"Reading mdketh a full man, conference a
readye man, and writing an exacte man"
— Bacon

OLD SHRINES AND IVY

OLD SHRINES
AND IVY
BY
WILLIAM WINTER

** I do love these ancient ruz'm:
We never tread upon them but ive set
Our foot vPon some reverend history.
. . . But all things have their end"
The Duchess of Malfi

NEW YORK
MACMILLAN AND COMPANY
AND London

Copyright, 1S92,
By MACMILLAN AND CO.

Two hundred and fifty copies of this edition
were printed fune, i8q2.

Edie.

Typography hy J. S. Gushing 4 Co., Boston, U.S.A.

Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston, U.S..\.

TO
@£ors£ aSSflUam CCurtis
WITH HONOUR FOR A NOBLE MIND
AND A BEAUTIFUL LIFE
AND WITH AFFECTIONATE MEMORIES
OF MUCH KINDNESS
DURING MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS OF
UNCLOUDED FRIENDSHIP
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

" Ibimus, ibimus,
Utcvnque prsscedes, supremum
Carpere iter comites parati"

PEEFACE.

The shrines upon vihich these offerings
of homage are laid are shrines of history
and shrines of literature. It has been the
author's design, alike in description and
commentary, and rohether depicting scenes of
travel or celebrating achievements of genius,
to carry through his books the thread of
Shakespearean interest. Tlie study of
Shakespeare is the study of life. Tliere can
be no broader or higher subject. In these
sketches and essays, accordingly, the reader
is desired not only to ramble in various
parts of England, Scotland, and France,
but especially to linger for a while in lovely
Wanoickshire, and to meditate upon some
of the works of that divine poet with whose
story and whose spirit that region is hal-
7

8 PREFACE.
lowed. Historical facts that are recounted,
in the course of these papers, respecting
Shakespeare pieces and a few others, are
not new to the dramatic scholar; but even
to him a summary of knowledge, combined
with definite thought, as to those writings,
may prove not unwelcome.
Most of the essays on the plays were writ
ten at the suggestion of my old friend
Augustin Daly, and were privately printed,
by way of introduction to stage-versions of
those plays, edited by him. A thread of
theatrical history therefore appears in those
essays, entwined with disquisition on the
beauties of some of the most cherished treas
ures of our language. The paper commem
orative of Longfellow leas written in the
New York Tribune at the time of his death.
W. W.
Mat, 1892.

CONTENTS.

I. Shrines of History.
CHAP. PAGE
1. STORIED SOUTHAMPTON ... 13
n. PAGEANTRY AND RELICS . . 25
ni. THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH . 31
IV. A STRATFORD CHRONICLE . , 40
V. FROM LONDON TO DOVER . . 55
VI. BEAUTIES OF FRANCE ... 66
Vn. ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL . . 75
Vni. FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS, 86
IX. THE FIELD OF CULLODEN . . 98
X. STORM-BOUND IN lONA . . . 107

10 CONTENTS.
II. Shrines of Literature.
CHAP. PAGE
XI. THE FOREST OF ARDEN: AS YOU
LIKE IT  133
xii. fairy land . a midsummer
night's dream . . . 163
XIII. WILL O' THE WISP : LOVE's LA
BOUR'S LOST .... 187
XIV. Shakespeare's shrew . . 207
XV. A MAD world: ANTONY AND
CLEOPATRA .... 219
XVI. SHERIDAN AND THE SCHOOL FOR
SCANDAL  224
XVII. FARQUHAR AND THE INCON
STANT  249
XVIII. LONGFELLOW  261
XIX. A THOUGHT ON COOPER'S NOV
ELS  281
XX. A MAN OF LETTERS: JOHN R. G.
HASSARD  285

I
SHEINES OF HISTORY

OLD SHRINES AND IVY.

STORIED SOUTHAMPTON.
EARLY in the morning of a brilliant July
day the Scilly islands came into view,
a little to the south of our course, and we
could see the great waves breaking into
flying masses and long wreaths of silver
foam, on their grim shores and in their
rock-bound chasms. Yet a little while and
the steep cliffs of Cornwall glimmered into
the prospect, and then came the double
towers of the Lizard Light, and we knew
that our voyage was accomplished. The
rest of the way is the familiar panorama
of the channel coast — lonely Eddystone,
keeping its sentinel watch in solitude and
danger ; the green pasture lands of Devon ;
the crags of Portland, gray and emerald
and gold, shining, changing, and fading in
silver mist ; the shelving fringes of the
Solent ; the sandy coves and green hills of
13

14 STORIED SOUTHAMPTON.
the beautiful Isle of "Wight; and placid
Southampton Water with its little light
houses and its crescent town, vital with the
incessant enterprise of the present and rich
with splendid associations of the past. The
gloaming had begun to die into night when
we lauded, and in the sleepy stillness of the
vacant streets and of the quiet inn we were
soon conscious of that feeling of peace and
comfort which is the first sensation of the
old traveller who comes again into England.
It is the sensation — after long wandering
and much vicissitude — of being at home
and at rest ; and you seldom, or never, find
it elsewhere.
If the old city of Southampton were not, to
the majority of ramblers, merely a port of
entry and departure, if the traveller were
constrained to seek it as a goal instead of
treating it as a thoroughfare, its uncommon
physical beauty and its exceptional anti
quarian interest would be more fitly appre
ciated and more highly prized than they
appear to be at present. Objects that are
viewed as incidental are seldom compre
hended as important. Traffic, with its
attendant bustle, imparts to Southampton
shores an air of turbulence and common
ness. The popular spirit of our age, not-

STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. 1 5
withstanding there is a newly awakened
feeling of reverence actively at work, makes
no account of picturesque accessories and
does nothing either to create or to perpetu
ate them. In Southampton, for example,
just as in ancient Warwick, a tramcar
jangles through the grim arch of a gray
stone gate of the Middle Ages ; and this
way the Present makes its comment on the
Past. Yet the Present and the Past are
inseparably associated, —the one being the
consequence and inheritor of the other, —
and in no way better can the student of
social development pursue his study than
in rambling through the streets and among
the structures that to-day has built amid
the ruins and the relics of yesterday. A
walk in breezy Southampton was full of in
struction. There was a great and merry
multitude upon the lovely green Common,
when first I saw it, a band was playing in
its pavilion, and birds were circling and
twittering around the tree-tops in the light
of the evening sun ; but as I stood there and
watched the happy throng and listened to
the martial music the scene seemed sud
denly to change, and I beheld the armoured
cohorts of Henry V., and heard the trum
pets bray, and saw the gallant king, upon

1 6 STORIED SOUTHAMPTON.
his mail-clad charger, riding downward to
the sea, for Agincourt and the laurel ot
everlasting fame.
Many days might be pleasantly spent in
Southampton and its storied neighbourhood.
You are at the mouth of the Itchen — the
river of Izaak Walton, who lived and died
at venerable Winchester, only a few miles
away. Netley Abbey is close by. On every
side, indeed, there is something to stimu
late the fancy and to awaken remembrance
of historic lore. King John's house is
extant, in Blue Anchor lane. King John's
charter may be seen in the Audit House.
The Bridewell Gate still stands, that was
built by Henry VIII., and in Bugle street
is the Spanish prison that was used in the
time of Queen Anne. At the foot of the
High street stood King Canute's palace ;
and upon the neighbouring beach the mon
arch spoke his vain command to stay tlie
advancing waves and made his memorable
submission to the Power that is greater
than kings. In St. Michael's square they
show you an ancient red-tiled house, made
of timber and brick, in which Anne Boleyn
once lived, with her royal lord Henry VIII. ,
and which bears her name to this day. It
is a two-story building, surmounted with

STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. I?
four large gables, the front curiously diver
sified with a crescent pent and with four
great diamond-latticed casements ; and gaz
ing upon it I could not fail to conjure up a
vision of that dark-eyed, golden-haired
beauty whose fascination played so large a
part in shaping the religious and political
destiny of England. There she may have
stood, in the gloaming, and looked forth
upon the grim and gloomy Norman church
that still frowns upon the lonely square and
would make a darkness even at noon. A
few steps from St. Michael's will bring you
to a relic of a different kind, fraught with
widely different associations — ¦ the birth
place of the pious poet Isaac Watts. The
house stands in French street, a little back
from the sidewalk, on the east side, and is
a two-story red-brick dwelling, having eight
windows in the front of it and two doors.
Between the house and the street there is
a garden which was brilliant with the blazr
ing yellow of a mass of blooming marigolds.
A tall iron fence encloses the garden, within
which are six poplar trees growing along
the margin, and if you stand at the gate
and look along French street you can dis
cern Southampton Water, at no great dis
tance. They venerate the memory of Dr..
B

l8 STORIED SOUTHAMPTON.
Watts in this town, and they have not only
built a church in his honour, just above
Bar Gate, but have set up his statue (by
Mr. Lucas) in the park, • — the figure of the
apostolic bard as he appeared when in the
act to preach. That piece of sculpture —
the pedestal of which is faced with medal
lions illustrative of the life and labours of
the bard — was appropriately dedicated by
the Earl of Shaftesbury, in July 1861.
Leaving the birthplace of Watts you have
only to turn a neighbouring corner and pro
ceed a short distance to find an effect of
contrast still more remarkable — the rem
nant of the Domus Dei, in Winkle street,
the burial-place of the decapitated nobles,
Sorope, Gray, and Cambridge, who lost their
lives for conspiracy to assassinate King
Henry V. This was an almshouse in
Henry's day and later [it was founded in
the reign of Richard L], but only the
chapel of it remains, and that has been
restored — a small, dark, oblong structure,
partly Norman and partly Early English.
Queen Elizabeth assigned that church for
the use of Protestant refugees who fled
from the persecution of the tyrant Alva —
so active in the Low Countries from 1567
to 15,73, Service is still performed in it,

storied SOUTHAMPTON. I9
in the French language. Under the chancel
floor of that old edifice rest the ashes of the
false friends [dismissed to their death
nearly five centuries ago] who would have
slain their king and imperilled their coun
try ; and upon the south wall, near the
altar, there is a tablet of gray stone, with
indented, blackened letters, bearing this
record of their fate :
RICHARD, EARL OP CAMBRIDGE,
LORD SCROPE OP MASHAM,
SIR THO. GRAY OF NORTHUMBERLAND,
CONSPIRED TO MURDER KING
HENRT V. IN THIS TOWN AS HE
WAS PREPARING TO SAIL WITH HIS
ARMY AGAINST CHARLES THE SIXTH,
KING OP PRANCE, POR WHICH
CONSPIRACY THEY WERE .EXECUTED
AND BURIED NEAR THIS PLACE
IN THE YEAR
MOCCCXV,
As you stand by that sepulchre you will
remember with a new interest and emotion
the noble, pathetic speech — as high a
strain of pure eloquence and lofty passion
as there is in our language — with which
Shakespeare makes the heroic prince de
plore and rebuke, at the same instant, the

20 STORIED SOUTHAMPTON.
treachery of the friendship in which he had
entirely believed and trusted. Those lords
were beheaded just outside of Bar Gate.
Near their tomb, leaning against the wall,
is a beautiful old brass, — the full-length
figure of a French cleric of the time of
Queen Elizabeth, — mounted upon an oak
board ; the head being carved in marble,
while the person is of the dark green hue
that old brasses so often acquire, and that
seems to enhance at once their interest and
their opulent efieot.
In Southampton, as indeed all over Eng
land, the disposition to preserve the relics
of a romantic past is stronger at present than
it was a hundred years ago ; and for this
the antiquary has reason to be deeply grate
ful. His constant regret, indeed, is that
this gentle impulse did not awaken earlier.
The old Castle of Southampton [where King
Stephen reigned, who ' ' was a worthy peer ' ' ]
was long ago destroyed ; but fragments of
the walls remain, and these, it is pleasant
to observe, are guarded with scrupulous
care. As you stroll along the shore your
gaze will wander from the gay and busy
steamboats, — alert for the channel islands
and for France, and seeming like brilliant
birds that plume their wings for flight, —

STORIED SOUTHA.MPTON. 21
and will rest on grim towers and bastions
of the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries,
over which the ivy hangs in dense draperies
of shining emerald, and against which the
copious flowers of geranium and nasturtium
blaze in scarlet and gold. One of those cit
adels, peacefully occupied now by the Har
bour Board, bears record of a time, in 1482,
when gunpowder was used there, to repel
a night attack made by the French ; so that
the American pilgrim, upon this spot, is
usefully reminded that there were lively
times in the world even before Columbus
made his interesting discovery. A strag
gling procession of belated travellers, bear
ing bags, rushed wildly by, as I stood before
that gray remnant of feudal magnificence,
and an idle youth in the gateway, happily
furnished with a flageolet, gayly performed
upon it "The girl I left behind me."
Nothing can exceed, in mingled strange
ness and drollery, the use of these quaint
places for the business and the pleasure of
the passing hour. Roaming through the
narrow little squalid thoroughfare of Blue
Anchor lane, amid the picturesque foun
dations of what was once the royal palace
of John and of Henry III., — now a mass of
masonry that has outlasted the storms and

22 STORIED SOUTHAMPTON.
ravages of a thousand years, — I looked
into dtagy lodgmg-houses that are scarcely
more than holes in a wall, and threaded a
difficult way among groups of ragged chil
dren, silenced for a moment by the presence
of a stranger, but soon loud again in their
careless frolic over the crumbling grandeur
of forgotten kings. Blue Anchor lane
leads to the Arcade in the west wall of the
city, which, with its nineteen splendid
arches, is surely as fine a specimen of true
Norman architecture as could be found in
this kingdom. Bar Gate, at the top of the
High street, is also a noble relic of Norman
taste and skill ; but Bar Gate has been
somewhat modernised by changes and res
toration ; and the statue, upon its south
front, of George III. in the dress of a
Roman Emperor, mars its venerable antiq
uity with a touch of unconsciously comie
humour. Many excursions are practicable from
Southampton. One of the prettiest of them
is the drive westward, by the Commercial
road and Romsey lane, to the village of
Millbrook, where there is an old church, and
where — in the adjacent cemetery — an obe
lisk of granite marks the resting-place of
the poet Robert Pollock, author of The

STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. 23
Course of Time — a poem much read and
admired by pious people sixty years ago.
Another, which may better be made on foot,
is the ramble along the avenue to South
ampton Common, and so, beneath oaks,
elms, and lime-trees, and through " a sweet
disorder" of shrubbery and gorse, to the
beautiful cemetery in which hawthorns,
evergreens, and a profusion of all the flowers
that grow in this radiant land have made a
veritable bower for the awful silence and in
scrutable majesty of death. I wandered
there to look upon the burial-place of my
old friend Edward Sothem, and I came upon
it, in an afternoon that was all sunshine
and fragrance, — like those days of careless
mirth that once we knew together. There
never was a droller or more whimsical spirit.
There never was a comedian who to the
faculty of eccentric humour added a more
subtle power of intellectual perception and
artistic purpose. Few players of our time
have made so much laughter or given so
much innocent pleasure. But he could not
bear prosperity, and he lived too much for
enjoyment — and so, prematurely, his bright
career ended. A simple cross of white
marble marks the place of his last sleep and
the leaves of a sturdy oak rustle over his

24 STORIED SOUTHAMPTON.
head ; and as I turned away from that place
of peace I saw the shimmering roses all
around, and heard the cawing of the rooks
in the distant elms, and felt and knew that
in this slumber there are no dreams and that
with the dead all is well.
Artemas Ward died in Southampton:
Edward Sothem is buried there. It seems
but yesterday since those lords of frolic
were my companions ; but the grass has
long been growing over them and even the
echo of their laughter has died away. His
toric association dignifies a place ; but it is
the personal association that makes it fa
miliar. From Southampton the Pilgrim
Fathers, nearly three hundred years ago,
sailed away to found another England in
the western wild. Innumerable legends of
that kind haunt the town and haUow it.
Yet to one dreamer its name will ever, first
of all, bring back the slumberous whisper
of leaves that ripple in a summer wind
and the balm of flowers that breathe their
blessing on a comrade's rest.

PAGEANTRY AND RELICS. 25

n.

PAGEANTRY AND RELICS.
A PLEAS ANT course, if you would drift
from the channel coast into the Mid
lands, is to go from Southampton, by either
Winchester or less directly by Salisbury, to
Basingstoke, and thence northward by Read
ing and Oxford. Another good way —
which has been mine — is to loiter slowly
along the west of England, taking the track
of the cathedral towns, and viewing what
ever of historic interest may be observed in
those places and in the pleasant and mem
orable regions that environ them. There
should be no inexorable route, — for the
chief charm of English travel is liberty of
caprice ; and whichever way you turn you
are sure to find some peculiar beauty that
will reward your quest. My path (July
1891) has traversed Salisbury, Amesbury,
Stonehenge, Glastonbury, Wells, Cheddar,
Bristol, Gloucester, Worcester, and Eves
ham ; and all the while it has seemed to

26 PAGEANTRY AND RELICS.
wind through a fairy realm of flowers and
of dreams. Each part of England has its
charming peculiarities, but the general char
acteristics of English scenery are uniform.
The cities are the workshops: the rest is
one great garden of diversified and ever-
changing beauty. As you range through
the country you gaze on wooded hills in the
glimmering distance, dark or bright beneath
skies of rain or smi — never one thing long,
but always fickle, like a capricious girl
whose loveliness is the more bewitching be
cause unsure. Green fields fill the fore
ground, in which cattle are grazing and
sheep are couched beneath the trees. Here
and there a stately manor-house gleams
from its lordly grove. Little cottages, pic
turesque with roofs of thatch and with tiny
latticed windows, nestle by the roadside.
Some of the fields have just been gleaned
and ploughed, so that the bare earth, in rich
brown squares, affords a lively contrast
with meadows of brilliant grass and masses
of rippling barley. Now and then you see
a comely mare, with her awkward little colt,
reposing in the shadow of a copse. Yellow
haystacks, artfully trimmed, attract the eye,
and circular clumps of trees upon the hill-
slopes attest the wise, prescient care of the

PAGEANTRY AND RELICS. 27
gardeners of long ago. The land is gently
undulating and in the valleys there are rows
of pollard willows, by which you may trace
the current of a hidden stream. Far away,
or near at hand sometimes, suddenly appears
a gray spire or a grim tower, suggesting a
thought of monastic seclusion or a reminis
cence of historic antiquity. White roads,
often devoid for many miles equally of vehi
cles and pedestrians, wind through the level
plains and over the ridges of lonely hills.
Rivers gleam in the landscape, some rapid
and some tranquil. Rain-clouds drift fre
quently over the scene, but only serve to
make it more sweetly beautiful. The past
and the present are softly blended in a gen
tle pageant of wood and meadow, park and
common, church and castle, lawn and past
ure, clouds that are like cloth of bronze, and
earth that is clad in emerald and scarlet ;
while over the broad expanse of this various
loveliness, in which the fresh garlands of
Nature deck with perennial bloom the
crumbling relics of an historic architectural
grandeur that is dead and gone, the skies of
summer brood with a benediction of peace.
It is the natural desire for change of
scenery that prompts an Englishman to
visit other lands ; but he can find no other

28 PAGEANTRY AND RELICS.
land that is as rich as his own in those
treasures of suggestion which are the chief
gain of travel. One picture of the old famil
iar Shakespeare country may stand for
many that are constantly within his reach.
A spiral stair of forty-five steps gives access,
for the adventurous explorer, to the ring
ing-loft of the tower of Stratford church,^
and a ladder of niaeteen rounds will then
conduct him to the bell-chamber above.
He may climb further if he likes to do so,
and ascend into the interior of the stone
spire. This is not the oak spire, covered
with lead, that Shakespeare saw, but one
that replaced it in 1746. From the ring
ing-loft a small portal will give egress to
the chancel roof. In all directions the
prospect from the tower is beautiful.
Looking westward along the nave, the ob
server will view a considerable part of the
old town, — the slate roofs of its thick-
clustering, red-brick dwellings wet with
recent rain and shining in the fitful sun
light, — and beyond it the bold crest and
1 In the winding stair that leade to the top of the
great tower of Warwicls Castle there are one hundred
and thirty-three steps. In the spiral that leads to
the top of the tower of St. Mary's church, Warwick,
there are one hundred and sixty.

PAGE.\NTRY AND RELICS. 29
green slopes of Borden hill, where "the
wild thyme" grows in sweet luxuriance,
and where, since it is close to Shottery, the
poet, as he strolled with his sweetheart in
those distant days when love was young,
possibly may have found (as many Shake-
speareans think he did) the fragrant ' ' bank ' '
of the Midsummer Nighfs Dream. South
ward stands the crag-like hill of Meon, once
a stronghold of the Danes, and far away
the lonely Broadway tower looms faintly
on the ridge of its emerald highland.
Further still and still more dimly visible is
the wavering outline of the Malvern hills.
In the north, weltering beneath the sombre
rain-clouds of retreatmg storm, are the
green heights of Welcombe, where once the
Saxons had a fortified camp ; while near at
hand you see the turrets of the Shakespeare
Memorial ; stately Avonbank with its
wealth of various trees and its flower-
spangled terraces ; and the old churchyard
of Stratford, in which the roses bloom freely
over man's decay, and in which the gray,
lichen- covered stones are cold and forlorn
against the brilliant green of the sun-smit
ten sod. A wide stretch of dark emerald
meadow, intersected with long, dense hedge
rows of hawthorn and wild honeysuckle,

30 PAGEANTRY AND RELICS.
fills the near prospect, in the east, while
gently sloping hills extend into the distance
beyond, some wooded and some bare, and
aU faintly enwreathed with silver mist. At
the base of the tower flows the Avon, its
dark waters wrinkled by the breeze. Rooks
are cawing over Avonbank. Swifts and
swallows are twittering around the spire.
The leafy boughs of those great elms
that engirdle Shakespeare's church toss
and rustle in the strong wind. Sudden
shafts of sunlight illumine the lovely
pageant, far and near, and soon the glory
of the west fades into that tender gloaming
which is the crowning charm of the English
summer day. There is no need to roam
far afield when you can gaze upon scenes at
home that are at once so lovely to the vision
and so enchanting with association for the
imaginative mind.

THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 3 1

III.
THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH.
THE renovation of the Shakespeare church
has not (July 1891) been completed;
but only a few old things in it remain to be
destroyed, and no doubt the final strokes
will be delivered within a short time. The
glory and the grandeur of that old church
cannot, indeed, be entirely despoiled, even
by the superserviceable zeal of bigotry and
the regulative spirit of button-making con
vention. Something of venerable majesty
must still survive in the gray, mossy stones
of that massive tower and in the gloomy
battlements of nave and chancel through
which the winds of night sigh sadly over
Shakespeare's dust. TThe cold sublimity
of the ancient fabric, with its environment
of soft and gentle natural beauty and its
associations of poetic renown, can never be
wholly dispelled. Almost everything has
been done, however, that could be done to
make the place modem and conventional.

32 THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH.
The appearance of the church, especially of
its interior, has been materially changed.
A few of the changes were, perhaps, essen
tial, and those may have been made wisely ;
and all of the changes have been made with
mechanical skill if not always with taste.
A few more touches, and the inside of the
ancient building will be as neat and prim
as a box of candles. That was the avowed
object of the restoration — to make the
church appear as it used to appear when it
was built and before it had acquired any
association whatever ; and that object has
been measurably accomplished. But all
change here was an injury.
When all is over and old things have been
made new the devotees of Shakespeare may
be asked what it is of which they think they
have reason to complain. Their answer is
ready. They wanted to have the church
repaired ; they did not want to have it re
built. Alteration was unnecessary and it
was wrong. The Shakespeare church is a
national monument. More than that — it
is a literary shrine for all the world. There
was an indescribable poetic charm about
the old edifice, which had been bestowed
upon it not by art but by time. That charm
needed only to be left untouched. Nothing

THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 33
should ever have been done to dispel it.
The biulding had acquired character. It
had become venerable with age, storied with
association, and picturesque with quaint-
ness. The suns and the storms of centuries
had left their traces on its walls. The
actions and sufferings, the inspirations and
eccentricities of successive generations had
impressed themselves upon its fabric. It had
been made individual and splendid, — like
a visage of some noble old saint of mediae
val times, a face lined and seamed vrith
thought, dignified witli experience, subli
mated with conquered passion. Above all,
it had enshrined, for nearly three himdred
years, the ashes of the greatest poet — and
therefore the greatest benefactor of human
ity — that ever lived. All that was asked
was that it should be left alone. To repair
it in certain particulars became a necessity ;
but to alter it was to do it an irreparable
harm. That harm has been done ; and
it is that which the Shakespeare scholar
resents and deplores ; and he is right to
do so.
I lately went into the chancel and stood
there alone, in front of the altar, and looked
around — in amazement and sorrow. The
aspect of that chancel is no longer ancient ;
0

34 THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH.
it is new. The altar has been moved from
its place against the east wall, beneath the
great window, and has been elevated upon
a double pedestal. The floor around it has
been paved with encaustic tiles, of hideous
brown and yellow. Almost all the mural
tablets upon the north and south walls have
been carried away, and they may now be
found dispersed in the transepts, while their
place is to be filled with a broad expanse of
wooden panels, extending from the backs of
the miserere stalls upward to the sills of the
windows. The stalls themselves have been
repaired — but this was necessary, because
the wooden foundations of them had become
much decayed. And, finally, the stone
screens that filled half of the window back
of Shakespeare's monument and half of the
window back of the busts of Judith Combe
and her lover i have been removed. The
resultant effect — which would be excellent
in a modern hotel but which is detestable
1 Judith Comhc died in August 1649, — just prior
to her purposed marriage, — "in yc armes of him
who most entirely loved and was heloved of her,
even to ye very death." She belonged, no doubt, to
the family of John-a-Combe, who died July 10, 1614,
and whose tomb is at the north side of the chancel
window of the Shakespeare church. The tomb at
the south side is that of James Kendal, 1751.

THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 35
here — is the effect of enterprise and nov
elty. The pervading air is that of the
new broom and the modem improvements.
Those improvements, no doubt, are iine ;
but if ever there was a place on earth where
they are inappropriate that place is the
Shakespeare church. They suit well with
it as a place of ecclesiastical ritual, and if
the church were merely that nobody would
greatly care even if it were made as bright
as a brass band. But since it is the literary
shrine of the world no one who appreciates
its value can fail to regret that the ruthless
hand of umovation has been permitted to
degrade it, ta any degree whatever, to the
level of the commonplace.
When Dean Balsall (obiit 1491) built
the chancel of that church, about four
hundred years ago (1480), he placed it
against a little stone building, the remnant
of an ancient monastery — as good antiqua
rian scholars believe — which was long used
as the priest's study and under which was
a charnel house or crypt. [A great mass
of human bones was removed from that
crypt about 1886, and buried in a pit in the
churchyard.] The stone screen in the
lower half of the Shakespeare window was
necessary as a part of the sustaining wall

36 THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH.
between the old structure and the new one,
and later it was found useful as a back
ground for the Shakespeare monument.
Against that screen the bust of the poet
was placed by his children and his friends,
and as they saw it and knew it and left it,
so it should have been preserved and per
petuated. So until this period it has re
mained; but the pilgrim to Stratford church
hereafter will never see the bust of Shake
speare as it was seen by his daughters. A
link that bound us to the past has been
severed and no skill of man can now avail
to restore it. Back of the bust has been
placed a stained window, commemorative
of J. 0. Halliwell-Phillipps, the renowned
Shakespeare scholar. This was put in on
July 27, 1891, late in the afternoon ; and
that same night it was my fortune to have
a view of it, from within and from without.
The light of the gloaming had not yet
faded. The bell-ringers were at practice in
the tower, and the sweet notes of the Blue
Bells of Scotland were wafted downward in
a shower of silver melody upon the still air
of haunted chancel and darkening nave.
Enough of light yet lingered to display the
fresh embellishment, and I examined it
closely and viewed it for a long time. It

THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 37
is exceedingly ugly — being prosaic in de
sign and coarse in colour. The principal
object in its composition is the head of a
bull which, engirt with flames, rests upon
a heap of stones, encircled with a rivulet
of ultramarine blue. Upon each side, in
contrasted groups, stand several figures,
two or three of them visible at full length,
but most of them visible only in part. Of
human heads the picture contains eleven.
The chief colours are blue, purple, bronze,
scarlet, a,nd gray. The action of the prin
cipal figures is spirited and the treatment of
the faces shows artistic skill — those qual
ities of charm being the merits of the work.
As a memorial, the window means noth
ing, while its implied reference to one of
the stories of Jewish history is completely
unimportant. The inscription is from the
Bible: "And with the stones he built an
altar in the name of the Lord." The mean
ing of this is figurative and it is reverent
and irreproachable. Yet the observer who
reads that sentence can scarcely repress a
smile when he remembers that the stones
which were taken from the Shakespeare
window, to make room for this pretentious
deformity, now form a channel for hot-air
pipes under the chancel floor. It is some-

38 THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH.
thing, however, that they were put to use,
and not treated as rubbish.
The necessity for saving a relic here and
there seems not to have been ignored. The
stone reading-desk that long adorned this
church was sold to a stone-mason in the
Warwick road ; the top of the stone pulpit
was thrown away ; but the broken and
battered font, at which possibly the poet
was baptized, has been placed upon the
pillar that formerly supported the stone
pulpit, and this structure may now be seen
in the southwest corner of the nave. There
also have been placed the three carved can
opies of stone that formerly impended over
the sedalia in the chapel of Thomas a'
Becket, — now occupied by the organ
works. In the south transept stand two
large gravestones, the memorials of former
vicars, which were removed from the chan
cel — where they ought to have been left.
The lately discovered (1890) gravestone of
Judith Combe has been placed in the chan
cel floor, beneath her bust. In making
repairs, the vault of Dean Balsall, which is
close to that of Shakespeare, was broken
open, and it was inspected if not ex
plored — but the remains were not dis
turbed. Let us be properly thankful for

THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 39
SO much forbearance. The time was when
the present vicar of Stratford, Rev. George
Arbuthnot, gave his consent that the grave
of Shakespeare might be opened ; ^ and there
are uneasy spirits stOl extant whom inquis
itive curiosity would quickly impel to that
act of desecration. Whatever remnant sur
vives, therefore, of the spirit of reverence
in the ecclesiastical authority of Stratford
ought to be prized and cherished.
1 Readers who wish to know why it is thought by
some people that the grave of Shakespeare ought to
be explored will find dubious reasons set forth in a
curious and interesting book called Shakespeare's
Bones, written by C. M. Ingleby, LL.D., 1883. Dr.
Ingleby has collected many striking facts with regard
to the explorations of other hallowed tombs. He
appears to think it probable that the relics of Shake
speare have already been rifled : but this is conject-
ure. His assertion that a fresh stone was laid over
Shakespeare's grave not much more than fifty years
ago is not supported by any authority that I can find.

/to A STRATFORD CHRONICLE.

rv.
A STRATFORD CHRONICLE.
THE old Guild Hall and Grammar School
of Stratford is to be restored. This
good work was begun in 1891 by Charles
Edward Flower, the chief benefactor of
Shakespeare's town. The exterior of that
building was covered with plaster in 1786.
It is purposed to remove the plaster and
expose the ancient timbers, whereby the
picturesque aspect of the structure will
be greatly enhanced. The building, how
ever, will not be altered ; it will only
be relieved of disfigurements that were
foisted upon it in comparatively recent
times. Those disfigurements include the
panelling of the interior, beneath which, no
doubt, will be discovered some remains of
antique decoration. At the south end of
the hall traces have already been observed
of what may once have been a fresco of the
Crucifixion. On the walls of the council
chamber, now occupied by the head-master

A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 41
of the Grammar School, two frescoes of
large roses were recently discovered — em
blems that possibly were placed there to com
memorate the happy ending of the Wars
of the Roses, in August 1485, three years
after the formal foundation of the school of
Thomas Jolyffe.^ One interesting relic of
the Shakespeare period, and indeed of a
much earlier period, must be sacrificed —
the cottage, in the rear of the hall, which
is known as the schoolmaster's house, and
in which lived Walter Roche,^ who is be
lieved to have been Shakespeare's teacher.
That cottage has greatly suffered beneath
the ravages of time, and it is now a total
wreck. The chapel of the Giuld needs res-
I The Rev. Mr. Laffan says that the school existed
in embryo as early as 1412, and that a new house for
its accommodation was erected by the Guild of the
Holy Cross in 1427. The estate of the Guild was
confiscated by Henry VIII., but the school was re
established by Edward VI. in 1553, and since that
time it has been called The King's New School, or
King Edward VI. Grammar School. The build
ing was repaired and decorated in 1668. The boy
Shakespeare, it is believed, began to attend the
school in 1571,
2 The signature of Walter Roche, exceedingly
rare, is on a deed dated 1578, relative to a tenement
in Ely street, Hereford, preserved in the astonishing
and precious collection made by the late J. 0. Halli
well-Phillipps.

42 A STRATFORD CHRONICLE.
toration and probably soon will receive it ;
but when that sacred edifice is touched the
most reverent care will be taken to preserve
unchanged the aspect of venerable majesty
that long has made it one of the most im
pressive churches in England. The clergy
man who presides over the Guild chapel is
the head-master of the Grammar School, the
Rev. R. S. De Courcy Laffan, — a scholar,
a Shakespearean, a man of feeling and
taste ; and it is certain that no desecration
will be permitted by him. The church of
Shakespeare's sepulchre has been marred.
The church associated with his school-days
will be scrupulously preserved.
Joseph Skipsey, the Newcastle poet, who
in the summer of 1889 succeeded Miss
Maria Chataway as custodian of the Shake
speare Birthplace, resigned that office and
withdrew from it in October 1891. No
true successor to the Chataway sisters has
been found, or is likely to be found, for the
office of custodian of that venerable house.
The Chataway sisters retired from their
post in June 1889, after seventeen years
of service. The elder. Miss Maria Chata
way, who officially held the place, was over
seventy-eight years old ; the younger. Miss
Caroline Chataway, her assistant, was sev-

A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 43
enty-six. It was Miss Caroline who usually
escorted the visitor through the principal
rooms, and who told, in such a quaintly
characteristic way, the story of the building
as a relic of Shakespeare days : and it seems
not likely that anybody else will ever tell
the tale so well. The Chataway sisters, on
leaving the Shakespeare Birthplace, took up
their residence in a cottage in the War
wick road. Miss Maria Chataway died on
January 31, 1891.
The trustees of the Shakespeare Birth
place were authorized by an act of Par
liament, March 16, 1891, to use, for the
purchase of other Shakespeare property,
whatever surplus of money had accumulated
in their possession. They have bought, for
£3000, the Anne Hathaway cottage, which
was the home of the poet's vrife, and they
intend to buy the Mary Arden cottage, at
Wilmcote, which was the home of the poet's
mother. Mrs. Mary Taylor Baker continues
to reside in the Hathaway house and to
show the wainscot, the great timbers, the
antique bedstead, the dresser, the settle,
and the fire-place vrith which it is believed
that Shakespeare and his Anne were long
and happily familiar. Mrs. Baker's pedigree,
as the descendant and representative of the

44 -*¦ STRATFORD CHRONICLE.
Hathaway family of Shakespeare's time,
is set down as follows in her old family
Bible : —

Susan Hathaway. 1

X

William Taylor.

1

1
John Hathaway Taylor.

X

Mary Kemp.

1

1
William Taylor.
X
Elizabeth Dobbin. 1
1
1
Mary Taylor.
X
George Baker.
i
The marriage of Mary Taylor to George
Baker occurred in 1840. The Susan Hatha
way who stands at the head of this pedigree
is understood to have been Anne Hatha-
way's niece.
There are credulous persons who believe
in what is called the Ely Palace Portrait
of Shakespeare. Mr. Henry Graves, long
noted as a connoisseur of art and as one of
the best authorities in the kingdom as to
such a matter, believes in it and he has
been heard to say that he would value the
painting at five hundred guineas or at any
fancy price above that figure. The Ely
A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 45
Palace Portrait of Shakespeare was discov
ered in London and was bought by Bishop
Turton, of Ely, in 1846. It purports to
have been an heirloom in a family resident
in Little Britain, and personally known to
Shakespeare, and the story of it declares
that it was painted in Shakespeare's time.
In contour and expression it bears some
resemblance to the Dreshout likeness. The
face, however, is thia and pale and the
eyes are small. In May 1891 this portrait
was, for the first time in many years, taken
out of its frame, in order that the glass
might be cleaned, and then was observed
the following inscription upon the left-hand
upper corner of the canvas: "AE. 39. X
1603." Its existence had not before been
known at the Birthplace, but subsequent
inquiry has ascertained that the inscription
was known to Bishop Turton when he
bought the picture, and doubtless it had
an effect upon his judgment of its authen
ticity. The Ely Palace Portrait is preserved
at the Birthplace, where it is an interesting
feature in the collection that was made for
the museum department by William Oakes
Hunt and J. O. Halliwell-Phmipps.
Among Shakespeare relics that long sur
vived in Stratford, but now have disap-

46 A STRATFORD CHRONICLE.
peared, was the old house of Avonbank.
That building stood next to the principal
gate of Trinity churchyard, on land that
now forms part of the estate of Charles
Edward Flower, and it was designated, in
the town records, " the House of St. Mary
in old town." Thomas Green, who has
been variously styled "the poet's cousin"
and "the poet's intimate friend," — he was
town-clerk of Stratford from 1614 to 1617, —
lived there, and accordingly it is reasonable
to suppose that the house may have been
one of Shakespeare's habitual resorts. Each
room in it had a name. One was called
"the churchyard room"; one "the bee
hive " ; one " the end " ; one "the middle" ;
and one "the bird's nest."
Another Shakespeare relic that has dis
appeared is the old Market Cross of Strat
ford. That structure, often seen by Shake
speare, was surely as old as the early time
of Queen Elizabeth. It stood close by the
southwest comer of High street and Wood
street and was apparently used for a
market. At a meeting of the Common
Council of Stratford, held August 2, 1794,
it was "agreed that the house at the Cross,
late in the possession of Mr. Robert Man-
der, be wholly taken down and laid open to

A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 47
the road ; that Mr. Taylor take down the
house and be careful to put the materials
by for the use of the corporation." So
said, so done. The Cross was taken down
and removed in one day, — Saturday, August
11, 1821, — and its base was finally placed in
the centre walk of the Shakespeare Birth
place garden. The foundation stone of the
ugly market-house now standing at the junc
tion of Wood street and Henley street was
laid by George Morris, Mayor of Stratford,
on the coronation day of George IV.
Charles Edward Flower's Memorial thea
tre edition of Shakespeare's plays includes
the thirty-seven plays and fills eight volumes.
This edition is intended equally for the actor
and the reader. Each play is printed in
full, but while the text that is spoken on the
stage is given in brevier, the passages that
are usually omitted are given in minion.
The text is genuine, and the editorial
work has been done with scholarship, taste,
veneration, and patient zeal. In several
cases Mr. Flower was obliged to make new
stage versions — notably in those of Tlie
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Lahour^s
Lost, The Comedy of Errors, and the first
part of Henry VI. Those new versions
have been acted at the Memorial theatre.

40 A STRATFORD CHRONICLE.
and without exception they were successful.
The edition was printed by George Boyden,
at the Stratford Herald press.
The library of the Shakespeare Memo
rial now contains 6260 volumes. There are
236 English editions of Shakespeare in that
collection. Among the relics that have been
obtained are the manuscript of the late
Charles Mackay's treatise on Obscure Words
in Shakespeare's Plays, and a human skull
that was used as " Yoriok's skull, the king's
jester," by John Philip Kemble and by
Edmund Kean, when playing Hamlet. The
store of relics in Stratford is naturally con
siderable, and many of them are of great
interest. An uncommonly fine autograph
of Robert Burns is owned by Mr. William
Hutohings, of this town, and the original
manuscript of the letter that Dr. Johnson
addressed (June 26, 1777) to Dr. Dodd,
the forger, then under sentence of death,
is one of the possessions of Alderman
Bird. Robert Bell Wheler,i the historian of
Stratford, was buried in Trinity churchyard,
together with several of his relatives. We
'An autograph letter from Robert Bell Wheler
has come into my possession, which is interesting
not only as a relic of the historian but because of a

A STRATFORD CHRO>'ICLE. 49
are soon forgotten when we are dead, — as in
timated by poor old Rip Van Winkle, — and
the burial-place of the venerable antiquary
is fast hastening to decay. The graves of
the Wheler family are enclosed within a tall
iron fence and over them the grass grows
thick and wild. A double stone marks
the spot, on which is the following in
scription . —

reference that it makes to one of the most distin
guished names in recent American history. It is
addressed to the antiquary John Gough Nichols,
F.8.A., Nc 25 Parliament-st., London,
" Dear Sir- Mr Sumner, an American gentleman
to whom I was last summer introduced hy a friend
of his residing in this place, wishes to inspect York-
ington's Pilgrimage, Mr. S, having, as I understood,
visited some of the places mentioned in it. I have
taken the liberty of giving hira your address, which
I trust you will pardon, and I shall feel obliged by
your allowing him to inspect the MS. or the copy,
hut of course not to take either of them out of your
possession. And should he desire to make any ex
tracts, I leave that to your wishes, as I hardly know
what use you may require to make of the Journal.
¦When you have done with the MS. I shall be happy
in receiving it back, with the copy= And I remain,
dear sir, very truly yours,
"Robert Bbll Whelee,
" Stratford-upon-Avon, Slst Deer., 1842.
•*Mr. Sumner dates from 38 Duke St., St,
James's." D

50 A STEATFORD CHRONICLE.
In memory of
Robert Wheler, Gent.,
Who died
29th August, 1819,
Aged 77 years.
Also of his daughter,
Elizabeth Whelee,
Who died 29th May, 1852,
Aged 72 years.
In memory of
Robert Bell Wheler
(Only son of Eobert Wheler)
Who died 15th July, 1857,
Aged 72 years.
Also of Ann Wheler,
Daughter of Eobert Wheler,
Who died 13th Sept., 1870,
Aged 87 years.
The historian's mother died at Quinton
and was buried in the churchyard of that
place, on the southeast side of the church —
the stone that marks her sepulchre being
inscribed as follows : —
In memory of
Elizabeth Wheler,
Wife of Robert Wheler,
Of Stratford-upon-Avon.
She died 13 April, 1786,
Aged 29.
Making a visit to the old city of Glouces-

A STEATFORD CHRONICLE. 5 I
ter, it was my privilege to see the Shake
speare relics that are preserved there, — in
a dwelling in Westgate street, occupied by
the family of Fletcher, dealers in fire-arms.
Mrs. E. Fletcher, who died in 1890, at an
advanced age, claimed to be a collateral de
scendant from Shakespeare, and she always
strenuously maintained that those memo
rials of the poet, a Jug and a Cane, had
been handed down, through succeeding gen
erations, in the family, from Shakespeare's
time. The tradition declares that Shake
speare once owned and used those articles,
and the religious care with which they have
been guarded is a proof that the tradition
has not lacked power. Each of them is en
closed in a case of wood and glass, and I
found the cases in a looked room. The Jug
is made of stone-ware, and is of a simple
and usual form, having panelled sides with
figures embossed upon them ; and it is sur
mounted with a metal lid. The Cane is a
Malacca joint, fully four feet long. As it
was enclosed I could not take it into my
hands for close examination, but I saw that
it is such a cane as was customarily carried
in the days of Queen Elizabeth and James I.
Miss Fletcher, who showed those relics,
spoke of them with veneration, and she dis-

52 A STRATFORD CHRONICLE.
played a large box of papers, both written
and printed, relative to their history.
"They are not now for sale," she said,
"but they will be hereafter." They have
several times been exhibited in public, and
they are always shown to the wanderer who
will take the trouble to inquire for them.
An effigy of Shakespeare looks down upon
them from the wall of the little parlour in
which they are enshrined ; and it was easy,
when standing in their presence — in the
ancient and romantic city of Gloucester,
with haunting historic shapes on every hand
— to credit their sanctity as objects that
Shakespeare knew and touched.

DEATH or CHARLES EDWARD FLOWER.
May 10, 1892. — The death of Charles
Edward Flower is a bereavement to the
town of Stratford-upon-Avon and it deprives
the Shakespeare fraternity of one of its best
friends. Mr. Flower was a native of Strat
ford-upon-Avon, and he grew up there to be
one of its most respected citizens. He loved
and venerated the name of Shakespeare ;
he was solicitous for the credit of his native
place ; and he wished that Stratford might
always prove worthy of its association with

A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 53
the first poet of the world. He possessed
large wealth and he used it freely for the
honour and advancement of his town. He
was the founder of the Shakespeare Memo
rial : he gave the land on which it stands
and also the greater part of the money
that built it, and he gave and improved and
beautified the gardens by which it is en
closed. The corner-stone of the Memorial
was laid on April 23, 1877, and the build
ing was opened, with a performance of
3Iuch Ado About Nothing, on April 2.3,
1879. Mr. Flower was constantly adding
books to its library. One of the gifts that
he had in store for it was a set of the four
folios of Shakespeare. He edited the Me
morial edition of Shakespeare's plays. He
was active in every good work in Stratford,
and he was respected and beloved by the
whole community. One of the last of his
labours was the restoration of the Guild
Hall and Grammar School of Stratford.
That work of restoration will go on, and
Stratford will soon possess another object
of antique beauty. Whenever a good deed
was to be done his liberality never halted.
Hundreds of Americans who have visited
Stratford will remember his hospitality and
recall with pleasure his kindness, his cheer-

54 A STRATFORD CHRONICLE.
ful sympathy, and the refinements and
graces of his beautiful home. Not anywhere
in the world remains a more devoted wor
shipper of Shakespeare, a more practical
friend of literature and art, a more public-
spirited citizen, or a man of more inflexible
principle and sterling integrity. Under an
austere demeanour Mr. Flower veiled with
out beingable to conceal tenderness of heart,
gentleness of temperament, quick apprecia
tion of merit and of goodness, and a fine
sense of humour. He left no children.
His widow — in whom his virtues were
reflected and increased, and in whom his
goodness survives — possesses in her be
reavement a sympathy too deep for words.
Mr. Flower was bom February 3, 1830,
and he was educated at the Grammar
School of Stratford — the school of Shake
speare. In 1852 he married Sarah, daughter
of Mr. Peter Martineau, of Highbury, Mid
dlesex. He passed his whole life in his
native town. He died suddenly, at War
wick, on May 3, 1892, and was buried on
May 7 , in the Stratford cemetery.
" Your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end."

FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 55

TEOM LONDON TO DOVER.
CALAIS, France, August 31, 1891. — It
is early morning in London. The rain
has been falling all night, and in the gray
of the dawn it continues to fall — not now
in showers but intermittently and in a cold
drizzle. The sky is dark and sullen, and
through the humid, misty air the towers
and spires of the majestic city loom shadow
like, fantastic, and strange. Pools of water
stand here and there in the streaming, slip
pery streets, which are almost devoid
equally of vehicles and pedestrians. The
shop-keepers of Kensington have not yet
awakened, and as my cab roUs through the
solitary highways I see that only in a few
places have the shutters been taken from
the windows. Victoria is presently reached,
where, at this early hour, only a few peo
ple are astir, so that the confusion and
clamour of British travel have not yet be
gun. Soon our train rumbles out of the

56 FROM LONDON TO DOVER.
station and we feel that all personal respon
sibility has been dropped and that we have
yielded to fate — at least till we reach
Dover. The skies begin to brighten as we
cross the Thames, while, gently rnflied by
the morning breeze, the broad expanse of
the river shows like a sheet of wrinkled
steel. At first we speed among long rows
of houses, all built alike — the monotonous
suburban dweUings of tovms such as Wands
worth and Clapham, with their melancholy
little gardens, all dripping with recent rain,
in which marigolds are beginnmg to bloom,
and great, heavy sunflowers hang their dis
consolate heads. Nothing here seems joyous
except the grass, but this has profited by the
pertinacious rain and is richer and greener
than ever. Presently the gardens and
dwellings grow more opulent. The wind
rises with the advance of day and soon the
dense foliage about the hill and vale of
Heme stirs and rustles in the gladness of
its careless life. Now begins the gentle
pageant of English rural scenery — that
blending of soft colour and quaint, delicate
object, the like of which is nowhere to be
found except in England. Every traveller
will remember, and will rejoice to remem
ber, the elements of that delicious picture —

FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 57
the open, far-reaching stretches of pasture,
level, green, and fragrant ; the beds of
many-coloured flowers, flashing on emerald
lawns ; the fleecy sheep, the sleek horses,
and the comely cattle, grouped or scattered
in the fields, some feedmg, some ruminant,
some in motion, and some asleep ; the deep,
lush grass and clover ; the nurseries of fruit-
trees ; the flying glimpses of gray church-
towers and of shining streams ; and over
all the frequent flights of solemn rooks and
frolicsome starlings that seem at times
almost to make a darkness in the air.
Soon the opulent, aristocratic fa9ade of
ancient Dulwich College — at once the
memorial and the sepulchre of Shake
speare's friend Edward AUeyne — smiles
upon us across the meadows and witches
us with thoughts of a memorable past.
Leaving Dulwich we rim through a long
tunnel and in a few moments, dashing
across the plain of Penge, we perceive the
lofty tower and Olympian fabric of the
Crystal Palace shining on the hills of Syden
ham. This is a fertile, rolling country, much
diversified with hill and valley. All around
us the banks are scarlet with innumerable
standards of the gorgeous poppy and golden
vpith flowers of the colt's foot, and many

58 FROM LONDON TO DOVER.
red-roofed farm-houses are momentarily
visible in the green depths of lofty groves.
Our way lies through hop fields now, and
the air is delicious with the zestful perfume
of their blossoms. We traverse beds of
wild fern and of many kinds of underwoods,
and in fields that are divided by hedges of
lovely hawthorn we see many sheaves of
the yellow harvest. Quaint little villages
are passed, each group of cottages nestled
around its gray old church, like children
clustered at a parent's knee. The door-
yards are gay with marigolds. There are
broad patches of clover in copious, fragrant
bloom, and on the distant horizon the green
hills, crowned with dark groves, loom
gloomily under straggling clouds. The
wind blows chill, the sky takes on a cold,
silvery hue, and innumerable starlings, fly
ing low, look like black dots upon the dome
of heaven. Our speed is great, and we
leave long trails of thick, smoky vapour that
melts through the trees and hedges or seems
to sink into the ground. At Sole a lovely
rural region is opened and the sky begins
to smile. Yonder on the hillside a vener
able church-tower shows its grim parapet.
In the opposite quarter there are hills, thick
wooded or capped with sheaves of the har-

FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 59
vest — sadly marred, this autumn, by the
rough weather of as drear an August as
England has known. All the same this
scene keeps its picturesque beauty — the
peace of deep vales in which boughs wave,
streams murmur, and stately rooks are
seeking their food ; the peace of old red or
gray farm-houses veiled with ivy and nestled
among flowers. The banks of the Medway
are near at hand and across the crystal
bosom of that beautiful river rises the black
ruin of Rochester castle, flecked with lichen
and haunted by hosts of doves, and near it
the pinnacled tower of Rochester cathedral,
romantic in itself but made more romantic
by the art of the great genius who loved it
so well. Here Dickens laid the scene of
his exquisite story of Edwin Drood, and
not far away from this spot stands the old,
lonely house of GadshUl in which he died.
The little town of Rochester is all astir.
The wet, red roofs of its cosy dwellings
glisten in the welcome though transient
sunshine, and on some of those houses
great mantles of green ivy sway gently in
the rising wind. The river is full of ship
ping, — small craft and steamboats, — and
the gaze of the pilgrim dwells delighted on
brown sails, and tapering spars, and gay

6o FROM LONDON TO DOVER.
smoke-stacks, and the busy little boats that
seem never at rest. Not many views in
England possess such animation as pervades
the spectacle of the valley of the Medway
at Rochester, and the lover of Dickens
may well look upon it with affection and
leave it with regret.
We dash through a ravine of chalkstone
now and have a fine prospect of martial
Chatham, which is built in a valley but
extends up the side of the adjacent east
ward hill ; and through one of its long
highways our glance follows the plunging
flight of a large flock of frightened sheep.
At New-Brompton there are many small
gray houses and there is a great profusion
of red and yellow flowers. A wide reach of
glistening water is presently seen, toward
the east — which is the Medway, nearing
the sea. Harvest fields extend almost to
its verge and the country is level for miles
— a marsh-land intersected with channels
and pools. Presently we come again into
hop-fields and we recognise the rich and
blooming land of Kent. At Newington
there are gloomier skies and dashes of sud
den rain, but the grass is thickly strewn
with sumptuous white daisies, and the pros
pect of a noble antique church, with plen-

FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 6 1
teous moss and lichen on its triple-gabled
roof and with its square tower bosomed in
foliage, would make any gazer forget the
weather and cast all discomfort to the
winds. Speeding past Sittingbourne you
note the breezy activity of that thrifty
place, the newly built manufactories, the
tall, smoking chimneys, the fine mill, and
the miller's still finer dwelling — so close to
the brink of his great pond that not the build
ing only but the innumerable flowers that
grow around it are reflected in the broad,
gleaming pool. This sweet picture passes in
an instant, and then, under rifts of blue in a
sky of silver, come more of the drenched
sheaves of the injured harvest. There is a
vision of roads that are full of mire ; of glow
ing hop-flelds ; of haystacks and thatched
cottages ; of distant spires peeping out
among the trees ; of windmills on the hill
tops; of harvesters gathering grain ; and of
happy children that wave a greeting from
poppy-spangled fields. Faversham now, and
across the green levels, far away, rise the
brown sails of barges and of other little ves
sels that ply the neighbouring sea. Near at
hand the green hedges are full of white and
red and yellow flowers, and many sheep
are nibbling in the pastures or gazing with

62 FROM LONDON TO DOVER.
a comic wooden stare at our flying train.
The sky continually changes, and here it is a
dome of dark -gray and silver, across which,
with astonishing speed, thin fleeces of rain-
cloud career on the stormy wind. We are
come into a beautiful valley, green on all
sides and softly diversified with vrindmills,
cottages, little gray churches, massive cones
of golden hay, clumps of larch, lines of
delicate silver birch, and large masses of
fragrant hops — the thick vines of which
hang so near that we can almost clutch
their pendant blossoms as we pass. A veil
of dim sunshine is cast over this verdurous
scene, and as the vale broadens you may
perceive a dazzling variety of objects —
manor-house and cottage, grove and plain,
fields that are brown and fields that are
yellow, thin white roads that wind away
over hill-tops and are lost in the distance,
a bright and rapid stream that flashes
through the meadow, and, grandly crown
ing the pageant and consecrating its beauty,
the stately and splendid towers of Canter
bury cathedral. There they stand, majes
tic and glorious, with a thousand years of
history upon their hallowed battlements,
serene, predominant, and changeless amid
the changes of a transitory and vanishing

FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 63
world. Nothing of architectural creation
can excel in charm the spiritual loveliness
of that cathedral. York and St. Paul's and
Lincoln surpass it in massive grandeur ;
Gloucester surpasses it in romance ; Dur
ham is more rugged and more savagely
splendid ; Westminster is more rich with
poetic association and with ecclesiastical
ornament ; Ely possesses a greater variety
of blended architectural styles and of eccen
tric character ; but, travel where you may,
you never will behold a church more com
pletely radiant with the investiture of
celestial sublimity. It won my heart years
ago, and no one of its magnificent rivals
has ever allured me from its shrine.
There is no pause. Berkesboume flashes
by — its velvet plains slumbering under spa
cious elms and its fields of silken oat-grass
blazing with poppies. All about Adisham
the thatched cottages and the sheep in the
pastures make a pretty picture of smiling
content. The harvest is partly mown and
partly erect. Rooks and small birds abound,
and there are many patches of woodland
near by, and many vacant plains. Now and
then we run through deep ravines in the
chalk. The country is hilly as we approach
the sea, and on the gentle acclivities, here

64 FROM LONDON TO DOVER.
and there, is seen a manor-house, quaint
with gables and latticed casements and
draped vrith ivy. In the foreground are
flelds of clover, and looking beyond those
your gaze faBs upon wooded vales in which
the dark sheen of the copper-beach shows
boldly against the green of the elms. A
little graveyard gleams for a moment on
the hQlside, — in mute token that Death
also has his part in these scenes of fertile
beauty, — and then we flit through the dark
tunnel and come slowly to a pause beneath
the noble cliffs of Dover. Nothing seems
changed upon this romantic shore since
those far-distant days when first I saw it.
The sombre castle still frowns upon its crag.
The great hillsides are solitary in the bleak
light. The little cabin and the signal-stand
ard keep, as of old, their lonely vigU on
the wind-beaten summit of the Shakespeare
cliff. The massive stone pier, like a giant's
arm, stretches into the sea and braves its
power and defies its wrath. And on the
vacant, desolate beach the endless surges
still murmur their mysterious, everlasting
dirge — the requiem of broken vows, and
blighted hope, and all the vain and futile
ambitions, passions, and sorrows of man
kind. The sea is wild, as our bark springs

FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 65
into its embrace ; the sky is full of white
and slate-coloured clouds broken into fre
quent rifts of blue ; and the distant waves
roll up in great purple masses crowned with
plumes of silver. Many shapes of sails are
visible on the distant horizon, and the air
is so clear that I discern at the same mo
ment the high cliffs of Albion and the low-
lying sandhills of France. It is an hour of
memory and of thought ; of dreams and of
visions; and you forget the common life
that is all around you, — the sailors at their
tasks, the vacant chatter of the tourists, the
clank of the engines, the swirl and strife
of the waters and the winds, — to muse on
old imperial battles that once incarnadined
these seas, and to gaze on the ghostly gal
leons of the Spanish Armada, the pennons
of the great admirals of Spain and France
and Holland and England, the stately ships
of Raleigh and Drake, of CoUingwood and
Rodney and Nelson, and, proudly stream
ing on the blast, that flag of Britannia which
is still the austere emblem of human free
dom, the flag that has
" Braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze."

66 BEAUTIES OF FRANCE.

VI.
BEAUTIES OP FRANCE.
IT was a beautiful afternoon in summer
when first I saw the shores of France.
The channel, a distressful water when rough,
had been in unusual pleasure, like King
Duncan in the play, so that " observation
with extended view," could look with inter
est on the Norman coast, as it rose into
sight across the surges. That coast seemed
like the Palisade bank of the Hudson river,
and prompted thoughts of home. It is high
and precipitous and on one of its windy hills
a little chapel is perched, in picturesque
loneliness, east of the stone harbour into
which the arriving steamer glides. At
Dieppe, as at most of the channel ports, a
long pier projects into the sea, and this
was thronged vrith spectators, as the boat
steamed to her moorings. The road from
Dieppe to Paris passes through Rouen and
up the valley of the Seine. The sky that
day was as blue and sunny as ever it is in

BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 67
brilliant America ; the air was soft and
cool ; and the fields of Normandy were
lovely with rich colour and generous with
abundance of golden crops. Now and then
we passed little hamlets, made up of thatched
cottages clustered around a tiny church,
vrith its sad, quaint place of graves. Sheaves
of wheat were stacked in careless piles in
the meadows. Rows of the tall, lithe Lom-
bardy poplar — so Hke the willowy girls of
France — flashed by, and rows of the tremu
lous silver-leaved maple, Sometimes I saw
rich bits of garden ground, gorgeous with
geraniums and with many of the wild-flowers,
neglected, for the most part, in other coun
tries, which the French know so well how
to cultivate and train. In some fields the
reapers were at work; in others women
were guiding the plough ; in others the sleek
cattle and shaggy sheep were couched in re
pose or busy with the herbage ; and through
that smiling land the Seine flowed peacefully
dovm, shining like burnished silver. At
Rouen I saw the round tower and the spires
of the famous cathedral — esteemed one of
the best pieces of Gothic architecture in
Europe ; and I thought of Comeille, who
was there born, and of Joan of Arc, who
was there burnt. Just beyond Rouen, on

68 BEAUTIES OF FRANCE.
the east bank of the Seine, the hills take,
and for many miles preserve, the shape of
natural fortifications. Circuitous pathways
vrind up the faces of the crags. A chapel
crowns one of the loftiest summits. Cottages
nestle in the vales below. Gaunt windmOls
stretch forth their arms, upon the distant
hills. Every rood of the land is cultivated ;
and there, as in England, the scarlet poppies
brighten the green, while cosy hedgerows
make the landscape comfortable to the fancy
as well as pretty to the eye, with a sense of
human companionship.
In the gloaming we glided into Paris, and
soon I was driving in the Champs Elys6es
and thinking of the Ai-abian Nights. No
body can know, without seeing them, how
imperial the great features of Paris are.
My first morning there was a Sunday, and
it was made beautiful by sunshine, singing
of birds, strains of music from passing
bands, and the many sights and sounds
which in every direction bespoke the cheer-
fidness of the people. I went that day to
a fete in the Bois de Vincennes, where from
noon till midnight a great throng took its
pleasure, in the most orderly, simple, child
like manner, and where I saw a "picture
in little " of the manners of the French.

BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 69
It was a peculiar pleasure while in Paris to
rise at an early hour and stroll through the
markets of St. Honors, in which flowers
have an equal place with more substantial
necessities of life, and where order and
neatness are perfect. It was impressive,
also, to walk in the gardens of the Tuileries,
in those lonely morning hours, and to muse
over the downfall of the dynasty of Napo
leon. Those gardens, formerly the private
grounds of the emperor, were open to the
public ; and streams of labourers, clothed
in blue blouses, poured through them every
day. But little trace remained of the rav
ages of the Commune. The Arc de Triomphe
stands, in solemn majesty ; the Column
Vendome towers toward the sky ; the
golden figure seems still in act of flight
upon the top of the Column of the Bastile.
I saw, in the church of Notre Dame, the
garments — stained with blood and riddled
with bullets — that were worn by the Arch
bishop of Paris, when he was murdered by
the friends of Liberty, Eqviality, and Fra
ternity ; and I saw, with admiration, a
panorama of the siege of Paris, by F. Phil-
lipoteaux, which is a marvel of faithful
detail, spirited composition, and the action
and sufiering of war. But those were all

yo BEAUTIES or FRANCE.
the tokens that I chanced to see of the evil
days of France.
The most interesting sights of Paris, to
a stranger, are the objects associated with
its older history. Every visitor repairs
presently to Les Invalides to see the tomb
of Napoleon Buonaparte. That structure
would inspire awe even if it were not asso
ciated with that glittering name and that
terrible memory. The gloom of the crypt
in which it is sunk ; the sepulchral character
of the mysterious, emblematic figures that
surround it — " staring right on, with calm
eternal eyes " ; the grandeur of the dome
that rises above it ; and its own vast size
and deathly shape — all those characteris
tics unite to make it a most impressive
object, apart from the solemn sense that
in the great, red-sandstone coffin rests, at
last, after the stormiest of human lives, the
j^yShes of the most vital man of action who
has lived in modem times. Deeply impres
sive also are the tombs of Voltaire and
Rousseau, in the crypt under the Pantheon.
No device more apposite and significant
could have been adopted than that which
startles you on the front of Rousseau's
tomb. The door stands ajar, and out of it
issues an arm and hand, in marble, grasp-

BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 71
ing a torch. It was almost as if the dead
had spoken with a living voice, to see that
fateful symbol of a power of thought and
passion that never can die, while human
hearts remain human. There is a fine
statue of Voltaire in the vault that holds
his tomb. Those mausoleums are merely
commemorative. The body of Voltaire was
destroyed with quicklime when laid in the
grave, at the Abbey of Celleries, so that it
might not be oast out of consecrated ground.
Other tombs of departed greatness I found
in Pere la Chaise. Molifere and La Fon
taine rest side by side. Racine is a neigh
bour to them. Talma, Auber, Rossini, De
Musset, DesclSe, and many other illus
trious names, may there be read, in the let
ters of death. Rachel's tomb Is in the
Hebrew quarter of the cemetery — a tall,
narrow, stone structure, vrith a grated door,
over which the name of Rachel is graven,
in black letters. Looking through the grat
ing I saw a shelf on which were vases and
flowers, and beneath it were fourteen im
mortelle wreaths. A few cards, left by
pilgrims to that solemn shrine of genius
and renovpn, were upon the floor, and I ven
tured to add my own. In humble reverence
of genius, to the names which thus gave

72 BEAUTIES OF FRANCE.
homage to the memory of a great actress ;
and I gathered a few leaves from the shrub
bery that grows in front of her grave. The
famous cemetery is comparatively destitute
of flowers and grass. It contains a few
avenues of trees, but for the most part it is
a mass of ponderous tombs, crowded to
gether upon a hot hUl-side, traversed by
little stony pathways sweltering in sun and
dust. No sadder graveyard was ever seeti.
All the acute anguish of remediless suffer
ing, all the abject misery and arid desola
tion of hopeless grief, is symbolised in that
melancholy place. Artisans were repairing
the tomb of Helolse and Abelard, and this,
for a while, converted a bit of old romance
to modern commonness. Still, I saw the
tomb, and it was elevating to think that
there may be " Words which are things,
hopes which do not deceive."
The most gorgeous modern building in
Paris is the Opera House. No building in
America can vie with it in ornate splendour.
Some observers do but scant justice to the
solid qualities in the French character.
That character is mercurial, yet it contains
elements of stupendous intensity and power;
and this you feel, as perhaps you may never
have felt it before, when you look at such

BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 73
works as the Opera House, the Pantheon,
the Madeleine, the Invalides, the Louvre,
the Luxembourg, and the miles of stone
embankment that hem in the Seine on both
its sides. The grandest old building in
Paris — also a living witness to French
power and purpose — is the church of Notre
Dame. It will not displace, in the affec
tionate reverence of Americans, the glory
of Westminster Abbey ; but it will fill al
most an equal place in their memory. Its
arches are not so grand ; its associations are
not so sacred. But it is exceedingly beau
tiful in forms and in simplicity, and no one
can help loving it; and by reason of its
skilfully devised vistas it is perhaps in
vested with more of the alluring attribute
of mystery. Some of its associations are
especially impressive. You may there see
the chapel in which Mary Stuart was mar
ried to her first husband, Francis II. of
France, and in which Henry VI., of Eng
land, was crovfned ; and you may stand on
the spot on which Napoleon Buonaparte in
vested himself with the imperial diadem —
which vrith his own hands he placed on his
own head.i I climbed the tower of that
1 Bichard I. of England, at his first coronation,
on September 3, 1189, in Westminster Abbey, took

74 BEAUTIES OP FRANCE.
famous cathedral and at the loftiest attain
able height pictured in fancy the awful
closing scene of The Hunchback of Notre
Dame. That romance seemed the truth
then, and Claude Frollo, Esmeralda, and
Quasimodo were as real as Richelieu. There
is a vine growing near the bell-tower and
some children were at play there, on the
stone platform. I went in beneath the bell
and smote upon it with a wooden mallet
and heard with pleasure its rich, melodious,
sotilful music. The four hundred steps are
well worn that lead to the tower of Notre
Dame. There are few places on earth so
fraught with memories ; few that so well
repay the homage of a pilgrim from a foreign
land. the crown from the altar and delivered it to the
archbishop. In both cases the purpose was to sig
nify that the crown was not the gift of the church.

ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 75

VII.
ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL.
ELY, Cambridgeshire, September 6, 1891.
— Gray and sombre London, gloomy
beneath vast clouds of steel and bronze, is
once more left behind. Old Highgate flits
by and we roll through the network of little
towns that fllls all the space between Horn-
sey and Tottenham. The country along our
course is one of exceptional interest, and
but that Buggins the Builder has marred it
by making the houses alike it would be one
of pecidiar beauty. Around Tottenham the
dweUings are interspersed with meadows
and there are market-gardens and nurseries
of flowers, — the bright green of carrot-tops
and of the humble but portly cabbage being
pleasantly relieved by masses of brilliant
hollyhock. Broad fields ensue, — cultivated
to the utmost and smiling with plenty; and
around some of the houses are beautiful
green lawns, divided with hedges of haw
thorn. The country, for the most part, is

76 ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL.
level, and a fine effect is produced upon the
landscape by single tall trees or by isolated
groups of them, — especially where the plain
slopes gently toward gleaming rivulet and
bird-haunted vale. Everywhere the aspect
is that of prosperity and bloom. The stm
has pierced the clouds and is faintly light
ing with a golden haze this shadowy sum
mer scene of loveliness and peace. In the
distance are several small streams, dark,
bright, and still, and near them many white
and brown cattle, conspicuous in a sudden
burst of sunshine, are couched under the
trees. A little canal-boat, gayly painted
red and green, winds slowly through the
plain, and over the harvest fields the omni
present rook wings his solemn flight or
perches on the yellow sheaves. Chingford
has been left to the east, — where you may
explore one of the most picturesque ruined
churches in this country, and where they
show you a hunting-lodge that once was
owned and used by Queen Elizabeth, — and
Enfield has been left to the west where
the nettles grow rank on the low grave of
Charles Lamb, within the shadow of the
grim church-tower that reverberated with
his funeral knell. White Webs has been
passed, with its associations of Father Gar-

ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 77
net and the Gunpowder Plot, and passed
also is Ponder's End, with its relics and
memories of the baleful Judge Jeffreys.
At Rye House the pilgrim remembers the
plan that was hatched there to murder
Charles XL, and thinks of the miserable
death of Lord WDliam Russell upon the
block In Lincoln's Inn Fields. Bishop's
Stortford brings thoughts of the cruel
Bishop Bonner. But the beauty of nature
triumphs over the depravity of man, and
nowhere in this verdant and blooming re
gion is there any hint of a wicked heart or
a sinister action.
The church at Bishop's Stortford crowns
a fine eminence and near that place an old
brick windmill and many black cattle make
a striking picture in the gentle landscape.
The pretty villages of Stanstead and Elsen-
ham glide by, and the wanderer's gaze,
as they pass, rests dreamily on tiny red
cottages with lichened roofs and on the
broad, fertile farms that surround them.
Between Audley End and Cambridge there
is a long stretch of country that contains
only farms and villages, — the cultivation
of the land being thorough and perfect and
the result a picture of contentment and
repose. Presently the region grows more

70 ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL.
hilly and under clouds of steel and silver
the landscape is swept by a cool, fragrant
wind, bringing dashes of sudden rain.
Hedges are abundant. Many flocks of
sheep are seen in the pastures. Fine farm
houses appear and many signs of opulence
are all around them. Wooden windmills
rise picturesque upon the heights, and the
eye rests delightedly on long rows of the
graceful Lombardy poplar. White roads
are visible, here and there, winding away
into the distance, and many kinds of trees
abound ; yet everywhere there is an ample
prospect. At Shelford comes a burst of
sunshine, and looking toward the horizon I
see tall trees that stand like sentinels around
the lovely plain of classic Cambridge, —
where soon I am to wander among such
stately haunts of learning as will fire the
imagination and fill the memory forever
with shapes and scenes and thoughts of
majesty and glory that words are powerless
to tell. But the aspect of Cambridge, as
we glide now along its margin, gives no
hint of the overwhelming magnificence
within its borders. Beyond it, still flying
northward, we traverse a flat country and
see the long roads bowered with trees, the
deep emerald verdure, the banks of white

ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 79
daisies and red clover, the gardens brilliant
with scarlet-runners, sunflowers, and mari
golds, the rooks at their customary occupa
tion of feeding, — provident, vigilant, saga
cious, and wonderfully humorous, — the
artistic forms of the hay-ricks, some circu
lar, some cone-shaped, some square with
beveUed edges, and in the long, yeUow fields
the mowers at their work, some swinging
their scythes and some pausing to rest.
These and others Hke them are the labourers
whose slow and patient toil, under guidance
of a wise and refined taste, has graduaUy
transformed almost aU. England into a gar
den of beauty and delight — for in every
part of this country industry is incessant,
and hand in hand with industry goes thrift.
A vast gray tower rising superbly out of
a dense mass of green and glistening foliage,
a gray spire near at hand, visible amid a
cluster of red and wrinkled roofs, and over
all a flood of sunshine — and this is Ely !
I had not been an hour in the town before
I had climbed to the summit of the western
tower of the cathedral, and gazed out upon
the green and golden plains of Cambridge
shire, Suffolk, and Northampton, lit by the
afternoon sun and blazing with light and
colour for thirty miles around. Far to the

So ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL.
northwest you may just discern the black
tower of Peterborough. North and east,
at a still greater distance, a dim gray shape
reveals the ramparts of Norwich. Thirty
miles northward rise the spires of Lynn.
You cannot see them, but the wash of the
North sea breaks in music on that delicious
coast, and the strong ocean breeze, sweep
ing over the moors and fens, cools the
whole land and stirs its sun-lit foliage till
it seems to sparkle vrith joyous motion.
The Ouse ^ winds through the plain, at some
distance, south and east, — dark and shin
ing in the glow of the autumn afternoon, —
while, gliding between hedges in the west
and south, come little railway trains from
Cambridge and Saint Ives. Nearer, far
below, and nestling around the great
church are the cosy dwellings of the clean
and quiet town — one of the neatest, most
orderly, most characteristic towns in Eng-
1 This river, and not the Ouse that flows through
Yorli, is Cowper's " Ouse, slow-winding through its
level plain." That poet's life (1731-1800) is asso
ciated with Beriibampstead, Hertfordshire, where
he was born ; Huntingdon and Olney, in Bucking
hamshire — both on the Ouse; Weston, in North
amptonshire; and Dereham, in Norfolk, where he
died. His ashes rest in the parish church of Dere
ham.

ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 8l
land. Houses, streets, and trees commingle
in the picture, and you discern that the
streets are irregular and full of pleasing
curves, the buildings being mostly made
of light gray or tawny yellow brick, and
roofed with slate or with brown tiles that
the action of the weather has curiously
wrinkled and the damp has marked with
lichen and moss. At this dizzy height you
are looking down even upon that colossal
octagon tower, the famous lantern of Ely
(built by Prior Alan de Walsingham, a
little after 1322), which is one of the mar
vels of ecclesiastical architecture through
out the world. It is a prospect at once of
extraordinary rural sweetness, religious
pomp, and august and solemn antiquity.
It is a pageant of superb modern civilisa
tion and refinement, and yet, as you gaze
upon it, you forget all that is contempo
rary and present, and seem to be standing
among the phantom shapes and in the
haunted cloisters of the Middle Ages.
Each of the great abbeys of England has
its distinctive character. The beauty of
Ely is originality combined with magnifi
cence. That cathedral is not only glorious ;
it is also strange. The colossal porch, the
stupendous tower, the long nave with ita
F

82 ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL.
marvellous painted ceiling, the vast central
octagon, the uncommon size and the un
usual position of the Lady chapel, the mas
sive buttresses, the delicate yet robust
beauty of the flanking turrets, the wealth
of carved niches and pinnacles — all those
elements of splendour unite to dazzle the
vision and overwhelm the soul. Inside the
church there is nothing to obstruct your
view of it from end to end ; the Gothic
architecture is not overladen, as in so many
other cathedrals in Europe, with inharmo
nious Grecian monuments ; and when you
are permitted to sit there, in the stillness,
with no sound of a human voice and no
purl of ecclesiastical prattle to call you
back to earth, you must indeed be hard to
impress if your thoughts are not centred
upon heaven. It is the little preacher in
his ridiculous vestments, it is man with his
vanity and folly, that humiliates the rever
ent pilgrim in such holy places as this, by
his insistent contrast of his own conven
tional littleness with all that is celestial in
the grandest architectural results of the
inspiration of genius. Alas, and again
Alas ! When I remember what glorious
places have been almost ruined for me
by inveterate human gabble I know not

ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 83
whether the sentiment that predominates
is resentment or despair. But for every
true worshipper tlie moment of solitude
comes, and with it comes the benediction
of beauty. During some part of last night
I stood at my window, in the Lamb, and
looked at the great cathedral, silent and
sombre under the cold light of the stars.
The wind was blowing, fresh and strong.
The streets were deserted. The lights had
been put out and the people had gone to
rest. But it did not seem that the ancient
church is a dead thing, or that slumber
ever comes to it, or weakness, or forgetful-
ness, or repose. It keeps an eternal vigil,
watchful over the earth and silently com
muning with heaven ; and as I gazed up
ward at its fretted battlements I could
almost see the wings of angels waving in
the midnight air.
It is early morning now, and across a
lovely blue sky float thin clouds of snovyy
fleece, while many rooks soar above the
lofty towers of Ely, darting into crevices
in its gray crown, or settling upon its para^
pets, with many a hoarse and querulous
croak. The little town has not yet awak
ened. Nothing is stirring except a few
dead leaves that the wind has blown down

84 ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL.
over night, and that are now wildly whirled
along the white, hard, cleanly streets. The
level on which this ancient settlement
rests is so even and so extensive that
from almost any elevation you can see
the tree-line on the distant horizon. Some
of the houses have doors and shutters of
yellow oak. The narrow causeways are
paved with smooth gray stone or slate. Not
many lattices or gables are visible, such as
one sees so often in Canterbury and Win
chester, nor is there in all Ely such a
romantic street as the exquisite Vicar's
Close, at Wells ; but bits of old monastic
architecture are numerous, — arched gate
ways fretted by time, shields of stone,
carved entablatures, and broken gargoyles,
— curiously commingled with the cottage
ornamentation of a more modern day. On
the long village-green in front of the cathe
dral stands a handsome piece of ordnance
that was captured at Sebastopol — peace
ful enough now, before the temple of the
Prince of Peace. A little way off rises
the spire of St. Mary's, a gray relic of
the thirteenth century, remarkable for its
door-arches of blended Norman and early
English art. Close at hand is the venerable
Tudor palace, which for more than four

ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 85
centuries has been inhabited by the bishops
of Ely, and upon some part of which may
have rested the gaze of that astute states
man, Bishop Morton, who "fled to Rich
mond," and whose defection wrought the
political ruin of Richard III. Every way
you turn and everywhere you ramble there
is something to inspire historic memories
or awaken impressive thought. Just as
Glastonbury, upon the golden plain of Som
erset, was once the Isle of Avalon, so this
place, lonely among the fens of Eastern
Anglia, was once the Isle of Ely. It is
more than twelve hundred years since the
resolute devotion of a chaste and noble
woman made this a sacred spot ; and if
storied Ely taught no other lesson and gave
no other comfort it would at least, — as the
commemorative monument to the Saxon
princess Ethelryth, — admonish us that life
is capable of higher things than mortal
love, and that the most celestial of women
is the woman who is sufficient unto her
self.

86 FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS.

VIII.
FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS.
INVERNESS, September 22, 1891. —The
Pentland Hills vanish to the southward,
under clouds of pale blue steel, through
which the silver globe of the morning sun
strives vainly to break its way, casting a dim
gray twilight over the wide green landscape
and adding to its beauty by fine contrast of
colour. The tide is out, as we cross the
Forth bridge, and many boats are aground
upon the sands beneath it ; but many ves
sels, including a trim ship of war, are at
anchor in the stream, and the graceful stone
piers, the gray villages on the banks of
Forth, and the miniature lighthouses on the
little rocks along its channel make the same
lovely picture as of old. The water, much
beaten by the equinoctial rain of the last
two or three days, is smooth and of a sul
len brovm. A cool wind is blowing, and
birds are on the wing. Soon the sunshine
grows stronger and upon the emerald hills

FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 87
and plains around Dunfermline there are
exquisite effects of golden light and passing
shadow. The old church-tower shows grand
beneath a wild sky, and in our fitful glimpse
of it we think of the grand life that it com
memorates, and revere the good Queen
Margaret whose grave was made at its
base. On many hiU-sides around this an
cient city are sheaves of the harvest, and
we note the calm, self-absorbed cattle,
grazing in the wet meadows. The clouds
that had dispersed grow suddenly dense,
but shafts of sunlight linger continually on
the high summits of the bleak, distant hills,
and presently the blue of heaven shines
through great rifts in the sullen sky, and
all nature seems to be rejoicing after the
storm. The bumies, which are fuU to over
flowing, rush gayly on their course and
murmur and sparkle as they speed. Scores
of sheep couch in the pastures, — the placid
images of innocent content. Loch Leven
is revealed to us, — its wide, gray water
gleaming in the fitful sun, — and as we
gaze upon its island and upon the little
dark town that is nestled on its shore, our
thoughts fly away to the remote days of
Mary Stuart, and we see her midnight flit
ting across the stormy waves, and muse

88 FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS.
once more upon the fascination of that Im
perial nature, victorious over so many noble
souls, and now, at the distance of more
than three centuries, still vital and still
triumphant. Toward Perth the country
grows more hilly and rocky, and we traverse
tunnels and roll through deep ravines that
are densely clad with the beautiful Scotch
fir. Upon the more distant hills there are
copses, which have an aristocratic effect of
studied refinement, while numerous sheep,
reposing amid the dark green broom, show
upon the landscape like little baUs of white
wool. Down in the lowlands are haystacks
shaped like ancient towers — -"one sign,
among many others, of the manner in
which the forms of the Middle Ages have
affected the taste of to-day. Perth itself
lies couched in a green glen, with lovely
wooded hills around it, and as we enter its
beautiful valley the sky is a dome of almost
cloudless blue, flooded with golden light.
Northward a brown -red castle rises stately
among the trees, and soon we see the glis
tening water of the superb Tay winding
through the most opulent meadows of Scot
land. Never could memory lose such a pic
ture, — the brilliant green of the fields;
the patches of red clover ; the beds of mari-

FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 89
gold ; the purple of heather ; the wild lux
uriance of the bracken ; the vine-clad stone
walls ; the groves of poplar, larch, oak, and
pine ; the thick-leaved boughs tossing, and
the many-coloured flowers trembling, in a
cold, brisk wind ; the constantly changing
outlines of the distant hills ; and, over all,
the benediction of the golden sun. This
part of Scotland is as finely cultivated as
the best of England, and similar to it, —
and sometimes superior to it, — in effect of
opulence and beauty.
For a long distance after leaving Perth
our course is through a fertile valley. The
sun lies warm upon it and the vegetation is
very rich. No observer could fail to notice,
in that region, the splendid effect of sun
shine glinting through the trees — the foliage
illuminated and glowing as if with Internal
light. In a little while we come to Dunkeld,
and then presently to Dalguise. It is a
lonely country, — but all the lovelier for its
loneliness. The encircling hills are craggy
and gaunt rocks stare through the trees.
There is a wealth of woods, of remarkable
variety, and many pretty roads wind away
and are lost in them. The bushes are cov
ered with hips and haws. The dark stream
of Tummel shines in a deep ravine. Pine

go FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS.
forests begin to crown the hills, and our gaze
lingers pleased upon little shielings of gray
stone, nestled in the sheltered dells. We
are coming to Pitloohrie now, which is one
of the loveliest places in the Highlands, and
to that famous Pass of Killiecrankie, through
which, in a frenzy of panic, the broken and
bleeding ranks of the English fled from the
victorious Highlanders of Dundee. The
houses of Pitloohrie, made of gray stone and
rising amid groves of birch and Scotch fir,
are blazing with roses and with the brilliant
purple shields of the clematis, and around
them the crisp air is honeyed with the balmy
fragrance of the pine. The Tummel and the
Garry commingle here ; the scenery blends
rugged grandeur with tranquil refinement ;
and surely it may be said that few spots in
Great Britain are lovelier than this one. A
glowing autumn sun pours its flood of crystal
light upon the wild Pass of Killiecrankie and
the narrow rapid stream in the depth of the
verdurous mountain gorge is burning with
the lustre of a river of diamonds. Every
element of great scenery, — excepting the
American element of great size, — may be
seen at Killiecrankie, and from there to
Blair-Athole. They have marked with a
memorial stone the place, upon the battle-

FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 9I
field, where the victorious Claverhouse fell,
— a mighty spirit ; a hero equally of history
and romance ; a great soldier ; perhaps, after
Montrose, the greatest soldier that Scotland
has ever known. Our thoughts are full of
him as we rush through this wild and glo
rious region of his last battle, his brilliant
victory, and his triumphant death. Ended
long ago was that unavailing strife — that
useless, pathetic waste of valour and vigour
and blood. Nothing but an epitaph remains
to tell of it. But genius can hallow what
ever it touches ; and as long as the stars
hold their courses in the heavens this grand
mountain pass and haunted glen will keep
the haUowed memory of the great Marquis
of Dundee. Scant pause is allowed for rev
erie. The great are gone — but the sun
shines and the roses bloom, and if we would
see them at all we must see them now.
When Dundee fought his battle it was a
scene of wUdness and of gloom. It is a
scene of bloom and beauty to-day. The
hills around Tummel and Garry are yellow
vrith hay-flelds, and in the levels below there
are thick-fleeced sheep, and sleek cattle,
and graceful hayricks, and clumps of flrs.
Blair-Athole sleeps in a vale of sunshine,
and around it, far away, rise the bold bare

92 FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS.
peaks of the mountains that are Scotland's
glory and pride. As the pageant lessens
you see a vast range of wooded acclivity on
the east and the river Tummel on the west,
flowing at the base of brown and barren
crags. Throughout this region the archi
tecture of the gray stone houses is charac
teristic and superior ; and if it lacks the
repose of the English rural village it pos
sesses a blending of solidity and piquancy
all its own. The cone-pointed turret often
rises among the trees, and the Tudor porch,
covered with late roses, gleams forth from
groves of fir; and everywhere there are
shapes and objects of beauty — the rowan-
tree, blooming and brilliant with its clusters
of red berries ; the blazing purple of the
heather-clad hills ; the fantastically figured
groups of wandering sheep; the brovyn,
transparent water of the rapid stream, —
at intervals suddenly broken into a tumult
of silver foam ; and, far away, a faint, deli
cate, blue mist upon mountain peaks that
seem to tower into heaven.
North of the Forest of Athole now — and
our track is through a land of rock and
heather, with not one tree to give it shade
and with no creature stirring but an occa
sional sheep. For miles and miles we look

FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 93
on nothing but lonely heath, extending up
the long mountain slopes on either hand,
desolate beneath the clear sunshine of a
September day. A solitary human being
is walking over the moor, and the dreary
waste grows drearier still, as our gaze rests
upon his dark figure and sees it fade away.
Soon we catch a momentary glimpse of
Loch Ericht, — the highest of the Scotch
lochs and reputed its gloomiest, — and grim
and gaunt enough it is, beneath the autum
nal sky, which even now has begvm to
lower with the remote approach of night.
Around vis, at distance, the outline of the
hills is much broken, — range beyond range
of swart and grisly mountains rising upon
aU sides and filling the prospect. We are
in the valley of the Spey and are traversing
the depth of Glen Truim. A backward
look through the hill-gap sees the whole
wild landscape under a semi-dome of silver.
Presently the glen becomes wooded ; abodes
of man appear ; hundreds of sheep are visi
ble upon the moors ; the mountain-peaks
are nearer and the mists creep down upon
them and swathe them in a silver fleece ;
while a few birds (the first that we have
seen for hours) fly low in the glen. There
is a noble view of the Spey, whose broad,

94 FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS.
black water, flowing beneath the three
arches of the bridge of Newtonmore, glis
tens like ebony in the morning light. At
Kingussie we view a sumptuous fir-grove
and a ruined castle, and we are entranced
with the lovely effect of sunshine falling
here and there, from behind black clouds,
on hills that otherwise are lapt in shadow
and in mist. The landscape now is won
derfully various — a splendid breadth of
valley bordered with young firs and teeming
with dense foliage and with great masses
of purple heather. The village of Kincraig
is here — a gem to be remembered and
revisited — and sweet Loch Ellen is not
distant. We note the sharp and sudden
contrast of fir-groves with barren, deso
late, rock-strewn hill-side. A lonely cabin
sweeps into view and a woman at the door
pensively looks at us as we pass. Loch
Inch is eastward from our track ; Loch
Alvie westward. Yonder, upon a spur of
the mountain, is a monument to the Duke
of Gordon. There, to the northeast, rises
in a faint blue cloud the mysterious Cairn
gorm mountain — which surely never looked
more beautiful than now. At Aviemore
the clouds lower and the mist is on the
hills, but in the sky behind them there is

FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 95
a streak of silver. Miles of moorland suc
ceed. The sky darkens. The wind is chill.
The country is very lonely. If human
beings are here they make but little sign
of their presence. One low cabin we do
indeed discern, — a mantle of green velvet
moss upon its roof and many hens roosted
on its window-sills in disconsolate medita
tion. The river Spey, broad and lovely,
flows through this plain, and as far as the
eye can reach its gaze lingers lovingly upon
dense masses of dark green broom, among
which, erect or couched, are the big and
stately black cattle of the North. Fine
gleams of sunshine fall suddenly, now and
then, out of the gray sky, and rifts of won
derfully brilliant blue shine through the
sombre rack of the storm. More and more
we delight in the bumies that gleam like
threads of silver on the hill-sides and bicker
into foam and music as they come dashing
through the plain. The clouds threaten
but the landscape smiles. Near at hand
is shadow, but far away the sunshine falls
upon a yellow field amid the blue-green of
the fir-trees and seems to make a glory over
half the visible world.
It is the land of Macbeth through which
we have been speeding, — "from Fife,

96 FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS.
great king," — and at many a place upon
those desolate, rook-strewn moors of peat
and heather the Shakespeare-lover has
seen the "blasted heath," the storm-clouds
hanging low, fantastic masses of mist drift
ing over the wet earth, Macbeth and Ban-
quo with their marching forces, and the
dim shapes of the three Weird Sisters glid
ing upon the haunted air. It was toward
Forres that the victors were making, on
that day of destiny when first the deadly
purpose in the heart of Macbeth took form
and voice in the evil angels who thencefor
ward were to lead him to his doom. We
make toward Forres now. The sun, be
neath dark clouds in the west, is sending
down shafts of light upon a fertile valley,
the harvest in sheaves, the yellow fields of
oats, the cattle in pasture and the sheep in
fold ; while the cold wind, sweeping over a
woodland of birch and flr, is sweeter than
honey. Forres next — a cleanly stone town
with a cone-capped tower in the middle
of it ; a place that is ample in popula
tion, active in enterprise, and abundantly
possessed of the rewards of industry and
thrift. At Brodie, looking across harvest
flelds and a low growth of firs, we see the
glimmer of gray and leaden water and so

FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 97
catch our first glimpse of the Moray Firth.
A little while, and we look upon the fine
gray spires of Nairn, and see the Moray
like a narrowing river, and beyond it the
bald, round mountains of Caithness, range
beyond range, disappearing in the angry
northern sky. Westward a narrow water
fall of light, falling from a dense bank of
slate-coloured clouds, illumines a little
river, the garments that are bleaching on
the copious bushes of the broom, the level
lands of peat and heather, and the hard,
white roads that wind away toward Dal-
cross and Culloden. A mighty flock of sea-
mews momentarily darkens the air, and we
can hear their quick, sharp cries, and
almost the whirring rustle of their innumer
able vrings. The day is done, — a long and
lovely day of poetic pageant and unalloyed
delight, — and just as streaks of gold under
layers of blue and lead declare the sunset
we see the gray battlements and towers of
our desired haven, and glide to our rest in
the bosom of Inverness.

THE FIELD OF CULLODEN.

IX.
THE FIELD OP CULLODEN.
EASTWARD from Inverness, on the way
to Culloden, the road at first skirts the
southern shore of the Moray Firth, and the
traveller driving on it sees a broad reach of
shining water over which the sea-mews sport,
and beyond it the bleak hills of Caithness,
sleeping solitary in the sun. Soon the
track bends southerly and then east again,
and finally, passing beneath an arch of
sumptuous beeches, it climbs the long
hUl-slope toward Drummossie Moor. The
hedges on both its sides are filled with hips
and haws and with the lovely blue-bells of
Scotland, and from many a neighbouring
glade of fir and birch sounds the clear,
delicious call of the throstle, — turning the
crisp air to music and filling the heart with
grateful joy that this world should be so
beautiful. Yonder on the hill is a massive
gray tower, venerable with antiquity and
stained as only time could stain it with the

THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. 99
moss and lichen of age. Near at hand is
the more humble dweBing of a cottager —
decked with clematis and marigold. A sin
gle rook, poised upon the extreme topmost
spike of a tall pine-tree, looks down upon
the wide green fields, thick sevm with yel
low flowers of the colt's-foot, and croaks
with comfort. The warm sun is riding
high in the cloudless blue of heaven and
every vrind is hushed. I could not have
found a day of greater peace in which to
gaze on a most desolate and pathetic scene
of buried war. The first intimation that
you receive of the battlefield is a gray rock
at the roadside, directing attention to a
couple of stone cottages in the adjacent
field, — inscribed with the words, " King's
stables : station of the EngUsh cavalry, after
the battle of Culloden." The immediate
approach to the centre of the field is made
through a grove of pine-trees, with which
Duncan Forbes, Laird of CuUoden, — gen
erously considerate of a cause to which his
famous ancestor. Lord President Forbes,
was inveterately hostile, — has caused it to
be surrounded. You reach it almost before
you are aware of its presence, and your
heart must be hard indeed if you can look
upon it without emotion. No spot that ever

lOO THE FIELD OF CULLODEN.
I have seen so melts the soul with desola
tion and awe. I had been told that there
is but little at Culloden ; and in the sense
of mere prose this may be true. There is a
large oval grassy plain, thickly strewn with
small stones. On one side of it there is a
lofty circular cairn. On the other side
there is an irregular line of low, rough
rocks, to mark the sepulchres of the clans
that died in this place, — brave victims of a
merciless massacre, heroic realities of loyal
love, vainly sacrificed for a dubious cause
and a weak leader. That is all. But to the
eyes of the spirit that lonely moorland, —
once populous with heroes, now filled with
their mouldering bones, — is forever hal
lowed and glorious with the pageant of
moral valour, the devotion and the grandeur
and the fearless fidelity of men who were
content to perish for what they loved. I
stood there a long time, in humble medita
tion. The faint white ghost of the half-
moon was visible in the western sky and
the place was so stiB that I could hear the
buzzing of flies in the air. No voice broke
the sacred silence, and from the neighbour
ing grove of pines no whisper floated —
though at a distance I could see their pen
dant tassels just swayed, and nothing more,

THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. 101
by the gentle autumn wind. Words have
their power ; but it is not in the power of
any words of mine to paint the noble solem
nity of that scene or to express the sublimity
of its spirit.
The battle of Culloden was an unequal
battle, and the issue of it seems to have
been for only a few moments in doubt.
The Highlanders — weakened by hunger
and want of sleep, wearied by a long and
useless night-march, and most unfit for
battle — were largely outnumbered. The
EngUsh artUlery, strongly placed on a long
ridge of the moor, mowed them like stubble.
They swarmed from the hUls on the west
and the south ; but in the face of the Eng
lish batteries their impetuosity was their
ruin. Their first charge did indeed break the
left wing of the first of the three EngUsh lines
that had been arrayed against them ; and if
the Macdonalds had reinforced that charge
the final result might have been different ;
but the Macdonalds had been denied the
place of honour, and they refused to lift a
hand. It is an old story now. The Duke
of Cumberland had commanded that no life
should be spared, and when the massacre
began men were shot down in droves. One
spot on the moor is marked "The Well of

102 THE FIELD OF CULLODEN.
the Dead." There the slaughter was fiercest
and bloodiest. The Chief of the Magillivray
fell there, and the rude lettering on that
rough rook commemorates one of the bravest
men that ever met a foe. No attempt has
been made at epitaph or mortuary recital-
Each rock of sepulchre bears simply the
name of the clan that was buried around
and beneath it, — Clan Eraser, Clan Mackin
tosh, Clan Cameron, Clan Stuart of Alpin,
Clans MaogiBivray, Maclean, and Maolach-
lan, and the Athole Highlanders, — those,
with the Mixed Clans, make up this roll of
honour, that neither change nor detraction
can tarnish nor time forget.
The Cairn of Culloden, erected in 1858,
suits the place as no other form of monu
ment could suit it. Rugged truth and
homely simplicity are its characteristic at
tributes. It is a circular tower, about thirty
feet liigh and about ten feet in diameter.
It consists of twelve rows of heavy, irregular
stones, laid without mortar, but welded
with layers of slate. Upon the corner
stone, at the south side, is sculptured the
commemorative record : "culloden. 1746.
E. p. FECIT. 1858." The top is flat, and on
it is a wild growth of flowers and grass.
A tall slab, set at the base of its east front

THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. I03
and protected by an iron grill of pointed
shafts, bears this inscription :
THE battle
OF CULLODEN
WAS FOUGHT ON THIS MOOR
16th APRIL, 1746.
THE GRAVES OP THE
GALLANT HIGHLANDERS
WHO FOUGHT FOR
SCOTLAND AND PRINCE CHARLIE
ARE MARKED BT THE NAMES
OF THEIR CLANS.
Drummossie Moor extends for about six
ndles along this region. It was vacant and
treeless in the wild days of the Pretender,
but in later times some of it has been cul
tivated and much of it has been reclaimed
and inclosed for pasture land. In a meadow
east of the cairn, caUed " The Field of the
English," are buried the soldiers of Cum
berland who perished in that terrible flght.
Still further east, and at a point that com
mands a comprehensive, magnificent view
of the moor, the valley, and the southern
hills beyond it, stands a large, almost flat
rock, marking the position of the Duke of
Cumberland on the day of the battle — and
now inscribed with his execrated name.

104 THE FIELD OF CULLODEN.
Upon that rook you may climb, and as you
stand there and gaze over the green, heather-
spangled waste, — seeing no motion any
where save of a wandering sheep or a drift
ing cloud, and hearing no sotmd except the
occasional cawing of a distant rook, — your
imagination will conjure up the scene of that
tremendous onset and awful carnage in
which the last hope of the Stuart was
broken and the star of his destiny went
down forever. Here floated the royal
standard of England and here were ranged
her serried cohorts and her shining guns.
There, on the hiU-slopes, flashed the ban
ners of the Highland clans. Everywhere
this placid moor — now brown and purple
in the slumberous autumn light — was bril
liant vrith the scarlet and the tartan and
with the burnished steel of naked weapons
gleaming under the AprB sky. Drums
rolled and trumpets blared and the boom
of cannon mingled in horrid discord with
the wild screech of bagpipes and the fierce
Highland yell ; and so the intrepid followers
of Royal Charlie rushed onward to their
death. The world knows well enough now
— seeing what he became, and in what man
ner he lived and died — that he was un
worthy of the love that f oBowed him and of

THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. I05
the blood that was shed in his cause. The
student of politics may wisely instruct us
now that a victory at Culloden for the House
of Stuart might have meant the restoration
of the Roman Catholic church to its old su
premacy over Great Britain, and thus might
have set back the kingdom to the iron
days of Henry VII. But when Culloden
was fought Charles Edward Stuart was
stfll, in Scottish minds, the gaBant young
prince unjustly kept from his ovra, and the
clans of Scotland, never yet pledged to the
Union, were raBied around their rightful
king. Both democracy and religion may
exult now, that the Duke of Cumberland
was the victor ; but, standing on that grave
of valour, with every voice of romance
whispering at his heart, the sympathy of
the pUgrim is with the prince that was a
fugitive, the cause that was lost, and the
heroes who died for it — and died in vain.
I thought of Campbell's great poem of
LochieVs Warning, — which first fired my
heart when I was a schoolboy, — and as I
recalled its full and fervid lines I was con
firmed in the conviction that not in any lan
guage among men was there ever achieved
a more eloquent, passionate, sublime, and
therefore altogether poetic commemoration

I06 THE FIELD OF CULLODEN.
of a great national event. To think of it
there was to place upon knowledge the crown
of inspiration ; and to have had the privi
lege of recalling it amid the scene which it
portrays will be a cause for gratitude as
long as I live.
Note. — The position occupied by Charles
Edward at the battle was imder a tree, still
called Prince Charlie's Tree. Culloden House,
the manor of Lord President Forbes, stands a
mile north of the moor. On the top of the
Cumberland Rock I made the acquaintance of
H. H. Drake, LL.D., the venerable author of
the History of the Hundred of Blackheath,
who chanced to be sitting there. At Inverness
I spoke with Mr. Joseph Clegg, a bookseller,
who said he had known a very old inhabitant
who had pointed out, upon Drummossie Moor,
the exact burial-place of Keppoch, the gigan
tic chief of the Macdonalds, who fell while
vainly urging his discontented followers into
action. That spot the veteran remembered,
because, when a youth, it had been shown to
him by his lather, a survivor of Culloden
fight: and persons digging there found the
bones of a very large man. The stones that
mark the sepulchres of the several clans were
.erected by Duncan P'orbes, Esq., in 1881.

STORM-BOUND IN lONA. I07

STORM-BOUND IN lONA.
IONA, IN THE Hebrides, September 30,
1891. — The wanderer who lands upon
the little stone ledge, partly natural and
partly artificial, that serves for a pier at
lona should be prepared to remain upon
that island not simply as long as he likes
but as long as he must. In the Hebrides
the weather is the sovereign; and never
was there a sovereign more arbitrary, capri
cious, imperious, and potential. The poet
Longfellow, always felicitous in his choice
of epithets, never chose an adjective more
fitly than when he designated the western
islands of Scotland "the tempest-haunted
Hebrides." At any moment the storm-
wind may sweep over them. At almost
any moment it may cease to blow. It seems
to know not any law except its own caprice.
When the tempest has spent its fury the
calm that reigns there is the calm of Para
dise ; but while the tempest rages no sail

108 STORM-BOUND IN IONA.
can brave the blast that beats those waters
and no boat ever dreams of making for that
perilous shore. The present pilgrim landed
at lona about noon on September 25, in
tending to return to Oban the next morn
ing. Five days have passed, and there is
but a faint prospect of his escape. Postal
communication with the mainland — regu
larly occurrent but once every forty- eight
hours in fair weather — has practically
ceased. Telegraphic communication does
not exist. If MacBrayne's steamer, the
gallant and sturdy Grenadier, should come
there wBl be a rescue. If not there must
be a protracted exercise of the virtue of
patience. Resting, however, in such a
home-like haven as the St. Columba hotel,
and cheered by companionship with the
kind Highland hearts who dwell there,
the practice of patience should not be
difficult. It was neither coarse weather nor fine
when we sailed out of Oban. The sky was
a dome of steel and the morning sun, be
neath half-transparent clouds, was a disc
of silver. At one point the sunrise splen
dour pierced its sullen veil and followed us
with a diamond shaft of light. The wind
was fresh ; the sea lively ; and now and

STORM-BOUND IN IONA. I09
then there came a dash of rain. North
ward we saw the ruined tower of Dunolly,
thick hung with ivy, and the black stone
upon the coast to which, as legend loves to
teB, King Fingal chained his dog. Far up
Loch Linnhe rose the huge back of Ben
Nevis, encumbered with sombre cloud.
More near, upon the right hand, glistened
the wet rooks of gray and lonely Lismore ;
while upon the left frowned the iron
shore of Mull. Upon the heights of Mull
shone the purple of heather and the rich
emerald of velvet turf. The lighthouse
tower upon Lismore stood out in bold re
lief against the sky, and over the furtive
rock where Maclean of Duart bound fair
EBen of Lorn and left her to perish the
waves were breaking in wreaths of snowy
foam. AU around were flights of sea-mews,
and we could see, in passing, upon the wide
ascending moors of Mull, the scattered gray
stone cottages and the cattle and sheep
sprinkled over the land. In the foreground
towered the iron-ribbed mountains of Mor-
ven, dark and terrible in their sterile soli
tude. The flrst time I ever saw Morven
the ghostly mists were trailing over its
sable parapets and there seemed no limit
to the altitude of its mysterious, inaccessi-

no STORM-BOUND IN IONA.
ble heights. This time its mountain masses
stood clearly disclosed in their grim grandeur
and cold, implacable disdain. The course
is northwestward between Morven and Mull,
and as we sped onward past the pleasant
town of Salen, secure in its little bay, the
clouds hung low, the waves glimmered
green in the fltful flashes of sunlight, the
sea-birds screamed their warning, and upon
both shores as far as the eye could reach
the white breakers foamed angrily against
dark, riven rocks. At most times I should
have seen those sights as signs of impend
ing peril. I did not heed them then. There
are moments when the soul exults in storm
and danger — blindly feeling, perhaps, that
its fetters are momentarily broken and its
freedom at last begun. Besides, Scottish
scenery needs its environment of tempest.
You want no gentle breezes nor languorous
Ughts ; but the frowning sky, the ohiB wind,
and the drifting mist.
Back of Tobermory, which is the capital
of Mull, there was sunshine on the distant
hills, and to our eyes, as we looked at it
from the sea, that ancient Highland town,
winding up its pleasant terraces on the side
of a noble cliff, seemed the chosen home of
adventure and romance. Ben More and

STORM-BOUND IN IONA. Ill
Ben TaBa rose supreme at distance, bathed
in flying light ; but Morven, under a slate-
coloured pall, was sullen and cold. Soon
we discerned at our right the ruins of
Ardtornish, — where dwelt of old the Lords
of the Isles, and where the genius of Scott
has caused to be spoken that eloquent and
sublime blessing of the abbot upon royal
Bruce which is among the noblest strains
of poetry in our language. Then, presently,
gaining the open sea, we looked all at once
upon the Tresnish Isles, — seeing Fladda
and Lunga and Black Mor, which is the
Dutchman's Cap, and Black Beg, and, far
to the southward, the misty outline of lona ;
whBe more to the north and west Tiree and
CoB, which are the haunted lands of Ossian,
lay like dim clouds on the horizon's verge.
Staffa is not seen as early as you see lona
when steering this course, — which grad
ually turns southwest and south after Ard-
namurchan point is left to the northward, —
although it is nearer to you ; for the other
isles of the Tresnish group partly hide it ;
but it soon comes into view, lying upon the
lonely ocean like a long ship, dismasted
and at rest. AH the world knows that flat-
topped crag, covered with brBliant grass
and honeycombed with caverns in which

112 STORM-BOUND IN IONA.
only cormorants and petrels breed and
haunt, while ocean listens to its own solemn
and tremendous music, whether of calm or
storm. We did not attempt to land, for the
sea had risen and the place was dangerous ;
but our boat steamed along the south side
of the island, and we gazed into Fingal's
Cave and into Mackinnon's and looked long
and wistfully at those mj'sterious basalt
columns which make a temple for the wor
ship of nature, far grander than any crea
tion of the hand of man. On a previous
occasion I had landed and explored the
caves ; and it is always wise, when any
form of experience has entirely filled and
satisfied the soul, not to attempt its repeti
tion. The visitor to Staffa finds a sufficient
pathway, artfully contrived, along the face
of the cliff, and a rail by which to sustain
himself, so that he can enter Fingal's Cave
and walk nearly to the end of its cathedral
arch and gaze upward at its groined vault
of petrified pendant lava, and downward
into its black transparent depths where
only the monsters of ocean have their lair.
It is a solemn and awful place, and you
behold it without words and leave it in
silence ; but your backward look remains
long fixed upon it, and its living picture of

STORM-BOUND IN IONA. II3
gloom and glory will never fade out of
your mind. We safled away from Staffa
over a rough and angry sea — but no one
thought of it. The course is southerly, with
the great island of Mull upon the left hand,
lona exactly ahead, and eighteen miles
distant in the solitary western ocean the
lighthouse on Skerryvore. We passed Loch-
na-Keal, which nearly divides Mull, and saw
at its mouth Gometra and Ulva, and, south
of them. Little Colonsay. It is to Ulva that
the hapless lovers would speed, in Campbell's
fine poem of ior(? Ullin's Daughter. Gom
etra is the nearest land to Staffa, and it is
from Gometra that the boatmen row out,
in their Bfe-boat, to carry visitors from the
steamer to the isle of caves, on days when
it is possible to land. Their boat was no
where on the waters as we passed, and that
again should have been an omen ; but I was
destined more and more to learn that the
fascination of lona wBl not be baffled and
cannot be opposed.
lona Sound is only one mile wide ; but
it Ues nearly north and south ; the an
chorage ground in it is uncertain and un
safe ; and, under the stress of a westerly
gale, the flerce waters of the Atlantic ocean
pour through it in one solid torrent of irre-
H

114 STORM-BOUND IN IONA.
sistible force and fury. On both sides,
with but scant exception, the shore is
fringed with rook. On the Mull coast that
rook is generally a precipice. No splendour
of the horrible could exceed the horrid
grandeur of that iron shore — that grim and
terrible battlement which confronts and
defies the savage sea, from Kintra around
most part of the Ross of Mull. Toward the
southwest corner of Mull the Sound of
Erraid pours its tides into the Sound of
lona, parting Erraid island from the larger
isle. The southwest corner of Erraid marks
the end of lona Sound ; and not on all that
perilous coast is there any other spot so full
of peril. Here are the Torraneu Rocks, —
the Otter, Frasiers, and the West Reef, —
and here, during days of almost unprece
dented tempest, watching them for hours
and hours, have I seen great domes of
water, foaming upward fifty feet into the
air and gleaming perfectly black against the
livid sky. It was toward the time of sunset
on Friday (September 25) that the storm
finally broke upon us ; and from that mo
ment onward, with but little pause, it has
continued to rage. Such a succession of
westerly gales has seldom been known
upon this coast. Such a glory of tempest

STORM-BOUND IN IONA. I15
surely was never surpassed anywhere. All
the night of Friday the wind moaned and
howled around our little habitation, as with
the many threatening voices of hungry and
baffled beasts ; aU night the rain was driven
in tumbling sheets against our windows ;
and all night I heard, in the darkness, the
long roar of the clamorous, resounding sea.
At morning, and at various other times dur
ing Saturday, there was sunshine, — fitfully
commingled with cloud and rain, — but at
no moment was there a lull in the gale ;
and when at noon I looked out upon the
Sound its great waves were rolling north
ward along its whole extent, in one regular
incessant procession of livid green ridges,
each reaching almost from shore to shore
and each mantled with an ermine crest.
No boat could have lived a moment in such
a sea. That night suddenly the wind fell,
the sky cleared, the air grew soft and
haUny, the stars came out innumerable and
glorious in the vast, dark vault of heaven,
and even the ocean curbed its anger and
changed its hoUow roar to a soft and solemn
dirge. The saBors know this habit of the
gale and are not deceived by it ; the storm
has paused to catch its breath. Most of
Sunday that deceitful calm continued, and

Il6 STORM-BOUND IN IONA.
no spot of earth ever looked more fair than
lonely and beautiful lona, — silent then,
save for the sound of Sabbath bells mingled
with the murmur of the many-coloured,
musical sea. Late at evening, walking over
the moors which are at the south of the
island, I heard a sudden sharp note in the
southern blast, and knew that a change was
at hand. By midnight the wind was moan
ing in the chimney and whistling in shrill
puffs through every cranny of the house,
and as we lay awake in our anxious beds
we could hear the swirl of rain, and from
every quarter the horrid crash of breakers
on the rocks. The morning of Monday
dawned brightly, but it soon darkened, and
all day long there was an alternation of
shadow and sunshine, ¦ — now black clouds
and sudden bursts of drenching rain, now a
twilight of sBver mist which sometimes
turned to glittering rainbows over the stormy
Sound, — but never was there a pause in
the violence of the gale. In some hours of
the ensuing night the moon cast her mantle
of silver upon the raging waters, giving
them a new beauty even in their wrath and
menace. It is a long time, though, since I
ceased to trust the moon, and I did not
trust her then. The night-wind in the

STORM-BOUND IN IONA. II7
chimney was a better monitor, and of that
night- wind in the chimney of lona I shall
carry the memory to my dying day. Its
prophetic note was amply justified by the
continued storm of Tuesday — less violent,
perhaps, but not less effective. Often, that
day, did I climb upon Maclean's cross,
which stands on the causeway by the nun
nery ruins, and there question the ocean,
now one way and now another, for the ap
proach of any boat ; but the colossal break
ers on the Torranen rocks, seen though inau
dible, were aU my answer. That day, also,
climbing to the windy summit of Dun-i
(which is the highest mountain on this
island) , I looked forth to the terrible crags
that gird its bay upon the west, and saw
Cabbach island, and Dite, and Musinal,
white with the flying shrouds of shattered
breakers, and the spouting cave in action,
hurling its snovpy column far into the air,
to fall in a cataract of silver. It is a cruel
shore, look at it from what point you will.
Early this morning I was on the most placid
part of it that I have found, — the Martyrs'
Bay, — but even there the sullen waves
were storming up the beach and strewing
its hard white sands with long, serpents
like grasses and with many sinister shapes

ir8 STORM-BOUND IN IONA.
of the brown and wrinkled and slimy weeds
of the sea. To that beach, in ancient days,
came many a train of funeral barges, with
muffled banners and with coronach, bring
ing home dead kings of Scotland, for burial
in the Holy Isle. Over those white sands
was borne the mangled body of " the
gracious Duncan," who rests by Oran's
chapel, in yonder field ; and not long after
ward, as many believe, was brought the
ravaged corse of his cruel murderer, to
sleep beside him in the same royal sepul
chre. Duncan and Macbeth side by side,
and the grass growing over them, and the
wild sea-birds screaming above their name
less rest !
Such an opportunity for minute observa
tion of this remarkable island is not likely
to occur again, and whether in storm or
calm, it has not been neglected. Standing
upon the summit of Dun-i the wanderer
looks northward to the hook-like point of
lona and its wide curves of yellow beach
where the white breakers are sporting in
their dance of death. Mysterious Staffa,
in the northern distance, is distinctly visi
ble. Eastward, across the swift and raging
channel, are the swarthy rocks of Mull,
with the treeless mountains of Mull and

STORM-BOUND IN IONA. II9
Morven towering beyond them, blended in
one colossal heap of chaotic splendour. In
the west is the wild Atlantic, breaking along
the whole three miles of crag and beach
that make lona's outmost coast. In the
foreground of the southern prospect is a
spine of rock-ribbed hUl, beyond and around
which the land shelves downward into
levels, toward the encircling sea. More
distant in the south the steeps once more
ascend, presenting a wide, broken surface
of lonely moorland, covered with rock and
heather, in which the shaggy black and
brown cattle, with their wide-spreading
horns and their great, luminous, beautiful
eyes, couch or stray, in indolent composure.
At the extreme southern point the isle pre
sents a lofty crescent headland of riven
rock, — each cleft a dark ravine, and each
decUning crag margined at its base with
cruel, jagged points, like iron teeth. All
that savage scene, in one comprehensive
glance, the gazer from Dun-i may gather
into his vision ; and whether he regards it
as nature in her naked glory, or as the
holy ground that religion has hallowed with
her blessing and history has covered with
the garlands of deathless renown, he cannot
look upon it unmoved, and he can never

I20 STORM-BOUND IN IONA.
forget either its magnificent aspect or its
Blustrious meaning.
lona is three miles long, and at its widest
point a mile and a half wide, and it con
tains about two thousand acres of land, of
which about a quarter is under cultivation —
for oats, hay, vegetables, and flowers. Three-
quarters of it are devoted to pasture. There
are within its limits, of cattle, horses, sheep,
and other animals, about a thousand. The
collie dog and the household cat are fre
quently encountered, and you wBl not stroll
far upon the moors without meeting the
dark and stately Highland bull. I counted
about fifty dwellings. The population is
small. ,The minister of lona, the Rev.
Archibald Maomillan, whose friendly ac
quaintance I had the pleasure and privBege
to gain, told me that his parish — which
comprises lona and a section of the western
end of the Ross of Mull — contains about
five hundred and fifteen persons, of whom
about three hundred dwell in Mull. The
church is the Presbyterian church of Soot-
land, but there is also a free church. One
of the buildings is the manse. Another is
the schoolhouse. All the houses are made
of stone and some of them have a roof of
thatch which is held in its place by clamps.

STORM-BOUND IN IONA. 121
superincumbent timbers, and heavy weights
of stone or iron. There are two hotels, —
one, the St. Columba, kept by Captain
Ritchie ; the other, the Argyll Arms, kept
by John Macdonald — the official guide to
lona, as his father was before him. The
crofters, all of whom are prosperous, live
in Uttle stone cottages, rarely more than
one story high. The viBage consists of a
single street, with those humble huts ranged
upon one side of it — their doors and win
dows facing eastward toward the Sound.
The postoffice is also a shop, and there are
two or three shops beside. Three times
a week a little steamboat, sailing out of
Bunessan, — a town of MuU, sheltered in
Loch-na-Keal, — calls at lona, if she can,
and takes away a mail, and leaves one, —
touching, by means of a skiff, at St. Ronan's
Bay. The settled part of lona is a slope
upon its eastern shore, not distant from
the northern extremity — a region protected
by the hflls from those westerly and south
erly winds that are the scourge of the island.
There are only a few roads, but the pedes
trian may readily make his way almost
anywhere, without fear of trespass. The
inhabitants are generally religious and are
orderly, courteous, and gentle. No doctor

122 STORM-BOUND IN IONA.
dwells in the place and no resident of it is
ever sick. Death may come by drowning
or by other accident, but as a rule, the
people live until they are worn out, and so
expire, naturally, from extreme age. The
Gaelic language, although it is dying away
in the Highlands, is still spoken here. The
minister, preaching on alternate Sundays
at lona and at Bunessan, speaks in Eng
lish first, and then repeats his discourse in
Gaelic, or he reverses that order, — and for
both sermons he has an audience. It was
my good fortune to hear him on September
27, together with about fifty other persons,
seated on wooden benches in a whitewashed
room, and I have never heard a preacher
more devout, earnest, sincere, and simple.
The school is largely followed, — the present
attendance now being nearly seventy pupils,
— and in the schoolhouse I found a library
of nearly five hundred volumes (there are
four hundred and fifteen titles in the cata
logue), collected partly through the friendly
ministrations of the Rev. Leigh Richmond,
who visited lona in 1820, and partly con
tributed by Mr. Thomas Cook, of London,
the organizer of Cook's Tours. Shake
speare, Scott, Macaulay, Hume, Smollett,
Tytler, Dickens, Sydney Smith, Cowper,

Storm-bound in iona. 123
John Wilson, and J. R. Green, are among
the authors represented. Several volumes
of Cook's Voyages are there, and so are
ten volumes of Chambers' Encyclopsedia.
Many sermons, however, appear in that
collection, together with many tomes of the
order of the everlasting Josephus — whom
everybody venerates and nobody reads.
Among the benefactors to the lona Library
are the Rev. Dr. S. Dvpyer; G. GalUe, of
Glasgow ; A. Philp, of Bute ; F. Clapp, of
Exeter ; Rev. G. F. W. Munby, of Turvey ;
Miss Copeland, of Dumfries ; Miss Roberts ;
and the directors of the Scottish Temper
ance League. No newspaper is published
at lona, but there is a Uttle printing-office
near the St. Columba hotel, and from that
germ may be expected, one day or another,
such practical growth of enterprise and of
civBising thought as follows in the track of
a wisely ordered press. The Presbyterian
house of worship was built in 1830, and it
is a primitive sort of structure, now much
dUapidated; but in every attribute that
should appertain to the character of a
clergyman its minister would do honour to
the finest church in the kingdom. Iona is
owned by the Duke of Argyll, to whose
family it was granted by Charles I. Before

124 stobm-bound in iona.
that time it had long been held by the
chieftains of the great house of Maclean.
When Dr. Johnson came here, vrith Bos-
weB, in 1773, Maclean was their companion,
— then the lord of the clan, — and both
Johnson and Boswell have borne fervent
testimony to the unstinted hospitality with
which they were received, notwithstanding
that the Campbells were in possession of
the land. The sturdy doctor was obliged,
indeed, to sleep on the hay in a barn, with
his portmanteau for a pBlow ; but that was
the best accommodation attainable in the
island, and the Maclean slept beside him.
There is greater comfort to be found in
Iona now, but there is no luxury. Nor is
this a place for luxury. Here you are cut
off from the world. Here you are alone.
Here you are brought face to face with
eternity. Here, accordingly, if anywhere
on earth, the mind would be inspired, the
heart would be clean, and life wotdd be
simple and pure. On one of those storm-
stricken days I stood alone upon the Hill
of Angels and looked off at the grim deso
lation of the dark Atlantic plain ; and I
could not wonder, as I felt the overwhelm
ing solitude and grandeur of the place, at
the old superstitious belief that when St.

STORM-BOUND IN IONA. I25
Columba stood there, thirteen centuries
ago, the white-robed beings of another
world came floating down from heaven to
talk with their brother upon earth.
It is perhaps trite history that Columba
came from Ireland to Iona in the year 663,
bringing Christianity to the Picts of the
Western Islands, and that he made Iona
the fountain-head of religion and learning
for Northern Europe, — dying there a.d.
597, at the age of seventy-six. No one can
speak of Iona, though, without speaking of
her Saint. His spirit is indelibly stamped
upon the place, and whosoever walks in his
footsteps, must venerate his memory and
hallow his name. The monastic remains,
however, that the traveller finds in the
island are the ruins of red granite buUdings
of a much later period than that of Columba
— structures that his pious labour had
rendered possible, but which his eyes never
beheld. The nunnery, St. Oran's chapel,
the cathedral and its adjacent fragments of
monastery, aB roofless, and aB the sport
of time and decay, are relics of about the
twelfth century. Parts of those ancient
fabrics are, possibly, of a date still earlier
— the noble cathedral tower (up which you
may ascend by a spiral stone staircase of

126 STORM-BOUND IN lONA.
forty-two steps), the arches of its north
transept, and the simple form and massive
and beautiful arched doorway of St. Oran's
chapel bearing architectural traces of essen
tially remote antiquity. The church that
Columba erected did not stand upon the
site of the present cathedral ruin, but was
situated further to the north and nearer to
the sea ; while the place of his cell — wherein
his pillow was the sacred heart-shaped stone
now preserved in the ruined chancel — is
believed to have been the site of a cottage
under the friendly shelter of Dun-i, a little
northward from the ArgyU cross. (That
monument, picturesque in itself and melan
choly in its loneliness, at the bleak roadside,
commemorates, "in the island that she
loved," that beautiful and lamented lady,
the first contemporary Duchess of Argyll.)
But whatever may be the measure of their
antiquity, those gaunt ecclesiastical relics
are more holy and beautiful than words
can tell, in their lone magnificence and deso
late grandeur of ruin and decay. Accurate
detail of what they are and of what they
contain is well-nigh impossible, even to an
tiquarian research. The ravages equally
of barbarian hordes and of relentless time
have left scarcely anything in its place.

STORM-BOUND IN IONA. I27
whether of statue, or carving, or inscription,
or symbol, or brass, or picture, or memorial
stone. But of their general character, —
their rugged strength, their romantic as
pect, their awful solemnity of isolation amid
a wilderness of brown crag and tempestuous
sea, — and of the subUmity which they
must have derived as well from their sacred
purpose as from their marvellous natural
investiture, it is not difficult to judge. Im
agination supplies every defect of knowl
edge, and the spirit that gazes upon those
remnants of vanished greatness is lifted far
above this world. The natural scene is the
same to-day that it was of old. A thousand
years make no change in those pitiless
rocks and that stormy and savage clime.
But man and aU his works, — all his hopes
and fears, his loves and hatreds, his ambi
tions and passions, his famous deeds, his
labours and his sufferings, — have been
swept away, and are become even as an
echo, a shadow, a hollow, dying word, a
pinch of dust borne seaward on the gale.
In the precincts of the cathedral, there, at
the foot of Oran's chapel, was the burial-
ground of the kings of Scotland — Releig
Oran. The grass grows thick upon it. No
stone remains in its original place. The

128 STORM-BOUND IN IONA.
rude letters and symbolic carvings have
been blasted by time and storm. The dust
of the humbler dead has mingled with the
dust of warriors and of princes in its royal
soil. The rooks that haunt the ruined
cathedral tower caw over it as they pass,
and over it sounds forever the melancholy
booming of the surges of the restless sea.
It is a place of utter desolation, where noth
ing reigns save nature's stony mockery of
all the achievements of man. What colos
sal forces of human strength and feeling
lie hushed and cold beneath that humble
sod ; what heroes of forgotten battles ; what
heroines of old romance ; what black, self-
tortured hearts of specious, ruthless mur
derers ; what busy brains of crafty, scheming
statesmen, toiling ever through tortuous
courses for the power that they never could
long maintain ! Monarchs and warriors
that fought against Rome, in the great days
of Belisarius and Constantine ; kings that
fell in battle and kings that died by the
base hand of midnight murder ; kings that
perished by the wrath of their jealous wives,
and kings who died peacefully in the arms
of mother church ; princes of Ireland and
of Norway, and Lords of the Isles — there
they all sleep, in tmknown graves kni in-

STORM-BOUND IN IONA. 1 29
accessible solitude, beneath the brooding
wings of oblivion. Hard must be the heart,
insensible the mind, that could dwell upon
that stupendous scene of mortality without
awe and reverence, or could turn away from
it without having learned, once and forever,
the great lesson of humility and submission.
Note on Macbeth and Duncan. — It is a
part of the tradition that Macbeth, after his
defeat on "high Dunsinane hill," which is
about eight miles northeast of Perth, was over
taken in flight, and was slain, at Lumphanan,
a little north of the Dee, about midway be
tween Ballater and Aberdeen. A cairn that
bears his name, and is dubiously said to mark
his grave, may be seen in a meadow of Lum
phanan. Authentic historians, however, de
clare that his remains were conveyed to Iona,
which had been the imperial sepulchre from,
at latest, the time of Kenneth III, 974. The
custom was to embark the royal corse at Cor-
pach, on Loch Eil. The funeral barges would
thence make their way through lonely seas to
the holy isle. The burial of Duncan at St.
Columba's Cell is mentioned by Shakespeare :
" Eosse. Where is Duncan's body?
Macduff'. Carried to Colmes-kill,
The sacred store-bouse of his predecessors
And guardian of their bones."

II
SHEINES OF LITEEATUEE

XL
THE FOREST OP ARDEN : AS YOU LIKE IT.
IN Shakespeare's youthful days the Forest
of Arden was close at his hand and
there is no doubt that he often wandered in
it and that he knew it well. It covered a
large tract of country in Warwickshire, ex
tending from the west bank of the Avon
six or eight miles northwest of Stratford,
and while that region is cleared now, and
beautifully cultivated, and sprinkled with
trim viUages and lovely manors, and diver
sified with many appellations, the general
name of Arden cleaves to it still. Many of
its great trees, indeed, sturdy and splendid
at a vast age, remain in flourishing luxuri
ance, to indicate what it was ; and if you
stand upon the hill near Beaudesert church
— where once the banners of Peter de Mont-
fort floated from his battlements — and
gaze over the adjacent plains, your eyes
will rest upon one of the sweetest landscapes
in all the delicious realm that environs the
133

134 THE FOREST OF ARDEN:
heart of England. It is idle f o suppose that
Shakespeare was unacquainted with that
old woodland and the storied places round
about it — with Wroxall Abbey, and the
moated grange of Baddesley Clinton, and
all the historic spots associated with the
wars of Henry III., the dark fate of Sir
Piers Gaveston the handsome Earl of Corn
wall, and the romantic traditions of the
great house of Warwick. From his earliest
boyhood this region must have been his pre
empted field of exploration and adventure
and must have been haunted for him with
stately shapes and glorious visions. His
mother's name was Mary Arden ; and we
may be sure that with her name, to him so
beautiful and so sacred, he always asso
ciated the freedom and the splendour of
that romantic forest. When therefore we
read his exquisite comedy of As You Like
It, and observe, as we cannot help observ
ing, that every flower that blooms, every
leaf that trembles, and every breeze that
murmurs in it is redolent of his native
Warwickshire, we are naturally disinclined
to surround a purely ideal and fanciful
conception with the accessories of literal
France, or to endure an iron-bound conven
tionality of treatment in the illustration of it.

AS YOU LIKE IT. I35
There are, to be sure, a few French names
in the piece, and in its flrst scene Oliver
designates Orlando as "the stubbornest
young fellow of France ' ' ; but later we meet
with the serpent and the lioness, indigenous
to the jungles of Asia. The story upon
which, to a considerable extent, it was
founded — Thomas Lodge's novel of Rosa-
lynd — is French in its location and its per
sons ; but Shakespeare, in his use of that
novel, has played havoc equally with the
geography and the nomenclature. His scene
is anywhere and nowhere ; but if in this
piece the wings of his imagination do brush
against the solid ground at all it is against
that haunted woodland of Arden which
waved its sweet green boughs around his
English home. As You Like It is an Eng
Ush pastoral comedy, through and through,
and therefore it ought to be dressed in Eng
lish pastoral robes — vrith such genial though
discreet license as poetic fancy might prompt
and approve — and it ought to be acted
under such greenwood trees as bloom in
the vale of the Red Horse, where Shake
speare lived and loved. Planchg will have
it — since Shakespeare has introduced pos
sibly French dukes into the story, whereas
in the original those potentates are cer-

136 THE FOREST OF ARDEN:
tainly French kings — that the action must
be supposed to occur in France, and to oc
cur at a time when yet independent duchies
existed in that country ; and that time he
declares must not be later than the reign of
Louis XII. (1498-1515), who married Anne
of Brittany and so incorporated into the
royal dominions the last existing fief to the
crown. It must be a French garb of the pre
ceding reign, says that learned antiquarian
and rose of heraldry — the reign of Charles
VIII. (1470-1498) ; and that wiB be pictur
esque and appropriate. In that way at once
this lawless. Biting, drifting fiction is
brought within the precise lines of fact and
duly provided with a local habitation. A
distinct purpose and a definite plan, of
course, there must be, when a piece is to be
acted : only it should be urged and allowed
that in dealing with this exceptionally va
grant play the imagination ought to be per
mitted to have a free rein. As You Like It
is a comedy which in a peculiar and un
usual degree requires imagination ; and not
with those only who present it but with
those who see it performed.
The composition of this piece occurred at
a specially interesting period of Shake
speare's life. He was in his thirty-fifth

AS YOU LIKE IT. I37
year, and he had, as it proved, lived two-
thirds of his allotted time. He had written
all but one {Henry VIII.) of his English his
torical plays ; he had written eight out of
his fourteen comedies ; he had written
Romeo and Juliet ; while his great tragedies
of Hamlet and Julius Ccesar were close at
hand and must have been much in his
thoughts. [The first draft of Hamlet, in
deed, may have been written long before
his thirty-lifth year.] Imagination had ob
tained full possession of him by this time,
and he was looking at life with a compre
hensive vision and writing about it with an
imperial affluence of freedom, feeling, and
power. No work of art was ever yet created
by anybody without labour, but the propor
tion of effort differs in different cases, and
surely no quality is more conspicuous in
As You Like It than that of spontaneity.
The piece is exceptional for its fluent grace.
It must have been written easily and in a
happy, dream-like, careless mood, half rev
erie and half frolic. There is much wise
philosophy in it, veiled with playfulness ;
there is much in it of the poetry which with
Shakespeare was incidental and natural ;
and here and there it is lightly touched with
the pensive melancholy of a mind that is

138 THE FOREST OF ARDEN :
disenchanted with the world : but its pre
dominant tone is sprightly ; and we may
be sure that Shakespeare was at ease in
its creation, and perhaps we may dis
cern in it much of his temperament and
of his habitual mental attitude — which
apparently was that of calm, benign, hu
morous, half-pitying, half-playful tolerance
— toward human nature and human life.
He threw aside all restraint when writ
ing this play, and allowed his fancies to
take care of themselves. The persons
who figure in As You Like It are all,
in some measure, shadowy. They are at
once real and unreal. They lay hold of
experience but their grasp is frail. The
loves of Orlando and Rosalind are not the
loves of Romeo and Juliet. The cynical
musings of Jaques are not the corrosive
reflections of Hamlet. The waggish droll
ery of Touchstone is not the pathetic levity
of the Fool in Lear. The drift, the sub
stance, the signiflcance is "as you like it "
— as you may please to find it ; grave or
gay, according to the eyes with which you
look and the heart with which you feel.
Those persons, entangled with incidents
that are mostly impossible, flit about under
green leaves, amid the mossy trunks of

AS YOU LIKE IT. 139
slumberous trees, in dells that are musical
with bird-songs and rimning water and res
onant with the echoes of the huntsman's
horn ; and while the fragrant wind blows
on their faces and the wild deer dash away
at their approach they play their parts in a
sweetly fantastic story of fortune's vicissi
tudes and love's delays, such as never could
Uterally have happened in the world, but
which the great poet, in his own wonderful
way, has made tributary to an exposition
of the strongest contrasts that human ex
perience can afford. There is one obvious
lesson to be deduced from this understand
ing of the subject. The reader or the spec
tator who would fully enjoy As You Like It
must accept it in the mood in which it was
conceived. He knows that lions do not
range French or English forests, and that
Rosalind, though in man's apparel, would
at once be recognised by the eyes of love.
Yet to those and to all discrepancies he is
blind. He even can assent to the spectacle
of Jaques stretched beside the brawling
stream at the foot of the antique oak, speak
ing his sermons upon human weakness,
foUy, and injustice, with nobody for an
audience. He feels himself set free from
the world of hard facts. He is in Arden.

140 THE FOREST OF ARDEN:
The antiquated metrical story, Coke's
Tale of Gamely n, which is older than Chau
cer, was the precursor of Lodge's novel of
Bosalynd, or Euphues'' Golden Legacye,
published in 1590, and this novel of Rosa-
lynd, by one of Shakespeare's contempora/-
ries, was in turn the precursor of As You
Like It. Shakespeare followed the novel in
his use of incidents and conduct of plot,
but he has transflgured it by his investiture
of the characters with new and often ex
alted personality, and by his poetical ex
pression and embellishment of them. He fur
thermore invented and introduced Jaques,
Touchstone, and Audrey. The comedy
was not printed during his lifetime and it
did not make its appearance till Heminge
and Condell published the flrst folio, in
1623. The piece as there given is divided
into acts and scenes. The text was sub
sequently altered for the second folio ( 1632) ,
and substantially according to the form then
adopted the comedy has survived. The flrst
text, however, is a good one. Those dis
crepancies, by the way, between the texts
of the four. Shakespeare folios, interfere
sadly with the addle-headed and superflu
ous industry of Mr. Donnelly and his disci
ples in their manufacture of Bacon crypto-

AS YOU LIKE IT. I4I
grams. The flrst performance of As You
Like It appears to have occurred at the
Globe theatre in the first year of its exist
ence (that house was opened early in 1599
and was burnt down on June 29, 1613), and
an ancient and apparently authentic tra
dition (it was first recorded by William
Oldys, 1687-1761) declares that Shake
speare himself acted in it as Adam. The
epBogue is thought to be, at least in part,
spurious. It obviously was written vrith a
view to its being spoken by the boy who
played the woman part of Rosalind in
Shakespeare's time and later. It is a feeble
composition, whoever wrote it. It is slightly
altered for stage use.
It has often been urged that the necessity
of providing occupation for a dramatic com
pany and of furnishing a novelty to win the
public attention and support is a sufficient
motive, or impulse, or inspiration for the
making of a good play ; and the believers
in that doctrine — that eminent Shakespeare
scholar Richard Grant White being conspic
uously one of them — usually point to
Shakespeare as an example in proof of this
practical and sordid theory. But Shake
speare's plays it is found, tax to the utmost
limit the best powers of the best actors ;

144 THE FOREST OF ARDEN :
but outwardly fantastic. He fools you to
the top of your bent. He is willing that
you should take the play in earnest if you
like to do so, but he smiles all the while at
your credulity. He will end it rationally
enough, in the matter of doing poetic justice ;
but in the meanwhile he has turned every
thing upside dovm and he is making merry
over the spectacle. Such incidents as the
radical conversion of the wicked duke by
the good hermit and the instantaneous re
generation of the malignant Oliver by his
brother's single act of generosity are suffi
ciently typical of this poetic pleasantry.
The most sonorous and apparently the most
searching observations upon human experi
ence are put into the mouth of Jaques ; but
Jaques is perhaps the least sane and sub
stantial of the representative persons in the
comedy — being an epicurean in sentiment
and a wayward cynic, whose remarks, al
though quite true as far as they go and won
derfully felicitous in manner, really contain
no deep truth and no final wisdom, but are
alike fragile and fantastic ; as any one can
see who will, for a test, set them beside
either of the four great soliloquies in Ham
let, or beside the principal speeches of
Ulysses, in Troilus and Cressida. The wisest

AS YOU LIKE IT. I45
man in the play is the professed Fool, — by
whom and by the old servant Adam the
only manifestations are made that the piece
contains of the highest of human virtue^,
self-sacrifice : for even as Adam devotes all
to Orlando so does Touchstone devote all
to Celia. No especial stress was laid on
the lover. He is handsome, pure, ingenu
ous, and brave, and he serves his purpose ;
but it is evident that Shakespeare loved
Rosalind, since in drawing her he ceases to
jest. Rosalind is not merely the heroine of
an impossible courtship in a visionary for
est ; she is the typical perfection of enchant
ing womanhood. She is everything that
man loves in woman. She is neither an
angel nor a fairy. She is flesh and blood ;
and while her mind and accomplishments
are noble and her attributes of character
poetical, she is depicted in absolute har
mony with, that significant line, wrapping
truth, with a jest, in Shakespeare's one hun
dred and thirtieth sonnet,
" My mistress, when she walks, treads on the
ground."
Amid the sprightly caprice, the tantalising
banter, the drift and whirl of fantastic inci
dents, and the glancing lights of foBy and

144 THE FOREST OF ARDEN:
but outwardly fantastic. He fools you to
the top of your bent. He is willing that
you should take the play in earnest if you
like to do so, but he smiles all the while at
your credulity. He will end it rationally
enough, in the matter of doing poetic justice ;
but in the meanwhile he has turned every
thing upside down and he is making merry
over the spectacle. Such incidents as the
radical conversion of the wicked duke by
the good hermit and the instantaneous re
generation of the malignant Oliver by his
brother's single act of generosity are suffi
ciently typical of this poetic pleasantry.
The most sonorous and apparently the most
searching observations upon human experi
ence are put into the mouth of Jaques ; but
Jaques is perhaps the least sane and sub
stantial of the representative persons in the
comedy — being an epicurean in sentiment
and a wayward cynic, whose remarks, al
though quite true as far as they go and won
derfully felicitous in manner, really contain
no deep truth and no final wisdom, but are
alike fragile and fantastic ; as any one can
see who will, for a test, set them beside
either of the four great soliloquies in Ham
let, or beside the principal speeches of
Ulysses, in Troilus and Cressida. The wis9st

AS YOU LIKE IT. I45
man in the play is the professed Fool, — by
whom and by the old servant Adam the
only manifestations are made that the piece
contains of the highest of human virtue^,
self-sacrifice : for even as Adam devotes all
to Orlando so does Touchstone devote all
to CeUa. No especial stress was laid on
the lover. He is handsome, pure, ingenu
ous, and brave, and he serves his purpose ;
but it is erident that Shakespeare loved
Rosalind, since in drawing her he ceases to
jest. Rosalind is not merely the heroine of
an impossible courtship in a visionary for
est ; she is the typical perfection of enchant
ing womanhood. She is everything that
man loves in woman. She is neither an
angel nor a fairy. She is flesh and blood ;
and while her mind and accomplishments
are noble and her attributes of character
poetical, she is depicted in absolute har
mony with that significant line, vyrapping
truth with a jest, in Shakespeare's one hun
dred and thirtieth sonnet,
" My mistress, when she walks, treads on the
grouDd."
Amid the sprightly caprice, the tantalising
banter, the drift and whirl of fantastic inci
dents, and the glancing lights of foUy and
E

146 THE FOREST OF ARDEN:
wisdom that constitute this comedy the
luxuriant, sumptuous, dazzling, entrancing
figure of Rosalind stands out clear and firm
in the warm light of its own surpassing
loveliness. And this is the personality that
has from time to time brought As You Like
It upon the stage, and temporarily at least
has kept it there.
At the time of Shakespeare's death (1616)
two movements had already begun which,
gathering power and momentum as the
years rolled on, have done much to shape
the dubious, shifting, political condition of
the world of to-day. One of these was a
movement in favour of government by the
many ; the other was a movement against
the Roman Catholic church. Both pre-
vaBed in the estabUshment of the Common
wealth, and one of the flrst institutions that
went down under them was the British
Drama. Shakespeare was an exceedingly
popular author during his lifetime, and his
works must have been in request for a con
siderable time after his death, because the
first folio, 1623, was succeeded by another
in 1632 ; but soon after that date theatres
and plays began to drop out of the pub
lic view. The fecundity of play-writers
between Shakespeare's theatrical advent

AS YOU LIKE IT. I47
(1588) and the year 1040 must indeed have
been abundant, since out of nearly or quite
six hundred plays that got into print in
England before the Restoration (1660) only
fifty-eight are thought to have existed before
Shakespeare began to write. The others,
therefore, must have been made during and
after his immediate time. But the war
between Charles I. and his Parliament put
an end to that dramatic episode ; and pres
ently, when the Puritans prevailed, they
authorised by law (1647) the destruction of
theatres and the public flagellation of actors.
There is a great darkness, of course, over
that period of theatrical history. Soon
after the Restoration, indeed, the third folio
of Shakespeare's works made its appear
ance (1663-64), containing six if not seven
plays that were spurious ; and in 1685 came
the fourth folio ; yet aU the while Shake
speare seems to have been banished from
the stage, and in general from contempo
rary knowledge. Dryden mangled his lovely
comedy of The Tempest (1670), and his
noble tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra
(1678), and sapiently referred to his man
ner as "out of date." Not till the period
of Queen Anne did the Shakespeare revival
begin, and even then it was a languid force.

148 THE FOREST OF ARDEN:
But it began — and little by little the plays
of the great master made their way back to
their rightful pre-eminence.
As You Like It, after its first career at
the Globe theatre — and whether this was
long or short nobody knows — seems to
have sunk into abeyance and to have re
mained unused for a long time. It may
have been revived at the period of the Res
toration, but I have found no record of its
presentation in that epoch. An injurious
alteration of it, called Love In a Forest, by
Charles Johnson, was acted at Drury Lane,
for six nights, in 1723, and was published
in that year ; but it is the opinion of Genest
that the original piece was not acted in
England at any time after the Restoration
untB 1740. On December 20 in that year
it was brought forward at Drury Lane with
a brilliant cast. Mrs. Pritchard was the
Rosalind. This was repeated on January
16, 1741, and twenty-five times during tbat
season. Within the next sixty years As
You Like It was reproduced upon the Lon
don stage thirteen times.
The immediate competitors and the suc
cessors of Mrs. Pritchard as Rosalind,
counting to the end of the eighteenth cen
tury, were Peg WofBngton ; Mrs. Dancer

AS YOU LIKE IT. I49
(who subsequently became Mrs. Barry,
wife of Spranger Barry, and finally Mrs.
Crawford) ; Mrs. Bulkeley ; Miss Younge ;
Miss Frodsham ; Mrs. Siddons ; and Mrs.
Jordan. Peg Woffington as Rosalind de
lighted everybody. Her first performance
of the part was given during her first season
on the London stage, after she had left
Covent Garden and gone to Drury Lane,
where she flrst appeared on September ^,
1741, as Sylvia in The Recruiting Officer,
under the management of Fleetwood. Kitty
Clive played CeUa when Woffington first
embodied Rosalind, and Theophilus Cibber
played Jaques. It was in Rosalind that
this great actress was last seen upon the
stage, May 3, 1757, in Covent Garden — the
tragic fact of her collapse while speaking
the epBogue being one of the best known
incidents in dramatic history. Without
doubt she was the best Rosalind of the
eighteenth century. Mrs. Dancer came
next and was deemed superb. Mrs. Sid
dons first acted the part on April 30, 1785 ;
but as might have been foreseen she did not
succeed in it. The record made by Genest
is explanatory and explicit : " Mrs. Siddons
contrived a dress for Rosalind which was
neither male nor female. For this she was

150 THE FOREST OF ARDEN:
ridiculed in the papers, and very deservedly.
She had it entirely at her option to act
Rosalind or not to act Rosalind ; but when
she determined to act the part it was her
duty to dress it properly. Mrs. Siddons
did not add to her reputation by her per
formance of Rosalind, and when Mrs. Jor
dan had played the character few persons
wished to see Mrs. Siddons in it." Mrs.
Abington, in a conversation with the vet
eran Crabb Robinson, mentioned that effort
on the part of Mrs. Siddons long afterward
(.June 16, 1811). "Early in life," she
remarked, "Mrs. Siddons was anxious to
succeed in comedy, and played Rosalind
before I retired." And Mr. Robinson In
genuously adds : ' ' Mrs. Siddons she praised,
though not with the warmth of a gentune
admirer." Mrs. Jordan first acted Rosa
lind on April 13, 1787. This was also at
Drury Lane. John Philip Kemble played
Orlando. The success of the actress was
brilliant. It was felt that the part had not
been acted in such a winning manner since
the days of the incomparable Woffington.
"The elastic step, the artless action, the
sincere laugh, and the juicy tones of her
clear and melodious voice ' ' (John Gait)
were all, we may be sure, delightful embel-

AS YOU LIKE IT. 151
lishments of that performance. ' ' Her Rosa
lind," saysOxberry, " was exquisite. " Mrs.
Jordan herself, however, seems to have
taken a different view of the subject, since
long afterward, in the green-room at Covent
Garden on a night when she was playing
Rosalind, she said to John Taylor (Records
of My Life, p. 122) : " If the public had
any taste how could they bear me in the
part which I play to-night, and which is far
above my habits and pretensions ! " Of
Mrs. Dancer as Rosalind (1767), the same
memoir makes enthusiastic mention no less
than three times in different chapters.
"Mrs. Dancer's Rosalind," says that vet
eran judge, "was the most perfect repre
sentation of the character that I ever
witnessed. It was tender, animated, and
playful to the highest degree. She gave the
'Cuckoo Song' with admirable humour."
Since 1800 As You Like It has been often
in the public view on both sides of the
Atlantic. Its first revival at London within
the present century was made on October
25, 1805, at Covent Garden. The oast then
included John PhBip Kemble as Jaques,
Charles Kemble as Orlando, Fawcett as
Touchstone, Incledon as Amiens, Murray
as Adam, Brtmton as Oliver, Blanchard as

152 THE FOREST OF ARDEN:
William, Miss Smith as Rosalind, Miss
Brunton as Celia, and Mrs. Mattocks as
Audrey. The book of this play, as revised
and prepared for the stage by J. P. Kemble,
was published in 1810. Macready on vari
ous occasions enacted Jaques, but he has
left no record of it that is usefully signifi
cant. His first performance of it was given
in 1819-20, at Covent Garden. "Jaques
was a study for me," he says, in his Auto
biography, " one of those real varieties of
mind with which it is a pleasure in represen
tation to identify one' s self.' ' Samuel Phelps,
however, who participated in Macready 's re
vival of the comedy at Drury Lane on Octo
ber 1, 1842, told his biographer John Coleman
that it was "the most superb production of
As You Like It the world has ever seen or
ever will see." Rosalind was then taken by
Mrs. Nisbett. "Not having seen her," said
the veteran, "you don' t know what beauty is.
Her voice was liquid music. Her laugh —
there never was such a laugh ! Her eyes,
living crystals, lamps lit with light divine !
Her gorgeous neck and shoulders — her
superbly symmetrical limbs, her grace, her
taste, her nameless but irresistible charm.
. . . You may rave about Helen Faucit's
Rosalind, but you never saw Nisbett."

AS YOU LIKE IT. 1 53
This estimate, so much in the vein of Sir
Anthony Absolute's description of Lydia
Languish, glances at a woman whose por
traits show her to have been very beautiful.
She was the daughter of Captain Mac-
namara, who is supposed to have suggested
the immortal Costigan, and she is said to
have been the original of Miss Fotheringay,
in Pendennis. Macready's comment on
that revival of As You Like It is in humor
ous contrast with that of Phelps. " The
only shortcoming in the whole perform
ance," he said to Lady Pollock, " was the
Rosalind of Mrs. Nisbett, a charming actress
in many characters, but not equal to that.
She was not disagreeable, but she was
inadequate." And Macready spoke of
having introduced into his revival, with
excellent effect, the delicate tinkle of sheep-
bells, as if the flock were somewhere feed
ing in pastures incident to the Forest of
Arden. The best of the Rosalinds in his
eyes, and indeed in the eyes of many judges
of a past generation, was Helen Faucit, now
Lady Martin, who acted the part for the
first time on March 18, 1839, at Covent
Garden, with James Anderson as Orlando,
Macready as Jaques, and Phelps as the
First Lord. EUen Tree (Mrs. Charles

154 THE FOREST OF ARDEN:
Kean) came next, who acted Rosalind on
September 13, 1839, at the London Hay-
market, and the old records abound with
praises of her performance. Buckstone
appeared as Touchstone, Phelps as Jaques,
and Priscilla Horton (Mrs. German Reed),
as Celia. Several English actresses have
assumed Rosalind since the time of Ellen
Tree — but only one has eclipsed her, the
late Adelaide Neilson, who was superbly
beautiful in the part and a vision of dazzling
glee. Fanny Kemble has often given read
ings of As You Like It, but she has not acted
in it.
On the British stage Rosalind has been
played also by Fanny Cooper (Mrs. T. H.
Lacy), who had the aid of G. V. Brooke as
Oriando ; IsabeUa Glyn (Mrs. E. S. Dallas) ;
MiUicent Palmer ; Jane Elizabeth Vezin
(Mrs. Charles Young) ; Carlotta Leclercq
(Mrs. John Nelson) ; Mrs. Rousby ; Mrs.
Scott-Siddons ; Mary Provost (Mrs. Samuel
Colville), at the Princess's, London, July
9, 1861 ; Julia Bennett (Mrs. Barrow) ; Amy
Sedgewick (Mrs. Goostry) ; Madge Robert
son Kendal (Mrs. W. H. Grimston) ; Miss
Marriott ; Jean Davenport (Mrs. Lander) ;
Mrs. Langtry ; Miss Marie Litton, and Miss
Calhoun. At the Shakespeare Memorial

AS YOU LIKE IT. I55
theatre, and for the benefit of that institu
tion, at Stratford-upon-Avon, Mary Ander
son enacted Rosalind, for the first time in
her life, on August 29, 1885, and afterwards
she repeated the performance in various
cities of Great Britain and the United States.
On the American stage As You Like It
was acted on July 14, 1786, at the John
street theatre. New York, with Mrs.
Kenna as Rosalind. Ireland records this,
together with other presentations of the
comedy in New York prior to 1860. On
June 21, 1796 it was performed at the
John street theatre, with Mrs. Johnson as
Rosalind, Mr. Hodgkinson as Jaques, Mr.
Hallam as Touchstone, Mr. Cleveland as
Orlando, Mrs. Cleveland as Celia, and Mrs.
Brett as Audrey. Mr. Jefferson, grand
father of the Jefferson of to-day, enacted
Le Beau. The famous Park theatre was
opened with ,4s You Like It, on Monday,
January 29, 1798. The piece was acted
only once, however, and the next mention
of it that occurs in the story of the New
York stage records its production on Janu
ary 8, 1850, at the Astor Place opera house,
where it was acted for the benefit of the
American Dramatic Fund Association, with
Charlotte Cushman as Rosalind, Burton as

156 THE FOREST OF ARDEN:
Touchstone, HambUn as Jaques, H. Bland
as Orlando, Chippendale as Adam, Mrs.
Abbott as CeBa, Mrs. J. Gilbert as Au
drey, and George Jordan as Le Beau.
The elder Wallaok closed his first sea
son at the old Broadway and Broome
Street house vrith seven performances of
As You Like It, ending June 13, 1853,
himself playing Jaques, with Laura Keene
as Rosalind, Mrs. Brougham as Audrey,
Lester Wallack as Orlando, Charles Wal-
cot as Touchstone, and Blake as Adam.
At Burton's theatre, which ultimately be
came the Winter Garden, this comedy was
represented on January 29, 1857, for the
benefit of JuUa Bennett Barrow, a bril
liant actress in her time, who embodied
Rosalind and who was a ripe and dashing
beauty in those days. Burton enacted
Touchstone on that occasion, Charles Fisher
was Jaques, and Orlando was performed by
Mr. Belton — an earnest and picturesque
actor, ¦ now forgotten. Laura Keene chose
Rosalind for her first character, when she
opened her theatre at 622 Broadway, on
November 18, 1856, and the cast then in
cluded George Jordan as Orlando, Charles
Wheatleigh as Touchstone, Dickinson as
Jaques, Burnett as Adam, Wemyss as the

AS YOU LIKE IT. 1 57
Duke in exile, J. H. Stoddart as Corin, and
Mrs. Grattan as Audrey.
On the American stage As You Like It
was acted more frequently within the thirty
years from 1860 to 1890 than it was on
either side of the Atlantic during the preced
ing sixty years of this century. Several
fine casts of its characters might be cited.
On November 29, 1870 it was acted at Niblo's
theatre. New York, with the best Orlando
of the age, Walter Montgomery ; and the
cast then included E. L. Davenport as
Jaques, Mark Smith as Adam, Mrs. Scott-
Siddons as Rosalind, Vining Bowers as
Touchstone, James Dunn as Amiens, and
Milnes Levick as Duke Frederick. On May
2, 1871 a performance of it was given at
Niblo's with. E. L. Davenport as Jaques,
and C. R. Thome, Jr., as Orlando. Car
lotta Leclercq played RosaUnd, for the first
time in New York, at Booth's theatre, on
March 25, 1872. The Jaques was D. W.
Waller ; the Touchstone Robert Pateman.
Adelaide Neilson played RosaUnd, for the
first time in America, on December 2,
1872, at Booth's theatre. J. W. WaUack,
Jr., was Jaques. Fanny Davenport ap
peared at Booth's theatre on December 22,
1877 as Rosalind, with Charles Fisher as

1 58 THE FOREST OF AEDEN :
Jaques. Ada Cavendish, who came to
America in 1878, had not acted Rosalind on
the English stage, but she assumed the part
here and was admired in it. Rose Coghlan
appeared for the first time as Rosalind on
September 30, 1880, at Wallack's theatre.
Mrs. Langtry's advent in this part was
seen at the same theatre on November 13,
1882. Helena Modjeska assumed it on
December 11, 1882, at Booth's theatre.
A performance of As You Like It was
given in the open air in the grounds
of the Masoonomo House, at Manchester,
Massachusetts, on August 8, 1887, with
Rose Coghlan as Rosalind, Osmond Tearle
as Orlando, Frank Mayo as Jaques, Agnes
Booth as Audrey, and Stuart Robson as
Touchstone. This experiment had previ
ously been made in England and had met
with social favour.
Under the management of Augustin Daly
by whom it was revived with scrupulous
care and profuse liberality, to signalise
the assumption of Rosalind by Ada Re-
han, December, 17, 1889, As You Like It
has been presented at various times and
places. Mr. Daly's first season as a the
atrical manager began on August 16, 1869,
when he opened the Fifth avenue theatre

AS YOU LIKE IT. I59
in Twenty-fourth street. That season con
tinued until July 9, 1870, and in the course
of it he presented twenty-five plays, three
of which were comedies by Shakespeare —
Twelfth Night, As You Like It, and Much
Ado About Nothing. Mr. Daly's dramatic
company at that time consisted of thirty-
three members, including E. L. Davenport,
George HoBand, William Davidge, James
Lewis, George Clarke, D. H. Harkins, Mrs.
GBbert, Fanny Davenport, Agnes Ethel,
Clai-a Jennings, Lina Edwin, Mrs. Chan-
frau, and Mrs. Marie WUkins. For the
Shakespeare revival Mrs. Scott-Siddons, an
actress then in the fresh enjoyment of pub-
Uc attention, was engaged as a star. Mrs.
Scott-Siddons played Rosalind, and so did
Mrs. Clara Jennings. The name of the former
had for two years been prominently asso
ciated with the part. Mrs. Scott-Siddons
made her flrst appearance on the London
stage on AprB 8, 1867, at the Haymarket
theatre, as RosaUnd. Her first display of
the character in America was made in a
reading that she gave in New York, on Oc
tober 26, 1868, in Steinway haU. She first
acted the part in this country on November
14, at the Boston Museum, and her first
representation of it in New York was given

l6o THE FOREST OF ARDEN:
on November 30, 1868, at the New York
theatre, under the management of Augustin
Daly. Her star was ecUpsed by that of
Adelaide Neilson, who in her day held
¦ Rosalind against all competitors. Ellen
Terry has often been urged to impersonate
Rosalind, but has declined to undertake it.
Shakespeare appreciated the value of
music in association with drama. There
are songs in Hamlet, Othello, King Lear,
and Antony and Cleopatra. There are
passages in Macbeth that obviously were
designed to be chanted. There is need of
music in the ghost scene in Julius Coesar
and in the masquerade scene in Romeo and
Juliet. There is use of song in King Henry
IV. and in King Henr-y VIII. The come
dies abound with music. The Tempest and
A Midsummer Nighfs Dream are excep
tionally rich in strains that must be sung ;
and songs also occur in The Two Gentlemen
of Verona, The Merry Wives of Windsor,
AlVs Well Tliat Ends Well, Much Ado
About Nothing, Lovers Labour^s Lost, Meas
ure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, A
Winter^s Tale, Cymbeline, Twelfth Night,
and As You Like It. Music has been affili
ated with other plays of Shakespeare, but
with these it was associated by his own

AS YOU LIKE IT. l6l
hand. In As You Like It the songs are
"Under the Greenwood Tree" (Act ii.,
sc. 5) ; "Blow, blow, thou winter wind"
(Act ii., sc. 7) ; " What shall he have that
killed the Deer ? " (Act iv., sc. 2) ; " It was
a lover and his lass " (Act v., sc. 3) ; and
the verses allotted to Hymen (Act v., sc. 4),
" Then is there mirth in heaven," and
" Wedding is great Juno's crown." The
songs of Hymen, together with all that re
lates to that personage, are usually omitted
in the representation of this comedy. On
the other hand, the song that is sung by
Spring, commonly called the Cuckoo Song,
in Love's Labour's Lost (Act v., sc. 2),
" When daisies pied and violets blue," was
long ago introduced into As You Like It,
and for many years of stage usage it was
put into the mouth of RosaUnd, immedi
ately after the words " O, that woman that
cannot make her fault her husband's occa
sion, let her never nurse her child herself,
for she will breed it like a fool." The pur
pose of that introduction is obscure. The
effect of it has ever been to smirch the ra
diant, gleeful ingenuousness and piquant
banter of the happy-hearted Rosalind with
a suggested taint of conscious coarseness.
The Cuckoo Song, sprightly and felicitous

l63 THE FOREST OF ARDEN.
in itself, was set to exceedingly beautiful
music by Dr. Arne (1710-1778), and it
appears to have been first introduced into
As You Like It in 1747, at Drury Lane, to
have been allotted to Celia, and to have been
sung by Kitty Clive. At Covent Garden in
1775 Mrs. Mattocks sang it, and Mrs. Mat
tocks played not Rosalind but Celia. The
flrst Rosalind that ever sang it was Mrs;
Dancer, at Drury Lane, in 1767. The airs
for the Greenwood Tree and the Winter
Wind were written by Dr. Arne ; that of
the Deer Song was vrritten by Sir Henry
Bishop. It was a Lover and his Lass
(sung by the Second Page in the original)
and the verses of Hymen were set to ex
quisite melodies by William Linley, and
these were retained in Daly's arrange
ment of the piece. The Pages were kept
in, and the droll episode of their singing to
Touchstone was allowed to have its rightful
effect in displaying still further the quaint-
ness of that wise, facetious, lovable char
acter. Altogether the lovely comedy was
presented substantially as Shakespeare
wrote it — in the glad light of early spring
time and in one continuous picture of
sylvan beauty.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT's DREAM. 1 63

XII.
FAIRY LAND ; A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S
DREAM.
BECAUSE Shakespeare, who lived only
fifty-two years, wrote so much within
that brief period, and furthermore because
he wrote vrith such transcendent genius
and abBity, it has pleased theoretical and
visionary observers to declare that he never
wrote at aB. Shakespeare viewed alone,
they maintain, is a miracle, and therefore
an impossibility ; but Shakespeare and
Francis Bacon, roUed into one, constitute a
being who is entirely natural and authentic.
The works of Shakespeare and the works
of Bacon present, indeed, almost every
possible point of dissimBarity, and no point
of resemblance. The man behind Shake
speare's plays and poems and the man
behind Bacon's essays and phflosophy are
absolutely distinct from one another and
as far apart as the poles. The direct and
positive testimony of Shakespeare's friend

1 64 FAIRY LAND :
and professional associate, Ben Jonson — a
close observer, a stern critic, a truth-teller,
a moralist, not over-amiable in his com
mentary upon human nature, and neither
prone to error nor liable to credulity — tells
the world, not only that Shakecpeare wrote,
but in what manner he wrote. The assump
tion, implied in the Bacon theory, that a
poet capable of writing Hamlet, Macbeth,
Lear, and Othello either would or could, for
any reason whatever, wish to escape the
imputation of their authorship, is obviously
absurd. The idea that Shakespeare, hired
by Bacon to father those plays, could for a
period of years go in and out among the
actors and the authors of his time, and so
impose upon their sagacity and elude their
jealous scrutiny as to keep the secret of this
gigantic fraud, is simply ludicrous. The
notion that the man who wrote Shake
speare's poems — and those, admittedly,
were the work of William Shakespeare —
was the kind of man to lend himself to any
scheme of imposture is repudiated by every
intimation of character that those poems
contain ; and the same may rightfully be
said of the man who wrote Shakespeare's
plays. The fact that the plays, which these
theorists would deny to Shakespeare's pen,

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 1 65
are entirely, absolutely, and incontestably
kindred with the poems, which they cannot
deny to it, stands f6rth as clear as the day
light. The associate fact that the plays
contain precisely such errors as would nat
urally be made by the untutored Shake
speare, but could not possibly be made by
the thoroughly taught and erudite Bacon,
is likewise distinctly visible. Yet, all the
same — because Shakespeare, like Burns,
sprung from a famBy in humble station,
and was but poorly schooled — this prepos
terous doctrine persistently rears its foolish
head, and insults with idle chatter the
Shakespearean scholarship of the world. A
prominent representative dramatist, Dion
Boucicault, had the astounding foBy to
announce an hypothesis — apparently in
tended to be taken in earnest — that Shake
speare's Hamlet was written by Jonson,
Webster, Dekker, and AUeyne, in conjunc
tion vrith Shakespeare, and under his super
vision ; a doctrine which, to any student
acquainted with those writers and their
times, is deplorably idle. For if there
be in literature any work which, from the
flrst Une to the last, and in every word
and syllable of it, bears the authentic
pressure of one creative and predominant

1 66 FAIRY land:
mind — the broad-headed arrow of im
perial dominion — that work is Hamlet.
Shakespeare's style, once known, can never
be mistaken. No man of his time, with the
single exception of John Fletcher, could
write in anything like his peculiar strain of
simplicity and power. In some of the his
torical plays tliere are traces of collabora
tion — as all readers know ; but in his
greater plays the only hand that is visible
is the hand of Shakespeare.
This is especially tme of A Midsummer
Nighfs Dream, and probably no better
mental exercise than the analysis of the
style and spirit and component elements of
that piece could be devised for those per
sons — if any such there be — who incline
to entertain either the Bacon theory or the
coUaboration theory of the authorship of
Shakespeare. Bacon, if his avowed writ
ings may be taken as the denotement of
his mind, could no more have written that
play than he could have flown on wings of
paper over the spire of St. Paul's ; nor does
it exhibit the slightest deviation from one
invariable poetic mind and temperament.
Shakespeare's fancy takes a free range here,
and revels in beauty and joy. The Dream
was first published in 1000 ; the earliest

A MIDSU.MMEE NIGHT'S DREAM. 167
aUusion made to it is that of Francis Meres,
in Palladis Tamia, in 1598 ; and probably
it was written as early as 1594, when
Shakespeare was thirty years old. A sig
nificant reference to the subject of it occurs
in the second scene of the second act of the
Comedy of Errors (1589-1591), which has
been thought to indicate that the poet had
already considered and perhaps conceived
it : he was working with wise and incessant
industry at that time, and the amazing fer
tility of his creative genius was beginning
to reveal itself. The Dream is absolutely
of his own invention. The names of the
characters, together vrith a few incidents,
he derived from Plutarch, Ovid, and Chau
cer — authors with whom he shows himself
to have been acquainted. The story of
Pyramus and Thisbe occurs in Ovid, and
a translation of that Latin poet, made by
Arthur Golding, was current in Shake
speare's day. It is thought that the Knighfs
Tale and Tysbe of Babylone, by Chaucer,
may have been the means of suggesting
this play to Shakespeare, but his story and
his characters are his own. And although,
as Dr. Johnson observes, fairies were in his
time fashionable, and Spenser's Faerie
Queene had made them great, Shakespeare

1 68 FAIRY LAND:
was the first to interblend them with the
proceedings of mortals in a drama. The
text of the piece is considered to be excep
tionally free from error or any sort of
defect. Two editions of the Dream, quarto,
appeared in 1600 — one published by Thomas
Fisher, bookseller ; the other by James
Roberts, printer. The Fisher publication
bad been entered at Stationers' Hall, Octo
ber 8, that year, and probably it was sanc
tioned by the author. The two editions do
not materially differ, and the modem
Shakespearean editors have made a judicious
use of both in their choice of the text.
The play was not again printed until 1623,
when it appeared in the first folio. It is
not known which was first of the Fisher
and the Roberts quartos, or which was
authorised. Each of those quartos consists
of 32 leaves. Neither of them distinguishes
the acts or scenes. In the first folio
(1623) the Dream occupies 18 pages, from
p. 145 to p. 162 inclusive, in the section
devoted to comedies — the acts, but not the
scenes, being distinguished. The editors
of that folio, Heminge and Condell, fol
lowed the text of the Roberts quarto. The
memory of one of the actors who appeared
in the Dream in its earliest days is curi-

A MIDSUM.MER NIGHTS DREAM. I69
ously preserved in a stage-direction, printed
in the flrst folio, in Act v., sc. i. ; " Tawyer
with a trumpet." The piece appears in
the later folios, — 1632, 1663-64, and 1685.
A Midsummer Night's Dream was popular
in Shakespeare's time. Mention of it, as
impliedly a play in general knowledge and
acceptance, was made by Taylor, the water
poet, in 1622.
A piece called The Fairy Queen, being
Shakespeare's comedy, with music by Pur-
ceB,^ was pubUshed in London in 1692. It
had been acted there, at the Haymarket —
the presentation being made with fine
scenery and elaborate mechanism. There
is another old piece, called The Merry- Con
ceited Humours of Bottom the Weaver.
This was made out of an episode in the
Dream, and it is included in the collection
of farces attributed to Robert Cox, a come
dian of the time of Charles I., published in
1672. A comic masque, by Richard Lever-
idge, simUarly derived, entitled Pyramus
and Thisbe, was performed at Lincoln's
Inn Fields theatre, and was pubUshed in
1716. Two other musical farce.s, with this
same title and origin, are recorded — one
1 Henry Purcell, 1658-1695, and Thomas Purcell,
 1682, were both musical composers.

170 FAIRY LAND :
by Mr. Lampe, acted at Covent Garden,
and published in 1745 ; the other by W. C.
Oulton, acted at Birmingham, and pub
lished in 1798. Garrick made an acting
copy of A Midsummer Nighfs Dream —
adding to the text as well as curtailing it,
and introducing songs — and this was played
at Drury Lane, where it faBed, and was
published ir 1763. Colman reduced Gar-
rick's pie.0 3 to two acts, and called it A
Fairy Tale, and in this form it was tried at
Drury Lane, and published in 1764 and
1777. Colman, however, wrote: "I was
little more than a godfather on the occasion,
and the alterations should have been sub
scribed Anon." The best production of
this comedy ever accomplished on the Eng
lish stage was that effected .by Charles
Kean, at the Princess's theatre, London, —
managed by him from August 1850 tiU
August 29, 1859.
The first performance of A Midsummer
Nighfs Dream given in America occurred
at the old Park theatre, for the bene
fit of Mrs. Hilson, on November 9, 1826.
Ireland, in his valuable records, has pre
served a part of the cast, rescued from a
mutilated copy of the playbill of that night :
Theseus, Mr. Lee ; Bottom, Mr. HUson ;

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. I7I
Snout, Mr. Placide ; Oberon, Peter Rieh-
ings ; Puck, Mrs. HBson ; Titania, Mrs.
Sharpe ; Hippolita, Mrs. Stickney ; Hermia,
Mrs. Hackett. On August 30, 1841 the
comedy was again revived at that theatre,
with a cast that included Mr. Fredericks
as Theseus, W. H. Williams as Bottom,
Mrs. Knight as Puck, Charlotte Cushman
as Oberon, Mary Taylor as Titania, Susan
Cushman as Helena, Mrs. Groves as Hippo
lita, Miss Buloid (afterward Mrs. Abbott)
as Hermia, and William Wheatley as Ly-
sander. The next revivals came on Febru
ary 3 and 6, 1854, at Bvirton's theatre and
at the Broadway theatre, rival houses, with
these casts :
At Broadway. At Burton's.
Theseus  F. B. Conway  Charles Fisher.
Lysander. . . Lannergan  George Jordan.
Demetrius.. Gro8venor._  W. H. Norton.
Egeus  Matthews  Moore.
Bottom  William Davidge  W. B. Burton.
Quince  Howard  T. Johnston.
Flute  Whiting  G. Barrett.
Snug  Fisk  Russell.
Snout  Henry  G. Andrews.
Puck  Viola Crocker  Parsloe.
Oberon  Mme. Ponisi  Miss E. Raymond.
Titania  Mrs. Abbott  Mrs. Burton.
Hippolita. . .Mrs. Warren  Mrs. J. Cooke.
Hermia  Mrs. Nagle  Mrs. Hough.
Helena  A. Gougenheim  Mrs. Bucl^iand.

172 FAIRY LAND :
Great stress, in both cases, was laid upon
Mendelssohn's music. At each house it
ran for a month. It was not revived in
New York again untB April 18, 1859, when
Laura Keene brought it forward at her
theatre, and kept it on till May 28, with
C. W. Couldock as Theseus, William Rufus
Blake as Bottom, Miss Macarthy as Oberon,
Miss Stevens as Helena, Ada Clifton as
Hermia, and herself as Puck. It was a fail
ure. Even Blake failed as Bottom, — an
acute critic of that period, Edward G. P.
Wilkins, describing the performance as
"not funny, not even grotesque, but vul
gar and unpleasant." Charles Peters was
good as Thisbe. The stage version used
was made by Richard Grant White. That
same theatre subsequently became the
Olympic (not Mitchell's, but the second of
that name), and there, on October 28, 1867,
under the management of James E. Hayes
and the direction of Joseph Jefferson, who
had brought from London a Grecian pan
orama by Telbin, A Midsurnmer Night's
Dream was again offered, with a cast
that included G. L. Fox as Bottom, W.
Davidge as Quince, Owen Marlowe as
Flute, Cornelia Jefferson as Titania, and
Clara Fisher as Peasblossom. Telbin's

A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM. I73
panorama displayed the country supposed
to Ue between Athens and the forest
wherein the Fairy Queen and the lovers
are enchanted and bewitched and the sapi
ent Bottom is "translated." Fox under
took Bottom, for the first time, and he was
drolly consequential and stolidly conceited
in it. Landseer's famous picture of Titania
and the ass-headed Bottom was copied in
one of the scenes. Mr. Hayes provided
a shining tableau at the close. Mendels
sohn's music was played and stmg, with
exceUent skill and effect — the chief vocal
ist being Clara Fisher. Owen Marlowe, as
Thisbe, gave a burlesque of the manner
of Rachel. The comedy, as then given,
ran for one hundred nights — from Octo
ber 28, 1867 tlB Febmary 1, 1868. The
stage version used was that of Charles
Kean. .
The next production of A Midsummer
Nighfs Dream was effected by Augustin
Daly, at the Grand Opera House, on August
19, 1873. The scenery then employed
was of extraordinary beauty — delicate in
colour, sensuous in feeling, sprightly in
fancy. Fox again played Bottom. The
attentive observer of the stage version
made by Augustin Daly, — and conspicu-

174 FAIRY LAND :
ously used by him when he revived the
piece at his theatre on January 31, 1888, —
would observe that much new and effective
stage business was introduced. The disposi
tion of the groups at the start was fresh, and
so was the treatment of the quarrel between
Oberon and Titania, with the disappear
ance of the Indian child. The moonlight
effects, in the transition from act second
to act third, and the gradual assembly
of goblins and fairies in shadowy mists
through which the fire-flies glimmered, at the
close of act third, were novel and beautiful.
Cuts and transpositions were made at the
end of the fourth act, in order to close
it with the voyage of the barge of Theseus,
through a summer landscape, on the silver
stream that rippled down to Athens. The
third act was judiciously compressed, so
that the spectator might not see too much
of the perplexed and wrangling lovers.
But Uttle of the original text was omitted.
The music for the choruses was selected
from various English composers — that of
Mendelssohn being prescribed only for the
orchestra. The accepted doctrine of traditional
criticism — a doctrine made seemingly po
tent by reiteration — that A Midsummer

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 1 75
Nighfs Dream is not for the stage, need
not necessarBy be considered final. Haz-
Utt was the first to insist on that idea.
"Poetry and the stage," said that famous
writer, ' ' do not agree well together. The
attempt to reconcile them, in this instance,
fails not only of effect, but of decorum.
The ideal can have no place upon the stage,
which is a picture without perspective.
The imagination cannot sufficiently qualify
the actual impression of the senses." But
this is only saying that there are difficul
ties. The remark applies to all the higher
forms of dramatic literature ; and, logically,
if that doctrine were observed in practice,
none of the great plays would be attempted.
A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, vrith all its
ideal spirit, is dramatic ; it ought not to be
lost to the stage ; and to some extent, cer
tainly, the difficulties can be surmounted.
In the spirit of a dream the play was writ
ten, and in the spirit of a dream it can be
acted. The student of A Midsummer Nighfs
Dream, as often as he thinks upon that
lofty and lovely expression of a luxuriant
and happy poetic fancy, must necessarily
find himself impressed with its exquisite
purity of spirit, its affiuence of invention.

176 FAIRY land:
its extraordinary wealth of contrasted char
acters, its absolute symmetry of form, and
its great beauty of poetic diction. The es
sential cleanliness and sweetness of Shake
speare's mind, unaffected by the gross
animalism of his time, appear conspicuously
in that play. No single trait of the piece
impresses the reader more agreeably than
its frank display of the spontaneous, natu
ral, and entirely delightful exultation of
Theseus and Hippolita in their approaching
nuptials. They are grand creatures, and
they rejoice in each other and in their per
fectly accordant love. Nowhere in Shake
speare is there a more imperial man than
Theseus; nor, despite her feminine impa
tience of dulness, a woman more royal
and more essentially woman-like than Hip
polita. It is thought that the immediate
impulse of that comedy, in Shakespeare's
mind, was the marriage of his friend and
benefactor the Earl of Southampton with
Elizabeth Vernon — which, while it did
not in fact occur till 1598, was probably
agreed upon, and had received Queen Eliz
abeth's sanction, as early as 1594-95. In
old English literature it is seen that such a
theme often proved suggestive of ribaldry ;
but Shakespeare could preserve the sane-

A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM. I77
tity even while he revelled in the passion
ate ardour of love ; and A Midsummer
Nighfs Dream, while it possesses the rosy
glow, the physical thrill, and the melting
tenderness of such pieces as Herrick's
Nuptiall Song, is likewise fraught with the
moral elevation and unaffected chastity of
such pieces as Milton's Comus. Human
nature is shown in it as feeling no shame
in its elemental passions, and as baring no
reason to feel ashamed of them. The at
mosphere is free and bracing; the tone
honest; the note true. Then, likewise,
the fertBity and felicity of the poet's in-
veittion — intertwining the loves of earthly
sovereigns and of their subjects with the
dissensions of fairy monarchs, the pranks
of mischievous elves, the protective care of
attendant sprites, and the comic but kind-
hearted and well-meant fealty of boorish
peasants — arouse lively interest and keep
it steadBy alert. In no other one of his
works has Shakespeare more briUiantly
shown that complete dominance of theme
which is manifested in the perfect preser
vation of proportion. The strands of action
are braided with astonishing grace. The
fourfold story is never allowed to lapse
into dulness or obscurity. There is caprice,
M

178 FAIRY land:
but no distortion. The supernatural ma
chinery is never wrested toward the pro
duction of startling or monstrous effects,
but it deftly impels each mortal personage
in the natural line of human development.
The dream-spirit is maintained through
out, and perhaps it is for that reason —
that the poet was living, thinking, writing
in the free, untrammelled world of his
spacious and airy imagination and not in
any definite sphere of this earth — that A
Midsummer Nighfs Dream is radically
superior to the other comedies written
by him at about the same period. The
Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of
Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, and The
Taming of the Shrew. His genius over
flows in this piece, and the rich excess
of it is seen in passages of exquisite
poetry — such as the beautiful speeches of
Titania and Oberon, in the second act —
over against which is set that triumph of
humour, that immortal Interlude of Pyra
mus and Thisbe, which is the father of all
the burlesques in our language, and which,
for freshness, pungency of apposite satire,
and general applicability to the foible of
self-love in human nature and to igno
rance and folly in human affairs, might

A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DKEAM. 1 79
have been written yesterday. The only
faults in this play are a slight tinge of
monotony in the third act, concerning the
lovers in the wood, and an excess of
rhymed passages in the text throughout.
Shakespeare had not yet cast aside that
custom of rhyme which was in vogue when
he came first upon the scene. But those
defects are trifles. The beauties overwhelm
them. It would take many pages to enu
merate and fitly to descant on the felicities
of literature that we owe to this comedy —
gems such as the famous passage on "the
course of true love" ; the regal picture of
Queen Elizabeth as "a fair vestal throned
by the west"; the fine description of the
stormy summer (that of 1594 in England,
according to Stow's Chronicle and Dr.
Simon Forman's Diary) ; the vision of
Titania asleep upon the bank of wild
thyme, oxUps, and violets ; the eloquent
contrasts of lover, madman, and poet, each
subdued and impelled by that " strong
imagination ' ' which ' ' bodies forth the
forms of things unknown " ; and the won
derfully spirited lines on the hounds of
Sparta, — " with ears that swept away the
morning dew." In character likewise, and
in those salutary lessons that the truthful

l8o FAIRY LAND :
portraiture of character invariably teaches,
this piece is exceptionally strong. Helena,
noble and loving, yet a Uttle perverted
from dignity by her sexual infatuation;
Hermia, shrewish and violent, despite her
feminine sweetness, and possibly because
of her impetuous and clinging ardour ;
Demetrius and Lysander, each selfish and
fierce in his love, but manly, straightfor
ward feUows, abounding more in youth
and desire than in brains ; Bottom, the
quintessence of bland, unconscious egotism
and self-conceit ; and Theseus, the princely
gentleman and typical ruler — these make
up one of the most interesting and signifi
cant groups that can be found in fiction.
The self-centred nature, the broad-minded
view, the magnanimous spirit, the calm
adequacy, the fine and high manner of
Theseus, make that character alone the
inspiration of the comedy and a most
potent lesson upon the conduct of life.
Through certain of his people — such as
Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida, the Duke
in Measure for Measure, and Prospero in
The Tempest — the voice of Shakespeare
himself, speaking personally, is clearly
heard ; and it is heard also in Theseus.
"The best in this kind are but shadows,"

A MIDSUMMER NIGHt'S DREAM. iSl
says that wise observer of life, when he
comes to speak of the actors who copy it,
" and the worst are no worse, if imagina
tion amend them." There is no higher
strain of princelike courtesy and consider
ate grace, even in the perfect breeding of
Hamlet, than is visible in the preference of
Theseus for the play of the hard-handed
men of Athens : —
" Never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it. . . .
And what poor duty cannot do
Noble respect takes it in might, not merit."
With reference to the question of suitable
method in the acting of A Midsummer
Nighfs Dream it may be observed that too
much stress can scarcely be laid upon the
fact that this comedy was conceived and
written absolutely in the spirit of a dream.
It ought not, therefore, to be treated as a
rational manifestation of orderly design.
It possesses, indeed, a coherent and sym
metrical plot and a definite purpose ; but,
while it moves toward a final result of abso
lute order, it presupposes intermediary prog
ress through a realm of motley shapes and
fantastic vision. Its persons are creatures
of the fancy, and all effort to make them

l82 FAIRY LAND :
solidly actual, to set them firmly upon the
earth, and to accept them as realities of
common life, is labour ill-bestowed. To
body forth the form of things is, in this
case, manifestly, a difficult task : and yet
the true course is obvious. Actors who
yield themselves to the spirit of whim, and
drift along with it, using a deUcate method
and avoiding insistence upon prosy realism,
will succeed with this piece — provided,
also, that their audience can be fanciful,
and can accept the performance, not as a
comedy of ordinary life but as a vision seen
in a dream. The play is full of intimations
that this was Shakespeare's mood. Even
Bottom, the consummate flower of uncon
scious humour, is at his height of signifl
cance in his moment of supreme illusion :
"I have had a dream, — past the wit of
man to say what dream it was : — Man is
but an ass If he go about to expound this
dream. Methought I was — there is no
man can tell what. Methought I was, and
methought I had^ But man is but a
patched fool if he will offer to say what me
thought I had. The eye of man hath not
heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's
hand is not able to taste, his tongue to con
ceive, nor his heart to report, what my

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 183
dream was." The whole phUosophy of the
subject, comically stated, is there. A serious
statement of it is in the words of the poet
Campbell : —
" Well may sleep present us fictions.
Since our waking moments teem
With such fanciful convictions
As make life itself a dream."
Various actors in the past — although A
Midsummer Nighfs Dream has not had
great currency upon the stage, at any period,
whether in England or America — have laid
a marked stress upon the character of
Bottom. Samuel Phelps, upon the London
stage, was esteemed exceBent in it. He
acted the part in his production of the
Dream, at Sadler's Wells, and he again
acted it in 1870 at the Queen's theatre, in
Long Acre — • now demolished. On the
American stage WBliam E. Burton was ac
counted wonderfuBy good in it. " As Bur
ton renders the character," says Richard
Grant White, "its traits are brought out
vrith a delicate and masterly hand ; its
humour is exquisite." And WBliam L.
Keese, in his careful biography of Burton,
makes equally cordial reference to that
achievement of the great comedian : ' ' How

184 FAIRY Lii.ND :
striking it was in sustained individuality,
and how finely exemplified was the poten
tial vanity of Bottom ! What pleased us
greatly was the vein of engaging raillery
which ran through the delivery of his
speeches to the fairies." Burton produced
the Dream at his theatre, in 1854, with
such wealth of fine scenery as in those days
was accounted prodigious. The most nota
ble impersonation of Bottom that has been
given since Burton's time was, proba
bly, that of George L, Fox. Self-conceit,
as the essence of the character, was thor
oughly well understood and expressed by
him. He wore the ass's head, but he did
not know that he was wearing it ; and when,
afterward, the vague sense of it came upon
him for an instant, he put it by as some
thing inconceivable and intolerable. His
" Not a word of me ! " — spoken to the ether
hard-handed men of Athens, after his re
turn to them out of the enchanted ' ' palace
wood " — was his finest single point. Cer
tainly it expressed to the utmost the colossal
self-love and swelling pomposity of this mir
acle of bland and opaque sapience. The
essential need of acting, in a portrayal of
this play, is whimsicality — but it must be
whimsicality exalted by poetry.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT's DREAM. 1 85
It is remarked by Hazlitt that ' ' the stage
is an epitome, a bettered likeness of the
world, with the duU part left out ' ' ; and
the fine thinker adds, with subtle insight
and quaint wisdom, that ' ' indeed, with this
omission, it is nearly big enough to hold all
the rest." There is a profound and signifi
cant truth in that observation. Actual life,
in most of its aspects. Is dull and tedious.
Almost aU persons are commonplace — ex
cept at moments. Almost all scenes are
insipid — except at moments. Nature will
not show herself to you at aB times. The
glory of sunrise is revealed only once in a
day, and even then you will not see it unless
you are in the right mood. The uncommon
element In human creatures must be awak
ened before they can really discern any
thing. Most persons who have reached
middle age know absolutely nothing that is
wortb knowing except what they saw dur
ing the one brief, sweet, youthful hour when
they were in love. It is the uncommon ele
ment that endows man with perception, and
it Is the uncommon element that makes hu
manity interesting. Common life is barren ;
and sometimes it is worse than barren —
because the contemplation of it is extremely
apt to engender a bitter contempt for hu-

1 86 FAIRY LAND.
manity, as altogether vacuous, frivolous,
and trivial. The world of art has no room
for the commonplace. No properly organ
ised mind will ever be contented with a
photograph if it can get anything better.
We do not wish to know what people are, in
their ordinary state. We know, only too
well, that human nature. In its average con
dition, is full of selfishness, envy, malice,
and greed. There is no circle into which
any man enters, anywhere, in which he does
not invariably hear people, sooner or later,
speaking ill of other people behind their
backs. Detraction is universal and it is
perennial. We do not wish in art, or in
anything else, to hear the small talk, the
cackle, the babble of everyday life. Hu
manity should be contemplated in Its ideal
ised aspects. Shakespeare has endured,
and he will endure forever (not, perhaps,
upon the stage, from which an effort is
already in formidable progress to exclude
him, as being archaic and not contempora^
neous), because, while absolutely tme to
truth in his refiections of human nature, he
idealised and transfigured it.

love's labour's lost. 187

XIIL
WILL O' THE WISP : LOVE's LABOUR'S LOST.
THE subject of this comedy Is self-<!ulture
— a subject that commends itself to the
attention of young men, and one that has
frequently been treated by young authors.
Shakespeare obviously was a young author
when he wrote Love's Labour's Lost; yet
In this case, whBe the subject has been
viewed with youthful enthusiasm. It has also
been viewed vrith the intuition of genius.
The Idea of natural development that lies
imbedded in the structure of this work is
absolutely sound and true. Mental culti
vation is a noble pursuit (so Shakespeare
seems now to declare), but the nature of
man Is not exclusively Intellectual ; it Is
also physical and spiritual ; it comprises
passions and affections. Man was not
intended to live a monastic life. Love is in
this world, as well as Thought, and the
true conduct of existence will not be ascetic,
but vital, free, simple, cheerful, and happy.

1 88 WILL O' THE WlSP:
The King of Navarre and his three chosen
lords, Biron, LongaviBe, and Dumain —
who typify at first a favourite theory of
youth, the theory of exclusive devotion to
the ideal — may seclude themselves as care
fully as they please ; but they will presently
find that rebeBion fiows in their blood, and
as soon as woman comes upon the scene of
their retreat — as inevitably she will come
¦ — their cool, stately, scholastic, but tepid,
barren, and insincere reserve wIB be ludi
crously broken and defeated. This evi
dently is all that the play was intended to
mean, and this meaning it conveys, inter
mingled with satire on certain social foibles
of Shakespeare's early day, in a forcible,
direct manner, and in a spirit of pimgent
truth which neither youthful effusiveness
nor immaturity of style is potent to invali
date. As far as he could go without much
experience Shakespeare went in Love's
Labour's Lost. After he had gained his
experience he went much further ; but it
was still in the same line — as the student
sees in Much Ado About Nothing.
The story of this comedy is pretty and
pleasing, but the piece does not contain
many incidents, and the element of action
in it is less prominent than are the elements

love's labour's LOST. 189
of poetry and humour. Ferdinand, King of
Navarre, and his three lords dedicate them
selves, for three years, to study. They are
to dweU alone. They are to be frugal and
vigilant. They are to refrain from the
society of ladies. They are to be temperate,
placid, chaste, pure, and cold. In a word,
they are to be dedicated to Mind. The
King of Navarre, however, is obliged to
receive a visit from the Princess of France,
who comes to him as an ambassador from
her royal father, on a political mission, and
who is accompanied by three of her ladies,
Rosaline, Maria, and Katharine. These
are handsome young women, and as soon
as they invade Navarre's serene retreat the
four consecrated yoimg men incontinently
fall in love with them, and each endeavours
to press his suit In secret. AU are thus for
sworn, and much merriment Is extracted
from the expedient of making each of them
betray his secret to the others, until they
all stand in comic discomfiture together.
At the last the condemnation of their error
in making a foolish compact is frankly
spoken, and in words of signal eloquence
and beauty, by the wisest and merriest of
them, Biron (in the old copies of the play
this name is given as Berowne) , who from the

190 WILL O' THE wisp:
first has only humoured Navarre's caprice
for monasticism but has never believed in
its wisdom. Those lovers are much teased
and tantalised by the sparkling French
girls, when their droll predicament Is dis
closed ; but in each case, happily, the love
of the youths is reciprocated, and so a com
fortable pairing time is seen to be Imminent ;
when suddenly comes news that the royal
father of the Princess has died. There can
be no nuptials now, for a year. Love's
labour is lost. The enamoured King of
Navarre must prove his fidelity by patience.
The frolicsome Biron must tend the sick
for a twelvemonth and show himself some
thing better than a farceur, in order to be
worthy of his Rosaline. In the under plot,
which is suffused with eccentric humour, the
fantastical Spaniard, Armado, held in
amorous captivity by the country wench,
Jaquenetta, affords a more broadly comical
illustration of the central truth which ani
mates this play. No man can escape from
the doom of love.
" Nature her custom holds.
Let shame say what it will."
Love's Labour's Lost is pure invention.
"The story of It," says Steevens, "has

LOVE S LABOUR S LOST. I9I
most of the features of an ancient romance."
"It would be more correct to say," ob
serves Charles Knight, "that it has most
of the features which would be derived from
an acquaintance with the ancient romances."
There was no Ferdinand, King of Navarre,
and there is no record that any question
was ever raised between France and Na
varre with reference to possessions in
Aquitain — the settlement of which is the
ostensible object of the Princess's visit to
Ferdinand's court. The scene is laid in
Navarre. The time is Shakespeare's time ;
and the piece has, accordingly, to be attired
for the stage in the styles of raiment pecul
iar to the period of Henry IV. of France
(1553-1610), and Philip II. of Spain (1527-
1598). The comedy drift in Shakespeare's
mind, from the outset till the last, is dis
tinctly indicated in this piece. Biron and
Rosaline are the precursors of Benedick
and Beatrice. Armado is the germ of Mal-
volio. Jaquenetta is a faint prelude both
to Maria and Audrey. Dull gives a hint of
the future Dogberry. In Holofernes, the
schoolmaster — who foreshadows Sir Hugh
Evans — some commentators have discov
ered a satirical portraiture of John Florio,
one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, who

192 WILL O' THE wisp:
taught Italian in London, and made a dic
tionary of that language called A World of
Words; but no conclusive evidence has
been adduced to sustain that notion. Holo
fernes is Shakespeare's satire on ridiculous
pedantry, just as Armado is his satire on
ridiculous affectation, pomposity, and con
ceit. Against those foolish things he places,
in beautiful contrast, his delicious rural
melodies — " When daisies pied and violets
blue," and " When icicles hang by the wall,"
— and the listener feels indeed that "the
words of Mercury are harsh after the songs
of Apollo."
Fifteen of Shakespeare's thirty-seven
plays were published in his lifetime, the
comedy of Love's Labour's Lost being one
of them. The title of the first edition,
quarto. Is : "A pleasant conceited comedie
called Loues Labors Lost. As it was pre
sented before her Highnes this last Christ
mas. Newly corrected and augmented by
W. Shakespeare. Imprinted at London by
W. W. for Cutbert Burly, 1598." The
Highness indicated is Queen Elizabeth
(1558-1603), and the Christmas that of
1597. In the first folio of Shakespeare
(1623) the text of this piece is the text of
the quarto, allowing for merely accidental

love's labour's lost. 193
discrepancies. The errors of the quarto,
which are numerous, reappear in the folio.
Heminge and Condell, when they say " we
have scarce received from him" [Shake
speare] "a blot in his papers," are not to
be taken too literally. They possibly pos
sessed some of Shakespeare's manuscripts
and they may have used them as " copy "
for the printer ; but their folio seems to
show that they must have used as " copy "
some of the prompt-books of Shakespeare's
plays, obtained from the theatre — such
books as may have survived the destructive
fire at the Globe in 1613 — together with
several of the early quartos. No one knows
what has become of Shakespeare's "papers "
— or, indeed, of the papers of some
other authors of Shakespeare's time. The
early quartos exist ; but no prompt-book
has been found, nor any piece of manu
script. It is not unlikely that much if not
the whole mass of the printer's "copy"
that was used in setting up the folio of 1623
was heedlessly dispersed and destroyed in
the printing-office, after the completion of
that work. In those days no such care was
taken, as to matters of this sort, as Is ha^
bitually taken now. The reprint In the
folio of Love's Labour's Lost must cer-
N

194 WILL o' THE wisp:
tainly have been made from the quarto, for
both contain, in Act v. sc. 2, the lines,
827 to 832, beginning " You must be purged
too, your sins are rank" — that are, by
Coleridge and others, judiciously deemed a
superfluous fragment from the first draft of
the piece ; and also the lines in Biron's
speech, in Act iv. sc. 3, that are immedi
ately repeated in an altered form. (Lines
296-317; paraphrased in lines 318-354.) i
The title of the piece is questioned. Some
editors of the poet call it Love's Labour
Lost; others prefer Love's Labours Lost;
and still others declare for Love's Labour
is Lost. In the title of the quarto no apos
trophe is used. In the folio of 1623 the
play is called Loues Labour's Lost. In
every form the Idea remains the same. It
has been alleged that the fashion of speech
called Euphuism, which was prevalent in
^ Capell sagaciously saw that in this speech, from
"For where would you" to " From whence doth
spring," and from " For where is any " to " And in
that vow," are passages which the poet had cancelled
in the " corrected and augmented " play. The same
occurs in Bichard HI., v. 3, and, on a much
smaller scale, however, in Borneo and Juliet, iii.
3, iv. 1. — Keightlet. — This is another trouble
for the makers of *' cyphers" — as Prof. Rolfe has
pungently suggested ; for the validity of a " cypher "
is vitally dependent on a perfectly accurate text.

love s labour's lost. 195
polite society in the reign of Gloriana {Eu-
pheus, the Anatomy of Wit, by John Lilly,
was published in 1580 and Eupheus arid his
England in 1581), was the particular object
of Shakespeare's satire — as Indicated in
the character of Don Adriano de Armado ;
but it seems more likely that he was writ
ing out of a natural, humorous scorn of
artificiality and pomposity, and with the
recollection of his early reading still fresh
in mind. Coleridge — perhaps the wisest
thinker that ever wrote on Shakespeare —
says : " It is not unimportant to notice how
strong a presumption the diction and allu
sions of this play afford that, though Shake
speare's acquirements in the dead lan
guages might not be such as we suppose in
a learned education, his habits had never
theless been scholastic and those of a stu
dent. For a young author's first work
almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits ;
and his flrst observations of life are either
drawn from the Immediate employments
of his youth and from the characters and
images most deeply impressed on his mind
in the situation in which those employments
have placed him, or else they are flxed on
such objects and occurrences In the world
as are easily connected with, and seem tc

196 WILL O' THE wisp:
bear upon,- his studies and the hitherto
exclusive subjects of his meditations."
In all examination into the writings of
Shakespeare the student naturally likes to
approach as nearly as possible to the per
sonality of that wonderful poet. Love's
Labour's Lost suggests him as he was at
the beginning of his career. There is no
immaturity, indeed, in the mental sub
stance of the piece, in its drift of thought,
in its conviction that no artificial scheme of
frigid self-denial can withstand the pur
poses of nature. "Young blood wiB but
obey an old decree." The Immaturity is
mostly in the style, and it is shown in the
frequency of rhymed passages, in the ca
pricious mutations of the verse, and In the
florid metaphor and the tumultuous senti
ment. When completely formed the style
of Shakespeare, whBe possessing the flexi
bility of the flnest- tempered steel, possesses
also Its uniform solidity and strength.
Throughout much of the language of this
comedy there is a lack of the power of self-
knowledge and self-restraint. Parts of the
text are, indeed, full of sinew and tremu
lous with intellectual vitality. No doubt
the author retouched it when he " newly
corrected and augmented " the piece for the

love's labour's LOST. I97
press in 1598 — when he was thirty-four
years old and in full vigour. Biron's fine
speech in Act. iv., " Have at ye then,
affection's men at arms," was probably
rewritten at that time. Yet parts of the
text are diffuse and strained, and in the
contemplation of these the best Shake
speare scholars agree that the first draft of
the comedy must have been written when
the author was a youth. This view is con
firmed by the fact that it Is at once senti
mental and satirical ; that it deals with that
extremely ambitious theme, the conduct of
life ; that it assails conventional affecta
tions ; and that it is reformatory in spirit
and would set matters right. That kind of
zeal belongs to the springtime of the human
mind, and it seldom endures. Love's La
bour's Lost was probably written as early
as 1590, and it may well have preceded
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which is
commonly set down as Shakespeare's first
comedy. He had begun by altering and
improving older plays — the kind of work
that he accomplished In that vein being
exempUfied by Pericles, Titus Andronicus,
and a portion of Henry VI. But he soon
entered on a pathway exclusively his own.
He never hesitated to make use of hints

igS WILL o THE wisp:
derived from earlier or from contempora
neous works, either histories or fictions ;
but whatever he touched was transfigured
and became new and original in his treat
ment of it and in his unique and potent
style. Love's Labour's Lost is entirely
original. "It is apparently wholly our
poet's own invention," says the judicious
Keightley, " as no novel, play, or anything
else, at all resembling it, has been dis
covered." Another and an equally signifi
cant fact is that it was the first of his
published plays that bore on the title-page
the illustrious name of Shakespeare.
The eccentric persons who are anxious to
convince themselves that the works of Shake
speare were written by somebody else might
perhaps be restrained if they would ponder
a Uttle on these facts. The earliest exist
ing mention of Shakespeare by name is a
mention made in the accounts of the Treas
urer of the Chamber, showing that he was
a member of the Lord Chamberlain's com
pany of actors, and that he twice appeared
with Richard Burbage before Queen Eliza
beth, at Christmas 1594 — in his thirty-
first year. This fact shows his rank as an
actor. The later mention of him, made by
Meres in Palladis Tamia, 1598, sliows that

LOVE S LABOURS LOST. I99
he had also been fertile and successful
as a dramatic author. "As Plautus and
Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy
and Tragedy among the Latines," says
Meres, " so Shakespeare among the English
is the most exceBent in both kinds for the
stage : for Comedy, witness his Gentlemen
of Verona, his Errors, his Love labors lost,
his Love labours wonne, his Midsummer's
night dreame, and his Merchant of Venice ;
for Tragedy, his Richard the 2, Richard the
3, Henry the 4, King John, Titus Androni
cus, and his Romeo and Juliet." The plays
thus named must have been produced upon
the stage prior to 1598. They were accepted,
not as the work of an unknown, mysterious
author, but as the work of WBliam Shake
speare, then and there present and visible
and in continual social and professional in
tercourse with the actors and writers of the
time, and with numbers of its great people.
This period is sis years later than Greene's
malevolent allusion to the "upstart crow,"
" In his own conceit the onely Shakescene
in a country," and to Henry Chettle's se
quent apology for having published Greene's
rancorous and offensive though puerile im
pertinence. " I am as sorry," says the pub
lisher of the Groatsworth of Wit, " as if the

200 WILL O' THE WISP :
original fault had beene my fault, because
myselfe have scene his demeanour no lesse
civill than he exelent in the qualitie he pro
fesses ; besides divers of worship have re
ported his uprightnes of dealing, which
argues his honesty, and his facetious grace
inwritting, that aprooves his art." Shake
speare was an accomplished and esteemed
gentleman, an excellent actor, and a felici
tous writer (facetious in those days mean
ing felicitous). Meres, mindful of rhetorical
balance and careless of thoroughness, nam
ing six tragedies and six comedies, obviously
intended to refer to an even number of each
kind of play: but Shakespeare, prior to the
date of Palladis Tamia, had not only written
the works that have been mentioned, but
had written the Taming of the Shrew and
the first part of Henry the Fourth. He was
eminent among the authors of his time —
well rewarded, prosperous, honoured, and,
as may be surmised by the reader of Ben
Jonson's Conversations with Drummond,
closely observed in all his walks and ways ;
a man of publicity and distinction — and
the comedy of Love's Labour's Lost had
helped to make him so.
In what degree the piece had popularity
in its immediate day no one now can tell.

love's labour's lost. 201
Its bearing as a local and contemporary
satire ought to have made it successful.
The public has always disliked satire and
satirists, and at the same time has always,
for a while, followed them and favoured
them. Its admirably humorous scene of
the discovery that all the dedicated celi
bates are in love, and its subsequent
sprightly colloquies of raillery in which
those wooers are chaffed by the merry
maidens of France, would have pleased
any audience at any time ; and doubtless
those merits were appreciated by the gal
lants of Gloriana' s court. It seems, how
ever, soon to have vanished from the stage.
In his chapter entitled ' ' Plays Printed But
Not Acted, Between 1660 and 1830 " Ge
nest makes the following note on a play
called The Students, printed in 1762:
" Students, 1762. This is professedly
Love's Labour Lost, adapted to the stage,
but it does not seem to have been ever
acted. The maker of the alteration, as is
usual in these cases, has left out too much
of Shakespeare and put in too much of his
own stuff. Biron is foolishly made to put
on Costard's coat ; in this disguise he
speaks part of what belongs to Costard,
and is mistaken for him by several of the

202 WILL O' T7IE WISP:
characters. The curate and schoolmaster
are omitted, but one of the pedantic
speeches belonging to the latter is absurdly
given to a player. One thing Is very hap
pily altered : Armado' s letter to the King is
omitted as a letter, and the contents of it
are thrown into Armado's part. The
Cuokow Song is transferred from the end of
the play to the second act, in which it is
sung by Moth. It Is now usually sung in
As You Like It. Steevens, in a note on
the third act of the original play, observes
that in many of the old comedies the songs
are frequently omitted. On this occasion
the stage direction is generally. Here they
sing, or cantant. Probably the performer
was left to the choice of his own ditty.
Sometimes yet more was left to the discre
tion of the ancient comedians. Thus, in
Greene's Tu Quoque, ' Here they two talk
and rail what they list.' Steevens gives
other similar instances."
When Shakespeare first arrived in Lon
don (1585-86) only two notable public
playhouses were open in that city. Those
were the Theatre, managed by his towns
man James Burbage, in Finsbury Field,
and the Curtain, in Shoreditch. Both are
mentioned by Stow (1525-1605), and both

LOVE S LABOUR S LOST. 203
certainly existed as early as 1583. The
Blackfriars (erected in 1570) was a private
theatre ; but it seems to have become a
public one In 1597. The Globe was opened
in 1599, and it was burnt down on June 29,
1613. The Rose was opened by Henslowe,
in February 1591, "on the Bancksyde"
— that is, at South wark. Most of Shake
speare's plays were originally produced at
one or another of those theatres. It is
probable that the first performance of
Love's Labour's Lost occurred at the Rose ;
though it may have been at the Curtain.
In aU the long annals of the British and
American drama there is but scant record
of any considerable revivals of this comedy.
It was performed in London, at Covent
Garden, in September 1839, when Eliza
Vestris acted Rosaline and the beautiful
Louisa Nisbett acted the Princess of France.
That earnest, intrepid, thorough actor,
Samuel Phelps, revived it at Sadler's Wells,
London, in 1857. It was included by Charles
Edward Flower in his tasteful and useful
edition of Shakespeare's plays prepared for
representation in the Memorial theatre at
Stratford-upon-Avon. It was presented at
the Arch Street theatre, Philadelphia, in
1858, but that revival seems to have been

204 WILL O THE WISP:
one of transient value. The first practically
auspicious reproduction of it that the stu
dent comes upon, in modern theatrical
chronicles, is that made by Augustin Daly,
when his theatre (then called the Fifth
Avenue) was in Twenty-eighth street. New
York, on February 21, 1874. It had not
until then been acted on the New York
stage, and after that it slumbered for seven
teen years, till revived by the same man
ager, on March 28, 1891, with Ada Rehan
as the Princess.
The careful student of Shakespeare's
methods will not fail to observe that in
Love's Labour's Lost the poet has taken
the same course that he pursues in A Mid
summer Nighfs Dream, and also that in
this early comedy he presages the form of
all his later ones. In both the Dream and
the Labour the persons who are distinc
tively humorous conjoin at last in giving
an entertainment of a dramatic character,
in the presence of royalty and nobility. In
the former we have Pyramus and Thisbe ;
in the latter the Pageant of the Nine Wor
thies. By this device the poet effects the
most ample disclosure of his eccentric peo
ple — showing more fully what they are by
making them show what they think them-

LOVE S LABOUR S LOST. 205
selves to be. The humorous part of Love's
Labour's Lost is the richest part of it. The
vein of quaint, quizzical, fantastic drollery
in Shakespeare's nature showed itself early
to be deep and rich, and his wonderful com
mand of humorous phraseology was also
briUiantly shown in that piece. The in
tensely English character of the - man,
together with his complete carelessness of
accurate and formal scholarship — a quali
fication which he did not possess, and
which be would not have regarded even If
he had possessed it — are also visible in the
humorous part of Love's Labour's Lost.
Every point, howsoever sUght, has to be
considered in the study of an author about
whose personality our chief information
has necessarBy to be derived from the
analysis of his mind. The fact that into
Love's Labour's Lost, although the scene is
laid in Navarre, the poet introduced such
names and persons as Costard, Dull, and
Moth Is, therefore, not devoid of signifi
cance. In arranging Love's Labour's Lost
for the stage the editor condensed It,
and blended the third act, which in the
original is very short, with the essential
portions of the fourth. Allusion to the
death of the French king was also omitted.

206 WILL O' THE WISP.
and the imposition of a penance of one year
of waiting was, presumably, ascribed to a
sense, on the part of the Princess, that it is
expedient and will prove salutary. The
pageant was transposed to the end of the
comedy, which closed with one of the sweet
est of the Shakespeare melodies and left
its spectator with a mental vision of all
the lovely flowers that grow on Avon's
banks.

Shakespeare's shrew. 207

XIV.
Shakespeare's shrew.
A PLAY entitled Tlie Tamirtg of a Shrew
was published in London in 1594. It
had been for some time extant and had
been " sundry times " acted by the players
who were in the service of the Earl of Pem
broke. The authorship of It Is unknown ;
but Charles Knight ascribes it to Robert
Greene (1561-1592) — that dissolute ge
nius, who Is now chiefly remembered as the
detractor of Shakespeare and as the flrst
English poet that ever wrote for bread.
The German commentator Tieck supposes
it to be a juvenile production by Shake
speare himself ; but this is a dubious the
ory. It is certain, however, that Shake
speare was acquainted with that piece, and
it is believed that in writing The Taming of
the Shrew he either co-laboured vrith an
other dramatist to make a new version of
the older play, or else that he augmented
and embellished a new version of It which

2o8 SHAKESPEARE'S SHREW.
had already been made by another hand.
In 1594 he was thirty years old, and he
had been about eight years in London the
atrical life. Edward Dowden thinks that
Shakespeare's portion of this task was
performed in 1597. The Taming of the
Shrew was acted, by his associates, at
the Blackfriars theatre, at the theatre at
Newington Butts — which the Shakespeare
players occupied while the Globe theatre
was being built — and finally at the Globe
Itself. He never claimed it, however, as
one of his works, and it was not published
until after his death. It first appeared in
the foUo of 1623.
Keightley describes The Taming of the
Shrew as " a rif acimento of an anonymous
play," and expresses the opinion that its
style "proves it to belong to Shakespeare's
early period." Collier maintains that
"Shakespeare had little to do with any
of the scenes in which Katherine and Pe-
truchio are not engaged." Dr. Johnson,
comparing the Shakespearean play with its
predecessor, remarks that " the quarrel in
the choice of dresses is precisely the same ;
many of the ideas are preserved without
alteration ; the faults found with the cap,
the gown, the compassed cape, the trunk

SHAKESPEARE'S SHREW. 209
sleeves, and the balderdash about taking up
the gown, have been copied, as weU as the
scene in which Petruchio makes Katherine
call the stm the moon. The joke of address
ing an elderly gentleman as a ' young, bud
ding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet,'
belongs also to the old drama; but in this
instance it is remarkable that, while the
leading idea is adopted, the mode of ex
pressing it is quite different."
Richard Grant White says : " The plot, the
personages, and the scheme of the Induction
are taken from the old play, which, how->-
ever, is as dull as this is in most points
spirited and Interesting. In (this play)
three hands at least are traceable ; that of
the author of the old play, that of Shake
speare himself, and that of a co-labourer.
The first appears in the structure of the
plot and in the incidents and the dialogue
of most of the minor scenes ; to the last
must be assigned the greater part of the
love business between Bianca and her two
suitors ; while to Shakespeare himself be
long the strong, clear characterisation,
the delicious humour, and the rich verbal
colouring of the recast Induction, and all
the scenes in which Katherine, Petruchio,
and Grumio are prominent figures, together

210 SHAKESPEARE'S SHREW.
with the general effect produced by scat
tering lines and words and phrases here
and there, and remoring others elsewhere,
throughout the play."
It is erident from these testimonies that,
whether Shakespeare recast and rewrote
his own work, — as Tieck supposes, and as
he seems to have done in the case of Ham
let, — or whether he furbished up the work
of somebody else, the comedy of The Tam
ing of the Shrew that stands in his name
is largely indebted, for structure, to its
predecessor on the same subject. Both
plays owe their plot to an ancient source.
The scheme of the Induction — a feature
common to both — is found as an old his
toric fact in The Arabian Nights, in the
tale of The Sleeper Awakened. Shakespeare
did not know that work ; but this tale of im
posture — said to have been practised upon
Abu-1-Hassan, "the wag," by the Kha-
leef eh Er-Rasheed — originating in remote
oriental literature, and repeated in various
forms, may have been current long before
his time. In that narrative Abu-1-Hassan
is deluded into the idea that he is the Prince
of the Faithful, and, as that potentate, he
commands that much gold shall be sent to
Hassan's mother, and that punishment

SHAKESPEARE S SHREW. 211
shall be inflicted upon certain persons by
whom Hassan has been persecuted.
A variation of this theme occurs in Gou-
lart's Admirable and Memorable Histories,
translated into English by E. Grimestone,
in 1607. In this it is related that Philip,
Duke of Burgundy, called the Good, found
a drunken man asleep in the street, at Brus
sels, caused him to be conveyed to the
palace, bathed and dressed, entertained by
the performance of " a pleasant comedy,'''
and at last once more stupefied with wine,
arrayed In ragged garments, and deposited
where he had been discovered, there to
awake, and to believe himself the sport of
a dream. Malone, by whom the narrative
was quoted from Goulart, thinks that it had
appeared in English prior to the old play of
The Taming of a Shrew, and consequently
was known to Shakespeare.
Another source of his material is Arlosto.
In 1587 were published tbe collected works
of George Gascoigne. Among them is a
prose comedy called Tlie Supposes — a
translation of Ariosto's ISuppositi, in which
occur the names of Petrucio and Lioio, and
from which, doubtless, Shakespeare bor
rowed the amusing incident of the Pedant
personating Vincentio. Gasooigne, it will

212 SHAKESPEARE'S SHREW.
be remembered, is the old poet to whom Sir
Walter Scott was indebted, when he wrote
his magnificent novel of Kenilworth — so
superb in pageantry, so strong and various
in character, so deep and rich iu passion,
and so fluent in style and narrative power
— for description of the revels vrith which
Leicester entertained Queen EUzabeth in
1575. In versiflcation the acknowledged Shake
spearean comedy is much superior to the
older piece. The Induction contains pas
sages of felicitous fluency, phrases of deUght-
ful aptness, that crystaUine lucidity of style
which is characteristic of Shakespeare, and
a rich vein of humour. Those speeches
uttered by the Lord have the unmistakable
Shakespearean ring. The character of
Christopher Sly likewise is conceived and
dravm in precisely the vein of Shake
speare's usual EngUsh peasants. Hazlitt
justly likens him to Sancho Panza. The
Warwickshire allusions are also significant
— though Greene as weU as Shakespeare
was a Warwickshire man ; but some of the
references are peculiar to the second comedy,
and they inevitably suggest the same hand
that wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor.
" Burton Heath " may be Barton-on-the-

Shakespeare's shrew. 213
Heath, a village situated about two mUes
from Long Compton. Knight, citing Dug-
dale, points out that in Doomsday-Book the
name of this vUlage is written "Bertone."
Shakespeare's own beautiful native shire —
as his works abundantly show — - was con
stantly In his mind when he wrote. It is
from the region round about Stratford-upon-
Avon that he habitually derives his climate,
his foUage, his flowers, his sylvan atmos
phere, and his romantic and always ef
fective correspondence between nature's
environment and the characters and deeds
of humanity. Only Sir Walter Scott,
WBkie CoUins, and Thomas Hardy, since
his time, have conspicuously rivalled him in
this latter f eUcIty ; and only George- Eliot
and Thomas Hardy have drawn such Eng
Ush peasants as his. " Ask Marion Hacket,
the fat ale-wife of Wincot," is another of
the Warwickshire allusions ; Wincot may
mean WBmcote — which Malone says was
called Wyncote — where lived Mary Arden,
the mother of Shakespeare, In that venera
ble, weather-beaten structure, in the parish
of Aston Cantlow, about four miles north
west of Stratford. And there is a Wincot
near the viUage of Clifford, a few miles to
the south.

214 Shakespeare's shrew.
The version of Tlie Taming of the Shrew
which for many years has been used on the
stage, in one form or another, is the version,
in three acts, that was made by Garrick,
produced at Drury Lane, and published in
1756, under the name of Katherine and Pe
truchio. That version omits several scenes
and transposes other parts of the original.
An alteration of Garriok's piece, made and
long used by Edwin Booth, was published
in 1878, with a preface and notes by the
present writer. Booth's version is in two
acts, and it has been adopted by several
other actors. Neither the Garrick nor the
Booth book includes The Induction or the
under-plot relative to the love of Hortensio
and Bianca. From the beginning of Amer
ican stage history until the time of Augustin
Daly's revival of it, January 18, 1887, with
Ada Rehan in her superb and matchless
embodiment of Katherine, The Taming
of the Shrew had never been presented
here as Shakespeare wrote it. That ex
quisite actress Marie Seebaoh, when she
visited America in 1870, produced it, in the
German language, under the name of Die
Widerspenstige, in a four-act version, cut
and changed ; but that did not include the
Induction.

Shakespeare's shrew. 215
On the EngUsh stage this comedy has
been the parent of several popular plays.
Aside from its rattling fun the subject
itseU seems to possess a particular in
terest for those Britons whose chief article
of faith is the subordination of woman
to man. Long ago it became a settled
principle of the common law of England
that a man may beat his wife -with a stick
not thicker than his thumb. The duck
ing stool — a chair affixed to the end of a
beam, which rested on a pivot, and so
arranged that the culprit, bound into it,
could be repeatedly soused in a pond or
river — was used in England, to punish
a scolding woman, as late as 1809. John
Taylor, the water-poet, counted sixty whip
ping-posts within one mile of London, prior
to 1630, and it was not tiU 1791 that the
whipping of female vagrants was forbidden
by statute. The brank, a peculiar and
cruel kind of gag, formerly in common use,
has been employed to punish a certain sort
of women within the memory of persons
stBl alive. Thackeray's caustic ballad of
Damages Two Hundred Pounds affords an
Instmctive glimpse of the view that has
been taken, by British law, of masculine
severity toward women. It is not meant

2i6 Shakespeare's shrew.
that the gentlemen of England are tyranni
cal and cruel in their treatment of the
women ; far from it ; but that the predomi
nance of John Bull, in any question between
himself and Mrs. Bull, is a cardinal doctrine
of the English law, and that plays illustra
tive of the application of discipline to
rebellious women have found favour with
the English audience.
Sawney the Scot, by John Lacy, acted at
Drury Lane and published in 1698, is an
alteration of The Taming of the Shrew and
is not so good a play ; yet it had success.
Another play derived from this original is
The Cobbler of Preston, by Charles Johnson,
a two-act farce, acted at Drury Lane and
pubUshed in 1716. A piece, by Christopher
Bullock, having the same title, was acted
at the same time at Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Both seem to have been well received.
John Fletcher's Rule a Wife and have a
Wife (1640) is perhaps the most notable
type of the popular plays of this class. In
that piece Leon pretends meekness and
docility, in order to win Margarita, and
presently becomes Imperative for the con
trol of her. Garrick used to personate
Leon, in an alteration of the comedy attrib
uted to his own hand. It is worthy of

Shakespeare's shrew. 217
note that Fletcher, whose views of women
are somewhat stem and severe (he was the
son of that Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough,
who troubled the last moments of Mary
Stuart by his importunate religious exhor
tations to her upon the scaffold at Fotherin
gay Castle), nevertheless wrote a sequel to
The Taming of the Shrew, in which Petru
chio reappears, Katherine being dead, with
a new wife, by whom he is henpecked and
subdued. This is entitled The Woman's
Prize, or the Tamer Tamed, and it was
printed in 1647. John Tobin's comedy of
The Honeymoon (1805), based on ideas
derived from Shakespeare, Fletcher, and
Shirley, portrays a husband's conquest of
his -wife's affections by personal charm,
irradiating manliness and firmness of char
acter ; and this piece Is deservedly held in
esteem. Petruchio' s method is to meet
turbulence with stiB greater turbulence,
remaining, however, entirely good-natured
throughout the stormiest paroxysms of
violence, tUl at last his boisterous, kindly,
rough, sine-wy -rigour and clamorous tu
mult overwhelm Katherine and disgust her
with the exaggerated image of her o-wn
faults. The scene of the Induction is obviously

2l8 SHAKESPEARE'S SHREW.
Warwickshire ; that of the main action
of the comedy at Padua, and at the coun
try-house of Petruchio — who comes to
Padua from Verona. The period Indicated
is the sixteenth century, about the year
1535. The time supposed to be occupied
by the action is four days. The name of
Shakespeare's shrew is Katharina Minola.
The Induction presents the only oppor
tunity that Shakespeare's works afford for
showing English costume of his o-wn time.
The Italian dresses required for the piece
are of styles such as were contemporaneous
with the poet. An actor named Sincklo,
who is mentioned in the quarto edition of
Henry IV., Part Second, and also in Henry
VL, Part Third, is supposed to have acted
in The I'aming of the Shrew, as well as in
those two histories — for the reason that a
reference to him occurs in the old play.
The line " I think 'twas Soto that your
honour means " was originally given to
Sincklo. It has long been customary, in
acting this piece, to present Curtis, a
serving-man in the original, as an old
woman ; and to allot two or three words of
speech to the servants who are named by
Grumio, in his deprecatory appeal to his
master, in the arrival scene.

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 219

XV.
A MAD WORLD: ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.
WHATEVER else may be said as to the
drift of the tragedy of Antony and
Cleopatra this certainly may -with truth be
said, that to strong natures that sicken
under the weight of convention and are
weary with looking upon the littleness of
human nature in its ordinary forms, it af
fords a great and splendid, howsoever tem
porary, relief and refreshment. The winds
of power blow through it ; the strong
meridian sunshine blazes over it ; the col
ours of morning burn around It ; the trum
pet blares in its music ; and its fragrance
is the scent of a wilderness of roses.
Shakespeare's vast Imagination was here
loosed upon colossal images and imperial
splendours. The passions that clash or
mingle in this piece are like the ocean
surges — flerce, glittering, terrible, glorious.
The theme Is the ruin of a demigod. The
adjuncts are empires. Wealth of every

220 A MAD WORLD :
sort is poured forth with regal and limitless
profusion. The language glows with a
prodigal emotion and towers to a superb
height of eloquence. It does not signify,
as modifying the effect of all this tumult
and glory, that the stern truth of mortal
evanescence is suggested all the way and
simply disclosed at last in a tragical vrreck
of honour, love, and life. WhBe the pag
eant endures it endures in diamond light,
and when it fades and crumbles the change
is instantaneous to darkness and death.
" The odds is gone.
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon."
There Is no need to inquire whether
Shakespeare — who closely followed Plu
tarch, in teUing the Roman and Egyptian
story — has been true to the historical
fact. His characters declare themselves
with absolute precision and they are not to
be mistaken. Antony and Cleopatra are
in middle life, and the only possible or ad
missible ideal of them is that which sepa^
rates them at once and forever from the
gentle, puny, experimental emotions of
youth, and invests them with the devel
oped powers and fearless and exultant pas-

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 221
sions of men and women to whom the
world and life are a fact and not a dream.
They do not palter. For them there is
but one hour, which is the present, and one
life, which they will entirely and absolutely
fulfll. They have passed out of the mere
instinctive life of the senses, into that more
intense and thrilling life wherein the senses
are fed and governed by the imagination.
Shakespeare has fllled this wonderful play
vrith lines that tell unerringly his grand
meaning in this respect — lines that, to
Shakespearean scholars, are in the alphabet
of memory : —
" There's beggary in the love that can be reck
oned."

'There's not a minute of our lives should
stretch
Without some pleasure now."
' Let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my
space 1 "
' O, thou day of the world.
Chain mine armed neck! Leap thou, attire
and all,

222 A MAD WORLD :
Through proof of harness, to my heart and
there
Ride on the pants triumphant."
" Fall not a tear, I say! one of them rates
All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss ;
Even this repays me."
Here is no Orsino, sighing for the music
that is the food of love ; no Romeo, taking
the measure of an unmade grave ; no Ham
let lover, bidding his mistress go to a nun
nery. You may indeed, if you possess the
subtle, poetic sense, hear, through this
voluptuous story, the faint, far-off rustle of
the garments of the coming Nemesis ; the
low moan of the funeral music that wBl
sing those imperial lovers to their rest —
for nothing is more inevitably doomed than
mortal delight in mortal love, and no mor
alist ever taught his lesson of truth with
more inexorable purpose than Shakespeare
uses here. But in the meantime it is the
present vitality and not the moral implica^
tion of the subject that actors must be con
cerned to show, and observers to recognise
and comprehend, upon the stage, if this
tragedy is to be rightly acted and rightly
seen. Antony and Cleopatra are lovers.

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 223
but not lovers only. It is the splendid
stature and infinite variety of character in
them that render them puissant in fascina
tion. Each of them speaks great thoughts
in great language. Each displays noble
imagination. Each becomes majestic in
the hour of danger and pathetically heroic
in the hour of death. The dying speeches
of Antony are in the highest vein that
Shakespeare ever reached ; and, when you
consider what is implied as well as what is
said, there is nowhere in him a more lofty
line than Cleopatra's
" Give me my robe, put on my cro-syn ; I have
Immortal longings in me ! "
Antony at the last is a ruin, and like a
ruin — dark, weird, grim, lonely, haggard
— he seems to stand beneath a cold and
lurid sunset sky, wherein the black clouds
gather, while the rising wind blows merci
less and terrible over an intervening waste
of rock and desert. Those Images indicate
the spirit and atmosphere of Shakespeare's
conception.

224 SHERIDAN AND THE

XVI.
SHERIDAN AND THE SCHOOL FOE SCANDAL.
ALTHOUGH genius is elemental, and
therefore is not created by circum
stances, it is certain that circumstances
exert an important infiuence upon its drift
and upon the channels and methods of Its
expression. Sheridan — whose father was
an actor and whose mother was a drama
tist, and who was born at Dublin in 1751,
and trained at Harrow School from 1762
till 1769, when he went to reside with his
father at Bath — came upon the scene
at a period when English society was in
an exceedingly artificial condition ; and
this prevalent artificiality of manners, as
experience subsequently proved, was des
tined to increase and to prevail during the
whole of his career (he died in 1816), and
not to decline until after the death of
George IV. in 1830. When Sheridan went
to reside at Bath he was in his nineteenth
year ; a remarkably handsome youth ; ar-

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 225
dent and impressible ; and Bath was then
one of the gayest cities in the British king
dom. In that brilliant city and in that
opulent, insincere, tattling, backbiting so
ciety — intermittently, but most of the time
— he lived during the perilous years of his
youth, from 1770 to 1776 ; there he loved
and won for a wife the beautiful Eliza
Linley — eloping with her to France, and
fighting duels In her defence when he came
back ; there he -wrote The Rivals and Tlie
Duenna, and there he planned and partly
executed the School for Scandal. Into
The Rivals he wrought much of his per
sonal experience, duly and artistically
modified and veBed. Into the School for
Scandal he wrought the results of his
observation — working in a manner essen
tially natural to his order of mind, yet one
that was to some extent guided and Im
pelled by the study of Etherege, Wycher-
ley, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, and Congreve,
who are his intellectual ancestors. There
is more freedom, more freshness of im
pulse, more kindness, more joy, more
nature in The Rivals than there is in the
School for Scandal ; but both are artificial ;
both reflect, In a mirror of artistic exagger
ation, the hollow, feverish, ceremonious,.

226 SHERIDAN AND THE
bespangled, glittering, heart-breaking fash
ionable world, in which their author's mind
was developed and in which they were
created. The School for Scandal, indeed,
is completely saturated with artificiality,
and the fact that it was intended to satirise
and rebuke the faults of an insincere, scan-
dal-mongering society does not — and was
not meant to — modify that pervasive and
predominant element of its character.
Satire, in order to be effective, must
portray the thing that it excoriates. The
School for Scandal rebukes a vice by de
picting it, and makes the rebuke pungent
by depicting it in a brilliant and entertain
ing way ; yet there is no considerable com
edy in our language, not even one by
Etherege or by Congreve ^ — authors whose
1 The student of the comedies of Sheridan is
aided in his appreciation of their quality, their
spirit, their peculiar excellence, by a preliminary
study of Etherege, Wycherley, Farquhar, Vanbrugln,
and Congreve. The intellectual line represented by
those writers closed with Sheridan. No successor
has arisen, although of imitators there have been
scores. Sir George Etherege (1636P-1689) wrote
The Comical Bevenge (1664), She Would if She
Could (1668), and The Man of Mode, or Sir Fop-
ling Flutter (1676). William Wycherley (1640-
1715) wrote, between 1672 and 1677, Love in a Wood,
The Gentleman Dancing-Master, The Country

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 227
influence was naturally and cogently oper
ative upon the kindred mind of Sheridan —
that stands further off from the simplicity
of nature, moves in a more garish light, or
requires for its inteBIglble and effective
interpretation a more studied, manufac
tured, fantastic manner. It contains no
person upon whom the imagination can dwell
with delight, or to whom the heart can be
come devoted ; no person who either fires the
mind by example, or arouses the imagina
tion by romantic nobility, or especially
Wife, and The Plain- Dealer. Moore found it diffi
cult to believe that Sheridau was unfamiliar with the
last of these pieces; it is extremely probable that he
had a cursory knowledge of them all. George Far
quhar (1678-1707) wrote Love and a Bottle (1699) ,
The Constant Couple (1700), Sir Harry Wildair
(1701), The Inconstant (1702), Tlie Twin Bivals
(1703), Tlie Stage Coach (1705), in which he was
assisted by Peter A. Motteux (1660-1718), The Be-
cruiting Officer (1705), and The Beaux Stratagem
(1707). Sheridan had the same Irish grace that is
found in Fai-quhar, but he more closely resembles
Congreve in terseness and glitter. Sir John Van
brugh (1666?-1726) wrote Tlie Relapse (1697), The
Provoked Wife (1697), '^sop (1697), Tlie Pilgrim
(1700), The False Friend (1702), Tlie Confederacy
(1706), The Mistake (1706), The Cuclcold in Conceit
(1706), The Country House (1715), and ,€ Journey
to London (1728). Squire Trelooby (1734) is also at-
tribuled to -him. Vanbrugh wrote with more appar.
ent facility than ¦either of the others in this group,

228 SHERIDAN AND THE
wins esteem whether for worth of character
or excellence of conduct. Once or twice
Indeed — as in Charles's impulsive expres
sion of grateful sentiment toward the boun
teous uncle whom he supposes to be absent
from the scene of the auction, and in Sir
Peter Teazle's disclosure to Joseph of his
considerate intentions toward his volatile
wife, in the scene of the screen — it imparts
a transient thrill of feeling. But it never
strikes — and, indeed. It never aims to
strike — the note of pathos, in its por-
and bis language is more flexible, more lilse the lan
guage of actual men and women, than that of the
rest. William Congreve (1670-1729) wrote The Old
Bachelor (1693), The Double-Dealer (1694), Love
for Love (1695), Tlie Mourning Bride (1697), The
Way of the World (1700), The Judgment of Paris,
a Masque (1701) , and Semele (1707) . Moore notes
the significant fact that the best comedies have
generally been written by young authors. All of
Congreve's pieces were written before he was
twenty-five. Farquhar died at thirty. Vanbrugh
began early. Sheridan at twenty-seven had written
The School for Scandal, and he never surpassed it;
indeed, practically, he wrote no more for the stage
— for Pizarro and The Stranger (which substan
tially are his) are scarcely worth remembrance.
But the reason why good comedies may be written
by clever young men is not obscure. Comedy must
necessarily treat of society and manners, and this
subject, which ceases to be interesting as men grow
old, is for youth a delightful inspiration.

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 229
traiture of human life ; so that, in the main,
it contains scarcely a single trait of simple
humanity. And yet its fascination is uni
versal, indomitable, irresistible, final — the
fascination of buoyant, intellectual char
acter, invincible mirth, pungent satire,
and a gorgeous aflluence of poUshed wit.
It succeeded when it was first produced,
and now, after the lapse of a hundred
years and more, it still continues to please,
equally when it is acted and when it is
read. There is a moral in this which
ought to carry comfort to those votaries of
art who beUeve in symbol rather than in
fact, the ideal rather than the literal ; who
know that a dramatic picture of life, in
order that it may be made universal in its
appUcabllity and incessant in its influence,
must be made to present aggregate and
comprehensive personifications and not local
and particular portraits, and must be painted
in colours that are not simply true but deli
cately exaggerated. This is the great art
— the art which has made Shakespeare to
survive when Ben Jonson Is dead. The
absence of genial emotion — of the glow of
expansive humanity and of pathos — in the
School for Scandal is, perhaps, to be
regretted ; but in this case a deficiency of

230 SHERIDAN AND THE
the melting heart is counterbalanced by a
prodigality of the opulent mind. The
piece transcends locality and epoch. The
resident not only of Bath and of London,
but of New York and San Francisco, the
denizen not only of great capitals but of
provincial villages, the inhabitant of yester
day, to-day, and to-morrow, can perceive
the meaning, feel the power, and rejoice in
the sparkling gayety of the School for
Scandal. This great comedy — produced when Its
author was in his twenty-seventh year —
was written slowly, painfully, and with
patient labour. Moore devotes about thirty
pages of his Life of Sheridan to an exposi
tion of the two distinct sketches that the
dramatist first made, when rearing the
fabric of the piece, and dilates with particu
lar admiration upon the scrupulous study,
the fastidious care, and the anxious severity
of revision with which he selected his lan
guage, moulded his materials, and blended
and fused the many scattered threads of
his fancy and inventive thought into one
symmetrical fabric of crystal wit. " Noth
ing great and durable," exclaims the de
lighted biographer (and Moore was a man
of excellent judgment, great reading, and a

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 23 1
beautiful faculty In literature), "has ever
been produced with ease. . . . Labour
is the parent of all the lasting wonders of
this world, whether a verse or stone,
whether poetry or pyramids." The original
manuscripts of the comedy manifested
especially to Moore's discerning eye "a
certain glare and coarseness," showing the
effect of recent study of Wycherley and
Vanbrugh; but also they revealed the
steady pressure of a delicate taste and the
incessant operation of strenuous refine
ment, alike in the improvement of the
characters, the conduct of the plot, the
formation and arrangement of the sentences,
and the choice of epithets. One of Sheri
dan's peculiarities, indeed, was a light,
graceful, indolent manner of elegant leisure.
He preferred that people should suppose
that his work was always done spontane
ously and with careless ease. In reality he
accomplished nothing without effort. Dur
ing a considerable part of his life — cer
tainly till he was thirty-six, when he
joined Edmund Burke's sentimental crusade
against Warren Hastings and fortified the
rancorous rhetoric of that statesman by a
refulgent burst of verbal fireworks concern
ing the Begum Princesses of Oude — his

232 SHERIDAN AND THE
Industry was minute, assiduous, and vigilant.
No man was ever a more pertinacious worker,
and no man ever seemed to have less occu
pation or less need of endeavour for the
accomplishment of splendid things. He
did not, as so many fussy people do — who
cannot endure to be employed without an
everlasting fluster of cackle over the virtue of
their toil — intrude his labour upon the atten
tion of his friends. He displayed the finished
statue ; he did not vaunt the chips and the
dust that were made in the cutting of it.
He gave results ; he did not proclaim the
process of their production. "Few per
sons with so much natural brilliancy of
talents," says Moore, "ever employed
more art and circumspection in their dis
play." But Sheridan's reticence In this
particular was not exclusively of a theatri
cal kind. He held the most of human
achievements to be (as certainly they are)
of slight importance ; he shrunk with all
his soul from the disgrace and humiliation
of being a bore ; and he possessed in extraor
dinary fulness, and therefore he abun
dantly exerted, the rare faculty of taste.
There can be no doubt that, as time wore
on, the character of Sheridan was weakened
and degraded by misfortune, embarrass-

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 233
ment, profUgate associations (with the
Prince Regent and his shameless set), and
most of aB by intemperance ; but at the
beginning of his life, and for some years of
his splendid productiveness and prosperity,
he was a noble gentleman and a most
individual mental power ; and there is no
reason why a -rirtue of his character should
be set down to its weakness.
The School for Scandal was produced
under auspicious circumstances. Garrick
had read it and pronounced It excellent.
Garrick, moreover, had assisted at its
rehearsals, and had vrrltten a prologue to
introduce it. Arthur Murphy, in his life of
that great actor — then retired from the
stage — says that Garrick was never known
on any former occasion to be more anxious
for a favourite piece. On the flrst night.
May 8, 1777, the doors of Drury Lane
theatre, which were opened at half-past
five, had not been opened an hour when the
house was crowded. The receipts that
night were £225. King spoke the prologue,
which is in Garrick's more whimsical and
sprightly manner. Colman furnished an
epilogue. The rehearsals had been numer
ous and careful. Sheridan, who was man
ager as weB as author, had taken great

234 SHERIDAN AND THE
pains. Every part was well acted. The
incessant play of wit created an effect of
sparkling animation. Mrs. Abington, King,
and Smith — who played respectively Lady
Teazle, Sir Peter Teazle, and Charles Sur
face — were uncommonly brilliant. Palmer,
as Joseph Surface, was superb. The only
defect noticed was a sluggishness of move
ment in act second, incident to some excess
of talk by the clique of scandal-mongers.
Garrick observed that the characters upon
the stage at the falling of the screen waited
too long before they spoke. At the close
of the screen scene, nevertheless, ending
the fourth act, the applause was tremen
dous. Frederick Reynolds, the dramatist,
happening to pass through the pit passage,
"from Vinegar yard to Brydges street,"
about nine o'clock that night, heard such a
noise, all at once, that he thought the thea
tre was about to fall, and ran for his life.
The public enthusiasm, after the final
descent of the baize, was prodigious. Sheri
dan was so delighted that he quaffed un
limited wine, got drunk, made a row in the
street, and was knocked down and put into
the watch-house. The London newspapers
teemed with praises of the comedy, not
only on the next day but on many days

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 235
thereafter. Horace Walpole, who speedUy
went to see it, wrote thus from his retreat
at Strawberry Hill : "To my great surprise
there were more parts performed admirably
in this comedy than I almost ever saw in
any play. Mrs. Abington was equal to the
first in her profession. Yates, Parsons,
Miss Pope, and Palmer, all shone." Boaden,
the biographer, in allusion to King and
Mrs. Abington as Sir Peter and Lady
Teazle, said they were so suited to each
other that they lost half their soul in sepa
ration. For years afterward the success of
the School for Scandal was so great in
London that it clftuded the fortune of the
new pieces that were brought forward in its
wake. From the capital it went to Bath,
Edinburgh, York, Dublin, and other large
towns of the kingdom. Moore records that
the scenes of the auction and the screen
were presented upon the Paris stage in
1778, in a piece called Les Deux Neveux,
and that the whole story soon found its
way to the Theatre Frangals, under the
name of Tartuffe de Mceurs. Genest, com
menting on the first cast, and speaking from
his ample knowledge of the chronicles of
the first performance (if not, possibly,
from personal recollection), observes that

236 SHERIDAN AND THE
"this comedy was so admirably acted that
though it has continued on the acting list
at Drury Lane from that time to this (1832),
and been several times represented at
Covent Garden and the Haymarket, yet no
new performer has ever appeared in any
one of the prinoipal characters that was not
inferior to the person who acted It origi
nally." The statement is made in Tlie
Thespian Dictionary (1802), that "the
copy of this play was lost after the first
night's representation, and all the per
formers in It were summoned together early
the next day in order, by the assistance of
their parts, to prepare another prompter's
book." The London productions of the School
for Scandal recorded by Genest 1 are these :
Drury Lane  May 8, 1777.
Haymarket  September 2, 1785.
Drury Lane  April 8, 1797.
Drury Lane  May 18, 1798.
Covent Garden  March 31, 1798.
Covent Garden  May 30, 1810.
Covent Garden  March 23, 1813.
Covent Garden  September 10, 1818.
Drury Lane  December 1, 1825.
' Some Account of the English Stage, from the
Restoration in 1660 to 1830. In Ten Volumes. (By

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 237
It Is more than half a century since the
industrious, loquacious, sensible, matter-of-
fact parson of Bath made up his chronicle,
and many brilliant representations of the
School for Scandal have been accomplished
within that time on both sides of the At
lantic. The method in which the piece
was originally acted, however, has been
preserved by tradition, and actors In suc
ceeding generations have seldom widely de
parted from it — although they may have
fallen short of its reputed perfection (a
point by no means certain) . That method
was the deUcate, brilliant exaggeration of
the manners of polite society in the days of
George IIL Mrs. Abington (1738-1815),
the original representative of Lady Teazle,
made her, radically and consistently, the
affected fine lady, without giving the slight
est indication that she had ever been "a
girl bred wholly in the country " ; and Mrs.
Abington's example has usually, and per
haps involuntarily, been followed. Eliza
beth Farren (1759-1829), who succeeded
Mrs. Abington at Drury Lane, gave a re
markably elegant performance of the part,
the Rev. John Genest, of Bath.) Bath : Printed by
H. E. Carrington. Sold by Thomas Rodd, Q-reat
Newport street, London, 1832.

238 SHERIDAN AND THE
harmonious as to artifice with the ideal in
dicated by her predecessor, but superior to
that ideal in natural refinement. It was in
this character that Miss Farren took leave
of the stage, April 8, 1797, just before her
marriage with the Earl of Derby.i The
next important embodiment of Lady Teazle
was that of Dora Jordan (1762-1816). That
delightful actress, whBe assuming the af
fected fine lady, allowed an occasional trace
of rustic breeding to show itself through an
artificial manner. John Gait, who wrote
biographies of both Miss Farren and Mrs.
Jordan, but had never seen either of them,
states that Dora Jordan's impersonation of
Lady Teazle was praised for "those little
points and sparkles of rusticity which are
still, by the philosophical critics, supposed
to mark the country education of the fas
cinating heroine." And Gait's parallel be
tween the two is instructively significant.
Miss Farren was "as the camellia of the
conservatory — soft, beautiful, and deli-
^ " I recollect the circumstance of seeing Lord
Derby leaving his private box to creep to her (Miss
Farren) behind the screen, and, of course, we all
loolied with impatience for the discovery, hoping
the screen would fall a little too soon and show to
the audience Lord Derby as well as Lady Teazle."
— Miss Wynne's Diary of a Lady of Quality.

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 239
cate." Mrs. Jordan was "as the rose of
the garden, sprinkled with dew." All the
representatives of Lady Teazle, for a hun
dred years, have been one or the other of
the varieties thus denoted.
Historic chronicles record many distin
guished names of actors upon the British
stage who have been identified with the
School for Scandal and who have sharpened
the outline and deepened the colour of those
traditions as to its performance which it
was a part of their vocation to transmit.
King, who left the stage In 1802, had earlier
parted from Sheridan. His Immediate suc
cessors as Sir Peter Teazle were Richard
Wroughton and the elder Mathews (1776-
1835), but neither of them was conspicu
ously fine in it. Mathews played Sir Peter
at twenty-eight. Munden (1758-1832)
acted it, with Mrs. Abington as Lady
Teazle, on March 31, 1789, in London.
Before that time he had acted it in Dublin
with Miss O'Neill as Lady Teazle ; and he
opened the season of 1816-17 with it, at
the new Drury Lane (the old one was
burned do-wn on February 24, 1809). Dur
ing his farewell engagement, October 1 to
October 31, 1823, at Drury Lane, he played
it twice — on the 18th and on the 25th.

240 SHERIDAN AND THE
His performance of Sir Peter was always
admired for polished deportment, freedom
from suspicion, and boundless confidence.
" When an actor retires," said Charles
Lamb, "how many worthy persons must
perish with him ! With Munden — Sir
Peter Teazle must experience a shock ; Sir
Robert Bramble gives up the ghost ; Crack
ceases to breathe." The discrimination
here suggested is significant : Sir Peter was
in the second grade — not the first — of
that great actor's achievements. It was in
the first grade, however, of the achievements
of his eminent successor, William Farren i
(1786-1861), the best Lord Ogleby of this
century, on the British stage, who, while
1 On the occasion when William Farren made his
first appearance upon the London stage, playing Sir
Peter Teazle, the School for Scandal was inter
preted by a remarkable group of actors. Thia
performance occurred at Covent Garden (Harris,
manager), on September 10, 1818; and this is a part
of the cast :
Sir Peter Teazle  Mr. Farren.
Sir Oliver Surface  Mr. Terry.
Joseph Surface  Mr. Young.
Charles Surface  C. Kemble.
Crabtree  Mr. Blanchard.
Sir Benjamin Backbite  Mr. Liston.
Lady Teazle  Louisa Brunton.
Maria  Miss Foote.
Mrs. Candour  Mrs. Gibbs.

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 24I
he lacked robust vigour for the impersona
tion of Sir Anthony Absolute and kindred
characters, possessed exactly the lace-ruffle-
and-diamond style essential for the ex
pression of Sir Peter Teazle's refinement,
high-bred testiness, and amused, satirical
cynicism. No English actor since Farren
has been esteemed his equal in this char
acter. The most notable performance of
Sir Peter that the English audience has
seen since Farren' s day was, apparently,
that of Samuel Phelps (1797-1872). It is
thought to have lacked Farren' s distinction
and his delicacy of mechanism and finish,
but It was accounted remarkable for the
qualities of force, sincerity,, authority,, and
restraint. WilUam Farren, son of " old
Farren," performed Sis Peter Teazle, in a
revival of the School for Scandal which
was effected at the VaudevBle theatre,, Lon
don, in 1872, and gained publia favour and
critical admiration.
The character of Lady Teazle has. had
many representatives on the British stage,
only a few of whom are now. remembered.
Louisa Brunton, who became Countess of
Craven, and Miss Smithson (1800-1854),
who wedded with Berlioz, the composer,
were among, the earliest foBowers in. the
Q

242 SHERIDAN AND THE
footsteps of Mrs. Abington, Miss Farren,
and Mrs. Jordan. Mrs. Warner (1804-
1854), acted the part with Phelps, and was
esteemed one of its best representatives.
Lucy Elizabeth Vestris (1798-1856) gave an
impersonation of Lady Teazle, which, al
though superficial and shallow, was ex
ceedingly vivacious and piquant. Louisa
Cranstoun Nisbett (1812-1858), who be
came Lady Boothby — the most radiant
and enchanting of the old stage beauties —
made the part bewitching and brilliant,
without suggestion of much sincerity or
depth. One of the most highly esteemed
and thoughtfully commended portrayals of
Lady Teazle that have been recorded of
late years was that given by Marie Wilton
(Mrs. Bancroft) at the Prince of Wales
theatre, London, in April 1874. That intel
lectual and polished actress Generieve Ward
has acted it, with sparkling effect, both in
French and English.
The American record of the School for
Scandal begins with a performance of it
given at the John street theatre, New York,
on December 16, 1785. The famous piece
was then acted — according to the excellent
authority of Ireland — "probably for the
first time in America." The flrst represen-

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 243
tation that the comedy received at the old
Park theatre occurred on December 3, 1798.
Since then it has been performed in every
considerable theatre In the United States,
and often it has enlisted the talent of re
markably brBliant groups of actors. There
is probably no veteran play-goer who could
not, vrith slight effort of the memory, recall
a cast of the School for Scandal which he
would regard as incomparable and memo
rable. No piece has enjoyed more favour as
the signalising feature of special dramatic oc
casions, i The chief part — the part that is a
1 The comedy was acted, with this excellent cast,
for the benefit of John Brougham, at Niblo's the
atre. May 19, 1869, p.m.;
Sir Peter Teazle  John Gilbert.t
Sir Oliver Surface...  John Brougham.!
Joseph Surface  Neil Warner.
Charles Surface  Edwin Adams. |
Crabtree  A. W. Young. f
Sir Benjamin Backbite  Owen Marlowe. t
Rowley  T. J. Hind. f
Moses  Harry Beckett.!
Trip  J. C. Williamson.
Snake  Frank Rae.f
Careless  J. W. Collier.
Sir Harry Bumper  R. Green.
Lady Teazle  Mrs. D. P. Bowers.
Maria  Miss Pauline Markham.
Lady Sneerwell  Mrs. John Sefton .f
Mrs. Candour  Miss Fanny Moraut..t
t Dead.

244 SHERIDAN AND THE
spring of crystal vitality for the whole fab
ric of the piece — is Lady Teazle, and upon
the representative of that character the
comedy is largely dependent. On the Amer
ican stage Lady Teazle has been acted by
Mrs. Morris, Mrs. Henry, Mrs. Hallam,
Mrs. Lipman, Miss Westray (Mrs. W. B.
Wood), Mrs. Shaw, Mrs. Gilfert, Fanny
Kemble (September 21, 1832), Mrs. Hamb
Un, Miss Cooper, Rose Telbin, Sarah Ander-
ton, Mrs. Russell (now Mrs. Hoey), Mme.
Ponisi, Mrs. Mowatt, Catharine Sinclair
(Mrs. Edwin Forrest), Ellen Tree (Mrs.
CJharles Kean), Julia Dean, Eliza Logan,
Mrs. Catherine Farren, Jean Davenport
(Mrs. Lander), Mrs. Bowers, Laura Keene,
Miss Jane Coombs, Miss Madeline Hen-
riques. Miss Rose Eytinge, Miss Fanny
Davenport, Mrs. Julia Bennett Barrow,
Mrs. Scott-Siddons, Miss Adelaide Neilson,
Miss Rose Coghlan, Miss Augusta Dargon,
Miss Annie (jlarke, Mrs. F. B. Conway,
Miss Ada Dyas, Mrs. Clara Jennings, Miss
Ada Cavendish, Mrs. Rose Leland, Mrs.
Langtry, and Miss Ada Rehan.
Among distinguished representatives of
Sir Peter Teazle who have been seen on the
American stage may be named Mr. Henry,
Mr. Hallam, Mr. W. B. Wood, Joseph Jef-

SCHOOL FOR SC.\NDAL. 245
ferson, the grand^ther of our Rip Van
Winkle, William Warren (the father of
the late William Warren, of our time, who
also was famous and especially fine in this
character), Mr. Twaits, Mr. Roberts, Mr.
Blanchard, Mr. Finn, Mr. Chippendale,
Henry Placide, Peter Richings, Henry
Wallack, Charles Bass, WBliam Rufus
Blake, WilUam Davidge, John Gilbert,
Charles Fisher, Mark Smith, and Henry
Edwards. The character of Charles Sur
face has been interpreted, for American
audiences, by Mr. Hodgkinson, Mr. Cooper,
George Barrett, Charles Kemble, Frederick
B. Conway, James E. Murdoch, WilUam
Wheatley, George Vandenhoff, E. L. Daven
port, Lester WaUack, Charles Wyndham,
H. J. Montague, Osmund Tearle, Charles
Coghlan, Charles Barron, George Clarke,
and John Drew.
Most of the old comedies contain impro
prieties ; sometimes of situation, more
commonly of language ; and those are not
adornments but blemishes. Every old
comedy, furthermore, which has survived
in actual representation, has gathered to
itself, in the course of years, a considerable
number of extraneous passages, which may
coBectlvely, though perhaps not quite accu-

246 SHERIDAN AND THE
rately, be described as 'igags." Those are
the contributions, mainly, of actors and
stage-managers. They are either figments
of fancy, or readily appreciable jokes, or
local and particular aBusions, which, in
actual performance of the piece, were found
to be effective. In some cases they have
become so soUdly incorporated into the
original text that they have gained accepts
ance as actuaUy parts of the original struct^
ure, and the omission of them has been
kno-wn to prompt a righteous remonstrance
against the iniquity of tampering with the
author. As a rule they are both spoken
and heard under the impression that they
belong to the play. The "pickled ele
phant " that figures in Valentine's mad
scene, in Love for Love, might be cited as
an example of this sort of embeUishment.
The passage is not in Congreve's text, but
it is generally used. It was introduced by
the elder WaUack — then a young man on
the London stage — on a night when he was
acting Valentine, in place of EUiston, who
was disabled with gout. That day an ele
phant had gone mad and been shot by the
guards, and this incident had caused much
popular excitement. Valentine, who is
pretending to be deranged, has to talk

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 247
wildly, and Wallack's sudden ejaculation,
"Bring me a pickled elephant," was thought
to be exceUent lunacy — for it was received
-with copious applause ; and ElUston, seated
in his invalid-chair, at the wing, accosted
WaUack, as that actor came off, and mourn-
fuBy exclaimed, "They never shot an ele
phant for me, young man ! ' ' Since then
every representative of Valentine makes
this allusion, although now the reference is
pointless and the image stands in the cate
gory of Oriana's "taU, gigantic sights " and
TBburina's "whistling moon." The pres
ence of such points in those old plays may
weU intimate to the judicious observer that
their text has not, from the beginning, been
regarded as a sacred thing, and that the
prime necessity of the stage — which is
effect — may sometimes be found to war
rant both additions and omissions in the
presentment of works that are, in some
measure, obsolete. One thing is certain —
that the indelicacy of those old pieces is
offensive to the taste of the present time,
and ought not ever, in these days, to be
thrust upon an audience. It Is not an
answer to talk of " Bowdlerism," or to
sneer at "purists," or to stigmatise re
finement as squeamish folly. There is

248 SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL.
much pure gold in the old English comedy;
but the dirt that is in it should be cast
aside. Nor is the modern theatre under
any sort of obligation to treat that body of
stage literature as if it were a celestial reve
lation. The book of the School for Scan
dal prepared by Augustin Daly (who first
produced the comedy at his theatre on
September 12, 1874, and revived it on
January 20, 1891, -with Ada Rehan as
Lady Teazle), has been edited in a spirit
harmonious with these views. The coarse
ness of the scandal-mongering colloquies
has been expunged. A few sentences have
been dropped, in order to shorten the
piece, and a few others have been trans
posed — the objects sought being Incessant
movement and the circumscription of each
act within a single scenic picture. That
comedy is not only the best work of one of
the most brBliant -writers that ever lived,
but it is one of the best dramatic pieces
ever -written, and the revival of It from
time to time will, doubtless, continue to
occur upon the stage as long as the stage
endures. This certainly should be hoped,
for the School for Scandal teaches charity
and reticence ; and these are among the
best rirtues that adorn character and sanc
tify Ufe.

FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 249

XVII.
FAHQDHAK AND THE INCONSTANT.
THE plays that survive from the past are
the plays that are not, in their spirit,
their character, their essential -ritaUty,
restricted to the particular fashion of the
periods in which they were written. Jon
son and Shakespeare lived and -wrote side
by side ; but while Jonson's plays are
no longer acted those of Shakespeare still
keep the stage. The Alchymist would not
be accepted now, except, perhaps, for a
night or two, by an audience of scholars
and as a curiosity. That comedy contains,
indeed, in the character of old Mammon,
the dramatic ancestor of Sir Sampson
Legend and Sir Anthony Absolute, and
some of the speeches in it are wonderfully
vigorous, ornate, and eloquent. Its object,
however, was satire of a local and contem
poraneous mania — the practice of astrology
and the quest for the wonderfiB philoso
pher's stone that would transmute worth-

250 FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT.

less metals into gold — and with the
disappearance of that mania disappeared
also the vitality of the satire upon it. As
You Like It, on the other hand, and Much
Ado About Nothing, because they are
comedies dealing faithfully and powerfully
with the elemental facts of human nature,
are as much alive to-day, and as significant
and welcome upon the stage as they were
when first presented in Shakespeare's time.
The dramatic author who portrays repre
sentative types of humanity rather than the
ephemeral eccentricities of the hour in
which he lives is recognised by mankind, in
all periods, as being the bearer of a signifi
cant and interesting message. Farquhar,
to some extent, dealt -with the permanent
and abiding facts of human nature, and that
is one reason why he survives as a dramatist
and pleases the public of to-day. The
auxBiary reasons are his abundant flow of
animal spirits, his droll humour, his nimble
Invention, his skill in raillery, and his grace
ful art in making sprightly language the
spontaneous expression of gallant, mirthful,
amorous, adventurous character — women
who fascinate by every dazzling and melt
ing charm of coquetry, and men who turn
all life to a feast of roses and revel in its
fragrance.

FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 25!
George Farquhar was bom in 1678, at
Londonderry, Ireland, and was educated
at that place and at Trinity College, Dublin.
He was the son of a clergyman and he
proved to be a wild youth. He was entered
at Trinity, as "a sizar," on July 17, 1694,
and he left it In 1695. In college he was
considered a dull fellow, and one account
of him says that he was expelled for an
irreverent jest, relative to one of the mira
cles recited in the New Testament ; while
another relates that he left the university
on account of the death of his patron. Dr.
Wiseman, Bishop of Dromore. On leaving
coBege he joined the Dublin theatre, then
managed by Ashbury, and made his first
appearance as an actor, choosing the part of
Othello. That was in 1695. He remained
on the stage only one season. His memory
was strong, his deUvery fluent, his de
meanour elegant, his person good ; but his
voice was feeble and he could never quite
control a nervous tendency to stage fright.
The immediate cause of his retirement from
the stage, however, was an accident. He
had the misfortune to inflict a dangerous
wound upon a stage antagonist, when acting
in Dryden's play of The Indian Emperor,
and the thought that he had come near

252 FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT.
killing a feBow-creature so impressed his
mind that he resolved to quit forever the
profession of an actor. Such is the story ;
but this sensitive disposition did not pre
vent him from becoming, subsequently, a
soldier. He left DubUn, for London, in
1696, in the society of that brBliant actor
Eobert Wilks, and on reaching the capital
of the British kingdom he speedBy made a
pleasant impression in society, and pres
ently was fortunate enough to -win the
favour of the Earl of Orrery, who made him
a lieutenant in his o-wn regiment and sent
him, on serrice, into Ireland and elsewhere,
so that for several years he led a military
life ; and it is recorded that he was invaria
bly upright in his conduct and noted for his
courage. Wilks, who early discerned Farquhar's
talent and perceived the drift of his mind,
urged him to write for the stage, and in
1698 was brought out his flrst comedy —
made in compliance vrith the -wish of that
good friend — Love and a Bottle. He after
ward wrote The Constant Couple, or a
Trip to the Jubilee ; Sir Harry Wildair ;
The Inconstant, or the Way to Win Him;
The Twin Rivals ; The Stage Coach ; The
Recruiting Officer ; and The Beaux' Strata-

FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 253
gem. In The Constant Couple the character
of Sir Harry Wildair flrst occurs — a part
in which WBks was conspicuously brilUant
and which came to be intimately associated
-with the shining name of Peg Wolfington.
Wilks acted in every one of his plays and
Anne Oldfield in two of them. The Twin
Rivals was long regarded as Farquhar's
most artistic composition, but it has not
survived in equal repute with The Incon
stant or The Recruiting Officer, or even
The Beaux' Stratagem ; for the flrst two of
those pieces are stBl acted, and the last, on
account of the dashing character of Archer,
long kept its place upon the stage, even In
the theatre of America. 27te Recruiting
Officer, it wiU be remembered, contains the
sprightly part of Captain Plume and is a
comedy of piquant reminiscence of Far
quhar's own experience and observation
whBe on duty in the romantic old city of
Shrewsbury. It was the habit of this
author to sketch himself in his wBd, gallant
characters, and he has aptly indicated his
ideal of the bright original, In a string of
expressive adjectives descriptive of Young
Mirabel, whom he indicates, in the preface
to The Inconstant, as "a gay, splendid,
generous, easy, fine young gentleman."

254 FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT.
Farquhar had a short life but a merry one,
notwithstanding that his temperament was
melancholy and his final experience unfor
tunate. It was he who discovered and first
recognised the talent of Anne Oldfield,
whom he found in the Mitre Tavern, in St.
James's Market ; and it was under his
influence and that of Sir John Vanbrugh
that this brBliant girl was introduced upon
the stage, in 1699, by Rich, at the King's
theatre. Anne was only sixteen and Far
quhar only twenty-one at that time, and
for a while they were lovers ; but in 1703
the gentleman got married, and four years
later, in April 1707, he died — aged twenty-
nine. The marriage was a mercenary one,
on his part, and he appears to have been
properly rewarded by flnding that his -wife
had no fortune whatever. It is recorded,
though, that he took the disappointment
in a philosophical spirit and treated his
connubial partner with all possible chivalry.
Toward the last he sold his military com
mission. In order to pay his debts, and
presently sunk into despondency and death.
His final effort was The Beaux' Stratagem.
His mental brilliancy and sportive humour
remained active and salient to the last.
When he was dead Wilks found among his

FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 255
papers a forlorn little note which sadly and
simply said: "Dear Bob, I have not any
thing to leave thee to perpetuate my mem
ory but two helpless girls : Look upon
them sometimes and think of him that was,
to the last moment of his life, thine, George
Farquhar." The story of this brief and bright life
seems a fit prelude to the sparkUng play of
The Inconstant, in which It is easy to per
ceive the author's ideal of himself, together
¦with the essential characteristics of his
mind and temperament. That piece, like all
his works, has to be cut and altered a lit
tle, in order that it may be represented,
for he did not scruple sometimes to vrrite
in a licentious vein and to use expressions
which in these days would offend the audi
ence. It is surprising, however, to consider
how weU that comedy bears being freed
from the taint of sensual warmth, which
was the characteristic of the plays of Far
quhar's period, and how much excellent
substance remains. Mirabel is the type of
many young fellows who may be met with
in society everywhere. He rejoices In his
youth and strength, in gallantry and adven
ture, and he wBl keep his freedom. He
loves Oriana, but having been contracted

256 FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT.
to her he shrinks from matrimony. The
course of events is too methodical. Con
ventionality makes it insipid, and therefore
he breaks away and Is inconstant. Such a
temperament inclines to value not what it
can have but what Is denied to it; yet
presently it can be awakened by peril and
touched by devotion and made to realise
that life and love are very serious matters.
Oriana, devotedly fond of him, but likewise
skilful in coquetry, employs various wiles
in order to subdue this errant cavalier, and
the movement of the piece is the rapid and
continuaUy shifting encounter of their wits,
in those stratagems of love. The flow of
intrigue, the variety of incident, the sparkle
of language, the undercurrent of passion,
the reality, sincerity, and piquancy of char
acter, the occasional touches of sentiment,
the flexibility of action, and the absorbing
interest of the climax — at which a feeling
of almost agonised suspense is sustained
with superb skill — are Bring virtues in a
play ; and they make this one as signiflcant
and valuable and enjoyable to the world
now as it was in the romantic days of good
Queen Anne. The closing scene of it,
which has always been much admired. Is
said to have been partly based upon an in-

FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 257
cident in the experience of the author. The
entire piece is fotmded on The Wild Goose
Chase, -written by John Fletcher and pro
duced In 1621. ' ' I took the hint, ' ' says Far
quhar, in his preface, "from Fletcher's Wild
Goose Chase, and to those who say that I
have spoBed the original I wish no other in
jury but that they would say it again."
Something more than a hint was, in fact,,
taken froni the elder dramatist; yet The
Inconstant contains much that is original,
and especially it Uves and glows -with the
characteristic spirit of impulsive, impettious
sprightliness and wanton mirth which was
essentiaUy Farquhar's nature. When first
produced this comedy was encumbered with
a miserable prologue of thirty-four lines,
written by P. A. Motteux and crammed full
of simBes dra-wn from the cook's kitchen.
Also it was furnished vrith an epilogue by
the poet laureate, Nicholas Rowe, announc
ing the moral of the piece to be that
" With easy freedom and a gay adiJress
A pressing lover seldom wants success.
Whilst the respectful', like the Greeks, sits
down,
And wastes a ten years' siege before one
town."
The Inconstant made its advent upon the

258 FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT.
American stage on January 1, 1759, at the
old theatre on Cruger's Wharf, New York.
In June 1795 a three-act version of it, made
by the reigning favourite Hodgkinson, was
produced at the theatre in John street, with
Hodgkinson as young Mirabel. In 1829
this old comedy was given at the Park
theatre, and Mirabel was acted by George
Barrett. In 1832, at the same theatre, the
piece was represented with a distinguished
cast of the characters, including Charles
Kemble as young Mirabel, Henry Placide
as old Mirabel, Mr. Simpson as Duretete,
Mrs. Sharp as Oriana, and Fanny Kemble
as Bisarre. Murdock first acted young
Mirabel in New York in 1857 at Burton's
theatre. Neither of the Wallacks appears
to have played Mirabel, although Lester
Wallack played Duretete. Among the rep
resentatives of Mirabel, in old times, were
Gifford, 1744 ; Palmer, 1751 ; Smith, 1753 ;
Wrougton, 1779 ; Farren, 1780 ; Pope, 1787;
C. Kemble, 1811; and Rae, 1817. Those
performances occurred at Drury Lane or
Covent Garden, in London. Garrick, at
Goodman's Fields, played Duretete, and
this performance he repeated, for Kitty
Clive's benefit, at Drury Lane, in 1761.
The younger Bannister took Duretete in

FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 259
1798. Oriana has been acted, among
others, by Peg Woffington, the pretty Mrs.
Davies, -wife of Dr. Johnson's friend the
actor and bookseUer, Mrs. Lessingham,
and SaUy Booth. Kitty Clive played Bisarre,
and so did Mrs. Abington.
Augustin Daly, who re-rived the comedy
on November 7, 1872, with Clara Morris as
Oriana, and again on January ,8, 1889, -with
Ada Rehan in that character, pruned the
text of The Inconstant, discarded the scene
of the monkish masquerade, restored the
passage portraying Duretete's rage and
comic pugnacity at the end of act third, and
compressed the piece into four acts ; and at
the latest of these re-rivals, a few lines by
the present writer were added, by way of
epBogue, spoken by Oriana — who ends the
play.i Thfi custom of naming this piece
* Not yet ! for what if Oriana choose
The=crown.of all your rapture to refuse?
Through many a maze of frolic, yet of pain.
Her faitbful heart has felt jour gay disdain.
Shall she not triumph, — now the strife is o'er —
And punish him who vexed her so before?
Nol Take her hand: her hearthaslongheen yours.
Tme love in trouble all the more endures!
She'll cling the closer for the risk she braved.
And dherish all the more the life she saved.
There's nought a loving woman will not do
When once she feels her lover's heart is true.

26o FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT.
Wine Works Wonders (In allusion to the
incident of the red Burgundy marked one
thousand. In the last scene) originated
many years ago, but that title was unknown
to the time of Farquhar. Mirabel has been
played by many dashing light comedians of
the last hundred years and more, but upon
the American stage the part is inseparably
entwined with the name and fame of that
guttering comedian of other days, James E.
Murdoch. The serious side of Mirabel's
nature was made earnest and sweet by him,
and by establishing a conviction of his In
herent manliness and generosity he intensi
fied enjoyment of his superficial insincer
ity and his manifold pranks. Clara Mor
ris, playing Oriana, presented a delicious
type of womanhood, rich, variable, capri
cious, and by the simulation of beauty in
piteous wreck, by sweet tenderness of voice,
and by rapid alternations of tender and
lightsome mood she made a deep impres
sion. The Inconstant is one of those fan
ciful pieces that are entitled to be viewed
through a haze of unreality, which makes
ideal pictures grateful to the mind and
which aUows an innocent forgetfulness of
the moraUties.

LONGFELLOW. 261

XVIII.
LONGFELLOW. 1
THE death of Longfellow comes home to
hundreds of hearts with a sense of
personal loss and bereavement. The lova
ble quality in his -writings, which was the
natural and spontaneous reflex of the gen
tleness of his nature, had endeared him
not less as a man than as a poet. To read
him was to know him, and, as Halleck
said of Drake, to know him was to love
him ; so that his readers were his affection
ate friends. The reading of Longfellow is
like sitting by the fireside of a sympathetic
and cherished companion. The atmosphere
of his works has the refinement and elegance
of a sumptuous, weU- ordered library ; but
also It has the soft tranquBlity and smiling
contentment of a happy home.
To any one who ever was pririleged to
1 The poet Longfellow died on March 24, 1882.
This paper was first published at that time.

262 LONGFELLOW.
sit by the fireside of the poet, the thought
of his death Is almost inconceivable, and
it brings an overwhelming solemnity. No
man ever diffused a more radiant influence
of life, cheerfulness, and -rigorous hope
than Longfellow did, beneath his own
roof. He was not, indeed, a demonstrative
person ; he did not overflow with effusion
or cover by a boisterous heartiness the ab
sence of a sincere welcome. But he never
failed to do the right thing in the right way,
or to say the right word at the right time.
He was thoughtful for every one who ap
proached him. He knew by unerring intui
tion the ways of true grace — which flow
out of true kindness. He was entirely frank
and simple, bearing himself always vrith
gentle dignity and speaking always vrith a
sweetness that was Inexpressibly winning.
With youth in particular he had a profound
and comprehensive sympathy. He under
stood all its ardours and aspirations, its
perplexity in presence of the mysteries of
life, its embarrassment amid unfamiliar
surroundings, its craving for recognition,
its sensitive heart, and its dream-like spirit.
" The thoughts of youth are long, long
thoughts." To the last day of his life he
carried that mood of youth ; and no one

LONGFELLOW. 263
ever heard from his lips a word of satire or
discouragement. His first and greatest im
pulse was sympathy. In domestic life this
displayed itself in a constant, unobtrusive
soUcitude for the comfort of those around
him, and in a thousand courtesies that
equaUy adorned his conduct and comforted
his associates. In his writings it is the
lambent flame of every page.
Yet there was no element of insipidity in
his character. If he preferred always to
see the most agreeable side and to speak
always the most agreeable word It was not
that he was blind to defects, or assiduous
to please, or insincere, or acquisitive of
popularity. When occasion required it
he spoke his convictions, whether accept
able or otherwise, fully and flrmly, and he
cotdd rebuke injustice or ill-breeding -with a
cool censure that was all the more implac
able for Its calmness and reserve. He
never obtruded his scholarship, but if the
drift of conversation carried him that way
he tinted his discourse with many a shining
ray of knowledge and many a coloured flash
of anecdote, with citations from a wide
range of books, and with a peculiar, dry,
half-veiled drollery that was kindly, mis
chievous, and delightfuBy pungent. His

264 LONGFELLOW.
tolerance was neither a weakness nor an
artifice ; it was the outgrowth of constitu
tional charity and tenderness toward that
human nature of which he possessed so
much and which he knew so well.
Those who remember him in early years
say that he was remarkable for personal
beauty and for the order and refinement of
his life and manners. From the first he
seems to have possessed the composure of
high poetic genius. Those who think that
he was passionless and that he knew little
or nothing of tragedy must have read to
but little purpose such poems as The Goblet
of Life, The Light of Stars, or the closing
chapters of Hyperion. Even his familiar
ballad of The Bridge is eloquent of a pro
found knowledge of grief ; and it may be
doubted whether our language contains a
more absolute poetic note of anguish and
fortitude — when one considers its bleak
isolation and its moumftd significance —
than his lines called Weariness. He was
not a Byron. His poetry is not the poetry
of storm and stress. The " banner, torn
but flying," that "streams like a, thunder
storm against the wind," is nowhere un
furled in all his writings. But If he did not
utter the conflict he clearly and sweetly

LONGFELLOW. 265
uttered the consciousness of it and the
grand clarion note of patience and conquest.
Of the trials and cares that are common to
humanity and that can be named and kno-wn
he had his share ; but also he had the ex
perience which the poetic nature invariably
and inevitably draws upon Itself. He had
felt aB that Burns felt, in writing To Mary
in Heaven. He had felt all that Goethe
felt, in writing that wonderful passage of
Faust which ends with the curse on pa
tience as the worst of human afBIctlons.
But he would suffer no shock of sorrow to
turn his life into a delirium. He would
meet every trouble as a man ought to meet
it who believes in the immortal destiny of
the human soul. When he lost, under cir
cumstances so pathetic and tragical (1861),
the wife whom he so entirely loved (that
beautiful and stately lady, whom to remem
ber is to wonder that so much loveliness
and worth coiBd take a mortal shape), he
took the terrible anguish Into the silent
chambers of his heart, he bore it with un
flinching, uncomplaining fortitude ; and
from that day onward no reader of his
writings was visited with one repining mur
mur, one plea for sympathy, one wail of
personal loneUness or despondency or mis-

266 LONGFELLOW.
anthropical bitterness. All that was ever
shown of that misery was the simple gran
deur of endurance combined with even a
more wistful and readier and deeper sym
pathy with the sorrows of mankind.
There are poets, and good ones too, who
seem never to get beyond the necessity of
utterance for their own sake. Longfellow
was not an egotist. He thought of others ;
and the permanent value of his -writings
consists in this — that he helped to utter the
emotions of the universal human heart. It
is when a writer speaks for us what were
else unspoken — setting our minds free and
giving us strength to meet the cares of life
and the hour of death — that he first be
comes of real value. Longfellow has done
this for thousands of human beings, and
done it in that language of perfect simplic
ity — never bald, never insipid, never fail
ing to exalt the subject — which is at once
the most beautiful and the most difficult of
all the elements of literature. And the
high thoughts and tender feelings that he
has thus spoken, the limpid, soft, and tran
quil strain of his music — breathing out so
truly our home loves, our tender longing for
those that are dead and gone, the trust that
we all would cherish in a happy future be-

LONGFELLOW. 267
yond the grave, the purpose to work nobly
and endure bravely whBe we live — will
sound on in the ears of the world, long
after every hand and heart that honours
him or grieves for him now is mouldering in
the dust.
The least of us who have recollections of
LongfeUow may venture to add them to
the general stock of knowledge, without
incurring the reproach of intrusiveness.
I saw him often, long before I was hon
oured with his personal acquaintance ; and
I observed him closely — as a youth nat
urally observes the object of his honest
admiration. His dignity and grace and
the beautiful refinement of his counte
nance, together with his perfect taste in
dress and the exquisite simplicity of his
manners, made him the Ideal of what a poet
should be. His voice was soft, sweet, and
musical, and, like his face, it had the Innate
charm of tranquBlity. His eyes were blue-
gray, very bright and brave, changeable
under the influence of emotion (as, after
ward, I often saw), but mostly calm, atten
tive, and gentle. The habitual expression
of his face was not that of sadness ; yet It
was pensive. Perhaps it may be best de
scribed as that of serious and tender

268 LONGFELLOW.
thoughtfulness. He had conquered his own
sorrows, thus far, but the sorrows of others
threw their shadow over him — as he
sweetly and humanly says in his pathetic
ballad of The Bridge.
It was in AprB 1854 that I became per
sonally acquainted with Longfellow, and he
was the first literary friend I ever had-
greeting me as a young aspirant in literar
ture and holding out to me the hand of fel
lowship and encouragement. He allowed
me to dedicate to him a volume of my
verses, published in that year, being the
first of my ventures. They were juvenile,
crude verses ; yet he was tolerant of them,
because he knew that sincerity of heart and
ambition of spirit lay beneath them, and,
in his far-reaching charity and prescience,
he must have thought that something good
might come of even such a poor beginning.
At all events, where others were cold, or
satirical, or contemptuous, he was kind,
cordial, and full of cheer. A few words In
commendation of the book had been virrit-
ten by N. P. WBlis and the paragraph hap
pened to come in his way. He was pleased
with it, and I can hear now the earnest tone
in which he spoke of It, turning to Mrs.
Longfellow, who was present, and saying,

LONGFELLOW. 269
-with an obvious relish of good-wUl : ' ' There
is much kindness in WiUis's nature."
This was a slight trait, but it is of Uttle
traits that the greatest human character is
composed. Goodness, generosity, and a
large liberality of judgment were, in his
character, conspicuous elements. His spon
taneous desire — the natural instinct of his
great heart and phUosophic mind — was
to be helpful : to lift up the lowly ; to
strengthen the weak ; to develop the best
in every person ; to dry every tear and
make every pathway smooth. It is saying
but little to say that he never spoke a harsh
word except against injustice and wrong.
He was the natural friend and earnest ad
vocate of every good cause and right idea.
His words about the absent were always
considerate and he never lost a practical
opportunity of doing good.
For the infirmities of humanity he was
charity itself and he shrank from harshness
as from a positive sin. " It is the preroga
tive of the poet," he once said to me, in
those old days, " to give pleasure ; but It Is
the critic's province to give pain." He
had, indeed, but a slender esteem for the
critic's province. Yet his tolerant nature
found excuses for even as vimlent and hos-

270 LONGFELLOVr.
tBe a critic as his assaBant and traducer
Edgar Poe — of whom I have heard him
speak with genuine pity. His words were
few and unobtrusive and they clearly in
dicated his consciousness that Poe had
abused and maligned him ; but instead of
resentment for injury they displayed only
sorrow for an unfortunate, distempered
adversary. There was a volume of Poe's
poems, an English edition, on the Ubrary
table, and at sight of this I was prompted
to ask LongfeBow if Poe had ever person
ally met him — ^" because," I said, "if he
had kno-wn you it is impossible he could
have written about you in such a manner."
He answered that he had never seen Poe,
and that the bitterness was, doubtless, due
to a deplorable literary jealousy. Then,
after a pause of musing, he added, very
gravely: "My works seemed to give him
much trouble, first and last ; but Mr. Poe
is dead and gone and I am aUve and still
writing — and that is the end of the matter.
I never condescended to answer Mr. Poe's
attacks ; and I would advise you now, at
the outset of your literary Ufe, never to
take notice of any attacks that may be
made upon yoiL Let them aU pass." He
then took up the volume of Poe, and, turn-

LONGFELLOW. 27 1
ing the leaves, particularly commended the
stanzas entitled For Annie and The
Haunted Palace. Then, stBl speaking of
criticism, he mentioned the great number
of newspaper and magazine articles, about
his o-wn VFTltings, that were received by
him — sent, apparently, by their writers.
"I look at the first few Unes," he said,
"and if I find that the article has been
written in a pleasant spirit, I read it
through ; but if I find that the intention is
to wound, I drop the paper into my fire,
and so dismiss it. In that way one escapes
much annoyance."
LongfeBow Bked to talk of young poets,
and he had an equally humorous and kind
way of noticing the foibles of the literary
character. Standing in the porch, one sum
mer day, and ebserving the eUns in front of
his house, he recaUed a visit made to him,
long before, by one of the many bards, now
extinct, who are embalmed in Griswold.
Then suddenly assuming a burly, martial
air, he seemed to reproduce the exact figure
and manner of the youthful enthusiast —
who had tossed back his long hair, gazed
approvingly on the elms, and in a deep
voice exclaimed, "I see, Mr. Longfellow,
that you ha.ve many trees — I love trees ! ! "

272 LONGFELLOW.
"It was," said the poet, " as if he gave a
certificate to all the neighbouring vegetar
tion." A few words Hke these, said in
Longfellow's peculiar, dry, humorous man
ner, with a t-winkle of the eye and a droll
inflection of the voice, had a charm of
mirth that was delightful. It was that
same demure playfulness which led him
to -write of the lady who wore flowers
"on the congregation side of her bonnet,"
or to extol those broad, magnificent west
ern roads which "dwindle to a squirrel-
track and run up a tree." He had no
particle of the acidity of biting wit ; but he
had abundant, playful humour, that was
full of kindness and that toyed good-
naturedly with the trifles of life. That
such a sense of fun should be amused by
the ludicrous peculiarities of a juvenile bard
was inevitable.
I recall many talks with him, about
poetry, the avenues of Uterary labour, and
the discipline of the mind in youth. His
counsel was conveyed in two words — calm
ness and patience. He did not believe in
seeking experience or in going to meet bur
dens. " What you desire wBl come, if you
will but wait for it" — that he said to me
again and again. ' ' My ambition once was,' '

LONGFELLOW. 273
he remarked, ' ' to edit a magazine. Since
then the opportunity has been offered to
me many times — and I did not take it, and
would not." That same night he spoke of
his first poem — the first that ever was
printed — and described his trepidation
when going, in the evening, to drop the
precious manuscript into the editor's box.
This was at a newspaper office in Portland,
Maine, when he was a boy. Publication
day arrived and the paper appeared — but
not a word of the poem. " But I had an
other copy," he said, "and I immediately
sent it to the rival paper, and it was pub
lished." And then he described his exul
tation and inexpressible joy and pride,
when, — having bought a copy of the paper,
still damp from the press, and walked with
it into a by-street of the town, — he saw,
for the first time, a poem of his o-wn act
ually in print} "I have never since had
such a thrill of delight," he said, " over
any of my publications."
His sense of humour found especial
pleasure in the inappropriate words that
were sometimes said to him by persons
whose design it was to be complimentary,
and he would relate, -with a keen reUsh of
their pleasantry, anecdotes, to Ulustrate
s

274 LONGFELLOW.
this form of social blunder. Years ago he
told me, at Cambridge, about a strange gen
tleman who was led up to him and intro
duced, at Newport, and who straightway
said, with enthusiastic fervour, — "Mr.
Longfellow, I have long desired the honour
of knowing you ! Sir, I am one of the few
men who have read your Evangeline."
Another of his favourites was related to me
a day or two after it occurred. The writer's
rule was to reserve the morning for work,
and -risitors were not received before noon.
One morning a man forced his way past
the servant who had opened the hall-door,
and, going into the presence of the as
tonished author, In his library, addressed
him in the following remarkable words :
"Mr. Longfellow, you're a poet, I believe,
and I've called here to see if I couldn't git
you to write some poetry, for me to have
printed, and stuck onto my medicine bot
tles. You see, I go round sellin' this medi
cine, and if you give me the poetry I'll give
you a bottle of the carminative — and it's
one dollar a bottle." For the enjoyment
of that story it was needful to see the
poet's face and hear the bland tone of his
voice. Many years ago he told me that
incident — sitting by the wide fire-place in

LONGFELLOW. 275
the Ubrary back of his study. As I -write
his words now the wind seems again to be
moaning in the chimney and the fire-light
flickers upon his pale, handsome, happy
face, and already sBvered hair. He took
delight in any bit of fun like that. He was
always gracious, always kind, always -wish-
fid to make every one happy that came
near him.
About poetry he talked -with the earnest
ness of a genuine passion and yet -with
no particle of self-assertion. Tennyson's
Princess was a new book when first I
heard him speak of it, and I remember
Mrs. Longfellow sitting with that volume in
her hands and reading it by the evening
lamp. The deUeate loveliness of the lyrical
pieces that are interspersed throughout its
text was, in particular, dwelt upon as a
supreme merit. Among his own poems his
favourite at that time was Evangeline ; but
he said that the style of versification which
pleased him best was that of ITie Day is
Done ; nor do I wonder, reading this now,
together vrith The Bridge, Twilight, The
Children's Hour, and The Open Window,
and flnding them so exquisite both in pathos
and music. He said also that he sometimes
-wrote poems that were for himself alone.

2/6 LONGFELLOW.
that he should not care to publish, be
cause they were too delicate for publica
tion. One of his sayings was that "the
desire of the young poet is not for ap
plause but for recognition." He much
commended the example, in one respect,
of the Italian poet Alfleri, who caused
himself to be bound into his library chair
and left for a certain period of time, each
day, at his library table — his servants
being strictly enjoined not to release him
till that time had passed : by this means he
forced himself to labour. No man ever
believed more firmly than Longfellow did
in regular, proportioned, resolute, incessant
industry. His poem of The Builders con
tains his creed ; his poem of The Ladder of
St. Augustine is the philosophy of his career.
Yet I have many times heard him say ' ' the
mind cannot be controlled ' ' ; and the fact
that he was, when at his best, a poet of in
spiration is proved by such poems as Sandal-
phon. My Lost Youth, The Beleaguered
City, The Fire of Drift Wood, Suspiria,
The Secret of the Sea, The Two Angels,
and The Warden of the Cinque Ports.
The two vyrlters of whom he oftenest
spoke, within my hearing, were Lowell
and Hawthorne. Of LoweB he said, "He

LONGFELLOW. 2/7
is one of the manBest and noblest men
that ever lived." " Hawthorne often came
into this room," he said, " and sometimes
he would go there, behind the window cur
tains, and remain in sBent reverie the whole
evening. No one disturbed him ; he came
and went as he Uked. He was a mysteri
ous man." With Irving's works he was
especially familiar, and he often quoted
from them in his talk to me. One summer
day at his cottage at Nahant I found him
reading Cooper's sea stories, and had the
pleasure of hearing from his lips a tribute
to that great writer — the foremost novelist
in American literatvire, unmatched since
Scott in the power to treat with a free
inspiration and vigorous and splendid de
scriptive skill the vast pageants of nature
and to buBd and sustain ideals of human
character worthy of such surroundings.
Longfellow was in fine spirits that day, and
very happy, and I have always thought of
him as he looked then, holding his daughter
Edith in his arms — a little child, with
long, golden hair, and lovely, merry face —
and by his presence making the sunshine
brighter and the place more sacred with
kindness and peace.
The best portrait of Longfellow is the one

278 LONGFELLOW.
made by Samuel Lawrence ; the best be
cause it gives the noble and spirited poise
and action of his head, shows his clear-cut,
strong, yet delicate features unmasked with
a beard, and preserves that alert, inspired
expression which came into his face when
he was affected by strong emotion. I recall
Mrs. Longfellow's commendation of it, in a
fireside talk. It was her favourite portrait
of him. We discussed Thomas Buchanan
Read's portrait of him, and of his three
daughters, when those pictures were yet
fresh from the easel. I remember speaking
to him of a fancied resemblance between
the face of Mrs. Longfellow and the face of
Evangeline, in Faed's well-kno-wn picture.
He said that others had noticed it but that
he did not perceive it. Yet I think those
faces were kindred, in stateliness and in the
mournful beauty of the eyes. It is strange
what trifles crowd upon the memory, when
one thinks of the long ago and the friends
that have departed. I recollect his SmBe
when he said that he always called to mind
the number of the house in Beacon street,
Boston, — which was Mrs. Longfellow's
home when she was Miss Appleton, — "by
thinking of the Thirty-nine Articles." I
recollect the gentle gravity of his voice when

LONGFELLOW. 279
he showed me apiece of the coffin of Dante,
and said, in a low tone, " That has touched
his bones." I recoBect the benignant look
in his eyes and the warm pressure of his
hand when he bade me good-bye (it was the
last time), saying, " You never forget me —
you always come to see me." There were
long lapses of time during which I never
saw him, being held fast by incessant duties
and drifted far away from the moorings of
my youth. But as often as I came back to
his door his love met me on the threshold
and his noble serenity gave me comfort and
cheer. It seems but a little whUe since, in
quick and delicate remembrance of the old
days, he led me to his hearthstone, saying,
"Come and sit in my children's chair."
What an awful solemnity, and yet what a
soothing sense of perfect nobleness and
beneficent love, haBows now that storied
home from which his earthly and visible
presence has forever departed !
In the summer of 1861, on a day of sun
shine and flowers and gently whispering
winds, those rooms were hushed and dark
ened, and a group of mourning friends
stood around the sacred relics, beautiful in
death, of the poet's wife. Only one voice
was heard — the voice of prayer. But

28o LONGFELLOW.
every heart prayed for the sufferer, thus
awfully stricken and left to bear the bur
den of a great and endless grief. And then
we followed her to the place of her final
rest. Here before me is a twig that I broke,
that day, from a tree beside her grave. I
may beep it now in remembrance of him
as well as of her. He fulfilled, within the
twenty years following, some of the greatest
works of his life ; but in all that time he
was only waiting for the hour which came
to him at last. Through all the grand
poise of his being, through his never-end
ing still beginning labour, through his pen
sive ways neither mournful nor gay, through
his meek but manly acceptance of the
events of life, through the high and solemn
strains of his later poetry, and through
that -wistful, haunted look in his venerable,
bard-like countenance, this was the one
prevailing truth. He was waiting for the
end. The world Is lonelier for his absence.
" Woe is me, that I should gaze upon thy
place and find it vacant ! "
" O friend I 0 best of friends ! Thy absence
more
Than the impending night darkens the land
scape o'er! "

A THOUGHT ON COOPER'S NOVELS. 28 1

XIX.
A THOUGHT ON COOPEr's NOVELS.
THE inherent spiritual charms appertain
ing to different forms of art are not in
terchangeable. The best Grecians are agreed
that something yet remains in Homer that
translation has never grasped. The char
acteristic magic of a romance wBl not im
part its thrill to a drama. Those who, for
example, should expect in a play, a re
production of the soul of Cooper's genius
would inevitably be disappointed. Certain
dramatic elements his genius and his stories
do, indeed, possess ; but the essential qual
ity of them is an evanescent spirit of romance
that can no more be cramped within stage-
grooves than the notes of a wind-harp can be
prisoned in a bird-cage. Often, when Cooper
is imaginative, his mind revels over vast
spaces, aUke in the trackless wBderness
and on the trackless ocean — forests that
darken half a continent and tremendous
icebergs that crash and crumble upon un-

282 A THOUGHT ON COOPBR'E NOVELS.
known seas. More often he is descriptive
and meditative, moralising, like Words
worth, on rock and river and the tokens of
a divine soul in the wonders of creation.
His highest mood of feeling is that of calm-
eyed philosophy. His highest ideal of vir
tue is self-sacrifice. His best pictures are
too broad in scope and too voluminous in
details for Illustration to the eye. Neither
Jasper's white-winged descent upon the
Indian ambuscade, nor the flight of Hutter's
ark, nor Chingachgook singing his death-
song, nor the mysterious Pilot steering his
ship, iu night and tempest, through a per
ilous channel and a thousand dangers
of death, could be shown in effigy. His
highest flgures, moreover, are types of the
action that passes within the heart ; of pas
sion that is repressed ; of what is suffered
rather than of what is done. He never
painted better than when he painted the
Pathflnder vanishing on the dusky edge of
the forest, after the parting with Mabel ;
and in that lovely, pathetic incident, as in
many that are kindred with It, there is no
particle of dramatic effect. Salient features
are alone avaBable for the purpose of the
drama, and it is not in salient features that
the spell of Cooper's genius resides. The

A THOUGHT ON COOPEr'S NOVELS. 283
essence of his novels — the vrildwood fra
grance of fancy and the reiterated yet con
stantly varied mood of suspense — eludes
dramatic treatment. The reader is con
stantly aware of this charm ; never so much
aware of it, perhaps, as in that absorbing
chapter of the Mohicans which describes
the beginning of Munro's quest of his
daughters, after the massacre. The spec
tator of a play on the subject would not be
aware of it at aU. He might be interested,
indeed, and at times excited and impressed ;
but he would no longer be ruled by the mas
sive sincerity of Cooper's feeling and the
honest, minute thoroughness of his simple
text, and he would be no longer swayed by
his o-wn imagination. In the sBenoe of the
Ubrary the reader may listen vrith Hawkeye
for the rustle of a leaf, or the crackling of
a t-wig, or the lonesome caU of the loon across
the darkening lake at sunset. In the glare
of lamps, and when neither the situation
nor the language is ideal, the spectator
would perceive his vision limited by the
picture before him; the inward ear would
close and the inward eye would darken. It
is the nature of some books that they lure
us into a dream of pleasure and keep us
there ; and it is the nature of some pictures

284 A THOUGHT ON COOPER'S NOVELS.
that they confront fancy vrith fact and stop
our dreaming with a shock. Nothing in
Cooper's delineation of wilderness Ufe
seems incongruous or absurd to a reader.
His books have an atmosphere — like the
odour of pine trees on the wind of night —
and this the stage could not preserve. They
were not written for it and they cannot be
fitted to Its powers and its needs. They
will yield romantic pictures, effective inci
dents, and various and picturesque charac
ters ; but they wBl not yield their glamour.
The poet who brought home the sea^shells
found that they had left their beauty on the
beach.

JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 28$

XX.
A MAN OF LETTERS : JOHN E. G. HASSARD.
Obiit April 18, 1888.
A PATIENT and noble struggle against
inexorable disease has ended, and a
friend and comrade — dearer than words
can say — has fallen asleep. The duty of
recording his death falls naturaUy upon one
who for many years stood nearest his side
and was honoured with his affection and
confidence. It would, under any circum
stances, be a difficult, mournfiB duty. It
is inexpressibly solemn to the friend who
writes these words — for not alone is it fit
ting that love should utter Its sense of be
reavement, but that thought should express
its conviction of public no less than personal
loss. John Hassard was a journalist, but also
he was a man of letters, and in both capaci
ties he exerted eminent talents in a consci
entious spirit and -with passionate loyalty
to the highest standard of principle, learn-

286 A MAN OF LETTERS :
Ing, and taste. As a journalist he knew
that the most essential function of the news
paper is the presentation of the news ; but
as a man of letters he was aware that the
pictorial facts and the facts of thought and
feeling are not less actual or less important
than the superficial aspects of the passing
hour. He treated many subjects, ranging
over a period of many years during which
he was in continuous serrice of the press
and -writing in the different veins of narra
tive, description, criticism, satire, and des
ultory comment ; but whatever the subject
he never faBed to satisfy his readers that
every material fact had been stated and to
impress their minds with his absolute sin
cerity, his breadth of view, his -wisdom, his
moral principle, his fine taste, and his noble
ideal of social order and personal conduct.
It was that double power, that power of
presenting the picture of actual life and at
the same tune of indicating its motive, its
spirit, its accessories and its meaning, that
made him an exceptional force in the pro
fession that he dignified and adorned.
A life that is devoted to the art of vmt-
ing seems, on its surface, to be uneventful.
There is nothing in it of outward action
and but little of visible deed. Yet no

JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 287
greater error could possibly be made, in
the study and estimate of human character,
than the error of assuming that the life of
a true man of letters is necessarBy or pos
sibly a life of apathetic monotony and gray
stagnation. For such a man lives, not alone
under the pressure of his intense individu
ality, but under the stress and strain of the
intellectual movement of his time. Every
fresh wave of thought breaks over him.
Every aspiration and every forward step of
the vanguard mind of his period is to him a
personal experience — because he must keep
pace with it. The religious question, the
poUtical question, the social question, the
scientific question — each and every one of
these Is of -rital personal importance to the
man of letters. He cannot be content, as
so many other people are, merely to hear
of those things and to pass them by ; he
must think out the problems of the age ; he
must reach a conclusion ; he must have
convictions ; he must speak his mind. To
him is forbidden alike indifference and
silence. A moral and mental responsibility
rests on him, to serve his generation, to
proclaim the truth and defend the right, to
help others at the hard part of the way, and
thus to fulffl the duty for which he was de-

288 A MAN OF LETTERS :
signed In the drama of human development.
There are serious ordeals in the life of such
a man — times of sore mental conflict and
cruel trial, hours of acute suffering, moments
of splendid conquest and joy. Outwardly
he seems placid, and the round of his ex
istence looks dull. But under the calm
surface of that silver tranquBlity the tem
pests of passion rage and pass, the powers
of character are matured and marshaBed,
and the strife of ideas accomplishes its ap
pointed work. The representative man of
letters is not seen in public affairs, and there
is but little to tell of him when his career
has ended. But his words are in thousands
of hearts and his influence lives in a myriad
of the good deeds of the men of action who
have imperceptibly felt his dominion.
John Hassard' s life afforded constant and
potent illustration of those views. It was
only slightly diverslfled by events, but it
flowed over the depths of a wide, varied,
and significant intellectual experience. He
was born in New York, in 1836. He was
taught and trained in St. John's College at
Fordham, from which Institution he was
graduated in 18-35. He assisted in prepar
ing the New American Encyclopedia and
in 1865 was editor of The Catholic World.

JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 289
In 1865-66 he was a writer for The Chi
cago Republican. He became associated
with The New York Tribune in 1866, and
in various capacities he served that journal
for about twenty years. He was an edito
rial writer, a reviewer, and a musical critic,
and for some time after the death of Horace
Greeley, in 1872, he held the post of manag
ing editor. He wrote the Life of Arch
bishop Hughes (1866) ; the Life of Pope
Pius IN. (1877) ; a History of the United
States (1877) ; The Ring of the Nibelungs
^a Description of its First Performance,
in August, 1876, at Bayreuth (1877) ; and
A Pickwickian Pilgrimage (1881). He was
at Bayreuth in 1876, and his narrative of
Wagner's exploits and success at that time
— a remarkable epoch in the history of
music — is one of fascinating interest, and
it is as vital now as when it was -written.
The sagacity with which he recognised
Wagner's power and the precision and
authority with which he foreshadowed the
drift of that composer's ideas and influence
abide among many proofs of his pre-eminent
competence and superiority as a musical
judge. His Pickwickian Pilgrimage was
the result of a stroll in England, in the
summer of 1879, chiefly in the track of Pick-
T

290 A MAN OF LETTERS :
wick and his friends. He was an ardent
admirer of the works of Charles Dickens,
and he followed in the footsteps of that
novelist reverently and with affectionate
appreciation. That book contains an ac
count of a boat voyage down the Wye,
from Hereford to Chepstow, which Is per
haps the best single example of his best
Uterary manner that could be chosen — a
manner in which the influence of Goldsmith
and Addison is discernible through the
•writer's characteristic mood of keen obser
vation, light, pictorial touch, and gentle
sentiment. Another of his felicitous works
is a pamphlet called The Fast Printing
Machine (1878), being a narrative of me
chanical dexterity and industrial achieve
ment, but invested with the charm of a
fairy tale and expressed in language of rare
vigour. These few sentences recount the
chief incidents of his life — scarcely more
eventful than that of the Vicar of Wake
field, with Its migration from the brown
bed to the blue and from the blue bed back
again to the brown. It is the old story of
the man of thought, who stands apart from
the pageant of human affairs, moralising
on it as it passes, and striving to purify
and refresh it at the springs.

JOHN R. G HASSARD 29 1
The actual and essential story of that
life Ues deeper and would be found beneath
the surface, in the current of inteUectual
development and the analysis of literary
achievement. John Hassard was not one
of the exceptional few who build monu
ments essentiaBy great in literature and
thus strongly command and permanently
retain the attention and interest of the
world. He was a man of flbae talents and
lovely character, who devoted himself to
the service of journalism, and who made
his mark In that field — broad, strong, bril
Uant, and noble. The great pubUc of mis
cellaneous readers cannot rationally be
supposed to cherish a deep interest in such
a personality for a great length of time after
its career has ended. But it was a person-
aUty that blessed many who never heard of
it, whBe those whose privilege it was to
know his labours and their value wBl ten
derly meditate now upon the beautiful traits
of his mind, the charm of his companion
ship, and the lesson of his pure, blameless,
devoted, beneficent life. He would have
been the first to reprove extravagant eulogy
of his talents or his productions. He filled
a difficult and delicate office with rare abil
ity and discretion. He taught, by example.

292 A MAN OF LETTERS :
the primal necessity of being perfectly well
acquainted with the art he discussed. He
studied constantly, he thought deeply, he
worked conscientiously and with laborious
zeal. His freedom from conventionality
and prejudice was a continual monition of
refreshing originality of view and justice of
mood. He looked at every subject with
present eyes, not with the eyes of the past.
The word that he spoke was the word of
to-day, not of yesterday, and he never fell
into the error of mistaking his personal
distaste for a defect in the artist or the
work reviewed. He knew, with Coleridge,
that the first requisite for a good critic is
a good heart, and he proved that he knew
it, every time he took up his pen. His keen
intuition as to the relative importance of
persons and themes was constantly mani
fested and was still another lesson of prac
tical value. For this journalist and man of
letters, this devotee of art and music — who
often sat alone for hours playing upon the
organ the music that he loved, — was also
a man of the world. He possessed the
sense of proportion and fitness, an old-time
courtliness of thinking as well as of man
ner, a sense of the right place for trifles,
and a happy faculty for silence. He was

JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 293
not envious and he was not meddlesome.
He never thought it to be his duty to regu
late the musical criticism of the general
press. If he wanted a good criticism of an
opera to be printed he endeavoured to -write
it himself, instead of -writmg querulous
observations condemnatory of the remarks
of contemporary journals. It was another
of his admirable and exemplary qualities
that he perceived the critical duty of giving
encouragement. He looked into the future
of the artist, and he could be wisely len
ient. In the fulfilment of his duty he
thought of himself last, or not at all, while
his dignity was of the natural kind that is
always present. Education and experience
taught him how to use fine faculties for the
best advantage of others.
Among the old-fashioned phrases of
eulogy there is one that long usage has
rendered conventional ; but it is very ex
pressive ; He was a gentleman and a
scholar. It Is much to deserve those names.
John Hassard entirely deserved them, and
he bore them with the sweet modesty,
unconscious humility, and native and win
ning gentleness of an unselfish nature. He
was always thoughtful for others ; always
doing acts of courtesy and kindness. He

294 A M,4N OF LETTERS :
was ever to be found on the side of chivalry
toward women, and his active considera
tion for young people, especially for work
ing boys, and his sweet manner toward
children much endeared him wherever he
went. His reading was large and various.
He was accomplished in the classics ; he
had comprehensive knowledge of English
Uterature ; and he possessed both the
French language and the German. As a
reviewer he early acquired the excellent
method, so long pursued and with such
good result by the late George Ripley —
the father of the art In America. That
method was to assume the author's point of
view ; to let the book declare itself, its con
tents, its style, character, and intention ;
and then to discuss it as a literary artist, an
observer, a thinker, and from essential
en-rironments of its subject. He was
rarely severe and never unkind. He could
condemn explicitly, but he stated the
grounds of his judgment, and they were
invariably logical and sound. He was
remarkably expert In perceiving the beau
ties of art, and he loved to praise ; and,
as he knew what had been done by others
and was quick to see the fresh touch and
understand the subtle suggestion, his praise

JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 295
gave pleasure, rewarded merit, encouraged
high endeavour, and was valuable. His
sympathies went with the imagination and
the affections, in literature, not with the
morbid passions and not with the "realis
tic" movement in any of Its phases. He
rightly abhorred the art represented by M.
Zola ; he justly despised the whole brood
of Ouida novelists ; and. In common with
other sane persons, he smiled at the weak
ness, which, mistaking the assertion of
power for power itself, accepts such -writ
ings as those of the late Walt Whitman for
poetry. He was sufficiently conservative
to love the novels of Scott and the poems
of Crabbe, and he was sufficiently compre
hensive, acute, and fair-minded, while
recognising the passion and splendour of
Byron, to appreciate and exult in the philo
sophic grandeur, the solemn tenderness,
the beautiful simplicity, and the con-if orting
faith of Wordsworth. Those are significant
indications of the character of his mind,
the mood in which he lived and laboured,
and the ideals toward which he strove.
And so he passed into his rest. He was
a bright and gentle presence In the life of
every man and woman to whom he was
ever kno-wn. He lived a good life. He

296 A MAN OF LETTERS.
suffered patiently. He met his fate -with
humble resignation and firm composure.
He helped, in a material degree, to ad
vance the standard of musical art and lit
erary taste in the republic. He has left
critical essays which are models of search
ing thought, just judgment, cheering sym
pathy, and felicitous expression. The
sketches with which he enriched our liter
ature In its lighter branches are of singular
beauty, graceful in their form and move
ment, often illumined with playful humour,
always rital with the appreciative sincerity
of critical enthusiasm. His biographical
writings are discriminative, judicious, and
truthful, and are couched in a terse and
lucid style. He was a devout man, rigid in
his principles and pure in his life ; but he
was invariably charitable, magnanimous,
and tender in his judgment of others. No
human being was ever more quick than he
to appreciate merit or to forgive frailty and
palliate defect. He was much beloved ; he
is deeply mourned ; and he wBl long be
remembered.

THE END.

0\ I,

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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