^mMW/mw''' 
 
 '£^1 
 
 mmmm 
 
 STRAY 
 THOUGHTS 
 ON 
 READING 
 
 L.H.M. Soulsiy 
 
 mi mmm^m'^mmm^ m'/Mfmym^m
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 STRAY THOUGHTS 
 
 ON 
 
 READING
 
 WORKS BY L. H. M. SOULSBY 
 
 STRAY THOUGHTS FOR GIRLS, 23. 6d. net. 
 [New and Enlarged Edition. ) 
 
 Contents : Lines written on being told that a Lady was " Plain and 
 Commonplace" — The Virtuous Woman — Making Plans — Conversation 
 — Aunt Rachel ; or, Old Maids' Children — " Get up, M. le Comte ! "— 
 A Friday Lesson — A Home Art ; or, Mothers and Daughters — Esprit 
 de Corps — Rough Notes of a Lesson — Holidays — Sunday — Friendship 
 and Love — A Good Time. 
 %* The Original Edition of this book is still on sale, i6»:o, is. 6d. net. 
 
 STRAY THOUGHTS FOR MOTHERS AND 
 TEACHERS, 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 Contents : The Religious Side of Secular Teaching — Home Educa- 
 tion from 14 to 17 — Mothers and Day Schools — Teaching of History — etc. 
 
 STRAY THOUGHTS ON READING, 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 Contents : Suggestions on Reading — Romola — Charles Kingsley — 
 "The Happy Warrior " — Paracelsus — Dante — Pilgrim's Progress — etc. 
 
 STRAY THOUGHTS ON CHARACTER, 
 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 Contents : *Happiness — fOne Called Help — fTwo Aspects of 
 Education or Self-Control and the Ideal Woman — fl'lie Use of Leisure 
 or Thoughts on Education — etc. 
 
 * This is printed separately, price 3d. net. 
 
 ■f These arc printed separately, price 4./. net each. 
 
 * m * The four books as above are also issued bound in limp leather, 
 gilt edges, and can be obtained through any bookseller. 
 
 STRAY THOUGHTS FOR INVALIDS, 2s. net. 
 
 Contents: "I do well to be Angry" — "Purring when you're 
 pleased" — The Duty of Eating — Nervous Irritability — The Shadow of 
 the Future — The Fear of Death — etc. 
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON PRAYER, is. net, 
 or in Cloth, is. 6d. net. 
 
 Contents: Difficulties in Prayer — Making a Prayer Book — Prayer 
 is Power — Self-Examination — Questions on the Ten Commandments. 
 
 SHORT PRAYERS, cloth limp, i6mo, 6d. net. 
 CHRIST AND HIS CROSS, 2s. net. 
 
 Selections from Rutherford's Letters. 
 
 CHRISTIAN PERFECTION, 2s. net. 
 
 By William Law, edited ny L. H. M. Soulsby. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 LONDON, NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
 
 Stray Thoughts 
 
 on 
 
 Reading 
 
 BY 
 
 LUCY H. M. SOULSBY 
 
 FIFTH IMPRESSION 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 1904 
 
 All rights rrscrvtd
 
 TO 
 
 THE GIRLS 
 
 OF 
 
 OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL, 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 UETUS SORTE MEA.
 
 1003 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THOSE to whom these papers are dedicated 
 will recognize old friends, and will have a 
 key to the apparently causeless diversity of the 
 subjects dwelt on. 
 
 The forbearance of others can only be asked for 
 on the score of the tacit apology conveyed by my 
 title — an apology for both discursiveness of subject 
 and slightness of treatment. 
 
 These thoughts, ranging as they do from 
 " Romola " to the " Pilgrim's Progress," will seem 
 " woefully astray " as far as any connection of ideas 
 goes ; but if they recall to the reader's mind the 
 books discussed, my deficiencies will be condoned 
 in consideration of the happy memories awakened 
 by these papers. 
 
 LUCY H. M. SOULSBY. 
 
 The Manor House, 
 Brondesbury Park, 
 October , 1S97. 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 L 
 
 PACK 
 
 1. Suggestions on Reading ..,,.,.. i 
 
 List. 
 
 2. Novels , 25 
 
 List. 
 
 3. Romola . 59 
 
 4. Charles Kingsley 65 
 
 II. 
 
 5. Poetry 75 
 
 6. A Shadow from the Merchant of Venice ... 88 
 
 7. Wordsworth 100 
 
 8. " The Happy Warrior " . 1 10 
 
 9. Paracelsus 120 
 
 10. Dante 146 
 
 11. The Divine Comedy . . , 155 
 
 List. 
 
 III. 
 
 12. Sunday Reading ........... 205 
 
 List. 
 
 ,, (A Month's Sermons). 
 
 13. "The Pilgrim's Progress" 233
 
 --I xrmsrra- ^- 
 
 live
 
 Suggestions on Iftearjfng. 
 
 " 'T^HINGS in books' clothing ! " It was thus 
 X that one of the most fascinating of all 
 writers spoke of the solid improving books for 
 which I am going to hold a brief. 
 
 It would have " moved the spleen " of that 
 most "genuine lover of reading," Charles Lamb, 
 to hear of our Half Hours' Reading Societies, and 
 " Hundred Best Books ; " — how would threepenny 
 classics have wounded the feelings of him who 
 found even octavo editions of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher " painful to look at " ! 
 
 The vagrant fancy of that scholar gypsy re- 
 belled against the "books that no gentleman's 
 library should be without," yet, surely, even he 
 would be pained to see those books discarded — 
 not (as he would have wished) for the sake of 
 " the thrice noble Margaret," or of Raymond 
 Lully — but, for the morbid psychology, and second- 
 rate passion, and vulgar scandals that cover every 
 railway bookstall. In spite of Elia on the one 
 hand, and the railway bookstall on the other, I 
 
 B
 
 2 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 want you to consider the question of what books it 
 " becomes a young woman to know." 
 
 I do not pretend that you will be amused by 
 these books, but, if you will work at them for a 
 couple of years, you will become interested, which 
 is far better. Amusement dies out with the 
 repetition of the thing which caused it, whereas 
 interest deepens and widens as you go on. 
 
 When De Quincey was a young man he wrote a 
 private memorandum of what he should aim at in 
 order to secure a happy life. In discussing these 
 " Constituents of Happiness," he says : — 
 
 " Nature provides to all men a sufficient supply 
 of happiness during that time when they have 
 sufficient intellect to apprehend and ascertain, or 
 foresight to secure to themselves sources of volun- 
 tary happiness — an involuntary happiness proceed- 
 ing from an exuberance of animal joy and spirits ; 
 this she withdraws in regular progression with the 
 advancement of the intellect. On the decay of 
 these self-supporting spirits commences the incum- 
 bency (which rests on every man) to provide for 
 himself a source of permanent stimulus ; and at this 
 crisis it is that wisdom most fails the souls of men." 
 
 As an assistance to this wisdom, I am going to 
 propose to you a list of books, 1 which you could 
 easily work through, during your first five years 
 after leaving school. If you took up this plan, 
 
 1 See p. 20.
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 3 
 
 and carried it out, you would be intellectually in a 
 far better position for facing the world, at twenty- 
 two or twenty-three, than most girls of that age. 
 
 I am fully alive to the objections that may be 
 fairly brought against giving such definite form to 
 my suggestions. Some say that girls, on leaving 
 school, should be able to shape their own line of 
 study, that otherwise their education has been a 
 failure. 
 
 I grant that the girl who on leaving school says 
 to some guide, philosopher, and friend, " Do tell 
 me what to read," is not the highest success of 
 Higher Education. I should admire her more if 
 she had a strong bent and knew exactly what she 
 wanted to do, and scorned stray suggestions ; but 
 I have not met this " not impossible she " often 
 enough to feel hampered by her. 
 
 I recognize, also, that each one of you has 
 probably some home adviser who could give her a 
 far better list ; but I give mine all the same, 
 because I observe that girls sometimes go abroad 
 for confession and direction, when their own mother 
 is fully qualified to meet all their requirements; 
 from which I infer that some of you may adopt 
 my list because it is not of home manufacture, and 
 that my having no claim on your allegiance may 
 seem to some of you a reason for your giving it. 
 This same instinct of natural perversity will 
 probably lead others to take exception to my list,
 
 \ SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 because /give it. By all means scratch out each 
 name and replace it — only, be sure you read the 
 supplanters. My object will then have been 
 attained. So long as you know the Iliad, I do not 
 care whether you think it the work of Homer, or 
 of another man of the same name. So long as 
 you read, I do not care whether you read my list, 
 or some one else's. Pray do not imagine that I 
 have compiled an official guide to books — I only 
 tell you of those I myself should buy, first and 
 foremost, and should most blush at not knowing. 
 Having told you how far I am from wishing to 
 impose my list as a yoke, I shall not apologize 
 for its personality, as, to my mind, wholly im- 
 personal advice is generally wholly uninteresting. 
 
 As I said before, you may very likely find my 
 books dull. If so, do not be rash in expressing 
 your feelings. 
 
 Many of these books are accepted by " those 
 who know " as " the precious life-blood of a master 
 spirit," 1 and it is not for us to presume to award 
 praise or blame. One hears some " unidea'd 
 young lady " 2 announcing that Wordsworth is prosy 
 and Miss Austen dull. I have no doubt she finds 
 them so, but whose fault is that ? Do not say a 
 book amuses you when it does not ; but, if good 
 judges admire it, try to bring yourself up to its 
 level, and, till you succeed, do not obtrude your 
 1 " Areopagitica." ' Dr. Johnson.
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 5 
 
 own deficiencies. Nothing strikes the note of 
 uncultivation so painfully as the expression of crude 
 judgments. 
 
 When you hear people pronouncing on music, or 
 painting, without having studied to inform their 
 judgment and to raise their taste, you are probably 
 struck by a sense of their inadequacy to the 
 occasion, but I suspect you often " rush in " to pass 
 very similar judgment on a book that has the mis- 
 fortune not to appeal to you. Even the invitation 
 of an examination-paper to discuss the merits and 
 demerits of Shakespeare seems to me a direct 
 injury to the moral humility of the examinee : how 
 much more those " literary and social judgments " 
 of private life which have not the same plea of 
 necessity ! 
 
 Now, suppose that a girl has made her good 
 resolutions about reading, and has chosen her 
 books. 
 
 My first advice would be, make easy rules for 
 yourself, and let your time-table be based on the 
 minimum of hours you can count on. If any of 
 you are already embarked in good resolutions, I 
 suspect that to halve what you have imposed 
 on yourself, would produce better results, and would 
 improve your self-respect and home comfort. 
 
 I once had a Reading Society with the following 
 rules : — 
 
 1. To keep a list of books read.
 
 6 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 2. To read half an hour a day (or three hours 
 
 a week), and to look out all unknown 
 allusions. 
 
 3. To read some good poetry daily. 
 
 4. To meet once a term, and to bring lists of 
 
 books read, of unverified quotations, and of 
 unknown allusions. 
 
 5. Not to skip. 
 
 6. To finish each book. 
 
 7. To keep a commonplace-book. 
 
 8. To get a Cassell's threepenny classic, once a 
 
 month and read it. 
 
 I think you will admit that these demands were 
 not excessive, and of course half an hour a day is 
 a minimum which will be exceeded by most who 
 care for their subject. But the value lies, not in 
 how many half-hours or how many pages you read, 
 but, in whether or no you read " with both hands 
 and all your teeth." I should be inclined to add 
 to that vigorous old proverb, "and a straight back," 
 for I have no faith in reading that is compatible 
 with an arm-chair. Sit up to the table with note- 
 book and atlas and dictionary at hand ; — write out 
 every unknown quotation or allusion, in a " Hunt 
 Book," for future search. 
 
 I was talking the other day to an old lady of 
 eighty-four, who pointed to her books of reference 
 at hand, and said she still kept up her lifelong habit 
 of looking out everything as it came. It cheered
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 7 
 
 one's own outlook on the future to hear her say that 
 at eighty-four she was as keenly interested in every 
 new book and subject, as Athenian to her finger 
 tips, as ever she was in her life. I suspect the vigour 
 and energy which looked out references had some- 
 thing to do with this freshness of mind, and that if we 
 allow ourselves to read at half pressure in youth 
 our faculties will be at half-power long before we 
 are eighty-four. 
 
 If possible, make a written abstract of the book, 
 and, in any case, " count your scalps " at the end 
 of the reading hour ; — by which I mean, shut your 
 book and give a clear account to yourself, either 
 verbally or in writing, of what you have learnt. 
 The mathematician who inquired, after reading 
 " Paradise Lost," " What does it prove ? " showed 
 an excellent, though somewhat misplaced, habit of 
 mind. 
 
 I set great store by the habit of keeping a list of 
 the books read. Arrange it in months, and it will 
 be invaluable as an encouragement to wholesome 
 shame for your shortcomings. It makes your list 
 very interesting in after years, if you enter the 
 place, and the lender, and an expression of opinion 
 about each book. 
 
 I should also strongly recommend a common 
 place-book, with an alphabetical index. 
 
 While on the subject of direct hints as to how to 
 to read, I should like to suggest that two subjects,
 
 8 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 at least, should be kept in hand, though very 
 possibly on alternate days or even weeks. Also 
 that one of these should be read with some 
 fulness, so that a group of books on the same 
 subject should be read consecutively. 
 
 " Know your centuries," but choose some one 
 century for your special possession. 
 
 I read Mrs. Delany's six fat volumes of letters 
 aloud one winter, and followed out the pedigree 
 and fortunes of every one she met — with the 
 result that the number of my personal acquaint- 
 ances is enlarged by Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Piozzi, 
 Mrs. Chapone, Miss Burney, the Duchess of Port- 
 land, and, in fact, more good company than I have 
 time to name. 
 
 I have before me a letter written by a girl of 
 twenty to a girl friend, more than seventy years 
 ago, and I cannot forbear quoting at some length 
 from such an instance of vivid personal interest in 
 historical characters. " So you are reading Gibbon. 
 The style is elegant and the criticism profound, but 
 the philosophy is naught. . . . Poor Ulpian, mur- 
 dered while covered with his purple, is a shocking 
 story. When you come to Stilicho you will grieve 
 as you read. . . . Belisarius was a great man in 
 the field, but, alas, he was a mean wretch at home ! 
 There is some amazingly fine writing about the 
 death of Julian. The Moslem and Mogul history 
 is very interesting. Most of these gentlemen are
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 9 
 
 domestic acquaintances of mine, and I feel quite 
 inspired whenever I touch Eastern ground. . . . 
 Heroes arise before and after these periods, whom 
 you follow with all your soul : Hannibal and 
 Alexander form a grand contrast of equal powers 
 fighting with, and against, fortune. But were I to 
 choose in the whole world a pedigree, I should 
 derive mine from the great Tancred de Hauteville 
 in Normandy. . . . But I am sure you wish Gibbon 
 at France by this time." 
 
 This letter (of which I have not given a tithe) 
 was one of a series of confidential letters written 
 by a girl who thoroughly enjoyed society and all 
 girlish pleasures. I have quoted at this length 
 because it seems to me interesting as a relic of that 
 keen book-hunger which some fear is being im- 
 proved off the face of the earth by the progress of 
 education, or rather, of instruction. 
 
 To return from this digression, if you only read 
 isolated books it will be as though, instead of 
 building a house, you merely collected single 
 bricks. At the same time my list consists mainly 
 of isolated books, because there are so many sub- 
 jects on which it is important that you should know 
 something to prevent your being a dumb note when 
 they are touched on. But if you have one favourite 
 subject in which you read connectedly, you can 
 keep a relay of isolated books on hand, as your 
 second subject.
 
 io SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 For a final caution, I would urge, never think that, 
 for lack of past education, it is useless to try in the 
 present. Begin now : take any book you like, and 
 feel that " here, or nowhere," ] is a liberal education. 
 You can begin perfectly well with tw previous 
 knowledge, if you will only look out whatever you 
 come on that is unknown to you. Begin on my 
 list, or any one else's, and I can promise that in 
 three years, though perhaps you may not have a 
 cultivated mind, yet you will have indefinitely 
 increased your power of profiting by the society of 
 those who have. A definite list is cramping to a 
 real reader, but a backbone to others. I should 
 never presume to mention a list to one who could 
 taste the flavour of Elia's " Detached Thoughts on 
 Books and Reading," or of that old-fashioned book, 
 Wilmot's "Pleasures of Literature," but I have 
 many friends who look on reading as a more or 
 less painful duty, and who need help in it. 
 
 It is the duty, not the pleasure, of reading that 
 I want to dwell on here, — I do not see how you 
 can honestly try to be good, and yet neglect such a 
 means of grace, such a method of self-discipline, as 
 reading. 
 
 I know well that many girls are not always pre- 
 pared to attempt this duty : they wish heartily for 
 that American institution, " A good time ; " they 
 prefer tennis and chatter to steady reading ; they 
 1 "Wllheim Meister."
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. II 
 
 do not offer their life, with its time and talents, as a 
 sacrifice to God — they want it for themselves. Yet 
 there is another side to such a girl : part of her 
 does wish to be on God's side in the great battle of 
 good and evil, — she has " pulses of nobleness and 
 aches of shame." * If the Service of God does not 
 yet appeal to her, yet, at moments, the Service of 
 Man fires her enthusiasm : — she is not content to 
 live an altogether empty life, and to feel that the 
 world will be as though she had never been. 
 
 We are all — especially girls — very apt to " hide 
 our best selves as we had stolen them," 2 so that 
 I doubt not I have some readers who proclaim that 
 they do not like improving books, that they prefer 
 amusing themselves, and who give a general im- 
 pression that they " can't be bothered." It is these 
 girls that I am most interested in. I am very 
 happy to come on Real Readers, but they do not 
 need me or any one else, they can swim alone. 
 Real Readers will have done already all I can 
 suggest, and far more too. I want to talk about 
 the necessity of reading when you do not enjoy it. 
 
 Real Readers will tell you, " it is no use reading 
 as a duty, — do not force yourself, — do not read 
 books ' on principle,' because you are advised so to 
 do, — follow your bent, and, if you have no reading 
 bent, do not invent one, for it will never make you 
 a Real Reader." No, I know it will not, — but 
 1 F. W. Myers. * J. R. Lowell.
 
 12 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 need this trouble you? Is a Real Reader such a 
 much higher order of being than a girl who cooks, 
 or fiddles, or sketches, or keeps house, or gardens ? 
 I myself admire the practical sister quite as much 
 as the bookish one. All the same, I should turn 
 them both on to books, if I had my way, — not for 
 the sake of the information conveyed, but because 
 of the moral qualities acquired by steady reading, 
 which the ordinary girl cannot get so well in any 
 other way. Dr. Johnson said, when Mr. Thrale's 
 brewery was being sold, " Sir, it is not the question 
 of a mere brewery, but of the potentiality of grow- 
 ing rich beyond the dreams of avarice." So it is 
 with reading. It is not the actual book which is in 
 question, but the " potentiality of growing rich " 
 spiritually, as well as mentally. 
 
 The Reader by nature will agree at once to the 
 value of this proposed diet, but the Headless 
 Horseman of the family will perhaps object, " Why 
 is it my duty to read? Am I not as useful in 
 learning to cut out, or to train the choir, or in 
 managing the garden or the poultry ? " Yes, you 
 very possibly accomplish more so, than by plod- 
 ding through some history, looking at the clock 
 to see when it will be time for conscience to let 
 you go, forgetting what you read yesterday, and 
 devoutly wishing something would prevent you 
 from reading to-morrow. I quite admit you will 
 not become intellectual at that rate, and that you
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING 13 
 
 would have more to show if you had given the 
 time to your ihands, and not to what you are 
 pleased to call your mind ! But does it matter 
 what you can show ? — is there not something 
 better, " which weighs not as his work, yet swells 
 the man's amount " ? 1 
 
 Read that half-hour steadily for one year, and 
 you will then know that nothing else could have 
 been such searching self-denial and discipline : — 
 the very irksomeness of it will have strengthened 
 your moral fibre in a way no manual drudgery 
 could have done, for the hardest physical labour 
 would have been nothing like such a battle with 
 Sloth. Mental sloth is the besetting sin of most 
 of us, — we would willingly go through any amount 
 of routine to save the trouble of thinking, and we 
 find manual labour (in comparison with mental) to 
 be soothing syrup for the mind. We live in an 
 age of much bustle and little contemplation, — of 
 multiplication of formal prayers, and decrease of 
 wrestling in prayer, — and we should be very chary 
 of relaxing any habit which (such as a settled 
 course of reading) tends to make us sit still and 
 be thoughtful. 
 
 " The power of thinking is a great help in being 
 
 spiritual," says Faber, and he puts, next to this, 
 
 the habit of reading, which is within the reach of 
 
 all, — however it may be with the other gift he 
 
 1 "Rabbi ben Ezra."
 
 r4 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 speaks of. We must all know cases in which moral 
 strength has been gained by perseverance in this 
 habit. I knew a girl who cared for nothing but 
 yellow-backed novels : she woke up to the fact that 
 she was in a fair way to become an empty-headed 
 frivolous woman. She put her shoulder to the 
 wheel, and worked regularly at books which bored 
 her, and I doubt if now you could find any one 
 who deserves more respect for backbone of 
 character. Mind you, this backbone has been 
 acquired ; she had not got it to start with, and, if 
 she had put off reading till her intellect appreciated 
 improving books, she would, to this day, be as 
 weak and self-indulgent as she was originally. 
 
 Let me quote again from Faber, in pursuing the 
 question of the moral obligation of reading. " It 
 is very hard," he says, " for one who does not care 
 for reading, to talk without sinning." This speaks 
 for itself, so, I will pass on to another kind of 
 talk, in connection with which we are not always 
 sufficiently alive to our moral responsibilities and 
 need of mental training — I mean, Castle-building. 
 " Every man," says Pascal, " is coloured in time by 
 what is said constantly to him. If you perpetually 
 tell any one he is a fool, he comes at last to believe 
 it. So also with the inferior conversations which 
 each holds with himself — we are responsible for 
 the way in which they colour our minds." How 
 much vanity and egoism, or resentment and
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 15 
 
 suspicion, are fed by these " interior conversations," 
 which are such a ready weapon for the seven evil 
 spirits who attack minds that are left empty ? 
 
 S. Hugh urges all to cultivate a love of reading 
 as the only remedy for illness and sorrow ; I would 
 add to those evils, the inevitable dulness of life. 
 The gayest, busiest girl is not safe in the future, 
 from passing through long grey stretches of actual 
 loneliness, or of the worse loneliness of depression, 
 and she will be very grateful then to early habits 
 which will enable her to find in books " fast sailing 
 ships to waft her away from present troubles to the 
 Fortunate Isles." l 
 
 How many girls live in the country and pine 
 because they are in such a bad neighbourhood; 
 yet Dante's Castle of Human Wisdom is within 
 easy reach of them j — whatever their county, 
 Utopia and Arcadia are within its limits; — the 
 Forest of Phantastes lies hard by, where they may 
 meet the Gentle Lady and Heavenly Una. Or, if 
 they ask for more human society, I cannot pity 
 those who can " listen to the flapping of the flame " 
 at a Cranford tea-party, and, when they grumble 
 about their Merrytown, I shall quite sympathize 
 with any offended Mrs. Bennet who assures them 
 "there is quite as much of that going on in the 
 country as in town." a 
 
 Very likely one of these sufferers marries and 
 1 J. R. Lowell. ' " Pride and Prejudice."
 
 i6 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 thinks that now the monotony of life is at an end. 
 Not at all. Its possibilities are to a certain extent 
 at an end ; no fairy prince can now ride by un- 
 expectedly and carry her off to his kingdom. Very 
 likely her husband (who is not a fairy prince) will 
 be out all day, and she will have nothing to do but 
 to miss her sisters and girl friends, and to brood 
 over every suspicion that her doll is stuffed with 
 sawdust. She rouses herself from this to go to the 
 circulating library, and returns with a re-arrange- 
 ment of the plot of yesterday's novel. Dante's 
 sinners, who ran their ceaseless round over burn- 
 ing sand, had hardly a worse lot than one who by 
 mental self-indulgence has doomed herself to in- 
 capacity for reading anything but a ceaseless round 
 of novels, whose plots she knows beforehand, from 
 long and dreary experience. I doubt if she could 
 possibly be as much bored if, earlier, she had 
 forced herself to read " the books no gentleman's 
 library should be without." 
 
 To the fear of being bored, you may add vanity 
 as another incentive to reading. You have no idea 
 how often you will feel hot in ordinary conversa- 
 tion if you are content to preserve invincible 
 ignorance ; while, on the other hand, if you persevere 
 in reading, you will daily feel more and more force 
 in De Quincey's plea for books as " increasing the 
 power of enforcing one's claims by conversation 
 and letter."
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. V? 
 
 Of course wherever you find Charybdis, Scylla 
 is not far off, and the conversation and letter based 
 on conscientious reading will, very likely, make the 
 receiver sigh for " the ounce of mother-wit," which 
 is said to be " worth a pound of clergy " (i.e. learn- 
 ing). Mother-wit is not always to be had, but, 
 fortunately, humility is an equal safeguard against 
 priggishness. Besides, you will be fairly safe if you 
 never hand on, as your own, opinions which you 
 have gleaned from reviews or magazines, and if you 
 never give anecdotes or information. " Never tell 
 people how you are," said a very shrewd old 
 woman of the world ; " they don't want to know." 
 Perhaps she was unnecessarily distrustful, but all 
 the same, there is wisdom for everyday use in a 
 caution given to a barrister, which ran thus : 
 " Witnesses should be kept as far away as possible 
 from subjects in which they are especially conver- 
 sant : for juries have no more relish than other 
 people for being instructed. In every proof the 
 witness gives of his own knowledge, they are quick 
 to see also an unmannerly discovery of their own 
 ignorance." 
 
 Girls are very ready to label themselves " un- 
 bookish." Some do it from a lurking idea that it 
 will add to their charms. I freely grant that in 
 Society charm avails a girl more than bookishness, 
 but the absence of bookishness does not necessarily 
 involve the presence of charm ! Many more say, 
 
 c
 
 i8 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 " Oh, I never read ; I'm not clever," with an air of 
 sweet humility, which, translated into plain English, 
 means, " I won't read because I can't distinguish 
 myself," — the smallest of all small reasons for 
 neglecting to develop a side of the nature God 
 gave us. Or, it means, " I won't read because 
 it is too much trouble, and so, I will be more 
 brainless than I need be, and less fit to do God's 
 work." 
 
 There's the rub ! You have most certainly got 
 a vocation and a ministry awaiting you in your 
 future life : will you be fit to undertake them when 
 the way is opened ? Dare we leave even one of our 
 tools unsharpened when we know not what work 
 is in store for us ? " God Almighty has no need 
 of human learning," said the popular preacher to 
 Dr. South. " Sir," was the reply, " He has still less 
 need of human ignorance." We dishonour God 
 and His work by acting as if a few good resolutions 
 and emotions were enough stock-in-trade for His 
 workers. He needs every power we have or can 
 acquire, and I put no limit to our possibilities of 
 acquiring powers, if we only care enough to do it. 
 Remember you are bound " to love the Lord your 
 God with all your mind," and that mind is probably 
 a much poorer thing than it need be ! 
 
 No one over-values bookishness less than I do, 
 or more regrets the selfishness which often accom- 
 panies it, but no one rates more highly than I do the
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 19 
 
 value of bookishness in sharpening God's tools. 
 Self-improvement may seem to you a selfish occu- 
 pation now that your school days are over. You 
 might be more attracted to reading if I were to 
 touch on its possibilities of immediate usefulness — 
 such as helping brothers in holiday tasks. But 
 though these rewards will doubtless come to many 
 of you in the present, I purposely do not dwell on 
 them, because I want to give weight to something 
 that many girls find it hard to realize, — that is, 
 the unselfishness of using for self-improvement the 
 breathing time that comes to most between the 
 restraints of school life and the cares of real life. 
 You want to do a bit of good work now, and you 
 mourn because you are of no use in the present, 
 /mourn because you will be of no use in the future, 
 if you do not use this quiet time for forging your 
 armour. 
 
 Steady reading seems self-ending, but when you 
 think of all the work in the world which wants 
 doing, and of how inadequate you are, as you now 
 stand, for such high service, surely in every half- 
 hour of study, in every effort to be thorough and to 
 look things out, you are, so far as in you lies, work- 
 ing for what should be the object of all advance- 
 ment of learning, " the glory of God and the 
 relief of man's estate." 1 
 
 1 Bacon'5 "Advancement of Learning."
 
 zo 
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 LIST OF 
 
 BOOKS. 
 
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 
 Short History of the English 
 
 
 People .... 
 
 Green 
 
 Ss. 6d. 
 
 St. Louis .... 
 
 Joinville . 
 
 2S. 6d. 
 
 Chronicles .... 
 
 Froissart . 
 
 y. 6d. 
 
 Siecle de Louis XIV. 
 
 Voltaire . 
 
 3 s. U. 
 
 French Revolution 
 
 Carlyle . 
 
 2S. od. 
 
 Holy Roman Empire 
 
 Bryce 
 
 •js. 6d 
 
 Germany (Story of the Nations 
 
 Baring Gould . 
 
 $s. od. 
 
 Conquests of Granada anc 
 
 Washington 
 
 
 Spain. 2 vols. 
 
 Irving . 
 
 2S. Od. 
 
 Ferdinand and Isabella . 
 
 Prescott . 
 
 Ss. od. 
 
 Charles V. 
 
 • >> • 
 
 Ss. od. 
 
 Cloister Life of Charles V. 
 
 . Sir W. Stirling 
 Maxwell 
 
 
 Philip II. ... 
 
 . Prescott . 
 
 Ss. od. 
 
 Mexico .... 
 
 • >> • • 
 
 Ss. od. 
 
 Peru .... 
 
 >> • • 
 
 i$s. od. 
 
 Dutch Republic 
 
 . Motley . 
 
 3r. 6d. 
 
 The Makers of Florence . 
 
 . Mrs. Oliphant. 
 
 10s. 6d. 
 
 „ ,, Venice 
 
 • »> >> • 
 
 I or. 6d. 
 
 „ ,, Rome 
 
 >» >> 
 
 2 1 J. od. 
 
 Outline History of Italy . 
 
 Miss Sewell . 
 
 2.C 6d. 
 
 
 
 
 Rome (School History) . 
 
 Merivale . 
 
 3s. 6d. 
 
 Greece .... 
 
 Oman 
 
 4.x. 6d. 
 
 Great Rebellion 
 
 . Clarendon 
 
 s. h. 
 
 Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 Stanhope . 
 
 s. h. 
 
 >> ij >j • 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant . 
 
 8s. 6d. 
 
 Historical Sketches of Geo. II 
 
 >> »» 
 
 6s. o/. 
 
 Peninsular War 
 
 Napier. 
 
 "js od.
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 21 
 
 TRAVELS. 
 
 Through Brittany and Normandy K. Macquoid each Js. 6d. 
 
 Travels in France . . . Arthur Young 3s. 6d. 
 
 Roof of France . . . M. B. Edwardes js. 6d. 
 
 Holidays in Eastern France . ,, ,, "js. 6d. 
 
 Holidays in Western France . , > , , Js. 6d. 
 
 With a Donkey in the Cevennes R. L. Stevenson zs. 6d. 
 
 Gatherings from Spain . . Ford . . . 3J. 6d. 
 
 Bible in Spain .... BORROW . . zs. od. 
 
 The Land of the Magyar. 2 vols. Mrs. N. E. Mazu- 
 
 CHELLl . . S. h. 
 
 Sketches of Life in Hungary . Marg. Fletcher js. 6d. 
 
 Land beyond the Forest . . Miss Gerard . s. h. 
 
 Russia Wallace . . 5.?. od. 
 
 Forest Life in Norway and 
 
 Sweden .... Newland. . s. h. 
 
 Residence in Norway . . Laing . . s. h. 
 
 Travels Marco Polo . 3d. 
 
 The Naturalist on the Prowl . E. H. A. . . p. 6d. 
 
 Tropical Africa . . . Prof. Drummond 3s. 6d. 
 
 Where Three Empires Meet . Knight . . 3s. 6d. 
 
 England and Egypt . . Sir A. Milner . "js. 6d. 
 
 Eothen Kinglake. . 6s. od. 
 
 Land and the Book . . . Thomson . . ys. 6d. 
 
 Arabia Palgrave . . 6s. od. 
 
 Mecca Sir R. Burton . 6s. od. 
 
 Le Desirt . . . .P. Loti . . zs. 6d. 
 
 The Chronicles of the Sid . Adela Orpen . Js. 6d. 
 
 An Enchanted Island . . Mallock . . 6s. od. 
 Curzon's Monasteries in the 
 
 Levant zs. 6d. 
 
 Travels in China and Thibet . L'Abbe Hue . s. h. 
 
 Malay Archipelago . . .A. Wallace . 6s. od. 
 
 Naturalist on the Amazon . T. H. Bates . zs. 6d.
 
 22 
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 Sandwich Islands . 
 
 Miss Bird . 
 
 "js. 6d. 
 
 Voyage of a Naturalist 
 
 Darwin 
 
 2s. oa. 
 
 Naturalist in La Plata 
 
 Hudson 
 
 s. h. 
 
 Recollections of a Happy Life. 
 
 
 
 2 vols. ..... 
 
 Miss North 
 
 s. h. 
 
 West Indies .... 
 
 Froude 
 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 Oceana 
 
 >» • • 
 
 2S. 6J. 
 
 At Last 
 
 KlNGSLEY . 
 
 3s. 6d 
 
 Travels ..... 
 
 IIakluyt . 
 
 Id- 
 
 The Bow of Ulysses 
 
 Palgrave . 
 
 s. h. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 
 Essays in Ecclesiastical Bio 
 
 . 
 
 
 graphy .... 
 
 . Sir J. Stephen . 
 
 Js. 6d. 
 
 S. Francois d'Assisi . 
 
 . Paul Saeatier . 
 
 14^. od. 
 
 S. Francis of Assisi . 
 
 . Mrs. Oliphant . 
 
 6s. od. 
 
 S. Anselm 
 
 . Church 
 
 Ss. od. 
 
 Memoirs of Col. Hutchinson 
 
 . Lucy Hutchinson 3*. 6d. 
 
 
 
 
 French Women of Letters 
 
 Miss Kavanagh . 
 
 s. h. 
 
 Angelique Arnauld . 
 
 Miss Martin 
 
 4S. 6d. 
 
 Portraits de Femmes 
 
 Saint Beuve 
 
 3s. 6d. 
 
 Life of Johnson 
 
 Bosvvell 
 
 3*. 6d. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte 
 
 Mrs. Gaskell 
 
 is. 6d. 
 
 Life of Dr. Arnold . 
 
 Stanley 
 
 is. od. 
 
 Kingsley's Life 
 
 
 6s. od. 
 
 Life of Lord Lawrence . 
 
 Bosworth Smith 
 
 2ls. od. 
 
 Life of Sir Henry Lawrence . 
 
 SirH.B. Ed\vardesi2.t. 0,/. 
 
 Letters of Edward Denison 
 
 Sir B. Leighton . 
 
 is. od. 
 
 Autobiography of Sir H. Taylor 
 
 . 
 
 s. h. 
 
 Life and Letters of Dean Churcr 
 
 M. C. Church . 
 
 6s. od. 
 
 Memorials of Charlotte Wil- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Remains of Mrs. R. Trench 
 
 . . 
 
 6s. od. 
 
 Jesuits in North America 
 
 F. Parkman . 
 
 5*. od.
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 23 
 
 ESSAYS. 
 
 
 Meditations .... 
 
 Marcus Aure- 
 
 
 * 
 
 lius 
 
 is. 6d. 
 
 Essays ..... 
 
 Bacon 
 
 Is. 6d. 
 
 Gracian's Manual (Gold: Tr: Series) . . 
 
 is. 6d. 
 
 Addison's Essays . ,, 
 
 . 1U 
 
 ' 2s. 6d. 
 
 Chesterfield's Letters ,, 
 
 . . 
 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 Selections from Landor ,, 
 
 ... 
 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 Essays of Elia . . . . 
 
 . 
 
 is. 6d. 
 
 Confessions of an Opium 
 
 
 
 Eater 
 
 De Quincey 
 
 is. 6d. 
 
 Sketches of Moral Philosophy 
 
 Sydney Smith 
 
 $s. 6d. 
 
 Essays ..... 
 
 Hazlitt . 
 
 is. 6d. 
 
 Recollections of a Literary Life 
 
 Miss Mitford 
 
 . 6s. od. 
 
 Essays ..... 
 
 Macaulay 
 
 2s. od. 
 
 Friends in Council . 
 
 Helps 
 
 Js. 6d. 
 
 Guesses at Truth 
 
 Hare 
 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 Essays on Social Subjects 
 
 Miss Mozley 
 
 s. h. 
 
 Heroes and Hero Worship 
 
 Carlyle . 
 
 is. od. 
 
 Sartor Resartus . . . 
 
 )) • 
 
 . IS. Od. 
 
 Past and Present . . 
 
 >» ■ 
 
 is. od. 
 
 Sesame and Lilies . . . 
 
 Ruskin . nc 
 
 t $s od. 
 
 Twenty Essays 
 
 Emerson . 
 
 . is. 6d. 
 
 My Study Windows 
 
 Lowell . 
 
 . is. 6d. 
 
 Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 
 
 Holmes . 
 
 Is. 0./. 
 
 Notes on Life .... 
 
 Sir H. Taylor 
 
 $s. od. 
 
 ,, ,, Books 
 
 »» »» 
 
 5s. od. 
 
 Historical and Theological 
 
 
 
 Essays .... 
 
 J. B. Mozley 
 
 , 24s. od 
 
 The Value of Life . 
 
 C. E. Burke 
 
 IS. od. 
 
 Miscellanies, Political and Lite- 
 
 
 
 rary 
 
 Grant-Duff 
 
 , JS. 6d. 
 
 Literary and Theological Essays 
 
 W. Hutton 
 
 . y. 6d. 
 
 Literary Studies . . 
 
 W. Bagehot 
 
 , 3 s.6d.
 
 24 
 
 SUGGESTIONS ON READING. 
 
 Defence of Poesy 
 
 The Compleat Angler 
 
 Religio Medici 
 
 History of French Literature . 
 
 Dante 
 
 Dante, his Times and his World 
 Readings on The Purgatorio . 
 Ditto, on The Inferno 
 The Shadow of Dante . • 
 The Study of Words 
 English Men of Letters Series . 
 Foreign Classics Series . 
 Ancient Classics Series . . 
 Tales of Ancient Greece . 
 Crito and Phasdo . 
 
 Sir P. Sidney . 
 
 I. Walton 
 
 Sir T. Browne . 
 
 Saintsbury 
 
 Church . 
 
 A. J. Butler . 
 
 W. Vernon 
 
 j» • 
 
 Maria Rossetti 
 
 Trench 
 
 each 
 each 
 each 
 
 Coxe. 
 
 Plato 
 
 3' 
 3* 
 
 3'/- 
 
 ioj. 6c/. 
 
 $s. od. 
 
 3 s. 6d. 
 
 2\S. Oci. 
 
 3 1 j. 6d. 
 3j. 6d. 
 $s. od. 
 is. od. 
 2s. 6d. 
 2s. 6d. 
 6s. od. 
 
 ART, &c. 
 
 Five Great Painters . 
 Old Masters .... 
 Modern Painters 
 Early Christian Art . 
 Greek and Gothic . 
 Christian Iconography . 
 Frondes Agrestes . 
 Stones of Venice 
 Seven Lamps of Architecture . 
 A.B.C. of Architecture . 
 Art of Music .... 
 Studies of Great Composers 
 Studies in Modern Music I. II. 
 Introductory Studies in Greek 
 Art 
 
 Lady Eastlake 
 
 j. //. 
 
 S. Tytler. 
 
 4J. 6d. 
 
 Ruskin 
 
 4-f. 6d. 
 
 Lord Lindsay . 
 
 s. h. 
 
 R. Tyrwhitt . 
 
 s. h. 
 
 DlDRON 
 
 \os. od. 
 
 Ruskin . vet 
 
 3j. od. 
 
 >> >> 
 
 \os. od. 
 
 >> >» 
 
 7s. 6d. 
 
 Parker 
 
 3*. od. 
 
 Parry 
 
 41. 6d. 
 
 j> • 
 
 6s. od. 
 
 W. II. IIadow . 
 
 ■7S. 6d. 
 
 J. E. Harrison ioj. 6d.
 
 M \ T 7 HAT is one man's meat is another man's 
 VV poison," and when we remember the 
 harm we often see caused by bad novels, or even 
 by the bad use of those which are good, we cannot 
 wonder that many people object to them altogether. 
 Perhaps it is owing to the prejudice often felt by 
 good people against novels as such, that we find 
 so many who seem to look on them as outside the 
 domain of conscience : they would not read a bad 
 or atheistical book of another sort, but they seem 
 to fancy that the recording angel takes no heed, 
 during their novel-reading time, of what novel they 
 take up. They have the same half-apologetic 
 feeling of pardonable waste of time, whether they 
 are reading one which raises their whole standard 
 of life, or, some rubbish which weakens and 
 perhaps defiles their minds for months to come. 
 
 We cannot always choose our company in life ; 
 let us resolve that, in our books at least, we will 
 live only with the best. But if we have accustomed 
 ourselves to " low company," " good society "
 
 26 NOVELS. 
 
 cannot fail to be irksome, whether it be that of 
 people or of books. If we find Scott and Thacke- 
 ray and Miss Austen dull, and turn with relief to 
 a circulating library, are we contentedly to accept 
 it as an inevitable fact that we have no taste for 
 classics ? By no means ! It is not enough to say, 
 " I like this," and, " I dislike that ; " we have to 
 see to it that we like what is good and strong and 
 wholesome, and that we dislike the reverse ; if we 
 have been lax in the matter, it is our duty to set 
 to work and try to raise our taste. Bad taste is 
 not a misfortune but a fault. 
 
 In this, as in all other efforts to reach a higher 
 level, it is waste of energy to pitch our scale too 
 high suddenly. If we enjoy sensational stories, it 
 is absurd to limit ourselves to masterpieces; we 
 are sure, after a more or less conscientious and 
 weary effort, to return to yellow-backed novels with 
 settled despair of ever enjoying better things. 
 Common sense, and gradual progress, are as 
 necessary in mental convalescence as in physical. 
 If we are conscious of need for improvement in 
 our choice of novel-reading, let us take a more 
 practicable good resolution than abstinence ; let 
 us resolve to sandwich our books. There is a long 
 array of novels which are admitted by all to be 
 among the best books in our language, considered 
 from a literary point of view, books which every 
 cultivated person is bound to have read. Let us
 
 NOVELS. 27 
 
 make a list of these, and resolve that, for every 
 sensational novel we read, we will conscientiously 
 get through one of those on our list before we open 
 another of the sort we enjoy. We shall soon find 
 that our taste is insensibly raised ; that the bad 
 tone of the inferior book will come to jar upon 
 us when always seen in contrast with good writing. 
 
 To this personal good resolution let us add 
 another : a resolution to keep modern fiction, as 
 far as possible, out of the schoolroom. It is right 
 and fitting that those who are living in the world 
 of to-day should study its tendency and teaching 
 in its novels, if so be that they " sandwich " them 
 with a due proportion of the older ones that can 
 hardly now be matched. But why begin at once 
 to feed upon exciting stories, beside which the 
 delicacy and reserve of Miss Austen, the history 
 and antiquarianism of Scott, must seem cold and 
 dry? There is a vivid power of realization in 
 youth, that can clothe the driest bones ; if it is not 
 swamped by the sensational stories, which, while 
 they seem to stimulate the imagination, in reality 
 stunt it, by leaving it no play. 
 
 Whether we are old or young, novels may serve 
 a most important purpose in our self-education. 
 Do not fictitious characters read us practical lessons 
 about our own faults, which would produce much 
 irritation if given in words by our friends ? " West- 
 ward Ho 1 " preaches to us of true manliness, and
 
 28 NOVELS. 
 
 " Wives and Daughters " of true womanliness, as do 
 few sermons. Good novels should surely greatly 
 increase our insight into character and that power 
 of discriminating motives, which is needed if we 
 are not to produce " confusion worse confounded " 
 in the many tangles of life that are sure to come in 
 our way. Miss Edgeworth is usually considered 
 too dull to read, but if you read her with a view 
 to worldly wisdom, you would be surprised to find 
 how many of her remarks would help to save you 
 from burning your own fingers. 
 
 Dickens' humour may or may not amuse you, 
 but if you read him with a view to the study of 
 types, you will notice that though he probably 
 paints no one person whom you will ever meet, yet 
 that, more and more, you will get to classify people 
 as " belonging to the type of so and so in Dickens." 
 
 Even more than Dickens, Miss Austen is a 
 writer for individual taste, — one must pity and not 
 blame those who cannot read her. I feel inclined, 
 however, to insist, at the sword's point, on all 
 novel-reading being based on Scott and Mrs. Gas- 
 kell. With scarcely any exceptions, I would compel 
 the would-be novel-reader to qualify by an exami- 
 nation in those two. If two additional authors were 
 to be chosen by the candidate, I should, in my own 
 case, offer Miss Austen and Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
 but I could not insist on these as a matter of 
 principle.
 
 NOVELS. 29 
 
 I was interested by seeing a series of foreign 
 novels recommended as a form of spiritual 
 Baedeker or Murray, for the various countries 
 which had produced them. Guide-books are 
 dull reading unless you have been, or are going, to 
 their scenes, but novels which give the atmosphere 
 of a country are as good as Prince Hussein's carpet, 
 and almost save you the trouble of going in person. 
 " Virgin Soil " by Tourgenieff, " Dead Souls " by 
 Gogol, take you to Russia, — ' The Prairie," and 
 " The Last of the Mohicans," to the backwoods, — 
 with a vividness which is missed by some who go 
 to the very places. Travel is supposed to enlarge 
 the mind ; with a judicious course of such novels, 
 I would undertake to do as much for those many 
 descendants of the Vicar of Wakefield whose 
 " migrations are only from the blue bed to the 
 brown ! " 
 
 If change of scene stimulates our minds, surely 
 change of time does the same. I suppose the mere 
 facts of history do us some good — but I am sure 
 its spirit does a great deal. We find in the study 
 of history a change of atmosphere which puts our 
 own affairs into truer proportion, and in studying 
 the feelings and difficulties of our predecessors, 
 our sympathies are widened for our contempo- 
 raries. Much of this good effect of history may be 
 arrived at through the easier medium of historical 
 novels. Marlborough owed his English History to
 
 3 o NO VELS. 
 
 Shakespeare, and ours might gain much from a 
 series of plays and novels, perhaps beginning with 
 " Harold " (which is said to have made Professor 
 Freeman an historian), while Ainsworth and G. P. 
 R. James — so unjustly laughed out of fashion by 
 Thackeray — would fill up many gaps left by Scott 
 and Shakespeare. Taking such novels in order 
 would give you a very fair knowledge of the facts 
 which you would perhaps find dull in undiluted 
 history, and if any one objects that they are in- 
 accurate, I would reply that a modern " History 
 School" would probably object quite as much to 
 the accuracy of any history not written by its own 
 members. 
 
 But to gain, not the facts of a past age, but its 
 atmosphere, we must read its own novels. A 
 Bedouin proverb says," A man is more the child of 
 the age in which he lives, than of his own father," 
 We might truly say a novel is more the production 
 of its age than of its own author. 
 
 It would be an interesting branch of the study of 
 social history to pick out the novels which have, 
 in turn, been representative of the young life of 
 their day. Clarissa Harlowe and Evelina would 
 have headed the procession in sedan chairs : 
 Waverley would have ridden past, heralding a 
 whole world of feudal romance and high-minded- 
 ness. Mr. Pickwick would then have driven up in 
 a stage coach with Sam Weller and Mark Tapley
 
 NOVELS. 31 
 
 and Mr. Pecksniff, a motley and delightful crew, 
 to whom the very language of Waverley would 
 have been an utterly unknown tongue. 
 
 Becky Sharpe would next have driven by, with 
 the horses coveted by Lady Bareacres, and then 
 the lash of the whip in " Uncle Tom's Cabin " 
 would have diverted attention to more realistic, if 
 not more real sorrows, than Rawdon Crawley's 
 disillusionment and Becky's feelings when Sir Pitt 
 proposed too late. 
 
 In 1855 the "Heir of Redely fife" began that series 
 of photographs of real life (only second to Miss 
 Austen's for their value to the future historian) where 
 you will search in vain for inaccuracies in observa- 
 tion of English home life or English landscape. 
 
 In ten years' time girls had deserted the chivalry 
 and churchmanship of Guy Morville for the pas- 
 sionate outpourings of such books as " Comin' 
 thro' the Rye," — a literature which is rendered 
 quite harmless, and even instructive, if it be read 
 aloud to an unsympathetic elder. 
 
 Early in the " seventies " " Middlemarch " was 
 reigning supreme, a book in which the many noble 
 passages hid from one the fact that it depicts life 
 as hopeless and inevitably ignoble. 
 
 Ten years later comes John Inglesant with his 
 intangible charm, unrelated to either the definitely 
 instructed circle in the " Heir of Redely ffe " (for 
 whom life is interpreted by the Catechism and
 
 32 NOVELS. 
 
 the " Christian Year "), or to the strenuous moral 
 atmosphere of " Middlemarch," — only moral, and 
 therefore not even moral in the long-run. 
 
 The detached mystic atmosphere in " John Ingle- 
 sant " is perhaps more fascinating to kindred souls 
 than that of any other book one could name, but it 
 is a "horn from Elfland faintly blowing;" 1 it is not 
 "the music to a march that sheds a joy on duty." 
 As you rise from reading it, you feel it almost argues 
 coarseness of moral fibre to be quite clear as to 
 any definite duty whatsoever ! Such a book softens 
 and spiritualizes the strong nature which is grow- 
 ing rigid in pursuit of clearly defined dutifulness ; 
 but, if the nature be not safely fixed in the mould 
 of Duty, such a book would be a dangerous dis- 
 solvent, and perhaps prevent the mould from ever 
 giving permanent shape to the mind. Is it pos- 
 sibly more than a coincidence which caused the 
 decade following the publication of "John Ingle- 
 sant " to be marked by novels that are cha- 
 racterized by an unsettlement of faith and morals, 
 which we should not find in the early years of the 
 century? As a sworn admirer of John Inglesant 
 and Mary Collet, I cannot allow that they could 
 ever do otherwise than " make for righteousness ; " 
 but at least they mark a wave of indefiniteness in 
 the air, which has since had other and far different 
 results. 
 
 1 " The Princess."
 
 NOVELS. 33 
 
 Or we might trace the various scenes on the 
 stage of English life, by recounting the leading 
 heroines ; many varying lists might be made, but 
 we may fairly claim the title for Clarissa and 
 Evelina. Elizabeth Bennet and sweet Anne 
 Eliot come next ; then Diana Vernon " witched the 
 world j" then came Beatrix Esmond, the heroine 
 whom no man can help falling in love with ; and 
 then Amelia, the gentle heroine in white satin, who 
 deserved admiration, and Becky Sharpe, the co?i- 
 fidante in white linen, who got it. Thackeray is 
 responsible for many heroines who stand out in 
 our minds as entitled, by almost universal suffrage, 
 to take their seats in this Parliament of women who 
 exercised undoubted sway over the minds of men. 
 Has he not also given us Ethel Newcome, that 
 most fascinating younger sister of Diana Vernon ? 
 
 To the Church movement of Ethel Newcome's 
 day, of which she was so unconscious, she owes 
 her younger cousins (akin to her in goodness and 
 simplicity), Amy Herbert, and Ethel May. But 
 Lady Kew's pupil would probably have felt more 
 at ease with Lily Dale ; yet no ! the real Ethel 
 Newcome would have preferred Romola, who was 
 more like herself in outward appearance than those 
 others. But I am forgetting one who would have 
 been her special friend, Molly Gibson. 
 
 The inconvenient indefiniteness with which such 
 women as Dorothea Cassaubon are fashioned would 
 
 D
 
 34 NOVELS. 
 
 have hindered the latter from making friends with 
 Lily Dale, and those eminently sensible Ethels; 
 but all whom I have named would have looked 
 the other way had they met " Nancy " and her 
 various successors. It is a curious sign of the 
 times, that the same sort of people should now 
 be living with Trilby and Dodo who, forty years 
 ago, knew only such women as Ethel May and 
 Ethel Newcome. Mrs. Norton is a reverse in- 
 stance of this curious power of the Hour to mould 
 the woman, if not the man. Had she lived to-day, 
 she would hardly have written the " Lady of La 
 Garaye." But if we give the Zeitgeist of the 
 " forties " credit for that beautiful poem, it is all the 
 more depressing to be obliged to consider Dodo 
 as the outcome of to-day. 
 
 Stormy emotions and concise cynicism are tricks 
 of the present hour, and caught by many a harm- 
 less creature, who, had she been born fifty years 
 sooner, would have been a. Mrs. Clarinda Single- 
 heart. I suspect the Zeitgeist should bear the 
 blame of many emotions, which the sufferers 
 fondly imagine to be quite original, and even 
 peculiar to themselves. The scenery for the soul's 
 tragedies — and comedies — of our day is also 
 painted by the Zeitgeist. It would be curious to 
 analyse some representative modern novels, and 
 to see how many of the colour-symphonies which 
 nature is made to play are composed of a few
 
 NOVELS. 35 
 
 nouns and adjectives, practically the invention of 
 the last ten years. The scenes are well painted 
 and in keeping with the play, but there is a same- 
 ness of "intensity" which is more wearying, when 
 you once catch the trick of it, than even the 
 sameness of commonplace. 
 
 Then too, as a sign of the times, notice the 
 advanced age of our heroines. How absurdly 
 young do both heroes and heroines of old novels 
 appear to us : did we met them in real life, we 
 should be conscious of a strong desire to send 
 them back to the schoolroom — if not to whip them ! 
 Heroines were then literally " to the manner born," 
 for they began their career almost in the cradle. 
 The sound judgment which characterized Ccelebs' 
 Lucilla at eighteen, waits another ten years for its 
 development in " maidens of our own day ; " while 
 we should bestow small sympathy on the " Emily '' 
 who, at fifteen, suffered from an ardent, though un- 
 requited, attachment for Sir Charles Grandison ; or 
 on that other Emily, surnamed St. Aubert, who at 
 a like tender age was held up by Mrs. Radcliffe as 
 a model of constancy, because she was always in 
 the garden with Valencourt, "listening to the 
 tender notes of his oboe," and preserved a taste 
 for that music through a long course of foreign 
 travel and wicked counts. Had she lived now, she 
 would have been ignominiously summoned indoorsi 
 to practise on a more prosaic instrument.
 
 35 NOVELS. 
 
 But instances of what seems to us premature 
 development are to be found later than Richardson 
 and Mrs. Radcliffe. Charlotte Bronte* makes Shirley 
 and Caroline such matured thoughtful women at 
 twenty, that, methinks, could they be revived, they 
 would find the present girls of that age somewhat 
 crude. I have not read Miss Braddon's revised 
 version of the Waverleys, but if she wished to make 
 Scott's ideas harmonize with ours, she would have 
 to add some ten years to the age of all his heroes, 
 to make them interesting to modern heroines ; for 
 Scott's heroes would now be at College, and the 
 attachments of undergraduates are seldom taken 
 an grand skrieux. Those whose memories can take 
 them back thirty years, will bear me out in saying 
 that girls then became old maids much sooner than 
 they do now : they were out of court at one or two 
 and twenty, while at twenty-five it was hardly 
 recognized that they still had feelings ! In " Agatha's 
 Husband," if I recollect rightly, Anne Valory sits 
 apart at the picnic on the score of being twenty- 
 nine. Nowadays she would have been, to all 
 intents and purposes, as much a girl as any one 
 else. There are many of Anne Valory's age 
 receiving quite as much attention as chits of 
 eighteen, who, unless very pretty, are less interest- 
 ing ; though, had they lived a hundred years 
 sooner, they would have fallen into Charybdis and 
 been thought too old for the part of first heroine in
 
 NOVELS. 37 
 
 any romance; nay, they would probably have 
 been relegated to the post of confidante. I suppose 
 the improvement in Women's Education has helped 
 to keep the situation of " Heroine in Real Life " 
 open to our girls for a longer time than would have 
 been allowed to their great-grandmothers. Our 
 girls of sixteen or seventeen would even now be 
 equal to the tasks imposed on ancient heroines, 
 which went little further than the social duties of 
 wearing long curls and languishing at suitable 
 seasons. 
 
 But look at all that is required of our heroines ! 
 Look, not only at girls in novels, but at actual girls 
 in real life, who are still considered entitled to 
 romance on their own account — though I fancy 
 Lucilla and Ccelebs would have felt them to be 
 entitled not to Romance, but to Reverence. Look, 
 I say, at such girls now, — they have to take in- 
 telligent interest in a thousand things that Lucilla 
 and Harriet Byron never heard of, and some of 
 which would have scandalized those good women. 
 
 Unless a woman has the peculiar gifts which 
 enable her to play the role of a Child of Nature, 
 she will find it useful to possess an amount of 
 education in Social Science, politics, etc., which 
 cannot possibly be acquired by sixteen; con- 
 sequently the limits of the Heroic Age have to be 
 widened. 
 
 Then, too, the same result is furthered by many
 
 3 8 NOVELS. 
 
 present-day poets, who burn incense at the shrines 
 of haggard images of our Lady of Passion. Girls 
 of sixteen cannot well look haggard or point to in- 
 teresting lines on their brows, traced by the wan 
 finger of experience. They were quite up to the 
 requirements of the last age, which only demanded 
 that its heroines should be clean and sweet and 
 fair, and, above all things, fresh in mind and heart 
 and dress. Freshness has ceased to be the fashion 
 now, and, except when taken as a restorative aftei 
 the turbid seas of Passion (with a particularly large 
 P) which meet us in every novel, it is apt to pall 
 on the modern imagination, — the " Papa, Potatoes, 
 Prunes and Prism" of yore have given place to 
 Passion, Psychology, Pain and Protoplasm. I know 
 not who so upset the ancient order of things, as 
 to bring about this change : it must have been a 
 woman, for no man could have been capable of 
 such a delicate stroke of genius ! Only a favoured 
 few had the natural graces formerly necessary for 
 aspirants to heroine-ism : but any one can look 
 haggard and passee and not much washed, which 
 is all that our more lenient age demands for its 
 heroines. All honour to her who invented this 
 simple type, which saves so many deserving 
 heroines from superannuation ! 
 
 There are many delights in store for those who 
 will turn to the atmosphere of a century ago, 
 breathed in the " Romance of the Forest " and " Sir
 
 NOVELS. 39 
 
 Charles Grandison." In these days of magazines 
 and reviews, when every one feels bound to read 
 the last new book, it is almost a mockery to urge 
 the study of Mrs. Radcliffe's works, " The Italian," 
 " The Mysteries of Udolpho " (in four thick 
 volumes). Nevertheless, I could wish no one 
 pleasanter company during a spell of rainy weather 
 in the country. To be properly enjoyed, they 
 should be read aloud ; only so can you appreciate 
 the sublime calm with which hero and heroine 
 discourse on some such theme as the superiority 
 of virtue to vice, while you and your hearers are 
 quivering in expectation of a shot, remembering 
 that the Capuchin or the Bandit (or both) crept, 
 only two pages before, under the shadow of the 
 neighbouring rock. The hero and the heroine 
 always see him quite plainly, but they converse 
 uninterruptedly, knowing, from long experience in 
 romances, that he never fires when he has a decent 
 chance of hitting his mark. 
 
 The race of heroines has strangely developed 
 since Mrs. Radcliffe's days. How terribly "of 
 the earth, earthy " do Mr. Trollope's appear, in 
 comparison ! Fresh from the society of Emily 
 St. Aubert, it is a shock to find Lily Dale requir- 
 ing her dinner at any and every crisis of her 
 fate. Mdlle. St. Aubert, after a hard day's work 
 of eluding wicked marquises and exploring haunted 
 rooms, rejects a good supper with the remark : " /
 
 40 NOVELS. 
 
 must learn to feed on sorrow." It is quite a 
 relapse into low life when Adela orders " a light 
 refreshment at the inn ; " but, as she had spent the 
 morning in binding up the wounds of one lover, 
 three ruffians, and a persecutor, she had some 
 excuse. 
 
 After living " Auf der Hohe " with Emily and 
 Adela, it feels strange to turn again to the " light of 
 common day " in " Sir Charles Grandison." The 
 conversation, except for its oaths and old-world 
 courtesy, seems an echo of our own. The expres- 
 sions often raise a smile, as when the rejected 
 lover " stept into his chariot, rearing his head up 
 to the top of it, as he sat swelling." But we 
 find the questions of our own day debated. Take, 
 for example, the discussion in which Sir Charles 
 graciously assures us that, " in Heaven, women 
 will certainly be on a footing with men as to 
 intellectuals," a discussion which Miss Byron closes 
 with the sound reflection, " Surely, my Lucy, we 
 may pronounce that where no duty is neglected, 
 where modesty, delicacy, and a teachable spirit are 
 preserved as characteristics of the sex, it need not 
 be thought a disgrace for a woman to be supposed 
 to know something." 
 
 It must be owned that Lady G. is the only 
 person in the book free from suspicion of moving 
 on polite wires, but then, how many living characters 
 do we meet with in the novels of the present day ?
 
 NOVELS. 41 
 
 And what a dreary waste do most of these novels 
 seem to the chastened imagination that has learnt 
 to delight in the " volant quill " of Miss Byron, which 
 kept her ' venerable circle ' in Northamptonshire so 
 fully informed of all her London experiences. 
 Each sigh of every lover, each thought of the 
 heroine, are faithfully detailed to " my Lucy," for 
 the benefit of " our Aunt Selby " and " our Grand- 
 mother Shirley," that " reverend parent " and " con- 
 descending excellence," Mho, after a few hours of 
 " her Byron's society," announced her intention of 
 returning home, remarking " that it was now fitting 
 she should mortify after such a regale." We 
 should have no time to read such letters, much less 
 write them, — and one has to keep in mind the 
 stationary, restful life of the days when this circle 
 of " polite letter-writers " detailed to each other 
 every incident and conversation. 
 
 But not only does their minuteness exceed ours 
 in quantity, it takes a wholly different form. Miss 
 Byron's placid autobiography has no shadow of 
 relationship to that minuteness of George Eliot's 
 psychological investigations, which leaves such a 
 painful impression of dissected souls. Harriet 
 Byron was spared any approach to George Eliot's 
 sense of that " keen vision and feeling of all ordinary 
 human life, which if we had it, would be like hear- 
 ing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, 
 and we should die of that roar which lies on the
 
 42 NOVELS. 
 
 other side of silence." Far from being in any 
 danger of suffering from the " roar," Harriet Byron 
 was so incessantly busy in hearing or retailing 
 small talk and compliments, that she never can 
 have arrived at Silence. She has none of Dorothea's 
 yearnings after unattainable goodness, but rather a 
 comfortable sense of the duty of " doing well unto 
 one's self." 
 
 In these days, when the great problems of 
 existence are common topics of conversation, and 
 magazines are discussing whether " life is worth 
 living," it is curious to see the utter absence of 
 such " obstinate questionings," and " blank mis- 
 givings" in the society Richardson draws for us. 
 The Religious Instinct, the Craving after the 
 Infinite, take, with Sir Charles, the form of a 
 " cheerful piety " which impels him in church (and 
 throughout life) to " pay his compliments only 
 secondarily to his wife, feeling that his first are due 
 to his Maker." 
 
 The book impresses one strongly with the idea 
 that reticence is a modern invention. Cautions 
 against " opening wide the bridal chambers of the 
 heart " l would have been incomprehensible to 
 Harriet. In the index, under the heading, " Miss 
 Byron," we frequently find the entry, " describes 
 several tender passages between herself and Sir 
 Charles." In truth the most confidential speeches 
 1 " Gardener's Daughter."
 
 NOVELS. 43 
 
 are made in such irreproachably " full dress " that 
 it would be a pity to keep them from the 
 company. 
 
 But although Harriet did not happen to have 
 that modern possession, " a buried life," and was 
 perfectly competent to put down in the best hand- 
 writing " all those nameless feelings that coursed 
 through her breast," ! yet, to do her justice, her 
 sentiments were irreproachable on all occasions ; 
 she was sensible and well-informed, an intelligent 
 companion to her husband, a good housewife, had 
 her feelings under control, and fulfilled all the 
 social and religious duties recognized by her age. 
 It is true that to our age, higher and broader ideas 
 of duty have been given, and more will therefore 
 be required of us. Still, she will be a good and 
 faithful servant who, in the present day, fills her 
 larger sphere of work as conscientiously as a 
 smaller sphere was filled by that type of old-world 
 womanhood — Miss Harriet Byron. 
 
 But I am lingering too long over the old-fashioned 
 novels which I delight in. I wish I could persuade 
 you to exchange some of Mudie's new lamps for 
 these old ones ! For I want to ask your patience 
 while I dwell on some of the points in modern 
 novels, which I think call for our serious attention. 
 
 One school of those novels, which I should 
 strongly urge all girls to avoid, is that which 
 1 M. Arnold.
 
 44 NOVELS. 
 
 tampers with religious faith. Some of them claim 
 to show you a more excellent way, some of them 
 proclaim that there is no way to be found. It is 
 with these last that I have least patience. There 
 is a tradition in Yorkshire that the ghosts of those 
 who die by falling into " pot holes " haunt the moors 
 and lure stray travellers to the same fate. The 
 spectre with broken bones, limping beside the way- 
 farer and terrifying him, till he too stumbles into 
 those awful depths, always seemed to me a most 
 eerie conception, but it is nothing compared to the 
 cruelty of those who disturb another's faith, having 
 nothing to offer in exchange. It may be a relief 
 to the writer to cry aloud that there is no answer 
 to the riddle of life, and that, as in Heine's poem, 
 " a fool waits for the answer," but if that is all the 
 contribution he can make to the general need, in 
 novel-writing or in conversation, he would be 
 braver, as well as wiser, if he held his peace, and 
 consumed his own smoke. 
 
 But there are some who feel they can offer new 
 lamps for old ones, and who do so in " novels 
 with a purpose." It is a curious sign of the times 
 that these attacks on our faith are now met with 
 in novels and magazines, which lie about on every 
 table ; whereas in old times they would have been 
 confined to learned treatises and addressed to a 
 properly trained audience. 
 
 It is the lack of proper mental training in the
 
 NOVELS. 45 
 
 readers that makes these present attacks so dan- 
 gerous. In one of those novels, a young man 
 is severely commented on for declining to read 
 unsound books. This intolerance is contrasted 
 with the open-mindedness of the hero, who chooses 
 his Master's adversary for a close friend, and 
 unbelieving books for his main study. In ordinary 
 life one does not admire a man who picks out his 
 father's slanderer as his bosom friend — is it any 
 more beautiful in us if we single out for friendship 
 those who despise Christ? We know that all 
 feeling is contagious, — have we any right to go 
 wilfully into temptation ? Giants of intellect have 
 found that Christian evidence and theology afford 
 scope for a life's work : is it " truth seeking " or 
 " temptation seeking," when an untrained, un- 
 equipped mind goes into these questions? The 
 present day is very full of distrust of old-fashioned 
 truths, but is there enough self-distrust on the part 
 of the truth seekers ? 
 
 You say, " We should learn to give a reason for 
 the faith that is in us." Certainly; but we had 
 better do it under circumstances that give a fair 
 chance to the Faith ; we are so bent on being fair 
 to the enemy, that we forget that fairness cuts both 
 ways. It is quite as possible (and almost more 
 frequent nowadays) to be narrow-minded and 
 illiberal on the anti-Christian, as on the Christian 
 side. I quite admit that in this matter the
 
 46 NOVELS. 
 
 religious world used to be the greatest hindrance to 
 religion, and our cause suffers for this now, in that 
 it is tacitly assumed there will be more generosity 
 and justice in the opponent than in the defender 
 of Christianity. I protest against the unfairness of 
 stories which endow atheists with all the Christian 
 graces, and the orthodox with that intolerance 
 which, in real life, is not confined to either side. 
 
 But it is not only their unfairness that would 
 make me put such novels on an index, — it is the 
 discussion of difficulties before a mixed audience, 
 that I feel to be so dangerous. Not because the 
 truth will not bear handling, but because we are 
 not fit to handle it. We shall all agree with 
 Milton, when he says, " Though all the winds of 
 doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so 
 Truth be in the field we do ingloriously ... to 
 misdoubt her strength." But I do not go on to 
 echo his consequent plea for liberty of printing, 
 since I should like to have these questions argued 
 in Latin. It is not truth, but her followers, who 
 sometimes cannot stand these winds. 
 
 A young man is not supposed to be in a position 
 to judge for himself in science till after a long 
 scientific training. Very little sympathy would be 
 bestowed on him if he broke his heart at the outset 
 of his career, because he was quite sure Huxley 
 and Tyndall were on a wrong track, as " one of his 
 lectures had said so," and " he had seen it in
 
 NOVELS. 47 
 
 print " ! But I have known people declare against 
 religion on no better evidence — mainly, indeed, 
 from a wish to stand on their own feet ! — it is the 
 extreme weakness of those feet that makes me 
 object to the attitude. Far from these doubts 
 being more intellectual than the simple faith in 
 which one was brought up, it seems to me most 
 crudely unintellectual to imagine one's self qualified 
 to pronounce an original opinion, without theo- 
 logical and evidential training, which only the most 
 exceptional women possess. If you are prepared 
 to undergo the training, well and good ; if not, it 
 seems to me a duty not to choose books which 
 attack the Faith, in whose defence we have been 
 too indolent to arm ourselves. 
 
 Some read these books on the plea that going 
 through the dark places will help them to guide 
 others. If God sends you an illness, you can 
 afterwards by your knowledge help others who go 
 through the same, but you would not willingly run 
 into infection merely to enlarge your experience. 
 Common sense would tell you not to face such a 
 certain risk for the sake of a very doubtful good to 
 others. Why are we to think more lightly of risk 
 to our souls ? If there were any certain good for 
 others gained by this search after experience I 
 would say nothing ; but is there ? Does any one but 
 God know " what is in the darkness " ? Are not 
 the " dark places " peculiar to each one ? Can any
 
 48 NOVELS. 
 
 human soul touch any other soul in these things ? 
 " Language conceals thought," and the would-be 
 guide is pretty sure to miss the real perplexity. 
 Only the Great Physician can give the real remedy 
 — another would but catch the disease and not help 
 the patient. 
 
 There are some who must pass through the 
 Valley of the Shadow of Doubt, but I am speaking 
 of those who from intellectual curiosity, or a wish 
 to be in the intellectual fashion of the day, deliber- 
 ately go into that valley. Is it not more helpful to 
 keep a clean bill of health yourself and to stand 
 outside the Dark Valley, shining in the sunlight, 
 and showing, as Faithful did to Christian, that out- 
 side the valley there are "workers, lovers all about," 1 
 and that the Valley is only a small part of life? 
 Surely feeling is contagious, and argument is not, — 
 your argument cannot have quite the same shade 
 of meaning for your hearer as for you — ten to one 
 you miss the point for him. But, to know that 
 another is facing life dutifully and bravely, in a 
 strength that the Doubter cannot yet realize, gives 
 him a feeling that strength does exist somewhere — 
 that the sun is shining on some part of God's 
 empire, though perhaps not at that moment on his 
 own garden. 
 
 These novels which may unsettle our faith will 
 be avoided by those who realise what their effect 
 1 " Within and Without " (G. MacDunald).
 
 NOVELS. 49 
 
 may be. But there is a still larger class of seem- 
 ingly harmless trash, which is often looked upon as 
 a neutral ground where conscience has nothing to 
 say. I am not sure of this being a true view. 
 Surely the ground of our Lord's judgment on idle 
 words lies, not in the individual word itself, but in 
 its being the index to an idle mind. May we 
 conscientiously indulge in any habit which tends to 
 make our minds thus idle ? For a busy worker to 
 relax occasionally over rubbish is one thing; for 
 an idler to read nothing else, is quite another. A 
 woman who takes to drinking is considered a sad, 
 a scandalous, and well-nigh a hopeless case. I 
 know some who are nearly as useless, nearly as 
 impervious to higher influences, as if their minds' 
 fibre had been unstrung by drink ; and yet with 
 these, it is not drink, but reading weak novels, 
 which has done the mischief. Certainly the rest 
 of their life matched their reading, so you may say 
 the novels should not bear all the blame, but I 
 think if they had kept a higher standard in reading, 
 there would have been some grit in them to turn 
 on to better things, when the follies of their youth 
 left them stranded in middle age. 
 
 If we get up from a novel, dissatisfied with that 
 state of life to which we have been called, and 
 inclined to pity ourselves, then we may be sure 
 that such a novel is our poison, and should be laid 
 aside. The main use of novel-reading should be to 
 
 £
 
 50 NOVELS. 
 
 let fresh air into our lives, instead of such malaria ; 
 novels should give us a change of air and scenery, 
 to send us back to our own lives with fresh vigour, 
 with nobler aims and hopes than before. 
 
 There are few things with regard to which it 
 more behoves us for our soul's health to remember 
 that " a light of duty shines on every day for all," l 
 than with regard to novel-reading, and there is 
 scarcely anything which is so seldom made a point 
 of conscience. If we once let our eyes dwell on 
 anything bad, we cannot forget it at will ; it haunts 
 us for years, and comes back when we most long 
 to be free from it — and yet many would read of 
 evil which they would shrink from hearing of. 
 Bad novels find entrance where bad companions 
 would not, and yet they are the more dangerous of 
 the two ; for we more insensibly fall into the tone 
 of the books we read than of the people we meet, 
 since there is nothing, while we are reading, to 
 arouse our attention, or that of others, to the 
 gradual change in our standard which is taking 
 place. It is not only downright bad novels which 
 our conscience ought to forbid, not only those 
 which manifestly seek to attract by picturing evil, 
 and which ask our sympathy for sin, and obscure 
 our sense of right and wrong : there are many 
 which do not deserve such harsh censure, but yet 
 which strike us as rather profane, or rather vulgar, or 
 1 "The Excursion."
 
 NOVELS. Si 
 
 rather coarse when we begin them, though there 
 is nothing positively wrong in them. But, if we are 
 to strive after perfection, then it is our clear duty to 
 close such books at once ; for nothing is so quickly 
 lost as this vague sense of distaste for evil, and we 
 may accept it as an inevitable judgment that, by the 
 time we have read such a book through, we shall for 
 ever have lost that full power of seeing and shrinking 
 from its evil, which was ours when we opened it. 
 
 And yet some old-fashioned books are coarse, 
 without quite deserving our avoidance. 
 
 My theory is that dirt does not stick after it is 
 dry, and that old-fashioned coarseness is nothing 
 like so hurtful as a verbally less offensive book of 
 the present day. There are French novels which 
 could be read out aloud quite well, and yet which 
 would leave one with no moral sense at all. 
 
 I wish you would read no French novels without 
 a warrant from some old-fashioned person — the 
 name of the author is no guarantee at all, for the 
 same man will write a black novel and a white one, 
 without seeming to know the difference. Their 
 workmanship makes most English novels seem, by 
 comparison, perfectly childish; but I deliberately 
 would rather a girl did not know how to read than 
 that she should read the French novels I speak of. 
 If she says that they do her no harm, she is like 
 Rappacini's daughter, 1 and has learnt to breathe 
 1 " Mosses from an Old Manse."
 
 52 NOVELS. 
 
 poison. They have a curious power of deadening 
 the moral sense, and I would almost rather she 
 read something that would shock her more. 
 
 Girls read many books which they say are 
 " powerful," an adjective which generally means 
 " disgusting." I do not object to strong situations 
 if some spiritual beauty is brought out ; but I deny 
 that even artistic perfection is reached unless this 
 is done. Mere animal beauty is an anachronism — 
 a lackingness (if I may coin a word) — in a woman, 
 or in a book, that is born in this age, which has 
 advanced to a spiritual level unknown to the Greeks. 
 Browning's " Old Pictures in Florence " has a bear- 
 ing on novels as well as on pictures ; and I do not 
 think we are justified in reading a book which only 
 shows power of depicting animal emotions. 
 
 I think, unless a girl can say that the world and 
 the flesh have no hold over her whatsoever, she has 
 no right to tamper with them, by reading books 
 which are " earthly, sensual," though there may be 
 no absolute wickedness about them, which would 
 earn for them St. James' third adjective. 
 
 Surely, too, the moral vulgarity of many books of 
 the kind should be a safeguard. The housemaids' 
 story, whose interest lies in such " promising nouns " 
 as Earls and Countesses, Velvets and Diamonds, is 
 allowed to be vulgar. Surely (putting right and 
 wrong aside) there is as much moral vulgarity in 
 books which rely for attraction on more lurid nouns
 
 NOVELS. 53 
 
 You have no idea how often it would help 
 another girl, who, in her heart dislikes that kind of 
 thing, if you had the courage to show that you do 
 mind what you read, and that you are content to 
 take an elder's advice, instead of investigating for 
 yourself. God shelters many from evil, and it is 
 one of the chief " blessings of this life " when He 
 does ; but some seem to think it selfish and 
 ignoble to remain sheltered, when others are not. 
 Possibly it is ignoble to eat my dinner to-day, 
 when some one else goes hungry. If I could 
 transfer my dinner to him, it would perhaps be 
 nobler. But to burn my dinner, in order to put 
 myself on his level, would bear no " signs of noble- 
 ness " about it ; it would only weaken my power of 
 serving him after dinner. 
 
 Girls tarnish their own purity by reading and 
 talking of evil, with a vague idea of helping in some 
 grand struggle for good. Reading doubtful novels, 
 and acquiring the debased form of that very useful 
 possession "knowledge of the world," is not the 
 way to win the power of one with whom " men at 
 her side grow nobler — girls purer." The longer I 
 live the more convinced I am that nothing you 
 say, or do, has any effect compared to the " virtue " 
 which goes out of you unconsciously, for good or 
 for ill, according to what you are. Every doubtful 
 book that you read kills a certain amount of the 
 virtue of purity, which might have come out of you,
 
 54 AOVELS. 
 
 and might have helped some one in their battle 
 against evil, of which you may be unconscious. 
 By every such book you deliberately put a veil 
 between your soul and the Beatific Vision. You 
 cannot be as much shocked at the end of a book 
 which offends your taste, or your sense of right and 
 wrong, as you were at the beginning : such indul- 
 gence must blunt our feelings. 
 
 Some speak contemptuously of "cloistered 
 virtue." I never find that people afflicted with 
 temper seek annoyances, or that the proud seek 
 mortifications, for fear their virtue should be 
 "cloistered." In such matters they trust God to 
 supply them with sufficient exercise in their " daily 
 round." But in the matter of purity, they " rush 
 in " where greater saints have " feared to tread." 
 Is it because they want an excuse for eating the 
 fruit that Eve also thought " was to be desired " ? 
 They sometimes call it selfish and cowardly to " go 
 through life with their eyes shut." It seems to 
 me that the "open eyes," which they think so 
 meritorious, mean wilful staring at various ugly 
 things which lie outside their natural line of vision. 
 
 "A tree to be desired to make one wise." 
 These words go home to us as much as to Eve ; 
 more so, I think, as the world is more complex 
 now, and knowledge of the world is consequently 
 more interestimr.
 
 NOVELS. 
 
 55 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR NOVEL READING. 
 
 (Excluding Historical Stories.) 
 
 BOOKS "IT BECOMES A YOUNG WOMAN TO 
 KNOW." 
 
 The Waverley Novels 
 
 Sir C. Grandison 
 
 Marriage 
 
 Destiny . 
 
 Inheritance 
 
 Miss Austen's Novels. 
 
 Ennui . 
 
 Patronage 
 
 Helen . 
 
 Villette . 
 
 Shirley . 
 
 Deerbrook 
 
 Cranford 
 
 Wives and Daughters 
 
 Sylvia's Lovers 
 
 North and South . 
 
 The Spy 
 
 Last of the Mohicans 
 
 The Prairie . 
 
 The Pathfinder 
 
 Esmond . . 
 
 Newcomes 
 
 Martin Chuzzlewit . 
 
 Bleak House . 
 
 Our Mutual Friend 
 
 The Caxtons . 
 
 My Novel 
 
 Never too Late to Mend 
 
 Sir W. Scott. 
 Richardson. 
 Miss Ferrier. 
 
 Miss Edgeworth. 
 
 C. Bronte. 
 
 Miss Marti neau. 
 Mrs. Gaskell. 
 
 F. Cooper. 
 •i 
 »» 
 >• 
 
 Thackeray. 
 
 ii 
 
 Dickens. 
 
 >i 
 >» 
 
 Bulwer Lytton. 
 
 i> i> 
 
 C. Reade.
 
 56 
 
 NOVELS. 
 
 Scenes of Clerical Life 
 
 Romola 
 
 Silas Marner 
 
 Westward Ho ! 
 
 Hypatia 
 
 Ravenshoe . 
 
 Transformation 
 
 House with the Seven Gables 
 
 The Experience of Life 
 
 Barchester Towers 
 
 Last Chronicles of Barset . 
 
 The Daisy Chain 
 
 Heart's-ease 
 
 Clever Woman of the Family 
 
 Robert Falconer . 
 
 Miss Majoribanks 
 
 The Beleaguered City 
 
 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
 Lorna Doone . 
 
 John Inglesant . 
 
 G. Eliot. 
 
 C. Kingsley. 
 
 »» 
 
 H. Kingsley. 
 N. Hawthorne. 
 
 ii 
 
 Miss Sewell. 
 A. Trollope. 
 
 »> 
 
 Miss Yonge. 
 
 G. MacDonald. 
 Mrs. Oliphant. 
 
 »» »i 
 
 S. Fraser-Tytler. 
 R. Blackmore. 
 H. Shorthouse. 
 
 "SANDWICH" BOOKS. 1 
 
 Too Strange not to be Tiue 
 
 Kenelm Chillingly 
 
 Coningsby . 
 
 Sybil . 
 
 Tancred 
 
 Lothaire 
 
 Ivan de Biron 
 
 Casimir Maremma 
 
 Realmah . 
 
 Heir of Redclyffe 
 
 Lady G. Fullerton. 
 Bulwer Lytton. 
 Disraeli. 
 
 Sir A. HELrs. 
 
 Miss Yonge. 
 
 See p. 26.
 
 NOVELS. 
 
 57 
 
 Dynevor Terrace 
 
 Can you forgive her ? 
 
 The Small House at Allington 
 
 Phineas Finn . 
 
 Old Town Folk 
 
 The Minister's Wooing . 
 
 Katie Brand . 
 
 Nathalie .... 
 
 Adele .... 
 
 Ferneyhurst Court , 
 
 Castle Daly 
 
 Janet's Home . 
 
 Gayworthys 
 
 A Maiden of our own Day 
 
 Sir Gibbie 
 
 For the Right . 
 
 Madonna of a Day . 
 
 Days of Yore . . . 
 
 Miss Yonge. 
 A. Trollope. 
 
 Mrs. Beecher Stowe. 
 
 i» » 
 
 Holme Lee. 
 Miss Kavanagh. 
 
 »> » 
 
 Lady Verney. 
 Miss Keary. 
 
 i> ji 
 
 A. D. J. Whitney. 
 
 F. W. Wilford. 
 
 G. MacDonald. 
 Franzos. 
 
 Miss DOUGALL. 
 
 S. Fraser Tytler. 
 
 FOR "THE LAND WHERE IT IS ALWAYS 
 AFTERNOON." 
 
 Semi-detached House 
 Semi-attached Couple 
 Charles O'Malley 
 Harry Lorrequer 
 Cruise upon Wheels 
 The Moonstone 
 The Coming Race 
 Christowell 
 Alice Lorraine 
 Off the Skelligs 
 For Percival . 
 Mitchelhurst Place 
 
 Hon. E. Eden. 
 
 ii >i 
 
 C. Lever. 
 
 ii 
 
 C. A. Collins. 
 W. Collins. 
 
 BULWER LYTTON. 
 
 R. Blackmore. 
 
 II 
 
 Jean Inglelow. 
 Margaret Vei.ey.
 
 58 
 
 NOVELS. 
 
 But yet a Woman 
 
 Denise 
 
 May . 
 
 Lady Car . 
 
 Vera . 
 
 Hotel du Petit S. Jean 
 
 Dorothy Fox 
 
 Prophet of the Great Smoky 
 
 Mountain 
 Ramona 
 Reata . 
 Orthodox 
 Recha . 
 
 A Family Affair . 
 Mr. Smith . 
 The Refugees 
 A Daughter of Heth 
 Adventures of a Phaeton 
 Princess of Thule 
 Village on the Cliff 
 Old Kensington . 
 Initials 
 Quits . 
 Day Book of Mrs. Bethia 
 
 Hardacre . 
 Saltonstall Gazette 
 
 A. S. Hardy. 
 Miss Roberts. 
 Mrs. Oliphant. 
 
 >» »> 
 
 C. L. H. Dempster. 
 
 »» >> 
 
 Mrs. Parr. 
 
 M. N. Murfree. 
 H. Jackson. 
 Miss Gerard. 
 
 H. Conway. 
 Mrs. Walford. 
 Conan Doyle. 
 Black. 
 
 Miss Thackeray. 
 
 »» »> 
 
 Baroness Tautphosus. 
 
 Mrs. Fuller Maitland.
 
 ISomola. 
 
 IN " Romola !> we learn to know, not only 
 Florence, but the fifteenth century with "its 
 strange web of belief and unbelief, with its zeal for 
 old manuscripts, and its waxen images hanging up 
 under the protection of the Madonna Annunziata ; " 
 — we see " the incomparable Lorenzo, with the dim 
 outward eyes and the subtile inward vision ; " and 
 the Prior of San Marco, Savonarola, who " had the 
 greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling 
 against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men 
 to the highest deeds they are capable of." And, 
 though we are thus brought face to face with the 
 actors in one of the greatest dramas of history, yet 
 the book teaches us " the broad sameness of the 
 human lot, which never alters in the main headings 
 of its history — hunger and labour, seedtime and 
 harvest, love and death." 
 
 " Romola " is a careful study of place and time, 
 and may well teach more, both of history and 
 geography, than many a text-book or careless 
 travel, but yet the predominant impression it leaves 
 on one's mind is that of much-needed lessons for
 
 60 ROM OLA. 
 
 our own lives : — the nobleness of Truth and Duty, 
 of that " great gift of the gods, to be born with a 
 hatred and contempt of all injustice and meanness ; " 
 the truth of " that inexorable law of human souls, 
 that we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds, by 
 the reiterated choice of good or evil, that really 
 determines character." 
 
 The possibilities of beauty in life have been 
 heightened for all of us who know the blind old 
 scholar Bardo, and his daughter Romola, — " such a 
 woman as the immortal poets had a vision of when 
 they sang the lives of the heroes — tender but strong, 
 like her voice which was to him instead of the 
 light in the years of his blindness." Into their 
 studious life entered the beautiful young Greek, 
 Tito Melema, supple in mind and body — and soul. 
 His bright face, with its rich tinted beauty, was 
 " like a wreath of spring, dropped suddenly in 
 Romola's young but wintry life, which had inherited 
 nothing but memories — memories of a dead mother, 
 of a lost brother, of a blind father's happier time, — 
 memories of far-off light, love and beauty, that lay 
 imbedded in dark mines of books." 
 
 Bardo sought Tito's aid in the learned work 
 which was to be the blind man's title to fame. 
 " He looked so bright and gentle : he must feel as 
 she did, that, in this eagerness of blind age, there 
 was piteousness enough to call for the inexhaustible 
 patience. ... A girl of eighteen imagines the
 
 ROMOLA. 61 
 
 feelings behind the face that has moved her with 
 its sympathetic youth, as easily as primitive people 
 imagined the humours of the gods in fine weather." 
 In Romola's presence, Tito's responsive nature was 
 in tune with hers, for " each woman creates in her 
 own likeness the love tokens that are offered her." 
 But his past life is sullied by base denial of the 
 foster-father who rescued him from slavery, and his 
 present is entangled by deceiving the peasant girl 
 Tessa — half from kindliness, half from the drifting 
 towards the softest corner, which is the fatal flaw 
 in his nature. 
 
 Surely in no other book do we find such a 
 marvellous study of character, or rather of tempera- 
 ment, as this of Tito. Every one in whose nature 
 lies the smallest tinge of pleasure-seeking should 
 read the story of the unintended misery which his 
 shrinking from disagreeables brought on himself 
 and all around him. 
 
 Every woman to whom " the cross comes as a 
 wife, should learn to carry it as a wife," from 
 the lessons taught to Romola by Savonarola. 
 Should I not rather say, that every woman 
 should lay to heart his words, "The higher life 
 begins for us, my daughter, when we renounce 
 our own will to bow before a Divine law. That 
 seems hard to you. It is the portal of wisdom, and 
 freedom, and blessedness. That wisdom is the 
 religion of the cross " ? Romola learnt her lesson
 
 62 ROMOLA. 
 
 and made" her life fair with " beautiful loving deeds, 
 rescuing those who were ready to perish," " though 
 there is no compensation for the woman who feels 
 that the chief relation of her life has been no more 
 than a mistake. She has lost her crown. The 
 deepest secret of human blessedness has half 
 whispered itself to her, and then for ever passed 
 her by." 
 
 At first sight, Romola's simple majesty and 
 high-minded goodness win our whole sympathy, as 
 contrasted with the baseness of the man whom she 
 credited with a like nobility of soul. But we miss 
 much of the tragedy of the story, if we overlook 
 the fact that she and Tito represent the opposite 
 temperaments of north and south. It is not merely 
 the contrast of virtue and vice ; it is a study of the 
 disastrous effect of the contact of two natures, 
 which each brought out the fault of the other. 
 Tito developed the hardness which is too often the 
 deadly sin of women of Romola's type ; while her 
 very virtues crushed his sympathetic responsive 
 nature as with a cloak of lead. 
 
 The story of her love and its betrayal is inter- 
 woven with that of the great Dominican monk, 
 who ruled Florence in virtue of "his burning 
 indignation at the sight of wrong ; of his fervent 
 belief in an unseen Justice that would put an end 
 to the wrong, and in an unseen Purity to which 
 lying and uncleanness were an abomination." In
 
 ROMOLA. 63 
 
 the midst of his powerful denunciations of the sins 
 of Florence and the corruptions of the Church, he 
 found time to save Romola from despair. " No 
 soul is desolate so long as there is a human being 
 for whom it can feel trust and reverence. . . . The 
 first condition of human goodness is something 
 to love ; the second, something to reverence." 
 Savonarola supplied Romola with both these con- 
 ditions, for his mind never stopped short of the 
 sublimest end. . . . Even in the last terrible days, 
 when ignominy, torture, and the fear of torture had 
 laid bare eveiy hidden weakness of his soul, he 
 would say to his importunate judges : " do not 
 wonder if it seems to you that I have told you but 
 few things ; for my purposes were few and great." 
 
 I have touched on the main characters and main 
 themes of the story, as much as possible in the 
 words of the book, because no description would 
 give so forcible an idea, as does exact quotation, 
 of the noble words and poetic rhythm in which 
 that story is told. The reader lives, for the time 
 being, in a city which is the joy of the whole earth 
 for its beauty and for its memories; he moves 
 among famous men of old, but the great charm of 
 the book is that it interprets for us some of the 
 painful riddles of our own life, that it leaves " our 
 heart beating faster at the sight of generous deeds." 
 We feel no doubt as we read, " what is the highest 
 prize the soul can win ; we almost believe in our
 
 64 ROMOLA. 
 
 own power to attain it ; " we rise in spirit to the 
 heights on which Romola stood when she said, " It 
 is a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by 
 caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. 
 We can only have the highest happiness, by having 
 wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the 
 world as well as ourselves : and this sort of 
 happiness often brings so much pain with it, that 
 we can only tell it from pain by its being what 
 we would choose before everything else."
 
 Charles USt'ncjsIeg. 
 
 PERHAPS few things would have given so 
 much pleasure to this "true lover," Charles 
 Kingsley, as to have known that his wife would 
 have a larger share than he himself in making his 
 name famous. Mrs. Kingsley's life of her husband 
 made him a household name to even a wider circle 
 than had been charmed by his books. I know of 
 no other wife, except perhaps Lucy Hutchinson, 
 to whom it has been given to force the world to 
 look at her husband through her eyes. 
 
 " Romeo and Juliet " is perhaps the most famous 
 version of the first act of that often-played drama 
 of " the world's great bridals," but the married life 
 of Charles Kingsley, as pictured in this book, is 
 worthy to be taken as an unsurpassed second 
 act, while I cannot think of any third and final 
 act, except " By the Fire-side." 
 
 No wonder, when he had such a home as 
 Eversley, that " faith in womankind " was Kings- 
 ley's watchword, and that " trust in all things high," 
 came easy to him. 
 
 F
 
 66 CHARLES KINGS LEY. 
 
 " If any two creatures grew into one, 
 They would do more than the world has done, 
 Though each apart were never so weak." 
 
 It is, therefore, no wonder that Kingsley's short 
 fifty years of work accomplished so much, when 
 his wife could write of him as she does : — 
 
 " If in the highest, closest of earthly relation- 
 ships, a love that never failed for six and thirty 
 years — pure, patient, passionate — a love which 
 never stooped from its own lofty level to a hasty 
 word, an impatient gesture, or a selfish act, in 
 sickness or in health, in sunshine or in storm, by 
 day or by night, could prove that the age of 
 chivalry has not passed away for ever, then Charles 
 Kingsley fulfilled the ideal of a ' most true and 
 perfect knight,' to the one woman blest with that 
 love in time and to eternity." 
 
 Few things are more touching than the closing 
 scenes of his life, when he snatched from Death 
 itself one last hour with her whom he had so 
 loved and served. Surely the " love never found 
 an earthly close " which died (or seemed to die) 
 to such strains as theirs did — to the sound of 
 Wordsworth's " Ode on Immortality," Matthew 
 Arnold's "Buried Life," and Milton's "Ode to 
 Time." 
 
 His epitaph consisted of the three words in 
 which the life of his life, past, present, and future, 
 is gathered up—" Aviavimus, amamus, amaiimus."
 
 CHARLES KINGS LEY. 67 
 
 Not Sir Lancelot or Sir Richard Grenvile was 
 more faithful to his Lady, more gentle to the 
 weak, more stout-hearted against all evil and 
 oppression. 
 
 " He was ever a fighter," a man of " fierce wars 
 and faithful loves." His last words were the sigh 
 of relief, " No more fighting." 
 
 Well might his wife dedicate her book to the 
 
 " SSclobeu i&cmorj) of 
 A RIGHTEOUS MAN 
 
 Who loved God and Truth above all things. 
 
 A man of untarnished honour — 
 
 Loyal and chivalrous — gentle and strong — 
 
 Modest and humble — tender and true — 
 
 Pitiful to the weak — yearning after the erring — 
 
 Stern to all forms of wrong and oppression, 
 
 Yet most stern towards himself — 
 
 Who being angry, yet sinned not — 
 
 Whose highest virtues were known only 
 
 To his wife, his children, his servants and the poor. 
 
 Who lived in the presence of God here, 
 
 And passing through the Grave and Gate of death 
 
 Now liveth unto God for evermore." 
 
 The two events which coloured his whole life 
 were his finding a home at Clovelly when he was 
 eleven, and his marriage with Miss Grenfell when 
 he was twenty-five. 
 
 He was a many-sided man. The muscularity of
 
 68 CHARLES KINGS LEY. 
 
 his training, his love of dogs and horses, was no 
 bar to earnest loving work as a " country parson," 
 who need not have shrunk from a comparison 
 even with George Herbert's model ; while his 
 poetic nature gave forth, in constant flow, books 
 which have helped to keep Englishmen as manly 
 and as pure as the heroes of whom he sang in his 
 prose Epic, " Westward Ho ! " 
 
 " The Saints' Tragedy," written when he was 
 twenty-nine, roused Bunsen to such a pitch of 
 enthusiasm, that he begged Kingsley to continue 
 Shakespeare's Historical Plays ! But 1848 filled his 
 mind with the making of history, not the writing 
 of it. He felt " the day of the Lord at hand." 
 
 " Every morning brought a noble chance, 
 And every chance brought forth a noble knight," ' 
 
 — such knights as Tom Hughes, F. D. Maurice, 
 Sidney Godolphin Osborne, Mansfield, Ludlow : — 
 Christian Socialists, shoulder to shoulder with 
 whom Kingsley found his work. 
 
 His papers, signed " Parson Lot," in " Politics 
 for the People " (among them one on Bellini's 
 picture of "the Doge"), "Yeast," and "Alton 
 Locke " show him to us, as that " Priest of God and 
 tribune of the People," which Dr. Arnold declared 
 every clergyman should be. 
 
 In 1853 came " Hypatia," with that fine gentleman, 
 
 1 Tennyson.
 
 CHARLES KINGS LEY. 69 
 
 Raphael; and then, while Crimean fighting was 
 going on, Kingsley, to use his own expression, 
 " wrote books to make others fight," and produced 
 " Westward Ho ! " which stands alone in its 
 wonderful mastery of the fascination of the sea, 
 and of Devon, and of England's forgotten worthies. 
 
 Then came the " Heroes " — Greek fairy tales, as 
 delicate and graceful as the laughter of the many- 
 twinkling sea. In 1857, " Two Years Ago," where 
 he portrayed Clovelly most charmingly. Then came 
 the " Water Babies," a very fascinating example of 
 the modern story-book, spoken to the child, but 
 really addressed to the nurse. 
 
 In i860, came his work as Professor of History 
 at Cambridge, and in 1869 as Canon of Chester, 
 where he wrote " Madam How and Lady Why " 
 and " At Last." 
 
 In 1873 came the canonry at Westminster and 
 his final visit to America, from which he returned 
 with the beginnings of the illness under which he 
 sank in 1875, aged fifty-five. 
 
 His poems were written at various times. 
 Professor Knight counts him as one of the greatest 
 of our minor poets. Surely he is, for one thing, 
 the chief of modern ballad singers; look at his 
 spirited " North Easter," which " stirs our Vikings' 
 blood," and the rhythm of " Loraine, Loraine, 
 Loree." But note, too, the delicate music of " Earl 
 Haldan's Daughter," and the pathos of the " Mango
 
 70 CHARLES KINGS LEY. 
 
 Tree," told by the crazy desolate woman, who 
 loses husband and children amid the luxuriant 
 beauty of a tropical forest, and whose thoughts 
 brood over the English home, where that husband 
 " told his boy's love, soft and oft." Around her 
 are "the monkeys in their foolish strife; the 
 lizards basking on the soil," — 
 
 "But still within her foolish brain 
 There hangs a pale blue evening sky ; 
 A furzy croft ; a sandy lane." 
 
 One is grateful to Kingsley for speaking in the 
 vulgar tongue, although, when a man so evidently 
 means what he says and says what he means, it is 
 apt to slay suggestiveness and poetic half-lights. 
 Yet the singer of the " Night Bird " was a true 
 poet. 
 
 Christian Socialism had not become fashionable 
 in 1848, and Kingsley and his "Master" (as he 
 loved to called Maurice) followed her before she 
 walked in silver slippers. 
 
 Parson Lot, with his simple hard hitting (at the 
 mercy of a practised fencer like Cardinal Newman), 
 was a good soldier in that same army to which 
 Heine, in all other ways so unlike him, claimed 
 admission. Heine's creed might well have been 
 spoken by Kingsley — 
 
 " Now that I have grown to manhood, 
 Read and travelled more than most,
 
 CHARLES KINGS LEY. 71 
 
 Swells my heart, and I acknowledge 
 With full heart the Holy Ghost. 
 
 " He has wrought the mightiest marvels, 
 Mightier works for suffering folk ; 
 He cast down the barons' strongholds, 
 Broke for aye the villeins' yoke. 
 
 " Thousand knights in shining armour, 
 Of the Holy Ghost inspired, 
 Chosen His will to do in all things, 
 With great courage hath He fired. 
 
 " Now, my child, come look upon me, 
 Kiss me, boldly look, and boast 
 Thou hast looked on such a champion, 
 Knight, child ! of the Holy Ghost." ' 
 
 But Nature, as well as Human Nature, owns 
 Charles Kingsley's allegiance. De Quincey says 
 local attachment to lovely country is a necessary 
 constituent of happiness, and boyhood at Clovelly 
 gave this to Kingsley. Few have so repaid their 
 debts as he did his to North Devon. In these 
 hurrying, travelling days, we need to be taught the 
 beauty of " Roots " — 
 
 " We see all sights from pole to pole, 
 And nod, and glance, and hurry by, 
 And never once possess our souls 
 Before we die." * 
 
 Kingsley could have taught us the beauty of actual, 
 1 " Harzreise." * M. Arnold.
 
 72 CHARLES KINGS LEY. 
 
 as well as of metaphorical, roots ; he knew " the 
 secret of the weed's plain heart," ' and in a country 
 walk with him we should have made friends with 
 the minutest creatures we passed. Even if we 
 must live in a town, let us read Kingsley's 
 " Town Geology." 
 
 " You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace, 
 You cannot shut the windows of the sky." ' 
 
 To Kingsley these windows were open from his 
 youth up, and the bed-ridden and the sick can see 
 through his eyes, and enter into an inheritance of 
 free Nature's grace, for which our children's 
 children should cherish his memory. 
 
 1 J. R. Lowell. 8 Thomson's " Castle of Indolence."
 
 II. 
 
 " Blessings be with them — and eternal praise, 
 Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares — 
 The Poets, who on earth have made us Heirs 
 Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays." 
 
 Wordsworth,
 
 POETRY should not form the staple of our 
 reading, any more than sugar-plums of our 
 food, but it is very resting and calming to keep 
 some one book of poetry in hand, and read it daily, 
 if only for a few minutes. Mr. Ruskin says that 
 we should be as careful to do this as to read a 
 daily portion of the Bible, that we may be kept in 
 mind of the ideal possibilities of life, and may 
 breathe, for those few moments, a purer atmo- 
 sphere, in which — 
 
 " The cares that infest the day 
 Shall fold their tents like the Arabs 
 And as silently steal away." ' 
 
 Many poets soothe and please us by their grace 
 and music, and have no harm in them, except that 
 they are apt to narcotize our moral sense. All 
 poetry that is only pretty, tends to do this; and 
 poetry, even in order to be first-rate poetry, should 
 point to something higher than itself. 
 
 Such poets as Wordsworth often seem dull. 
 He himself deprecates a "degrading thirst after 
 1 Longfellow.
 
 76 POETRY. 
 
 outrageous stimulation j " and if the literature of his 
 day suggested this to him, what would ours do ? 
 If we spend the afternoon reading " idle singers of 
 an empty day," 1 we run a poorer chance of doing 
 our duty at night; whereas, if we get a few 
 thoughts of Wordsworth into our mind, we are 
 almost sure to take a nobler view of the next 
 question that comes before us. 
 
 I hope you possess that old-fashioned thing, a 
 commonplace-book, and that you make constant use 
 of it. Think no time wasted that is spent in copying 
 out really good poetry, the mere act impresses it 
 on your mind, far more than any reading can do. 
 
 There are already innumerable books of quota- 
 tions, and of selected passages for each day in the 
 year, but those that we ourselves collect have a far 
 surpassing value for us. It is very interesting to 
 select a text and a verse of poetry for every day — 
 if the alternate pages of the book are blank, it 
 makes a birthday book, far more satisfactory to the 
 compiler than any printed one. It would be still 
 more interesting to take one virtue for each month, 
 and to bring together the different things said by 
 both poet and prose writers on the subject, though 
 it is hard to find enough quotations on some of 
 the virtues. 
 
 It is very interesting to work out a subject in 
 various poets, and to bring together their modes of 
 1 Morris's "Earthly Paradise."
 
 POETRY. 77 
 
 treating it, e.g. the Poets' Ideal Women, such as 
 Wordsworth's " She was a Phantom of Delight," 
 Lowell's "My Love" and "Irene;" Tennyson's 
 " Isabel ; " Milton's " Eve ; " » Dante's " Beatrice j " 
 Matthew Arnold's " Urania," and many more. 
 Or make a Poets' Garden ; flowers would have an 
 added beauty for us if the sight of them brought 
 back to our minds the lines that have turned them 
 into everlastings. 
 
 Such a garden might have grass, " not immacu- 
 late of the sweet fault of daisies ; " 2 out of the grass 
 should spring roses " not royal in their smell alone, 
 but in their hue." 3 There must be a white rose 
 for good Jacobites to wear on June ioth, the 
 Chevalier's birthday (by rights it should be the 
 rose unique). There must be "a red red rose 
 that's newly sprung in June " to speak of that other 
 royal exile, Margaret of Anjou. If we are fortunate 
 enough to get it, we must have the old rose of 
 May, Rose de Meaux, which Mary Howitt found 
 at Annesley — that most poetical of old houses, a 
 rose which is only seen — 
 
 " Where the great of other days have been ; 
 Left, like a noble deed, to grace 
 The memory of an ancient race." 4 
 
 1 Perhaps Mrs. Catherine Thompson should be considered 
 Milton's Ideal Woman. 
 
 2 George MacDonald. * Ben Jonson. 
 « "Birds and Flowers" (M. Howett).
 
 78 POETRY. 
 
 The border round the grass might be well filled, 
 even if we restricted ourselves to flowers that bring 
 us some messages from the past. I have a list of 
 Chaucerian flowers which would be enough in 
 itself, and another of Elizabethan ones, which 
 would require large space. It is curious to notice 
 what a tidal wave of new flowers came into 
 England under Queen Elizabeth, not only from 
 America, but from European countries also, for 
 the " Art of Simpling," as Gerrard tells us, was 
 then held " an exercise for the noblest, a pastime 
 for the best," and many " curious and painfull 
 Herbalists" in France and Holland were in 
 correspondence with Gerrard and Parkinson, 
 helping the one to write his " Herbal," and the 
 other his " Paradise," which are still the most 
 fascinating of all flower-books. Elizabeth's nobles 
 received something more than the instruction in 
 cricket and football, which we have now agreed to 
 call a liberal education, and as ambassadors they 
 had many opportunities of assisting English savants ; 
 Gerrard speaks specially of " the liberalise of the 
 Rt. Hon. the Lorde Edward Zouche at his return 
 from Italy, whence I received many rare seeds 
 which do flourish in my garden, for which I think 
 myself much bounde unto his good Lordship." It 
 would make a garden very interesting if we 
 collected all the plants mentioned by Bacon in the 
 essay wherein he directs " the royal ordering of
 
 POETRY. 79 
 
 gardens where there ought to be gardens for all 
 the months of the year, in which, severally, things 
 of beauty may be seen in season." 
 
 But, even in a town back garden, much may be 
 done in this way by careful management, while at 
 least we can pay heed to his reminder that " the 
 breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it 
 comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than 
 in the hand," though we should like also to have 
 flowers for a true nosegay, or tussiemussie, as 
 Parkinson calls it. We will so arrange our flowers 
 as to have a calendar of sweet odours, such as 
 J. S. Mill drew up for Caroline Fox, not omitting, 
 as he does, the autumn strawberry leaves, whose 
 faint smell, according to the old superstition (and 
 to my Lady Ludlow), can only be discerned by 
 nostrils of ancient descent ! 
 
 Under the bedroom window we must have night- 
 blowing flowers, such as the white rocket — which was 
 Marie Antoinette's favourite flower, thus bearing 
 out the old belief that white flowers mean death. 
 Mignonette, " the fragrant weed, the Frenchman's 
 darling," l smells sweetest of all, by day and night, 
 and shall be sown broadcast. Wall-flowers shall 
 be set, as Lord Bacon would have it, " under the 
 parlour window ; " up the wall shall climb — 
 " The fair wild honeysuckle flower 
 Seeming of her to speak 
 
 1 Cowper's "Task."
 
 So POETRY. 
 
 Who clings to home — her sheltering bower — 
 With loving heart and meek, 
 Careless for self, but full of care, 
 That home be ever sweet and fair." ' 
 
 But sweet smells shall not be the only creden- 
 tials to admit flowers to our garden, quaint names 
 shall be an open sesame, the oxlip daisy shall ride 
 in triumphantly because " our women," says 
 Gerrard, " had named them Jacke an apes on 
 horseback : " " daffodils and the green world they 
 live in " when brought to us by " March, the first 
 redresser of the winter's wrong shall be the more 
 welcome, because Gerrard tells us that " the 
 Persians do name him the King's chalice." Rose- 
 campion shall come in with its " clear light-giving 
 flowers " under its Dutch name of " Christes Eye," 
 and the old English one of " Nonsuch." We will 
 have Crown Imperial, the yellow lily, because, 
 when George Herbert humbly craved to know, 
 " sweet peace where dost thou dwell ? " he spied 
 this gallant flower, and thought — 
 
 " Peace at the root must dwell." 
 
 But Herbert found he was wrong, and we must 
 put a royal carpet for this Imperial Crown of the 
 true Heartsease, with its old pet names of " Cull 
 me to you," and " Kiss me ere I rise." Ours shall 
 be the sweet strife — 
 
 1 "Church Toetry" (collected by A. Mozley).
 
 POETRY. 8 1 
 
 *' Why pansies, eyes that laugh, bear beauty's prize 
 From violets, eyes that dream." 1 
 
 And if the old proverb be true — " The Garden is a 
 mute Gospel " — surely violets are its sweetest text ; 
 listen to Gerrard's quaint sermon thereon, which 
 is not yet out of date, though three hundred gene- 
 ration of violets have preached it, since he put it 
 into words for them. 
 
 " Gardens receive by these the greatest orna- 
 ment of all, chiefest beauty, and most gallant 
 grace ; and the recreation of the minde which is 
 taken hereby, cannot but be verie goode and 
 honest : for they admonish and stir up a man to 
 that which is comely and honest; for flowers 
 through their beautie do bring to a liberal and 
 gentlemanlie minde, the remembrance of honestie, 
 comelinesse, and all kinds of virtue. For it would 
 be an unseemely and filthie thing for him that 
 dothe looke upon and handel faire and beautifull 
 things, and who frequenteth and is conversaunt in 
 faire and beautifull places, to have his minde not 
 faire but filthie and deformed." 
 
 Flower lovers will forgive this long digression, 
 for they know the temptation of the subject, and 
 perhaps in our climate it is as well for every one to 
 be able to find outdoor pleasures by means of 
 books : all who can, would " go to the woods and 
 hills" to read— 
 
 1 " raracelsus." 
 
 G
 
 82 POETRY. 
 
 " A lesson that will keep 
 Their heart from fainting, and their soul from sleep ; " ' 
 
 but too often, in default of summer pleasures, we 
 must do as Mr. Lowell did when May proved " a 
 pious fraud of the almanac " — 
 
 " Warmly walled by books, 
 I take my May down from the happy shelf 
 Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row, 
 And beg an alms of spring-time, ne'er denied 
 Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods 
 Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year."' 
 
 In any words about poetry, I cannot speak too 
 strongly of the importance of learning by heart. 
 If you were blind, or sitting with a sick person in 
 a darkened room, or walking over the moors, you 
 might very likely wish for poetry : would it be at 
 your command? Besides, the best poetry, until 
 you have learnt it by heart, will not yield you all 
 its riches : part is on the surface ; but the best 
 is hoarded till you earn it by real effort of memory 
 and will. 
 
 An old lady said to me the other day that she 
 had never been educated, but that there was 
 hardly a page of Shakespeare and Milton which 
 her father had not made her study and paraphrase, 
 till she realized every shade of meaning in it. I 
 envied her that "no education," and I fear we 
 are all too busy nowadays with the educational 
 
 1 Longfellow. ' " Under the Willows."
 
 POETRY. 83 
 
 advantages showered upon us, to go through such 
 teaching as that. But I would draw your attention 
 to smaller poets too, and more especially would 
 I break a lance for Mrs. Hemans. She has a 
 delicacy of feeling and expression and a wide range 
 of subjects which make the present neglect of her, 
 one of the uncultivating influences of the day. 
 Inez de Castro, Ivan the Terrible, Alaric, Bernardo 
 del Carpio, Tasso, Sebastian, Crescentius, Conradin, 
 were all personal friends to those who in old days 
 learnt Mrs. Hemans by heart ; but I fear that girls, 
 now, too often find their names non-conductors. 
 There is a stage in life when we are ashamed to 
 own allegiance to any poetry so simple as Mrs. 
 Hemans and Longfellow ; we are even half 
 inclined in those younger days to apologize for 
 Tennyson himself as being too intelligible. In later 
 life we gain the courage of our opinions, and hail 
 such streams as flowing from Parnassus, in spite of 
 their waters being so clear ! 
 
 There is a special pleasure in attacking such 
 poems as Browning's " Easter Eve," and " Para- 
 celsus," but it is the pleasure of hard thought, — a 
 charm shared with Butler's " Analogy" — and hardly 
 belonging to them as poetry, though they are 
 rich in poetical beauties. There is also special 
 charm about such poetry as George Herbert and 
 Vaughan, where the thought, though simple, is 
 so concisely put, that you need to leam much
 
 84 POETRY. 
 
 of it by heart before you realize the fulness of 
 each line. Isaac Williams, in " Thoughts for Past 
 Years," has learnt much of this weightiness, and 
 many of Archbishop Trench's poems also would 
 well repay learning by heart, and would prove a 
 store of strength for the dark hours which he so 
 well understood. 
 
 The mention of religious poetry leads us 
 necessarily to Keble, though it is to be feared 
 that the present generation of Church people have 
 transferred to less sober devotional works, the 
 study which, thirty years ago, was given to " The 
 Christian Year." Perhaps Keble's hope that he 
 might establish " a sober standard of feeling in 
 matters of practical religion," is still far from 
 fulfilment, but yet his words of truth and soberness 
 have gained a marvellous hold on English Church 
 people : as Sir John Coleridge points out in his 
 life of Keble, " a library book, or a book of the 
 house, is just what it is not ; it is rather a book of 
 each person, and of each room in the house." 
 While unlike Wesley's hymns in form, it yet 
 appeals, like them, with simplicity and directness 
 to personal religious sentiment, though the reserve, 
 which is one of its chief characteristics, may 
 prevent a careless reader from noticing the many 
 lines in each poem which speak to the inmost 
 heart. It may not be one of the least benefits 
 derived from its study if it teach us to appreciate
 
 POETRY. 85 
 
 the charm of such reserve, rare in this age of 
 autobiographies and Journals Intimes. 
 
 George MacDonald complains that the poetry of 
 *' The Christian Year " is like " Berlin work in iron 
 — hard and delicate," but what can be more touch- 
 ing in its sympathy than the poem on loneliness for 
 the Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity, or those 
 for the Monday and Wednesday before Easter ? 
 
 Wordsworthian love of Nature is another feature 
 of the book. Principal Shairp points out in his 
 delightful monograph on " Keble and the ' Christian 
 Year,' " that Keble is the only poet who has noticed 
 the singing of the solitary thrush in distant fields, 
 during the hush that preludes the thunderstorm. 
 But it is not only the Oxfordshire and Gloucester- 
 shire scenery so familiar to the poet, that he 
 faithfully describes. Dean Stanley, that most 
 graphic of travellers, has noticed the accuracy of 
 touch with which Keble pictures the Holy Land, 
 as in the poems for the Third Sundays in Advent 
 and Lent. As Keble never went to Palestine, this 
 shows not only his quick insight into nature, but 
 also his close study of the hints to be found in the 
 Bible and in modern travels. Minute knowledge 
 of the Bible is noticeable in every page of his 
 book ; it needs special observation on the reader's 
 part, to detect the extent to which the poems are 
 imbued with scriptural thoughts and expressions. 
 A clergyman in a rural part of Worcestershire was
 
 86 POETRY. 
 
 in the habit of reading the poem for the Sunday, 
 and explaining it from the pulpit, in lieu of an after- 
 noon sermon. Many may feel, though the poems 
 
 often contain an excellent skeleton of a sermon 
 
 i 
 
 yet that they would be only suitable to a bookish 
 congregation, and to one of a peculiar school of 
 thought ; but those to whom " The Christian 
 Year" is a household word, feel rather, "all the 
 lore its scholars need," is " pure eyes and Christian 
 hearts," and that, though it is a watchword of a 
 special school, yet its spirit is truly that of Christ's 
 Universal Church. 
 
 Perhaps the poem on S. Matthew's Day is Keble's 
 high-water mark of poetry. This and the sonnet 
 on Westminster Bridge are the two poems which 
 most perfectly express the poetry of the town — both 
 given us by men who keenly felt the inspiration of 
 the country. 1 
 
 " The Christian Year " is strongly marked by 
 scholarly and patristic learning; but we hardly 
 pause to consider such points in a book which so 
 belongs to our devotions, and so colours our Bible 
 reading. 
 
 Can we ever picture to ourselves, except in 
 Keble's setting, such scenes as Balaam on Peor, 
 Joshua's Conquest, the Feeding of the Five 
 Thousand, Elijah on Mount Horeb, Ezekiel's 
 Vision, the Three Holy Children ? 
 
 1 For this thought I am indebted to Miss Wordsworth.
 
 POETRY. S? 
 
 Are we ever in the mountains without learning 
 from Keble to hear — 
 
 "Such sounds as make deep silence in the heart 
 For Thought to do her part " ? 
 
 Can the year close without the thought of the 
 line (and all that follows it)— 
 
 " Will God indeed with fragments bear ? " 
 
 St. John, St. Philip, and St. James, St. Barnabas 
 and St. Matthew all speak to us in Keble's 
 words : — his lines on the Catechism and the Burial 
 of the Dead, and the morning and evening hymns 
 are in themselves enough to give him almost as 
 unquestioned a place in our religious life as the 
 Prayer Book itself. 
 
 Surely no other uninspired writer has so grown 
 into the very fibre of the religious life of a nation.
 
 3 ScfcHfcofo from tfje i^lercftatxt of Fernet. 
 
 ANTONIO is a spirit "finely touched!" so 
 finely that to say he was a gentleman is 
 too coarse a definition for so fine a nature — he 
 would shiver in hearing it said of him — as Bassanio 
 should have done, in saying it of himself. 
 
 But, roughly speaking, that is what Shakespeare 
 makes him in every touch, emphasizing it by 
 contrast with Bassanio. Bassanio is, at first sight, 
 such a fine young fellow — a frank-hearted soldier, 
 a free-handed young noble, whose qualities are 
 just such as to impress Nerissa, and, alas ! her 
 mistress also. What a pity Portia was not raised 
 to her best self by marrying Antonio, for Bassanio 
 would have been equally happy with Nerissa. 
 
 Surely Shakespeare must himself have been very 
 like Antonio, to be able to draw with such delicate 
 touches the commonness of Bassanio's real nature. 
 He makes us feel the charm of the young fellow ; 
 one hardly wonders that Antonio loves him — he 
 must, many a time, have brought sunshine to the 
 older man, and this, partly through his very in- 
 ability to understand the moods in which Antonio
 
 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 89 
 
 wearied of his own sadness. He had a childlike 
 trust in the sympathy of Antonio (from whose love 
 he " had a warranty to unburden all his plots and 
 purposes ") which must have endeared him to the 
 more reserved nature, to whom such trust in 
 another's sympathy would have meant far more 
 than Bassanio could have possibly understood. 
 
 If Antonio could ever have got near enough 
 to such a woman as * * * he too might have 
 " truly grown a talker " — unless she had understood 
 without words, as the little mermaid would have 
 done. But I greatly doubt if he could have 
 married ; he had an ideal woman in his mind, 
 something like his mother, of an older generation, 
 and whom he had never met in life ; and he 
 never found out that with an understanding wife 
 by his side he might have been twice the man he 
 was. 
 
 Who should that wife have been ? Mary Collet 
 and Romola would not have roused him enough 
 on his dark days. Realmah's Ainah would have 
 made him happy, but I am inclined to think that 
 Miss Edge worth's Lady Geraldine, in "Ennui," 
 would have been the best match for him, — she 
 would have made him not only happy, but 
 successful. 
 
 In his own circle I can find no wife for him : 
 Portia would never have had patience with a man 
 so apt, when anything jarred on him, to shrink
 
 90 A SHADOW FROM THE 
 
 silently back into himself, rather than follow it out 
 in words and questions. She would have exchanged 
 gossip with Solanio, while Antonio discussed 
 politics with Salarino. She has wit, but not 
 wisdom ; she is merely clever, her nature is not 
 deep enough to be wise. But she is worldly- 
 wise : she has watched the fate of trie wives of 
 " spunges," — she is business-like in the trial, — she 
 has the ready tact of a practised hostess when she 
 tells Morocco that he stands " as fair as any comer 
 she has looked on yet." Nothing escapes her, and 
 she probably could draw as good caricatures 
 with her pencil as with her tongue. But her want 
 of reserve jars on us ; not only does she chatter 
 more freely to Nerissa than Beatrice and Hero do 
 to their waiting women, but she even " chaffs " the 
 servant who bring news of Bassanio's courier. She 
 speaks of Bassanio before he comes, in a way 
 that quite harmonizes with her having conveyed to 
 him " fair speechless messages " on his earlier visit. 
 Notice by the way, that both mistress and maid 
 are wooed in much the same way, — by much the 
 same kind of man. Bassanio would have been 
 equally happy with Nerissa, while there is just so 
 much of finer touch in Portia, as forbids our mating 
 her with Gratiano, and sets us wondering whether 
 she might not have been raised by marriage with 
 Antonio. But doubtless, Fate, which was kind to 
 Bassanio in giving him his heart's desires, was ever
 
 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 91 
 
 kinder to Antonio, in saving him from a happiness 
 which would have made him a smaller man. He 
 was better left with the " shadow's bliss " of an 
 empty house. 
 
 Did he ever stay at Belmont ? I doubt it ! — at 
 least, not after the first few months. Portia, who 
 had so fallen in love with Bassanio's " presence," 
 that he was, for the time, her highest ideal (on 
 hearing of Antonio's perfections, she felt he " must 
 be like my lord ") — this same Portia will soon see 
 the flaws in the handsome "jolly" adventurer, 
 who, in honour of Antonio's first visit to the pair, 
 at Belmont, will take too much wine at dinner on 
 the night of his arrival. When they rejoin Portia, 
 she will see Bassanio in his stupid good-humoured 
 stage, — she will see him through the eyes of 
 Antonio, the grave, thoughtful, Venetian grand 
 vigneur. 
 
 Surely the woman, who could speak with such 
 heart and brain in the Doge's Palace, will feel, 
 after a few such evenings, that she is worthy of 
 something better than Fate has given her ; and she 
 will hate the man who unconsciously opened her 
 eyes, and who will be credited by her, with far 
 more criticism of her husband than he is really 
 guilty of. Besides, I am afraid Antonio ivill grow 
 critical ; his incipient resenting of Portia (shown in 
 his impatient remark about " thy wife's command- 
 ment ") will open his eyes to the real Bassanio
 
 92 A SHADOW FROM THE 
 
 more than any of the latter's early escapades has 
 done. He will probably grow to like Portia the 
 best of the two, unless, indeed, he comes to think 
 that the married Bassanio has developed feet of 
 clay through his wife's influence, instead of having 
 had them all along ! 
 
 But all this is a digression, for we were busily 
 discussing whether marriage would have made 
 Antonio " grow a talker." As it was, he truly 
 describes himself when he says, " I am dumb." 
 For he was dumb, both in fewness of words, and 
 still more so as regarded expression of the deeper 
 side of his nature. 
 
 He says most, in the opening scene, to Salarino, 
 who cares for him, as he cared for Bassanio. But 
 this is not altogether an instance in point, since it 
 is not entirely a momentary impulse of confidence 
 in Salarino, but is also a part of his one weakness 
 — the defatU of his qualite, — a weakness of melan- 
 choly which is, perhaps, a part of his finer nature. 
 Mr. Ruskin says that a sense of " O the pity of it," 
 is the constant underlying feeling of the true gentle- 
 man's outlook on the world ; but, in Antonio, this 
 is apt to degenerate into self-pity, he is too ready to 
 feel himself " the tainted wether of the flock ; " 
 a sojourn at " Abu Telfan," to teach him what 
 real sorrow meant, would have strengthened his 
 nature. 
 
 Abu Telfan may not be marked on the moral
 
 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 93 
 
 maps of my readers, so I had better explain that, 
 many years ago, a certain German, whose adven- 
 tures were written by Raabe, was taken prisoner 
 by an African tribe, and given as slave to an old 
 negress in the village of Abu Telfan. Here he 
 went through such deep waters of cruelty and 
 degradation that on his eventual rescue and return 
 to Berlin, all subsequent misfortunes seemed to 
 him as mere jesting on the part of fate. Abu 
 Telfan has suburbs in every country under the sun, 
 and the initiated who have sojourned there (and 
 yet kept a stout heart) may be known by a certain 
 serenity of temper which sometimes causes them to 
 be confounded (only by the uninitiated) with those 
 who are serene merely because life has not yet 
 crossed them. 
 
 In one place Antonio gives utterance to the 
 poetry that, at other times, he locks up in his 
 own heart. When confronted with death, he shows 
 a power of words which betray his underlying 
 nature doubly : — first, as proving him a poet (a 
 poet who may have written but would never have 
 published), and next, as showing what a shock, to 
 his sensitive nature, was the approach of death. 
 Only supreme excitement would have unloosed his 
 tongue, and a less imaginative, coarser nature 
 might have faced death with far less nervous 
 strain, and so perhaps have felt more heroic. 
 Antonio was probably physically a coward, because
 
 94 A SHADOW FROM THE 
 
 he realized things. In a minor degree this power 
 of realization comes out in his sensitive perception 
 of the picture which he himself will make — " Say 
 how I loved you, speak me fair in death." Here 
 is the cultivated and complex Venetian tempera- 
 ment, unlike the simple heroism of an English — of 
 a northern — nature. The most simple and direct 
 of all his feelings is his love for Bassanio, the 
 sweet-natured harum-scarum boy, whom he had 
 doubtless helped out of a hundred scrapes — helped 
 so often that he had weakened the boy's proper 
 pride ; it is hardly Bassanio's fault that he is so 
 ready to ask Antonio for more money. How 
 ready he is to listen to the boy's story ! " Tell me 
 now of the lady" — (was it perhaps a shock to 
 Antonio, unexpressed even to himself, that money 
 difficulties came first to the young fellow's tongue, 
 instead of the love story which Antonio expected ?) 
 — " he only loved the world for him." How ready, 
 in Bassanio's trouble, is the offer of Antonio's purse 
 and person ! When trouble came to himself, 
 Antonio cared not, "if only Bassanio came" to 
 show the answering love, which he probably very 
 often forgot to give. Bassanio must unconsciously 
 have wounded his friend a dozen times a day. How 
 much, do you suppose, was conveyed to him by 
 Antonio's reproach : " You wrong my love by 
 questioning it ! " ? 
 
 The more I watch those two together, the more
 
 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 95 
 
 I wonder at Antonio's infatuation, unless indeed, 
 as some one suggested to me, Antonio had been 
 in love with Bassanio's mother. Bassanio is " the 
 average Englishman who remains, if not a school- 
 boy, an undergraduate." Antonio was, what is 
 rare in every nation, a full-grown and thoughtful 
 man. But, after all, why should their unlikeness 
 be a difficulty? Are friends alike, as Portia 
 thought? Antonio, "being the bosom lover of 
 her lord," must he needs be like him ? 
 
 Who are Antonio's brothers-in-arms in the better 
 world where, as Swedenborg held, likeness of soul 
 is the only means of meeting ? Surely Charles I., 
 Don Quixote, Dante, Sir Philip Sidney, Lord 
 Falkland, George Herbert, John Inglesant, Sir 
 Richard Grenville, Sir Ralph Verney, are now his 
 friends. 
 
 "There do the band, that now in triumph shines 
 And that (before they were invested thus) 
 In earthly bodies carried heavenly minds, 
 Pitch round about, in order glorious, 
 Their sunny tents and houses luminous, 
 And from their eyes joy looks, and laughs at pain." ' 
 
 The only sister souls I can think of, to join this 
 band, are Antigone and Lucy Hutchinson, though, 
 having great faith in education, I am inclined 
 to think that if Lady Macbeth had had better 
 influences around her in early life, and had 
 married differently, she might have been fit for this 
 1 Giles Fletcher.
 
 96 A SHADOW FROM THE 
 
 constellation of " fair women ; " but then, it is only 
 the over-education of Hypatia which renders her 
 unworthy of a place, so the education must be 
 carefully administered. 
 
 Perhaps the difficulty lies in the fact that the 
 highest kind of woman, as well as the happiest, is 
 she "who has no history," and so perhaps some, 
 of whom least is said, are most closely related 
 to these "solitary hearted" ones. Such are, 
 Jephthah's daughter, Ruth, Judith, and Esther ; it 
 is only for a moment that we see them, but, if we 
 may judge them by that moment, they are 
 " Queens of noble Nature's crowning." 1 
 
 Whether fit or not for Antonio and his noble 
 company, they are far above Bassanio, with his 
 reliance on Portia's appreciation of himself; the 
 chivalry of " I that loved and you that liked " 
 would never have dawned upon him, though I feel 
 sure it was a favourite song of Antonio's. When 
 he describes Portia, he only dwells on her locks, 
 her eyes say nothing to him except when " therein 
 he sees himself." His description of her portrait 
 in the casket scene, is the studio jargon of the 
 young Venetian, accustomed to haunt his friends' 
 studios, and criticize their models. It is the 
 surface admiration to be expected of the man who 
 is hail-fellow-well-met with every one, and enjoys 
 the horse-play of Gratiano. " II y a quelque chose 
 1 Hartley Coleridge.
 
 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 97 
 
 ie pire que le manque de gout" said Victor Hugo, 
 " c'est le manque de dego&t ; " any sort of company 
 pleases Bassanio, even Shylock is asked to dinner 
 (though he has the good taste to refuse — the manque 
 de degoiit is the last fault with which one can charge 
 Shylock !). 
 
 This same want of true pride comes out in his 
 spending more than he has, and in his readiness to 
 ask Antonio for more money. His false pride 
 comes out in his " rich liveries" — his " gifts of rich 
 value " (all paid for by Antonio) ; in his thinking 
 money can settle all debts, the " courteous pains " 
 of the young advocate included. (Antonio feels 
 that they are " indebted to him in love and service 
 evermore," over and above the 3,000 ducats.) This 
 same Bassanio is quick in assuming his ownership 
 at Belmont, the " youth of his new interest " is a 
 second thought when he welcomes Lorenzo and 
 Salarino. 
 
 Nerissa calls him a scholar, and he has school- 
 boy tags of quotation, which he uses to Antonio in 
 Act I., but they come out again in the casket 
 scene, so we may conclude they had done duty 
 already on his first visit, and impressed Portia and 
 Nerissa. In the casket scene we find Portia talk- 
 ing up to the classical level of " her lord " — she 
 will know better by-and-by ! 
 
 Learning was fashionable among the young 
 Venetians — Jacopo Foscari was probably not 
 
 H
 
 98 A SHADOW FROM THE 
 
 alone in his fondness for Greek books ; and there 
 were plenty of young nobles who enjoyed literary 
 talk with Petrarch when he was at Venice, more 
 than a hundred years before. Bassanio was quick 
 enough to catch the colouring of his day, and he 
 was helped by a gift of words. His ready give 
 and take with Portia, at a supreme moment of his 
 life, suggest a good diner-out in calmer circum- 
 stances. 
 
 When he was " giddy in spirit, gazing in a doubt," 
 have we a touch of the self-questioning, self-disgust, 
 which probably came to Antonio in most moments 
 of success ? — Or was it merely astonishment at his 
 luck ? Perhaps Portia read it in a way that 
 quickened her own humility seen in the answering 
 speech — and there only ! 
 
 But, after all, these various instances of manque de 
 gout, and manque de degout, are but minor matters 
 compared to the want of principle in this adven- 
 turer; for, though a noble by accident, Bassanio 
 was a mere adventurer by nature. 
 
 Not to serve Bassanio himself, would Antonio 
 have pleaded with any Judge, " to do a little 
 wrong ; " — and Portia spoke a truer word in jest 
 than would have pleased her had she understood 
 it, when she said he " knew not his own honour " 
 in keeping the ring. Bassanio said "his honour 
 would not let ingratitude so much besmear it," as 
 to refuse the ring; but had Antonio " riveted a ring
 
 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 99 
 
 with faith unto his flesh," he would not have 
 " plucked it from his finger," for any argument of 
 false generosity, — had even Portia in her own 
 person prayed for it, he would have taught her that 
 he " loved honour more."
 
 Mor&sfoortl). 
 
 DOUBTLESS many have tried to read Words- 
 worth and given up in despair, feeling quite 
 unable to care for him; but, as we know that 
 those whose judgment is far better than our own, 
 love and value him, let us determine to learn his 
 secret and to go on reading and learning till our 
 eyes are opened. Many can tell us from 
 experience how far more than repaid we shall be, 
 if we persevere. There is not much incident in 
 his life, only the development of the soul ; but, as 
 Browning says, little else is worth study. 
 
 Three things must be remembered, if we are to 
 understand him — the country he lived in, the 
 times he lived in, and the friends he lived with. 
 
 He was born in Cumberland and passed his 
 boyhood there, returning to the north when he 
 was twenty-nine, to spend his manhood at Gras- 
 mere, in Westmoreland. Surely no country has 
 ever found expression so perfectly as the Lake 
 Country did in Wordsworth's poetry. He under- 
 stood and gave voice to " the souls of lonely 
 places," while, in return, no other poet has owed
 
 WORDSWORTH. 101 
 
 so much to the country round him. Mr. Pater 
 says, that to read one of his long pastoral poems 
 for the first time, is like taking a walk in a new 
 country. No other poet gives such wonderfully 
 precise and vivid pictures in a single line. 
 
 " The pliant hare-bell swinging in the breeze 
 
 On some grey rock." 
 " The single sheep and the one blasted tree 
 
 And the bleak music from that old stone wall." 
 " And that green corn all day is rustling in thine ears." 
 
 The first fact to note in Wordsworth's life is, 
 that he was, heart and soul, and eyes and ears, a 
 Northcountryman. The second is, that he lived in 
 the days of the French Revolution. Liherty, and 
 the Brotherhood of Man, formed the great Gospel 
 of that day ; — the new wine which got put into the 
 wrong bottles, but which was heavenly wine all the 
 same. We shall see traces of this in some of 
 the best poetry of Wordsworth, who travelled in 
 France during the hopeful days of the Revolution, 
 landing at Calais in 1789, on the day when trees of 
 Liberty were planted all over France. He was 
 nineteen, and — 
 
 •' To be young was very Heaven. 
 A glorious time 
 
 A happy time that was : triumphant looks 
 Were then the common language of all eyes." 
 
 He was an ardent Radical in those days — a
 
 102 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 believer in progress — but the course of the 
 Revolution destroyed his hope and faith in 
 human nature, till life among stalwart Cumbrian 
 statesmen and shepherds restored it. The per- 
 sistent believers in revolution looked on him as a 
 backslider when he joined the party of Law and 
 Order and Conservatism ; — Browning's " Lost 
 Leader" is supposed to refer to Wordsworth's 
 accepting the office of Poet Laureate, since the 
 latter's earlier Republican views would have made 
 him scorn to receive any gift from a king. 
 
 Thus, between twenty and thirty (generally the 
 " Sturm und Drang" period of a man's life — the 
 unsettled, rebellious stage), the world was out of 
 joint for him. But he learnt to " see into the life 
 of things," and to find an Eternal Law in Nature, 
 the thought of which was a sheet anchor to him, 
 when human goodness and beauty seemed to 
 crumble away. 
 
 He was also helped by the third great factor of 
 his life — his friends. Chief of them was Dorothy 
 Wordsworth, his sister, who came to live with him 
 when he was twenty-five. — (" She gave me eyes, she 
 gave me ears.") — He read much of his poetry in 
 " the shooting lights of her wild eyes," and her 
 diary has the first hint of many a poem of his — 
 e.g. " Calais Sands," " Westminster Bridge," 
 " Daffodils." 
 
 His other friend was Coleridge, whom he always
 
 WORDS IVOR TH. 103 
 
 thought the most wonderful man he ever knew. 
 In 1797, Coleridge visited the brother and sister 
 at Alfoxden in Somerset, and here they planned 
 " Lyrical Ballads," an epoch-making book, which 
 contained " The Ancient Mariner," " The Tables 
 Turned," " Expostulation and Reply," and " Tintern 
 Abbey." 
 
 These poems struck an entirely new note in 
 poetry : — if Wordsworth had died then, he would 
 have been one of the few voices in this world of 
 echoes. Not only was the insight into nature new, 
 but the very language was new. To us it seems 
 natural that a poet should express himself clearly 
 and simply, but this is a new order of things, which 
 we owe to Wordsworth. When you rebel against 
 the over-plainness, the doggrel, of some of his 
 poems, you must remember that he was a crusader 
 in behalf of the truth to nature which could touch 
 men's hearts; and that he was fighting against 
 shams and unreality, which were eating the life out 
 of poetry. 
 
 We may say that Wordsworth's education lasted 
 till the age of thirty, when he settled finally into 
 his northcountry life at Grasmere. The first 
 period includes his early Cumbrian school, King's 
 College, Cambridge, his travels in France, his life 
 in Somerset, and a final year at Goslar near Ham- 
 burg, where some of his finest, most delicate work 
 was done, e.g. " Lucy Gray," " Ruth," " Nutting,"
 
 104 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 "The Poet's Epitaph," " Lucy." (With the restrained, 
 silent passion of this last, compare those lines in 
 which Browning touches almost his high-water 
 mark of feeling : " But cannot praise, I love so 
 much.") 
 
 At Goslar he also planned the " Prelude," which 
 was not finished for six years, and only published 
 after his death. It is an epic poem on his own 
 education, a history of his own mind. Read it 
 carelessly, and you will find it intolerably dull : — 
 read it to mark any beautiful line you can discover, 
 and you will be surprised to find how much you 
 will mark, and you will love the bits all the more 
 for having discovered them : — notice, too, how 
 few men could remain so great while chronicling 
 such small things. 
 
 We now come to the inspired decade of Words- 
 worth's life, 1 798-1808. The outward incidents 
 were: 1799, life at Grasmere; 1800, friendship 
 with Lamb ; 1802, marriage with Mary Hutchinson ; 
 1803, his tour in Scotland and the Napoleonic 
 War, with Nelson as its hero. Wordsworth's inner 
 life showed itself in the " Four Sonnets on Personal 
 Talk," "There is an Eminence," "Daffodils;" 
 1803, "Highland Girl," "Stepping Westward," 
 " The Solitary Reaper," " Yarrow Unvisited ; " 
 1805, Sonnets (on "Venice," "Toussaint," "Two 
 Voices," "O Friend," "Milton," "A Roman 
 Master ") and the " Happy Warrior," our most
 
 WORDSWORTH. 105 
 
 permanent literary record of the Napoleonic War ; 
 1806, "Odes to Duty and Immortality." 
 
 For another ten years he was still a poet, though 
 a lesser one. We get, in 181 5, " The White Doe," 
 setting forth " purification as the joy of pain ; " and 
 after this he writes only verse, not poetry, with 
 such occasional flashes as we find in " Ecclesiastical 
 Sonnets," 1822. He lives on for thirty years 
 longer, and in 1843 succeeds Southey as Poet 
 Laureate : — to be succeeded in his turn by Tenny- 
 son, who received in 1850 — 
 
 *' This laurel greener from the brows 
 Of him that uttered nothing base." 
 
 What is Wordsworth's position in English 
 poetry? Matthew Arnold ranks him next to the 
 four great modern poets, Shakespeare, Milton, 
 Goethe, and Moliere. He was " a morning star of 
 song," * one of a group of six, who gave us our 
 present poetry, the others being Coleridge, Scott, 
 Byron, Keats, Shelley, who were all helpers in the 
 cause Wordsworth had so much at heart — the super- 
 seding Pope's artificiality by the language of Nature. 
 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge were critics as well 
 as poets, and have left their reasons for thus 
 writing. Wordsworth, in his preface to " Lyrical 
 Ballads," contends that the peasantry alone speak 
 straight to the heart, and that poetry and prose 
 1 "Vision of Poets," by E. B. B.
 
 106 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 should use the same diction, i.e. he was so provoked 
 with the misuse of poetical diction that he wanted 
 to discard it altogether. 
 
 Coleridge was wiser; he agreed with Words- 
 worth in trying to bring in a language of natural 
 sense and feeling, but he held that educated men, 
 like Hooker and Spenser, could speak as straight 
 to the heart as the peasantry, and play upon more 
 strings in it. Also he held that poetry represents 
 warmer emotions than prose, and therefore should 
 have its own appropriate diction. 
 
 Wordsworth was so true a poet, that he could 
 not help (in spite of his theories) writing in this 
 finer, truer language. His strongest work is in his 
 lyrics, such as " The Cuckoo," " The Reaper," 
 " The Fountain ; " and in such sonnets as " West- 
 minster Bridge." The style and expression in 
 these is admitted by all judges to be unique in its 
 perfection : " They have set a standard of pure and 
 sincere diction in poetry, as Cardinal Newman has 
 done in prose — both these men have shown us 
 unsuspected powers in the English language." 1 
 
 Wordsworth has his own style, (as parodies 
 can testify). There is a famous piece about 
 " The Boy on Winander," of which Lamb said, 
 " Had I had met those lines running wild in the 
 deserts of Arabia, I should have shrieked out 
 ' Wordsworth ! ' " 
 
 1 Matthew Arnold.
 
 WORDSWORTH. 107 
 
 There are minor points we should notice in read- 
 ing Wordsworth, before we go on to the real reasons 
 for the reverence which is now shown him by the 
 finest judges. One is his wonderful perception of 
 sound. Only Wordsworth would have felt " that 
 beauty born of murmuring sound would pass into 
 a face." The next is, that he prefers " the short 
 and simple annals of the poor " l to Scott's feudal 
 lords : many have since taught us to see that the 
 House Beautiful stands by the wayside, that Love 
 and Sorrow and Self-sacrifice are no respecters of 
 persons ; but it was a new idea in Wordsworth's 
 day, and was partly the cause of Jeffery's famous 
 criticism in the Edinburgh Review on " The Excur- 
 sion," — "This will never do!" Certainly "The 
 Excursion " is dull. Mr. Lowell says every long 
 poem, except the " Odyssey," is dull ; but it is a 
 poor thing to pick out the flaws in the work of a 
 man who could truly give the following as the aim 
 of his long life of poetic work : " To console the 
 afflicted ; to add sunshine to daylight, by making 
 the happy happier ; to teach the young and gracious 
 of every age, to see, to think, and feel." 
 
 This brings us to Matthew Arnold's reasons for 
 his high estimate of Wordsworth. First, the 
 unique quantity of first-class work. Take only two 
 or three bits, and Coleridge, Shelley, and others 
 will be close rivals to him ; but what other poet, 
 1 Gray's " Elegy. "
 
 io8 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 when his feebler work has been cleared away, is 
 left with such a mass of genuine poetry. And 
 what is the strength of this first-rate work ? It is 
 that Wordsworth has more to say than any other 
 poet on that which most concerns us — how to live. 
 Epictetus compares the pleasant accessories of life 
 and art — form, finish, etc. — to an inn ; while " the 
 best and master thing " is hoiu to live. 
 
 " ' This inn is pleasant.' Yes ! But we are to pass 
 through it, and not to live there. Some poets stay 
 at a pleasant and lovely inn : Wordsworth never 
 does. He helps us to live our best and highest 
 life ] he is a strengthening and purifying influence 
 like his own mountains. Groping in the dark 
 passages of life, we come on some axiom of 
 his, that like a wall, gives us our bearing 
 and enables us to find an outlet." l He has the 
 true Teutonic nature which never rests in beauty 
 only, which always turns to the ethical side of 
 things. His is never merely poetry — he always 
 turns our mind to some question of right living. 
 He aimed at being a teacher before all things. 
 Let us make him part of our Sunday reading, — let 
 us mark all the bits which help us to feel as we 
 should aspire to feel — the bits which express 
 what we do feel in our best moments : let us go to 
 him as a teacher, and we shall learn to love him as 
 a poet. 
 
 1 Matthew Arnold.
 
 WORDS IVOR TH. 109 
 
 Some poets remind us of the lines — 
 
 *' She's like the keystone of anarch 
 That consummates all beauty : 
 She's like the music of a march 
 That sheds a joy on Duty." 
 
 Wordsworth is like this, in that he does not 
 merely set our lives to music, which is the Poet's 
 mission; — he is not only the music to a march, 
 but he makes us march, — which is the Teacher's 
 mission. 
 
 In the hurry and bustle of this life, he makes us 
 hear the sound of many voices underlying it, and 
 reminds us that there is something nobler and 
 more permanent in life, than the petty selfish 
 interests and pleasures, which tend to absorb us ; 
 he reminds us of the Eternal Laws which underlie 
 life, and are the only reality. 
 
 He is pre-eminently a poet who helps to make 
 us dutiful : let us constrain ourselves to read him, 
 and we shall — 
 
 " When we have parted up the hill 
 Of Duty with reluctant will, 
 Be thankful, even though tired and faint, 
 For the rich bounties of constraint."
 
 " &J)e l^appB ^Harriot." 
 
 "There is no portrait fitter than that of the Happy Warrior to go 
 forth to all lands as representing the English character at its height— a 
 figure not ill-matching with ' Plutarch's men.' " — F. W. Myers. 
 
 "W 
 
 HO is the happy Warrior ? Who is he 
 
 That every man in arms should wish to be?" 
 
 Wordsworth answers his own question by drawing 
 a picture which has been called " a summary of 
 patriotism, a manual of national honour." Read 
 — or, better still, learn by heart — this poem inspired 
 by Nelson, our great sailor, and Tennyson's ode on 
 our great soldier, the Duke of Wellington, and you 
 will know what " England expects " of her sons. 
 
 " Who is the happy Warrior ? . . . 
 It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought 
 Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought 
 Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought." 
 
 Generous, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, 
 is hardly the term we should apply to the prudent 
 deliberate nature described in the poem, but in the 
 original sense of " well born " it suggests to us one
 
 "THE HAPPY WARRIOR. n hi 
 
 who has been surrounded by ennobling influences 
 from the very first. 
 
 " Whose high endeavours are an inward light 
 That makes the path before him always bright." 
 
 As a boy he appreciates the true aim and 
 methods of education. 
 
 " Who, with natural instinct to discern 
 What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn, 
 Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, 
 But makes his moral being his prime care." 
 
 He sees that the soul must come first and the mind 
 second, if the mind itself is to be fully developed. 
 A great educationalist once said, " Teach a boy 
 arithmetic only and let me teach another boy both 
 arithmetic and religion : other things being equal, 
 the second boy will beat the first in arithmetic." 
 Develop the whole nature, and each separate 
 faculty will stand a better chance. 
 
 So far we have had the Happy Warrior's educa- 
 tion, now we see its result when he goes into the 
 world. 
 
 " Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, 
 And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train ! 
 Turns his necessity to glorious gain ; 
 In face of these doth exercise a power 
 Which is our human nature's highest dower ; 
 Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves 
 Of their bad influence, and their good receives."
 
 ii2 'THE HAPPY WARRIORS 
 
 The well trained, well disciplined nature is King 
 over Circumstances, and experiences, as every 
 growing nature does, the advantage of dis- 
 advantages. 
 
 Wordsworth goes on to give instances of this 
 power of transmuting base metal into gold — 
 
 "By objects, which might force the soul to abate 
 Her feeling, rendered more compassionate ; 
 Is placable — because occasions rise 
 So often that demand such sacrifice ; 
 More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure 
 As tempted more ; more able to endure 
 As more exposed to suffering and distress ; 
 Thence also, more alive to tenderness." 
 
 He does well to put " tenderness " as the culmin- 
 ating point. Many natures learn from suffering, 
 endurance, and purity of self-control, but they are 
 apt to demand of others the strength they have 
 themselves shown. It means a rare and beautiful 
 nature when "out of the strong comes forth 
 sweetness." 
 
 We now find the keynote of the Happy Warrior's 
 character — 
 
 " 'Tis he whose law is reason ; who depends 
 Upon that law as on the best of friends." 
 
 He and Cordelia are brother and sister, — (I will 
 not say husband and wife, for two such eminently
 
 " THE HAPPY WARRIORS 113 
 
 reasonable people would hardly have attracted 
 each other !) 
 
 There was no statecraft about the Happy Warrior, 
 no expediency, no opportunism, no compromise, 
 no putting up with a low standard, because he was 
 obliged to work with imperfect instruments. 
 
 " Whence, in a state where men are tempted still 
 To evil for a guard against worse ill, 
 And what in quality or act is best 
 Doth seldom on a right foundation rest, 
 He labours good on good to fix, and owes 
 To virtue every triumph that he knows." 
 
 Whether as a chairman of a committee or as a 
 prime minister, he would have said, like the great 
 duke, " I haven't time not to do right." 
 
 In public life the question sometimes comes, Is a 
 man to throw up office and, presumably, harm his 
 party because of personal scruples ? Is he to bring 
 a private standard of honour into public life? 
 Wordsworth says " Yes," and suggests that the 
 politician helps the nation more by keeping up its 
 standard, than by keeping a clever head in office, — 
 his brains are not necessary to God's cause, but 
 his principle is. 
 
 "Who, if he rise to station of command, 
 Rises by open means ; and there will stand 
 On honourable terms, or else retire, 
 And in himself possess his own desire." 
 
 I
 
 IH "THE HAPPY WARRIOR." 
 
 The Warrior's whole character is then summed 
 up in two lines — 
 
 " Who comprehends his trust, and to the same 
 Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim:" 
 
 What is this trust — what special gift has been 
 confided to him ? Is it not the moral insight, the 
 realization of the true proportion and value of 
 earthly things, which was his instinct in boyhood? 
 He sees earth in the light of eternity, as Lazarus 
 did in " The Epistle of Karshish," hence — 
 
 "He does not stoop nor lie in wait 
 For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state ; 
 Whom they must follow ; on whose head must fall 
 Like showers of manna, if they come at all." 
 
 He is one of the poor in spirit, who sit loose to 
 the good things of this world. He knows how 
 to abound, but he has the grace of poverty, of 
 detachment, and can suffer need without any 
 change in his inner self. 
 
 " Whose powers shed round him in the common strife, 
 Or mild concerns of ordinary life, 
 A constant influence, a peculiar grace." 
 
 He lives ordinary life on the highest level, and 
 is rewarded by almost unknown powers being 
 developed at a crisis, the exercising of which brings 
 the keen joy of action, which is the spiritualiza- 
 tion of the Berserker love of battle.
 
 "THE HAPPY WARRIORS 115 
 
 '* But who, if he be called upon to face 
 Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined 
 Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 
 Is happy as a Lover ; and attired 
 With sudden brightness, like a man inspired." 
 
 In that " awful moment " he has the exhilaration 
 of at last finding full scope for the faculties which 
 he had contentedly devoted to the day of small 
 things : at last the world is big enough for him, 
 and he can stretch his wings. As the powers 
 which culminate in this inspiration were nursed by 
 the discipline of obedience, he is rewarded by being 
 enabled to preserve what seems incompatible with 
 such rapture, perfect self-control ; he preserves 
 undimmed the insight of his calmer hours, — 
 
 "And through the heat of conflict, keeps the law 
 In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw." 
 
 Here, in the few moments which completely 
 express his real self, is his one point of contact 
 with emotion — the strength and insight of reason 
 are joined with the warmth and force of impulse : 
 perhaps there is here a glimpse, a suggestion, of 
 what he will be in a higher life. Till that higher 
 life comes, he mainly walks on one leg — i.e. Reason. 
 Perhaps it is the best foot to put foremost ; but a 
 complete man has two ! The description of his 
 bearing when the crisis comes, enforces the idea
 
 u6 "THE HAPPY WARRIOR:' 
 
 that the " reward of performing one duty is the 
 power to fulfil another." x 
 
 " Who, if an unexpected call succeed, 
 Come when it will, is equal to the need." 
 
 Then comes a race-touch : a Frenchman would 
 love to " ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm ; " 2 
 a German would prefer to remain undisturbed at 
 the domestic hearth; the Englishman is equally 
 at home in either life — being the inheritor of the 
 Roman type — the hero that could save the State 
 and then retire again to his cabbages. 
 
 " He who, though thus endued as with a sense 
 And faculty for storm and turbulence, 
 Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans 
 To home-felt pleasures and to gentle scenes ; 
 Sweet images 1 which, wheresoe'er he be, 
 Are at his heart ; and such fidelity 
 It is his darling passion to approve ; 
 More brave for this, that he hath much to love." 
 
 He commands better in the field — speaks better 
 in the House — because he, all the time, feels as if 
 he were winning his spurs under his wife's eyes; 
 he is " approving " himself to her, and is therefore 
 more brave ; the sense of the one public opinion 
 which he does care for, is always at his heart. 
 
 The close of this poem reminds us of the 
 picture of his boyhood, and shows us a consistent, 
 a continuous life. 
 
 1 George Eliot. ' Addison's "Campaign."
 
 "THE HAFPY WARRIOR" 117 
 
 "Tis, finally, the Man, who, lifted high, 
 Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye, 
 Or left unthought of in obscurity — 
 Who, with a toward or untoward lot, 
 Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not, 
 Plays, in the many games of life, that one 
 Where what he most doth value must be won." 
 
 He is Cromwell's ideal Ironside — "what he 
 most doth value " is the acting on principle which 
 we saw in his political career. " Give me a 
 man that hath principle," said Cromwell ; " I know 
 where to have him," — i.e. you always know which 
 game of life he will be playing at. He has — what 
 is daily growing a rarer possession — a standard 1 
 M Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, 
 Nor thought of tender happiness betray'." 
 
 To say he does not flinch for either fear or favour 
 seems almost too obvious a trait of strength to 
 be worthy of the more suggestive features which 
 precede it — and yet it is the one intimation that 
 he had the fighting courage of a soldier. The pre- 
 ceding parts show us more the moral courage of 
 the director and statesman. 
 
 We saw the power of growth, which makes the 
 difference between man and man, in his boyhood's 
 high endeavours and diligence to learn. 
 
 " Who not content that former worth stand fast 
 Looks forward persevering to the last, 
 From well to better, daily self-surpassed." 
 
 Next to reasonableness (we may almost sav " sweet
 
 nS "THE HAPPY WARRIOR: 
 
 reasonableness "), this power of growth is perhaps 
 the strongest feature in his character. In later life 
 we see that it needs no competition with others, no 
 rivalry to inspire it with energy, — the seed of 
 worldliness is always lurking in competition, and 
 the Happy Warrior is pre-eminently an unworldly 
 man. 
 
 " Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth 
 For ever, and to noble deeds give birth, 
 Or he must go to dust without his fame, 
 And leave a dead unprofitable name — 
 Finds comfort in himself and in his cause." 
 
 What has been "his cause" all through his life? 
 Is it not " what he most doth value," — " his trust " 
 — i.e. the triumph of principle ? His life and 
 aims are based on Reality — he has touched the 
 Rock — and can never suddenly awake to feel his 
 life a failure and his aim misplaced. Whether he 
 die early or late he "can never mourn a head 
 grown grey, a heart grown cold in vain." He 
 finds comfort "in himself" — i.e. in his sense of 
 progress — he feels he is not standing still : the fact 
 of his being daily self-surpassed makes life worth 
 living. 
 
 We must own that, from first to last, in the 
 
 Happy Warrior, there is no touch of the sense of 
 
 sin, there is a Pagan serenity and completeness in 
 
 his life. He is of the family of John the Baptist, 
 
 1 Shelley's " Adonais."
 
 " THE HAPPY WARRIOR?' 119 
 
 and the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater 
 than he. The imperfection of the saints, compared 
 to the Happy Warrior, " is precisely because of 
 their wider nature." 
 
 " He, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws 
 His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause." 
 
 Even while allowing for the limitation which 
 runs through the whole character, this word 
 " applause " grates on our ears ; we feel that the 
 Happy Warrior's ideal must have been small indeed 
 if applause, in the ordinary sense of the word, 
 could have been grateful to his ears. We must 
 keep to the stricter sense of " approval," such as 
 that which Hildebrand would have looked for 
 when he said he had loved righteousness and 
 hated iniquity. The Happy Warrior had a right 
 to feel that he had been on God's side all through 
 the battle of life \ he may well feel that, much as he 
 may have failed in execution, only in Heaven will 
 his aims be sympathized with and approved. His 
 deep nature, marked by inward gravity of soul (by 
 the " moral thoughtfulness " which Arnold desired 
 to see in his Sixth), must always have felt more or 
 less of a stranger and pilgrim among the shallower 
 natures around him, — it can hardly have been 
 earthly joy which made him the Happy Warrior 
 " that every man in arms should wish to be,"
 
 ^Parncelsus. 
 
 IT is related of a Chinese ambassador to this 
 country that he desired to see some poets : 
 accordingly, he and his interpreter were sent to 
 call on Mr. Browning. The latter, knowing that 
 his guest was himself a poet, inquired whether his 
 writings were lyrical, dramatic, or pastoral, to 
 which the interpreter replied that His Excellency's 
 poetry was chiefly enigmatical. That two of a 
 trade met on this occasion, must be allowed by the 
 warmest of Mr. Browning's admirers; but where 
 they join issue with the world at large, is in saying 
 that that labour is well bestowed in searching for 
 le mot de I'enigme. The denouncers of Mr. Brown- 
 ing's obscurity are mostly those who have never 
 given him more than a cursory reading, and from 
 that they cannot expect much result, seeing that 
 Coleridge used to say of the plainest book ever 
 written, "The Pilgrim's Progress," that he read it 
 three times : first, as a theologian ; second, with 
 devotional feelings; third, as a poet. Surely, we 
 should bestow at least as much study on a
 
 PARACELSUS. 121 
 
 confessedly 1 obscure style, before dismissing it as 
 unfathomable. In saying this, it is, of course, taken 
 for granted that the subject-matter is worthy of 
 being studied, and few thoughtful persons who have 
 fairly considered the question will refuse to grant 
 so much to Browning. In this very poem of 
 " Paracelsus," though there are many beauties that 
 he who runs may read, yet a large number of people 
 shrink from the mental labour involved in grappling 
 with it as a whole, and say of the prophet of our 
 day, as those of old did of Ezekiel — " Doth he not 
 speak parables?" The following sketch of the 
 poem is intended, in a very slight degree, to aid 
 such as are unaccustomed to Browning's style, to 
 read it for themselves. 
 
 Like almost all his works, it deals with ' the in- 
 cidents in the development of a soul ; " he says 
 himself that he considers " little else worth study," 
 and, by looking at all incidents in this light of 
 soul-growth, he reads lofty spiritual life into the 
 minutest trait of character ; in Browning's eyes man 
 can " nothing common do or mean," 2 because there 
 is a deep significance in all his words and deeds, 
 since " in the mental, as in the bodily organism, 
 the present is the resultant of the past, so that what- 
 ever we learn, think, or do, will come again in later 
 
 * "To bring the invisible full into play, 
 
 Let the visible go to the dogs — what matter?" 
 
 * Andrew Man-ell.
 
 122 PARACELSUS. 
 
 life as a Nemesis, or as an angel's visit." J He inter- 
 weaves time and eternity ; teaching us that, it may 
 be, our life will be continuous, "forever old, yet 
 new ; changed not in kind, but in degree," and that 
 " Eternity is not to be railed off from time, as xithat 
 were the High Altar, and this the profane street." 1 
 The poem opens a.d. 15 12, in a garden near 
 Wurzburg, where Paracelsus, an ambitious lad 
 of nineteen, is bidding farewell to his friend Festus, 
 and to Michal, the latter's bride, telling them that 
 their memories shall make his heart " quiet and 
 fragrant as befits their home." He speaks with 
 such yearning love of their common home — " This 
 kingdom limited alone by one old populous green 
 wall" — that his friends half believe he will not 
 be able to tear himself away from it ; but he goes 
 on to speak of the success that shall be his, with a 
 look that breaks their dream. " That look," says 
 Festus, "as if where'er you gazed there stood a 
 star ! " but yet " a solitary briar the bank puts forth 
 to save our swan's nest floating out to sea," and he 
 seeks to dissuade the boy from his scheme. Para- 
 celsus protests that it was Festus himself who had 
 first awakened his mind, and guided him through 
 doubt and fear, though now trying to make him 
 reject God's great commission, his acceptance of 
 which is due to Festus's own teaching : " We agreed 
 as to what was man's end and God's will, and yet 
 1 Martineau.
 
 PARACELSUS. 123 
 
 now that I am about to put it all; into practice, you 
 seem to hold that the sovereign proof that we 
 devote ourselves to God, is seen in living just as 
 though no God there were." 
 
 Festus, like many an elder since, accustomed 
 to combine intellectual perception of truths with 
 " respectable " inaction, is startled when enthusiastic 
 youth thinks that acting upon a truth is the 
 necessary consequence of perceiving it ! But he 
 goes on to recall Paracelsus's early life, and how 
 he had come to stand apart from his compeers 
 with a brooding purpose to gain— 
 
 "The secret of the world, 
 Of man, and man's true purpose, path, and fate, 
 
 You, if a man may, dare aspire to know." 
 
 Paracelsus protests against his aim being stated 
 thus, and declares that he aspires to nothing but 
 to give a ready answer to the will of God, "who 
 summons me to be His organ." Festus bids him 
 search well into his heart, to see whether his ruling 
 motive be not ambition rather than God's glory, 
 warning him that God appoints no less the way of 
 praise than the desire of praise — 
 
 " Presume not to serve God apart from such 
 Appointed channels as He wills shall gather 
 Imperfect tributes — for that sole obedience 
 Valued, perchance. He seeks not that His altars 
 Blaze, careless how, so that they do but blaze."
 
 124 PARACELSUS. 
 
 Paracelsus replies that he requires " no fairer 
 seal" to his mission than the fierce energy, the 
 irresistible force, that work within him, since God — 
 
 11 Ne'er dooms to waste the strength He deigns impart . . 
 They sleep not whom God needs : " 
 
 through him "new hopes shall animate the 
 world." Festus asks why he should strike out new 
 paths, instead of following up the work of those 
 who had been before him. He answers that, from 
 his youth, a secret influence has been about him to 
 which he turned — 
 
 ° Scarce consciously, as turns 
 A water-snake where fairies cross his sleep," 
 
 and this spirit has ever been calling upon him 
 to separate himself from mankind, and to do the 
 world some mighty service, seeking for no rewards — 
 
 " Like some knight traversing a wilderness 
 Who on his way may chance to free a tribe 
 Of desert people from their dragon foe, 
 When all the swarthy tribes pi ess round to kiss 
 His feet, and choose him for their king, and yield 
 Their poor tents, pitched among the sand-hills, for 
 His realm ; and he points, smiling, to his scarf, 
 Heavy with riveted gold, his burgonet, 
 Gay set with twinkling stones — and to the East, 
 Where these must be displayed." 
 
 After a youth spent in feelings such as these, 
 there came a period of conscious failure as he 
 worked with the other students. At last — when it
 
 PARACELSUS. 125 
 
 dawned upon him that he seemed less successful 
 than his fellows only because his aims were 
 larger — a voice said to him, " Whence spring 
 defeat and loss ? Even from thy strength ; " " and 
 
 I smiled, as men never smile but once ; then first 
 discovering my own aim's extent, which sought to 
 comprehend God and His works. From that time 
 all things wore a different hue to me, and now I 
 go to prove my soul ! I see my way as birds their 
 trackless way. In some good time I shall arrive. 
 He guides me and the bird. In His good time ! " 
 Festus again urges upon him to accept the light of 
 those who have gone before, but he refuses to sit 
 beside their dry wells — 
 
 ** While in the distance heaven is blue above 
 Mountains where sleep the unsunned tarns." 
 
 Festus yields to his ardour, and Michal exclaims : 
 
 II Then Aureole is God's commissary ! He shall 
 be great and grand ! " " No^sweet," says he, " not 
 great and grand ; I never will be served by those 
 I serve ! " 
 
 With an insight justified by the end, Festus 
 warns him against being " that monstrous spectacle 
 upon the earth, a being knowing not what love is." 
 Replying first to the old objection, Paracelsus 
 denies that he is wrong in rejecting the wisdom 
 gained by others, because truth is within ourselves, 
 and to know consists in opening out a way for
 
 126 PARACELSUS. 
 
 this imprisoned splendour to escape ; some seem- 
 ingly commonplace man may go mad, and— 
 
 " By his wild talk alone, 
 You first collect how great a spirit he had." 
 
 Paracelsus says his aim is to discover the true laws 
 by which " the flesh accloys the spirit." Is not 
 this the aim that St. Paul proposes to us, when he 
 exhorts us to " grow in the knowledge of the Son 
 of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of 
 the stature of the fulness of Christ " ? 
 
 " Let us not always say, 
 ' Spite of this flesh, to-day 
 I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole.' 
 As the bird wings and sings, 
 Let us cry, ' All good things 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps 
 soul.' " 
 
 Ascetics were wrong — they looked on the spirit 
 as everything, and on the body as a mere oppor- 
 tunity of mortifying and disciplining that spirit; 
 and still more wrong were those of the Renaissance, 
 who thought only of beautifying and perfecting the 
 body and the intellect. Paracelsus saw that man's 
 true perfection must be in perfecting body and 
 spirit — that the body ought to be a help, and not 
 a hindrance, in leading the higher life. He sought 
 to find the laws by the observance of which would 
 best be furthered man's development as a perfect 
 whole. How to do this seems to be still the main
 
 PARACELSUS. 127 
 
 problem of the day, the yet unanswered riddle of 
 the sphinx. How, indeed, could it be otherwise) 
 since to solve it would be to understand life and 
 God's education of the human race ? But to return 
 to the argument of Paracelsus : he says, with 
 regard to the scorn of love and gratitude with which 
 Festus taxes him, that when he has achieved his 
 aim and knows, his affections, laid to sleep 
 awhile, will awaken purified. 
 
 " Till then, till then . . . 
 Ah, the time — whiling loitering of a page, 
 Thro* bower and over lawn, till eve shall bring 
 The stately lady's presence whom he loves ; 
 The broken sleep of the fisher, whose rough coat 
 Enwraps the queenly pearl — these are faint types." 
 
 Then, with one only touch of human weakness 
 (feeling with Novalis, who said, " My belief gains 
 infinitely the moment it is shared by one other 
 human soul"), he breaks off with — " Say, do you 
 believe I shall accomplish this ? " "I do believe," 
 says Festus. " I ever did," says Michal. 
 
 Nine years later, Paracelsus sits in the house of 
 a Greek conjurer in Constantinople, while against 
 the splendour of the setting sun, " the city, black 
 and crooked, runs like a Turk verse along a 
 scimitar." This fortune-teller wills that his seekers 
 should inscribe their previous life's attainments in 
 his roll, before his promised secret shall make up
 
 128 PARACELSUS. 
 
 the sum. Accordingly (" slipped into the blank 
 space between an idiot's gibber and a mad lover's 
 ditty"), a few blurred characters record how 
 Paracelsus had wandered through many lands, 
 and made a few discoveries, though too intent on 
 coming gain to stay and scrutinize the little 
 gained. The Greek had promised that he should 
 not quit the chamber till he should know what he 
 desired; and as he sits waiting, he muses on his 
 past life, and how he had bent it unceasingly to 
 his one purpose ; and then (for he ever " bears 
 a memory of a pleasant life, whose small events 
 he treasures ") his thoughts wander back to Ein- 
 siedeln, his earliest home, and to Festus, with " that 
 sweet maiden long ago his bride," and then he 
 recalls the early days of his search after truth, 
 when all the wonder and beauty of life were as 
 the mere robe of truth : he sees the robe now, he 
 saw the form then. He had never paused upon 
 his way, had never glanced behind to see if his 
 primal light had waned ; and thus insensibly he 
 had declined from his high level. Then he prays — 
 " Crush not my mind, dear God, tho' I be crushed ; 
 give but one hour of my first energy, that I may 
 mould the truths I have, and so completing them, 
 possess." 
 
 He is interrupted by the lovely song (" I heard 
 a voice, perchance I heard, long ago, but too low *'), 
 in which —
 
 PARACELSUS. 1 29 
 
 11 All poets that God meant 
 Should save the world, and therefore lent 
 Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused 
 To do His work, or lightly used 
 Those gifts, or failed, thro' weak endeavour, 
 Now mourn, cast off by Him forever." 
 
 Then enters the sweet singer, Aprile, who 
 proclaims that the ambition of his life had been 
 " to love infinitely" and be loved ; " and as he tells 
 of the world of love and loveliness which he had 
 aspired to create, and how he had been distracted 
 from his mission by the very sense of beauty which 
 had been intrusted to him in order that he might 
 fulfil it, — Paracelsus, in the darkness, softens into 
 tears, exclaiming, " Merciful God ! forgive us both. 
 I too have sought to know, as thou to love, 
 excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge." But 
 even as he implores Aprile to live with him till 
 both are saved (they being " two halves of one 
 dissevered world whom this strange chance unites "), 
 Aprile dies upon his breast, surrounded by visions 
 of "white brows, lit up with glory, poets all," 
 exclaiming, " God is the perfect poet, who in His 
 own person acts His own creations." " Let me 
 love," says Paracelsus ; " I have attained, and now 
 I may depart." 
 
 Five years later, Paracelsus, the wondrous life- 
 dispenser, Fate's commissary, idol of the schools 
 and courts, sits in his own chamber at Basle, 
 heaping on " logs to let the blaze laugh out," as 
 
 K
 
 130 PARACELSUS. 
 
 he listens to Festus's account of the quiet life 
 which has been going on at Einsiedeln during his 
 own wild wanderings, and of Michal, whose face 
 " still wears that quiet and peculiar light, like the 
 dim circlet floating round a pearl," although her 
 children are " wild with joy beside her ; " but 
 Paracelsus cares not to hear of them, for they 
 unsettle the old picture in his mind. 
 
 " Michal may become her motherhood, 
 But 'tis a change, and I detest all change, 
 And most, a change in aught I loved long since." 
 
 And so the talk goes on, till Festus humbly says — 
 
 " But you are very kind to humour me 
 By showing interest in my quiet life." 
 
 And Paracelsus answers that Death lets out 
 strange secrets ; that some few weeks ago he had 
 helped a man to die — a courtier, who had " well- 
 nigh wormed all traces of God's finger out of him," 
 and yet an hour before his death — 
 
 " Having laid long with blank and soulless eyes, 
 He sat up suddenly, and with natural voice, 
 Said that, in spite of thick air and closed doors, 
 God told him it was June ; and he knew well, 
 Without such telling, hare-bells grew in June; 
 And all that kings could ever give or take 
 Would not be precious as those blooms to him. 
 Just so . . . it seems to me much worthier argument,
 
 PARACELSUS. 131 
 
 Why pansies, eyes that laugh, bear beauty's prize 
 From violets, eyes that dream (your Michal's choice), 
 Than all fools find to wonder at in me 
 Or in my fortunes ! " 
 
 And then he breaks out into sneers at his own 
 popularity in the schools, accusing himself of 
 quackery, confessing the utter failure of his aspira- 
 tions, and his inner misery only hidden by his fame 
 and seeming success. Festus, amazed, refuses to 
 believe him, recounts the wonders told by all of 
 his healing power, how he was — 
 
 " One ordained 
 To free the flesh from fell disease, as frees 
 Our Luther's burning tongue the fettered soul." 
 
 Paracelsus persists in declaring that he has thrown 
 his life away, and that, bought by a hollow popu- 
 larity, based on ignorance, he has subsided into 
 enjoying a lower range of pleasures than of old. 
 He tells how Aprile had warned him that the only 
 way to save himself was to serve his fellows ; and 
 how he had therefore come to be teacher and 
 physician in Basle, where crowds were crying 
 " Hosanna 1 " to-day, who would be just as eager in 
 crying " Crucify ! " to-morrow. He had found it 
 impossible to live for love and beauty like Aprile 
 — the old craving for knowledge had come upon 
 him again, though now he lived on a lower level, 
 and was haunted by the fear that he might sink 
 still more, and come to breathe falsehood as if it
 
 132 PARACELSUS. 
 
 were truth. Festus assures him this mood will 
 pass. 
 
 "Be brave, dear Aureole, since 
 The rabbit has his shade to frighten him, 
 The fawn a rustling bough, mortals their cares, 
 And higher natures yet would slight and laugh 
 At these entangling fantasies, as you 
 At trammels of a weaker intellect. 
 Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts." 
 
 He rejects Paracelsus's suggestion that he is blinded 
 by his love. 
 
 " Nought blinds you less than admiration, friend 1 
 Whether it be that all love renders wise 
 In its degree : from love which blends with love — 
 Heart answering heart — to love which spends itself 
 In silent, mad idolatry of some 
 Pre-eminent mortal, some great soul of souls, 
 Which ne'er will know how well it is adored : 
 I say, such love is never blind ; but rather 
 Alive to every, the minutest spot 
 Which mars its object, and which hate (supposed 
 So vigilant and searching) dreams not of : 
 Love broods on such — What then ? When first perceived 
 Is there no sweet strife to forget, to change, 
 To overflush these blemishes with all 
 The glow of general goodness they disturb ? 
 To make these very defects an endless source 
 Of new affections grown from hopes and fears ? " 
 
 Paracelsus exclaims at his being thus instnicted 
 by a quiet mountain-cloistered priest, but goes on 
 to point out where his sole merit lies : namely, in 
 being in advance of his age, though he fears his
 
 PARACELSUS. 133 
 
 clumsy pupils will fail to use aright the intellectual 
 weapons with which he has furnished them. Then 
 the melancholy wind disturbs the talk, and Festus, 
 opening the casement, looks out into the night, 
 where " peaceful sleep the tree-tops all together ! " 
 " Like an asp the wind slips whispering from bough 
 to bough, ' Morn is near ' " — 
 
 ** The shrubs bestir and rouse themselves as if 
 Some snake that weighed them down all night, let go 
 His hold, and from the east, fuller and fuller, 
 Day, like a mighty river, is flowing in, 
 But clouded, wintry, desolate, and cold " — 
 
 a dawn in keeping with the wounded heart, which 
 cries out that knowledge belongs to God and His 
 spirits, while — 
 
 " Love, hope, fear, faith — these make humanity, 
 These are its signs, its note, its character, 
 And these I've lost !— gone, shut from me forever, 
 Like a dead friend, safe from unkindness more ! " 
 
 The friends next meet, two years later, at an inn 
 in Alsatia. Paracelsus is on his way to Nuremberg 
 because of his unpopularity in Basle, where he has 
 received " hate, scorn, obloquy, and all the higher, 
 rarer, and more gratifying forms of popular 
 applause." 1 As long as he merely satisfied their 
 love of the marvellous, they worshipped him ; but 
 when he strove to teach them real truth, he 
 reaped truth's usual reward — a crown of thorns. 
 
 1 Prof. Seeley.
 
 134 PARACELSUS. 
 
 He announces his intention of seeking anew his 
 former goal, but by better means than the old 
 ones, over which he sings the lovely dirge, " Heap 
 cassia, sandal buds;" he will accept all help, 
 he says, instead of spurning it as before — he will 
 not only knoiv, but will also enjoy every delight 
 that comes in his path, and his future shall be 
 glorious with visions of a full success. But Festus 
 is not blinded by this feverish eagerness, and 
 Paracelsus says he is glad of it — glad that 
 Festus is not " gulled by all this swaggering," but 
 can see how full he is of mean motives and low 
 desires. In vain does Festus strive to assure him 
 that these feelings are no part of his real nature ; he 
 refuses comfort, and declares he has nothing left but 
 that " this life of mine must be lived out and a grave 
 thoroughly earned." Festus urges him to make a 
 mighty effort to redeem the past, and even yet to 
 arrive at his destination ; but he declares it is too 
 late, and sings the tale of those who sailed in a 
 gallant armament, bearing on each ship a fair statue, 
 for which they were to build shrines on certain 
 islands. Weary of their voyage, they landed on 
 the first rock they came to — 
 
 " All day we built its shrine for each, . . . 
 Nor paused, till, in the westering sun, 
 We sat together on the beach 
 To sing because our work was done." 
 
 As they rested, came a raft with gentle islanders.
 
 PARACELSUS. 135 
 
 *' ' Our isles are just at hand,' they cried, . . . 
 ' Our olive groves thick shades are keeping 
 For these majestic forms,' they cried ; 
 Oh, when we woke with sudden start 
 From our deep dream, and knew too late 
 How bare the rock, how desolate, 
 Which had received our precious freight ; 
 Yet, we called out, ' Depart ! 
 Our gifts, once given, must here abide. 
 We have no heart to mar our work ! ' we cried." 
 
 And so, with Paracelsus, he now knew the barren- 
 ness of the rock whereon he had built ; but he had 
 no heart to rear a fresh shrine for his soul; his 
 nature was no longer even pure enough to return, 
 as Festus wished, to his quiet home at Einsiedeln. 
 His life was broken, his trust in God had proved a 
 broken reed. But here Festus interrupted him, 
 declaring what he had called " trust " was nothing 
 but self-delusion and selfishness. 
 
 "None 
 Could trace God's will so plain as you, while yours 
 Remained implied in it. But now you fail, 
 And we, who prate about that will, are fools ! " 
 
 Paracelsus retorts that Man is the glory of God, 
 and that he had promoted God's glory in striving 
 to be glorious himself. He says again, that the old 
 life is not for him ; that he must dree his weird, 
 however Festus may scorn him; that he departs 
 secure against all further insult ; " my one friend's 
 scorn shall brand me ; no fear of sinking deeper 1
 
 !36 PARACELSUS. 
 
 Only never let Michal know this last dull winding 
 up of all ; grieve her not." " Your ill-success can 
 little grieve her now ; " whereat Paracelsus, in an 
 ecstasy of sorrow, knowing well that, with her, 
 indifference to his fate means death, assures Festus, 
 as if it were some strange discovery of his own, that 
 she yet lives in spirit. 
 
 " Know, then, you did not ill to trust your love 
 To the cold earth : I have thought much of it, 
 For I believe we do not wholly die. 
 
 And so we leave him musing on how Michal 
 sleeps amidst the roots and dews, and on what an 
 empty farce are his schemes and struggles, com- 
 pared to the reality of the loss he has just learned. 
 
 Thirteen years later, Festus sits by his friend's 
 death-bed, in the hospital of Sebastian, at Salzburg, 
 listening in unavailing sorrow to his delirium, 
 crying vainly to God for him : " Save him, dear 
 God ! Thou art not made like us ; we should be 
 wroth in such a case, but Thou forgivest ! " But the 
 sick man ceases not to rave and to rail at the fiends 
 who have marred his work, and who are now 
 triumphing over his failure. He wails over his loss 
 of both power and love. 
 
 " Sweet human love is gone ! 
 'Tis only when they spring to heaven that angels 
 Reveal themselves to you : they sit all day
 
 PARACELSUS. 137 
 
 Beside you, and lie down at night by you 
 Who care not for their presence — muse or sleep — 
 And all at once, they leave you, and you know them. 
 We are so fooled, so cheated ! " 
 
 At last he awakens to his friend's presence, and 
 fancies himself once more at Einsiedeln, watching 
 St. Saviour's spire flame in the sunset — 
 
 "All its figures quaint 
 Gay in the glancing light. You might conceive them 
 A troop of yellow-vested, white-haired Jews, 
 Bound for their own land, where redemption dawns." 
 
 And then he yields the fight, accuses himself of 
 quackery and deceit, and prays to be "forgotten 
 even by God." Festus refuses to believe his failure 
 and bids him enter gloriously his rest. 
 
 1,1 1 am for noble Aureole, God ! ' cries he. 
 ' I am upon his side, come weal or woe. 
 His portion shall be mine : he has done well. 
 I would have sinned, had I been strong enough, 
 As he has sinned ; reward him or I waive 
 Reward I If Thou canst find no place for him, 
 He shall be king elsewhere, and I will be 
 His slave forever. There are two of us."' 
 
 " Speak on," says Paracelsus, " or I dream ; " and 
 Festus soothes him with the song — 
 
 11 There the Mayne glideth, 
 Where my love abideth," 
 
 till its simple words loose the sick man's heart, and
 
 138 PARACELSUS. 
 
 drive out the darkness which naught else could 
 touch. 
 
 " Like some dark snake that force may not expel, 
 He glideth out to music sweet and low." 
 
 And then his mind awakens wholly, and he arises, 
 with a last effort of strength, to tell God's message. 
 He bids Festus not deem his aims wrong, for he 
 goes joyous back to God, although he brings no 
 offering. " Higher prizes may await the mortal 
 persevering to the end ; " but yet he is not all so 
 valueless, though he too soon left following the 
 instincts of that happy time when he had vowed 
 himself to man. He was born with all the high 
 ambitions of which others only attain the perception 
 by many struggles and mistakes ; he had felt and 
 known what God was and how He dwelt in the whole 
 of life, most of all, in man, in whom were united, in 
 a wondrous whole, the dim fragments of glory found 
 in the rest of creation. In man, Paracelsus now 
 saw, "Poiver neither blind nor all knowing, but 
 checked by hope and fear ; knowledge, not intuition, 
 as he had once thought, but the slow fruit of toil ; 
 love, not serenely pure, but strong through weakness 
 — a blind, oft-failing, yet believing love — a half 
 enlightened, often chequered trust." And in man 
 thus formed, all nature receives a soul. When he 
 once appears in the world —
 
 PARACELSUS. 139 
 
 " The winds are henceforth voices, in a wail or shout, 
 A querulous mutter, or a quick, gay laugh ; 
 Never a senseless gust now man is born. " 
 
 Yet all this is only to teach us man's proper 
 place, to which he has not yet attained, and never 
 will, till " all mankind alike is perfected, equal in 
 full-blown powers ; " when this is consummated, then 
 will " his long triumphant march begin." Even 
 as, before man's advent, all that was highest in 
 Nature was but a symbol and foreshadowing of 
 him, so, when he is perfected, shall he feel in 
 himself — 
 
 " August anticipations, symbols, types 
 Of a dim splendour ever on before 
 In that eternal circle life pursues." 
 
 His enlarged horizon shall fill him with new hopes 
 and fears, unmeasured thirst for good. 
 
 " Such men are even now upon the earth, 
 Serene among the half-formed creatures round 
 Who should be saved by them, and joined with them. 
 Such was my task, and I was born for it. 
 
 " I from the first was never cheated by a delusive 
 and divided aim, as has been the fate of many a 
 high-dowered spirit ! I clearly saw that God was 
 glorified in man, and to man's glory vowed I soul 
 and limb. I never fashioned out a fancied good 
 distinct from man's, and never dreamed that his 
 successes could be over-great. Yet, clear-sighted,
 
 Ho PARACELSUS. 
 
 gifted, still I failed. I thought power the sign 
 and note and character of man, and saw no reason 
 why he should not rise to it by one bold leap. I 
 sought for power alone, and that without the 
 discipline of tears and labour by which man, in the 
 future, shall attain to it — for he shall painfully attain 
 to joy, while love and hope shall keep him man — 
 and as my dreams grew dim, my wide aims 
 circumscribed by petty obstacles, what wonder if I 
 saw no way to shun despair ? The power I sought 
 for man, seemed God's ; then, from Aprile I 
 learned my error, and saw how one sin had spotted 
 my career from its uprise. 
 
 " Love's undoing 
 Taught me the worth of love in man's estate, 
 And what proportion love should hold with power 
 In his right constitution ; love preceding 
 Power, and with much power, always much more love. 
 
 " I thought then that the whole was learned ; I 
 devoted all my knowledge to man's service, but 
 scorned their stupid wonder, despised their praise, 
 and when they turned upon me, it was not strange 
 I hated them, for — 
 
 " In my own heart love had not been made wise 
 To trace love's first beginnings in mankind. 
 
 " It is fitting that men should, at this present, 
 only see the weak and false in me, but in after- 
 times they yet shall know me.
 
 PARACELSUS. 141 
 
 " If I stoop 
 Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud 
 It is but for a time. I press God's lamp 
 Close to my breast ; its splendour soon or late 
 Will pierce the gloom : I shall emerge one day." 
 
 And so, with brave words upon his lips, and 
 
 clasping the hand of his earliest friend, the great 
 
 sin-stained, storm-tossed spirit passes to that 
 
 " world of larger scope," where " what here is 
 
 faithfully begun will be completed, not undone." 
 
 " He there does now enjoy eternall rest, 
 Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, 
 Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please." 
 
 With the questioning spirit abroad on all sides, 
 meeting one in every magazine, when it is a moot 
 point whether life be worth living, it is a grand 
 thing to be able to say, with Clough, to all the 
 doubts which seek to paralyze our souls, " I know 
 not ; I will do my duty." But it is grander still to 
 hold, with Browning, that there is an answer to 
 the thoughts which trouble us, another side to the 
 pain, and grief, and failure, and littleness which 
 crush us as we look upon life, and that we are 
 justified in saying with Paracelsus, " One day I 
 shall emerge." Beside the nettle grows the dock, 
 and in this age of unbelief, which would fain 
 believe, we have a prophet sent us, who brings a 
 word of the Lord, translated into the thoughts and 
 feelings of our own day, though it is, in truth, an
 
 142 PARACELSUS. 
 
 old message, which many prophets and kings have 
 desired to see, and could only see dimly afar off; 
 a message which has strengthened the hearts of 
 heroes in all ages, and inspired all " the communion 
 of saints whose heroic sufferings rise up melodiously 
 together to heaven, out of all lands, out of all 
 times, as a sacred Miserere ; their heroic actions also 
 as a boundless, everlasting psalm of triumph." l 
 
 Browning's " Men and Women" learn this truth, 
 this faith in immortality, in many ways, even as 
 the Easterns say in their proverb, " Jesus went 
 many ways unto Jerusalem." Pompilia seizes it 
 through her feeling of the necessity of another 
 world, wherein can be manifested that wealth of 
 undying love which finds no utterance here. 
 
 " O, lover of my life, O, soldier-saint ! 
 No work begun shall ever pause for death. 
 Love will be helpful to me more and more 
 I' the coming course." 
 
 It is taught to Rabbi Ben Ezra by the very imper- 
 fection of man's nature. 
 
 " Life shall succeed in that it seems to fail. 
 What I aspired to be 
 And was not, comforts me, 
 A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the 
 scale." 
 
 " All I could never be 
 All men ignored in me ; 
 This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher 
 shaped." 
 
 1 " Sartor Resartus."
 
 PARACELSUS. 143 
 
 This life is but machinery just meant to give the 
 soul its bent, to shape the pitcher ; the uses of the 
 cup, the raiso?i d'etre of the soul, wait for the fuller 
 life beyond, where will be the festal board — 
 
 " The new wine's foaming flow, 
 The Master's lips aglow." 
 
 It is his failure here which teaches Paracelsus the 
 true greatness of his mission. Over and over 
 again does Browning impress upon us that man's 
 imperfections only show his real superiority. 
 
 " What's whole can increase no more, 
 Is dwarfed and dies, since here's its sphere." 
 
 In " Old Pictures at Florence," he argues that 
 Christian artists are inferior to Greek, just because 
 they strive to express a deeper meaning. Greek 
 perfection of form was a sign of limitation, of 
 inferiority in depth. Christian artists were more 
 faulty, precisely because of their wider nature. 
 
 " For time, theirs — ours for eternity. 
 They are perfect — how else ? They shall never change. 
 We are faulty — why not? We have time in store." 
 
 The feeling, that we have time in store, is the 
 keynote of the chord that closes " Paracelsus." He 
 was one who learned to — 
 
 M Throw on God 
 (He loves the burthen) 
 God's task to make the heavenly period 
 Perfect the earthen."
 
 144 . PARACELSUS. 
 
 What faith but this could support us in a world 
 where many a noble heart sinks under failure and 
 defeat, like him who breathed away his soul in 
 the cry : "I have loved righteousness and hated 
 iniquity, and therefore I die in exile " ? 
 
 But Browning says, as the angel did to Esdras, 
 " Lovest thou this people more than He that made 
 them?" 
 
 " Do I find Love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, 
 That I doubt His own love can compete with it, here the 
 
 parts shift ? 
 Would I fain, in my impotent yearning, do all for this man, 
 And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, who yet 
 
 alone can?" 
 
 And like Paracelsus, Browning's own— 
 
 " Heart has been made wise by love, 
 To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind, 
 To see a good in evil, and a hope 
 In ill-success ; to sympathize, be proud 
 Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim 
 Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies, 
 Their prejudice, and fears and cares and doubts, 
 All with a touch of nobleness, despite 
 Their error, upward tending all, tho' weak, 
 Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, 
 But dream of him, and guess where he may be, 
 And do their best to climb and get at him." 
 
 He faces man's littleness because he believes in 
 his greatness. He can bear to confront the 
 unsuccess of life, " contrast the petty done, the 
 undone vast," for, in that very unsuccess, he sees a
 
 PARACELSUS. 145 
 
 fairer promise for the end than if man were allowed 
 in this world, " to plant his foot upon the goal — 
 twine glory-garlands round his soul." Browning 
 raises our conception of the race, not so much by 
 dwelling on those who, like Paracelsus, stand 
 out above their fellows spiritually, as Saul did 
 physically, " from the shoulders upward higher than 
 any of the people : " he rather dwells on " Saul the 
 mistake, Saul the failure," and on that infinite love 
 which shall — 
 
 " Bid him awake 
 
 From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find him- 
 self set, 
 
 Clear and safe, in new light and new life — a new harmony, 
 yet 
 
 To be run and continued and ended. Who knows ? "
 
 Bante. 
 
 "T") EAD the canonical books of Literature, and 
 JlV let the smaller books take care of them- 
 selves," says Coleridge, and where shall we find any 
 book more universally accepted as canonical than 
 " The Divine Comedy " ? But before we can read 
 it, we must be acquainted with Dante's life, for his 
 personal feelings form the thread which binds it 
 together. When we look at Shakespeare we are 
 inclined to feel that it needed his superhuman im- 
 personality to make him not " of an age, but for all 
 time," that, had he " unlocked his heart," l he would 
 have lost somewhat of his power over our hearts. It 
 is surely a true feeling that egotism means smallness 
 and makes poets as well as other people forgotten. 
 But, with Dante, egotism meant greatness, and has 
 made all the world know and remember him. It 
 may be questioned whether, since the world began, 
 there has ever been a man with such a strong per- 
 sonality as his : it runs through every line of his 
 poem, and to enter into that poem we must realize 
 the two main strands in his thread of life, — love for 
 Beatrice, and love for Florence. The man who 
 1 Matthew Arnold.
 
 DANTE. 147 
 
 so intensely loved the two fairest things the world 
 then held, was bound to have a " Fair Soul," and 
 he shows it to us in the " Vita Nuova," the most 
 beautiful love stoiy ever written, in which he tells 
 us of his love for Beatrice Portinari. Who has not 
 pictured the first meeting of those two Florentine 
 children, at the great feast given by Folco Portinari, 
 to celebrate the coming of May ? not the " pious 
 fraud of the almanacs," * which we know under that 
 name, but the Italian May, the spring-time of the 
 Poets. We see the boy, as Boccaccio describes 
 him, serving at the tables, and then playing with 
 the children, among whom was the little lady of 
 the house, in that dress which so dwelt in her boy- 
 lover's fancy, " of a most noble colour, a subdued 
 crimson," and with those " grave and consecrated 
 eyes," 2 whose light was to be his guiding star 
 through this world and the next. " Often in my 
 boyish years," he tells us, " did I go in search of 
 this youngest of the angels, and sometimes, as she 
 passed along the street, she turned her eyes to 
 where I stood, thrilled through and through, and, 
 by her ineffable courtesy, which now hath its 
 guerdon in everlasting life, she saluted me in such 
 gracious wise, that I seemed to see heaven in all 
 its blessedness." 
 
 But, though he must have daily seen her who 
 was " so near and yet so far," they seldom spoke, 
 1 J. R. Lowell. 2 Ben Jonson.
 
 148 DANTE. 
 
 for he records each greeting with religious care — 
 " the hour her most sweet salutation reached me 
 was the ninth hour of the day." He was happy in 
 this distant awestruck worship, and his friends 
 listened to his sonnets on his " gentil donna," with 
 an understanding patience, which makes us wonder 
 whether that age of blood and iron was not, in 
 some ways, gentler than our own. Sounds of 
 kindly laughter come to us here and there, from 
 these fortressed houses of Dante's Florence, — as 
 from that company of ladies who, one day, ask 
 him, " Wherein, we pray thee, abides that happiness 
 of thine ? " The poet finds the kindliness beneath 
 the laughter, and gives an answer in language that 
 breathes the whole spirit of chivalry, " In the 
 words which praise my lady." 
 
 In 1286, his lady married Simon dei Bardi, the 
 spiritual ancestor of Romola, but this was no bar 
 to such reverential worship as Dante's. He went 
 on pouring out his soul in the poems with which 
 the prose story of the " Vita Nuova " is interspersed, 
 the loveliest being that which begins : " Ladies 
 who have intelligence of Love," in which he tells 
 how the angels besought God that they might have 
 Beatrice to be with them in Paradise, and how He 
 refused, " for the sake of one on earth who loves 
 her, and who dreads to lose her." 
 
 But his dread was soon to overshadow him : four 
 years later he breaks off in the middle of a sonnet
 
 DANTE. 149 
 
 with the verse from the Vulgate : " How doth the 
 city sit solitary that was full of people." The city 
 of Florence was now solitary to him, for Beatrice 
 was dead. This is the end of Dante's earthly love 
 story ; the end, as it seemed to him, of that Vita 
 Nuova, that new life, which was born in him through 
 knowing Beatrice, but it was the beginning of his 
 real life. He was scarcely a man as yet, only 
 twenty-five, but this feeling of his boyhood was to 
 be the mainspring of his future life, the inspiration 
 of that marvellous life-work at which he hints in 
 the concluding words of the " Vita Nuova," where 
 he strikes a chord that is worthy to close the 
 requiem of such a loss. 
 
 " I resolved to speak no more of this blessed 
 one, until the time should come when I could 
 speak of her more worthily. And to arrive at this, 
 I study as much as I can, as she truly knows : so 
 that, if it pleaseth Him, by whom all things live, 
 that my life should continue for a time, I hope to 
 say that of her which has not yet been spoken of 
 any woman. And after, may it please Him, who is 
 the Lord of Courtesy, that my soul may see the glory 
 of my Lady, that blessed Beatrice, who gloriously 
 beholds the Face of Him who is blessed for ever." 
 
 But he was not yet fit to write of her worthily. 
 " No one shall sing a song to the Immortals," says 
 one of our own singers, 1 " who cannot live the song 
 1 G. MacDonald.
 
 Ijo DANTE. 
 
 he sings, for what right hath he else to take holy 
 deeds in his mouth ; " and Milton also tells us, that 
 " he who would write a true poem must first make 
 his life a true poem." Dante had " the poet's heart 
 and brain, feeling and song," but he himself was 
 not yet "a poem of God's making." 1 Beautiful 
 feelings alone never make a hero, the fire of the 
 forge will never make a sword without the smith's 
 hammer; and Dante needed to be forged and 
 hammered by the blows of real life and duty and 
 hard work for his country. 
 
 Let us put him in his place in history before we 
 go on to the more historical part of his life. He 
 was born in 1265, when our Henry III., the 
 " monarch of the simple life," was reigning ; he 
 died in 132 1, during the troubles of our Edward 
 II. When he was a boy the Crusades had just 
 come to an end. St. Louis died 1270. Cimabue 
 was becoming the father of Italian painting, and 
 training Giotto, who was afterwards to learn even 
 higher inspiration from his friendship with Dante. 
 
 While Dante was worshipping Beatrice, Edward 
 I. was conquering Wales ; while he was a man of 
 business in Florence, Edward was crushing 
 William Wallace; and while he was in exile, 
 writing his poem, Robert Bruce was beginning to 
 free Scotland. We shall meet with our Henry III. 
 in Purgatory, one of the few Englishmen to whom 
 1 G. MacDonald, "Within and Without."
 
 DANTE. 151 
 
 Dante gives a place in his Temple of Fame ; but 
 one cannot help feeling that when the poet did, in 
 very deed, and not in vision, join the company of 
 the Blessed, he would have had more sympathy 
 with Edward I., who was akin to his own strong 
 and disdainful soul. 
 
 In the second stage of Dante's life, to which we 
 now come, Florence is his first thought; hitherto 
 she has only been a background for Beatrice, — now 
 he plunges into active life, and learns to love his 
 city only second to his lady. In 1293, when he 
 wrote those closing words of the " Vita Nuova," he 
 was one of the priors, or chief rulers, of Florence ; 
 a stern, sad man, in a city torn asunder by the 
 strifes of Guelphs, and Ghibellines, Bianchi and 
 Neri. After seven years of faithful service in 
 the ranks of the Guelphs, the Papal party, he was 
 sent, in 1300, on an embassy to Rome. 
 
 In the following year the Ghibelline or Im- 
 perialist party gained the upper hand, and passed 
 sentence of banishment on their opponents, includ- 
 ing the absent Dante. He never returned to his 
 home, though for twenty years he thundered night 
 and day at the gates of Florence, while he learnt 
 " how salt was the bread of others, and how steep 
 their stairs." Yet he would not return unworthily, 
 and when the magistrates of Florence offered a 
 safe return to such exiles as would do penance for 
 thei" offences, he sent them an answer which rings
 
 152 DANTE. 
 
 still with the fiery scorn of that most " disdainful 
 soul " : — " Is this the glorious revocation of an 
 unjust sentence, by which Dante Alighieri is to be 
 recalled, after suffering almost three lustres of exile ? 
 Is this the recompense of labour ? May such 
 cowardice and earthly baseness of heart be far 
 from me. Another way might surely be found 
 which would not derogate from the honour of 
 Dante. Such would I accept, and not with slow 
 steps. But if with this way only I can return to 
 Florence, Florence shall never again be entered by 
 me. And what then? Can I not still behold the 
 sun and stars ? Cannot I still ponder upon tnith 
 under the free heavens ? " 
 
 Yet he would have moved heaven and earth for 
 that boon which he refused to take ignobly, — he 
 wandered all over Europe (some say even to 
 Oxford), with but this one thought in his mind, so 
 far as earthly things were concerned. Spiritually, 
 his wanderings led him to Hell and Heaven, so that 
 women in the street would point him out to their 
 children, saying, " Look ! that man has been to 
 Hell, and that is why his hair is so scorched and 
 grizzled." And truly, Dante's intense realization 
 of the unseen could not fail to leave traces on him. 
 We say now that a description is " Dantesque," 
 when it makes us actually see something grim and 
 terrible ; — no wonder that, as he says himself, 
 his poem made him " lean." We read his bitter
 
 DANTE. 153 
 
 disappointment in every page, — it shows us a man 
 hard and stern, yet with flashes, every now and 
 then, of an infinite tenderness and compassion, 
 which bring back to us the boy who had been such 
 a true lover of Beatrice. We cannot wonder at the 
 hardness in a man who lost all personal joy in 
 life when he was twenty-five, who worked day and 
 night for his country for ten years, and, as a reward, 
 was turned adrift to wander in heart-broken exile 
 for twenty years, smarting with the intense feeling 
 of injustice from the city he had loved so well. 
 
 His life was a failure to the last ; his lady married 
 another, and died young ; his city was ungrateful ; 
 he never had any honour that he cared for. 
 Bologna offered him a crown of laurels; but he 
 cared for no crown that was not Florentine. 
 " Were it not better," he says, " to veil these grey 
 hairs, that once were golden, beside my native 
 Arno, with the crown that is given there ? " 
 
 But he never saw his native Arno again, though 
 it was never out of sight of his mind's eye : he 
 peoples the slopes of Hell and Purgatory and 
 Heaven with Florentines, never letting us forget the 
 Lady of Cities, any more than we forget Beatrice. 
 
 But his failure to gain Florence has gained 
 him the whole world. He might never rest again 
 on the Sasso di Dante, that stone still standing in 
 the great square of Florence, where tradition tells
 
 154 DANTE. 
 
 us Dante used to sit and watch Arnulpho building 
 his cathedral; but he has achieved the Siege 
 Perilous, among the noble army of poets, who must 
 perforce be a " noble army of martyrs," and " learn 
 in suffering what they teach in song."
 
 MR. LOWELL speaks somewhere of " litera- 
 ture suited to desolate islands." To use 
 his idea in a somewhat different sense than his 
 context allows, I will ask what hook you would 
 advise Robinson Crusoe to save from the wreck, 
 if only one were allowed him ? 
 
 In my own case, supposing I looked forward to 
 an eventual return to civilized life, I would take 
 Shakespeare as being the most humanizing of 
 writers, the most likely to sustain, in a shipwrecked 
 man, the urbane, serene temper which he would 
 need in future intercourse with his fellows. But 
 were the banishment to be perpetual, I would take 
 Dante, as the writer who most keenly recognizes 
 the human interests of life, and yet keeps steadily 
 in view the supreme end of tuning our nature for 
 a higher life. 
 
 As it is an education in itself to go to pictures 
 with an artist — to music with a musician, — so it is 
 an education to go to Life with Dante, one who 
 can teach us to " see life steadily and see it whole." l 
 
 The " Commedia " is a book of practical spiritual 
 1 Matthew Arnold.
 
 156 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 counsel, for Dante here gives us a faithful transcript 
 of his own inner life. The " Purgatorio " especially 
 is one of the great autobiographies of the world, as 
 much so as the " Confessions of St. Augustine." 
 When we read these confessions of Dante we see 
 his nature developing under the discipline of life. 
 It surely cannot be merely a sense of dramatic 
 fitness that causes each division of the poem to 
 exhibit him in a new stage of growth. 
 
 Years of experience (though, maybe, not of 
 months) must have been lived through, before the 
 Dante of the " Inferno," the disdainful man of the 
 world, was transformed into the humble pilgrim of 
 the " Purgatorio," or attained to the burning purity 
 of the pupil of Beatrice in the " Paradiso." The 
 transitions follow the order one would, from his cir- 
 cumstances, naturally expect. In the early days of 
 exile, he was likely to be hotly indignant, eager to 
 see the Day of Vengeance ; but as time passed on, 
 he would be " made great " by the " loving correc- 
 tion " of his life ; he would realize his own short- 
 comings, and be more generous to those of others. 
 The Dante who felt, in the " Inferno," about Fra 
 Alberigo, " that to be rude to him was courtesy," 
 speaks of the meanest sinners in the " Purgatorio " as 
 " those beloved souls." It is this personal element 
 that makes the poem so fascinating even in a trans- 
 lation. Many wait till they can read Italian 
 forgetting that the original will have double charm
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 157 
 
 if they are familiar beforehand with the matter of 
 the poem, and that with such translations as 
 Longfellow, Plumptre, and Vernon, they can even 
 now enjoy the careful character study with which 
 Dante draws Virgil and Beatrice ; and the sketches 
 of such men as Farinata, " who had hell in great 
 despite," or of Jason, " the tall one who retained 
 his royal aspect and for his pain seemed not to 
 shed a tear ; " they will enjoy Dante's close study of 
 Nature, specially of bird life ; — and his many lines 
 which embody some helpful, devotional thought (a 
 whole manual of Intercessory Prayer might be com- 
 plied from the " Purgatorio)." Read the " Corn- 
 media " and mark it, make a subject concordance 
 for yourselves, note down marginal references com- 
 paring one passage with another, and you will come 
 to feel that Dante fills all earth and Heaven with 
 new light, and has an echo for every beautiful sight 
 you see, every noble word you hear. 
 
 His geography needs a word of explanation : the 
 belief of his day was that Lucifer fell from Heaven 
 on to the Garden of Eden, and by the impetus of 
 his fall pushed the garden right through the earth. 
 Lucifer himself stuck fast at the centre of the globe, 
 but the earth which he had dislodged rose out of 
 the Southern Ocean as the Mount of Purgatory, 
 bearing on its summit the Garden of Eden, or the 
 Terrestrial Paradise. The opening made in the 
 northern hemisphere by Lucifer's fall, was covered
 
 158 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 over by a crust of earth, on which was built 
 Jerusalem, while the crater-like hollow beneath 
 was peopled by lost souls, the sins of Passion, 
 Heresy, and Malevolence, being punished in 
 separate circles of the ever-narrowing descent. 
 Dante, led by Virgil, descends this funnel-shaped 
 Inferno, and after he passes Lucifer (who is at the 
 centre of gravity), a narrow passage leads him 
 through the Earth to the Mount of Purgatory. 
 
 There are seven terraces on this mountain, with 
 a staircase leading from one to the other, and, 
 on each terrace, Dante finds a special sin being 
 punished. When any soul is cleansed from that 
 sin, it mounts up to the next terrace ; till at last it 
 works its way through all seven circles, and, purged 
 from the seven Deadly Sins, rises to the Earthly 
 Paradise, the foretaste of the joys of Heaven. 
 After ascending the mountain, Dante is translated 
 by Beatrice to each of the nine heavens which, 
 like so many coats of an onion, encompass the 
 earth. Each of these heavens is the home of souls 
 distinguished by some special virtue, and all are 
 enclosed by the Empyrean, the motionless sphere of 
 Light, the Home of God Himself, where all the 
 saints have their appointed station, and help to form 
 the mystic Rose, whose petals are the Blessed 
 Company of all faithful people. 
 
 With this general sketch by which to find our 
 bearings, let us follow Dante a little more closely
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 159 
 
 in his pilgrimage. When the poem opens he is 
 midway on the road of life, and finds himself 
 " within a forest dark," as one " who weeps in 
 all his thoughts and is despondent." He meets 
 one " from long continued silence hoarse," who 
 urged him to " climb the Mount Delectable, which 
 is the source and cause of every joy," where they 
 dwell — 
 
 " Who contented are 
 Within the fire, because they hope to come 
 Whene'er it may be, to the blessed people." 
 
 This is Virgil, who tells him that for his sake 
 " Beatrice withdrew from singing Hallelujah," and 
 came to the outer court of Hell, to invoke Virgil's 
 aid for " a friend of hers, but not the friend of 
 fortune." Virgil, exhorting Dante to take heart, 
 seeing that " such ladies benedight are caring for 
 him in the Courts of Heaven," leads him through 
 the Gate of Hell with its inscription — 
 
 " All hope abandon, ye who enter here." 
 
 There— 
 
 " Voices high and hoarse 
 
 Resounded through the air without a star." 
 
 Here were the melancholy souls of those " with 
 neither infamy nor praise," " miscreants, who 
 never were alive," such men as he " who made 
 through cowardice the great refusal." Virgil speaks
 
 160 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 after Dante's own heart when he says disdainfully, 
 " Let us not talk of them, but look and pass." 
 They are then ferried across Acheron by Charon, 
 and enter Limbo, the first Circle of Hell, where 
 there — 
 
 " Were lamentations none, but only sighs 
 That tremulous made the everlasting air." 
 
 Here dwelt the noble heathen, " only so far 
 punished," says Virgil, " that without hope we 
 live on in desire." Four mighty shades approach 
 to welcome Virgil on his return ; " semblance had 
 they nor sorrowful nor glad," but Virgil smiled for 
 joy at their welcome of Dante when they adopted 
 him " sixth, mid so much wit." With these sages, 
 Dante passed on to the Castle of Human Wisdom, 
 defended by a fair rivulet and seven lofty walls. 
 Here in a meadow of fresh verdure were people 
 with— 
 
 " Solemn eyes and slow, 
 Of great authority in their countenance," 
 
 "who spake but seldom and with gentle voices," 
 mighty spirits, " whom to have seen," says Dante, 
 " I felt myself exalted." Among them are " Caesar 
 in armour, with gerfalcon eyes ; " " sitting alone, 
 apart, the Saladin j " and Aristotle, " the master of 
 those who know." 
 
 Dante passes from this noble company to a 
 place, " mute of all light," where the souls are
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 161 
 
 hurtled onwards by a hurricane, " as the wings of 
 starlings bear them on," and as the cranes — 
 
 "Go chanting forth their lays, 
 Making in air a long line of themselves." 
 
 These are the souls who sinned through Love, 
 Helen, Paris, Tristram, and two who clung 
 together as we see them in the pictures of Watts 
 and Ary Scheffer, and who at Dante's call flew 
 to him as — 
 
 "Turtle doves called onward by desire, 
 With open and steady wings to the sweet nest." 
 
 They are Paolo and Francesa da Rimini, to whom 
 "a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering 
 happier things." One of the few touches of 
 graciousness in the " Inferno " is the picture of 
 these two, saying to Dante — 
 
 "If were the King of the Universe our friend, 
 We would pray unto Him to give thee peace." 
 
 Dante swoons for sorrow at their story, and awakes 
 to find himself in the third circle, where the 
 gluttons are punished by rain, " eternal, maledict, 
 and cold and heavy." Then come the avaricious — 
 
 " Whose undiscerning life which made them sordid, 
 Now makes them unto all discernment dim." 
 
 In the fifth circle, the wrathful are tearing each 
 
 M
 
 1 62 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 other in the sombre waters of Styx, while, further 
 on, are those who sinned through Accidie, the 
 spiritual sloth, which we rechristen " depression " 
 and " low spirits," and meet with sympathy ! 
 Dante met it by fixing its victims in the mire 
 beneath the water, where they keep gurgling in 
 their throats the confession — 
 
 "We sullen were 
 In the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened, 
 Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek ; 
 Now we are sullen in this sable mire." 
 
 But we must not linger over each step of the 
 journey. The descent into Hell leads us through 
 " malign grey shores " and " filthy fens ; " the air, 
 full of smoke and gloom, is thick with " accents 
 of anger, words of agony." Dante, with his Italian 
 love of light and warmth, " shivers in the eternal 
 shade," beholding — 
 
 M A thousand faces, made 
 Purple with cold ; whence o'er me comes a shudder, 
 And evermore will come, at frozen ponds." 
 
 The City of Dis stands out amid the gloom, with 
 its vermilion minarets and mosques, reflected in 
 the waves of the marshy lagoon that surrounds it. 
 Its gates are closed to the pilgrims till the celestial 
 messenger comes, heralded by the clangour as of 
 "a wind that smites the forest and, laden with
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 163 
 
 dust, onward goes superb." The ruined souls flee 
 before him, as frogs before the hostile serpent, 
 while he passes " o'er the Styx with soles unwet," 
 silent and motionless save that he fans the heavy 
 air from off his face, admired by Dante for the 
 disdain with which he spake no word to them — 
 
 " But had the look 
 Of one whom other care constrains and goads 
 Than that of him who in his presence is." 
 
 But when the gates fly open at his command, the 
 city and its threatening citizens have vanished, as 
 in a dream, and Dante finds himself wandering 
 through a place of tombs, where lie the Heretics. 
 Hitherto we have seen sins of Passion allied to 
 those for which the pains of Purgatory have 
 cleansing power, but Heresy was the sin of 
 choosing evil instead of good, a denial of the 
 higher principle of life which could alone raise 
 man above his animal nature. Hence the City of 
 Dis, with the Heretics in burning tombs, is the 
 next halting-place before Malebolge, where we find 
 the blacker sins of malevolence, beginning in 
 violence, and ending in treachery and revolt against 
 authority. 
 
 Three scenes stand out in the more accursed 
 region to which we have now descended. 
 
 First, the sand waste, where — 
 
 " Were raining down dilated flake; of fire, 
 As of the snow on Alps without a wind."
 
 1 64 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 We see the "dance of miserable hands, shaking 
 from off them " these flakes of fire, and we see, too, 
 the mighty one, " who heeded not the fire, but lay 
 disdainful there, so that the rain seemed not to 
 ripen him." 
 
 Next, Malebolge, a lake of pitch divided into 
 circular rivers by concentric rings of stone cause- 
 ways, on which the pilgrims walked, following the 
 ring till they came to the bridge which led to the 
 next and smaller causeway. Here they watch, 
 with terrified sympathy, the tormented souls driven 
 under the boiling pitch by demons with tridents, 
 as busy at their task as Venetian workmen caulking 
 their vessels at the Arsenal. 
 
 In the centre of this stone spider's-web, woven 
 on the pitch lake, is the steep descent to the frozen 
 Lake of Cocytus, where Lucifer for ever devours 
 the traitors against God and the Empire. 
 
 Read Mr. Bryce's " Holy Roman Empire " to see 
 why Dante puts the betrayal of Christ and of Caesar 
 on an equal footing. Much of Dante's strongest 
 feeling is lost on us, unless we realize that to him 
 the Empire was as Divine as the Papacy, and that 
 each in its own sphere represented God's Authority. 
 Herein lies the force of that denunciation of Con- 
 stantine's marriage dower, which so pleased Virgil 
 that he caught Dante in his arms and bore him — 
 
 "Tenderly on the crag uneven and steep, 
 That would have been hard passage for the goats."
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 165 
 
 In this thought lies the sting of Sordello's dis- 
 appointment in " German Albert," 1 in this lies the 
 grandeur of Justinian's picture of the triumphs of 
 the Roman Eagle. 2 
 
 As Mr. Bryce should be read for a key to Dante's 
 politics, so should ^Eneid, vi., be read as a clue to 
 that large part of Dante's imagery which is a close 
 working out of Virgilian suggestions. 
 
 Dante is rich enough to borrow without danger 
 of showing poverty at home. His reproduction 
 of Virgil's scenery is so vivid that it shows wealth 
 of imagination, not the lack of it — his own eye for 
 country is sufficiently seen in such passages as 
 Guido del Duca's sketch of the Valley of the Arno, 
 and the description given to Guido da Montefeltro 
 of Romagna, beginning — 
 
 " Ravenna stands as it long years hath stood ; 
 The Eagle of Polenta there is brooding." 
 
 He makes us see and hear the picture that 
 intensifies the misery of Master Adam, the forger, 
 in his thirst — 
 
 " The rivulets, that from the verdant hills 
 Of Cassentin descend down into Arno, 
 Making their channel-courses cool and soft." 
 
 Just as his eye for Nature is so true and keen 
 that he has no need to fear comparison with 
 Virgil's scenery, so he is able to invent incidents 
 1 " Purgatorio," vi. * " Paradiso," vi.
 
 1 66 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 that hold their own with the most moving records he 
 transcribes from history. The story of Ulysses and 
 his last voyage (to which Tennyson owes so much) ; 
 of the old age of Guido da Montefeltro and the 
 logician fiend who snatched his soul from St. 
 Francis because of the one piece of evil counsel ; 
 the companion picture in the " Purgatorio " of the 
 son, Buonconte da Montefeltro, — so forsaken that 
 " Giovanna nor none other cared for him," but 
 whose soul was saved because " of one poor little 
 tear;" the biography of Statius with its delicate 
 homage to Virgil, who had lighted Statius to the 
 saving Faith he failed to attain himself; these and 
 many other such episodes show that Dante could 
 handle with equal skill things new and old. 
 
 In the " Inferno," time is measured by the moon, 
 the sun is never mentioned, and Dante's passion 
 for light only shows itself by his intense perception 
 of the " eternal shade." But on the first page of the 
 " Purgatorio " we breathe a new atmosphere — the 
 reader heaves a sigh of relief to find himself once 
 more, in the pure air that had " the sweet colour 
 of the Oriental sapphire," standing with Dante on 
 the seashore at the foot of the Delectable Mountain. 
 As Cato, the guardian of the mount, hears Virgil's 
 story, the dawn of Easter Sunday breaks — 
 
 " The dawn was vanquishing the matin hour 
 Which fled before it, so that from afar 
 I recognized the trembling of the sea."
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 167 
 
 The orange tints of sunrise overspread the sky 
 while Virgil, in obedience to Cato, girds Dante 
 with the rush of humility and cleanses his face 
 with morning dew from the stains of the Inferno, 
 i.e. from the recollection of evil that impairs the 
 clearness of vision which is the condition of seeing 
 God. With eyes thus "purged by euphrasy and 
 rue," x Dante saw approach the bark of the Celestial 
 Pilot, " who had a face like a Benediction." 2 More 
 than a hundred spirits sat within, chanting In 
 exitu Israel, the Psalm which Dante might have 
 heard at Beatrice's funeral. 
 
 With this mystic chant in his ears, of the exodus 
 from corruption to glorious liberty, Dante begins his 
 upward road ; but more earthly music soon caused 
 him to be " oblivious to go and make him fair." 
 Among the newly arrived is Casella, who, in old 
 student days in Florence, had set Dante's poems to 
 music, " that used to quiet in him all his longings," 
 and who now began to sing one of these same songs 
 so melodiously. Says Dante, " The melody within 
 me still is sounding." But the laggard souls who 
 stayed " attentive to the note " were upbraided by 
 Cato, with an inflexibility of judgment that showed 
 him to belong in heart to Minos and the relentless 
 rulers of that Inferno from which he had been set 
 free by " the Mighty One, with sign of Victory in- 
 coronate." The irresistible attraction for a poet, 
 1 Milton. 2 Don Quixote.
 
 1 68 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 of hearing his own verses sung in the Spirit-world, 
 would have been understood by the gentle warders 
 of the Purgatorio, beings — 
 
 " Vested in white, and in their countenance 
 Such as appears the tremulous morning star." 
 
 But the upward path is now resumed, and, on this 
 Easter Day, Dante meets with those who had 
 delayed repentance till the hour of death, and who 
 must now delay their entrance into Purgatory 
 proper. Among them are Manfred and Buonconte, 
 and Balacqua, the flute player of Florence, well 
 known to Dante and Casella, " lazier than if 
 Laziness were his sister." 
 
 These all tell their tales at length, unlike the 
 Troubadour Sordello, who reminds us of Saladin 
 sitting alone in the Castle of Human Wisdom — 
 
 " O Lombard soul, 
 How lofty and disdainful thou didst bear thee, 
 And grand and slow in moving of thine eyes 1 
 Nothing whatever did it say to us, 
 But let us go our way, eyeing us only 
 After the manner of a couchant lion." 
 
 Sordello is as imperiously heedless of Virgil's 
 words, as Farinata had been of Dante's, but the 
 name of " Mantua " rouses him to warm affection, 
 and to an outpouring of his own brooding grief 
 for Italian feuds, which is repaid by Virgil, who 
 breaks the silence of his usual proud patience to
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 169 
 
 describe his own sorrow. Only once had he 
 appealed for sympathy, when he spoke to Dante 
 of the mighty dead who had that desire for know- 
 ledge " which evermore is given them for a grief." 
 
 " I speak of Aristotle and Plato 
 And others many ; and here he bowed his head 
 And more he said not, and remained disturbed." 
 
 This was a momentary self-betrayal soon sup- 
 pressed, but to Sordello he describes at length his 
 lot in the place of sighs, where he — 
 
 "Dwells with the little innocents 
 Snatched by the teeth of Death, or ever they 
 Were from our human sinfulness exempt." 
 
 Nightfall comes on, and Sordello guides them to 
 the Valley of the Princes, — rulers who, owing to 
 the honourable occupation of governing their 
 kingdoms, gave too little heed to their own 
 spiritual condition. 
 
 The "herbage and the flowers within that 
 hollow " are painted with all the colours of Giotto's 
 pre-Raphaelite paint-box — 
 
 " Nor in that place had nature painted only, 
 But of the sweetness of a thousand odours 
 Made there a mingled fragrance and unknown." 
 
 Seated on the green and flowers, spirits were sing- 
 ing Salve Regitici) the compline hymn of exiles. 
 
 Among them was Rudolph the Emperor, with 
 the semblance " of having what he should have
 
 170 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 done neglected," and Harry of England, " monarch 
 of the simple life." 
 
 But the sweetest singer and the most devout, was 
 Judge Nino of Sardinia, kneeling (as Dante may 
 have often seen him in life), with hands devoutly 
 joined, as the Angelus bell sounded — 
 
 " At the hour that turneth back desire, 
 In those who sail the sea, and melts the heart, 
 The day they've said to their sweet friends farewell." 
 
 " Fixing his eyes upon the Orient, as if he said 
 to God, ' Naught else I care for,' " he sang the com- 
 pline hymn, Te lucis ante, so sweetly, that Dante's 
 Avhole soul was joined with his. Night falls on 
 this noble company, and Dante sleeps; awakened 
 by the twittering of the swallows, he finds that he 
 had been carried in his sleep up to the Gate of 
 Purgatory. Here he ascends the three steps, the 
 polished white marble of Self-knowledge, the black 
 granite of Confession, and the flaming porphyry of 
 the Blood of the Atonement. 
 
 The warder of the gate, with the golden key of 
 Authority, and the silver key of Discernment, 
 admitted Dante, tracing on his brow seven " P's," 
 emblematic of the seven Peccata, or sins, from 
 which he must be purged. 
 
 Thus, early on Easter Monday, Dante enters on 
 the first circle of Purgatory, where the Proud are 
 " purging away the smoke-stains of the world," 
 bent by such burdens —
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 171 
 
 " That he who had most patience in his looks, 
 Weeping did seem to say, ' I can no more.' " 
 
 As they passed by, the Lord's Prayer comes from 
 their lips, in a paraphrase where we seem to over- 
 hear the private prayers of Dante himself. It is 
 like the stern, sad wanderer, described in Fra 
 Ilario's letter, to render " Thy Kingdom come," 
 by the words — 
 
 " Come unto us the peace of Thy Dominion, 
 For unto it we cannot of ourselves, 
 If it come not, with all our intellect." 
 
 On the pathway beneath their feet are sculptured 
 scenes so life-like that we remember how Dante 
 may have been a fellow-student with Giotto in the 
 studio of Cimabue, and learnt there to appreciate 
 the art which could depict Gabriel so truthfully. 
 
 ■' There sculptured in a gracious attitude, 
 He did not seem an image that is silent. 
 One could have sworn that he was saying 'Ave.' " 
 
 Further on, the " image of Michal glimmered 
 white upon him," and then came the scene in 
 Trajan's life, of that deed of patient justice to the 
 widow, which earned him future salvation through 
 the prayers of Pope Gregory. In all these scenes 
 " dead seemed the dead, the living seemed alive." 
 
 Dante's artistic sympathies are also roused by 
 meeting Oderisi, " honour of that art which is in
 
 172 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 Paris called illuminating," with whom Dante talks 
 feelingly of the fickleness of literary fame. 
 
 The Angel who now meets them brushed Dante's 
 forehead with his pinion, erasing the P which stood 
 for Pride. Dante, in his new-born humility, is 
 unconscious of this, and wonders at the greater 
 easiness of the ascent. Virgil tells him that when 
 all his sins are purged away — 
 
 " His feet will be so vanquished by good will, 
 That not alone they shall not feel fatigue, 
 But urging up will be to them delight." 
 
 They now pass upwards to the Terrace of the 
 Envious, to whom Dante shows special courtesy, 
 perhaps because he is so free from all touch of 
 their failing that he pities from his heart those who 
 are labelled with a fault so odious to a proud 
 nature like his own. 
 
 These souls are sitting disconsolately with blind 
 eyes, in sackcloth coloured like the stone they sit 
 on. To Dante's courteous nature — 
 
 "It seemed in passing, to do outrage, 
 Seeing the others without being seen." 
 
 So he addresses them, with a deference he shows 
 to no one else, saying, "O people, certain of 
 beholding the full glory of that light which alone 
 you wish for." He asks if any Latian is among 
 them, but the souls have risen above the earthly 
 jealousies, so strong in Italy, to the thought of the
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 173 
 
 Heavenly Jerusalem, " the Rome where Christ is a 
 Roman," and he is answered — 
 
 " O brother mine, each one is citizen 
 Of the one true city." 
 
 Local feelings are not extinct, however, for in 
 the next canto (xiv.) Guido del Duca gives an 
 account of the Valley of the Arno and its inhabi- 
 tants, with a bitterness which makes Ampere call it 
 " a piece of topographical satire, of which I know 
 no other example." 
 
 Dante now ascends to the next terrace, while 
 " Blessed are the Merciful " was sung behind him. 
 Each terrace has one of the Beatitudes assigned 
 to it for a song of triumph when souls ascend to 
 the next stage, and compassion for misfortune is 
 chosen as the one cure for envy. 
 
 He now reaches the Terrace of Anger. Here, 
 and here only in Purgatory, he finds thick fog, for 
 to be conscious of anger is to be in Hell with all its 
 darkness. Dante must have felt that thick mist of 
 rage within him, when he wrote the previous canto 
 on the Arno ; and his letter to Henry VII. about 
 the sins of the Florentines, one long fierce invective, 
 was written about the same time, so he spoke from 
 experience. He kept close to Virgil (or human 
 wisdom) — 
 
 " E'en as a blind man goes behind his guide, 
 Lest he should wander, or should strike against
 
 174 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 Aught that may harm or perad venture kill him, 
 So I went through the bitter and foul air." 
 
 But he knows that the only true remedy is to be 
 found in the Agnus Dei, which is the prayer of 
 all around him. In this terrace, teaching is con- 
 veyed in visions instead of in sculpture, in order 
 to develop the contemplative side, deficient in the 
 wrathful. Among the scenes so revealed is a picture 
 of St. Stephen, " who of his eyes made ever gates to 
 Heaven," and " in the din of so great a battle " 
 implored the high Lord to pardon his foes. Virgil, 
 who knows the implacable rancour of a Florentine, 
 here, and here only, enforces the lesson — 
 
 11 What thou hast seen was that thou mayst not fail 
 To ope thy heart unto the waters of peace." 
 
 Then, to the music of " Beati Pacifici, who are 
 without ill-anger," Dante mounts to the Terrace of 
 Accidie, where — 
 
 "The love of good, remiss 
 In what it should have done, is here restored ; 
 Here plied again the ill-belated oar." 
 
 It is curious that no prayer is assigned to these 
 souls ; perhaps in their slothful lives they had lost 
 the faculty of prayer. As usual they are urged on 
 by alternate Biblical and Classical examples. The 
 souls who run round this terrace are urged to haste 
 by hearing of Mary hastening to Hebron, and of 
 Caesar hastening to conquer Spain, while their
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 175 
 
 upward course is cheered by the Beatitude, 
 " Blessed are they that mourn, for their souls 
 shall be Queens of Consolation." " The essence of 
 Accidie is a shrinking from effort. He who accepts 
 that pain, shall have a soul, mistress of every 
 true element of consolation." x In the next circle 
 of avarice, Dante finds Pope Adrian V., whose 
 noble nature had learnt through success the lesson 
 of humility, which a smaller nature would have 
 found only in humiliation. Elevation to the highest 
 earthly dignities opened his eyes to his own meaner 
 nature, and made him realize that his " eye did not 
 uplift itself aloft, being fastened upon earthly things." 
 Hugh Capet then gives so long a history of the 
 future sins of his descendants, that Benvenuto, the 
 early commentator on Dante, says at the end, " And 
 there really was not time for talking any more in 
 this twentieth canto, which contains in itself so many 
 noble histories, fictions, and opinions." The talk 
 is interrupted by an earthquake, which is the thrill 
 of joy felt by the whole mountain when any soul 
 ascends to a higher terrace. Statius, the poet, was 
 the cause in this instance, and he joins Dante and 
 Virgil, in like manner, " that Christ appeared to 
 two upon the way." He tells how the ^Eneid had 
 been his "nurse in song," and says that, to see 
 Virgil, he would accept an added year of Purgatory. 
 Virgil turned to Dante, " with looks that in their 
 1 Plumptre.
 
 176 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 silence said, Be silent ! ' " Dante smiled, and 
 Statius gazed "into his eyes, where most expres- 
 sion dwells," saying — 
 
 u Why did thy face just now 
 Display to me the lightning of a smile ? " 
 
 The talk that follows, when Dante makes his 
 favourite writers known to each other, expresses the 
 most delicate hero-worship ever conceived. Virgil 
 marvels that Statius, a heathen, should be bound 
 for Paradise instead of Limbo, and Statius replies 
 to him, " Through thee I poet was, through thee a 
 Christian." Dante gives an ideal biography of 
 Statius, without authority, and describes what he 
 thinks must have been the effect of the Virgilian 
 prophecy in the Fourth Eclogue, putting his own 
 reverence for Virgil into the mouth of Statius. 
 When the latter asks for news of his heathen friends, 
 Virgil describes those dwelling in Limbo, " among 
 whom some of thine own people may be seen." 
 It must have been sweet to Statius to hear his own 
 poems quoted by his master, and they walked on, 
 deep in talk that gave Dante " lessons in the art of 
 song." 
 
 Now comes the Terrace of Gluttony, where Dante 
 finds his brother-in-law, Forese Donati, who says he 
 is thus far advanced in Purgatory because — 
 
 " My Nella, with her overflowing tears, 
 She with her prayers devout and with her sighs 
 Has from the other circles set me free."
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 177 
 
 The next soul they meet salutes Dante as author 
 of the canzone, " Ladies, that have intelligence of 
 Love." As Dante quotes it elsewhere, we may 
 conclude it was his own favourite, and that it was 
 dear to his soul, even though purged of pride, to 
 find it thus loved in the spirit world. 
 
 Then comes the guiding voice of the Angel of 
 Abstinence, "This way goes he who goeth after 
 peace." A fresh breeze here symbolizes the " clear 
 brightness and sweetness of the temperate life " — 
 
 " And as, the harbinger of early dawn, 
 The air of May doth move and breathe out fragrance, 
 Impregnate all with herbage and with flowers, 
 So did I feel a breeze strike in the midst 
 My front, and felt the moving of the plumes 
 That breathed around an odour of ambrosia." 
 
 The heavenly choir now sing, from the Vulgate, 
 the Beatitude, " Blessed are they which hunger and 
 thirst righteously," i.e. whose higher nature rules 
 their lower one. 
 
 Now comes the last terrace, where Impurity is 
 cleansed by a fire so fierce that Dante's shadow, 
 falling on it, makes the flame appear more red, a 
 description of fire which Ruskin says is the finest 
 known. 
 
 Then comes one of the many passages of the 
 " Purgatorio " that make the tenderness of Dante 
 transfuse all his sternness. Virgil cannot induce his 
 
 N
 
 178 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 pupil to brave the flames which are necessary to fit 
 him for Paradise, until he says — 
 
 "Now look thou, Son, 
 'Twixt Beatrice and thee there is this wall." 
 
 Dante turned to his " wise Guide, who smiled 
 as one doth at a child who's vanquished by an 
 apple." Twice before had Virgil smiled — when the 
 four great Poets had adopted Dante as one of 
 themselves, and when Dante was purged from his 
 besetting sin of pride. He smiles now with the 
 generous sweetness of a noble nature at seeing how 
 much stronger than his own was another's influence 
 over this "Son," to whom he had so devoted 
 himself. He was to smile once more with the 
 same self-forgetful sweetness in hearing Matilda 
 describe the joys that were not destined to be 
 his. 
 The flames were hotter than molten glass — 
 
 "But my sweet Father, to encourage me, 
 Discoursing still of Beatrice, went on, 
 Saying, ' Her eyes I seem to see already ! ' " 
 
 When they attain the next and final staircase, night 
 falls, and they rest on the stairs, a companion 
 picture to the twilight scene in the Valley of the 
 Princes. As goats upon the mountains, hushed 
 in the shadow while the sun is hot, are watched 
 
 i •« Purgatorio," xxviii. 146.
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 179 
 
 by the herdsman, who upon his staff is leaning, 
 and in leaning tendeth them — 
 
 " Such at that hour were we, all three of us, 
 I like the goat, and like the herdsmen they, 
 Begirt on this side and on that by rocks, 
 Little could there be seen of things without ; 
 But through that little I beheld the stars, 
 More luminous and larger than their wont." 
 
 Watching his beloved stars, sleep seized upon him, 
 and he dreamt of Leah plucking a garland to 
 adorn herself, and of Rachel gazing in her mirror, 
 — types, says Ruskin, " of unglorified (because self- 
 ending) Action and Contemplation. Matilda and 
 Beatrice are the same temperaments glorified, 
 because centred in God." 
 
 The dream fled as Easter Wednesday dawned, 
 the day on which "rejoicing came the beauteous 
 eyes," " whose weeping had brought Virgil unto 
 him." 
 
 Dante has now been purged from the Seven Sins, 
 and Virgil knows that his work is done, that Dante's 
 nature is now cleansed and healed, and needs only 
 to be spiritualized by the Beatific Vision. This 
 higher life cannot be shared by Virgil ; he belongs 
 to the noble company of " friends of the bride- 
 groom," to Jonathan and John the Baptist, and 
 many another finely tempered soul, which has 
 learnt to rejoice in seeing another fill their own niche 
 in life. Dante has been as Virgil's own child
 
 180 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 throughout the journey; it was the touch of his 
 hand which alone nerved Dante to enter the 
 infernal regions. When the demons of Malebolge 
 threatened, we read — 
 
 •* My Leader on a sudden seized me up. 
 Even as a mother who by noise is wakened, 
 And close beside her sees the enkindled flames, 
 Who takes her son, and flies, and does not stop, 
 Having more care of him than of herself, 
 So that she clothes her only with a shift. 
 So did my Master down along that border, 
 Bearing me with him on his breast away, 
 As his own son, and not as a companion." 
 
 Virgil reads Dante's inmost thoughts so instan- 
 taneously that he says — 
 
 " Were I a mirror, 
 Thine outward image I should not attract, 
 Sooner to me than I imprint the inner." 
 
 " Well knew he," says Dante, later on, " what the 
 mute one wished to say ; " and half-regretfully, 
 at the beginning of their friendship, Dante had 
 exclaimed — 
 
 " Ah me 1 how very cautious men should be 
 With those who not alone behold the act, 
 But with their wisdom look into their thoughts." 
 
 But his love is stern as a cleansing fire, when Dante 
 listens to the quarrel between Master Adam and 
 Sinon, he is roused by a look and tone from Virgil 
 that made him turn away —
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 181 
 
 " With such shame 
 That still it eddies through his memory." 
 
 His speechless shame so touched his Master that 
 he is forgiven : " Less shame doth wash away a 
 greater fault." 
 
 " But make account that I am aye beside thee, 
 If e'er it come to pass that fortune bring thee 
 Where there are people in a like dispute ; 
 For a base wish it is to wish to hear it." 
 
 He comforts Dante in his many terrors, so that 
 he turns to him with that reliance — 
 
 " With which the little child runs to his mother, 
 When he has fear, or when he is in grief." 
 
 But he ever rouses him to more strenuous effort — 
 
 '• Think that this day will never dawn again. 
 The heavens are calling you, and wheel around you, 
 Displaying to you their eternal beauties 
 And still your eye is looking on the ground." 
 
 When Dante listens complacently to the interest 
 expressed in him by passing souls, the Master's 
 stern voice breaks in — 
 
 " Come after me, and let the people talk ; 
 Stand like a steadfast tower, that never wags 
 Its summit for the blowing of the winds." 
 
 Dante is instantly — 
 
 " With that colour tinged 
 Which makes a man of pardon sometimes worthy,"
 
 1 82 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 For if Virgil is a perfect master, Dante is a perfect 
 pupil. We see him eager to learn, prompt to 
 respond to his master's every look and tone. We 
 see him, with " his head bowed as one who goeth 
 reverently," in his conversation with Brunetto 
 Latini, his old tutor, who must have had high 
 hopes of him as a boy, for he says — 
 
 " If thou thy star do follow, 
 Thou canst not fail thee of a glorious port, 
 If well I judged in the life beautiful." 
 
 Dante tells Brunetto that he bears in his heart — 
 
 " The dear and good paternal image 
 Of you, when in the world from hour to hour 
 You taught me how a man becomes eternal." 
 
 Few lesson-books have been so canonized by 
 grateful pupils as was the one written by Brunetto, 
 whose last words are those of an author. " Com- 
 mended unto thee be my Tesoro." We can 
 fancy Brunetto's pleasure in his pupil when we 
 watched the eager thirst for learning Dante shows 
 in his talks with Virgil. Dante's whole nature 
 grows and deepens as the poem proceeds, and the 
 credit is all given to his " lofty Teacher." He is too 
 reverent to praise him directly, but we can see his 
 own feelings in the awestruck homage of Sordello 
 and Statius, and we should note the beauty and 
 delicacy of his implied farewell, when Virgil fades 
 away before Beatrice, as the morning star before 
 the sun.
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 183 
 
 All the songs of the angelic choir are from the 
 Psalms or the Church Service, except at the 
 moment of Virgil's departure. Then a line from 
 the iEneid bursts from "the ministers and mes- 
 sengers of life eternal" in the act of scattering 
 flowers to greet the Queen of Heaven. " Bring 
 lilies here, in handfuls bring." 
 
 Virgil vanishes just as Beatrice is about to 
 appear. The last words he hears of the heavenly 
 song, are his own words of sorrow for Marcellus, 
 in the use of which Dante scatters flowers over 
 the grave which is to separate himself and Virgil. 
 Virgil's last spoken words are the blessing he 
 pronounces on Dante when the seven circles have 
 been surmounted — 
 
 ; ' Free and upright and sound is thy free will, 
 An error were it not to do its bidding : 
 So, crowned and mitred, o'er thyself rule thou." 
 
 Dante is now ready for the Terrestrial Paradise, 
 whose forest is a reminiscence of the Pineta at 
 Ravenna, where the little birds upon the pines, sing- 
 ing their matin song with holy exultation, receive 
 the first breezes of the day in the midst of leaves 
 " that ever bore a burden to their rhymes." Through 
 this ancient forest of the Garden of Eden sweeps 
 the mystical pageant of Christ and His Church, 
 beside the river of Lethe. An advance guard of 
 the seven Spirits of God flame as a torch, and 
 paint the air as they pass, leaving a rainbow of
 
 1 84 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 sevenfold colour to mark their track. Then came 
 the four-and-twenty elders, "incoronate with fleur 
 de luce," figuring the books of the Old Testament : 
 then came the four living creatures of Ezekiel, 
 the Evangelists, and then the Car of the Church 
 drawn by Christ, typified by the Gryfon, with its 
 double nature of eagle and lion. On the left hand 
 of the car dance the four maidens, vested in 
 purple, who represent Prudence, Justice, Tem- 
 perance, and Fortitude — the "four consecrated" 
 stars by which Dante had steered his course, till he 
 came to the Mount of Purgatory and was guided 
 by the influence of the three maidens dancing 
 on the right hand of the Car — Faith, Hope, and 
 Charity, the theological virtues. 
 
 Behind the car came St. Luke, the beloved 
 Physician, and St. Paul the Persecutor, with a 
 shining sword. Then come the four writers of the 
 remaining Epistles, " of humble aspect," " and, 
 behind all, an aged man alone," St. John of the 
 Apocalypse, " walking in sleep with countenance 
 acute." These last seven writers burnt more with 
 love than those of the Old Testament, so, in place 
 of fleur de luce, their brows were bound with 
 roses, till, 
 
 " At little distance would the sight have sworn 
 That all were in a flame above their brows." 
 
 Having described the procession of the sacred 
 writers, who surrounded the Car of the Church,
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 185 
 
 Dante now tells us of Divine Wisdom, typified 
 by the lady " vested in colour of the living 
 flame." It was forty years since he had seen 
 Beatrice as a little girl in the crimson dress : it 
 was twenty-four years since she had died, and he 
 had resolved "to speak no more of that Blessed 
 One until he could more worthily treat of her." His 
 hope then was " to say of her what was never said of 
 any other woman," and that time was now come. 
 
 " From the first day that he beheld her face in 
 this world, to the moment of her divinest smile 
 in Paradise, the sequence of his life was never 
 severed," 1 and he was now to describe her increasing 
 beauty in sphere after sphere of Paradise, until she 
 leaves him to sit on her eternal throne beside 
 Rachel and Lucia. In Virgil he had found the 
 perfect friend " who seeth and uprightly wills and 
 loves;" he was now to pass into the keeping of 
 " the Lady fair who made him strong for Heaven," 
 and " from a slave should bring him into freedom." 
 
 Dante is borne upwards with a swiftness at 
 which he marvels, till Beatrice — 
 
 " After a pitying sigh, 
 Her eyes directed towards me with that look 
 A mother casts on a delirious child," 
 
 and with a "few brief words, more smiled than 
 
 spoken," told him that, now he is purified from sin, 
 
 it would be as great a marvel were he not so to 
 
 1 Plumptre.
 
 1 86 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 rise " as if on earth the living fire were quiet." It 
 is natural for the child of God to ascend in heart 
 and mind : the marvel to Beatrice is that men are 
 so often like Mammon, " with looks downwards 
 bent " ! x 
 
 In this first Heaven, that of the Moon, Dante 
 finds those whose perfection had been marred by 
 weakness of will. His scientific mind is exercised 
 by the question of lunar spots, and Beatrice sets his 
 doubts at rest by a long discourse which is chiefly 
 interesting to us for the light it throws on Dante's 
 mind. Here, as in Statius' discourse on embryology 
 in Purg. xxv., we see Dante fascinated by the new 
 theory of his day. Roger Bacon was the only 
 other physicist of the time who held the theory 
 Dante assigns to Beatrice, so that we probably find 
 here a personal remembrance of the great English- 
 man, who had been Dante's friend in his student 
 days at Paris. 
 
 In the heaven of the Moon Dante is encompassed 
 by a luminous cloud. 
 
 " Into itself did the eternal pearl 
 
 Receive us, even as water doth receive 
 A ray of light." 
 
 In these crystalline depths was a vision of fair 
 faces, " seen faintly as a pearl on forehead white." 
 He speaks to one of these spirits, who, " with laugh- 
 ing eyes," bids him recognize in her, Piccarda, his 
 1 "Paradise Lost."
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 187 
 
 wife's sister. He courteously excuses his non- 
 recognition of her, saying — 
 
 "In your miraculous aspects 
 There shines I know not what of the Divine, 
 Therefore I was not swift in my remembrance." 
 
 He asks her if her happiness is disturbed by wishes 
 for a higher place — whether she and her fellows are 
 disquieted by any wish to drink more deeply of the 
 two great sources in the joy of Paradise, the Beatific 
 Vision and the Communion of Saints. 
 
 " ' But tell me, ye who in this place are happy, 
 Are you desirous of a higher place, 
 To see more or to make yourselves more friends ? ' 
 First with those other shades she smiled a little ; 
 Thereafter answered me so full of gladnes?, 
 She seemed to burn in the first fire of love : 
 ' Brother, our will is quieted by virtue 
 Of charity, that makes us wish alone 
 For what we have, nor gives us thirst for more. 
 If to be more exalted we aspired, 
 Discordant would our aspirations be 
 Unto the will of Him who here secludes us ; 
 . . . 'Tis essential to this blest existence 
 To keep itself within the will Divine, 
 Whereby our very wishes are made one ; 
 So that our station to all the realm is pleasing, 
 As to the King, who makes His will our will, 
 And His will is our peace.' " 
 
 She tells him how, when a Poor Clare, she was 
 torn from the sweet cloister by her brothers : "'God 
 knows what afterwards my life became.' "
 
 1 88 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 " The outline is left to be filled up. Remorse, 
 endurance, asceticism, prayers to depart may all be 
 included in these words, as full of meaning as the 
 story of La Pia, in Purg. v. 133." x 
 
 Beside Piccarda is Constance, mother of 
 Frederick II., who was "to the world returned 
 against her wishes," though " of the heart's veil she 
 never was divested." 
 
 It seems hard to Dante that these fair souls 
 should suffer through the wrong of others, but 
 Beatrice explains that they should have returned 
 as soon as they were free, "for will is never 
 quenched unless it will." She believes, with 
 Bunyan's Mr. Honest, that " a Christian can never 
 be overcome, unless he should yield himself," and 
 she laments that " a solid will is all too rare." 
 
 They now enter the Second Heaven of 
 Mercury. 
 
 " The little planet which adorns itself 
 With the good spirits that have active been, 
 That fame and honour might come after them." 
 
 Here dwell the great lawgivers, a characteristic 
 part of whose joy is to measure their wages by their 
 desert, and to admire the just proportions of the 
 Divine Law. 
 
 Here Justinian unrolls before Dante a picture of 
 the course of the Roman eagle, symbol of that 
 empire which was, to Dante, God manifest in the 
 1 Plumptre.
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 189 
 
 world ; and Beatrice, " lighting him with a smile such 
 as would make one happy in the fire," treats of the 
 doctrine of the Atonement in one of those passages 
 which show Dante as fulfilling Westcott's definition 
 of a perfect theologian : " a perfect scholar, a perfect 
 physicist, and a perfect philosopher." 
 
 In the Heaven of Venus he is greeted by a line 
 of the canzone in which he himself, in his youthful 
 days at Florence, sang the praises of the angels 
 who move in this Third Heaven. 
 
 Perhaps the line was suggested to the celestial 
 choir by the friend of his youth who now speaks to 
 him. This is Charles Martel, who had made friends 
 with Dante — some ten years his senior — when 
 he stayed at Florence as a boy of twenty- two. 
 Dante may have seen in this heir to Provence, 
 Naples, Hungary, and Sicily, the Righteous Ruler 
 whom he afterwards sought in Henry VII.; but 
 Charles died in the following year, and Dante's 
 next sight of him must have been here in Paradise, 
 "rayed round and hidden by his own gladness, 
 like a silk worm swathed in its own silk." 
 
 The Heaven of Venus has many reminders of 
 past days in Florence, for close to Charles stands 
 Cunizza, who loved Sordello, married the astrologer 
 of her brother Ezzelin, and ended her days in 
 Florence as a devout and gracious lady, retaining 
 her dazzling beauty even in old age. She made 
 her will in the house of Guido Cavalcanti's father,
 
 190 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 the year Dante was born, so that Guido, then a 
 boy of sixteen, may have told Dante of her pious 
 and charitable old age. 
 
 In the Heaven of the Sun Dante sees "Lights 
 many, vivid and triumphant." These are the souls 
 of theologians, among whom is pre-eminent 
 Thomas Aquinas the most learned of saints and 
 the most holy of learned men. He is the patron 
 saint of teachers ; and well he may be, for he 
 always sought for light in his studies by prayer, 
 and said that he learnt more in prayer at the foot 
 of his crucifix than from any book. His " Summa 
 Theological " was intended to collect the writing of 
 the Fathers and doctors of the Church, during the 
 preceding twelve centuries, and to build them up 
 in one great body of Christian doctrine. This great 
 work, so carefully studied by Dante, was the only 
 book of reference, except the Bible, used at the 
 Council of Trent ; and when St. Thomas was 
 canonized by Pope John XXII. and it was objected 
 that he had worked few miracles during his life, 
 the Pope replied, that every article of the " Summa " 
 was in itself a miracle. His vast learning was 
 only equalled by his humility. Once when a 
 student at Paris, he was reading aloud in the 
 refectory. The superior corrected him wrongly ; 
 and, with great humility, he adopted the false 
 quantity. On the other brothers expressing sur- 
 prise afterwards, he said, " It matters little how a
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 191 
 
 word is pronounced, but much to practise humility 
 and obedience." 
 
 We no longer read the "Summa," but St. 
 Thomas's prayers still express our needs : " May 
 all labour delight me which is for Thee, and all 
 rest be weariness which is not in Thee." " Grant 
 me diligence in study, quickness of apprehension, 
 and power to retain what I learn." " Grant that I 
 may never desire to do what is unwise, and that 
 I may never be discouraged in what is distasteful ; 
 that I may never begin my works before the proper 
 time, nor abandon them before they are com- 
 pleted. Amen." 
 
 Dante must have been in full sympathy with St. 
 Thomas, who used to pray, " Give me, O Lord, a 
 noble heart which no earthly affection can drag 
 down ; " and we can imagine his pleasure when his 
 master introduced him to the great teachers of the 
 schools, Albertus Magnus, " the Universal Doctor ; " 
 Peter Lombard, " Master of Sentences ; " Gratian, 
 the monk of St. Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna, 
 who is still an authority on Canon Law. With 
 these, was Boethius, who "from martyrdom and 
 banishment came unto this peace," and whose 
 "Consolations of Philosophy" had helped strengthen 
 Dante when Beatrice died. St. Thomas tells the 
 story of St. Francis of Assisi, and his friend St. 
 Bonaventura tells the story of St. Dominic, "the 
 zealous lover of the Christian Faith, the athlete
 
 192 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 consecrate," who " went about that vineyard, which 
 fadeth soon if faithless be the dresser." 
 
 In the fifth Heaven of Mars, the flames, in which 
 dwell souls of Crusaders, form a Greek cross, and 
 the lights shoot from arm to arm of the cross — 
 
 " As through the pure and tranquil evening air 
 There shoots from time to time a sudden fire, 
 And seems to be a star that changeth place." 
 
 One of these stars ran to the cross's foot, and, 
 greeting Dante in words of antique sound, proved 
 to be his ancestor Cacciaguida, who " came from 
 martydom unto this peace." Beatrice, who knows 
 every thought of Dante's heart, and, " saw his silent- 
 ness in the light of Him who seeth everything," 
 knows well his pride in "the poor nobility of 
 blood " and sympathizes with it ; for when Dante 
 turned to her for leave to speak, he saw burning 
 in her eyes such a smile — 
 
 " That with mine own methought I touched the bottom, 
 Both of my grace and of my Paradise ! " 
 
 Then follows a long tale, in which Dante listens 
 with delight to accounts of old days in Florence 
 and of his own ancestry and their dwelling-place. 
 His belief in heredity often appears in the poem, 
 so that we may feel this talk solved for him some 
 of the problems of his own life, besides gratifying 
 that pride of birth to which he reads a lesson on 
 noblesse oblige and the duty of maintaining family 
 traditions —
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 193 
 
 " O thou, our poor nobility of blood, 
 Truly thou art a cloak that quickly shortens, 
 So that, unless we piece thee day by day, 
 Time goeth round thee with his shears ! " 
 
 Cacciaguida foretells to Dante the banishment 
 awaiting him : — 
 
 " Thou shalt abandon everything beloved 
 Most tenderly, 
 
 Thou shalt have proof how savoureth of salt 
 The bread of others, and how hard a road 
 The going down and up another's stairs." 
 
 In times past, Virgil had exhorted Dante to — 
 
 " Stand like a stedfast tower, that never wags 
 Its summit for the blowing of the winds." 
 
 He has learnt the lesson now, and, as he says, can 
 " stand foursquare against the blows of chance ; " 
 but he shrinks from the thought of faithfully 
 reporting, to the great ones upon earth, the adverse 
 judgments pronounced against so many of them in 
 the courts of Heaven. 
 
 Cacciaguida tells him it is no slight argument of 
 honour to be chosen " to smite, as doth the wind, 
 the most exalted summits ; " and " the lady who to 
 God was leading him," reminds him that " He who 
 lightens every wrong is at her side." 
 
 " Unto the loving accents of my comfort I 
 turned me, and her fair face conquered me with 
 the radiance of a smile, so that my heart from 
 every baser longing was released." His courage 
 
 o
 
 194 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 was further heightened by a vision of heroes, 
 whose souls " flashed athwart the Cross," Joshua 
 the great Maccabee, Charlemagne, Duke Godfrey, 
 Robert Guisoard, — a sight so dear to Beatrice that 
 I beheld her eyes — 
 
 " So full of pleasure, that her countenance 
 Surpassed its other and its latest wont." 
 
 In the sixth Heaven of Jupiter, the home of Justice, 
 the souls, " like birds uprisen from the shore, made 
 squadrons of themselves," and, forming with their 
 flames the words " Diligite justitiam qui judicatis 
 terram," remained in the m of the last word, so 
 arranged that " Jupiter seemed to be silver there 
 inlaid with gold." As Dante gazed on the illumina- 
 tion the m changed shape, and he beheld the head 
 of an eagle " delineated by that inlaid fire." 
 
 Dante turns to this incarnation of Justice to solve 
 the doubt, " which was in him so very old a fast." 
 
 The doubt is, How can it be consistent with justice 
 that a virtuous heathen should be condemned? 
 The eagle convinces him that the Divine judgments 
 are far above out of his sight, so that he lifted 
 grateful eyes to his teacher, even as when above — 
 
 " The nest goes circling round 
 The stork when she has fed her little ones, 
 And he who has been fed looks up at her." 
 
 This answer is enforced when he is shown the 
 chief rulers who form the eagle's head, for not only
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 195 
 
 does he see David, Hezekiah, and Constantine, but 
 two heathens, Trajan the Emperor, and Ripheus, 
 noted by Virgil as the most just among the Trojans 
 and most obedient to the right. Trajan, when 
 recalled to life for a brief hour by Pope Gregory's 
 prayer, kindled to such fire of love that, at its close, 
 " in His unerring sight Who measures life by love," ' 
 he was thought worthy of the joy of Paradise. 
 Ripheus set all his love below on righteousness, 
 wherefore God " revealed to him redemption yet to 
 be, and Faith, Hope, and Charity, — 
 
 " Those Maidens three, whom at the right-hand wheel 
 Thou didst behold, were unto him for baptism 
 More than a thousand years before baptizing." 
 
 This revelation of the mercy of God put Dante 
 yet more in tune with the heavenly choir, who sang 
 " that whatsoever God wills we also will." 
 
 He was now uplifted to the " seventh splendour," 
 Saturn, the Heaven of Contemplation, where he saw 
 the symbol of the contemplative life, the mystic 
 ladder " coloured like gold on which the sunshine 
 gleams," where angels descend and prayers 
 ascend. Here the corruption of the Church is 
 denounced by St. Benedict and by St. Peter 
 Damiano, monk of Sta. Maria in Porto Fuori at 
 Ravenna, where Dante wrote these cantos. 
 
 Dante now rises to the Heaven of the Fixed 
 1 Keble.
 
 196 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 Stars, and sees Beatrice, erect and vigilant, with 
 expectant gaze. 
 
 " Even as a bird, 'mid the beloved leaves, 
 Quiet upon the nest of her sweet brood 
 Throughout the night, that hideth all things from us, 
 "Who, that she may behold their longed-for looks, 
 And find the food wherewith to nourish them, 
 In which, to her, grave labours grateful are, 
 Anticipates the time on open spray, 
 And with an ardent longing waits the sun, 
 Gazing intent as soon as breaks the dawn." 
 
 Then came the vision of Christ's triumphal 
 march, and Beatrice prays the "company elect 
 to the great supper of the Lamb benedight," to 
 satisfy Dante's "immense desire" for knowledge. 
 At this there " issues forth a fire so happy that 
 none it left there of a greater brightness ; " for 
 joy in Paradise is shown by greater light, even as, 
 on earth, by smiles. This happy soul is St. Peter, 
 who subjects Dante to an examination on Faith, 
 which must have reminded him of baccalaureate 
 days in Paris and Oxford. He acquitted himself 
 so well that "the Baron," St. Peter, gave him a 
 triple benediction. This crowning honour in 
 Paradise recalled to him the earthly honour which 
 he was to crave in vain, the laurel crown of his 
 " fair sheepfold," Florence. The hope flashes across 
 his mind that perhaps the poem — 
 
 •' To which both heaven and earth have set their hand, 
 So that it many a year hath made me lean,"
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 197 
 
 may win him entrance to that city which is as 
 near his heart as it was in the " Inferno," though 
 less often on his tongue. 
 
 Then comes St. James to examine Dante on 
 Hope, and — 
 
 " In the same way as, when a dove alights 
 Near his companion, both of them pour forth, 
 Circling about and murmuring, their affection, 
 So one beheld I by the other grand 
 Prince glorified to be with welcome greeted." 
 
 St. James says that what — 
 
 " Comes hither from the mortal world, 
 Must needs be ripened in our radiance ;" 
 
 and surely Dante has been so ripened, for it must 
 have needed all the light and hope, with which 
 every line of the " Paradiso " is instinct, to teach 
 such a nature as Dante's that Hope is the chief 
 mark " of all the souls whom God hath made His 
 friends." 
 
 Dante was by nature one of those who most 
 often sojourn in the "melancholy inn" of Jacob 
 Bohme ; but Beatrice, who knows him through and 
 through, answers for him unhesitatingly, that the 
 " Church Militant possesses no child more full of 
 hope : " he had surely learnt it " close at her side, 
 and in the Happy World." 
 
 St. John now questions him on love, and Adam 
 tells him of the life in Eden, the primeval soul
 
 1 98 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 being " so jubilant to give him pleasure " that it 
 thrilled through its covering of light, even as a cat's 
 vibrations of pleasure are seen under the wrappage 
 of its fur. Dante now ascends to the Primum 
 Mobile, the sphere which surrounded all the others 
 and set them all in motion. As he passes upward 
 he looks to the homeward "great vision of the 
 guarded mount " and the mad track of Ulysses ; but 
 the vision of the world was as nothing compared 
 to the divine delight of gazing on Beatrice, who 
 " imparadised his mind " and — 
 
 " Smiled so joyously, 
 That God's own joy seemed in her face to dwell." 
 
 She satisfies his curiosity about the angels with an 
 answer which was clearer to him than to us; for 
 as the west wind drives away the clouds — 
 
 " Till the welkin laughs 
 With all the beauties of its pageantry ; 
 Thus did I likewise, after that my Lady 
 Had me provided with her clear response, 
 And like a star in heaven the truth was seen." 
 
 They now ascend to the Empyrean, the highest 
 Heaven, the motionless home of God Himself, 
 " The Love which quieteth this Heaven." His 
 Lady's beauty has increased at every nearer 
 approach to the presence of God, and now — 
 
 " If what has hitherto been said of her 
 Were all concluded in a single praise 
 Scant would it be to serve the present turn."
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 199 
 
 Dante's mind lost all power at the mere " memory 
 of that sweet smile," when with " voice and gesture 
 of a perfect leader," she told him of the vision he was 
 about to behold of the hosts of Paradise, clothed in 
 those bodies which would not be theirs till the 
 Judgment Day. In the Theologian's Heaven Dante 
 had been troubled by doubts as to whether even 
 the resurrection body could bear the radiance of 
 the light of Heaven. The saints had reassured 
 him, saying — 
 
 " ' So great a splendour cannot weary us, 
 For strong will be the organs of the body 
 To everything which hath the power to please us.' 
 So sudden and alert appeared to me 
 Both one and the other choir to say Amen, 
 That well they showed desire for their dead bodies ; 
 Nor sole for them perhaps, but for the mothers, 
 The fathers, and the rest who had been dear 
 Or ever they became eternal flames." 
 
 Dante's first vision in the Empyrean was of the 
 River of the Grace of God. Its banks were rich 
 with all the flowers of spring, the souls of saints. 
 
 " Out of this river issued living sparks, 
 And on all sides sank down into the flowers, 
 Like unto rubies that are set in gold," — 
 
 these topaz and ruby sparks being the angels in 
 ministry of joy and fellowship. 
 
 As he gazes, the vision changes into a mystic 
 Rose miiTored in that divine river as a hill mirrors
 
 200 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 its flowers and " laughing herbage " in the lake at 
 its foot. 
 
 Beatrice bids him note " how vast the convent 
 of the white stoles," and how a throne is waiting 
 for the noble Henry who should try in vain to 
 redress the wrongs of Italy. Her last words are 
 a cry for vengeance on Clement V., the Pope whose 
 double dealing had frustrated Henry's hopes of 
 regenerating the world. 
 
 It is a shock to us that her last words should 
 be political, not spiritual : but to Dante politics 
 were the building of the City of God on earth, and 
 it may well have harmonized, in his mind, that 
 the last words of her who was his inspiration 
 all through life, should be concerned with the 
 hero round whom his latest hopes turned, the 
 Emperor whom he had believed to be the one 
 who should have redeemed God's Israel. 
 
 Beatrice returns to her own place, and as Dante 
 prays her still to help his soul which she has healed, 
 she, so far away, — 
 
 " Smiled, as it seemed, and looked once more at me ; 
 Then unto the eternal fountain turned." 
 
 But St. Bernard was now to guide Dante to 
 still higher love. "As Aquinas mastered men's 
 intellects, so Bernard of Clairvaux mastered their 
 hearts," and he used his power to spread devotion 
 to the Queen of Heaven. Dean Plumptre, in his
 
 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 201 
 
 notes on Dante, to which I am so much indebted, 
 attributes much of the honour paid to her by the 
 hymns, paintings, and lady-chapels of the twelfth, 
 thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, to the influence 
 of St. Bernard's sermons. 
 
 Dante, who had " been made strong for Heaven " 
 by the smile of Beatrice, now finally and indelibly 
 learns the lesson she and Virgil had so laboured 
 to teach him ; he learns it in the smile of the 
 Blessed Virgin, " which makes glad with fullest 
 joy the eyes of all the other saints in Paradise : " 
 he learns that — 
 
 " Before that Light one grows to such content 
 That to turn back from it to aught beside 
 The soul can never possibly consent." 
 
 POETS. 
 
 Chaucer's Prologue. 
 
 Shakspeare's Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Julius Caesar, King 
 
 John, Henry V., Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing. 
 Spenser's Faery Queen. 
 George Herbert. 
 Henry Vaughan. 
 Milton. 
 
 Pope's Essay on Man. 
 Gray. 
 Goldsmith.
 
 202 THE DIVINE COMEDY. 
 
 Cowper. 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 Scott. 
 
 Byron's "Childe Harold." 
 
 Mrs. Hemans. 
 
 " Dream of Gerontius." 
 
 Tennyson. Js. 6d. 
 
 Selections from Robert Browning and Mrs. Browning. 
 
 Trench, 'js. 6d. 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 7j. 6d. 
 
 Clough. Js. 6d. 
 
 Legendary Ballads of Scotland and England. 
 
 Palgrave's Golden Treasury. 
 
 „ Treasury of Sacred Poetry. 4s. 6d. 
 Dante, translated by Longfellow (or Plumptre. j. hi) 
 Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme, L'Avare, Les Femmes 
 
 Savantes, Le Misanthrope. 
 Goethe's Ballads and Torquato Tasso and Iphigenia. 
 Schiller's Ballads and Wallenstein. 
 Uhland's Ballads. 
 Longfellow. 
 Lowell. 
 Whittier. 
 Keats. 
 
 (Except where otherwise specified, the cost is 2s. (xi. or 
 under.)
 
 III. 
 
 1 Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt u9 round ! 
 Parents first season us : then schoolmasters 
 Deliver us to laws ; they send us bound 
 To rules of reason, holy messengers, 
 Pulpits and Sundays." 
 
 George Herbert.
 
 Sbuntrag SHeaMng. 
 
 SUNDAY reading means very different things 
 in different households. Some people think 
 everything wrong except sermons, others make no 
 difference from their weekday reading. I should 
 not like to say that a book which is good and 
 wholesome reading on Saturday night, becomes a 
 sin on Sunday morning. Very possibly, as Dr. 
 Arnold says, St. Paul, could he return among us, 
 would be shocked to find us still needing to keep 
 Sunday. But his point of view would be that, 
 after so many years of grace, all our days ought to 
 
 be— 
 
 " Bracelets to a.lorn the wife 
 Of the Eternal Glorious King." 
 
 If we read as many spiritual books on weekdays 
 as we need for our souls' health, there would 
 be no necessity for any " Sunday reading." But 
 most of us do not so spend our weekdays, and it 
 is therefore at our souls' peril that we reject each 
 Sunday's offer of a " truce of God " with the 
 cares and labours of the weekday life —
 
 206 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 " When each day brings its petty dust, 
 Our soon choked souls to fill." l 
 
 Practically, if we do not read good books on Sun- 
 days, we do not read them at all ; it is not so much 
 that a novel is wrong on Sunday, as that better 
 things leave no time for it. In this, as in all else, it 
 is not a negative rule which should keep us right, 
 but, " the expulsive power of a new affection." 2 
 
 If Sunday reading be considered merely from the 
 point of view of one whose main wish is to improve 
 his mind, it has overwhelming claims ; for it com- 
 prises the grandest half of that heritage of English 
 literature with which such an one seeks to be 
 acquainted. Milton, Jeremy Taylor, Keble, Bun- 
 yan, Henry Vaughan, George Herbert, Newman, 
 quite apart from their bearing on the spiritual 
 life, must be studied by any one who would know 
 " the best that has been thought and said." 
 
 In taking the matter from a higher point of 
 view, there are two special blessings for which we 
 might advantageously seek in our Sunday reading — 
 enthusiasm, and sympathy with those who differ 
 from us. 
 
 Some start with more, some with less enthu- 
 siasm ; but contact with the world rubs off so 
 much from every one, that, as Hare says, 3 every 
 mother should seek to equip her son in a three-pile 
 
 1 Matthew Arnold. * Chalmers. 
 
 * "Guesses at Truth.'
 
 SUNDAY READING. 207 
 
 cloak of it. But it is within our power to repair 
 this cloak when it wears thin, by putting ourselves 
 under the spell of those whose larger and stronger 
 natures make them superior in this Christian grace. 
 One great means of doing this is to read the 
 biographies of the saints, latter-day saints, many of 
 them. Let us be careful in this branch of cur 
 reading, that we take the lives of all saints, not the 
 saints of our own particular school, for so we shall 
 learn also the other grace of sympathy. It is of 
 the first importance to have firm convictions of 
 our own, but it is of, at least, second importance 
 to understand and sympathize with the convictions 
 of others. 
 
 Not only does sympathy lead us to see the 
 opinions of others in a truer light, it enables us to 
 form a sounder judgment on our own ; for as long 
 as a man looks only " on his own things," he fails 
 to see them in true proportion. 
 
 We shall surely rise above party spirit and 
 narrowness, if we read with generous sympathy 
 such books as Stanley's " Life of Arnold ; " the 
 lives of "Kingsley," "F. D. Maurice," "St. 
 Catharine of Sienna" (by Mrs. Butler); "Mrs. 
 Fry," " William Wilberforce," " Angelique Arnauld " 
 (by Miss Martin) ; " St. Theresa " (by Miss Trench ; 
 also by Mrs. Cunningham Graham) ; " Charles 
 Lowder," " Sir Henry Lawrence," and of " Lord 
 Lawrence " (by Mr. Bosworth Smith) ; " John
 
 2o8 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 Woolner the Quaker ; " " The Hermits " (hy Kings- 
 ley ) ; " Disciples of St. John " (by Miss Yonge) ; 
 " Letters of Edward Denison ; " " St. Francis of 
 Assisi " and " Edward Irving " (both by Mrs. Oli- 
 phant) ; " St. Vincent de Paul ; " Walton's " Lives." 
 
 No suggestions on Sunday reading can fail to 
 mention those " Companions of the Devout Life," 
 treated in a volume of that name, which is itself 
 fascinating Sunday reading. I mean the great 
 devotional books of the world — " The Confessions 
 of St. Augustine," "The Pilgrim's Progress," 
 " Pense'es de Pascal," " The Imitation," and 
 " The Christian Year," — books of the inner life of 
 the best men of all ages, which teach us more 
 than anything else can do, the essential oneness in 
 spirit of all true lovers of God. 
 
 " I accept and believe," said Mr. Bright in one 
 of his speeches many years ago, " in a very grand 
 passage I once met with in the writings of the 
 Founder of the State of Pennsylvania. He says 
 that humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout 
 souls are everywhere of one religion, and when 
 death has taken off the mask, they all know one 
 another, though the divers liveries they wear here 
 make them strangers." 
 
 Missionary work is surely one of the branches of 
 Sunday study incumbent on us. Very likely you 
 will say you do not care about it ; but this state of 
 mind by no means absolves you from the duty of
 
 SUNDAY READING. 209 
 
 missionary work, and the prelude to that work is to 
 team something about it. 
 
 I grant that most missionary reports are dull 
 when seen in the setting of our own general 
 ignorance. But let us take one centre of missionary 
 work, and make it a centre for our general read- 
 ing. Read the best book of travels describing 
 that country, read about its native religion, and the 
 lives of its chief missionaries, and chief heroes 
 (whether missionary or not). After this preparation 
 we shall, for the future, read the missionary report 
 with quite different eyes. 
 
 A few volumes of sermons would be a good 
 element in our Sunday library. 
 
 Perhaps you may think that to hear sermons on 
 Sunday is enough without reading any. But when 
 we consider what a storehouse of instruction and 
 devotion is contained in such books as the 
 University Sermons of Dr. Newman, Dean Church, 
 and Dr. Mozley, we must surely feel that they 
 would widen and strengthen our spiritual life. 
 
 An invalid once gave me a list of sermons 
 which she found specially helpful x (one for each 
 day of the month), all taken from seven volumes 
 that contain the essence of the Church of Bishop 
 Andrewes and Bishop Butler : — Dean Church's 
 " University Sermons," and " Pascal ; " Mozley's 
 " University " and " Parochial " sermons ; Dean 
 1 Page 231. 
 
 P
 
 2io SUNDAY READING. 
 
 Paget's " Spirit of Discipline," and " Studies in the 
 Christian Character ; " and vol. i. of Newman's 
 " Parochial Sermons." It is interesting to notice 
 in connection with this last a passage in Isaac 
 William's autobiography : " Newman had a 
 peculiar power of seizing intellectually the rjOos 
 and principles of another, and making them his 
 own, as it were on trial. I was struck with this 
 afterwards in a remarkable manner, by the way in 
 which he learned through me the yvoyxai, as he 
 called them, of Thomas Keble of Bisley, his 
 character and principles; so that, at one time, 
 when I walked daily with him, and we conversed 
 on these subjects, I found the same views, drawn 
 out and expressed in his own way, in his sermon 
 at St. Mary's on the following Sunday. The first 
 volume that he published is almost entirely made 
 up of these, and will be found to differ on this 
 account from his succeeding volumes as more 
 practical. It has this marked distinguishable 
 character, owing to this circumstance, and I always 
 looked upon that volume as Bisley, passing through 
 me, and appearing, developed by Newman, in St. 
 Mary's pulpit." 
 
 There is one sermon I should like to add to the 
 list, and that is Bishop Butler's sermon on the 
 government of the tongue, which might be learnt by 
 heart, instead of being merely read once a month. 
 
 A daily sermon will probably be more than you
 
 SUNDAY READING. 211 
 
 require, but you may find the idea helpful of 
 having a carefully chosen set of sermons, and 
 reading them through several times, instead of 
 going on to fresh ones. 
 
 When you read them the first time, mark the bits 
 that go home to you and look on them as tuning- 
 forks by which to set the pitch of your life. When 
 you read them the second time, these marked bits 
 will be so many questions in your self-examination 
 as to how you have spent the time, since that 
 special aspect of duty was brought to your notice. 
 
 Dr. Liddon says : " Especially should an effort 
 be made on every Sunday in the year, to learn 
 some portion of the Will of God more perfectly 
 than before ; some truth or aspect of His Revelation 
 of Himself in the gospel ; some Christian duty, as 
 taught by the example or the words of Christ. 
 Without a positive effort of this kind a Sunday is a 
 lost Sunday : we shall think of it thus in eternity." 
 We probably all feel we need this strenuous mental 
 effort of which Dr. Liddon speaks. 
 
 Is our religious knowledge any more exact and 
 deep than it used to be (or at all events, has it 
 improved in proper proportion to the years which 
 have elapsed) — are we more able to give a reason 
 for the faith that is in us ? We know our favourite 
 author pretty well by this time — e.g. some of us 
 could find most quotations from Browning or 
 Tennyson, and if wc come on a passage in them
 
 212 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 we do not understand, we work at it till we do 
 understand. Have we improved in Bible know- 
 ledge ? — beyond the formal reading of chapter 
 after chapter, in the course of which, unless we 
 had put a mark, we should sometimes find it hard 
 to know where we left off ! 
 
 The Theological School is open to women at 
 Oxford, and it may surely be hoped that women 
 will devote as much brain power to this as they do 
 to History and Classics and Mathematics. These 
 latter " schools " seem to us worthy of our best 
 intellect, whereas in Bible study we are too often 
 content with the baby-knowledge which we gained 
 when we were small. 
 
 We must all acknowledge that women and girls, 
 as a rule, have very scanty religious knowledge, 
 and, only too often, unsettled views. Our religious 
 education has not kept pace with our higher edu- 
 cation. Perhaps the main cause is, that the 
 conscience of women is not awake on the matter of 
 solid religious instruction. If women had, as a 
 body, realized that their intellects had a duty in the 
 matter, as clearly as they do realize that their 
 emotions have, the difficulty would be in a fair way 
 of being met. Their conscience is awake on the 
 subject of good little books, and these are read 
 assiduously ; but the ordinary girl of to-day is not 
 so likely to realize this intellectual duty as was her 
 grandmother. The Evangelical revival, though it
 
 SUNDAY READING. 213 
 
 did untold good spiritually, yet had the defect of 
 its quality, and was apt to substitute emotional 
 spiritual edification for instruction. The " Catholic " 
 revival has also a share in causing the present 
 deficiency, for it has led the younger generation 
 towards attractive services, and has left no time 
 on Sunday for the solid, instructive, "Sunday 
 books " so profitably read by our grandmothers. 
 
 Much stress is laid in the present day, and quite 
 rightly, on meditation. But in order to meditate 
 profitably, we need something more than our own 
 crude thoughts. If even St. Paul sent for his 
 " books and parchments," can we afford to dispense 
 with such assistance as can be derived from the 
 study of higher and holier minds than our own ? 
 
 As women (whether professional teachers or not) 
 we shall each have to teach and guide some one in 
 religious matters. We ought to have a general 
 grasp of the subject for this purpose, besides the 
 personal help of knowing our Bibles thoroughly. 
 
 As regards reading theology to settle one's own 
 mind, I am not sure that arguments do much 
 good. I fancy Doubt is one of the evil spirits 
 which goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. 
 
 You may say that I do not allow due weight to 
 the intettecttial difficulties which beset Christianity. 
 Perhaps so, for, personally, I see no other practical 
 and practicable clue to life but the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. I can quite understand that arguments are
 
 214 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 needed by a more logical mind, but as far as 
 argument goes, it seems to me that the negation of 
 Christianity is beset by more difficulties still. 1 
 Most of the difficulties connected with Christianity 
 are difficulties common to every thoughtful mind, 
 whether Christian or not ; problems which are 
 inherent in life, and which it is unfair to charge to 
 Christianity as such. 
 
 There is a great deal of doubt flying about, 
 some of it is a real trial allowed by God, some is 
 fashion, some is laziness; for the non-Christian 
 side comes before us without any trouble, in 
 magazine articles, while the defence needs some 
 study and trouble. I have never yet met a girl 
 who complained of doubts and who had given so 
 much as a year's hard study, under direction, to 
 theology. I do not say the year would have 
 answered her questions, but it would have been an 
 earnest that she grudged no trouble, it would 
 have been part of the ' fasting ' and self-denial 
 which would have helped. 
 
 Doubt is sometimes a wish to evade the 
 tremendously high standard imposed by Christ, a 
 standard which the last of Mr. Gore's " Bampton 
 Lectures " helps us to realize. 
 
 Mrs. Hannah More said, of the people in her 
 day who complained that the Athanasian Creed 
 was a stumbling-block to them, that she always 
 1 Cp. R. Browning, "Bishop Blougram's Apology," etc.
 
 SUNDAY READING. 215 
 
 shrewdly suspected the real stumbling-block was 
 the Ten Commandments ! A girl does not 
 actually wish to break a commandment, but her 
 conscience is more at ease when she is only 
 balancing ' views ' for and against Christianity, than 
 when she is standing face to face with a real Master 
 Who claims a part of her every thought and action. 
 
 Definite study is desirable because, though Doubt 
 may not attack you personally, you may have to 
 talk to those who suffer under it, and it is well to 
 be able to detect the weak points in their chain of 
 difficulties. Besides, a course of this reading is 
 very useful in clearing the air, it makes you less 
 likely to be attracted by suggestions from the other 
 side, if you know that they are an old story, met 
 and conquered long ago. I do not say that this is 
 true of all suggested difficulties, by any means, 
 though it is of many. The universe would be 
 narrow indeed if our present brains could see the 
 answer to everything I 
 
 Also, though arguments may not meet your 
 special difficulties, yet a steady course of reading 
 will help you. It clears up the mistiness of your 
 mind ; you do not find an answer to your special 
 question, but your difficulties, generally, take truer 
 proportions — you get clearer headed, I should say, 
 do not read about your special question, attack 
 your unsettledness indirectly. Forgive me for say- 
 ing it, but girls are apt to be very muddle-headed,
 
 216 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 and I have read and listened to 'intellectual 
 doubts,' in which the intellect appeared to be 
 conspicuous by its absence ! The only argument 
 that seemed applicable was Cromwell's to his 
 Parliament, ' I beseech you, my beloved brethren, 
 I beseech you by the mercies of Christ, to believe 
 that you may be mistaken.' 
 
 Most women would do well to recognize that 
 these matters require real intellect and years of 
 study, before one could venture to differ from the 
 great minds who have studied the question and 
 who have set to their seal that God is true. 
 
 You may say that many great and wise men 
 have arrived at a different conclusion. True, but 
 many of those are out of court in the question, 
 because they did not try to find the ' doctrine ' by 
 doing ' the will,' but I will grant that some (many 
 if you like) were Christlike, though they failed to 
 find Christ. Well, then, if it is to be a question 
 of authority, it seems wiser, all other things being 
 equal, to pin one's faith to those who did find a 
 clue to life. Of course I do not allow that all 
 other things are equal, but even if I went so far as 
 that, I should feel that Bishop Butler (" Analogy," 
 II. vi.) left a very serious responsibility on us to 
 act as if Christianity were true. 
 
 Let us suppose that a girl wishes to give 
 her tithe of intellect as well as of other things 
 to religion, how had she better do it? Many
 
 SUNDAY READING. 217 
 
 currents in the present tide of affairs distract 
 the ordinary girl from religious study, and, if she 
 yet wishes to improve herself, she is frightened 
 by feeling the vastness of the subject. One 
 book here, and one book there, seems such a drop 
 in the ocean, and very likely she will find that she 
 has read something as much out of date as if she 
 studied Miss Martineau's stories for her political 
 economy. She needs direction : who is to give it ? 
 
 Women have now special facilities at Oxford 
 for religious study, and I hope that some of the 
 students who intend to be headmistresses, or 
 special parish workers, may give an extra year to 
 such work. But this will not solve the difficulty of 
 religious education for the upper classes. The 
 expense is too great and the work too hard, for 
 ordinary cases. What can be suggested for the 
 ordinary woman who has no special time, brains, 
 or money at her disposal, and who yet wishes to be 
 able to give a reason for the faith that is in her ? 
 
 There are various branches of the subject, to 
 each of which she owes some study — study of the 
 Bible itself; the present position of science and of 
 criticism with regard to religion; dogmatics; 
 Church history ; illustration of the Bible in modem 
 discoveries and travel ; practical devotional read- 
 ing. Of those seven heads, I confidently affirm 
 that the devotional reading is the only one in which 
 the average woman could stand examination, and
 
 218 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 yet it is her duty to know something of the other 
 six. How is she to be helped ? I should like her 
 to have definite guidance in religious study, by 
 means of an authorized scheme of reading, giving 
 under such headings as I named just now, the 
 minimum course of reading 1 which an average 
 woman should feel bound to master, as an 
 elementary part of her education. 
 
 I should like to be able to say to a girl : Read 
 this perfectly practicable list of books before you 
 feel yourself capable of forming an opinion. I 
 should like it to be recommended in school 
 magazines, in "old girls'" reading societies; I 
 should like to see a society among the staff of every 
 school for reading it through together. The 
 Divinity School offers a course too deep, and 
 consequently too limited, to meet the needs of the 
 average woman. The various diocesan schemes 
 and the Sunday-school institutes issue something 
 of the kind, but they involve several years' con- 
 secutive study, and many people would prefer a 
 shorter scheme put forth as a whole, and not in 
 parts. If it were issued as a penny leaflet (revised 
 often enough to be kept up to date), it would be 
 thankfully followed by many who would hesitate 
 to enrol themselves as members of a diocesan 
 scheme. There might be more than one such 
 list, so as to give scope for varying views, but 
 1 Suggested course, p. 222.
 
 SUNDAY READING. 219 
 
 authorization by some committee of repute would 
 be a strong feature of the desired usefulness. 
 
 A headmistress often recommends a book because 
 it suits her personally, and it is read by the girl, 
 who personally believes in her; but it would be 
 very different if she could say that such and such a 
 responsible body of clergy recommend this list as 
 the minimum course of reading for every conscien- 
 tious Churchwoman. I believe nine girls out of 
 every ten, and teachers too, and Sunday-school 
 teachers and district visitors, would gladly follow 
 such a definite course. They cannot in this busy 
 and migratory age feel sure of attending any set of 
 lectures, or of keeping up year by year with any 
 one diocesan reading scheme, but they would keep 
 such a short list by them, and work their way 
 through it in course of time. At present they are 
 frightened by the width of the subject, or read a 
 book here and a pamphlet there, as their various 
 advisers suggest, never getting any general idea of 
 the subject, such as they have of English literature 
 or history. The very superficiality of such a 
 list would have the quality of its defect, and 
 would induce many to adopt it who would be 
 afraid of a more lengthy and thorough scheme, 
 though it would probably lead them on to the 
 better work of the diocesan reading societies. 
 I am not advocating superficiality as opposed 
 to solid reading, but superficiality as opposed
 
 220 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 to the utter ignorance which now too often 
 prevails. 
 
 Suppose such a scheme of reading were issued, 
 and were recommended by clergy and teachers, 
 would this be enough ? No ! The tendency of 
 modern education is more in the direction of oral 
 teaching than of private reading. 
 
 The clergy, being already overworked, can 
 hardly attend to the religious education of all 
 upper-class girls or women in the parish; it is 
 hard work already to see to the poor, and it is 
 seldom possible to make the Sunday afternoon 
 catechizing profitable to both rich and poor. 
 A thoughtful girl, accustomed to the hard head- 
 work of good school methods, requires her teaching 
 in divinity to be as intellectual as the rest of her 
 school work. Such girls do desire help in this 
 matter. If every clergyman would recommend 
 such a list, or issue one himself, I am certain nine- 
 tenths of the women and girls in his parish would 
 read it if he definitely told them to do so. The 
 Sunday-school catechizing does not help them ; and 
 the clergyman is too busy to hold a special class 
 for them ; but could he not organize such a class, 
 where the outlines of the Faith could be studied, 
 under some one of the clever unattached women to 
 be found in most congregations ? Such a woman 
 would be glad of the intellectual scope this class 
 would offer ; she would have leisure to prepare for
 
 SUNDAY READING. 221 
 
 it ; and in time, when such a class should become 
 a recognized part of the usual parochial machinery 
 (as mothers' meetings are now), one might hope 
 that such women would go to Oxford to prepare 
 seriously for the work. The teaching could be 
 kept under the clergyman's own hand, as much as 
 in the Sunday school, and he would find such a 
 class a great help in doing for him the more formal 
 part of his confirmation work, and leaving him 
 more time for the spiritual part. 
 
 With older girls it would be a nursery of parish 
 workers, where they could be trained and tested 
 before being turned loose in a Sunday school, just 
 because here is a class and there is a young lady, 
 and it seems natural to put the two together, with- 
 out in the least knowing what the combination will 
 produce. 
 
 These are small remedies — advice in reading and 
 upper-class Bible lessons. Doubtless, they are 
 already at work in many places, but they are not as 
 yet part of the ordinary machinery of every parish. 
 It might seem more to the purpose to urge some- 
 thing new, e.g. the Oxford Divinity School, now 
 open to women ; but religious education amongst 
 women is at such a low ebb, that a small remedy 
 may be more efficacious as a beginning. Every day 
 one sees more clearly the danger of leaving women 
 as untaught as they now undoubtedly are, in spite 
 of the opportunities for learning which surround
 
 222 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 them. Women do not like religious study, though 
 they enjoy religious reading, but they would carry 
 out a short scheme if their own clergyman told 
 them to do it ; and though it would not meet 
 all the difficulties of the day, it would obviate 
 what makes nine-tenths of the danger of those 
 difficulties, i.e. the mistiness and emptiness of their 
 own minds on this matter. Women have developed 
 their minds in nearly all other subjects, but in 
 religion they are content with the baby-knowledge 
 of the nursery. 
 
 In that severely helpful book, Law's "Serious 
 Call," there is a striking picture of the man whose 
 powers and brain and knowledge were deepened 
 and cultivated by every year of his life, but whose 
 prayers remain as elementary as when he was a 
 child. Is not the same thing but too often true 
 of women, — not of their prayers, perhaps, but of 
 their religious knowledge ? 
 
 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 A.— A MINIMUM COURSE OF READING FOR 
 AN AVERAGE WOMAN. 
 
 Jewish Church. 3 vols. A. P. Stanley. 6j. each. 
 Life of the Messiah. 2 vols. Dr. Edersheim. 24J. or "js. 6d. 
 Life and Epistles of S. Paul. Conybeare and Howson. 
 is. 6d.
 
 SUNDAY READING. 223 
 
 Illustrations of the Creed. Elizabeth Wordsworth. $s. 
 Some Elements of Religion. H. P. Liddon. is. 6d. 
 Primer of Biblical Geography. Lieut. Conder. 2 s - 6d- 
 History of Religion in England. H. 0. Wakeman. is. 6d. 
 
 Special Books on Theology. 
 
 Bampton Lectures on the Incarnation. C. Gore. "]s. 6d. 
 The Atonement. R. W. Dale. 4J. net. 
 The Resurrection. W. Milliwatt. $s. 
 The Ascension. IV. Milligan. 7$. 6d. 
 
 B.— BOOKS FOR FURTHER STUDY. 1 
 General Books on the Old Testament. 
 
 •Discipline of the Christian Character. R. W. Church. 4s. 6d. 
 Doctrine of the Prophets. A. F. Kirkpatrick. 6s. 
 * Prophets and Kings. F. D. Maurice. 3s. 6d. 
 *Patriarchs and Law-givers. F. D. Maurice. $s. 6d. 
 •Sermons on the Old Testament. H. P. Liddon. $s. 
 Early Religion of Israel. Robertson. 10s. 6d. 
 •Jewish Church. 3 vols. A. P. Stanley. 6s. each. 
 •Divine Library of the Old Testament. A. F. Kirkpatrick. 
 
 3j. net. 
 The Canon of the Old Testament. H. Ryle. 6s. 
 Ruling Ideas of Early Ages. J. B. Mozley. 6s. 
 *Guild Manual. Robertson. 6d. 
 •The Temple and its Services. Dr. Ederslieim. 3*. 6d. 
 
 1 This list is more exhaustive than is necessary for general reading, 
 but it was compiled by the help of such valuable advice that it is 
 thought better to print it in full. An asterisk is prefixed to the easier 
 books.
 
 224 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 Special Books of the Old Testament. 
 ♦Notes on Genesis. F. W. Robertson. ^s. 6d. 
 ♦Early Narratives of Genesis. H. Ryle. 3s. net. 
 The Book Genesis, a true History. Watson, is. 
 After the Exile. 2 vols. Hunter. $s. each. 
 Lectures on the Book of Job. Bradley. "]s. 6d. 
 The Psalms. Book I. A. F. Kirk pat rick. $s. 6d. 
 Psalm Mosaics. A. S. Dyer. Js. 6d. 
 The Book of Psalms (abridged ed.). Bp.Perowne. \os. 6d. 
 
 „ ,, translated by Prof. Cheyne. 6s. 
 
 Lectures on Ecclesiastes. Bradley. 4s. 6d. 
 Isaiah (Expositor's Bible). 2 vols. G. A. Smith. Is. 6d. 
 The Story of Daniel. Hunter. $s. 
 The Minor Prophets. E. B. Pusey. 3U. 6d. 
 *The Minor Prophets (Expositor's Bible). G. A. Smith. 
 
 p. 6d. 
 Dictionary of the Bible. 4 vols. Smith. £4 4r. 
 ""Cambridge Bible Series. About %s. 6d. each. 
 •Difficulties of the Old Testament. H. Winnington Ingram. 
 
 6d. 
 
 General Books on the New Testament. 
 •Life of the Messiah. Dr. Edersheim. 24J. or Js. 6d. 
 Introduction to the New Testament. G. Salmon, gs. 
 * Pastor Pastorum. Latham. 6j. 6d. 
 *Notes on the Parables. R. C. Trench. Is. 6d. 
 ""Studies in the Gospels. R. C. Trench. \os. 6d. 
 Synonyms of the New Testament. R. C. 7'rench. 12s. 
 ♦Harmony. Fuller. (S.P.C.R.) is. 6d. 
 Introduction to Study of the Gospels. Bp. Westcott. \os. 6d. 
 Life of our Lord (Hulsean Lectures). Bp. Ellicott. 12s. 
 Life of Christ. Jeremy Taylor, s. h. 
 Origin of Christianity. Fisher. 12s. 6d. 
 ♦Difficulties of the New Testament. H. Winnington Ingram. 
 64.
 
 SUNDAY READING. 225 
 
 Special Books on the New Testament. 
 
 •Commentary on the Gospels. S.P.C.K. Js.6d. 
 
 ♦Key to the Gospels. T. P. Norris. is. 6d. 
 
 •Footprints of the Son of Man. (S. Mark.) H. M. Luckock. 
 
 3s. 6d. 
 Gospel according to S. John. Bp. Westcott. \os. 6d. 
 ♦Creed and Character. (S. John's Gospel.) H. S. Holland. 
 
 3j. 6d. 
 The Great 40 Days. Bp. Moberly. $s. 
 S. Paul as Traveller and Roman Citizen. Ramsay. 12s. 6d. 
 ♦God's City. (Acts.) H. S. Holland, y. 6d. 
 ♦Key to the Acts. J. P. Norris. 2s. 6d. 
 First Age of the Church. Dollinger. s.h. 
 Church in the Roman Empire. Ramsay. 1 2s. 
 ♦Life and Epistles of S. Paul. Conybeare and Howson. 
 
 3j. 6d. 
 Dissertations on the Apostolic Age. Bp. lightfoot. 14^. 
 Epistle to the Romans. H. P. liddon. 14J. 
 Epistle to the Romans (Speaker's Commentary). Cifford. 
 
 •js. 6d. 
 Biblical Essays. Bp. lightfoot. \zs. 
 •Lectures on the Corinthians. F. W. Robertson. 51. 
 Galatians (Expositor's Bible). Findlay. "js. 6d. 
 Epistle to the Ephesians. R. W. Dale. Js. 6d. 
 Christus Consummator. (Hebrews.) Westcott. 6s. 
 The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church. R. IV, 
 
 Dale. Js. 6d. 
 Book of Revelation. W. Milligan. Js. 6d. 
 
 Theology. 
 
 Faith of the Gospels. A. Mason, y. Cd. 
 ♦Rudiments of Theology. J. P. Norris. p. 6d. 
 Lectures on Religion. Leighton Pullan. 6s. 
 Historic Faith. Bp. Westcott. 6s.
 
 226 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 Foundations of the Creed. Bp. Hervey Goodwin. 14J. 
 
 "■Introduction to the Creed. Mac/ear. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Sermons of S. Leo. W. Bright. 4J. 6d. 
 
 Manual of Theology. Strong. $s. 
 
 Nicene Creed. Forbes. 6s. 
 
 ""Illustrations of the Creed. Elizabeth Wordsworth. $s. 
 
 Lux Mundi. Js. 6d. 
 
 Theism. Flint. 7j. 6d. 
 
 Or 
 
 The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief. Fisher. 
 
 \os. 6d. 
 Chief End of Revelation. Bruce. 6s. 
 Reasonable Apprehensions and Reassuring Hints. Footman. 
 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 Special Subjects. 
 
 The Incarnation. 
 Bampton Lectures. H. P. Liddott. $s. 
 
 ,, „ C. Gore. Js. 6d. 
 
 The Incarnation. R. Wilberforce. Js. 6d. 
 De Incarnatione, trans, by Robertson. S. Alhanasius. 
 3*- 
 The Atonement. 
 The Atonement. R. W. Dale. 4s. net. 
 Cur Deus Homo (Translation). S. Anselm. is. 
 
 The Resurrection. 
 The Gospel of the Resurrection. Bp. Westcott. 6s, 
 The Resurrection. W. Milligan. $s. 
 
 The Ascension. 
 The Ascension. W. Milligan. 75. 6d. 
 
 The Holy Spirit. 
 Bampton Lectures. Bp. Moberly. "Js. 6d. 
 *The Holy Spirit. Bp. Webb. y. 6d.
 
 SUNDAY READING. 227 
 
 Miracles. 
 
 Bampton Lectures. T. Mozley. y. 6d. 
 *Notes on the Miracles. R. C. Trench. Js. 6d. 
 Miracles. Cox. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Criticism and the Bible. 
 
 The Bible in the Church. Bp. Westcott. 4.?. 6d. 
 
 Biblical Study. Briggs. Js. 6d. 
 
 *Christus Comprobator. Bp. Ellicott. zs. 
 
 The Oracles of God. W. Sanday. 4J. 
 
 Inspiration (Bampton Lectures). W. Sanday. Js. 6d. 
 
 Science and the Bible. 
 
 Relations between Religion and Science (Bampton Lectures). 
 
 Bp. Temple. 6s. 
 Science and the Faith. Aubrey Moore. y. 6d. 
 Evolution and Religious Thought. Le Conte. 6s. 
 Christianity in Relation to Science and Morals. MacColl. 
 
 6s. 
 Does Science aid Faith ? CoUerill. y. 6d. 
 Apologetics. Part I. Bruce, ioj. 6d. 
 
 Illustrations of the Bible. 
 
 'Helps to the Study of the Bible (Oxford), is. or 4J. 6d, 
 
 ""Companion to the Bible (Camb.). is. or $s. 
 
 Historical Geography of the Holy Land. G. A. Smith. \y> 
 
 * Primer of Biblical Geography. Conder. y. 6d. 
 
 *Sinai and Palestine. Stanley. 12s. 
 
 *Fresh Light from Ancient Monuments. Sayce. y. 
 
 ♦Natural History of the Bible. Tristram. $s. 
 
 *The Bible and the East. Conder. $s. 
 
 Church History. 
 History of the Church. Schaff. 42^.
 
 228 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 Student's English Church History. Perry. 3 vols. Js. 6d. 
 each. 
 
 * History of Religion in England. //. 0. Wakeman. is. 6d. 
 
 * History of the Church of England. II. 0. Wakeman. Js. 6d. 
 *Illustrated Notes on English Church History. lane. 
 
 2 vols. 1 j. each. 
 "Turning Points of English Church History. Cutis. $s. 6d. 
 *A Key to Church History. Ancient, and Modern. Blunt. 
 2s. 67. each. 
 
 Early. 
 
 *Creed and Character. H. S. Holland. 3*. 6d. 
 Ecclesiastical History (Translated). Eusebius. 5-r. 
 History of the Church, A. D. 313-451. Bright. 10s. 6d. 
 Church History. Vol. I. Bp. Wordsworth. 8s. 6d. 
 
 ,, ,, Vols. II., III., and IV. 6s. each. 
 
 Christian Church during First Six Centuries. Cheetham. 
 
 \os. 6d. 
 Early Christianity. Milman. 3 vols. 4J. each. 
 •Eastern Church. Stanley. 6s. 
 
 Literary History of Christianity. Cruttwcll. 2 vols. 2U. 
 Early English Church History. Bright. \zs. 
 *Waymarks in Church History. Bright, "js. 6d. 
 On the Church. Palmer, s. h. 
 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 Latin Christianity. Milman. 9 vols. 4?. each. 
 
 The Dark Ages. Mai/land. 12s. net. 
 
 History of the Popes. Ranke. 3 vols. 3*. 6d. eaih. 
 
 History of the Papacy during the Reformation. Bp 
 
 Creighton. Vols. I.-V. 3^. 6d. each. 
 •Lectures on Medieval Church History. R. C. Trench. I2j. 
 Middle Ages. Hardwick. 10s. 6<l. 
 Reformation. Hardwick. \os. 6d. 
 The English Church in the Middle Ages. Hunt. 2s. 6d.
 
 SUNDAY READING. 229 
 
 History of the Church of England, 1529-1558. Dixon. 
 
 4 vols. i6j. each. 
 Lectures on the Reformation. Aubrey Moore. \6s. 
 Reformation in England. Perry. 2s. 6d. 
 ♦The Church and the Puritans. H. 0. Wakeman. 2s. 6d. 
 Lectures on the Reformation. Beard. 4s. 6d. 
 
 Special Books. 
 
 *The Church and the Roman Empire. Carr. 2s. 6d. 
 ♦The Church of the Early Fathers. Plummer. 2s. 6d. 
 ♦Three Great Fathers. Bright. 6s. 
 *The Fathers for English Readers : — Ambrose, Basil t 
 
 Jerome, Augustine, Leo, Gregory, Synesius. 2s. each. 
 
 {S.P.C.K.) 
 Life and Times of S. Chrysostom. Stephens. 7s. 6d. 
 ♦The Arian Controversy. H. N. Givatkin. 2s. 6d. 
 Conversion of the West. Mac/ear. 4 vols. 2s. each. 
 Leaders of the Northern Church. Bp. Lightfoot. 6s. 
 ♦Venerable Bede. Browne. 2s. 
 ♦Alfred the Great. Hughes. 6s. 
 ♦S. Anselm. R. W. Church, ^s. 
 ♦WyclirTe and Early Movements of Reform. Lane Poole. 
 
 2s. 6d. 
 Wycliffe and his English Precursors. Lechler. 8s, 
 Oxford Reformers. Seebohm. \&,s. 
 
 Sermons, Etc. 
 
 Hall's Contemplations, s. h. 
 Leighton on S. Peter, s. h. 
 Jeremy Taylor's Sermons, s. h. 
 Butler's Analogy. Edited by IV. E. Gladstone, ioj. 
 ,, Sermons. ,, ,, ioj. 
 
 Law's Serious Call, is 
 
 ,, Letters, s. h. 
 
 ., Treatise on Christian Perfection, s. K
 
 
 6s. 
 
 od. 
 
 
 6s. 
 
 Od. 
 
 
 4-r. 
 
 6d. 
 
 
 JS. 
 
 6d. 
 
 
 F. Paget. 
 
 4 
 
 r. 6d. 
 
 
 230 SUNDAY READING. 
 
 *Goulburn's Thoughts on Personal Religion. 3*. 6d. 
 
 * ,, Study of the Holy Scriptures. 2s. 6d. 
 Elements of Religion. Liddon. 2s. 6d. 
 
 * Discipline of the Christian Character. R. IV. Church. 4s. 6d. 
 Human Life and its Conditions. ,, ,, 
 
 * Village Sermons. ,, ,, 
 Advent Sermons. ,, ,, 
 The Gifts of Civilization. ,, ,, 
 *The Hallowing of Work. F. Paget. 2j. 
 •Faculties and Difficulties of Belief and Disbelief. 
 
 6s. 6d. 
 Studies in the Christian Character. F. Paget. 
 *Sermon on the Mount. C. Gore. 3J. 6d. 
 University Sermons. Illingworth. $s. 
 Personality Human and Divine. Illingworth. &r. 6d. 
 *Advent to Lent. Aubrey Moore. 3s. 6d. 
 The Decalogue. Elizabeth Wordsworth. $s. 6d. 
 *The Revelation of the Risen Lord. Bp. Westcott. 6s. 
 Prophets and Kings. F. D. Maurice. 3J. 6d. 
 ♦Sermons. F. IV. Robertson. 3.?. 6d. each vol. 
 The Lord's Prayer. Elizabeth Wordsworth. 4J. 6d. 
 *The Candle of the Lord. Phillips Brooks. 6s. 
 Lectures on Preaching. R. IV. Dale. 6s. 
 Laws of Christ for Common Life. R. W. Dale. 6s. 
 Hours of Thought. J. Martineau. Js. 6d. 
 Endeavours after the Christian Life. J. Martineau. js. 6d. 
 
 Devotional Books. 
 
 The Imitation of Christ. 
 
 Spiritual Letters. S. Francis de Sales. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Spiritual Letters to Men. Finelon. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Spiritual Letters to Women. FhiHon. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Avis Spirituels. 2s. 6d. 
 
 JJrief Thoughts and Meditations. R. C. Trench.
 
 SUNDAY READING. 231 
 
 Thoughts on the Christian Life. H. Bowman, is. 6d. 
 Instructions in the Devout Life. Bp. Wilkinson. 6d. 
 Hints on Meditation. W. Trevelyan. 2d. 
 The Still Hour. J. Stalker, id. 
 Prayers. 
 The Book of Private Prayer (issued by Convocation). 2s. 
 Sacra Privata. Bp. Wilson, is. 
 Bishop Andrewes' Devotions, is. 
 The Armoury of Prayer. Berdmore Compton. 3*. 6d. 
 Before the Throne. Bellatrs. 2s. 6d. 
 Private Prayers. E. B. Pusey. is. 
 The Golden Grove. Jeremy Taylor, is. 6d. 
 
 A MONTH'S SERMONS. 1 
 
 Parochial Sermons. Vol. I. J. H. Newman. 
 Secret Faults. 
 
 Religious Use of Excited Feeling. 
 Times of Private Prayer. 
 Forms of Private Prayer. 
 Promising without Doing. 
 Self-denial the Test of Religious Earnestness. 
 
 University Sermons. J. B. Mozley. 
 The Peaceful Temper. 
 The Reversal of Human Judgment. 
 The Strength of Wishes. 
 Our Duty to our Equals. 
 
 Parochial Sermons. J. B. Mozley. 
 Influences of Habit on Devotion. 
 The Life of Probation. 
 Thought for To-morrow. 
 Growing Worse. 
 
 The Educating Power of Strong Impressions. 
 1 Page 209.
 
 232 SUNDAY READING, 
 
 University Sermons. R. W. Church. 
 Human Judgment and Divine Temper. 
 Self-Discipline. 
 The Sense of Beauty. 
 The Power of the Ascension. 
 
 Pascal and other Sermons. R. IV. Church. 
 Particular Providence. 
 Strong Words. 
 
 The Spirit of Discipline. F. Paget. 
 The Sorrow of the World. 
 The Perils of the Vacant Heart. 
 Leisure Thoughts. 
 
 Studies in the Christian Character. F. Paget. 
 Honouring all Men. 
 Sanity of Saintliness. 
 Forbearance. 
 Courtesy. 
 Misuse of Words. 
 Cowardice. 
 Simplicity of Goodness. 
 
 ON THE PRAYER BOOK. 
 
 History of the Book of Common Prayer. Proctor, ioj. 6d. 
 Annotated Book of Common Prayer. J. H. Blunt. 2 i.e. 
 Principles of Divine Service. Archdeacon Freeman, s. h. 
 Studies in the History of the Prayer Book. H.M.Luckock. 6s> 
 The Divine Liturgy. H. M. Luckock. 6s. 
 Voices of the Prayer Book. IV. C. E. Newbolt. 2s. 6d. 
 Preparation of Prayer Book Lessons. C. M. Yonge. 6s. 
 Conversations on the Catechism. C. M. Yonge. s. h.
 
 "Qlty ^tlgum'g ^progress." 
 
 DR. JOHNSON once took Bishop Percy's 
 little girl on his knee and asked her if she 
 had read " The Pilgrim's Progress." " No," said 
 the child. " Then you are not worth a farthing," 
 exclaimed the doctor, as he put her down. 
 
 One hopes that she went forthwith and read it, 
 for a child's mental landscape is much impoverished 
 if it lacks the wicket gate and the House Beautiful, 
 if she never hears the birds singing the Old 
 Hundredth in the trees of the Land of Beulah, and 
 never overhears Giant Despair's consultations with 
 his wife. But it is not the obvious charm of the 
 vivid pictures and forcible language, on which 
 I would dwell here, but the value of the book as 
 part of our Devotional Library. 
 
 Let no one object to " The Pilgrim's Progress," 
 as being childish, or for unlettered people, since 
 Coleridge said every man should read it three 
 times, as a poet, as a theologian, and as a 
 Christian. 
 
 " How much the world owes to great sorrows 1 " ' 
 1 Prof. Seeley.
 
 234 " THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS:' 
 
 Had Bunyan never " lighted on a certain place 
 where was a den," what blanks there would be in 
 our spiritual maps ! The geography of Europe 
 may be altered by wars and rumours of wars 
 without its making much difference to many of us, 
 but Doubting Castle, the Slough of Despond, the 
 Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, the 
 Land of Beulah, and the Delectable Mountains 
 are more than mere geographical expressions to 
 us ; they have given a local habitation and a name 
 to many a painful conflict, many a vision of the 
 Celestial City, which come to the pilgrim of to-day, 
 as surely as to Bunyan in his " den." For us, also, 
 " The House Beautiful stands by the wayside ; " 
 for us, also, " Giant Despair sometimes falls into 
 fits in sunshiny weather." We, also, should say, 
 as did the pilgrims one to another, " We have need 
 to cry to the Strong for strength," and should heed 
 the Shepherd's rejoinder, " Ay, and you will have 
 need to use it too, when you have it." We, too, 
 can be like Christian, glad and lightsome, and say 
 with a merry heart, " He hath given me rest by his 
 sorrow, and life by His death." We, too, have " to 
 play the man in Vanity Fair," and need to say 
 to ourselves, " To go back is nothing but death : to 
 go forward is fear of death, and life everlasting 
 beyond it : I will yet go forward : " or, at least, to 
 say with Mr. Feeblemind, " Brunts I look for, but 
 this I have resolved on, to wit, to run vhere I can,
 
 " THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 235 
 
 to go where I cannot run, and to creep where I 
 cannot go." 
 
 Is there any other book which has thus enriched 
 our mental picture gallery with scenes, so real and 
 sacred, that they form a continuous series in our 
 minds with those of Bible history? Are not 
 Christian and Greatheart as real to us as any 
 heroes of Hebrew history ? Do not Bunyan and 
 Milton monopolize the honour of having modified 
 popular theology, and given shape and vividness 
 to many ideas, which, though implied in the Bible, 
 would be overlooked, but for " Paradise Lost " and 
 " The Pilgrim's Progress " ? How peopled must 
 the Bedford prison have been with these creations, 
 whose circumstances and relationships were so real 
 to Bunyan ! Who has not felt the delight of over- 
 hearing the private talk of a real giant with his 
 wife? Who has not felt he has often been past 
 the place "where they saw one Fool, and one 
 Want-wit, washing of an Ethiopian, with intention 
 to make him white " ? Who has not felt the 
 satisfactoriness of knowing about Mr. Hold-the- 
 World, Mr. Money-love, and Mr. Save-all, with a 
 fulness of detail that made them seem next-door 
 neighbours ; how, in " their minority they were 
 schoolfellows and taught by one Mr. Gripeman, a 
 schoolmaster in Love-gain, which is a market town 
 in the County of Coveting, in the North ? " Who 
 has not delighted in the family history of By-ends,
 
 236 " THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS:' 
 
 who had so many good connections, but " in 
 especial my Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time- 
 server, my Lord Fair-speech ; also Mr. Smoothman, 
 Mr. Facing-both-ways, Mr. Anything; while the 
 parson of the parish, Mr. Two-tongues, was his 
 mother's own brother, by the father's side, so that 
 he was a gentleman of good quality, though his 
 great-grandfather was but a waterman, looking one 
 way and rowing another." 
 
 A clergyman once told me that he had found 
 it a most helpful means of Bible study to read 
 " The Pilgrim's Progress," finding all the references. 
 He said that, until he did this, he had had no idea 
 what a fresh light Bunyan threw on many passages 
 of scripture, by his use of them, and by the manner 
 in which he connected one with another. It has 
 often seemed to me a pity that this book is not 
 used as a basis for lessons ; a series might be 
 drawn out which could be used, instead of stories, 
 at afternoon Sunday school, and which would give 
 vividness to many children's ideas of the Christian's 
 journey. 
 
 Bunyan is a writer who has a special message to 
 us in the present day, when, owing to a natural 
 reaction from Puritanism, the sense of sin is seldom 
 dwelt upon. Exhortations to philanthropy are 
 sure to be heard and read, and ideals of moral 
 excellence are plentiful j but Dean Stanley has 
 had a large share in moulding this generation, and
 
 " THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS:' 237 
 
 Dr. Pusey has remarked how, in him, the sense of 
 sin was curiously absent. 
 
 " The Pilgrim's Progress " " plays upon the bass," 
 and its story pleases the young better than does its 
 underlying meaning. But its beauty and nobleness 
 delight all readers, and the days will come when 
 " the still sad music " which underlies that beauty 
 will be welcomed for its own sake, and will bring 
 double comfort for being an old friend. 
 
 To us, as to Christian, there comes in our dark 
 hours "a man whose name is Help," and it is 
 Bunyan himself, who brings us " the comfort where- 
 with he himself was comforted of God." We feel 
 the inward gravity of Bunyan's own soul speaking 
 to us, as we hear Christian telling Apollyon that 
 "as for present deliverances he does not much 
 expect it." 
 
 " No one can tell what in that combat attends us 
 but he that hath been in the battle himself," and 
 we feel the living grasp of Bunyan's own hand, as 
 we take heart in hearing Christian's answer to the 
 warnings of Mr. Worldly Wiseman : " Thou art 
 likely to meet with wearisomeness, painfulness, 
 hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, 
 darkness, and, in a word, death, and what not 1 " 
 
 " Why, sir," says Christian, " this burden upon 
 my back is more terrible to me than are all these 
 things which you have mentioned ; nay, methinks 
 I care not what things I meet with in the way, if
 
 238 " THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 
 
 so be I can also meet with deliverance from my 
 burden." 
 
 To Christian (as to Valiant, long afterwards), 
 " these things seemed but as so many nothings," 
 for he had seen his Lord " upon a mercy-seat, 
 where He sits all the year long, to give pardon and 
 forgiveness to them that come. . . . He longed to 
 do something for the honour and glory of the Name 
 of the Lord Jesus ; yen, he thought that, had he a 
 thousand gallons of blood in his body, he could 
 spill it all for the sake of the Lord Jesus. . . . Things 
 were right betwixt the Prince of Pilgrims and his 
 soul." The " thought of what waited for him on the 
 other side, lay as a glowing coal at his heart." And 
 yet we are made to feel, over and over again, that 
 "burthened Christian" is the true description of 
 him. When Prudence asks, " Do you not find 
 sometimes as if those things were vanquished, 
 which at other times are your perplexity ? " he 
 answers, " Yes, but that is but seldom ; but they 
 are to me golden hours in which such things 
 happen to me." 
 
 Our education generally takes us to the House 
 Beautiful, though we sometimes "go past it un- 
 heeding ; " sometimes because our hearts are so full 
 of some Hill Difficulty we have been climbing, or 
 of the lions in the way, or simply because we are 
 in a hurry. As a rule, however, we do learn to 
 be appreciative of beauty, and we visit with keen
 
 " THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS: 1 239 
 
 interest the Interpreter's House; but we are in- 
 creasingly apt to miss out, on our journey, the Valley 
 of Humiliation, and the Valley of the Shadow, 
 " which was a very solitary place." Hence our 
 mental faculties are developed in modern life, more 
 than is the case with our moral thoughtfulness. 
 It is to our own most grievous loss, both of 
 pleasure and profit, when our life is so full of " the 
 blessed (?) influence of high pressure " if we 
 miss the valley, where " our Lord formerly had 
 His country house, and loved much to be," and 
 where the shepherd boy dwelt with " the herb 
 called heartsease in his bosom," and where "a 
 man shall be free from the noise and hurryings of 
 this life," so that some have wished that " the next 
 way to their Father's house were here, so that they 
 might be troubled no more with either hills or 
 mountains to go over." 
 
 This valley is " as fruitful a place as any the crow 
 flies over — there is no rattling with coaches, nor 
 rumbling with wheels; methinks, here one may, 
 without much molestation, be thinking what he is, 
 whence he came, what he has done, and to what 
 the King has called him." It is often in our own 
 power to save time (!) by avoiding this valley ; but 
 if we do, the unavoidable passage through Vanity 
 Fair is made trebly dangerous ; for Vanity Fair is 
 no longer a place of open peril, as it was to Chris- 
 tian and Faithful (which was in itself a warning),
 
 240 " THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS?' 
 
 it is more often, as Mnason described it, " full 
 of hurry in fair-time ; " — I had almost written 
 " term "-time ! " It is hard keeping our hearts and 
 spirits in any good order, when we are in a 
 cumbered condition. He that lives in such a place 
 as this is (Vanity Fair), and that has to do with 
 such as we have, has need of an item, to caution 
 him to take heed, every moment of the day." 
 
 Inward gravity of soul is the abiding temperament 
 of Bunyan's Christian, — 
 
 "The gay at heart may wander to the skies, 
 And harps be found them, and a branch of palm 
 Be put into their hands," ' 
 
 but Bunyan knows little of such; he feels more at 
 home with one who knows what it is to have battles 
 with Apollyon " in a narrow place just beyond 
 Forgetful Green," or who feels conscious of belong- 
 ing to the Town of Uncertain, or the Town of 
 Stupidity. Bunyan is sensitive enough to know by 
 experience that it needs " a sunshine morning " for 
 Mr. Fearing to get over the Slough of Despond, 
 and that it helped him wonderfully when Evangelist 
 "gave him one smile." 
 
 We cannot doubt that Bunyan was a good 
 fighter, but he has curious sympathy with weak- 
 lings. Perhaps he had in him a touch of the 
 nature of Mr. Fearing, who carried a Slough of 
 1 Quoted in " Friends in Council."
 
 " THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 241 
 
 Despond in his mind (though he made nothing of 
 the lions); or it may have been sympathy with 
 Him Who loved pilgrims, that made Bunyan year 
 by year more tender to those " dejected at every 
 difficulty, who stumbled at every straw." For this 
 compassionate insight grows in him, — it is only in 
 Part II. that we find those careful studies of 
 " desponds and slavish fears " which may make 
 the most cowardly reader say, with Christiana, " I 
 thought nobody had been like me, but this relation 
 of Mr. Fearing has done me good." 
 
 There are many books for the sick — "The 
 Pilgrim's Progress" is one for the dying also. 
 Except the Bible itself, where shall we find more 
 " comfortable words " for those on the brink of the 
 Dark River, than Christiana's cry, " Come wet, come 
 dry, I long to be gone ; for, however the weather 
 is in my journey, I shall have time enough when I 
 come there to sit down and rest me and dry me." 
 Mr. Ready-to-halt lets us share the message that 
 came to him " in the Name of Him Whom he had 
 loved and followed, though upon crutches ; " and 
 Mr. Stand-fast says to us, " This river has been a 
 terror to many ; yea, the thoughts of it also have 
 often frightened me ; yet the thoughts of what I 
 am going to, and of the conduct that waits for me 
 on the other side, doth lie as a glowing coal at my 
 heart. I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of; 
 and wherever I have seen the print of His shoe 
 
 R
 
 242 " THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 
 
 in the earth, there I have coveted to set my foot 
 too. My toilsome days are ended. I shall be 
 with Him in Whose company I delight myself." 
 
 But " The Pilgrim's Progress " is a book for the 
 living — a manual for the pilgrim on his way to 
 Jerusalem. Few of us are fortunate enough to 
 dwell always " out of the reach of Giant Despair, 
 where they can not so much as see Doubting 
 Castle ; " and we may often be grateful for Christian's 
 reminder that we "have in our bosoms a key 
 called Promise, which will open any lock in Doubt- 
 ing Castle," and for Mr. Feeblemind's words, that 
 he has " heard that not any pilgrim taken captive, 
 if he keeps heartwhole towards his Master, is to 
 die by the hand of the enemy." Hopeful's 
 exhortations to pluck up heart should go home to 
 us all, though it may be that some of us are like 
 Mr. Fearing, who was " one that played upon the 
 bass. He and his fellows sound the sackbut, 
 whose notes are more doleful than the notes of 
 other music are ; though, indeed, some say the bass 
 is the ground of music. The first string that the 
 musician touches is usually the bass, when he 
 intends to put all in tune. God also plays upon 
 this string first, when He sets the soul in tune for 
 Himself. Only there was the imperfection of Mr. 
 Fearing; he could play on no other music than 
 this." 
 
 Put though Bunyan is " one of the Lord's
 
 " THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS." 243 
 
 Shepherds indeed, who does not push the diseased 
 aside, but rather strews their way into the palace 
 with flowers," yet, the man who could condense 
 twelve years of suffering and prison into the one 
 line, " I lighted on a certain place where was a 
 den," must have been Greatheart himself, who 
 " loved greatly one that was a man of his hands." 
 As Greatheart takes up Mr. Valiant's sword, surely 
 it is the stout old Puritan of Bedford gaol who, 
 when " he had looked there on a while, says, • Ha ' 
 it is a right Jerusalem blade ! ' " 
 
 PRINTED BV WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS 
 LONDON AND BECCXES.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This hook is DLL on (he last date stamped below. 
 
 totd to-um: 
 AUG22133Q 
 JAN 3 1989 
 
 FEB 2 2 
 
 
 '4139
 
 3 1158 00617 3602 
 
 «\ 
 
 AA 001 162 771 8