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 SELECTED WRITINGS 
 OF WILLIAM SHARP 
 
 UNIFORM EDITION 
 ARRANGED BY 
 MRS. WILLIAM SHARP 
 
 VOLUME II
 
 STUDIES AND 
 APPRECIATIONS 
 
 BY WILLIAM SHARP 
 
 SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY 
 
 MRS. WILLIAM SHARP 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 1912
 
 When I speak of Criticism I have in 
 mind not merely the more or less deft use 
 of commentary or indication, but one of 
 the several ways of literature, and in 
 itself a rare and -fine art : the marriage 
 of science that knows and of spirit that 
 discerns. The basis of Criticism is 
 imagination, its spiritual quality is 
 simplicity, its intellectual distinction is 
 balance. 
 
 WILLIAM SHARP
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE SONNET : ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND 
 
 HISTORY i 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS 71 
 
 GREAT ODES 106 
 
 " LA JEUNE BELGIQUE " 140 
 
 SAINTE-BEUVE 188 
 
 THE MODERN TROUBADOURS 249 
 
 SOME DRAMAS OF GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO 309 
 
 ITALIAN POETS OF TO-DAY 337 
 
 THE HEROIC AND LEGENDARY LITERATURE 
 
 OF BRITTANY 394 
 
 THE SEVENFOLD NEED IN LITERATURE 422 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 423
 
 THE SONNET 
 
 ITS CHARACTERISTICS AND HISTORY 
 
 FOR the concise expression of an isolated 
 poetic thought an intellectual or sensuous 
 " wave " keenly felt, emotionally and 
 rhythmically the sonnet would seem to 
 be the best medium, the means apparently 
 prescribed by certain radical laws of melody 
 and harmony; in other words, of nature ; 
 even as the swallow's wing is the best for 
 rapid volant wheel and shift, as the heron's 
 for mounting by wide gyrations, as that of the 
 kite or the albatross for sustained suspension. 
 
 To bring this more clearly home to the 
 mind of the reader unacquainted with the 
 true scope of our sonnet-literature and of 
 the technique of the sonnet itself, and to 
 illustrate its development and capacities, is 
 the aim of this essay. 
 
 It is no new ground that is here broken. 
 The sonnet has had many apologists and 
 critical historians, and has been considered 
 from many points of view. Chief among 
 
 II I A
 
 those of our countrymen who have devoted 
 themselves to the special study of this 
 fascinating poetic vehicle may be named 
 the following : Capel Lofft, who in 1813-14 
 published under the title of Laura a valuable 
 and interesting but very unequal and badly 
 arranged anthology of original and trans- 
 lated sonnets ; R. F. Housman, who in 
 1833 issued a good selection, with an 
 interesting prefatory note ; Dyce, whose 
 small but judiciously compiled volume was 
 a pleasant possession at a time when 
 sonnet-literature gained but slight public 
 attention ; Leigh Hunt, who laboured in 
 this field genuinely con amore ; Charles Tom- 
 linson, whose work on the sonnet has much of 
 abiding value ; John Dennis, whose English 
 Sonnets served as an unmistakable index 
 to the awakening of general interest in this 
 poetic form ; David M. Main, an accom- 
 plished student of literature and a critic 
 possessing the true instinct, whose honour 
 it is to have produced the most exhaustive 
 sonnet-anthology with quite a large volume- 
 ful of notes in our language (for Capel 
 Lofft's Laura is largely made up of Italian 
 sonnets and translations) ; Samuel Wadding- 
 ton, who a year or two ago produced two 
 pleasant little volumes of selections ; and, 
 2
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 finally, Hall Caine, whose Sonnets of Three 
 Centuries at once obtained the success which 
 that ably edited compilation deserved. To 
 all these writers, but, from the student's 
 point of view, of course more especially 
 to Main, the present editor is indebted, as 
 must be every future worker in this secluded 
 but not least beautiful section of the Garden 
 of Poetry. There are, moreover, one or two 
 students who have done good service in 
 this cause without having published in book 
 form either their opinions or any sonnet- 
 anthology ; especially among these should 
 reference be made to the anonymous writer 
 of two admirable papers on the sonnet in 
 the Quarterly Review (1866) ; to the anony- 
 mous author of the thoughtful and sugges- 
 tive article in the Westminster Review (1871) ; 
 and to the anonymous contributor of the 
 two highly interesting papers on sonnet- 
 literature which appeared in the Dublin 
 Review for 1876 and 1877 ; to Ashcroft 
 Noble, a capable and discriminating critic, 
 whose article in the Contemporary Review 
 attracted considerable notice ; to the late 
 Rector of Lincoln College, Mark Pattison, 
 who prefaced his edition of Milton's sonnets 
 with a suggestive essay ; to the late Arch- 
 bishop Trench, the value of whose edition 
 3
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 of Wordsworth's sonnets is heightened in 
 the same way ; to J. Addington Symonds ; 
 and to Theodore Watts-Dunton, whose 
 influence in this direction is very marked. 
 Nor should I omit to mention two charm- 
 ing French anthologies, La Monographic des 
 Sonnets of Louis de Veyrires and Le Livre 
 des Sonnets of Charles Asselineau. 
 
 The reasons for now issuing a new collec- 
 tion * are two : to show how much of the 
 poetic thought of our own time has been 
 cast in the mould of the sonnet, and how 
 worthy that mould is of the honour ; and, 
 by the formation of an anthology of which 
 the first and only absolute principle is the 
 inclusion of no sonnet that does not possess 
 of course in varying degree distinct 
 poetic value, to meet the widespread and 
 manifestly increasing appreciation of and 
 liking for this metrical form. Even yet no 
 more can with justice be said than that it 
 is limitedly popular, for not only is there still 
 a general ignorance of what a sonnet really 
 is and what technical qualities are essential 
 to a fine specimen of this poetic genus, but 
 a perfect plague of feeble productions in 
 f ourteen-lines has done its utmost, ever since 
 Wordsworth's influence became a recognised 
 * See Bibliographical Note. 
 4
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 factor, to render the sonnet as effete a form 
 of metrical expression as the irregular ballad- 
 stanza with a meaningless refrain. 
 
 Concerning every method of expression, 
 in each of the arts, there is always a pro and 
 contra ; but few metrical forms have been 
 more fortunate than the sonnet, for its 
 contras have generally been pronounced 
 either by persons quite ignorant of what 
 they were discussing or incapable of appre- 
 ciating any excellence save when meted out 
 as it were by the yard. On the other hand, 
 those who have studied it love it as the 
 naturalist loves his microscope and verit- 
 ably, like the microscope, it discloses many 
 beautiful things which, if embedded in some 
 greater mass, might have been but faintly 
 visible and incoherent. Then some of the 
 greatest of poets have used it, not a few 
 having selected it as the choicest mould into 
 which to cast their most personal, their 
 most vivid utterances : thus did Petrarca, 
 and thus in less exclusive degree did Dante 
 and Milton ; thus Shakespeare did, and 
 Mrs. Browning, and Wordsworth, and 
 Rossetti, and many another true poet in 
 our own and other lands. The stirring of 
 the poetic impulse is very markedly at work 
 among us at present, and there is no more 
 5
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 remarkable sign of the times than the 
 steadily growing public appreciation of the 
 sonnet as a poetic vehicle. For one thing, 
 its conciseness is an immense boon in these 
 days when books multiply like gossamer-flies 
 in a sultry June ; it is realised that if good 
 a sonnet can speedily be read and enjoyed, 
 that if exceptionally fine it can with ease 
 be committed to memory, and that if bad 
 it can be recognised as such at a glance, and 
 can be relegated to oblivion by the turning 
 of a single page. There is no doubt that the 
 writer in the Dublin Review is correct when 
 he regards " the increasing attention be- 
 stowed on the history and structure of the 
 sonnet as an indication of the growth of a 
 higher and healthier poetical taste." It 
 may be remembered that Leigh Hunt makes 
 a statement to the effect that the love of 
 Italian poetry has always been greatest in 
 England when English genius has been in 
 its most poetical condition ; this has, as I 
 think most will agree, been true in the past, 
 even up to so late a date as the middle of 
 this century, and if a renascence of this 
 interest have a prophetic quality, then we 
 should be on the eve of a new poetic period, 
 for once again early Italian poetry is claim- 
 ing its students and its many admirers. And 
 6
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 perhaps nothing in Italian poetry is better 
 worth study than its beautiful sonnet-litera- 
 ture. Whether in Italy or in England, " no 
 form of verse," as Waddington has well 
 remarked, " no description of poetic com- 
 position, has yielded a richer harvest than 
 the sonnet." One can agree with this without 
 fully endorsing Menzini's statement that the 
 sonnet is the touchstone of great geniuses ; 
 for it must not be overlooked that some of 
 our truest poets, living as well as dead, are 
 unable to write sonnets of the first class 
 noticeably, for instance, two such masters 
 of verbal music as Shelley and Coleridge 
 nor must it for a moment be forgotten 
 that no one form has a monopoly of the most 
 treasurable poetic beauty, that the mould 
 is a very secondary matter compared with 
 the substance which renders it vital, and 
 that a fine poem in not altogether the best 
 form is infinitely better than a poor or 
 feeble one in a flawless structure. As a 
 matter of fact, poetic impulse that arises 
 out of the suddenly kindled imagination 
 may generally be trusted instinctively to 
 find expression through the medium that 
 is most fitting for it. To employ a humble 
 simile, a poetic idea striving towards or 
 passing into utterance is often like one of 
 
 7
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 those little hermit-crabs which creep into 
 whatever shell suits them the moment they 
 are ready to leave their too circumscribed 
 abodes. Poetry I take to be the dynamic 
 condition of the imaginative and rhythmical 
 faculties in combination, finding expression 
 verbally and metrically and the animating 
 principle is always of necessity greater than 
 the animated form, as the soul is superior 
 to the body. Before entering on the subject 
 of the technique of the sonnet, on its chief 
 types, and on its legitimate and irregular 
 variations, a few words may be said con- 
 cerning the derivation of its name and its 
 earliest history. 
 
 It is generally agreed that " sonnet " is an 
 abbreviation of the Italian sonetto, a short 
 strain (literally, a little sound), that word 
 being the diminutive of suono = sound. The 
 sonetto was originally a poem recited with 
 sound, that is, with a musical accompani- 
 ment, a short poem of the rispetto kind, sung 
 to the strains of lute or mandolin. Prob- 
 ably it had an existence, and possibly even 
 its name, at a period considerably anterior 
 to that where we first find definite mention 
 of it, just as the irregular stanzaic form known 
 as the ballad existed in England and Scotland 
 prior to any generally accepted definition 
 8
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 thereof. As to its first birthplace there is 
 some uncertainty. It has been asserted to 
 have been a native of Provence, that mother 
 of poets, but some have it that the sonnet 
 is an outcome of the Greek epigram. This 
 idea is certainly not defensible, but, while 
 it has been ridiculed as unworthy of enter- 
 tainment, the scoffers seem generally to have 
 had in mind the modern epigram, a very 
 different thing. The essential principle of 
 the ancient epigram was the presentment of 
 a single idea, emotion, or fact, and in this 
 it is entirely at one with the rival that has 
 supplanted it but in technique it was much 
 simpler. It is much more likely that the 
 stornello was the Italian equivalent of the 
 sonnet that fleeting bar of verbal melody, 
 which in its narrow compass of two lines 
 presents one fact of nature and one 
 metaphorical allusion based thereon. The 
 stornello stands in perhaps even closer rela- 
 tionship to the ancient epigram than the 
 rispetto to the modern sonnet. To readers 
 interested in the true epigram, and unac- 
 quainted with recent translations of or 
 works thereon, I may recommend Dr. 
 Richard Garnett's delightful little volume, 
 Idylls and Epigrams, and William Watson's 
 Original Epigrams, with its admirable Note. 
 9
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 Housman compares the epigram and the 
 sonnet to the well-known Grecian archi- 
 tectural types, the Ionic column and the 
 Corinthian the former a specimen of pure 
 and graceful beauty, the latter of more 
 elaborate but still of equally pure and 
 graceful genius. A very far-fetched theory 
 is that the sonnet is an Italian shadow of 
 the ancient ode, its divisions corresponding 
 with the strophe, antistrophe, epode, and 
 antepode. It is not in the least likely that 
 this may have been its origin ; it is scarcely 
 more probable that its source may have been 
 the ancient epigram. In all likelihood it was 
 of Sicilian birth, gradually forming or being 
 moulded into a certain recognised type, and 
 apparently the outcome of the stornelli 
 which every contadino sang as he pruned 
 his olive-trees or tended his vines. Yet 
 another origin has been claimed for the 
 word, viz., that it is the French sonnette, 
 and that its parentage may be primarily 
 ascribed to the tinkling sheep-bells of 
 Provencal days. The stornello is the germ of 
 its popular allies, the sestina rima, ottava 
 rima, and the rispetto. The stornello con- 
 sists of two lines, or it may be of four, on 
 two rhymes ; and from this metrical type 
 issues in time the sonnet. The sestina rima 
 10
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 is the original quatrain with an added 
 couplet on a new rhyme ; the ottava rima is 
 an expansion of the original form into six 
 lines on two rhymes, with a concluding 
 couplet as in the sestina ; in the rispetto, as 
 accurately characterised by J. A. Symonds, 
 the quatrain is doubled or prolonged inde- 
 finitely, and is followed by an additional 
 system of one or more couplets which return 
 or reflect upon the original theme, the 
 quatrain or its expansion being composed 
 upon two rhymes, the prolongation, or 
 return, upon two other rhymes. In the 
 sonnet the germinal four lines have developed 
 into two quatrains, still on two rhymes : and 
 the prolongation invariably consists of six 
 lines, on either two or three rhymes, with 
 some freedom of arrangement. 
 
 Like a plant of steady growth, the seedling 
 of the sonnet, having fallen into suitable 
 ground somewhere about the middle of the 
 thirteenth century, gradually forced its 
 obscure and tortuous way towards the light. 
 Considerably before the close of the thir- 
 teenth century we find it in fulfilled bud, in 
 due time to open into the mature Petrarcan 
 flower, the perfected stock whence such a 
 multiplicity of varieties has come. Many 
 buds did indeed arise about the same 
 ii
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 period, and there is still preserved at Milan 
 (according to Muratori, in his Perfetta Poesia) 
 a manuscript Latin treatise on poems in the 
 Italian vernacular Poetica volgare written 
 in the year 1332 by a learned and ingenious 
 judge of Padua named Antonio di Tempo, 
 wherein mention is made of sixteen distinct 
 species of sonnet, most of them posterior 
 to the unfolding of the finest and most 
 energetic bud, but some anterior thereto. 
 To carry on the metaphor a little further, 
 the gardener who tended and cultivated this 
 choice bud was a certain clerical poet known 
 widely as Fra Guittone d'Arezzo not the 
 least worthy among the illustrious little band 
 which that small Italian town has produced. 
 At the same time, such honour as is due must 
 be rendered to a little-known predecessor in 
 the art, the author of the sonnet beginning 
 Perd ch'amore, which, as J. A. Symonds has 
 pointed out, is presumably the earliest 
 extant example of this metrical structure. 
 The poet in question was Piero delle Vigne, 
 Secretary of State to Frederick II. of Sicily, 
 and while his little poem differs from the 
 typical Italian sonnet in that the rhyme- 
 arrangement of the octave is simply that of 
 two ordinary conjoint quatrains, or two 
 rhymes throughout, it is a true example in 
 12
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 all other particulars. Fra Guittone flourished 
 during the greater part of the thirteenth 
 century, and he it was who first definitely 
 adopted and adhered to what was even then 
 recognised as the best modern form for the 
 expression of an isolated emotion, thought, 
 or idea. His sonnets are not only the model 
 of those of his great successor, Petrarca, but 
 are also in themselves excellent productions, 
 and especially noteworthy when considered 
 in relation to the circumstances under which 
 they came into existence. From the work 
 of Guittone d'Arezzo whom Capel Lofft 
 called the Columbus of poetic literature, 
 from his having discovered the sonnet 
 even as the Genoese navigator discovered 
 America to that of the sweetest-voiced 
 of all Italian poets, there is a considerable 
 step. The period was eminently an experi- 
 mental one, and in sonnet-literature as 
 elsewhere. While the Guittonian sonnet 
 remained the most admired model, many 
 variations thereof and divergencies therefrom 
 became temporarily popular, exerting an un- 
 fortunate influence by allowing free scope to 
 slovenly or indifferent workmanship. But 
 Petrarca and Dante laid an ineffaceable 
 seal on the Guittonian form, not prohibit- 
 ing minor variations, and even themselves 
 13
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 indulging in experimental divergencies ; in the 
 hands of the one it gained an exquisite beauty, 
 a subtle music abidingly sweet, and in those 
 of the other a strength and vigour that 
 supplied as it were the masculine element to 
 the already existent feminine. Tasso and the 
 other great Italians followed suit, and the 
 sonnet became the favourite Italian poetic 
 vehicle, as it remains to this day, though, 
 alas ! but the body still lives, the soul having 
 fled or it may be lying in a profound 
 and apparently undisturbable trance. J. A. 
 Symonds has objected that this statement 
 can hardly be taken literally in view of the 
 excellent poems of Stecchetti and the Verini, 
 but, broadly speaking, it can hardly be 
 doubted that the sonnet in Italy has fallen 
 upon evil days when it is mostly to be found 
 adorning young ladies' albums, or as an 
 accompaniment to presents of flowers and 
 confectionery. In due course Camoens in 
 the South, Du Bellay and the early French 
 poets in the West, and Surrey and Spenser 
 in England, turned towards this form as 
 birds towards a granary unroofed by the 
 wind. Concerning Hall Caine's theory that 
 the English sonnet is an indigenous growth, 
 I shall have something to say later on. 
 It will be well to consider the sonnet in a 
 14
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 threefold aspect : the aspect of Formal 
 Excellence, that of Characteristic Excellence, 
 and that of Ideal Excellence. By the first 
 I refer to technique simply ; by the second 
 to individuality, expression ; by the third 
 to the union of imagination, suggestiveness, 
 melody of word and line, and harmony of 
 structure. The section of this essay devoted 
 to the consideration of Formal Excellence may 
 be comprehensively headed Sonnet-Structure. 
 
 Sonnet-Structure. It is a matter of sur- 
 prise that even now there are many well- 
 read people who have no other idea of what 
 a sonnet is than that it is a short poem 
 what kind of short poem they very vaguely 
 apprehend. I have heard it described as 
 any short poem of one or more stanzas used 
 for filling up blank spaces in magazine- 
 pages a definition not so very absurd when 
 we remember that a poet and critic like 
 Coleridge pronounced it "a medium for 
 the expression of a mere momentary burst 
 of passion." But the majority of readers of 
 poetry know that it is limited to fourteen 
 lines in length ; beyond this the knowledge 
 of all save a comparative few does not go. 
 
 The commonest complaint against the 
 sonnet is its supposed arbitrariness a com- 
 plaint based on a complete misconception 
 15
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 of its nature. In the sense that a steersman 
 must abide by the arbitrary law of the com- 
 pass, in the sense that the engine-driver 
 must abide by the arbitrary machinery of 
 the engineer, in the sense that the battalion 
 must wheel to the right or left at the arbitrary 
 word of command in this sense is the sonnet 
 an arbitrary form. Those who complain 
 seem to forget that the epic, the tragedy, the 
 ode, are also arbitrary forms, and that it is 
 somewhat out of place to rail against estab- 
 lished rules of architecture in the erection of 
 a cottage and to blink those in the building 
 of a mansion or a palace. Any form of 
 creative art, to survive, must conform to 
 certain restrictions : would Paradise Lost 
 hold its present rank if Milton had inter- 
 spersed Cavalier and Roundhead choruses 
 throughout his epic ? What would we think 
 of the Mneid if Virgil had enlivened its pages 
 with Catullan love-songs or comic inter- 
 ludes after the manner of Plautus or Terence? 
 The structure of the sonnet is arbitrary in 
 so far as it is the outcome of continuous 
 experiment moulded by mental and musical 
 influences ; it is not a form to be held sacred 
 simply because this or that great poet, or a 
 dozen poets, pronounced it to be the best pos- 
 sible poetic vehicle for its purpose . It has with- 
 16
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 stood the severest test that any form can be 
 put to : it has survived the changes of lan- 
 guage, the fluctuations of taste, the growth 
 of culture, the onward sweep and the resi- 
 lience of the wave of poetry that flows to 
 and fro, " with kingly pauses of reluctant 
 pride," across all civilised peoples, for 
 close upon six hundred years have elapsed 
 since Fra Guittone and Dante and Petrarca 
 found the perfect instrument ready for them 
 to play their sweetest music upon. Guittone 
 was like the first man who adventured fre- 
 quently upon the waters in a wedge-shaped 
 craft, after whom every one agreed that 
 grooved and narrow bows were better than 
 the roundness of a tub or the clumsy length 
 of a hollowed tree-trunk. Or again, he may 
 be compared with the great Florentine 
 painter Masaccio, who first introduced the 
 reality of life into Italian art, or with the 
 even greater Fleming, Jan van Eyck, who 
 invented, or at any rate inaugurated, painting 
 in oils as now understood. 
 
 The Guittonian limitation of the sonnet's 
 length to fourteen lines was, we may rest 
 assured, not wholly fortuitous. The musical 
 and poetic instinct probably, however, deter- 
 mined its final form more than any appre- 
 hension of the fundamental natural law 
 
 ii 17 B
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 beneath its metrical principles. The multi- 
 plicity and easy facility of Italian rhymes 
 rendered the more limited epigram of the 
 ancients too malleable a metrical material 
 in one way, and too obstinate a material in 
 another ; for, while almost any one with a 
 quick ear and ready tongue could have 
 rattled off a loose quatrain, it was difficult 
 to give sufficient weight and sonority there- 
 to with a language where rhyme-sounds 
 are as plentiful as pebbles in a shallow 
 mountain-stream. It became necessary, then, 
 to find a mould for the expression of a single 
 thought, emotion, or poetically apprehended 
 fact, which would allow sufficient scope for 
 sonority of music and the unfolding of 
 the motive and its application, and yet 
 would not prove too ample for that which 
 was to be put into it. Repeated experi- 
 ments tended to prove that twelve, fourteen, 
 or sixteen lines were ample for the presenta- 
 tion of any isolated idea or emotion ; again, 
 that the sensitive ear was apt to find the 
 latter number a shade too long, or cumbrous ; 
 and still later, that while a very limited 
 number of rhymes was necessitated by the 
 shortness of the poem, the sixteen rever- 
 berations of some three or four terminal 
 sounds frequently became monotonous and 
 18
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 unpleasing. Ten- or twelve-line poems were 
 ascertained to be as a rule somewhat frag- 
 mentary, and worthily served only when the 
 poet was desirous of presenting to his readers 
 a simple pearl rather than a diamond with its 
 flashing facets, though here also there was 
 not enough expansion for restricted rhyme, 
 while there was too much for merely two or 
 at the most three distinct terminal sounds. 
 Again, it was considered advisable that the 
 expression should be twofold, that is, that 
 there should be the presentation of the motive, 
 and its application ; hence arose the division 
 of the fourteen-line poem into two systems. 
 How were these systems to be arranged ? 
 Were seven lines to be devoted to the pre- 
 sentation of the idea or emotion, and seven 
 to its application : seven to the growth of 
 the tree, and seven to its fruitage : seven 
 to the oncoming wave, and seven to its 
 resurge ? The sensitive ear once more decided 
 the question, recognising that if there were 
 to be a break in the flow of melody and the 
 necessity of pauses it had already foreseen 
 it could not be at a seventh line, which 
 would bring about an overbalance of rhyme. 
 Experience and metrical music together 
 coincided to prove that the greatest amount 
 of dignity and beauty could be obtained by 
 19
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 the main pause occurring at the end of the 
 eighth line. Here, then, we arrive at the 
 two systems into which the sonnet is divided 
 the major and the minor ; and because 
 the major system consists of eight lines, it 
 is called the " octave," and correspondingly 
 the minor system is known as the " sestet." 
 It soon became evident, however, that some- 
 thing more was wanted : it was as if a harpist 
 had discovered that with another string or 
 two he could greatly add to the potential 
 powers of his instrument. This was the 
 number and the true distribution of rhyme- 
 sounds. How many were to occur in the 
 octave, how many in the sestet ? or were 
 they to pervade both systems indiscrimi- 
 nately ? Even before Dante and Petrarca 
 wrote their sonnets it was an accepted 
 canon that the octave lost its dignity if it 
 contained more than two distinct rhyme- 
 sounds, or at most three. In the sestet it 
 was recognised that a greater freedom was 
 allowable, if not in the number of rhyme- 
 sounds, at least in their disposition. Again, 
 Guittone had definitely demonstrated that 
 in length each sonnet-line should consist of 
 ten syllables, the decasyllabic metre per- 
 mitting a far greater sonority than the 
 octosyllabic ; and that acute experimen- 
 20
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 talist probably quite realised that continuous 
 sonority and unbroken continuity of motive 
 were two of the most essential characteristics 
 of the sonnet. No one who has any know- 
 ledge of the laws both of musical and of 
 poetical forms would be surprised if it were 
 proved, as has been asserted, that Fra 
 Guittone or his predecessors perceived and 
 acted in accordance with the close analogy 
 existing between their chosen metrical form 
 and the musical system established by Guido 
 Bonatti in the eleventh century. Throughout 
 Fra Guitt one's work it is evident that he is 
 no blind blunderer, but a poet striving to 
 make his vehicle the best possible, working 
 upon it with a determinate aim. 
 Sv: In most of his sonnets we find the following 
 arrangement : in the octave the first, fourth, 
 fifth, and eighth lines rhyme, and so do the 
 second, third, sixth, and^seventh. By^this ar- 
 rangement the utmost attainable dignity and 
 harmony is obtained, there being no clashing 
 of rhymes, no jingle, but a steady sweeping 
 wave-like movement entirely satisfactory to 
 the ear. There have been some fine sonnets 
 written with the introduction of a third 
 rhyme-sound into the octave (the termina- 
 tions of the sixth and seventh lines), and 
 there can be no doubt that if this were 
 
 21
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 equally satisfactory to the ear, a still greater 
 and most valuable expansion would be 
 given to the English sonnet ; but to the 
 sensitive ear, especially sensitive among 
 Italians, it is as out of place as some new 
 strain is in a melody that is already in 
 itself amply sufficient, and that loses in 
 effect by the alien introduction. This 
 variation never gained ground in Italy, 
 though in Spain it found favour with some 
 of the Castilian sonneteers as early as the 
 beginning of the fourteenth century. 
 
 It gained, instead of losing, in what 
 Theodore Watts-Dunton calls the soli- 
 darity of the outflowing waves by its nominal 
 subdivision into two basi, or bases, as the 
 Italians name what we call the quatrains : 
 upon these basi the poetic image could rest, 
 either rendered clear to the reader supported 
 on both, or appealing to him by an illumi- 
 nating gleam from one base and then by an 
 added light from the other. The octave of 
 the perfect sonnet, then, we find to consist 
 of two quatrains, capable of divisional 
 pause yet forming a solid whole : in all, 
 eight lines following a prescribed rhyme- 
 arrangement, which may be thus expressed : 
 
 a b b a a b b a 
 
 The sestet in like manner is subdivided 
 
 22
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 equally, in this case into sections of three 
 lines each : these sections are called the 
 tercets. There can be either three rhymes or 
 two, and the variations thereupon are 
 numerous. The Guittonian, or, as it is 
 generally called, the Petrarcan sestet-type, 
 contains three distinct rhyme-sounds, and 
 employs the valuable pause permitted by 
 the true use of the double-tercet ; but a 
 system of two rhyme-sounds is, as far as 
 " metrical emphasis " goes, much stronger, 
 and any arrangement of the rhymes (whether 
 two or three) is permissible, save that of a 
 couplet at the close. It is a difficult ques- 
 tion to decide even for one's self whether it 
 is better for the sestet to contain only two 
 rhymes or three : personally I am inclined 
 to favour the restriction to two, on account 
 of the great accession of metrical emphasis 
 resulting to this restriction. The normal 
 type, however (the Petrarcan), affords a 
 better opportunity for a half-break at the 
 end of the first tercet, corresponding to the 
 same midway in the octave and to the full 
 break at the latter's close. It would be a 
 mistake to dogmatise upon the point, and 
 the poet will probably instinctively use the 
 tercets in just correspondence with his emo- 
 tional impulse. The Italian masters recog- 
 nised as the best that division of the sestet 
 23
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 into two distinct tercets (which they termed 
 volte, or turnings), which, while not inter- 
 fering with what Theodore Watts-Dunton 
 calls the ebb-movement of the sestet, is 
 fully capable of throwing out two separate 
 lights in one gleam like the azure hollow 
 and yellow flame in burning gas. 
 
 The sestet of the pure Guittonian sonnet, 
 then, may be expressed by the following 
 formula : 
 
 a b c: a b c 
 
 The following are among the more or less 
 appropriate variations : 
 
 I 
 
 2 
 
 3* 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 II 
 
 12 
 
 13 
 
 H 
 
 15 
 
 16 
 
 17 
 
 18 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 c 
 
 a 
 
 c 
 
 c 
 
 c 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 c 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 c 
 
 c 
 
 b 
 
 c 
 
 G 
 
 ,c 
 
 c 
 
 c 
 
 c 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 c 
 
 a 
 
 C 
 
 c 
 
 b 
 
 c 
 
 a 
 
 c 
 
 c 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 c 
 
 c 
 
 a 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 c 
 
 b 
 
 c 
 
 b 
 
 c 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 | cxxix. 
 
 '* 
 
 '* 
 
 | cxxiii. 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 | xcviii. 
 
 > 
 
 j clxxiii. 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 _>' 
 
 j ccxii. 
 
 | xxxviii. 
 
 "y, 
 * 
 
 1 
 
 | cxxxiv. 
 
 8 
 
 The figures in the lower division of this table 
 denote examples among the sonnets in my 
 Anthology of the variation in question. 
 
 * Rossetti used to say that he considered this 
 (No. 3) to be the best form of sestet, if it could be 
 24
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 Of these, it seems to me that the two most 
 musical the least disturbant to the melodic 
 wave are the first and third, 
 
 a b a b a b 
 a b b a b a 
 
 The occurrence of a rhymed couplet at the 
 close of the sonnet is rare indeed in Italian 
 literature : I cannot recall a single example 
 of it among the classic masters of the sonnet, 
 and even in later times I fancy it would be 
 difficult to find a single good Italian example 
 worthy the name with this termination. But 
 it does not necessarily follow that a closing 
 couplet is equally unpleasant to the ear in 
 English, for in the latter practically all 
 sonnets are what the Italians call mute, that 
 is, the rhyming terminals are in one syllable, 
 while in the language of Petrarca and Dante 
 they are trisyllabic and dissyllabic a cir- 
 cumstance materially affecting our considera- 
 tion of this much-debated point. Not only 
 are there few good English sonnets with 
 dissyllabic terminals (I remember none with 
 trisyllabic throughout, and do not suppose 
 there is an example thereof to be found), 
 but there are few of any quality. In Mrs. 
 
 achieved without any damage to intellectual 
 substance. 
 
 25
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 Alice Meynell's Preludes there are one or 
 two partially so constructed, e.g., A Day 
 to Come. But notwithstanding the differ- 
 ences in terminal structure, it is open to 
 question whether the rhymed couplet-ending 
 be not almost as disagreeable to the English 
 as to the Italian ear, unless the form be 
 that of the so-called Shakespearean sonnet. 
 One of the chief pleasures of the sonnet is 
 the expectancy of the closing portion, and 
 when the ear has become attuned to the 
 sustained flow of the normal octave and also 
 of the opening lines of the sestet, the couplet 
 is apt to come upon one with an unexpected 
 jar, as if some one had opened and banged-to 
 a door while the musician was letting the last 
 harmonious chords thrill under his touch. 
 There has been a good deal written on this 
 point, and Hall Caine and others have 
 succinctly pointed out their reasons for 
 strongly objecting to it. It is, moreover, 
 perhaps the last point on which sonneteers 
 themselves will agree. Writing elsewhere 
 on this subject, I stated that " if the arrange- 
 ment of lines suits the emotion, I am not 
 offended by a concluding rhymed couplet, 
 or by the quatrains used to such purpose 
 by Shakespeare, Dray ton, and Tennyson- 
 Turner " ; but then, undoubtedly, only 
 26
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 one side of the question was clear to me. 
 Continuous study of the sonnet has con- 
 vinced me that, while many English sonnets 
 of the Guittonian type, even by good writers, 
 are markedly weakened by rhymed couplet- 
 endings, in the Shakespearean form the 
 closure in question is not only not objection- 
 able, but is absolutely as much the right 
 thing as the octave of two rhymes is for 
 the Petrarcan sonnet. Most writers on the 
 sonnet either state generally that they 
 object or that they do not object to the 
 rhymed couplets at the close : thus one 
 anonymous critic writes that he fails " to 
 see wherein a couplet ending is not as musical 
 as any other arrangement, that indeed it 
 is demonstratively so by the citation of 
 some of the most striking sonnets in our 
 language " while, on the other hand, Hall 
 Caine refers to the closure in question as 
 being as offensive to his ear as the couplets 
 at the ends of scenes and acts in some 
 Shakespearean plays. It seems to me now 
 that there are, broadly speaking, but two 
 normal types in English of sonnet-struc- 
 tures the Petrarcan and the Shakespearean : 
 whenever a motive is cast in the mould of 
 the former a rhymed couplet ending is, 
 to my own ear at least, quite out of 
 27
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 place ; whenever it is embodied in the 
 latter the final couplet is eminently satis- 
 factory. 
 
 Before, however, considering the five chief 
 types (primarily, two), I may finish my 
 general remarks on the early history of the 
 sonnet. 
 
 That by the fourteenth century the mature 
 sonnet was fully understood and recognised 
 is evident from the facts (set forth by Mr. 
 Tomlinson) that of the forty examples 
 attributed (one or two of them somewhat 
 doubtfully) to Dante, thirty-three belong 
 to the strict Guittonian type ; of the three 
 hundred and seventeen produced throughout 
 a long period by Petrarca, not one has more 
 than two rhymes in the octave, and only 
 fifteen have any variations from the normal 
 type (eleven in alternate rhymes, and four 
 with the first, third, sixth, and eighth lines 
 harmonising) ; while two hundred and 
 ninety agree in having nothing more than a 
 double rhyme both in the major and in the 
 minor system one hundred and sixteen 
 belonging to the pure Guittonian type, one 
 hundred and seven with the tercets in two 
 alternate rhymes (Type I in foregoing table), 
 and sixty-seven with three rhyme-sounds, 
 arranged as in Type 7 in foregoing table. 
 28
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 Again, of the eighty sonnets of Michael 
 Angelo, seven-eighths are in the normal 
 type. It is thus evident that, at a period 
 when the Italian ear was specially keen to 
 all harmonious effects, the verdict of the 
 masters in this species of poetic composition 
 was given in favour of two sonnet- formations 
 the Guittonian structure as to the octave, 
 and the co-relative arrangement of the 
 sestet a b c a b c, or a b a b 
 a b, with a preference for the former. 
 Another variation susceptible of very beau- 
 tiful effect is that of Type 9 (ante), but 
 though it can most appropriately be used 
 when exceptional tenderness, sweetness, or 
 special impressiveness is sought after, it 
 does not seem to have found much favour. 
 I may quote here in exemplification of it 
 one of the most beautiful of all Italian 
 sonnets. It is one of Dante's, and is filled 
 with the breath of music as a pine-tree with 
 the cadences of the wind the close being 
 supremely exquisite. It will also afford to 
 those who are unacquainted with Italian 
 an idea of the essential difference between 
 the trisyllabic and dissyllabic terminals of 
 the Southern and the one-syllable or " mute " 
 endings of the English sonnet, and at the 
 same time serve to illustrate what has been 
 29
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 already said concerning the pauses at the 
 quatrains and tercets : 
 
 Tanto gentile, e tanto onesta pare 
 
 La donna mia, quand' ella altrui saluta, 
 Ch' ogni lingua divien tremando muta, 
 E gli occhi non I'ardiscon di guardare. 
 
 Ella sen va, sentendosi laudare, 
 Umilimente d' onesta vestuta ; 
 E par che sia una cosa venuta 
 Di cielo in terra a miracol mostrare. 
 
 Mostrasi si piacente a chi la mira, 
 
 Che da per gli occhi una dolcezza al core, 
 Che'ntender non la pub chi non la pruova. 
 
 E par, che dalla sua labbia si mova, 
 Uno spirito soave, pien d' amove, 
 Che va dicendo all' anima : sospira. 
 
 I need not here enter into detail concerning 
 all the variations that have been made upon 
 the normal type ; in Italian these are very 
 numerous, as also in French. In Germany 
 the model type (where, by-the-by, the 
 sonnet was first known by the name of 
 Klang-gedicht, a very matter-of-fact way of 
 rendering sonetto in its poetic sense !) has 
 always been the Petrarcan, as exemplified 
 in the flawless statuesque sonnets of Platen. 
 The following six Italian variations repre- 
 30
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 sent those most worthy of notice : (i) Versi 
 sdruccioli, twelve-syllabled lines, i.e. (Leigh 
 Hunt], slippery or sliding verses, so called on 
 account of their terminating in dactyls 
 tene're' Vene're'. (2) Caudated, or Tailed 
 Sonnets i.e., sonnets to which as it were 
 an unexpected augmentation of two or 
 five or more lines is made : an English 
 example of which will be found in any 
 edition of Milton's works, under the title, 
 On the New Forcers of Conscience. (3) 
 Mute Sonnets : on one-syllable terminals, 
 but generally used only for satirical and 
 humorous purposes in the same way as we, 
 contrariwise, select dissyllabic terminals as 
 best suited for badinage. (4) Linked, or 
 Interlaced Sonnets, corresponding to the 
 Spenserian form, which will be formulated 
 shortly. (5) The Continuous or Iterating 
 Sonnet, on one rhyme throughout, and (6) 
 the same, on two rhymes throughout. 
 French poets (who, speaking generally, are 
 seen to less advantage in the sonnet than 
 in any other poetic vehicle) have delighted 
 in much experimentalising : their only com- 
 mendable deviation, one commonly made, is 
 a commencement of the sestet with a rhymed 
 couplet (a mould into which Mr. Swinburne 
 is fond of casting his impulsive speech)
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 but their octosyllabic and dialogue sonnets, 
 and other divergencies, are nothing more 
 than experiments, more or less interesting 
 and able. The paring-down system has 
 reached its extreme level in the following 
 clever piece of trifling byComtePaul deResse- 
 guier a " sonnet " of single-syllable lines : 
 
 EPITAPHE D'UNE JEUNE FILLE 
 
 Fort 
 Belle. 
 Elle 
 Dort / 
 
 Sort 
 Frele 
 Quelle 
 Mort f 
 
 Rose 
 Close- 
 La 
 
 Brise 
 
 L'a 
 
 Prise. 
 
 Among English sonnets the chief varia- 
 tions are the rhymed-couplet ending added 
 to the preceding twelve-line cast in the regu- 
 lar form : the sonnet ending with an Alex- 
 andrine : the sonnet with an Alexandrine 
 closing both octave and sestet : the assonantal 
 sonnet, i.e., a sonnet without rhymes, but 
 32
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 with the vowel sounds of the words so arranged 
 as to produce a distinctly harmonious effect 
 almost identical with that of rhyme-music. 
 Of this form Mr. Wilfred Blunt, among 
 others, has given a good example in his 
 Love-Sonnets of Proteus : the octosyllabic 
 sonnets (mere experiments), written by 
 E. Cracroft Lefroy and Samuel Wadding- 
 ton and others : and the sonnet constructed 
 on two rhyme-sounds throughout. Among 
 the last-named I may mention William 
 Bell Scott's Garland for Advancing Years, 
 Edmund Gosse's Pipe-Player, and Lord 
 Hanmer's Winter. The latter I may quote 
 as a fine but little-known example of this 
 experimental variation : 
 
 WINTER 
 
 To the short days, and the great vault of shade, 
 The whitener of the hills, we come alas, 
 There is no colour in the faded grass, 
 
 Save the thick frost on its hoar stems arrayed. 
 
 Cold is it : as a melancholy maid, 
 
 The latest of the seasons now doth pass, 
 With a dead garland, in her icy glass 
 
 Setting its spikes about her crisped braid. 
 
 The streams shall breathe, along the orchards laid, 
 In the soft spring-time ; and the frozen mass 
 Melt from the snowdrift ; flowerets where it was 
 
 Shoot up the cuckoo shall delight the glade ; 
 But to new glooms through some obscure crevasse 
 
 She will have past that melancholy maid. 
 
 n 33 c
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 This interesting and poetic experiment 
 would have been still better but for the 
 musical flaw in the first line (days shade) 
 and those in the thirteenth - fourteenth 
 (crevasse past), though of course in this 
 instance the repetition of maid as a terminal 
 is intentional, and is a metrical gain rather 
 than a flaw. Dialogue-sonnets are not an 
 English variation : I am aware of very few 
 in our language, the earliest which I have 
 met with is that written by Alexander, 
 Earl of Stirling (1580-1640). There are one 
 or two sonnets in French with octaves where 
 the first three lines rhyme, and therewith 
 also the fifth, sixth, and seventh : and one, 
 in English, The Chorister, by J. A. Symonds. 
 
 We may now consider the five standard 
 formal types, and thereby close the first 
 section of this Introduction, that on " Sonnet- 
 structure." 
 
 These formal types are : (i) The Petrarcan ; 
 (2) the Spenserian ; (3) the Shakespearean ; 
 (4) the Miltonic ; and (5) the Contem- 
 porary. 
 
 The Guittonian, or Petrarcan, sonnet has 
 already been explained from the structural 
 point of view, but its formal characteristics 
 may be summarised once more, (i) It, like 
 all sonnets, must primarily consist of four- 
 
 34
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 teen decasyllabic lines. (2) It must be made 
 up of a major and minor system : the major 
 system consisting of eight lines, or two 
 quatrains, to be known as the octave ; the 
 minor, consisting of six lines, or two tercets, 
 to be known as the sestet. (3) Two rhyme- 
 sounds only must pervade the octave, and 
 their arrangement (nominally arbitrary, but 
 in reality based on an ascertainable melodic 
 law) must be so that the first, fourth, fifth, 
 and eighth terminals rhyme, while the 
 second, third, sixth, and seventh do so also 
 on a different note. (4) What generally is 
 looked upon as completing the normal type 
 is a sestet with the tercet divisions clearly 
 marked, and employing three rhyme-sounds, 
 the co-relatives being the terminals of lines I 
 and 4, 2 and 5, 3 and 6. 
 
 The first English sonnets were composed 
 by Sir Thomas Wyat (1503-1542), and 
 Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1517- 
 1547) ; and the first appearance of any in 
 book form was in the rare publication briefly 
 known as Tottel's Miscellany, whose full title 
 is Songs and Sonettes written by the ryght 
 honourable lorde Henry Howard late earle oj 
 Surrey, and other. These accomplished young 
 noblemen had resided in Italy, and, them- 
 selves delighting in Italian poetic literature 
 35
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 especially Petrarca's work hastened, on 
 their return to their own country, to accli- 
 matise the new poetic vehicle which had 
 become so famous in the hands of two of 
 Italy's greatest writers. Their efforts, with a 
 new and difficult medium and a language 
 which was still only approaching the state in 
 which Spenser and Marlowe and Shakespeare 
 found it, were only very partially successful, 
 and, as we now know, their sonnets owed 
 most of what was excellent in them to Italian 
 sources. The remarkable thing about them 
 is that they all end with rhymed couplets, 
 an arrangement distinctly opposed to any 
 with which they were acquainted in another 
 language. On the other hand, it must be 
 noted (this point should be remembered a 
 little later when we come to discuss Hall 
 Caine's theory) that Wyat's are otherwise 
 mostly on the Italian model. Surrey, again, 
 evidently found his task over-difficult of 
 satisfactory performance, and so constantly 
 experimented with a fourteen-line sonnet- 
 mould like a musician who, arriving in his 
 own land, finds his countrymen's ears not 
 easily attuned to the melodies of the new 
 instrument he brings with him from abroad, 
 and so tries again and again to find some way 
 of making his novel mandolin- or lute-sounds 
 36
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 attractive to ears accustomed to the harsher 
 strains of fife or bagpipe. Thus we find 
 him composing on the two-rhyme-throughout 
 system ; linking the three elegiac quatrains 
 and a couplet, and otherwise feeling his 
 way evidently coming ultimately to the 
 conclusion that the three quatrains and the 
 couplet constituted the form best suited to 
 the English language. This may concisely 
 be set forth in the following formula : 
 
 a b a b c d c d e f e f g g 
 
 A much more original and more potent 
 poetic nature next endeavoured to find meet 
 expression in the sonnet. Spenser, that great 
 metricist and genuine poet, notwithstanding 
 all his power in verse, was unable to accli- 
 matise the new vehicle, the importance and 
 beauty of which he undoubtedly fully recog- 
 nised. Having tried the effect of a fourteen- 
 line poem in well-modulated blank verse, he 
 found that he was dissatisfied with the 
 result ; equally dissatisfied was he with the 
 quatrains-and-couplet mould of Wyat and 
 Surrey ; and so at last, after continuous 
 experiments, he produced a modification of 
 both the English and the Italian form, 
 retaining something of the rhyme-iteration 
 of the latter along with the couplet-ending 
 37
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 of the former ; or perhaps he simply adopted 
 this structure from a similar Italian experi- 
 ment, discerning through translation its 
 seeming appropriateness. That he con- 
 sidered this the best possible mould of the 
 sonnet for the English poet is evident from 
 the fact that in this structure he composed 
 his famous love sonnets, the Amoretti. The 
 Spenserian sonnet may be regarded as repre- 
 senting that transitional stage of develop- 
 ment which a tropical plant experiences 
 when introduced into a temperate clime. 
 In this case the actual graft proved short- 
 lived, but the lesson was not lost upon 
 cultivators, in whose hands manifold seed 
 lay ready for germination. Spenser's method 
 was to interlace the quatrains by using the 
 last rhyme-sound of each as the keynote of 
 the next 6 2 , for example, if I may use a 
 musical comparison, constituting the domi- 
 nant of 6 3 and 6 5 , as of course c 2 of c 3 and c 5 
 and then to clinch those by an independent 
 rhyme-couplet. It will more easily be under- 
 stood by this formula : 
 
 a b a b 
 b c b ^c 
 c d c d
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 But this form pleased the ear neither of his 
 contemporaries nor of his successors : it was 
 suited for gentle tenderness, for a lover's half- 
 assumed languor but in it neither Dante on 
 the one hand nor Shakespeare nor Milton 
 on the other would have found that rhyth- 
 mical freedom, or rather that amplitude in 
 confinement, which they obtained in the 
 structures they adopted. After Spenser 
 there set in the flood of Elizabethan son- 
 neteering, which culminated in the Shake- 
 spearean sonnets. Before mentioning Shake- 
 speare and his immediate forerunners, 
 however, an interesting feature should be 
 noted. This is a fine sonnet foreshadowing 
 what is now called the Miltonic mould, by 
 that great Englishman Sir Walter Raleigh : 
 though structurally of the Surrey type, 
 it has the Miltonic characteristic of un- 
 broken continuity between octave and 
 sestet. It may be added that the author 
 of Paradise Lost modelled his well-known 
 lines to his dead wife on this sonnet by 
 Raleigh. 
 
 What is styled the Shakespearean sonnet 
 is so called only out of deference to the great 
 poet who made such noble use of it in the 
 same way as Petrarca is accredited with 
 the structural form bearing his name. As 
 39
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 " the sweete laureate of Italic " had prede- 
 cessors in Guittone d'Arezzo and Amalricchi, 
 so Shakespeare found that the English 
 sonnet as it should be called having been 
 inefficiently handled by Surrey, discarded 
 by Spenser, taken up and beautified by 
 Sir Philip Sidney (who seemed unable to 
 definitely decide as to what form to adopt), 
 was at last made thoroughly ready for his 
 use by Daniel and Dray ton. To show how 
 the so-called Shakespearean sonnet was led 
 up to, and how it actually existed in its 
 maturity prior to the splendid poems of the 
 young player-poet, a sonnet by each of these 
 admirable writers may be quoted. But 
 previous thereto it may again be made clear 
 that the English or Shakespearean sonnet is 
 distinctly different from the normal Italian 
 type. Unlike the latter, it is not divided into 
 two systems though a pause corresponding 
 to that enforced by the separation of octave 
 and sestet is very frequently observed. 
 Instead of having octave and sestet, the 
 Shakespearean sonnet is made up of four 
 elegiac quatrains clinched by a rhymed 
 couplet with a new sound ; and, generally, 
 it presents the motive as it were in a trans- 
 parent sphere, instead of as a cameo with 
 two sides. As regards swiftness of motion, 
 40
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 its gain upon the Spenserian, to which it is 
 so closely allied, is great. 
 
 Referring, in a chapter dealing with the 
 sonnets of Rossetti, to the two archetypal 
 forms, I wrote some four years ago that 
 " the Shakespearean sonnet is like a red- 
 hot bar being moulded upon a forge, till 
 in the closing couplet it receives the final 
 clinching blow from the heavy hammer : 
 while the Petrarcan, on the other hand, is 
 like a wind gathering in volume and dying 
 away again immediately on attaining a 
 culminating force." The anterior simile is 
 the happier ; for the second I should now 
 be inclined to substitute : the Petrarcan 
 sonnet is like an oratorio, where the musical 
 divisions are distinct, and where the close 
 is a grand swell, the culmination of the fore- 
 going harmonies. Petrarca himself, in one 
 of his numerous marginalia to his sonnets, 
 remarks that the end should invariably be 
 more harmonious than the beginning, i.e., 
 should be dominantly borne-in upon the 
 reader. 
 
 In selecting the Sleep of Samuel Daniel, 
 I do so not because it is in the true Shake- 
 spearean type (as in Dray ton's) though he 
 wrote mostly in the latter mould but 
 because in this example is shown the final
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 transition from an octave of two rhymes to 
 the English archetype as already formu- 
 lated. It must not be overlooked, however, 
 that he used and used well the Shake- 
 spearean form : 
 
 TO SLEEP 
 
 Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, 
 Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, 
 Relieve my languish, and restore the light ; 
 With dark forgetting of my care return, 
 And let the day be time enough to mourn 
 The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth ; 
 Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn, 
 Without the torment of the night's untruth. 
 Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires, 
 To model forth the passions of the morrow ; 
 Never let rising Sun approve you liars, 
 To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow ; 
 Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain, 
 And never wake to feel the day's disdain. 
 
 The sonnet by Michael Drayton which I 
 shall next quote is not only the finest of 
 Elizabethan sonnets by writers other than 
 Shakespeare, but in condensed passion is 
 equalled by only one or two of those of the 
 great master, and is surpassed by none, 
 either of his or of any later poet :
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 A PARTING 
 
 Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part, 
 Nay, I have done, you get no more of me ; 
 And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, 
 That thus so cleanly I myself can free : 
 Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, 
 And when we meet at any time again, 
 Be it not seen in either of our brows 
 That we one jot of former love retain. 
 Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, 
 When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies, 
 When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, 
 A nd Innocence is closing up his eyes, 
 
 Now, ifthou would' st, when all have given him over, 
 From death to life thou might' st him yet recover ! 
 
 But it was in Shakespeare's hands that 
 this form of sonnet first became immutably 
 established in our literature. These mag- 
 nificent poems magnificent notwithstanding 
 many minor flaws must always hold their 
 high place, not only as the personal record 
 of the greatest of our poets, but for the sake 
 of their own consummate beauty and intel- 
 lectual force. I may repeat the words I 
 wrote in the Introductory Essay to my 
 edition of his Songs and Sonnets : "It is 
 because this great master over the passions 
 and follies and heroisms of man has at least 
 once dropped the veil of impersonality that 
 we are so fascinated by the Sonnets. Here 
 43
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 the musician who has otherwise played for 
 all generations of humanity, pipes a solitary 
 tune of his own life, its love, its devotion, its 
 fervour, its prophetic exaltation, its passion, 
 its despair, its exceeding bitterness. Veritably 
 we are here face to face with ' a splendour 
 amid glooms/ ' 
 
 Rossetti, the greatest master of sonnet- 
 music posterior to the " starre of poets," 
 declared while expressing his unbounded 
 admiration for Shakespeare's sonnets that 
 ' ' conception fundamental brain - work is 
 what makes the difference in all art. ... A 
 Shakespearean sonnet is better than the 
 most perfect in form because Shakespeare 
 wrote it." Again, the opinion of so acute a 
 critic and genuine a poet as Theodore Watts- 
 Dunton may here be appropriately quoted : 
 " The quest of the Shakespearean form is 
 not," he writes in his article on The Sonnet 
 in the Encyclopedia Britannica, " like that 
 of the sonnet of octave and sestet sonority, 
 and, so to speak, metrical counterpoint, 
 but sweetness ; and the sweetest of all 
 possible arrangements in English versifica- 
 tion is a succession of decasyllabic quatrains 
 in alternate rhymes knit together, and 
 clinched by a couplet a couplet coming 
 not too far from the initial verse, so as to lose 
 44
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 its binding power, and yet not so near the 
 initial verse that the ring of epigram disturbs 
 ' the linked sweetness long drawn out ' of 
 this movement, but sufficiently near to shed 
 its influence over the poem back to the initial 
 verse." This is admirably expressed, and 
 true so far as it goes ; but to a far wider 
 scope than " sweetness " does the Shake- 
 spearean sonnet reach. Having already 
 given a good example of sonnets cast in 
 this mould, it is not necessary to quote 
 another by the chief master of the English 
 sonnet ; still I may give one of the latter's 
 greatest, perhaps the greatest of Shake- 
 speare's or any other, which will not only 
 serve as a supreme example of the type, but 
 will demonstrate a capability of impressive- 
 ness unsurpassed by any sonnet of Dante or 
 Milton : 
 
 The expense of spirit in a waste of shame 
 Is lust in action ; and till action, lust 
 Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, 
 Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, 
 Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight, 
 Past reason hunted, and no sooner had 
 Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait 
 On purpose laid to make the taker mad ; 
 Mad in pursuit and in possession so ; 
 Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme ; 
 A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe ; 
 Before, a joy proposed ; behind, a dream, 
 
 45
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 All this the world well knows ; yet none knows 
 
 well 
 To shun the heaven that leads men to this 
 
 hell. 
 
 Between the sonnets of Shakespeare and 
 those of Milton there is not much to 
 chronicle concerning the history of the 
 sonnet. Its chief intermediate composer 
 was Drummond of Hawthornden, a graceful 
 poet, but assuredly not the master he has 
 again and again been represented to be. 
 His essential weakness may be seen in his 
 inability to adopt any pure mould : his 
 sonnets may either be regarded as English 
 bastards of Italian parentage, or as Italian 
 refugees disguised in a semi-insular costume. 
 Hitherto, and this notwithstanding several 
 noble examples by Shakespeare of a more 
 impersonal scope, most English sonnets were 
 amatory amatory to such an extent indeed 
 that " sugred sonettes " became as much the 
 stereotyped medium of lovers' prayers and 
 plaints as was the Border-ballad that of the 
 virile energies of a semi-civilised people. 
 In this state they still were after the close 
 of the Elizabethan period indeed they 
 were, with the minor poets, fast degenerat- 
 ing into florid and insipid imbecilities. But 
 when Milton recognised the form as one 
 46
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 well suited even for the voice which was in 
 due time to chant the rebellion of the Prince 
 of Evil, he took it up to regenerate it. In 
 his hands it " became a trumpet." Recog- 
 nising the rhythmical beauty of the normal 
 Italian type, he adopted its rhyme-arrange- 
 ment, discarding both the English sonnet 
 and all bastard intermediates ; but, either 
 from imperfect acquaintance with or under- 
 standing of the Italian archetype (which 
 seems improbable, considering the circum- 
 stances of his life and the breadth of his 
 culture), or out of definite intention, he did 
 not regard as essential or appropriate the 
 break in the melody between octave and 
 sestet. And here, according to Mark 
 Pattison, he " missed the very end and aim 
 of the Petrarcan scheme." He considered 
 so we may infer that the English sonnet 
 should be like a revolving sphere, every 
 portion becoming continuously visible, with 
 no break in the continuity of thought or 
 expression anywhere apparent. Sir Henry 
 Taylor describes this characteristic well as 
 the absence of point in the evolution of the 
 idea. I need not quote one of these " soul- 
 animating strains," as Wordsworth sympa- 
 thetically styled Milton's sonnets, so familiar 
 as they are to all lovers of English poetry ; 
 47
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 but I may point to an admirable sonnet in 
 the Miltonic mould in which readers may 
 examine with advantage viz., the impres- 
 sive Democrary Downtrodden of William 
 Michael Rossetti. 
 
 A second reference may here appropriately 
 be made to Hall Caine's claim for the inherent 
 independence of the English sonnet. This 
 writer is so accomplished and generally so 
 acute a critic that I differ from him only 
 after the most careful consideration of his 
 arguments. To the independent existence 
 of the English sonnet as such I am, of course, 
 as will have been seen, no opponent ; but 
 there is a difference between a poetic form 
 being national and its being indigenous. 
 An English skate, for example, is at once 
 recognisable from that of any other Northern 
 country, has, in a word, the seal of nationality 
 impressed on its familiar aspect : but every 
 one knows that originally that delightful 
 means towards " ice-flight " came to us 
 from the Dutch, and was not the invention 
 of our countrymen. So is it with the national 
 sonnet. Wyat and Surrey did not invent 
 the English form of sonnet, they introduced 
 it from Italy ; Spenser played with and 
 altered it ; Shakespeare as it were translated 
 it into our literature ; Drummond half 
 48
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 Italian, half English, critically regarded 
 used it variously ; the Elizabethan son- 
 neteers piped through it their real or imagi- 
 nary amatory woes ; and at last came Milton } 
 and made it shine newly, as if he had cut his 
 diamond in such a way that only one 
 luminous light were visible to us. The 
 Shakespearean or English sonnet is no 
 bastard form, nor is the Miltonic ; each is 
 derivative, one more so than the other to 
 all appearance, and the only bastard forms 
 are those which do not belong to the pure 
 types ; those sonnets, for instance, which 
 have the octave regular and a sestet con- 
 sisting of a quatrain and a couplet, or those 
 which, like the Love-Sonnets of Proteus, are 
 irregular throughout. Hall Caine was de- 
 sirous to remove the charge of illegitimacy 
 against the English sonnet : where I differ 
 from him is only that I can see no real 
 basis for bringing up the charge against the 
 pure types at all. 
 
 What is known as the Contemporary, and 
 sometimes as the Natural, sonnet was first 
 formulated by Theodore Watts-Dunton. 
 With the keen insight that characterises 
 his critical work and no less gives point 
 to his imaginative faculty, this writer 
 recognised not only the absolute metrical 
 
 ii 49 D
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 beauty of the Petrarcan type, but also 
 that it was based on a deep melodic law, 
 the law which may be observed in the 
 flow and ebb of a wave ; and, indeed, the 
 sonnet in question was composed at a 
 little seaside village in Kent, while the writer 
 and a friend were basking on the shore. It 
 was he who first explained the reason why 
 the separate and complete solidarity of the 
 octave was so essential to perfect harmony, 
 finding in this metrical arrangement nothing 
 less than the action of the same law that 
 is manifested in the inflowing wave solidly 
 gathering into curving volume, culminating 
 in one great pause, and then sweeping 
 out again from the shore. This is not only 
 a fine conception, but it was accepted at 
 once by Rossetti, J. A. Symonds, Mark 
 Pattison, Hall Caine, Karl Lentzner (in his 
 treatise on the sonnet), and by others 
 who have given special attention to this 
 form of verse. " The striking meta- 
 phorical symbol," says J. A. Symonds, 
 " drawn by Mr. Theodore Watts from the 
 observation of the swelling and declining 
 wave can even, in some examples, be applied 
 to sonnets on the Shakespearean model ; for, 
 as a wave may fall gradually or abruptly, 
 so the sonnet may sink with stately volume 
 50
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 or with precipitate subsidence to its close." 
 In France the revival of the sonnet has been 
 only less marked than in England, and among 
 French poets it is also now recognised as 
 indubitable that the octave must be in the 
 normal mould, and that the sestet should 
 have no more doubtful variation than a 
 commencing couplet. Theodore Watts- 
 Dunton's theory naturally excited much 
 comment ; and his sonnet on the Sonnet, 
 wherein that theory was first formulated, 
 may be appropriately quoted here. 
 
 THE SONNET'S VOICE 
 
 (A METRICAL LESSON BY THE SEASHORE) 
 
 Yon silvery billows breaking on the beach 
 Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear, 
 The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear 
 
 A restless lore like that the billows teach ; 
 
 For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach 
 From its own depths, and rest within you, dear, 
 As, through the billowy voices yearning here 
 
 Great nature strives to find a human speech. 
 
 A sonnet is a wave of melody : 
 
 From heaving waters of the impassioned soul 
 
 A billow of tidal music one and whole 
 Flows in the " octave " ; then returning free, 
 
 Its ebbing surges in the " sestet " roll 
 Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea. 
 
 At the same time he is no mere formalist, 
 and has himself expressed his conviction
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 (both in the Athenceum and in the Encyclo- 
 pedia Britannica) that the same form is 
 not always the best for every subject. I, 
 for my part, think that, broadly speaking, 
 the Contemporary Sonnet, as formulated by 
 Watts-Dunton, may be regarded in a dual 
 light. When it is a love-sonnet, or the 
 emotion is tender rather than forceful, the 
 music sweet rather than dignified, it will 
 be found to correspond to the law of flow 
 and ebb i.e., of the inflowing solid wave 
 (the octave), the pause, and then the broken 
 resilient wash of the wave (the sestet). 
 When, on the other hand, it is intellectually 
 or passionately forceful rather than tender 
 or pathetic, dignified and with impressive 
 amplitude of imagery rather than strictly 
 beautiful, then it will correspond to the law 
 of ebb and flow i.e., of the steady resilient 
 wave-wash till the culminating moment when 
 the billow has curved and is about to pour 
 shoreward again (the octave), and of the 
 solid inflowing wave, sweeping strongly 
 forward (the sestet) in Keats' words : 
 
 Swelling loudly 
 Up to its climax, and then dying proudly. 
 
 It is thus evident that the Contemporary 
 type is no variation from the Petrarcan, but 
 52
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 is simply an artistically understood develop- 
 ment thereof. 
 
 Readers will already have gathered that 
 there can thus only be three genuine sonnet- 
 types : 
 
 THE PETRARCAN or NATURAL SONNET (compre- 
 hending the Contemporary). 
 
 THE ENGLISH or SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET. 
 
 THE MILTONIC SONNET (any Sonnet, whether in 
 the Petrarcan or Shakespearean mould, with 
 unbroken continuity, metrically and other- 
 wise, in its presentation). 
 
 In the wide scope thus afforded no poet 
 can with justice complain of too rigid 
 limitations : such objection-making must 
 simply be an exemplification of the well- 
 known saying as to the workman and his 
 tools. To these moreover may be addressed 
 Capel Loftt's words (who, however, adapted 
 them from Menzini) " No Procrustes has 
 obliged you to be lopped to the measure 
 of this bed : Parnassus will not be in 
 ruins even if you should not publish a 
 sonnet." 
 
 I will not here attempt any adequate 
 survey of the history of the sonnet in England 
 from Milton to the present day. A- cursory 
 glance must be sufficient. 
 
 With Milton the Italian influence in our 
 53
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 literature waned, and that of France (inau- 
 gurated by Dryden) took its place. A 
 corresponding change in the poetic tempera- 
 ment rapidly took place. 
 
 After Milton the sonnet almost languished 
 out of existence in this country. Many years 
 after the great Puritan poet was laid in his 
 grave, Gray wrote an often-praised (but to 
 me, I must confess, a very indifferent) 
 sonnet on the death of Mr. Richard West, 
 and Mason and Warton several of fair 
 quality. Cowper (who died, as may be re- 
 membered, in the last year of the eighteenth 
 century) wrote one fine poem of this class 
 to Mary Unwin. Gradually the sonnet began 
 to awake from its poetic hibernation, and 
 though one or two women writers not 
 altogether unworthily handled it, and though 
 William Roscoe and Egerton Brydges even 
 used it with moderate success, the first 
 real breath of spring came in the mild advent 
 of William Lisle Bowles. His sonnets move 
 us now hardly at all, but when we remember 
 the season of their production we may well 
 regard them with more kindly liberality. 
 Bowles was born just eight years before 
 William Wordsworth, to whom, more than 
 any one else, is due the great revival and 
 increasing study and appreciation of the 
 54
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 sonnet. Coleridge wrote no fine sonnets, 
 though he just missed writing one which is 
 of supreme excellence. Blanco White con- 
 centrated all his poetic powers in one great 
 effort, and wrote a sonnet which will live 
 as long as the language as in French 
 literature Felix Arvers will be remembered 
 always for his unique example, that beau- 
 tiful sonnet commencing " Mon dme a son 
 secret, ma vie a son mystere." Leigh Hunt, 
 true poet in his degree as he was, did truer 
 service by his admirable efforts in critical 
 literature towards the popularisation of the 
 sonnet; and after him (by " after " reference 
 is made to birth-sequence) came a constantly 
 increasing number, the chief of whom will be 
 found represented in my Anthology among 
 the most important being Sir Aubrey de 
 Vere, little known, but a true poet and a 
 fine sonneteer ; Byron (who wrote some 
 half-dozen compositions of this class, and 
 wrote them well too, notwithstanding his 
 real or pretended dislike of the form) ; 
 Barry Cornwall ; Shelley (whose Ozymandias 
 is a fine poem but not a fine sonnet) ; and 
 Keats. Though Keats has never been and 
 probably never will be a really popular 
 poet, his influence on other poets and on 
 poetic temperaments generally has been 
 55
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 quite incalculable. Some of his sonnets are 
 remarkable for their power and beauty, 
 while others are indifferent and a few are 
 poor. With all his love for the beauty of 
 isolated poetic lines music condensed into 
 an epigram more concise than the Greeks 
 ever uttered as, for example, his own 
 splendid verse 
 
 There is a budding morrow in mid-night 
 and with all that sense of verbal melody 
 which he manifested so remarkably in his 
 odes, it is strange that in his sonnets he 
 should so often be at fault in true harmony. 
 Even the beautiful examples which I have 
 chosen for my Anthology afford instances 
 of this : as in Ailsa Rock, where the pen- 
 ultimate word of the ninth line and the 
 penultimate word of the tenth (not forming 
 part of the rhyme sound, the two terminals 
 indeed being antagonistic) are identical ; 
 as in the Elgin Marbles, where " weak " 
 midway in the first line has an unpleasing 
 assonantal relation with " sleep," the ter- 
 minal of the second line ; as in To Homer, 
 where after the beautiful eleventh line 
 already quoted, " ending in " mid-night," 
 there succeeds " sight " midway in the 
 twelfth. These are genuine discords, and 
 those who are unable to perceive them 
 56
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 simply prove their deficiency in ear. Born 
 a year later than Keats, Hartley Coleridge, 
 the poetic son of a greater father, finely 
 fulfilled the impulse that had come to him 
 from Wordsworth, making an abiding name 
 for hmself through his sonnet-work alone. 
 His Birth of Speech as I have styled one 
 of his best -known but unnamed sonnets 
 is a fine example of a sonnet in the 
 Miltonic mould. Thomas Hood, that true 
 poet so little understood by the public 
 generally not only wrote some fine sonnets, 
 but wrote two of special excellence, one of 
 them (Silence) taking a place in the very 
 front rank. Ten years younger than Hood 
 was Charles Tennyson-Turner. Charming, 
 even permanently beautiful as many of his 
 sonnet-stanzas are, their form cannot be 
 admired : if we have been correct in con- 
 sidering the so-called pure types to be the 
 true expression of certain metrical laws, 
 then certainly these compositions of his 
 are not sonnets, but only (to repeat Ashcroft 
 Noble's appropriate term for similar pro- 
 ductions) sonnet-stanzas. The rhythm is 
 much broken up, and the charm of assured 
 expectancy is destroyed. But a greater 
 poet than Tennyson-Turner, true singer as 
 the latter was, came into the world about 
 57
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 the same time. No more impassioned soul 
 ever found expression in rhythmical speech 
 than Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and there 
 is nothing in her poetry which is finer 
 than that famous love-record, the so-called 
 Sonnets from the Portuguese. Impetuous as 
 was her genius, hasty and frequently care- 
 less as she was in production, she never 
 found the archetypal sonnet too circum- 
 scribed for her. The pathetic beauty, the 
 fascinating personality, the pure poetry 
 displayed in these sonnets, have touched 
 many and many a heart since the tired 
 singer was laid to rest under the cypresses 
 not far from that beloved river whose flow 
 she had so often followed in thought down 
 to the far-off Pisan sea. Only those who have 
 thoroughly studied contemporary poetry, 
 and not only the poetry which is familiar 
 to many, but that also which is quite un- 
 known and by minor writers of no reputation 
 or likelihood of reputation, can realise the 
 potency of Mrs. Browning's influence, espe- 
 cially among women. Even to mention by 
 name all those who have charmed, or inte- 
 rested, or transiently attracted us by their 
 sonnets throughout the last fifty years 
 would take up much more space than I have 
 to spare, nor can I even refer in detail 
 58
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 to those who are no longer with us. One 
 name, however, stands out from all others 
 since Wordsworth and Mrs. Browning, like 
 a pine-tree out of a number of graceful 
 larches. Dante Gabriel Rossetti is not only 
 one of the great poets of the century, but 
 the one English poet whose sonnet-work 
 can genuinely be weighed in the balance 
 with that of Shakespeare and with that of 
 Wordsworth. No influence is at present 
 more marked than his : its stream is 
 narrower than that of Tennyson and Brown- 
 ing, but the current is deep, and its fertilising 
 waters have penetrated far and wide into 
 the soil. The author of The House of Life thus 
 holds a remarkable place in the literary 
 and artistic history of the second Victorian 
 epoch. No critic of this poet's work will 
 have any true grasp of it who does not recog- 
 nise that " Rossetti " signifies something of 
 greater import than the beautiful produc- 
 tions of one man ; the historian of the bril- 
 liant period in question will work in the dark 
 if he is unable to perceive one of the chief 
 well-springs of the flood, if he should fail to 
 recognise the relationship between certain 
 radical characteristics of the time and the 
 man who did so much to inaugurate or 
 embody them. 
 
 59
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Mrs. 
 Browning, Rossetti. Italy herself cannot 
 present a finer body of pure poetry in the 
 mould of this form than is to be found in 
 the collective sonnets of these great English 
 writers. As to the vexed question of priority 
 among these sonneteers, I need not attempt 
 to gauge the drift of capable opinion. For 
 myself and this I set forward the less 
 reluctantly as I know the opinion is shared 
 by so many better judges than I claim to be 
 I would simply say : (i) that the three 
 greatest sonneteers of our language seem 
 to me to be Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and 
 Rossetti ; (2) that the two greatest, regard- 
 ing their work en masse and not by this or 
 that sonnet, or this or that group of sonnets, 
 seem to me to be Shakespeare and Rossetti ; 
 and (3) that no poet of our own or any 
 language could show ten sonnets equal in 
 breadth of thought, verity of poetry, and 
 beauty of expression to the ten greatest 
 of Wordsworth's. In " fundamental brain- 
 work," to use Rossetti's phrase, or in the 
 composition of " deep-brained sonnettes," 
 to quote Shakespeare's, these two poets 
 stand above Wordsworth ; but in impersonal 
 humanity Shakespeare rarely, Rossetti a 
 little less rarely, approaches the highest reach 
 60
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 of one who in general is their poetic inferior. 
 For what great poet at his poorest is so poor 
 as Wordsworth : in what other great poetic 
 nature has there ever been so abundant a 
 leaven of the prosaic ? One of the chief 
 poets in our country, his garden has more 
 desert-spaces in it than any other, and the 
 supreme beauties are almost lost to all 
 who have no guide to the labyrinth. But 
 these super-excellent treasures, when once 
 found, how we are carried away by their 
 exquisite perfume, their extreme beauty ! 
 We forget the sand and the many weeds, and 
 for a time believe that in no other of the 
 many gardens of verse blooms there such 
 loveliness, breathes there such fragrance. 
 But in one thing Rossetti is greater than 
 Wordsworth, greater even than Shakespeare, 
 and that is in weight and volume of sound. 
 As a wind-swayed pine seems literally to 
 shake off music from its quivering branches, 
 so do his sonnets throb with and disperse 
 deep-sounding harmonies. What sonority 
 of pure poetic speech there is in this from 
 The Dark Glass : 
 
 Not I myself know all my love for thee : 
 
 How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh 
 To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday ? 
 
 Shall birth and death and all dark names that be 
 61
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 As doors and windows bared to some loud sea, 
 Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with 
 
 spray ; 
 And shall my sense pierce love, the last relay 
 
 And ultimate outpost of eternity ? 
 
 or in this from Lovesight : 
 
 O love, my love ! If I no more should see 
 Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, 
 
 Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, 
 How then should sound upon Life's darkening 
 
 slope 
 The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, 
 
 The wind of Death's imperishable wing ? 
 
 How transcendently Shakespearean this 
 beautiful opening of the sestet of the sonnet 
 True Woman her Heaven : 
 
 The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill 
 Like any hillflower ; and the noblest troth 
 Dies here to dust ! 
 
 A poem does not require to be an epic 
 to be great, any more than a man need be 
 a giant to be noble. When a fine thing is 
 adequately and completely stated, it does 
 not gain by being embedded in an environ- 
 ment too great for it, like an amethyst 
 in a great boulder of quartz. In the words 
 of an early sonnet commentator " like the 
 small statue by the chisel of Lysippus, they 
 62
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 demonstrate that the idea of greatness may 
 be excited independently of the magnitude 
 of size." Look at the majesty of this 
 imagery : 
 
 Even as, heavy-curled, 
 Stooping against the wind, a charioteer 
 Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair, 
 So shall Time be ; and as the void car, hurled 
 Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world : 
 Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air, 
 It shall be sought and not found anywhere : 
 
 or at the amplitude of that magnificent 
 sonnet, Aubrey de Vere's The Sun-God ; 
 or at the spaciousness of that of Wilfred 
 Scawen Blunt entitled The Sublime. 
 
 When it is fully realised that a sonnet 
 must be the complete development of a 
 single motive, and that it must at once be 
 reticent and ample, it will be understood 
 how true is that line of Boileau : " Un 
 sonnet sans defaut vaut seul un long poeme." 
 Sonnets are like waves of the sea, each on 
 a small scale that which the ocean is on a 
 large. " A sonnet is a moment's monu- 
 ment," wrote Rossetti, in one of his own 
 compositions not improbably unconsciously 
 reproducing that line of de Musset, in his 
 "Impromptu en reponse a cette question: 
 ' Qu'est-ce que la poesie ? ' Eterniser peut- 
 63
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 etre un reve d'un instant." It is to in- 
 dulge in no mere metaphysical subtlety 
 to say that life can be as ample in one 
 divine moment as in an hour, or a day, or 
 a year. And there is a wide world of sensa- 
 tion open to the sonneteer if he will but 
 exercise not only a wise reticence, but also 
 vivid perception and acute judgment. As 
 the writer in the Quarterly Review has well 
 said, " the sonnet might almost be called 
 the alphabet of the human heart, since 
 almost every kind of emotion has been 
 expressed, or attempted to be expressed, in 
 it." And in this, more than in any other 
 poetic form, it is well for the would-be 
 composer to study, not only every line and 
 every word, but every vowel and every part 
 of each word, endeavouring to obtain the 
 most fit phrase, the most beautiful and 
 original turn to the expression to be, like 
 Keats, " misers of sound and syllable." More- 
 over, in no form is revision more advisable : 
 in none is it less likely to be harmful, for 
 a sonnet is pre-eminently a form embody- 
 ing emotion remembered in tranquillity, as 
 Wordsworth defined poetry generally. We 
 know that Petrarca has himself recorded 
 how he passed the file athwart his handiwork 
 over and over again, and but rarely, even 
 64
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 then, saw the gem leave his cabinet without 
 reluctance how he wrote not hurriedly, 
 and issued with still greater circumspection, 
 letting each sonnet, as Leigh Hunt expresses 
 it, lie polishing in his mind for months 
 together, like a pebble on the sea-shore. 
 And not less enamoured of perfection for 
 perfection's sake was the greatest sonneteer 
 of our own time, every one of whose sonnets 
 was passed again and again through the 
 white heat of imaginative and critical com- 
 parative study : in Rossetti's own words, 
 the first and highest quality of finish in 
 poetic execution, " is that where the work 
 has been all mentally ' cartooned,' as it 
 were, beforehand, by a process intensely 
 conscious, but patient and silent an occult 
 evolution of life." 
 
 Some score or more of essential rules 
 might well be formulated for the behoof, 
 not only of those who wish to write in the 
 sonnet-form, but also of those who do not 
 even yet fully realise how many things 
 go to the making of a really good sonnet. 
 These regulations, major and minor, are to 
 be found fully set forth by Leigh Hunt and 
 also by Mark Pattison, but a complete 
 statement of points to be observed is here 
 now unnecessary. It will suffice if I set 
 
 il 65 E
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 forth the ten absolutely essential rules for 
 a good sonnet : 
 
 I. The sonnet must consist of fourteen deca- 
 syllabic lines. 
 
 II. Its octave, or major system, whether or 
 not this be marked by a pause in the 
 cadence after the eighth line, must 
 (unless cast in the Shakespearean mould) 
 follow a prescribed arrangement in the 
 rhyme-sounds namely, the first, fourth, 
 fifth, and eighth lines must rhyme on 
 the same sound, and the second, third, 
 sixth, and seventh on another. 
 
 III. Its sestet, or minor system, may be 
 
 arranged with more freedom, but a 
 rhymed couplet at the close is only 
 allowable when the form is the English 
 or Shakespearean. 
 
 IV. No terminal should also occur in any 
 
 portion of any other line in the same 
 system ; and (i) the rhyme-sounds of 
 the octave should be harmoniously at 
 variance, and (2) the rhyme-sounds of 
 the sestet should be entirely distinct in 
 intonation from those of the octave. 
 Thus (i) no octave should be based 
 on a monotonous system of nominally 
 distinct rhymes, such as sea futurity 
 eternity be flee adversity inevit- 
 ably -free. 
 
 V. It must have no slovenliness of diction, 
 no weak or indeterminate terminations, 
 no vagueness of conception, and no 
 obscurity. 
 
 66
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 VI. It must be absolutely complete in itself 
 i.e., it must be the evolution of one 
 thought, or one emotion, or one poeti- 
 cally apprehended fact. 
 
 VII. It should have the characteristic of 
 apparent inevitableness, and in ex- 
 pression be ample, yet reticent. It 
 must not be forgotten that dignity 
 and repose are essential qualities of a 
 true sonnet. 
 
 VIII. The continuity of the thought, idea, or 
 emotion must be unbroken throughout. 
 
 IX. Continuous sonority must be maintained 
 
 from the first phrase to the last. 
 X. The end must be more impressive than the 
 commencement- the close must not be 
 inferior to, but must rather transcend 
 what has gone before. 
 
 If these rules are adequately fulfilled, 
 there will be every chance of the sonnet 
 proving a super-excellent one. But there 
 must be no mere music, no mere sonority, 
 no fourteen-line descriptions of aspects of 
 nature in the manner of Wordsworth in 
 his Duddon-sonnets, for example. Beneath 
 the intermingling lights of apt simile and 
 imaginative metaphor, beneath the melody 
 of vowels and words melting into the 
 melody of the line, and the harmony of 
 the due proportion of the lines themselves 
 from first to last, there must lie, clear 
 and undisturbed by its environment, the 
 67
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 dominating motive the idea, the thought, 
 the emotion. 
 
 But after all these remarks upon techni- 
 calities after all this talk about octaves 
 and sestets, vowels and consonants, I must 
 not let the reader suppose that such matters 
 form anything more than the mere scaffold- 
 ing of poetry. Whether in sonnet-form or 
 in any other guise, " poetry must always," 
 as has been said by a writer often quoted 
 in this essay, " reflect the life of Nature 
 or the life of Man, else it is nothing 
 worth." 
 
 I write these last words not far from the 
 sombre shadow of Ben Ledi the Hill of 
 God, as the name signifies sombre not- 
 withstanding the white garment of snow 
 in which it is enveloped. The stream 
 flowing far beneath it is apparently one 
 sheet of dark ice : not a familiar object is 
 in view, and nothing is audible save the 
 occasional snapping of a frost-bitten branch, 
 or that strangest of all sounds, the north 
 wind ruffling the snow-drifts on the upper 
 hill-slopes ; not a living thing is visible, 
 though far up, on a vast expanse of unbroken 
 white, a tiny blue-black shadow moves 
 like a sweeping scimitar, and I know that 
 68
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 an eagle is passing from peak to lonely 
 peak. 
 
 Away for a brief space from the turmoil 
 and many conflicting interests of the great 
 city, " mother of joys and woes," I realise 
 the more clearly how much more beautiful 
 and reposeful and stimulative Nature is than 
 any imitation of her, how much greater 
 Life than its noblest artistic manifesta- 
 tion. I realise, also, how true it is that 
 the sincerest poetic function for sonneteer 
 as for lyrist or epicist is not the creation of 
 what is strange or fanciful, but the imagina- 
 tive interpretation of what is familiar, so 
 that a thing is made new to us : in the words 
 of an eminent critic, Leslie Stephen, " the 
 highest triumph of style is to say what 
 everybody has been thinking in such a way 
 as to make it new." 
 
 Here, also, in this soothing solitude, this 
 dignified, this majestic silence, this secret 
 and " holy lair " of her who is, the poet 
 tells us, Natura Benigna or Natura Maligna 
 according to the eyes that gaze and the 
 ears that hearken, it seems as if all that 
 is morbid and unreal and merely fanciful 
 were indeed petty enough, and that perfect 
 sanity of mind is as essential to the creation 
 of any great and lasting mental product 
 69
 
 The Sonnet 
 
 as perfect robustness is to the due perform- 
 ance of any prolonged and fatiguing physical 
 endurance. In the words of Leslie Stephen, 
 the highest poetry, like the noblest morality, 
 is the product of a thoroughly healthy 
 mind. 
 
 1886
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS 
 
 THERE are two ways of approaching the 
 study of Shakespeare's Sonnets that of 
 the earnest and reverent student of the 
 man and his work, and that of the critic 
 already biassed in some direction. It may 
 with safety be said that no writer has 
 suffered more at the hands of would-be inter- 
 preters. Shakespeare's simple meaning has 
 been tortured into all manner of strange 
 disguises : his straightforward words have 
 been taken to signify everything from the 
 basest immorality to the wildest of meta- 
 physical absurdities. There is no length of 
 mental folly that has not measured its 
 strength with the robust and long-enduring 
 steadfastness of our greatest poet's genius 
 as manifested in that famous series which, 
 as a foremost living critic has remarked, 
 in itself constitutes a warrant of perpetual 
 fame. 
 
 It is to be hoped that in that shadowy 
 region where dwell the spirits of the worthy 
 
 71
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 no earthly rumour breaks in upon the peace 
 of one who fought triumphantly the battle 
 of his own life, leaving, in no stinted measure, 
 some record of the stress and strife of his 
 mortal passions as a priceless inheritance to 
 those that came after him. Pathetic would 
 it be if those ears which on earth had listened 
 to the sea-like melody of The Tempest and 
 the sadder harmony of King Lear the 
 thrilling human note, the vox-humana of 
 Hamlet the joyous delight-in-life of As 
 You Like It the exquisite minor touches 
 of A Midsummer Night's Dream pathetic 
 would it be if those ears had to apprehend 
 the foolish disquisitions of a Steevens on 
 a series of poems which " had reduced their 
 author to a level with the meanest 
 rhymers " ; or the far-fetched interpreta- 
 tions of a Heraud, finding in Shakespeare's 
 mistress of a season no other than The 
 Church, the " black but comely bride of 
 Solomon " ; the almost equally wild theories 
 of a Gerald Massey ; or the repugnant 
 explanations of a Philarete Chasles ; or, 
 densest of all, the hopelessly muddle-headed 
 Eureka of a Barnstorff, triumphantly de- 
 claring that the enigmatical " W. H." of 
 the dedication stands for " William Him- 
 self " ! and that throughout the series 
 72
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 ' William " is but apostrophising his own 
 Interior Individuality ! 
 
 If such sad circumstance do indeed afflict 
 the serene consciousness of the great Shade 
 in question, some mitigation of his suffering 
 must have been afforded by the labours 
 of those clear-sighted commentators of 
 recent years who have been content to 
 accept his utterances as they were meant 
 to be understood, and, instead of vainly 
 evolving from their inner consciousness 
 strange and monstrous imaginings, have 
 restricted themselves to solving, or en- 
 deavouring to solve, certain points of 
 strictly personal or merely clerical dubiety. 
 Pre-eminently is the gratitude of students 
 that is, of all lovers of Shakespeare's poetic 
 work due to that accomplished writer and 
 Shakespearean authority, Professor Dowden ; 
 to the late J. P. Collier ; to Mr. Thomas 
 Tyler ; to Dr. Furnivall ; to Messrs. Clarke 
 and Wright, the Cambridge editors ; to 
 Mr. Palgrave ; to Professor W. Minto ; to 
 Mr. W. M. Rossetti ; to Mr. Theodore Watts- 
 Dunton ; to Mr. David Main ; to Mr. Hall 
 Caine ; and, among foreign writers, M. Taine 
 in France, and Mr. Grant White and Miss 
 Hillard in America. No one of these emi- 
 nent students (or of others whose names I do 
 73
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 not at the moment recall) has permitted his 
 or her mental vision to be obscured by the 
 bewildering conjectural mists arising out of 
 that miasma of sheer foolishness along whose 
 illusive banks have strayed so many witless 
 wanderers. They one and all see in the 
 first series of sonnets (i. to xcvi.) nothing 
 but a plain declaration of the writer's loyal, 
 self-renouncing, nobly persistent love for a 
 younger and perhaps not wholly worthy 
 friend ; and with but one exception * they 
 recognise in the remainder, the " Dark 
 Woman " series (cxxvii. to clii.), the reve- 
 lation of a great passion that for a season 
 rendered full of bitter import the life of the 
 greatest of our countrymen. 
 
 Among the most eminent poets of our 
 own time, Robert Browning only has 
 doubted Shakespeare's having shown us 
 glimpses of his direct personal experience. 
 We all know Wordsworth's famous words in 
 his sonnet on The Sonnet: With this same 
 
 * Professor Minto, who regards the Woman- 
 Series not in the light of a personal revelation, 
 but as " exercises of skill undertaken in a spirit 
 of wanton defiance and derision of commonplace " 
 a view first enunciated by Mr. Henry Brown, who 
 particularised Michael Drayton and John Davies 
 as the writers who were specially though indirectly 
 thus satirised. 
 
 74
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 key Shakespeare unlocked his heart, to which 
 Browning takes objection, adding : " Did 
 Shakespeare ? If so, the less Shakespeare 
 he ! " a metrical criticism that brought 
 forth the counter-remark of Swinburne : 
 " No whit the less like Shakespeare, but un- 
 doubtedly the less like Browning." Shelley, 
 Keats, Coleridge, and Wordsworth indubit- 
 ably held the personal theory, as, later, have 
 Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Victor 
 Hugo, and others, whose opinions, by virtue 
 of their own poetic powers, may be considered 
 worthy of special attention. 
 
 It may well be asked, why should there 
 be this persistent digging for hidden signi- 
 ficance in the work of a man whose genius 
 was no more secretive than that of any other 
 dramatist ? We do not speculate wildly on 
 all possible meanings that human ingenuity 
 is capable of twisting out of the Amoretti 
 of Spenser or the Astrophel and Stella of 
 Sir Philip Sidney : why then should we 
 approach Shakespeare's sonnets as if they 
 were the profoundest enigmas ? 
 
 One reason undoubtedly lies in the 
 senseless habit of insincere laudation that 
 prevails to such extent. Out of every twenty 
 who speak of Shakespeare as the greatest 
 intellect since ^Eschylus and Plato, are there 
 75
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 ten who have ever read all his writings ? Are 
 there five who intimately know them ? Are 
 there even two who find endless pleasure, 
 wonder, suggestion, comfort, inspiration, in 
 the sonnets ? It is to be feared not. It is 
 to be feared that there are too many whose 
 loud appreciation of Shakespeare's greatness 
 is based merely on an acquaintance with 
 Irving in the characters of Hamlet and 
 Shylock with Ellen Terry in those of Portia 
 and Ophelia. There is perhaps no greater 
 test of Shakespeare's overwhelming genius 
 than the circumstance that it successfully 
 withstands the rank incense with which it 
 is assailed by fools and all manner of 
 thoughtless persons, a cloud of indiscrimi- 
 nate praise sufficient to obscure all but the 
 loftiest summits in the serene region of 
 the intellect. And it is this universal Ave 
 Imperator Poetarum I that is at least in part 
 responsible for the innumerable vagaries of 
 psychological commentators this, coupled 
 with an inherent preference on their part 
 for darkness rather than for light. Realising 
 that the greatest creator of multiform types 
 of humanity is held in such universal 
 esteem, they seem to consider it incumbent 
 upon them to prove that he was not a man 
 like as we are ; that in all things he was 
 76
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 perfect, a flawless man, more ideal than any 
 one of his most ideal conceptions. 
 
 What folly is this ! Granting for a moment 
 that Shakespeare could have been the divine 
 being some of his admirers would fain make 
 him out, where could he have gained those 
 experiences that render his imaginative 
 work quick with vitality ; where could he 
 have laid in that ballast of practical know- 
 ledge without which the ship of his genius 
 would have sailed across no turbulent ocean 
 of human life, traversed no perilous shoals 
 of danger and death, but have been borne 
 irresistibly away by any casual wind to 
 speedy wreckage on the rocks of reality, 
 or have foundered helplessly as soon as 
 the transient sunshine had given place to 
 darkness and storm ? Whatever else he was, 
 we may rest assured that he was pre-emi- 
 nently manly, and therefore that he expe- 
 rienced all those emotions to which men 
 are ordinarily liable ; that he wrestled with 
 temptations even as we ourselves do ; that 
 not infrequently, especially in the impul- 
 sive ardours of youth, indiscretion overcame 
 precept and prudence ; that occasionally he 
 spoke and acted as he would fain not have 
 done ; that once or twice, at least, in his life 
 he had bitter cause to bewail the domination 
 77
 
 of the body, the surrender of the better 
 part of him.* The magnetism of all genuine 
 work of Shakespeare lies in its essential 
 humanity : no one lives but could find his 
 most salient mental and spiritual traits 
 delineated somewhere in that marvellous 
 gallery of portraits comprised in the Plays. 
 Could this man, who touched to such keen 
 music all the notes of humanity, who sounded 
 the subtlest spiritual chords, who produced 
 the saddest as well as the most joyous, the 
 most majestic strains along the whole 
 diapason of life and death, could this man 
 have been otherwise than a veritable fellow 
 of our own, compact of strength and weak- 
 ness, will and impulse, soul and body ? 
 
 And it is because this great master over 
 the passions and follies and heroisms of 
 man has at least once dropped the veil of 
 impersonality that we are so fascinated by 
 the sonnets. Here the musician who has 
 otherwise played for all generations of 
 humanity pipes a solitary tune of his own 
 life, its love, its devotion, its fervour, its 
 prophetic exaltation, its passion, its despair, 
 its exceeding bitterness. There he speaks 
 to the wide world, that admires while it 
 
 * Vide, in further confirmation, the remark- 
 able sonnet, No. cxix. 
 
 7 8
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 learns not, or but little : here, he speaks to 
 us, to each one of us who have ears to hear, 
 or have care to listen. Not only the poets 
 the Words worths, the Shelleys, the Cole- 
 ridges, the Rossettis, the Victor Hugos 
 experience the full potency of this fascina- 
 tion ; the magnetism of it holds in spell all 
 those whose view of life is, in howsoever slight 
 degree, transformed with the glamour that is 
 as aerial distance to the brown fallow-land 
 of the commonplace. Veritably, we are here 
 face to face with " a splendour amid glooms." 
 Yet another reason for the strange obtuse- 
 ness of some would-be interpreters is an 
 apparent forgetfulness of the most obvious 
 facts of chronology. Would the man who 
 was capable of writing such immortal 
 works as The Tempest, King Lear, Macbeth, 
 Hamlet, Othello so urge they, in effect be 
 likely to condescend to such almost unreason- 
 ing devotion to a boyish friend ? still less 
 would he be likely to forget the unspoken 
 commands of duty, and yield to a tempta- 
 tion which was doubly evil in that the sinner 
 transgressed against both moral and civil 
 law ? But it was not the Shakespeare of 
 Hamlet, of Lear, of Macbeth, of Othello, who 
 addressed the brilliant young Herbert of 
 Pembroke in terms which now seem to us 
 79
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 extravagant in their ardour ; it was not this 
 Shakespeare who for a time forgot fealty 
 to wife and child for an enthralling passion 
 that disturbed his spiritual nature to its 
 deepest depths, though it left them clearer 
 than they had yet been, serene for evermore. 
 But it was that younger Shakespeare, still 
 in his years of youth, adventuresome, full 
 of life, inspired with the fire of genius, elate 
 with already won success, susceptible to 
 every charm pertinent to the joyous pageant 
 of life around him, that Shakespeare, who, 
 as a young man married untimely and 
 early thrown upon the world to carve out his 
 own destiny, so far as in him lay, loved 
 with true affection, and with all the Euphu- 
 istic emphasis in expression characteristic 
 of the generation, his brilliant young friend, 
 William Herbert ; rejoiced in the company 
 of accomplished men of divers talents ; 
 was half surprised into and doubtless 
 strenuously fought against a liaison with 
 one whom he afterwards found to be un- 
 worthy even as a paramour. Shakespeare, 
 like many another man, had to pass through 
 the dark valley of humiliation and weariness 
 and sorrow ; and they are but bat-sighted 
 apologists who would have us believe that, 
 instead of going through these experiences 
 80
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 which taught him such infinite store of wis- 
 dom, he spent his youthful years in thinking 
 out indifferent allegories, and in tricking them 
 forth in still more intricate and (from this 
 point of view) dissatisfying verbal disguise. 
 Nor must the fact be overlooked that at 
 any rate one important section of these 
 revelations to us so deeply interesting 
 was never published by him either directly 
 or indirectly, so far as has been ascertained. 
 He was not the kind of man to invite the 
 world in general to share in his private 
 hopes and fears, his trials of friendship, his 
 love agonies. The " W. H." series, or prob- 
 ably but a limited number thereof, circu- 
 lated among a few friends and their acquaint- 
 ances, possibly not at Shakespeare's instance 
 at all (possibly, even, with only his half- 
 willing consent), but at that of young 
 Herbert, or even at that of some friend of the 
 latter and generous admirer of the former. 
 That the young poet did not look upon the 
 authorship of the sonnets as disguisable is 
 evident from these lines in Sonnet Ixxvi. : 
 
 Why write I still all one, ever the same, 
 And keep invention in a noted weed, 
 
 [i.e., in a known, a recognisable style] 
 That every word doth almost tell my name, 
 Showing their birth and where they did proceed ? 
 II 8l F
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 Also that he intended their ultimate publi- 
 cation in the generally accepted sense of 
 the word may with tolerable certainty be 
 inferred from internal evidence : e.g., the 
 last lines of Sonnet xxxviii. : 
 
 // my slight Muse do please these curious days, 
 The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise. 
 
 But it was not till many years after their 
 composition (diverse in date as they are) 
 that they were published in book form, 
 and even then they had not their author's 
 supervision, if even his direct consent to 
 their collective issue. It is certainly unlikely 
 that he would have published the two series 
 as they appear in the Quarto of 1609, 
 Nos. cxxvii. to clii. being beyond doubt 
 antecedent in composition to those, or to 
 the great majority of those, addressed to 
 " W. H." 
 
 In the very evident deficiency in strict 
 sequence, and in the equally manifest want 
 of arrangement according to persons and 
 periods, is alone almost sufficient basis for 
 the argument that Shakespeare wrote these 
 sonnets not as literary exercises, but as 
 genuine expressions of emotion, either when 
 first swayed by this emotion, or when 
 stirred by vivid remembrance. One or two 
 82
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 of the sonnets, peculiarly suited for adapta- 
 tion, he interpolated in one of his early 
 comedies, Love's Labour's Lost. Otherwise, 
 it is generally understood that the first 
 printed sonnets of Shakespeare are those 
 surreptitiously given by Jaggard in his 
 quaintly styled miscellany, The Passionate 
 Pilgrim (published in 1599). How Jaggard 
 obtained these and other pieces we do not 
 know, though it is of course possible that he 
 applied to one who was already heralded 
 as a coming luminary, a master of melli- 
 fluous verse,* and obtained permission to 
 print them, the young poet all the while 
 not suspecting that the authorship of the 
 whole miscellany was to be attributed to 
 him. But against this supposition there 
 are serious objections. Firstly (but this is of 
 minor importance), the two opening sonnets 
 differ considerably in details from their 
 counterparts (Nos. cxxxvii. and cxliv.) in 
 Thomas Thorpe's edition of the Complete 
 Sonnets, published ten years later. This 
 might either point to the fact that Shake- 
 
 * Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia, Wit's 
 Treasury (published in 1598), speaks of the 
 " sweete wittie soule of Ovid " living " in melli- 
 fluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare," and 
 refers, inter alia, to his " sugred sonnets among 
 his private friends." 
 
 83
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 speare altered the misreadings, or improved 
 the original versions, in his own ^ d other 
 copies of The Passionate Pilgrim correc- 
 tions which duly came under the notice 
 of Thorpe ; or else it might point to Jaggard 
 having taken them down on hearsay, or 
 having copied them from unrevised or care- 
 lessly replicated versions. Secondly, it is 
 not likely that Shakespeare would have 
 given any compiler mere studies, as un- 
 doubtedly are the Venus and Adonis sonnets 
 and Divisions Nos. iv., vi., ix., and xi. of 
 The Passionate Pilgrim, especially in incom- 
 plete form (as in Division ix., which wants 
 the second line) ; charming as they are, 
 though too characteristic of an age differing 
 essentially from our own to be suited for 
 " a mixed audience," they are manifestly 
 but studies for, or contemporary offshoots 
 from, the composition of Venus and Adonis, 
 published from five to six years before the 
 appearance of Jaggard's miscellany. Thirdly, 
 still less would he be likely to contribute 
 odd stanzas, as Divisions x. and xiii. (prob- 
 ably draft-portions of, or excerpts from, 
 an unpublished elegiac poem printed in 
 my edition under the title Death in 
 Youth and Beauty), or Divisions xiv. 
 and xv., disconnected sets, probably part 
 84
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 of a contemplated, an unfinished, or a 
 lost love-poem, if indeed by Shakespeare 
 at all. 
 
 It is, of course, somewhat puzzling to 
 understand how such sonnets as the first 
 three of The Passionate Pilgrim (in publica- 
 tion ten years anterior to that of the first 
 collective edition) could have come within 
 Jaggard's cognisance unless given him by 
 their author. It is almost certain that they 
 were portions of the series addressed to 
 the woman who was at one time Shake- 
 speare's mistress, and if so, is it likely, 
 records of strong emotion and bitter expe- 
 rience as they are, that he would have 
 handed them over to an adventurous pub- 
 lisher ? It would be easy, of course, to 
 make one surmise after another in favour of 
 the young poet's having done so ; but where 
 there is little light to go by, we must follow 
 what seems most like a gleam of dayshine, 
 and not every illusive will-o'-the-wisp that 
 flickers along the difficult way. For my 
 part, I can only surmise that (i) Shakespeare 
 showed these and other love-sonnets to his 
 friend Herbert before the latter became his 
 rival, or else subsequently to the desertion 
 of the latter in turn (or his of the Dark 
 Woman), and that Herbert (or Earl of
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 Pembroke as, in the event of the latter 
 supposition being correct, he would be) 
 showed them to a friend or friends, through 
 whom they reached Jaggard ; or (2) that 
 Shakespeare's mistress herself, in a spirit 
 of wanton indifference, mockery, or jealousy 
 (hoping to stir up a real dissension between 
 the two friends who loved her), showed or 
 gave them to Pembroke, or perhaps out of 
 sheer vanity allowed them to be copied by 
 more or less disinterested acquaintances ; 
 or (3) and this seems to me the likeliest 
 of all the whole body of the sonnets was 
 never actually sent to his mistress at all, 
 but in the main simply constituted Shake- 
 speare's contemporary record of the passion 
 that so deeply affected his life at that 
 period. This record he may at a later period 
 have shown to Pembroke or some other 
 friend, and so indirectly brought about their 
 ultimate publication. Individual sonnets, 
 as those of The Passionate Pilgrim, not 
 necessarily revealing the genuine standpoint 
 of the writer, may have been previously 
 permitted to circulate in manuscript. 
 What lover would ever have written 
 to his mistress sonnets i.e., missives 
 intended for her receipt containing such 
 remarks as 
 
 86
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, 
 Who art as black as hell, as dark as night ! 
 
 (S. cxlvii.) 
 
 or 
 
 For I have sworn thee fair ; more perjured I 
 To swear against the truth so foul a He. 
 
 (S. clii.) 
 
 Probably, out of the twenty-six, eleven (Nos. 
 cxxviii., cxxxi. to cxxxvi. inclusive, cxxxix., 
 cxl. , cxliii. , and cxlix.) were actually sent to his 
 mistress at different periods : the remainder 
 (even including a sonnet like No. cl., with its 
 " thou's ") I conjecture to have been as 
 already stated pages of what may be 
 called Shakespeare's private journal of his 
 passion, and certainly not love-missives. 
 Not improbably they form as they stand a 
 genuine sequence, their author having either 
 sent copies of certain of them after their 
 entry in his MS. book, or, as is more likely, 
 made the entries in the latter from originals 
 duly sent. Nos. cxxix., cxliv., cxlvi., are 
 surely not such missives as he would have 
 sent to the woman he loved or had loved : 
 such a procedure would be contrary both to 
 his own chivalrous nature and the spirit 
 of the times. No. cxli. itself affords fairly con- 
 clusive proof that at any rate all the sonnets 
 were not sent ; for in addition to its being 
 87
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 such a missive as no lover, in whatever 
 mood, would send to his inamorata, it may 
 be noted that the personal address charac- 
 terising the opening lines is forgotten in 
 the couplet, where " she " usurps " thou." 
 
 The chief points of difficulty, and of 
 critical dissensions, are, broadly speaking, 
 five in number, viz. : (i) The sphinx-like 
 Dedication ; (2) the identity of the friend 
 of Sonnets i. to cxxvi. ; (3) the identity 
 of the Rival Poet referred to in this series ; 
 (4) the arrangement of the sonnets in groups ; 
 and (5) the identity of the inspirer of Sonnets 
 cxxvii. to clii., and the connection of the 
 latter, if any, with the preceding series. 
 
 As briefly as possible these points must 
 now be considered. It is possible that in 
 endeavouring to be succinct, the writer 
 may appear not only to take too much as 
 indisputable, but also to assert what he 
 has to say with an air of dogmatism : if 
 either failing be apparent, the fault should 
 be attributed not to him who sins unin- 
 tentionally, but to the mass of commentary 
 he has waded through, in the atmosphere 
 involving which he has for some time past 
 been saturated. To one who looks at the 
 moot points with unprejudiced eyes, and 
 with some necessary knowledge of the 
 88
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 social manners as well as of the literature 
 of the period in question, so much of what 
 has been written on the subject seems 
 such mere superfluity of foolishness that he 
 almost inevitably comes to regard points of 
 manifest likelihood as points of irrefutable 
 certainty. Again, there is not room in 
 a short study such as this to go into 
 ample detail in support of asseverations : 
 students will find what they want in the 
 writings of Professor Dowden and other 
 accomplished Shakespearean scholars, while 
 ordinary readers must be content to accept 
 in faith what is undoubtedly representative 
 of the most recent Shakespearean criticism. 
 For this I am indebted to Professor Dowden, 
 Mr. Thomas Tyler, Professor Minto, and 
 others who directly or indirectly have 
 afforded me valuable data to work upon. 
 Especially in connection with Part II. of 
 my edition of the sonnets have I to 
 acknowledge my indebtedness to the careful 
 research and critical acumen displayed in 
 Mr. Tyler's introduction to the photo-litho- 
 graphic facsimile of the sonnets as they 
 appear in the first Quarto (1609). 
 
 (i) The Dedication. The opening words 
 have themselves been productive of some 
 misunderstanding. The onlie begetter : not 
 89
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 unnaturally the word " only " has been taken 
 by many, unacquainted with the change in 
 significance which so many of our words 
 have undergone, to mean sole. Its real 
 meaning in the phrase quoted may possibly, 
 however, be " matchless " or " incompar- 
 able " or " super- excellent," or some other 
 such superlative. When in Sonnet i. Shake- 
 speare speaks of " the only herald of the gaudy 
 Spring " he does not mean " sole herald," 
 but " most welcome " or " incomparable," 
 or perhaps " chief." Begetter : still more 
 is misunderstanding liable to be caused by 
 this word. It has been taken to signify the 
 person who procured the sonnets for the 
 publisher Thorpe, " the only procurer, col- 
 lector, begetter " (here " only " signifying 
 " sole "). As Professor Tyler has pointed 
 out, there is just a possibility that Thorpe 
 meant to convey to their problematical 
 " procurer " the assurance that the poet's 
 promise of " eternitie " would be literally 
 fulfilled unto him for the great service he 
 had rendered to literature in obtaining 
 these sonnets for publication. But neither 
 Mr. Tyler nor any of the most eminent 
 recent commentators entertain these suppo- 
 sitions. The word begetter is now understood 
 to have signified originator, source of, cause 
 go
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 of. When in Sonnet xxxviii. Shakespeare 
 addresses his friend, "Be thou the tenth Muse 
 . . . and he that calls on thee, let him bring 
 forth Eternal numbers to outlive long date," 
 the reference is undoubtedly the same as 
 that underlying " begetter." " The onlie 
 begetter " therefore may either be " the sole 
 bringer forth, the sole cause of," or else 
 " the incomparable inspirer " of " these 
 insuing sonnets." 
 
 (2) The Identity of" Mr. W. H." Even a 
 superficial reader would notwithstanding a 
 few puzzling expressions speedily gather 
 that Sonnets i. to cxxvi. were addressed 
 to a dearly loved male friend of the writer : 
 probably, also, that they constituted a more 
 or less discernible sequence. Of long con- 
 tinuance, and characterised by a great 
 amount of argumentative energy, has been 
 the debate concerning the identity of this 
 friend, obscurely shrouded under those 
 puzzling initials which Mr. Thomas Thorpe 
 so little thought were doomed to be the 
 cause of such an amount of perplexed 
 discussion. 
 
 The researches of critical students ulti- 
 mately made it plain that the Dedicatee 
 must have been one of two men Henry 
 Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, and
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. It 
 might seem easy to at once fix upon the latter 
 as the " W. H." of Mr. Thorpe, but the fact 
 of these initials corresponding with those 
 of Pembroke is by no means sufficient for 
 identification. I shall not attempt in the 
 limited space at my command to repeat 
 all the pros and cons on either side, but may 
 at once state that though many influential 
 commentators have considered Southampton 
 to be the individual referred to, it is now 
 known, almost certainly beyond disproof, 
 that Shakespeare's friend was William Her- 
 bert, Earl of Pembroke. For the claims of 
 Lord Southampton it may briefly be said 
 that it was to this nobleman (who was not 
 more than nine years the junior of the poet) 
 that Shakespeare in 1593 dedicated his 
 Venus and Adonis, and in the following 
 year his Rape of Lucrece, on this second 
 occasion using dedicatory words of such 
 warmth of expression as nearly to coincide 
 with the ardent language of some of the most 
 directly personal of the sonnets. Especially 
 is Sonnet xxvi. considered more like the 
 method of address which Shakespeare would 
 have pursued in the case of Lord South- 
 ampton, than of the much younger and 
 distinctly less staid Earl of Pembroke. 
 92
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 Again, Shakespeare in this preface says 
 plainly to his older friend, " What I have 
 done is yours ; what I have to do is yours." 
 As for the fact that the initials in Thorpe's 
 dedication are " W. H." and not " H. W.," 
 it has been contended that the transposition 
 was intentional and was meant as a blind 
 a rather far-fetched conclusion certainly, 
 considering all the circumstances. As for 
 the " Mr.," no blind, in all probability, 
 was thereby meant. The prefix at that 
 period had a much more elastic use than 
 now ; examples of its similar employment 
 could easily be adduced e.g., in England's 
 Parnassus Lord Buckhurst appears as 
 Mr. Sackville. 
 
 But an overwhelming amount of evidence 
 facts of minor weight mostly, but all 
 tending in the same direction renders 
 it as nearly indisputable as any question 
 can be without absolutely conclusive evi- 
 dence, that the " W. H." of the sonnets 
 was the Earl of Pembroke. Any remaining 
 doubts in the minds of those who have 
 perused the lucid arguments of Professor 
 Minto in Characteristics of English Poets 
 (section on "The Elizabethan Sonneteers"), 
 of Professor Dowden, and others, must be 
 removed after acquaintance with the latest 
 93
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 researches as set forth by Mr. Thomas 
 Tyler in his introduction to Mr. Praetorius' 
 Quarto-Facsimile. Here we clearly learn 
 all that is necessary concerning Pembroke's 
 life, his friendship with Shakespeare, his 
 liaison with the same woman who at one time 
 was the latter's mistress (certainly in the 
 poetic, and only less certainly in the more 
 commonly accepted meaning of the term) 
 that mysterious " Dark Woman," now for 
 the first time, in all probability, identified 
 his Court troubles, his public career. Sixteen 
 years younger than the great dramatist, 
 brilliant in varied accomplishments and in 
 manners, beautiful and well worthy of the 
 famous race with whom he was so closely 
 connected, it was this William Herbert, 
 Earl of Pembroke, to whom as " the real 
 source of the insuing sonnets " Thomas 
 Thorpe, with or without the knowledge or 
 consent of the popular nobleman ^ his 
 already famous friend, inscribed his cele- 
 brated dedication. The dedication, there- 
 fore, may be taken to read thus : To the Sole 
 Cause (or Incomparable Inspirer) of these 
 insuing sonnets Mr. W[illiam] H[erberf\ 
 (Earl of Pembroke] all Happiness, and 
 that Eternity promised by our immortal 
 poet, their author, wisheth the well-wishing 
 94
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 " adventurer " in issuing them in printed 
 form, T[homas} T[horpe]. 
 
 (3) To Professor Minto is due the dis- 
 covery of the Rival Poet specially referred 
 to by Shakespeare in one of the nine sonnets 
 (Ixxviii.-lxxxvi.) dealing with the preten- 
 sions of other bardic aspirants for the 
 favour of his patron-friend. Almost every 
 likely writer had been cited as the " better 
 spirit " of Sonnet Ixxx., the " proud full 
 sail of whose great verse " threatened to 
 altogether obliterate from notice his own 
 " saucy bark." Marlowe, notwithstanding 
 certain indubitable drawbacks to the likeli- 
 hood of the supposition, and Ben Jonson, 
 were the two generally considered as having 
 claims to be nominated this rival poet. 
 " I hope," says Professor Minto, " I shall 
 not be held guilty of hunting after paradox 
 if I say that every possible poet has been 
 named but the right one, nor of presump- 
 tion if I say that he is so obvious that 
 his escape from notice is something little 
 short of miraculous." With conclusive 
 argument Mr. Minto then proceeds to 
 prove that Chapman was this poet, a 
 conclusion now accepted by all students 
 as definite. 
 
 (4) The arrangement of the Sonnets in 
 
 95
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 groups. It may be broadly taken for granted 
 that any transposition of certain groups 
 of the sonnets should not be attempted. 
 They may, as they stand, be productive 
 of no inconsiderable perplexity, but if every 
 commentator had his way the confusion 
 would in a very short time become hopeless. 
 The example of Gerald Massey may be 
 held forth as a solemn warning ; to the 
 meditative student none could be more 
 salutary. 
 
 The only certain division is that of 
 Sonnets cxxvii. to clii. from the 126 pre- 
 ceding : as yet, perhaps, the only defensible 
 transposition would be the placement of 
 cxxvii.-clii. before and not after the longer 
 series, belonging as they do to an earlier 
 period, not only in application, but as 
 regards composition ; moreover, this trans- 
 position would render certain portions in 
 the subsequent series less obscure, and would 
 indeed throw a flood of light thereupon 
 which every one who read the sonnets 
 for the first time would find sufficiently 
 illuminative. Merely as a matter of personal 
 opinion the present writer would like to see 
 the " Dark Woman " series placed as an 
 interlude between Sonnets xxxix. and xl. 
 Here the series would fit in with peculiar 
 96
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 applicability. In one or two of the immedi- 
 ately preceding sonnets (especially No. xxxv.) 
 there are foreshado wings of what is taking, 
 or has taken, place ; then would come the 
 long passion poem, revealing everything to 
 the sympathetic reader : and, thereafter, 
 the reproachful, forgiving, warning, con- 
 soling, beseeching series from xl. to xciv., 
 concluding with the sonnets of Reconcilia- 
 tion, Nos. c. to cxxvi. Certainly, if I had 
 ventured to interfere with the universally 
 accepted numerical sequence, this is the 
 order which I should" have adopted. 
 
 The following divisional arrangement of 
 the series addressed to " W. H." is to 
 some extent based on that of Mr. Armitage 
 Brown, on that of Dr. Furnivall in the 
 Leopold Shakespeare, and on that of Mr. 
 Tyler in his Introduction ; as for the 
 headings of the groups, these may be altered 
 by any reader where found unsatisfactory. 
 
 i.-xvii. Of Persuasion (to his friend 
 
 " W. H." to marry and per- 
 petuate his beauty and race). 
 
 xviii.-xxxiii. Of Shakespeare's ardent friendship 
 for " W. H." 
 
 xxxiv.-xxxix. Of Renunciation. 
 
 xl.-lviii. Of Excuse, Love in Absence, 
 
 Promised Immortality of Fame, 
 and Remonstrance. 
 II 97 G
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 lix.-lx. Of Oblivion. 
 
 Ixi.-lxv. Of Suffering through Love, and 
 
 of Apprehension. 
 
 Ixvi. Of Deep Weariness. 
 
 Ixvii.-lxviii. Of Contemplative Regret. 
 
 Ixix.-lxx. Of Evil Rumours concerning 
 
 " W. H." 
 
 Ixxi.-lxxiv. Of Inevitable Death and Enduring 
 Love. 
 
 Ixxv.-lxxvii. Of the Monotony of Love's Lan- 
 guage, and of advice to " W. H." 
 as how best to fill up an accom- 
 panying present of a book of 
 blank leaves. 
 
 Ixxviii.-lxxxvii. Concerning certain rival poetic 
 aspirants for the supreme 
 favour of " W. H." 
 
 Ixxxviii.-xcix. Of Estrangement ; of Rebuke con- 
 cerning Libertinism ; and of 
 Reproachful Pleading. 
 
 c.-cxxvi. Of Reconciliation after Separa- 
 
 tion ; of Assurance of Fame ; 
 of Marriage (cxvi.) ; of Con- 
 fession, and of Rumours (cxix.- 
 cxxi.) ; Envoy. 
 
 (5) The Identity of the Inspirer of 
 cxxvii.-clii. The identity of the woman 
 who for a season exercised so potent a spell 
 on Shakespeare has for long remained a 
 complete mystery ; while conjecture was 
 possible, discovery seemed as hopeless as 
 ascertainment of " what song the syrens 
 sang." Even so recent and so accomplished 
 98
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 an authority as Professor Dowden has 
 written : " We shall never discover the name 
 of the woman who for a season could 
 sound, as no one else, the instrument of 
 Shakespeare's heart from the lowest note 
 to the top of the compass. To the eyes of 
 no diver among the wrecks of time will 
 that curious talisman gleam." But that 
 curious talisman has been revealed to the 
 vision of Mr. Tyler ; he, and the Rev. W. A. 
 Harrison, and, indirectly, the late Rev. 
 F. C. Fitton, have solved an apparently 
 inscrutable enigma. I cannot here repeat 
 or even give a digest of all they have to say 
 on this interesting subject, and it must 
 suffice to affirm that it is now established, 
 probably beyond disproof, that the woman 
 who was the mistress first of Shakespeare 
 and then of the Earl of Pembroke was known 
 as Mrs. Mary Fitton. Mary Fitton, or 
 Ffitton, of good parentage, was born in 
 1578, so that she would be about seventeen 
 when Shakespeare first saw her, or between 
 eighteen and nineteen when the liaison 
 may have occurred (possibly it was consider- 
 ably later), a conjecture founded on the fact 
 that Love's Labour's Lost (containing allusive 
 sonnets) was played at the Christmas of 
 1597. Whether she favoured Shakespeare 
 99
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 while still unmarried is uncertain ; the 
 strong probability is that it was while she 
 was simply Mary Fitton. This fascinating 
 woman was one of Queen Elizabeth's maids- 
 of-honour. Her first husband was a Captain 
 Lougher, though it was possibly before this 
 that she scandalised the Court by being 
 proved with child by the young Earl of 
 Pembroke, who, while confessing the fact, 
 utterly renounced all marriage. Mr. Tyler 
 suggests the possibility that she had been 
 married in very early youth, a manage de 
 convenance, in support of the existence 
 of which he adduces strong evidence. If 
 so, she must have secured a divorce on the 
 legal point noted by Mr. Tyler, otherwise 
 Pembroke would have had no need to 
 declare his resolution not to marry Mary 
 Fitton. The date of this scandal was 
 1601, a circumstance which tends to prove 
 that the woman-sonnets were written at 
 varying periods, and that Pembroke found 
 passion a stronger force than the loyalty 
 of friendship. The case would seem to be 
 that Sir Edward Fitton, while in Ireland 
 on political duty, arranged for his young 
 daughter's marriage with a Captain Lougher ; 
 that this marriage was solemnised, but after- 
 wards annulled on account of some irregu- 
 100
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 larity in money matters ; that while in 
 London, after her father's return, Mary 
 Fitton (having renounced the name of 
 Lougher) saw Shakespeare acting, or other- 
 wise made his acquaintance ; entertained 
 a fancy and possibly a passion for him ; 
 later on allowed Pembroke to take Shake- 
 speare's place, and became mother of a child 
 by the former ; got into disgrace with the 
 Queen ; transferred her favours to Sir Richard 
 Leveson, knight, by whom she had two 
 illegitimate children ; and finally married her 
 second husband, a Captain (or Mr.) Polwhele. 
 These circumstances are in themselves 
 sufficient to prove that Mary Fitton was 
 if not a woman of rare beauty at any rate 
 one of extraordinary fascination. We know 
 (cxxviii.) that she was a skilled musician on 
 the virginal, surely a certain way to touch the 
 heart of Shakespeare, the poet who of all 
 others has written with most emphasis and 
 unmistakable sincerity of music ; that she 
 had lovely eyes, dark and with that pathos 
 generally accompanying depth 
 
 A nd truly not the morning sun of heaven 
 Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east, 
 Nor that full star that ushers in the even 
 Doth half that glory to the sober west, 
 As those two mourning eyes become thy 
 face 
 
 101
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 and that her mouth was formed for sweet 
 speech and lover's kisses : 
 
 Those lips that Love's own hand did make. 
 
 The bitter emphasis of lines 13, 14 in cxlvii. 
 and lines 13, 14 in clii. do not of necessity 
 point to anything repellent in her features or 
 expression. The word "fair" in both instances 
 probably refers more to her real, her inner 
 nature than to her external appearance ; 
 but, even if taken literally, Shakespeare's 
 words would simply mean that having 
 addressed her on occasions in the stereo- 
 typed complimentary phraseology of the 
 time, calling her fair when she was really 
 dark-haired, dark-eyed, and olive- com- 
 plexioned, he privately denounces his own 
 forswearing, once that the glamour of passion 
 has been wholly or almost wholly dissipated. 
 Professor Minto argues well for his theory that 
 the " Dark Woman " series was the outcome 
 of a spirit of mockery or defiance of con- 
 ventional mistress-sonneteering, intensified 
 here and there into seeming vivid reality 
 of emotion through the writer's essentially 
 dramatic genius ; but it is hardly likely 
 that he will gain wide support in this view, 
 quite possible as it certainly is. With Pro- 
 fessor Dowden we may conjecture whether we 
 102
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 do not in some measure owe Cleopatra to 
 this strange passion of Shakespeare : surely, 
 the woman he so loved, the woman 
 of whom he sometimes wrote so bitterly 
 (see especially the lines entitled " A 
 Woman " among his Poems), must have 
 coloured many of his conceptions of women 
 and women's ways ? It seems to me a 
 great mistake to consider the heroine of 
 the sonnets as a woman destitute of beauty 
 Mr. Tyler would even have it, without 
 the charm of a soft or pleasing voice 
 simply because of Shakespeare's allusion 
 to her blackness or darkness of complexion ; 
 a black beauty, as has been pointed out by 
 A. Hillard, was a phrase universally used to 
 express a brunette as late even as the age 
 of Queen Anne. A beautiful, certainly a 
 fascinating " brunette " she must have 
 been. The debatable Sonnet cxxx. must 
 not be taken as expressive of deficiencies in 
 beauty and manners on the part of Shake- 
 speare's mistress : there, in a spirit of irony 
 as much as of earnestness, he wrote literal 
 truth, yet with a saving clause that trans- 
 formed all he had said negatived his nega- 
 tives, so to speak. 
 
 On the sonnets themselves I need not 
 now expatiate, great though the temptation 
 103
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 may be. Briefly it may be noted, as regards 
 their metrical structure, that much has been 
 inconsiderately written concerning the in- 
 efficiency of the Shakespearean as compared 
 with other sonnet-forms.. The greatest of 
 sonneteers since Shakespeare one, moreover, 
 who himself seldom adopted the model of 
 the master-poet he so intensely admired 
 declared that " conception FUNDAMENTAL 
 BRAIN- WORK is what makes the difference 
 in all art. . . .A Shakespearean sonnet is 
 better than the most perfect in form, because 
 Shakespeare wrote it." In confirmation of 
 this dictum of Rossetti, I quote the words of 
 the chief living authority on the "sonnet," 
 Theodore Watts-Dunton, who, after object- 
 ing to Mark Pattison's strange assertion 
 that Shakespeare's selection of the sonnet- 
 form was an unfortunate choice of vehicle, 
 and after justly referring to Sonnet cxxix. 
 (The expense of spirit in a waste of shame] 
 as the greatest in the world, proceeds : 
 " The quest of the Shakespearean sonnet is 
 not, like that of the form adopted by 
 Milton, sonority, and, so to speak, metrical 
 counterpoint, but sweetness ; and the 
 sweetest of all possible arrangements in 
 English versification is a succession of deca- 
 syllabic quatrains in alternate rhymes knit 
 104
 
 Shakespeare's Sonnets 
 
 together, and clinched by a couplet a 
 couplet coming not too far from the initial 
 verse to lose its binding power, and yet 
 not too near the initial verse for the 
 ring of epigram to disturb the ' linked 
 sweetness long drawn out ' of this move- 
 ment, but sufficiently near to shed its 
 influence over the poem back to the initial 
 verse." 
 
 Veritably, to use Shakespeare's own phrase, 
 these " deep-brained sonnets " are a legacy 
 of inestimable value. 
 
 Subtle as Sphinx ; as sweet and musical 
 As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair ; 
 A nd when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods 
 Make heaven drowsy with the harmony. 
 
 Their sonority, their grandeur, their beauty, 
 their deep-reaching music and subtle human 
 " reverberations," are ours whensoever we 
 will ; but still more may we find strength 
 and refreshment in the great nature they 
 reveal self-abnegating, loyal, reaching down 
 from the heights of supremity with a humi- 
 lity that has in it something of pathos as 
 well as of spiritual nobility. 
 
 1885 
 
 105
 
 GREAT ODES 
 
 THE ode is the most unpopular of all 
 poetic forms : exceptions such as Milton's 
 Hymn on the Nativity, for example, and the 
 odes of Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and 
 Wordsworth are loved by virtue of their 
 own beauty, and not for their more or 
 less close resemblance to certain irregular 
 stanzaic poems which have come to be 
 regarded as typical odes. The very word, 
 to the ear of the general reader, seems to carry 
 with it some suggestion either of affected 
 sentiment, inflated diction, or both in 
 unhappy union. But, besides this common 
 and by no means unjustifiable prejudice, 
 there is much uncertainty as to what an 
 ode is. If Dryden's Alexander's Feast be 
 one, how can we fitly class with it, for 
 example, Coleridge's Ode to France or 
 Shelley's Ode to the West Wind P Poets 
 themselves are generally as much at sea 
 in their definitions as is the ordinary reader, 
 and will freely accept as an ode anything 
 106
 
 Great Odes 
 
 between the irregular stanzaic outpourings 
 of Cowley, or Pope's merely rhetorical 
 St. Cecilia's Day, and Shelley's impassioned, 
 outwelling lyric To a Skylark. 
 
 With the Pindaric ode it is needless to 
 concern ourselves. Completely misappre- 
 hended at first, and, later, arbitrarily and 
 mistakenly raised as a fixed model, its 
 influence, such as it is, has been almost 
 entirely harmful. The true Pindaric ode 
 has all the regularity of tjdal music in its 
 swelling strains ; the conventional Anglo- 
 Pindaric ode is merely a series of irregular 
 metres, arbitrarily separated into strophe, 
 antistrophe, and epode, or, equally arbi- 
 trarily, into irregular stanzas. Each ode 
 of Pindar has its own music, as each conch 
 stranded by the waves has its own forlorn 
 vibration of the sea's rhythm ; whereas the 
 so-called Pindaric odes of Cowley and his 
 imitators have no more individuality of 
 music than have the exercises of instru- 
 mentalists in contradistinction to the com- 
 positions of musicians. It would seem as 
 though the ode, whenever modelled more 
 or less closely upon the conventional type, 
 loses all spontaneity, all freedom of move- 
 ment : it is as though we were conscious of 
 the poet singing. The supreme quality of 
 107
 
 Great Odes 
 
 lyrical music is its inevitableness. Words- 
 worth's great irregular Ode on the Intimations 
 of Immortality fails in rhythmic effect just 
 where he adopts an arbitrary metrical 
 system where there is no seduction of the 
 ear, because not a line is inevitable : 
 
 A wedding or a festival, 
 
 A mourning or a funeral ; 
 
 And this hath now his heart, 
 And unto this he frames his song : 
 
 Then will he fit his tongue 
 To dialogues of business, love or strife ; 
 
 But it will not be long 
 
 Ere this be thrown aside, 
 
 A nd with new joy and pride 
 The little actor cons another part ; 
 Filling from time to time his " humorous stage " 
 With all the persons, down to palsied age, 
 That Life brings with her in her equipage ; 
 
 As if his whole vocation 
 
 Were endless imitation. 
 
 Here Wordsworth, conscious that he was 
 writing an ode, evidently believed that if he 
 did not frequently interpolate such short 
 accidental measures as those quoted, he 
 would produce a poem, but not distinctively 
 an ode. It is the freedom from any unfor- 
 tunate convention that makes his Ode to 
 Duty so supremely fine an ode in which 
 there is not a stanza, not a line even, which 
 would have satisfied the eighteenth-century 
 108
 
 Great Odes 
 
 poets and critics. Yet what lofty beauty in 
 this ode of seven eight-line stanzas : 
 
 Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 A s is the smile upon thy face ; 
 Flowers laugh before thee on their beds ; 
 A nd fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
 And (he most ancient heavens, through thee, 
 are fresh and strong. 
 
 After this dignified reticence, what a 
 babbling there seems in : 
 
 As if his whole vocation 
 Were endless imitation. 
 
 It is here, at once, that we reach the 
 primary rule which should guide the poet. 
 Let him give himself up to his poetic 
 instinct, which is the same thing as saying 
 that he should let his rhythmic emotion 
 dominate his critical heed of metrical 
 propriety. We may be sure that, in the 
 fulfilment of this rule, there will be no more 
 Anglo-Pindaric odes. 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine a drearier 
 
 yoltime of verse than one composed of odes 
 
 of the conventional type. Fine, even, as 
 
 is Dryden's St. Cecilia's Day, how false its 
 
 109
 
 Great Odes 
 
 metallic music seems compared with that 
 which is produced under no superficial law 
 of conventional propriety, but under the 
 deeper law of shaping emotion ! Still, if 
 the term could be applied only to poems of 
 this class, they would have to be accepted 
 on their own merits. But the word is no 
 more thrall to one species of verse than to 
 another, and a volume of fine odes might be 
 compiled which would not include a single 
 example of the Pindaric or pseudo-Pindaric 
 type. An ode was originally a lyrical com- 
 position, a song. When, with the cessation 
 of the choric chant, the strophe, anti- 
 strophe, and epode lost their musical value, 
 the divisions became arbitrary. The ancient 
 choral lyric, which had been accompanied 
 by music, was no longer the same thing when 
 it came to be privily read instead of publicly 
 chanted. Thenceforth lyrical poetry was 
 not verse indissociable from the sympa- 
 thetic strains of the lyre or other instru- 
 ment, or the human voice, but gradually 
 attained a music of its own : a music in a 
 sense allied to, but practically distinct 
 from, vocal or instrumental melody. So, 
 now, a " lyric " does not mean a poem % 
 singing : most of our finest lyrics, indeed, 
 are beyond the compass of the singer, 
 no
 
 Great Odes 
 
 Poems so unlike each other in rapidity and 
 buoyancy of movement as Shelley's Cloud 
 and Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci are, 
 the one as much as the other, entitled to 
 be called lyrics, though they could not be 
 sung. On the other hand, many of the 
 truest lyrics by Heine, Beranger, and Burns 
 are also true songs. But, by common 
 consent, the term " ode " is never now 
 applied to a lyrical composition intended 
 to be set to music. That the word cannot 
 be restricted to a solemn or grandiose 
 theme, treated with sedate harmony, would 
 seem demonstrable ; otherwise, for example, 
 that swift and impassioned lyric, the Ode 
 to the West Wind, could not be classed with, 
 say, the Ode to Duty. 
 
 What then is, or should be, an ode : an 
 English ode, for English poets ? Surely it 
 must be commonly agreed that, as we have 
 no classic model, or none suitable, we cannot 
 determine any metrical form as one pre- 
 eminently worthy to be distinguished as The 
 Ode. As an ode is no longer a poem to be 
 chanted, and is not a lyric to be sung, shall 
 it be called simply a lyric ? This, of course, 
 would be inadequate : for many poems, 
 of an absolutely distinct nature (though 
 with a common fundamental principle), 
 in
 
 Great Odes 
 
 are comprised under the generic name of 
 lyric. 
 
 Each of us expects in an ode, whether it 
 consist of a set of irregular stanzaic divisions 
 or of a regular series of regular stanzas 
 (the only primary distinctions now recog- 
 nised), a dignity and even solemnity of 
 beauty in expression, in harmony with a 
 theme lofty in itself, or of worthy purport. 
 It does not follow, however, that every 
 loftily-fine lyrical poem with a nobly com- 
 pulsive theme is an ode ; otherwise Emily 
 Bronte's Last Lines would have as much 
 claim to be so classed as Milton's Hymn on 
 the Nativity. Here, at once, we have a clue. 
 The Nativity is a lyrical poem to be distin- 
 guished as an ode because it is not a lyric 
 in the sense of being an impulsive, irre- 
 pressible, individual outcry, a purely per- 
 sonal utterance ; whereas the Last Lines, 
 or Shelley's Stanzas written in Dejection, 
 Heine's Wenn ich in deine Augen seh', or 
 Burns' Ae fond kiss, Wordsworth's / 
 wandered lonely as a cloud, or Tennyson's 
 Tears, idle tears, are not odes, though an ode 
 is a lyric, by virtue of their acutely personal 
 note. But, again, mere impersonality is 
 not the sole distinguishing factor, otherwise 
 scpjres of familiar lyrics would be odes. 
 112
 
 Great Odes 
 
 I remember hearing an eminent critic 
 define the modern ode as " a slow lyric." 
 But this, as we have seen, is not enough. 
 It must be, first of all, not only a " slow " 
 but a majestic lyric : its measures must 
 move with dignity and grandeur, or at 
 least with a stately beauty that is serene 
 rather than impassioned. Then it must be 
 impersonal, in the sense that it must not 
 be a direct personal outcry, though, in 
 common with all true poetry, it must be 
 absolutely individualistic in utterance. Just 
 as there are motives which can be best 
 expressed in the blank-verse epic, in the 
 heroic-couplet narrative, in the ballad, the 
 sonnet, or the quatrain, so there are motives 
 which can best be expressed in the ode, or 
 in what may be called odic measures. But 
 that high sentiment cannot alone justify the 
 claim to be an ode may be shown by example. 
 Among all our Victorian poets none is or 
 was so fitted for the writing of odic poems 
 as Matthew Arnold. Many of his com- 
 positions are, in the truest sense, odes. He 
 loved a slow, stately sweep of verse, or a 
 not less dignified brevity of metre, and his 
 poetic emotion had keenest insight when, 
 like the condor, it moved in calm and 
 serene flight far above the highest summits 
 
 II 113 H
 
 Great Odes 
 
 of the moods and passions of the moment. 
 There is a very noble poem of his which, 
 though in a sense personal, is only relatively 
 so : it is lofty in sentiment and lofty in 
 expression. It is the poem Morality, fit 
 comrade for Wordsworth's Duty. 
 
 We cannot kindle when we will 
 
 The fire which in the hearth resides, 
 
 The spirit bloweth and is still, 
 
 In mystery our soul abides ; 
 
 But tasks in hours of insight will'd 
 Can be through hours of gloom fulfill' d. 
 
 Thus it begins, and mounts to a higher 
 music when Nature delivers her message, 
 closing with the rapt lines : 
 
 / knew not yet the gauge of time, 
 
 Nor wore the manacles of space ; 
 
 I felt it in some other clime ! 
 
 I saw it in some other place ! 
 
 'Twas when the heavenly house I trod, 
 A nd lay upon the breast of God. 
 
 A few pages before Morality in Matthew 
 Arnold's poetical works occurs a poem 
 which is truly an ode, In Utrumque 
 Paratus : 
 
 If in the silent mind of One all-pure 
 
 At first imagined lay 
 The sacred world, and by procession sure
 
 Great Odes 
 
 From those still deeps, in form and colour drest, 
 
 Seasons alternating, and night and day, 
 
 The long mused thought to north, south, east, and 
 
 west, 
 Took them its all-seen way ; 
 
 O waking on a world which thus-wise springs I 
 
 Whether it needs thee count 
 Betwixt thy waking and the birth of things 
 Ages or hours O waking on life's stream / 
 By lonely pureness to the all-pure fount 
 (Only by this thou canst) the colour 'd dream 
 
 Of life remount ! 
 
 Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow, 
 
 And faint the city gleams, 
 Rare the lone pastoral huts ; marvel not thou ! 
 The solemn peaks but to the stars are known, 
 But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams ; 
 Alone the sun arises, and alone 
 
 Spring the great streams. 
 
 O man, whom Earth, thy long-vex t mother, bare 
 Not without joy, so radiant, so endow' d 
 (Such happy issue crown'd her painful care) ! 
 Be not too proud ! 
 
 Thy native world stirs at thy feet unknown, 
 
 Yet there thy secret lies ! 
 Out of this stuff, these forces, thou art grown, 
 And proud self-severance from them were 
 
 Disease. 
 
 O scan thy native world with pious eyes ! 
 High as thy life be risen, 'tis from these ; 
 
 And these, too, rise.
 
 Great Odes 
 
 Why may this fine poem be called an ode, 
 this and the short measured Bacchanalia and 
 several other familiar poems by Matthew 
 Arnold,. and the term be denied to Morality ? 
 Both deal with a lofty subject, and each has 
 a gracious serenity of utterance. Does a too 
 great simplicity of rhyme-scheme modify the 
 grandiose impression which an ode should 
 afford ? If so, Wordsworth's Ode to Duty 
 would surely come under the ban. Is it 
 not, really, that the utterance is more of 
 individual than general import ? "An ode 
 is a poem in irregular rhymed stanzas 
 with abruptly varying metres, or series of 
 regular-rhymed decasyllabic stanzas," says 
 one authority ; but neither rhyme nor con- 
 formity with any stanzaic arrangement is 
 actually necessary, still less a decasyllabic 
 uniformity. Collins's beautiful Ode to 
 Evening consists of a series not merely 
 of quatrains, but of unrhymed quatrains. 
 To return to Matthew Arnold : the 
 poem entitled The Future is really an 
 ode, though it depends upon assonance 
 instead of rhyme, and is irregular in its 
 divisions : 
 
 Haply, the river of Time, 
 
 A s it grows, as the towns on its marge 
 
 Fling their wavering lights 
 
 116
 
 Great Odes 
 
 On a wider, statelier stream 
 
 May acquire, if not the calm 
 
 Of its early mountainous shore, 
 
 Yet a solemn peace of its own. 
 
 And the width of the waters, the hush 
 
 Of the grey expanse where he floats, 
 
 Freshening its current and spotted with foam 
 
 As it draws to the Ocean, may strike 
 
 Peace to the soul of the man on its breast, 
 
 As the pale waste widens around him 
 
 A s the banks fade dimmer away 
 
 As the stars come out, and the night-wind 
 
 Brings up the stream 
 
 Murmurs and scents of the infinite Sea. 
 
 Morality, again, is not a swift lyric, but it 
 is clear that it has not throughout that slow 
 majestic phrasing which would seem to be 
 the first essential of odic metres. This brings 
 us to the point, can " swift " lyrics be aptly 
 described as odes ? 
 
 There can be little doubt that the term 
 would be almost meaningless if it were 
 allowed to comprise every lyrical form. If 
 the ode be at once " a high remote chant " 
 and an impassioned apostrophe, it must 
 cease to be distinctive, must become as 
 liberal a term as " lyric " itself. Are we to 
 call the Hymn on Christ's Nativity and the 
 Ode to the West Wind, or To the Skylark 
 by one common name ? Yet each has been 
 accepted as an ode. It may be suggested 
 117
 
 Great Odes 
 
 that any poem finely wrought and full of 
 high thinking, which is of the nature of an 
 apostrophe or of sustained intellectual medi- 
 tation on a single theme of general purport, 
 should be classed as an ode. This, it seems 
 to me, may fairly be accepted if, further, 
 the distinction between the personal and 
 impersonal lyric be observed, and if it be 
 understood that the form must neither be 
 narrative nor dramatic, nor, again, be of 
 an obtrusively choric nature. 
 
 In the only compilation of English odes 
 which I know, that edited by Mr. Edmund 
 Gosse, there will be found sufficient variety 
 of type to prove the aptness of any complaint 
 anent the uncertainty as to what is or is not 
 an ode. Mr. Gosse can find room for Prior's 
 indifferent and merely occasional Ode on the 
 Taking of Namur : 
 
 Some Folks are drunk, yet do not know it : 
 
 So might not Bacchus give you law ? 
 Was it a muse, O lofty Poet, 
 
 Or virgin of St. Cyr, you saw ? 
 Why all this fury ? What's the matter. 
 
 That oaks must come from Thrace to dance ? 
 Must stupid stocks be taught to flatter, 
 
 And is there no such wood in France ? &c. 
 
 Nor does he hesitate, while he omits Crashaw 
 
 and, among the moderns, Hood, to include 
 
 118
 
 Great Odes 
 
 Akenside's amiable but commonplace On 
 Leaving Holland, Warton's lines on the 
 First of April beginning : 
 
 With dalliance rude young Zephyr woos 
 Coy May. Full oft with kind excuse 
 The boisterous boy the Fair denies, &c., 
 
 and Cowper's episodical poem in narrative- 
 quatrains, Boadicea, ending : 
 
 She with all a monarch's pride 
 
 Felt them on her bosom glow ; 
 Rushed to battle, fought, and died : 
 
 Dying, hurled them at the foe. 
 
 " Ruffians, pitiless as proud, 
 
 Heaven award the vengeance due ; 
 
 Empire is on us bestowed, 
 
 Shame and ruin wait for you." 
 
 Of course, in no real sense are these com- 
 positions odes, either after a classical or 
 pseudo-classical model or in the most liberal 
 modern interpretation. Again, though poeti- 
 cally of better worth, three other poems 
 which Mr. Gosse includes in his collection 
 have no claim to be called odes : Lander's 
 Lines to Joseph Ablett, Leyden's fine stanzas 
 To an Indian Gold Coin, and Gray's charming 
 poem On the Spring. Yet Mr. Gosse himself 
 writes, in his introduction : " We take as 
 an ode any strain of enthusiastic and exalted 
 lyrical verse, directed to a fixed purpose, and 
 119
 
 Great Odes 
 
 dealing progressively with one dignified 
 theme." 
 
 Perhaps the most fatal fault the ode can 
 have is to be narrative in form. It is this 
 that vitiates Gray's Bard, which, in our 
 modern sense of the word, is not an ode at 
 all, but a narrative poem of a declamatory 
 kind. If The Bard be an ode, then Marmion 
 is simply an enlarged example of the same 
 species. For this reason I cannot consider 
 it to be an ode. Indeed, conclusive evi- 
 dence is afforded in Mr. Gosse's book that 
 the odes written more or less closely to the 
 supposedly conventional type are invari- 
 ably inferior to those regular stanzaic poems 
 which follow a natural law. It is not merely 
 the difference between the genius of Milton 
 and that of Cowley which constitutes such 
 a gulf between the opening lines of Christ's 
 Passion and the Nativity. After the majestic 
 music of the latter how artificial, as well as 
 how commonplace, sounds : 
 
 Enough, my Muse, of earthly things, 
 And inspirations but of mind, 
 Take up thy lute and to it bind 
 Loud and everlasting strings ; 
 And on them play, and to them sing, 
 The happy mournful stories, 
 The lamented glories 
 Of the great Crucified King ! 
 120
 
 Great Odes 
 
 Mountainous heap of wonders, which dost rise 
 
 Till earth thou joinest with the skies ! 
 Too large at bottom and at top too high 
 
 To be half seen by mortal eye ; 
 
 How shall I grasp this boundless thing ? 
 
 What shall I play ? What shall I sing ? 
 I'll sing the mighty riddle of mysterious love, 
 Which neither wretched man below, nor blessed spirits 
 above 
 
 With all their comments can explain 
 How all the whole world's Life to die did not 
 ' 'v' disdain. 
 
 Odes, whether irregular or regular, may 
 broadly be divided into three kinds those 
 which deal loftily with lofty themes of a 
 more or less abstract, or at any rate imper- 
 sonal nature ; those which are Elegiac ; 
 and those which are Nuptial. There are 
 several Nuptial odes which have high 
 qualities, but there is only one that stands 
 out supremely fine the noble Epithalamium 
 of Spenser. This is not only our first 
 great ode, but the most splendid marriage- 
 hymn in our language. 
 
 The Elegiac odes hold a place apart. 
 Properly, they should be strictly elegiacal 
 odes of mourning. The most remarkable 
 modern example of this species of verse 
 is Tennyson's monody on the death 
 of the Duke of Wellington. One of the 
 
 121
 
 Great Odes 
 
 earliest, and certainly not one of the least 
 beautiful, is that of Dryden, inscribed 
 To the Pious Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew. 
 Thy r sis, again, is one of the finest of modern 
 elegiac odes. This species of ode, however, 
 is of necessity of a directly personal nature, 
 and so is outside of the plan of this volume. 
 
 Among the first kind, the true English 
 odes, a wide metrical licence may be allowed, 
 so long as the poems are in truth set forth 
 " in exalted verse, and deal progressively with 
 one dignified theme," yet are not narrative, 
 nor impassioned personal outcries. If on 
 the one hand this excludes from the cate- 
 gory of odes so famous an example as The 
 Bard, so also are excluded those exquisite 
 lyrics the odes To the West Wind and To a 
 Skylark. Both the latter have too much 
 of the lyric cry in them to be classed even 
 with the same author's odes on Liberty and 
 on Naples. 
 
 With the beautiful Epithalamium, or 
 Marriage Ode, of Spenser may be classed 
 two from Crashaw, which have not hitherto 
 been printed as odes. To them may 
 be added the St. Mary Magdalene of the 
 same ardent and noble poet. In common 
 with the Ode on the Passions of Collins, and 
 many others down to the lengthy and in 
 122
 
 Great Odes 
 
 one sense formless odes of Emerson, Cra- 
 shaw's are not divided into sections or 
 stanzas, and have the simplest rhyme- 
 scheme. Milton's " majestic numbers " 
 aptly follow. Indubitably fine as is Dryden's 
 St. Cecilia's Day, it will not strike the 
 happiest note in the ode-music of which it 
 is part ; nor do even such masterpieces as 
 Gray's Progress of Poesy and Collins 's On 
 the Superstitions of the Highlands seem 
 really in harmony with the sweet movement 
 of Spenser's verse, the organ-tone of Milton's, 
 the noble dignity of Wordsworth's, the 
 rhythmic freedom of Coleridge's, the ardour 
 of Shelley's, or the flawless artistry of the 
 odes of Keats. Still, as the finest examples 
 of the conventional ode (for Wordsworth's 
 Intimations of Immortality is conventional 
 only in a secondary degree), it is well that 
 they should be included. Yet what lover 
 of poetry would not barter a score of such 
 odes as the two celebrated poems of Gray 
 and Collins for the latter 's lovely unrhymed 
 Ode to Evening ? 
 
 Wordsworth's lines to Duty constitute one 
 of the finest odes of modern literature, 
 though naturally enough the Intimations of 
 Immortality is far better known. In some 
 respects the longer is unquestionably the 
 123
 
 Great Odes 
 
 greater poem, but, as Mr. Theodore Watts- 
 Dunton has pointed out in his searching 
 and acute essay on Poetry, it suffers ever 
 and again from lack of that inevitableness 
 which supreme poetic forms invariably and 
 necessarily possess. If I had to select a 
 single poem as the model of the ideal 
 English ode it would be Coleridge's France, 
 whose superb and lordly music is inspired 
 by a lordly and superb idea. It is as far 
 above the Ode of the Departing Year or that 
 on Dejection as these are above the odes of 
 Wart on and Akenside. There is little either 
 of the classical or of the conventional type 
 in the glowing odes of Shelley, and still less 
 of either in the perfect stanzas of Keats, 
 the most flawless poems of their kind in 
 the language. The latest among the writers 
 of the immediate past from whom I should 
 select an ode is Thomas Hood, that rare 
 and commonly misunderstood genius. His 
 Autumn has a unique beauty ; the lines 
 beginning 
 
 O go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded 
 Under the languid downfall of her hair 
 
 are perfect. Unfortunately it has one vital 
 
 artistic flaw, the presentment of Autumn in 
 
 the first stanza as an old man, " shaking 
 
 124
 
 his languid locks all dewy bright with 
 tangled gossamer," whereas a little later 
 Autumn is presented to us in the guise of a 
 beautiful woman, fair but weary. Indeed, 
 the poet's vision was doubly veiled, for 
 there is an obvious contradiction between 
 the verbal picture of the opening lines, 
 with old Autumn standing in the misty 
 morn, " shadowless like Silence," and " lis- 
 tening to silence " (in itself a beautiful 
 picture) 
 
 For no lonely bird would sing 
 Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, 
 Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn 
 
 and that of the gossamer " pearling his 
 coronet of golden corn " : for the time of 
 the golden corn is not one of misty, lifeless 
 silence. Among the Autumnal odes written 
 by later poets I know of none to surpass 
 that by Mr. Aubrey De Vere, which would be 
 quoted were it not overlong. 
 
 The ode, both irregular and regular, has 
 been a favourite means of expression with 
 many of the foremost American poets, 
 though Poe, by virtue of his genius being 
 in its utterance more lyrical, literally, than 
 sedately measured, is not to be numbered 
 among them. Longfellow, again, has written 
 few poems which could come under the 
 125
 
 Great Odes 
 
 present category. Even his Palingenesis 
 (which is included in my Anthology) has too 
 much of singing melody in it to admit of 
 its being unreservedly classed as an ode. 
 On the other hand, the " Father of American 
 Poetry," as Bryant has been called, was by 
 nature an ode-writer. His beautiful lines 
 To a Water-fowl take the place in American 
 poetry occupied by Collins 's To Evening 
 in that of England. The Winds and The 
 Hymn of the City are also fine odes. The 
 critic who speaks of Emerson as a poet of 
 high order is no longer sneered at, and so I 
 may venture to state that some of his poems 
 are very noble odes. Bayard Taylor, notable 
 poet as he was, had seldom the serene atmo- 
 sphere and more rarely still the deep vision 
 of his great contemporary ; but some of 
 his odes are, and deservedly, likely to be 
 long treasured by his countrymen. On a 
 higher level are the noble strains of James 
 Russell Lowell, unquestionably one of the 
 three foremost poets whom America has 
 produced. It is the highest compliment 
 that could be paid to them to say that 
 his odes do not suffer by comparison with 
 their kindred by Wordsworth and Coleridge ; 
 and among other modern American poets I 
 would draw particular attention to Edmund 
 126
 
 Great Odes 
 
 Clarence Stedman, whose Ode to Pastoral 
 Romance is perhaps his finest achievement. 
 
 Among the later Victorian poets there 
 are many who have written odes so called, 
 and so in truth, though not thus entitled 
 and a few who have written poems of this 
 kind which will long be read appreciatively, 
 even if not assured of perpetuity. But 
 Coventry Patmore is the only poet of our 
 day who has preferred the ode to any other 
 form for habitual expression. But over and 
 above this he has, like an ingenious gardener 
 who has evolved a new and graceful flower 
 from a familiar stock, made a new kind 
 of verse, or, rather, given a new direction 
 to a certain kind of verse. In the recent 
 popular edition of the most remarkable of 
 his books, The Unknown Eros, and other 
 Odes, all his poems written in catalectic 
 verse are included. I cannot do better than 
 quote from Coventry Patmore 's prefatory 
 note : 
 
 " Nearly all English metres owe their 
 existence as metres to ' catalexis,' or pause, 
 for the time of one or more feet, and, as a 
 rule, the position and amount of catalexis 
 are fixed. But the verse in which this volume 
 is written is catalectic par excellence, em- 
 ploying the pause (as it does the rhyme) 
 127
 
 Great Odes 
 
 with freedom only limited by the exigencies 
 of poetic passion. From the time of Drum- 
 mond of Hawthornden to our own, some of 
 the noblest flights of English poetry have 
 been taken on the wings of this verse ; 
 but with ordinary readers it has been more 
 or less discredited by the far greater number 
 of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes 
 of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes 
 with which it has no expressional corre- 
 spondence ; or to vary it by rhythmical 
 movements which are destructive of its 
 character. Some persons, unlearned in the 
 subject of metre, have objected to this 
 kind of verse that it is ' lawless.' But it has 
 its laws as truly as any other. In its highest 
 order, the lyric or ' ode,' it is a tetrameter, 
 the line having the time of eight iambics. 
 When it descends to narrative, or the ex- 
 pression of a less-exalted strain of thought, 
 it becomes a trimeter, having the time of 
 six iambics, or even a dimeter, with the 
 time of four ; and it is allowable to vary 
 the tetrameter ' ode ' by occasional intro- 
 duction of passages in either or both of these 
 inferior measures, but not, I think, by the 
 use of any other. The licence to rhyme 
 at indefinite intervals is counterbalanced in 
 the writing of all poets who have employed 
 128
 
 Great Odes 
 
 this metre successfully, by unusual frequency 
 in the recurrence of the same rhyme. For 
 information on the generally overlooked 
 but primarily important function of catalexis 
 in English verse, I refer such readers as may 
 be curious about the subject to the essay 
 printed as an appendix to the later editions 
 of my collected poems. I do not pretend 
 to have done more than very moderate 
 justice to the exceeding grace and dignity 
 and the inexhaustible expressiveness of 
 which this kind of metre is capable ; but I 
 can say that I have never attempted to 
 write in it in the absence of that one justi- 
 fication of and prime qualification for its 
 use, namely, the impulse of some thought 
 that ' voluntary moved harmonious num- 
 bers.' " 
 
 Of Patmore's poems, The Unknown 
 Eros and The Day after To-morrow are 
 examples of the longer, and Wind and Wave 
 and The Body of the shorter, ode ; while 
 The Contract is an instance of an ode 
 wherein poetic dialogue takes the place of the 
 ancient choric strophe and antistrophe. Two 
 other remarkable odes are Delicice Sapien- 
 tice de Amore and Legem tuam Dilexi. 
 There is a new music, a new voice, and, to 
 our ears, one strange almost as that of 
 
 II 129 i
 
 Great Odes 
 
 Crashaw himself, in these poems. I can 
 find space for a few lines only from the 
 second. 
 
 For, ah, who can express 
 
 How full of bonds and simpleness 
 
 Is God, 
 
 How narrow is He, 
 
 And how the wide, waste field of possibility 
 
 Is only trod 
 
 Straight to His homestead in the human heart, 
 
 And all His art 
 
 Is as the babe's that wins his Mother to repeat 
 
 Her little song so sweet ! 
 
 What is the chief news of the Night ? 
 
 Lo, iron and salt, heat, weight and light 
 
 In every star that drifts on the great breeze ! 
 
 And these 
 
 Mean Man, 
 
 Darling of God, whose thoughts but live and move 
 
 Round him ; Who woos his will 
 
 To wedlock with His own, and does distil 
 
 To that drop's span 
 
 The attar of all rose-fields of all love. 
 
 Although it cannot properly be classed 
 as an ode, there is a little poem by 
 Patmore, entitled The Toys, which, though 
 based on a familiar episode and weighted 
 throughout with acute personal emotion, 
 reaches so lofty a height by its very sim- 
 plicity that it has much more claim to be 
 termed an ode than many better-known 
 poems so called. For the benefit of those 
 130
 
 Great Odes 
 
 readers who do not know Coventry 
 Patmore's writings, I add it here : 
 
 My little son, who look' d from thoughtful eyes 
 And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up 
 
 wise, 
 
 Having my law the seventh time disobey'd, 
 I struck him, and dismiss'd 
 With hard words and unkiss'd, 
 His Mother, who was patient, being dead. 
 Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep, 
 I visited his bed, 
 But found him slumbering deep, 
 With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet 
 From his late sobbing wet. 
 And I, with moan, 
 Kissing away his tears, left others of my 
 
 own ; 
 
 For, on a table drawn beside his head, 
 He had put, within his reach, 
 A box of counters and a red-vein' d stone, 
 A piece of glass abraded by the beach 
 And six or seven shells, 
 A bottle with bluebells 
 And two French copper coins, ranged there 
 
 with careful art, 
 To comfort his sad heart. 
 So when that night I pray'd 
 To God, I wept, and said : 
 Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath, 
 Not vexing Thee in death, 
 A nd Thou rememberest of what toys 
 We made our joys, 
 How weakly understood, 
 Thy great commanded good,
 
 Great Odes 
 
 Then, fatherly not less 
 
 Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay, 
 
 Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say, 
 
 " I will be sorry for their childishness." 
 
 Lord Tennyson, notwithstanding his un- 
 surpassed mastery of his poetic material, 
 did not succeed in writing any memorable 
 ode. His best, that On the Death of the Duke 
 of Wellington, is grandiose rather than 
 grand, and though it was greatly admired 
 at the time of its publication, and for many 
 years afterwards, it now seems somewhat 
 lifeless, forced in a word, a piece d' occasion. 
 In scarce any of Tennyson's poems is 
 there so marked a lack of rhythmic energy, 
 although in parts the music moves in lordly 
 fashion. But how unspontaneous it is may 
 best be gauged by examination of those lines 
 and passages every here and there which 
 in nowise seem the natural expression of 
 Tennyson's genius ; as, for example, the 
 half -felt, assertively patriotic close of the 
 eighth section : 
 
 And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame 
 
 For many and many an age proclaim 
 
 A t civic revel and pomp and game, 
 
 And when the long-illumined cities flame, 
 
 Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame, 
 
 With honour, honour, honour, honour to him, 
 
 Eternal honour to his name.
 
 Great Odes 
 
 Some of the finest Victorian odes, whether 
 or not so called, are by Matthew Arnold, 
 and one of the most remarkable is the 
 death-hymn of Empedocles in Empedocles 
 on Etna. This is a noble ode, with a serene 
 if austere music. 
 
 Like us, the lightning-fires 
 Love to have scope and play ; 
 The stream, like us, desires 
 An unimpeded way ; 
 Like us, the Libyan wind delights to roam at large. 
 
 Streams will not curb their pride 
 The just man not to entomb, 
 Nor lightnings go aside 
 To give his virtues room ; 
 
 Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man's 
 barge. 
 
 Nature, with equal mind, 
 Sees all her sons at play ; 
 p, Sees man control the wind. 
 
 The wind sweep man away ! 
 Allows the proudly-riding and the foundered bark. 
 
 It is as though the souls of Marcus 
 Aurelius and Seneca and Epictetus had found 
 utterance in : 
 
 Is it so small a thing 
 To have enjoyed the sun, 
 To have lived light in the Spring, 
 To have loved, to have thought, to have done ; 
 To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling 
 foes ; 
 
 133
 
 Great Odes 
 
 That we must feign a bliss 
 
 Of doubtful future date, 
 
 And, while we dream on This, 
 
 Lose all our present state, 
 And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose ? 
 * * * * 
 
 But thou, because thou hear'st 
 
 Men scoff at Heaven and Fate, 
 
 Because the Gods thou fear' st 
 
 Fail to make blest thy state, 
 
 Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there 
 are ! 
 
 I say : Fear not ! Life still 
 Leaves human effort scope. 
 But, since life teems with ill, 
 Nurse no extravagant hope ; 
 
 Because thou must not dream, thou need'st not then 
 despair I 
 
 Foremost, however, among all contem- 
 porary writers of odes is Swinburne. He 
 delights to expend his liberal rhetoric in 
 sounding measures ; and though often his 
 odes, beautiful as they are, are more declama- 
 tory than thought-weighted, there are at 
 least two or three which will surely always 
 hold their supreme place in Victorian poetry. 
 In magnificence of music and splendour of 
 imagery the Ode on the Eve of Revolution 
 stands foremost. Swinburne also has written 
 the finest elegiac ode of our time, the superb 
 and solemn Ave atque Vale, written in 
 134
 
 Great Odes 
 
 memory of Baudelaire. There is unsurpass- 
 able music in these stanzas, slow-sweeping 
 like long sea-billows : 
 
 Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, 
 Brother, on this that was the veil of thee ? 
 Or quiet sea- flower moulded by the sea, 
 
 Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel, 
 Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave, 
 Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve 
 
 Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before, 
 Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat 
 A nd full of bitter summer, but more sweet 
 
 To thee than gleanings of a northern shore 
 Trod by no tropic feet ? 
 
 VI 
 
 Now all strange hours and all strange loves are 
 
 over. 
 Dreams and desires and sombre things and 
 
 sweet, 
 Hast thou found place at the great knees and 
 
 feet 
 
 Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover, 
 Such as thy vision here solicited, 
 Under the shadow of her fair vast head, 
 The deep division of prodigious breasts, 
 The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep, 
 The weight of awful tresses that still keep 
 The savour and shade of old-world pine-forests 
 Where the wet hill-winds weep ? 
 
 * * * * 
 
 135
 
 Great Odes 
 
 XVIII 
 
 For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother, 
 
 Take at my hands this garland, and farewell. 
 Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell, 
 
 And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother, 
 With sadder than the Niobean womb, 
 And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb. 
 
 Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done ; 
 There lies not any troublous thing before, 
 Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more, 
 
 For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, 
 All waters as the shore. 
 
 Finally, I may allude to the two or 
 three fine odes which George Meredith has 
 written. Chief among them is the noble 
 Ode to France : December, 1870. One, more 
 brief, from his volume, A Reading of Earth, 
 I may quote : 
 
 MEDITATION UNDER STARS 
 
 What links are ours with orbs that are 
 
 So resolutely far : 
 The solitary asks, and they 
 Give radiance as from a shield : 
 
 Still at the death of day, 
 
 The seen, the unrevealed. 
 
 Implacable they shine 
 To us who would of Life obtain 
 An answer for the life we strain, 
 
 To nourish with one sign. 
 Nor can imagination throw 
 The penetrative shaft : we pass 
 136
 
 Great Odes 
 
 The breath of thought, who would divine 
 
 If haply they may grow 
 As Earth ; have our desire to know ; 
 If life comes there to grain from grass, 
 A nd flowers like ours of toil and pain ; 
 
 Has passion to beat bar, 
 
 Win space from cleaving brain ; 
 
 The mystic link attain, 
 
 Whereby star holds on star. 
 
 Those visible immortals beam 
 
 Allurement to the dream : 
 Ireful at human hungers brook 
 
 No question in the look. 
 For ever virgin to our sense, 
 Remote they wane to gaze intense : 
 Prolong it, and in ruthlessness they smite 
 The beating heart behind the ball of sight : 
 
 Till we conceive their heavens hoar, 
 Those lights they raise but sparkles frore, 
 And Earth, our blood-warm Earth, a shuddering 
 
 prey 
 To that frigidity of brainless ray. 
 
 Yet space is given for breath of thought 
 Beyond our bounds when musing : more 
 When to that musing love is brought, 
 And love is asked of love's wherefore. 
 'Tis Earth's, her gift ; else have we nought : 
 Her gift, her secret, here our tie. 
 And not with yet and yonder sky ? 
 Bethink you : were it Earth alone 
 Breeds love, would not her region be 
 
 The sole delight and throne 
 
 Of generous Deity ? 
 
 137
 
 Great Odes 
 
 To deeper than this ball of sight 
 Appeal the lustrous people of the night. 
 Fronting yon shoreless, sown with fiery sails, 
 
 It is our ravenous that quails, 
 Flesh by its craven thirsts and fears distraught. 
 
 The spirit leaps alight, 
 
 Doubts not in them is he, 
 The binder of his sheaves, the sane, the right : 
 Of magnitude to magnitude is wrought, 
 To feel it large of the great life they hold 
 In them to come, or vaster intervolved, 
 
 The issues known in us, our unsolved solved : 
 That there with toil Life climbs the self-same 
 
 Tree, 
 Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness 
 
 dropped. 
 
 So may we read and little find them cold : 
 Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide 
 Our eyes ; no branch of Reason's growing lopped ; 
 Nor dreaming on a dream ; but fortified 
 By day to penetrate black midnight ; see, 
 Hear, feel, outside the senses ; even that we. 
 The specks of dust upon a mound of mould, 
 We who reflect those rays, though low our place, 
 To them are lastingly allied. 
 
 So may we read, and little find them cold : 
 Nor frosty lamps illuminating dead space, 
 Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers. 
 The fire is in them whereof we are born ; 
 The music of their motion may be ours. 
 Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and 
 
 voiced 
 Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced. 
 
 138
 
 Great Odes 
 
 Of love the grand impulsion, we behold 
 
 The love that lends her grace 
 
 Among the starry fold. 
 Then at new flood of customary morn, 
 
 Look at her through her showers, 
 
 Her mists, her streaming gold, 
 A wonder edges the familiar face : 
 She wears no more that robe of printed hours ; 
 Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her 
 flowers. 
 
 It is in poems such as this, governed, 
 as to their metrical music, by a natural 
 and not by an arbitrary law, that we find 
 the true English ode, " the slow, majestic 
 lyric." 
 
 1890 
 
 139
 
 "LA JEUNE BELGIQUE" 
 
 (1893) 
 
 FOR more than a decade an interesting and 
 highly significant literary movement has 
 evolved in Belgium. This renaissance, for 
 such it is, is quite distinct from the slowly 
 waning Flemish literary revival which took 
 on a new vitality about the time of the 
 Franco-German conflict ; and, on the other 
 hand, from the somewhat insipid " French 
 tradition," which has the actual or partly 
 imaginary status of official and conservative 
 recognition. 
 
 This movement, be it noted, arose under 
 conditions and in circumstances practically 
 similar to those which determined in France 
 the foundation of the famous Parnasse of 
 1866. The aim of the Belgic, as of the 
 French Parnassiens was, in the words of 
 one of the most noteworthy, not to create 
 a particular poetic school, but to bring 
 about a reaction against literary ignor- 
 ance, disorder, and general backbonelessness 
 140
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 (amorphisme ambiant] ; not to open a little 
 private chapel, but to clear and garnish 
 afresh " la grande eglise ou regnent la 
 religion desinteressee de 1'art et le respect 
 de la forme." This brotherhood of a Par- 
 nasse Belgique has naturally had its schisms 
 and defections. Its latest apologist, M. 
 Gilkin, admits this ; but he adds that since 
 1887 (when La Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique 
 was published) the group of new men has 
 remained almost intact, and is proud of 
 having maintained steadfastly the demands 
 of the fundamental laws of French poetry 
 without hurt to, or transformation of, 
 those particular aspects and methods of 
 thought and sentiment characteristic of 
 every patriotic Belgian the legacy of his 
 race, of his Northern climate, and of that 
 particular condition which has given his 
 country an intermediate situation between 
 the most powerful, as well as the most 
 Occidental, of the Latin peoples, and the 
 most potent of the Germanic races. 
 
 The Belgians claim that they are produc- 
 ing a national literature. Many influential 
 French critics refuse to acknowledge this 
 Belgic literary output as anything more 
 than the transfrontier radiation of the 
 central luminary. Other and not less 
 141
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 trustworthy students declare that, mean- 
 while, Belgic literature is a dependent ally 
 (still an ally, not lineal progeny), and 
 that ere long it will probably become as 
 distinctly and recognisably national as is 
 possible for any literature expressed in a 
 language which is its own by adoption only 
 or through complex accident. 
 
 To one who has closely studied the 
 whole movement in its intimate and extra- 
 national bearings, as well as in its individual 
 manifestations and aberrations, its par- 
 ticular and collective achievement in the 
 several literary genres, there is no question 
 as to the radical distinction between Belgic 
 and French literature. Whether there be 
 a great future for the first is almost entirely 
 dependent on the concurrent political con- 
 dition of Belgium. If Germany were to 
 appropriate the country, it is almost certain 
 that only the Flemish spirit would retain 
 its independent vitality, and even that 
 probably only for a generation or two. 
 But if Belgium were absorbed by France, 
 Brussels would almost immediately become 
 as insignificant a literary centre as is Lyons 
 or Bordeaux, or be, at most, not more 
 independent of Paris than is Marseilles. 
 Literary Belgium would be a memory 
 142
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 within a year of the hoisting of the French 
 tricolour from the Scheldt to Liege. Mean- 
 while the whole energy of " Young Belgium " 
 is, consciously or unconsciously, concentrated 
 in the effort to withstand Paris. 
 
 Of course, every one who follows the drift 
 of Continental literature knows that Belgium 
 is, at least, above the productive level of 
 Portugal or Greece. But, even in France, 
 the misapprehension is too prevalent that 
 this sudden renaissance, amid the Flemish 
 and Walloon " barbarians," concurs with the 
 advent of Maurice Maeterlinck. 
 
 The author of La Princesse Maleine is a 
 man of genius. His, no doubt, is the most 
 interesting literary personality among the 
 many more or less interesting personalities 
 of " Young Belgium." But he is not, in his 
 dramatic method, the absolute innovator he 
 has been represented to be ; and he is not 
 the chief poet of his country. In a word, 
 he is one of a group, and is himself, as a 
 literary force, as directly the outcome of 
 circumstances as the group to which he 
 adheres is the natural result of the causes 
 which induced a Belgic renaissance. 
 
 No doubt, an adequate account of this 
 renaissance would have to comprise the 
 Flemish as well as the Walloon and Gallic 
 143
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 aims and accomplishment. It is impractic- 
 able, naturally, to attempt even an outline 
 of such an account in the present article. 
 We must consider Belgic literature " d 'ex- 
 pression fran9aise " posterior to its inocu- 
 lation with its most fortunate strain, that 
 which the critics call le flandricisme. 
 
 We all know the national motto of 
 Belgium : " Union is strength." The ablest 
 writers of the Franco-Flemish Netherlands 
 recognised its aptness. There was no room 
 for a national Flemish literature, nor could 
 the Franco-Belgians hold their own against 
 Gallic influences without alliance, and, 
 indeed, practical identification with, the 
 patriotic sons of Flanders. Fusion had 
 already gone far ; the new movement 
 had begun, when, in 1881, Henri Con- 
 science, at the end of his notable speech 
 before the Royal Academy of Belgium, on 
 the " Histoire et Tendances de la Litterature 
 Flamande," concluded with those signifi- 
 cant, often quoted, and, to a Belgian, 
 inspiring words : 
 
 Flamands, Wallons, 
 Ce ne sont Id que des prtnoms : 
 Beige est notre nom de famille ! 
 
 This was a note often sounded, but not 
 
 listened to, throughout the country, from 
 
 144
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 the Dutch Scheldt to the French Meuse, 
 till Henri Conscience uttered it with an 
 earnestness which, coming from him, carried 
 conviction. So far back as five-and-forty 
 years ago the Flemish poet Nolet de Brau- 
 were urged the same plea : " Let us all put 
 our lutes into one accord, and dedicate our 
 music to our native land the native land of 
 each of us, whether Walloon or Fleming ! " 
 
 No movement of vital importance is 
 ever made. It must grow. The men must 
 be in evidence before they congregate in 
 a league, as there must be natural leaders 
 in a mob or an army before manifold 
 causes bring the needed men to the front. 
 Thus was it with "la Jeune Belgique" of 
 the Parnasse of 1887, the " Young Belgium " 
 which looks to Henri Conscience and Picard 
 with reverence, but whose aims are inspired, 
 whose minds are influenced, whose language 
 is coloured, by a passionate modernity which 
 has little heed for what is of the past in point 
 of manner and selection. The designation 
 had been bandied about a good deal had 
 indeed been used as the name of a periodical 
 but was not of national import till the 
 publication, in 1887, of La Parnasse des 
 Pastes Beiges, the pronunciamiento by the 
 band of writers who had definitely adopted 
 
 II 145 K
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 the signal appellation of " La Jeune Belgique " 
 and the implied motto Pro Arte. 
 
 The movement, as we now know it, may 
 be said to begin in so far as any compli- 
 cated literary development can be said to 
 begin in any one year, or through the pro- 
 pulsion of any one writer with a significant 
 little volume of verse published in 1876 : 
 M. Theodore Hannon's Vingt-quatre Coups 
 de Sonnets. This is where we first hear 
 definitely the new note. It is the note of 
 Parnassien modernity a note of revolt, a 
 revolt as distinct from the cheap cynicism 
 of the Byronic school as from the purely 
 intellectual pessimism which has long been 
 the vogue in Germany ; of reversion to the 
 old monkish doctrine that we all, men and 
 women, are thoroughly given over to the 
 Devil, and that no good thing can come out 
 of modern life (with a paradoxical harping 
 upon its carnal delights which savours of 
 sympathetic enjoyment rather than of re- 
 probation) ; and of conviction that not to 
 be neurotic is to be outside the pale of 
 endurable existence, and that to be a con- 
 tented bourgeois is to be thrice damned. 
 With this " modern note " there is always 
 aspiration ; too often, however, we find 
 the aspiration, here among these young 
 146
 
 " La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 Belgians as elsewhere, somewhat passee, 
 not to say got up for the occasion. Not 
 quite infrequently, I admit, I have been 
 reminded of a sentence in Mr. Richard 
 Whiteing's witty and charming romance The 
 Island : the Adventures of a Person of Quality : 
 " The great mark of all progressive nations is 
 that struggle of each man to make some other 
 do his dirty work for him, which is commonly 
 known as aspiration for the higher life." 
 
 But the modern note in its wider and 
 finer sense is also to be discerned among 
 the Belgian authors even of the elder 
 generation. We find it markedly, for instance, 
 in Charles de Coster, an eminent writer 
 with whose death in 1879 the old regime 
 gave place to the new, though not rudely 
 or abruptly, as all Belgium had in more 
 or less degree been wrought preparedly by 
 the genuine power and new spirit in Legendes 
 Flamandes (1857), Contes Brabanfons (1861), 
 and particularly in his now famous chef- 
 d'ceuvre, La Legende d'Ulenspiegel (1868). 
 This note is likewise audible, it goes almost 
 without saying, in the work of Henri 
 Conscience. But with these exceptions the 
 Belgic phalanx, before 1880, was not a 
 formidable one. So slightly were the new 
 men recognised, that in 1880 an eminent 
 147
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 critic spoke of Charles Potvin as " our 
 best living poet " Potvin, an able and 
 conscientious litterateur, but certainly no 
 master of words either in prose or verse. 
 Even then certain writers had struck an 
 unmistakable note. Even then the strong 
 spirits of the elder and younger generation 
 were knocking loudly at the door ; and 
 Edmond Picard, Georges Eckhoud, Max 
 Waller, Camille Lemonnier, Georges Roden- 
 bach, Emile Verhaeren, Charles Van 
 Lerberghe, and others of scarce less note, 
 had actually crossed the threshold. 
 
 " Young Belgium " was fortunate in the 
 friends it attracted or who voluntarily wel- 
 comed it with gladly proffered aid. To two 
 men in particular the writers of to-day owe a 
 deep debt to the veteran Edmond Picard, 
 for his own able work in some degree, still 
 more for his critical proclamations collectively 
 entitled Pro Arte ; and, above all, for his 
 incessant heed and ready advice, for that 
 sympathy and helpfulness which have won 
 for him the appellation " the Belgic 
 Maecenas " ; and to the late Maurice War- 
 lomont (" Max Waller "), the generally 
 recognised founder of La Jeune Belgique 
 as we know it to-day, a man of singular 
 charm, ability, and influence. 
 148
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 Even in Brussels (in the words of a satirical 
 critic) one might, in 1883, have heard of 
 the existence of the league of les Jeunes. 
 The movement was then in full swing, the 
 wave bearing on its crest, among others, 
 Picard and Max Waller, Lemonnier and 
 Verhaeren, and Eckhoud. With the founda- 
 tion of the now rare periodical La Pleiade,* 
 and its more robust confrere La Jeune 
 Belgique, this movement had at last become 
 a recognised factor. Of course absolute 
 solidarity was not to be expected. In 1886 
 Camille Lemonnier went to Paris, there to 
 begin anew a brilliant career with Happe- 
 Chair, the Germinal of Belgium, as it has 
 been called. There, moreover, were already 
 domiciled Georges Rodenbach (a Franco- 
 Flemish poet and novelist of genuine talent 
 lost in Paris journalism), and the well- 
 known J. K. Huysmans. Other and more 
 serious schisms or departures took place, 
 but the essential solidarity of the movement, 
 more particularly in poetic literature, became 
 
 * Not to be confounded with La Pttiade 
 published in Paris ; though in that still rarer 
 periodical, I may add, Maeterlinck (then content 
 to sign his Flemish baptismal name, Mooris), and 
 I believe also Van Lerberghe, Gregoire Le Roy, 
 and perhaps Ephraim Mikhael, made each his 
 debut in literature. 
 
 149
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 evident by the distinctive and significant 
 Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique, published, 
 as already stated, in 1889. Thereafter it 
 was no longer seemly even for the most 
 adverse critics to deny that Belgium had 
 at last produced a literature which it 
 might fairly claim as distinctively its 
 own. 
 
 To return to the beginning of the move- 
 ment. Since what Belgian historians call 
 their romantic epoch, the generation younger 
 than that just on the wane at the time of 
 the Franco-Prussian War knew only five 
 native authors of whom it could be proud 
 Charles de Coster, Henri Conscience, Camille 
 Lemonnier, Octave Pirmez, and Andre 
 Van Hasselt. Of these only the third was 
 in " war-paint " towards the end of the 
 seventh decade of the century. 
 
 To found and carry on, in the front of 
 organised opposition and contumely, official 
 sneers, irresponsible enmity, and, for a time, 
 the profound public apathy, a periodical 
 entitled La Jeune Belgique, with a programme 
 obnoxious to the great majority of possible 
 readers, and a staff composed of writers 
 either wholly unfamiliar or known mainly 
 by disrepute, was a creditable as well as a 
 hazardous undertaking. To Max Waller 
 150
 
 "La feune Belgique" 
 
 this high credit is due. At his call to arms 
 he was joined at once by such brilliant 
 lieutenants as Eckhoud, Albert Giraud, 
 Emile Verhaeren, I wan Gilkin ; later by 
 almost every poet and romancist who has 
 made any reputation whatever. To colour- 
 less verse, to effete or anaemic prose, this 
 phalanx, recruited and led by Max Waller, 
 responded, says a necrologist of M. War- 
 lomont " par des vers puissants et des proses 
 pleines d'exuberance, de sante et de vie." 
 
 Max Waller will always hold a high place 
 in the history of modern Belgian literature. 
 But he will hold it as a pioneer. In a sense 
 he is a captain of a new departure ; as 
 Dryden was in England, as Chateaubriand 
 was in France, as Gogol was in Russia. 
 But he was neither a Gogol, a Chateau- 
 briand, nor a Dryden. Meanwhile it is 
 natural his countrymen should be kindly 
 in their praise of his work. What he has 
 left will not, however, survive, save for the 
 student. When the personal tradition of 
 the man is no longer extant he will have 
 ceased to be remembered even by his most 
 notable prose book, La Vie Bete, and possibly 
 not even by his charming volume of verse, 
 Airs de Flute, or Flute a Siebel, as it came to 
 be called.
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 That was a goodly assertion that the verse 
 and prose of the younger men was full of 
 exuberance, of health, and of life. Obviously, 
 however, there are differences of opinion as 
 to the true definition or the proper signifi- 
 cance of these abstractions. 
 
 The two most " Parnassien " of the Par- 
 nassiens are Theodore Hannon and Iwan 
 Gilkin. Both, moreover, are fond of insisting 
 on exuberance (joy), health (joyous living), 
 and life (more or less unconventional expe- 
 rience). One of them, indeed, wrote the 
 eulogium of Max Waller's " phalanx." Let 
 us glance at the poetry of these young 
 Davids. 
 
 M. Hannon followed his Vingt-quatre 
 Coups de Sonnets with his remarkable 
 Rimes de Joie. This collection of verse 
 won for him at a later date such designations 
 as " the Belgian Laforgue," " the Belgian 
 Rimbaud," and even " the Belgian Ver- 
 laine." But M. Hannon is not a supreme 
 artist in words, nor has he either the poig- 
 nant personal note of the poet of Les 
 Illuminations or the marked individuality 
 of the author of Moralites Legendaires. A 
 nicer estimate would be one that ranked 
 him a brilliant apprentice to the great poet 
 of Les Fleurs du Mai. Baudelaire, indeed, 
 152
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 is the paramount influence in the moulding 
 of the collective poetic genius of Young 
 Belgium. Even in one point where some 
 of our not too widely read newer critics 
 attribute novelty to the productions of 
 certain of the younger French and Spanish 
 poets, to the Dutch " sensitists," and to 
 one or two English imitators the use of 
 colour- words to convey particular emotions 
 or conditions even here the new note, 
 clear and mellow, was sounded by Baude- 
 laire. This impeccable artist, who so 
 invariably adopted " des adjectifs avec 
 premeditation," has anticipated Rene Ghil 
 and a host of others in, for instance, these 
 lines at once so lovely and so signi- 
 ficant : 
 
 // est des parfums frais comme des chairs d'enfants, 
 Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies. 
 Les parfums, les couleurs, et les sons se repondent. 
 
 By Rimes de Joie M. Hannon must 
 not be taken as indicating " Songs of 
 Joy." " Joie " with him has the signi- 
 ficance of the word in another collocation 
 " fille de joie." His rhymes are of the 
 gaiety, the sensuous seduction, the animal 
 appeal, in a sense the spiritual allure, of 
 the life which is of the flesh, of the earth 
 earthy. He is in this respect but the 
 153
 
 " La feune Belgique " 
 
 emphasised type of his kindred among " les 
 jeunes." "O! Femme, Femme ! toi qui 
 fais 1'humanite monomane ! " cries Jules 
 Laforgue in his Moralites Legendaires. And 
 to a veritable obsession by " the eternal 
 feminine " is due the most striking work of 
 Hannon, Gilkin, and other fin-de-siecle poets 
 of Belgium ; as, indeed, of the painter- 
 etcher, Felicien Rops, and others of his 
 kindred. This vision of animal woman- 
 hood dominates the imagination of these 
 latter-day " barbares precieux." For le Nu 
 they have substituted le Denude. Woman 
 is a " blanche chatte humaine " for M. Van 
 Beers ; something between " une ange 
 perdue et une fouine " for M. Rops ; a 
 seductive aspect of damnation for M. 
 Gilkin ; an expensive vice for M. Hannon ; 
 for one or two a wandering voice from a 
 lost land ; for others a consuming or a para- 
 lysing breath " la voix feminine arrivee 
 au fond des volcans et des grottes arc- 
 tiques." * 
 
 M. Huysmans is an acute and subtle 
 
 critic. He deserves attention, therefore, 
 
 when he writes so emphatically as he does 
 
 in his prefatory note to the second (1881) 
 
 edition of Rimes de Joie. Theodore Hannon 
 
 * A. Rimbaud, Barbare. 
 
 154
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 has in his work, he says, " une saveur 
 particuliere, un gout de terroir flamand, 
 complique d'un arome tres-fin de nervisme." 
 So far, so good. A glance will satisfy any- 
 one as to the actuality of a particular 
 savour in Rimes de Joie, though some 
 will define it otherwise than as a deli- 
 cate aroma. Again, the poet displays an 
 extraordinary "sollicitude inquiete pour les 
 raffinements mondains." True, he certainly 
 does. 
 
 En resume, malgre ses quelques cahots de 
 rimes et ses quelques emberlificotis de phrases, le 
 volume est, en attendant les ceuvres realistes 
 plus larges, plus fortes, concues d'apres un precede 
 que j 'ignore encore, 1'un des recueils de vers les 
 plus interessants qui aient paru depuis des annees. 
 . . . Par la, les Rimes de Joie se rattachent, 
 comme une amusante fantaisie, au grand mouve- 
 ment de naturalisme. 
 
 This was written in the autumn of 1879 ; 
 it would be interesting to know what 
 M. Huysmans would say by way of con- 
 firmation or modification in this autumn of 
 1893. A " proud hosannah of the flesh " 
 ("la chair feminine," needless to say) goes 
 through this notable contribution " to the 
 great movement of Naturalism." 
 The Port Mignon of this poet has little 
 155
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 in common with the Bimini of the dreamers.* 
 It is probably one of those havens referred 
 to by Ben Jonson " the ports of Death 
 are sins." M. Huysmans reserves his highest 
 praise for the poem entitled Opoponax. It 
 opens, according to him, with " une fanfare 
 triomphale du cornet, peu a peu 1'orchestre 
 entier s'allume et soutient du beau fracas 
 de ces timbales et de ces cuivres, 1'hymne 
 qui s'elance, chantant les vertus libertines du 
 glorieux parfum." This hath a sound of 
 nonsense. The masterpiece in question 
 opens thus : 
 
 Opoponax ! nom tres bizarre, 
 . Et parfum plus bizarre encor ? 
 
 Opoponax, le son du cor 
 Est pale aupres de ta fanfare ! 
 
 The whole poem as Les Litanies de V Ab- 
 sinthe, and others of the kind is an expo- 
 sitio'n of Baudelaire's text, " Les parfums, 
 les couleurs, et les sons se repondent." The 
 reader will find it, if he will in company 
 with eight or nine companion pieces in 
 the Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique. He can 
 there enjoy its " abracadabrant arome " to 
 the full. " D'autres morceaux suivent, d'une 
 maladie vraiment rejouissante, entr'autres, 
 
 * ... Port Mignon, 
 Ou mes desirs ont jett I'ancre. 
 156
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 le ' Maquillage,' cet extraordinaire hosannah, 
 celebrant le charme dolent des epidermes 
 fanes." But as a matter of fact one has 
 soon too much of this " charme," whether 
 " dolent " or " abracadabrant " (whatever 
 that may mean). There are lines which even 
 M. Huysmans qualifies as of " une corrup- 
 tion troublante." 
 
 The most famous thing in the book, 
 however a couplet that spread throughout 
 Belgium and France with the venomous 
 rapidity of cholera-morbus occurs as the 
 conclusion of a poem called Grisaille : 
 
 Amour, Amour, on t'a bien dit 
 Un contact coAteux d'ipidervnes. 
 
 Probably the cynicism of depravity has never 
 gone beyond this. Whoever M. Hannon's 
 Musa Consolatrix may be, to her is certainly 
 applicable his lines to " une vierge Byzan- 
 tine " : 
 
 Certe elle est plus originate 
 Que virginale, 
 
 It is true that in this poet's best work there 
 is an exquisite art. Chinoiserie has a grace 
 and remote charm that makes it worthy 
 of comparison with the masterpieces in 
 Emaux et Camees. But from first to last 
 the Rimes de Joie are obtrusively salacious. 
 157
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 They may be, like the body of the lady in 
 Maigreurs, "seduisant comme un sonnet " : 
 but well, there are sonnets and sonnets. 
 It is to be feared that M. Hannon, though 
 not, I hope, one of his drear company of 
 " buveurs de phosphore " or even a practical 
 devotee of that absinthe whose praises he 
 sings so ecstatically, has imbibed a peril- 
 ous draught from that intoxicating stream 
 whereby stands Woman with one hand 
 pointing to (vide Les Illuminations) the 
 flaming volcanoes, and with the other to 
 arctic caverns. 
 
 If, as some have fancied, each of us 
 (though for the present let us confine 
 ourselves to saying " each poet ") has a 
 " double " somewhere in the wide world, 
 M. Iwan Gilkin might be taken to be the 
 counterpart of the author of The City of 
 Dreadful Night. His pessimism is not less 
 profound. But he is a fin-de-siecle Belgian, 
 and James Thomson was only a British 
 poet who found dissipation too like unto 
 masked tragedy to treat of it save with 
 a deep if dramatically disguised horror. 
 M. Iwan Gilkin is, of all the decadents, 
 French or Belgian, the most sombre in his 
 imaginings. Even in his titles he is more 
 suggestive of Poe than of a singer of the 
 158
 
 "La Jeune Bdgique" 
 
 joy of life. His first and in some respects 
 his most remarkable book is called La Dam- 
 nation de V Artiste ; his second Tenebres. 
 These young poets are either very conscious 
 of the rare quality of their work, or are 
 profoundly suspicious of the reluctance of 
 their countrymen to part with their francs 
 for " the immortal beauty of the flawless 
 line " ; for M. I wan Gilkin deserts the 
 usual 3 francs 50 centimes for the impres- 
 sive 15 francs ; M. Emile Verhaeren asks 
 12 francs for his Flambeaux Noirs or his 
 Debacles ; and M. Gregoire Le Roy expects 
 the more modest sum of 10 francs for his 
 exposition of how mon cceur pleure d'autrefois. 
 M. I wan Gilkin might have chosen the 
 following sentence from Guy de Maupassant's 
 L'Endormeuse as the motto of his books : 
 "J'ai senti 1'infamie trompeuse de la vie, 
 comme personne plus que moi ne 1'a sentie." 
 It is regrettable that his vision is often so 
 perverted, his sentiment so morbid, his 
 determination to be gloomy and despairing 
 and generally " tenebrious " so obvious ; 
 for with all his shortcomings he is a poet of 
 genuine power, and even (on his restricted 
 highest level) of distinction. He is too much 
 addicted in the ironical words of M. 
 Brunetiere in his article on Le Symbolisme 
 159
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 Contemporain (in the Revue des Deux Mondes 
 for April 1891) to " rinstrumentation d'un 
 rhythme polymorphe, allie d'un verbe ondu- 
 latoire." But he has a high sense of style, 
 and, while himself possessor of a style, 
 occasionally attains style. " II se passionne 
 pour la passion." He is in love with Beauty. 
 He vibrates to the joy of life : 
 
 O bonte de la vie ! O sante du soleil ! 
 
 "Come unto me," he cries in his ecstasy, 
 " come unto me, all ye who are young and 
 athirst for beautiful life, and I will lead 
 you by sweet ways aflower with the breaths 
 of lovers' kisses " : " Laissez venir . . . 
 laissez venir a moi les beaux adolescents." 
 It is strange after this, or after such a 
 solemn adjuration as this verse from his 
 strange and impressive Litanies : 
 
 Surnaturelle, calme et puissante Beaute, 
 Fontaine de sante, miroir d'etrangete, 
 Ecoutez-moi ! 
 
 to find our minister of Apollo stoop to such 
 obscure vision and dull satiety of belief as 
 in the following (and it must be admitted 
 equally typical) sonnet-octave : 
 
 Dans la rue, au theatre, au bal, je decompose 
 Les visages. Toujours j'y retrouve le mal, 
 
 160
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 Qui sous les teints cuivves, la graisse ou la Morose, 
 Dicoupe en grimafant un profit d 'animal. 
 
 La brute qui vSg&te au fond de I'dme impose 
 Au galbe lentement son rictus bestial. 
 L'itre humain se dissout et se metamorphose 
 En chien, en bouc, en pore, en hy&ne, en chacal. 
 
 Alas ! can it be that the wanderer by the 
 halcyon " royaume en fleur des baisers 
 eternels," ihe ecstatic poet from whose 
 lips we heard " O bonte de la vie ! O sante 
 du soleil ! " can see nothing in humanity 
 but irredeemable evil, must view each 
 face of man or woman as " un profil 
 d'animal," and can find no more generous 
 category for his fellows than that com- 
 prising the dog, the goat, the pig, the 
 hyena, and the jackal ! Which is the 
 I wan Gilkin : the poet of life and beauty, 
 or the poet of decay and corruption ? 
 One, surely, must be sincere ; the other 
 insincere, or perversely wrought to accept 
 mirage for reality. For this gloom of his 
 is no lovely melancholy, that shadow of 
 life, of joy, of beauty. It is a vision of the 
 corruptible seen across miasma. But the 
 author of Tenebres is of the uplands by 
 grace of his best gift ; why should he make 
 himself one with the newt and the blind- 
 worm ? 
 
 ii 161 L
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 M. Gilkin is fairly well represented in 
 the Parnasse de la Jeune Belgique. Even 
 in these few poems the reader will encounter 
 many of those sonorous lines which give 
 this young poet an almost Mario we -like 
 distinction : 
 
 La nuit, sur le zenith, debout comme un heraut. 
 
 Lumineusement route une lune coupee 
 Dans le silence noir et la terreur de I' air. 
 
 Est-ce I'ange sonnant la trompette de fer ? 
 Beuglant sur la cite sa clameur rauque et morne ? 
 
 From first to last there is unmistakably 
 something of "le gout de terroir flamand." 
 It is no French poet 
 
 Of the clear glow divine, 
 The flawless sunlit line, 
 
 but the countryman of Van Lerberghe and 
 Maeterlinck, who cries in his dolorous Rime 
 de Reve Malheureux : 
 
 En toi j' adore, enfant des sinistres Destins, 
 L'Horreur fascinatrice et la Bisarrerie. 
 
 It is regrettable, however, that the antho- 
 logy in question does not include some of the 
 finer poems, as, for example, Israfel (from 
 La Damnation de V Artiste), "'mid the high 
 amber and ebony palaces of heaven." 
 162
 
 !' La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 To neither M. Hannon nor M. Gilkin, 
 I am afraid, could their most enthu- 
 siastic eulogists apply what an indignant 
 French apologist exclaimed on behalf of a 
 "martyr's" work : "II n'y a pas lade quoi 
 faire rougir une epiciere, ou palir un gen- 
 darme." Truth to tell, much of this mala- 
 droit handling of salacious themes is alto- 
 gether remote from a purely artistic passion 
 for the beautiful in any guise. Too often 
 it is mere vulgarity. In a sense the most 
 regrettable thing is not the vulgarity, but 
 the author's ignorance that they are dis- 
 mounted from Pegasus and are standing in 
 the mire. Good for both the poets just 
 named, and for so many other of their 
 confreres, would be a breath of that " elan 
 genial " in the words of Erastne Ramiro 
 " cet elan g6nial, qui chasse, comme un 
 vent irresistible, les scories des impressions 
 vulgaires." 
 
 M. Iwan Gilkin, however, was hardly 
 one of the inaugurators of the new move- 
 ment. Before 1880 Rodenbach had pub- 
 lished his (somewhat mediocre) Tristesses and 
 other volumes, and Eckhoud his sole collection 
 of verse, Myrtes et Cyprus, and other books. 
 Strangely enough to those who are not 
 au courant with everything concerning " La 
 163
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 Jeune Belgique," neither is represented in 
 the Parnasse. The omission of the author 
 of La Jeunesse Blanche and Le Regne du 
 Silence is certainly a mistake. These books 
 have a remote dreamy beauty, constantly 
 reminiscent of and inspired by the old dead 
 cities of Flanders reflecting, as the un- 
 rippled waters of those deserted towns, 
 
 Des nuages, des tours et de longs peupliers. 
 
 As a novelist, also, Georges Rodenbach is 
 worthy of note. His Art en Exil is as unlike 
 conventional French fiction as his most 
 exigent Flemish compatriot could wish. 
 But, both as poet and novelist, he is 
 hopelessly adrift in the maelstrom of Paris 
 journalism. As for the exclusion of Georges 
 Eckhoud, that may be on account of the 
 eminent novelist's not being considered as a 
 poet at all. From this opinion no unbiassed 
 critic could differ. Eckhoud, the Mau- 
 passant of the Low Countries, the literary 
 historian, looms gigantic in the van of the 
 Belgian renaissance ; Eckhoud, the author of 
 Myrtes et Cypres, &c., is insignificant. The 
 gulf is as wide as that which divides Mr. 
 Lecky the historian from Mr. Lecky the 
 writer in verse. But I remember at least 
 one light and dexterous poem (Xaviola), of 
 164
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 an easy grace and the happiest insouciance, 
 though I can recall only a stanza one 
 that hummed in my ears for days after I 
 first read it : 
 
 Si I 'anecdote est leg&re, 
 
 Excusez-moi, tr&s-cher fr&re 
 
 J suite, pardonnez-moi : 
 
 On etait sous la Regence. 
 
 Les mceurs ont change, je pense ; 
 
 On suit mieux la sainte loi. 
 
 Mon cher fr&re, excusez-moi. 
 
 It is not in verse, however, but in the 
 prose of Kees Dovorik, Kermesses, Nouvettes 
 Kermesses, La Nouvelle Carthage, Le Cycle 
 Patibulaire, that one must study this power- 
 ful though gloomy writer. The conteurs of 
 Belgium are a small but really notewothy 
 body. After Eckhoud, let me recommend 
 to those readers who may be unacquainted 
 with the Belgian writers Louis Delattre's 
 Contes de mon Village, and Eugene Demolder's 
 Contes d'Yperdamme. The latter is a model 
 of its kind. Mention should also be made 
 of the Contes a Marjolaine and Les Char- 
 neux of Georges Garnir, that " Wallon 
 Wallonais " ; Albert Giraud's Le Scribe, 
 &c., and Henry Maubel's Quelqu'un d'Au- 
 jourd'hui and singularly charming Miette. 
 There are many others, but these seem to 
 165
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 me particularly representative. Among the 
 several writers of that species of conte, 
 or allegory or fantasy, now generally called 
 " proses - lyriques " a genre cultivated 
 among the young Belgian poets and roman- 
 cists with singular success I must mention 
 especially M. Arnold Coffin. Excellent and 
 suggestive as are Delzire Moris, Journal 
 cT Andre, and Maxime, this most able writer 
 is seen at his highest artistic attainment 
 in the charming contes of his recently pub- 
 lished Le Fou Raisonnable. In point of 
 art, no living Frenchman has, in this 
 particular genre, excelled this series, unless, 
 perhaps, Marcel Schwob in his Mimes. 
 
 Apart from those already specially alluded 
 to, the most distinguished of the Parnassiens 
 are Fernand Severin, Gregoire Le Roy, 
 Andre Fontainas, and Albert Giraud. Of 
 these, only the first has any suggestion 
 of what can fairly be called genius. His 
 Le Lys and Le Don cTEnfance contain 
 poetry of great beauty, with an exquisite 
 sense for nature, the more appellant because 
 the poet does not describe but always evokes 
 the scene, the fleeting aspect, the quint- 
 essential moment. Gregoire Le Roy's Mon 
 Cceur pleure d'autrefois is full of delicate 
 fancy and seductive phrasing, but in the 
 166
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 overwhelming pressure of excellent poetic 
 writing in French he cannot be singled out 
 for special honour. Albert Giraud is prob- 
 ably more widely appreciated as a roman- 
 cist and critic than as a poet, though a 
 poet the author of Hors du Siecle, Pierrot 
 Lunaire, Pierrot Narcisse, and Dernieres 
 Fetes unquestionably is. M. Giraud is one 
 of the sanest and surest critics of literature 
 now writing in Frenc.h Fontainas may yet 
 distinguish himself ; Emile Verhaeren (who 
 is so much in sympathy with, though not 
 included in, " La Jeune Belgique ") has 
 already done so in, particularly, Les 
 Flambeaux Noirs and Les Debacles. Leon 
 Montenaeken deserves mention. No Bel- 
 gian has a lighter touch, a sweeter, if 
 restricted, lilt. The following haunting 
 little song by him has been attributed to 
 a dozen different French poets, old and 
 latter-day, and, if I am not mistaken, 
 even Mr. Andrew Lang fathered it on some 
 innocent Frenchman : 
 
 PEU DE CHOSE 
 
 La vie est vaine : 
 Un peu d'amour, 
 Un peu de haine . . . 
 Et puis bonjour ! 
 167
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 La vie est brdve : 
 Un pen d'espoir, 
 Un peu de rfoe . . . 
 Et puis bon soir ! 
 
 But in the Parnasse list there are two names 
 of supreme importance in the history of 
 the Belgian renaissance, though neither of 
 commanding rank in metrical composition : 
 Charles Van Lerberghe and Maurice Maeter- 
 linck. To these should be added the lesser 
 but still noteworthy name of a third expo- 
 nent of the drame intime, Auguste Jenart : 
 a writer whose neglect by his fellows and 
 the Belgian public has always to me been 
 a source of surprise. 
 
 It is disappointing to find in the poetry 
 of two such potent literary temperaments 
 so little of the same distinctive quality as 
 is readily discernible in the respective 
 dramatic work of either. It need scarce 
 detain us at present. I must add that 
 I know too little of M. Van Lerberghe's 
 uncollected verse to attempt to judge it 
 adequately. He betrays a marked rap- 
 prochement to Rossetti, and, to a certain 
 extent, to Poe. Most of M. Van Lerberghe's 
 published metrical work, I assume, may be 
 read in the Parnasse. It is graceful and 
 has an individual charm in such poems as 
 168
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 La Devine and Un Bois Dormant ; while in 
 Solyane there is an echo of that austerely 
 impressive style which characterises his 
 dramatic masterpiece. Maeterlinck is, per- 
 haps, more natively the poet. He shows 
 himself an unmistakable and, as yet, very 
 limited poet in Serres Chaudes ; he displays 
 promise as a conteur in his extremely 
 clever if fantastically archaic Massacre des 
 Innocents, Onirologie, &c. ; and he has won 
 a place as a critical writer by his scholarly 
 monograph on Ruysbroeck PAdmirable and 
 his occasional studies of contemporary 
 literature. But it is as an imaginative 
 writer in rarefied prose wrought in the 
 dramatic form that he is a newcomer of 
 distinction, of genius, and is a literary 
 force which has to be reckoned with. As 
 he is represented in the Parnasse by about a 
 third of his unique volume of verse, and 
 presumably by pieces chosen by himself, 
 he may be said to be fairly represented. 
 Unlikely masters are suggested in these 
 poems : poets so distinct as Walt Whitman 
 and Edgar Poe. Without his beloved 
 " cygnes " and his exclamation marks 
 Maeterlinck would be heavily handicapped. 
 " Swans " are now as commonplace (though 
 apparently as inevitable) in Belgian verse 
 169
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 as the breeze in the trees in our albums and 
 annuals fifty years ago. It would be abso- 
 lutely safe to say that no Belgian volume 
 of poetry has appeared without " cygnes," 
 " mensonges," " desirs fauves," " mon ame 
 pale," and " femmes lascivieuses " (or other 
 expressive epithet). " O " is a deadly pitfall 
 for all " Young Belgium," and exclamation 
 marks should be looked at by them with 
 the same menacing disapproval (if secret 
 longing) as our Academical painters (no 
 doubt) regard the labour-saving photo- 
 graph. In one of these poems of Serres 
 Chaudes alone, consisting as it does of 
 forty-one lines, I have counted no fewer 
 than twenty -nine terminal exclamation 
 marks. In the same poem, three lines 
 begin with " Oh," six with " A," and nine- 
 teen with " Et." This is not art, but artifice : 
 that is, the mechanical substitute for art. 
 Those repetitive phrasings which Maeterlinck 
 uses with such effect (though sometimes 
 disenchantingly) in La Princesse Maleine, 
 Les Aveugles, VIntruse, Les Sept Princesses, 
 and Pelleas et Melisande, are also much 
 affected by him in these poems sometimes, 
 as in Ennui, by monotonous insistence upon 
 a single word, or noun and epithet : in this 
 instance " paon blanc." It is impossible to 
 170
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 read these hothouse blooms of poetry 
 without wishing for the author that " wind 
 Euroclydon " for which, he tells us, in the 
 opening of Ame, he holds himself ready. 
 For, truly, his soul is too much in the 
 shade : " Mon ame ! . . . O mon ame 
 vraiment trop a 1'abri ! " 
 
 The real distinction of the contemporary 
 literary movement in Belgium lies in the 
 drame intime. This particular form of 
 imaginative literature has been given new 
 life and significance by Maeterlinck 
 Maeterlinck inspired by Charles Van Ler- 
 berghe. It has already had a strong influ- 
 ence on recent French literature, though 
 naturally the Belgian origin of this influence 
 is not recognised readily in France. " Can 
 any good thing come out of Nazareth ? " 
 
 Broadly, the Belgian movement culmi- 
 nates in this new form relatively new, 
 that is to say. It is a form strangely 
 seductive if obviously perilous, and one 
 that has, probably, a remarkable future 
 coming, as it has done, at a time when our 
 most eager spirits are solicitous of a wider 
 scope in expression, for a further opening 
 up of alluring ways through the ever- 
 blossoming wilderness of art. It may well 
 be that Maeterlinck's highest service will 
 171
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 prove to be that of a pioneer as Bernardin 
 de St. Pierre's highest service has not been 
 by Paul et Virginie, but by his Etudes de 
 Nature, having therewith directed into 
 new and fresh channels of delight the 
 stream which threatened to stagnate in 
 the shallows of an insincere nature-con- 
 vention. For, highly suggestive, profoundly 
 interesting, and even fascinating as his best 
 work is, he does not " loom forth the 
 master." 
 
 " C'est Poperette de la decadence, apres 
 le drame de Baudelaire," wrote E. Picard of 
 the debut of " Young Belgium." Baudelaire 
 is, in truth, even yet the tutelary god of "La 
 Jeune Belgique." In the perusal of the 
 writings of the league one almost inevitably 
 comes to identify the great French poet 
 with the nation among whom he sojourned 
 awhile in anything but unalloyed joy as the 
 Germans, in that Bavarian Walhalla by the 
 Danube, have included Shakespeare among 
 their effigies of Teutonic celebrities. There 
 are critics who believe that Maurice Maeter- 
 linck will oust the alien master from his 
 sovereignty somewhat forgetful, mean- 
 while, of the fact that the relationship is 
 not closer between these two men than 
 between a sculptor and a painter working 
 172
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 differently under a common bond. That 
 able Belgian critic, M. Albert Arnay, believes 
 Maeterlinck to be " among the giants." 
 For myself I can regard him only as a worthy 
 forerunner of a greater than himself. Yet 
 he is young, he is still in time to unlearn 
 as well as to learn, he enjoys what is for him 
 a fortunate environment, he has had fit 
 training ; he has a strain, perhaps very 
 much more than a strain, of genius. With 
 his supreme advantages he may yet appear 
 to his countrymen, to the world, as he now 
 does to such critics as M. Arnay in Belgium 
 and M. Mirbeau in France. 
 
 It is strange that the imaginative writer 
 who first showed Maeterlinck the method 
 and allure of that peculiar dramatic form 
 with which the younger man is identified 
 should be so little known. Strange, too, 
 that he should be so austerely reticent, for 
 Charles Van Lerberghe has published no 
 book since Les Flaireurs, that epoch-marking 
 drame intime, brief as it is. Here for the 
 first time we encounter the dramatic 
 method which has so impressed readers of 
 Maeterlinck's dramas and episodes. Van 
 Lerberghe does not appear to have followed 
 any other writer in his own country or 
 abroad. Possibly he has taken a hint 
 173
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 from Calderon. There are in that writer's 
 plays dramatic interludes of an extraordinary 
 intensity. It is not improbable that the 
 Flemish poet, a curious student of foreign 
 literature, should have noted the aptitude 
 of this specific form of composition for the 
 expression of a certain quality of imagina- 
 tive thought or emotion not so adequately 
 to be rendered in verse, or even in highly 
 rarefied prose-narrative. 
 
 The short dramatic episode entitled Les 
 Flaireurs occupies itself with a single inci- 
 dent : the death of an old peasant woman, 
 by night, in a lonely cottage in a remote 
 district, with no companion save her girlish 
 grandchild. Almost from the outset the 
 reader guesses what the nocturnal voices 
 indicate. The ruse- of the dramatist is 
 almost childishly simple, if its process of 
 development be regarded in detail. The 
 impressiveness lies greatly in the cumulative 
 effect. A night of storm, the rain lashing at 
 the windows, the appalling darkness without, 
 the wan candle -glow within, a terrified and 
 bewildered child, a dying and delirious old 
 woman, an ominous, oft -repeated knocking 
 at the door, a hoarse voice without, changeful 
 but always menacing, mocking or muttering 
 an obscure and horrible message : this inter - 
 174
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 wrought, again and again represented, aus- 
 terely tragic by-play from one point of 
 view merely the material for tragedy is 
 a profoundly impressive work of art. It 
 is perhaps all the more so from the fact 
 that it relies to some extent upon certain 
 venerable and even outworn conventionali- 
 ties. The midnight hour, storm, mysterious 
 sounds, the howl of a dog we are familiar 
 with all these " properties." They do not 
 now move us. Sheridan Le Fanu, or 
 Fitzjames O'Brien, or R. L. Stevenson, 
 can create for us an inward terror far 
 beyond the half-simulated creep with which 
 we read the conventional bogey -story. That 
 Charles Van Lerberghe should so impress 
 us by the simplest and most familiar stage 
 tricks points to his genuine artistry, to his 
 essential masterhood. The literary con- 
 jurer would fain deceive us by sleight of 
 hand ; the literary artist persuades us by 
 sleight of mind. 
 
 Van Lerberghe is neither romanticist 
 nor realist as these vague and often identical 
 terms are understood abroad. He works 
 realistically in the sphere of the imaginary. 
 If it were not that his aim (as that of 
 Maeterlinck) is to bring into literature a 
 new form of the drame intime, with, mean- 
 175
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 while, the adventitious aid of nominal 
 stage accessories, one might almost think 
 that Les Flaireurs was meant for stage 
 representation. It would be impossible, 
 however, thus. Imagine the incongruity 
 of the opening of this drama with its 
 subject. 
 
 " Orchestral music. Funeral march. Roll 
 of muffled drums. A blast of a horn in the 
 distance. Roll of drums. A short psalmodic 
 motive for the organ. REPEATED KNOCKS, 
 HEAVY AND DULL. Curtain." What have 
 orchestral music and rolling of drums 
 and a psalmodic motive for the organ to do 
 with an old peasant woman dying in a 
 cottage ? For that stage of the imagina- 
 tion from which many of us derive a keener 
 pleasure than from that of any theatre, 
 there is perhaps nothing incongruous here. 
 The effect sought to be produced is a psychic 
 one ; and, if produced, the end is gained, 
 and the means of no moment. It is only 
 from this standpoint that we can view 
 aright the work of Van Lerberghe, Maeter- 
 linck, and Auguste Jenart. Les Flaireurs is 
 wholly unsuitable for the actual stage, as 
 unsuitable as L'Intruse, or Les Aveugles, or 
 Les Sept Princesses, or Le Barbare. Each 
 needs to be enacted in the shadow-haunted 
 176
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 glade of the imagination, in order to be 
 understood aright. Under the limelight 
 their terror becomes folly, their poetry 
 rhetoric, their tragic significance impotent 
 commonplace, their atmosphere of mys- 
 tery the common air of the squalidly 
 apparent, their impressiveness a cause of 
 mocking. 
 
 Of the strange drama of Auguste Jenart 
 I can say little here. In its own kind 
 it seems to me genuinely impressive. 
 Nevertheless, it is ill sustained ; here 
 and there it even passes into rhodomontade. 
 The author has obviously been influenced 
 by Maeterlinck as well as by Van Lerberghe, 
 though the peril of the quest for derivation 
 is exemplified in- a recent allusion to Le 
 Barbare as an indifferent production clearly 
 inspired by such compositions as Les Sept 
 Princesses and Pelleas et Melisandethe 
 critic oblivious of the fact that the first 
 appeared in 1891, a few months after Jenart's 
 drama, and the second in 1892. Le Barbare 
 is a study in psychic heredity, in atavism. 
 It is as remote in style and conception from 
 Ibsen's Ghosts, on the one hand, as, on the 
 other, from such works as Zola's Rougon- 
 Maquart series, the Goncourt's Germinie 
 Lacerteuse, or Huysman's ^4 Rebours. The 
 
 II 177 M
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 inevitableness is not less convincing because 
 the action is mainly mental and spiritual 
 rather than personal in the restricted bodily 
 sense. A profoundly imaginative gloom 
 lies over this tragedy of Rynel de Roncort 
 the last exhausted scion of a noble race. 
 In a sense, Le Barbare is a poetic version of 
 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is an indi- 
 vidual episode of the universal war of good 
 and evil for supremacy. Only here, as Rynel 
 would say, it is not one man struggling 
 against inborn tendencies and adverse cir- 
 cumstances, but the heritor of ancestral 
 passions and desires, insensate cravings, 
 and inarticulate longings, battling wildly 
 against this overwhelming past, and striving 
 against or yielding before the inevitable. 
 " Connais-tu la Puissance tenebreuse qui 
 trame nos destinees ? Pourquoi lutter 
 contre elle ? " Rynel cries. Again with a 
 despairing sense of futility : " Des vies 
 anterieures sont innombrablement presentes 
 en moi." The inner motive of Le Barbare 
 is revealed in such a sentence as that of 
 Nurh, the strange, dreamlike beloved of 
 Rynel : " There are graves below the nerves 
 whence mount the desires of the dead." 
 The dominant note in this sombre symphony 
 of despair is that ceaseless cry of Rynel : 
 178
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 " Eveille-moi du somnambulisme de cette 
 vie ! " 
 
 Le Barbare has obvious faults. Notably 
 Jenart, like Maeterlinck, trusts too often 
 and too much to effects of repetition. 
 
 SIRIA. Vous appartiendrez bientot d un autre. 
 NURH. Jamais ! Jamais ! Jamais ! 
 SIRIA. Vous ne I'aimez pas ! Vous ne I'aimez 
 pas ! Vous ne I'aimez pas ! 
 
 A little of this inter jectional repetition is 
 effective : a little more, and it is no longer 
 so. It soon becomes dulled as that Sultan's 
 scimitar which could raze the fluff from a 
 falling feather at the first sweep, cleave 
 the feather-quill at the second, and at the 
 third merely whirl aside the drifting flake. 
 
 Perhaps the most notable thing in Le 
 Barbare from the point of view of the 
 literary student is the poetic and singu- 
 larly impressive way in which the animate 
 and inanimate environment of the personages 
 of the drama play their part in the general 
 scheme of psychic effect. The wind, snow, 
 the tempest, the water of the lake that 
 clucks and gurgles below the stairs of Rynel's 
 castle, the old tapestries, the firelight, the 
 deep gloom of chill rooms, the ominous 
 silence, the leaping or crawling of shadows 
 179
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 are all wrought into the same tragic weft, and, 
 as it seems to one under the glamour of the 
 dramatist's imagination, wrought inevitably. 
 
 In Maurice Maeterlinck we certainly 
 encounter the most interesting figure in 
 the contemporary Belgian Renaissance. 
 Member of a group though he be, fellow 
 in dramatic method with Van Lerberghe 
 and others, inheritor of both the Flemish 
 and the Franco -Belgian tradition he yet 
 is original. He has temperament, per- 
 sonality. He has that exceptional absorbent 
 faculty which is one of the several important 
 factors that distinguish the man of genius 
 from the man of talent though, almost 
 needless, to say, one might be a veritable 
 sponge in the waters of other people's 
 minds and imaginations, and yet be no 
 more than an insatiably absorbent sponge. 
 But is Maeterlinck a dominant force ? Will 
 he revolutionise, will his captaincy remain 
 uncancelled, will he be crowned at last 
 as a welcome, if irresistible usurper ? Will 
 he attain to that high mastery which makes 
 a writer a voice for all men, and not merely 
 an arresting echo for his own hour, his own 
 time, among his own people ? His debut 
 was significant, remarkable. 
 
 I do not know how far back the author 
 180
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 of La Princesse Maleine first began to write ; 
 but I remember that there appeared early 
 in 1886, in a long since defunct Paris 
 periodical, one of the most striking of his 
 prose studies. At that date Maeterlinck 
 was so exigent in the matter of his Flemish 
 nationality that he signed his poems and 
 articles " Mooris Maeterlinck." The 
 " Maurice " came later when he found 
 that a Belgian wrote and spoke a universal 
 tongue, and a Fleming what from a broad 
 standpoint can be called only a provincial 
 dialect. So far back as 1886 " Mooris 
 Maeterlinck " projected, and, indeed, an- 
 nounced, two volumes : one, a collection 
 of poems under the general title Les Symbo- 
 liques, and the other Histoires Gothiques, to 
 comprise several imaginative and more or 
 less fantastic prose studies. Neither book 
 has yet appeared. At any rate the Histoires 
 Gothiques has not ; for it is possible that 
 this author's sole published volume of verse, 
 Serres Chaudes, contains the essential part 
 of what was to appear in Les Symboliques. 
 There are two things essential to a proper 
 understanding of this author's writings : 
 some knowledge of the complex circum- 
 stances which have made him what he is, 
 of his avowed aims and obvious tendencies, 
 181
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 and some acquaintance with the literary 
 movement of which he is but one among 
 several, and, indeed, with the immediate 
 derivations and remoter origins of this 
 movement. For, if ever a writer was 
 the direct outcome of visible shaping 
 influences, it is Maurice Maeterlinck. More- 
 over, he is not yet thirty, and, not- 
 withstanding Les Aveugles, Vlntruse, La 
 Princesse Maleine, and Les Sept Princesses, 
 he has not yet found himself. 
 
 A strain of English blood, I understand, 
 runs in the veins of M. Maeterlinck. How- 
 soever this may be, his literary inheritance 
 is markedly English. He himself admits 
 this ; and it is doubtful if any Continental 
 writer, even M. Paul Bourget, is more 
 intimate not only with our latter-day poets, 
 but with the superb wilderness of Elizabethan 
 literature itself. True, there is his admission 
 about his debt to Villiers de 1'Isle-Adam, 
 and during a seven months' residence in 
 Paris (in 1886) he saw a good deal of this 
 fascinating if sometimes disappointing writer, 
 whom he so much admires : 
 
 " Je voyais trs souvent Villiers de 1'Isle- 
 
 Adam pendant les sept mois qui j'ai passes 
 
 a Paris. C'etait a la brasserie Pousset, au 
 
 faubourg Montmartre. II y avait la Saint - 
 
 182
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 Pol-Roux, Mikhael, Quillard, Darzens ; 
 Mendes y passait quelquefois, toujours 
 charmeur. Tout ce que j'ai fait, c'est a 
 Villiers que je le dois, a ses conversations 
 plus qu'a ses oeuvres que j 'admire beaucoup 
 d'ailleurs." 
 
 In a word, Villiers de PIsle-Adam was to 
 him much what Gustave Flaubert was to 
 Guy de Maupassant, a dominating personal 
 influence. But he has testified again and 
 again to the supreme magnitude of his 
 debt to " Shakspere, surtout ! Shakspere ! " 
 A comparison with something by Shake- 
 speare or one of the Elizabethans is as 
 natural to him as to Swinburne. Thus, 
 in a remarkable critical article (La Damna- 
 tion de V Artiste) : 
 
 " II y a la un tragique interne implacable- 
 ment compact, mercuriel, v^neneux, et qui 
 fait songer a 1'envers psychologique d'une 
 de ces inhabitables tragedies du sombre 
 contemporain de Shakspere, 1'irrespirable 
 Cyril Tourneur." 
 
 After Shakespeare, his acknowledged in- 
 debtedness is to De Quincey, Rossetti, and 
 Edgar Allan Poe, and, intellectually, to 
 Carlyle among other English writers ; 
 among French, pre-eminently to his friend 
 and countryman, Charles Van Lerberghe, 
 183
 
 "La feune Belgique" 
 
 in some measure to Baudelaire, and more 
 markedly to certain of the younger men, 
 notably Stephane Mallarme and Jules 
 Laforgue ; among Germans, distinctly to 
 Schopenhauer. But, after Shakespeare, it 
 is chiefly from Rossetti and Poe from Poe 
 and Rossetti would be nearer the mark 
 that he derives that temperamental excite- 
 ment to which is due no small portion of 
 his work. In both instances he seems to 
 me to have assimilated weakness rather than 
 strength. He has been deeply impressed by 
 the author of The House of Life, but it is 
 not the real massiveness underlying the 
 overwrought surface of Rossetti's work 
 that has most appealed to him. His radical 
 danger is uncontrolled imagination. In his 
 latest work, published in 1892, this is 
 again and emphatically demonstrated. Les 
 Sept Princesses has grace, a strange inde- 
 finable haunting charm, and once or twice 
 a touch of power ; and having this, it has 
 much. But no dramatic presentment so 
 essentially undramatic, no imaginative effort 
 so uncontrolled by the saving sense of the 
 artistically incongruous, can take rank as 
 a notable achievement. Nevertheless, to the 
 student of Maeterlinck's achievement as a 
 whole, Les Sept Princesses is of special 
 184
 
 "La Jeune Belgique" 
 
 interest, though it has the faults, exaggerated 
 in some respects, of its predecessor La Prin- 
 cesse Maleine. Neither play is in the exact 
 sense a drama. In both works, as M. Arnay 
 indicated at the time of the appearance 
 of the earlier, Maeterlinck has been eager 
 to seek and demonstrate what he himself 
 calls somewhere " Pinnombrable inconnu 
 des pressentiments," undeterred by the 
 example of Shakespeare and De Quincey. 
 But a keen apprehension of the value of 
 rare dramatic effects does not involve the 
 capacity of application, and again and again 
 in La Princesse Maleine the author has 
 failed, either by crude obtrusion of this or 
 that " point," or by elaboration. The 
 murder-scene in the dark chamber of 
 Maleine is more horrible than terrible ; 
 the evil Queen Ann is a vulgar murderess, 
 not a soul wrought to tragic fury ; and 
 King Hjalmar is fantastic rather than con- 
 vincing. 
 
 It is not, however, in La Princesse Maleine 
 that Maeterlinck's highest achievement is 
 to be found. In those extraordinary dramatic 
 phantasies, at once so mechanical in structure 
 and so imaginatively persuasive, Les Aveugles 
 and Ulntruse, he not only reaches a higher 
 artistic level, but more adequately fulfils his 
 185
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 aim than in the longer and more ambitious 
 and essentially more conventional work. 
 But it is altogether a mistake to criticise 
 Maeterlinck the writer of imaginative 
 dramatic prose as though he were Maeter- 
 linck the playwright. 
 
 In each composition he attempted to 
 produce certain effects ; and to this end 
 he wrought with a subtle skill so individual 
 because so truly artistic that it defies, or 
 at any rate has as yet defied, translation. 
 
 I believe he will give us better work ; 
 work as distinctive as his two masterpieces, 
 L'Intruse and Les Aveugles, but with a 
 wider range, a sympathy more general, 
 and insight and apprehension and technical 
 accomplishment more masterly still. 
 
 For him, however, as for all, there is 
 the rock-ahead of a misleading conception 
 of originality. The originality which lies 
 in the formative vision is that which is 
 of paramount value, not that which is 
 preoccupied with mere novelty of pre- 
 sentment. In the words of M. Theodore 
 de Wyzewa in a recent suggestive article in 
 Le Mercure de France : " Cette decroissance 
 de 1'originalite interieure, et ce souci croissant 
 de 1'originalite extrieure, ce sont les deux 
 faits qui resument toute 1'histoire de 1'art 
 186
 
 " La Jeune Belgique " 
 
 contemporain, aussi bien a I'e'tranger qui 
 chez nous." 
 
 If for Maeterlinck himself the warning 
 be not 'called for, certainly for most of les 
 Jeunes in Belgium and France there is need 
 to remember, to take to heart, the scornful 
 words of a great literary artist admired of 
 them all : 
 
 Dors ! L'impure laideur est la reine du monde, 
 Et nous avons perdu le chemin de Paros. 
 
 It is not the least of M. Maeterlinck's 
 honours that he is worthy to be ranged 
 under the banner of Leconte de Lisle. 
 
 But what we have to bear in mind mean- 
 while is that a new method is coming into 
 literature, and that the way has been shown 
 by the " Jeune Belgique " pioneers. Maurice 
 Maeterlinck is one of those pioneers, and 
 one deserving of singular honour ; for it is 
 not in the accidents of his dramatic expres- 
 sion that he is the original writer, but in 
 that quality of insight, that phrasing, that 
 atmosphere, which is his own. 
 
 187
 
 SAINTE-BEUVE 
 
 AMONG the innumerable apt quotations from 
 Sainte-Beuve with which an essay upon 
 that sovereign critic might fittingly be 
 introduced, I doubt if there be any better 
 than this : " I have but one diversion, one 
 pursuit : I analyse, I botanise, I am a 
 naturalist of minds. What I would fain 
 create is Literary Natural History." He 
 was, and is, unquestionably the foremost 
 "naturaliste des esprits " : in literary natu- 
 ral history he is at once the Buffon and 
 Humboldt, the Linnaeus and Cuvier, the 
 Darwin even, of scientific criticism. He was 
 not a great inventor, a new creative force, it 
 is true ; but he was, so to say, one of the 
 foremost practical engineers in literature, 
 he altered the course of the alien stream of 
 criticism, compelled its waters to be tribu- 
 tary to the main river, and gave it a new 
 impetus, an irresistible energy, a fresh and 
 vital importance. 
 
 188
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 I 
 
 During the ten or twelve years in which 
 I have been a systematic reader of Sainte- 
 Beuve, I have often wondered if his literary 
 career would have been a very different one 
 from what we know it if he had been born 
 ere the parental tides of life were already 
 on the ebb. Students of physiology are 
 well aware of the fact that children born of 
 parents beyond the prime of life are, in the 
 first degree, inferior in physique to those 
 born, say, to a father of thirty years of 
 age, and to a mother five-and- twenty years 
 old ; and, in the second degree, that the 
 children of parents married after the prime 
 of life are, as a rule, less emotional than 
 those born of a union in the more ardent 
 and excitable years of youth. It is because 
 in the Life, Poems, and Thoughts of Joseph 
 Delorme, in Les Consolations, in the Pensees 
 d'Aout, I for one find so much which is 
 praiseworthy, which is excellent even, that 
 I have often wondered if, his natal cir- 
 cumstances having been other than they 
 were, the author who has become so cele- 
 brated for his inimitable Causeries du Lundi 
 might have become famous as a poet. 
 That the keen subjectivity of emotion 
 189
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 which is at the base of the poetic nature 
 was his may be inferred from a hundred 
 hints throughout his writings ; he was 
 very far from being what some one has 
 called him, a " mere bloodless critic, serenely 
 impartial because of his imperturbable 
 pulse." To cite a single example : in one 
 of his Notes et Remarques, printed in M. 
 Pierrot's appendical volume (tome xvi me .) 
 to the collected Causeries du Lundi, he says, 
 a propos of his novel Volupte : " Why do I 
 not write another novel ? To write a romance 
 was for me but another, an indirect way of 
 being in love, and to say so." It was not 
 "a mere bloodless critic" who penned 
 that remark. But, withal, in his poetry, 
 in his essays, in his critiques, in the episodes 
 of his long and intellectually active life, it 
 is obvious to the discerning reader that 
 Sainte-Beuve rarely attained to the white- 
 heat of emotion for any length of time ; 
 that a cold wave of serene judgment, of 
 ennui often enough, speedily dissipated the 
 intoxication of spiritual ardour. But in 
 those white-heat moments he touches so 
 fine a note, reaches so high a level, that one 
 realises the poet within him is not buried so 
 deep below his ordinary self as the com- 
 mon judgment would have us believe. The 
 190
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 century has been rich in poetic literature, 
 while there have been few eminent critics, 
 till Sainte-Beuve no French critic great 
 by virtue of the art of criticism alone. It 
 is only since the advent of Sainte-Beuve, 
 indeed, that criticism has come to be accepted 
 as an art that is, in France ; for amongst 
 us criticism, as distinct from conventional 
 book-reviewing, can at most be said merely 
 to exist. 
 
 In the invaluable autobiographical frag- 
 ment which was found among his papers 
 on the morrow of his death, Sainte-Beuve 
 states that he was brought up by his mother, 
 who had been left, a few months after her 
 marriage, a widow with sadly straitened 
 means yet not in extreme poverty, and by 
 a sister of his father, who united her slender 
 income to that of Mme. Sainte-Beuve, thus 
 enabling the small family of three to live 
 in comparative comfort. The boy was care- 
 fully educated at the lay school of a M. 
 Ble'riot, and was particularly well grounded 
 in Latin. His intellectual development was 
 rapid. He had scarcely entered upon his 
 teens before he had become a student, and 
 his mother, sympathetic and intelligent if 
 not actively intellectual, gave him every 
 encouragement. It was at this time that 
 191
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 he read many of the books which bore his 
 father's marginalia ; and no doubt the 
 mere circumstance of annotation impressed 
 him with the importance of the subject- 
 matter. Some ten years or so later he alluded, 
 in one of his poems, to his father and his 
 indirect influence upon him : 
 
 ' ' Mon pere ainsi sentait. Si, ne dans sa mart meme, 
 Ma memoire n'eut pas son image supreme, 
 II m'a laisse du mains son ame el son esprit, 
 Et son gout tout entier d chaque marge ecrit." 
 
 What is even more noteworthy is his con- 
 sciousness of his educational shortcomings 
 when, in his fourteenth year, he realised that 
 he was not likely to learn anything more at 
 M. Bleiiot's school. " I felt strongly how 
 much I lacked" : and in this persuasion he 
 urged his mother to take, or send, him to 
 Paris. It was not an easy thing for the widow 
 to do, but she managed to send him to the 
 capital (September 1818), and to arrange 
 for his board with a M. Landry, a man of 
 some note, who had formerly been a pro- 
 fessor at the College of Louis-le-Grand, 
 and was a mathematician and philosopher. 
 At the house of this esprit libre in the Rue 
 de la Cerisail this free-thinker, as Sainte- 
 Beuve calls him the young scholar met 
 192
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 several men of high standing in the world 
 of letters, among them certain eminent 
 students of science. He seems to have 
 been noticed by them, though he did not 
 quite relish being treated as a hobbledehoy, 
 " as a big boy, as a little man." He was an 
 instinctive student : to learn was as natural 
 to him as to play is easy for most boys, 
 and yet he does not seem to have been 
 devoid of the gaiety and even abandon of 
 youth. At the College of Charlemagne, at 
 the end of the first year of his attendance, 
 he took part in the general competition 
 and succeeded in carrying off the highest 
 prize for history ; and in the following 
 year, at the Bourbon College, he gained 
 the prize for Latin verse, and had the further 
 distinction of a Governmental award, in 
 the form of a medal, as a special recognition 
 of his scholarly achievements. One of his 
 school friends, Charles Potier, the son of 
 the eminent actor, and himself afterwards 
 successful on the stage, has put on record 
 his recollection of how he and Sainte-Beuve 
 acted the familiar old parts of the clever 
 and the stupid boy ; how while he dug or 
 hoed the garden-plot which had been 
 allotted to them, the other Charles sat 
 idly by, obliviously engaged in some book or 
 II 193 N
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 indolently abstracted ; and how, in return, 
 he was helped by his friend in the uncon- 
 genial task of class-exercises. Sainte-Beuve 
 was free to spend his evenings as he chose, 
 and he voluntarily studied medical science, 
 at first with the full intention of becoming 
 a physician, later with the idea of making 
 the philosophical study of physiology and 
 chemistry his specialities, and, finally, simply 
 for the value of the training and its bearing 
 upon that new science of literature which 
 he was one of the earliest to apprehend as a 
 complex unity. The lectures of Messieurs 
 Magendie, Robiquet, and Blainville, respec- 
 tively upon physiology, chemistry, and 
 natural history, interested him profoundly. 
 " I went every evening to these lectures 
 at the Athenee, off the Palais Royal, from 
 seven to ten o'clock," he says in his auto- 
 biographical fragment, "and also to some 
 literary lectures." It was natural that this 
 preoccupation with strictly scientific study 
 should bias his mind to the materialistic 
 school of thought ; and one is not surprised 
 to learn, on the authority of D'Haussonville, 
 his biographer, that in his own judgment 
 he had reached his true ground, " mon fonds 
 veritable," in the most pronounced eigh- 
 teenth-century materialism. It is, however, 
 194
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 interesting and suggestive to note that even 
 at that time Sainte-Beuve was dominated 
 by his exceptional mental receptivity ; that 
 he was swayed this way and that by the 
 intellectual duality which has puzzled so 
 many of his readers. Daunou and Lamarck 
 were his prophets ; by them he swore, their 
 words contained the authentic gospel ; but 
 the same week, perhaps, as that in which he 
 proclaimed his enfranchisement from the 
 most abstract Deism, he would announce 
 his convicton that a Supreme Power 
 controlled the tides of life as when he 
 wrote to his friend, afterwards the Abbe 
 Barbe, distinctly asserting his recognition of 
 God as " the source of all things." The 
 mystic in him was always side by side with 
 the physiologist, the unflinching analyst, 
 just as the poet was ever comrade to the 
 critic. It is to this, indeed, that Sainte- 
 Beuve owes his pre-eminence, to this that 
 is to be traced the fundamental secret of 
 his spell. In later life he was fully conscious 
 of his indebtedness to those early medical 
 and scientific studies ; and many will call to 
 mind his famous defence of the Faculty, in 
 the Senate of the Second Empire, when an 
 attempt was made to limit the medical 
 professors in Governmental institutions in 
 195
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 the free expression of their views. The very 
 least he could do, he declared, was to give 
 his testimony in favour of that Faculty to 
 which he owed the philosophical spirit, the 
 love of exactitude and of physiological 
 reality, and " such good method as may have 
 entered into my writings." As a matter of 
 fact, his early scientific training was of the 
 highest value. It is possible that, with his 
 strong religious bias, if he had been educated 
 at an ecclesiastical seminary he would have 
 become one of the great company led by 
 Pascal and Bossuet, a spiritual comrade of 
 his contemporaries Lamennais and Lacor- 
 daire ; that, but for his liaison with radical 
 materialism, the art, the science of Criticism, 
 would have remained half formless and in- 
 determinate, and have waited long for its 
 first great master. 
 
 His several scientific excursions led to his 
 following the regular course in the study 
 of medicine ; and, with the goal of a medical 
 career in view, he was an assiduous student 
 till 1827, when he was in his twenty-third 
 year. At that date an event occurred which 
 determined his particular line of energy. 
 But before this he had already begun to 
 write. These tentative efforts, in verse 
 and prose, conventional though they were, 
 196
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 encouraged him to believe that he had 
 the literary faculty, though even then his 
 sense of style was so developed that he 
 realised how wide was the gulf between 
 mere facility and a vital dominating impulse. 
 His mother, who had come from Boulogne 
 to watch over her son, saw these literary 
 indications with an annoyance which grew 
 into alarm ; for at that time the literary 
 career was rarely a remunerative one, and, 
 moreover, her heart was set upon her son's 
 success as a physician or collegiate pro- 
 fessor of medicine. It was not, as a matter 
 of fact, till his election to the Academy 
 that she admitted the wisdom of his early 
 decision ; and even then she complained, 
 and not without justice, of the terrible wear 
 and tear of an unceasingly active literary 
 life. Mme. Sainte-Beuve, who lived with 
 her son till her death at the goodly age of 
 eighty -six, seems to have been an intelli- 
 gent and sympathetic rather than an intel- 
 lectually clever woman ; and though her 
 always affectionate Charles loved and ad- 
 mired her, it would not appear that he 
 enjoyed with her any rare mental com- 
 munion. 
 
 The youth who at the College of Charle- 
 magne had gained the History prize attracted 
 197
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 the particular attention of his professor, 
 M. Dubois. A friendship, as intimate as 
 practicable in the circumstances, ensued ; 
 and when, in 1824, M. Dubois founded the 
 Globe, the journal which ere long became 
 so famous and so influential both in politics 
 and literature, he asked Sainte-Beuve to 
 join the staff as an occasional contributor. 
 This was a remarkable compliment, for the 
 young student was quite unknown, and had 
 done nothing to warrant such an honour ; 
 so it is clear that M. Dubois must have had 
 a strong opinion as to the young man's 
 capabilities. Sainte-Beuve was all the more 
 gratified because the staff of writers who had 
 promised their practical support comprised 
 men so famous as Guizot and Victor Cousin, 
 Jouffroy, Ampere, Merimee, De Broglie, and 
 Villemain. It was not long before the Globe 
 became a power in Paris, and thereafter 
 throughout France and Northern Europe : 
 even the great Goethe read it regularly, and 
 alluded to it in terms of cordial praise. It 
 was regarded as the organ of the principal 
 exponents of that earlier Romantic move- 
 ment which made the latter years of the 
 Restoration so brilliant, and worked like 
 powerful yeast through contemporary 
 thought and literature. Politically, it was 
 198
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 the mouthpiece of those who were charac- 
 terised as les Doctrinaires. Naturally the 
 young medical student, who had scarce 
 unsheathed his virginal literary sword, was 
 not among the first contributors. When 
 M. Dubois did entrust to him several short 
 reviews, he did not allow these to appear 
 without scrupulous revision on his own part. 
 They did not attract any particular notice : 
 few were curious as to the personality of 
 the critic whose articles appeared above 
 the initials " S. B." But the editor soon 
 discovered that his youngest contributor was 
 quite able to stand alone so far as literary 
 craftsmanship was concerned. One day he 
 delighted the novice by saying to him, 
 " Now you know how to write ; henceforth 
 you can go alone." Confidence helped style, 
 and Parisian men of letters read with appre- 
 ciative interest the new recruit's articles 
 on Thiers' Histoire de la Revolution and 
 Mignet's Tableau of the same epoch. He 
 may be said to have definitely gained his 
 place as a recognised literary critic by the 
 time that he had published his able and 
 scholarly review of Alfred de Vigny's Cinq 
 Mars. It was still before he had finally 
 given up a medical career that, by means of 
 a review, he formed a new acquaintanceship 
 199
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 which was to prove of great importance to 
 him, and that not only as a man of letters. 
 One morning, late in 1826, he chanced to call 
 upon M. Dubois, who was engaged in turning 
 over the pages of two volumes of Odes and 
 Ballads, which he had just received. The 
 editor of the Globe asked Sainte-Beuve to 
 review them, having first explained that 
 they were by an acquaintance of his, "a 
 young barbarian of talent," interesting on 
 account of his forceful character and the 
 incidents of his life Victor Hugo. The 
 volumes were duly carried off, read, re-read 
 and reviewed. When the critic took his 
 MS. to his editor he told the latter that this 
 Victor Hugo was not such a barbarian 
 after all, but a man of genius. The review 
 appeared in the issue of the Globe for 
 January 2, 1827 ; and it is interesting 
 to know that among the earliest foreign 
 readers of it was Goethe, who on the 4th 
 expressed to Eckermann his appreciation of 
 Hugo, and his belief that the young poet's 
 fortunes were assured since he had the 
 Globe on his side. And of course the author 
 of Odes et Ballades was delighted. He called 
 upon M. Dubois, enthusiastically expressed 
 his gratification, maugre the few strictures 
 upon his poetic and metrical extravagances 
 200
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 which the article contained, and begged for 
 the address of the writer. The critic was 
 out when the poet called, but a return 
 visit was speedily made. No doubt Sainte- 
 Beuve was not the man to regret any 
 useful experience, and yet one may question, 
 from knowledge of the man in his later 
 years, if, could he have relieved and at the 
 same time refashioned the drift of his life, 
 he would have made that eventful call. 
 From it, indirectly, arose his " one critical 
 crime," that of wilful blindness to short- 
 comings because of the influence of per- 
 sonal charm ; and to it, also, was due the 
 " romantic " prose and poetry of the morbid 
 and supersensitive Joseph Delorme. Poeti- 
 cally, in a word, he would not have had 
 what he calls somewhere his " liaison avec 
 1'ecole poetique de Victor Hugo." On the 
 other hand, he owed much to his intimacy 
 with the Hugos and their circle, which at 
 that time comprised Alfred de Vigny, 
 Lamartine, Musset, and other ardent repre- 
 sentatives of Jeune France. The recollection 
 of his critical reception of Alfred de Musset 
 was always, in late years, one of Sainte- 
 Beuve's thorns in the flesh. But the accusa- 
 tion which has been made, that he was 
 chagrined by the poet's manner to him 
 201
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 when they first met, and that the critic 
 allowed his personal resentment to bias his 
 judgment, is ridiculous. The contrary is 
 proved by the passage in Ma Biographic 
 (Nouveaux Lundis, tome xiii.), where the 
 author expressly recounts the circumstances. 
 Sainte-Beuve was impressed by Victor 
 Hugo's genius and captivated by his per- 
 sonal charm ; and, at the same time, he 
 was fascinated by Madame Hugo. He 
 became an intimate friend ; saw the poet 
 at least twice daily ; praised, admired, 
 wrote about the beautiful Adele and, 
 indeed, became so enthusiastically friendly 
 that the brilliant group which formed Le 
 Cenacle (the Guest-Chamber), a club of 
 kindred spirits in the several arts, must 
 have thought that their latest recruit was 
 qualifying to be the prophet of woman's 
 supremacy in all things. As a matter of 
 fact, the Hugo circle was not fettered by 
 severe social conventionalities ; yet even 
 the self-confident Victor made objections 
 when he found his numerous friends, from 
 the polished Alfred de Vigny and the senti- 
 mental Lamartine to " Musset PEnnuye " 
 and the brilliant light-hearted essayist, whom 
 Monselet afterwards with so much justice 
 called " the smiling critic " (le critique 
 202
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 souriani), freely addressing his wife as Adele. 
 As for Sainte-Beuve, his complaint was 
 so severe that, though he laughed at it 
 afterwards as a flirtation with Romanticism, 
 it might best be called Adelaisme. This one- 
 sided passion was no doubt the mainspring 
 of the sufferings, thoughts, and poesies of 
 the melancholy Joseph Delorme, the Gallic 
 counterpart of the much more unendurable 
 Werther. True, something of Sainte- Beuve's 
 deeper melancholy of " seriousness " may 
 have been due to his remote English strain, 
 and his splenetic temperament to the fact 
 that his mother passed several dolorous 
 months between his birth and the death of 
 her husband. It seems strange that so 
 acute a critic of literary physiology should 
 not have seen that his " spleen " was due 
 more to want of outdoor life and to incessant 
 mental preoccupation, and (in the " Joseph 
 Delorme " period) to what I have called 
 Adelaisme , than to the circumstance of 
 his mother having borne him during months 
 of widowhood, or to that of his grand- 
 mother having been an Englishwoman. 
 Although he was never married, Sainte- 
 Beuve was of a susceptible nature. There is 
 absolutely no warrant for the belief that he 
 was so deeply in love with Adele Hugo that his 
 203
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 whole life was affected by the blight of unre- 
 quited affection. On the contrary, if he was 
 the critique souriant in the world of literature, 
 he was the critique gai in the affairs of life. 
 
 For a time everything prospered with Le 
 Cenacle. Then one member and then another 
 grew lukewarm or directly seceded. Sainte- 
 Beuve slowly diverged from the views he had 
 allowed himself to expound, overborne as 
 he had been by the charm of Victor and the 
 fascination of Madame Hugo. The already 
 famous poet does not seem to have had any 
 particularly high appreciation of his critical 
 friend as a man of letters ; indeed, Sainte- 
 Beuve was commonly regarded as nothing 
 more than, at most, a conscientious and 
 able critic, with genuine enough but mediocre 
 original powers. In the first flush of intimacy, 
 however, Hugo was as immoderate in his 
 praise of his new acquaintance as was his 
 wont in the matter of superlatives. But 
 when the "eagle," the "royal meteor," 
 ceased from the making of critical honey, 
 when, in giving a present of a book, he no 
 more inscribed above his signature on the 
 flyleaf such pleasant phrases as, " To the 
 greatest lyrical inventor French poetry 
 has known since Ronsard," but, instead, 
 uttered such words as "theatricality," 
 204
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 "violence," "eccentricity " then there was 
 a cooling of enthusiasm. 
 
 But about this time, and indirectly owing 
 to the Hugo connection, two important 
 things happened. A journalistic and literary 
 career was opened to Sainte-Beuve. He at 
 once availed himself of the chance ; so 
 eager was he, indeed, that he left his sur- 
 geon's case at St. Louis's Hospital, where 
 he had been a day-pupil, and it is said 
 that he never went back for it. His voca- 
 tion was in the art of literature, not in the 
 science of medicine. As soon as he realised 
 this, and saw his way to a possibility of 
 living by the pen, he not only busied himself 
 as a journalist, but prepared to undertake 
 an ambitious literary task, a work of real 
 magnitude. Probably if it had not been for 
 Victor Hugo and Sainte-Beuve's ardent if 
 transient romanticism, the admirable studies 
 on The French Poetry of the Sixteenth Cen- 
 tury would not have been written not 
 then, at any rate, nor in the form in 
 which we know them. The critic had 
 been impressed by the enthusiasm of Hugo 
 and his circle for the early poets. He 
 read, studied, and came to the conclusion 
 that these were unworthily neglected. He 
 discerned in them, moreover, the poetic 
 205
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 ancestors of the enthusiastic members of Le 
 Cenacle ; both were unconventional, indi- 
 vidual, comparatively simple. The series of 
 studies which, as the result, appeared in 
 the Globe delighted the writer's friends and 
 attracted no little share of literary attention ; 
 but it was not till the publication of them 
 collectively in book form that Sainte-Beuve's 
 name became widely known as that of a 
 scholarly and, above all, an independent 
 critic. It was the prevalent literary vogue 
 to decry the pre-classicists, or, at least, to 
 affirm that there was little of abiding worth 
 prior to Moliere, Racine, and Corneille. By 
 insight, critical acumen, felicitous quota- 
 tion, and a light and graceful while incisive 
 style (not, however, characterised by the 
 limpid delicacy and suppleness of his best 
 manner, as in the Causeries du Lundi), he 
 won many admirers and did good service 
 to literature, and particularly to literary 
 criticism. 
 
 From this time forward Sainte-Beuve's 
 career was a prosperous one, chequered now 
 and again indeed, but in the main happy 
 and marvellously fruitful. For some years 
 he dreamed of poetic fame ; gradually he 
 realised that his well-loved Life, Poetry, and 
 Thoughts of Joseph Delorme, his Consolations, 
 206
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 and his August Thoughts would never appeal 
 to a public outside the literary world of 
 Paris, and even there that they were assured 
 of mere respect at most ; and finally he 
 became convinced that it was neither as 
 poet nor as novelist, but as critic, that he 
 was to win the laurels of fame. To the last, 
 however, he had a tender feeling for his 
 poetic performances, and there was no surer 
 way to his good graces than admiration of 
 his poems. The most unsympathetic critic 
 cannot regret Sainte-Beuve's having devoted 
 so much time and so many hopes to those 
 springtide blossoms of a summer that never 
 came. At the least, they helped their 
 author to a wide sympathy, to a deep 
 insight, to that catholicity of taste which 
 enabled him not only to enjoy for himself, 
 but to interpret for others, the essential 
 merits of a great number of poets, writers 
 so absolutely distinct as Virgil and Victor 
 Hugo, Villon and William Cowper, Dante 
 and Firdausi, Theocritus and Moli6re, Ron- 
 sard and Racine. 
 
 When Dr. Veron founded in 1829 the 
 Revue de Paris, the predecessor of the more 
 famous Revue des Deux Mondes, he made 
 haste to enrol Sainte-Beuve among his 
 contributors. He thought it possible that 
 207
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 the poet might make a great name, but he 
 was quite convinced that the critic would 
 become a prince of his tribe. The result 
 of his trust was more than satisfactory. 
 Although Sainte-Beuve was only five- or six- 
 and- twenty when he wrote his articles on 
 Boileau, Racine, La Fontaine, Rousseau, 
 Andre Chenier, and others, how admirable 
 they are, and how well worth perusal even 
 at the present date ! In style, it is true, 
 they are graceful and scholarly rather than 
 winsome with individual charm, for the 
 latter does not become a characteristic of 
 his work till he has reached the noon of 
 his maturity ; but, even with this qualifi- 
 cation, they are unquestionably delightful 
 reading. 
 
 In the summer of 1830 Sainte-Beuve was 
 in Normandy, at Honfleur, on a visit to 
 his friend Ulric Guttinguer, when the July 
 Revolution overthrew many institutions 
 besides that of the old monarchy. With the 
 advent of Louis Philippe arose schism among 
 the brilliant staff of the Globe. Some main- 
 tained that the hour had come in which to 
 cry " Halt " to further innovations ; one or 
 two wavered and talked of compromise ; 
 the more strenuous affirmed that there was 
 as pressing need of progress as ever. Among 
 208
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 the progressists was Sainte-Beuve, who had 
 hurried back to Paris. The Globe became 
 the organ of the Saint-Simonians ; and 
 though Sainte-Beuve never identified him- 
 self with the school of Saint-Simon, he 
 fought valiantly as a free-lance by the side 
 of its exponents. But, before this change 
 in the destiny of the paper (for, after the 
 split, it abruptly lost its place in the van 
 of Parisian journals, and was sold at a loss 
 to a sanguine experimentalist, who in turn 
 speedily disposed of it to the Saint- 
 Simonians), a tragi-comedy, in which Sainte- 
 Beuve and his former good friend M. Dubois 
 were the chief actors, occurred. The clash 
 of opinions at the editorial office begat 
 heated discussions, reproaches, taunts even. 
 Dubois reminded Sainte-Beuve, in not very 
 complimentary terms, of how he had given 
 him a lift into the literary world ; the 
 critic made a scathing reply. The blood 
 of all the Dubois boiled in the veins of the 
 worthy editor, and he challenged Sainte- 
 Beuve to mortal combat. So high did feeling 
 run that the matter was really a serious 
 one, though we may hesitate to accept 
 the great critic's after-statement that he 
 went to the duel with the full intention of 
 killing his adversary. It was the Joseph 
 ii 209 o
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 Delorme lying latent in Charles Augustin 
 Sainte-Beuve who made this affirmation. 
 The preliminaries of the duel were arranged 
 with all circumspection ; both antagonists 
 made their wills and felt alternately heroic 
 and despondent ; and at last the hour came. 
 It was a chill and wretched morning, for 
 the rain came down in a steady pour. 
 What was the astonishment of M. Dubois 
 and the seconds of both principals to see 
 Sainte-Beuve take up his position with his 
 pistol in his right hand and his unfolded 
 umbrella upheld by his left. To the remon- 
 strances of the seconds, he protested that 
 he was willing to be shot, if need be but 
 to be drenched, no ! (Je veux bien etre tue ; 
 mais mouille, non.) Four shots were ex- 
 changed, and editor and critic remained 
 unhurt. Neither their ill-success nor the 
 rain damped their bloodthirstiness, however, 
 and if it had not been for the firm remon- 
 strances of the seconds, who declared that 
 the demands of honour had been amply 
 satisfied, one or other of the combatants 
 would have suffered for his folly. Happily, 
 this was Sainte-Beuve's sole martial expe- 
 rience. As one of his detractors long after- 
 wards maliciously remarked, thenceforth he 
 confined himself to stabbing with the pen, 
 
 2iO
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 and to destroying literary reputations by a 
 causerie. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve's renewed connection with 
 the Globe was not of long duration. His 
 only interest in the doctrines of the Saint- 
 Simonians was one of curiosity : neither 
 more nor less than he, pre-eminently the 
 hedonist of modern literature, felt in those 
 of the enthusiasts who were bent upon recon- 
 ciling democratic and radical politics with 
 the most conservative Roman Catholicism. 
 Although he knew and admired Lacordaire, 
 Lamennais, and Montalembert, he refused to 
 co-operate with them in the writing of articles 
 for their journalistic organ, UAvenir. These 
 eminent men were not alone in their inability 
 to understand Sainte-Beuve's mental tem- 
 perament. They thought that because he 
 seemed profoundly interested he was there- 
 fore a disciple. But the foremost critic of 
 the day was a man of a passionate intellectual 
 curiosity : his sovereign need was for new 
 mental intellectual impressions. It was his 
 insatiable curiosity into all manifestations 
 of mental activity, as much as his exceptional 
 receptivity, elasticity of sympathy, searching 
 insight, and extraordinary synthetic faculty, 
 that enabled him to become the master- 
 critic. His catholicity of taste was his 
 
 211
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 strength, as with others it is often a source 
 of weakness. It was not through inability 
 to find anchorage in the sea of truth that his 
 was a restless barque, with sails trimmed 
 for seafaring again as soon as a haven was 
 entered ; it was because he was a literary 
 viking, consumed with a passion for mental 
 voyaging and remote explorations because 
 he loved the deep sea, and found that even 
 the profoundest inlets, the grandest bays, 
 were too shallow for him to rest content 
 therein. 
 
 " No one," he says, " ever went through more 
 mental vicissitudes than I have done. I began 
 my intellectual life as an uncompromising adherent 
 of the most advanced form of eighteenth-century 
 thought, as exemplified by Tracy, Daunou, 
 Lamarck, and the physiologists : Id est mon fonds 
 veritable. Then I passed through the psychological 
 and doctrinaire school as represented by my 
 confreres on the Globe, but without giving it my 
 unqualified adhesion. For a time thereafter I 
 had my liaison with the school of Victor Hugo, and 
 seemed to lose myself in poetical romanticism. 
 Later, I fared by the margins of Saint-Simonism, 
 and, soon thereafter, Liberal-Catholicism as repre- 
 sented by Lamennais and his group. In 1837, 
 when residing at Lausanne, I glided past Calvinism 
 and Methodism . . . but in all these wanderings 
 I never (save for a moment in the Hugo period, 
 and when under the influence of a charm) for- 
 feited my will or my judgment, never pawned my 
 212
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 belief. Oil the other hand, I understood so well 
 both the world of books and that of men that 
 I gave dubious encouragement to those ardent 
 spirits who wished to convert me to their con- 
 victions, and indeed claimed me as one of them- 
 selves. But it was all curiosity on my part, a 
 desire to see everything, to examine closely, to 
 analyse, along with the keen pleasure I felt in 
 discovering the relative truth of each new idea 
 and each system, which allured me to my long 
 series of experiments, to me nothing else than a 
 prolonged course of moral physiology." 
 
 The short space at my command prevents 
 my enlarging upon the hint conveyed in the 
 last phrase, except to say that it is directly 
 indicative to Sainte-Beuve's fundamental 
 critical principle. To him criticism was 
 literary physiology. With him a series of 
 critiques meant a series of studies of (i) a 
 writer as one of a group, as the product 
 of the shaping spirit of the time ; (2) a 
 writer as an individual, with all his inherited 
 and acquired idiosyncrasies ; (3) a writer as 
 seen in his writings, viewed in the light of 
 all ascertainable personalia ; (4) the writings 
 themselves, intrinsically and comparatively 
 estimated. But, primarily, his essays were 
 as much studies of character, of moral 
 physiology, as of literary values. 
 
 After his withdrawal from the too sectarian 
 213
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 Globe, Sainte-Beuve joined the staff of the 
 National. With the ultra -Republican prin- 
 ciples of that paper he had but a lukewarm 
 sympathy, but his friend Armand Carrel, 
 the editor, assured him that nothing would 
 be expected from him save purely literary 
 contributions. For about three years 
 (1831-4) he remained on the staff of the 
 National, and it was in the last year of the 
 connection that he published his one novel, 
 Volupte. The book had a gratifying reception 
 so far as wide notice was concerned ; but 
 it was generally adjudged to be unwhole- 
 some in tone and somewhat too self-con- 
 scious in style though so beautiful a nature 
 and so refined a critic as Eugenie de Guerin 
 affirmed it to be a notable and even a noble 
 book. That the prejudice against the author 
 on account of it must have been strong is 
 evident from the fact that when it was sug- 
 gested to Guizot, then Minister of Public 
 Instruction, that he should confer upon 
 Sainte-Beuve a professional post at the 
 Normal School, just vacant through the 
 resignation of Ampere, he refused to appoint 
 a man, howsoever brilliantly qualified, who 
 had written such books as Joseph Delorme 
 and Volupte. Guizot was conscientiously 
 scrupulous in this matter ; and to show 
 214
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 that he bore no personal ill-feeling, he 
 appointed Sainte-Beuve to the secretary- 
 ship of an historical Commission, a post 
 which the equally conscientious critic re- 
 signed in less than a year on the ground 
 that it was becoming or had become a mere 
 sinecure. Another instance of his conscien- 
 tiousness is his having declined, about the 
 same date, the Cross of the Legion of 
 Honour a distinction he would have been 
 proud to accept had he felt assured that it 
 was offered in recognition of his literary 
 merits, but upon which he looked suspi- 
 ciously because it came when the Ministry 
 of M. Mole and M. Salvandy, both personal 
 friends of his, was in power. Three years 
 after the publication of his novel, he issued 
 the last of his purely imaginative produc- 
 tions, the Pensees d'Aout. In the same year 
 (1837) he went to Switzerland, and having 
 been invited by the Academy of Lausanne to 
 deliver a course of lectures, he settled for a 
 time in the pleasant Swiss town. There he 
 delivered in all eighty -one lectures, the 
 foundation of his famous and voluminous 
 work on Port Royal. The history of the 
 religious movement in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury known as Jansenism, which occupied 
 him intermittently for twenty years, is a 
 215
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 monument of labour, research, and scrupu- 
 lous historic fairness, and, though the 
 least read, is one of his greatest achieve- 
 ments. 
 
 Both before and during his Swiss sojourn, 
 and for about ten years thereafter, Sainte- 
 Beuve was a regular contributor to the 
 most famous magazine in Europe, the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, which had been 
 founded in 1831, heir to the defunct Revue 
 de Paris. The first number contains an 
 article by him upon his friend George 
 Farcy, a victim of the July Revolution ; and 
 thereafter appeared that long and delight- 
 ful series of Portraits Litteraires, studies of 
 contemporary as well as of deceased writers, 
 which not only gave him a European repu- 
 tation as a leading critic, but ultimately 
 won him his election to the French Academy. 
 This signal good-fortune happened in 1845, 
 on the occasion of the death of Casimir 
 Delavigne ; and the irony of circumstances 
 was obvious to many in the fact that the 
 eulogium on the new " immortal " had 
 to be pronounced by the reluctant Victor 
 Hugo, his immediate predecessor. It was 
 a memorable date, that I7th of February ; 
 and if among the many " immortals " 
 who have been raised to glory by the 
 216
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 Academy there are relatively few whose 
 fame will be imperishable, there are not 
 many with juster claims to remembrance, 
 though in widely different degrees, than 
 the two authors who were then elected to 
 the coveted honour, Prosper Merimee and 
 Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 His periodical articles and his books 
 (including five volumes of essays which he 
 had contributed to the Revue de Paris and 
 the Revue des Deux Mondes) brought him 
 in a very moderate income ; and it was not 
 till 1840 that his means were materially 
 improved. In that year he was appointed 
 one of the keepers of the Mazarin Library. 
 The appointment meant not only an increase 
 of income, but a change of residence, for it 
 comprised a suite of residential apartments 
 at the Institute. This pleasant state of 
 affairs came to an end after the Revolution 
 in 1848. A ridiculous charge of corruption 
 was brought up against him by envious 
 and inimical journalists and political adver- 
 saries ; the ultra-Republicans accused him 
 of having accepted bribes, hush-money, 
 from the late Government. In vain Sainte- 
 Beuve protested, and vainly he demanded a 
 searching inquiry. The hint was taken up ; 
 everywhere he was abused, condemned, 
 217
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 scathingly ridiculed. Even when, at last, 
 the truth was revealed and the greedy 
 public learned that the amount of Sainte- 
 Beuve's indebtedness was 4, and that 
 that sum had been expended upon the 
 alteration of a smoking chimney in his 
 department of the Library, and the charge 
 inadvertently entered in the official books 
 simply under the heading " Ste. Beuve," 
 even then there were many ungenerous 
 souls who kept up the parrot cry of con- 
 tumely. It somewhat unfortunately hap- 
 pened that about this time Sainte-Beuve 
 left Paris, and of course there was at once 
 a shout of triumph from his enemies. The 
 real reasons for his departure were primarily 
 financial, though no doubt he was not at 
 all sorry to leave a city which had for the 
 time being become so disagreeable to him 
 moreover, his distaste for the political 
 issues then in full development was very 
 strong. But after his resignation of his post at 
 the Mazarin Library, which he had tendered 
 in the heat of his indignation during the 
 bribery controversy, he found that he would 
 have to do something at once for a living. 
 The political turmoil of 1848 was unfavour- 
 able for the pursuit of pure literature ; and, 
 despite his high reputation, the editors 
 218
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 whom he knew could not promise him 
 a sufficiency of remunerative work until 
 times changed for the better. Accordingly, 
 he very willingly accepted the Professorship 
 of French Literature at the University of 
 Liege, offered to him by M. Rogier, the 
 Belgian Minister of the Interior. Liege he 
 found monotonous and provincial, but he 
 stayed there for some time, and attracted 
 more than local, more even than national 
 attention by his preliminary course of 
 lectures on the chronological history of 
 French literature. There, also, he delivered 
 the famous series on Chateaubriand and his 
 contemporaries, which amply demonstrated 
 his independence as a critic, though many of 
 his judgments and reservations brought a 
 veritable storm of reproaches and angry 
 recriminations about his ears. For a long 
 time he was called an ingrate, a hypocrite, 
 a resentful critic inspired by pique ; but 
 ultimately it was acknowledged that he 
 had written the ablest and justest critique 
 of the celebrated egotist and poseur. The 
 fundamental reason of the attacks upon 
 Sainte-Beuve was on account of his so- 
 called inconsistency. True, among his early 
 Literary Portraits was a flattering essay on 
 Chateaubriand, but he was then under the 
 219
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 magic charm of Madame Recamier, at whose 
 house, Abbaye-aux-Bois, he heard read 
 aloud in solemn state numerous extracts 
 from the famous writer's unpublished 
 Memoirs. Moreover, Chateaubriand had 
 inspired him with a temporary enthusiasm. 
 When, with fuller knowledge of the man and 
 his writings and with the Correspondence 
 to boot, he found that he had been mistaken, 
 he said so. 
 
 Chateaubriand and his Literary Group 
 under the Empire is the work which marks 
 the turning-point in Sainte-Beuve's genius. 
 Thenceforth he was, in truth, the foremost 
 critic of his time. 
 
 Late in 1849 Sainte-Beuve, much to the 
 chagrin of his Belgian friends and admirers, 
 left Liege and returned to Paris. He was 
 still hesitating how best to employ his pen 
 when he received a flattering, but to him 
 somewhat startling, offer from his friend 
 Dr. de Veron, editor of Le Constitutionnel. 
 This was to the effect that he should write a 
 literary article for that paper every week. 
 The reason of his perturbation was that 
 hitherto he had always composed in leisurely 
 fashion, and for papers or magazines whose 
 readers were cultivated people, much more 
 interested in literature than in politics and 
 220
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 local news. Fortunately, M. de Veron over- 
 ruled his scruples, and so there began that 
 delightful and now famous series of literary 
 critiques which the writer himself entitled 
 Causeries du Lundi. He called them 
 " Monday Chats " because each appeared on 
 a Monday. For five days every week he 
 " sported his oak," and occupied himself 
 for twelve hours daily with the study of 
 his subject and the writing of his article ; 
 on the sixth he finally revised it ; Sunday 
 was his sole holiday from his task. By next 
 morning he was deep in the subject of the 
 Causerie for the following week. It was the 
 need to be concise and simple that did 
 so much good to Sainte-Beuve's style. As 
 two of his most eminent friends said of 
 them, they were all the better insomuch 
 as he had not had time to spoil them. 
 From the end of 1849 to almost exactly 
 twenty years later he wrote weekly, in 
 the Constitutionnel or the Moniteur, with a 
 single considerable interval, one of those 
 brilliant, scholarly, fascinating articles, 
 collectively, a mass of extraordinarily 
 varied work now embodied in fifteen goodly 
 volumes. 
 
 When the coup d'itat occurred, Sainte- 
 Beuve gave his approval to the Empire. 
 221
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 Thereby he won for himself no little unpopu- 
 larity. His first materially disagreeable 
 experience of this was when he proceeded 
 to lecture at the College de France, to the 
 Professorship of Latin Poetry at which he 
 had been appointed. The students would 
 have none of him. He was an Imperialist, a 
 Government payee, he wrote in the official 
 organ, Le Moniteur. He was finally hissed 
 from the lecture-room, whence he retired in 
 high dudgeon. Ultimately the lecture he 
 had tried to deliver, and those which were 
 to have followed, were published in a volume 
 entitled A Study on Virgil. The single inter- 
 mission to his regular literary work already 
 alluded to was during the four years when 
 he held the post of Maitre des Conferences 
 at the Ecole Normale, at a salary of about 
 240. When he again took up literary 
 journalism, after his resignation of his 
 professional post, it was once more as a 
 contributor to the Constitution-net. He now 
 made a fair income, for his weekly contri- 
 butions to that journal brought him in, by 
 special arrangement, an annual salary of 
 624. The Causeries were now called 
 Nouveaux Lundis, " New Monday- Chats." In 
 the main this series (begun in 1861) is 
 equal to the Causeries du Lundi, though there 
 222
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 are signs ever and again of lassitude. This 
 might well be. The work was a steady and 
 serious strain, and the great critic's health 
 gradually became undermined. In 1865, 
 when he was in his sixty-first year, he wrote : 
 " I am of the age at which died Horace, 
 Montaigne, and Bayle, my masters : so I 
 am content to die." It was in this very year 
 that good fortune came to him, and greatly 
 relieved the mental strain under which 
 his strength was waning. He was appointed 
 to a Senatorship of the Second Empire, a 
 position which secured him an annual 
 income of 1200. His Senatorial career 
 was a dignified though not a brilliant one. 
 He was ever on the side of true freedom, 
 and was so independent in his attitude 
 that he gave offence to those of his fellow- 
 Senators who were Imperialists and resented 
 his championship of religious liberty. This 
 muzzled wrath broke into clamorous fury 
 at an incident concerning which an absurd 
 fuss has been made. Sainte-Beuve had 
 arranged to give a dinner to some of his 
 friends on the occasion of Prince Napoleon's 
 departure from Paris, and, to suit that 
 gentleman, had appointed Friday (which 
 chanced to be Good Friday) as the night. 
 The Prince, Edmond About, Gustave 
 223
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 Flaubert, Renan, Robin, and Taine duly 
 joined their host and spent a pleasant 
 evening. But the jackals were on the trail. 
 A howl arose about a conspiracy to under- 
 mine the religious welfare of the nation ; 
 the diners were arraigned as impious 
 debauchees ; and Sainte-Beuve in parti- 
 cular was upbraided for his " scandalous 
 orgy." 
 
 One other and much more serious annoy- 
 ance troubled the latter years of Sainte- 
 Beuve. This arose from his writing for 
 Le Temps (whither he had transferred his 
 Causeries, on account of a servile attempt 
 to muzzle him on the part of the temeritous 
 directorate of the Moniteur) ; and, as Le 
 Temps was hostile to the Government, 
 M. Rouher and his confreres in the Ministry 
 (as well as the whole Senate) thought it 
 shameful that the critic should write for 
 that journal, and did all in their power to 
 force him into conformity with their views. 
 But the critic was firmly independent, and 
 emerged triumphantly from the ordeal. 
 
 For some years Sainte-Beuve had been in 
 indifferent health. At last he became ill 
 indeed, so that he could only stand or lie 
 when he had writing to do, as to sit was 
 impossible. By the late summer of 1869 
 224
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 his case was desperate. Ultimately a 
 perilous operation was made, but the 
 patient sank under its effects. He died in 
 his house in the Rue Mont Parnasse, on 
 October 13, at the age of sixty-four. Along 
 with the biographical fragment found on 
 his desk on the morrow of his death, which 
 concluded with the celebrated words, " Voue 
 et adonne a mon metier de critique, j'ai 
 tache d'etre de plus en plus un bon et, s'il 
 se peut, habile ouvrier " " Devoted with 
 all my heart to my profession as critic, I 
 have done my utmost to be more and more 
 a good and, if possible, an able workman " 
 along with Ma Biographic were found 
 written instructions as to his funeral. He 
 directed that he should be buried in the 
 Cemetery of Mont Parnasse beside his 
 mother ; that the ceremony should be as 
 simple as practicable, and without religious 
 rites or even a friendly oration. All due 
 respect was paid to his wishes, and yet 
 seldom has a funeral been attended with 
 greater honour. It was not the Senator of 
 the Second Empire who was carried to the 
 grave, but the greatest of French critics, a 
 writer of European renown. In the immense 
 crowd which formed the voluntary proces- 
 sion estimated at ten thousand all 
 II 225 p
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 political differences were forgotten : uncom- 
 promising Imperialists and equally uncom- 
 promising Republicans walked in union for 
 once, in company with nearly all who were 
 distinguished in letters, science, or art. 
 The only words uttered above his grave 
 were more eloquent in their poignant 
 simplicity than the most glowing exordium : 
 " Farewell, Sainte-Beuve ; farewell, our 
 friend." 
 
 II 
 
 Sainte-Beuve's literary career may be 
 studied in three main phases. The novelist 
 least claims our attention ; the poet 
 demands it ; while as a critic he appears 
 as of supreme importance. 
 
 Volupte, to some extent, but still more 
 the Vie, Poesies, et Pensees de Joseph 
 Delorme, may be taken as embodying some 
 of the positive and many of the spiritual 
 experiences of Sainte-Beuve's life. We have 
 his own testimony to the fact that Joseph 
 Delorme was "a pretty faithful representa- 
 tion of himself morally, but not in the 
 biographical details." This alone would 
 give a permanent interest to the book, as 
 it is admittedly in some degree the auto- 
 psychical record of the most complex, 
 226
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 brilliant, protean spirit of our time. No 
 one indeed has yet limned Sainte-Beuve 
 for us as he, for instance, has revealed the 
 heart, mind, and soul of Pascal. Neither 
 D'Haussonville, his biographer, nor any of 
 his critics, French and English, has done 
 more than introduce us to the author of 
 so many inimitable Causeries ; none of 
 them has made us intimate with Sainte- 
 Beuve himself, notwithstanding the array 
 of authentic facts and suggestive hints 
 which can now be marshalled. He is easiest 
 to be discerned in his writings : not in 
 this essay nor in that series of essays, not 
 in the grave pages of Port Royal nor in the 
 alluring byways of the Lundis, neither in 
 the sensitive poet of The Consolations nor 
 in the austere pages of Pensees d'Aout, 
 not in that Gallic Werther, Amaury, the 
 hero of Voluptfr, not even in Joseph Delorme; 
 but in all collectively. One is always being 
 surprised in him. There is one man in 
 Amaury, another in Joseph Delorme, a 
 very different one in Pensees d'Aout, a 
 still more distinct one in the Nouveaux 
 Lundis, and in his single short tale, the 
 charming Christel, there are hints of a per- 
 sonality whose shadowy features rarely, if 
 ever, haunt the corridors of the Causeries. 
 227
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 As a matter of fact, Sainte-Beuve became 
 more and more reserved as he found himself 
 deceived by the glowing perspectives of 
 youth. Often he was consumed with a 
 nostalgia for a country whence he was half 
 voluntarily, half perforce an exile, the 
 country of the Poetic Land where once he 
 spent " six fleeting celestial months," * as 
 a native of which he would fain be regarded 
 even in the remote days when he found 
 himself an alien among those whom he 
 yearned to claim as brothers. Thenceforth 
 the man shrank more and more behind the 
 writer. The real Sainte-Beuve was no doubt 
 less of a recluse in the days when he was 
 a member of Le Cenacle, when he was one 
 of the sprightliest in the Hugo circle, and 
 laughed with de Vigny and sighed with 
 Lamartine, debated with Hugo and flirted 
 with Adele. But even then his nature 
 could not have been transparent to all, 
 otherwise Alfred de Musset would not have 
 drawn his picture of him as sitting some- 
 what apart in the shadow, rhyming a sonnet 
 to a demoiselle's cap or a lyric to his 
 mistress's eyebrow. Truly, as he himself 
 says, in the preface to his Poesies Completes, 
 almost all of us have within ourselves a 
 
 * Causeries du Lundi, tome xvi. 
 228
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 second self (" nous avons presque tous en 
 nous un homme double "). 
 
 The Vie, Poesies, et Pensees de Joseph 
 Delorme has been put forward as an effort 
 on the part of Sainte-Beuve to introduce 
 into France a poetic literature as simple, 
 fresh, and spontaneous as that of the 
 naturalistic poets of England, and of Cowper 
 and Wordsworth in particular. Readers of 
 that notable book will find it difficult to 
 perceive any direct Wordsworthian influence, 
 though the author makes clear his great 
 admiration for the English poet and his 
 school. Joseph Delorme, in fact, is cousin- 
 german to Don Juan, closely akin to Chateau- 
 briand's Rene, French half-brother to 
 Goethe's Werther. He is the most literary 
 of the family, but while he is as senti- 
 mental as Rene and as melancholy as 
 Werther, he has not the frank debonnaire 
 licentiousness of Don Juan. He is morbid 
 in his thoughts and in his desires. The 
 fellowship of a Tom Jones would have done 
 him good ; the laughing Juan, even, would 
 have acted as a tonic. " The road of excess 
 leads to the palace of wisdom," says Blake ; 
 but the poet -visionary did not mean the 
 kind of excess in which the too introspective 
 Joseph indulged. He said one good thing, 
 229
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 however, for which he will be remembered 
 when he spoke of his dread of marriage 
 because of its restrictions upon his " rather 
 rude philanthropy " (a euphemism for " free 
 morals "), and denned it as une egoisme a 
 deux personnes. 
 
 Rousseau and Goethe were the literary 
 godfathers of Joseph Delorme, who was 
 born when the author of his being was only 
 five-and-twenty. The nature of the book 
 is indicated by a passage from Senancour's 
 Obermann, which exactly strikes the key- 
 note : " I have seen him, I have pitied him ; 
 I respected him ; he was unhappy and 
 virtuous. He had no transcendent misfor- 
 tunes ; but, on entering life, he found 
 himself in a mesh of distastes and satieties 
 [" il s'est trouve sur une longue trace de 
 dugouts et d'ennuis "] ; there he is still, 
 there he has dwelt, there he has grown 
 old ere age has come upon him, there he has 
 literally buried himself." The Adolphe of 
 Obermann, indeed, is but a more melan- 
 choly and a more austere " double " of 
 Joseph. 
 
 The following lines are fairly representa- 
 tive of the dominant sentiment of the 
 book: 
 
 230
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 V(EU 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Tout le jour du loisir ; rever avec des larmes ; 
 Vers midi, me coucher d I'ombre des grands 
 
 charmes ; 
 
 Voir la vigne couriv sur mon toit ardoise, 
 Et mon vallon riant sous le coteau boise ; 
 
 Chaque soir m'endormir en ma douce folie, 
 Comme I'heureux ruisseau qui dans mon pre 
 
 s'oublie ; 
 
 Ne rien vouloir de plus, ne pas me souvenir, 
 Vivre d me sentir vivre ! . . . Et la mort peut 
 
 venir. 
 
 But a healthier note is often struck, as 
 in the blithe strain wedded to a pathetic 
 thought, " Ce ciel restera bleu Quand nous 
 ne serons plus " ; often, too, one fresh and 
 haunting, as in 
 
 Et dans ses blonds cheveux, ses blanches mains 
 errantes 
 
 Tels deux cygnes nageant dans les eaux trans- 
 par entes. . . . 
 
 The Life, Poetry, and Thoughts are worth 
 reading ; the book contains much that is 
 interesting, no little that is suggestive, not 
 infrequently thoughts, lines, and passages 
 of genuine beauty. But it can enthral only 
 those who are enjoying the exquisite senti- 
 mentalism of adolescence ; ere long it will 
 231
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 interest only the student of a certain literary 
 epoch, the epoch begun by Rousseau, that 
 found its acme in Byron, that knew its 
 autumn in Werther, that had its grave in 
 the Rene of Chateaubriand, its brief phan- 
 tasmal second life in Joseph Delorme. 
 The poetry in it is often sterile, and is 
 frequently forced, self-conscious, obtrusively 
 sedate in imagery, occasionally even is 
 markedly derivative. We find Sainte-Beuve 
 the poet much better worth listening to in 
 Les Consolations. In point of style there is 
 not very much difference, though a greater 
 dexterity is manifest, a more delicate 
 metrical tact, perhaps also a more unmis- 
 takably natural note. But there is no more 
 kinship between the author of Les Conso- 
 lations and Joseph Delorme than between 
 Don Juan and Manfred. The volume was 
 the product of the religious mysticism which 
 underlay Sainte-Beuve's mental robustness 
 a trait which allured him often by dan- 
 gerous pitfalls, but also enabled him to 
 understand so well the great religious 
 writers of whom he still remains the most 
 sympathetic as well as the most brilliant 
 exponent. It seemed ultra-saintly to some 
 of those who read it on its appearance. 
 BeYanger annoyed the author by some sly 
 232
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 disparagement ; Prosper Merime'e cynically 
 smiled at what he took to be a literary 
 ruse ; Gustave Planche and others glee- 
 fully whetted their vivisectionary knives. 
 Yet it was for the most part well received 
 by the critics, and no cruel witticism like 
 that of Guizot on its predecessor (that 
 Joseph Delorme was " a Werther turned 
 Jacobin and sawbones ") went echoing 
 through Paris. The public remained indif- 
 ferent, but the poet was gratified when 
 Chateaubriand wrote him a letter of praise 
 with a characteristic " Ecoutez votre genie, 
 Monsieur " ; when Hugo and Alfred de 
 Vigny waxed enthusiastic ; when Beranger 
 sent an epistle of kindly criticism ; and when 
 Lamartine unbosomed himself as follows : 
 " Yesterday, I re-read the Consolations 
 . . . they are ravishing. I say it and I 
 repeat it : it is this that I care for in French 
 poetry of this order. What truth, what 
 soul, what grace and poetry ! I have wept, 
 I who never weep." (This must have amused 
 Sainte-Beuve, later, if not then. The senti- 
 mental Lamartine was always weeping 
 over one thing or another, and the " J'en 
 ai pleure", moi qui oncques ne pleure," 
 is as little apt as though Mr. Pickwick 
 were to say, "I have smiled, who never 
 233
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 smile.") It was at this time, the period 
 wherein The Consolations were produced, 
 that Sainte-Beuve dreamed upon Latmos 
 and believed that the goddess whom he 
 loved was going to reward his passion. 
 The " celestial months " passed, but they 
 were ever an oasis to which he delighted 
 to return in memory. He even wished, in 
 later years, that those who desired to know 
 him should seek and find him a happy 
 Dryad flitting through the shadowy vales 
 and sunlit glades of the woodlands of song. 
 No doubt the real Sainte-Beuve is as much 
 in this book of verse as in any other of his 
 library of volumes, but it is the Sainte- 
 Beuve of a certain period, and even then 
 only one of two selves. The Consolations 
 always remained his favourite volume. It 
 contains a great deal of gracious and even 
 beautiful verse, in style often clear as a 
 trout-stream, fresh and fragrant as a May- 
 meadow, though even here, as certainly 
 with his other " poesies," one is inclined 
 to say of him, in the words of his own 
 Joseph Delorme, that he had not sufficiently 
 " the ingenuousness of deep faith, the 
 instinctive and spontaneous cry of pas- 
 sionate emotion." Some of the Consolations 
 are extremely Wordsworthian how closely, 
 234
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 indeed, he could enter into the spirit of the 
 great English poet is evident in the following 
 free translation of that most lovely sonnet 
 beginning, " It is a beauteous evening, calm 
 and free." 
 
 C'est un beau soir, un soir paisible et solennel ; 
 A la fin du saint jour, la Nature en pridre 
 Se tail, comme Marie d genoux sur la pierre, 
 Qui tremblante et muette ecoutait Gabriel : 
 
 La mer dort ; le soleil descend en paix du del ; 
 Mais dans ce grand silence, au-dessus et derrie're, 
 On entend I'hymne heureux du triple sanctuaire, 
 Et I'orgue immense ou gronde un tonnerre kernel. 
 
 O blond jeune fille, d la tete baissee, 
 Qui marches pres de moi, si ta sainte pensee, 
 Semble moins qui la mienne adorer ce moment, 
 C'est qu'au sein d' Abraham vivant toute I'annee, 
 Ton dme est de priere, d chaque heure, baignee ; 
 C'est que ton cceur recite un divin firmament. 
 
 This, of course, is but indifferent verse 
 after the superb original, but it shows 
 both how Sainte-Beuve was inspired by 
 Wordsworth, and how ably he too could 
 write, albeit as a translator, in simple and 
 unaffected strains. Although the second, 
 third, and fourth lines bear no resemblance to 
 the original and the rest is only in a lesser 
 degree unliteral, it must be borne in mind 
 that the full beauty of the original is untrans- 
 latable, and that the French poet strove to 
 235
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 convey to the French reader the same 
 impression as an English reader would 
 gain from the English sonnet. However, 
 the importance of this and other experi- 
 ments is not to be overlooked. Many of 
 the younger poets owe much, directly or 
 indirectly, to the lesson taught by Sainte- 
 Beuve in what a hostile critic has called his 
 " Anglo-French metrical essays." 
 
 Yet, while it is true that the man is per- 
 haps to be seen most clearly in his poetry, 
 "it is in following the poet that we find 
 the man," as Anatole France says, 
 even here he is an evasive, an uncertain 
 personality. The strange mixture of a 
 sensuousness that is at times almost sensual, 
 a mysticism which would suit a religious 
 enthusiast, a clarity of thought and an 
 exquisite sense of the beauty of precision 
 and artistic form, a frequent remoteness of 
 shaping emotion, coupled with keen per- 
 ception of the sovereign value of that 
 resistless formative power which makes the 
 creatures of the imagination more real than 
 the actual beings about us * all this, and 
 
 * In his own words, he sought to arrive " at 
 that particularity and at that precision which 
 causes the creations of our mind to become 
 altogether ours and to be recognised as ours." 
 236
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 his complex style (which now is simple, 
 now is heated with fires unlit of the sun, 
 and again is involved, obscure almost, 
 wrought to an excessive finish, tourmente), 
 makes Sainte-Beuve the poet a profoundly 
 puzzling as well as interesting study. In 
 his last volume of verse, particularly, he 
 is, as one of his critics has said, "tour- 
 mente a Pexces, souvent d'une etrangete 
 qui deconcerte." But it is quite wrong to 
 assert, as has been affirmed more than once, 
 that Sainte-Beuve's poetic melancholy, the 
 undertone of each of his three books, is 
 assumed. One writer in Le Temps (or Le 
 Figaro) recently found a proof of this literary 
 insincerity in some remarks made by the 
 critic in his old age, remarks treating 
 his former mysticism lightly, with an 
 avowal that " his odours of the sacristy 
 were really meant for the ladies." "I have 
 been guilty of a little Christian mythology 
 in my time," he admitted, " but it all 
 evaporated long ago. It was for me, as the 
 swan to Leda's wooer, merely a means to 
 reach fair readers and to win their tender 
 regard." But this, quite obviously, is mere 
 badinage. If there be any truth in it at all, 
 it is one of those remote filaments of fact 
 which go to the weaving of the web of truth ; 
 237
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 nothing more. His melancholy was a genuine 
 sentiment, which found expression diffe- 
 rently at divers times. Even in his latest 
 essays, where his natural geniality is allowed 
 free play, it is traceable in those occasional 
 bitternesses and abrupt dislikes, those half- 
 weary and yet mordant " asides," which 
 show that the man was by no means wholly 
 absorbed in the critic. He himself, as we 
 have seen, attributed this fundamental 
 strain of sadness in his nature to his mother's 
 early widowhood. But, as M. France has 
 well said, it was another mother, the Revo- 
 lution, that inoculated him with the malady 
 of the age a malady to which M. Taine, 
 the most brilliant of the disciples of Sainte- 
 Beuve, has alluded so eloquently: "It was 
 then that the malady of the age appeared, 
 the spiritual inquietude typified by Werther 
 and Faust, almost identical with that which, 
 in a somewhat similar time, agitated men 
 at the beginning of the century. I would 
 call it the discontent with present horizons, 
 the vague desire after a higher beauty and an 
 ideal happiness, a pathetically sad aspira- 
 tion towards the infinite. Man suffers in 
 doubting and yet he doubts : he tries to 
 recapture his lost beliefs, they are really in 
 his hand." (Hist, de la Lit. Anglaise, 
 238
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 tome iii.) This melancholy nature, induced 
 by the spirit of the age, derived now from 
 this source and now from that, and occa- 
 sionally insincere, is most marked in its 
 least genuine aspects in the Pensees d'Aout. 
 There is nothing in it so fine, in the poetry 
 of melancholy, as the lines in The Consola- 
 tions (inscribed to Mme. V. H. ; no other, 
 of course, than the immaculate Adle Hugo) 
 beginning : 
 
 Plus fraiche que la vigne au bord d'un antre /rat's. 
 
 The chief poem in the collection, entitled 
 Monsieur Jean, is an ill-considered attempt 
 at a didactic novelette in verse. The author 
 did not so regard it ; he believed that he 
 had wooed and won Musa Pedestris, and had 
 given his poetry the tone of serene wisdom. 
 Jean is a natural son of Jean Jacques 
 Rousseau, and is a simple, gentle creature, 
 eager to expiate in his remote village, by 
 piety and endless good deeds, what he cannot 
 but regard as the disastrous glory of his 
 father. But the poet's failure is a signal 
 instance of the folly of metrical didactics. 
 Jean bored the reading public, who com- 
 bined in awarding the Pensees d'Aotit what 
 its author called a really savage reception. 
 In this book, more than anywhere else 
 239
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 in his poetical writings, is true what Matthew 
 Arnold said of him, that he lacked some- 
 thing of flame, of breath, of pinion : here, 
 more than elsewhere, his poems cotoient la 
 prose coasted perilously near the land of 
 prose. As a matter of fact, the book was a 
 complete failure; it caused the pendulum 
 of his poetic repute to swing back, and to 
 be caught up and never let go again. More- 
 over, its reception stifled the poet in Sainte- 
 Beuve. It is a poignant personal note 
 that underlies his famous remark, " Every 
 one contains a dead poet in his soul." 
 
 But, after all, even the most reluctant 
 reader of Sainte-Beuve as a poet cannot, 
 if he be minded to criticism, afford to over- 
 look this important section of the life-work 
 of the great critic. It is necessary, indeed, 
 not only to an understanding of the man, 
 but of the writer. For in these Poesies 
 Completes, to quote the words of a sympa- 
 thetic critic, "is revealed the most inquir- 
 ing, the most sagacious, the most complex 
 spirit " to whom the age has given birth. 
 
 It is not feasible here, in the limited 
 space at my command, to attempt any 
 analysis of Volupte, Sainte-Beuve's sole 
 effort in fiction save the short tale Christel. 
 Some day when a critical historian, curious 
 240
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 as to the mainsprings of, let us hope, the 
 long since cured maladie du siecle, will 
 occupy himself with the fortunes of Werther 
 and Rene, Adolphe and Amiel, he will 
 not omit to include in that strange company 
 the amorously sentimental and sentimentally 
 melancholic Amaury. For myself I admit I 
 find that youth quite as entertaining as 
 either of the more famous offspring of Goethe 
 or Chateaubriand. 
 
 As a historian Sainte-Beuve showed re- 
 markable aptitude, but it is as an historian 
 of mental phases, episodes and general 
 events, rather than of the ebb and flow of 
 outer weal, the conflict of kingdoms and the 
 fortunes of internecine warfare, the rise of 
 this house or that dynasty, the ruin of cities 
 and the growth of States. He could have 
 been neither a Gibbon nor a Niebuhr, 
 neither a Guizot nor a Mommsen, not even 
 a Macaulay or an Ampere ; but he is in 
 the domain of historical literature what the 
 author of the History of the Rise of Morals 
 in Europe and the History of Rationalism 
 is in the sphere of ethical research, though, 
 of course, there is a radical distinction 
 between the method of Mr. Lecky and that 
 of the author of Port Royal. To the accom- 
 plishment of this immense undertaking 
 
 li 241 Q
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 Sainte-Beuve brought his inexhaustible 
 patience, his almost unerring faculty of 
 wise discrimination, his precise and scientific 
 method of analysis and exposition, and a 
 style which gave wings to words yoked to 
 dry and apparently outworn subjects. It 
 may safely be said that no student of Pascal 
 or of the religious movement in the seven- 
 teenth century will ever be able to dispense 
 with Sainte-Beuve's masterly work. 
 
 As the literary critic, as the first who 
 brought into the analysis and exposition 
 of literature the methods of exact science, 
 Sainte-Beuve must always have a high place 
 in the literary history of the nineteenth 
 century. Ultimately, it may be that his 
 chief glory will lie in his having been the 
 pioneer of a new literary art, in his having 
 been the torch-bearer who gave light and 
 direction to many, not heeding much whether 
 his torch, its service done, should there- 
 after be seldom seen and rarely sought. His 
 example has been of almost inestimable 
 value, and not among his countrymen 
 only. All of the foremost living critics of 
 France, from the eldest and most brilliant, 
 Henri Taine, to Paul Bourget, the late 
 Emile Hennequin, Ernest Tissot, and Charles 
 Morice, have learned much from him some 
 242
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 a lifelong lesson, others guiding hints 
 only. 
 
 In the Notes et Remarques at the end of 
 the sixteenth volume of the Causeries du 
 Lundi occurs the following : "I have 
 given no one the right to say He belongs 
 to us [// est des notres]." It is this absolute 
 independence, this many-sidedness of Sainte- 
 Beuve, which is one of the secrets of his 
 success. He can be an intellectual comrade 
 of every poet, from the austere Dante to 
 the gay Villon ; of every wit and satirist, 
 from Rabelais to Rivarol ; of every builder 
 up of ethical systems and every iconoclast 
 of creeds, of the ancient Latins and Greeks 
 as well as of the modern Germans and 
 English ; and, moreover, at all times a 
 comrade with an eye to the exact value of 
 and pleasure derivable from his companion 
 of the hour. Here, it seems to me, is his 
 strength and his weakness. He can be 
 bon camarade with every one, but he is 
 never able to forget that he is the observer 
 of the thoughts, speech, action, and prin- 
 ciples of those with whom he fares. He 
 has charming ruses for evading detection. 
 He will laugh gaily, he will smile, he will 
 allude to this or that scarcely pertinent 
 matter, he will altogether diverge from his 
 243
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 subject, he will reintroduce it casually 
 and possibly dismiss it lightly, yet he will 
 have had but one aim in view from the 
 outset : to analyse and estimate the writings 
 of his author ; to discover the shaping cir- 
 cumstances of the latter as an individual ; to 
 strip him of what is extraneous and reveal 
 him as he really is ; in a word to portray 
 him in one composite photograph and give 
 us a likeness of the man as well as of the 
 author which shall be none the less true 
 because it resolves into definite features the 
 fleeting and indeterminate traits which we 
 perceive, now in the one, now in the other. 
 He is no believer in the doctrine of the 
 isolation of an author from his writings ; 
 it seems as absurd to him as it would be to 
 assert that no notice of the prism may be 
 taken in a study of the chemic action of 
 light passing therethrough. But, on the 
 other hand, the question arises if Sainte- 
 Beuve is not apt to be misled by his own 
 theory, having to make positive affirmations 
 based on facts necessarily in some degree 
 supposititious. Herein is the hidden reef of 
 literary psychology, and even so great a 
 critic as Taine is occasionally missuaded by 
 semblances which he takes for actualities. 
 The elder writer is content to be a careful 
 244
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 scientific observer and delights in artistic 
 demonstration of his newly perceived and 
 otherwise accumulated facts : Taine, Paul 
 Bourget, and the later literary analysts 
 go further, and wish to reach down through 
 facts to their origins and to the primary 
 impulsion again of the influences which 
 moulded those origins and, finally, by 
 cumulative verification to transform hypo- 
 thesis into demonstrable truth. But, funda- 
 mentally, both means are identical ; the 
 basis of each is the adoption, for literary 
 research, of the method of exact science. 
 Sainte-Beuve hated fixed judgments ; he 
 had none of the arrogances of his critical 
 kindred. He neither said himself, nor cared 
 to hear others saying, that a book was defi- 
 nitely good or definitely bad ; he loved the 
 nuances, the delicacies and subtleties of 
 criticism, as much as he disliked rigid 
 formulas. Yet his studies in literary 
 psychology, as Paul Bourget would call 
 them, are not only acute, but are generally 
 profoundly conclusive. It is his suave and 
 winsome manner that makes many think he is 
 too complaisant to be critical, though he has 
 himself said that in his Portraits the praise 
 is conspicuous and the criticism inobtrusive 
 " dans mes Portraits, le plus sou vent la 
 245
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 louange est exterieure, et la critique intes- 
 tine." The man himself continually evades 
 us, but the critic is always trustworthy. 
 He has, to a phenomenal degree, the delicate 
 flair which detects the remotest perfume 
 amid a confusion of fragrances ; he knows 
 how to isolate it, how to detach it, how to 
 delight us with it and then, when we are 
 just upon the verge of deeper enjoyment, 
 he proves that the scent is not so exquisite 
 in itself after all, but owes much to the 
 blending of the exhalations of neighbouring 
 flowers and blossoms and herbs. While we 
 are still wavering between conviction and 
 disenchantment, he explains that it has 
 this peculiarity or that because of the soil 
 whence it derives its nurture, a thin rocky 
 earth or loam of the valley. Then, finally, 
 lest we should turn aside disappointedly, 
 he tells us something about it which we had 
 but half noticed, praises fragrance and bloom 
 again, and with a charming smile gives us 
 the flower to take with us, perchance to 
 press and put away, like sweet -la vender or 
 wild-thyme, a hostage against oblivion of 
 a certain hour, a certain moment of fresh 
 experience. 
 
 What range for one man to cover ! Let 
 one but glance at the contents of all these 
 246
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 volumes. Besides this novel, these three 
 collections of poems, here are seven volumes 
 of Port Royal (containing a multitude of 
 vignettes and sketches as well as carefully 
 drawn pictures and portraits), fifteen volumes 
 of the Causeries du Lundi, volumes upon 
 volumes of Nouveaux Lundis, Portraits 
 Litteraires, Portraits des Contemporains, Der- 
 niers Portraits, and Portraits des Femmes, 
 a Tableau Historique et Critique de la 
 Poesie Fran$aise et du Theatre Franfais au 
 xvi e Siecle, and miscellaneous essays and 
 studies. Then the richly suggestive Notes, 
 and Thoughts, and Remarks must be added, 
 and the recent volume edited by M. Jules 
 Troubat, Sainte-Beuve's latest secretary and 
 " good friend with qualifications," and an 
 Introduction here and an Etude there. 
 
 I should like to conclude with a selection 
 from the several hundred detached Pensees 
 of Sainte-Beuve, which are often so beauti- 
 ful, so clever, or so witty, and are always so 
 suggestive ; but that is impracticable now. 
 Those who would become more intimate 
 with the man as well as with the writer 
 should turn, in particular, to the two 
 hundred and more Notes et Pensees in the 
 eleventh volume of the Causeries du Lundi, 
 and to the richly suggestive posthumous 
 247
 
 Sainte-Beuve 
 
 collection, Les Cahiers de Sainte-Beuve. 
 For " finis," however, I may select one, 
 peculiarly apt to the great critic himself, 
 as well as to the epoch. It is cxxvii. of 
 the Notes et Pensees : " Great things may be 
 accomplished in our days, great discoveries 
 for example, great enterprises; but these 
 do not give greatness to our epoch. Greatness 
 is shown especially in its point of departure, 
 in its flexibility, in its thought." 
 
 1890 
 
 248
 
 THE MODERN TROUBADOURS 
 
 (1900) 
 
 h ' / 
 
 IF there is one region of Europe of which it 
 can be said that it has been continually 
 the home of poetry, that region is " the 
 sunny corner of France," as Paul Arene 
 calls Provence, " the Empire of the Sun," 
 as Mistral alludes to his native land, " the 
 Midi," as the old Roman province is uni- 
 versally designated. Every literature in 
 Europe has drawn light and warmth from 
 this source ; and to-day Proven9al literature 
 is still the only national literature whose 
 salient characteristics are youth, hope, and 
 joy. In one of the admirable letters of 
 
 La Comtesse Sophie de L (the "Mignon " 
 
 of Aubanel's charming posthumous volume 
 of correspondence) occurs the phrase, " La 
 Provence, entre toutes les nations, est restee 
 jeune " ; and to the student of Proven9al 
 history, of Provensal life and literature, the 
 phrase carries conviction. "In the days of 
 the Troubadours, Provence was not only 
 249
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 the one country where poetry was nourished 
 as a beautiful art, where it was the actual 
 breath of the finer spirits of the time ; it 
 was also the one inheritor of the gladness 
 that had been the gladness of Greece, the 
 gladness that died out of Europe with 
 Julian the Apostate, and only once or 
 twice during many generations revealed 
 itself as a living force, now in the Italy of 
 the Renaissance, now in the England of 
 Shakespeare and Raleigh. To-day, in the 
 work of every Provengal poet of note 
 as Mistral says of a book by one of his 
 friends, the Aixois poet, Baptiste Gaut 
 "un petit vent de Grece agite son habit." 
 The song of the delight of life was the song 
 of every trouvere from the banks of the 
 rushing Arc, the brown Durance, or the 
 azure Rhone, to the Loire, the willowed 
 Marne, and the sea-wandering Seine. To- 
 day the rural poets by the Loire are silent, 
 and those of an urban Seine sing of despair 
 and sorrow, of loss and regret and longing ; 
 pessimistic and disillusioned, they have 
 renamed love, desire ; hate, bitterness ; 
 beauty, illusion ; nobility, vanity ; glad- 
 ness, regret ; hope, despair. But in the 
 South, in that 'Midi so passionately loved 
 and so passionately sung, life is more than 
 250
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 ever life, love more than ever love, beauty 
 and joy and gladness more than ever 
 gladness and joy and beauty. It is almost 
 impossible not to find this note of joy in 
 the writings of every Provengal poet and 
 now, Provencals and Languedociens, from 
 Toulouse to Antibes, from Briangon to 
 Barcelona, and above all in Provence proper, 
 the singers are legion. Even with the 
 saddest and there is no Provengal poet 
 whose song is all of sadness there is a joy 
 of life which is as an inextinguishable fount. 
 Perhaps the most sombre, as well as 
 certainly one of the most powerful and 
 intense, of the Provengal poets is the 
 Protestant Languedocien, Auguste Foures ; 
 but no reader of Cants del Soulelh, La Muso 
 Sylvestro, Lou Troumbeto, to mention his 
 three most characteristic works, can fail 
 to note therein the deep delight in life, 
 as well as the ardent heart and impassioned 
 mind of a poet the secret of whose genius 
 was a continual grave ecstasy. Perhaps 
 the most " divinely melancholic " is Alphonse 
 Tavan, yet the melancholy and sadness of 
 some of the poems in his winsome Amour e 
 Plour (Love and Tears] must seem to the 
 Northern reader but April weather, brief 
 sallies of rainbow-lit rain, soft showers 
 251
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 among lilacs at dawn or sundown. There 
 is, in the Provencal literature of to-day, 
 nothing of the poignant bitterness of Heine 
 or of the weariness of De Musset, nothing 
 in the vaguest degree resembling either the 
 evil beauty of the Fleurs du Mai or the 
 morose despair of The City of Dreadful 
 Night, nothing of the lamentation of the 
 Irish or Scottish Gael over " that which 
 has gone away upon the wind." Every- 
 where is the note of rejoicing in life. Even 
 in the work of the delicate and ill-fated 
 Jules Boissiere, whose recent tragic end in 
 the French Orient closed a career of rare 
 promise, we find this trait as marked as 
 in the lyric serenity of Mistral or the joyous 
 abandon and sunny paganism of Aubanel. 
 In his beautiful ode Of the Sky, of the Waters, 
 of the Earth (Dou Ceu, de VAigo e de la Terro), 
 in Li Gabian, he cries : " Adieu 1'enuei e 
 1'escor ! " (" Farewell, weariness and dis- 
 taste ! ") Everywhere 
 
 L'amour vanego a I'asard 
 
 Per gravo, colo, e carriero ; 
 
 Dins li poutoun dou vent Larg, 
 
 Te beve coume un neitar, 
 
 Festo dou Ceu, de la Mar, 
 De la Terro entiero* 
 
 * ' ' Love wanders at hazard through the streets, 
 by the hillsides, in the valleys. In the kisses of 
 252
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 For every other Provengal poet, as for him, 
 is the aptness of the motto, " Noste Sant 
 Grasall, lou Beu," " Our Sanct-Graal, the 
 Beautiful." There is not a singer among 
 them who has not two mistresses, two 
 Lauras of inspiration the Joy of Life, and 
 Provence. " O ma Prouvengo," cries one, 
 but it is the voice of all, " O ma Prouvengo 
 ardento e siavo " though perhaps few 
 likewise seriously claim that Provengal is 
 " the language of the kings of old, of the 
 peasants, and of God." 
 
 If one wish to understand Provence, or 
 to approach its contemporary literature, 
 with adequate knowledge of that wonder- 
 ful Provence of old which for generations 
 enthralled and inspired Europe with its 
 romance, its poetry, its codes of love and 
 chivalry, with all its lovely and dignified 
 traditions, one's best preparation, by a 
 strange contrast, is through the extensive 
 and erudite labour of an American enthu- 
 siast. In his two beautiful volumes, The 
 Troubadours at Home, Mr. Justin H. Smith 
 has demonstrated his vast subject-matter 
 with a fullness, a thoroughness, and a 
 
 the wave-born wind I drink to thee as a nectar, 
 Festival of the Sky, the Sea, and the whole 
 Earth." 
 
 253
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 vivifying sympathy which render his labour 
 of love a truly valuable production. 
 
 It is with some self-denial that one refrains 
 from a period a period of two hundred 
 years, from its dawn with Duke Guihem of 
 Aquitaine, Marcabru, and the famous Rudel, 
 to its sunset with Guiraut Riquier at the 
 close of the thirteenth century so fasci- 
 nating in every way, but above all to the 
 student of the origins of modern literatures. 
 Again, and particularly in connection with 
 the hidden growth and immediate origins 
 of modern Provenal literature, one would 
 gladly dwell on the fascinating and complex 
 problem of the making of Provencal in all 
 its many dialects, and on the still more 
 complex ethnological problem of the funda- 
 mental constituents of the Provensal nature, 
 mind, and genius. As Mistral says in the 
 preface to his great philological work, 
 Lou Tresor dou Felibrige, " Quau t6n la 
 lengo ten la clau," "Who holds the lan- 
 guage holds the key." But that is apart 
 from the subject-matter of the present 
 article, and indeed would not be alluded to 
 but for the obvious, if not direct or unbroken, 
 connection between the Provence of old and 
 the Provence of to-day. 
 
 Gaston Paris and other scholars have 
 
 254
 
 written much on the ethnological founda- 
 tions of the.Provensal peoples; there is a 
 whole library of books on Langue d'Oc and 
 Langue cTOil ; and there is no lack of 
 learned treatises, scholarly dissertations, 
 and more or less valuable and voluminous 
 studies, summaries, and inquiries on every- 
 thing to do with Provence (the wider Pro- 
 vence of old as well as the Provence of 
 to-day). Perhaps much learning can be 
 conveyed in a few words. Gaston Paris 
 himself has summed up the career of the 
 old Provensal literature by saying that 
 from its original seat in or near Limousin 
 it spread over Poitou and Languedoc, 
 aroused in France an imitative poetry, 
 and inspired the Minnesingers of Germany, 
 created the poetry of Spain and Portugal, 
 and in Italy fertilised the soil that was to 
 produce a Dante and a Petrarch. Through 
 Dante and Petrarch, all modern lyric poetry 
 may reasonably be said to descend from the 
 Troubadours of Provence. A scrupulous and 
 scholarly English critic has demonstrated 
 that our own literature was almost constantly 
 under Italian (and, therefore, directly or 
 indirectly, Proven9al) influence for three 
 hundred years. M. Gaston Paris is explicit 
 as to the Minnesingers, whom some Teutonic 
 255
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 and British writers hold to have been 
 wholly independent of Southern influences. 
 " La poesie lyrique fran9aise," he says, 
 " exera a son tour de 1'influence sur 1'Alle- 
 magne, ou elle fut (ainsi que son initiatrice 
 meridionale) imitee de bonne heure par les 
 Minnesingers." 
 
 All this wonderful efflorescence of poetic 
 genius died away before English had become 
 the uniform speech of a welded nation. 
 Consideration of it might, therefore, seem 
 superfluous to a study of the Provengal 
 literature which with Jasmin lifted up its 
 head anew and with Roumanille and Mistral 
 became a living and beautiful creature 
 " a divine figure," as one of the Felibres 
 has it, " with a Greek soul and a Latin spirit, 
 with Celt and Visigoth as ancestors, with all 
 the nations of the world as blood-relations, 
 and with Paradise, renamed Provence, as 
 her Promised Land." But it is not super- 
 fluous. In every direction of understanding 
 and sympathy the student will find him- 
 self on surer ground, will more accurately 
 understand and appreciate, in degree as he 
 is well informed on the history of all that of 
 old made Provence so famous in every land, 
 the Provence that Keats has immortalised 
 for us in a single line. With this know- 
 256
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 ledge and no more attainable and easier 
 guide exists than the two scholarly and 
 entertaining volumes by Mr. Justin Smith 
 he will discover a continuity that is 
 not readily to be discerned otherwise. 
 When, in our day, Teodor Aubaneu (Aubanel) 
 sings his famous " Quau canto soun mau 
 encanto " "Who sings his own sorrow, 
 enchants " he is but saying, out of the 
 same Proven9al heart, in the same Provengal 
 tongue (a tongue of many dialects, but a 
 single language, as a trailing wild -rose has 
 many blooms), and in the same Provensal 
 land, what Duke Guihem the Crusader 
 sang in noo, "A song I'll fashion from my 
 grief " ; and it might be either Gaucelm 
 Faidit of Malemort, the twelfth-century 
 Joglar, or Theodore Aubanel of Avignon, 
 the nineteenth-century Catullus of Provence, 
 who writes : 
 
 L'amour es la vido, 
 La vido es V amour : 
 L'amour nous convid 
 A cui$ la flour . . ;. 
 
 for both have said the same thing in the same 
 words of the same singing speech. Both 
 the Rudels and Marcabrus, the Arnauts de 
 Maruelh and Bernarts de Ventadorn, the 
 Gaucelms and Guihems of to-day, and the 
 ii 257 R
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Jasmins and Roumanilles, the Mistrals and 
 Aubanels of that dim, remote golden age 
 of song to reverse the mere accident of 
 nomenclature have a common inspiration, 
 a manner in common, a heart and soul alike. 
 " La cigalo di piboulo, la bouscarlo di bouis- 
 soun, lou grihet di ferigoulo, tout canto sa 
 cansoun " " The tree -locust in the poplar, 
 the thrush in the wayside bush, the grass- 
 hopper under the wild thyme, each sings 
 its own song." 
 
 As we know it, modern Provencal litera- 
 ture may be said to begin with Jasmin. 
 He had precursors and contemporaries, but 
 his, in remote Agen, near Toulouse, and 
 so outside of latter-day Provence proper, 
 was the first master-voice to arrest the 
 lengue roman from disappearing in a hundred 
 channels and sands of dialect, the first to 
 lure the cultured ear of France and the world 
 beyond. Jasmin was not a great genius like 
 Frederic Mistral, but in his hour and place 
 he was, early and late, a great pioneer, 
 the proudly isolated captain of what seemed 
 a forlorn hope. 
 
 It is an error, frequently iterated, that 
 
 Proven9al literature absolutely lapsed during 
 
 some four or five hundred years, and that 
 
 the wonderful revival which happened well 
 
 258
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 on in the nineteenth century knew no 
 immediate precursors. In each century 
 there occur at least one or two eminent 
 names, as, for example, Grassois La Bellau- 
 diere in the sixteenth century, the Rou- 
 manille or Mistral of that age ; and Pierre 
 Goudelin, the Toulousian Aubanel of the 
 seventeenth century. One name, indeed, 
 from the latter century is as fresh to-day 
 as two hundred years ago, and perhaps 
 better known in Provence than any other 
 singer of the past, the then-and-now beloved 
 noelliste Saboly, whose lovely Noels, or 
 Christmas carols, may still be heard through- 
 out the Midi at mid-winter. There were 
 others, in each generation, whom we need 
 not mention here. They were, however, 
 few and isolated and spoke no common 
 Provencal speech, but used each his own 
 regional dialect. Above all, none wrote 
 from out of the people, as one of the people, 
 for the people. Despourrins was a poetic 
 Watteau, not a Burns ; the Abbe Favre, 
 the Herrick of the Midi, was the joyous 
 Prior of Celleneuve who lilted for the 
 Languedocien dames and gentry, and not 
 for the unlettered and indifferent people of 
 Languedoc. Even when Jasmin came upon 
 the scene, early in the nineteenth century, 
 259
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 there were Provencal singers of note, though 
 none was for Provence, but for his own 
 province only. The now celebrated modern 
 Provencal anthology made by Roumanille 
 and his colleagues had its immediate pre- 
 decessor in 1823, when the brothers Achard 
 of Marseilles and seven other felibres (they 
 called themselves troubalres then) published 
 a successful contemporary Treasury. The 
 famous Felibrige itself was the outcome 
 rather than the progenitor of the new life 
 which became unified in the Provencal 
 Renaissance. That league was inaugurated 
 by Roumanille in 1852 at the " Congress 
 of Provencal Troubadours " held at Aries ; 
 but before its formation there was a great 
 outburst of patois minstrelsy, many books 
 appeared in this or that dialect, and 
 numerous periodicals in Provencal and 
 French circulated from Marseilles, Avignon, 
 and Aix. Roumanille himself, indeed, had 
 already raised the Rhone -side patois to a 
 language, for in 1847 and 1851 had appeared 
 Li Margarideto and Li Sounjarello. 
 
 To-day Jasmin is not much read in France. 
 He is beloved in seminaries and orphanages, 
 and his books are among the "specially 
 recommended volumes of eminent authors " ; 
 but even with the Languedociens of Agen 
 260
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 and Toulouse his fame is a genial tradition 
 rather than a vivid recognition. Yet every 
 one is supposed to know all he has written, 
 and to admire it, or at least the Fran- 
 couneto. He is to the Midi what Longfellow 
 is to America ; and just as Longfellow was 
 overrated but is now unjustly underrated, 
 so is it with Jasmin. At the same time it 
 must be admitted that in lyric faculty, in 
 human range, in universal interest there is 
 no just comparison of the Proven5al with 
 the American poet. Jasmin is eminently 
 provincial, in every sense of the word. Nor 
 has his poetry that finish of art which alone 
 (save perhaps in one or two national songs) 
 enables verse to endure. His faculty of 
 rhythmic utterance was as spontaneous and 
 inevitable as with Beranger, Burns, or Heine ; 
 but he lacks the real culture and intuitive 
 knowledge of men and the thoughts of men 
 in the outer world which with these poets 
 was the soil whence many of their fairest 
 flowers grew. 
 
 Although in later life Jasmin produced 
 works of signal merit and beauty, notably 
 Maltro rinnoucento and Mous Noubels 
 Soubenis (Martha the Innocent and New 
 Recollections), his chef-d'oeuvre was the ever- 
 charming and delightful work of his maturity, 
 261
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Francouneto,* completed when he was forty- 
 two, though for seven years the poet had 
 occupied himself with its composition and 
 revision. This lovely and graceful idyll of 
 Provensal life is the flower of modern 
 Gascon literature and one of the treasures 
 of French poetry. Its significance as a 
 Provencal masterpiece is in the fact that it 
 preceded not only the now world-famous 
 Mireio of Mistral and the first works of 
 Roumanille, but also the first definite 
 organisation of " the Provensal Renais- 
 sance." Neither Roumanille nor Mistral, 
 not even the love-lyrist of Provence par 
 excellence, Theodore Aubanel, has given a 
 more winsome Tanagra of Love, as one 
 might say, than Francouneto Fran?ouneto 
 " damb soun cap de luzer e soun ped 
 d'Espagnolo e sa taio de fissaiou," " with her 
 lizard-head and her Spanish dancer's feet 
 and her waist like a wasp's." She is the 
 idol of the poet, and idolised by all. 
 
 It is not yet half a century since the 
 Fdibrige f " association regionaliste d'ecri- 
 
 * Franouneto herself is a reflection of Mag- 
 nounet, Jasmin's beautiful and charming young 
 wife, and the lifelong inspirer of his muse. 
 
 f This Provenfal equivalent for " League of 
 Poets " carries an accent only when used as a 
 French term in a French context. 
 262
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 vains et d'artistes du Midi de la France " 
 was formally founded. In these forty-seven 
 years the great wave, which on its ascent 
 uplifted Roumanille and Mistral to its 
 crest and on whose crest Mistral still rests 
 supreme, has covered the Midi in one vast 
 triumphant sweep. Provence has become a 
 nation recreated by genius. The shadow 
 lies in this, an already paralysing apprehen- 
 sion, that with the death of Mistral (when 
 that veritable disaster for Provence comes 
 at last) the great wave will be crestless, will 
 be seen to have spent its force, to be swinging 
 indolently or idly lapsing along these shores 
 of old romance. Mistral himself, though he 
 has given all his genius to the Provensal 
 national movement and has nourished and 
 sustained it for half a century with indomit- 
 able power, resource, and influence, is not 
 blind to the bitter facts that the language is 
 being more and more relinquished by the 
 people as the unique and proud expression 
 of themselves and their nation ; that the 
 league itself is now rather a forlorn hope 
 than an eager vanguard or militant army ; 
 and that among all its able and sometimes 
 truly notable lieutenants there is not one, 
 now that the veteran Felix Gras has 
 passed away, who has authority and power 
 263
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 to command, to control, and to lead. His 
 sadness is that the great philological work of 
 his life, Lou Tresor dou Felibrige, is destined 
 to be, not the dictionary of the enduring 
 speech of a people, but the cenotaph of the 
 language, the genius, and the romance of 
 Provence. His hope, as the hope now of 
 so many of the most eager and far-seeing 
 of the younger men impassioned with the 
 idea of nationality and the Southern spirit, 
 is in the already potent and significant 
 Latin League, a league whose end is to unite 
 the ardent spirits of the Latin race. It is 
 a splendid, an inspiring, and who dare say 
 an impossible ideal. Recently the present 
 writer heard Mistral's superb sirvente, A la 
 Raco Latino that wonderful Ode to the Latin 
 Race which has been translated into every 
 Latin tongue and dialect and is in a sense the 
 Marseillaise of a new Confederation read by 
 a beautiful young Provengale, the daughter 
 of Marius Girard and wife of the brilliant 
 Aixois, Joachim Gasquet, and he can never 
 forget the electrical effect of its stirring 
 clarion -call, in the mellifluous and virile 
 tongue of Provence, as given by a " Queen 
 of the Felibrige," herself the devoted 
 friend and impassioned disciple of the 
 great poet. 
 
 264
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 Aubouro-te, rapo latino . . . 
 
 Erne toun peu que se desnouso 
 A I'auro santo dou Tabor, 
 Tu sids ta rafo lumenouso 
 Que vieu de joio e d'estrambord ; 
 Tu sies la rafo apoustoulico 
 Que sono li campano a brand : 
 Tu sies la troumpo que publico 
 E sies la man que trais lou gran. 
 
 Aubouro-te, rafo latino ! * 
 
 " There," exclaimed a member of the 
 little company (one of the most notable 
 of the younger writers of the Midi), " there 
 is our hope, our faith, and our flag. The 
 Latin genius with the ProvenQal spirit 
 that is our literary ideal ; as the Latin 
 genius with the French spirit is our political 
 ideal as, across the Alps, with our racial 
 kin, it is the Latin genius with the Italian 
 spirit, or, across the Pyrenees, the Latin 
 genius with the Spanisjj spirit. But, trium- 
 phantly, from Palermo to Paris, from Cadiz 
 
 * " Latin race, arouse thyself! With thy hair 
 loosened To the holy air of the Tabor, Thou art 
 the race of light, Who livest in enthusiasm and 
 joy : Thou art the apostolic race That sets the 
 bells a-chiming ; Thou art the trumpet that 
 proclaims ; Thou art the hand that sows the 
 seed. O Latin race, arise ! " 
 265
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 to Cherbourg, the Latin genius, the Latin 
 spirit, the Latin League ! " 
 
 Whether by accident of poetical and 
 technical congruity, or because of a deeper 
 intent, this Ode to the Latin Race (among 
 the Sirventes or Odes in Mistral's most varied 
 and charming volume, Lis Isclo d'Or, The 
 Golden Isles) follows that terrible outburst 
 of rage and passionate refusal to despair, 
 written in September 1871, Lou Roucas de 
 Sisife (The Rock of Sisyphus] with its 
 bitter cry, " Erian, a passa terns, un pople " 
 (" Of old we were a people ! "), and its 
 fierce final anathema on the Emperor who 
 had sold France by his selfish pride and 
 ambition, " Siegues maudi, maudi, maudi ! " 
 ("Be for ever accurst, accurst, accurst ! "). 
 
 It is as the " Trumpet of the South," 
 however, even more than as the chief 
 prophet of the Latin Union, that Mistral 
 is revered in Provence. To-day, we fear, 
 his heart beats less high when he recalls 
 some of the stanzas in his beautiful book 
 Calendau that masterpiece somewhat over- 
 shadowed by the overwhelming popularity 
 of Mireio and the lyric variety of the 
 composite Lis Isclo d*0r as, for example, 
 the invocation in Cant Proumie (i.e., 
 Canto I.) : 
 
 266
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Amo de moun pat's . .. 
 
 A mo de-longo renadivo, 
 
 Amo jouiouso e ftero e vivo, 
 Qu'endibes dins lou brut dou Rose e dou Rousau 
 
 A mo di seavo armouniouso 
 
 E di calanco souleiouso, 
 
 De la patrio amo piouso, 
 T'apelle ! encarno-te dins mi vers prouvenfau ! * 
 
 So much curiosity has been excited by 
 the titles Felibre and Felibrige that a word 
 should be said on the subject. The designa- 
 tion " Felibre " equivalent in the common 
 parlance to troubadour, minstrel, poet, 
 but originally signifying rather a bard in 
 the Celtic sense, a singer and poet, but also 
 a priest or doctor of the divine law and the 
 history of men was found by Mistral in an 
 old Provenal canticle (a song in a mystery 
 play or Christmas pastoral), where Mary 
 is alluded to as meeting Christ in the 
 temple " among the seven felibres of the 
 law " (" li set felibre de la lei "). As later 
 
 * " Soul of my country . . . Soul eternally 
 reborn [renewed], Joyous and proud and alive, 
 Who [as a war-horse] neighest against the sound 
 of the Rh6ne and the Rhone-wind [idiomatically 
 " lou Rousau " means the wind from the further 
 side of the Rhdne i.e., the west wind] ; Soul 
 of our musical woods and our sunlit havens, 
 Pious soul of my Fatherland, I call thee ! May'st 
 thou become incarnate in my Song of Provence 1 " 
 267
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 versions gave either " doctors," " bards," 
 " poets," or " wise men," Mistral at once 
 recognised the comprehensive value of the 
 recovered ancient word. Neither he nor 
 other philologists, however, have yet defi- 
 nitively settled its derivation, though, among 
 other specialists, Mistral himself thinks it 
 possible, and Gaston Paris and d'Arbois de 
 Jubainville are convinced, that the word 
 is one of the many Celtic survivals in the 
 Proven9al language, and is composed of the 
 ancient Erse ftlea and ber, equivalent to 
 "chief-singer " or "arch-poet." In their con- 
 temporary meaning, the word and its deriva- 
 tives signify : Felibre, a poet who is a native 
 of Provence and composes in Proven9al a 
 term adopted, and certainly preferable to 
 the outworn " troubadour "or " trouvere " ; 
 Felibree, a bardic gathering, or the Eistedfodd 
 or Mdd of the Provencals ; Felibresque, 
 felibrique, two French terms for that 
 which pertains to the Felibres or their 
 works, but the first used rarely now 
 and the second obsolete, the adjectives 
 Felibreen having replaced them. The 
 Felibrige is the organised fellowship of 
 the Felibres. 
 
 In recording the great work done by 
 Roumanille and Mistral, the chiefs, and 
 268
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Aubanel and other masters of the Provencal 
 Renaissance, one should not forget, as com- 
 monly in France, and even in Provence 
 itself, the pioneer work accomplished by 
 immediate predecessors men who at least 
 cleared the ground, tilled and sowed and 
 made ready for the great cultivators, the 
 masters of the olive and the vine, who 
 were to come. Allusion has already been 
 made to the brothers Achard of Marseilles 
 and seven comrades, troubaires as they 
 called themselves, who in 1823 published 
 their collective Provenal verse in one 
 volume. At Beziers in 1839 the learned 
 Provenal, J. Azai's, presided over an 
 influential conference of philologists and 
 archaeologists on the origins and composi- 
 tion of the Langue d'Oc. About 1840 two 
 popular and prolific patois-singers, Pierre 
 Bellot of Marseilles and Desanat of Tarascon, 
 decided to publish a special " organ " for 
 the social and literary life and interests of 
 Provence ; but, as one wished the periodical 
 to be bilingual and the other that it should 
 be solely in Proven9al, the outcome was 
 that Bellot, with Louis Mery, brought 
 out Lou Tambourinaire et le Menestrel, 
 while Desanat inaugurated the longer- 
 lived, more virile and more national Lou 
 269
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Bouil-Abaisso. Not only did most of the 
 scattered patois-singers contribute to these 
 " organs," but the earliest lyrics and poems 
 of Roumanille, Anselme Mathieu, Mistral, 
 and others less known, also appeared there. 
 A year after the decease of Lou Bouil- 
 Abaisso, which appeared at intervals during 
 six years, was heard the first high note of 
 the Midi. Hitherto only in distant Gascony 
 had the Provenal Muse caught the ear of 
 the outside world. Now from the little 
 town of St. Remy, the ancient Roman 
 Glanum, " the town of gardens, poets, and 
 beautiful women," came the clear and strong 
 voice of Joseph Roumanille, afterwards to 
 be known as the Father of the Felibrige. 
 By 1847 Roumanille had published his 
 beautiful idyllic poem Li Margarideto, and 
 had written his still finer Li Sounjarello 
 (The Dreamers], when, at the seminary in 
 Avignon (where he was a young teacher), 
 he met Frederic Mistral, then a lad who 
 on his neighbouring ancestral farm of 
 Maillane (Maiano) had already begun his 
 lifelong dream of the poetry and romance, 
 of the past and present and future of 
 Provence, of the conservation and purifica- 
 tion and definite restoration of its beautiful 
 language. The lad and the young man at 
 270
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 once became intimate friends. Mistral had 
 already a sympathiser, oneAnselme Mathieu; 
 and just as at Oxford two young men, 
 William Morris and Edward Burne- Jones, 
 became intimate friends through reading 
 together one spring day by the waterside 
 a poem by another not much older than 
 themselves, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and 
 in turn gave their allegiance to this reveal- 
 ing poet, so was it with Mistral Mathieu and 
 Roumanille. 
 
 The first public outcome of this union 
 of three enthusiasts was the publication 
 early in 1852 of Li Prouvenpalo, an anthology 
 from the scattered writings or unprinted 
 though widely circulated compositions of 
 the living poets of the Midi. In August of 
 the same year a Congress of Proven9al 
 Poets was held at Aries under the presidency 
 of Roumanille. The following year a still 
 more influential gathering was held at Aix, 
 the old Troubadour capital. From the 
 several regions of Provence came repre- 
 sentatives, sixty-five in all (only Jasmin 
 refrained, piqued at this extraordinary 
 invasion across what he considered his own 
 frontiers) ; and, as a result, another and 
 greater anthology was published, Lou Rou- 
 mavdgi deis Troubaires (1854). 
 271
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 But the " Centre," the not yet named 
 Felibrige, held itself -independent, with 
 its more concentrated and impassioned 
 ideals. On May 21, 1854, seven young 
 Proven9al poets known as the Avignon 
 group met in the little chateau Font- 
 Segugne (Vaucluse), the ancestral home of 
 one of them, Pauloun Giera, and solemnly 
 vowed themselves to purify and restore 
 their native speech and to devote their 
 lives to this end, to poetry, and to Provence. 
 As our " Pre-Raphaelites " were all men of 
 individual power but were profoundly in- 
 fluenced by one dominating and inspiring 
 genius, so was it with this " Avignon 
 group." Roumanille, Mistral, Aubanel, Paul 
 Giera, Jean Brunet, Alphonse Tavan, 
 Anselme Mathieu all were men of rare 
 and beautiful powers ; but the greatest 
 were the two youngest, Aubanel and Mistral ; 
 and the Rossetti of these " Pre-Raphaelites " 
 was Mistral. But here, it may be as well 
 to add, after this accident of analogy all 
 likeness ends. 
 
 Thus was formed the Felibrige, after- 
 wards to become a League so great and 
 comprehensive ; but Provence has not 
 known any more truly characteristic singers 
 than the first seven Felibres, or any poets 
 272
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 so great as Mistral " the emperor of the 
 Midi," as the people proudly call him, 
 perhaps the greatest poet whom France has 
 produced and Theodore Aubanel, " the 
 nightingale of the South." 
 
 Of the work of one or two of those early 
 Felibres it is not easy now to find more 
 than a few scattered poems. These must 
 be sought in anthologies, in the Provengal 
 periodicals, in the annual almanack of the 
 Midi (now approaching its fiftieth volume, 
 and a continual source of interest and 
 pleasure, since its first appearance as 
 VArmana Prouvengau per lou bel an de 
 Dieu 1855). Neither Paul Giera nor Jean 
 Brunet published any collection of their 
 poetry, and Tavan and Mathieu have been 
 content to remain as respectively the authors 
 of Amour e Plour and La Farandoulo, beau- 
 tiful books, but a strangely meagre out- 
 put for men of brilliant promise who began 
 thus and have since given us no more than 
 fragments. Jean Brunet published nothing 
 in book-form in his lifetime but a pamphlet 
 entitled Bachiquello sus La Luno (Bagatelles 
 on the Moon), but his poems in the Armana 
 and elsewhere are admired. There is more 
 individuality, with a stronger national 
 accent, in the poetry of Pauloun Giera, who 
 
 II 273 s
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 died a young man. Students interested in 
 Proven9al poetry should consult an interest- 
 ing but now somewhat rare volume, edited 
 by Roumanille and Mistral and published 
 by the former at Avignon. Entitled Un 
 Liame de Rasin, it comprises, besides bio- 
 graphical notices and representative verses 
 of Jean Reboul (an excellent poet and a 
 good baker of Nimes), Castil-Blaze, Adolphe 
 Dumas, and Toussaint Poussel, the fifteen 
 pieces left by the Felibre Paul Giera, col- 
 lectively entitled Li Galejado. 
 
 We have seen it frequently stated in 
 Parisian chronicles that two other eminent 
 French men of letters, Provencal by birth and 
 upbringing, were associated with Mistral in 
 the inauguration of the Felibrige : Alphonse 
 Daudet and Paul Arene. There is, however, 
 no basis for the statement. These two 
 masters of French prose, perhaps the most 
 supple and delicate prose in French litera- 
 ture, owed much to the Provencal genius, 
 which they inherited as a birthright, and to 
 the Provencal background of life and nature 
 which was a continual inspiration to both ; 
 but neither wrote in his native dialect, 
 or till long after the Felibrige was an 
 influential and well-known League of the 
 Midi. Daudet, indeed, is not known to have 
 274
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 written more than a single set of verses in 
 Provencal La Cabano (The Little Cabin, or 
 Moor-cot], which appeared in 1880, in the 
 April number of the periodical La Farandole 
 for he did not really himself write, as 
 commonly averred, the Proven9al version 
 of the Lettres de mon Moulin. La Cabano 
 is charming, graceful, and its few lines 
 convey the desiderated atmosphere of a 
 vast wind-filled solitude ; but they have the 
 suggestion of a tour de force, of a literary 
 accomplishment as has so much of the 
 work, both in verse and prose, of Jean 
 Aicard, probably now in Paris and France 
 generally the most widely read of all living 
 Proven9al writers, partly because of the 
 immense success of his powerful and pic- 
 turesque romance, Le Roi de Camargue, 
 and greatly owing to the fact that he writes 
 solely in French. It is significant that, 
 though a Languedocien for the great 
 romancist of the Midi was born at Nimes 
 Daudet's Cabano is written in the pure 
 Proven9al of Aries and the Rhone. Paul 
 Arene, who was born at Sister on, one of the 
 least known but not least fascinating and 
 picturesque of the smaller Proven9al towns, 
 never collected his scattered Proven9al 
 verses, but these may be found in the 
 275
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Armana and other annuals or periodicals 
 of the Midi, and have invariably the same 
 freshness, charm, distinction, and beauty 
 as characterise the French writings of this 
 exquisite prosaist, the author of Jean des 
 Figues, La Gueuse Parfumee, La Vraie 
 Tentation de Saint Antoine, and other 
 masterpieces in the genre of the short 
 story. 
 
 Of Tavan and Anselme Mathieu a further 
 word must be said, for though so little 
 known beyond the somewhat vague frontiers 
 of Provence, their names are fixed stars 
 in the galaxy of the Felibrige. Tavan is 
 still alive, though he has long ceased to 
 write, or at least to publish. Born in 1833 
 at Chateau-Neuf-de-Gadagne, a beautiful 
 region of Vaucluse, he was what he has 
 remained a true son of the soil, one of 
 those peasant -aristocrats who have been 
 the pride and glory of Provence. He lived 
 the sane, arduous life of a man of the field 
 and olive orchards till he was about twenty, 
 by which time his remarkable poetic talent 
 had proved itself. Drafted into the army, 
 fortune took him to Rome during the days 
 of the French occupation ; but a serious 
 mischance occurred there, for he fell a 
 victim to malaria. Later, alike unfit for 
 276
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 military service and for field-labour, he 
 obtained a clerical post in connection with 
 the P. L. M. Railway, and has been a 
 railway employe ever since that is, for the 
 greater part of his life. Alphonse Tavan is 
 none the less a peasant in nature, thought, 
 and expression, and it is as a beautiful 
 and refined poet of the people that he is 
 loved. The shortness of his allotted spell 
 of happiness saddened but did not embitter 
 him : when he lost his dearly loved wife 
 and little girl he held them near to him in 
 an exquisite lyric memory. In his preface 
 to his one published collection, Love and 
 Tears, he writes : 
 
 Commonly the life of the poet is reflected in 
 his poetry, and in my case it is but right frankly 
 to admit that all my life is mirrored in these 
 verses. I am but a peasant, and have seen 
 little, have little learning, few acquirements, but 
 I could not do otherwise than sing what I have 
 so deeply felt, my own joys and sorrows, that 
 is to say, my life. Thus it is that these rustic 
 airs are not idle carols of the wind, but true songs 
 from a human heart. 
 
 And therein is the secret of their compelling 
 charm, the reason why to this day Love 
 and Tears is a beloved book in many a 
 Provencal mas, or valley cottage, or hillside 
 cabano. That it is so little known elsewhere 
 277
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 in France is because no French translation 
 was made by the author, nor has been since 
 made by any admirer. Of Tavan's less 
 intimately personal poems some are now 
 classic, as, for example, his early lyrical 
 piece entitled Li Frisoun de Marieto (Man- 
 ette*s Curls], than which Beranger never 
 wrote anything more gay and dainty, with 
 its delightful idolatry of two coquettish curls 
 on a pretty young girl's lustrous brow 
 
 Pichot frisoun descaussane, 
 Merviho de noste vilage * 
 
 that begins so characteristically with an 
 allusion to this village beauty as " fresco 
 e lisqueto coume un iou " ("as fresh and 
 shiny as an egg "). Another, of a fine 
 nature, that evokes the strong national 
 note, is the sirvente (or species of ode) 
 called Prouven$o e Troubadour (Provence and 
 her Singers], a kind of symphony on the 
 chord struck in Mistral's Calendau. 
 
 O flour, erias trop proumierenco ! 
 Nacioun en flour, I'espaso trenco 
 Toun espandido / . . .f 
 
 * " Dear little lawless curls, the marvel of our 
 village." 
 
 t " O flower of Provence, too soon was thy 
 blossoming : O nation in flower, the sword cut 
 thee off in thine early beauty." 
 278
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Here the poet recalls how the Provencal 
 singers carried the art of poetry and the 
 fine fteur of life into other countries, and how 
 all Europe listened with rapt delight to this 
 honey -sweet voice : " 1'Europe s'estasio a 
 vosto melicouso e siavo pouesio." And this 
 joy, everywhere audible in the old Proven9al 
 poetry, was, says the poet, and truly, the 
 first glad modern expression of the romance 
 and beauty and fidelity of love, " for their 
 poetry is all love " : 
 
 L' amour ! aquelo flour poulido 
 
 Aquelo flour dou mes de mat, 
 
 Ateno I'avie pas culido 
 
 Li Mouro e li Latin nimai ; 
 Vous-dutri sias vengu : la floureto oudourouso, 
 
 Embaumo vosto amo amourouso, 
 
 L'amour vous alargo si doun : 
 Escampant vosti cor, courres touti li terra : 
 Bernat de Ventadour enebrio I'Anglo-terro, 
 
 Giraud de Bournelh, I'Aragoun. 
 
 Ves I'ltalio e I'Alemagno, 
 
 Coume se souvenon de vous I 
 
 Vosto flour creis, vosto flour gagno 
 
 Li serre li mai auturous : 
 Beatris la divino e Lauro I'estelado, 
 
 Sus I'aubo roso encimelado, 
 
 S'emplanon amount dins I'azur, 
 Car Petrarco e lou Dante an senti vosto flamo, 
 An beisa vosto flour, an coumpr$s vostis amo, 
 
 An respira voste amour pur ! 
 279
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Erias trop beu . . . mats la tempesto 
 Agouloupo nosto nacioun ! * 
 
 Another beautiful and stirring ode, the 
 sirvente entitled Ma Maestresso, is universally 
 known in Provence, and is even in some 
 degree an accepted national chant. The 
 " mistress " that the poet sings is no beautiful 
 woman, is not even Provence, but Liberty. 
 The poem appeals to all who can cry with 
 the author : " Ai la fe que trasporto, ai 
 1'espero qu'esbriho," " I have the faith that 
 
 * " Love, this beautiful flower, this flower of 
 life's springtide, neither the Moor nor the Roman, 
 nor Athens herself, has truly culled it : but you, 
 Proven?al singers of old, come . . . and in its 
 fragrant beauty embalm your very soul, and 
 Love dowers you with every gift he has to give. 
 With hearts uplifted you wander now to the 
 ends of the earth. Bernard de Ventadour intoxi- 
 cates England with his song, and all Spain listens 
 entranced to Giraud de Borniel. 
 
 " And Italy and Germany, can they ever forget 
 you ? The Flower of Song grows, may be gathered, 
 on their proudest heights ! The divine Beatrice, 
 the starry Laura, shine from on high, twin-planets 
 over the rose and azure of Dawn for Dante 
 and Petrarch lit their hearts at your flame, have 
 kissed your sacred flower and breathed its spiri- 
 tual fragrance, and known that pure and perfect 
 love. 
 
 " You were too beautiful . . . the tempest 
 broke and our nation was no more ! " 
 280
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 uplifts, and hope unquenchable." It is a 
 passion, not a deep devotion only, that he 
 sings, and a passion that strengthens with 
 the passing years : 
 
 Sieu amourous ben mai, O ben mai I Ma mestresso 
 Es divo. En beuta pas so e Minervo e Venus : 
 D'elo raive, e'n pantai . . . ma mestresso es 
 divesso* 
 
 It is, however, as much a Christian as a 
 pagan cry : 
 
 Lou Crist, noste grand pvieu, soun plus caud calig- 
 
 naire, 
 Vougue la prouclama. . . .f 
 
 The poem ends : 
 
 Situ d6u pople e moun cor i'a douna ma tendresso, 
 E vous dise lou noum de ma bello mestresso : 
 Ma Mestresso es la Liberia ! 
 
 The late Anselme Mathieu, one of the 
 leading members of the Felibrige, and famous 
 on account of his unique achievement, La 
 Farandoulo, was also a Vauclusien, and 
 born too at a " Chateau-Neuf," though the 
 
 * " More and more I love her. My mistress 
 is godlike. In beauty she excels Minerva and 
 Venus. I dream of her, and in my dreams . . . 
 my mistress is a goddess." 
 
 t " Christ, our great chief and her most ardent 
 votary, wished to proclaim her. . . ." 
 28l
 
 birthplace of the " Felibre di poutoun " 
 ("the poet of kisses") was the lovely 
 Chateau-Neuf-du-Pape, between Orange 
 and Avignon. Like Mistral, Mathieu came 
 of good Proven9al stock, and of parents 
 who spoke only the native tongue of the 
 Midi ; he was Mistral's schoolfellow at 
 Avignon and his fellow-student for three 
 years at Aix, whose literary associations 
 and beautiful neighbourhood inspired both 
 poets. Anselme Mathieu, Mistral, and 
 Aubanel are the " aristocrats " of the 
 Provengal writers, and the note of distinction 
 revealed itself early in the young singer from 
 Vaucluse in his admirable translations into 
 pure Proven9al of some of the finest odes 
 and lyrics of Virgil and Catullus. Those 
 who would know more of the man and his 
 life and life-work should consult MistraPs 
 intimate and generous preface to La Faran- 
 doulo, wherein he alludes to his friend's 
 work as one of the loveliest fruits, as a per- 
 fect fruit, from the tree of Provencal genius, 
 and adds that, for the turn of the phrase, 
 the lovely suggestiveness of the thought 
 and metrical variety and suppleness, the 
 poetry of Mathieu more than that of any 
 other contemporary resembles the fine fteur 
 of Troubadour song. This preface is well 
 282
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 worth perusal for its own sake. Mistral 
 invariably writes beautiful prose, at once 
 virile and delicate, and in the mass of his 
 miscellaneous sketches, studies, remini- 
 scences, introductions, &c., there are few 
 better examples of his charm as prosateur 
 than this preface to La Farandoulo.* 
 
 What he says of La Farandoulo may be 
 summed up in a Provensal phrase now 
 become classical in the Midi : " You will 
 find here young girls, flowers, and kisses, 
 and if you love kisses, flowers, and young 
 girls, The Farandole will content you." 
 
 The book consists of some forty-five 
 poems and lyrics, grouped in three sec- 
 tions, Lis Aubado (The Aubades, or Songs 
 at Sunrise), Li Souleiado (Songs of the 
 Noontide), and Li Serenade (Serenades 
 by implication, Songs of Dusk and Love). 
 Many of these are in light, joyous measures, 
 with a Burns- or Beranger-like lilt, as the 
 song of one Gatouno, who was ill with love : 
 Gatouno, 
 
 Malautouno, 
 
 Malautouno d'amour, 
 Paureto ! 
 
 I floureto 
 
 Countaro si doulour. 
 
 * La Farandoulo, par Anselme Mathieu (second 
 edition, with French translation). Avans-Prepaus 
 283
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 But perhaps Mathieu is most successful in 
 the quatrain, to which he gave a new swift 
 and deft movement, as in the altogether 
 delightful Coy Maid (La Paurouso), or The 
 Old Vineyard (La Vignasso), the finest vine- 
 chant of the Midi : 
 
 L'agouldnfo de ti bouqueto, 
 
 Just n'ai beisa I'espino, Agueto, 
 
 Just I'espino ! . . . E pi&i, que U fai ? 
 
 Un poutoun encaro ! . . . A i ! Ai ! A i ! * 
 
 Or: 
 
 Ai uno vigno d Cast&u-Nou, 
 Dins un valoun di Coumbo-Masco, 
 Sus lo revds d'un degouldu : 
 Clafis ma tino, emplis mi fiasco.^ 
 
 (Introduction) par Frederic Mistral. (Avignon : 
 Roumanille, 1868.) 
 
 * " From the wild-rose of thy mouth, I have 
 but kissed a little thorn away just a little thorn 
 no more, and what is that ? Now, one real 
 kiss ! . . . Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! " 
 
 | " I have a vine at Chateau -Neuf, 
 In an enchanted valley, 
 Lone in a rocky ravine : 
 Ah, but my cellar and flasks remember it ! " 
 
 The writer first heard Lo Vignasso recited in a 
 little arbour, over " old wine of Crau," in the 
 wild highlands of Vauvenargues, and on inquir- 
 ing what was the actual meaning of " Coumbo- 
 Masco," was told that " li Coumbo-Masco " were 
 "enchanted valleys," or "valleys of the be- 
 witched." 
 
 284
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 The wine of the Enchanted Valley, from 
 the old vineyard planted two hundred 
 years or more ago among the broom and 
 thyme in the honey-pale moonshine, amid 
 fairy laughters, has intoxicated many a 
 poetic brain beside that of Anselme Mathieu. 
 One thinks of " lou vin dou valoun di 
 Coumbo-Masco " as no less symbolical than 
 the Fay in Mistral's UAmiradou. 
 
 Au castbu de Tarascoun 
 I' a 'no rdino, i'a 'no fado, 
 Au casteu de Tarascoun 
 I'a 'no fado que s'escound.* 
 
 It is perhaps difficult now to understand 
 aright the far-reaching influence as well as 
 vogue of Joseph Roumanille ; some, much of 
 it no doubt, was personal. Roumanille had 
 a dominant individuality as remarkable as 
 that of Victor Hugo, with a passionate 
 enthusiasm and ardour for Provence and 
 Provengal literature equalled only by 
 Frederic Mistral. Of these two great in- 
 fluences one the influence of a remarkable 
 mind and of a true, if not a great poet, 
 the other the influence of a master-mind and 
 
 * " In the Chateau of Tarascon 
 Is a queen, is a Fay, 
 In the Chateau of Tarascon 
 Is a Fay who hideth." 
 285
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 of the greatest living poet of the Latin races 
 it would be superfluous to write here in 
 detail. French, German, Italian, Spanish, 
 Scandinavian studies on Roumanille and 
 Mistral have appeared by scores, and if 
 these writers are less known and less appre- 
 ciated among ourselves than among other 
 nations it is by no means wholly from lack 
 of interpreters, from the first faithful if 
 not very flexible translation of Mistral's 
 Mireio (by an American, Miss Preston) to 
 the charming Embassy to Provence of Mr. 
 Thomas A. Janvier. In France a hundred 
 writers have dealt with Mistral and the 
 Felibres, in books, treatises, studies, articles, 
 anthologies, and individual translations, 
 perhaps none so authoritatively and ably 
 as M. Paul Marieton.* So great, indeed, 
 is the library of books dealing with modern 
 Provence that only a few enthusiasts could 
 possibly cope with it. On Mistral alone 
 quite a library of " studies " has accumu- 
 lated. 
 
 But, to-day, when we take up the (still 
 untranslated) Li Margarideto, or the more 
 
 * E.g., in the long and important articles on the 
 Felibres, and on Mistral, Aubanel, &c., in the 
 Grande Encyclopedic, and in books, notably La 
 Terre Provencale. 
 
 286
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 widely known Li Sounjarello of Roumanille, 
 it is to read with no little wonder what one 
 has so often heard praised as masterpieces. 
 For these poems, masterly as in a sense 
 they are, have the beauty of genre rather 
 than the final and universal beauty. They 
 differ in kind from The Rhcne or Calendau 
 or even the Mireio of Mistral, bearing 
 somewhat of the same relation to these as 
 the poetry of Tannahill or Ferguson to the 
 " central " poetry of Burns ; or, let us say, 
 as the essentially parochial stories of John 
 Gait to the universal romances of Sir Walter 
 Scott. 
 
 It is regrettable that Li Margarideto has 
 not been translated into French, for in 
 France justice has not been done to this 
 pioneer work of the Proven9al revival. 
 When it appeared in 1847, it came upon 
 the poets of the Midi as convincingly as 
 the genius of Burns came upon the innumer- 
 able minor singers of Scotland. This de- 
 lightful idyllic poem is in four sections : 
 Quan Li-Z-Agrena Flourissien, Quan Li 
 Bla se Maduravon, Quan Li Feuio Toum- 
 bavon, Ou cantoun dou Fid, which may be 
 rendered, When the Blossoms Whiten, When 
 the Grain Ripens, When the Leaves Fall, 
 and By the Winter -Hearth. Popular as 
 287
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 The Daisies, Li Margarideto, was, and 
 has remained, Roumanille's fame was far 
 more widely enhanced by the lovely lyri- 
 cal narrative - poem Li Sounjarello (The 
 Dreamers), published five years later (1852) ; 
 and was perhaps more intimately and per- 
 manently deepened by his beautiful Li 
 Nouve (Noels), some forty in all, published 
 first in magazines and journals or " fasci- 
 cules " between 1845 and 1859. The vogue 
 of Li Sounjarello, as a poetic love-tale, 
 resembled that enjoyed, with us, in the 
 mid- Victorian period, by The Gardener's 
 Daughter. The poem has considerable 
 metrical diversity, apart from the little 
 lyrics it enshrines, but here is a repre- 
 sentative divisional section : 
 
 Dindouleto, parla me d'eu : 
 En travessant la mar, aves pas vis moun beu ? 
 Dessu si mas bessai aves fu la pauseto. 
 Es que vous a ren di se ma mio Leleto ? . . . 
 
 Aco se.m'ero pas fideu ! . . . 
 Pamen, plouravo tan quand me laisse souleto, 
 Que me doune la croux de sa maire, e I'aneu . . ', -. 
 Mai que dise ? sieu folo / ... Ana leu, dindouleto, 
 
 A na-ie pienta moun bonjour ; 
 Pouvta-ie su vosti-z-aleto 
 
 Moun Idngui, mi poutoun e mi souspir d'amour . . . 
 Diga-il que I'espere, 6 bravi dindouleto ! * 
 
 * " Swallows, tell me of him ! In crossing the 
 288
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Besides Li Margarideto, Li Sounjarello, 
 Li Nouve, and his share in Prouven$alo (The 
 Provencals) and in that delightful and 
 invaluable annual L'Armana Prouvenfau, 
 Roumanille published notable minor works 
 in verse, such as La Part de Dieu and Li 
 Flour de Sauvi (Flour o' the Sage), and the 
 longer and more masterly La Campano 
 Mountado, a mock-heroic poem in seven 
 cantos, which so capable a critic as M. de 
 Pontmartin ranked as Roumanille's most 
 original production. His complete poetical 
 productions may be had in one volume, 
 modestly entitled Lis Oubreto (Minor Works). 
 
 seas, have you not seen my beloved ? Mayhap you 
 rested on the masts of his ship ? Did he whisper 
 nothing to you of his dear Leleto ? Oh ! if he 
 has not remained true to me ! . . . and yet, 
 how he wept the day he left me all alone, and gave 
 me the little cross that had been his mother's, 
 and the ring. . . . But what am I saying ? I 
 am mad ! . . . Quick, quick, little swallows, 
 breathe on him my morning greeting : carry him 
 on your little wings my impatience, my kisses, 
 my sighs of longing. Whisper that I await him, 
 that I a waif him, O good little swallows ! " 
 
 This quotation is from the original edition. 
 It was after the publication of Li Sounjarello 
 that the Provengal language was given its classic 
 uniformity, mainly by or through the influence of 
 Mistral. Later versions of Li Sounjarello have a 
 revised text. 
 
 II 289 T
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 In Provence there is nothing of his so 
 loved among the poor hill-folk and vintagers 
 as his Noels. Saboly himself, the prince of 
 " the Singers of Bethlehem," never wrote 
 anything lovelier, more exquisitely tender, 
 than Li Crecho, with its plea of the Seraph 
 to God, that when the little Jesus first knew 
 mortal cold in the manger at Bethlehem : 
 
 Es moun rire que I'assoulavo, 
 Es moun alo que I'acatavo ; 
 L'escaufave em6 moun alen.* 
 
 Last Yuletide, the present writer heard 
 sung one midnight in the streets of Aix 
 Als, la antico vilo di Troubaires another 
 lovely Noel of Roumanille's, La Chato 
 Avuglo, The Blind Girl, of which the first 
 stanza runs thus : 
 
 Ero lou jour tant beu qu'uno Vierge enfantavo 
 
 A Betelen ; 
 E soun fru benesi, de la fre tremoulavo 
 
 Su'n pau de fen ; 
 Lis ange, eilamoundant, tout-beu-just acabaron 
 
 Soun " Gloria," 
 E, de tout caive, au jas pastre e pastmsso anavon 
 
 S'ageinouia.^ 
 
 * "It was my smile that consoled Him, my 
 wings that sheltered Him, my breath that warmed 
 Him." 
 
 j- " It was on the wondrous day when a Virgin 
 bore a child at Bethlehem. This blessed fruit of 
 290
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Roumanille, the son of a gardener, and of 
 a mother " of the old race of the Gardeners 
 of St. Remy, the town of gardens," was born 
 among the beautiful gardens he so often 
 lovingly described, on August 8, 1818. 
 Even in his long and ardently enthusiastic 
 as well as arduous life he was acknow- 
 ledged as the " chef de depart " ; and since 
 his death a few years ago his fame has 
 grown, not lessened, as the most potent 
 and victorious general in the great move- 
 ment of which Mistral is the commander-in- 
 chief. 
 
 It is but right to add a word on Madame 
 Roumanille, wife of one famous Felibre, 
 and, as Rose-Anai's Gras, sister of another, 
 herself a fine poet and a woman who, as 
 friend and publisher of so many of the 
 poets of the Midi, has had a very real 
 influence on the development of contempo- 
 rary Provenal literature. A little poem of 
 hers in sonnet form suggests comparison 
 with The Toys of Coventry Patmore, and is 
 no less pathetic and dignified. Called Lou 
 
 the Divine Love trembled in the mortal cold of 
 the manger : but the thronging angels rejoicingly 
 burst into song, singing the ' Gloria ' there on 
 high, as the shepherd folk here on earth, bending 
 their knees before the new-born Son." 
 291
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Chambroun, The Little Room, it may be thus 
 rendered, perforce baldly, in prose : 
 
 Here, in a corner, are her little cart, her doll, 
 her rattle, lying abandoned on the floor beside 
 her pretty baby-skirt ; yonder on the wall of the 
 silent room hangs the little one's amber necklace : 
 dust, like a shroud, covers the desolate cradle. 
 Here, midway, are her tiny blue slippers, so 
 lively ever, so restless. . . . O dear God, the 
 music of those little pattering feet only so brief 
 a while ago. . . . Hist ! some one comes . . . 
 I hear steps. Of this little room say nothing, 
 not a word. Never again will the mother 
 enter it. 
 
 There is no need to dwell in detail on the 
 work and achievement of Frederic Mistral. 
 His fame is in all lands. Translations of 
 his chief works exist in French, Italian, 
 Spanish, and Portuguese and not in the 
 Latin tongues only, but in German, Dutch, 
 Scandinavian, Russian. In English Mireio 
 has been at least twice translated. The 
 greatest poet of Provence, he is also by far 
 the greatest living poet of France having, 
 indeed, within the definitely narrower limits 
 of lyrical excellence, no rival in any of the 
 Latin races save, perhaps, Carducci. As 
 scholar, as poet, as man of letters, as the 
 pioneer of the intellect of the South and the 
 captain of its soul, as a Provencal of the 
 292
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Pro verbals, with the greatness and nobility 
 of his nature and the unequalled charm of 
 his personality, Mistral is, in truth, worthy 
 of his popular designation, " the Emperor 
 of the Midi." Mireio, Calendau, Lis Isclo 
 d'Or, Lou Rose are already classics. Lamar- 
 tine's prophecy about " this new-risen genius 
 at Avignon " has been justified to the full. 
 The worship of Mistral in Provence is un- 
 equalled ; such a triumph as his, when ten 
 thousand people in the vast amphitheatre 
 at Orange simultaneously arose on his 
 unexpected entrance, is unparalleled in 
 contemporary homage, except perhaps by 
 the more fickle and transitory tribute of 
 Paris to Victor Hugo. 
 
 In his preface to Li Parpaioun Blu (the 
 amazing Provencal achievement of that 
 adopted Felibre, the Irish scholar and 
 poet, W. Bonaparte-Wyse) Mistral speaks 
 of " lou Reiaume dou Souleu," and again of 
 " la flamo felibren9o " ; and of no Provencal, 
 living or dead, could it be said that more than 
 Frederic Mistral he had " the poetic flame," 
 or that he had as good a claim to the sceptre 
 of " the Kingdom of the Sun." Scattered 
 through his many addresses and prefaces 
 are scores of characteristic sayings which 
 reveal the man, but few perhaps better than 
 293
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 words such as these : "I believe in the 
 audacity which accomplishes miracles ; and 
 I believe that the higher one aspires the 
 higher one attains." For Mistral, as for 
 Mirabeau on a famous occasion, " im- 
 possible " is a stupid word. For, in truth, 
 he has achieved the seeming impossible. 
 In that extraordinary dialect-revival so 
 noticeable in several countries at this 
 moment, no one man has had so potent an 
 influence as Mistral. He has done three 
 wonderful things, remarked an eminent 
 Felibre to the present writer : 
 
 He put a soul into a revived language ; he has 
 himself used that language as Dante and Petrarch 
 used Italian, as Heine used German ; and, lest 
 its mortal body should perish, he has embalmed 
 it for all time in that marvellous triumph of 
 philological science, Lou Tresor dou Felibrige t 
 
 Born in 1830 at Maillane, an ancestral 
 property near the small village of the same 
 name in the arrondissement of Aries and 
 within a few miles of St. Remy " St. Remy, 
 with its gardens, its gentle folk, and pretty 
 girls, its lovely and picturesque neighbour- 
 hood, its ancient ruined temples and arches, 
 its poetic tradition, the St. R6my so asso- 
 ciated with Roumanille and Felix Gras and 
 Marius Girard " Frederic Mistral, "Capoulie 
 294
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 dou Felibrige," has lived there ever since, a 
 peasant, a prince, and a poet. In the history 
 of modern Provencal literature there are 
 no landmarks more familiar than Mireio 
 (1859), Calendau (1867), Lis Isclo d'Or (1875), 
 Nerto (1880), La Reino Jano (1890), and 
 Lou Rose (The Rhone, 1894). These six 
 works also to change the metaphor are 
 milestones on the road followed by the 
 minor developments in the last half-century. 
 Not even the fame of Jasmin equalled that 
 which came to Mistral when the beautiful 
 idyllic romance of Mireio took Provence and 
 all France by storm at first in great part, 
 no doubt, because of that literary bomb- 
 shell, the famous pronouncement of the 
 then all-powerful Lamartine that (in 
 effect) 
 
 in Mistral a great epic poet is born, a true 
 Homeric poet in this day, a primitive poet in this 
 age of decadence, a poet who has given a new 
 sensation and a new scope to modern literature, 
 a poet who has created a language of an idiom, 
 as Petrarch created Italian. 
 
 Though that superb epical achievement 
 Calendau did not have the vogue of its 
 predecessor, it is now, perhaps, the more 
 widely admired. The earlier poem may be 
 said to embody the Provence of the plains 
 295
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 and pastoral valleys, the Provence of the 
 Crau, the Camargue, and of the Rhone ; 
 the other, to embody the Provence of 
 mountain and sea. But of all Mistral's 
 books none is now so familiar, so loved 
 and admired, as his collection of dramatic 
 lyrics, ballads, odes, and other poems, 
 collectively entitled Lis Isclo d'Or (The 
 Golden Isles). Here all his most famous 
 lyrical triumphs from the Ode to the Latin 
 Race to the delightful and so often quoted 
 Lou Prego-Dieu (a kind of grasshopper) 
 are to be found. Lis Isclo d'Or, in technical 
 mastery, ranks with the finest work of 
 Hugo, Banville, Leconte de Lisle, and 
 Baudelaire, with more of the pulse of 
 universal humanity. Nerto, an epical poem 
 in the style of the chivalrous romances 
 and of Ariosto, is a Provencal chronicle 
 of the Popes in Avignon. Though hailed 
 with welcome and crowned by the French 
 Academy, it remains the least widely 
 known (and in Provence the least read) 
 of Mistral's works. The fine tragic drama, 
 La Reino Jano, was more impressive to 
 witness on the stage (especially at Orange) 
 than to read ; and perhaps only to Pro- 
 vencals is there compelling magic in the name 
 of the famous princess round whose memory 
 296
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 so many native legends, romances, songs, 
 and ballads have gathered. In The Poem 
 of the Rhone Mistral has produced his epi- 
 cal chef-d'oeuvre. Here, unquestionably, he 
 justifies that supreme praise of Lamartine's 
 which so profoundly impressed the whole 
 European world of culture. 
 
 Of two of his most valued colleagues and 
 literary contemporaries, Felix Gras and 
 Harms Girard, though not members of the 
 original " league of poets," much might be 
 written here were there space to spare. 
 Certainly no student of contemporary Pro- 
 ven$al literature can afford to overlook 
 M. Girard's Lis Aupiho (The Lesser Alps, 
 behind St. R6my), published in 1888, and 
 the larger and finer collection, with its often 
 valuable and always interesting notes, La 
 Crau (the great stony plain of the Bouches 
 du Rhone, contiguous to, but distinct 
 from, the vaster Camargue, the Maremma 
 of Provence). Marius Girard is one of the 
 most distinguished of the Felibres of to-day, 
 and as he is still vigorous in mind and body 
 we may look for further works of fresh 
 collections from his fertile pen. His con- 
 temporary, Felix Gras, is much more 
 widely known, and within the last five years, 
 indeed, has, as a romancist, won also a 
 297
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 wide circle of readers in the United States 
 and Great Britain through the admirable 
 translation by Mrs. Catherine Janvier of 
 his trilogy of The Terror (The Reds of the 
 Midi, The Terror, The White Terror). Four 
 years younger than Marius Girard, Felix 
 Gras (1844), while still a young man (i.e., 
 in his thirty-second year), published Li 
 Carbounie (The Charcoal-burners), and at 
 once became famous. The note struck was 
 a new one, intensely virile, robust, sonorous. 
 This " epopee " in twelve cantos has no real 
 rival in Proven$al literature after Mistral's 
 Calendau or Nerto : indeed few works of 
 the kind can even be compared with it, 
 except perhaps the splendidly picturesque 
 Chansou Lemouzina of the Abbe Roux, the 
 great poet of the Limousin. In later life 
 he achieved another success in kind, with 
 Toloza, a geste Provencale in twelve cantos 
 dealing with the famous crusade of Simon 
 de Montfort. In 1887 ne published, through 
 Savine of Paris (one of the few instances 
 where a Provencal book has been printed 
 beyond the unofficial frontier of the Midi), 
 his chef-d'oeuvre, Lou Roumancero Prou- 
 vencau. The book consists of a score or so 
 of romantic ballads or ballad-romances, and 
 in metrical strength, poetic virility, and 
 298
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 compelling charm recalls no contemporary 
 poetry so much as Browning's Dramatic 
 Lyrics and Romances. Perhaps the finest is 
 the fifth, the barbaric Roumanso de Damo 
 Guiraudo. Others as notable and stirring are 
 Lou Rei Reinie (King Rene], La Roumanso 
 de la Reino Jano, Guihen de Cabestang, the 
 pathetic Blanche de Simiane, and the savage 
 La Dama Tibor all, and The Lady Tibor 
 in particular, strongly suggestive of our own 
 wild North-Country ballads, such as Glas- 
 gerion, Bur A Helen, and the like. In all 
 his poetry, epical or brief lyrics or episodic 
 poems, sonorous lines continually recur, with 
 a sound of the sea or as of the mountain 
 wind : 
 
 Es-ti la grando mar ? Es-ti la grand mountagno ? 
 Sari6-ti lou mistrau que bramo e coumbouris ? * 
 
 and lovely lines, full of aerial light and 
 sound, such as 
 
 Lou long salut que fan souto vdnt H piboulo.\ 
 
 In connection with the success of his 
 romances of The Terror, it may be added 
 that, though the prose literature of the 
 
 * " Is it the great sea ? or the voice of the hills 
 Or the wild tumult of the mountain- wind ? " 
 f " The long swaying of a poplar to the wind." 
 299
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 Provengal revival cannot vie with that in 
 verse, it is still remarkable and fascinating. 
 We need allude only to the most outstanding 
 works, such as the Contes Prouvenc.au of 
 Roumanille, the brilliant, vivacious, and 
 highly flavoured as well as highly coloured 
 Li Papalino (Tales of Papal Avignon) of 
 Felix Gras, the fine and austerely simple 
 Memdri d'un Gnarro (Reminiscences of a 
 Farm-hand) of Baptiste Bonnet, the vivid 
 Scenes of Provencal Life of the Tou- 
 lonaise Charles Senes, and those strange, 
 bewilderingly erudite, flame-coloured, but 
 inartistically wrought antique " classical " 
 romances VAgonie and Byzance of the poor 
 peasant Jean Lombard (whose early death in 
 1891 was practically due to privation bor- 
 dering on starvation). As for the larger 
 " world " which cannot read Prove^al, 
 and has not time or care to look for the less 
 eminent men, it can well rest content with 
 the work of the delicate genius who gave 
 to all countries Tartarin, Numa Roumestan, 
 and the Lettres de mon Moulin ; with that 
 of the exquisite artist, Paul Arene, whose 
 work is the very essence, the very fragrance, 
 of Provence ; and with that of picturesque 
 and vivid romancists such as Jean Aicard. 
 One of the most notable prose works by 
 300
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 any Provencal writer, though dealing with 
 alien life and conditions, is the strangely 
 impressive Fumeurs d'Opium of the late 
 Jules Boissiere ; another, more recent, 
 more powerful if less rare in quality, less 
 subtle in style, is Louis Bertrand's Le Sang 
 des Races. Doubtless all the Provencal 
 romancists will henceforth write in French, 
 for they are in the same case as the Welsh- 
 born or Irish-born novelists, who might 
 prefer to write, but who cannot get pub- 
 lished, tales in Welsh or Irish. Among 
 these younger men the most promising are 
 Emmanuel Delbousquet, Louis Bertrand, 
 and Joachim Gasquet, the latter a young 
 Aixois who, besides having already won high 
 distinction by his beautiful verse and the 
 range and distinction of his prose, is achieving 
 a continually growing influence through his 
 able editing of Le Pays de France, one of 
 the most interesting of French monthly 
 magazines. 
 
 Another writer of whom something should 
 be said, the more as he is in danger of being 
 overlooked by the younger generation of 
 Provencal students, is the late Jean-Baptiste 
 Gaut, one of the most distinguished sons 
 of Aix, and an influential member of the 
 Felibre'en league. His prose writings 
 301
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 notably his Resume de I'Histoire du Roi 
 Rene and his now rare Poetes ei la Poesie de 
 Provence are as interesting as they are 
 erudite. His lyrical drama Uno Court 
 d' Amour was crowned at the Floral Fetes 
 at Montpellier ; and his Lou Mau d' Amour 
 (Love-Sickness), produced in 1881, has the 
 distinction of being the first and still the 
 best comic opera on the Proven9al stage. 
 A more noteworthy dramatic achievement 
 was his earlier drama in three acts, with 
 many songs, called Lei Mouro (The Moors), 
 published about 1875. 
 
 Although Mistral, Aubanel, Gras, and 
 other Provencal poets have written sonnets, 
 the sonnet has never taken a prominent place 
 in the poetic literature of the Midi, and is 
 never a " popular," always a " literary," 
 form. But Gaut has the distinction of being 
 the Provencal sonneteer par excellence. His 
 Lei Set Pecat Capitau (The Seven Deadly 
 Sins) is a notable collection ; and now not 
 only the sonnet amateur but the literary 
 enthusiast may consider himself lucky who 
 obtains that fantastically delightful col- 
 lection, Sounet, Souneto e Sounaio (Sonnets, 
 Tinkles, and Idle Rhymes), published in 
 1874, with a " Sounadisso " or sonnet 
 preface by Mistral, wherein the great poet 
 302
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 half playfully appreciates his friend's sin- 
 gular qualities saying, " Qu'il joue aux 
 osselets, ou qu'il chasse aux perdreaux, 
 ou que dans la rivi&re il fasse mordre 
 quelque anguille, un petit vent de Grece 
 agite son habit." 
 
 We have left to the last one of the greatest 
 of the Felibres, and, as we believe, one of 
 the finest lyric poets whom France has 
 produced, Theodore Aubanel. Aubanel is 
 the poet whose name above all others in 
 Provence causes the chord of love to thrill 
 in the hearts of the young. He is, supremely, 
 the poet of youth and love and beauty. 
 Throughout his writings we may hear the 
 refrain of his lyric La Gldri de Vau-Cluso : 
 
 L' Amour es la vido, 
 La vido es I 'amour, 
 
 as throughout all his own days he heard the 
 self -same song : 
 
 L'amour nous convido 
 A cuie li flour. 
 
 And this for the greater part sufficed him ; 
 this instinct of life, this passion for beauty, 
 for love, for the sunshine and the blithe 
 delight of spring and summer in his beloved 
 Provence, for " la cigalo di piboulo. la 
 303
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 bouscarlo di bouissoun, lo grihet di fari- 
 goulo, tout canto sa cansoun." In his glad 
 content with the beauty of the world, 
 the world of youth and love and songs, 
 he struck a note which endeared him to 
 his compatriots : 
 
 Tout auceloun amo sou nis : 
 Noste ceu blu, noste terraire 
 Soun p$r nous-autre un paradis.* 
 
 His posthumous collection, Lou Reire dou 
 Souleu (idiomatically, From Beyond the 
 Grave ; poetically, The Afterglow'), is as full 
 as his chef-d'oeuvre, Li Fiho d*Avignoun 
 (The Girls of Avignon), of that inspiration 
 of the country regions, di bastido, of which 
 he sang in a little canticle for the Festo 
 Felibren^o at Nimes in 1859 : 
 
 O muso di bastido 
 De siedo noun vestido 
 E pamens tant poulido, 
 Muso di Prouvenfau ! f 
 
 Aubanel's printed writings are small in 
 quantity. La Miougrano Entre-Duberto 
 
 * " Every little bird loves its nest. Our blue 
 sky, our little country, are Paradise for us." 
 
 T " O muse of the country places [lit. of the 
 farmsteads], Not clad in silk art thou, Yet O 
 most fair to see, Muse of the Proven9als ! " 
 304 

 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 (The Half -open Pomegranate), first privately 
 printed about 1880 (though written many 
 years earlier), and public and complete only 
 in 1888 ; Li Fiho d'Avignoun, published the 
 year of his death, 1886 ; and Lou Reive 
 du Souleu, published in 1900, though all or 
 most of the contents had already appeared 
 in periodicals, represent his achievement 
 in lyrical poetry. Besides these books 
 he wrote three dramas in Proven9al verse. 
 One of these, the powerful and sombre 
 Lou Pan dou Pecat (The Bread of Sin) 
 has been published, and, in Paul Arene's 
 somewhat unsatisfactory French version 
 in Alexandrines, was acted in Paris. Of 
 another no trace has been found. The 
 third and most powerful, Lou Pastre (The 
 Herdsman), though'kn.ovjn to exist at the time 
 of his death, is apparently also destroyed 
 or lost. From the little publicly known 
 of it, and some fragments remembered by 
 friends, it is certain that The Herdsman was 
 one of the most terrible of modern tragedies, 
 too savagely terrible perhaps for publication 
 to-day. Some idea of it, though even here 
 modified, may be gained from the note about 
 Lou Pastre in the appendix to Lou Reire dou 
 Souteu. The only other book of Aubanel's 
 is the posthumous collection of his letters 
 ii 305 u
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 to a friend, the " Mignon " of his idealising 
 and romantic love for "a dear unknown." 
 
 There is perhaps no single book of con- 
 temporary poetry so full of the atmosphere 
 as well as the sound and colour of beauty 
 as Li Fiho d*Avignoun. In it is one supreme 
 masterpiece : " the apple on the topmost 
 bough " of modern pagan poetry. The Venus 
 of Aries is, in contemporary poetry, what 
 the Venus of Milo is among all the other 
 treasures of the Louvre. Aubanel's work is 
 all of music, beauty, emotion. His lyrical 
 poems are as full of light and rippling sound 
 as an aspen. One could quote scores of lines 
 such as this quatrain from the pathetically 
 beautiful Li Piboulo (The Poplars) : 
 
 Bella ttio de grand pibo 
 Enfioucado dou tremount, 
 Que veses sus I'autro ribo ? 
 Que veses d'aperamount ? * 
 
 Of his lovely Miougrano, Mistral truly 
 prophesied, " Li grano di courau de la Miou- 
 grano Entre-Duberto devendran en Prouveno 
 km capelet dis amourous " " The coral-red 
 grains of The Half-open Pomegranate will 
 
 * " Stately alley of great poplars, All aflame 
 with the fires of sunset What see you, in the 
 valley, From your swaying tops, what see 
 you ? " 
 
 306
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 become throughout Provence the chaplet of 
 lovers." It has all the " sentour de Paubespin, 
 es dou9o emai amaro " " all the fragrance 
 of the hawthorn, at once sweet and bitter." 
 New cadences, too, come into this Latin 
 poetry, vaguely suggestive of those of Celtic 
 music : 
 
 De-la-man-d'eila de lamar, 
 
 Dins mis ouro de pantaiage, 
 
 Souvtnti-fes ieu fau un viage, 
 
 leu fau souvent un viage amar, 
 
 De-la-man-d'eila de la mar.* 
 
 The whole of the poem (No. xi. in The 
 Book of Love) is beautiful with its " Eilalins " 
 and " De-la-man-d'eilas's," and other melan- 
 choly recurrent cadences, as, for example : 
 
 D'evso en erso, sus I'aigo amaro, 
 Coume un cadabre i mar jita, 
 En pantai me laisse empourta 
 I ped d'acquelo que mei caro, 
 D'erso en erso, sus I'aigo amaro. ,f 
 
 Aubanel spoke for all Provence as well 
 as for himself when he wrote : "La pouesio 
 
 * " To a far land across the sea, oftentimes in 
 my dreaming hours I voyage alone, a bitter voyage 
 of longing oftentimes I make, to a far land across 
 the sea." 
 
 | " From hollow to hollow, on the salt wave, 
 as a body thrown upon the waters, in dreams I 
 let myself be carried to the feet of her I love : 
 From hollow to hollow, on the salt wave." 
 
 307
 
 The Modern Troubadours 
 
 es lou souleu, lou souleu di jouine e di 
 fort e di beu " " Poetry is the sun, the sun 
 of the young and the strong and the beau- 
 tiful." He sang for all poets when he shaped 
 in music his own device, " Quau canto soun 
 mau encanto." 
 
 And, for him, as for many another 
 beautiful singer of human love and loss, 
 an earlier writer long ago said " the deep 
 word " : 
 
 Quia sine dolore non vivitur in amove. 
 
 Let us take leave of Aubanel, and with 
 him of the singers of modern Provence, 
 in fitting words of his own, uttered in one 
 of his poems to his " Laura," his " Beatrice " : 
 
 Dins lou vaste camin dis astre barrulant canto dins 
 la joio.* 
 
 If there be that immortality also for the 
 poet, none worthier than Theodore Aubanel 
 could enter upon it. " We are two comrade 
 stars," said Mistral prophetically. And truly 
 both are of the company of " Adonais," " e 
 chi lo scrisse." 
 
 * " On the vast road of the wandering stars he 
 sings in joy." 
 
 308
 
 SOME DRAMAS OF GABRIELE 
 D'ANNUNZIO 
 
 (1900) 
 
 WHEN we consider the dramatic work of 
 Gabriele D'Annunzio we find that three 
 long plays have been published, La Citta 
 Morta, La Gioconda, and La Gloria ; that 
 two shorter plays, Sogno d'un Tramonto 
 d'Autunno and Sogno d'un Mattino di 
 Primavera, have been issued as booklets ; 
 and that the author is now at work on his 
 trilogy, UAlessandreide. 
 
 Of the published dramas only the first is 
 well known here, though since Eleonora 
 Duse's magnificent acting of La Gioconda 
 in London that play also is familiar to 
 many who understand Italian. Even in 
 France, where D'Annunzio's work is fol- 
 lowed with much interest and close atten- 
 tion, La Gloria is all but unknown : in 
 Italy itself it has fascinated the few, not 
 the many. One reason, obvious reason, for 
 309
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 this is, that of the plays La Cittd Morta 
 alone has been translated into French and 
 into English. 
 
 To understand the complex genius and 
 Graeco - Latin temperament of Gabriele 
 D'Annunzio, one unacquainted with his 
 writings could perhaps in no way gain so 
 swift an insight as to read these two short 
 plays, the Sogno d'un Tramonto cFAutunno 
 and Sogno d'un Mattino di Primavera. The 
 one, violent, fevered, intoxicated with colour, 
 convulsed with the very hysteria of passion, 
 is wrought, as it were, in blood-red clay ; 
 the other, hushed, delicate, beautiful, exqui- 
 site in its very morbidity, intensely rather 
 than overwhelmingly tragic, is wrought in 
 ivory and emerald : the one is a resplendent 
 nightmare, the other a tragic but beautiful 
 dream. In both the same genius reveals 
 itself, in each the extraordinarily marked 
 dual temperament is found at the extreme. 
 If there is no one scene in D'Annunzio's 
 plays so beautiful as that in La Gioconda, 
 where la Sirenetta, a mysterious child born 
 of the wind, sun, and sea, unwittingly 
 tortures Silvia Settala in her bitter grief 
 and mutilated beauty, and where, when 
 the lovely sea -girl says she would offer the 
 poor, desolate, mutilated woman her own 
 310
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 hands were they not so brown and rough, 
 Silvia answers : 
 
 Sono felici le tue mani : toccano le foglie, 
 i fiori, 1'arena, 1'acqua, le pietri, i fanciulli, gli 
 animali, tutte le cose innocenti. 
 
 (" Ah, these happy hands of yours they can 
 touch the leaves and flowers, the earth and water 
 and stones, little children, all innocent creatures.") 
 
 if, as I think, there is no scene so poig- 
 nantly beautiful as this, neither is there, 
 I think, any succession of scenes or any one 
 play so beautiful as the Dream of a Spring 
 Morning. Again, there is nowhere in 
 D'Annunzio's dramas or romances so extreme 
 a presentment of the sensuously hysterical 
 side of his nature the side that in that 
 wonderful book, // Trionfo delta Morte, 
 permitted him to sink to the grossest 
 banalities, to a dithyrambic satyr iasis, 
 where the power and beauty of the with- 
 held while revealed are set aside for the 
 poor audacity of the explicit nowhere so 
 extreme a presentment in this kind, though 
 without any suggestion of Zolaesque 
 "realism," as in the Dream of an Autumn 
 Sunset. 
 
 I am not certain as to the order in which 
 D'Annunzio's plays were written, but in 
 publication the Dream of a Spring Morning
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 comes first. Certainly it was written not 
 later than early in 1897. Then La Cittd 
 Morta came, 1898 ; and thereafter were 
 published the Dream of an Autumn Sunset, 
 early in 1899 ; La Gioconda, 1899 ; and La 
 Gloria in 1900. The actual date of com- 
 position of the remarkable play La Gloria 
 is February-March of 1899, written " ai 
 cipressi di Mamalus." 
 
 Although so unique a literary tempera- 
 ment, so individual a master in style, 
 D'Annunzio has been influenced formatively 
 by at least one modern writer, Maurice 
 Maeterlinck. It is seen not only in the 
 occasional Maeterlinckian convention of 
 phrase and repetitive effect, but even in 
 construction. Generally this likeness is 
 mere similarity, but sometimes is recog- 
 nisable, as where in the opening scene of 
 the fourth act of Gioconda la Sirenetta 
 comes shyly upon Silvia : 
 
 LA SIRENETTA. Miriconosci ? . . . Miriconosci, 
 signora bella ? 
 
 SILVIA. Ti riconosco, ti riconosco. 
 LA SIRENETTA. Ma riconosci ? 
 
 One marked instance of constructional 
 
 influence is in La Gloria, where the second 
 
 act opens with a scene which, distinct in 
 
 detail as it is, is yet so much at one in 
 
 312
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D^Annunzio 
 
 kind that one cannot but believe it to be, 
 if not inspired, at least influenced by 
 Ulnterieur. The scene represents a room 
 hung with crimson brocade, with two doors, 
 each with a heavy portiere, one withdrawn. 
 The room is filled with friends, partisans, 
 old adherents of Cesare Bronte, who lies 
 at death's door in the inner room, " the 
 solemn anticipation of immense catastrophe " 
 going from one to one of this expectant 
 group of watchers. 
 
 ONE. Well, has the death-agony begun ? 
 
 ANOTHER. Is there no hope ? 
 
 ANOTHER. Will he live till dawn ? 
 
 SEVERAL (at once}. We want to see him . . . 
 we want to see him ! 
 
 ONE. Silence ! . . . Don't raise your voices. 
 
 ANOTHER. No one may go in. . . . 
 
 ANOTHER. He will see no one. 
 
 ANOTHER. He will see no one whomsoever . . . 
 not even the doctors. 
 
 ANOTHER. He has sent away the doctors. . . . 
 
 In the mass of D'Annunzio's dramatic 
 work, however, these are, as I have said, 
 but occasional echoes. Echoes do not 
 detract from the individuality of an original 
 writer : on the contrary, they afford an 
 added interest, showing as they do where 
 one original mind has been influenced by 
 another original mind, and where what has 
 313
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 been tried with effect by one is tried newly 
 with new effect by another. 
 
 The Dream of a Morning in Spring (Sogno 
 (Tun Mattino di Primavera) is a long one- 
 act play in five scenes. The story is an 
 episode likely found in, or suggested by, 
 mediaeval Italian chronicles. The action of 
 the drama is subsequent to the tragic ending 
 of the love of Giuliano and Isabella, as 
 tragic and sudden as that which came upon 
 Paolo and Francesca ; but more terrible, 
 because of the appalling disclosure of blind 
 human helplessness in sleep. We learn, 
 not all at once, that the two beautiful 
 sisters, the Duchess Isabella and Beatrice, 
 lived at Poggio-Gherardi ; that Isabella 
 came to love Giuliano, a handsome young 
 lord of Fontelucente (a principality or 
 seigneury as vague as " PArmiranda," the 
 " old Tuscan town ") ; and that Beatrice 
 secretly loves his brother Virginio ; that il 
 Duca learned the truth, and one night 
 returned to Poggio-Gherardi, or came sud- 
 denly upon Giuliano and Isabella as they 
 lay asleep in her bed-chamber, and silently 
 thrust his long poniard through Giuliano's 
 heart ; that Isabella awoke, perhaps in 
 time to see the sinister face behind her 
 lover's fallen head, and certainly in time 
 314
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 to be " inundated " in his life-blood, and 
 lay silent and motionless all night, holding 
 her dead lover to her breast, till, at dawn, 
 her women found her death-white, mutter- 
 ing, in still and awful madness. Thereafter, 
 we infer, Isabella has been sent to the ducal 
 retreat at l'Armiranda, to be tended by 
 Teodata and a physician. The drama-motive 
 is the unfolding of her madness in exquisite 
 and unforgettably beautiful fantasy ; in the 
 effort of the physician to cure, or at least 
 to alleviate, her mental suffering ; in the 
 sudden and perturbing appearance of the 
 dead man's brother, Virginio ; in the half- 
 uncertain, half-suggested love of Virginio 
 and Beatrice, or at least of hers for him ; 
 in the all but successful healing through a 
 wonderful identification of Isabella with 
 " the green life " of the forest, and in the 
 sudden and final relapse. From first to 
 last there is a terror lest a spot of red be 
 seen. No scarlet or ruddy flower or blossom 
 is allowed in the garden or wood ; nothing 
 that can suggest blood the blood of 
 Giuliano. The reader trembles when a 
 thorn pricks Isabella's white arm, and a red 
 bead of blood catches her startled, remem- 
 bering eyes ; instinctively starts, perhaps, 
 when a scarlet ladybird alights on her white 
 315
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 robe, moving like a trickling drop. Through 
 scenes of poignant pathos and beauty the 
 play moves till the fantastic, unreal, but 
 strangely fascinating figure of Virginio 
 comes upon the stage. This creature of 
 the woods for he is this, more than human 
 is akin to Goethe's Euphorion, to the 
 Faun in Transformation, to the figure kneel- 
 ing by Procris in Piero da Cosimo's familiar 
 picture, to D'Annunzio's own " Sirenetta " 
 in La Gioconda. In Virginio and in La 
 Sirenetta I do think that while D'Annunzio 
 may consciously be the symbolist, uncon- 
 sciously or consciously he is following the 
 same instinct of the Renaissance artists 
 (with whom he has so much in common) 
 as made them say Giovanni Bazzi, or 
 Piero da Cosimo, both so typical introduce 
 into their pictures pagan or mythological 
 figures, fauns, satyrs, and the like, some- 
 times with a definite significance, sometimes 
 because of their strange beauty only, their 
 obsession of more than half pagan minds. 
 Nevertheless, la Sirenetta may be intended 
 as a symbol of innocent and beautiful 
 young life, and Virginio as a symbol of 
 remote youth not as commonly understood, 
 not as the youth of men now, but as the 
 primitive youth of man, whose mother is 
 316
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 Nature. Perhaps it will be easier for the 
 reader to understand something of the vague, 
 yet significant charm of Virginio if I add 
 that he suggests kinship with the central 
 figure in Pater's Apollo in Picardy, or that 
 in Denys VAuxerrois. 
 
 An undramatic drama : a morbid motive, 
 morbidly worked out that, doubtless, is 
 what some readers will think of the Sogno 
 d 1 un Mattino di Primavera. But the play 
 moves ; scene unfolds naturally out of 
 scene ; there is no disenchantment by 
 ill-timed lapse or break. As in all 
 D'Annunzio's, as in all Italian, drama, 
 there is too much and too lengthy mono- 
 logue. The desert -reminiscences in La Gio- 
 conda, for example, would hardly be tolerated 
 on the English stage. But in beauty there 
 is, perhaps, nothing else in its kind that 
 that can be compared with this play ; I 
 find no words adequate. Is there any living 
 dramatist who could depict Isabella and her 
 oneness with the " green life " of the woods 
 as D'Annunzio has done ? Even in a frag- 
 ment, and that a translation, something of 
 this is evident : 
 
 ISABELLA. Yes yes the horse neighs behind 
 them, while they wander on. Look, look, doctor ; 
 are not Isabella and the fruit-tree one and the 
 
 317
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 same ? [She moves swiftly to the sunlit orange- 
 tree, and buries her head among its green foliage. 
 Looking towards the old man, and holding with 
 each hand the pliant ends of two branches, she 
 crosses and winds them about her neck and shoulders, 
 remaining thus, mixed with the foliage as though 
 part of it, her face half covered by the green leaves. 
 Her long sleeves are fallen back on her shoulders, 
 and leave her white arms bare.] 
 
 THE DOCTOR. Yes, one and the same thing. 
 
 ISABELLA. I see green as if the pupils of 
 my eyes were two transparent leaves. The little 
 nerves of the leaves are luminous against the 
 sunlight. . . . Oh, a little leaf lapping ! How 
 luminous it is and soft as wax as though it 
 would melt in my breath. How tender it is ! 
 How sweet it is ! ... Make me a green robe, 
 of tender green, so that the little new leaves 
 will have no fear of me when I move among them. 
 . . i I am not Isabella : I am no more Isabella : 
 the green things have taken me to themselves : 
 I am one of them, I am one of them, one and the 
 same thing. 
 
 In her lovely helplessness Isabella recalls 
 Melisande and Selysette. There is, too, in 
 D'Annunzio's play, as in Pelleas et Meli- 
 sande, a significant ignoring or a blindness 
 to the culpability of the beautiful forlorn 
 transgressor. Melisande is as a little child 
 baffled by winds of unknown and obscure 
 forces ; Isabella has no thought, nor has 
 her sister or Teodata, or the old Doctor, 
 that she was taken in her sin, the sweet,
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 puzzled sin of youth. To all she is simply 
 beautiful and unfortunate ; no other senti- 
 ment is ever dreamed of than pity for 
 her, regret for the slain youth of the lover, 
 a wordless resentment against the sinister 
 slayer, whose action yet seems to all too 
 natural, too inevitable, to arraign. 
 
 When the play ends (and D'Annunzio 
 uses repetitive "decoration" as Maeter- 
 linck does, to enhance impression e.g., the 
 reiterated " Profound silence, interrupted 
 only by the cries of swallows, the tumultu- 
 ous hum of bees, a rising and falling breath 
 of wind ") a final cloud has come upon the 
 mind of Isabella. The last we see of her is 
 as she stands slowly letting fall soft blossoms 
 over her hair, cheeks, lips, hands, remember- 
 ing nothing now ; stooping to the fallen 
 garland which had meant so much, lifting 
 it, looking at it idly, and with a faint 
 child-like smile murmuring bewilderedly, 
 " Per una ghirlandetta" 
 
 The Dream of a Spring Morning is not 
 like any play by Maeterlinck, yet, but for 
 the wandering fire of his genius, I do not 
 think it would have been written. It is, in 
 Italian literature, what Pelleas et Melisande 
 is in literature written in French. Nothing 
 so piteous, so beautiful, so delicate, so 
 319
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 poignantly unforgettable, exists in modern 
 Italian. 
 
 There can be no question, however, of 
 how little of Maeterlinck and of how much 
 of D'Annunzio is in the Dream of an Autumn 
 Sunset. Here are no reserve, no delicacy, 
 no nuance, no vague or deep symbolism, 
 but fierce colour, crude emotions, barbaric 
 cries and instincts, a "Venetian splendour " 
 become a debauch, an atmosphere intoler- 
 ably surcharged with passion that is a rather 
 savage hysteria, an inchoate panorama of 
 distorted images, a wild pele-mele of gorgeous 
 barges, torch -lit gondolas, flitting figures; 
 nude courtesans, lawless passions, cunning 
 magicians, and, through all, the insane 
 dementia of the woman Gradeniga, la 
 Dogaressa. 
 
 This play is shorter than the Spring 
 Morning ; is not subdivided into scenes, 
 and the dramatic action centres on "la 
 Gradeniga," the Dogaressa. The woman 
 Pentella, the women spies Lucrezia, Caterina, 
 Ordella, Nerissa, and the Slavonian sorceress, 
 are mere stage puppets. The story may or 
 may not be historical or have an historical 
 basis ; it is Annunzio's here, and no other's. 
 The drama unfolds itself " at the domain 
 of a patrician of Venice, on the bank of the 
 320
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Anaunzio 
 
 Brenta, bequeathed by one of the doges 
 to his Most Serene widow, now living here 
 in exile." It opens as " the autumnal day is 
 ending in beauty at once rich and sad." 
 D'Annunzio describes the setting of his 
 scene with an opulence of detail which 
 pertains to the romancist rather than to the 
 dramatist ; it is all very wonderful, very 
 picturesque, very decadent ; from the vivid 
 purple and saffron colours in the sky, to 
 ' ' the marvellous aerial stairway crowned with 
 a loggia whence one can see the garden, the 
 Brenta, and the distant country " ; from 
 an equally wonderful " atrium " to iron 
 railings " like those which surround the 
 tombs of the Scaliger at Verona " (as the 
 marble circular stairway is like that of " the 
 Venetian palace called ' del Bovolo ' in the 
 Court of the Contrarini ") ; from pilasters 
 on which are fixed the great golden fans 
 erected at the prows of galleys, to the garden 
 itself, vast, pathwayed, showing now a mass 
 of discoloured leaves, ruinous flowers, over- 
 ripe fruit, " a garden leaning towards the 
 waters of the Brenta with the abandon of a 
 voluptuous and languid creature, lying by 
 a mirror wherein she contemplates the last 
 splendour of her decaying beauty ! " Vast, 
 moveless clouds, shining in amber and pale 
 n 321 x
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 gold, are suspended in the north, some 
 resting seemingly on the domed summits 
 of the pines, some pierced by the shafts of 
 sombre cypresses. 
 
 From the first moment the Dogaressa is 
 repellent. She is infatuated with a lover 
 far younger than herself, who, weary of 
 her, is about to yield an open triumph to 
 a dreaded rival, a beautiful courtesan of 
 Venice. 
 
 It is needless to follow this play in detail. 
 It is an hysterical screech throughout, 
 alleviated by a few lovely images, pictorial 
 " asides," passages of malign beauty. A 
 sorceress arrives ; the Dogaressa 's women 
 come back with maddening reports of what 
 they have seen, of Panthea white and 
 beautiful upon the Bucentaur, of her lover 
 laughing at her feet, of the great festal 
 procession of the barges and galleys ; of 
 the extraordinary love-chase of the nude 
 Panthea by her baffled lover, in face of the 
 multitude in the galleys. Then as night 
 falls, and the incantations of the sorceress 
 arise, a sudden conflagration startles all, 
 and a tumult breaks out. Fierce strife has 
 begun among rival factions at the water- 
 festival, and, before long, the Bucentaur 
 is suddenly in flames. The women in the 
 322
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 garden hurry to and fro with torches, and 
 two of them suddenly run forward, crying 
 the wild tidings : 
 
 BARBARA. Panthea is in the flames ! 
 
 ORDELLA. Panthea is in the flames ! 
 
 [The DOGARESSA bounds impetuously to her feet, 
 and casts the mutilated waxen image from her and 
 lets it fall, unheeded now, to the ground.] 
 
 BARBARA [hurrying breathlessly]. Panthea 
 burns ! The Bucentaur is on fire ! Swords flash 
 everywhere ! 
 
 ORDELLA [half suffocated with anguish of fear]. 
 The Bucentaur is on fire, and the flames enwrap 
 the courtesan and every one ! ... It sails up 
 the Brenta ... it is close to us now ! 
 
 BARBARA. A battle, Serenissima, a battle is 
 being fought all are mad with fury every 
 barge is attacked blood runs it is a carnage .... 
 They come nearer here they come. Hark ! Hark ! 
 
 [The tumult grows, coming nearer and nearer : 
 at the bottom of the garden the blood-red reflection 
 of the burning Bucentaur flames through the dusk. 
 Mad with grief and terror, the DOGARESSA throws 
 herself towards the spiral stairway of the tower. 
 The SORCERESS lifts the fallen, pin-pierced waxen 
 image, and deposits it at the feet of the bronze 
 Venus.] 
 
 PENTELLA [from the summit of the spiral marble 
 staircase]. The fire ! The fire ! It is beneath me ! 
 It is the Bucentaur with Panthea burned covered 
 with burning bodies. The battle rages still 
 swords flash a myriad swords fire and blood ! 
 
 [The DOGARESSA, unable to move, leans helplessly 
 on the balustrade, mute, mad with grief and terror, 
 
 323
 
 Some Dramas of Gdbnele D'Annunzio 
 
 while the garden is now aflame with the burning 
 Bucentaur and echoing with the savage cries of the 
 combatants : " Panthea ! Panthea / Panthea I "] 
 
 And so this orgy of blood, fire, and 
 horror comes to an end. We have the 
 dramatist's " direction " at the last that 
 the livid and despairing face of the Doga- 
 ressa is lit as with " a bloody reverberation " 
 of what is happening, "and expresses all the 
 grandeur and all the beauty of the tragic 
 scene." Alas, we cannot but think of her 
 as a horrible and degraded madwoman; 
 of the other personages as pantomimic 
 maniacs ; and of the whole play as to 
 repeat words just written an orgy of blood, 
 fire, and horror an orgy of lust, super- 
 stition, and the putrescent splendour of an 
 insane vision. 
 
 In these two short plays, then, as I have 
 already said, we have Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 at two extremes. His maturer work is 
 neither so poignantly beautiful as the story 
 of the Duchess Isabella, nor so luridly 
 sensuous and offensive as that of the 
 Dogaressa Gradeniga, but partakes of the 
 dominant quality of each. There is evi- 
 dence of a morbid, occasionally almost an 
 insane imagination, in La Citta Morta and 
 La Gioconda, which reminds us of the 
 324
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 author of // Sogno d'un Tramonto d'Autunno ; 
 but in La Gioconda there are passages and 
 one or two scenes, and many pages and 
 scene after scene in The Dead City, of a 
 beauty so incomparable that we know no 
 other could have written them but the author 
 of II Sogno d'un Mattino di Primavera. 
 
 La Gioconda is the only play by Gabriele 
 D'Annunzio which has been performed in 
 this country. But for the spell of the name 
 of Eleanora Duse, but for her genius, it 
 could hardly have won the startled atten- 
 tion of an English audience. The drama of 
 art is the very last kind of dramatic art to 
 appeal to the general public here. French 
 wit and buffoonery, German domesticity 
 and farce, these can be and are commonly 
 welcome ; but the play which turns upon 
 a complex problem of art has little chance 
 of tolerance except from a few. It is easy 
 to say, as most critics said and many visitors 
 appear to have said, that Lucio Settala the 
 sculptor is simply a libertine, with (some 
 add) the special licence of the artistic tem- 
 perament. There is no such licence ; and 
 with too many people " the artistic tem- 
 perament " is simply a euphemism for selfish 
 weakness. On the other hand, the shape 
 and colour, the growth, the idiosyncrasy, 
 325
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 the need of the creative nature (a rare 
 and peculiar thing, not for a moment to 
 be confused with " the artistic tempera- 
 ment," which, as an American humorist 
 says, is as common and disagreeable as 
 measles), is generally neither understood 
 nor sympathised with. La Gioconda, which 
 phrase by phrase, page by page, moves in 
 a procession of delicate words and lovely 
 images, has, in Italy, been hailed by the 
 best judges as one of the most beautiful 
 and remarkable plays of the modern Italian 
 drama. " Cosa bella mortal passa, e non 
 d'arte " ; and La Gioconda will be remem- 
 bered when its detractors, who pronounced 
 it morbidly full of horrors and mutilation, 
 have long been silent. 
 
 I had meant to devote much space to 
 La Citta Morta, as the most beautiful of 
 D'Annunzio's plays, but there is not now 
 the same need for this since the recent 
 publication of The Dead City, an admirable 
 translation by Mr. Arthur Symons. There 
 is nothing of Gabriele D'Annunzio's which 
 has been more discussed than this remark- 
 able play ; it is at once the most perfect of 
 his writings and that which has given the 
 greatest cause of offence. To some it is 
 one of the most essentially dramatic plays 
 326
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 of our time ; to others it is merely an 
 unpleasant attempt along a line ventured 
 upon by few modern dramatists since 
 Shelley wrote The Cenci. It may be said 
 at once that if one miss the central idea in 
 The Dead City the play must seem little 
 less than revolting ; for we have here an 
 instance of the overwhelming power of a 
 supremely dramatic idea to transform what 
 is ordinarily beyond the scope of art into 
 what is convincingly a subject for art. If 
 one can admit the spiritual or psychological 
 power of evil of an abstract idea, then there 
 is no difficulty in understanding the tragic 
 circumstance upon which this drama turns. 
 In The Revolt of Islam, in Ford's well- 
 known play, in one or two other dramas 
 and romances, the illicit love of brother and 
 sister has been the central motive. Perhaps 
 the most potent reason for the common 
 refusal to accept even these first -named 
 writings as works of true art is not their 
 subject so much as the lack of any suffi- 
 ciently strong and convincingly fundamental 
 idea to justify that choice in subject. This, 
 at least, cannot be urged against The Dead 
 City. The group of four people it must 
 be admitted, all " predisposed," as Nordau 
 would say fulfil the drama of their strange, 
 327
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriels D'Annunzio 
 
 passionate, in a sense demented lives near 
 and among the ruins of Mycenae, where 
 " Leonardo " is searching for the ages- 
 long interred bodies of the Atridae and 
 Cassandra. That ancient terrible crime, 
 whose tragic story in Greek drama is still 
 the most appalling in art, throws its sinister 
 light on all. As in the A ntigone of Sophocles, 
 so too in La Citta Morta we feel that " Fate 
 works Her own dread work," that " there is 
 no saviour from appointed woe," and that 
 from overhead, from around, from beneath, 
 "intolerable destiny" fulfils itself in terror 
 and beauty a beauty almost more unen- 
 durable than the sombre terror itself. No 
 one of the four characters of the play 
 knows what dreadful ill is being engendered 
 in the crime-impregnated soil of the tombs 
 of the Atridae. All are caught in that evil, 
 as strayed birds in a net. 
 
 Here is at once the strength and weak- 
 ness of La Citta Morta. It has a motive of 
 supreme tragedy, it has the soul of a tragic 
 and terrible idea. But, also, it has that 
 fatal weakness in the treatment of " inevit- 
 able fate " which distinguishes the modern 
 dramatist. This is a weakness we never 
 find in ^Eschylus or Sophocles, whose men 
 and woman do not relinquish all at the 
 328
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 mere shadow of a passing fatality, but are, 
 in the end, overcome by an inscrutable 
 and irresistible Destiny, struggled against 
 to the last for all its inscrutable resistless- 
 ness. We cannot but feel that the four 
 persons in The Dead City, as so many of 
 the persons in D'Annunzio's dramas and 
 romances, are what they are, not because 
 this is what they must be, but because this is 
 what they have made themselves, or allow 
 themselves to remain, or imagine themselves. 
 I need not here go into the details of the 
 working out of the terrible tragedy of La 
 Citta Morta. Now that we have an English 
 version so admirable as that of Arthur 
 Symons, The Dead City is attainable by any 
 one who cares to read it. It has so much 
 beauty that one can read and re-read with 
 an instant pleasure ; but even this continual 
 beauty is sometimes at the verge of sanity, 
 as (when not over it) are the four persons 
 who enact "this bitter theme." In its 
 extraordinary subtlety, much of the play is 
 purely literary, not dramatic, to make a 
 present distinction. Even in " the other 
 world " of romance men and women do not 
 talk thus : 
 
 ALESSANDRO. I have met you in dreams as 
 now I meet you in life. You belong to me as if 
 
 329
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 you were my creation, formed of my hands, 
 inspired by my breath. Your face is beautiful 
 in me as a thought in me is beautiful. When 
 your eyelids quiver it seems to me that they 
 quiver like my blood, and that the shadow of 
 your eyelashes touches the root of my heart. 
 
 BIANCA MARIA. You exalt with your breath 
 the humblest of creatures. I have been only a 
 good sister. 
 
 ALESSANDRO. . . . Wherever there was a trace 
 of the great myths or a fragment of the imaginings 
 of beauty with which the chosen race transfigures 
 the force of the world, she passed with her reviving 
 grace, passing lightly over the distance of centuries 
 as if she followed the song of the nightingale across 
 a country strewn with ruins. 
 
 The Dead City stands alone among recent 
 dramatic literature for beauty of phrase 
 and workmanship. On every page, almost, 
 one may hold festival. But to say this is 
 one thing : to say that it is also a great 
 drama is another. For one, I consider it 
 to be of the most memorable and significant 
 dramas I have read, the most memorable 
 perhaps, the most significant ; but that, it 
 may be, is because with some of us the power 
 of the idea is greater than the power of all 
 but the supreme expression of an idea. 
 One obvious objection to La Citta Morta 
 is its extreme, its omnipresent, morbidity. 
 330
 
 Some Dramas of Gabnele D'Annunzio 
 
 Everybody is morbid ; the play is the last 
 word of the decadent exalted in the pride 
 of a decadence already moribund. 
 
 In La Gloria, as already hinted, we have 
 at once the least known and the most ambi- 
 tious of D'Annunzio's plays ; longer than 
 La Gioconda, longer perhaps than La Cittd 
 Morta even, it is much more involved than 
 either is, indeed, of so complex a nature 
 that the foreign reader at least may well be 
 uncertain as to his accurate interpretation 
 of the author's meaning. Is La Comnena, 
 that mysterious woman whose malign genius 
 and influence dominate this drama, more 
 than a heroic figure, an Empress -Elect ? 
 Is she indeed more than " La Gloria " ? 
 The motto of the book, it is true, seems at 
 once to suggest and to limit the interpre- 
 tation, La Gloria mi somiglia. But it is 
 possible and on a first reading the present 
 writer thus interpreted Elena Comnena 
 that she stands for Rome itself : not the 
 Rome of any one age or of all the ages, 
 neither pagan nor Christian, nor mediaeval 
 nor modern Rome, but the very spirit of 
 Rome itself, proud with an insane pride, 
 and terrible and relentless in that pride, 
 that insane obsession. Certainly this inter- 
 pretation is at least permissible ; nor, if 
 331
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 accepted, does it clash with that apparently 
 indicated by the motto quoted above, " I 
 am as Glory herself." 
 
 La Gloria is not only the most ambitious 
 of D'Annunzio's plays, but is unquestion- 
 ably remarkable. No doubt the author was 
 inspired to write this play by his own 
 comparatively recent identification with 
 Italian Parliamentary life. Signer D'An- 
 nunzio entered Parliament with high but 
 by no means chimerical ideals : from the 
 first he seems to have been animated by an 
 intense pride of and faith in his country, 
 her past and her destinies, and, above all, 
 by unbounded pride of and faith in Rome 
 the eternal, the City of Cities, Mother of 
 Nations. If there is one great Roman who 
 more than any other was much in his mind 
 when he was writing La Gloria, surely it 
 was the famous tribune, Rienzi. Certainly 
 Ruggero Flamma, in many respects, recalls 
 that historic figure. It is difficult to dis- 
 cern wherein this play is actual and where 
 symbolical. Elena Comnena, Cesare Bronte, 
 Ruggero Flamma are they severally an 
 ambitious Roman Cleopatra, a dying cham- 
 pion of the old order, the prophet and leader 
 of a new dispensation : or is La Comnena 
 merely the embodied spirit of that malign 
 332
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 destiny of which we speak as Glory : is 
 Cesare Bronte the impersonation of that 
 which is for ever dying and passing, fighting 
 desperately to the last against ideals and 
 aims which, wolf-like, have turned to rend 
 and destroy : is Ruggero Flamma no other 
 than impetuous, divinely confident, superbly 
 audacious Youth that Youth which, as 
 Ibsen tells us, is for ever knocking at our 
 doors itself so soon to be broken, ruined, 
 and remorselessly trampled under the unseen 
 feet of Change ? 
 
 It would be impracticable here to attempt 
 anything like an adequate digest of La 
 Gloria. Unlike La Gioconda or La Citta 
 Morta, even its fundamental plot cannot be 
 told succinctly : it is at once as compact 
 and multiform as "La Folia " itself La 
 Folia, the Crowd, whose sea -like tumult, 
 wrath, subsidence, whose impetuous and 
 blind clamour, forever recurrent, give so 
 overwhelmingly an effective background or 
 undertone to this drama. One hears the 
 significant voice of La Folia with D'An- 
 nunzio this abstraction becomes a single 
 living creature, ominous, irresponsible, un- 
 constrained from first to last : the play 
 opens with its menacing laughter and closes 
 with its savage, unreasoning yells for the 
 333
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 martyrdom of its dethroned idol. In this 
 connection one looks with singular interest 
 to the publication of that drama to which 
 I have already alluded, La Folia ; for here, 
 it may be, D'Annunzio will give us, through 
 the alchemy of the imagination, a new 
 transmutation from the abstract to the 
 actual, a new but inverted transformation 
 of Demos. 
 
 Briefly, La Gloria illustrates the rise and 
 fall of Ruggero Flamma. Behind, through, 
 and beyond his individual destiny is the 
 more potent and mysterious destiny of 
 Elena Comnena, the wife of the dying 
 Cesare Bronte La Comnena, that beauti- 
 ful, scornful, imperious woman, citizen, and 
 Empress the breath of whose will seems to 
 have power to make not only the souls of 
 men rise up and go down and pass away, but 
 the destinies of nations also, the supreme 
 destiny of Rome itself. The play opens 
 with the coming of defeat to the partisans 
 of the moribund Cesare Bronte, with the 
 popular advent of Ruggero Flamma. All 
 between this opening and the final scenes 
 s concerned with the passionate effort of 
 Flamma to reach his ends, to fulfil his 
 ideals, with his immense triumph and 
 inevitable disastrous collapse, with the 
 334
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 bitter scorn, the bitter remorselessness, and 
 the still more bitter love of Elena Comn&na, 
 in whose fatal net Ruggero Flamma is 
 entangled from the first, from which he 
 never escapes, and, as one realises, never 
 could escape. When, at the opening, the 
 streets of Rome resound to the acclaim of 
 those who hail Ruggero Flamma as Liberator- 
 Elect, and unharness his horses and carry 
 him past the house of his dying oppo- 
 nent, Cesare Bronte ; when Flamma himself 
 harangues the surging multitude, eager to 
 win over the still-loyal soldiery ; and when, 
 above the part infuriated, part mocking and 
 insolent crowd the face of the fascinating 
 and hated woman whom they call La Com- 
 nna looks out from a window almost from 
 that moment one hears the gathering of 
 distant cries of hate, the savage turning of 
 the imperiously led upon the fallen leader, 
 the shouts of Gettaci la sua testa ! Gettaci la 
 sua testa ! " Throw us his head ! Throw his 
 head to us ! " 
 
 That Elena Comnna stands for more 
 than an individual woman is early made 
 evident by a passage in the first act, where 
 one Fulvio asks, " To how many defunct 
 kings, emperors, and princes did old Cesare 
 ally himself in marrying La Comnna ? " 
 335
 
 Some Dramas of Gabriele D'Annunzio 
 
 and the answer of one Fieschi, " To nineteen 
 kings, ten emperors, seventy-seven sovereign 
 princes, ninety ' protosebasti,' one hundred 
 and fifteen ' curopalati,' and to all the rotten 
 plutocracy of Byzanzia." She may be 
 Byzance, she may be Rome ; but doubtless 
 this imperial woman is one common to both 
 and to many other dead cities and empires : 
 la Gloria mi somiglia. 
 
 This remarkable drama is so different 
 from anything else that D'Annunzio has 
 done that we may well believe it stands 
 for a great change that has come to him, to 
 his art. What that change is, what its 
 import is, we shall doubtless see in those 
 as yet unpublished dramatic writings which 
 Gabriele D'Annunzio has since written, or 
 upon which, as is known, he is now 
 engaged. 
 
 336
 
 ITALIAN POETS OF TO-DAY 
 (1902) 
 
 IT has been the vogue for a considerable 
 time to speak of contemporary Italian 
 literature as a negligible quantity ; as at 
 best a beautiful garden, now untended and 
 unkempt, where the few flowers are all 
 but undiscoverable among the wilderness of 
 weedy growths a garden illumined, it may 
 be, by the sunset radiance of Carducci, or 
 by the summer-lightning of Gabriele D'An- 
 nunzio. Generalisations of the kind are 
 notoriously misleading. Guy de Maupassant 
 trenchantly alluded to them as the boome- 
 rangs of the would-be clever, that on occasion 
 might hit their object, but were more likely 
 to return upon the thrower. The other day 
 we read in a foreign summary that since 
 Walter Scott no novelist of note had 
 appeared in our country, and that since 
 Byron the British Muse had been silent. 
 This statement is not further from the mark 
 than that alluded to as common among us, 
 " 337 Y
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 nor than the rash assertion made a short 
 time ago by one who ought to have known 
 better, that there was not a latter-day 
 poet, painter, or musician in Italy who stood 
 above mediocrity and this in the Italy of 
 Carducci, of Segantini, of Verdi ! 
 
 A juster note was struck a few years ago 
 by one of the foremost French critics, the 
 Vicomte Melchior de Vogue, in whose now 
 famous essay on the Latin Renaissance occur 
 these significant words : 
 
 L'ltalie est a cette heure le foyer d'une veritable 
 renaissance de la poesie et du roman. L'esprit, 
 qui souffle ou il veut, rallume la des clartes 
 evanouies sous d'autres cieux. 
 
 In the same year an Italian critic of repute, 
 Alberto Manzi, thus hopefully concludes " a 
 summary and outlook " : 
 
 Young, strong, feverishly studious and laborious, 
 Italy is passing through a fertile period of pre- 
 paration which will before long lead to a great 
 and splendid display of her artistic, literary, and 
 scientific vitality. 
 
 The truth must be sought somewhere 
 between these optimistic declarations and 
 the deep despondency of the late Ruggero 
 Bonghi, who (writing, it must be remembered, 
 some five or six years earlier, and at a time of 
 338
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 exceptional national depression) expressed 
 himself thus : 
 
 In the literary life of the nation there are signs 
 of the same languor that paralyses its economical 
 life. I see no sign of improvement. I should be 
 very glad if there were a way out of so great a 
 lethargy ; but I do not find it. I think that the 
 chief cause is the lack of any strong moral move- 
 ment ; there is nothing that agitates the public mind. 
 
 The phrase of Monsieur de Vogue not 
 only aroused European attention : it was 
 welcomed in Italy, and sank deep into the 
 finer national consciousness. The distin- 
 guished French critic was accepted as a 
 prophet. For Italy he foresees a worthy 
 destiny. It is not, perhaps, the destiny 
 dreamed of by those who carved the inchoate 
 " geographical expression " into the soli- 
 darity of a united realm ; or of those who 
 to-day would strain the national resources 
 for the Fata Morgana of a militant world- 
 Power ; but it is a destiny at once high and 
 possible. It is not, says M. de Vogue truly, 
 to be achieved by war, and with great 
 ships. It is not a destiny to be won by the 
 sword, but by the pen (" avec quelques 
 condottieri de la plume "). 
 
 But what is of more immediate concern 
 is that the Vicomte de Vogue discerns 
 
 339
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 clearly what the student of contemporary 
 Italian literature must realise, if he is to 
 form any just estimate, that there is in the 
 Italian genius a conflict of two opposing 
 influences, the one mystical, idealistic, aus- 
 tere, at times ascetic, the other sensual 
 and pagan. Into this conflict of " les 
 deux genies opposes, qui se disputerent de 
 tout temps 1'ame italienne," has entered 
 another element, the brooding spirit of the 
 North. To the sadness and pessimism in- 
 herent in the Latin nature, along with the 
 more obvious pagan delight in and absorbing 
 preoccupation with life for life's sake, have 
 come another sadness and another pre- 
 occupation. The Melancolia whom Diirer 
 limned in symbol and De Quincey adum- 
 brated in words, whom the musicians of the 
 North breathed in strange airs and har- 
 monies ; whom Schopenhauer has disclosed, 
 and Ibsen served, and Nietszche interpreted ; 
 who has inspired the Slavonic mind from 
 Tolstoi and Turgeniev to Dostoievski and 
 Maxim Gorki this new melancholy (coming 
 to Italy ever with a Teutonic aspect and 
 accent) has taken its place in the Italian 
 soul to work for good or evil. We hear 
 much of the pagan tendency of the Latin 
 genius ; to-day the thought of Italy is more 
 340
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 coloured with longing and bewilderment 
 than with that hedonistic vision of life 
 which is supposed to be the peculiar attri- 
 bute of the peoples of the South. It is not 
 D'Annunzio (as is so commonly assumed 
 abroad) who is the true representative of the 
 Italian mind, not even Carducci, the greatest 
 of Italian pacts since Leopardi. The true 
 representatives are writers such as the nor- 
 therners Antonio Fogazzaro, Arturo Graf, 
 Ada Negri ; as the southerners Mario 
 Rapisardi, Giovanni Verga, Matilde Serao. 
 In these the cry of revolt is against the 
 conditions of life as incurred by human 
 wrong and folly. In Carducci it is a vain 
 cry of revolt against the inevitable change 
 of ideals and circumstances, a cry of longing 
 for the life that was, the beauty that has 
 diminished ; the cry that in his verse 
 echoes in : 
 
 L'ora presente & in vano, non fa che percuotere e 
 
 fugge : 
 Sol nel passato & il bello, sol ne la wiorte & il vero ; * 
 
 the cry that in his militant prose echoes in 
 phrases such as this : " Poetry to-day is 
 
 * " The present hour is as naught ; it is gone 
 
 even as it sounds : 
 
 In the past alone is Beauty ; only in death 
 hides the True." 
 
 341
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 useless from not having learned that it has 
 nothing to do with the exigencies of the 
 moment." It is, however, a vain cry only 
 in so far as the concentration of spiritual 
 or intellectual energy on an impossible 
 recovery, or in futile lament, is a vain 
 essay, however clothed in beauty ; the cry 
 is the wisdom of the seer and the prophetic 
 voice of the poet when the things of the 
 past, sought for in longing, are truly recover- 
 able, or when the lament for what is gone 
 is not a wailing over what has perished, but 
 a summons to a living spirit to return. 
 The strength and the weakness of Carducci 
 stand revealed in the sane vision of the 
 great poet, and in the wavering mirage of 
 the lesser poet. 
 
 In D'Annunzio we hear another cry the 
 cry of revolt again, but of revolt against 
 spiritual and intellectual ennui (as an im- 
 posed evil rather than as an incurred 
 disease), of revolt against the wise tyranny 
 of the actual, of revolt against that straight 
 road of the commonweal, the via media 
 which the wisdom of the ancients has pro- 
 jected far beyond us into the ages to follow ; 
 the cry of temperament, the cry of exacer- 
 bated nerves, the cry of the singer who 
 thinks of the whole world as an air to be 
 342
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 played delicately upon his flute, the cry of 
 art withdrawn from the heart into the mind, 
 the cry of egoism, of the supreme egotist. 
 
 It is because of this triple element in 
 contemporary Italian literature this mysti- 
 cal, idealistic, austere element, this sensual 
 and pagan element, and this element of 
 intellectual melancholy " cette vraie 
 maladie septentrionale," as M. Bourget 
 calls it that we shall do better to seek 
 the reflection in the writings of a few 
 typical minds rather than in the " imma- 
 gine fluente " presented by the ampler but 
 confused mirror of the literature of the day 
 and hour a mirror in which we may dis- 
 cover tendencies and tide -reach and ebb- 
 fall, but too vast and complex for any but 
 the broadest synthesis of what it reveals. 
 And as this article is to deal with the out- 
 standing features of recent Italian poetry, 
 and not with the complex physiognomy of 
 fiction, the selection should comprise only 
 the most significant figures Carducci and 
 Arturo Graf and D'Annunzio, Antonio 
 Fogazzaro and Ada Negri and Giovanni 
 Pascoli. Among the rest are many poets of 
 fine achievement, one or two of rare excel- 
 lence, whom to pass by here is not to ignore. 
 
 There has been a singular undulatory 
 343
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 movement in Italian literature during the 
 last quarter of a century. A wave of talent 
 gathers from the still lagoons, but is barely 
 discerned, at most has moved only a short 
 way, before it lapses ; then again the listless 
 waste ; then again a wave ; and so the 
 melancholy rhythm alternates. But in each 
 successive period the wave is wider, perhaps 
 also deeper. If, in the intervals, the sad 
 prophets have been wont to lament with 
 Bonghi, the more hopeful have been too 
 apt to hail the wave when it comes as no 
 less than an upheaval of the Risorgimento. 
 Both in some degree mislead ; but it is 
 wiser to go a little astray with the eager 
 than to stumble in the slough of despond. 
 To-day three main factors act as deterrents 
 on Italian literature : the absence of a 
 united national ideal ; the continually more 
 conspicuous recession of religious faith to 
 a callous formalism ; and the profound 
 discontent with existing conditions, poli- 
 tical, social, economic, which finds vent in 
 the steady growth of a crude Socialism, and, 
 concurrently, in a gathering disbelief in the 
 stability of the monarchical rock against the 
 coming flood. It is to "Young Italy "that 
 the nation looks above all for salutary 
 inspiration. 
 
 344
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 The high hopes, the passionate Risorgi- 
 mento of the days of the Austrian struggle, 
 of the Garibaldian liberation, of the Mazzi- 
 nian gospel of emancipation, of the triumph 
 of Rome, of the Unification, seem to have 
 lapsed. Heavy taxation, the strain of 
 supporting a great army and a powerful 
 navy, the disastrous enterprise in Abyssinia, 
 the futile dreams of colonial empire, the 
 slow disintegration of monarchical influence, 
 the growth of a hostile Socialism, the appa- 
 rition of the anarchist, the bitter trade- 
 rivalry with France, the tragic assassination 
 of the devoted head of the State (son of the 
 Liberator- King), the financial scandals in 
 Rome, the labour risings from Milan to 
 Palermo, the recurrent ferment in Sicily, 
 the misery of Apulia and the Basilicata, the 
 gradual depopulation of Calabria all this, 
 and more, has moved " immortal Italy " to 
 its depths. It is a welcome augury that, 
 in despite of all, the nation does not despair ; 
 that her statesmen hope ; that her poets and 
 dreamers proclaim a new day. " If only we 
 could believe in the honesty and far-sighted- 
 ness of those set above us, we would shape our 
 destiny as our noblest and truest discern it " 
 that is what one hears everywhere, from 
 Palermo to Venice, from Messina to Milan. 
 345
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 Alas ! that " prevalent political leprosy " 
 on which the late Ruggero Bonghi so 
 continually laid sad insistence is more 
 than all else accountable. The Neapolitans 
 have a saying "Every one is unsettled 
 when Vesuvius is restless " ; and, unfor- 
 tunately, there is a moral Vesuvius which 
 keeps the intellectual activities of the 
 nation in a feverish excitation when it is 
 not in a torpor of hesitancy. Here we have 
 the chief clue to that ominously frequent 
 ebb and flow to which allusion has been made. 
 The causes act so potently that the results 
 immediately follow ; for example, after 
 1887, a year of great despondency and 
 disquietude, the publications of 1888 were 
 fewer by some three hundred. No wonder 
 that in this year Bonghi wrote : "In all 
 that makes literature, my native country 
 has certainly grown feeble and weary, 
 and is growing more so every year." For 
 the next year or two almost nothing of note 
 appeared. A young poet, Mario di Siena, 
 a youth of seventeen, on whom high hopes 
 were set, proved to be but one of the 
 innumerable stelle cadenti. Even that new 
 meteor, D'Annunzio, showed himself at his 
 weakest in Giovanni Episcopo. 
 
 In 1891 the slow wave began to lift 
 346
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 again. Carducci published his noble and 
 patriotic lyrical epic, Piemonte ; and the 
 marked success which met Signora Eugenia 
 Levi's delightful anthology, Dai Nostri 
 Poeti Viventi, showed that not only was 
 Italy " a nest of singing-birds," but that a 
 public far wider than had been foreseen 
 waited ready to listen. Three well-known 
 writers of charming verse added to their 
 reputation by the publication, about this 
 time, of collective editions G. Mazzoni, 
 Giovanni Marradi, and Aurelio Costanzo ; 
 and the " Carducci of the South," the 
 Sicilian master-poet, Mario Rapisardi, made 
 all the insurgent element of Italy re-echo 
 with the fierce lyrical cries of his Giustizia, 
 while at the same time he won the admira- 
 tion of his critics by his more delicately 
 wrought Empedocle. The brief wave culmi- 
 nated before the lapse of 1893 in the beauti- 
 ful Myricce of Giovanni Pascoli, one of the 
 freshest, most winsome, and happiest of 
 modern Italian books ; in an " outburst " 
 of the minor Sicilian poets, fired, perhaps, 
 by Rapisardi's return to popularity notably 
 Eliodoro Lombardi, Ragusa Moleti, and Ugo 
 Ojetti ; in a new departure in sobriety 
 and distinction on the part of D'Annunzio, 
 with Elegie Romane ; and, above all, in the 
 347
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 appearance of that remarkable book, 
 Fatalita, by Ada Negri, with its cry of the 
 dumb and the poor, of the inarticulate 
 suffering of labour, of the vaguely insurgent 
 multitude, of the angry clang (to use the 
 poet's own words) of the enchained masses 
 striking into the silver flutes of those in 
 high places. 
 
 Then again the ebbing wave. The mono- 
 tonous months of the next year or two are 
 relieved by only one newcomer of promise, 
 Alfredo Baccelli, with Vittime e Ribelli.* 
 Even Carducci, Rapisardi, and D'Annunzio 
 fail respectively in // Cadore, Atlantide, and 
 Odi Navale. The subsequent period would 
 be a blank but for the modest appearance 
 of three young writers of promise, the 
 Sicilian Cesareo, the Roman Diego Angeli, 
 the Lombard Antonio della Porta. It must 
 be admitted that the outlook to-day is not 
 more encouraging than it was a decade 
 ago ; perhaps less so since Carducci is now 
 all but silent, and the mature writers of 
 the younger group with the exception of 
 Giovanni Pascoli reveal no advance upon 
 
 * Signer Baccelli is now Under-Secretary of 
 State, and, in his two spheres of influence, one 
 of the outstanding personalities of the younger 
 generation, 
 
 348
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 what they had achieved before 1890. It 
 has been pre-eminently the period of 
 D'Annunzio and the " D'Annunzieggianti," 
 though the fame of this writer is perhaps 
 greater throughout the Continent than in 
 the peninsula, where he is still looked upon 
 somewhat askance, as a clever but audacious 
 and refractory ward is looked upon by an 
 anxious guardian. With justice, too, the 
 Italians resent the frequent assertion abroad 
 that Gabriele D'Annunzio stands alone as 
 representative of the intellectual Italy of 
 to-day, as with justice the Belgians resent 
 the like common assertion in connection 
 with Maurice Maeterlinck. 
 
 Within the last three or four years there 
 have been signs of the returning tide. The 
 low-water mark was probably touched in 
 1897-8, a period barren of any signal 
 literary achievement. True, the much-dis- 
 cussed poetess, Ada Negri, published her 
 fine volume of drab-coloured verse, Tem- 
 peste a lyrical series which reveals, how- 
 ever, no advance upon Fatalitd, while all 
 that stood for weakness in that remarkable 
 first book by an Italian woman in humble 
 life is notably emphasised. It would be 
 unfair to say that this slack period was 
 absolutely barren, for both in the verse and 
 349
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 prose which deserved critical attention were 
 one or two instances of fine work accom- 
 plished, and at least two or three of promise. 
 But, as an able critic (Vicenzo Morello, in 
 his Nell' Arte e Nella Vita) has said, 
 
 These fragile blossoms of song appear one day 
 and disappear the next in that blighting wind of 
 indifference which has so long prevailed from the 
 Alps of the north to the shores of Etna. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is evident an awaken- 
 ing of public interest in national literature* 
 probably in some degree because of the 
 " commemorations " celebrated at the close 
 of the century, with their stirring historical 
 reminiscences and inspiring literary asso- 
 ciations Amerigo Vespucci, Paolo Toscan- 
 elli, Savonarola, Leopardi, Bernini, and 
 others. From the standpoint of letters the 
 period is notable for the immense stride in 
 Italian and European reputation made by 
 one writer, Gabriele D'Annunzio. In one 
 year, in the twelvemonth comprising the 
 otherwise somewhat barren period 1898-9, 
 this writer's amazing output included the 
 three long dramas published in book form, 
 La Cittd Morta, La Gioconda, and La 
 Gloria, and the two shorter dramas sepa- 
 rately issued as the Sogno d'un Mattino di 
 Primavera and the Sogno d'un Tramonto 
 35<>
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 d'Autunno.* La Gioconda and La Cittd 
 Morta have been read and discussed through- 
 out Europe ; and the former has been acted 
 in London and Paris as well as in the chief 
 Italian cities. La Gloria, D'Annunzio's most 
 ambitious dramatic attempt, was unsuccessful 
 on the stage; and, though some of the leading 
 Italian critics spoke of this strange, not to 
 say somewhat enigmatic, play with high 
 praise, their appreciation was never endorsed 
 by that of the public. Already known as a 
 poet and novelist, D'Annunzio had now 
 challenged criticism as a dramatist. But 
 while radical differences of opinion obtain as 
 to the significance and value of his achieve- 
 ment in this direction, there can surely be 
 little question as to the wealth of imagina- 
 tive energy and the continual miracle of art 
 poured forth in these dramas, most notably 
 perhaps in that sombre and terrible play of 
 the buried city, which (with one or two 
 exceptions) has been so inadequately con- 
 sidered by English critics ; or in La Gioconda, 
 of which an eminent Italian critic, Guido 
 
 * The first and third of a dramatic quartet 
 called I Sogni delle Stagioni (Dreams of the Four 
 Seasons'), of which the Sogno d'un Meriggio 
 d'Estate and Sogno d'una Notte d'Inverno are as 
 yet unpublished, 
 
 351
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 Biagi, has aptly said : "In any case La 
 Gioconda has brought into the theatre a 
 breath of fresh and fragrant poetry, which 
 might have come from the blossoming 
 gardens of the Renaissance " ; or in that 
 masterpiece of poignant beauty, the Dream 
 of a Spring Morning, where, in combined 
 loveliness and terror, we find something 
 akin to the Elizabethan magic that we prize 
 so highly in Webster,' in Ford, in Beaumont 
 and Fletcher. 
 
 We cannot in this article further discuss 
 D'Annunzio's achievement in imaginative 
 drama, nor his work in this respect as com- 
 pared with that of Arrigo Boito, Felice 
 Cavallotti, Severino Ferrari, Cossa, and 
 above all Giuseppe Giacosa. But the drift 
 of the most authoritative opinion, foreign 
 and native, is that D'Annunzio has revealed 
 no compelling genius, perhaps not even a 
 genuine talent, for the drama, except as a 
 form of literary expression. All the faults 
 and shortcomings of this perplexing writer 
 are of a nature to render nugatory his 
 ambition to become " the Wagner of the 
 drama." His latest effort, Francesca da 
 Rimini, has failed on the stage ; the radical 
 shortcomings of this poetical drama as an 
 acting play, despite its beauty and charm 
 352
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 and above all its vividness, make it difficult 
 to believe that it can appeal to any but a 
 strictly literary public. 
 
 The close of the nineteenth and the dawn 
 of the twentieth century were not wholly 
 engrossed by " the Deputy for Beauty " 
 to adopt M. de Vogue's phrase and the 
 D'Annunzieggianti,* though his fame was 
 enhanced by the furore which followed 
 the publication of // Fuoco, and the 
 announcement of the long-expected volume 
 of mature verse, Laudi del Cielo, del Mare, 
 delta Terra, e degli Eroi, and of the 
 forthcoming Francesca da Rimini, and the 
 public readings and actual publication 
 of the first instalment of the lyrical epic, 
 La Canzone di Garibaldi. An important 
 new book (besides a volume of notable 
 essays and addresses) by Antonio Fogaz- 
 zaro ; Giovanni Pascoli's second collection 
 of lovely verse, Myrica, hailed with de- 
 light throughout Italy ; t Vittoria Aganoor's 
 
 * Notably D. Tumiati, Antonio della Porta, 
 Angelo Orvieto, Diego Angeli, Angelo Conti. 
 
 t The author is sometimes lovingly called " II 
 Virgilio di nostro tempo," and his idyllic muse 
 and home-note justify the application. To many 
 of his compatriots, moreover, his appeal is the 
 greater because his muse never wanders from 
 familiar ground. No more significant lines of 
 
 " 353 z
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 Leggenda Eterna ; the exquisitely chiselled 
 Primavera Fiorentina of Severino Ferrari 
 (of some of whose earlier work Carducci 
 wrote : " If Petrarch were among us to-day 
 he would be proud of this ") ; Arrigo Boito's 
 much - discussed Nerone ; Arturo Graf's 
 Morgana ; the brilliant colloquial sonnet - 
 sequence of Cesare Pascarella ; the new 
 edition of the Musica antica per Chitana of 
 Domenico Tumiati, foremost of the " Sym- 
 bolists " ; the just published Verso VOriente 
 of Angelo Orvieto, the young author of 
 Sposa Mistica these, and others whom it 
 would be wearisome to enumerate, suffice 
 to show both the vitality and variety of 
 the new " Risorgimento." Perhaps the 
 most significant indication of an Italian 
 public really interested in imaginative litera- 
 ture is the publication, in a single volume 
 at a moderate price, of all the poetry of 
 Carducci in a " popular edition " ; and in 
 the fact that this (for an Italian publisher) 
 daring venture has achieved a wide success. 
 But the true hope is here that all Young 
 Italy reproves despondency, and looks 
 
 his, indeed, could be quoted than those which end 
 the last poem in Myvica : 
 
 lo ne seguira il vano sussurrare 
 Sempre lo stesso, sempre put lontano. 
 
 354
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 forward with courage and determination. 
 It believes in itself, in its national vocation, 
 in the national destiny ; it maintains the 
 survival, within itself, of the ancient spirit 
 of the ancient genius. " It sleeps, that 
 antique spirit," wrote Carducci many years 
 ago, " it sleeps, but is not dead ; and, as a 
 sleeper wakes, so shall it wake, and to a 
 new day." 
 
 When, some pages back, we spoke of 
 the three chief deterrent influences working 
 on the intellectual and spiritual life of the 
 nation, we might have added that in yet 
 another vital respect the writers of Italy are 
 seriously affected. In no other European 
 country, with the possible exception of 
 Spain, is there so marked a divergence 
 between the language of letters and the 
 language of common use, between literary 
 and colloquial speech. The " reading public " 
 in Italy is amazingly small in relation to the 
 population, if we compare it with that of 
 France,^ Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, 
 Great Britain. But the ordinary speech 
 of this relatively small reading public is 
 quite as amazingly distinct from literary 
 diction as is, say, the vernacular of London 
 or New York from the ornate periods of 
 Johnson, Gibbon, or Macaulay, and has 
 355
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 not even the vital connection which, in 
 these cases, underlies the obvious divergence. 
 No wonder that Carducci, the most polished 
 living master of Italian, is all but incom- 
 prehensible to many of his intelligent com- 
 patriots, who find even Antonio Fogazzaro 
 and Emilio De Marchi, Giovanni Verga, and 
 Matilde Serao (the most vernacular of the 
 eminent writers of the day) using a diction 
 which in private life would seem alien, if 
 not wholly artificial. For Italy is above all 
 others the country of dialectical speech. 
 That this barrier is being overcome, and that 
 the directed efforts of the ablest writers and 
 educationalists concur with the slow but 
 steady improvement of the mental training 
 of the masses (i.e., of all classes, from the 
 professional to the poorest, even in densely 
 ignorant Calabria and remote Sicily), affords 
 promise that a truly great national literature 
 will in due time arise in Italy. Fortunately 
 there has always been the connecting bridge 
 of " popular literature " i.e., the colloquial 
 and dialectical local poetry in which Italy has 
 ever been, and still is, so fortunately rich. 
 
 Like so many others of his countrymen 
 now writing circumspectly of the problems, 
 the developments, and the collective move- 
 ment of Italian literature, the late Ruggero 
 356
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 Bonghi (whom we specify as a representa- 
 tive critic) did not realise that the so-called 
 " pagan " or " barbaric " movement headed 
 by Carducci was, and is, one of those 
 inevitable life-seeking movements which 
 periodically occur in every literature, when 
 old ways have become outworn ; or, again, 
 that a regenerative movement of the kind 
 may have to turn backward in order to 
 rediscover the forward way. A large part, 
 possibly the greater and the more vital 
 part, of contemporary Italian literature 
 turns thus upon an apparently retrograde 
 way, turns upon what is called the classical 
 revival. The famous veteran at Bologna is 
 its accepted leader. But neither Carducci 
 nor his adherents (who now comprise nearly 
 all the younger writers of note) attempt a 
 revival of the kind so often imputed. It is 
 not mere imitation of the past that is the 
 end in view, but, through a following of the 
 same avenues of art as those in which the 
 great poets of old reached their goal, to reach 
 in turn the same or a still higher goal. To 
 this end it was necessary to break away 
 from the conventions which had so ham- 
 pered, not to say devitalised, modern Italian 
 literature. It was not thought or inspira- 
 tion only that had to have new wings, not 
 357
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 poetry only, but metre itself had to shed its 
 old chrysalis and break into a new life. 
 
 In every new intellectual movement the 
 feature of exaggeration is inevitable ; with- 
 out exaggeration no new energy is likely to 
 force its way. It was long, and to some 
 extent still is, the wont in Italy to impute 
 to Carducci an almost perverse exaggera- 
 tion, not only as to his intellectual stand- 
 point (that of a modern man consistently 
 looking backward), or as to his lifelong 
 effort to recreate in the Italian vernacular 
 of to-day the dignity and beauty of the 
 vernacular of Horace and Catullus, but as 
 to wilful obscurity in point of metrical 
 diction. The obscurity of Carducci is not 
 that of congested thought and crowded 
 images, as in Browning ; nor that of the 
 dazzle of continual by -play, as in George 
 Meredith ; nor that of careful and calcu- 
 lated occultism, as in Mallarme. It is 
 rather the " obscurity " of extreme light, 
 such as that which the earliest critics of 
 Leconte de Lisle, Villiers de 1'Isle Adam, 
 Baudelaire and Heredia, found in the 
 classically pure diction of those writers. 
 Carducci has little in common with writers 
 like Mallarme, with whom he is often igno- 
 rantly compared. He is rather the Italian 
 358
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 confrere of Leconte de Lisle, of Jose Maria 
 Heredia, but is more " human," more of 
 his day and hour, than the supreme French 
 classicist in verse, and has a spiritual 
 earnestness alien to the cold beauty of M. 
 He're'dia's " perfected ivory." At the same 
 time it cannot be denied that both in 
 remote allusion and in calculated Latinity 
 of diction he is occasionally pedantic ; 
 and it would be easy to cull from his writings 
 lines and even quatrains or passages which 
 would justify the complaint frequently heard 
 in Italy that " Carducci is difficult, often 
 even unintelligible." Then, too, his Italian 
 is so far from colloquial that even when 
 clear to a compatriot it is difficult to render 
 adequately in English, for sometimes the dif- 
 ference is a constitutional difference of racial 
 genius as well as of speech, as, to choose 
 at random an instance, the final quatrain 
 of the lovely poem, Su Monte Mario : 
 
 Su le rovine de la basilica 
 Di Zeno al sole sibili il colubro, 
 Ancov canter ai nel deserlo 
 I tedi insonni de I'infinito. 
 
 But these occasional defects are mere 
 
 specks on the polished mirror of Carducci's 
 
 poetry, at once so beautiful, so distinguished, 
 
 so antique, so modern, the only poetry of 
 
 359
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 to-day which can be compared with that of 
 Leconte de Lisle and Alfred de Vigny, with 
 that of the poet's greater predecessors, 
 above all with that of his chosen master, 
 Catullus. Every great poet is in a sense 
 a metrical inventor : and with the exception 
 of Mr. Swinburne there is no living master 
 of metre, particularly of classical metres, 
 comparable with Giosue Carducci. In a 
 word, it is not by their exaggerations we 
 are to judge Carducci and the writers who 
 follow his lead, or the intellectual fellowships 
 typified by Antonio Fagazzaro, Arturo Graf, 
 Ada Negri, Giovanni Pascoli, or Gabriele 
 D'Annunzio and the D'Annunzieggianti. 
 All these have to be judged by their range 
 of thought, the object of their aim, and their 
 actual achievement. 
 
 The student of Italian literature, there- 
 fore, will do well to put aside as irrelevant 
 nearly all that he reads or hears as to the 
 " pseudo-classicism " of Carducci and the 
 rest who participate in that vital movement 
 at the head of which he stands. For it is 
 a movement of life, not of an artificially 
 stimulated erudition ; a movement of fresh 
 energy, not a spurred effort. It is in truth 
 part of a " movement," of an uplifted life 
 that is not confined to this or that leader 
 360
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 and his following, nor to Italy, nor even to 
 the Latin countries, but is coextensive with 
 the human mind. 
 
 Already, we perceive, it is a long way 
 from the conditions indicated by Lamartine 
 in a once notorious passage of the Pelerinage 
 cTHarold, where Italy is alluded to as 
 
 Poussiere du passe, qu'un vent sterile agite, 
 
 a phrase which, with the added " Je vais 
 chercher ailleurs . . . des hommes et non pas 
 de la poussiere humaine," brought the French 
 poet a " cartel " from an indignant Italian 
 patriot, the once celebrated General Pepe. 
 
 In a broad classification, then, as already 
 indicated, Antonio Fogazzaro and Arturo 
 Graf stand for the North, Giosue Carducci 
 and Giovanni Pascoli for the Centre (and 
 this not only in the geographical sense), 
 and Gabriele D'Annunzio for the South, as 
 well as for that neo-paganism, neo-Hellenism, 
 and very modern (and, we may add, world- 
 old) hedonism which too often is the dignified 
 verbal raiment of a very unworthy thing, 
 generally more crudely designated. 
 
 Although Fogazzaro and Graf are the 
 
 most distinctive of the Northerners, they 
 
 differ materially. The elder and more 
 
 famous is the Fran$ois Millet of Italian 
 
 361
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 literature, but a Millet of a far wider intel- 
 lectual and sesthetic range than the great 
 Frenchman. The pathos and dignity of 
 suffering, of sorrow, of the heavy burden 
 bravely borne ; the nobility of faith and 
 courage ; the beauty of simplicity in life 
 and art ; the charm of tenderness and the 
 sustaining power of love these are the 
 sources of this writer's genius, both in prose 
 and verse. But, pure as is his Italian, 
 virile and idiomatic, the colour of his 
 mind is distinctively Northern, Teutonic. 
 So might a Scandinavian, an Englishman, 
 a German, write, were he equally gifted, 
 and were he an adopted Italian, settled 
 in that Northern Alpine region of the lakes, 
 so well loved, sung, and praised by Fogaz- 
 zaro. That gentle but all-pervading melan- 
 choly of his, too so different from the 
 disdainful stoicism of Carducci, the baffled 
 despair of writers such as Ada Negri, the 
 life -weariness of Graf, the ennui of D'An- 
 nunzio, the hard pessimism of Rapisardi 
 and Verga is likewise Northern. But it 
 would be a mistake to think of Fogazzaro 
 as a sentimentalist, notwithstanding the 
 sentimentality of some of his work. He 
 stands for what is finest in the Italian nature ; 
 and the love and reverence in which he is 
 362
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 held afford the best proof of his high signi- 
 ficance in contemporary literature. " Val- 
 solda " (in whose beautiful valley he has 
 passed the better part of his life) has become 
 a signal word in Italy, for it is now identified 
 with some of the loveliest verse and much 
 of the noblest prose of the day is, indeed, 
 associated with a noble personal ideal, the 
 ideal of a simple, strong, much-suffering, 
 yet ever brave and serene life. " Our 
 Walter Scott," Giacosa has called Antonio 
 Fogazzaro. 
 
 But he, too, like Arturo Graf though 
 not as a fascinated victim, rather as one 
 greatly dreading yet sustained by faith 
 has looked at times overfearfully in the face 
 of that new tragic Muse of the modern 
 world, " Madre Dolorosa." In his remarkable 
 study on Sadness in Art,* Fogazzaro writes : 
 
 Senza tenerezza, senza fiamma ... la potenza 
 sua fascinatrice 6 nella grandiosita del suo dolore 
 stesso, 1'idea pura, fatta marmo, dell' universale 
 dolore, del dolore che oscura presto o tardi ogni 
 vita umana. 
 
 The words have the colour of Fogazzaro 's 
 
 mind, and show, as a tinted map, the colour 
 
 of a vast region in the Italian thought of 
 
 to-day. In the same essay he speaks of 
 
 * // Dolore nelV Arts. (Milan, 1901.) 
 
 363
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 " la innocenza magnifica della natura " ; 
 but he and those of his spiritual fellowship 
 trust little to this " magnificent innocence," 
 and for the most part look habitually into 
 life, not only as in a glass darkly, but as 
 into a dark pool, heavy with the shadow of 
 ancient sorrow and obscure menace. True, 
 Fogazzaro is not a pessimist ; he has not 
 the steel-bound gloom of Graf, whose 
 impeccable verse is forged rather than 
 moulded. But in his poems and novels, 
 notably in // Mistero del' Poeta, and in the 
 excellent monograph on his life-work by 
 Sebastiano Rumor,* and, above all, in his 
 always intimate and profoundly sincere 
 " addresses " as, for example, when he 
 spoke in Rome in 1893 on The Origin of Man 
 and the Religious Sentiment, or, recently, 
 at the Collegio Romano, on I Misteri dello 
 Spirito Umano a deep and native melan- 
 choly pervades even the most ardent 
 words of faith and hope, and underlies all 
 but the sunniest and most debonair of his 
 poems. Nevertheless, his influence is wholly 
 for good the foremost moral influence now 
 moulding Young Italy. Seldom is the bio- 
 
 * A . Fogazzaro. La Sua Vita, le Sue Opere, 
 i Suoi Critici. By Sebastiano Rumor. (Milan, 
 1896.) 
 
 364
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 grapher more literally truthful than Sebas- 
 tiano Rumor in writing, " In tutta Italia 
 il nome di Antonio Fogazzaro, poeta e 
 romanziere, e riverito ed amato." 
 
 Though all the poetry of Fogazzaro is 
 worth familiarity (particularly for those 
 who feel the underlying charm of his prose 
 romances), the foreign reader may be content 
 with the Selected Poems, published in Milan 
 in 1898 ; the more so as it is not in the 
 longer poetical compositions, such as the 
 versified novel, Miranda, but in the shorter 
 poems, that he is to be found at his best. 
 One of these, a poem representative of the 
 author's mastery over the cadence of simple 
 Italian prosody, may fitly be quoted here : 
 
 LA SERA 
 
 (LE CAMPANE DI OIRA) 
 A d occidente il del si discolor a, 
 Vien I' or a de le tenebre. 
 Da gli spiriti malt, 
 Signor, guarda i mortali I 
 Oriamo. 
 
 (LE CAMPANE DI OSTENO) 
 
 Pur noi su I' onde 
 Moviam da queste solitarie sponde 
 Voci prof onde. 
 Da gli spiriti malt, 
 Signor, guarda i mortali I 
 Oriamo. 
 
 365
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 (LE CAMPANE DI FURIA) 
 Pur noi remote, ad alte 
 Fra le buie montagne 
 Odi, Signore. 
 Da gli spiriti mali 
 Guarda i mortali ! 
 
 Oriamo. 
 
 (ECHI DELLE VALLl) 
 
 Oriamo. 
 
 (TUTTE LE CAMPANE) 
 // lume nasce e muore ; 
 Che riman dei tramonti e delle aurore ? 
 Tutto, Signore, 
 Tranne I' Eterno, al mondo 
 E vano. 
 
 (ECHI DELLE VALLl) 
 
 E vano. 
 
 (TUTTE LE CAMPANE) 
 Oriamo, oriamo in pianto, 
 Da I' alto e dal profondo, 
 Pei morti e pei viventi, 
 Per tanta colpa occulta e dolor 
 Pietd Signore ! 
 Tutto il dolore 
 Che non ti prega, 
 Tutto I' errore 
 Che ti diniega, 
 Tutto I' amove 
 Che a te non piega, 
 Perdona, O Santo. 
 
 (ECHI DELLE VALLl) 
 
 O Santo. 
 366
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 (TUTTE LE CAMPANE) 
 Oviam per i dormienti 
 Del cimitero 
 
 Che dicon rei, che dicono innocenti, 
 E tu, Mistero, 
 Solo tu sai. 
 
 (ECHI DELLE VALLl) 
 
 Solo tu sai. 
 
 (TUTTE LE CAMPANE) 
 Oviam per il profondo 
 Soffrir del mondo 
 Che tutto vive e sente. 
 Ama, dolora, 
 
 Giudigio arcano de I' Omnipotente. 
 Sia pace al monte a I' onda. 
 A I bronzo ancora 
 Sia pace. 
 
 (ECHI DELLE VALLl) 
 
 Pace.* 
 
 * Evening. (The Bells of Oria) In the west 
 the heavens redden ; the gloaming is come. From 
 all evil spirits, Lord, guard Thy children. Let 
 us pray ! (The Bells of Osteno) We also, by 
 the waters [beneath these lonely hill-sides], lift 
 out voices from the depths. From all evil spirits, 
 Lord, guard thy children. Let us pray ! (The 
 Bells of Furia)We, too, remote and lone among 
 the shadowy hills, cry to Thee, Lord ! From all 
 evil spirits guard Thy children. Let us pray ! 
 (Echoes from the Valleys) Let us pray ! (All the 
 Bells) The light is born, and dies ; what remains 
 of sunsets or dawns ? All, Lord, all of this world, 
 all save the eternal, is vain. (Echoes from the 
 
 367
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 There is perhaps no stranger apparition 
 in contemporary Italian literature than 
 Arturo Graf. Called the Heredia of Italy, 
 because of the classic ideal and impeccable 
 form of his verse, he is the son of an Italian 
 mother by a German father. He was born 
 at Athens, nurtured in Greece that Greece 
 whose art he has mastered, but whose tem- 
 perament he has not inherited, having been 
 endowed instead with the world-sadness of 
 Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and trans- 
 planted while still young to Roumania, 
 whence in early manhood he came to 
 
 Valleys) Is vain ! (All the Bells) Let us pray, 
 let us pray, from mountain-height and shadowy 
 vale, for the living and for the dead, for all secret 
 wrong and evil, have pity, Lord ! All sorrow that 
 doth not come to Thee in prayer, all bitterness 
 that denieth Thee, all love that doth not seek 
 Thee, have pity upon it, O Holy Spirit ! (Echoes 
 from the Valleys) O Holy Spirit ! (All the Bells) 
 Let us pray for those sleeping the long sleep 
 of the grave ; for those who are accounted sinners, 
 and for those accounted without sin ! For Thou 
 alone, Mysterious Spirit, Thou only knowest all. 
 (Echoes from the Valleys) Thou only knowest 
 all. (All the Bells) Let us pray for all the sorrow 
 and suffering of the world, which lives in grief 
 and pain. Love, sorrow . . . hidden wisdom of 
 the All- Wise. Let there be peace upon the hill- 
 side, by the waters ! On the holy bells, them- 
 selves, peace ! (Echo from the Valleys) Peace ! 
 368
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 Milan. In the intensity of his irremediable 
 pessimism he can be compared with no 
 French poet save the anonymous author of 
 the Chants de Maldoror, with no English 
 poet save James Thomson of The City of 
 Dreadful Night ; and nothing in the fan- 
 tastically sombre verse of Nietzsche suggests 
 the same profound depths of gloom. But 
 Graf's terrible sadness, his almost elemental 
 melancholy, has never the suggestion of 
 anything ignoble, as in Maldoror or Baude- 
 laire ; it is never the mere rhetoric of spiritual 
 collapse and despair, as sometimes in James 
 Thomson ; nor is it the outcome of intel- 
 lectual fever, or of the tortured nerves, or 
 of a powerful mind habitually apt to lose 
 its equilibrium, as with the author of Thus 
 Spake Zarathustra. He gathers up all the 
 hopelessness of Italy, of the world, of the 
 human soul ; moulds it in tears and long- 
 ing, and the unutterable sadness of sorrow 
 without hope ; and reveals it to us in lovely 
 image after image, in chiselled verse of 
 perfect form, in a beauty rendered almost 
 unnaturally poignant. In a far deeper 
 sense than the somewhat blatant Lucifer 
 of Mario Rapisardi, than the magnificently 
 rhetorical Hymn to Satan of Carducci, Graf's 
 Buried Titan (in the very remarkable poem 
 II 369 2 A
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 La Citta dei Titani in the volume called 
 Le Danaidi] may be said to symbolise the 
 bewildered attitude of the modern mind. 
 So absolutely does he differ from the Latin 
 temperament that he remains cold even 
 before the inspiration of woman. Neither 
 the beautiful actuality nor the seductive 
 visionary type moves this modern St. 
 Anthony. In all his writings we remember 
 no verse in the slightest degree recalling 
 these eminently Carduccian lines (from Ruit 
 Horn, perhaps the loveliest poem in the first 
 Odi Barbare) : 
 
 Fra le tue neve chiome, o bianco, Lidia, 
 Langue una rosa pallida ; 
 E una dolce a me in cuor tristezza subita 
 Tetnpra d' amor gl' incendii.* 
 
 Nor has he ever any such cry to the lesser 
 destinies as : 
 
 O des'iata verde solitudine 
 Lungi al rumor de gli uomini ! 
 Qui due con noi divini amid vengono 
 Vino ed amore, O 
 
 * " In thy dark hair, O white Lidia, a pale rose 
 languishes ; in my heart suddenly a sweet sadness 
 softens the flame of love." 
 
 f " O longed-for green solitude, far from the 
 rumour of men ; hither have come with us our 
 two divine friends, Wine and Love, O Lidia," 
 
 37
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 If once or twice we think we hear the cry 
 of passion, it is only that of disillusion or 
 brooding incertitude. 
 
 woman, the darkness in thine eyes is the darkness 
 
 of night ; 
 Thy soul, too, is obscure and mysterious as the sea, 
 
 as this obscure sea 
 Which engulfs in its flowing side the plunging 
 
 prow. 
 
 1 see thy dark hair ; in thy pale, beautiful 
 
 face 
 I see the wandering fires of thine eyes ; I see thy 
 
 laughter-parted rosy lips ; 
 But into thy soul, into that darkness, no, I do not 
 
 see. 
 
 And yet this is the poet who, in his 
 beautiful reminiscences (Dal Libro dei 
 Ricordi), writes thus of his dear home 
 at the foot of the slope where the 
 Parthenon rears its sacred outline (" la 
 dolce casa . . . sulla cui cima altero il 
 Par tenon drizza la sacra mole ") : 
 
 Avea presso un giardin, triste e sever o, 
 Benchd di rose pieno e di viole, 
 E un gran cipresso, avviluppato e nero, 
 Aduggiava di fredda ombra le ajuole. 
 
 V era, pien d'acqua, e di figure adorno, 
 Un sarcofago antico, alia cui sponda 
 Veniano a her le rondini dal cielo. 
 
 371
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 Alto silenzio tenea I' aria intorno, 
 E nella pace estatica e profonda 
 Non si vedea crollar foglia nt stelo.* 
 
 Truly, as has been said of him, Arturo 
 Graf may see as a Hellene, and write in 
 Italian, his maternal tongue, but it is the 
 sad Northern soul, "Panima tedesca," which 
 speaks in his poetry. In Idea Fissa, one of 
 the most notable poems in his first book, 
 Dopo il Tramonto (After Sundown), he 
 reveals, consciously or unconsciously, the 
 overwhelming prepossession of a single 
 idea which all his life has bewitched his 
 imagination and entranced his mind. His 
 Muse, in a word, is Death, whether he call 
 her " Morte Regina," or " Morte Guerriera," 
 or " Regina del Mondo," or veils his sombre 
 passion under an antique name, as in that 
 strange and terrible second book, Medusa : 
 
 * " Near by was a garden, somewhat sad and 
 austere, for all that it was full of roses and violets ; 
 perhaps because of the great cypress, a pyramid 
 of green darkness, which cast its chill shadow 
 athwart the garden- ways. 
 
 " There, too, with carven figures and full of 
 water, stood an antique sarcophagus, where the 
 swallows loved to dip and drink. 
 
 " A deep stillness brooded around, rose into 
 the silent air : the peace was a husht ecstasy, 
 wherein no stem moved, no leaf quivered." 
 
 372
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 O mia lugubre Musa 
 
 Implacabile Erinni, 
 
 Tu dal mio labbro fai proromper gl' inni 
 
 Venenati, O Medusa ! * 
 
 There is, however, more variety, along 
 with still more evident beauty and mastery, 
 in Graf's third book, Le Danaidi, published 
 in 1897. A few months ago appeared his 
 Morgana, in which, though there is no poem 
 to compare with Citta dei Titani of the 
 Danaidi volume, nor any sequence to parallel 
 the Athenian Libro dei Ricordi in Dopo il 
 Tramonto, a more serene spirit, somewhat 
 of a wise hedonism, is revealed. We even 
 encounter lines such as : 
 
 . . . nell' aria chiara 
 Cantano i mandolini 
 / mandolini arguti 
 
 Dalle voci tremanti, 
 
 Onde perdon lor vanti 
 Arpe, flauli, liuti. 
 Cantano, Gioja, amove ! 
 
 which surprise one almost as though one 
 were to come upon an ode of Anacreon 
 in the text of Ecclesiastes ! Nevertheless, 
 Ruit Hora might be the apt title of the 
 
 * " O sombre and dread Muse, implacable 
 Erinnys, thou makest these lips sing poisoned 
 hymns, O Medusa ! " 
 
 373
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 book, and its motto the couplet to which 
 so much music and thought and longing 
 are attuned : 
 
 M io vecchio core, mio povero core, 
 Perche se' tu cost triste e inquieto ; 
 
 or that undernote that is never lost : 
 
 Passato & 'I tempo de' teneri inganni, 
 Passato & r ora propizia all' amove. 
 
 The book closes with a short poem, Explicit, 
 which might well stand as epilogue to all its 
 sad beauty a sadness not wholly in vain, 
 for it is the sadness of a fine and noble spirit, 
 and as such is accepted in Italy, and so is 
 become in a sense representative : 
 
 EXPLICIT 
 
 Non uno de' ben vani, in ch' io gid confidai, 
 
 Mi tenne fede mai : 
 do mi riempie il core, che a soffriv mal s' avvezza, 
 
 D' una grande amarezza. 
 
 Non una delle colpe, ch' io commisi in mia vita, 
 
 E rimasta impunita : 
 do mi riempie il core (povera, nuda stanza /) 
 
 D' una grande speranza.* 
 
 * " Not one good thing, now lost, in which once 
 I put all my trust, has ever remained with me ; 
 and this has filled my heart, even now so ill- 
 accustomed to suffer, with a great bitterness. 
 
 " Not one of all the faults I have committed 
 
 374
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 There is an even greater difference between 
 the pessimism of Ada Negri, whose Fatalita 
 has had in Italy a wider acceptance than 
 almost any other recent book of verse, and 
 that of Arturo Graf, than between Graf's 
 and Leopardi's. Leopardi was the exponent 
 of the malady of his age : Graf is the poet 
 of the soul's secret dread and despair : Ada 
 Negri is of the many whose strength lies 
 in wild protest, fierce denunciation, in scorn 
 and reproach, and the voice of social misery. 
 Her poetry has the swift movement and 
 lyrical vehemence of the early revolutionary 
 poems of Swinburne, or of Victor Hugo's 
 Les Chdtiments, but it has also the faults of 
 these, and that in an exaggerated degree. 
 An instance from the same poem (Sfida 
 Defiance, or Challenge) will suffice. We 
 sympathise when she cries : 
 
 E sei tu dunque, tu, mondo bugiardo, 
 Che vuoi celarmi il sol de gl' ideali ; * 
 
 but we only smile at the rhetoric of : 
 
 O grasso mondo d' oche e di serpenti, 
 Mondo vigliacco che tu sia dannato ; 
 
 in my life but has had to pay its penalty : and 
 this has filled my heart (poor, bare habitation) 
 with a great hope." 
 
 * "It is you, then, lying world, who conceal 
 from me the fair heaven of the ideal." 
 
 375
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 Fisso lo sguardo ne gli astri fulgenti 
 lo movo incontro al fato* 
 
 Many of us have been Ada Negris in our 
 day. As we grow older we not only do not 
 call our fellows geese and serpents, but 
 even settle down to tolerate them with 
 kindly complacency. Miss Ada Negri her- 
 self, revolutionist, socialist, intransigeante , 
 is now the Signora Garlanda, the wife of a 
 wealthy Milanese bourgeois. 
 
 Nevertheless, there is in her work a power 
 to influence. Its secret may be discerned 
 in the poem in Fatalitd called Senza Nome 
 (Nameless), wherein she speaks of herself 
 as an enigma of hate and love, of violence 
 and gentleness ("un enigma son io d'odio 
 e d' amore, di forza e di dolcezza "), and 
 says that throughout her life " an evil 
 spirit has followed me step by step, and an 
 angel with hands claspt in prayer " (" se- 
 guono i passi miei maligno un nano e un 
 angelo pregante "). It is the combina- 
 tion in her of class-hatred and feminine un- 
 selfishness which have won her so many 
 friends ; and the secret of her influence 
 
 * " O world, swarming with geese and serpents, 
 wretched world, may damnation be your lot. 
 With my gaze fixt on the shining stars, I move 
 onward to my destiny." 
 
 376
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 is, on the one side, the frank recognition of 
 the power of absorbing love to ennoble 
 circumstance, as in that passionate and 
 vivid poem, Popolana (A Girl of the People), 
 and, on the other, her grandiose vision of 
 the congregated sorrows and sufferings of 
 the world, as in the burning lines of the 
 unforgettable I Vinti (The Vanquished) 
 " Behold them, in hundreds, in thousands, 
 in millions, in countless hordes ; from their 
 serried ranks rises a rumour as of distant 
 thunder. . . . Alas, alas, we are the van- 
 quished ! " and in her poignant sense of 
 spiritual retribution, as in / Grandi (The 
 Great Ones of the Earth) : 
 
 . , . Ma piango il sangue del mio COY sui Grandi 
 
 De la tenebra. Sono 
 Gli Affamati, gli Oppressi, i Venerandi, 
 
 Che tregua n& perdono* 
 
 - To turn from this tempestuous emotion 
 and troubled art to the serene air of Carducci 
 though he too is the poet of revolt or 
 to the languorous beauty of D'Annunzio's 
 verse, or to the exquisite art and natural 
 
 * " From my heart I weep tears of blood for 
 those who were once Great Ones of the earth : 
 now, in the Other-world, they are the Starving, 
 the Oppressed, the Aged and Stricken, knowing 
 neither truce nor mercy." 
 
 377
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 charm of Pascoli, is to exchange the noise 
 and sordidness of a manufacturing town for 
 the intellectual peace of a library, or the 
 charmed stillness of a cloister, or the gladness 
 of a spring day in the open. Books such as 
 Giovanni Pascoli 's MyriccB and the maturer 
 and finer Poemetti bring into Italian litera- 
 ture to-day something of what Words- 
 worth, Keats, and Tennyson, in a fresh, 
 vivid naturalism, brought into English 
 poetry. So now we come to the two most 
 eminent names in Italy to-day to the old 
 king and the insurgent prince, Giosue 
 Carducci and Gabriele D'Annunzio. 
 
 It is now nearly thirty years since the 
 Hymn to Satan that modern " classic " of 
 spiritual and intellectual revolt electrified 
 Italy. To-day it will be read without the 
 same answering thrill, perhaps even with 
 lessened admiration. Rhetoric has not the 
 staying-power of the grave ecstasy that is 
 perfected art ; and this, perhaps the most 
 famous lyrical poem of the last half -century, 
 is largely superb rhetoric. Nevertheless, 
 the fragrance and the bloom are still upon 
 that unique flower, grown in the troubled 
 solitudes of spiritual desire. .Nor, to vary 
 the metaphor, have the echoes yet died 
 away, in any country, of that clanging 
 378
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 tocsin, that war-song of the pagan spirit. 
 If, nowadays, no one even in Italy anathe- 
 matises Carducci as a worshipper of evil 
 because of his Inno a Satana, there are few 
 probably, in Italy or elsewhere, who would 
 not now regard the Satanic epithets and 
 allusions as somewhat pantomimic and 
 grotesque. For, of course, Carducci does not 
 mean, never did mean, to invoke the Prince 
 of Evil ! All that the celebrated (and 
 technically marvellous) Hymn means is, 
 Let us be done with what is outworn ; let 
 us worship only what makes for divinity ; 
 let us rejoice in our mortal destiny, and 
 in our world, and not cry shame upon our 
 humanity ; let us be done with shams ; 
 let us be up and rejoice ; let us be up and 
 doing. It is but the principle of rebirth, 
 of revolt, the law of material, as of spiritual, 
 resurrection which the poet invokes in his 
 Satan : 
 
 Salute, O Satana, 
 
 O ribellione, 
 
 O forza vindice 
 
 Delia ragione ! 
 
 And it is not to the conventional " Prince 
 of this World," but to no other than Alastor, 
 the Spirit of Beauty, which every poet has 
 worshipped since poetry became the dream 
 379
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 of the human soul, that he cries : "For thee 
 Adonis lived ; for thee Astarte ; for thee 
 came into being the marbles, the pictures, 
 and golden verse, when, from the Ionian 
 wave, Aphrodite arose with her great joy ; 
 for thee roared the forests of Lebanon . . . 
 for thee sang the chorus ... for thee raved 
 the dances." 
 
 The rhetorical fires have long ere this 
 expended their inflammatory force : the 
 beauty remains. It is to be hoped that the 
 day will not come when the youth of Italy 
 will no more be stirred by the magic of the 
 lines of the famous Hymn : 
 
 Tva le odorifere 
 Palme d'ldume, 
 Dove biancheggiano 
 Le ciprie spume* 
 
 If the Inno a Satana be so characteristic 
 of Carducci, not less characteristic of his 
 mental attitude, of the ethical aspect of his 
 splendid achievement, are those other words 
 of his " Send forth upon the wind the cry 
 of the watchman : ' The age renews itself, 
 the day of fulfilment is nigh.' " 
 
 In this sense the Hymn is typical of 
 Carducci 's poetry ; for here again, we may 
 
 * " 'Neath the odoriferous Palms of Id time, 
 Where whitens the foam Of the Cyprian wave." 
 380
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 say, the rhetorical part served, or still 
 serves, its purpose ; what is of sheer beauty 
 remains. We doubt if the achievement of 
 any living poet could stand comparison 
 with that of Giosue Carducci in the great 
 qualities of distinction, strength, and classic 
 beauty. Within a limited range, Heredia 
 is the sole name to suggest ; but Heredia is 
 a sculptor in ivory, Carducci is of the 
 kindred of Michael Angelo ; or, again, 
 Heredia is as one of the exquisite minor 
 poets of the Anthology, Carducci a latter-day 
 Catullus, with a far greater intellectual and 
 national inspiration and range. Neither 
 Heredia nor Arturo Graf, not even Leconte 
 de Lisle, has more truly cherished and given 
 us anew " the antique beauty." For Car- 
 ducci, the beauty that was of old is the one 
 immortal thing in this world of mortal 
 change and chance. For him, as he says 
 in the Primavere Elleniche, "though all 
 other gods may die," the divinities made 
 immortal by the Greek genius " live still 
 among ancient woods and in the eternal 
 seas." 
 
 For Carducci, too, is the honour of having 
 restored to Italian poetry the dignity it 
 had long lost. This true brother of Catullus 
 has not only moulded anew the form of
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 lyric verse, but has set forward a strenuous 
 ideal for his countrymen who would strive 
 to recreate and not to imitate. 
 
 Odio I' usata poesia : concede 
 Comoda al vulgo. . . . 
 * * * * 
 
 A me la strofa vigile, . . . 
 
 as he writes in the famous Prelude, in 
 rhymeless Catullan verse, in the first series 
 of the Odi Barbare. 
 
 But Carducci is much more than " the 
 high-priest of impeccable form." He is a 
 poet inspired by a lofty patriotism, a poet 
 troubled by the deep problems of modern 
 life, a prophet of high destinies, national 
 and mundane. Even " the pagan note " 
 throughout his work, sane and wise as no 
 small part of it indubitably is, must not be 
 over-emphasised. We find this pagan note, 
 it is true, in every personal utterance even 
 of the graver poet of mature age ; but now 
 it is the utterance of one who realises that 
 in the pagan spirit alone lies no likelihood 
 of escape from the Slough of Despond. 
 In contemporary Italian literature Carducci 
 stands pre-eminent as the poet who has 
 given his whole life to the service of his art, 
 to the persistent ideal to recreate in beauty 
 382
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 and distinction, to make his own art (" far 
 P arte ") in his own way : the poet who 
 writes : 
 
 Or destruggiam. Dei secoli 
 
 Lo strata & sul pensiero : 
 
 O pocht e forti, all' opera, 
 
 CM nei profundi il vero.* 
 
 For fifty years Carducci has led the van 
 of the literary Risorgimento. To-day he 
 stands higher than ever, as immeasurably 
 the greatest modern Italian poet. He has 
 lived to see the seed of his wise and of 
 his unwise " paganism " flourish, and to 
 accept both harvests philosophically ; but 
 above all he has lived to rejoice that the 
 nation at large is not only the richer but 
 the stronger for what he has given of his best. 
 
 In one respect, at least, Gabriele D'An- 
 nunzio is to be mentioned with his great 
 compatriot, for whatever be the short- 
 comings of this brilliant and fascinating 
 personality we speak of him solely as a 
 writer in prose and verse he has the 
 unique poetic temperament. For him too 
 the " word " is sacred, a secret minister, an 
 
 * " Now perforce we destroy. The highway of 
 the ages is built upon thought. To the work, 
 then, O few and strong, for truth is of the 
 depths." 
 
 383
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 ally to be won, at once slave and tyrant. 
 For him too the one dominant ideal is 
 "far 1' arte," "to make art." D'Annunzio 
 does not fall short of Carducci because of 
 any lack of those shaping and colouring 
 qualities which make for the rarest and 
 highest art, but because, in the main, he 
 has failed to see that it is not mere imagina- 
 tion that triumphs, but controlled imagina- 
 tion ; that song must be the outcome of 
 long spiritual meditation, so that from the 
 greater depth it may soar to greater height ; 
 that spiritual understanding is as much 
 the poet's concern as the swift flame of 
 lyrical emotion. In a word, though D'An- 
 nunzio has all the artistic qualities, he has 
 them to excess, so that there is no equipoise 
 as with Carducci. Nor, with all his culture, 
 his wide range, his cosmopolitan sympathies, 
 has he the like instinctive scholarship a 
 scholarship that is something more than 
 erudition, for we are thinking of a mental 
 quality rather than of intellectual accom- 
 plishment. On the other hand, while more 
 derivative than Carducci, he is not less 
 lacking in originality. He is an instance, 
 simply, of the literary temperament in 
 alliance with that order of creative genius 
 which must gather from many gardens, and 
 384
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 in the gathering is both heedless as to what 
 honey is stolen and indifferent to what 
 accusations are bandied. And, in truth, the 
 honey of the poet is all that need concern 
 the critic of poetry. A poet's methods 
 may be interesting ; it is the results that 
 convince, or do not convince. 
 
 Moreover, D'Annunzio is less derivative 
 in his poetry than in his prose. At any rate 
 he does not " convey " in the one as he 
 sometimes too audaciously does in the 
 other ; though there are notable exceptions 
 to this generalisation, as, for example, in 
 the very Maeterlinckian passage in the 
 drama La Gloria, where the group of physi- 
 cians and others keep the vigil of death 
 near the dying patrician. Of course as a 
 young man he imitated, now Carducci, 
 now Leopardi, now Baudelaire, now Catullus 
 or the poets of the Greek Anthology, now 
 Shelley, now de Musset. But these imitations 
 were the tentative efforts of a potent per- 
 sonality that had not yet learned the height 
 or direction of its true course. 
 
 Either as poet or novelist, however, 
 D'Annunzio is not properly understood in 
 this country. This is partly because he 
 is an extreme exemplar of the pagan side 
 of the Latin temper, and of the Latin habit 
 
 ii 385 2 B
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 of mind. Yet more and more, as we con- 
 sider his already notable and variegated 
 achievement, we believe that D'Annunzio's 
 superabundant faults and shortcomings blind 
 Northerners, not only to his marvellous art, 
 but to his power and influence as an accepted 
 type, as a signal genius of the Latin race. 
 The gulf between the Latin and the Anglo- 
 Saxon is greater than is commonly recognised 
 in these days, when it is a commonplace 
 that racial distinctions tend to disappear. 
 It is, on the contrary, possible, perhaps 
 probable, that this gulf is not being bridged 
 more and more, but rather that the division 
 grows deeper. 
 
 Nor has D'Annunzio yet said all that he 
 has to say. It might indeed be urged that 
 he has now been long enough before the 
 public for judgment to be passed on his 
 limitations, for an estimate all but certain 
 as to what he can not do. But it must be 
 remembered that the author of Primavere 
 was but a boy of fifteen ; that the poet, 
 dramatist, novelist of to-day is even now 
 still a young man, being on the sunny side 
 of forty. 
 
 It is as a poet of nature that D'Annunzio 
 is at his best. With the exception of Gio- 
 vanni Pascoli (to compare whom would be, 
 386
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 as it were, to compare Andre Chenier and 
 Baudelaire, or the author of Endymion 
 with the author of Poems and Ballads), he 
 has in this respect no rival. He has the com- 
 pelling passion for the sea so characteristic 
 of Swinburne ; the love of mountain- 
 solitude and lonely wilds so characteristic 
 of Wordsworth, though a love less simple 
 in sentiment and less natural in expression ; 
 something of the charm, too, that we find 
 in Theocritus ; something of the delicate 
 and intimate touch of Tennyson. To this 
 is added a rapt intensity of vision and 
 emotion sometimes considered characteristi- 
 cally Celtic, though it is in truth too primi- 
 tive and universal a quality to be adequately 
 expressed by any literary label. We come 
 to think of him at times, not as the D'An- 
 nunzio of scandal and criminal passion, 
 but the poet pure and simple, as a faun 
 become a man and a modern singer, who 
 remembers old songs and the antique 
 world, and at heart is a faun indeed, or 
 at least " veritamente un figlio della terra 
 antica," as in the Song of the Sun in Canto 
 Novo : 
 
 Sta il gran meriggio su questa di ftutti di 
 
 piante 
 Verde azzurrina conca solitaria : 
 
 387
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 Ed to, come il fauno antico in agguato, m' 
 
 ascondo, 
 Platano sacro, qui fra le chiome tue. . . .* 
 
 But if we are allured at times into this 
 wonder -world of intimate nature, we are 
 more often recalled to the sad world of 
 weariness and disillusion, hearing the super- 
 sensuous, decadent, ennuye poet crying, 
 " O cessate ! la musica mi stanca," or " Chi 
 potra darmi un qualche nuovo senso ? " 
 There is one thing inevitable for him who 
 drinks too long and too deep from the cup 
 of experience. If weariness and disillusion 
 may inspire, they must also weaken the art 
 of the poet who has thus drunken and not 
 known when to throw the cup aside. 
 
 Sono spogliati tutti i miei rosai. 
 Non piu ghirlande ! E la mia coppa I vuota. 
 Bevvi, bevvi e ribevvi. A I fine ignota 
 Non me nessuna ebrezza . . .f 
 
 * " The heats of noon whelm this green solitary 
 hollow, filled with blue sheen like a shell of the 
 sea ; and I, as a faun of the antique time, in a 
 branch-hid hiding-place, crouch here among thy 
 shadowy boughs, O sacred plane-tree." 
 
 f " Despoiled now are all my roses : no garlands 
 now ! The bitter-sweet cup is empty. I have 
 drunk of it again, and yet again, and yet again. 
 Nothing, no intoxication, is left to me to 
 know. . , ." 
 
 388
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 It is the salutary part of this poetry of 
 weariness, so characteristic, not only of 
 D'Annunzio, but of all he stands for 
 in that decadent phase of thought and 
 literature and life of which, on one 
 side at least, he is the foremost ex- 
 emplar, that, when revulsion is at hand, 
 the reader is almost always won back 
 by some beautiful vision of the world 
 we know and love, or by some deep and 
 sincere cry from the poet's heart " Allor 
 che su '1 vento maestrale mi balzava la 
 strofe . . . squillando annanzi, O mare, 
 O mare, O mare ! " * 
 
 In his so-called decadent verse, too, 
 there is much of great beauty, some of it 
 at least being no more " decadent " than is 
 that poetic melancholy which is the habit 
 of mind of all the poets of love, from Catullus 
 or Omar Khayyam to Leconte de Lisle and 
 Carducci. Read, for instance, The Triumph 
 of Iseult (itself a metrical triumph in the 
 difficult manner of Lorenzo di Medici), 
 recalling as it does Villon and Swinburne 
 and William Morris, and yet so unmistak- 
 ably the poet's own, with its monotonously 
 
 * " Then on the tempestuous wind my song 
 turns, crying, with great longing, O sea, O sea, 
 O sea ! " 
 
 389
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 sweet refrain, " For everything save love is 
 vain " : 
 
 Torna in fior di giovinezza 
 
 Isaotta Blanzesmano, 
 
 Dice : Tutto al mondo $ vano. 
 
 N& I' amove ogni dolcezza ! * 
 
 That, too, is the poet's own, the stanza 
 of Death, as a beautiful woman, closing the 
 procession, however much the Guinevere 
 and other stanzas suggest comparison with 
 familiar lines of the poets named above : 
 
 Chiude il gran covteo la Morte ; 
 Non la dea de' cemeteri, 
 Ma una fresca donna e forte 
 Cut valletti lusinghieri 
 Sono i Sogni ed i Piaceri 
 Da 'I gentil volto pagano. 
 Dice : Tutto al mondo & vano, 
 Ne I' amove ogni dolcezza 1 1 
 
 Perhaps one reason why D'Annunzio 
 appeals more strongly than Carducci to 
 the Italians of the North, to the French of 
 
 * " Cometh again, in her flower of youth, Iseult 
 of the White Hands. She says : ' All the world is 
 vain : in love only doth all sweetness live.' " 
 
 t " At the end of the noble cortege, Death ; 
 not the sombre Lady of Graves, but a beauti- 
 ful and strong woman, whose train-bearers are 
 Dreams and Delights, each of a noble pagan 
 beauty. And she too says : ' All the world is 
 vain : in love only doth all sweetness live.' " 
 
 390
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 the North, to the Germans and ourselves, 
 is that he has more of the love of the mys- 
 terious. In one of his most beautiful 
 short poems, the Fas Mysteri, in the Poema 
 Paradisiaco volume of 1893, he makes, 
 indeed, a direct invocation to that veiled 
 Muse : " Apriti al fine, O tu che 1' urna sei 
 del Mistero ! " And, again, because he is a 
 prophet of " the joy to come "... that 
 " far-off day of the travailing genera- 
 tions " : 
 
 Cantate, O venti ! Ne V ignoto mare 
 E I' Isold promessa : 
 La come in sommo d' un immenso altare 
 E la gioia promessa. . . . 
 
 Gabriele D'Annunzio is now before his 
 countrymen as a " national " poet. We 
 do not think that his essentially lyrical 
 and emotional genius is well fitted for a 
 sustained flight ; but perhaps of this no 
 foreigner can properly judge. Meanwhile 
 the lyrical epic of Garibaldi is in part given 
 to the world.* In judging this lyrical epic, 
 
 * The Canzone di Garibaldi, published in 1901, 
 is not, as many critics apparently imagine, a 
 completed work. The present instalment is a 
 poem of twenty-two sections amounting in all 
 to 1004 lines. The actual title of this section is 
 The Night of Caprera, and it is the third in a series 
 
 391
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 or " epical series of lyrical chants," one 
 must bear in mind the author's own comment 
 that the poems should be recited aloud 
 rather than silently read, " per vivere della 
 sua piena vita musicale, ella ha bisogno di 
 passare nella bocca sonante del dicitore." 
 But it must be admitted that, with many 
 fine lines, and frequent subtle and enchanting 
 effects, as in 
 
 Ei si ricorda nelV alba di Novembre : 
 Quando salpo da Quarto era la sera, 
 Sera di Maggio conridere di stelle, 
 
 there is also much mere rhetoric, and at times 
 a bathos sinking to the level of distinctly 
 commonplace prose. 
 
 Here, as in matters of deeper import, it 
 is to be wished that D'Annunzio had more 
 of the intellectual pride and artistic control 
 of his greater compatriot, Giosu Carducci ; 
 and the more so as his influence is becoming 
 steadily more potent in Italy, despite ob- 
 stacles of all kinds, and notwithstanding 
 both the unwise and the wise prejudices 
 of possibly the majority of the critics and 
 
 of seven. In time we are to have the other 
 " books " or sections : (i) The Birth of the Hero ; 
 (2) The Ocean and the Pampas ; (4) From Rome to 
 the Pontine Marshes ; (^)Aspromonte and Mentana ; 
 (6) The Crown of Peace ; (7) The Hero's End. 
 
 392
 
 Italian Poets of To-day 
 
 of the reading public. Carducci's high place 
 is now beyond cavil. He for his part has 
 ever thought of his to-morrow. Gabriele 
 D'Annunzio has owed so much to French 
 writers that it is to be wished he could 
 more consistently have borne in mind, 
 that he may henceforth bear in mind, the 
 memorable words of Sainte-Beuve : "C'est 
 a ce lendemain seVere que tout artiste 
 serieux doit songer." And what better 
 watchword could he too have than that of 
 his master the veteran Carducci, already 
 adopted by Young Italy, fervent and hope- 
 ful : " O pochi e forti, all' opera ! " " To the 
 good work, then, O ye few and strong ! " 
 
 393
 
 THE HEROIC AND LEGENDARY 
 LITERATURE OF BRITTANY 
 
 IF one were asked what were the three 
 immediate influences, the open-sesames of 
 literature, which revealed alike to the 
 dreaming and the critical mind of modern 
 Europe the beauty and extraordinary 
 achievement of the Celtic genius, it would 
 not be difficult to name them. From Scot- 
 land came Macpherson's reweaving of ancient 
 Gaelic legendary lore under the collective 
 title of Ossian ; from Wales came the 
 Mabinogion, obtained and translated by 
 Lady Charlotte Guest ; and from Brittany 
 came the now celebrated life-work of the 
 Vicomte Hersart de la Villemarque, the 
 Barzaz-Breiz, or collection of the popular 
 songs and heroic ballads of old Brittany 
 some mediaeval, some with their roots in 
 the heart of ancient Armorica. 
 
 The history of the influence of these 
 three books Ossian, the Mabinogion, and 
 the Barzaz-Breiz has never yet been pro- 
 
 394
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 perly estimated. When a competent critic 
 shall give us this history, in its exact and 
 critical relation to literature itself, the deep 
 and far-reaching power of what may be 
 distinguished as fundamentally appealing 
 books will be made apparent. 
 
 If these were the immediate influences in 
 the awakening of the mind of Europe to the 
 beauty and mystery and high significance of 
 the old Celtic literature, legendary lore, and 
 racial traditions, the general attention was 
 attracted rather by two famous pioneers of 
 critical thought. In France, Ernest Renan, 
 himself of Celtic blood and genius, and having 
 indeed in his name one of the most ancient and 
 sacred of Armorican designations (Ronan), 
 gained the notice of all intellectual Europe 
 by his acute, poignantly sympathetic, and 
 eloquent treatise on the Poetry of the Celtic 
 Races. Later, in England, Matthew Arnold 
 convinced his reluctant fellow-countrymen 
 that a new and wide domain of literary 
 beauty lay as it were just beyond their home 
 pastures. 
 
 Since Renan and Matthew Arnold, there 
 have been many keen and ever more and 
 more thoroughly equipped students of Celtic 
 literature ; but while admitting the immense 
 value of the philological labours of men such 
 395
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 as the German Windisch, the English 
 Whitley Stokes, the French Loth, the 
 Scottish Dr. Cameron, the Welsh Sir John 
 Rhys, and the Irish Standish Hayes O'Grady, 
 or of the more popular writings of collectors 
 and exponents such as the late Campbell of 
 Islay, Alfred Nutt, Standish O'Grady, and 
 others, it would be at once unjust and 
 uncritical to omit full recognition of the 
 labours of collectors and interpreters such 
 as, say, Alexander Carmichael in Scotland, 
 and Hersart de la Villemarque in France. 
 
 There can hardly be a student of Celtic 
 literature who is unfamiliar with the Barzaz- 
 Breiz, that unique collection of Breton 
 legendary lore and heroic ballads so closely 
 linked with the name of Hersart de la 
 Villemarque. This celebrated man at once 
 collector, folk-lorist, philologist, poet, and 
 impassioned patriot was not only born a 
 Breton of the Bretons, but began life among 
 circumstances pre-eminently conducive to 
 his mental development along the lines 
 where he has made his name of world- 
 wide repute. His great work * was not 
 
 * Barzaz-Breiz. Chants Populaires de la Bre- 
 tetgne, recueillis, traduits, et annotts par le Vicomte 
 Hersart de la Villemarque, M.I. (work crowned 
 by the Academy of France). 
 
 39 6
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 only the outcome of his own genius and of 
 his racial inheritance, but was inspired by 
 his mother, a remarkable woman of a very 
 ancient Armorican family. It is to her 
 that the Barzaz-Breiz was dedicated : "A 
 ma tendre et sainte mere, Marie-Ursule 
 Feydeau du Plessix-Nizon, Comtesse de la 
 Villemarque." So significant are the open- 
 ing words of his introduction to the new 
 and definite edition (1893) that they may be 
 given here : 
 
 A profound sentiment [he says in effect] 
 inspired the idea of this book wherein my country 
 stands forth self -portrayed, and in that revela- 
 tion wins our love. In sending forth this revised 
 reprint of my work, doubtless for the last time, 
 and feeling myself to be as much as in my early 
 days under the spell of her love, I dedicate this 
 work to her who really began it, and that too 
 before I was born to her who enthralled my 
 childhood with old-world ballads and legendary 
 tales, and who herself was indeed for me one of 
 those good fairies who, as the old lore has it, 
 stand by the side of happy cradles. My mother, 
 who was also the mother of all who were un- 
 happy, once restored to health a poor wandering 
 singer of the parish of Melgren. Moved by the 
 sincere regrets of the poor woman at her inability 
 to convey aright her gratitude to her benefactress, 
 having indeed nothing in the world to offer but 
 her songs, my mother asked her to repeat one or 
 two of her treasury of folk-songs. So impressed 
 was she by the original character of the Breton 
 
 397
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 poetry, that often thereafter she sought and 
 obtained a like pleasure. At a later date, though 
 this was not for herself, she made a special quest 
 of this ancestral countryside fugitive poetry. 
 Such was the real origin in a sense purely 
 domestic and private, and primarily the outcome 
 of a sweet and pious nature of this collection of 
 the Barzaz-Breiz ; some of the finest pieces in 
 which I found written, in the first years of the 
 century, on the blank leaves of an old manuscript 
 volume of recipes wherein my mother had her 
 store of medical science. 
 
 As for what M. de la Villemarque himself 
 did to qualify for his lifelong labour of love, 
 he writes as follows : 
 
 To render this collection at once more complete 
 and worthy of the attention of literary critics, 
 and of all students of literature and life, scrupulous 
 and conscientious care has been taken. I have 
 gone hither and thither on my quest through long 
 years, and traversed every region of Basse-Bre- 
 tagne [Western and Southern Brittany], the richest 
 in old memories ; taking part in popular festivals 
 and in private gatherings, at our national pardons 
 [pilgrimages], at the great fairs, at weddings, or 
 the special fete-days of the agricultural world 
 and of the workers in all the national industries ; 
 ever by preference seeking the professional beggars, 
 the itinerant shoemakers, tailors, weavers, and 
 vagrant journeymen of all kinds in a word, in 
 the whole nomad song-loving, story-telling fra- 
 ternity. Everywhere, too, I have interrogated 
 the old women, nurses, young girls, and old men ; 
 above all, those of the hill regions, who in the last 
 
 398
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 century formed part of the armed bands of patriots, 
 and whose recollections, when once they can be 
 quickened, constitute a national repertory as rich 
 as any one could possibly consult. Even children 
 at their play have sometimes revealed to me 
 unexpected old-world survivals. Ever varying as 
 was the degree of intelligence in all these people, 
 they were at one in this : that no one among 
 them knew how to read. Naturally, therefore, 
 the songs and legends and superstitions which 
 I heard thus are not to be found in books, and 
 never at least as here given ; for these came fresh 
 from the lips of an illiterate but passionately 
 conservative, patriotic, and poetic people. 
 
 In a word, Brittany is, in common with 
 Ireland or Gaelic Scotland, the last home 
 of the old-world Celt, of the old Celtic 
 legendary and mythological lore, of the 
 passing and ever more and more fugitive 
 Celtic folk -literature. Scotland has her 
 Campbell of Islay, her Alexander Carmichael ; 
 Brittany has Hersart de la Villemarque. 
 
 The scientific value of M. de la Ville- 
 marque's Barzaz-Breiz has been disparaged 
 by some writers, to whom the pedantry of 
 absolute literality is more dear than the 
 living spirit of which language is but the 
 veil ; and this on the ground that his ver- 
 sions are often too elaborated, and are some- 
 times modern rather than archaic. The best 
 answer is in the words of the famous Breton 
 
 399
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 himself, in the preface to the revised and 
 definite edition. After detailing the endless 
 care taken, and the comparative method 
 pursued, he adds : " The sole license I 
 have permitted myself is the substitution, 
 in place of certain mutilated or vicious 
 expressions, or of certain unpoetic or less 
 poetic verses, of corresponding but more 
 adequate and harmonious verses, or words 
 from some other version or versions. This 
 was the method of Walter Scott [in his 
 Scottish Minstrelsy], and I could not follow 
 a better guide." 
 
 The Barzaz-Breiz, or Treasury of Breton 
 Popular Chants, is a storehouse of learned 
 and most interesting and fascinating matter 
 concerning the origins and survival and 
 interrelations of the racial and other 
 legendary beliefs, and superstitions, and 
 folk-lore generally, of the Armorican people 
 Arvor, or Armorica, being the old name 
 of Brittany, the Wales of France. In the 
 introductory and appendical notes to each 
 heroic ballad or legendary poem, Hersart de 
 la Villemarque has condensed the critical 
 and specialistic knowledge of one of the 
 most indefatigable and enthusiastic of folk- 
 lorists ; and this with the keenness of 
 sympathy and of insight, and the new and 
 400
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 convincing charm of interpretation, of a 
 man of genius. 
 
 It is amazing how little of his work has 
 been translated or paraphrased in English, 
 especially when we consider the ever-growing 
 interest in literature of the kind, and par- 
 ticularly in Celtic literature. 
 
 The three representative pieces which I 
 have translated from the Barzaz-Breiz are 
 not only typical of the ancient and the 
 mediaeval Breton romance or heroic ballad, 
 but are given intact with their prefatory 
 and appendical notes. 
 
 The Wine of the Gauls is one of the earliest 
 preserved utterances of the ancient Armori- 
 can bards. The Tribute of Nomenoe is still 
 old, though not so ancient. The Foster - 
 Brother is a type of both the style and 
 substance of the mediaeval folk-tale. 
 
 THE WINE OF THE GAULS AND THE 
 
 DANCE OF THE SWORD 
 
 (DIALECT OF LEON) 
 
 Argument 
 
 One is not ignorant that in the sixth 
 century the Bretons often made excursions 
 into the territory of their neighbours, subject 
 
 ii 401 2 c
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 to the domination of the Franks, whom 
 they called by the general name of Gauls. 
 These expeditions, undertaken oftenest under 
 the necessity of defending their independence, 
 were also sometimes ventured through the 
 desire of providing themselves in the enemy's 
 country with what they lacked in Brittany, 
 principally with wine. As soon as autumn 
 came, says Gregory of Tours, they departed, 
 followed by chariots, and supplied with 
 instruments of war and of agriculture ; 
 armed for the vintage. Were the grapes 
 still hanging, they plucked them themselves ; 
 was the wine made, they carried it away. 
 If they were too hurried, or surprised by the 
 Franks, they drank it on the spot ; then, 
 leading the vintagers captive, they joyously 
 regained their woods and their marshes. 
 The piece here following was composed, 
 according to the illustrious author of the 
 Merovingian Accounts, on the return from 
 one of these expeditions. Some tavern 
 habitues of the parish of Coray intone it 
 glass in hand, more for the melody than for 
 the words ; the primitive spirit of which, 
 thanks be to God, they have ceased to 
 seize. 
 
 402
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 Better is white wine of grapes than of mulberries ; 
 better is white grape wine. 
 
 O fire ! O fire ! O steel ! O steel ! 
 O fire ! O fire I O steel and fire ! 
 O oak I O oak ! O earth I O waves I 
 O waves ! O earth ! O earth and 
 oak ! 
 
 Red blood and white wine, a river I red blood and 
 white wine I 
 
 O fire I O fire t &>c. 
 
 Better new wine than ale ; better new wine. 
 O fire I O fire ! &>c. 
 
 Better sparkling wine than hydromel ; better sparkling 
 wine. 
 
 O fire ! O fire I 6-c. 
 
 Better wine of the Gauls than of apples ; better wine 
 of the Gauls. 
 
 O fire ! O fire ! &c. 
 
 Gaul, vines and leaf for thee, O dunghill I Gaul, 
 vine and leaf to thee ! 
 
 O fire ! O fire ! &c. 
 
 White wine to thee, hearty Breton ! White wine to 
 thee, Breton ! 
 
 O fire I O fire I S>c. 
 
 Wine and blood flow mixed ; wine and blood flow, 
 O fire ! O fire ! 6>c. 
 
 White wine and red blood, and thick blood ; white 
 wine and red blood. 
 
 O fire ! O fire t &c. 
 
 43
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 'Tis blood of the Gauls that flows ; the blood of the 
 Gauls. 
 
 fire ! O fire ! &c. 
 
 In the rough fray have I drunk wine and blood ; 
 I have drunk wine and blood. 
 O fire ! O fire ! &c. 
 
 Wine and blood nourish him who drinks ; wine and 
 blood nourish. 
 
 fire ! O fire ! &>c. 
 
 II 
 
 Blood and wine and dance, Sun, to thee ! blood and 
 wine and dance. 
 
 O fire ! O fire ! &>c. 
 
 And dance and song, song and battle 1 and dance 
 and song. 
 
 O fire I O fire I &-c. 
 
 Dance of the sword in rounds ; dance of the 
 sword. 
 
 O fire ! O fire ! &-c. 
 
 Song of the blue sword which murder loves ; song of 
 the blue sword. 
 
 O fire ! O fire ! &>c. 
 
 Battle where the savage sword is king ; battle of the 
 savage sword. 
 
 fire I O fire I &c. 
 
 O sword I O great king of the battlefield ! O sword ! 
 O great king I 
 
 fire I O fire I &-c. 
 404
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 May the rainbow shine on thy forehead ! may the 
 rainbow shine ! 
 
 O fire 1 O fire I O steel I O steel ! 
 O fire I O fire ! O steel and fire ! 
 O oak ! O oak ! O earth ! O earth ! 
 O waves ! O waves ! O earth ! O earth 
 and oak I 
 
 Note 
 
 It is probable that the expedition to which 
 this wild song alludes took place on the 
 territory of the Nantais ; for their wine 
 is white, as is that of which the bard speaks. 
 The different beverages he attributes to 
 the Bretons mulberry wine, beer, hydromel, 
 apple wine or cider are also those which 
 were used in the sixth century. 
 
 Without any doubt we have here two 
 distinct songs, welded together by the power 
 of time. The second begins at the thirteenth 
 stanza, and is a warrior's hymn in honour 
 of the sun, a fragment of the Sword Round 
 of the ancient Bretons. Like the Gaels 
 and the Germans, they were in the habit of 
 surrendering themselves to it during their 
 festivals ; it was executed by young men 
 who knew the art of jumping circularly to 
 music, at the same time throwing their 
 swords into the air and catching them 
 again. 
 
 405
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 This is represented on three Celtic medal- 
 lions in M. Hucher's collection : on one a 
 warrior jumps up and down, while brandish- 
 ing his battle-axe in one hand, and with the 
 other throwing it up behind his long float- 
 ing headdress; on a second one,* a warrior 
 dances before a suspended sword, and, says 
 M. Henri Martin, he is evidently repeating 
 the invocation : " O sword ! O great king of 
 the battlefield ! O sword ! O great king ! " 
 
 This, it is obvious, would cast us back 
 into plain paganism. At least it is certain 
 that the language of the last seven stanzas 
 is still older than that of the other twelve. 
 As for its form, the entire piece is regularly 
 alliterated from one end to the other, 
 like the songs of the primitive bards ; and, 
 like them, is subject to the law of ternary 
 rhythm. I have no need to draw notice 
 to what a clashing of meeting weapons it 
 recalls to the ear, and what a strident 
 blast the melody breathes. 
 
 THE TRIBUTE OF NOMENOE 
 
 (CORNOUAILLE DIALECT) 
 
 Argument 
 
 Nomenoe, the greatest king whom Brittany 
 has had, pursued the work of his country's 
 406
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 deliverance, but by different means than his 
 predecessors. He opposed ruse to force ; 
 he feigned to submit to the foreign domina- 
 tion, and by these tactics succeeded in 
 impeding an enemy ten times superior in 
 numbers. The Emperor Charles, called the 
 Bald, was deceived by his demonstrations 
 of obedience. He did not guess that the 
 Breton chief, like all politicians of superior 
 genius, knew how to wait. When the 
 moment for acting came, Nomenoe threw 
 off the mask : he drove the Franks beyond 
 the rivers of the Oust and of Vilaine, 
 extending the frontiers of Brittany to 
 Poitou ; and taking the towns of Nantes 
 and Rennes from the enemy, which since 
 then have not ceased to make part of 
 the Breton territory, he delivered his com- 
 patriots from the tribute which they paid 
 to the Franks (841). 
 
 " A remarkably beautiful piece of poetry," 
 says Augustin Thierry, " and one full of 
 details of the habits of a very ancient epoch, 
 recounts the event which determined this 
 grand act of independence." According to 
 the illustrious French historian, "it is an 
 energetically symbolic picture of the pro- 
 longed inaction of the patriot prince, and 
 of his rude awakening when he judged the 
 407
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 moment had come " (Ten Years of His- 
 torical Studies, 6th ed., p. 515). 
 
 I 
 
 The golden grass is mown ; it has misted suddenly. 
 To battle I 
 
 It mists, said, from the summit of the mountain of 
 Arez, the great chief of the family ; 
 
 To battle ! 
 
 From the direction of the country of the Franks, 
 
 for three weeks more and more, more and more, 
 
 has it misted, 
 
 So that in no wise can I see my son return to me. 
 Good merchant, who the country travels o'er, know'st 
 
 thou news of Karo, my son ? 
 Mayhap, old father of Arez ; but how looks he ? 
 
 what does he ? 
 He is a man of sense and of heart ; he it was who 
 
 went to drive the chariots to Rennes, 
 To drive to Rennes the chariots drawn by horses 
 
 harnessed three by three, 
 Divided between them, they that carry faithfully 
 
 Brittany's tribute. 
 // your son is the tribute-bearer, in vain will you 
 
 await him. 
 When they came to weigh the silver, there lacked 
 
 three pounds in every hundred ; 
 And the steward said : Thy head, vassal, shall 
 
 complete the weight. 
 And drawing his sword, he cut off the head of your 
 
 son. 
 Then by the hair he took it, and threw it on the 
 
 scales* 
 
 408
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 At these words the old chief of the family was like 
 
 to swoon : 
 Violently on the rock he fell, hiding his face with his 
 
 white hairs ; 
 And his head in his hands, he cried with a moan : 
 
 Kara, my son, my poor, dear son ! 
 
 II 
 
 Followed by his kindred, the great tribal chief set 
 
 out ; 
 The great tribal chief of the family approaches, he 
 
 approaches the stronghold of Nomenoe. 
 Tell me, head of the porters, the master, is he at 
 
 home ? 
 Be he there, or not there, God keep him in good 
 
 health ! 
 As these words he said, the lord to his dwelling 
 
 returned ; 
 Returning from the hunt, preceded by his great 
 
 playful dogs, 
 In his hand he held his bow, on his shoulder carried 
 
 a boar, 
 A nd the fresh blood, quite warm from the mouth of 
 
 the beast, flowed upon his white hand. 
 Good day, good day to you, honest mountaineers ! 
 
 first of all to you, great tribal chief : 
 What news is there, what wish you of me ? 
 We come to know of you if a law there be ; if in the 
 
 sky there is a God, and in Brittany a chief. 
 In the sky there is a God, I believe, and in Brittany 
 
 a chief if I can. 
 He who will, he can ; he who can, drives the Frank 
 
 away 
 Drives away the Frank, defends his country, avenges 
 
 it and will avenge it. 
 
 409
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 He will avenge the living and dead, and me and 
 
 Karo my child, 
 My poor son Karo, beheaded by the excommunicated 
 
 Frank ; 
 Beheaded in his prime, and whose head, golden as 
 
 millet, was thrown into the scales to balance the 
 
 weight ! 
 A nd the old man began to weep, and his tears flowed 
 
 down his gray beard, 
 And they shone as the dew on a lily, at the rising 
 
 of the sun. 
 When the lord saw this, a bloody and terrible oath he 
 
 swore : 
 By this boar's head and the arrow which pierced it, 
 
 I swear it : 
 Before I wash the blood from my right hand, I shall 
 
 have washed my country's wound ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Nomenoe has done that which no chief e'er did 
 
 before : 
 He went to the shores of the sea with bags to gather 
 
 pebbles, 
 Pebbles to tender as tribute to the steward of the 
 
 bald king.* 
 
 Nomenoe has done that which chief ne'er did before : 
 With polished silver has he shod his horses, and 
 
 with reversed shoes. 
 
 Nomenoe has done that which chief ne'er did before : 
 Prince as he is, in person to pay the tribute he has 
 
 gone. 
 Open wide the gates of Rennes, that I make entry in 
 
 the town : 
 
 * The Emperor Charles, surnamed the Bald. 
 410
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 With chariots full of silver, 'tis Nomeno& who is 
 
 here. 
 Alight, my lord ; enter the castle ; and leave your 
 
 chariots in the coach-house ; 
 Leave to the equerry your white horse, and come and 
 
 sup above, 
 Come to sup, and first of all to wash : there sounds 
 
 the water-horn ; do you hear ? * 
 / will wash in a moment, my lord, when the tribute 
 
 shall have been weighed. 
 
 The first bag to be carried (and it was well tied}, 
 The first bag which was brought, of the right weight 
 
 was found. 
 The second bag which was brought, also of right 
 
 weight was found. 
 The third bag that they weighed : Aha ! aha t 
 
 this weight is not right ! 
 When the steward this saw, unto the bag his hand 
 
 he extended ; 
 Quickly he seized the cords, endeavouring to untie 
 
 them. 
 Wait, wail, Sir Steward, with my sword I will cut 
 
 them. 
 Hardly had he finished these words, that his sword 
 
 leaped from the scabbard, 
 That close to the shoulders the head of the Frank 
 
 bent double it struck, 
 And that it cut flesh and nerves and one chain of 
 
 the scale beside. 
 The head fell in the scale, and thus the balance was 
 
 made. 
 But behold the town in uproar : Stop, stop the 
 
 assassin I 
 
 * Before the repast, at the sound of the horn, 
 one washed one's hands. 
 
 411
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 He escapes, he escapes ! bring torches ! let us run 
 
 quickly after him. 
 Bring torches ! 'twould be well : the night is black, 
 
 and frozen the road ; 
 But I greatly fear you will wear out your shoes in 
 
 following me, 
 Your shoes of blue gilded leather : as to your scales, 
 
 you will use them no more ; 
 You will use no more your golden scales in weighing 
 
 the stones of the Bretons. 
 
 To battle ! 
 
 Note 
 
 This traditional portrait of the chief whose 
 political genius saved Breton independence 
 is no less faithful, from its point of view, 
 than those of history itself. Thus, Augustin 
 Thierry did not hesitate to place it in the 
 gallery which contemporaneous history has 
 preserved to us, and which he has so admir- 
 ably restored. The latter proves by its 
 general spirit, if by no precise feature, the 
 exactitude of the anecdote. Before the 
 time of Nomenoe, for at least ten years, the 
 Bretons had paid tribute to the Franks ; 
 he delivered them from it : that is the real 
 fact. The tone of the ballad is in harmony 
 with the epoch. 
 
 As the head of the Frank charged to re- 
 ceive the tribute falls in the scales, where 
 412
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 the weight is lacking, and the poet cries with 
 ferocious joy, " His head fell in the basin, 
 and the weight was thus made ! " one remem- 
 bers that a few years ago Morvan, the Lez- 
 Breiz of the Breton tradition, said, trembling 
 with rage : "If I could see him, he would 
 have of me what he asks, this king of the 
 Franks : I would pay him the tribute in 
 iron." 
 
 In regard to the epic song with which 
 the liberator of Brittany inspired the national 
 Muse, the satirical song composed in the 
 Abbey of St. Florent against Nomenoe is 
 opposed. The Frankish monks of the 
 shores of the Loire could not pardon 
 him the destruction of their monastery ; 
 and to avenge themselves they invented 
 the following fable, which they chanted in 
 chorus : 
 
 In that time lived a certain man called Nomenoe : 
 Of poor parents he was born ; his field he plowed 
 
 himself ; 
 But hidden in the earth an immense treasure he 
 
 encountered ; 
 By means of which among the rich many friends 
 
 for himself he made ; 
 Then, clever in the art to deceive, he began himself to 
 
 raise ; 
 So that, thanks to his riches, he finished by domi 
 
 nating all, &-c t 
 
 413
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 Quidam fuit hoc tempore 
 Nomenoius nomine ; 
 
 Pauper fuit progenie ; 
 A grunt colebat vomere ; 
 
 Sed reperit largissimum 
 Thesaurum terra conditum ; 
 
 Quo plurimorum divitum 
 Junxit sibi solatium. 
 
 Dehinc, per artem fallere, 
 Ccepit qui mox succrescere, 
 
 Donee super cunctos, ope 
 Transcenderet potentice, &c. 
 
 Poor Latin, poor rhymes/ poor revenge. 
 
 THE FOSTER-BROTHER 
 
 (TREGUIER DIALECT) 
 Argument 
 
 This ballad, some variants of which I 
 owe to the Abbe Henry, and which is one 
 of the most popular of Brittany, is sung 
 under different titles in several parts of 
 Europe. Fauriel has published it in modern 
 Greek ; Burger picked it up from the lips 
 of a young German peasant girl, and gave 
 it an artificial form ; The Dead go about 
 Alive is but an artistic reproduction of the 
 Danish ballad Aage and Else. A Welsh 
 414
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 savant has assured me that his compatriots 
 of the mountains possess it in their language. 
 All are based on the idea of a duty, the obe- 
 dience to the sacredness of the oath. The 
 hero of the primitive German ballad, like 
 the Greek Constantine, like the Breton 
 cavalier, vowed to return, though dead ; 
 and he kept his word. 
 
 We do not know to what epoch the com- 
 position of the two German and Danish 
 songs, nor that of the Greek ballad, date 
 back : ours must belong to the most flourish- 
 ing period of the Middle Ages, chivalric 
 devotion shining therein by its sweetest 
 lustre. 
 
 The prettiest girl of high degree in all this country 
 
 round was a young maid of eighteen years, whose 
 
 name was Gwennolaik. 
 Dead was the old lord, her two poor sisters and her 
 
 mother ; her own people all were dead, alas ! 
 
 except her stepmother. 
 It was pitiful to see her, weeping bitterly on the 
 
 threshold of the manor-door, so beauteous and 
 
 so sweet ! 
 Her eyes fixed on the sea, seeking there the vessel 
 
 of her foster-brother, her only consolation in the 
 
 world, and whom since long she had awaited ; 
 Her eyes fixed upon the sea, and seeking there the 
 
 vessel of her foster-brother. Six years had passed 
 
 since he had left his country. 
 
 415
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 Away from here, my daughter, and go and fetch 
 
 the cattle ; I do not feed you to remain there 
 
 seated. 
 She awaked her two, three hours before the day in 
 
 winter, to light the fire and sweep the house ; 
 To go to draw water at the fountain of the dwarfs, 
 
 with a little cracked pitcher and a broken pail ; 
 The night was dark ; ihe water had been disturbed 
 
 by the foot of the horse of a cavalier who returned 
 
 from Nantes. 
 
 Good health to you, young maid : are you be- 
 trothed ? 
 And I (what a child and fool I was /) I replied : 
 
 I wot naught of it. 
 
 Are you betrothed ? Tell me, I pray you. 
 Save your grace, dear sir : not yet am I betrothed. 
 Well, take my golden ring, and say to your stepmother 
 
 that unto a cavalier who returns from Nantes you 
 
 are betrothed : 
 That a great combat there has been ; that his young 
 
 esquire has been killed over there, that he himself by 
 
 a sword-thrust in the flank has been wounded ; 
 Thai in three weeks and three days he'll be restored, 
 
 and to the manor will come gayly and quickly to 
 
 seek you. 
 And she to run at once to the house and to look at 
 
 the ring : it was the ring that her foster-brother 
 
 wore on his left hand. 
 
 II 
 
 One, two, three weeks had passed, and the young 
 
 cavalier had not yet returned. 
 You must be married ; I have thought thereon in 
 
 my heart, and for you a proper man, my daughter, 
 
 I've found. 
 
 416
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 Save your grace, stepmother, I wish no husband other 
 
 than my foster-brother, who has come. 
 He gave me my wedding-ring of gold, and soon will 
 
 come gayly and quickly to seek me. 
 Be quiet, if you please, with your wedding-ring of 
 
 gold, or I will take a rod to teach you how to speak. 
 Willy-nilly, you shall wed Job the Lunatic, our 
 
 young stable-boy. 
 Wed Job ! Oh horror ! I shall die of sorrow ! My 
 
 mother, my poor little mother ! if thou wert still 
 
 alive ! 
 Go and lament in the court, mourn there as much as 
 
 you will ; in vain will you make a wry face : in 
 
 three days betrothed you'll be. 
 
 Ill 
 
 About that time the old gravedigger travelled through 
 
 the country, his bell in his hand, to carry the 
 
 tidings of death. 
 Pray for the soul which hath been the lord cavalier, 
 
 in his lifetime a gdlfd man and a brave. 
 And who beyond Nantes was wounded to death by 
 
 a sword-thrust in his side, in a great battle over 
 
 there. 
 To-morrow at the setting of the sun the watching will 
 
 begin, and thereafter from the white church to the 
 
 tomb they will carry him. 
 
 IV 
 
 How early you do go away ! Whether I am 
 going? Oh, yes. indeed ! But the feast is not yet 
 done, nor is the evening spent. 
 
 1 cannot restrain the pity she inspires in me, and 
 II 417 2 D
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 the horror which awakes this herdsman who stands 
 
 in the house face to face with her ! 
 Around the poor girl, who bitterly wept, every one 
 
 was weeping, the rector himself : 
 In the parish church this morn all were weeping, all 
 
 both young and old ; all except the stepmother. 
 The more the fiddlers in returning to the manor 
 
 twanged their bows, the more they consoled her, 
 
 the more was her heart torn. 
 They took her to the table, to the place of honour for 
 
 supper ; she has drunk no drop of water, nor 
 
 eaten a morsel of bread. 
 They tried just now to undress her, to put her in 
 
 her bed : she has thrown away her ring, has torn 
 
 her wedding fillet ; 
 She has escaped from the house, her hair in disorder. 
 
 Where she has gone to hide, no one doth it know. 
 
 V 
 
 All lights were extinguished ; in the manor every 
 
 one profoundly slept ; elsewhere, the poor young 
 
 maid was awake, to fever a prey. 
 Who is there ? I, Nola, thy foster-brother. 
 It is thou, really, really thou ! It is thou, thou, 
 
 my dear brother ! 
 And she ran to go out, and to flee away on her brother's 
 
 white horse in saddle behind, encircling him with 
 
 her little arm, seated behind him. 
 How fast we go, my brother ! We have gone a 
 
 hundred leagues, I think ! How happy I am 
 
 near unto thee ! So much was I never before. 
 Is it still afar, thy mother's house ? I would we 
 
 were arrived. 
 Ever hold me close, my sister : ere long we shall be 
 
 there. 
 
 418
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 The owl fled screeching before them ; as well as the 
 
 wild animals frightened by the noise they made. 
 How supple is thy horse, and thy armour how bright ! 
 
 I find thee much grown, my brother. 
 I find thee very beautiful ! Is it still far, thy 
 
 manor ? 
 Ever hold me close, my sister : we shall arrive 
 
 apace. 
 Thy heart is icy ; thy hair is wet ; thy heart 
 
 and thy hand are icy : I fear that thou art 
 
 cold. 
 Ever hold me close, my sister : behold us quite near ; 
 
 hearest thou not the piercing sounds of the gay 
 
 musicians of our nuptials ? 
 He had not finished speaking when his horse 
 
 stopped all at once, shivering and neighing very 
 
 loud ; 
 A nd they found themselves on an island where many 
 
 people were dancing ; 
 Where young men and beautiful young girls, holding 
 
 each other by the hand, did play : 
 All about green trees with apples laden, and behind, 
 
 the sun rising on the mountains. 
 A little clear fountain flowed there ; souls to life 
 
 returning, were drinking there ; 
 Gwennola's mother was with them, and her two 
 
 sisters also. 
 There was nothing there but pleasure, songs, and 
 
 cries of joy. 
 
 VI 
 
 On the morrow morning, at the rising of the sun, 
 young girls carried the spotless body of little 
 Gwennola from the white church to the tomb. 
 419
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 Notes 
 
 As will be remembered, the German 
 ballad ends, after the fashion of the stories 
 of the Helden-Buch, by a catastrophe which 
 swallows up the two heroes ; it is the 
 same with the Greek ballad published by 
 Fauriel. 
 
 The ancient Bretons recognised several 
 stages of existence through which the soul 
 passed ; and Procopius placed the Druid 
 Elysium beyond the ocean in one of the 
 Britannic Isles, which he does not name. 
 The Welsh traditions are more precise : they 
 expressly designate this island under the 
 name of Isle of Avalon, or of the Apples. 
 It is the abiding-place of the heroes : Arthur, 
 mortally wounded at the battle of Camlann, 
 is conducted there by the bards Merlin 
 and Taliesin, guided by Barinte the peer- 
 less boatman (Vita Merlini Caledoniensis). 
 The French author of the novel of William of 
 the Short Nose has his hero Renoard trans- 
 ported thither by the fairies, with the Breton 
 heroes. 
 
 One of the Armorican lays of Mary of 
 
 France also transports thither the squireen 
 
 Lanval. And it is there, one cannot doubt 
 
 it, that the foster-brother and his betrothed 
 
 420
 
 The Literature of Brittany 
 
 alight : but no soul, it was said, could be 
 admitted there before having received the 
 funeral rites ; it remained wandering on the 
 opposite bank until the moment when the 
 priest collected its bones and sang its funeral 
 hymn. This opinion is as alive to-day in 
 Lower Brittany as in the Middle Ages ; 
 and we have seen celebrated there the 
 same funeral ceremonies as those of olden 
 times. 
 
 1898 
 
 421
 
 THE SEVENFOLD NEED IN 
 LITERATURE 
 
 (A Fragment) 
 i. IDEA. 
 
 ii. TECHNIQUE. 
 
 in. SPONTANEITY OF IMPRESSION. 
 
 FIDELITY OF OBSERVATION. 
 
 SINCERITY IN EXPRESSION. 
 
 Which together constitute the sig- 
 nature of truth, whether actual or 
 imaginativCi 
 
 iv. JUDGMENT : 
 
 Deliberation which is the spiritual 
 instinct of Symmetry, as it is the 
 intellectual expression of Taste. 
 
 v. EMOTIONAL POWER : 
 (i) RHYTHM. 
 (n) EMOTION. 
 
 vi. INVENTION : 
 
 (i) As FORMATIVE ENERGY. 
 (n) As SYNTHETIC VISION. 
 
 vn. THE ACHIEVEMENT IN BEAUTY. 
 422
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 THE Studies and Appreciations that are gathered 
 together in this selection of the writings of 
 William Sharp were intended by him to form 
 part of a volume of essays on literature en- 
 titled In the Garden of Letters, prefaced by an 
 essay on " The Literary Ideal," of which only 
 the preliminary outline was sketched in the 
 fragment, " The Sevenfold Need in Literature," 
 now herein included. 
 
 These Studies and Appreciations were written 
 at different periods of the author's career (from 
 1885 to 1902), either as editorials to Antho- 
 logies, to Collected Essays, or as contributions 
 to periodicals. The essay on "The Sonnet, 
 its History and Characteristics," prefaces his 
 anthology of Sonnets of the Nineteenth Century 
 (1886), and was preceded in 1885 by his edition 
 of The Songs and Sonnets of Shakespeare. Con- 
 cerning his critical preface to the latter volume, 
 J^Yddington Symonds wrote to the author that, 
 in lusoplliiun, " The Preface is more humanly 
 and humanely true about Shakespeare's attitude 
 in the Sonnets than anything which has yet 
 been written about them. . . . You are one 
 of those who live (as Goethe has for ever put it) 
 in the whole. It is a great thing for modern 
 criticism to get itself out of holes and corners, 
 mere personal proclivities and scholarly niceties, 
 
 423
 
 Bibliographical Note 
 
 into the large air of nature and of man." 
 The paper on " Great Odes " was written for 
 the author's collection of English Odes issued 
 in 1890, and all three volumes were issued in the 
 " Canterbury Series " published by Walter Scott, 
 Ltd., to whom I am indebted for permission to 
 include these three essays in my selection of 
 my husband's writings. The critical memoir of 
 Sainte-Beuve prefaces an English translation of 
 the French critic's Essays on Men and Women, 
 which appeared in the " Masterpieces of Foreign 
 Authors," published by David Stott, in 1890. 
 
 "The Literature of Brittany," originally 
 printed in vol. xxvi. of Warner's "Library of 
 Best Literature " (New York, 1898), is a study 
 on the Heroic and Legendary Literature of 
 Brittany in the sixth century, as translated 
 by Hersart de la Villemarque in 1850. " La 
 Jeune Belgique " was printed in the Nineteenth 
 Century in 1893, the appreciation of " Some 
 Dramas of D'Annunzio" in the Fortnightly in 
 1900; "The Modern Troubadours " (1900) and 
 " Modern Italian Poets " (1902) were written 
 for the Quarterly Review ; and to the editors 
 of those periodicals I desire to tender my sin- 
 cere acknowledgment of their courtesy, whereby 
 I am enabled to include the three essays in this 
 
 present volume. 
 
 ELIZABETH A. SHARP 
 
 BALLANTYNE & COMPANY LTD 
 
 TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN 
 
 LONDON
 
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