; her instincts are surer, her intuition 
 more certain, her spirit more gracious, more tender, and 
 more divine. He who despises the intuitions of pure 
 womanhood quenches a light which God has set in the 
 world for his guidance and illumination. Of course this 
 is no new doctrine, either in poetry or morals. But it 
 came upon the world almost as a new doctrine in 1830. 
 The women of poetry fifty years ago the women of 
 Byron, to wit had no sign of any divine intuition about 
 them. They were warm, weak, and foolish. They never 
 exercised the slightest control over men, except the sensu- 
 ous control of passion. They were neither reverenced nor 
 obeyed. They were the toys of desire, the beautiful and 
 fragile playthings of an hour. Neither in poetry nor in 
 real life was woman treated with reverential chastity of 
 thought sixty years ago. The revolution and emancipa- 
 tion of woman had not yet come. It was easy, therefore, 
 for writers like Bulwer Lytton, throughout whose works 
 there is scarcely one example of reverence for woman, and 
 in which the prevalent conception of woman is debasingly 
 gross and offensive, to mock Tennyson as "school-miss 
 Arthur." It was easy to use the femininity of tone in 
 the earlier poems as a weapon of insult against him. 
 Bulwer Lytton had yet to discover that reverence for 
 woman did not imply any lack of virility in manhood. No
 
 90 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 more stinging retort was ever made than the verse which 
 "Miss Arthur" fixed upon the dandy author of "Pel- 
 ham" 
 
 What profits it to understand 
 
 The merits of a spotless shirt, 
 A dapper foot, a little hand, 
 If half the little soul be dirt ! 
 
 For it was not weakness of fiber which bred in Tenny- 
 son a reverence for woman, but nobility of spirit. And it 
 was something more than this. It was the outcome of 
 pure training under the gracious eyes of good women. 
 The home was to Tennyson the highest and noblest 
 expression of human life. His sympathy with romance 
 and chivalry gave us exquisite sketches of mediaeval 
 thought, like the "Lady of Shalott," and finally worked 
 out the noblest series of poems in modern literature, "The 
 Idylls of the King." The same romantic sympathy is 
 apparent in such a poem of fairy fancy as the "Day- 
 Dream." But the strongest movement of Tennyson's 
 mind in the direction of woman-worship is toward 
 domestic life. It is in married love the noblest blooming 
 of love is found. It is there the divinest dreams of love 
 are realized. Happy he to whom such joy is given, but 
 the joy is not for all. 
 
 Of love that never found his earthly close 
 
 What sequel ? Streaming eyes, and breaking hearts ? 
 
 Or all the same as if he had not been ? 
 
 Not so. When love and duty strive together, the victory 
 is with duty. Any love snatched in defiance of duty is 
 not true love: because it forgets reverence to womanhood, 
 therefore it is base, and can only lead to moral disintegra- 
 tion and corruption. Better far
 
 Tennyson Love and Woman 91 
 
 Such tears as flow but once a life, 
 
 In that last kiss, which never was the last ! 
 
 For to Tennyson so supreme is the passion of reverence 
 for womanhood, so infinitely high and dear is womanly 
 purity, that it becomes the key to everything really noble 
 in human life, and any outrage upon that is the vilest of 
 all sin such sin as shakes the pillars of society and over- 
 throws the majesty and might of empire. Reverence for 
 woman and reverence for self go hand in hand. 
 
 Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
 These three alone lead life to sov reign power, 
 Yet not for power (power of herself 
 Would come uncalled for), but to live by law, 
 Acting the law we live by without fear : 
 And, because right is right, to follow right 
 Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. 
 
 But high as Tennyson sets woman, yet he retains a 
 clear conception of the just and proper place of woman in 
 society. She may inspire and lead man, but she is not 
 equal with man. She may, indeed, govern men, but it is 
 not by the right of superior intellectual endowment, but 
 by the force of her nobility of soul. Her passions matched 
 with man's 
 
 Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and water unto wine. 
 
 That is a rough and dramatic way of expressing the truth, 
 which Tennyson has worked out at large, with great 
 subtlety and skill, in the remarkable poem of the "Prin- 
 cess." 
 
 The central point of the whole argument in the "Prin- 
 cess" is, that woman was never meant to wrestle with man 
 in the arena of intellectual pre-eminence or the active busi- 
 ness of the world. He will reverence her to the utmost,
 
 92 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 but he will not abdicate in her favor. In fact, his very 
 reverence is founded on her possession of certain qualities 
 which man has in only a less degree, and those qualities 
 are the highest, because they lead to the noblest results 
 in the actual administration of human life. Man rules 
 through the brain, woman through the heart. If man is 
 to be ruled by woman it can only be a spiritual rule, not 
 an intellectual. In nothing is the reasonableness of Tenny- 
 son's mind better seen than in this poem. It would have 
 been easy for him to become an impassioned advocate of 
 women's rights. On the contrary, his very reverence for 
 womanhood leads him to put certain limitations upon 
 woman's empire, which do not hinder its influence, but 
 rather intensify it. The power of woman is not to be 
 wasted in vulgar strife with men for social pre-eminence: 
 it is too rare, too subtle, too ethereal. That power finds 
 its highest exercise in molding men to morality and pene- 
 trating nations with the spirit of purity. The woman who 
 is "slight-natured, miserable," prevents by her peevish- 
 ness the growth of man. There is no strife between man 
 and woman 
 
 The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink 
 Together, dwarfed or god-like, bond or free. 
 
 They are "distinct in individualities," and the only bond 
 of common life and toil is 
 
 Self-reverent each, and reverencing each. 
 
 And the noble conclusion of the whole argument once 
 more leads to that vision of the perfect home which never 
 fades from the poet's heart 
 
 For woman is not undevelopt man, 
 
 But diverse : could we make her as the man
 
 Tennyson Love and Woman 93 
 
 Sweet Love were slain: his dearest bond is this, 
 
 Not like to like, but like in difference. 
 
 Yet in the long years liker must they grow; 
 
 The man be more of woman, she of man; 
 
 He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 
 
 Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; 
 
 She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 
 
 Nor lose the child-like in the larger mind: 
 
 Till at the last she set herself to man 
 
 Like perfect music unto noble words; 
 
 And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 
 
 Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers, 
 
 Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be. 
 
 Finally, we may say of Tennyson's view of woman- 
 hood that it is not easy to exaggerate the immense service 
 he has rendered to society by his constant insistence on 
 the nobility of purity, the divine grace of chastity. He 
 has never glorified the wanton or clothed evil with a 
 golden mist of glowing words. He has' kept his moral 
 sense acute and sensitive, and has never confused the 
 limits of right and wrong. With a clear and steady eye 
 he has gazed upon the acts of unchaste passion, but not 
 with sympathy, not with delirious yearning, not with any 
 voluptuous quickening of the pulse; but always with loath- 
 ing, with hatred, with the strenuous abhorrence of a noble 
 heart, strong in its virgin purity. He has known where 
 the secret of strength lay 
 
 His strength was as the strength of ten, 
 Because his heart was pure. 
 
 There is no taint upon his page. He has followed a high 
 ideal, and has been consistent to it through a long life. 
 For him vice has had no seduction; a jealous virtue has 
 sat enthroned in the heart of his genius and preserved
 
 94 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 his mind unsullied. When we consider the bulk of his 
 work, the multitude of his readers, the greatness of his 
 influence, and when we contrast with him the influence 
 and work of such a poet as Byron, we begin to under- 
 stand how vast a service Tennyson has rendered to the 
 cause of righteousness by the reverent ideal of womanhood 
 he has maintained and the great example of purity which 
 he has set. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. Compare Tennyson's general attitude toward women 
 with that of some of the greater English poets. 
 
 2. How is Tennyson's purity of mind illustrated in his treat- 
 ment of Guinevere and of Godiva? 
 
 3. Why did Tennyson's view of woman come to the world 
 as a new doctrine? 
 
 4. What was his idea of woman's sphere? 
 
 5. Why is it not easy to exaggerate Tennyson's influence 
 upon the social life of his time? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Tennyson : His Art and Relation to Modern Life. Stopford 
 A. Brooke. 
 
 The Poetry of Tennyson. Henry Van Dyke. 
 
 Three Great Teachers of Our Time Carlyle, Tennyson, 
 Ruskin. A. H. Japp. 
 
 Lessons from My Masters (Cartyle, Tennyson, Ruskin}. 
 Peter Bayne.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 TENNYSON'S VIEW OF LIFE AND SOCIETY 
 
 It is hardly to be expected of a poet that he should be 
 required to define his views on sociology, or that he should 
 begin his work in imaginative literature with any cut-and- 
 dried social creed, which it is his mission to propagate. 
 No great poet has ever set out with any such propaganda. 
 Wordsworth and the Lake poets did profess a definite 
 creed, and drew up a statement of their principles, but 
 they were purely literary principles. There was nothing 
 in these principles to lead the Lake poets toward any 
 common view of human life or human society. Each 
 took his own course apart from the literary principles they 
 professed in common, and it was inevitable that he should. 
 Training, idiosyncrasy, environment, the social status of 
 the poet, the methods of his education, the opportunities 
 he may have of knowing the world, or the reverse all 
 these, and a thousand other causes, contribute to the 
 shaping of his thought and the consequent attitude of his 
 mind toward human life. But though a poet may have 
 no definite intention of drawing up any philosophic inter- 
 pretation of life, he usually succeeds in doing so. He 
 cannot help himself. He is bound to furnish himself with 
 some answer to the great problems that press upon him 
 hungrily, with a dreadful insistence, a voice that cannot be 
 silenced. Some ideal of human society he must have, and 
 he cannot help comparing things as they are with things 
 
 95
 
 g6 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 as he would make them. It is the ideal which he ponders 
 in his heart which gives utterance to his tongue. His 
 ideal rules him. It is ever before him. He may be him- 
 self unconscious of the persistence of its influence, but not 
 the less that influence is always with him and is clearly 
 traceable. It is like a colored glass through which the 
 light of the mind streams: every thought comes to us 
 tinged with the ideal conceptions of the thinker. When 
 at last the finished work of a poet lies before us, then we 
 perceive, and perhaps he also perceives for the first time, 
 that there is a unity and sharpness of outline in his thought 
 which is clear and distinctive. A hint there, a phrase 
 here, a verse yonder and silently the underlying thought 
 of the poet emerges. Bone comes to its bone, till at last, 
 with every reticulation complete, the skeleton rises clothed 
 in flesh, and the ideal of human life which was jealously 
 hidden in the poet's heart stands before us complete and 
 undisguised. 
 
 Now, perhaps the first thing that occurs to the reader 
 who approaches Tennyson from this point of view is his 
 sense of order. The tendency of his mind is distinctly 
 conservative. He hears, indeed, "the roll of the ages," 
 and he is not unconscious of the revolutionary elements 
 which seethe in society; but he hears, if not with unsym- 
 pathetic stoicism, at least with an equanimity too settled 
 for disturbance. He is full of reverence for antiquity, he 
 is filled with an all-sufficing sense of the perfection and 
 indestructible stability of all English institutions. His 
 mind is too calm and steady to be sympathetic toward the 
 passionate revolts and despairing heroisms of those who 
 seek an immediate reform of society; he is, indeed, too 
 cool in temper to catch the glow of such movements as
 
 Tennyson's View of Life and Society 97 
 
 these. The place in which he habitually walks and medi- 
 tates is like that pathway which he has described in the 
 "Gardener's Daughter "- 
 
 A well-worn pathway courted us 
 To one green wicket in a privet-hedge; 
 This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk 
 Thro' crowded lilac-ambush trimly pruned; 
 
 And over many a range 
 Of waving limes the gray cathedral towers, 
 Across a hazy glimmer of the west, 
 Reveal their shining windows. 
 
 Now, what are the details of this picture? What is the 
 effect it produces on the imagination? The chief idea it 
 conveys is a sense of perfect order. The pathway is well- 
 worn with the feet of generations; the green wicket is 
 framed in a perfectly neat and symmetrical privet-hedge; 
 the lilac-bush, in its utmost joy of burgeoning and blos- 
 som, must be allowed no license it is "trimly pruned"; 
 and finally, as if to complete the sense of well-established 
 use, of absolute propriety, of faultless order and reverent 
 conservatism, the gray cathedral walls bound the view, 
 and the shining windows seem to reflect the glory of the 
 past. In this passage we have a not inapt illustration of 
 the strongest tendency of Tennyson's mind. It is from 
 such a neat and quiet bower of peace he looks out upon the 
 world. He is a recluse, shut up with his own thoughts, 
 and weaving the bright thread of his fancy far from the 
 loud commotions of the world. He loves to surround 
 himself with influences which minister to this studious 
 calm. In the garden where he walks no leaf is out of 
 place, no grass-blade grows awry. If the world he looks 
 upon hardly matches the spotless propriety of his retreat,
 
 98 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 yet, at least, the world shows itself upon the whole a very 
 proper and well-governed world. Accidents will happen 
 in the best-regulated societies, but in England at all events 
 they are blessedly rare. Our roots run deep and we 
 stand above the shocks of time. We have gray cathedrals, 
 excellent clergy, gracious noblemen, stately homes sur- 
 rounded by the greenest of lawns, which might almost 
 justify the eloquent eulogism of the Cambridge gardener, 
 who remarked that such turf could only be got "by mow- 
 ing 'em and rolling 'em, rolling 'em and mowing 'em, for 
 thousands of years!" The axiom, that "Order is heaven's 
 first law," has been fully accepted by Tennyson, and has 
 received additional development: to him order is also 
 earth's best excellence. 
 
 One has only to glance through Tennyson's poems of 
 modern life to see that this criticism is neither spiteful nor 
 unjust. He is usually found in the company of lords and 
 ladies, princesses, scholars, and generally refined people, 
 whose place in society is fully assured. There are excep- 
 tions to this statement, of course, which will occur to 
 every reader. He has studied the northern farmer to 
 good effect, and in the "May Queen" and "Dora" we 
 have admirable pictures of country life. But this does 
 not affect the general truth of the statement. Claribel, 
 Lilian, Isabel, Mariana, are not daughters of the people. 
 Lady Clara Vere de Vere certainly receives condign chas- 
 tisement, but still she is Lady Clara Vere de Vere. Maud 
 lives in the stately hall, and the village where her lover 
 meets her is the sort of perfect village, "with blossomed 
 gable-ends," which we only see upon a great estate. 
 When he bitterly assails a lord, it is a new-made lord, 
 with a gewgaw title new as his castle, "master of half a
 
 Tennyson's View of Life and Society 99 
 
 servile shire," and clothed with the rank insolence of 
 recent wealth. When he alludes to trade it is with the 
 usual aristocratic contempt, and the ear of the merchant 
 
 Is crammed with his cotton, and rings 
 Even in dreams, to the chink of his pence. 
 
 It is true that he can cry, 
 
 Ah, God, for a man with a heart, head, hand, 
 Like some of the simple great ones gone 
 
 Forever and ever by : 
 One still strong man in a blatant land, 
 Whatever they call him, what care I 
 Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat, one 
 Who can rule and dare not lie ! 
 
 But this is, after all, merely the wail of an angry pessi- 
 mism. It is the sort of jeremiad in which timid minds 
 usually indulge when the ancient order of things seems 
 threatened. Of true democratic feeling Tennyson is sin- 
 gularly destitute. His leaning is all the other way. It is 
 the sustained splendor and delicate refinement of aristo- 
 cratic life which fascinate him. His heart is with the 
 ancient order of things, and all his modern poems breathe 
 the spirit of this sentiment. It follows, therefore, that 
 Tennyson never has been, and never can be, in the true 
 sense, a people's poet. That he has written poems which 
 the very poorest value, and which might rejoice the heart 
 of the peasant, we gladly admit. Probably the "May 
 Queen" is far and away the most popular poem he ever 
 wrote, and it is so because it touches the hearts of homely 
 people. But in the main there is little for the common 
 people in Tennyson's poetry. It knocks at the door of 
 the lady's bower, but not at the poor man's cottage. Its 
 troops of knights and ladies, and exquisitely dressed and
 
 ioo Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 admirably nurtured people, seem out of place amid the 
 coarse realities of grimed and toiling life. To those who 
 stand among the shadows of life, those who suffer or fight 
 in the hard battles of humanity, and feel the cruel irony 
 and mockery of circumstance, it may well seem that Tenny- 
 son's laudation of order is in itself an irony, that the pup- 
 pets on his stage know little of the great throbbing heart 
 of the common people, and that their fine talk is, after all, 
 a little too finical to pierce into the most secret chambers 
 of the human memory. 
 
 A further evidence of this limitation of sympathy in 
 Tennyson is found in his treatment of social questions. 
 He does not ignore them; he sees them indeed, and some 
 of his lines, such as the following from the opening of 
 "Maud," quiver with a passionate indignation: 
 
 And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head 
 Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife, 
 
 And chalk and alum and plaster are sold the poor for bread, 
 And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. 
 
 But it is not in mere denunciation of existing evils that the 
 true poet should spend himself. The true poet seeks to 
 probe the heart of the world's sorrow, and we turn to him 
 to know what verdict he can give, and whether there is 
 any hope. Tennyson has no distinctive reply to such 
 questions as these, or if any reply, it is a hopeless one. 
 He perceives the glorious growth of science, he foreshad- 
 ows the vast discoveries of a larger age, he is sure that 
 on the whole the world means progress; but when he 
 brings himself face to face with the actual details of life 
 lived in poverty, squalor, and crime, he is sullenly unhope- 
 ful. He looks upon the whole question from the point of 
 view of the comfortable burgess, not of the poor man him-
 
 Tennyson's View of Life and Society 101 
 
 self who stands amid the grime of the actual sacrifice. 
 He gazes down from his sunny vantage-ground of esthetic 
 refinement, where "no wind blows roughly," and ponders, 
 speculates, sympathises, but his philosophic calm is undis- 
 turbed. He never steps down into the thick of the strug- 
 gle and makes those who unjustly suffer feel that in him 
 they have a comrade and a champion. When the sudden 
 light of some glowing, some delusive hope is flung across 
 their wasted faces, he is quick to tell them that the hope 
 is delusive, and to rebuke them for their excess of fond 
 credulity. One of his characters is described as running 
 
 A Malayan muck against the times; 
 
 but when we wait to be told exactly in what his offending 
 lies, we find that it simply amounts to this, that he 
 
 Had golden hopes for France and all mankind. 
 
 This is typical of Tennyson's point of view of social ques- 
 tions. There is no living heat of enthusiasm in him: he 
 is wrapped in a chilly mantle of reserve, and he chills the 
 ardent as he talks with them. When he proposes a great 
 concession to the poor, what is it? 
 
 Why should not these great sirs 
 Give up their parks some dozen times a year 
 To let the people breathe? 
 
 That is all: a mere act of justice, an imperfect recognition 
 of the truth that property has duties as well as privileges; 
 but it is announced as though it were a revolution, and as 
 if the poet himself were astonished at his own daring. 
 Perhaps, however, the sense of daring is not surprising 
 when we find that the proposal was made to a stalwart 
 baronet
 
 IO2 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 A patron of some thirty charities, 
 A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, 
 A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none, 
 Fair-haired, and redder than a windy morn. 
 
 And practically, this is as far as Tennyson ever goes 
 in his treatment of social questions. He does not really 
 grasp them. He does not understand the intensity of 
 peril or the grave considerations of justice which under- 
 lie them. He stands aloof, in the company of baronets 
 and princesses, courtly and cultured people, whose life is 
 perfumed with pleasure and cut off from all intrusion of 
 tragic misery; those who fare sumptuously every day, to 
 whom poetry is an exquisite luxury of the mind as fine 
 color is to the eye, or delicate flavor to the appetite: and 
 it is to these Tennyson sings, and it. is their view of life 
 which finds the fullest reflection in his poetry. 
 
 It is characteristic of the scientific spirit that it rigidly 
 attends to facts and classifies them, finally deducing from 
 them great laws which appear to underlie and control all 
 things. Thus, in his treatment of nature, Tennyson's 
 love of science has worked in the direction of accuracy of 
 statement and fidelity of delineation. But in his view of 
 life it has checked generous enthusiasm and produced 
 coldness of temper. The survival of the fittest is not in 
 truth a doctrine likely to produce a sympathetic temper 
 toward the crippled and the unfortunate. It does indeed 
 kindle a great light in the future. It pictures the final 
 evolution of man into some unimagined state of strength 
 and joy, when he shall have attained his majority and 
 entered into the scientific paradise which truth is prepar- 
 ing for him. 
 
 So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man,
 
 Tennyson's View of Life and Society 103 
 
 that we may well consider him, not as having reached his 
 true height, but as toiling on to something higher even 
 than he dreams. But however bright may be the vision 
 of the future, the survival of the fittest is poor comfort in 
 the vast interval. It has nothing to say to the halt and 
 maimed, except that they deserve to be halt and maimed. 
 It can rejoice in the vast movements of society, which, like 
 immense waves, carry it onward to its infinite goal, but it 
 has no compassion for the lives sacrificed every day in 
 this predetermined progress. And as one turns over the 
 pages of Tennyson, he sometimes finds himself wondering 
 whether Tennyson has ever suffered deeply. Personal 
 suffering, the agony of severed love which comes to all, 
 he has known; but there is another form of sorrow, the 
 sorrow of early disappointment and rebuff, which does far 
 more to educate men into breadth and charity of view; 
 and by the buffeting angels of vicissitude he has been 
 unvisited. Life may be too fortunate, things may go too 
 well with men in this world. The liquor of life may cor- 
 rupt with excess of sweetness; and for lack of that whole- 
 some bitter of disappointment, which is God's frequent 
 medicine to the greatest, a man's heart may stagnate in an 
 undiscerning content. Is this absence of vicissitude part 
 of the reason for the comparative limitation of sympathy 
 which we find in Tennyson's view of life? He has been 
 attended by worldly fortune and success never before 
 vouchsafed to any English poet. How different the life 
 that closed in sorrowful isolation at Dumfries, or the life 
 cut off by the violence of tempest at Spezzia, to the close 
 of this life in fortune, fame, and peerage! How different 
 the plain life and simple house from which came to us the 
 "Ode on Intimations of Immortality" to the cultured life
 
 IO4 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 of artistic ease in which the "Idylls of the King" have 
 been slowly fashioned and perfected in fastidious patience ! 
 Doubt it as we may, resent it as we do, nevertheless the 
 truth remains that those whose words live longest in the 
 hearts of men have "learned in suffering what they taught 
 in song." In them the heart has most maintained a child- 
 like simplicity and sympathy, and to them it has been 
 given to survey life with the largest charity of hope. Is 
 it this lack of vicissitude in the life of the poet himself 
 which has dulled the larger sympathies of his nature and 
 narrowed the range and spirit of his poetry? Has he too 
 long, like his own Maud, 
 
 Fed on the roses and lain in 'the lilies of life? 
 
 It is hard to judge; but no one can be unconscious of the 
 fact of this limitation. Its causes lie partly in the order 
 of the poet's life, but mainly in the character of his own 
 mind, which is dispassionate rather than ardent, philosophic 
 rather than sympathetic, and better fitted to touch with 
 subtle delicacy the fringe of a great problem than to pene- 
 trate its bloom with true imaginative insight. 
 
 The final impression which we take, then, from the 
 modern poems of Tennyson is, that his view of life and 
 society is dull and conventional. The greater portion of 
 his poetry consists of reproductions reproductions from 
 the antique, from the mediaeval, from the romantic. And 
 this is in itself significant, because it shows how largely 
 he has turned his mind away from the vision of the present. 
 When he touches the mediaeval and antique world he is at 
 his best. All the graceful qualities of his mind then come 
 into play, and he clothes the past with a glamour of words 
 which soothes the mind and kindles the imagination with
 
 Tennyson's View of Life and Society 105 
 
 a keen delight. But in spite of all his attempts, laborious 
 and partially successful as they are, to seize the modern 
 spirit, he has failed in the main. He has nothing new to 
 say: all that he can do is to take old and well-worn ideas 
 and clothe them with a novelty of phrase which gives them 
 fresh currency. He has little faculty of piercing through 
 the husk of the conventional to the living thoughts and 
 passions of man which throb beneath. He passes by, as 
 a careless tourist might pass over a volcanic district, 
 admiring the flowers and color, but not suspecting the 
 angry fire which boils below his feet. He finds every- 
 where just what conventional opinion says you ought to 
 find; he has no strength to tear aside the thin crust and 
 discover the passionate possibilities and sad realities which 
 are decorously hidden from the thoughtless eye. He 
 skims the surface: he does not probe the depth. Divest 
 his figures of the garb of musical speech in which they 
 move, and there is nothing left but commonplace thought 
 and sentiment. Like the "passon" in the "Northern 
 Farmer," they say what they "ow't to 'a said," and we 
 come away with a convincing sense of their entire respec- 
 tability. They talk, in fact, very much like Anthony 
 Trollope's deans and churchmen, who look out upon life 
 with a curious mixture of sedate thoughtfulness and deco- 
 rous conservatism. The general effect they produce upon 
 the mind is dullness. But if Tennyson's view of life is 
 dull, and his opinions commonplace, we cannot but admit 
 that all that the art of the most perfect phrasing can do to 
 cover dullness Tennyson has clone. He has, indeed, so 
 dexterously concealed the comparative poverty of his 
 thought in all his modern poems with the eloquence and 
 beauty of his language that many people have not yet dis-
 
 io6 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 covered the deception. Nevertheless it is there. The 
 fact that so few are aware of it is sufficient testimony to 
 the perfection of the artistic illusion. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. How does a poet usually work out his philosophy of life? 
 
 2. How is "the sense of order" felt in Tennyson's poems? 
 
 3. How does this quality of his character affect his view of 
 human society? 
 
 4. Why is he not in the true sense " a people's poet "? 
 
 5. Give illustrations of his treatment of great social ques- 
 tions. 
 
 6. How may these qualities of the poet's work be explained? 
 
 7. Why is the commonplace character of his views of life 
 not always perceived? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Tennyson : His Art and Relation to Modern Life. Stopford 
 A. Brooke. 
 
 The Poetry of Tennyson. Henry Van Dyke. 
 
 The Mind of Tennyson. 
 
 Literary Studies ( Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning), 
 Vol. II. Walter Bagehot.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 IDYLLS AND THE "IDYLLS OF THE KING" 
 
 We have now come to the point in our study of Tenny- 
 son where his two greatest poems, the "Idylls of the 
 King" and "In Memoriam," come into review. There 
 are, however, certain groups of poems which can scarcely 
 be passed unmentioned; and before turning to the two 
 greatest works of Tennyson it may be well to glance at 
 these. Everywhere throughout Tennyson's books there 
 are to be found exquisite clusters of lyrical poems, and it 
 may be said with confidence that in this domain of poetry 
 his power is unrivaled and his excellence supreme. It is 
 this excellence which redeems "Maud," in all other 
 respects the weakest and least artistic of his long poems. 
 The "Princess," again, wearisome and dull as it becomes 
 in parts, contains three or four of the most musical lyrics 
 Tennyson has ever written, and snatches of melody which 
 will bear comparison with the finest lyrics in the language. 
 The art in which Tennyson's rarest excellence lies, the 
 art of musical expression, the subtle cadence of rhythm 
 which produces a recurring and never-forgotten sweetness 
 in the memory, is seen at its very best in these short and 
 lovely lyrics. The lines in the "Princess" commencing, 
 
 The splendor falls on castle walls, 
 
 may be mentioned in this category as the nearest approach 
 to the effect of fine music which language is able to pro- 
 icy
 
 io8 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 duce, and in glamour and sweetness they are unapproached 
 by any modern poet. Of poems like these nothing can 
 be said but praise. They have gone far to constitute the 
 charm of Tennyson. They have found their way into the 
 general memory without effort, by virtue of an enchant- 
 ment all their own. They will probably be remembered 
 when much of his more ambitious work is forgotten. 
 Indeed, it may be said that already this process has been 
 accomplished in part, and the chief thing which preserves 
 "Maud" from oblivion is the famous garden song, "Come 
 into the Garden, Maud," one of the most finished and 
 impassioned lyrics that is to be found in the whole range 
 of modern English. In lyrical power and sweetness, in 
 the power of uttering that "lyrical cry," as it has been 
 called, that species of poem which is, in truth, not so 
 much a poem as a cry, a voice, a gust of thrilling music 
 in this art Tennyson has few rivals and no peer. 
 
 To another class of poems in which Tennyson has 
 attained high excellence he has himself given an appro- 
 priate title when he calls them English Idylls. The more 
 famous is "Enoch Arden, " the most exquisite is "Dora." 
 When "Enoch Arden" was published, great exception was 
 taken to its method and structure, and its obvious want of 
 simplicity in diction was held to disqualify its title to be 
 called an Englishid yll. In subject it is purely idyllic; in 
 diction it is elaborately ornate. One of the acutest and 
 most brilliant of English critics, Mr. Walter Bagehot, has 
 pointed out the fact that in no single instance throughout 
 the poem is Tennyson content to speak in the language of 
 simplicity. The phrases are often happy, often express- 
 ive, but always stiff with an elaborate word-chiseling. 
 To express the very homely circumstance that Enoch
 
 Idylls and the "Idylls of the King" 109 
 
 Arden was a fisherman and sold fish, we are told that he 
 vended "ocean-spoil in ocean-smelling osier." The de- 
 scription of the gateway of the Hall is almost pretentious 
 in its combination of complex phrases: "portal-warding 
 lion- whelp, and the peacock yew-tree." This is no doubt 
 an excellent description of tropic scenery: 
 
 The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts, 
 
 Among the palms and ferns and precipices; 
 
 The blaze upon the waters to the east, 
 
 The blaze upon his island overhead; 
 
 Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, 
 
 The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again 
 
 The scarlet shafts of sunrise but no sail. 
 
 But this is not a shipwrecked sailor's description of what 
 he would see, nor is there a single phrase such as a 
 homely seaman would be likely to use in all this elaborate 
 passage. "The hollower-bellowing ocean" is a combi- 
 nation such as an ornate poet, anxious to combine his 
 impressions in a complex phrase, might use; but it would 
 not by any possibility be the phrase of Enoch Arden. As 
 an English idyll, therefore, "Enoch Arden" fails. As a 
 poem of the ornate school it is excellent. But in "Dora" 
 we have the simplest story of country life told in the sim- 
 plest words, and with an almost Wordsworthian austerity 
 of phrase. There is nothing to disturb the charm of per- 
 fect verisimilitude. It is, however, a poem almost by 
 itself. Nowhere else does Tennyson work so high an 
 effect by such simple means. In the main he is an ornate 
 poet and errs in over-elaboration of phrase. In the 
 "Idylls of the King" the same strength and weakness are 
 always associated, and the excellence and defect run side 
 by side. As his narrative rises in passion the phraseology
 
 no Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 becomes terser, clearer, less involved; when his invention 
 slackens, and his poetic impulse ebbs, he always falls back 
 upon elaborate phrase-coining to cover his defect. The 
 result is a curious combination such as exists in no other 
 poet. In a score of pages we pass a dozen times from 
 the noble severity of Wordsworth to the fanciful conceit 
 of Keats. It is never difficult to know how the tide of 
 poetic impulse runs in Tennyson: when the impulse is 
 strong the style clarifies into nervous simplicity; when 
 weak, it abounds in ornate decoration and scholastic word- 
 mongering. 
 
 The "Idylls of the King" are the work of Tennyson's 
 mature manhood, and give us the ripest result of his art. 
 The history of their inception and completion is curious; 
 it covers fifty years, beginning with a lyric; "then with 
 an epical fragment and three more lyrics; then with a 
 poem, 'Enid and Nimue, ' which is suppressed as soon as 
 it is written; then with four romantic idylls, followed ten 
 years later by four others, and two years later by two 
 others, and thirteen years later by yet another idyll, which 
 is to be placed not before or after the rest, but in the very 
 center of the cycle." Thus the world of Arthurian 
 romance is first touched in the "Lady of Shalott," pub- 
 lished in 1832; and last, in "Balin and Balan, " published 
 in 1885. 
 
 Since the completion of the "Idylls" Tennyson has 
 written little of really first-rate excellence or gravity. His 
 finest thoughts and finest lines are here. They are his 
 magnum opus, and on them his claim to fame must largely 
 rest. In the life of every great poet there comes a time 
 when a desire seizes him to accomplish some great de- 
 sign, a poem on a scale of magnitude which shall give
 
 Idylls and the "Idylls of the King" in 
 
 scope to all his qualities. As a rule, such ambitions have 
 resulted in failure. Wordsworth is not known, after all, 
 by his "Excursion," but by his lyrics and his "Ode on 
 Immortality." Mrs. Browning's "Drama of Exile" can- 
 not contest the awards of fame with the "Lines on 
 Cowper's Grave." The only long poem by an English 
 author which has held an uncontested place in memory is 
 Milton's "Paradise Lost," and it has been pointed out 
 that this is largely owing to the fact that it is written in 
 sections, and each section can be read at a sitting. No 
 doubt Tennyson was fully conscious of the peril of his 
 task, and the warning of these great examples, when he 
 began to work upon the "Idylls." He began at the end 
 of his theme, with the "Morte d' Arthur, " as though to 
 judge of his chances of success by an experiment on the 
 public taste. He was fortunate also in the choice of a 
 subject. In the noble myths which had gathered round 
 King Arthur there was a vast field of poetry which was 
 wholly unworked. Over and above their moral and poetic 
 elements they possessed a national value. For Tennyson 
 they had always had a peculiar charm, and we are told 
 that in his solitary boyhood at Somersby a favorite 
 recreation was to enact scenes from the Round Table 
 with his brothers. These myths provided him with 
 precisely what he was least able to provide himself, a 
 splendid story, or series of stories, ready to his hand. 
 No critical reader can help noticing that in the power of 
 pure invention Tennyson is singularly weak. It is the 
 weakness of his invention which led to the vicious elabo- 
 ration of style which we have remarked in "Enoch Arden." 
 But in the old chronicle of Sir Thomas Malory of the 
 fabulous deeds of the Knights of the Round Table there
 
 H2 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 is a series of stories complete in every incident and detail. 
 The chronicle is full of graphic force and poetic merit. It 
 is indeed so full of the genuine elements of poetry that 
 many persons who have carefully read Sir Thomas 
 Malory refuse to think that Tennyson has improved upon 
 him. In many senses he has not. He has often failed 
 where Malory is strongest, necessarily, perhaps, because to 
 make Malory acceptable to modern ears it was needful to 
 smooth over a good many awkward details. But what 
 Tennyson has done is to imbue the old chronicle with new 
 life and spirit, to interpret it by a Christian insight, and 
 to apply its ancient lessons to the complex conditions of 
 modern life and thought. 
 
 Probably one reason why Tennyson chose Sir Thomas 
 Malory's famous chronicle for his greatest experiment in 
 verse was, that it exactly coincided with his own natural 
 bent toward romantic allegory. We have to remember 
 the force of the pre-Raphaelite movement, as it was called, 
 if we are to understand the reasons of Tennyson's choice. 
 From the simple nature-worship of Wordsworth, and the 
 more ethereal and ecstatic nature-worship of Shelley, there 
 had come a revulsion toward the glowing spectacle of 
 mediaeval life and the chivalrous bent of mediaeval 
 thought. Just as the publication of the "Reliques 
 of English Ballad Poetry," by Bishop Percy, in the 
 end of the eighteenth century, worked a revival of 
 mediaeval sentiment, whose best fruit is found in the great 
 romances of Sir Walter Scott, so the experiments of Ros- 
 setti and Morris worked a similar revival in our own. 
 Among the weird half-lights of mediaeval history there lay 
 a land of old romance, full of material for the poet. 
 Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott," "Sir Galahad," and "St.
 
 Idylls and the "Idylls of the King" 113 
 
 Agnes" were early experiments in this field of poetry, and 
 indicate how deeply he had felt its fascination. It was 
 only natural that he should pursue the clue which he had 
 thus discovered. In the mediaeval England of knight and 
 lady, tournament and battle, spell and incantation, adven- 
 ture and romance, Tennyson found an atmosphere entirely 
 suited to his genius. It was the land of glamour and 
 enchantment. There the imagination and fancy could 
 move untrammeled. Every knight was brave and every 
 lady fair. Magnificent spectacles continually passed before 
 the imagination, and afforded a decorative artist like 
 Tennyson the finest possible opportunity for the exercise 
 of that species of art in which he most excelled. And over 
 and above all this, there ran throughout the record of the 
 history a strong moral sentiment, a deep religious bias. 
 The fall of King Arthur's Round Table was the fall of a 
 kingdom, and the causes of its fall were moral causes. 
 In this respect it was more than a mere mediaeval record: 
 it was an eternal parable of human life. It touched the 
 moral sense in Tennyson, which had always been quick 
 and sensitive. What theme was there more likely to 
 stimulate his genius than this, and more suitable for a 
 great epic ? The greatest of all themes Milton had taken, 
 but even if he had not, it was too late to write a religious 
 epic. The "Paradise Lost" could only have been written 
 in a theological age an age like the Puritan, deeply satu- 
 rated with the theological spirit. To hit the taste of the 
 nineteenth century an epic might be a morality, but it 
 needed also human sentiment and passion in all their full- 
 ness. With that perfect artistic insight which has rarely 
 failed him, Tennyson saw the value of his theme, and the 
 result is, that he has produced the only long poem which
 
 H4 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 has been read by multitudes since "Paradise Lost," and 
 a poem which, in parts at least, may fairly challenge com- 
 parison with the noblest work of Milton. 
 
 The "Idylls of the King," as Tennyson handles them, 
 are a very different thing from the simple chronicle of 
 Malory. It is extremely interesting to compare passages 
 and see how far Tennyson has followed and where he has 
 left Malory. As regards the story itself, he has inserted 
 many poetic fancies, but he has invented little or nothing. 
 The incidents run parallel. In some points, as we have 
 said, there is a graphic force in Malory which we miss in 
 Tennyson, and the short, simple words of the mediaeval 
 chronicler produce a deeper effect upon the mind than the 
 rich and subtle diction of the modern poet. It is the 
 difference between the rude but thrilling ballad tune and 
 the skillful variations made upon it by a great musical com- 
 poser. In Malory we think of the theme; in Tennyson 
 more frequently of the artist. But if any one desires to 
 see how finely a poetic fancy can breathe life into a bald 
 history, he has only to mark how faithfully Tennyson has 
 seized upon the salient points of Malory and what a 
 wealth of artistic skill he has lavished on them; for the 
 chief fact to be observed in Tennyson's use of Malory is, 
 that to the plain facts of the chronicler he always gives an 
 allegorical significance. He never loses sight of the moral 
 lesson. King Arthur stands out as a mystic incarnation, 
 a Christ-man pure, noble, unerring coming mysteri- 
 ously into the world and vanishing mysteriously, accord- 
 ing to the prophecy of Merlin : 
 
 From the great deep to the great deep he goes. 
 He is the perfect flower of purity and chivalry, and the
 
 Idylls and the "Idylls of the King" 115 
 
 kingdom he seeks to found is the very kingdom of Christ 
 upon the earth. Lancelot, in many respects the more 
 subtle and powerful study, is of the earth, earthy, and by 
 turns base and noble, and rightly describes himself in the 
 hour of his remorse: 
 
 In me there dwells 
 
 No greatness, save it be some far-off touch 
 Of greatness to know well I am not great: 
 There is the man. 
 
 It is round these two men and Guinevere that the great 
 interest of the poem culminates. The very over-nobleness 
 of Arthur works disaster, and Guinevere cries: 
 
 He is all fault who has no fault at all, 
 
 For who loves me must have a touch of earth; 
 
 The low sun makes the color. 
 
 The pathos of the whole poem is, that in Arthur we have 
 the incarnation of a high ideal which men vainly strive 
 after, and its tragedy is, that men do strive vainly, and that 
 all the noble work of Arthur is undone by the weakness 
 and folly of his followers. In the lesser characters of the 
 epic the allegorical bent is more fully developed. Sir 
 Galahad is the type of glorified asceticism, visionary aims, 
 spirit triumphant over flesh, but after all following wander- 
 ing fires in a vain quest, and "leaving human wrongs to 
 right themselves." "Gareth and Lynette" is but a vari- 
 ation of the story of Arthur and Guinevere, and it points 
 to the severity of struggle which awaits him who over- 
 comes the flesh. In this poem the allegory is more 
 distinct and beautiful than in either of the others, and 
 Tennyson has given us no nobler conception of victory 
 over death than this:
 
 n6 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 The huge pavilion slowly yielded up 
 Thro' those black foldings that which housed within; 
 High on a night-black horse, in night-black arms, 
 In the half-light, thro' the dim dawn, advanced 
 The monster, and then paused, and spake no word. 
 
 It is the King of Terrors, the spectral form of the last 
 enemy. But when Gareth rides forth to the combat, and 
 strikes the helm of his grisly foe 
 
 Out from this 
 
 Issued the bright face of a blooming boy, 
 Fresh as a flower new-born. 
 
 And this is immortality, the life which springs out of 
 death. 
 
 Of the tenderness of "Lancelot and Elaine," with its 
 immortal picture of the dead Elaine sailing to her last 
 home, oared by the dumb servitor; the grandeur of the 
 "Last Tournament," with its ever-present sense of deso- 
 lation; the unapproachable pathos of "Guinevere," in- 
 creasing stanza by stanza in passionate depth and tragic 
 force, till we reach the parting with Arthur in the misty 
 darkness, amid the faint blowing of the unhappy trumpets; 
 and of the solemnity of the "Passing of Arthur, " with its 
 dramatic fullness, its farewell counsels of neglected wisdom, 
 its tragic mixture of human despair and mystic heavenly 
 hope of these poems it is needless to speak. If we had 
 to choose the greatest poem of Tennyson, we should 
 choose "Guinevere"; if the most solemnly impressive, the 
 "Passing of Arthur." Nothing which he has written 
 rivals these two, or approaches them in the highest quali- 
 ties of poetry. They are the mature work of a great 
 poet. They express his deepest convictions and sum up 
 his best wisdom. Such passages as
 
 Idylls and the "Idylls of the King" 117 
 
 More things are wrought by prayer 
 Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice 
 Rise like a fountain for me night and day; 
 For what are men better than sheep or goats 
 That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
 If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
 Both for themselves and those who call them friend? 
 For so the whole round earth is every way 
 Bound by gold chains about the feet of God; 
 
 or- 
 
 The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 
 And God fulfills Himself in many ways, 
 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world 
 
 have already passed into the permanent currency of litera- 
 ture. They contain noble truths nobly expressed. And 
 among the artistic lessons of the "Idylls of the King" 
 none is better worth marking than the perfection of 
 Tennyson's blank verse. Blank verse is the one distinc- 
 tively English measure, and the most difficult of all. 
 Apparently it is easy of attainment; in reality there is 
 nothing harder. There is no form of verse which so 
 severely tests the ear and musical faculty of a great poet. 
 Keats attempted it in "Hyperion" with magnificent suc- 
 cess, but he gave it up after that one supreme effort. 
 Wordsworth's success is only partial, and there are many 
 passages in the "Excursion" which are little better than 
 prose cut up into metrical lengths. Byron never touched 
 it without complete failure. Milton only has chosen it as 
 his supreme method of utterance for epic poetry, and he 
 has used it as only a giant could use it. Next to Milton 
 stands Tennyson. He sinks far below Milton in grandeur, 
 but he excels him in musical modulation. He does not 
 fill the air with the wave-like majesty of sound and move-
 
 n8 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 ment which characterize Milton, but he soothes it with an 
 unfailing melody of phrase. It is so distinctive that the 
 merest tyro could not fail to recognize the peculiar charm 
 of Tennyson's blank verse and distinguish it at once in 
 any company. Often it is mannered, and mannerism is 
 always a vice. But in the finest qualities of assonance 
 and resonance Tennyson rarely fails. His verse moves 
 with perfect ease, with perfect music, with perfect 
 strength; and apart from the charm of thought and sub- 
 ject, the "Idylls of the King" show his metrical talent in 
 its finest operation. But the theme also is great and 
 solemn, and in the "Idylls of the King" we have his 
 noblest work, and work such as the very greatest poets 
 might have been proud to produce and covetous to claim. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. How do Tennyson's gifts show at their best in his lyric 
 poems? 
 
 2. How do his two "idylls" illustrate some of his most 
 characteristic traits? 
 
 3. In what order did Tennyson produce "The Idylls of the 
 King"? 
 
 4. What has been the experience of many poets with great 
 literary projects? 
 
 5. What were some of Tennyson's reasons for selecting the 
 Arthur legends for his greatest work? 
 
 6. How do Tennyson's " Idylls " compare with Malory's 
 chronicle? 
 
 7. In what does the pathos of the poem consist? 
 
 8. Why do his "Idylls of the King" rank as his noblest 
 work? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Tennyson : His A rt and Relation to Modern Life. Stopford 
 A. Brooke. 
 
 The Poetry of Tennyson. Henry Van Dyke. 
 Essays on the Idylls of the King. Harold Littledale. 
 Studies in the Idylls of the King. Henry Elsdale.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM" 
 
 We now come to the most distinctive, and in many 
 essential characteristics, the greatest of Tennyson's 
 poems, "In Memoriam." Published in 1850, it is the 
 work of his prime, and contains the most perfect repre- 
 sentation of his genius. The personal history on which it 
 is founded is well known. ^ It commemorates one of the 
 noblest of human friendships, and one of the noblest of 
 men. Arthur Hallam, the son of Henry Hallam, the 
 celebrated historian, was born in Bedford Place, London, 
 on the 1st of February, 1811. The family afterward 
 removed to Wimpole Street, which is thus described in 
 "In Memoriam": 
 
 Dark house, by which once more I stand, 
 Here in the long, unlovely street, 
 Doors, where my heart was wont to beat 
 
 So quickly, waiting for a hand. 
 
 In October, 1828, Arthur Hallam went into residence at 
 Cambridge, and it was there he met Tennyson. The 
 affection which sprang up between them must have been 
 immediate, for in 1830 we find them discussing a plan for 
 publishing conjointly a volume of poems. One of Tenny- 
 son's most striking phrases in the "Palace of Art," "the 
 abysmal deeps of personality," is directly borrowed from 
 a phrase of Hallam's: "God with whom alone rest the 
 abysmal secrets of personality." It was one of those rare 
 
 119
 
 I2O Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 and beautiful friendships which sometimes visit the morning 
 hours of life, in which intellectual sympathy, not less than 
 love, plays a foremost part. On the 1 5th of September, 
 
 1833, Arthur Hallam lay dead. On the 3d of January, 
 
 1834, his body was brought over from Vienna, where he 
 died, and was interred in manor aisle, Clevedon Church,* 
 Somersetshire 
 
 The Danube to the Severn gave 
 
 The darkened heart that beat no more; 
 They laid him by the pleasant shore, 
 
 And in the hearing of the wave. 
 
 There twice a day the Severn fills; 
 The salt sea-water passes by, 
 And hushes half the babbling Wye, 
 
 And makes a silence in the hills. 
 
 When and where "In Memoriam" was conceived or 
 commenced it is impossible for us to know, but it will thus 
 be seen that seventeen years elapsed between the death of 
 Arthur Hallam and the publication of Tennyson's exquisite 
 elegy. It is quite possible that the poem was actually in 
 process of construction during the whole of this long 
 period, for it bears in itself marks of slow growth, of 
 gradual accretion and elaboration. Probably the work was 
 begun with one or two of the earlier sections, which simply 
 bewail in poignant verse Tennyson's sense of unspeakable 
 loss, and which possess the solemnity and self-contained- 
 ness of separate funeral hymns, rather than the consecu- 
 tiveness of an elaborate poem. The history and character 
 of the poem sustain this view. In seventeen years the 
 anguish of the deepest sorrow must needs show signs of 
 
 * In the first edition of " In Memoriam '' Tennyson says in " the 
 chancel." This was not strictly correct, and is altered in subsequent editions 
 to " dark Church."
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam" 121 
 
 healing. Grief grows less clamant and more meditative. 
 It passes somewhat out of the region of personal bitter- 
 ness into the realms of philosophic reflection and religious 
 resignation. Time does not destroy the sense of loss, but 
 it lifts the soul to a place of broader outlook and calmer 
 vision. As we read "In Memoriam" this process is 
 clearly detailed, and there is much in the structure of the 
 poem to suggest that from a few mournful verses, cast off 
 in the bitterest hour of bereavement as a solace to the 
 wounded spirit, Tennyson gradually enlarged his plan, till 
 he had woven into it all the philosophic doubts, the reli- 
 gious hopes, the pious aspirations, which the theme of 
 human loss could suggest to a thoughtful mind and noble 
 spirit. 
 
 Concerning the general structure and character of the 
 poem, one or two things are worth remark. It differs 
 essentially from any other elegy in the English language, 
 both as to metrical arrangement and artistic color. English 
 literature is not rich in elegy, but it possesses in Milton's 
 "Lycidas, " in Gray's famous poem, in Shelley's "Ado- 
 nais, " and perhaps in Arnold's noble lamentation for his 
 father and his "Thyrsis," 'isolated specimens of elegiac 
 poetry as fine as any literature can boast. Of these great 
 elegies, Shelley's "Adonais" is the longest and the no- 
 blest; Milton's "Lycidas" the most classic in gravity and 
 sweetness; Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" the 
 most perfectly polished; Arnold's "Lines in Rugby 
 Chapel" the most effective in moral view and spirit. But 
 of the last two it will be at once perceived that neither 
 aims at the constructive breadth of a prolonged poem, nor 
 would the metrical form sustain the burden of great length. 
 The constant evil which menaces elegy is monotony, and
 
 122 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 it is the most difficult to be avoided by the very nature of 
 the theme. Gray avoids it by aiming at aphoristic brevity, 
 and by polishing every phrase with the most consummate 
 artistic skill and patience. Arnold adopls for his purpose 
 a peculiar unrhymed meter, which stimulates the ear with- 
 out wearying it, but which could not be sustained except 
 within the limits of brevity which he has set for himself. 
 Milton is similarly brief, and "Lycidas" reads more like a 
 noble fragment of the antique than an English poem writ- 
 ten for English readers. No doubt Milton's genius would 
 have served him perfectly if he had attempted a "Lycidas" 
 of thrice the length, for he has attempted no form of 
 poetry without absolute success; but however that may 
 be, he was taught by his artistic instincts in writing elegy 
 to compress within the narrowest limits of space his lament 
 for the noble dead. Shelley does indeed write at length, 
 but there are two things to sustain him in his daring effort: 
 first, he uses a meter singularly pliable and resonant; and 
 secondly, he leaves his theme at will, and weaves into his 
 poem a hundred exquisite suggestions of natural beauty 
 and imaginative vision, so that while his theme is mourn- 
 ful his poem is often ecstatic, and monotony is avoided by 
 richness of fancy and variety of theme. In what respects 
 does "In Memoriam" differ from these great masterpieces? 
 Wherein does its distinctive charm and greatness lie? 
 
 In the first place, it differs entirely in metrical form and 
 arrangement. Properly speaking, it is hymnal in form. 
 Some of its stanzas are admirably suited for Christian 
 worship, and no doubt will appear, with slight alterations, 
 in the hymnal collections of the future. In this respect it 
 is distinctively English, and appeals strongly to English 
 tastes. But what is there that could be conceived as
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam" 123 
 
 more monotonous than a hymn of a thousand stanzas? 
 The hymnal form may be excellently suited for elegy, but 
 how is it possible to combine a form in itself monotonous 
 with a theme whose chief peril is monotony, without pro- 
 ducing a poem which would be insufferably dull and tedi- 
 ous? That was the problem Tennyson had to solve, and 
 he solved it in two ways. Instead of the ordinary hymnal 
 quatrain, he adopted a form, not unknown indeed in Eng- 
 lish literature, but virtually new to modern readers, in 
 which the first and last and the two middle lines of the 
 verses rhyme. Any one who will take the trouble to com- 
 pare these forms will at once see how greatly Tennyson's 
 variation gains in modulation and flexibility. He had 
 already attempted it in one of his earlier poems, "Love 
 thou thy land with love far brought," and had no doubt 
 been struck with its power of musical expression. If, as 
 we surmise, "In Memoriam" grew slowly from certain 
 fragmentary stanzas, thrown off in the first agony of grief, 
 no doubt that was the metrical form in which they were 
 written. A form more perfect for elegiac poetry could 
 not be conceived; but how could it be applied to an elabo- 
 rate poem of many hundreds of lines? This Tennyson 
 answered by dividing his poem into short sections, each 
 one complete in itself, and expressing some particular 
 thought or sentiment. It is to this division of the poem, 
 in part at least, that much of its popularity must be attrib- 
 uted. I have already quoted the saying of an acute critic, 
 that the reason why people read "Paradise Lost" is that 
 it is arranged in sections, and can therefore be put down 
 and resumed at will. This is eminently true of "In Me- 
 moriam." It is a brilliant constellation of short poems, 
 held together in rhythmic order by one great sustaining
 
 124 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 sentiment. We can open it where we will, read as much 
 as we wish, and put it down again, without any perplexing 
 sense of having missed the poet's meaning or destroyed his 
 clue of thought. Of course this is not the student's 
 method of reading "In Memoriam, " but it is a method 
 often forced upon busy men by the necessities of their 
 position; and the fact that "In Memoriam" is as truly a 
 cluster of small poems as a great poem in itself has no 
 doubt helped its popularity, and has fully justified the 
 artistic instinct which suggested its division into sections. 
 Another point worthy of special remark is, that not 
 merely in form, but in all its coloring, "In Memoriam" 
 is a distinctively English poem. Milton's noble elegy we 
 have already spoken of as a fragment of the antique, and 
 its whole conception and spirit is severely classic. Shelley 
 goes to the same source to find inspiration for his elegy 
 on Keats. Save the passages which directly touch on the 
 unhappy fate of Keats, there is nothing in the poem which 
 is distinctively English. Its allusions are classic; its sky 
 is the sky of Italy; its scenery has a gorgeousness of color 
 and a pomp unknown in the gray latitudes of the north. 
 Over the dead body of Keats, Shelley builds a glorious 
 and fantastic tomb a sepulcher of foreign splendors, and 
 the earth that holds him in her bosom is a warmer and 
 more glorious earth than that land of somber skies and 
 gray seas where his genius was suffered to blossom 
 and decay unheeded. Gray, indeed, is English; Arnold 
 is English, but with the trace of Greek culture always per- 
 ceptible; but Milton and Shelley both go boldly to the 
 classics for their inspiration, and have written elegies 
 which are English in name indeed, but classical in spirit and 
 design. It is the charm of "In Memoriam" that it is
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam" 125 
 
 steeped in English thought and spirit. Its sights and 
 sounds are the familiar sights and sounds of rural life in 
 England. It is England, and no other land, that is de- 
 scribed in lines like these: 
 
 Now fades the last long streak of snow, 
 Now burgeons every maze of quick 
 About the flowery squares, and thick 
 
 By ashen roots the violets grow. 
 
 Now rings the woodland loud and long, 
 The distance takes a lovelier hue, 
 And, drowned in yonder living blue, 
 
 The lark becomes a sightless song. 
 
 Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, 
 The flocks are whiter down the vale, 
 And milkier every milky sail, 
 
 On winding stream or distant sea; 
 
 Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives 
 In yonder gleaming green, and fly 
 The happy birds, that change their sky 
 
 To build and brood. 
 
 All the color of the pictures drawn from life and nature is 
 English, and can be mistaken for no other. It is the 
 Christmas eve we all have known which he thus describes 
 
 for us: 
 
 The time draws near the birth of Christ; 
 The moon is hid, the night is still: 
 A single church below the hill 
 Is pealing, folded in the mist. 
 
 It is the English summer, whose mellow eventides we all 
 have rejoiced in, when "returning from afar," 
 
 And brushing ankle-deep in flowers, 
 We heard behind the woodbine veil 
 The milk that bubbled in the pail, 
 
 And buzzings of the honeyed hours.
 
 126 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Nowhere in Tennyson's works will there be found 
 more perfect pictures of English scenery and seasons exe- 
 cuted with more artistic delicacy and skill than in "In 
 Memoriam." They are all exquisitely finished, with 
 something of the labored patience of pictures on ivory or 
 porcelain, and each is perfect in its way. The effects are 
 often gained in single phrases, so happy, so luminous, so 
 exact, that we feel it is impossible to surpass them. This, 
 at least, is one of the qualities which have made "In 
 Memoriam" famous. It is not merely a noble threnody 
 upon a dead Englishman, but it is one of the most dis- 
 tinctively English poems in the language, expressing uni- 
 versal sentiments indeed, but with a perpetual reference to 
 national scenery, customs, and life. 
 
 One other point should not be overlooked in estimating 
 such a poem as "In Memoriam." To its many other 
 great qualities, it adds one of the rarest of all it is the 
 most perfect expression we have of the spirit of the age. 
 It is a poem of the century; indeed, we may say, the 
 poem of the century. It sums up as no other work of our 
 time has done the characteristic intellectual and religious 
 movements of the Victorian epoch. Nowhere has Tenny- 
 son borrowed so largely from modern science as here. 
 The well-known lines, 
 
 Break thou deep vase of chilling tears 
 That grief hath shaken into frost, 
 
 afford an excellent specimen of these obligations; the 
 metaphor is very beautiful, but it cannot be understood 
 without a knowledge of elementary chemistry. At first 
 this was esteemed a startling innovation, and was used 
 against him as a reproach, but if the great poet is he who
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam" 127 
 
 concentrates in his poetry the spirit of his time, Tennyson 
 was bound to take account of the scientific tendency, 
 which is one of the most marked features of the century. 
 But he has done more than this. He has stated, not 
 merely scientific arguments and facts, but also the religious 
 doubts, the perplexities, the philosophic difficulties of the 
 day, with equal skill and force. He has perceived the 
 intellectual and religious drift of his age with unerring 
 accuracy. He himself has passed through its various 
 stages of doubtful illumination, of dark misgiving, of 
 agonizing search for light, and lastly of clear and even 
 triumphant faith. Like another poet of our time, Arthur 
 Hugh Clough, Tennyson has known what it is 
 
 To finger idly some old Gordian knot, 
 Unskilled to sunder and too weak to cleave, 
 And with much toil attain to half-believe. 
 
 But he has done what Clough could not do, he has cut the 
 Gordian knot, and found "a surer faith his own." The 
 process by which he has attained this victory we shall see 
 in the analysis of "In Memoriam." In the mean time, it 
 is sufficient to observe that the hold which this poem has 
 taken on the minds of men must be attributed not only to 
 its literary genius, but to its prophetic qualities. Not 
 merely is it original in metrical design, and thoroughly 
 English in color, but it is also an interpretation of the 
 deepest religious yearnings and philosophic problems of 
 our time, and as such has become the indispensable com- 
 panion of all who share, and seek to understand or to 
 direct, the intellectual life of the century. 
 
 A great poem should interpret itself, and, in the larger 
 sense, "In Memoriam" needs no comment or elucidation. 
 But there is another sense in which elucidation is needed
 
 128 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 and cannot but be useful. Because the "In Memoriam" 
 is, as we have seen, not merely a great poem in itself, but 
 really a series of short poems held together by a common 
 sentiment, it is not always easy to perceive the thread of 
 thought that binds each to each. The transitions of 
 thought and theme are always subtle, and often sudden. 
 The various suggestions of loss crowd thickly on the mind 
 of the poet, and it is sometimes difficult to perceive the 
 link which connects them into an organic whole. It may 
 be well, therefore, to attempt, not an elaborate analysis, 
 for that has been ably done by others, but a sort of indi- 
 catory comment whereby we may perceive the course and 
 current of the poem. 
 
 The opening poem of the series is an after-thought, 
 and sums up much that is said hereafter in detail. It is 
 a final confession of religious faith, "believing where we 
 cannot prove, ' ' in which Tennyson craves forgiveness for 
 "the wild and wandering cries" of the poem, which he 
 terms "confusions of a wasted youth." The poem proper 
 then begins. From i. to v. we have a statement of those 
 common states of mind which attend all great bereave- 
 ments. There is a sacredness in loss (v.) which almost 
 makes it a sacrilege to embalm the sorrow of the heart in 
 words, and yet there is a use in measured language, for at 
 least the labor of literary production numbs the pain. 
 Then follows (vi.) a beautiful and pathetic vision of what 
 loss means to others besides himself. Such a sorrow as 
 his is not peculiar: at the moment while the father pledges 
 his gallant son, he is shot upon the battle-field, and while 
 the mother prays for her sailor-lad, his 
 
 Heavy-shotted hammock-shroud 
 Drops in his vast and wandering grave.
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam" 129 
 
 Memory wakens (vii.-viii.), and then Fancy (ix.-x.); the 
 one recalling ended joys of fellowship, the other picturing 
 the ship that bears homeward the dead body of his friend; 
 and fancy suggests that it at least is something to be 
 spared an ocean burial, and to sleep in English earth, that 
 
 From his ashes may be made 
 
 The violet of his native land. (xviii.) 
 
 Nature is calm (xi.), but if the poet has any calm it is a 
 calm despair. Yet while he pictures the processes of 
 death, he marks it as curious that it is almost impossible 
 to believe his friend is dead. If again they struck hand in 
 hand, he would not feel it strange (xiv.), for death seems 
 unimaginable. Then again the light fades, and he pic- 
 tures the final obsequies and place of rest (xix.). Pain 
 may be meant to produce in him the firmer mind (xviii.). 
 Perhaps some will say that this brooding over grief is 
 unmanly, the pastime of the egotist, the vain torture of a 
 morbid mind; to which he can only reply they know 
 neither him nor his friend. 
 
 I do but sing because 1 must, 
 
 And pipe but as the linnets sing. (xxi.) 
 
 Again he recalls lost days, and how on the "fifth autum- 
 nal slope" of those brief ended years, Death met and 
 parted them (xxii.). Let those mock who will. He has 
 no envy of those more callous of heart than he, who have 
 never known the joy of a perfect love and therefore 
 cannot understand what its loss may mean. A man's 
 capacity of agony is his capacity of rapture: 
 
 I hold it true, whate'er befall, 
 
 I feel it, when I sorrow most; 
 
 Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all. (xxvii.)
 
 130 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 The time of happy family gatherings draws near, and 
 
 Christmas bells from hill to hill 
 Answer each other in the mist. 
 
 To him it is a sad time of forced mirth and empty joy. 
 But there is something in the very season that suggests 
 nobler thoughts: 
 
 Our voices took a higher range; 
 
 Once more we sang: "They do not die 
 
 Nor lose their mortal sympathy, 
 Nor change to us, although they change." (xxx.) 
 
 That, at least, is the promise of faith, and with a cry to 
 the Divine Father, who lit <'the light that shone when Hope 
 was born," the first great halting-place in the poem is 
 reached. 
 
 In the next section of the poem (xxxi.) a new line of 
 thought begins with the touching picture of Lazarus re- 
 deemed from the grave's dishonors, and seated once more 
 among the familiar faces of Bethany. During those four 
 days of sojourn in the realm of death, did Lazarus yearn 
 for human love, or miss it? Did he retain a conscious 
 identity, and know where and what he was? If he had 
 willed, surely he could have solved all the deep mystery of 
 death for us. But if such questions were proposed to him, 
 "there lives no record of reply," or if he answered them, 
 "something sealed the lips of that evangelist," and the 
 world will never know the secrets of the prison-house. 
 At this point Tennyson begins to state and combat the 
 doubts that perplex him. Yet he half hesitates to do so. 
 Simple faith is so beautiful and rare, that he may well ask 
 himself what right he has to disturb its serenity with his 
 uneasy questionings. Let any who, after toil and storm,
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam" 131 
 
 think that they have reached a higher freedom of truth, 
 be careful how they disturb the faith of simple souls, who 
 have nothing but their faith to sustain them, and whose 
 "hands are quicker unto good" than ours (xxxii.). Yet 
 we cannot help asking, "Is man immortal?" If he is 
 not, then 
 
 Earth is darkness at the core, 
 
 And dust and ashes all that is. 
 
 The thought of God is lost, and the best fate were to drop 
 
 Head-foremost in the jaws 
 Of vacant darkness and to cease. (xxxiv.) 
 
 In the hour of such awful questionings the heart instinc- 
 tively turns to Christ, who wrought 
 
 With human hands the creed of creeds, 
 In loveliness of perfect deeds 
 More strong than all poetic thought. (xxxvi.) 
 
 Doubt and hope now alternate like shadow and light in the 
 poet's mind. When he sees the sun sink on the wide 
 moor, a spectral doubt makes him cold with the sugges- 
 tion that so his friend's life has sunk out of sight, and he 
 will see his "mate no more" (xli.). Perhaps his friend is 
 as the maiden who has entered on the new toils of wedded 
 days, and is content to forsake the home of childhood: 
 yet even she returns sometimes to 
 
 Bring her babe, and make her boast, 
 Till even those who missed her most 
 Shall count new things as dear as old. (xl.) 
 
 "How fares it with the happy dead?" (xliv.) May 
 not death be in itself a new birth, the entrance upon fuller 
 life? (xlv.) Only it were hard to accept the suggestion
 
 132 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 literally, for that would mean forgetfulness of that which 
 preceded the entrance on eternal life. "In that deep 
 dawn behind the tomb" will not "the eternal landscape of 
 the past" be clear "from marge to marge"? (xlvi.) With 
 those who speak of death as reabsorption into the univer- 
 sal soul he has no sympathy. It is "faith as vague as all 
 unsweet"; it means destruction of identity, and his hope 
 about his dead friend is that he 
 
 Shall know him when we meet, 
 And we shall sit in endless feast, 
 Enjoying each the other's good. (xlvii.) 
 
 With the glow of that thought burning in him he calls 
 upon the dead ever to be near him when the light is low, 
 when the heart is sick, when the pangs of pain conquer 
 trust, when the folly and emptiness of human life appal 
 him and finally, when he fades away on that low dark 
 verge of life which is 
 
 The twilight of eternal day. (1.) 
 
 Yet even this wish he is keen to question a moment later; 
 do we really desire our dead to be near us in spirit, and is 
 there no baseness we would hide from their purged and 
 piercing vision? (li.) In fact, his soul has become so sick 
 with sorrow that he now only suggests hopes to himself, 
 that he may fight against them. He philosophizes on his 
 own errors of conduct, but rebukes his conclusions with 
 the fear that he may push Philosophy beyond her mark, 
 and make her "Procuress to the lords of hell!" (liv.) Yet 
 in the moment of the uttermost darkness, full of distemper 
 and despair, he breaks forth into one of the noblest con- 
 fessions of faith,
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam" 133 
 
 That nothing walks with aimless feet, 
 That not one life shall be destroyed, 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 
 When God hath made the pile complete. (liv.) 
 
 It is true that Nature teaches no such doctrine; she is 
 careless of the single type, and cries, 
 
 A thousand types are gone; 
 
 I care for nothing, all shall go. (Iv.-vi.) 
 
 Yet will he stretch lame hands of faith, and "faintly trust 
 the larger hope." Nay, it seems a sin against the dead 
 to doubt that it is forever and forever well with them 
 (Ivii.). The lost Arthur is in a "second state sublime"; 
 and he has carried human love with him there. Will he 
 still love his friend on earth? (Ixi.) Will he not still love 
 the earth and earthly ways? It is a question Emily Bronte 
 answered in her daring picture of a spirit in heaven sighing 
 unceasingly for the purple moors she loved below, until 
 the angels in anger cast her out, and she wakes, sobbing 
 for joy, on the wild heather, with a skylark singing over 
 her. Tennyson pictures the great statesman who still 
 yearns for the village green of childhood, and consoles 
 himself that love cannot be lost : 
 
 Since we deserved the name of friends, 
 
 And thine effect so lives in me, 
 
 A part of mine may live in thee, 
 And move thee on to nobler deeds. (Ixiv.-v.) 
 
 He dreamed there would be spring no more, but now he 
 perceives that his life begins to quicken again (Ixix.). 
 
 So many worlds, so much to do, 
 
 So little done, such things to be, (Ixxiii.) 
 
 is his reflection on the premature ending of his friend's 
 life, but it also marks an awakening of purpose in his own.
 
 134 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Here again, upon the verge of another Christmas, the 
 poem seems to pause with the personal reflections of the 
 seventy-seventh section, on the possibility that what he 
 has written of his friend may never find readers, nor touch 
 any heart but his own. There is a virility and spirit in 
 this section which marks the movement of a healthier 
 mind. That he can begin to think about the publication 
 of his own verses is significant of the rekindling of human 
 ambition in him, and is the token that the lethargy of grief 
 is broken. He has not recovered his strength yet; but 
 the crisis of the disease is over. 
 
 From this point the poem moves in a clearer and less 
 grief-laden atmosphere; the assurance of faith becomes 
 stronger, and a note of triumph breathes in the music, 
 gradually heightening and deepening to its majestic close. 
 He can bear now to pass in review the lost possibilities of 
 earthly felicity which were in his friend (Ixxxiv.), because 
 he has learned to believe that a diviner felicity is his. He 
 holds sacred "commune with the dead," and asks, 
 
 How is it? Canst thou feel for me 
 
 Some painless sympathy with pain? (Ixxxv.) 
 
 He gives us a portrait of his friend; he pictures him eager 
 in debate, a master bowman cleaving the center of the 
 profoundest thought, quick and impassioned in oratory, 
 
 And over those ethereal eyes 
 
 The bar of Michael Angelo; (Ixxxvii.) 
 
 that is, the deep furrow between the eyebrows,* which 
 was indicative of individuality in the great Italian artist. 
 He recollects how he left "the dusty purlieus of the law," 
 
 * This is a disputed point. According to Dr. Gatty the reference is the 
 straightness and prominence of Hallam's forehead, in which it resembled 
 Michael Angelo's.
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam" 135 
 
 and joined in simple rural sports with boyish glee (Ixxxix. ) ; 
 and how they talked together, and in prolonged and eager 
 
 converse 
 
 Discussed the books to love or hate, 
 Or touched the changes of the state, 
 Or threaded some Socratic dream. 
 
 This portraiture of Arthur Hallam is completed later on, 
 in the striking stanza of the hundred and eleventh section, 
 when Tennyson exclaims: 
 
 And thus he bore without abuse 
 The grand old name of gentleman, 
 Defamed by every charlatan, 
 
 And soiled with all ignoble use. 
 
 Again he implores his presence, and he will have no fear; 
 for whereas he once thought of him as lost forever, now 
 he feels his presence, "Spirit to Spirit, Ghost to Ghost," 
 and actually believes that in dream or vision his friend 
 does visit him 
 
 So word by word, and line by line, 
 The dead man touched me from the past, 
 And all at once it seemed at last 
 
 The living soul was flashed on mine. (xci.-v.) 
 
 It is mind breathing on mind from the past ; he feels that 
 whatever is lost, that survives, and is- with him alway. 
 It is true that his friend has doubted, but it was honest 
 doubt, which he defends in the famous lines: 
 
 There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds. (xcvi.) 
 
 He draws a lovely picture of a wife who lives with a hus- 
 band whose intellectual life is beyond her apprehension, 
 but who can say at least, as he has learned to say, "I
 
 136 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 cannot understand; I love" (xcvii.). It is the only out- 
 come from bewilderment; he will follow, not the reason, 
 but the heart; a truth stated with yet greater force and 
 fullness in section cxxiv. : 
 
 If e'er when faith had fallen asleep, 
 I heard a voice, " Believe no more," 
 
 A warmth within the breast would melt 
 
 The freezing reason's colder part, 
 
 And like a man in wrath the heart 
 Stood up, and answered, " I have felt." 
 
 He recalls how he and his friend traveled together in 
 unforgotten summer days, and that leads to a series of 
 those beautiful cabinet pictures of scenery which lend so 
 great a charm to the poem (xcviii.-ci.). He relates how 
 he has dreamed, and saw in dreams the glory of his friend; 
 how "thrice as large as man he bent to greet us" a 
 symbol of the larger manhood which he has inherited; and 
 how he stood upon the deck of some great ship with shin- 
 ing sides, that sailed o'er floods of "grander space" than 
 any earthly a pathetic reference to the ship that bore his 
 dead body home to England, and again a symbol of that 
 voyage of life on which his spirit now passes through an 
 ever-broadening glory (ciii.). Then again the Christmas 
 comes: charged still with too great memories of sorrow to 
 allow the dance and wassail-song, but yet bringing a genial 
 change in him, for he has abandoned wayward grief, and 
 "broke the bond of dying use" (cv.). This Christmas is 
 spent in "the stranger's land," away from home, and the 
 bells are not the bells he knows. The Christmas bells 
 peal "folded in the mist" as before; but when the New 
 Year is near its dawning there is a new music in the bells, 
 a hope and triumph in their chime, which sets his heart
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam" 137 
 
 vibrating with a new and wholesome vigor, and he breaks 
 out into that memorable apostrophe: 
 
 Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
 The flying cloud, the frosty light, 
 The year is dying in the night. 
 
 Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. (cvi.) 
 
 The happy clangor of the New Year bells celebrates 
 his final emancipation from the perplexities of doubt, his 
 final recovery of healthful life, the sanctification of his 
 sorrow, the triumph of his faith. It is the anniversary of 
 Arthur Hallam's birth, the bitter February weather, which 
 "admits not flowers or leaves to deck the banquet," yet 
 the day shall be kept with festal cheer 
 
 With books and music; surely we 
 Will drink to him, whate'er he be, 
 And sing the songs he loved to hear. (cvii.) 
 
 He has soared into the mystic heights of perplexed specu- 
 lation, only to find his "own phantom singing hymns"; 
 henceforth, he says: 
 
 I will not shut me from my kind; 
 
 And lest 1 stiffen into stone, 
 
 I will not eat my heart alone, 
 Nor feed with sighs a passing wind. (cviii.) 
 
 Science, which teaches him how the world and human 
 life have grown out of the fierce shocks of age-long dis- 
 cipline, the cleansing fire and cyclic storm, may also teach 
 him that sorrow is to man a sacred discipline, and that 
 fear, and weeping, and the shocks of doom do but batter 
 him to shape and use (cxviii.). Natural science can tell us 
 much, but not all; we are not "magnetic mockeries," nor 
 "cunning casts in clay." There is a spiritual science also 
 which the wise man seeks to learn, and which unfolds a
 
 138 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 truer map of the mysterious nature of man (cxx.). It is 
 the reality of spiritual existence that his sorrow has re- 
 vealed to him. Love is immortality, and through his love 
 he has already entered on eternal life. The knowledge 
 that his lost friend is really alive for evermore ; that death 
 for him has been simply emancipation and enfranchisement; 
 that all which he loved in him not merely survives, but is 
 perfected in excellence, freed from all human blemish or 
 limitation this fills him with an almost ecstatic joy. In 
 the early morning, when the city is asleep, he again stands 
 before those dark doors in Wimpole Street, but it is no 
 longer with agonized upbraidings of fate. The calmness 
 and hope of morning are with him, as they were with that 
 forlorn woman who long since sought her Master, when it 
 was yet early, in an Eastern garden, and found, not a 
 corpse within the tomb, but a shining Figure walking in 
 the dewy freshness of the day, and he says: 
 
 And in my thoughts, with scarce a sigh, 
 
 I take the pressure of thy hand. (cxix.) 
 
 It is more than resignation, it is more than hope. It is 
 the voice of living certainty, of an entire and undivided 
 triumph, which lifts itself above the dark confusions of 
 the past and sings 
 
 Far off thou art, but ever nigh, 
 I have thee still and I rejoice; 
 I prosper, circled with thy voice, 
 I shall not lose thee tho' I die. (cxxx.) 
 
 The long anguish has done its work in the purification of 
 the soul and the strengthening of the faith; all the bitter 
 sounds of wailing and distress die away, and it is with a 
 perfect hallelujah chorus of glory in the highest, and 
 peace upon earth, that the poem ends.
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam" 139 
 
 There is, however, annexed to it one other section, and 
 not the least lovely the epithalamium on his sister's mar- 
 riage. We learn that this marriage took place "some 
 thrice three years" after Arthur Hallam's death, but 
 whether the bride was the sister Hallam hoped to marry 
 we have no means of knowing. This epithalamium is one 
 of those happy after-touches in which Tennyson displays 
 so perfectly his artistic skill. It is suggestive of how life 
 goes on, and must go on, in spite of the gaps made in our 
 ranks by death; and "the clash and clang" of the wed- 
 ding bells, carried on the warm breeze, is a noble contrast 
 to that mournful pealing of bells through the mist which 
 is heard so often in the earlier stages of the poem. The 
 winter is over and gone, the time of the singing of birds 
 is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. 
 Andnow, whether life bring joy or sorrow, funeral chimes 
 or marriage bells, the poet has an all-sustaining and puri- 
 fying faith in God 
 
 That God, which ever lives and loves, 
 
 One God, one law, one element, 
 
 And one far-off divine event, 
 To which the whole creation moves. 
 
 That "one far-off divine event" can be no other than the 
 perfecting of love in human life, the complete recognition 
 by every living soul of the love of God, and the final vin- 
 dication of that perfect divine love in all its varied deal- 
 ings with men, in things past, in things present, and in 
 things that are to come. This is the vaguely sketched 
 yet noble vision, which crowns with spiritual glory the 
 completion of his thought and labor. He has led us through 
 the darkest valleys of Apollyon, but we reach with him the 
 Beulah land at last. We hear the trumpets pealing on
 
 140 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 the other side, and behold it is morning! Fair and sweet 
 the light shines, and heavenly voices tell us we shall walk 
 in night no more. It is morning the morning of a deep 
 and clear-eyed faith; and doubt and sorrow, fear and 
 pain, are past forever. They are not forgotten indeed; 
 but we see them now only as distant clouds touched with 
 glories of celestial color, lying far and faint behind us on 
 the radiant horizon, transfigured and transformed by the 
 alchemy of God. The phantoms of the night are slain, 
 the anguish of the night is ended; the true light shineth 
 with healing in its wings, and the soul rejoices. It may 
 well rejoice with joy unspeakable, for 
 
 Out of the shadow of night 
 The world rolls into light, 
 It is daybreak everywhere. 
 
 We here conclude our study of Tennyson. What his 
 ultimate position in the ranks of fame may be it is impos- 
 sible to decide. We are yet too fully under his immediate 
 influence for our discernment to be just or our judgment 
 to be wise. That he is among the few great creative 
 poets of humanity no one will assert; that he is never- 
 theless a poet of great and varied excellence none will 
 deny. He has been compared with Milton, and has been 
 set so high above Wordsworth that one of his critics has 
 ventured to say that in the future, when men call the roll 
 of poets, "they will begin with Shakespeare and Milton 
 and who shall have the third place if it be not Tennyson?" 
 But Emerson, whose judgment is worthy of general defer- 
 ence, has said that Wordsworth is the poet of modern 
 England, and that "other writers have to affect what to 
 him is natural." And that pregnant saying illumines at
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam" 141 
 
 once the whole question, laying bare at one stroke the 
 secret of Wodsworth's supremacy and of Tennyson's 
 deficiency. We cannot but feel that he lacks the massive 
 ease of Wordsworth and the deep interior strength of 
 Milton. If we still hesitate to grant him equality with the 
 foremost poets of his own century, it is for the sound 
 reason that while in Tennyson artistic culture has never 
 been surpassed, yet the original poetic impulse is weaker 
 in him than in either of these great poets. But happily 
 it is not necessary for us to determine the rank, before we 
 can discern the genius, of our masters; it is enough for us 
 to receive with thankfulness and admiration the writings 
 of a great poet, who for sixty years has fed the mind of 
 England with visions of truth and beauty, and who, 
 through all that length of various years, has never ceased 
 to be a source of inspiration and delight to that diffused 
 and dominant race who 
 
 Speak the tongue that Shakespeare spake. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. What experience in Tennyson's life led to the writing 
 of " In Memoriam "? 
 
 2. How is it probable that the idea of the poem developed 
 in Tennyson's mind? 
 
 3. Compare the famous elegiac poems which have ap- 
 peared in English literature? 
 
 4. What external qualities of " In Memoriam " have helped 
 its popularity? 
 
 5. Give illustrations of some peculiarly English character- 
 istics of the poem. 
 
 6. How does it reflect the spirit of the nineteenth century? 
 
 7. Show how the thought of the poem develops up to 
 Section xxxi.
 
 142 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 8. Show the changes in the quality of the poet's thought 
 in the next section. 
 
 9. How does the poem proceed to a triumphant conclusion ? 
 
 10. Describe the epithalamium. 
 
 11. What comparisons have been made between Tenny- 
 son and the other great poets of the century? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Tennyson : His A rt and Relation to Modern Life. Stopf ord 
 A. Brooke. 
 
 The Poetry of Tennyson. Henry Van Dyke. 
 
 Tennyson's In Memoriam, Its Purpose and Its Structure. 
 John F. Genung. 
 
 Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning. Anne Thack- 
 eray Ritchie. 
 
 The Victorian Poets. Edmund Clarence Stedman. 
 
 Poets and Problems. George Willis Cooke. 
 
 Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill and Other Literary Estimates. 
 Frederic Harrison.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 [Born at Camberwell, London, May 7, 1812. " Pauline" pub- 
 lished 1832. Married Elizabeth Barrett September 12, 
 1846. "The Ring and the Book " published 1868. "Aso- 
 lando," his last volume, 1889. Died in Venice, December 
 12, 1889. Buried in Westminster Abbey, December 31, 
 i! 
 
 The two greatest figures in the world of modern poetry 
 are Tennyson and Browning. To each has been accorded 
 old age; both have been keenly alive to the intellectual 
 and social movements of their time, and have endeavored 
 to reflect them. Each also has been an observant student 
 of life, as all true poets must be, and each has constructed 
 a huge gallery of human portraits, representing many 
 types, and arranged with artistic instinct and consummate 
 skill. But while Tennyson has proved himself the greater 
 artist, Browning has proved himself the greater mind. 
 He has brought to the work of the poet a keen and subtle 
 intellect, a penetrating insight, the experience of a citizen 
 of the world, and in all things the original force of a 
 powerful individuality. The result of his artistic deficiency 
 is, that he has entirely failed to obtain popularity. He has 
 not known how to deliver his message to the popular ear, 
 and it may be doubted if he has ever cared to try. With 
 a touch of justifiable scorn, he has declared that he never 
 intended his poetry to be a substitute for a cigar or a game 
 
 H3
 
 144 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 of dominoes to an idle man. The grace and music of 
 Tennyson's verse have compelled delight, but in Browning 
 there is no attempt at verbal music. It is with him an 
 unstudied, perhaps an uncoveted, art. When David 
 sought to express the consummate union of the opposite 
 qualities which constitute perfection, he said, "Strength 
 and beauty are in His sanctuary." In Browning we have 
 the strength, in Tennyson the beauty. And the result of 
 this artistic deficiency, this inability to clothe his thoughts 
 in forms of grace, is, that Browning has failed in any large 
 degree to charm the ear of that wide public who care less 
 for the thought that is uttered than for the manner of its 
 utterance. 
 
 It is, however, necessary to remember another fact 
 about Browning's poetry; viz., that to the first minds of 
 the age, the men who lead and govern the world of 
 thought, Browning has been and is a potent and inspiring 
 force. He has disseminated ideas, he has pervaded the 
 literature of his time with his influence. He has found 
 an audience, few but fitting, and to them has addressed 
 himself, knowing that through them he could effectually 
 reach the world at large. The test of popularity is at all 
 times an imperfect test, and in Browning's case is wholly 
 inadequate and unsatisfactory as an index of his true posi- 
 tion in the literature of his day. The influence of a poet 
 is often out of all proportion to his popularity, and is by 
 no means to be measured by the number of his readers, 
 or the poverty or copiousness of public praise. If mere 
 popularity were to become the solitary test of influence, 
 we should have to rank Longfellow above Dante, and 
 Martin Tupper above Tennyson. But while popularity is 
 in itself a testimony to the possession of certain service-
 
 Robert Browning 145 
 
 able qualities, or a certain happy combination of qualities, 
 it fails wholly as a just measurement of the real formative 
 force which a writer may be able to exercise upon his 
 time, and still more hopelessly as an indication of the posi- 
 tion such a writer may take up in the unknown judgments 
 of posterity. A man may catch the ear of the public, 
 and win its empty plaudits, without touching in more than 
 an infinitesimal degree the public conscience or the public 
 thought. 
 
 The deeper and diviner waves of intellectual life indeed 
 have more often than not owed their origin to men who 
 have quarreled with their age, and received from their 
 contemporaries little but the thorn-crown of derision and 
 the sponge of gall and vinegar men wandering in the 
 bitterness of exile like Dante, or starving in the scholar's 
 garret like Spinoza. Most truly great writers, to whom 
 has been committed the creative genius which opens new 
 wells of thought and new methods of utterance, have had 
 need to steel themselves against the indifference of their 
 time, and to learn how to say: "None of these things 
 move me." They have appealed from the contemptuous 
 ignorance of their contemporaries to the certain praises of 
 posterity, and not in vain. Where such men find readers 
 they make disciples, and each heart upon which the fire 
 of their genius falls becomes consecrated to their service. 
 Theirs it is to found a secular apostolate, a school of 
 prophets united by a common faith, and pledged by the 
 sacredness of an intense conviction to urge on the teach- 
 ing of the new doctrine and the new name, till the world 
 acknowledges the claim and gives adhesion to the master 
 whom they love and reverence. 
 
 Let us grant, then, that we have in Robert Browning
 
 146 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 undoubtedly a great poet, but also an undoubtedly unpopu- 
 lar poet. With the exception of the "Ride from Ghent 
 to Aix, " the "Pied Piper of Hamelin," and the tender 
 and pathetic "Evelyn Hope," few or none of his poems 
 have won the ear of the general public. Yet he has pro- 
 duced no fewer than twenty-four volumes, the latest of 
 which was not long since everywhere discussed. No 
 writer of our time has manifested greater fecundity of 
 genius, versatility of style, or capacity of industry. Few 
 writers have ever had a firmer faith in themselves, and 
 have trusted more fully to the secure awards of time. Now 
 that the poetry of Browning has become a cult, his less 
 known works have probably found readers; but at the 
 time of their publication, few but the reviewers had the 
 courage to read them. There is a story told of Leigh 
 Hunt's having "Sordello" sent him for review at a time 
 when he was in weak health and low spirits. After an 
 hour's fruitless effort, he flung the book aside, crying: 
 "My brain is failing! I must be mad! I have not under- 
 stood a word." His wife then took the book up, and it 
 was agreed that upon the test of her ability to understand 
 it the question of her husband's sanity must turn. She at 
 length flung it down, saying: "My dear, don't be alarmed. 
 You're not mad; but the man who wrote it is!" Many 
 persons have closed "Sordello" with the same angry com- 
 ment, and there are isolated passages in Browning more 
 difficult than anything in "Sordello." How is it, then, 
 that the man whose mastery of humor is so finely dis- 
 played in the "Pied Piper," whose pathos and power 
 of narrative have such splendid attestations as "Evelyn 
 Hope" and the "Ride from Ghent to Aix," who can 
 write with such terseness, simplicity, and vigor as these
 
 Robert Browning 147 
 
 poems display, is, nevertheless, to the bulk of English 
 readers a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence? 
 
 The answer to this question is not difficult. Let it at 
 once be granted that Robert Browning can write as clearly 
 as any English poet when he likes, for he has done it. 
 Open Browning at random, and it will be hard if, in half 
 an hour, you do not come upon a score of noble thoughts, 
 admirably expressed in clear-ringing English, with delicate 
 attention to phrase and perfect adherence to the laws of 
 construction. Yet it must be owned that in the same half- 
 hour it is quite possible to alight on passages where the 
 nominative has lost its verb beyond hope of recovery, and 
 phrases seem to have been jerked out haphazard, in a sort 
 of volcanic eruption of thought and temper. What is the 
 underlying cause of these defects of style? 
 
 There are two main causes. The first springs from 
 Browning's theory of poetry. Browning's theory of 
 poetry is a serious one. Like all truly great artists, he 
 has uniformly recognized the dignity and responsibility of 
 art. With him poetry is not the manufacture of a melo- 
 dious jingle, nor the elaboration of pretty conceits: it is 
 as serious as life, and is to be approached with reverent 
 and righteous purpose. It is, moreover, the noblest of 
 all intellectual labors, and should therefore minister to the 
 intellect not less than to the emotion. Into his poetry 
 Browning has put his subtlest and deepest thought, and he 
 uniformly puts a higher value on the thought than the 
 method or manner of its expression. In "Pauline," his 
 earliest poem, published in 1832, he says, with a true 
 forecast of his own powers and limitations: 
 
 So will I sing on, fast as fancies come; 
 Rudely, the verse being as the mood it paints.
 
 148 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 With him the sense is more than the sound, the substance 
 is more than the form, the moral significance is more than 
 the rhetorical adornment. He has something to say, 
 something of infinite moment and solemn import, and he 
 is comparatively careless of how he says it. He is the 
 Carlyle of poetry: the message is everything, the verbal 
 vesture nothing. It is in this respect that Browning's 
 divergence from all other modern poets is greatest. He is 
 not indifferent to the art and music of words, but he habitu- 
 ally treats them as of secondary importance. Naturally, 
 the growth of this temper has led Browning into extrava- 
 gances of style, as it did Carlyle; many a fine thought is 
 hopelessly embedded in insufficient and faulty phrases, 
 and therefore, to the mass of readers who do not approach 
 poetry with the patient spirit of scientific research, is 
 hopelessly lost. 
 
 The second cause of the occasional obscurity of 
 Browning's poetry is found in the condensation of his 
 style. When "Paracelsus" was published it was declared 
 unintelligible, and John Sterling, one of the acutest critics 
 of his day, accused it of "verbosity." This saying of 
 Sterling's was reported to Browning by Miss Caroline 
 Fox, who went on to ask: "Doth he know that Words- 
 worth will devote a fortnight or more to the discovery of 
 a single word that is the one fit for his sonnet?" 
 
 This criticism filled Browning with a dread of diffuse- 
 ness, and henceforth he set himself never to use two words 
 where one would do. The result of this resolve is, that 
 often he does not use words enough to express his mean- 
 ing. He uses one word, and expects his reader to supply 
 two. It is this which makes "Sordello" the puzzle it is. 
 It is a vast web of words, in which the filaments are
 
 Robert Browning 149 
 
 dropped, confused, tangled, like the crumpled gossamer 
 of a spider's web hastily detached and more than half- 
 ruined by the touch of carelessness. 
 
 There are beautiful thoughts and passages in "Sor- 
 dello, " .but they savor so much of bookishness, and 
 demand so much antiquarian knowledge in the reader, that 
 few are likely to disinter and appreciate them. For 
 instance, take this passage from Book the Third: "Fac- 
 titious humors" fall from Sordello, and turn him pure 
 
 As some forgotten vest 
 Woven of painted byssus, silkiest, 
 Tufting the Tyrrhene whelk's pearl-sheeted lip, 
 Left welter where a trireme let it slip 
 I' the sea and vexed a satrap: so the stain 
 O' the world forsakes Sordello: how the tinct 
 Loosening escapes, cloud after cloud. 
 
 Now, what is the picture painted here? Analyze it, and 
 this is the result: An eastern satrap, sailing upon a galley 
 or trireme, wears a vest of byssus, dyed with Tyrian 
 purple. He lets it fall overboard, and as he looks down 
 through the clear sea sees the purple dye escaping and 
 clouding the water. So Sordello is cleansed from the 
 stain of the world. It is a very beautiful illustration; but 
 its beauty is not perceived till we recollect that purple is 
 taken from the tuft of the "whelk's pearl-sheeted lip," 
 and that a garment so dyed, if cast into the sea, throws 
 off its color in tremulous clouds. Does any one see the 
 meaning at first sight? And how many might read it and 
 never see any meaning in it at all? This is an example of 
 Browning in his worst mood; and we cannot wonder, 
 when we consider it, that simple-minded poets like Charles 
 Mackay called him the "High Priest of the Unintelligible";
 
 150 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 or that Browning societies have had to be invented to 
 reduce his recondite fancies to lucidity. 
 
 These, then, are the two main sources of all that is 
 obscure in Browning's writings. The very fact that for 
 many years he was a solitary worker, writing almost for 
 his own pleasure, naturally confirmed the defects of his 
 style. The obscurity is never of the thought; that, in- 
 deed, is so clear and luminous to him that he seems inca- 
 pable of conceiving it as confused in the vision of his reader. 
 The thought is clear as the sun; but the atmosphere of 
 words through which we perceive it is murky, and the 
 body of the thought looms through it dim and strange. 
 And so Mr. Swinburne has spoken with equal felicity and 
 truth of Browning's faculty of "decisive and incisive 
 thought," and has said: "He is something too much the 
 reverse of obscure; he is too brilliant and subtle for the 
 ready readers of a ready writer." The case cannot be 
 better put than in the words of one of his most earnest 
 and intelligent students: "He has never ignored beauty, 
 but he has neglected it in the desire for significance. He 
 has never meant to be rugged, but he has become so in the 
 striving after strength. He never intended to be obscure, 
 but he has become so from the condensation of style which 
 was the excess of significance and strength." This should 
 constantly be remembered, if we are to approach Brown- 
 ing's poetry with the intelligence which interprets and the 
 sympathy which appreciates. 
 
 Were Browning not a great poet, it would be difficult 
 to forgive him such defects as these. We should be 
 inclined to dismiss him with the brief aphorism of the 
 Swedish poet, Tegner, who said: "The obscurely uttered 
 is the obscurely thought." But Browning is one of the
 
 Robert Browning 15 j 
 
 greatest of poets, and has so profoundly affected the 
 thought of his time, that however the ordinary reader may 
 be repelled by the grotesqueness of his style, it is emi- 
 nently worth the while even of that distinguished indi- 
 vidual to endeavor to understand him. We freely grant 
 that poets should not need interpreters; but where there 
 is something of infinite moment to be interpreted it is well 
 to set aside fixed rules and habitual maxims. Genius is 
 so rare a gift that we must take it on its own terms, and 
 we cannot afford to quarrel with the conditions it may 
 impose on us. It speaks its own language, and is indiffer- 
 ent alike to the reproach or desire of those whom it ad- 
 dresses. The only question for us is, whether it is worth 
 our while to endeavor to penetrate the meaning and ascer- 
 tain the teaching of any writer who, through natural limi- 
 tations or willful indifference, renders the study of his 
 works difficult and perplexing. In the case of Browning, 
 I reply that no more remunerative study can be found 
 than in the careful reading of his works. He embodies 
 some of the most curious and pervasive tendencies of nine- 
 teenth-century literature, and in subsequent chapters I 
 shall endeavor to show what Browning's teaching is, and 
 to estimate his influence in literature. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. What qualities of Browning's poetry are usually the first 
 to make themselves felt? 
 
 2. In what way has Browning's influence been felt most 
 deeply? 
 
 3. Why is it not safe to judge of a poet's influence by his 
 popularity? 
 
 4. What is frequently the common destiny of great thinkers?
 
 152 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 5. What poems of Robert Browning are best known to the 
 general public? 
 
 6. What story is told of "Sordello"? 
 
 7. What is probably the chief cause of Browning's obscure 
 style? 
 
 8. Give another reason for this defect. 
 
 9. Why is it worth while to study Browning in spite of his 
 defects? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Life and Letters of Robert Browning. Mrs. Sutherland Orr. 
 
 Robert Browning. William Sharp. (Great Writers Series.) 
 
 Robert Browning, Personalia. Edmund Gosse. 
 
 Introduction to the Study of Browning's Poetry. Hiram 
 Corson. 
 
 A Handbook to tJie Works of Robert Browning. Mrs. 
 Sutherland Orr.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 BROWNING'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 
 
 One of the most interesting facts about Robert Brown- 
 ing is, that he has no touch of the recluse about him; he 
 is the child of cities, not of solitudes. In the writings of 
 Wordsworth and Tennyson, dissimilar as they are in many 
 respects, there is this bond of likeness they breathe the 
 air and silence of seclusion. With the one it is the silence 
 of the mountains, with the other the ordered calm of Eng- 
 lish rural life. All that Wordsworth has written is steeped 
 in the very spirit of solitude, and the mighty silence of the 
 hills has lent a majesty to his conceptions an atmosphere, 
 as it were, of dignified simplicity. In Tennyson, also, one 
 is always conscious of the presence of nature. The wind 
 that blows across his page is full of the dewy freshness of 
 green lawns and rustling trees. The city, with its moil 
 and grime, its passionate intensity of life and action, is far 
 away. He sees its distant lights flaring like a dusky 
 dawn, but he has little care to penetrate its mysteries. 
 And in most modern poets the same remoteness from the 
 passionate stress of life is felt. What is true of Words- 
 worth and Tennyson is equally true of Keats and Morris. 
 The fundamental idea in each seems to be that the life of 
 the recluse alone is favorable to poetry, and that the life 
 of action in the great centers of civilization is fatal to 
 works of imagination. 
 
 To this temper Browning furnishes a splendid excep-
 
 154 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 tion. Born a Londoner, and proud to own himself a citi- 
 zen of the greatest city upon earth, it is with London, 
 Florence, and Venice that his name is imperishably inter- 
 woven; not the Lake district of Wordsworth, nor the 
 Geneva of Byron, nor the Spezzia of Shelley. In conti- 
 nental travel he is evidently more familiar with the book- 
 stalls of Florence than the snow-solitudes of the high 
 Alps. He was a familiar figure in society for many years. 
 He does not shun the crowd: he seeks and loves it. The 
 sense of numbers quickens his imagination. The great 
 drama of human life absorbs him. The glimpses of pure 
 nature he gives us are curiously few. He can describe a 
 lunar rainbow, but he saw it not among the Alps, but 
 from the dull greensward of a London common. Practi- 
 cally he has little to say about nature as such. When he 
 does describe any bit of scenery he does it with scientific 
 accuracy. His pictures of Italy are full of the very spirit 
 of Italian scenery, and have an almost photographic exac- 
 titude. But they are the mere by-play of his mind. It is 
 Italian life which fascinates him, not Italian scenery. It 
 is live everywhere that moves him to utterance, and in the 
 crowd of men, and in the tangled motives of men, and the 
 constant dramas and tragedies bred by the passions and 
 instincts of the human heart, Browning has found the food 
 upon which his genius has thriven. In this respect Brown- 
 ing occupies an entirely unique position among modern 
 poets. He concerns himself so little with the message 
 of nature, and so much with the soul of man, that his 
 whole poetry may be called the Poetry of the Soul: its 
 
 Shifting fancies and celestial lights, 
 
 With all its grand orchestral silences 
 
 To keep the pauses of the rhythmic sounds.
 
 The Spirit of Browning's Religion 171 
 
 Not only is there no despair: there is no touch of dis- 
 heartenment even in Browning 
 
 Languor is not in his heart, 
 Weakness is not in his word, 
 Weariness not on his brow. 
 
 He awaits the revelation of eternity; then all will be made 
 clear. The lost leader, who has forsaken the great cause 
 of progress "just for a handful of silver he left us"- 
 may never be received back save in doubt, hesitation, and 
 pain by his old comrades; but the estrangement of earth 
 will not outlast earth 
 
 Let him receive the new knowledge and wait us 
 Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne! 
 
 Caponsacchi, the great and noble priest, the "soldier- 
 saint" of "The Ring and the Book," must needs hence- 
 forth pass through life with the shadow of Pompilia's 
 sweet presence laid across his heart, and all the purest 
 aspiration of his life covered in her grave. Well, is there 
 not a further world, where they neither marry nor are 
 given in marriage? 
 
 Oh, how right it is! how like Jesus Christ 
 
 To say that! 
 
 So let him wait God's instant, men call years; 
 
 Meanwhile hold hard by truth and his great soul, 
 
 Do out the duty! 
 
 The dying Pompilia sees how the love of souls like his 
 interprets the meaning of the love of God, and cries: 
 
 Through such souls alone 
 God, stooping, shows sufficient of His light 
 For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise. 
 
 Even when Browning stands in such a place as the 
 morgue, amid the ghastliness of tragic failure and despair,
 
 1 72 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 touched though he be with mournfulness, yet this strong 
 and living hope does not leave him, and he still can write: 
 
 It's wiser being good than bad, 
 
 It's safer being meek than fierce, 
 It's fitter being sane than mad. 
 
 My own hope is, the sun will pierce 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 
 
 That, after Last, returns the First, 
 Though a wide compass first be fetched; 
 
 That what began best can't end worst, 
 
 Nor what God blest once prove accurst. 
 
 In other words, whatever dreary intervals there may 
 be of folly, darkness, misery, the world God blessed in the 
 beginning will roll round into the light at last; and when 
 His purpose is complete, there will be a new heaven and 
 a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. What is one of the surest signs of a great poet? 
 
 2. Is Browning an optimist because he does not know life? 
 
 3. What is the story of the poem " Easter Day "? 
 
 4. How does Browning emphasize the importance of choos- 
 ing the highest? 
 
 5. How does he express the doctrine of unselfishness? 
 
 6. What great truths are illustrated in " Instans Tyrannus "? 
 
 7. Give an instance of his teaching that God is Love. 
 
 8. Show how he regards the next world as completing this 
 one. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Browning as a Religious Teacher. Henry Jones. 
 Studies in the Poetry of Browning. James Fotheringham. 
 Browning 's Women. Mary E. Burt. 
 
 Broivning Studies. Select Papers by Members of the 
 Browning Society. Edited by Edward Berdoe. 
 
 Boston Browning Society Papers. (Selected.) 1886-1897.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 BROWNING'S ATTITUDE TO CHRISTIANITY- 
 CONCLUDING SURVEY 
 
 In the last chapter we noticed that one 'of the abnormal 
 growths of modern poetry is a poetry of negation. We 
 may add that this, in its last development, has become a 
 poetry of despair. And the source of that despair is 
 inability to receive the truths of Christianity. Since the 
 advent of Goethe a movement very similar to the Renais- 
 sance in Italy has passed over the whole of Europe. 
 There has been a return to paganism, concurrently with 
 a widespread revival 'in art and culture. The dogmas of 
 the church have been vehemently assailed, and the ethical 
 teachings of Christianity disputed. The movement initi- 
 ated by Goethe has spread throughout the world. It has 
 received impulse from strange quarters, and given impulse 
 in strange directions. Its legitimate outcome in Germany 
 is found in the long line of great scholars who have 
 devoted indefatigable genius and patience to the work of 
 destructive Biblical criticism. There may appear to be a 
 wide enough gulf between the calm paganism of Goethe 
 and the vehement controversial temper of German theologi- 
 cal scholarship, but nevertheless the one is a true child of 
 the other. 
 
 Added to this, there must be reckoned the extraordi- 
 nary growth of natural science during the present century. 
 The minds of the greatest thinkers have been riveted on
 
 174 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 the problem of the origin of things. The results of their 
 investigations have been published with the hardihood and 
 confidence of complete conviction. In their researches as 
 to the working of natural law they have completely ignored 
 all that is supernatural. Their temper toward the super- 
 natural has been one of contemptuous indifference or embit- 
 tered hostility. Thus, then, two forces of immense 
 strength have been steadily at work upon the structure of 
 received opinion: the one force, fearless rationalism; the 
 other, fearless paganism. Culture has been preached as 
 the true substitute for Christianity, art, and beauty as the 
 all-sufficient gospels for human life. We have only to 
 turn to the literature of the last half-century to see how 
 far these influences have permeated. The essayist and 
 poet have alike conspired to preach the new doctrine. 
 The stream of tendency thus created has sufficient exam- 
 ples in the beautiful paganism of Keats and the garrulous 
 medigevalism of Morris. 
 
 But there is another class of writers who have not been 
 able so easily to dismiss the great beliefs by which centu- 
 ries of men and women have lived and striven. They 
 have been allured, fascinated, and repelled alternately; 
 they have hoped and doubted; in their voices is the sound 
 of weeping, in their words the vibration of long suffering; 
 for whatever attitude they may have taken toward Christi- 
 anity they have never relapsed into reckless indifference. 
 This eager scrutiny of religious dogmas by the best and 
 keenest minds of the age is, at least, a proof that such 
 men have been alive, and even agonizingly alive, to the 
 tremendous importance of those dogmas. Poetry in the 
 nineteenth century has sought to be the minister of theo- 
 logical truth not less than of artistic beauty, and as a con-
 
 Browning's Attitude to Christianity 175 
 
 sequence the theological problems of the century, and in 
 less degree the scientific problems also, have been inextri- 
 cably interwoven with its fine warp and woof of exquisite 
 creation. So that let what will be said about the faith- 
 lessness of the nineteenth century, nevertheless the pres- 
 ence of Jesus Christ in nineteenth-century literature is one 
 of its most remarkable and indisputable characteristics. 
 
 But the solitary issue of this intermingling of theology 
 with poetry is not perplexity or sadness. There is found 
 a very different culmination in one poet at least, and that 
 poet is Browning. Browning has attacked theology with 
 the zeal and fervor of a born disputant. He is not merely 
 a great religious poet, but is distinctively a theological 
 poet. He has deliberately chosen for the exercise of his 
 art the most subtle problems of theology, and has' made 
 his verse the vehicle for the statement of theological diffi- 
 culties and personal beliefs. The historical evidences and 
 arguments of Christianity have exercised upon him a deep 
 and enduring fascination. In "Pauline," his earliest 
 poem, the vision of Christ has visited Browning, and he 
 cries 
 
 Thou pale form, so dimly seen, deep-eyed, 
 
 1 have denied Thee calmly do I not 
 
 Pant when I read of Thy consummate deeds, 
 And burn to see Thy calm pure truth outflash 
 The brightest gleams of earth's philosophy? 
 Do I not shake to hear ought question Thee? 
 If I am erring, save me, madden me, 
 Take from me powers and pleasures, let me die 
 Ages, so I see Thee! 
 
 That vision of Christ has been not only an ever-present 
 but an ever-growing vision with Browning. 
 
 This spirit of passionate reverence for Christ, which
 
 176 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Browning thus expresses in his first considerable poem, is 
 the spirit which dominates his entire writings. The deep- 
 est mystery of Christianity is Christ himself; that, indeed, 
 is its one mystery. Browning has been quick to' realize 
 this, and habitually perceives and teaches, with unerring 
 keenness, that in Christ all mysteries have solution, or 
 without him are left forever dark and impenetrable. The 
 method of argument he pursues is peculiarly his own. 
 He ranks himself for the moment with the Rationalist, and 
 having detailed his conclusions, goes on to probe them. 
 For this purpose dialectic skill, irony, humor, and the 
 subtlest analysis are his weapons. He refuses to be con- 
 tent with negation; it is not enough to say what you do 
 not believe, you must realize what you do believe. He 
 pushes back the burden of proof upon the doubter, and 
 says men have an equal right to demand the demonstra- 
 tion of a doubt as of a creed. When every shred of evi- 
 dence has been weighed and tested, then comes the moment 
 to ask what is left, and the final verdict depends, not on 
 the letter of the evidence, but the spirit; not on anybody 
 of oral attestation, but on the soul which witnesses within 
 a man. This, with many variations and differences, is, 
 upon the whole, a fair statement of Browning's method 
 of argument, and the result is never left in doubt. In 
 "A Death in the Desert," where St. John is supposed to 
 utter his last words of belief, the verdict, not indeed of 
 the man Cerinthus, who hears the great confession, but of 
 the man who adds the final note, is: 
 
 If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of men, 
 Mere man, the first and best, but nothing more, 
 Account Him, for reward of what He was, 
 Now and forever, wretchedest of all.
 
 Browning's Attitude to Christianity 177 
 
 Can a mere man do this? 
 Yet Christ saith this He lived and died to do. 
 Call Christ then the illimitable God, 
 Or lost! 
 
 and he significantly adds 
 
 But 'twas Cerinthus that is lost. 
 
 In the "Epistle of Karshish, " in which the strange 
 story of Lazarus is debated from the physician's point of 
 view, the writer finally rises into a very ecstasy of faith, 
 and the poem closes with this passionate exclamation: 
 
 The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? 
 So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too 
 So, through the thunder conies a human voice, 
 Saying, " O heart I made, a heart beats here! 
 Face, My hands fashioned, see it in Myself! 
 Thou hast no power, nor may conceive of Mine. 
 But love I gave thee, with Myself to love, 
 And thou must love Me who have died for thee." 
 
 It cannot be said that there is the faintest touch of 
 intolerance or scorn for honest doubt in Browning's 
 poetry. Yet no man of our days has pierced it with so 
 many telling shafts of irony and reason. He acknowl- 
 edges the difficulties of belief, and it is plain to every 
 reader that Browning has wrestled sorely with the angel 
 in the night, with that impalpable and dreadful shape 
 which has all but overwhelmed him. But the morning 
 has broken and brought its benediction. If the difficulties 
 of belief are great, the difficulties of unbelief are greater. 
 He assumes that there must be many unexplored remain- 
 ders in the world of thought. Well, what then? Because 
 some things are hidden, are there none revealed?
 
 178 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 What, my soul? See so far and no farther? When doors 
 
 great and small, 
 Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth 
 
 appal? 
 In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all. 
 
 That were the last unreasonableness of ignorance, the final 
 folly of imbecility. No; the wiser act is to trust where 
 actual knowledge fails. Faith is a very fine word, but 
 
 You must mix some uncertainty 
 With faith if you would have faith be. 
 
 If a scientific faith is absurd, and "frustrates the very end 
 'twas meant to serve," he will rest content with a mere 
 probability 
 
 So long as there be just enough 
 To pin my faith to, though it hap 
 Only at points; from gap to gap, 
 One hangs up a huge curtain so, 
 Grandly, nor seeks to have it go 
 Foldless and flat along the wall. 
 What care I if some interval 
 Of life less plainly may depend 
 On God? I'd hang there to the end. 
 
 Moreover, it is part of God's good discipline to educate 
 us by illusion; the point of victory, the prize of the high 
 calling, perpetually recedes to the man who presses toward 
 the mark. 
 
 We do not see it, where it is 
 At the beginning of the race; 
 As we proceed, it shifts its place, 
 And where we look for crowns to fall, 
 We find the tug's to come that's all. 
 
 Thus the uncertainties of knowledge are in themselves a 
 beneficent training for the spirit of man; they sting him
 
 Browning's Attitude to Christianity 179 
 
 with this divine hunger for full light, they soften him to 
 childlike blessedness of mere trust, and tend to the more 
 real and vivid hold upon the creed itself, by shaking from 
 it "the torpor of assurance." 
 
 No poet of our time has so consistently attacked the 
 darker and more tangled problems of human conduct. 
 He confesses that "serene deadness" puts him out of 
 temper. His sympathies, on the other hand, go out irre- 
 sistibly toward any sort of life, however strangely mistaken 
 or at variance with custom, which has real, throbbing, 
 energetic vitality in it. To him there is an overwhelming 
 fascination in misunderstood men, and the more tangled 
 and intricate is the problem of character and action the 
 more eagerly does he approach it. Not unnaturally this 
 tendency of Browning's genius has led him through many 
 of the darker labyrinths of human motive, and occasion- 
 ally, as in "Mr. Sludge, the Medium," the riddle has not 
 been worth the prolonged application he has devoted to 
 it. But in no class of poems is Browning's intense reli- 
 gious conviction more remarkably displayed. The same 
 retreat upon mere faith which he makes in subtle ques- 
 tions of theology he observes also in dealing with the 
 mysteries of human conduct. His method of treatment 
 is twofold. The majority of his poems which deal with 
 character and conduct deal with character and conduct 
 more or less imperfect. In all such cases the blemish is 
 laid bare with unerring accuracy. There are no glozing 
 words to cover moral lapses, no spun purple of fine 
 phrases to hide the hideousness of spiritual leprosy. But 
 Browning describes such lives, not to display their corrup- 
 tion, but to discover some seed of true life which may yet 
 be hidden in them. Few lives are so evil but that some
 
 180 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 golden threads are woven in the coarse fabric; some im- 
 pulses are left which, if followed, may be the clue to life 
 eternal. 
 
 Oh, we're sunk enough, God knows! 
 But not quite so sunk that moments, 
 Sure, though seldom, are denied us 
 When the spirit's true endowments 
 Stand out plainly from its false ones, 
 And apprise it, if pursuing 
 On the right way or the wrong way, 
 To its triumph or undoing. 
 
 The "poor impulse," the one obscure, true instinct, 
 which vibrates under a smothered or sinful nature, may 
 be the starting-point towards ideal goodness. But if man 
 be evil, God is good, and the soul of the universe is just. 
 Browning is bound to admit that some natures seem hope- 
 lessly corrupt; at all events, he fails to find the germ of 
 renovation in them. They have chosen the evil part, 
 which cannot be taken away from them. They have had 
 their choice 
 
 The earthly joys lay palpable 
 A taint, in each distinct as well; 
 The heavenly flitted, faint and rare, 
 Above them, but as truly were 
 Taintless, so, in their nature best. 
 Thy choice was earth; thou didst attest 
 'Twas fitter spirit should subserve 
 The flesh. 
 
 When Browning confronts such natures, his second method 
 comes into play; he falls back upon faith faith in the 
 wise order and infinite goodness of God. The most 
 marked example of this method is in that splendid dramatic 
 sketch, "Pippa Passes." No more awful picture of guilt
 
 Robert Browning Concluding Survey 181 
 
 triumphing in its guiltiness, of corruption intoxicated with 
 the abandonment and depraved joy of its own wickedness, 
 has any poet given us than the Ottima of that poem. 
 There stands the villa, with its closed shutters; within it 
 the murdered man, and the guilty woman pouring out her 
 confessions of passion to the man who slew him. Can 
 human action produce a more hideous combination? Yet 
 the sun shines fair, and "God has not said a word." 
 Has God's good government of things broken down, then? 
 No, indeed. Pippa passes Pippa, the poor girl with her 
 one day's holiday in the whole year, yet happy, cheerful, 
 trustful; and as she pauses she sings rebuke to our doubts 
 of God, and terror to the black heart of Ottima: 
 
 The year's at the spring, 
 And day's at the morn; 
 Morning's at seven; 
 The hillside's dew-pearled; 
 The lark's on the wing, 
 God's in His heaven, 
 All's right with the world. 
 
 It is thus Browning, like many a great spirit before 
 him, falls back upon faith in God, saying in effect what 
 Abraham said when confronted with the corruption of man 
 and the judgment of God: "Shall not the Judge of all the 
 earth do right?" 
 
 The prevalent impression which the work of Browning 
 leaves upon the reader is twofold: he makes us feel the 
 greatness of his mind and the intensity and breadth of his 
 sympathies. It is a vast world of thought to which Brown- 
 ing introduces his reader. He claims from him absolute 
 attention, the entire absorption of the neophyte, whose 
 whole moral earnestness is given to his task. Like all
 
 1 82 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 neophytes, we have to submit to a process of initiation. 
 In the world of Browning's thought there is much that is 
 strange, much that is new, much that is grotesque. 
 
 Perhaps the best way of sifting the perfect from the 
 imperfect in Browning's work would be to ask what we 
 should care least to lose, and what we would most will- 
 ingly forget. If we had to submit to an ideal justice for 
 the final jurisdiction of immortality the poems most likely 
 to win him the award of age-long fame, which should we 
 choose to support the claim? 
 
 When we apply this test to Browning's poetry the result 
 is soon reached. First of all stands the "Ring and the 
 Book." In force of conception, skill and delicacy of 
 treatment, subtlety of thought, purity, power, and passion, 
 the "Ring and the Book" is Browning's masterpiece. 
 Wandering in Florence, Browning discovers on a book- 
 stall an old manuscript volume containing the pleadings of 
 a murder trial at Rome in 1698. The whole case is one 
 of those strange tangles of evidence which dull people 
 usually discredit until the passions of human life flame 
 forth, and the thing is a dramatic actuality, done before 
 their very eyes. The murdered woman is Pompilia, who 
 has fled from her husband with the priest Caponsacchi; 
 the murderer is the husband. At first sight this appears 
 merely a low drama of vicious passion and brutal revenge; 
 but as Browning pores over the pleadings and unravels 
 the tangled skein of evidence it reveals itself in a very 
 different way. As he reads, the dark shadows of crime 
 recede, revealing in transfiguring brightness the figure of 
 Pompilia, "young, good, beautiful," clothed upon with 
 the raiment which is from heaven, the beauty of holiness, 
 the divine dignity of goodness, the touching, inimitable
 
 Robert Browning Concluding Survey 183 
 
 freshness and purity of childlike innocence. A mere child 
 in years, she is the spoil of her husband's avarice, then 
 the victim of his malignity and disappointed cupidity, until 
 at last she flies, to save her babe's life, with the young 
 priest who has promised to defend her. Browning's 
 method is to let each witness tell his own tale, making 
 the written report his basis of fact, on which he casts his 
 own quick, penetrating light of interpretation. This is 
 accomplished in twelve books. The one-half of Rome 
 gives its opinion, takes merely the outward appearance of 
 the facts, and judges Guido justified in the murder. The 
 other half of Rome accepts Pompilia's innocence, and 
 perceives that from first to last she has been a victim. 
 Then follow the chief actors in the drama. Guido makes 
 his defence the defence of a man thoroughly shrewd, 
 with more than a touch of fanaticism, alive to his posi- 
 tion, and alert to use every waft of popular prejudice in 
 his favor. After him Caponsacchi tells his tale; how he 
 came to enter the church, and was urged by great priests 
 to put only an easy interpretation on the vows which 
 seemed to him so strenuously solemn; how he came to 
 recognize in Pompilia a womanhood he had never before 
 imagined so sadly sweet, so grave, so pure, that he felt 
 lifted into higher thoughts as by the vision of a saint; how 
 God and Pompilia kept company in his thoughts, so that 
 when the hour came that he could serve her he seized it 
 with a simple chivalry, and did it as God's plain duty, then 
 and there made clear to him. Then Pompilia herself, 
 dying fast, in broken snatches, tells the story of her life. 
 Finally, the old pope sums up the case, giving verdict of 
 death against Guido, and Guido himself pours out his last 
 despairing utterances, which reach their tragic climax in the
 
 184 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 cry to his murdered wife to save him, thus unconsciously 
 witnessing to the purity he had defamed and despised. 
 
 The "Ring and the Book" is the most astonishing 
 work of genius of our time, and if the narrations of Guide, 
 Caponsacchi, and Pompilia do not escape oblivion, it is 
 hard to say what other poetry of our day is likely to 
 endure and win the suffrages of posterity. 
 
 Another poem which it is impossible to omit in a cate- 
 gory of Browning's greatest works is "Paracelsus." It 
 may well take rank with the "Ring and the Book" in 
 nobility of design and expression; but perhaps the most 
 wonderful thing about it is the vision of evolution which 
 is found in its concluding pages pages, let it be noted, 
 which were written many years before Darwin had pub- 
 lished his "Origin of Species." Let him who would 
 measure accurately the immense sweep and power of 
 Browning's genius turn to the last fifty pages of "Para- 
 celsus." They contain passages which cannot be read, 
 even after many readings, without astonishment. Never 
 has blank verse been handled with fuller mastery; never 
 has it been sustained at a greater height of majesty, even 
 by Milton, the greatest of all masters in blank verse. 
 What largeness of utterance, and what a picture of God's 
 creative joy, and of the earth's rebirth in spring, is there 
 in lines like these: 
 
 In the solitary waste strange groups 
 
 Of young volcanos come up, Cyclops-like, 
 
 Staring together with their eyes on flame 
 
 God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
 
 Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: 
 
 But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
 
 Over its breast to waken it: rare verdure 
 
 Buds tenderly upon rough banks.
 
 Robert Browning Concluding Survey 185 
 
 The lark 
 
 Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; 
 Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing-gulls 
 Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 
 Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek 
 Their loves in wood and plain, and God renews 
 His ancient rapture. 
 
 And then follows that vision of the true evolution, which 
 it is a shame to quote piecemeal, but of which some sen- 
 tences at least must be quoted here: 
 
 Thus God dwells in all, 
 From life's minute beginnings, up at last 
 To man, the consummation of this scheme 
 Of being, the completion of this sphere 
 Of life, whose attributes had here and there 
 Been scattered o'er the visible world before, 
 Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant 
 To be united in some wondrous whole, 
 Imperfect qualities throughout creation 
 Suggesting some one creature yet to make, 
 Some point where all these scattered rays shall meet 
 Convergent in the faculties or man. 
 
 Progress is 
 
 The law of life: man is not man as yet, 
 Nor shall I deem his general object served 
 While only here and there a towering mind 
 O'erlooks his prostrate fellows: when the host 
 Is out at once to the despair of night; 
 When all mankind alike is perfected, 
 Equal in full-blown powers then, not till then, 
 I say begins man's general infancy. 
 
 "Paracelsus" is a great poem, one of the greatest in 
 English literature; and when we read it we cannot wonder 
 that one of the first organs of literary opinion in England 
 does not hesitate to set Browning close beside Shakespeare. 
 
 In sustained splendor of thought and imagery, but upon
 
 1 86 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 a lesser scale, "Saul" is also one of the poems which men 
 will not readily let die; and one might class with "Saul" 
 such wonderful studies as "A Death in the Desert" and 
 the "Epistle of Karshish." In "Saul" Browning has 
 attained the rare achievement of perfect form and har- 
 mony. There is a magnificent music in the billowy 
 cadences of "Saul"; it seems to rise and fall not so much 
 to the harp of David as to the melodious thunder and 
 trumpet-calls of some great organ which floods the uni- 
 verse with invisible delight. But such poems as these 
 owe their true greatness to the thought which informs 
 them. There is no writer of our day, whether of prose 
 or poetry, who will so well repay the attention of the 
 theological student as Browning. He has so vivid a vision 
 of invisible things, so intense a grasp on spiritual facts, 
 that he pierces into the heart of religious mystery as no 
 other man of our time has done, and it is impossible to 
 rise from a course of Browning without a sense of added 
 or invigorated faith. The literature of Christian evidence 
 has received, in our time, no more important contribu- 
 tions than "Easter Day" and "Christmas Eve," the 
 "Death in the Desert" and the "Epistle of Karshish." 
 The method is Browning's own, but it is used with con- 
 summate skill and effect; it is a sword which no other 
 man can wield save the craftsman who forged it, but in 
 his hand it pierces to the dividing asunder of the bone and 
 marrow of current scepticism. As poet and thinker, 
 Browning secures a double advantage, and annexes realms 
 to his dominion which are not often brought under the 
 sway of a common scepter. The fashion of the world 
 may change, and the old doubts may wear themselves out 
 and sink like shadows out of sight in the morning of a
 
 Browning's Philosophy of Life 155 
 
 If Wordsworth's was the priestly temperament, and 
 Tennyson's is the artistic, it may be said that Browning's 
 was something broader than both: the nobly human tem- 
 perament, which cleaves to man, and seeks to understand 
 his hopes and fears, and judges him by the standard of 
 a catholic charity. In this respect it is no exaggeration 
 to say that Browning more nearly resembles Shakespeare 
 than any poet of the last three hundred years; for we can 
 imagine Shakespeare as having moved among men with 
 the same genial and understanding sympathy, and as inter- 
 preting the men of his day with an insight similar to, if 
 broader and more profo'und than, Browning's. 
 
 The immediate result of this temper in Browning is, 
 that no poet has exhibited such variety, and this variety 
 springs from the multiplicity of subjects in which he is 
 interested. His poems cover dissertations on art and 
 music, stories of adventure, strangely vivid and exact 
 reproductions of mediaeval life and thought, glimpses of 
 the authentic life of the ancient world not less than of the 
 modern, yet all touched with that precision which marks 
 the student and the scholar. In the company of Robert 
 Browning you see from the prosaic eminence of a London 
 common the overthrow of Sodom, and the dread vision 
 of the Last Judgment, as in the wonderful poem called 
 "Easter Day"; you sail in Venetian gondolas witnessing 
 the drama of passion and crime; you hide with conspira- 
 tors in the ruined aqueducts of modern Italy; the scene 
 changes from the Ghetto to the Morgue; from the by- 
 ways of London to the deserts of Arabia; from the tent 
 of Saul to the plains of "glorious guilty Babylon"; from 
 the Shambles' Gate, where the patriot rides out to death 
 upon his hurdle, to the splendid chambers of the connois-
 
 156 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 seur, crowded with the spoils of Renaissance art, where 
 the Bishop orders his tomb in St. Praxed's. Nothing in 
 the drama of human life seems to escape Browning; its 
 minutest by-play rivets his attention not less than its 
 master passions. He writes, in fact, like a citizen of the 
 world, with a shrewd, hard, piercing intelligence, which 
 goes straight to the heart of things, touching them off 
 with gentle cynicism, or laying them bare with the light- 
 ning flash of inspired insight. He is essentially dramatic; 
 that is to say, he habitually loses himself in the individu- 
 ality of the person he represents, his main question being, 
 "Now, what did this man think, that he acted thus?" 
 He frequently labors with minute care to build up his pic- 
 ture of the man's condition, till we begin to be impatient 
 of his patience; then suddenly, with some short, sharp 
 flash of thought, the whole soul of the man is revealed 
 as by lightning, and the poem ends. What, then, is 
 Browning's view of life? His view of religion we may 
 conveniently leave for a separate chapter. Let us ask 
 now, What is his view of life? 
 
 The first and chief point in Browning's view of life 
 is his intense sense of the reality of God and the human 
 
 soul. 
 
 He glows above 
 
 With scarce an intervention, presses close 
 And palpitatingly, His soul o'er ours. 
 
 These are the twin Pharos-lights of earthly life; the wild 
 surge of circumstance breaks and darkens on all sides, but 
 these abide. It matters not what is lost if God be found, 
 or how much is swept down into the roaring wells of the 
 hungry sea of oblivion if the soul be saved.
 
 Browning's Philosophy of Life 157 
 
 In man's self arise 
 
 August anticipations, symbols, types 
 Of a dim splendor ever on before, 
 In that eternal circle life pursues. 
 
 In all moments of supreme passion and impulse we feel 
 how thin is that veil which shuts us from eternity. The 
 lover in the "Last Ride" utters this thought when he 
 cries: 
 
 Who knows but the world may end to-night? 
 
 These moments of exaltation are the true index to the 
 greatness of the soul of man, and therefore are to be 
 sought and cherished above all other gain. What are 
 progress, science, knowledge, love, art, in the light of 
 these higher thoughts? They are simply so many golden 
 roads which lead to God, so many shining stairs on which 
 the half-visible shapes of spiritual presences go up and 
 down. There is a world of spirit as of sense, and the 
 gleams of spiritual knowledge which visit us 
 
 Were meant 
 To sting with hunger for full light. 
 
 Art is not to be praised for what it achieves, but for 
 what it aspires to. It is the yearning of the spirit, not 
 the skill of the hand, which gives it its real value. 
 
 Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, 
 
 Not God's, and not the beasts'; God is, they are, 
 
 Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be. 
 
 No English poet has written so fully upon art and 
 music, or has shown more conclusively an exact knowl- 
 edge and delicate taste in both; but no poet is less of a 
 dilettante. Art is simply an aspiration; when the artist 
 is satisfied with his work, then he has renounced all that
 
 158 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 made his art true and worthy. The mere visible results 
 of art are worthless in themselves, and the passion of 
 accumulating them an ignoble passion, if it has no higher 
 purposes. Contempt can go no farther than to picture 
 such a connoisseur, who 
 
 Above all epitaphs 
 Aspires to have his tomb describe 
 Himself as sole among the tribe 
 Of snuff-box fanciers who possessed 
 A Grignon with the Regent's crest. 
 
 On the other hand, it is in the pursuit of true art that 
 Abt Vogler gets his vision of truth itself, and cries: 
 
 All we have willed and hoped or dreamed of good shall exist, 
 
 Not in semblance, but in itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist, 
 
 When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, 
 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard. 
 
 Enough that He heard it once; we shall hear it by and by. 
 
 Upon the general text of this view of life Browning 
 perpetually engrafts other lessons. For instance, he is 
 fond of showing that it is better and grander to fail in 
 great things than to succeed in little ones. What though 
 the patriot goes out at the Shambles' Gate, remember- 
 ing, as he rides, the flags flung wide for him a year 
 before? 
 
 Thus I entered, and thus I go! 
 
 In triumphs people have dropped down dead. 
 " Paid by the World what dost thou owe 
 
 Me?" God might question; now instead 
 'Tis God shall repay! I am safer so.
 
 Browning's Philosophy of Life 159 
 
 So again, in the "Grammarian's Funeral," Browning 
 puts into four terse and epigrammatic lines the same truth: 
 
 This low man seeks a little thing to do, 
 
 Sees it and does it; 
 This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 
 
 Dies ere he knows it. 
 
 A point which Browning is never weary of illustrating 
 is, that to all men there come moments of half-inspired 
 insight, the keen and perhaps momentary thrill of great 
 impulses, and that a man's whole eternity hangs upon the 
 use of such visitations. The revelation may be made in 
 human love; it may be a vision of knowledge or of duty; 
 but it is imperative that when such transfiguring moments 
 come we should be ready to seize them. In such divine 
 moments we see the narrow way that leads to life eternal. 
 
 There are flashes struck from midnights, 
 
 There are fire-flames noondays kindle, 
 Whereby piled-up honors perish, 
 
 Whereby swoln ambitions dwindle; 
 While just this or that poor impulse, 
 
 Which for once had play unstifled, 
 Seems the whole work of a lifetime, 
 
 That away the rest has trifled. 
 
 What if it be said such moments are transient, that 
 ecstasy is rare, that such high visions fade as soon as 
 born? The vision may perish, but the lesson it reveals 
 remains. Life which is not vivified by faith and emotion 
 is scarcely life at all. The worst of all woes is worldli- 
 ness; to sink down in tranquil acquiescence before the 
 customs of a low-pitched life, and never to break through 
 into that eternal world which invests the visible world like 
 an invisible atmosphere this is spiritual death, and there
 
 160 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 is no death to be feared but that. Why, the very grass- 
 hopper 
 
 Spends itself in leaps all day 
 To reach the sun, you want the eyes 
 To see, as they the wings to rise 
 
 And match the noble hearts of them. 
 
 Would the grasshopper, with his "passionate life," 
 change estate with the mole that gropes in his "veritable 
 muck"? Thus the vision of life which shapes itself to 
 Browning is the vision of a great world in which the spirit- 
 ual is ever in peril of being throttled by the sordid. 
 
 The general issue of Browning's philosophy of life is, 
 then, that life is probation and education. Nothing is of 
 value in itself but for what it leads to, for the help that it 
 may yield the spirit in its long battle to gain enfranchise- 
 ment from the flesh, and inheritance with God. Just as 
 the utmost spoil of knowledge only serves to sting us with 
 hunger for fuller light, so the utmost wealth of love only 
 reveals to us the infinite possibilities of the love of God. 
 There is "no pause in the leading and the light": 
 
 There's heaven above, and night by night 
 I look right through its gorgeous roof; 
 For I intend to get to God. 
 
 Life has manifold sweet and pleasant uses; let the 
 odor of the April, and the freshness of the sea, the miracle 
 of science, the ineffable yearning of perfect music, or the 
 spell of perfect art, find their just and proper place in the 
 category of life, and be accepted with no ascetic scruple, 
 but genial gratitude. But they are nothing more than 
 broken hints, by which men learn the alphabet of better 
 life. And it is because to rest in these things is death 
 that Browning so eagerly applauds any life that flings
 
 Browning's Philosophy of Life 161 
 
 itself away in endeavors after the distant and unattainable, 
 and is at all times so merciful toward earthly failure. He 
 loves to show us that beneath the rough husk of lives 
 which seem wasted, there lies hidden the true seed of a 
 life which will one day bloom consummate in beauty. He 
 loves equally to take up some apparently successful life, 
 and pierce it with his caustic humor, and point out its 
 essential emptiness with an irony so keen and stern that 
 it would be bitter were it not softened by the pathos of a 
 human-hearted pity. Above all, there is no touch of 
 pessimism in him: he looks undismayed above present 
 evils to the brightening of a diviner day. He says, with 
 Abt Vogler: 
 
 Therefore, to whom turn I, but to Thee, the ineffable Name? 
 Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands! 
 What, have fear of change from Thee, who art ever the same? 
 Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power 
 
 expands? 
 There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as 
 
 before. 
 
 The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; 
 On the earth, the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. What circumstances of Browning's life were in marked 
 contrast with those of Wordsworth and Tennyson? 
 
 2. In what respect is Browning unique among modern poets? 
 
 3. What great variety of subjects are treated in Browning's 
 poetry? 
 
 4. What is the first great point to be noted in Browning's 
 view of life? 
 
 5. What is his general view of art? 
 
 6. How are his views brought out in his pictures of the 
 "connoisseur" and of "Abt Vogler"?
 
 1 62 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 7. What lesson does he teach in his poem of " The Patriot "? 
 
 8. What other great experience in human life is he fond of 
 illustrating? 
 
 9. What in general is his view of the meaning of life? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Essays on Robert Browning's Poetry, J. T. Nettleship. 
 Poets and Problems. George Willis Cooke. 
 Literary Studies. Vol. II. (Wordsworth, Tennyson, and 
 Browning.) Walter Bagehot. 
 
 Studies in Literature. Edward Dowden. 
 The Victorian Poets. E. C. Stedman.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 THE SPIRIT OF BROWNING'S RELIGION 
 
 Having said so much as I have about Browning's 
 intense interest in life, it naturally follows that something 
 should be said about his attitude to religion, and the spirit 
 of his religious teaching. The great poet is necessarily a 
 great believer. The faculty which pierces to the unseen, 
 and works in constant delicate contact with the invisible, 
 is a faculty absolutely necessary to the equipment of a 
 true poet. The poetry of faithfulness is an abnormal 
 growth. It has little range or vitality. It never attains 
 to really high and memorable results. When the spring 
 of faith is broken, every faculty of the mind seems to 
 share in the vast disaster. And especially do the facul- 
 ties of imagination, spiritual insight, and tender fancy, 
 which are the master architects of poetry, suffer. The 
 loss of faith strikes a chill to the central core of being, and 
 robs the artist of more than half the material from which 
 the highest poetry is woven. 
 
 On the other hand, the power of spiritual apprehension 
 is one of the surest signs whereby we know a great poet. 
 It is the function of the great poet to be a seer and inter- 
 preter. He sees farther, deeper, and higher than ordi- 
 nary men, and interprets for the common man what he 
 dimly feels, but does not fully apprehend. It is quite 
 possible that the message of the poet, the result of his 
 spiritual insight, may not shape with our preconceived 
 
 163
 
 164 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 notions and theories; but where the spiritual insight is 
 sure and real, the true poet never fails to quicken insight 
 in his reader. Perhaps no man has done more in our 
 generation to quicken and sharpen the spiritual insight of 
 men than Browning. Pre-eminently he is a religious poet. 
 Religion enters into all his work, like a fragrance or a 
 color which clings to some delicate and lovely fabric, and 
 while occasionally subdued or modified, is never lost. 
 Browning's vast knowledge of the world never degener- 
 ates into worldliness. He seeks to know the world in all 
 its aspects, all its strange and vague contradictions, and 
 seeks rather than shuns its sad and seamy side. If he is 
 an optimist, it is not because he is an idealist, and the 
 most striking thing about his optimism is, that it thrives in 
 the full knowledge of the baseness and evil of the world. 
 But the curiosity which impels Browning to investigate the 
 darker side of life is never altogether an artistic curiosity: 
 it is a religious curiosity. What, then, is the net result? 
 What are the great facts on which he builds his faith? 
 What are the sources of the religious buoyancy which is 
 so remarkable in so thorough a citizen of the world, and 
 especially in an age when so many of the foremost writers 
 and thinkers have given themselves over to agnosticism or 
 despair? 
 
 Now, the actual religion of a man can usually be 
 reduced to a few simple truths which are grasped with 
 entire belief, and thus become the working principles of 
 his life. Few men believe with equal conviction all the 
 various dogmas of religious truth; but while many may 
 remain obscure, there are others which are revealed with 
 a vividness of light and force which constitute them hence- 
 forth the pillars of a man's real life. Thus, for instance,
 
 The Spirit of Browning's Religion 165 
 
 St. James has defined what pure religion and undefiled 
 meant to him in one simple and sufficing formula charity 
 and unworldliness, visiting the fatherless, and keeping the 
 soul unspotted from the world. So Browning has grasped, 
 with all his force, certain religious truths which appear to 
 him the soul and marrow of Christianity, and these consti- 
 tute the spirit of his religion. 
 
 The best illustration of the working of Browning's 
 genius in the realm of religious truth may be found in 
 such a poem as "Easter Day." This poem is a wonder- 
 ful poem in more respects than one: it is wonderful in its 
 imagery, its intensity of insight, its daring, its vividness, 
 the closeness of its reasoning, the sustained splendor of 
 its diction, the prophetic force of its conclusions. It 
 begins with the discussion of two speakers, who agree 
 "How very hard it is to be a Christian." But each 
 speaker utters the phrase in a different sense: the one 
 finds Christianity hard as a matter of faith, unproved to 
 the intellect; the other, as a matter of practice, unrealized 
 in the life. It would not be difficult to be a martyr, and 
 find a Hand plunged through the flame to pluck the soul 
 up to God, if indeed one could be certain of any such 
 result; it is hard to believe on less than scientific evidence. 
 To renounce the world on such evidence as we have would 
 be folly. Suppose, after such renunciation, a man found 
 he had given up the only world there was for him? Then 
 ensues the poem itself, which consists of the description 
 of a vision of the final judgment which the man of faith 
 received, and which shook him out of the very web of 
 negation in which his friend struggles. Suddenly, as he 
 crossed a common at midnight, occupied with these very 
 thoughts, all the midnight became "one fire." There
 
 1 66 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 shot across the dome of heaven, "like horror and astonish- 
 ment, ' ' 
 
 A fierce vindictive scribble of red, 
 And straight I was aware 
 
 That the whole rib-work round, minute 
 
 Cloud touching cloud beyond compute 
 
 Was tinted, each with its own spot 
 
 Of burning at the core, till clot 
 
 Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire 
 
 Over all heaven. 
 
 This awful vision burned away all darkness from his 
 spirit, and he knew that he had chosen, not God, but the 
 World. Instantly he resolved to defend and applaud his 
 choice. God had created him to appreciate the beauties 
 of life, and he had not put aside the boon unused that 
 was all. But at that instant there came a final belch of 
 
 fire, and he saw God 
 
 Like the smoke 
 
 Pillared o'er Sodom when day broke 
 I saw him. 
 
 Then God spoke. He had chosen the world; let him 
 glut his sense upon the world, but remember he was shut 
 out from the heaven of spirit. But what was the world, 
 with all its brave show of beauty? Merely one rose of 
 God's making, flung 
 
 Out of a summer's opulence, 
 Over the Eden barrier, whence 
 Thou art excluded. 
 
 Well, then, he would choose art, to which the voice of 
 God replies yet more sternly that art is less than nature; 
 and its highest trophies the shame and despair of artists, 
 who sought therein to express the invisible whole of which 
 they perceived but a part. Then he will choose mind,
 
 The Spirit of Browning's Religion 167 
 
 the joys of intellect; but what again, replies the Judge, is 
 mind but a gleam which to the devout thinker 
 
 Makes bright the earth an age 
 Now, the whole sun's his heritage! 
 
 Lastly, he perceives there is nothing left but love, and 
 that shall be his choice. 
 
 God is: thou art the rest is hurled 
 To nothingness. 
 
 He has doubted the story of Christ because he could 
 not conceive so great love in God 
 
 Upon the ground 
 That in the story had been found 
 Too much love! How could God love so? 
 He, who in all His works below, 
 Adapted to the needs of man, 
 Made love the basis of His plan, 
 Did love, as was demonstrated. 
 
 In that moment he saw that God's love was the solu- 
 tion of all intellectual difficulties, and then, as he lay prone 
 and overwhelmed, 
 
 The whole God within his eyes 
 Embraced me. 
 
 So the poem ends a vision of divine, unalterable love 
 as the solution of the mystery of the universe. 
 
 The infinite issue of human choice is, again, one of 
 those strong beliefs which with Browning form the spirit 
 of his religion. He reiterates persistently and in many 
 forms that any choice which falls short of God is ruinous 
 in its sequence. For instance, the speaker in "Easter 
 Day" is taught the folly of choosing mind by perceiving 
 that the highest genius of man is but a gleam from the
 
 1 68 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 unexhausted sun which pours light through an eternal 
 world. But Browning, in one of his greatest poems, 
 "Paracelsus," has gone much farther than this. In that 
 poem he has shown that intellect without love, without 
 morality, without character, is of all forces the most peril- 
 ous. Paracelsus has sought to know. What has his 
 desire brought him but bitterness and disappointment? 
 So poignant is his sense of failure that he even cries: 
 
 Mind is nothing but disease, 
 And natural health is ignorance. 
 
 And in the final pathetic scene he derides the folly of such 
 intellectual passions as those which have consumed him, 
 and sees clearly that to love is better than to know. 
 
 No, no; 
 
 Love, hope, fear, faith these make humanity; 
 These are its sign and note and character, 
 And these I have lost. 
 
 Indeed, throughout his writings Browning shows him- 
 self inexorably opposed to the modern theistic philosophy 
 which makes the individual the center of the universe, and 
 steadily teaches the more ancient doctrine of Him who, 
 being rich, for our sakes became poor, that we, by His 
 poverty, might become rich 
 
 Renounce joy for my fellow's sake? That's joy 
 Beyond joy. 
 
 But this all-present sense of God's love implies also 
 such truths as communion, prayer, providence; and these 
 also are incorporated in Browning's religion. The noblest 
 example of Browning's expression of these doctrines is 
 found in the short but splendid poem, "Instans Tyran- 
 nus." It is the tyrant who speaks. Out of the million
 
 The Spirit of Browning's Religion 169 
 
 or two of men he possesses there is one man not at all to 
 his mind. He struck him, of course, but though pinned 
 to the earth with the persistence of so great a hate, he 
 neither moaned nor cursed. He is nothing but a toad or 
 rat, but nevertheless the tyrant cannot eat in peace while 
 he lives to anger him with his abominable meekness. So 
 he soberly lays his last plan to extinguish the man 
 
 When sudden . . . how think ye? the end 
 
 Did I say "without friend"? 
 
 Say, rather, from marge to blue marge, 
 
 The whole sky grew his targe, 
 
 With the sun's self for visible boss, 
 
 While an arm ran across! 
 
 Do you see? Just my vengeance complete, 
 
 The man sprang to his feet, 
 
 Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed! 
 
 So /was afraid? 
 
 The poem is a sort of magnificent version of the familiar 
 hymn-lines: 
 
 Strong to deliver, and good to redeem 
 
 The weakest believer who hangs upon Him. 
 
 The center of Browning's whole world of religious 
 thought lies in his abiding sense and conviction that God 
 is love. It reconciles him to the mysteries of faith, it 
 casts a bright bridge of gleaming hope across the pro- 
 found gulfs of human error, and like the lunar rainbow he 
 describes, a second and mightier bow springs from the 
 first, and stands vast and steady above the mysterious 
 portals of human destiny, on whose straining topmost arc 
 he sees emerge the foot of God himself. "God is good, 
 God is wise, God is love," is the perpetual whisper of 
 spiritual voices, floating over him, and piercing with their
 
 i jo Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 divine sweetness the evil darkness of the tortuous way he 
 threads in tracking out the strange secrets of human 
 impulse and achievement. All knowledge is but the 
 shadow of God's light; all purity and constancy of human 
 passion but the hint of His love; all beauty but the fitful 
 gleam of His raiment as He passes us that King in His 
 beauty whose very face itself we shall at last behold in the 
 land that is very far off. If Browning stands amid the 
 ruins of that mighty city, which in a single year sent its 
 million fighters forth, and 
 
 Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time 
 
 Sprang sublime, 
 And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced 
 
 As they raced, 
 
 it is to turn at last from the vision of that domed and 
 daring palace, the splendid spectacle of power and pomp, 
 
 to cry: 
 
 Shut them in, 
 
 With their triumphs, and their glories, and the rest; 
 Love is best! 
 
 If he considers the failing of human power in the pres- 
 ence of death, it is only to exclaim, in his "Rabbi Ben 
 Ezra," with a sense of triumphant gladness: 
 Grow old along with me! 
 The best is yet to be, 
 
 The last of life for which the first was made; 
 Our times are in His hand, 
 Who saith: "A whole I planned, 
 Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid!" 
 
 He has infinite faith in God, that His love will, in ways 
 unknown to us, work out ultimate blessedness for His 
 children, and that the world will not pass out in darkness, 
 but in the end of the ages it will be daybreak everywhere.
 
 Robert Browning Concluding Survey 187 
 
 stronger faith; but even so the world will still turn to the 
 finer poems of Browning for intellectual stimulus, for the 
 purification of pity and of pathos, for the exaltation of 
 hope, and will revere him who, in the night of the world's 
 doubt, still sang: 
 
 This world's no blot for us, 
 
 Nor blank it means intensely and means good, 
 
 To find its meaning is my meat and drink. 
 
 Since these criticisms were written, Robert Browning 
 has passed away. He retained to the last his genial faith, 
 his resolute optimism, his intellectual vigor and subtlety. 
 The last poem of his last volume is a sort of summing up 
 of himself and his life-work: nor could a more discerning 
 summary be found than in the words: 
 
 One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, 
 
 Never doubted clouds would break, 
 Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, 
 
 Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
 Sleep to wake. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. How have the problems of the nineteenth century affected 
 the faith of many of its thinking men? 
 
 2. What is Browning's teaching with regard to Christ? 
 
 3. In what spirit does he approach the doubts of men? 
 
 4. What does he teach as to our constantly receding ideals? 
 
 5. How does Browning deal with the tangled problems of 
 human conduct? 
 
 6. What is the story of "The Ring and the Book"? 
 
 7. What remarkable vision of evolution is found in the con- 
 cluding pages of Paracelsus?
 
 1 88 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 8. What famous poems of Browning are peculiarly Christian 
 in their character? 
 
 9. Quote the stanza from Browning's last poem which sums 
 up his own life. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Browning's Message to His Time. Edward Berdoe. 
 
 Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning. Anne Thack- 
 eray Ritchie. 
 
 Browning Encyclopedia. Edward Berdoe. 
 
 Browning's Complete Works, in one volume, with notes. 
 Cambridge Edition, $3.00. 
 
 The Camberwell Edition, in twelve small volumes, with 
 notes, 7$c each, sold singly. 
 
 There are many excellent small volumes of selected poems.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 Born at Ecclefechan, December 4, 1795. Entered Edinburgh 
 University, 1809. Published Life of Schiller, 1825. Married 
 Jane Welsh, October, 1826. Contributed to Edinburgh 
 Review, Westminster, Foreign Quarterly, etc., 1828-1833, 
 when Sartor Resartus was published in Eraser's Magazine, 
 French Revolution, 1837. Past and Present, 1843. Latter- 
 Day Pamphlets, 1850. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, 
 1845. History of Frederick the Great, begun 1858, com- 
 pleted 1865. Elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, 
 1865. Died at 5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, February 5, 1881. 
 
 Taking him for all in all, Thomas Carlyle is the most 
 representative and by far the greatest man of genius of 
 the nineteenth century. The four notes of genius are 
 originality, fertility, coherence, and articulation. He is 
 so far original in style and method that there is no one 
 with whom we can justly compare him. He followed no 
 master, and acknowledged none; his angle of vision on 
 all questions was his own, and what he saw he expressed 
 in a fashion which decorous literary persons of the old 
 order felt to be dazzlingly perverse, startling, eruptive, and 
 even outrageous. His mind was also one of the most 
 fertile of minds; not so much in the matter of industrious 
 production as in the much rarer function of begetting 
 great seminal ideas, which reproduced themselves over the 
 entire area of modern literature. Coherence marks these 
 ideas, for the main principles of his philosophy are so 
 
 189
 
 190 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 simple and so definite, that from his earliest writings to 
 his last there is perfect unity. Lastly, in the matter of 
 articulation or expression, he is supreme. He enlarged 
 the potentialities of language, as every great literary artist 
 does, and in precision, splendor, and suggestiveness of 
 phrase stands unapproached. 
 
 But Carlyle was much more even than a great man of 
 genius, or a great writer. He never conceived himself, 
 nor did any one who knew him intimately conceive him, 
 as having found a sufficing expression of himself in his 
 writings. He knew himself, and was felt by others, to be 
 a great spiritual force. Criticism has had much to say 
 upon the strangeness and mass of his genius; it has hardly 
 "yet apprehended aright his prophetic force. That he 
 brought into English literature much that is startling and 
 brilliant in style is the least part of the matter; he brought 
 also a flaming vehemence of thought, passion, and convic- 
 tion, which is unique. Goethe, with his piercing insight, 
 was the first to recognize the true nature of the man. He 
 discovered Carlyle long before England had heard of him, 
 when he was simply an unknown and eccentric young 
 Scotsman, who found astonishing difficulty in earning daily 
 bread. The great German incontinently brushed aside, as 
 of relative unimportance, all questions about his genius, and 
 touched the true core of the man and his message, when he 
 said that Carlyle was "a new moral force, the extent and 
 effects of which it is impossible to predict." In other words, 
 Goethe recognized the main fact about him, which was that 
 by nature, temperament, and vocation he was a prophet. 
 
 If Carlyle had been asked to state what he understood 
 by the word "prophet," he would have laid emphasis upon 
 two things: clearness and vividness of vision in the appre-
 
 Thomas Carlyle 191 
 
 hension of truth, and resolute sincerity in acting on it. 
 Carlyle held that there is within every man something 
 akin to the Daemon of Socrates intuition, spiritual appre- 
 hension, a living monitor and guide; and that the man 
 who obeys this inward voice knows by a species of celes- 
 tial divination where his path lies, and what his true work 
 is. In nothing does the essentially prophetic nature of 
 Carlyle appear more plainly than in these qualities. Dur- 
 ing the first forty years of his life forty years spent in 
 the desert of the sorest discipline a man could suffer 
 there was no moment when he might not have instantly 
 improved his position by a little judicious compromise. 
 But all compromise he regarded with scornful anger. He 
 might have entered the church, and his spiritual gifts were 
 vastly in excess of those of thousands who find in the pul- 
 pit an honorable opportunity of utterance. He might 
 have obtained a professorship in one or other of the Scotch 
 seats of learning, if he had cared to trim his course to 
 suit the winds and tides of the ordinary conventions. He 
 might at any moment have earned an excellent competence 
 by his pen, if he had consented to modify the ruggedness 
 of his style and the violence of his opinions to the stan- 
 dards of the review editors and their readers. But in 
 either of these courses he recognized a fatal peril to his 
 sincerity. Poor as he was, he would not budge an inch. 
 He was fastidious to what seemed to men like Jeffrey an 
 absolutely absurd degree over the honor of his indepen- 
 dence. He would make no hair's-breadth advance to meet 
 the world; the world must come over to him, bag and 
 baggage. He acted with implicit obedience on his intu- 
 ition. He had the prophet's stern simplicity of habit. 
 He cared nothing for comfort or success; and when at
 
 192 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 last success came, his Spartan simplicity of life suffered 
 no change. If ever man in modern days knew what the 
 burden of prophecy meant, what it is to be impelled to 
 utterance by an imperious instinct for truth, and to be 
 straitened in spirit till the message was spoken, that man 
 was Carlyle. It was in this respect that he differed as 
 much from the ordinary man of letters as Isaiah in his 
 most impassioned moments from the common sermon- 
 writer. The pulpit, the bar, the professor's chair, were 
 not for him; therefore he seized upon pen and paper as 
 the only means left of uttering himself to his age. He 
 was perfectly sincere in despising even this as a medium 
 for his spiritual activities. He despised writing as a pro- 
 fession, because he found that when men began to write 
 for bread they became poor creatures, and if they had any 
 real message in them they stifled it to win praise or money. 
 To both praise and money he was contemptuously in- 
 different. His only passion was a passion for truth, and 
 to speak this with the least possible of those literary flour- 
 ishes which capture popularity was his meat and drink. 
 
 Further than this, Carlyle was both poet and humor- 
 ist. He could not indeed write verse. He was never 
 able to master the technicalities of the art of meter. He 
 was as little able to write a novel, which next to verse 
 affords a medium for the man of constructive poetic 
 genius. He tried both arts, with rare and partial success 
 in the first, and abject failure in the second. Goethe, 
 who is the only man who could be spoken of even in a 
 partial sense as Carlyle's master, had a serene equipoise 
 of faculty, a fine and supreme artistic sense, which enabled 
 him to succeed equally in poetry, drama, fiction, or phil- 
 osophy. Carlyle's genius was as remarkable as Goethe's,
 
 Thomas Carlyle 193 
 
 but its powers lay apart in streaming fire-masses, nebu- 
 lous and chaotic, and were not co-ordinated into perfect 
 harmony by that aesthetic sense which was Goethe's high- 
 est gift. But fundamentally he was a poet, and among 
 the greatest of poets. He saw everything through the 
 medium of an intense and searching imagination. No 
 one could describe the impression which his French 
 Revolution produces on the mind better than he himself 
 has done, when he says: "Nor do I mean to investigate 
 much more about it, but to splash down what I know in 
 large masses of colors, that it may look like a smoke and 
 flame conflagration in the distance, which it is." He 
 cannot even walk in Regent Street without exclaiming, 
 "To me, through these thin cobwebs, death and eternity 
 sate glaring." All his personal sensations are magnified 
 into the same gigantic proportions, now lurid, now gro- 
 tesque, by the same atmosphere of imagination through 
 which they are perceived. His sensitiveness is extreme, 
 poignant, even terrible. When he talks of immensities 
 and eternities, he uses no mere stock phrases; he hears 
 the rushing of the fire-streams, and the rolling worlds 
 overhead, as he hears the dark streams flowing under foot, 
 bearing man and all his brave arrays down to "Tartarus, 
 and the pale kingdoms of Dis." When he speaks of him- 
 self as feeling "spectral," he simply expresses that sense 
 of spiritual loneliness, detachment, and mystery out of 
 which the deepest poetry of the world has come. To 
 judge such a man by ordinary prosaic standards is impos- 
 sible. He is of imagination all compact, and his writings 
 can only be rightly regarded as the work of a poet who 
 has the true spirit of the seer, but is incapable of the 
 orthodox forms of poetry.
 
 194 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 It is perhaps even more essential to remember that 
 Carlyle was a humorist of the first order. On the one 
 side of his genius he approaches Burns; on the other, 
 Swift. He shares with Burns a rugged independence of 
 nature, native pride, a sense of the elemental in human 
 life, a power of poignant realism, a rare depth and delicacy 
 of sentiment; he shares also with him the rollicking, 
 broad, not always decorous humor of the Olympian peas- 
 ant, racy of the soil, half-grim, half-boisterous, of which 
 Burns has given imperishable examples in "Tarn o' 
 Shanter" and "Holy Willie's Prayer." But there was 
 also mingled in Carlyle's humor a strain of something 
 darker and more subtle, akin to the saturnine humor of 
 Swift. He has much of that intense and scathing scorn, 
 that sardonic and bitter penetration, which made, and still 
 preserves, the name of Swift as a name of terror. To be 
 sure, we do not find that depth of silent ferocity in Carlyle 
 which alarms and appals us in Swift. Swift often thought 
 and wrote like a mere savage, smarting with the torture of 
 some lacerating, cureless pain. He is at heart a hater of 
 his kind, who spits in the face of its most familiar nobili- 
 ties, out of mere exasperated truculence. There is some- 
 thing abominable and insane in the humor of Swift, with 
 only a rare touch of redeeming geniality. But Carlyle's 
 humor, in all its sardonic force, still preserves an element 
 of geniality. He loves the grotesque and the absurd for 
 their own sakes. He cannot long restrain himself from 
 laughter, good, wholesome, volleying laughter, directed 
 as often against himself as others. Gifts of insight, pas- 
 sion, eloquence, and imagination he had in plenty; but 
 the greatest and rarest of all his gifts was humor. 
 
 Those who knew Carlyle most intimately have all recog-
 
 Thomas Carlyle 195 
 
 i 
 
 nized this wonderful gift of humor which was his. It 
 was said of him by his friends that when he laughed it 
 was Homeric laughter the laughter of the whole soul 
 and body in complete abandonment of mirth. This deep, 
 wholesome laughter reverberates through his writings. 
 No man is quicker to catch a humorous point, or to make 
 it. A collection of Carlyle's best stories, phrases, and 
 bits of personal description would make one of the most 
 humorous books in the language. He makes sly fun of 
 himself, of his poverty, of the unconscious oddities of the 
 obscurest people, and equally of the greatest. His rail- 
 lery is incessant, his eye for the comic of supreme vigi- 
 lance. Of the obscenity of Swift there is no trace; it 
 was not in Carlyle to cherish unwholesome thoughts. 
 But in the strange mingling of the wildest fun with the 
 most penetrating thought, of sardonic bitterness with the 
 mellowest laughter, of the most daring and incisive irony 
 with deep philosophy and serious feeling, there is much 
 that recalls Swift, and suggests his finest qualities. With 
 Swift the bitterness closed down like a cloud, and extin- 
 guished the humor, with the result of that tragic madness 
 which still moves the pity of the world. With Carlyle the 
 humor was always in excess of the bitterness; and supplied 
 that element of saving health which kept his genius fresh 
 and wholesome amid many perils not less real than those 
 which destroyed Swift. 
 
 There is one respect in which it is especially necessary 
 to recollect this element of humor in Carlyle, if we are to 
 judge him correctly, because most of the harsh and unfair 
 judgments passed upon him have directly resulted from its 
 neglect. It must be remembered that Mrs. Carlyle had 
 many qualities in common with her husband, and not the
 
 196 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 least of these was a similar power of irony and humor. 
 She was accustomed to speak of Carlyle in a fashion of 
 the freest banter. When his lectures were first announced 
 in London there was much speculation among his friends 
 whether he would remember to begin orthodoxly with 
 "Ladies and gentlemen," to which Mrs. Carlyle replied 
 that it was far more likely he would begin with "Fool 
 creatures come hither for diversion." Her satiric com- 
 ment on the success of the business was, that at last the 
 public had apparently decided that he was a man of genius, 
 and "worth being kept alive at a moderate rate." Is it 
 not conceivable to a person of even moderate intelligence 
 that the conversation of two persons so witty, keen- 
 tongued, and given to satiric burlesque and banter as the 
 Carlyles, was in no sense to be taken literally? Is it not 
 further conceivable that many things which look only 
 bitter when put into print had a very different effect and 
 intention when uttered in the gay repartee of familiar 
 conversation? The fact is, that the Carlyles habitually 
 addressed one another with irony. It is no uncommon 
 thing between intimates : it is rather a sign of the security 
 of the affection which unites them. But if, by some 
 unhappy accident, a third person who has no sense of 
 humor hears this gay clash of keen words, and puts them 
 down in dull print, and goes on to point out in his dull 
 fashion that they do not sound affectionate, and are 
 phrases by no means in common use among excellent 
 married persons of average intellects, it is easy to see that 
 the worst sort of mischief may readily be wrought. Thus, 
 for example, when Mrs. Carlyle lay ill with a nervous 
 trouble which made it impossible for her to close her 
 mouth, Carlyle, who knew nothing of this peculiarity of
 
 Thomas Carlyle 197 
 
 her disease, stood solemnly at the foot of her bed one 
 day, and said: "Jane, ye'd be in a far more composed 
 state of mind if ye'd close your mouth." This story is 
 told, forsooth, as an illustration of the harshness of Car- 
 lyle to his wife. So far was Mrs. Carlyle from inter- 
 preting it in any such way, that she tells it herself with 
 inimitable glee, and is keen to describe its ludicrous aspect. 
 And as in this instance, so in a hundred more that might 
 be analyzed, humor was a dominant quality in all the con- 
 versations of Carlyle, and in almost equal degree of his 
 wife's also; and it is only by recollecting this that it is 
 possible to judge rightly a married life which was passed 
 in an atmosphere and under conditions peculiarly its own. 
 It is necessary to dwell on this matter with more full- 
 ness than it deserves, because nothing has so greatly 
 injured Carlyle's reputation and influence as the reported 
 infelicities of his domestic life. All these reports depend 
 on the testimony of one or two witnesses whose word is 
 worthless. Fortunately for us the real truth is preserved, 
 not in the chance impressions of friends or guests who 
 saw the Carlyles from the outside, but in the mutual cor- 
 respondence of husband and wife, in their journals, and 
 in their intimate confessions to others through a long 
 range of years. There have been many exquisite love- 
 letters written by literary men, but there are none to sur- 
 pass Carlyle's letters to his wife. No woman was ever 
 loved more deeply: had not the love on both sides been 
 real and vital there would have been no tragedy to record. 
 It was simply because these two were so much to each 
 other that the slightest variation of temperature in their 
 affection was so keenly and instantaneously felt by each. 
 The real source of their difficulties was, that they were too
 
 198 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 much alike in temper, in methods of thought, and in intel- 
 lectual outlook. There was about each that difficult 
 Scottish reticence which sealed the lips and forbade speech 
 even when the heart was fullest. The moment they are 
 separated, the love-letters flow in a continuous stream 
 love-letters, as I have said, which are the tenderest in the 
 language so far as Carlyle is concerned, and which never 
 lost their warmth through all the years of a long married 
 life. On paper the heart opens itself; face to face they 
 cannot speak. As they recede from one another each 
 grows in luminous charm, and faults are forgotten, and 
 passion is intensified; as they come back from these con- 
 stant separations, the glow fades into the light of common 
 day, and neither has the tact or grace to retain it. Each 
 is exquisitely, even poignantly sensitive, and gives and 
 suffers wounds which are totally unsuspected by the other. 
 The heart is always at boiling-point ; the nerves are always 
 quivering; there are no cool, gray reaches of mere pleas- 
 ant comradeship between them. It is not difficult to 
 understand that in such a marriage there were hours of 
 the deepest blackness; but there were also seasons of such 
 light and radiance as are never found in duller lives. 
 
 But there was another cause of bitterness, which Car- 
 lyle has touched with the utmost delicacy and insight when 
 he writes (August 24, 1836): "Oh, my poor bairn, be not 
 faithless, but believing! Do not fling life away as insup- 
 portable, despicable; but let us work it out, and rest it 
 out together, like a true two, though under some obstruc- 
 tions." One would have supposed that Carlyle would 
 have written "a true one"; but that he had ceased to 
 hope for. Mrs. Carlyle's nature was of a stubbornness 
 as invincible as his own, and was as deeply independent
 
 Thomas Carlyle 199 
 
 and original. It galled her to shine only in Carlyle's 
 light. She had a literary faculty, in its way as remarkable 
 as her husband's, and she felt that it was obscured by his 
 more massive genius. She was not the sort of woman to 
 find her life in the life of any man; she craved a separate 
 platform. What Carlyle could do to soften and ease 
 matters he did. He absolutely refused all invitations to 
 great houses where his wife was not as welcome as him- 
 self. He sincerely believed her to be the cleverest and 
 best of women, who deserved distinction for her own 
 sake. But it was all of no avail. She allowed herself to 
 become frantic with jealousy, and absolutely without 
 cause. Her tongue could be as satiric, as undiscriminat- 
 ing, as his. For the most part she used that potent 
 instrument, as Dr. Garnett says (a little unjustly, I think), 
 "to narrow his sympathies, edge his sarcasms, intensify 
 his negations, and foster his disdain for whatever would 
 not run in his own groove." When it was turned against 
 him one can imagine the result. That which strikes one 
 most in reading the story is, that all the bitterness between 
 them might have been avoided by a little tact, a little com- 
 mon sense. But in these qualities each was deficient. 
 Each was accustomed to see life through the atmosphere 
 of an imagination which exaggerated into grotesqueness 
 or tragedy the simplest things. Each felt the least jar 
 upon the nerves as a veritable agony. Life was unques- 
 tionably hard enough for them in any case, but this intense 
 sensitiveness made it tenfold harder. 
 
 Yet when all these admissions are made, we should 
 take an altogether wrong impression if we supposed that 
 these disagreements were normal and continuous. Not 
 merely does Mrs. Carlyle's real love for Carlyle come out
 
 2OO Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 in so many direct and positive expressions, but it is admir- 
 ably reflected in her humor. There may be wit, but there 
 cannot be humor, without love, and the way in which she 
 permits her bright and vivacious humor to play round him 
 in her letters reveals not merely her genius, but her heart. 
 He is her "poor babe of genius." "Between two and 
 three o'clock is a very placid hour with the creature." 
 "He never complains of serious things, but if his finger is 
 cut, one must hold it and another get plaister." On the 
 New- Year morning of 1863, Carlyle no sooner gets up 
 than he discovers "that his salvation, here and hereafter, 
 depended on having 'immediately, without a moment's 
 delay,' a beggarly pair of old cloth boots that the street- 
 sweeper would hardly have thanked him for, 'lined with 
 flannel, and new bound, and repaired generally.' ' 
 "Nothing in the shape of illness ever alarms Mr. C. but 
 that of not eating one's regular meals." She relates with 
 positive glee, and in the spirit of the brightest banter, 
 innumerable episodes in which "the creature" performs 
 some eccentric part; and often enough, as Mr. Moncure 
 Conway has told us, these little pieces of inimitable farce 
 were performed in Carlyle's presence, and to his own 
 infinite amusement. There is always a certain soup f on of 
 bitterness in the banter, but it is a pleasant, and not a cor- 
 rosive, bitter. She knew exactly where the trouble was 
 between them; she knew that when Carlyle was exhausted 
 with his immense labors, and she worn to the nerve with 
 neuralgia, sleeplessness, and domestic worries, each was 
 apt to rub the other the wrong way, and to magnify unin- 
 tended slights into mischievous offences. She knew it, 
 and was sorry for it, and would have avoided it if she 
 could. "Alas, dear!" she writes, "I am very sorry for you.
 
 Thomas Carlyle 201 
 
 You, as well as I, are too vivid; to you as well as me has 
 a skin been given much too thin for the rough purposes of 
 human life God knows how gladly I would be sweet- 
 tempered, and cheerful-hearted, and all that sort of thing, 
 for your single sake, if my temper were not soured and 
 my heart saddened beyond my power to mend them." 
 But though she could be neither sweet-tempered nor 
 cheerful, she was always brave, bright, and sensitive to 
 the humorous aspect of things. Upon the whole, one 
 may doubt if any braver woman ever lived; Joan of Arc 
 in her glittering armor was no more of a heroine than 
 Mrs. Carlyle in that small dominion at Cheyne Row, in 
 her endless strifes with servants and mechanics, her reso- 
 lute sorties on the wolf of poverty that for so many years 
 growled at the door, and her desperate ingenuities to make 
 the path easy for her "poor babe of genius." 
 
 The actual amount of physical and nervous suffering 
 which Mrs. Carlyle endured during these years, and espe- 
 cially towards the end, exceeds the total of the worst 
 agony of those we call martyrs. What sadder or more 
 poignant cries have ever been wrung from a human spirit 
 than these? "Oh, my own darling, God have pity on us! 
 Ever since the day after you left, whatever flattering 
 accounts may have been sent you, the truth is, I have been 
 wretched perfectly wretched day and night, with that 
 horrible malady. So God help me, for on earth is no 
 help!" "Oh, my dear, I think how near my mother I 
 am! [She was then staying at Holm Hill, not far from 
 where her mother was buried.] How still I should be, 
 laid beside her! But I wish to live for you, if only I 
 
 could live out of torment I seem already to belong 
 
 to the passed-away as much as to the present; nay, more.
 
 2O2 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 God bless you on your solitary way! .... Oh, my dear, 
 I am very weary. My agony has lasted long. I am 
 tempted to take a long cry over myself and no good will 
 come of that." She expresses her sorrow for "the ter- 
 rible, half-insane sensitiveness which drove me on to 
 bothering you. Oh, if God would only lift my trouble off 
 me so far that I could bear it all in silence, and not add 
 to the troubles of others !....! am very stupid and low. 
 God can raise me up again: but will he? My dear, when 
 I have been giving directions about the house, then a feel- 
 ing like a great black wave will roll over my breast, and I 
 say to myself, whatever pains be taken to gratify me, shall 
 I ever more have a day of ease, of painlessness, or a 
 night of sweet rest in that house, or in any other house 
 but the dark narrow one where I shall arrive at last? Oh, 
 dear! you cannot help me, though you would! Nobody 
 can help me! Only God: and can I wonder if God take 
 no heed of me, when I have all my life taken so little heed 
 of Him?" Nor are the replies of Carlyle less pathetic. 
 "My thoughts," says he, "are a prayer for my poor little 
 life-partner, who has fallen lame beside me, after travel- 
 ing so many steep and thorny ways My poor 
 
 little friend of friends! she has fallen wounded to the 
 ground, and I am alone alone !" In her worst agonies 
 she turns to her husband always with cries for consola- 
 tion, and says: "I cannot tell how gentle and good Mr. 
 Carlyle is. He is busy as ever, but he studies my com- 
 fort and peace as he never did before." At the same 
 time he is taking sorrowful note of the fact that she is 
 more careful of his comforts than in her busiest days of 
 health. Is there anywhere in literature a more pathetic 
 page than this? Can there be any clearer testimony to the
 
 Thomas Carlyle 203 
 
 reality and depth of that love which bound these two sorely 
 tried souls together, or to the error of the general assump- 
 tion that their marriage was a foolish and unhappy one? 
 
 Pages might be written on such a theme, but all that 
 can be said profitably is said when we are asked to recol- 
 lect the extreme and almost morbid sensitiveness of both 
 Carlyle and his wife, their common love of irony, their 
 common practice of humorous exaggeration on all sub- 
 jects, but especially those in which their own personalities 
 were involved, and the strain upon nerve and temper 
 which was imposed by years of unintermittent labor and 
 vain struggle. One thing is at least clear, that in their 
 more serious misunderstandings they were neither in 
 thought nor deed unfaithful to one another, and never 
 ceased to love each other with absorbing passion. Of the 
 dull, truculent, selfish brutality of temper attributed to 
 Carlyle by some writers, he was utterly incapable, for he 
 was the most magnanimous of men. "I could not help," 
 says Emerson, on recalling his memorable visit to Carlyle 
 at Craigenputtock, "congratulating him upon his treasure 
 of a wife." Others who visited the Carlyles during this 
 same period, when life was hardest with them, have borne 
 witness that they lived with one another upon delightful 
 terms. Surely, if some bitter words escaped them in the 
 long struggle, it is a matter, not for wonder, but for forgive- 
 ness; surely also some allowance can be made for a man 
 of genius staggering beneath a burden almost too great to 
 be borne, and for a woman broken in health by a most 
 distressing malady, each of them, as Mrs. Carlyle con- 
 fessed, "too vivid," and "with a skin much too thin for 
 the rough purposes of human life." When the unwhole- 
 some love of scandal, aroused by the passion which mean
 
 204 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 natures find in discovering the faults of the great, subsides, 
 no doubt the true facts will be seen in their right per- 
 spective, and blame will be exchanged for pity, censure 
 for a comprehending charity. 
 
 In the mean time we may remember that those who 
 knew Carlyle the best speak most warmly of the magna- 
 nimity of his character. 
 
 The impression which Carlyle made upon his contem- 
 poraries is the best comment on his character. The most 
 serious men of his time recognized him as a modern John 
 the Baptist, and even a worldly ecclesiastic like Bishop 
 Wilberforce described him as "a most eminently religious 
 man." Charles Kingsley honored him as his master, and 
 has drawn an admirable portrait of him as Saunders 
 Mackaye in Alton Locke, of winch description Carlyle 
 characteristically said that it was a "wonderfully splendid 
 and coherent piece of Scotch bravura." His gospel is 
 contained in Sartor Resartus, of which it has been perti- 
 nently said that it "will be read as a gospel or not at all." 
 A calm and penetrative critic like James Martineau wit- 
 nesses to the same overwhelming religious force in Carlyle 
 when he speaks of L ls writings as a "pentecostal power 
 on the sentiments of Englishmen." On the truly poetic 
 nature of his genius all the great critics have long ago 
 agreed. How could it be otherwise in regard of writings 
 whose every second paragraph kindles into the finest 
 imaginative fire? His power of imagery is Dantesque; 
 his range is truely epic; the very phrases of his diaries 
 and letters are steeped in poetry, as when he speaks of 
 John Sterling's last "verses, written for myself alone, as 
 in star-fire and immortal tears." The testimonies to his 
 power of humor, so far as his conversations are con-
 
 Thomas Carlyle 205 
 
 cerned, are much too numerous for recapitulation. His 
 own definition of humor was "a genial sympathy with the 
 under side"; and this vivid sympathy expressed itself in 
 his use of ludicrous and extraordinary metaphor, and in 
 his "delicate sense of absurdity." His most volcanic 
 denunciations usually "ended in a laugh, the heartiest in 
 the world, at his own ferocity. Those who have not 
 heard that laugh," says Mr. Allingham, "will never know 
 what Carlyle's talk was." Prophet, poet, and humorist 
 so stands Carlyle before the world, a man roughly hewn 
 out of the primeval earth, conceived in the womb of labor 
 and hardship, yet touched with immortal fire, fashioned 
 in the rarest mould of greatness, tenderness, and heroism; 
 clearly the most massive, impressive, and fascinating figure 
 in nineteenth-century literature. It remains for us to see 
 what his writings teach us, and what is taught yet more 
 forcibly by the epic of his life. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. In what respects may Carlyle be called the greatest 
 genius of the nineteenth century? 
 
 2. What did Goethe say of him? 
 
 3. How did the nature of Carlyle's early life prove the 
 sincerity of his purpose? 
 
 4. How did Carlyle's genius differ from that of Goethe? 
 
 5. How were his habits of expression colored by his im- 
 agination? 
 
 6. What kind of humor did Carlyle possess? 
 
 7. Illustrate Mrs. Carlyle's use of humor of a similar kind. 
 
 8. Why has Carlyle's domestic life been so unfortunately 
 misunderstood? 
 
 9. What real causes for suffering existed in the lives of 
 these two people? 
 
 10. What is undoubtedly the true view to be taken of the 
 whole subject?
 
 206 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Thomas Carlyle. Richard Garnett. (Great Writers Series.) 
 
 Thomas Carlyle : A History of the First Forty Years of 
 His Life. J. A. Froude. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle : A History of His Life in London. }. A. 
 Froude. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle. Reminiscences, letters, correspondence 
 of Carlyle and Emerson, correspondence between Goethe and 
 Carlyle. Edited by Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 Lessons from My Masters: Carlyle, Tennyson, Ruskin. 
 Peter Bayne. 
 
 Carlyle's Complete Works (Illustrated Cabinet Edition), 
 $1.50 per volume, sold separately. There are many cheap 
 editions of Sartor Resartus, Heroes and Hero Worship, and of 
 some of his essays.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 CARLYLE'S TEACHING 
 
 Maurice once said of himself that he only had three or 
 four things to say, and he felt it necessary to go on saying 
 them over and over again. The same criticism might be 
 passed upon Carlyle. No great writer has repeated him- 
 self with such freedom and emphasis. It therefore be- 
 comes a comparatively easy task to discern the main lines 
 of his teaching. In whatever he wrote, whether history 
 or essay, private journals or biography, these main lines 
 of thought perpetually appear, like auriferous strata, 
 pushing themselves up through the soil, and indicating the 
 nature of his thinking. 
 
 The remark of Bishop Wilberforce, that Carlyle was 
 an eminently religious man, gives us the true starting- 
 point for any honest understanding of his teaching. Mr. 
 Frbude has spoken of him as a Calvinist without the 
 theology, and in the main this is true. Every one knows 
 the striking passage in which Carlyle tells us how Irving 
 drew from him the confession that he was no longer able 
 to see the truths of religion from the orthodox standpoint. 
 Upon analysis this will be found to mean that he had 
 definitely rejected the supernatural. He once said that 
 nothing could be more certain than that the miracles, as 
 they were related in the Gospels, did not and could not 
 have occurred. For the church, as such, he had small 
 respect, because it seemed to him to be mainly given over 
 
 207
 
 208 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 to a hollow recitation of formulae which it had really 
 ceased to believe, and which no rational man ever would 
 believe again with genuine sincerity. He regarded the 
 efforts of Maurice to frame a rational basis for belief in 
 the supernatural as the endless spinning of a rope of sand. 
 He once pointed to Dean Stanley and said, with cutting 
 sarcasm: "There goes Stanley knocking holes in the 
 bottom of the Church of England." But on the other 
 hand, he had more than sarcasm: he had an absolutely 
 savage contempt for anything approaching atheism. Of 
 Mill he spoke with bitter and habitual ridicule, although 
 he recognized in him the finest friendliness of nature; of 
 Darwin "as though he had robbed him." He dismissed 
 the discoveries of Darwin with the scathing phrase, 
 "Gorilla damnifications of humanity." He speaks of his 
 "whole softened heart" going out anew in childlike utter- 
 ance of the great prayer, "Our Father, who art in heaven." 
 While he cannot believe the Gospel miracles, he neverthe- 
 less teaches that the world itself is nothing less than one 
 vast standing miracle. No saint or prophet ever spoke 
 with a surer faith of that great Yonder, to which he 
 believes his father is gathered, and where he and all whom 
 he loves will some day be reunited in some new intimacy 
 of infinite love. He scruples even to use the name of 
 God, inventing paraphrases of it because he feels it is too 
 great and holy for common utterance. A profound belief 
 in Providence governed all his estimates of life, and prayer 
 was with him a habit and an urgent duty, since it was the 
 lifting up of the heart to the Infinite above, which answered 
 to the Infinite within. 
 
 Now, nothing can well appear more contradictory than 
 these statements, and they can only be harmonized by the
 
 Carlyle's Teaching 209 
 
 recollection of one fact, viz., that in Carlyle emotion out- 
 ran reason, and what was impossible to the pure intellect 
 was constantly accepted on the testimony of his spiritual 
 intuitions. The merely theological conclusions of Calvin 
 he absolutely rejected, but the essence of Calvinism ran 
 like a subtle spirit through his whole nature. What he 
 really aimed at was to show that religion rested on no 
 external evidences at all, but on the indubitable intuitions 
 of the human soul. He would not even take the trouble 
 to set about proving that there was a God ; he would have 
 agreed with Addison that the man who said that he did 
 not believe in a God was an impudent liar and knew it. 
 He was angrily contemptuous of Kenan's Life of Jesus, 
 although Renan probably said nothing more than he him- 
 self believed; but he felt a reverence for Christ which 
 revolted from Kenan's method of statement, and he said 
 that his life of Christ was something that never ought to 
 be written at all. Thus it becomes more necessary with 
 Carlyle than with any other writer of our time to distin- 
 guish sharply between his opinions and his convictions. 
 In point of fact, he wrote on religion, as on all other sub- 
 jects, from the standpoint of the poet rather than of the 
 scholar or the philosopher. Driven back upon his defences, 
 Calvin himself could not have spoken with more lucidity 
 and passion of his primary religious beliefs than Carlyle. 
 The Shorter Catechism had passed into the very blood and 
 marrow of his nature. In the bare house at Ecclefechan the 
 "Cottar's Saturday Night" was a veritable fact, and from 
 the Puritan mould of his childhood he never escaped. He 
 never wished to do so. He sought rather to distill the 
 finer essences of Calvinism afresh, and in a great measure 
 he did so. His real creed was Calvinism shorn of its logic
 
 2io Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 and interpenetrated with emotion. He translated it into 
 poetry and touched it with the iridescent glow and color 
 of transcendentalism. He separated what he considered 
 its accidental and formal elements from the essential, and 
 to those essential and imperishable elements he gave a 
 new authority and currency by the impact of his own 
 astonishing genius. 
 
 What were these elements? As restated by Carlyle, 
 they were belief in God as the certainty of certainties on 
 which all human life is built; of a God working in history, 
 and revealing Himself in no mere collection of books, but 
 in all events; of all work as perenially noble and beauti- 
 ful, because it was God's appointed task; of duty and 
 morality as the only real prerogatives of man ; of sincerity 
 and honesty as the chief achievements which God de- 
 manded of man, and the irreducible minimum of any 
 honorable human life. The world was no mere mill, turn- 
 ing its wheels mechanically in the Time-floods, without 
 any Overseer, but a Divinely appointed world, and to 
 know that was the chief element of all knowledge. Man 
 was not a mechanism, but an organism; not a "patent 
 digesting machine," but a divinely fashioned creature. 
 The everlasting Yea was to admit this; the everlasting No 
 to deny it. "On the roaring billows of Time thou art not 
 engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love 
 not pleasure: love God. This is the everlasting Yea, 
 wherein all contradiction is solved, wherein whoso walks 
 and works it is well with him. Even to the greatest that 
 has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and God- 
 announcing, even as under simpler figures to the simplest 
 and the least? The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the 
 rudely jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into
 
 Carlyle's Teaching in 
 
 separate firmaments; deep, silent rock- foundations are 
 built beneath; and the skyey vault with its everlasting 
 luminaries above; instead of a dark, wasteful Chaos, we 
 have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed World." 
 
 To believe this, according to Carlyle, implied a species 
 of conversion, and of his own conversion, when these 
 things suddenly became real to him one night in Leith 
 Walk, he has left as circumstantial an account as we have 
 of the conversion of Luther or Wesley. What it implies 
 is, in effect, a certain reconciliation to God, to the world, 
 and to one's self, Carlyle's intense sympathy with Crom- 
 well, which has made him his best biographer, arises from 
 the fact that he found in Cromwell an echo of his own 
 thoughts and a picture of his own experiences. When 
 Cromwell said, "What are all events but God working?" 
 we readily feel that the very accent of the thought is Car- 
 lyle's. When Cromwell steadies his trembling hand and 
 says, "A governor should die working," he expresses 
 Carlyle's gospel of work in its finest form. When Crom- 
 well talks of dwelling in Kedar and Meshech, where no 
 water is, and of passing through strange hours of black- 
 ness and darkness, he is talking entirely after the manner 
 of Carlyle. After that memorable experience in Leith 
 Walk, Carlyle tells us, his mood was no longer despond- 
 ence, but valorous defiance. The world, at least, had no 
 further power to hurt or hinder him: is he not now sure 
 that he lives and moves at the bidding of a divine task- 
 master? Long afterwards, when his first draft of the 
 French Revolution was burned, this faith in the mystery 
 of God's ordering was his one source of solace. "It is 
 as if my invisible schoolmaster had torn my copy-book 
 when I showed it, and said, 'No, boy! thou must write
 
 212 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 it better.' What can I, sorrowing, do but obey obey 
 and think it the best? To work again; and oh! may God 
 be with me, for this earth is not friendly. On in His 
 name! I was the nearest being happy sometimes these 
 last few days that I have been for months!" To be 
 reconciled to himself meant in such circumstances that he 
 was willing to work, even if nothing came of his work, 
 since work in itself was the appointed duty and true glory 
 of man. "Produce! Produce! were it but the pitifullest 
 infinitesimal fraction of a product, produce it, in God's 
 name. 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, 
 then. Up! up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do 
 it with thy whole might. Work while it is called to-day; 
 for the night cometh wherein no man can work." Not, 
 perhaps, a hopeful or a cheering creed this; but at all 
 events a strenuous and a noble one. Such as it is, it con- 
 tains the substance of Carlyle's contribution to religious 
 thought. And we may profitably remember that the true 
 effect and grandeur of a creed is not to be measured by 
 its dimensions, but by its intensity. We do not need large 
 creeds for high lives, but we do need deep convictions, 
 and Carlyle believed his creed and lived by it with pas- 
 sionate sincerity. 
 
 I have said that this is not a hopeful creed, nor was 
 Carlyle ever a hopeful prophet. He called himself a 
 Radical of the quiet order, but he had none of the hope- 
 fulness of Radicalism, nor was it in him to be quiet on any 
 subject that interested him. There is a good deal of truth 
 in the ironical remark of Maurice, that Carlyle believed in 
 a God who left off governing the world at the death of 
 Oliver Cromwell. He saw nothing in modern progress 
 that justified its boasts, and it must be owned that his
 
 Carlyle's Teaching 213 
 
 social forecasts have been all too amply fulfilled. The 
 hopefulness of Emerson positively angered him. He took 
 him round London, showing him the worst of its many 
 abominations, asking after each had been duly objurgated, 
 "Do you believe in the Devil now?" His very reverence 
 for work led him to reverence any sort of great worker, 
 irrespective of the positive results of his energy. It led 
 him into the mistake of glorifying Frederick the Great. 
 It led him into the still greater error of defending Dr. 
 Francia, the dictator of Paraguay. So far as the first 
 article of the Radical faith goes, a belief in the people 
 and the wisdom of majorities, he was a hardened un- 
 believer. Yet it was not because he did not sympathize 
 with the people. His rapid and brilliant etchings of 
 laboring folk the poor drudge, son of a race of drudges, 
 with bowed shoulders and broken finger-nails, whom he 
 sees in Surges; the poor Irishman "in Piccadilly, blue- 
 visaged, thatched in rags, a blue child on each arm: 
 hunger-driven, wide-mouthed, seeking whom he may 
 devour" are full of tenderness and compassion. He 
 never forgot that he himself was the child of laboring folk, 
 and he spoke for his order. But he had no mind to hand 
 over the government of the nation to the drudges. His 
 theory of government was government by great men, by 
 which he meant strong men. History was to him at bottom 
 the story of great men at work. He believed in individual- 
 ism to the last degree when government was in question. 
 If a man had the power to rule, it was his right to be a 
 ruler, and those who had not the power should be glad and 
 thankful to obey. If they would not obey, the one remedy 
 was the Napoleonic "whiff of grapeshot," or something 
 akin to it, and in this case Might was the divinest Right.
 
 214 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Yet this is very far from being all Carlyle's political 
 gospel. He advocated emigration, and by systematic 
 emigration a dimly formulated scheme of imperial feder- 
 ation, long before these things were discussed by poli- 
 ticians. His denunciations of competition really paved 
 the way for the great schemes of co-operation which have 
 since been effected. More or less he believed that the 
 great remedy for poverty was to get back to the land. 
 "Captains of industry" was his suggestive phrase, by 
 which he indicated the organization of labor. His ap- 
 peals to the aristocracy to be a true aristocracy of work, 
 alive to their social duties, and justly powerful because 
 nobly wise, were certainly not unregarded. Much that 
 we call socialism to-day had its real origin in the writings 
 of Carlyle. The condition of the people was with him a 
 burning and tremendous question. It was not within the 
 range of his powers to suggest much in the way of prac- 
 tical measures; his genius was not constructive. The 
 function of the prophet has always been rather to expose 
 an evil than to provide a remedy. It must be admitted 
 that Carlyle's denunciations are more convincing than his 
 remedies. But they had one effect whose magnitude is 
 immeasurable: they roused the minds of all thinking men 
 throughout England to the real state of affairs, and created 
 the new paths of social reform. The blazing vehemence 
 of his style, the intense vividness of his pictures, could 
 not fail to arrest attention. He shattered forever the 
 hypocrisy that went by the name of "unexampled pros- 
 perity." He forced men to think. In depicting the social 
 England of his time, he "splashed" great masses of color 
 on his canvas, as he did in describing the French Revolu- 
 tion, and all earnest men were astonished into attention.
 
 Carlyle's Teaching 215 
 
 The result has been, as Dr. Garnett puts it, that "opinion 
 has in the main followed the track pointed out by Carlyle's 
 luminous finger"; and a completer testimony to his politi- 
 cal prescience could not be desired. 
 
 Much must be allowed for Carlyle's love of paradox in 
 the statement of these truths. Fundamentally, it is the 
 exaggeration of the humorist who, in his habitual ironies, 
 is half-conscious that he caricatures himself as well as his 
 opponents. No doubt it would have been very helpful to 
 persons of slow understanding if he had always spoken 
 with logical gravity, and had strictly defined and stated 
 what he meant. But then he would have been as dull as 
 they are. The half-dozen truths which he had to teach 
 are as common as copy-book headlines, and as depressing. 
 Put in plain and exact English, they are things which 
 everybody knows, and is willing to accept theoretically, 
 however little he is disposed to act upon them. The 
 supreme merit of Carlyle is, that he sets these common- 
 places on fire by his vehemence, and vitalizes them by his 
 humor. It is the humor of Carlyle that keeps his writ- 
 ings fresh. His nicknames stick when his argument is 
 forgotten. In his hands political economy itself ceases to 
 be a dismal science, and becomes a manual of witty meta- 
 phors. This is so great an achievement that we may 
 readily forgive his frequent inconsequence, and what is 
 worse, his unfairness and exaggeration of statement. 
 
 To this it may be added, that where Carlyle was con- 
 vinced of any unfairness of statement, or unneedful 
 acerbity of temper, no one showed a quicker or nobler 
 magnanimity in apology. His bark was always worse 
 than his bite. We read his ferocious attacks on oppo- 
 nents, or his satiric descriptions of persons, in cool blood,
 
 2i6 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 and do not hear that genial laugh which wound up many 
 similar vituperations in his conversation, and drew their 
 sting. For all his angry counsel to whip drones and shoot 
 rogues, Mrs. Carlyle tells us that when she read aloud to 
 him the account of the execution of the assassin Buranelli, 
 "tears rolled down Carlyle's cheeks he who talks of 
 shooting Irishmen who will not work." He was lament- 
 ably wrong in his judgment of the great issues involved in 
 the American Civil War; but when, years afterwards, 
 Mrs. Charles Lowell, whose son had fallen in the war, 
 visited him, he took her by her hand, and said, even with 
 tears, "I doubt I have been mistaken." Amid all his 
 bright derision and savage mockery, no one can fail to see 
 that he sought for and loved truth alone. That was, and 
 will always remain, his crowning honor. He sought it, 
 and was loyal to it, when he turned sadly from the minis- 
 try for which he was destined, when he went into the 
 wilderness of Craigenputtock, when he was content to be 
 ostracized by Jeffrey and his clique as an intellectual 
 Ishmael, when he finally came to London and took up his 
 real life work, content to starve, if needs be, but resolved 
 to speak or write no word that should win him bread or 
 fame at the price of insincerity. And in the hearts of 
 thousands of men, and among them the best and ablest 
 of his time, he begot the same temper. Kingsley, Ster- 
 ling, Ruskin, and a score of others gathered to his stan- 
 dard, not to name the throng of humbler disciples in every 
 walk of life who caught the inspiration of his passion, 
 and reinterpreted his thoughts. This was the work he 
 did for England; amid manifold shams and hypocrisies 
 he stood fast by the truth, for it was to bear witness to 
 the truth that he was born, and came into the world.
 
 Carlyle's Teaching 217 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. Why is it comparatively easy to discern the main lines 
 of Carlyle's teaching? 
 
 2. What difficulty did he find with the religious beliefs of 
 his time? 
 
 3. How did he feel toward anything like atheism? 
 
 4. What was his own attitude toward God? 
 
 5. How did his opinions sometimes differ from his con- 
 victions? 
 
 6. What were the chief elements of Carlyle's creed? 
 
 7. How does his life of Cromwell reflect his own experi- 
 ences? 
 
 8. How did he meet the tragic destruction of his work on 
 the French Revolution? 
 
 9. How was he impressed by the social conditions of his 
 own times? 
 
 10. What was his idea of the rule of the strong? 
 
 11. How did he try to right the social wrongs of his day? 
 
 12. How did his gifts of style help him in putting the plain 
 truth? 
 
 13. How did his one great purpose in life make him mag- 
 nanimous when he erred as well as heroic in the face of ob- 
 stacles? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. By J. A. 
 Froude. 
 
 Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Mrs. Alexander Ireland. 
 
 In Carlyle's Country : A Sunday in Cheyne Row. John 
 Burroughs, in " Fresh Fields." 
 
 Some Aspects of Poetry. (Prose Poets Carlyle.) J. C. 
 Shairp. 
 
 Modern Guides of English Thought in Matters of Faith. 
 (Carlyle.) R. H. Hutton. 
 
 My Study Windows. (Carlyle.) James Russell Lowell. 
 
 Miscellanies. Vol. I. John Morley. 
 
 Three Great Teachers of Our Own Time. A. H. Japp.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 Born in London, February 8, 1819. Took his degree at Oxford, 
 1842. First volume of Modern Painters published, 1843. 
 Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1849. The Stones of Venice, 
 1851-1853. The Two Paths, 1854. The Elements of Draw- 
 ing, 1857. The Elements of Perspective, 1859. Among his 
 most popular smaller books are: The Crown of Wild Olive, 
 Sesame and the Lilies, The Queen of the Air, Ethics of the 
 Dust, Until This Last, which he has called his best work. 
 Fors Clavigera, a series of letters, published with index, 
 1887. Died at Coniston, January 20, 1900. This and the 
 following chapters were written during the life of Ruskin, 
 and the phraseology has not been altered. 
 
 It is the prophetic force of Carlyle which is his most 
 remarkable quality, as we have seen, and the secret of his 
 abiding influence; it is also the primal and distinctive gift 
 of Ruskin. In poetry, Wordsworth and Shelley represent 
 this force; in history, Carlyle; in social economics, Rus- 
 kin. The prophet is the summed-up soul and conscience 
 of a community, the emblem and the fountain of its moral 
 life. He derives nothing from convention; he speaks out 
 of his own strength and originality of nature, with the 
 vehemence, and even anger, of great convictions, and with 
 an amplitude of utterance which scorns details in its pas- 
 sion for principles. It is above all things his business to 
 see; then to speak of what he sees with unfaltering sin- 
 cerity, addressing himself to his fellows in such a way as 
 
 218
 
 John Ruskin 219 
 
 to reveal to them their own deficiencies; finally to inspire 
 in them a desire of reformation, and of all noble progress 
 and accomplishment. This has been the lifelong mission 
 of Ruskin. 
 
 It has been, however, a mission very much misappre- 
 hended. Tolstoi has affirmed that Ruskin is one of the 
 greatest men of the age, and has said that it pained him 
 to notice that English people generally were of a different 
 opinion. The fact of the matter is, that England has 
 never quite known how to take Ruskin. 
 
 He presents a character of so many subtleties and vari- 
 ations, so tremulously poised between common sense and 
 eccentricity, so clear and firm in outline, yet touched with 
 such deceptive lights and shadows, and capable of such 
 extraordinary transformations, that average opinion has 
 preferred to accept him as a great stylist rather than a 
 great man. He is by turns reactionary and progressive, 
 simple and shrewd, a mystic and a man of practical affairs. 
 He has bewildered men by the very brilliance of his ver- 
 satility. No sooner has the world owned him as the 
 prince of art critics than he sets up as the exponent of a 
 new political economy. He will show us how to weave 
 cloth honestly as well as to draw truly; how to build char- 
 acter, as a matter of greater import even than the building 
 of a Venice; and he who is an authority on Botticelli must 
 needs also be an authority on drains. He links together 
 in the strangest fashion the remotest things philosophy 
 and agriculture, theology and sanitation, the manner of a 
 man's life and the quality of his pictures. It is this very 
 variety and exuberance of mind which has kept the esti- 
 mate of his genius low among his countrymen. They 
 have not been able to follow the nimbleness of his thought,
 
 220 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 and to perceive that, eccentric as it seems, it moves in a 
 precisely ordered orbit. The last thing that the English 
 reader would say of Ruskin is, that he sees life steadily, 
 and he sees it whole; yet that is the very thing that 
 Tolstoi would say of him, and he would add that therein 
 lies his claim to be a great man. 
 
 And in such a contention Tolstoi would be right; the 
 cardinal fact about Ruskin is, that he sees life steadily and 
 sees it whole. This is the explanation of the immense 
 variety of theme in his writings; it springs from width of 
 vision. If he had seen life only in some one special aspect, 
 as for example, in its relation to art alone, which is com- 
 monly supposed to be his one function, the critics would 
 at once have known how to rank him. There would have 
 been no hesitation as to the place that was his by right. 
 But when he links art with morality, when he sets himself 
 to the discovery of the principles by which art is great, 
 and finds them to be also the only verified principles by 
 which life is also great, then criticism becomes purblind 
 and embarrassed. It was prepared to praise the critic of 
 art, but the critic of life is a very different matter. Hence 
 there arises the natural tendency on the part of the reader 
 to regard the opinions of Ruskin as eccentric, but their 
 expression as perfect to value him as a master of literary 
 expression, but not as a teacher to agree, in point of 
 fact, that he is a great writer, but to deny the contention 
 of Tolstoi that he is a great man. It is only going a step 
 further to say of him, as it was said of Goldsmith, who 
 "wrote like an angel, but talked like a poor poll," that 
 Ruskin writes nonsense, but writes it beautifully. That 
 this is the general opinion of English readers, no one 
 would venture to say; but having regard to the general
 
 John Ruskin 221 
 
 praise of the beauty of his style, and the general contempt 
 of the social principles he enunciates, one can see without 
 difficulty what it is Tolstoi meant when he called him a 
 great man, and deplored that his countrymen held a differ- 
 ent opinion. 
 
 The personal history of Ruskin is the history of his 
 writings. No youth ever began life with less likelihood 
 of prophetic development. He was the petted if not 
 spoiled child of wealthy parents. He begins his long use 
 of the pen by the production of merely pretty and con- 
 ventional poems. He writes with the certainty of parental 
 praise, and without the fear of parental or any other 
 criticism. He has absolutely no acquaintance with the 
 hard facts of life, such as drove the iron deep into the 
 soul of Carlyle, and taught him to become both law and 
 impulse to himself. No youth ever stood in greater dan- 
 ger of a life of mere dilettanteism. There was no urgency 
 to win his bread laid upon him, no special preparation 
 for any profession, no diligent training with a view to the 
 toils or the prizes of a career. His chief tastes are, a love 
 of nature, carefully fed by early and extensive travel; a 
 love of books, developed by the best examples; and a love 
 of art, which his possession of means enabled him to 
 gratify. We do not gather from any record of his early 
 life which we possess any sense of great robustness either 
 of mind or body. His youth was threatened by consump- 
 tion, and his mind was delicate and sensitive rather than 
 profound or energetic. There is even the trace of effemi- 
 nacy in this early Ruskin, the quite natural and innocent 
 effeminacy of a childhood sheltered from the rough winds 
 of life, and of a youth that flowers into manhood, not by 
 the conquest of a barren soil, but by the sedulous assist-
 
 222 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 ance of exotic horticulture. As compared with Carlyle, 
 with whom he stands most closely associated, Ruskin 
 grows in a hothouse, while Carlyle is a product of wild 
 moor and bleak hillside. The one is the child of wealth, 
 the other of poverty; the one has a nature rich and varied, 
 the other remains to the last stern and narrow as the land 
 that bore him. Any more unlikely environment for a 
 prophet than Ruskin 's it would be difficult, and perhaps 
 impossible, to imagine. 
 
 But one gift Ruskin had the rare and superb gift of 
 fearless sincerity, and it was this gift that saved him from 
 the perils of dilettanteism and became the dominant force 
 in the shaping of his life and genius. He had also a mind 
 of the keenest analytic quality, and an imagination alike 
 virile and sensitive. It was natural that in such an en- 
 vironment as his, his genius should fix itself first of all 
 upon the study of art. What was art? Was it merely 
 a pleasant adornment of luxurious life, or was it in 
 itself an expression of life? Was its true aim pleas- 
 ure or truth? Ruskin speedily decided that art was 
 serious, and not frivolous, that it had a vital connection 
 with national character, and that its one great mission was 
 truth. He began to train himself with infinite industry 
 and assiduity, that he might be in a position to judge of 
 art with justice and knowledge. He resolved to be led by 
 no traditions, but simply to allow his sincerity of temper 
 unimpeded play, and to abide by the result. The discov- 
 ery of the germ in which all his future teaching of art lay 
 was made almost by accident. He had been taught in 
 sketching foliage to generalize it, and to arrange it by 
 arbitrary rules and on an artificial method. One day he 
 sketched for himself a tree stem with ivy leaves upon it,
 
 John Ruskin 223 
 
 and instantly perceived "how much finer it was as a piece 
 of design than any conventional rearrangement would be." 
 All the rules of artificial art in which he had been trained 
 perished in that simple discovery. He saw then that the 
 only rule of any importance to the artist was, ' ' Be sincere 
 with Nature, and take her as she is, neither casually glan- 
 cing at her 'effects,' nor dully laboring at her parts with 
 the intention of improving and blending them into some- 
 thing better, but taking her all in all. On the other hand, 
 be sincere with yourself, knowing what you truly admire 
 and painting that, refusing the hyprocrisy of any 'grand 
 style' or 'high art,' just as much as you refuse to pander 
 to vulgar tastes. And then vital art is produced, and if 
 the workman be a man of great powers, great art." He 
 had found a domain which hitherto no prophet had claimed 
 or touched. The mere painting of pictures, which to men 
 of a narrower mind, a less refined training, or a more 
 Puritan temper might have seemed a superfluity of luxuri- 
 ous life, without relation to the more serious principles of 
 conduct or the progress of society, he perceived to be an 
 essential element of life and an infallible witness to charac- 
 ter. He had discovered "that art, no less than other 
 spheres of life, had its heroes; that the mainspring of 
 their energy was sincerity, and the burden of their utter- 
 ance truth." 
 
 In its moral aspects this principle is but a rediscovery 
 of the principle of Milton, that a true poet must make his 
 life a poem. It sounds a commonplace, only we have 
 need to remember that nothing is so original as a com- 
 monplace when it is genuinely believed. But it was not a 
 commonplace as Ruskin uttered it, either to himself or the 
 world he sought to instruct; so far from this was it, that
 
 224 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 it was felt to be the enunciation of a new and revolution- 
 ary principle. Art was in those days in peril of becoming 
 a mere handicraft. Its rules were as the laws of the 
 Medes and Persians, which altered not. Given so many 
 rules, you produced a picture with the mathematical cer- 
 tainty by which two and two make four. Mediocre pic- 
 tures were produced in endless progression, each as like to 
 each as though they had been turned out of a factory. 
 The greatest and most inspired artist of his day, Turner, 
 was the object of rancorous ridicule, because he was out- 
 raging the pedantic traditions of artificial picture-making. 
 Ruskin recalled men to nature in art as Wordsworth did 
 in poetry. He laid down the rule that it was the business 
 of the artist to study nature with humbleness and docility, 
 "rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning noth- 
 ing." He laid down the yet harder rule that the character 
 of the artist has more to do with the making of his art 
 than the deftness of his hand; that a picture is the record 
 of a soul, as truly as of some fragment of natural phe- 
 nomena; the rule of Milton, in fact, that the true poem is 
 the product of the true life, and that great art is impossible 
 to the man of mean soul. On those two principles all the 
 art criticism of Ruskin is based. The principle of the 
 return to nature made him the champion of Turner against 
 the world; and later on led him to the discovery of the 
 pre-Raphaelites, and the counsel "to paint things as they 
 probably did look and happen, not as, by the rules of art 
 developed under Raphael, they might be supposed grace- 
 fully, deliciously, or sublimely to have happened." The 
 principle of character as the true secret of art led him to 
 the much wider field of his later literary labors, and the 
 fulfillment of his true prophetic mission.
 
 John Ruskin 225 
 
 I have associated, and in part contrasted, Ruskin with 
 Carlyle, and it is a contrast which he himself sanctions, 
 since he has declared that Carlyle was his master, and that 
 all his thinking has been colored by Carlyle's stronger 
 thought. At first sight the comparison seems unsustained 
 and impossible, for the differences between the two men 
 are clear to the most casual observation. The genius of. 
 Ruskin is subtle, while Carlyle lacks subtlety; the style 
 of Carlyle is chaotic, while Ruskin's is polished to the 
 utmost nicety of expression; Carlyle despised art, and 
 Ruskin adored it; Carlyle is above all things a humorist, 
 while Ruskin has wit and satire, but no humor. Each 
 has vast powers of pugnacity; but Carlyle hurls the 
 thunderbolt, while Ruskin wields the rapier. One has 
 the energy of a primeval man, and his limitations; the 
 other is the fine product of a special culture. Yet in 
 moral temper they are alike, and their criticism of life 
 agrees. Each teaches, as a fundamental truth, that the 
 first duty of man is to take care of facts, and that prin- 
 ciples will take care of themselves. Each delights in 
 broad and vivid generalization. Each is in violent antago- 
 nism to the main trend of the age, and states the ground of 
 his revolt with violence. It was by the mere accident of 
 environment that Ruskin spent the first eagerness of his 
 genius on a theme that Carlyle could never regard as 
 serious; criticism of art was from the very first, with 
 him, criticism of life; and as his genius grew, art fell 
 behind him, and life became more and more. 
 
 How Ruskin has preached the gospel of sincerity with 
 a force inferior only to Carlyle's, and with a penetrating 
 beauty of phrase all his own, we shall see as we turn to 
 his works. In the mean time we should remember that,
 
 226 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 however wrong-headed he may seem to those who do not 
 agree with him, he has practiced his principles, and main- 
 tained from first to last an uncompromising sincerity. He 
 championed Turner, and bought his pictures, when Turner 
 was utterly neglected by both the patron and the public. 
 He praised work, and no more laborious life than his has 
 been lived among us. He insists on a mastery of facts, 
 and no artist ever put himself through a more strenuous 
 discipline to facts than Ruskin, before he considered him- 
 self competent to pronounce judgment on the humblest 
 picture. He has advocated a wise simplicity of life, and 
 few lives have been more gracefully austere than his. No 
 duty has been too humble, if commended by a sense of 
 right; no generosity too great, if it served a wise purpose 
 or a public need. It is the least part of his benefactions 
 that of the two hundred thousand pounds left him by his 
 father every penny has long ago been given away. He 
 has given what is more than money himself, his genius, 
 sympathy, and service, as a willing sacrifice to his country- 
 men; and thus the gospel of sincerity proclaimed in his 
 writings has been made still more beautiful and convincing 
 by his life. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. What is the mission of a prophet as illustrated in the 
 case of Ruskin? 
 
 2. Why has Ruskin frequently bewildered his English 
 readers? 
 
 3. Why do others hold that he " sees life steadily and sees 
 it whole"? 
 
 4. Compare his early life with that of Carlyle. 
 
 5. What qualities had he which saved him from the perils 
 of a life of ease?
 
 John Ruskin 227 
 
 6. What view of art did he develop as the result of his in- 
 terest in the subject? 
 
 7. What was the condition of art in England at this time? 
 
 8. In what respects are Carlyle and Ruskin different and 
 in what alike? 
 
 9. Show how Ruskin practiced what he preached. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 PrcEterita. Outlines of My Past Life. John Ruskin. 
 
 Life and Works of John Ruskin. W. G. Collingwood. 2 
 vols. 
 
 John Ruskin : His Life and Teachings. J. Marshall Mather. 
 
 Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning. Anne Thack- 
 eray Ritchie.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 THE TEACHING OF RUSKIN 
 
 To arrive at an estimate of Ruskin's temperament is 
 easy; of the nature and scope of his teaching and phil- 
 osophy much may be said. In his art criticism we have 
 seen that Ruskin lays down the great principle that sincer- 
 ity is the mainspring of the artist's energy, and the burden 
 of his message is truth. It may be said that such a defi- 
 nition precisely expresses his own temper. But this is by 
 no means an inclusive definition. He insists also with 
 Keats, that truth is beauty, beauty is truth; and that the 
 true artist, while not ignoring the facts of ugliness, will 
 feel his passion going out perpetually toward the fairest 
 forms and richest aspects of things. And it follows still 
 further, that if truth is beauty, then falsehood is ugliness; 
 and wherever there exist things that are repulsive and dis- 
 gusting, it is because of some outrage on truth, or some 
 fundamental error which an exacter conception of truth 
 would have prevented. 
 
 It needs no great wit to see that such a conclusion as 
 this involves every species of social and moral question. 
 Let it be applied in the direction of art itself, and we per- 
 ceive at once that where we have a weakly sensational or 
 a morally degraded art where we have even less than 
 this, an art which is not indeed a moral offence, but is 
 artificial and mechanical, destitute of high imagination 
 and feeling, wrong in its ideals and misguided in its 
 
 228
 
 The Teaching of Ruskin 229 
 
 methods it is simply because of a fault or deficiency in 
 the artist. What is that fault? It is lack of truth and 
 nobleness of moral temper. The greatest artists have not 
 always been good or religious men, but they have been 
 noble-minded men. Their more perfect vision of beauty 
 is the natural result of their profounder love of truth. 
 The lower school of Dutch art is denounced by Ruskin on 
 this very ground; it lacks beauty entirely because the 
 artists lacked the fine sense of truth. They can paint the 
 coarse revels of the tavern with a certain gross realism, 
 but if they had been less of tavern roysterers themselves, 
 they would have had higher visions of truth, and so would 
 have painted things that were beautiful instead of things 
 that are repulsive. It was because they had no thoughts 
 that give them any noble pleasure, that they relied on 
 sensation rather than imagination for the materials of their 
 art. On the other hand, the great Italian masters were 
 men of a noble moral temper; they saw the higher aspects 
 of truth, and for that reason they also reached a pecu- 
 liarly noble ideal of beauty. Bad art, therefore, means 
 either a bad age or an ignobly minded artist; or it may 
 mean both an age that is itself too gross to attain any high 
 vision of truth, or to desire it, and an artist who is the 
 product of his age, and acts in conformity with it. 
 
 Under one of Fra Angelico's pictures is inscribed the 
 sentence, " Painted at rest, praying." Those who look at 
 the picture are scarcely in need of such an explanation. 
 There is an infinite peace and spiritual fervor in the pic- 
 ture; it seems to have captured in its rich color a radiance 
 that is not of this world, and it is the expression not merely 
 of the great technical qualities of the artist, but also of 
 the devoutness of his soul, and the virile purity and reach
 
 230 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 of his imagination. And this is not an inapt illustration 
 of the truth that Ruskin enforces continually in his art 
 teaching. To produce a great picture, it is necessary not 
 merely for the artist to prepare his canvas, but to prepare 
 himself. If a picture is not great, it is because the artist 
 lacks moral and spiritual fiber; and no knowledge of tech- 
 nique, or laborious dexterity of hand, can cover this defi- 
 ciency. Beauty of a mechanical or tumultuous kind there 
 may be, but never the highest form of beauty without the 
 noblest passion for truth. 
 
 Let this principle be applied to the general aspects of 
 national life, and it is equally penetrative and infallible. 
 Let it be assumed that English cities of the manufacturing 
 type are squalid and repulsive; that they have no fine 
 order or regulated beauty of arrangement; that they have 
 no noble public buildings; or if they have them, they are 
 hidden away behind grimy ranges of mean tenements, so 
 that their total effect cannot be realized or discovered 
 and it will be found that this outward ugliness is the 
 natural witness to a general contempt of truth. It is 
 generally assumed that Ruskin's violently expressed cen- 
 sure of the ignoble grime of manufacturing towns springs 
 from a violent hatred of manufacture. On the contrary, 
 he himself has established manufactures, and praises with 
 Carlyle the great "captains of industry." But what he 
 says is, that there is no natural association between manu- 
 facture and ugliness, and there need be none. If there 
 be a notorious violation of beauty, it is because there has 
 been a notorious contempt for truth. What truth? The 
 truth that man lives not by bread alone; that the soul has 
 claims as well as the stomach; that to make money is in 
 itself the ignoblest of pursuits; and that where money is
 
 The Teaching of Ruskin 23 1 
 
 made by the sacrifice of men, it is more wicked than war, 
 because more deliberately cruel. If there had been any due 
 and real sense of the claims of the soul, as infinitely superior 
 to the claims of the stomach, England would not have per- 
 mitted her manufactures to thrive by the destruction of all 
 that refines and ennobles those by whose toil this enor- 
 mous wealth is created. If English cities are ugly, if 
 there is not one of them, nor altogether, capable of giving 
 so much delight to the eye as the meanest mediaeval Italian 
 town could furnish, it is because we have been too ab- 
 sorbed in the ignoble haste to be rich to care for anything 
 but the condition of our bank-books. It is not manufac- 
 tures that are wrong, but the spirit in which they are con- 
 ducted. Those who administer them have notoriously 
 departed from truth in the essential methods of their 
 administration. They have not sought to provide an 
 honest article for an honest wage. They have had no 
 pride in their work, but only a base pleasure in its rewards. 
 They have not asked, "Is this thing that I have made as 
 sound and efficient a thing as it is possible for me to pro- 
 duce?" but "Have I produced something that will pay, 
 and something calculated cunningly to deceive the eye, so 
 that I may obtain a larger payment for it than I have 
 justly earned or have any right to expect?" No wonder 
 manufacturing towns are ugly and squalid when they are 
 governed and created by men of this spirit; how could 
 you reasonably expect them to be beautiful? There has 
 been a contempt for truth, and there is a corresponding 
 contempt for beauty. Before England can be a land of 
 beautiful cities, it must be renewed in its ideals, and must 
 regain that reverence for truth which it has lost. 
 
 The only final strength is Tightness, says Ruskin; and
 
 232 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 excellence, whether of art or of character, can only be 
 achieved by an unswerving fidelity to right. A contempt 
 of beauty means more than a lack of aesthetic taste in a 
 man's nature: it means necessarily a contempt of right, 
 since beauty is the concrete final expression of Tightness. 
 Venice rose from the sea in stern yet exquisite grandeur 
 of form, because the race that laid its stones deep in the 
 shallow waters of the lagoons were for centuries a great 
 and noble race, disciplined into strenuous hardihood by 
 the nature of their perilous position, virtuous by their 
 passion for liberty, great in soul by their reverence for 
 truth. The period of their decline is marked in the cor- 
 ruption of their architecture, and the dream of beauty 
 lessens as the people wax debased. It is useless, says 
 Ruskin, to ask for men like Tintoret or churches like St. 
 Mark's in a day when manufacture prospers by jugglery, 
 and trade is an organized deceit; we ask for the blossom 
 on the tree, forgetting that its stem is cut, and its root 
 withered. You will get sound workmanship in no depart- 
 ment of life when honesty and truth have ceased to com- 
 mand respect; and since beauty is Tightness, you will not 
 get beauty either. The jerry-builder is simply the natural 
 and inevitable product of an avaricious and corrupt age. 
 He is the parasite of a decaying civilization, at once 
 springing from the decay and propagating it. Had 
 Venice been built by men whose one passion was money, 
 and whose one evil gift was a minute and absolute mastery 
 of the art of cheating, we should have had a stucco St. 
 Mark's, which long ago had sunk unregretted in the tides 
 from which it rose. An unstable people does not build 
 stable and enduring works, but after its kind, unstable 
 erections, only meant to last as long as money can be
 
 The Teaching of Ruskin 233 
 
 made by them. The age of cathedral building was natu- 
 rally the age when belief in God was an intelligible factor 
 in human conduct, and when the imaginations of men 
 were fed by solemn and eternal visions of truth. But 
 when we build churches we build them by contract, 
 accepting the lowest tender, and we are utterly indifferent 
 to the quality of the work, so long as we get something 
 showy for our money. All the bad building that goes on 
 in our civic centers is therefore, like the bad art of our 
 time, simply the outward witness to an inward corruption 
 of the conscience. There is only one remedy, says Rus- 
 kin: "No religion that ever was preached on this earth of 
 God's rounding will proclaim any salvation to sellers of 
 bad goods. If the ghost that is in you, whatever the 
 essence of it, leaves your hand a juggler's and your heart 
 a cheat's, it is not a Holy Ghost, be assured of that. 
 And for the rest, all political economy, as well as all 
 higher virtue, depends first on sound work." 
 
 To obtain, therefore, fine art or noble architecture, 
 according to the gospel of Ruskin, means an entire reor- 
 ganization of commerce, and a renewal of the whole nation 
 in righteousness. And this means a renewal in honesty, 
 a word whose meaning is almost lost in the dim-sighted- 
 ness bred of universal chicanery and fraud. Thus, by 
 what is after all no feat of intellectual acrobatics, but a 
 calmly reasoned and intelligent process, Ruskin passes 
 from the consideration of the ethics of art and architec- 
 ture to the creation of a new and radical political economy. 
 
 What, then, is the chief burden of Ruskin's ethical and 
 social teaching? He lays down, first of all, the absolute 
 duty of work, and of work which, as far as possible, 
 absorbs the full interest, and excites the inventive faculty
 
 234 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 of the worker. The great evil of modern civilization is 
 "not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure 
 in the work by which they make their bread, and ther ore 
 look to wealth as the only means of pleasure." Now, the 
 workmen who built St. Mark's, or any great English 
 cathedral, were, beyond doubt, far worse fed than our 
 modern workmen; but their work was a pleasure to them, 
 because they put into it such intelligence of soul as they 
 possessed, and therefore it is good and stable work. The 
 general thirst for wealth really means, therefore, a dis- 
 taste for honest labor, and the resolve to escape labor by 
 the readiest means in our power. But why has the work- 
 man no pleasure in his work? Partly because we have 
 destroyed the possibility of pleasure by what we call 
 division of labor, and so rendered the exercise of thought 
 and intelligence unnecessary. "It is not, truly speaking, 
 the labor which is divided, but the men : divided into mere 
 segments of men broken into small fragments and 
 crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence 
 that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin or a nail, 
 but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head 
 of a nail." This is really the ground of Ruskin's antago- 
 nism to machine-made goods, and his strong preference 
 for goods made by hand; the latter are the product of 
 intelligence, and work that has pleasure in its act, and the 
 former are not; the one work develops men, the other 
 divides and enslaves them. 
 
 He then gives his standard of wages in three principles, 
 which to all men of just and honorable minds will appear 
 self-evident and imperative. First, men should be paid 
 for the actual work done; secondly, "a man should in 
 justice be paid for difficult or dangerous work proportion-
 
 The Teaching of Ruskin 
 
 O 
 
 ately more than for easy and safe work, supposing the 
 other conditions of the work similar"; thirdly, "if a man 
 does a given quantity of work for me, I am bound in 
 justice to do, or procure to be done, a precisely equal 
 quantity of work for him; and just trade in labor is the 
 exchange of equivalent quantities of labor of different 
 kinds." Thus the employer of labor is himself a laborer, 
 giving, in exchange for work done for him, another kind 
 of work done for those who serve under him. The fac- 
 tory worker is not "a hand," but a man, and it is the 
 bounden duty of his employer to see that he has a fair 
 share of food, and warmth and comfort, and a reasonable 
 opportunity of attending to the wants of his mind and the 
 culture of his soul. His claim is not, and never can be, 
 settled adequately by any award of money; his employer 
 is also responsible for the nature of his life. If the indi- 
 vidual employer is too callous or indifferent to attend to 
 these responsibilities, then it is the business of the state to 
 step in, and force upon the avaricious and foolish master 
 the instant attendance to his duties. Indeed, in almost 
 all that concerns trade, Ruskin advocates what we under- 
 stand as State Socialism. He would have either the 
 trade-guild or the state fix a standard of excellence for all 
 manufactured articles. The public would soon discover 
 that it was all the better off by buying a sound article, 
 and the craze for mere cheapness would die with the dis- 
 covery that the cheap thing is, in the long run, the dear- 
 est, being worthless at any price. Moreover, such a wise 
 interference by the state, if all states would unite in its 
 enforcement, would, in the end, kill the demon of com- 
 petition, which is the curse of commerce. "The primal 
 and eternal law of vital commerce shall be of all men
 
 236 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 understood; namely, that every nation is fitted by its 
 character, and the nature of its territories, for some par- 
 ticular employments or manufactures; and that it is the 
 true interest of every other nation to encourage it in such 
 speciality, and by no means to interfere with, but in all 
 ways forward and protect, its efforts, ceasing all rivalship 
 with it, so soon as it is strong enough to occupy its proper 
 place." The one necessary principle for all honorable 
 and efficient trade is thus seen to be co-operation. First 
 of all, between the employers and the employed, each 
 honestly working to serve the public by the production of 
 the best possible article; and then between nations, each 
 separate people producing what it can produce best, for 
 the general international good. 
 
 It will, of course, be said, that under such a system as 
 this no large fortunes could be made; but equally it is 
 true that nine-tenths of our want and misery would disap- 
 pear, the other tenth being that caused by vice and im- 
 providence, which no state can remove so long as man 
 has the right to ruin himself. The question is, How are 
 large fortunes made, and by what methods, under the 
 existing system? Ruskin replies that such fortunes as are 
 the prizes of commerce can only be made in one of three 
 ways : I . By obtaining command over the labor of mul- 
 titudes of other men, and taxing it for our own profit; 
 2. By treasure-trove, as of mines, useful vegetable 
 products, and the like in circumstances putting them 
 under our own exclusive control; 3. By speculation 
 (commercial gambling). Ruskin categories these three 
 methods under the scathing title of "The nature of theft 
 by unjust profits," and after explaining by what means
 
 The Teaching of Ruskin 237 
 
 such dishonest acquisition is accomplished, asks us to 
 "consider further, how many of the carriages that glitter 
 in our streets are driven, and how many of the stately 
 houses that gleam among our English fields are inhabited, 
 by this kind of thief!" His remedy for the first kind of 
 theft is, as we have seen, a just system of co-operation; 
 and while no remedy is stated for the second, yet the plain 
 suggestion is the nationalization of mines and mineral 
 treasure generally, as the property of the state, to be 
 administered for the good of all. Of the third form of 
 theft his words are unmistakably stern and incisive; "for 
 in all cases of profit derived from speculation, at best, 
 what one man gains another loses; and the net result to 
 the state is zero (pecuniarily), with the loss of time and 
 ingenuity spent in the transaction; beside the disadvan- 
 tage involved in the discouragement of the losing party, 
 and the corrupted moral natures of both." 
 
 And beyond all this, Ruskin teaches that great fortunes 
 are rarely a blessing to their possessors, and the truly for- 
 tunate man is he whose wealth is in the limitation of his 
 lower desires, and the extension of his higher aspirations. 
 The gospel of plain living and high thinking is after all a 
 possible gospel, within the reach of all. The love of 
 money is the root of all the evil in our modern life. It is 
 right that work should be honestly remunerated ; but if we 
 love the fee more than the work, then fee is our master, 
 "and the lord of fee, who is the Devil." The true 
 advancement of men must begin in the heart and con- 
 science, and it is because England has grown in wealth, 
 but not in character, that we have side by side the prodi- 
 gality of the rich and the want of the poor; and having
 
 23 8 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 regard to the first alone, persuade ourselves that we live 
 in an era of unexampled prosperity, and are blind to the 
 realities of unexampled corruption and materialism. We 
 have yet to learn the art of wise and noble living; and 
 "what is chiefly needed in England at the present day is 
 to show the quantity of pleasure that may be obtained by 
 a consistent, well-administered competence, modest, con- 
 fessed, and laborious. We need examples of people who, 
 leaving heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the 
 world, decide for themselves whether they will be happy 
 in it, and have resolved to seek, not greater wealth, but 
 simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; 
 making the first of possession self-possession; and honor- 
 ing themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of 
 peace." These are truly prophetic words, and contain 
 not only the counsel of a great thinker, but of a true 
 patriot. 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. What moral qualities did Ruskin associate with beauty 
 and ugliness? 
 
 2. What did he consider were the causes of bad art? 
 
 3. How did he apply these principles to the ugliness of 
 cities? 
 
 4. What did he teach concerning the spirit in which busi- 
 ness should be carried on? 
 
 5. How does the architecture of Venice illustrate the char- 
 acter of the Venetians? 
 
 6. What similar truth is suggested by the great cathedrals? 
 
 7. What does Ruskin teach concerning the duty and 
 pleasure of work? 
 
 8. What responsibility did he place upon the employer of 
 labor? 
 
 9. How did he look upon competition and commerce?
 
 The Teaching of Ruskin 239 
 
 10. What remedies does he suggest for the three means 
 employed by men to accumulate great wealth? 
 
 11. What does he teach concerning man's true relation to 
 wealth? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Lessons from My Masters (Carlyle, Tennyson, and Ruskin). 
 Peter Bayne. 
 
 Three Great Teachers of Our Time. A. H. Japp. 
 John Ruskin : Economist. Patrick Geddes. 
 Poets and Problems. George Willis Cooke.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 RUSKIN'S IDEAL OF WOMEN 
 
 No summary of Ruskin's teaching would be complete 
 without reference to the more poetical side of his genius; 
 and since it is necessary to quote some concrete example, 
 we can scarcely find a better than that section of his writ- 
 ings which deals specifically with the place assigned to 
 woman in his new Utopia. For him, as for all really 
 great writers and thinkers, woman has held a high place, 
 and been a commanding influence. But one can no more 
 describe in a sentence what is Ruskin's ideal woman than 
 what is his ideal of art, for in all his writing he is, as we 
 have seen, alternately reactionary and progressive, and at 
 all times a mystic, whose perceptions are colored by a 
 singularly grave and noble imagination. That he would 
 not accept all the theories of female emancipation which 
 are current to-day is clear from the most casual acquaint- 
 ance with his drift of thought, and in this he may be 
 deemed reactionary. But the reaction on its rebound 
 really becomes a very large measure of progression. He 
 goes back to the more ancient ideals of womanly modesty, 
 humility, and service, only to link them afresh to all that 
 is highest in the aims of modern life. And nowhere is his 
 mysticism the mysticism of the lover and the thinker, 
 reverent and sweet and beautiful more pronounced than 
 in his treatment of woman. In Ruskin himself there is a 
 certain feminine element that perhaps enables him to judge 
 
 240
 
 Ruskin's Ideal of Women 241 
 
 woman with a finer delicacy and more accurate eye than 
 belong to most men; certainly with a graver sympathy 
 and more chivalrous regard. 
 
 Every one who has read the lecture on "Queen's 
 Gardens" in Sesame and the Lilies will remember the 
 series of fine passages in which Ruskin points out how 
 reverence for womanhood has been the master note in the 
 rich music of the greatest poets. We cannot do better 
 than recall these passages if we would understand his own 
 ideal of womanhood. Broadly speaking, he says, Shake- 
 speare has no heroes he has only heroines. The one 
 entirely heroic figure in the plays and this is after all but 
 a slight sketch is Henry V. And then he continues: 
 "Coriolanus, Caesar, Anthony, stand in flawed strength, 
 and fall by their vanities; Hamlet is indolent and drowsily 
 speculative; Romeo an impatient boy; the Merchant of 
 Venice languidly submissive to adverse fortune; Kent, in 
 King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but too rough and 
 unpolished to be of true use at the critical time, and he 
 
 sinks into the office of a servant only Whereas 
 
 there is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, 
 steadfast in grave hope and errorless purpose; Cordelia, 
 Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen Cather- 
 ine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, 
 and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless, conceived 
 in the highest heroic type of humanity." Of course the 
 mind will also recall the dread figure of Lady Macbeth, 
 and the revolting hard-heartedness of Regan and Goneril; 
 but these, says Mr. Ruskin, were clearly meant by Shake- 
 speare to be frightful exceptions to the ordinary aspects of 
 life. And as it was with Shakespeare, so it was with 
 Walter Scott, with Dante, with the great Greeks, and with
 
 242. Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 our own Chaucer and Spenser. Wherever woman is 
 pictured, it is in the bright strength of her truth and purity, 
 her constancy and virtue. Chaucer writes his Legend of 
 Good Women, and Spenser makes it clear to us how easily 
 the best of his faery knights may be deceived and van- 
 quished; " but the soul of Una is never darkened, and the 
 spear of Britomart is never broken." This view of woman 
 is one which Mr. Ruskin indorses and amplifies. He be- 
 lieves in the old Teutonic reverence for women as the 
 prophets of society, "as infallibly faithful and wise coun- 
 selors, incorruptibly just and pure examples strong 
 always to sanctify even where they cannot save"; and he 
 shows with completeness of illustration that the greatest 
 men have believed in this ideal of womanhood, and that 
 this belief has shaped and colored all that is noblest in the 
 poetic literature of the world. 
 
 Starting from this noble ideal of what woman may be, 
 Ruskin works out the details of his picture with great art 
 and fidelity. He will hear of no "superiority" between 
 the sexes, of no obedience demanded by the one as the 
 prerogative of sex, or rendered by the other as its con- 
 dition. Woman was certainly not meant to be the attend- 
 ant shadow of her lord, serving him with a thoughtless 
 and servile obedience; for how could he be "helped 
 effectually by a shadow, or worthily by slave"? And as 
 for "superiority," in what does superiority lie? For any 
 true comparison there must be similarity, whereas between 
 man and woman there is eternal dissimilarity. They can 
 be neither equal nor unequal who have wholly different 
 gifts, and are intrusted with widely various functions. 
 "Each has what the other has not; each completes the 
 other, and is completed by the other; they are in nothing
 
 Ruskin's Ideal of Women 243 
 
 alike, and the happiness and perfection of both depend 
 on each asking and receiving from the other what the 
 other only can give." Yet, however radical are the differ- 
 ences, simply because each is the complement of the 
 other, their cause is one, and the mission and rights of 
 women cannot be separated from the mission and rights 
 of men. This is simply a prose statement of the phil- 
 osophy which Tennyson has interpreted in memorable 
 verse when he says: 
 
 For woman is not undevelopt man, 
 But diverse: could we make her as the man, 
 Sweet love were slain; his bond is this, 
 Not like to like, but like in difference. 
 
 The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink 
 Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free. 
 
 To the more ardent and inconsiderate spirits in . the 
 modern revolt of woman, all this may seem somewhat 
 antiquated philosophy nowadays. Those who are loudest 
 in proclaiming the advance of women sometimes talk as if 
 they would be content with no advance that did not sub- 
 merge man, or which at least surrendered the claim of 
 absolute equality to woman. And such women will prob- 
 ably resent the stress which Ruskin lays upon man's fitness 
 for the world, and woman's fitness for the household. 
 They will not care to admit that "man's power is active, 
 progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the 
 creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for 
 speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for 
 war, for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever con- 
 quest necessary. But the woman's power is for rule, not 
 for battle; and her intellect is not for invention or crea-
 
 244 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 tion, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, decision." Yet 
 it may be well even for the most advanced woman to ask 
 whether Tennyson and Ruskin have not the truth with them, 
 and whether she would not lose far more than she could 
 gain by scornfully rejecting the programme each assigns 
 her. For it is in the domain of the emotions that Ruskin 
 makes woman supreme. The man, in his conflict with 
 the world, is sure to be hardened; but it is his business to 
 guard the woman against this hardening of the heart, and 
 her work is to soften and purify the man by the strength 
 of her emotions and the joy of her affection. The harden- 
 ing of the heart is a doleful and disastrous process, which 
 we see going on around us every day, and perhaps also 
 perceive within us. We accept the responsibility for 
 training the mind, but we do not think it necessary to train 
 and educate the emotions. More than this, we English 
 people are for the most part ashamed of our emotions, and 
 take a pride in repressing them, so that equally in Europe 
 and America we are regarded as the coldest and most 
 phlegmatic of races. It is, no doubt, not well to wear the 
 heart upon the sleeve, but it is still worse to repress the 
 emotions until they become sterile, and the very power of 
 feeling dies in us. For the Englishman, the home is the 
 one secure asylum where he permits his heart to beat 
 freely, and for that reason we, more than most peoples, 
 should reverence women as the queens of the heart, whose 
 work it is to liberate in the home the emotions that have 
 been repressed in the world. Home is the place of peace, 
 the sanctuary of the heart, the realm wherein the emotions 
 may find free air and unimpeded action; it is, as Ruskin 
 nobly says, roof and fire, shelter and warmth, shade and 
 light "Shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as
 
 Ruskin's Ideal of Women 245 
 
 of the Pharos in the stormy sea." And in such a home 
 it is the part of woman to be enduringly, incorruptibly 
 good; instinctively, infallibly wise wise, not for self- 
 development, but for self-renunciation; wise, not that she 
 may set herself above her husband, but that she may 
 never fail from his side; wise, not with the narrowness of 
 insolent and loveless pride, but with the passionate gentle- 
 ness of an infinitely variable, because infinitely applicable, 
 modesty of service the true changefulness of woman." 
 "Wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunci- 
 ation," this again will sound like a note of reaction, and 
 will be distasteful to many noble souls who toil heroically 
 for the advance of woman. Yet the whole evil is in the 
 sound there is no error in the sentiment. If morality is 
 more than culture, if to be is better than to know, if char- 
 acter is a more precious gain than even knowledge, then 
 it is clear that self-renunciation, by which the flower of 
 the soul is brought to fullness, is a nobler gain than self- 
 development, by which the mind is trained to alert activity 
 and the body to athletic vigor. But what Ruskin means 
 by self-development is the development of selfishness, just 
 as by self-renunciation he means the subdual of self, and 
 its suppression. Certainly he does not mean that the 
 weapons of intellectual growth or physical culture are to 
 be denied to women. On the contrary, he declares that 
 the first duty of society to women is "to secure for her 
 such physical training and exercise as may confirm her 
 health and perfect her beauty"; and again, that "all such 
 knowledge should be given her as may enable her to 
 understand, and even to aid, the work of man." In this 
 latter respect Ruskin may be claimed as one of the pio- 
 neers of the higher education of women. In 1864, when
 
 246 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 these words were uttered, there were not many men who 
 ventured to claim a perfect equality of education for men 
 and women; but this Ruskin does with passionate plead- 
 ing, nor is there any passage of satire in his writings more 
 telling than that in which he contrasts the education 
 afforded to a boy with that thought sufficient for a girl. 
 He says that at least you show some respect for the tutor 
 of your son, and you teach your son to respect him. You 
 do not treat the dean of Christ Church or the master of 
 Trinity as your inferiors. But you intrust the entire for- 
 mation of a girl's "character, moral and intellectual, to a 
 person whom you let your servants treat with less respect 
 than they do your housekeeper (as if the soul of your 
 child were a less charge than jam and groceries), and 
 whom you yourself think you confer an honor upon by 
 letting her sometimes sit in the drawing-room in the even- 
 ing. " Mr. Ruskin 's ideal woman is clearly no creature 
 of unfurnished mind, meek with the meekness of igno- 
 rance, subservient with the humility of self-distrust: she 
 is the highest product of both physical and mental culture, 
 and is fitted to sit with man in equal comradeship 
 
 Full-summed in all their powers, 
 Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-Be. 
 
 Ruskin's ideal of woman includes, therefore, a very full 
 trust in those moral instincts which he regards as her 
 highest gift, and in the unimpeded exercise of which he 
 discerns her noblest power. He claims for her the largest 
 liberty, because she is far less likely than man to abuse 
 her liberty. He goes so far as to declare that nature in 
 her is to be trusted far more than in men to do its own 
 work, and to do it beautifully and beneficently. The boy 
 may be chiseled into shape, but the girl must take her
 
 Ruskin's Ideal of Women 247 
 
 own way, and will grow as a flower grows. The boy, 
 needs discipline before he will learn what is good for him; 
 but the girl, if she trust her instincts, will be infallibly 
 guided to what is good around her, without any, save the 
 slightest, pressure from extraneous authority. Thus Mr. 
 Ruskin advocates in a well-known passage the wisdom of 
 letting a girl pretty much alone in the choice of her read- 
 ing, so long as the mere ephemeral "package of the circu- 
 lating library, wet with the last and lightest spray of the 
 fountain of folly," is kept out of her way. "Turn her 
 loose into the old library," he says, "and let her alone. 
 
 She will find what is good for her, and you cannot 
 
 Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a 
 field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times better than 
 you, and the good ones too, and will eat some bitter and 
 prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest 
 thought were good." 
 
 This is an heroic form of education, indeed, but in 
 Ruskin's view it is the best form, simply because he has 
 unbounded faith in the wise intuition and invincible purity 
 of true womanhood. He believes with George Meredith 
 that woman lies nearer to the heart of nature than man, 
 and is a creature of altogether surer and wiser instinct. 
 There is a sweet, old-fashioned chivalry in this doctrine, 
 of which we hear little to-day. It is characteristic of the 
 man. Simple himself as a child, pure and sweet-natured 
 as a child, he feels something of that reverent worship for 
 woman which was the soul of ancient chivalry; and no 
 woman can read his writings without a fresh and happy 
 sense of her own endowments, and a new and high ideal 
 of how these can be best applied for the service of the 
 world.
 
 248 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 We are all hot for emancipation to-day. Ruskin bids 
 us inquire what such emancipation really means. He 
 reminds us that womanhood may be emancipated in so 
 rough and wrong a fashion that the bloom of virgin grace 
 may be wasted in the process, and the true charm of 
 womanhood may perish. An emancipation which corrupts 
 the delicacy of the soul, or dulls the sensitiveness of the 
 emotions, is a fatal error, for which no gain of worldly 
 shrewdness or mental acumen can be any just or appre- 
 ciable recompense. It is in her power of sympathy, of 
 kindness, of all fine and tender feeling, that woman's true 
 strength lies, and any diminution here is not only to her a 
 fatal detriment, but it is a boundless loss inflicted on soci- 
 ety. To learn to feel, or to keep in unspent freshness the 
 power to feel, is for woman of far greater moment than 
 to learn to know, or to learn to achieve some poor battle 
 in the clamorous strifes of a callous world. There is a 
 higher thing than to speak with tongues, or to know all 
 mysteries, and that is to love with the love that thinketh 
 no evil, that rejoiceth in the truth, that beareth all things, 
 believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 
 This is the essence of Ruskin's ideal womanhood. Noth- 
 ing that ought to be shared with man will he deny her, but 
 he insists that there are many things she need not wish to 
 share, because she is the mistress of a larger wealth which 
 is hidden in her own soul. To know how to love truly, 
 to feed the sacred flame of love which is the glory of the 
 world, to soften the asperities of life with her charity, and 
 to brighten its joys by her diviner force of feeling this is 
 the true programme of true womanhood, and there is no 
 noble-natured woman who will not grant that it is a high 
 and noble ideal.
 
 Ruskin's Ideal of Women 249 
 
 QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 
 
 1. What contrast does Ruskin bring out between Shake- 
 speare's heroes and his heroines? 
 
 2. What is his view of the so-called superiority of one sex 
 over the other? 
 
 3. What general traits does he ascribe to man and what to 
 woman? 
 
 4. How does he show the importance of woman's influence 
 in the home? 
 
 5. How does he condemn the lack of consideration given 
 to woman's education? 
 
 6. What theories does he hold as to the nature of a woman's 
 education? 
 
 7. What dangers to womanhood does he fear from attempts 
 to "emancipate " her? 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Prceterita. Outlines of My Past Life, John Ruskin. 
 
 Complete Works of John Ruskin. (Illustrated Cabinet Edi- 
 tion.) In 26 volumes, sold separately at $1.50 each. There are 
 numerous cheap editions of Sesame and Lilies, Unto This Last, 
 and other of his essays. 
 
 Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary Estimates. 
 Frederic Harrison.
 
 SELECTIONS FROM WORDSWORTH 
 
 I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD 
 
 Written at Town-end, Grasmere. The daffodils grew and still grow on 
 the margin of Ullswater, and probably may be seen to this day as beau- 
 tiful in the month of March, nodding their golden heads beside the dancing 
 and foaming waves. 
 
 I wandered lonely as a cloud 
 That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
 
 When all at once I saw a crowd, 
 A host of golden daffodils; 
 
 Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
 
 Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 
 
 Continuous as the stars that shine 
 
 And twinkle on the Milky Way, 
 They stretched in never-ending line 
 
 Along the margin of a bay; 
 Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 
 Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 
 
 The waves beside them danced; but they 
 Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: 
 
 A poet could not but be gay, 
 In such a jocund company: 
 
 I gazed and gazed but little thought 
 
 What wealth the show to me had brought: 
 
 For oft, when on my couch I lie 
 
 In vacant or in pensive mood, 
 They flash upon that inward eye, 
 
 Which is the bliss of solitude; 
 And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
 And dances with the daffodils. 
 
 251
 
 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 THE WORLD'S RAVAGES 
 
 The world is too much with us: late and soon. 
 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: 
 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours; 
 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 
 This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; 
 
 The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
 
 And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; 
 For this, for everything, we are out of tune. 
 It moves us not. Great God! I' d ratheV be 
 
 A pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 
 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 
 
 ODE 
 
 INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF 
 EARLY CHILDHOOD 
 
 The Child is father of the Man; 
 And I could wish my days to be 
 Bound each to each by natural piety. 
 
 I 
 
 There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
 The earth, and every common sight, 
 
 To me did seem 
 
 Appareled in celestial light, 
 The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
 It is not now as it has been of yore; 
 
 Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
 
 By night or day, 
 The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
 
 Selections from Wordsworth 253 
 
 V 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
 The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And cometh from afar: 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home: 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing Boy, 
 But he beholds the light, and whence it flows 
 
 He sees it in his joy; 
 The Youth, who daily farther from the East 
 
 Must travel, still is Nature's Priest; 
 
 And by the vision splendid 
 
 Is on his way attended; 
 At length the Man perceives it die away, 
 And fade into the light of common day. 
 
 VI 
 
 Earth fills her lap with pleasure of her own; 
 Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, 
 And even with something of a Mother's mind, 
 
 And no unworthy aim, 
 
 The homely Nurse doth all she can 
 To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, 
 
 Forget the glories he hath known, 
 And that imperial palace whence he came. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie 
 
 Thy Soul's immensity; 
 Thou best Philosopher, yet who dost keep 
 Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, 
 That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, 
 Haunted forever by the eternal mind,
 
 254 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! 
 
 On whom those truths do rest, 
 Which we are toiling all our lives to find, 
 In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; 
 Thou, over whom thy Immortality 
 Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, 
 A Presence which is not to be put by; 
 Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might 
 Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, 
 Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 
 The years to bring the inevitable yoke, 
 Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 
 Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, 
 And custom lie upon thee with weight, 
 Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! 
 
 IX 
 
 O joy! that in our embers 
 
 Is something that doth live, 
 That nature yet remembers 
 
 What was so fugitive! 
 
 The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
 . Perpetual benediction: not indeed 
 For that which is most worthy to be blest' 
 Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
 Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, 
 With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: 
 
 Not for these I raise 
 
 The song of thanks and praise ; 
 
 But for those obstinate questionings 
 
 Of sense and outward things, 
 
 Fallings from us, vanishings; 
 
 Blank misgivings of a Creature 
 Moving about in worlds not realized, 
 High instincts before which our mortal Nature 
 Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
 
 Selections from Wordsworth 255 
 
 But for those first affections, 
 
 Those shadowy recollections, 
 Which, be they what they may, 
 Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
 Are yet a master light of all our seeing; 
 Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
 Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
 Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 
 
 To perish never; 
 Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, 
 
 Nor Man nor Boy. 
 Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
 Can utterly abolish or destroy! 
 
 Hence in a season of calm weather 
 
 Though inland far we be, 
 Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 
 Which brought us hither, 
 
 Can in a moment travel thither, 
 And see the Children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 
 
 X 
 
 Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! 
 
 And let the young Lambs bound 
 
 As to the tabor's sound! 
 We in thought will join your throng, 
 
 Ye that pipe and ye that play, 
 
 Ye that through your hearts to-day 
 
 Feel the gladness of the May! 
 
 What though the radiance which was once so bright 
 Be now forever taken from my sight, 
 
 Though nothing can bring back the hour 
 Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; 
 
 We will grieve not, rather find 
 
 Strength in what remains behind; 
 
 In the primal sympathy 
 
 Which having been must ever be;
 
 1$6 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 In the soothing thoughts that spring 
 Out of human suffering; 
 In the faith that looks through death, 
 In years that bring the philosophic mind. 
 
 XI 
 
 And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, 
 
 Forbode not any severing of our loves! 
 
 Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; 
 
 I only have relinquished one delight 
 
 To live beneath your more habitual sway. 
 
 I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, 
 
 Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; 
 
 The innocent brightness of a new-born Day 
 
 Is lovely yet; 
 
 The Clouds that gather round the setting sun 
 Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
 That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; 
 Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 
 Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 
 Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, 
 To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
 
 SELECTIONS FROM TENNYSON 
 
 CROSSING THE BAR 
 
 Sunset and evening star, 
 
 And one clear call for me! 
 And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
 
 When I put out to sea. 
 
 But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
 
 Too full for sound and foam, 
 When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
 
 Turns again home. 
 
 Twilight and evening bell, 
 
 And after that the dark; 
 And may there be no sadness of farewell, 
 
 When I embark. 
 
 For though from out our bourne of Time and Place 
 
 The flood may bear me far, 
 I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
 
 When I have crossed the bar. 
 
 PROEM FROM IN MEMORIAM 
 
 Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 
 Believing where we cannot prove. 
 
 Thine are these orbs of light and shade; 
 
 Thou madest Life in man and brute; 
 
 Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot 
 Is on the skull which thou hast made. 
 
 257
 
 258 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 
 
 Thou madest man, he knows not why; 
 He thinks he was not made to die; 
 
 And thou hast made him: thou art just. 
 
 Thou seemest human and divine, 
 
 The highest, holiest manhood, thou: 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
 
 Our wills are ours to make them thine. 
 
 Our little systems have their day; 
 
 They have their day and cease to be: 
 They are but broken lights of thee, 
 
 And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 
 
 We have but faith: we cannot know; 
 
 For knowledge is of things we see; 
 
 And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
 A beam in darkness: let it grow. 
 
 Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 But more of reverence in us dwell: 
 That mind and soul, according well, 
 
 May make one music as before. 
 
 But vaster. We are fools and slight; 
 We mock thee when we do not fear: 
 But help thy foolish ones to bear; 
 
 Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light. 
 
 Forgive what seem'd my sin in me; 
 
 What seem'd my worth since I began; 
 
 For merit lives from man to man, 
 And not from man, O Lord, to thee. 
 
 Forgive my grief for one removed, 
 
 Thy creature, whom I found so fair. 
 I trust he lives in thee, and there 
 
 I find him worthier to be loved. .
 
 Selections from Tennyson 259 
 
 Forgive these wild and wandering cries, 
 
 Confusions of a wasted youth; 
 
 Forgive them where they fail in truth, 
 And in thy wisdom make me wise. 
 
 GUINEVERE 
 
 SELECTED PASSAGES 
 
 But when the Queen immersed in such a trance, 
 And moving thro' the past unconsciously, 
 Came to that point where first she saw the King 
 Ride toward her from the city, sigh'd to find 
 Her journey done, glanced at him, thought him cold, 
 High, self-contained, and passionless, not like him, 
 " Not like my Lancelot" while she brooded thus 
 And grew half-guilty in her thoughts again, 
 There rode an armed warrior to the doors. 
 A murmuring whisper thro' the nunnery ran, 
 Then on a sudden cry, " the King." She sat 
 Stiff-stricken, listening; but when armed feet 
 Thro' the long gallery from the outer doors 
 Rang coming, prone from off her seat she fell, 
 And grovell'd with her face against the floor; 
 There with her milk-white arms and shadowy hair 
 She made her face a darkness from the King; 
 And in the darkness heard his armed feet 
 Pause by her; then came silence, then a voice, 
 Monotonous and hollow like a Ghost's 
 Denouncing judgment, but tho' changed, the King's 
 
 " Liest thou here so low, the child of one 
 I honor'd, happy, dead before thy shame? 
 Well is it that no child is born of thee. 
 The children born of thee are sword and fire, 
 Red ruin, and the breaking up of laws, 
 The craft of kindred and the Godless hosts 
 Of heathen swarming o'er the Northern Sea.
 
 160 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Whom I, while yet Sir Lancelot, my right arm, 
 
 The mightiest of my knights, abode with me, 
 
 Have everywhere about this land of Christ 
 
 In twelve great battles ruining overthrown. 
 
 And knowest thou now from whence I come? from him, 
 
 From waging bitter war with him; and he, 
 
 That did not shun to smite me in worse way, 
 
 Had yet that grace of courtesy in him left, 
 
 He spared to lift his hand against the King 
 
 Who made him knight: but many a knight was slain; 
 
 And many more, and all his kith and kin 
 
 Clave to him, and abode in his own land. 
 
 And many more when Modred raised revolt, 
 
 Forgetful of their troth and fealty, clave 
 
 To Modred, and a remnant stays with me. 
 
 And of this remnant will I leave a part, 
 
 True men who love me still, for whom I live, 
 
 To guard thee in the wild hour coming on, 
 
 Lest but a hair of this low head be harm'd. 
 
 Fear not: thou shalt be guarded till my death. 
 
 Howbeit I know, if ancient prophecies 
 
 Have erred not, that I march to meet my doom. 
 
 Thou hast not made my life so sweet to me, 
 
 That I the King should greatly care to live; 
 
 For thou has spoilt the purpose of my life. 
 
 Bear with me for the last time while I show, 
 
 E'en for thy sake, the sin which thou hast sinned. 
 
 For when the Roman left us, and their law 
 
 Relax'd its hold upon us, and the ways 
 
 Were fill'd with rapine, here and there a deed 
 
 Of prowess done redress'd a random wrong. 
 
 But I was first of all the kings who drew 
 
 The knighthood-errant of this realm and all 
 
 The realms together under me, their head, 
 
 In that fair order of my Table Round, 
 
 A glorious company, the flower of men, 
 
 To serve as model for the mighty world, 
 
 And be the fair beginning of a time.
 
 Selections from Tennyson 261 
 
 I made them lay their hands in mine and swear 
 
 To reverence the King, as if he were 
 
 Their conscience, and their conscience as their King, 
 
 To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, 
 
 To ride abroad redressing human wrongs, 
 
 To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it, 
 
 To lead sweet lives in purest chastity, 
 
 To love one maiden only, cleave to her 
 
 And worship her by years of noble deeds, 
 
 Until they won her; for indeed I knew 
 
 Of no more subtle master under heaven 
 
 Than is the maiden passion for a maid, 
 
 Not only to keep down the base in man, 
 
 But teach high thought and amiable words, 
 
 And courtliness, and the desire of fame, 
 
 And love of truth, and all that makes a man. 
 
 And all this throve until I wedded thee, 
 
 Believing, " lo, mine helpmate, one to feel 
 
 My purpose and rejoicing in my joy." 
 
 Then came thy shameful sin with Lancelot; 
 
 Then came the sin of Tristram and Isolt; 
 
 Then others, following these my mightiest knights, 
 
 And drawing foul ensample from fair names, 
 
 Sinn'd also, till the loathsome opposite 
 
 Of all my heart had destined did obtain, 
 
 And all thro' thee! so that this life of mine 
 
 I guard as God's high gift from scathe and wrong, 
 
 Not greatly care to lose; but rather think 
 
 How sad it were for Arthur, should he live, 
 
 To sit once more within his lonely hall, 
 
 And miss the wonted number of my knights, 
 
 And miss to hear high talk of noble deeds 
 
 As in the golden days before thy sin. 
 
 For which of us, who might be left, could speak 
 
 Of the pure heart, nor seem to glance at thee? 
 
 And in thy bowers of Camelot or of Usk 
 
 Thy shadow still would glide from room to room, 
 
 And I should evermore be vext with thee
 
 262 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 In hanging robe or vacant ornament, 
 
 Or ghostly footfall echoing on the stair. 
 
 For think not, tho' thou wouldst not love thy lord, 
 
 Thy lord has wholly lost his love for thee. 
 
 I am not made of so slight elements. 
 
 Yet I must leave thee, woman, to thy shame." 
 
 He paused, and in the pause she crept an inch 
 Nearer, and laid her hands about his feet. 
 Far off a solitary trumpet blew. 
 Then waiting by the doors the war horse neigh'd 
 As at a friend's voice, and he spake again. 
 
 " Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes, 
 
 I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere, 
 
 I, whose vast pity almost makes me die 
 
 To see thee, laying there thy golden head, 
 
 My pride in happier summers, at my feet. 
 
 The wrath which forced my thoughts on that fierce law, 
 
 The doom of treason and of flaming death, 
 
 (When first I learnt thee hidden here) is past. 
 
 The pang which while I weighed thy heart with one 
 
 Too wholly true to dream untruth in thee, 
 
 Made my tears burn is also past, in part, 
 
 And all is past, the sin is sinn'd, and I, 
 
 Lo ! I forgive thee, as Eternal God 
 
 Forgives: do thou for thine own soul the rest. 
 
 But how to take last leave of all I loved? 
 
 golden hair with which I used to play 
 Not knowing ! O imperial moulded form, 
 And beauty such as never woman wore, 
 Until it came a kingdom's curse with thee 
 
 1 cannot touch thy lips, they are not mine, 
 
 But Lancelot's: nay, they never were the King's. 
 I cannot take thy hand; that, too, is flesh. 
 And in the flesh thou hast sinn'd; and mine own flesh, 
 Here looking down on thee polluted, cries
 
 Selections from Tennyson 263 
 
 "I loathe thee": yet not less, O Guinevere, 
 For I was ever virgin save for thee, 
 My love thro' flesh hath wrought into my life 
 So far, that my doom is, I love thee still. 
 Let no man dream but that I love thee still. 
 Perchance, and so thou purify thy soul, 
 And so thou lean on our fair father Christ, 
 Hereafter in that world where all are pure 
 We two may meet before high God, and thou 
 Wilt spring to me and claim me thine, and know 
 I am thine husband not a smaller soul, 
 Nor Lancelot, nor another. Leave me that, 
 I charge thee, my last hope. Now must I hence. 
 Thro' the thick night I hear the trumpet blow: 
 They summon me their King to lead mine hosts 
 Far down to that great battle in the west, 
 Where I must strike against the man they call 
 My sister's son no kin of mine, who leagues 
 With lords of the White Horse, heathen, and knights- 
 Traitors and strike him dead, and meet myself 
 Death, or I know not what mysterious doom. 
 And thou remaining here wilt learn the event; 
 But hither shall I never come again, 
 Never lie by thy side, see thee no more, 
 Farewell!" 
 
 And while she grovell'd at his feet, 
 She felt the King's breath wander o'er her neck, 
 And in the darkness o'er her fallen head, 
 Perceived the waving of his hands that blest.
 
 SELECTIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 THE PATRIOT 
 
 AN OLD STORY 
 
 It was roses, roses, all the way, 
 With myrtle mixed in my path like mad: 
 
 The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, 
 The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, 
 
 A year ago on this very day. 
 
 The air broke into a mist with bells, 
 
 The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. 
 Had I said, " Good folk, mere noise repels 
 
 But give me your sun from yonder skies! " 
 They had answered, "And afterward, what else? ' 
 
 Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun 
 To give it my loving friends to keep! 
 
 Naught man could do, have I left undone: 
 And you see my harvest, what I reap 
 
 This very day, now a year has run. 
 
 There 's nobody on the housetops now 
 Just a palsied few at the window set; 
 
 For the best of the sight is, all allow, 
 At the Shambles' Gate or, better yet, 
 
 By the very scaffold's foot, I trow. 
 
 I go in the rain, and, more than needs, 
 A rope cuts both my wrists behind; 
 
 And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, 
 For they fling, whoever has a mind, 
 
 Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. 
 264
 
 Selections from Browning 265 
 
 Thus I entered, and thus I go! 
 
 In triumphs people have dropped down dead. 
 " Paid by the world, what dost thou owe 
 
 Me?" God might question; now instead, 
 'T is God shall repay: I am safer so. 
 
 PROSPICE 
 
 This poem was written in the autumn following Mrs. Browning's death. 
 
 Fear death? to feel the fog in my throat, 
 
 The mist in my face, 
 When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 
 
 I arn nearing the place, 
 The power of the night, the press of the storm, 
 
 The post of the foe; 
 Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, 
 
 Yet the strong man must go: 
 For the journey is done and the summit attained, 
 
 And the barriers fall, 
 Though a battle 's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, 
 
 The reward of it all. 
 I was ever a fighter, so one fight more, 
 
 The best and the last! 
 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, 
 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, 
 
 The heroes of old, 
 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 
 
 Of pain, darkness and cold. 
 For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, 
 
 The black minute 's at end, 
 And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 
 
 Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
 Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, 
 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, 
 
 And with God be the rest!
 
 266 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 ONE WAY OF LOVE 
 
 All June I bound the rose in sheaves. 
 
 Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves, 
 
 And strew them where Pauline may pass. 
 
 She will not turn aside? Alas! 
 
 Let them lie. Suppose they die? 
 
 The chance was they might take her eye. 
 
 How many a month I strove to suit 
 These stubborn fingers to the lute! 
 To-day I venture all I know. 
 She will not hear my music? So! 
 Break the string; fold music's wing: 
 Suppose Pauline had bade me sing! 
 
 My whole life long I learned to love. 
 This hour my utmost art I prove, 
 And speak my passion heaven or hell? 
 She will not give me heaven? 'T is well! 
 Lose who may I still can say, 
 Those who win heaven, blest are they! 
 
 MEETING AT NIGHT 
 
 The gray sea and the long black land; 
 And the yellow half-moon large and low; 
 
 And the startled little waves that leap 
 
 In fiery ringlets from their sleep, 
 As I gain the cove with pushing prow, 
 And quench its speed in the slushy sand. 
 
 Then mile of warm sea-scented beach; 
 
 Three fields to cross till a farm appears; 
 A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch 
 And the blue spurt of a lighted match, 
 
 And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, 
 
 Than the two hearts beating each to each!
 
 Selections from Browning 267 
 
 PARTING AT MORNING 
 
 Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, 
 And the sun looked over the mountain's rim: 
 And straight was a path of gold for him, 
 And the need of a world of men for me. 
 
 CHRISTMAS-EVE 
 
 SELECTED PASSAGES 
 
 For lo, what think you? Suddenly 
 
 The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky 
 
 Received at once the full fruition 
 
 Of the moon's consummate apparition. 
 
 The black cloud-barricade was riven, 
 
 Ruined beneath her feet, and driven 
 
 Deep in the West; while bare and breathless, 
 
 North and South and East lay ready 
 
 For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, 
 
 Sprang across them and stood steady. 
 
 'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, 
 
 From heaven to heaven extending, perfect 
 
 As the mother-moon's self, full in face. 
 
 It rose, distinctly at the base 
 
 With its seven proper colors chorded, 
 
 Which still, in the rising, were compressed, 
 
 Until at last they coalesced, 
 
 And supreme the spectral creature lorded 
 
 In a triumph of whitest white, - 
 
 Above which intervened the night. 
 
 But above night, too, like only the next, 
 
 The second of a wondrous sequence, 
 
 Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, 
 
 Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, 
 
 Another rainbow rose, a mightier, 
 
 Fainter, flushier, and flightier, 
 
 Rapture dying along its verge.
 
 268 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, 
 Whose, from the straining topmost dark, 
 On to the keystone of that arc? 
 
 All at once I looked up with terror. 
 
 He was there. 
 
 He himself with his human air, 
 
 On the narrow pathway, just before. 
 
 I saw the back of him, no more 
 
 He had left the chapel, then, as I. 
 
 I forgot all about the sky. 
 
 No face: only the sight 
 
 Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, 
 
 With a hem that I could recognize. 
 
 I felt terror, no surprise; 
 
 My mind filled with the cataract 
 
 At one bound of the mighty fact. 
 
 " I remember, he did say 
 
 Doubtless that, to this world's end, 
 
 Where two or three should meet and pray, 
 
 He would be in the midst, their friend; 
 
 Certainly he was there with them!" 
 
 And my pulses leaped for joy 
 
 Of the golden thought without alloy, 
 
 That I saw his very vesture's hem. 
 
 Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear, 
 
 With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear; 
 
 And I hastened, cried out while I pressed 
 
 To the salvation of the vest; 
 
 "But not so, Lord! It cannot be 
 
 That thou, indeed, art leaving me 
 
 Me, that have despised thy friends! 
 
 Did my heart make no amends? 
 
 Thou art the love of God above 
 
 His power, didst hear me place his love, 
 
 And that was leaving the world for thee. 
 
 Therefore thou must not turn from me 
 
 As I had chosen the other part!
 
 Selections from Browning 269 
 
 Folly and pride o'ercame my heart. 
 Our best is bad, nor bears thy test; 
 Still, it should be our very best. 
 I thought it best that thou, the spirit, 
 Be worshiped in spirit and in truth, 
 And in beauty, as even we require it 
 Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth, 
 I left but now, as scarcely fitted 
 For thee: I knew not what I pitied. 
 But all I felt there, right or wrong, 
 What is it to thee, who curest sinning? 
 Am I not weak as thou art strong? 
 I have looked to thee from the beginning, 
 Straight up to thee through all the world 
 Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled 
 To nothingness on either side: 
 And since the time thou wast descried, 
 Spite of the weak heart, so have I 
 Lived ever, and so fain would die, 
 Living and dying, thee before! 
 But if thou leavest me" 
 
 Less or more, 
 
 I suppose that I spoke thus. 
 When, have mercy, Lord, on us! 
 The whole face turned upon me full. 
 And I spread myself beneath it, 
 As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it 
 In the cleansing sun, his wool, 
 Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness 
 Some defiled, discolored web 
 So lay I, saturate with brightness.
 
 SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN 
 
 FROM "THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE" 
 
 There is a noble way of carving a man, and a mean one; 
 and there is a noble way of carving a beetle, and a mean one; 
 and a great sculptor carves his scarabaeus grandly, as he carves 
 his king, while a mean sculptor makes vermin of both. And it 
 is a sorrowful truth, yet a sublime one, that this greatness of 
 treatment cannot be taught by talking about it. No, nor even 
 by enforced imitative practise of it. Men treat their subjects 
 nobly only when they themselves become noble; not till then. 
 And that elevation of their own nature is assuredly not to be 
 effected by a course of drawing from models, however well 
 chosen, or of listening to lectures, however well intended. 
 
 All lovely architecture was designed for 
 
 cities in cloudless air; for cities in which piazzas and gar- 
 dens opened in bright populousness and peace; cities built that 
 men might live happily in them, and take delight daily in each 
 other's presence and powers. But our cities, built in black air, 
 which, by its accumulated foulness, first renders all ornament 
 invisible in distance, and then chokes its interstices with soot; 
 cities which are mere crowded masses of store and warehouse, 
 and counter, and are therefore to the rest of the world what 
 the larder and cellar are to a private house; cities in which the 
 object of men is not life, but labor; and in which all chief mag- 
 nitude of edifice is to enclose machinery; cities in which the 
 streets are not the avenues for the passing and procession of a 
 happy people, but the drains for the discharge of a tormented 
 mob, in which the only object in reaching any spot is to be 
 transferred to another; in which existence becomes mere 
 transition, and every creature is only one atom in a drift of 
 human dust, and current of interchanging particles, circulating 
 
 270
 
 Selections from Ruskin 271 
 
 here by tunnels underground, and there by tubes in the air; for 
 a city, or cities, such as this, no architecture is possible nay, 
 no desire of it is possible to their inhabitants. 
 
 One of the most singular proofs of the vanity of all hope 
 that conditions of art may be combined with the occupations 
 of such a city, has been given lately in the design of the new 
 iron bridge over the Thames at Blackfriars. Distinct attempt 
 has been there made to obtain architectural effect on a grand 
 scale. Nor was there anything in the nature of the work to 
 prevent such an effort being successful. It is not an edifice's 
 being of iron, or of glass, or thrown into new forms, demanded 
 by new purposes, which need hinder its being beautiful. But 
 it is the absence of all desire of beauty, of all joy in fancy, and 
 of all freedom in thought. If a Greek, or Egyptian, or Gothic 
 architect had been required to design such a bridge, he would 
 have looked instantly at the main conditions of its structure, 
 and dwelt on them with the delight of imagination. He would 
 have seen that the main thing to be done was to hold a hori- 
 zontal group of iron rods steadily and straight over stone piers. 
 Then he would have said to himself (or felt without saying), 
 " It is this holding this grasp this securing tenor of a thing 
 which might be shaken, on which I have to insist." And he 
 would have put some life into those iron tenons. As a Greek 
 put human life into his pillars and produced the caryatid, and 
 an Egyptian lotus-life into his pillars and produced the lily 
 capital, so here, either of them would have put some gigantic 
 or angelic life into those colossal sockets. He would perhaps 
 have put vast winged statues of bronze, folding their wings, and 
 grasping <he iron rails with their hands; or monstrous eagles, 
 or serpents holding with claw or coH, or strong, four-footed ani- 
 mals couchant, holding with the paw, or in fierce action, 
 holding with teeth. Thousands of grotesque or of lovely 
 thoughts would have risen before him, and the bronze forms, 
 animal or human, would have signified, either in symbol or in 
 legend, whatever might be gracefully told respecting the pur- 
 poses of the work and the districts to which it conducted. 
 Whereas, now, the entire invention of the designer seems to 
 have exhausted itself in exaggerating to an enormous size a
 
 Literary Leaders of Modern England 
 
 weak form of iron nut, and in conveying the information upon 
 it, in large letters, that it belongs to the London, Chatham, and 
 Dover Railway Company. 
 
 FROM "UNTO THIS LAST" 
 
 "THE VEINS OF WEALTH" 
 
 It has been shown that the chief value and virtue of money 
 consists in its having power over human beings; that without 
 this power, large material possessions are useless, and to any 
 person possessing such power, comparatively unnecessary. But 
 power over human beings is attainable by other means than 
 by money. As I said a few pages back, the money power is 
 always imperfect and doubtful; there are many things that 
 cannot be retained by it. Many joys may be given to men 
 which cannot be bought for gold, and many fidelities found in 
 them which cannot be rewarded by it. 
 
 Trite enough the reader thinks. Yes: but it is not so 
 trite I wish it were that in this moral power, quite inscrut- 
 able and immeasurable though it be, there is a monetary value 
 just as real as that represented by more ponderous currencies. 
 A man's hand may be full of invisible gold, and the wave of it, 
 or the grasp of it shall do more than another's with a shower 
 of bullion. This invisible gold, also, does not necessarily di- 
 minish in spending. Political economists will do well someday 
 
 to take heed of it, though they cannot take measure 
 
 Finally. Since the essence of wealth consists in power over 
 men, will it not follow that the nobler and the more in num- 
 ber the persons are over whom it has power, the greater the 
 wealth? Perhaps it may even appear after some consideration, 
 that the persons themselves are the wealth that these pieces 
 of gold with which we are in the habit of guiding them, are, in 
 fact, nothing more than a kind of Byzantine harness or trap- 
 pings, very glittering and beautiful in barbaric sight, wherewith 
 we bridle the creatures; but that if these same living creatures 
 could be guided without the fretting and jingling of the Byzants 
 in their mouths and ears, they might themselves be more valu- 
 able than their bridles. In fact, it may be discovered that the
 
 Selections from Ruskin 273 
 
 true veins of wealth are purple and not in Rock, but in 
 Flesh perhaps even that the final outcome and consummation 
 of all wealth is in the producing as many as possible full- 
 breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures. 
 Nay, in some far-away and undreamt-of hour, 
 I can even imagine that England may cast all thoughts 
 of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom 
 they first arose; and that, while the sands of the Indus and 
 adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the 
 charger, and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Chris- 
 tian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures 
 of a heathen one, and be able to lead forth her sons, saying 
 " These are my Jewels."
 
 SELECTION FROM CARLYLE 
 
 FROM "PAST AND PRESENT" 
 
 For there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in 
 Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high 
 calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and ear- 
 nestly works; in Idleness alone is there' perpetual despair. 
 Work, never so Mammonish, mean, is in communication with 
 Nature; the real desire to get Work done will itself lead one 
 more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regula- 
 tions, which are truth. The latest Gospel in this world is, 
 Know thy work and do it. " Know thyself": long enough has 
 that poor "self" of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get 
 to "know "it I believe! Think it not thy business, this of 
 knowing thyself ; thou art an unknowable individual: Know 
 what thou canst work at; and work at it like a Hercules ! That 
 will be thy better plan. 
 
 It has been written, "An endless significance lies in work"; 
 a man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared 
 away, fair seed fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal, 
 the man himself first ceases to be jungle and foul unwhole- 
 some desert thereby. Consider how, even in the meanest sorts 
 of Labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of 
 real harmony, the instant he sets himself to work ! Doubt, De- 
 sire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these 
 like hell-dogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor day-worker, 
 as of every man; but he bends himself with free valor against 
 his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring 
 far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed 
 glow of Labor in him, is it not as a purifying fire, wherein all 
 poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made 
 bright blessed flame ? Labor is life: from the 
 
 274
 
 Selection from Carlyle 275 
 
 inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given Force, the sa- 
 cred, celestial Life essence breathed into him by Almighty 
 God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness to 
 all knowledge, " self-knowledge," and much else, so soon as 
 work fitly begins. Knowledge ? The knowledge that will hold 
 good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself ac- 
 credits that, says yea to that. Properly thou hast no other 
 knowledge but what thou hast got by working: the rest is yet 
 all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in 
 schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic-vortices, 
 till we try it and fix it. " Doubt, of whatever kind, can be end- 
 ed by Action alone."
 
 A 001 110897 4