liiPilii'iiiiilii'MJi^^^
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 • IN THE KEY OF BLUE
 
 IN THE KEY OF BLUE AND 
 OTHER PROSE ESSAYS BY 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 
 
 LONDON ELKIN MATHEWS & JOHN LANE 
 
 VIGO STREET 
 
 NEW YORK MACMILLAN & COMPANY 
 
 MbCCCXCllI
 
 I 1\ 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Several of these Essays have not yet appeared 
 in print. Others are republished from the 
 " Fortnightly,'' '' Contemporary^'' and '* New " 
 Reviews ; one from the '' Century Guild 
 Hobby-Horse''' 
 
 There is an interval of more than thirty years 
 between the earliest of the series, " Clifton and a 
 Lad^s Love,' and the latest. 
 
 I have tried to make the selection representative 
 of the different kinds of work in zvhich I have 
 been principally engaged — Greek and Renaissance 
 Literature, Description of Places, Translation, 
 Criticism, Original Verse. 
 
 John Addington Symonds. 
 
 September i8g2. 
 
 O 
 
 94893
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 In the Key of Blue 
 
 Among the Euganeax Hills .... 
 
 On an Altar-piece by Tiepolo 
 
 The Dantesque and Platonic Ideals of Love 
 
 Edward Cracroft Lefroy 
 
 La BfiTE Humaine 
 
 Medieval Norman Songs . 
 
 Clifton and a Lad's Love 
 
 Notes of a Somersetshire Home 
 
 Culture : its Meaning and its Uses 
 
 Some Notes on Fletcher's "Valentinian 
 
 The Lyrism of the Romantic Drama . 
 
 Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 17 
 
 43 
 
 55 
 
 87 
 
 III 
 
 133 
 
 155 
 177 
 
 195 
 217 
 241 
 265
 
 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 
 
 I 
 
 The nomenclature of colour in literature has 
 always puzzled me. It is easy to talk of green, 
 blue, yellow, red. But when we seek to distin- 
 guish the tints of these hues, and to accentuate 
 the special timbre of each, we are practically left 
 to suggestions founded upon metaphor and ana- 
 logy. We select some object in nature — a gem, 
 a flower, an aspect of the sky or sea — which 
 possesses the particular quality we wish to indi- 
 cate. We talk of grass-green, apple-green, olive- 
 green, emerald-green, sage-green, jade-green ; of 
 sapphire, forget-me-not, turquoise, gentian, ultra- 
 marine, sky-blue ; of topaz, gold, orange, citron; 
 of rose and cherry, ruby and almandine, blood 
 and flame. Or else we use the names of sub- 
 stances from which the pigments are compounded: 
 as yellow-ochre, burnt-sienna, cadmium, lamp- 
 black, verdigris, vermilion, madder, cinnabar. To 
 
 A
 
 2 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 
 
 indicate very subtle gradations, the jargon of 
 commerce supplies us liberally with terms like 
 mauve, magenta, eau-de-Nile, peacock, merda- 
 d'oca, Prussian-blue, crushed strawberry, Vene- 
 tian-red, gris-de-perle, and so forth to infinity. 
 It is obvious that for purely literary purposes 
 these designations have a very unequal value. 
 Some of them are inadmissible in serious com- 
 position. The most precise often fail by inter- 
 preting what is absent from the reader's mental 
 eye through what is unknown to his intelligence. 
 Not everybody is familiar with jade, cadmium, 
 almandine, Nile-water. What the writer wants 
 would be a variety of broad terms to express the 
 species (tints) of each genus (hue). In such 
 terms some of the colours are richer than others. 
 Green, I think, is the poorest of all. After 
 verdant, it has to be contented with compounds 
 of itself, like pea-green and those which I have 
 cited above. The Greeks had no generic name 
 for green except one which also meant pale. 
 Next to this they used an adjective derived from 
 the leek. Blue fares better with its azure, 
 cerulean, celestial, amethystine. Yellow is still 
 more fortunate, rejoicing in golden, saffron, 
 orange, flaxen, tawny, blonde. Red stands at 
 the head of the list, possessing a copious voca- 
 bulary of ruddy, rosy, russet, crimson, scarlet, 
 pink, sanguine, mulberry, carnation, blushing.
 
 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 3 
 
 It will be noticed that all these words denomi- 
 nating tints are eventually derived from sub- 
 stances which have been accepted into common 
 parlance. In one shape or another, for example, 
 blood and the rose contribute largely to the 
 phraseology of red. 
 
 The poverty of language upon which I am 
 insisting is not wholly disadvantageous to a 
 stylist. It forces him to exercise both fancy and 
 imagination in the effort to bring some special 
 tint before the mental vision of the reader ; while 
 all the branches of knowledge at his command, 
 even heraldry, are laid under contribution in 
 turns. 
 
 These thoughts were in my mind at Venice, 
 where the problem of colour gradations under 
 their most subtle aspect presents itself on all 
 sides to the artist. I had been especially 
 attracted to the qualities of blue in the dresses 
 of both men and women, and to the behaviour of 
 this colour under various effects of natural and 
 artificial light. Justice has lately been done by 
 some contemporary painters to blue as worn by 
 the Venetian women. But no one, so far as I 
 am aware, has set himself the task of repro- 
 ducing the costumes of men in single figures or 
 in masses. Yet it is just among the working 
 people — fishermen, stevedores, porters, boatmen, 
 artizans, facchini — that the best opportunities
 
 4 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 
 
 are offered for attempting symphonies and har- 
 monies of blue. Whole classes of the male 
 population attire themselves in blouses, sashes, 
 and trousers of this colour. According to the 
 fancy of the individual, or the limitations of his 
 wardrobe, the arrangements of tints are infinitely 
 varied in the same costume. Stuffs faded by 
 virashing and exposure blend with new crude 
 dyes. Dirt and stains of labour, patchings of 
 harder upon softer tones, add picturesqueness. 
 And whether the flesh-tints of the man be pale 
 or sun-burned, his complexion dark or fair, 
 blue is equally in sympathy with the model. 
 Some men show remarkable taste in the choice 
 and arrangement of the tints combined. It is 
 clear that they give no little thought to the 
 matter. Modulations from the main chord of 
 three decided blues are made by tones of lavender 
 or mauve in the blouse, the sash, or the stockings. 
 Under strong sunlight, against the greenish water 
 of the canals, the colour effects of such chromatic 
 deviations are piquant and agreeable. 
 
 It struck me that it would be amusing to try 
 the resources of our language in a series of 
 studies of what might be termed " blues and 
 blouses." For this purpose I resolved to take a 
 single figure — a facchino with whom I have been 
 long acquainted — and to pose him in a variety of 
 lights with a variety of hues in combination.
 
 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 5 
 
 What follows are notes taken for these studies, 
 most of them, I may add, caught by accident, 
 not sought deliberately. 
 
 II 
 
 It was a hot June night. Scirocco lay heavy 
 on the air, swathing Venice in damp mists of 
 inky darkness, brooding low upon the city, yet 
 not interfering with the local pungency of lamp- 
 light. I had gone with friends to a theatre 
 where Boito's Mcfistofile was being creditably 
 represented. At the end of the prologue I left 
 the house, intending to return for the prison 
 scene and the beautiful last act. I crossed the 
 Rialto, strolled through the Pescheria, and 
 walked slowly along the Riva dell' Olio. At 
 the very end, upon the barriers of the traghettOy 
 under the flaring gas-lamp, Augusto was sitting 
 gazing dreamily and tired across the Grand 
 Canal. Scattered lights broke the surface of the 
 water, and gondolas, like glow-worms, now and 
 then moved silently upon that oily calm. 
 Augusto was intensely blue, giving the single 
 blot of colour on a ground of gloom. This 
 suggested the first of my studies : 
 
 A symphony of black and blue — 
 Venice asleep^ vast nighty and you.
 
 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 
 
 The skies were blurred with vapours dank 
 
 The long canal stretched inky-hlank, 
 
 With lights on heaving water shed 
 
 From lamps that trembled overhead. 
 
 Pitch-dark ! You were the one thing blue 
 
 Four tints of pure celestial hue : 
 
 The larkspur blouse by tones degraded 
 
 Through silken sash of sapphire faded, 
 
 The faintly floating violet tie, 
 
 The hose of lapis-lazuli. 
 
 How blue you were amid that black, 
 
 Lighting the wave, the ebon wrack ! 
 
 The ivory pallor of your face 
 
 Gleamed from those glowing azures back 
 
 Against the golden gaslight; grapes 
 
 Of dusky curls your brows embrace, 
 
 And round you all the vast night gapes. 
 
 Augusto, though he was then nineteen years of 
 age, had never left Venice for a day. He once went 
 to Mestre with wine-casks, touched the land, and 
 returned in one of those great barche. He 
 wanted to know what the world of fields and 
 woods was like, where horses moved the vehicles, 
 instead of men, and the high-roads are not paved 
 with water. Willing to pleasure him, I proposed 
 that we should spend a couple of days in the 
 Euganean Hills. The first day took us to Val 
 San Zibio. Here we visited that ancient garden 
 of enchantment, with its pleached alleys and 
 labyrinths of box, the gush of mountain streams
 
 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 7 
 
 conducted through stone basins among sculptured 
 deities, the huge umbrageous chestnuts swaying 
 heavy limbs above smooth gravelled paths. We 
 slept at Val San Zibio, in company with silk- 
 worms. Next day we drove through Praglia, 
 and round by Rovolone, up to Teolo. On 
 that drive Augusto gave me the second of my 
 studies. His blue dress was now combined 
 with white : 
 
 A symphony of hlties and white — 
 Yott, the acacias^ dewy-bright, 
 Transparent skies of chrysolite. 
 We wind along these leafy hills ; 
 One chord of blue the landscape thrills, 
 Your three blent azures merged in those 
 Cerulean heavens above the blouse. 
 The highest tones flash forth in white : 
 Acacia branches bowed with snow 
 Of scented blossom; broken light; 
 The ivory of your brows, the glow 
 Of those large orbs that are your eyes : 
 Those starry orbs of lustrous jet 
 In clear enamelled turquoise set, 
 Pale as the marge of morning skies. 
 
 There is an osteria in the Calle del Campanile, 
 where I sometimes go to dine with Augusto. 
 The padrona cooks excellently, and the place is 
 frequented by sober people of the quarter. 
 They are all of them very poor, tired with labour, 
 clothed in the most homely garb. At the end of
 
 8 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 
 
 the day's work a little suffices to amuse them — 
 itinerant musicians, a bit of dancing among them- 
 selves, a glass of wine added to the frugal store 
 of bread and sausages they bring in handker- 
 chiefs or newspapers. The company is well-bred, 
 and they do not receive a stranger unwillingly, 
 provided they see that he has found a mate of 
 their own kindred. It was here that Augusto 
 suggested the third of my studies in blue : 
 
 A symphony of blues and brown — 
 
 We were together in the town : 
 
 A grimy tavern with blurred walls, 
 
 Where dingy lamplight floats and falls 
 
 On working men and women, clad 
 
 In sober watchet, umber sad. 
 
 Two viols and one 'cello scream 
 
 Waltz music through the smoke and steam: 
 
 You rise, you clasp a comrade, who 
 
 Is clothed in triple blues like you : 
 
 Sunk in some dream voluptuously 
 
 Circle those azures richly blent. 
 
 Swim through the dusk, the melody ; 
 
 Languidly breathing, you and he. 
 
 Uplifting the environment; 
 
 Ivory face and swart face laid 
 
 Cheek unto cheek, like man, like maid. 
 
 The host of this osteriuy which has no name 
 or sign by which it may be known, is called 
 Giovanni. The blank back of the Church of 
 S. Casciano frowns down upon his house, and
 
 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 9 
 
 chokes the Hght out. He has a heap of children, 
 the youngest of whom come home at nightfall 
 just after we have finished supper. Augusto 
 one evening took a little bright-eyed girl belong- 
 ing to the family upon his knee. We were 
 sitting with the table between us, and a gas 
 lamp above our heads. That is the motif of my 
 fourth study : 
 
 A syjnphony of pink and blue, 
 
 The lamp, the little maid, and you. 
 
 Your strong inan's stature in those three 
 
 Blent azures clothed, so loved by me; 
 
 Your grave face framed in felt thrown hack ; 
 
 Your sad sweet lips, eyes glossy black. 
 
 Now laughing, while your wan cheeks flush 
 
 Like warm white roses with a blush. 
 
 Clasped to your breast, held by your hands, 
 
 Smothered in blues, the baby stands : 
 
 Her frock like some carnation gleams; 
 
 Her hair, a golden torrent, streams : 
 
 Blue as forget-me-not her eyes, 
 
 Or azure-winged butterflies : 
 
 Her cheeks and mouth so richly red. 
 
 One would not think her city-bred. 
 
 Your beautiful pale face of pain 
 
 Leaned to the child's cheeks breathing health; 
 
 Like feathers dropped from raven's wing. 
 
 The curls that round your forehead rain 
 
 Merged with her tresses' yellowy wealth ; 
 
 Her mouth that was a rose in spring
 
 lo IN THE KEY OF BLUE 
 
 Touched yours, her pouting nether lip 
 Clasped your fine upper lip, whose brinks 
 Wherefrom Love's self a bee might sip, 
 Is pencilled with faint Indian ink. 
 Such was the group I saw one night 
 Illumined by a flaring light, 
 In that dim tavern where • we meet 
 Sometimes to smoke, and drink and eat; 
 Exquisite contrast, not of tone, 
 Or tint, or form, or face alone. 
 
 Augusto and I were once more in the country 
 together. This time we fared further, and found 
 a nook of the hills which was all overgrown with 
 yellow shrubs and plants in bloom. The sun- 
 light was intense, and summer in the air. He 
 lay prone in grass, which was not so much 
 grass as a vast field of cloth of gold. The blues 
 he wore struck me as giving its accent to the 
 scene, and so I made a fifth study : 
 
 A symphony of blues and 
 
 Among ravifies of grey stones rolled 
 
 A down the steep from mountains old. 
 
 Laburnum branches drop their dew 
 
 Of amber bloom on me, on you : 
 
 With cytisus and paler broom. 
 
 Electron glimmering through the gloom. 
 
 Around us all the field flames tip, 
 
 Goldenrod, hawkweed, buttercup ; 
 
 While curling through lush grass one spies 
 
 Tendrils of honeyed helichryse.
 
 IN THE KEY OF BLUE ii 
 
 'Tis saffron, topaz, solar rays, 
 Dissolved in fervent chrysoprase. 
 Cool, yet how luminous, the blue, 
 Centred in triple tones by you. 
 Uniting all that yellow glare 
 With the blue circumambient air. 
 The violet shades, the hard cobalt 
 Of noon''s inexorable vault. 
 
 How are blues to be combined with green ? 
 That question haunted me, until I passed in my 
 gondola one day down a narrow Rio, where there 
 was a dyer's workshop. Augusto had nothing 
 to do with the study which I place sixth on my 
 list. It must be noticed that the tone of blue here 
 indicated is very low, and that of green is dimin- 
 ished to mere notes and suggestions. It might have 
 been possible to discover a concord of blue and 
 green under intenser conditions of light and 
 colour, as when, in the afterglow, barges laden 
 with fresh-cut grass glide against the purples of 
 the east. Yet, as I saw the harmony, I give it 
 here in verse : 
 
 A symphony of blues and green, 
 Swart indigo and eau,-marine. 
 Stripped to the waist two dyers kneel 
 On grey steps strewn with orange peel ; 
 The glaucous water to the brink 
 Welters with clouds of purplish ink : 
 The men wring cloth that drips and takes 
 Verditer hues of water-snakes,
 
 12 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 
 
 While pali paled by sun and seas 
 
 Repeat the tint in verdigris. 
 
 Those brows, nude breasts, and arms of mighty 
 
 The pride of youth and manhood white, 
 
 Now smirched with woad, proclaim the doom 
 
 Of labour aiid its life-long gloom. 
 
 Only the eyes emergent shine, 
 
 These black as coals, those opaline ; 
 
 Lighten from storms of tangled hair, 
 
 Black curls and blonde curls debonnair, 
 
 Proving man^s untamed spirit there. 
 
 The lagoon toward Fusina takes the whole 
 glory of Venetian sunset. The sun sinks down 
 into the Lombard plain, incarnadining the vault of 
 clouds and the vast mirrors of the undulating 
 water floor. Colours which are cold by nature 
 now assume an unexpected warmth. The blue 
 of blouse and sash and trousers passes trans- 
 figured into gems or flowers. It is raised to 
 amethyst, irradiated with crimson. Alone with 
 Augusto at such a moment, I obtained the 
 seventh of my studies : 
 
 A symphony of blues and red — 
 The broad lagoon, and overhead 
 Sunset, a sanguine banner, spread. 
 Pretty of azure and pure gules 
 Are sea, sky, city, stagnant pools : 
 You, by my side, within the boat, 
 Imperially purple float, 
 Beneath a burning sail, straight on 
 Into the wesfs vermilion.
 
 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 13 
 
 The triple azures melt and glow 
 Like flaunting iris-flowers arow ; 
 One amethystine gem of tJiree 
 Fused by the heaven's effulgeiicy. 
 Now fails the splendour, day dies down 
 Beyond the hills by Padiui's town; 
 And all along the eastern sky 
 Bhie reassumes ascendency. 
 Lapped in those tints of fluor-spar, 
 You shine intense, an azure star. 
 With roses flushed that slowly fade 
 Against the vast aerial shade. 
 
 I have made Augusto pose long enough as a 
 mere model or lay figure, dressed in three sorts 
 of blue, composing pictures. The next study, 
 in which the sense of colour is not wholly lost, 
 deals at last with more actual and kindly human 
 sympathies. I give it as the record of a day 
 spent in a little town between Treviso and 
 Vicenza. The old towers and walls of Castel- 
 franco still exist ; and a moat surrounds them 
 filled with running water. The walls and 
 turrets rise, covered here and there with ivy, 
 from green banks — intensely red in their time- 
 mellowed brickwork. The banks are planted 
 like a garden with flowering shrubs and trees, 
 among which, at the time of our visit, clumps of 
 Guelder roses, with their heavy white bosses in 
 full bloom, were conspicuous. Around the 
 ancient burgh, separated from the moat by a
 
 14 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 
 
 broad high-road, runs a suburb of low houses, 
 with mediaeval arcades ; and there are avenues 
 of tall white poplars. The town and its suburb 
 form two squares, at one angle of which, fronting 
 Giorgione's great white marble statue, is the 
 Albergo della Spada, a Venetian palace with 
 Gothic windows, and a balustraded balcony 
 adorned with little seated lions. 
 
 At Castelfranco, with a blouse 
 
 Venetian, blent of triple blues, 
 
 I walked all through the sleepy town, 
 
 Worshipped Madonna gazing down 
 
 From that high throne Giorgione painted 
 
 Above the knight and friar sainted. 
 
 Drank in the landscape golden-green^ 
 
 The dim primeval pastoral scene. 
 
 The blouse beside me thrilled no less 
 
 Than I to that mute loveliness; 
 
 Spoke littU, turned aside, and dwelt 
 
 Perchance on what he dumbly felt. 
 
 There throbbed a matins heart neath the shirt. 
 
 The sash, the hose, a life alert, 
 
 Veiled by that dominating hurt. 
 
 Then swept a storm-cloud from the hills ; 
 
 Eddying dust the city fills. 
 
 The thunder crashes, and the rain 
 
 Hisses on roof and flooded plain. 
 
 Ere midfiight, when the moon sailed low, 
 
 Peering through veils of indigo, 
 
 We went abroad, and heard the wail 
 
 Of many a darkling nightingale,
 
 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 15 
 
 Pouring as birds will only pour 
 
 Their souls forth when heaven's strife is o'er. 
 
 Those red walls, and the mighty towers. 
 
 Which lustrous ivy over-flowers, 
 
 Loojned through the murk divinely warm, 
 
 As palpitating after storm. 
 
 Hushed was the Jiight for friendly talk ; 
 
 Under the dark arcades we walk, 
 
 Pace the wet pavement, where light steals 
 
 And swoons amid the huge abeles : 
 
 Then'j^seek our chamber. All the blues 
 
 Dissolve, the symphony of hues 
 
 Fades out of sight, and leaves at length 
 
 A flawless form of simple strength. 
 
 Sleep -seeking, breathing, ivory-white. 
 
 Upon the couch in candle-light. 
 
 I will now close this fantasia on blues and 
 blouses with an envoy to the man who helped 
 to make it. An artist in language must feel the 
 mockery of word-painting, though he is often 
 seduced to attempt effects which can only be 
 adequately rendered by the palette. Description 
 is not the proper end of writing. Word-paint- 
 ings are a kind of hybrid, and purists in art 
 criticism not irrationally look askance at the 
 mixed species. 
 
 '■''Pictures or poems ? Dithyramb or prose ? 
 What are they ? " cries this critic. This replies : 
 " Word-pictures or verse-idylls, no man knows ! " 
 '■^ One thing is sttre," a third saith : ^^ Sure he lies 
 Who finds in these thrice-sifted rhapsodies
 
 16 IN THE KEY OF BLUE 
 
 The stujf of good plain writing!'' ^' Put them by,'' 
 A fourth, more caiitiotis, iminniirs ; ^^ time will try." 
 
 Were silence, then, not better than this speech ? 
 
 Words do no work of pencil^ palette, brush. 
 
 Words are designed to thrill the heart, or teach; 
 
 Not to depict, not to revoke the blush 
 
 Of dawn, or reincarnadine the flush 
 
 Of sunset; break this wavering wand, and go 
 
 Back to thy books, poor powerless Prospero. 
 
 Nevertheless, something may still be pleaded 
 in favour of verbal description. If it be suffi- 
 ciently penetrated with emotion, it has by its very 
 vagueness a power of suggestion which the more 
 direct art of the painter often misses. Sym- 
 pathetic minds are stimulated to acts of creation 
 by the writer, while pictures make demands upon 
 their assimilative faculties alone. 
 
 How can words paijtt this warmth of blues, 
 
 Blended with black, white, brown, all hues ? 
 
 Longhi we want, Tiepolo, 
 
 To make us moderns feel blue so : 
 
 They knew the deep Venetian night. 
 
 The values of Venetian light, 
 
 Venetian blouses led them right. 
 
 Come back, my Muse, come back to him 
 
 Who warmed the cold hue, bright or dim. 
 
 Those ivory brows, those lustrous eyes, 
 
 Those grape-like curls, those brief replies ; 
 
 These are thy themes — the man, the life — 
 
 Not tints in symphony at strife.
 
 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 A LAND less rich in natural, artistic, and historical 
 attractions than Italy could not afford to leave 
 a district so charming as that of the Euganean 
 Hills almost unknown, unvisited. No guide- 
 books talk about these little mountains ; there is 
 nothing of importance, so far as I am aware, 
 written on them from the historical or any other 
 point of view. Express trains carry troops of 
 tourists along their outskirts from Bologna to 
 Padua and vice versa. All English people who 
 read our poets know that Shelley called them — 
 
 " Thos& famous Euganean hills which bear, 
 As seen from Lido through the harbour piles, 
 The likeness of a clump of peaked isles." 
 
 Their purple pyramids, lifted against the orange 
 of the western sky, form an indispensable 
 
 B
 
 i8 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 ingredient of the orthodox Venetian sunset. 
 Their reflections in the blue mirror of the 
 lagoons, although they are so far away, count 
 as one of the chief wonders of the beautiful Vene- 
 tian mornings. Yet I rarely meet with man or 
 woman who has had the curiosity to invade the 
 Oreads of the Euganeans in their native haunts, 
 and to pluck the heart out of their poetic 
 mystery. 
 
 It has been my own good fortune to spend 
 several weeks on different occasions at the villa 
 of a noble lady who resides not far from Mon- 
 selice. So I have enjoyed special opportunities 
 of becoming acquainted with this fascinating 
 island in the ocean of the Lombard plain. For 
 variety and delicacy of detail, for miniature 
 mountain grandeur, it may be compared with 
 what we call the English Lakes. The scale is 
 nearly similar, though the Euganeans are posi- 
 tively smaller, and are placed in far more inter- 
 esting surroundings. What they lack is water. 
 This defect is balanced by the richness of 
 Italian vegetation, by the breadth of the great 
 landscape out of which they heave, by the imme- 
 diate neighbourhood of famous cities, and by 
 the range of snowy Alps which tower upon 
 their northern horizon. 
 
 I cannot offer anything like a detailed 
 study of the Euganean Hills. What follows in
 
 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 19 
 
 these pages consists of three extracts from my 
 diary, made in the May month of three several 
 years, relating aimless but highly enjoyable 
 ramblings about their gentle declivities and 
 wooded valleys. 
 
 II 
 
 Este is a town of great antiquity, mentioned 
 under its old name of Ateste both by Tacitus 
 and Pliny. The Adige in former times flowed 
 by its walls ; and etymologists derive the city's 
 name from Athesis. The museum is rich in 
 Roman inscriptions, which are said to have 
 drawn Professor Mommsen on a visit to the 
 quiet place. Here in the Middle Ages dwelt the 
 ItaHan members of the mighty house of Guelph ; 
 who took their title from Este, and afterwards 
 ruled Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio as Dukes. 
 At present the town has little to show of interest, 
 except some picturesque ruins of wall and tower, 
 crumbling away upon the southern promontory 
 of the Euganeans, under slopes of olive and 
 almond and vine. 
 
 Just above the town, surveying it from a kind 
 of terrace, is the villa called I Cappuccini, which 
 Lord Byron lent to the Shelleys in the autumn 
 of 1818. *^ We have been living," writes Shelley
 
 20 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 to Peacock on the 8th of October, *' this last 
 month near the little town from which I date 
 this letter, in a very pleasant villa which has 
 been lent to us. Behind here are the Euganean 
 hills, not so beautiful as those of the Bagni di 
 Lucca, with Arqua, where Petrarch's house and 
 tomb are religiously preserved and visited. At 
 the end of our garden is an extensive Gothic 
 castle, now the habitation of owls and bats, 
 where the Medici family resided before they 
 came to Florence. We see before us the wide, 
 flat plain of Lombardy, in which we see the 
 sun and moon rise and set, and the evening 
 star, and all the golden magnificence of autumnal 
 clouds." I do not know to what tradition about 
 the Medici Shelley was referring. It is true 
 that Cosmo di Medici was banished in 1433 to 
 Padua ; and he may possibly have spent part of 
 his short exile at Este. I think it more probable, 
 however, that Shelley confused the Medici with 
 the Dukes of Ferrara, who took their family 
 title from the old fief of Este. 
 
 In this villa Shelley composed the first part 
 of Prometheus Unbound, '' I have been writing, 
 and indeed have just finished, the first act of a 
 lyric and classical drama, to be called Prometheus 
 Unbound^* From Padua he wrote, September 
 22, to his '^best Mary": ^* Bring the sheets of 
 Prometheus Unbound^ which you will find num-
 
 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 21 
 
 t)ered from i to 26 on the table of the pavilion." 
 The people who now inhabit I Cappuccini still 
 show this pavilion, a little dilapidated summer- 
 house, overgrown with ivy, at the end of a garden 
 terrace. It was also near Este, having climbed 
 one of the many-peaked summits above the town, 
 that Shelley improvised the '^ Lines written in 
 the Euganean Hills." 
 
 From Este to Arqu^ is no great distance. 
 The road for some time skirts the hills, then 
 turns abruptly upward to the left, leading to the 
 village, which is picturesquely placed among its 
 fruit-trees in a hollow of the arid hmestone 
 mountains. Arqua looks at first sight like a 
 tiny piece of the Riviera, with the hazy Lombard 
 plain in lieu of the Mediterranean. Petrarch's 
 house is a fair-sized white cottage at the extreme 
 ■end of the village, one of the highest dwellings of 
 Arqua. From its windows and garden-walls the 
 ■eye ranges across olive-trees, laurels, and pome- 
 granates to the misty level land which melts into 
 the sea ; churches with their companili rising 
 from the undetermined azure, like great galleys 
 stranded in a lagoon. It is the constant recur- 
 rence of this Lombard distance, the doubt 
 whether we are gazing upon land or sea, the 
 sense of the neighbouring Adriatic and Venetian 
 salt-lakes, which lends a peculiar charm to 
 Euganean landscapes.
 
 22 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 Petrarch's study is a tiny room, with a little 
 northern window, opening out of a larger ante- 
 chamber. There was just enough space in it to 
 hold a table and his arm-chair, which is still 
 preserved, as well as a book-cupboard. Here, 
 then, the old poet fell asleep for the last time 
 among his books, upon the i8th of June 1374. 
 He had lived at Arqua since 1369, studying in- 
 cessantly and writing with assiduity till the very 
 end. One of the last things he composed was a 
 Latin version of his friend Boccaccio's story of 
 Griselda. They show the mummy of a cat, 
 wholly destitute of hair, which is said to have once 
 been his " furry favourite." Probably the beast 
 is no more genuine than Wallenstein's celebrated 
 horse at Prague. 
 
 The house contains several spacious rooms, 
 with chimney-pieces of a later date, and frescoes 
 setting forth in quaint quattrocejtto style the loves 
 of Laura and the poet. One of these, which 
 represents the meeting of Petrarch and his lady, 
 might almost be called pretty ; a bushy laurel 
 sprouts from Petrarch's head, Laura has a Cupid 
 near her ; both are pacing in a verdant meadow. 
 
 The village church of Arqua stands upon an 
 open terrace with a full stream of clearest water 
 — chiare e fresche onde — flowing by. On the 
 square before its portal, where the peasants 
 at mass-time, rises the tomb of
 
 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 23 
 
 Petrarch : a simple rectilinear coffin of smooth 
 Verona marble, raised on four thick columns, 
 and covered with a pyramidal lid — what the 
 Italians call an area. Without emblems, alle- 
 gories, or lamenting genii, this tomb of the in- 
 spired poet, the acute student who opened a new 
 age of intellectual activity for Europe, suggests 
 thoughts beyond the reach of words. Petrarch 
 was emphatically the first modern man, the indi- 
 viduality who began to disengage art and letters 
 from mediaevalism. Here he sleeps, encircled 
 by the hills, beneath the canopy of heaven ; and 
 his own winged thoughts, " forms more real than 
 living man, nurslings of immortality," the ethe- 
 real offspring of his restless heart and brain, 
 seem to keep watch around him in the liquid 
 air. 
 
 There is a village inn within a few steps of 
 this piazza, where the excellent white wine of 
 Arqua may be tasted with advantage. Grown 
 upon that warm volcanic soil of the Euganeans, 
 in the pure dry climate of the hills, it is generous 
 and light together. Experience leads me to 
 believe that it does not bear transportation ; for 
 the Arqua wine one sometimes finds in Venice 
 has lost in quality. This, however, is a charac- 
 teristic of very many Italian wines ; and nothing 
 is more charming in that incomparable country 
 than the surprises which are always awaiting the
 
 24 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 cenophilist (as Thackeray calls him) in unex- 
 pected places, villages unknown to fame, and 
 wayside hostelries. 
 
 To Battaglia we drive through a swamp of 
 willows and tall buUrushes and bending reeds. 
 The quiet pools and dykes which slumber in this 
 mass of vegetation are abloom with white and 
 yellow water-lilies, iris, water-violet, and flower- 
 ing rush. Some great birds — wild geese, I 
 think — were flying and feeding there, as I drove 
 through the marshland in the early morning. 
 
 Battaglia and the neighbouring village of 
 Abano are both celebrated for their baths and 
 springs of hot sulphurous water. Here we 
 understand in how true a sense the Euganean 
 Hills are a volcanic upheaval from what must 
 have been a great sea at the time of their emer- 
 gence. The ground is so hot and hollow, so 
 crusted with salts and crystalline deposits, and 
 the water which spouts up in miniature geysers 
 is so boiling, that one wonders when a new 
 eruption is going to take place. On autumn 
 evenings, a mist from the warm springs hangs 
 over Abano, giving it a dreamy look as the train 
 whisks by. But this is no vapour of malaria. 
 The country indeed is singularly healthy. 
 Abano was known to the Romans. They called 
 it Aponus ; the name being derived, it is said, 
 from a Greek adjective which means painless — a
 
 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 25 
 
 kind of parallel to Posilippo. Hundreds of folk, 
 then as now, came to rid themselves of rheumatic 
 pains and other ailments in the mud-baths and 
 hot mineral water. Suetonius says that when 
 Tiberius was a young man, the object of suspicion 
 to his stepfather, Augustus, he visited Padua 
 upon the occasion of a journey into Illyria. 
 '' There he consulted the oracle of Geryon, 
 which bade him cast golden dice into the foun- 
 tain of Aponus, in order to obtain an answer to 
 his questions. This he did accordingly, and the 
 dice thrown by him turned up the highest pos- 
 sible numbers.. The dice themselves can be seen 
 to this day in the water." 
 
 Geryon, according to one version of his 
 legend, was a king of Hesperia ; and Hercules 
 is said to have opened the springs of Battaglia 
 and Abano by ploughing with his oxen there. 
 The ancients seem to have symbolised the vol- 
 canic nature of this country in several myths. 
 It is difficult not to connect the legend of Phae- 
 thon, who fell from heaven into the Po, burned 
 up the waters of Eridanus, and converted the 
 tears of the river-nymphs to amber, with some 
 dim memory of primitive convulsions. At this 
 point I would fain turn aside to dally with the 
 two books of Pontano's Eridani, than which 
 modern scholarship has produced nothing more 
 liquid, more poetical, more original in Latin
 
 26 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 verse. But ne quid nimis : for now the domes 
 and towers of Padua begin to loom in the dis- 
 tance — the vast roof of the Palazzo Ragione, 
 the fanciful cupolas of S. Antonio, harmonious 
 and lovely S. Giustina — while we jog along the 
 never-ending straight banks of the canal, and 
 the Euganeans sink cloudHke into azure air be- 
 hind us. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Two days ago I started with three friends, 
 two Venetians and an Englishman, for the Euga- 
 nean Hills. The day was very hot for the season, 
 since we are still in the middle of May. Our 
 object was to make an early ascent of Venda, 
 the highest point of the group, which looks so 
 graceful and so lofty from the lagoons near Mala- 
 mocco. Venda rises only a little over two thou- 
 sand feet above the sea. But it has the sweep 
 and outline of a grand mountain. 
 
 We spent the afternoon and evening at Val 
 San Zibio, in the Albergo alia Pergola : about 
 half an hour's drive out of Battaglia. There is 
 a villa there with gardens, built and planned 
 originally in the early seventeenth century by a 
 member of the Barbarigo family. The place 
 afterwards passed to the Martinenghi of Venice, 
 and now belongs to the Conte Dona delle Rose.
 
 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 27 
 
 The dwelling-house has been modernised and 
 ruined in appearance by the destruction of the 
 statues and florid architectural decorations which 
 brought it formerly into keeping with those mas- 
 sive walls, old-fashioned iron gratings, barocco 
 groups of gods on balustrades and fountains, 
 remaining in the ancient pleasure-ground. On 
 the great front gates to the garden, where the 
 water from the hills comes rushing down by steps, 
 the coat of Barbarigo is splendidly displayed : 
 *^ Argent on a bend gules, between six beards 
 sabky three lioncels passant or." It is the same 
 coat which adorns the Scala dei Giganti and one 
 of the great chimney-pieces in the Ducal Palace. 
 There is nothing, perhaps, exactly comparable 
 to this old-world garden at Val San Zibio. 
 Placed at the opening of a little glen, or coomb, 
 descending from a spur of Venda, it fills the whole 
 space up, and works into complete harmony with 
 the surrounding wildness. The formal landscape 
 gardening of two centuries ago has been mellowed 
 by time, so as to merge imperceptibly, without 
 the slightest break or discord, into bowery woods 
 and swelling hills. The compassed fish-ponds, 
 the moss-grown statues of aquatic deities, the 
 Cupids holding dolphins which spout threads of 
 water from their throats, the labyrinth of clipped 
 box, the huge horse-chestnut trees, the long green 
 alleys of hornbeam twisted into ogee arches over-
 
 28 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 head, the smooth-shaven lawns, and the myriad 
 gold-fish in the water-lilied tanks — all these ele- 
 ments of an aristocratic pleasance melt, as it 
 were, into the gentle serenity of the leafy heights 
 above them, the solemnity of cypress avenues, 
 the hoary stillness of olive orchards, the copses 
 of hazel, elm, acacia, chestnut. Nowhere, indeed, 
 have I seen art and nature married by time and 
 taste with such propriety and sympathy of feel- 
 ing. It is delightful to saunter through those 
 peaceful walks, to hear the gush of waterfalls, 
 and to watch the fountains play, while the sun is 
 westering, and the golden-verdant cup of the 
 little valley swims in light-irradiated haze. 
 
 We four friends enjoyed this pastime for an 
 hour or so ; and then, after strolling awhile in 
 acacia woods above the hamlet, we returned to 
 an excellent supper at our inn. It was served 
 in a corner of the kitchen : one of those large 
 brick-floored rooms, with wooden rafters, and a 
 pent-house chimney-piece half open to the air, 
 which Tintoretto sometimes painted — notably in 
 his Cenacolo, at the Scuola di S. Rocco. Such 
 kitchens always contain an abundance of copper 
 vessels and brass salvers hung about the walls, 
 from the appearance of which the wary guest 
 may form a tolerably accurate prognostication of 
 his coming meal. At our hostel of the Pergola 
 the copper and brass gear was not only plentiful,
 
 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 29 
 
 but almost as dazzling as Atlanta's shield in the 
 Orlando. And the supper corresponded to these 
 happy auspices. Signora Fortin, our hostess, 
 served it with her own hands, hissing from the 
 hearth. The 7n€7m ran as follows: — "Risi-bisi," 
 a Venetian mess of rice and young peas stewed 
 in gravy ; veal cutlets, with asparagus ; lettuce- 
 salad, home-made sausage, and cheese from the 
 pastures. Good white wine of the Arqua type 
 satisfied our thirst ; and when the simple meal 
 was finished, my three companions sat down to 
 play treselt with the jovial Boniface. I, who had 
 no skill at cards, wandered out into the moon- 
 light, pacing country lanes alive with fire-flies 
 and glow-worms. Then came the divine night 
 of sleep in lowly bed-chambers with open 
 windows, through which entered the songs of 
 nightingales, the plash of falling waters, and the 
 sough of heavy- foliaged trees. 
 
 In the morning we started at six o'clock for 
 Venda. We had been promised a putelo, a 
 ragazzo — a boy, in fact, to carry our provisions. 
 He turned out a red-haired toper, over fifty 
 years of age, with a fiery nose. However, he 
 performed his function as a beast of burden. 
 The hedgerows were drenched with dew, bringing 
 out the scent of wild-rose, privet, and acacia- 
 blossom. Scirocco brooded in the air, foreboding 
 an afternoon of thunderstorm. From Galzignano,
 
 30 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 a village at the foot of our mountain, we began 
 the ascent to Rua — the first stage of the easy 
 climb. The hillsides here were abloom with 
 silver cistus, golden broom, gaudy orchises, 
 starred anthericum lilies, purple columbines, and 
 creamy potentillas swaying from a slender stalk. 
 Rua is a spacious convent, covering several acres 
 on a spur of Venda. Within its walled enclosure 
 are separate dwellings for the monks who live 
 there, cottages united by common allegiance to 
 the church which rises in their midst. It ought 
 to be a paradise for men who have renounced 
 the world, desire seclusion, and are contented 
 with a round of rustic labour and religious duties. 
 But as we skirted the long wall of the convent 
 precincts, I wondered how many of its inmates 
 may have missed their vocation — for whom that 
 vast extent of landscape and the distant cities 
 seen upon the plain are only sources of perpetual 
 irritation. For, as we rose, the view expanded ; 
 the isolated position of the Euganeans, Hke an 
 island in an immense sea, made itself more and 
 more felt. By ghmpses through the thickets of 
 dwarf chestnut, hornbeam, or hazel, we gazed 
 upon aerial Alps, long silvery lagoons, the lapse 
 of rivers flowing to the Adriatic, and brown 
 villages with bell-towers for their centre. 
 
 The summit of Venda is a long rolling down, 
 which reminded me of the Feldberg in the Black
 
 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 31 
 
 Forest. The ruins of an ancient convent crown 
 its southern crest. This must have erewhile 
 been a noble edifice ; for the abandoned walls 
 are built to last for ever, in a severely massive 
 Benedictine style. They abut upon a kind of 
 precipice ; and the prospect they command is 
 the whole Lombard plain to south and west, 
 fringed with the silver-edged lagoons and sea, 
 threaded by the Adige, and gemmed with 
 venerable seats of human habitation, among 
 which Montagnana stands conspicuous. Upon 
 the other side of Venda, the line of the Tyrolese 
 and Friulian Alps breaks the northern sky ; 
 Brenta flows through the fields to Padua ; and 
 the Monti Berici, descending from the mountains 
 of Vicenza, stretch out their feelers till they 
 almost touch the Euganeans at Bastia. From 
 this point, as from the top of one of those 
 raised maps men make in Switzerland, we can 
 study the structure of the tiny group of 
 mountains Venda crowns — so small in scale, so 
 exquisitely modelled, so finely pencilled in its 
 valley structure, so rich in human life and 
 vegetation. 
 
 It would be impossible to spend some hours 
 upon the crest of Venda, and not to think of 
 Shelley's poem. As a boy, I had those lines by 
 heart, and used to wonder dreamily about the 
 memorable landscape they describe :
 
 32 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 ^^ Beneath is spread like a green sea 
 The waveless plain of Lombardy, 
 Bounded by the vapourous air, 
 Islanded by cities fair ; 
 Underneath day's azure eyes 
 Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, 
 A peopled labyrinth of walls, 
 Amphitrite's destined halls." 
 
 How true the picture is ! And then again : 
 
 ^^ By the skirts of that grey cloud 
 Many-domed Padua proud 
 Stands, a peopled solitude, 
 'Mid the harvest-shining plain, 
 Where the peasant heaps his grain." 
 
 Yes, indeed, there is Venice, there is Padua, 
 there are the skirts of the grey cloud ; but the 
 Celtic anarch, the foes, the tyrants, of whom 
 Shelley sang, have now disappeared from Italy. 
 Are her sons happier, I asked myself, than 
 when the Frenchmen and the Austrians were 
 here ? 
 
 While I was making these reflections, there 
 appeared upon the scene a youthful cowherd, or 
 vacher, with a hungry hound who loved him. 
 He was a bright lad, clear-cut in feature, nut- 
 brown of complexion, white of teeth, with pale 
 blue wistful eyes. He told us that he could 
 neither read nor write, that his mother was 
 dead, and his father confined in the madhouse
 
 AMONG THE BUG A NE AN HILLS 33 
 
 of San Servolo. He had been born and bred 
 on Venda ; and now he had drawn a number for 
 the army, and was just going to be drafted into 
 some regiment. I gave him my briar pipe for a 
 keepsake ; and then, having already spent three 
 lazy hours upon the top of Venda, we began 
 the descent upon the other side, breaking into 
 thickets of low brushwood. Here the air be- 
 came heavy with an aromatic resinous scent, 
 which I soon perceived to come from the mystic 
 Dictamntis fraxinella in full bloom. The coppice 
 reddened far and wide with the tall spires of that 
 remarkably handsome flower. At night, in cer- 
 tain conditions of the weather, it is said to be 
 phosphorescent; or, to put the fact perhaps 
 more accurately, it emits volatile oil in large 
 quantities, which readily ignites and burns with 
 a pale bluish flame around the ruddy blossoms. 
 After following a ridge, partly wooded and partly 
 down-land, for about an hour, we came to the 
 opening of the Val San Zibio ravine. Into this 
 we plunged — into a dense, silent, icy-cold wood 
 of hazels — where the air seemed frozen by 
 contrast with the burning sunlight we had left. 
 The descent through the coomb or gully to the 
 quiet hamlet, deep in verdure, called to mind 
 many a Devonshire or Somersetshire glen. 
 
 This morning, on the way back to Venice, I 
 visited Cataio, a castle built in the sixteenth 
 
 c
 
 34 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 century by one of the Obizzi family. It is a 
 huge place, designed in a fanciful style, half 
 Renaissance palace, half barrack. A broad 
 flight of steps leads to a vast terrace high above 
 the courts and gardens, which commands an 
 enchanting prospect over the plain of Battaglia, 
 the hazy glens and outskirts of the Euganeans, 
 and the cloudlike mass of Venda. Here I bade 
 adieu to the mountain and to the pleasant 
 solitudes of Val San Zibio. 
 
 IV 
 
 The third extract from my diary shows me 
 again at Val San Zibio, next year, upon the 
 very same day of the month, strolling about the 
 lovely pleasance, this time in different company. 
 It is Sunday morning, and the peasants, both 
 men and women, carry roses stuck behind their 
 ears. One grey-haired old fellow, who is the 
 Conte's bailiff, wore two large China roses, one 
 for each side of his ruddy countenance. 
 
 Domenico, the coachman, arrived at eight, and 
 having said farewell to the jolly Boniface of the 
 Pergola, we started on our long day's expedition. 
 Skirting the hills by Galzignano and across the 
 spurs of Venda, we pass through a land of 
 changeful beauty. The whole country is in
 
 AMONG THE BUG A MEAN HILLS 35 
 
 bloom upon this glorious summer morning. In 
 none of my wanderings have I seen such torrents 
 of acacia-blossom, whitening acres of the hillside, 
 making the ridges hoary and the glens one snow- 
 drift, lifting plumes of rosy or of creamy silver 
 into the fiery blue of heaven above our eyes. 
 Ruddy-fruited cherry-trees, grey-green olives, 
 glossy chestnuts, with mulberries and figs and 
 peach-trees, all attired in daintiest green, inter- 
 penetrate this riot of acacia-blossom ; and the 
 air is alive with dragon-flies in thousands, chasing 
 each other through the liquid light. Here and 
 there wild nature asserts her independence. The 
 signs of tilth and culture fade off into tangles 
 of cistus, Mediterranean heath, broom, myrtle, 
 arbutus, and juniper, overflowing from the arid 
 sandstone slopes, just like the maquis of Corsica. 
 Then follow orchards of apples, almonds, pears, 
 plums, apricots. Copses of walnuts and chest- 
 nuts break into vineyards or pastures bordered 
 with dykes full of yellow iris and nymphea. 
 This variety within a narrow compass, due to 
 the rise and fall of the land, and also to abrupt 
 geological changes, constitutes the chief charm of 
 travelling in the Euganeans. 
 
 So, in due course of time, we arrived at the 
 great Benedictine Abbey of Praglia, now used as 
 a barrack, where troops of all descriptions come 
 from time to time on camping expeditions. They
 
 36 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 bring their bedding and furniture with them, and 
 take it away when they depart ; so that in their 
 absence the interminable corridors and cells, 
 refectories and parlours, cloisters and courts, are 
 whitewashed and dreary, scrawled over with the 
 names and jests of soldiers. Only two Padri are 
 left ; '* Ciistodi for the State in a house where 
 we were once Padroni" said one of them with 
 a bitter smile, as he pointed to the ruthlessly 
 dilapidated library, the empty bookcases, the 
 yawning framework of the wooden ceiling, whence 
 pictures had been torn. These Padri simply 
 loathe the soldiers. 
 
 The architectural interest of Praglia centres in 
 three large cloisters, one of them lifted high in 
 air above magazines, cellars, and storehouses. 
 The refectory, too, is a noble chamber ; and the 
 church is spacious. But the whole building 
 impresses the imagination by magnitude, solidity, 
 severity — true Benedictine qualities — rather than 
 by beauty of form or brilliance of fancy. We 
 find nothing here of the harmonious grace (of 
 what Albert! called ttttta quella musicaj that 
 music of the classic style) which is so con- 
 spicuous in S. Giustina at Padua, itself an offshoot 
 from the mighty Abbey. The situation, too, 
 though certainly agreeable, on the skirts of the 
 hills, with a fair prospect over the broad 
 champaign, lacks that poetry of which one finds
 
 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 37 
 
 so much in all parts of the Euganeans. Praglia 
 might be called a good specimen of massive 
 ecclesiastical prose. 
 
 We jogged on, through Montemerlo, toward 
 the group of hills which divide Teolo from 
 Rovolone, having the jagged cliffs of Pendice 
 first in sight, and then the deeply wooded 
 Madonna del Monte on our left hand, and the 
 Paduan plain upon the right. After about four 
 miles of this travelling under the noonday sun, 
 the road bends suddenly upwards, striking into 
 wood and coppice. The summit of the little pass 
 affords a double vista ; backwards over the 
 inimitable plain with Padua stretched out like a 
 map in hazy sunshine ; forwards to Bastia and 
 the Monti Berici. These miniature cols, deep in 
 chestnut and acacia groves, with the gracefully 
 shaped crests above them, make one of the main 
 beauties of the Euganeans. Tali purple orchids, 
 splashed with white, began to gleam in the thick 
 grasses, while here and there a flame-like spire 
 of fraxinella-bloom reminded me of Venda. 
 
 At length we plunged into the deep woods and 
 country lanes of Rovolone, remarkably English 
 in character, and halted at a roadside osteria. 
 The red wine here was excellent — one of those 
 surprises which reward the diligent oenophilist in 
 Italy. I decided to walk up to the church, 
 remembering our autumn visit of 1888, when a 
 
 294893
 
 38 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 dear friend of mine lay and shed tears on the 
 parapet. E vide e pianse il fato amaro, for he 
 had to leave Lombardy next day for London 
 and the British Museum. To-day the landscape 
 swam in summer heat, out of which emerged the 
 spurs of the Monti Berici, amethystine-blue ; and 
 the Alpine chain, which was so white and glitter- 
 ing on that October afternoon, could now be 
 hardly detected through sultry vapour. So I 
 retraced my steps down the rough sandstone road, 
 following the tinkling streamlet, between over- 
 arching boughs of maple, hornbeam, and wild 
 cherry. I found Domenico and Augusto still 
 drinking the excellent red wine and eating salame 
 in the osteria. When the nag was rested, we 
 helped him and the carriage down a broken lane 
 — more torrent-bed than pathway — into the main 
 road to Vo. At this point we struck abruptly 
 upward to the left, and reached Teolo through 
 a long straight valley between limestone hills. 
 The variety of soil, and the sudden alteration 
 from one kind of rock to another in the Euganeans, 
 together with the change of flora this implies, is 
 another of their charms. Here I noticed abun- 
 dance of tree-heath and starry snow-white 
 anthericum. 
 
 At the head of this long valley the view 
 gradually broadens out on every side. Teolo 
 is magnificently situated between the Madonna
 
 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 39 
 
 del Monte and more distant Venda — Venda 
 stretching like a great green cloud, with Rua 
 perched upon its eastern spur, and the ruins 
 of the convent crowning the irregular summit. 
 But between the town and Venda lies a wide 
 expanse of undulating country, out of the ver- 
 dure of which shoot the grey double crags of 
 Pendice, in form reminding one not very dis- 
 tantly of Langdale Pikes. 
 
 Teolo occupies incomparably the finest point, 
 as it also is the central point, of the Euganean 
 district. It is important enough to be a station 
 for Carabinieri. Yet the little township lies so 
 scattered on the hillsides, that in my Alpine 
 home we should call it a Landschaft. I thought 
 involuntarily of Cadore, as I stood before the 
 door of the inn, an isolated house, the last house 
 of the village. There is a touch of Dolomite 
 feeling about the scenery of Teolo. 
 
 Domenico bade me go to sleep for a couple 
 of hours, which I did as well as I could through 
 the noise and singing of fifteen Venetian cortesani 
 in the next room. At six o'clock he called me 
 to begin the ascent of Pendice. Leaving the 
 street behind us, we passed out upon a ridge 
 which joins the terrace-side of Teolo to the 
 larger block of precipice and forest called Pen- 
 dice. Here one looks both ways over the 
 Lombard plain, spread out literally like an
 
 40 AMONG THE EU GAME AN HILLS 
 
 ocean, and framed, as the sea might be framed, 
 by the inverted angles of valleys descending into 
 it on either hand. It took us rather more than 
 half an hour to reach the summit of the rock by 
 a pretty steep footpath. I suppose the crags 
 in vertical height on the eastern side are about 
 two hundred feet above the woods, which fall 
 away steeply to the valley bottom at the distance 
 of some three hundred feet farther. So the 
 impression of altitude is considerable, and the 
 fine bold cleavage of the stone increases the 
 effect. There are extensive and massive remains 
 of what must have once been a very formidable 
 castle, covering the whole of the upper platform, 
 and descending for a certain distance upon either 
 side. Henbane grows in rank luxuriance around 
 these ruins. But I am ashamed to say that I 
 know nothing about the history of this strong- 
 hold, nor about Speronella, the mediaeval heroine 
 of its romance. An old peasant who lives up 
 there, like an owl in a corner of the ruin, could 
 give no information. He waxed eloquent about 
 monks and bandits, bravi and maidens confined 
 in subterranean grottoes ; but of facts he was 
 as ignorant as I am. 
 
 From this point of vantage the view is really 
 glorious ; so much of plain visible to east and 
 west as gives a sense of illimitable space, with- 
 out the monotony of one uniform horizon ; then
 
 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 41 
 
 the great billowy mass of Venda, the crest of 
 Madonna del Monte, and the rich green labyrinth 
 of dales and copses at one's feet. A furious 
 wind flew over us ; and a thunderstorm swept 
 across the southern sky, passing probably be- 
 tween Este and the Adige, lightening and thun- 
 dering incessantly. The old peasant told us 
 not to be anxious ; the storm was not coming 
 our way. So we sat down beneath a broken 
 wall, which seemed to tremble in the blast, and 
 enjoyed the lurid commotion of the heavens, 
 which added sublimity to the landscape. All 
 this while the sun was setting, flaringly red 
 and angry, in crimson contrast with the tawny 
 purples of the tempest clouds. The verdure of 
 hill, wood, and meadow assumed that pecuhar 
 brilliancy which can only be compared to chry- 
 soprase ; and all the reaches of the Lombard 
 plain smouldered in violet blue. The sun 
 dropped behind the Monti Berici, and we 
 clambered down from our eyrie, glad to regain 
 the inn, to sup and sleep. 
 
 I will save one tiny episode from the ascent 
 to Pendice, and put it in the form of a dialogue, 
 as it really happened. 
 
 Domenico. — What herb is that ? 
 
 The Peasant. — Hemlock. 
 
 Aiigusto. (bending down to touch the plant. ^ — 
 Poor Socrates !
 
 42 AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS 
 
 I. — Socrates was the Jesus Christ of Greece. 
 
 Augusto. — Just so. 
 
 Next day, the whim came over me to drive 
 the whole way from Teolo, through Padua, Stra, 
 Dolo, to Mestre, and to regain Venice by the 
 lagoon. It meant rising at four and reaching 
 home at seven. But I wanted to get a notion 
 of what travelling was like in Lombardy before 
 the age of railways.
 
 ON AN ALTAR-PIECE BY TIEPOLO 
 
 Venice in the last century produced four eminent 
 painters, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Canaletto, 
 Guardi, Longhi. Of these Tiepolo was by far the 
 greatest, in natural endowment, in splendour of 
 performance, in fecundity of production. Believers 
 in metempsychosis might have sworn, seeing his 
 grand style bud and bloom in that degenerate 
 age, that Paolo Veronese lived again in Tiepolo's 
 body. He has the same sincerity of conception, 
 the same firmness of execution, the same large- 
 ness, breadth, serenity and sanity, that we admire 
 in the earlier master. This is felt in the 
 frescoes of the Palazzo Labia, where the loves of 
 Antony and Cleopatra fill immense spaces with 
 mundane pomp and insolent animalism. How 
 grandly the great scenes are planned ; how large 
 and luminous the sky-regions, where masts 
 bristle and pennants flutter to the breeze of 
 Cydnus ; how noble the orders of the architec- 
 ture, enclosing groups of men and women,
 
 44 ON AN ALTAR-PIECE BY TIEPOLO 
 
 horses, dwarfs, dogs, all in stately movement or 
 superb repose ! Then the fresco-painting is so 
 solid, the drawing and design so satisfactory, 
 the colouring so rich and varied, the types and 
 characters in face and form so strongly marked. 
 Of a truth, we say, here is a master of the 
 heroic age come to life once more in the century 
 of Castrati and Cicisbei, of wanton Casanovas 
 and neurotic Rousseaus and effeminate abbes. 
 
 It would be a mistake, however, to confine 
 our appreciation of Tiepolo to this one note of 
 his affinity to Veronese. Every artist of such 
 calibre has a distinction of his own. To seize 
 this characteristic and personal quality with 
 absolute certainty in the case of Tiepolo 
 requires some patience of analysis. At first we 
 are tempted to find it in those vast decorative 
 schemes for ceilings — apotheoses of Saints or 
 Heroes, with flying Angels, allegorical figures 
 upon clouds and cornices, in all possible atti- 
 tudes of violent movement and perilous foreshort- 
 ening : works in the barocco taste of the Italian 
 decadence, upon which the noble artist spent too 
 much of his energy and time. The contrast 
 between these soulless compositions and the 
 serious frescoes of the Labia palace is very 
 striking ; and here indeed we have something in 
 quite a different key from that of Veronese's art. 
 But if this had been Tiepolo's only or chief
 
 ON AN ALTAR-PIECE BY TIEPOLO 45 
 
 claim on our regard, he would count at best as 
 one of the most consummate scene-painters in sub- 
 ordination to architectural effect, whom modern 
 Europe has produced. His title to distinction is 
 not here. 
 
 The specific strength of Tiepolo as an artist 
 lay, I take it, in a peculiar and just perception of 
 certain atmospheric and colour qualities in his 
 Venetian birthplace ; the employment of which 
 for the realisation of very original and bold 
 conceptions placed him in advance not only of 
 Veronese, but also of all his contemporaries. 
 He is the true Italian pioneer of the most mo- 
 dern aims and sentiments in painting. Tiepolo, 
 in spite of his barocco decorative schemes, his 
 frigid allegories and conventional ^' machines," 
 was a plein air master in a sense of this 
 term, which is wholly inapphcable to men like 
 Guardi, Canaletto, Longhi. I do not mean to 
 assert that he actually worked in the open air, 
 or that he struggled consciously with those 
 problems of values and relations, which tax the 
 energies of recent naturalistic painters. His 
 originality consisted in the fact, that he seems to 
 have been aware of the imminence of a radical 
 change in art-principles, and in the effort to 
 bring plein air into the studio, where hitherto a 
 conventional scheme of light and colour held 
 undisputed sway. His key of colour, wonder-
 
 46 ON AN ALTAR-PIECE BY TIEPOLO 
 
 fully clear and luminous, is settled by the 
 harmonies between weather-mellowed marble, 
 light blue sky, russet or ochre-tinted sails, vivid 
 vegetable greens, sunburnt faces, and patches of 
 bright hues in the costume of sailors and the 
 common people, all subdued and softened by the 
 pearly haze " of moisture bred," which bathes 
 Venetian landscape in the warmth of early 
 summer. Gazing down the Zattere, along the 
 fa9ade of S. Maria del Rosario, with the 
 cypress-spires and creepers of the Dolgorouki 
 garden for foreground, and a group of fishing 
 boats in middle distance ; these objects forming 
 as it were an episode in the great poem of the 
 wide-spreading canal of the Giudecca, arched 
 over b}' illimitable light-irradiated heavens — 
 taking then this point of vision on a June 
 morning about ten, when the sun is already high 
 above the horizon, we enter into the region of 
 Tiepolo's artistic sympathies. He caught this 
 aspect of his sea-girt home : and being a sincere 
 and scientific draughtsman, he was able to place 
 the figures of his pictures with perfect relief of 
 modelling, in right aerial perspective, and with 
 exact relative tone-values, in the midst of a 
 liquid, luminous, translucent atmosphere. When 
 he is painting at his best, not to order, but con 
 amore, we do not feel, as we always feel with 
 Titian and Veronese, that the pictorial scheme
 
 ON AN ALTAR-PIECE BY TIEPOLO 47 
 
 has been settled for studio-lighting, with careful 
 adjustments of facts observed during the artist's 
 study of external nature. On the contrary, we 
 feel that he has detached and fixed for us a 
 fragment of the whole wide scene around him 
 and ourselves. In other words, Tiepolo breaks 
 the tradition, derived from mediaeval miniature 
 through fresco, of a conventional chiaroscuro and 
 a conventional system of decorative tinting. 
 The living rapport which exists in nature 
 between colour, light and atmosphere, is felt and 
 reproduced by him. 
 
 I might illustrate these remarks by the famous 
 oil-painting of Christ's Ascent to Calvary, now 
 on view in the cast-room of the Accademia. 
 But I prefer to take for my example a smaller 
 canvas exhibited upon an easel beside this large 
 one, which seems to epitomise the qualities of 
 style on which I am insisting.* 
 
 It is a tall and narrow canvas, divided, after 
 old Venetian custom, into two almost equal sec- 
 tions ; the upper portion being occupied with 
 sky and architecture, the lower with a group of 
 figures in which the subject-interest of the com- 
 position concentrates. On the marble pavement 
 of the palace, in the open air, kneels a female 
 
 * The picture has been lately replaced in the Church 
 of the Apostoli, where it is very badly lighted.
 
 48 ON AN ALTAR-PIECE BY TIEPOLO 
 
 saint supported by praying women, and backed 
 by mundane figures — a hard-featured old man, 
 a dainty page, and so forth. The saint, whose 
 head and flowing fair hair is surrounded with 
 an opalescent aureole, like greenish water of the 
 lagoon flashed through with silvery sunbeams, 
 kneels in an attitude of physical prostration. 
 She is clearly dying, parting her lips languidly 
 to receive the sacred wafer from the hand of a 
 ministering priest in cope and full canonicals. 
 He bends down to her, just as the priest bends 
 in Domenichino's Communion of S. Jerome. An 
 acolyte, kneeling and raising a lighted candle, 
 supports this sacerdotal dignitary in his heavy 
 robes of celebration. And thus two principal 
 masses are formed for the group : the one deter- 
 mined by the dying saint, the other by the 
 ministrant priest. They are connected, and 
 carried into combination with the architecture 
 and the sky by a gorgeously attired ecclesiastic 
 with white hair, who stands erect between the 
 two figure-masses and controls the colour scheme 
 of the composition. In this man's robes a richly- 
 glowing but subdued ochre, like gold dulled and 
 smouldering, predominates. The saint, at his 
 side, below him, is clothed in white, all the 
 shades and semitones of which have been worked 
 with greens and yellows and faint suggestions 
 of greyish blues. It may be said at once that,
 
 ON AN ALTAR-PIECE BY TIE POLO 49 
 
 although at a distance the chromatic scheme 
 seems singularly decisive and vigorous, yet on 
 inspection it is impossible to discover any pure 
 or simple hue in any portion of the picture. 
 That plein air effect at which I think Tiepolo v^^as 
 aiming, is gained by the most subtle and adroit 
 interworking of tint v^^ith tint ; not any one of 
 the dominant hues (except in the very highest 
 lights) being allowed to assert its own unmodified 
 quality. The hair of the bending priest, for 
 instance, looks black at a certain distance. Yet 
 it is almost entirely painted in strokes of bright 
 blue upon a dark ground. 
 
 Examining the group of figures, in order to 
 understand the subject of this altar-piece, we find 
 that the saint is a woman of exquisite and natural 
 beauty, a lily of whiteness, a princess of dignity 
 and grace. The ashen pallor of her face shows 
 that she has suffered some sudden and terrible 
 shock to her vital system ; and on her exquisite 
 pure throat there is just one little stain of crimson, 
 indicating blood. The heavy bluish lids droop 
 downward to her ivory cheeks ; and as we gaze 
 intently, we seem to feel that they cover no eyes, 
 but only empty orbits. This impression is so 
 vaguely, so tenderly communicated, that at first 
 I rebuked my fancy for having trespassed on 
 some region of unimaginable horror, which existed 
 not in the manly painter's mind, but in my own 
 
 D
 
 50 ON AN ALTAR-PIECE BY TIEPOLO 
 
 too curious imagination. Then I perceived upon 
 a step below the marble platform where the saint 
 is kneeling, a silver plate with two eyes placed 
 upon it, and by the side thereof a bloody stiletto. 
 It seemed, then, that the pity and terror I had 
 taken from those drooping eyelids were not 
 fanciful ; and I christened the picture (whether 
 rightly or wrongly I do not know, for it is not 
 catalogued) by the title of ** The Last Communion 
 of S. Lucy." 
 
 In addition to his other quahties, Tiepolo 
 painted like a great gentleman. There is an 
 unmistakable note of good breeding in all his 
 work. I do not remember to have ever found 
 him vulgar, brutal, or bourgeois. And here, 
 where he skirted the very border of the abyss of 
 physical torment, he avoids the clumsy symbolism 
 of mediaeval painters — jocund women carrying 
 their eyes or bleeding breasts on plates : he 
 avoids the butcherly abominations of Italian or 
 Flemish or French naturalists — Carravaggio's 
 flayings, Rubens's flakes of spear-divided flesh 
 with blood and water gushing from a gaping 
 wound, Poussin's bowels wound like ropes on 
 capstans by brawny varlets. Tiepolo shows 
 proper respect for the reality of his subject, to- 
 gether with noble breeding and a fine sense for 
 the limits of art, by creating a thing of beauty, 
 which, when examined a la loupe^ betrays a
 
 ON AN ALTAR-PIECE BY TIEPOLO 51 
 
 tragic content, but does not force this in any 
 painful way upon attention. Lovers of what is 
 beautiful in art need not dwell upon the cruel 
 details of the subject-matter. The picture itself 
 suffices to give pleasure by its harmonies of 
 wisely ordered lines and colours melting in a 
 blaze of softened lustre. 
 
 The subject in a work of art like this counts 
 for little ; and we ought to be grateful to Tiepolo 
 for combining so much dramatic force with such 
 dignity in his treatment of a distressing motive. 
 The leading motive is sufficiently suggested, but 
 feelingly subordinated to those higher purposes 
 of elevated pleasure for which the fine arts were 
 created. Studying this picture, I arrive at the 
 conclusion that Tiepolo solved a very difficult art- 
 problem more successfully than almost any of his 
 predecessors, and than most of their successors. 
 Mediaeval painters, such for example as Perugino, 
 treated S. Lucy on the fines of the missal and 
 the miniature, detaching a central symbolic 
 motive and enlarging it. They served art by 
 making this expansion of the technicafiy deve- 
 loped themes agreeable to our sense of line and 
 tint, without attempting to deal with the real 
 aspects of the world, and without engaging in 
 the strife with dramatic realism. Later masters 
 emancipated the motive from its mediaeval barren- 
 ness and infantile suggestion ; they sought to
 
 52 ON AN ALTAR-PIECE BY TIEPOLO 
 
 evoke sensation by crude and violent exhibitions 
 of nerve-torturing martyrdom, as when Sebastian 
 del Piombo, in a picture at the Pitti, exposed 
 S. Apollonia with bared breasts and two execu- 
 tioners preparing to snip her nipples off with 
 iron pincers. Few, at this epoch, succeeded in 
 creating a vision of adorable beauty with all the 
 anguish of pain expressed in it ; as Sodoma once 
 did when he painted the pallid S. Sebastian of 
 the Ufifizi. But then comes Tiepolo, with more 
 of realistic action, with far finer suggestions, 
 with a firmer touch upon the supreme point in 
 the saint's crucifixion ; and yet without the 
 slightest mediaeval frigidity, without a hint of 
 brutal and disgusting realism. When it is 
 treated in this way, we can quit the subject, and 
 ascend into regions of pure art, where the bare 
 subject serves as a theme. The final meaning 
 of Tiepolo's work lies in its interpretation of a 
 world delightful to our senses by lines and hues, 
 naturally derived from the great source of uni- 
 versal beauty : form, and stuff, and substance, 
 flooded by the light of day ; things closest to 
 our senses, yet capable of subtlest transformation 
 at the poet-artist's bidding. 
 
 This little picture, then, which I have chosen 
 for my text, is a miracle of all perfections in the 
 painter's craft. Within a narrow space the 
 master has played with architectural perspective,
 
 ON AN ALTAR-PIECE BY TIEPOLO 53 
 
 with atmosphere, with consummate drawing of the 
 hum?n form, with cunning composition ; and 
 these essentials of art he has used as preludes to 
 the revel of his light and colour sense. When 
 the details have been keenly scrutinised and 
 studied, we return to the first impression made 
 upon us by the first sight of the canvas. Its 
 marvellous luminosity : its multiplication of low- 
 toned colours in a scheme of yellow and green, 
 delicately heightened by audacious flakes of red 
 (as on the jewel of S. Lucy's bosom), and 
 turquoise blue, and crimson (in the page's jacket), 
 and blots of acqua-marina — gemmily imposed 
 upon the thick impaste of the dominant ochres, 
 and flooded with light in which the melody of 
 tone throbs and quivers. 
 
 A critic of art, a describer, finds no words to 
 communicate the passion of a picture so exalted 
 by its maker's vivid grasp upon the beauty of 
 the world he felt so keenly in one aspect of its 
 many-sided fascination. 
 
 It is impossible that another Tiepolo should be 
 born again : one who preserved the great Italian 
 tradition, the solemn cantilena of the Venetian 
 religious style ; transforming this at the touch of 
 his magician's wand into something which the 
 newest schools can recognise as breathed upon 
 by the spirit they obey.
 
 THE DANTESQUE AND PLATONIC 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 The sexcentenary of Beatrice Portinari, which 
 was celebrated two years ago at Florence, com- 
 pelled the student of Dante's Hfe and writings once 
 more to consider the relation of the poet to his 
 lady. Are we to accept as truths of history the 
 facts related by Boccaccio — namely, that Dante's 
 father took him at the age of nine to a May-day 
 feast in the house of Folco Portinari, and that 
 there he beheld Beatrice, the daughter of his 
 host, for the first time ? ^' She was a child of 
 eight then," says Boccaccio, " more fit to be an 
 angel than a girl." Are we to accept the 
 incidents of the *^ Vita Nuova " literally ? In 
 that record of his earliest life experience, Dante 
 says that love on this occasion took possession 
 of his soul, and that henceforth he worshipped 
 Beatrice, till the day of her death, with steadfast 
 silent adoration. To see her pass upon the
 
 56 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 Streets, to receive her salutation, to sympathise 
 with her at a distance in her joys and griefs, 
 sufficed to keep the flame of spiritual passion 
 alive in his heart, until that day in the year 
 1290, six centuries ago, when '^ the Lord of 
 Justice called my most gracious lady to be glo- 
 rious beneath the banner of that blessed Queen 
 Mary whose name was always of greatest 
 reverence in the words of saintly Beatrice." 
 It does not appear from anything he tells us of 
 his youthful years that they conversed together ; 
 and of love in the common acceptation of that 
 term it is clear there was no question. Are we 
 then to believe that the inspiring lady of the 
 Convito, who typifies philosophy, that the Bea- 
 trice of the Paradise, who is certainly Divine 
 Wisdom, was still this same daughter of Folco 
 Portinari ? During those years of severe studies, 
 of political activity, of exile, after his marriage 
 and the birth of several children, did Dante still 
 cherish the memory of Beatrice, whom he had 
 worshipped at a distance from his tenth to his 
 twenty-fifth year ? How are we to explain the 
 fact, that a love, so immaterial, so visionary, be- 
 gotten in the tender days of childhood, and fed 
 with ahment so unsubstantial, exercised this en- 
 during influence over a man of Dante's stamp — 
 severe, precise, logical, austerely loyal to truth 
 as he conceived it ?
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 57 
 
 In short, was Beatrice a woman ? Or was 
 she, as a certain school of commentators (start- 
 ing with Gian Maria Filelfo, and represented in 
 this century by the elder Rossetti, by Barlow, by 
 Tomlinson, and others) would have us imagine — 
 was she an ideal, an allegory ? 
 
 For my own part I cannot reject the authority 
 of Dante's contemporaries, Boccaccio and Villani, 
 who believed in the literal meaning of the ^' Vita 
 Nuova." I cannot doubt the accent of veracity 
 in that book of youthful love. I cannot put out 
 of sight the sonnet to Guido Cavalcanti, in which 
 the poet, assuming for once a tone of familiarity 
 and daily life, speaks of his lady as one whose 
 presence in the flesh might give complete and 
 innocent joy to her lover. The mistrust in the 
 reality of Beatrice seems to me to have arisen 
 partly from the false note struck by Boccaccio, 
 and partly from Dante's own mystical habit of 
 mind. Boccaccio could not comprehend the pe- 
 culiar nature of chivalrous passion as it existed 
 in natures more metaphysical than his own. 
 And Dante from the very beginning, in his 
 language about love, in his idealisation of the 
 woman whom he loved, introduced an element of 
 allegory. Even in the *^Vita Nuova" she is not 
 merely a beautiful and gracious girl, but a 
 spiritual being, round whom his highest and 
 deepest thoughts spontaneously crystallise. She
 
 58 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 is the living ensign of a power more potent than 
 
 j herself, of something vital in the universe for 
 
 Dante ; of Love, in fact, which for her lover 
 
 • included all his noblest impulses and purest 
 
 I strivings after the ideal life. Early in his boy- 
 
 \ hood he formed this habit of regarding Beatrice ; 
 
 and after her death, in spite of all temporal 
 
 ; changes, the habit was continued ; so that at last 
 
 1 she became in fact what critics of the allegorical 
 
 , interpretation wish to believe she always had 
 
 been — a symbol. Still, even to the last, even 
 
 in the pageant of the Purgatory and the ascent 
 
 , through Paradise, Beatrice retains a portion of 
 
 I her original womanhood. She is never wholly 
 
 i transmuted into allegory. 
 
 It is only by adhering steadily to these con- 
 ceptions — to the thought of Beatrice as a real 
 woman, whom Dante really selected to love after 
 the singular fashion of his age ; and to the 
 thought of her submitted to an allegorising pro- 
 cess from the earliest in her lover's mind — that 
 we can arrive at sound critical conclusions on 
 this problem. Our main difficulty is to throw 
 ourselves back by sympathy and intelligence into 
 the mood of emotion which made the poet's 
 attitude possible. In other words, we have to 
 / try to comprehend that very peculiar form of 
 i philosophical enthusiasm which the chivalrous 
 ; love of mediaeval Christendom assumed in Jtaly.
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 59 
 
 In the case of Dante, this presents itself to 
 our imagination under conditions of almost in- 
 superable unintelligibility, owing to the specific 
 qualities of his unique genius. The other poets 
 of his period, Cino, Guido Guinicelli, Guido 
 Cavalcanti, afterwards Petrarch, approached love 
 from the same points of view — of mysticism, 
 allegory, metaphysical interpretation — each, ac- 
 cording to his character and temperament, blend- 
 ing the memory of the woman who had stirred 
 passion in his soul with those aspiring thoughts 
 and exalted emotions which were then considered 
 to be the natural offspring of respectful love, 
 until the woman disappeared in an incense-cloud 
 of adoration, vanished in a labyrinth of philo- 
 sophical abstractions. This, so to speak, was 
 the method 'of that school of poetry which, 
 transmitted from Provence through Sicily, took 
 upon itself a new character of intellectual subtlety 
 at Florence and Bologna. But Dante, while he 
 followed the method, displayed the inevitable 
 qualities of his marked personality. We have to 
 deal with no mere lyrist and schoolman, such as 
 Guido Cavalcanti was. Dante is over and above 
 all the singer of the Divine Comed}^, the poet of 
 stirring dramatic passages, of concrete images, of 
 firm grasp on all external and internal facts. 
 The realistic veracity of his genius applied to the 
 delineation of an actual emotion so spiritual as
 
 6o IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 that of his f >r Beatrice, has misled people into 
 thinking that he cannot be telling the truth. 
 There are strains of feeling so ethereal and im- 
 palpable (as there are qualities of pitch in sound 
 so fine) that the ordinary sense does not perceive 
 them. Dante, in the "Vita Nuova" and the 
 " Rime," expresses such a feeling ; and he 
 further complicates our difficulty by doing so to 
 a great extent indirectly, employing the method 
 of his school, allegorising, transmuting love- 
 thoughts into metaphysical conceptions, con- 
 founding the simple propositions of a natural 
 emotion with the corollaries from those pro- 
 positions in the lover's mind. Beatrice is not 
 only Beatrice, Portinari's daughter and Simone's 
 wife. She is also all that the poet-philosopher 
 learned and saw and loved of beautiful or good 
 or true ; the whole of which, as springing from 
 her influence, he carries to her credit, and wor- 
 ships under her sign and symbol. 
 
 This, I repeat, is a difficult attitude of mind 
 for us modern men, with our positive conceptions, 
 to assimilate. In order to approach the task 
 more easily, it may be well to consider another 
 type of amorous enthusiasm which once flourished 
 in the world for a short season, and which also 
 assumed the philosophical mantle. I allude to 
 that specific type of Greek love which Plato 
 expounds in the " Phaedrus " and '' Symposium."
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 6i 
 
 Greek love and chivalrous love form two extra- 
 ordinary and exceptional phases of psychological 
 experience. By comparing them in their points 
 of similarity and points of difference, we may 
 come to understand more of that pecuhar 
 enthusiasm which they possessed in common, 
 w^hich made love in either case a ladder for 
 scaHng the higher fortresses of intellectual truth, 
 and which it is now well-nigh impossible for us 
 to realise as actual. 
 
 II 
 
 In order to understand the Platonic and the 
 Florentine enthusiasm, the love of the " Sym- 
 posium" and the love of the ^^ Vita Nuova," we 
 must begin by studying the conditions under 
 which they were severally elaborated. 
 
 Platonic love, in the true sense of that phrase, 
 was the affection of a man for a man ; and it 
 grew out of antecedent customs which had 
 obtained from very distant times in Hellas. 
 Homer excludes this emotion from his picture of 
 society in the heroic age. The tale of Patroclus 
 and Achilles in the *' IHad " does not suggest the 
 interpretation put on it by later generations ; and 
 the legend of Gan3^mede is related without a hint 
 of personal desire. It has therefore been
 
 62 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 assumed that what is called Greek love was 
 unknown at the time when the Homeric poems 
 were composed. This argument, however, is not 
 conclusive ; for Homer, in his theology, sup- 
 pressed the darker and cruder elements of Greek 
 religion, which certainly survived from ancient 
 savagery, and which prevailed long after the 
 supposed age of those poems. An eclectic spirit 
 of refinement presided over the redaction of the 
 'Mliad" and the '^Odyssey"; and the other 
 omission I have mentioned may possibly be due 
 to the same cause. The orator ^Eschines, in his 
 critique of the Achilleian story, adopts this 
 explanation. Unhappily for the science of com- 
 parative literature, we have lost the Cyclic poems. 
 But there is reason to believe that these contained 
 direct allusions to the passion in question. 
 Otherwise, ^Eschylus, the conservative, and 
 Sophocles, the temperate, would hardly have 
 written tragedies (the '* Myrmidons " and the 
 ^'Lovers of Achilles") which brought Greek 
 love upon the Attic stage. If the " IHad " had 
 been his sole authority, iEschylus could not have 
 made Achilles burst forth into that cry of 
 ** unhusbanded grief" over the corpse of his 
 dead comrade, which Lucian and Athenaeus have 
 preserved for us. 
 
 However this may be, masculine love, as the 
 Greeks called it, appeared at an early age in
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 63 
 
 Hellas. We find it localised in several places, ; 
 and consecrated by divers legends of the gods. 
 Yet none of the later Greeks could give a distinct 
 account of its origin or importation. There are 
 critical grounds for supposing that the Dorians 
 developed this custom in their native mountains 
 (the home of Achilles and the region where it 
 still survives), and that they carried it upon th^r 
 migration to Peloponnesus. At any rate, tin / 
 Crete and Sparta, it speedily became a social ? 
 institution, regulated by definite laws and 
 sanctioned by the State. In each country a 
 youth who had no suitor lost in public estima- 
 tion. The elder, in these unions of friends, 
 received the name of '^ inspirer" or ^' lover," the 
 younger that of *' hearer " or ^* admired." When 
 the youth grew up and went to battle with his 
 comrade, he assumed the title of bystander in 
 the ranks. I have not space to dwell upon the 
 minute laws and customs by which Dorian love 
 was governed. Suffice it to say that in all of 
 them we discern the intention of promoting a 
 martial spirit in the population, securing a manly ; 
 education for the young, and binding the male i 
 members of the nation together by bonds of 
 mutual affection. In earlier times at least care 
 was taken to secure the virtues of loyalty, self- 
 respect, and permanence in these relations. In 
 shortJ\ masculine love constituted the chivalry of '
 
 64 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 primitive Hellas, the stimulating and exalting 
 enthusiasm of her sons. It did not exclude 
 marriage, nor had it the effect of lowering the 
 position of women in society, since it is notorious 
 that in those Dorian States where the love of 
 comrades became an institution, women received 
 more public honour and enjoyed fuller liberty and 
 power over property than elsewhere. 
 
 The military and chivalrous nature of Greek 
 love is proved by the myths and more or less 
 historical legends which idealised its virtues. 
 Herakles, the Dorian demigod, typified by his 
 affection for young men and by his unselfish 
 devotion to humanity what the Spartan and 
 Cretan warriors demanded from this emotion. 
 The friendships of Theseus and Peirithous, of 
 Orestes and Pylades, of Damon and Pythias, 
 comrades in arms and faithful to each other to 
 the death, embalmed the memory of lives en- 
 nobled by mascuHne affection. Nearly every 
 city had some tale to tell of emancipation from 
 tyranny, of prudent legislation, or of heroic 
 achievements in war, inspired by the erotic 
 enthusiasm. When Athens laboured under a 
 grievous curse and pestilence, two lovers, Cratinus 
 and Aristodemus, devoted their lives to the 
 salvation of the city. Two lovers, Harmodius 
 and Aristogeiton, shook off the bondage of the 
 Peisistratidae. Philolaus and Diodes gave laws
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 65 
 
 to Thebes. Another Diodes won everlasting 
 glory in a fight at Megara. Chariton and 
 Melanippus resisted the tyranny of Phalaris at 
 Agrigentum. Cleomachus, inspired by passion, 
 restored freedom to the town of Chalkis. All 
 these men were lovers of the Greek type. 
 Tyrants, says an interlocutor in one of Plato's 
 dialogues, tremble before lovers. Glorying in 
 their emotion, the Greeks pronounced it to be the 
 crowning virtue of free men, the source of gentle 
 and heroic actions, the heirloom of Hellenic 
 civiHsation, in which barbarians and slaves had 
 and could have no part or lot. The chivalry of 
 which I am speaking powerfully influenced Greek 
 history. All the Spartan kings and generals grew 
 up under the institution of Dorian comradeship. 
 Epameinondas and Alexander were notable lovers ; 
 and the names of their comrades are recorded. 
 When Greek liberty expired upon the Plain of 
 Chaeronea, the Sacred Band of Thebans, all of 
 whom were lovers, fell dead to a man ; and 
 Philip wept as he beheld their corpses, crying 
 aloud : ^* Perish the man who thinks that these 
 men either did or suffered what is shameful." 
 It powerfully influenced Greek art. Pindar and 
 Sophocles were lovers ; Pindar died in the arms 
 of Theoxenos, whose praise he sang in the 
 Skolion of which we have a characteristic frag- 
 ment. Pheidias carved the name of his beloved 
 
 E
 
 n 
 
 66 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 Pantarkes on the chryselephantine statue of 
 Olympian Zeus. iEschylus, as we have seen, 
 wrote one of his most popular tragedies upon 
 the affection of Achilles for Patroclus. Solon, 
 Demosthenes, iEschines, among statesmen and 
 orators, made no secret of a feeling which they 
 regarded as the highest joy in life and the source 
 of exalted enthusiasm. 
 
 Greek love, as I have shown, was in its origin 
 and essence masculine, military, chivalrous. 
 However repugnant to modern taste may be the 
 bare fact that this passion existed and flourished 
 in the highest-gifted of all races, yet it was 
 clearly neither an effeminate depravity nor a 
 sensual vice. Still such an emotion, being ab- 
 normal, could not prevail and dominate the 
 customs of a whole nation without grave draw- 
 backs. Very close to the chivalry of Hellas 
 lurked a formidable social evil, just as adultery 
 was intertwined with the chivalry of mediaeval 
 Europe. Adultery was not occasionally, but 
 so to speak continually, mixed up with the 
 feudal love de par amour. One ingenious writer, 
 Vernon Lee, even maintains that adultery was 
 the very ground on which that love flourished. 
 In Hke manner, another immorality was, not 
 occasionally, but continually mixed up with Greek 
 love, was the soil on which it flourished. There- 
 fore in those States especially, like Athens, where
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 67 
 
 the love in question had not been moralised by 
 prescribed laws, did it tend to degenerate. And 
 it was just here, at Athens, that it received the 
 metaphysical idealisation which justifies us in 
 comparing it to the Italian form of mediaeval 
 chivalry. Socrates, says Maximus Tyrius, pity- 
 ing the state of young men, and wishing to raise 
 their affections from the mire into which they 
 were declining, opened a way for the salvation of 
 their souls through the very love they then 
 abused. Whether Socrates was really actuated 
 by these motives, cannot be affirmed with cer- 
 tainty. At any rate, he handled mascuhne love 
 with robust originality, and prepared the path 
 for Plato's philosophical conception of passion 
 as an inspiration leading men to the divine 
 idea. 
 
 I have observed that in Dorian chivalry the 
 lover was called '' inspirer," and the beloved 
 '^ hearer." It was the man's duty to instruct the 
 lad in manners, feats of arms, trials of strength 
 and music. This relation of the elder to the 
 younger is still assumed to exist by Plato. But 
 he modifies it in a way peculiar to himself, 
 upon the consideration of which I must now 
 enter, since we have reached the very point of 
 contact between Plato's and Dante's enthusiasm. 
 
 Socrates, as interpreted in the Platonic dia- 
 logues entitled '' Phaedrus " and '' Symposium,"
 
 68 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 sought to direct and elevate a moral force, an 
 enthusiasm, an exaltation of the emotions, which 
 already existed as the highest form of feeling in 
 the Greek race. In the earlier of those dialogues 
 he describes the love of man for youth as a 
 madness, or divine frenzy, not different in quality 
 from that which inspires prophets and poets. 
 The soul he compares to a charioteer guiding 
 a pair of winged horses, the one of noble, the 
 other of ignoble breed. Under this metaphor 
 is veiled the psychological distinctions of reason, 
 generous impulse, and carnal appetite. Com- 
 posed of these triple elements, the soul has 
 shared in former lives the company of gods, and 
 has gazed on beauty, wisdom, and goodness, the 
 three most eminent manifestations of the divine, 
 in their pure essence. But, sooner or later, 
 during the course of her celestial wanderings, 
 the soul is dragged to earth by the baseness of 
 the carnal steed. She enters a form of flesh, 
 and loses the pinions which enabled her to soar. 
 Yet even in her mundane life (that obscure and 
 confused state of existence which Plato else- 
 where compares to a dark cave visited only by 
 shadows of reality) she may be reminded of the 
 heavenly place from which she fell, and of the 
 glorious visions of divinity she there enjoyed. 
 No mortal senses, indeed, could bear the sight 
 of truth or goodness or beauty in their undimmed
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 69 
 
 splendour. Yet earthly things in which truth, 
 goodnt-ss, and beauty are incarnate, touch the 
 soul to adoration, stimulate the growth of her 
 wings, and set her on the upward path whereby 
 she will revert to God. The lover has this 
 opportunity when he beholds the person who 
 awakes his passion ; for the human body is of 
 all earthly things that in which real beauty shines 
 most clearly. When Plato proceeds to say that 
 ** philosophy in combination with affection for 
 young men " is the surest method for attaining 
 to the higher spiritual life, he takes for granted 
 that reason, recognising the divine essence of 
 beauty, encouraging the generous impulses of 
 the heart, curbing the carnal appetite, converts 
 the mania of love into an instrument of edifica-i 
 tion. Passionate friends, bound together in the 
 chains of close yet temperate comradeship, seek- 
 ing always to advance in wisdom, self-restraint, 
 and intellectual illumination, prepare themselves 
 for the celestial journey. "When the end 
 comes, they are light and ready to fly away, 
 having conquered in one of the three heavenly 
 or truly Olympian victories. Nor can human 
 discipline or divine inspiration confer any greater 
 blessing on man than this." Moreover, even 
 should they decline toward sensuality and taste 
 those pleasures on which the vulgar set great 
 store, they, too, will pass from life, " unwinged
 
 70 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 indeed, but eager to soar, and thus obtain no 
 mean reward of love and madness." 
 
 The doctrine of the " Symposium " is not 
 different, except that here Socrates, professing to 
 report the teaching of a wise woman Diotima, 
 assumes a loftier tone, and attempts a sublimer 
 flight. Love, he says, is the child of Poverty 
 and Contrivance, deriving something from both 
 his father and his mother. He lacks all things, 
 and has the wit to gain all things. Love too, 
 when touched by beauty, desires to procreate ; 
 and if the mortal lover be one whose body alone 
 is creative, he betakes himself to woman and 
 begets children ; but if the soul be the chief 
 creative principle in the lover's nature, then he 
 turns to young men of* fair and noble and well- 
 nurtured spirit," and in them begets the immortal 
 progeny of high thoughts and generous emotions. 
 The same divine frenzy of love, which forms the 
 subject of the '' Phaedrus," is here again treated as 
 the motive force which starts the soul upon her 
 journey towards the region of essential truth. 
 Attracted by what is beautiful, the lover first 
 dedicates himself to one youth in whom beauty 
 is apparent ; next he is led to perceive that 
 beauty in all fair forms is a single quality ; he 
 then passes to the conviction that intellectual is 
 superior to physical beauty ; and so by degrees 
 he attains the vision of a single science, which
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 71 
 
 is the science of beauty everywhere, or the wor- 
 ship of the divine under one of its three main 
 attributes. 
 
 The lesson which both of these Socratic dia- 
 logues seem intended to inculcate, may be 
 summed up thus. Love, like poetry and pro- 
 phecy, is a divine gift, which diverts men from 
 the common current of their earthly lives ; and 
 in the right use of this gift lies the secret of all 
 human excellence. The passion which grovels 
 in the filth of sensual grossness may be trans- 
 formed into a glorious enthusiasm, a winged 
 splendour, capable of rising to the contemplation 
 of eternal verities and reuniting the soul of man 
 to God. How strange will it be, when once 
 those heights of intellectual intuition have been 
 scaled, to look down again on earth and view 
 the human being in whom the spirit first recog- 
 nised the essence of beauty. 
 
 There is a deeply rooted mysticism, an im- 
 penetrable Soofyism, in the Socratic doctrine of 
 Eros. And it must be borne in mind that the 
 love of women is rigidly and expressly excluded 
 from the scheme. The soul which has attained 
 to the highest possible form of perfection in this : 
 life, is defined by Plato ("Phaedr." 249, A.), to 1 
 be " the soul of one who has followed philosophy 
 with flawless self-devotion, or who has combined [ 
 his passion for young men with the pursuit of
 
 72 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 ' truth." These are the essential conditions of 
 Platonic love ; and they are so strange that Lucian, 
 Epicurus, Cicero, and Gibbon may be pardoned 
 for sneering at ** the thin device of virtue and 
 friendship which amused the philosophers of 
 Athens," just as in modern times the purity of 
 chivalrous love has been almost universally sus- 
 pected. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It is not needful to describe the conditions 
 of mediaeval chivalry with great particularity of 
 detail. They are better known than the condi- 
 tions of Greek chivalry ; and the enthusiastic love 
 which sprang from them, though little under- 
 stood, is regarded by common consent as legiti- 
 mate and beneficial to society. 
 
 Chivalry must not be confounded with the 
 feudalism out of which it emerged. It was an 
 ideal, binding men together by common spiritual 
 enthusiasms. We find the ground material of 
 the chivalrous virtues in the Teutonic character. 
 As described by Tacitus, the German races were 
 distinguished for chastity, obedience to self- 
 imposed laws, truth, loyalty, regard for honour 
 more than gain, and a reverence for women 
 amounting to idolatry. These qualities furnished 
 a proper soil for the chivalrous emotions ; and
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 73 
 
 the chivalrous investiture, whereby the young 
 knight was consecrated to a noble life, can also 
 be derived from Teutonic customs. *' They 
 decorate their youthful warriors with the shield 
 and spear," says Tacitus, insisting on the sacred 
 obligation which this ceremony imposed. Chi- 
 valry would, however, scarcely have assumed 
 the form it did in the twelfth century but for the 
 slowly refining influences of Christianity. In 
 the epics of the Niblung Cycle, and in the 
 song of Roland, there are but faint traces of its 
 subtler spirit. The unselfishness of the true 
 knight, his humihty and obedience, his devotion 
 to the service of the weak and helpless, his 
 inspiration by ideals, his readiness to forgive and 
 to show mercy — in fact, what we may call his 
 charity in armour — sprang from Christianity. It. 
 is only in the later romances of King Arthur 
 that these essential elements of the chivalrous 
 spirit make themselves manifest. 
 
 " As for death," says a knight of the Round 
 Table, ^' be he welcome when he cometh ; but 
 my oath and my honour, the adventure that [ 
 hath fallen to me, and the love of my lady, I will 
 lose them not." 
 
 This sentence, in a few words, expresses the 
 attitude of a chivalrous gentleman. When 
 King Arthur established his knights in a solemn 
 chapter at the Court of Camelot, he ** charged
 
 74 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 them never to do outrage nor murder, and 
 alway to flee treason ; also by no means to be 
 cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asked 
 mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship 
 and lordship of King Arthur for evermore ; and 
 always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen 
 succour upon pain of death. Also that no man 
 take no battles in a wrong quarrel for no law, 
 nor for worldly goods." The knights, both old 
 and young, swore to these articles ; and every 
 year they took the oath again at the high feast 
 of Pentecost. 
 
 As the Christian religion in general exercised 
 a decisive influence in the formation of chivalry, 
 jso we may perhaps connect the peculiar mode 
 of amorous enthusiasm which characterised this 
 ideal with the worship of the maiden mother of 
 . Christ. Woman had been exalted to the throne 
 of heaven ; and it was not unnatural that woman 
 should become an object of almost religious 
 adoration upon earth. The names of God and 
 of his lady were united on the lips of a true 
 , knight ; for the motto of chivalry in its best 
 j period was " Dieu et ma Dame." Love came to 
 IJ be regarded as the source of all nobility, virtue, 
 J heroism, and self-sacrifice. " A knight may 
 never be of prowess," says Sir Tristram, " but if 
 he be a lover." This language precisely corre- 
 sponds with the language of the Greeks regarding
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 75 
 
 that other love of theirs, which nerved them for 
 deed3 of prowess, for the overthrow of tyrants, 
 and the Hberation of their fatherland. 
 
 Chivalrous love was wholly extra-nuptial and I 
 anti-matrimonial. The lady whom the knight ' 
 ^ adored and served, who received his service and 
 rewarded his devotion, could never be his wife. 
 She might be a maiden or a married woman ; in 
 practice she was almost invariably the latter. 
 But the love which united the two in bonds more 
 firm than any other, was incompatible with mar- 
 riage. The feudal courts of love in fact pro- 
 claimed that '* between two married persons, 
 Love cannot exert his powers." This is a 
 peculiarity well worthy of notice. Not only does 
 it at once and for ever set an end to those foolish 
 questions which have sometimes been asked 
 about the reasons why Dante did not marry 
 Beatrice ; it also constitutes one of the strongest \ 
 points of similarity between the chivalrous love f 
 of the ancient Greeks and that of the mediaeval | 
 races. Plato, in the " Symposium," it will be 
 remembered, asserts that the exalted love on 
 which he is discoursing has nothing whatever to 
 do with the '' vulgar and trivial " way of matri- 
 mony. It must be excited by a person with 
 whom connubial relations are absolutely impos- 
 sible. It is a state of the soul, not an appetite ; i 
 and though the weakness of mortahty may lead
 
 76 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 lovers into sensuality, such shortcomings form a 
 distinct deviation from the ideal. Least of all 
 can it have anything to do with those connections 
 profitable to the State and useful to society, 
 w^hich involve the procreation and rearing of 
 children, domestic cares, and the commonplace 
 of daily duties, jln theory, at any rate, both 
 Greek and mediaeval types of chivalrous emotion 
 WGve pure and spiritual enthusiasms, purging the 
 lover's soul of all base thoughts, Hfting him 
 above the bondage of the flesh, and filling him 
 with a continual rapture. 
 
 Plato called love a " mania," an inspired 
 frenzy. Among the chivalrous lovers of Pro- 
 vence, this high rapture received the name of 
 *^ Joy-" It will here be remembered by students 
 of the " Morte Darthur " that the castle to which 
 both Lancelot and Tristram carried off their 
 ladies was Joyous Gard. The fruits of joy were 
 bravery, courtesy, high spirit, sustained powers 
 of endurance, delight in perilous adventure. 
 The soul of the knight, penetrated with the fine 
 elixir of enthusiatic love, is ready to confront all 
 dangers, to undertake the most difficult tasks, to 
 bear obloquy and want, the scorn of men, mis- 
 understanding, even coldness and disdain on the 
 part of his lady, with serene sweetness and an 
 exalted patience. Plato's description of the 
 lover in the '' Phsedrus " exactly squares with
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 77 
 
 this romantic ideal of the knight's enthusiasm. 
 The permanent emotion, whether termed 
 "mania" or "joy," is precisely the same in 
 quahty ; and whether the object which stirred it 
 was a young man as in Greece, or a married 
 woman as in mediaeval Europe, signified nothing. 
 
 Chivalrous love, under both its forms, did not 
 exclude marriage, except between the lovers 
 themselves. Lancelot and Tristram took wives, 
 while remaining loyal to Guinevere and Iseult, 
 their ladies. Dante had children by Gemma, 
 and Petrarch by a concubine. Still it was the 
 sainted Beatrice, the unattainable Laura, who 
 received the homage of these poets and inspired 
 their art. 
 
 In theory, then, chivalrous love of both types, 
 the Greek and the mediaeval, existed indepen- 
 dently of the marriage tie and free from sensual 
 affections. It was, in each case, the source of 
 exhilarating passion ; a durable ecstasy which 
 removed the lover to a higher region, rendering 1 
 him capable of haughty thoughts and vaHant j 
 deeds. Both loves were originally martial, and j 
 connected with the military customs of the 
 peoples among whom they flourished. Both, in 
 practice and in course of time, fell below their 
 own ideal standards, without, however, losing 
 the high spirit, loyalty, and sense of honour, 
 which went far to compensate for what was 

 
 78 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 defective in their psychological basis. At the 
 same time, social evils of the gravest kind were 
 inseparable from both forms of enthusiastic 
 i feeling, because each had striven to transcend the 
 'sphere of natural duties and of normal instincts. 
 At this point, when feudal chivalry was 
 tending toward the travesty which is depicted 
 for us in " Little Jehan de Saintre," the same 
 thing happened at Florence to its imaginative 
 essence as had previously happened to the imagi- 
 native essence of Greek chivalry at Athens. We 
 have seen that Greek love was originally a Dorian 
 and soldierly passion ; it had grown up in the 
 camp : and when it lost its primal quality in the 
 Attic circles, Socrates attempted to utilise the 
 force he recognised in this still romantic feeling 
 for the stimulation of a nobler intellectual life. 
 The moral energy was there. It throbs through 
 previous ages of Greek legend, literature, and 
 history. But a philosophical application of this 
 motive, which is the peculiar discovery of the 
 Platonic Socrates, had not been attempted. 
 That was reserved for the ' Athenians, and, in 
 particular, for the school of the Academy. 
 Precisely in like manner, chivalry, the fine but 
 scarcely wholesome flower of feudalism, the 
 super-subtle hybrid between savage Teutonic 
 virtues and hyper-sensitive Christian emotions, 
 which grew up in the mediaeval castle, had been
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 79 
 
 now transplanted to the classic soil of Italy. 
 Italy was neither feudal nor Teutonic ; and her 
 Christianity, for the highest of her sons, was 
 deeply penetrated with political and intellectual 
 ideas. The generous Tuscan spirits who 
 adopted chivalry, partly as a motive for their 
 art, and partly as a visionary guide in conduct 
 — Guido Guinicelli, Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da 
 Pistoja, Lapo, Dante — enamoured of its beauty, 
 but unable to prolong its life upon the former 
 line of feudal institutions, lent it the new touch 
 of mystical philosophy. The simple substance 
 of the chivalrous enthusiasm, which had taken 
 gracious form in the legends of Lancelot and 
 Tristram, of Sir Beaumains and Sir Galahad, 
 was refined upon and spun into a web of 
 allegory. The subtleties and psychological 
 distinctions of the troubadours received meta- 
 physical interpretations. A nation of scholars 
 and of doctors, who were also artists — Dante 
 calls the poets of his school dottori — men who 
 were not knights or squires or mighty of their 
 hands, reformed, rehandled, and recast the 
 tradition of the love they had received from 
 militant subconscious predecessors. We come 
 thus to the remarkable fact that the last manifes- m\ 
 tation of mediaeval love at Florence represents 
 an almost exact parallel to the last manifestation 
 of Greek love at Athens. In both instances, an 

 
 8o IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 enthusiasm which had its root in human passion, 
 after passing through a martial phase of evolu- 
 tion and becoming a social factor of importance 
 in the raising of the race to higher spiritual 
 power, assumes the aspect of philosophy, and 
 connects itself with the effort of the intellect to 
 reach the Beatific Vision. Dante, conducted by 
 Beatrice into the circle of the Celestial Rose, 
 proclaims the same creed as Plato when he 
 asserts that the love of a single person, leading 
 the soul upon the way to truth, becomes the means 
 whereby man may ascend to the contemplation 
 of the divine under one of its eternal aspects. 
 
 What is really remarkable in the parallel I 
 have attempted to establish is, that the meta- 
 physical transformation of Greek ^^ mania " and 
 mediaeval ''joy," which was effected severally at 
 Athens and in Tuscany, took place in each case 
 by a natural and independent process of develop- 
 ment. We have no reason to suppose that 
 feudal chivalry owed anything to Platonic in- 
 fluences, even in this its latest manifestation. It 
 is certain, for instance, that Dante never read 
 the "Phaedrus" and the ^'Symposium" in the 
 originals ; and nothing shows that he was even 
 remotely acquainted with their true substance in 
 scholastic compendiums. The same exalted 
 psychological condition followed similar lines of 
 development, and reached the same result — a
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 8i 
 
 result which in each case is almost unintelligible 
 to us who study it. We find the greatest diffi- 
 culty in beheving that Socrates was sincere, and 
 that Dante was sincere. We turn, like Gibbon, 
 in our perplexity about Greek love to the hypo- 
 thesis of '* a thin device of friendship and 
 virtue," masking gross immorality. We turn, 
 like the elder Rossetti and his school, in our 
 perplexity about Dante's idealisation of Beatrice, 
 to the hypothesis of a political or a theological 
 allegory. But sound criticism rejects both of 
 these hypotheses. Frankly admitting that Greek 
 love was tainted with a vice obnoxious to 
 modern notions, and that mediaeval love was 
 involved with adultery, the true critic will 
 declare that, strange and incomprehensible as 
 this must always seem, there were two brief 
 moments, once at Athens and once at Florence, 
 when amorous enthusiasms of an abnormal type 
 presented themselves to natures of the noblest ■ 
 stamp as indispensable conditions of the pro- 
 gress of the soul upon the pathway toward J 
 perfection. 
 
 IV 
 
 I have dwelt in this essay more upon the 
 similarity between Greek and mediaeval love 
 than on their difference. The identity of the 
 
 F
 
 82 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 psychological phenomenon is what I had to 
 demonstrate. Yet each was distinguished by 
 characteristics which make it seem at first sight 
 the exact contrary of the other. The antique 
 Platonist, as appears from numerous passages 
 in the Platonic writings, would have despised 
 the Petrarchist as a vulgar woman-lover. The 
 Petrarchist would have loathed the Platonist as 
 a moral pariah. But, though the emotion 
 differed in external aspect, the spiritual quin- 
 tessence of it was the same. Romantic passion, 
 distilled through the alembic of philosophy, pro- 
 duced both at Athens and in Italy a rare and 
 singular exaltation, which only superficial ob- 
 servers will deny to have been one and the 
 same psychical condition. 
 
 The person of a beautiful youth led Plato's 
 Socrates to follow beauty through all its epi- 
 phanies until he arrived at the notion of the 
 universal beauty which is God. Dante, under 
 the influence of the love he felt for Beatrice, 
 advanced in knowledge till he grasped the divine 
 wisdom which he then symbolically identified 
 with the woman who had inspired him. 
 
 In addition to the radical divergence I have 
 here indicated — a divergence of moral sentiment 
 and social custom, which presents a curious 
 problem to the ethical inquirer — we have to 
 take into account the dominant conceptions of
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 83 
 
 the peoples who evolved this enthusiasm. Greek 
 religion was plastic, objective, anthropomorphic. 
 The Greeks thought of their deities as persons, 
 whose portraits could be carved in statues. 
 Mediaeval religion was spiritual, separating the 
 divinity man worshipped from corporeal form, so 
 far as this was compatible with the dogma of the 
 incarnation. Greek philosophy, in spite of its 
 occasional excursions into mysticism, remained 
 positive. Mediaeval philosophy eagerly embraced 
 allegory and " anagogical interpretations." 
 
 Who shall say whether the Platonic ideal ( 
 •evolved from the old Greek chivalry of masculine 
 love was ever realised in actual existence ? The 
 healthy temper of the Attic mind made it difficult 
 for men to persuade themselves that such a state 
 of the soul was possible. But in Italy the 
 corresponding ideal evolved from the feudal 
 chivalry of woman-service found a more con- 
 genial soil to root in. The long travail of the 
 past ten centuries, the many maladies of scho- 
 lastic speculation, created a favourable intellectual 
 atmosphere. Saying one thing when you meant 
 another, clothing simple thoughts and natural 
 instincts with the veil of symbohsm, drawing an 
 iridescent mirage of fancy over the surface of 
 fact by half-voluntary self-sophistications : all 
 this was alien to the frank Greek nature, familiar 
 to the subtleising minds of schoolmen. Accord-
 
 84 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 ingly the Platonic conception of Greek love soon 
 revealed its unsubstantiality, whereas the Dan- 
 tesque conception of feudal love allied itself to 
 the symbolising tendencies of the age in art and 
 letters, and to the hazy web-weavings of contem- 
 porary science. In Greece the Platonic ideal 
 was rudely disavowed by average men who 
 knew what lurked at the bottom of it. In 
 Europe the Dantesque ideal, though no one 
 doubted how perilously near it lay to adultery, 
 imposed for a certain time upon society. Dante, 
 as I have remarked before, in this, as in all 
 things, stood apart, sharing the tendencies of his 
 age in a general way only. His successors, 
 while they afTected to carry on the tradition of 
 the Florentine amourists, practically reverted to 
 ' the unsophisticated emotions of common humanity. 
 Laura, in Petrarch's poems, is a very real though 
 not a very well-defined woman, and is loved by 
 him in a very natural manner. The cHmax of 
 Boccaccio's " Amorosa Visione," after all its 
 mysticism and allegorising, is the union of two 
 lovers in a voluptuous embrace. 
 , What subsists of really vital and precious in 
 '. both ideals is the emotional root from which 
 ■ they severally sprang : in Greece the love of 
 ^ comrades, binding friends together, spurring 
 them on to heroic action, and to intellectual 
 pursuits in common ; in mediaeval Europe the
 
 IDEALS OF LOVE 85 
 
 devotion to the female sex, through manly cour- 
 tesy, which raised the crudest of male appetites 
 to a higher value. 
 
 It would also be unjust, in treating of these 
 two ideas, to forget that the first awakening of 
 love in true and gentle natures is a psychological 
 moment of the utmost importance. The spiritual 
 life of a man has not unfrequently started from 
 this point, and his addiction to nobler aims has 
 been occasioned by the incidence of emotion. 
 The stimulating and quickening influence of 
 genuine love is a very real thing ; and if this 
 were all contained in the ideals we have been 
 comparing, no exception could be taken to them. 
 But in both cases the psychological fact has been 
 strained beyond its power of tension ; and a 
 simple matter of experience has been made the 
 basis of a misleading mystical philosophy. 
 
 So then the attitude of Dante toward Beatrice 
 must, for all practical purposes, be judged as 
 sterile and ineffectual as the attitude assumed by 
 Plato toward young men, loved, according to 
 Greek custom, in the playing field or in the 
 groves of the Academy. 
 
 It is a delusion to imagine that the human 
 spirit is led to discover divine truths by amorous 
 enthusiasm for a fellow-creature, however refined 
 that impulse may be. The quagmires into which 
 those who follow such a will-o'-the-wisp will
 
 86 IDEALS OF LOVE 
 
 probably flounder are only too plainly illustrated 
 by the cynical remarks of Shelley upon Emilia 
 Viviani, written a few days after he had composed 
 the Platonic ravings of " Epipsychidion." Never- 
 theless, there are delusions, wandering fires of 
 the imaginative reason, which, for a brief period 
 of time, under special conditions, and in peculiarly 
 constituted natures, have become fruitful of real 
 and excellent results. This was the case, I take 
 it, with both Plato and Dante.
 
 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 I 
 
 Not long ago, a writer in 77?^ Artist quoted 
 some lines of remarkable dignity and beauty by 
 E. C. L. I felt that here was a poet unknown 
 to me ; for the verses had that peculiar quahty 
 which belongs alone to genuine inspiration. By 
 the kindness of the editor of The Artist I obtained 
 a copy of the book from which the extracts 
 had been made. It is a thin volume, entitled 
 *' Echoes from Theocritus, and Other Sonnets." 
 By Edward Cracroft Lefroy. London : Elliot 
 Stock, 1885. The first thirty sonnets are com- 
 posed on themes suggested by the Syracusan 
 idyllist. Of miscellaneous sonnets there are 
 seventy. So, whether by accident or intention, 
 the poet rests his fame upon a century of sonnets, 
 by far the most important of these being the 
 seventy which do not give their title to the book. 
 Together with this volume came the sad intel-
 
 88 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 ligence that Edward Lefroy died last summer 
 after a tedious illness. In reply to inquiries, I 
 learned, through the courtesy of his best and 
 oldest friend, that he was educated at Blackheath 
 Proprietary School and at Keble College, Oxford. 
 In 1878 he took orders. His sonnets originally 
 appeared in three small paper-covered pamphlets, 
 severally entitled ''Echoes from Theocritus," 
 " Cytisus and Galingale," " Sketches and Studies." 
 They were published at Blackheath by H. Burn- 
 side, bookseller, between the years 1883 and 
 1884, and attracted comparatively little notice. 
 In 1885 the same sonnets were collected under 
 the title and description I have given above. 
 Few of our well-known literary critics, with the 
 exception of Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. William 
 Sharp, took notice of them and discerned their 
 merit. Later on, Mr. Lefroy gave a volume of 
 sermons to the public, and in 1885 he printed a 
 very characteristic collection of " Addresses to 
 Senior School-boys." He was thirty-five years 
 of age when he died. 
 
 Though Mr. Lefroy worked as a parish clergy- 
 man both at Truro and Lambeth with the late 
 and the present Archbishops of Canterbury, he 
 suffered from chronic physical weakness of a dis- 
 tressing nature. As early as the year 1882, he 
 learned from the best medical authority that his 
 heart was seriously affected, and that he could
 
 , EDWARD CR A CROFT LEFROY 89 
 
 not expect length of life. The pains and weari- 
 nesses of illness he bore with what a critic, 
 writing in the Academy^ well described as 
 *^ breezy healthfulness of thought and feeling." 
 Combining in a singular measure Hellenic cheer- 
 fulness with Christian faith and patience, he was 
 able to await death with a spiritual serenity 
 sweeter than the steadfastness of Stoical endur- 
 ance. In one of his diaries he wrote : " The 
 world contains, even for an invalid like me, a 
 multitude of beautiful and inspiring things. 
 .... I have always tried to live a broad life. 
 It has been my pleasure to sympathise with all 
 sorts and conditions of men in their labours and 
 their recreations. Art, nature, and youth have 
 yielded to me ' the harvest of a quiet eye.' It 
 would be affectation to pretend that I am weary 
 of existence .... but I have faith enough in 
 my Lord to follow Him willingly where He has 
 gone before." His sympathy with youthful 
 strength and beauty, his keen interest in boyish 
 games and the athletic sports of young men, 
 seem to have kept his nature always fresh and 
 wholesome. These qualities were connected in a 
 remarkable way with Hellenic instincts and an 
 almost pagan delight in nature. But Lefroy's 
 temperament assimilated from the Christian and 
 the Greek ideals only what is really admirable in 
 both : discarding the asceticism of the one and
 
 90 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 the sensuousness of the other. The twofold 
 elements in him were kindly mixed and blended 
 in a rare beauty and purity of manliness. 
 Writing to a friend about his Theocritean son- 
 nets, he says that he composed them in order to 
 relax his mind. " To a man occupied in sermon- 
 writing and parochial visitation it is intellectual 
 change of air to go back in thought to a pre- 
 Christian age : and I confess that I have never 
 been able to emancipate myself (as most clergy- 
 men do) from the classical bonds which school- 
 masters and college tutors for so many years 
 did their best to weave around me. And then I 
 have such an intense sympathy with the joys and 
 griefs, hopes and fears, passions and actions of 
 * the young life' that I find myself in closer 
 affinity to Greek feeling than most people would. 
 At the same time, I should be sorry to help on 
 that Hellenic revival which some Oxford teachers 
 desire." At another time he writes : ^' I find the 
 school of Keats more congenial to my ' natural 
 man ' than the school of Keble. And in my 
 more truthful moments the temper of Sophocles 
 seems more akin to mine than the temper of 
 Thomas a Kempis, though the ' Imitatio * is 
 seldom far from my hand. I mean to struggle 
 on to a less perishable standpoint, and hope 
 (D.V.) to diminish the frequency of my lapses 
 into Hellenism."
 
 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 91 
 
 II 
 
 Indeed, Lefroy seems, through some special 
 privilege of temperament, to have hit by instinct 
 upon the right solution of difficult problems, 
 which many less well-balanced natures seek after 
 in vain, because they are too coarsely fibred, too 
 revolutionary, or peradventure too intemperate. 
 Thus he felt able to write candidly to a friend 
 upon a topic which is not often discussed among 
 men (1883): *' I have an inborn admiration 
 for beauty of form and figure. It amounts 
 almost to a passion. And in most football teams 
 I can find one Antinous, sometimes two or 
 three. And surely it is very beautiful to see 
 the rapid movement of a perfect animal, &c. 
 Some folk would say it was a mark of sickly or 
 diseased sentimentalism to admire any but 
 feminine flesh. But that only proves how base 
 is the carnality, which is now reckoned the only 
 legitimate form. The other is far nobler, unless 
 it be vilely prostituted : and were I painter, 
 sculptor or poet, I would teach the world so. 
 Platonic passion in any relationship is better 
 than the animalism which will go to all ex- 
 tremes." This passage strikes the key-note to 
 a great deal of his best poetry, and shows in 
 how true a sense he possessed the Greek virtue 
 ot temperate self-control. Modern men refuse to
 
 92 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 admit the possibility of purity in emotions which 
 are stimulated by the aspects of physical beauty 
 in the male and female sex. On the banks of 
 the Ilissus they felt and thought differently ; 
 and Lefroy existed to prove that the Lysis and 
 Charmides of Plato are not masterpieces of 
 artistic hypocrisy, concealing foulness. 
 
 His opinions regarding the right way of 
 remaining faithful to the Greek ideal of life, 
 without sacrificing cleanliness of conduct, obe- 
 dience to the law, or holiness of spirit, are 
 fully set forth in an address on ** Muscular 
 Christianity." This was printed at Oxford in 
 1877 (Slatter & Rose), when the Chair of Poetry, 
 vacated by Sir Francis Doyle, was being some- 
 what warmly disputed. A Rev. St. John 
 Tyrwhitt upon that occasion wrote against what 
 Lefroy himself called the ^* Hellenic revival which 
 some Oxford teachers desire ; " and I can dis- 
 cern an echo of the controversy in the Address, 
 from which I mean to quote some passages. It 
 is mainly directed against Mr. Pater and myself, 
 to some extent also against Matthew Arnold. 
 But *^ Pater-paganism and Symonds-sophistry " 
 — that is to say, the views expressed by Pater 
 in the last essay of his " Studies in the History 
 of the Renaissance," and by Symonds in the 
 last chapter of his *' Studies of Greek Poets : 
 Second Series " — are the principal objects of his
 
 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 93 
 
 attack. ^' What Mr. Symonds and Mr. Pater, 
 and their followers, advise us to do," he says, 
 ^' may be summed up in a single sentence : * Act 
 according to the promptings of nature, and you 
 cannot go wrong.' .... In the present case, 
 what is meant by the term ^ nature ' ? Is it 
 Anglo-Byzantine (as Mr. Tyrwhitt would say) 
 for the worst passions and most carnal inclina- 
 tion of humanity ? I fear that there is too 
 much reason to dread an affirmative answer. 
 .... I have called the new religion a pseudo- 
 Hellenism, and for this reason : it seems to 
 differ in a very important respect from Hellenism 
 properly so-called. The Greeks had at least 
 an ideal standard, that which they indicated by 
 the term to koXov. Unquestionably they often 
 fell short of it, not only in their practice, but in 
 their doctrine on particular points ; but there is 
 no inconsistency in the general teaching of 
 their greatest philosophers, or in the avowed 
 aim of their statesmen and legislators. They 
 all pointed to the honourable, the comely, the 
 beautiful, in every department of thought and 
 action. They would not have tolerated for a 
 moment a philosophy which bade each man 
 follow freely the bent of his own unchastened 
 disposition, or encouraged the cultivation of 
 merely sensual faculties, without an equal train- 
 ing of man's diviner instincts."
 
 94 EDWARD CR A CROFT LEFROY 
 
 I need not discuss the question how far 
 Lefroy was just to either Mr. Pater or myself, as 
 regards our doctrine and our practice ; because 
 I have not introduced this passage with any 
 polemical object, but only with the view of making 
 his position clear, and of showing how decidedly 
 he disagreed with the prominent " Hellenisers " 
 of his period. It was both the strength and the 
 weakness of Lefroy's philosophy that he began 
 by postulating the Christian faith as a divinely 
 appointed way of surmounting the corruption and 
 imperfection of nature. His strength ; because 
 he undoubtedly lived by this faith. His weak- 
 ness ; because it is impossible to demonstrate or 
 to maintain that Christianity has this efficacy. 
 " Muscular Christianity," to use his own phrase, 
 " includes all that is brightest in Hellenism, and 
 all that is purest in Hebraism." Alas ! It was 
 not Muscular Christianity, but one Muscular 
 Christian, Lefroy himself, who included these two 
 excellences. 
 
 Ill 
 
 There is a strong personal accent in all Lefroy's 
 writing ; the *^ breezy healthfulness of thought 
 and feeling " which his reviewer noted ; the un- 
 tainted Hellenism broadening and clarifying
 
 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 95 
 
 Christian virtues, which I have attempted to 
 describe. 
 
 This attitude of mind is sufficiently well set 
 forth in the last sonnet of the series. It is en- 
 titled *' An Apology," and may here be cited, 
 although in form and language it falls below the 
 level of Lefroy's best writing : 
 
 " / hold not lightly by this world of sense^ 
 So full it is of things that make m& cheer, 
 I deem that mortal blind of soul and dense, 
 To whom created joys are less than dear. 
 The heaven we hope for is not brought more near 
 By spurning drops of love that filter thence : 
 In Nature^s prism some purple beams appear, 
 Of unrevealed light the effluence. 
 Then count me not, O yearning hearts, to blame 
 Because at Beauty^s call mine eyes respond. 
 Nor soon convict me of ignoble aim, 
 Who in the schools of life am frankly fond ; 
 For out of earth^s delightful things we frame 
 Our only visions of the world beyond.'' 
 
 Some of Lefroy's finest work is done in the 
 key suggested by this sonnet. He felt that Hfe 
 itself is more than literature : the real poems are 
 not what we sing, but what we feel and see. 
 This thought, which is indeed the base-note of 
 all Walt Whitman's theories upon art, is ad- 
 mirably rendered in ''From Any Poet" (No. 
 xxxvii.) :
 
 96 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 ^^Oh, Fair and Young, w& singers only lift 
 A mirror to your beauty dimly true, 
 And what you gave us, that we give to you. 
 And in returning minimise the gift. 
 We trifle like an artist brought to view 
 The nuggets gleaming in a golden drift, 
 Who, while the busy miners sift and sift, 
 Will take his idle brush and paint a few. 
 O Young and Glad, O Shapely, Fair, and Strong, 
 Yours is the soul of verse to make, not mar ! 
 In you is loveliness : to you belong 
 Glory and grace : we sing but what you are. 
 Pleasant the song perchance ; but oh, how far 
 The beauty sung of doth excel the song." 
 
 Feeling this, Lefroy felt, like Alfred de Musset, 
 that the poet's true applause is praise bestowed 
 upon him by the young : 
 
 " O hearts of youth, so brightly, frankly true. 
 To gods and bards alike your praise is dear; 
 Though wreaths from adult hands be all unseized, 
 Our crowns are crowns indeed if thrown by you.'" 
 
 These Hues, from a sonnet entitled " A Story 
 of Aurelius " (No. xxxviii.), suffer by their sever- 
 ance from the rest of the poem. It may be said, 
 indeed, in passing, that, spontaneous and un- 
 studied as his work appears, Lefroy had a fine 
 sense of unity. None of his pieces, to my mind, 
 can be rightly estimated, except in their total 
 effect. I will illustrate this by quoting at full 
 " Bill : A Portrait " (No. xxxvi.) :
 
 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 97 
 
 " / know a lad with sim-illumined eyes, 
 Whose constant heaven is fieckless of a cloud ; 
 He treads the earth with heavy steps and proud, 
 As if the gods had given him for a prize 
 Its beauty and its strength. What money buys 
 Is his ; and his the reverence unavowed 
 Of toiling men for men who never bowed 
 Their backs to any burden anywise. 
 And if you, talk of pain, of doubt, of ill, 
 He smiles and shakes his head, as who should say, 
 * The thing is black, or white, or what you will : 
 Let Folly rule, or Wisdom : any way 
 I am the dog for whom this merry day 
 Was made, and I enjoy it J That is Bill." 
 
 The grace of this composition is almost rustic, 
 the music Hke to that of some old ditty piped by 
 shepherds in the shade. The subrisive irony, 
 the touch of humour, the quiet sympathy with 
 Nature's and Fortune's gilded darhng, give it a 
 peculiar raciness. But after all is said, it leaves 
 a melody afloat upon the brain, a savour on the 
 mental palate. Only lines four and five seem to 
 interrupt the rhythm by sibilants and a certain 
 poverty of phrase — as though (which was perhaps 
 the case) two separate compositions had been 
 patched together. 
 
 A companion portrait, this time of a maiden, 
 may be placed beside it — " Flora " (No. xxxv.): 
 
 " Some faces scarce are born of earth, they say; 
 Thine is not one of them, attd yet 'tis fair; 
 
 G
 
 98 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 Showing the buds of hope in soft array, 
 Which presently will burst and blossom there ; 
 Now small as bells that Alpine meadows bear, — 
 Too low for any boisterous wind to sway. 
 Why should we think it shame for youth to wear 
 A beauty portioned from the statural day ? 
 'Tis thifie to teach us what dull hearts forget. 
 How near of kin we are to springing flowers. 
 The sap from Nature's stem is in us yet ; 
 Young life is conscious of uncancelled powers. 
 And happy they who, ere youth's sun has set, 
 Enjoy the golden unreturning hours." 
 
 In all these sonnets there are charming single 
 lines : 
 
 •' How near of kin we are to springing flowers. " 
 Of children, in another place, he says : 
 
 " To you the glory and to us the debt.'' 
 
 And again, in yet another sonnet : 
 
 " We press and strive and toil from morn till eve; 
 From eve to morn our waking thoughts are grim. 
 Were children silent, we should half believe 
 That joy were dead — its lamp would burn so dim." 
 
 This special sympathy with what he called 
 "the young Hfe" finds noble expression in four 
 sonnets dedicated to the sports of boyhood. 
 Here is " A Football Player " (No. xxvii.) :
 
 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 99 
 
 *' If I could paint you, friend, as you stand there, 
 Guard of the goal, defensive, open-eyed. 
 Watching the tortured bladder slide and glide 
 Under the twinkling feet ; arms bare, head bare, 
 The breeze a-tremble through crow-tufts of hair; 
 Red-brown in face, and ruddier having spied 
 A wily foeman breaking from the side ; 
 Aware of him — of all else unaware : 
 If I could limn you as you leap and fling 
 Your weight against his passage, like a wall; 
 Clutch him, and collar him, and rudely cling 
 For one brief moment till he falls — you fall : 
 My sketch would have what Art can never give — 
 Sinew and breath and body ; it would live.'' 
 
 The '' Cricket-Bowler" follows (No. xxviii.): 
 
 *' Two minutes'* rest till the next man goes in ! 
 The tired arms lie with every sinew slack 
 On the mown grass. Unbent the supple back. 
 And elbows apt to make the leather spin 
 Up the slow bat and round the unwary shin — 
 In knavish hands a most unkindly knack; 
 But no guile shelters under this boy's black 
 Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin. 
 Two minutes only. Conscious of a name, 
 The new man plants his weapon with profound 
 Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare. 
 Not loth, the rested lad resumes the game : 
 The flung ball takes one madding tortuous bound, 
 And the mid-stump three somersaults in air.'* 
 
 The third, not so perfect in execution, cele- 
 brates the runner's noble strife. It is called 
 *' Before the Race " (No. xxix.) :
 
 loo EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 " The impatient starter waxeth saturnine. 
 ' Is the bell cracked ? ' he cries. They make it sound : 
 And six tall lads break through the slanders round. 
 I watch with Mary while they foryn in line ; 
 White jersey ed all, but each with some small sign, 
 A broidered badge or shield with painted ground. 
 And one with crimson kerchief sash-wise bound ; 
 I think we know that token, neighbour mine. 
 Willie, they call you best of nimble wights ; 
 Yet brutal Fate shall whelm in slippery ways 
 Two soles at least. Will it be you she spites ? 
 Ah well! 'Tis not so much to win the bays. 
 Uncrowned or crowned, the struggle still delights; 
 It is the effort, not the palm we praise."" 
 
 Very finely conceived and splendidly expressed 
 is the fourth of these athletic sonnets, which 
 connects aesthetic impressions with underlying 
 moral ideas. " A Palaestral Study " (No. xxxi.) : 
 
 " The curves of beauty are not softly wrought : 
 These quivering limbs by strong hid muscles held 
 In attitudes of wonder, and compelled 
 Through shapes more sinuous than a sciilpto/s thought, 
 Tell of dull matter splendidly distraught. 
 Whisper of mutinies divinely quelled, — 
 Weak indolence of flesh, that lojtg rebelled, 
 The spirit's domination bravely taught. 
 And all man's loveliest works are cut with pain. 
 Beneath the perfect art we know the strain, 
 Intense, defined, how deep soe'er it lies. 
 From each high masterpiece our souls refrain,
 
 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY loi 
 
 Not tired of gazing, but with stretched eyes 
 Made hot by radiant flames of sacrifice.'* 
 
 I think it will be felt, from these examples, 
 that in Lefroy's now almost forgotten work a true 
 poet drew authentic inspiration from the beautiful 
 things which lie nearest to the artist's vision in 
 the life of frank and simple human beings. His 
 sonnets rank high in that region of Art which I 
 have elsewhere called '' democratic." The sensi- 
 bility to subjects of this sort may be frequent 
 among us ; but the power of seizing on their 
 essence, the faculty for lifting them into the 
 aesthetic region without marring their wilding 
 charm, are not common. For this reason, be- 
 cause just here seems to lie his originality, I 
 have dwelt upon this group of poems. Their 
 Neo-Hellenism is so pure and modern, their 
 feeling for physical beauty and strength is so 
 devoid of sensuality, their tone is so right and 
 yet so warmly sympathetic, that many readers 
 will be grateful to a singer, distinguished by rare 
 personal originality, who touched common and 
 even carnal things with such distinction. I 
 might enforce this argument by quoting *' The 
 New Cricket Ground," '' Childhood and Youth," 
 " In the Cloisters : Winchester College." But, 
 as the Greeks said, the half is more than the 
 whole.
 
 I02 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 IV 
 
 The thirty " Echoes from Theocritus " are all 
 penetrated with that purged Hellenic sentiment 
 which was the note of Lefroy's genius. They 
 are exquisite cameos in miniature carved upon 
 fragments broken from the idylls ; nor do I dis- 
 agree with a critic who said, when they first 
 appeared, that " rarely has the great pastoral 
 poet been so freely transmuted without loss of 
 his spell." Nevertheless, these sonnets have not 
 the same personal interest, nor, in my opinion, 
 the same artistic importance, as others in which 
 the poet's fancy dealt more at large with themes 
 suggested to him by his study of the Greek 
 past. Take this, for instance : ^^ Something 
 Lost " (No. xviii.) : 
 
 " How changed is Nature from the Time antique ! 
 The world we see to-day is dumb and cold; 
 It has no word for us. Not thus of old 
 It won heart-worship from the enamoured Greek. 
 Through all fair forms he heard the Beauty speak ; 
 To him glad tidings of the Unknown were told 
 By babbling runlets, or sublimely rolled 
 In thunder from the cloud- enveloped peak. 
 He caught a message at the oak's great girth, 
 While prisoned Hamadryads weirdly sang : 
 He stood where Delphi's Voice had chasm-birthy
 
 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 103 
 
 And der strange vapour watched the Sibyl hang; 
 Or where, hnid throbbing of the tremulous earth, 
 The caldrons of Dodona pulsed and rang.'' 
 
 Here we feel that Lefroy (like Wordsworth 
 when he yearned for Triton rising in authentic 
 vision from the sea) had his soul lodged in 
 Hellas. Of how many English poets may not 
 this be said ? " Come back, ye wandering Muses, 
 come back home ! " Landor was right. The 
 home of the imagination of the artist is in Greece. 
 Gray, Keats, Shelley, even Byron, Landor, 
 Wordsworth, even Matthew Arnold, all the great 
 and good poets who have passed away from us, 
 signified this truth in one way or in another, 
 each according to his quahty. It was the dis- 
 tinction of Lefroy that he *^ came back home " 
 with a peculiarly fresh and child-like perception 
 of its charm. Seeking to define his touch upon 
 Hellenic things, I fight upon this barren and 
 scholastic formula : he had a spiritual apperception 
 of sensuous beauty. The strong, clear music 
 which throbbed so piercingly, so passionately, 
 round the Isles of Greece, reached his sense 
 attenuated and refined — like the notes of the 
 Alpine horn, after ascending and tingling through 
 a thousand feet of woods and waterfalls and 
 precipices. Here is the echo of it in his sonnet, 
 *' On the Beach in November " (No. xvii.) :
 
 104 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 " My hearfs Ideal, that somewhere out of sight 
 Art beautiful and gracious and alone, — 
 Haply where blue Saronic waves are blowti 
 On shores that keep some touch of old delight, — 
 How welcome is thy memory, and how bright, 
 To one who watches over leagues of stojie 
 These chilly northern waters creep and moan 
 From weary morning unto weary night. 
 
 Shade-form, lovelier than the living crowd, 
 So kind to votaries, yet thyself unvowed. 
 
 So free to human fancies, fancy-free. 
 
 My vagrant thought goes out to thee, to thee, 
 
 As, wandering lonelier than the Poefs cloud, 
 
 1 listen to the wash of this dull sea.'' 
 
 How he could convey a single Greek sugges- 
 tion into the body of an English poem may be 
 exemplified by "A Thought from Pindar" (No. 
 xxxix.) : 
 
 " Twin immortalities man's art doth give 
 To man ; both fair ; both noble ; one supreme. 
 The sculptor beating out his portrait scheme 
 Can make the marble statue breathe and live; 
 Yet with a life cold, silent, locative; 
 It cannot break its stone-eternal dream. 
 Or step to join the busy human stream, 
 But dwells in some high fane a hieroglyph. 
 Not so the poet. Hero, if thy name 
 Lives in his verse, it lives indeed. For then 
 In every ship thou sailest passenger 
 To every town where aught of soul doth stir, 
 Through street and market borne, at camp and game^ 
 And on the lips and in the hearts of men!''
 
 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 105 
 
 The contrast between the powers of two rival 
 arts, sculpture and poetry, to confer immortal 
 fame upon some noble agent in the world's 
 drama, has been well conceived and forcibly 
 presented. 
 
 Like all poets who have confined their prac- 
 tice mainly to contemplative and meditative forms 
 of verse, Lefroy reflected on the nature of art. 
 That he was not in theory " the idle singer of 
 an idle day " may be gathered from a sonnet 
 entitled " Art that Endures " (No. Ixviii.) : 
 
 " Marble of Paros, bronze that will not rust, 
 Onyx or agate — sculptor, choose thy block I 
 Not clay nor wax nor perishable stock 
 Of earthy stones can yield a virile bust 
 Keen-edged against the centuries. Strive thou must 
 In molten brass or adamantine rock 
 To carve the strenuous shape which shall not mock 
 Thy faith by crumbling dust upon thy dust. 
 Poet, the warning comes not less to thee ! 
 Match well thy metres with a strong design. 
 Let noble themes find nervous utterance. Flee 
 The frail conceit., the weak jnellijiuous line. 
 High thoughts, hard forms, toil, rigour, — these be thine 
 And steadfast hopes of immortality." 
 
 With this lofty conception of the spirit in 
 which the artist should approach his task, Lefroy 
 did not exaggerate his own capacity as poet or 
 seek to exalt his function. A sonnet called
 
 io6 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 '' The Torch-Bearer '' (No. Ixvi.) expresses, in a 
 charming metaphor, the thought that poetry is 
 but the soul's Hght cast upon the world for other 
 souls to see by : 
 
 " In splendour robed for some court-revelry 
 A monarch moves when eve is o?t the wane. 
 His faithful lieges flock their prince to see, 
 And strive to pierce the gathering shade — in vain. 
 But lo, a torch! And now the brilliant train 
 Is manifest. Who may the bearer be ? 
 Not great himself, he maketh greatness plain. 
 To him this praise at least. What more to mc? 
 Mine is a lowly Muse. She cannot sing 
 A pageant or a passion; cajinot cry 
 With clamorous voice against an evil thing, 
 And break its power; but seeks with single eye 
 To follow in the steps of Love, her King, 
 And hold a light for men to see Him by." 
 
 In another place (No. i.) he disclaims his 
 right or duty to attack the higher paths of poesy, 
 saying of his Muse : 
 
 " She hath no mind for ^freaks upon the fells,'' 
 No wish to hear the storm-wind rattling by : 
 She loves her cowslips more than immortelles, 
 Her garden-clover than the abysmal sky : 
 In a green dell her chosen sweetheart dwells : 
 The mountahi-height she must not, does not, try.'' 
 
 That sense of inadequacy which every modest 
 worker feels from time to time, when he com-
 
 EDWARD CR A CROFT LEFROY 107 
 
 pares ^'this man's art or that man's scope" with 
 his own performance, and the reaction from its 
 benumbing oppression under the influence of 
 healthier reflection, are expressed with delightful 
 spontaneity in ^* Two Thoughts" (No. xhii.) : 
 
 *' Whe?i I reflect how small a space I fill 
 In this great teeming world of labourers, 
 How little I can do with strongest will, 
 How marred that little by most hateful blurs, — 
 The fancy overwhelms me, and deters 
 My soul from putting forth so poor a skill : 
 Let me be counted with those worshippers 
 Who lie before God's altar and are still. 
 But then I think (for healthier moments come) 
 This power of will, this natural force of hand, — 
 What do they mean, if working be not wise ? 
 Forbear to weigh thy work, O Soul! Arise, 
 And join thee to that nobler, sturdier band 
 Whose worship is not idle, fruitless, dumb.'* 
 
 V 
 
 It was not to be expected that a man who 
 vibrated so deeply and truly to the beauty of 
 the world and to the loveliness of ''the young 
 life," and who was himself condemned to life- 
 long sickness with no prospect but the grave 
 upon this planet, should not have left some 
 utterances upon the problems of death and
 
 io8 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 thwarted vitality. It must be remembered, how- 
 ever, that Lefroy was a beHeving Christian, and 
 for him the tomb was, therefore, but a doorway 
 opened into regions of eternal life. It is highly 
 characteristic of the man that, in his poetry, he 
 made no vulgar appeal to the principles of his 
 religious creed, but remained within the region 
 of that Christianised Stoicism I have attempted 
 to define. We feel this strongly in the sonnets 
 " To An Invalid " (No. liv.), '' On Reading a 
 Poet's Life" (No. lix.), and ^' The Dying 
 Prince" (No. xlvii.). All of these, for their 
 intrinsic merits, are worthy of citation. But 
 space fails ; and I would fain excite some 
 curiosity for lovely things to be discovered by the 
 reader when a full edition of Lefroy 's " Remains " 
 appears. I shall, therefore, content myself with 
 the transcription of the following most original 
 poem upon the old theme of ** Quem Di DiH- 
 gunt " (No. Ivii.) : 
 
 "O kiss the almond-blossom on the rod! 
 A thing has gone from us that could not stay. 
 At least our sad eyes shall not see one day 
 All baseness treading where all beauty trod. 
 O kiss the almond-blossom on the rod! 
 For this our budding Hope is caught away 
 From growth that is not other than decay, 
 To bloom eternal in the halls of God. 
 And though of subtler grace we saw no sign,
 
 EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 109 
 
 No glimmer from the yet unrisen star, — 
 Full-orbed he broke upon the choir divine, 
 Saints among saints beyond the golden bar. 
 Round whose pale brozvs new lights of glory shine — 
 The aureoles that were not and that are.'' 
 
 The artistic value of Lefroy's work is great. 
 That first attracted me to him, before I knew 
 what kind of man I was to meet with in the 
 poet. Now that I have learned to appreciate 
 his life-philosophy, it seems to me that this is 
 even more noteworthy than his verse. We are 
 ail of us engaged, in some way or another, with 
 the problem of co-ordinating the Hellenic and 
 Christian ideals, or, what is much the same 
 thing, of adapting Christian traditions to the 
 governing conceptions of a scientific age. Lefroy 
 proved that it is possible to combine reli- 
 gious faith with frank delight in natural love- 
 liness, to be a Christian without asceticism, and 
 a Greek without sensuality. I can imagine that 
 this will appear simple to many of my readers. 
 They will exclaim : '' We do not need a minor 
 poet Hke Lefroy to teach that lesson. Has not 
 the problem been solved by thousands ? " Per- 
 haps it has. But there is a specific note, a 
 particular purity, a clarified distinction, in the 
 amalgam offered by Lefroy. What I have called 
 his spiritual apperception of sensuous beauty 
 was the outcome of a rare and exquisite per-
 
 no EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY 
 
 sonality. It has the translucent quahty of a 
 gem, beryl or jacinth, which, turn it to the light 
 and view it from all sides, retains one flawless 
 colour. This simplicity and absolute sincerity 
 of instinct is surely uncommon in our perplexed 
 epoch. To rest for a moment upon the spon- 
 taneous and unambitious poetry which flowed 
 from such a nature cannot fail to refresh minds 
 wearied with the storm and stress of modern 
 thought. To abide in communion with an 
 individuality so finely and felicitously moulded 
 must be a source of strength and soothing to 
 those even who find themselves incapable of 
 taking up exactly the same fundamental prin- 
 ciples.
 
 LA BETE HUMAINE 
 
 A STUDY IN ZOLA'S IDEALISM 
 
 It is one of the mauvaises plaisanteries of the 
 epoch to call M. Zola a realist. Actually, he is 
 an idealist of the purest water ; and if ideahsts 
 are Philistines, then Gath can claim him for her 
 own. The ponderousness of his method, the 
 tedium of his descriptions, and the indecencies in 
 which he revels, do not justify his claim to stand 
 outside the ranks of those who treat reality from 
 an ideal point of view. Walt Whitman, one of 
 the staunchest idealists who ever uttered prophecy, 
 might be made to pass for a realist on the same 
 grounds of heaviness, minuteness, and indecency. 
 The fact is that Zola, like Whitman, approaches 
 his art-work in the spirit of a poet. 
 
 These assertions have an odour of paradox, 
 and require demonstration. That may be supplied 
 by an analysis of " La Bete Humaine." I will call 
 this book the poem of the railway. It is, indeed,
 
 112 LA BETE HUMAINE 
 
 a great deal more than that. But the unity of 
 subject, movement, composition, interest, which 
 constitutes a creation of idealising art, and 
 distinguishes that from the haphazard incom- 
 pleteness of reality, is found by Zola in the 
 biography of an engine on the line between 
 Paris and Havre. ^^ La Lison," as the locomotive 
 is named, might be termed the heroine of the 
 romance. 
 
 This unity, which constitutes an ideal creation 
 of the brain, separating that from fact or from any 
 literal transcripts of reality, is sustained with extra- 
 ordinary ability and constructive genius through- 
 out "La Bete Humaine." All the personages of 
 the drama are in one way or another connected 
 with the company of the Quest Hne : as directors, 
 station-masters, guards, engine-drivers, stokers, 
 pointsmen, with their wives and mistresses. 
 The unity of place is equally preserved. Of the 
 many tragic episodes to which the action gives 
 rise, all are prepared at Paris or Havre in 
 buildings attached to the railway stations, and 
 all are consummated at a certain fatal point 
 between the stopping-places of Malaunay and 
 Barentin. There is a tunnel which plays an 
 important part in each catastrophe, and a way- 
 side house of doom at Croix-de-Maufras. This 
 house, in truth, has a right to claim equahty 
 with the palace of Atreus at Mycenge. It is just
 
 LA BETE HUMAINE 113 
 
 as mysterious, and no less haunted by the Furies 
 of an ancient crime. Guilty and innocent alike 
 are drawn within its neighbourhood, to be in- 
 volved in the mesh of destiny, which eventually 
 entangles all the dramatis personce. The scheme 
 by which Zola has worked out this unity of 
 subject, place and retribution is so mathematically 
 perfect, so mechanically exact, as to set all the 
 probabihties of actual events at defiance. Only 
 the extreme vivacity and photographic accuracy 
 of each incident in detail blind us to the immense 
 demand continually made upon our credulity by 
 the poet's ideality. 
 
 What is the meaning of the title. We find it 
 in this sentence : ^' Posseder, tuer, cela s'equi- 
 valait-il, dans le fond sombre de la bete humaine ?" 
 (p. 196). Murder and sexual desire, co-existent, 
 confounding their qualities, emergent one out of 
 the other, in the nature of the irredeemable wild 
 beast, man : that is the double subject of the 
 book. These two brutal factors persist in 
 humanity. The machinery of modern fife, the 
 train which goes hurling and howling down the 
 grooves of progress, remains an idle instrument 
 beside the passions of the human beast. ^^ Ah ! 
 c'est une belle invention, il n'y a pas a dire," 
 says one of the persons in the story : *^ on va 
 
 vite, on est plus savant Mais les betes 
 
 sauvages restent des betes sauvages, et on aura 
 
 H
 
 114 -^^ BETE HUMAINE 
 
 beau inventer des mecaniques meilleures encore, 
 il y aura quand meme des betes sauvages 
 dessous " (p. 45). That other great invention 
 of the civilised brain, legal justice, fails to solve 
 the problems of social life, cannot penetrate the 
 passions which impel the wild beast, man, to 
 improbable or inconceivable actions. The in- 
 eptitude of the judge, M. Denizet, acute and 
 industrious in the search after truth as he may 
 be, forms a moral pendant to the bhnd brute 
 force of the locomotive which whirls human 
 beings to destruction. Justice does not fathom 
 the profundities of the beast's heart any better 
 than the railway engine is capable of sympathising 
 with its emotions. 
 
 The poetic unity which marks La BSfe Humaine 
 out as a masterpiece of the constructive imagina- 
 tion, cannot be fully appreciated without passing 
 the main actors of its drama in review. The 
 first to whom we are introduced is a man called 
 Roubaud, '* sous-chef de gare," or second station- 
 master, at Havre. He had risen from the ranks, 
 passing through several grades in the company's 
 sei-vice, until his vigour and good conduct 
 prepared him for a higher post. That, however, 
 might have still been long in coming had he not 
 married a young woman called Severine, who was 
 the protegee of the President Grandmorin, one 
 of the acting directors in the company. Severine,
 
 LA BETE HU MAINE 115 
 
 a daughter of Grandmorin's gardener, had been 
 taken into the great man's family upon the death 
 of her father, and grew up in humble companion- 
 ship with his only daughter Berthe. Roubaud, 
 now on the verge of forty, wooed and won this 
 girl, his junior by fifteen years. Grandmorin 
 gave her a marriage portion of ;^400, advanced 
 her husband to the post of station-master, and 
 promised to leave her by his will a house at 
 Croix-de-Maufras, on the line between Rouen 
 and Havre. The property was valued at about 
 £1600. 
 
 Severine is described as one of those graceful 
 fascinating women who charm men without 
 possessing any peculiar beauty. Her great at- 
 traction for the rough railway servant was the 
 distinction she derived from her education in 
 Grandmorin's family. Rather tall and slender, 
 she had a wealth of undulating dark hair, fram- 
 ing her pale face, and eyes of clear grey 
 blue — " yeux de pervenche." Roubaud sus- 
 pected nothing wrong in the protection extended 
 to her by the president ; for though there were 
 disquieting rumours afloat about his conduct, 
 he had reached an advanced if vigorous old age, 
 stood well at the Imperial Court, and owned a 
 property of some three millions of francs. 
 
 During the opening scene between husband 
 and wife, which takes place in a little room over-
 
 ii6 LA BETE HUMAINE 
 
 looking the station of the Quest at Paris, an 
 accident leads Roubaud to the discovery that 
 M. Grandmorin had foully abused his quasi- 
 guardianship of the young woman when she was 
 a girl of sixteen. The wild beast in the man 
 awakes. His first impulse is to murder his wife, 
 and he very nearly does so with fists and feet. 
 On second thoughts, he determines to murder 
 Grandmorin. Opportunity enables him to do so 
 that very evening in a railway carriage between 
 Malaunay and Barentin. The weapon used is a 
 knife which Severine had just given him. The 
 place selected is the tunnel which has been 
 already mentioned. But the deed had not been 
 completed before the train emerged from the 
 tunnel, and swept on along a hedgerow. At that 
 point lay a young man, who had just time to catch 
 the vision of Roubaud stabbing his victim in the 
 throat, while a mass of something black weighed 
 on the murdered person's legs. He could not, 
 however, remember with any distinctness the 
 features of the two men, and was not certain 
 whether the black mass was a woman or a 
 railway-rug. 
 
 It is not necessary to describe how Roubaud's 
 professional familiarity with railway trains en- 
 abled him and Severine to escape detection by 
 shifting from one carriage to another, and back 
 again, at well-chosen moments. Enough that
 
 LA BETE HUMAINE 117 
 
 they reached Havre apparently as usual, and 
 though suspected of the crime (their alleged 
 motive being a wish to anticipate Grandmorin's 
 bequest of the house at Croix-de-Maufras), they 
 were finally dismissed without a stain upon their 
 reputations. 
 
 The young man who obtained that fleeting 
 vision of the murder is Jacques Lantier, a son of 
 Gervaise (the heroine of Zola's LAssommoir)^ 
 and brother of a suicidal painter (the hero of 
 Zola's LCEuvre). There is also one of the 
 Lantiers in Zola's Germinal. His peculiarity of 
 temperament has to be noticed. Coming of what 
 would now be called a neuropathical stock, he 
 was the victim of an inborn homicidal instinct. 
 It took the special form, that, from the age of 
 dawning manhood, he never desired a woman 
 without at the same time being irresistibly im- 
 pelled to kill her. " Tuer une femme, tuer une 
 femme ! cela sonnait a ses oreilles, du fond de sa 
 jeunesse, avec la fievre grandissante, affolante du 
 desir. Comme les autres, sous I'eveil de la 
 puberte, revent d'en posseder une, lui s'etait 
 enrage a I'idee d'en tuer une " (p. 57). A vague 
 impression haunts his brain that this terrible 
 perversion of the sexual instinct derives from 
 a remote ancestry. Sitting by women in the 
 theatre, passing them in the streets, suddenly the 
 insane abominable impulse comes upon him, like
 
 Ii8 LA BETE HUMAINE 
 
 a force superior to his will and reason. " Puis- 
 qu'il ne les connaissait pas, quelle fureur pouvait- 
 il avoir contre elles ? car, chaque fois, c'etait 
 comme une soudaine crise de rage aveugle, une 
 soif toujours renaissante de venger des offenses 
 tres anciennes, dont il aurait perdu I'exacte 
 memoire. Cela venait-il done de si loin, du mal 
 que les femmes avaient fait a sa race, de la 
 rancune amassee de male en male, depuis la 
 premiere tromperie au fond des cavernes ? " For 
 the rest, Jacques Lantier is a young man of 
 more than ordinary refinement ; physically attrac- 
 tive, with well-formed hands and a face that 
 would have been eminently sympathetic but for 
 the restlessness of the brown eyes, shot at times 
 with flakes of red. His position in the railway 
 company, which connects all these people in one 
 sphere of work, is that of engine-driver. De- 
 barred from the society of women by the fearful 
 malady which preys upon his brain, Lantier has 
 made a mistress of his engine, the strong, beauti- 
 ful, responsive creature, Lison, who twice daily 
 performs the journey between Havre and Paris 
 with express trains. 
 
 Lantier found himself in the evening of Grand- 
 morin's murder on the bank above the tunnel's 
 mouth, owing to a series of incidents which must 
 be related. A group of persons highly important 
 to the plot of La Bete Humaine appear now upon
 
 LA BETE HUMAINE 119 
 
 the stage. Jacques had gone to visit a female 
 cousin of his father, who brought him up at 
 Plassans when his mother Gervaise deserted him 
 at the age of six. This woman, ^'tante Phasie," 
 as she is called, was left a widow with two 
 daughters, Flore and Louisette. For her second 
 husband she married a miserable, lifeless crea- 
 ture named Misard, who is employed upon the 
 line of the Ouest as signalman, at Croix-de- 
 Maufras. The house inhabited by the Misards 
 stands close to the railway, so that it is shaken 
 by the thunder of all the trains that pass ; and 
 at night the glare of their illuminated carriages 
 startles the sleepers in the bedrooms, and leaves 
 upon wakeful brains the silhouettes of countless 
 travellers going and coming upon the iron high- 
 way of the world. Close by lies the deserted 
 garden and the empty house which Severine is 
 destined to inherit from the President Grand- 
 morin. We are, therefore, at the local centre of 
 the tragedy. Misard, the signalman, is actuated 
 by only one motive in life, a slow, persistent 
 avarice. It works in his dull brain like a 
 spreading disease ; and just at this moment it 
 has brought him to the commission of a crime. 
 He is poisoning Phasie by little doses introduced 
 into her food, in order to gain possession of 
 some thousand francs which she has recently in- 
 herited. The woman knows what her husband
 
 I20 LA BETE HU MAINE 
 
 has in view. But she fancies herself strong and 
 keen-witted enough to defeat him, and persists 
 in this illusion till she dies of poison on the 
 night which determines one of the great crises of 
 the tragedy. 
 
 The two girls, Flore and Louisette, both of 
 them play parts in this closely woven drama. 
 Louisette went out to service in the country 
 house of Grandmorin. One day she left her 
 situation in a miserable plight, teUing a dark 
 story of her master's violence, signs of which 
 were only too visible upon her body. Instead of 
 going home to Phasie, she took refuge in the 
 woods with a sort of gentle savage, a veritable 
 Orson, whom she called her ** bon ami," and 
 whom in the natural course of events she would 
 probably have married. The name of this man 
 is Cabuche. Endowed with herculean strength, 
 he had killed a man by accident in a tavern 
 brawl, and had been sentenced to five years' 
 penal servitude. Leaving the prison at the end 
 of four years with a good character for discipline 
 and industry, Cabuche found himself avoided by 
 his neighbours, and went off to live in a hut 
 close to some deserted quarries. Here he em- 
 ployed himself in excavating huge blocks of 
 stone and carting them down to the nearest rail- 
 way station. The pure and intimate relation 
 which sprang up between him and the innocent
 
 LA BETE HU MAINE I2I 
 
 child Louisette, forms one of those romantic 
 episodes that bloom like flowers upon the arid 
 rock of Zola's human wilderness. Louisette 
 died of fever in the forest hut ; and Cabuche, 
 knowing well the real cause of her death, vowed 
 to take the life of Grandmorin. Suspicion 
 naturally fell on him when the president was 
 murdered ; and it was only due to political 
 reasons for quashing the whole investigation 
 that the good-hearted giant did not fall a victim 
 to M. Denizet's (the magistrate's) well-reasoned 
 system of analysis. Eventually, by another 
 train of circumstances which illustrates Zola's 
 plot-weaving and dexterous manipulation of his 
 characters, Cabuche is condemned for a murder 
 of which he is equally guiltless. He and 
 Louisette are the victims of fatality, crime in 
 others, the mistakes of justice. 
 
 Flore has her own place on the railway. At 
 Croix-de-Maufras, close by Misard's signal-box, 
 there is a level crossing. It is her duty to 
 attend to the opening and shutting of the barriers 
 at this point. Zola has drawn in Flore the 
 portrait of an Amazon, a primeval virgin, a 
 nymph of Dian's train. " Une grande fille de 
 dix-huit ans, blonde, forte, a la bouche epaisse, 
 aux grands yeux verdatres, au front bas sous de 
 lourds cheveux. Elle n'etait point jolie, elle 
 avait les hanches solides et les bras durs d'un
 
 122 LA BETE HUMAINE 
 
 gargon " (p. 37). Possessed of enormous 
 physical force, she kept importunate suitors at a 
 distance by the weight of her arms and fists. 
 " Elle etait vierge et guerriere, dedaigneuse du 
 male, ce qui finissait par convaincre les gens 
 qu'elle avait pour sur la tete derangee " (p. 53). 
 The fact is that she had early set her affections 
 upon Jacques Lantier, and was open to no other 
 influence of the passions. On the evening of 
 his visit to ** la tante Phasie/' chance brought 
 them alone together in the president's deserted 
 garden. The emotional trouble of the girl 
 roused Lantier's latent malady. He was seized 
 with the irresistible impulse to kill instead of 
 possessing this woman on the point of yielding. 
 Rushing from her arms to avoid the horrible 
 suggestion, he roamed in the dark over field and 
 hedge until he sank exhausted at the spot where 
 the vision of Grandmorin's murder flashed across 
 his eyes. The ending of Flore's history may here 
 be related. Seeing Jacques devote himself to 
 another woman, and growing in course of time 
 to hate them both, she determined to wreck an 
 express train which she knew would carry the 
 lovers to Paris on a certain day. Flore attained 
 her object by contriving to arrest Cabuche's 
 waggon with its load of blocks upon the level 
 crossing just before the train came by. The 
 smash, of course, was awful. But Flore had the
 
 LA BETE HU MAINE 123 
 
 disappointment of finding that neither Jacques 
 nor his mistress had been killed. He was carried, 
 bruised and wounded, into Grandmorin's house 
 at Croix-de-Maufras. There Severine, for she 
 was the woman, nursed him, and there he 
 eventually murdered her with the same knife 
 Roubaud had used to stab the president. But 
 this is anticipating the order of events. When 
 Flore saw that she had failed in the main part 
 of her design, and reflected on the number of 
 human lives she had sacrificed — lives hitherto 
 unreckoned by her, since daily cargoes of passen- 
 gers, unknown, unheeded, had been always going 
 and coming on the wings of steam before her 
 eyes — she walked straight into the tunnel, and 
 standing upright before an approaching train, 
 was shattered to bits by the iron cuirass of the 
 engine. They laid what was left of her mangled 
 form by the side of her mother Phasie, who was 
 lying dead of Misard's poison in the signalman's 
 house. 
 
 Up to the present point of the analysis we 
 have had several types of murderers presented 
 to us. There is Roubaud, who kills from 
 motives of revenge and retrospective jealousy ; 
 Misard, who poisons his wife to get her money ; 
 Cabuche, v/ho commits an accidental homicide 
 through heat of blood and strength of muscle ; 
 Lantier, who is the subject of a perverted
 
 124 LA BETE HU MAINE 
 
 instinct, changing the natural impulse of sex into 
 blood-lust ; Flore, whose jealousy prompts her 
 to sacrifice a hecatomb of human victims in the 
 hope of killing her lover and her rival ; Grand- 
 morin, whose abnormal vices in old age lead to 
 the death of innocent Louisette. There remains 
 one other personage necessary to the unity of 
 this remarkable plot. He is Lantier's stoker, a 
 debauched drunkard, called Pecqueux, who 
 works in good relations with the engine-driver 
 on their common pet, la Lison. Poor Lison, 
 by the way, ends her own locomotive life in the 
 wreck of the train at Croix-de-Maufras. Lantier 
 and Pecqueux have to drive another, and do so 
 with their usual harmony until Pecqueux obtains 
 ocular evidence that Lantier has been tampering 
 with his mistress Philomene. Of Philomene, 
 one of Zola's disagreeable characters, it is only 
 necessary to say that she lives in the station at 
 Havre, keeping house for her brother, the ^'chef 
 de depot," and pursuing a course of reckless 
 immorality. Lantier was never in any true 
 sense her lover. But the stoker's jealousy once 
 roused he determines to revenge himself. It 
 happens, accordingly, that being more drunk 
 than usual one day he refuses to obey the engine- 
 driver's orders and insults him. They are alone 
 together on their locomotive, carrying a trainful 
 of soldiers, packed in cattle-pens, to Paris ; for
 
 LA BETE HU MAINE 125 
 
 the Franco-Prussian War has broken out, troops 
 are being concentrated, and these men will be 
 drafted from Paris to the frontier. The quarrel 
 begun by Pecqueux ends in a struggle for 
 supremacy between the two men, in the course 
 of which both fall from the engine and are killed 
 upon the spot. La Bete Humaine winds up with 
 a description of the train and its freight of 
 soldiers hurling along the rails, dashing through 
 stations, driverless, uncontrollable. In what I 
 have called the ideahsm of Zola, this termination 
 of the story with its prospect of carnage and the 
 vision of man's mechanical instrument let loose 
 upon the pathway of destruction is highly 
 dramatic. He closes Nana with the shouts of 
 the Parisians yelling, " A Berhn ! '' The whole 
 series of the Rougon-Macquart volumes lead up 
 to the fall of the Empire. Again, with special 
 reference to this particular romance, the crowd- 
 ing together of a mass of human animals, 
 soldiers, food for powder, who are launched into 
 eternity through the jealous fury of a drunken 
 homicide — nothing, I assert, could be better 
 arranged to sustain the central idea, or less 
 probable as a piece of fortuitous reality. It also 
 has to be remarked that Pecqueux's fatal quarrel 
 begins at Croix-de-Maufras, which I have called 
 the local centre of the tragic drama. Dante 
 himself could not have designed the machinery
 
 126 LA BETE HUMAINE 
 
 of a poem with more mathematical precision than 
 Zola has displayed in the construction of this 
 plot. Nature and the course of events, it need 
 hardly be said, do not act in this way. 
 
 Before proceeding to draw final critical con- 
 clusions, I have to resume what, after all, is the 
 most interesting matter in the book — Lantier's 
 love-affair with Severine. We have seen how 
 the engine-driver had a vision of the murder of 
 Grandmorin in the railway-carriage. Called as 
 a witness, he made a clean breast of all he knew, 
 but positively declared his inability to identify 
 any of the accused persons. Still he became 
 naturally an object of great anxiety to the 
 Roubauds ; and their strange behaviour toward 
 him, displayed in petty acts of courtesy and 
 signs of curiosity, convinced him that Roubaud 
 was the murderer, and that the black mass he 
 had discerned so dimly was the body of Severine. 
 The three persons came thus to be drawn to- 
 gether in a complicity of knowledge, though 
 they never discussed the details of the crime. 
 Roubaud almost pushed Lantier into his wife's 
 arms ; and Lantier found, to his great astonish- 
 ment, that he could love her without awakening 
 the homicidal demon in his breast. The very 
 fact that she was a murderess seemed to render 
 her inviolable. Severine, yielding by slow de- 
 grees to the young man^s passion, discerned for
 
 LA BETE HUMAINE ' 127 
 
 the first time what it was to love with the heart. 
 Her previous relations with Grandmorin and 
 Roubaud had not aroused the woman in her. 
 Lantier's delicate attentions, the difficulties of 
 the situation, and finally the rapture of possession, 
 made her his slave. She grew to hate her 
 husband, who, since the epoch of the murder, 
 abandoned himself wholly to the vice of gaming. 
 Then she prompted her lover to kill the man 
 who stood in the way of their union. But 
 Lantier, in spite of his peculiar homicidal in- 
 sanity, could not murder in cold blood. At last 
 they agreed to decoy Roubaud alone one evening 
 to the empty house at Croix-de-Maufras, and 
 there Lantier promised he would do the deed. 
 The knife which had stabbed Grandmorin was 
 ready on the table. However, just at the fatal 
 moment, certain imprudences of Severine brought 
 a paroxysm of his malady upon her lover. 
 Lantier thrust the knife of destiny into her 
 throat, at the very point on the railway where 
 Grandmorin received his death-blow, and in the 
 room where Grandmorin's crime with her had 
 been committed so many years ago. He escaped 
 unseen, leaving the house-door open ; and when 
 Roubaud arrived with Misard, they found the 
 unfortunate Cabuche there covered with Severine's 
 blood. The presence of Cabuche is well motivirt 
 (as Goethe would say) ; and accessory circum-
 
 128 LA BETE HUMAINE 
 
 stances lead M. Denizet to the conclusion that 
 he was the murderer of both Grandmorin and 
 Severine, instigated in each case by Roubaud. 
 During the course of the judicial proceedings 
 Roubaud confesses the murder of the president, 
 and is condemned. Cabuche has to bear the 
 guilt of Severine's assassination. 
 
 This analysis of La Bete Humaine shows in 
 how true a sense it may be called a poem. It 
 has all those qualities of the constructive reason 
 by which an ideal is distinguished from the bare 
 reality. Not only does it violate our sense of 
 probability in life that ten persons should be 
 either murderers or murdered, or both together, 
 when all of them exist in close relations through 
 their common connection with one line of railway, 
 but the short space of time required for the 
 evolution of this intricate drama of blood and 
 appetite is also unnatural. Eighteen months 
 suffice for the unfolding and termination of the 
 whole series of homicidal tragedies. At the end, 
 the stage is swept literally bare by the violent 
 deaths of all the principal persons who played 
 their parts upon it, with the exception of Misard, 
 who marries a woman of bad character, Roubaud, 
 who goes to life-imprisonment, and the un- 
 fortunate Cabuche, who receives a similar doom. 
 Even la Lison is destroyed, and her successor is 
 consigned to probable perdition by the insane 
 fury of Pecqueux. Nor is this all. The con-
 
 LA BETE HU MAINE 129 
 
 ditions of place are manipulated with equal 
 idealistic ingenuity. I have already pointed out 
 how all the threads of the drama are tied together 
 in one knot at Croix-de-Maufras, that place upon 
 the line between Malaunay and Barentin at the 
 entrance to the fatal tunnel. When Lantier 
 comes to the president's deserted house, at the 
 commencement of the story, he regards it with a 
 superstitious dread. '' Cette maison, il la con- 
 naissait bien, il la regardait a chacun de ses 
 voyages, dans le branle grondant de la machine. 
 Elle le hantait sans qu'il sut pourquoi, avec la 
 sensation confuse qu'elle importait a son exist- 
 ence " (p. 51). It was here that he fled from 
 Flore under one access of his homicidal mania, 
 and it was here that he murdered Severine under 
 the pressure of another. Here Grandmorin had 
 previously corrupted the girlhood of Madame 
 Roubaud. In its close vicinity stood the house 
 where Madame Misard died of poison, hard by 
 the level crossing where Flore wrecked the 
 train, not far from the tunnel where Grandmorin 
 was stabbed, Flore committed suicide, and Pec- 
 queux made his slaughterous attack on Lantier. 
 Nor must we forget the fatal knife, that present 
 which Severine gave her husband in the opening 
 scene, which he used to assassinate the president, 
 which Severine meant should be the instrument 
 of Roubaud's death, and which Lantier finally 
 plunged into her own throat. It is impossible 
 
 I
 
 I30 LA BETE HUMAINE 
 
 to contend that this interweaving of a numerous 
 dramatis personce in one mesh of homicidal crime, 
 this concentration of so many murderous in- 
 cidents upon one spot, this crowding of them 
 into less than two years, and this part played by 
 the fatal knife, are realistic — if realism means a 
 faithful correspondence to facts as we observe 
 them, and a reproduction of the events of life as 
 they are known to us. 
 
 It may be urged that not a single character, 
 or motive, or circumstance in the whole prose- 
 poem (a long poem of four hundred and fifteen 
 closely-printed pages) has been idealised. That 
 is quite true. The people are studied from life. 
 They act and talk naturally. They say and do a 
 large number of things which are usually con- 
 cealed in Hterature, but which are none the less 
 veracious. The mechanism and management of 
 a great main line in France have been reproduced 
 with carefully accumulated details which we may 
 assume to be exact. Few of M. Zola's critics 
 know as much about such things as he does. 
 Also, the conduct of a train, its composition, the 
 relations of guards, station-masters, engine- 
 drivers, stokers, pointsmen, to one another, to 
 the machine they set in motion and control, and 
 to the passengers they carry, are presented with 
 Zola's usual detail, and with more than his usual 
 feeling for the poetry inherent in this phase of 
 modern life. The only point for criticism is at
 
 LA BJETE HUMAINE 131 
 
 the end of the romance, when the train, with its 
 freight of military cattle, starts forth driverless 
 upon that terrific course. Here we might, 
 indeed, pause to wonder how long the engine 
 would speed on alone with no one to stoke up its 
 furnace. Here, and here perhaps for once, M. 
 Zola yields consciously to the incorrigible idealism 
 of an artist. The romance closes with the pros- 
 pect of a tragedy which fitly winds the poem up, 
 but which might very probably have failed for 
 want of coals. 
 
 Zola's realism consists, then, in his careful 
 attention to details, in the naturalness of his 
 connecting motives, and his frank acceptance of 
 all things human which present themselves to 
 his observing brain. The idealism which I have 
 been insisting on, which justifies us in calling 
 La Bete Humaine a poem, has to be sought in 
 the method whereby these separate parcels of 
 the plot are woven together, and also in the 
 dominating conception contained in the title 
 which gives unity to the whole work. We are 
 not in the real region of reality, but in the region 
 of the constructive imagination from the first to 
 the last line of the novel. If that be not the 
 essence of idealism — this working of the artist's 
 brain not in but on the subject-matter of the ex- 
 ternal world and human nature — I do not know 
 what meaning to give to the term.
 
 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 
 
 Val de Vire was one of the richest and most 
 favoured regions of old Normandy. The country 
 has a look of Devonshire or Somerset. Grass- 
 land and orchards intersected by deep lanes, 
 feathery with ferns and fox-gloves. Sluggish 
 streams, bordered with yellow flags and flower- 
 ing rush ; banks blue with columbine. Spinneys 
 and copses, mossy homesteads, hedged grazing 
 meadows, humble churches, slouching stable- 
 men, and sturdy farmers. The names of towns 
 and villages remind one constantly of noble 
 English families, who came from them across the 
 channel, and of these one of the most picturesquely 
 situated is St. Lo. It stands on a hill of solid 
 grey rock overhanging the Vire — a stream not 
 unlike our Avon, which winds through wooded 
 slopes of dark red iron-stone and lime-stone, 
 curving a gentle course toward the open plain 
 and not far distant sea. The valley, the river, 
 the woods, the gardens on the hills, the broad
 
 134 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 
 
 meadow-land beyond, can all be surveyed from 
 the square of the Cathedral. This is an irregular 
 and decrepit old church, interesting by reason of 
 its imperfections. No one part of the building 
 corresponds to the rest ; the chapels sprawl at 
 oblique angles ; the towers are ingeniously con- 
 structed to combine similarity and difference. 
 The workmanship throughout is loose, dishevelled, 
 mongrel. Yet there are beautiful wide windows : 
 labyrinths of grey glass, like spiders' webs, en- 
 closing figures bright as gems with green and 
 blue and fiery crimson. Outside, there is a little 
 stone pulpit — like the one in the courtyard of 
 Magdalen College Oxford — open to the air, with 
 a Gothic canopy above it. Here one can fancy 
 monks preaching or pardoners displaying their 
 indulgences to country folk in Lent. 
 
 It was at St. Lo that I picked up a collection 
 of *^ Chansons Normandes du xv°^® Siecle," pub- 
 lished from manuscripts existing in private 
 libraries at Vire and Bayeux. They consist 
 for the most part of drinking-songs and love- 
 ditties ; but fragments of ballads and a few 
 patriotic songs, relating to the wars with Eng- 
 land, give variety to this material. Like all 
 literary efforts of a rustic population, the Vaux 
 de Vire, as they were called, are distinguished 
 by simplicity and spontaneity. Their frequent 
 repetition of the same ideas proves the intellectual
 
 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 135 
 
 poverty of the source from which they were 
 derived. The want of art in their composition 
 guarantees the genuineness of the feehngs which 
 produced them. We seem, while reading their 
 refrains and lays, to hear the voices of genera- 
 tions living tranquilly in the same round, revolving 
 in one routine of natural joys and sorrows : 
 rejoicing in the warmth of summer, and shrink- 
 ing from the winter's cold ; expanding in the 
 spring to love, and welcoming the autumn with 
 its gift of wine and fruit. There is a pathos in 
 this half-developed poetry, like that which thrills 
 us in the unfoldings of the first buds and leaves 
 of spring. It is so near to all things natural ; 
 like earth herself, so very old and yet so fresh 
 and new. Centuries and centuries of men and 
 women have felt and sung like this : used the 
 same images of joy adopted from the fields in 
 April or in May, crooned the same melodies 
 borrowed from streams and winds and waving 
 trees. The song of the thrush and the black- 
 bird, the note of the nightingale, the blossoms of 
 the apple-tree and thorn, the freshness of the 
 greenwood after winter snows have melted — 
 these are the ever recurring themes of pleasure, 
 hope, and love, on which the rustic singers dwell. 
 It is a poetry singularly sympathetic to the 
 pastoral country which developed it. The lyrics 
 of the Minnesingers and Proven9al Troubadours
 
 136 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 
 
 have something similar in monotone to this ; but 
 the clang of arms and the stirring of the great 
 world were never far distant from the ladies' 
 bowers in which they sounded : whereas these 
 Norman ditties breathe of nothing but the crofts 
 and cottages and pastures of a village. If the 
 noise of war is heard at all in Val de Vire, 
 it is but some marauding band of English 
 foragers, who come to lift the cattle and to make 
 great pillage of the Duchy. The peasants rise 
 and do their best to pay back force with force, 
 and deep and deadly is the hatred stored against 
 their foes. From the beginning to the end of 
 this scanty literature, we remain within the narrow 
 circle of local interests, and it is this which gives 
 it a peculiar charm. The Vaux de Vire should 
 be read in Normandy in May. Their flavour, 
 like that of the cider which gushes from the 
 presses of St. Lo or St. Sever, is native to the 
 fat fair orchard-land which gave them, birth so 
 many years ago. 
 
 To translate popular songs is never very easy. 
 Yet these offer fewer difficulties than those, for 
 instance, of the Tuscan and the Umbrian high- 
 lands. The old French is clear and limpid ; the 
 metrical structure in most cases very simple. It 
 will be observed that, in the English versions I 
 am about to offer, one peculiarity of the originals 
 — a curious monotony of recurring and repeated
 
 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 137 
 
 rhymes — has been retained. The succession of 
 rhymes I have sometimes altered, where I thought 
 our language needed it. 
 
 The first group are the love-songs, by far the 
 most numerous and characteristic of the collection. 
 We may start with one in which a lover sings 
 the praises of his sweetheart : 
 
 Fair is her body, bright her eye, 
 With smiles her mouth is kind to me; 
 Then, think no evil, this is she 
 Whom God hath made my only joy. 
 
 Between the earth and heaven high 
 There is no maid so fair as she ; 
 The beauty of her sweet body 
 Doth ever fill my heart with joy. 
 
 He is a knave, nor do I lie, 
 Who loveth her not heartily ; 
 The grace that shines from her body 
 Giveth to lovers all great joy. 
 
 Sometimes the accented passages remind us of 
 Elizabethan lyric, as in the repeated last line of 
 the following quatrain : 
 
 Sad, lost in thought, and mute I go : 
 The cause, ah me! you know full well: 
 But see that nought thereof you tell, 
 
 For men will only laugh at woe — 
 
 For men will only laugh at woe.
 
 138 MEDIAEVAL NORMAN SONGS 
 
 The same effect is gained by the echoed 
 questions in this catch : 
 
 Kiss me then, my merry May, 
 By the soul of love I pray ! 
 
 Prithee, nay ! ^ell, tell me why ? 
 If with you I sport and play. 
 My mother will be vexed to-day. 
 
 Tell me why, oh, tell me why? 
 
 I must confess to having slightly modernised 
 two pretty but imperfect pieces, which play upon 
 the different tribes of singing birds : 
 
 Before my lady^s window gay. 
 The little birds they sing all day, 
 
 The lark, the mavis, and the dove; 
 But the sweet nightingale of May, 
 She whiles the silent hours away, 
 
 Chanting of sorrow, joy, and love. 
 
 The dove in the next song is clearly metaphor- 
 ical for some fair damsel, who has been tamed 
 to appreciate the caresses of a swain : 
 
 / found at daybreak yester morn, 
 Close by the nest where she was born^ 
 A tender turtle dove : 
 Oha! ohe! ohesa, hesa, he! 
 
 She fluttered, but she could not fly ; 
 I heard, but would not heed her cry : 
 She had not learned to love : 
 Oha! ohe! ohesa, hesa, he!
 
 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 139 
 
 Now she is quiet on my breast, 
 And from her new and living nest 
 She doth not seek to rove: 
 Oha! ohd! ohesa, hesa, he! 
 
 Occasionally the lyric note closely resembles 
 that belonging to the love-songs of the Carmina 
 Burana. I have found, in translating both, that 
 the effect produced in English is almost exactly 
 the same, without any intention on my own part. 
 This is the case with the rather pretty but 
 insipid piece which follows : 
 
 This month of May, one pleasant eventide, 
 I heard a young girl singing on the green; 
 
 I came upon her where the ways divide, 
 
 And said, " God keep you, maiden, from all teen. 
 
 ♦' Maiden, the God of love you keep and save, 
 And give you all your heart desires," I cried. 
 Then she : " Pray tell me, gentle sir and brave, 
 Whither you wend this pleasant eventide?" 
 
 " To you I come, a lover leal and true. 
 
 To tell you all my hope and all my care ; 
 Your love alone is what I seek ; than you 
 No woman ever seemed to me more fair." 
 
 The parting of two lovers, also in the leafy 
 forest-glades, has a throb of keener passion : 
 
 In this first merry morn of May, 
 
 When as the year grows young and green, 
 
 Into the wood I went ?ny way. 
 To say farewell unto my queen.
 
 I40 MEDIMVAL NORMAN SONGS 
 
 And when we could no longer stay, 
 
 Weeping upon my neck she fell. 
 Oh, send me news from far away ! 
 
 Farewell, sweet heart of mute, farewell! 
 
 The ladies, in the absence of their lovers, are 
 anxious for news. Their longing thoughts do 
 not, however, borrow the wings of a bird, as in 
 the more imaginative poetry of central Italy, 
 The heart's unrest finds simpler expression. 
 Take for instance the following song, the close of 
 which strikes me as charmingly fanciful in its 
 disconnection from the main theme : 
 
 O Love, my love and perfect bliss ! 
 God in His goodness grant me this — 
 
 I see thee soon again. 
 Nought else I need to take away 
 The grief that for thy sake alway 
 
 Doth keep me in great pain. 
 
 Alas! I know not what to do, 
 Nor how to get good news and true : 
 
 Dear God, I pray to Thee; 
 If else Thou canst not comfort me, 
 Of Thy great mercy make that he 
 
 Send speedy news to me. 
 
 Within my fathefs garden walls 
 There is a tree — when April falls 
 
 It blossometh alway. 
 There wend I oft in winter drear, 
 Yea, and in spring, the winds to hear, 
 
 The sweet winds at their play.
 
 MEDIAEVAL NORMAN SONGS 141 
 
 The motif of a bird as messenger occurs in 
 the next ditty ; but a nightingale, and not the 
 swallow, has been chosen : 
 
 Alas! poor heart, I pity thee 
 
 For all the grief thou hast and care ! 
 My love I see not anywhere; 
 
 He is so far away from me. 
 
 Until once more his face I see 
 I shall be sad by night and day ; 
 
 And if his face I may not see 
 
 Then I shall die most certainly : 
 
 For other pleasures have I none, 
 
 And all my hope is this alone. 
 
 No ease I take by night and day : 
 O Love, my love, to thee I pray 
 Have pity upon me ! 
 
 Dear nightingale of woodland gay. 
 
 Who singest on the leafy tree, 
 Go, take a message I thee pray, 
 
 A message to my love from me ; 
 Tell, tell him that I waste away 
 And weaker grow from day to day. 
 
 Ah, God! what pain and grief have we 
 Who are poor lovers, leal and true : 
 For every week that we pass through. 
 
 Five hundred thousand griefs have we : 
 One cannot think, or count, or tell 
 The griefs and pains that we know well!
 
 142 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 
 
 A forlorn swain echoes the same lament in 
 stanzas which, though monotonous, have an 
 accent of poignant sincerity : 
 
 Now who is he on earth that lives, 
 
 Who knows or with his tongue can say 
 
 What grief to poor lovers it gives 
 To love with loyal heart alway ? 
 
 So bitter is their portion, yea, 
 
 So hard their part I 
 
 But this doth more confound my heart; 
 Unloved to love, and still to pray ! 
 Thinking thereon I swoon away. 
 
 A man is trying to unlock the secret of a 
 maiden's bosom. It is a lover and his lass, 
 sauntering in twilight between hedgerows 
 heavy with the scent of honeysuckle and wild 
 roses. From the tenour of the swain's pleading, 
 we may feel assured that he does not suffer 
 under any great anxiety about her answer : 
 
 Sweet flower, that art so fair and gay. 
 Come tell me if thou lovest me ! . 
 Think well, and tell me presently : 
 
 For sore it irks me, by my fay, 
 
 For sore it irketh me alway, 
 
 That I know not the mind of thee : 
 
 I pray thee, gentle lady gay, 
 
 If so thou wilt, tell truth to me.
 
 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 143 
 
 For I do love thee so, sweet May^ 
 That if my heart thou wert to see, 
 hi sooth I kjiow, of courtesy, 
 
 Thou wouldst have pity ofi me this day, 
 
 A girl has plighted her troth. She is sure of 
 the man's loyalty, tranquil in the sense of his 
 affection ; not to repay him with truth and kind- 
 ness in like measure, would be base : 
 
 My love for him shall be 
 Fair love and true : 
 For he loves me, I hww, 
 
 And I love him, pardie ! 
 
 And for I know that he, 
 
 Doth love me so, 
 
 I should be all tmtrue 
 To love but him, pardie! 
 
 The greenwood was the common trysting 
 place for sweethearts. Here is a song of 
 spring-time in which the contentment of secure 
 affection is very prettily expressed : 
 
 Beneath the branch of the careen may 
 My merry heart sleeps happily. 
 Waiting for him who promised me 
 
 To meet me here again this day. 
 
 And what is that I would fwt do 
 To please my love so dear to me ? 
 
 He loves me with leal heart and true, 
 And I love him no less, pardie!
 
 144 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 
 
 Perchance I see him but a day ; 
 
 Yet maketh he my heart so free — 
 
 His beauty so rejoiceth me — 
 That months thereafter I am gay. 
 
 We hear a good deal about '^ faux jaloux " 
 and scandals, calumnious reports, and malignant 
 gossip. A damsel is indignant because her 
 sweetheart's personal appearance has been de- 
 preciated by persons who might have been better 
 occupied in minding their own business : 
 
 They have said evil of my dear ; 
 Therefore my heart is vexed and drear: 
 
 But what is it to them 
 If he be fair or foul to see, 
 Since he is perfect joy to me. 
 
 He loves me well : the like do I : 
 I do not look with half an eyCj 
 But seek to pleasure him. 
 
 From all the rest I choose him here; 
 I want no other for my dear : 
 
 How then should he displease 
 Those who may leave him if they please ? 
 
 God keep him from all fear ! 
 
 A stormier burst of indignation escapes from 
 the lips of a man who has been slandered to his 
 mistress. This lyric, in pure Hterary quality, is 
 one of the best of the collection :
 
 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 145 
 
 They lied, those lying traitors all, 
 Disloyal, hypocritical, 
 
 Who feigned that I spake ill of thee ! 
 
 Heed not their words of charity ; 
 For they are flatterers tongued with gall, 
 And liars all. 
 
 They make the tales that they let fall, 
 Coining falsehoods, wherewithal 
 
 They swear that I spake ill of thee : 
 
 Heed not their lies of charity ; 
 For they are flatterers tongued with gall, 
 And liars all. 
 
 Believe them not, although they call 
 Themselves thy servants; one and all. 
 They lie, or God's curse light on me! — 
 Whatever oaths they swear to thee. 
 Or were they thrice as stout and tall. 
 They re liars all! 
 
 After quoting two stanzas of another song, it 
 will be time to quit these ditties of the spring 
 and love : 
 
 O nightingale of woodland gay. 
 
 Go to my love and to her tell 
 
 That I do love her passing well ; 
 And bid her also think of me, 
 For I to her will bring the may. 
 
 The may that I shall bring will be, 
 
 Nor rose nor any opening flower ; 
 
 But with my heart I will her dower ; 
 And kisses on her lips Pll lay, 
 And pray God keep her heartily. 
 
 K
 
 146 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 
 
 I can only find one true ballad, in our sense 
 of the word, among these songs. It refers to 
 some tradition about a girl whose sweetheart 
 was a prisoner in her father's castle, and who 
 died when he was brought forth to be hanged. 
 
 Maid Marjory sits at the castle gate : 
 
 With groans and sighs 
 
 She weeps and cries : 
 Her grief it is great. 
 
 Her father asks, ^^ Daughter ^ what is your woe? 
 Seek you a husband or lord I trow ? " 
 " Let husbands be ! 
 
 Give my love to 7ne, 
 Who pines in the dungeon dark below I " 
 
 ^^ r faith, my daughter, thouHt long want him; 
 For he hangs to-morrow when dawn is dim" 
 
 ^^Then bury my corpse at the gallows' feet ; 
 And men will say, they were true lovers sweet." 
 
 The raciest of these Norman songs are drink- 
 ing-catches. I find, however, that the lightest 
 and best of them are untranslateable. The 
 delicacy of the French refrains cannot be pre- 
 served ; the sound of laughter in their facile 
 lines escapes ; the gossamer-thread of sense, 
 so lightly spun, is loosened. One satire 
 upon female topers admits of rendering into 
 EngUsh. It is curious artistically, by reason of 
 its pertinacious monotony in rhyming. As a
 
 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 147 
 
 picture of manners one may compare it with the 
 scene of Noah's wife and her gossips in the 
 Miracle plays. Similar lyrics occur in Proven9al 
 and early Italian poetry. But I think the finest 
 specimen of the type is this : 
 
 Drinkj gossips mine ! we drink no wine. 
 They were three wives that had one heart for wine ; 
 One to the other said — We drink no wine ! 
 
 Drink, gossips mine ! we drink no wine. 
 
 Drink, gossips mine ! we drink no wine. 
 The varlet stood in jerkin tight and fine 
 To serve the dames with service of good wine. 
 
 Drink, gossips mine ! we drink no wine. 
 
 Drink, gossips mine ! we drink no wine. 
 These wives they cried — Here's service of good wine ! 
 Make we good cheer, nor stint our souls of wine ! 
 
 Drink, gossips mine ! we drink no wine. 
 
 Drink, gossips mine ! we drink no wine. 
 The gallant fills, nor seeketh further sign. 
 But crowns the cups with service of good wine. 
 
 Drink, gossips mine ! we drink no wine. 
 
 Drink, gossips mine ! ive dritik no wine. 
 Singing heginneth, and sweet notes combine 
 With joyance to proclaim the praise of wine ! 
 
 Drink, gossips mine ! we drink no wine. 
 
 Drink, gossips mine ! we drink no wine. 
 For fear of husbands it/ill we never pine ; 
 They are not here to mar the taste of wine. 
 
 Drink, gossips mine ! we drink no wine.
 
 148 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 
 
 What sort of songs were sung at these con- 
 vivial meetings appears from another Bacchic 
 melody which follows : — 
 
 Sweet comrades, fellows of the vine ! 
 Drink we by morn and eve, drink wine — 
 
 A cask or so; 
 
 Ha, ho! 
 Nor will we pay our host one jot, 
 
 Save a credo ! 
 
 But if our host sue us therefor, 
 WeHl tell hint he must pass it o'er 
 
 Quasimodo : 
 
 Ha, ho/ 
 Nor will we pay our host one jot. 
 
 Save a credo/ 
 
 The jolliest of all the topers of the Val de 
 Vire was Oliver Basselin, who lived in the reign 
 of Louis XII., and was killed by the English. 
 The song which follows alludes to his death, and 
 to the sadness which it cast over the pleasant 
 company of Vire : — 
 
 Alas/ good Oliver Basselin/ 
 
 Shall we of yon no more hear tell ? 
 And have the English killed you then? 
 
 You 07ice were wont to sing your songs 
 And live, I ween, right joyously. 
 
 Joining in all the jolly throngs 
 Throughout the land of Normandy.
 
 MEDIAEVAL NORMAN SONGS 149 
 
 Far as St. Lo in Cotentin, 
 
 Mid fellows fair, as I hear tell, 
 No pilgrim like to him was seen. 
 
 The English they have done great wrong 
 
 Unto the fellows of Van de Vire ; 
 No more shall you hear voice or song 
 From those who once sang all the year. 
 
 To God with stout heart pray we will, 
 And to Queen Mary, that sweet maid, 
 
 To bring the English to all ill: 
 The Father's curse on them be laid. 
 
 The animosity against the Enghsh bursts out 
 with even a fiercer growl of rage in some ballads 
 composed expressly upon the ravages inflicted 
 by Henry V.'s soldiery. One patriotic song, 
 with a fine rolling Hit in the line, refers to 
 the death of the hero of Agincourt, and also to 
 the siege of Harfleur, after which Henry expelled 
 the Norman inhabitants and planted in their 
 stead an Anglo-Saxon colony. It further com- 
 memorates the exploits of Captain Pregent de 
 Bidoulx, commander of the French warships in 
 15 13, who defended the coast of Normandy 
 from British invaders. Allusion is made in 
 line 7 to the English custom of wearing the 
 hair long, and the name Godar or Godan in 
 line 12 appears to be a corruption of Goddam, 
 the traditional French appellation of an English- 
 man :
 
 ISO MEDIMVAL NORMAN SONGS 
 
 The English king himself of late let call 
 
 The king of France by style and proclamation : 
 His cursed will it was to summon all 
 
 Good Frenchmen forth from out their land and 
 nation. 
 Now is he dead at St. Fiacre en Brie : 
 
 From la7id of France the churls are ousted quite]; 
 
 There sneaks no English pig-tailed cur in sight : 
 Cursed be their race and lineage all, say we. 
 
 They shipped their battle all tipoti the sea, 
 
 With store of biscuit and each knave a can; 
 And so by sea to Biscay merrily 
 
 Sailed they to crown their little king Godan, 
 But all their doing was but idle play, 
 
 So well hath Captain Pregent made them skip; 
 
 Foundered they are by land and eke on ship : 
 Cursed by their race and lineage all, say we. 
 
 The next has been called the Marseillaise of 
 the Norman peasantry. Even in the original 
 it does not deserve so high-sounding a title, 
 yet the stanzas are interesting for their rustic 
 flavour and for the touches of unconscious- 
 humour, which season the deadly hatred they 
 express : — 
 
 Good folk of village, thorp, and hall. 
 
 Who love the French king well, 
 Take heart of courage, each and ally 
 
 To fight the English fell.
 
 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 151 
 
 Seize each his pruning-hook and hoe 
 
 To top them root and branch; 
 And if you ca?inot make them go. 
 
 Shew a sour countenance. 
 
 Fear not to grapple with them closer 
 
 These Goddams, guts of grease ; 
 For one of us for four of those, 
 
 Or three, is match with ease. 
 
 By God, if I could clutch them here — 
 
 And by this oath I stand — 
 Fd shew them, without feint or fear, 
 
 Hoiv heavy is my hand. 
 
 Nor pig nor goose in all the shire 
 
 Have they left far or wide : 
 Nor fowl nor fowl-house by the byre~~' 
 
 God send them evil tide ! 
 
 Another ballad, complaining, in like rustic 
 fashion, of oppression and extortion, may pos- 
 sibly refer to English rapine, but more likely to 
 the rapacity of feudal bailiffs and tax-collectors. 
 Commentators differ about the *^ court vestus " in 
 line 9. 
 
 In the Duchy of Normandy 
 Pillage reigns and thievery ; 
 
 Of wealth and goods there is no store : 
 God grant us respite presently. 
 Or each man, as he may, must flee. 
 
 And leave his ho?ne for evermore.
 
 152 MEDimVAL NORMAN SONGS 
 
 A s for me, I will not stay ; 
 
 For there is left nor ease nor cheer, 
 By reason of the shortcoats ; they 
 
 Too often come my door anear. 
 
 The knaves, with foul discourtesy, 
 Ask us to give when nought have we, 
 
 And eke they cudgel us full sore : 
 Nathless, what boots it but that we 
 Should pray, " Good sirs, of charity, 
 
 Take all we have ! What have we more ? 
 
 Right willingly would I pay toll 
 If aught I had wherewith to pay. 
 
 But all my wealth, upon my soul. 
 And all my goods, are given away, 
 
 I cannot show them courtesy 
 By reason of grim penury, 
 
 Which keepeth me a bondman poor : 
 Nor friend nor lover dear have I 
 In France nor yet in Normandy 
 
 To aid with alms my beggared store. 
 
 God grant that peace and law might sway 
 Through Christendom on every side; 
 
 Yea, grant us peace to last alway ; 
 So might we all secure abide. 
 
 If Christendom at one might be, 
 Then should we live right joyously. 
 
 And shut on grief the prison door: 
 God curse them who make woes to be, 
 And eke the blessed Maid Mary, 
 
 Withouten hope for evermore.
 
 MEDIEVAL NORMAN SONGS 153 
 
 I will add the full title of the volume to which 
 I am indebted for the songs I have translated. 
 It is " Chansons Normandes du xv'"^ siecle, 
 publiees pour la P"^^ fois sur les manuscrits de 
 Bayeux et de Vire avec introduction et notes 
 de A. Gaste. Caen : Le Gost-Clerisse, Rue 
 Ecuyere 36. 1866."
 
 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 
 
 Far away in the valley the wind raved ; and 
 ever and anon it lashed the panes, whirling up 
 powdery sleet, or bellowed in the chimney. All 
 the middle space of sky had been swept bare by 
 the hurricane. A net of vapour hid the moon, 
 through which she cast a glaring blurred light 
 upon the frozen scene. Beneath lay the city, 
 as clear as in daytime. The church-towers 
 black against the garish snow — their tops and 
 the roof of every house piled with snow, while 
 the dark fronts of buildings traced the course of 
 street and quay and winding river. Far beyond, 
 the hills stood tall and white and spectral, 
 divided by the black lines of their hedgerows. 
 As I gazed, they seemed in that turmoil of tem- 
 pest to shiver and grow taller and then shrink 
 again, and again to move toward me from their 
 basements. Down there in the town a myriad 
 of twinkling gusty lamps danced and flickered 
 like stars upon a frosty night, except that their
 
 156 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 
 
 light was redder. Our cypresses and tulip-trees 
 and beeches kept grinding and clanging at every 
 wrench of the blast ; and sometimes a bough, 
 all bare and dry, was whirled across the window- 
 panes and carried far into the darkness, to be 
 embedded in some distant snow-wreath. All 
 this commotion suggested no thrill of life, no 
 passion. The stolid, pale-faced, blear-eyed 
 heavens and earth seemed lashed by a vindic- 
 tive fury of dead impersonal force. How 
 different was this from the same landscape 
 last July ! Then, after a sleepless night, I 
 rose to watch the dawn between three and four 
 o'clock. Golden light flooded the eastern hills, 
 and came gloriously falling on my bedroom 
 walls, as though the sun were rising for me 
 alone. For there was an almost awful stillness, 
 through which the messenger of day arrived. 
 The birds who had been chirping since the 
 darkness of the dawn, were hushed. No sound 
 of human step or wheel or rustling tree disturbed 
 the silence — nothing but the Cathedral clock 
 striking a half-hour. Domed thunder-clouds, 
 sheeted with gold around their moulded edges, 
 went sailing ponderously eastward, and amber 
 ripplings glimmered beneath them from the 
 water amid those many masts of ships between 
 the houses. These movements of the travelling 
 clouds and sparkling river alone suggested
 
 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 157 
 
 activity, and life was barely indicated by smoke 
 curling from three glass-houses. There I knew 
 that the fires had been kept awake all night by 
 watchers, who listened to the roar of the black 
 chimneys, crying like myself, ** Would God that 
 it were morning ! " 
 
 I 
 
 He was all beautiful : as fair 
 As stimmer in the silent trees; 
 As bright as stmshine on the leas; 
 As gentle as the evening air. 
 
 His voice was swifter than the lark; 
 Softer than thistle-down his cheek; 
 His eyes were stars that shyly break 
 At sundown ere the skies are dark. 
 
 I found him in a lowly place .- 
 He sang clear songs that made me weep 
 Long nights he ruled my soul in sleep : 
 Long days I thought upon his face. 
 
 II 
 
 A lone : and must it then be so ? 
 Why do you walk alone ? " she cried. 
 I answered with a smile, to hide 
 The undercurrent of my woe.
 
 158 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 
 
 But had she knoivn^ dear friend^ that thou 
 Art living still, she would have said: 
 '■'■ Oblivion should hut shroud the dead; 
 Go, throw thy arms around him now ! " 
 
 Then on my lips the smile had died : 
 " From deep to deeper depths I sink ; 
 They hade me leave him on the hrinkj 
 And now hell's gulfs our paths divide." 
 
 Ill 
 
 This time it is no dream that stirs 
 The ancient fever of my hrain : 
 The hurning pulses throb again, 
 The thirst I may not quench recurs. 
 
 In vain I tell my heating heart 
 How poor and worthless were the prize : 
 The stifled wish within me dies. 
 But leaves an unextinguished smart. 
 
 It is not for the love of God 
 
 That I have done my soul this wrong; 
 
 'Tis not to make my reason strong 
 
 Or curb the currents of my blood. ♦ 
 
 But sloth, and fear of men, and shame 
 Impose their limit on my bliss : 
 Else had I laid my lips to his, 
 And called him by love's dearest name. 
 
 I walked with friends to the wood of Druid 
 Stoke. The clouds were like alabaster in the
 
 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 159 
 
 windless sky; sunlight pouring from them with 
 mild intensity and silvery clearness. There we 
 found snowdrops, tall, delicate, and white, 
 among mosses and green ivy. The corymbs of 
 the ivy on those walls of oolite are still ripe, fit 
 to crown fervid brows of amber-skinned Diony- 
 sus. The little stream which threads that wood 
 was swollen with rain, and went brawling be- 
 tween grassy banks through cresses with a 
 pretty childish babble. On the fir-trees by the 
 road to Sea-Mills rested very golden light ; and 
 there we found red jew's-ears in the hedges. 
 Emerging from the wood into the lowland by the 
 Avon was like passing bodily into a mellow 
 picture by some Dutch painter. The landscape 
 gradually gained in breadth, and when we 
 reached the towing-path, there were for us far- 
 reaching intimations of the sea. Seaweed clings 
 to bits of rock, close beneath oak-boughs and ivy 
 roots, which go creeping downwards to tide- 
 level, and meet the fucus sent up from the sea to 
 seed and grow there. Woodland and wave kiss 
 one another strangely in the peace of those in- 
 flowing and receding brackish waters. As we 
 travelled homewards, what wealth of gold and 
 fire and crimson was there abroad on rocks and 
 trees and clouds, what azure of the sky, cloven 
 by those radiant cliffs ! Dundry, far away, that 
 long, low, undulating line of hill, stood clear
 
 i6o CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 
 
 with snow. Steamers splashed panting up and 
 down, fretting a mimic sea. When at length 
 we climbed to Durdham Down, there lay out- 
 spread before us glory beyond all glory. East- 
 ward, a mountain range of cloud, stationary, 
 based on blue foundations, towering through all 
 gradations of purple valleys, of crimsoned alps, 
 of golden lights contrasted with pink shadows on 
 ascending ridges, up to one crowning pinnacle of 
 purest snow. In the west rose a jagged castle- 
 wall, fringed with flame, broken with a breach 
 through which the last rays shot ineffable 
 radiance into calm green spaces of the sky, and 
 smote pavilions of frail floating clouds above. 
 All this sky-scape was cloud — cloud such as I 
 have rarely seen, so steeped in colour, so fan- 
 tastical in shape, so majestic in proportions. 
 
 IV 
 
 The gale is up, and far away 
 It comes o'er changeful sea and sand, 
 Where that dim distant borderland 
 Stands clear and doffs her mist to-day. 
 
 The broad brown woods are close to view ; 
 Their crests are fringed with orange sky. 
 And here a beech all russet dry, 
 And here a black rock-pluming yew.
 
 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE i6i 
 
 The river swirls with muddy flow ; 
 The wild white sea-gulls screaming sail 
 Round point and headland on the gale^ 
 Down to the channels golden glow. 
 
 Far up in air the homeward rooks 
 Float dense against the liquid sky : 
 They hear the woods beneath them cry, 
 They mark the swelling of the brooks. 
 
 Faint heart, why sad ? They flout the breeze, 
 They care not though their nests be torn; 
 They laugh the drenching showers to scorn : 
 Wilt thou, not wijig thy way like these? 
 
 The chimes upon this troubled air 
 Went sighing, sobbing to the night. 
 Day drew the curtai?t from the light, 
 And left the new year bleak and bare. 
 
 A heaven inpenetrably black; 
 Earth sullen, hard, and well defined : 
 No hope above; the clouds are blind. 
 And from the East fast whirls the wrack. 
 
 VI 
 
 The stately ships are passing free. 
 Where scant light strikes along the flood ; 
 Gaunt winter scowls o'er field and wood ? 
 O who will bring my love to me ?
 
 l62 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 
 
 White gulls fly screaming to the sea; 
 The bitter east wind sweeps the sky ; 
 Faint snow streaks on the hill-sides lie : 
 O who will bring my love to me ? 
 
 The hawthorn bough is bare and dree; 
 The spiky holly keeps him warm; 
 Brown brake shrills shivering in the storm : 
 O who will bring my love to me ? 
 
 The bright blue sky is cold to see; 
 The frosty ground lies hard and bare ; 
 So cold is hope, so hard is care : 
 O who will bring my love to me ? 
 
 Low on the horizon, beyond Durdham Down, 
 were streaks of white hght, wavering spokes and 
 flaring lines and streamers, flushing into faint rose- 
 pink. Could the buried sunlight still be felt so 
 late into a night of May ? Soon, by quiverings 
 and motions in these signs — for the west dark- 
 ened, and flames burst forth among the topmost 
 stars, and toward the east ran swords, stealthily 
 creeping across the heavenly spaces — I knew 
 that this was an Aurora Borealis. The pageant 
 rapidly developed, and culminated with dramatic 
 vividness. At the very zenith, curving downward 
 to the Great Bear, there shone a nebulous semi- 
 circle — phosphorescent, with stars tangled in it. 
 From this crescent of light were effused to north 
 and west and east rays, bands, foam-flakes, belts, 
 spears, shafts of changeful hues, now rosy red,
 
 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 163 
 
 now brightening into amethyst, now green, now 
 pale as ashes. The whole was in slow and solemn 
 movement, like lightning congealed, which has 
 not ceased to throb. As glaciers are to running 
 water, so were these auroral flames to the 
 quiverings of lightning. In the midst of all the 
 glow and glory sparkled Ursa Major, calm and 
 frosty. Other stars seemed to wander in the 
 haze, as I have seen them in a comet's tail. 
 The most wonderful point in the pageant was 
 when the crescent flamed into intensely brilliant 
 violet. Then it faded ; the whole heaven for a 
 few moments flushed with diffused rose ; but the 
 show was over. That supreme flash recalled the 
 pulsing and rutilant coruscations with which 
 Tintoretto spheres his celestial messengers. I 
 could have fancied the crescent and its meteoric 
 emanations to have been the shield of an arch- 
 angel. On Monte Generoso last spring we 
 watched a sunset of great beauty. Thunder-clouds 
 hung over the extreme heights of Monte Rosa, 
 stationary, like the up-spread wing of a seraph 
 who had plunged headlong down the western 
 steep of flame. All the rest of him was hidden 
 by the mountain : only this one wing, fretted 
 with grain of gold and crimson and deep blue, 
 pointed skyward. And restlessly against the 
 ;gorgeous glow behind it shot lightning flashes, 
 as though an angelic sword behind the hills were
 
 i64 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 
 
 doing dreadfully. Well, the auroral shield was 
 fit buckler for this seraph. 
 
 Clifton, now as ever, is full of vague yet 
 powerful associations. When will this Circe 
 cease to brew enchantments for my soul ? The 
 trees and streets and distant views of down and 
 valley keep saying to me as I walk, *' Put upon 
 your heart the dress which we have woven for 
 you ; you will wear it, whether you Hke or not ; 
 palpitate, aspire, recalcitrate as you may, here it 
 is waiting for j^ou ! " 
 
 VII 
 
 / saw a vision of deep eyes 
 
 In morning sleep when dreams are true: 
 
 Wide humid eyes of hazy blue, 
 
 Like seas that kiss the horizon skies. 
 
 Then as I gazed, I felt the rain 
 Of soft warm curls around my cheek, 
 And heard a whisper low and meek: 
 " / love, and canst thou love again ? " 
 
 A gentle youth beside me bent; 
 His cool moist lips to mine were pressed, 
 That throbbed and burned with love's unrest: 
 When, lo, the powers of sleep were spent ; 
 
 And noiseless on the airy wings 
 That follow after night's dim way. 
 The beauteous boy was gone for aye, 
 A theme of vague imaginings.
 
 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 165 
 
 Yet I can never rest again: 
 The flocks of morning dreams arc true ; 
 A nd till I find those eyes of blue 
 And golden curls, I walk in pain. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Spring comes again : the blushing earth 
 Will deck herself with bridal flowers : 
 The birds among the leafy bowers 
 Will wake dumb winter^ s woods with mirth. 
 
 But I shall never find him, never : 
 Though winters snow dissolve in dew, 
 And hyacinth'' s star-spangled blue 
 ^ Neath vernal breezes bend and shiver. 
 
 The field shall throb with marriage hymn, - 
 And summer's wealth shall deck the grove, 
 Wherethrough my feet must lonely rove, 
 Disconsolately seeking him. 
 
 Seek on, seek on, till autumn dies 
 Like sunset in drear winter's night; 
 Seek on, seek on, for thy delight, 
 A mirage dream, before thee flies. 
 
 Brackets of grey rock jutting from the solid 
 cliff, and shaded by the white leaves of the service- 
 trees. From these perches the eye can plunge 
 into the massy woods beneath. Birches fledging
 
 i66 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 
 
 the precipice, feathery ashes, tall limes and glossy 
 oaks mingle the billows of their verdant crests and 
 fill the hollow of the valley. Sometimes a wood- 
 pigeon, pale in sunlight, blue in shadow, passes. 
 The sunlight streams along the ravine, casts 
 purple shade upon the river, strikes in flame 
 against the rich red rocks beyond. The Avon 
 is crowded with ships and boats and steamers. 
 These enliven the waters, ploughing up its 
 solemn shadows and many-hued reflections. 
 Have you noticed that reflections in a stream are 
 more intensely coloured than real objects ? The 
 mingling reds and greens upon the river here 
 glow hke veined marble. Broken by moving 
 prows into ribs and furrows of shivered opal- 
 escence, while the blue sky gleams back from 
 the shadowed sides of wavelets, these many- 
 tinted radii flank the black bulk of sea-going 
 vessels like fins of gorgeous sea-dragons. 
 
 Leigh Woods are as beautiful as when I 
 roamed in them three years ago. The Hghts fall 
 still as golden on those grey rocks streaked with 
 red, on the ivy and the glossy trees, the ferns 
 and heather and enchanter's nightshade. This 
 loveliness sinks into my soul now as it did then. 
 But it does not stir me so profoundly or pain- 
 fully. I do not feel the unassuaged hunger of 
 the soul so deeply.
 
 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 167 
 
 IX 
 
 The tide is high, and stormy beams 
 Of sunlight scud across the down : 
 Above, the cloudy squadrons frown ; 
 On their broad front a rainbow gleams. 
 
 Cease, boisterous wind. The west is grey 
 With glory-coated mists, that swell 
 From distant seas, and gathering tell 
 Of coming storm and darkened day. 
 
 Leave the dank clouds to droop, and guide 
 Toward their fair port yon sleeping sails : 
 Close-furled they wait the wakening gales; 
 Shower-sprinkled shines the pennon wide. 
 
 Sail seaward, stately ship, and view 
 Some blessed isle where love is bred. 
 Bring me again my love that's dead, 
 And all I have Pll give to you. 
 
 The magic of divine spring sunlight is again 
 abroad. The clearings in Leigh Woods are 
 sheets of bluebells. The service-trees upon the 
 cliffs have expanded their white under-leafage, 
 with thick bosses of blossom honey-sweet ; burly, 
 big-bodied, furry bees, banded black and red, 
 swaying helplessly, and swinging their unwieldy 
 carcasses in air, hum drunken with honeydew and 
 white bloom above and underneath and all 
 around.
 
 i68 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 
 
 X 
 
 My own loved Clifton, jocund May 
 Hath decked thy hanks and bowers again; 
 Thy populous elms that crowd the plain, 
 Thy birches, fountains of green spray. 
 
 Once more I pace the lonesome woods, 
 I hear the thrush and cuckoo call, 
 I hear the tinkling raindrops fall, 
 I smell the scent of hidden buds. 
 
 Star-spangled bluebell heavens are spread 
 ^Neath silky screens of tender beech ; 
 The yews their dewy fingers reach 
 To lay them on the lily bed. 
 
 A U that is fair, and sweet, and gay, 
 All brightest germs of happy thought, 
 To-day their freshest gifts have brought 
 To crown the brows of laughing May. 
 
 But I am lone, and sad, and dull. 
 My brain is sick, my heart is dry ; 
 A weary longing dims the sky, 
 With bitter want 7ny soul is full. 
 
 Oh, wherefore, wherefore, is he gone ? 
 He made my life one living spring ; 
 My heart was then a joyous thing, 
 And brightened when the sunbeams shone. 
 
 I see the light, I see the flowers ; 
 The trees are tremulous with praise ; 
 One craving darkens all my days; 
 Dead love hath dulled the jocund hours.
 
 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 169 
 
 XI 
 
 It seems as though these years of pain 
 Had never made me man from boy, 
 So keenly do I feel the joy 
 That breathes in wakening spring again. 
 
 The rooks complain of coming showers; 
 The sharp fresh morning breezes blow ; 
 The sunbeams on the river glow, 
 And kiss the brows of misty towers; 
 
 While I along our terrace stray, 
 I count the shadows on the lawn, 
 The clouds across the azure drawn 
 In dappled films of white and grey. 
 
 All silent signs of spring are rife : 
 My heart leaps np to hail the hours. 
 That guerdon bring of vernal flowers. 
 And swell our veins ivith love and life. 
 
 I leap, I cry, " O summer, trace 
 Thy hues along the deepening wood. 
 Thy fleecy vapours on the flood. 
 Thy lush green grasses o'er the chase J 
 
 **0 summer, come! Voluptuous queen, 
 Bright mistress of a magic wand! 
 And stir me with thy fairy hand. 
 And make me what I once have been! 
 
 *• For spring is fresh on mead and hill, 
 As fresh as those three Aprils gone; 
 But all my life is dead and wan, 
 My pulse of love is cold and still.
 
 I70 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 
 
 •'/ count the shadow ^ count the cloudy 
 And hail the growth of silent days ; 
 But there were other notes of praise, 
 With which those springtide hours were loud. 
 
 " They sounded in the windy strife, 
 I heard them in the dim starlight, 
 They shouted through the landscape bright, 
 They tnade me one with nature's life." 
 
 We clambered down the cliffs, and bruised 
 young fennel-shoots and marjoram and thyme 
 and the many aromatic mints and celeries that 
 grow there. We saw the thorns in bloom, and 
 the light upon the hanging birches of Leigh 
 Woods, and the jackdaws glistening from shade 
 to sunlight, as of old. Ships came up the Avon 
 at our feet ; we could almost touch the pennons 
 waving from their masts. Then we wandered on 
 the downs, whence we could see the channel, 
 silvery-grey like a lake, with film behind film of 
 Welsh hills traced upon the blue beyond. All 
 was so calm, so clear, that the eye might trace 
 elm-masses on the farther marge of Severn, and 
 the hedgerows of the upland fields, with here and 
 there a patch of curling smoke. 
 
 XII 
 
 The light from yonder cliff is fled, 
 That y ester morn so brightly shone ; 
 The glory of thy love hath gone 
 From my dulled life, and left it dead.
 
 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 171 
 
 Let sunshine fade from rock and sky, 
 Let Leigh's deep woodland walks be torn ; 
 O'er ruined woods I will not mourns 
 Which once were green, when you and I 
 
 Went hand in hand among the flowers, 
 Whose najnes I taught you, and I made 
 Rare crowtis of columbines to shade 
 With purple buds the golden showers 
 
 Of your loved curls, A t times we hung 
 Like eagles o'er the dizzy rock. 
 Where faintly boomed the hammer's shock, 
 And ever upward slowly swung 
 
 The sailor's melancholy chant; 
 While ships went gliding out to sea, 
 Sails furled and pennons floating free. 
 With sunlight on their sterns aslant; 
 
 Till evening yellowed over all 
 From Hesper in the dewy sky — 
 The woods may fall, I will not sigh ; 
 Love's star hath set, ^tis time they fall. 
 
 XIII 
 
 Three summers gone : and now once more 
 Pale autumn comes to pluck the leaf ; 
 On every hill they bind the sheaf ; 
 The oak-woods redden as of yore. 
 
 The woods may bronze ; the golden ears 
 May gladden all the land with grain; 
 But I shall never feel again 
 The gladness of those byegone years.
 
 172 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 
 
 We climbed down the face of St. Vincent's 
 Rock by a path I know. The full moon was 
 partly hidden by heavy clouds, but the northern 
 sky held delicate green and pale-blue light, and 
 the moon poured oblique rays upon the river and 
 the woods. Then the clouds sailed slowly away, 
 and their edges were tinct with pearl and opal. 
 Spaces of crystalline azure, seas of glass, swam 
 between them, full-filled with moonlight and trem- 
 bling with scattered stars — stars scarcely seen in 
 that pellucid radiance — stars palpitating, throbbing 
 out breathless melodies. At length the moon 
 emerged, naked and round, glorious, midway 
 above the bridge, suspended in luminous twilight. 
 The cliff shone like marble in her plenilunar 
 splendour. But again the clouds gathered. A 
 vulture's head shot forward and swallowed the 
 moon's silver sphere. Again she triumphed , 
 and this time the clouds dispersed in gauze and 
 filmy veils of faintest shell-like hues. Finally, 
 Queen Luna reigned in undisputed majesty. 
 And now I seemed to see choruses of sylph- 
 like shapes sailing on one side from the valley of 
 Nightingales, and on the other from the shadow 
 of St. Vincent's Rock, to meet and weave their 
 dances in the air ; and now an arm was thrust 
 from the Giant's Cave, which grew and grew 
 until the huge hand rested on my heart ; and 
 now furry paws of monsters from beneath were
 
 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 173 
 
 laid upon the knoll beside me ; and now I saw 
 the blanched face of Lilith upturned imploring 
 from the smooth slope of the curving rock above ; 
 and then again came troops of shadows sweeping 
 down the path which we had traversed ; and yet 
 again the gleaming scales of dragons coiled and 
 twisted on the glittering mud-banks of Avon, and 
 all their massive jaws were raised to hiss. 
 
 After midnight I came home through the 
 avenue of Clifton churchyard, and emerged upon 
 the open space beyond. The valley of the Avon 
 was flooded with moonhght ; fleeces of almost 
 iridescent cloud hung to westward, and the sul- 
 phurous glare of Ashton furnaces sent out flame 
 and smoke into that liquid argent of moon-bathed 
 wood and hill and meadow. 
 
 XIV 
 
 How coldly steals the journeying night, 
 How silent sleeps the garden spray : 
 Far down I hear the watch-dog bay ; 
 I hear the sheep from yonder height. 
 Swathed in thick mist the city lies: 
 Her lamps like myriad jewels peer 
 Through wreaths of vapour faintly clear ; 
 Her chimes from muffled belfries rise. 
 Pale as the moon is memory's light, 
 Those April days as darkly lower, 
 As looms mid yonder mist the tower, 
 Which then with rays of morn were bright.
 
 174 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 
 
 I hear his voice like yon thin chimes ; 
 As those faint lamps his eyes are dim^ 
 Deep midnight gloom encircles him, 
 Scarce can I dream of those dear times. 
 
 It is five o'clock in the morning. The sun has 
 not yet touched the horizon, but the sky is yellow, 
 barred with rose, and the morning star is shining 
 in pale blue above. The city lies wrapped in 
 thick white vapour ; only the towers of Redclyffe 
 and the Cathedral rising like black islands. 
 Here and there trees and grassy knolls emerge 
 from the level sea of mist. Our garden and the 
 distant hills are clear in garish light of morning. 
 The whole scene is very silent and asleep, chill 
 with dews, the foliage stiff with frosty lack of 
 warmth, the birds half waking. Thus, as with 
 life itself, only the great things remain distinct to 
 catch fading or growing lights of sunset or of 
 sunrise, while all around is blurred and indistinct. 
 Last evening the red blaze of the west fell upon 
 those towers with such splendour as memory 
 throws upon the past. This morning they stand 
 forth Hke ominous events to be — sorrow and death, 
 thick-shadowed, seen only by their certainty of 
 darkness. The past glows with a sunset flush 
 of poetry. The future is cold with sad features 
 sharply defined. But the past fades into indis- 
 tinctness, while the future broadens into perfect 
 clarity of day.
 
 CLIFTON AND A LAD'S LOVE 175 
 
 XV 
 
 To thee far off, more far than deaths 
 To thee I make my lonely rhyme. 
 Condemned to see thee not in time, 
 Though life and love still ride thy breath. 
 
 Our pulses beat, our hearts strike on ; 
 They beat, but do not beat together ; 
 Our years are young, but lusty weather 
 Wakes 171 our blood no unison. 
 
 We pace the self -same field and street. 
 We hear the same strong organ roll; 
 No music leaps from soul to soul, 
 Our paths are near, yet never meet. 
 
 Only in visions of the night 
 I seem with thee to watch the morn; 
 A tempest swells, and thou art borne 
 To lands I know not far from sight.
 
 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 
 
 {SUTTON COURT) 
 
 I 
 
 '* Per noctis vigilias clamavi, et lacrymis torum 
 meum irrigavi. Mane lucem spectare odi, e sub 
 vespere tenebras perhorreo. Ab urbe in rus, 
 solatium dolorisque lenimenta desiderans, effugi. 
 Mecum autem me portabam, nee mei met ipsius 
 desidiem deponere potui. Quod non est, quaero ; 
 quod est, fastidior ; praeterita respicio, nee tamen 
 laetabundus sum ; praesentia me cruciant ; futura 
 timeo. Amare nequeo quos amare debuissem. 
 Amore inamabili eorum quos amare nunquam po- 
 tuerim, ardeo. Erroris atque imbecillitatis meae 
 mihi conscius, non tamen me talibus e volutabris 
 evehere jam valeo. Lux me taedet, nox me terret, 
 libri fatigant, homines contemnunt. Nihil invenio 
 quod vulnus medeat, nihil quod sinu meo foveam, 
 nihil quod osculer, nihil quod precibus et votis 
 
 M
 
 178 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 
 
 colam. Erro miserabilis ; inter vivos mortuus ; 
 inter frutices alga ; inter Stellas caligo ; inter 
 dulciloquas volucres silentium ; inter amantes in- 
 vidia ; inter sapientes stultus ; inter felices in- 
 felix ; inter divites pauperrimus. Sine spe, 
 sine luce, sine viribus, sine animo, cur terram 
 onero ? " 
 
 In the afternoon I said, " This melancholy is 
 nigh to madness." And in truth, what with un- 
 healthy sleep by night and painful reflection by 
 day, I seem to be losing the power of living as 
 reason and will direct. Yet in the clear Sep- 
 tember sky, as I walked to Dundry and back, 
 misery fell from me like a burden. I gathered 
 from the hedgerow a long tendril of convolvulus 
 bronzed by sunlight and polished bj' the kisses 
 of the summer air. And this I twined about my 
 hat. Strange heart of man ! How we yearn 
 with fever after knowledge, and then sicken of 
 disgust for thought and speculation ! How we 
 sink numbed into week-long monotony, although 
 Nature surrounds us with beauty and love, and 
 then by some fine touch upon our senses wake 
 to S3^mpathy with Fauns ! 
 
 Sept. 1862. 
 
 II 
 
 We spend our days lazily and quietly, and 
 have as much sunshine as is common in the
 
 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 179 
 
 West. Though it rains one day, the next 
 brings splendid clouds — domes and columns of 
 white alabaster moulded into the most stately 
 forms, and sailing slowly over the blue sky with 
 bars and tatters of grey vapour on their fronts. 
 To-day we sat in Broad Mead, looking up at 
 them and watching a herd of cattle. Twenty- 
 nine were browsing in front of us, with heads 
 bent down and tails lazily switching off the flies. 
 One heard them feeding as they cropped the grass 
 and champed it in their mouths. I thought of 
 Wordsworth's line : 
 
 There are forty feeding like one. 
 
 We had rambled through the lanes and fields 
 to Stanton Drew, over the clover, by hedgerows 
 tangled thick with briony — black, yellow, and 
 green-berried. When we reached *^ the stones," 
 as they call them here, we sat down in the inner 
 circle of the Druid's temple. It was a pleasant 
 scene — the masses of red crystalline rock, 
 overgrown with moss and lichen, standing in a 
 ring about the centre of the field. Other re- 
 mains of broken circles lie about the meadow, 
 some thrown down and some erect, some perfect 
 and some shattered, but all picturesquely purple 
 and gigantic. Pigmy English cows were grazing 
 near us, and a Httle rustic stream, belted with
 
 i8o NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 
 
 alders and aspens, ran silently at one end of the 
 field. Behind us rose the church-tower and a 
 manor-house, and above all the marble pinnacles 
 and bubbles of the clouds. C. said the whole 
 scene seemed to say *' Summer." On a distant 
 hill stretched cornfields, yellow, and ready for the 
 harvest, with green hedges running round and 
 through their cloth of gold. The sounds of 
 country-folk speaking to their cattle and of dogs 
 from the farm-yards came to us in the stillness. 
 
 Yesterday we took another walk of the same 
 kind. Edward drove us to Chew-Magna, and 
 from there we walked to Dundry. We found 
 ferns in the quarries, and looked down on 
 Bristol, a fairy city in the valley of the Avon. 
 It is pleasant walking here with C. We both of 
 us love to search for wild flowers, and from some 
 high hill to gaze on '' distant colour, happy 
 hamlet " — the blue Mendips with their robe of 
 wood and few faint towers and villages. In the 
 narrow lanes we stop to examine what she calls 
 '* Nature's vulgar embroidery " — ferns, violet 
 leaves, great bunches of the red Guelder-rose- 
 berries, enchanter's nightshade, white bindweed, 
 marsh-mallow, and cascades of clematis. I re- 
 member wandering here alone three autumns 
 ago. How I bowed myself in anguish on Dun- 
 dry hill, and walking home crowned myself with 
 black briony leaves, and forgot my wish to die.
 
 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME i8i 
 
 In the night I dreamed that I met Willie at 
 the door of the Cathedral — as he used to be, 
 and as I used to be — but years had passed away, 
 and we had not seen each other. He said with 
 his eyes, " Friend, have you come at last ? I 
 have waited for you as a watcher waiteth for the 
 morning " — his old words. He took me by the 
 hand, and we sat together in an aisle and heard 
 windy chaunts sweep through the darkness as in 
 days gone by. I woke up well, and it was 
 morning. 
 
 To-day we have been at Cheddar. It was 
 quite dull and cloudy when we left, but the sun 
 came out on Mendip, and shone brightly all the 
 rest of the day. The rocks at Cheddar deserve 
 their fame for picturesqueness. The gorge is so 
 narrow and so well proportioned that the 480 feet 
 of cliff might stand for as many thousands. The 
 windings of the road continually open out fresh 
 beauties, and aid to create an illusion of vastness. 
 In some places the columns, spires, and bastions 
 of rock impend and topple with an oppressive 
 menace on the road. What Cheddar wants is 
 water. It is absolutely voiceless. With a few 
 cascades and a torrent running beneath the road, 
 it might resemble an Alpine pass. I thought of 
 Wordsworth's lines on Gondo. ^* The unfettered 
 clouds and region of the heavens," the '' winds 
 thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn," were
 
 i82 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 
 
 there ; but no " black drizzling crags that spake 
 by the wayside as if a voice were in them," no 
 ** stationary blasts of waterfalls/' no *' sick sight 
 and giddy prospect of the raving stream." With 
 eyes accustomed to the Alps, one was always 
 longing for a foot or so of unmistakable snow- 
 summit above the limestone, to make one feel that 
 the crowning patches of bright grass were the 
 beginning of pastures leading up to glacier and 
 tracts of ice. Yet this ravine is in no sense Swiss. 
 It is more like the Saxon Switzerland, still more 
 like some road across the Apennines — that gorge 
 beyond Urbino on the way to Gubbio, for instance 
 — but really sm generis. This is its charm. The 
 veins of ivy clinging to the highest spires, the 
 fern-fledged basements, the rock-pluming yew 
 trees, and the silence of the calm grey cHffs, be- 
 long to Somersetshire. I climbed one side of the 
 valley, and saw Sedgmoor beyond, with Glaston- 
 bury Tor and the broad champaign stretching 
 to the Severn. C. and I went down into a 
 cave. The drapery of stalactite is very beautiful. 
 It hangs in transparent masses like the folds of 
 an Ionic chiton. The lights, too, in the cavern 
 are so variously disposed about its strange re- 
 cesses, that one seems to be looking at the work 
 of fairy masons and sculptors, lit by fairy lamps. 
 This afternoon C. has been sketching and I 
 watching her. We sat in the field opposite the
 
 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 183 
 
 house, just where the ground falls away to the 
 gully. In old times the stream made a lake 
 here, and hollowed out a great bed for itself with 
 shelving sides. Now it has retreated, leaving a 
 green sward that slopes by gentle undulations 
 to the gully. Trees have grown up round the 
 water, oaks above with gnarled arms lichen-grey, 
 alders beneath, and elfin ashes rising like spirits 
 with frail stems and pallid tresses from the 
 deeper green. Over the grass a light of laughing 
 flowers is spread — not violets now, but crocuses, 
 lilac and white, which do not fear the sun, but 
 spread their faces broadly to his rays. How 
 they glow ! red in the sunlight and pale purple 
 in the shadows, each a perfect form. Lady's 
 tresses, like fairy wands, hung with pearly bells, 
 odorous and dewy, stand among blue milkwort 
 blossoms, and on every hawkweed rests an azure 
 butterfly. There are multitudes here. The rooks, 
 ever so far away, high up in the sky, caw faintly. 
 The air is loud with humming flies. Pink cloud- 
 lets scarcely move across the blue, which is no 
 darker than the white part of a beauty's eye. 
 The whole field undulates and ripples like a sea 
 in ages far ago, before Atlantics and Pacifies 
 were divided, and when the ocean waves went 
 round the world. Each billow is gigantic, and 
 the grass shines like an Alpine pasture in the 
 sun. Elm shadows fall athwart these undula-
 
 i84 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 
 
 tions, and the restless fretwork of ash branches, 
 with ponderous darkness from the brooding 
 oaks. 
 
 All this I saw. But to me now a primrose is 
 a primrose and a field a field. " For this, for 
 everything, I am out of tune." Why so, faint 
 heart ? A sore brain, bad thoughts, and discon- 
 tent. I would not so much mind if I could do 
 my work. But even there I fail. I toiled at 
 Marston's comedies to-day, and wrote such anti- 
 quated nonsense. Crambe repetita is nothing to 
 my salad, which consists of the very refuse of 
 a kitchen-garden gathered from a dustheap and 
 served up with ashes. 
 
 I know that this land is passing fair ; but I 
 am not a part of it. The hushed stillness of the 
 hanging woods, the dells in which Pan cools him- 
 self in noontide heat among rank ferns and dripping 
 mosses, the pendulous abeles, the free spring of tall 
 aspiring limes affording pasture to a million bees, 
 the indescribable low sounds which Nature makes 
 alone unto herself, half melodies, music without 
 a thought, all preluding to man ; the quick rush 
 of water over stones by reeds and cresses in the 
 brook, the crowns of briony which Dryads 
 weave, the clematis which braids thick-berried 
 banks, the gossamers where fairies swing and 
 whistle to the bats their steeds, glowworms 
 hanging out faint lamps to lure ethereal suitors,
 
 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 185 
 
 like Moore's ladies whom the angels loved, white 
 mists at morning and cold dews at night, the 
 multitudinous stars, unchanging galaxies and 
 glimmering constellations, the low voice of birds 
 before the sun slants upward from the under- 
 world, the magnificent swoop and twitter of the 
 swallow, faint crescents of young moons in liquid 
 skies — I used to know and love them all. 
 
 August 1869. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We are just at the end of a fortnight's visit at 
 Sutton Court. The weather has not favoured 
 us. We have only had one really fine day. 
 During the rest of the time one long succession 
 of westerly gales has brought wind and rain 
 in hurricanes across the sky, and we have stayed 
 indoors, escaping to the fields by runs and 
 sallies in the intervals of sunshine. Yet this 
 very intermittency of fine weather is most 
 beautiful. If I were inclined to write a study 
 of Somersetshire, the place would supply me 
 with plenty of motives and of pretty pictures. 
 It is a true realisation of the ideal primitive 
 English Country, where railways have not yet 
 penetrated, where the corn-land is still allowed 
 to have its fallow 3^eai, and the hedges stretch 
 unpruned across the fields in spite of modern
 
 i86 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 
 
 farming. These fields are, each in itself, a 
 perfect picture — in spring-time yellow with cow- 
 slips, in autumn purple with crocuses; and 
 the hedges line them with sweet violets, and 
 primroses, and hyacinths in April, yielding to 
 summer flowers — bindweed, and clematis, and 
 mallow, and wild roses, and St. John's wort — 
 until August brings the scarlet briony berries, 
 and arum bunches of red fruit, and fluffy thistles, 
 and ripe hazels and blackberries. In and out 
 among the bushes grow tangles of enchanter's 
 nightshade, and brake, and hart's tongue, and 
 herb-robert, and broad-feathery ferns. They are 
 a kingdom for the children, hning the green 
 pastures and the deeply cloven lanes — lanes 
 which once were watercourses, and still wind 
 between the slopes of rising hills. Alders and 
 oaks wave over them, and in their cool depth all 
 things are turned ''to a green thought in a 
 green shade." The earth in them is mostly of 
 a dark red, and the cottage walls, which are 
 hidden at the turns and angles of the bosky 
 dells, by little rivulets and copses of hazel, show 
 white fronts, jessamine and rose-embowered, 
 against dark boughs. One farm, which is called 
 *' Moorledge," seems quite lost and forgotten in a 
 maze of winding leafy lanes and undulating 
 fields, interpreting its own name by the near 
 proximity of rush-grown common land, where
 
 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 187 
 
 the geese run cackling on a windy day. Then 
 there are the "guUies," so called in Somerset- 
 shire ; other counties call them " bourns," or 
 "chines," or " goyles," or ''ghylls;" the 
 bowery courses of little streams, cut in the 
 bosom of the open fields, and grown with every 
 kind of tree — alder, wych-elm, hazel, and oak, 
 and slender ash. B}^ their brinks the briar and 
 burdock, the hemlock and wild rose, the service 
 tree and maple cluster in a leafy jungle, odorous 
 with aromatic herbs, and bright with butterflies, 
 and loud with humming bees. Kingfishers and 
 waterfowl haunt the reeds that grow beneath ; 
 and where the water spreads itself into pools, 
 there spring tall bulrushes and beautiful pink 
 willow-herbs and purple loosestrife. To the 
 edge of these ponds come the cattle ; for every 
 field is full of grazing kine — the wealth and pride 
 of the country. You see them feeding by scores, 
 gathering at noontide under the spreading boughs 
 of oak or beech in the centre of the meadow, or 
 lowing in the evening on their way to being 
 milked. Nor is the country all so purely 
 pastoral. There is Dundry with its high-towered 
 church, sacred to St. Michael, commanding that 
 view across Bristol and the valley of the Avon, 
 over to Severn and the hills of Wales — a bleak 
 beacon-height, never quiet from the turbulent 
 wind. There is Mendip, 1000 feet above the
 
 1 88 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 
 
 sea, wooded at its base and springing to open 
 moorland, a bare upland swept by the winter 
 gales, where trees are bent to eastward, puny 
 thorns and a few stubborn oaks, and where the 
 barren fields are separated from each other by 
 stone walls. The ridge of Mendip is always 
 hazy with Atlantic mists and watery west-winds ; 
 great clouds seem always forming on its brow, 
 with hazy outlines and brief interspace of bright 
 blue sky — true sea-clouds, gathered far away, 
 and blown by restless south-west gales across 
 the fertile plains. This is why Somersetshire is 
 so rich a pasture-land. 
 
 The moisture never fails, and the sun is warm 
 enough to make it foster every kind of herb, 
 and grass, and tree. Autumn is the time for 
 apple-harvest, when you see in every orchard 
 boys and girls shaking the red and golden fruit 
 down to the rank grass below. Baskets, and 
 rakes, and ladders lie about beneath the trees, 
 and a sound of laughing, and of rustling boughs, 
 and of apples pattering like a hailstorm, rings 
 through the home-garth. Then you find a heap 
 of ruddy pippins and brown russettings laid in the 
 darkness of a barn, with mellow October sunlight 
 falHng on them through the chinks, while the 
 cider-press is turned outside, and the thick pulpy 
 juice comes foaming into vats and jars. Autumn 
 is the time for apple-harvest, summer for hay-
 
 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 189 
 
 making. There is little corn to cut or ground to 
 till ; for pasture is the wealth and beauty of the 
 land. The village must not be forgotten — Stowey, 
 with its thatches and bright gardens, its noble 
 beeches and elms about the little church, its cot- 
 tage doors embowered in deadly nightshade to pro- 
 tect the house from witchcraft. Nor yet the Court 
 — stately avenues, and terraces, and gardens — 
 homelike, and primitive, and unassuming, where 
 everything is so green that you cannot say where 
 garden ends and fields begin, what is natural and 
 what is the result of art. To the north stretches 
 an ancient avenue of elms, the haunt of rooks — 
 to the south an avenue of hmes, the summer 
 home of innumerable bees, and wood-pigeons, and 
 night-flying owls. The Court itself has a long 
 and curious pedigree. Leland says that in the 
 reign of Edward III. one John de Sutton held 
 half a knight's fee, and to him belonged in all 
 probability the tower which forms the oldest and 
 most central building of the Court. It has three 
 storeys ; the lowest was where they penned the 
 cattle ; the second formed the living and the eating 
 place for masters and men ; in the third they slept ; 
 and on the roof was the watch-tower, beacon 
 bracket, and crenellations for defence. To this 
 tower in times of greater security was added a 
 large hall, square, roomy, with an ample porch 
 and deep bay windows, and minstrels' gallery
 
 I90 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 
 
 above the dais, and yawning chimney : beyond the 
 hall in process of time was placed on one side the 
 kitchen, on the other side the solar room or sunny 
 parlour. The old archways of the hall have Gothic 
 mouldings, showing them to have preceded Tudor 
 times. Before these alterations were effected, the 
 St. Loes, a knightly family of the West, now quite 
 extinct, had become possessors of the Court. 
 Their arms are carved on the stonework of the 
 kitchen window. From the St. Loes it passed in 
 the reign of Elizabeth to the Countess of Salisbury, 
 building Bess of Hardwick, who married a St. Loe 
 for her last husband. She added a chapel to the 
 Court, and made other substantial alterations 
 which have subsisted till this day. After her it 
 came into the possession of the Stracheys. 
 During all its changes the Court has never 
 entirely lost the embattled wall which ran round 
 the house, enclosing a good portion of ground. 
 To the south, and east, and west it has been de- 
 stroyed ; but to the north it still stands, overgrown 
 with lichens and bushes flowering from its cracks 
 — a remnant of the ancient state of warfare and 
 defence. Pear trees, and figs, and hollyhocks, en- 
 tangled with creeping nasturtiums, and sweet 
 peas, and clematis, make its southern aspect gay 
 and green, while, over all, the frowning battle- 
 ments stand grey and gloomy like the wrecks of 
 a past state of things. Nor is the house without
 
 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 191 
 
 its ghosts. There is a tradition that the wall 
 was built by Giant St. Loe, as he is called among 
 the rustics. While he was building it, there 
 came a neighbouring giant, who jeered at him 
 and said : "Is this your wall of protection ? 
 Lo ! I will leap over it." This he did, like 
 Remus ; but Giant St. Loe went on building, and 
 never cared for him at all. Well, this giant who 
 built the wall, still haunts the Court, and up and 
 down the turret staircase on winter nights goes 
 clanking with his iron heel and jingling spurs. 
 A sadder story is the tale of a young daughter of 
 the house who drowned herself for love in the 
 gully at the end of the lime avenue, and who still is 
 seen, a white form, sheeted and shrill-screaming, 
 in the Black Walk underneath the chestnut trees. 
 Round the old hall hang the portraits of many 
 generations — Elizabethan ruffs, Puritan Geneva 
 collars. Sir Peter Lely ladies with lambs, a whole 
 family attired like Roman warriors of the age of 
 Anne, Romneys and Beecheys and Northcotes of a 
 recent date. Every degree of stiffness, primness, 
 smirk, melancholy, vacancy, intensity, gravity, 
 levity, stern manliness, and maiden prettiness — 
 warriors, and citizens, and shepherdesses, and 
 admirals, and lords — look down upon us as we 
 dine. 
 
 August 1866.
 
 192 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 
 
 IV 
 
 Spring has come suddenly, with cuckoos, 
 blackbirds, and thrushes. The chestnuts are 
 bursting into leaf and cones of snowy blossom ; 
 laburnums and lilacs in flower ; with a wonder- 
 ful wealth of cowslip, bluebell, speedwell, allium, 
 red lychnis, orchis, dog-violet, and starwort in 
 fields and hedges. Primroses, too, Hnger, though 
 faint ; and the wood anemones are still like tears 
 or dew among deep grasses. Thus spring and 
 summer kiss each other. The trees of every 
 kind display their earliest, tenderest foKage, 
 scarce-fledged. Orchards everywhere are snowy- 
 pink ; and overhead there is the purest sky, with 
 soft winds from the Channel. We strolled down 
 to the stream, where C. showed me a little 
 dell brimful of thick blue hyacinths. Then we 
 went through meadows, picking cowslips and 
 orchises, watching the distance over Mendip and 
 Chew-Magna — a picture of most perfect spring 
 and hallowing tranquilHty. 
 
 The hyacinths in these deep sunken lanes, 
 mingling with cowslips and cuckoo-flowers, pre- 
 sent the very bloom and beauty of the year. 
 Yet they are less lovely in the hedges than when 
 they blend with the same cuckoo-flowers and 
 cowslips on the slopes of short green grass, with
 
 NOTES OF A SOMERSETSHIRE HOME 195 
 
 blue distance in front and the golden foliage of 
 thorn and oak above. Such slopes rival any 
 Alpine meadow. This early spring is like the 
 first dawn of love, before fruition, when all is 
 still conjecture and anticipation, when a hand- 
 touch is more passionate than the nights of 
 satisfied desire that are to follow. Of all spring 
 flowers, the hyacinths attract me most. Their 
 beauty is pathetic : tall stem and melancholy 
 curve and fringed bells amethystine, the divine 
 burden of youthful curls. As they line the lanes 
 in twilight, a mist of blueness, they seem to 
 murmur music. 
 
 April 1870.
 
 CULTURE: ITS MEANING AND 
 ITS USES 
 
 Not many years ago, I happened to notice the 
 review of one of my books in some weekly 
 periodical. The writer sneered at me for travel- 
 ling round Europe with a portmanteau full of 
 culture on my back. This made me reflect. 
 What does the reviewer mean by culture ? 
 What is it I am supposed to stagger under like 
 a pedlar's pack ? And then, what do / mean by 
 culture ? How do / value the wares I carry on 
 my shoulders ? Reflection convinced me that 
 the reviewer and myself held different opinions 
 about what we both call culture. 
 
 It is probable that when people use this word, 
 nowadays, it signifies for them some knowledge 
 of history and literature, intelligence refined by 
 considerable reading, and a susceptibility to the 
 beauties of art and nature. But words which 
 vhave been overworked, or which have passed
 
 196 CULTURE 
 
 into the jargon of cliques, are apt to acquire a 
 secondary and degraded meaning with the gen- 
 eral public. And this has been the case with 
 culture. All the good things it implies in 
 common parlance are understood to be alloyed 
 with pedantry, affectation, aesthetical priggish- 
 ness. It is believed that the cultured person, 
 like the dilettante of a previous century, will rave 
 about the Correggiosity of Correggio, the symbolic 
 depth of Botticelli, the preciousness of Ruskin's 
 insight into Tintoretto. Or, if he does not take 
 that line, he may be expected to possess a multi- 
 farious store of knowledge about all periods of 
 all the arts and literatures, and to be perpetually 
 parading this knowledge in and out of season. 
 
 The last sort of stuff is, probably, what my 
 reviewer accused me of hawking over Europe. 
 But this, I am certain, is not what I mean when 
 I talk of culture. 
 
 Judged by the etymology of the word, culture 
 is not a natural gift. It implies tillage of the 
 soil, artificial improvement of qualities supplied 
 by nature. It is clearly, then, something ac- 
 quired, as the lovelinesses of the garden rose are 
 developed from the briar, or the '' savage-tasted 
 drupe " becomes '' the suave plum " by cultiva- 
 tion. In the full width of its meaning, when 
 applied to human beings, culture is the raising 
 of faculties — physical, mental, emotional, and
 
 CULTURE 197 
 
 moral — to their highest excellence by training. 
 In a particular sense, and in order to distinguish 
 culture from education, it implies that this train- 
 ing has been consciously carried on by the 
 individual. Education educes or draws forth 
 faculties. Culture improves, refines, and enlarges 
 them, when they have been brought out. Finally, 
 although moral and physical qualities are sus- 
 ceptible of both education and culture, yet it is 
 commonly understood, when we use these terms, 
 that we are thinking of the intellectual faculties. 
 This is speciall}^ the case with culture. It 
 would be pedantry to extend its sphere to 
 morals and athletics ; we cannot talk of a cul- 
 tured gymnast or a cultured philanthropist, for 
 instance, when we are referring to a man who 
 has trained either his muscles or his benevolent 
 emotions to their highest excellence. 
 
 I will therefore define culture, for the purpose 
 of this discussion, as the raising of previously 
 educated intellectual faculties to their highest 
 potency by the conscious effort of their pos- 
 sessors. 
 
 In its most generalised significance, culture 
 may be identified with self-effectuation. The 
 individual attempts to arrive at his real self, to 
 perfect the rudiments supphed by Nature on the 
 line for which he is best qualified, and by so 
 doing to arrive at independence — what the Ger-
 
 198 CULTURE 
 
 mans call Selbststdndigkeit. Men of true culture?- 
 as distinguished from that false thing which 
 usurps the name, may possess diverse intellectual 
 temperaments, and reach widely-separated points 
 of vantage. But they agree in this, that each 
 has acquired freedom from bondage to cliques 
 and schools, from the prejudices of the worser 
 and the fashions of the better vulgar. Goethe 
 points out in two famous lines that this self- 
 effectuation, which is the highest end of culture, 
 demands different environments according to the 
 different quality of the mental force to be de- 
 veloped : 
 
 Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, 
 
 Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt. 
 
 " Talent forms itself in the silence of the study, 
 character in the stream of the great world." 
 But when formed, each mental force, whether it 
 belongs to the contemplative or to the active 
 order, each self, so cultivated, will possess the 
 privilege insisted on by the same poet of being 
 able *^to live resolvedly in the Whole, the Good, 
 the Beautiful " : not in the warped, the falsified, 
 the egotistical ; not in the petty, the adulterated, 
 the partial; not in the school, the cHque, the 
 coterie ; but in the large sphere of universal and 
 enduring ideas. 
 
 It will be seen now that, when I speak o5
 
 CULTURE 199 
 
 culture; I mean something different from what is 
 commonly intended by the half-slang phrase. It 
 may be urged I am ascribing too lofty and in- 
 definite a function to culture, when I define it to 
 be the raising of intellectual faculties to their 
 highest potency by means of conscious training. 
 Still, the more we think about the derivation 
 and the history of the word, the more shall we 
 become convinced that this is its root meaning, 
 its most abstract and essential signification. It 
 is the duty of criticism always to aim at bringing 
 back abused or debased words, so far as this is 
 possible, to their logical and legitimate values. 
 
 But now comes the question. How is the man 
 with educated faculties to achieve culture ? In 
 the case of rare and specially gifted natures, 
 there is no need to ask this question. They 
 attain culture, and more than it can give, by an 
 act of instinct. They leap to their work im- 
 pulsively, discover it inevitably. Owen Meredith, 
 the late Lord Lytton, wrote no stronger line 
 than this, which I quote from memory : 
 
 Genius does what it must, but talent does what 
 it can. 
 
 In trying to solve the problem of culture, we 
 are bound to leave genius unreckoned. The 
 force implied in what we call genius is incalcu- 
 lable, uncontrollable. Genial natures are often
 
 200 CULTURE 
 
 doomed to frosts and thwartings ; are sometimes 
 favoured by the grace of circumstance ; are never 
 fostered by prescribed rules and calculated issues. 
 Handel, with nothing but a purely professional 
 education, soared far higher into the ideal 
 regions of his art than Mendelssohn with all the 
 culture Germany could give him. Shakespeare, 
 a mere playwright and theatre-lessee, darted his 
 rays of dramatic insight far deeper and far wider 
 than Goethe, who was nursed upon the lore and 
 wisdom of all ages. Genius is the pioneer whom 
 talent follows ; and men of culture have been 
 mostly talents, though we can discover here and 
 there a genius among their ranks. In dealing 
 with culture, then, we have to regard the needs 
 of talent rather than the necessities of genius : 
 intellectual faculties of good quality, rather than 
 minds of an exceptional, unique distinction. 
 
 Culture is self-tillage, the ploughing and the 
 harrowing of self by use of what the ages have 
 transmitted to us from the work of gifted minds. 
 It is the appropriation of the heritage bequeathed 
 from previous generations to the needs and 
 cravings of the individual in his emancipation 
 from "that which binds us all, the common." 
 It is the method of self-exercise which enables a 
 man, by entering into communion with the 
 greatest intellects of past and present generations, 
 by assimilating the leading ideas of the World-
 
 CULTURE 20I 
 
 Spirit, to make himself, according to his personal 
 capacity, an efficient worker, if not a creator, in 
 the symphony for ever woven out of human 
 souls. 
 
 There are two principal methods for arriving 
 at the ends involved in culture. These may be 
 briefly described as Humanism and Science. 
 In a certain sense, we owe both to that mighty 
 intellectual movement of the fifteenth and six- 
 teenth centuries with which the term Renaissance 
 is commonly connected. The so-called Refor- 
 mation movement was a subordinate, though 
 politically important, stream of its main current. 
 The essential element in this great burst of 
 energy has been well defined in Michelet's 
 famous formula : the re-discovery of the world 
 and of man. It began with the revival of 
 learning, or the return of the mediaeval mind to 
 fountain-heads of knowledge and of life-experi- 
 ence gushing from long-neglected antique sources. 
 At first, as was natural, the study of mankind in 
 ancient languages and literatures and histories., 
 in Hebrew, Greek, and Roman records, arrested 
 curiosity. Humanism — the literary, philosophical, 
 historical, artistic side of culture — gave tone to 
 European thought for many generations. Still, 
 it was impossible to pursue these studies of the 
 past without raising comparison with the present. 
 The remoteness of the modern from the antique
 
 202 CULTURE 
 
 mind led to critical analysis ; and out of criticism 
 emerged science. Science includes all branches 
 of exact co-ordinated knowledge. Criticism, 
 exerted first upon texts and theories, began to 
 be extended to facts. In course of time the 
 study of Nature evolved itself out ot the study of 
 ancient philosophies. The curiosity about the 
 external world, which had at first been poetical, 
 aesthetic, sensuous, assumed the gravity of anxious 
 speculation and of careful inquiry into actual 
 conditions of existence. Mathematics, in the 
 field of physics and astronomy, introduced novel 
 conceptions of the universe. Without tracing 
 the evolution of the natural sciences, it is enough 
 to observe that at the end of the last century 
 Europe became aware that humanism alone would 
 not suffice as the basis of education and culture. 
 The Renaissance had rediscovered man and the 
 world. The criticism of man implied humanism. 
 The criticism of the world, at a somewhat later 
 period, led to science. Science, though tardy to 
 emerge, proved itself the paramount force of the 
 modern as distinguished from the antique and 
 the mediaeval spirit. The whole of this nine- 
 teenth century has been dominated by a rapid 
 extension of scientific ideas. Scientific methods 
 have been introduced into every department of 
 study. We have arrived at the conviction that 
 mental training of a thorough sort cannot neglect
 
 CULTURE 203 
 
 science. In other words, we know now that an 
 interpenetration of humanism with science and of 
 science with humanism is the condition of the 
 highest culture. At present the fusion cannot 
 be said to have been fully realised. And for the 
 future it is probable that there w^ill always be 
 two differently constituted orders of minds, the 
 one incHning to the purely humanistic, and the 
 other to the purely scientific side of culture. 
 
 I have no wish to enter here into the contro- 
 versy which has been carried on between scien- 
 tific men and humanists as to the relative educa- 
 tional value of their methods. Nor do I want to 
 touch upon the burning question as to whether 
 the classics will have to be abandoned in our 
 schools. I shall content myself by pointing out 
 that if, as Pope says, " the proper study of 
 mankind is man," then humanism must always 
 keep the first rank in the higher intellectual 
 culture. It cannot be dethroned by abstract 
 mathematics, or by the investigation of the 
 physical universe. Ideal culture involves both 
 factors ; and this ideal was to some extent 
 realised in Goethe. Few men — none, indeed — 
 can hope now to exercise themselves completely 
 in both branches. We have to choose between 
 the alternatives of a literary or a scientific training. 
 Still, the points of contact between humanism 
 and science are so numerous that thorough study
 
 204 CULTURE 
 
 compels us to approach literature scientifically 
 and also to pursue science in a humane spirit. 
 The humanist remembers that his department is 
 capable of being treated with something like the 
 exactitude which physical research demands. 
 The man of science bears in mind that he can- 
 not afford to despise imagination and philosophy. 
 Both poetry and metaphysic, upon the one hand, 
 contributed to the formation of the evolutionary 
 hypothesis. Without habits of strict investiga- 
 tion, on the other hand, we should not possess 
 the great historical works of the nineteenth 
 century, its discoveries in comparative philology, 
 its ethnological theories and inquiries into primi- 
 tive conditions of society. 
 
 I have been speaking about culture as a form 
 of self-effectuation through conscious training of 
 the mind. It is a psychical state, so to speak, 
 which may be acquired by sympathetic and 
 assimilative study. It makes a man to be some- 
 thing ; it does not teach him to create anything. 
 It has no power to stand in the place of Nature, 
 and to endow a human being w^ith new faculties. 
 It prepares him to exert his innate faculties in a 
 chosen line of work, with a certain spirit of 
 freedom, with a certain breadth of under- 
 standing. 
 
 This brings me to consider the relation of 
 culture to those special industries, arts, and
 
 CULTURE 205 
 
 professions which are determined by the sub- 
 division of labour and by the varieties of human 
 temperament. We have seen already that "genius 
 does what it must." Education and self-training 
 exercise but slender formative influence over 
 natures Hke Michael Angelo, Beethoven, Shake- 
 speare. This is the pith of the old proverb that 
 " a poet is born, not made." Some of the 
 greatest men of genius. Burns and Turner for 
 example, can hardly be called men of culture. 
 Others, like Ben Jonson, Tasso, Heine, were so 
 emphatically. We have also seen that ''Talent 
 does what it can." For this reason, culture is 
 most important to men of talent. It enables 
 them to know what they can do ; brings forth 
 their latent capacities ; leads them to choose 
 painting or sculpture, pure literature or philo- 
 sophy, according to their innate bias. It also 
 compensates that bias by giving them a general 
 sympathy with things outside their specialit}^ 
 In this respect it is of value also for men of 
 genius, whose bias in one particular direction 
 reaches the maximum. Specialists, unless they 
 be creative geniuses of the most marked type, 
 require to be armed by culture against narrow- 
 mindedness and the conceit of thinking that their 
 own concerns are all-important. A man of 
 moderate ability who cannot see beyond the 
 world of beetles, beyond the painter's studio,
 
 2o6 CULTURE 
 
 beyond the church or chapel, beyond the concert 
 room, beyond the grammar of an extinct language, 
 or some one period of history, is apt to be intol- 
 erable. Culture teaches him his modest place 
 in the whole scheme. Culture is, therefore, 
 absolutely essential to the mental well-being of 
 persons confined by their craft or profession to 
 a narrow range of intellectual interests. I am, 
 of course, not alluding here to handicraftsmen 
 and honest labourers, who do the work required 
 of them without self-conceit, and serve the 
 immediate needs of society without being aware 
 of their own inestimable value. But, to return 
 to the intellectual specialist. It is fortunate for 
 him that the downright examination of any 
 branch of knowledge, the conscientious practice 
 of any fine art, directs a man of ordinary talent 
 on the path of real culture. This is due to the 
 inter-connection of all departments in the scheme 
 of modern thought. Humanists and scientists 
 have been engaged together for nearly five 
 centuries in weaving a magic robe, warp and 
 woof combined into one fabric, which gradually 
 through their accumulated industry, approximates 
 to something like an organic tissue. The hope 
 of the future is that any exact investigation of 
 one part will imply an adequate acquaintance 
 with the whole. An able man, therefore, who 
 has made himself an accomplished specialist, will
 
 CULTURE 207 
 
 even now be found to have in him the spirit of 
 true culture. That is to say, he will regard his 
 own subject as one province of a vast, pehaps 
 an illimitable, empire. 
 
 In a certain sense all people who have de- 
 veloped their own nature to the utmost are 
 speciaHsts. We give the name, indeed, to 
 botanists and oculists, palaeographers and lepi- 
 dopterists, because these men devote their facul- 
 ties to very strongly demarcated fields of study. 
 But, if we regard the problem from the point of 
 view of personality, the specialist is one who 
 applies the whole of his energies to the single 
 task for which he is specifically qualified. I mean 
 it is no less a speciality in philosophers like 
 Hegel, Comte, and Herbert Spencer, to attempt 
 the co-ordination of all human knowledge in one 
 system, than it is a speciality in men like Ehren- 
 berg and Edison to concentrate their attention 
 upon infusoria and electricity. Both types of 
 individuals, those who strive to embrace the 
 whole, and those who delve into a portion, stand 
 in the same need of culture. I am speaking of 
 culture now under its moral aspect, as teaching 
 us to measure any man's littleness against the 
 vastness of the whole. Auguste Comte, to take 
 an example of one sort, was deficient in the 
 spirit of real culture, because he thought he 
 could reconstitute religion on a fanciful basis.
 
 2o8 CULTURE 
 
 Darwin was not deficient in this spirit of real 
 culture, because he published his epoch-making 
 theory as a simple hypothesis, restraining himself 
 to rigorous inductions and to limited deductions 
 within a certain sphere of knowledge. No one 
 was more aware than Darwin that he had made 
 a serious contribution to his own branch of 
 science. But no one was more conscious of the 
 immense dark sphere of inscrutabilities sur- 
 rounding the little spark of light he had evoked. 
 I must repeat that culture is not an end in 
 itself. It prepares a man for life, for work, for 
 action, for the reception and emission of ideas. 
 Life itself is larger than literature, than art, than 
 science. Life does not exist for them, but they 
 for life. This does not imply that it is better to 
 be a man of no culture than a man of culture. 
 The man of culture is obviously capable of living 
 to more purpose, of getting a larger amount out 
 of life, than the man of no culture. He can also 
 judge more fairly in all cases of comparative 
 criticism. Still, I am unable to perceive that 
 the refinements of the intellect on any line of its 
 development involve an ennobling or a strength- 
 ening of the human being. Given individuals of 
 equal calibre, as many wise men may be found 
 among the artisans and peasants as among 
 reputed savants. Household proverbs are not 
 unfrequently a safer guide to conduct than the
 
 CULTURE 209 
 
 aphorisms of professors. We all of us probably 
 have known flawless characters, men, as the 
 Greeks said, *' four-cornered without defect," who 
 never enjoyed the privileges of education. The 
 life of no great nation lies either in humanism 
 or science. The arts and literature of Italy in 
 the sixteenth century did not make her powerful 
 or virtuous. The so-called progress to which 
 she is now sacrificing the monuments of her past, 
 a progress dominated by scientific notions, has 
 substituted ugHness and vulgarity for beauty and 
 distinction, without adding an iota to her strength 
 or general intelligence. We ought not to despise 
 culture. The object of this article is to demon- 
 strate its value. But the nearer a man has come 
 to possessing it, the less will he over-estimate 
 acquirements or accumulations of knowledge, 
 the more importance will he attach to character, 
 to personality, to energy, to independence. 
 
 At this point it may be useful to glance at the 
 polemic which Walt Whitman, the prophet-poet 
 of democracy, used to carry on against culture. 
 His arguments, to a large extent, miss their 
 mark, because they are directed against the 
 vulgar conception of culture, as an imitative 
 smattering, a self-assertiveness of so-called 
 cultivated people. He has ignored the higher 
 significance which may be given to the word, 
 and which I have sought to bring forth. Yet 
 
 o
 
 210 
 
 CULTURE 
 
 much that he said is worthy of attention. He 
 endeavoured to enforce the truth that a great and 
 puissant nation does not Hve by sensibility and 
 knowledge, but by the formation of character, by 
 the development of personal energy. *' What is 
 our boasted culture ? " he asks. ^' Do you term 
 that perpetual, pistareen, paste-pot work Ameri- 
 can art, American drama, taste, &.c. ? " Culture 
 is good in its way ; but it is not what forms a 
 manly personality, a sound and simple faith. 
 ^* As now taught, accepted, and carried out, are 
 not the processes of culture rapidly creating a 
 class of supercilious infidels, who beheve in 
 nothing ? " '^ Shall a man lose himself in count- 
 less masses of adjustments, and be so shaped 
 with reference to this, that, and the other that 
 the simply good and healthy and brave parts of 
 him are reduced and chipped away, like the 
 bordering of box in a garden ? " The only 
 culture which is of service to a nation must aim 
 less at polish than at the bracing of character. 
 *' It must have for its spinal meaning the forma- 
 tion of typical personality of character, eligible to 
 the uses of the high average of men, and not 
 restricted by conditions ineligible to the masses." 
 To the man of letters he exclaims : — 
 
 What is this you bring ? 
 
 Is it not something that has been better told or 
 done before ?
 
 CULTURE 211 
 
 Have you not imported thisj or the spirit of it, 
 
 in some ship ? 
 Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness? 
 
 And again : 
 
 Rhymes and rhymers pass aiuay, poems distilled 
 
 from poems pass away ; 
 The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and 
 
 leave ashes; 
 Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but 
 
 the soil of literature. 
 
 The pith of his contention lies in the following 
 admonition, which breathes the spirit of an 
 antique Spartan or Roman : '' Fear grace, 
 elegance, civilisation, delicatesse." Shun the 
 atmosphere which enfeebles, the learning which 
 encumbers, the customs and traditions which 
 trammel independence. Prophetic utterances of 
 this sort are apt to be exaggerated. It is good, 
 however, that cultured people should be told not 
 to let culture draft them into cliques and coteries, 
 separate them from the people, blunt them to 
 the main thought-currents and vital interests of 
 their age. 
 
 No great and spontaneous growths of art have 
 arisen in an age of erudition and assimilation. 
 The Greek drama, the Gothic style of archi- 
 tecture, the romantic drama of Elizabethan 
 England, were products not of cultivated taste,
 
 212 CULTURE 
 
 but of instinctive genius. There is profound 
 truth in what Herder taught to the young 
 Goethe, that really great poetry has always been 
 the product of a national spirit, and not the 
 product of studies confined to a select few. 
 
 No one feels this more than one who, like 
 myself, has devoted a large portion of his life to 
 the history of that period which developed 
 modern culture. I mean the Italian Renaissance. 
 Humanism inflicted an irreparable damage on 
 the national literature of Italy. It impeded the 
 evolution of the mother-tongue by the preference 
 given to composition in dead languages. It 
 caused an abrupt division between the learned 
 classes and the people. When men of genius 
 began again to use Italian for great works of art, 
 they found themselves hampered in two ways. 
 They were clogged with classical reminiscences 
 and precedents. They were separated from 
 popular sympathy and deprived of popular 
 support. The masterpieces of their predecessors, 
 Petrarch and Boccacio, had become classics, 
 and were slavishly imitated. It was not in the 
 lyric or the drama, but in the plastic arts, that 
 the national genius of the ItaHans expressed 
 itself during the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
 turies. 
 
 Germany presents a parallel instance. It is 
 in music that the modern Germans have displayed
 
 CULTURE 213 
 
 their national originality. Yet the Germans 
 have been the most thoroughly cultivated of the 
 European nations during the last century and a 
 half. That is to say, they have worked at both 
 branches of culture, humanism and science, with 
 the greatest diligence, and have applied both to 
 literary studies with the most philosophical 
 breadth of intelligence. It cannot be said, how- 
 ever, that the creative literature of this cultured 
 race, in poetry, oratory, the drama, and the 
 novel, taken as a whole, has been of the highest 
 order. It is true that their representative man 
 of genius, the Olympian Goethe, was essentially 
 a poet of culture ; and he shows to what 
 altitudes the cultivated intellect may climb, 
 ivhen it resides in a noble and exceptionally- 
 gifted personality. Goethe towers so markedly 
 superior to all the other poets of culture upon 
 German soil, that his example tests the rule. 
 
 Some of these sayings may sound hard in an 
 age and country where culture appears to have 
 superseded originality. They seem especially 
 intended to discourage those of us who are 
 doomed by the limitations of our nature to be 
 critics, men of learning, taste, assimilation. We 
 must comfort ourselves by reflecting that it is 
 impossible to transcend the conditions of the 
 times we live in, or the limits of our personality. 
 
 Society would reach something like perfection
 
 214 CULTURE 
 
 if each individual succeeded in self-effectuation, 
 fulfilling the law of his own nature, and being 
 distinguished from his neighbours by some 
 marked quality, some special accompHshment. 
 The concord of divers instruments constitutes 
 the music of a symphony. The blending of 
 distinct personalities creates the finest mental 
 and moral harmony. To some extent, of course, 
 this result is attained wherever human beings 
 are associated. But we suffer too much from 
 the tyranny of majorities, the oppression of 
 custom, the gregarious instinct of commonplace 
 and timid persons. As I have already tried to 
 demonstrate, true culture tends to the differentia- 
 tion of individualities, by enabling people to 
 find out what they are made for, what they can 
 do best, what their deepest self requires for 
 its accomplishment. True culture is never in a 
 condescending attitude. It knows that no kind 
 of work, however trivial, ought to be regarded 
 with contempt. People who carve cherry-stones, 
 dance ballets, turn rondeaux, are as much needed 
 as those who till the soil, construct Cabinets, or 
 fabricate new theories of the universe. True 
 culture respects hand-labour upon equal terms 
 with brain-labour, the mechanic with the inventor 
 of machinery, the critic of poetry with the singer 
 of poems, the actor with the playwright. The 
 world wants all sorts, and wants each sort to be
 
 CULTURE 215 
 
 of the best quality. True culture knows that the 
 quality cannot be first-rate when the species is 
 looked down upon. On the other hand, false 
 culture, the kind against which Walt Whitman 
 prophesies, encourages the growth of prigs who 
 despise folk because they do not pursue some 
 branch of industry which is conventionally re- 
 garded as being higher in the scale than others. 
 It makes Pharisees, who feel themselves superior 
 to their neighbours, because these people do not 
 belong to their own set, their own coterie, their 
 own creed, and so forth. 
 
 The liberality and width of toleration upon 
 which I am insisting as signs of true culture do 
 not imply a facile acquiescence in every doctrine 
 or in every mode of living. True culture does 
 not prevent a man from being pugnacious, ready 
 to fight for his opinions, eager to conquer in 
 what he regards as the right cause. In the 
 universal symphony strife it no less important 
 than concord. Fully developed personalities 
 cannot co-exist and energise together without 
 clash and conflict. Innovation works with con- 
 servatism, powers of revolution and of progress 
 combine with stationary or retrogressive forces, 
 to keep the organism in a state of active energy. 
 As Empedocles put it, both Love and Hate are 
 necessary to the balance of the cosmic sphere. 
 Culture prepares us to acquiesce in this state of
 
 2i6 CULTURE 
 
 things as part of the universal order. While re- 
 cognising our own right and duty to struggle for 
 the truth as we perceive it, we acknowledge the 
 same right and the same duty in our opponents. 
 For some reason hidden from our mortal ken the 
 world was meant to be so governed. Pheno- 
 menal existence is in a perpetual state of 
 becoming ; becoming implies cohesion and dis- 
 solution ; both processes involve contention. All 
 the soldiers in all the armies, if they act with 
 energy, sincerity, disinterested loyalty, serve one 
 Lord and Master. 
 
 There is, therefore, no reason to fear that the 
 higher culture should involve men in supercilious 
 indifference, or cynical acceptance, or the Buddh- 
 istic inertia of contemplation.
 
 SOME NOTES ON FLETCHER'S 
 " VALENTINIAN" 
 
 1 THINK it was Mr. Swinburne who said that 
 Beaumont and Fletcher invented the Heroic 
 Romance. This is an acute remark, the right 
 understanding of which will enable us to place 
 these dramatists in their proper relation to the 
 best art of the Elizabethan age. There seems to 
 be no reason, in the case of their most interest- 
 ing serious plays, why the climax should not be 
 quite other than it is. We. cannot conceive of 
 Hamlet being brought to a fortunate conclu- 
 sion for all parties, or of a tragic catastrophe 
 being found for The Tempest. But if TJie 
 Maid's Tragedy had ended happily, while 
 Philaster or A King and No King had 
 taken a disastrous turning in the last scenes, little 
 violence would have been done to our sense of 
 artistic propriety. The reason of this is that the 
 conduct of the drama in each case is not properly
 
 2i8 FLETCHER'S '^ VALENTINIAN '' 
 
 tragic or properly comic, but romantic. In other 
 words, these authors did not write plays for the 
 sake of a well- wrought plot, or with a clear 
 sense of the inevitable in human circumstance, 
 or with the view of interpreting character, but for 
 the development of an attractive tale. The tale 
 itself is often in a true sense heroic ; and 
 though Philaster and A King mid No King 
 have happy endings, while The Maid's Tragedy 
 ends unhappily, all three plays belong precisely 
 to one and the same species — the species of 
 heroic fable dramatically set forth by dialogue in 
 acts and scenes. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher — if we may still be 
 allowed to use these names for the work of many 
 hands which bears their superscription — were 
 not dramatists so much as great dramatic rheto- 
 ricians. There is dramatic rhetoric, as there is 
 poetical rhetoric. The latter differs from true 
 poetry in this, that it diffuses where it should 
 condense, that it approaches the object from out- 
 side by description instead of penetrating to its 
 core ; and also that it is not inevitable, not abso- 
 lutely sincere. Dramatic rhetoric has the same 
 leading qualities. The dramatic rhetorician rarely 
 knows how to be succinct, how to let his per- 
 sonages reveal themselves by actions and uncon- 
 scious utterances, how to evolve his plot without 
 explaining it by declamation put into their
 
 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTINIAN" 219 
 
 mouths. Furthermore, he is careless of consist- 
 ency and truth to nature in the drawing of his 
 characters, incapable of making us feel certain 
 that so, and so only, could they have spoken, 
 acted, looked, and moved. 
 
 Both these kinds of rhetoric, the poetical and 
 the dramatic, form the strength of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher. When we have once yielded ourselves 
 up to the control of what is confessedly less 
 potent than the truest dramatic inspiration and 
 the highest poetry, we shall acknowledge that 
 their rhetoric possesses a real charm. And what 
 is more, it suits their choice of the romantic 
 rather than the strictly tragic or comic method. 
 While reading them, we experience the pleasure 
 that attends impassioned improvisation, the plea- 
 sure that Bandello's audience perhaps enjoyed in 
 listening to his pathetic and extravagant novelle. 
 Thought, feeling, sentiment, language, metre ; 
 all the elements of their art are fluid, copious, 
 untrammelled, poured forth from a richly abun- 
 dant vein. But the dramatic tension is compara- 
 tively slack, and the poetic touch comparatively 
 tame. 
 
 No other playwrights of the epoch possessed 
 this power of rhetoric so fully. It is the distinc- 
 tion of Shakespeare that, both as a poet and a 
 dramatist, he was free from its defects and did 
 not need its qualities ; and this in a lesser degree
 
 220 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTINIAN'' 
 
 may be said of Webster also. Ben Jonson, in 
 his strength and his weakness, is so far removed 
 from Beaumont and Fletcher that we can hardly 
 compare them. He has not the same power to 
 fascinate ; but he has far more power to impress 
 and subjugate our mind. He takes hold of us 
 by means of a quite different faculty, the faculty 
 of intellectual vigour, intense cerebration, mascu- 
 line grasp, artistic purpose firmly conceived and 
 conscientiously pursued. It would be rather 
 with Massinger, Shirley, Ford, that Beaumont 
 and Fletcher should be matched as rhetoricians 
 of the drama ; and I think that by fulness, rich- 
 ness, and variety of this particular gift, the twin 
 playwrights would easily bear off the prize. 
 
 One of the marked points about Beaumont 
 and Fletcher's manner, in connection with their 
 rhetoric, is that they worked like Rossini and 
 the later masters of the Italian opera. I mean, 
 they wrote out, at full, all the florid fioriture 
 which the age required for dramatic effect, and 
 left no iota of it to the actor's personality and 
 gesture. They put into the actor's lips every 
 nuance of the situation, so that he had nothing 
 to do but to recite volubly what they had 
 copiously versified. As is the case with Rossini's 
 melodies, so with their rhetorical motives, 
 there is not quite the pith and substance to render 
 this method enduringly attractive. Shakespeare
 
 FLETCHER'S '^ VALENTINIAN '' 221 
 
 makes us feel men and women, talking, acting ; 
 Beaumont and Fletcher make us feel them being 
 talked for, provided with fluent utterance to 
 describe their action. What partially blinded 
 contemporaries and critics Hke Dryden to Shake- 
 speare's supremacy, was that he was contented 
 to adopt the Romantic style as it had been created 
 b}' his predecessors ; and his immediate successors 
 were as yet incapable of discerning the whole 
 difference between his use of it and Beaumont's 
 or Fletcher's. They could perceive Jonson's 
 superiority more easily because his elaborate per- 
 formances were in a sharply contrasted style. 
 
 What I have termed dramatic rhetoric, as 
 opposed to genuine dramatic poetry, betrayed 
 Beaumont and Fletcher into their most serious 
 faults as playwrights. Its want of absolute sin- 
 cerity led them to violate truth, propriety, and 
 probability, both in their fables and their charac- 
 ters. Sudden and unaccountable conversions to 
 good from evil, and vice versa, like Hippolyta's in 
 The Custom of the Country, or Boroski's in 77?^ 
 Loyal Subject ; inexplicable reconcilements at the 
 ends of plays, the most infamous people being 
 taken into favour and pardoned, like Frederick in 
 A Wife for a Month ; mere tricks to deceive the 
 audience and prepare a surprise, like Polydore's 
 feigned death in The Mad Lover; all these 
 devices to protract a plot or to wind up a story,
 
 222 FLETCHER'S " VALENTINIAN" 
 
 to amuse or to astonish, at the expense of ethical 
 and artistic fitness, belong to rhetoric, which is 
 unconscientious in the use of means, and in- 
 different to the necessity of preparing effects by 
 proper and natural gradations. To the same 
 cause may be ascribed their almost invariable 
 habit of overdoing moral situations. They make 
 brave generals, like Memnon in The Mad Lover, 
 proclaim their own valour in language which 
 would be exaggerated on the lips of a panegyrist. 
 Their virtuous women vaunt their chastity in 
 language which suggests familiarity with the 
 brothel. Thus, too, they cannot refrain from 
 *' volleys of execrations and defiances," cannon- 
 ades of protestations. What French critics call 
 emphase is for ever spoiling the effect of their 
 most passionate scenes. It seems that they 
 were compelled to surcharge each motive by in- 
 ability to exhibit the motive clearly and precisely. 
 They resemble those imperfect writers who ex- 
 pand a paragraph because they have not force, 
 concision, mental pithiness enough to say their 
 say in a sentence. 
 
 A more legitimate field for the display of 
 dramatic rhetoric, and one to which they were 
 extremely partial, is casuistry. Upon honour, 
 chastity, loyalty, marriage, upon the right and 
 wrong of duelling, upon the advantages and dis- 
 advantages of travel, and so forth ad infinitum^
 
 FLETCHER'S " VALENTINIAN" 223 
 
 their discussions are luminous and eminently 
 interesting. They succeed in debating dramati- 
 cally without falling into the forensic tone which 
 spoils this kind of casuistry in Euripides. Their 
 characters, however they may spit fire and belch 
 forth fury, seldom condescend to nagging. 
 
 Their true strength was shown in planning 
 some elaborate situation, like the finale of an 
 opera act, carefully prepared, long drawn-out, 
 introducing the main agents of the drama. 
 These situations are always set forth with 
 admirable but prolix oratory. Into the full 
 effect of such dramatic climaxes, we, who only 
 read them, can but dimly see. They must have 
 intoxicated an audience whose eyes were satiated 
 with the groupings of practised actors, and 
 whose ears were delighted with the declamation 
 of honeyed eloquence. That audience hardly 
 perceived the thinness of the stream of poetry, 
 the oftentimes miserable absurdity of the plot, or 
 the occasional impropriety of the part assigned to 
 a chief character. The sustained psychological 
 coherence and the perfection of single scenes, in 
 which Shakespeare had no rival, were hardly 
 missed by them. They were fascinated by the 
 linked sweetness of Beaumont's verbal music, by 
 the glitter of his rapidly changing lights and 
 shadows of emotion. Furthermore, they were 
 warmed with passion, and the passion, though
 
 224 FLETCHER'S " VALENTINIAN'' 
 
 diluted, was vehement and various. They were 
 interested in casuistical questions and scruples of 
 honour, analogous to those which their own lives 
 yielded. They were touched and melted by senti- 
 ment and romance, beyond the scope perhaps 
 of their experience, but yet upon the plane of 
 their habitual attitude toward life. 
 
 All these considerations taken together go far 
 to explain why the attractive and many-coloured, 
 but essentially inferior dramatic work of Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher took so strong a hold upon 
 the imagination of the age as almost to eclipse 
 the fame of Shakespeare. Not only in regard to 
 casuistry, but also in many other points, it might 
 be compared with that of the great Greek 
 dramatic rhetorician Euripides ; and we know 
 that Euripides, though the least excellent, was 
 for centuries the most popular of the three Attic 
 tragedians. 
 
 The tragedy which I have selected to illus- 
 trate these general remarks is one that may with 
 safety be attributed to the sole hand of Fletcher, 
 and which ranks among the finest of his com- 
 positions. Founded upon actual events in the 
 life of Valentinian III., it presents the facts of 
 history in a romantic spirit, partly in order to 
 increase the interest of the fable, and partly to 
 secure unity for what would otherwise have been 
 a disjointed plot. The principal actors in the
 
 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTINIAN" 225 
 
 drama are Valentinian and his wife Eudoxia, the 
 Roman general Aecius, Maximus and his wife 
 Lucina, together with a crowd of servile crea- 
 tures, male and female, used by the Emperor in 
 his pleasures and addicted basely to his service. 
 For the furtherance of the action, Fletcher has 
 introduced some Roman soldiers, of no historical 
 importance ; detailed allusion to whom is not 
 here necessary. 
 
 The first act, as is common with the more 
 skilful craftsmen of the great English period, 
 blocks out the plot with masterly precision. In 
 the first scene a dialogue between Valentinian's 
 four base Ministers lays bare the character of 
 the Emperor, and unfolds the plot which he has 
 laid for Lucina. The second scene introduces 
 Lucina herself, and shows with what constancy 
 she resists the flatteries and blandishments of 
 the court ladies sent to corrupt her mind. 
 Only, in depicting this Roman ideal of matronal 
 chastity, Fletcher, with his wonted coarseness of 
 taste, has touched on very slippery ground. 
 Balbus, it is true, reports that when he hinted in 
 her ears how easily the Emperor might play the 
 part of Tarquin to her : 
 
 She pointed to a Lucvece that hung by, 
 And with an angry look, that from her eyes 
 Shot vestal fire against me, she departed. 
 
 P
 
 226 FLETCHER'S " VALENTINIAN" 
 
 This is fine. But upon Lucina's own lips the 
 dramatist ought never to have put such words of 
 double meaning as the following, addressed to 
 Phorba and Ardelia — 
 
 / perceive ye : 
 Youv own dark sins dwell with ye ! and that price 
 You sell the chastity of modest wives at, 
 Run to diseases with your bones ! 
 
 In the third scene we learn the characters of 
 Maximus and Aecius, and their several disposi- 
 tions toward the Emperor sunk in his vices. 
 Maximus is hot with indignation, excusing the 
 disaffection of the nation and the mutinous spirit 
 of the army by Valentinian's own intolerable 
 conduct. Aecius, who suffers no less deeply on 
 account of the degradation of the empire, pre- 
 serves his loyalty intact. The high-flown con- 
 ception of kinghood which marks the Jacobean 
 drama finds noble expression in this speech : — 
 
 Yet remember, 
 We are but subjects, Maximus; obedience 
 To what is done, and grief for what is ill done. 
 Is all we can call ours. The hearts of princes 
 Are like the temples of the gods; pure incense, 
 Until unhallowed hands defile those offerings. 
 Burns ever there ; we must not put 'em out, 
 Because the priests that touch those sweets are 
 wicked ;
 
 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTINIAN" 227 
 
 We dare not, dearest friend, nay, more, we can- 
 not, — 
 Whilst we consider who we are, and how. 
 To what laws botmd, much more to what law- 
 giver ; 
 Whilst majesty is made to be obeyed. 
 And not inqiured into ; whilst gods and angels 
 Make but a rule as we do, though a stricter, — 
 Like desperate and unseasoned fools, let fly 
 Our killing angers, and forsake our honours. 
 
 Valentinian himself is next brought in view, 
 hearing from the lips of Aecius what the soldiers 
 say against him, the peril of his throne, and the 
 unworthy part which he is playing on the 
 world's stage. There is no want of candour 
 now in the old general, who had lately spoken 
 with such submissive reverence of the divinity 
 that doth hedge a king. Fletcher draws this 
 Emperor as rather weak than utterly bad ; he is 
 a lawless young man with the making of a 
 tyrant in him. 
 
 The first act having thus presented the chief 
 characters and outlined the plot, the second act 
 brings on the business of the play. Valentinian 
 gains at dice the ring of Maximus, by means of 
 which he intends to bring Lucina to the palace, 
 and there to effect forcibly what the arts of his 
 sycophants have failed to compass. The second 
 ■and third scenes are employed in throwing
 
 228 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTINIAN " 
 
 further light upon Lucina, who goes unwillingly 
 to court at the exhibition of her husband's ring, 
 and in developing the situation between Valen- 
 tinian, his generals, and the half-rebellious army. 
 Scenes 4, 5> ^nd 6 of act ii. and scene i of 
 act iii. are closely linked together in one rhythm 
 of imaginative presentation ; all the emotions of 
 thrilling expectation, pathos, tragic passion, and 
 profound pity being successively called forth, and 
 verbally expressed with the dramatic rhetoric which 
 I have qualified as the chief note of Fletcher's art. 
 It is a very masterly example of his power to 
 sustain a carefully prepared situation, and to 
 prolong its interest by the gradual heightening 
 of romantic incident. In the first of these 
 connected scenes Lucina enters the great hall of 
 the palace, attended by her two waiting women, 
 and received by Chilax. In the next she passes 
 to an inner apartment, still more sumptuous, 
 where two of Fletcher's sweetest lyrics, sung to 
 music, greet her ears. Lovely as are these songs 
 in themselves, they possess a peculiar and almost 
 plaintive beauty in their dramatic context ; for 
 never surely was the seductiveness of wanton 
 pleasure more airily and deHcately insinuated : 
 
 Now the lusty spring is seen; 
 
 Golden yellow, gaudy blue, 
 
 Daintily invite the view. 
 Everywhere on every green.
 
 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTIN I AN'' 229 
 
 Roses blushing as they blow, 
 And enticing men to pull; 
 Lilies whiter than the snow, 
 Woodbines of sweet honey full : 
 All love's emblems, and all cry, 
 " Ladies, if not plucked, we die.'' 
 
 Then again : 
 
 Hear, ye ladies that despise 
 
 What the mighty Love hath done; 
 Fear examples, and be ivise ; 
 
 Fair Calisto was a nun; 
 Leda, sailing on the stream 
 
 To deceive the hopes of man. 
 Love accotmting but a dream. 
 
 Doted on a silver swan; 
 Dande, in a brazen tower. 
 Where no love was, loved a shower. 
 
 But Lucina, when she is asked how she Hkes 
 the song, only repHes : 
 
 / like the air well; 
 
 But for the words, they arc lascivious, 
 
 And over -light for ladies. 
 
 Then Balbus displays a heap of jewels, thrown 
 about in rich profusion, for her acceptance. She 
 passes them by, and going forward, is met by 
 Valentinian's ladies strewing rushes in her 
 honour : — 
 
 Where is this stranger? Rushes, ladies, rushes! 
 Rushes as green as summer for this stranger !
 
 230 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTINIAN" 
 
 At this point the men retire, her waiting- 
 women are withdrawn, and Lucina has perforce 
 to accept the proffered hospitality of the court 
 dames. They take her onward into a third 
 chamber, where the door closes on her ; and 
 when again it opens, Valentinian appears to the 
 sound of soft music, leading her by the hand, 
 and advancing up the stage, alone with her at 
 last. Now she knows, what she had always 
 feared, that the ring of Maximus has been used 
 as a lure to bring her to her ruin. She pleads 
 for her honour, appealing to the sacredness of 
 Caesar, to her husband's services, kneeling upon 
 the ground to crave for pity : 
 
 YoiL are CcBsav, 
 Which is, ^^the father of the empire's honour'' ; 
 You are too near the nature of the gods 
 To wrong the weakest of all creatures, women. 
 
 But prayers are vain, and when this act closes 
 we know that poor Lucina's doom will be accom- 
 phshed. 
 
 There are few instances of dramatic rhetoric 
 finer than the succession of these three scenes, 
 ascending to a tragic climax through so many 
 stages of preparation. It may, however, be 
 questioned whether the full effect was realised on 
 the London stage in the first years of the seven- 
 teenth century, for there everything was left to<
 
 FLETCHER'S ''VALENTINIAN'' 231 
 
 the imagination ; and though the purest dramatic 
 poetry gains rather than it loses by simpHcity 
 of presentation, what I have called dramatic 
 rhetoric is specially adapted to magnificence of 
 mtse en scene. In one of our great modern 
 theatres, the Scala at Milan, for example, a 
 proper spectacular gradation might be obtained 
 by means of drop-scenes raised successively, 
 until, in the last scene, the whole stage lay open 
 to its depth, and Valentinian, entering with 
 Lucina from the bottom, should advance to the 
 footlights for their dialogue. This device, and 
 this alone it seems to me, could visibly convey 
 the impression of Lucina's passage from room to 
 room through the sinful splendours of the palace, 
 surrounded by meretricious enticements to the 
 ear and eye, beleaguered by the false blandish- 
 ments of men and women bent on her destruction, 
 until at last she is left alone with her all-powerful 
 betrayer — an impression which, in reading the 
 play, is almost overpowering. 
 
 The interval between acts ii. and iii. suffices 
 for the deed of darkness done in some secluded 
 chamber. When the curtain rises again, we 
 learn from the lips of Proculus and Chilax that 
 all is over, and are prepared for Valentinian's 
 re-entrance with Lucina. Her tone of pleading 
 is now changed to one of grave rebuke and fiery 
 accusation. Fortunately for Fletcher's fame, in
 
 232 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTINIAN" 
 
 this difficult passage he has just avoided his usual 
 temptation to make a heroine scold or utter things 
 beneath her dignity. He came very near so 
 doing; however, as will be seen from the follow- 
 ing quotations. Lucina's first words are — 
 
 As long as there is motion in my body, 
 
 And life to give me words, Vll cry for justice 
 
 In answer to this speech Fletcher found for 
 Valentinian the strongest line in the whole play, 
 a line which, for dramatic intensity, might be 
 classed with some of those keen, pungent single 
 lines in Webster and Tourneur : 
 
 Justice shall never hear you; I am justice. 
 Then she breaks out : 
 
 Wilt thou not kill me, monster, ravisher? 
 Thou bitter bane o' th' empire ; look upon me. 
 And if thy guilty eyes dare see these ruins 
 Thy wild lust hath laid level with dishonour, 
 The sacrilegious razing of this temple. 
 The mother of thy black sins would have blushed at, 
 Behold, and curse thyself ! The gods will find thee, 
 (That's all my refuge now,) for they are righteous. 
 Vengeance and horror circle thee ! The empire^ 
 In which thou liv'st a strong continued surfeit, 
 Like poison will disgorge thee ; good men raze thee 
 For ever being read again but vicious; 
 Women a7id fearful maids make vows against thee; 
 Thy own slaves, if they hear of this, shall hate thee ;
 
 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTINIAN'' 233 
 
 And those thou hast corrupted^ first fall from thee ; 
 Atid, if thou lefst me live, the soldier, 
 Tired zaith thy tyrannies, break through obedience 
 And shake his strong steel at .thee ! 
 
 The accent of rhodomontade and railing, the 
 emphase of which I spoke, is felt here ; but, 
 notwithstanding this, Lucina's abuse compares 
 favourably with that of Bonduca, Edith in RollOf 
 and Evadne in The Maid's Tragedy. It was not 
 likely that Valentinian should be moved by that ; 
 he makes, on the contrary, cynical avowals of 
 his satisfaction and ample promises for the future, 
 sustaining his imperial dignity with sentences 
 like these : 
 
 Know I am far above the faults I do, 
 And those I do, I am able to forgive too. 
 
 Then, finding her still *' cold as crystal," he 
 leaves the wronged woman face-downward on a 
 couch, where she is discovered by her husband 
 and Aecius, who have meanwhile come to court. 
 The thread of dramatic interest, already spun 
 to such a length, is now prolonged upon a 
 finer and more thrilling chord of tension. The 
 two generals extract from Lucina, by signs 
 and mute avowals rather than by spoken words, 
 what has happened, and learn that she is resolved 
 to die like Lucrece. Maximus says little to 
 break this resolution ; and with tender farewells
 
 234 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTIN I AN'' 
 
 to the wretched lady, dignified in her humiliation, 
 they send her home to perish. One of the most 
 touching of those melodious passages, which 
 Coleridge called Fletcher's "lyrical interbreath- 
 ings," occurs here in a speech by Maximus : 
 
 Go, Liicina; 
 Already in thy tears I have read thy wrong, 
 Already found a CcBsar : go^ thou, lily, 
 Thou sweetly -drooping flower ! Go^ silver swan, 
 And sing thine oimi sad requiem! Go, Liicina, 
 And, if thou darest, outlive this wrong. 
 
 Aecius now remains with his friend, striving to 
 temper a mood that verges upon madness ; and 
 while they are thus occupied, Lucina's waiting- 
 woman enters with the news that she has died of 
 grief. 
 
 When first she entered 
 Into her house, after a world of weeping, 
 And blushing like the sunset, as we saw her: 
 ^^ Dare /," said she, ^'defile this house with whore, 
 In which his noble family has flourished?'' 
 At which she fell, and stirred no more 
 
 That is only just passable. For Fletcher's sake 
 let us refrain from suggesting any comparison 
 with Giovanni's words on his mother's death in 
 Vittoria Corombona. Yet it must be admitted 
 that he has shown more reserve than is usual 
 with him throughout the scene. Few words are
 
 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTINIAN'' 235 
 
 wasted either by Aecius or Maximus upon a fact 
 which needs no amplification to enforce its 
 pathos. 
 
 Lucina's death cuts the tragedy of Valentinian 
 in half. The second part exhibits Fletcher's 
 weakness as a dramatic poet. He has only 
 arrived at the commencement of the third act, 
 and he is bound, according to his own conception 
 of the playwright's art, to carry the story forward 
 without allowing the interest of the audience to 
 cool. But he has already exhausted his finest 
 vein of romantic poetry, and has displayed his 
 force as a rhetorical dramatist in its fullest vigour 
 through the long-drawn scena of Lucina's betrayal 
 and heartbroken death. In continuation of the 
 previous motive, it is true that he will have to 
 bring poetical justice down upon the Emperor ; 
 but this is insufficient for a five-act traged3\ 
 Therefore he begins to develop a new series of 
 exciting incidents out of the character of Maximus. 
 Hitherto we have known Maximus only as a bluff 
 soldier, less tolerant than his wise and world- 
 worn friend Aecius towards the vices of Valen- 
 tinian. He must now be employed, first through 
 the natural passion of revenge, and afterwards 
 through the superadded passion of a vulgar 
 ambition, to supply a secondary motive for the 
 plot, which otherwise would languish. It is the 
 doom of Fletcher as a dramatic rhetorician, lacking
 
 236 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTIN I AN'' 
 
 the genuine dramatic inspiration, that he cannot 
 convince us of the necessity of what ensues from 
 the evolution of these two passions in the pre- 
 viously uncoloured character of the protagonist 
 Maximus. 
 
 History supplied the playwright with the 
 following events. Valentinian III. murdered 
 the general Aecius with his own hand, then 
 outraged the wife of Petronius Maximus, and 
 finally was killed by the orders of Maximus, 
 who, after this assassination, assumed the 
 imperial purple, and compelled Valentinian's 
 widow, Eudoxia, to become his consort. Fletcher, 
 in order to give unity to his plot, inverted the 
 order of these incidents. He sought the main 
 tragic motive in the outrage upon Lucina and 
 the revenge of Maximus ; but wishing to com- 
 bine this with the murder of Aecius, he resorted 
 to the expedient of making Maximus the 
 treacherous instigator of that crime. Aecius, 
 represented as the bosom friend of Maximus, 
 stands in the way of his vengeance, for Maximus 
 well knows that nothing will induce the loyal 
 general to sanction an attempt upon the Emperor's 
 person. He therefore flings love and honour to 
 the winds, and forges a letter which rouses 
 Valentinian's suspicions against his faithful 
 subject. Aecius, after scenes of protracted 
 Roman eloquence, falls on his own sword, and
 
 FLETCHER'S ^' VALENTINIAN ■' 237 
 
 when he is dead Maximus, playing a part, 
 similar to that of Antony in Julhts Ccvsar, induces 
 Aretus and Phidias, the great general's lieuten- 
 ants, to revenge his death on Valentinian. They 
 succeed in administering poison to the Emperor, 
 having secured an honourable exit out of life for 
 themselves by suicide. Fletcher obviously put 
 forth all his strength to make the scene of 
 Valentinian's death in agony, taunted by Aretus, 
 terrific. But those who are curious to compare 
 dramatic rhetoric with true dramatic intensity 
 should read that scene side by side with 
 Brachiano's death-scene in Vittoria Corombona, 
 and with the last speeches of Shakespeare's 
 King John. Valentinian screams in his torment : 
 
 Oh, gods, gods I Drink, drink ! Colder, colder 
 Than snow on Scythian mountains! Oh, my 
 
 heart-stings ! 
 Daniihius Fll have brought thorough my body, 
 And Volga on whose face the north wind freezes. 
 I am an hundred hells ! an hundred piles 
 Already to my funeral are flaming ! 
 
 Shall I not drink ? 
 
 By Heaven! 
 
 ril let my breath out, that shall burn ye all, 
 If ye deny me longer ! Tempests blow me, 
 And inundatiojts that have drunk up kingdoms. 
 Flow over me and quench me! 
 
 These frenzies, put together from successive
 
 238 FLETCHERS '' VALENTIN IAN'' 
 
 speeches, are striking. But they will not stand 
 beside King John's : 
 
 There is so hot a summer in my bosom 
 That all my bowels crumble tcp to dust; 
 I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen 
 Upon a parchment, and against this fire 
 
 Do I shrink up 
 
 Poisoned — ill fare ; — dead, forsook, cast off ; 
 
 And none of you will bid the winter come. 
 
 To thrust his icy fingers in my maw ; 
 
 Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course 
 
 Through my burn'd bosom; nor entreat the north 
 
 To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips. 
 
 And comfort me with cold. 
 
 After all these deaths, Maximus reflects upon 
 the general ruin he has wrought. His thirst for 
 vengeance has been satisfied, but at the expense 
 of his friend's betrayal and murder, and by the 
 sacrifice of two brave Romans more. It is 
 necessary to rehabilitate him in the opinion of 
 the audience ; and this Fletcher feebly attempts 
 to do by making him express a rhetorical desire 
 to join Lucina and Aecius in Elysium. That, 
 however, is but mere bravado ; and his next 
 thought is how to grasp the empire. He secures 
 the good-will of the army, and then prevails upon 
 Eudoxia to become his wife, pretending that he 
 has waded through treason, treachery, and 
 murder — nay, the undoing of Lucina also — to 
 the throne for love of her. She submits in
 
 FLETCHER'S '' VALENTINIAN '' 239 
 
 appearance, and at a great public banquet crowns 
 him with the imperial wreath. But the wreath is 
 poisoned, and he dies amid the acclamations of 
 " Hail, Caesar ! " with the Bacchic melodies of 
 *' God Lyaeus, ever young," sounding in his ears. 
 
 The incurable fault of Valentinian as a tragedy 
 is now apparent. It lies in the inadequate 
 motives provided by the action of Maximus after 
 Lucina's death. Up to that date, Fletcher had 
 suggested nothing in his character which prepares 
 us for the fraud he works on Aecius in order to 
 secure his revenge ; and no sooner have we 
 condoned that baseness on the hypothesis that 
 grief had maddened him, than we are asked to 
 accept the intrusion of ambition into his nature, 
 and the outrageous indecency of his feigned 
 avowals to Eudoxia, with even less of explana- 
 tion. In one word, Maximus, upon whom the 
 whole conduct of the drama turns, has been 
 wantonly and cynically used as a mere machine 
 for evolving a succession of stirring scenes. 
 The romantic playwright, the rhetorical dramatist, 
 is content to sacrifice psychological coherence, 
 probability, and the facts of history for the sake 
 of a magnificent but insufficiently developed 
 series of effects. 
 
 It would be unfair to stigmatize Beaumont 
 and Fletcher as the only, or indeed as the chief, 
 sinners in this respect among our early play-
 
 240 FLETCHER'S " VALENTINIAN'' 
 
 Wrights. When the English drama settled into 
 its romantic form, after the attempts made by 
 the authors of Gorboduc and others to mould it 
 on a classical type, it was already committed to 
 the dramatisation of stories ; and stories, so 
 long as they presented striking situations and a 
 fable of exciting interest, were welcomed without 
 due regard for their artistic suitableness to tragic 
 presentation. In an Italian novella, ill-developed 
 motives and psychological incoherences of all 
 sorts were excusable or passed unnoticed, the 
 narrator dealing lightly with his material, and 
 holding the attention of his audience only for 
 the brief space of half an hour or so. But 
 these defects, when transferred to the exacting 
 sphere of the drama, which demands more 
 detailed working out of character and a 
 firmer grasp upon causation, became glaringly 
 apparent, and formed the main source of 
 weakness in the tragedies of nearly all our 
 playwrights. It is because Beaumont and 
 Fletcher possessed such brilliant gifts in rich 
 abundance, and because they adorned their 
 romances with such delightful eloquence, 
 falling only just short of the higher poetry 
 and the more poignant dramatic imagination, 
 that I have submitted the composite work 
 which passes under their joint names to a 
 seemingly severe criticism.
 
 THE LYRISM OF THE ENGLISH 
 ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 The most prominent feature of the English 
 Romantic or Elizabethan Drama is a predomin- 
 ance of high-strung poetry in all its parts. 
 When we compare this drama with that of Italy 
 or of France at the same epoch, or even with 
 that of Athens in the classical period, its charac- 
 teristic quality is found to be a diffusion of 
 lyrical poetry through every fibre, vein, and 
 tissue of its vital structure. 
 
 The conception of character and the choice of 
 situations in our drama are always poetical. 
 Imagination never fails, even when the construc- 
 tion of the plot is lamentably defective. The 
 playwright, in his diction, in his images and 
 metaphors, in his rhetorical embroidery, in his 
 handling of blank-verse, exhibits a poetic faculty 
 which sometimes conceals the poverty of his 
 dramatic resources. It often happens that the 
 
 Q
 
 242 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 effect of dialogue or soliloquy is dramatically 
 weakened by the abundance of imagery and the 
 wealth of fancy lavished by the poet. The tone 
 of diction proper to dramatic utterance frequently 
 exhales in lyrisms. These '^ lyrical interbreath- 
 ings," as Coleridge called them with admirable 
 nicety of phrase, are exquisitely charming. To the 
 student in his chamber they offer new delights at 
 every turning of the page. They appeal to his 
 imagination ; they stimulate his sense of beauty 
 and of passion in the outer and the inner worlds 
 of nature and mankind. But they tend to clog 
 and interrupt the business of the scene. In the 
 hands of playwrights of the second order, of 
 Fletcher for example, these " lyrical interbreath- 
 ings," constantly repeated, degenerate into a 
 kind of poetical rhetoric, which excuses or cloaks 
 a want of dramatic sincerity, a feeble grasp on 
 the essential conditions of character and action. 
 
 The lyrical element, which I have attempted 
 to describe, was not peculiar to the drama. It 
 pervaded all species of poetry in the Elizabethan 
 age. That was the time when music flourished 
 in England. We had then a native school of 
 composers, and needed not to borrow the melo- 
 dies of other lands. Every house had its lute 
 suspended on the parlour- wall. In every com- 
 pany of men and women part-songs could be 
 sung. When poets sat down to write, music
 
 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 243 
 
 sounded in their ears. Their thoughts and 
 rhythms moved instinctively to vocal tunes. Thus 
 we find that the epical, narrative, and meditative 
 verse of the period, no less than the dramatic, 
 was penetrated with lyrism. Many of the finest 
 passages in the Faery Queen seem written to be 
 sung. The lyric cry is audible throughout 
 Marlowe's Hero and Leander ; not only in its 
 high uplifted passion, but also in the tense and 
 •quivering movement of the lines. Shakespeare's 
 sonnets are lyrical, both in their structure and 
 their tone. In this respect they differ from the 
 sonnets of Milton, where the gnomic or reflective 
 element predominates. 
 
 The dramatists, not unnaturally, felt this lyric 
 impulse. It is the function of the drama in all 
 ages to reflect the very form and pressure of the 
 time in which it flourishes. The material con- 
 ditions of the English theatre were also favour- 
 able to the development of a lyrical element in 
 our drama. In the absence of scenery or stage- 
 decorations appeal had to be made to the imagin- 
 ation of the spectators. That was done by 
 raising the accent of poetic speech to such a pitch 
 that the wildest flights of fancy emphasized the 
 playwright's meaning. There were only men and 
 boys upon the wooden platform of the stage. 
 What these actors uttered had to bring distant 
 scenes within the vision of the audience ; their
 
 244 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 lines interpreted subtle changes of emotion, sud- 
 den reverses of fortune, the flux and reflux of 
 passion in human hearts ; and all this had to 
 be presented with nothing but a bare background, 
 with the open sky above, with people in hats and 
 trunk-hose sitting, smoking, jostling the players 
 on the stage. That being so, it is not wonderful 
 that the playwright used the lyric note, the note 
 of high impassioned poetry, to stimulate the fancy 
 of his audience, and to carry them away with him 
 into the realm of the ideal. He could not act upon 
 their sense of sight, as the modern playwright 
 does. Unless he pierced their intellectual sense, 
 he failed to rivet their attention. It is thus, at 
 any rate, that I partly explain to myself the 
 lyrism of the English drama. 
 
 In plain words, the bias of poetical literature 
 in England during the Ehzabethan age was 
 lyrical. The drama obeyed that bias. And the 
 conditions of the London stage favoured a style 
 of writing for the theatre which was eminently 
 lyrical. 
 
 We see this in Marlowe, the founder of our 
 theatre. Those famous *' lunes " of Tambtir/ame, 
 those descants upon beauty, those apostrophes to 
 divine Xenocrate, those fierce forth-stretchings 
 after universal empire, are lyrical : lyrical not 
 only in their tone and sentiment, but also in the 
 form and exaltation of the verses which express
 
 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 245 
 
 them. The serious part of Fansttis is a sus- 
 tained lyric. The philosopher in his study 
 evokes the image of 
 
 Women, or tinwedded 7naids, 
 Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows 
 Than have the white breasts of the queen of love. 
 
 He cries to the fiend who buys and sells him : 
 
 Had I as many souls as there be stars, 
 Vd give them all for Mephistophilis. 
 
 When Helen appears to him in a vision, he 
 exclaims : 
 
 Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, 
 
 And burned the topless towers of Ilium? — 
 
 Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss — 
 
 O, thou art fairer than the evening air 
 
 Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars; 
 
 Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter 
 
 When he appeared to hapless Semele ; 
 
 More lovely than the monarch of the sky 
 
 In wanton Arcthusa's azured arms; 
 
 And none but thou shall be my paramour! 
 
 The lyrical accent here is unmistakable. 
 Preserving the form of dramatic verse, keeping 
 Vi^ell to his decasyllabic metre, Marlowe soars 
 aloft into that higher region of poetry where 
 music is demanded. He does not rely upon the 
 decoration or the business of the stage : he forces
 
 246 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 the audience, by poetry, by the evocation of their 
 sympathies, by a keen lyric cry, to comprehend 
 the dramatic situation. 
 
 If we abstract the lyrical passages from 
 Tamburlaine and Faustus there remains but 
 little noteworthy in these plays. The case is 
 different with Edward II. Here Marlowe con- 
 structs a tragedy, which would be forcibly 
 dramatic without its lyrical element. The lyrism 
 survives. It is particularly potent in the scene 
 of Edward's abdication. But the action and the 
 passions move almost without its help. The 
 lyric, which was nearly everything in Tambur- 
 laine and Faustus, has become a subordinate 
 quantity in Edward II. 
 
 At the point which Marlowe reached in 
 Edward 11, , Shakespeare took his art up. 
 Shakespeare always regarded the dramatic move- 
 ment of the play first. But he never neglected 
 the lyrical element. He recognised this as a 
 main point in the romantic drama, which he was 
 born to perfect. And he has more than once or 
 twice written plays which are purely lyrical in 
 their construction. 
 
 It will suffice to mention Romeo and Juliet. 
 This is a lyrical poem, dramatically presented. 
 As a German critic has remarked, Romeo and 
 Juliet combines the sonnet, the epithalamium, and 
 the aubade — three types of lyrical poetry — under
 
 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 247 
 
 one dramatic form. The whole play is a Chant 
 d' Amour — an exhalation of human love, in poetry 
 assuming the dramatic mantle. All the incidents 
 of action fall away and sink into their place 
 before the simple fact that Romeo loves Juliet, 
 and Juliet loves Romeo. This play is the lyric 
 cry converted into drama. 
 
 It would be easy to show by copious illustra- 
 tions how lyrically conceived and executed is the 
 tragedy of Richard II. Nor would it be difficult 
 to point out in what way Love's Labour^ s Lost falls 
 short of being a good comedy by its dependence 
 upon lyrical rhymed structures in the metre, and 
 by its incongruous admixture of high lyric flights 
 of passion — Biron's ecstatic extravaganzas — with 
 satirical humour and frank buffoonery. This 
 play, in some respects one of the most charming 
 of Shakespeare's earliest efforts, closing as it 
 does upon the note of one of his most genial and 
 native songs, does not indeed deserve the name 
 of a comedy, but rather that of some ethereal 
 variety-entertainment, because of its imperfectly 
 assimilated lyrism. Far more finely mingled 
 are the elements of comedy and lyric in A 
 Midsummer Nighfs Dreamy which is really a 
 dramatic romance, interweaving three separate 
 strains of poetry — the heroic in Theseus, the 
 amorous in the two pairs of lovers, the fantastic 
 in the fairies — with one strain of burlesque,
 
 248 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 toned exquisitely into keeping with the major 
 parts. I should like lastly to demonstrate how 
 The Tempest, a work of Shakespeare's maturity, 
 is a pure ideal lyric, converted by the master's 
 wonder-working wand into an effective drama for 
 the stage, without the sacrifice of its dominant 
 quality, but rather by the maintenance of the 
 lyric note throughout. Descending to the com- 
 positions of minor playwrights, it is enough to 
 mention Dekker's Old Fortunattis, Day's Parlia- 
 ment of Bees, Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, and 
 many of the later romantic tragi-comedies, in 
 which the lyrism of the English drama is most 
 noticeable. 
 
 Marlowe proved in Edward II. that a tragedy 
 could be constructed, which was not dependent 
 on its lyrical element, but which used that only 
 for purposes of occasional rhetoric and powerful 
 appeal to the imagination of the audience. The 
 type which he then fixed became the standard for 
 his immediate successors. 
 
 This brings us back to what Coleridge called 
 the " lyrical interbreathings " of the romantic 
 drama, and necessitates a closer examination of 
 those portions of non-lyrical plays in which the 
 dramatic style modulates into the lyric. 
 
 The passages in Shakespeare's tragedies and 
 comedies where dialogue or soliloquy soars into 
 the empyrean of impassioned poetry are so fre-
 
 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 249 
 
 quent, and some of them are so famous, that it 
 is needless to do more than allude to them in 
 passing. Macbeth's declamation on the vanity 
 of hfe, when he hears the news of the Queen's 
 death ; Perdita's melodious enumeration of spring- 
 flowers ; Claudio's horror-stricken meditation on 
 the state of disembodied spirits ; the narrative of 
 OpheHa's drowning ; the last speeches of Antony 
 and Cleopatra — especially that sublime cry of 
 hers : 
 
 / am again for Cydnus, 
 To meet Mark A ntony ! — 
 
 all these illustrate wh^t I mean by dramatic style 
 transfigured, raised to lyrical .intensity. So are 
 some of those brief snatches which occur occa- 
 sionally in almost unexpected places, as when 
 Timon dismisses the Athenian senators : 
 
 Come not to me again; hut say to Athens, 
 Timon hath made his everlasting mansio7i 
 Upon the beached verge of the salt flood ; 
 Whom once a day zmth his embossed froth 
 The turbulent surge shall cover. 
 
 So, again, are those vignetted pictures, and 
 freaks of roving fancy, which present an episode 
 idealized, and strike the keynote of its purified 
 emotion. A good instance of this is when 
 Lorenzo and Jessica exchange their lovers' 
 thoughts by means of musical allusions — a
 
 250 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 sustained and measured dialogue in antiphonal 
 descant — beneath the flooding moonlight in the 
 Park at Belmont : 
 
 Lor. In such a night 
 
 Stood Dido with a willow in her hand 
 Upon the- wild sea banks^ and waft her love 
 To come again to Carthage. 
 
 Jes. In such a night 
 
 Medea gathered the enchajited herbs 
 That did renew old Aesojt. 
 
 This uplifting of dramatic into lyrical style in 
 dialogue and soliloquy is common to all those of 
 the Elizabethan playwrights who were gifted 
 with a genuine poetic faculty. We find it 
 everywhere in Fletcher's romantic plays. I 
 need not cull examples from 77?^ Faithful Shep- 
 herdess j for that is obviously lyrical throughout. 
 I will rather allude in passing to Ordella's 
 panegyric on death in Thierry and Theodoret; to 
 Memnon's address to his young mistress in The 
 Mad Lover; to Aspatia's impassioned vision of 
 Ariadne on the desert island in 77?^ Maid^s 
 Tragedy. These are doubtless too familiar to 
 call for quotation in full. But a passage may be 
 selected from 77?^ Custom of the Country — that 
 comedy which might be called a dung-heap 
 strewn with pearls — to illustrate the specific 
 quality of Fletcher's lyrism :
 
 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 251 
 
 Strew all yoiiv withered flowers, your autumn 
 
 sweets, 
 By the hot sun ravished of bud and beauty. 
 Thus round about her bride-bed; hang these blacks 
 
 there. 
 The emblems of her honour lost : all joy 
 That leads a virgin to receive her lover. 
 Keep from this place ; all fellow maids that bless 
 
 her. 
 And blushifig do unloose her zone, keep from her ; 
 No merry noise, nor lusty songs, be heard here. 
 Nor full cups crowned with wine make the rooms 
 
 giddy : 
 This is no masque of mirth, but murdered honour. 
 Sing mournfully that sad epithalamion 
 I gave thee now ; and, prithee, let thy lute weep. 
 
 We note the same ascent to lyrism in Hey- 
 wood. When Mr. Frankford, in A Woman 
 Killed with Kindness^ is approaching and leaving 
 his wife's bedchamber, and again when he 
 discovers the lute which she has left behind her 
 in the desecrated home, he breaks into solilo- 
 quies ringing with a wounded heart-cry. The 
 intensity of the situation changes the accent of 
 the verse. One of these three passages will 
 serve as an example : 
 
 O God I O God ! that it were possible 
 To undo things done ; to call back yesterday ! 
 That time could turn up his swift sandy glass 
 To untell the days, and to redeem these hours!
 
 252 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 Or that the sun 
 
 Could, rising from the west, draw his coach hack- 
 ward ; 
 Take from the account of time so many minutes, 
 Till he had all these seasons called again. 
 Those minutes, and those actions done in them, 
 Even from her first offence ; that I might take her 
 As spotless as an angel in my arms! 
 But, oh ! I talk of things impossible^ 
 And cast beyond the moon.^' 
 
 It is the same with Webster, with Dekker 
 with Ford, with Marston. Even Ben Jonson 
 that strict master of severity in style, indulges 
 now and then in flights of lyrism. Level's 
 dissertation upon Platonic affection, in The New 
 Inn, is an example ; so too are the opening lines 
 about Earine in The Sad Shepherd. 
 
 We have now seen that the characteristic note 
 of the English romantic drama is a predom- 
 inance of high-strung poetry in all its parts. 
 This poetry, even in the blank-verse passages, 
 assumes a lyrical quality. But the spirit of this 
 poetry goes farther ; climbs higher ; and the 
 final point to which it soars, claims our attention 
 next. The lyrical element, on which I have 
 been so long insisting as the very mainspring of 
 English romantic art, culminates and finds free 
 expression in the songs which are scattered up 
 and down each play. These songs cannot be 
 regarded as occasional ditties, interpolated for
 
 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 253 
 
 the delectation of the audience. On the con- 
 trary, they strike the key-note of the playwright's 
 style. They condense the particular emotion of 
 the tragedy or comedy in a quintessential drop 
 of melody. Mr. Pater ha^ dwelt upon a single 
 instance of this fact with his usual felicity of 
 phrase. Speaking of the song of Mariana's 
 page in Measure for Measure, he remarks that in 
 it '^ the kindhng power and poetry of the whole 
 play seems to pass for a moment into an actual 
 strain of music." The same might be said 
 about the two songs in the second act of As Yoii 
 Like iff Ariel's songs in The Tempest, and all the 
 fairy lyrics of A Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 What painters call their accent, the highest value 
 in their pictures, we find in these dramatic 
 lyrics. It only requires a moment's reflection to 
 perceive in how true a sense the little poems 
 written by the dramatist for music at a certain 
 point in his pla}^, give the accent of his style, 
 the highest value in his scheme of composition. 
 This is very clear when we consider the dirges 
 introduced by Webster into The Duchess of Malfi 
 and Vittoria Corombona. The sombre genius of 
 the poet, his sinister philosophy of life, the 
 terrible gloom of his tragic motives, are epito- 
 mized in those funeral ditties. In like manner, 
 the theme of Fletcher's Vakjttinian is accen- 
 tuated by the two songs of the second act ; and
 
 254 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 the whole spirit of The Maid^s Tragedy lives in 
 Aspatia's dirge : 
 
 Lay a garland on my hearse, 
 
 Of the dismal yew ; 
 Maidens, willow branches bear; 
 
 Say, I died true. 
 
 My love was false, but I was firm 
 
 From my hour of birth. 
 Upon my buried body lie 
 
 Lightly, gentle earth! 
 
 Ford, though he was not one of the best 
 lyrists of this period, managed to sublimate the 
 motive of his tragedy, 77?^ Broken Heart, in 
 three songs, *^ Can you paint a thought ? " " Oh, 
 no more, no more, too late," and "Glories, 
 pleasures, pomps, delights, and ease." 
 
 This is equally true of comedies or drama- 
 tized romances. Dekker's lyrics in The Pleasant 
 Comedy of Patient Grissell yield at once the 
 purest accent of his own poetic quality and the 
 highest value of the play in which they occur. 
 Heywood's song, ''Ye little birds that sit and 
 sing," is the culminating point of his Fair Maid 
 of the Exchange. The spirit of the man and the 
 spirit of the work of art are both extracted and 
 etherealized in the four stanzas of that exquisitely 
 transparent ditty.
 
 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 255 
 
 I have now made it clear in what way I think 
 the songs which are scattered through our drama 
 deserve to be carefully studied ; first as the 
 ultimate expression of that lyrism to which the 
 romantic species in England was always tend- 
 ing ; and secondly, as an index to the play- 
 wright's specific quality as poet. 
 
 Some of our dramatists were defective in the 
 lyrical faculty. Their blank-verse lyrism is 
 rather rhetorical than poetical ; and their songs 
 are mediocre. Massinger is of this sort ; so, 
 but in a less degree, is Middleton ; and Shirley 
 might be classed with them, had he not be- 
 queathed to us the two immortal odes upon the 
 vanity of human power and glory, from Cupid 
 and Death and The Contention of Ajax. 
 
 Ben Jonson rarely struck the note of genuine 
 inevitable lyric inspiration. None of the songs 
 in his plays can be called perfect in their music. 
 Beside being stiff through labour of the file, 
 they are often awkward in some turn or other of 
 expression. The best to my mind are the 
 " Hymn to Diana," in Cynthids Revels^ and the 
 '' Ode to Charis," introduced from Underwoods 
 into The Devil is an Ass. It may interest some 
 of my readers to learn that the third stanza of 
 this beautiful poem was parodied by Sir John 
 Suckling in The Sad One. Jonson had writ- 
 ten :
 
 256 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 Have you seen hut a bright lily grow 
 
 Before rude hands have touched it? 
 Have marked hut the fall of the snow 
 
 Before the soil hath smutched it ? 
 Have you felt the wool of the heaver, 
 
 Or sivan^s down ever? 
 Or have smelt o' the hud of the hrier, 
 
 Or the nard in the fire ? 
 Or have tasted the hag of the bee ? 
 O so white, O so soft, O so sweet is she! 
 
 Suckling converted this to his own use as 
 follows : 
 
 Hast thou seen the down in the air, 
 
 When wanton blasts have tossed it ? 
 Or the ship on the sea. 
 
 When ruder winds have crossed it ? 
 Hast thou marked the crocodile's weeping, 
 
 Or the fox's sleeping ? 
 Or hast thou viewed the peacock in his pride. 
 
 Or the dove by his bride. 
 
 When he courts for his lechery ? 
 Oh ! so fickle, oh ! so vain, oh ! so false, so false 
 is she! 
 
 The execution of the lyric in VolponCy ** Come, 
 my Celia, let us prove," is excellent. These 
 couplets might be reckoned among Jonson's 
 successes, did they not challenge fatal com- 
 parison with the Ode of Catullus, from which 
 they are in part borrowed, but of which they are 
 in no true sense an adequate translation. The
 
 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 257 
 
 song from The Silent Woman, '* Still to be neat, 
 still to be drest/' transplanted into English from 
 the Latin of Jean Bonnefons, deserves honour- 
 able mention ; not only for its terseness and 
 correction, but also because it plainly foreshad- 
 owed and probably helped to form the lyric style 
 of the seventeenth century. If we may trust 
 Drummond of Hawthornden, Jonson thought 
 highly of his drinking-song in The Poetaster. It 
 does not find a place in the best anthologies of 
 songs from the dramatists. I shall therefore 
 produce it here ; for it illustrates what I mean 
 by Jonson's awkwardness of phrase ; and if he 
 really set great store upon this little ode, it also 
 illustrates his incapacity for just self-criticism : 
 
 Swell mc a howl with lusty wine. 
 Till I may see the plump Lyceus swim 
 
 Above the brim: 
 I drink as I would write, 
 In flowing measure filled with flame and sprite. 
 
 This is certainly inferior in poetry and rhythm 
 to Fletcher's ''God Lyaeus ever young," and to 
 Lyly's "O for a bowl of fat canary," which 
 reappears improved in one of Middleton's 
 comedies.* Beautiful lyrical extracts may be 
 culled from Jonson's Masques. But these are 
 only fragments, scattered stanzas, occasional 
 
 * A Mad World, my Masters.
 
 258 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 flights above the poet's ordinary mood — like that 
 fine passage from the Queens Masque, prefiguring 
 the style of Dryden's odes, which begins, " So 
 beauty on the waters stood " — Hke the description 
 of an ocean paradise in The Fortunate Isles, *' The 
 winds are sweet and gently blow " — like the 
 dirge for withered spring-flowers in Pan's Anni- 
 versary, ^^ Drop, drop, you violets, change your 
 hues."* Indeed Jonson, with all his fine poetic 
 feehng, was not sure of touch enough, nor exact- 
 ing enough in his taste, to produce lyrics of a 
 sustained excellence. The one absolutely fault- 
 less song he wrote, " Drink to me only with 
 thine eyes," is absent from his dramatic works. 
 
 One playwright of the highest eminence, and 
 two of the second order, Marlowe, Cyril Tourneur, 
 and Marston, have no songs printed in their 
 plays. This does not prove, however, that they 
 wrote none ; for publishers, at that period, were 
 not always careful to retain the lyrics when they 
 sent an author's plays to press. It also appears 
 that stage-ditties were regarded as common 
 property. In the case of Marston, stage directions 
 are frequently given for the introduction of music 
 and singing. But whether his own lyrics were 
 used on those occasions cannot now be determined. 
 
 * The text of the Masque gives " Drop, drop, your violets." Since 
 the violets are obviously addressed in the following lines, it seems to 
 me t\\2X your must here be a misprint for you.
 
 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 259 
 
 Marlowe had the lyrical faculty in over-measure. 
 I have already pointed out what a large part 
 blank-verse lyrism plays in his tragedies. It 
 must therefore be left to conjecture whether he 
 chose to dispense with the element of song, or 
 whether in the printing of his plays the lyrics 
 were omitted. In the latter case, we have 
 suffered grievous wrong from the publishers of 
 his dramatic works. But I am inclined to believe, 
 from the stage-business of Marlowe's tragedies, 
 that the detached lyric formed no portion of his 
 scheme. Did we possess none but the original 
 editions of Lyly's comedies, we should have to 
 mourn the loss of those charming songs, which 
 form the best part of Lyly's literary bequest to 
 posterity. They were introduced by Edward 
 Blount into the complete edition of 1632. With 
 regard to Tourneur, there is no reason to suppose 
 that he was incapable of writing songs superior 
 to those of Ford, and not inferior to Webster's. 
 The lyrisms in his blank-verse are magnificently 
 poignantly fantastic. 
 
 Two collections of dramatic lyrics have been 
 published in this century. The first, called 
 Songs from the Dramatists^ by Robert Bell, has 
 long been out of print. The second, edited by 
 Mr. A. H. Bullen, under the title of Lyrics from 
 Elizabethan Dramatists, bears the date of 1889. 
 These books, both of which are valuable, have a
 
 26o THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 somewhat different scope and diverse merits. 
 Mr. Bell begins earlier, and ends later. His 
 first entries are the five lyrics from Ralph Roister 
 Doister. His last are five songs from the comedies 
 of Sheridan. Mr. Bullen starts with Lyly, and 
 finishes with Jasper Mayne and Thomas Forde, 
 contemporaries of Milton. Though Mr. Bell 
 covers a larger ground, he is neither so complete 
 nor so scholarly as Mr. Bullen. His anthology, 
 delightful and useful as it is, bears the air of 
 dilettante reading and caprice. Mr. Bullen is 
 well-nigh exhaustive within the limits he has 
 assigned to himself. He has also reproduced 
 for the first time many interesting pieces which 
 were known to few but specialists. I may 
 mention, in particular, the lyrics of Thomas Nash, 
 all of which are well worth study ; of Peter 
 Hausted, William Habington, and Richard Brome, 
 whose charming spring ditty from The Jolly 
 Beggars was unaccountably omitted by Mr. Bell. 
 It is to be hoped that future editions of this 
 collection will incorporate those earlier pieces 
 which we iind in Bell's anthology, adding perhaps 
 the fresh and simple April song which opens 
 the Morality of Lusty Juventus. 
 
 In the next essay I propose to consider two 
 volumes of Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books^ 
 and the works of Dr. Thomas Campion, edited 
 by Mr. Bullen. It is interesting to compare the
 
 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 261 
 
 contents of these collections, songs written for 
 music and not intended for the drama, with the 
 Lyrics from Elizabethan Dramatists. Surveying 
 the whole mass of poems here presented, we 
 first observe the common note which marks 
 them all out as the product of one period, 
 the outcome of one national sensibility. The 
 style throughout is the style of that Renais- 
 sance movement which took hold of England in 
 the last quarter of the sixteenth century, and 
 which spent its force before the restoration of 
 the Stuarts. There is no mistaking the similarity 
 of tone and accent in all the lyrics written during 
 that memorable space of somewhat more than 
 fifty years. They have a spontaneity, a bird- 
 like freshness, an irrecoverable facility of sing- 
 ing, which has never been recaptured in the 
 centuries which followed. This divine quality 
 of careless inspiration they possess in common. 
 But when we look closer, we find that the 
 dramatic lyrics differ in important respects from 
 those of the song-books. The latter are always 
 more generic, vaguer, broader in their emotion. 
 They were intended to be sung in every place 
 where men and women met together for society 
 and recreation. Consequently, their authors 
 tuned them to what Browning called " the common 
 chord," '* the C major of this life. The songs of 
 the dramatists, on the other hand, cannot easily 
 
 h
 
 262 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 be detached from their context, from the situations 
 they were meant to accentuate. The playwrights 
 wrote them, as I have attempted to prove, in 
 order to give the highest value, to strike the 
 key-note of their compositions. Perhaps we ought 
 not to ascribe deliberate intention to the authors 
 of these stage songs. But being penetrated with 
 the dramatic situation, this forced them, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, to a special treatment 
 of the lays they wrote for it. Therefore, the 
 emotion expressed is specific, definite, connected 
 with the particular movement and motive of the 
 plays where they occur. It follows that the 
 dramatic song is more intense, high-pitched, and 
 thrilling, than the lyric meant for chamber music. 
 There is more concentrated stuff of thought and 
 passion directed to a single psychological moment 
 in its poetry. 
 
 I do not wish to assert that this is invariably 
 the case. Examples might be culled from the 
 drama in which the song is only interpolated as 
 a pleasing ditty. Examples, again, might be 
 selected from Campion, in which the song seems 
 to demand a dramatic setting. But, broadly 
 speaking, I think that this distinction holds good. 
 
 I have treated our romantic drama from the 
 point of view of lyric poetry, and have tried to 
 demonstrate its constant striving after lyrical ex- 
 pression in the handling of blank verse, and the
 
 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 263 
 
 culmination of that effort in the songs written to 
 illustrate certain leading motives or decisive 
 situations of the action. 
 
 This position is confirmed when we pass from 
 the Elizabethan to the Restoration playwrights. 
 The Comedy of the Restoration was essentially 
 non-lyrical ; and that is equally true of its 
 tragedy. Even in Otway we do not discover the 
 lyrical interbreathings which were so marked a 
 feature of Elizabethan literature. Dryden gives 
 us plenty of robust declamation and sonorous 
 rhetoric ; but the note of his drama is not poeti- 
 cal. As might be expected, the songs of this 
 period are defective in poetic feeling and fancy. 
 Some of Congreve's have an exquisite finish, a 
 sparkling brilliancy ; but their finish and their 
 sparkle are those of a paste diamond. Dryden 
 wrote rough, commonplace, and tawdry lyrics for 
 the stage. I will quote a stanza from The Spanish 
 Friar y which deserves attention, not only because 
 it exhibits the extraordinary want of charm in 
 Dryden's stage-songs, but also because it first 
 exemphfied the metrical scheme which Swinburne 
 adopted for his Garden of Proserpine : 
 
 Farewell, Jingrateful traitor, 
 
 Farewell, my perjured swain ! 
 
 Let never injured creature 
 Believe a man again.
 
 264 THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC DRAMA 
 
 The pleasure of possessing 
 Surpasses all expressing : 
 But His too short a blessing, 
 And love too long a pain. 
 
 Mr. Swinburne deserves credit for having 
 perceived the capacities of this stanza, and for 
 constructing the silk purse of his immortal poem 
 out of such a veritable sow's ear.
 
 LYRICS FROM ELIZABETHAN 
 SONG-BOOKS 
 
 There are epochs in the literature of nations 
 when something resembling clairvoyance into 
 poetry — a true instinct as to its conditions, 
 together with the power of shaping language 
 in accordance with this intuition — seems to be 
 universally distributed throughout the people. 
 Such an epoch , in the case of England, was that 
 to which Elizabeth gave her name, although it 
 extended in duration considerably beyond the 
 queen's lifetime. Throughout this period we 
 find the English singularly gifted with dramatic 
 and lyrical genius. 
 
 The songs of the time have a freshness and 
 a certainty of cadence, as of some bird's note. 
 Those scattered through the drama are compara- 
 tively well known. But we have only in recent 
 days become acquainted with the verses written
 
 266 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 for chamber-music, many of which are no less 
 rare and beautiful. 
 
 The first collection of lyrics reprinted from 
 old English song-books, so far as I am aware, 
 was Mr. Thomas Oliphant's Musa MadrigalescUy 
 published in 1837. It contained a liberal 
 anthology from Byrd, Dowland, Weelkes, Morley, 
 Wilbye, Gibbons, Ford, Vautor, and three 
 anonymous sources — Melismatay Pammeliay Deu- 
 teromelia — which have been ascribed with pro- 
 bability to Thomas Ravenscroft. Mr. Oliphant 
 added much curious bibliographical and bio- 
 graphical information, together with copious dis- 
 cursive notes. Yet his book is, on the whole, 
 unsatisfactory ; for the compiler exercised no 
 critical discrimination, but admitted the veriest 
 trash of bad translations from the Italian, side by 
 side with exquisite gems of EngHsh composi- 
 tion. 
 
 Between the years 1879 and 1883 Professor 
 Arber, to whose indefatigable industry and exact 
 scholarship our literature is indebted for so many 
 recovered treasures, printed entire collections of 
 Byrd, Yonge, Campion, Rosseter, Dowland, 
 Alison, and Wilbye. 
 
 Adhering to his fixed principles in dealing 
 with such reprints, Arber reproduced the origi- 
 nal texts of these old books without alteration 
 in successive volumes of his English Garner,
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 267 
 
 Though accessible to students, and eminently 
 valuable by their textual fidelity, these republi- 
 cations are hardly calculated to make the l3Tics 
 from the song-books widely popular. Like 
 Oliphant's anthology, they diffused a good deal 
 of inferior literary matter, together with much 
 that was both admirable and new. Campion's 
 and Rosseter's songs, in particular, opened up a 
 mine of exquisite lyrical melody, the existence of 
 which had been forgotten. 
 
 In 1883, Mr. W. J. Linton's collection, entitled 
 Raj'e Poems of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Cen~ 
 turieSj showed what use for purely literary purposes 
 could be made of the Elizabethan song-books. 
 While culling pieces from eminent authors — 
 Sidney, Jonson, Beaumont, Waller, Lovelace and 
 Marvell — Mr. Linton drew freely upon Dowland, 
 Byrd, Morley, Wilbye, Weelkes, Ford, Farmer, 
 and the other sources edited by Oliphant and 
 Arber. 
 
 It remained for Mr. A. H. Bullen to present 
 the public with a full and critical selection of the 
 choicest pieces. His Lyrics from the Song-Books 
 of the Elizabethan Age, which appeared in 1887, 
 resumed the labours of his predecessors, and 
 widely extended the field of research. This 
 volume has been followed by a second, under 
 the same title. Not only has Mr. Bullen care- 
 fully examined and collected the song-books
 
 268 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 previously edited by Oliphant and Arber; but 
 he has disinterred large numbers of entirely new 
 lyrics, partly from rare copies extant in public 
 and private libraries, partly also from MS. 
 sources undreamed of by the ordinary student 
 and inaccessible to nearly every one. The result 
 is that his anthologies are, without comparison, 
 the richest in variety of materials. But that is 
 not their only feature. What renders them of 
 special value from the point of view of literature, 
 as distinguished from scholarship, is that he has 
 employed a fine critical taste and sound judgment 
 in making his selections. Those who shall take 
 the trouble to compare his specimens from Byrd, 
 Yonge, Dowland, Campion, Alison, and Wilbye, 
 with Arber's reprints, will find that he has 
 skimmed the cream for us, beside introducing 
 many fresh jewels of bright and delicate lustre. 
 
 These lyrics from the song-books have not the 
 intensity of some songs introduced into dramas 
 of the Elizabethan period. They are rarely so 
 high-strung and weighty with meaning as Web- 
 ster's dirges, or as Ford's and Shirley's solemn 
 descants on the transitiveness of earthly love 
 and glory. Nor again do we often welcome in 
 them that fulness of romantic colour, which 
 makes the lyrics of Beaumont and Fletcher so 
 resplendent. This is, perhaps, because their 
 melodies are not the outgrowth of dramatic
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 269 
 
 situations, but have their Hfe and being in the 
 more aerial element of musical sound. For the 
 purposes of singing they are exactly adequate, 
 being substantial enough to sustain and animate 
 the notes, and yet so slight as not to overburden 
 these with too much reflection and emotion. We 
 feel that they have arisen spontaneously from 
 the natural and facile marrying of musical words 
 to musical phrases ; they are the right and 
 fitting verbal counterpart to vocal and instru- 
 mental melody ; hmpid, liquid, never surcharging 
 the notes which need them as a vehicle with 
 complexities of fancy, involutions of thought, or 
 the disturbing tyranny of vehement passions. It 
 is clear in many cases that the literary and the 
 musical parts of these delicious compositions 
 were begotten simultaneously. This is the 
 right quality of song ; the presence of this 
 indicates true familiarity with musical require- 
 ments in England of the sixteenth century. 
 
 Who were the authors of these lyrics ? That 
 is a difficult question to answer. The large 
 majority must be accepted as anonymous, or in 
 the more delicate language of the old Greeks, as 
 '* masterless," a^£(T7rora. It would be uncritical 
 to assume that the composers of the music, under 
 whose names the books were issued, always 
 wrote their own poetry. Indeed, the contrary 
 can sometimes easily be proved ; for we find
 
 270 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 pieces by Sidney, Dyer, Drayton, and other 
 well-known poets, set to melodies. There is, 
 however, a strong presumption in favour of the 
 belief that John Dowland, Robert Jones, and 
 Thomas Campion, wrote their own words. The 
 greatest of these men was Campion ; and he has 
 now at last, through Mr. Bullen's complete edition 
 of his works, been restored to his right place 
 among the first and best of English lyrists. In 
 the preface to his Third Book of Airs, Campion 
 remarks : "In these English Airs I have chiefly 
 aimed to couple my words and notes lovingly 
 together ; which will be much for him to do that 
 hath not power over both." I take this to be 
 pretty conclusive proof, if other proof from the 
 testimony of contemporaries were wanting, that 
 Campion composed both words and notes in the 
 pieces published under his own name. Still, we 
 must not assume that every song in Campion's 
 books belongs to him. The evidence for John 
 Dowland's authorship is not quite so clear. Yet 
 the identity of style presented by those " rich 
 clusters of golden verse " — so Mr. Bullen describes 
 the songs in Dowland's books — together with the 
 absence from his prefaces of any reference to 
 other writers, will justify our hailing his touch 
 on language as no less heavenly than Richard 
 Barnfield found his touch upon the lute to be. 
 The songs of Robert Jones are in like manner
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 271 
 
 marked by signs of an individual style, which can 
 be best explained by supposing that he made his 
 own verses. 
 
 When we come to classify the topics of these 
 lyrics, it will be convenient to divide them 
 roughly under a few headings, (i) The first 
 group is composed of sacred ditties, hymns, in- 
 vocations, prayers, psalms of repentance, and 
 thanksgivings. (2) The second group includes 
 little poems upon human life, of that nature 
 which the Greeks called gnomic. Proverbial 
 wisdom is here expressed in flowing verse. 
 (3) The third group embraces the wide and 
 universal theme of love. We have to subdivide 
 it into songs of wooing supplicating love, of love 
 triumphant and enjoyed, of sorrowing and pining 
 love, of love rejected, of scornful and disdainful 
 love, and lastly of light love and ephemeral 
 flirtation. As will be readily conceived, this 
 third group is by far the largest. Some of its 
 lyrics are direct and poignant, arrows shot from 
 the bow-strings of the heart in moments of 
 unreflective feeling. Others assume the gentle 
 affectation of the pastoral style, which lends 
 itself so prettily to musical effect. In the former, 
 I and thou, the immortal personages of the heart's 
 duet, sing their undying descant from the solitude 
 of soul to soul. In the latter, Phyllis and Cory- 
 don, Thoralis and Lycidas, shepherd their flocks
 
 272 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 upon green lawns, and bend beribboned crooks 
 to the swaying of leafy boughs in spring or 
 summer. (4) A fourth group contains humorous 
 songs of many sorts ; some frankly comic, some 
 fitted for drinking-bouts and tavern-company, 
 some satirical, some trenching on the sphere of 
 politics. (5) To a fifth group, though it is a 
 small one, I would consign those compositions 
 which deal with the praise of music, as an 
 element in man's spiritual life. 
 
 It is my purpose to present a few choice 
 specimens of these several groups in turn. I 
 shall confine myself to Mr. Bullen's two volumes, 
 and, where I think this possible, I shall give the 
 author's name of each piece. These specimens 
 must be regarded only as samples, chosen, partly 
 at haphazard, partly through some personal sense 
 in me of their peculiar beauty. Many of the songs 
 which I omit to quote, will seem, in other eyes 
 than mine, of equal or superior excellence. What 
 Byrd wrote in the preface to his first collection 
 of English songs, holds good in a far wider sense 
 than he intended : — " Benign reader, here is 
 offered unto thy courteous acceptance, music of 
 sundry sorts, and to content divers humours." Out 
 of the hundreds of lyrics which Mr. Bullen has 
 selected, every man of taste and feeling will form 
 a different anthology of fifty. That is the charm 
 of this large river-head of song. We can all fill
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 273 
 
 our own pitchers at its fount of melody, and each 
 will be surprised to find that his neighbour has 
 brought something different away. 
 
 From the first group, that of pious songs, I will 
 begin by selecting one by Thomas Campion : 
 
 Awake, awake! thou heavy sprite 
 
 That steepest the deadly sleep of sin! 
 
 Rise now and walk the ways of light, 
 'Tis not too late yet to begin. 
 
 Seek heaven early, seek it late ; 
 
 True faith finds still an open gate. 
 
 Get tip, get up, thou leaden man! 
 
 Thy track to endless joy or pain, 
 Yields but the model of a span : 
 
 Yet burns out thy life's lamp in vain! 
 One minute bounds thy fame or bliss ; 
 Then watch and labour while time is. 
 
 Another of Campion's religious pieces has the 
 merit of simplicity and unaffected piety. 
 
 View me. Lord, a work of Thine ! 
 
 Shall I then lie drowned in night? 
 Might Thy grace in me but shine, 
 I should seem made all of light. 
 
 But my soul still surfeits so 
 
 On the poison'd baits of sin, 
 That I strange and ugly grow ; 
 
 All is dark and foul within
 
 274 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 Cleanse me. Lord, that I may kneel 
 At Thine altar pure and white: 
 
 They that once Thy mercies feel, 
 Gaze no more on earth^s delight. 
 
 Worldly joys like shadows fade 
 When the heavenly light appears : 
 
 But the covenants Thou, hast made, 
 Endless, know not days nor years. 
 
 In Thy Word, Lord, is my trust, 
 
 To Thy mercies fast I fly ; 
 Though I am but clay and dust, 
 
 Yet Thy grace can lift me high. 
 
 Here is a scrap from the MSS. preserved at 
 Christ Church Oxford, the metaphor of which 
 may serve as introduction to a far nobler com- 
 position from the same source : 
 
 Turn in, my Lord, turn into me, 
 
 My hearVs a homely place; 
 
 But Thou canst make corruption flee, 
 
 And fill it with Thy grace : 
 
 So furnished it will he brave, 
 
 And a rich dwelling thou shall have. 
 
 I hardly know with what words to preface the 
 next poem, only a fragment, alas ! as it appears 
 by the abrupt commencement. Its extreme 
 beauty of diction and dignity of phrase, its rich 
 and ample rhetoric, deep-coloured but subdued 
 in tone, mark it out for the work of no mere
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 275 
 
 'prentice hand in poetry. Could we think of it 
 as Vaughan's ? Its style is grander than that 
 of Herbert, more exquisite than that of Jonson, 
 more pompous than that of Herrick. Happy 
 indeed was Mr. Bullen, when this jewel, luminous 
 by reason even of the fracture which has shivered 
 it, sparkled before his eyes among the dusty MSS. 
 in Christ Church Library ! 
 
 Yet if his majesty our sovereign lord 
 
 Should of his own accord 
 
 Friendly himself invite, 
 
 And say " Vll be your guest to morrow night," 
 
 How should we stir ourselves, call and command 
 
 All hands to work! '''Let no man idle stand. 
 
 Set me fine Spanish tables in the hall. 
 
 See they be fitted all ; 
 
 Let there be room to eat, 
 
 And order taken that there want no meat. 
 
 See every sconce and candlestick made bright, 
 
 That without tapers they may give a light. 
 
 Look to the presence ! are the carpets spread, 
 
 The dais o'er the head. 
 
 The cushions in the chairs. 
 
 And all the candles lighted on the stairs? 
 
 Perfume the chambers, and in a?ty case 
 
 Let each man give attendance in his place.'' 
 
 Thus if the king were coming would we do, 
 
 And Hwere good reason too; 
 
 For His a duteous thing 
 
 To show all honour to an earthly king. 
 
 And after all our travail and our costt
 
 276 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 So he be pleased, to think no labour lost. 
 But at the coming of the King of Heaven 
 AWs set at six and seven: 
 We wallow in our sin, 
 Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn. 
 , We entertain him always like a stranger^ 
 And as at first still lodge him in a manger. 
 
 The music to these royal words was composed 
 by Thomas Ford. I wish that we could venture 
 to think that he wrote them. In that case 
 Thomas Ford would rank beside his illustrious 
 namesake, the tragic poet John Ford, as one of 
 the finest masters of our language. He was an 
 excellent musician, and made use of admirable 
 lyrics. Since I have introduced this subject, I 
 will submit two other poems which he set. 
 
 Since first I saw your face, I resolved to honour and 
 renown ye; 
 
 If now I be disdained, I wish my heart had never 
 known ye. 
 
 What ? I that loved and you that liked, shall we 
 begin to wrangle ? 
 
 No, no, no, my heart is fast, and cannot disen- 
 tangle. 
 
 If I admire or praise you too much, that fault you 
 
 may forgive me ; 
 Or if my hands had strayed but a touch, then justly 
 
 might you leave me.
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 277 
 
 / asked your leave, you bade me love ; isH now a 
 time to chide me ? 
 
 No, nOf no, Pll love you still, what fortune e^ev be- 
 tide me. 
 
 The sun whose beams most glorious are, rejecteth no 
 
 beholder ; 
 And your sweet beauty past compare made my poor 
 
 eyes the bolder. 
 Where beauty moves, and wit delights, and signs of 
 
 kindness bind me, 
 There, O there ! wherever I go, Pll leave my heart 
 
 behind me. 
 
 This is in the grand style also, the style of 
 subdued and loyal passion, deep and calm as the 
 flow of a steady river. The next piece, again set 
 by Ford, is in a lighter key of feeling. Yet it 
 retains something of the superb chivalrous 
 manner. Both emotion and diction are noble. 
 
 There is a lady sweet and kind; 
 Was never face so pleased my mind : 
 I did but see her passing by, 
 And yet I love her till I die. 
 
 Her gesture, motion, and her smiles, 
 Her wit, her voice, my heart beguiles, 
 Beguiles my heart, I know not why. 
 But yet I love her till I die. 
 
 Her free behaviour, winning looks, 
 Will make a lawyer burn his books; 
 I touched her not, alas! not I; 
 And yet I love her till I die*
 
 278 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 Cupid is winged, and doth range; 
 Her country so my love doth change; 
 But change she earth, or change she sky, 
 Yet will I love her till I die. 
 
 If Thomas Ford really composed these three 
 pieces of poetry which he set to music, we must 
 henceforth look upon him as the writer of three 
 of the most touching lyrics in our language. I 
 will resume my selections from the religious airs 
 in the song-books. Take this little piece from 
 John Danyel's Songs for the Lute, Viol and Voices 
 1606. Notice how it is steeped in the shadow 
 of religious gloom and deep compunction. 
 
 If I could shut the gate against my thoughts 
 And keep out sorrow from this room within, 
 
 Or memory could cancel all the notes 
 Of my misdeeds, and I tmthink my sin : 
 
 How free, how clear, how clean my soul should lie,. 
 
 Discharged of such a loathsome company ! 
 
 Or were there other rooms without my heart 
 That did not to my conscience join so 7iear, 
 
 Where I might lodge the thoughts of sin apart 
 That I might not their clamorous crying hear; 
 
 What peace, what joy, what ease should I possess, 
 
 Freed from their horrors that my soul oppress ! 
 
 But, O my Saviour, who my refuge art, 
 Let thy dear mercies stand Hwixt them and me. 
 
 And be the wall to separate my heart 
 So that I may at length repose me free ; 
 
 That peace, and joy, and rest may be within, 
 
 And I remain divided from my sin.
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 279 
 
 One of Campion's compositions, upon the 
 border-land between pious ditties and gnomic 
 pieces, may here be introduced. The second 
 stanza, though impaired by a certain slightness 
 of execution, which is not unfrequent in Campion, 
 begins very nobly and has a high and lofty tone 
 of feeling. 
 
 To music bent is my retired mind 
 
 And fain would I some song of pleasure sing, 
 
 But in vain joys no comfort now I find, 
 
 From heavenly thoughts all true delight doth spring: 
 
 Thy power, O God, thy mercies to record, 
 
 Will sweeten every note and every word. 
 
 All earthly pomp or beauty to express 
 Is but to carve hi snow, on waves to write; 
 Celestial things, though men conceive them less, 
 Yet fullest are they in themselves of light : 
 Such beams they yield as kjiow no means to die, 
 Such heat they cast as lifts the spirit high. 
 
 Moral and sententious poems, embodying 
 maxims upon life, are common enough in these 
 collections. Most of them turn upon the bless- 
 ings of content, and upon the contrast between a 
 courtier's or statesman's life and that of humble 
 folk and peasants. The key-note is struck in 
 that famous poem, which Sidney's friend Sir 
 Edward Dyer is said to have written. William 
 Byrd set it to music in 1588. 
 
 ^
 
 28o ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 My mind to me a kingdom is : 
 
 Such perfect joy therein I find 
 
 That it excels all other bliss 
 
 That God or nature hath assigned. 
 
 Though much I want, that most would have, 
 
 Yet still my mind forbids to crave. 
 
 More than one stanza need not be quoted from 
 a composition, already well-known to lovers of 
 our literature, while there are so many which 
 have escaped notice till the present date. 
 
 Here is something more original and fanciful, 
 also extracted from one of Byrd's books, 1611 : 
 
 In crystal towers and turrets richly set 
 
 With glittering gems that shine against the sun, 
 
 In regal rooms of jasper and of jet, 
 
 Content of mind not always likes to won; 
 
 But oftentimes it pleaseth her to stay 
 
 In simple cotes enclosed with walls of clay. 
 
 The following in like manner distinguishes 
 itself from the common run of such compositions. 
 It occurs in John Mundy's Songs and Psalms^ 
 1594: 
 
 Were I a king, I might command content; 
 Were I obscure, unknown should be my cares; 
 Arid were I dead, no thoughts should me torment, 
 Nor words, nov wrongs, nor cares, nor hopes, nor fears : 
 A doubtful choice, of three things one to crave — 
 A kingdom, or a cottage, or a grave.
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 281 
 
 Thomas Campion, with his religious and philo- 
 sophical soul, was abundant in such strains of 
 poetry. I will select one little piece, which 
 illustrates the loose but genial manner of trans- 
 lation common at that time. It is modelled upon 
 Horace, and has generally been ascribed, but 
 without sufficient reason, as I think, to Lord 
 Bacon : 
 
 The man of life upright, 
 
 Whose guiltless heart is free 
 
 From all dishonest deeds, 
 Or thought of vanity. 
 
 The man whose silent days 
 
 In harmless joys are spent, 
 Whom hopes cannot delude 
 
 Nor sorrow discontent. 
 
 That man needs neither towers 
 
 Nor armour for defence, 
 Nor secret vaults to fly 
 
 From thunder's violence. 
 
 He only can behold 
 
 With unaffrighted eyes 
 The horrors of the deep 
 
 And terrors of the skies. 
 
 Thus scorning all the cares 
 
 That fate or fortune brings, 
 He 7nakes the heaven his book. 
 
 His ivisdom heavenly things.
 
 282 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 Good thoughts his only friends, 
 His wealth a well-spent age. 
 
 The earth his sober inn 
 And quiet pilgrimage. 
 
 It is now time to embark upon that mighty 
 sea of lyrics which deal with Love and Beauty. 
 The key-note shall be struck by one stanza from 
 a little jewel, set to music by a certain Captain 
 Tobias Hume. The poem itself, like so many 
 of the best in the Greek anthology, is master- 
 less (aSf(77rorov) : 
 
 Love, they wrong thee much 
 That say thy sweet is bitter, 
 When thy rich fruit is siich 
 As nothing can be sweeter. 
 Fair house of joy and bliss, 
 Where truest pleasure is, 
 
 1 do adore thee; 
 
 I know thee what thou art, 
 I serve thee with my heart, 
 And fall before thee. * 
 
 If that is not the nectar of the gods, distilled 
 in golden numbers, I know not where to find it. 
 
 Have I found her ? O rich finding ! 
 
 Goddess-like for to behold ; 
 Her fair tresses seemly binding 
 
 In a chain of pearl and gold. 
 Chain me, chain me, O most fair. 
 Chain me to thee with that hair!
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 283 
 
 That, too, has no name of author. Yet it is 
 worthy, if not of Shakespeare, at least of the 
 romantic Fletcher. Listen to another, with the 
 dream of music in it. And notice how wonder- 
 fully the soul is tuned beforehand to its wavering 
 melodies by the first line, parent of the poem, 
 and parent doubtless of the air : 
 
 Give beauty all hey right ! 
 
 She's not to one form tied ; 
 Each shape yields fair delight, 
 
 Where her perfections bide : 
 Helen, I grant, might pleasing be, 
 And Ros'mond was as sweet as she. 
 
 Some the quick eye commends. 
 
 Some swelling lips and red; 
 Pale looks have many friends. 
 
 Through sacred sweetness bred : 
 Meadows have flowers that pleasures move, 
 Though roses are the flowers of love. 
 
 Free beauty is not bound 
 
 To one unmoved clime; 
 She visits every ground. 
 
 And favours every time. 
 Let the old lords with mine compare; 
 My sovereign is as sweet and fair. 
 
 Something in the careless touch upon the 
 verse, and something in the metaphysical turn of 
 thought, betrays the authorship of Campion. A 
 rare poet indeed would Campion have been, had
 
 284 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 not the music satisfied his sense of art in places 
 where the verbal melody runs shallow. Here is 
 a snatch of old song, also by Campion, in one 
 of his best moments ; an echo from Catullus : 
 
 My sweetest Lesbia, let its live and love; 
 
 And though the sagev sort our deeds reprove, 
 
 Let us not weigh them. Heaven's great lamps do dive 
 
 Into their west, and straight again revive; 
 
 But soon as once is set our little light, 
 
 Then must we sleep one evev-during night. 
 
 A lover says this to his lady : 
 
 Love not me for comely grace, 
 For my pleasing eye or face, 
 Nov for any outward part : 
 No, nor for a constant heart ! 
 For these may fail or turn to ill : 
 
 So thou and I shall sever. 
 Keep therefore a true woman's eye, 
 And love me still, but know not why : 
 So hast thou the same reason still 
 
 To dote upon me ever. 
 
 In the next song, one of Thomas Campion's, 
 we can hear the lilt of the music sounding in its 
 rhythm : 
 
 Kind are her answers, 
 
 But her performance keeps no day ; 
 
 Breaks time, as dancers, 
 
 From their own music when they stray.
 
 in 
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 285 
 
 A II her free favours and smooth words 
 Wing my hopes in vain. 
 O, did ever voice so sweet but only feign ? 
 Can true love yield such delay, 
 Converting joy to pain. 
 
 Another by Campion, again with its key-note 
 the leading hne, opens thus : 
 
 Shall I come, sweet Love, to thee 
 
 When the evening beams are set ? 
 
 Shall I not excluded be ? 
 
 Will you find no feigned let ? 
 
 Let me not, for pity, more 
 
 Tell the long hours at your door. 
 
 Here is good advice to ladies : 
 
 Never love tuiless you can 
 
 Bear with all the faults of man : 
 
 Men will sometimes jealous be 
 
 Though but little cause they see; 
 
 And hang the head as discontent, 
 
 And speak what straight they will repent. 
 
 Men that but one saint adore 
 Make a show of love to more; 
 Beauty must be scorned in none. 
 Though but truly served in one: 
 For what is courtship but disguise ? 
 True hearts may have dissembling eyes.
 
 286 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 Men, when their affairs require, 
 Must awhile themselves retire; 
 Sometimes hnnt and sometimes hawk, 
 And not ever sit and talk : 
 If these and such-like you can hear. 
 Then like, and love, and never fear ! 
 
 This, too, as I find, is by Thomas Campion. 
 Indeed I cannot keep my fingers from the ripe 
 clusters of his honeyed songs, which hang like 
 grapes upon the boughs of poetry. It is not 
 that I seek him out ; but he is so admirable in 
 his art that the airs which linger in my memory 
 are mostly his. Perhaps another gatherer of fruit 
 from this abundant garden would be attracted by 
 the songs of other singers. Campion has for me 
 particular charm. Listen to this deep harmony of 
 his. It is addressed to some cruel fair one : 
 
 When thou must home to shades of undevgroimd. 
 
 And there arrived, a new admired guest, 
 
 The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round. 
 
 White lope, blithe Helen, and the rest, 
 
 To hear the stories of thy finished love 
 
 From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move ; 
 
 Then wilt thou speak of banqueting delights. 
 Of masques and revels which sweet youth did make. 
 Of tourneys and great challenges of knights. 
 And all these triumphs for thy beauty's sake : 
 When thou hast told these honours done to thee. 
 Then tell, O tell, how thou didst murder me.
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 287 
 
 Was ever the entrance of a proud beauty into 
 the myrtle groves of Elysium, and her reception 
 by the fabled dames of Hellas, more delicately 
 imagined ? Was ever a scholar's and a courtier's 
 compliment more subtly turned to love's up- 
 braiding ? 
 
 Well, we must leave Campion for a moment. 
 Take one of the unnamed and unremembered 
 poets : 
 
 We must not part as others do. 
 
 With sighs and tears, as we zcere two : 
 
 Though with these outward forms we part, 
 
 We keep each other in the heart. 
 
 What search hath found a being where 
 
 I am not, if that thou be there? 
 
 True love hath wings, and can as soon 
 Survey the world as sun and moon; 
 And everywhere our triumphs keep 
 O'er absence which makes others weep : 
 By which alone a power is given 
 To live on earth, as they in heaven. 
 
 The spiritual note in that last couplet reminds 
 me of another love-ditty, again by Campion, which 
 paints love in its most celestial form. A lady 
 refuses her lover upon earth, and refers him to 
 the charity of souls in heaven, where there is 
 neither marrying nor giving in marriage :
 
 288 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 So quick, so hot, so mad is thy fond suit. 
 So nide, so tedious grown in urging me, 
 
 That fain I would with loss make thy tongue mute. 
 And yield some little grace to quiet thee : 
 
 An hour with thee I care not to converse. 
 
 For I would not be counted too perverse. 
 
 But roofs too hot would prove for me all fire. 
 And hills too high for my unused pace; 
 
 The grove is charged with thorns and the bold briar ; 
 Grey snakes the meadows shroud in every place: 
 
 A yellow frog, alas ! will fright me so 
 
 As I should start and tremble as I go. 
 
 Since then I can on earth no fit room find. 
 In heaven I am resolved with you to meet : 
 
 Till then, for hope's siveet sake, rest your tired mind. 
 And 7iot so much as see me in the street: 
 
 A heavenly meeting one day we shall have, 
 
 Btit never, as you dream, in bed or grave. 
 
 John Dowland shall now present us with one 
 of his dreamy melodies in linked sweetness long 
 drawn out : 
 
 Weep you no more, sad fountains ; 
 
 What need you flow so fast ? 
 Look how the snowy mountains 
 
 Heaven's sun doth gently waste ! 
 But my sun's heavenly eyes 
 
 View not your weepittg ; 
 
 That now lies sleeping 
 Softly, now softly lies 
 
 Sleeping.
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 289 
 
 Sleep is a reconciling^ 
 
 A rest that peace begets ; 
 Doth not the sun rise smiling^ 
 
 When fair at even he sets ? 
 Rest you then, rest^ sad eyes ! 
 
 Melt not in weeping; 
 
 While she lies sleeping, 
 Softly, now softly lies 
 
 Sleeping. 
 
 That is delicious in its drowsy way. And so 
 is the next, by Dowland also : 
 
 Flow not so fast ye fountains : 
 
 What needeth all this haste? 
 
 Swell not above your mountains, 
 
 Nor spend yonr time in waste. 
 
 Gentle springs, freshly yonr salt tears 
 Must still fall, dropping from their spheres. 
 
 Weep they apace, whom Reason 
 
 Or lingering Time can ease : 
 
 My sorrow can no season. 
 
 Nor ought besides appease. 
 
 Gentle springs, freshly your salt tears 
 Must still fall, dropping from their spheres. 
 
 Time can abate the terror 
 
 Of every common pain : 
 
 But common grief is error, 
 
 True grief will still remain. 
 
 Gentle springs, freshly your salt tears 
 Must still fall, dropping from their spheres, 
 
 T
 
 290 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 Dowland clearly was of the opinion that 
 "mountains" and ** fountains," "haste" and 
 "waste," "sleeping" and ''weeping," "tears" 
 and " spheres " were good. Indeed, the exqui- 
 site and ever fresh use which is made of these 
 hackneyed verse-materials by the old song- 
 writers stirs our wonder. " Cruel " and "jewel," 
 " treasure " and " measure," " fashion " and 
 "passion" recur again and again. We accept 
 the poor rhymes as part of the game, marvelling 
 at the lyrist's inventive skill in setting them. 
 Somehow, while we read, we feel the music 
 between the verses ; and the music justifies the 
 rhymes. 
 
 Let us now hear a maiden complaining of 
 man's inconstancy : 
 
 Go, htm away those cruel eyes, 
 
 For they have quite undone me; 
 
 They used not so to tyrannize, 
 
 When first those glances won me. 
 
 But 'tis the custom of you men — 
 False men, thus to deceive us: 
 
 To love but till we love again, 
 And then again to leave us. 
 
 Go, let alone my heart and me, 
 
 Which thou hast thus affrighted! 
 
 J did not think I could by thee 
 Have been so ill requited.
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 291 
 
 BtU now I find 'tis I must prove 
 
 That men have no compassion ; 
 When we are won, you never love 
 Poor women, but for fashion. 
 
 Do recompense my love with hate, 
 And kill my heart! Fnt sure 
 
 Thoii'lt one day say, when 'tis too late, 
 Thou never hadst a truer. 
 
 The man's tone, under similar circumstances, 
 is lighter, as the following ditty shows, one 
 stanza of which I will quote, because of its fan- 
 ciful refrain : 
 
 While that the sun with his beams hot 
 
 Scorched the fruits in vale and mountain^ 
 Philon, the shepherd, late forgot, 
 
 Sitting beside a crystal fountain, 
 In shadow of a green oak tree. 
 Upon his pipe this song played he : 
 Adieu, love! adieu, love! untrue love! 
 Untrue love ! untrue love ! adieu love ! 
 Your mind is light, soon lost for new love. 
 
 I mentioned Robert Jones as one of those 
 poets whose verses have a certain individuality. 
 The following is a fair specimen of his style : 
 
 How many new years have grown old 
 Since first your servant old was new ! 
 How many long hours have I told 
 Since first my love was vowed to you ! 
 And yet, alas! she doth not know 
 Whether her servant love or no.
 
 292 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 How many walls as white as s7iow, 
 And windows clear as any glass, 
 Have I conjured to tell yon so, 
 
 Which faithfully performed was ! 
 And yet youHl swear you do not know 
 
 Whether your servant love or no. 
 
 How often hath my pale lean face, 
 With true characters of my love, 
 Petitioned to you for grace, 
 Whoin neither sighs nor tears can move! 
 
 cruel, yet do you not know 
 Whether your servant love or no. 
 
 And wanting oft a better token, 
 
 1 have been fain to send my heart. 
 Which now your cold disdain hath broken^ 
 Nor can you heart by any art: 
 
 O look upon't, and you shall know 
 Whether your servant love or no. 
 
 The fluency of this poet, combined with a 
 certain substance of thought, may be exempHfied 
 by the following stanza : 
 
 Thine eyes, that some as stars esteem, 
 From whence themselves, they say, take light, 
 Like to the foolish fire I deem 
 That leads men to their death by night; 
 Thy words and oaths are light as wind, 
 And yet far lighter is thy mind; 
 Thy friendship is a broken reed 
 That fails thy friend in greatest need.
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 293 
 
 Robert Jones, however, when compared with 
 Campion and certain other tyrists, was but a 
 journeyman in verse. This airy little waif of 
 anonymous melody has more the ring of ster- 
 ling poetry than his lengthy and pretentious 
 compositions : 
 
 Favcivell, my love, I go, 
 If Fate will have it so ! 
 Yet, to content tis both, 
 Return again as doth 
 
 The bee unto the flower, 
 The cattle to the brook, 
 
 The shadow to the hour, 
 The fish unto the hook. 
 That ive may sport our fill 
 And love continue still. 
 
 And how metaphysical, how quaint, how fine 
 is this of Campion ! It seems to be an answer 
 to Shakespeare's ^' Tell me where is fancy 
 bred " : 
 
 Are you what your fair looks express? 
 
 O then be kind ! 
 From law of nature they digress 
 
 Whose form suits not their mind : 
 Fairness seen in th' outward shape 
 Is but th^ inward beauty's ape. 
 
 Eyes that of earth are mortal made. 
 What can they view ?
 
 294 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 All's hut a colour or a shade. 
 
 And neither always true: 
 Reason's sight, that is etern, 
 E'en the substance can discern. 
 
 Sold is the Man : for who will so 
 
 The body name? 
 And to that power all grace we owe. 
 
 That decks our living frame. 
 What or how had housen bin 
 But for them that dwell therein ? 
 
 Love in the bosom is begot, 
 
 Not in the eyes; 
 No beauty makes the eye more hot, 
 
 Her flames the sprite surprise : 
 Let our loving minds then meet, 
 For pure meetings are most sweet. 
 
 How grave and earnest are Campion's admo- 
 nitions to a Cherubino of the period ! 
 
 Thou joyest, fond boy, to be by many loved, 
 To have thy beauty of most dames approved; 
 For this dost thou thy native worth disguise. 
 And play est the sycophant f observe their eyes : 
 Thy glass thou- counselVst, more to adorn thy skin. 
 That first should school thee to be fair within. 
 
 'Tis childish to be caught ivith pearl or amber. 
 And womanlike too much to cloy the chamber ; 
 Youths should the fields affect, heat their rough steeds. 
 Their hardened nerves to fit for better deeds : 
 Is't not more joy strongholds to force with swords 
 Than women's weakness take with looks or words ?
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 295 
 
 Men that do noble things all purchase glory, 
 One man for one brave act hath proved a story ; 
 But if that one ten thousand dames overcame. 
 Who would record it, if not to his shame? 
 'Tis far more conquest with one to live true 
 Than every hour to triumph lord of new. 
 
 It is hard to believe that the man who com- 
 posed those serious Hnes, wrote also the follow- 
 ing piece of exquisite light fancy : 
 
 / care 7tot for these ladies 
 
 That must be woo'd and pray'd, 
 Give me kind Amaryllis, 
 
 The wanton coimtry maid : 
 Nature art disdaineth, 
 Her beauty is her own : 
 
 Her when we court and kiss : 
 
 She cries " Forsooth, let go ! ' 
 
 But when we come where comfort isj 
 
 She never will say " No.'' 
 
 If I love Amaryllis, 
 
 She gives me fruit and flowers ; 
 But if we love these ladies, 
 
 We must give golden showers. 
 Give them gold that sell love. 
 Give me the nut-brown lass. 
 
 Who when we court and kiss, 
 
 She cries ^^ Forsooth, let go!'' 
 
 But when we come where comfort iSy 
 
 She never will say " No."
 
 296 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 These ladies must have pillows 
 And beds by strangers wrought; 
 
 Give me a bower of willows^ 
 Of moss and leaves unbought : 
 
 And fresh Amaryllis, 
 
 With milk and honey fed, 
 
 Who when we court and kiss, 
 She cries ^^ Forsooth, let go!" 
 But when we come where comfort is, 
 She never will say '■^ No.'' 
 
 John Dowland's descant upon constancy in 
 love yields one stanza, worthy to rank with 
 Campion's in his philosophic mood: 
 
 Nature two eyes hath given. 
 
 All beauty to impart 
 As well in earth as heaven. 
 
 But she hath given one heart; 
 That though we see 
 Ten thousand beauties, yet in us One should be, 
 
 One steadfast love, 
 Because our hearts stand fixt although our eyes 
 do move. 
 
 Once more I must return to my beloved 
 master Campion. With what serene and simple 
 lucidity the thought flows, and how pleasantly 
 the cadence falls in these two stanzas : 
 
 When to her lute Corinna sings, 
 Her voice revives the leaden strings. 
 And doth in highest notes appear 
 As any challenged echo clear:
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 297 
 
 But when she doth of mourning speak, 
 E'eft with her sighs the strings do break. 
 
 And as her kite doth live or die, 
 
 Led by her passion, so must I : 
 
 For when of pleasure she doth sing, 
 
 My thoughts enjoy a sudden spring; 
 
 But if she doth of sorrow speak, 
 
 E'en from my heart the strings do break. 
 
 Hardly less beautiful in the same limpid 
 measure are the following lines by an anonymous 
 writer : 
 
 Dear, do not your fair beauty wrong 
 In thinking still you are too young ; 
 The rose and lily in your cheek 
 Flourish, and no more ripening seek; 
 Inflaming beams shot from your eye 
 Do show Love's Midsummer is nigh; 
 Your cherry lip, red, soft, and sweet. 
 Proclaims such fruit for taste is meet ; 
 Love is still young, a buxom boy. 
 And younglings are alloived to toy : 
 Then lose no time, for love hath wings, 
 A nd flies away from aged things. 
 
 Before quitting the Elysium of lovers, I shall in- 
 dulge myself in one more quotation. This shall 
 be a dialogue between a lover and his mistress, 
 composed by some unknown versifier. The 
 swain speaks in the first stanza, praying the 
 maiden of his heart to come forth from her
 
 298 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 chamber and walk the meadows with him. She 
 replies in the second, giving good reasons for 
 staying at home : 
 
 Opeji the door ! Who's there within ? 
 
 The fairest of thy mother's kin I 
 
 O come, come, come abroad 
 And hear the shrill birds sing, 
 
 The air with tunes that load ! 
 It is too soon to go to rest, 
 The sun not midway yet to west : 
 
 The day doth miss thee 
 And will not part until it kiss thee. 
 
 Were I as fair as you pretend. 
 Yet to an unknown seld-seen friend 
 I dare not ope the door: 
 
 To hear the sweet birds sing 
 
 Oft proves a dangerous thing. 
 The sun may run his wonted race 
 And yet not gaze on my poor face, 
 
 The day may miss me : 
 Therefore depart, you shall not kiss me. 
 
 So far as the lyrics from the song-books are 
 known to me, there is nothing gross or licentious 
 in them ; even those translated from Italian 
 sources have been bettered in tone by the pro- 
 cess, losing something of their sensuous languor, 
 assuming something of that fresh ethereal air 
 which is a peculiar beauty of English poetry in 
 the Elizabethan period.
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 299 
 
 I pass now to miscellaneous lyrics, some of 
 which take a humorous turn, while others 
 trench upon the ballad. Here is a quaint sort 
 of fable, extracted from Weelkes' Madrigals, 
 1600 : 
 
 A sparrow-hawk proud did hold in wicked jail 
 Music's sweet chorister, the nightingale, 
 To whom with sighs she said: "O set me free ! 
 And in my song Fll praise no bird but thee.'' 
 The hawk replied, " / will not lose my diet 
 To let a thousand such enjoy their quiet," 
 
 The next catch, in which an owl is addressed, 
 has something of the same quaintness ; though 
 why owls should be localized in Suffolk, I cannot 
 say. It comes from Vautor's Songs of divers 
 Airs and Natures, 1600 : 
 
 Sweet Suffolk owl, so trimly dight 
 With feathers like a lady bright. 
 Thou sing'st alo7ie, sitti^ig by night, 
 Te whit, fe whoo ! 
 
 Thy note, that forth so freely rolls, 
 With shrill command the mouse controls, 
 And sings a dirge for dying souls, 
 Te whit, te whoo! 
 
 There is a charming little poem in which one 
 girl bids her sister wake at dawn, inviting her to 
 wander forth into the park beneath their window. 
 We owe this to Bateson's Firsi set of English 
 Madrigals, 1604 :
 
 300 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 Sister, awake ! close not your eyes ! 
 
 The day her light discloses, 
 And the bright morning doth arise 
 
 Out of her bed of roses. 
 
 See, the clear sun, the world's bright eye, 
 
 In at our window peeping : 
 Lo ! how he blusheth to espy 
 
 Us idle wenches sleeping. 
 
 Therefore, awake ! make haste, I say. 
 
 And let us, without staying, 
 A II in our gowns of green so gay 
 
 Into the park a-maying. 
 
 What a dewy morning-freshness greets us in 
 these careless stanzas ; how prettily the ruddy 
 dawn is turned into conceits of roses and of 
 blushes. The style is so simple, the feeling so 
 spontaneous, that we pardon those innocent 
 concetti. And the last line carries with it a waft 
 from the burden of a greater poet's masterpiece : 
 
 Come, my Corinna, come, leVs go a-maying. 
 
 Ravenscroft's Melismata and Deiiteromelia deal 
 with a different class of airs from those which 
 have hitherto delayed us. It is in these collec- 
 tions that we find the pathetic old ballad of the 
 Three Ravens, with the melody which Jenny 
 Lind made famous by her thrilling voice and fine
 
 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 301 
 
 dramatic declamation some five-and-twenty years 
 ago. Here too is the catch of the three sailors : 
 
 We be three poor manners. 
 
 ^^A wooing song of a Yeoman of Kent's 
 Son " is another anonymous ditty borrowed from 
 Melismata: 
 
 I have house and land in Kent, 
 And if yon love me, love me now ; 
 
 Twopence-halfpenny is my rent, 
 I cannot come every day to ivoo. 
 
 (Chorus) Twopence-halfpenny is his rent, 
 
 And he cannot come every day to woo. 
 
 This humorous song, extending to many stanzas, 
 still survives upon the lips of our rustic popula- 
 tion. You may hear it, with local variations, at 
 merry-makings in Somersetshire. 
 
 One word in conclusion. The songs we have 
 read together are unequal in artistic merit. 
 Some few of them may be valued as flawless 
 gems ; and these will pass, I doubt not, into the 
 Golden Treasuries of English lyric poetry. An 
 attentive ear, however, catches many defective 
 accents, halting cadences, slovenly and careless 
 rhymes, prosaic phrases breaking disagreeably 
 on the rhythm. We have to remember that they 
 were made for the singing voice and viol. The 
 unheard melodies of that old music ought to
 
 302 ELIZABETHAN SONG-BOOKS 
 
 sound in our brain while reading them. I do not 
 say this by way of excuse or apology. I only 
 wish to indicate the way in which they should be 
 taken. Their charm of unaffected grace, their 
 beauty and fragrance as of wilding flowers, re- 
 main precious gifts. Few poets, alas ! in this 
 age, are natural enough to ^' recapture that first 
 fine careless rapture/' which was as native to the 
 lyrists of the sixteenth century as to thrush or 
 linnet. 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. 
 London and Edtnburgh
 
 JAN 2 4 1963 
 
 BEC'B La-wui 
 
 on APK2 4ig74 
 
 APR 1 7 1974 
 
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