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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13619 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 13619-h.htm or 13619-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/6/1/13619/13619-h/13619-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/6/1/13619/13619-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE GREAT, VOLUME 5
+
+Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors
+
+by
+
+ELBERT HUBBARD
+
+New York
+
+1916
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS
+ROBERT BROWNING
+ALFRED TENNYSON
+ROBERT BURNS
+JOHN MILTON
+SAMUEL JOHNSON
+THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+LORD BYRON
+JOSEPH ADDISON
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+BENJAMIN DISRAELI
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+               THE IDLE SINGER
+
+    Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
+    I can not ease the burden of your fears,
+    Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
+    Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
+    Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
+    Or hope again for aught that I can say,
+    The idle singer of an empty day.
+
+    But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
+    From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
+    And feeling kindly unto all the earth,
+    Grudge every minute as it passes by,
+    Made the more mindful that the sweet days die,--
+    Remember me a little then, I pray,
+    The idle singer of an empty day.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
+    Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
+    Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
+    Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
+    Telling a tale not too importunate
+    To those who in the sleepy region stay,
+    Lulled by the singer of an empty day.
+                        --_From "The Earthly Paradise"_
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS]
+
+
+The parents of William Morris were well-to-do people who lived in the
+village of Walthamstow, Essex. The father was a London bill-broker,
+cool-headed, calculating, practical. In the home of his parents William
+Morris received small impulse in the direction of art; he, however, was
+taught how to make both ends meet, and there were drilled into his
+character many good lessons of plain commonsense--a rather unusual
+equipment for a poet, but still one that should not be waived or
+considered lightly. At the village school William was neither precocious
+nor dull, neither black nor white: his cosmos being simply a sort of
+slaty-gray, a condition of being which attracted no special attention from
+either his schoolfellows or his tutors. From the village school he went to
+Marlborough Academy, where by patient grubbing he fitted himself for
+Exeter College, Oxford.
+
+Morris, the elder, proved his good sense by taking no very special
+interest in the boy's education. Violence of direction in education falls
+flat: man is a lonely creature, and has to work out his career in his own
+way. To help the grub spin its cocoon is quite unnecessary, and to play
+the part of Mrs. Gamp with the butterfly in its chrysalis stage is to
+place a quietus upon its career.
+
+The whole science of modern education is calculated to turn out a good,
+fairish, commonplace article; but the formula for a genius remains a
+secret with Deity. The great man becomes great in spite of teachers and
+parents: and his near kinsmen, being color-blind, usually pooh-pooh the
+idea that he is anything more than mediocre. At Oxford, William Morris
+fell in with a young man of about his own age, by the name of Edward
+Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones was studying theology. He was slender in stature,
+dreamy, spiritual, poetic. Morris was a giant in strength, blunt in
+speech, bold in manner, and had a shock of hair like a lion's mane. This
+was in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three--these young men being
+nineteen years of age. The slender, yellow, dreamy student of theology and
+the ruddy athlete became fast friends.
+
+"Send your sons to college and the boys will educate them," said Emerson.
+These boys read poetry together; and it seems the first author that
+specially attracted them was Mrs. Browning; and she attracted them simply
+because she had recently eloped with the man she loved. This fact proved
+to Morris that she was a worthy woman and a discerning. She had the
+courage of her convictions. To elope with a poor poet, leaving a rich
+father and a luxurious home--what nobler ambition?
+
+Burne-Jones, student of theology, considered her action proof of
+depravity. Morris, in order to show his friend that Mrs. Browning was
+really a rare and gentle soul, read aloud to Burne-Jones from her books.
+Morris himself had never read much of Mrs. Browning's work, but in
+championing her cause and interesting his friend in her, he grew
+interested himself. Like lawyers, we undertake a cause first and look for
+proof later. In teaching another, Morris taught himself. By explaining a
+theme it becomes luminous to us.
+
+In passing, it is well to note that this impulse in the heart of William
+Morris to come to the defense of an accused person was ever very strong.
+His defense of Mrs. Browning led straight to "The Defense of Guinevere,"
+begun while at Oxford and printed in book form in his twenty-fourth year.
+Not that the offenses of Guinevere and Elizabeth Barrett were parallel,
+but Morris was by nature a defender of women. And it should further be
+noted that Tennyson had not yet written his "Idylls of the King,"-at the
+time Morris wrote his poetic brief.
+
+Another author that these young men took up at this time was Ruskin. John
+Ruskin was fifteen years older than Morris--an Oxford man, too; also, the
+son of a merchant and rich by inheritance. Ruskin's natural independence,
+his ability for original thinking and his action in embracing the cause of
+Turner, the ridiculed, won the heart of Morris. In Ruskin he found a
+writer who expressed the thoughts that he believed. He read Ruskin, and
+insisted that Burne-Jones should. Together they read "The Nature of
+Gothic," and then they went out upon the streets of Oxford and studied
+examples at first hand. They compared the old with the new, and came to
+the conclusion that the buildings erected two centuries before had various
+points to recommend them which modern buildings have not. The modern
+buildings were built by contractors, while the old ones were constructed
+by men who had all the time there was, and so they worked out their
+conceptions of the eternal fitness of things.
+
+Then these young men, with several others, drew up a remonstrance against
+"the desecration by officious restoration, and the tearing down of
+time-mellowed structures to make room for the unsightly brick piles of
+boarding-house keepers."
+
+The remonstrance was sent in to the authorities, and by them duly
+pigeonholed, with a passing remark that young fellows sent to Oxford to be
+educated had better attend to their books and mind their own business.
+Having espoused the cause of the Middle Ages in architecture, these young
+men began to study the history of the people who lived in the olden time.
+They read Spenser and Chaucer, and chance threw in their way a dog-eared
+copy of Mallory's "Morte d' Arthur," and this was still more dog-eared
+when they were through with it. Probably no book ever made more of an
+impression on Morris than this one; and if he had written an article for
+the "Ladies' Home Journal" on "Books That Influenced Me Most," he would
+have placed Mallory's "Morte d' Arthur" first.
+
+The influence of Burne-Jones on Morris was marked, and the influence of
+Morris on Burne-Jones was profound. Morris discovered himself in
+explaining things to Burne-Jones, and Burne-Jones, without knowing it,
+adopted the opinions of Morris; and it was owing to Morris that he gave up
+theology.
+
+Having abandoned the object that led him to college, Burne-Jones lost
+faith in Oxford, and went down to London to study art.
+
+Morris hung on, secured his B.A., and articled himself to a local
+architect with the firm intent of stopping the insane drift for modern
+mediocrity, and bringing about a just regard for the stately dignity of
+the Gothic.
+
+A few months' experience, however, and he discovered that an apprentice to
+an architect was not expected to furnish plans or even criticize those
+already made: his business was to make detail drawings from completed
+designs for the contractors to work from.
+
+A year at architecture, with odd hours filled in at poetry and art, and
+news came from Burne-Jones that he had painted a picture, and sold it for
+ten pounds.
+
+Now Morris had all the money he needed. His father's prosperity was at
+flood, and he had but to hint for funds and they came; yet to make things
+with your own hands and sell them was the true test of success.
+
+He had written "Gertha's Lovers," "The Tale of the Hollow Land," and
+various poems and essays for the college magazine; and his book, "The
+Defense of Guinevere," had been issued at his own expense, and the edition
+was on his hands--a weary weight.
+
+Thoreau wrote to his friends, when the house burned and destroyed all
+copies of his first book, "The edition is exhausted," but no such
+happiness came to Morris. And so when glad tidings of an artistic success
+came from Burne-Jones, he resolved to follow the lead and abandon
+architecture for "pure art."
+
+Arriving in London he placed himself under the tutorship of Dante Gabriel
+Rossetti, poet, dreamer and artist, six years his senior, whom he had
+known for some time, and who had also instructed Burne-Jones.
+
+While taking lessons in painting at the rather shabby house of Rossetti in
+Portland Street, he was introduced to Rossetti's favorite model--a young
+woman of rare grace and beauty. Rossetti had painted her picture as "The
+Blessed Damozel," leaning over the bar of Heaven, while the stars in her
+hair were seven. Morris, the impressionable, fell in love with the canvas
+and then with the woman.
+
+When they were married, tradition has it that Rossetti withheld his
+blessing and sought to drown his sorrow in fomentation's, with dark, dank
+hints in baritone to the effect that the Thames only could appreciate his
+grief.
+
+But grief is transient; and for many years Dante Rossetti and Burne-Jones
+pictured the tall, willowy figure of Mrs. Morris as the dream-woman, on
+tapestry and canvas; and as the "Blessed Virgin," her beautiful face and
+form are shown in many sacred places.
+
+Truth need not be distorted in a frantic attempt to make this an ideal
+marriage--only a woman with the intellect of Minerva could have filled the
+restless heart of William Morris. But the wife of Morris believed in her
+lord, and never sought to hamper him; and if she failed at times to
+comprehend his genius, it was only because she was human.
+
+Whistler once remarked that without Mrs. Morris to supply stained-glass
+attitudes and the lissome beauty of an angel, the Preraphaelites would
+have long since gone down to dust and forgetfulness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The year which William Morris spent at architecture, he considered as
+nearly a waste of time, but it was not so in fact. As a draftsman he had
+developed a marvelous skill, and the grace and sureness of his lines were
+a delight to Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown and
+others of the little artistic circle in which he found himself.
+
+Youth lays great plans; youth is always in revolt against the present
+order; youth groups itself in bands and swears eternal fealty; and life,
+which is change, dissipates the plans, subdues the revolt into conformity,
+and the sworn friendships fade away into dull indifference. Always? Well,
+no, not exactly.
+
+In this instance the plans and dreams found form; the revolt was a
+revolution that succeeded; and the brotherhood existed for near fifty
+years, and then was severed only by death.
+
+Without going into a history of the Preraphaelite Brotherhood, it will be
+noted that the band of enthusiasts in art, literature and architecture had
+been swung by the arguments and personality of William Morris into the
+strong current of his own belief, and this was that Art and Life in the
+Middle Ages were much lovelier things than they are now.
+
+That being so, we should go back to medieval times for our patterns.
+
+A study of the best household decorations of the Fifteenth Century showed
+that all the furniture used then was made to fit a certain apartment, and
+with a definite purpose in view.
+
+Of course it was made by hand, and the loving marks of the tool were upon
+it. It was made as good and strong and durable as it could be made. Floors
+and walls were of mosaic or polished wood, and these were partly covered
+by beautifully woven rugs, skins and tapestries. The ceilings were
+sometimes ornamented with pictures painted in harmony with the use for
+which the room was designed. Certainly there were no chromos and the
+pictures were few and these of the best, for the age was essentially a
+critical one.
+
+A modest circular was issued in which the fact was made known that "a
+company of historical artists will use their talents in home decoration."
+
+Dealers into whose hands this circular fell, smiled in derision, and the
+announcement made no splash in England's artistic waters. But the leaven
+was at work which was bound to cause a revolution in the tastes of fifty
+million people.
+
+Most of our best moves are accidents, and every good thing begins as
+something else. In the beginning there was no expectation of building up a
+trade or making a financial success of the business. The idea was simply
+that the eight young men who composed the band were to use their influence
+in helping one another to secure commissions, and corroborate the views of
+doubting patrons as to what was art and what not. In other words, they
+were to stand by one another.
+
+Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Arthur Hughes
+were painters; Philip Webb an architect; Peter Paul Marshall a
+landscape-gardener and engineer; Charles Joseph Faulkner, an Oxford don,
+was a designer, and William Morris was an all-round artist--ready to turn
+his hand to anything.
+
+These men undertook to furnish a home from garret to cellar in an artistic
+way.
+
+Work came, and each set himself to help all the others. From simply
+supplying designs for furniture, rugs, carpets and wall-paper they began
+to manufacture these things, simply because they could not buy or get
+others to make the things they desired.
+
+Morris undertook the entire executive charge of affairs, and mastered the
+details of half a dozen trades in order that he might intelligently
+conduct the business. The one motto of the firm was, "Not how cheap, but
+how good." They insisted that housekeeping must be simplified, and that we
+should have fewer things and have them better. To this end single pieces
+of furniture were made, and all sets of furniture discarded. I have seen
+several houses furnished entirely by William Morris, and the first thing
+that impressed me was the sparsity of things. Instead of a dozen pictures
+in a room, there were two or three--one on an easel and one or two on the
+walls. Gilt frames were abandoned almost entirely, and dark-stained woods
+were used instead. Wide fireplaces were introduced and mantels of solid
+oak. For upholstery, leather covering was commonly used instead of cloth.
+Carpets were laid in strips, not tacked down to stay, and rugs were laid
+so as to show a goodly glimpse of hardwood floor; and in the dining-room a
+large, round table was placed instead of a right-angled square one. This
+table was not covered with a tablecloth; instead, mats and doilies were
+used here and there. To cover a table entirely with a cloth or spread was
+pretty good proof that the piece of furniture was cheap and shabby; so in
+no William Morris library or dining-room would you find a table entirely
+covered. The round dining-table is in very general use now, but few people
+realize how its plainness was scouted when William Morris first introduced
+it.
+
+One piece of William Morris furniture has become decidedly popular in
+America, and that is the "Morris Chair." The first chair of this pattern
+was made entirely by the hands of the master. It was built by a man who
+understood anatomy, unlike most chairs and all church pews. It was also
+strong, durable, ornamental, and by a simple device the back could be
+adjusted so as to fit a man's every mood.
+
+There has been a sad degeneracy among William Morris chairs; still, good
+ones can be obtained, nearly as excellent as the one in which I rested at
+Kelmscott House--broad, deep, massive, upholstered with curled hair, and
+covered with leather that would delight a bookbinder. Such a chair can be
+used a generation and then passed on to the heirs.
+
+Furnishing of churches and chapels led naturally to the making of
+stained-glass windows, and hardly a large city of Christendom but has an
+example of the Morris work.
+
+Morris managed to hold that erratic genius, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in
+line and direct his efforts, which of itself was a feat worthy of record.
+He made a fortune for Rossetti, who was a child in this world's affairs,
+and he also made a fortune for himself and every man connected with the
+concern.
+
+Burne-Jones stood by the ship manfully, and proved his good sense by never
+interfering with the master's plans, or asking foolish, quibbling
+questions--showing faith on all occasions.
+
+The Morris designs for wall-paper, tapestry, cretonnes and carpets are now
+the property of the world, but to say just which is a William Morris
+design and which a Burne-Jones is an impossibility, for these two strong
+men worked together as one being with two heads and four hands. At one
+time, I find the firm of Morris and Company had three thousand hands at
+work in its various manufactories, the work in most instances being done
+by hand after the manner of the olden time. William Morris was an avowed
+socialist long before so many men began to grow fond of calling themselves
+Christian Socialists. Morris was too practical not to know that the time
+is not ripe for life on a communal basis, but in his heart was a high and
+holy ideal that he has partially explained in his books, "A Dream of John
+Ball" and "News From Nowhere," and more fully in many lectures. His
+sympathy was ever with the workingman and those who grind fordone at the
+wheel of labor. To better the condition of the toiler was his sincere
+desire. But socialism to him was more of an emotion than a well-worked-out
+plan of life. He believed that men should replace competition by
+Co-operation. He used to say: "I'm going your way, so let us go hand in
+hand. You help me and I'll help you. We shall not be here very long, for
+soon, Death, the kind old nurse, will come and rock us all to sleep--let
+us help one another while we may." And that is about the extent of the
+socialism of William Morris.
+
+There is one criticism that has been constantly brought against Morris,
+and although he answered this criticism a thousand times during his life,
+it still springs fresh--put forth by little men who congratulate
+themselves on having scored a point.
+
+They ask in orotund, "How could William Morris expect to benefit society
+at large, when all of the products he manufactured were so high in price
+that only the rich could buy them?"
+
+Socialism, according to William Morris, does not consider it desirable to
+supply cheap stuff to anybody. The socialist aims to make every
+manufactured article of the best quality possible. It is not how cheap can
+this be made, but how good. Make it as excellent as it can be made to
+serve its end. Then sell it at a price that affords something more than a
+bare subsistence to the workmen who put their lives into its making. In
+this way you raise the status of the worker--you pay him for his labor and
+give him an interest and pride in the product. Cheap products make cheap
+men. The first thought of socialism is for the worker who makes the thing,
+not the man who buys it.
+
+Work is for the worker.
+
+What becomes of the product of your work, and how the world receives it,
+matters little. But how you do it is everything. We are what we are on
+account of the thoughts we have thought and the things we have done. As a
+muscle grows strong only through use, so does every attribute of the mind,
+and every quality of the soul take on new strength through exercise. And
+on the other hand, as a muscle not used atrophies and dies, so will the
+faculties of the spirit die through disuse.
+
+Thus we see why it is very necessary that we should exercise our highest
+and best. We are making character, building soul-fiber; and no rotten
+threads must be woven into this web of life. If you write a paper for a
+learned society, you are the man who gets the benefit of that paper--the
+society may. If you are a preacher and prepare your sermons with care, you
+are the man who receives the uplift--and as to the congregation, it is all
+very doubtful.
+
+Work is for the worker.
+
+We are all working out our own salvation. And thus do we see how it is
+very plain that John Ruskin was right when he said that the man who makes
+the thing is of far more importance than the man who buys it. Work is for
+the worker.
+
+Can you afford to do slipshod, evasive, hypocritical work? Can you afford
+to shirk, or make-believe or practise pretense in any act of life? No, no;
+for all the time you are molding yourself into a deformity, and drifting
+away from the Divine. What the world does and says about you is really no
+matter, but what you think and what you do are questions vital as Fate. No
+one can harm you but yourself. Work is for the worker. And so I will
+answer the questions of the critics as to how society has been benefited
+by, say, a William Morris book:
+
+1. The workmen who made it found a pride and satisfaction in their work.
+
+2. They received a goodly reward in cash for their time and efforts.
+
+3. The buyers were pleased with their purchase, and received a decided
+satisfaction in its possession.
+
+4. Readers of the book were gratified to see their author clothed in such
+fitting and harmonious dress.
+
+5. Reading the text has instructed some, and possibly inspired a few to
+nobler thinking.
+
+After "The Defense of Guinevere" was published, it was thirteen years
+before Morris issued another volume. His days had been given to art and
+the work of management. But now the business had gotten on to such a firm
+basis that he turned the immediate supervision over to others, and took
+two days of the week, Saturday and Sunday, for literature.
+
+Taking up the active work of literature when thirty-nine years of age, he
+followed it with the zest of youth for over twenty years--until death
+claimed him. William Morris thought literature should be the product of
+the ripened mind--the mind that knows the world of men and which has
+grappled with earth's problems. He also considered that letters should not
+be a profession in itself--to make a business of an art is to degrade it.
+Literature should be the spontaneous output of the mind that has known and
+felt. To work the mine of spirit as a business and sift its product for
+hire, is to overwork the vein and palm off slag for sterling metal.
+Shakespeare was a theater-manager, Milton a secretary, Bobby Burns a
+farmer, Lamb a bookkeeper, Wordsworth a government employee, Emerson a
+lecturer, Hawthorne a custom-house inspector, and Whitman a clerk. William
+Morris was a workingman and a manufacturer, and would have been Poet
+Laureate of England had he been willing to call himself a student of
+sociology instead of a socialist. Socialism itself (whatever it may be) is
+not offensive--the word is.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great American Apostle of Negation expressed, once upon a day, a
+regret that he had not been consulted when the Universe was being planned,
+otherwise he would have arranged to make good things catching instead of
+bad.
+
+The remark tokened a slight lesion in the logic of the Apostle, for good
+things are now, and ever have been, infectious.
+
+Once upon a day, I met a young man who told me that he was exposed at
+Kelmscott House for a brief hour, and caught it, and ever after there were
+in his mind, thoughts, feelings, emotions and ideals that had not been
+there before. Possibly the psychologist would explain that the spores of
+all these things were simply sleeping, awaiting the warmth and sunshine of
+some peculiar presence to start them into being; but of that I can not
+speak--this only I know, that the young man said to me, "Whereas I was
+once blind, I now see."
+
+William Morris was a giant in physical strength and a giant in intellect.
+His nature was intensely masculine, in that he could plan and act without
+thought of precedent. Never was a man more emancipated from the trammels
+of convention and custom than William Morris.
+
+Kelmscott House at Hammersmith is in an ebb-tide district where once
+wealth and fashion held sway; but now the vicinity is given over to
+factories, tenement-houses and all that train of evil and vice that
+follows in the wake of faded gentility.
+
+At Hammersmith you will see spacious old mansions used as warehouses;
+others as boarding-houses; still others converted into dance-halls with
+beer-gardens in the rear, where once bloomed and blossomed milady's
+flowerbeds.
+
+The broad stone steps and wide hallways and iron fences, with glimpses now
+and then of ancient doorplates or more ancient knockers, tell of
+generations lost in the maze of oblivion.
+
+Just why William Morris, the poet and lover of harmony, should have
+selected this locality for a home is quite beyond the average ken.
+Certainly it mystified the fashionable literary world of London, with whom
+he never kept goose-step, but that still kept track of him--for fashion
+has a way of patronizing genius--and some of his old friends wrote him
+asking where Hammersmith was, and others expressed doubts as to its
+existence. I had no difficulty in taking the right train for Hammersmith,
+but once there no one seemed to have ever heard of the Kelmscott Press.
+When I inquired, grave misgivings seemed to arise as to whether the press
+I referred to was a cider-press, a wine-press or a press for "cracklings."
+
+Finally I discovered a man--a workingman--whose face beamed at the mention
+of William Morris. Later I found that if a man knew William Morris, his
+heart throbbed at the mention of his name, and he at once grew voluble and
+confidential and friendly. It was the "Open Sesame," And if a person did
+not know William Morris, he simply didn't, and that was all there was
+about it.
+
+But the man I met knew "Th' Ole Man," which was the affectionate title
+used by all the hundreds and thousands who worked with William Morris. And
+to prove that he knew him, when I asked that he should direct me to the
+Upper Mall, he simply insisted on going with me. Moreover, he told a
+needless lie and declared he was on the way there, although when we met he
+was headed in the other direction. By a devious walk of half a mile we
+reached the high iron fence of Kelmscott House. We arrived amid a florid
+description of the Icelandic Sagas as told by my new-found friend and
+interpreted by Th' Ole Man. My friend had not read the Sagas, but still he
+did not hesitate to recommend them; and so we passed through the wide-open
+gates and up the stone walk to the entrance of Kelmscott House. On the
+threshold we met F.S. Ellis and Emery Walker, who addressed my companion
+as "Tom." I knew Mr. Ellis slightly, and also had met Mr. Walker, who
+works Rembrandt miracles with a camera.
+
+Mr. Ellis was deep in seeing the famous "Chaucer" through the press, and
+Mr. Walker had a print to show, so we turned aside, passed a great pile of
+paper in crates that cluttered the hallway, and entered the library.
+There, leaning over the long, oaken table, in shirt-sleeves, was the
+master. Who could mistake that great, shaggy head, the tangled beard, and
+frank, open-eyed look of boyish animation?
+
+The man was sixty and more, but there was no appearance of age in eye,
+complexion, form or gesture--only the whitened hair! He greeted me as if
+we had always known each other, and Ellis and piles of Chaucer proof led
+straight to old Professor Child of Harvard, whose work Ellis criticized
+and Morris upheld. They fell into a hot argument, which was even continued
+as we walked across the street to the Doves Bindery.
+
+The Doves Bindery, as all good men know, is managed by Mr.
+Cobden-Sanderson, who married one of the two daughters of Richard Cobden
+of Corn-Law fame.
+
+Just why Mr. Sanderson, the lawyer, should have borrowed his wife's maiden
+name and made it legally a part of his own, I do not know. Anyway, I quite
+like the idea of linking one's name with that of the woman one loves,
+especially when it has been so honored by the possessor as the name of
+Cobden.
+
+Cobden-Sanderson caught the rage for beauty from William Morris, and began
+to bind books for his own pleasure. Morris contended that any man who
+could bind books as beautifully as Cobden-Sanderson should not waste his
+time with law. Cobden-Sanderson talked it over with his wife, and she
+being a most sensible woman, agreed with William Morris.
+
+So Cobden-Sanderson, acting on Th' Ole Man's suggestion, rented the quaint
+and curious mansion next door to the old house occupied by the Kelmscott
+Press, and went to work binding books.
+
+When we were once inside the Bindery, the Chaucerian argument between Mr.
+Ellis and Th' Ole Man shifted off into a wrangle with Cobden-Sanderson. I
+could not get the drift of it exactly--it seemed to be the continuation of
+some former quarrel about an oak leaf or something. Anyway, Th' Ole Man
+silenced his opponent by smothering his batteries--all of which will be
+better understood when I explain that Th' Ole Man was large in stature,
+bluff, bold and strong-voiced, whereas Cobden-Sanderson is small,
+red-headed, meek, and wears bicycle-trousers.
+
+The argument, however, was not quite so serious an affair as I at first
+supposed, for it all ended in a laugh and easily ran off into a quiet
+debate as to the value of Imperial Japan versus Whatman.
+
+We walked through the various old parlors that now do duty as workrooms
+for bright-eyed girls, then over through the Kelmscott Press, and from
+this to another old mansion that had on its door a brass plate so polished
+and repolished, like a machine-made sonnet too much gone over, that one
+can scarcely make out its intent. Finally I managed to trace the legend,
+"The Seasons." I was told it was here that Thomson, the poet, wrote his
+book. Once back in the library of Kelmscott House, Mr. Ellis and Th' Ole
+Man leaned over the great oaken table and renewed, in a gentler key, the
+question as to whether Professor Child was justified in his construction
+of the Third Canto of the "Canterbury Tales." Under cover of the smoke I
+quietly disappeared with Mr. Cockerill, the Secretary, for a better view
+of the Kelmscott Press.
+
+This was my first interview with William Morris. By chance I met him
+again, some days after, at the shop of Emery Walker in Clifford Court,
+Strand. I had been told on divers occasions by various persons that
+William Morris had no sympathy for American art and small respect for our
+literature. I am sure this was not wholly true, for on this occasion he
+told me he had read "Huckleberry Finn," and doted on "Uncle Remus." He
+also spoke with affection and feeling of Walt Whitman, and told me that he
+had read every printed word that Emerson had written. And further he
+congratulated me on the success of my book, "Songs From Vagabondia."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The housekeeping world seems to have been in thrall to six haircloth
+chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center
+table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent
+times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the
+center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a
+bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the
+mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such houses were
+usually to be seen gaudy-colored carpets, imitation lace curtains, and a
+what-not in the corner that seemed ready to go into dissolution through
+the law of gravitation.
+
+Early in the Seventies lithograph-presses began to make chromos that were
+warranted just as good as oil-paintings, and these were distributed in
+millions by enterprising newspapers as premiums for subscriptions. Looking
+over an old file of the "Christian Union" for the year Eighteen Hundred
+Seventy-one, I chanced upon an editorial wherein it was stated that the
+end of painting pictures by hand had come, and the writer piously thanked
+heaven for it--and added, "Art is now within the reach of all." Furniture,
+carpets, curtains, pictures and books were being manufactured by
+machinery, and to glue things together and give them a look of gentility
+and get them into a house before they fell apart, was the seeming
+desideratum of all manufacturers.
+
+The editor of the "Christian Union" surely had a basis of truth for his
+statement; art had received a sudden chill: palettes and brushes could be
+bought for half-price, and many artists were making five-year contracts
+with lithographers; while those too old to learn to draw on
+lithograph-stones saw nothing left for them but to work designs with
+worsted in perforated cardboard.
+
+To the influence of William Morris does the civilized world owe its
+salvation from the mad rage and rush for the tawdry and cheap in home
+decoration. It will not do to say that if William Morris had not called a
+halt some one else would, nor to cavil by declaring that the inanities of
+the Plush-Covered Age followed the Era of the Hair-Cloth Sofa. These
+things are frankly admitted, but the refreshing fact remains that fully
+one-half the homes of England and America have been influenced by the good
+taste and vivid personality of one strong, earnest man.
+
+William Morris was the strongest all-round man the century has produced.
+He was an Artist and a Poet in the broadest and best sense of these
+much-bandied terms. William Morris could do more things, and do them well,
+than any other man of either ancient or modern times whom we can name.
+William Morris was master of six distinct trades. He was a weaver, a
+blacksmith, a wood-carver, a painter, a dyer and a printer; and he was a
+musical composer of no mean ability.
+
+Better than all, he was an enthusiastic lover of his race: his heart
+throbbed for humanity, and believing that society could be reformed only
+from below, he cast his lot with the toilers, dressed as one of them, and
+in the companionship of workingmen found a response to his holy zeal which
+the society of an entailed aristocracy denied.
+
+The man who could influence the entire housekeeping of half a world, and
+give the kingdom of fashion a list to starboard; who could paint beautiful
+pictures; compose music; speak four languages; write sublime verse;
+address a public assemblage effectively; produce plays; resurrect the lost
+art of making books, books such as were made only in the olden time as a
+loving, religious service; who lived a clean, wholesome, manly
+life--beloved by those who knew him best--shall we not call him Master?
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+    So, take and use Thy work,
+    Amend what flaws may lurk,
+    What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim:
+    My times be in Thy hand!
+    Perfect the cup as planned!
+    Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.
+                                        --_Rabbi Ben Ezra_
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING]
+
+
+If there ever lived a poet to whom the best minds pour out libations, it
+is Robert Browning. We think of him as dwelling on high Olympus; we read
+his lines by the light of dim candles; we quote him in sonorous monotone
+at twilight when soft-sounding organ-chants come to us mellow and sweet.
+Browning's poems form a lover's litany to that elect few who hold that the
+true mating of a man and a woman is the marriage of the mind. And thrice
+blest was Browning, in that Fate allowed him to live his philosophy--to
+work his poetry up into life, and then again to transmute life and love
+into art. Fate was kind: success came his way so slowly that he was never
+subjected to the fierce, dazzling searchlight of publicity; his
+recognition in youth was limited to a few obscure friends and neighbors.
+And when distance divided him from these, they forgot him; so there seems
+a hiatus in his history, when for a score of years literary England dimly
+remembered some one by the name of Browning, but could not just place him.
+
+About the year Eighteen Hundred Sixty-eight the author of "Sordello" was
+induced to appear at an evening of "Uncut Leaves" at the house of a
+nobleman at the West End, London. James Russell Lowell was present and
+was congratulated by a lady, sitting next to him, on the fact that
+Browning was an American.
+
+"But only by adoption!" answered the gracious Lowell.
+
+"Yes," said the lady; "I believe his father was an Englishman, so you
+Americans can not have all the credit; but surely he shows the Negro or
+Indian blood of his mother. Very clever, isn't he?--so very clever!"
+
+Browning's swarthy complexion, and the fine poise of the man--the entire
+absence of "nerves," as often shown in the savage--seemed to carry out the
+idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as
+black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion
+mahogany, the report that he was a Creole found ready credence. And so did
+this gossip of mixed parentage follow him that Mrs. Sutherland Orr, in her
+biography, takes an entire chapter to prove that in Robert Browning's
+veins there flowed neither Indian nor Negro blood.
+
+Doctor Furnivall, however, explains that Browning's grandmother on his
+father's side came from the West Indies, that nothing is known of her
+family history, and that she was a Creole.
+
+And beyond this, the fact is stated that Robert Browning was quite pleased
+when he used to be taken for a Jew--a conclusion made plausible by his
+complexion, hair and features.
+
+In its dead-serious, hero-worshiping attitude, the life of Robert
+Browning by Mrs. Orr deserves to rank with Weems' "Life of Washington." It
+is the brief of an attorney for the defense. "Little-Willie" anecdotes
+appear on every page.
+
+And thus do we behold the tendency to make Browning something more than a
+man--and, therefore, something less.
+
+Possibly women are given to this sort of thing more than men--I am not
+sure. But this I know, every young woman regards her lover as a distinct
+and peculiar personage, different from all others--as if this were a
+virtue--the only one of his kind. Later, if Fate is kind, she learns that
+her own experience is not unique. We all easily fit into a type, and each
+is but a representative of his class.
+
+Robert Browning sprang from a line of clerks and small merchants; but as
+indemnity for the lack of a family 'scutcheon, we are told that his uncle,
+Reuben Browning, was a sure-enough poet. For once in an idle hour he threw
+off a little thing for an inscription to be placed on a presentation
+ink-bottle, and Disraeli seeing it, declared, "Nothing like this has ever
+before been written!"
+
+Beyond doubt, Disraeli made the statement--it bears his earmark. It will
+be remembered that the Earl of Beaconsfield had a stock form for
+acknowledging receipt of the many books sent to him by aspiring authors.
+It ran something like this: "The Earl of Beaconsfield begs to thank the
+gifted author of----for a copy of his book, and gives the hearty assurance
+that he will waste no time in reading the volume."
+
+And further, the fact is set forth with unction that Robert Browning was
+entrusted with a latchkey early in life, and that he always gave his
+mother a good-night kiss. He gave her the good-night kiss willy-nilly. If
+she had retired when he came home, he used the trusty latchkey and went to
+her room to imprint on her lips the good-night kiss. He did this, the
+biographer would have us believe, to convince the good mother that his
+breath was what it should be; and he awakened her so she would know the
+hour was seasonable.
+
+In many manufactories there is an electric apparatus wherewith every
+employee registers when he arrives, by turning a key or pushing a button.
+Robert Browning always fearlessly registered as soon as he got home--this
+according to Mrs. Orr.
+
+Unfortunately, or otherwise, there is a little scattered information which
+makes us believe that Robert Browning's mother was not so fearful of her
+son's conduct, nor suspicious as to his breath, as to lie awake nights and
+keep tab on his hours. The world has never denied that Robert Browning was
+entrusted with a latchkey, and it cares little if occasionally, early in
+life, he fumbled for the keyhole. And my conception of his character is
+such that, when in the few instances Aurora, rosy goddess of the morn,
+marked his homecoming with chrome-red in the eastern sky, he did not
+search the sleeping-rooms for his mother to apprise her of the hour.
+
+In one place Mrs. Orr avers, in a voice hushed with emotion, that Browning
+carefully read all of Johnson's Dictionary "as a fit preparation for a
+literary career." Without any attempt to deny that the perusal of a
+dictionary is "fit preparation for a literary career," I yet fear me that
+the learned biographer, in a warm anxiety to prove the man exceeding
+studious and very virtuous, has tipped a bit to t' other side.
+
+She has apotheosized her subject--and in an attempt to portray him as a
+peculiar person, set apart, has well-nigh given us a being without hands,
+feet, eyes, ears, organs, dimensions, passions.
+
+But after a careful study of the data, various visits to the places where
+he lived in England, trips to Casa Guidi, views from Casa Guidi windows, a
+journey to Palazzo Rezzonico at Venice, where he died, and many a pious
+pilgrimage to Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey, where he sleeps, I am
+constrained to believe that Robert Browning was made from the same kind of
+clay as the rest of us. He was human--he was splendidly human.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Browning's father was a bank-clerk; and Robert Browning, the Third, author
+of "Paracelsus," could have secured his father's place in the Bank of
+England, if he had had ambitions. And the fact that he had not was a
+source of silent sorrow to the father, even to the day of his death, in
+Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six.
+
+Robert Browning, the grandfather, entered the Bank as an errand-boy, and
+rose by slow stages to Principal of the Stock-Room. He served the Bank
+full half a century, and saved from his salary a goodly competence. This
+money, tightly and rightly invested, passed to his son. The son never
+secured the complete favor of his employers that the father had known, but
+he added to his weekly stipend by what a writer terms, "legitimate
+perquisites." This, being literally interpreted, means that he purchased
+paper, pens and sealing-wax for the use of the Bank, and charged the goods
+in at his own price, doubtless with the consent of his superior, with whom
+he divided profits. He could have parodied the remark of Fletcher of
+Saltoun and said, "Let me supply the perquisite-requisites and I care not
+who makes the laws." So he grew rich--moderately rich--and lived simply
+and comfortably up at Camberwell, with only one besetting dissipation: he
+was a book-collector and had learned more Greek than Robert the Third was
+to acquire. He searched bookstalls on the way to the City in the morning,
+and lay in wait for First Editions on the way home at night. When he had
+a holiday, he went in search of a book. He sneaked books into the house,
+and declared to his admonishing wife the next week that he had always
+owned 'em, or that they were presented to him. The funds his father had
+left him, his salary and "the perquisites," made a goodly income, but he
+always complained of poverty. He was secretly hoarding sums so as to
+secure certain books.
+
+The shelves grew until they reached the ceiling, and then bookcases
+invaded the dining-room. The collector didn't trust his wife with the
+household purchasing; no bank-clerk ever does--and all the pennies were
+needed for books. The good wife, having nothing else to do, grew anemic,
+had neuralgia and lapsed into a Shut-in, wearing a pale-blue wrapper and
+reclining on a couch, around which were piled--mountain-high--books.
+
+The pale invalid used to imagine that the great cases were swaying and
+dancing a minuet, and she fully expected the tomes would all come
+a-toppling down and smother her--and she didn't care much if they would;
+but they never did. She was the mother of two children--the boy Robert,
+born the year after her marriage; and in a little over another year a
+daughter came, and this closed the family record.
+
+The invalid mother was a woman of fine feeling and much poetic insight.
+She didn't talk as much about books as her husband did, but I think she
+knew the good ones better. The mother and son moused in books together,
+and Mrs. Orr is surely right in her suggestion that this love of mother
+and son took upon itself the nature of a passion.
+
+The love of Robert Browning for Elizabeth Barrett was a revival and a
+renewal, in many ways, of the condition of tenderness and sympathy that
+existed between Browning and his mother. There certainly was a strange and
+marked resemblance in the characters of Elizabeth Barrett and the mother
+of Robert Browning; and to many this fully accounts for the instant
+affection that Browning felt toward the occupant of the "darkened room,"
+when first they met.
+
+The book-collector took much pride in his boy, and used to take him on
+book-hunting excursions, and sometimes to the Bank, on which occasions he
+would tell the Beef-Eaters how this was Robert Browning, the Third, and
+that all three of the R.B.'s were loyal servants of the Bank. And the
+Beef-Eaters would rest their staves on the stone floor, and smile
+Fifteenth-Century grimaces at the boy from under their cocked hats.
+
+Robert the Third was a healthy, rollicking lad, with power plus, and a
+deal of destructiveness in his nature. But destructiveness in a youngster
+is only energy not yet properly directed, just as dirt is useful matter in
+the wrong place.
+
+To keep the boy out of mischief, he was sent to a sort of kindergarten,
+kept by a spinster around the corner. The spinster devoted rather more
+attention to the Browning boy than to her other pupils--she had to, to
+keep him out of mischief--and soon the boy was quite the head scholar.
+
+And they tell us that he was so much more clever than any of the other
+scholars that, to appease the rising jealousy of the parents of the other
+pupils, the diplomatic spinster requested that the boy be removed from her
+school--all this according to the earnest biographer. The facts are that
+the boy had so much energy and restless ambition; was so full of brimming
+curiosity, mischief and imagination--introducing turtles, bats and mice on
+various occasions--that he led the whole school a merry chase and wore the
+nerves of the ancient maiden to a frazzle.
+
+He had to go.
+
+After this he studied at home with his mother. His father laid out a
+schedule, and it was lived up to, for about a week.
+
+Then a private tutor was tried, but soon this plan was abandoned, and a
+system of reading, best described as "natural selection," was followed.
+
+The boy was fourteen, and his sister was twelve, past. These are the ages
+when children often experience a change of heart, as all "revivalists"
+know. Robert Browning was swinging off towards atheism. He grew
+melancholy, irritable and wrote stanzas of sentimental verse. He showed
+this verse, high-sounding, stilted, bold and bilious, to his mother and
+then to his father, and finally to Lizzie Flower.
+
+A word about Lizzie Flower: She was nine years older than Robert Browning;
+and she had a mind that was gracious and full of high aspiration. She
+loved books, art, music, and all harmony made its appeal to her--and not
+in vain. She wrote verses and, very sensibly, kept them locked in her
+workbox; and then she painted in water-colors and worked in worsted. A
+thoroughly good woman, she was far above the average in character, with a
+half-minor key in her voice and a tinge of the heartbroken in her
+composition, caused no one just knew how. Probably a certain young curate
+at Saint Margaret's could have thrown light on this point; but he married,
+took on a double chin, moved away to a fat living and never told.
+
+No woman is ever wise or good until destiny has subdued her by grinding
+her fondest hopes into the dust.
+
+Lizzie Flower was wise and good.
+
+She gave singing lessons to the Browning children. She taught Master
+Robert Browning to draw.
+
+She read to him some of her verses that were in the sewing-table drawer.
+And her sister, Sarah Flower, two years older, afterwards Sarah Flower
+Adams, read aloud to them a hymn she had just written, called, "Nearer, My
+God, to Thee."
+
+Then soon Master Robert showed the Flower girls some of the verses he had
+written.
+
+Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate, and told his mother so. A young
+woman never cares anything for an unlicked cub, nine years younger than
+herself, unless Fate has played pitch and toss with her heart's true love.
+And then, the tendrils of the affections being ruthlessly lacerated and
+uprooted, they cling to the first object that presents itself.
+
+Lizzie Flower was a wallflower. That is to say, she had early in life rid
+herself of the admiration of the many, by refusing to supply an unlimited
+amount of small talk. In feature she was as plain as George Eliot. A boy
+is plastic, and even a modest wallflower can woo him; but a man, for her,
+inspires awe--with him she takes no liberties. And the wallflower woos the
+youth unwittingly, thinking the while she is only using her influence the
+better to instruct him.
+
+It is fortunate for a boy escaping adolescence to be educated and loved
+(the words are synonymous) by a good woman. Indeed, the youngster who has
+not violently loved a woman old enough to be his mother has dropped
+something out of his life that he will have to go back and pick up in
+another incarnation.
+
+I said Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate; and she declared that he was
+the brightest and most receptive pupil she had ever had.
+
+He was seventeen--she was twenty-six. They read Shelley, Keats and Byron
+aloud, and together passed through the "Byronic Period." They became
+violently atheistic, and at the same time decidedly religious: things that
+seem paradoxical, but are not. They adopted a vegetable diet and for two
+years they eschewed meat. They worshiped in the woods, feeling that the
+groves were God's first temples; and sitting at the gnarled roots of some
+great oak, they would read aloud, by turn, from "Queen Mab."
+
+On one such excursion out across Hampstead Heath they lost their copy of
+"Shelley" in the leaves, and a wit has told us that it sprouted, and as a
+result--the flower and fruit--we have Browning's poem of "Pauline." And
+this must be so, for Robert and Miss Flower (he always called her "Miss
+Flower," but she called him "Robert") made many an excursion, in search of
+the book, yet they never found it.
+
+Robert now being eighteen, a man grown--not large, but very strong and
+wiry--his father made arrangements for him to take a minor clerkship in
+the Bank. But the boy rebelled--he was going to be an artist, or a poet,
+or something like that.
+
+The father argued that a man could be a poet and still work in a bank--the
+salary was handy; and there was no money in poetry. In fact, he himself
+was a poet, as his father had been before him. To be a bank-clerk and at
+the same time a poet--what nobler ambition!
+
+The young man was still stubborn. He was feeling discontented with his
+environment: he was cramped, cabined, cribbed, confined. He wanted to get
+out of the world of petty plodding and away from the silly round of
+conventions, out into the world of art--or else of barbarism--he didn't
+care which.
+
+The latter way opened first, and a bit of wordy warfare with his father on
+the subject of idleness sent him off to a gipsy camp at Epsom Downs. How
+long he lived with the vagabonds we do not know, but his swarthy skin, and
+his skill as a boxer and wrestler, recommended him to the ragged gentry,
+and they received him as a brother.
+
+It is probable that a week of pure vagabondia cured him of the idea that
+civilization is a disease, for he came back home, made a bonfire of his
+attire, and after a vigorous tubbing, was clothed in his right mind.
+
+Groggy studies in French under a private tutor followed, and then came a
+term as special student in Greek at London University.
+
+To be nearer the school, he took lodgings in Gower Street; but within a
+week a slight rough-house incident occurred that crippled most of the
+furniture in his room and deprived the stair-rail of its spindles. R.
+Browning, the Second, bank-clerk, paid the damages, and R. Browning, the
+Third, aged twenty, came back home, formally notifying all parties
+concerned that he had chosen a career--it was Poetry. He would woo the
+Divine Goddess, no matter who opposed. There, now!
+
+His mother was delighted; his father gave reluctant consent, declaring
+that any course in life was better than vacillation; and Miss Flower, who
+probably had sown the dragon's teeth, assumed a look of surprise, but gave
+it as her opinion that Robert Browning would yet be Poet Laureate of
+England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Robert Browning awoke one morning with a start--it was the morning of his
+thirtieth birthday. One's thirtieth birthday and one's seventieth are days
+that press their message home with iron hand. With his seventieth
+milestone past, a man feels that his work is done, and dim voices call to
+him from across the Unseen. His work is done, and so illy, compared with
+what he had wished and expected! But the impressions made upon his heart
+by the day are no deeper than those his thirtieth birthday inspires. At
+thirty, youth, with all it palliates and excuses, is gone forever. The
+time for mere fooling is past; the young avoid you, or else look up to you
+as a Nestor and tempt you to grow reminiscent. You are a man and must give
+an account of yourself.
+
+Out of the stillness came a Voice to Robert Browning saying, "What hast
+thou done with the talent I gave thee?"
+
+What had he done? It seemed to him at the moment as if he had done
+nothing. He arose and looked into the mirror. A few gray hairs were mixed
+in his beard; there were crow's feet on his forehead; and the first joyous
+flush of youth had gone from his face forever. He was a bachelor, inwardly
+at war with his environment, but making a bold front with his tuppence
+worth of philosophy to conceal the unrest within.
+
+A bachelor of thirty, strong in limb, clear in brain and yet a dependent!
+No one but himself to support, and couldn't even do that! Gadzooks! Fie
+upon all poetry and a plague upon this dumb, dense, shopkeeping,
+beer-drinking nation upon which the sun never sets!
+
+The father of Robert Browning had done everything a father could. He had
+supplied board and books, and given his son an allowance of a pound a week
+for ten years. He had sent him on a journey to Italy, and published
+several volumes of the young man's verse at his own expense. And these
+books were piled high in the garret, save a few that had been bought by
+charitable friends or given away.
+
+Robert Browning was not discouraged--oh no, not that!--only the world
+seemed to stretch out in a dull, monotonous gray, where once it was green,
+the color of hope, and all decked with flowers.
+
+The little literary world of London knew Browning and respected him. He
+was earnest and sincere and his personality carried weight. His face was
+not handsome, but his manner was one of poise and purpose; and to come
+within his aura and look into his calm eyes was to respect the man and
+make obeisance to the intellect that you felt lay behind.
+
+A few editors had gone out of their way to "discover" him to the world,
+but their lavish reviews fell flat. Buyers would not buy--no one seemed to
+want the wares of Robert Browning. He was hard to read, difficult,
+obscure--or else there wasn't anything in it at all--they didn't know
+which.
+
+Fox, editor of the "Repository," had met Browning at the Flowers' and
+liked him. He tried to make his verse go, but couldn't. Yet he did what he
+could and insisted that Browning should go with him to the "Sunday
+evenings" at Barry Cornwall's. There Browning met Leigh Hunt, Monckton
+Milnes and Dickens. Then there were dinner-parties at Sergeant Talfourd's,
+where he got acquainted with Wordsworth, Walter Savage Landor and
+Macready.
+
+Macready impressed him greatly and he impressed Macready. He gave the
+actor a copy of "Paracelsus" (one of the pile in the garret) and Macready
+suggested he write a play. "Strafford" was the result, and we know it was
+stillborn, and caused a very frosty feeling to exist for many a year
+between the author and the actor. When a play fails, the author blames the
+actor and the actor damns the author. These men were human. Of course
+Browning's kinsmen all considered him a failure, and when the father paid
+over the weekly allowance he often rubbed it in a bit. Lizzie Flower had
+modified her prophecy as to the Laureateship, but was still loyal. They
+had tiffed occasionally, and broken off the friendship, and once I believe
+returned letters. To marry was out of the question--he couldn't support
+himself--and besides that, they were old, demnition old; he was past
+thirty and she was forty--Gramercy!
+
+They tiffed.
+
+Then they made up.
+
+In the meantime Browning had formed a friendship, very firm and frank, but
+strictly Platonic, of course, for Fanny Haworth. Miss Haworth had seen
+more of the world than Miss Flower--she was an artist, a writer, and moved
+in the best society. Browning and Miss Haworth wrote letters to each other
+for a while most every day, and he called on her every Wednesday and
+Saturday evening.
+
+Miss Haworth bought and gave away many copies of "Pauline," "Sordello" and
+"Paracelsus"; and informed her friends that "Pippa Passes" and "Two in a
+Gondola" were great quality.
+
+About this time we find Edward Moxon, the publisher (who married the
+adopted daughter of Charles and Mary Lamb), saying to Browning: "Your
+verse is all right, Browning, but a book of it is too much: people are
+appalled; they can not digest it. And when it goes into a magazine it is
+lost in the mass. Now just let me get out your work in little monthly
+instalments, in booklet form, and I think it will go."
+
+Browning jumped at the idea.
+
+The booklets were gotten out in paper covers and offered at a moderate
+price.
+
+They sold, and sold well. The literary elite bought them by the dozen to
+give away.
+
+People began to talk about Browning--he was getting a foothold. His
+royalties now amounted to as much as the weekly allowance from his father,
+and Pater was talking of cutting off the stipend entirely. Finances being
+easy, Browning thought it a good time to take another look at Italy. Some
+of the best things he had written had been inspired by Venice and
+Asolo--he would go again. And so he engaged passage on a sailing-ship for
+Naples.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shortly after Browning's return to London, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-four,
+he dined at Sergeant Talfourd's. After the dinner a well-dressed and
+sprightly old gentleman introduced himself and begged that Browning would
+inscribe a copy of "Bells and Pomegranates," that he had gotten specially
+bound. There is an ancient myth about writers being harassed by
+autograph-fiends and all that; but the simple fact is, nothing so warms
+the cockles of an author's heart as to be asked for his autograph. Of
+course Browning graciously complied with the gentleman's request, and in
+order that he might insert the owner's name in the inscription, asked:
+
+"What name, please?"
+
+And the answer was, "John Kenyon."
+
+Then Mr. Browning and Mr. Kenyon had a nice little visit, talking about
+books and art. And Mr. Kenyon told Mr. Browning that Miss Elizabeth
+Barrett, the poetess, was a cousin of his--he was a bit boastful of the
+fact.
+
+And Mr. Browning nodded and said he had often heard of her, and admired
+her work.
+
+Then Mr. Kenyon suggested that Mr. Browning write and tell her so--"You
+see she has just gotten out a new book, and we are all a little nervous
+about how it is going to take. Miss Barrett lives in a darkened room, you
+know--sees no one--and a letter from a man like you would encourage her
+greatly."
+
+Mr. Kenyon wrote the address of Miss Barrett on a card and pushed it
+across the table.
+
+Mr. Browning took the card, put it in his pocketbook and promised to write
+Miss Barrett, as Mr. Kenyon requested.
+
+And he did.
+
+Miss Barrett replied.
+
+Mr. Browning answered, and soon several letters a week were going in each
+direction.
+
+Not quite so many missives were being received by Fanny Haworth; and as
+for Lizzie Flower, I fear she was quite forgotten. She fell into a
+decline, drooped and died in a year.
+
+Mr. Browning asked for permission to call on Miss Barrett.
+
+Miss Barrett explained that her father would not allow it, neither would
+the doctor or nurse, and added: "There is nothing to see in me. I am a
+weed fit for the ground and darkness."
+
+But this repulse only made Mr. Browning want to see her the more. He
+appealed to Mr. Kenyon, who was the only person allowed to call, besides
+Miss Mitford--Mr. Kenyon was her cousin.
+
+Mr. Kenyon arranged it--he was an expert at arranging anything of a
+delicate nature. He timed the hour when Mr. Barrett was down town, and the
+nurse and doctor safely out of the way, and they called on the invalid
+prisoner in the darkened room.
+
+They did not stay long, but when they went away Robert Browning trod on
+air. The beautiful girl-like face, in its frame of dark curls, lying back
+among the pillows, haunted him like a shadow. He was thirty-three, she was
+thirty-five. She looked like a child, but the mind--the subtle,
+appreciative, receptive mind! The mind that caught every allusion, that
+knew his thought before he voiced it, that found nothing obscure in his
+work, and that put a high and holy construction on his every sentence--it
+was divine! divinity incarnated in a woman.
+
+Robert Browning tramped the streets forgetful of meat, drink or rest.
+
+He would give this woman freedom. He would devote himself to restoring her
+to the air and sunshine. What nobler ambition! He was an idler, he had
+never done anything for anybody. He was only a killer of time, a vagrant,
+but now was his opportunity--he would do for this beautiful soul what no
+one else on earth could do. She was slipping away as it was--the world
+would soon lose her. Was there none to save?
+
+Here was the finest intellect ever given to a woman--so sure, so vital, so
+tender and yet so strong!
+
+He would love her back to life and light!
+
+And so Robert Browning told her all this shortly after, but before he
+told, she had divined his thought. For solitude and loneliness and
+heart-hunger had given her the power of an astral being; she was in
+communication with all the finer forces that pervade our ether. He would
+love her back to life and light--he told her so. She grew better.
+
+And soon we find her getting up and throwing wide the shutters. It was no
+longer the darkened room, for the sunlight came dancing through the
+apartment, driving out all the dark shadows that lurked therein.
+
+The doctor was indignant; the nurse resigned.
+
+Of course, Mr. Barrett was not taken into confidence and no one asked his
+consent. Why should they?--he was the man who could never understand.
+
+So one fine day when the coast was clear, the couple went over to Saint
+Marylebone Church and were married. The bride went home alone--could walk
+all right now--and it was a week before her husband saw her, because he
+would not be a hypocrite and go ring the doorbell and ask if Miss Barrett
+was home; and of course if he had asked for Mrs. Robert Browning, no one
+would have known whom he wanted to see.
+
+But at the end of a week, the bride stole down the stairs, while the
+family was at dinner, leading her dog Flush by a string, and all the time,
+with throbbing heart, she prayed the dog not to bark. I have oft wondered
+in the stilly night season what the effect on English Letters would have
+been, had the dog really barked! But the dog did not bark; and Elizabeth
+met her lover-husband there on the corner where the mail-box is. No one
+missed the runaways until the next day, and then the bride and groom were
+safely in France, writing letters back from Dieppe, asking forgiveness and
+craving blessings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"She is the Genius and I am the Clever Person," Browning used to say. And
+this I believe will be the world's final judgment.
+
+Browning knew the world in its every phase--good and bad, high and low,
+society and commerce, the shop and gypsy camp. He absorbed things,
+assimilated them, compared and wrote it out.
+
+Elizabeth Barrett had never traveled, her opportunities for meeting people
+had been few, her experiences limited, and yet she evolved truth: she
+secreted beauty from within.
+
+For two years after their elopement they did not write--how could they?
+goodness me! They were on their wedding-tour. They lived in Florence and
+Rome and in various mountain villages in Italy.
+
+Health came back, and joy and peace and perfect love were theirs. But it
+was joy bought with a price--Elizabeth Barrett Browning had forfeited the
+love of her father. Her letters written him came back unopened, books
+inscribed to him were returned--he declared she was dead.
+
+Her brothers, too, discarded her, and when her two sisters wrote, they did
+so by stealth, and their letters, meant to be kind, were steel for her
+heart. Then her father was rich; and she had always known every comfort
+that money could buy. Now, she had taken up with a poor poet, and every
+penny had to be counted--absolute economy was demanded.
+
+And Robert Browning, with a certain sense of guilt upon him, for
+depriving her of all the creature comforts she had known, sought by
+tenderness and love to make her forget the insults her father heaped upon
+her.
+
+As for Browning, the bank-clerk, he was vexed that his son should show so
+little caution as to load himself up with an invalid wife, and he cut off
+the allowance, declaring that if a man was old enough to marry, he was
+also old enough to care for himself. He did, however, make his son several
+"loans"; and finally came to "bless the day that his son had sense enough
+to marry the best and most talented woman on earth."
+
+Browning's poems were selling slowly, and Mrs. Browning's books brought
+her a little royalty, thanks to the loyal management of John Kenyon, and
+so absolute want and biting poverty did not overtake the runaways.
+
+After the birth of her son, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, Mrs.
+Browning's health seemed to have fully returned. She used to ride
+horseback up and down the mountain passes, and wrote home to Miss Mitford
+that love had turned the dial backward and the joyousness of girlhood had
+come again to her.
+
+When John Kenyon died and left them ten thousand pounds, all their own, it
+placed them forever beyond the apprehension of want, and also enabled them
+to do for others; for they pensioned old Walter Savage Landor, and
+established him in comfortable quarters around the corner from Casa
+Guidi.
+
+I intimated a moment ago that their honeymoon continued for two years.
+This was a mistake, for it continued for just fifteen years, when the
+beautiful girl-like form, with her head of flowing curls upon her
+husband's shoulder, ceased to breathe. Painlessly and without apprehension
+or premonition, the spirit had taken its flight.
+
+That letter of Miss Blagdon's, written some weeks after, telling of how
+the stricken man paced the echoing hallways at night crying, "I want her!
+I want her!" touches us like a great, strange sorrow that once pierced our
+hearts.
+
+But Robert Browning's nature was too strong to be subdued by grief. He
+remembered that others, too, had buried their dead, and that sorrow had
+been man's portion since the world began. He would live for his boy--for
+Her child.
+
+But Florence was no longer his Florence, and he made haste to settle up
+his affairs and go back to England. He never returned to Florence, and
+never saw the beautiful monument, designed by his lifelong friend,
+Frederick Leighton.
+
+When you visit the little English Cemetery at Florence, the slim little
+girl that comes down the path, swinging the big bunch of keys, opens the
+high iron gate and leads you, without word or question, straight to the
+grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
+
+Browning was forty-nine when Mrs. Browning died.
+
+And by the time he had reached his fiftieth meridian, England, harkening
+to America's suggestion, was awakening to the fact that he was one of the
+world's great poets.
+
+Honors came slowly, but surely: Oxford with a degree; Saint Andrew's with
+a Lord-Rectorship; publishers with advance payments. And when Smith and
+Elder paid one hundred pounds for the poem of "Herve Riel," it seemed that
+at last Browning's worth was being recognized. Not, of course, that money
+is the infallible test, but even poetry has its Rialto, where the extent
+of appreciation is shown by prices current.
+
+Browning's best work was done after his wife's death; and in that love he
+ever lived and breathed. In his seventy-fifth year, it filled his days and
+dreams as though it were a thing of yesterday, singing in his heart a
+perpetual eucharist.
+
+"The Ring and the Book" must be regarded as Browning's crowning work.
+Offhand critics have disposed of it, but the great minds go back to it
+again and again. In the character of Pompilia the author sought to pay
+tribute to the woman whose memory was ever in his mind; yet he was too
+sensitive and shrinking to fully picture her. He sought to mask his
+inspiration; but tender, loving recollections of "Ba" are interlaced and
+interwoven through it all.
+
+When Robert Browning died, in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine, the world of
+literature and art uncovered in token of honor to one who had lived long
+and well and had done a deathless work. And the doors of storied
+Westminster opened wide to receive his dust.
+
+
+
+
+ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+    Not of the sunlight,
+    Not of the moonlight,
+    Nor of the starlight!
+    O young Mariner,
+    Down to the haven,
+    Call your companions,
+    Launch your vessel,
+    And crowd your canvas,
+    And ere it vanishes
+    Over the margin,
+    After it, follow it,
+    Follow the Gleam.
+                      --_Merlin_
+
+[Illustration: ALFRED TENNYSON]
+
+
+The grandfather of Tennyson had two sons, the elder boy, according to
+Clement Scott, being "both wilful and commonplace." Now, of course, the
+property and honors and titles, according to the law of England, would all
+gravitate to the commonplace boy; and the second son, who was competent,
+dutiful and worthy, would be out in the cold world--simply because he was
+accidentally born second and not first. It was not his fault that he was
+born second, and it was in no wise to the credit of the other that he was
+born first.
+
+So the father, seeing that the elder boy had small executive capacity, and
+no appreciation of a Good Thing, disinherited him, giving him, however, a
+generous allowance, but letting the titles go to the second boy, who was
+bright and brave and withal a right manly fellow.
+
+Personally, I'm glad the honors went to the best man. But Hallam Tennyson,
+son of the poet, sees only rank injustice in the action of his ancestor,
+who deliberately set his own opinion of right and justice against
+precedent as embodied in English Law. As a matter of strictest justice, we
+might argue that neither boy was entitled to anything which he had not
+earned, and that, in dividing the property between them, instead of
+allowing it all to drift into the hands of the one accidentally born
+first, the father acted wisely and well.
+
+But neither Alfred nor Hallam Tennyson thought so. How much their opinions
+were biased by the fact that they were descendants of the firstborn son,
+we can not say. Anyway, the descendants of the second son, the Honorable
+Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt, have made no protest of which I can learn,
+about justice having been defeated.
+
+Considering this subject of the Law of Entail one step further, we find
+that Hallam, the present Lord Tennyson, is a Peer of the Realm simply
+because his father was a great poet, and honors were given him on that
+account by the Queen. These honors go to Hallam, who, as all men agree, is
+in many ways singularly like his grandfather.
+
+Genius is not hereditary, but titles are. Hallam is eminently pleased with
+the English Law of Entail, save that he questions whether any father has
+the divine right to divert his titles and wealth from the eldest son. Lord
+Hallam's arguments are earnest and well expressed, but they seem to show
+that he is lacking in what Herbert Spencer calls the "value sense"--in
+other words, the sense of humor.
+
+Hallam's lack of perspective is further demonstrated by his patient
+efforts to explain who the various Tennysons were. In my boyhood days I
+thought there was but one Tennyson. On reading Hallam's book, however,
+one would think there were dozens of them. To keep these various men,
+bearing one name, from being confused in the mind of the reader, is quite
+a task; and to better identify one particular Tennyson, Hallam always
+refers to him as "Father," or "My Father." In the course of a recent
+interview with W.H. Seward, of Auburn, New York, I was impressed by his
+dignified, respectful, and affectionate references to "Seward." "This
+belonged to Seward," and "Seward told me"--as though there were but one.
+In these pages I will speak of Tennyson--there has been but one--there
+will never be another.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think Clement Scott is a little severe in his estimate of the character
+of Tennyson's father, although the main facts are doubtless as he states
+them. The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson, Rector of Somersby and Wood
+Enderby parishes, was a typical English parson. As a boy he was simply
+big, fat and lazy. His health was so perfect that it overtopped all
+ambition, and having no nerves to speak of, his sensibilities were very
+slight.
+
+When he was disinherited in favor of his younger brother, a keen, nervous,
+forceful fellow, he accepted it as a matter of course. His career was
+planned for him: he "took orders," married the young woman his folks
+selected, and slipped easily into his proper niche--his adipose serving as
+a buffer for his feelings. In his intellect there was no flash, and his
+insight into the heart of things was small.
+
+Being happily married to a discreet woman who managed him without ever
+letting him be aware of it, and having a sure and sufficient income, and
+never knowing that he had a stomach, he did his clerical work (with the
+help of a curate), and lived out the measure of his days, no wiser at the
+last than he was at thirty.
+
+In passing, we may call attention to the fact that the average man is a
+victim of Arrested Development, and that the fleeting years bring an
+increase of knowledge only in very exceptional cases. Health and
+prosperity are not pure blessings--a certain element of discontent is
+necessary to spur men on to a higher life.
+
+The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson had income enough to meet his wants,
+but not enough to embarrass him with the responsibility of taking care of
+it. Each quarterly stipend was spent before it arrived, and the family
+lived on credit until another three months rolled around. They had roast
+beef as often as they wanted it; in the cellar were puncheons, kegs and
+barrels, and as there was no rent to pay nor landlords to appease, care
+sat lightly on the Rector.
+
+Elizabeth, this man's wife, is worthy of more than a passing note. She was
+the daughter of the Reverend Stephen Fytche, vicar of Louth. Her family
+was not so high in rank as the Tennysons, because the Tennysons belonged
+to the gentry. But she was intelligent, amiable, fairly good-looking, and
+being the daughter of a clergyman, had beyond doubt a knowledge of
+clerical needs; so it was thought she would make a good wife for the newly
+appointed incumbent of Somersby.
+
+The parents arranged it, the young folks were willing, and so they were
+married--and the bridegroom was happy ever afterward.
+
+And why shouldn't he have been happy? Surely no man was ever blessed with
+a better wife! He had made a reach into the matrimonial grab-bag and drawn
+forth a jewel. This jewel was many-faceted. Without affectation or silly
+pride, the clergyman's wife did the work that God sent her to do. The
+sense of duty was strong upon her. Babies came, once each two years, and
+in one case two in one year, and there was careful planning required to
+make the income reach, and to keep the household in order. Then she
+visited the poor and sick of the parish, and received the many visitors.
+And with it all she found time to read. Her mind was open and alert for
+all good things. I am not sure that she was so very happy, but no
+complaints escaped her. In all she bore twelve children--eight sons and
+four daughters. Ten of these children lived to be over seventy-five years
+of age. The fourth child that came to her they named Alfred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tennyson's education in early youth was very slight. His father laid down
+rules and gave out lessons, but the strictness of discipline never lasted
+more than two days at a time. The children ran wild and roamed the woods
+of Lincolnshire in search of all the curious things that the woods hold in
+store for boys. The father occasionally made stern efforts to "correct"
+his sons. In the use of the birch he was ambidextrous. But I have noticed
+that in households where a strap hangs behind the kitchen-door, for ready
+use, it is not utilized so much for pure discipline as to ease the
+feelings of the parent. They say that expression is a need of the human
+heart; and I am also convinced that in many hearts there is a very strong
+desire at times to "thrash" some one. Who it is makes little difference,
+but children being helpless and the law giving us the right, we find
+gratification by falling upon them with straps, birch-rods, slippers,
+ferules, hairbrushes or apple-tree sprouts.
+
+No student of pedagogics now believes that the free use of the rod ever
+made a child "good"; but all agree that it has often served as a
+safety-valve for a pent-up emotion in the parent or teacher.
+
+The father of Alfred Tennyson applied the birch, and the boy took to the
+woods, moody, resentful, solitary. There was good in this, for the lad
+learned to live within himself, and to be self-sufficient: to love the
+solitude, and feel a kinship with all the life that makes the groves and
+fields melodious.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-eight, when nineteen years of age, Alfred was
+sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. He remained there three years, but
+left without a degree, and what was worse, with the ill-will of his
+teachers, who seemed to regard his as a hopeless case. He wouldn't study
+the books they wanted him to, and was never a candidate for academic
+distinctions.
+
+College life, however, has much to recommend it beside the curriculum. At
+Cambridge, Tennyson made the acquaintance of a group of young men who
+influenced his life profoundly. Kemble, Milnes, Brookfield and Spedding
+remained his lifelong friends; and as all good is reciprocal, no man can
+say how much these eminent men owe to the moody and melancholy Tennyson,
+or how much he owes to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tennyson began to write verse very young. His first line is said to have
+been written at five, and he has told of going when thirteen years of age
+to visit his grandfather, and of presenting him a poem. The old gentleman
+gave him half a guinea with the remark, "This is the first money you ever
+made by writing poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last!"
+When eighteen years of age, with his brother, Charles, he produced a thin
+book of thin verses.
+
+We have the opinion of Coleridge to the effect that the only lines which
+have any merit in the book are those signed C.T. Charles became a
+clergyman of marked ability, married rich, and changed his name from
+Tennyson to Turner for economic and domestic reasons. Years afterward,
+when Alfred had become Poet Laureate, rumor has it he thought of changing
+the "Turner" back to "Tennyson," but was unable to bring it about.
+
+The only honor captured by Alfred at Cambridge was a prize for his poem,
+"Timbuctoo." The encouragement that this brought him, backed up by Arthur
+Hallam's declaiming the piece in public--as a sort of defi to
+detractors--caused him to fix his attention more assiduously on verse. He
+could write--it was the only thing he could do--and so he wrote.
+
+At Cambridge he was in the habit of reading his poetry to a little coterie
+called "The Apostles," and he always premised his reading with the
+statement that no criticism would be acceptable.
+
+The year he was twenty-one he published a small book called, "Poems,
+Chiefly Lyrical." The books went a-begging for many years; but times
+change, for a copy of this edition was sold by Quaritch in Eighteen
+Hundred Ninety-five for one hundred eighty pounds. The only piece in the
+book that seems to show genuine merit is "Mariana."
+
+Two years afterward a second edition, revised and enlarged, was brought
+out. This book contains "The Lady of Shalott," "The May Queen," "A Dream
+of Fair Women" and "The Lotus-Eaters."
+
+Beyond a few fulsome reviews from personal friends and a little surly
+mention from the tribe of Jeffrey, the volume attracted little or no
+attention. This coldness on the part of the public shot an atrabilarian
+tint through the ambition of our poet, and the fond hope of a success in
+literature faded from his mind.
+
+And then began what Stopford Brooke has called "the ten fallow years in
+the life of Tennyson." But fallow years are not all fallow. The dark
+brooding night is as necessary for our life as the garish day. Great crops
+of wheat that feed the nations grow only where the winter's snow covers
+all as with a garment. And ever behind the mystery of sleep, and beneath
+the silence of the snow, Nature slumbers not nor sleeps.
+
+The withholding of quick recognition gave the mind of Tennyson an
+opportunity to ripen. Fate held him in leash that he might be saved for a
+masterly work, and all the time that he lived in semi-solitude and read
+and thought and tramped the fields, his soul was growing strong and his
+spirit was taking on the silken self-sufficient strength that marked his
+later days. This hiatus of ten years in the life of our poet is very
+similar to the thirteen fallow years in the career of Browning. These men
+crossed and recrossed each other's pathway, but did not meet for many
+years. What a help they might have been to each other in those years of
+doubt and seeming defeat! But each was to make his way alone.
+
+Browning seemed to grow through society and travel, but solitude served
+the needs of Tennyson.
+
+"There must be a man behind every sentence," said Emerson. After ten years
+of silence, when Tennyson issued his book, the literary world recognized
+the man behind it. Tennyson had grown as a writer, but more as a man. And
+after all, it is more to be a man than a poet. All who knew Tennyson, and
+have written of him, especially during those early years, begin with a
+description of his appearance. His looks did not belie the man. In
+intellect and in stature he was a giant. The tall, athletic form, the
+great shaggy head, the classic features, and the look of untried strength
+were all thrown into fine relief by the modesty, the half-embarrassment,
+of his manner.
+
+To meet the poet was to acknowledge his power. No man can talk as wise as
+he can look, and Tennyson never tried to. His words were few and simple.
+
+Those who met him went away ready to back his lightest word. They felt
+there was a man behind the sentence.
+
+Carlyle, who was a hero-worshiper, but who usually limited his worship to
+those well dead and long gone hence, wrote of Tennyson to Emerson: "One of
+the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of dusky hair; bright,
+laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most
+delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes
+cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is
+musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that
+may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet
+in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will
+grow to."
+
+And then again, writing to his brother John: "Some weeks ago, one night,
+the poet Tennyson and Matthew Arnold were discovered here sitting smoking
+in the garden. Tennyson had been here before, but was still new to
+Jane--who was alone for the first hour or two of it. A fine,
+large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man is Alfred;
+dusty, smoky, free and easy; who swims outwardly and inwardly, with great
+composure, in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos and
+tobacco-smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most restful,
+brotherly, solid-hearted man."
+
+The "English Idylls," put forth in Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, contained
+all the poems, heretofore published, that Tennyson cared to retain. It
+must be stated to the credit, or discredit, of America, that the only
+complete editions of Tennyson were issued by New York and Boston
+publishers. These men seized upon the immature early poems of Tennyson,
+and combining them with his later books, issued the whole in a style that
+tried men's eyes--very proud of the fact that "this is the only complete
+edition," etc. Of course they paid the author no royalty, neither did they
+heed his protests, and possibly all this prepared the way for frosty
+receptions of daughters of quick machine-made American millionaires, who
+journeyed to the Isle of Wight in after-days. Soon after the publication
+of "English Idylls," Alfred Tennyson moved gracefully, like a ship that is
+safely launched, into the first place among living poets. He was then
+thirty-three years of age, with just half a century, lacking a few months,
+yet to live. In all that half-century, with its many conflicting literary
+judgments, his title to first place was never seriously questioned. Up to
+Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, in his various letters, and through his close
+friends, we learn that Tennyson was sore pressed for funds. He hadn't
+money to buy books, and when he traveled it was through the munificence of
+some kind kinsman. He even excuses himself from attending certain social
+functions on account of his lack of suitable raiment--probably with a
+certain satisfaction.
+
+But when he tells of his poverty to Emily Sellwood, the woman of his
+choice, there is anguish in his cry. In fact, her parents succeeded in
+breaking off her relations with Tennyson for a time, on account of his
+very uncertain prospects. His brothers, even those younger than he, had
+slipped into snug positions--"but Alfred dreams on with nothing special in
+sight." Poetry, in way of a financial return, is not to be commended.
+Honors were coming Tennyson's way as early as Eighteen Hundred Forty-two,
+but it was not until Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, when a pension of two
+hundred pounds a year was granted him by the Government, that he began to
+feel easy. Even then there were various old scores to liquidate.
+
+The year Eighteen Hundred Fifty, when he was forty-one, has been called
+his "golden year," for in it occurred the publication of "In Memoriam,"
+his appointment to the post of Poet Laureate, and his marriage.
+
+Emily Sellwood had waited for him all these years. She had been sought
+after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and
+others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid
+forlorn. But she was true to her love for Alfred. Possibly she had not
+been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson's mother had been. When that
+dear old lady was past eighty she became very deaf, and the family often
+ventured to carry on conversations in her presence which possibly would
+have been modified had the old lady been in full possession of her
+faculties. On a day as she sat knitting in the chimney-corner, one of her
+daughters in a burst of confidence to a visitor, said, "Why, before Mamma
+married Papa she had received twenty-three offers of marriage!"
+
+"Twenty-four, my dear--twenty-four," corrected the old lady as she shifted
+the needles.
+
+No one has ever claimed that Tennyson was an ideal lover. Surely he never
+could have been tempted to do what Browning did--break up the peace of a
+household by an elopement. His love was a thing of the head, weighed
+carefully in the scales of his judgment. His caution and good sense saved
+him from all Byronic excesses, or foolish alliances such as took Shelley
+captive. He believed in law and order, and early saw that his interests
+lay in that direction. He belonged to the Church of England, and doubtless
+thought as he pleased, but ever expressed himself with caution.
+
+It is easy to accuse Tennyson of being insular--to say that he is merely
+"the poet of England." Had he been more he would have been less.
+World-poets have usually been revolutionists, and dangerous men who
+exploded at an unknown extent of concussion. None of them has been a safe
+man--none respectable. Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo and Whitman were
+outcasts.
+
+Tennyson is always serene, sane and safe--his lines breathe purity and
+excellence. He is the poet of religion, of the home and fireside, of
+established order, of truth, justice and mercy as embodied in law.
+
+Very early he became a close personal friend of Queen Victoria, and many
+of his lines ministered to her personal consolation. For fifty years
+Tennyson's life was one steady, triumphal march. He acquired wealth, such
+as no other English poet before him had ever gained; his name was known in
+every corner of the earth where white men journeyed, and at home he was
+beloved and honored. He died October Sixth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two,
+aged eighty-three, and for him the Nation mourned, and with deep sincerity
+the Queen spoke of his demise as a poignant, personal sorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at Cambridge he met Arthur Hallam--Arthur Hallam, immortal and
+remembered alone for being the comrade and friend of Tennyson.
+
+Alfred took his friend Arthur to his home in Lincolnshire one vacation,
+and we know how Arthur became enamored of Tennyson's sister Emily, and
+they were betrothed. Together, Tennyson and Hallam made a trip through
+France and the Pyrenees.
+
+Carlyle and Milburn, the blind preacher, once sat smoking in the little
+arbor back of the house in Cheyne Row. They had been talking of Tennyson,
+and after a long silence Carlyle knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and
+with a grunt said: "Ha! Death is a great blessing--the joyousest blessing
+of all! Without death there would ha' been no 'In Memoriam,' no Hallam,
+and like enough no Tennyson!" It is futile to figure what would have
+occurred had this or that not happened, since every act of life is a
+sequence. But that Carlyle and many others believed that the death of
+Hallam was the making of Tennyson, there is no doubt. Possibly his soul
+needed just this particular amount of bruising in order to make it burst
+into undying song--who knows! When Charles Kingsley was asked for the
+secret of his exquisite sympathy and fine imagination, he paused a space,
+and then answered--"I had a friend." The desire for friendship is strong
+in every human heart. We crave the companionship of those who can
+understand. The nostalgia of life presses, we sigh for "home," and long
+for the presence of one who sympathizes with our aspirations, comprehends
+our hopes and is able to partake of our joys. A thought is not our own
+until we impart it to another, and the confessional seems a crying need of
+every human soul.
+
+One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad.
+
+We reach the Divine through some one, and by dividing our joy with this
+one we double it, and come in touch with the Universal. The sky is never
+so blue, the birds never sing so blithely, our acquaintances are never so
+gracious, as when we are filled with love for some one.
+
+Being in harmony with one we are in harmony with all.
+
+The lover idealizes and clothes the beloved with virtues that exist only
+in his imagination. The beloved is consciously or unconsciously aware of
+this, and endeavors to fulfil the high ideal; and in the contemplation of
+the transcendent qualities that his mind has created, the lover is raised
+to heights otherwise unattainable.
+
+Should the beloved pass from the earth while this condition of exaltation
+endures, the conception is indelibly impressed upon the soul, just as the
+last earthly view is said to be photographed upon the retina of the dead.
+The highest earthly relationship is, in its very essence, fleeting, for
+men are fallible, and living in a world where material wants jostle, and
+time and change play their ceaseless parts, gradual obliteration comes
+and disillusion enters. But the memory of a sweet affinity once fully
+possessed, and snapped by Fate at its supremest moment, can never die from
+out the heart. All other troubles are swallowed up in this, and if the
+individual is of too stern a fiber to be completely crushed into the dust,
+time will come bearing healing, and the memory of that once ideal
+condition will chant in the heart a perpetual eucharist.
+
+And I hope the world has passed forever from the nightmare of pity for the
+dead: they have ceased from their labors and are at rest.
+
+But for the living, when death has entered and removed the best friend,
+Fate has done her worst; the plummet has sounded the depths of grief, and
+thereafter nothing can inspire terror. At one fell stroke all petty
+annoyances and corroding cares are sunk into nothingness. The memory of a
+great love lives enshrined in undying amber. It affords a ballast 'gainst
+all the storms that blow, and although it lends an unutterable sadness, it
+imparts an unspeakable peace. Where there is this haunting memory of a
+great love lost, there are always forgiveness, charity and a sympathy that
+makes the man brother to all who suffer and endure. The individual himself
+is nothing: he has nothing to hope for, nothing to lose, nothing to win,
+and this constant memory of the high and exalted friendship that once was
+his is a nourishing source of strength; it constantly purifies the mind
+and inspires the heart to nobler living and diviner thinking. The man is
+in communication with Elemental Conditions.
+
+To know an ideal friendship and to have it fade from your grasp and flee
+as a shadow before it is touched with the sordid breath of selfishness, or
+sullied by misunderstandings, is the highest good. And the constant
+dwelling in sweet, sad recollection on the exalted virtues of the one that
+has gone, tends to crystallize these very virtues in the heart of him who
+meditates them. The beauty with which love adorns its object becomes at
+last the possession of the one who loves.
+
+At the hour when the strong and helpful, yet tender and sympathetic,
+friendship of Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam was at its height, there
+came a brief and abrupt word from Vienna to the effect that Arthur was
+dead.
+
+    "In Vienna's fatal walls
+    God's finger touched him and he slept!"
+
+The shock of surprise, followed by dumb, bitter grief, made an impression
+on the youthful mind of Tennyson that the sixty years which followed did
+not obliterate.
+
+At first a numbness and a deadness came over his spirit, but this
+condition erelong gave way to a sweet contemplation of the beauties of
+character that his friend possessed, and he tenderly reviewed the gracious
+hours they had spent together.
+
+"In Memoriam" is not one poem; it is made up of many "short
+swallow-flights of song that dip their wings in tears and skim away."
+There are one hundred thirty separate songs in all, held together by the
+silken thread of love for the poet's lost friend.
+
+Seventeen years were required for their evolution. Some people, misled by
+the title, possibly, think of these poems as a wail of grief for the dead,
+a vain cry of sorrow for the lost, or a proud parading of mourning
+millinery. Such views could not be more wholly wrong.
+
+To every soul that has loved and lost, to those who have stood by open
+graves, to all who have beheld the sun go down on less worth in the world,
+these songs are a victor's cry. They tell of love and life that rise
+phoenix-like from the ashes of despair; of doubt turned to faith; of fear
+which has become serenest peace.
+
+All poems that endure must have this helpful, uplifting quality. Without
+violence of direction they must be beacon-lights that gently guide
+stricken men and women into safe harbors.
+
+The "Invocation," written nearly a score of years after Hallam's death,
+reveals Tennyson's personal conquest of pain. His thought has broadened
+from the sense of loss into a stately march of conquest over death for the
+whole human race. The sharpness of grief has wakened the soul to the
+contemplation of sublime ideas--truth, justice, nobility, honor, and the
+sense of beauty as shown in all created things. The man once loved a
+person--now his heart goes out to the universe. The dread of death is
+gone, and he calmly contemplates his own end and waits the summons without
+either impatience or fear. He realizes that death itself is a
+manifestation of life--that it is as natural and just as necessary.
+
+    "Sunset and evening star
+       And one clear call for me,
+     And may there be no moaning of the bar
+       When I put out to sea."
+
+The desire for sympathy and the wish for friendship are in his heart, but
+the fever of unrest and the spirit of revolt are gone. His heart, his
+hope, his faith, his life, are freely laid on the altar of Eternal Love.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BURNS
+
+              TO JEANNIE
+
+    Come, let me take thee to my breast,
+      And pledge we ne'er shall sunder;
+    And I shall spurn, as vilest dust,
+      The warld's wealth and grandeur.
+
+    And do I hear my Jeannie own
+      That equal transports move her?
+    I ask for dearest life, alone,
+      That I may live to love her.
+
+    Thus in my arms, wi' a' thy charms,
+      I clasp my countless treasure;
+    I'll seek nae mair o' heaven to share
+      Than sic a moment's pleasure.
+
+    And by thy een, sae bonnie blue,
+      I swear I'm thine for ever:
+    And on thy lips I seal my vow,
+      And break it shall I never.
+                              --_Robert Burns_
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BURNS]
+
+
+The business of Robert Burns was love-making.
+
+All love is good, but some kinds of love are better than others. Through
+Burns' penchant for falling in love we have his songs. A Burns
+bibliography is simply a record of his love-affairs, and the spasms of
+repentance that followed his lapses are made manifest in religious verse.
+
+Poetry is the very earliest form of literature, and is the natural
+expression of a person in love; and I suppose we might as well admit the
+fact at once that without love there would be no poetry.
+
+Poetry is the bill and coo of sex. All poets are lovers, and all lovers,
+either actual or potential, are poets. Potential poets are the people who
+read poetry; and so without lovers the poet would never have a market for
+his wares.
+
+If you have ceased to be moved by religious emotion; if your spirit is no
+longer exalted by music, and you do not linger over certain lines of
+poetry, it is because the love-instinct in your heart has withered to
+ashes of roses. It is idle to imagine Bobby Burns as a staid member of the
+Kirk; had he been so, there would now be no Bobby Burns. The literary
+ebullition of Robert Burns (he himself has told us) began shortly after he
+had reached the age of indiscretion; and the occasion was his being
+paired in the hayfield, according to the Scottish custom, with a bonnie
+lassie. This custom of pairing still endures, and is what the students of
+sociology call an expeditious move. The Scotch are great economists--the
+greatest in the world. Adam Smith, the father of the science of economics,
+was a Scotchman; and Draper, author of "A History of Civilization," flatly
+declares that Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" has influenced the people
+of Earth for good more than any other book ever written--save none.
+
+The Scotch are great conservators of energy.
+
+The practise of pairing men and women in the hayfield gets the work done.
+One man and one woman going down the grass-grown path afield might linger
+and dally by the way. They would never make hay, but a company of a dozen
+or more men and women would not only reach the field, but do a lot of
+work. In Scotland the hay-harvest is short--when the grass is in bloom,
+just right to make the best hay, it must be cut. And so the men and women,
+the girls and boys, sally forth. It is a jolly picnic-time, looked forward
+to with fond anticipation, and after recalled with sweet, sad memories, or
+otherwise, as the case may be.
+
+But they all make hay while the sun shines, and count it joy. Liberties
+are allowed during haying-time that otherwise would be declared
+scandalous; during haying-time the Kirk waives her censor's right, and
+priest and people mingle joyously. Wives are not jealous during
+hay-harvest, and husbands never faultfinding, because they each get even
+by allowing a mutual license. In Scotland during haying-time every married
+man works alongside of some other man's wife. To the psychologist it is
+somewhat curious how the desire for propriety is overridden by a stronger
+desire--the desire for the shilling. The Scotch farmer says, "Anything to
+get the hay in"--and by loosening a bit the strict bands of social custom,
+the hay is harvested.
+
+In the hay-harvest the law of natural selection holds; partners are often
+arranged for weeks in advance; and trysts continue year after year. Old
+lovers meet, touch hands in friendly scuffle for a fork, drink from the
+same jug, recline at noon and eat lunch in the shade of a friendly stack,
+and talk to heart's content, sweetening the labor of the long summer day.
+
+Of course this joyousness of the haying-time is not wholly monopolized by
+the Scotch. Haven't you seen the jolly haying parties in Southern Germany,
+France, Switzerland and the Tyrol? How the bright costumes of the men and
+the jaunty attire of the women gleam in the glad sunshine!
+
+But the practise of pairing is carried to a degree of perfection in
+Scotland that I have not noticed elsewhere. Surely it is a great economic
+scheme! It is like that invention of a Connecticut man, which utilizes the
+ebb and flow of the ocean-tides to turn a gristmill.
+
+And it seems queer that no one has ever attempted to utilize the waste of
+dynamic force involved in the maintenance of the Company Sofa.
+
+In Ayrshire, I have started out with a haying party of twenty--ten men and
+ten women--at six o'clock in the morning and worked until six at night. I
+never worked so hard, nor did so much. All day long there was a fire of
+jokes and jolly gibes, interspersed with song, while beneath all ran a
+gentle hum of confidential interchange of thought. The man who owned the
+field was there to direct our efforts and urge us on in well-doing by
+merry raillery, threat, and joyous rivalry.
+
+The point I make is this--we did the work. Take heed, ye Captains of
+Industry, and note this truth, that where men and women work together
+under right influences, much good is accomplished, and the work is
+pleasurable. Of course there are vinegar-faced philosophers who say that
+the Scotch custom of pairing young men and maidens in the hayfield is not
+without its effect on esoterics, also on vital statistics; and I'm willing
+to admit there may be danger in the scheme. But life is a dangerous
+business anyway--few indeed get out of it alive!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Burns succeeded in his love-making and succeeded in poetry, but at
+everything else he was a failure. He failed as a farmer, a father, a
+friend, in society, as a husband, and in business.
+
+From his twenty-third year his days were passed in sinning and repenting.
+
+Poetry and love-making should be carried on with caution: they form a
+terrific tax on life's forces. Most poets die young, not because the gods
+especially love them, but because life is a bank-account, and to wipe out
+your balance is to have your checks protested. The excesses of youth are
+drafts payable at maturity. Chatterton dead at eighteen, Keats at
+twenty-six, Shelley at thirty-three, Byron at thirty-six, Poe at forty,
+and Burns at thirty-seven, are the rule. When drafts made by the men
+mentioned became due, there was no balance to their credit and Charon
+beckoned.
+
+Most life-insurance companies now ask the applicant this question, "Do you
+write poetry to excess?" Shakespeare, to be sure, clung to life until he
+was fifty-three, but this seems to be the limit. Dickens and Thackeray,
+their candles well burned out, also died under sixty. Of course, I know
+that Browning, Tennyson, Morris and Bryant lived to a fair old age, but
+this was on borrowed time, for in the early life of each there was a
+hiatus of from ten to eighteen years, when the men never wrote a line, nor
+touched a drop of anything, bravely eschewing all honey from Hymettus.
+Then the four men last named were all happily married, and married life is
+favorable to longevity, but not to poetry. As a rule only single men, or
+those unhappily mated, make love and write poetry. Men happily married
+make money, cultivate content, and evolve an aldermanic front; but love
+and poetry are symptoms of unrest. Thus is Emerson's proposition partially
+proven, that in life all things are bought and must be paid for with a
+price--even success and happiness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Burns once explained to Doctor Moore that the first fine, careless rapture
+of his song was awakened into being when he was sixteen years old, by "a
+bonnie sweet sonsie lass" whom we now know as "Handsome Nell." Her other
+name to us is vapor, and history is silent as to her life-pilgrimage.
+Whether she lived to realize that she had first given voice to one of the
+great singers of earth--of this we are also ignorant. She was one year
+younger than Burns, and little more than a child when she and Bobby lagged
+behind the troop of tired haymakers, and walked home, hand in hand, in the
+gloaming. Here is one of the stanzas addressed to "Handsome Nell":
+
+    "She dresses all so clean and neat,
+    Both decent and genteel,
+    And then there's something in her gait
+    Makes any dress look weel."
+
+And how could Nell then ever guess why her cheeks burned scarlet, and why
+she was so sorry when haying-time was over? She was sweet, innocent,
+artless, and their love was very natural, tender, innocent. It's a pity
+that all loves can not remain in just that idyllic, milkmaid stage, where
+the girls and boys awaken in the early morning with the birds, and hasten
+forth barefoot across the dewy fields to find the cows. But love never
+tarries. Love is progressive; it can not stand still. I have heard of the
+"passiveness" of woman's love, but the passive woman is only one who does
+not love--she merely consents to have affection lavished upon her. When I
+hear of a passive woman, I always think of the befuddled sailor who once
+saw one of those dummy dress-frames, all duly clothed in flaming bombazine
+(I think it was bombazine) in front of a clothing establishment. The
+sailor, mistaking the dummy for a near and dear lady friend, embraced the
+wire apparatus and imprinted a resounding smack on the chaste
+plaster-of-Paris cheek. Meeting the sure-enough lady shortly after, he
+upbraided her for her cold passivity on the occasion named.
+
+A passive woman--one who consents to be loved--should seek occupation
+among those worthy firms who warrant a fit in ready-made gowns, or money
+refunded.
+
+Love is progressive--it hastens onward like the brook hurrying to the sea.
+They say that love is blind: love may be short-sighted, or inclined to
+strabismus, or may see things out of their true proportion, magnifying
+pleasant little ways into seraphic virtues, but love is not really
+blind--the bandage is never so tight but that it can peep. The only kind
+of love that is really blind and deaf is Platonic love. Platonic love
+hasn't the slightest idea where it is going, and so there are surprises
+and shocks in store for it. The other kind, with eyes wide open, is
+better. I know a man who has tried both. Love is progressive. All things
+that live should progress. To stand still is to retreat, and to retreat
+is death. Love dies, of course. All things die, or become something else.
+And often they become something else by dying. Behold the eternal Paradox!
+The love that evolves into a higher form is the better kind. Nature is
+intent on evolution, yet of the myriads of spores that cover earth, most
+of them are doomed to death; and of the countless rays sent out by the
+sun, the number that fall athwart this planet are infinitesimal. Edward
+Carpenter calls attention to the fact that disappointed love--that is,
+love that is "lost"--often affects the individual for the highest good.
+But the real fact is, nothing is ever lost. Love in its essence is a
+spiritual emotion, and its office seems to be an interchange of thought
+and feeling; but often thwarted in its object, it becomes general,
+transforms itself into sympathy, and embracing a world, goes out to and
+blesses all mankind.
+
+Very, very rare is the couple that has the sense and poise to allow
+passion just enough mulberry-leaves, so it will spin a beautiful silken
+thread, out of which a Jacob's ladder can be constructed, reaching to the
+Infinite. Most lovers in the end wear love to a fringe, and there remains
+no ladder with angels ascending and descending--not even a dream of a
+ladder. Instead of the silken ladder on which one can mount to Heaven,
+there is usually a dark, dank road to Nowhere, over which is thrown a
+package of letters and trinkets, all fastened round with a white ribbon,
+tied in a lover's knot. The many loves of Robert Burns all ended in a
+black jumping-off place, and before he had reached high noon, he tossed
+over the last bundle of white-ribboned missives and tumbled in after them.
+The life of Burns is a tragedy, through which are interspersed sparkling
+scenes of gaiety, as if to retrieve the depth of bitterness that would
+otherwise be unbearable. Go ask Mary Morison, Highland Mary, Agnes
+McLehose, Betty Alison, and Jean Armour!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The poems of Robert Burns fall easily into four divisions.
+
+First, those written while he was warmly wooing the object of his
+affection.
+
+Second, those written after he had won her.
+
+Third, those written when he had failed to win her.
+
+Fourth, those written when he felt it his duty to write, and really had
+nothing to say.
+
+The first-named were written because he could not help it, and are, for
+the most part, rarely excellent. They are joyous, rapturous, sprightly,
+dancing, and filled with references to sky, clouds, trees, fruit, grain,
+birds and flowers. Birds and flowers, by the way, are peculiarly lovers'
+properties. The song and the plumage of birds, and the color and perfume
+of flowers are all distinctly sex manifestations. Robert Burns sang his
+songs just as the bird wings and sings, and for the same reason. Sex holds
+first place in the thought of Nature; and sex in the minds of men and
+women holds a much larger place than most of us are willing to admit. All
+religious emotion and all art are born of the sex instinct.
+
+Burns' poems of the second variety, written after he had won her, are
+touched with religious emotion, or filled with vain regret and deep
+remorse, as the case may be, all owing to the quality and kind of success
+achieved, and the influence of the Dog-Star.
+
+Burns wrote several deeply religious poems. Now, men are very seldom
+really religious and contrite, except after an excess. Following a
+debauch a man signs the pledge, vows chastity, writes fervently of
+asceticism and the need of living in the spirit and not in the senses.
+Good pictures show best on a dark back-ground. Men talk most about things
+they do not possess.
+
+"The Cotter's Saturday Night," perhaps the most quoted of any of Burns'
+poems, is plainly the result of a terrible tip to t' other side. Bobby had
+gone so far in the direction of Venusburg that he resolved on getting
+back, and living thereafter a staid and proper life.
+
+In order to reform you must have an ideal, and the ideal of Burns, on the
+occasion of having exhausted all capacity for sin, is embodied in the
+"Saturday Night." It is all a beautiful dream. The real Scottish cotter is
+quite another kind of person. The religion of the live cotter is well
+seasoned with fear, malevolence and absurd dogmatism. The amount of love,
+patience, excellence and priggishness shown in "The Cotter's Saturday
+Night" never existed, except in a poet's imagination. In stanza Number Ten
+of that particular poem is a bit of unconscious autobiography that might
+as well ha' been omitted; but in letting it stand, Burns was loyal to the
+thought that surged through his brain.
+
+People who are not scientific in their speech often speak of the birds as
+being happy. My opinion is that birds are not any more happy than
+men--probably not as much so. Many birds, like the English sparrow and the
+blue jay, quarrel all day long. Come to think of it, I believe that man
+is happier than the birds. He has a sense of remorse, and this suggests
+reformation, and from the idea of reformation comes the picturing of an
+ideal. This exercise of the imagination is pleasure, for indeed there is a
+certain satisfaction in every form of exercise of the faculties. There is
+a certain pleasure in pain: for pain is never all pain. And sin surely is
+not wholly bad, if through it we pass into a higher life--the life of the
+spirit.
+
+Anything is better than the Dead Sea of neutral nothingness, wherein a man
+merely avoids sin by doing nothing and being nothing. The stirring of the
+imagination by sorrow for sin, sometimes causes the soul to wing a
+far-reaching upward flight.
+
+Asceticism is often only a form of sensuality: the man finds satisfaction
+in overcoming the flesh. And wherever you find asceticism you find
+potential passion--a smoldering volcano held in check by a devotion to
+duty; and a gratification is oft found in fidelity.
+
+The moral and religious poems of Burns were written in a desire to work
+off a fit of depression, and make amends for folly. They are sincere and
+often very excellent. Great preachers have often been great sinners, and
+the sermons that have moved men most are often a direct recoil from sin on
+the part of the preacher. Remorse finds play in preaching repentance. When
+a man talks much about a virtue, be sure that he is clutching for it.
+Temperance fanatics are men with a taste for strong drink, trying hard to
+keep sober. The moral and religious poems of Robert Burns are not equal to
+his love-songs. The love-songs are free, natural, untrammeled and
+unrestrained; while his religious poems have a vein of rotten warp running
+through them in the way of affectation and pretense. From this I infer
+that sin is natural, and remorse partially so. In Burns' moral poems the
+author tries to win back the favor of respectable people, which he had
+forfeited. In them there is a violence of direction; and all violence of
+direction--all endeavors to please and placate certain people--is fatal to
+an artist. You must work to please only yourself.
+
+Work to please yourself and you develop and strengthen the artistic
+conscience. Cling to that and it shall be your mentor in times of doubt:
+you need no other. There are writers who would scorn to write a muddy
+line, and would hate themselves for a year and a day should they dilute
+their honest thought with the platitudes of the fear-ridden. Be yourself
+and speak your mind today, though it contradict all you have said before.
+And above all, in art, work to please yourself--that Other Self that
+stands over and behind you, looking over your shoulder, watching your
+every act, word and deed--knowing your every thought. Michelangelo would
+not paint a picture on order. "I have a critic who is more exacting than
+you," said Meissonier--"it is my Other Self."
+
+Rosa Bonheur painted pictures just to please her Other Self, and never
+gave a thought to any one else, nor wanted to think of any one else, and
+having painted to please herself, she made her appeal to the great Common
+Heart of humanity--the tender, the noble, the receptive, the earnest, the
+sympathetic, the lovable. That is why Rosa Bonheur stands first among
+women artists of all time: she worked to please her Other Self.
+
+That is the reason Rembrandt, who lived at the same time Shakespeare
+lived, is today without a rival in portraiture. He had the courage to make
+an enemy. When at work he never thought of any one but his Other Self, and
+so he infused soul into every canvas. The limpid eyes look down into yours
+from the walls and tell of love, pity, earnestness and deep sincerity.
+Man, like Deity, creates in his own image, and when he portrays some one
+else, he pictures himself, too--this provided his work is Art. If it is
+but an imitation of something seen somewhere, or done by some one else, to
+please a patron with money, no breath of life has been breathed into its
+nostrils, and it is nothing, save possibly dead perfection--no more.
+
+Is it easy to please your Other Self? Try it for a day. Begin tomorrow
+morning and say: "This day I will live as becomes a man. I will be filled
+with good-cheer and courage. I will do what is right; I will work for the
+highest; I will put soul into every hand-grasp, every smile, every
+expression--into all my work. I will live to satisfy my Other Self."
+
+Do you think it is easy? Try it for a day.
+
+Robert Burns wrote some deathless lines--lines written out of the
+freshness of his heart, simply to please himself, with no furtive eye on
+Dumfries, Edinburgh, the Kirk, or the Unco Guid of Ayrshire; and these are
+the lines that have given him his place in the world of letters.
+
+The other day I was made glad by finding that John Burroughs, Poet and
+Prophet, says that the male thrush sings to please himself, out of pure
+delight; and pleasing himself, he pleases his mate. "The female," says
+Burroughs, "is always pleased with a male that is pleased with himself."
+
+The various controversial poems (granting for argument's sake that
+controversy is poetic) were written when Burns was smarting under the
+sense of defeat. These show a sharp insight into the heart of things, and
+a lively wit, but are not sufficient foundation on which to build a
+reputation. Ali Baba can do as well. Considering the fact that twice as
+many people make pilgrimages to the grave of Burns as visit the dust of
+Shakespeare, and that his poems are on the shelves of every library, his
+name now needs no defense. The ores are very seldom found pure, and if
+even the work of Deity is composite, why should we be surprised that man,
+His creature, should express himself in a varying scale of excellence!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was nothing of Jack Falstaff about Francis Schlatter, whose whitened
+bones were found amid the alkali dust of the desert, a few years ago--dead
+in an endeavor to do without meat and drink for forty days.
+
+Schlatter purported, and believed, that he was the reincarnation of the
+Messiah. Letters were sent to him, addressed simply, "Jesus Christ,
+Denver, Colorado," and he walked up to the General-Delivery window and
+asked for them with a confidence, we are told, that relieved the
+postmaster of a grave responsibility.
+
+Schlatter was no mere ordinary pretender, working on the superstitions of
+shallow-pated people. He lived up to his belief--took no money, avoided
+notoriety when he could; and the proof of his sincerity lies in the fact
+that he died a victim to it.
+
+Herbert Spencer has said all about the Messianic Instinct that there is to
+say, save this--the Messianic Instinct first had its germ in the heart of
+a woman. Every woman dreams of the coming of the Ideal Man--the man who
+will give her protection, even to giving up his life for her, and
+vouchsafe peace to her soul. I am told by a noted Bishop of the Catholic
+Church that many women who become nuns are prompted to take their vows
+solely through the occasion of an unrequited love. They become the bride
+of the Church and find their highest joy in following the will of Christ.
+He is their only Spouse and Master.
+
+The terms of endearment one hears at prayer-meetings, "Blessed Jesus,"
+"Dear Jesus," "Loving Jesus," "Elder Brother," "Patient, gentle Jesus,"
+etc., were first used by women in an ecstasy of religious transport. And
+the thought of Jesus as a loving, "personal Savior," would die from the
+face of the earth did not women keep it alive. The religious nature and
+the sex nature are closely akin: no psychologist can tell where the one
+ends and the other begins.
+
+There may be wooden women in the world, and of these I will not speak, but
+every strong, pulsing, feeling, thinking woman goes through life, seeking
+the Ideal Man. Whether she is married or single, rich or poor, old or
+young, every new man she meets is interesting to her, because she feels in
+some mysterious way that possibly he is the One.
+
+Of course, I know that every good man, too, seeks the Ideal Woman--but
+that deserves another chapter.
+
+The only woman in whose heart there is not the live, warm, Messianic
+Instinct is the wooden woman, and the one who believes she has already
+found him. But this latter is holding an illusion that soon vanishes with
+possession.
+
+That pale, low-voiced, gentle and insane man, Francis Schlatter, was
+followed at times by troops of women. These women believed in him and
+loved him--in different ways, of course, and with passion varying
+according to temperament and the domestic environment already existing.
+To love deeply is a matter of propinquity and opportunity.
+
+One woman, whom "The Healer" had cured of a lingering disease, loved this
+man with a wild, mad, absorbing passion. Chance gave her the opportunity.
+He came to her house, cold, hungry, homeless, sick. She fed him, warmed
+him, looked into his liquid eyes, sat at his feet and listened to his
+voice. She loved him--and partook of his every mental delusion.
+
+This woman now waits and watches in her mountain home for his return. She
+knows the coyotes and buzzards picked the scant flesh from his starved
+frame, but she says: "He promised he would come back to me, and he will. I
+am waiting for him here."
+
+This woman writes me long letters from her solitude, telling me of her
+hopes and plans. Just why all the cranks in the United States should write
+me letters, I do not know, but they do--perhaps there is a sort o'
+fellow-feeling. This woman may write letters to others, just as she does
+to me. Of this I do not know, but surely I would not thus make public the
+heart-tragedy told me in a private letter, were it not that the woman
+herself has printed a pamphlet, setting forth her faith and veiling only
+those things into which it is not our right to pry.
+
+This Mary Magdalene believes her lover was the Chosen Son of God, and that
+the Father will reclothe the Son in a new garment of flesh and send him
+back to his beloved. So she watches and waits, and dresses herself to
+receive him, and at night places a lighted lantern in the window to guide
+the way.
+
+She watches and waits.
+
+Other women wait for footsteps that will never come, and listen for a
+voice that will never be heard. All round the world there is a sisterhood
+of such. Some, being wise, lose themselves in loving service to others--in
+useful work. But this woman, out in the wilds of New Mexico, hugs her
+sorrow to her heart, and feeds her passion by recounting it, and watches
+away the leaden hours, crying aloud to all who will listen: "He is not
+dead--he is not dead! he will come back to me! He promised it--he will
+come back to me! This long, dreary waiting is only a test of my loyalty
+and love! I will be patient, for he will come back to me! He will come
+back to me!"
+
+This world would be a sorry place if most men conducted their lives on the
+Robert Burns plan. Burns was affectionate, tender, generous and kind; but
+he was not wise. He never saw the future, nor did he know that life is a
+sequence, and that if you do this, it is pretty sure to lead to that. His
+loves were largely of the earth.
+
+Excess was a part of his wayward, undisciplined nature; and that constant
+tendency to put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his brains, bound him
+at last, hand and foot. His old age could never have been frosty, but
+kindly--it would have been babbling, irritable, senile, sickening. Death
+was kind and reaped him young. Sex was the rock on which Robert Burns
+split. He seemed to regard pleasure-seeking as the prime end of life, and
+in this he was not so very far removed from the prevalent "civilized"
+society notion of marriage. But it is a phantasmal idea, and makes a mock
+of marriage, serving the satirist his excuse.
+
+To a great degree the race is yet barbaric, and as a people we fail
+utterly to touch the hem of the garment of Divinity. We have been mired in
+the superstition that sex is unclean, and therefore honesty and free
+expression in love matters have been tabued.
+
+But the day will yet dawn when we will see that it takes two to generate
+thought; that there is the male man and the female man, and only where
+these two walk together hand in hand is there a perfect sanity and a
+perfect physical, moral and spiritual health.
+
+We reach infinity through the love of one, and loving this one, we are in
+love with all. And this condition of mutual sympathy, trust, reverence,
+forbearance and gentleness that can exist between a man and a woman, gives
+the only hint of Heaven that mortals ever know. From the love of man for
+woman we guess the love of God, just as the scientist from a single bone
+constructs the skeleton--aye! and then clothes it with a complete garment.
+
+In their love-affairs women are seldom wise, or men just. How should we
+expect them to be when but yesterday woman was a chattel and man a
+slave-owner? Woman won by diplomacy--that is to say, by trickery and
+untruth, and man had his way through force, and neither is quite willing
+to disarm. An amalgamated personality is the rare exception, because
+neither Church, State nor Society yet fully recognizes the fact that
+spiritual comradeship and the marriage of the mind constitute the only
+Divine mating. Doctor Blacklock once said that Robert Burns had eyes like
+the Christ. Women who looked into those wide-open, generous orbs lost
+their hearts in the liquid depths.
+
+In the natures of Robert Burns and Francis Schlatter there was little in
+common; but their experiences were alike in this: they were beloved by
+women. Behind him Burns left a train of weeping women--a trail of broken
+hearts. And I can never think of him except as a mere youth--"Bobby
+Burns"--one who never came into man's estate. In all his love-making he
+never seemed really to benefit any woman, nor did he avail himself of the
+many mental and spiritual excellencies of woman's nature, absorbing them
+into his own. He only played a devil's tattoo upon her emotions.
+
+If Burns knew anything of the beauty and inspiration of a high and holy
+friendship between a thinking man and a thinking woman, with mutual aims,
+ideals and ambitions, he never disclosed it. The love of a man for a maid,
+or a maid for a man, can never last, unless these two mutually love a
+third something. Then, as they are traveling the same way, they may move
+forward hand in hand, mutually sustained. The marriage of the mind is the
+only compact that endures. I love you because you love the things that I
+love. That man alone is great who utilizes the blessings that God
+provides; and of these blessings no gift equals the gentle, trusting
+companionship of a good woman.
+
+So, having written thus far, I find that already I have reached the limit
+of my allotted space.
+
+In closing, it may not be amiss for me to state that Robert Burns was an
+Irish poet whose parents happened to be Scotch. He was born in Ayrshire in
+Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine. He died in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-six, and
+was buried at Dumfries by the "gentleman volunteers," in spite of his last
+solemn words--"Don't let the Awkward Squad fire over my grave!"
+
+His mother survived him thirty-eight years, passing out in Eighteen
+Hundred Thirty-four. Burns left four sons, each of whom was often pointed
+out as the son of his father--but none of them was.
+
+This is all I think of, at present, concerning Robert Burns.
+
+For further facts I must refer the Gentle Reader to the "Encyclopedia
+Britannica," a compilation that I cheerfully recommend, it having been
+vouched for to me by a dear friend, a clergyman of East Aurora, who, the
+past year, perused the entire work, from A to Z, reading five hours a day:
+and therefore is competent to speak.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN MILTON
+
+          Thus with the year
+    Seasons return; but not to me returns
+    Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
+    Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
+    Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
+    But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
+    Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men
+    Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
+    Presented with a universal blank
+    Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
+    And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
+    So much the rather thou, Celestial Light,
+    Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
+    Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
+    Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
+    Of things invisible to mortal sight.
+                                      --_Paradise Lost: Book III_
+
+[Illustration: JOHN MILTON]
+
+
+Shakespeare and Milton lived at the same time, though the difference in
+their ages was such that we may not speak of them as contemporaries. John
+Milton was eight years old when William Shakespeare died. The Miltons
+lived in Bread Street, and out of the back garret-window of their house
+could catch a glimpse of the Globe Theater.
+
+The father of John Milton might have known Shakespeare--might have dined
+with him at the "Mermaid," played skittles with him on Hampstead Heath,
+fished with him from the same boat in the river at Richmond; and then John
+Milton, the lawyer, might have discreetly schemed for passes to the
+"Globe" and gone with his boy John, Junior, to see "As You Like It"
+played, with the Master himself in the role of old Adam.
+
+Bread Street was just off Cheapside, where the Mermaid Tavern stood, and
+where Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson and other roysterers often lingered
+and made the midnight echo with their mirth. In all probability, John
+Milton, Senior, father of John Milton, Junior, knew Shakespeare well. But
+the Miltons owned their home; were rich, influential, eminently
+respectable; attended Saint Giles' Church, and really didn't care to
+cultivate the society of play-actors who kept bad hours, slept in the
+theater, and had meal-tickets at half a dozen taverns.
+
+There were six children born into the Milton family, three of whom died in
+infancy. Of the survivors, the eldest was Anne, the second John, the third
+Christopher.
+
+Anne was strong, robust and hearty; John was slender, pale, with dreamy,
+dark gray eyes and a head too big for his body; Christopher was so-so.
+And, in passing, it is well to explain, once for all, that Christopher
+made his way straight to the front in life, taking up his father's
+business and being appointed a Court Officer. Thence he was promoted to
+the Woolsack, became rich, cultivated a double chin, was knighted, and
+passed out full of honors. The chief worriment and source of shame in the
+life of Sir Christopher Milton came from the unseemly conduct of his
+brother John, who was much given to producing political and theological
+pamphlets. And once in desperation Sir Christopher Milton requested John
+Milton to change his family name, that the tribe of Milton might be saved
+the disgrace of having in it "a traducer of the State, an enemy of the
+King, and a falsifier of Truth." Sir Christopher Milton was an excellent
+and worthy man, and I must apologize for not giving him more attention at
+this time; but lack of space forbids.
+
+Sickly boys who are wise beyond their years are ever the pets of big
+sisters, and the object of loving, jealous, zealous care on the part of
+their mothers. John Milton talked like an oracle while yet a child, and
+one biographer records that even as a babe he sometimes mildly reproved
+his parents for levity.
+
+He was a precocious child, and have we not been told that precocity does
+not fulfill its promises? But this boy was an exception. He was incarnated
+into a family that prized music, poetry, philosophy, and yet held fast to
+the Christian faith. His father set psalms to music, his sister wrote
+madrigals, and his mother played sweet strains on a harp to waken him at
+morningtide. The entire household united in a devotion to poetry and art.
+Possibly this atmosphere of high thinking was too rarefied for real
+comfort--the gravity of the situation being sustained only by a stern
+effort.
+
+But no matter--father, mother and sister joined hands to make the pale,
+handsome boy a prodigy of learning: one that would surprise the world and
+leave his impress on the time.
+
+And they succeeded.
+
+Of the three Milton children that passed away in childhood, I can not but
+think that they succumbed to overtraining, being crammed quite after the
+German custom of stuffing geese so as to produce that delicious diseased
+tidbit known to gourmets as pate de foies gras. John Milton stood the
+cramming process like a true hero. His parents set him apart for the
+Church--therefore he must be learned in books, familiar with languages,
+versed in theories. They desired that he should have knowledge, which
+they did not know is quite a different thing from wisdom.
+
+So the boy had a private tutor in Greek and Latin at nine years of age,
+and even then began to write verse. At ten years of age his father had the
+lad's portrait painted by that rare and thrifty Dutchman, Cornelius
+Jansen. We have this picture now, and it reveals the pale, grave, winsome
+face with the flowing curls that we so easily recognize.
+
+No expense or pains were spared in the boy's education. The time was
+divided up for him as the hours are for a soldier. One tutor after another
+took him in hand during the day; but the change of study and a glad
+respite of an hour in the morning and the same in the afternoon, for
+music, bore him up.
+
+He was the pride of his parents, the delight of his tutors.
+
+Three years were spent at Saint Paul's School; then he was sent to
+Cambridge. From there he wrote to his mother, "I am penetrating into the
+inmost recesses of the Muses; climbing high Olympus, visiting the green
+pastures of Parnassus, and drinking deep from Pierian Springs."
+
+This is terrible language for a child of fourteen. A boy who should talk
+like that now would be regarded with anxious concern by his loving
+parents. The present age is incredulous of the Infant Phenomenon. And no
+fond parent must for a moment imagine that by following the system laid
+out for the education of John Milton can a John Milton be produced. The
+Miltonian curriculum, if used today, would be sufficient ground for action
+on the part of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
+
+But John Milton, though but a weak-eyed boy with a chronic headache, had a
+deal of whipcord fiber in his make-up. He stood the test and grubbed at
+his books every night until the clock tolled twelve. He was born at a
+peculiar time, being a child of the Reformation married to the
+Renaissance. The toughness and grimness of Calvin were united in him with
+the tenderness of Erasmus. From out of the Universal Energy, of which we
+are particles, he had called into his being qualities so diverse that they
+seemed never to have been before or since united in one person.
+
+He remained at Cambridge seven years. The beauty of his countenance had
+increased so that he was as one set apart. His finely chiseled features,
+framed in their flowing curls, challenged the admiration of every person
+he met. A writer of the time described him as "a grave and sober person,
+but one not wholly ignorant of his own parts."
+
+There is a sly touch in this sentence that sheds light upon "The Lady of
+Christ's." John Milton was a bit of a poseur, as Schopenhauer declares all
+great men are and ever have been. With the masterly mind goes a touch of
+the fakir or charlatan. Milton knew his power--he gloried in this bright
+blade of the intellect. He was handsome--and he knew it. And yet we will
+not cavil at his velvet coats, or laces, or the golden chain that adorned
+his slender, shapely person. These things were only the transient,
+springtime adornments that passion puts forth.
+
+And yet I see that one writer mentions the chaste and ascetic quality of
+Milton's early life as proof of a cold and measured nature. Seemingly the
+writer does not know that intense feeling often finds a gratification in
+asceticism, and that vows of chastity are proof of passion. There are many
+ways of working off one's surplus energy--Milton was married to his work.
+He traversed the vast fields of Classic Literature, read in the original
+from Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, French, Spanish, Latin and Italian. He delved
+into abstruse mathematics, studied music as a science, and labored at
+theology. In fact, he came to know so much of all religions that he had
+faith in none. He seemed to view religion in the cold, calculating light
+of a syllogistic problem--not as a warm, pulsing motive in life. His real
+religion was music, a fact he once frankly acknowledged.
+
+On the pinions of music he was carried out and away beyond the boundaries
+of time and space, and there he found that rest for his soul, without
+which he would have sunk to earth and been covered by the kindly, drifting
+leaves of oblivion.
+
+For some, the secrets of music, the wonder of love, and the misty,
+undefined prayers of the soul constitute true religion. When you place a
+creed in a crucible and afterward study the particles on a slide encased
+in balsam, you are apt to get a residuum or something--a something that
+does not satisfy the heart.
+
+Milton got well acquainted with theology. It was interesting, but not what
+he had supposed. He came to regard the Church as a useful part of the
+Government--divine, of course, as all good things are divine. But to
+become a priest and play a part--he would not do it. He was
+honest--stubbornly honest.
+
+Seven years he had been at Cambridge, and now that he was just ready to
+step into a "living"--right in the line of promotion of which his beauty
+and intellect tokened a sure presage--he balked.
+
+It was a great blow to his parents. His mother pleaded; his father
+threatened; but they soon perceived that this son they had brought forth
+had a will stronger than theirs. Their fond dreams of his preferment--the
+handsome face of their boy above an oaken pulpit, with thousands feeding
+on his words, the public honors, and all that--faded away into tears and
+misty nothingness. But parenthood is doomed to disappointment--it does not
+endure long enough to see the end. Youth is so headstrong and wilful: it
+will not learn from the experience of others.
+
+And all these years of preparation and expense! Better had he died and
+been laid to rest with the three now in the churchyard.
+
+Before Milton had served his seven years' apprenticeship at Cambridge, his
+parents moved to the village of Horton--twenty miles out of London,
+Windsor way.
+
+The village of Horton has not changed much with the years, and a tramp
+across the fields from Eton by way of Burnham Beeches and Stoke Pogis,
+where Gray wrote "The Elegy," is quite worth while. It is a land of lazy
+woods, and winding streams and hedgerows melodious with birds. One treads
+on storied ground, and if you wish you can recline beneath gnarled old
+oaks where Milton mused and scribbled, and wrote the first draft of "L'
+Allegro" and "Il Penseroso."
+
+Milton loitered here at Horton for six years, and in that time produced
+just six poems.
+
+He was thirty-two years of age, and had never earned a sixpence. But what
+booted it! His father and mother's home was his: they gladly supplied his
+every want; and his mother, especially, was ever his kindly critic and
+most intimate friend. His days were spent in study, dreams, lonely walks
+across green fields, and homecomings when, with his mother's hand in his,
+he would talk or recite to her in order to clarify the thought that
+pressed upon him. Very calm, very peaceful and very beautiful were those
+days. "The pensive attitude of mind brings the best result--not the
+active," he used to say. It was then he wrote to his old friend, Diodati:
+"You asked what I am about--what I am thinking of? Why, with God's help, I
+am thinking of immortality. Forgive the word, it is for your ear alone--I
+am pluming my wings for flight."
+
+The good mother had misty, prophetic visions of what this flight might be,
+and had ceased to counsel her son against the sin of idleness. But she did
+not live to see her prophecies confirmed, for in this time of peace and
+love, when the vibrant air was filled with hope, she passed Beyond.
+
+Long years after, John Milton exclaimed, "Oh! Why could she not have lived
+to know!" And the poignant grief of this son, then a man in years (with
+his thirtieth birthday well behind), turned on the thought that he had
+disappointed Her--the mother who had loved him into being.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton's woes began with his marriage--they have given rise to nearly as
+much discussion as his poetry. In his "Defensio Secunda," he tells, with a
+touch of pride, of the absolute innocency that continued until his
+thirty-fifth year. When we consider how his combined innocence and
+ignorance plunged him into a sudden marriage with a bit of pink-and-white
+protoplasm, aged seventeen, we can not but regret that he had not devoted
+a little of his valuable time to a study of femininity. And in some way we
+think of Thackeray, when he was being shown the marvelous works of a
+certain amateur artist. "Look at that! look at that!" cried the zealous
+guide, "and he never had a lesson in art in his life!"
+
+Thackeray adjusted his glasses, looked at the picture carefully, sighed
+and said, "What a pity he didn't have just a little good instruction!"
+
+Milton the student, versed in abstractions and full of learned lore, went
+up the Thames seeking a little needed rest. Five miles from Oxford lived
+an ebb-tide aristocratic family by the name of Powell. Milton had long
+known this family, and, it seems, decided to tarry with them a day or so.
+Just why he sought their company no one ever knew, and Milton was too
+proud to tell. The brown thrush, rival of the lark and mockingbird, seldom
+seeks the society of the blue jay. But it did this time. The Powells were
+a roaring, riotous, roystering, fox-hunting, genteel, but reduced family,
+on the eve of bankruptcy, with marriageable daughters.
+
+The executive functions of love-making are best carried on by shallow
+people; so mediocre women often show rare skill in courtship, and
+sometimes succeed in bagging big game. But surely Mary Powell had no
+conception of the greatness of Milton's intellect--she only knew that he
+was handsome, and her parents said he was rich.
+
+There was feasting and mirth when Milton arrived back in town accompanied
+by his bride and various of her kinsmen. In all marriage festivals there
+is something pathetically absurd, and I never see a sidewalk awning spread
+without thinking of the one erected for John Milton and Mary Powell, who
+were led through it by an Erebus that was not only blind, but stone-deaf.
+
+John Milton was an ascetic, and lived in a realm of reverie and dreams;
+his wife had a strong bias toward the voluptuous, reveling in a world of
+sense, and demanding attention as her right. Milton began diving into his
+theories and books, and forgot the poor child who had no abstract world
+into which to withdraw. Suddenly bereft of the gay companionship that her
+father's house supplied, she felt herself aggrieved, alone; and tears of
+vexation and homesickness began to stream down her pretty cheeks.
+
+When summoned into her husband's presence she had nothing to say, and
+Milton, the theorist, discovered that what he had mistaken for the natural
+reticence and bashfulness of maidenhood was mere inanity and lack of
+ideas. But the loneliness of the poor country girl, shut up in a student's
+den, is a deal more touching than the scholar's wail about "the silent and
+insensate" wife. The girl was being deprived of the rollicking freedom to
+which she had been used, but the great man was waking the echoes with his
+wail for a companionship he had never known.
+
+Yet the girl was shrewd. All women are shrewd, I am told, and some are
+wise and some are not; and many women there be who consider finesse an
+improvement on frankness. At the end of a month, Milton's wife contrived
+to have her parents send for her to return home on a visit that was to
+last only until come Michaelmas. But Michaelmas arrived and the young
+bride refused to return, sending back saucy answers to the great author of
+"Il Penseroso."
+
+In the meantime Milton wrote pamphlets urging that divorce should be
+granted on the grounds of incompatibility, and pronouncing as inhuman the
+laws that gave freedom from marital woes on no less ignoble grounds than
+that a man should violate his honor.
+
+There is pretty good evidence that a part of Milton's argument on the
+subject of divorce was written out while his wife was under his roof. This
+reveals a slight lack of delicacy as well as the author's habit to make
+copy out of his private griefs; but it must be granted that Milton goes to
+the very bottom of the subject, even to stating the fact that those
+happily married have neither pity nor patience with those mismated. "If
+you want sympathy," he says, "you must go to those who are regarded as not
+respectable," Any man who writes on philosophy can find his every cue in
+Plato, and he who discusses divorce from a radical standpoint can find
+himself anticipated by Milton in the Seventeenth Century. Every view is
+taken, even down to the suggestion of a probationary marriage, which
+Milton thought might come about when civilization had ceased to crawl and
+begun to walk.
+
+One seeks in vain to learn if the unhappy wife of Milton ever read her
+husband's bitter tracts. It is probable she never did, and would not have
+comprehended their import if she had; and it is still more likely that she
+never came to realize that she was wedded to the greatest man of the age.
+A truce was patched up, on the bankruptcy of her father, and she came back
+penitent, and was taken into favor. Not only did she come back, but she
+brought her family; and the ravenous Royalists consumed the substance of
+the spiritual and ascetic Puritan.
+
+Had Milton then died, it is probable that the gladsome widow would have
+been consoled and married again very shortly, just as did the widows of
+Van Dyck and Rubens--not knowing that to have been the wife of a king was
+honor enough for one woman.
+
+But after fifteen years of domestic "neglect," during which she doubtless
+benefited her husband by stirring in him a noble discontent, she passed
+from earth; and it was left for John Milton to repeat twice more his
+marital venture, with a similar result. And in this, Fate sends back a
+fact that leers like Mephistopheles, by way of answer to Milton's
+pamphlets on divorce: Why should the State grant a divorce, when great men
+refuse to learn by experience, and, given the opportunity, only repeat the
+blunders they have already made?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+God in His goodness has in certain instances sent great men angels of
+light for assistants--mates who could comprehend and sympathize with their
+ideals. But it is expecting too much to suppose that Nature can look out
+for such a trifle as that the right man should marry the right woman.
+Nature possibly never considered a time-contract, and she is a careless
+jade, anyway. She moves blindly along with never a thought for the
+individual.
+
+Audubon the naturalist records that one-third of all birds hatched tumble
+out of the nest before they can fly, and once on the ground the parent
+birds are unable either to warm, feed or protect them.
+
+Read the lives of the Great Men who have lived during the past three
+thousand years, and listen closely, and you will hear the wild wail of
+neglected and unappreciated wives. A woman can forgive a beating, but to
+be forgotten--never. She hates, by instinct, an austere and self-contained
+character. Dignity and pride repel her; preoccupation keeps her aloof;
+concentration on an idea is unforgivable.
+
+The wife of Tolstoy seeking to have her husband adjudged insane is not a
+rare instance in the lives of thinkers. To think thoughts that are
+different from the thoughts one's neighbors think is surely good reason
+why the man should be looked after. Recently we have had evidence that the
+wife of Victor Hugo regarded the author of "Les Miserables" with
+suspicion, and at one time actually made preparations to let him enjoy
+his exile alone--she would go back to Paris and enjoy life as every one
+should. At Guernsey there was no society!
+
+When Isaac Newton called upon his ladylove and in a fit of abstraction,
+looking about for a utensil to push the tobacco down in his pipe, chanced
+upon the lady's little finger, the law of gravitation was abrogated at
+once, and Newton and his pipe were sent, like nebulæ whirling into space.
+
+When the Great Inventor, absorbed in a problem as to Electricity (that
+thing which to us is only a name and of which we know nothing), forgets
+home, wife, child, supper; and midnight finds him in his laboratory, where
+he has been since sunrise--just imagine, if you please, the shrill
+greeting that is in cold storage for him when he stumbles home, haggard
+and worn, at dawn. How can he explain why he did this thing and answer the
+questions as to who was there, and what good it all did anyway!
+
+Thought is a torture, and requires such a concentration of energy that
+there is nothing left for the soft courtesies of marriage. The day is
+fleeting, and the night cometh when no man can work. The hot impulse to
+grasp and materialize the dream ere it fades, is strong upon the man.
+
+Of course he is selfish--he sacrifices everything, as Palissy did when
+fuel was short and the clay just at the turning-point. Yes, the artist is
+selfish: he sacrifices his wife and society, and himself, too, to get the
+work done. Four-o'clocks, mealtime, bedtime, and all the household system
+as to pink teas, calls and etiquette, stand for naught. And down the
+corridors of Time comes to us the shrill wail of neglected wives, and the
+crash of broken hearts echoes like the sound of a painter falling through
+a skylight. All this is the price of achievement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Making a little look backward into Milton's life, we find that until his
+thirty-third year he had not tasted of practical life at all. About that
+time his father, in a sort of desperation, packed him off to the
+Continent, in charge of a trusty attendant, who acted in the dual capacity
+of servant and friend. The letters he carried to influential men in Paris,
+Florence, Venice and Rome secured him the Speaker's eye, and his beauty
+and learning did the rest. His march was that of a conquering hero. In
+Paris he surprised the savants by addressing them in their own tongue, and
+reciting from their chief writers. This was repeated in Italy; and at
+Florence, as a sort of half-challenge for permission to occupy the highest
+seat, he was invited to read from his own compositions, which he did with
+such grace and power that thereafter all doors flew open at his touch.
+
+Returning to England after an absence of fifteen months, he found his
+father's household broken up, and through bad investments, the family
+fortune sadly depleted. But travel had added cubits to his stature: the
+mixture with men had put him into possession of his own, and he now felt
+well able to cope with the world. He secured modest lodgings in Saint
+Bride's Churchyard, and set to work to make a living and a name by
+authorship. His head teemed with subjects for poems, but cash advances
+were not forthcoming from publishers, and, to bridge over, he tried
+tutoring.
+
+It was at this time that "Paradise Lost," the one matchless epic of
+English literature, was conceived. Rough jottings were made as to
+divisions and heads, and a few stanzas were written of the immortal poem
+that was not to be completed for a score of years.
+
+The first volume of Milton's poems was issued in Sixteen Hundred
+Forty-five, when he was thirty-seven years of age. But before this he was
+known as the author of some pamphlets which had made political London
+reel. The writer was at once seen to be a man of remarkable learning and
+marvelous intellect, and the work secured Milton a few friends and divers
+enemies.
+
+From a man of leisure Milton had suddenly become a worker, whose every
+daylight hour was crammed with duties. His skill as a teacher brought him
+all the pupils he cared for, and he moved into better quarters in
+Aldersgate. He was immersed in his work, was making valuable acquaintances
+among literary people, was revered by his pupils, and the happiness was
+his of knowing that he was influential and independent. A fine
+intoxication comes to every brain-worker when the world acknowledges with
+tangible remittances that the product of his mind has a value on the
+Rialto. Such was Milton's joy in Sixteen Hundred Forty-three.
+
+The "Comus," "Il Penseroso," "L'Allegro" and "Lycidas" had established his
+place as a poet; and the power of his pen had been proven in sundry
+religious and political controversies.
+
+In his household were two sons of his sister and several other pupils who
+had sought his tutorship. He was contented in his work, pleased and happy
+with the young friends who sat at his board, and in an hour or two
+snatched each day from toil, for music and reverie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Seize upon the moments as they fly, O John Milton, and hug them to your
+heart! Those were days of gold when your mother was your patient listener
+and friend. Her love enveloped you as an aura; and her voice, soft and
+low, upheld you when courage faltered. But these, too, are glorious
+days--days full of work, and health, and hope, and high endeavor. But
+these days of peace and freedom are the last you shall ever know. Even now
+they flee as a shadow and fade into mist! Gross stupidity, silent and
+insensate, sits waiting for you at the door; calumny is near; taunting
+hate comes riding fast!
+
+The sympathy for which you yearn shall be yours only in dreams, and you
+shall be cheated of all the tenderness for which your heart prays. The
+love and gentleness which you associate with your mother, you ascribe in
+innocence and ignorance to all women; but Fate shall undeceive you, O John
+Milton, and make mock of all your high ideals. You dote on liberty, but
+liberty is not for you. You shall see the funeral of the Republic; the
+defamation of your honor; the proscription of all the sacred things you
+prize. Your companions shall not be of your own choosing, but shall be
+those who neither know nor value the sweet, subtle mintage of the mind.
+Around you mad riot shall surge, a hatred for liberty shall prevail--an
+enthusiasm for slavery. The glorious leaders of your Puritan faith shall
+be condemned and executed, hanged, cut down from the gallows alive, and
+quartered amid the hoarse insults of the people they sought to serve; and
+you yourself shall be hunted like a wild beast. You shall see the prisons
+filled to overflowing with men and women whose only crime was their love
+for truth. And a libertine shall sit on the throne of the England that you
+love. These things you shall see with those mild, dark eyes, and then
+night, eternal night, shall settle down upon you; and for those idle orbs
+no day shall dawn nor starry night appear, nor face of man nor child shall
+be reflected there. Your sightlessness shall give those who owe you
+gratitude and love, opportunity to filch your gold; and, lastly, fire
+shall rob you of your books, and well-nigh all your treasures.
+
+Like another Lear, your daughters shall neither esteem nor respect you,
+and the lines you dictate shall be to them but the idle vaporings of a
+mind diseased. Your acute ears shall hear these daughters express the wish
+that you were dead; and then in your blindness you will give yourself into
+the keeping of a woman as dull, inane and unfeeling as the foolish child
+you first chose as wife. But with it all your obstinacy shall constitute
+your power; and that beauty which was yours in youth shall be with you to
+the last. You shall feel all the torments of the damned and become inured
+to the scorching flames of hell! But, as recompense, the splendors of the
+Celestial Kingdom shall open upon your inward vision, and your soul shall
+behold that which the eyes of earth have lost. Something great and proud
+shall go out from your presence to all the discerning ones who shall
+approach you; and your end shall be like the setting of the sun, bright,
+calm, poised and resplendent.
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL JOHNSON
+
+    * * * Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in
+    your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which
+    time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which
+    it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the
+    verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of
+    encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not
+    expect, for I never had a patron before.
+
+    The shepherd in Vergil grew at last acquainted with Love, and
+    found him a native of the rocks.
+
+    Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+    struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the
+    ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been
+    pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind;
+    but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and can not enjoy
+    it; till I am a solitary, and can not impart it; till I am known,
+    and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to
+    confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be
+    unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a
+    patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.
+
+    Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to
+    any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I
+    should conclude it, should less be possible, with less; for I
+    have been long wakened from that dream of hope in which I once
+    boasted myself with so much exultation, my Lord.
+
+    Your Lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,
+                                             --_Sam Johnson_
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL JOHNSON]
+
+
+The critics, I believe, have made a distinction between large men and
+great men.
+
+Samuel Johnson was both. He was massive in intellect, colossal in culture,
+prodigious in memory, weighed nigh three hundred pounds, and had
+prejudices to match. He was possessed of a giant's strength, and
+occasionally used it like a giant--for instance, when he felled an
+offending bookseller with a folio.
+
+Johnson was most unfortunate in his biographer. In picturing the great
+writer, Boswell writes more entertainingly than Johnson ever did, and
+thereby overtops his subject. And when in reply to the intimation that
+Boswell was going to write his life, Johnson answered, "If I really
+thought he was, I would take his," he spoke a jest in earnest.
+
+Walking along Market Street in the city of Saint Louis, with a friend, not
+long ago, my comrade suddenly stopped and excitedly pointed out a man
+across the way--"Look quick--there he goes!" exclaimed my friend, "that
+man with the derby and duster--see? That's the husband of Mrs. Lease of
+Kansas!" And all I could say was, "God help him!"
+
+Not but that Mrs. Lease is a most excellent and amiable lady; but the
+idea of a man, made in the image of his Maker, being reduced to the social
+state of a drone-bee is most depressing.
+
+Among that worthy class of people referred to somewhat ironically as "the
+reading public," Boswell is read, but Johnson never. And so sternly true
+is the fact that many critics, set on a hair-trigger, aver that were it
+not for Boswell no one would now know that a writer by the name of Johnson
+ever lived. Yet the fact is, Boswell ruined the literary reputation of
+Johnson by intimating that Johnson wrote Johnsonese; but that is a
+mistake.
+
+Johnson never wrote Johnsonese. The piling up of reasons, the cumulation
+of argument--setting off epigram against epigram--that mark Johnson's
+literary style are its distinguishing features. He is profound, but always
+lucid. And lucidity is just what modern Johnsonese lacks. The word was
+coined by a man who had neither the patience to read Johnson nor the
+ability to comprehend him. Only sophomores, and private secretaries who
+write speeches for able Congressmen, write Johnsonese.
+
+Quibblers possibly may arise and present Johnson's definition of
+network--"anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances with
+interstices between the intersections"--but with the quibbler we have no
+time to dally. Some people insist on having their literature illustrated,
+just as others refuse to attend lectures that are not reinforced by a
+stereopticon.
+
+Johnson had a style that is stately, dignified, splendid. It moves from
+point to point with absolute precision, and in it there is seldom anything
+ambiguous, muddy, confused or uncertain. Get down a volume of "Lives of
+the Poets," and prove my point for yourself, by opening at any page. It
+was Boswell who set his own light, chatty and amusing gossip over against
+the wise, stately diction of Johnson, and allowed Goldsmith to say, "Dear
+Doctor, if you were to write a story about little fishes, you would make
+them talk like whales," and the mud ball has stuck. The average man is
+much more willing to take the wily Boswell's word for it than to read
+Johnson for himself.
+
+The balanced power of Johnson's English can not fail to delight the
+student of letters who cares to interest himself in the matter of
+sentence-building. Johnson handles a thought with such ease! He makes you
+think of the circus "strong man" who tosses the cannon-ball, marked
+"weight 250 lbs." What if the balls are sometimes only wood painted black!
+Have we not been entertained? Read this specimen paragraph:
+
+"Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very
+small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by Nature upon
+few, and the labor of learning those sciences which may by continuous
+effort be obtained is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can
+exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom
+Nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his
+vanity by the name of 'critic,'"
+
+But the greatest literary light of his day has been thrown into the shadow
+by a man whom no one suspected of being able to write entertainingly. In
+the world of letters the great Cham exists only as a lesser luminary; just
+as the once-noted novelist, George Henry Lewes, is now known only as the
+husband of George Eliot.
+
+And yet no one is so rash as to say that the name of Boswell would now be
+known were it not for Johnson. And conversely (or otherwise), if it were
+the proper place, I could show that were it not for George Henry Lewes we
+should never have had "Adam Bede" or "The Mill on the Floss."
+
+Boswell wrote the best "Life" ever written. Nothing like it was ever
+written before; nothing to equal it has been written since. It has had
+hundreds of imitators, but no competitors. Matthew Arnold said that no man
+ever had so good a subject, but Arnold for the moment seemed to forget
+that Hawkins, a professional literary man, published his "Life of Johnson"
+long before Boswell's was sent to the printer--and who reads Hawkins?
+
+Surely Boswell had a great subject, and he rises to the level of his theme
+and makes the most of it. At times I have wondered if Boswell were not
+really a genius so great and profound that he was willing to play the
+fool, as Edgar in "Lear" plays the maniac, and allow himself to be snubbed
+(in print) in order to make his telling point! Millionaires can well
+afford to wear ragged coats. Second-rate man Boswell may have been, as he
+himself so oft admits, yet as a biographer he stands first in the front
+rank. But suppose his extreme ignorance was only the domino disguising a
+cleverness so subtle that it was not discovered until after his death! And
+what if he smiles now, as from out of Elysium he looks and beholds how, as
+a writer, he has eclipsed old Ursa Major, and thus clipped the claws that
+were ready for any chance Scot who might pass that way!
+
+John Hay has suggested that possibly the insight, piquancy and calm wisdom
+of Omar Khayyam are two-thirds essence of FitzGerald. If so, the joke is
+on Omar, not on FitzGerald.
+
+A dozen of Johnson's contemporaries wrote about him, and all make him out
+a profound scholar, a deep philosopher, a facile writer. Boswell by his
+innocent quoting and recounting makes his conversation outstrip all of his
+other accomplishments. He reveals the man by the most skilful indirection,
+and by leaving his guard down, often allows the reader to score a point.
+And of all devices of writing folk, none is finer than to please the
+reader by allowing him to pat himself on the back.
+
+If a writer is too clever he repels. Shakespeare avoids the difficulty,
+and proves himself the master by keeping out of sight; Renan wins by a
+great show of modesty and deferential fairness; Boswell assumes an
+artlessness and ignorance that were really not parts of his nature. Every
+man who reads Boswell considers himself the superior of Boswell, and
+therefore is perfectly at home. It is not pleasant to be in the society of
+those who are much your superiors. Any man who sits in the company of
+Samuel Pepys for a half-hour feels a sort of half-patronizing pity for
+him, and therefore is happy, for to patronize is bliss.
+
+If Boswell has reinforced fact with fiction, and given us art for truth,
+then his character of Samuel Johnson is the most vividly conceived and
+deeply etched in all the realm of books. But if he gives merely the simple
+facts, then Boswell is no less a genius, for he has omitted the irrelevant
+and inconsequential, and by playing off the excellent against the absurd,
+he has placed his subject among the few great wits who have ever lived--a
+man who wrote remarkably well, but talked infinitely better.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Montaigne advises young men that if they will fall in love, why, to fall
+in love with women older than themselves. His argument is that a young and
+pretty woman makes such a demand on a man's time and attention that she is
+sure, eventually, to wear love to the warp. So the wise old Gascon
+suggests that it is the part of wisdom to give your affection to one who
+is both plain and elderly--one who is not suffering from a surfeit of
+love, and one whose head has not been turned by flattery. "Young women,"
+says the philosopher, "demand attention as their right and often flout the
+giver; whereas old women are very grateful."
+
+Whether Samuel Johnson, of Lichfield, ever read Montaigne or not is a
+question; but this we know, that when he was twenty-six he married the
+Widow Porter, aged forty-nine.
+
+Assuming that Johnson had read Montaigne and was mindful of his advice,
+there were other excellent reasons why he did not link his fortunes with
+those of a young and pretty woman.
+
+Johnson in his youth, as well as throughout life, was a Grind of the pure
+type. The Grind is a fixture, a few being found at every University, even
+unto this day. The present writer, once in a book of fiction, founded on
+fact, took occasion to refer to the genus Grind, with Samuel Johnson in
+mind, as follows: He is poor in purse, but great in frontal development.
+
+He goes to school because he wishes to (no one ever "sent" a Grind to
+college). He has a sallow skin, a watery eye, a shambling gait, but he has
+the facts. His clothes are outgrown, his coat shiny, his linen a dull
+ecru, his hands clammy. He reads a book as he walks, and when he bumps
+into you, he always exculpates himself in Attic Greek.
+
+This absent-mindedness and habit of reading on the street affords the
+Sport (another college type) great opportunity for the playing of pranks.
+It is very funny to walk along in front of a Grind who is reading as he
+walks, and then suddenly stop and stoop, and let the Grind fall over you;
+for the innocent Grind, thinking he has been at fault, is ever profuse in
+apologies.
+
+Many years ago there was a Grind. A party of Sports saw him approaching,
+deeply immersed in his book. "Look you," quoth the chief of the
+Sports--"look you and observe him fall over me."
+
+And they looked.
+
+Onward blindly trudged the Grind, reading as he came. The Sport stepped
+ahead of him, stooped, and ---- one big foot of the Grind shot out and
+kicked him into the gutter. Then the Grind continued his walk and his
+reading without saying a word.
+
+This incident is here recorded for the betterment of the Young, to show
+them that things are not always what they seem.
+
+Samuel Johnson, I have said, was a Grind of the pure type. He was so
+nearsighted that he fell over chairs in drawing-rooms, and so awkward that
+his long arms occasionally brushed the bric-a-brac from mantels. No lady's
+train was safe if he was in the room. At gatherings of young people, if
+Johnson appeared, his presence was at once the signal for mirth, of which
+he was, of course, the unconscious object.
+
+Johnson's face was scarred by the King's Evil, which even the touch of
+Queen Anne had failed to cure. While a youth he talked aloud to himself--a
+privilege that should be granted only to those advanced in years. He would
+grunt out prayers and expletives at uncertain times, keep up a clucking
+sound with his tongue, sway his big body from side to side, and drum a
+tattoo upon his knee. Now and again would come a suppressed whistle, and
+then a low humming sound, backed up by a vacant non-compos-mentis smile.
+
+Another odd whim of Johnson's was, that he would never pass a lamp-post
+without touching it, and would go back miles upon his way to repair an
+omission. Surely great wit to madness is near allied.
+
+This most strange young man was a boarder in the home of Mrs. Porter, when
+her husband was alive, and the husband and boarder had been fast
+friends--drawn together by a bookish bias.
+
+Very naturally, when the husband passed away, the boarder sought to
+console the bereaved landlady, and the result was as usual. And when, long
+years after, Johnson would solemnly explain that it was a pure love-match
+on both sides, the statement never failed to excite much needless and
+ill-suppressed merriment on the part of the listeners. In mimicking the
+endearments of Johnson and his "pretty creature"--so the admiring husband
+called her--Garrick many years later added to his artistic reputation.
+
+Unlike most literary men, Johnson was domestic, and his marriage was one
+of the most happy events of his career. But to show that the philosophy of
+Montaigne is not infallible, and that all signs fail in dry weather, it
+may be stated that the bride proved by her conduct on her wedding-day that
+she had some relish of the saltness of time in her cosmos, despite her
+fifty summers and as many hard winters.
+
+Said Johnson to Boswell, referring to the horseback-ride home after the
+wedding-ceremony: "Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into
+her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her
+lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and
+she could not keep up with me; and when I rode a little slower, she passed
+me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of
+caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on
+briskly, till I was fairly out of sight. The road lay between two hedges,
+so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon
+come up with me. When she did I observed her to be in tears."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shortly after his marriage, Johnson opened a private school for boys. To
+operate a private school successfully implies a certain amount of skill in
+the management of parents; but Johnson's uncouth manners and needlessly
+blunt speech were appalling to those who had children who might possibly
+be given to imitation.
+
+Only three pupils were secured, and but one of these received any benefit
+from the tutor; and this benefit came, according to the scholar, from the
+master's supplying an excellent object for ridicule.
+
+This pupil's name was David Garrick.
+
+The meeting with David Garrick was a pivotal point in the life of Johnson.
+Johnson's mental and spiritual existence flowed on, separate and apart
+from that of his wife. There was no meeting of the waters. His affection
+for her was most tender and constant, but in quality it seemed to differ
+but slightly from the sentiment he entertained toward "Hodge," his cat.
+
+Hodge was fed on oysters that his owner could ill afford; and after
+Johnson had spent the little fortune that belonged to his wife, the lady
+was regaled on the best and choicest that his income, or credit, could
+secure. But if one of those lightning-flashes of wit ever escaped him in
+her direction, we do not know it. Garrick evidently was the first flint
+that tried his steel. The distinctions of teacher and scholar were soon
+lost between these two, and the lessons took the turn of a fusillade of
+wit. They made comments on the authors they read, and comments on the
+people they met, and criticized each other with encaustic remarks that
+tested friendship to its extremest limit. And this continual skirmish that
+would have made sworn foes of common men in a day revealed to each that
+the other had the element of unexpectedness in his nature and was worth
+loving.
+
+Humor and melancholy go hand in hand; both are born of an extreme
+sensitiveness, and the man who smiles at the trivial misfits of life
+realizes also that all men who tread the earth are living under a sentence
+of death, and that Fate has merely allowed them an indefinite, but
+limited, reprieve.
+
+At the outset of Johnson's career, one can not but see that the
+companionship and nimble wit of Garrick saved his ponderous and melancholy
+mind from going into bankruptcy.
+
+And now we find them: one twenty-eight, big, nearsighted, theoretical,
+blundering; and the other twenty-one, slight, active, graceful, practical.
+They were alike in this: they both loved books and were possessed of the
+eager, earnest, receptive mind. To possess the hospitable mind! For what
+greater blessing can one pray?
+
+And then they were alike in other respects--they were desperately poor;
+neither had an income; neither had a profession; both were ambitious.
+Johnson had written a tragedy--"Irene"--and he had read it to Garrick
+several times, and Garrick said it was good and should make a hit. But
+Garrick didn't know much about tragedies--law was his bent--he had read
+law for two years, off and on. They would go to London and seize fortune
+by the scalp-lock. In London good lawyers were needed, and London was the
+only place for a playwright.
+
+They scraped together their pennies, borrowed a few more, got a single
+letter of introduction between them to some person of unknown influence,
+and started away, with the lacrimose blessings of the elderly bride, and
+of Davy's mother.
+
+They must have been a queer sight when the stage let them down at the
+Strand--dusty, dirty, tired and scared by the babel of sounds and sights!
+And no doubt Johnson's enormous size saved them from sundry insults and
+divers taunts that otherwise might have come their way.
+
+Those first few weeks in London were given to staring into shop-windows
+and wandering, open-mouthed, up and down. No one wanted the tragedy--the
+managers all sniffed at it. Little then did Davy dream, as they made their
+way from the office of one theater-manager to that of another, that he
+himself would some day own a theater and give the discarded play its first
+setting. And little did he think that he would yet be the foremost actor
+of his time, and his awkward mate the literary dictator of London. Oh!
+this game of life is a great play! The blissful uncertainty of it all!
+The ambitions, plans, strivings, heartaches, mad desires and vain reaching
+out of empty arms! The tears, the bitter disappointments, the sleepless
+nights, the echoes of prayers unheard, and the hollow hopelessness of love
+turned to hate!
+
+And then mayhap we do as Emerson did--go out into the woods, and all the
+trees say, "Why so hot, my little man?"
+
+Garrick, disappointed and undone at the thought of defeat in his chosen
+profession, turned to commercial life and then to the theater. At his
+first stage appearance he trembled with diffidence and all but fled in
+fright. He persevered, for he could do nothing else. He arose step by
+step, and honors, wealth and fame were his. Love came to him: he wedded
+the woman of his choice. And after his death she survived for forty-three
+years. She lived one hundred years, lacking two. Garrick was born in
+Seventeen Hundred Sixteen; and his wife died in Eighteen Hundred
+Twenty-two, which seems to bring the times of Johnson pretty close home to
+us. Throughout her long life, she lived in the memory of the love that had
+been hers; cherishing and protecting, idolizing, as did Mary Shelley, the
+one name and that alone.
+
+Johnson and Garrick thoroughly respected and admired each other, yet they
+often quarreled--they quarreled to the last. But when Davy had lain him
+down in his last sleep, aged sixty-three, it was Johnson, aged seventy,
+who wrote his epitaph, introducing into it the deathless sentence * * *
+"by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and
+impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three months in London and Johnson succeeded in getting a place on the
+editorial staff of "The Gentleman's Magazine." Prosperity smiled, not
+exactly a broad grin; but the expression was something better than a
+stony, forbidding stare.
+
+He made haste to go back to Lichfield after his "Letty," which name, by
+the way, is an improvement on Betty, Betsy or Tetsy--being baby-talk for
+Elizabeth.
+
+They took modest lodgings in a third floor back, off Fleet Street, and
+Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind
+condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt,
+never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky
+broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth--with the weapons of his
+dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved;
+jeered and praised; feared and idolized.
+
+Coming out of his burrow one dark night, he encountered an old
+beggar-woman who importuned him for alms. He was brushing past her, when
+one of her exclamations caught his ear.
+
+"Sir," said the woman, "I am an old struggler!"
+
+"Madam," replied Johnson, "so am I!" And he gave her his last sixpence.
+
+But life in London was cheap in those days--it is now if you know how to
+do it, or else have to. Johnson used to maintain that for thirty pounds a
+year one could live like a gentleman, and as proof would quote an
+imaginary acquaintance who argued that ten pounds a year for clothes would
+keep a man in good appearance; a garret could be hired for eighteen pence
+a week, and if any one asked your address you could reply, "I am to be
+found in such a place," Threepence laid out at a coffeehouse would enable
+one to pass some hours a day in good company; dinner might be had for
+sixpence, and supper you could do without. On clean-shirt day you could go
+abroad and call on your lady friends. Among Johnson's first literary tasks
+in London was the work of reporting the debates in Parliament. In order
+that the best possible results might be obtained, he resorted to the
+rather unique, but not entirely original, method of not attending
+Parliament at all. Two or three young men would be sent to listen to the
+debates; they would make notes giving the general drift of the argument,
+and Johnson would write out the speech. His style was exactly suited to
+this kind of work, being eminently rhetorical. And as at the time no
+public record of proceedings was kept and Parliament did not allow the
+press the liberty it now possesses--all being as it were clouded in
+mysterious awe--these reports of debates were eagerly sought after. To
+evade the law, a fictitious name was given the speaker, or his initials
+used in such a way that the individual could be easily recognized by the
+reading public.
+
+Some of Johnson's best work was done at this time, and in several
+instances the speaker, not slow to appreciate a good thing, allowed the
+matter to be reissued as his own. Long years after, a certain man was once
+praising the speeches of Lord Chesterfield and was led on to make
+explanations. He did so, naming two speeches, one of which he zealously
+declared had the style of Cicero; the other that of Demosthenes. Johnson
+becalmed the speaker by agreeing with him as to the excellence of the
+speeches, and then adding, "I wrote them both."
+
+The gruffness of Ursa Major should never be likened to that of the Sage of
+Chelsea. Carlyle vented his spleen on the nearest object, as irate
+gentlemen sometimes kick at the cat; but Johnson merely sparred for
+points. When Miss Monckton undertook to refute his statements as to the
+shallowness of Sterne by declaring that "Tristram Shandy" affected her to
+tears, Johnson rolled himself into contortions, made an exasperating
+grimace, and replied, "Why, dearest, that is because you are a dunce!"
+Afterward, when reproached for the remark, he replied, "Madam, if I had
+thought so, I surely would not have said it."
+
+Once, at the house of Garrick, to the terror of every one, Burke
+contradicted Johnson flatly, but Johnson's good sense revealed itself by
+his making no show of resentment. Burke's experience was, it must be said,
+exceptional. An equally exciting, but harmless occasion, was the only time
+that the author of "Rasselas" met the man who wrote the "Wealth of
+Nations," Johnson called Adam Smith a liar, and Smith promptly handed back
+an epithet not in the Dictionary. Nevertheless, old Ursa spoke in an
+affectionate praise of "Adam," as he called him thereafter, thus
+recognizing the right of the other man to be frank if he cared to be.
+Johnson wanted no privilege that he was not willing to grant to
+others--except perhaps that of dictator of opinions.
+
+When Blair asked Johnson if he thought any modern man could have written
+"Ossian," Johnson replied, "Yes, sir--many men, many women, and many
+children." And if Blair took umbrage at the remark, so much the worse for
+Blair.
+
+We have recently heard of the Boston lady who died and went to Heaven, and
+on being questioned by an archangel as to how she liked it, replied
+languidly, "Very, very beautiful it all is!" And then sighed and added,
+"But it is not Boston!" This story seems to illustrate that all tales have
+their prototype, for Boswell tells of taking Doctor Johnson out to
+Greenwich Park, and saying, "Now, now, isn't this fine!" But Johnson would
+not enthuse; he only grunted, "All very fine--but it's not Fleet Street."
+
+On another occasion when a Scotchman was dilating on the noble prospects
+to be enjoyed among the hills of Scotland, Johnson called a halt by
+saying, "Sir, let me tell you that the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever
+sees is the highroad that leads him to England."
+
+This seems to evince a strong prejudice toward Scotland, and several
+Scots, with their usual plentiful lack of wit, have so solemnly written it
+down. But the more sensible way is to conclude that the situation simply
+afforded opportunity for a little harmless banter.
+
+Another equally indisputable proof of prejudice is shown when Boswell
+tells Johnson of the wonderful preaching of a Quaker woman. Johnson
+listened in grim, cold silence and then exclaimed: "Sir, a woman's
+preaching is like a dog's walking on its hind legs. It is not done well;
+but you are surprised to find it done at all."
+
+One of the leading encyclopedias, I see, says, "Doctor Johnson was one of
+the greatest conversationalists of all time." The writer evidently does
+not distinguish between talk, conversation and harangue. Johnson could
+talk and he often harangued; but he was not a conversationalist. Neither
+could he address a public assembly, and I do not find that he ever
+attempted it. Good talkers are seldom orators. One reads with amusement
+tinged with pity, of Carlyle's sleepless nights and cold, terror-fraught
+anticipations of his Lord Rector's speech. In deliberative gatherings a
+very small man could apply the snuffers to the great Dictator of Letters.
+
+"Sir," said Doctor Johnson to a talkative politician, at a dinner-party,
+"I perceive you are a vile Whig," and then he proceeded to demolish him.
+Yet Johnson himself was a Whig, although he never knew it; just as he was
+a liberal in religion, and yet was boastful of being a stanch Churchman.
+
+Johnson's irritability never vented itself against the helpless. His
+charity knew no limit--not even the bottom of his purse. When he had no
+money to give, he borrowed it. And when his pension was three hundred
+pounds a year, the Thrales could not figure out that he spent more than
+seventy or eighty on himself. The rest went to his dependents. In his
+latter days his home was a regular museum of waifs and strays. There was
+Miss Williams, the ancient aristocratic spinster who came to London to
+have an operation performed on one of her eyes. She came to Johnson's home
+and remained ten years, because she had been a friend of his wife. This
+claim was enough, and she slid into the head place in Johnson's household.
+Her peevishness used to drive the old man, at times, into the street; but
+that tongue of his, with its crushing retorts, was ever silent and tender
+towards her. The poor creature became blind, and used to shock the finicky
+Boswell by testing the fulness of the teacups with her finger.
+
+Then there was a Mrs. Desmoulins and her daughter, who drifted down from
+Lichfield and came to Johnson, because forty years before, he, too, had
+lived in Lichfield. He gave them house-room, treated them as guests, and
+each week left a half-guinea on the mantel of their room.
+
+Then there was the broken-down Levett, and Francis Barber, who, coming as
+a servant, remained as one of the family, because he was too old to work.
+A Miss Carmichael, in green spectacles and bombazine, carrying a cane,
+completed what the Doctor called his "seraglio." Writing to Mrs. Thrale in
+playful mood, telling of his household troubles, he says, "Williams hates
+everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins
+hates them both; Poll loves none of them." And he, the great, gruff and
+mighty Ursa Major, listened to all their woes, caring for them in
+sickness, wiping the death-dew from their foreheads, wearing crape upon
+his sleeve for them when dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This man tasted all the fame that is one man's due; he had all the money
+he needed, or knew how to use; the coveted LL.D. came from his Alma Mater;
+and the patronage from Lord Chesterfield, for which he craved, only that
+he might fling it back. He was the friend and confidant of the great and
+proud, deferred to by the King and sought out by those who prized the
+far-reaching mind and subtle imagination--the things that link us with the
+Infinite. The fear of hell and dread of death that haunted him in youth
+and middle age, finally gave way to faith and trust. When partial
+paralysis came to him at midnight, his sanity did not fail him, and
+knowing the worst, he yet hesitated to disturb the other members of the
+household, but went to sleep, philosophizing on the phenomena of the
+case--alert for more knowledge, as was his wont. Morning came and being
+speechless, he wrote on his ever-ready pad of paper and handing the sheet
+to his servant, watched with amused glances the perplexity and terror of
+the man. He next wrote to his friend, Mrs. Thrale, that letter, a classic
+of wit and resignation, wherein he explains his condition and excuses
+himself for not calling upon her and explaining the matter by word of
+mouth.
+
+Such willingness to accept the inevitable is curative. He grew better and
+recovered his speech. But old age is a disease that has no cure save
+death. Johnson accepted the issue as a brave man should--thankful for the
+gift of conscious life that had been his. When the last hour was nigh he
+sent loving messages to his nearest friends, repeating their names over
+one by one. His last recorded words were directed to a young woman who
+called upon him, "God bless you, my dear."
+
+And so he passed painlessly and quietly into the sleep that knows no
+waking; pleased at last to know that his dust would rest in Westminster
+Abbey.
+
+Thus ended, as the day dies out of the western sky, this life, seemingly
+so full of tempest and contradiction. The autumn of his life was full of
+enjoyment, and no day passed but that some one, weak, weary and worn,
+arose and called him blessed. Most of his wild imprecations and blustering
+contradictions were reserved for those who fattened on such things, and
+who came to be tossed and gored. In his spirit Socrates and Falstaff
+joined hands. In his life there was a deal of gladness--far, far more than
+of misery and unrest; which fact I believe is true of every life.
+
+The Universe seems planned for good.
+
+A world made up of such men as Samuel Johnson would be a wild chaos of
+tasks undone. But since Nature has never sent but one such man, and more
+than a century has passed since his death and we know not yet with whom to
+compare him, we need have no fears. The world is held in place through the
+opposition of forces: and the body of every healthy man is the
+battle-ground of animal organisms that match strength against strength.
+So, too, a healthy society always has these active and sturdy organisms,
+which set in play other forces that hold in check their seeming excess.
+That the Divine Energy should incarnate itself and find expression in the
+form of a man, and that this man should inspire others to think and write,
+to do and dare, is a subject the contemplation of which should make us
+stand uncovered. The companionship of Johnson inspired Reynolds to better
+painting, Garrick to stronger acting, Burke to more profound thinking--and
+hundreds of others, too, quenched their thirst at the rock which he smote
+whenever he discoursed or wrote.
+
+Sympathy is the first essential to insight. So with sympathy, I pray,
+behold this blundering giant, and you will see that the basis of his
+character was a great Sincerity. He was honest--doggedly honest--and saw
+with flashing vision the thing that was; and thither he followed,
+crowding, pushing, knocking down whatsoever opinion or prejudice was in
+the way. And so he ever struggled forward. But hate him not, for he is thy
+brother--yea! he is brother to all who strive and reach forward toward the
+Ideal. Shining through dust and disorder, now victorious, now eclipsed in
+deepest gloom, in him is the light of genius; and this is never base, but
+at the worst is admirable, lovable with pity. There was pride in his
+heart, but no vanity; and he should be loved for this if for no other
+reason: he had the courage to make an enemy. In his great heart were wild
+burstings of affection, and a hunger for love that only the grave
+requited. There, too, were fierce flashes of wrath, smothered in an hour
+by the soft dew of pity. His faults and follies were manifold, as he often
+lamented with tears; but the soul of the man was sublime in its
+qualities--worldwide in its influence.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+
+    The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and
+    spirit of the age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact,
+    he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not
+    authenticated by sufficient testimony. But by judicious
+    selection, rejection and arrangement, he gives to truth those
+    attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative
+    a due subordination is observed: some transactions are prominent;
+    others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is
+    increased or diminished, not according to the dignity of the
+    persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which
+    they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man.
+                                                --_Essay on History_
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS MACAULAY]
+
+
+Success is in the blood.
+
+There are men whom Fate can never keep down--they march jauntily forward,
+and take by divine right the best of everything that earth affords. But
+their success is not attained by the Doctor Samuel Smiles Connecticut
+policy. They do not lie in wait, nor scheme, nor fawn, nor seek to adapt
+their sails to catch the breeze of popular favor. Still, they are ever
+alert and alive to any good that may come their way, and when it comes
+they simply appropriate it, and tarrying not, move steadily forward.
+
+Good health! Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the
+crown of your head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in
+sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every
+hand-clasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and never waste a minute
+thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would
+like to do, and then without violence of direction you will move straight
+to the goal.
+
+Fear is the rock on which we split, and hate is the shoal on which many a
+bark is stranded. When we are fearful, the judgment is as unreliable as
+the compass of a ship whose hold is full of iron ore; when we hate, we
+have unshipped the rudder; and if we stop to meditate on what the gossips
+say, we have allowed a hawser to befoul the screw.
+
+Keep your mind on the great and splendid thing you would like to do; and
+then, as the days go gliding by, you will find yourself unconsciously
+seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfilment of
+your desire, just as the coral-insect takes from the running tide the
+elements that it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful
+person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming
+you into that particular individual. Thought is supreme, and to think is
+often better than to do.
+
+Preserve a right mental attitude--the attitude of courage, frankness and
+good-cheer.
+
+To think rightly is to create.
+
+Darwin and Spencer have told us that this is the method of Creation. Each
+animal has evolved the parts it needed and desired. The horse is fleet
+because it wishes to be; the bird flies because it desires to; the duck
+has a web-foot because it wants to swim. All things come through desire,
+and every sincere prayer is answered. Many people know this, but they do
+not believe it thoroughly enough so that it shapes their lives.
+
+We want friends, so we scheme and chase 'cross lots after strong people,
+and lie in wait for good folks--or alleged good folks--hoping to attach
+ourselves to them. The only way to secure friends is to be one.
+
+And before you are fit for friendship you must be able to do without it.
+That is to say, you must have sufficient self-reliance to take care of
+yourself, and then out of the surplus of your energy you can do for
+others. The man who craves friendship, and yet desires a self-centered
+spirit more, will never lack for friends.
+
+If you would have friends, cultivate solitude instead of society. Drink in
+the ozone; bathe in the sunshine; and out in the silent night, under the
+stars, say to yourself again and yet again, "I am a part of all my eyes
+behold!" And the feeling will surely come to you that you are no mere
+interloper between earth and sky; but that you are a necessary particle of
+the Whole. No harm can come to you that does not come to all, and if you
+shall go down, it can only be amid a wreck of worlds.
+
+Thus by laying hold on the forces of the Universe, you are strong with
+them. And when you realize this, all else is easy, for in your arteries
+course red corpuscles, and in your heart there is the will to do and be.
+Carry your chin in, and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the
+chrysalis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thomas B. Macauley was small in stature; but he always carried his chin
+well in and the crown of his head high.
+
+It was said of Rubens that throughout his lifetime he kept success tied to
+the leg of his easel with a blue ribbon. If ever a writing man had success
+tied to the leg of his easy chair, that man was Macaulay. In the
+characters and careers of Rubens and Macaulay there is a marked
+resemblance.
+
+When Macaulay was twenty-two he was at Cambridge, and the tidings arrived
+that a dire financial storm had wrecked the family fortune. The young man
+had ever been led to suppose that his father was rich--rich beyond all
+danger from loss--and that he himself would never have a concern beyond
+amusing himself, and the cultivation of his intellect. And so in practical
+affairs his education had been sadly neglected. But when the news of
+calamity came, instead of being depressed, he was elated to think that now
+he could make himself positively useful.
+
+Responsibility gravitates to the man who can shoulder it. Strong men who
+can wisely direct the efforts of others are always needed--they were
+needed in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-two, when Tom Macaulay received word of
+his father's trouble--they are needed today more than then--men who meet
+calamity with a smile and are pleased at sight of obstacles, knowing they
+can overcome them. Augustine Birrell has written, "Macaulay always went
+his sublime way rejoicing like a strong man to run a race, knowing full
+well that he could give anybody five yards in fifty and win easily."
+
+Macaulay took up the burden that his father was not able to bear, mastered
+every detail of the business, studied out the weak points, and then
+explained to the creditors just what they had better do.
+
+And they did it.
+
+We always trust the man who has courage plus, enthusiasm to spare, and who
+shows by his manner that he is master of the situation.
+
+In a few years Macaulay saved from the wreck enough to secure his father,
+mother and sisters against want for the rest of their days, and eventually
+he paid every creditor in full with interest. Had he run away from the
+difficulty, as his father was on the point of doing, the family would have
+been turned homeless into the streets.
+
+Moral--Things are never so bad as they seem; and all difficulties sneak
+away when you look them squarely in the eye.
+
+At this time the family, consisting of the father, mother, three sisters
+and a brother, lived at Fifty Great Ormond Street, not far from the
+British Museum. The house is still standing, but I recently discovered
+that the occupants know nothing, and care less, about Thomas Macaulay.
+
+Tom was the child of his mother. In temperament, disposition and physique
+he was as much unlike his father as two men can well be. Old Zachary
+Macaulay was a strong, earnest man who took himself seriously. In latter
+years he grew morose, puritanic and was full of dread of the Unseen. He
+preached long sermons to his family, cautioned them against frivolity,
+forbade music, tabued games, and constantly spoke of the tongue as "the
+unruly member."
+
+He, of course, was not aware of it, but he was teaching his children by
+antithesis.
+
+"When I meet Macaulay I always imagine I am in Holland," once said Sydney
+Smith.
+
+"Why so!" asked a friend.
+
+"Because he is such a windmill," was the reply.
+
+But then we must remember that Sydney Smith never much liked
+Macaulay--they were too near alike. Whenever they met there was usually a
+wordy duel. "He is so overflowing with learning that it runs over and he
+stands in the slop," said Smith.
+
+Tom talked a great deal, he was fond of music and games, and was never so
+pleased as when engaging in some wild frolic with his sisters and any
+chance youngster that happened to stray in. His sister, Lady Trevelyan,
+has recorded that during those days of gloom which followed her father's
+failure, matters were made worse by the stricken man moping at home and
+tightening the domestic discipline.
+
+Tom never resented this, but on the instant the father would leave the
+house, it was the signal of a wild pandemonium of disorder. Tom would play
+he was a tiger, and crawling under the sofa would emit fearful growls that
+would cause the children to scream with pretended fright. Next they would
+play fire, and pile all the furniture in the center of the room, heaping
+books, clothing, rugs on top. Then Tom would "rescue" his mother if she
+appeared on the scene, and seizing her in his arms carry her to a place of
+safety, and then engage in a pillow-fight if she came back.
+
+This wild frolic was always a delight to the children, and Tom's
+homecoming was ever watched with eager anticipation. His visits shot the
+gloom through with sunshine, and when he went away even the neighbors'
+children were in tears. His health and enthusiasm infected everybody he
+met.
+
+In the course of looking after his father's business Macaulay unlearned
+most of the previous lessons of his life, and taught himself that to do
+for others and sink self was the manly method. But so lightly did he bear
+the burden that it is doubtful if he ever considered he was making any
+sacrifice.
+
+When his father died, Macaulay put entirely out of his mind the question
+of a household separate and apart from that of his mother and sisters. He
+devoted himself entirely to them; he wanted no other love than theirs.
+
+Unlike so many men of decided talent, the best and most loving side of
+Macaulay's nature was made manifest at home. His bubbling wit, brilliant
+conversation, and good-cheer were for his own fireside, first; and all
+that cutting, critical, scathing flood of invective was for the public
+that wore a rhinoceros-hide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Macaulay's article on Milton, published during his twenty-fifth year, in
+the "Edinburgh Review," is generally regarded as a most wonderful
+achievement. "Just think!" the critics cry--"the first article printed to
+be of a quality that electrified the world!" But we must remember that
+this youth had been getting ready to write that article for ten years.
+
+At college Macaulay shirked mathematics and philosophy, spending his time
+and attention on things he liked better. The only study in which he
+excelled was composition. Even in babyhood his command of language had
+been a wonder to the neighborhood in which he lived. Hannah More had for a
+time taken him under her immediate charge and prophesied great things of
+his literary faculty; and his mother was not slow in seconding the
+opinion.
+
+At Cambridge he already had more than a local reputation as a writer, and
+it was this reputation that secured him the commission to write for the
+"Review." The terrible Jeffrey was getting old and his regular staff had
+pretty nearly worked out their vein. Jeffrey wrote up to London (being
+south) to a friend telling him that the "Review" must have new blood, and
+imploring him to be on the lookout for some young man who had ideas in his
+ink-bottle.
+
+This friend knew the vigor and incisiveness of Macaulay's style, and as he
+read the letter from Jeffrey he exclaimed, "Macaulay!"
+
+It was a great compliment to a mere youth to be asked to contribute to the
+"Edinburgh Review." Edinburgh was a literary center, and you could not
+throw a stone in Princess Street, any more than you can in Tremont Street,
+Boston, without hitting a poet and caroming on two novel-writers and an
+essayist.
+
+Thomas Carlyle, five years older than Macaulay, and who was to live and
+write for twenty-five years after Macaulay's passing, had not yet struck
+twelve. London, too, like Edinburgh, was full of writing men, standing in
+the market-places of Grub Street with no man to hire.
+
+And yet Fate sought out Tom Macaulay, five feet four, who had plenty of
+other work on hand; and through that single "Essay on Milton" he sprang at
+once into the front rank of British writers--and at the same time there
+was thrust into his hands a bonus of fifty pounds for the work.
+
+As a study of a thing that made the reputation of a writer, the "Milton"
+is worth a careful reading. It is very sure that in America today there
+are a hundred men who could write just as good an article, but whether
+these men are Macaulays or not is quite another question. But it is not at
+all probable that a writer will ever again leap into place and power on so
+small a feat.
+
+Yet the article surely shows all the dash and vigor that mark Macaulay's
+literary style. There is personality in it; it reveals the red corpuscle;
+and tells without question that there is a man behind the guns. It was
+opportune; for literature at that particular time had reached a point
+where the sciolist was in full possession, and the dead husks of learning
+were being palmed off for the living thoughts of living men.
+
+Periodicity reveals itself in all Nature, and even in the world of thought
+there are years of famine and years of plenty. Dry rot gets into letters;
+things are ripe for a revolution; the tinder is dry, and along comes some
+Martin Luther and applies the torch.
+
+Macaulay simply expressed himself boldly, frankly, and without thought of
+favor--writing as he felt.
+
+The article made a great stir--the first edition of the magazine was
+quickly exhausted, and Macaulay awoke one morning, like Byron, and found
+himself famous. All there was about it, the "Milton" revealed a man, a
+strong, vivid-thinking, vigorous man, who, seeing things clearly, wrote
+from his heart. Art is born of feeling: it is heart, not head, that
+carries conviction home; but if you have both, as Macaulay had, it is no
+special disadvantage.
+
+From the publication of Macaulay's first article the "Review" took on a
+new lease of life. Prosperity came that way and for the rest of his life
+the "Review" was not long without contributions from his pen; and the
+numbers that contained his articles were always in great demand. Writers
+who possess a piercing insight into the heart of things, and who have the
+courage to express themselves, regardless of the views of others, are well
+feared by men in power.
+
+The man who knows, who can think, and who can write, holds a sword of
+Damocles over every politician.
+
+Governments are honeycombed with vulnerable spots; and to secure the ready
+writer on your side is the part of wisdom.
+
+Macaulay's article on Milton proved that there was a thinker loose, and
+that on occasion he could strike. The politicians began to court him, and
+we find him writing articles of a very Junius-like quality on contemporary
+issues.
+
+When he was twenty-six years old we are told he was "called to the Bar,"
+which means that he was given permission to practise law--the expression,
+"called," being a mild form of fiction that still obtains in England in
+legal matters, while in America the word applies only in theology.
+
+The practise of law, however, was not at all to the taste of Macaulay, and
+after a few short terms on the circuit he relinquished it entirely.
+
+In the meantime we find he read continually. Indeed, about the only bad
+habit this man had was reading. He read to excess--he read everything and
+read all the time. He read novels, history, poetry, and dived deeply into
+the dead languages, reading Plutarch's Lives twice in a year, and
+Euripides, Thucydides, Homer, Cicero, Cæsar--all without special aim or
+end. Such a restless appetite for reading is apt to produce mental
+dyspepsia, and is not at all to be advised for average people; and the
+probabilities are that even in Macaulay's case his time might often have
+been better spent in meditation.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven appeared in the "Review" the "Essay on
+Mill." Like all of Macaulay's articles it reveals a wealth of learning and
+bristles with information on many themes. It often seems as if Macaulay
+took a subject simply to execute a learned war-dance around it. The
+article on Mill is a good example of merely touching the central theme and
+then going off into by-lanes of economics, history and civil government,
+with endless allusions to literature, poetry, art and philosophy. It is
+all intensely interesting, closely woven, often gorgeous in its coloring;
+and "style" runs like a thread of gold through it all.
+
+Shortly after this article appeared, Lord Lansdowne intimated to the young
+writer that he would like the honor of introducing him into public life,
+and if agreeable he could arrange for him to stand for Parliament in the
+vacant seat of Calne.
+
+Calne was one of those vest-pocket boroughs, owned by a single man, of
+which England has so many. The people think they choose their
+representative, but they do not, any more than we do in America. The
+government by the Boss and for the Boss is no new institution. Macaulay
+presented himself and was elected without opposition. And so before his
+thirtieth year he found himself on the flood-tide of national politics.
+
+Fifteen years before, if any one had expressed himself as plainly as
+Macaulay did on entering Parliament, he would have had a taste of jail,
+the hulks, or the pillory. So alert had the Government agents been for
+sedition that to stick one's tongue in his cheek at a member of the
+Cabinet was considered fully as bad as poaching, both being heinous
+offenses before God and man. Persecution was in the air and tyranny
+stalked abroad.
+
+But tyranny is self-limiting. If laws are too severe, there will surely
+come a time when they will not be observed, and history shows that the men
+who have introduced the guillotine ended their careers in its embrace.
+
+A change had come in England. The Tories were being jostled from their
+seats, and the Whigs were just coming into power. Liberalism was abroad in
+the land, and surely the time had come when a strong man might speak his
+mind.
+
+Macaulay was by nature a protester; he was "agin 'em"; and when he chose a
+subject for his maiden speech he was not only sincere, but exceeding
+politic. He guessed the lay of the land, and knew the direction of the
+wind. Heresy was popular.
+
+His address was in favor of an act removing the legal disabilities of
+Jews. It was a plea for liberty, and such was the vigor, power and vivid
+personality he threw into the address that he astonished the House and
+brought in the loungers from the cloakrooms.
+
+It was his only speech during the session. Efforts were made to get him on
+his feet again, but he was too wise to lend the battery of his mind to any
+commonplace theme. Only a subject such as might stir men's souls could
+tempt him.
+
+Wise Thomas Macaulay!
+
+He had made a reputation as a writer by his first article, and after his
+maiden speech all London chanted his praises as an orator. He practised
+self-restraint and knew better than to dilute his fame by holding argument
+with small men on little topics.
+
+His first speech at the next session of Parliament only served to fix his
+place as an orator more firmly. The immediate excuse was the "Reform
+Bill"; but the subject was liberty, and literature and history were called
+upon to furnish fire and supply the fuel for pyrotechnics. After its
+delivery the Speaker sent for Macaulay and personally congratulated him on
+making the most effective address to which he had listened for twenty-five
+years. The House of Commons, ever willing and anxious to appropriate a
+genius, being glutted by the dull and commonplace, sought in many ways
+from this time forward to do honor to Macaulay.
+
+The elder members grew reminiscent and said the good old times were coming
+back, and talked of Burke, Fox, Canning and Lord Plunket.
+
+Jeffrey, feeling a sense of guardianship over Macaulay, having launched
+him, as he rightfully claimed, was on hand to hear the speech, and made
+haste to embrace his ward, kissing him on both cheeks.
+
+Judging from this distance, there was nothing especially peculiar or
+distinctive about Macaulay's oratory, save his intense personality and
+vivid earnestness. An educated man, thoroughly alive on any one theme, is
+always interesting. And it was Macaulay's policy never to speak in public
+on a theme that did not bring out his entire armament, and yet with it all
+he was wise enough to cultivate a feeling of restraint and leave the
+impression that he had much more in reserve. So it was in his literary
+work: he never wrote when tired, nor attempted to express when he was not
+thoroughly alive to the subject in hand. He watched his mood. And thus in
+all Macaulay's "Essays" we feel the systole and diastole, and the hot,
+strong, impatient movement of ruddy life. There is "go" in every sentence.
+This is what constitutes his marvelous style--life, life, life!
+
+To very few men, indeed, is it given to be at once a brilliant talker, a
+strong writer and an effective orator. Clever talkers are seldom orators,
+and the great writers usually ebulliate only in the silence of their
+studies.
+
+The fame of Macaulay went abroad, and he became the social lion of
+London--he was courted, feted, petted--and in drawing-rooms when he
+attended, people stood on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of him, and remained
+breathless that they might hear him speak. No doubt the fact that he was a
+bachelor helped fan the social flame. His sister has recorded that every
+morning cards and letters of invitation were piled high on his
+breakfast-table.
+
+With it all, though, the handsome little man preserved his poise, and his
+modesty and becoming dignity in public never failed him.
+
+Such was Macaulay's popularity that, after having served two terms for the
+borough of Calne, the way was opened for him to stand for Leeds. Indeed,
+it is probable that a dozen districts would have been glad to elect him as
+their representative.
+
+After the passing of the "Reform Bill," to which his efforts had been so
+valuable, he was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Board of
+Control. This Board represented the King in the Government's relations
+with the East India Company. Macaulay, being the strongest man on the
+Board, was naturally chosen its secretary, just as the best man in a jury
+is chosen foreman. Here was a man who was not content to be a mere
+figurehead in office, trusting to paid clerks and underlings to secure him
+information and do the work--not he. Macaulay set himself the task of
+thoroughly acquainting himself with Indian affairs. He read every book of
+importance bearing on the subject; and studied the record and history of
+every man of consequence who was or had been connected with India. His
+intensely practical, businesslike mind sifted every detail, intuitively
+separating the relevant from the inconsequential, so that within a few
+months older heads were going to him for information, just as in a store
+or shop there is always one man who knows where things are, and in times
+of doubt he is the man who is sought out. To the many it is so much easier
+to ask some one else than to find out for themselves; and it also shifts
+the responsibility, and gives one a chance, if necessary, to prove a
+halibi--goodness gracious!
+
+One feature of the Reform Bill provided that one of the members of the
+Supreme Council of India should be chosen from among persons not connected
+in any way with the East India Company.
+
+This membership of the Supreme Council was a most important office, and
+carried with it the modest salary of ten thousand pounds a year--fifty
+thousand dollars--double what the President of the United States then
+received.
+
+Macaulay had had no hand in creating this office, and indeed, at the time
+the Reform Bill was being gotten into shape, his interest in Indian
+affairs had only been casual. But now he was recognized as the one man for
+the new office, and the office sought the man.
+
+Comparatively, Macaulay was a poor man, and the acceptance of the office
+for the term of six years would place him for the rest of his life beyond
+the reach of want. He could live royally and retire at forty years of age,
+with at least thirty thousand pounds to his credit. And yet he hesitated
+about accepting the office. His far-reaching eye told him that an exile
+for six years from England would place him out of touch with things at
+home, and that the greater office to which he aspired would be beyond his
+grasp. Besides that, the fact would always be brought up that his reward
+for well-doing had been enough, just as we have an unwritten law in
+America that there shall be no "third term."
+
+Macaulay saw all this and hesitated.
+
+He advised with Lord Lansdowne, and with his sister Hannah, his nearest
+and best friend; and if it had been possible his mother would have been
+given the casting vote; but two years before, she had passed out, yet not
+until she realized that her son was one of the foremost men in England.
+Hannah Macaulay (named in honor of Hannah More) advised the acceptance of
+the office, and upon his earnest request agreed to share her brother's
+exile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hannah Macaulay, gracious in every way, was the sister of her brother. Her
+mind was fit companion for his, and whenever he had a difficult problem on
+hand he would clarify it by explaining it to her; and be it known, you can
+never talk well to a dullard.
+
+And so Hannah the loyal resigned her position as governess, and brother
+and sister packed up and sailed away in the good ship "Asia" for India.
+Among their belongings was a modest library of three thousand volumes, all
+of which, a wit has said, were read twice through by Macaulay on the
+outward voyage. India was safely reached, and Macaulay set himself with
+his accustomed vigor to learning the language and informing himself as to
+the actual status of things, in order that he might provide for their
+betterment. On account of his grasp on legal matters he was elected Legal
+Adviser of the Supreme Council.
+
+Everything went well for a year, and then a terrible calamity overtook
+Macaulay.
+
+His sister was in love.
+
+This seems a good place to explain that Thomas Babington Macaulay himself
+was never in love. He had no time for that--his days were too full of
+books and practical business to ever waste any time on soft sentiment.
+
+But now he was confronted by a condition, not a theory: Lord Trevelyan was
+in love with his sister, and his sister was in love with Lord Trevelyan.
+Macaulay might have discovered the fact for himself and saved the lovers
+the embarrassment of making a confession, had he not been so terribly busy
+with his books, but Macaulay, like love, was blind--to some things.
+
+He heard the confession, and wept.
+
+Then he gave the pair his blessing--there was nothing else to do.
+
+It was not long after the wedding that he discovered he had found a
+brother instead of having lost a sister; and the sister being very happy,
+Macaulay was happy, too. He insisted that they move their effects into his
+house, and they did so, all living as one happy family. So the years
+passed; and when children came Macaulay's joy was complete. His heart went
+out to his sister's children as though they were his own. Occasionally the
+good mother complained that the Legal Adviser of the Supreme Council undid
+her discipline by indulging the youngsters in things that she had
+forbidden. To all of which the Legal Adviser would only laugh, and
+crawling under the settle would emit many tigerish growls, and the
+children would scream with terror and delight, and other children,
+brown-legged, wearing no clothes to speak of, would come trooping in, and
+together they would manage, after an awful struggle, to capture the tiger,
+and with some in front and others behind and two or three on his back,
+would carry him away captive.
+
+One of these children, grown to manhood, Sir George Trevelyan, was
+destined to write, with the help of his mother, the best life of Macaulay
+that has ever been written.
+
+The exile did not prove quite so severe as was anticipated; but when in
+Eighteen Hundred Thirty-eight it was necessary for Lord Trevelyan to
+return to England, Macaulay, sick at the thought of being left behind,
+resigned his office and sailed back with the family.
+
+We are told that officeholders seldom die and never resign. This may be
+true in the main; but surely there can not be found another instance in
+history of a man throwing up an office with a fifty-thousand-dollar salary
+attachment, simply because he could not bear the thought of being
+separated from his sister's children.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon after his return to England Macaulay was elected to a seat in
+Parliament from Edinburgh, a city that he had scarcely so much as visited,
+but to whose interest he had been loyal in that, up to this time,
+nine-tenths of all he had written had been printed there.
+
+To represent Edinburgh in the House of Commons was no small matter, and we
+know that Macaulay was not unmindful of the honor.
+
+His next preferment was his appointment as Secretary of War, and a seat in
+the Cabinet.
+
+During all these busy years he ever had on hand some piece of literary
+work. In fact, all of the "Essays" on which his literary fame so largely
+rests, were composed on "stolen time" in the lull seized from the official
+and social whirl in which he lived.
+
+If you want a piece of work well and thoroughly done, pick a busy man. The
+man of leisure postpones and procrastinates, and is ever making
+preparations and "getting things in shape"; but the ability to focus on a
+thing and do it is the talent of the man seemingly o'erwhelmed with work.
+Women in point lace and diamonds, club habitues and "remittance
+men"--those with all the time there is--can never be entrusted to carry
+the message to Gomez.
+
+Pin your faith to the busy person.
+
+Macaulay's first and only political rebuff came with his defeat the second
+time he stood for election in Edinburgh. His conscientious opposition to
+a measure in which the Scottish people were especially interested caused
+the tide to turn against him.
+
+No doubt, though, the failure of re-election was a good thing for
+Macaulay--and for the world. He at once began serious work on his "History
+of England"--that project which had been in his head and heart for a score
+of years. All of his literary labors so far had been merely ephemeral--at
+least he so regarded them. The Essays he regarded only as so many
+newspaper articles, not worth the collecting. It was America that first
+guessed their true value as literature, and it was not until the American
+editions were pouring into England that Macaulay allowed his scattered
+work to be collected, corrected and put into authorized book form.
+
+This history was to be the thesis that would admit his name to the Roster
+of Fame. But, alas, the history was destined to be only a fragment. It
+covers scarce fifteen years, and is like that other splendid fragment, the
+work of Henry Thomas Buckle, a preface; Buckle's preface is the greatest
+ever penned, with its author dead at forty. The projected work of both of
+these men was too great for any one man to accomplish in a single
+lifetime. A hundred years of unremitting toil could not have completed
+Macaulay's task.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine he was elected Lord Rector of the
+University of Glasgow; and at his speech of installation he took occasion
+to take formal leave of political life. He would devote the remainder of
+his days to literature and abstract thought.
+
+Men are continually "retiring" from business and active life, all unaware
+of the grim humor of the proceedings. It was not so very long before
+Edinburgh, in an endeavor to undo the slight she had put upon Macaulay,
+again elected him to Parliament, without his being near, or raising his
+hand either for or against the measure.
+
+And again his voice was heard in the House of Commons.
+
+Macaulay was a modest man, and yet he knew his power.
+
+The Premiership dangled just beyond his reach. Many claim that if he had
+not gone to India he would have moved by strong, steady strides straight
+to the highest office that England could bestow. And others aver that when
+he was created a Peer in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven it was a move toward
+the Premiership, and that if his health had not failed he would surely
+have won the goal. But how futile it is to speculate on what might have
+happened had not this or the other occurred!
+
+Yet certainly the daring caution of Macaulay's mind, his dignity and
+luring presence, his patience, self-command, good temper, and all those
+manifold graces of his heart, would have made him an almost ideal Premier,
+one who might rank with Palmerston, Peel, Disraeli or Gladstone.
+
+But the highest office was not for him.
+
+We die by heart-beats; and Macaulay at fifty-nine had lived as much as
+most strong men do if they exist a hundred years.
+
+It is easy to show where Lord Macaulay could have been greater. His life
+lies open to us as the ether. We complain because he did not read less and
+meditate more; we sigh at his lack of religion and mention the fact that
+he never loved a woman, seemingly waiving tautology and the fact that men
+who do not love are never religious.
+
+We forget that it takes a good many men to make the Ideal Man.
+
+If Macaulay had been different he would have been some one else. He was a
+brave, tender-hearted man who lived one day at a time, packing the moments
+with good-cheer, good work and an earnest wish to do better tomorrow than
+he had done today. That Nature occasionally produces such a man should be
+a cause for gratitude in the hearts of all the rest of us little folk who
+jig, mince, mouth, amble, run, peek about and criticize our betters.
+
+
+
+
+LORD BYRON
+
+    I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
+      A palace and a prison on each hand:
+    I saw from out the wave her structures rise
+      As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
+    A thousand years, their cloudy wings expand
+      Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
+    O'er the far times, when many a subject land
+      Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,
+    Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
+                                                 --_Childe Harold_
+
+[Illustration: LORD BYRON]
+
+
+Man! I wonder what a man really is! Starting from a single cell, this
+seized upon by another, and out of the Eternal comes a particle of the
+Divine Energy that makes these cells its home. Growth follows, cell is
+added to cell, and there develops a man--a man whose body, two-thirds
+water, can be emptied by a single dagger-thrust and the spirit given back
+to its Maker.
+
+This being, which we call man, does not last long.
+
+Fifty-seven generations have come and gone since Cæsar trod the Roman
+Forum. The pillars against which he often leaned still stand, the
+thresholds over which he passed are there, the pavements ring beneath your
+tread as they once rang beneath his. Three generations and more have come
+and gone since Napoleon trod the streets of Toulon contemplating suicide.
+
+Babes in arms were carried by fond mothers to see Lincoln, the candidate
+for President. These babes have grown into men, are grandfathers possibly,
+with whitened hair, furrowed faces, looking calmly forward to the end,
+having tasted all that life holds in store for them.
+
+And yet Lincoln lived but yesterday! You can reach back into the past and
+grasp his hand, and look into his sad and weary eyes.
+
+A man! weighted with the sins of his parents, grandparents,
+great-grandparents, who fade off into dim spectral shapes in the dark and
+dreamlike past; no word of choice has he in the selection of his father
+and mother, no voice in the choosing of environment--brought into life
+without his consent and thrust out of it against his will--battling,
+striving, hoping, cursing, waiting, loving, praying; burned by fever, torn
+by passion, checked by fear, reaching for friendship, longing for
+sympathy, clutching--nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doctors and priests attend us at both ends of the route. We can not be
+born, neither can we die, without consulting the tax-collector, and
+interviewing those who look after us for a consideration.
+
+The doctor who sought to assist George Gordon Byron into the world
+dislocated the bones of his left foot in the operation. Forsooth, this
+baby would not be born as others---he selected a way of his own and paid
+the penalty. "It is a malformation--take these powders--I'll be back
+tomorrow," quoth the busy doctor.
+
+The autopsy proved it was not a malformation, but a displacement.
+
+"Doctor, now please tell me just what is the matter with me," once asked
+an anxious patient.
+
+"Tut, tut!" replied the absent-minded physician; "can't you wait? The
+post-mortem will reveal all that."
+
+The critics did not wait for Byron's death--it was vivisection. And after
+his death the dissection was zealously continued. Byron's life lies open
+to us in many books. Scarcely a month in the entire life of the man is
+unaccounted for, and if a hiatus of a few weeks is found, the men of
+imagination fill in and make him a pirate on the Mediterranean coast, or
+give him a seraglio in some gloomy old Moorish palace in Venice.
+
+In his lifetime Byron was overpraised and overcensured, and since his
+death the dust has been allowed to gather over his matchless books.
+Between the two extremes lies the truth; and the true Byron is just now
+being discovered. Byron in literature will not die. He is the brightest
+comet that has darted into our ken since Shakespeare's time; and as comets
+have no orbit, but are vagrants of the heavens, so was he. Tragedy was in
+his train, and his destiny was disgrace and death.
+
+And yet as we review the life of this man, "the lame brat" of his mother,
+as this mother called him, and behold the whirlwind of passion that swept
+him on, the fulsome praise, the shrill outcry of hypocritical prudes and
+pedants, the torrent of abuse, and the piling up of sins that he never
+committed (and God knows he committed enough!); and yet behold his craving
+for tenderness, the reaching out for truth, and hear his earnest and
+unquenchable prayer to be understood and loved, we blot out the record of
+his sins with our tears. To know the life of Byron and not be moved to
+profoundest pity marks one as alien to his kind.
+
+"God is on the side of the most sensitive," said Thoreau. And did there
+ever tread the earth a man more sensitive than Byron?--such capacity for
+suffering, such exaltation, such heights, such depths! Music made him
+tremble and weep, and in the presence of kindness he was powerless. He
+lived life to its fullest, and paid the penalty with shortened years. He
+expressed himself without reserve--being emancipated from superstition and
+precedent. And the man who is not dominated by the fetish of custom is
+marked for contumely by the many. Custom makes law, and the one who
+violates custom is "bad." Yet all respectable people are not good; and all
+good people are not respectable. If you do not know this you are ignorant
+of life.
+
+So imagine this handsome, headstrong, restless young man, in whose lexicon
+there was no such word as prudence, with time and money at his command,
+defying the state, society and religion, and listen to the anathemas that
+fill the air at mention of his name.
+
+That a world full of such men would not be at all desirable is stern
+truth; but that one such man lived is a cause for congratulation. His life
+holds for us both warning and example.
+
+Beneath the strain of the stuff and the onward swirl of his verse we see
+that this man stood for truth and justice as against hypocrisy and
+oppression. Folly and freedom are better far than smugness and
+persecution. Byron stood for the rights of the individual, for the right
+of free speech and free thought: and he stood for political and physical
+freedom, long before abolition societies became popular. He sided with the
+people; his heart went out to the oppressed; and all of his fruitless
+gropings and stumblings were a reaching out for tenderness and truth, for
+life and love--for the Ideal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The father of Byron, the poet, was a captain in the army--a man of small
+mental ability, whose recklessness won him the sobriquet of "Mad Jack
+Byron." When twenty-three years of age he eloped to France with the
+Baroness Conyers, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen. Happiness, in a
+foreign country, for a woman who has exchanged one love for another is
+outside the pale of possibilities. Love is much--but love is not all. Life
+is too short to break family-ties and adjust one's self to a new language
+and a new country. The change means death.
+
+Two years and the woman died, leaving a daughter, Augusta by name,
+afterward Mrs. Augusta Leigh.
+
+Back to England went Mad Jack Byron, broken-hearted, bearing in his arms
+the baby girl. Kind kinsmen, ready to forgive, cared for the child. Mad
+Jack didn't remain broken-hearted long--what would you expect from a man?
+He sought sympathy among several discreet dames, and in two years we find
+him safely and legally married to Catherine Gordon. Scotch, and heiress to
+twenty-five thousand pounds. On the occasion of the wedding, Jack informed
+a friend that the fact of the lady's being Scotch was forgiven in view of
+the dowry. Most of this fortune went into a rat-hole to help pay the debts
+of the Mad Jack.
+
+One child was born to this ill-assorted pair--a boy who was destined to
+write his name large on history's page. But such a pedigree! No wonder
+the youth once wrote to Augusta, his half-sister, expressing a covetous
+appreciation of her parentage, even with its bar sinister. In passing, it
+is well to note the sunshine of this love of brother and sister, which
+continued during life--confidential, earnest, tender, frank. In their best
+moods they were both lofty souls, and their mutuality was cemented in a
+contempt for the man who was their sire. This fine brotherly and sisterly
+affection comes close to us when we remember that it was our own Harriet
+Beecher Stowe, with sympathies worn to the quick through much brooding
+over the wrongs of a race in bondage, who rushed into print with a
+scandalous accusation concerning this same sweet affection of brother for
+sister. The charge was brought on no better foundation than some old-woman
+gossip held over the hyson when it was red, and moved itself aright--all
+vouchsafed to Mrs. Stowe by the widow of Byron in Eighteen Hundred
+Fifty-six. If a woman as good at heart as Harriet Beecher Stowe was
+deceived, why should we blame humanity for biting at a hook that is not
+baited?
+
+No sane dentist will administer an anesthetic to a woman, without a
+witness: not that women as a class are dangerous, but because some women
+can not be trusted to distinguish between their dreams and the facts.
+Every practising lawyer of insight also knows that a wronged woman's
+reasons are plentiful as blackberries, and must always be taken with
+large pinches of the Syracuse product.
+
+Mad Jack followed his regiment here and there, dodging his creditors, and
+finally in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one induced his wife to borrow a
+hundred pounds for him, with which he started to Paris intent on
+retrieving fortune with pasteboard.
+
+He died on the way, and the money was used to bury him. The lame boy was
+then three years old, but a few dark memories, no doubt retouched by
+hearsay, were retained by him of Mad Jack, who in his most sober moments
+never guessed that he would be known to the ages as the father of the
+greatest poet of his time.
+
+Mad Jack was neither literary nor psychic.
+
+The widowed mother remained at Aberdeen with her boy, living on the
+hundred and fifty pounds a year that had been settled on her in a way that
+she could not squander the principal--all the rest had gone.
+
+The child was shy, sensitive, proud and headstrong.
+
+The mother used to reprove him by throwing things at him, and by chasing
+him with the tongs. At other times she diverted herself by imitating his
+limp. And yet again she would smother him with caresses, beseech his
+pardon for abusing him, and praise the beauty of his matchless eyes.
+
+Children are usually better judges of grown-ups than grown-ups are of
+children. This boy at five years of age had estimated his mother's
+character correctly. He knew that she was not his steadfast friend, and
+that she was unworthy of his confidence and whole heart's love. He grew
+moody, secretive, wilful. Once, being wrongly accused and punished, he
+seized a knife from the table and was about to apply it to his throat when
+he was disarmed. The child longed for tenderness and love, and being
+denied these, was already taking on that proud and haughty temper which
+was to serve as a mask to hide the tenderness of his nature.
+
+We are told that seven brothers Byron fought at Edgehill, but when we get
+down to the time of Mad Jack there was danger of the name being snuffed
+out entirely. Nature is not anxious to perpetuate the idle and dissipated.
+
+When little George Gordon was ten years old, his mother one day ran to
+him, seized him in her arms, wept and laughed, then laughed and wept,
+kissing him violently, addressing him as "My Lord!"
+
+His great-uncle, William, Lord Byron of Rochdale and Newstead Abbey, had
+died, and the big-eyed, lame boy was the nearest heir--in fact, the only
+living male who bore the family-name. The next day at school, when the
+master called the roll and mentioned his name with the prefix "Dominus,"
+the lad did not reply "Adsum"--he only stood up, gazed helplessly at the
+teacher, and burst into tears.
+
+Even at this time he had given promise of the quality of his nature, by
+his firm affection for Mary Duff, his cousin. All the intensity of his
+childish nature was centered in this young woman, several years his
+senior. To call it a passion would be too much, but this child, denied of
+love at home, clung to Mary Duff, to whom he went in confession with all
+his childish tales of woe. When his mother proposed to leave Aberdeen, now
+that fortune had smiled, the anguish of the boy at thought of leaving his
+"first love" nearly caused him a fit of sickness.
+
+And all this wealth of love was met with jeers and loud laughter, save by
+Mary Duff. The vibrating sensitiveness of such a child, with such a
+mother, must have caused a misery we can only guess.
+
+"Your mother is a fool," said a boy to Byron at college some years later.
+
+"I know it," was the melancholy answer, as the brown eyes filled with
+tears.
+
+When money came, Mrs. Byron's first move was to take the lad to Nottingham
+and place him in charge of a surgical quack, who proposed, for a price, to
+make the lame foot just as good as the other, if not better. To this
+effect wooden clamps were placed on the foot and screwed down by
+thumbscrews, causing a torture that would have been unbearable to many.
+
+No benefit was experienced from the treatment, although it was continued
+by another physician at London soon after. A schoolfellow of Byron's
+visited him in his room when his foot was encased in a wooden compress.
+The visitor noted the white face, and the beads of anguish on the boy's
+forehead, and at last said, "I know you are suffering awfully!"
+
+"You will never hear me say so," was the grim reply.
+
+The emphasis placed on Byron's lameness has been altogether overdone. In
+fact, as he grew to manhood, it was nothing more than a stiffness that
+would never have been noticed in a drawing-room. We have this on the
+testimony of the Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington and others. Byron
+himself made the mistake of referring to it several times in his verse,
+and doubtless all the torture he had suffered through ill-considered
+medical counsel, and his mother's taunts, caused the matter to take a
+place in his sensitive mind quite out of its due proportion. Sir Walter
+Scott was lame, too, but whoever heard of his discussing it, either by
+word of mouth or in print?
+
+Of Byron's life at Harrow we have many tales as to his defending his
+juniors, volunteering to take punishment for them--and of lessons
+unlearned. He could not be driven nor forced, and pedagogics a hundred
+years ago, it seemed, was largely a science of coercion. Mary Gray, a
+nurse and early teacher of Byron's, has told us that kindness was the
+unfailing touchstone with this boy; no other plan would work. But Harrow
+knew nothing of Froebel methods, and does not yet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Byron's first genuine love-affair occurred when he was sixteen. The object
+of this affection, as all the world knows, was Miss Chaworth, whose estate
+adjoined Newstead. The lady was two years older than Byron, and being of a
+lively nature found a pleasant diversion in leading the youth a merry
+chase. So severe was his attack that he was alternately oppressed by
+chills of fear and fevers of ecstasy. He lost appetite, and the family
+began to fear for his sanity. Such a love must find expression some way,
+and so the daily stealthy notes to the young woman took the form of rhyme.
+The lovesick youth was revealing considerable facility in this way. It
+pleased him, and did the buxom young woman no harm.
+
+Beyond the mere prettiness and pinky whiteness of a healthy country lass,
+Miss Chaworth evidently had no beauties of character, save those conjured
+forth from the inner consciousness of the poet--a not wholly original
+condition.
+
+Byron loved the Ideal. And this love-affair with Miss Chaworth is only
+valuable as showing the evolution of imagination in the poet. The woman
+hadn't the slightest idea that she was giving wings to a soul--to her the
+affair was simply funny.
+
+The fact that Byron's great-uncle, from whom he had inherited his title,
+had killed the grandfather of Miss Chaworth in a duel, lent a romantic
+tinge to the matter--the boy was doing a sort of penance, and in one of
+his poems hints at the undoing of the sin of his kinsman by the lifelong
+devotion that he will bestow. This calling up the past, and incautious
+revealing of the fact that the ancestor Chaworth could not hold his own
+with a Byron, but allowed himself to be run through the body by the Byron
+cold steel, was not pleasing to Miss Chaworth.
+
+"Don't imagine I am such a fool as to love that lame boy," cried Miss
+Chaworth to her maid one day.
+
+Unluckily, "the lame boy" was in the next room and heard the remark.
+
+He rushed from the house with a something gripping at his heart.
+Straightway he would go back to Harrow, which he had left in wrath only a
+few months before.
+
+So he went to Harrow.
+
+When he next returned home, his mother met him with the remark, "I have
+news for you; get out your handkerchief--Miss Chaworth is married."
+
+In just another year Byron was home again, and was invited to dine with
+the Chaworths. He accepted the invitation, and when he was introduced to a
+baby girl, a month old, the child of his old sweetheart, his emotions got
+the better of him and he had to leave the room. And to ease his woe he
+indited a poem to the baby.
+
+Miss Chaworth was not happy with her fox-hunting squire. Her mind became
+clouded, and after some years she passed out, in poverty and alone. And if
+there ever came to her mind any appreciation of the greatness of the man
+who had given her name immortality, we do not know it.
+
+The years from Eighteen Hundred Five to Eighteen Hundred Eight Byron spent
+at Cambridge. The arts in which he perfected himself there were shooting,
+swimming, fencing, drinking and gambling.
+
+During vacations, and off and on, he lived at Southwell, a village halfway
+between Mansfield and Newark. Southwell was sleepy, gossipy, dull--and
+exerted a wholesome restraint on our restless youth. It was simply a
+question of economy that took Byron and his mother to Southwell. The
+run-down estate of Newstead was yielding a meager income, but at Southwell
+one could be shabby and yet respectable.
+
+At Southwell Byron met John Pigot and his sister--cultured people of a
+refined and quiet sort. Byron took to them at once, and they liked him.
+
+In a country town the person who thinks, instinctively hunts out the other
+man who thinks--granting the somewhat daring hypothesis that there are two
+of them. So Byron and the Pigots often met for walks and talks, and on
+such occasions the poet would read to his friends the scraps of verse he
+had written. He had gotten into the habit--he wrote whenever his pulse ran
+up above eighty--he wrote because he could not help it; and he read his
+productions to his friends for the same reason. Every one who writes longs
+to read his work to some sympathetic soul. A thought is not ours until we
+repeat it to another, and this crying need of expression marks every
+poetic soul. All art is born of feeling, high, intense, holy feeling, and
+the creative faculty is largely a matter of temperature. We feel, and not
+to impart our feelings is stagnation--death. People who do not feel deeply
+never have anything to impart, either to individuals or to the world. They
+have no message.
+
+The young man, fresh from the dusty, musty lectures of Cambridge, and out
+of the reach of his boisterous and carousing companions, grasped at the
+gentle, refined and sympathetic friendship of this brother and sister. The
+trinity would walk off across the fields and recline on the soft turf
+under a great spreading tree, reading aloud by turn from some good book.
+Such meetings always ended by Byron's reading to his friends any chance
+rhymes he had written since they last met.
+
+John Morley dates the birth of Byron's poetic genius from his meeting with
+Miss Chaworth, while Taine names Southwell as the pivotal point. Probably
+both are right.
+
+But this we know, that it was the Pigots who induced Byron to collect his
+rhymes and have them printed. This was done at the neighboring town of
+Newark, when Byron was nineteen years old. Possibly you have a few of
+these thin, poorly printed, crudely bound little books entitled
+"Juvenilia" around in the garret somewhere, and, if so, it might be well
+enough to take care of them. Quaritch says they are worth a hundred
+pounds apiece, although in the poet's lifetime they were dear at sixpence.
+
+Byron sent copies to all the leading literary men whom he knew, including
+Mackenzie, the man of feeling. Mackenzie replied, praising the work, and
+so did several others. All writers of note are favored with many such
+juvenilia, and usually there is a gracious electrotype reply. A doubt
+exists as to whether Mackenzie ever read Byron's book, but we know that
+his letter of stock platitude fired Byron to do still better. It is said
+that no flattery is too fulsome for a pretty woman--she inwardly
+congratulates the man on his subtle insight in discovering excellences
+that she hardly knew existed. This may be so and may not, but the logic
+holds when applied to fledgling authors. When it comes to praise he is
+quite willing to take your word for it.
+
+Byron's spirits arose to an ecstacy--he would be a poet.
+
+About this time we find Hydra, as Byron pleasantly called his mother,
+rushing to the village apothecary and warning that worthy not to sell
+poison to the poet; and a few moments after her leaving, the astonished
+apothecary was visited by the poet, who begged that no poison should be
+sold to his mother. Each thought the other was going to turn Lucretia
+Borgia, or play the last act of Romeo and Juliet, at least.
+
+There were wild bursts of rage on the mother's part, stubborn mockery on
+the other, followed up once by a poker flung with almost fatal precision
+at the poet's curly head.
+
+Upon this he took flight to London and Hydra followed, repentant and
+lacrimose. A truce was patched up; they agreed to disagree, and coldly
+shaking hands withdrew in opposite directions.
+
+After this, when the poet wrote he addressed his mother as "Dear Madam,"
+and confined himself to business matters. Only rarely was there any flash
+in his letters, as when he said, "Dear Mother--you know you are a vixen,
+but save me some champagne." If Byron's mother had been of the stuff of
+which most mothers are made, we would have found these two safely settled
+at Newstead, making the best of their battered fortune, with the son in
+time marrying some neighbor lass, and slipping into the place of a
+respectable English gentleman, a worthy member of the House of Lords.
+
+But the boy, now grown twenty, had no home, and either was supplied too
+much money or else too little. He wasted his substance in London,
+economized in Southwell, sponged on friends, and borrowed of Scrope Davis
+at Cambridge. When a remittance again came, he explored the greenrooms,
+took lessons from Professor Johnson, the pugilist (referred to as "my
+corporeal pastor"), drank whole companies under the table, bought a tame
+bear and a wolf to guard the entrance of Newstead, and roamed the country
+as a gipsy, in company with a girl dressed in boy's clothes, thus
+supplying Richard Le Gallienne an interesting chapter in his "Quest of the
+Golden Girl."
+
+But all this time his brain was active, and another book of poetry had
+been printed, entitled "Hours of Idleness." This book was gotten out, at
+his own expense, by the same country printer as the first.
+
+Surely the verse must have had merit, or why should Lord Brougham, in the
+great "Edinburgh Review," go after it with a slashing, crashing, damning
+criticism?
+
+When Byron read the review, a bystander has told us he turned red, then
+livid green. He straightway ordered and drank two bottles of claret, said
+nothing, but looked like a man who had sent a challenge.
+
+A challenge! that was exactly what Byron proposed. He would fight Jeffrey
+first, and then take up in turn every man who had ever contributed to the
+magazine--he would kill them all. And to that end he called for his
+pistols and went out to practise firing at ten paces. Wiser counsel
+prevailed, and he decided to attack the enemy in their own citadel, and
+with their own weapons. He ordered ink, and began "English Bards and
+Scotch Reviewers."
+
+It took time to get this enormous siege-gun into position and find the
+range. Finally, it was loaded with more kinds of missiles, in the way of
+what Augustine Birrell has called literary stinkpots, than were ever
+before rammed home in a single charge.
+
+It was an audacious move--to reverse the initiative and go after a whole
+race of critics, scribblers and reviewers, who had been badgering honest
+folks, and blow 'em into kingdom come.
+
+But at the last moment Byron's heart failed him, his wrath gave way to
+caution, and "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" appeared anonymously.
+
+The edition was soon exhausted--the shot had at least raised a mighty
+dust.
+
+The author got his nerve back, fathered the book, made corrections; and
+this edition, too, sold with a rush. Byron returned to Newstead, invited a
+score of his Cambridge cronies, who came down, entering the mansion
+between the bear and the wolf, and were received with salvos of
+pistol-shots. Here they played games over the spacious grounds, wrestled,
+boxed, swam, and at night feasted and drank deep damnation out of a skull
+to all Scotch reviewers.
+
+Probably the acme of this depravity was reached when the young gentlemen
+began shooting the pendants off the chandelier; then the servants hastily
+decamped and left the rogues to do their own cooking.
+
+This brought them to their senses, sanity came back, and the company
+disbanded. Then the servants, who had watched the orgies from afar,
+returned and found a week's pile of dishes unwashed and a horse stabled in
+the library.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then Byron had reached the mature age of twenty-one, he was formally
+admitted to the House of Lords as a Peer of the realm. His titles and
+pedigree were so closely scanned on this occasion that he grew quite out
+of conceit with the noble company, and was seriously thinking of launching
+a dunciad in their direction. His good nature was especially ruffled by
+Lord Carlisle, his guardian, who refused to stand as his legal sponsor.
+The chief cause of the old Lord's prejudice against the young one lay in
+the fact that the young 'un had ridiculed the old 'un's literary
+pretensions.
+
+They were rivals in letters, with a very beautiful, natural and mutual
+disdain for each other.
+
+Lord Byron was not welcomed into the House of Lords: he simply pushed in
+the door because he had a right to. He thirsted for approbation, for
+distinction, for notoriety. His sensitive soul hung upon newspaper
+clippings with feverish expectations; and about all the attention he
+received was in the line of being damned by faint praise, or smothered
+with silence. Patriotism, as far as England was concerned, was not a part
+of Byron's composition.
+
+When all Great Britain was execrating Napoleon, picturing him as a devil
+with horns and hoofs, Byron looked upon him as the world's hero.
+
+In this frame of mind he went forth and borrowed a goodly sum, and started
+cut to view the world. He was accompanied by his friend Hobhouse, and his
+valet, Fletcher.
+
+It was a two years' trip, this jolly trio made--down along the coast of
+France, Spain, through the Straits of Gibraltar, lingering in queer old
+cities, mousing over historic spots, alternately living like princes or
+vagabonds. They frolicked, drank, made love to married women, courted
+maidens, fought, feasted and did all the foolish things that sophomores
+usually do when they have money and opportunity.
+
+These months of travel supplied Byron enough in way of suggestion to keep
+him writing many moons. His active imagination seized upon everything
+picturesque, peculiar, romantic, sentimental or tragic, and stored it up
+in those wondrous brain-cells, to be used when the time was ripe.
+
+The disciples of Munchausen, who delight in showing Byron's verse to be
+only biography, have found a rich field in that two years' travel. One man
+really did a brilliant thing--in three volumes--recounting the conquering
+march of the poet, whom he depicts as a combination of Don Juan and Rob
+Roy.
+
+The probabilities are that the real facts, not illumined by fancy, would
+be a tale with which to conjure sleep. Foreign travel is hard work. It
+constitutes the final test of friendship, and to make the tour of Europe
+with a man and not hate him marks one or both of the parties as seraphic
+in quality. The best of travel is in looking back upon it from the dreamy
+quiet and rest of home--laughing at the things that once rasped your
+nerves, and enjoying, through recollection, the scenes you only glanced
+at wearily.
+
+Two instances of that trip--when Hobhouse threatened to desert the party
+and was dared to do so, and Byron slapped Fletcher's face and got himself
+well kicked in return--will suffice to show how Byron had the faculty of
+seizing trivial incidents, and by lifting them up and separating them from
+the mass, made them live as Art.
+
+At Athens the trio made a sudden resolve to be respectable, and practise
+economy. To this end they hired rooms of a worthy widow, who accommodated
+travelers with a transient home for a moderate stipend. This widow had
+three daughters: the eldest, Theresa by name, lives in letters as the Maid
+of Athens, and the glory that came to her was achieved without any special
+danger to either her heart or the poet's. The young woman, we know,
+assisted in the household affairs; and probably often dusted the mantel in
+the poet's room while he sat smoking with one foot on the table, making
+irrelevant remarks to her about this or that.
+
+Suddenly he wrote a poem, "Maid of Athens, ere we part, give, O give me
+back my heart." * * *
+
+With the genuine literary thrift that marked all of Byron's career, he
+preserved a copy of the lines, and some years after recast them, touched
+them up a bit, included the stuff in a book--and there you are.
+
+The other incident is that of Hobhouse recording in his journal the bare
+and barren fact that outside the city wall in Persia they once saw two
+dogs gnawing a human body. Byron saw the sight, but made no mention of it
+at the time. He waited, the scene sealed up in his brain-cells. Years
+after he wrote thus:
+
+    "And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall,
+    Hold o'er the dead their carnival;
+    Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb,
+    They were too busy to bark at him.
+    From a Tartar's skull they stripped the flesh,
+    As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;
+    And their white tusks crunched on the whiter skull,
+    As it slipped through their jaws when the edge grew dull."
+
+And this only proves that Hobhouse was not a poet and Byron was. The poet
+is never content to state the mere facts--facts are only valuable as
+suggestions for poetry.
+
+Travel often excites the spirit to the point of expression. Good travelers
+carry pads and pencils. Byron reached England with fragments of marbles,
+skulls, pictures, shells, spears, guns, curios beyond count, and many
+manuscripts in process.
+
+Upon arriving on the English coast the first news that reached him was
+that his mother had just died. He hastened to Newstead and reached there
+in time to attend the funeral, but refrained from following the cortege
+to the grave because he could not master his emotions. Their quarrels were
+at last ended.
+
+A diversion to his feelings came soon after, in the way of a blunt letter
+from Tom Moore demanding if Lord Byron was the author of "English Bards
+and Scotch Reviewers."
+
+Byron replied very stiffly that he was, but he really had intended no
+insult to Mr. Moore, with whom he had not the honor of being acquainted.
+Furthermore, if Mr. Moore felt himself aggrieved, why, the author of
+"English Bards" was at his service to supply him such satisfaction as he
+required.
+
+The irate Irishman accepted "the apology," a genial reply followed, and
+soon the poets met at the house of a friend, and there began that lifelong
+friendship, with the result that Moore wrote Byron's "Life" and used much
+needless whitewash.
+
+While abroad Byron had gotten into shape for publication one piece of
+manuscript. This was "Hints From Horace," and the matter was placed in the
+hands of Mr. Dallas, his businessman, very soon after his arrival. Dallas
+read the poem and did not like it.
+
+"Haven't you anything else?" asked Dallas.
+
+"Oh, nothing but a few stanzas of Spenserian stuff," was the answer.
+
+Dallas asked to see it, and there were placed in his hands rough drafts of
+the first and second cantos of "Childe Harold." This time Dallas was
+better suited, and to corroborate his judgment the matter was submitted
+to Murray, the publisher.
+
+Murray thought the matter had more or less merit, and arrangements were at
+once made for its publication. And so it came out, hammered into shape
+while in the printer's hands.
+
+"Childe Harold" was an instantaneous, brilliant success--a success beyond
+the publisher's or author's expectations. The book ran through seven
+editions in four weeks, and Lord Byron "became famous in a night."
+
+London society became Byron-mad. The poet was feted, courted, petted.
+
+He indulged in much innocent and costly dissipation, and some not so
+innocent.
+
+Finally all this began to pall upon him. When twenty-six we find him
+making a bold stand for reform: he would get married and live a staid,
+sober, respectable life. His finances were reduced--all the money he had
+made out of his books had been given away, prompted by a foolish whim that
+no man should take pay for the product of his mind.
+
+Now he would marry and "settle down"; and to marry a woman with an income
+would be no special disadvantage. To sell one's thoughts was abhorrent to
+the young man, but to marry for money was quite another thing. Morality
+depends upon your point of view.
+
+The paradox of things found expression when Byron the impressionable,
+Byron the irresistible, sat himself down and after chewing the end of his
+penholder, wrote a letter to Miss Milbanke, with whom he was only slightly
+acquainted, proposing marriage. The lady very properly declined. To be
+courted with a fresh-nibbed pen, and paper cut sonnet-size, instead of by
+a live man, deserves rebuke. Men who propose by mail to a woman in the
+next town are either insincere, self-deceived, or else are of the sort
+whose pulse never goes above sixty-five, and therefore should be avoided.
+
+Byron was both insincere and self-deceived. He had grown to distrust the
+emotions of his heart, and so selected a wife with his head. He chose a
+woman with income, one who was strong, cool-headed, safe and sensible.
+Miss Milbanke was the antithesis of his mother.
+
+The lady declined--but that is nothing.
+
+They were married within a year.
+
+In another year the wife left her husband and went back to her mother,
+carrying in her arms a girl baby, only a few weeks old.
+
+She never returned to her husband.
+
+What the trouble was no one ever knew, although the gossips named a
+hundred and one reasons--running from drunkenness to homicide. But Byron,
+the world now knows, was no drunkard--he was at times convivial, but he
+had no fixed taste for strong drink. He was, however, peevish, impulsive,
+impetuous and often very unreasonable.
+
+Byron, be it said to his credit, brought no recriminating charges against
+his wife. He only said their differences were inexplicable and
+unexplainable.
+
+The simple facts were that they breathed a different atmosphere--their
+heads were in a different stratum. His normal pulse was eighty; hers,
+sixty-five.
+
+What do you think of a spiritual companionship where the wife demands,
+"How much longer are you going to follow this foolish habit of writing
+verses?"
+
+They did not understand each other. Byron uttered words that no man should
+voice to a woman, and his outbursts were met with a forced calmness that
+was exasperating. The lady sat down, yawned wearily, and when there came a
+lull in the gentleman's verbal pyrotechnics, she would ask him if he had
+anything more to say.
+
+One day she varied the program by packing up her effects and leaving him.
+
+Of course, it is easy to say that had this woman been wise she would have
+stood the childish outbursts and endured the peevish tantrums, for the
+sake of the hours of tenderness and love that were sure to follow. By
+right treatment he would have been on his knees, begging forgiveness and
+crying it out with his head in her lap very shortly. But all this implies
+a woman of unusual power--extraordinary patience. And this woman was
+simply human. She left, and then in order to justify her action she gave
+reasons. Our actions are usually right, but our reasons for them seldom
+are.
+
+Mrs. Byron made no concealment of her troubles. Society had occasion for
+gossip and the occasion was improved. Stories of Byron's cruelty and
+inhumanity filled the coffeehouses and drawing-rooms; and the hints at
+crimes so grave they could not even be mentioned gave the gossips their
+cue.
+
+The press took it up, and the poet was warned by his friends not to appear
+at the theater or upon the street for fear of the indignation of the mob.
+The spoilt child of London was paying the penalty of popularity. The
+pendulum had swung too far and was now coming back.
+
+Byron, hunted by creditors, hooted by enemies, broken in health, crushed
+in spirit, left the country--left England, never to return alive.
+
+When Byron trod the deck of the good ship bound for Ostend, and saw a
+strip of tossing, blue water separating him from England, his spirits
+rose. He was twenty-eight years old, and the thought that he would yet do
+something and be somebody was strong in his heart. All the old pride came
+back.
+
+The idea that he would not sell the product of his brain for hire was
+abandoned, and soon after arriving in Holland he began to write letters
+home, making sharp bargains with publishers.
+
+Further than this, his attorneys, on his order, made demand for a share of
+his wife's estate. And erelong we find Byron, the wasteful, cultivating
+the good old gentlemanly habit of penuriousness. He was making money, and
+had he lived to be sixty it is probable he would have evolved into a
+conservative and written a book on "Getting on in the World, or Success as
+I Have Found It."
+
+Byron's pilgrimage down through Germany, along the Rhine to Switzerland,
+was one of rest and recreation. At Berne, Basle, Lausanne and Geneva he
+found food for literary thought, and many instances in his writings show
+the reflected scenes he saw. No visitor at Lausanne fails to visit the
+Castle of Chillon, and all the guides will recite you these sweeping
+lines, so surcharged with feeling, beginning:
+
+    "Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls;
+    A thousand feet in depth below,
+    Its many waters meet and flow."
+
+At Geneva began the most interesting friendship between Byron and that
+other young man, so like and yet so unlike him.
+
+Only a few years and Byron was to search the shores of the Mediterranean
+for Shelley's dead body, and finding it, be one of the friends who reduced
+it to ashes.
+
+Tiring of Geneva and the tourists who pointed him out as a curiosity, we
+find Byron and his little party making their way across the Simplon, to
+cross which is an epoch in the life of any man, and then down by the Lago
+Maggiore to Milan.
+
+"The Last Supper" of Leonardo da Vinci did not impress Byron--the art of
+painting never did--this was his most marked limitation. From Milan they
+wandered down through Italy to Verona and Venice.
+
+The third Canto of "Childe Harold," "Manfred," and dozens of shorter poems
+had been sent to Murray. England read and paid for all that Byron wrote,
+and accepted it all as autobiography. Possibly Byron's defiant manner lent
+an excuse for this, but by applying similar rules we could convict
+Sophocles, Schiller and Shelley of basest crimes, put Shakespeare in the
+dock for murder, Milton for blasphemy, Scott for forgery, and Goethe for
+questionable financial deals with the devil. Byron's sins were as scarlet
+and the number not a few, but the moths that came just to flit about the
+flame were all of mature age. Byron set no snares for the innocent, and in
+all of the man's misdoings, he himself it was who suffered most.
+
+The Countess Guiccioli, it seems, was the only woman who comprehended his
+nature sufficiently to lead him in the direction of peace and poise. With
+her, for the first time, he began to systematize his life on a basis of
+sanity. They lived together for five years, and from the time he met her
+until his death no other love came to separate them.
+
+Throughout his life Byron was a man in revolt; and it was only a variation
+of the old passion for freedom that led him to Greece and to his grave.
+The personal bravery of the man was proven more than once in his life,
+and on the approach of death he was undismayed. When he passed away, April
+Nineteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-four, Stanhope wrote, "England has
+lost her brightest genius--Greece her best friend."
+
+His body was returned to England, denied burial in Westminster, and now
+rests in the old church at Hucknall, near Newstead.
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH ADDISON
+
+    Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,
+    My bane and antidote, are both before me.
+    This in a moment brings me to an end;
+    But this informs me I shall never die.
+    The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
+    At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
+    The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
+    Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
+    But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
+    Unhurt amid the war of elements,
+    The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds!
+                                       --_Cato's Soliloquy_
+
+[Illustration: JOSEPH ADDISON]
+
+
+Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
+
+Expression is necessary to life. The spirit grows through exercise of its
+faculties, just as a muscle grows strong through use. Life is expression
+and repression is stagnation--death.
+
+Yet there is right expression and wrong expression. If a man allows his
+life to run riot, and only the animal side of his nature is allowed to
+express itself, he is repressing his highest and best, and therefore those
+qualities, not used, atrophy and die.
+
+Sensuality, gluttony and the life of license repress the life of the
+spirit, and the soul never blossoms; and this is what it is to lose one's
+soul. All adown the centuries thinking men have noted these truths, and
+again and again we find individuals forsaking, in horror, the life of the
+senses and devoting themselves to the life of the spirit.
+
+The question of expression through the spirit or through the
+senses--through the soul or the body--has been the pivotal point of all
+philosophies and the inspiration of all religions. Asceticism in our day
+finds an interesting manifestation in the Trappists, who live on a
+mountain, nearly inaccessible, and deprive themselves of almost every
+vestige of bodily comfort; going without food for days, wearing
+uncomfortable garments, suffering severe cold. So here we find the extreme
+instance of men repressing the faculties of the body in order that the
+spirit may find ample time and opportunity for exercise.
+
+Between this extreme repression and the license of the sensualist lies the
+truth. But just where, is the great question; and the desire of one
+person, who thinks he has discovered the norm, to compel all other men to
+stop there, has led to war and strife untold. All law centers around this
+point--what shall men be allowed to do? And so we find statutes to punish
+"strolling play-actors," "players on fiddles," "disturbers of the public
+conscience," "persons who dance wantonly," "blasphemers," etc. In England
+there were, in the year Eighteen Hundred, sixty-seven offenses punishable
+with death.
+
+What expression is right and what is not is largely a matter of opinion.
+Instrumental music has been to some a rock of offense, exciting the
+spirit, through the sense of hearing, to wrong thoughts--through "the
+lascivious pleasing of a lute." Others think dancing wicked, while a few
+allow square dances, but condemn the waltz. Some sects allow pipe-organ
+music, but draw the line at the violin; while others, still, employ a
+whole orchestra in their religious service. Some there may be who regard
+pictures as implements of idolatry, while the Hook-and-Eye Baptists look
+upon buttons as immoral.
+
+Strange evolutions are often witnessed within the life of one individual,
+as to what is right and what wrong. For instance, Leo Tolstoy, that great
+and good man, once a worldling, has now turned ascetic, a not unusual
+evolution in the lives of the saints. Not caring for harmony as expressed
+in color, form and sounds, Tolstoy is now quite willing to deprive all
+others of these things which minister to their well-being. There is in
+most souls a hunger for beauty, just as there is a physical hunger. Beauty
+speaks to their spirits through the senses; but Tolstoy would have his
+house barren to the verge of hardship, and he advocates that all other
+houses should be likewise. My veneration for Count Tolstoy is profound,
+but I mention him here simply to show the danger that lies in allowing any
+man, even one of the best, to dictate to us what is right.
+
+Most of the frightful cruelties inflicted on mankind during the past have
+arisen out of a difference of opinion arising through a difference in
+temperament. The question is as live today as it was two thousand years
+ago--what expression is best? That is, what shall we do to be saved? And
+concrete absurdity consists in saying we must all do the same thing.
+
+Whether the race will ever grow to a point where men will be willing to
+leave the matter of life-expression to the individual is a question. Most
+men are anxious to do what is best for themselves and least harmful for
+others. The average man now has intelligence enough! Utopia is not far
+off, if the self-appointed folk who govern us for a consideration would
+only be willing to do unto others as they would be done by, and cease
+coveting things that belong to other people. War among nations, and strife
+among individuals, is a result of the covetous spirit to possess either
+power or things, or both. A little more patience, a little more charity
+for all, a little more devotion, a little more love; with less bowing down
+to the past, a brave looking forward to the future, with more confidence
+in ourselves, and more faith in our fellows, and the race will be ripe for
+a great burst of light and life.
+
+Macaulay has said that the Puritan did not condemn bear-baiting because it
+gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator. The
+Puritan regarded beauty as a pitfall and a snare: that which gave pleasure
+was a sin; he found his gratification in doing without things. Puritanism
+was a violent oscillation of the pendulum of life to the other side. From
+the vanity, pretense, affectation and sensualism of a Church and State
+bitten by corruption, we find the recoil in Puritanism.
+
+Asceticism to the verge of hardship, frankness bordering on rudeness, and
+a stolidity that was impolite; or soft, luxurious hypocrisy in a
+moth-eaten society--which shall it be? And Joseph Addison comes upon the
+scene and by the sincerity, graciousness and gentle excellence of his life
+and work, says, "Neither!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The little village of Wiltshire is noted as the birthplace of Addison, who
+was the son of a clergyman, afterward the Dean of Lichfield. An erstwhile
+resident of Lichfield, Samuel Johnson by name, once said of Joseph
+Addison, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not
+coarse, elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the
+volumes of Addison."
+
+For elegance, simplicity, insight, and a wit that is sharp but which never
+wounds, Addison has no rival, although more than two hundred years have
+come and gone since he ceased to write.
+
+Addison was a gentleman--the best example of a perfect gentleman that the
+history of English literature affords. And in letters it is much easier to
+find a genius than a gentleman. The field today is not at all over-worked;
+and those who wish to cultivate the art of being gentlemen will find no
+fearsome competition. In fact, the chief reason for not engaging in this
+line is the discomfort of isolation, and the lack of comradeship one is
+sure to suffer. To be gentle, generous, kind; to win by few words; and to
+disarm criticism and prejudice through the potency of a gracious presence,
+is a fine art. Books on etiquette will not serve the end, nor studious
+attempts to smile at the proper time, nor zealous efforts to avoid
+jostling the whims of those we meet; for to attempt to please is often to
+antagonize.
+
+Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise seem the three ingredients most needed in
+forming the gentle man. I place these elements according to their value.
+No man is great who does not possess Sympathy plus, and the greatness of
+men can safely be gauged by their sympathies. Sympathy and imagination are
+twin sisters. Your heart must go out to all men, the high, the low, the
+rich, the poor, the learned, the unlearned, the good, the bad, the wise,
+the foolish--you must be one with them all, else you can never comprehend
+them. Sympathy! It is the touchstone to every secret, the key to all
+knowledge, the open sesame of all hearts. Put yourself in the other man's
+place, and then you will know why he thinks certain thoughts and does
+certain deeds. Put yourself in his place, and your blame will dissolve
+itself into pity, and your tears will wipe out the record of his misdeeds.
+The saviors of the world have simply been men with wondrous Sympathy.
+
+But Knowledge must go with Sympathy, else the emotions will become maudlin
+and pity may be wasted on a poodle instead of a child; on a field-mouse
+instead of a human soul. Knowledge in use is wisdom, and wisdom implies a
+sense of values--you know a big thing from a little one, a valuable fact
+from a trivial one. Tragedy and comedy are simply questions of value: a
+little misfit in life makes us laugh, a great one is tragedy and cause for
+grief.
+
+Poise is the strength of body and strength of mind to control your
+Sympathy and your Knowledge. Unless you control your emotions they run
+over and you stand in the slop. Sympathy must not run riot, or it is
+valueless and tokens weakness instead of strength. In every hospital for
+nervous disorders are to be found many instances of this loss of control.
+The individual has Sympathy, but not Poise, and therefore his life is
+worthless to himself and to the world.
+
+He symbols inefficiency, not helpfulness. Poise reveals itself more in
+voice than in words; more in thought than in action; more in atmosphere
+than in conscious life. It is a spiritual quality, and is felt more than
+it is seen. It is not a matter of size, nor bodily attitude, nor attire,
+nor personal comeliness: it is a state of inward being, and of knowing
+your cause is just. And so you see it is a great and profound subject
+after all, great in its ramifications, limitless in extent, implying the
+entire science of right living. I once met a man who was deformed in body
+and little more than a dwarf, but who had such Spiritual Gravity--such
+Poise--that to enter a room where he was, was to feel his presence and
+acknowledge his superiority. To allow Sympathy to waste itself on unworthy
+subjects is to deplete one's life-forces. To conserve is the part of
+wisdom. No great orator ever exerts himself to his fullest, and reserve is
+a necessary element in all good literature, as well as in everything else.
+Poise being the control of your Sympathy and Knowledge implies the
+possession of these attributes, for without Sympathy and Knowledge you
+have nothing to control but your physical body. To practise Poise as a
+mere gymnastic exercise, or a study in etiquette, is to be self-conscious,
+stiff, preposterous and ridiculous. Those who cut such fantastic tricks
+before high heaven as make angels weep are men void of Sympathy and
+Knowledge trying to cultivate Poise. Their science is a mere matter of
+what to do with arms and legs. Poise is a question of spirit controlling
+flesh, heart controlling attitude. And so in the cultivation of Poise it
+is well to begin quite aways back. Let perfect love cast out fear; get rid
+of all secrets; have nothing in your heart to conceal; be gentle,
+generous, kind; do not bother to forgive your enemies--it is better to
+forget them, and cease conjuring them forth from your inner consciousness.
+The idea that you have enemies is egotism gone to seed. Get Knowledge by
+coming close to Nature, listening to her heart-beats, studying her ways.
+And let your heart go out to humanity by a desire to serve.
+
+That man is greatest who best serves his kind. Sympathy and Knowledge are
+for use--you acquire that you may give out; you accumulate that you may
+bestow. And as God has given you the sublime blessings of Sympathy and
+Knowledge, there will come to you the wish to reveal your gratitude by
+giving them out again, for the wise man knows that we retain spiritual
+qualities only as we give them away. Let your light shine. To him that
+hath shall be given. The exercise of wisdom brings wisdom; and at the
+last the infinitesimal quantity of man's knowledge, compared with the
+Infinite, and the meagerness of man's Sympathy when compared with the
+source from which ours is absorbed, will evolve an abnegation and a
+humility that will lend a perfect Poise. The Gentleman is a man with
+Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise; and as I sit here in this quiet corner,
+Joseph Addison seems to me to fit the requirements a little better than
+any other name I can recall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Born into a family where economy was a necessity, yet Addison had every
+advantage that good breeding and thorough tutorship could give.
+
+At Charterhouse School he won the affection of his teachers by his earnest
+wish to comply. The receptive spirit and the desire to please were his by
+inheritance. When fifteen he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where,
+within a year, his beauty, good nature and intelligence made his presence
+felt.
+
+In another year he was elected a scholar at Magdalen College, his
+recommendation being his skill in Latin versification.
+
+It was the hope and expectation of his parents that he should become a
+clergyman and follow in his father's footsteps. This also seems to have
+been the bent of the young man's mind. But the grace of his personality,
+his obliging disposition, with a sort of furtive ability to peer into a
+millstone as far as any, had attracted the attention of several statesmen.
+One of these, Charles Montague, afterward Lord Halifax, remarked, "I am a
+friend of the Church, but I propose to do it the injury of keeping Addison
+out of it."
+
+Montague discussed the matter with Lord Somers, and these two concluded
+that just a trifle more maturity of that gently ironical mind, a little
+more seasoning of the gracious personality, and the State would have in
+Joseph Addison a servant of untold value.
+
+Thus we see that England's policy of selecting and training men for the
+consular and diplomatic service is no new thing. It is a wonder that
+America has not ere this profited by the example. The tradition holds that
+we must at least have a scholar and a gentleman for the Court of Saint
+James, and several times we have been put to straits to find the man. The
+only way is to breed them and then bring them up in the way they should
+go.
+
+But beyond the zealous desire of Montague and Lord Somers to educate good
+men for the diplomatic service, lurked the still more eager wish to secure
+able writers to plead and defend the party cause. With this phase of the
+question America is more familiar; the policy of rewarding able speakers
+and ready writers with offices ready made or made to order has come to us
+ably backed by precedent untold.
+
+Addison set himself to literary tasks, but still regarded himself as a
+scholar. Leisure fitted his temperament--he was never in haste, even when
+he was in a hurry, and he carried with him the air of having all the time
+there was. Nothing is so ungraceful as haste. Addison always had time to
+listen; and we make friends, not by explaining things to other folks, but
+by allowing others to explain to us.
+
+The habit of attentive, sympathetic listening came to Addison early in
+life. From his twenty-first to his twenty-seventh year he lived a studious
+life--idle, his father called it--writing essays, political pamphlets and
+Latin verse. His political friends took care that some of the output was
+purchased, so that he was assured a comfortable living; but his success
+was not sufficient to inflate his cosmos with an undue amount of ego.
+
+One small book of criticism which he produced about this time was
+entitled, "Account of the English Poets." A significant feature of the
+work is that Shakespeare is not mentioned, even once, while Dryden is
+placed as the standard of excellence, just as in "Modern Painters," Ruskin
+takes Turner and lets him stand for one hundred, and all other artists
+grade down from this.
+
+Addison merely reflected the taste of his time. Shakespeare was not
+thought any more of two hundred years ago than we think of him now, with
+this difference--that he is the author we now talk about and seldom read,
+but then they did not discuss him any more than we now go to see him
+played.
+
+An interesting character by the name of Jacob Tonson appears upon the
+scene, as a friend of Addison in his early days. Tonson enjoyed the
+distinction of being the father of the modern publishing business--the
+first man to bring out the works of authors at his own risk and then sell
+the product to bookstores. I believe it is Mr. Le Gallienne who has been
+so unkind as to speak of "Barabbas Tonson." Among Tonson's many good
+strokes was his act in buying the copyright of "Paradise Lost" from
+Simmons, the bookseller, who had purchased all rights in the manuscript
+from the bereaved widow on a payment of eight pounds.
+
+Tonson appreciated good things in a literary way. He was on friendly terms
+with all the principal writers, and did much in bringing some shy writers
+to the front. Addison and Tonson laid great plans, few of which
+materialized, and some were carried out by other people--notably the
+compilation of an English Dictionary. In Sixteen Hundred Ninety-nine we
+find Addison, in possession of a pension of three hundred pounds a year,
+crossing the Channel into France with the object "to travel and qualify
+himself to serve His Majesty."
+
+The diplomatic language of the world was French. With intent to learn the
+language, Addison made his home with a modest French family; and a better
+way of acquiring a language than this has never been devised. A young
+friend of mine, however, recently returned from Europe, tells me that the
+ideal plan is to make love to a vivacious French girl who can not speak
+English. Of the excellence of this plan I know nothing--it may be a mere
+barren ideality.
+
+A little over a year in France and we are told that "Addison spoke the
+language like a native "--a glib expression, still able-bodied, that means
+little or much. From France Addison followed down into Italy, and spent a
+year there, residing in various small towns with the same object in view
+that took him to France.
+
+And one of his admirers relates that "he learned to speak Italian
+perfectly, his pronunciation being marred only by a slight French accent."
+Addison's three years of foreign travel, and the friendly society of the
+highest and best wherever he journeyed, had caused him to blossom out into
+a most exceptional man. Nature had done much for him, but her best gift
+was the hospitable mind. Travel to many young men is the opportunity to
+indulge in a line of conduct not possible at home. But Addison, ripening
+slowly, appreciated the fact that the Puritan has a deal of truth on his
+side. There is a manly abstinence that is most becoming, and to moderate
+one's desires and partake of the good things of earth sparingly is the
+best way to garner their benefit. No doubt, too, Addison's modesty and
+tendency to shyness saved him from many a danger. "Bashfulness is the
+tough husk in which genius ripens," says Emerson.
+
+Thus do we find our man at thirty, strong, manly, gifted, handsome,
+chivalrous, proud, yet tender, sympathetic, knowing--ready to serve his
+country in whatsoever capacity he could serve it best. When lo! the death
+of the King cut off his pension, a new party came in, his influential
+friends were thrown out of power, and Addison's prospects wilted in a
+single night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fact is that Addison from his thirtieth to his fortieth year was
+little better than a denizen of Grub Street. Fortunately he was a
+bachelor, with no one but himself to support, else actual hardship might
+have entered. Several flattering offers to act as tutor or companion to
+rich men's sons came his way, and were declined in polite and gracious
+language; and once a suggestion that he wed a woman of wealth was tabled
+in a manner not quite so gracious. In passing, it is well to state that
+all of Addison's relations with women seem to have occupied a lofty plane
+of chivalry. His respect for the good name of woman was profound, and
+whether any woman ever broke through that fine reserve and exquisite
+formality is a question. He was intensely admired by women, of course, but
+it was from the other side of the drawing-room. He kept gush at bay, and
+never tempted to indiscretion.
+
+Addison's youth was past; he was creeping well into the thirties, and
+still with no prospects. He was out of money, with no profession, and no
+special reputation as a writer. The popular poets of the time were Sedley,
+Rochester, Buckingham and Dorset--and you have never heard of them? Well,
+it only shows how a literary reputation is a shadow that fades in a night.
+
+Addison had written his "Cato" several years before, but no one had seen
+it. He carried the manuscript about with him, as Goethe did his "Faust,"
+for years, and added to it, or erased, all according to the moods that
+came to him. And we have reason to believe that the sublime soliloquy in
+"Cato" was written by Addison when the blankness of his prospects and the
+blackness of the future had forced the question of self-destruction upon
+him.
+
+Cato made a great mistake in committing suicide--he did the deed right on
+the eve of success--he should have waited. Addison waited.
+
+At this time Lord Godolphin, who had the happiness to have a great
+racehorse named after him, occupied the chief place in the Ministry.
+Marlborough had just fought the battle of Blenheim, and it was Godolphin's
+wish to have the victory sung in adequate verse, for history's sake and
+for the sake of the political party. But he could not think of a poet who
+was equal to the task; so in his dilemma he called in Lord Halifax, who
+had a reputation for knowing good things in a literary way.
+
+Lord Halifax was unfortunate in having his portrait transmitted by two
+poets who hated him thoroughly, each for the amply sufficient reason that
+he failed to confer the favors that were much desired. Swift calls Halifax
+"a would-be Mæcenas"; and Pope refers to him as "penurious, mean and
+chicken-hearted," satirizing him in the well-known character of Bufo.
+
+Do not take the poets too seriously: all good men have had mud-balls
+thrown at them--sometimes bricks--and Halifax was not a bad man by any
+means. Let the poets make copy of their thwarted hopes.
+
+In reply to Lord Godolphin's inquiries, Halifax said he did indeed know
+the man who could celebrate the victory in verse, and in fact there was
+only one man in England who could do the task justice. He, however,
+refused to divulge his man's identity until a suitable reward for the poet
+was fixed upon.
+
+Godolphin finally thought of an office in the Excise, worth three hundred
+pounds a year or more.
+
+Halifax then stipulated that the negotiations must be carried on directly
+between the Government and the poet, otherwise the poet's pride would
+rebel. Godolphin agreed to shield Halifax from all mention in the matter,
+and the name and address of Joseph Addison were then taken down.
+
+Godolphin had never heard of Addison, but relying on Halifax, he sent
+Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the address named, where Addison
+was found over a haberdasher's, up three flights, back. The account comes
+from Pope, who was the enemy of both Addison and Halifax, and can
+therefore be relied upon.
+
+The Chancellor of the Exchequer broached the subject, was gently repulsed,
+the case was argued, and being put on the plane of duty the poet
+surrendered, and as a result we have Addison's poem, "The Campaign." It
+was considered a great literary feat in its day, but like all things
+performed to order, comes tardy off. Only work done in love lives. But
+Addison slid into the Excise office, taking it as legal tender. This
+brought him into relationship with Godolphin, who one day exclaimed, "I
+thought that man Addison was nothing but a poet--I'm a rogue if he isn't
+really a great man!" Lord Godolphin was needing a good man, a man of
+address, polish, tact and education. And Addison was selected to fill the
+office of Under-Secretary of State, the place for which he had fitted
+himself and to which he had aspired eight years before. Moral: Be
+prepared.
+
+The party that called Addison was not the one to which he was supposed to
+be attached, but his merits were recognized, his help was needed, and so
+he was sent for. It was a great compliment. But good men are always
+needed--they were then, and the demand is greater now than ever before.
+The highest positions are hard to fill--good men are scarce.
+
+Addison's knowledge, his modesty, his willingness, his caution, his grace
+of manner, fitted him exactly for the position; and we have reason to
+believe that the salary of one thousand pounds a year was very acceptable
+to one in his situation.
+
+In another year the Whigs had grown stronger; Halifax was again a
+recognized power; and erelong we find Addison entering Parliament. So
+great was his popularity that he was elected from one district six times,
+representing Malmesbury until his death.
+
+It was stated by Congreve that Addison's habit of shyness was an
+affectation. If so, it was a good stroke, for nothing is so becoming in a
+man known to be versatile and strong as a half-embarrassment when in
+society. The Duke of Wellington's awkwardness in a drawing-room put all
+others at their ease. The eternal fitness of things demands that when
+greatness is in evidence some one should be embarrassed, and if the
+celebrity is "it," so much the better.
+
+Personally, I feel sure that Addison's shyness was not feigned, for on the
+only occasion he ever attempted to speak ex-tempore in Parliament he
+muffed the subject, forgot his theme, and sat down in confusion. With all
+his incisive thought and fine command of language, Addison could not think
+on his feet. And as if aware of his limitations, in one of the "Spectator"
+essays he said, with more or less truth, "The fluent orator, ready to
+speak on any topic, is never profound, and when once his thought is cold
+it will seldom repay examination--it was only a skyrocket."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Without Addison's literary reputation, resting upon his essays published
+in the "Tatler" and the "Spectator," it is very possible that we would now
+know about as much concerning him as we do about Sir John Hawkins. The
+"Tatler" and the "Spectator" allowed him to express his best, and in his
+own way.
+
+With the name of Addison is inseparably coupled that of Richard Steele.
+These men had a literary style which they held in partnership. The nearest
+approach to it in our time is the "Easy Chair" of George William Curtis.
+Curtis was once called by Lowell, with a goodly degree of justice, "our
+modern Addison."
+
+Steele and Addison had been schoolmates at the Charterhouse, and friends
+for a lifetime. They were of the same age within a year. Steele had been a
+soldier and an adventurer, and his disposition was decidedly convivial. He
+was a clever writer, knowing the world of politics and society, but he
+lacked the spiritual and artistic qualities which Addison's moderate and
+studious life had fostered. But on simple themes, where the argument did
+not rise above the commonplace, Addison and Steele wrote exactly alike,
+just as all writers on the "Sun" used to write like Dana. Steele had
+filled the lowest office in the Ministry, the office of "Gazeteer": the
+duties of the office being to issue a newspaper giving the official news
+of the day. It was a licensed monopoly, and all infringers were severely
+punished.
+
+Steele, however, did not like the office, because the Powers demanded that
+all writing in the "Gazette" be very innocent and very insipid. "To
+publish a newspaper and say nothing is no easy task," said Steele. Had he
+lived in our day he could have seen the trick performed on every hand.
+
+Finally the office of Gazetteer was abolished, and any man who wished
+might issue a "gazette," provided he kept within proper bounds. The result
+was a flight of small leaflet periodicals, quite like the Chapbook
+Renaissance of Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five and Eighteen Hundred
+Ninety-six, when over eleven hundred "brownie" and "chipmunk" magazines
+were started in America. Every man with two or three ideas and ten
+dollars' capital started a magazine. Steele, teeming with thoughts
+demanding expression, at war with smug society, and possessing wit withal,
+started the "Tatler," to be issued three times a week, price one penny.
+Seizing upon a creation of Swift's, "Isaac Bickerstaff," a character
+already known to the public, was introduced as editor. Bickerstaff
+announced his assistants, and among others named as authority in Foreign
+Affairs a waiter at Saint James Coffeehouse known as "Kidney." The spirit
+of rollicking freedom in the publication, with a touch of philosophy, and
+a dash of culture, caught the public fancy at once. The "Tatler" was the
+theme in every coffeehouse, and in the drawing-rooms, as well. Those who
+understood it laughed and passed it along to others who pretended they
+understood, and so it became the fad. Then the anonymity lent the charm of
+mystery--who could it be who was into all the secrets, and knew the world
+so thoroughly?
+
+Addison read each issue with surprise and amusement, but it was not until
+the fifth number that he located the author positively, by reading an
+observation of his own that he had voiced to Steele some weeks before.
+Steele absorbed everything, digested it, and gave the good out as his own,
+innocent and probably unmindful of where he got it. This accounts for his
+wonderful versatility: he made others grub and used the net result.
+
+Some years ago Francis Wilson made a mock complaint to the effect that
+whenever he met Eugene Field in the "Saints and Sinners Corner" for a
+half-hour's chat, any good thing he might voice was duly printed next day
+in the "Sharps and Flats" column as Field's very own, and thus did the
+genial Eugene acquire his reputation as a genius. All of which gentle
+gibing contains more fact than fiction.
+
+When Addison saw his bright thoughts appearing in the "Tatler," he went to
+Steele and said, "Here, I'll write that out myself and save you the
+trouble." Steele welcomed him with open arms. The first "Tatler" article
+written by Addison relates to the distress of news-writers at the prospect
+of peace. This is exactly in Steele's style; but we find erelong in the
+"Tatler" a spiritual quality that was not a part of Steele's nature. From
+current gossip and easy society commonplace, the tone is exalted, and this
+we know was the result of Addison's influence. Out of two hundred
+seventy-one articles in the "Tatler," one hundred eighty-eight were
+produced by Steele and forty-two by Addison. Yet Steele was wise enough to
+perceive the superior quality of Addison's work, and this dictated the key
+in which the magazine was pitched. Yet the fertility of Steele surpassed
+that of Addison. Steele initiated the crusade against gambling, dueling
+and vice; and this was all very natural, for he simply inveighed against
+sins with which experience had made him familiar. His moral essays were
+all written in periods of repentance. His sharp tirades on dueling in one
+instance approached the point of personality, and on being criticized, he
+resented the interference and expressed a willingness to fight his man
+with pistols at ten paces. It must not be forgotten that Richard Steele
+was an Irishman.
+
+The political tone of the "Tatler" favored the Marlborough administration,
+and on this account Steele was rewarded with a snug office under the wing
+of the State. In Seventeen Hundred Ten, the Whig Ministry fell, but Lord
+Harley knew the value of Steele as a writer, and so notified him that he
+would not be disturbed in possession of his Stamp Office.
+
+Now, a complete silence concerning things political in the "Tatler" was
+hardly possible, and a change of front would be humiliating, and whether
+to give up the "Tatler" or the office--that was the question! Addison was
+in the same box. The offices they held brought them in twice as much money
+as the little periodical, and either the patronage or the paper would have
+to go. They decided to abandon the "Tatler."
+
+But the habit of writing sticks to a man; and after two months Steele and
+Addison began to feel the necessity of some outlet for their pent-up
+thoughts. They had each grown with their work, and were aware of it. They
+would start a new paper, and make it a daily; and they would keep clear of
+politics. So we find the "Spectator" duly launched with the intended
+purpose of forming "a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art
+and literature."
+
+Every good thing has its prototype, and Addison in Italy had become
+familiar with the force of "Manners" by Casa, and the "Courtier" by
+Castiglione. Then he knew the character of La Bruyere, and this gave the
+cue for the Spectator Club, with Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew
+Freeport, Will Honeycomb, Captain Sentry and the Templar.
+
+Swift had contributed several papers to the "Tatler," but he found the
+"Spectator" too soft and feminine for his fancy. Probably Steele and
+Addison were afraid of the doughty Dean's style; there was too much
+vitriol in it for popularity--and they kept the Irish parson at a
+distance, as certain letters to "Stella" seem to indicate. The
+"Spectator" was a notable success from the start and soon put Steele and
+Addison in comfortable financial shape.
+
+After the first year the daily issue amounted to fourteen thousand copies.
+Addison introduced the "Answers to Correspondents" scheme.
+
+He has had many imitators along this line, some of whom yet endure, but
+they are not Addisons.
+
+An imitation of the "Spectator" was started as a daily in New York in
+Eighteen Hundred Ninety-eight. In one week it ran short on phosphorus and
+was obliged to quit. It took two years for Steele and Addison to write
+themselves out, and rather than let the quality of the periodical decline
+they discontinued its publication, quitting like the wise men they were at
+the height of their success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Addison's tragedy of "Cato" was produced in Seventeen Hundred
+Thirteen, he occupied the first place in English letters. The play was a
+dazzling success; and it is a great play yet. It lives as literature among
+the best things men have ever done--a masterpiece!
+
+Addison still continued in the service of the State, and wrote more or
+less in a political way. The strain of carrying on the "Spectator" and the
+stress of political affairs had tired the man. The spring had gone out of
+his intellect, and he began to talk of some quiet retreat in the country.
+In Seventeen Hundred Sixteen, in his forty-fourth year, he married the
+Countess of Warwick, a widow of fifteen years' standing. We have reason to
+believe that the worthy widow did the courting and literally took our good
+man captive. He was depressed and worn, and longed for rest and gentle,
+sympathetic companionship. She promised all these--the buxom creature--and
+married him, taking him to her home at Holland House. Yes, it would be
+unjust to blame her; doubtless she wished to do for the man what was best;
+and so report has it that she exercised a discipline over his hours of
+work and recreation and curtailed a little there and issued orders here,
+until the poor patient rebelled and fled to the coffeehouses. There he
+found the rollicking society that he so despised--and loved, for there was
+comradeship in it, and comradeship was what he prayed for. His wife did
+not comprehend that delicate, spiritual quality of his heart: that
+craving for sympathy which came after he had given out so much. He wanted
+peace, quiet and rest; but she wished to take him forth and exhibit him to
+the throng. Yet all of her admonitions that he "brace up" were in vain.
+His work was done. He foresaw the end, and grew impatient that it did not
+come. Placid, resigned, sane to the last hour, he passed away at Holland
+House, June Seventeenth, Seventeen Hundred Nineteen, aged forty-seven. His
+body, lying in state, was viewed by more than ten thousand people, and
+then it was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+                         Let no man write
+    Thy epitaph, Emmett; thou shalt not go
+    Without thy funeral strain! O young and good,
+    And wise, though erring here, thou shalt not go
+    Unhonored or unsung. And better thus
+    Beneath that undiscriminating stroke,
+    Better to fall, than to have lived to mourn,
+    As sure thou wouldst, in misery and remorse,
+    Thine own disastrous triumph * * * *
+    How happier thus, in that heroic mood
+    That takes away the sting of death, to die,
+    By all the good and all the wise forgiven!
+    Yea, in all ages by the wise and good
+    To be remembered, mourned, and honored still!
+                                  --_Southey to Robert Emmett_
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT SOUTHEY]
+
+
+Most generally, when I travel, I go alone--this to insure being in good
+company. To travel with another is a terrible risk: it puts a great strain
+on the affections.
+
+I once made the tour of Scotland with a man who was traveling for his
+health. He had kidney-trouble belief. I had known the man in a casual way
+for several years, and we started out the best of friends, anticipating a
+good time. We were gone three weeks, and when we got back I hated the
+fellow thoroughly, and I have every reason to believe that he fully
+reciprocated the sentiment.
+
+And yet he was an honest man, and I am, too, although not an extremist.
+There was nothing to quarrel about; it began at Euston Station, where I
+bought third-class tickets. He said he preferred to ride first-class, or
+second, at least--there was such a thing as false economy.
+
+I asked him why he had not said something along this line before I had
+purchased the tickets.
+
+He retorted that I had not consulted his preference in the matter. I
+brought in a mild rejoinder by moving the previous question, and showing
+that he, himself, had proposed that I should take entire charge of the
+arrangements, using my own good judgment at all times.
+
+He said something about his error in supposing he was traveling with a
+discerning person. Just then the guard came along, slamming the doors, and
+we were pushed into a third-class carriage, where we enjoyed an all-day
+journey together.
+
+At Edinburgh my companion wished to ascend the Scott monument, visit a
+friend at the University, and buy a plaid rug at one of the shops in
+Princess Street; while I proposed to look up the footprints of Bobbie
+Burns and John Knox. He said, "Confound John Knox!" I answered, "You
+evidently think I am referring to Knox the Hatter!" He grew mad as a
+hatter, and I had to defend John Knox, and later had to do the same for
+Rab and his friends, as well as for Christopher North.
+
+And so it went--he pooh-poohed my heroes; and I scorned the friend he
+wished to find at the University, smiled patronizingly on the Scott
+monument, and said, "hoot mon" at the idea of buying a plaid rug in
+Princess Street.
+
+All this was many years ago; since then I have been very cautious about
+entering into any Anglo-American alliances. Yet to travel alone often
+seems to be dropping something out of your life. When the voyage is rough,
+the weather bad and the fare below par, my spirits always rise. I say to
+myself: "My son, this is certainly tough--but who cares! We can stand it,
+we have had this way right along year after year--but just imagine your
+plight if there were some one in your charge expecting a good time!"
+
+Then I drink to Boreas and all the fiends of Gehenna, and am supremely
+content.
+
+But suppose the night is resplendent with stars, the waves tremulous with
+reflected beauty, and as the great ship goes gliding across the
+deep--proud, strong and tireless--there come to you thoughts sublime and
+emotions such as Wagner knew when he wrote the "Pilgrims' Chorus."
+
+But you are not happy, simply because you want to tell some one how happy
+you are. What is the starlight for, save to call some one's attention to,
+or the phosphorescent sheen except to be pointed out and enjoyed by two?
+Exquisite beauty, as revealed in music, painting, sculpture or beautiful
+scenery, affects me at times to tears; and there always comes creeping
+into my life a profound sadness, a dread homesickness, to think that in
+this wealth of peace and joy I am alone--alone.
+
+Can you stand by yourself on a hillside and look across a beautiful little
+lake to the woods beyond; or walk through a pine-forest, where the needles
+sink as a carpet beneath your feet, and the air is full of the pungent
+odor of the pine, and the gently swaying tree-tops overhead croon you a
+lullaby--can you enjoy all this without an exquisite melancholy, and a
+joy that hurts, piercing your soul? It's homesickness, that's all; you
+want to go home and tell some one how happy you are. Give me solitude,
+sweet solitude, but in my solitude give me still one friend to whom I may
+murmur, Solitude is sweet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That about the sea and the forest, the wooded hillside and the little lake
+may not be the exact words, but the thought is there just as White Pigeon
+expressed it to me that evening when we sat on the mossy bank of the lake
+at Grasmere and threw pebbles into the water.
+
+I had come up from Liverpool to Bowness, walked over to Ambleside and
+along the lake to Grasmere. My luggage consisted of a comb, a toothbrush
+and a stout second-growth East Aurora hickory stick.
+
+At Grasmere I applied at the Red Lion Inn for supper and lodging. The
+landlady looked at my dusty, rusty corduroys, paused, coughed and asked
+where my luggage was. Wishing to be honest, I displayed the luggage
+aforementioned. She did not smile. She was a large person, sober, sedate,
+sincere and also serious, with a big bunch of keys dangling from a waist
+that once was Grecian. And she told me right there that if I wanted
+accommodations I would have to pay in advance. I demurred, pleaded and
+finally explained that I had lost my money and had sent to New York for a
+remittance, I was a remittance-man. Had this been true, it were sad, yet I
+had a hundred pounds sterling in my belt; but it just came to me to see
+how it would feel to be penniless and friendless and plead for charity. It
+is not hard to plead for charity when one has a pocket full of money.
+
+So I pleaded. But it was of no avail.
+
+I requested a drink of water. This was denied. Then I asked if I could
+wash in the lake; and this favor was granted, and the advice volunteered
+that it would be a good thing to do. And further the kind lady made a
+motion toward a dangling red tassel that hung from a rope, and suggested
+that I get me to a gunnery and quickly, too, otherwise she would have to
+call the porter.
+
+I felt to see that my money was all right--to assure myself it was no jest
+in earnest--and departed. Being singularly psychic to suggestion I
+followed the thought that I wash in the lake, and started in that
+direction, along a footpath that led across a meadow, over a stile. A
+thick growth of bushes lined the lake for aways, and then the footpath
+seemed to follow right through the undergrowth. I pushed the green
+branches aside, and continued along for about a hundred feet, when I stood
+on the green, grass-covered bank of the beautiful "Windermere." Daffodils
+lined the water's edge--the daffodils of Wordsworth--down the lake were
+the white wings of several sailboats; the sun had gone down, but his long
+rays of gold still pierced the sky, while across the water arose, silent
+and majestic, the dark purple hills.
+
+It was a beautiful sight--so full of quiet and peace and rest. I stood
+with hat in hand, the evening breeze fanning my face, enjoying the scene.
+Just then there was a little splash in the water, and looking down I saw a
+woman with back toward me sitting on a boulder, tossing pebbles into the
+lake. By the side of the woman were her hat and book. I was on the point
+of softly backing out through the bushes, when it came to me that I had
+seen that head with its big coil of brown hair somewhere else--but where,
+ah, where!
+
+Why, in Paris, two years before. It was White Pigeon.
+
+She had not seen me. I retraced my steps, and then came crashing through
+the juniper, straight over to the bankside, where I sat down about twenty
+feet from the good lady. I was whistling violently and throwing pebbles
+into the water, not even glancing toward her. She let me whistle for a
+full minute and then said gently: "Do not be absurd! I know you." Then we
+both laughed, and I, of course, did the regulation thing, and asked, "When
+did you arrive, and where are you going, and how do you like it?"
+
+"You see what I am doing here, and as for when I arrived and how long I'll
+stay, and how I like it--what difference is it? There, you are surprised
+to see me, aren't you? I thought you had gotten past being surprised at
+anything, long ago--only silly people are surprised--you once said it,
+yourself!"
+
+Then White Pigeon ceased to speak and we simply gazed into each other's
+eyes. White Pigeon has gray eyes that sometimes are blue and sometimes
+amber--it all depends upon her mood and the thoughts reflected there. The
+long, sober gaze stole off into a half-smile and she said, "You got things
+awfully mixed up in that Rosa Bonheur booklet--why not stick to truth?"
+
+"Truth," I replied, "is hideous, and facts are like some men, stubborn
+things. But what was the matter with the Bonheur Little Journey?"
+
+"You will not be angry with me?"
+
+"How could I be?"
+
+"You promise?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you said my cousin was a conductor on the Lake Shore--you knew
+perfectly well it was the Michigan Central!"
+
+I apologized.
+
+It had been two years since I had seen this woman, and not a letter had
+passed between us. I had sent her a book now and then, and she had sent me
+a sketch or two.
+
+White Pigeon knows nothing about me, and never asked concerning my
+history, which is a blank, my lord! Does the lily inquire of the
+humming-bird, "Hast hummed and fluttered about other flowers?"
+
+That is a charming friendship that asks nothing, makes no demands, needs
+no assurances, never falters, and is so frank that it disarms prudery and
+pretense.
+
+I said as much.
+
+White Pigeon made no answer, but flung a pebble into the lake.
+
+And all I know of White Pigeon is that she was born in White Pigeon,
+Michigan, and had left there ten years before to study art for a short
+time in Paris. The short time extended to ten years.
+
+White Pigeon does not call herself an artist--she only copies pictures in
+the Louvre and gives lessons. "Not being able to paint, I give lessons,"
+she once said to me. The first pictures she copied were sold to kind
+gentlemen who make many wagons at South Bend, Indiana; other pictures went
+to men who have interests at Ivorydale; and some have gone to the
+mill-owner at Ypsilanti, for the mill-owner is interested in art, as all
+patrons of the "Hum Journal" know.
+
+White Pigeon lived at Paris because one must needs live somewhere, and
+rich Americans sometimes send her their daughters to "finish." That was
+what took her over to the Lake District--she was traveling with two young
+women from Grand Rapids. And so these three women were doing Great
+Britain, and White Pigeon was acting as courier, chaperone and instructor.
+
+"I need 'finish,'" I suggested in one of the long pauses.
+
+"I was just going to suggest it," said the lady.
+
+"You say you are going to Southey's old home tomorrow--may I go, too?" I
+ventured.
+
+And the answer was, "Of course--if you will promise not to work me up into
+copy."
+
+I promised.
+
+I found lodgings that night at "Nab Cottage." Being well recommended, the
+landlady did not hesitate, but gave me the best accommodations her house
+afforded.
+
+Hartley Coleridge does not live at "Nab Cottage" now--a moss-covered slab
+marks his resting-place up at the Grasmere Churchyard, and only a step
+away in a very straight row are similar old headstones that token the
+graves of William, Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth. Hartley Coleridge had most
+of the weaknesses of his father, and only a few of his better traits. Yet
+Southey brought up the children of Coleridge and gave them just as good
+advantages as he did his own.
+
+"It is not 'advantages' that make great men--it is disadvantages!" said
+White Pigeon. We were eating breakfast at the table set out under the
+arbor, back of the Coleridge cottage--Grace, Myrtle, White Pigeon and I.
+
+Grace and Myrtle were the Grand Rapids girls, and fine girls, too--pink
+and twenty, with diaries and autograph-fans. Girls of that age are
+charming, but they only interest me as do beautiful kittens or colts.
+Women do not become wise or discreet until they are past thirty. White
+Pigeon was past thirty.
+
+We took the stage that morning at nine o'clock for Keswick. The stage
+started from the Red Lion Inn. It is a great event--the starting of a
+four-horse stage. The guests came out, and so did the boots, and
+chamber-maids and waiters, and the cook came also. They stood in line and
+bade the parting guests godspeed, and all the guests were supposed to
+express gratitude tangibly. The landlady was busy, flying about like a
+Plymouth Rock hen with a brood of ducks. She saw me handing up the
+pink-and-white Grace and Myrtle and the dignified, tailor-made White
+Pigeon, and she came out and apologized profusely for not having had room
+to accommodate me the night before.
+
+At last all the hatboxes and bloomin' luggage were safely stowed, the
+trunks were lashed in place behind, and I climbed to the top of the stage
+and took my seat beside my charges. A merry blast was blown from the
+tallyho horn. A man with a red coat, high white hat, kid gloves and a
+brick-dust complexion mounted the box and gathered up a big handful of
+reins. The hostlers at the heads of the leaders let go, twenty feet of
+whiplash went singing through the air--and we were off!
+
+We swung through the village with more majesty and clatter than the Empire
+State Express ever assumed, stopping just an instant at the post-office
+for a bag of mail that the brick-dusty driver caught with his feet, and
+then away we went.
+
+I am sorry I did not live in stagecoach times--things are now so dead and
+dreary and prosaic. Yet I sometimes have imagined that today the
+stagecoach business in England is a little stagey--many things are done to
+heighten effects. For instance, the intense excitement of starting is not
+exactly necessary--why the mad rush? No one is really in a hurry to reach
+a certain place at a certain time! And all this is apparent when you
+notice that a mile out of town the pace subsides to a lazy dog-trot, and
+the boots has jumped down and unchecked each horse so as to make things
+easy. I was glad the boots got down, for whenever I see a horse's head
+checked up in the air my impulse is to uncheck him--and once on Wabash
+Avenue in Chicago I did.
+
+I was arrested, and it cost me five.
+
+The road to Keswick bristles with history. Coleridge, Wordsworth and
+Southey tramped it many a time, and since their day, thousands of literary
+pilgrims have come this way. That two poets-laureate should have come from
+this beautiful corner of the earth of course is interesting, but the honor
+of being poet-laureate to the King is a shifting honor, depending upon the
+poet. No title can ever really honor a man, although a man may honor a
+title, and no King by taking thought can add a cubit to a subject's
+stature. The man is what he is. Southey succeeded the poet Pye, who was
+laureate before him.
+
+A weaker nature than mine might here succumb to temptation and play
+pleasant philological pranks concerning the poet Pye, but I am above all
+that. Pye was a good man, and if I could remember any of the lines he
+wrote, I would here introduce them; but this is doubtless unnecessary, for
+the gentle reader can recall to suit.
+
+White Pigeon claimed that Pye was greater than Southey, and she further
+said that Tennyson's reputation suffered by consenting to act as successor
+to this line of men in whom felicity and insight were the exception. The
+tierce of Canary was no pay for acting as successor to Pye, but Southey
+jumped at the Canary and slipped his last vestige of radicalism quickly.
+
+"Oh, what a funny little church," exclaimed Myrtle; "can't we stop and go
+in?"
+
+It is a curious little building--that church at Wythburn.
+
+It looks like a little girl's playhouse, that might have belonged to her
+great-great-grandmother.
+
+Opposite this lovely little church is a tavern, where a lovely barmaid in
+white apron and lovely collar and cuffs stood in the doorway, ready to
+serve the thirsty. The red-coated driver pulled in on the tavern side, and
+men in neckerchiefs, hobnailed shoes, blue woolen stockings and
+knee-breeches made fussy haste to water the horses. Old Brick-Dusty
+climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and
+Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn
+Church. There isn't another church in England so peculiar and so
+interesting. A pew is marked sacred to Wordsworth, and one also to Harriet
+Martineau, who I did not know before ever went to church. The silver
+service was the gift of Southey, and is inscribed with his name and crest.
+Southey was a vestryman of Wythburn Church for many years, and sometimes
+read the service there. I stood in the pulpit where Southey stood, and so
+did White Pigeon, and I reminded her that she would never be allowed
+there on Sunday, for Deity is most easily approached and influenced by
+men, as all theologians know and have ever stoutly held. One of the busy
+hostlers came in, pulling his forelock, and apologizing, in a voice full
+of cobwebs, said that the coach was ready to start. We did the proper
+thing, and also as much for the red-coated driver, who, in spite of great
+dignity, we saw was open to reward for well-doing. It was a great mistake,
+though, to "cross his palm," for he began a lecture on the Cumberland
+Kings, that lasted until we got to Thirlmere, where he stopped at the
+Pumping-Station, and told us how the city of Manchester got its
+water-supply from here. To him all things were equally interesting. He was
+still deep in the fight between Manchester aldermen and the 'Ouse of
+Commons when we reached Castle Rigg. The Vale of Keswick opened before us.
+We implored the well-informed driver to stop, and then we got down and
+begged him to go on without us.
+
+Seated there on the bankside we viewed the beautiful scene of lake, valley
+and village stretching out so peacefully before us, all framed in the dark
+towering hills. Even Grace forgot to say, "How lovely!" but sat there,
+chin in hand, rapt and speechless.
+
+Down in that valley, just a little to one side of the village, Southey
+lived for over forty years, and all the visitors he really liked he took
+to Castle Rigg, to show them as he said, "the kingdoms of the earth." It
+was a view of which he never tired. Coleridge came up this way first, and
+took lodgings with a Mr. Johnson, who owned Greta Hall. It is not on
+record that Coleridge paid any rent, but he was so charmed with the
+location that he induced Southey to come and visit him. Southey came and
+liked it so well that he remained. He performed here a life-task that
+staggers one to contemplate: fifty volumes or more of closely set type are
+shown you at the Keswick Museum, duly labeled, "The Works of Southey,"
+Charles Lamb's "Works" were the East India ledgers, but he wrote one
+little book of Essays that are still sweet and fresh as
+wood-violets--essays written hot from the heart, often in tears; written
+because he could not help it, or to please Mary--he did not know which.
+
+No man ever divided his time up more systematically than Southey. He
+produced political and theological essays, histories, poems, diatribes,
+apologies and criticisms, and worked as men work in the Carnegie
+Consolidated Steel Works.
+
+Robert Southey was the precocious son of a Bristol linen-draper. Being
+rather delicate, his parents did not set him to work in a drygoods-store,
+but gave him the benefit of Oxford. The thing that brought him first into
+prominence was an article he wrote for "The Flaggellant," a college paper,
+wherein he ridiculed the idea of a devil. Now the powers did not like
+that--the creed called for a "personal devil," and they wanted one. They
+summoned young Southey before them to account for speaking disrespectfully
+of the devil. The youth was found guilty and expelled.
+
+He was a reckless young man, but recklessness is its own check--in fact,
+all things in life are self-regulating, everything is limited. Southey's
+secret marriage with Edith Fricker tamed him. Nothing tames men like
+marriage; and when babies came, and Coleridge went to Germany, leaving
+Mrs. Coleridge and young Hartley in his charge, Southey realized he was
+dealing with a condition, not a theory. Then soon he had the widowed Mrs.
+Lovell with her brood on his hands, and his old dream of pantisocracy was
+realized, only not just as he expected.
+
+Too much can not be said for the patience and unflinching fidelity shown
+by Southey in shouldering the burdens that Fate sent him.
+
+"Any man can succeed with three good women to help him!" said White
+Pigeon.
+
+"True," said I, "and next in importance to the person who originates a
+good thing is the one who quotes it." Men weighted with responsibilities
+fight for the established order. Southey's pension and his steady income
+came from the men in power, and he made it his business not to offend
+them. Southey was a scholar; he associated with educated people; and once
+he complained because he could not get acquainted with workingmen--they
+shut up like clams on his approach. Of course they did, for we are simple
+and sincere only with our own.
+
+Learned, scholarly and cultured men are to be pitied, for they are ever
+the butt, byword and prey of the untaught, who are often the knowing. As
+success came to Southey he lost the sense of values, that is to say, the
+sense of humor. He attacked Byron with great severity, and Byron's reply
+was the dedication of Don Juan, "To the illustrious Poet-Laureate, Robert
+Southey, LL.D." It was as if the play of "Sappho" were dedicated to the
+Reverend Doctor Parkhurst.
+
+Southey came out with a card declaring he had given Lord Byron no
+permission to dedicate any of his detestable works to him. Byron replied,
+acknowledging all this, but saying he had a right to honor the name of
+Southey, if he chose, just the same. No taint of excess or folly marks the
+name of Southey; his life was filled with good work and kind deeds. His
+name is honored by a monument in the village of Keswick, and in
+Crosthwaite Church is another monument to his memory, the inscription
+being written by Wordsworth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Were Heaven a place, I still politely maintain, it would probably be
+located in the Lake District of England.
+
+Every man of genius the world has ever produced has come from a little
+belt of land in the North Temperate Zone. Snow and cold, rock and
+mountain, danger and difficulty--these are the conditions required to make
+men. The heaven of which I can conceive is a place with plenty of oxygen,
+sunshine and water. In a mountainous country water runs (I hope no one
+will dispute this) and winds blow, and running water and air in motion are
+always pure.
+
+When I have no thoughts worth recording I take a walk, and the elements,
+which seem to carry soul, fill me to the brim.
+
+The Tropics may have much to offer in way of soft, luxurious creature
+comforts. But the Tropics supply sundry and divers discomforts as well,
+and really offer too much; for with the flowers, vines, fruits and
+never-ending foliage go mosquitoes, tarantulas, and snakes that wiggle and
+sometimes bite.
+
+The climate of Cumberland does not overpower one--the air is of a quality
+that urges you on to think and do.
+
+By no reach of imagination can one conjure forth anything more beautiful
+in Nature than is to be realized in vicinity of Keswick; and no home
+thereabouts surpasses Greta Hall in charm of location and quiet, simple
+beauty.
+
+Greta Hall is a rambling pile, constructed partly of stone and partly of
+wood, evolved rather than built, for evidently the work was done by many
+hands, and stretched over a century or more of time. Vines and flowers,
+fruits and shrubbery, stone walls covered close by creeping bellflowers
+where birds chirrup and cheep and play hide-and-seek the livelong day--all
+these are there. The house is situated on a little wooded plateau that
+overlooks the lake, and back of it the solemn and everlasting hills stand
+guard. There are no such mountains here as one sees in Switzerland,
+overpowering, vast, awful in their majesty; but just green-topped,
+self-sufficient and friendly hills that invite you to lift up your eyes
+and be strong.
+
+Visitors are welcome to the grounds at Greta Hall at all times, and the
+kind old gardener who showed us about gathered us bouquets of mignonette,
+rue and thyme, and gave us the history of a wonderful pear-tree that had
+turned into a vine and now covers one whole side of a stable thirty feet
+long. Even a tree will lose its individuality if it is not allowed to
+assert its nature and care for itself. That particular pear-tree, we were
+told, sprang from a slip planted by Shelley when he once came here on a
+visit to Southey; and we were further told that the year Shelley was
+drowned, the leaves of this tree turned pale and withered, and only by
+patient, loving nursing on the part of our old gardener's father was its
+life saved. The residence was closed the day we were there, in dread
+anticipation of Cook tourists with designs on the shrubbery, we had reason
+to believe, but we lingered around the grounds, listened to the soothing,
+rippling lullaby of the Greta, watched the strutting peacocks, and ate
+bread-and-milk, under the trees, out of big bowls supplied us by the old
+gardener for the most modest of considerations.
+
+Southey never really mixed in the wealth of beauty that covers this
+beautiful corner of earth. He was learned and profound, and he took
+himself and the Church and the State seriously. He felt himself a part of
+an indestructible institution, whereas man and all his works are no more
+peculiar, no more wonderful than an ant-hill--and last only a day longer.
+He never realized that he was a part of the great whole that made up
+mountain, lake, globe, wooded glen and tireless river. He differentiated.
+He considered himself a man, an educated man, and therefore a little
+better, and a little above, and a little outside of it all--otherwise how
+could he have withered at the top at the early age of sixty-seven?
+
+This question White Pigeon asked as we sat in the dim quiet of Crosthwaite
+Church, down in the village. I did not attempt to reply--people do not ask
+questions expecting, necessarily, to have them answered. We ask questions
+in order to clarify our own minds.
+
+The warning blast of the coach-horn was heard, and we went out into the
+sunshine. I bade my three friends good-by (first placing my autograph on
+Grace's and Myrtle's fans), and they climbed to the top of the coach. I
+sat on the stone wall and watched them until they disappeared around the
+bend of the road, waving handkerchiefs. That night I made my way over to
+Penreith on the way to Carlisle. It had been a day brimming with thought
+and feeling, and beauty expressed and unexpressed, and the kindness of
+kind friends who understand. That night as I dozed off into deep, calm
+sleep I said to myself: "They were great men, those Lake Poets, and the
+world is better because they lived. But there will come other men and they
+will be greater than those gone--the best is yet to be."
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+
+    Beneath the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the
+    Thrones of Frost, this through the absence of objects to reflect
+    the rays.
+
+    What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own--we need another
+    to reflect our thoughts.
+                             --_Samuel Taylor Coleridge_
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE]
+
+
+Samuel T. Coleridge was a thinker, and thinkers are so rarely found that
+the world must take note of them. John Stuart Mill, writing in Eighteen
+Hundred Forty, assigned first place among English philosophers to Jeremy
+Bentham, incidentally mentioning that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was
+Bentham's only rival.
+
+In philosophy there is an apostolic succession. We build on the past, and
+all the centuries of turmoil and travail which have gone before have made
+this moment possible. There has never been any such thing as "the fall of
+man"; for the march of the race has been a continual climb--a movement
+onward and upward. Were it not for Coleridge and Bentham, we could not
+have had Buckle, Wallace and Spencer, for the minds of men would not have
+been prepared to give them a hearing. "Half the battle is in catching the
+Speaker's eye," said Thomas Brackett Reed; and a John the Baptist to
+prepare the way is always necessary. Without Coleridge to quietly ignore
+the question of precedent, and refuse to accept a thing without proof, and
+ask eternally and yet again, "How do you know?" Charles Darwin with his
+"Origin of Species" would have been laughed out of court. Or probably had
+Darwin been persistent we would have consigned him to the stocks, burned
+his book in the public square, and with the aid of logical thumbscrews
+made him recant.
+
+Even as it was, the gibes and guffaws of the press and pulpit came near
+drowning the modest, moderate voice of Darwin; and for a score of years,
+his reputation as a scientist seemed to be trembling in the balance. Yet
+today the man who would seriously attempt in an educated assembly to throw
+obloquy upon the doctrine of Evolution and the name of Charles Darwin
+would find himself speedily listed with Brudder Jasper of Richmond,
+Virginia. The Church now, everywhere, has its Drummonds, who build on
+Darwin and use his citations as proof; and Drummond merely expressed what
+the many believe--no more.
+
+The man who has dared to think for himself and voiced his thought--the
+emancipated man--has been as one in a million. What usually passes for
+thought is only the repetition of things we have heard or been told. We
+memorize, repeat by rote and call it thought.
+
+With the Church and State in control of food and clothes, and with spears,
+clubs, knives and guns ready to suppress whatsoever seemed dangerous to
+their stability, it is a miracle that men have ever improved on
+anything--for progress has been for centuries a perilous performance. To
+question a priest was blasphemy. To reason with a judge was heinous. To
+think and decide for yourself was to invite torture and death.
+
+And all this was very natural, simply because the superior class who
+monopolized the good things of earth were obliged, in order to enslave and
+tax men, to make them believe that their power was derived from God. And
+thus was taught the "divine right of kings," the duty of submission, the
+necessity of belief and the sinfulness of doubt. The source of all
+knowledge was declared to be a book, and the right of interpretation of
+this book was given to one class alone--those who sided with and were a
+part of the Superior Class.
+
+The reason the race has progressed so slowly is because the strong,
+vigorous and independent have been suppressed, either by legal process, or
+exterminated through war, which reaps the best and lets the weak, the
+diseased and the cowards go.
+
+Those who doubted and questioned have been deprived of food and clothes,
+disgraced, mobbed, robbed, lashed naked at the cart's tail, burned at the
+stake, or separated from their families and transported beyond the sea to
+be devoured by wild beasts, die in jungles, or toil out their lives in
+slavery.
+
+But still there were always a few who would doubt and a few who would
+question; and in the early part of the Eighteenth Century in England the
+government was being put to severe straits to cope with the difficulty.
+Lying in the Thames were receiving-ships on which were crowded men and
+women to be transported. When the ship was full, crowded to her utmost,
+she sailed away with her living cargo. From Sixteen Hundred Fifty to
+Seventeen Hundred Fifty, over forty thousand people were sent away for
+their country's good. The hangman worked overtime, all prisons were
+crowded, and the walls of Newgate bulged with men and women, old and
+young, who were believed to be dangerous to the stability and well-being
+of the superior class--that is, those who had the right to tax others.
+
+Finally, the enormity of bloodshed and woe involved caused a sort of
+concession on both sides to be agreed upon. Oppression continued will
+surely lead to a point where it cures itself, and the superior class in
+England, with a wise weather-eye, saw the reef on which they were in
+danger of striking. They heard the breakers, and began to grant
+concessions--unwillingly of course--concessions wrung from them. The
+censorship was abolished, reform bills introduced, the rights of free
+speech and a free press were partially recognized. The clergy, taking the
+cue, began to preach more love and less damnation; for the pew ever
+dictates to the pulpit what it shall preach. Thus general relaxation was
+in order to meet the competition of rival sects and independent preachers
+that were springing up; for although creeds never change, yet their
+interpretation does, and liberal sects do their work, not by growing
+strong, but by making all others more liberal.
+
+Thus the latter part of the Eighteenth Century witnessed a weakening of
+both sides through compromise. The schools and colleges were pedantic,
+complacent, smug and self-satisfied; by giving in a few points they had
+absorbed the radicals, and the political protesters had been bought off
+with snug places in the excise. Pretended knowledge passed for wisdom,
+dignity paraded as worth, affectation and hypocrisy patronized virtue. And
+Coleridge appears upon the scene, a conservative, with a beautiful
+innocence and an indifference to all pretended authority and asks, "How do
+you know?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The number of people who have written their names large in literature, who
+were the children of clergymen, is no mere coincidence. Tennyson, Addison,
+Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Coleridge--you
+can add to the list to suit. Young people follow example, and the habit of
+the father in writing out his thoughts causes others of the family to try
+it, too. Then there is an atmosphere of books in a rectory, and leisure to
+think, and best of all the income is not so great but that the practise of
+economy of time and money is duly enforced by necessity. To be launched
+into a library and learn by absorption is a great blessing.
+
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-two, the son
+of the Reverend John Coleridge, of Ottery Saint Mary, a small village of
+Devonshire. The rector was also a schoolmaster, just as all clergymen were
+before division of labor forced itself upon us. This worthy clergyman was
+twice married, his first wife bearing him three children, the second ten.
+Samuel was the last of the brood--the thirteenth--but his parents were not
+superstitious.
+
+The youngest in a big family, like the first, is apt to have a deal of
+love lavished upon him. The question of discipline has proved its own
+futility, and when a baby comes to parents approaching fifty, depend upon
+it, that child transforms the household into a monarchy, with himself as
+tyrant. This may be well and it may not.
+
+Little Samuel Taylor seemed to be aware of his power; he evolved a
+wondrous precocity and ruled the rectory with a rod of iron. When he was
+five he propounded questions that shook the orthodoxy of the worthy vicar
+to its very center.
+
+Yet, remarkable as was the intellect of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the
+family would not have remained in obscurity without him. In fact, the very
+brightness of his fame caused the excellence of his brothers to be lost in
+the shadow. His brother James became the father of Henry Nelson Coleridge,
+who married his cousin Sara, the daughter of our poet.
+
+To anticipate a little, it is well enough here to say that the daughter of
+Coleridge was a woman of remarkable excellence, and if you wish to
+disprove the adage that genius does not transmit itself she is a good
+example to bring up--even though there is a difference between fact and
+truth. James Coleridge was also the father of Mr. Justice Coleridge,
+himself the father of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge.
+
+And since iconoclasm is not out of place in an essay on Coleridge, it can
+also be stated that when Sara Coleridge married her cousin she did a wise
+thing. The marriage was a most happy one, and the children of these
+cousins have shown themselves to be beyond the average. And once,
+certainly not with his daughter in mind, Coleridge debated the question of
+consanguinity with Charles Lamb, and proved to his own satisfaction at
+least that the marriage of cousins was eminently sane, proper, just and
+right, and fraught with the best results for humanity.
+
+The only indictment that can be brought against the father of Coleridge is
+that he was a zealous Latin scholar, and proposed that the term "ablative"
+be abolished as insufficient, and in its stead should be used that of
+"quale-quare-quiddative case." He was a simple, amiable, excellent man who
+did his work the best he could, and was beloved by all the parish. As to
+the excellence of the established order of things he had no
+doubts--government and religion were divine institutions and should be
+upheld by all honest men.
+
+As to the vicar's wife we know little, but enough of a glance is given
+into her character through letters to show that she had in her make-up a
+trace of noble discontent. She was not entirely happy in her surroundings,
+and the amiable ways of her husband were often an exasperation to her,
+rather than a pleasure--even amiability can be overdone. He never saw more
+than a mile from home, but her eyes swept England from Cornwall to
+Scotland, and few men, even, saw so far as that a hundred years ago. The
+discontent of Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the heritage of mother to son.
+When Samuel was nine years of age the father passed away. The widow would
+have been in sore financial straits had it not been for the older
+children, and even as it was, strict economy and untiring industry were in
+order. Out of sympathy, Mr. Justice Buller, who had been a pupil of the
+Reverend John Coleridge, proposed to secure the youngest boy a scholarship
+in Christ's Hospital School, and so we find him entered there, July
+Eighteenth, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two. This was a year memorable in the
+history of America; and the alertness of the charity boy's intellect is
+shown in that he was aware of the struggle between England and the
+Colonies. He discussed the situation with his schoolfellows, and explained
+that the mother country had made a mistake in exacting too much. His
+sympathies were with the Colonies, but he thought submission on their part
+was in order when the stamp-tax was removed and that complete independence
+was absurd--the Colonies needed some one to protect them.
+
+Such reasoning in a boy of ten years seems strange, especially in view of
+the fact that a noted professor of pedagogy has recently explained to us
+that no child under fourteen is capable of independent reasoning.
+
+But it is quite certain that young Coleridge's opinions were not borrowed,
+for all the lad's acquaintances, who thought of the matter at all,
+considered the Americans simply "rebels" who merited death.
+
+Coleridge remained at Christ's Hospital for eight years, and before he
+left had easily taken his place as "Deputy Grecian." Charles Lamb has
+given many delightful glimpses of that schoolboy life in the "Essays of
+Elia."
+
+Middleton, afterward Bishop of Calcutta, called the attention of Boyer,
+the master, to Coleridge by saying, "There is a boy who reads Vergil for
+amusement!" Boyer was a strict disciplinarian, but he was ever on the
+lookout for a lad who loved books--the average youth getting out of all
+the study he could.
+
+The master began to encourage young Coleridge, and Coleridge responded. He
+wrote verses and essays, and was a prodigy in memorizing. According to
+Boyer's idea, and it was the prevailing idea everywhere then, and is yet
+in some sections, memorization was the one thing desirable. If the subject
+were Plato, and the master had forgotten his book, he called on Coleridge
+to recite. And the tall, fair-haired boy, with the big dreamy eyes, would
+rise and give page after page, "verbatim et literatim."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before Coleridge went to Cambridge, when nineteen years old he had taken
+on that masterly quality in conversation that made his society sought,
+even to the last. Lamb has told us of the gentle voice, not loud nor deep,
+but full of mellow intonations, and bell-like in its purity.
+
+Such a voice, laden with fine feeling, carrying conviction, only goes with
+a great soul. No doubt, though, the young man had grown into a bit of a
+dictator, and this habit of harangue he carried with him to College. To
+talk enabled him to think, and expression is necessary to growth. So the
+habit of argument with Coleridge seemed Nature's method of developing his
+powers of mental analysis. No more foolish saying was ever launched than,
+"Children should be seen and not heard." From lisping babyhood Coleridge
+talked, and talked much. When he was twenty, at Cambridge, he drew the
+boys to his room, until it was crowded to suffocation, just by the magic
+of his voice, and the subtle quality of his thought. His questioning mind
+went right to the heart of things, and in his divisions and heads and
+subheads even the professors could not always follow him. Let us hope that
+he himself always knew what he was trying to explain.
+
+He discussed metaphysics, theology and politics, and very naturally got to
+treading on thin ice.
+
+In theology his reasoning led him into Unitarianism, then a very fearful
+thing; and in politics he dallied with Madame la Revolution.
+
+A polite note from the Master of the College, suggesting that he talk less
+and follow the curriculum a little more closely, led him straight to the
+Master, with whom he proposed to argue the case, or publicly debate it.
+This was terrible!
+
+Stephen Crane at Syracuse University, a hundred years later, did just such
+a thing. He sought to argue a point in the classroom with Chancellor
+Symms.
+
+"Tut, tut!" said the Chancellor. "Have you forgotten what Saint Paul says
+on that very theme?"
+
+"Yes, I know," replied the best catcher ever on the Syracuse Nine; "yes, I
+know what Saint Paul says, but I differ with Saint Paul." And Stevie,
+unconsciously, was standing on the well-lubricated chute that landed him,
+soon, well outside the campus.
+
+The authorities did not admire the brilliant young Coleridge, full of his
+reasons and prolix abstractions. He was attracting too much attention to
+himself, and gradually gathering about him a throng of admirers who might
+disturb the balance of things. He was there anyway only through
+sufferance, and an intimation was given him that if he were not willing to
+accept things as they existed, and as they were taught, he had better go
+elsewhere.
+
+Piqued by his treatment and feeling he had been misunderstood and wronged,
+he suddenly disappeared.
+
+Some months afterwards, an acquaintance found him in a company of
+dragoons, duly enlisted in His Majesty's service, under an assumed name.
+
+The authorities at Jesus College were notified, and knowing that such a
+youth was out of place serving as a soldier, and feeling further a small
+pang of regret possibly for having driven him away, a plan was set on foot
+to secure his discharge. This was soon brought about, and doubtless much
+to Coleridge's relief. Erelong he found himself back at Cambridge--a
+little subdued, and a trifle more discreet, for his rough contact with the
+workaday world.
+
+A journey to Oxford, to visit an old friend, proved a pivotal point in his
+life. The fame of Coleridge as a poet had gone abroad, and the literary
+fledglings at Oxford sought to do the visitor honor in the proper way.
+Among others whom he met on this visit were Robert Southey and Robert
+Lovell, both poets of considerable local fame.
+
+Lovell had been married but a few months before to a young woman by the
+name of Fricker. Southey was engaged to a sister of the bride, and there
+was still a third sister fancy-free. The three poets became fast friends.
+They were all radicals, full of ambition to make a name for themselves,
+and all intent on elevating society out of the ruts into which it had
+fallen. All had suffered contumely on account of advanced ideas; and all
+were out of conceit with the existing order.
+
+They discussed the matter at length, and decided to set the world an
+example, by founding an ideal colony and showing how to make the most of
+life.
+
+Coleridge had long been interested in America, and from an
+acquaintanceship with sundry soldiers who had helped fight the battles of
+George the Third in the New World, he had gathered a rather romantic idea
+of the country. The stories of returned sailors and soldiers, told to
+civilians, are seldom exactly authentic. And Coleridge the poet, bubbling
+with the effervescence of youth, argued that a home on the banks of the
+Susquehanna, with love and books and comradeship, was the ideal condition.
+
+The matter was broached to the three sisters Fricker, and they of course
+responded--what woman worthy of the name of woman would not? And so the
+arrangements were fast being made, and as a necessary feature the three
+poets were duly and legally married to the three sisters, and Eden was to
+be peopled with the best.
+
+A date was arranged for sailing, but some trifling matter of finance
+delayed the exodus--in fact, certain expected loans were not forthcoming.
+Coleridge put in the time lecturing and preaching from Unitarian pulpits.
+He also tried his hand as editor, but the publication scheme failed to
+bring the shekels that were to buy emancipation. The innate contrariness
+of things seemed to be blocking all his plans.
+
+Meanwhile we find Lovell drifting off into commercialism. That is to say,
+Barabbas-like, he had turned publisher. Gadzooks! What would you have a
+man with a wife and baby do? Live on moonshine--well, well, well!
+
+Death claimed poor Lovell before he could make a success either of
+commerce or of art.
+
+Coleridge moved up to the Lake District, and at Keswick, near where the
+water comes down at Lodore--or did before the stream dried up--he rented
+rooms of a kind friend by the name of Johnson, who owned Greta Hall.
+Southey was writing articles for London papers. He received a guinea a
+column, and when he wrote a poem, as he did every little while, he sent it
+to a publisher who returned him a little good cash.
+
+Southey's wife went up to Keswick on a visit to see her sister, Mrs.
+Coleridge. Southey followed up to Keswick, and rather liked the situation.
+The Southeys and the Coleridges all lived together as one happy family.
+
+Southey was writing poetry and getting paid for it; and beside this had a
+small income. Coleridge allowed Southey to buy the supplies, and when he
+went away on tramp lecturing tours he felt perfectly safe in leaving his
+family with Southey.
+
+While up that way he met a young man, a native, by the name of
+Wordsworth--William Wordsworth--and a poet, too.
+
+Wordsworth had a sister named Dorothy, and this brother and sister lived
+together in a little whitewashed stone cottage, built up against the
+hillside at Grasmere, a village thirteen miles from Keswick. Coleridge
+liked these people first-rate and they liked him. He used to go down to
+visit them, and they would all sit up late listening to the splendid talk
+of the handsome Coleridge. William said he was the only great man he had
+ever met, and Dorothy agreed in the proposition.
+
+Coleridge was discouraged: the world did not care for his work, and the
+men in power had set their faces against him--or he thought they had,
+which is the same thing. There was a conspiracy, he thought, to keep him
+down; and Wordsworth should have advised him to join it, but did not.
+
+Dorothy Wordsworth was a most extraordinary woman--she was gentle, kind,
+low-voiced, sympathetic. She was not handsome, but she had the intellect
+that entitled her to a membership in the Brotherhood of Fine Minds. She
+knew the splendid excellence of Coleridge, and could follow him in his
+most abstract dissertations; and if his logic faltered she could lead him
+back to the trail.
+
+Dorothy Wordsworth admired and pitied Coleridge; and from pity to love is
+but a step.
+
+But Coleridge was not capable of a passionate love--the substance of his
+being was all absorbed in abstract thought. And yet Dorothy Wordsworth
+attracted him as no other woman ever did. He forgot his wife, Sara, up
+there at Southey's. Sara was a better-looking woman than Dorothy, but she
+lacked intellect. Her life was all bound up in housekeeping and going to
+church, and the petty little round of daily happenings to neighbors and
+friends. The world of thought and dreams to her was nothing. She loved
+her husband, but his foolish foibles vexed her, and his lack of
+application prompted her to chide him. And at such times he would turn to
+his friends at Dove Cottage for sympathy and rest.
+
+They used to tramp the hills, and discuss philosophy, and recite their
+poems the livelong day. It was on one such jaunt that out of the ghost of
+shoreless seas they sighted the "Ancient Mariner." Then Coleridge went
+ahead, completed the plot and gave the poem to the world. And once he
+said, half-boastfully, to Dorothy: "This old seafaring poem is valuable in
+that it is a tale no one will understand, but which will excite universal
+interest. Only the perfectly sane and sensible is dull."
+
+Wordsworth had read somewhat of the works of the German philosophers, and
+as he and his sister had a little money saved up they decided to go over
+and attend the lectures at the University of Göttingen for awhile.
+Coleridge had nothing in the way to prevent his going, too, save that he
+didn't have the money. However, he wanted to go and so decided to lay the
+case before the sons of Josiah Wedgwood. These young men had been
+schoolfellows of Coleridge at Cambridge, and once he had gone home with
+them and so had met their father.
+
+And right here comes a very strong temptation to say not another word
+about Coleridge, but merge this essay off into a sketch of that most
+excellent, strong and noble man, Josiah Wedgwood. Here is a man who left
+his impress indelibly on the times, and whose influence outweighed that of
+a dozen prime ministers. The potter is gone, but he lives in his art, so
+we still have the best and purest and noblest of the soul of Josiah
+Wedgwood.
+
+This man had assisted Coleridge at Cambridge, and it was to his sons
+Coleridge looked for help to realize his Susquehanna dream of Utopia. But
+the Wedgwoods knew the hazy, moonshine quality of the project and made
+excuses.
+
+Coleridge now appealed to them for assistance in a saner project, and they
+supplied him the money to go to Göttingen.
+
+His stay of fourteen months in Germany gave him a firm hold on the
+language, and a goodly glimpse into the philosophy of Kant, Leibnitz and
+Schleiermacher. When Coleridge returned to England, he went at once to see
+his interesting family. Rumor has it that Mrs. Coleridge, in addition to
+caring for her own little brood and assisting in the Southey household,
+had also been working in the Keswick lead-pencil factory for a weekly wage
+of twelve shillings. The philosopher did not much like this lowering of
+dignity, and said so mildly. This led to the truthful explanation that he
+had hardly done his duty by his family in allowing them to shift for
+themselves or be cared for by kinsmen; and therefore advice from him was
+out of place. In short, Southey intimated that while he would care for
+his sisters-in-law he drew the line at brothers-in-law. And Samuel Taylor
+Coleridge drifted up to London (being down) to see if something would not
+turn up.
+
+His first task there was to translate "Werther," but the work did not seem
+to go. Grub Street took up the brilliant talker, and for a time he gave
+parlor lectures and filled the air of thought and speculation with his
+brilliant pyrotechnics. The force of his mind was everywhere acknowledged,
+but someway he did not seem to get on. Men who have managed the finances
+of a nation often have not been able successfully to control their own;
+and more than once we have had the spectacle of one who could do the
+thinking for a world failing in the humdrum duties of a citizen and
+neighbor. Coleridge tried various things, among others a secretaryship
+that took him to Malta, but the lack of system in his habits and his
+absent-mindedness made him the prey and butt of "practical" men.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Carlyle said that no more dreary record than the lives of authors
+existed, save the Newgate Calendar, he spoke truth.
+
+That the lives of most authors is a series of misunderstandings, blunders,
+heart-burnings, tragedies, is a fact. The author is a man who diverts and
+amuses us by doing the things we would do if we had time; and if we like
+him it is only because he expresses the things we already know. His is a
+hard task, requiring intense concentration--a concentration that can only
+be continued for a short time without the absolute burning out of
+existence.
+
+To think one's best and write out ideas is an abnormal operation. The most
+artistic work is always done in a sort of fever or ecstacy, which in its
+very nature is transient. To hunt and fish and dream and to work with
+one's hands are all very natural; but to sit down and think and then
+express your thoughts by the artificial scheme of writing on paper is a
+dangerous operation. If carried to excess it shall be paid for by your
+life.
+
+Coleridge had turned night into day in his hot zeal to follow the winding,
+dancing mystery of existence to its inmost recess. At times he had
+forgotten to eat or sleep; and then to reinforce despairing nature he had
+resorted to stimulants.
+
+Digestion had become impaired, circulation faulty through lack of
+exercise, so sleeplessness followed stimulation. Then to quiet pain came
+the use of the drug that brings oblivion. And lo! thought burned up
+brighter than ever and all the dreams of youth and twenty came trooping
+back.
+
+Coleridge had made a discovery. He thought he was getting the start of God
+Almighty; but he wasn't, for men have tried that before, and are trying it
+today, and many know not yet that we are strong only as we cling close to
+the skirts of Mother Nature and follow lovingly in her ways.
+
+From his twenty-ninth year we find Coleridge a wreck in mind and body;
+shuffling, sick, disheartened, erratic, uncertain, yet occasionally
+brilliant. He tramped the streets, feared and shunned. His money was gone,
+his power of concentration had vanished. In search of bread he met an
+old-time friend, Doctor Gillman.
+
+"Gillman," said Coleridge, "I am sick and helpless--look at me!"
+
+"Why don't you come to my house and live with me?" asked the kind friend.
+
+"Gillman," said the poor man, "Gillman, I am on my way there!"
+
+So Gillman brought him to his house up at Highgate and took care of him as
+a child. And there he remained, the pride and pet of a group of brave,
+thinking men and women.
+
+He lived on for thirty years, under the kindly, skilful care of his
+friend, but all the real work of his life was done before he was thirty.
+Occasionally the old fire would flash forth, and the wit and insight of
+his youth would shine out. Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron, and others strong
+and great sought him out to hold converse with him. And so he existed, a
+sort of oracle, amiable, kind and generous--wreck of a man that
+was--protected and defended by loving friends; while up at Keswick,
+Southey cared for his wife and educated his children as though they were
+his own.
+
+"I am dying," said Coleridge to Gillman in July, Eighteen Hundred
+Thirty-four; "dying, but I should have died, like Keats, in youth and not
+have made myself a burden to you--do you forgive me?" We can guess the
+answer.
+
+The dust of Coleridge rests in Highgate Cemetery, just a step from where
+he lived all those years. He, himself, selected the place and wrote his
+epitaph. The simple monument that marks the spot was paid for by kind
+friends who remembered him and loved him and who pardoned him for all that
+he was not, in memory of what he once had been.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To a young man from the country, who makes his way up, no greater shock
+ever comes than the discovery that rich people are, for the most part,
+woefully ignorant. He has always imagined that material splendor and
+spiritual gifts go hand in hand; and now if he is wise he discovers that
+millionaires are too busy making money, and too anxious about what they
+have made, and their families are too intent on spending it, ever to
+acquire a calm, judicial mental attitude.
+
+The rich are not the leisure class, and they need education no less than
+the poor. Lord, enlighten thou our enemies, should be the prayer of every
+man who works for progress: give clearness to their mental perceptions,
+awaken in them the receptive spirit, soften their callous hearts, and
+arouse their powers of reason.
+
+Danger lies in their folly, not in their wisdom; their weakness is to be
+feared, not their strength.
+
+That the wealthy and influential class should fear change, and cling
+stubbornly to conservatism, is certainly to be expected.
+
+To convince this class that spiritual and temporal good can be improved
+upon by a more liberal policy has been a task a thousand times greater
+than the exciting of the poor to riot. It is easy to fire the
+discontented, but to arouse the rich and carry truth home to the blindly
+prejudiced is a different matter. Too often the reformer has been one who
+caused the rich to band themselves against the poor.
+
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a Tory who defended the existing order on the
+plea of its usefulness.
+
+He approached the vital issue from the inside, taught the conservative to
+think, and thus opened the eyes of the aristocrats without exciting their
+fears or unduly arousing their wrath.
+
+Self-preservation prompts men to move in the line of least resistance. And
+that any man should ever have put his safety in peril by questioning the
+authority of those able and ready to confiscate his property and take away
+his life is very strange. Such a person must belong to one of two types.
+He must be either a revolutionist--one who would supplant existing
+authority with his own, thus knowingly and willingly hazarding all--or he
+is an innocent, indiscreet individual, absolutely devoid of all interest
+in the main chance.
+
+Coleridge belonged to the last-mentioned type. Genius needs a keeper. Here
+was a man so absorbed in abstract thought, so intent on attaining high and
+holy truth, that he neglected his friends, neglected his family, neglected
+himself until his body refused to obey the helm. It is easy to find fault
+with such a man, but to refuse to grant an admiring recognition of his
+worth, on account of what he was not, is an error, pardonable only to the
+rude, crude and vulgar. The cultivated mind sees the good and fixes
+attention on that.
+
+Coleridge formulated no system, solved no complex problems, made no
+brilliant discoveries. But his habit of analysis enriched the world
+beyond power to compute. He taught men to think and separate truth from
+error. He was not popular, for he did not adapt himself to the many. His
+business was to teach teachers--he conducted a Normal School, and taught
+teachers how to teach. Coleridge went to the very bottom of a subject, and
+his subtle mind refused to take anything for granted. He approached every
+proposition with an unprejudiced mind. In his "Aids to Reflection," he
+says, "He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed
+by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and then end in
+loving himself better than all."
+
+The average man believes a thing first, and then searches for proof to
+bolster his opinion. Every observer must have noticed the tenuous, cobweb
+quality of reasons that are deemed sufficient to the person who thinks he
+knows, or whose interests lie in a certain direction. The limitations of
+men seem to make it necessary that pure truth should come to us through
+men who are stripped for eternity. Kant, the villager who never traveled
+more than a day's walk from his birthplace, and Coleridge, the homeless
+and houseless aristocrat, with no selfish interests in the material world,
+view things without prejudice.
+
+The method of Coleridge, from his youth, was to divide the whole into
+parts. Then he begins to eliminate, and divides down, rejecting all things
+that are not the thing, until he finds the thing. He begins all inquiries
+by supposing that nothing is known on the subject. He will not grant you
+that murder and robbery are bad--you must show why they are bad, and if
+you can not explain, he will take the subject up and divide it into heads
+for you.
+
+First, the effect on the sufferer. Second, the evil to the doer. Third,
+the danger of a bad example. Fourth, the injury to society through the
+feeling of insecurity. Fifth, the pain given to the families of both doer
+and sufferer. Next he will look for excuses for the crime and give all the
+credit he can; and then finally strike a balance and give a conclusion.
+
+One of Coleridge's best points was in calling attention to what
+constitutes proof; he saw all fallacies and discovered at a glance
+illusions in logic that had long been palmed off on the world as truth. He
+saw the gulf that lies between coincidence and sequence, and hastened the
+day when the old-time pedant with his mighty tomes and tiresome sermons
+about nothing should be no more. And so today, in the Year of Grace
+Nineteen Hundred, the man who writes must have something to say, and he
+who speaks must have a message. "Coleridge," says Principal Shairp, "was
+the originator and creator of the higher criticism." The race has gained
+ground, made head upon the whole; and thanks to the thinkers gone, there
+are thinkers now in every community who weigh, sift, try and decide. No
+statement made by an interested party can go unchallenged. "How do you
+know?" and "Why?" we ask.
+
+That is good which serves--man is the important item, this earth is the
+place, and the time is now. So all good men and women and all churches are
+endeavoring to make earth heaven; and all agree that to live, now and
+here, the best you can, is the fittest preparation for a life to come.
+
+We no longer accept the doctrine that our natures are rooted in infamy,
+and that the desires of the flesh are cunning traps set by Satan, with
+God's permission, to undo us. We believe that no one can harm us but
+ourselves, that sin is misdirected energy, that there is no devil but
+fear, and that the universe is planned for good. On every side we find
+beauty and excellence held in the balance of things. We know that work is
+needful, that winter is as necessary as summer, that night is as useful as
+day, that death is a manifestation of life, and just as good. We believe
+in the Now and Here. We believe in a power that is in ourselves that makes
+for righteousness.
+
+These things have not been taught us by a superior class who have governed
+us for a consideration, and to whom we have paid taxes and tithes--we have
+simply thought things out for ourselves, and in spite of them. We have
+listened to Coleridge, and others, who said: "You should use your reason
+and separate the good from the bad, the false from the true, the useless
+from the useful. Be yourself and think for yourself; and while your
+conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the
+opinions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping
+you in ignorance. You grow through the exercise of your faculties, and if
+you do not reason now you never will advance. We are all sons of God, and
+it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Claim your heritage!"
+
+
+
+
+BENJAMIN DISRAELI
+
+    The stimulus subsided. The paroxysms ended in prostration. Some
+    took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated
+    between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury
+    bench, the Ministers reminded me of those marine landscapes not
+    unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of
+    exhausted volcanoes; not a flame flickers on a single pallid
+    crest; but the situation is still dangerous: there are occasional
+    earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumblings of the sea.
+                                               --_Speech at Manchester_
+
+[Illustration: BENJAMIN DISRAELI]
+
+
+Since Disraeli was born a Jew, he was received into the Jewish Church with
+Jewish rites. But Judaism, standing in the way of his ambition, and his
+parents' ambition for him, the religion of his fathers was renounced and
+he became, in name, a Christian. Yet to the last his heart was with his
+people, and the glory of his race was his secret pride.
+
+The fine irony of affiliating with a people who worship a Jew as their
+Savior, but who have legislated against, and despised the Jew--this
+attracted Disraeli. With them he bowed the knee in an adoration they did
+not feel, and while his lips said the litany, his heart repeated Ben
+Ezra's prayer. In temperament he belonged with the double-dealing East. He
+intuitively knew the law of jiu jitsu, best exemplified by the Japanese,
+and won often by yielding. He was bold, but not too bold.
+
+Israel Zangwill, shrewdest, keenest and kindliest of Jews--with the
+tragedy of his race pictured on his furrowed face, a face like an ancient
+weather-worn statue on whose countenance grief has petrified--has summed
+up the character of Disraeli as no other man ever has or can. I will not
+rob the reader by quoting from "The Primrose Sphinx"--that gem of letters
+must ever stand together without subtraction of a word. It belongs to the
+realm of the lapidary, and its facets can not be transferred. Yet when Mr.
+Zangwill refers to the Mephistophelian curl of Lord Beaconsfield's lip,
+the word is used advisedly. No character in history so stands for the
+legendary Mephisto as does this man. The Satan of the Book of Job, jaunty,
+daring, joking with his Maker, is the Mephisto of Goethe and all the other
+playwriters who, have used the character. Mephisto is so much above the
+ordinary man in sense of humor--which is merely the right estimate of
+values--so sweeping in intellect, that Milton pictures him as a
+dispossessed god, the only rival of Deity.
+
+Disraeli, not satisfied with playing the part of Mephisto and tempting men
+to their ruin, but thirsting for a wider experience, turns Faustus himself
+and sells his soul for a price. He knows that everything in life is
+sold--nothing is given gratis--we pay for knowledge with tears; for love
+with pain; for life with death. He haggles and barters with Fate, and pays
+the penalty because he must.
+
+He alternately affronts and cajoles his enemies; takes all that the world
+has to give; knows every pleasure; wins every prize; makes love to the
+daughters of men (without loving them); and winning the one he selects,
+secretly thanks Jehovah, God of his fathers, that he leaves no
+offspring--because the woman fit for his mate and equal to mothering his
+children does not exist.
+
+The sublimity of his egotism stands unrivaled. It is so great that it is
+admirable. We lift our hats to this man. Napoleon gained the field without
+prejudice; but this man enters the list with hate and prejudice arrayed
+against him. He plays the pawns of chance with literature, religion,
+politics, and moves the queen so as to checkmate all adversaries. He
+flouts love, but to show the world that he yet knows the ideal, he
+occasionally pictures truth and trusting affection in his speeches and
+books. This entire game of life is to him only a diversion.
+
+They may jeer him down in the House of Commons, but his patience is
+unruffled. He says, "Very well, I will wait." Now and again he smiles that
+wondrous, contagious smile, showing his white teeth and the depth of his
+dark, burning eyes.
+
+He knows his power. He revels in the wit he never expresses; he glories in
+this bright blade of the intellect that is never fully unsheathed.
+
+They think he is interested in English politics--pish! Only world problems
+really interest him, and those that lie behind mean as much to him as
+those that are to come. He is one with eternity, and the vanquished glory
+of Rome, the marble beauty of Athens, the Assyrian Sphinx, the flight from
+Egypt under the leadership of one who had killed his man--yet had talked
+with God face to face--these and the dim uncertainty of the unseen, are
+the things that interest him. He is a dreamer of the Ghetto.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no taint of mixed blood in the veins of Benjamin Disraeli. He
+traced his ancestry in a record that looks like a chapter from the Book of
+Numbers. His forebears had known every persecution, every contumely,
+slight and disgrace. Driven from Spain by the Inquisition, barely escaping
+with life, when Jewish blood actually fertilized the fields about Granada,
+his direct ancestor became one of the builders of Venice. The Jews
+practically controlled the trade of the world in the sun-kissed days of
+prosperity, when Venice produced the books and the art of Christendom.
+
+To trace an ancestry back to those who enthroned Venice on her hundred
+isles was surely something of which to be proud; and into the blood of
+Benjamin Disraeli went a dash of the gleam and glory and glamour of
+Venice--the Venice of the Doges.
+
+This man's grandfather came to England with a goodly fortune, which he
+managed to increase as the years went by. He had one son, Isaac, who
+nearly broke his parents' heart in that he not only showed no aptitude for
+business, but actually wrote poems wherein commerce was held up to
+ridicule. The tendency of the artistic nature to speak with disdain of the
+"mere money-grabber," and the habit of the "money-grabber" to refer
+patronizingly to the helpless, theoretical and dreamy artist, is well
+known. Isaac Disraeli was an artist in feeling; he must have been a
+reincarnation of one of those bookmakers of Venice who touched hands with
+Titian and Giorgione and helped to invest wisely the moneys the merchants
+of the Rialto made. Never a Gratiano had a greater contempt for a merchant
+than he. Just to get him out of the way, his parents packed Isaac off to
+Europe, where he acquired several languages, and some other things, with
+that ease which the Jew always manifests. He dallied in art, pecked at
+books, and made the acquaintance of many literary men.
+
+When his father died and left him a goodly fortune, he had the sense to
+turn the entire management of the estate over to his wife, a woman with a
+thorough business instinct, while he busied himself with his books.
+
+Benjamin was the second child of these parents. He had a sister older than
+himself, and two brothers younger. Those philosophers who claim that
+spirits have their own individuality in the unseen world, and the accident
+of birth really does not constitute a kinship between brothers and
+sisters, will find here something that looks like proof. Benjamin Disraeli
+bore no resemblance in mental characteristics to his sister or brothers;
+he did, however, possess the mental virtues of both father and mother,
+multiplied by ten.
+
+When twelve years of age he exhibited that intense disposition for mastery
+which was through life his distinguishing trait. The Jew does not outrank
+the Gentile in strength, but the average Jew surely does have the faculty
+of concentration which the average Gentile does not possess. And that is
+what constitutes strength--the ability to focus the mind on one thing and
+compass it: to concentrate is power.
+
+When Ben was sent to the Unitarian school at Walthamstow, aged fifteen, it
+was his first taste of school life. Up to this time his father had been
+his tutor. Now he found himself cast into that den of wild animals--an
+English school for boys. His Jewish name and features and his dandy ways
+and attire made him the instant butt of the playground. Ben very patiently
+surveyed his tormentors, waited to pick his man, and then challenged the
+biggest boy in the school to single combat. The exasperating way in which
+he coolly went about the business set his adversary's teeth chattering
+before the call of "time." The result of the fight was that, even if
+"Dizzy" was not thoroughly respected from that day forth, no one ever
+called, "Old clo'! Old clo'!" within his hearing. Of course it was not
+generally advertised that the lad had been taking boxing lessons from
+"Coster Joe" for three years, with the villainies of a boys' school in
+view. In fact, boxing was this young man's diversion, and the Coster on
+several occasions expressed great regret that writing and politics had
+robbed the ring of one who showed promise of being the cleverest
+welter-weight of his time.
+
+The main facts in both "Vivian Gray" and "Contarini Fleming" are
+autobiographical. Like Byron, upon whom Disraeli fed, the author never
+got far away from himself.
+
+It was not long before the intense personality of young Disraeli made
+itself felt throughout the Walthamstow school. The young man smiled at the
+pedant's idolatry of facts, and seized the vital point in every lesson. He
+felt himself the superior of every one in the establishment, master
+included--and he was.
+
+Before a year he split the school into two factions--those who favored Ben
+Disraeli, and those who were opposed to him. The master cast his vote with
+the latter class, and the result was that Ben withdrew, thus saving the
+authorities the trouble of expelling him. His leave-taking was made
+melodramatic with a speech to the boys, wherein impertinent allusions were
+made concerning all schoolmasters, and the master of Walthamstow in
+particular.
+
+And thus ended the school life of Benjamin Disraeli, the year at
+Walthamstow being his first and last experience.
+
+However, Ben was not indifferent to study; he felt sure that there was a
+great career before him, and he knew that knowledge was necessary to
+success. With his father's help he laid out a course of work that kept him
+at his tasks ten hours a day. His father was a literary man of
+acknowledged worth, and mingled in the best artistic society of London.
+Into this society Benjamin was introduced, meeting all his father's
+acquaintances on an absolute equality. The young man at eighteen was
+totally unabashed in any company; he gave his opinion unasked, criticized
+his elders, flashed his wit upon the guests and was looked upon with fear,
+amusement or admiration, as the case might be.
+
+Froude says of him, "The stripling was the same person as the statesman at
+seventy, with this difference only, that the affectation which was natural
+in the boy was itself affected in the matured politician, whom it served
+well for a mask, or as a suit of impenetrable armor."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That literature is the child of parents is true. That is to say, it takes
+two to produce a book. Of course there are imitation books, sort o' wax
+figures that look like books, made through habit by those that have been
+many years upon the turf, and who work automatically; but every real,
+live, throbbing, pulsing book was written by a man with a woman at his
+elbow, or vice versa.
+
+When twenty-one years of age Benjamin Disraeli produced "Vivian Gray." The
+woman in the case was Mrs. Austen, wife of a prosperous London solicitor.
+This lady was handsome, a brilliant talker, a fine musician and an amateur
+artist of no mean ability. She was much older than Disraeli--she must have
+been in order to comprehend that the young man's frivolity was pretense,
+and his foppery affectation. A girl of his own age, whose heart-depths had
+not been sounded by experience, would have fallen in love with the foppery
+(or else despised it--which is often the same thing); but Mrs. Austen,
+mature in years, with a decade of London "seasons" behind her, having met
+every possible kind of man Europe had to offer, discovered that the world
+did not know Ben Disraeli at all. She saw that the youth did not reveal
+his true self, and that instead of courting society for its own sake he
+had a supreme contempt for it. She intuitively knew that he was seething
+in discontent, and with prophetic vision she knew that his restless power
+and his ambition would yet make him a marked figure in the world of
+letters or politics, or both.
+
+For love as a passion, or supreme sentiment, ruling one's life, Disraeli
+had no sympathy. He shunned love for fear it might bind him hand and foot.
+Love not only is blind, but love blinds its votary, and Disraeli, knowing
+this, fled for freedom when the trail grew warm. A man madly in love is
+led, subdued--imagine Mephisto captured, crying it out on his knees with
+his head in a woman's lap!
+
+But Mrs. Austen was happily married, the mother of a family, and occupied
+a position high in London society.
+
+Marriage with her was out of the question, and scandal and indiscretion
+equally so--Ben Disraeli felt safe with Mrs. Austen. With her he put off
+his domino and grew simple and confidential.
+
+And so the lady, doubtless a bit flattered--for she was a woman--set
+herself to push on the hazard of new fortunes. She encouraged him to write
+his novel of "Vivian Gray"--discussed every phase of it, read chapter
+after chapter as they were produced, and by her gentle encouragement and
+warm sympathy fired the mind of the young man to the point of production.
+
+The book is absurd in plot, and like most first books, flashy and
+overdrawn. And yet there is a deal of power in it, and the thinly veiled
+characters were speedily pointed out as living personages. Literary London
+went agog, and Mrs. Austen fanned the flame by inviting "the set" to her
+drawing-room to hear the great author read from his amusing work. The best
+feature of the book, and probably the saving feature, is that the central
+figure in the plot is Disraeli, himself, and upon his own head the author
+plays his shafts of wit and ridicule. The impertinence and impudence which
+he himself manifested were parodied, caricatured and played upon, to the
+great delight of the uninitiated rabble, who gave themselves much credit
+for having made a discovery.
+
+The man who scorns, scoffs, gibes and jeers other men, and at the same
+time is willing to drop his guard and laugh at himself, is not a bad man.
+Very, very seldom is found a man under thirty who does not take himself
+and all his wit seriously. But Disraeli, the lawyer's clerk, at twenty was
+wise and subtle beyond all men in London Town. Mrs. Austen must have been
+wise, too, for had she been like most other good women she would have
+wanted her protege admired, and have rebelled in tears at the thought of
+placing him in a position where society would serve him up for
+tittle-tattle. Small men can be laughed down, but great ones, never.
+
+A little American testimony as to the appearance of Disraeli in his
+manhood may not here be amiss. Says N.P. Willis: "He was sitting in a
+window looking on Hyde Park, the last rays of sunlight reflected from the
+gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat.
+Patent-leather pumps, a white stick with a black cord and tassel, and a
+quantity of chains about his neck and pockets, served to make him a
+conspicuous object. He has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He
+is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and strength of his
+lungs would seem to be a victim of consumption. His eye is black as
+Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying-in-wait sort of expression
+conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient
+nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a
+particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of
+triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. His hair is as
+extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black
+ringlets falls on his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, which on
+the right temple is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a
+girl. The conversation turned on Beckford. I might as well attempt to
+gather up the foam of the sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary
+language in which he clothed his description. He talked like a racehorse
+approaching the winning-post, every muscle in action."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Disraeli, like Byron, awoke one morning and found himself famous. And like
+Byron, he was yet a stripling. Pitt was Prime Minister at twenty-five.
+Genius has its example, and Disraeli worshiped alternately at the shrines
+of Byron and Pitt. The daring intellect and haughty indifference of Byron,
+and the compelling power of Pitt--he saw no reason why he should not unite
+these qualities within himself. He had been grubbing in a lawyer's office,
+and had revealed decided ability in a business way, but novel-writing in
+office-hours was not appreciated by his employer--Ben was told so, and
+this gave him an opportunity to resign. He had set his heart on a
+political career--he thirsted for power--and no doubt Mrs. Austen
+encouraged him in this. To push a man to the front, and thus win a
+vicarious triumph, has been a source of great joy to more than one
+ambitious woman. To get on in politics, Disraeli must enter the House of
+Commons. Even now, with the help of the Austens, and his father's purse, a
+pocket borough might be secured, but it was not enough--he must enter with
+eclat.
+
+A year of travel was advised--fame grows best where the man is not too
+much in evidence; there is virtue in obscurity. Disraeli decided to go
+down through Europe, traveling over the same route that Byron had taken,
+write another book that would secure him some more necessary notoriety,
+and then stand for a seat in the House of Commons. Once within the sacred
+pale, he believed his knowledge of business, his ability to express
+himself as a writer or speaker, and the magic of his presence would make
+the rest easy.
+
+There was no dumb luck in the matter--neither father nor son believed in
+chance; they fixed their faith on cause and effect.
+
+And so Ben went abroad before London society grew aweary of him.
+
+His stay was purposely prolonged; and news of his progress from time to
+time filled the public prints. He carried letters of introduction to every
+one and moved in a sort of sublime pageant as he traveled.
+
+When he returned, wearing the costume of the East, he was greeted by
+society as a prince. His novel, "Contarini Fleming," was published with
+great acclaim, and interest in "Vivian Gray" was revived by a special
+edition deluxe. "Contarini" was compared to "Childe Harold," and pictures
+of Disraeli, with hair curling to his shoulders, were displayed in
+shop-windows by the side of pictures of Byron.
+
+Disraeli was the lion of the drawing-rooms. When it was known he was to be
+in a certain place crowds gathered to get a glimpse of his handsome face,
+and to listen to his wit.
+
+He introduced several of his Eastern accomplishments, one of which was the
+hookah. "Beware of tobacco, my boy," said an old colonel to him one day;
+"women do not like it; it has ruined more charming liaisons than anything
+else I know!"
+
+"Then you must consider smoking a highly moral accomplishment," was the
+reply. The colonel had wrongly guessed the object of Disraeli's ambition.
+
+He became acquainted with Tom Moore, Count d'Orsay, and Lady Morgan; Lady
+Blessington welcomed him at Kensington; Bulwer-Lytton introduced him to
+Mrs. Wyndham Lewis--wife of the member from Maidstone--aged forty; and he
+was, say, twenty-five. They tried conclusions in repartee, sparred for
+points, and amused the company by hot arguments and wordy pyrotechnics.
+When they found themselves alone in the conservatory, after a little
+stroll, they shook hands, and the gentleman said, "What fools these
+mortals be!" "True," replied the lady; "true, and you and I are mortals."
+And so Disraeli found another woman who correctly gauged him. They liked
+each other first-rate. At last a vacant borough was found and arrangements
+made for the young man to stand as a candidate for the House of Commons.
+The campaign was entered upon with great vigor. Disraeli quite outdid
+himself in speech-making and waistcoats. The election took place--and he
+was defeated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With Disraeli defeat meant merely a transient episode, not a conclusion.
+On the second venture he was elected, and one sunshiny day found himself
+duly sworn in as a member of the House of Commons, with a seat just back
+of Peel's.
+
+There is a tradition in Parliament, adopted also in the United States
+Senate, that silence is quite becoming to a member during his first
+session. Disraeli had a motto to the effect that it is better to be
+impudent than servile, and in order to teach Parliament that in the
+presence of personality all rules are waived, he very shortly indulged him
+in an exceeding spread-eagle speech. But he had not spoken five minutes
+before the members began to laugh. Catcalls, hisses and mad tumult
+reigned. The young man in the flaming waistcoat let loose all his
+oratorical artillery, and the result was bravos and left-handed applause
+that smothered his batteries. Again and again he tried to proceed, but his
+voice was lost in the Clover-Club fusillade. The Chair was powerless. At
+last the speaker saw an opening and roared above the din, "I will now sit
+down, but you shall yet listen to me!"
+
+Opinions were divided as to whether the House had squelched the
+Israelitish fop, or whether the fop had tantalized the House into
+unseemliness. The young man needed snubbing, no doubt, but the lesson had
+been given so brutally that sympathy was with the snubbed. The original
+intent was to abash him, so he would break down; but this not succeeding,
+he had simply been clubbed into silence.
+
+Then when Disraeli refused to accept condolences--merely waiving the whole
+affair--and a few days after arose to make some trivial motion, just as
+though nothing had happened, he made friends.
+
+Any man who shows himself to be strong has friends--people wish to attach
+themselves to such a one. Disraeli showed himself strong in that he held
+no resentment, and indulged in no recrimination on account of the
+treatment he had received. A weak man would have done one of these things:
+resigned his seat, demanded an apology from the House, or refused to let
+his voice again be heard. Disraeli did neither--he continued to speak on
+various occasions, and expressed himself so courteously, so modestly, so
+becomingly, that the members listened in awe and curiosity. Then soon it
+was discovered that beneath the mild and gentle ripple of his speech ran a
+deep current of earnest truth, tinged with subtle wit. When he spoke, the
+loungers came in from the cloakrooms, fearing to miss something that was
+worth while.
+
+The House of Commons experience taught Disraeli one great truth, and that
+was this: the most effective oratory is not bombastic. Among educated
+people (or illiterate) the quiet, deliberate and subdued manner is best.
+Reserve is a very necessary element in effective speaking. It is
+soul-weight that counts, not mere words, words, words. The extreme
+deliberation and compelling quality of quiet self-possession in Disraeli's
+style dated, according to Gladstone, from the day that Parliament tried to
+laugh him down. After that if any one wanted to hear him they had to come
+to him, and he took good care that those who did come did not go away
+empty. He never explained the evident, illustrated the obvious, nor
+expatiated on the irrelevant.
+
+However, the motto, "Impudence rather than servility," was not discarded.
+Instead of a dashing style he developed a slow, subtle, scathing quality
+that was quite lost on all, save those who gave themselves to close
+listening.
+
+And the House listened, for when Disraeli went after an antagonist he
+chose an antlered stag. If little men, fiercely effervescent and
+childishly inconsequential, attempted to reply to him or sought to engage
+him in debate, he simply answered them with silence, or that tantalizing
+smile.
+
+O'Connell and Disraeli, although unlike, had much in common and should
+have been fast friends. Surely the age and distinguished record of
+O'Connell must have commanded Disraeli's respect, but we know how they
+grappled in wordy warfare. Disraeli called the Irishman an incendiary, and
+O'Connell, who was a past master in abuse, replied in a speech wherein he
+exhausted the Billingsgate lexicon. He wound up by a reference to the
+ancestry of his opponent, and a suggestion that "this renegade Jew is
+descended from the impenitent thief, whose name was doubtless Disraeli."
+It was a home-thrust--a picture so exaggerated and overdrawn that all
+England laughed. The very extravagance of the simile should have saved the
+allusion from resentment; but it touched Disraeli in his most sensitive
+spot--his pride of birth.
+
+He straightway challenged his traducer. O'Connell had killed a man in a
+duel years before, and then vowed he would never again engage in mortal
+combat.
+
+Disraeli intimated that he would fight O'Connell's son, Morgan, if
+preferred, a man of his own age.
+
+Morgan replied that his father insulted so many men he could not set the
+precedent of fighting them all, or standing sponsor for an indiscreet
+parent. But with genuine Irish spirit he suggested that if the son of
+Abraham was intent on fight and could not be persuaded to be sensible,
+why, the matter could probably be arranged.
+
+Happily, about this time, police officers invaded the apartments of
+Disraeli and arrested him on a bench-warrant. He was bound over, to his
+great relief, in the sum of five hundred pounds to keep the peace.
+
+O'Connell never took the matter very seriously, and referred soon after in
+a speech to "my excellent, though slightly bellicose friend, child of an
+honored race."
+
+Disraeli did not take up politics to make money--the man who does that may
+win in his desires, but his career is short. Nothing but honesty really
+succeeds. Disraeli knew this, and in his record there is no taint. But the
+income of a member of the House of Commons affords no opportunity for
+display. Disraeli's books brought him in only small sums, and his father's
+moderate fortune had been sadly drawn upon. He was well past thirty, and
+was not making head, simply because he was cramped for funds. To rise in
+politics you must have an establishment; you must entertain and reach out
+and bring those you wish to influence within your scope. A third floor
+back, in an ebb-tide street, will not do. Like Agassiz, Disraeli had no
+time to make money--it was a sad plight. But this was a man of destiny,
+and to use the language of Augustine Birrell, "Wyndam Lewis at this time
+accommodatingly died." Mrs. Wyndam Lewis had been the firm friend and
+helper of Disraeli for many years, and although a small matter of fifteen
+years separated them as to ages, yet their hearts beat as one.
+
+Scarce a twelvemonth had gone before the widow and Disraeli were married.
+They disappeared from London for some months, journeying on the Continent.
+When they returned all the old scores in way of unpaid bills against
+Disraeli were paid, and he was master of an establishment.
+
+Disraeli was thirty-five, his wife was fifty, but it was a happy mating.
+They thought alike, and their ambitions were the same. Disraeli treated
+his wife with all the courtly grace and deference in which he was an
+adept, and her princely fortune was absolutely his. "There was much cause
+for gratitude on both sides," said O'Connell. And there is no doubt that
+Disraeli's wife proved the firmest friend he ever had. For many years she
+was his sole confidante and best adviser. She attended him everywhere and
+relieved him of many burdens. That true incident of her fingers being
+crushed by the careless slamming of the carriage-door, and her hiding the
+bleeding members in her muff, and attending her husband to the House of
+Commons, where he was to speak, refusing to disturb him by her pain--this
+symbols the moral quality of the woman. She was the fit mate of a great
+man, and it is pleasant to know that she was honored and appreciated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To tell the story of Disraeli's thirty years in Parliament would be to
+write the political history of the time. He was in the front of every
+fight; he expressed himself on every subject; he crossed swords with the
+strongest men of his age. That he had no great and overpowering
+convictions on any subject is fully admitted now, even by his most ardent
+admirers--it was always a question of policy; that is to say, he was a
+politician. He gave a point here and there when he had to, and when he
+did, always managed to do it gracefully. When he ambled over from one
+party to another he affected a fine wrath and gave excellent reasons.
+
+Three times he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and twice was he Prime
+Minister, and for a time actual Dictator. But he took good care not to
+exercise his power too severely. When his word was supreme, the safety of
+the nation lay, as it always does, in a strong opposition.
+
+In one notable instance was Disraeli wrong in his prophecies--he declared
+again and again that Free Trade meant commercial bankruptcy. Yet Free
+Trade came about, and the fires were started in ten thousand factories,
+and such prosperity came to England as she had never known before.
+
+Political economy as a science was a constant butt for his wit, and in
+physical science he was dense to a point where his ignorance calls for
+pity. He believed in the literal Mosaic account of creation, and said in
+his paradoxical way on one occasion, that in belief he was not only a
+Christian, but a Jew. And this in spite of his most famous mot: "All
+sensible men are of one religion."
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+"Sensible men never tell."
+
+Had Disraeli been truly sensible he would not have attempted to hold
+Charles Darwin up to ridicule, by declaring in a speech at Oxford that "it
+is a choice between apes and angels." He had neither the ability,
+patience, nor inclination to read the "Origin of Species," and yet was so
+absurd as to answer it.
+
+In his novels of "Coningsby," "Sybil" and "Tancred," he argues with great
+skill and adroit sophistry that a landed aristocracy is necessary to a
+progressive civilization. "The common people need an example of refinement
+in way of manners, art and intellect. Some one must take the lead, and
+reveal the possibility of life in leisurely and luxurious living." And
+this example of beauty, gentleness and excellence was to come from the
+landed gentry of England--ye gods! Was it possible that this man believed
+in the necessity of the gentry as a virtuous example? Or did he merely
+view the fact that the aristocracy were there in actual possession, and as
+they could not be evicted, why then the next best thing was to cajole,
+flatter and discreetly advise them? Who shall say what this man believed!
+
+Sensible men never tell.
+
+But this we know, this man had no vice but ambition. He conformed pretty
+closely to England's ideals, and his thirst for power never caused him to
+take the chances of a Waterloo. His novels show a close acquaintanceship
+with the ways of society, and he knew the human heart as few men ever do.
+The degradation of the average toiler in Great Britain, the infamy of the
+policy extended toward Ireland, and the cruelty of imperialism--all these
+he knew, for his books reveal it; but he was powerless as a leader to stem
+the current of tendency. He acquiesced where he deemed action futile.
+
+"Lothair" is his best novel, for in it he gets furthest away from himself.
+It reveals a cleverness that is admirable, and this same brilliancy and
+shifty play of intellect are found in "Endymion," written in his
+seventy-fifth year. Whether these novels can ever take their place among
+the books that endure is a question that is growing more easy to answer
+each succeeding year. They owed their popularity more to their flippant
+cleverness than to their insight, and their vogue was due, to a great
+extent, to the veiled personalities that interline their pages.
+
+That Disraeli did not carry out all the plans and reforms he attempted,
+need not be set down to his discredit. It is fortunate he did not succeed
+better than he did. He, however, safely piloted the great ship in the
+direction the passengers desired to go; and his own personal ambition was
+reached when he, a Jew at heart--member of a despised race--had made
+himself master of the fleets, armies and treasury of the proudest nation
+the world has ever known.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bound into the life of Disraeli is a peculiar incident in the romantic
+friendship that existed between him and Mrs. Willyums of Torquay,
+Cornwall. About the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, Disraeli began to
+receive letters from an unknown admirer, who expressed a great desire for
+an interview on "a most important business." All public men, especially if
+they have the brilliant mental qualities of Disraeli, receive such
+letters. The sensitive neurotic female who is ill-appreciated in her own
+home and whose soul yearns for a "higher companionship" is numerous.
+Disraeli's secretary used to take care of such letters with a gentle
+explanation that the Chief was out of town, but upon his return, etc.,
+etc., and that was the last of it. But this Torquay correspondent was
+insistent, and finally a letter came from her saying she had come to
+London on purpose to meet her lord and master, and she would await him at
+a seat just east of the fountain in Crystal Palace at a certain hour.
+Disraeli read the missive with impatience--the idea of his meeting an
+unknown woman in this fishmonger manner at a hurdy-gurdy show! He tossed
+the letter into the fire. The next day another letter came, expressing
+much regret that he had not kept the appointment, but saying she would
+await him at the same place the following day, and begging him, as the
+matter was very urgent, not to fail her.
+
+Disraeli smiled and showed the letter to his wife. She advised him to go.
+When his wife said he had better do a thing he usually did it; and so he
+ordered his carriage and went to the hurdy-gurdy show to meet the
+impressionable female of unknown age and condition at the seat just east
+of the fountain. It was a silly thing for the leading member of Parliament
+to do--to make an assignation in a public place with a fool-woman--all
+London might be laughing at him tomorrow! He was on the point of turning
+back.
+
+But he reached the fountain and there was his destiny awaiting him--a
+little woman in widow's black. She lifted her veil and showed a face
+wrinkled and old, but kindly. She was agitated--she really did not expect
+him--and the great man gave a great sigh of relief when he saw that no
+flashily dressed creature had entrapped him. Even if people stared at him
+sitting there it made no difference. In pity he shook hands with the
+little old woman, sat down beside her, calmed her agitation, spoke of
+Cornwall and the weather, and inquired what he could do for her. A
+rambling talk about nothing followed, and Disraeli was sure it was just a
+mild case of lunacy.
+
+He arose to go, and the woman gave him an envelope, saying she had written
+out her case and begged him to read the letter when he had time. The man
+was preoccupied, his mind on great affairs of state--he simply crushed the
+letter into the side-pocket of his overcoat, bade the woman a dignified
+good-morning, and turned away.
+
+It was a month before he found the letter all crumpled and soiled there
+where he had placed it. He really had forgotten where it came from. The
+envelope was opened and out dropped a Bank of England note for one
+thousand pounds. This note was to pay for certain legal advice. The advice
+wanted was of a trivial nature, and Disraeli, always conscientious in
+money matters, hastened to return the money, in person, and give the
+advice gratis.
+
+But the lady had had the interview--two of them--and this was all she
+wanted. Letters followed, and this developed into a daily correspondence,
+wherein the old lady revealed the story of her passion--a passion as
+delicate, earnest and all-devouring as ever a girl of twenty knew. Insane,
+you say? Well, ah--yes, doubtless. But then, love is illusion; perhaps
+life is illusion, a very beautiful rainbow, and why old folks should not
+be allowed to chase it, or allow sweet emotion to gurgle gleefully under
+their lee, a bit, as well as young folks, I do not know. Then, really, is
+love simply a physical manifestation and do spirits grow old? If so, where
+is our belief in the immortality of the soul?
+
+Mrs. Willyums was childless, had long been a widow, was rich, and her
+heart had been in the grave until she began to trace the record of
+Disraeli. She was a recluse: read, studied, fed on Disraeli--loved him.
+After several years of dreaming and planning she had actually bagged the
+game. She was a woman of education and ideas. Her letters were
+interesting--and Disraeli's letters to her, now published, reveal the
+history of his daily life as he never told it to another. At her death the
+bulk of Mrs. Willyum's fortune went by will to Disraeli.
+
+But Mrs. Disraeli was not jealous of this affection. Why should a woman of
+sixty be jealous of another woman the same age? They pooled their love and
+grew rich together in recounting it. Presents were going backward and
+forward all the time between Disraeli's country home and Torquay. Mrs.
+Willyums next came to live at Hughenden. There she died, and there she
+sleeps, side by side, as was her wish, with Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Privy
+Seal, Earl Beaconsfield of Beaconsfield, Viscount Hughenden of Hughenden.
+And the reason the Ex-Premier was not buried in Westminster Abbey was
+because he had promised these two women that even death should not
+separate them from him. So there under the spreading elms, in this
+out-of-the-way country place, they rest--these three, side by side, and
+the sighing breeze tells and tells again to the twittering birds in the
+branches, of this triple love, strange as fate, strong as destiny, warm as
+life, pure as snow, and unselfish as the kiss of the summer sun.
+
+
+
+
+SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF ENGLISH AUTHORS," BEING
+VOLUME FIVE OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED AND
+ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13619 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13619 ***</div>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great,
+Volume 5 (of 14), by Elbert Hubbard</h1>
+<hr class="pg" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name='V_Page_1'></a><a name='V_Page_2'></a><a name='V_Page_3'></a>
+
+<h3>Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5</h3>
+
+<h1>Little Journeys to the Homes<br>
+    of English Authors</h1>
+
+<h3>by</h3>
+
+<h2>Elbert Hubbard</h2>
+
+<h3>Memorial Edition</h3>
+
+<h3>New York</h3>
+
+<h3>1916</h3>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>Contents</h2><a name='V_Page_4'></a><a name='V_Page_5'></a>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+ <a href='#WILLIAM_MORRIS'><b>William Morris</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#ROBERT_BROWNING'><b>Robert Browning</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#ALFRED_TENNYSON'><b>Alfred Tennyson</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#ROBERT_BURNS'><b>Robert Burns</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#JOHN_MILTON'><b>John Milton</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#SAMUEL_JOHNSON'><b>Samuel Johnson</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#THOMAS_B_MACAULAY'><b>Thomas B. Macaulay</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#LORD_BYRON'><b>Lord Byron</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#JOSEPH_ADDISON'><b>Joseph Addison</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#ROBERT_SOUTHEY'><b>Robert Southey</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#SAMUEL_T_COLERIDGE'><b>Samuel T. Coleridge</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#BENJAMIN_DISRAELI'><b>Benjamin Disraeli</b></a><br />
+
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='WILLIAM_MORRIS'></a><h2>WILLIAM MORRIS</h2><a name='V_Page_6'></a><a name='V_Page_7'></a><a name='V_Page_8'></a><a name='V_Page_9'></a>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i4'>THE IDLE SINGER<br /></span><a name='V_Page_10'></a>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,<br /></span>
+<span>I can not ease the burden of your fears,<br /></span>
+<span>Or make quick-coming death a little thing,<br /></span>
+<span>Or bring again the pleasure of past years,<br /></span>
+<span>Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,<br /></span>
+<span>Or hope again for aught that I can say,<br /></span>
+<span>The idle singer of an empty day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>But rather, when aweary of your mirth,<br /></span>
+<span>From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,<br /></span>
+<span>And feeling kindly unto all the earth,<br /></span>
+<span>Grudge every minute as it passes by,<br /></span>
+<span>Made the more mindful that the sweet days die,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Remember me a little then, I pray,<br /></span>
+<span>The idle singer of an empty day.<br /></span>
+</div>
+<hr class="poem" />
+<div class='stanza'>
+<span>Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,<br /></span>
+<span>Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?<br /></span>
+<span>Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme<br /></span>
+<span>Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,<br /></span>
+<span>Telling a tale not too importunate<br /></span>
+<span>To those who in the sleepy region stay,<br /></span>
+<span>Lulled by the singer of an empty day.</span>
+<span class='i11'>&mdash;<i>From &quot;The Earthly Paradise&quot;</i><br /></span></div></div>
+<a name='V_Page_11'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-1.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-1-th.jpg" alt="WILLIAM MORRIS"></a></p><p class="ctr">WILLIAM MORRIS</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>The parents of William Morris were well-to-do people who lived in the
+village of Walthamstow, Essex. The father was a London bill-broker,
+cool-headed, calculating, practical. In the home of his parents William
+Morris received small impulse in the direction of art; he, however, was
+taught how to make both ends meet, and there were drilled into his
+character many good lessons of plain commonsense&mdash;a rather unusual
+equipment for a poet, but still one that should not be waived or
+considered lightly. At the village school William was neither precocious
+nor dull, neither black nor white: his cosmos being simply a sort of
+slaty-gray, a condition of being which attracted no special attention from
+either his schoolfellows or his tutors. From the village school he went to
+Marlborough Academy, where by patient grubbing he fitted himself for
+Exeter College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>Morris, the elder, proved his good sense by taking no very special
+interest in the boy's education. Violence of direction in education falls
+flat: man is a lonely creature, and has to work out his career in his own
+way. To help the grub spin its cocoon is quite unnecessary, and to play
+the part of Mrs. Gamp with the butterfly in its chrysalis stage is to
+place a quietus upon its career.</p>
+
+<p><a name='V_Page_12'></a>The whole science of modern education is calculated to turn out a good,
+fairish, commonplace article; but the formula for a genius remains a
+secret with Deity. The great man becomes great in spite of teachers and
+parents: and his near kinsmen, being color-blind, usually pooh-pooh the
+idea that he is anything more than mediocre. At Oxford, William Morris
+fell in with a young man of about his own age, by the name of Edward
+Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones was studying theology. He was slender in stature,
+dreamy, spiritual, poetic. Morris was a giant in strength, blunt in
+speech, bold in manner, and had a shock of hair like a lion's mane. This
+was in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three&mdash;these young men being
+nineteen years of age. The slender, yellow, dreamy student of theology and
+the ruddy athlete became fast friends.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Send your sons to college and the boys will educate them,&quot; said Emerson.
+These boys read poetry together; and it seems the first author that
+specially attracted them was Mrs. Browning; and she attracted them simply
+because she had recently eloped with the man she loved. This fact proved
+to Morris that she was a worthy woman and a discerning. She had the
+courage of her convictions. To elope with a poor poet, leaving a rich
+father and a luxurious home&mdash;what nobler ambition?</p>
+
+<p>Burne-Jones, student of theology, considered her action proof of
+depravity. Morris, in order to show his friend that Mrs. Browning was
+really a rare and gentle <a name='V_Page_13'></a>soul, read aloud to Burne-Jones from her books.
+Morris himself had never read much of Mrs. Browning's work, but in
+championing her cause and interesting his friend in her, he grew
+interested himself. Like lawyers, we undertake a cause first and look for
+proof later. In teaching another, Morris taught himself. By explaining a
+theme it becomes luminous to us.</p>
+
+<p>In passing, it is well to note that this impulse in the heart of William
+Morris to come to the defense of an accused person was ever very strong.
+His defense of Mrs. Browning led straight to &quot;The Defense of Guinevere,&quot;
+begun while at Oxford and printed in book form in his twenty-fourth year.
+Not that the offenses of Guinevere and Elizabeth Barrett were parallel,
+but Morris was by nature a defender of women. And it should further be
+noted that Tennyson had not yet written his &quot;Idylls of the King,&quot;-at the
+time Morris wrote his poetic brief.</p>
+
+<p>Another author that these young men took up at this time was Ruskin. John
+Ruskin was fifteen years older than Morris&mdash;an Oxford man, too; also, the
+son of a merchant and rich by inheritance. Ruskin's natural independence,
+his ability for original thinking and his action in embracing the cause of
+Turner, the ridiculed, won the heart of Morris. In Ruskin he found a
+writer who expressed the thoughts that he believed. He read Ruskin, and
+insisted that Burne-Jones should. Together they read &quot;The Nature of
+Gothic,&quot; and then they <a name='V_Page_14'></a>went out upon the streets of Oxford and studied
+examples at first hand. They compared the old with the new, and came to
+the conclusion that the buildings erected two centuries before had various
+points to recommend them which modern buildings have not. The modern
+buildings were built by contractors, while the old ones were constructed
+by men who had all the time there was, and so they worked out their
+conceptions of the eternal fitness of things.</p>
+
+<p>Then these young men, with several others, drew up a remonstrance against
+&quot;the desecration by officious restoration, and the tearing down of
+time-mellowed structures to make room for the unsightly brick piles of
+boarding-house keepers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The remonstrance was sent in to the authorities, and by them duly
+pigeonholed, with a passing remark that young fellows sent to Oxford to be
+educated had better attend to their books and mind their own business.
+Having espoused the cause of the Middle Ages in architecture, these young
+men began to study the history of the people who lived in the olden time.
+They read Spenser and Chaucer, and chance threw in their way a dog-eared
+copy of Mallory's &quot;Morte d' Arthur,&quot; and this was still more dog-eared
+when they were through with it. Probably no book ever made more of an
+impression on Morris than this one; and if he had written an article for
+the &quot;Ladies' Home Journal&quot; on &quot;Books That Influenced Me Most,&quot; he would
+have <a name='V_Page_15'></a>placed Mallory's &quot;Morte d' Arthur&quot; first.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of Burne-Jones on Morris was marked, and the influence of
+Morris on Burne-Jones was profound. Morris discovered himself in
+explaining things to Burne-Jones, and Burne-Jones, without knowing it,
+adopted the opinions of Morris; and it was owing to Morris that he gave up
+theology.</p>
+
+<p>Having abandoned the object that led him to college, Burne-Jones lost
+faith in Oxford, and went down to London to study art.</p>
+
+<p>Morris hung on, secured his B.A., and articled himself to a local
+architect with the firm intent of stopping the insane drift for modern
+mediocrity, and bringing about a just regard for the stately dignity of
+the Gothic.</p>
+
+<p>A few months' experience, however, and he discovered that an apprentice to
+an architect was not expected to furnish plans or even criticize those
+already made: his business was to make detail drawings from completed
+designs for the contractors to work from.</p>
+
+<p>A year at architecture, with odd hours filled in at poetry and art, and
+news came from Burne-Jones that he had painted a picture, and sold it for
+ten pounds.</p>
+
+<p>Now Morris had all the money he needed. His father's prosperity was at
+flood, and he had but to hint for funds and they came; yet to make things
+with your own hands and sell them was the true test of success.</p>
+
+<p>He had written &quot;Gertha's Lovers,&quot; &quot;The Tale of the Hollow Land,&quot; and
+various poems and essays for the <a name='V_Page_16'></a>college magazine; and his book, &quot;The
+Defense of Guinevere,&quot; had been issued at his own expense, and the edition
+was on his hands&mdash;a weary weight.</p>
+
+<p>Thoreau wrote to his friends, when the house burned and destroyed all
+copies of his first book, &quot;The edition is exhausted,&quot; but no such
+happiness came to Morris. And so when glad tidings of an artistic success
+came from Burne-Jones, he resolved to follow the lead and abandon
+architecture for &quot;pure art.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Arriving in London he placed himself under the tutorship of Dante Gabriel
+Rossetti, poet, dreamer and artist, six years his senior, whom he had
+known for some time, and who had also instructed Burne-Jones.</p>
+
+<p>While taking lessons in painting at the rather shabby house of Rossetti in
+Portland Street, he was introduced to Rossetti's favorite model&mdash;a young
+woman of rare grace and beauty. Rossetti had painted her picture as &quot;The
+Blessed Damozel,&quot; leaning over the bar of Heaven, while the stars in her
+hair were seven. Morris, the impressionable, fell in love with the canvas
+and then with the woman.</p>
+
+<p>When they were married, tradition has it that Rossetti withheld his
+blessing and sought to drown his sorrow in fomentation's, with dark, dank
+hints in baritone to the effect that the Thames only could appreciate his
+grief.</p>
+
+<p>But grief is transient; and for many years Dante Rossetti and Burne-Jones
+pictured the tall, willowy figure of<a name='V_Page_17'></a> Mrs. Morris as the dream-woman, on
+tapestry and canvas; and as the &quot;Blessed Virgin,&quot; her beautiful face and
+form are shown in many sacred places.</p>
+
+<p>Truth need not be distorted in a frantic attempt to make this an ideal
+marriage&mdash;only a woman with the intellect of Minerva could have filled the
+restless heart of William Morris. But the wife of Morris believed in her
+lord, and never sought to hamper him; and if she failed at times to
+comprehend his genius, it was only because she was human.</p>
+
+<p>Whistler once remarked that without Mrs. Morris to supply stained-glass
+attitudes and the lissome beauty of an angel, the Preraphaelites would
+have long since gone down to dust and forgetfulness.</p><a name='V_Page_18'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The year which William Morris spent at architecture, he considered as
+nearly a waste of time, but it was not so in fact. As a draftsman he had
+developed a marvelous skill, and the grace and sureness of his lines were
+a delight to Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown and
+others of the little artistic circle in which he found himself.</p>
+
+<p>Youth lays great plans; youth is always in revolt against the present
+order; youth groups itself in bands and swears eternal fealty; and life,
+which is change, dissipates the plans, subdues the revolt into conformity,
+and the sworn friendships fade away into dull indifference. Always? Well,
+no, not exactly.</p>
+
+<p>In this instance the plans and dreams found form; the revolt was a
+revolution that succeeded; and the brotherhood existed for near fifty
+years, and then was severed only by death.</p>
+
+<p>Without going into a history of the Preraphaelite Brotherhood, it will be
+noted that the band of enthusiasts in art, literature and architecture had
+been swung by the arguments and personality of William Morris into the
+strong current of his own belief, and this was that Art and Life in the
+Middle Ages were much lovelier things than they are now.</p>
+
+<p>That being so, we should go back to medieval times for our patterns.</p>
+
+<p>A study of the best household decorations of the Fifteenth Century showed
+that all the furniture used then was made to fit a certain <a name='V_Page_19'></a>apartment, and
+with a definite purpose in view.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it was made by hand, and the loving marks of the tool were upon
+it. It was made as good and strong and durable as it could be made. Floors
+and walls were of mosaic or polished wood, and these were partly covered
+by beautifully woven rugs, skins and tapestries. The ceilings were
+sometimes ornamented with pictures painted in harmony with the use for
+which the room was designed. Certainly there were no chromos and the
+pictures were few and these of the best, for the age was essentially a
+critical one.</p>
+
+<p>A modest circular was issued in which the fact was made known that &quot;a
+company of historical artists will use their talents in home decoration.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dealers into whose hands this circular fell, smiled in derision, and the
+announcement made no splash in England's artistic waters. But the leaven
+was at work which was bound to cause a revolution in the tastes of fifty
+million people.</p>
+
+<p>Most of our best moves are accidents, and every good thing begins as
+something else. In the beginning there was no expectation of building up a
+trade or making a financial success of the business. The idea was simply
+that the eight young men who composed the band were to use their influence
+in helping one another to secure commissions, and corroborate the views of
+doubting patrons as to what was art and what not. In other words, they
+were to stand by one another.</p><a name='V_Page_20'></a>
+
+<p>Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Arthur Hughes
+were painters; Philip Webb an architect; Peter Paul Marshall a
+landscape-gardener and engineer; Charles Joseph Faulkner, an Oxford don,
+was a designer, and William Morris was an all-round artist&mdash;ready to turn
+his hand to anything.</p>
+
+<p>These men undertook to furnish a home from garret to cellar in an artistic
+way.</p>
+
+<p>Work came, and each set himself to help all the others. From simply
+supplying designs for furniture, rugs, carpets and wall-paper they began
+to manufacture these things, simply because they could not buy or get
+others to make the things they desired.</p>
+
+<p>Morris undertook the entire executive charge of affairs, and mastered the
+details of half a dozen trades in order that he might intelligently
+conduct the business. The one motto of the firm was, &quot;Not how cheap, but
+how good.&quot; They insisted that housekeeping must be simplified, and that we
+should have fewer things and have them better. To this end single pieces
+of furniture were made, and all sets of furniture discarded. I have seen
+several houses furnished entirely by William Morris, and the first thing
+that impressed me was the sparsity of things. Instead of a dozen pictures
+in a room, there were two or three&mdash;one on an easel and one or two on the
+walls. Gilt frames were abandoned almost entirely, and dark-stained woods
+were used instead. Wide fireplaces were introduced and mantels of solid
+<a name='V_Page_21'></a>oak. For upholstery, leather covering was commonly used instead of cloth.
+Carpets were laid in strips, not tacked down to stay, and rugs were laid
+so as to show a goodly glimpse of hardwood floor; and in the dining-room a
+large, round table was placed instead of a right-angled square one. This
+table was not covered with a tablecloth; instead, mats and doilies were
+used here and there. To cover a table entirely with a cloth or spread was
+pretty good proof that the piece of furniture was cheap and shabby; so in
+no William Morris library or dining-room would you find a table entirely
+covered. The round dining-table is in very general use now, but few people
+realize how its plainness was scouted when William Morris first introduced
+it.</p>
+
+<p>One piece of William Morris furniture has become decidedly popular in
+America, and that is the &quot;Morris Chair.&quot; The first chair of this pattern
+was made entirely by the hands of the master. It was built by a man who
+understood anatomy, unlike most chairs and all church pews. It was also
+strong, durable, ornamental, and by a simple device the back could be
+adjusted so as to fit a man's every mood.</p>
+
+<p>There has been a sad degeneracy among William Morris chairs; still, good
+ones can be obtained, nearly as excellent as the one in which I rested at
+Kelmscott House&mdash;broad, deep, massive, upholstered with curled hair, and
+covered with leather that would delight a bookbinder. Such a chair can be
+used a generation and <a name='V_Page_22'></a>then passed on to the heirs.</p>
+
+<p>Furnishing of churches and chapels led naturally to the making of
+stained-glass windows, and hardly a large city of Christendom but has an
+example of the Morris work.</p>
+
+<p>Morris managed to hold that erratic genius, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in
+line and direct his efforts, which of itself was a feat worthy of record.
+He made a fortune for Rossetti, who was a child in this world's affairs,
+and he also made a fortune for himself and every man connected with the
+concern.</p>
+
+<p>Burne-Jones stood by the ship manfully, and proved his good sense by never
+interfering with the master's plans, or asking foolish, quibbling
+questions&mdash;showing faith on all occasions.</p>
+
+<p>The Morris designs for wall-paper, tapestry, cretonnes and carpets are now
+the property of the world, but to say just which is a William Morris
+design and which a Burne-Jones is an impossibility, for these two strong
+men worked together as one being with two heads and four hands. At one
+time, I find the firm of Morris and Company had three thousand hands at
+work in its various manufactories, the work in most instances being done
+by hand after the manner of the olden time. William Morris was an avowed
+socialist long before so many men began to grow fond of calling themselves
+Christian Socialists. Morris was too practical not to know that the time
+is not ripe for life on a communal basis, but in his heart was a high and
+holy ideal that <a name='V_Page_23'></a>he has partially explained in his books, &quot;A Dream of John
+Ball&quot; and &quot;News From Nowhere,&quot; and more fully in many lectures. His
+sympathy was ever with the workingman and those who grind fordone at the
+wheel of labor. To better the condition of the toiler was his sincere
+desire. But socialism to him was more of an emotion than a well-worked-out
+plan of life. He believed that men should replace competition by
+Co-operation. He used to say: &quot;I'm going your way, so let us go hand in
+hand. You help me and I'll help you. We shall not be here very long, for
+soon, Death, the kind old nurse, will come and rock us all to sleep&mdash;let
+us help one another while we may.&quot; And that is about the extent of the
+socialism of William Morris.</p>
+
+<p>There is one criticism that has been constantly brought against Morris,
+and although he answered this criticism a thousand times during his life,
+it still springs fresh&mdash;put forth by little men who congratulate
+themselves on having scored a point.</p>
+
+<p>They ask in orotund, &quot;How could William Morris expect to benefit society
+at large, when all of the products he manufactured were so high in price
+that only the rich could buy them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Socialism, according to William Morris, does not consider it desirable to
+supply cheap stuff to anybody. The socialist aims to make every
+manufactured article of the best quality possible. It is not how cheap can
+this be made, but how good. Make it as excellent as it can <a name='V_Page_24'></a>be made to
+serve its end. Then sell it at a price that affords something more than a
+bare subsistence to the workmen who put their lives into its making. In
+this way you raise the status of the worker&mdash;you pay him for his labor and
+give him an interest and pride in the product. Cheap products make cheap
+men. The first thought of socialism is for the worker who makes the thing,
+not the man who buys it.</p>
+
+<p>Work is for the worker.</p>
+
+<p>What becomes of the product of your work, and how the world receives it,
+matters little. But how you do it is everything. We are what we are on
+account of the thoughts we have thought and the things we have done. As a
+muscle grows strong only through use, so does every attribute of the mind,
+and every quality of the soul take on new strength through exercise. And
+on the other hand, as a muscle not used atrophies and dies, so will the
+faculties of the spirit die through disuse.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we see why it is very necessary that we should exercise our highest
+and best. We are making character, building soul-fiber; and no rotten
+threads must be woven into this web of life. If you write a paper for a
+learned society, you are the man who gets the benefit of that paper&mdash;the
+society may. If you are a preacher and prepare your sermons with care, you
+are the man who receives the uplift&mdash;and as to the congregation, it is all
+very doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>Work is for the worker.</p><a name='V_Page_25'></a>
+
+<p>We are all working out our own salvation. And thus do we see how it is
+very plain that John Ruskin was right when he said that the man who makes
+the thing is of far more importance than the man who buys it. Work is for
+the worker.</p>
+
+<p>Can you afford to do slipshod, evasive, hypocritical work? Can you afford
+to shirk, or make-believe or practise pretense in any act of life? No, no;
+for all the time you are molding yourself into a deformity, and drifting
+away from the Divine. What the world does and says about you is really no
+matter, but what you think and what you do are questions vital as Fate. No
+one can harm you but yourself. Work is for the worker. And so I will
+answer the questions of the critics as to how society has been benefited
+by, say, a William Morris book:</p>
+
+<p>1. The workmen who made it found a pride and satisfaction in their work.</p>
+
+<p>2. They received a goodly reward in cash for their time and efforts.</p>
+
+<p>3. The buyers were pleased with their purchase, and received a decided
+satisfaction in its possession.</p>
+
+<p>4. Readers of the book were gratified to see their author clothed in such
+fitting and harmonious dress.</p>
+
+<p>5. Reading the text has instructed some, and possibly inspired a few to
+nobler thinking.</p>
+
+<p>After &quot;The Defense of Guinevere&quot; was published, it was thirteen years
+before Morris issued another volume. His days had been <a name='V_Page_26'></a>given to art and
+the work of management. But now the business had gotten on to such a firm
+basis that he turned the immediate supervision over to others, and took
+two days of the week, Saturday and Sunday, for literature.</p>
+
+<p>Taking up the active work of literature when thirty-nine years of age, he
+followed it with the zest of youth for over twenty years&mdash;until death
+claimed him. William Morris thought literature should be the product of
+the ripened mind&mdash;the mind that knows the world of men and which has
+grappled with earth's problems. He also considered that letters should not
+be a profession in itself&mdash;to make a business of an art is to degrade it.
+Literature should be the spontaneous output of the mind that has known and
+felt. To work the mine of spirit as a business and sift its product for
+hire, is to overwork the vein and palm off slag for sterling metal.
+Shakespeare was a theater-manager, Milton a secretary, Bobby Burns a
+farmer, Lamb a bookkeeper, Wordsworth a government employee, Emerson a
+lecturer, Hawthorne a custom-house inspector, and Whitman a clerk. William
+Morris was a workingman and a manufacturer, and would have been Poet
+Laureate of England had he been willing to call himself a student of
+sociology instead of a socialist. Socialism itself (whatever it may be) is
+not offensive&mdash;the word is.</p><a name='V_Page_27'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The great American Apostle of Negation expressed, once upon a day, a
+regret that he had not been consulted when the Universe was being planned,
+otherwise he would have arranged to make good things catching instead of
+bad.</p>
+
+<p>The remark tokened a slight lesion in the logic of the Apostle, for good
+things are now, and ever have been, infectious.</p>
+
+<p>Once upon a day, I met a young man who told me that he was exposed at
+Kelmscott House for a brief hour, and caught it, and ever after there were
+in his mind, thoughts, feelings, emotions and ideals that had not been
+there before. Possibly the psychologist would explain that the spores of
+all these things were simply sleeping, awaiting the warmth and sunshine of
+some peculiar presence to start them into being; but of that I can not
+speak&mdash;this only I know, that the young man said to me, &quot;Whereas I was
+once blind, I now see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>William Morris was a giant in physical strength and a giant in intellect.
+His nature was intensely masculine, in that he could plan and act without
+thought of precedent. Never was a man more emancipated from the trammels
+of convention and custom than William Morris.</p>
+
+<p>Kelmscott House at Hammersmith is in an ebb-tide district where once
+wealth and fashion held sway; but now the vicinity is given over to
+factories, tenement-houses and all that train of evil and vice that
+follows in the wake of faded gentility.</p><a name='V_Page_28'></a>
+
+<p>At Hammersmith you will see spacious old mansions used as warehouses;
+others as boarding-houses; still others converted into dance-halls with
+beer-gardens in the rear, where once bloomed and blossomed milady's
+flowerbeds.</p>
+
+<p>The broad stone steps and wide hallways and iron fences, with glimpses now
+and then of ancient doorplates or more ancient knockers, tell of
+generations lost in the maze of oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>Just why William Morris, the poet and lover of harmony, should have
+selected this locality for a home is quite beyond the average ken.
+Certainly it mystified the fashionable literary world of London, with whom
+he never kept goose-step, but that still kept track of him&mdash;for fashion
+has a way of patronizing genius&mdash;and some of his old friends wrote him
+asking where Hammersmith was, and others expressed doubts as to its
+existence. I had no difficulty in taking the right train for Hammersmith,
+but once there no one seemed to have ever heard of the Kelmscott Press.
+When I inquired, grave misgivings seemed to arise as to whether the press
+I referred to was a cider-press, a wine-press or a press for &quot;cracklings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Finally I discovered a man&mdash;a workingman&mdash;whose face beamed at the mention
+of William Morris. Later I found that if a man knew William Morris, his
+heart throbbed at the mention of his name, and he at once grew voluble and
+confidential and friendly. It was the<a name='V_Page_29'></a> &quot;Open Sesame,&quot; And if a person did
+not know William Morris, he simply didn't, and that was all there was
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>But the man I met knew &quot;Th' Ole Man,&quot; which was the affectionate title
+used by all the hundreds and thousands who worked with William Morris. And
+to prove that he knew him, when I asked that he should direct me to the
+Upper Mall, he simply insisted on going with me. Moreover, he told a
+needless lie and declared he was on the way there, although when we met he
+was headed in the other direction. By a devious walk of half a mile we
+reached the high iron fence of Kelmscott House. We arrived amid a florid
+description of the Icelandic Sagas as told by my new-found friend and
+interpreted by Th' Ole Man. My friend had not read the Sagas, but still he
+did not hesitate to recommend them; and so we passed through the wide-open
+gates and up the stone walk to the entrance of Kelmscott House. On the
+threshold we met F.S. Ellis and Emery Walker, who addressed my companion
+as &quot;Tom.&quot; I knew Mr. Ellis slightly, and also had met Mr. Walker, who
+works Rembrandt miracles with a camera.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ellis was deep in seeing the famous &quot;Chaucer&quot; through the press, and
+Mr. Walker had a print to show, so we turned aside, passed a great pile of
+paper in crates that cluttered the hallway, and entered the library.
+There, leaning over the long, oaken table, in shirt-sleeves, was the
+master. Who could mistake that great, <a name='V_Page_30'></a>shaggy head, the tangled beard, and
+frank, open-eyed look of boyish animation?</p>
+
+<p>The man was sixty and more, but there was no appearance of age in eye,
+complexion, form or gesture&mdash;only the whitened hair! He greeted me as if
+we had always known each other, and Ellis and piles of Chaucer proof led
+straight to old Professor Child of Harvard, whose work Ellis criticized
+and Morris upheld. They fell into a hot argument, which was even continued
+as we walked across the street to the Doves Bindery.</p>
+
+<p>The Doves Bindery, as all good men know, is managed by Mr.
+Cobden-Sanderson, who married one of the two daughters of Richard Cobden
+of Corn-Law fame.</p>
+
+<p>Just why Mr. Sanderson, the lawyer, should have borrowed his wife's maiden
+name and made it legally a part of his own, I do not know. Anyway, I quite
+like the idea of linking one's name with that of the woman one loves,
+especially when it has been so honored by the possessor as the name of
+Cobden.</p>
+
+<p>Cobden-Sanderson caught the rage for beauty from William Morris, and began
+to bind books for his own pleasure. Morris contended that any man who
+could bind books as beautifully as Cobden-Sanderson should not waste his
+time with law. Cobden-Sanderson talked it over with his wife, and she
+being a most sensible woman, agreed with William Morris.</p>
+
+<p>So Cobden-Sanderson, acting on Th' Ole Man's suggestion, rented the quaint
+and curious mansion next door to the old <a name='V_Page_31'></a>house occupied by the Kelmscott
+Press, and went to work binding books.</p>
+
+<p>When we were once inside the Bindery, the Chaucerian argument between Mr.
+Ellis and Th' Ole Man shifted off into a wrangle with Cobden-Sanderson. I
+could not get the drift of it exactly&mdash;it seemed to be the continuation of
+some former quarrel about an oak leaf or something. Anyway, Th' Ole Man
+silenced his opponent by smothering his batteries&mdash;all of which will be
+better understood when I explain that Th' Ole Man was large in stature,
+bluff, bold and strong-voiced, whereas Cobden-Sanderson is small,
+red-headed, meek, and wears bicycle-trousers.</p>
+
+<p>The argument, however, was not quite so serious an affair as I at first
+supposed, for it all ended in a laugh and easily ran off into a quiet
+debate as to the value of Imperial Japan versus Whatman.</p>
+
+<p>We walked through the various old parlors that now do duty as workrooms
+for bright-eyed girls, then over through the Kelmscott Press, and from
+this to another old mansion that had on its door a brass plate so polished
+and repolished, like a machine-made sonnet too much gone over, that one
+can scarcely make out its intent. Finally I managed to trace the legend,
+&quot;The Seasons.&quot; I was told it was here that Thomson, the poet, wrote his
+book. Once back in the library of Kelmscott House, Mr. Ellis and Th' Ole
+Man leaned over the great oaken table and renewed, in a gentler <a name='V_Page_32'></a>key, the
+question as to whether Professor Child was justified in his construction
+of the Third Canto of the &quot;Canterbury Tales.&quot; Under cover of the smoke I
+quietly disappeared with Mr. Cockerill, the Secretary, for a better view
+of the Kelmscott Press.</p>
+
+<p>This was my first interview with William Morris. By chance I met him
+again, some days after, at the shop of Emery Walker in Clifford Court,
+Strand. I had been told on divers occasions by various persons that
+William Morris had no sympathy for American art and small respect for our
+literature. I am sure this was not wholly true, for on this occasion he
+told me he had read &quot;Huckleberry Finn,&quot; and doted on &quot;Uncle Remus.&quot; He
+also spoke with affection and feeling of Walt Whitman, and told me that he
+had read every printed word that Emerson had written. And further he
+congratulated me on the success of my book, &quot;Songs From Vagabondia.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_33'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The housekeeping world seems to have been in thrall to six haircloth
+chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center
+table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent
+times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the
+center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a
+bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the
+mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such houses were
+usually to be seen gaudy-colored carpets, imitation lace curtains, and a
+what-not in the corner that seemed ready to go into dissolution through
+the law of gravitation.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the Seventies lithograph-presses began to make chromos that were
+warranted just as good as oil-paintings, and these were distributed in
+millions by enterprising newspapers as premiums for subscriptions. Looking
+over an old file of the &quot;Christian Union&quot; for the year Eighteen Hundred
+Seventy-one, I chanced upon an editorial wherein it was stated that the
+end of painting pictures by hand had come, and the writer piously thanked
+heaven for it&mdash;and added, &quot;Art is now within the reach of all.&quot; Furniture,
+carpets, curtains, pictures and books were being manufactured by
+machinery, and to glue things together and give them a look of gentility
+and get them into a house before they fell apart, was the seeming
+desideratum of all manufacturers.</p><a name='V_Page_34'></a>
+
+<p>The editor of the &quot;Christian Union&quot; surely had a basis of truth for his
+statement; art had received a sudden chill: palettes and brushes could be
+bought for half-price, and many artists were making five-year contracts
+with lithographers; while those too old to learn to draw on
+lithograph-stones saw nothing left for them but to work designs with
+worsted in perforated cardboard.</p>
+
+<p>To the influence of William Morris does the civilized world owe its
+salvation from the mad rage and rush for the tawdry and cheap in home
+decoration. It will not do to say that if William Morris had not called a
+halt some one else would, nor to cavil by declaring that the inanities of
+the Plush-Covered Age followed the Era of the Hair-Cloth Sofa. These
+things are frankly admitted, but the refreshing fact remains that fully
+one-half the homes of England and America have been influenced by the good
+taste and vivid personality of one strong, earnest man.</p>
+
+<p>William Morris was the strongest all-round man the century has produced.
+He was an Artist and a Poet in the broadest and best sense of these
+much-bandied terms. William Morris could do more things, and do them well,
+than any other man of either ancient or modern times whom we can name.
+William Morris was master of six distinct trades. He was a weaver, a
+blacksmith, a wood-carver, a painter, a dyer and a printer; and he was a
+musical composer of no mean ability.</p><a name='V_Page_35'></a>
+
+<p>Better than all, he was an enthusiastic lover of his race: his heart
+throbbed for humanity, and believing that society could be reformed only
+from below, he cast his lot with the toilers, dressed as one of them, and
+in the companionship of workingmen found a response to his holy zeal which
+the society of an entailed aristocracy denied.</p>
+
+<p>The man who could influence the entire housekeeping of half a world, and
+give the kingdom of fashion a list to starboard; who could paint beautiful
+pictures; compose music; speak four languages; write sublime verse;
+address a public assemblage effectively; produce plays; resurrect the lost
+art of making books, books such as were made only in the olden time as a
+loving, religious service; who lived a clean, wholesome, manly
+life&mdash;beloved by those who knew him best&mdash;shall we not call him Master?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='ROBERT_BROWNING'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_36'></a><a name='V_Page_37'></a>ROBERT BROWNING</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_38'></a>
+<span>So, take and use Thy work,<br /></span>
+<span>Amend what flaws may lurk,<br /></span>
+<span>What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim:<br /></span>
+<span>My times be in Thy hand!<br /></span>
+<span>Perfect the cup as planned!<br /></span>
+<span>Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.<br /></span>
+<span class='i20'>&mdash;<i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_39'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-2.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-2-th.jpg" alt="ROBERT BROWNING"></a></p><p class="ctr">ROBERT BROWNING</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>If there ever lived a poet to whom the best minds pour out libations, it
+is Robert Browning. We think of him as dwelling on high Olympus; we read
+his lines by the light of dim candles; we quote him in sonorous monotone
+at twilight when soft-sounding organ-chants come to us mellow and sweet.
+Browning's poems form a lover's litany to that elect few who hold that the
+true mating of a man and a woman is the marriage of the mind. And thrice
+blest was Browning, in that Fate allowed him to live his philosophy&mdash;to
+work his poetry up into life, and then again to transmute life and love
+into art. Fate was kind: success came his way so slowly that he was never
+subjected to the fierce, dazzling searchlight of publicity; his
+recognition in youth was limited to a few obscure friends and neighbors.
+And when distance divided him from these, they forgot him; so there seems
+a hiatus in his history, when for a score of years literary England dimly
+remembered some one by the name of Browning, but could not just place him.</p>
+
+<p>About the year Eighteen Hundred Sixty-eight the author of &quot;Sordello&quot; was
+induced to appear at an evening of &quot;Uncut Leaves&quot; at the house of a
+nobleman at the West End, London. James Russell Lowell <a name='V_Page_40'></a>was present and
+was congratulated by a lady, sitting next to him, on the fact that
+Browning was an American.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But only by adoption!&quot; answered the gracious Lowell.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said the lady; &quot;I believe his father was an Englishman, so you
+Americans can not have all the credit; but surely he shows the Negro or
+Indian blood of his mother. Very clever, isn't he?&mdash;so very clever!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Browning's swarthy complexion, and the fine poise of the man&mdash;the entire
+absence of &quot;nerves,&quot; as often shown in the savage&mdash;seemed to carry out the
+idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as
+black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion
+mahogany, the report that he was a Creole found ready credence. And so did
+this gossip of mixed parentage follow him that Mrs. Sutherland Orr, in her
+biography, takes an entire chapter to prove that in Robert Browning's
+veins there flowed neither Indian nor Negro blood.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Furnivall, however, explains that Browning's grandmother on his
+father's side came from the West Indies, that nothing is known of her
+family history, and that she was a Creole.</p>
+
+<p>And beyond this, the fact is stated that Robert Browning was quite pleased
+when he used to be taken for a Jew&mdash;a conclusion made plausible by his
+complexion, hair and features.</p>
+
+<p>In its dead-serious, hero-worshiping attitude, the life <a name='V_Page_41'></a>of Robert
+Browning by Mrs. Orr deserves to rank with Weems' &quot;Life of Washington.&quot; It
+is the brief of an attorney for the defense. &quot;Little-Willie&quot; anecdotes
+appear on every page.</p>
+
+<p>And thus do we behold the tendency to make Browning something more than a
+man&mdash;and, therefore, something less.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly women are given to this sort of thing more than men&mdash;I am not
+sure. But this I know, every young woman regards her lover as a distinct
+and peculiar personage, different from all others&mdash;as if this were a
+virtue&mdash;the only one of his kind. Later, if Fate is kind, she learns that
+her own experience is not unique. We all easily fit into a type, and each
+is but a representative of his class.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Browning sprang from a line of clerks and small merchants; but as
+indemnity for the lack of a family 'scutcheon, we are told that his uncle,
+Reuben Browning, was a sure-enough poet. For once in an idle hour he threw
+off a little thing for an inscription to be placed on a presentation
+ink-bottle, and Disraeli seeing it, declared, &quot;Nothing like this has ever
+before been written!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Beyond doubt, Disraeli made the statement&mdash;it bears his earmark. It will
+be remembered that the Earl of Beaconsfield had a stock form for
+acknowledging receipt of the many books sent to him by aspiring authors.
+It ran something like this: &quot;The Earl of Beaconsfield <a name='V_Page_42'></a>begs to thank the
+gifted author of&mdash;&mdash;for a copy of his book, and gives the hearty assurance
+that he will waste no time in reading the volume.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And further, the fact is set forth with unction that Robert Browning was
+entrusted with a latchkey early in life, and that he always gave his
+mother a good-night kiss. He gave her the good-night kiss willy-nilly. If
+she had retired when he came home, he used the trusty latchkey and went to
+her room to imprint on her lips the good-night kiss. He did this, the
+biographer would have us believe, to convince the good mother that his
+breath was what it should be; and he awakened her so she would know the
+hour was seasonable.</p>
+
+<p>In many manufactories there is an electric apparatus wherewith every
+employee registers when he arrives, by turning a key or pushing a button.
+Robert Browning always fearlessly registered as soon as he got home&mdash;this
+according to Mrs. Orr.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, or otherwise, there is a little scattered information which
+makes us believe that Robert Browning's mother was not so fearful of her
+son's conduct, nor suspicious as to his breath, as to lie awake nights and
+keep tab on his hours. The world has never denied that Robert Browning was
+entrusted with a latchkey, and it cares little if occasionally, early in
+life, he fumbled for the keyhole. And my conception of his character is
+such that, when in the few instances Aurora, rosy goddess of the morn,
+marked his <a name='V_Page_43'></a>homecoming with chrome-red in the eastern sky, he did not
+search the sleeping-rooms for his mother to apprise her of the hour.</p>
+
+<p>In one place Mrs. Orr avers, in a voice hushed with emotion, that Browning
+carefully read all of Johnson's Dictionary &quot;as a fit preparation for a
+literary career.&quot; Without any attempt to deny that the perusal of a
+dictionary is &quot;fit preparation for a literary career,&quot; I yet fear me that
+the learned biographer, in a warm anxiety to prove the man exceeding
+studious and very virtuous, has tipped a bit to t' other side.</p>
+
+<p>She has apotheosized her subject&mdash;and in an attempt to portray him as a
+peculiar person, set apart, has well-nigh given us a being without hands,
+feet, eyes, ears, organs, dimensions, passions.</p>
+
+<p>But after a careful study of the data, various visits to the places where
+he lived in England, trips to Casa Guidi, views from Casa Guidi windows, a
+journey to Palazzo Rezzonico at Venice, where he died, and many a pious
+pilgrimage to Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey, where he sleeps, I am
+constrained to believe that Robert Browning was made from the same kind of
+clay as the rest of us. He was human&mdash;he was splendidly human.</p><a name='V_Page_44'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Browning's father was a bank-clerk; and Robert Browning, the Third, author
+of &quot;Paracelsus,&quot; could have secured his father's place in the Bank of
+England, if he had had ambitions. And the fact that he had not was a
+source of silent sorrow to the father, even to the day of his death, in
+Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Browning, the grandfather, entered the Bank as an errand-boy, and
+rose by slow stages to Principal of the Stock-Room. He served the Bank
+full half a century, and saved from his salary a goodly competence. This
+money, tightly and rightly invested, passed to his son. The son never
+secured the complete favor of his employers that the father had known, but
+he added to his weekly stipend by what a writer terms, &quot;legitimate
+perquisites.&quot; This, being literally interpreted, means that he purchased
+paper, pens and sealing-wax for the use of the Bank, and charged the goods
+in at his own price, doubtless with the consent of his superior, with whom
+he divided profits. He could have parodied the remark of Fletcher of
+Saltoun and said, &quot;Let me supply the perquisite-requisites and I care not
+who makes the laws.&quot; So he grew rich&mdash;moderately rich&mdash;and lived simply
+and comfortably up at Camberwell, with only one besetting dissipation: he
+was a book-collector and had learned more Greek than Robert the Third was
+to acquire. He searched bookstalls on the way to the City in the morning,
+and lay in wait for<a name='V_Page_45'></a> First Editions on the way home at night. When he had
+a holiday, he went in search of a book. He sneaked books into the house,
+and declared to his admonishing wife the next week that he had always
+owned 'em, or that they were presented to him. The funds his father had
+left him, his salary and &quot;the perquisites,&quot; made a goodly income, but he
+always complained of poverty. He was secretly hoarding sums so as to
+secure certain books.</p>
+
+<p>The shelves grew until they reached the ceiling, and then bookcases
+invaded the dining-room. The collector didn't trust his wife with the
+household purchasing; no bank-clerk ever does&mdash;and all the pennies were
+needed for books. The good wife, having nothing else to do, grew anemic,
+had neuralgia and lapsed into a Shut-in, wearing a pale-blue wrapper and
+reclining on a couch, around which were piled&mdash;mountain-high&mdash;books.</p>
+
+<p>The pale invalid used to imagine that the great cases were swaying and
+dancing a minuet, and she fully expected the tomes would all come
+a-toppling down and smother her&mdash;and she didn't care much if they would;
+but they never did. She was the mother of two children&mdash;the boy Robert,
+born the year after her marriage; and in a little over another year a
+daughter came, and this closed the family record.</p>
+
+<p>The invalid mother was a woman of fine feeling and much poetic insight.
+She didn't talk as much about <a name='V_Page_46'></a>books as her husband did, but I think she
+knew the good ones better. The mother and son moused in books together,
+and Mrs. Orr is surely right in her suggestion that this love of mother
+and son took upon itself the nature of a passion.</p>
+
+<p>The love of Robert Browning for Elizabeth Barrett was a revival and a
+renewal, in many ways, of the condition of tenderness and sympathy that
+existed between Browning and his mother. There certainly was a strange and
+marked resemblance in the characters of Elizabeth Barrett and the mother
+of Robert Browning; and to many this fully accounts for the instant
+affection that Browning felt toward the occupant of the &quot;darkened room,&quot;
+when first they met.</p>
+
+<p>The book-collector took much pride in his boy, and used to take him on
+book-hunting excursions, and sometimes to the Bank, on which occasions he
+would tell the Beef-Eaters how this was Robert Browning, the Third, and
+that all three of the R.B.'s were loyal servants of the Bank. And the
+Beef-Eaters would rest their staves on the stone floor, and smile
+Fifteenth-Century grimaces at the boy from under their cocked hats.</p>
+
+<p>Robert the Third was a healthy, rollicking lad, with power plus, and a
+deal of destructiveness in his nature. But destructiveness in a youngster
+is only energy not yet properly directed, just as dirt is useful matter in
+the wrong place.</p><a name='V_Page_47'></a>
+
+<p>To keep the boy out of mischief, he was sent to a sort of kindergarten,
+kept by a spinster around the corner. The spinster devoted rather more
+attention to the Browning boy than to her other pupils&mdash;she had to, to
+keep him out of mischief&mdash;and soon the boy was quite the head scholar.</p>
+
+<p>And they tell us that he was so much more clever than any of the other
+scholars that, to appease the rising jealousy of the parents of the other
+pupils, the diplomatic spinster requested that the boy be removed from her
+school&mdash;all this according to the earnest biographer. The facts are that
+the boy had so much energy and restless ambition; was so full of brimming
+curiosity, mischief and imagination&mdash;introducing turtles, bats and mice on
+various occasions&mdash;that he led the whole school a merry chase and wore the
+nerves of the ancient maiden to a frazzle.</p>
+
+<p>He had to go.</p>
+
+<p>After this he studied at home with his mother. His father laid out a
+schedule, and it was lived up to, for about a week.</p>
+
+<p>Then a private tutor was tried, but soon this plan was abandoned, and a
+system of reading, best described as &quot;natural selection,&quot; was followed.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was fourteen, and his sister was twelve, past. These are the ages
+when children often experience a change of heart, as all &quot;revivalists&quot;
+know. Robert Browning was swinging off towards atheism. He grew
+<a name='V_Page_48'></a>melancholy, irritable and wrote stanzas of sentimental verse. He showed
+this verse, high-sounding, stilted, bold and bilious, to his mother and
+then to his father, and finally to Lizzie Flower.</p>
+
+<p>A word about Lizzie Flower: She was nine years older than Robert Browning;
+and she had a mind that was gracious and full of high aspiration. She
+loved books, art, music, and all harmony made its appeal to her&mdash;and not
+in vain. She wrote verses and, very sensibly, kept them locked in her
+workbox; and then she painted in water-colors and worked in worsted. A
+thoroughly good woman, she was far above the average in character, with a
+half-minor key in her voice and a tinge of the heartbroken in her
+composition, caused no one just knew how. Probably a certain young curate
+at Saint Margaret's could have thrown light on this point; but he married,
+took on a double chin, moved away to a fat living and never told.</p>
+
+<p>No woman is ever wise or good until destiny has subdued her by grinding
+her fondest hopes into the dust.</p>
+
+<p>Lizzie Flower was wise and good.</p>
+
+<p>She gave singing lessons to the Browning children. She taught Master
+Robert Browning to draw.</p>
+
+<p>She read to him some of her verses that were in the sewing-table drawer.
+And her sister, Sarah Flower, two years older, afterwards Sarah Flower
+Adams, read aloud to them a hymn she had just written, called, &quot;Nearer, My
+God, to Thee.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_49'></a>
+
+<p>Then soon Master Robert showed the Flower girls some of the verses he had
+written.</p>
+
+<p>Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate, and told his mother so. A young
+woman never cares anything for an unlicked cub, nine years younger than
+herself, unless Fate has played pitch and toss with her heart's true love.
+And then, the tendrils of the affections being ruthlessly lacerated and
+uprooted, they cling to the first object that presents itself.</p>
+
+<p>Lizzie Flower was a wallflower. That is to say, she had early in life rid
+herself of the admiration of the many, by refusing to supply an unlimited
+amount of small talk. In feature she was as plain as George Eliot. A boy
+is plastic, and even a modest wallflower can woo him; but a man, for her,
+inspires awe&mdash;with him she takes no liberties. And the wallflower woos the
+youth unwittingly, thinking the while she is only using her influence the
+better to instruct him.</p>
+
+<p>It is fortunate for a boy escaping adolescence to be educated and loved
+(the words are synonymous) by a good woman. Indeed, the youngster who has
+not violently loved a woman old enough to be his mother has dropped
+something out of his life that he will have to go back and pick up in
+another incarnation.</p>
+
+<p>I said Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate; and she declared that he was
+the brightest and most receptive pupil she had ever had.</p>
+
+<p>He was seventeen&mdash;she was twenty-six. They read<a name='V_Page_50'></a> Shelley, Keats and Byron
+aloud, and together passed through the &quot;Byronic Period.&quot; They became
+violently atheistic, and at the same time decidedly religious: things that
+seem paradoxical, but are not. They adopted a vegetable diet and for two
+years they eschewed meat. They worshiped in the woods, feeling that the
+groves were God's first temples; and sitting at the gnarled roots of some
+great oak, they would read aloud, by turn, from &quot;Queen Mab.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On one such excursion out across Hampstead Heath they lost their copy of
+&quot;Shelley&quot; in the leaves, and a wit has told us that it sprouted, and as a
+result&mdash;the flower and fruit&mdash;we have Browning's poem of &quot;Pauline.&quot; And
+this must be so, for Robert and Miss Flower (he always called her &quot;Miss
+Flower,&quot; but she called him &quot;Robert&quot;) made many an excursion, in search of
+the book, yet they never found it.</p>
+
+<p>Robert now being eighteen, a man grown&mdash;not large, but very strong and
+wiry&mdash;his father made arrangements for him to take a minor clerkship in
+the Bank. But the boy rebelled&mdash;he was going to be an artist, or a poet,
+or something like that.</p>
+
+<p>The father argued that a man could be a poet and still work in a bank&mdash;the
+salary was handy; and there was no money in poetry. In fact, he himself
+was a poet, as his father had been before him. To be a bank-clerk and at
+the same time a poet&mdash;what nobler ambition!</p>
+
+<p>The young man was still stubborn. He was feeling <a name='V_Page_51'></a>discontented with his
+environment: he was cramped, cabined, cribbed, confined. He wanted to get
+out of the world of petty plodding and away from the silly round of
+conventions, out into the world of art&mdash;or else of barbarism&mdash;he didn't
+care which.</p>
+
+<p>The latter way opened first, and a bit of wordy warfare with his father on
+the subject of idleness sent him off to a gipsy camp at Epsom Downs. How
+long he lived with the vagabonds we do not know, but his swarthy skin, and
+his skill as a boxer and wrestler, recommended him to the ragged gentry,
+and they received him as a brother.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that a week of pure vagabondia cured him of the idea that
+civilization is a disease, for he came back home, made a bonfire of his
+attire, and after a vigorous tubbing, was clothed in his right mind.</p>
+
+<p>Groggy studies in French under a private tutor followed, and then came a
+term as special student in Greek at London University.</p>
+
+<p>To be nearer the school, he took lodgings in Gower Street; but within a
+week a slight rough-house incident occurred that crippled most of the
+furniture in his room and deprived the stair-rail of its spindles. R.
+Browning, the Second, bank-clerk, paid the damages, and R. Browning, the
+Third, aged twenty, came back home, formally notifying all parties
+concerned that he had chosen a career&mdash;it was Poetry. He would woo the
+Divine Goddess, no matter who opposed. There, now!</p><a name='V_Page_52'></a>
+
+<p>His mother was delighted; his father gave reluctant consent, declaring
+that any course in life was better than vacillation; and Miss Flower, who
+probably had sown the dragon's teeth, assumed a look of surprise, but gave
+it as her opinion that Robert Browning would yet be Poet Laureate of
+England.</p><a name='V_Page_53'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Robert Browning awoke one morning with a start&mdash;it was the morning of his
+thirtieth birthday. One's thirtieth birthday and one's seventieth are days
+that press their message home with iron hand. With his seventieth
+milestone past, a man feels that his work is done, and dim voices call to
+him from across the Unseen. His work is done, and so illy, compared with
+what he had wished and expected! But the impressions made upon his heart
+by the day are no deeper than those his thirtieth birthday inspires. At
+thirty, youth, with all it palliates and excuses, is gone forever. The
+time for mere fooling is past; the young avoid you, or else look up to you
+as a Nestor and tempt you to grow reminiscent. You are a man and must give
+an account of yourself.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the stillness came a Voice to Robert Browning saying, &quot;What hast
+thou done with the talent I gave thee?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What had he done? It seemed to him at the moment as if he had done
+nothing. He arose and looked into the mirror. A few gray hairs were mixed
+in his beard; there were crow's feet on his forehead; and the first joyous
+flush of youth had gone from his face forever. He was a bachelor, inwardly
+at war with his environment, but making a bold front with his tuppence
+worth of philosophy to conceal the unrest within.</p>
+
+<p>A bachelor of thirty, strong in limb, clear in brain and yet a dependent!
+No one but himself to support, and <a name='V_Page_54'></a>couldn't even do that! Gadzooks! Fie
+upon all poetry and a plague upon this dumb, dense, shopkeeping,
+beer-drinking nation upon which the sun never sets!</p>
+
+<p>The father of Robert Browning had done everything a father could. He had
+supplied board and books, and given his son an allowance of a pound a week
+for ten years. He had sent him on a journey to Italy, and published
+several volumes of the young man's verse at his own expense. And these
+books were piled high in the garret, save a few that had been bought by
+charitable friends or given away.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Browning was not discouraged&mdash;oh no, not that!&mdash;only the world
+seemed to stretch out in a dull, monotonous gray, where once it was green,
+the color of hope, and all decked with flowers.</p>
+
+<p>The little literary world of London knew Browning and respected him. He
+was earnest and sincere and his personality carried weight. His face was
+not handsome, but his manner was one of poise and purpose; and to come
+within his aura and look into his calm eyes was to respect the man and
+make obeisance to the intellect that you felt lay behind.</p>
+
+<p>A few editors had gone out of their way to &quot;discover&quot; him to the world,
+but their lavish reviews fell flat. Buyers would not buy&mdash;no one seemed to
+want the wares of Robert Browning. He was hard to read, difficult,
+obscure&mdash;or else there wasn't anything in it at all&mdash;they didn't know
+which.</p><a name='V_Page_55'></a>
+
+<p>Fox, editor of the &quot;Repository,&quot; had met Browning at the Flowers' and
+liked him. He tried to make his verse go, but couldn't. Yet he did what he
+could and insisted that Browning should go with him to the &quot;Sunday
+evenings&quot; at Barry Cornwall's. There Browning met Leigh Hunt, Monckton
+Milnes and Dickens. Then there were dinner-parties at Sergeant Talfourd's,
+where he got acquainted with Wordsworth, Walter Savage Landor and
+Macready.</p>
+
+<p>Macready impressed him greatly and he impressed Macready. He gave the
+actor a copy of &quot;Paracelsus&quot; (one of the pile in the garret) and Macready
+suggested he write a play. &quot;Strafford&quot; was the result, and we know it was
+stillborn, and caused a very frosty feeling to exist for many a year
+between the author and the actor. When a play fails, the author blames the
+actor and the actor damns the author. These men were human. Of course
+Browning's kinsmen all considered him a failure, and when the father paid
+over the weekly allowance he often rubbed it in a bit. Lizzie Flower had
+modified her prophecy as to the Laureateship, but was still loyal. They
+had tiffed occasionally, and broken off the friendship, and once I believe
+returned letters. To marry was out of the question&mdash;he couldn't support
+himself&mdash;and besides that, they were old, demnition old; he was past
+thirty and she was forty&mdash;Gramercy!</p>
+
+<p>They tiffed.</p>
+
+<p>Then they made up.</p><a name='V_Page_56'></a>
+
+<p>In the meantime Browning had formed a friendship, very firm and frank, but
+strictly Platonic, of course, for Fanny Haworth. Miss Haworth had seen
+more of the world than Miss Flower&mdash;she was an artist, a writer, and moved
+in the best society. Browning and Miss Haworth wrote letters to each other
+for a while most every day, and he called on her every Wednesday and
+Saturday evening.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Haworth bought and gave away many copies of &quot;Pauline,&quot; &quot;Sordello&quot; and
+&quot;Paracelsus&quot;; and informed her friends that &quot;Pippa Passes&quot; and &quot;Two in a
+Gondola&quot; were great quality.</p>
+
+<p>About this time we find Edward Moxon, the publisher (who married the
+adopted daughter of Charles and Mary Lamb), saying to Browning: &quot;Your
+verse is all right, Browning, but a book of it is too much: people are
+appalled; they can not digest it. And when it goes into a magazine it is
+lost in the mass. Now just let me get out your work in little monthly
+instalments, in booklet form, and I think it will go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Browning jumped at the idea.</p>
+
+<p>The booklets were gotten out in paper covers and offered at a moderate
+price.</p>
+
+<p>They sold, and sold well. The literary elite bought them by the dozen to
+give away.</p>
+
+<p>People began to talk about Browning&mdash;he was getting a foothold. His
+royalties now amounted to as much as the weekly allowance from his father,
+and Pater was <a name='V_Page_57'></a>talking of cutting off the stipend entirely. Finances being
+easy, Browning thought it a good time to take another look at Italy. Some
+of the best things he had written had been inspired by Venice and
+Asolo&mdash;he would go again. And so he engaged passage on a sailing-ship for
+Naples.</p><a name='V_Page_58'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Shortly after Browning's return to London, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-four,
+he dined at Sergeant Talfourd's. After the dinner a well-dressed and
+sprightly old gentleman introduced himself and begged that Browning would
+inscribe a copy of &quot;Bells and Pomegranates,&quot; that he had gotten specially
+bound. There is an ancient myth about writers being harassed by
+autograph-fiends and all that; but the simple fact is, nothing so warms
+the cockles of an author's heart as to be asked for his autograph. Of
+course Browning graciously complied with the gentleman's request, and in
+order that he might insert the owner's name in the inscription, asked:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What name, please?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the answer was, &quot;John Kenyon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Browning and Mr. Kenyon had a nice little visit, talking about
+books and art. And Mr. Kenyon told Mr. Browning that Miss Elizabeth
+Barrett, the poetess, was a cousin of his&mdash;he was a bit boastful of the
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Browning nodded and said he had often heard of her, and admired
+her work.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Kenyon suggested that Mr. Browning write and tell her so&mdash;&quot;You
+see she has just gotten out a new book, and we are all a little nervous
+about how it is going to take. Miss Barrett lives in a darkened room, you
+know&mdash;sees no one&mdash;and a letter from a man like you would encourage her
+greatly.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_59'></a>
+
+<p>Mr. Kenyon wrote the address of Miss Barrett on a card and pushed it
+across the table.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Browning took the card, put it in his pocketbook and promised to write
+Miss Barrett, as Mr. Kenyon requested.</p>
+
+<p>And he did.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Barrett replied.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Browning answered, and soon several letters a week were going in each
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>Not quite so many missives were being received by Fanny Haworth; and as
+for Lizzie Flower, I fear she was quite forgotten. She fell into a
+decline, drooped and died in a year.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Browning asked for permission to call on Miss Barrett.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Barrett explained that her father would not allow it, neither would
+the doctor or nurse, and added: &quot;There is nothing to see in me. I am a
+weed fit for the ground and darkness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But this repulse only made Mr. Browning want to see her the more. He
+appealed to Mr. Kenyon, who was the only person allowed to call, besides
+Miss Mitford&mdash;Mr. Kenyon was her cousin.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kenyon arranged it&mdash;he was an expert at arranging anything of a
+delicate nature. He timed the hour when Mr. Barrett was down town, and the
+nurse and doctor safely out of the way, and they called on the invalid
+prisoner in the darkened room.</p><a name='V_Page_60'></a>
+
+<p>They did not stay long, but when they went away Robert Browning trod on
+air. The beautiful girl-like face, in its frame of dark curls, lying back
+among the pillows, haunted him like a shadow. He was thirty-three, she was
+thirty-five. She looked like a child, but the mind&mdash;the subtle,
+appreciative, receptive mind! The mind that caught every allusion, that
+knew his thought before he voiced it, that found nothing obscure in his
+work, and that put a high and holy construction on his every sentence&mdash;it
+was divine! divinity incarnated in a woman.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Browning tramped the streets forgetful of meat, drink or rest.</p>
+
+<p>He would give this woman freedom. He would devote himself to restoring her
+to the air and sunshine. What nobler ambition! He was an idler, he had
+never done anything for anybody. He was only a killer of time, a vagrant,
+but now was his opportunity&mdash;he would do for this beautiful soul what no
+one else on earth could do. She was slipping away as it was&mdash;the world
+would soon lose her. Was there none to save?</p>
+
+<p>Here was the finest intellect ever given to a woman&mdash;so sure, so vital, so
+tender and yet so strong!</p>
+
+<p>He would love her back to life and light!</p>
+
+<p>And so Robert Browning told her all this shortly after, but before he
+told, she had divined his thought. For solitude and loneliness and
+heart-hunger had given her the power of an astral being; she was in
+communication with all the finer forces that pervade our ether.<a name='V_Page_61'></a> He would
+love her back to life and light&mdash;he told her so. She grew better.</p>
+
+<p>And soon we find her getting up and throwing wide the shutters. It was no
+longer the darkened room, for the sunlight came dancing through the
+apartment, driving out all the dark shadows that lurked therein.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was indignant; the nurse resigned.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Mr. Barrett was not taken into confidence and no one asked his
+consent. Why should they?&mdash;he was the man who could never understand.</p>
+
+<p>So one fine day when the coast was clear, the couple went over to Saint
+Marylebone Church and were married. The bride went home alone&mdash;could walk
+all right now&mdash;and it was a week before her husband saw her, because he
+would not be a hypocrite and go ring the doorbell and ask if Miss Barrett
+was home; and of course if he had asked for Mrs. Robert Browning, no one
+would have known whom he wanted to see.</p>
+
+<p>But at the end of a week, the bride stole down the stairs, while the
+family was at dinner, leading her dog Flush by a string, and all the time,
+with throbbing heart, she prayed the dog not to bark. I have oft wondered
+in the stilly night season what the effect on English Letters would have
+been, had the dog really barked! But the dog did not bark; and Elizabeth
+met her lover-husband there on the corner where the mail-box is. No one
+missed the runaways until the next day, and then the bride and groom were
+safely in France, writing letters back from Dieppe, asking forgiveness and
+craving blessings.</p><a name='V_Page_62'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&quot;She is the Genius and I am the Clever Person,&quot; Browning used to say. And
+this I believe will be the world's final judgment.</p>
+
+<p>Browning knew the world in its every phase&mdash;good and bad, high and low,
+society and commerce, the shop and gypsy camp. He absorbed things,
+assimilated them, compared and wrote it out.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth Barrett had never traveled, her opportunities for meeting people
+had been few, her experiences limited, and yet she evolved truth: she
+secreted beauty from within.</p>
+
+<p>For two years after their elopement they did not write&mdash;how could they?
+goodness me! They were on their wedding-tour. They lived in Florence and
+Rome and in various mountain villages in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Health came back, and joy and peace and perfect love were theirs. But it
+was joy bought with a price&mdash;Elizabeth Barrett Browning had forfeited the
+love of her father. Her letters written him came back unopened, books
+inscribed to him were returned&mdash;he declared she was dead.</p>
+
+<p>Her brothers, too, discarded her, and when her two sisters wrote, they did
+so by stealth, and their letters, meant to be kind, were steel for her
+heart. Then her father was rich; and she had always known every comfort
+that money could buy. Now, she had taken up with a poor poet, and every
+penny had to be counted&mdash;absolute economy was demanded.</p>
+
+<p>And Robert<a name='V_Page_63'></a> Browning, with a certain sense of guilt upon him, for
+depriving her of all the creature comforts she had known, sought by
+tenderness and love to make her forget the insults her father heaped upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>As for Browning, the bank-clerk, he was vexed that his son should show so
+little caution as to load himself up with an invalid wife, and he cut off
+the allowance, declaring that if a man was old enough to marry, he was
+also old enough to care for himself. He did, however, make his son several
+&quot;loans&quot;; and finally came to &quot;bless the day that his son had sense enough
+to marry the best and most talented woman on earth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Browning's poems were selling slowly, and Mrs. Browning's books brought
+her a little royalty, thanks to the loyal management of John Kenyon, and
+so absolute want and biting poverty did not overtake the runaways.</p>
+
+<p>After the birth of her son, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, Mrs.
+Browning's health seemed to have fully returned. She used to ride
+horseback up and down the mountain passes, and wrote home to Miss Mitford
+that love had turned the dial backward and the joyousness of girlhood had
+come again to her.</p>
+
+<p>When John Kenyon died and left them ten thousand pounds, all their own, it
+placed them forever beyond the apprehension of want, and also enabled them
+to do for others; for they pensioned old Walter Savage Landor, and
+established him in comfortable quarters around the corner from Casa
+Guidi.</p><a name='V_Page_64'></a>
+
+<p>I intimated a moment ago that their honeymoon continued for two years.
+This was a mistake, for it continued for just fifteen years, when the
+beautiful girl-like form, with her head of flowing curls upon her
+husband's shoulder, ceased to breathe. Painlessly and without apprehension
+or premonition, the spirit had taken its flight.</p>
+
+<p>That letter of Miss Blagdon's, written some weeks after, telling of how
+the stricken man paced the echoing hallways at night crying, &quot;I want her!
+I want her!&quot; touches us like a great, strange sorrow that once pierced our
+hearts.</p>
+
+<p>But Robert Browning's nature was too strong to be subdued by grief. He
+remembered that others, too, had buried their dead, and that sorrow had
+been man's portion since the world began. He would live for his boy&mdash;for
+Her child.</p>
+
+<p>But Florence was no longer his Florence, and he made haste to settle up
+his affairs and go back to England. He never returned to Florence, and
+never saw the beautiful monument, designed by his lifelong friend,
+Frederick Leighton.</p>
+
+<p>When you visit the little English Cemetery at Florence, the slim little
+girl that comes down the path, swinging the big bunch of keys, opens the
+high iron gate and leads you, without word or question, straight to the
+grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.</p>
+
+<p>Browning was forty-nine when Mrs. Browning died.</p><a name='V_Page_65'></a>
+
+<p>And by the time he had reached his fiftieth meridian, England, harkening
+to America's suggestion, was awakening to the fact that he was one of the
+world's great poets.</p>
+
+<p>Honors came slowly, but surely: Oxford with a degree; Saint Andrew's with
+a Lord-Rectorship; publishers with advance payments. And when Smith and
+Elder paid one hundred pounds for the poem of &quot;Herve Riel,&quot; it seemed that
+at last Browning's worth was being recognized. Not, of course, that money
+is the infallible test, but even poetry has its Rialto, where the extent
+of appreciation is shown by prices current.</p>
+
+<p>Browning's best work was done after his wife's death; and in that love he
+ever lived and breathed. In his seventy-fifth year, it filled his days and
+dreams as though it were a thing of yesterday, singing in his heart a
+perpetual eucharist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Ring and the Book&quot; must be regarded as Browning's crowning work.
+Offhand critics have disposed of it, but the great minds go back to it
+again and again. In the character of Pompilia the author sought to pay
+tribute to the woman whose memory was ever in his mind; yet he was too
+sensitive and shrinking to fully picture her. He sought to mask his
+inspiration; but tender, loving recollections of &quot;Ba&quot; are interlaced and
+interwoven through it all.</p>
+
+<p>When Robert Browning died, in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine, the world of
+literature and art uncovered <a name='V_Page_66'></a>in token of honor to one who had lived long
+and well and had done a deathless work. And the doors of storied
+Westminster opened wide to receive his dust.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='ALFRED_TENNYSON'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_67'></a>ALFRED TENNYSON</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_68'></a>
+<span>Not of the sunlight,<br /></span>
+<span>Not of the moonlight,<br /></span>
+<span>Nor of the starlight!<br /></span>
+<span>O young Mariner,<br /></span>
+<span>Down to the haven,<br /></span>
+<span>Call your companions,<br /></span>
+<span>Launch your vessel,<br /></span>
+<span>And crowd your canvas,<br /></span>
+<span>And ere it vanishes<br /></span>
+<span>Over the margin,<br /></span>
+<span>After it, follow it,<br /></span>
+<span>Follow the Gleam.<br /></span>
+<span class='i8'>&mdash;<i>Merlin</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_69'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-3.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-3-th.jpg" alt="ALFRED TENNYSON"></a></p><p class="ctr">ALFRED TENNYSON</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>The grandfather of Tennyson had two sons, the elder boy, according to
+Clement Scott, being &quot;both wilful and commonplace.&quot; Now, of course, the
+property and honors and titles, according to the law of England, would all
+gravitate to the commonplace boy; and the second son, who was competent,
+dutiful and worthy, would be out in the cold world&mdash;simply because he was
+accidentally born second and not first. It was not his fault that he was
+born second, and it was in no wise to the credit of the other that he was
+born first.</p>
+
+<p>So the father, seeing that the elder boy had small executive capacity, and
+no appreciation of a Good Thing, disinherited him, giving him, however, a
+generous allowance, but letting the titles go to the second boy, who was
+bright and brave and withal a right manly fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Personally, I'm glad the honors went to the best man. But Hallam Tennyson,
+son of the poet, sees only rank injustice in the action of his ancestor,
+who deliberately set his own opinion of right and justice against
+precedent as embodied in English Law. As a matter of strictest justice, we
+might argue that neither boy was entitled to anything which he had not
+earned, and that, in <a name='V_Page_70'></a>dividing the property between them, instead of
+allowing it all to drift into the hands of the one accidentally born
+first, the father acted wisely and well.</p>
+
+<p>But neither Alfred nor Hallam Tennyson thought so. How much their opinions
+were biased by the fact that they were descendants of the firstborn son,
+we can not say. Anyway, the descendants of the second son, the Honorable
+Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt, have made no protest of which I can learn,
+about justice having been defeated.</p>
+
+<p>Considering this subject of the Law of Entail one step further, we find
+that Hallam, the present Lord Tennyson, is a Peer of the Realm simply
+because his father was a great poet, and honors were given him on that
+account by the Queen. These honors go to Hallam, who, as all men agree, is
+in many ways singularly like his grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>Genius is not hereditary, but titles are. Hallam is eminently pleased with
+the English Law of Entail, save that he questions whether any father has
+the divine right to divert his titles and wealth from the eldest son. Lord
+Hallam's arguments are earnest and well expressed, but they seem to show
+that he is lacking in what Herbert Spencer calls the &quot;value sense&quot;&mdash;in
+other words, the sense of humor.</p>
+
+<p>Hallam's lack of perspective is further demonstrated by his patient
+efforts to explain who the various Tennysons were. In my boyhood days I
+thought there <a name='V_Page_71'></a>was but one Tennyson. On reading Hallam's book, however,
+one would think there were dozens of them. To keep these various men,
+bearing one name, from being confused in the mind of the reader, is quite
+a task; and to better identify one particular Tennyson, Hallam always
+refers to him as &quot;Father,&quot; or &quot;My Father.&quot; In the course of a recent
+interview with W.H. Seward, of Auburn, New York, I was impressed by his
+dignified, respectful, and affectionate references to &quot;Seward.&quot; &quot;This
+belonged to Seward,&quot; and &quot;Seward told me&quot;&mdash;as though there were but one.
+In these pages I will speak of Tennyson&mdash;there has been but one&mdash;there
+will never be another.</p><a name='V_Page_72'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>I think Clement Scott is a little severe in his estimate of the character
+of Tennyson's father, although the main facts are doubtless as he states
+them. The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson, Rector of Somersby and Wood
+Enderby parishes, was a typical English parson. As a boy he was simply
+big, fat and lazy. His health was so perfect that it overtopped all
+ambition, and having no nerves to speak of, his sensibilities were very
+slight.</p>
+
+<p>When he was disinherited in favor of his younger brother, a keen, nervous,
+forceful fellow, he accepted it as a matter of course. His career was
+planned for him: he &quot;took orders,&quot; married the young woman his folks
+selected, and slipped easily into his proper niche&mdash;his adipose serving as
+a buffer for his feelings. In his intellect there was no flash, and his
+insight into the heart of things was small.</p>
+
+<p>Being happily married to a discreet woman who managed him without ever
+letting him be aware of it, and having a sure and sufficient income, and
+never knowing that he had a stomach, he did his clerical work (with the
+help of a curate), and lived out the measure of his days, no wiser at the
+last than he was at thirty.</p>
+
+<p>In passing, we may call attention to the fact that the average man is a
+victim of Arrested Development, and that the fleeting years bring an
+increase of knowledge only in very exceptional cases. Health and
+prosperity are not pure blessings&mdash;a certain element of <a name='V_Page_73'></a>discontent is
+necessary to spur men on to a higher life.</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson had income enough to meet his wants,
+but not enough to embarrass him with the responsibility of taking care of
+it. Each quarterly stipend was spent before it arrived, and the family
+lived on credit until another three months rolled around. They had roast
+beef as often as they wanted it; in the cellar were puncheons, kegs and
+barrels, and as there was no rent to pay nor landlords to appease, care
+sat lightly on the Rector.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth, this man's wife, is worthy of more than a passing note. She was
+the daughter of the Reverend Stephen Fytche, vicar of Louth. Her family
+was not so high in rank as the Tennysons, because the Tennysons belonged
+to the gentry. But she was intelligent, amiable, fairly good-looking, and
+being the daughter of a clergyman, had beyond doubt a knowledge of
+clerical needs; so it was thought she would make a good wife for the newly
+appointed incumbent of Somersby.</p>
+
+<p>The parents arranged it, the young folks were willing, and so they were
+married&mdash;and the bridegroom was happy ever afterward.</p>
+
+<p>And why shouldn't he have been happy? Surely no man was ever blessed with
+a better wife! He had made a reach into the matrimonial grab-bag and drawn
+forth a jewel. This jewel was many-faceted. Without affectation or silly
+pride, the clergyman's wife did the work that God sent her to do. The
+sense of duty was strong upon <a name='V_Page_74'></a>her. Babies came, once each two years, and
+in one case two in one year, and there was careful planning required to
+make the income reach, and to keep the household in order. Then she
+visited the poor and sick of the parish, and received the many visitors.
+And with it all she found time to read. Her mind was open and alert for
+all good things. I am not sure that she was so very happy, but no
+complaints escaped her. In all she bore twelve children&mdash;eight sons and
+four daughters. Ten of these children lived to be over seventy-five years
+of age. The fourth child that came to her they named Alfred.</p><a name='V_Page_75'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Tennyson's education in early youth was very slight. His father laid down
+rules and gave out lessons, but the strictness of discipline never lasted
+more than two days at a time. The children ran wild and roamed the woods
+of Lincolnshire in search of all the curious things that the woods hold in
+store for boys. The father occasionally made stern efforts to &quot;correct&quot;
+his sons. In the use of the birch he was ambidextrous. But I have noticed
+that in households where a strap hangs behind the kitchen-door, for ready
+use, it is not utilized so much for pure discipline as to ease the
+feelings of the parent. They say that expression is a need of the human
+heart; and I am also convinced that in many hearts there is a very strong
+desire at times to &quot;thrash&quot; some one. Who it is makes little difference,
+but children being helpless and the law giving us the right, we find
+gratification by falling upon them with straps, birch-rods, slippers,
+ferules, hairbrushes or apple-tree sprouts.</p>
+
+<p>No student of pedagogics now believes that the free use of the rod ever
+made a child &quot;good&quot;; but all agree that it has often served as a
+safety-valve for a pent-up emotion in the parent or teacher.</p>
+
+<p>The father of Alfred Tennyson applied the birch, and the boy took to the
+woods, moody, resentful, solitary. There was good in this, for the lad
+learned to live within himself, and to be self-sufficient: to love the
+solitude, and feel a kinship with all the life that makes <a name='V_Page_76'></a>the groves and
+fields melodious.</p>
+
+<p>In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-eight, when nineteen years of age, Alfred was
+sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. He remained there three years, but
+left without a degree, and what was worse, with the ill-will of his
+teachers, who seemed to regard his as a hopeless case. He wouldn't study
+the books they wanted him to, and was never a candidate for academic
+distinctions.</p>
+
+<p>College life, however, has much to recommend it beside the curriculum. At
+Cambridge, Tennyson made the acquaintance of a group of young men who
+influenced his life profoundly. Kemble, Milnes, Brookfield and Spedding
+remained his lifelong friends; and as all good is reciprocal, no man can
+say how much these eminent men owe to the moody and melancholy Tennyson,
+or how much he owes to them.</p><a name='V_Page_77'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Tennyson began to write verse very young. His first line is said to have
+been written at five, and he has told of going when thirteen years of age
+to visit his grandfather, and of presenting him a poem. The old gentleman
+gave him half a guinea with the remark, &quot;This is the first money you ever
+made by writing poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last!&quot;
+When eighteen years of age, with his brother, Charles, he produced a thin
+book of thin verses.</p>
+
+<p>We have the opinion of Coleridge to the effect that the only lines which
+have any merit in the book are those signed C.T. Charles became a
+clergyman of marked ability, married rich, and changed his name from
+Tennyson to Turner for economic and domestic reasons. Years afterward,
+when Alfred had become Poet Laureate, rumor has it he thought of changing
+the &quot;Turner&quot; back to &quot;Tennyson,&quot; but was unable to bring it about.</p>
+
+<p>The only honor captured by Alfred at Cambridge was a prize for his poem,
+&quot;Timbuctoo.&quot; The encouragement that this brought him, backed up by Arthur
+Hallam's declaiming the piece in public&mdash;as a sort of defi to
+detractors&mdash;caused him to fix his attention more assiduously on verse. He
+could write&mdash;it was the only thing he could do&mdash;and so he wrote.</p>
+
+<p>At Cambridge he was in the habit of reading his poetry to a little coterie
+called &quot;The Apostles,&quot; and he always <a name='V_Page_78'></a>premised his reading with the
+statement that no criticism would be acceptable.</p>
+
+<p>The year he was twenty-one he published a small book called, &quot;Poems,
+Chiefly Lyrical.&quot; The books went a-begging for many years; but times
+change, for a copy of this edition was sold by Quaritch in Eighteen
+Hundred Ninety-five for one hundred eighty pounds. The only piece in the
+book that seems to show genuine merit is &quot;Mariana.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Two years afterward a second edition, revised and enlarged, was brought
+out. This book contains &quot;The Lady of Shalott,&quot; &quot;The May Queen,&quot; &quot;A Dream
+of Fair Women&quot; and &quot;The Lotus-Eaters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Beyond a few fulsome reviews from personal friends and a little surly
+mention from the tribe of Jeffrey, the volume attracted little or no
+attention. This coldness on the part of the public shot an atrabilarian
+tint through the ambition of our poet, and the fond hope of a success in
+literature faded from his mind.</p>
+
+<p>And then began what Stopford Brooke has called &quot;the ten fallow years in
+the life of Tennyson.&quot; But fallow years are not all fallow. The dark
+brooding night is as necessary for our life as the garish day. Great crops
+of wheat that feed the nations grow only where the winter's snow covers
+all as with a garment. And ever behind the mystery of sleep, and beneath
+the silence of the snow, Nature slumbers not nor sleeps.</p>
+
+<p>The withholding of quick recognition gave the mind of<a name='V_Page_79'></a> Tennyson an
+opportunity to ripen. Fate held him in leash that he might be saved for a
+masterly work, and all the time that he lived in semi-solitude and read
+and thought and tramped the fields, his soul was growing strong and his
+spirit was taking on the silken self-sufficient strength that marked his
+later days. This hiatus of ten years in the life of our poet is very
+similar to the thirteen fallow years in the career of Browning. These men
+crossed and recrossed each other's pathway, but did not meet for many
+years. What a help they might have been to each other in those years of
+doubt and seeming defeat! But each was to make his way alone.</p>
+
+<p>Browning seemed to grow through society and travel, but solitude served
+the needs of Tennyson.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There must be a man behind every sentence,&quot; said Emerson. After ten years
+of silence, when Tennyson issued his book, the literary world recognized
+the man behind it. Tennyson had grown as a writer, but more as a man. And
+after all, it is more to be a man than a poet. All who knew Tennyson, and
+have written of him, especially during those early years, begin with a
+description of his appearance. His looks did not belie the man. In
+intellect and in stature he was a giant. The tall, athletic form, the
+great shaggy head, the classic features, and the look of untried strength
+were all thrown into fine relief by the modesty, the half-embarrassment,
+of his manner.</p><a name='V_Page_80'></a>
+
+<p>To meet the poet was to acknowledge his power. No man can talk as wise as
+he can look, and Tennyson never tried to. His words were few and simple.</p>
+
+<p>Those who met him went away ready to back his lightest word. They felt
+there was a man behind the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>Carlyle, who was a hero-worshiper, but who usually limited his worship to
+those well dead and long gone hence, wrote of Tennyson to Emerson: &quot;One of
+the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of dusky hair; bright,
+laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most
+delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes
+cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is
+musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that
+may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet
+in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will
+grow to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then again, writing to his brother John: &quot;Some weeks ago, one night,
+the poet Tennyson and Matthew Arnold were discovered here sitting smoking
+in the garden. Tennyson had been here before, but was still new to
+Jane&mdash;who was alone for the first hour or two of it. A fine,
+large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man is Alfred;
+dusty, smoky, free and easy; who swims outwardly and inwardly, with great
+composure, in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos <a name='V_Page_81'></a>and
+tobacco-smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most restful,
+brotherly, solid-hearted man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;English Idylls,&quot; put forth in Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, contained
+all the poems, heretofore published, that Tennyson cared to retain. It
+must be stated to the credit, or discredit, of America, that the only
+complete editions of Tennyson were issued by New York and Boston
+publishers. These men seized upon the immature early poems of Tennyson,
+and combining them with his later books, issued the whole in a style that
+tried men's eyes&mdash;very proud of the fact that &quot;this is the only complete
+edition,&quot; etc. Of course they paid the author no royalty, neither did they
+heed his protests, and possibly all this prepared the way for frosty
+receptions of daughters of quick machine-made American millionaires, who
+journeyed to the Isle of Wight in after-days. Soon after the publication
+of &quot;English Idylls,&quot; Alfred Tennyson moved gracefully, like a ship that is
+safely launched, into the first place among living poets. He was then
+thirty-three years of age, with just half a century, lacking a few months,
+yet to live. In all that half-century, with its many conflicting literary
+judgments, his title to first place was never seriously questioned. Up to
+Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, in his various letters, and through his close
+friends, we learn that Tennyson was sore pressed for funds. He hadn't
+money to buy books, and when he traveled it was through the munificence of
+some kind kinsman. He <a name='V_Page_82'></a>even excuses himself from attending certain social
+functions on account of his lack of suitable raiment&mdash;probably with a
+certain satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>But when he tells of his poverty to Emily Sellwood, the woman of his
+choice, there is anguish in his cry. In fact, her parents succeeded in
+breaking off her relations with Tennyson for a time, on account of his
+very uncertain prospects. His brothers, even those younger than he, had
+slipped into snug positions&mdash;&quot;but Alfred dreams on with nothing special in
+sight.&quot; Poetry, in way of a financial return, is not to be commended.
+Honors were coming Tennyson's way as early as Eighteen Hundred Forty-two,
+but it was not until Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, when a pension of two
+hundred pounds a year was granted him by the Government, that he began to
+feel easy. Even then there were various old scores to liquidate.</p>
+
+<p>The year Eighteen Hundred Fifty, when he was forty-one, has been called
+his &quot;golden year,&quot; for in it occurred the publication of &quot;In Memoriam,&quot;
+his appointment to the post of Poet Laureate, and his marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Emily Sellwood had waited for him all these years. She had been sought
+after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and
+others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid
+forlorn. But she was true to her love for Alfred. Possibly she had not
+been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson's mother had been. When that
+dear <a name='V_Page_83'></a>old lady was past eighty she became very deaf, and the family often
+ventured to carry on conversations in her presence which possibly would
+have been modified had the old lady been in full possession of her
+faculties. On a day as she sat knitting in the chimney-corner, one of her
+daughters in a burst of confidence to a visitor, said, &quot;Why, before Mamma
+married Papa she had received twenty-three offers of marriage!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Twenty-four, my dear&mdash;twenty-four,&quot; corrected the old lady as she shifted
+the needles.</p>
+
+<p>No one has ever claimed that Tennyson was an ideal lover. Surely he never
+could have been tempted to do what Browning did&mdash;break up the peace of a
+household by an elopement. His love was a thing of the head, weighed
+carefully in the scales of his judgment. His caution and good sense saved
+him from all Byronic excesses, or foolish alliances such as took Shelley
+captive. He believed in law and order, and early saw that his interests
+lay in that direction. He belonged to the Church of England, and doubtless
+thought as he pleased, but ever expressed himself with caution.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to accuse Tennyson of being insular&mdash;to say that he is merely
+&quot;the poet of England.&quot; Had he been more he would have been less.
+World-poets have usually been revolutionists, and dangerous men who
+exploded at an unknown extent of concussion. None of them has been a safe
+man&mdash;none respectable. Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo and Whitman were
+outcasts.</p><a name='V_Page_84'></a>
+
+<p>Tennyson is always serene, sane and safe&mdash;his lines breathe purity and
+excellence. He is the poet of religion, of the home and fireside, of
+established order, of truth, justice and mercy as embodied in law.</p>
+
+<p>Very early he became a close personal friend of Queen Victoria, and many
+of his lines ministered to her personal consolation. For fifty years
+Tennyson's life was one steady, triumphal march. He acquired wealth, such
+as no other English poet before him had ever gained; his name was known in
+every corner of the earth where white men journeyed, and at home he was
+beloved and honored. He died October Sixth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two,
+aged eighty-three, and for him the Nation mourned, and with deep sincerity
+the Queen spoke of his demise as a poignant, personal sorrow.</p><a name='V_Page_85'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It was at Cambridge he met Arthur Hallam&mdash;Arthur Hallam, immortal and
+remembered alone for being the comrade and friend of Tennyson.</p>
+
+<p>Alfred took his friend Arthur to his home in Lincolnshire one vacation,
+and we know how Arthur became enamored of Tennyson's sister Emily, and
+they were betrothed. Together, Tennyson and Hallam made a trip through
+France and the Pyrenees.</p>
+
+<p>Carlyle and Milburn, the blind preacher, once sat smoking in the little
+arbor back of the house in Cheyne Row. They had been talking of Tennyson,
+and after a long silence Carlyle knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and
+with a grunt said: &quot;Ha! Death is a great blessing&mdash;the joyousest blessing
+of all! Without death there would ha' been no 'In Memoriam,' no Hallam,
+and like enough no Tennyson!&quot; It is futile to figure what would have
+occurred had this or that not happened, since every act of life is a
+sequence. But that Carlyle and many others believed that the death of
+Hallam was the making of Tennyson, there is no doubt. Possibly his soul
+needed just this particular amount of bruising in order to make it burst
+into undying song&mdash;who knows! When Charles Kingsley was asked for the
+secret of his exquisite sympathy and fine imagination, he paused a space,
+and then answered&mdash;&quot;I had a friend.&quot; The desire for friendship is strong
+in every human heart. We crave the companionship of those who <a name='V_Page_86'></a>can
+understand. The nostalgia of life presses, we sigh for &quot;home,&quot; and long
+for the presence of one who sympathizes with our aspirations, comprehends
+our hopes and is able to partake of our joys. A thought is not our own
+until we impart it to another, and the confessional seems a crying need of
+every human soul.</p>
+
+<p>One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad.</p>
+
+<p>We reach the Divine through some one, and by dividing our joy with this
+one we double it, and come in touch with the Universal. The sky is never
+so blue, the birds never sing so blithely, our acquaintances are never so
+gracious, as when we are filled with love for some one.</p>
+
+<p>Being in harmony with one we are in harmony with all.</p>
+
+<p>The lover idealizes and clothes the beloved with virtues that exist only
+in his imagination. The beloved is consciously or unconsciously aware of
+this, and endeavors to fulfil the high ideal; and in the contemplation of
+the transcendent qualities that his mind has created, the lover is raised
+to heights otherwise unattainable.</p>
+
+<p>Should the beloved pass from the earth while this condition of exaltation
+endures, the conception is indelibly impressed upon the soul, just as the
+last earthly view is said to be photographed upon the retina of the dead.
+The highest earthly relationship is, in its very essence, fleeting, for
+men are fallible, and living in a world where material wants jostle, and
+time and change play their ceaseless parts, gradual obliteration comes
+<a name='V_Page_87'></a>and disillusion enters. But the memory of a sweet affinity once fully
+possessed, and snapped by Fate at its supremest moment, can never die from
+out the heart. All other troubles are swallowed up in this, and if the
+individual is of too stern a fiber to be completely crushed into the dust,
+time will come bearing healing, and the memory of that once ideal
+condition will chant in the heart a perpetual eucharist.</p>
+
+<p>And I hope the world has passed forever from the nightmare of pity for the
+dead: they have ceased from their labors and are at rest.</p>
+
+<p>But for the living, when death has entered and removed the best friend,
+Fate has done her worst; the plummet has sounded the depths of grief, and
+thereafter nothing can inspire terror. At one fell stroke all petty
+annoyances and corroding cares are sunk into nothingness. The memory of a
+great love lives enshrined in undying amber. It affords a ballast 'gainst
+all the storms that blow, and although it lends an unutterable sadness, it
+imparts an unspeakable peace. Where there is this haunting memory of a
+great love lost, there are always forgiveness, charity and a sympathy that
+makes the man brother to all who suffer and endure. The individual himself
+is nothing: he has nothing to hope for, nothing to lose, nothing to win,
+and this constant memory of the high and exalted friendship that once was
+his is a nourishing source of strength; it constantly purifies the mind
+and inspires the heart to nobler living and diviner <a name='V_Page_88'></a>thinking. The man is
+in communication with Elemental Conditions.</p>
+
+<p>To know an ideal friendship and to have it fade from your grasp and flee
+as a shadow before it is touched with the sordid breath of selfishness, or
+sullied by misunderstandings, is the highest good. And the constant
+dwelling in sweet, sad recollection on the exalted virtues of the one that
+has gone, tends to crystallize these very virtues in the heart of him who
+meditates them. The beauty with which love adorns its object becomes at
+last the possession of the one who loves.</p>
+
+<p>At the hour when the strong and helpful, yet tender and sympathetic,
+friendship of Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam was at its height, there
+came a brief and abrupt word from Vienna to the effect that Arthur was
+dead.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;In Vienna's fatal walls<br /></span>
+<span>God's finger touched him and he slept!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The shock of surprise, followed by dumb, bitter grief, made an impression
+on the youthful mind of Tennyson that the sixty years which followed did
+not obliterate.</p>
+
+<p>At first a numbness and a deadness came over his spirit, but this
+condition erelong gave way to a sweet contemplation of the beauties of
+character that his friend possessed, and he tenderly reviewed the gracious
+hours they had spent together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In Memoriam&quot; is not one poem; it is made up of <a name='V_Page_89'></a>many &quot;short
+swallow-flights of song that dip their wings in tears and skim away.&quot;
+There are one hundred thirty separate songs in all, held together by the
+silken thread of love for the poet's lost friend.</p>
+
+<p>Seventeen years were required for their evolution. Some people, misled by
+the title, possibly, think of these poems as a wail of grief for the dead,
+a vain cry of sorrow for the lost, or a proud parading of mourning
+millinery. Such views could not be more wholly wrong.</p>
+
+<p>To every soul that has loved and lost, to those who have stood by open
+graves, to all who have beheld the sun go down on less worth in the world,
+these songs are a victor's cry. They tell of love and life that rise
+phoenix-like from the ashes of despair; of doubt turned to faith; of fear
+which has become serenest peace.</p>
+
+<p>All poems that endure must have this helpful, uplifting quality. Without
+violence of direction they must be beacon-lights that gently guide
+stricken men and women into safe harbors.</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;Invocation,&quot; written nearly a score of years after Hallam's death,
+reveals Tennyson's personal conquest of pain. His thought has broadened
+from the sense of loss into a stately march of conquest over death for the
+whole human race. The sharpness of grief has wakened the soul to the
+contemplation of sublime ideas&mdash;truth, justice, nobility, honor, and the
+sense of beauty as shown in all created things. The man once loved a
+person&mdash;now his heart goes out to <a name='V_Page_90'></a>the universe. The dread of death is
+gone, and he calmly contemplates his own end and waits the summons without
+either impatience or fear. He realizes that death itself is a
+manifestation of life&mdash;that it is as natural and just as necessary.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Sunset and evening star<br /></span>
+<span class='i3'>And one clear call for me,<br /></span>
+<span class='i1'>And may there be no moaning of the bar<br /></span>
+<span class='i3'>When I put out to sea.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The desire for sympathy and the wish for friendship are in his heart, but
+the fever of unrest and the spirit of revolt are gone. His heart, his
+hope, his faith, his life, are freely laid on the altar of Eternal Love.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='ROBERT_BURNS'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_91'></a>ROBERT BURNS</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_92'></a>
+<span class='i4'>TO JEANNIE<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Come, let me take thee to my breast,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And pledge we ne'er shall sunder;<br /></span>
+<span>And I shall spurn, as vilest dust,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The warld's wealth and grandeur.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And do I hear my Jeannie own<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>That equal transports move her?<br /></span>
+<span>I ask for dearest life, alone,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>That I may live to love her.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Thus in my arms, wi' a' thy charms,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>I clasp my countless treasure;<br /></span>
+<span>I'll seek nae mair o' heaven to share<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Than sic a moment's pleasure.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And by thy een, sae bonnie blue,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>I swear I'm thine for ever:<br /></span>
+<span>And on thy lips I seal my vow,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And break it shall I never.<br /></span>
+<span class='i11'>&mdash;<i>Robert Burns</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_93'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-4.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-4-th.jpg" alt="ROBERT BURNS"></a></p><p class="ctr">ROBERT BURNS</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>The business of Robert Burns was love-making.</p>
+
+<p>All love is good, but some kinds of love are better than others. Through
+Burns' penchant for falling in love we have his songs. A Burns
+bibliography is simply a record of his love-affairs, and the spasms of
+repentance that followed his lapses are made manifest in religious verse.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry is the very earliest form of literature, and is the natural
+expression of a person in love; and I suppose we might as well admit the
+fact at once that without love there would be no poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry is the bill and coo of sex. All poets are lovers, and all lovers,
+either actual or potential, are poets. Potential poets are the people who
+read poetry; and so without lovers the poet would never have a market for
+his wares.</p>
+
+<p>If you have ceased to be moved by religious emotion; if your spirit is no
+longer exalted by music, and you do not linger over certain lines of
+poetry, it is because the love-instinct in your heart has withered to
+ashes of roses. It is idle to imagine Bobby Burns as a staid member of the
+Kirk; had he been so, there would now be no Bobby Burns. The literary
+ebullition of Robert Burns (he himself has told us) began shortly after he
+<a name='V_Page_94'></a>had reached the age of indiscretion; and the occasion was his being
+paired in the hayfield, according to the Scottish custom, with a bonnie
+lassie. This custom of pairing still endures, and is what the students of
+sociology call an expeditious move. The Scotch are great economists&mdash;the
+greatest in the world. Adam Smith, the father of the science of economics,
+was a Scotchman; and Draper, author of &quot;A History of Civilization,&quot; flatly
+declares that Adam Smith's &quot;Wealth of Nations&quot; has influenced the people
+of Earth for good more than any other book ever written&mdash;save none.</p>
+
+<p>The Scotch are great conservators of energy.</p>
+
+<p>The practise of pairing men and women in the hayfield gets the work done.
+One man and one woman going down the grass-grown path afield might linger
+and dally by the way. They would never make hay, but a company of a dozen
+or more men and women would not only reach the field, but do a lot of
+work. In Scotland the hay-harvest is short&mdash;when the grass is in bloom,
+just right to make the best hay, it must be cut. And so the men and women,
+the girls and boys, sally forth. It is a jolly picnic-time, looked forward
+to with fond anticipation, and after recalled with sweet, sad memories, or
+otherwise, as the case may be.</p>
+
+<p>But they all make hay while the sun shines, and count it joy. Liberties
+are allowed during haying-time that otherwise would be declared
+scandalous; during haying-time the Kirk waives her censor's right, and
+priest <a name='V_Page_95'></a>and people mingle joyously. Wives are not jealous during
+hay-harvest, and husbands never faultfinding, because they each get even
+by allowing a mutual license. In Scotland during haying-time every married
+man works alongside of some other man's wife. To the psychologist it is
+somewhat curious how the desire for propriety is overridden by a stronger
+desire&mdash;the desire for the shilling. The Scotch farmer says, &quot;Anything to
+get the hay in&quot;&mdash;and by loosening a bit the strict bands of social custom,
+the hay is harvested.</p>
+
+<p>In the hay-harvest the law of natural selection holds; partners are often
+arranged for weeks in advance; and trysts continue year after year. Old
+lovers meet, touch hands in friendly scuffle for a fork, drink from the
+same jug, recline at noon and eat lunch in the shade of a friendly stack,
+and talk to heart's content, sweetening the labor of the long summer day.</p>
+
+<p>Of course this joyousness of the haying-time is not wholly monopolized by
+the Scotch. Haven't you seen the jolly haying parties in Southern Germany,
+France, Switzerland and the Tyrol? How the bright costumes of the men and
+the jaunty attire of the women gleam in the glad sunshine!</p>
+
+<p>But the practise of pairing is carried to a degree of perfection in
+Scotland that I have not noticed elsewhere. Surely it is a great economic
+scheme! It is like that invention of a Connecticut man, which utilizes the
+ebb and flow of the ocean-tides to turn a gristmill.</p><a name='V_Page_96'></a>
+
+<p>And it seems queer that no one has ever attempted to utilize the waste of
+dynamic force involved in the maintenance of the Company Sofa.</p>
+
+<p>In Ayrshire, I have started out with a haying party of twenty&mdash;ten men and
+ten women&mdash;at six o'clock in the morning and worked until six at night. I
+never worked so hard, nor did so much. All day long there was a fire of
+jokes and jolly gibes, interspersed with song, while beneath all ran a
+gentle hum of confidential interchange of thought. The man who owned the
+field was there to direct our efforts and urge us on in well-doing by
+merry raillery, threat, and joyous rivalry.</p>
+
+<p>The point I make is this&mdash;we did the work. Take heed, ye Captains of
+Industry, and note this truth, that where men and women work together
+under right influences, much good is accomplished, and the work is
+pleasurable. Of course there are vinegar-faced philosophers who say that
+the Scotch custom of pairing young men and maidens in the hayfield is not
+without its effect on esoterics, also on vital statistics; and I'm willing
+to admit there may be danger in the scheme. But life is a dangerous
+business anyway&mdash;few indeed get out of it alive!</p><a name='V_Page_97'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Burns succeeded in his love-making and succeeded in poetry, but at
+everything else he was a failure. He failed as a farmer, a father, a
+friend, in society, as a husband, and in business.</p>
+
+<p>From his twenty-third year his days were passed in sinning and repenting.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry and love-making should be carried on with caution: they form a
+terrific tax on life's forces. Most poets die young, not because the gods
+especially love them, but because life is a bank-account, and to wipe out
+your balance is to have your checks protested. The excesses of youth are
+drafts payable at maturity. Chatterton dead at eighteen, Keats at
+twenty-six, Shelley at thirty-three, Byron at thirty-six, Poe at forty,
+and Burns at thirty-seven, are the rule. When drafts made by the men
+mentioned became due, there was no balance to their credit and Charon
+beckoned.</p>
+
+<p>Most life-insurance companies now ask the applicant this question, &quot;Do you
+write poetry to excess?&quot; Shakespeare, to be sure, clung to life until he
+was fifty-three, but this seems to be the limit. Dickens and Thackeray,
+their candles well burned out, also died under sixty. Of course, I know
+that Browning, Tennyson, Morris and Bryant lived to a fair old age, but
+this was on borrowed time, for in the early life of each there was a
+hiatus of from ten to eighteen years, when the men never wrote a line, nor
+touched a drop of anything, bravely eschewing all honey from Hymettus.<a name='V_Page_98'></a>
+Then the four men last named were all happily married, and married life is
+favorable to longevity, but not to poetry. As a rule only single men, or
+those unhappily mated, make love and write poetry. Men happily married
+make money, cultivate content, and evolve an aldermanic front; but love
+and poetry are symptoms of unrest. Thus is Emerson's proposition partially
+proven, that in life all things are bought and must be paid for with a
+price&mdash;even success and happiness.</p><a name='V_Page_99'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Burns once explained to Doctor Moore that the first fine, careless rapture
+of his song was awakened into being when he was sixteen years old, by &quot;a
+bonnie sweet sonsie lass&quot; whom we now know as &quot;Handsome Nell.&quot; Her other
+name to us is vapor, and history is silent as to her life-pilgrimage.
+Whether she lived to realize that she had first given voice to one of the
+great singers of earth&mdash;of this we are also ignorant. She was one year
+younger than Burns, and little more than a child when she and Bobby lagged
+behind the troop of tired haymakers, and walked home, hand in hand, in the
+gloaming. Here is one of the stanzas addressed to &quot;Handsome Nell&quot;:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;She dresses all so clean and neat,<br /></span>
+<span>Both decent and genteel,<br /></span>
+<span>And then there's something in her gait<br /></span>
+<span>Makes any dress look weel.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And how could Nell then ever guess why her cheeks burned scarlet, and why
+she was so sorry when haying-time was over? She was sweet, innocent,
+artless, and their love was very natural, tender, innocent. It's a pity
+that all loves can not remain in just that idyllic, milkmaid stage, where
+the girls and boys awaken in the early morning with the birds, and hasten
+forth barefoot across the dewy fields to find the cows. But love never
+tarries. Love is progressive; it can not stand still. I have heard of the
+&quot;passiveness&quot; of woman's <a name='V_Page_100'></a>love, but the passive woman is only one who does
+not love&mdash;she merely consents to have affection lavished upon her. When I
+hear of a passive woman, I always think of the befuddled sailor who once
+saw one of those dummy dress-frames, all duly clothed in flaming bombazine
+(I think it was bombazine) in front of a clothing establishment. The
+sailor, mistaking the dummy for a near and dear lady friend, embraced the
+wire apparatus and imprinted a resounding smack on the chaste
+plaster-of-Paris cheek. Meeting the sure-enough lady shortly after, he
+upbraided her for her cold passivity on the occasion named.</p>
+
+<p>A passive woman&mdash;one who consents to be loved&mdash;should seek occupation
+among those worthy firms who warrant a fit in ready-made gowns, or money
+refunded.</p>
+
+<p>Love is progressive&mdash;it hastens onward like the brook hurrying to the sea.
+They say that love is blind: love may be short-sighted, or inclined to
+strabismus, or may see things out of their true proportion, magnifying
+pleasant little ways into seraphic virtues, but love is not really
+blind&mdash;the bandage is never so tight but that it can peep. The only kind
+of love that is really blind and deaf is Platonic love. Platonic love
+hasn't the slightest idea where it is going, and so there are surprises
+and shocks in store for it. The other kind, with eyes wide open, is
+better. I know a man who has tried both. Love is progressive. All things
+that live should progress. To stand still is to retreat, and <a name='V_Page_101'></a>to retreat
+is death. Love dies, of course. All things die, or become something else.
+And often they become something else by dying. Behold the eternal Paradox!
+The love that evolves into a higher form is the better kind. Nature is
+intent on evolution, yet of the myriads of spores that cover earth, most
+of them are doomed to death; and of the countless rays sent out by the
+sun, the number that fall athwart this planet are infinitesimal. Edward
+Carpenter calls attention to the fact that disappointed love&mdash;that is,
+love that is &quot;lost&quot;&mdash;often affects the individual for the highest good.
+But the real fact is, nothing is ever lost. Love in its essence is a
+spiritual emotion, and its office seems to be an interchange of thought
+and feeling; but often thwarted in its object, it becomes general,
+transforms itself into sympathy, and embracing a world, goes out to and
+blesses all mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Very, very rare is the couple that has the sense and poise to allow
+passion just enough mulberry-leaves, so it will spin a beautiful silken
+thread, out of which a Jacob's ladder can be constructed, reaching to the
+Infinite. Most lovers in the end wear love to a fringe, and there remains
+no ladder with angels ascending and descending&mdash;not even a dream of a
+ladder. Instead of the silken ladder on which one can mount to Heaven,
+there is usually a dark, dank road to Nowhere, over which is thrown a
+package of letters and trinkets, all fastened round with a white ribbon,
+tied in a lover's <a name='V_Page_102'></a>knot. The many loves of Robert Burns all ended in a
+black jumping-off place, and before he had reached high noon, he tossed
+over the last bundle of white-ribboned missives and tumbled in after them.
+The life of Burns is a tragedy, through which are interspersed sparkling
+scenes of gaiety, as if to retrieve the depth of bitterness that would
+otherwise be unbearable. Go ask Mary Morison, Highland Mary, Agnes
+McLehose, Betty Alison, and Jean Armour!</p><a name='V_Page_103'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The poems of Robert Burns fall easily into four divisions.</p>
+
+<p>First, those written while he was warmly wooing the object of his
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>Second, those written after he had won her.</p>
+
+<p>Third, those written when he had failed to win her.</p>
+
+<p>Fourth, those written when he felt it his duty to write, and really had
+nothing to say.</p>
+
+<p>The first-named were written because he could not help it, and are, for
+the most part, rarely excellent. They are joyous, rapturous, sprightly,
+dancing, and filled with references to sky, clouds, trees, fruit, grain,
+birds and flowers. Birds and flowers, by the way, are peculiarly lovers'
+properties. The song and the plumage of birds, and the color and perfume
+of flowers are all distinctly sex manifestations. Robert Burns sang his
+songs just as the bird wings and sings, and for the same reason. Sex holds
+first place in the thought of Nature; and sex in the minds of men and
+women holds a much larger place than most of us are willing to admit. All
+religious emotion and all art are born of the sex instinct.</p>
+
+<p>Burns' poems of the second variety, written after he had won her, are
+touched with religious emotion, or filled with vain regret and deep
+remorse, as the case may be, all owing to the quality and kind of success
+achieved, and the influence of the Dog-Star.</p>
+
+<p>Burns wrote several deeply religious poems. Now, men are very seldom
+really religious and contrite, <a name='V_Page_104'></a>except after an excess. Following a
+debauch a man signs the pledge, vows chastity, writes fervently of
+asceticism and the need of living in the spirit and not in the senses.
+Good pictures show best on a dark back-ground. Men talk most about things
+they do not possess.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Cotter's Saturday Night,&quot; perhaps the most quoted of any of Burns'
+poems, is plainly the result of a terrible tip to t' other side. Bobby had
+gone so far in the direction of Venusburg that he resolved on getting
+back, and living thereafter a staid and proper life.</p>
+
+<p>In order to reform you must have an ideal, and the ideal of Burns, on the
+occasion of having exhausted all capacity for sin, is embodied in the
+&quot;Saturday Night.&quot; It is all a beautiful dream. The real Scottish cotter is
+quite another kind of person. The religion of the live cotter is well
+seasoned with fear, malevolence and absurd dogmatism. The amount of love,
+patience, excellence and priggishness shown in &quot;The Cotter's Saturday
+Night&quot; never existed, except in a poet's imagination. In stanza Number Ten
+of that particular poem is a bit of unconscious autobiography that might
+as well ha' been omitted; but in letting it stand, Burns was loyal to the
+thought that surged through his brain.</p>
+
+<p>People who are not scientific in their speech often speak of the birds as
+being happy. My opinion is that birds are not any more happy than
+men&mdash;probably not as much so. Many birds, like the English sparrow and the
+blue jay, quarrel all day long. Come to think of it, I <a name='V_Page_105'></a>believe that man
+is happier than the birds. He has a sense of remorse, and this suggests
+reformation, and from the idea of reformation comes the picturing of an
+ideal. This exercise of the imagination is pleasure, for indeed there is a
+certain satisfaction in every form of exercise of the faculties. There is
+a certain pleasure in pain: for pain is never all pain. And sin surely is
+not wholly bad, if through it we pass into a higher life&mdash;the life of the
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Anything is better than the Dead Sea of neutral nothingness, wherein a man
+merely avoids sin by doing nothing and being nothing. The stirring of the
+imagination by sorrow for sin, sometimes causes the soul to wing a
+far-reaching upward flight.</p>
+
+<p>Asceticism is often only a form of sensuality: the man finds satisfaction
+in overcoming the flesh. And wherever you find asceticism you find
+potential passion&mdash;a smoldering volcano held in check by a devotion to
+duty; and a gratification is oft found in fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>The moral and religious poems of Burns were written in a desire to work
+off a fit of depression, and make amends for folly. They are sincere and
+often very excellent. Great preachers have often been great sinners, and
+the sermons that have moved men most are often a direct recoil from sin on
+the part of the preacher. Remorse finds play in preaching repentance. When
+a man talks much about a virtue, be sure that he is clutching for it.
+Temperance fanatics are men with a taste for <a name='V_Page_106'></a>strong drink, trying hard to
+keep sober. The moral and religious poems of Robert Burns are not equal to
+his love-songs. The love-songs are free, natural, untrammeled and
+unrestrained; while his religious poems have a vein of rotten warp running
+through them in the way of affectation and pretense. From this I infer
+that sin is natural, and remorse partially so. In Burns' moral poems the
+author tries to win back the favor of respectable people, which he had
+forfeited. In them there is a violence of direction; and all violence of
+direction&mdash;all endeavors to please and placate certain people&mdash;is fatal to
+an artist. You must work to please only yourself.</p>
+
+<p>Work to please yourself and you develop and strengthen the artistic
+conscience. Cling to that and it shall be your mentor in times of doubt:
+you need no other. There are writers who would scorn to write a muddy
+line, and would hate themselves for a year and a day should they dilute
+their honest thought with the platitudes of the fear-ridden. Be yourself
+and speak your mind today, though it contradict all you have said before.
+And above all, in art, work to please yourself&mdash;that Other Self that
+stands over and behind you, looking over your shoulder, watching your
+every act, word and deed&mdash;knowing your every thought. Michelangelo would
+not paint a picture on order. &quot;I have a critic who is more exacting than
+you,&quot; said Meissonier&mdash;&quot;it is my Other Self.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_107'></a>
+
+<p>Rosa Bonheur painted pictures just to please her Other Self, and never
+gave a thought to any one else, nor wanted to think of any one else, and
+having painted to please herself, she made her appeal to the great Common
+Heart of humanity&mdash;the tender, the noble, the receptive, the earnest, the
+sympathetic, the lovable. That is why Rosa Bonheur stands first among
+women artists of all time: she worked to please her Other Self.</p>
+
+<p>That is the reason Rembrandt, who lived at the same time Shakespeare
+lived, is today without a rival in portraiture. He had the courage to make
+an enemy. When at work he never thought of any one but his Other Self, and
+so he infused soul into every canvas. The limpid eyes look down into yours
+from the walls and tell of love, pity, earnestness and deep sincerity.
+Man, like Deity, creates in his own image, and when he portrays some one
+else, he pictures himself, too&mdash;this provided his work is Art. If it is
+but an imitation of something seen somewhere, or done by some one else, to
+please a patron with money, no breath of life has been breathed into its
+nostrils, and it is nothing, save possibly dead perfection&mdash;no more.</p>
+
+<p>Is it easy to please your Other Self? Try it for a day. Begin tomorrow
+morning and say: &quot;This day I will live as becomes a man. I will be filled
+with good-cheer and courage. I will do what is right; I will work for the
+highest; I will put soul into every hand-grasp, <a name='V_Page_108'></a>every smile, every
+expression&mdash;into all my work. I will live to satisfy my Other Self.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Do you think it is easy? Try it for a day.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Burns wrote some deathless lines&mdash;lines written out of the
+freshness of his heart, simply to please himself, with no furtive eye on
+Dumfries, Edinburgh, the Kirk, or the Unco Guid of Ayrshire; and these are
+the lines that have given him his place in the world of letters.</p>
+
+<p>The other day I was made glad by finding that John Burroughs, Poet and
+Prophet, says that the male thrush sings to please himself, out of pure
+delight; and pleasing himself, he pleases his mate. &quot;The female,&quot; says
+Burroughs, &quot;is always pleased with a male that is pleased with himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The various controversial poems (granting for argument's sake that
+controversy is poetic) were written when Burns was smarting under the
+sense of defeat. These show a sharp insight into the heart of things, and
+a lively wit, but are not sufficient foundation on which to build a
+reputation. Ali Baba can do as well. Considering the fact that twice as
+many people make pilgrimages to the grave of Burns as visit the dust of
+Shakespeare, and that his poems are on the shelves of every library, his
+name now needs no defense. The ores are very seldom found pure, and if
+even the work of Deity is composite, why should we be surprised that man,
+His creature, should express himself in a varying scale of excellence!</p><a name='V_Page_109'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>There was nothing of Jack Falstaff about Francis Schlatter, whose whitened
+bones were found amid the alkali dust of the desert, a few years ago&mdash;dead
+in an endeavor to do without meat and drink for forty days.</p>
+
+<p>Schlatter purported, and believed, that he was the reincarnation of the
+Messiah. Letters were sent to him, addressed simply, &quot;Jesus Christ,
+Denver, Colorado,&quot; and he walked up to the General-Delivery window and
+asked for them with a confidence, we are told, that relieved the
+postmaster of a grave responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>Schlatter was no mere ordinary pretender, working on the superstitions of
+shallow-pated people. He lived up to his belief&mdash;took no money, avoided
+notoriety when he could; and the proof of his sincerity lies in the fact
+that he died a victim to it.</p>
+
+<p>Herbert Spencer has said all about the Messianic Instinct that there is to
+say, save this&mdash;the Messianic Instinct first had its germ in the heart of
+a woman. Every woman dreams of the coming of the Ideal Man&mdash;the man who
+will give her protection, even to giving up his life for her, and
+vouchsafe peace to her soul. I am told by a noted Bishop of the Catholic
+Church that many women who become nuns are prompted to take their vows
+solely through the occasion of an unrequited love. They become the bride
+of the Church and find their highest joy in following the will of Christ.
+He is their only Spouse and Master.</p><a name='V_Page_110'></a>
+
+<p>The terms of endearment one hears at prayer-meetings, &quot;Blessed Jesus,&quot;
+&quot;Dear Jesus,&quot; &quot;Loving Jesus,&quot; &quot;Elder Brother,&quot; &quot;Patient, gentle Jesus,&quot;
+etc., were first used by women in an ecstasy of religious transport. And
+the thought of Jesus as a loving, &quot;personal Savior,&quot; would die from the
+face of the earth did not women keep it alive. The religious nature and
+the sex nature are closely akin: no psychologist can tell where the one
+ends and the other begins.</p>
+
+<p>There may be wooden women in the world, and of these I will not speak, but
+every strong, pulsing, feeling, thinking woman goes through life, seeking
+the Ideal Man. Whether she is married or single, rich or poor, old or
+young, every new man she meets is interesting to her, because she feels in
+some mysterious way that possibly he is the One.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I know that every good man, too, seeks the Ideal Woman&mdash;but
+that deserves another chapter.</p>
+
+<p>The only woman in whose heart there is not the live, warm, Messianic
+Instinct is the wooden woman, and the one who believes she has already
+found him. But this latter is holding an illusion that soon vanishes with
+possession.</p>
+
+<p>That pale, low-voiced, gentle and insane man, Francis Schlatter, was
+followed at times by troops of women. These women believed in him and
+loved him&mdash;in different ways, of course, and with passion varying
+according to temperament and the domestic environment <a name='V_Page_111'></a>already existing.
+To love deeply is a matter of propinquity and opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>One woman, whom &quot;The Healer&quot; had cured of a lingering disease, loved this
+man with a wild, mad, absorbing passion. Chance gave her the opportunity.
+He came to her house, cold, hungry, homeless, sick. She fed him, warmed
+him, looked into his liquid eyes, sat at his feet and listened to his
+voice. She loved him&mdash;and partook of his every mental delusion.</p>
+
+<p>This woman now waits and watches in her mountain home for his return. She
+knows the coyotes and buzzards picked the scant flesh from his starved
+frame, but she says: &quot;He promised he would come back to me, and he will. I
+am waiting for him here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This woman writes me long letters from her solitude, telling me of her
+hopes and plans. Just why all the cranks in the United States should write
+me letters, I do not know, but they do&mdash;perhaps there is a sort o'
+fellow-feeling. This woman may write letters to others, just as she does
+to me. Of this I do not know, but surely I would not thus make public the
+heart-tragedy told me in a private letter, were it not that the woman
+herself has printed a pamphlet, setting forth her faith and veiling only
+those things into which it is not our right to pry.</p>
+
+<p>This Mary Magdalene believes her lover was the Chosen Son of God, and that
+the Father will reclothe the Son in a new garment of flesh and send him
+back <a name='V_Page_112'></a>to his beloved. So she watches and waits, and dresses herself to
+receive him, and at night places a lighted lantern in the window to guide
+the way.</p>
+
+<p>She watches and waits.</p>
+
+<p>Other women wait for footsteps that will never come, and listen for a
+voice that will never be heard. All round the world there is a sisterhood
+of such. Some, being wise, lose themselves in loving service to others&mdash;in
+useful work. But this woman, out in the wilds of New Mexico, hugs her
+sorrow to her heart, and feeds her passion by recounting it, and watches
+away the leaden hours, crying aloud to all who will listen: &quot;He is not
+dead&mdash;he is not dead! he will come back to me! He promised it&mdash;he will
+come back to me! This long, dreary waiting is only a test of my loyalty
+and love! I will be patient, for he will come back to me! He will come
+back to me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This world would be a sorry place if most men conducted their lives on the
+Robert Burns plan. Burns was affectionate, tender, generous and kind; but
+he was not wise. He never saw the future, nor did he know that life is a
+sequence, and that if you do this, it is pretty sure to lead to that. His
+loves were largely of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Excess was a part of his wayward, undisciplined nature; and that constant
+tendency to put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his brains, bound him
+at last, hand and foot. His old age could never have been <a name='V_Page_113'></a>frosty, but
+kindly&mdash;it would have been babbling, irritable, senile, sickening. Death
+was kind and reaped him young. Sex was the rock on which Robert Burns
+split. He seemed to regard pleasure-seeking as the prime end of life, and
+in this he was not so very far removed from the prevalent &quot;civilized&quot;
+society notion of marriage. But it is a phantasmal idea, and makes a mock
+of marriage, serving the satirist his excuse.</p>
+
+<p>To a great degree the race is yet barbaric, and as a people we fail
+utterly to touch the hem of the garment of Divinity. We have been mired in
+the superstition that sex is unclean, and therefore honesty and free
+expression in love matters have been tabued.</p>
+
+<p>But the day will yet dawn when we will see that it takes two to generate
+thought; that there is the male man and the female man, and only where
+these two walk together hand in hand is there a perfect sanity and a
+perfect physical, moral and spiritual health.</p>
+
+<p>We reach infinity through the love of one, and loving this one, we are in
+love with all. And this condition of mutual sympathy, trust, reverence,
+forbearance and gentleness that can exist between a man and a woman, gives
+the only hint of Heaven that mortals ever know. From the love of man for
+woman we guess the love of God, just as the scientist from a single bone
+constructs the skeleton&mdash;aye! and then clothes it with a complete garment.</p>
+
+<p>In their love-affairs women are seldom wise, or men just. How should we
+expect them to be when but <a name='V_Page_114'></a>yesterday woman was a chattel and man a
+slave-owner? Woman won by diplomacy&mdash;that is to say, by trickery and
+untruth, and man had his way through force, and neither is quite willing
+to disarm. An amalgamated personality is the rare exception, because
+neither Church, State nor Society yet fully recognizes the fact that
+spiritual comradeship and the marriage of the mind constitute the only
+Divine mating. Doctor Blacklock once said that Robert Burns had eyes like
+the Christ. Women who looked into those wide-open, generous orbs lost
+their hearts in the liquid depths.</p>
+
+<p>In the natures of Robert Burns and Francis Schlatter there was little in
+common; but their experiences were alike in this: they were beloved by
+women. Behind him Burns left a train of weeping women&mdash;a trail of broken
+hearts. And I can never think of him except as a mere youth&mdash;&quot;Bobby
+Burns&quot;&mdash;one who never came into man's estate. In all his love-making he
+never seemed really to benefit any woman, nor did he avail himself of the
+many mental and spiritual excellencies of woman's nature, absorbing them
+into his own. He only played a devil's tattoo upon her emotions.</p>
+
+<p>If Burns knew anything of the beauty and inspiration of a high and holy
+friendship between a thinking man and a thinking woman, with mutual aims,
+ideals and ambitions, he never disclosed it. The love of a man for a maid,
+or a maid for a man, can never last, unless these two mutually love a
+third something. Then, as <a name='V_Page_115'></a>they are traveling the same way, they may move
+forward hand in hand, mutually sustained. The marriage of the mind is the
+only compact that endures. I love you because you love the things that I
+love. That man alone is great who utilizes the blessings that God
+provides; and of these blessings no gift equals the gentle, trusting
+companionship of a good woman.</p>
+
+<p>So, having written thus far, I find that already I have reached the limit
+of my allotted space.</p>
+
+<p>In closing, it may not be amiss for me to state that Robert Burns was an
+Irish poet whose parents happened to be Scotch. He was born in Ayrshire in
+Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine. He died in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-six, and
+was buried at Dumfries by the &quot;gentleman volunteers,&quot; in spite of his last
+solemn words&mdash;&quot;Don't let the Awkward Squad fire over my grave!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His mother survived him thirty-eight years, passing out in Eighteen
+Hundred Thirty-four. Burns left four sons, each of whom was often pointed
+out as the son of his father&mdash;but none of them was.</p>
+
+<p>This is all I think of, at present, concerning Robert Burns.</p>
+
+<p>For further facts I must refer the Gentle Reader to the &quot;Encyclopedia
+Britannica,&quot; a compilation that I cheerfully recommend, it having been
+vouched for to me by a dear friend, a clergyman of East Aurora, who, the
+past year, perused the entire work, from A to Z, reading five hours a day:
+and therefore is competent to speak.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='JOHN_MILTON'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_116'></a><a name='V_Page_117'></a>JOHN MILTON</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_118'></a>
+<span class='i6'>Thus with the year<br /></span>
+<span>Seasons return; but not to me returns<br /></span>
+<span>Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,<br /></span>
+<span>Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,<br /></span>
+<span>Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;<br /></span>
+<span>But cloud instead, and ever-during dark<br /></span>
+<span>Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men<br /></span>
+<span>Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair<br /></span>
+<span>Presented with a universal blank<br /></span>
+<span>Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased,<br /></span>
+<span>And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.<br /></span>
+<span>So much the rather thou, Celestial Light,<br /></span>
+<span>Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers<br /></span>
+<span>Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence<br /></span>
+<span>Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell<br /></span>
+<span>Of things invisible to mortal sight.<br /></span>
+<span class='i10'>&mdash;<i>Paradise Lost: Book III</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_119'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-5.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-5-th.jpg" alt="JOHN MILTON"></a></p><p class="ctr">JOHN MILTON</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Shakespeare and Milton lived at the same time, though the difference in
+their ages was such that we may not speak of them as contemporaries. John
+Milton was eight years old when William Shakespeare died. The Miltons
+lived in Bread Street, and out of the back garret-window of their house
+could catch a glimpse of the Globe Theater.</p>
+
+<p>The father of John Milton might have known Shakespeare&mdash;might have dined
+with him at the &quot;Mermaid,&quot; played skittles with him on Hampstead Heath,
+fished with him from the same boat in the river at Richmond; and then John
+Milton, the lawyer, might have discreetly schemed for passes to the
+&quot;Globe&quot; and gone with his boy John, Junior, to see &quot;As You Like It&quot;
+played, with the Master himself in the role of old Adam.</p>
+
+<p>Bread Street was just off Cheapside, where the Mermaid Tavern stood, and
+where Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson and other roysterers often lingered
+and made the midnight echo with their mirth. In all probability, John
+Milton, Senior, father of John Milton, Junior, knew Shakespeare well. But
+the Miltons owned their home; were rich, influential, eminently
+respectable; attended Saint Giles' Church, and really didn't care <a name='V_Page_120'></a>to
+cultivate the society of play-actors who kept bad hours, slept in the
+theater, and had meal-tickets at half a dozen taverns.</p>
+
+<p>There were six children born into the Milton family, three of whom died in
+infancy. Of the survivors, the eldest was Anne, the second John, the third
+Christopher.</p>
+
+<p>Anne was strong, robust and hearty; John was slender, pale, with dreamy,
+dark gray eyes and a head too big for his body; Christopher was so-so.
+And, in passing, it is well to explain, once for all, that Christopher
+made his way straight to the front in life, taking up his father's
+business and being appointed a Court Officer. Thence he was promoted to
+the Woolsack, became rich, cultivated a double chin, was knighted, and
+passed out full of honors. The chief worriment and source of shame in the
+life of Sir Christopher Milton came from the unseemly conduct of his
+brother John, who was much given to producing political and theological
+pamphlets. And once in desperation Sir Christopher Milton requested John
+Milton to change his family name, that the tribe of Milton might be saved
+the disgrace of having in it &quot;a traducer of the State, an enemy of the
+King, and a falsifier of Truth.&quot; Sir Christopher Milton was an excellent
+and worthy man, and I must apologize for not giving him more attention at
+this time; but lack of space forbids.</p>
+
+<p>Sickly boys who are wise beyond their years are ever the pets of big
+sisters, and the object of loving, jealous, <a name='V_Page_121'></a>zealous care on the part of
+their mothers. John Milton talked like an oracle while yet a child, and
+one biographer records that even as a babe he sometimes mildly reproved
+his parents for levity.</p>
+
+<p>He was a precocious child, and have we not been told that precocity does
+not fulfill its promises? But this boy was an exception. He was incarnated
+into a family that prized music, poetry, philosophy, and yet held fast to
+the Christian faith. His father set psalms to music, his sister wrote
+madrigals, and his mother played sweet strains on a harp to waken him at
+morningtide. The entire household united in a devotion to poetry and art.
+Possibly this atmosphere of high thinking was too rarefied for real
+comfort&mdash;the gravity of the situation being sustained only by a stern
+effort.</p>
+
+<p>But no matter&mdash;father, mother and sister joined hands to make the pale,
+handsome boy a prodigy of learning: one that would surprise the world and
+leave his impress on the time.</p>
+
+<p>And they succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>Of the three Milton children that passed away in childhood, I can not but
+think that they succumbed to overtraining, being crammed quite after the
+German custom of stuffing geese so as to produce that delicious diseased
+tidbit known to gourmets as pate de foies gras. John Milton stood the
+cramming process like a true hero. His parents set him apart for the
+Church&mdash;therefore he must be learned in books, familiar with languages,
+<a name='V_Page_122'></a>versed in theories. They desired that he should have knowledge, which
+they did not know is quite a different thing from wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>So the boy had a private tutor in Greek and Latin at nine years of age,
+and even then began to write verse. At ten years of age his father had the
+lad's portrait painted by that rare and thrifty Dutchman, Cornelius
+Jansen. We have this picture now, and it reveals the pale, grave, winsome
+face with the flowing curls that we so easily recognize.</p>
+
+<p>No expense or pains were spared in the boy's education. The time was
+divided up for him as the hours are for a soldier. One tutor after another
+took him in hand during the day; but the change of study and a glad
+respite of an hour in the morning and the same in the afternoon, for
+music, bore him up.</p>
+
+<p>He was the pride of his parents, the delight of his tutors.</p>
+
+<p>Three years were spent at Saint Paul's School; then he was sent to
+Cambridge. From there he wrote to his mother, &quot;I am penetrating into the
+inmost recesses of the Muses; climbing high Olympus, visiting the green
+pastures of Parnassus, and drinking deep from Pierian Springs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This is terrible language for a child of fourteen. A boy who should talk
+like that now would be regarded with anxious concern by his loving
+parents. The present age is incredulous of the Infant Phenomenon. And no
+<a name='V_Page_123'></a>fond parent must for a moment imagine that by following the system laid
+out for the education of John Milton can a John Milton be produced. The
+Miltonian curriculum, if used today, would be sufficient ground for action
+on the part of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.</p>
+
+<p>But John Milton, though but a weak-eyed boy with a chronic headache, had a
+deal of whipcord fiber in his make-up. He stood the test and grubbed at
+his books every night until the clock tolled twelve. He was born at a
+peculiar time, being a child of the Reformation married to the
+Renaissance. The toughness and grimness of Calvin were united in him with
+the tenderness of Erasmus. From out of the Universal Energy, of which we
+are particles, he had called into his being qualities so diverse that they
+seemed never to have been before or since united in one person.</p>
+
+<p>He remained at Cambridge seven years. The beauty of his countenance had
+increased so that he was as one set apart. His finely chiseled features,
+framed in their flowing curls, challenged the admiration of every person
+he met. A writer of the time described him as &quot;a grave and sober person,
+but one not wholly ignorant of his own parts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There is a sly touch in this sentence that sheds light upon &quot;The Lady of
+Christ's.&quot; John Milton was a bit of a poseur, as Schopenhauer declares all
+great men are and ever have been. With the masterly mind goes <a name='V_Page_124'></a>a touch of
+the fakir or charlatan. Milton knew his power&mdash;he gloried in this bright
+blade of the intellect. He was handsome&mdash;and he knew it. And yet we will
+not cavil at his velvet coats, or laces, or the golden chain that adorned
+his slender, shapely person. These things were only the transient,
+springtime adornments that passion puts forth.</p>
+
+<p>And yet I see that one writer mentions the chaste and ascetic quality of
+Milton's early life as proof of a cold and measured nature. Seemingly the
+writer does not know that intense feeling often finds a gratification in
+asceticism, and that vows of chastity are proof of passion. There are many
+ways of working off one's surplus energy&mdash;Milton was married to his work.
+He traversed the vast fields of Classic Literature, read in the original
+from Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, French, Spanish, Latin and Italian. He delved
+into abstruse mathematics, studied music as a science, and labored at
+theology. In fact, he came to know so much of all religions that he had
+faith in none. He seemed to view religion in the cold, calculating light
+of a syllogistic problem&mdash;not as a warm, pulsing motive in life. His real
+religion was music, a fact he once frankly acknowledged.</p>
+
+<p>On the pinions of music he was carried out and away beyond the boundaries
+of time and space, and there he found that rest for his soul, without
+which he would have sunk to earth and been covered by the kindly, drifting
+leaves of oblivion.</p><a name='V_Page_125'></a>
+
+<p>For some, the secrets of music, the wonder of love, and the misty,
+undefined prayers of the soul constitute true religion. When you place a
+creed in a crucible and afterward study the particles on a slide encased
+in balsam, you are apt to get a residuum or something&mdash;a something that
+does not satisfy the heart.</p>
+
+<p>Milton got well acquainted with theology. It was interesting, but not what
+he had supposed. He came to regard the Church as a useful part of the
+Government&mdash;divine, of course, as all good things are divine. But to
+become a priest and play a part&mdash;he would not do it. He was
+honest&mdash;stubbornly honest.</p>
+
+<p>Seven years he had been at Cambridge, and now that he was just ready to
+step into a &quot;living&quot;&mdash;right in the line of promotion of which his beauty
+and intellect tokened a sure presage&mdash;he balked.</p>
+
+<p>It was a great blow to his parents. His mother pleaded; his father
+threatened; but they soon perceived that this son they had brought forth
+had a will stronger than theirs. Their fond dreams of his preferment&mdash;the
+handsome face of their boy above an oaken pulpit, with thousands feeding
+on his words, the public honors, and all that&mdash;faded away into tears and
+misty nothingness. But parenthood is doomed to disappointment&mdash;it does not
+endure long enough to see the end. Youth is so headstrong and wilful: it
+will not learn from the experience of others.</p>
+
+<p>And all these years of preparation and expense! Better <a name='V_Page_126'></a>had he died and
+been laid to rest with the three now in the churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>Before Milton had served his seven years' apprenticeship at Cambridge, his
+parents moved to the village of Horton&mdash;twenty miles out of London,
+Windsor way.</p>
+
+<p>The village of Horton has not changed much with the years, and a tramp
+across the fields from Eton by way of Burnham Beeches and Stoke Pogis,
+where Gray wrote &quot;The Elegy,&quot; is quite worth while. It is a land of lazy
+woods, and winding streams and hedgerows melodious with birds. One treads
+on storied ground, and if you wish you can recline beneath gnarled old
+oaks where Milton mused and scribbled, and wrote the first draft of &quot;L'
+Allegro&quot; and &quot;Il Penseroso.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Milton loitered here at Horton for six years, and in that time produced
+just six poems.</p>
+
+<p>He was thirty-two years of age, and had never earned a sixpence. But what
+booted it! His father and mother's home was his: they gladly supplied his
+every want; and his mother, especially, was ever his kindly critic and
+most intimate friend. His days were spent in study, dreams, lonely walks
+across green fields, and homecomings when, with his mother's hand in his,
+he would talk or recite to her in order to clarify the thought that
+pressed upon him. Very calm, very peaceful and very beautiful were those
+days. &quot;The pensive attitude of mind brings the best result&mdash;not the
+active,&quot; he used to say. It was then he wrote to his old friend,<a name='V_Page_127'></a> Diodati:
+&quot;You asked what I am about&mdash;what I am thinking of? Why, with God's help, I
+am thinking of immortality. Forgive the word, it is for your ear alone&mdash;I
+am pluming my wings for flight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The good mother had misty, prophetic visions of what this flight might be,
+and had ceased to counsel her son against the sin of idleness. But she did
+not live to see her prophecies confirmed, for in this time of peace and
+love, when the vibrant air was filled with hope, she passed Beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Long years after, John Milton exclaimed, &quot;Oh! Why could she not have lived
+to know!&quot; And the poignant grief of this son, then a man in years (with
+his thirtieth birthday well behind), turned on the thought that he had
+disappointed Her&mdash;the mother who had loved him into being.</p><a name='V_Page_128'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Milton's woes began with his marriage&mdash;they have given rise to nearly as
+much discussion as his poetry. In his &quot;Defensio Secunda,&quot; he tells, with a
+touch of pride, of the absolute innocency that continued until his
+thirty-fifth year. When we consider how his combined innocence and
+ignorance plunged him into a sudden marriage with a bit of pink-and-white
+protoplasm, aged seventeen, we can not but regret that he had not devoted
+a little of his valuable time to a study of femininity. And in some way we
+think of Thackeray, when he was being shown the marvelous works of a
+certain amateur artist. &quot;Look at that! look at that!&quot; cried the zealous
+guide, &quot;and he never had a lesson in art in his life!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thackeray adjusted his glasses, looked at the picture carefully, sighed
+and said, &quot;What a pity he didn't have just a little good instruction!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Milton the student, versed in abstractions and full of learned lore, went
+up the Thames seeking a little needed rest. Five miles from Oxford lived
+an ebb-tide aristocratic family by the name of Powell. Milton had long
+known this family, and, it seems, decided to tarry with them a day or so.
+Just why he sought their company no one ever knew, and Milton was too
+proud to tell. The brown thrush, rival of the lark and mockingbird, seldom
+seeks the society of the blue jay. But it did this time. The Powells were
+a roaring, riotous, roystering, fox-hunting, genteel, but reduced family,
+<a name='V_Page_129'></a>on the eve of bankruptcy, with marriageable daughters.</p>
+
+<p>The executive functions of love-making are best carried on by shallow
+people; so mediocre women often show rare skill in courtship, and
+sometimes succeed in bagging big game. But surely Mary Powell had no
+conception of the greatness of Milton's intellect&mdash;she only knew that he
+was handsome, and her parents said he was rich.</p>
+
+<p>There was feasting and mirth when Milton arrived back in town accompanied
+by his bride and various of her kinsmen. In all marriage festivals there
+is something pathetically absurd, and I never see a sidewalk awning spread
+without thinking of the one erected for John Milton and Mary Powell, who
+were led through it by an Erebus that was not only blind, but stone-deaf.</p>
+
+<p>John Milton was an ascetic, and lived in a realm of reverie and dreams;
+his wife had a strong bias toward the voluptuous, reveling in a world of
+sense, and demanding attention as her right. Milton began diving into his
+theories and books, and forgot the poor child who had no abstract world
+into which to withdraw. Suddenly bereft of the gay companionship that her
+father's house supplied, she felt herself aggrieved, alone; and tears of
+vexation and homesickness began to stream down her pretty cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>When summoned into her husband's presence she had nothing to say, and
+Milton, the theorist, discovered that what he had mistaken for the natural
+reticence <a name='V_Page_130'></a>and bashfulness of maidenhood was mere inanity and lack of
+ideas. But the loneliness of the poor country girl, shut up in a student's
+den, is a deal more touching than the scholar's wail about &quot;the silent and
+insensate&quot; wife. The girl was being deprived of the rollicking freedom to
+which she had been used, but the great man was waking the echoes with his
+wail for a companionship he had never known.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the girl was shrewd. All women are shrewd, I am told, and some are
+wise and some are not; and many women there be who consider finesse an
+improvement on frankness. At the end of a month, Milton's wife contrived
+to have her parents send for her to return home on a visit that was to
+last only until come Michaelmas. But Michaelmas arrived and the young
+bride refused to return, sending back saucy answers to the great author of
+&quot;Il Penseroso.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Milton wrote pamphlets urging that divorce should be
+granted on the grounds of incompatibility, and pronouncing as inhuman the
+laws that gave freedom from marital woes on no less ignoble grounds than
+that a man should violate his honor.</p>
+
+<p>There is pretty good evidence that a part of Milton's argument on the
+subject of divorce was written out while his wife was under his roof. This
+reveals a slight lack of delicacy as well as the author's habit to make
+copy out of his private griefs; but it must be granted that Milton goes to
+the very bottom of the subject, <a name='V_Page_131'></a>even to stating the fact that those
+happily married have neither pity nor patience with those mismated. &quot;If
+you want sympathy,&quot; he says, &quot;you must go to those who are regarded as not
+respectable,&quot; Any man who writes on philosophy can find his every cue in
+Plato, and he who discusses divorce from a radical standpoint can find
+himself anticipated by Milton in the Seventeenth Century. Every view is
+taken, even down to the suggestion of a probationary marriage, which
+Milton thought might come about when civilization had ceased to crawl and
+begun to walk.</p>
+
+<p>One seeks in vain to learn if the unhappy wife of Milton ever read her
+husband's bitter tracts. It is probable she never did, and would not have
+comprehended their import if she had; and it is still more likely that she
+never came to realize that she was wedded to the greatest man of the age.
+A truce was patched up, on the bankruptcy of her father, and she came back
+penitent, and was taken into favor. Not only did she come back, but she
+brought her family; and the ravenous Royalists consumed the substance of
+the spiritual and ascetic Puritan.</p>
+
+<p>Had Milton then died, it is probable that the gladsome widow would have
+been consoled and married again very shortly, just as did the widows of
+Van Dyck and Rubens&mdash;not knowing that to have been the wife of a king was
+honor enough for one woman.</p>
+
+<p>But after fifteen years of domestic &quot;neglect,&quot; during <a name='V_Page_132'></a>which she doubtless
+benefited her husband by stirring in him a noble discontent, she passed
+from earth; and it was left for John Milton to repeat twice more his
+marital venture, with a similar result. And in this, Fate sends back a
+fact that leers like Mephistopheles, by way of answer to Milton's
+pamphlets on divorce: Why should the State grant a divorce, when great men
+refuse to learn by experience, and, given the opportunity, only repeat the
+blunders they have already made?</p><a name='V_Page_133'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>God in His goodness has in certain instances sent great men angels of
+light for assistants&mdash;mates who could comprehend and sympathize with their
+ideals. But it is expecting too much to suppose that Nature can look out
+for such a trifle as that the right man should marry the right woman.
+Nature possibly never considered a time-contract, and she is a careless
+jade, anyway. She moves blindly along with never a thought for the
+individual.</p>
+
+<p>Audubon the naturalist records that one-third of all birds hatched tumble
+out of the nest before they can fly, and once on the ground the parent
+birds are unable either to warm, feed or protect them.</p>
+
+<p>Read the lives of the Great Men who have lived during the past three
+thousand years, and listen closely, and you will hear the wild wail of
+neglected and unappreciated wives. A woman can forgive a beating, but to
+be forgotten&mdash;never. She hates, by instinct, an austere and self-contained
+character. Dignity and pride repel her; preoccupation keeps her aloof;
+concentration on an idea is unforgivable.</p>
+
+<p>The wife of Tolstoy seeking to have her husband adjudged insane is not a
+rare instance in the lives of thinkers. To think thoughts that are
+different from the thoughts one's neighbors think is surely good reason
+why the man should be looked after. Recently we have had evidence that the
+wife of Victor Hugo regarded the author of &quot;Les Miserables&quot; with
+suspicion, and at <a name='V_Page_134'></a>one time actually made preparations to let him enjoy
+his exile alone&mdash;she would go back to Paris and enjoy life as every one
+should. At Guernsey there was no society!</p>
+
+<p>When Isaac Newton called upon his ladylove and in a fit of abstraction,
+looking about for a utensil to push the tobacco down in his pipe, chanced
+upon the lady's little finger, the law of gravitation was abrogated at
+once, and Newton and his pipe were sent, like nebul&aelig; whirling into space.</p>
+
+<p>When the Great Inventor, absorbed in a problem as to Electricity (that
+thing which to us is only a name and of which we know nothing), forgets
+home, wife, child, supper; and midnight finds him in his laboratory, where
+he has been since sunrise&mdash;just imagine, if you please, the shrill
+greeting that is in cold storage for him when he stumbles home, haggard
+and worn, at dawn. How can he explain why he did this thing and answer the
+questions as to who was there, and what good it all did anyway!</p>
+
+<p>Thought is a torture, and requires such a concentration of energy that
+there is nothing left for the soft courtesies of marriage. The day is
+fleeting, and the night cometh when no man can work. The hot impulse to
+grasp and materialize the dream ere it fades, is strong upon the man.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he is selfish&mdash;he sacrifices everything, as Palissy did when
+fuel was short and the clay just at the turning-point. Yes, the artist is
+selfish: he sacrifices <a name='V_Page_135'></a>his wife and society, and himself, too, to get the
+work done. Four-o'clocks, mealtime, bedtime, and all the household system
+as to pink teas, calls and etiquette, stand for naught. And down the
+corridors of Time comes to us the shrill wail of neglected wives, and the
+crash of broken hearts echoes like the sound of a painter falling through
+a skylight. All this is the price of achievement.</p><a name='V_Page_136'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Making a little look backward into Milton's life, we find that until his
+thirty-third year he had not tasted of practical life at all. About that
+time his father, in a sort of desperation, packed him off to the
+Continent, in charge of a trusty attendant, who acted in the dual capacity
+of servant and friend. The letters he carried to influential men in Paris,
+Florence, Venice and Rome secured him the Speaker's eye, and his beauty
+and learning did the rest. His march was that of a conquering hero. In
+Paris he surprised the savants by addressing them in their own tongue, and
+reciting from their chief writers. This was repeated in Italy; and at
+Florence, as a sort of half-challenge for permission to occupy the highest
+seat, he was invited to read from his own compositions, which he did with
+such grace and power that thereafter all doors flew open at his touch.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to England after an absence of fifteen months, he found his
+father's household broken up, and through bad investments, the family
+fortune sadly depleted. But travel had added cubits to his stature: the
+mixture with men had put him into possession of his own, and he now felt
+well able to cope with the world. He secured modest lodgings in Saint
+Bride's Churchyard, and set to work to make a living and a name by
+authorship. His head teemed with subjects for poems, but cash advances
+were not forthcoming from publishers, and, to bridge over, he tried
+tutoring.</p><a name='V_Page_137'></a>
+
+<p>It was at this time that &quot;Paradise Lost,&quot; the one matchless epic of
+English literature, was conceived. Rough jottings were made as to
+divisions and heads, and a few stanzas were written of the immortal poem
+that was not to be completed for a score of years.</p>
+
+<p>The first volume of Milton's poems was issued in Sixteen Hundred
+Forty-five, when he was thirty-seven years of age. But before this he was
+known as the author of some pamphlets which had made political London
+reel. The writer was at once seen to be a man of remarkable learning and
+marvelous intellect, and the work secured Milton a few friends and divers
+enemies.</p>
+
+<p>From a man of leisure Milton had suddenly become a worker, whose every
+daylight hour was crammed with duties. His skill as a teacher brought him
+all the pupils he cared for, and he moved into better quarters in
+Aldersgate. He was immersed in his work, was making valuable acquaintances
+among literary people, was revered by his pupils, and the happiness was
+his of knowing that he was influential and independent. A fine
+intoxication comes to every brain-worker when the world acknowledges with
+tangible remittances that the product of his mind has a value on the
+Rialto. Such was Milton's joy in Sixteen Hundred Forty-three.</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;Comus,&quot; &quot;Il Penseroso,&quot; &quot;L'Allegro&quot; and &quot;Lycidas&quot; had established his
+place as a poet; and the power of his pen had been proven in sundry
+religious and political controversies.</p><a name='V_Page_138'></a>
+
+<p>In his household were two sons of his sister and several other pupils who
+had sought his tutorship. He was contented in his work, pleased and happy
+with the young friends who sat at his board, and in an hour or two
+snatched each day from toil, for music and reverie.</p><a name='V_Page_139'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Seize upon the moments as they fly, O John Milton, and hug them to your
+heart! Those were days of gold when your mother was your patient listener
+and friend. Her love enveloped you as an aura; and her voice, soft and
+low, upheld you when courage faltered. But these, too, are glorious
+days&mdash;days full of work, and health, and hope, and high endeavor. But
+these days of peace and freedom are the last you shall ever know. Even now
+they flee as a shadow and fade into mist! Gross stupidity, silent and
+insensate, sits waiting for you at the door; calumny is near; taunting
+hate comes riding fast!</p>
+
+<p>The sympathy for which you yearn shall be yours only in dreams, and you
+shall be cheated of all the tenderness for which your heart prays. The
+love and gentleness which you associate with your mother, you ascribe in
+innocence and ignorance to all women; but Fate shall undeceive you, O John
+Milton, and make mock of all your high ideals. You dote on liberty, but
+liberty is not for you. You shall see the funeral of the Republic; the
+defamation of your honor; the proscription of all the sacred things you
+prize. Your companions shall not be of your own choosing, but shall be
+those who neither know nor value the sweet, subtle mintage of the mind.
+Around you mad riot shall surge, a hatred for liberty shall prevail&mdash;an
+enthusiasm for slavery. The glorious leaders of your Puritan faith shall
+be condemned and executed, hanged, cut down <a name='V_Page_140'></a>from the gallows alive, and
+quartered amid the hoarse insults of the people they sought to serve; and
+you yourself shall be hunted like a wild beast. You shall see the prisons
+filled to overflowing with men and women whose only crime was their love
+for truth. And a libertine shall sit on the throne of the England that you
+love. These things you shall see with those mild, dark eyes, and then
+night, eternal night, shall settle down upon you; and for those idle orbs
+no day shall dawn nor starry night appear, nor face of man nor child shall
+be reflected there. Your sightlessness shall give those who owe you
+gratitude and love, opportunity to filch your gold; and, lastly, fire
+shall rob you of your books, and well-nigh all your treasures.</p>
+
+<p>Like another Lear, your daughters shall neither esteem nor respect you,
+and the lines you dictate shall be to them but the idle vaporings of a
+mind diseased. Your acute ears shall hear these daughters express the wish
+that you were dead; and then in your blindness you will give yourself into
+the keeping of a woman as dull, inane and unfeeling as the foolish child
+you first chose as wife. But with it all your obstinacy shall constitute
+your power; and that beauty which was yours in youth shall be with you to
+the last. You shall feel all the torments of the damned and become inured
+to the scorching flames of hell! But, as recompense, the splendors of the
+Celestial Kingdom shall open upon your inward vision, and your soul shall
+<a name='V_Page_141'></a>behold that which the eyes of earth have lost. Something great and proud
+shall go out from your presence to all the discerning ones who shall
+approach you; and your end shall be like the setting of the sun, bright,
+calm, poised and resplendent.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='SAMUEL_JOHNSON'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_142'></a><a name='V_Page_143'></a>SAMUEL JOHNSON</h2>
+
+<a name='V_Page_144'></a>
+<div class='blkquot'><p>* * * Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in
+    your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which
+    time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which
+    it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the
+    verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of
+    encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not
+    expect, for I never had a patron before.</p>
+
+<p>    The shepherd in Vergil grew at last acquainted with Love, and
+    found him a native of the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>    Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+    struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the
+    ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been
+    pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind;
+    but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and can not enjoy
+    it; till I am a solitary, and can not impart it; till I am known,
+    and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to
+    confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be
+    unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a
+    patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.</p>
+
+<p>    Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to
+    any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I
+    should conclude it, should less be possible, with less; for I
+    have been long wakened from that dream of hope in which I once
+    boasted myself with so much exultation, my Lord.</p></div>
+
+<span style='margin-left: 17em;'>Your Lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,</span><br />
+<span style='margin-left: 37.5em;'>&mdash;<i>Sam Johnson</i></span><br />
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-6.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-6-th.jpg" alt="SAMUEL JOHNSON"></a></p><p class="ctr">SAMUEL JOHNSON</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>The critics, I believe, have made a distinction between large men and
+great men.</p>
+
+<p>Samuel Johnson was both. He was massive in intellect, colossal in culture,
+prodigious in memory, weighed nigh three hundred pounds, and had
+prejudices to match. He was possessed of a giant's strength, and
+occasionally used it like a giant&mdash;for instance, when he felled an
+offending bookseller with a folio.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson was most unfortunate in his biographer. In picturing the great
+writer, Boswell writes more entertainingly than Johnson ever did, and
+thereby overtops his subject. And when in reply to the intimation that
+Boswell was going to write his life, Johnson answered, &quot;If I really
+thought he was, I would take his,&quot; he spoke a jest in earnest.</p>
+
+<p>Walking along Market Street in the city of Saint Louis, with a friend, not
+long ago, my comrade suddenly stopped and excitedly pointed out a man
+across the way&mdash;&quot;Look quick&mdash;there he goes!&quot; exclaimed my friend, &quot;that
+man with the derby and duster&mdash;see? That's the husband of Mrs. Lease of
+Kansas!&quot; And all I could say was, &quot;God help him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Not but that Mrs. Lease is a most excellent and <a name='V_Page_146'></a>amiable lady; but the
+idea of a man, made in the image of his Maker, being reduced to the social
+state of a drone-bee is most depressing.</p>
+
+<p>Among that worthy class of people referred to somewhat ironically as &quot;the
+reading public,&quot; Boswell is read, but Johnson never. And so sternly true
+is the fact that many critics, set on a hair-trigger, aver that were it
+not for Boswell no one would now know that a writer by the name of Johnson
+ever lived. Yet the fact is, Boswell ruined the literary reputation of
+Johnson by intimating that Johnson wrote Johnsonese; but that is a
+mistake.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson never wrote Johnsonese. The piling up of reasons, the cumulation
+of argument&mdash;setting off epigram against epigram&mdash;that mark Johnson's
+literary style are its distinguishing features. He is profound, but always
+lucid. And lucidity is just what modern Johnsonese lacks. The word was
+coined by a man who had neither the patience to read Johnson nor the
+ability to comprehend him. Only sophomores, and private secretaries who
+write speeches for able Congressmen, write Johnsonese.</p>
+
+<p>Quibblers possibly may arise and present Johnson's definition of
+network&mdash;&quot;anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances with
+interstices between the intersections&quot;&mdash;but with the quibbler we have no
+time to dally. Some people insist on having their literature illustrated,
+just as others refuse to attend <a name='V_Page_147'></a>lectures that are not reinforced by a
+stereopticon.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson had a style that is stately, dignified, splendid. It moves from
+point to point with absolute precision, and in it there is seldom anything
+ambiguous, muddy, confused or uncertain. Get down a volume of &quot;Lives of
+the Poets,&quot; and prove my point for yourself, by opening at any page. It
+was Boswell who set his own light, chatty and amusing gossip over against
+the wise, stately diction of Johnson, and allowed Goldsmith to say, &quot;Dear
+Doctor, if you were to write a story about little fishes, you would make
+them talk like whales,&quot; and the mud ball has stuck. The average man is
+much more willing to take the wily Boswell's word for it than to read
+Johnson for himself.</p>
+
+<p>The balanced power of Johnson's English can not fail to delight the
+student of letters who cares to interest himself in the matter of
+sentence-building. Johnson handles a thought with such ease! He makes you
+think of the circus &quot;strong man&quot; who tosses the cannon-ball, marked
+&quot;weight 250 lbs.&quot; What if the balls are sometimes only wood painted black!
+Have we not been entertained? Read this specimen paragraph:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very
+small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by Nature upon
+few, and the labor of learning those sciences which may by continuous
+effort be obtained is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can
+exert such judgment as he <a name='V_Page_148'></a>has upon the works of others; and he whom
+Nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his
+vanity by the name of 'critic,'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the greatest literary light of his day has been thrown into the shadow
+by a man whom no one suspected of being able to write entertainingly. In
+the world of letters the great Cham exists only as a lesser luminary; just
+as the once-noted novelist, George Henry Lewes, is now known only as the
+husband of George Eliot.</p>
+
+<p>And yet no one is so rash as to say that the name of Boswell would now be
+known were it not for Johnson. And conversely (or otherwise), if it were
+the proper place, I could show that were it not for George Henry Lewes we
+should never have had &quot;Adam Bede&quot; or &quot;The Mill on the Floss.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Boswell wrote the best &quot;Life&quot; ever written. Nothing like it was ever
+written before; nothing to equal it has been written since. It has had
+hundreds of imitators, but no competitors. Matthew Arnold said that no man
+ever had so good a subject, but Arnold for the moment seemed to forget
+that Hawkins, a professional literary man, published his &quot;Life of Johnson&quot;
+long before Boswell's was sent to the printer&mdash;and who reads Hawkins?</p>
+
+<p>Surely Boswell had a great subject, and he rises to the level of his theme
+and makes the most of it. At times I have wondered if Boswell were not
+really a genius <a name='V_Page_149'></a>so great and profound that he was willing to play the
+fool, as Edgar in &quot;Lear&quot; plays the maniac, and allow himself to be snubbed
+(in print) in order to make his telling point! Millionaires can well
+afford to wear ragged coats. Second-rate man Boswell may have been, as he
+himself so oft admits, yet as a biographer he stands first in the front
+rank. But suppose his extreme ignorance was only the domino disguising a
+cleverness so subtle that it was not discovered until after his death! And
+what if he smiles now, as from out of Elysium he looks and beholds how, as
+a writer, he has eclipsed old Ursa Major, and thus clipped the claws that
+were ready for any chance Scot who might pass that way!</p>
+
+<p>John Hay has suggested that possibly the insight, piquancy and calm wisdom
+of Omar Khayyam are two-thirds essence of FitzGerald. If so, the joke is
+on Omar, not on FitzGerald.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen of Johnson's contemporaries wrote about him, and all make him out
+a profound scholar, a deep philosopher, a facile writer. Boswell by his
+innocent quoting and recounting makes his conversation outstrip all of his
+other accomplishments. He reveals the man by the most skilful indirection,
+and by leaving his guard down, often allows the reader to score a point.
+And of all devices of writing folk, none is finer than to please the
+reader by allowing him to pat himself on the back.</p>
+
+<p>If a writer is too clever he repels. Shakespeare avoids the difficulty,
+and proves himself the master by keeping <a name='V_Page_150'></a>out of sight; Renan wins by a
+great show of modesty and deferential fairness; Boswell assumes an
+artlessness and ignorance that were really not parts of his nature. Every
+man who reads Boswell considers himself the superior of Boswell, and
+therefore is perfectly at home. It is not pleasant to be in the society of
+those who are much your superiors. Any man who sits in the company of
+Samuel Pepys for a half-hour feels a sort of half-patronizing pity for
+him, and therefore is happy, for to patronize is bliss.</p>
+
+<p>If Boswell has reinforced fact with fiction, and given us art for truth,
+then his character of Samuel Johnson is the most vividly conceived and
+deeply etched in all the realm of books. But if he gives merely the simple
+facts, then Boswell is no less a genius, for he has omitted the irrelevant
+and inconsequential, and by playing off the excellent against the absurd,
+he has placed his subject among the few great wits who have ever lived&mdash;a
+man who wrote remarkably well, but talked infinitely better.</p><a name='V_Page_151'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Montaigne advises young men that if they will fall in love, why, to fall
+in love with women older than themselves. His argument is that a young and
+pretty woman makes such a demand on a man's time and attention that she is
+sure, eventually, to wear love to the warp. So the wise old Gascon
+suggests that it is the part of wisdom to give your affection to one who
+is both plain and elderly&mdash;one who is not suffering from a surfeit of
+love, and one whose head has not been turned by flattery. &quot;Young women,&quot;
+says the philosopher, &quot;demand attention as their right and often flout the
+giver; whereas old women are very grateful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whether Samuel Johnson, of Lichfield, ever read Montaigne or not is a
+question; but this we know, that when he was twenty-six he married the
+Widow Porter, aged forty-nine.</p>
+
+<p>Assuming that Johnson had read Montaigne and was mindful of his advice,
+there were other excellent reasons why he did not link his fortunes with
+those of a young and pretty woman.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson in his youth, as well as throughout life, was a Grind of the pure
+type. The Grind is a fixture, a few being found at every University, even
+unto this day. The present writer, once in a book of fiction, founded on
+fact, took occasion to refer to the genus Grind, with Samuel Johnson in
+mind, as follows: He is poor in purse, but great in frontal development.</p><a name='V_Page_152'></a>
+
+<p>He goes to school because he wishes to (no one ever &quot;sent&quot; a Grind to
+college). He has a sallow skin, a watery eye, a shambling gait, but he has
+the facts. His clothes are outgrown, his coat shiny, his linen a dull
+ecru, his hands clammy. He reads a book as he walks, and when he bumps
+into you, he always exculpates himself in Attic Greek.</p>
+
+<p>This absent-mindedness and habit of reading on the street affords the
+Sport (another college type) great opportunity for the playing of pranks.
+It is very funny to walk along in front of a Grind who is reading as he
+walks, and then suddenly stop and stoop, and let the Grind fall over you;
+for the innocent Grind, thinking he has been at fault, is ever profuse in
+apologies.</p>
+
+<p>Many years ago there was a Grind. A party of Sports saw him approaching,
+deeply immersed in his book. &quot;Look you,&quot; quoth the chief of the
+Sports&mdash;&quot;look you and observe him fall over me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And they looked.</p>
+
+<p>Onward blindly trudged the Grind, reading as he came. The Sport stepped
+ahead of him, stooped, and &mdash;&mdash; one big foot of the Grind shot out and
+kicked him into the gutter. Then the Grind continued his walk and his
+reading without saying a word.</p>
+
+<p>This incident is here recorded for the betterment of the Young, to show
+them that things are not always what they seem.</p>
+
+<p>Samuel Johnson, I have said, was a Grind of the pure <a name='V_Page_153'></a>type. He was so
+nearsighted that he fell over chairs in drawing-rooms, and so awkward that
+his long arms occasionally brushed the bric-a-brac from mantels. No lady's
+train was safe if he was in the room. At gatherings of young people, if
+Johnson appeared, his presence was at once the signal for mirth, of which
+he was, of course, the unconscious object.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson's face was scarred by the King's Evil, which even the touch of
+Queen Anne had failed to cure. While a youth he talked aloud to himself&mdash;a
+privilege that should be granted only to those advanced in years. He would
+grunt out prayers and expletives at uncertain times, keep up a clucking
+sound with his tongue, sway his big body from side to side, and drum a
+tattoo upon his knee. Now and again would come a suppressed whistle, and
+then a low humming sound, backed up by a vacant non-compos-mentis smile.</p>
+
+<p>Another odd whim of Johnson's was, that he would never pass a lamp-post
+without touching it, and would go back miles upon his way to repair an
+omission. Surely great wit to madness is near allied.</p>
+
+<p>This most strange young man was a boarder in the home of Mrs. Porter, when
+her husband was alive, and the husband and boarder had been fast
+friends&mdash;drawn together by a bookish bias.</p>
+
+<p>Very naturally, when the husband passed away, the boarder sought to
+console the bereaved landlady, and the result was as usual. And when, long
+years after,<a name='V_Page_154'></a> Johnson would solemnly explain that it was a pure love-match
+on both sides, the statement never failed to excite much needless and
+ill-suppressed merriment on the part of the listeners. In mimicking the
+endearments of Johnson and his &quot;pretty creature&quot;&mdash;so the admiring husband
+called her&mdash;Garrick many years later added to his artistic reputation.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike most literary men, Johnson was domestic, and his marriage was one
+of the most happy events of his career. But to show that the philosophy of
+Montaigne is not infallible, and that all signs fail in dry weather, it
+may be stated that the bride proved by her conduct on her wedding-day that
+she had some relish of the saltness of time in her cosmos, despite her
+fifty summers and as many hard winters.</p>
+
+<p>Said Johnson to Boswell, referring to the horseback-ride home after the
+wedding-ceremony: &quot;Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into
+her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her
+lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and
+she could not keep up with me; and when I rode a little slower, she passed
+me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of
+caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on
+briskly, till I was fairly out of sight. The road lay between two hedges,
+so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon
+come up with me. When she did I observed her to be in tears.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_155'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Shortly after his marriage, Johnson opened a private school for boys. To
+operate a private school successfully implies a certain amount of skill in
+the management of parents; but Johnson's uncouth manners and needlessly
+blunt speech were appalling to those who had children who might possibly
+be given to imitation.</p>
+
+<p>Only three pupils were secured, and but one of these received any benefit
+from the tutor; and this benefit came, according to the scholar, from the
+master's supplying an excellent object for ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>This pupil's name was David Garrick.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting with David Garrick was a pivotal point in the life of Johnson.
+Johnson's mental and spiritual existence flowed on, separate and apart
+from that of his wife. There was no meeting of the waters. His affection
+for her was most tender and constant, but in quality it seemed to differ
+but slightly from the sentiment he entertained toward &quot;Hodge,&quot; his cat.</p>
+
+<p>Hodge was fed on oysters that his owner could ill afford; and after
+Johnson had spent the little fortune that belonged to his wife, the lady
+was regaled on the best and choicest that his income, or credit, could
+secure. But if one of those lightning-flashes of wit ever escaped him in
+her direction, we do not know it. Garrick evidently was the first flint
+that tried his steel. The distinctions of teacher and scholar were soon
+lost between these two, and the lessons took the turn of a <a name='V_Page_156'></a>fusillade of
+wit. They made comments on the authors they read, and comments on the
+people they met, and criticized each other with encaustic remarks that
+tested friendship to its extremest limit. And this continual skirmish that
+would have made sworn foes of common men in a day revealed to each that
+the other had the element of unexpectedness in his nature and was worth
+loving.</p>
+
+<p>Humor and melancholy go hand in hand; both are born of an extreme
+sensitiveness, and the man who smiles at the trivial misfits of life
+realizes also that all men who tread the earth are living under a sentence
+of death, and that Fate has merely allowed them an indefinite, but
+limited, reprieve.</p>
+
+<p>At the outset of Johnson's career, one can not but see that the
+companionship and nimble wit of Garrick saved his ponderous and melancholy
+mind from going into bankruptcy.</p>
+
+<p>And now we find them: one twenty-eight, big, nearsighted, theoretical,
+blundering; and the other twenty-one, slight, active, graceful, practical.
+They were alike in this: they both loved books and were possessed of the
+eager, earnest, receptive mind. To possess the hospitable mind! For what
+greater blessing can one pray?</p>
+
+<p>And then they were alike in other respects&mdash;they were desperately poor;
+neither had an income; neither had a profession; both were ambitious.
+Johnson had written <a name='V_Page_157'></a>a tragedy&mdash;&quot;Irene&quot;&mdash;and he had read it to Garrick
+several times, and Garrick said it was good and should make a hit. But
+Garrick didn't know much about tragedies&mdash;law was his bent&mdash;he had read
+law for two years, off and on. They would go to London and seize fortune
+by the scalp-lock. In London good lawyers were needed, and London was the
+only place for a playwright.</p>
+
+<p>They scraped together their pennies, borrowed a few more, got a single
+letter of introduction between them to some person of unknown influence,
+and started away, with the lacrimose blessings of the elderly bride, and
+of Davy's mother.</p>
+
+<p>They must have been a queer sight when the stage let them down at the
+Strand&mdash;dusty, dirty, tired and scared by the babel of sounds and sights!
+And no doubt Johnson's enormous size saved them from sundry insults and
+divers taunts that otherwise might have come their way.</p>
+
+<p>Those first few weeks in London were given to staring into shop-windows
+and wandering, open-mouthed, up and down. No one wanted the tragedy&mdash;the
+managers all sniffed at it. Little then did Davy dream, as they made their
+way from the office of one theater-manager to that of another, that he
+himself would some day own a theater and give the discarded play its first
+setting. And little did he think that he would yet be the foremost actor
+of his time, and his awkward mate the literary dictator of London. Oh!
+this game of life is a <a name='V_Page_158'></a>great play! The blissful uncertainty of it all!
+The ambitions, plans, strivings, heartaches, mad desires and vain reaching
+out of empty arms! The tears, the bitter disappointments, the sleepless
+nights, the echoes of prayers unheard, and the hollow hopelessness of love
+turned to hate!</p>
+
+<p>And then mayhap we do as Emerson did&mdash;go out into the woods, and all the
+trees say, &quot;Why so hot, my little man?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Garrick, disappointed and undone at the thought of defeat in his chosen
+profession, turned to commercial life and then to the theater. At his
+first stage appearance he trembled with diffidence and all but fled in
+fright. He persevered, for he could do nothing else. He arose step by
+step, and honors, wealth and fame were his. Love came to him: he wedded
+the woman of his choice. And after his death she survived for forty-three
+years. She lived one hundred years, lacking two. Garrick was born in
+Seventeen Hundred Sixteen; and his wife died in Eighteen Hundred
+Twenty-two, which seems to bring the times of Johnson pretty close home to
+us. Throughout her long life, she lived in the memory of the love that had
+been hers; cherishing and protecting, idolizing, as did Mary Shelley, the
+one name and that alone.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson and Garrick thoroughly respected and admired each other, yet they
+often quarreled&mdash;they quarreled to the last. But when Davy had lain him
+down in his <a name='V_Page_159'></a>last sleep, aged sixty-three, it was Johnson, aged seventy,
+who wrote his epitaph, introducing into it the deathless sentence * * *
+&quot;by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and
+impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_160'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Three months in London and Johnson succeeded in getting a place on the
+editorial staff of &quot;The Gentleman's Magazine.&quot; Prosperity smiled, not
+exactly a broad grin; but the expression was something better than a
+stony, forbidding stare.</p>
+
+<p>He made haste to go back to Lichfield after his &quot;Letty,&quot; which name, by
+the way, is an improvement on Betty, Betsy or Tetsy&mdash;being baby-talk for
+Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>They took modest lodgings in a third floor back, off Fleet Street, and
+Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind
+condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt,
+never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky
+broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth&mdash;with the weapons of his
+dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved;
+jeered and praised; feared and idolized.</p>
+
+<p>Coming out of his burrow one dark night, he encountered an old
+beggar-woman who importuned him for alms. He was brushing past her, when
+one of her exclamations caught his ear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir,&quot; said the woman, &quot;I am an old struggler!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madam,&quot; replied Johnson, &quot;so am I!&quot; And he gave her his last sixpence.</p>
+
+<p>But life in London was cheap in those days&mdash;it is now if you know how to
+do it, or else have to. Johnson used to maintain that for thirty pounds a
+year one could <a name='V_Page_161'></a>live like a gentleman, and as proof would quote an
+imaginary acquaintance who argued that ten pounds a year for clothes would
+keep a man in good appearance; a garret could be hired for eighteen pence
+a week, and if any one asked your address you could reply, &quot;I am to be
+found in such a place,&quot; Threepence laid out at a coffeehouse would enable
+one to pass some hours a day in good company; dinner might be had for
+sixpence, and supper you could do without. On clean-shirt day you could go
+abroad and call on your lady friends. Among Johnson's first literary tasks
+in London was the work of reporting the debates in Parliament. In order
+that the best possible results might be obtained, he resorted to the
+rather unique, but not entirely original, method of not attending
+Parliament at all. Two or three young men would be sent to listen to the
+debates; they would make notes giving the general drift of the argument,
+and Johnson would write out the speech. His style was exactly suited to
+this kind of work, being eminently rhetorical. And as at the time no
+public record of proceedings was kept and Parliament did not allow the
+press the liberty it now possesses&mdash;all being as it were clouded in
+mysterious awe&mdash;these reports of debates were eagerly sought after. To
+evade the law, a fictitious name was given the speaker, or his initials
+used in such a way that the individual could be easily recognized by the
+reading public.</p>
+
+<p>Some of Johnson's best work was done at this time, <a name='V_Page_162'></a>and in several
+instances the speaker, not slow to appreciate a good thing, allowed the
+matter to be reissued as his own. Long years after, a certain man was once
+praising the speeches of Lord Chesterfield and was led on to make
+explanations. He did so, naming two speeches, one of which he zealously
+declared had the style of Cicero; the other that of Demosthenes. Johnson
+becalmed the speaker by agreeing with him as to the excellence of the
+speeches, and then adding, &quot;I wrote them both.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The gruffness of Ursa Major should never be likened to that of the Sage of
+Chelsea. Carlyle vented his spleen on the nearest object, as irate
+gentlemen sometimes kick at the cat; but Johnson merely sparred for
+points. When Miss Monckton undertook to refute his statements as to the
+shallowness of Sterne by declaring that &quot;Tristram Shandy&quot; affected her to
+tears, Johnson rolled himself into contortions, made an exasperating
+grimace, and replied, &quot;Why, dearest, that is because you are a dunce!&quot;
+Afterward, when reproached for the remark, he replied, &quot;Madam, if I had
+thought so, I surely would not have said it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Once, at the house of Garrick, to the terror of every one, Burke
+contradicted Johnson flatly, but Johnson's good sense revealed itself by
+his making no show of resentment. Burke's experience was, it must be said,
+exceptional. An equally exciting, but harmless occasion, was the only time
+that the author of &quot;Rasselas&quot;<a name='V_Page_163'></a> met the man who wrote the &quot;Wealth of
+Nations,&quot; Johnson called Adam Smith a liar, and Smith promptly handed back
+an epithet not in the Dictionary. Nevertheless, old Ursa spoke in an
+affectionate praise of &quot;Adam,&quot; as he called him thereafter, thus
+recognizing the right of the other man to be frank if he cared to be.
+Johnson wanted no privilege that he was not willing to grant to
+others&mdash;except perhaps that of dictator of opinions.</p>
+
+<p>When Blair asked Johnson if he thought any modern man could have written
+&quot;Ossian,&quot; Johnson replied, &quot;Yes, sir&mdash;many men, many women, and many
+children.&quot; And if Blair took umbrage at the remark, so much the worse for
+Blair.</p>
+
+<p>We have recently heard of the Boston lady who died and went to Heaven, and
+on being questioned by an archangel as to how she liked it, replied
+languidly, &quot;Very, very beautiful it all is!&quot; And then sighed and added,
+&quot;But it is not Boston!&quot; This story seems to illustrate that all tales have
+their prototype, for Boswell tells of taking Doctor Johnson out to
+Greenwich Park, and saying, &quot;Now, now, isn't this fine!&quot; But Johnson would
+not enthuse; he only grunted, &quot;All very fine&mdash;but it's not Fleet Street.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion when a Scotchman was dilating on the noble prospects
+to be enjoyed among the hills of Scotland, Johnson called a halt by
+saying, &quot;Sir, let me tell you that the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever
+<a name='V_Page_164'></a>sees is the highroad that leads him to England.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This seems to evince a strong prejudice toward Scotland, and several
+Scots, with their usual plentiful lack of wit, have so solemnly written it
+down. But the more sensible way is to conclude that the situation simply
+afforded opportunity for a little harmless banter.</p>
+
+<p>Another equally indisputable proof of prejudice is shown when Boswell
+tells Johnson of the wonderful preaching of a Quaker woman. Johnson
+listened in grim, cold silence and then exclaimed: &quot;Sir, a woman's
+preaching is like a dog's walking on its hind legs. It is not done well;
+but you are surprised to find it done at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One of the leading encyclopedias, I see, says, &quot;Doctor Johnson was one of
+the greatest conversationalists of all time.&quot; The writer evidently does
+not distinguish between talk, conversation and harangue. Johnson could
+talk and he often harangued; but he was not a conversationalist. Neither
+could he address a public assembly, and I do not find that he ever
+attempted it. Good talkers are seldom orators. One reads with amusement
+tinged with pity, of Carlyle's sleepless nights and cold, terror-fraught
+anticipations of his Lord Rector's speech. In deliberative gatherings a
+very small man could apply the snuffers to the great Dictator of Letters.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir,&quot; said Doctor Johnson to a talkative politician, at a dinner-party,
+&quot;I perceive you are a vile Whig,&quot; and <a name='V_Page_165'></a>then he proceeded to demolish him.
+Yet Johnson himself was a Whig, although he never knew it; just as he was
+a liberal in religion, and yet was boastful of being a stanch Churchman.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson's irritability never vented itself against the helpless. His
+charity knew no limit&mdash;not even the bottom of his purse. When he had no
+money to give, he borrowed it. And when his pension was three hundred
+pounds a year, the Thrales could not figure out that he spent more than
+seventy or eighty on himself. The rest went to his dependents. In his
+latter days his home was a regular museum of waifs and strays. There was
+Miss Williams, the ancient aristocratic spinster who came to London to
+have an operation performed on one of her eyes. She came to Johnson's home
+and remained ten years, because she had been a friend of his wife. This
+claim was enough, and she slid into the head place in Johnson's household.
+Her peevishness used to drive the old man, at times, into the street; but
+that tongue of his, with its crushing retorts, was ever silent and tender
+towards her. The poor creature became blind, and used to shock the finicky
+Boswell by testing the fulness of the teacups with her finger.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a Mrs. Desmoulins and her daughter, who drifted down from
+Lichfield and came to Johnson, because forty years before, he, too, had
+lived in Lichfield. He gave them house-room, treated them as guests, <a name='V_Page_166'></a>and
+each week left a half-guinea on the mantel of their room.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was the broken-down Levett, and Francis Barber, who, coming as
+a servant, remained as one of the family, because he was too old to work.
+A Miss Carmichael, in green spectacles and bombazine, carrying a cane,
+completed what the Doctor called his &quot;seraglio.&quot; Writing to Mrs. Thrale in
+playful mood, telling of his household troubles, he says, &quot;Williams hates
+everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins
+hates them both; Poll loves none of them.&quot; And he, the great, gruff and
+mighty Ursa Major, listened to all their woes, caring for them in
+sickness, wiping the death-dew from their foreheads, wearing crape upon
+his sleeve for them when dead.</p><a name='V_Page_167'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>This man tasted all the fame that is one man's due; he had all the money
+he needed, or knew how to use; the coveted LL.D. came from his Alma Mater;
+and the patronage from Lord Chesterfield, for which he craved, only that
+he might fling it back. He was the friend and confidant of the great and
+proud, deferred to by the King and sought out by those who prized the
+far-reaching mind and subtle imagination&mdash;the things that link us with the
+Infinite. The fear of hell and dread of death that haunted him in youth
+and middle age, finally gave way to faith and trust. When partial
+paralysis came to him at midnight, his sanity did not fail him, and
+knowing the worst, he yet hesitated to disturb the other members of the
+household, but went to sleep, philosophizing on the phenomena of the
+case&mdash;alert for more knowledge, as was his wont. Morning came and being
+speechless, he wrote on his ever-ready pad of paper and handing the sheet
+to his servant, watched with amused glances the perplexity and terror of
+the man. He next wrote to his friend, Mrs. Thrale, that letter, a classic
+of wit and resignation, wherein he explains his condition and excuses
+himself for not calling upon her and explaining the matter by word of
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Such willingness to accept the inevitable is curative. He grew better and
+recovered his speech. But old age is a disease that has no cure save
+death. Johnson accepted the issue as a brave man should&mdash;thankful for <a name='V_Page_168'></a>the
+gift of conscious life that had been his. When the last hour was nigh he
+sent loving messages to his nearest friends, repeating their names over
+one by one. His last recorded words were directed to a young woman who
+called upon him, &quot;God bless you, my dear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And so he passed painlessly and quietly into the sleep that knows no
+waking; pleased at last to know that his dust would rest in Westminster
+Abbey.</p>
+
+<p>Thus ended, as the day dies out of the western sky, this life, seemingly
+so full of tempest and contradiction. The autumn of his life was full of
+enjoyment, and no day passed but that some one, weak, weary and worn,
+arose and called him blessed. Most of his wild imprecations and blustering
+contradictions were reserved for those who fattened on such things, and
+who came to be tossed and gored. In his spirit Socrates and Falstaff
+joined hands. In his life there was a deal of gladness&mdash;far, far more than
+of misery and unrest; which fact I believe is true of every life.</p>
+
+<p>The Universe seems planned for good.</p>
+
+<p>A world made up of such men as Samuel Johnson would be a wild chaos of
+tasks undone. But since Nature has never sent but one such man, and more
+than a century has passed since his death and we know not yet with whom to
+compare him, we need have no fears. The world is held in place through the
+opposition of forces: and the body of every healthy man is the
+battle-ground of animal organisms that match strength <a name='V_Page_169'></a>against strength.
+So, too, a healthy society always has these active and sturdy organisms,
+which set in play other forces that hold in check their seeming excess.
+That the Divine Energy should incarnate itself and find expression in the
+form of a man, and that this man should inspire others to think and write,
+to do and dare, is a subject the contemplation of which should make us
+stand uncovered. The companionship of Johnson inspired Reynolds to better
+painting, Garrick to stronger acting, Burke to more profound thinking&mdash;and
+hundreds of others, too, quenched their thirst at the rock which he smote
+whenever he discoursed or wrote.</p>
+
+<p>Sympathy is the first essential to insight. So with sympathy, I pray,
+behold this blundering giant, and you will see that the basis of his
+character was a great Sincerity. He was honest&mdash;doggedly honest&mdash;and saw
+with flashing vision the thing that was; and thither he followed,
+crowding, pushing, knocking down whatsoever opinion or prejudice was in
+the way. And so he ever struggled forward. But hate him not, for he is thy
+brother&mdash;yea! he is brother to all who strive and reach forward toward the
+Ideal. Shining through dust and disorder, now victorious, now eclipsed in
+deepest gloom, in him is the light of genius; and this is never base, but
+at the worst is admirable, lovable with pity. There was pride in his
+heart, but no vanity; and he should be loved for this if for no other
+reason: he had the courage to make an enemy. In his great heart were <a name='V_Page_170'></a>wild
+burstings of affection, and a hunger for love that only the grave
+requited. There, too, were fierce flashes of wrath, smothered in an hour
+by the soft dew of pity. His faults and follies were manifold, as he often
+lamented with tears; but the soul of the man was sublime in its
+qualities&mdash;worldwide in its influence.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='THOMAS_B_MACAULAY'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_171'></a>THOMAS B. MACAULAY</h2>
+
+<a name='V_Page_172'></a>
+<div class='blkquot'><p>The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and
+    spirit of the age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact,
+    he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not
+    authenticated by sufficient testimony. But by judicious
+    selection, rejection and arrangement, he gives to truth those
+    attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative
+    a due subordination is observed: some transactions are prominent;
+    others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is
+    increased or diminished, not according to the dignity of the
+    persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which
+    they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man.</p></div>
+
+<span style='margin-left: 30em;'>&mdash;<i>Essay on History</i></span><br />
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-7.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-7-th.jpg" alt="THOMAS MACAULAY"></a></p><p class="ctr">THOMAS MACAULAY</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Success is in the blood.</p>
+
+<p>There are men whom Fate can never keep down&mdash;they march jauntily forward,
+and take by divine right the best of everything that earth affords. But
+their success is not attained by the Doctor Samuel Smiles Connecticut
+policy. They do not lie in wait, nor scheme, nor fawn, nor seek to adapt
+their sails to catch the breeze of popular favor. Still, they are ever
+alert and alive to any good that may come their way, and when it comes
+they simply appropriate it, and tarrying not, move steadily forward.</p>
+
+<p>Good health! Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the
+crown of your head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in
+sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every
+hand-clasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and never waste a minute
+thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would
+like to do, and then without violence of direction you will move straight
+to the goal.</p>
+
+<p>Fear is the rock on which we split, and hate is the shoal on which many a
+bark is stranded. When we are fearful, the judgment is as unreliable as
+the compass of a ship whose hold is full of iron ore; when we <a name='V_Page_174'></a>hate, we
+have unshipped the rudder; and if we stop to meditate on what the gossips
+say, we have allowed a hawser to befoul the screw.</p>
+
+<p>Keep your mind on the great and splendid thing you would like to do; and
+then, as the days go gliding by, you will find yourself unconsciously
+seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfilment of
+your desire, just as the coral-insect takes from the running tide the
+elements that it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful
+person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming
+you into that particular individual. Thought is supreme, and to think is
+often better than to do.</p>
+
+<p>Preserve a right mental attitude&mdash;the attitude of courage, frankness and
+good-cheer.</p>
+
+<p>To think rightly is to create.</p>
+
+<p>Darwin and Spencer have told us that this is the method of Creation. Each
+animal has evolved the parts it needed and desired. The horse is fleet
+because it wishes to be; the bird flies because it desires to; the duck
+has a web-foot because it wants to swim. All things come through desire,
+and every sincere prayer is answered. Many people know this, but they do
+not believe it thoroughly enough so that it shapes their lives.</p>
+
+<p>We want friends, so we scheme and chase 'cross lots after strong people,
+and lie in wait for good folks&mdash;or alleged good folks&mdash;hoping to attach
+ourselves to <a name='V_Page_175'></a>them. The only way to secure friends is to be one.</p>
+
+<p>And before you are fit for friendship you must be able to do without it.
+That is to say, you must have sufficient self-reliance to take care of
+yourself, and then out of the surplus of your energy you can do for
+others. The man who craves friendship, and yet desires a self-centered
+spirit more, will never lack for friends.</p>
+
+<p>If you would have friends, cultivate solitude instead of society. Drink in
+the ozone; bathe in the sunshine; and out in the silent night, under the
+stars, say to yourself again and yet again, &quot;I am a part of all my eyes
+behold!&quot; And the feeling will surely come to you that you are no mere
+interloper between earth and sky; but that you are a necessary particle of
+the Whole. No harm can come to you that does not come to all, and if you
+shall go down, it can only be amid a wreck of worlds.</p>
+
+<p>Thus by laying hold on the forces of the Universe, you are strong with
+them. And when you realize this, all else is easy, for in your arteries
+course red corpuscles, and in your heart there is the will to do and be.
+Carry your chin in, and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the
+chrysalis.</p><a name='V_Page_176'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Thomas B. Macauley was small in stature; but he always carried his chin
+well in and the crown of his head high.</p>
+
+<p>It was said of Rubens that throughout his lifetime he kept success tied to
+the leg of his easel with a blue ribbon. If ever a writing man had success
+tied to the leg of his easy chair, that man was Macaulay. In the
+characters and careers of Rubens and Macaulay there is a marked
+resemblance.</p>
+
+<p>When Macaulay was twenty-two he was at Cambridge, and the tidings arrived
+that a dire financial storm had wrecked the family fortune. The young man
+had ever been led to suppose that his father was rich&mdash;rich beyond all
+danger from loss&mdash;and that he himself would never have a concern beyond
+amusing himself, and the cultivation of his intellect. And so in practical
+affairs his education had been sadly neglected. But when the news of
+calamity came, instead of being depressed, he was elated to think that now
+he could make himself positively useful.</p>
+
+<p>Responsibility gravitates to the man who can shoulder it. Strong men who
+can wisely direct the efforts of others are always needed&mdash;they were
+needed in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-two, when Tom Macaulay received word of
+his father's trouble&mdash;they are needed today more than then&mdash;men who meet
+calamity with a smile and are pleased at sight of obstacles, knowing they
+can overcome them. Augustine Birrell has written,<a name='V_Page_177'></a> &quot;Macaulay always went
+his sublime way rejoicing like a strong man to run a race, knowing full
+well that he could give anybody five yards in fifty and win easily.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay took up the burden that his father was not able to bear, mastered
+every detail of the business, studied out the weak points, and then
+explained to the creditors just what they had better do.</p>
+
+<p>And they did it.</p>
+
+<p>We always trust the man who has courage plus, enthusiasm to spare, and who
+shows by his manner that he is master of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>In a few years Macaulay saved from the wreck enough to secure his father,
+mother and sisters against want for the rest of their days, and eventually
+he paid every creditor in full with interest. Had he run away from the
+difficulty, as his father was on the point of doing, the family would have
+been turned homeless into the streets.</p>
+
+<p>Moral&mdash;Things are never so bad as they seem; and all difficulties sneak
+away when you look them squarely in the eye.</p>
+
+<p>At this time the family, consisting of the father, mother, three sisters
+and a brother, lived at Fifty Great Ormond Street, not far from the
+British Museum. The house is still standing, but I recently discovered
+that the occupants know nothing, and care less, about Thomas Macaulay.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was the child of his mother. In temperament, <a name='V_Page_178'></a>disposition and physique
+he was as much unlike his father as two men can well be. Old Zachary
+Macaulay was a strong, earnest man who took himself seriously. In latter
+years he grew morose, puritanic and was full of dread of the Unseen. He
+preached long sermons to his family, cautioned them against frivolity,
+forbade music, tabued games, and constantly spoke of the tongue as &quot;the
+unruly member.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He, of course, was not aware of it, but he was teaching his children by
+antithesis.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I meet Macaulay I always imagine I am in Holland,&quot; once said Sydney
+Smith.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why so!&quot; asked a friend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because he is such a windmill,&quot; was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>But then we must remember that Sydney Smith never much liked
+Macaulay&mdash;they were too near alike. Whenever they met there was usually a
+wordy duel. &quot;He is so overflowing with learning that it runs over and he
+stands in the slop,&quot; said Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Tom talked a great deal, he was fond of music and games, and was never so
+pleased as when engaging in some wild frolic with his sisters and any
+chance youngster that happened to stray in. His sister, Lady Trevelyan,
+has recorded that during those days of gloom which followed her father's
+failure, matters were made worse by the stricken man moping at home and
+tightening the domestic discipline.</p>
+
+<p>Tom never resented this, but on the instant the father <a name='V_Page_179'></a>would leave the
+house, it was the signal of a wild pandemonium of disorder. Tom would play
+he was a tiger, and crawling under the sofa would emit fearful growls that
+would cause the children to scream with pretended fright. Next they would
+play fire, and pile all the furniture in the center of the room, heaping
+books, clothing, rugs on top. Then Tom would &quot;rescue&quot; his mother if she
+appeared on the scene, and seizing her in his arms carry her to a place of
+safety, and then engage in a pillow-fight if she came back.</p>
+
+<p>This wild frolic was always a delight to the children, and Tom's
+homecoming was ever watched with eager anticipation. His visits shot the
+gloom through with sunshine, and when he went away even the neighbors'
+children were in tears. His health and enthusiasm infected everybody he
+met.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of looking after his father's business Macaulay unlearned
+most of the previous lessons of his life, and taught himself that to do
+for others and sink self was the manly method. But so lightly did he bear
+the burden that it is doubtful if he ever considered he was making any
+sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>When his father died, Macaulay put entirely out of his mind the question
+of a household separate and apart from that of his mother and sisters. He
+devoted himself entirely to them; he wanted no other love than theirs.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike so many men of decided talent, the best and <a name='V_Page_180'></a>most loving side of
+Macaulay's nature was made manifest at home. His bubbling wit, brilliant
+conversation, and good-cheer were for his own fireside, first; and all
+that cutting, critical, scathing flood of invective was for the public
+that wore a rhinoceros-hide.</p><a name='V_Page_181'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Macaulay's article on Milton, published during his twenty-fifth year, in
+the &quot;Edinburgh Review,&quot; is generally regarded as a most wonderful
+achievement. &quot;Just think!&quot; the critics cry&mdash;&quot;the first article printed to
+be of a quality that electrified the world!&quot; But we must remember that
+this youth had been getting ready to write that article for ten years.</p>
+
+<p>At college Macaulay shirked mathematics and philosophy, spending his time
+and attention on things he liked better. The only study in which he
+excelled was composition. Even in babyhood his command of language had
+been a wonder to the neighborhood in which he lived. Hannah More had for a
+time taken him under her immediate charge and prophesied great things of
+his literary faculty; and his mother was not slow in seconding the
+opinion.</p>
+
+<p>At Cambridge he already had more than a local reputation as a writer, and
+it was this reputation that secured him the commission to write for the
+&quot;Review.&quot; The terrible Jeffrey was getting old and his regular staff had
+pretty nearly worked out their vein. Jeffrey wrote up to London (being
+south) to a friend telling him that the &quot;Review&quot; must have new blood, and
+imploring him to be on the lookout for some young man who had ideas in his
+ink-bottle.</p>
+
+<p>This friend knew the vigor and incisiveness of Macaulay's style, and as he
+read the letter from Jeffrey he <a name='V_Page_182'></a>exclaimed, &quot;Macaulay!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a great compliment to a mere youth to be asked to contribute to the
+&quot;Edinburgh Review.&quot; Edinburgh was a literary center, and you could not
+throw a stone in Princess Street, any more than you can in Tremont Street,
+Boston, without hitting a poet and caroming on two novel-writers and an
+essayist.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Carlyle, five years older than Macaulay, and who was to live and
+write for twenty-five years after Macaulay's passing, had not yet struck
+twelve. London, too, like Edinburgh, was full of writing men, standing in
+the market-places of Grub Street with no man to hire.</p>
+
+<p>And yet Fate sought out Tom Macaulay, five feet four, who had plenty of
+other work on hand; and through that single &quot;Essay on Milton&quot; he sprang at
+once into the front rank of British writers&mdash;and at the same time there
+was thrust into his hands a bonus of fifty pounds for the work.</p>
+
+<p>As a study of a thing that made the reputation of a writer, the &quot;Milton&quot;
+is worth a careful reading. It is very sure that in America today there
+are a hundred men who could write just as good an article, but whether
+these men are Macaulays or not is quite another question. But it is not at
+all probable that a writer will ever again leap into place and power on so
+small a feat.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the article surely shows all the dash and vigor <a name='V_Page_183'></a>that mark Macaulay's
+literary style. There is personality in it; it reveals the red corpuscle;
+and tells without question that there is a man behind the guns. It was
+opportune; for literature at that particular time had reached a point
+where the sciolist was in full possession, and the dead husks of learning
+were being palmed off for the living thoughts of living men.</p>
+
+<p>Periodicity reveals itself in all Nature, and even in the world of thought
+there are years of famine and years of plenty. Dry rot gets into letters;
+things are ripe for a revolution; the tinder is dry, and along comes some
+Martin Luther and applies the torch.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay simply expressed himself boldly, frankly, and without thought of
+favor&mdash;writing as he felt.</p>
+
+<p>The article made a great stir&mdash;the first edition of the magazine was
+quickly exhausted, and Macaulay awoke one morning, like Byron, and found
+himself famous. All there was about it, the &quot;Milton&quot; revealed a man, a
+strong, vivid-thinking, vigorous man, who, seeing things clearly, wrote
+from his heart. Art is born of feeling: it is heart, not head, that
+carries conviction home; but if you have both, as Macaulay had, it is no
+special disadvantage.</p>
+
+<p>From the publication of Macaulay's first article the &quot;Review&quot; took on a
+new lease of life. Prosperity came that way and for the rest of his life
+the &quot;Review&quot; was not long without contributions from his pen; and the
+numbers that contained his articles were always in <a name='V_Page_184'></a>great demand. Writers
+who possess a piercing insight into the heart of things, and who have the
+courage to express themselves, regardless of the views of others, are well
+feared by men in power.</p>
+
+<p>The man who knows, who can think, and who can write, holds a sword of
+Damocles over every politician.</p>
+
+<p>Governments are honeycombed with vulnerable spots; and to secure the ready
+writer on your side is the part of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay's article on Milton proved that there was a thinker loose, and
+that on occasion he could strike. The politicians began to court him, and
+we find him writing articles of a very Junius-like quality on contemporary
+issues.</p>
+
+<p>When he was twenty-six years old we are told he was &quot;called to the Bar,&quot;
+which means that he was given permission to practise law&mdash;the expression,
+&quot;called,&quot; being a mild form of fiction that still obtains in England in
+legal matters, while in America the word applies only in theology.</p>
+
+<p>The practise of law, however, was not at all to the taste of Macaulay, and
+after a few short terms on the circuit he relinquished it entirely.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime we find he read continually. Indeed, about the only bad
+habit this man had was reading. He read to excess&mdash;he read everything and
+read all the time. He read novels, history, poetry, and dived deeply into
+the dead languages, reading Plutarch's Lives <a name='V_Page_185'></a>twice in a year, and
+Euripides, Thucydides, Homer, Cicero, C&aelig;sar&mdash;all without special aim or
+end. Such a restless appetite for reading is apt to produce mental
+dyspepsia, and is not at all to be advised for average people; and the
+probabilities are that even in Macaulay's case his time might often have
+been better spent in meditation.</p>
+
+<p>In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven appeared in the &quot;Review&quot; the &quot;Essay on
+Mill.&quot; Like all of Macaulay's articles it reveals a wealth of learning and
+bristles with information on many themes. It often seems as if Macaulay
+took a subject simply to execute a learned war-dance around it. The
+article on Mill is a good example of merely touching the central theme and
+then going off into by-lanes of economics, history and civil government,
+with endless allusions to literature, poetry, art and philosophy. It is
+all intensely interesting, closely woven, often gorgeous in its coloring;
+and &quot;style&quot; runs like a thread of gold through it all.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this article appeared, Lord Lansdowne intimated to the young
+writer that he would like the honor of introducing him into public life,
+and if agreeable he could arrange for him to stand for Parliament in the
+vacant seat of Calne.</p>
+
+<p>Calne was one of those vest-pocket boroughs, owned by a single man, of
+which England has so many. The people think they choose their
+representative, but they do not, any more than we do in America. The
+<a name='V_Page_186'></a>government by the Boss and for the Boss is no new institution. Macaulay
+presented himself and was elected without opposition. And so before his
+thirtieth year he found himself on the flood-tide of national politics.</p>
+
+<p>Fifteen years before, if any one had expressed himself as plainly as
+Macaulay did on entering Parliament, he would have had a taste of jail,
+the hulks, or the pillory. So alert had the Government agents been for
+sedition that to stick one's tongue in his cheek at a member of the
+Cabinet was considered fully as bad as poaching, both being heinous
+offenses before God and man. Persecution was in the air and tyranny
+stalked abroad.</p>
+
+<p>But tyranny is self-limiting. If laws are too severe, there will surely
+come a time when they will not be observed, and history shows that the men
+who have introduced the guillotine ended their careers in its embrace.</p>
+
+<p>A change had come in England. The Tories were being jostled from their
+seats, and the Whigs were just coming into power. Liberalism was abroad in
+the land, and surely the time had come when a strong man might speak his
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay was by nature a protester; he was &quot;agin 'em&quot;; and when he chose a
+subject for his maiden speech he was not only sincere, but exceeding
+politic. He guessed the lay of the land, and knew the direction of the
+wind. Heresy was popular.</p><a name='V_Page_187'></a>
+
+<p>His address was in favor of an act removing the legal disabilities of
+Jews. It was a plea for liberty, and such was the vigor, power and vivid
+personality he threw into the address that he astonished the House and
+brought in the loungers from the cloakrooms.</p>
+
+<p>It was his only speech during the session. Efforts were made to get him on
+his feet again, but he was too wise to lend the battery of his mind to any
+commonplace theme. Only a subject such as might stir men's souls could
+tempt him.</p>
+
+<p>Wise Thomas Macaulay!</p>
+
+<p>He had made a reputation as a writer by his first article, and after his
+maiden speech all London chanted his praises as an orator. He practised
+self-restraint and knew better than to dilute his fame by holding argument
+with small men on little topics.</p>
+
+<p>His first speech at the next session of Parliament only served to fix his
+place as an orator more firmly. The immediate excuse was the &quot;Reform
+Bill&quot;; but the subject was liberty, and literature and history were called
+upon to furnish fire and supply the fuel for pyrotechnics. After its
+delivery the Speaker sent for Macaulay and personally congratulated him on
+making the most effective address to which he had listened for twenty-five
+years. The House of Commons, ever willing and anxious to appropriate a
+genius, being glutted by the dull and commonplace, sought in many ways
+from this time forward to do honor to Macaulay.</p><a name='V_Page_188'></a>
+
+<p>The elder members grew reminiscent and said the good old times were coming
+back, and talked of Burke, Fox, Canning and Lord Plunket.</p>
+
+<p>Jeffrey, feeling a sense of guardianship over Macaulay, having launched
+him, as he rightfully claimed, was on hand to hear the speech, and made
+haste to embrace his ward, kissing him on both cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Judging from this distance, there was nothing especially peculiar or
+distinctive about Macaulay's oratory, save his intense personality and
+vivid earnestness. An educated man, thoroughly alive on any one theme, is
+always interesting. And it was Macaulay's policy never to speak in public
+on a theme that did not bring out his entire armament, and yet with it all
+he was wise enough to cultivate a feeling of restraint and leave the
+impression that he had much more in reserve. So it was in his literary
+work: he never wrote when tired, nor attempted to express when he was not
+thoroughly alive to the subject in hand. He watched his mood. And thus in
+all Macaulay's &quot;Essays&quot; we feel the systole and diastole, and the hot,
+strong, impatient movement of ruddy life. There is &quot;go&quot; in every sentence.
+This is what constitutes his marvelous style&mdash;life, life, life!</p>
+
+<p>To very few men, indeed, is it given to be at once a brilliant talker, a
+strong writer and an effective orator. Clever talkers are seldom orators,
+and the great writers usually ebulliate only in the silence of their
+studies.</p><a name='V_Page_189'></a>
+
+<p>The fame of Macaulay went abroad, and he became the social lion of
+London&mdash;he was courted, feted, petted&mdash;and in drawing-rooms when he
+attended, people stood on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of him, and remained
+breathless that they might hear him speak. No doubt the fact that he was a
+bachelor helped fan the social flame. His sister has recorded that every
+morning cards and letters of invitation were piled high on his
+breakfast-table.</p>
+
+<p>With it all, though, the handsome little man preserved his poise, and his
+modesty and becoming dignity in public never failed him.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Macaulay's popularity that, after having served two terms for the
+borough of Calne, the way was opened for him to stand for Leeds. Indeed,
+it is probable that a dozen districts would have been glad to elect him as
+their representative.</p>
+
+<p>After the passing of the &quot;Reform Bill,&quot; to which his efforts had been so
+valuable, he was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Board of
+Control. This Board represented the King in the Government's relations
+with the East India Company. Macaulay, being the strongest man on the
+Board, was naturally chosen its secretary, just as the best man in a jury
+is chosen foreman. Here was a man who was not content to be a mere
+figurehead in office, trusting to paid clerks and underlings to secure him
+information and do the work&mdash;not he. Macaulay set himself the task of
+thoroughly <a name='V_Page_190'></a>acquainting himself with Indian affairs. He read every book of
+importance bearing on the subject; and studied the record and history of
+every man of consequence who was or had been connected with India. His
+intensely practical, businesslike mind sifted every detail, intuitively
+separating the relevant from the inconsequential, so that within a few
+months older heads were going to him for information, just as in a store
+or shop there is always one man who knows where things are, and in times
+of doubt he is the man who is sought out. To the many it is so much easier
+to ask some one else than to find out for themselves; and it also shifts
+the responsibility, and gives one a chance, if necessary, to prove a
+halibi&mdash;goodness gracious!</p>
+
+<p>One feature of the Reform Bill provided that one of the members of the
+Supreme Council of India should be chosen from among persons not connected
+in any way with the East India Company.</p>
+
+<p>This membership of the Supreme Council was a most important office, and
+carried with it the modest salary of ten thousand pounds a year&mdash;fifty
+thousand dollars&mdash;double what the President of the United States then
+received.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay had had no hand in creating this office, and indeed, at the time
+the Reform Bill was being gotten into shape, his interest in Indian
+affairs had only been casual. But now he was recognized as the one man for
+the new office, and the office sought the man.</p><a name='V_Page_191'></a>
+
+<p>Comparatively, Macaulay was a poor man, and the acceptance of the office
+for the term of six years would place him for the rest of his life beyond
+the reach of want. He could live royally and retire at forty years of age,
+with at least thirty thousand pounds to his credit. And yet he hesitated
+about accepting the office. His far-reaching eye told him that an exile
+for six years from England would place him out of touch with things at
+home, and that the greater office to which he aspired would be beyond his
+grasp. Besides that, the fact would always be brought up that his reward
+for well-doing had been enough, just as we have an unwritten law in
+America that there shall be no &quot;third term.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay saw all this and hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>He advised with Lord Lansdowne, and with his sister Hannah, his nearest
+and best friend; and if it had been possible his mother would have been
+given the casting vote; but two years before, she had passed out, yet not
+until she realized that her son was one of the foremost men in England.
+Hannah Macaulay (named in honor of Hannah More) advised the acceptance of
+the office, and upon his earnest request agreed to share her brother's
+exile.</p><a name='V_Page_192'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Hannah Macaulay, gracious in every way, was the sister of her brother. Her
+mind was fit companion for his, and whenever he had a difficult problem on
+hand he would clarify it by explaining it to her; and be it known, you can
+never talk well to a dullard.</p>
+
+<p>And so Hannah the loyal resigned her position as governess, and brother
+and sister packed up and sailed away in the good ship &quot;Asia&quot; for India.
+Among their belongings was a modest library of three thousand volumes, all
+of which, a wit has said, were read twice through by Macaulay on the
+outward voyage. India was safely reached, and Macaulay set himself with
+his accustomed vigor to learning the language and informing himself as to
+the actual status of things, in order that he might provide for their
+betterment. On account of his grasp on legal matters he was elected Legal
+Adviser of the Supreme Council.</p>
+
+<p>Everything went well for a year, and then a terrible calamity overtook
+Macaulay.</p>
+
+<p>His sister was in love.</p>
+
+<p>This seems a good place to explain that Thomas Babington Macaulay himself
+was never in love. He had no time for that&mdash;his days were too full of
+books and practical business to ever waste any time on soft sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>But now he was confronted by a condition, not a theory: Lord Trevelyan was
+in love with his sister, and his <a name='V_Page_193'></a>sister was in love with Lord Trevelyan.
+Macaulay might have discovered the fact for himself and saved the lovers
+the embarrassment of making a confession, had he not been so terribly busy
+with his books, but Macaulay, like love, was blind&mdash;to some things.</p>
+
+<p>He heard the confession, and wept.</p>
+
+<p>Then he gave the pair his blessing&mdash;there was nothing else to do.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long after the wedding that he discovered he had found a
+brother instead of having lost a sister; and the sister being very happy,
+Macaulay was happy, too. He insisted that they move their effects into his
+house, and they did so, all living as one happy family. So the years
+passed; and when children came Macaulay's joy was complete. His heart went
+out to his sister's children as though they were his own. Occasionally the
+good mother complained that the Legal Adviser of the Supreme Council undid
+her discipline by indulging the youngsters in things that she had
+forbidden. To all of which the Legal Adviser would only laugh, and
+crawling under the settle would emit many tigerish growls, and the
+children would scream with terror and delight, and other children,
+brown-legged, wearing no clothes to speak of, would come trooping in, and
+together they would manage, after an awful struggle, to capture the tiger,
+and with some in front and others behind and two or three on his back,
+would carry him away captive.</p><a name='V_Page_194'></a>
+
+<p>One of these children, grown to manhood, Sir George Trevelyan, was
+destined to write, with the help of his mother, the best life of Macaulay
+that has ever been written.</p>
+
+<p>The exile did not prove quite so severe as was anticipated; but when in
+Eighteen Hundred Thirty-eight it was necessary for Lord Trevelyan to
+return to England, Macaulay, sick at the thought of being left behind,
+resigned his office and sailed back with the family.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that officeholders seldom die and never resign. This may be
+true in the main; but surely there can not be found another instance in
+history of a man throwing up an office with a fifty-thousand-dollar salary
+attachment, simply because he could not bear the thought of being
+separated from his sister's children.</p><a name='V_Page_195'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Soon after his return to England Macaulay was elected to a seat in
+Parliament from Edinburgh, a city that he had scarcely so much as visited,
+but to whose interest he had been loyal in that, up to this time,
+nine-tenths of all he had written had been printed there.</p>
+
+<p>To represent Edinburgh in the House of Commons was no small matter, and we
+know that Macaulay was not unmindful of the honor.</p>
+
+<p>His next preferment was his appointment as Secretary of War, and a seat in
+the Cabinet.</p>
+
+<p>During all these busy years he ever had on hand some piece of literary
+work. In fact, all of the &quot;Essays&quot; on which his literary fame so largely
+rests, were composed on &quot;stolen time&quot; in the lull seized from the official
+and social whirl in which he lived.</p>
+
+<p>If you want a piece of work well and thoroughly done, pick a busy man. The
+man of leisure postpones and procrastinates, and is ever making
+preparations and &quot;getting things in shape&quot;; but the ability to focus on a
+thing and do it is the talent of the man seemingly o'erwhelmed with work.
+Women in point lace and diamonds, club habitues and &quot;remittance
+men&quot;&mdash;those with all the time there is&mdash;can never be entrusted to carry
+the message to Gomez.</p>
+
+<p>Pin your faith to the busy person.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay's first and only political rebuff came with his defeat the second
+time he stood for election in<a name='V_Page_196'></a> Edinburgh. His conscientious opposition to
+a measure in which the Scottish people were especially interested caused
+the tide to turn against him.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt, though, the failure of re-election was a good thing for
+Macaulay&mdash;and for the world. He at once began serious work on his &quot;History
+of England&quot;&mdash;that project which had been in his head and heart for a score
+of years. All of his literary labors so far had been merely ephemeral&mdash;at
+least he so regarded them. The Essays he regarded only as so many
+newspaper articles, not worth the collecting. It was America that first
+guessed their true value as literature, and it was not until the American
+editions were pouring into England that Macaulay allowed his scattered
+work to be collected, corrected and put into authorized book form.</p>
+
+<p>This history was to be the thesis that would admit his name to the Roster
+of Fame. But, alas, the history was destined to be only a fragment. It
+covers scarce fifteen years, and is like that other splendid fragment, the
+work of Henry Thomas Buckle, a preface; Buckle's preface is the greatest
+ever penned, with its author dead at forty. The projected work of both of
+these men was too great for any one man to accomplish in a single
+lifetime. A hundred years of unremitting toil could not have completed
+Macaulay's task.</p>
+
+<p>In Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine he was elected Lord Rector of the
+University of Glasgow; and at his speech of installation he took occasion
+to take formal leave of <a name='V_Page_197'></a>political life. He would devote the remainder of
+his days to literature and abstract thought.</p>
+
+<p>Men are continually &quot;retiring&quot; from business and active life, all unaware
+of the grim humor of the proceedings. It was not so very long before
+Edinburgh, in an endeavor to undo the slight she had put upon Macaulay,
+again elected him to Parliament, without his being near, or raising his
+hand either for or against the measure.</p>
+
+<p>And again his voice was heard in the House of Commons.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay was a modest man, and yet he knew his power.</p>
+
+<p>The Premiership dangled just beyond his reach. Many claim that if he had
+not gone to India he would have moved by strong, steady strides straight
+to the highest office that England could bestow. And others aver that when
+he was created a Peer in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven it was a move toward
+the Premiership, and that if his health had not failed he would surely
+have won the goal. But how futile it is to speculate on what might have
+happened had not this or the other occurred!</p>
+
+<p>Yet certainly the daring caution of Macaulay's mind, his dignity and
+luring presence, his patience, self-command, good temper, and all those
+manifold graces of his heart, would have made him an almost ideal Premier,
+one who might rank with Palmerston, Peel, Disraeli or Gladstone.</p>
+
+<p>But the highest office was not for him.</p><a name='V_Page_198'></a>
+
+<p>We die by heart-beats; and Macaulay at fifty-nine had lived as much as
+most strong men do if they exist a hundred years.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to show where Lord Macaulay could have been greater. His life
+lies open to us as the ether. We complain because he did not read less and
+meditate more; we sigh at his lack of religion and mention the fact that
+he never loved a woman, seemingly waiving tautology and the fact that men
+who do not love are never religious.</p>
+
+<p>We forget that it takes a good many men to make the Ideal Man.</p>
+
+<p>If Macaulay had been different he would have been some one else. He was a
+brave, tender-hearted man who lived one day at a time, packing the moments
+with good-cheer, good work and an earnest wish to do better tomorrow than
+he had done today. That Nature occasionally produces such a man should be
+a cause for gratitude in the hearts of all the rest of us little folk who
+jig, mince, mouth, amble, run, peek about and criticize our betters.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='LORD_BYRON'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_199'></a>LORD BYRON</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_200'></a>
+<span>I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>A palace and a prison on each hand:<br /></span>
+<span>I saw from out the wave her structures rise<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:<br /></span>
+<span>A thousand years, their cloudy wings expand<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Around me, and a dying Glory smiles<br /></span>
+<span>O'er the far times, when many a subject land<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,<br /></span>
+<span>Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!<br /></span>
+<span class='i20'>&mdash;<i>Childe Harold</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_201'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-8.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-8-th.jpg" alt="LORD BYRON"></a></p><p class="ctr">LORD BYRON</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Man! I wonder what a man really is! Starting from a single cell, this
+seized upon by another, and out of the Eternal comes a particle of the
+Divine Energy that makes these cells its home. Growth follows, cell is
+added to cell, and there develops a man&mdash;a man whose body, two-thirds
+water, can be emptied by a single dagger-thrust and the spirit given back
+to its Maker.</p>
+
+<p>This being, which we call man, does not last long.</p>
+
+<p>Fifty-seven generations have come and gone since C&aelig;sar trod the Roman
+Forum. The pillars against which he often leaned still stand, the
+thresholds over which he passed are there, the pavements ring beneath your
+tread as they once rang beneath his. Three generations and more have come
+and gone since Napoleon trod the streets of Toulon contemplating suicide.</p>
+
+<p>Babes in arms were carried by fond mothers to see Lincoln, the candidate
+for President. These babes have grown into men, are grandfathers possibly,
+with whitened hair, furrowed faces, looking calmly forward to the end,
+having tasted all that life holds in store for them.</p>
+
+<p>And yet Lincoln lived but yesterday! You can reach back into the past and
+grasp his hand, and look into <a name='V_Page_202'></a>his sad and weary eyes.</p>
+
+<p>A man! weighted with the sins of his parents, grandparents,
+great-grandparents, who fade off into dim spectral shapes in the dark and
+dreamlike past; no word of choice has he in the selection of his father
+and mother, no voice in the choosing of environment&mdash;brought into life
+without his consent and thrust out of it against his will&mdash;battling,
+striving, hoping, cursing, waiting, loving, praying; burned by fever, torn
+by passion, checked by fear, reaching for friendship, longing for
+sympathy, clutching&mdash;nothing.</p><a name='V_Page_203'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Doctors and priests attend us at both ends of the route. We can not be
+born, neither can we die, without consulting the tax-collector, and
+interviewing those who look after us for a consideration.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor who sought to assist George Gordon Byron into the world
+dislocated the bones of his left foot in the operation. Forsooth, this
+baby would not be born as others&mdash;-he selected a way of his own and paid
+the penalty. &quot;It is a malformation&mdash;take these powders&mdash;I'll be back
+tomorrow,&quot; quoth the busy doctor.</p>
+
+<p>The autopsy proved it was not a malformation, but a displacement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Doctor, now please tell me just what is the matter with me,&quot; once asked
+an anxious patient.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tut, tut!&quot; replied the absent-minded physician; &quot;can't you wait? The
+post-mortem will reveal all that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The critics did not wait for Byron's death&mdash;it was vivisection. And after
+his death the dissection was zealously continued. Byron's life lies open
+to us in many books. Scarcely a month in the entire life of the man is
+unaccounted for, and if a hiatus of a few weeks is found, the men of
+imagination fill in and make him a pirate on the Mediterranean coast, or
+give him a seraglio in some gloomy old Moorish palace in Venice.</p>
+
+<p>In his lifetime Byron was overpraised and overcensured, and since his
+death the dust has been allowed to gather over his matchless books.
+Between the two extremes <a name='V_Page_204'></a>lies the truth; and the true Byron is just now
+being discovered. Byron in literature will not die. He is the brightest
+comet that has darted into our ken since Shakespeare's time; and as comets
+have no orbit, but are vagrants of the heavens, so was he. Tragedy was in
+his train, and his destiny was disgrace and death.</p>
+
+<p>And yet as we review the life of this man, &quot;the lame brat&quot; of his mother,
+as this mother called him, and behold the whirlwind of passion that swept
+him on, the fulsome praise, the shrill outcry of hypocritical prudes and
+pedants, the torrent of abuse, and the piling up of sins that he never
+committed (and God knows he committed enough!); and yet behold his craving
+for tenderness, the reaching out for truth, and hear his earnest and
+unquenchable prayer to be understood and loved, we blot out the record of
+his sins with our tears. To know the life of Byron and not be moved to
+profoundest pity marks one as alien to his kind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God is on the side of the most sensitive,&quot; said Thoreau. And did there
+ever tread the earth a man more sensitive than Byron?&mdash;such capacity for
+suffering, such exaltation, such heights, such depths! Music made him
+tremble and weep, and in the presence of kindness he was powerless. He
+lived life to its fullest, and paid the penalty with shortened years. He
+expressed himself without reserve&mdash;being emancipated from superstition and
+precedent. And the man who is not dominated by the fetish of custom is
+marked for contumely by the <a name='V_Page_205'></a>many. Custom makes law, and the one who
+violates custom is &quot;bad.&quot; Yet all respectable people are not good; and all
+good people are not respectable. If you do not know this you are ignorant
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>So imagine this handsome, headstrong, restless young man, in whose lexicon
+there was no such word as prudence, with time and money at his command,
+defying the state, society and religion, and listen to the anathemas that
+fill the air at mention of his name.</p>
+
+<p>That a world full of such men would not be at all desirable is stern
+truth; but that one such man lived is a cause for congratulation. His life
+holds for us both warning and example.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath the strain of the stuff and the onward swirl of his verse we see
+that this man stood for truth and justice as against hypocrisy and
+oppression. Folly and freedom are better far than smugness and
+persecution. Byron stood for the rights of the individual, for the right
+of free speech and free thought: and he stood for political and physical
+freedom, long before abolition societies became popular. He sided with the
+people; his heart went out to the oppressed; and all of his fruitless
+gropings and stumblings were a reaching out for tenderness and truth, for
+life and love&mdash;for the Ideal.</p><a name='V_Page_206'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The father of Byron, the poet, was a captain in the army&mdash;a man of small
+mental ability, whose recklessness won him the sobriquet of &quot;Mad Jack
+Byron.&quot; When twenty-three years of age he eloped to France with the
+Baroness Conyers, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen. Happiness, in a
+foreign country, for a woman who has exchanged one love for another is
+outside the pale of possibilities. Love is much&mdash;but love is not all. Life
+is too short to break family-ties and adjust one's self to a new language
+and a new country. The change means death.</p>
+
+<p>Two years and the woman died, leaving a daughter, Augusta by name,
+afterward Mrs. Augusta Leigh.</p>
+
+<p>Back to England went Mad Jack Byron, broken-hearted, bearing in his arms
+the baby girl. Kind kinsmen, ready to forgive, cared for the child. Mad
+Jack didn't remain broken-hearted long&mdash;what would you expect from a man?
+He sought sympathy among several discreet dames, and in two years we find
+him safely and legally married to Catherine Gordon. Scotch, and heiress to
+twenty-five thousand pounds. On the occasion of the wedding, Jack informed
+a friend that the fact of the lady's being Scotch was forgiven in view of
+the dowry. Most of this fortune went into a rat-hole to help pay the debts
+of the Mad Jack.</p>
+
+<p>One child was born to this ill-assorted pair&mdash;a boy who was destined to
+write his name large on history's <a name='V_Page_207'></a>page. But such a pedigree! No wonder
+the youth once wrote to Augusta, his half-sister, expressing a covetous
+appreciation of her parentage, even with its bar sinister. In passing, it
+is well to note the sunshine of this love of brother and sister, which
+continued during life&mdash;confidential, earnest, tender, frank. In their best
+moods they were both lofty souls, and their mutuality was cemented in a
+contempt for the man who was their sire. This fine brotherly and sisterly
+affection comes close to us when we remember that it was our own Harriet
+Beecher Stowe, with sympathies worn to the quick through much brooding
+over the wrongs of a race in bondage, who rushed into print with a
+scandalous accusation concerning this same sweet affection of brother for
+sister. The charge was brought on no better foundation than some old-woman
+gossip held over the hyson when it was red, and moved itself aright&mdash;all
+vouchsafed to Mrs. Stowe by the widow of Byron in Eighteen Hundred
+Fifty-six. If a woman as good at heart as Harriet Beecher Stowe was
+deceived, why should we blame humanity for biting at a hook that is not
+baited?</p>
+
+<p>No sane dentist will administer an anesthetic to a woman, without a
+witness: not that women as a class are dangerous, but because some women
+can not be trusted to distinguish between their dreams and the facts.
+Every practising lawyer of insight also knows that a wronged woman's
+reasons are plentiful as <a name='V_Page_208'></a>blackberries, and must always be taken with
+large pinches of the Syracuse product.</p>
+
+<p>Mad Jack followed his regiment here and there, dodging his creditors, and
+finally in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one induced his wife to borrow a
+hundred pounds for him, with which he started to Paris intent on
+retrieving fortune with pasteboard.</p>
+
+<p>He died on the way, and the money was used to bury him. The lame boy was
+then three years old, but a few dark memories, no doubt retouched by
+hearsay, were retained by him of Mad Jack, who in his most sober moments
+never guessed that he would be known to the ages as the father of the
+greatest poet of his time.</p>
+
+<p>Mad Jack was neither literary nor psychic.</p>
+
+<p>The widowed mother remained at Aberdeen with her boy, living on the
+hundred and fifty pounds a year that had been settled on her in a way that
+she could not squander the principal&mdash;all the rest had gone.</p>
+
+<p>The child was shy, sensitive, proud and headstrong.</p>
+
+<p>The mother used to reprove him by throwing things at him, and by chasing
+him with the tongs. At other times she diverted herself by imitating his
+limp. And yet again she would smother him with caresses, beseech his
+pardon for abusing him, and praise the beauty of his matchless eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Children are usually better judges of grown-ups than grown-ups are of
+children. This boy at five years of age had estimated his mother's
+character correctly. He <a name='V_Page_209'></a>knew that she was not his steadfast friend, and
+that she was unworthy of his confidence and whole heart's love. He grew
+moody, secretive, wilful. Once, being wrongly accused and punished, he
+seized a knife from the table and was about to apply it to his throat when
+he was disarmed. The child longed for tenderness and love, and being
+denied these, was already taking on that proud and haughty temper which
+was to serve as a mask to hide the tenderness of his nature.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that seven brothers Byron fought at Edgehill, but when we get
+down to the time of Mad Jack there was danger of the name being snuffed
+out entirely. Nature is not anxious to perpetuate the idle and dissipated.</p>
+
+<p>When little George Gordon was ten years old, his mother one day ran to
+him, seized him in her arms, wept and laughed, then laughed and wept,
+kissing him violently, addressing him as &quot;My Lord!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His great-uncle, William, Lord Byron of Rochdale and Newstead Abbey, had
+died, and the big-eyed, lame boy was the nearest heir&mdash;in fact, the only
+living male who bore the family-name. The next day at school, when the
+master called the roll and mentioned his name with the prefix &quot;Dominus,&quot;
+the lad did not reply &quot;Adsum&quot;&mdash;he only stood up, gazed helplessly at the
+teacher, and burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>Even at this time he had given promise of the quality of his nature, by
+his firm affection for Mary Duff, his <a name='V_Page_210'></a>cousin. All the intensity of his
+childish nature was centered in this young woman, several years his
+senior. To call it a passion would be too much, but this child, denied of
+love at home, clung to Mary Duff, to whom he went in confession with all
+his childish tales of woe. When his mother proposed to leave Aberdeen, now
+that fortune had smiled, the anguish of the boy at thought of leaving his
+&quot;first love&quot; nearly caused him a fit of sickness.</p>
+
+<p>And all this wealth of love was met with jeers and loud laughter, save by
+Mary Duff. The vibrating sensitiveness of such a child, with such a
+mother, must have caused a misery we can only guess.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your mother is a fool,&quot; said a boy to Byron at college some years later.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know it,&quot; was the melancholy answer, as the brown eyes filled with
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>When money came, Mrs. Byron's first move was to take the lad to Nottingham
+and place him in charge of a surgical quack, who proposed, for a price, to
+make the lame foot just as good as the other, if not better. To this
+effect wooden clamps were placed on the foot and screwed down by
+thumbscrews, causing a torture that would have been unbearable to many.</p>
+
+<p>No benefit was experienced from the treatment, although it was continued
+by another physician at London soon after. A schoolfellow of Byron's
+visited him in his room when his foot was encased in a wooden <a name='V_Page_211'></a>compress.
+The visitor noted the white face, and the beads of anguish on the boy's
+forehead, and at last said, &quot;I know you are suffering awfully!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will never hear me say so,&quot; was the grim reply.</p>
+
+<p>The emphasis placed on Byron's lameness has been altogether overdone. In
+fact, as he grew to manhood, it was nothing more than a stiffness that
+would never have been noticed in a drawing-room. We have this on the
+testimony of the Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington and others. Byron
+himself made the mistake of referring to it several times in his verse,
+and doubtless all the torture he had suffered through ill-considered
+medical counsel, and his mother's taunts, caused the matter to take a
+place in his sensitive mind quite out of its due proportion. Sir Walter
+Scott was lame, too, but whoever heard of his discussing it, either by
+word of mouth or in print?</p>
+
+<p>Of Byron's life at Harrow we have many tales as to his defending his
+juniors, volunteering to take punishment for them&mdash;and of lessons
+unlearned. He could not be driven nor forced, and pedagogics a hundred
+years ago, it seemed, was largely a science of coercion. Mary Gray, a
+nurse and early teacher of Byron's, has told us that kindness was the
+unfailing touchstone with this boy; no other plan would work. But Harrow
+knew nothing of Froebel methods, and does not yet.</p><a name='V_Page_212'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Byron's first genuine love-affair occurred when he was sixteen. The object
+of this affection, as all the world knows, was Miss Chaworth, whose estate
+adjoined Newstead. The lady was two years older than Byron, and being of a
+lively nature found a pleasant diversion in leading the youth a merry
+chase. So severe was his attack that he was alternately oppressed by
+chills of fear and fevers of ecstasy. He lost appetite, and the family
+began to fear for his sanity. Such a love must find expression some way,
+and so the daily stealthy notes to the young woman took the form of rhyme.
+The lovesick youth was revealing considerable facility in this way. It
+pleased him, and did the buxom young woman no harm.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the mere prettiness and pinky whiteness of a healthy country lass,
+Miss Chaworth evidently had no beauties of character, save those conjured
+forth from the inner consciousness of the poet&mdash;a not wholly original
+condition.</p>
+
+<p>Byron loved the Ideal. And this love-affair with Miss Chaworth is only
+valuable as showing the evolution of imagination in the poet. The woman
+hadn't the slightest idea that she was giving wings to a soul&mdash;to her the
+affair was simply funny.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Byron's great-uncle, from whom he had inherited his title,
+had killed the grandfather of Miss Chaworth in a duel, lent a romantic
+tinge to the matter&mdash;the boy was doing a sort of penance, and in one of
+<a name='V_Page_213'></a>his poems hints at the undoing of the sin of his kinsman by the lifelong
+devotion that he will bestow. This calling up the past, and incautious
+revealing of the fact that the ancestor Chaworth could not hold his own
+with a Byron, but allowed himself to be run through the body by the Byron
+cold steel, was not pleasing to Miss Chaworth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't imagine I am such a fool as to love that lame boy,&quot; cried Miss
+Chaworth to her maid one day.</p>
+
+<p>Unluckily, &quot;the lame boy&quot; was in the next room and heard the remark.</p>
+
+<p>He rushed from the house with a something gripping at his heart.
+Straightway he would go back to Harrow, which he had left in wrath only a
+few months before.</p>
+
+<p>So he went to Harrow.</p>
+
+<p>When he next returned home, his mother met him with the remark, &quot;I have
+news for you; get out your handkerchief&mdash;Miss Chaworth is married.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In just another year Byron was home again, and was invited to dine with
+the Chaworths. He accepted the invitation, and when he was introduced to a
+baby girl, a month old, the child of his old sweetheart, his emotions got
+the better of him and he had to leave the room. And to ease his woe he
+indited a poem to the baby.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Chaworth was not happy with her fox-hunting squire. Her mind became
+clouded, and after some years she passed out, in poverty and alone. And if
+there ever <a name='V_Page_214'></a>came to her mind any appreciation of the greatness of the man
+who had given her name immortality, we do not know it.</p>
+
+<p>The years from Eighteen Hundred Five to Eighteen Hundred Eight Byron spent
+at Cambridge. The arts in which he perfected himself there were shooting,
+swimming, fencing, drinking and gambling.</p>
+
+<p>During vacations, and off and on, he lived at Southwell, a village halfway
+between Mansfield and Newark. Southwell was sleepy, gossipy, dull&mdash;and
+exerted a wholesome restraint on our restless youth. It was simply a
+question of economy that took Byron and his mother to Southwell. The
+run-down estate of Newstead was yielding a meager income, but at Southwell
+one could be shabby and yet respectable.</p>
+
+<p>At Southwell Byron met John Pigot and his sister&mdash;cultured people of a
+refined and quiet sort. Byron took to them at once, and they liked him.</p>
+
+<p>In a country town the person who thinks, instinctively hunts out the other
+man who thinks&mdash;granting the somewhat daring hypothesis that there are two
+of them. So Byron and the Pigots often met for walks and talks, and on
+such occasions the poet would read to his friends the scraps of verse he
+had written. He had gotten into the habit&mdash;he wrote whenever his pulse ran
+up above eighty&mdash;he wrote because he could not help it; and he read his
+productions to his friends for the same reason. Every one who writes longs
+to read his work to some <a name='V_Page_215'></a>sympathetic soul. A thought is not ours until we
+repeat it to another, and this crying need of expression marks every
+poetic soul. All art is born of feeling, high, intense, holy feeling, and
+the creative faculty is largely a matter of temperature. We feel, and not
+to impart our feelings is stagnation&mdash;death. People who do not feel deeply
+never have anything to impart, either to individuals or to the world. They
+have no message.</p>
+
+<p>The young man, fresh from the dusty, musty lectures of Cambridge, and out
+of the reach of his boisterous and carousing companions, grasped at the
+gentle, refined and sympathetic friendship of this brother and sister. The
+trinity would walk off across the fields and recline on the soft turf
+under a great spreading tree, reading aloud by turn from some good book.
+Such meetings always ended by Byron's reading to his friends any chance
+rhymes he had written since they last met.</p>
+
+<p>John Morley dates the birth of Byron's poetic genius from his meeting with
+Miss Chaworth, while Taine names Southwell as the pivotal point. Probably
+both are right.</p>
+
+<p>But this we know, that it was the Pigots who induced Byron to collect his
+rhymes and have them printed. This was done at the neighboring town of
+Newark, when Byron was nineteen years old. Possibly you have a few of
+these thin, poorly printed, crudely bound little books entitled
+&quot;Juvenilia&quot; around in the garret somewhere, and, if so, it might be well
+enough to take <a name='V_Page_216'></a>care of them. Quaritch says they are worth a hundred
+pounds apiece, although in the poet's lifetime they were dear at sixpence.</p>
+
+<p>Byron sent copies to all the leading literary men whom he knew, including
+Mackenzie, the man of feeling. Mackenzie replied, praising the work, and
+so did several others. All writers of note are favored with many such
+juvenilia, and usually there is a gracious electrotype reply. A doubt
+exists as to whether Mackenzie ever read Byron's book, but we know that
+his letter of stock platitude fired Byron to do still better. It is said
+that no flattery is too fulsome for a pretty woman&mdash;she inwardly
+congratulates the man on his subtle insight in discovering excellences
+that she hardly knew existed. This may be so and may not, but the logic
+holds when applied to fledgling authors. When it comes to praise he is
+quite willing to take your word for it.</p>
+
+<p>Byron's spirits arose to an ecstacy&mdash;he would be a poet.</p>
+
+<p>About this time we find Hydra, as Byron pleasantly called his mother,
+rushing to the village apothecary and warning that worthy not to sell
+poison to the poet; and a few moments after her leaving, the astonished
+apothecary was visited by the poet, who begged that no poison should be
+sold to his mother. Each thought the other was going to turn Lucretia
+Borgia, or play the last act of Romeo and Juliet, at least.</p>
+
+<p>There were wild bursts of rage on the mother's part, stubborn mockery on
+the other, followed up once by a <a name='V_Page_217'></a>poker flung with almost fatal precision
+at the poet's curly head.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this he took flight to London and Hydra followed, repentant and
+lacrimose. A truce was patched up; they agreed to disagree, and coldly
+shaking hands withdrew in opposite directions.</p>
+
+<p>After this, when the poet wrote he addressed his mother as &quot;Dear Madam,&quot;
+and confined himself to business matters. Only rarely was there any flash
+in his letters, as when he said, &quot;Dear Mother&mdash;you know you are a vixen,
+but save me some champagne.&quot; If Byron's mother had been of the stuff of
+which most mothers are made, we would have found these two safely settled
+at Newstead, making the best of their battered fortune, with the son in
+time marrying some neighbor lass, and slipping into the place of a
+respectable English gentleman, a worthy member of the House of Lords.</p>
+
+<p>But the boy, now grown twenty, had no home, and either was supplied too
+much money or else too little. He wasted his substance in London,
+economized in Southwell, sponged on friends, and borrowed of Scrope Davis
+at Cambridge. When a remittance again came, he explored the greenrooms,
+took lessons from Professor Johnson, the pugilist (referred to as &quot;my
+corporeal pastor&quot;), drank whole companies under the table, bought a tame
+bear and a wolf to guard the entrance of Newstead, and roamed the country
+as a gipsy, in <a name='V_Page_218'></a>company with a girl dressed in boy's clothes, thus
+supplying Richard Le Gallienne an interesting chapter in his &quot;Quest of the
+Golden Girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But all this time his brain was active, and another book of poetry had
+been printed, entitled &quot;Hours of Idleness.&quot; This book was gotten out, at
+his own expense, by the same country printer as the first.</p>
+
+<p>Surely the verse must have had merit, or why should Lord Brougham, in the
+great &quot;Edinburgh Review,&quot; go after it with a slashing, crashing, damning
+criticism?</p>
+
+<p>When Byron read the review, a bystander has told us he turned red, then
+livid green. He straightway ordered and drank two bottles of claret, said
+nothing, but looked like a man who had sent a challenge.</p>
+
+<p>A challenge! that was exactly what Byron proposed. He would fight Jeffrey
+first, and then take up in turn every man who had ever contributed to the
+magazine&mdash;he would kill them all. And to that end he called for his
+pistols and went out to practise firing at ten paces. Wiser counsel
+prevailed, and he decided to attack the enemy in their own citadel, and
+with their own weapons. He ordered ink, and began &quot;English Bards and
+Scotch Reviewers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It took time to get this enormous siege-gun into position and find the
+range. Finally, it was loaded with more kinds of missiles, in the way of
+what Augustine Birrell has called literary stinkpots, than were ever
+before rammed home in a single charge.</p>
+
+<p>It was an <a name='V_Page_219'></a>audacious move&mdash;to reverse the initiative and go after a whole
+race of critics, scribblers and reviewers, who had been badgering honest
+folks, and blow 'em into kingdom come.</p>
+
+<p>But at the last moment Byron's heart failed him, his wrath gave way to
+caution, and &quot;English Bards and Scotch Reviewers&quot; appeared anonymously.</p>
+
+<p>The edition was soon exhausted&mdash;the shot had at least raised a mighty
+dust.</p>
+
+<p>The author got his nerve back, fathered the book, made corrections; and
+this edition, too, sold with a rush. Byron returned to Newstead, invited a
+score of his Cambridge cronies, who came down, entering the mansion
+between the bear and the wolf, and were received with salvos of
+pistol-shots. Here they played games over the spacious grounds, wrestled,
+boxed, swam, and at night feasted and drank deep damnation out of a skull
+to all Scotch reviewers.</p>
+
+<p>Probably the acme of this depravity was reached when the young gentlemen
+began shooting the pendants off the chandelier; then the servants hastily
+decamped and left the rogues to do their own cooking.</p>
+
+<p>This brought them to their senses, sanity came back, and the company
+disbanded. Then the servants, who had watched the orgies from afar,
+returned and found a week's pile of dishes unwashed and a horse stabled in
+the library.</p><a name='V_Page_220'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Then Byron had reached the mature age of twenty-one, he was formally
+admitted to the House of Lords as a Peer of the realm. His titles and
+pedigree were so closely scanned on this occasion that he grew quite out
+of conceit with the noble company, and was seriously thinking of launching
+a dunciad in their direction. His good nature was especially ruffled by
+Lord Carlisle, his guardian, who refused to stand as his legal sponsor.
+The chief cause of the old Lord's prejudice against the young one lay in
+the fact that the young 'un had ridiculed the old 'un's literary
+pretensions.</p>
+
+<p>They were rivals in letters, with a very beautiful, natural and mutual
+disdain for each other.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron was not welcomed into the House of Lords: he simply pushed in
+the door because he had a right to. He thirsted for approbation, for
+distinction, for notoriety. His sensitive soul hung upon newspaper
+clippings with feverish expectations; and about all the attention he
+received was in the line of being damned by faint praise, or smothered
+with silence. Patriotism, as far as England was concerned, was not a part
+of Byron's composition.</p>
+
+<p>When all Great Britain was execrating Napoleon, picturing him as a devil
+with horns and hoofs, Byron looked upon him as the world's hero.</p>
+
+<p>In this frame of mind he went forth and borrowed a goodly sum, and started
+cut to view the world. He was accompanied by his friend Hobhouse, and his
+valet,<a name='V_Page_221'></a> Fletcher.</p>
+
+<p>It was a two years' trip, this jolly trio made&mdash;down along the coast of
+France, Spain, through the Straits of Gibraltar, lingering in queer old
+cities, mousing over historic spots, alternately living like princes or
+vagabonds. They frolicked, drank, made love to married women, courted
+maidens, fought, feasted and did all the foolish things that sophomores
+usually do when they have money and opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>These months of travel supplied Byron enough in way of suggestion to keep
+him writing many moons. His active imagination seized upon everything
+picturesque, peculiar, romantic, sentimental or tragic, and stored it up
+in those wondrous brain-cells, to be used when the time was ripe.</p>
+
+<p>The disciples of Munchausen, who delight in showing Byron's verse to be
+only biography, have found a rich field in that two years' travel. One man
+really did a brilliant thing&mdash;in three volumes&mdash;recounting the conquering
+march of the poet, whom he depicts as a combination of Don Juan and Rob
+Roy.</p>
+
+<p>The probabilities are that the real facts, not illumined by fancy, would
+be a tale with which to conjure sleep. Foreign travel is hard work. It
+constitutes the final test of friendship, and to make the tour of Europe
+with a man and not hate him marks one or both of the parties as seraphic
+in quality. The best of travel is in looking back upon it from the dreamy
+quiet and rest of home&mdash;laughing at the things that once rasped your
+<a name='V_Page_222'></a>nerves, and enjoying, through recollection, the scenes you only glanced
+at wearily.</p>
+
+<p>Two instances of that trip&mdash;when Hobhouse threatened to desert the party
+and was dared to do so, and Byron slapped Fletcher's face and got himself
+well kicked in return&mdash;will suffice to show how Byron had the faculty of
+seizing trivial incidents, and by lifting them up and separating them from
+the mass, made them live as Art.</p>
+
+<p>At Athens the trio made a sudden resolve to be respectable, and practise
+economy. To this end they hired rooms of a worthy widow, who accommodated
+travelers with a transient home for a moderate stipend. This widow had
+three daughters: the eldest, Theresa by name, lives in letters as the Maid
+of Athens, and the glory that came to her was achieved without any special
+danger to either her heart or the poet's. The young woman, we know,
+assisted in the household affairs; and probably often dusted the mantel in
+the poet's room while he sat smoking with one foot on the table, making
+irrelevant remarks to her about this or that.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he wrote a poem, &quot;Maid of Athens, ere we part, give, O give me
+back my heart.&quot; * * *</p>
+
+<p>With the genuine literary thrift that marked all of Byron's career, he
+preserved a copy of the lines, and some years after recast them, touched
+them up a bit, included the stuff in a book&mdash;and there you are.</p>
+
+<p>The other incident is that of Hobhouse recording in <a name='V_Page_223'></a>his journal the bare
+and barren fact that outside the city wall in Persia they once saw two
+dogs gnawing a human body. Byron saw the sight, but made no mention of it
+at the time. He waited, the scene sealed up in his brain-cells. Years
+after he wrote thus:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall,<br /></span>
+<span>Hold o'er the dead their carnival;<br /></span>
+<span>Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb,<br /></span>
+<span>They were too busy to bark at him.<br /></span>
+<span>From a Tartar's skull they stripped the flesh,<br /></span>
+<span>As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;<br /></span>
+<span>And their white tusks crunched on the whiter skull,<br /></span>
+<span>As it slipped through their jaws when the edge grew dull.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And this only proves that Hobhouse was not a poet and Byron was. The poet
+is never content to state the mere facts&mdash;facts are only valuable as
+suggestions for poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Travel often excites the spirit to the point of expression. Good travelers
+carry pads and pencils. Byron reached England with fragments of marbles,
+skulls, pictures, shells, spears, guns, curios beyond count, and many
+manuscripts in process.</p>
+
+<p>Upon arriving on the English coast the first news that reached him was
+that his mother had just died. He hastened to Newstead and reached there
+in time to attend the funeral, but refrained from following the <a name='V_Page_224'></a>cortege
+to the grave because he could not master his emotions. Their quarrels were
+at last ended.</p>
+
+<p>A diversion to his feelings came soon after, in the way of a blunt letter
+from Tom Moore demanding if Lord Byron was the author of &quot;English Bards
+and Scotch Reviewers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Byron replied very stiffly that he was, but he really had intended no
+insult to Mr. Moore, with whom he had not the honor of being acquainted.
+Furthermore, if Mr. Moore felt himself aggrieved, why, the author of
+&quot;English Bards&quot; was at his service to supply him such satisfaction as he
+required.</p>
+
+<p>The irate Irishman accepted &quot;the apology,&quot; a genial reply followed, and
+soon the poets met at the house of a friend, and there began that lifelong
+friendship, with the result that Moore wrote Byron's &quot;Life&quot; and used much
+needless whitewash.</p>
+
+<p>While abroad Byron had gotten into shape for publication one piece of
+manuscript. This was &quot;Hints From Horace,&quot; and the matter was placed in the
+hands of Mr. Dallas, his businessman, very soon after his arrival. Dallas
+read the poem and did not like it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Haven't you anything else?&quot; asked Dallas.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, nothing but a few stanzas of Spenserian stuff,&quot; was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>Dallas asked to see it, and there were placed in his hands rough drafts of
+the first and second cantos of &quot;Childe Harold.&quot; This time Dallas was
+better suited, <a name='V_Page_225'></a>and to corroborate his judgment the matter was submitted
+to Murray, the publisher.</p>
+
+<p>Murray thought the matter had more or less merit, and arrangements were at
+once made for its publication. And so it came out, hammered into shape
+while in the printer's hands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Childe Harold&quot; was an instantaneous, brilliant success&mdash;a success beyond
+the publisher's or author's expectations. The book ran through seven
+editions in four weeks, and Lord Byron &quot;became famous in a night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>London society became Byron-mad. The poet was feted, courted, petted.</p>
+
+<p>He indulged in much innocent and costly dissipation, and some not so
+innocent.</p>
+
+<p>Finally all this began to pall upon him. When twenty-six we find him
+making a bold stand for reform: he would get married and live a staid,
+sober, respectable life. His finances were reduced&mdash;all the money he had
+made out of his books had been given away, prompted by a foolish whim that
+no man should take pay for the product of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Now he would marry and &quot;settle down&quot;; and to marry a woman with an income
+would be no special disadvantage. To sell one's thoughts was abhorrent to
+the young man, but to marry for money was quite another thing. Morality
+depends upon your point of view.</p>
+
+<p>The paradox of things found expression when Byron <a name='V_Page_226'></a>the impressionable,
+Byron the irresistible, sat himself down and after chewing the end of his
+penholder, wrote a letter to Miss Milbanke, with whom he was only slightly
+acquainted, proposing marriage. The lady very properly declined. To be
+courted with a fresh-nibbed pen, and paper cut sonnet-size, instead of by
+a live man, deserves rebuke. Men who propose by mail to a woman in the
+next town are either insincere, self-deceived, or else are of the sort
+whose pulse never goes above sixty-five, and therefore should be avoided.</p>
+
+<p>Byron was both insincere and self-deceived. He had grown to distrust the
+emotions of his heart, and so selected a wife with his head. He chose a
+woman with income, one who was strong, cool-headed, safe and sensible.
+Miss Milbanke was the antithesis of his mother.</p>
+
+<p>The lady declined&mdash;but that is nothing.</p>
+
+<p>They were married within a year.</p>
+
+<p>In another year the wife left her husband and went back to her mother,
+carrying in her arms a girl baby, only a few weeks old.</p>
+
+<p>She never returned to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>What the trouble was no one ever knew, although the gossips named a
+hundred and one reasons&mdash;running from drunkenness to homicide. But Byron,
+the world now knows, was no drunkard&mdash;he was at times convivial, but he
+had no fixed taste for strong drink. He was, however, peevish, impulsive,
+impetuous and often very unreasonable.</p><a name='V_Page_227'></a>
+
+<p>Byron, be it said to his credit, brought no recriminating charges against
+his wife. He only said their differences were inexplicable and
+unexplainable.</p>
+
+<p>The simple facts were that they breathed a different atmosphere&mdash;their
+heads were in a different stratum. His normal pulse was eighty; hers,
+sixty-five.</p>
+
+<p>What do you think of a spiritual companionship where the wife demands,
+&quot;How much longer are you going to follow this foolish habit of writing
+verses?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They did not understand each other. Byron uttered words that no man should
+voice to a woman, and his outbursts were met with a forced calmness that
+was exasperating. The lady sat down, yawned wearily, and when there came a
+lull in the gentleman's verbal pyrotechnics, she would ask him if he had
+anything more to say.</p>
+
+<p>One day she varied the program by packing up her effects and leaving him.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, it is easy to say that had this woman been wise she would have
+stood the childish outbursts and endured the peevish tantrums, for the
+sake of the hours of tenderness and love that were sure to follow. By
+right treatment he would have been on his knees, begging forgiveness and
+crying it out with his head in her lap very shortly. But all this implies
+a woman of unusual power&mdash;extraordinary patience. And this woman was
+simply human. She left, and then in order to justify her action she gave
+reasons. Our actions are <a name='V_Page_228'></a>usually right, but our reasons for them seldom
+are.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Byron made no concealment of her troubles. Society had occasion for
+gossip and the occasion was improved. Stories of Byron's cruelty and
+inhumanity filled the coffeehouses and drawing-rooms; and the hints at
+crimes so grave they could not even be mentioned gave the gossips their
+cue.</p>
+
+<p>The press took it up, and the poet was warned by his friends not to appear
+at the theater or upon the street for fear of the indignation of the mob.
+The spoilt child of London was paying the penalty of popularity. The
+pendulum had swung too far and was now coming back.</p>
+
+<p>Byron, hunted by creditors, hooted by enemies, broken in health, crushed
+in spirit, left the country&mdash;left England, never to return alive.</p>
+
+<p>When Byron trod the deck of the good ship bound for Ostend, and saw a
+strip of tossing, blue water separating him from England, his spirits
+rose. He was twenty-eight years old, and the thought that he would yet do
+something and be somebody was strong in his heart. All the old pride came
+back.</p>
+
+<p>The idea that he would not sell the product of his brain for hire was
+abandoned, and soon after arriving in Holland he began to write letters
+home, making sharp bargains with publishers.</p>
+
+<p>Further than this, his attorneys, on his order, made demand for a share of
+his wife's estate. And erelong we find Byron, the wasteful, cultivating
+the good old <a name='V_Page_229'></a>gentlemanly habit of penuriousness. He was making money, and
+had he lived to be sixty it is probable he would have evolved into a
+conservative and written a book on &quot;Getting on in the World, or Success as
+I Have Found It.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Byron's pilgrimage down through Germany, along the Rhine to Switzerland,
+was one of rest and recreation. At Berne, Basle, Lausanne and Geneva he
+found food for literary thought, and many instances in his writings show
+the reflected scenes he saw. No visitor at Lausanne fails to visit the
+Castle of Chillon, and all the guides will recite you these sweeping
+lines, so surcharged with feeling, beginning:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls;<br /></span>
+<span>A thousand feet in depth below,<br /></span>
+<span>Its many waters meet and flow.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At Geneva began the most interesting friendship between Byron and that
+other young man, so like and yet so unlike him.</p>
+
+<p>Only a few years and Byron was to search the shores of the Mediterranean
+for Shelley's dead body, and finding it, be one of the friends who reduced
+it to ashes.</p>
+
+<p>Tiring of Geneva and the tourists who pointed him out as a curiosity, we
+find Byron and his little party making their way across the Simplon, to
+cross which is an epoch in the life of any man, and then down by the Lago
+Maggiore to Milan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Last Supper&quot; of<a name='V_Page_230'></a> Leonardo da Vinci did not impress Byron&mdash;the art of
+painting never did&mdash;this was his most marked limitation. From Milan they
+wandered down through Italy to Verona and Venice.</p>
+
+<p>The third Canto of &quot;Childe Harold,&quot; &quot;Manfred,&quot; and dozens of shorter poems
+had been sent to Murray. England read and paid for all that Byron wrote,
+and accepted it all as autobiography. Possibly Byron's defiant manner lent
+an excuse for this, but by applying similar rules we could convict
+Sophocles, Schiller and Shelley of basest crimes, put Shakespeare in the
+dock for murder, Milton for blasphemy, Scott for forgery, and Goethe for
+questionable financial deals with the devil. Byron's sins were as scarlet
+and the number not a few, but the moths that came just to flit about the
+flame were all of mature age. Byron set no snares for the innocent, and in
+all of the man's misdoings, he himself it was who suffered most.</p>
+
+<p>The Countess Guiccioli, it seems, was the only woman who comprehended his
+nature sufficiently to lead him in the direction of peace and poise. With
+her, for the first time, he began to systematize his life on a basis of
+sanity. They lived together for five years, and from the time he met her
+until his death no other love came to separate them.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout his life Byron was a man in revolt; and it was only a variation
+of the old passion for freedom that led him to Greece and to his grave.
+The personal <a name='V_Page_231'></a>bravery of the man was proven more than once in his life,
+and on the approach of death he was undismayed. When he passed away, April
+Nineteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-four, Stanhope wrote, &quot;England has
+lost her brightest genius&mdash;Greece her best friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His body was returned to England, denied burial in Westminster, and now
+rests in the old church at Hucknall, near Newstead.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='JOSEPH_ADDISON'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_232'></a><a name='V_Page_233'></a>JOSEPH ADDISON</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_234'></a>
+<span>Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,<br /></span>
+<span>My bane and antidote, are both before me.<br /></span>
+<span>This in a moment brings me to an end;<br /></span>
+<span>But this informs me I shall never die.<br /></span>
+<span>The soul, secured in her existence, smiles<br /></span>
+<span>At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.<br /></span>
+<span>The stars shall fade away, the sun himself<br /></span>
+<span>Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;<br /></span>
+<span>But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,<br /></span>
+<span>Unhurt amid the war of elements,<br /></span>
+<span>The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds!<br /></span>
+<span class='i17'>&mdash;<i>Cato's Soliloquy</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_235'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-9.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-9-th.jpg" alt="JOSEPH ADDISON"></a></p><p class="ctr">JOSEPH ADDISON</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.</p>
+
+<p>Expression is necessary to life. The spirit grows through exercise of its
+faculties, just as a muscle grows strong through use. Life is expression
+and repression is stagnation&mdash;death.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there is right expression and wrong expression. If a man allows his
+life to run riot, and only the animal side of his nature is allowed to
+express itself, he is repressing his highest and best, and therefore those
+qualities, not used, atrophy and die.</p>
+
+<p>Sensuality, gluttony and the life of license repress the life of the
+spirit, and the soul never blossoms; and this is what it is to lose one's
+soul. All adown the centuries thinking men have noted these truths, and
+again and again we find individuals forsaking, in horror, the life of the
+senses and devoting themselves to the life of the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The question of expression through the spirit or through the
+senses&mdash;through the soul or the body&mdash;has been the pivotal point of all
+philosophies and the inspiration of all religions. Asceticism in our day
+finds an interesting manifestation in the Trappists, who live on a
+mountain, nearly inaccessible, and deprive themselves of almost <a name='V_Page_236'></a>every
+vestige of bodily comfort; going without food for days, wearing
+uncomfortable garments, suffering severe cold. So here we find the extreme
+instance of men repressing the faculties of the body in order that the
+spirit may find ample time and opportunity for exercise.</p>
+
+<p>Between this extreme repression and the license of the sensualist lies the
+truth. But just where, is the great question; and the desire of one
+person, who thinks he has discovered the norm, to compel all other men to
+stop there, has led to war and strife untold. All law centers around this
+point&mdash;what shall men be allowed to do? And so we find statutes to punish
+&quot;strolling play-actors,&quot; &quot;players on fiddles,&quot; &quot;disturbers of the public
+conscience,&quot; &quot;persons who dance wantonly,&quot; &quot;blasphemers,&quot; etc. In England
+there were, in the year Eighteen Hundred, sixty-seven offenses punishable
+with death.</p>
+
+<p>What expression is right and what is not is largely a matter of opinion.
+Instrumental music has been to some a rock of offense, exciting the
+spirit, through the sense of hearing, to wrong thoughts&mdash;through &quot;the
+lascivious pleasing of a lute.&quot; Others think dancing wicked, while a few
+allow square dances, but condemn the waltz. Some sects allow pipe-organ
+music, but draw the line at the violin; while others, still, employ a
+whole orchestra in their religious service. Some there may be who regard
+pictures as implements of idolatry, while the Hook-and-Eye Baptists look
+upon buttons as immoral.</p><a name='V_Page_237'></a>
+
+<p>Strange evolutions are often witnessed within the life of one individual,
+as to what is right and what wrong. For instance, Leo Tolstoy, that great
+and good man, once a worldling, has now turned ascetic, a not unusual
+evolution in the lives of the saints. Not caring for harmony as expressed
+in color, form and sounds, Tolstoy is now quite willing to deprive all
+others of these things which minister to their well-being. There is in
+most souls a hunger for beauty, just as there is a physical hunger. Beauty
+speaks to their spirits through the senses; but Tolstoy would have his
+house barren to the verge of hardship, and he advocates that all other
+houses should be likewise. My veneration for Count Tolstoy is profound,
+but I mention him here simply to show the danger that lies in allowing any
+man, even one of the best, to dictate to us what is right.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the frightful cruelties inflicted on mankind during the past have
+arisen out of a difference of opinion arising through a difference in
+temperament. The question is as live today as it was two thousand years
+ago&mdash;what expression is best? That is, what shall we do to be saved? And
+concrete absurdity consists in saying we must all do the same thing.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the race will ever grow to a point where men will be willing to
+leave the matter of life-expression to the individual is a question. Most
+men are anxious to do what is best for themselves and least harmful for
+others. The average man now has intelligence enough!<a name='V_Page_238'></a> Utopia is not far
+off, if the self-appointed folk who govern us for a consideration would
+only be willing to do unto others as they would be done by, and cease
+coveting things that belong to other people. War among nations, and strife
+among individuals, is a result of the covetous spirit to possess either
+power or things, or both. A little more patience, a little more charity
+for all, a little more devotion, a little more love; with less bowing down
+to the past, a brave looking forward to the future, with more confidence
+in ourselves, and more faith in our fellows, and the race will be ripe for
+a great burst of light and life.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay has said that the Puritan did not condemn bear-baiting because it
+gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator. The
+Puritan regarded beauty as a pitfall and a snare: that which gave pleasure
+was a sin; he found his gratification in doing without things. Puritanism
+was a violent oscillation of the pendulum of life to the other side. From
+the vanity, pretense, affectation and sensualism of a Church and State
+bitten by corruption, we find the recoil in Puritanism.</p>
+
+<p>Asceticism to the verge of hardship, frankness bordering on rudeness, and
+a stolidity that was impolite; or soft, luxurious hypocrisy in a
+moth-eaten society&mdash;which shall it be? And Joseph Addison comes upon the
+scene and by the sincerity, graciousness and gentle excellence of his life
+and work, says, &quot;Neither!&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_239'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The little village of Wiltshire is noted as the birthplace of Addison, who
+was the son of a clergyman, afterward the Dean of Lichfield. An erstwhile
+resident of Lichfield, Samuel Johnson by name, once said of Joseph
+Addison, &quot;Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not
+coarse, elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the
+volumes of Addison.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For elegance, simplicity, insight, and a wit that is sharp but which never
+wounds, Addison has no rival, although more than two hundred years have
+come and gone since he ceased to write.</p>
+
+<p>Addison was a gentleman&mdash;the best example of a perfect gentleman that the
+history of English literature affords. And in letters it is much easier to
+find a genius than a gentleman. The field today is not at all over-worked;
+and those who wish to cultivate the art of being gentlemen will find no
+fearsome competition. In fact, the chief reason for not engaging in this
+line is the discomfort of isolation, and the lack of comradeship one is
+sure to suffer. To be gentle, generous, kind; to win by few words; and to
+disarm criticism and prejudice through the potency of a gracious presence,
+is a fine art. Books on etiquette will not serve the end, nor studious
+attempts to smile at the proper time, nor zealous efforts to avoid
+jostling the whims of those we meet; for to attempt to please is often to
+antagonize.</p>
+
+<p>Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise seem the three <a name='V_Page_240'></a>ingredients most needed in
+forming the gentle man. I place these elements according to their value.
+No man is great who does not possess Sympathy plus, and the greatness of
+men can safely be gauged by their sympathies. Sympathy and imagination are
+twin sisters. Your heart must go out to all men, the high, the low, the
+rich, the poor, the learned, the unlearned, the good, the bad, the wise,
+the foolish&mdash;you must be one with them all, else you can never comprehend
+them. Sympathy! It is the touchstone to every secret, the key to all
+knowledge, the open sesame of all hearts. Put yourself in the other man's
+place, and then you will know why he thinks certain thoughts and does
+certain deeds. Put yourself in his place, and your blame will dissolve
+itself into pity, and your tears will wipe out the record of his misdeeds.
+The saviors of the world have simply been men with wondrous Sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>But Knowledge must go with Sympathy, else the emotions will become maudlin
+and pity may be wasted on a poodle instead of a child; on a field-mouse
+instead of a human soul. Knowledge in use is wisdom, and wisdom implies a
+sense of values&mdash;you know a big thing from a little one, a valuable fact
+from a trivial one. Tragedy and comedy are simply questions of value: a
+little misfit in life makes us laugh, a great one is tragedy and cause for
+grief.</p>
+
+<p>Poise is the strength of body and strength of mind to control your
+Sympathy and your Knowledge. Unless <a name='V_Page_241'></a>you control your emotions they run
+over and you stand in the slop. Sympathy must not run riot, or it is
+valueless and tokens weakness instead of strength. In every hospital for
+nervous disorders are to be found many instances of this loss of control.
+The individual has Sympathy, but not Poise, and therefore his life is
+worthless to himself and to the world.</p>
+
+<p>He symbols inefficiency, not helpfulness. Poise reveals itself more in
+voice than in words; more in thought than in action; more in atmosphere
+than in conscious life. It is a spiritual quality, and is felt more than
+it is seen. It is not a matter of size, nor bodily attitude, nor attire,
+nor personal comeliness: it is a state of inward being, and of knowing
+your cause is just. And so you see it is a great and profound subject
+after all, great in its ramifications, limitless in extent, implying the
+entire science of right living. I once met a man who was deformed in body
+and little more than a dwarf, but who had such Spiritual Gravity&mdash;such
+Poise&mdash;that to enter a room where he was, was to feel his presence and
+acknowledge his superiority. To allow Sympathy to waste itself on unworthy
+subjects is to deplete one's life-forces. To conserve is the part of
+wisdom. No great orator ever exerts himself to his fullest, and reserve is
+a necessary element in all good literature, as well as in everything else.
+Poise being the control of your Sympathy and Knowledge implies the
+possession of these attributes, for without Sympathy and Knowledge you
+<a name='V_Page_242'></a>have nothing to control but your physical body. To practise Poise as a
+mere gymnastic exercise, or a study in etiquette, is to be self-conscious,
+stiff, preposterous and ridiculous. Those who cut such fantastic tricks
+before high heaven as make angels weep are men void of Sympathy and
+Knowledge trying to cultivate Poise. Their science is a mere matter of
+what to do with arms and legs. Poise is a question of spirit controlling
+flesh, heart controlling attitude. And so in the cultivation of Poise it
+is well to begin quite aways back. Let perfect love cast out fear; get rid
+of all secrets; have nothing in your heart to conceal; be gentle,
+generous, kind; do not bother to forgive your enemies&mdash;it is better to
+forget them, and cease conjuring them forth from your inner consciousness.
+The idea that you have enemies is egotism gone to seed. Get Knowledge by
+coming close to Nature, listening to her heart-beats, studying her ways.
+And let your heart go out to humanity by a desire to serve.</p>
+
+<p>That man is greatest who best serves his kind. Sympathy and Knowledge are
+for use&mdash;you acquire that you may give out; you accumulate that you may
+bestow. And as God has given you the sublime blessings of Sympathy and
+Knowledge, there will come to you the wish to reveal your gratitude by
+giving them out again, for the wise man knows that we retain spiritual
+qualities only as we give them away. Let your light shine. To him that
+hath shall be given. The exercise of wisdom <a name='V_Page_243'></a>brings wisdom; and at the
+last the infinitesimal quantity of man's knowledge, compared with the
+Infinite, and the meagerness of man's Sympathy when compared with the
+source from which ours is absorbed, will evolve an abnegation and a
+humility that will lend a perfect Poise. The Gentleman is a man with
+Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise; and as I sit here in this quiet corner,
+Joseph Addison seems to me to fit the requirements a little better than
+any other name I can recall.</p><a name='V_Page_244'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Born into a family where economy was a necessity, yet Addison had every
+advantage that good breeding and thorough tutorship could give.</p>
+
+<p>At Charterhouse School he won the affection of his teachers by his earnest
+wish to comply. The receptive spirit and the desire to please were his by
+inheritance. When fifteen he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where,
+within a year, his beauty, good nature and intelligence made his presence
+felt.</p>
+
+<p>In another year he was elected a scholar at Magdalen College, his
+recommendation being his skill in Latin versification.</p>
+
+<p>It was the hope and expectation of his parents that he should become a
+clergyman and follow in his father's footsteps. This also seems to have
+been the bent of the young man's mind. But the grace of his personality,
+his obliging disposition, with a sort of furtive ability to peer into a
+millstone as far as any, had attracted the attention of several statesmen.
+One of these, Charles Montague, afterward Lord Halifax, remarked, &quot;I am a
+friend of the Church, but I propose to do it the injury of keeping Addison
+out of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Montague discussed the matter with Lord Somers, and these two concluded
+that just a trifle more maturity of that gently ironical mind, a little
+more seasoning of the gracious personality, and the State would have in
+Joseph Addison a servant of untold value.</p><a name='V_Page_245'></a>
+
+<p>Thus we see that England's policy of selecting and training men for the
+consular and diplomatic service is no new thing. It is a wonder that
+America has not ere this profited by the example. The tradition holds that
+we must at least have a scholar and a gentleman for the Court of Saint
+James, and several times we have been put to straits to find the man. The
+only way is to breed them and then bring them up in the way they should
+go.</p>
+
+<p>But beyond the zealous desire of Montague and Lord Somers to educate good
+men for the diplomatic service, lurked the still more eager wish to secure
+able writers to plead and defend the party cause. With this phase of the
+question America is more familiar; the policy of rewarding able speakers
+and ready writers with offices ready made or made to order has come to us
+ably backed by precedent untold.</p>
+
+<p>Addison set himself to literary tasks, but still regarded himself as a
+scholar. Leisure fitted his temperament&mdash;he was never in haste, even when
+he was in a hurry, and he carried with him the air of having all the time
+there was. Nothing is so ungraceful as haste. Addison always had time to
+listen; and we make friends, not by explaining things to other folks, but
+by allowing others to explain to us.</p>
+
+<p>The habit of attentive, sympathetic listening came to Addison early in
+life. From his twenty-first to his twenty-seventh year he lived a studious
+life&mdash;idle, his <a name='V_Page_246'></a>father called it&mdash;writing essays, political pamphlets and
+Latin verse. His political friends took care that some of the output was
+purchased, so that he was assured a comfortable living; but his success
+was not sufficient to inflate his cosmos with an undue amount of ego.</p>
+
+<p>One small book of criticism which he produced about this time was
+entitled, &quot;Account of the English Poets.&quot; A significant feature of the
+work is that Shakespeare is not mentioned, even once, while Dryden is
+placed as the standard of excellence, just as in &quot;Modern Painters,&quot; Ruskin
+takes Turner and lets him stand for one hundred, and all other artists
+grade down from this.</p>
+
+<p>Addison merely reflected the taste of his time. Shakespeare was not
+thought any more of two hundred years ago than we think of him now, with
+this difference&mdash;that he is the author we now talk about and seldom read,
+but then they did not discuss him any more than we now go to see him
+played.</p>
+
+<p>An interesting character by the name of Jacob Tonson appears upon the
+scene, as a friend of Addison in his early days. Tonson enjoyed the
+distinction of being the father of the modern publishing business&mdash;the
+first man to bring out the works of authors at his own risk and then sell
+the product to bookstores. I believe it is Mr. Le Gallienne who has been
+so unkind as to speak of &quot;Barabbas Tonson.&quot; Among Tonson's many good
+strokes was his act in buying the copyright of &quot;Paradise<a name='V_Page_247'></a> Lost&quot; from
+Simmons, the bookseller, who had purchased all rights in the manuscript
+from the bereaved widow on a payment of eight pounds.</p>
+
+<p>Tonson appreciated good things in a literary way. He was on friendly terms
+with all the principal writers, and did much in bringing some shy writers
+to the front. Addison and Tonson laid great plans, few of which
+materialized, and some were carried out by other people&mdash;notably the
+compilation of an English Dictionary. In Sixteen Hundred Ninety-nine we
+find Addison, in possession of a pension of three hundred pounds a year,
+crossing the Channel into France with the object &quot;to travel and qualify
+himself to serve His Majesty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The diplomatic language of the world was French. With intent to learn the
+language, Addison made his home with a modest French family; and a better
+way of acquiring a language than this has never been devised. A young
+friend of mine, however, recently returned from Europe, tells me that the
+ideal plan is to make love to a vivacious French girl who can not speak
+English. Of the excellence of this plan I know nothing&mdash;it may be a mere
+barren ideality.</p>
+
+<p>A little over a year in France and we are told that &quot;Addison spoke the
+language like a native &quot;&mdash;a glib expression, still able-bodied, that means
+little or much. From France Addison followed down into Italy, and spent a
+year there, residing in various small towns with the same object in view
+that took him to France.</p><a name='V_Page_248'></a>
+
+<p>And one of his admirers relates that &quot;he learned to speak Italian
+perfectly, his pronunciation being marred only by a slight French accent.&quot;
+Addison's three years of foreign travel, and the friendly society of the
+highest and best wherever he journeyed, had caused him to blossom out into
+a most exceptional man. Nature had done much for him, but her best gift
+was the hospitable mind. Travel to many young men is the opportunity to
+indulge in a line of conduct not possible at home. But Addison, ripening
+slowly, appreciated the fact that the Puritan has a deal of truth on his
+side. There is a manly abstinence that is most becoming, and to moderate
+one's desires and partake of the good things of earth sparingly is the
+best way to garner their benefit. No doubt, too, Addison's modesty and
+tendency to shyness saved him from many a danger. &quot;Bashfulness is the
+tough husk in which genius ripens,&quot; says Emerson.</p>
+
+<p>Thus do we find our man at thirty, strong, manly, gifted, handsome,
+chivalrous, proud, yet tender, sympathetic, knowing&mdash;ready to serve his
+country in whatsoever capacity he could serve it best. When lo! the death
+of the King cut off his pension, a new party came in, his influential
+friends were thrown out of power, and Addison's prospects wilted in a
+single night.</p><a name='V_Page_249'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The fact is that Addison from his thirtieth to his fortieth year was
+little better than a denizen of Grub Street. Fortunately he was a
+bachelor, with no one but himself to support, else actual hardship might
+have entered. Several flattering offers to act as tutor or companion to
+rich men's sons came his way, and were declined in polite and gracious
+language; and once a suggestion that he wed a woman of wealth was tabled
+in a manner not quite so gracious. In passing, it is well to state that
+all of Addison's relations with women seem to have occupied a lofty plane
+of chivalry. His respect for the good name of woman was profound, and
+whether any woman ever broke through that fine reserve and exquisite
+formality is a question. He was intensely admired by women, of course, but
+it was from the other side of the drawing-room. He kept gush at bay, and
+never tempted to indiscretion.</p>
+
+<p>Addison's youth was past; he was creeping well into the thirties, and
+still with no prospects. He was out of money, with no profession, and no
+special reputation as a writer. The popular poets of the time were Sedley,
+Rochester, Buckingham and Dorset&mdash;and you have never heard of them? Well,
+it only shows how a literary reputation is a shadow that fades in a night.</p>
+
+<p>Addison had written his &quot;Cato&quot; several years before, but no one had seen
+it. He carried the manuscript about with him, as Goethe did his &quot;Faust,&quot;
+for years, and <a name='V_Page_250'></a>added to it, or erased, all according to the moods that
+came to him. And we have reason to believe that the sublime soliloquy in
+&quot;Cato&quot; was written by Addison when the blankness of his prospects and the
+blackness of the future had forced the question of self-destruction upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Cato made a great mistake in committing suicide&mdash;he did the deed right on
+the eve of success&mdash;he should have waited. Addison waited.</p>
+
+<p>At this time Lord Godolphin, who had the happiness to have a great
+racehorse named after him, occupied the chief place in the Ministry.
+Marlborough had just fought the battle of Blenheim, and it was Godolphin's
+wish to have the victory sung in adequate verse, for history's sake and
+for the sake of the political party. But he could not think of a poet who
+was equal to the task; so in his dilemma he called in Lord Halifax, who
+had a reputation for knowing good things in a literary way.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Halifax was unfortunate in having his portrait transmitted by two
+poets who hated him thoroughly, each for the amply sufficient reason that
+he failed to confer the favors that were much desired. Swift calls Halifax
+&quot;a would-be M&aelig;cenas&quot;; and Pope refers to him as &quot;penurious, mean and
+chicken-hearted,&quot; satirizing him in the well-known character of Bufo.</p>
+
+<p>Do not take the poets too seriously: all good men have had mud-balls
+thrown at them&mdash;sometimes bricks&mdash;and<a name='V_Page_251'></a> Halifax was not a bad man by any
+means. Let the poets make copy of their thwarted hopes.</p>
+
+<p>In reply to Lord Godolphin's inquiries, Halifax said he did indeed know
+the man who could celebrate the victory in verse, and in fact there was
+only one man in England who could do the task justice. He, however,
+refused to divulge his man's identity until a suitable reward for the poet
+was fixed upon.</p>
+
+<p>Godolphin finally thought of an office in the Excise, worth three hundred
+pounds a year or more.</p>
+
+<p>Halifax then stipulated that the negotiations must be carried on directly
+between the Government and the poet, otherwise the poet's pride would
+rebel. Godolphin agreed to shield Halifax from all mention in the matter,
+and the name and address of Joseph Addison were then taken down.</p>
+
+<p>Godolphin had never heard of Addison, but relying on Halifax, he sent
+Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the address named, where Addison
+was found over a haberdasher's, up three flights, back. The account comes
+from Pope, who was the enemy of both Addison and Halifax, and can
+therefore be relied upon.</p>
+
+<p>The Chancellor of the Exchequer broached the subject, was gently repulsed,
+the case was argued, and being put on the plane of duty the poet
+surrendered, and as a result we have Addison's poem, &quot;The Campaign.&quot; It
+was considered a great literary feat in its day, but like all things
+performed to order, comes tardy off. Only <a name='V_Page_252'></a>work done in love lives. But
+Addison slid into the Excise office, taking it as legal tender. This
+brought him into relationship with Godolphin, who one day exclaimed, &quot;I
+thought that man Addison was nothing but a poet&mdash;I'm a rogue if he isn't
+really a great man!&quot; Lord Godolphin was needing a good man, a man of
+address, polish, tact and education. And Addison was selected to fill the
+office of Under-Secretary of State, the place for which he had fitted
+himself and to which he had aspired eight years before. Moral: Be
+prepared.</p>
+
+<p>The party that called Addison was not the one to which he was supposed to
+be attached, but his merits were recognized, his help was needed, and so
+he was sent for. It was a great compliment. But good men are always
+needed&mdash;they were then, and the demand is greater now than ever before.
+The highest positions are hard to fill&mdash;good men are scarce.</p>
+
+<p>Addison's knowledge, his modesty, his willingness, his caution, his grace
+of manner, fitted him exactly for the position; and we have reason to
+believe that the salary of one thousand pounds a year was very acceptable
+to one in his situation.</p>
+
+<p>In another year the Whigs had grown stronger; Halifax was again a
+recognized power; and erelong we find Addison entering Parliament. So
+great was his popularity that he was elected from one district six times,
+representing Malmesbury until his death.</p>
+
+<p>It was stated by Congreve that Addison's habit of <a name='V_Page_253'></a>shyness was an
+affectation. If so, it was a good stroke, for nothing is so becoming in a
+man known to be versatile and strong as a half-embarrassment when in
+society. The Duke of Wellington's awkwardness in a drawing-room put all
+others at their ease. The eternal fitness of things demands that when
+greatness is in evidence some one should be embarrassed, and if the
+celebrity is &quot;it,&quot; so much the better.</p>
+
+<p>Personally, I feel sure that Addison's shyness was not feigned, for on the
+only occasion he ever attempted to speak ex-tempore in Parliament he
+muffed the subject, forgot his theme, and sat down in confusion. With all
+his incisive thought and fine command of language, Addison could not think
+on his feet. And as if aware of his limitations, in one of the &quot;Spectator&quot;
+essays he said, with more or less truth, &quot;The fluent orator, ready to
+speak on any topic, is never profound, and when once his thought is cold
+it will seldom repay examination&mdash;it was only a skyrocket.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_254'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Without Addison's literary reputation, resting upon his essays published
+in the &quot;Tatler&quot; and the &quot;Spectator,&quot; it is very possible that we would now
+know about as much concerning him as we do about Sir John Hawkins. The
+&quot;Tatler&quot; and the &quot;Spectator&quot; allowed him to express his best, and in his
+own way.</p>
+
+<p>With the name of Addison is inseparably coupled that of Richard Steele.
+These men had a literary style which they held in partnership. The nearest
+approach to it in our time is the &quot;Easy Chair&quot; of George William Curtis.
+Curtis was once called by Lowell, with a goodly degree of justice, &quot;our
+modern Addison.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Steele and Addison had been schoolmates at the Charterhouse, and friends
+for a lifetime. They were of the same age within a year. Steele had been a
+soldier and an adventurer, and his disposition was decidedly convivial. He
+was a clever writer, knowing the world of politics and society, but he
+lacked the spiritual and artistic qualities which Addison's moderate and
+studious life had fostered. But on simple themes, where the argument did
+not rise above the commonplace, Addison and Steele wrote exactly alike,
+just as all writers on the &quot;Sun&quot; used to write like Dana. Steele had
+filled the lowest office in the Ministry, the office of &quot;Gazeteer&quot;: the
+duties of the office being to issue a newspaper giving the official news
+of the day. It was a licensed monopoly, and all infringers were severely
+punished.</p><a name='V_Page_255'></a>
+
+<p>Steele, however, did not like the office, because the Powers demanded that
+all writing in the &quot;Gazette&quot; be very innocent and very insipid. &quot;To
+publish a newspaper and say nothing is no easy task,&quot; said Steele. Had he
+lived in our day he could have seen the trick performed on every hand.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the office of Gazetteer was abolished, and any man who wished
+might issue a &quot;gazette,&quot; provided he kept within proper bounds. The result
+was a flight of small leaflet periodicals, quite like the Chapbook
+Renaissance of Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five and Eighteen Hundred
+Ninety-six, when over eleven hundred &quot;brownie&quot; and &quot;chipmunk&quot; magazines
+were started in America. Every man with two or three ideas and ten
+dollars' capital started a magazine. Steele, teeming with thoughts
+demanding expression, at war with smug society, and possessing wit withal,
+started the &quot;Tatler,&quot; to be issued three times a week, price one penny.
+Seizing upon a creation of Swift's, &quot;Isaac Bickerstaff,&quot; a character
+already known to the public, was introduced as editor. Bickerstaff
+announced his assistants, and among others named as authority in Foreign
+Affairs a waiter at Saint James Coffeehouse known as &quot;Kidney.&quot; The spirit
+of rollicking freedom in the publication, with a touch of philosophy, and
+a dash of culture, caught the public fancy at once. The &quot;Tatler&quot; was the
+theme in every coffeehouse, and in the drawing-rooms, as well. Those who
+understood it <a name='V_Page_256'></a>laughed and passed it along to others who pretended they
+understood, and so it became the fad. Then the anonymity lent the charm of
+mystery&mdash;who could it be who was into all the secrets, and knew the world
+so thoroughly?</p>
+
+<p>Addison read each issue with surprise and amusement, but it was not until
+the fifth number that he located the author positively, by reading an
+observation of his own that he had voiced to Steele some weeks before.
+Steele absorbed everything, digested it, and gave the good out as his own,
+innocent and probably unmindful of where he got it. This accounts for his
+wonderful versatility: he made others grub and used the net result.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago Francis Wilson made a mock complaint to the effect that
+whenever he met Eugene Field in the &quot;Saints and Sinners Corner&quot; for a
+half-hour's chat, any good thing he might voice was duly printed next day
+in the &quot;Sharps and Flats&quot; column as Field's very own, and thus did the
+genial Eugene acquire his reputation as a genius. All of which gentle
+gibing contains more fact than fiction.</p>
+
+<p>When Addison saw his bright thoughts appearing in the &quot;Tatler,&quot; he went to
+Steele and said, &quot;Here, I'll write that out myself and save you the
+trouble.&quot; Steele welcomed him with open arms. The first &quot;Tatler&quot; article
+written by Addison relates to the distress of news-writers at the prospect
+of peace. This is exactly in Steele's style; but we find erelong in the
+&quot;Tatler&quot;<a name='V_Page_257'></a> a spiritual quality that was not a part of Steele's nature. From
+current gossip and easy society commonplace, the tone is exalted, and this
+we know was the result of Addison's influence. Out of two hundred
+seventy-one articles in the &quot;Tatler,&quot; one hundred eighty-eight were
+produced by Steele and forty-two by Addison. Yet Steele was wise enough to
+perceive the superior quality of Addison's work, and this dictated the key
+in which the magazine was pitched. Yet the fertility of Steele surpassed
+that of Addison. Steele initiated the crusade against gambling, dueling
+and vice; and this was all very natural, for he simply inveighed against
+sins with which experience had made him familiar. His moral essays were
+all written in periods of repentance. His sharp tirades on dueling in one
+instance approached the point of personality, and on being criticized, he
+resented the interference and expressed a willingness to fight his man
+with pistols at ten paces. It must not be forgotten that Richard Steele
+was an Irishman.</p>
+
+<p>The political tone of the &quot;Tatler&quot; favored the Marlborough administration,
+and on this account Steele was rewarded with a snug office under the wing
+of the State. In Seventeen Hundred Ten, the Whig Ministry fell, but Lord
+Harley knew the value of Steele as a writer, and so notified him that he
+would not be disturbed in possession of his Stamp Office.</p>
+
+<p>Now, a complete silence concerning things political in the &quot;Tatler&quot; was
+hardly possible, and a change of <a name='V_Page_258'></a>front would be humiliating, and whether
+to give up the &quot;Tatler&quot; or the office&mdash;that was the question! Addison was
+in the same box. The offices they held brought them in twice as much money
+as the little periodical, and either the patronage or the paper would have
+to go. They decided to abandon the &quot;Tatler.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the habit of writing sticks to a man; and after two months Steele and
+Addison began to feel the necessity of some outlet for their pent-up
+thoughts. They had each grown with their work, and were aware of it. They
+would start a new paper, and make it a daily; and they would keep clear of
+politics. So we find the &quot;Spectator&quot; duly launched with the intended
+purpose of forming &quot;a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art
+and literature.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Every good thing has its prototype, and Addison in Italy had become
+familiar with the force of &quot;Manners&quot; by Casa, and the &quot;Courtier&quot; by
+Castiglione. Then he knew the character of La Bruyere, and this gave the
+cue for the Spectator Club, with Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew
+Freeport, Will Honeycomb, Captain Sentry and the Templar.</p>
+
+<p>Swift had contributed several papers to the &quot;Tatler,&quot; but he found the
+&quot;Spectator&quot; too soft and feminine for his fancy. Probably Steele and
+Addison were afraid of the doughty Dean's style; there was too much
+vitriol in it for popularity&mdash;and they kept the Irish parson at a
+distance, as certain letters to &quot;Stella&quot; seem to indicate.<a name='V_Page_259'></a> The
+&quot;Spectator&quot; was a notable success from the start and soon put Steele and
+Addison in comfortable financial shape.</p>
+
+<p>After the first year the daily issue amounted to fourteen thousand copies.
+Addison introduced the &quot;Answers to Correspondents&quot; scheme.</p>
+
+<p>He has had many imitators along this line, some of whom yet endure, but
+they are not Addisons.</p>
+
+<p>An imitation of the &quot;Spectator&quot; was started as a daily in New York in
+Eighteen Hundred Ninety-eight. In one week it ran short on phosphorus and
+was obliged to quit. It took two years for Steele and Addison to write
+themselves out, and rather than let the quality of the periodical decline
+they discontinued its publication, quitting like the wise men they were at
+the height of their success.</p><a name='V_Page_260'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>When Addison's tragedy of &quot;Cato&quot; was produced in Seventeen Hundred
+Thirteen, he occupied the first place in English letters. The play was a
+dazzling success; and it is a great play yet. It lives as literature among
+the best things men have ever done&mdash;a masterpiece!</p>
+
+<p>Addison still continued in the service of the State, and wrote more or
+less in a political way. The strain of carrying on the &quot;Spectator&quot; and the
+stress of political affairs had tired the man. The spring had gone out of
+his intellect, and he began to talk of some quiet retreat in the country.
+In Seventeen Hundred Sixteen, in his forty-fourth year, he married the
+Countess of Warwick, a widow of fifteen years' standing. We have reason to
+believe that the worthy widow did the courting and literally took our good
+man captive. He was depressed and worn, and longed for rest and gentle,
+sympathetic companionship. She promised all these&mdash;the buxom creature&mdash;and
+married him, taking him to her home at Holland House. Yes, it would be
+unjust to blame her; doubtless she wished to do for the man what was best;
+and so report has it that she exercised a discipline over his hours of
+work and recreation and curtailed a little there and issued orders here,
+until the poor patient rebelled and fled to the coffeehouses. There he
+found the rollicking society that he so despised&mdash;and loved, for there was
+comradeship in it, and comradeship was what he prayed for. His wife did
+not comprehend <a name='V_Page_261'></a>that delicate, spiritual quality of his heart: that
+craving for sympathy which came after he had given out so much. He wanted
+peace, quiet and rest; but she wished to take him forth and exhibit him to
+the throng. Yet all of her admonitions that he &quot;brace up&quot; were in vain.
+His work was done. He foresaw the end, and grew impatient that it did not
+come. Placid, resigned, sane to the last hour, he passed away at Holland
+House, June Seventeenth, Seventeen Hundred Nineteen, aged forty-seven. His
+body, lying in state, was viewed by more than ten thousand people, and
+then it was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='ROBERT_SOUTHEY'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_262'></a><a name='V_Page_263'></a>ROBERT SOUTHEY</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_264'></a>
+<span class='i8'>Let no man write<br /></span>
+<span>Thy epitaph, Emmett; thou shalt not go<br /></span>
+<span>Without thy funeral strain! O young and good,<br /></span>
+<span>And wise, though erring here, thou shalt not go<br /></span>
+<span>Unhonored or unsung. And better thus<br /></span>
+<span>Beneath that undiscriminating stroke,<br /></span>
+<span>Better to fall, than to have lived to mourn,<br /></span>
+<span>As sure thou wouldst, in misery and remorse,<br /></span>
+<span>Thine own disastrous triumph * * * *<br /></span>
+<span>How happier thus, in that heroic mood<br /></span>
+<span>That takes away the sting of death, to die,<br /></span>
+<span>By all the good and all the wise forgiven!<br /></span>
+<span>Yea, in all ages by the wise and good<br /></span>
+<span>To be remembered, mourned, and honored still!<br /></span>
+<span class='i17'>&mdash;<i>Southey to Robert Emmett</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_265'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-10.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-10-th.jpg" alt="ROBERT SOUTHEY"></a></p><p class="ctr">ROBERT SOUTHEY</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Most generally, when I travel, I go alone&mdash;this to insure being in good
+company. To travel with another is a terrible risk: it puts a great strain
+on the affections.</p>
+
+<p>I once made the tour of Scotland with a man who was traveling for his
+health. He had kidney-trouble belief. I had known the man in a casual way
+for several years, and we started out the best of friends, anticipating a
+good time. We were gone three weeks, and when we got back I hated the
+fellow thoroughly, and I have every reason to believe that he fully
+reciprocated the sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>And yet he was an honest man, and I am, too, although not an extremist.
+There was nothing to quarrel about; it began at Euston Station, where I
+bought third-class tickets. He said he preferred to ride first-class, or
+second, at least&mdash;there was such a thing as false economy.</p>
+
+<p>I asked him why he had not said something along this line before I had
+purchased the tickets.</p>
+
+<p>He retorted that I had not consulted his preference in the matter. I
+brought in a mild rejoinder by moving the previous question, and showing
+that he, himself, had proposed that I should take entire charge of <a name='V_Page_266'></a>the
+arrangements, using my own good judgment at all times.</p>
+
+<p>He said something about his error in supposing he was traveling with a
+discerning person. Just then the guard came along, slamming the doors, and
+we were pushed into a third-class carriage, where we enjoyed an all-day
+journey together.</p>
+
+<p>At Edinburgh my companion wished to ascend the Scott monument, visit a
+friend at the University, and buy a plaid rug at one of the shops in
+Princess Street; while I proposed to look up the footprints of Bobbie
+Burns and John Knox. He said, &quot;Confound John Knox!&quot; I answered, &quot;You
+evidently think I am referring to Knox the Hatter!&quot; He grew mad as a
+hatter, and I had to defend John Knox, and later had to do the same for
+Rab and his friends, as well as for Christopher North.</p>
+
+<p>And so it went&mdash;he pooh-poohed my heroes; and I scorned the friend he
+wished to find at the University, smiled patronizingly on the Scott
+monument, and said, &quot;hoot mon&quot; at the idea of buying a plaid rug in
+Princess Street.</p>
+
+<p>All this was many years ago; since then I have been very cautious about
+entering into any Anglo-American alliances. Yet to travel alone often
+seems to be dropping something out of your life. When the voyage is rough,
+the weather bad and the fare below par, my spirits always rise. I say to
+myself: &quot;My son, this is <a name='V_Page_267'></a>certainly tough&mdash;but who cares! We can stand it,
+we have had this way right along year after year&mdash;but just imagine your
+plight if there were some one in your charge expecting a good time!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then I drink to Boreas and all the fiends of Gehenna, and am supremely
+content.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose the night is resplendent with stars, the waves tremulous with
+reflected beauty, and as the great ship goes gliding across the
+deep&mdash;proud, strong and tireless&mdash;there come to you thoughts sublime and
+emotions such as Wagner knew when he wrote the &quot;Pilgrims' Chorus.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But you are not happy, simply because you want to tell some one how happy
+you are. What is the starlight for, save to call some one's attention to,
+or the phosphorescent sheen except to be pointed out and enjoyed by two?
+Exquisite beauty, as revealed in music, painting, sculpture or beautiful
+scenery, affects me at times to tears; and there always comes creeping
+into my life a profound sadness, a dread homesickness, to think that in
+this wealth of peace and joy I am alone&mdash;alone.</p>
+
+<p>Can you stand by yourself on a hillside and look across a beautiful little
+lake to the woods beyond; or walk through a pine-forest, where the needles
+sink as a carpet beneath your feet, and the air is full of the pungent
+odor of the pine, and the gently swaying tree-tops overhead croon you a
+lullaby&mdash;can you enjoy all this without <a name='V_Page_268'></a>an exquisite melancholy, and a
+joy that hurts, piercing your soul? It's homesickness, that's all; you
+want to go home and tell some one how happy you are. Give me solitude,
+sweet solitude, but in my solitude give me still one friend to whom I may
+murmur, Solitude is sweet.</p><a name='V_Page_269'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>That about the sea and the forest, the wooded hillside and the little lake
+may not be the exact words, but the thought is there just as White Pigeon
+expressed it to me that evening when we sat on the mossy bank of the lake
+at Grasmere and threw pebbles into the water.</p>
+
+<p>I had come up from Liverpool to Bowness, walked over to Ambleside and
+along the lake to Grasmere. My luggage consisted of a comb, a toothbrush
+and a stout second-growth East Aurora hickory stick.</p>
+
+<p>At Grasmere I applied at the Red Lion Inn for supper and lodging. The
+landlady looked at my dusty, rusty corduroys, paused, coughed and asked
+where my luggage was. Wishing to be honest, I displayed the luggage
+aforementioned. She did not smile. She was a large person, sober, sedate,
+sincere and also serious, with a big bunch of keys dangling from a waist
+that once was Grecian. And she told me right there that if I wanted
+accommodations I would have to pay in advance. I demurred, pleaded and
+finally explained that I had lost my money and had sent to New York for a
+remittance, I was a remittance-man. Had this been true, it were sad, yet I
+had a hundred pounds sterling in my belt; but it just came to me to see
+how it would feel to be penniless and friendless and plead for charity. It
+is not hard to plead for charity when one has a pocket full of money.</p>
+
+<p>So I pleaded. But it was of no avail.</p>
+
+<p>I requested a drink of water. This was denied. Then I <a name='V_Page_270'></a>asked if I could
+wash in the lake; and this favor was granted, and the advice volunteered
+that it would be a good thing to do. And further the kind lady made a
+motion toward a dangling red tassel that hung from a rope, and suggested
+that I get me to a gunnery and quickly, too, otherwise she would have to
+call the porter.</p>
+
+<p>I felt to see that my money was all right&mdash;to assure myself it was no jest
+in earnest&mdash;and departed. Being singularly psychic to suggestion I
+followed the thought that I wash in the lake, and started in that
+direction, along a footpath that led across a meadow, over a stile. A
+thick growth of bushes lined the lake for aways, and then the footpath
+seemed to follow right through the undergrowth. I pushed the green
+branches aside, and continued along for about a hundred feet, when I stood
+on the green, grass-covered bank of the beautiful &quot;Windermere.&quot; Daffodils
+lined the water's edge&mdash;the daffodils of Wordsworth&mdash;down the lake were
+the white wings of several sailboats; the sun had gone down, but his long
+rays of gold still pierced the sky, while across the water arose, silent
+and majestic, the dark purple hills.</p>
+
+<p>It was a beautiful sight&mdash;so full of quiet and peace and rest. I stood
+with hat in hand, the evening breeze fanning my face, enjoying the scene.
+Just then there was a little splash in the water, and looking down I saw a
+woman with back toward me sitting on a boulder, <a name='V_Page_271'></a>tossing pebbles into the
+lake. By the side of the woman were her hat and book. I was on the point
+of softly backing out through the bushes, when it came to me that I had
+seen that head with its big coil of brown hair somewhere else&mdash;but where,
+ah, where!</p>
+
+<p>Why, in Paris, two years before. It was White Pigeon.</p>
+
+<p>She had not seen me. I retraced my steps, and then came crashing through
+the juniper, straight over to the bankside, where I sat down about twenty
+feet from the good lady. I was whistling violently and throwing pebbles
+into the water, not even glancing toward her. She let me whistle for a
+full minute and then said gently: &quot;Do not be absurd! I know you.&quot; Then we
+both laughed, and I, of course, did the regulation thing, and asked, &quot;When
+did you arrive, and where are you going, and how do you like it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You see what I am doing here, and as for when I arrived and how long I'll
+stay, and how I like it&mdash;what difference is it? There, you are surprised
+to see me, aren't you? I thought you had gotten past being surprised at
+anything, long ago&mdash;only silly people are surprised&mdash;you once said it,
+yourself!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then White Pigeon ceased to speak and we simply gazed into each other's
+eyes. White Pigeon has gray eyes that sometimes are blue and sometimes
+amber&mdash;it all depends upon her mood and the thoughts reflected there. The
+long, sober gaze stole off into a half-smile and she said, &quot;You got things
+awfully mixed up in that<a name='V_Page_272'></a> Rosa Bonheur booklet&mdash;why not stick to truth?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truth,&quot; I replied, &quot;is hideous, and facts are like some men, stubborn
+things. But what was the matter with the Bonheur Little Journey?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will not be angry with me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How could I be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You promise?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you said my cousin was a conductor on the Lake Shore&mdash;you knew
+perfectly well it was the Michigan Central!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I apologized.</p>
+
+<p>It had been two years since I had seen this woman, and not a letter had
+passed between us. I had sent her a book now and then, and she had sent me
+a sketch or two.</p>
+
+<p>White Pigeon knows nothing about me, and never asked concerning my
+history, which is a blank, my lord! Does the lily inquire of the
+humming-bird, &quot;Hast hummed and fluttered about other flowers?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That is a charming friendship that asks nothing, makes no demands, needs
+no assurances, never falters, and is so frank that it disarms prudery and
+pretense.</p>
+
+<p>I said as much.</p>
+
+<p>White Pigeon made no answer, but flung a pebble into the lake.</p>
+
+<p>And all I know of White Pigeon is that she was born in White Pigeon,
+Michigan, and had left there ten years <a name='V_Page_273'></a>before to study art for a short
+time in Paris. The short time extended to ten years.</p>
+
+<p>White Pigeon does not call herself an artist&mdash;she only copies pictures in
+the Louvre and gives lessons. &quot;Not being able to paint, I give lessons,&quot;
+she once said to me. The first pictures she copied were sold to kind
+gentlemen who make many wagons at South Bend, Indiana; other pictures went
+to men who have interests at Ivorydale; and some have gone to the
+mill-owner at Ypsilanti, for the mill-owner is interested in art, as all
+patrons of the &quot;Hum Journal&quot; know.</p>
+
+<p>White Pigeon lived at Paris because one must needs live somewhere, and
+rich Americans sometimes send her their daughters to &quot;finish.&quot; That was
+what took her over to the Lake District&mdash;she was traveling with two young
+women from Grand Rapids. And so these three women were doing Great
+Britain, and White Pigeon was acting as courier, chaperone and instructor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I need 'finish,'&quot; I suggested in one of the long pauses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was just going to suggest it,&quot; said the lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You say you are going to Southey's old home tomorrow&mdash;may I go, too?&quot; I
+ventured.</p>
+
+<p>And the answer was, &quot;Of course&mdash;if you will promise not to work me up into
+copy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I promised.</p>
+
+<p>I found lodgings that night at &quot;Nab Cottage.&quot; Being well recommended, the
+landlady did not hesitate, but gave me the best accommodations her house
+afforded.</p><a name='V_Page_274'></a>
+
+<p>Hartley Coleridge does not live at &quot;Nab Cottage&quot; now&mdash;a moss-covered slab
+marks his resting-place up at the Grasmere Churchyard, and only a step
+away in a very straight row are similar old headstones that token the
+graves of William, Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth. Hartley Coleridge had most
+of the weaknesses of his father, and only a few of his better traits. Yet
+Southey brought up the children of Coleridge and gave them just as good
+advantages as he did his own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not 'advantages' that make great men&mdash;it is disadvantages!&quot; said
+White Pigeon. We were eating breakfast at the table set out under the
+arbor, back of the Coleridge cottage&mdash;Grace, Myrtle, White Pigeon and I.</p>
+
+<p>Grace and Myrtle were the Grand Rapids girls, and fine girls, too&mdash;pink
+and twenty, with diaries and autograph-fans. Girls of that age are
+charming, but they only interest me as do beautiful kittens or colts.
+Women do not become wise or discreet until they are past thirty. White
+Pigeon was past thirty.</p>
+
+<p>We took the stage that morning at nine o'clock for Keswick. The stage
+started from the Red Lion Inn. It is a great event&mdash;the starting of a
+four-horse stage. The guests came out, and so did the boots, and
+chamber-maids and waiters, and the cook came also. They stood in line and
+bade the parting guests godspeed, and all the guests were supposed to
+express gratitude tangibly. The landlady was busy, flying about like a
+Plymouth<a name='V_Page_275'></a> Rock hen with a brood of ducks. She saw me handing up the
+pink-and-white Grace and Myrtle and the dignified, tailor-made White
+Pigeon, and she came out and apologized profusely for not having had room
+to accommodate me the night before.</p>
+
+<p>At last all the hatboxes and bloomin' luggage were safely stowed, the
+trunks were lashed in place behind, and I climbed to the top of the stage
+and took my seat beside my charges. A merry blast was blown from the
+tallyho horn. A man with a red coat, high white hat, kid gloves and a
+brick-dust complexion mounted the box and gathered up a big handful of
+reins. The hostlers at the heads of the leaders let go, twenty feet of
+whiplash went singing through the air&mdash;and we were off!</p>
+
+<p>We swung through the village with more majesty and clatter than the Empire
+State Express ever assumed, stopping just an instant at the post-office
+for a bag of mail that the brick-dusty driver caught with his feet, and
+then away we went.</p>
+
+<p>I am sorry I did not live in stagecoach times&mdash;things are now so dead and
+dreary and prosaic. Yet I sometimes have imagined that today the
+stagecoach business in England is a little stagey&mdash;many things are done to
+heighten effects. For instance, the intense excitement of starting is not
+exactly necessary&mdash;why the mad rush? No one is really in a hurry to reach
+a certain place at a certain time! And all this is apparent when <a name='V_Page_276'></a>you
+notice that a mile out of town the pace subsides to a lazy dog-trot, and
+the boots has jumped down and unchecked each horse so as to make things
+easy. I was glad the boots got down, for whenever I see a horse's head
+checked up in the air my impulse is to uncheck him&mdash;and once on Wabash
+Avenue in Chicago I did.</p>
+
+<p>I was arrested, and it cost me five.</p>
+
+<p>The road to Keswick bristles with history. Coleridge, Wordsworth and
+Southey tramped it many a time, and since their day, thousands of literary
+pilgrims have come this way. That two poets-laureate should have come from
+this beautiful corner of the earth of course is interesting, but the honor
+of being poet-laureate to the King is a shifting honor, depending upon the
+poet. No title can ever really honor a man, although a man may honor a
+title, and no King by taking thought can add a cubit to a subject's
+stature. The man is what he is. Southey succeeded the poet Pye, who was
+laureate before him.</p>
+
+<p>A weaker nature than mine might here succumb to temptation and play
+pleasant philological pranks concerning the poet Pye, but I am above all
+that. Pye was a good man, and if I could remember any of the lines he
+wrote, I would here introduce them; but this is doubtless unnecessary, for
+the gentle reader can recall to suit.</p>
+
+<p>White Pigeon claimed that Pye was greater than Southey, and she further
+said that Tennyson's reputation suffered by consenting to act as successor
+to this <a name='V_Page_277'></a>line of men in whom felicity and insight were the exception. The
+tierce of Canary was no pay for acting as successor to Pye, but Southey
+jumped at the Canary and slipped his last vestige of radicalism quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, what a funny little church,&quot; exclaimed Myrtle; &quot;can't we stop and go
+in?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is a curious little building&mdash;that church at Wythburn.</p>
+
+<p>It looks like a little girl's playhouse, that might have belonged to her
+great-great-grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite this lovely little church is a tavern, where a lovely barmaid in
+white apron and lovely collar and cuffs stood in the doorway, ready to
+serve the thirsty. The red-coated driver pulled in on the tavern side, and
+men in neckerchiefs, hobnailed shoes, blue woolen stockings and
+knee-breeches made fussy haste to water the horses. Old Brick-Dusty
+climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and
+Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn
+Church. There isn't another church in England so peculiar and so
+interesting. A pew is marked sacred to Wordsworth, and one also to Harriet
+Martineau, who I did not know before ever went to church. The silver
+service was the gift of Southey, and is inscribed with his name and crest.
+Southey was a vestryman of Wythburn Church for many years, and sometimes
+read the service there. I stood in the pulpit where Southey stood, and so
+did White Pigeon, and I <a name='V_Page_278'></a>reminded her that she would never be allowed
+there on Sunday, for Deity is most easily approached and influenced by
+men, as all theologians know and have ever stoutly held. One of the busy
+hostlers came in, pulling his forelock, and apologizing, in a voice full
+of cobwebs, said that the coach was ready to start. We did the proper
+thing, and also as much for the red-coated driver, who, in spite of great
+dignity, we saw was open to reward for well-doing. It was a great mistake,
+though, to &quot;cross his palm,&quot; for he began a lecture on the Cumberland
+Kings, that lasted until we got to Thirlmere, where he stopped at the
+Pumping-Station, and told us how the city of Manchester got its
+water-supply from here. To him all things were equally interesting. He was
+still deep in the fight between Manchester aldermen and the 'Ouse of
+Commons when we reached Castle Rigg. The Vale of Keswick opened before us.
+We implored the well-informed driver to stop, and then we got down and
+begged him to go on without us.</p>
+
+<p>Seated there on the bankside we viewed the beautiful scene of lake, valley
+and village stretching out so peacefully before us, all framed in the dark
+towering hills. Even Grace forgot to say, &quot;How lovely!&quot; but sat there,
+chin in hand, rapt and speechless.</p>
+
+<p>Down in that valley, just a little to one side of the village, Southey
+lived for over forty years, and all the visitors he really liked he took
+to Castle Rigg, to show them as he said, &quot;the kingdoms of the earth.&quot; It
+was <a name='V_Page_279'></a>a view of which he never tired. Coleridge came up this way first, and
+took lodgings with a Mr. Johnson, who owned Greta Hall. It is not on
+record that Coleridge paid any rent, but he was so charmed with the
+location that he induced Southey to come and visit him. Southey came and
+liked it so well that he remained. He performed here a life-task that
+staggers one to contemplate: fifty volumes or more of closely set type are
+shown you at the Keswick Museum, duly labeled, &quot;The Works of Southey,&quot;
+Charles Lamb's &quot;Works&quot; were the East India ledgers, but he wrote one
+little book of Essays that are still sweet and fresh as
+wood-violets&mdash;essays written hot from the heart, often in tears; written
+because he could not help it, or to please Mary&mdash;he did not know which.</p>
+
+<p>No man ever divided his time up more systematically than Southey. He
+produced political and theological essays, histories, poems, diatribes,
+apologies and criticisms, and worked as men work in the Carnegie
+Consolidated Steel Works.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Southey was the precocious son of a Bristol linen-draper. Being
+rather delicate, his parents did not set him to work in a drygoods-store,
+but gave him the benefit of Oxford. The thing that brought him first into
+prominence was an article he wrote for &quot;The Flaggellant,&quot; a college paper,
+wherein he ridiculed the idea of a devil. Now the powers did not like
+that&mdash;the creed called for a &quot;personal devil,&quot; and they wanted <a name='V_Page_280'></a>one. They
+summoned young Southey before them to account for speaking disrespectfully
+of the devil. The youth was found guilty and expelled.</p>
+
+<p>He was a reckless young man, but recklessness is its own check&mdash;in fact,
+all things in life are self-regulating, everything is limited. Southey's
+secret marriage with Edith Fricker tamed him. Nothing tames men like
+marriage; and when babies came, and Coleridge went to Germany, leaving
+Mrs. Coleridge and young Hartley in his charge, Southey realized he was
+dealing with a condition, not a theory. Then soon he had the widowed Mrs.
+Lovell with her brood on his hands, and his old dream of pantisocracy was
+realized, only not just as he expected.</p>
+
+<p>Too much can not be said for the patience and unflinching fidelity shown
+by Southey in shouldering the burdens that Fate sent him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Any man can succeed with three good women to help him!&quot; said White
+Pigeon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;True,&quot; said I, &quot;and next in importance to the person who originates a
+good thing is the one who quotes it.&quot; Men weighted with responsibilities
+fight for the established order. Southey's pension and his steady income
+came from the men in power, and he made it his business not to offend
+them. Southey was a scholar; he associated with educated people; and once
+he complained because he could not get acquainted with workingmen&mdash;they
+shut up like clams on his approach. Of course they <a name='V_Page_281'></a>did, for we are simple
+and sincere only with our own.</p>
+
+<p>Learned, scholarly and cultured men are to be pitied, for they are ever
+the butt, byword and prey of the untaught, who are often the knowing. As
+success came to Southey he lost the sense of values, that is to say, the
+sense of humor. He attacked Byron with great severity, and Byron's reply
+was the dedication of Don Juan, &quot;To the illustrious Poet-Laureate, Robert
+Southey, LL.D.&quot; It was as if the play of &quot;Sappho&quot; were dedicated to the
+Reverend Doctor Parkhurst.</p>
+
+<p>Southey came out with a card declaring he had given Lord Byron no
+permission to dedicate any of his detestable works to him. Byron replied,
+acknowledging all this, but saying he had a right to honor the name of
+Southey, if he chose, just the same. No taint of excess or folly marks the
+name of Southey; his life was filled with good work and kind deeds. His
+name is honored by a monument in the village of Keswick, and in
+Crosthwaite Church is another monument to his memory, the inscription
+being written by Wordsworth.</p><a name='V_Page_282'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Were Heaven a place, I still politely maintain, it would probably be
+located in the Lake District of England.</p>
+
+<p>Every man of genius the world has ever produced has come from a little
+belt of land in the North Temperate Zone. Snow and cold, rock and
+mountain, danger and difficulty&mdash;these are the conditions required to make
+men. The heaven of which I can conceive is a place with plenty of oxygen,
+sunshine and water. In a mountainous country water runs (I hope no one
+will dispute this) and winds blow, and running water and air in motion are
+always pure.</p>
+
+<p>When I have no thoughts worth recording I take a walk, and the elements,
+which seem to carry soul, fill me to the brim.</p>
+
+<p>The Tropics may have much to offer in way of soft, luxurious creature
+comforts. But the Tropics supply sundry and divers discomforts as well,
+and really offer too much; for with the flowers, vines, fruits and
+never-ending foliage go mosquitoes, tarantulas, and snakes that wiggle and
+sometimes bite.</p>
+
+<p>The climate of Cumberland does not overpower one&mdash;the air is of a quality
+that urges you on to think and do.</p>
+
+<p>By no reach of imagination can one conjure forth anything more beautiful
+in Nature than is to be realized in vicinity of Keswick; and no home
+thereabouts surpasses Greta Hall in charm of location and quiet, simple
+<a name='V_Page_283'></a>beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Greta Hall is a rambling pile, constructed partly of stone and partly of
+wood, evolved rather than built, for evidently the work was done by many
+hands, and stretched over a century or more of time. Vines and flowers,
+fruits and shrubbery, stone walls covered close by creeping bellflowers
+where birds chirrup and cheep and play hide-and-seek the livelong day&mdash;all
+these are there. The house is situated on a little wooded plateau that
+overlooks the lake, and back of it the solemn and everlasting hills stand
+guard. There are no such mountains here as one sees in Switzerland,
+overpowering, vast, awful in their majesty; but just green-topped,
+self-sufficient and friendly hills that invite you to lift up your eyes
+and be strong.</p>
+
+<p>Visitors are welcome to the grounds at Greta Hall at all times, and the
+kind old gardener who showed us about gathered us bouquets of mignonette,
+rue and thyme, and gave us the history of a wonderful pear-tree that had
+turned into a vine and now covers one whole side of a stable thirty feet
+long. Even a tree will lose its individuality if it is not allowed to
+assert its nature and care for itself. That particular pear-tree, we were
+told, sprang from a slip planted by Shelley when he once came here on a
+visit to Southey; and we were further told that the year Shelley was
+drowned, the leaves of this tree turned pale and withered, and only by
+patient, loving nursing on the part of our old gardener's father was its
+life saved. The residence was <a name='V_Page_284'></a>closed the day we were there, in dread
+anticipation of Cook tourists with designs on the shrubbery, we had reason
+to believe, but we lingered around the grounds, listened to the soothing,
+rippling lullaby of the Greta, watched the strutting peacocks, and ate
+bread-and-milk, under the trees, out of big bowls supplied us by the old
+gardener for the most modest of considerations.</p>
+
+<p>Southey never really mixed in the wealth of beauty that covers this
+beautiful corner of earth. He was learned and profound, and he took
+himself and the Church and the State seriously. He felt himself a part of
+an indestructible institution, whereas man and all his works are no more
+peculiar, no more wonderful than an ant-hill&mdash;and last only a day longer.
+He never realized that he was a part of the great whole that made up
+mountain, lake, globe, wooded glen and tireless river. He differentiated.
+He considered himself a man, an educated man, and therefore a little
+better, and a little above, and a little outside of it all&mdash;otherwise how
+could he have withered at the top at the early age of sixty-seven?</p>
+
+<p>This question White Pigeon asked as we sat in the dim quiet of Crosthwaite
+Church, down in the village. I did not attempt to reply&mdash;people do not ask
+questions expecting, necessarily, to have them answered. We ask questions
+in order to clarify our own minds.</p>
+
+<p>The warning blast of the coach-horn was heard, and <a name='V_Page_285'></a>we went out into the
+sunshine. I bade my three friends good-by (first placing my autograph on
+Grace's and Myrtle's fans), and they climbed to the top of the coach. I
+sat on the stone wall and watched them until they disappeared around the
+bend of the road, waving handkerchiefs. That night I made my way over to
+Penreith on the way to Carlisle. It had been a day brimming with thought
+and feeling, and beauty expressed and unexpressed, and the kindness of
+kind friends who understand. That night as I dozed off into deep, calm
+sleep I said to myself: &quot;They were great men, those Lake Poets, and the
+world is better because they lived. But there will come other men and they
+will be greater than those gone&mdash;the best is yet to be.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_286'></a><a name='V_Page_287'></a>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='SAMUEL_T_COLERIDGE'></a><h2>SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE</h2>
+
+<a name='V_Page_288'></a>
+<div class='blkquot'><p>Beneath the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the
+    Thrones of Frost, this through the absence of objects to reflect
+    the rays.</p>
+
+<p>    What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own&mdash;we need another
+    to reflect our thoughts.</p></div>
+
+<span style='margin-left: 27em;'>&mdash;<i>Samuel Taylor Coleridge</i></span><br />
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-11.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-11-th.jpg" alt="SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE"></a></p><p class="ctr">SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Samuel T. Coleridge was a thinker, and thinkers are so rarely found that
+the world must take note of them. John Stuart Mill, writing in Eighteen
+Hundred Forty, assigned first place among English philosophers to Jeremy
+Bentham, incidentally mentioning that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was
+Bentham's only rival.</p>
+
+<p>In philosophy there is an apostolic succession. We build on the past, and
+all the centuries of turmoil and travail which have gone before have made
+this moment possible. There has never been any such thing as &quot;the fall of
+man&quot;; for the march of the race has been a continual climb&mdash;a movement
+onward and upward. Were it not for Coleridge and Bentham, we could not
+have had Buckle, Wallace and Spencer, for the minds of men would not have
+been prepared to give them a hearing. &quot;Half the battle is in catching the
+Speaker's eye,&quot; said Thomas Brackett Reed; and a John the Baptist to
+prepare the way is always necessary. Without Coleridge to quietly ignore
+the question of precedent, and refuse to accept a thing without proof, and
+ask eternally and yet again, &quot;How do you know?&quot; Charles Darwin with his
+&quot;Origin of Species&quot; would have been laughed out of court. Or probably had
+Darwin <a name='V_Page_290'></a>been persistent we would have consigned him to the stocks, burned
+his book in the public square, and with the aid of logical thumbscrews
+made him recant.</p>
+
+<p>Even as it was, the gibes and guffaws of the press and pulpit came near
+drowning the modest, moderate voice of Darwin; and for a score of years,
+his reputation as a scientist seemed to be trembling in the balance. Yet
+today the man who would seriously attempt in an educated assembly to throw
+obloquy upon the doctrine of Evolution and the name of Charles Darwin
+would find himself speedily listed with Brudder Jasper of Richmond,
+Virginia. The Church now, everywhere, has its Drummonds, who build on
+Darwin and use his citations as proof; and Drummond merely expressed what
+the many believe&mdash;no more.</p>
+
+<p>The man who has dared to think for himself and voiced his thought&mdash;the
+emancipated man&mdash;has been as one in a million. What usually passes for
+thought is only the repetition of things we have heard or been told. We
+memorize, repeat by rote and call it thought.</p>
+
+<p>With the Church and State in control of food and clothes, and with spears,
+clubs, knives and guns ready to suppress whatsoever seemed dangerous to
+their stability, it is a miracle that men have ever improved on
+anything&mdash;for progress has been for centuries a perilous performance. To
+question a priest was blasphemy. To reason with a judge was heinous. To
+think and decide for yourself was to invite torture and death.</p><a name='V_Page_291'></a>
+
+<p>And all this was very natural, simply because the superior class who
+monopolized the good things of earth were obliged, in order to enslave and
+tax men, to make them believe that their power was derived from God. And
+thus was taught the &quot;divine right of kings,&quot; the duty of submission, the
+necessity of belief and the sinfulness of doubt. The source of all
+knowledge was declared to be a book, and the right of interpretation of
+this book was given to one class alone&mdash;those who sided with and were a
+part of the Superior Class.</p>
+
+<p>The reason the race has progressed so slowly is because the strong,
+vigorous and independent have been suppressed, either by legal process, or
+exterminated through war, which reaps the best and lets the weak, the
+diseased and the cowards go.</p>
+
+<p>Those who doubted and questioned have been deprived of food and clothes,
+disgraced, mobbed, robbed, lashed naked at the cart's tail, burned at the
+stake, or separated from their families and transported beyond the sea to
+be devoured by wild beasts, die in jungles, or toil out their lives in
+slavery.</p>
+
+<p>But still there were always a few who would doubt and a few who would
+question; and in the early part of the Eighteenth Century in England the
+government was being put to severe straits to cope with the difficulty.
+Lying in the Thames were receiving-ships on which were crowded men and
+women to be transported. When the ship was full, crowded to her utmost,
+she <a name='V_Page_292'></a>sailed away with her living cargo. From Sixteen Hundred Fifty to
+Seventeen Hundred Fifty, over forty thousand people were sent away for
+their country's good. The hangman worked overtime, all prisons were
+crowded, and the walls of Newgate bulged with men and women, old and
+young, who were believed to be dangerous to the stability and well-being
+of the superior class&mdash;that is, those who had the right to tax others.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the enormity of bloodshed and woe involved caused a sort of
+concession on both sides to be agreed upon. Oppression continued will
+surely lead to a point where it cures itself, and the superior class in
+England, with a wise weather-eye, saw the reef on which they were in
+danger of striking. They heard the breakers, and began to grant
+concessions&mdash;unwillingly of course&mdash;concessions wrung from them. The
+censorship was abolished, reform bills introduced, the rights of free
+speech and a free press were partially recognized. The clergy, taking the
+cue, began to preach more love and less damnation; for the pew ever
+dictates to the pulpit what it shall preach. Thus general relaxation was
+in order to meet the competition of rival sects and independent preachers
+that were springing up; for although creeds never change, yet their
+interpretation does, and liberal sects do their work, not by growing
+strong, but by making all others more liberal.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the latter part of the Eighteenth Century witnessed a weakening of
+both sides through compromise.<a name='V_Page_293'></a> The schools and colleges were pedantic,
+complacent, smug and self-satisfied; by giving in a few points they had
+absorbed the radicals, and the political protesters had been bought off
+with snug places in the excise. Pretended knowledge passed for wisdom,
+dignity paraded as worth, affectation and hypocrisy patronized virtue. And
+Coleridge appears upon the scene, a conservative, with a beautiful
+innocence and an indifference to all pretended authority and asks, &quot;How do
+you know?&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_294'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The number of people who have written their names large in literature, who
+were the children of clergymen, is no mere coincidence. Tennyson, Addison,
+Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Coleridge&mdash;you
+can add to the list to suit. Young people follow example, and the habit of
+the father in writing out his thoughts causes others of the family to try
+it, too. Then there is an atmosphere of books in a rectory, and leisure to
+think, and best of all the income is not so great but that the practise of
+economy of time and money is duly enforced by necessity. To be launched
+into a library and learn by absorption is a great blessing.</p>
+
+<p>Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-two, the son
+of the Reverend John Coleridge, of Ottery Saint Mary, a small village of
+Devonshire. The rector was also a schoolmaster, just as all clergymen were
+before division of labor forced itself upon us. This worthy clergyman was
+twice married, his first wife bearing him three children, the second ten.
+Samuel was the last of the brood&mdash;the thirteenth&mdash;but his parents were not
+superstitious.</p>
+
+<p>The youngest in a big family, like the first, is apt to have a deal of
+love lavished upon him. The question of discipline has proved its own
+futility, and when a baby comes to parents approaching fifty, depend upon
+it, that child transforms the household into a monarchy, with himself as
+tyrant. This may be well and it may not.</p><a name='V_Page_295'></a>
+
+<p>Little Samuel Taylor seemed to be aware of his power; he evolved a
+wondrous precocity and ruled the rectory with a rod of iron. When he was
+five he propounded questions that shook the orthodoxy of the worthy vicar
+to its very center.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, remarkable as was the intellect of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the
+family would not have remained in obscurity without him. In fact, the very
+brightness of his fame caused the excellence of his brothers to be lost in
+the shadow. His brother James became the father of Henry Nelson Coleridge,
+who married his cousin Sara, the daughter of our poet.</p>
+
+<p>To anticipate a little, it is well enough here to say that the daughter of
+Coleridge was a woman of remarkable excellence, and if you wish to
+disprove the adage that genius does not transmit itself she is a good
+example to bring up&mdash;even though there is a difference between fact and
+truth. James Coleridge was also the father of Mr. Justice Coleridge,
+himself the father of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge.</p>
+
+<p>And since iconoclasm is not out of place in an essay on Coleridge, it can
+also be stated that when Sara Coleridge married her cousin she did a wise
+thing. The marriage was a most happy one, and the children of these
+cousins have shown themselves to be beyond the average. And once,
+certainly not with his daughter in mind, Coleridge debated the question of
+consanguinity with Charles Lamb, and proved to his own satisfaction <a name='V_Page_296'></a>at
+least that the marriage of cousins was eminently sane, proper, just and
+right, and fraught with the best results for humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The only indictment that can be brought against the father of Coleridge is
+that he was a zealous Latin scholar, and proposed that the term &quot;ablative&quot;
+be abolished as insufficient, and in its stead should be used that of
+&quot;quale-quare-quiddative case.&quot; He was a simple, amiable, excellent man who
+did his work the best he could, and was beloved by all the parish. As to
+the excellence of the established order of things he had no
+doubts&mdash;government and religion were divine institutions and should be
+upheld by all honest men.</p>
+
+<p>As to the vicar's wife we know little, but enough of a glance is given
+into her character through letters to show that she had in her make-up a
+trace of noble discontent. She was not entirely happy in her surroundings,
+and the amiable ways of her husband were often an exasperation to her,
+rather than a pleasure&mdash;even amiability can be overdone. He never saw more
+than a mile from home, but her eyes swept England from Cornwall to
+Scotland, and few men, even, saw so far as that a hundred years ago. The
+discontent of Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the heritage of mother to son.
+When Samuel was nine years of age the father passed away. The widow would
+have been in sore financial straits had it not been for the older
+children, and even as it was, strict economy and untiring industry were in
+<a name='V_Page_297'></a>order. Out of sympathy, Mr. Justice Buller, who had been a pupil of the
+Reverend John Coleridge, proposed to secure the youngest boy a scholarship
+in Christ's Hospital School, and so we find him entered there, July
+Eighteenth, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two. This was a year memorable in the
+history of America; and the alertness of the charity boy's intellect is
+shown in that he was aware of the struggle between England and the
+Colonies. He discussed the situation with his schoolfellows, and explained
+that the mother country had made a mistake in exacting too much. His
+sympathies were with the Colonies, but he thought submission on their part
+was in order when the stamp-tax was removed and that complete independence
+was absurd&mdash;the Colonies needed some one to protect them.</p>
+
+<p>Such reasoning in a boy of ten years seems strange, especially in view of
+the fact that a noted professor of pedagogy has recently explained to us
+that no child under fourteen is capable of independent reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>But it is quite certain that young Coleridge's opinions were not borrowed,
+for all the lad's acquaintances, who thought of the matter at all,
+considered the Americans simply &quot;rebels&quot; who merited death.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge remained at Christ's Hospital for eight years, and before he
+left had easily taken his place as &quot;Deputy Grecian.&quot; Charles Lamb has
+given many delightful glimpses of that schoolboy life in the &quot;Essays of
+Elia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Middleton, afterward Bishop of Calcutta, called the <a name='V_Page_298'></a>attention of Boyer,
+the master, to Coleridge by saying, &quot;There is a boy who reads Vergil for
+amusement!&quot; Boyer was a strict disciplinarian, but he was ever on the
+lookout for a lad who loved books&mdash;the average youth getting out of all
+the study he could.</p>
+
+<p>The master began to encourage young Coleridge, and Coleridge responded. He
+wrote verses and essays, and was a prodigy in memorizing. According to
+Boyer's idea, and it was the prevailing idea everywhere then, and is yet
+in some sections, memorization was the one thing desirable. If the subject
+were Plato, and the master had forgotten his book, he called on Coleridge
+to recite. And the tall, fair-haired boy, with the big dreamy eyes, would
+rise and give page after page, &quot;verbatim et literatim.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_299'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Before Coleridge went to Cambridge, when nineteen years old he had taken
+on that masterly quality in conversation that made his society sought,
+even to the last. Lamb has told us of the gentle voice, not loud nor deep,
+but full of mellow intonations, and bell-like in its purity.</p>
+
+<p>Such a voice, laden with fine feeling, carrying conviction, only goes with
+a great soul. No doubt, though, the young man had grown into a bit of a
+dictator, and this habit of harangue he carried with him to College. To
+talk enabled him to think, and expression is necessary to growth. So the
+habit of argument with Coleridge seemed Nature's method of developing his
+powers of mental analysis. No more foolish saying was ever launched than,
+&quot;Children should be seen and not heard.&quot; From lisping babyhood Coleridge
+talked, and talked much. When he was twenty, at Cambridge, he drew the
+boys to his room, until it was crowded to suffocation, just by the magic
+of his voice, and the subtle quality of his thought. His questioning mind
+went right to the heart of things, and in his divisions and heads and
+subheads even the professors could not always follow him. Let us hope that
+he himself always knew what he was trying to explain.</p>
+
+<p>He discussed metaphysics, theology and politics, and very naturally got to
+treading on thin ice.</p>
+
+<p>In theology his reasoning led him into Unitarianism, then a very fearful
+thing; and in politics he dallied with<a name='V_Page_300'></a> Madame la Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>A polite note from the Master of the College, suggesting that he talk less
+and follow the curriculum a little more closely, led him straight to the
+Master, with whom he proposed to argue the case, or publicly debate it.
+This was terrible!</p>
+
+<p>Stephen Crane at Syracuse University, a hundred years later, did just such
+a thing. He sought to argue a point in the classroom with Chancellor
+Symms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tut, tut!&quot; said the Chancellor. &quot;Have you forgotten what Saint Paul says
+on that very theme?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I know,&quot; replied the best catcher ever on the Syracuse Nine; &quot;yes, I
+know what Saint Paul says, but I differ with Saint Paul.&quot; And Stevie,
+unconsciously, was standing on the well-lubricated chute that landed him,
+soon, well outside the campus.</p>
+
+<p>The authorities did not admire the brilliant young Coleridge, full of his
+reasons and prolix abstractions. He was attracting too much attention to
+himself, and gradually gathering about him a throng of admirers who might
+disturb the balance of things. He was there anyway only through
+sufferance, and an intimation was given him that if he were not willing to
+accept things as they existed, and as they were taught, he had better go
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Piqued by his treatment and feeling he had been misunderstood and wronged,
+he suddenly disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Some months afterwards, an acquaintance found him in a company of
+dragoons, duly enlisted in His Majesty's <a name='V_Page_301'></a>service, under an assumed name.</p>
+
+<p>The authorities at Jesus College were notified, and knowing that such a
+youth was out of place serving as a soldier, and feeling further a small
+pang of regret possibly for having driven him away, a plan was set on foot
+to secure his discharge. This was soon brought about, and doubtless much
+to Coleridge's relief. Erelong he found himself back at Cambridge&mdash;a
+little subdued, and a trifle more discreet, for his rough contact with the
+workaday world.</p>
+
+<p>A journey to Oxford, to visit an old friend, proved a pivotal point in his
+life. The fame of Coleridge as a poet had gone abroad, and the literary
+fledglings at Oxford sought to do the visitor honor in the proper way.
+Among others whom he met on this visit were Robert Southey and Robert
+Lovell, both poets of considerable local fame.</p>
+
+<p>Lovell had been married but a few months before to a young woman by the
+name of Fricker. Southey was engaged to a sister of the bride, and there
+was still a third sister fancy-free. The three poets became fast friends.
+They were all radicals, full of ambition to make a name for themselves,
+and all intent on elevating society out of the ruts into which it had
+fallen. All had suffered contumely on account of advanced ideas; and all
+were out of conceit with the existing order.</p>
+
+<p>They discussed the matter at length, and decided to set the world an
+example, by founding an ideal colony and showing how to make the most of
+life.</p><a name='V_Page_302'></a>
+
+<p>Coleridge had long been interested in America, and from an
+acquaintanceship with sundry soldiers who had helped fight the battles of
+George the Third in the New World, he had gathered a rather romantic idea
+of the country. The stories of returned sailors and soldiers, told to
+civilians, are seldom exactly authentic. And Coleridge the poet, bubbling
+with the effervescence of youth, argued that a home on the banks of the
+Susquehanna, with love and books and comradeship, was the ideal condition.</p>
+
+<p>The matter was broached to the three sisters Fricker, and they of course
+responded&mdash;what woman worthy of the name of woman would not? And so the
+arrangements were fast being made, and as a necessary feature the three
+poets were duly and legally married to the three sisters, and Eden was to
+be peopled with the best.</p>
+
+<p>A date was arranged for sailing, but some trifling matter of finance
+delayed the exodus&mdash;in fact, certain expected loans were not forthcoming.
+Coleridge put in the time lecturing and preaching from Unitarian pulpits.
+He also tried his hand as editor, but the publication scheme failed to
+bring the shekels that were to buy emancipation. The innate contrariness
+of things seemed to be blocking all his plans.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile we find Lovell drifting off into commercialism. That is to say,
+Barabbas-like, he had turned publisher. Gadzooks! What would you have a
+man with a wife and baby do? Live on moonshine&mdash;well, well, well!</p><a name='V_Page_303'></a>
+
+<p>Death claimed poor Lovell before he could make a success either of
+commerce or of art.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge moved up to the Lake District, and at Keswick, near where the
+water comes down at Lodore&mdash;or did before the stream dried up&mdash;he rented
+rooms of a kind friend by the name of Johnson, who owned Greta Hall.
+Southey was writing articles for London papers. He received a guinea a
+column, and when he wrote a poem, as he did every little while, he sent it
+to a publisher who returned him a little good cash.</p>
+
+<p>Southey's wife went up to Keswick on a visit to see her sister, Mrs.
+Coleridge. Southey followed up to Keswick, and rather liked the situation.
+The Southeys and the Coleridges all lived together as one happy family.</p>
+
+<p>Southey was writing poetry and getting paid for it; and beside this had a
+small income. Coleridge allowed Southey to buy the supplies, and when he
+went away on tramp lecturing tours he felt perfectly safe in leaving his
+family with Southey.</p>
+
+<p>While up that way he met a young man, a native, by the name of
+Wordsworth&mdash;William Wordsworth&mdash;and a poet, too.</p>
+
+<p>Wordsworth had a sister named Dorothy, and this brother and sister lived
+together in a little whitewashed stone cottage, built up against the
+hillside at Grasmere, a village thirteen miles from Keswick. Coleridge
+liked these people first-rate and they liked him. He used to go down to
+visit them, and they would all sit up late <a name='V_Page_304'></a>listening to the splendid talk
+of the handsome Coleridge. William said he was the only great man he had
+ever met, and Dorothy agreed in the proposition.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge was discouraged: the world did not care for his work, and the
+men in power had set their faces against him&mdash;or he thought they had,
+which is the same thing. There was a conspiracy, he thought, to keep him
+down; and Wordsworth should have advised him to join it, but did not.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy Wordsworth was a most extraordinary woman&mdash;she was gentle, kind,
+low-voiced, sympathetic. She was not handsome, but she had the intellect
+that entitled her to a membership in the Brotherhood of Fine Minds. She
+knew the splendid excellence of Coleridge, and could follow him in his
+most abstract dissertations; and if his logic faltered she could lead him
+back to the trail.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy Wordsworth admired and pitied Coleridge; and from pity to love is
+but a step.</p>
+
+<p>But Coleridge was not capable of a passionate love&mdash;the substance of his
+being was all absorbed in abstract thought. And yet Dorothy Wordsworth
+attracted him as no other woman ever did. He forgot his wife, Sara, up
+there at Southey's. Sara was a better-looking woman than Dorothy, but she
+lacked intellect. Her life was all bound up in housekeeping and going to
+church, and the petty little round of daily happenings to neighbors and
+friends. The world of thought and dreams to her <a name='V_Page_305'></a>was nothing. She loved
+her husband, but his foolish foibles vexed her, and his lack of
+application prompted her to chide him. And at such times he would turn to
+his friends at Dove Cottage for sympathy and rest.</p>
+
+<p>They used to tramp the hills, and discuss philosophy, and recite their
+poems the livelong day. It was on one such jaunt that out of the ghost of
+shoreless seas they sighted the &quot;Ancient Mariner.&quot; Then Coleridge went
+ahead, completed the plot and gave the poem to the world. And once he
+said, half-boastfully, to Dorothy: &quot;This old seafaring poem is valuable in
+that it is a tale no one will understand, but which will excite universal
+interest. Only the perfectly sane and sensible is dull.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Wordsworth had read somewhat of the works of the German philosophers, and
+as he and his sister had a little money saved up they decided to go over
+and attend the lectures at the University of G&ouml;ttingen for awhile.
+Coleridge had nothing in the way to prevent his going, too, save that he
+didn't have the money. However, he wanted to go and so decided to lay the
+case before the sons of Josiah Wedgwood. These young men had been
+schoolfellows of Coleridge at Cambridge, and once he had gone home with
+them and so had met their father.</p>
+
+<p>And right here comes a very strong temptation to say not another word
+about Coleridge, but merge this essay off into a sketch of that most
+excellent, strong and <a name='V_Page_306'></a>noble man, Josiah Wedgwood. Here is a man who left
+his impress indelibly on the times, and whose influence outweighed that of
+a dozen prime ministers. The potter is gone, but he lives in his art, so
+we still have the best and purest and noblest of the soul of Josiah
+Wedgwood.</p>
+
+<p>This man had assisted Coleridge at Cambridge, and it was to his sons
+Coleridge looked for help to realize his Susquehanna dream of Utopia. But
+the Wedgwoods knew the hazy, moonshine quality of the project and made
+excuses.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge now appealed to them for assistance in a saner project, and they
+supplied him the money to go to G&ouml;ttingen.</p>
+
+<p>His stay of fourteen months in Germany gave him a firm hold on the
+language, and a goodly glimpse into the philosophy of Kant, Leibnitz and
+Schleiermacher. When Coleridge returned to England, he went at once to see
+his interesting family. Rumor has it that Mrs. Coleridge, in addition to
+caring for her own little brood and assisting in the Southey household,
+had also been working in the Keswick lead-pencil factory for a weekly wage
+of twelve shillings. The philosopher did not much like this lowering of
+dignity, and said so mildly. This led to the truthful explanation that he
+had hardly done his duty by his family in allowing them to shift for
+themselves or be cared for by kinsmen; and therefore advice from him was
+out of place. In short, Southey <a name='V_Page_307'></a>intimated that while he would care for
+his sisters-in-law he drew the line at brothers-in-law. And Samuel Taylor
+Coleridge drifted up to London (being down) to see if something would not
+turn up.</p>
+
+<p>His first task there was to translate &quot;Werther,&quot; but the work did not seem
+to go. Grub Street took up the brilliant talker, and for a time he gave
+parlor lectures and filled the air of thought and speculation with his
+brilliant pyrotechnics. The force of his mind was everywhere acknowledged,
+but someway he did not seem to get on. Men who have managed the finances
+of a nation often have not been able successfully to control their own;
+and more than once we have had the spectacle of one who could do the
+thinking for a world failing in the humdrum duties of a citizen and
+neighbor. Coleridge tried various things, among others a secretaryship
+that took him to Malta, but the lack of system in his habits and his
+absent-mindedness made him the prey and butt of &quot;practical&quot; men.</p><a name='V_Page_308'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>When Carlyle said that no more dreary record than the lives of authors
+existed, save the Newgate Calendar, he spoke truth.</p>
+
+<p>That the lives of most authors is a series of misunderstandings, blunders,
+heart-burnings, tragedies, is a fact. The author is a man who diverts and
+amuses us by doing the things we would do if we had time; and if we like
+him it is only because he expresses the things we already know. His is a
+hard task, requiring intense concentration&mdash;a concentration that can only
+be continued for a short time without the absolute burning out of
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>To think one's best and write out ideas is an abnormal operation. The most
+artistic work is always done in a sort of fever or ecstacy, which in its
+very nature is transient. To hunt and fish and dream and to work with
+one's hands are all very natural; but to sit down and think and then
+express your thoughts by the artificial scheme of writing on paper is a
+dangerous operation. If carried to excess it shall be paid for by your
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge had turned night into day in his hot zeal to follow the winding,
+dancing mystery of existence to its inmost recess. At times he had
+forgotten to eat or sleep; and then to reinforce despairing nature he had
+resorted to stimulants.</p>
+
+<p>Digestion had become impaired, circulation faulty through lack of
+exercise, so sleeplessness followed stimulation. Then to quiet pain came
+the use of the drug that <a name='V_Page_309'></a>brings oblivion. And lo! thought burned up
+brighter than ever and all the dreams of youth and twenty came trooping
+back.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge had made a discovery. He thought he was getting the start of God
+Almighty; but he wasn't, for men have tried that before, and are trying it
+today, and many know not yet that we are strong only as we cling close to
+the skirts of Mother Nature and follow lovingly in her ways.</p>
+
+<p>From his twenty-ninth year we find Coleridge a wreck in mind and body;
+shuffling, sick, disheartened, erratic, uncertain, yet occasionally
+brilliant. He tramped the streets, feared and shunned. His money was gone,
+his power of concentration had vanished. In search of bread he met an
+old-time friend, Doctor Gillman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gillman,&quot; said Coleridge, &quot;I am sick and helpless&mdash;look at me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why don't you come to my house and live with me?&quot; asked the kind friend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gillman,&quot; said the poor man, &quot;Gillman, I am on my way there!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So Gillman brought him to his house up at Highgate and took care of him as
+a child. And there he remained, the pride and pet of a group of brave,
+thinking men and women.</p>
+
+<p>He lived on for thirty years, under the kindly, skilful care of his
+friend, but all the real work of his life was done before he was thirty.
+Occasionally the old fire <a name='V_Page_310'></a>would flash forth, and the wit and insight of
+his youth would shine out. Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron, and others strong
+and great sought him out to hold converse with him. And so he existed, a
+sort of oracle, amiable, kind and generous&mdash;wreck of a man that
+was&mdash;protected and defended by loving friends; while up at Keswick,
+Southey cared for his wife and educated his children as though they were
+his own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am dying,&quot; said Coleridge to Gillman in July, Eighteen Hundred
+Thirty-four; &quot;dying, but I should have died, like Keats, in youth and not
+have made myself a burden to you&mdash;do you forgive me?&quot; We can guess the
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>The dust of Coleridge rests in Highgate Cemetery, just a step from where
+he lived all those years. He, himself, selected the place and wrote his
+epitaph. The simple monument that marks the spot was paid for by kind
+friends who remembered him and loved him and who pardoned him for all that
+he was not, in memory of what he once had been.</p><a name='V_Page_311'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>To a young man from the country, who makes his way up, no greater shock
+ever comes than the discovery that rich people are, for the most part,
+woefully ignorant. He has always imagined that material splendor and
+spiritual gifts go hand in hand; and now if he is wise he discovers that
+millionaires are too busy making money, and too anxious about what they
+have made, and their families are too intent on spending it, ever to
+acquire a calm, judicial mental attitude.</p>
+
+<p>The rich are not the leisure class, and they need education no less than
+the poor. Lord, enlighten thou our enemies, should be the prayer of every
+man who works for progress: give clearness to their mental perceptions,
+awaken in them the receptive spirit, soften their callous hearts, and
+arouse their powers of reason.</p>
+
+<p>Danger lies in their folly, not in their wisdom; their weakness is to be
+feared, not their strength.</p>
+
+<p>That the wealthy and influential class should fear change, and cling
+stubbornly to conservatism, is certainly to be expected.</p>
+
+<p>To convince this class that spiritual and temporal good can be improved
+upon by a more liberal policy has been a task a thousand times greater
+than the exciting of the poor to riot. It is easy to fire the
+discontented, but to arouse the rich and carry truth home to the blindly
+prejudiced is a different matter. Too often the reformer has been one who
+caused the rich to band themselves against the poor.</p><a name='V_Page_312'></a>
+
+<p>Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a Tory who defended the existing order on the
+plea of its usefulness.</p>
+
+<p>He approached the vital issue from the inside, taught the conservative to
+think, and thus opened the eyes of the aristocrats without exciting their
+fears or unduly arousing their wrath.</p>
+
+<p>Self-preservation prompts men to move in the line of least resistance. And
+that any man should ever have put his safety in peril by questioning the
+authority of those able and ready to confiscate his property and take away
+his life is very strange. Such a person must belong to one of two types.
+He must be either a revolutionist&mdash;one who would supplant existing
+authority with his own, thus knowingly and willingly hazarding all&mdash;or he
+is an innocent, indiscreet individual, absolutely devoid of all interest
+in the main chance.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge belonged to the last-mentioned type. Genius needs a keeper. Here
+was a man so absorbed in abstract thought, so intent on attaining high and
+holy truth, that he neglected his friends, neglected his family, neglected
+himself until his body refused to obey the helm. It is easy to find fault
+with such a man, but to refuse to grant an admiring recognition of his
+worth, on account of what he was not, is an error, pardonable only to the
+rude, crude and vulgar. The cultivated mind sees the good and fixes
+attention on that.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge formulated no system, solved no complex problems, made no
+brilliant discoveries. But his habit <a name='V_Page_313'></a>of analysis enriched the world
+beyond power to compute. He taught men to think and separate truth from
+error. He was not popular, for he did not adapt himself to the many. His
+business was to teach teachers&mdash;he conducted a Normal School, and taught
+teachers how to teach. Coleridge went to the very bottom of a subject, and
+his subtle mind refused to take anything for granted. He approached every
+proposition with an unprejudiced mind. In his &quot;Aids to Reflection,&quot; he
+says, &quot;He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed
+by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and then end in
+loving himself better than all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The average man believes a thing first, and then searches for proof to
+bolster his opinion. Every observer must have noticed the tenuous, cobweb
+quality of reasons that are deemed sufficient to the person who thinks he
+knows, or whose interests lie in a certain direction. The limitations of
+men seem to make it necessary that pure truth should come to us through
+men who are stripped for eternity. Kant, the villager who never traveled
+more than a day's walk from his birthplace, and Coleridge, the homeless
+and houseless aristocrat, with no selfish interests in the material world,
+view things without prejudice.</p>
+
+<p>The method of Coleridge, from his youth, was to divide the whole into
+parts. Then he begins to eliminate, and divides down, rejecting all things
+that are not the thing, <a name='V_Page_314'></a>until he finds the thing. He begins all inquiries
+by supposing that nothing is known on the subject. He will not grant you
+that murder and robbery are bad&mdash;you must show why they are bad, and if
+you can not explain, he will take the subject up and divide it into heads
+for you.</p>
+
+<p>First, the effect on the sufferer. Second, the evil to the doer. Third,
+the danger of a bad example. Fourth, the injury to society through the
+feeling of insecurity. Fifth, the pain given to the families of both doer
+and sufferer. Next he will look for excuses for the crime and give all the
+credit he can; and then finally strike a balance and give a conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>One of Coleridge's best points was in calling attention to what
+constitutes proof; he saw all fallacies and discovered at a glance
+illusions in logic that had long been palmed off on the world as truth. He
+saw the gulf that lies between coincidence and sequence, and hastened the
+day when the old-time pedant with his mighty tomes and tiresome sermons
+about nothing should be no more. And so today, in the Year of Grace
+Nineteen Hundred, the man who writes must have something to say, and he
+who speaks must have a message. &quot;Coleridge,&quot; says Principal Shairp, &quot;was
+the originator and creator of the higher criticism.&quot; The race has gained
+ground, made head upon the whole; and thanks to the thinkers gone, there
+are thinkers now in every community who weigh, sift, try and decide. No
+<a name='V_Page_315'></a>statement made by an interested party can go unchallenged. &quot;How do you
+know?&quot; and &quot;Why?&quot; we ask.</p>
+
+<p>That is good which serves&mdash;man is the important item, this earth is the
+place, and the time is now. So all good men and women and all churches are
+endeavoring to make earth heaven; and all agree that to live, now and
+here, the best you can, is the fittest preparation for a life to come.</p>
+
+<p>We no longer accept the doctrine that our natures are rooted in infamy,
+and that the desires of the flesh are cunning traps set by Satan, with
+God's permission, to undo us. We believe that no one can harm us but
+ourselves, that sin is misdirected energy, that there is no devil but
+fear, and that the universe is planned for good. On every side we find
+beauty and excellence held in the balance of things. We know that work is
+needful, that winter is as necessary as summer, that night is as useful as
+day, that death is a manifestation of life, and just as good. We believe
+in the Now and Here. We believe in a power that is in ourselves that makes
+for righteousness.</p>
+
+<p>These things have not been taught us by a superior class who have governed
+us for a consideration, and to whom we have paid taxes and tithes&mdash;we have
+simply thought things out for ourselves, and in spite of them. We have
+listened to Coleridge, and others, who said: &quot;You should use your reason
+and separate the good from the bad, the false from the true, the useless
+from <a name='V_Page_316'></a>the useful. Be yourself and think for yourself; and while your
+conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the
+opinions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping
+you in ignorance. You grow through the exercise of your faculties, and if
+you do not reason now you never will advance. We are all sons of God, and
+it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Claim your heritage!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='BENJAMIN_DISRAELI'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_317'></a>BENJAMIN DISRAELI</h2>
+
+<a name='V_Page_318'></a>
+<div class='blkquot'><p>The stimulus subsided. The paroxysms ended in prostration. Some
+    took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated
+    between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury
+    bench, the Ministers reminded me of those marine landscapes not
+    unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of
+    exhausted volcanoes; not a flame flickers on a single pallid
+    crest; but the situation is still dangerous: there are occasional
+    earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumblings of the sea.</p></div>
+
+<span style='margin-left: 10em;'>&mdash;<i>Speech at Manchester</i></span><br />
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-12.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-12-th.jpg" alt="BENJAMIN DISRAELI"></a></p><p class="ctr">BENJAMIN DISRAELI</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Since Disraeli was born a Jew, he was received into the Jewish Church with
+Jewish rites. But Judaism, standing in the way of his ambition, and his
+parents' ambition for him, the religion of his fathers was renounced and
+he became, in name, a Christian. Yet to the last his heart was with his
+people, and the glory of his race was his secret pride.</p>
+
+<p>The fine irony of affiliating with a people who worship a Jew as their
+Savior, but who have legislated against, and despised the Jew&mdash;this
+attracted Disraeli. With them he bowed the knee in an adoration they did
+not feel, and while his lips said the litany, his heart repeated Ben
+Ezra's prayer. In temperament he belonged with the double-dealing East. He
+intuitively knew the law of jiu jitsu, best exemplified by the Japanese,
+and won often by yielding. He was bold, but not too bold.</p>
+
+<p>Israel Zangwill, shrewdest, keenest and kindliest of Jews&mdash;with the
+tragedy of his race pictured on his furrowed face, a face like an ancient
+weather-worn statue on whose countenance grief has petrified&mdash;has summed
+up the character of Disraeli as no other man ever has or can. I will not
+rob the reader by quoting from &quot;The Primrose Sphinx&quot;&mdash;that gem of letters
+<a name='V_Page_320'></a>must ever stand together without subtraction of a word. It belongs to the
+realm of the lapidary, and its facets can not be transferred. Yet when Mr.
+Zangwill refers to the Mephistophelian curl of Lord Beaconsfield's lip,
+the word is used advisedly. No character in history so stands for the
+legendary Mephisto as does this man. The Satan of the Book of Job, jaunty,
+daring, joking with his Maker, is the Mephisto of Goethe and all the other
+playwriters who, have used the character. Mephisto is so much above the
+ordinary man in sense of humor&mdash;which is merely the right estimate of
+values&mdash;so sweeping in intellect, that Milton pictures him as a
+dispossessed god, the only rival of Deity.</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli, not satisfied with playing the part of Mephisto and tempting men
+to their ruin, but thirsting for a wider experience, turns Faustus himself
+and sells his soul for a price. He knows that everything in life is
+sold&mdash;nothing is given gratis&mdash;we pay for knowledge with tears; for love
+with pain; for life with death. He haggles and barters with Fate, and pays
+the penalty because he must.</p>
+
+<p>He alternately affronts and cajoles his enemies; takes all that the world
+has to give; knows every pleasure; wins every prize; makes love to the
+daughters of men (without loving them); and winning the one he selects,
+secretly thanks Jehovah, God of his fathers, that he leaves no
+offspring&mdash;because the woman fit for his mate and equal to mothering his
+children does not exist.</p><a name='V_Page_321'></a>
+
+<p>The sublimity of his egotism stands unrivaled. It is so great that it is
+admirable. We lift our hats to this man. Napoleon gained the field without
+prejudice; but this man enters the list with hate and prejudice arrayed
+against him. He plays the pawns of chance with literature, religion,
+politics, and moves the queen so as to checkmate all adversaries. He
+flouts love, but to show the world that he yet knows the ideal, he
+occasionally pictures truth and trusting affection in his speeches and
+books. This entire game of life is to him only a diversion.</p>
+
+<p>They may jeer him down in the House of Commons, but his patience is
+unruffled. He says, &quot;Very well, I will wait.&quot; Now and again he smiles that
+wondrous, contagious smile, showing his white teeth and the depth of his
+dark, burning eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He knows his power. He revels in the wit he never expresses; he glories in
+this bright blade of the intellect that is never fully unsheathed.</p>
+
+<p>They think he is interested in English politics&mdash;pish! Only world problems
+really interest him, and those that lie behind mean as much to him as
+those that are to come. He is one with eternity, and the vanquished glory
+of Rome, the marble beauty of Athens, the Assyrian Sphinx, the flight from
+Egypt under the leadership of one who had killed his man&mdash;yet had talked
+with God face to face&mdash;these and the dim uncertainty of the unseen, are
+the things that interest him. He is a dreamer of the Ghetto.</p><a name='V_Page_322'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>There was no taint of mixed blood in the veins of Benjamin Disraeli. He
+traced his ancestry in a record that looks like a chapter from the Book of
+Numbers. His forebears had known every persecution, every contumely,
+slight and disgrace. Driven from Spain by the Inquisition, barely escaping
+with life, when Jewish blood actually fertilized the fields about Granada,
+his direct ancestor became one of the builders of Venice. The Jews
+practically controlled the trade of the world in the sun-kissed days of
+prosperity, when Venice produced the books and the art of Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>To trace an ancestry back to those who enthroned Venice on her hundred
+isles was surely something of which to be proud; and into the blood of
+Benjamin Disraeli went a dash of the gleam and glory and glamour of
+Venice&mdash;the Venice of the Doges.</p>
+
+<p>This man's grandfather came to England with a goodly fortune, which he
+managed to increase as the years went by. He had one son, Isaac, who
+nearly broke his parents' heart in that he not only showed no aptitude for
+business, but actually wrote poems wherein commerce was held up to
+ridicule. The tendency of the artistic nature to speak with disdain of the
+&quot;mere money-grabber,&quot; and the habit of the &quot;money-grabber&quot; to refer
+patronizingly to the helpless, theoretical and dreamy artist, is well
+known. Isaac Disraeli was an artist in feeling; he must have been a
+reincarnation <a name='V_Page_323'></a>of one of those bookmakers of Venice who touched hands with
+Titian and Giorgione and helped to invest wisely the moneys the merchants
+of the Rialto made. Never a Gratiano had a greater contempt for a merchant
+than he. Just to get him out of the way, his parents packed Isaac off to
+Europe, where he acquired several languages, and some other things, with
+that ease which the Jew always manifests. He dallied in art, pecked at
+books, and made the acquaintance of many literary men.</p>
+
+<p>When his father died and left him a goodly fortune, he had the sense to
+turn the entire management of the estate over to his wife, a woman with a
+thorough business instinct, while he busied himself with his books.</p>
+
+<p>Benjamin was the second child of these parents. He had a sister older than
+himself, and two brothers younger. Those philosophers who claim that
+spirits have their own individuality in the unseen world, and the accident
+of birth really does not constitute a kinship between brothers and
+sisters, will find here something that looks like proof. Benjamin Disraeli
+bore no resemblance in mental characteristics to his sister or brothers;
+he did, however, possess the mental virtues of both father and mother,
+multiplied by ten.</p>
+
+<p>When twelve years of age he exhibited that intense disposition for mastery
+which was through life his distinguishing trait. The Jew does not outrank
+the Gentile in strength, but the average Jew surely does <a name='V_Page_324'></a>have the faculty
+of concentration which the average Gentile does not possess. And that is
+what constitutes strength&mdash;the ability to focus the mind on one thing and
+compass it: to concentrate is power.</p>
+
+<p>When Ben was sent to the Unitarian school at Walthamstow, aged fifteen, it
+was his first taste of school life. Up to this time his father had been
+his tutor. Now he found himself cast into that den of wild animals&mdash;an
+English school for boys. His Jewish name and features and his dandy ways
+and attire made him the instant butt of the playground. Ben very patiently
+surveyed his tormentors, waited to pick his man, and then challenged the
+biggest boy in the school to single combat. The exasperating way in which
+he coolly went about the business set his adversary's teeth chattering
+before the call of &quot;time.&quot; The result of the fight was that, even if
+&quot;Dizzy&quot; was not thoroughly respected from that day forth, no one ever
+called, &quot;Old clo'! Old clo'!&quot; within his hearing. Of course it was not
+generally advertised that the lad had been taking boxing lessons from
+&quot;Coster Joe&quot; for three years, with the villainies of a boys' school in
+view. In fact, boxing was this young man's diversion, and the Coster on
+several occasions expressed great regret that writing and politics had
+robbed the ring of one who showed promise of being the cleverest
+welter-weight of his time.</p>
+
+<p>The main facts in both &quot;Vivian Gray&quot; and &quot;Contarini Fleming&quot; are
+autobiographical. Like Byron, upon <a name='V_Page_325'></a>whom Disraeli fed, the author never
+got far away from himself.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before the intense personality of young Disraeli made
+itself felt throughout the Walthamstow school. The young man smiled at the
+pedant's idolatry of facts, and seized the vital point in every lesson. He
+felt himself the superior of every one in the establishment, master
+included&mdash;and he was.</p>
+
+<p>Before a year he split the school into two factions&mdash;those who favored Ben
+Disraeli, and those who were opposed to him. The master cast his vote with
+the latter class, and the result was that Ben withdrew, thus saving the
+authorities the trouble of expelling him. His leave-taking was made
+melodramatic with a speech to the boys, wherein impertinent allusions were
+made concerning all schoolmasters, and the master of Walthamstow in
+particular.</p>
+
+<p>And thus ended the school life of Benjamin Disraeli, the year at
+Walthamstow being his first and last experience.</p>
+
+<p>However, Ben was not indifferent to study; he felt sure that there was a
+great career before him, and he knew that knowledge was necessary to
+success. With his father's help he laid out a course of work that kept him
+at his tasks ten hours a day. His father was a literary man of
+acknowledged worth, and mingled in the best artistic society of London.
+Into this society Benjamin was introduced, meeting all his father's
+<a name='V_Page_326'></a>acquaintances on an absolute equality. The young man at eighteen was
+totally unabashed in any company; he gave his opinion unasked, criticized
+his elders, flashed his wit upon the guests and was looked upon with fear,
+amusement or admiration, as the case might be.</p>
+
+<p>Froude says of him, &quot;The stripling was the same person as the statesman at
+seventy, with this difference only, that the affectation which was natural
+in the boy was itself affected in the matured politician, whom it served
+well for a mask, or as a suit of impenetrable armor.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_327'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>That literature is the child of parents is true. That is to say, it takes
+two to produce a book. Of course there are imitation books, sort o' wax
+figures that look like books, made through habit by those that have been
+many years upon the turf, and who work automatically; but every real,
+live, throbbing, pulsing book was written by a man with a woman at his
+elbow, or vice versa.</p>
+
+<p>When twenty-one years of age Benjamin Disraeli produced &quot;Vivian Gray.&quot; The
+woman in the case was Mrs. Austen, wife of a prosperous London solicitor.
+This lady was handsome, a brilliant talker, a fine musician and an amateur
+artist of no mean ability. She was much older than Disraeli&mdash;she must have
+been in order to comprehend that the young man's frivolity was pretense,
+and his foppery affectation. A girl of his own age, whose heart-depths had
+not been sounded by experience, would have fallen in love with the foppery
+(or else despised it&mdash;which is often the same thing); but Mrs. Austen,
+mature in years, with a decade of London &quot;seasons&quot; behind her, having met
+every possible kind of man Europe had to offer, discovered that the world
+did not know Ben Disraeli at all. She saw that the youth did not reveal
+his true self, and that instead of courting society for its own sake he
+had a supreme contempt for it. She intuitively knew that he was seething
+in discontent, and with prophetic vision she knew that his restless power
+and his ambition <a name='V_Page_328'></a>would yet make him a marked figure in the world of
+letters or politics, or both.</p>
+
+<p>For love as a passion, or supreme sentiment, ruling one's life, Disraeli
+had no sympathy. He shunned love for fear it might bind him hand and foot.
+Love not only is blind, but love blinds its votary, and Disraeli, knowing
+this, fled for freedom when the trail grew warm. A man madly in love is
+led, subdued&mdash;imagine Mephisto captured, crying it out on his knees with
+his head in a woman's lap!</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Austen was happily married, the mother of a family, and occupied
+a position high in London society.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage with her was out of the question, and scandal and indiscretion
+equally so&mdash;Ben Disraeli felt safe with Mrs. Austen. With her he put off
+his domino and grew simple and confidential.</p>
+
+<p>And so the lady, doubtless a bit flattered&mdash;for she was a woman&mdash;set
+herself to push on the hazard of new fortunes. She encouraged him to write
+his novel of &quot;Vivian Gray&quot;&mdash;discussed every phase of it, read chapter
+after chapter as they were produced, and by her gentle encouragement and
+warm sympathy fired the mind of the young man to the point of production.</p>
+
+<p>The book is absurd in plot, and like most first books, flashy and
+overdrawn. And yet there is a deal of power in it, and the thinly veiled
+characters were speedily pointed out as living personages. Literary London
+went agog, and Mrs. Austen fanned the flame by <a name='V_Page_329'></a>inviting &quot;the set&quot; to her
+drawing-room to hear the great author read from his amusing work. The best
+feature of the book, and probably the saving feature, is that the central
+figure in the plot is Disraeli, himself, and upon his own head the author
+plays his shafts of wit and ridicule. The impertinence and impudence which
+he himself manifested were parodied, caricatured and played upon, to the
+great delight of the uninitiated rabble, who gave themselves much credit
+for having made a discovery.</p>
+
+<p>The man who scorns, scoffs, gibes and jeers other men, and at the same
+time is willing to drop his guard and laugh at himself, is not a bad man.
+Very, very seldom is found a man under thirty who does not take himself
+and all his wit seriously. But Disraeli, the lawyer's clerk, at twenty was
+wise and subtle beyond all men in London Town. Mrs. Austen must have been
+wise, too, for had she been like most other good women she would have
+wanted her protege admired, and have rebelled in tears at the thought of
+placing him in a position where society would serve him up for
+tittle-tattle. Small men can be laughed down, but great ones, never.</p>
+
+<p>A little American testimony as to the appearance of Disraeli in his
+manhood may not here be amiss. Says N.P. Willis: &quot;He was sitting in a
+window looking on Hyde Park, the last rays of sunlight reflected from the
+gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat.
+Patent-leather pumps, a white stick with a black <a name='V_Page_330'></a>cord and tassel, and a
+quantity of chains about his neck and pockets, served to make him a
+conspicuous object. He has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He
+is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and strength of his
+lungs would seem to be a victim of consumption. His eye is black as
+Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying-in-wait sort of expression
+conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient
+nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a
+particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of
+triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. His hair is as
+extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black
+ringlets falls on his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, which on
+the right temple is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a
+girl. The conversation turned on Beckford. I might as well attempt to
+gather up the foam of the sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary
+language in which he clothed his description. He talked like a racehorse
+approaching the winning-post, every muscle in action.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_331'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Disraeli, like Byron, awoke one morning and found himself famous. And like
+Byron, he was yet a stripling. Pitt was Prime Minister at twenty-five.
+Genius has its example, and Disraeli worshiped alternately at the shrines
+of Byron and Pitt. The daring intellect and haughty indifference of Byron,
+and the compelling power of Pitt&mdash;he saw no reason why he should not unite
+these qualities within himself. He had been grubbing in a lawyer's office,
+and had revealed decided ability in a business way, but novel-writing in
+office-hours was not appreciated by his employer&mdash;Ben was told so, and
+this gave him an opportunity to resign. He had set his heart on a
+political career&mdash;he thirsted for power&mdash;and no doubt Mrs. Austen
+encouraged him in this. To push a man to the front, and thus win a
+vicarious triumph, has been a source of great joy to more than one
+ambitious woman. To get on in politics, Disraeli must enter the House of
+Commons. Even now, with the help of the Austens, and his father's purse, a
+pocket borough might be secured, but it was not enough&mdash;he must enter with
+eclat.</p>
+
+<p>A year of travel was advised&mdash;fame grows best where the man is not too
+much in evidence; there is virtue in obscurity. Disraeli decided to go
+down through Europe, traveling over the same route that Byron had taken,
+write another book that would secure him some more necessary notoriety,
+and then stand for a seat in the House of Commons. Once within the sacred
+pale, he <a name='V_Page_332'></a>believed his knowledge of business, his ability to express
+himself as a writer or speaker, and the magic of his presence would make
+the rest easy.</p>
+
+<p>There was no dumb luck in the matter&mdash;neither father nor son believed in
+chance; they fixed their faith on cause and effect.</p>
+
+<p>And so Ben went abroad before London society grew aweary of him.</p>
+
+<p>His stay was purposely prolonged; and news of his progress from time to
+time filled the public prints. He carried letters of introduction to every
+one and moved in a sort of sublime pageant as he traveled.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned, wearing the costume of the East, he was greeted by
+society as a prince. His novel, &quot;Contarini Fleming,&quot; was published with
+great acclaim, and interest in &quot;Vivian Gray&quot; was revived by a special
+edition deluxe. &quot;Contarini&quot; was compared to &quot;Childe Harold,&quot; and pictures
+of Disraeli, with hair curling to his shoulders, were displayed in
+shop-windows by the side of pictures of Byron.</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli was the lion of the drawing-rooms. When it was known he was to be
+in a certain place crowds gathered to get a glimpse of his handsome face,
+and to listen to his wit.</p>
+
+<p>He introduced several of his Eastern accomplishments, one of which was the
+hookah. &quot;Beware of tobacco, my boy,&quot; said an old colonel to him one day;
+&quot;women do not like it; it has ruined more charming liaisons <a name='V_Page_333'></a>than anything
+else I know!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you must consider smoking a highly moral accomplishment,&quot; was the
+reply. The colonel had wrongly guessed the object of Disraeli's ambition.</p>
+
+<p>He became acquainted with Tom Moore, Count d'Orsay, and Lady Morgan; Lady
+Blessington welcomed him at Kensington; Bulwer-Lytton introduced him to
+Mrs. Wyndham Lewis&mdash;wife of the member from Maidstone&mdash;aged forty; and he
+was, say, twenty-five. They tried conclusions in repartee, sparred for
+points, and amused the company by hot arguments and wordy pyrotechnics.
+When they found themselves alone in the conservatory, after a little
+stroll, they shook hands, and the gentleman said, &quot;What fools these
+mortals be!&quot; &quot;True,&quot; replied the lady; &quot;true, and you and I are mortals.&quot;
+And so Disraeli found another woman who correctly gauged him. They liked
+each other first-rate. At last a vacant borough was found and arrangements
+made for the young man to stand as a candidate for the House of Commons.
+The campaign was entered upon with great vigor. Disraeli quite outdid
+himself in speech-making and waistcoats. The election took place&mdash;and he
+was defeated.</p><a name='V_Page_334'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>With Disraeli defeat meant merely a transient episode, not a conclusion.
+On the second venture he was elected, and one sunshiny day found himself
+duly sworn in as a member of the House of Commons, with a seat just back
+of Peel's.</p>
+
+<p>There is a tradition in Parliament, adopted also in the United States
+Senate, that silence is quite becoming to a member during his first
+session. Disraeli had a motto to the effect that it is better to be
+impudent than servile, and in order to teach Parliament that in the
+presence of personality all rules are waived, he very shortly indulged him
+in an exceeding spread-eagle speech. But he had not spoken five minutes
+before the members began to laugh. Catcalls, hisses and mad tumult
+reigned. The young man in the flaming waistcoat let loose all his
+oratorical artillery, and the result was bravos and left-handed applause
+that smothered his batteries. Again and again he tried to proceed, but his
+voice was lost in the Clover-Club fusillade. The Chair was powerless. At
+last the speaker saw an opening and roared above the din, &quot;I will now sit
+down, but you shall yet listen to me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Opinions were divided as to whether the House had squelched the
+Israelitish fop, or whether the fop had tantalized the House into
+unseemliness. The young man needed snubbing, no doubt, but the lesson had
+been given so brutally that sympathy was with the snubbed. The original
+intent was to abash him, so he <a name='V_Page_335'></a>would break down; but this not succeeding,
+he had simply been clubbed into silence.</p>
+
+<p>Then when Disraeli refused to accept condolences&mdash;merely waiving the whole
+affair&mdash;and a few days after arose to make some trivial motion, just as
+though nothing had happened, he made friends.</p>
+
+<p>Any man who shows himself to be strong has friends&mdash;people wish to attach
+themselves to such a one. Disraeli showed himself strong in that he held
+no resentment, and indulged in no recrimination on account of the
+treatment he had received. A weak man would have done one of these things:
+resigned his seat, demanded an apology from the House, or refused to let
+his voice again be heard. Disraeli did neither&mdash;he continued to speak on
+various occasions, and expressed himself so courteously, so modestly, so
+becomingly, that the members listened in awe and curiosity. Then soon it
+was discovered that beneath the mild and gentle ripple of his speech ran a
+deep current of earnest truth, tinged with subtle wit. When he spoke, the
+loungers came in from the cloakrooms, fearing to miss something that was
+worth while.</p>
+
+<p>The House of Commons experience taught Disraeli one great truth, and that
+was this: the most effective oratory is not bombastic. Among educated
+people (or illiterate) the quiet, deliberate and subdued manner is best.
+Reserve is a very necessary element in effective speaking. It is
+soul-weight that counts, not mere words, <a name='V_Page_336'></a>words, words. The extreme
+deliberation and compelling quality of quiet self-possession in Disraeli's
+style dated, according to Gladstone, from the day that Parliament tried to
+laugh him down. After that if any one wanted to hear him they had to come
+to him, and he took good care that those who did come did not go away
+empty. He never explained the evident, illustrated the obvious, nor
+expatiated on the irrelevant.</p>
+
+<p>However, the motto, &quot;Impudence rather than servility,&quot; was not discarded.
+Instead of a dashing style he developed a slow, subtle, scathing quality
+that was quite lost on all, save those who gave themselves to close
+listening.</p>
+
+<p>And the House listened, for when Disraeli went after an antagonist he
+chose an antlered stag. If little men, fiercely effervescent and
+childishly inconsequential, attempted to reply to him or sought to engage
+him in debate, he simply answered them with silence, or that tantalizing
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell and Disraeli, although unlike, had much in common and should
+have been fast friends. Surely the age and distinguished record of
+O'Connell must have commanded Disraeli's respect, but we know how they
+grappled in wordy warfare. Disraeli called the Irishman an incendiary, and
+O'Connell, who was a past master in abuse, replied in a speech wherein he
+exhausted the Billingsgate lexicon. He wound up by a reference to the
+ancestry of his opponent, and a suggestion that &quot;this renegade Jew is
+descended from the impenitent thief, <a name='V_Page_337'></a>whose name was doubtless Disraeli.&quot;
+It was a home-thrust&mdash;a picture so exaggerated and overdrawn that all
+England laughed. The very extravagance of the simile should have saved the
+allusion from resentment; but it touched Disraeli in his most sensitive
+spot&mdash;his pride of birth.</p>
+
+<p>He straightway challenged his traducer. O'Connell had killed a man in a
+duel years before, and then vowed he would never again engage in mortal
+combat.</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli intimated that he would fight O'Connell's son, Morgan, if
+preferred, a man of his own age.</p>
+
+<p>Morgan replied that his father insulted so many men he could not set the
+precedent of fighting them all, or standing sponsor for an indiscreet
+parent. But with genuine Irish spirit he suggested that if the son of
+Abraham was intent on fight and could not be persuaded to be sensible,
+why, the matter could probably be arranged.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, about this time, police officers invaded the apartments of
+Disraeli and arrested him on a bench-warrant. He was bound over, to his
+great relief, in the sum of five hundred pounds to keep the peace.</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell never took the matter very seriously, and referred soon after in
+a speech to &quot;my excellent, though slightly bellicose friend, child of an
+honored race.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli did not take up politics to make money&mdash;the man who does that may
+win in his desires, but his <a name='V_Page_338'></a>career is short. Nothing but honesty really
+succeeds. Disraeli knew this, and in his record there is no taint. But the
+income of a member of the House of Commons affords no opportunity for
+display. Disraeli's books brought him in only small sums, and his father's
+moderate fortune had been sadly drawn upon. He was well past thirty, and
+was not making head, simply because he was cramped for funds. To rise in
+politics you must have an establishment; you must entertain and reach out
+and bring those you wish to influence within your scope. A third floor
+back, in an ebb-tide street, will not do. Like Agassiz, Disraeli had no
+time to make money&mdash;it was a sad plight. But this was a man of destiny,
+and to use the language of Augustine Birrell, &quot;Wyndam Lewis at this time
+accommodatingly died.&quot; Mrs. Wyndam Lewis had been the firm friend and
+helper of Disraeli for many years, and although a small matter of fifteen
+years separated them as to ages, yet their hearts beat as one.</p>
+
+<p>Scarce a twelvemonth had gone before the widow and Disraeli were married.
+They disappeared from London for some months, journeying on the Continent.
+When they returned all the old scores in way of unpaid bills against
+Disraeli were paid, and he was master of an establishment.</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli was thirty-five, his wife was fifty, but it was a happy mating.
+They thought alike, and their ambitions were the same. Disraeli treated
+his wife with all <a name='V_Page_339'></a>the courtly grace and deference in which he was an
+adept, and her princely fortune was absolutely his. &quot;There was much cause
+for gratitude on both sides,&quot; said O'Connell. And there is no doubt that
+Disraeli's wife proved the firmest friend he ever had. For many years she
+was his sole confidante and best adviser. She attended him everywhere and
+relieved him of many burdens. That true incident of her fingers being
+crushed by the careless slamming of the carriage-door, and her hiding the
+bleeding members in her muff, and attending her husband to the House of
+Commons, where he was to speak, refusing to disturb him by her pain&mdash;this
+symbols the moral quality of the woman. She was the fit mate of a great
+man, and it is pleasant to know that she was honored and appreciated.</p><a name='V_Page_340'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>To tell the story of Disraeli's thirty years in Parliament would be to
+write the political history of the time. He was in the front of every
+fight; he expressed himself on every subject; he crossed swords with the
+strongest men of his age. That he had no great and overpowering
+convictions on any subject is fully admitted now, even by his most ardent
+admirers&mdash;it was always a question of policy; that is to say, he was a
+politician. He gave a point here and there when he had to, and when he
+did, always managed to do it gracefully. When he ambled over from one
+party to another he affected a fine wrath and gave excellent reasons.</p>
+
+<p>Three times he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and twice was he Prime
+Minister, and for a time actual Dictator. But he took good care not to
+exercise his power too severely. When his word was supreme, the safety of
+the nation lay, as it always does, in a strong opposition.</p>
+
+<p>In one notable instance was Disraeli wrong in his prophecies&mdash;he declared
+again and again that Free Trade meant commercial bankruptcy. Yet Free
+Trade came about, and the fires were started in ten thousand factories,
+and such prosperity came to England as she had never known before.</p>
+
+<p>Political economy as a science was a constant butt for his wit, and in
+physical science he was dense to a point where his ignorance calls for
+pity. He believed <a name='V_Page_341'></a>in the literal Mosaic account of creation, and said in
+his paradoxical way on one occasion, that in belief he was not only a
+Christian, but a Jew. And this in spite of his most famous mot: &quot;All
+sensible men are of one religion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sensible men never tell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Had Disraeli been truly sensible he would not have attempted to hold
+Charles Darwin up to ridicule, by declaring in a speech at Oxford that &quot;it
+is a choice between apes and angels.&quot; He had neither the ability,
+patience, nor inclination to read the &quot;Origin of Species,&quot; and yet was so
+absurd as to answer it.</p>
+
+<p>In his novels of &quot;Coningsby,&quot; &quot;Sybil&quot; and &quot;Tancred,&quot; he argues with great
+skill and adroit sophistry that a landed aristocracy is necessary to a
+progressive civilization. &quot;The common people need an example of refinement
+in way of manners, art and intellect. Some one must take the lead, and
+reveal the possibility of life in leisurely and luxurious living.&quot; And
+this example of beauty, gentleness and excellence was to come from the
+landed gentry of England&mdash;ye gods! Was it possible that this man believed
+in the necessity of the gentry as a virtuous example? Or did he merely
+view the fact that the aristocracy were there in actual possession, and as
+they could not be evicted, why then the next best thing was to cajole,
+flatter and discreetly advise them? Who shall say what this man believed!</p><a name='V_Page_342'></a>
+
+<p>Sensible men never tell.</p>
+
+<p>But this we know, this man had no vice but ambition. He conformed pretty
+closely to England's ideals, and his thirst for power never caused him to
+take the chances of a Waterloo. His novels show a close acquaintanceship
+with the ways of society, and he knew the human heart as few men ever do.
+The degradation of the average toiler in Great Britain, the infamy of the
+policy extended toward Ireland, and the cruelty of imperialism&mdash;all these
+he knew, for his books reveal it; but he was powerless as a leader to stem
+the current of tendency. He acquiesced where he deemed action futile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lothair&quot; is his best novel, for in it he gets furthest away from himself.
+It reveals a cleverness that is admirable, and this same brilliancy and
+shifty play of intellect are found in &quot;Endymion,&quot; written in his
+seventy-fifth year. Whether these novels can ever take their place among
+the books that endure is a question that is growing more easy to answer
+each succeeding year. They owed their popularity more to their flippant
+cleverness than to their insight, and their vogue was due, to a great
+extent, to the veiled personalities that interline their pages.</p>
+
+<p>That Disraeli did not carry out all the plans and reforms he attempted,
+need not be set down to his discredit. It is fortunate he did not succeed
+better than he did. He, however, safely piloted the great ship in the
+direction the passengers desired to go; and his <a name='V_Page_343'></a>own personal ambition was
+reached when he, a Jew at heart&mdash;member of a despised race&mdash;had made
+himself master of the fleets, armies and treasury of the proudest nation
+the world has ever known.</p><a name='V_Page_344'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Bound into the life of Disraeli is a peculiar incident in the romantic
+friendship that existed between him and Mrs. Willyums of Torquay,
+Cornwall. About the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, Disraeli began to
+receive letters from an unknown admirer, who expressed a great desire for
+an interview on &quot;a most important business.&quot; All public men, especially if
+they have the brilliant mental qualities of Disraeli, receive such
+letters. The sensitive neurotic female who is ill-appreciated in her own
+home and whose soul yearns for a &quot;higher companionship&quot; is numerous.
+Disraeli's secretary used to take care of such letters with a gentle
+explanation that the Chief was out of town, but upon his return, etc.,
+etc., and that was the last of it. But this Torquay correspondent was
+insistent, and finally a letter came from her saying she had come to
+London on purpose to meet her lord and master, and she would await him at
+a seat just east of the fountain in Crystal Palace at a certain hour.
+Disraeli read the missive with impatience&mdash;the idea of his meeting an
+unknown woman in this fishmonger manner at a hurdy-gurdy show! He tossed
+the letter into the fire. The next day another letter came, expressing
+much regret that he had not kept the appointment, but saying she would
+await him at the same place the following day, and begging him, as the
+matter was very urgent, not to fail her.</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli smiled and showed the letter to his wife. She <a name='V_Page_345'></a>advised him to go.
+When his wife said he had better do a thing he usually did it; and so he
+ordered his carriage and went to the hurdy-gurdy show to meet the
+impressionable female of unknown age and condition at the seat just east
+of the fountain. It was a silly thing for the leading member of Parliament
+to do&mdash;to make an assignation in a public place with a fool-woman&mdash;all
+London might be laughing at him tomorrow! He was on the point of turning
+back.</p>
+
+<p>But he reached the fountain and there was his destiny awaiting him&mdash;a
+little woman in widow's black. She lifted her veil and showed a face
+wrinkled and old, but kindly. She was agitated&mdash;she really did not expect
+him&mdash;and the great man gave a great sigh of relief when he saw that no
+flashily dressed creature had entrapped him. Even if people stared at him
+sitting there it made no difference. In pity he shook hands with the
+little old woman, sat down beside her, calmed her agitation, spoke of
+Cornwall and the weather, and inquired what he could do for her. A
+rambling talk about nothing followed, and Disraeli was sure it was just a
+mild case of lunacy.</p>
+
+<p>He arose to go, and the woman gave him an envelope, saying she had written
+out her case and begged him to read the letter when he had time. The man
+was preoccupied, his mind on great affairs of state&mdash;he simply crushed the
+letter into the side-pocket of his overcoat, bade the woman a dignified
+good-morning, and turned <a name='V_Page_346'></a>away.</p>
+
+<p>It was a month before he found the letter all crumpled and soiled there
+where he had placed it. He really had forgotten where it came from. The
+envelope was opened and out dropped a Bank of England note for one
+thousand pounds. This note was to pay for certain legal advice. The advice
+wanted was of a trivial nature, and Disraeli, always conscientious in
+money matters, hastened to return the money, in person, and give the
+advice gratis.</p>
+
+<p>But the lady had had the interview&mdash;two of them&mdash;and this was all she
+wanted. Letters followed, and this developed into a daily correspondence,
+wherein the old lady revealed the story of her passion&mdash;a passion as
+delicate, earnest and all-devouring as ever a girl of twenty knew. Insane,
+you say? Well, ah&mdash;yes, doubtless. But then, love is illusion; perhaps
+life is illusion, a very beautiful rainbow, and why old folks should not
+be allowed to chase it, or allow sweet emotion to gurgle gleefully under
+their lee, a bit, as well as young folks, I do not know. Then, really, is
+love simply a physical manifestation and do spirits grow old? If so, where
+is our belief in the immortality of the soul?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Willyums was childless, had long been a widow, was rich, and her
+heart had been in the grave until she began to trace the record of
+Disraeli. She was a recluse: read, studied, fed on Disraeli&mdash;loved him.
+After several years of dreaming and planning she had actually bagged the
+game. She was a woman of education and ideas.<a name='V_Page_347'></a> Her letters were
+interesting&mdash;and Disraeli's letters to her, now published, reveal the
+history of his daily life as he never told it to another. At her death the
+bulk of Mrs. Willyum's fortune went by will to Disraeli.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Disraeli was not jealous of this affection. Why should a woman of
+sixty be jealous of another woman the same age? They pooled their love and
+grew rich together in recounting it. Presents were going backward and
+forward all the time between Disraeli's country home and Torquay. Mrs.
+Willyums next came to live at Hughenden. There she died, and there she
+sleeps, side by side, as was her wish, with Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Privy
+Seal, Earl Beaconsfield of Beaconsfield, Viscount Hughenden of Hughenden.
+And the reason the Ex-Premier was not buried in Westminster Abbey was
+because he had promised these two women that even death should not
+separate them from him. So there under the spreading elms, in this
+out-of-the-way country place, they rest&mdash;these three, side by side, and
+the sighing breeze tells and tells again to the twittering birds in the
+branches, of this triple love, strange as fate, strong as destiny, warm as
+life, pure as snow, and unselfish as the kiss of the summer sun.</p>
+<br /><a name='V_Page_348'></a><a name='V_Page_349'></a>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p>SO HERE ENDETH &quot;LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF ENGLISH AUTHORS,&quot; BEING
+VOLUME FIVE OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED AND
+ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS.
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13619 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
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+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #13619 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13619)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great,
+Volume 5 (of 14), by Elbert Hubbard
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14)
+
+Author: Elbert Hubbard
+
+Release Date: October 8, 2004  [eBook #13619]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF
+THE GREAT, VOLUME 5 (OF 14)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland and the Project Gutenberg Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 13619-h.htm or 13619-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/6/1/13619/13619-h/13619-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/6/1/13619/13619-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE GREAT, VOLUME 5
+
+Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors
+
+by
+
+ELBERT HUBBARD
+
+New York
+
+1916
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS
+ROBERT BROWNING
+ALFRED TENNYSON
+ROBERT BURNS
+JOHN MILTON
+SAMUEL JOHNSON
+THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+LORD BYRON
+JOSEPH ADDISON
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+BENJAMIN DISRAELI
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+               THE IDLE SINGER
+
+    Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
+    I can not ease the burden of your fears,
+    Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
+    Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
+    Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
+    Or hope again for aught that I can say,
+    The idle singer of an empty day.
+
+    But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
+    From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
+    And feeling kindly unto all the earth,
+    Grudge every minute as it passes by,
+    Made the more mindful that the sweet days die,--
+    Remember me a little then, I pray,
+    The idle singer of an empty day.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
+    Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
+    Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
+    Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
+    Telling a tale not too importunate
+    To those who in the sleepy region stay,
+    Lulled by the singer of an empty day.
+                        --_From "The Earthly Paradise"_
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS]
+
+
+The parents of William Morris were well-to-do people who lived in the
+village of Walthamstow, Essex. The father was a London bill-broker,
+cool-headed, calculating, practical. In the home of his parents William
+Morris received small impulse in the direction of art; he, however, was
+taught how to make both ends meet, and there were drilled into his
+character many good lessons of plain commonsense--a rather unusual
+equipment for a poet, but still one that should not be waived or
+considered lightly. At the village school William was neither precocious
+nor dull, neither black nor white: his cosmos being simply a sort of
+slaty-gray, a condition of being which attracted no special attention from
+either his schoolfellows or his tutors. From the village school he went to
+Marlborough Academy, where by patient grubbing he fitted himself for
+Exeter College, Oxford.
+
+Morris, the elder, proved his good sense by taking no very special
+interest in the boy's education. Violence of direction in education falls
+flat: man is a lonely creature, and has to work out his career in his own
+way. To help the grub spin its cocoon is quite unnecessary, and to play
+the part of Mrs. Gamp with the butterfly in its chrysalis stage is to
+place a quietus upon its career.
+
+The whole science of modern education is calculated to turn out a good,
+fairish, commonplace article; but the formula for a genius remains a
+secret with Deity. The great man becomes great in spite of teachers and
+parents: and his near kinsmen, being color-blind, usually pooh-pooh the
+idea that he is anything more than mediocre. At Oxford, William Morris
+fell in with a young man of about his own age, by the name of Edward
+Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones was studying theology. He was slender in stature,
+dreamy, spiritual, poetic. Morris was a giant in strength, blunt in
+speech, bold in manner, and had a shock of hair like a lion's mane. This
+was in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three--these young men being
+nineteen years of age. The slender, yellow, dreamy student of theology and
+the ruddy athlete became fast friends.
+
+"Send your sons to college and the boys will educate them," said Emerson.
+These boys read poetry together; and it seems the first author that
+specially attracted them was Mrs. Browning; and she attracted them simply
+because she had recently eloped with the man she loved. This fact proved
+to Morris that she was a worthy woman and a discerning. She had the
+courage of her convictions. To elope with a poor poet, leaving a rich
+father and a luxurious home--what nobler ambition?
+
+Burne-Jones, student of theology, considered her action proof of
+depravity. Morris, in order to show his friend that Mrs. Browning was
+really a rare and gentle soul, read aloud to Burne-Jones from her books.
+Morris himself had never read much of Mrs. Browning's work, but in
+championing her cause and interesting his friend in her, he grew
+interested himself. Like lawyers, we undertake a cause first and look for
+proof later. In teaching another, Morris taught himself. By explaining a
+theme it becomes luminous to us.
+
+In passing, it is well to note that this impulse in the heart of William
+Morris to come to the defense of an accused person was ever very strong.
+His defense of Mrs. Browning led straight to "The Defense of Guinevere,"
+begun while at Oxford and printed in book form in his twenty-fourth year.
+Not that the offenses of Guinevere and Elizabeth Barrett were parallel,
+but Morris was by nature a defender of women. And it should further be
+noted that Tennyson had not yet written his "Idylls of the King,"-at the
+time Morris wrote his poetic brief.
+
+Another author that these young men took up at this time was Ruskin. John
+Ruskin was fifteen years older than Morris--an Oxford man, too; also, the
+son of a merchant and rich by inheritance. Ruskin's natural independence,
+his ability for original thinking and his action in embracing the cause of
+Turner, the ridiculed, won the heart of Morris. In Ruskin he found a
+writer who expressed the thoughts that he believed. He read Ruskin, and
+insisted that Burne-Jones should. Together they read "The Nature of
+Gothic," and then they went out upon the streets of Oxford and studied
+examples at first hand. They compared the old with the new, and came to
+the conclusion that the buildings erected two centuries before had various
+points to recommend them which modern buildings have not. The modern
+buildings were built by contractors, while the old ones were constructed
+by men who had all the time there was, and so they worked out their
+conceptions of the eternal fitness of things.
+
+Then these young men, with several others, drew up a remonstrance against
+"the desecration by officious restoration, and the tearing down of
+time-mellowed structures to make room for the unsightly brick piles of
+boarding-house keepers."
+
+The remonstrance was sent in to the authorities, and by them duly
+pigeonholed, with a passing remark that young fellows sent to Oxford to be
+educated had better attend to their books and mind their own business.
+Having espoused the cause of the Middle Ages in architecture, these young
+men began to study the history of the people who lived in the olden time.
+They read Spenser and Chaucer, and chance threw in their way a dog-eared
+copy of Mallory's "Morte d' Arthur," and this was still more dog-eared
+when they were through with it. Probably no book ever made more of an
+impression on Morris than this one; and if he had written an article for
+the "Ladies' Home Journal" on "Books That Influenced Me Most," he would
+have placed Mallory's "Morte d' Arthur" first.
+
+The influence of Burne-Jones on Morris was marked, and the influence of
+Morris on Burne-Jones was profound. Morris discovered himself in
+explaining things to Burne-Jones, and Burne-Jones, without knowing it,
+adopted the opinions of Morris; and it was owing to Morris that he gave up
+theology.
+
+Having abandoned the object that led him to college, Burne-Jones lost
+faith in Oxford, and went down to London to study art.
+
+Morris hung on, secured his B.A., and articled himself to a local
+architect with the firm intent of stopping the insane drift for modern
+mediocrity, and bringing about a just regard for the stately dignity of
+the Gothic.
+
+A few months' experience, however, and he discovered that an apprentice to
+an architect was not expected to furnish plans or even criticize those
+already made: his business was to make detail drawings from completed
+designs for the contractors to work from.
+
+A year at architecture, with odd hours filled in at poetry and art, and
+news came from Burne-Jones that he had painted a picture, and sold it for
+ten pounds.
+
+Now Morris had all the money he needed. His father's prosperity was at
+flood, and he had but to hint for funds and they came; yet to make things
+with your own hands and sell them was the true test of success.
+
+He had written "Gertha's Lovers," "The Tale of the Hollow Land," and
+various poems and essays for the college magazine; and his book, "The
+Defense of Guinevere," had been issued at his own expense, and the edition
+was on his hands--a weary weight.
+
+Thoreau wrote to his friends, when the house burned and destroyed all
+copies of his first book, "The edition is exhausted," but no such
+happiness came to Morris. And so when glad tidings of an artistic success
+came from Burne-Jones, he resolved to follow the lead and abandon
+architecture for "pure art."
+
+Arriving in London he placed himself under the tutorship of Dante Gabriel
+Rossetti, poet, dreamer and artist, six years his senior, whom he had
+known for some time, and who had also instructed Burne-Jones.
+
+While taking lessons in painting at the rather shabby house of Rossetti in
+Portland Street, he was introduced to Rossetti's favorite model--a young
+woman of rare grace and beauty. Rossetti had painted her picture as "The
+Blessed Damozel," leaning over the bar of Heaven, while the stars in her
+hair were seven. Morris, the impressionable, fell in love with the canvas
+and then with the woman.
+
+When they were married, tradition has it that Rossetti withheld his
+blessing and sought to drown his sorrow in fomentation's, with dark, dank
+hints in baritone to the effect that the Thames only could appreciate his
+grief.
+
+But grief is transient; and for many years Dante Rossetti and Burne-Jones
+pictured the tall, willowy figure of Mrs. Morris as the dream-woman, on
+tapestry and canvas; and as the "Blessed Virgin," her beautiful face and
+form are shown in many sacred places.
+
+Truth need not be distorted in a frantic attempt to make this an ideal
+marriage--only a woman with the intellect of Minerva could have filled the
+restless heart of William Morris. But the wife of Morris believed in her
+lord, and never sought to hamper him; and if she failed at times to
+comprehend his genius, it was only because she was human.
+
+Whistler once remarked that without Mrs. Morris to supply stained-glass
+attitudes and the lissome beauty of an angel, the Preraphaelites would
+have long since gone down to dust and forgetfulness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The year which William Morris spent at architecture, he considered as
+nearly a waste of time, but it was not so in fact. As a draftsman he had
+developed a marvelous skill, and the grace and sureness of his lines were
+a delight to Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown and
+others of the little artistic circle in which he found himself.
+
+Youth lays great plans; youth is always in revolt against the present
+order; youth groups itself in bands and swears eternal fealty; and life,
+which is change, dissipates the plans, subdues the revolt into conformity,
+and the sworn friendships fade away into dull indifference. Always? Well,
+no, not exactly.
+
+In this instance the plans and dreams found form; the revolt was a
+revolution that succeeded; and the brotherhood existed for near fifty
+years, and then was severed only by death.
+
+Without going into a history of the Preraphaelite Brotherhood, it will be
+noted that the band of enthusiasts in art, literature and architecture had
+been swung by the arguments and personality of William Morris into the
+strong current of his own belief, and this was that Art and Life in the
+Middle Ages were much lovelier things than they are now.
+
+That being so, we should go back to medieval times for our patterns.
+
+A study of the best household decorations of the Fifteenth Century showed
+that all the furniture used then was made to fit a certain apartment, and
+with a definite purpose in view.
+
+Of course it was made by hand, and the loving marks of the tool were upon
+it. It was made as good and strong and durable as it could be made. Floors
+and walls were of mosaic or polished wood, and these were partly covered
+by beautifully woven rugs, skins and tapestries. The ceilings were
+sometimes ornamented with pictures painted in harmony with the use for
+which the room was designed. Certainly there were no chromos and the
+pictures were few and these of the best, for the age was essentially a
+critical one.
+
+A modest circular was issued in which the fact was made known that "a
+company of historical artists will use their talents in home decoration."
+
+Dealers into whose hands this circular fell, smiled in derision, and the
+announcement made no splash in England's artistic waters. But the leaven
+was at work which was bound to cause a revolution in the tastes of fifty
+million people.
+
+Most of our best moves are accidents, and every good thing begins as
+something else. In the beginning there was no expectation of building up a
+trade or making a financial success of the business. The idea was simply
+that the eight young men who composed the band were to use their influence
+in helping one another to secure commissions, and corroborate the views of
+doubting patrons as to what was art and what not. In other words, they
+were to stand by one another.
+
+Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Arthur Hughes
+were painters; Philip Webb an architect; Peter Paul Marshall a
+landscape-gardener and engineer; Charles Joseph Faulkner, an Oxford don,
+was a designer, and William Morris was an all-round artist--ready to turn
+his hand to anything.
+
+These men undertook to furnish a home from garret to cellar in an artistic
+way.
+
+Work came, and each set himself to help all the others. From simply
+supplying designs for furniture, rugs, carpets and wall-paper they began
+to manufacture these things, simply because they could not buy or get
+others to make the things they desired.
+
+Morris undertook the entire executive charge of affairs, and mastered the
+details of half a dozen trades in order that he might intelligently
+conduct the business. The one motto of the firm was, "Not how cheap, but
+how good." They insisted that housekeeping must be simplified, and that we
+should have fewer things and have them better. To this end single pieces
+of furniture were made, and all sets of furniture discarded. I have seen
+several houses furnished entirely by William Morris, and the first thing
+that impressed me was the sparsity of things. Instead of a dozen pictures
+in a room, there were two or three--one on an easel and one or two on the
+walls. Gilt frames were abandoned almost entirely, and dark-stained woods
+were used instead. Wide fireplaces were introduced and mantels of solid
+oak. For upholstery, leather covering was commonly used instead of cloth.
+Carpets were laid in strips, not tacked down to stay, and rugs were laid
+so as to show a goodly glimpse of hardwood floor; and in the dining-room a
+large, round table was placed instead of a right-angled square one. This
+table was not covered with a tablecloth; instead, mats and doilies were
+used here and there. To cover a table entirely with a cloth or spread was
+pretty good proof that the piece of furniture was cheap and shabby; so in
+no William Morris library or dining-room would you find a table entirely
+covered. The round dining-table is in very general use now, but few people
+realize how its plainness was scouted when William Morris first introduced
+it.
+
+One piece of William Morris furniture has become decidedly popular in
+America, and that is the "Morris Chair." The first chair of this pattern
+was made entirely by the hands of the master. It was built by a man who
+understood anatomy, unlike most chairs and all church pews. It was also
+strong, durable, ornamental, and by a simple device the back could be
+adjusted so as to fit a man's every mood.
+
+There has been a sad degeneracy among William Morris chairs; still, good
+ones can be obtained, nearly as excellent as the one in which I rested at
+Kelmscott House--broad, deep, massive, upholstered with curled hair, and
+covered with leather that would delight a bookbinder. Such a chair can be
+used a generation and then passed on to the heirs.
+
+Furnishing of churches and chapels led naturally to the making of
+stained-glass windows, and hardly a large city of Christendom but has an
+example of the Morris work.
+
+Morris managed to hold that erratic genius, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in
+line and direct his efforts, which of itself was a feat worthy of record.
+He made a fortune for Rossetti, who was a child in this world's affairs,
+and he also made a fortune for himself and every man connected with the
+concern.
+
+Burne-Jones stood by the ship manfully, and proved his good sense by never
+interfering with the master's plans, or asking foolish, quibbling
+questions--showing faith on all occasions.
+
+The Morris designs for wall-paper, tapestry, cretonnes and carpets are now
+the property of the world, but to say just which is a William Morris
+design and which a Burne-Jones is an impossibility, for these two strong
+men worked together as one being with two heads and four hands. At one
+time, I find the firm of Morris and Company had three thousand hands at
+work in its various manufactories, the work in most instances being done
+by hand after the manner of the olden time. William Morris was an avowed
+socialist long before so many men began to grow fond of calling themselves
+Christian Socialists. Morris was too practical not to know that the time
+is not ripe for life on a communal basis, but in his heart was a high and
+holy ideal that he has partially explained in his books, "A Dream of John
+Ball" and "News From Nowhere," and more fully in many lectures. His
+sympathy was ever with the workingman and those who grind fordone at the
+wheel of labor. To better the condition of the toiler was his sincere
+desire. But socialism to him was more of an emotion than a well-worked-out
+plan of life. He believed that men should replace competition by
+Co-operation. He used to say: "I'm going your way, so let us go hand in
+hand. You help me and I'll help you. We shall not be here very long, for
+soon, Death, the kind old nurse, will come and rock us all to sleep--let
+us help one another while we may." And that is about the extent of the
+socialism of William Morris.
+
+There is one criticism that has been constantly brought against Morris,
+and although he answered this criticism a thousand times during his life,
+it still springs fresh--put forth by little men who congratulate
+themselves on having scored a point.
+
+They ask in orotund, "How could William Morris expect to benefit society
+at large, when all of the products he manufactured were so high in price
+that only the rich could buy them?"
+
+Socialism, according to William Morris, does not consider it desirable to
+supply cheap stuff to anybody. The socialist aims to make every
+manufactured article of the best quality possible. It is not how cheap can
+this be made, but how good. Make it as excellent as it can be made to
+serve its end. Then sell it at a price that affords something more than a
+bare subsistence to the workmen who put their lives into its making. In
+this way you raise the status of the worker--you pay him for his labor and
+give him an interest and pride in the product. Cheap products make cheap
+men. The first thought of socialism is for the worker who makes the thing,
+not the man who buys it.
+
+Work is for the worker.
+
+What becomes of the product of your work, and how the world receives it,
+matters little. But how you do it is everything. We are what we are on
+account of the thoughts we have thought and the things we have done. As a
+muscle grows strong only through use, so does every attribute of the mind,
+and every quality of the soul take on new strength through exercise. And
+on the other hand, as a muscle not used atrophies and dies, so will the
+faculties of the spirit die through disuse.
+
+Thus we see why it is very necessary that we should exercise our highest
+and best. We are making character, building soul-fiber; and no rotten
+threads must be woven into this web of life. If you write a paper for a
+learned society, you are the man who gets the benefit of that paper--the
+society may. If you are a preacher and prepare your sermons with care, you
+are the man who receives the uplift--and as to the congregation, it is all
+very doubtful.
+
+Work is for the worker.
+
+We are all working out our own salvation. And thus do we see how it is
+very plain that John Ruskin was right when he said that the man who makes
+the thing is of far more importance than the man who buys it. Work is for
+the worker.
+
+Can you afford to do slipshod, evasive, hypocritical work? Can you afford
+to shirk, or make-believe or practise pretense in any act of life? No, no;
+for all the time you are molding yourself into a deformity, and drifting
+away from the Divine. What the world does and says about you is really no
+matter, but what you think and what you do are questions vital as Fate. No
+one can harm you but yourself. Work is for the worker. And so I will
+answer the questions of the critics as to how society has been benefited
+by, say, a William Morris book:
+
+1. The workmen who made it found a pride and satisfaction in their work.
+
+2. They received a goodly reward in cash for their time and efforts.
+
+3. The buyers were pleased with their purchase, and received a decided
+satisfaction in its possession.
+
+4. Readers of the book were gratified to see their author clothed in such
+fitting and harmonious dress.
+
+5. Reading the text has instructed some, and possibly inspired a few to
+nobler thinking.
+
+After "The Defense of Guinevere" was published, it was thirteen years
+before Morris issued another volume. His days had been given to art and
+the work of management. But now the business had gotten on to such a firm
+basis that he turned the immediate supervision over to others, and took
+two days of the week, Saturday and Sunday, for literature.
+
+Taking up the active work of literature when thirty-nine years of age, he
+followed it with the zest of youth for over twenty years--until death
+claimed him. William Morris thought literature should be the product of
+the ripened mind--the mind that knows the world of men and which has
+grappled with earth's problems. He also considered that letters should not
+be a profession in itself--to make a business of an art is to degrade it.
+Literature should be the spontaneous output of the mind that has known and
+felt. To work the mine of spirit as a business and sift its product for
+hire, is to overwork the vein and palm off slag for sterling metal.
+Shakespeare was a theater-manager, Milton a secretary, Bobby Burns a
+farmer, Lamb a bookkeeper, Wordsworth a government employee, Emerson a
+lecturer, Hawthorne a custom-house inspector, and Whitman a clerk. William
+Morris was a workingman and a manufacturer, and would have been Poet
+Laureate of England had he been willing to call himself a student of
+sociology instead of a socialist. Socialism itself (whatever it may be) is
+not offensive--the word is.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great American Apostle of Negation expressed, once upon a day, a
+regret that he had not been consulted when the Universe was being planned,
+otherwise he would have arranged to make good things catching instead of
+bad.
+
+The remark tokened a slight lesion in the logic of the Apostle, for good
+things are now, and ever have been, infectious.
+
+Once upon a day, I met a young man who told me that he was exposed at
+Kelmscott House for a brief hour, and caught it, and ever after there were
+in his mind, thoughts, feelings, emotions and ideals that had not been
+there before. Possibly the psychologist would explain that the spores of
+all these things were simply sleeping, awaiting the warmth and sunshine of
+some peculiar presence to start them into being; but of that I can not
+speak--this only I know, that the young man said to me, "Whereas I was
+once blind, I now see."
+
+William Morris was a giant in physical strength and a giant in intellect.
+His nature was intensely masculine, in that he could plan and act without
+thought of precedent. Never was a man more emancipated from the trammels
+of convention and custom than William Morris.
+
+Kelmscott House at Hammersmith is in an ebb-tide district where once
+wealth and fashion held sway; but now the vicinity is given over to
+factories, tenement-houses and all that train of evil and vice that
+follows in the wake of faded gentility.
+
+At Hammersmith you will see spacious old mansions used as warehouses;
+others as boarding-houses; still others converted into dance-halls with
+beer-gardens in the rear, where once bloomed and blossomed milady's
+flowerbeds.
+
+The broad stone steps and wide hallways and iron fences, with glimpses now
+and then of ancient doorplates or more ancient knockers, tell of
+generations lost in the maze of oblivion.
+
+Just why William Morris, the poet and lover of harmony, should have
+selected this locality for a home is quite beyond the average ken.
+Certainly it mystified the fashionable literary world of London, with whom
+he never kept goose-step, but that still kept track of him--for fashion
+has a way of patronizing genius--and some of his old friends wrote him
+asking where Hammersmith was, and others expressed doubts as to its
+existence. I had no difficulty in taking the right train for Hammersmith,
+but once there no one seemed to have ever heard of the Kelmscott Press.
+When I inquired, grave misgivings seemed to arise as to whether the press
+I referred to was a cider-press, a wine-press or a press for "cracklings."
+
+Finally I discovered a man--a workingman--whose face beamed at the mention
+of William Morris. Later I found that if a man knew William Morris, his
+heart throbbed at the mention of his name, and he at once grew voluble and
+confidential and friendly. It was the "Open Sesame," And if a person did
+not know William Morris, he simply didn't, and that was all there was
+about it.
+
+But the man I met knew "Th' Ole Man," which was the affectionate title
+used by all the hundreds and thousands who worked with William Morris. And
+to prove that he knew him, when I asked that he should direct me to the
+Upper Mall, he simply insisted on going with me. Moreover, he told a
+needless lie and declared he was on the way there, although when we met he
+was headed in the other direction. By a devious walk of half a mile we
+reached the high iron fence of Kelmscott House. We arrived amid a florid
+description of the Icelandic Sagas as told by my new-found friend and
+interpreted by Th' Ole Man. My friend had not read the Sagas, but still he
+did not hesitate to recommend them; and so we passed through the wide-open
+gates and up the stone walk to the entrance of Kelmscott House. On the
+threshold we met F.S. Ellis and Emery Walker, who addressed my companion
+as "Tom." I knew Mr. Ellis slightly, and also had met Mr. Walker, who
+works Rembrandt miracles with a camera.
+
+Mr. Ellis was deep in seeing the famous "Chaucer" through the press, and
+Mr. Walker had a print to show, so we turned aside, passed a great pile of
+paper in crates that cluttered the hallway, and entered the library.
+There, leaning over the long, oaken table, in shirt-sleeves, was the
+master. Who could mistake that great, shaggy head, the tangled beard, and
+frank, open-eyed look of boyish animation?
+
+The man was sixty and more, but there was no appearance of age in eye,
+complexion, form or gesture--only the whitened hair! He greeted me as if
+we had always known each other, and Ellis and piles of Chaucer proof led
+straight to old Professor Child of Harvard, whose work Ellis criticized
+and Morris upheld. They fell into a hot argument, which was even continued
+as we walked across the street to the Doves Bindery.
+
+The Doves Bindery, as all good men know, is managed by Mr.
+Cobden-Sanderson, who married one of the two daughters of Richard Cobden
+of Corn-Law fame.
+
+Just why Mr. Sanderson, the lawyer, should have borrowed his wife's maiden
+name and made it legally a part of his own, I do not know. Anyway, I quite
+like the idea of linking one's name with that of the woman one loves,
+especially when it has been so honored by the possessor as the name of
+Cobden.
+
+Cobden-Sanderson caught the rage for beauty from William Morris, and began
+to bind books for his own pleasure. Morris contended that any man who
+could bind books as beautifully as Cobden-Sanderson should not waste his
+time with law. Cobden-Sanderson talked it over with his wife, and she
+being a most sensible woman, agreed with William Morris.
+
+So Cobden-Sanderson, acting on Th' Ole Man's suggestion, rented the quaint
+and curious mansion next door to the old house occupied by the Kelmscott
+Press, and went to work binding books.
+
+When we were once inside the Bindery, the Chaucerian argument between Mr.
+Ellis and Th' Ole Man shifted off into a wrangle with Cobden-Sanderson. I
+could not get the drift of it exactly--it seemed to be the continuation of
+some former quarrel about an oak leaf or something. Anyway, Th' Ole Man
+silenced his opponent by smothering his batteries--all of which will be
+better understood when I explain that Th' Ole Man was large in stature,
+bluff, bold and strong-voiced, whereas Cobden-Sanderson is small,
+red-headed, meek, and wears bicycle-trousers.
+
+The argument, however, was not quite so serious an affair as I at first
+supposed, for it all ended in a laugh and easily ran off into a quiet
+debate as to the value of Imperial Japan versus Whatman.
+
+We walked through the various old parlors that now do duty as workrooms
+for bright-eyed girls, then over through the Kelmscott Press, and from
+this to another old mansion that had on its door a brass plate so polished
+and repolished, like a machine-made sonnet too much gone over, that one
+can scarcely make out its intent. Finally I managed to trace the legend,
+"The Seasons." I was told it was here that Thomson, the poet, wrote his
+book. Once back in the library of Kelmscott House, Mr. Ellis and Th' Ole
+Man leaned over the great oaken table and renewed, in a gentler key, the
+question as to whether Professor Child was justified in his construction
+of the Third Canto of the "Canterbury Tales." Under cover of the smoke I
+quietly disappeared with Mr. Cockerill, the Secretary, for a better view
+of the Kelmscott Press.
+
+This was my first interview with William Morris. By chance I met him
+again, some days after, at the shop of Emery Walker in Clifford Court,
+Strand. I had been told on divers occasions by various persons that
+William Morris had no sympathy for American art and small respect for our
+literature. I am sure this was not wholly true, for on this occasion he
+told me he had read "Huckleberry Finn," and doted on "Uncle Remus." He
+also spoke with affection and feeling of Walt Whitman, and told me that he
+had read every printed word that Emerson had written. And further he
+congratulated me on the success of my book, "Songs From Vagabondia."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The housekeeping world seems to have been in thrall to six haircloth
+chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center
+table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent
+times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the
+center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a
+bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the
+mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such houses were
+usually to be seen gaudy-colored carpets, imitation lace curtains, and a
+what-not in the corner that seemed ready to go into dissolution through
+the law of gravitation.
+
+Early in the Seventies lithograph-presses began to make chromos that were
+warranted just as good as oil-paintings, and these were distributed in
+millions by enterprising newspapers as premiums for subscriptions. Looking
+over an old file of the "Christian Union" for the year Eighteen Hundred
+Seventy-one, I chanced upon an editorial wherein it was stated that the
+end of painting pictures by hand had come, and the writer piously thanked
+heaven for it--and added, "Art is now within the reach of all." Furniture,
+carpets, curtains, pictures and books were being manufactured by
+machinery, and to glue things together and give them a look of gentility
+and get them into a house before they fell apart, was the seeming
+desideratum of all manufacturers.
+
+The editor of the "Christian Union" surely had a basis of truth for his
+statement; art had received a sudden chill: palettes and brushes could be
+bought for half-price, and many artists were making five-year contracts
+with lithographers; while those too old to learn to draw on
+lithograph-stones saw nothing left for them but to work designs with
+worsted in perforated cardboard.
+
+To the influence of William Morris does the civilized world owe its
+salvation from the mad rage and rush for the tawdry and cheap in home
+decoration. It will not do to say that if William Morris had not called a
+halt some one else would, nor to cavil by declaring that the inanities of
+the Plush-Covered Age followed the Era of the Hair-Cloth Sofa. These
+things are frankly admitted, but the refreshing fact remains that fully
+one-half the homes of England and America have been influenced by the good
+taste and vivid personality of one strong, earnest man.
+
+William Morris was the strongest all-round man the century has produced.
+He was an Artist and a Poet in the broadest and best sense of these
+much-bandied terms. William Morris could do more things, and do them well,
+than any other man of either ancient or modern times whom we can name.
+William Morris was master of six distinct trades. He was a weaver, a
+blacksmith, a wood-carver, a painter, a dyer and a printer; and he was a
+musical composer of no mean ability.
+
+Better than all, he was an enthusiastic lover of his race: his heart
+throbbed for humanity, and believing that society could be reformed only
+from below, he cast his lot with the toilers, dressed as one of them, and
+in the companionship of workingmen found a response to his holy zeal which
+the society of an entailed aristocracy denied.
+
+The man who could influence the entire housekeeping of half a world, and
+give the kingdom of fashion a list to starboard; who could paint beautiful
+pictures; compose music; speak four languages; write sublime verse;
+address a public assemblage effectively; produce plays; resurrect the lost
+art of making books, books such as were made only in the olden time as a
+loving, religious service; who lived a clean, wholesome, manly
+life--beloved by those who knew him best--shall we not call him Master?
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+    So, take and use Thy work,
+    Amend what flaws may lurk,
+    What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim:
+    My times be in Thy hand!
+    Perfect the cup as planned!
+    Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.
+                                        --_Rabbi Ben Ezra_
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING]
+
+
+If there ever lived a poet to whom the best minds pour out libations, it
+is Robert Browning. We think of him as dwelling on high Olympus; we read
+his lines by the light of dim candles; we quote him in sonorous monotone
+at twilight when soft-sounding organ-chants come to us mellow and sweet.
+Browning's poems form a lover's litany to that elect few who hold that the
+true mating of a man and a woman is the marriage of the mind. And thrice
+blest was Browning, in that Fate allowed him to live his philosophy--to
+work his poetry up into life, and then again to transmute life and love
+into art. Fate was kind: success came his way so slowly that he was never
+subjected to the fierce, dazzling searchlight of publicity; his
+recognition in youth was limited to a few obscure friends and neighbors.
+And when distance divided him from these, they forgot him; so there seems
+a hiatus in his history, when for a score of years literary England dimly
+remembered some one by the name of Browning, but could not just place him.
+
+About the year Eighteen Hundred Sixty-eight the author of "Sordello" was
+induced to appear at an evening of "Uncut Leaves" at the house of a
+nobleman at the West End, London. James Russell Lowell was present and
+was congratulated by a lady, sitting next to him, on the fact that
+Browning was an American.
+
+"But only by adoption!" answered the gracious Lowell.
+
+"Yes," said the lady; "I believe his father was an Englishman, so you
+Americans can not have all the credit; but surely he shows the Negro or
+Indian blood of his mother. Very clever, isn't he?--so very clever!"
+
+Browning's swarthy complexion, and the fine poise of the man--the entire
+absence of "nerves," as often shown in the savage--seemed to carry out the
+idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as
+black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion
+mahogany, the report that he was a Creole found ready credence. And so did
+this gossip of mixed parentage follow him that Mrs. Sutherland Orr, in her
+biography, takes an entire chapter to prove that in Robert Browning's
+veins there flowed neither Indian nor Negro blood.
+
+Doctor Furnivall, however, explains that Browning's grandmother on his
+father's side came from the West Indies, that nothing is known of her
+family history, and that she was a Creole.
+
+And beyond this, the fact is stated that Robert Browning was quite pleased
+when he used to be taken for a Jew--a conclusion made plausible by his
+complexion, hair and features.
+
+In its dead-serious, hero-worshiping attitude, the life of Robert
+Browning by Mrs. Orr deserves to rank with Weems' "Life of Washington." It
+is the brief of an attorney for the defense. "Little-Willie" anecdotes
+appear on every page.
+
+And thus do we behold the tendency to make Browning something more than a
+man--and, therefore, something less.
+
+Possibly women are given to this sort of thing more than men--I am not
+sure. But this I know, every young woman regards her lover as a distinct
+and peculiar personage, different from all others--as if this were a
+virtue--the only one of his kind. Later, if Fate is kind, she learns that
+her own experience is not unique. We all easily fit into a type, and each
+is but a representative of his class.
+
+Robert Browning sprang from a line of clerks and small merchants; but as
+indemnity for the lack of a family 'scutcheon, we are told that his uncle,
+Reuben Browning, was a sure-enough poet. For once in an idle hour he threw
+off a little thing for an inscription to be placed on a presentation
+ink-bottle, and Disraeli seeing it, declared, "Nothing like this has ever
+before been written!"
+
+Beyond doubt, Disraeli made the statement--it bears his earmark. It will
+be remembered that the Earl of Beaconsfield had a stock form for
+acknowledging receipt of the many books sent to him by aspiring authors.
+It ran something like this: "The Earl of Beaconsfield begs to thank the
+gifted author of----for a copy of his book, and gives the hearty assurance
+that he will waste no time in reading the volume."
+
+And further, the fact is set forth with unction that Robert Browning was
+entrusted with a latchkey early in life, and that he always gave his
+mother a good-night kiss. He gave her the good-night kiss willy-nilly. If
+she had retired when he came home, he used the trusty latchkey and went to
+her room to imprint on her lips the good-night kiss. He did this, the
+biographer would have us believe, to convince the good mother that his
+breath was what it should be; and he awakened her so she would know the
+hour was seasonable.
+
+In many manufactories there is an electric apparatus wherewith every
+employee registers when he arrives, by turning a key or pushing a button.
+Robert Browning always fearlessly registered as soon as he got home--this
+according to Mrs. Orr.
+
+Unfortunately, or otherwise, there is a little scattered information which
+makes us believe that Robert Browning's mother was not so fearful of her
+son's conduct, nor suspicious as to his breath, as to lie awake nights and
+keep tab on his hours. The world has never denied that Robert Browning was
+entrusted with a latchkey, and it cares little if occasionally, early in
+life, he fumbled for the keyhole. And my conception of his character is
+such that, when in the few instances Aurora, rosy goddess of the morn,
+marked his homecoming with chrome-red in the eastern sky, he did not
+search the sleeping-rooms for his mother to apprise her of the hour.
+
+In one place Mrs. Orr avers, in a voice hushed with emotion, that Browning
+carefully read all of Johnson's Dictionary "as a fit preparation for a
+literary career." Without any attempt to deny that the perusal of a
+dictionary is "fit preparation for a literary career," I yet fear me that
+the learned biographer, in a warm anxiety to prove the man exceeding
+studious and very virtuous, has tipped a bit to t' other side.
+
+She has apotheosized her subject--and in an attempt to portray him as a
+peculiar person, set apart, has well-nigh given us a being without hands,
+feet, eyes, ears, organs, dimensions, passions.
+
+But after a careful study of the data, various visits to the places where
+he lived in England, trips to Casa Guidi, views from Casa Guidi windows, a
+journey to Palazzo Rezzonico at Venice, where he died, and many a pious
+pilgrimage to Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey, where he sleeps, I am
+constrained to believe that Robert Browning was made from the same kind of
+clay as the rest of us. He was human--he was splendidly human.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Browning's father was a bank-clerk; and Robert Browning, the Third, author
+of "Paracelsus," could have secured his father's place in the Bank of
+England, if he had had ambitions. And the fact that he had not was a
+source of silent sorrow to the father, even to the day of his death, in
+Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six.
+
+Robert Browning, the grandfather, entered the Bank as an errand-boy, and
+rose by slow stages to Principal of the Stock-Room. He served the Bank
+full half a century, and saved from his salary a goodly competence. This
+money, tightly and rightly invested, passed to his son. The son never
+secured the complete favor of his employers that the father had known, but
+he added to his weekly stipend by what a writer terms, "legitimate
+perquisites." This, being literally interpreted, means that he purchased
+paper, pens and sealing-wax for the use of the Bank, and charged the goods
+in at his own price, doubtless with the consent of his superior, with whom
+he divided profits. He could have parodied the remark of Fletcher of
+Saltoun and said, "Let me supply the perquisite-requisites and I care not
+who makes the laws." So he grew rich--moderately rich--and lived simply
+and comfortably up at Camberwell, with only one besetting dissipation: he
+was a book-collector and had learned more Greek than Robert the Third was
+to acquire. He searched bookstalls on the way to the City in the morning,
+and lay in wait for First Editions on the way home at night. When he had
+a holiday, he went in search of a book. He sneaked books into the house,
+and declared to his admonishing wife the next week that he had always
+owned 'em, or that they were presented to him. The funds his father had
+left him, his salary and "the perquisites," made a goodly income, but he
+always complained of poverty. He was secretly hoarding sums so as to
+secure certain books.
+
+The shelves grew until they reached the ceiling, and then bookcases
+invaded the dining-room. The collector didn't trust his wife with the
+household purchasing; no bank-clerk ever does--and all the pennies were
+needed for books. The good wife, having nothing else to do, grew anemic,
+had neuralgia and lapsed into a Shut-in, wearing a pale-blue wrapper and
+reclining on a couch, around which were piled--mountain-high--books.
+
+The pale invalid used to imagine that the great cases were swaying and
+dancing a minuet, and she fully expected the tomes would all come
+a-toppling down and smother her--and she didn't care much if they would;
+but they never did. She was the mother of two children--the boy Robert,
+born the year after her marriage; and in a little over another year a
+daughter came, and this closed the family record.
+
+The invalid mother was a woman of fine feeling and much poetic insight.
+She didn't talk as much about books as her husband did, but I think she
+knew the good ones better. The mother and son moused in books together,
+and Mrs. Orr is surely right in her suggestion that this love of mother
+and son took upon itself the nature of a passion.
+
+The love of Robert Browning for Elizabeth Barrett was a revival and a
+renewal, in many ways, of the condition of tenderness and sympathy that
+existed between Browning and his mother. There certainly was a strange and
+marked resemblance in the characters of Elizabeth Barrett and the mother
+of Robert Browning; and to many this fully accounts for the instant
+affection that Browning felt toward the occupant of the "darkened room,"
+when first they met.
+
+The book-collector took much pride in his boy, and used to take him on
+book-hunting excursions, and sometimes to the Bank, on which occasions he
+would tell the Beef-Eaters how this was Robert Browning, the Third, and
+that all three of the R.B.'s were loyal servants of the Bank. And the
+Beef-Eaters would rest their staves on the stone floor, and smile
+Fifteenth-Century grimaces at the boy from under their cocked hats.
+
+Robert the Third was a healthy, rollicking lad, with power plus, and a
+deal of destructiveness in his nature. But destructiveness in a youngster
+is only energy not yet properly directed, just as dirt is useful matter in
+the wrong place.
+
+To keep the boy out of mischief, he was sent to a sort of kindergarten,
+kept by a spinster around the corner. The spinster devoted rather more
+attention to the Browning boy than to her other pupils--she had to, to
+keep him out of mischief--and soon the boy was quite the head scholar.
+
+And they tell us that he was so much more clever than any of the other
+scholars that, to appease the rising jealousy of the parents of the other
+pupils, the diplomatic spinster requested that the boy be removed from her
+school--all this according to the earnest biographer. The facts are that
+the boy had so much energy and restless ambition; was so full of brimming
+curiosity, mischief and imagination--introducing turtles, bats and mice on
+various occasions--that he led the whole school a merry chase and wore the
+nerves of the ancient maiden to a frazzle.
+
+He had to go.
+
+After this he studied at home with his mother. His father laid out a
+schedule, and it was lived up to, for about a week.
+
+Then a private tutor was tried, but soon this plan was abandoned, and a
+system of reading, best described as "natural selection," was followed.
+
+The boy was fourteen, and his sister was twelve, past. These are the ages
+when children often experience a change of heart, as all "revivalists"
+know. Robert Browning was swinging off towards atheism. He grew
+melancholy, irritable and wrote stanzas of sentimental verse. He showed
+this verse, high-sounding, stilted, bold and bilious, to his mother and
+then to his father, and finally to Lizzie Flower.
+
+A word about Lizzie Flower: She was nine years older than Robert Browning;
+and she had a mind that was gracious and full of high aspiration. She
+loved books, art, music, and all harmony made its appeal to her--and not
+in vain. She wrote verses and, very sensibly, kept them locked in her
+workbox; and then she painted in water-colors and worked in worsted. A
+thoroughly good woman, she was far above the average in character, with a
+half-minor key in her voice and a tinge of the heartbroken in her
+composition, caused no one just knew how. Probably a certain young curate
+at Saint Margaret's could have thrown light on this point; but he married,
+took on a double chin, moved away to a fat living and never told.
+
+No woman is ever wise or good until destiny has subdued her by grinding
+her fondest hopes into the dust.
+
+Lizzie Flower was wise and good.
+
+She gave singing lessons to the Browning children. She taught Master
+Robert Browning to draw.
+
+She read to him some of her verses that were in the sewing-table drawer.
+And her sister, Sarah Flower, two years older, afterwards Sarah Flower
+Adams, read aloud to them a hymn she had just written, called, "Nearer, My
+God, to Thee."
+
+Then soon Master Robert showed the Flower girls some of the verses he had
+written.
+
+Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate, and told his mother so. A young
+woman never cares anything for an unlicked cub, nine years younger than
+herself, unless Fate has played pitch and toss with her heart's true love.
+And then, the tendrils of the affections being ruthlessly lacerated and
+uprooted, they cling to the first object that presents itself.
+
+Lizzie Flower was a wallflower. That is to say, she had early in life rid
+herself of the admiration of the many, by refusing to supply an unlimited
+amount of small talk. In feature she was as plain as George Eliot. A boy
+is plastic, and even a modest wallflower can woo him; but a man, for her,
+inspires awe--with him she takes no liberties. And the wallflower woos the
+youth unwittingly, thinking the while she is only using her influence the
+better to instruct him.
+
+It is fortunate for a boy escaping adolescence to be educated and loved
+(the words are synonymous) by a good woman. Indeed, the youngster who has
+not violently loved a woman old enough to be his mother has dropped
+something out of his life that he will have to go back and pick up in
+another incarnation.
+
+I said Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate; and she declared that he was
+the brightest and most receptive pupil she had ever had.
+
+He was seventeen--she was twenty-six. They read Shelley, Keats and Byron
+aloud, and together passed through the "Byronic Period." They became
+violently atheistic, and at the same time decidedly religious: things that
+seem paradoxical, but are not. They adopted a vegetable diet and for two
+years they eschewed meat. They worshiped in the woods, feeling that the
+groves were God's first temples; and sitting at the gnarled roots of some
+great oak, they would read aloud, by turn, from "Queen Mab."
+
+On one such excursion out across Hampstead Heath they lost their copy of
+"Shelley" in the leaves, and a wit has told us that it sprouted, and as a
+result--the flower and fruit--we have Browning's poem of "Pauline." And
+this must be so, for Robert and Miss Flower (he always called her "Miss
+Flower," but she called him "Robert") made many an excursion, in search of
+the book, yet they never found it.
+
+Robert now being eighteen, a man grown--not large, but very strong and
+wiry--his father made arrangements for him to take a minor clerkship in
+the Bank. But the boy rebelled--he was going to be an artist, or a poet,
+or something like that.
+
+The father argued that a man could be a poet and still work in a bank--the
+salary was handy; and there was no money in poetry. In fact, he himself
+was a poet, as his father had been before him. To be a bank-clerk and at
+the same time a poet--what nobler ambition!
+
+The young man was still stubborn. He was feeling discontented with his
+environment: he was cramped, cabined, cribbed, confined. He wanted to get
+out of the world of petty plodding and away from the silly round of
+conventions, out into the world of art--or else of barbarism--he didn't
+care which.
+
+The latter way opened first, and a bit of wordy warfare with his father on
+the subject of idleness sent him off to a gipsy camp at Epsom Downs. How
+long he lived with the vagabonds we do not know, but his swarthy skin, and
+his skill as a boxer and wrestler, recommended him to the ragged gentry,
+and they received him as a brother.
+
+It is probable that a week of pure vagabondia cured him of the idea that
+civilization is a disease, for he came back home, made a bonfire of his
+attire, and after a vigorous tubbing, was clothed in his right mind.
+
+Groggy studies in French under a private tutor followed, and then came a
+term as special student in Greek at London University.
+
+To be nearer the school, he took lodgings in Gower Street; but within a
+week a slight rough-house incident occurred that crippled most of the
+furniture in his room and deprived the stair-rail of its spindles. R.
+Browning, the Second, bank-clerk, paid the damages, and R. Browning, the
+Third, aged twenty, came back home, formally notifying all parties
+concerned that he had chosen a career--it was Poetry. He would woo the
+Divine Goddess, no matter who opposed. There, now!
+
+His mother was delighted; his father gave reluctant consent, declaring
+that any course in life was better than vacillation; and Miss Flower, who
+probably had sown the dragon's teeth, assumed a look of surprise, but gave
+it as her opinion that Robert Browning would yet be Poet Laureate of
+England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Robert Browning awoke one morning with a start--it was the morning of his
+thirtieth birthday. One's thirtieth birthday and one's seventieth are days
+that press their message home with iron hand. With his seventieth
+milestone past, a man feels that his work is done, and dim voices call to
+him from across the Unseen. His work is done, and so illy, compared with
+what he had wished and expected! But the impressions made upon his heart
+by the day are no deeper than those his thirtieth birthday inspires. At
+thirty, youth, with all it palliates and excuses, is gone forever. The
+time for mere fooling is past; the young avoid you, or else look up to you
+as a Nestor and tempt you to grow reminiscent. You are a man and must give
+an account of yourself.
+
+Out of the stillness came a Voice to Robert Browning saying, "What hast
+thou done with the talent I gave thee?"
+
+What had he done? It seemed to him at the moment as if he had done
+nothing. He arose and looked into the mirror. A few gray hairs were mixed
+in his beard; there were crow's feet on his forehead; and the first joyous
+flush of youth had gone from his face forever. He was a bachelor, inwardly
+at war with his environment, but making a bold front with his tuppence
+worth of philosophy to conceal the unrest within.
+
+A bachelor of thirty, strong in limb, clear in brain and yet a dependent!
+No one but himself to support, and couldn't even do that! Gadzooks! Fie
+upon all poetry and a plague upon this dumb, dense, shopkeeping,
+beer-drinking nation upon which the sun never sets!
+
+The father of Robert Browning had done everything a father could. He had
+supplied board and books, and given his son an allowance of a pound a week
+for ten years. He had sent him on a journey to Italy, and published
+several volumes of the young man's verse at his own expense. And these
+books were piled high in the garret, save a few that had been bought by
+charitable friends or given away.
+
+Robert Browning was not discouraged--oh no, not that!--only the world
+seemed to stretch out in a dull, monotonous gray, where once it was green,
+the color of hope, and all decked with flowers.
+
+The little literary world of London knew Browning and respected him. He
+was earnest and sincere and his personality carried weight. His face was
+not handsome, but his manner was one of poise and purpose; and to come
+within his aura and look into his calm eyes was to respect the man and
+make obeisance to the intellect that you felt lay behind.
+
+A few editors had gone out of their way to "discover" him to the world,
+but their lavish reviews fell flat. Buyers would not buy--no one seemed to
+want the wares of Robert Browning. He was hard to read, difficult,
+obscure--or else there wasn't anything in it at all--they didn't know
+which.
+
+Fox, editor of the "Repository," had met Browning at the Flowers' and
+liked him. He tried to make his verse go, but couldn't. Yet he did what he
+could and insisted that Browning should go with him to the "Sunday
+evenings" at Barry Cornwall's. There Browning met Leigh Hunt, Monckton
+Milnes and Dickens. Then there were dinner-parties at Sergeant Talfourd's,
+where he got acquainted with Wordsworth, Walter Savage Landor and
+Macready.
+
+Macready impressed him greatly and he impressed Macready. He gave the
+actor a copy of "Paracelsus" (one of the pile in the garret) and Macready
+suggested he write a play. "Strafford" was the result, and we know it was
+stillborn, and caused a very frosty feeling to exist for many a year
+between the author and the actor. When a play fails, the author blames the
+actor and the actor damns the author. These men were human. Of course
+Browning's kinsmen all considered him a failure, and when the father paid
+over the weekly allowance he often rubbed it in a bit. Lizzie Flower had
+modified her prophecy as to the Laureateship, but was still loyal. They
+had tiffed occasionally, and broken off the friendship, and once I believe
+returned letters. To marry was out of the question--he couldn't support
+himself--and besides that, they were old, demnition old; he was past
+thirty and she was forty--Gramercy!
+
+They tiffed.
+
+Then they made up.
+
+In the meantime Browning had formed a friendship, very firm and frank, but
+strictly Platonic, of course, for Fanny Haworth. Miss Haworth had seen
+more of the world than Miss Flower--she was an artist, a writer, and moved
+in the best society. Browning and Miss Haworth wrote letters to each other
+for a while most every day, and he called on her every Wednesday and
+Saturday evening.
+
+Miss Haworth bought and gave away many copies of "Pauline," "Sordello" and
+"Paracelsus"; and informed her friends that "Pippa Passes" and "Two in a
+Gondola" were great quality.
+
+About this time we find Edward Moxon, the publisher (who married the
+adopted daughter of Charles and Mary Lamb), saying to Browning: "Your
+verse is all right, Browning, but a book of it is too much: people are
+appalled; they can not digest it. And when it goes into a magazine it is
+lost in the mass. Now just let me get out your work in little monthly
+instalments, in booklet form, and I think it will go."
+
+Browning jumped at the idea.
+
+The booklets were gotten out in paper covers and offered at a moderate
+price.
+
+They sold, and sold well. The literary elite bought them by the dozen to
+give away.
+
+People began to talk about Browning--he was getting a foothold. His
+royalties now amounted to as much as the weekly allowance from his father,
+and Pater was talking of cutting off the stipend entirely. Finances being
+easy, Browning thought it a good time to take another look at Italy. Some
+of the best things he had written had been inspired by Venice and
+Asolo--he would go again. And so he engaged passage on a sailing-ship for
+Naples.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shortly after Browning's return to London, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-four,
+he dined at Sergeant Talfourd's. After the dinner a well-dressed and
+sprightly old gentleman introduced himself and begged that Browning would
+inscribe a copy of "Bells and Pomegranates," that he had gotten specially
+bound. There is an ancient myth about writers being harassed by
+autograph-fiends and all that; but the simple fact is, nothing so warms
+the cockles of an author's heart as to be asked for his autograph. Of
+course Browning graciously complied with the gentleman's request, and in
+order that he might insert the owner's name in the inscription, asked:
+
+"What name, please?"
+
+And the answer was, "John Kenyon."
+
+Then Mr. Browning and Mr. Kenyon had a nice little visit, talking about
+books and art. And Mr. Kenyon told Mr. Browning that Miss Elizabeth
+Barrett, the poetess, was a cousin of his--he was a bit boastful of the
+fact.
+
+And Mr. Browning nodded and said he had often heard of her, and admired
+her work.
+
+Then Mr. Kenyon suggested that Mr. Browning write and tell her so--"You
+see she has just gotten out a new book, and we are all a little nervous
+about how it is going to take. Miss Barrett lives in a darkened room, you
+know--sees no one--and a letter from a man like you would encourage her
+greatly."
+
+Mr. Kenyon wrote the address of Miss Barrett on a card and pushed it
+across the table.
+
+Mr. Browning took the card, put it in his pocketbook and promised to write
+Miss Barrett, as Mr. Kenyon requested.
+
+And he did.
+
+Miss Barrett replied.
+
+Mr. Browning answered, and soon several letters a week were going in each
+direction.
+
+Not quite so many missives were being received by Fanny Haworth; and as
+for Lizzie Flower, I fear she was quite forgotten. She fell into a
+decline, drooped and died in a year.
+
+Mr. Browning asked for permission to call on Miss Barrett.
+
+Miss Barrett explained that her father would not allow it, neither would
+the doctor or nurse, and added: "There is nothing to see in me. I am a
+weed fit for the ground and darkness."
+
+But this repulse only made Mr. Browning want to see her the more. He
+appealed to Mr. Kenyon, who was the only person allowed to call, besides
+Miss Mitford--Mr. Kenyon was her cousin.
+
+Mr. Kenyon arranged it--he was an expert at arranging anything of a
+delicate nature. He timed the hour when Mr. Barrett was down town, and the
+nurse and doctor safely out of the way, and they called on the invalid
+prisoner in the darkened room.
+
+They did not stay long, but when they went away Robert Browning trod on
+air. The beautiful girl-like face, in its frame of dark curls, lying back
+among the pillows, haunted him like a shadow. He was thirty-three, she was
+thirty-five. She looked like a child, but the mind--the subtle,
+appreciative, receptive mind! The mind that caught every allusion, that
+knew his thought before he voiced it, that found nothing obscure in his
+work, and that put a high and holy construction on his every sentence--it
+was divine! divinity incarnated in a woman.
+
+Robert Browning tramped the streets forgetful of meat, drink or rest.
+
+He would give this woman freedom. He would devote himself to restoring her
+to the air and sunshine. What nobler ambition! He was an idler, he had
+never done anything for anybody. He was only a killer of time, a vagrant,
+but now was his opportunity--he would do for this beautiful soul what no
+one else on earth could do. She was slipping away as it was--the world
+would soon lose her. Was there none to save?
+
+Here was the finest intellect ever given to a woman--so sure, so vital, so
+tender and yet so strong!
+
+He would love her back to life and light!
+
+And so Robert Browning told her all this shortly after, but before he
+told, she had divined his thought. For solitude and loneliness and
+heart-hunger had given her the power of an astral being; she was in
+communication with all the finer forces that pervade our ether. He would
+love her back to life and light--he told her so. She grew better.
+
+And soon we find her getting up and throwing wide the shutters. It was no
+longer the darkened room, for the sunlight came dancing through the
+apartment, driving out all the dark shadows that lurked therein.
+
+The doctor was indignant; the nurse resigned.
+
+Of course, Mr. Barrett was not taken into confidence and no one asked his
+consent. Why should they?--he was the man who could never understand.
+
+So one fine day when the coast was clear, the couple went over to Saint
+Marylebone Church and were married. The bride went home alone--could walk
+all right now--and it was a week before her husband saw her, because he
+would not be a hypocrite and go ring the doorbell and ask if Miss Barrett
+was home; and of course if he had asked for Mrs. Robert Browning, no one
+would have known whom he wanted to see.
+
+But at the end of a week, the bride stole down the stairs, while the
+family was at dinner, leading her dog Flush by a string, and all the time,
+with throbbing heart, she prayed the dog not to bark. I have oft wondered
+in the stilly night season what the effect on English Letters would have
+been, had the dog really barked! But the dog did not bark; and Elizabeth
+met her lover-husband there on the corner where the mail-box is. No one
+missed the runaways until the next day, and then the bride and groom were
+safely in France, writing letters back from Dieppe, asking forgiveness and
+craving blessings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"She is the Genius and I am the Clever Person," Browning used to say. And
+this I believe will be the world's final judgment.
+
+Browning knew the world in its every phase--good and bad, high and low,
+society and commerce, the shop and gypsy camp. He absorbed things,
+assimilated them, compared and wrote it out.
+
+Elizabeth Barrett had never traveled, her opportunities for meeting people
+had been few, her experiences limited, and yet she evolved truth: she
+secreted beauty from within.
+
+For two years after their elopement they did not write--how could they?
+goodness me! They were on their wedding-tour. They lived in Florence and
+Rome and in various mountain villages in Italy.
+
+Health came back, and joy and peace and perfect love were theirs. But it
+was joy bought with a price--Elizabeth Barrett Browning had forfeited the
+love of her father. Her letters written him came back unopened, books
+inscribed to him were returned--he declared she was dead.
+
+Her brothers, too, discarded her, and when her two sisters wrote, they did
+so by stealth, and their letters, meant to be kind, were steel for her
+heart. Then her father was rich; and she had always known every comfort
+that money could buy. Now, she had taken up with a poor poet, and every
+penny had to be counted--absolute economy was demanded.
+
+And Robert Browning, with a certain sense of guilt upon him, for
+depriving her of all the creature comforts she had known, sought by
+tenderness and love to make her forget the insults her father heaped upon
+her.
+
+As for Browning, the bank-clerk, he was vexed that his son should show so
+little caution as to load himself up with an invalid wife, and he cut off
+the allowance, declaring that if a man was old enough to marry, he was
+also old enough to care for himself. He did, however, make his son several
+"loans"; and finally came to "bless the day that his son had sense enough
+to marry the best and most talented woman on earth."
+
+Browning's poems were selling slowly, and Mrs. Browning's books brought
+her a little royalty, thanks to the loyal management of John Kenyon, and
+so absolute want and biting poverty did not overtake the runaways.
+
+After the birth of her son, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, Mrs.
+Browning's health seemed to have fully returned. She used to ride
+horseback up and down the mountain passes, and wrote home to Miss Mitford
+that love had turned the dial backward and the joyousness of girlhood had
+come again to her.
+
+When John Kenyon died and left them ten thousand pounds, all their own, it
+placed them forever beyond the apprehension of want, and also enabled them
+to do for others; for they pensioned old Walter Savage Landor, and
+established him in comfortable quarters around the corner from Casa
+Guidi.
+
+I intimated a moment ago that their honeymoon continued for two years.
+This was a mistake, for it continued for just fifteen years, when the
+beautiful girl-like form, with her head of flowing curls upon her
+husband's shoulder, ceased to breathe. Painlessly and without apprehension
+or premonition, the spirit had taken its flight.
+
+That letter of Miss Blagdon's, written some weeks after, telling of how
+the stricken man paced the echoing hallways at night crying, "I want her!
+I want her!" touches us like a great, strange sorrow that once pierced our
+hearts.
+
+But Robert Browning's nature was too strong to be subdued by grief. He
+remembered that others, too, had buried their dead, and that sorrow had
+been man's portion since the world began. He would live for his boy--for
+Her child.
+
+But Florence was no longer his Florence, and he made haste to settle up
+his affairs and go back to England. He never returned to Florence, and
+never saw the beautiful monument, designed by his lifelong friend,
+Frederick Leighton.
+
+When you visit the little English Cemetery at Florence, the slim little
+girl that comes down the path, swinging the big bunch of keys, opens the
+high iron gate and leads you, without word or question, straight to the
+grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
+
+Browning was forty-nine when Mrs. Browning died.
+
+And by the time he had reached his fiftieth meridian, England, harkening
+to America's suggestion, was awakening to the fact that he was one of the
+world's great poets.
+
+Honors came slowly, but surely: Oxford with a degree; Saint Andrew's with
+a Lord-Rectorship; publishers with advance payments. And when Smith and
+Elder paid one hundred pounds for the poem of "Herve Riel," it seemed that
+at last Browning's worth was being recognized. Not, of course, that money
+is the infallible test, but even poetry has its Rialto, where the extent
+of appreciation is shown by prices current.
+
+Browning's best work was done after his wife's death; and in that love he
+ever lived and breathed. In his seventy-fifth year, it filled his days and
+dreams as though it were a thing of yesterday, singing in his heart a
+perpetual eucharist.
+
+"The Ring and the Book" must be regarded as Browning's crowning work.
+Offhand critics have disposed of it, but the great minds go back to it
+again and again. In the character of Pompilia the author sought to pay
+tribute to the woman whose memory was ever in his mind; yet he was too
+sensitive and shrinking to fully picture her. He sought to mask his
+inspiration; but tender, loving recollections of "Ba" are interlaced and
+interwoven through it all.
+
+When Robert Browning died, in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine, the world of
+literature and art uncovered in token of honor to one who had lived long
+and well and had done a deathless work. And the doors of storied
+Westminster opened wide to receive his dust.
+
+
+
+
+ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+    Not of the sunlight,
+    Not of the moonlight,
+    Nor of the starlight!
+    O young Mariner,
+    Down to the haven,
+    Call your companions,
+    Launch your vessel,
+    And crowd your canvas,
+    And ere it vanishes
+    Over the margin,
+    After it, follow it,
+    Follow the Gleam.
+                      --_Merlin_
+
+[Illustration: ALFRED TENNYSON]
+
+
+The grandfather of Tennyson had two sons, the elder boy, according to
+Clement Scott, being "both wilful and commonplace." Now, of course, the
+property and honors and titles, according to the law of England, would all
+gravitate to the commonplace boy; and the second son, who was competent,
+dutiful and worthy, would be out in the cold world--simply because he was
+accidentally born second and not first. It was not his fault that he was
+born second, and it was in no wise to the credit of the other that he was
+born first.
+
+So the father, seeing that the elder boy had small executive capacity, and
+no appreciation of a Good Thing, disinherited him, giving him, however, a
+generous allowance, but letting the titles go to the second boy, who was
+bright and brave and withal a right manly fellow.
+
+Personally, I'm glad the honors went to the best man. But Hallam Tennyson,
+son of the poet, sees only rank injustice in the action of his ancestor,
+who deliberately set his own opinion of right and justice against
+precedent as embodied in English Law. As a matter of strictest justice, we
+might argue that neither boy was entitled to anything which he had not
+earned, and that, in dividing the property between them, instead of
+allowing it all to drift into the hands of the one accidentally born
+first, the father acted wisely and well.
+
+But neither Alfred nor Hallam Tennyson thought so. How much their opinions
+were biased by the fact that they were descendants of the firstborn son,
+we can not say. Anyway, the descendants of the second son, the Honorable
+Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt, have made no protest of which I can learn,
+about justice having been defeated.
+
+Considering this subject of the Law of Entail one step further, we find
+that Hallam, the present Lord Tennyson, is a Peer of the Realm simply
+because his father was a great poet, and honors were given him on that
+account by the Queen. These honors go to Hallam, who, as all men agree, is
+in many ways singularly like his grandfather.
+
+Genius is not hereditary, but titles are. Hallam is eminently pleased with
+the English Law of Entail, save that he questions whether any father has
+the divine right to divert his titles and wealth from the eldest son. Lord
+Hallam's arguments are earnest and well expressed, but they seem to show
+that he is lacking in what Herbert Spencer calls the "value sense"--in
+other words, the sense of humor.
+
+Hallam's lack of perspective is further demonstrated by his patient
+efforts to explain who the various Tennysons were. In my boyhood days I
+thought there was but one Tennyson. On reading Hallam's book, however,
+one would think there were dozens of them. To keep these various men,
+bearing one name, from being confused in the mind of the reader, is quite
+a task; and to better identify one particular Tennyson, Hallam always
+refers to him as "Father," or "My Father." In the course of a recent
+interview with W.H. Seward, of Auburn, New York, I was impressed by his
+dignified, respectful, and affectionate references to "Seward." "This
+belonged to Seward," and "Seward told me"--as though there were but one.
+In these pages I will speak of Tennyson--there has been but one--there
+will never be another.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think Clement Scott is a little severe in his estimate of the character
+of Tennyson's father, although the main facts are doubtless as he states
+them. The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson, Rector of Somersby and Wood
+Enderby parishes, was a typical English parson. As a boy he was simply
+big, fat and lazy. His health was so perfect that it overtopped all
+ambition, and having no nerves to speak of, his sensibilities were very
+slight.
+
+When he was disinherited in favor of his younger brother, a keen, nervous,
+forceful fellow, he accepted it as a matter of course. His career was
+planned for him: he "took orders," married the young woman his folks
+selected, and slipped easily into his proper niche--his adipose serving as
+a buffer for his feelings. In his intellect there was no flash, and his
+insight into the heart of things was small.
+
+Being happily married to a discreet woman who managed him without ever
+letting him be aware of it, and having a sure and sufficient income, and
+never knowing that he had a stomach, he did his clerical work (with the
+help of a curate), and lived out the measure of his days, no wiser at the
+last than he was at thirty.
+
+In passing, we may call attention to the fact that the average man is a
+victim of Arrested Development, and that the fleeting years bring an
+increase of knowledge only in very exceptional cases. Health and
+prosperity are not pure blessings--a certain element of discontent is
+necessary to spur men on to a higher life.
+
+The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson had income enough to meet his wants,
+but not enough to embarrass him with the responsibility of taking care of
+it. Each quarterly stipend was spent before it arrived, and the family
+lived on credit until another three months rolled around. They had roast
+beef as often as they wanted it; in the cellar were puncheons, kegs and
+barrels, and as there was no rent to pay nor landlords to appease, care
+sat lightly on the Rector.
+
+Elizabeth, this man's wife, is worthy of more than a passing note. She was
+the daughter of the Reverend Stephen Fytche, vicar of Louth. Her family
+was not so high in rank as the Tennysons, because the Tennysons belonged
+to the gentry. But she was intelligent, amiable, fairly good-looking, and
+being the daughter of a clergyman, had beyond doubt a knowledge of
+clerical needs; so it was thought she would make a good wife for the newly
+appointed incumbent of Somersby.
+
+The parents arranged it, the young folks were willing, and so they were
+married--and the bridegroom was happy ever afterward.
+
+And why shouldn't he have been happy? Surely no man was ever blessed with
+a better wife! He had made a reach into the matrimonial grab-bag and drawn
+forth a jewel. This jewel was many-faceted. Without affectation or silly
+pride, the clergyman's wife did the work that God sent her to do. The
+sense of duty was strong upon her. Babies came, once each two years, and
+in one case two in one year, and there was careful planning required to
+make the income reach, and to keep the household in order. Then she
+visited the poor and sick of the parish, and received the many visitors.
+And with it all she found time to read. Her mind was open and alert for
+all good things. I am not sure that she was so very happy, but no
+complaints escaped her. In all she bore twelve children--eight sons and
+four daughters. Ten of these children lived to be over seventy-five years
+of age. The fourth child that came to her they named Alfred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tennyson's education in early youth was very slight. His father laid down
+rules and gave out lessons, but the strictness of discipline never lasted
+more than two days at a time. The children ran wild and roamed the woods
+of Lincolnshire in search of all the curious things that the woods hold in
+store for boys. The father occasionally made stern efforts to "correct"
+his sons. In the use of the birch he was ambidextrous. But I have noticed
+that in households where a strap hangs behind the kitchen-door, for ready
+use, it is not utilized so much for pure discipline as to ease the
+feelings of the parent. They say that expression is a need of the human
+heart; and I am also convinced that in many hearts there is a very strong
+desire at times to "thrash" some one. Who it is makes little difference,
+but children being helpless and the law giving us the right, we find
+gratification by falling upon them with straps, birch-rods, slippers,
+ferules, hairbrushes or apple-tree sprouts.
+
+No student of pedagogics now believes that the free use of the rod ever
+made a child "good"; but all agree that it has often served as a
+safety-valve for a pent-up emotion in the parent or teacher.
+
+The father of Alfred Tennyson applied the birch, and the boy took to the
+woods, moody, resentful, solitary. There was good in this, for the lad
+learned to live within himself, and to be self-sufficient: to love the
+solitude, and feel a kinship with all the life that makes the groves and
+fields melodious.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-eight, when nineteen years of age, Alfred was
+sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. He remained there three years, but
+left without a degree, and what was worse, with the ill-will of his
+teachers, who seemed to regard his as a hopeless case. He wouldn't study
+the books they wanted him to, and was never a candidate for academic
+distinctions.
+
+College life, however, has much to recommend it beside the curriculum. At
+Cambridge, Tennyson made the acquaintance of a group of young men who
+influenced his life profoundly. Kemble, Milnes, Brookfield and Spedding
+remained his lifelong friends; and as all good is reciprocal, no man can
+say how much these eminent men owe to the moody and melancholy Tennyson,
+or how much he owes to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tennyson began to write verse very young. His first line is said to have
+been written at five, and he has told of going when thirteen years of age
+to visit his grandfather, and of presenting him a poem. The old gentleman
+gave him half a guinea with the remark, "This is the first money you ever
+made by writing poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last!"
+When eighteen years of age, with his brother, Charles, he produced a thin
+book of thin verses.
+
+We have the opinion of Coleridge to the effect that the only lines which
+have any merit in the book are those signed C.T. Charles became a
+clergyman of marked ability, married rich, and changed his name from
+Tennyson to Turner for economic and domestic reasons. Years afterward,
+when Alfred had become Poet Laureate, rumor has it he thought of changing
+the "Turner" back to "Tennyson," but was unable to bring it about.
+
+The only honor captured by Alfred at Cambridge was a prize for his poem,
+"Timbuctoo." The encouragement that this brought him, backed up by Arthur
+Hallam's declaiming the piece in public--as a sort of defi to
+detractors--caused him to fix his attention more assiduously on verse. He
+could write--it was the only thing he could do--and so he wrote.
+
+At Cambridge he was in the habit of reading his poetry to a little coterie
+called "The Apostles," and he always premised his reading with the
+statement that no criticism would be acceptable.
+
+The year he was twenty-one he published a small book called, "Poems,
+Chiefly Lyrical." The books went a-begging for many years; but times
+change, for a copy of this edition was sold by Quaritch in Eighteen
+Hundred Ninety-five for one hundred eighty pounds. The only piece in the
+book that seems to show genuine merit is "Mariana."
+
+Two years afterward a second edition, revised and enlarged, was brought
+out. This book contains "The Lady of Shalott," "The May Queen," "A Dream
+of Fair Women" and "The Lotus-Eaters."
+
+Beyond a few fulsome reviews from personal friends and a little surly
+mention from the tribe of Jeffrey, the volume attracted little or no
+attention. This coldness on the part of the public shot an atrabilarian
+tint through the ambition of our poet, and the fond hope of a success in
+literature faded from his mind.
+
+And then began what Stopford Brooke has called "the ten fallow years in
+the life of Tennyson." But fallow years are not all fallow. The dark
+brooding night is as necessary for our life as the garish day. Great crops
+of wheat that feed the nations grow only where the winter's snow covers
+all as with a garment. And ever behind the mystery of sleep, and beneath
+the silence of the snow, Nature slumbers not nor sleeps.
+
+The withholding of quick recognition gave the mind of Tennyson an
+opportunity to ripen. Fate held him in leash that he might be saved for a
+masterly work, and all the time that he lived in semi-solitude and read
+and thought and tramped the fields, his soul was growing strong and his
+spirit was taking on the silken self-sufficient strength that marked his
+later days. This hiatus of ten years in the life of our poet is very
+similar to the thirteen fallow years in the career of Browning. These men
+crossed and recrossed each other's pathway, but did not meet for many
+years. What a help they might have been to each other in those years of
+doubt and seeming defeat! But each was to make his way alone.
+
+Browning seemed to grow through society and travel, but solitude served
+the needs of Tennyson.
+
+"There must be a man behind every sentence," said Emerson. After ten years
+of silence, when Tennyson issued his book, the literary world recognized
+the man behind it. Tennyson had grown as a writer, but more as a man. And
+after all, it is more to be a man than a poet. All who knew Tennyson, and
+have written of him, especially during those early years, begin with a
+description of his appearance. His looks did not belie the man. In
+intellect and in stature he was a giant. The tall, athletic form, the
+great shaggy head, the classic features, and the look of untried strength
+were all thrown into fine relief by the modesty, the half-embarrassment,
+of his manner.
+
+To meet the poet was to acknowledge his power. No man can talk as wise as
+he can look, and Tennyson never tried to. His words were few and simple.
+
+Those who met him went away ready to back his lightest word. They felt
+there was a man behind the sentence.
+
+Carlyle, who was a hero-worshiper, but who usually limited his worship to
+those well dead and long gone hence, wrote of Tennyson to Emerson: "One of
+the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of dusky hair; bright,
+laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most
+delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes
+cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is
+musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that
+may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet
+in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will
+grow to."
+
+And then again, writing to his brother John: "Some weeks ago, one night,
+the poet Tennyson and Matthew Arnold were discovered here sitting smoking
+in the garden. Tennyson had been here before, but was still new to
+Jane--who was alone for the first hour or two of it. A fine,
+large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man is Alfred;
+dusty, smoky, free and easy; who swims outwardly and inwardly, with great
+composure, in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos and
+tobacco-smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most restful,
+brotherly, solid-hearted man."
+
+The "English Idylls," put forth in Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, contained
+all the poems, heretofore published, that Tennyson cared to retain. It
+must be stated to the credit, or discredit, of America, that the only
+complete editions of Tennyson were issued by New York and Boston
+publishers. These men seized upon the immature early poems of Tennyson,
+and combining them with his later books, issued the whole in a style that
+tried men's eyes--very proud of the fact that "this is the only complete
+edition," etc. Of course they paid the author no royalty, neither did they
+heed his protests, and possibly all this prepared the way for frosty
+receptions of daughters of quick machine-made American millionaires, who
+journeyed to the Isle of Wight in after-days. Soon after the publication
+of "English Idylls," Alfred Tennyson moved gracefully, like a ship that is
+safely launched, into the first place among living poets. He was then
+thirty-three years of age, with just half a century, lacking a few months,
+yet to live. In all that half-century, with its many conflicting literary
+judgments, his title to first place was never seriously questioned. Up to
+Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, in his various letters, and through his close
+friends, we learn that Tennyson was sore pressed for funds. He hadn't
+money to buy books, and when he traveled it was through the munificence of
+some kind kinsman. He even excuses himself from attending certain social
+functions on account of his lack of suitable raiment--probably with a
+certain satisfaction.
+
+But when he tells of his poverty to Emily Sellwood, the woman of his
+choice, there is anguish in his cry. In fact, her parents succeeded in
+breaking off her relations with Tennyson for a time, on account of his
+very uncertain prospects. His brothers, even those younger than he, had
+slipped into snug positions--"but Alfred dreams on with nothing special in
+sight." Poetry, in way of a financial return, is not to be commended.
+Honors were coming Tennyson's way as early as Eighteen Hundred Forty-two,
+but it was not until Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, when a pension of two
+hundred pounds a year was granted him by the Government, that he began to
+feel easy. Even then there were various old scores to liquidate.
+
+The year Eighteen Hundred Fifty, when he was forty-one, has been called
+his "golden year," for in it occurred the publication of "In Memoriam,"
+his appointment to the post of Poet Laureate, and his marriage.
+
+Emily Sellwood had waited for him all these years. She had been sought
+after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and
+others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid
+forlorn. But she was true to her love for Alfred. Possibly she had not
+been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson's mother had been. When that
+dear old lady was past eighty she became very deaf, and the family often
+ventured to carry on conversations in her presence which possibly would
+have been modified had the old lady been in full possession of her
+faculties. On a day as she sat knitting in the chimney-corner, one of her
+daughters in a burst of confidence to a visitor, said, "Why, before Mamma
+married Papa she had received twenty-three offers of marriage!"
+
+"Twenty-four, my dear--twenty-four," corrected the old lady as she shifted
+the needles.
+
+No one has ever claimed that Tennyson was an ideal lover. Surely he never
+could have been tempted to do what Browning did--break up the peace of a
+household by an elopement. His love was a thing of the head, weighed
+carefully in the scales of his judgment. His caution and good sense saved
+him from all Byronic excesses, or foolish alliances such as took Shelley
+captive. He believed in law and order, and early saw that his interests
+lay in that direction. He belonged to the Church of England, and doubtless
+thought as he pleased, but ever expressed himself with caution.
+
+It is easy to accuse Tennyson of being insular--to say that he is merely
+"the poet of England." Had he been more he would have been less.
+World-poets have usually been revolutionists, and dangerous men who
+exploded at an unknown extent of concussion. None of them has been a safe
+man--none respectable. Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo and Whitman were
+outcasts.
+
+Tennyson is always serene, sane and safe--his lines breathe purity and
+excellence. He is the poet of religion, of the home and fireside, of
+established order, of truth, justice and mercy as embodied in law.
+
+Very early he became a close personal friend of Queen Victoria, and many
+of his lines ministered to her personal consolation. For fifty years
+Tennyson's life was one steady, triumphal march. He acquired wealth, such
+as no other English poet before him had ever gained; his name was known in
+every corner of the earth where white men journeyed, and at home he was
+beloved and honored. He died October Sixth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two,
+aged eighty-three, and for him the Nation mourned, and with deep sincerity
+the Queen spoke of his demise as a poignant, personal sorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at Cambridge he met Arthur Hallam--Arthur Hallam, immortal and
+remembered alone for being the comrade and friend of Tennyson.
+
+Alfred took his friend Arthur to his home in Lincolnshire one vacation,
+and we know how Arthur became enamored of Tennyson's sister Emily, and
+they were betrothed. Together, Tennyson and Hallam made a trip through
+France and the Pyrenees.
+
+Carlyle and Milburn, the blind preacher, once sat smoking in the little
+arbor back of the house in Cheyne Row. They had been talking of Tennyson,
+and after a long silence Carlyle knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and
+with a grunt said: "Ha! Death is a great blessing--the joyousest blessing
+of all! Without death there would ha' been no 'In Memoriam,' no Hallam,
+and like enough no Tennyson!" It is futile to figure what would have
+occurred had this or that not happened, since every act of life is a
+sequence. But that Carlyle and many others believed that the death of
+Hallam was the making of Tennyson, there is no doubt. Possibly his soul
+needed just this particular amount of bruising in order to make it burst
+into undying song--who knows! When Charles Kingsley was asked for the
+secret of his exquisite sympathy and fine imagination, he paused a space,
+and then answered--"I had a friend." The desire for friendship is strong
+in every human heart. We crave the companionship of those who can
+understand. The nostalgia of life presses, we sigh for "home," and long
+for the presence of one who sympathizes with our aspirations, comprehends
+our hopes and is able to partake of our joys. A thought is not our own
+until we impart it to another, and the confessional seems a crying need of
+every human soul.
+
+One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad.
+
+We reach the Divine through some one, and by dividing our joy with this
+one we double it, and come in touch with the Universal. The sky is never
+so blue, the birds never sing so blithely, our acquaintances are never so
+gracious, as when we are filled with love for some one.
+
+Being in harmony with one we are in harmony with all.
+
+The lover idealizes and clothes the beloved with virtues that exist only
+in his imagination. The beloved is consciously or unconsciously aware of
+this, and endeavors to fulfil the high ideal; and in the contemplation of
+the transcendent qualities that his mind has created, the lover is raised
+to heights otherwise unattainable.
+
+Should the beloved pass from the earth while this condition of exaltation
+endures, the conception is indelibly impressed upon the soul, just as the
+last earthly view is said to be photographed upon the retina of the dead.
+The highest earthly relationship is, in its very essence, fleeting, for
+men are fallible, and living in a world where material wants jostle, and
+time and change play their ceaseless parts, gradual obliteration comes
+and disillusion enters. But the memory of a sweet affinity once fully
+possessed, and snapped by Fate at its supremest moment, can never die from
+out the heart. All other troubles are swallowed up in this, and if the
+individual is of too stern a fiber to be completely crushed into the dust,
+time will come bearing healing, and the memory of that once ideal
+condition will chant in the heart a perpetual eucharist.
+
+And I hope the world has passed forever from the nightmare of pity for the
+dead: they have ceased from their labors and are at rest.
+
+But for the living, when death has entered and removed the best friend,
+Fate has done her worst; the plummet has sounded the depths of grief, and
+thereafter nothing can inspire terror. At one fell stroke all petty
+annoyances and corroding cares are sunk into nothingness. The memory of a
+great love lives enshrined in undying amber. It affords a ballast 'gainst
+all the storms that blow, and although it lends an unutterable sadness, it
+imparts an unspeakable peace. Where there is this haunting memory of a
+great love lost, there are always forgiveness, charity and a sympathy that
+makes the man brother to all who suffer and endure. The individual himself
+is nothing: he has nothing to hope for, nothing to lose, nothing to win,
+and this constant memory of the high and exalted friendship that once was
+his is a nourishing source of strength; it constantly purifies the mind
+and inspires the heart to nobler living and diviner thinking. The man is
+in communication with Elemental Conditions.
+
+To know an ideal friendship and to have it fade from your grasp and flee
+as a shadow before it is touched with the sordid breath of selfishness, or
+sullied by misunderstandings, is the highest good. And the constant
+dwelling in sweet, sad recollection on the exalted virtues of the one that
+has gone, tends to crystallize these very virtues in the heart of him who
+meditates them. The beauty with which love adorns its object becomes at
+last the possession of the one who loves.
+
+At the hour when the strong and helpful, yet tender and sympathetic,
+friendship of Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam was at its height, there
+came a brief and abrupt word from Vienna to the effect that Arthur was
+dead.
+
+    "In Vienna's fatal walls
+    God's finger touched him and he slept!"
+
+The shock of surprise, followed by dumb, bitter grief, made an impression
+on the youthful mind of Tennyson that the sixty years which followed did
+not obliterate.
+
+At first a numbness and a deadness came over his spirit, but this
+condition erelong gave way to a sweet contemplation of the beauties of
+character that his friend possessed, and he tenderly reviewed the gracious
+hours they had spent together.
+
+"In Memoriam" is not one poem; it is made up of many "short
+swallow-flights of song that dip their wings in tears and skim away."
+There are one hundred thirty separate songs in all, held together by the
+silken thread of love for the poet's lost friend.
+
+Seventeen years were required for their evolution. Some people, misled by
+the title, possibly, think of these poems as a wail of grief for the dead,
+a vain cry of sorrow for the lost, or a proud parading of mourning
+millinery. Such views could not be more wholly wrong.
+
+To every soul that has loved and lost, to those who have stood by open
+graves, to all who have beheld the sun go down on less worth in the world,
+these songs are a victor's cry. They tell of love and life that rise
+phoenix-like from the ashes of despair; of doubt turned to faith; of fear
+which has become serenest peace.
+
+All poems that endure must have this helpful, uplifting quality. Without
+violence of direction they must be beacon-lights that gently guide
+stricken men and women into safe harbors.
+
+The "Invocation," written nearly a score of years after Hallam's death,
+reveals Tennyson's personal conquest of pain. His thought has broadened
+from the sense of loss into a stately march of conquest over death for the
+whole human race. The sharpness of grief has wakened the soul to the
+contemplation of sublime ideas--truth, justice, nobility, honor, and the
+sense of beauty as shown in all created things. The man once loved a
+person--now his heart goes out to the universe. The dread of death is
+gone, and he calmly contemplates his own end and waits the summons without
+either impatience or fear. He realizes that death itself is a
+manifestation of life--that it is as natural and just as necessary.
+
+    "Sunset and evening star
+       And one clear call for me,
+     And may there be no moaning of the bar
+       When I put out to sea."
+
+The desire for sympathy and the wish for friendship are in his heart, but
+the fever of unrest and the spirit of revolt are gone. His heart, his
+hope, his faith, his life, are freely laid on the altar of Eternal Love.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BURNS
+
+              TO JEANNIE
+
+    Come, let me take thee to my breast,
+      And pledge we ne'er shall sunder;
+    And I shall spurn, as vilest dust,
+      The warld's wealth and grandeur.
+
+    And do I hear my Jeannie own
+      That equal transports move her?
+    I ask for dearest life, alone,
+      That I may live to love her.
+
+    Thus in my arms, wi' a' thy charms,
+      I clasp my countless treasure;
+    I'll seek nae mair o' heaven to share
+      Than sic a moment's pleasure.
+
+    And by thy een, sae bonnie blue,
+      I swear I'm thine for ever:
+    And on thy lips I seal my vow,
+      And break it shall I never.
+                              --_Robert Burns_
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BURNS]
+
+
+The business of Robert Burns was love-making.
+
+All love is good, but some kinds of love are better than others. Through
+Burns' penchant for falling in love we have his songs. A Burns
+bibliography is simply a record of his love-affairs, and the spasms of
+repentance that followed his lapses are made manifest in religious verse.
+
+Poetry is the very earliest form of literature, and is the natural
+expression of a person in love; and I suppose we might as well admit the
+fact at once that without love there would be no poetry.
+
+Poetry is the bill and coo of sex. All poets are lovers, and all lovers,
+either actual or potential, are poets. Potential poets are the people who
+read poetry; and so without lovers the poet would never have a market for
+his wares.
+
+If you have ceased to be moved by religious emotion; if your spirit is no
+longer exalted by music, and you do not linger over certain lines of
+poetry, it is because the love-instinct in your heart has withered to
+ashes of roses. It is idle to imagine Bobby Burns as a staid member of the
+Kirk; had he been so, there would now be no Bobby Burns. The literary
+ebullition of Robert Burns (he himself has told us) began shortly after he
+had reached the age of indiscretion; and the occasion was his being
+paired in the hayfield, according to the Scottish custom, with a bonnie
+lassie. This custom of pairing still endures, and is what the students of
+sociology call an expeditious move. The Scotch are great economists--the
+greatest in the world. Adam Smith, the father of the science of economics,
+was a Scotchman; and Draper, author of "A History of Civilization," flatly
+declares that Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" has influenced the people
+of Earth for good more than any other book ever written--save none.
+
+The Scotch are great conservators of energy.
+
+The practise of pairing men and women in the hayfield gets the work done.
+One man and one woman going down the grass-grown path afield might linger
+and dally by the way. They would never make hay, but a company of a dozen
+or more men and women would not only reach the field, but do a lot of
+work. In Scotland the hay-harvest is short--when the grass is in bloom,
+just right to make the best hay, it must be cut. And so the men and women,
+the girls and boys, sally forth. It is a jolly picnic-time, looked forward
+to with fond anticipation, and after recalled with sweet, sad memories, or
+otherwise, as the case may be.
+
+But they all make hay while the sun shines, and count it joy. Liberties
+are allowed during haying-time that otherwise would be declared
+scandalous; during haying-time the Kirk waives her censor's right, and
+priest and people mingle joyously. Wives are not jealous during
+hay-harvest, and husbands never faultfinding, because they each get even
+by allowing a mutual license. In Scotland during haying-time every married
+man works alongside of some other man's wife. To the psychologist it is
+somewhat curious how the desire for propriety is overridden by a stronger
+desire--the desire for the shilling. The Scotch farmer says, "Anything to
+get the hay in"--and by loosening a bit the strict bands of social custom,
+the hay is harvested.
+
+In the hay-harvest the law of natural selection holds; partners are often
+arranged for weeks in advance; and trysts continue year after year. Old
+lovers meet, touch hands in friendly scuffle for a fork, drink from the
+same jug, recline at noon and eat lunch in the shade of a friendly stack,
+and talk to heart's content, sweetening the labor of the long summer day.
+
+Of course this joyousness of the haying-time is not wholly monopolized by
+the Scotch. Haven't you seen the jolly haying parties in Southern Germany,
+France, Switzerland and the Tyrol? How the bright costumes of the men and
+the jaunty attire of the women gleam in the glad sunshine!
+
+But the practise of pairing is carried to a degree of perfection in
+Scotland that I have not noticed elsewhere. Surely it is a great economic
+scheme! It is like that invention of a Connecticut man, which utilizes the
+ebb and flow of the ocean-tides to turn a gristmill.
+
+And it seems queer that no one has ever attempted to utilize the waste of
+dynamic force involved in the maintenance of the Company Sofa.
+
+In Ayrshire, I have started out with a haying party of twenty--ten men and
+ten women--at six o'clock in the morning and worked until six at night. I
+never worked so hard, nor did so much. All day long there was a fire of
+jokes and jolly gibes, interspersed with song, while beneath all ran a
+gentle hum of confidential interchange of thought. The man who owned the
+field was there to direct our efforts and urge us on in well-doing by
+merry raillery, threat, and joyous rivalry.
+
+The point I make is this--we did the work. Take heed, ye Captains of
+Industry, and note this truth, that where men and women work together
+under right influences, much good is accomplished, and the work is
+pleasurable. Of course there are vinegar-faced philosophers who say that
+the Scotch custom of pairing young men and maidens in the hayfield is not
+without its effect on esoterics, also on vital statistics; and I'm willing
+to admit there may be danger in the scheme. But life is a dangerous
+business anyway--few indeed get out of it alive!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Burns succeeded in his love-making and succeeded in poetry, but at
+everything else he was a failure. He failed as a farmer, a father, a
+friend, in society, as a husband, and in business.
+
+From his twenty-third year his days were passed in sinning and repenting.
+
+Poetry and love-making should be carried on with caution: they form a
+terrific tax on life's forces. Most poets die young, not because the gods
+especially love them, but because life is a bank-account, and to wipe out
+your balance is to have your checks protested. The excesses of youth are
+drafts payable at maturity. Chatterton dead at eighteen, Keats at
+twenty-six, Shelley at thirty-three, Byron at thirty-six, Poe at forty,
+and Burns at thirty-seven, are the rule. When drafts made by the men
+mentioned became due, there was no balance to their credit and Charon
+beckoned.
+
+Most life-insurance companies now ask the applicant this question, "Do you
+write poetry to excess?" Shakespeare, to be sure, clung to life until he
+was fifty-three, but this seems to be the limit. Dickens and Thackeray,
+their candles well burned out, also died under sixty. Of course, I know
+that Browning, Tennyson, Morris and Bryant lived to a fair old age, but
+this was on borrowed time, for in the early life of each there was a
+hiatus of from ten to eighteen years, when the men never wrote a line, nor
+touched a drop of anything, bravely eschewing all honey from Hymettus.
+Then the four men last named were all happily married, and married life is
+favorable to longevity, but not to poetry. As a rule only single men, or
+those unhappily mated, make love and write poetry. Men happily married
+make money, cultivate content, and evolve an aldermanic front; but love
+and poetry are symptoms of unrest. Thus is Emerson's proposition partially
+proven, that in life all things are bought and must be paid for with a
+price--even success and happiness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Burns once explained to Doctor Moore that the first fine, careless rapture
+of his song was awakened into being when he was sixteen years old, by "a
+bonnie sweet sonsie lass" whom we now know as "Handsome Nell." Her other
+name to us is vapor, and history is silent as to her life-pilgrimage.
+Whether she lived to realize that she had first given voice to one of the
+great singers of earth--of this we are also ignorant. She was one year
+younger than Burns, and little more than a child when she and Bobby lagged
+behind the troop of tired haymakers, and walked home, hand in hand, in the
+gloaming. Here is one of the stanzas addressed to "Handsome Nell":
+
+    "She dresses all so clean and neat,
+    Both decent and genteel,
+    And then there's something in her gait
+    Makes any dress look weel."
+
+And how could Nell then ever guess why her cheeks burned scarlet, and why
+she was so sorry when haying-time was over? She was sweet, innocent,
+artless, and their love was very natural, tender, innocent. It's a pity
+that all loves can not remain in just that idyllic, milkmaid stage, where
+the girls and boys awaken in the early morning with the birds, and hasten
+forth barefoot across the dewy fields to find the cows. But love never
+tarries. Love is progressive; it can not stand still. I have heard of the
+"passiveness" of woman's love, but the passive woman is only one who does
+not love--she merely consents to have affection lavished upon her. When I
+hear of a passive woman, I always think of the befuddled sailor who once
+saw one of those dummy dress-frames, all duly clothed in flaming bombazine
+(I think it was bombazine) in front of a clothing establishment. The
+sailor, mistaking the dummy for a near and dear lady friend, embraced the
+wire apparatus and imprinted a resounding smack on the chaste
+plaster-of-Paris cheek. Meeting the sure-enough lady shortly after, he
+upbraided her for her cold passivity on the occasion named.
+
+A passive woman--one who consents to be loved--should seek occupation
+among those worthy firms who warrant a fit in ready-made gowns, or money
+refunded.
+
+Love is progressive--it hastens onward like the brook hurrying to the sea.
+They say that love is blind: love may be short-sighted, or inclined to
+strabismus, or may see things out of their true proportion, magnifying
+pleasant little ways into seraphic virtues, but love is not really
+blind--the bandage is never so tight but that it can peep. The only kind
+of love that is really blind and deaf is Platonic love. Platonic love
+hasn't the slightest idea where it is going, and so there are surprises
+and shocks in store for it. The other kind, with eyes wide open, is
+better. I know a man who has tried both. Love is progressive. All things
+that live should progress. To stand still is to retreat, and to retreat
+is death. Love dies, of course. All things die, or become something else.
+And often they become something else by dying. Behold the eternal Paradox!
+The love that evolves into a higher form is the better kind. Nature is
+intent on evolution, yet of the myriads of spores that cover earth, most
+of them are doomed to death; and of the countless rays sent out by the
+sun, the number that fall athwart this planet are infinitesimal. Edward
+Carpenter calls attention to the fact that disappointed love--that is,
+love that is "lost"--often affects the individual for the highest good.
+But the real fact is, nothing is ever lost. Love in its essence is a
+spiritual emotion, and its office seems to be an interchange of thought
+and feeling; but often thwarted in its object, it becomes general,
+transforms itself into sympathy, and embracing a world, goes out to and
+blesses all mankind.
+
+Very, very rare is the couple that has the sense and poise to allow
+passion just enough mulberry-leaves, so it will spin a beautiful silken
+thread, out of which a Jacob's ladder can be constructed, reaching to the
+Infinite. Most lovers in the end wear love to a fringe, and there remains
+no ladder with angels ascending and descending--not even a dream of a
+ladder. Instead of the silken ladder on which one can mount to Heaven,
+there is usually a dark, dank road to Nowhere, over which is thrown a
+package of letters and trinkets, all fastened round with a white ribbon,
+tied in a lover's knot. The many loves of Robert Burns all ended in a
+black jumping-off place, and before he had reached high noon, he tossed
+over the last bundle of white-ribboned missives and tumbled in after them.
+The life of Burns is a tragedy, through which are interspersed sparkling
+scenes of gaiety, as if to retrieve the depth of bitterness that would
+otherwise be unbearable. Go ask Mary Morison, Highland Mary, Agnes
+McLehose, Betty Alison, and Jean Armour!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The poems of Robert Burns fall easily into four divisions.
+
+First, those written while he was warmly wooing the object of his
+affection.
+
+Second, those written after he had won her.
+
+Third, those written when he had failed to win her.
+
+Fourth, those written when he felt it his duty to write, and really had
+nothing to say.
+
+The first-named were written because he could not help it, and are, for
+the most part, rarely excellent. They are joyous, rapturous, sprightly,
+dancing, and filled with references to sky, clouds, trees, fruit, grain,
+birds and flowers. Birds and flowers, by the way, are peculiarly lovers'
+properties. The song and the plumage of birds, and the color and perfume
+of flowers are all distinctly sex manifestations. Robert Burns sang his
+songs just as the bird wings and sings, and for the same reason. Sex holds
+first place in the thought of Nature; and sex in the minds of men and
+women holds a much larger place than most of us are willing to admit. All
+religious emotion and all art are born of the sex instinct.
+
+Burns' poems of the second variety, written after he had won her, are
+touched with religious emotion, or filled with vain regret and deep
+remorse, as the case may be, all owing to the quality and kind of success
+achieved, and the influence of the Dog-Star.
+
+Burns wrote several deeply religious poems. Now, men are very seldom
+really religious and contrite, except after an excess. Following a
+debauch a man signs the pledge, vows chastity, writes fervently of
+asceticism and the need of living in the spirit and not in the senses.
+Good pictures show best on a dark back-ground. Men talk most about things
+they do not possess.
+
+"The Cotter's Saturday Night," perhaps the most quoted of any of Burns'
+poems, is plainly the result of a terrible tip to t' other side. Bobby had
+gone so far in the direction of Venusburg that he resolved on getting
+back, and living thereafter a staid and proper life.
+
+In order to reform you must have an ideal, and the ideal of Burns, on the
+occasion of having exhausted all capacity for sin, is embodied in the
+"Saturday Night." It is all a beautiful dream. The real Scottish cotter is
+quite another kind of person. The religion of the live cotter is well
+seasoned with fear, malevolence and absurd dogmatism. The amount of love,
+patience, excellence and priggishness shown in "The Cotter's Saturday
+Night" never existed, except in a poet's imagination. In stanza Number Ten
+of that particular poem is a bit of unconscious autobiography that might
+as well ha' been omitted; but in letting it stand, Burns was loyal to the
+thought that surged through his brain.
+
+People who are not scientific in their speech often speak of the birds as
+being happy. My opinion is that birds are not any more happy than
+men--probably not as much so. Many birds, like the English sparrow and the
+blue jay, quarrel all day long. Come to think of it, I believe that man
+is happier than the birds. He has a sense of remorse, and this suggests
+reformation, and from the idea of reformation comes the picturing of an
+ideal. This exercise of the imagination is pleasure, for indeed there is a
+certain satisfaction in every form of exercise of the faculties. There is
+a certain pleasure in pain: for pain is never all pain. And sin surely is
+not wholly bad, if through it we pass into a higher life--the life of the
+spirit.
+
+Anything is better than the Dead Sea of neutral nothingness, wherein a man
+merely avoids sin by doing nothing and being nothing. The stirring of the
+imagination by sorrow for sin, sometimes causes the soul to wing a
+far-reaching upward flight.
+
+Asceticism is often only a form of sensuality: the man finds satisfaction
+in overcoming the flesh. And wherever you find asceticism you find
+potential passion--a smoldering volcano held in check by a devotion to
+duty; and a gratification is oft found in fidelity.
+
+The moral and religious poems of Burns were written in a desire to work
+off a fit of depression, and make amends for folly. They are sincere and
+often very excellent. Great preachers have often been great sinners, and
+the sermons that have moved men most are often a direct recoil from sin on
+the part of the preacher. Remorse finds play in preaching repentance. When
+a man talks much about a virtue, be sure that he is clutching for it.
+Temperance fanatics are men with a taste for strong drink, trying hard to
+keep sober. The moral and religious poems of Robert Burns are not equal to
+his love-songs. The love-songs are free, natural, untrammeled and
+unrestrained; while his religious poems have a vein of rotten warp running
+through them in the way of affectation and pretense. From this I infer
+that sin is natural, and remorse partially so. In Burns' moral poems the
+author tries to win back the favor of respectable people, which he had
+forfeited. In them there is a violence of direction; and all violence of
+direction--all endeavors to please and placate certain people--is fatal to
+an artist. You must work to please only yourself.
+
+Work to please yourself and you develop and strengthen the artistic
+conscience. Cling to that and it shall be your mentor in times of doubt:
+you need no other. There are writers who would scorn to write a muddy
+line, and would hate themselves for a year and a day should they dilute
+their honest thought with the platitudes of the fear-ridden. Be yourself
+and speak your mind today, though it contradict all you have said before.
+And above all, in art, work to please yourself--that Other Self that
+stands over and behind you, looking over your shoulder, watching your
+every act, word and deed--knowing your every thought. Michelangelo would
+not paint a picture on order. "I have a critic who is more exacting than
+you," said Meissonier--"it is my Other Self."
+
+Rosa Bonheur painted pictures just to please her Other Self, and never
+gave a thought to any one else, nor wanted to think of any one else, and
+having painted to please herself, she made her appeal to the great Common
+Heart of humanity--the tender, the noble, the receptive, the earnest, the
+sympathetic, the lovable. That is why Rosa Bonheur stands first among
+women artists of all time: she worked to please her Other Self.
+
+That is the reason Rembrandt, who lived at the same time Shakespeare
+lived, is today without a rival in portraiture. He had the courage to make
+an enemy. When at work he never thought of any one but his Other Self, and
+so he infused soul into every canvas. The limpid eyes look down into yours
+from the walls and tell of love, pity, earnestness and deep sincerity.
+Man, like Deity, creates in his own image, and when he portrays some one
+else, he pictures himself, too--this provided his work is Art. If it is
+but an imitation of something seen somewhere, or done by some one else, to
+please a patron with money, no breath of life has been breathed into its
+nostrils, and it is nothing, save possibly dead perfection--no more.
+
+Is it easy to please your Other Self? Try it for a day. Begin tomorrow
+morning and say: "This day I will live as becomes a man. I will be filled
+with good-cheer and courage. I will do what is right; I will work for the
+highest; I will put soul into every hand-grasp, every smile, every
+expression--into all my work. I will live to satisfy my Other Self."
+
+Do you think it is easy? Try it for a day.
+
+Robert Burns wrote some deathless lines--lines written out of the
+freshness of his heart, simply to please himself, with no furtive eye on
+Dumfries, Edinburgh, the Kirk, or the Unco Guid of Ayrshire; and these are
+the lines that have given him his place in the world of letters.
+
+The other day I was made glad by finding that John Burroughs, Poet and
+Prophet, says that the male thrush sings to please himself, out of pure
+delight; and pleasing himself, he pleases his mate. "The female," says
+Burroughs, "is always pleased with a male that is pleased with himself."
+
+The various controversial poems (granting for argument's sake that
+controversy is poetic) were written when Burns was smarting under the
+sense of defeat. These show a sharp insight into the heart of things, and
+a lively wit, but are not sufficient foundation on which to build a
+reputation. Ali Baba can do as well. Considering the fact that twice as
+many people make pilgrimages to the grave of Burns as visit the dust of
+Shakespeare, and that his poems are on the shelves of every library, his
+name now needs no defense. The ores are very seldom found pure, and if
+even the work of Deity is composite, why should we be surprised that man,
+His creature, should express himself in a varying scale of excellence!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was nothing of Jack Falstaff about Francis Schlatter, whose whitened
+bones were found amid the alkali dust of the desert, a few years ago--dead
+in an endeavor to do without meat and drink for forty days.
+
+Schlatter purported, and believed, that he was the reincarnation of the
+Messiah. Letters were sent to him, addressed simply, "Jesus Christ,
+Denver, Colorado," and he walked up to the General-Delivery window and
+asked for them with a confidence, we are told, that relieved the
+postmaster of a grave responsibility.
+
+Schlatter was no mere ordinary pretender, working on the superstitions of
+shallow-pated people. He lived up to his belief--took no money, avoided
+notoriety when he could; and the proof of his sincerity lies in the fact
+that he died a victim to it.
+
+Herbert Spencer has said all about the Messianic Instinct that there is to
+say, save this--the Messianic Instinct first had its germ in the heart of
+a woman. Every woman dreams of the coming of the Ideal Man--the man who
+will give her protection, even to giving up his life for her, and
+vouchsafe peace to her soul. I am told by a noted Bishop of the Catholic
+Church that many women who become nuns are prompted to take their vows
+solely through the occasion of an unrequited love. They become the bride
+of the Church and find their highest joy in following the will of Christ.
+He is their only Spouse and Master.
+
+The terms of endearment one hears at prayer-meetings, "Blessed Jesus,"
+"Dear Jesus," "Loving Jesus," "Elder Brother," "Patient, gentle Jesus,"
+etc., were first used by women in an ecstasy of religious transport. And
+the thought of Jesus as a loving, "personal Savior," would die from the
+face of the earth did not women keep it alive. The religious nature and
+the sex nature are closely akin: no psychologist can tell where the one
+ends and the other begins.
+
+There may be wooden women in the world, and of these I will not speak, but
+every strong, pulsing, feeling, thinking woman goes through life, seeking
+the Ideal Man. Whether she is married or single, rich or poor, old or
+young, every new man she meets is interesting to her, because she feels in
+some mysterious way that possibly he is the One.
+
+Of course, I know that every good man, too, seeks the Ideal Woman--but
+that deserves another chapter.
+
+The only woman in whose heart there is not the live, warm, Messianic
+Instinct is the wooden woman, and the one who believes she has already
+found him. But this latter is holding an illusion that soon vanishes with
+possession.
+
+That pale, low-voiced, gentle and insane man, Francis Schlatter, was
+followed at times by troops of women. These women believed in him and
+loved him--in different ways, of course, and with passion varying
+according to temperament and the domestic environment already existing.
+To love deeply is a matter of propinquity and opportunity.
+
+One woman, whom "The Healer" had cured of a lingering disease, loved this
+man with a wild, mad, absorbing passion. Chance gave her the opportunity.
+He came to her house, cold, hungry, homeless, sick. She fed him, warmed
+him, looked into his liquid eyes, sat at his feet and listened to his
+voice. She loved him--and partook of his every mental delusion.
+
+This woman now waits and watches in her mountain home for his return. She
+knows the coyotes and buzzards picked the scant flesh from his starved
+frame, but she says: "He promised he would come back to me, and he will. I
+am waiting for him here."
+
+This woman writes me long letters from her solitude, telling me of her
+hopes and plans. Just why all the cranks in the United States should write
+me letters, I do not know, but they do--perhaps there is a sort o'
+fellow-feeling. This woman may write letters to others, just as she does
+to me. Of this I do not know, but surely I would not thus make public the
+heart-tragedy told me in a private letter, were it not that the woman
+herself has printed a pamphlet, setting forth her faith and veiling only
+those things into which it is not our right to pry.
+
+This Mary Magdalene believes her lover was the Chosen Son of God, and that
+the Father will reclothe the Son in a new garment of flesh and send him
+back to his beloved. So she watches and waits, and dresses herself to
+receive him, and at night places a lighted lantern in the window to guide
+the way.
+
+She watches and waits.
+
+Other women wait for footsteps that will never come, and listen for a
+voice that will never be heard. All round the world there is a sisterhood
+of such. Some, being wise, lose themselves in loving service to others--in
+useful work. But this woman, out in the wilds of New Mexico, hugs her
+sorrow to her heart, and feeds her passion by recounting it, and watches
+away the leaden hours, crying aloud to all who will listen: "He is not
+dead--he is not dead! he will come back to me! He promised it--he will
+come back to me! This long, dreary waiting is only a test of my loyalty
+and love! I will be patient, for he will come back to me! He will come
+back to me!"
+
+This world would be a sorry place if most men conducted their lives on the
+Robert Burns plan. Burns was affectionate, tender, generous and kind; but
+he was not wise. He never saw the future, nor did he know that life is a
+sequence, and that if you do this, it is pretty sure to lead to that. His
+loves were largely of the earth.
+
+Excess was a part of his wayward, undisciplined nature; and that constant
+tendency to put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his brains, bound him
+at last, hand and foot. His old age could never have been frosty, but
+kindly--it would have been babbling, irritable, senile, sickening. Death
+was kind and reaped him young. Sex was the rock on which Robert Burns
+split. He seemed to regard pleasure-seeking as the prime end of life, and
+in this he was not so very far removed from the prevalent "civilized"
+society notion of marriage. But it is a phantasmal idea, and makes a mock
+of marriage, serving the satirist his excuse.
+
+To a great degree the race is yet barbaric, and as a people we fail
+utterly to touch the hem of the garment of Divinity. We have been mired in
+the superstition that sex is unclean, and therefore honesty and free
+expression in love matters have been tabued.
+
+But the day will yet dawn when we will see that it takes two to generate
+thought; that there is the male man and the female man, and only where
+these two walk together hand in hand is there a perfect sanity and a
+perfect physical, moral and spiritual health.
+
+We reach infinity through the love of one, and loving this one, we are in
+love with all. And this condition of mutual sympathy, trust, reverence,
+forbearance and gentleness that can exist between a man and a woman, gives
+the only hint of Heaven that mortals ever know. From the love of man for
+woman we guess the love of God, just as the scientist from a single bone
+constructs the skeleton--aye! and then clothes it with a complete garment.
+
+In their love-affairs women are seldom wise, or men just. How should we
+expect them to be when but yesterday woman was a chattel and man a
+slave-owner? Woman won by diplomacy--that is to say, by trickery and
+untruth, and man had his way through force, and neither is quite willing
+to disarm. An amalgamated personality is the rare exception, because
+neither Church, State nor Society yet fully recognizes the fact that
+spiritual comradeship and the marriage of the mind constitute the only
+Divine mating. Doctor Blacklock once said that Robert Burns had eyes like
+the Christ. Women who looked into those wide-open, generous orbs lost
+their hearts in the liquid depths.
+
+In the natures of Robert Burns and Francis Schlatter there was little in
+common; but their experiences were alike in this: they were beloved by
+women. Behind him Burns left a train of weeping women--a trail of broken
+hearts. And I can never think of him except as a mere youth--"Bobby
+Burns"--one who never came into man's estate. In all his love-making he
+never seemed really to benefit any woman, nor did he avail himself of the
+many mental and spiritual excellencies of woman's nature, absorbing them
+into his own. He only played a devil's tattoo upon her emotions.
+
+If Burns knew anything of the beauty and inspiration of a high and holy
+friendship between a thinking man and a thinking woman, with mutual aims,
+ideals and ambitions, he never disclosed it. The love of a man for a maid,
+or a maid for a man, can never last, unless these two mutually love a
+third something. Then, as they are traveling the same way, they may move
+forward hand in hand, mutually sustained. The marriage of the mind is the
+only compact that endures. I love you because you love the things that I
+love. That man alone is great who utilizes the blessings that God
+provides; and of these blessings no gift equals the gentle, trusting
+companionship of a good woman.
+
+So, having written thus far, I find that already I have reached the limit
+of my allotted space.
+
+In closing, it may not be amiss for me to state that Robert Burns was an
+Irish poet whose parents happened to be Scotch. He was born in Ayrshire in
+Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine. He died in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-six, and
+was buried at Dumfries by the "gentleman volunteers," in spite of his last
+solemn words--"Don't let the Awkward Squad fire over my grave!"
+
+His mother survived him thirty-eight years, passing out in Eighteen
+Hundred Thirty-four. Burns left four sons, each of whom was often pointed
+out as the son of his father--but none of them was.
+
+This is all I think of, at present, concerning Robert Burns.
+
+For further facts I must refer the Gentle Reader to the "Encyclopedia
+Britannica," a compilation that I cheerfully recommend, it having been
+vouched for to me by a dear friend, a clergyman of East Aurora, who, the
+past year, perused the entire work, from A to Z, reading five hours a day:
+and therefore is competent to speak.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN MILTON
+
+          Thus with the year
+    Seasons return; but not to me returns
+    Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
+    Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
+    Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
+    But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
+    Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men
+    Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
+    Presented with a universal blank
+    Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
+    And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
+    So much the rather thou, Celestial Light,
+    Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
+    Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
+    Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
+    Of things invisible to mortal sight.
+                                      --_Paradise Lost: Book III_
+
+[Illustration: JOHN MILTON]
+
+
+Shakespeare and Milton lived at the same time, though the difference in
+their ages was such that we may not speak of them as contemporaries. John
+Milton was eight years old when William Shakespeare died. The Miltons
+lived in Bread Street, and out of the back garret-window of their house
+could catch a glimpse of the Globe Theater.
+
+The father of John Milton might have known Shakespeare--might have dined
+with him at the "Mermaid," played skittles with him on Hampstead Heath,
+fished with him from the same boat in the river at Richmond; and then John
+Milton, the lawyer, might have discreetly schemed for passes to the
+"Globe" and gone with his boy John, Junior, to see "As You Like It"
+played, with the Master himself in the role of old Adam.
+
+Bread Street was just off Cheapside, where the Mermaid Tavern stood, and
+where Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson and other roysterers often lingered
+and made the midnight echo with their mirth. In all probability, John
+Milton, Senior, father of John Milton, Junior, knew Shakespeare well. But
+the Miltons owned their home; were rich, influential, eminently
+respectable; attended Saint Giles' Church, and really didn't care to
+cultivate the society of play-actors who kept bad hours, slept in the
+theater, and had meal-tickets at half a dozen taverns.
+
+There were six children born into the Milton family, three of whom died in
+infancy. Of the survivors, the eldest was Anne, the second John, the third
+Christopher.
+
+Anne was strong, robust and hearty; John was slender, pale, with dreamy,
+dark gray eyes and a head too big for his body; Christopher was so-so.
+And, in passing, it is well to explain, once for all, that Christopher
+made his way straight to the front in life, taking up his father's
+business and being appointed a Court Officer. Thence he was promoted to
+the Woolsack, became rich, cultivated a double chin, was knighted, and
+passed out full of honors. The chief worriment and source of shame in the
+life of Sir Christopher Milton came from the unseemly conduct of his
+brother John, who was much given to producing political and theological
+pamphlets. And once in desperation Sir Christopher Milton requested John
+Milton to change his family name, that the tribe of Milton might be saved
+the disgrace of having in it "a traducer of the State, an enemy of the
+King, and a falsifier of Truth." Sir Christopher Milton was an excellent
+and worthy man, and I must apologize for not giving him more attention at
+this time; but lack of space forbids.
+
+Sickly boys who are wise beyond their years are ever the pets of big
+sisters, and the object of loving, jealous, zealous care on the part of
+their mothers. John Milton talked like an oracle while yet a child, and
+one biographer records that even as a babe he sometimes mildly reproved
+his parents for levity.
+
+He was a precocious child, and have we not been told that precocity does
+not fulfill its promises? But this boy was an exception. He was incarnated
+into a family that prized music, poetry, philosophy, and yet held fast to
+the Christian faith. His father set psalms to music, his sister wrote
+madrigals, and his mother played sweet strains on a harp to waken him at
+morningtide. The entire household united in a devotion to poetry and art.
+Possibly this atmosphere of high thinking was too rarefied for real
+comfort--the gravity of the situation being sustained only by a stern
+effort.
+
+But no matter--father, mother and sister joined hands to make the pale,
+handsome boy a prodigy of learning: one that would surprise the world and
+leave his impress on the time.
+
+And they succeeded.
+
+Of the three Milton children that passed away in childhood, I can not but
+think that they succumbed to overtraining, being crammed quite after the
+German custom of stuffing geese so as to produce that delicious diseased
+tidbit known to gourmets as pate de foies gras. John Milton stood the
+cramming process like a true hero. His parents set him apart for the
+Church--therefore he must be learned in books, familiar with languages,
+versed in theories. They desired that he should have knowledge, which
+they did not know is quite a different thing from wisdom.
+
+So the boy had a private tutor in Greek and Latin at nine years of age,
+and even then began to write verse. At ten years of age his father had the
+lad's portrait painted by that rare and thrifty Dutchman, Cornelius
+Jansen. We have this picture now, and it reveals the pale, grave, winsome
+face with the flowing curls that we so easily recognize.
+
+No expense or pains were spared in the boy's education. The time was
+divided up for him as the hours are for a soldier. One tutor after another
+took him in hand during the day; but the change of study and a glad
+respite of an hour in the morning and the same in the afternoon, for
+music, bore him up.
+
+He was the pride of his parents, the delight of his tutors.
+
+Three years were spent at Saint Paul's School; then he was sent to
+Cambridge. From there he wrote to his mother, "I am penetrating into the
+inmost recesses of the Muses; climbing high Olympus, visiting the green
+pastures of Parnassus, and drinking deep from Pierian Springs."
+
+This is terrible language for a child of fourteen. A boy who should talk
+like that now would be regarded with anxious concern by his loving
+parents. The present age is incredulous of the Infant Phenomenon. And no
+fond parent must for a moment imagine that by following the system laid
+out for the education of John Milton can a John Milton be produced. The
+Miltonian curriculum, if used today, would be sufficient ground for action
+on the part of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
+
+But John Milton, though but a weak-eyed boy with a chronic headache, had a
+deal of whipcord fiber in his make-up. He stood the test and grubbed at
+his books every night until the clock tolled twelve. He was born at a
+peculiar time, being a child of the Reformation married to the
+Renaissance. The toughness and grimness of Calvin were united in him with
+the tenderness of Erasmus. From out of the Universal Energy, of which we
+are particles, he had called into his being qualities so diverse that they
+seemed never to have been before or since united in one person.
+
+He remained at Cambridge seven years. The beauty of his countenance had
+increased so that he was as one set apart. His finely chiseled features,
+framed in their flowing curls, challenged the admiration of every person
+he met. A writer of the time described him as "a grave and sober person,
+but one not wholly ignorant of his own parts."
+
+There is a sly touch in this sentence that sheds light upon "The Lady of
+Christ's." John Milton was a bit of a poseur, as Schopenhauer declares all
+great men are and ever have been. With the masterly mind goes a touch of
+the fakir or charlatan. Milton knew his power--he gloried in this bright
+blade of the intellect. He was handsome--and he knew it. And yet we will
+not cavil at his velvet coats, or laces, or the golden chain that adorned
+his slender, shapely person. These things were only the transient,
+springtime adornments that passion puts forth.
+
+And yet I see that one writer mentions the chaste and ascetic quality of
+Milton's early life as proof of a cold and measured nature. Seemingly the
+writer does not know that intense feeling often finds a gratification in
+asceticism, and that vows of chastity are proof of passion. There are many
+ways of working off one's surplus energy--Milton was married to his work.
+He traversed the vast fields of Classic Literature, read in the original
+from Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, French, Spanish, Latin and Italian. He delved
+into abstruse mathematics, studied music as a science, and labored at
+theology. In fact, he came to know so much of all religions that he had
+faith in none. He seemed to view religion in the cold, calculating light
+of a syllogistic problem--not as a warm, pulsing motive in life. His real
+religion was music, a fact he once frankly acknowledged.
+
+On the pinions of music he was carried out and away beyond the boundaries
+of time and space, and there he found that rest for his soul, without
+which he would have sunk to earth and been covered by the kindly, drifting
+leaves of oblivion.
+
+For some, the secrets of music, the wonder of love, and the misty,
+undefined prayers of the soul constitute true religion. When you place a
+creed in a crucible and afterward study the particles on a slide encased
+in balsam, you are apt to get a residuum or something--a something that
+does not satisfy the heart.
+
+Milton got well acquainted with theology. It was interesting, but not what
+he had supposed. He came to regard the Church as a useful part of the
+Government--divine, of course, as all good things are divine. But to
+become a priest and play a part--he would not do it. He was
+honest--stubbornly honest.
+
+Seven years he had been at Cambridge, and now that he was just ready to
+step into a "living"--right in the line of promotion of which his beauty
+and intellect tokened a sure presage--he balked.
+
+It was a great blow to his parents. His mother pleaded; his father
+threatened; but they soon perceived that this son they had brought forth
+had a will stronger than theirs. Their fond dreams of his preferment--the
+handsome face of their boy above an oaken pulpit, with thousands feeding
+on his words, the public honors, and all that--faded away into tears and
+misty nothingness. But parenthood is doomed to disappointment--it does not
+endure long enough to see the end. Youth is so headstrong and wilful: it
+will not learn from the experience of others.
+
+And all these years of preparation and expense! Better had he died and
+been laid to rest with the three now in the churchyard.
+
+Before Milton had served his seven years' apprenticeship at Cambridge, his
+parents moved to the village of Horton--twenty miles out of London,
+Windsor way.
+
+The village of Horton has not changed much with the years, and a tramp
+across the fields from Eton by way of Burnham Beeches and Stoke Pogis,
+where Gray wrote "The Elegy," is quite worth while. It is a land of lazy
+woods, and winding streams and hedgerows melodious with birds. One treads
+on storied ground, and if you wish you can recline beneath gnarled old
+oaks where Milton mused and scribbled, and wrote the first draft of "L'
+Allegro" and "Il Penseroso."
+
+Milton loitered here at Horton for six years, and in that time produced
+just six poems.
+
+He was thirty-two years of age, and had never earned a sixpence. But what
+booted it! His father and mother's home was his: they gladly supplied his
+every want; and his mother, especially, was ever his kindly critic and
+most intimate friend. His days were spent in study, dreams, lonely walks
+across green fields, and homecomings when, with his mother's hand in his,
+he would talk or recite to her in order to clarify the thought that
+pressed upon him. Very calm, very peaceful and very beautiful were those
+days. "The pensive attitude of mind brings the best result--not the
+active," he used to say. It was then he wrote to his old friend, Diodati:
+"You asked what I am about--what I am thinking of? Why, with God's help, I
+am thinking of immortality. Forgive the word, it is for your ear alone--I
+am pluming my wings for flight."
+
+The good mother had misty, prophetic visions of what this flight might be,
+and had ceased to counsel her son against the sin of idleness. But she did
+not live to see her prophecies confirmed, for in this time of peace and
+love, when the vibrant air was filled with hope, she passed Beyond.
+
+Long years after, John Milton exclaimed, "Oh! Why could she not have lived
+to know!" And the poignant grief of this son, then a man in years (with
+his thirtieth birthday well behind), turned on the thought that he had
+disappointed Her--the mother who had loved him into being.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton's woes began with his marriage--they have given rise to nearly as
+much discussion as his poetry. In his "Defensio Secunda," he tells, with a
+touch of pride, of the absolute innocency that continued until his
+thirty-fifth year. When we consider how his combined innocence and
+ignorance plunged him into a sudden marriage with a bit of pink-and-white
+protoplasm, aged seventeen, we can not but regret that he had not devoted
+a little of his valuable time to a study of femininity. And in some way we
+think of Thackeray, when he was being shown the marvelous works of a
+certain amateur artist. "Look at that! look at that!" cried the zealous
+guide, "and he never had a lesson in art in his life!"
+
+Thackeray adjusted his glasses, looked at the picture carefully, sighed
+and said, "What a pity he didn't have just a little good instruction!"
+
+Milton the student, versed in abstractions and full of learned lore, went
+up the Thames seeking a little needed rest. Five miles from Oxford lived
+an ebb-tide aristocratic family by the name of Powell. Milton had long
+known this family, and, it seems, decided to tarry with them a day or so.
+Just why he sought their company no one ever knew, and Milton was too
+proud to tell. The brown thrush, rival of the lark and mockingbird, seldom
+seeks the society of the blue jay. But it did this time. The Powells were
+a roaring, riotous, roystering, fox-hunting, genteel, but reduced family,
+on the eve of bankruptcy, with marriageable daughters.
+
+The executive functions of love-making are best carried on by shallow
+people; so mediocre women often show rare skill in courtship, and
+sometimes succeed in bagging big game. But surely Mary Powell had no
+conception of the greatness of Milton's intellect--she only knew that he
+was handsome, and her parents said he was rich.
+
+There was feasting and mirth when Milton arrived back in town accompanied
+by his bride and various of her kinsmen. In all marriage festivals there
+is something pathetically absurd, and I never see a sidewalk awning spread
+without thinking of the one erected for John Milton and Mary Powell, who
+were led through it by an Erebus that was not only blind, but stone-deaf.
+
+John Milton was an ascetic, and lived in a realm of reverie and dreams;
+his wife had a strong bias toward the voluptuous, reveling in a world of
+sense, and demanding attention as her right. Milton began diving into his
+theories and books, and forgot the poor child who had no abstract world
+into which to withdraw. Suddenly bereft of the gay companionship that her
+father's house supplied, she felt herself aggrieved, alone; and tears of
+vexation and homesickness began to stream down her pretty cheeks.
+
+When summoned into her husband's presence she had nothing to say, and
+Milton, the theorist, discovered that what he had mistaken for the natural
+reticence and bashfulness of maidenhood was mere inanity and lack of
+ideas. But the loneliness of the poor country girl, shut up in a student's
+den, is a deal more touching than the scholar's wail about "the silent and
+insensate" wife. The girl was being deprived of the rollicking freedom to
+which she had been used, but the great man was waking the echoes with his
+wail for a companionship he had never known.
+
+Yet the girl was shrewd. All women are shrewd, I am told, and some are
+wise and some are not; and many women there be who consider finesse an
+improvement on frankness. At the end of a month, Milton's wife contrived
+to have her parents send for her to return home on a visit that was to
+last only until come Michaelmas. But Michaelmas arrived and the young
+bride refused to return, sending back saucy answers to the great author of
+"Il Penseroso."
+
+In the meantime Milton wrote pamphlets urging that divorce should be
+granted on the grounds of incompatibility, and pronouncing as inhuman the
+laws that gave freedom from marital woes on no less ignoble grounds than
+that a man should violate his honor.
+
+There is pretty good evidence that a part of Milton's argument on the
+subject of divorce was written out while his wife was under his roof. This
+reveals a slight lack of delicacy as well as the author's habit to make
+copy out of his private griefs; but it must be granted that Milton goes to
+the very bottom of the subject, even to stating the fact that those
+happily married have neither pity nor patience with those mismated. "If
+you want sympathy," he says, "you must go to those who are regarded as not
+respectable," Any man who writes on philosophy can find his every cue in
+Plato, and he who discusses divorce from a radical standpoint can find
+himself anticipated by Milton in the Seventeenth Century. Every view is
+taken, even down to the suggestion of a probationary marriage, which
+Milton thought might come about when civilization had ceased to crawl and
+begun to walk.
+
+One seeks in vain to learn if the unhappy wife of Milton ever read her
+husband's bitter tracts. It is probable she never did, and would not have
+comprehended their import if she had; and it is still more likely that she
+never came to realize that she was wedded to the greatest man of the age.
+A truce was patched up, on the bankruptcy of her father, and she came back
+penitent, and was taken into favor. Not only did she come back, but she
+brought her family; and the ravenous Royalists consumed the substance of
+the spiritual and ascetic Puritan.
+
+Had Milton then died, it is probable that the gladsome widow would have
+been consoled and married again very shortly, just as did the widows of
+Van Dyck and Rubens--not knowing that to have been the wife of a king was
+honor enough for one woman.
+
+But after fifteen years of domestic "neglect," during which she doubtless
+benefited her husband by stirring in him a noble discontent, she passed
+from earth; and it was left for John Milton to repeat twice more his
+marital venture, with a similar result. And in this, Fate sends back a
+fact that leers like Mephistopheles, by way of answer to Milton's
+pamphlets on divorce: Why should the State grant a divorce, when great men
+refuse to learn by experience, and, given the opportunity, only repeat the
+blunders they have already made?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+God in His goodness has in certain instances sent great men angels of
+light for assistants--mates who could comprehend and sympathize with their
+ideals. But it is expecting too much to suppose that Nature can look out
+for such a trifle as that the right man should marry the right woman.
+Nature possibly never considered a time-contract, and she is a careless
+jade, anyway. She moves blindly along with never a thought for the
+individual.
+
+Audubon the naturalist records that one-third of all birds hatched tumble
+out of the nest before they can fly, and once on the ground the parent
+birds are unable either to warm, feed or protect them.
+
+Read the lives of the Great Men who have lived during the past three
+thousand years, and listen closely, and you will hear the wild wail of
+neglected and unappreciated wives. A woman can forgive a beating, but to
+be forgotten--never. She hates, by instinct, an austere and self-contained
+character. Dignity and pride repel her; preoccupation keeps her aloof;
+concentration on an idea is unforgivable.
+
+The wife of Tolstoy seeking to have her husband adjudged insane is not a
+rare instance in the lives of thinkers. To think thoughts that are
+different from the thoughts one's neighbors think is surely good reason
+why the man should be looked after. Recently we have had evidence that the
+wife of Victor Hugo regarded the author of "Les Miserables" with
+suspicion, and at one time actually made preparations to let him enjoy
+his exile alone--she would go back to Paris and enjoy life as every one
+should. At Guernsey there was no society!
+
+When Isaac Newton called upon his ladylove and in a fit of abstraction,
+looking about for a utensil to push the tobacco down in his pipe, chanced
+upon the lady's little finger, the law of gravitation was abrogated at
+once, and Newton and his pipe were sent, like nebul� whirling into space.
+
+When the Great Inventor, absorbed in a problem as to Electricity (that
+thing which to us is only a name and of which we know nothing), forgets
+home, wife, child, supper; and midnight finds him in his laboratory, where
+he has been since sunrise--just imagine, if you please, the shrill
+greeting that is in cold storage for him when he stumbles home, haggard
+and worn, at dawn. How can he explain why he did this thing and answer the
+questions as to who was there, and what good it all did anyway!
+
+Thought is a torture, and requires such a concentration of energy that
+there is nothing left for the soft courtesies of marriage. The day is
+fleeting, and the night cometh when no man can work. The hot impulse to
+grasp and materialize the dream ere it fades, is strong upon the man.
+
+Of course he is selfish--he sacrifices everything, as Palissy did when
+fuel was short and the clay just at the turning-point. Yes, the artist is
+selfish: he sacrifices his wife and society, and himself, too, to get the
+work done. Four-o'clocks, mealtime, bedtime, and all the household system
+as to pink teas, calls and etiquette, stand for naught. And down the
+corridors of Time comes to us the shrill wail of neglected wives, and the
+crash of broken hearts echoes like the sound of a painter falling through
+a skylight. All this is the price of achievement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Making a little look backward into Milton's life, we find that until his
+thirty-third year he had not tasted of practical life at all. About that
+time his father, in a sort of desperation, packed him off to the
+Continent, in charge of a trusty attendant, who acted in the dual capacity
+of servant and friend. The letters he carried to influential men in Paris,
+Florence, Venice and Rome secured him the Speaker's eye, and his beauty
+and learning did the rest. His march was that of a conquering hero. In
+Paris he surprised the savants by addressing them in their own tongue, and
+reciting from their chief writers. This was repeated in Italy; and at
+Florence, as a sort of half-challenge for permission to occupy the highest
+seat, he was invited to read from his own compositions, which he did with
+such grace and power that thereafter all doors flew open at his touch.
+
+Returning to England after an absence of fifteen months, he found his
+father's household broken up, and through bad investments, the family
+fortune sadly depleted. But travel had added cubits to his stature: the
+mixture with men had put him into possession of his own, and he now felt
+well able to cope with the world. He secured modest lodgings in Saint
+Bride's Churchyard, and set to work to make a living and a name by
+authorship. His head teemed with subjects for poems, but cash advances
+were not forthcoming from publishers, and, to bridge over, he tried
+tutoring.
+
+It was at this time that "Paradise Lost," the one matchless epic of
+English literature, was conceived. Rough jottings were made as to
+divisions and heads, and a few stanzas were written of the immortal poem
+that was not to be completed for a score of years.
+
+The first volume of Milton's poems was issued in Sixteen Hundred
+Forty-five, when he was thirty-seven years of age. But before this he was
+known as the author of some pamphlets which had made political London
+reel. The writer was at once seen to be a man of remarkable learning and
+marvelous intellect, and the work secured Milton a few friends and divers
+enemies.
+
+From a man of leisure Milton had suddenly become a worker, whose every
+daylight hour was crammed with duties. His skill as a teacher brought him
+all the pupils he cared for, and he moved into better quarters in
+Aldersgate. He was immersed in his work, was making valuable acquaintances
+among literary people, was revered by his pupils, and the happiness was
+his of knowing that he was influential and independent. A fine
+intoxication comes to every brain-worker when the world acknowledges with
+tangible remittances that the product of his mind has a value on the
+Rialto. Such was Milton's joy in Sixteen Hundred Forty-three.
+
+The "Comus," "Il Penseroso," "L'Allegro" and "Lycidas" had established his
+place as a poet; and the power of his pen had been proven in sundry
+religious and political controversies.
+
+In his household were two sons of his sister and several other pupils who
+had sought his tutorship. He was contented in his work, pleased and happy
+with the young friends who sat at his board, and in an hour or two
+snatched each day from toil, for music and reverie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Seize upon the moments as they fly, O John Milton, and hug them to your
+heart! Those were days of gold when your mother was your patient listener
+and friend. Her love enveloped you as an aura; and her voice, soft and
+low, upheld you when courage faltered. But these, too, are glorious
+days--days full of work, and health, and hope, and high endeavor. But
+these days of peace and freedom are the last you shall ever know. Even now
+they flee as a shadow and fade into mist! Gross stupidity, silent and
+insensate, sits waiting for you at the door; calumny is near; taunting
+hate comes riding fast!
+
+The sympathy for which you yearn shall be yours only in dreams, and you
+shall be cheated of all the tenderness for which your heart prays. The
+love and gentleness which you associate with your mother, you ascribe in
+innocence and ignorance to all women; but Fate shall undeceive you, O John
+Milton, and make mock of all your high ideals. You dote on liberty, but
+liberty is not for you. You shall see the funeral of the Republic; the
+defamation of your honor; the proscription of all the sacred things you
+prize. Your companions shall not be of your own choosing, but shall be
+those who neither know nor value the sweet, subtle mintage of the mind.
+Around you mad riot shall surge, a hatred for liberty shall prevail--an
+enthusiasm for slavery. The glorious leaders of your Puritan faith shall
+be condemned and executed, hanged, cut down from the gallows alive, and
+quartered amid the hoarse insults of the people they sought to serve; and
+you yourself shall be hunted like a wild beast. You shall see the prisons
+filled to overflowing with men and women whose only crime was their love
+for truth. And a libertine shall sit on the throne of the England that you
+love. These things you shall see with those mild, dark eyes, and then
+night, eternal night, shall settle down upon you; and for those idle orbs
+no day shall dawn nor starry night appear, nor face of man nor child shall
+be reflected there. Your sightlessness shall give those who owe you
+gratitude and love, opportunity to filch your gold; and, lastly, fire
+shall rob you of your books, and well-nigh all your treasures.
+
+Like another Lear, your daughters shall neither esteem nor respect you,
+and the lines you dictate shall be to them but the idle vaporings of a
+mind diseased. Your acute ears shall hear these daughters express the wish
+that you were dead; and then in your blindness you will give yourself into
+the keeping of a woman as dull, inane and unfeeling as the foolish child
+you first chose as wife. But with it all your obstinacy shall constitute
+your power; and that beauty which was yours in youth shall be with you to
+the last. You shall feel all the torments of the damned and become inured
+to the scorching flames of hell! But, as recompense, the splendors of the
+Celestial Kingdom shall open upon your inward vision, and your soul shall
+behold that which the eyes of earth have lost. Something great and proud
+shall go out from your presence to all the discerning ones who shall
+approach you; and your end shall be like the setting of the sun, bright,
+calm, poised and resplendent.
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL JOHNSON
+
+    * * * Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in
+    your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which
+    time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which
+    it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the
+    verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of
+    encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not
+    expect, for I never had a patron before.
+
+    The shepherd in Vergil grew at last acquainted with Love, and
+    found him a native of the rocks.
+
+    Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+    struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the
+    ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been
+    pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind;
+    but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and can not enjoy
+    it; till I am a solitary, and can not impart it; till I am known,
+    and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to
+    confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be
+    unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a
+    patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.
+
+    Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to
+    any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I
+    should conclude it, should less be possible, with less; for I
+    have been long wakened from that dream of hope in which I once
+    boasted myself with so much exultation, my Lord.
+
+    Your Lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,
+                                             --_Sam Johnson_
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL JOHNSON]
+
+
+The critics, I believe, have made a distinction between large men and
+great men.
+
+Samuel Johnson was both. He was massive in intellect, colossal in culture,
+prodigious in memory, weighed nigh three hundred pounds, and had
+prejudices to match. He was possessed of a giant's strength, and
+occasionally used it like a giant--for instance, when he felled an
+offending bookseller with a folio.
+
+Johnson was most unfortunate in his biographer. In picturing the great
+writer, Boswell writes more entertainingly than Johnson ever did, and
+thereby overtops his subject. And when in reply to the intimation that
+Boswell was going to write his life, Johnson answered, "If I really
+thought he was, I would take his," he spoke a jest in earnest.
+
+Walking along Market Street in the city of Saint Louis, with a friend, not
+long ago, my comrade suddenly stopped and excitedly pointed out a man
+across the way--"Look quick--there he goes!" exclaimed my friend, "that
+man with the derby and duster--see? That's the husband of Mrs. Lease of
+Kansas!" And all I could say was, "God help him!"
+
+Not but that Mrs. Lease is a most excellent and amiable lady; but the
+idea of a man, made in the image of his Maker, being reduced to the social
+state of a drone-bee is most depressing.
+
+Among that worthy class of people referred to somewhat ironically as "the
+reading public," Boswell is read, but Johnson never. And so sternly true
+is the fact that many critics, set on a hair-trigger, aver that were it
+not for Boswell no one would now know that a writer by the name of Johnson
+ever lived. Yet the fact is, Boswell ruined the literary reputation of
+Johnson by intimating that Johnson wrote Johnsonese; but that is a
+mistake.
+
+Johnson never wrote Johnsonese. The piling up of reasons, the cumulation
+of argument--setting off epigram against epigram--that mark Johnson's
+literary style are its distinguishing features. He is profound, but always
+lucid. And lucidity is just what modern Johnsonese lacks. The word was
+coined by a man who had neither the patience to read Johnson nor the
+ability to comprehend him. Only sophomores, and private secretaries who
+write speeches for able Congressmen, write Johnsonese.
+
+Quibblers possibly may arise and present Johnson's definition of
+network--"anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances with
+interstices between the intersections"--but with the quibbler we have no
+time to dally. Some people insist on having their literature illustrated,
+just as others refuse to attend lectures that are not reinforced by a
+stereopticon.
+
+Johnson had a style that is stately, dignified, splendid. It moves from
+point to point with absolute precision, and in it there is seldom anything
+ambiguous, muddy, confused or uncertain. Get down a volume of "Lives of
+the Poets," and prove my point for yourself, by opening at any page. It
+was Boswell who set his own light, chatty and amusing gossip over against
+the wise, stately diction of Johnson, and allowed Goldsmith to say, "Dear
+Doctor, if you were to write a story about little fishes, you would make
+them talk like whales," and the mud ball has stuck. The average man is
+much more willing to take the wily Boswell's word for it than to read
+Johnson for himself.
+
+The balanced power of Johnson's English can not fail to delight the
+student of letters who cares to interest himself in the matter of
+sentence-building. Johnson handles a thought with such ease! He makes you
+think of the circus "strong man" who tosses the cannon-ball, marked
+"weight 250 lbs." What if the balls are sometimes only wood painted black!
+Have we not been entertained? Read this specimen paragraph:
+
+"Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very
+small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by Nature upon
+few, and the labor of learning those sciences which may by continuous
+effort be obtained is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can
+exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom
+Nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his
+vanity by the name of 'critic,'"
+
+But the greatest literary light of his day has been thrown into the shadow
+by a man whom no one suspected of being able to write entertainingly. In
+the world of letters the great Cham exists only as a lesser luminary; just
+as the once-noted novelist, George Henry Lewes, is now known only as the
+husband of George Eliot.
+
+And yet no one is so rash as to say that the name of Boswell would now be
+known were it not for Johnson. And conversely (or otherwise), if it were
+the proper place, I could show that were it not for George Henry Lewes we
+should never have had "Adam Bede" or "The Mill on the Floss."
+
+Boswell wrote the best "Life" ever written. Nothing like it was ever
+written before; nothing to equal it has been written since. It has had
+hundreds of imitators, but no competitors. Matthew Arnold said that no man
+ever had so good a subject, but Arnold for the moment seemed to forget
+that Hawkins, a professional literary man, published his "Life of Johnson"
+long before Boswell's was sent to the printer--and who reads Hawkins?
+
+Surely Boswell had a great subject, and he rises to the level of his theme
+and makes the most of it. At times I have wondered if Boswell were not
+really a genius so great and profound that he was willing to play the
+fool, as Edgar in "Lear" plays the maniac, and allow himself to be snubbed
+(in print) in order to make his telling point! Millionaires can well
+afford to wear ragged coats. Second-rate man Boswell may have been, as he
+himself so oft admits, yet as a biographer he stands first in the front
+rank. But suppose his extreme ignorance was only the domino disguising a
+cleverness so subtle that it was not discovered until after his death! And
+what if he smiles now, as from out of Elysium he looks and beholds how, as
+a writer, he has eclipsed old Ursa Major, and thus clipped the claws that
+were ready for any chance Scot who might pass that way!
+
+John Hay has suggested that possibly the insight, piquancy and calm wisdom
+of Omar Khayyam are two-thirds essence of FitzGerald. If so, the joke is
+on Omar, not on FitzGerald.
+
+A dozen of Johnson's contemporaries wrote about him, and all make him out
+a profound scholar, a deep philosopher, a facile writer. Boswell by his
+innocent quoting and recounting makes his conversation outstrip all of his
+other accomplishments. He reveals the man by the most skilful indirection,
+and by leaving his guard down, often allows the reader to score a point.
+And of all devices of writing folk, none is finer than to please the
+reader by allowing him to pat himself on the back.
+
+If a writer is too clever he repels. Shakespeare avoids the difficulty,
+and proves himself the master by keeping out of sight; Renan wins by a
+great show of modesty and deferential fairness; Boswell assumes an
+artlessness and ignorance that were really not parts of his nature. Every
+man who reads Boswell considers himself the superior of Boswell, and
+therefore is perfectly at home. It is not pleasant to be in the society of
+those who are much your superiors. Any man who sits in the company of
+Samuel Pepys for a half-hour feels a sort of half-patronizing pity for
+him, and therefore is happy, for to patronize is bliss.
+
+If Boswell has reinforced fact with fiction, and given us art for truth,
+then his character of Samuel Johnson is the most vividly conceived and
+deeply etched in all the realm of books. But if he gives merely the simple
+facts, then Boswell is no less a genius, for he has omitted the irrelevant
+and inconsequential, and by playing off the excellent against the absurd,
+he has placed his subject among the few great wits who have ever lived--a
+man who wrote remarkably well, but talked infinitely better.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Montaigne advises young men that if they will fall in love, why, to fall
+in love with women older than themselves. His argument is that a young and
+pretty woman makes such a demand on a man's time and attention that she is
+sure, eventually, to wear love to the warp. So the wise old Gascon
+suggests that it is the part of wisdom to give your affection to one who
+is both plain and elderly--one who is not suffering from a surfeit of
+love, and one whose head has not been turned by flattery. "Young women,"
+says the philosopher, "demand attention as their right and often flout the
+giver; whereas old women are very grateful."
+
+Whether Samuel Johnson, of Lichfield, ever read Montaigne or not is a
+question; but this we know, that when he was twenty-six he married the
+Widow Porter, aged forty-nine.
+
+Assuming that Johnson had read Montaigne and was mindful of his advice,
+there were other excellent reasons why he did not link his fortunes with
+those of a young and pretty woman.
+
+Johnson in his youth, as well as throughout life, was a Grind of the pure
+type. The Grind is a fixture, a few being found at every University, even
+unto this day. The present writer, once in a book of fiction, founded on
+fact, took occasion to refer to the genus Grind, with Samuel Johnson in
+mind, as follows: He is poor in purse, but great in frontal development.
+
+He goes to school because he wishes to (no one ever "sent" a Grind to
+college). He has a sallow skin, a watery eye, a shambling gait, but he has
+the facts. His clothes are outgrown, his coat shiny, his linen a dull
+ecru, his hands clammy. He reads a book as he walks, and when he bumps
+into you, he always exculpates himself in Attic Greek.
+
+This absent-mindedness and habit of reading on the street affords the
+Sport (another college type) great opportunity for the playing of pranks.
+It is very funny to walk along in front of a Grind who is reading as he
+walks, and then suddenly stop and stoop, and let the Grind fall over you;
+for the innocent Grind, thinking he has been at fault, is ever profuse in
+apologies.
+
+Many years ago there was a Grind. A party of Sports saw him approaching,
+deeply immersed in his book. "Look you," quoth the chief of the
+Sports--"look you and observe him fall over me."
+
+And they looked.
+
+Onward blindly trudged the Grind, reading as he came. The Sport stepped
+ahead of him, stooped, and ---- one big foot of the Grind shot out and
+kicked him into the gutter. Then the Grind continued his walk and his
+reading without saying a word.
+
+This incident is here recorded for the betterment of the Young, to show
+them that things are not always what they seem.
+
+Samuel Johnson, I have said, was a Grind of the pure type. He was so
+nearsighted that he fell over chairs in drawing-rooms, and so awkward that
+his long arms occasionally brushed the bric-a-brac from mantels. No lady's
+train was safe if he was in the room. At gatherings of young people, if
+Johnson appeared, his presence was at once the signal for mirth, of which
+he was, of course, the unconscious object.
+
+Johnson's face was scarred by the King's Evil, which even the touch of
+Queen Anne had failed to cure. While a youth he talked aloud to himself--a
+privilege that should be granted only to those advanced in years. He would
+grunt out prayers and expletives at uncertain times, keep up a clucking
+sound with his tongue, sway his big body from side to side, and drum a
+tattoo upon his knee. Now and again would come a suppressed whistle, and
+then a low humming sound, backed up by a vacant non-compos-mentis smile.
+
+Another odd whim of Johnson's was, that he would never pass a lamp-post
+without touching it, and would go back miles upon his way to repair an
+omission. Surely great wit to madness is near allied.
+
+This most strange young man was a boarder in the home of Mrs. Porter, when
+her husband was alive, and the husband and boarder had been fast
+friends--drawn together by a bookish bias.
+
+Very naturally, when the husband passed away, the boarder sought to
+console the bereaved landlady, and the result was as usual. And when, long
+years after, Johnson would solemnly explain that it was a pure love-match
+on both sides, the statement never failed to excite much needless and
+ill-suppressed merriment on the part of the listeners. In mimicking the
+endearments of Johnson and his "pretty creature"--so the admiring husband
+called her--Garrick many years later added to his artistic reputation.
+
+Unlike most literary men, Johnson was domestic, and his marriage was one
+of the most happy events of his career. But to show that the philosophy of
+Montaigne is not infallible, and that all signs fail in dry weather, it
+may be stated that the bride proved by her conduct on her wedding-day that
+she had some relish of the saltness of time in her cosmos, despite her
+fifty summers and as many hard winters.
+
+Said Johnson to Boswell, referring to the horseback-ride home after the
+wedding-ceremony: "Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into
+her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her
+lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and
+she could not keep up with me; and when I rode a little slower, she passed
+me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of
+caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on
+briskly, till I was fairly out of sight. The road lay between two hedges,
+so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon
+come up with me. When she did I observed her to be in tears."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shortly after his marriage, Johnson opened a private school for boys. To
+operate a private school successfully implies a certain amount of skill in
+the management of parents; but Johnson's uncouth manners and needlessly
+blunt speech were appalling to those who had children who might possibly
+be given to imitation.
+
+Only three pupils were secured, and but one of these received any benefit
+from the tutor; and this benefit came, according to the scholar, from the
+master's supplying an excellent object for ridicule.
+
+This pupil's name was David Garrick.
+
+The meeting with David Garrick was a pivotal point in the life of Johnson.
+Johnson's mental and spiritual existence flowed on, separate and apart
+from that of his wife. There was no meeting of the waters. His affection
+for her was most tender and constant, but in quality it seemed to differ
+but slightly from the sentiment he entertained toward "Hodge," his cat.
+
+Hodge was fed on oysters that his owner could ill afford; and after
+Johnson had spent the little fortune that belonged to his wife, the lady
+was regaled on the best and choicest that his income, or credit, could
+secure. But if one of those lightning-flashes of wit ever escaped him in
+her direction, we do not know it. Garrick evidently was the first flint
+that tried his steel. The distinctions of teacher and scholar were soon
+lost between these two, and the lessons took the turn of a fusillade of
+wit. They made comments on the authors they read, and comments on the
+people they met, and criticized each other with encaustic remarks that
+tested friendship to its extremest limit. And this continual skirmish that
+would have made sworn foes of common men in a day revealed to each that
+the other had the element of unexpectedness in his nature and was worth
+loving.
+
+Humor and melancholy go hand in hand; both are born of an extreme
+sensitiveness, and the man who smiles at the trivial misfits of life
+realizes also that all men who tread the earth are living under a sentence
+of death, and that Fate has merely allowed them an indefinite, but
+limited, reprieve.
+
+At the outset of Johnson's career, one can not but see that the
+companionship and nimble wit of Garrick saved his ponderous and melancholy
+mind from going into bankruptcy.
+
+And now we find them: one twenty-eight, big, nearsighted, theoretical,
+blundering; and the other twenty-one, slight, active, graceful, practical.
+They were alike in this: they both loved books and were possessed of the
+eager, earnest, receptive mind. To possess the hospitable mind! For what
+greater blessing can one pray?
+
+And then they were alike in other respects--they were desperately poor;
+neither had an income; neither had a profession; both were ambitious.
+Johnson had written a tragedy--"Irene"--and he had read it to Garrick
+several times, and Garrick said it was good and should make a hit. But
+Garrick didn't know much about tragedies--law was his bent--he had read
+law for two years, off and on. They would go to London and seize fortune
+by the scalp-lock. In London good lawyers were needed, and London was the
+only place for a playwright.
+
+They scraped together their pennies, borrowed a few more, got a single
+letter of introduction between them to some person of unknown influence,
+and started away, with the lacrimose blessings of the elderly bride, and
+of Davy's mother.
+
+They must have been a queer sight when the stage let them down at the
+Strand--dusty, dirty, tired and scared by the babel of sounds and sights!
+And no doubt Johnson's enormous size saved them from sundry insults and
+divers taunts that otherwise might have come their way.
+
+Those first few weeks in London were given to staring into shop-windows
+and wandering, open-mouthed, up and down. No one wanted the tragedy--the
+managers all sniffed at it. Little then did Davy dream, as they made their
+way from the office of one theater-manager to that of another, that he
+himself would some day own a theater and give the discarded play its first
+setting. And little did he think that he would yet be the foremost actor
+of his time, and his awkward mate the literary dictator of London. Oh!
+this game of life is a great play! The blissful uncertainty of it all!
+The ambitions, plans, strivings, heartaches, mad desires and vain reaching
+out of empty arms! The tears, the bitter disappointments, the sleepless
+nights, the echoes of prayers unheard, and the hollow hopelessness of love
+turned to hate!
+
+And then mayhap we do as Emerson did--go out into the woods, and all the
+trees say, "Why so hot, my little man?"
+
+Garrick, disappointed and undone at the thought of defeat in his chosen
+profession, turned to commercial life and then to the theater. At his
+first stage appearance he trembled with diffidence and all but fled in
+fright. He persevered, for he could do nothing else. He arose step by
+step, and honors, wealth and fame were his. Love came to him: he wedded
+the woman of his choice. And after his death she survived for forty-three
+years. She lived one hundred years, lacking two. Garrick was born in
+Seventeen Hundred Sixteen; and his wife died in Eighteen Hundred
+Twenty-two, which seems to bring the times of Johnson pretty close home to
+us. Throughout her long life, she lived in the memory of the love that had
+been hers; cherishing and protecting, idolizing, as did Mary Shelley, the
+one name and that alone.
+
+Johnson and Garrick thoroughly respected and admired each other, yet they
+often quarreled--they quarreled to the last. But when Davy had lain him
+down in his last sleep, aged sixty-three, it was Johnson, aged seventy,
+who wrote his epitaph, introducing into it the deathless sentence * * *
+"by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and
+impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three months in London and Johnson succeeded in getting a place on the
+editorial staff of "The Gentleman's Magazine." Prosperity smiled, not
+exactly a broad grin; but the expression was something better than a
+stony, forbidding stare.
+
+He made haste to go back to Lichfield after his "Letty," which name, by
+the way, is an improvement on Betty, Betsy or Tetsy--being baby-talk for
+Elizabeth.
+
+They took modest lodgings in a third floor back, off Fleet Street, and
+Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind
+condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt,
+never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky
+broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth--with the weapons of his
+dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved;
+jeered and praised; feared and idolized.
+
+Coming out of his burrow one dark night, he encountered an old
+beggar-woman who importuned him for alms. He was brushing past her, when
+one of her exclamations caught his ear.
+
+"Sir," said the woman, "I am an old struggler!"
+
+"Madam," replied Johnson, "so am I!" And he gave her his last sixpence.
+
+But life in London was cheap in those days--it is now if you know how to
+do it, or else have to. Johnson used to maintain that for thirty pounds a
+year one could live like a gentleman, and as proof would quote an
+imaginary acquaintance who argued that ten pounds a year for clothes would
+keep a man in good appearance; a garret could be hired for eighteen pence
+a week, and if any one asked your address you could reply, "I am to be
+found in such a place," Threepence laid out at a coffeehouse would enable
+one to pass some hours a day in good company; dinner might be had for
+sixpence, and supper you could do without. On clean-shirt day you could go
+abroad and call on your lady friends. Among Johnson's first literary tasks
+in London was the work of reporting the debates in Parliament. In order
+that the best possible results might be obtained, he resorted to the
+rather unique, but not entirely original, method of not attending
+Parliament at all. Two or three young men would be sent to listen to the
+debates; they would make notes giving the general drift of the argument,
+and Johnson would write out the speech. His style was exactly suited to
+this kind of work, being eminently rhetorical. And as at the time no
+public record of proceedings was kept and Parliament did not allow the
+press the liberty it now possesses--all being as it were clouded in
+mysterious awe--these reports of debates were eagerly sought after. To
+evade the law, a fictitious name was given the speaker, or his initials
+used in such a way that the individual could be easily recognized by the
+reading public.
+
+Some of Johnson's best work was done at this time, and in several
+instances the speaker, not slow to appreciate a good thing, allowed the
+matter to be reissued as his own. Long years after, a certain man was once
+praising the speeches of Lord Chesterfield and was led on to make
+explanations. He did so, naming two speeches, one of which he zealously
+declared had the style of Cicero; the other that of Demosthenes. Johnson
+becalmed the speaker by agreeing with him as to the excellence of the
+speeches, and then adding, "I wrote them both."
+
+The gruffness of Ursa Major should never be likened to that of the Sage of
+Chelsea. Carlyle vented his spleen on the nearest object, as irate
+gentlemen sometimes kick at the cat; but Johnson merely sparred for
+points. When Miss Monckton undertook to refute his statements as to the
+shallowness of Sterne by declaring that "Tristram Shandy" affected her to
+tears, Johnson rolled himself into contortions, made an exasperating
+grimace, and replied, "Why, dearest, that is because you are a dunce!"
+Afterward, when reproached for the remark, he replied, "Madam, if I had
+thought so, I surely would not have said it."
+
+Once, at the house of Garrick, to the terror of every one, Burke
+contradicted Johnson flatly, but Johnson's good sense revealed itself by
+his making no show of resentment. Burke's experience was, it must be said,
+exceptional. An equally exciting, but harmless occasion, was the only time
+that the author of "Rasselas" met the man who wrote the "Wealth of
+Nations," Johnson called Adam Smith a liar, and Smith promptly handed back
+an epithet not in the Dictionary. Nevertheless, old Ursa spoke in an
+affectionate praise of "Adam," as he called him thereafter, thus
+recognizing the right of the other man to be frank if he cared to be.
+Johnson wanted no privilege that he was not willing to grant to
+others--except perhaps that of dictator of opinions.
+
+When Blair asked Johnson if he thought any modern man could have written
+"Ossian," Johnson replied, "Yes, sir--many men, many women, and many
+children." And if Blair took umbrage at the remark, so much the worse for
+Blair.
+
+We have recently heard of the Boston lady who died and went to Heaven, and
+on being questioned by an archangel as to how she liked it, replied
+languidly, "Very, very beautiful it all is!" And then sighed and added,
+"But it is not Boston!" This story seems to illustrate that all tales have
+their prototype, for Boswell tells of taking Doctor Johnson out to
+Greenwich Park, and saying, "Now, now, isn't this fine!" But Johnson would
+not enthuse; he only grunted, "All very fine--but it's not Fleet Street."
+
+On another occasion when a Scotchman was dilating on the noble prospects
+to be enjoyed among the hills of Scotland, Johnson called a halt by
+saying, "Sir, let me tell you that the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever
+sees is the highroad that leads him to England."
+
+This seems to evince a strong prejudice toward Scotland, and several
+Scots, with their usual plentiful lack of wit, have so solemnly written it
+down. But the more sensible way is to conclude that the situation simply
+afforded opportunity for a little harmless banter.
+
+Another equally indisputable proof of prejudice is shown when Boswell
+tells Johnson of the wonderful preaching of a Quaker woman. Johnson
+listened in grim, cold silence and then exclaimed: "Sir, a woman's
+preaching is like a dog's walking on its hind legs. It is not done well;
+but you are surprised to find it done at all."
+
+One of the leading encyclopedias, I see, says, "Doctor Johnson was one of
+the greatest conversationalists of all time." The writer evidently does
+not distinguish between talk, conversation and harangue. Johnson could
+talk and he often harangued; but he was not a conversationalist. Neither
+could he address a public assembly, and I do not find that he ever
+attempted it. Good talkers are seldom orators. One reads with amusement
+tinged with pity, of Carlyle's sleepless nights and cold, terror-fraught
+anticipations of his Lord Rector's speech. In deliberative gatherings a
+very small man could apply the snuffers to the great Dictator of Letters.
+
+"Sir," said Doctor Johnson to a talkative politician, at a dinner-party,
+"I perceive you are a vile Whig," and then he proceeded to demolish him.
+Yet Johnson himself was a Whig, although he never knew it; just as he was
+a liberal in religion, and yet was boastful of being a stanch Churchman.
+
+Johnson's irritability never vented itself against the helpless. His
+charity knew no limit--not even the bottom of his purse. When he had no
+money to give, he borrowed it. And when his pension was three hundred
+pounds a year, the Thrales could not figure out that he spent more than
+seventy or eighty on himself. The rest went to his dependents. In his
+latter days his home was a regular museum of waifs and strays. There was
+Miss Williams, the ancient aristocratic spinster who came to London to
+have an operation performed on one of her eyes. She came to Johnson's home
+and remained ten years, because she had been a friend of his wife. This
+claim was enough, and she slid into the head place in Johnson's household.
+Her peevishness used to drive the old man, at times, into the street; but
+that tongue of his, with its crushing retorts, was ever silent and tender
+towards her. The poor creature became blind, and used to shock the finicky
+Boswell by testing the fulness of the teacups with her finger.
+
+Then there was a Mrs. Desmoulins and her daughter, who drifted down from
+Lichfield and came to Johnson, because forty years before, he, too, had
+lived in Lichfield. He gave them house-room, treated them as guests, and
+each week left a half-guinea on the mantel of their room.
+
+Then there was the broken-down Levett, and Francis Barber, who, coming as
+a servant, remained as one of the family, because he was too old to work.
+A Miss Carmichael, in green spectacles and bombazine, carrying a cane,
+completed what the Doctor called his "seraglio." Writing to Mrs. Thrale in
+playful mood, telling of his household troubles, he says, "Williams hates
+everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins
+hates them both; Poll loves none of them." And he, the great, gruff and
+mighty Ursa Major, listened to all their woes, caring for them in
+sickness, wiping the death-dew from their foreheads, wearing crape upon
+his sleeve for them when dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This man tasted all the fame that is one man's due; he had all the money
+he needed, or knew how to use; the coveted LL.D. came from his Alma Mater;
+and the patronage from Lord Chesterfield, for which he craved, only that
+he might fling it back. He was the friend and confidant of the great and
+proud, deferred to by the King and sought out by those who prized the
+far-reaching mind and subtle imagination--the things that link us with the
+Infinite. The fear of hell and dread of death that haunted him in youth
+and middle age, finally gave way to faith and trust. When partial
+paralysis came to him at midnight, his sanity did not fail him, and
+knowing the worst, he yet hesitated to disturb the other members of the
+household, but went to sleep, philosophizing on the phenomena of the
+case--alert for more knowledge, as was his wont. Morning came and being
+speechless, he wrote on his ever-ready pad of paper and handing the sheet
+to his servant, watched with amused glances the perplexity and terror of
+the man. He next wrote to his friend, Mrs. Thrale, that letter, a classic
+of wit and resignation, wherein he explains his condition and excuses
+himself for not calling upon her and explaining the matter by word of
+mouth.
+
+Such willingness to accept the inevitable is curative. He grew better and
+recovered his speech. But old age is a disease that has no cure save
+death. Johnson accepted the issue as a brave man should--thankful for the
+gift of conscious life that had been his. When the last hour was nigh he
+sent loving messages to his nearest friends, repeating their names over
+one by one. His last recorded words were directed to a young woman who
+called upon him, "God bless you, my dear."
+
+And so he passed painlessly and quietly into the sleep that knows no
+waking; pleased at last to know that his dust would rest in Westminster
+Abbey.
+
+Thus ended, as the day dies out of the western sky, this life, seemingly
+so full of tempest and contradiction. The autumn of his life was full of
+enjoyment, and no day passed but that some one, weak, weary and worn,
+arose and called him blessed. Most of his wild imprecations and blustering
+contradictions were reserved for those who fattened on such things, and
+who came to be tossed and gored. In his spirit Socrates and Falstaff
+joined hands. In his life there was a deal of gladness--far, far more than
+of misery and unrest; which fact I believe is true of every life.
+
+The Universe seems planned for good.
+
+A world made up of such men as Samuel Johnson would be a wild chaos of
+tasks undone. But since Nature has never sent but one such man, and more
+than a century has passed since his death and we know not yet with whom to
+compare him, we need have no fears. The world is held in place through the
+opposition of forces: and the body of every healthy man is the
+battle-ground of animal organisms that match strength against strength.
+So, too, a healthy society always has these active and sturdy organisms,
+which set in play other forces that hold in check their seeming excess.
+That the Divine Energy should incarnate itself and find expression in the
+form of a man, and that this man should inspire others to think and write,
+to do and dare, is a subject the contemplation of which should make us
+stand uncovered. The companionship of Johnson inspired Reynolds to better
+painting, Garrick to stronger acting, Burke to more profound thinking--and
+hundreds of others, too, quenched their thirst at the rock which he smote
+whenever he discoursed or wrote.
+
+Sympathy is the first essential to insight. So with sympathy, I pray,
+behold this blundering giant, and you will see that the basis of his
+character was a great Sincerity. He was honest--doggedly honest--and saw
+with flashing vision the thing that was; and thither he followed,
+crowding, pushing, knocking down whatsoever opinion or prejudice was in
+the way. And so he ever struggled forward. But hate him not, for he is thy
+brother--yea! he is brother to all who strive and reach forward toward the
+Ideal. Shining through dust and disorder, now victorious, now eclipsed in
+deepest gloom, in him is the light of genius; and this is never base, but
+at the worst is admirable, lovable with pity. There was pride in his
+heart, but no vanity; and he should be loved for this if for no other
+reason: he had the courage to make an enemy. In his great heart were wild
+burstings of affection, and a hunger for love that only the grave
+requited. There, too, were fierce flashes of wrath, smothered in an hour
+by the soft dew of pity. His faults and follies were manifold, as he often
+lamented with tears; but the soul of the man was sublime in its
+qualities--worldwide in its influence.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+
+    The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and
+    spirit of the age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact,
+    he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not
+    authenticated by sufficient testimony. But by judicious
+    selection, rejection and arrangement, he gives to truth those
+    attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative
+    a due subordination is observed: some transactions are prominent;
+    others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is
+    increased or diminished, not according to the dignity of the
+    persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which
+    they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man.
+                                                --_Essay on History_
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS MACAULAY]
+
+
+Success is in the blood.
+
+There are men whom Fate can never keep down--they march jauntily forward,
+and take by divine right the best of everything that earth affords. But
+their success is not attained by the Doctor Samuel Smiles Connecticut
+policy. They do not lie in wait, nor scheme, nor fawn, nor seek to adapt
+their sails to catch the breeze of popular favor. Still, they are ever
+alert and alive to any good that may come their way, and when it comes
+they simply appropriate it, and tarrying not, move steadily forward.
+
+Good health! Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the
+crown of your head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in
+sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every
+hand-clasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and never waste a minute
+thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would
+like to do, and then without violence of direction you will move straight
+to the goal.
+
+Fear is the rock on which we split, and hate is the shoal on which many a
+bark is stranded. When we are fearful, the judgment is as unreliable as
+the compass of a ship whose hold is full of iron ore; when we hate, we
+have unshipped the rudder; and if we stop to meditate on what the gossips
+say, we have allowed a hawser to befoul the screw.
+
+Keep your mind on the great and splendid thing you would like to do; and
+then, as the days go gliding by, you will find yourself unconsciously
+seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfilment of
+your desire, just as the coral-insect takes from the running tide the
+elements that it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful
+person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming
+you into that particular individual. Thought is supreme, and to think is
+often better than to do.
+
+Preserve a right mental attitude--the attitude of courage, frankness and
+good-cheer.
+
+To think rightly is to create.
+
+Darwin and Spencer have told us that this is the method of Creation. Each
+animal has evolved the parts it needed and desired. The horse is fleet
+because it wishes to be; the bird flies because it desires to; the duck
+has a web-foot because it wants to swim. All things come through desire,
+and every sincere prayer is answered. Many people know this, but they do
+not believe it thoroughly enough so that it shapes their lives.
+
+We want friends, so we scheme and chase 'cross lots after strong people,
+and lie in wait for good folks--or alleged good folks--hoping to attach
+ourselves to them. The only way to secure friends is to be one.
+
+And before you are fit for friendship you must be able to do without it.
+That is to say, you must have sufficient self-reliance to take care of
+yourself, and then out of the surplus of your energy you can do for
+others. The man who craves friendship, and yet desires a self-centered
+spirit more, will never lack for friends.
+
+If you would have friends, cultivate solitude instead of society. Drink in
+the ozone; bathe in the sunshine; and out in the silent night, under the
+stars, say to yourself again and yet again, "I am a part of all my eyes
+behold!" And the feeling will surely come to you that you are no mere
+interloper between earth and sky; but that you are a necessary particle of
+the Whole. No harm can come to you that does not come to all, and if you
+shall go down, it can only be amid a wreck of worlds.
+
+Thus by laying hold on the forces of the Universe, you are strong with
+them. And when you realize this, all else is easy, for in your arteries
+course red corpuscles, and in your heart there is the will to do and be.
+Carry your chin in, and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the
+chrysalis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thomas B. Macauley was small in stature; but he always carried his chin
+well in and the crown of his head high.
+
+It was said of Rubens that throughout his lifetime he kept success tied to
+the leg of his easel with a blue ribbon. If ever a writing man had success
+tied to the leg of his easy chair, that man was Macaulay. In the
+characters and careers of Rubens and Macaulay there is a marked
+resemblance.
+
+When Macaulay was twenty-two he was at Cambridge, and the tidings arrived
+that a dire financial storm had wrecked the family fortune. The young man
+had ever been led to suppose that his father was rich--rich beyond all
+danger from loss--and that he himself would never have a concern beyond
+amusing himself, and the cultivation of his intellect. And so in practical
+affairs his education had been sadly neglected. But when the news of
+calamity came, instead of being depressed, he was elated to think that now
+he could make himself positively useful.
+
+Responsibility gravitates to the man who can shoulder it. Strong men who
+can wisely direct the efforts of others are always needed--they were
+needed in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-two, when Tom Macaulay received word of
+his father's trouble--they are needed today more than then--men who meet
+calamity with a smile and are pleased at sight of obstacles, knowing they
+can overcome them. Augustine Birrell has written, "Macaulay always went
+his sublime way rejoicing like a strong man to run a race, knowing full
+well that he could give anybody five yards in fifty and win easily."
+
+Macaulay took up the burden that his father was not able to bear, mastered
+every detail of the business, studied out the weak points, and then
+explained to the creditors just what they had better do.
+
+And they did it.
+
+We always trust the man who has courage plus, enthusiasm to spare, and who
+shows by his manner that he is master of the situation.
+
+In a few years Macaulay saved from the wreck enough to secure his father,
+mother and sisters against want for the rest of their days, and eventually
+he paid every creditor in full with interest. Had he run away from the
+difficulty, as his father was on the point of doing, the family would have
+been turned homeless into the streets.
+
+Moral--Things are never so bad as they seem; and all difficulties sneak
+away when you look them squarely in the eye.
+
+At this time the family, consisting of the father, mother, three sisters
+and a brother, lived at Fifty Great Ormond Street, not far from the
+British Museum. The house is still standing, but I recently discovered
+that the occupants know nothing, and care less, about Thomas Macaulay.
+
+Tom was the child of his mother. In temperament, disposition and physique
+he was as much unlike his father as two men can well be. Old Zachary
+Macaulay was a strong, earnest man who took himself seriously. In latter
+years he grew morose, puritanic and was full of dread of the Unseen. He
+preached long sermons to his family, cautioned them against frivolity,
+forbade music, tabued games, and constantly spoke of the tongue as "the
+unruly member."
+
+He, of course, was not aware of it, but he was teaching his children by
+antithesis.
+
+"When I meet Macaulay I always imagine I am in Holland," once said Sydney
+Smith.
+
+"Why so!" asked a friend.
+
+"Because he is such a windmill," was the reply.
+
+But then we must remember that Sydney Smith never much liked
+Macaulay--they were too near alike. Whenever they met there was usually a
+wordy duel. "He is so overflowing with learning that it runs over and he
+stands in the slop," said Smith.
+
+Tom talked a great deal, he was fond of music and games, and was never so
+pleased as when engaging in some wild frolic with his sisters and any
+chance youngster that happened to stray in. His sister, Lady Trevelyan,
+has recorded that during those days of gloom which followed her father's
+failure, matters were made worse by the stricken man moping at home and
+tightening the domestic discipline.
+
+Tom never resented this, but on the instant the father would leave the
+house, it was the signal of a wild pandemonium of disorder. Tom would play
+he was a tiger, and crawling under the sofa would emit fearful growls that
+would cause the children to scream with pretended fright. Next they would
+play fire, and pile all the furniture in the center of the room, heaping
+books, clothing, rugs on top. Then Tom would "rescue" his mother if she
+appeared on the scene, and seizing her in his arms carry her to a place of
+safety, and then engage in a pillow-fight if she came back.
+
+This wild frolic was always a delight to the children, and Tom's
+homecoming was ever watched with eager anticipation. His visits shot the
+gloom through with sunshine, and when he went away even the neighbors'
+children were in tears. His health and enthusiasm infected everybody he
+met.
+
+In the course of looking after his father's business Macaulay unlearned
+most of the previous lessons of his life, and taught himself that to do
+for others and sink self was the manly method. But so lightly did he bear
+the burden that it is doubtful if he ever considered he was making any
+sacrifice.
+
+When his father died, Macaulay put entirely out of his mind the question
+of a household separate and apart from that of his mother and sisters. He
+devoted himself entirely to them; he wanted no other love than theirs.
+
+Unlike so many men of decided talent, the best and most loving side of
+Macaulay's nature was made manifest at home. His bubbling wit, brilliant
+conversation, and good-cheer were for his own fireside, first; and all
+that cutting, critical, scathing flood of invective was for the public
+that wore a rhinoceros-hide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Macaulay's article on Milton, published during his twenty-fifth year, in
+the "Edinburgh Review," is generally regarded as a most wonderful
+achievement. "Just think!" the critics cry--"the first article printed to
+be of a quality that electrified the world!" But we must remember that
+this youth had been getting ready to write that article for ten years.
+
+At college Macaulay shirked mathematics and philosophy, spending his time
+and attention on things he liked better. The only study in which he
+excelled was composition. Even in babyhood his command of language had
+been a wonder to the neighborhood in which he lived. Hannah More had for a
+time taken him under her immediate charge and prophesied great things of
+his literary faculty; and his mother was not slow in seconding the
+opinion.
+
+At Cambridge he already had more than a local reputation as a writer, and
+it was this reputation that secured him the commission to write for the
+"Review." The terrible Jeffrey was getting old and his regular staff had
+pretty nearly worked out their vein. Jeffrey wrote up to London (being
+south) to a friend telling him that the "Review" must have new blood, and
+imploring him to be on the lookout for some young man who had ideas in his
+ink-bottle.
+
+This friend knew the vigor and incisiveness of Macaulay's style, and as he
+read the letter from Jeffrey he exclaimed, "Macaulay!"
+
+It was a great compliment to a mere youth to be asked to contribute to the
+"Edinburgh Review." Edinburgh was a literary center, and you could not
+throw a stone in Princess Street, any more than you can in Tremont Street,
+Boston, without hitting a poet and caroming on two novel-writers and an
+essayist.
+
+Thomas Carlyle, five years older than Macaulay, and who was to live and
+write for twenty-five years after Macaulay's passing, had not yet struck
+twelve. London, too, like Edinburgh, was full of writing men, standing in
+the market-places of Grub Street with no man to hire.
+
+And yet Fate sought out Tom Macaulay, five feet four, who had plenty of
+other work on hand; and through that single "Essay on Milton" he sprang at
+once into the front rank of British writers--and at the same time there
+was thrust into his hands a bonus of fifty pounds for the work.
+
+As a study of a thing that made the reputation of a writer, the "Milton"
+is worth a careful reading. It is very sure that in America today there
+are a hundred men who could write just as good an article, but whether
+these men are Macaulays or not is quite another question. But it is not at
+all probable that a writer will ever again leap into place and power on so
+small a feat.
+
+Yet the article surely shows all the dash and vigor that mark Macaulay's
+literary style. There is personality in it; it reveals the red corpuscle;
+and tells without question that there is a man behind the guns. It was
+opportune; for literature at that particular time had reached a point
+where the sciolist was in full possession, and the dead husks of learning
+were being palmed off for the living thoughts of living men.
+
+Periodicity reveals itself in all Nature, and even in the world of thought
+there are years of famine and years of plenty. Dry rot gets into letters;
+things are ripe for a revolution; the tinder is dry, and along comes some
+Martin Luther and applies the torch.
+
+Macaulay simply expressed himself boldly, frankly, and without thought of
+favor--writing as he felt.
+
+The article made a great stir--the first edition of the magazine was
+quickly exhausted, and Macaulay awoke one morning, like Byron, and found
+himself famous. All there was about it, the "Milton" revealed a man, a
+strong, vivid-thinking, vigorous man, who, seeing things clearly, wrote
+from his heart. Art is born of feeling: it is heart, not head, that
+carries conviction home; but if you have both, as Macaulay had, it is no
+special disadvantage.
+
+From the publication of Macaulay's first article the "Review" took on a
+new lease of life. Prosperity came that way and for the rest of his life
+the "Review" was not long without contributions from his pen; and the
+numbers that contained his articles were always in great demand. Writers
+who possess a piercing insight into the heart of things, and who have the
+courage to express themselves, regardless of the views of others, are well
+feared by men in power.
+
+The man who knows, who can think, and who can write, holds a sword of
+Damocles over every politician.
+
+Governments are honeycombed with vulnerable spots; and to secure the ready
+writer on your side is the part of wisdom.
+
+Macaulay's article on Milton proved that there was a thinker loose, and
+that on occasion he could strike. The politicians began to court him, and
+we find him writing articles of a very Junius-like quality on contemporary
+issues.
+
+When he was twenty-six years old we are told he was "called to the Bar,"
+which means that he was given permission to practise law--the expression,
+"called," being a mild form of fiction that still obtains in England in
+legal matters, while in America the word applies only in theology.
+
+The practise of law, however, was not at all to the taste of Macaulay, and
+after a few short terms on the circuit he relinquished it entirely.
+
+In the meantime we find he read continually. Indeed, about the only bad
+habit this man had was reading. He read to excess--he read everything and
+read all the time. He read novels, history, poetry, and dived deeply into
+the dead languages, reading Plutarch's Lives twice in a year, and
+Euripides, Thucydides, Homer, Cicero, C�sar--all without special aim or
+end. Such a restless appetite for reading is apt to produce mental
+dyspepsia, and is not at all to be advised for average people; and the
+probabilities are that even in Macaulay's case his time might often have
+been better spent in meditation.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven appeared in the "Review" the "Essay on
+Mill." Like all of Macaulay's articles it reveals a wealth of learning and
+bristles with information on many themes. It often seems as if Macaulay
+took a subject simply to execute a learned war-dance around it. The
+article on Mill is a good example of merely touching the central theme and
+then going off into by-lanes of economics, history and civil government,
+with endless allusions to literature, poetry, art and philosophy. It is
+all intensely interesting, closely woven, often gorgeous in its coloring;
+and "style" runs like a thread of gold through it all.
+
+Shortly after this article appeared, Lord Lansdowne intimated to the young
+writer that he would like the honor of introducing him into public life,
+and if agreeable he could arrange for him to stand for Parliament in the
+vacant seat of Calne.
+
+Calne was one of those vest-pocket boroughs, owned by a single man, of
+which England has so many. The people think they choose their
+representative, but they do not, any more than we do in America. The
+government by the Boss and for the Boss is no new institution. Macaulay
+presented himself and was elected without opposition. And so before his
+thirtieth year he found himself on the flood-tide of national politics.
+
+Fifteen years before, if any one had expressed himself as plainly as
+Macaulay did on entering Parliament, he would have had a taste of jail,
+the hulks, or the pillory. So alert had the Government agents been for
+sedition that to stick one's tongue in his cheek at a member of the
+Cabinet was considered fully as bad as poaching, both being heinous
+offenses before God and man. Persecution was in the air and tyranny
+stalked abroad.
+
+But tyranny is self-limiting. If laws are too severe, there will surely
+come a time when they will not be observed, and history shows that the men
+who have introduced the guillotine ended their careers in its embrace.
+
+A change had come in England. The Tories were being jostled from their
+seats, and the Whigs were just coming into power. Liberalism was abroad in
+the land, and surely the time had come when a strong man might speak his
+mind.
+
+Macaulay was by nature a protester; he was "agin 'em"; and when he chose a
+subject for his maiden speech he was not only sincere, but exceeding
+politic. He guessed the lay of the land, and knew the direction of the
+wind. Heresy was popular.
+
+His address was in favor of an act removing the legal disabilities of
+Jews. It was a plea for liberty, and such was the vigor, power and vivid
+personality he threw into the address that he astonished the House and
+brought in the loungers from the cloakrooms.
+
+It was his only speech during the session. Efforts were made to get him on
+his feet again, but he was too wise to lend the battery of his mind to any
+commonplace theme. Only a subject such as might stir men's souls could
+tempt him.
+
+Wise Thomas Macaulay!
+
+He had made a reputation as a writer by his first article, and after his
+maiden speech all London chanted his praises as an orator. He practised
+self-restraint and knew better than to dilute his fame by holding argument
+with small men on little topics.
+
+His first speech at the next session of Parliament only served to fix his
+place as an orator more firmly. The immediate excuse was the "Reform
+Bill"; but the subject was liberty, and literature and history were called
+upon to furnish fire and supply the fuel for pyrotechnics. After its
+delivery the Speaker sent for Macaulay and personally congratulated him on
+making the most effective address to which he had listened for twenty-five
+years. The House of Commons, ever willing and anxious to appropriate a
+genius, being glutted by the dull and commonplace, sought in many ways
+from this time forward to do honor to Macaulay.
+
+The elder members grew reminiscent and said the good old times were coming
+back, and talked of Burke, Fox, Canning and Lord Plunket.
+
+Jeffrey, feeling a sense of guardianship over Macaulay, having launched
+him, as he rightfully claimed, was on hand to hear the speech, and made
+haste to embrace his ward, kissing him on both cheeks.
+
+Judging from this distance, there was nothing especially peculiar or
+distinctive about Macaulay's oratory, save his intense personality and
+vivid earnestness. An educated man, thoroughly alive on any one theme, is
+always interesting. And it was Macaulay's policy never to speak in public
+on a theme that did not bring out his entire armament, and yet with it all
+he was wise enough to cultivate a feeling of restraint and leave the
+impression that he had much more in reserve. So it was in his literary
+work: he never wrote when tired, nor attempted to express when he was not
+thoroughly alive to the subject in hand. He watched his mood. And thus in
+all Macaulay's "Essays" we feel the systole and diastole, and the hot,
+strong, impatient movement of ruddy life. There is "go" in every sentence.
+This is what constitutes his marvelous style--life, life, life!
+
+To very few men, indeed, is it given to be at once a brilliant talker, a
+strong writer and an effective orator. Clever talkers are seldom orators,
+and the great writers usually ebulliate only in the silence of their
+studies.
+
+The fame of Macaulay went abroad, and he became the social lion of
+London--he was courted, feted, petted--and in drawing-rooms when he
+attended, people stood on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of him, and remained
+breathless that they might hear him speak. No doubt the fact that he was a
+bachelor helped fan the social flame. His sister has recorded that every
+morning cards and letters of invitation were piled high on his
+breakfast-table.
+
+With it all, though, the handsome little man preserved his poise, and his
+modesty and becoming dignity in public never failed him.
+
+Such was Macaulay's popularity that, after having served two terms for the
+borough of Calne, the way was opened for him to stand for Leeds. Indeed,
+it is probable that a dozen districts would have been glad to elect him as
+their representative.
+
+After the passing of the "Reform Bill," to which his efforts had been so
+valuable, he was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Board of
+Control. This Board represented the King in the Government's relations
+with the East India Company. Macaulay, being the strongest man on the
+Board, was naturally chosen its secretary, just as the best man in a jury
+is chosen foreman. Here was a man who was not content to be a mere
+figurehead in office, trusting to paid clerks and underlings to secure him
+information and do the work--not he. Macaulay set himself the task of
+thoroughly acquainting himself with Indian affairs. He read every book of
+importance bearing on the subject; and studied the record and history of
+every man of consequence who was or had been connected with India. His
+intensely practical, businesslike mind sifted every detail, intuitively
+separating the relevant from the inconsequential, so that within a few
+months older heads were going to him for information, just as in a store
+or shop there is always one man who knows where things are, and in times
+of doubt he is the man who is sought out. To the many it is so much easier
+to ask some one else than to find out for themselves; and it also shifts
+the responsibility, and gives one a chance, if necessary, to prove a
+halibi--goodness gracious!
+
+One feature of the Reform Bill provided that one of the members of the
+Supreme Council of India should be chosen from among persons not connected
+in any way with the East India Company.
+
+This membership of the Supreme Council was a most important office, and
+carried with it the modest salary of ten thousand pounds a year--fifty
+thousand dollars--double what the President of the United States then
+received.
+
+Macaulay had had no hand in creating this office, and indeed, at the time
+the Reform Bill was being gotten into shape, his interest in Indian
+affairs had only been casual. But now he was recognized as the one man for
+the new office, and the office sought the man.
+
+Comparatively, Macaulay was a poor man, and the acceptance of the office
+for the term of six years would place him for the rest of his life beyond
+the reach of want. He could live royally and retire at forty years of age,
+with at least thirty thousand pounds to his credit. And yet he hesitated
+about accepting the office. His far-reaching eye told him that an exile
+for six years from England would place him out of touch with things at
+home, and that the greater office to which he aspired would be beyond his
+grasp. Besides that, the fact would always be brought up that his reward
+for well-doing had been enough, just as we have an unwritten law in
+America that there shall be no "third term."
+
+Macaulay saw all this and hesitated.
+
+He advised with Lord Lansdowne, and with his sister Hannah, his nearest
+and best friend; and if it had been possible his mother would have been
+given the casting vote; but two years before, she had passed out, yet not
+until she realized that her son was one of the foremost men in England.
+Hannah Macaulay (named in honor of Hannah More) advised the acceptance of
+the office, and upon his earnest request agreed to share her brother's
+exile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hannah Macaulay, gracious in every way, was the sister of her brother. Her
+mind was fit companion for his, and whenever he had a difficult problem on
+hand he would clarify it by explaining it to her; and be it known, you can
+never talk well to a dullard.
+
+And so Hannah the loyal resigned her position as governess, and brother
+and sister packed up and sailed away in the good ship "Asia" for India.
+Among their belongings was a modest library of three thousand volumes, all
+of which, a wit has said, were read twice through by Macaulay on the
+outward voyage. India was safely reached, and Macaulay set himself with
+his accustomed vigor to learning the language and informing himself as to
+the actual status of things, in order that he might provide for their
+betterment. On account of his grasp on legal matters he was elected Legal
+Adviser of the Supreme Council.
+
+Everything went well for a year, and then a terrible calamity overtook
+Macaulay.
+
+His sister was in love.
+
+This seems a good place to explain that Thomas Babington Macaulay himself
+was never in love. He had no time for that--his days were too full of
+books and practical business to ever waste any time on soft sentiment.
+
+But now he was confronted by a condition, not a theory: Lord Trevelyan was
+in love with his sister, and his sister was in love with Lord Trevelyan.
+Macaulay might have discovered the fact for himself and saved the lovers
+the embarrassment of making a confession, had he not been so terribly busy
+with his books, but Macaulay, like love, was blind--to some things.
+
+He heard the confession, and wept.
+
+Then he gave the pair his blessing--there was nothing else to do.
+
+It was not long after the wedding that he discovered he had found a
+brother instead of having lost a sister; and the sister being very happy,
+Macaulay was happy, too. He insisted that they move their effects into his
+house, and they did so, all living as one happy family. So the years
+passed; and when children came Macaulay's joy was complete. His heart went
+out to his sister's children as though they were his own. Occasionally the
+good mother complained that the Legal Adviser of the Supreme Council undid
+her discipline by indulging the youngsters in things that she had
+forbidden. To all of which the Legal Adviser would only laugh, and
+crawling under the settle would emit many tigerish growls, and the
+children would scream with terror and delight, and other children,
+brown-legged, wearing no clothes to speak of, would come trooping in, and
+together they would manage, after an awful struggle, to capture the tiger,
+and with some in front and others behind and two or three on his back,
+would carry him away captive.
+
+One of these children, grown to manhood, Sir George Trevelyan, was
+destined to write, with the help of his mother, the best life of Macaulay
+that has ever been written.
+
+The exile did not prove quite so severe as was anticipated; but when in
+Eighteen Hundred Thirty-eight it was necessary for Lord Trevelyan to
+return to England, Macaulay, sick at the thought of being left behind,
+resigned his office and sailed back with the family.
+
+We are told that officeholders seldom die and never resign. This may be
+true in the main; but surely there can not be found another instance in
+history of a man throwing up an office with a fifty-thousand-dollar salary
+attachment, simply because he could not bear the thought of being
+separated from his sister's children.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon after his return to England Macaulay was elected to a seat in
+Parliament from Edinburgh, a city that he had scarcely so much as visited,
+but to whose interest he had been loyal in that, up to this time,
+nine-tenths of all he had written had been printed there.
+
+To represent Edinburgh in the House of Commons was no small matter, and we
+know that Macaulay was not unmindful of the honor.
+
+His next preferment was his appointment as Secretary of War, and a seat in
+the Cabinet.
+
+During all these busy years he ever had on hand some piece of literary
+work. In fact, all of the "Essays" on which his literary fame so largely
+rests, were composed on "stolen time" in the lull seized from the official
+and social whirl in which he lived.
+
+If you want a piece of work well and thoroughly done, pick a busy man. The
+man of leisure postpones and procrastinates, and is ever making
+preparations and "getting things in shape"; but the ability to focus on a
+thing and do it is the talent of the man seemingly o'erwhelmed with work.
+Women in point lace and diamonds, club habitues and "remittance
+men"--those with all the time there is--can never be entrusted to carry
+the message to Gomez.
+
+Pin your faith to the busy person.
+
+Macaulay's first and only political rebuff came with his defeat the second
+time he stood for election in Edinburgh. His conscientious opposition to
+a measure in which the Scottish people were especially interested caused
+the tide to turn against him.
+
+No doubt, though, the failure of re-election was a good thing for
+Macaulay--and for the world. He at once began serious work on his "History
+of England"--that project which had been in his head and heart for a score
+of years. All of his literary labors so far had been merely ephemeral--at
+least he so regarded them. The Essays he regarded only as so many
+newspaper articles, not worth the collecting. It was America that first
+guessed their true value as literature, and it was not until the American
+editions were pouring into England that Macaulay allowed his scattered
+work to be collected, corrected and put into authorized book form.
+
+This history was to be the thesis that would admit his name to the Roster
+of Fame. But, alas, the history was destined to be only a fragment. It
+covers scarce fifteen years, and is like that other splendid fragment, the
+work of Henry Thomas Buckle, a preface; Buckle's preface is the greatest
+ever penned, with its author dead at forty. The projected work of both of
+these men was too great for any one man to accomplish in a single
+lifetime. A hundred years of unremitting toil could not have completed
+Macaulay's task.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine he was elected Lord Rector of the
+University of Glasgow; and at his speech of installation he took occasion
+to take formal leave of political life. He would devote the remainder of
+his days to literature and abstract thought.
+
+Men are continually "retiring" from business and active life, all unaware
+of the grim humor of the proceedings. It was not so very long before
+Edinburgh, in an endeavor to undo the slight she had put upon Macaulay,
+again elected him to Parliament, without his being near, or raising his
+hand either for or against the measure.
+
+And again his voice was heard in the House of Commons.
+
+Macaulay was a modest man, and yet he knew his power.
+
+The Premiership dangled just beyond his reach. Many claim that if he had
+not gone to India he would have moved by strong, steady strides straight
+to the highest office that England could bestow. And others aver that when
+he was created a Peer in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven it was a move toward
+the Premiership, and that if his health had not failed he would surely
+have won the goal. But how futile it is to speculate on what might have
+happened had not this or the other occurred!
+
+Yet certainly the daring caution of Macaulay's mind, his dignity and
+luring presence, his patience, self-command, good temper, and all those
+manifold graces of his heart, would have made him an almost ideal Premier,
+one who might rank with Palmerston, Peel, Disraeli or Gladstone.
+
+But the highest office was not for him.
+
+We die by heart-beats; and Macaulay at fifty-nine had lived as much as
+most strong men do if they exist a hundred years.
+
+It is easy to show where Lord Macaulay could have been greater. His life
+lies open to us as the ether. We complain because he did not read less and
+meditate more; we sigh at his lack of religion and mention the fact that
+he never loved a woman, seemingly waiving tautology and the fact that men
+who do not love are never religious.
+
+We forget that it takes a good many men to make the Ideal Man.
+
+If Macaulay had been different he would have been some one else. He was a
+brave, tender-hearted man who lived one day at a time, packing the moments
+with good-cheer, good work and an earnest wish to do better tomorrow than
+he had done today. That Nature occasionally produces such a man should be
+a cause for gratitude in the hearts of all the rest of us little folk who
+jig, mince, mouth, amble, run, peek about and criticize our betters.
+
+
+
+
+LORD BYRON
+
+    I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
+      A palace and a prison on each hand:
+    I saw from out the wave her structures rise
+      As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
+    A thousand years, their cloudy wings expand
+      Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
+    O'er the far times, when many a subject land
+      Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,
+    Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
+                                                 --_Childe Harold_
+
+[Illustration: LORD BYRON]
+
+
+Man! I wonder what a man really is! Starting from a single cell, this
+seized upon by another, and out of the Eternal comes a particle of the
+Divine Energy that makes these cells its home. Growth follows, cell is
+added to cell, and there develops a man--a man whose body, two-thirds
+water, can be emptied by a single dagger-thrust and the spirit given back
+to its Maker.
+
+This being, which we call man, does not last long.
+
+Fifty-seven generations have come and gone since C�sar trod the Roman
+Forum. The pillars against which he often leaned still stand, the
+thresholds over which he passed are there, the pavements ring beneath your
+tread as they once rang beneath his. Three generations and more have come
+and gone since Napoleon trod the streets of Toulon contemplating suicide.
+
+Babes in arms were carried by fond mothers to see Lincoln, the candidate
+for President. These babes have grown into men, are grandfathers possibly,
+with whitened hair, furrowed faces, looking calmly forward to the end,
+having tasted all that life holds in store for them.
+
+And yet Lincoln lived but yesterday! You can reach back into the past and
+grasp his hand, and look into his sad and weary eyes.
+
+A man! weighted with the sins of his parents, grandparents,
+great-grandparents, who fade off into dim spectral shapes in the dark and
+dreamlike past; no word of choice has he in the selection of his father
+and mother, no voice in the choosing of environment--brought into life
+without his consent and thrust out of it against his will--battling,
+striving, hoping, cursing, waiting, loving, praying; burned by fever, torn
+by passion, checked by fear, reaching for friendship, longing for
+sympathy, clutching--nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doctors and priests attend us at both ends of the route. We can not be
+born, neither can we die, without consulting the tax-collector, and
+interviewing those who look after us for a consideration.
+
+The doctor who sought to assist George Gordon Byron into the world
+dislocated the bones of his left foot in the operation. Forsooth, this
+baby would not be born as others---he selected a way of his own and paid
+the penalty. "It is a malformation--take these powders--I'll be back
+tomorrow," quoth the busy doctor.
+
+The autopsy proved it was not a malformation, but a displacement.
+
+"Doctor, now please tell me just what is the matter with me," once asked
+an anxious patient.
+
+"Tut, tut!" replied the absent-minded physician; "can't you wait? The
+post-mortem will reveal all that."
+
+The critics did not wait for Byron's death--it was vivisection. And after
+his death the dissection was zealously continued. Byron's life lies open
+to us in many books. Scarcely a month in the entire life of the man is
+unaccounted for, and if a hiatus of a few weeks is found, the men of
+imagination fill in and make him a pirate on the Mediterranean coast, or
+give him a seraglio in some gloomy old Moorish palace in Venice.
+
+In his lifetime Byron was overpraised and overcensured, and since his
+death the dust has been allowed to gather over his matchless books.
+Between the two extremes lies the truth; and the true Byron is just now
+being discovered. Byron in literature will not die. He is the brightest
+comet that has darted into our ken since Shakespeare's time; and as comets
+have no orbit, but are vagrants of the heavens, so was he. Tragedy was in
+his train, and his destiny was disgrace and death.
+
+And yet as we review the life of this man, "the lame brat" of his mother,
+as this mother called him, and behold the whirlwind of passion that swept
+him on, the fulsome praise, the shrill outcry of hypocritical prudes and
+pedants, the torrent of abuse, and the piling up of sins that he never
+committed (and God knows he committed enough!); and yet behold his craving
+for tenderness, the reaching out for truth, and hear his earnest and
+unquenchable prayer to be understood and loved, we blot out the record of
+his sins with our tears. To know the life of Byron and not be moved to
+profoundest pity marks one as alien to his kind.
+
+"God is on the side of the most sensitive," said Thoreau. And did there
+ever tread the earth a man more sensitive than Byron?--such capacity for
+suffering, such exaltation, such heights, such depths! Music made him
+tremble and weep, and in the presence of kindness he was powerless. He
+lived life to its fullest, and paid the penalty with shortened years. He
+expressed himself without reserve--being emancipated from superstition and
+precedent. And the man who is not dominated by the fetish of custom is
+marked for contumely by the many. Custom makes law, and the one who
+violates custom is "bad." Yet all respectable people are not good; and all
+good people are not respectable. If you do not know this you are ignorant
+of life.
+
+So imagine this handsome, headstrong, restless young man, in whose lexicon
+there was no such word as prudence, with time and money at his command,
+defying the state, society and religion, and listen to the anathemas that
+fill the air at mention of his name.
+
+That a world full of such men would not be at all desirable is stern
+truth; but that one such man lived is a cause for congratulation. His life
+holds for us both warning and example.
+
+Beneath the strain of the stuff and the onward swirl of his verse we see
+that this man stood for truth and justice as against hypocrisy and
+oppression. Folly and freedom are better far than smugness and
+persecution. Byron stood for the rights of the individual, for the right
+of free speech and free thought: and he stood for political and physical
+freedom, long before abolition societies became popular. He sided with the
+people; his heart went out to the oppressed; and all of his fruitless
+gropings and stumblings were a reaching out for tenderness and truth, for
+life and love--for the Ideal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The father of Byron, the poet, was a captain in the army--a man of small
+mental ability, whose recklessness won him the sobriquet of "Mad Jack
+Byron." When twenty-three years of age he eloped to France with the
+Baroness Conyers, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen. Happiness, in a
+foreign country, for a woman who has exchanged one love for another is
+outside the pale of possibilities. Love is much--but love is not all. Life
+is too short to break family-ties and adjust one's self to a new language
+and a new country. The change means death.
+
+Two years and the woman died, leaving a daughter, Augusta by name,
+afterward Mrs. Augusta Leigh.
+
+Back to England went Mad Jack Byron, broken-hearted, bearing in his arms
+the baby girl. Kind kinsmen, ready to forgive, cared for the child. Mad
+Jack didn't remain broken-hearted long--what would you expect from a man?
+He sought sympathy among several discreet dames, and in two years we find
+him safely and legally married to Catherine Gordon. Scotch, and heiress to
+twenty-five thousand pounds. On the occasion of the wedding, Jack informed
+a friend that the fact of the lady's being Scotch was forgiven in view of
+the dowry. Most of this fortune went into a rat-hole to help pay the debts
+of the Mad Jack.
+
+One child was born to this ill-assorted pair--a boy who was destined to
+write his name large on history's page. But such a pedigree! No wonder
+the youth once wrote to Augusta, his half-sister, expressing a covetous
+appreciation of her parentage, even with its bar sinister. In passing, it
+is well to note the sunshine of this love of brother and sister, which
+continued during life--confidential, earnest, tender, frank. In their best
+moods they were both lofty souls, and their mutuality was cemented in a
+contempt for the man who was their sire. This fine brotherly and sisterly
+affection comes close to us when we remember that it was our own Harriet
+Beecher Stowe, with sympathies worn to the quick through much brooding
+over the wrongs of a race in bondage, who rushed into print with a
+scandalous accusation concerning this same sweet affection of brother for
+sister. The charge was brought on no better foundation than some old-woman
+gossip held over the hyson when it was red, and moved itself aright--all
+vouchsafed to Mrs. Stowe by the widow of Byron in Eighteen Hundred
+Fifty-six. If a woman as good at heart as Harriet Beecher Stowe was
+deceived, why should we blame humanity for biting at a hook that is not
+baited?
+
+No sane dentist will administer an anesthetic to a woman, without a
+witness: not that women as a class are dangerous, but because some women
+can not be trusted to distinguish between their dreams and the facts.
+Every practising lawyer of insight also knows that a wronged woman's
+reasons are plentiful as blackberries, and must always be taken with
+large pinches of the Syracuse product.
+
+Mad Jack followed his regiment here and there, dodging his creditors, and
+finally in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one induced his wife to borrow a
+hundred pounds for him, with which he started to Paris intent on
+retrieving fortune with pasteboard.
+
+He died on the way, and the money was used to bury him. The lame boy was
+then three years old, but a few dark memories, no doubt retouched by
+hearsay, were retained by him of Mad Jack, who in his most sober moments
+never guessed that he would be known to the ages as the father of the
+greatest poet of his time.
+
+Mad Jack was neither literary nor psychic.
+
+The widowed mother remained at Aberdeen with her boy, living on the
+hundred and fifty pounds a year that had been settled on her in a way that
+she could not squander the principal--all the rest had gone.
+
+The child was shy, sensitive, proud and headstrong.
+
+The mother used to reprove him by throwing things at him, and by chasing
+him with the tongs. At other times she diverted herself by imitating his
+limp. And yet again she would smother him with caresses, beseech his
+pardon for abusing him, and praise the beauty of his matchless eyes.
+
+Children are usually better judges of grown-ups than grown-ups are of
+children. This boy at five years of age had estimated his mother's
+character correctly. He knew that she was not his steadfast friend, and
+that she was unworthy of his confidence and whole heart's love. He grew
+moody, secretive, wilful. Once, being wrongly accused and punished, he
+seized a knife from the table and was about to apply it to his throat when
+he was disarmed. The child longed for tenderness and love, and being
+denied these, was already taking on that proud and haughty temper which
+was to serve as a mask to hide the tenderness of his nature.
+
+We are told that seven brothers Byron fought at Edgehill, but when we get
+down to the time of Mad Jack there was danger of the name being snuffed
+out entirely. Nature is not anxious to perpetuate the idle and dissipated.
+
+When little George Gordon was ten years old, his mother one day ran to
+him, seized him in her arms, wept and laughed, then laughed and wept,
+kissing him violently, addressing him as "My Lord!"
+
+His great-uncle, William, Lord Byron of Rochdale and Newstead Abbey, had
+died, and the big-eyed, lame boy was the nearest heir--in fact, the only
+living male who bore the family-name. The next day at school, when the
+master called the roll and mentioned his name with the prefix "Dominus,"
+the lad did not reply "Adsum"--he only stood up, gazed helplessly at the
+teacher, and burst into tears.
+
+Even at this time he had given promise of the quality of his nature, by
+his firm affection for Mary Duff, his cousin. All the intensity of his
+childish nature was centered in this young woman, several years his
+senior. To call it a passion would be too much, but this child, denied of
+love at home, clung to Mary Duff, to whom he went in confession with all
+his childish tales of woe. When his mother proposed to leave Aberdeen, now
+that fortune had smiled, the anguish of the boy at thought of leaving his
+"first love" nearly caused him a fit of sickness.
+
+And all this wealth of love was met with jeers and loud laughter, save by
+Mary Duff. The vibrating sensitiveness of such a child, with such a
+mother, must have caused a misery we can only guess.
+
+"Your mother is a fool," said a boy to Byron at college some years later.
+
+"I know it," was the melancholy answer, as the brown eyes filled with
+tears.
+
+When money came, Mrs. Byron's first move was to take the lad to Nottingham
+and place him in charge of a surgical quack, who proposed, for a price, to
+make the lame foot just as good as the other, if not better. To this
+effect wooden clamps were placed on the foot and screwed down by
+thumbscrews, causing a torture that would have been unbearable to many.
+
+No benefit was experienced from the treatment, although it was continued
+by another physician at London soon after. A schoolfellow of Byron's
+visited him in his room when his foot was encased in a wooden compress.
+The visitor noted the white face, and the beads of anguish on the boy's
+forehead, and at last said, "I know you are suffering awfully!"
+
+"You will never hear me say so," was the grim reply.
+
+The emphasis placed on Byron's lameness has been altogether overdone. In
+fact, as he grew to manhood, it was nothing more than a stiffness that
+would never have been noticed in a drawing-room. We have this on the
+testimony of the Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington and others. Byron
+himself made the mistake of referring to it several times in his verse,
+and doubtless all the torture he had suffered through ill-considered
+medical counsel, and his mother's taunts, caused the matter to take a
+place in his sensitive mind quite out of its due proportion. Sir Walter
+Scott was lame, too, but whoever heard of his discussing it, either by
+word of mouth or in print?
+
+Of Byron's life at Harrow we have many tales as to his defending his
+juniors, volunteering to take punishment for them--and of lessons
+unlearned. He could not be driven nor forced, and pedagogics a hundred
+years ago, it seemed, was largely a science of coercion. Mary Gray, a
+nurse and early teacher of Byron's, has told us that kindness was the
+unfailing touchstone with this boy; no other plan would work. But Harrow
+knew nothing of Froebel methods, and does not yet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Byron's first genuine love-affair occurred when he was sixteen. The object
+of this affection, as all the world knows, was Miss Chaworth, whose estate
+adjoined Newstead. The lady was two years older than Byron, and being of a
+lively nature found a pleasant diversion in leading the youth a merry
+chase. So severe was his attack that he was alternately oppressed by
+chills of fear and fevers of ecstasy. He lost appetite, and the family
+began to fear for his sanity. Such a love must find expression some way,
+and so the daily stealthy notes to the young woman took the form of rhyme.
+The lovesick youth was revealing considerable facility in this way. It
+pleased him, and did the buxom young woman no harm.
+
+Beyond the mere prettiness and pinky whiteness of a healthy country lass,
+Miss Chaworth evidently had no beauties of character, save those conjured
+forth from the inner consciousness of the poet--a not wholly original
+condition.
+
+Byron loved the Ideal. And this love-affair with Miss Chaworth is only
+valuable as showing the evolution of imagination in the poet. The woman
+hadn't the slightest idea that she was giving wings to a soul--to her the
+affair was simply funny.
+
+The fact that Byron's great-uncle, from whom he had inherited his title,
+had killed the grandfather of Miss Chaworth in a duel, lent a romantic
+tinge to the matter--the boy was doing a sort of penance, and in one of
+his poems hints at the undoing of the sin of his kinsman by the lifelong
+devotion that he will bestow. This calling up the past, and incautious
+revealing of the fact that the ancestor Chaworth could not hold his own
+with a Byron, but allowed himself to be run through the body by the Byron
+cold steel, was not pleasing to Miss Chaworth.
+
+"Don't imagine I am such a fool as to love that lame boy," cried Miss
+Chaworth to her maid one day.
+
+Unluckily, "the lame boy" was in the next room and heard the remark.
+
+He rushed from the house with a something gripping at his heart.
+Straightway he would go back to Harrow, which he had left in wrath only a
+few months before.
+
+So he went to Harrow.
+
+When he next returned home, his mother met him with the remark, "I have
+news for you; get out your handkerchief--Miss Chaworth is married."
+
+In just another year Byron was home again, and was invited to dine with
+the Chaworths. He accepted the invitation, and when he was introduced to a
+baby girl, a month old, the child of his old sweetheart, his emotions got
+the better of him and he had to leave the room. And to ease his woe he
+indited a poem to the baby.
+
+Miss Chaworth was not happy with her fox-hunting squire. Her mind became
+clouded, and after some years she passed out, in poverty and alone. And if
+there ever came to her mind any appreciation of the greatness of the man
+who had given her name immortality, we do not know it.
+
+The years from Eighteen Hundred Five to Eighteen Hundred Eight Byron spent
+at Cambridge. The arts in which he perfected himself there were shooting,
+swimming, fencing, drinking and gambling.
+
+During vacations, and off and on, he lived at Southwell, a village halfway
+between Mansfield and Newark. Southwell was sleepy, gossipy, dull--and
+exerted a wholesome restraint on our restless youth. It was simply a
+question of economy that took Byron and his mother to Southwell. The
+run-down estate of Newstead was yielding a meager income, but at Southwell
+one could be shabby and yet respectable.
+
+At Southwell Byron met John Pigot and his sister--cultured people of a
+refined and quiet sort. Byron took to them at once, and they liked him.
+
+In a country town the person who thinks, instinctively hunts out the other
+man who thinks--granting the somewhat daring hypothesis that there are two
+of them. So Byron and the Pigots often met for walks and talks, and on
+such occasions the poet would read to his friends the scraps of verse he
+had written. He had gotten into the habit--he wrote whenever his pulse ran
+up above eighty--he wrote because he could not help it; and he read his
+productions to his friends for the same reason. Every one who writes longs
+to read his work to some sympathetic soul. A thought is not ours until we
+repeat it to another, and this crying need of expression marks every
+poetic soul. All art is born of feeling, high, intense, holy feeling, and
+the creative faculty is largely a matter of temperature. We feel, and not
+to impart our feelings is stagnation--death. People who do not feel deeply
+never have anything to impart, either to individuals or to the world. They
+have no message.
+
+The young man, fresh from the dusty, musty lectures of Cambridge, and out
+of the reach of his boisterous and carousing companions, grasped at the
+gentle, refined and sympathetic friendship of this brother and sister. The
+trinity would walk off across the fields and recline on the soft turf
+under a great spreading tree, reading aloud by turn from some good book.
+Such meetings always ended by Byron's reading to his friends any chance
+rhymes he had written since they last met.
+
+John Morley dates the birth of Byron's poetic genius from his meeting with
+Miss Chaworth, while Taine names Southwell as the pivotal point. Probably
+both are right.
+
+But this we know, that it was the Pigots who induced Byron to collect his
+rhymes and have them printed. This was done at the neighboring town of
+Newark, when Byron was nineteen years old. Possibly you have a few of
+these thin, poorly printed, crudely bound little books entitled
+"Juvenilia" around in the garret somewhere, and, if so, it might be well
+enough to take care of them. Quaritch says they are worth a hundred
+pounds apiece, although in the poet's lifetime they were dear at sixpence.
+
+Byron sent copies to all the leading literary men whom he knew, including
+Mackenzie, the man of feeling. Mackenzie replied, praising the work, and
+so did several others. All writers of note are favored with many such
+juvenilia, and usually there is a gracious electrotype reply. A doubt
+exists as to whether Mackenzie ever read Byron's book, but we know that
+his letter of stock platitude fired Byron to do still better. It is said
+that no flattery is too fulsome for a pretty woman--she inwardly
+congratulates the man on his subtle insight in discovering excellences
+that she hardly knew existed. This may be so and may not, but the logic
+holds when applied to fledgling authors. When it comes to praise he is
+quite willing to take your word for it.
+
+Byron's spirits arose to an ecstacy--he would be a poet.
+
+About this time we find Hydra, as Byron pleasantly called his mother,
+rushing to the village apothecary and warning that worthy not to sell
+poison to the poet; and a few moments after her leaving, the astonished
+apothecary was visited by the poet, who begged that no poison should be
+sold to his mother. Each thought the other was going to turn Lucretia
+Borgia, or play the last act of Romeo and Juliet, at least.
+
+There were wild bursts of rage on the mother's part, stubborn mockery on
+the other, followed up once by a poker flung with almost fatal precision
+at the poet's curly head.
+
+Upon this he took flight to London and Hydra followed, repentant and
+lacrimose. A truce was patched up; they agreed to disagree, and coldly
+shaking hands withdrew in opposite directions.
+
+After this, when the poet wrote he addressed his mother as "Dear Madam,"
+and confined himself to business matters. Only rarely was there any flash
+in his letters, as when he said, "Dear Mother--you know you are a vixen,
+but save me some champagne." If Byron's mother had been of the stuff of
+which most mothers are made, we would have found these two safely settled
+at Newstead, making the best of their battered fortune, with the son in
+time marrying some neighbor lass, and slipping into the place of a
+respectable English gentleman, a worthy member of the House of Lords.
+
+But the boy, now grown twenty, had no home, and either was supplied too
+much money or else too little. He wasted his substance in London,
+economized in Southwell, sponged on friends, and borrowed of Scrope Davis
+at Cambridge. When a remittance again came, he explored the greenrooms,
+took lessons from Professor Johnson, the pugilist (referred to as "my
+corporeal pastor"), drank whole companies under the table, bought a tame
+bear and a wolf to guard the entrance of Newstead, and roamed the country
+as a gipsy, in company with a girl dressed in boy's clothes, thus
+supplying Richard Le Gallienne an interesting chapter in his "Quest of the
+Golden Girl."
+
+But all this time his brain was active, and another book of poetry had
+been printed, entitled "Hours of Idleness." This book was gotten out, at
+his own expense, by the same country printer as the first.
+
+Surely the verse must have had merit, or why should Lord Brougham, in the
+great "Edinburgh Review," go after it with a slashing, crashing, damning
+criticism?
+
+When Byron read the review, a bystander has told us he turned red, then
+livid green. He straightway ordered and drank two bottles of claret, said
+nothing, but looked like a man who had sent a challenge.
+
+A challenge! that was exactly what Byron proposed. He would fight Jeffrey
+first, and then take up in turn every man who had ever contributed to the
+magazine--he would kill them all. And to that end he called for his
+pistols and went out to practise firing at ten paces. Wiser counsel
+prevailed, and he decided to attack the enemy in their own citadel, and
+with their own weapons. He ordered ink, and began "English Bards and
+Scotch Reviewers."
+
+It took time to get this enormous siege-gun into position and find the
+range. Finally, it was loaded with more kinds of missiles, in the way of
+what Augustine Birrell has called literary stinkpots, than were ever
+before rammed home in a single charge.
+
+It was an audacious move--to reverse the initiative and go after a whole
+race of critics, scribblers and reviewers, who had been badgering honest
+folks, and blow 'em into kingdom come.
+
+But at the last moment Byron's heart failed him, his wrath gave way to
+caution, and "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" appeared anonymously.
+
+The edition was soon exhausted--the shot had at least raised a mighty
+dust.
+
+The author got his nerve back, fathered the book, made corrections; and
+this edition, too, sold with a rush. Byron returned to Newstead, invited a
+score of his Cambridge cronies, who came down, entering the mansion
+between the bear and the wolf, and were received with salvos of
+pistol-shots. Here they played games over the spacious grounds, wrestled,
+boxed, swam, and at night feasted and drank deep damnation out of a skull
+to all Scotch reviewers.
+
+Probably the acme of this depravity was reached when the young gentlemen
+began shooting the pendants off the chandelier; then the servants hastily
+decamped and left the rogues to do their own cooking.
+
+This brought them to their senses, sanity came back, and the company
+disbanded. Then the servants, who had watched the orgies from afar,
+returned and found a week's pile of dishes unwashed and a horse stabled in
+the library.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then Byron had reached the mature age of twenty-one, he was formally
+admitted to the House of Lords as a Peer of the realm. His titles and
+pedigree were so closely scanned on this occasion that he grew quite out
+of conceit with the noble company, and was seriously thinking of launching
+a dunciad in their direction. His good nature was especially ruffled by
+Lord Carlisle, his guardian, who refused to stand as his legal sponsor.
+The chief cause of the old Lord's prejudice against the young one lay in
+the fact that the young 'un had ridiculed the old 'un's literary
+pretensions.
+
+They were rivals in letters, with a very beautiful, natural and mutual
+disdain for each other.
+
+Lord Byron was not welcomed into the House of Lords: he simply pushed in
+the door because he had a right to. He thirsted for approbation, for
+distinction, for notoriety. His sensitive soul hung upon newspaper
+clippings with feverish expectations; and about all the attention he
+received was in the line of being damned by faint praise, or smothered
+with silence. Patriotism, as far as England was concerned, was not a part
+of Byron's composition.
+
+When all Great Britain was execrating Napoleon, picturing him as a devil
+with horns and hoofs, Byron looked upon him as the world's hero.
+
+In this frame of mind he went forth and borrowed a goodly sum, and started
+cut to view the world. He was accompanied by his friend Hobhouse, and his
+valet, Fletcher.
+
+It was a two years' trip, this jolly trio made--down along the coast of
+France, Spain, through the Straits of Gibraltar, lingering in queer old
+cities, mousing over historic spots, alternately living like princes or
+vagabonds. They frolicked, drank, made love to married women, courted
+maidens, fought, feasted and did all the foolish things that sophomores
+usually do when they have money and opportunity.
+
+These months of travel supplied Byron enough in way of suggestion to keep
+him writing many moons. His active imagination seized upon everything
+picturesque, peculiar, romantic, sentimental or tragic, and stored it up
+in those wondrous brain-cells, to be used when the time was ripe.
+
+The disciples of Munchausen, who delight in showing Byron's verse to be
+only biography, have found a rich field in that two years' travel. One man
+really did a brilliant thing--in three volumes--recounting the conquering
+march of the poet, whom he depicts as a combination of Don Juan and Rob
+Roy.
+
+The probabilities are that the real facts, not illumined by fancy, would
+be a tale with which to conjure sleep. Foreign travel is hard work. It
+constitutes the final test of friendship, and to make the tour of Europe
+with a man and not hate him marks one or both of the parties as seraphic
+in quality. The best of travel is in looking back upon it from the dreamy
+quiet and rest of home--laughing at the things that once rasped your
+nerves, and enjoying, through recollection, the scenes you only glanced
+at wearily.
+
+Two instances of that trip--when Hobhouse threatened to desert the party
+and was dared to do so, and Byron slapped Fletcher's face and got himself
+well kicked in return--will suffice to show how Byron had the faculty of
+seizing trivial incidents, and by lifting them up and separating them from
+the mass, made them live as Art.
+
+At Athens the trio made a sudden resolve to be respectable, and practise
+economy. To this end they hired rooms of a worthy widow, who accommodated
+travelers with a transient home for a moderate stipend. This widow had
+three daughters: the eldest, Theresa by name, lives in letters as the Maid
+of Athens, and the glory that came to her was achieved without any special
+danger to either her heart or the poet's. The young woman, we know,
+assisted in the household affairs; and probably often dusted the mantel in
+the poet's room while he sat smoking with one foot on the table, making
+irrelevant remarks to her about this or that.
+
+Suddenly he wrote a poem, "Maid of Athens, ere we part, give, O give me
+back my heart." * * *
+
+With the genuine literary thrift that marked all of Byron's career, he
+preserved a copy of the lines, and some years after recast them, touched
+them up a bit, included the stuff in a book--and there you are.
+
+The other incident is that of Hobhouse recording in his journal the bare
+and barren fact that outside the city wall in Persia they once saw two
+dogs gnawing a human body. Byron saw the sight, but made no mention of it
+at the time. He waited, the scene sealed up in his brain-cells. Years
+after he wrote thus:
+
+    "And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall,
+    Hold o'er the dead their carnival;
+    Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb,
+    They were too busy to bark at him.
+    From a Tartar's skull they stripped the flesh,
+    As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;
+    And their white tusks crunched on the whiter skull,
+    As it slipped through their jaws when the edge grew dull."
+
+And this only proves that Hobhouse was not a poet and Byron was. The poet
+is never content to state the mere facts--facts are only valuable as
+suggestions for poetry.
+
+Travel often excites the spirit to the point of expression. Good travelers
+carry pads and pencils. Byron reached England with fragments of marbles,
+skulls, pictures, shells, spears, guns, curios beyond count, and many
+manuscripts in process.
+
+Upon arriving on the English coast the first news that reached him was
+that his mother had just died. He hastened to Newstead and reached there
+in time to attend the funeral, but refrained from following the cortege
+to the grave because he could not master his emotions. Their quarrels were
+at last ended.
+
+A diversion to his feelings came soon after, in the way of a blunt letter
+from Tom Moore demanding if Lord Byron was the author of "English Bards
+and Scotch Reviewers."
+
+Byron replied very stiffly that he was, but he really had intended no
+insult to Mr. Moore, with whom he had not the honor of being acquainted.
+Furthermore, if Mr. Moore felt himself aggrieved, why, the author of
+"English Bards" was at his service to supply him such satisfaction as he
+required.
+
+The irate Irishman accepted "the apology," a genial reply followed, and
+soon the poets met at the house of a friend, and there began that lifelong
+friendship, with the result that Moore wrote Byron's "Life" and used much
+needless whitewash.
+
+While abroad Byron had gotten into shape for publication one piece of
+manuscript. This was "Hints From Horace," and the matter was placed in the
+hands of Mr. Dallas, his businessman, very soon after his arrival. Dallas
+read the poem and did not like it.
+
+"Haven't you anything else?" asked Dallas.
+
+"Oh, nothing but a few stanzas of Spenserian stuff," was the answer.
+
+Dallas asked to see it, and there were placed in his hands rough drafts of
+the first and second cantos of "Childe Harold." This time Dallas was
+better suited, and to corroborate his judgment the matter was submitted
+to Murray, the publisher.
+
+Murray thought the matter had more or less merit, and arrangements were at
+once made for its publication. And so it came out, hammered into shape
+while in the printer's hands.
+
+"Childe Harold" was an instantaneous, brilliant success--a success beyond
+the publisher's or author's expectations. The book ran through seven
+editions in four weeks, and Lord Byron "became famous in a night."
+
+London society became Byron-mad. The poet was feted, courted, petted.
+
+He indulged in much innocent and costly dissipation, and some not so
+innocent.
+
+Finally all this began to pall upon him. When twenty-six we find him
+making a bold stand for reform: he would get married and live a staid,
+sober, respectable life. His finances were reduced--all the money he had
+made out of his books had been given away, prompted by a foolish whim that
+no man should take pay for the product of his mind.
+
+Now he would marry and "settle down"; and to marry a woman with an income
+would be no special disadvantage. To sell one's thoughts was abhorrent to
+the young man, but to marry for money was quite another thing. Morality
+depends upon your point of view.
+
+The paradox of things found expression when Byron the impressionable,
+Byron the irresistible, sat himself down and after chewing the end of his
+penholder, wrote a letter to Miss Milbanke, with whom he was only slightly
+acquainted, proposing marriage. The lady very properly declined. To be
+courted with a fresh-nibbed pen, and paper cut sonnet-size, instead of by
+a live man, deserves rebuke. Men who propose by mail to a woman in the
+next town are either insincere, self-deceived, or else are of the sort
+whose pulse never goes above sixty-five, and therefore should be avoided.
+
+Byron was both insincere and self-deceived. He had grown to distrust the
+emotions of his heart, and so selected a wife with his head. He chose a
+woman with income, one who was strong, cool-headed, safe and sensible.
+Miss Milbanke was the antithesis of his mother.
+
+The lady declined--but that is nothing.
+
+They were married within a year.
+
+In another year the wife left her husband and went back to her mother,
+carrying in her arms a girl baby, only a few weeks old.
+
+She never returned to her husband.
+
+What the trouble was no one ever knew, although the gossips named a
+hundred and one reasons--running from drunkenness to homicide. But Byron,
+the world now knows, was no drunkard--he was at times convivial, but he
+had no fixed taste for strong drink. He was, however, peevish, impulsive,
+impetuous and often very unreasonable.
+
+Byron, be it said to his credit, brought no recriminating charges against
+his wife. He only said their differences were inexplicable and
+unexplainable.
+
+The simple facts were that they breathed a different atmosphere--their
+heads were in a different stratum. His normal pulse was eighty; hers,
+sixty-five.
+
+What do you think of a spiritual companionship where the wife demands,
+"How much longer are you going to follow this foolish habit of writing
+verses?"
+
+They did not understand each other. Byron uttered words that no man should
+voice to a woman, and his outbursts were met with a forced calmness that
+was exasperating. The lady sat down, yawned wearily, and when there came a
+lull in the gentleman's verbal pyrotechnics, she would ask him if he had
+anything more to say.
+
+One day she varied the program by packing up her effects and leaving him.
+
+Of course, it is easy to say that had this woman been wise she would have
+stood the childish outbursts and endured the peevish tantrums, for the
+sake of the hours of tenderness and love that were sure to follow. By
+right treatment he would have been on his knees, begging forgiveness and
+crying it out with his head in her lap very shortly. But all this implies
+a woman of unusual power--extraordinary patience. And this woman was
+simply human. She left, and then in order to justify her action she gave
+reasons. Our actions are usually right, but our reasons for them seldom
+are.
+
+Mrs. Byron made no concealment of her troubles. Society had occasion for
+gossip and the occasion was improved. Stories of Byron's cruelty and
+inhumanity filled the coffeehouses and drawing-rooms; and the hints at
+crimes so grave they could not even be mentioned gave the gossips their
+cue.
+
+The press took it up, and the poet was warned by his friends not to appear
+at the theater or upon the street for fear of the indignation of the mob.
+The spoilt child of London was paying the penalty of popularity. The
+pendulum had swung too far and was now coming back.
+
+Byron, hunted by creditors, hooted by enemies, broken in health, crushed
+in spirit, left the country--left England, never to return alive.
+
+When Byron trod the deck of the good ship bound for Ostend, and saw a
+strip of tossing, blue water separating him from England, his spirits
+rose. He was twenty-eight years old, and the thought that he would yet do
+something and be somebody was strong in his heart. All the old pride came
+back.
+
+The idea that he would not sell the product of his brain for hire was
+abandoned, and soon after arriving in Holland he began to write letters
+home, making sharp bargains with publishers.
+
+Further than this, his attorneys, on his order, made demand for a share of
+his wife's estate. And erelong we find Byron, the wasteful, cultivating
+the good old gentlemanly habit of penuriousness. He was making money, and
+had he lived to be sixty it is probable he would have evolved into a
+conservative and written a book on "Getting on in the World, or Success as
+I Have Found It."
+
+Byron's pilgrimage down through Germany, along the Rhine to Switzerland,
+was one of rest and recreation. At Berne, Basle, Lausanne and Geneva he
+found food for literary thought, and many instances in his writings show
+the reflected scenes he saw. No visitor at Lausanne fails to visit the
+Castle of Chillon, and all the guides will recite you these sweeping
+lines, so surcharged with feeling, beginning:
+
+    "Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls;
+    A thousand feet in depth below,
+    Its many waters meet and flow."
+
+At Geneva began the most interesting friendship between Byron and that
+other young man, so like and yet so unlike him.
+
+Only a few years and Byron was to search the shores of the Mediterranean
+for Shelley's dead body, and finding it, be one of the friends who reduced
+it to ashes.
+
+Tiring of Geneva and the tourists who pointed him out as a curiosity, we
+find Byron and his little party making their way across the Simplon, to
+cross which is an epoch in the life of any man, and then down by the Lago
+Maggiore to Milan.
+
+"The Last Supper" of Leonardo da Vinci did not impress Byron--the art of
+painting never did--this was his most marked limitation. From Milan they
+wandered down through Italy to Verona and Venice.
+
+The third Canto of "Childe Harold," "Manfred," and dozens of shorter poems
+had been sent to Murray. England read and paid for all that Byron wrote,
+and accepted it all as autobiography. Possibly Byron's defiant manner lent
+an excuse for this, but by applying similar rules we could convict
+Sophocles, Schiller and Shelley of basest crimes, put Shakespeare in the
+dock for murder, Milton for blasphemy, Scott for forgery, and Goethe for
+questionable financial deals with the devil. Byron's sins were as scarlet
+and the number not a few, but the moths that came just to flit about the
+flame were all of mature age. Byron set no snares for the innocent, and in
+all of the man's misdoings, he himself it was who suffered most.
+
+The Countess Guiccioli, it seems, was the only woman who comprehended his
+nature sufficiently to lead him in the direction of peace and poise. With
+her, for the first time, he began to systematize his life on a basis of
+sanity. They lived together for five years, and from the time he met her
+until his death no other love came to separate them.
+
+Throughout his life Byron was a man in revolt; and it was only a variation
+of the old passion for freedom that led him to Greece and to his grave.
+The personal bravery of the man was proven more than once in his life,
+and on the approach of death he was undismayed. When he passed away, April
+Nineteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-four, Stanhope wrote, "England has
+lost her brightest genius--Greece her best friend."
+
+His body was returned to England, denied burial in Westminster, and now
+rests in the old church at Hucknall, near Newstead.
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH ADDISON
+
+    Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,
+    My bane and antidote, are both before me.
+    This in a moment brings me to an end;
+    But this informs me I shall never die.
+    The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
+    At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
+    The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
+    Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
+    But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
+    Unhurt amid the war of elements,
+    The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds!
+                                       --_Cato's Soliloquy_
+
+[Illustration: JOSEPH ADDISON]
+
+
+Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
+
+Expression is necessary to life. The spirit grows through exercise of its
+faculties, just as a muscle grows strong through use. Life is expression
+and repression is stagnation--death.
+
+Yet there is right expression and wrong expression. If a man allows his
+life to run riot, and only the animal side of his nature is allowed to
+express itself, he is repressing his highest and best, and therefore those
+qualities, not used, atrophy and die.
+
+Sensuality, gluttony and the life of license repress the life of the
+spirit, and the soul never blossoms; and this is what it is to lose one's
+soul. All adown the centuries thinking men have noted these truths, and
+again and again we find individuals forsaking, in horror, the life of the
+senses and devoting themselves to the life of the spirit.
+
+The question of expression through the spirit or through the
+senses--through the soul or the body--has been the pivotal point of all
+philosophies and the inspiration of all religions. Asceticism in our day
+finds an interesting manifestation in the Trappists, who live on a
+mountain, nearly inaccessible, and deprive themselves of almost every
+vestige of bodily comfort; going without food for days, wearing
+uncomfortable garments, suffering severe cold. So here we find the extreme
+instance of men repressing the faculties of the body in order that the
+spirit may find ample time and opportunity for exercise.
+
+Between this extreme repression and the license of the sensualist lies the
+truth. But just where, is the great question; and the desire of one
+person, who thinks he has discovered the norm, to compel all other men to
+stop there, has led to war and strife untold. All law centers around this
+point--what shall men be allowed to do? And so we find statutes to punish
+"strolling play-actors," "players on fiddles," "disturbers of the public
+conscience," "persons who dance wantonly," "blasphemers," etc. In England
+there were, in the year Eighteen Hundred, sixty-seven offenses punishable
+with death.
+
+What expression is right and what is not is largely a matter of opinion.
+Instrumental music has been to some a rock of offense, exciting the
+spirit, through the sense of hearing, to wrong thoughts--through "the
+lascivious pleasing of a lute." Others think dancing wicked, while a few
+allow square dances, but condemn the waltz. Some sects allow pipe-organ
+music, but draw the line at the violin; while others, still, employ a
+whole orchestra in their religious service. Some there may be who regard
+pictures as implements of idolatry, while the Hook-and-Eye Baptists look
+upon buttons as immoral.
+
+Strange evolutions are often witnessed within the life of one individual,
+as to what is right and what wrong. For instance, Leo Tolstoy, that great
+and good man, once a worldling, has now turned ascetic, a not unusual
+evolution in the lives of the saints. Not caring for harmony as expressed
+in color, form and sounds, Tolstoy is now quite willing to deprive all
+others of these things which minister to their well-being. There is in
+most souls a hunger for beauty, just as there is a physical hunger. Beauty
+speaks to their spirits through the senses; but Tolstoy would have his
+house barren to the verge of hardship, and he advocates that all other
+houses should be likewise. My veneration for Count Tolstoy is profound,
+but I mention him here simply to show the danger that lies in allowing any
+man, even one of the best, to dictate to us what is right.
+
+Most of the frightful cruelties inflicted on mankind during the past have
+arisen out of a difference of opinion arising through a difference in
+temperament. The question is as live today as it was two thousand years
+ago--what expression is best? That is, what shall we do to be saved? And
+concrete absurdity consists in saying we must all do the same thing.
+
+Whether the race will ever grow to a point where men will be willing to
+leave the matter of life-expression to the individual is a question. Most
+men are anxious to do what is best for themselves and least harmful for
+others. The average man now has intelligence enough! Utopia is not far
+off, if the self-appointed folk who govern us for a consideration would
+only be willing to do unto others as they would be done by, and cease
+coveting things that belong to other people. War among nations, and strife
+among individuals, is a result of the covetous spirit to possess either
+power or things, or both. A little more patience, a little more charity
+for all, a little more devotion, a little more love; with less bowing down
+to the past, a brave looking forward to the future, with more confidence
+in ourselves, and more faith in our fellows, and the race will be ripe for
+a great burst of light and life.
+
+Macaulay has said that the Puritan did not condemn bear-baiting because it
+gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator. The
+Puritan regarded beauty as a pitfall and a snare: that which gave pleasure
+was a sin; he found his gratification in doing without things. Puritanism
+was a violent oscillation of the pendulum of life to the other side. From
+the vanity, pretense, affectation and sensualism of a Church and State
+bitten by corruption, we find the recoil in Puritanism.
+
+Asceticism to the verge of hardship, frankness bordering on rudeness, and
+a stolidity that was impolite; or soft, luxurious hypocrisy in a
+moth-eaten society--which shall it be? And Joseph Addison comes upon the
+scene and by the sincerity, graciousness and gentle excellence of his life
+and work, says, "Neither!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The little village of Wiltshire is noted as the birthplace of Addison, who
+was the son of a clergyman, afterward the Dean of Lichfield. An erstwhile
+resident of Lichfield, Samuel Johnson by name, once said of Joseph
+Addison, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not
+coarse, elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the
+volumes of Addison."
+
+For elegance, simplicity, insight, and a wit that is sharp but which never
+wounds, Addison has no rival, although more than two hundred years have
+come and gone since he ceased to write.
+
+Addison was a gentleman--the best example of a perfect gentleman that the
+history of English literature affords. And in letters it is much easier to
+find a genius than a gentleman. The field today is not at all over-worked;
+and those who wish to cultivate the art of being gentlemen will find no
+fearsome competition. In fact, the chief reason for not engaging in this
+line is the discomfort of isolation, and the lack of comradeship one is
+sure to suffer. To be gentle, generous, kind; to win by few words; and to
+disarm criticism and prejudice through the potency of a gracious presence,
+is a fine art. Books on etiquette will not serve the end, nor studious
+attempts to smile at the proper time, nor zealous efforts to avoid
+jostling the whims of those we meet; for to attempt to please is often to
+antagonize.
+
+Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise seem the three ingredients most needed in
+forming the gentle man. I place these elements according to their value.
+No man is great who does not possess Sympathy plus, and the greatness of
+men can safely be gauged by their sympathies. Sympathy and imagination are
+twin sisters. Your heart must go out to all men, the high, the low, the
+rich, the poor, the learned, the unlearned, the good, the bad, the wise,
+the foolish--you must be one with them all, else you can never comprehend
+them. Sympathy! It is the touchstone to every secret, the key to all
+knowledge, the open sesame of all hearts. Put yourself in the other man's
+place, and then you will know why he thinks certain thoughts and does
+certain deeds. Put yourself in his place, and your blame will dissolve
+itself into pity, and your tears will wipe out the record of his misdeeds.
+The saviors of the world have simply been men with wondrous Sympathy.
+
+But Knowledge must go with Sympathy, else the emotions will become maudlin
+and pity may be wasted on a poodle instead of a child; on a field-mouse
+instead of a human soul. Knowledge in use is wisdom, and wisdom implies a
+sense of values--you know a big thing from a little one, a valuable fact
+from a trivial one. Tragedy and comedy are simply questions of value: a
+little misfit in life makes us laugh, a great one is tragedy and cause for
+grief.
+
+Poise is the strength of body and strength of mind to control your
+Sympathy and your Knowledge. Unless you control your emotions they run
+over and you stand in the slop. Sympathy must not run riot, or it is
+valueless and tokens weakness instead of strength. In every hospital for
+nervous disorders are to be found many instances of this loss of control.
+The individual has Sympathy, but not Poise, and therefore his life is
+worthless to himself and to the world.
+
+He symbols inefficiency, not helpfulness. Poise reveals itself more in
+voice than in words; more in thought than in action; more in atmosphere
+than in conscious life. It is a spiritual quality, and is felt more than
+it is seen. It is not a matter of size, nor bodily attitude, nor attire,
+nor personal comeliness: it is a state of inward being, and of knowing
+your cause is just. And so you see it is a great and profound subject
+after all, great in its ramifications, limitless in extent, implying the
+entire science of right living. I once met a man who was deformed in body
+and little more than a dwarf, but who had such Spiritual Gravity--such
+Poise--that to enter a room where he was, was to feel his presence and
+acknowledge his superiority. To allow Sympathy to waste itself on unworthy
+subjects is to deplete one's life-forces. To conserve is the part of
+wisdom. No great orator ever exerts himself to his fullest, and reserve is
+a necessary element in all good literature, as well as in everything else.
+Poise being the control of your Sympathy and Knowledge implies the
+possession of these attributes, for without Sympathy and Knowledge you
+have nothing to control but your physical body. To practise Poise as a
+mere gymnastic exercise, or a study in etiquette, is to be self-conscious,
+stiff, preposterous and ridiculous. Those who cut such fantastic tricks
+before high heaven as make angels weep are men void of Sympathy and
+Knowledge trying to cultivate Poise. Their science is a mere matter of
+what to do with arms and legs. Poise is a question of spirit controlling
+flesh, heart controlling attitude. And so in the cultivation of Poise it
+is well to begin quite aways back. Let perfect love cast out fear; get rid
+of all secrets; have nothing in your heart to conceal; be gentle,
+generous, kind; do not bother to forgive your enemies--it is better to
+forget them, and cease conjuring them forth from your inner consciousness.
+The idea that you have enemies is egotism gone to seed. Get Knowledge by
+coming close to Nature, listening to her heart-beats, studying her ways.
+And let your heart go out to humanity by a desire to serve.
+
+That man is greatest who best serves his kind. Sympathy and Knowledge are
+for use--you acquire that you may give out; you accumulate that you may
+bestow. And as God has given you the sublime blessings of Sympathy and
+Knowledge, there will come to you the wish to reveal your gratitude by
+giving them out again, for the wise man knows that we retain spiritual
+qualities only as we give them away. Let your light shine. To him that
+hath shall be given. The exercise of wisdom brings wisdom; and at the
+last the infinitesimal quantity of man's knowledge, compared with the
+Infinite, and the meagerness of man's Sympathy when compared with the
+source from which ours is absorbed, will evolve an abnegation and a
+humility that will lend a perfect Poise. The Gentleman is a man with
+Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise; and as I sit here in this quiet corner,
+Joseph Addison seems to me to fit the requirements a little better than
+any other name I can recall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Born into a family where economy was a necessity, yet Addison had every
+advantage that good breeding and thorough tutorship could give.
+
+At Charterhouse School he won the affection of his teachers by his earnest
+wish to comply. The receptive spirit and the desire to please were his by
+inheritance. When fifteen he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where,
+within a year, his beauty, good nature and intelligence made his presence
+felt.
+
+In another year he was elected a scholar at Magdalen College, his
+recommendation being his skill in Latin versification.
+
+It was the hope and expectation of his parents that he should become a
+clergyman and follow in his father's footsteps. This also seems to have
+been the bent of the young man's mind. But the grace of his personality,
+his obliging disposition, with a sort of furtive ability to peer into a
+millstone as far as any, had attracted the attention of several statesmen.
+One of these, Charles Montague, afterward Lord Halifax, remarked, "I am a
+friend of the Church, but I propose to do it the injury of keeping Addison
+out of it."
+
+Montague discussed the matter with Lord Somers, and these two concluded
+that just a trifle more maturity of that gently ironical mind, a little
+more seasoning of the gracious personality, and the State would have in
+Joseph Addison a servant of untold value.
+
+Thus we see that England's policy of selecting and training men for the
+consular and diplomatic service is no new thing. It is a wonder that
+America has not ere this profited by the example. The tradition holds that
+we must at least have a scholar and a gentleman for the Court of Saint
+James, and several times we have been put to straits to find the man. The
+only way is to breed them and then bring them up in the way they should
+go.
+
+But beyond the zealous desire of Montague and Lord Somers to educate good
+men for the diplomatic service, lurked the still more eager wish to secure
+able writers to plead and defend the party cause. With this phase of the
+question America is more familiar; the policy of rewarding able speakers
+and ready writers with offices ready made or made to order has come to us
+ably backed by precedent untold.
+
+Addison set himself to literary tasks, but still regarded himself as a
+scholar. Leisure fitted his temperament--he was never in haste, even when
+he was in a hurry, and he carried with him the air of having all the time
+there was. Nothing is so ungraceful as haste. Addison always had time to
+listen; and we make friends, not by explaining things to other folks, but
+by allowing others to explain to us.
+
+The habit of attentive, sympathetic listening came to Addison early in
+life. From his twenty-first to his twenty-seventh year he lived a studious
+life--idle, his father called it--writing essays, political pamphlets and
+Latin verse. His political friends took care that some of the output was
+purchased, so that he was assured a comfortable living; but his success
+was not sufficient to inflate his cosmos with an undue amount of ego.
+
+One small book of criticism which he produced about this time was
+entitled, "Account of the English Poets." A significant feature of the
+work is that Shakespeare is not mentioned, even once, while Dryden is
+placed as the standard of excellence, just as in "Modern Painters," Ruskin
+takes Turner and lets him stand for one hundred, and all other artists
+grade down from this.
+
+Addison merely reflected the taste of his time. Shakespeare was not
+thought any more of two hundred years ago than we think of him now, with
+this difference--that he is the author we now talk about and seldom read,
+but then they did not discuss him any more than we now go to see him
+played.
+
+An interesting character by the name of Jacob Tonson appears upon the
+scene, as a friend of Addison in his early days. Tonson enjoyed the
+distinction of being the father of the modern publishing business--the
+first man to bring out the works of authors at his own risk and then sell
+the product to bookstores. I believe it is Mr. Le Gallienne who has been
+so unkind as to speak of "Barabbas Tonson." Among Tonson's many good
+strokes was his act in buying the copyright of "Paradise Lost" from
+Simmons, the bookseller, who had purchased all rights in the manuscript
+from the bereaved widow on a payment of eight pounds.
+
+Tonson appreciated good things in a literary way. He was on friendly terms
+with all the principal writers, and did much in bringing some shy writers
+to the front. Addison and Tonson laid great plans, few of which
+materialized, and some were carried out by other people--notably the
+compilation of an English Dictionary. In Sixteen Hundred Ninety-nine we
+find Addison, in possession of a pension of three hundred pounds a year,
+crossing the Channel into France with the object "to travel and qualify
+himself to serve His Majesty."
+
+The diplomatic language of the world was French. With intent to learn the
+language, Addison made his home with a modest French family; and a better
+way of acquiring a language than this has never been devised. A young
+friend of mine, however, recently returned from Europe, tells me that the
+ideal plan is to make love to a vivacious French girl who can not speak
+English. Of the excellence of this plan I know nothing--it may be a mere
+barren ideality.
+
+A little over a year in France and we are told that "Addison spoke the
+language like a native "--a glib expression, still able-bodied, that means
+little or much. From France Addison followed down into Italy, and spent a
+year there, residing in various small towns with the same object in view
+that took him to France.
+
+And one of his admirers relates that "he learned to speak Italian
+perfectly, his pronunciation being marred only by a slight French accent."
+Addison's three years of foreign travel, and the friendly society of the
+highest and best wherever he journeyed, had caused him to blossom out into
+a most exceptional man. Nature had done much for him, but her best gift
+was the hospitable mind. Travel to many young men is the opportunity to
+indulge in a line of conduct not possible at home. But Addison, ripening
+slowly, appreciated the fact that the Puritan has a deal of truth on his
+side. There is a manly abstinence that is most becoming, and to moderate
+one's desires and partake of the good things of earth sparingly is the
+best way to garner their benefit. No doubt, too, Addison's modesty and
+tendency to shyness saved him from many a danger. "Bashfulness is the
+tough husk in which genius ripens," says Emerson.
+
+Thus do we find our man at thirty, strong, manly, gifted, handsome,
+chivalrous, proud, yet tender, sympathetic, knowing--ready to serve his
+country in whatsoever capacity he could serve it best. When lo! the death
+of the King cut off his pension, a new party came in, his influential
+friends were thrown out of power, and Addison's prospects wilted in a
+single night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fact is that Addison from his thirtieth to his fortieth year was
+little better than a denizen of Grub Street. Fortunately he was a
+bachelor, with no one but himself to support, else actual hardship might
+have entered. Several flattering offers to act as tutor or companion to
+rich men's sons came his way, and were declined in polite and gracious
+language; and once a suggestion that he wed a woman of wealth was tabled
+in a manner not quite so gracious. In passing, it is well to state that
+all of Addison's relations with women seem to have occupied a lofty plane
+of chivalry. His respect for the good name of woman was profound, and
+whether any woman ever broke through that fine reserve and exquisite
+formality is a question. He was intensely admired by women, of course, but
+it was from the other side of the drawing-room. He kept gush at bay, and
+never tempted to indiscretion.
+
+Addison's youth was past; he was creeping well into the thirties, and
+still with no prospects. He was out of money, with no profession, and no
+special reputation as a writer. The popular poets of the time were Sedley,
+Rochester, Buckingham and Dorset--and you have never heard of them? Well,
+it only shows how a literary reputation is a shadow that fades in a night.
+
+Addison had written his "Cato" several years before, but no one had seen
+it. He carried the manuscript about with him, as Goethe did his "Faust,"
+for years, and added to it, or erased, all according to the moods that
+came to him. And we have reason to believe that the sublime soliloquy in
+"Cato" was written by Addison when the blankness of his prospects and the
+blackness of the future had forced the question of self-destruction upon
+him.
+
+Cato made a great mistake in committing suicide--he did the deed right on
+the eve of success--he should have waited. Addison waited.
+
+At this time Lord Godolphin, who had the happiness to have a great
+racehorse named after him, occupied the chief place in the Ministry.
+Marlborough had just fought the battle of Blenheim, and it was Godolphin's
+wish to have the victory sung in adequate verse, for history's sake and
+for the sake of the political party. But he could not think of a poet who
+was equal to the task; so in his dilemma he called in Lord Halifax, who
+had a reputation for knowing good things in a literary way.
+
+Lord Halifax was unfortunate in having his portrait transmitted by two
+poets who hated him thoroughly, each for the amply sufficient reason that
+he failed to confer the favors that were much desired. Swift calls Halifax
+"a would-be M�cenas"; and Pope refers to him as "penurious, mean and
+chicken-hearted," satirizing him in the well-known character of Bufo.
+
+Do not take the poets too seriously: all good men have had mud-balls
+thrown at them--sometimes bricks--and Halifax was not a bad man by any
+means. Let the poets make copy of their thwarted hopes.
+
+In reply to Lord Godolphin's inquiries, Halifax said he did indeed know
+the man who could celebrate the victory in verse, and in fact there was
+only one man in England who could do the task justice. He, however,
+refused to divulge his man's identity until a suitable reward for the poet
+was fixed upon.
+
+Godolphin finally thought of an office in the Excise, worth three hundred
+pounds a year or more.
+
+Halifax then stipulated that the negotiations must be carried on directly
+between the Government and the poet, otherwise the poet's pride would
+rebel. Godolphin agreed to shield Halifax from all mention in the matter,
+and the name and address of Joseph Addison were then taken down.
+
+Godolphin had never heard of Addison, but relying on Halifax, he sent
+Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the address named, where Addison
+was found over a haberdasher's, up three flights, back. The account comes
+from Pope, who was the enemy of both Addison and Halifax, and can
+therefore be relied upon.
+
+The Chancellor of the Exchequer broached the subject, was gently repulsed,
+the case was argued, and being put on the plane of duty the poet
+surrendered, and as a result we have Addison's poem, "The Campaign." It
+was considered a great literary feat in its day, but like all things
+performed to order, comes tardy off. Only work done in love lives. But
+Addison slid into the Excise office, taking it as legal tender. This
+brought him into relationship with Godolphin, who one day exclaimed, "I
+thought that man Addison was nothing but a poet--I'm a rogue if he isn't
+really a great man!" Lord Godolphin was needing a good man, a man of
+address, polish, tact and education. And Addison was selected to fill the
+office of Under-Secretary of State, the place for which he had fitted
+himself and to which he had aspired eight years before. Moral: Be
+prepared.
+
+The party that called Addison was not the one to which he was supposed to
+be attached, but his merits were recognized, his help was needed, and so
+he was sent for. It was a great compliment. But good men are always
+needed--they were then, and the demand is greater now than ever before.
+The highest positions are hard to fill--good men are scarce.
+
+Addison's knowledge, his modesty, his willingness, his caution, his grace
+of manner, fitted him exactly for the position; and we have reason to
+believe that the salary of one thousand pounds a year was very acceptable
+to one in his situation.
+
+In another year the Whigs had grown stronger; Halifax was again a
+recognized power; and erelong we find Addison entering Parliament. So
+great was his popularity that he was elected from one district six times,
+representing Malmesbury until his death.
+
+It was stated by Congreve that Addison's habit of shyness was an
+affectation. If so, it was a good stroke, for nothing is so becoming in a
+man known to be versatile and strong as a half-embarrassment when in
+society. The Duke of Wellington's awkwardness in a drawing-room put all
+others at their ease. The eternal fitness of things demands that when
+greatness is in evidence some one should be embarrassed, and if the
+celebrity is "it," so much the better.
+
+Personally, I feel sure that Addison's shyness was not feigned, for on the
+only occasion he ever attempted to speak ex-tempore in Parliament he
+muffed the subject, forgot his theme, and sat down in confusion. With all
+his incisive thought and fine command of language, Addison could not think
+on his feet. And as if aware of his limitations, in one of the "Spectator"
+essays he said, with more or less truth, "The fluent orator, ready to
+speak on any topic, is never profound, and when once his thought is cold
+it will seldom repay examination--it was only a skyrocket."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Without Addison's literary reputation, resting upon his essays published
+in the "Tatler" and the "Spectator," it is very possible that we would now
+know about as much concerning him as we do about Sir John Hawkins. The
+"Tatler" and the "Spectator" allowed him to express his best, and in his
+own way.
+
+With the name of Addison is inseparably coupled that of Richard Steele.
+These men had a literary style which they held in partnership. The nearest
+approach to it in our time is the "Easy Chair" of George William Curtis.
+Curtis was once called by Lowell, with a goodly degree of justice, "our
+modern Addison."
+
+Steele and Addison had been schoolmates at the Charterhouse, and friends
+for a lifetime. They were of the same age within a year. Steele had been a
+soldier and an adventurer, and his disposition was decidedly convivial. He
+was a clever writer, knowing the world of politics and society, but he
+lacked the spiritual and artistic qualities which Addison's moderate and
+studious life had fostered. But on simple themes, where the argument did
+not rise above the commonplace, Addison and Steele wrote exactly alike,
+just as all writers on the "Sun" used to write like Dana. Steele had
+filled the lowest office in the Ministry, the office of "Gazeteer": the
+duties of the office being to issue a newspaper giving the official news
+of the day. It was a licensed monopoly, and all infringers were severely
+punished.
+
+Steele, however, did not like the office, because the Powers demanded that
+all writing in the "Gazette" be very innocent and very insipid. "To
+publish a newspaper and say nothing is no easy task," said Steele. Had he
+lived in our day he could have seen the trick performed on every hand.
+
+Finally the office of Gazetteer was abolished, and any man who wished
+might issue a "gazette," provided he kept within proper bounds. The result
+was a flight of small leaflet periodicals, quite like the Chapbook
+Renaissance of Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five and Eighteen Hundred
+Ninety-six, when over eleven hundred "brownie" and "chipmunk" magazines
+were started in America. Every man with two or three ideas and ten
+dollars' capital started a magazine. Steele, teeming with thoughts
+demanding expression, at war with smug society, and possessing wit withal,
+started the "Tatler," to be issued three times a week, price one penny.
+Seizing upon a creation of Swift's, "Isaac Bickerstaff," a character
+already known to the public, was introduced as editor. Bickerstaff
+announced his assistants, and among others named as authority in Foreign
+Affairs a waiter at Saint James Coffeehouse known as "Kidney." The spirit
+of rollicking freedom in the publication, with a touch of philosophy, and
+a dash of culture, caught the public fancy at once. The "Tatler" was the
+theme in every coffeehouse, and in the drawing-rooms, as well. Those who
+understood it laughed and passed it along to others who pretended they
+understood, and so it became the fad. Then the anonymity lent the charm of
+mystery--who could it be who was into all the secrets, and knew the world
+so thoroughly?
+
+Addison read each issue with surprise and amusement, but it was not until
+the fifth number that he located the author positively, by reading an
+observation of his own that he had voiced to Steele some weeks before.
+Steele absorbed everything, digested it, and gave the good out as his own,
+innocent and probably unmindful of where he got it. This accounts for his
+wonderful versatility: he made others grub and used the net result.
+
+Some years ago Francis Wilson made a mock complaint to the effect that
+whenever he met Eugene Field in the "Saints and Sinners Corner" for a
+half-hour's chat, any good thing he might voice was duly printed next day
+in the "Sharps and Flats" column as Field's very own, and thus did the
+genial Eugene acquire his reputation as a genius. All of which gentle
+gibing contains more fact than fiction.
+
+When Addison saw his bright thoughts appearing in the "Tatler," he went to
+Steele and said, "Here, I'll write that out myself and save you the
+trouble." Steele welcomed him with open arms. The first "Tatler" article
+written by Addison relates to the distress of news-writers at the prospect
+of peace. This is exactly in Steele's style; but we find erelong in the
+"Tatler" a spiritual quality that was not a part of Steele's nature. From
+current gossip and easy society commonplace, the tone is exalted, and this
+we know was the result of Addison's influence. Out of two hundred
+seventy-one articles in the "Tatler," one hundred eighty-eight were
+produced by Steele and forty-two by Addison. Yet Steele was wise enough to
+perceive the superior quality of Addison's work, and this dictated the key
+in which the magazine was pitched. Yet the fertility of Steele surpassed
+that of Addison. Steele initiated the crusade against gambling, dueling
+and vice; and this was all very natural, for he simply inveighed against
+sins with which experience had made him familiar. His moral essays were
+all written in periods of repentance. His sharp tirades on dueling in one
+instance approached the point of personality, and on being criticized, he
+resented the interference and expressed a willingness to fight his man
+with pistols at ten paces. It must not be forgotten that Richard Steele
+was an Irishman.
+
+The political tone of the "Tatler" favored the Marlborough administration,
+and on this account Steele was rewarded with a snug office under the wing
+of the State. In Seventeen Hundred Ten, the Whig Ministry fell, but Lord
+Harley knew the value of Steele as a writer, and so notified him that he
+would not be disturbed in possession of his Stamp Office.
+
+Now, a complete silence concerning things political in the "Tatler" was
+hardly possible, and a change of front would be humiliating, and whether
+to give up the "Tatler" or the office--that was the question! Addison was
+in the same box. The offices they held brought them in twice as much money
+as the little periodical, and either the patronage or the paper would have
+to go. They decided to abandon the "Tatler."
+
+But the habit of writing sticks to a man; and after two months Steele and
+Addison began to feel the necessity of some outlet for their pent-up
+thoughts. They had each grown with their work, and were aware of it. They
+would start a new paper, and make it a daily; and they would keep clear of
+politics. So we find the "Spectator" duly launched with the intended
+purpose of forming "a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art
+and literature."
+
+Every good thing has its prototype, and Addison in Italy had become
+familiar with the force of "Manners" by Casa, and the "Courtier" by
+Castiglione. Then he knew the character of La Bruyere, and this gave the
+cue for the Spectator Club, with Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew
+Freeport, Will Honeycomb, Captain Sentry and the Templar.
+
+Swift had contributed several papers to the "Tatler," but he found the
+"Spectator" too soft and feminine for his fancy. Probably Steele and
+Addison were afraid of the doughty Dean's style; there was too much
+vitriol in it for popularity--and they kept the Irish parson at a
+distance, as certain letters to "Stella" seem to indicate. The
+"Spectator" was a notable success from the start and soon put Steele and
+Addison in comfortable financial shape.
+
+After the first year the daily issue amounted to fourteen thousand copies.
+Addison introduced the "Answers to Correspondents" scheme.
+
+He has had many imitators along this line, some of whom yet endure, but
+they are not Addisons.
+
+An imitation of the "Spectator" was started as a daily in New York in
+Eighteen Hundred Ninety-eight. In one week it ran short on phosphorus and
+was obliged to quit. It took two years for Steele and Addison to write
+themselves out, and rather than let the quality of the periodical decline
+they discontinued its publication, quitting like the wise men they were at
+the height of their success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Addison's tragedy of "Cato" was produced in Seventeen Hundred
+Thirteen, he occupied the first place in English letters. The play was a
+dazzling success; and it is a great play yet. It lives as literature among
+the best things men have ever done--a masterpiece!
+
+Addison still continued in the service of the State, and wrote more or
+less in a political way. The strain of carrying on the "Spectator" and the
+stress of political affairs had tired the man. The spring had gone out of
+his intellect, and he began to talk of some quiet retreat in the country.
+In Seventeen Hundred Sixteen, in his forty-fourth year, he married the
+Countess of Warwick, a widow of fifteen years' standing. We have reason to
+believe that the worthy widow did the courting and literally took our good
+man captive. He was depressed and worn, and longed for rest and gentle,
+sympathetic companionship. She promised all these--the buxom creature--and
+married him, taking him to her home at Holland House. Yes, it would be
+unjust to blame her; doubtless she wished to do for the man what was best;
+and so report has it that she exercised a discipline over his hours of
+work and recreation and curtailed a little there and issued orders here,
+until the poor patient rebelled and fled to the coffeehouses. There he
+found the rollicking society that he so despised--and loved, for there was
+comradeship in it, and comradeship was what he prayed for. His wife did
+not comprehend that delicate, spiritual quality of his heart: that
+craving for sympathy which came after he had given out so much. He wanted
+peace, quiet and rest; but she wished to take him forth and exhibit him to
+the throng. Yet all of her admonitions that he "brace up" were in vain.
+His work was done. He foresaw the end, and grew impatient that it did not
+come. Placid, resigned, sane to the last hour, he passed away at Holland
+House, June Seventeenth, Seventeen Hundred Nineteen, aged forty-seven. His
+body, lying in state, was viewed by more than ten thousand people, and
+then it was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+                         Let no man write
+    Thy epitaph, Emmett; thou shalt not go
+    Without thy funeral strain! O young and good,
+    And wise, though erring here, thou shalt not go
+    Unhonored or unsung. And better thus
+    Beneath that undiscriminating stroke,
+    Better to fall, than to have lived to mourn,
+    As sure thou wouldst, in misery and remorse,
+    Thine own disastrous triumph * * * *
+    How happier thus, in that heroic mood
+    That takes away the sting of death, to die,
+    By all the good and all the wise forgiven!
+    Yea, in all ages by the wise and good
+    To be remembered, mourned, and honored still!
+                                  --_Southey to Robert Emmett_
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT SOUTHEY]
+
+
+Most generally, when I travel, I go alone--this to insure being in good
+company. To travel with another is a terrible risk: it puts a great strain
+on the affections.
+
+I once made the tour of Scotland with a man who was traveling for his
+health. He had kidney-trouble belief. I had known the man in a casual way
+for several years, and we started out the best of friends, anticipating a
+good time. We were gone three weeks, and when we got back I hated the
+fellow thoroughly, and I have every reason to believe that he fully
+reciprocated the sentiment.
+
+And yet he was an honest man, and I am, too, although not an extremist.
+There was nothing to quarrel about; it began at Euston Station, where I
+bought third-class tickets. He said he preferred to ride first-class, or
+second, at least--there was such a thing as false economy.
+
+I asked him why he had not said something along this line before I had
+purchased the tickets.
+
+He retorted that I had not consulted his preference in the matter. I
+brought in a mild rejoinder by moving the previous question, and showing
+that he, himself, had proposed that I should take entire charge of the
+arrangements, using my own good judgment at all times.
+
+He said something about his error in supposing he was traveling with a
+discerning person. Just then the guard came along, slamming the doors, and
+we were pushed into a third-class carriage, where we enjoyed an all-day
+journey together.
+
+At Edinburgh my companion wished to ascend the Scott monument, visit a
+friend at the University, and buy a plaid rug at one of the shops in
+Princess Street; while I proposed to look up the footprints of Bobbie
+Burns and John Knox. He said, "Confound John Knox!" I answered, "You
+evidently think I am referring to Knox the Hatter!" He grew mad as a
+hatter, and I had to defend John Knox, and later had to do the same for
+Rab and his friends, as well as for Christopher North.
+
+And so it went--he pooh-poohed my heroes; and I scorned the friend he
+wished to find at the University, smiled patronizingly on the Scott
+monument, and said, "hoot mon" at the idea of buying a plaid rug in
+Princess Street.
+
+All this was many years ago; since then I have been very cautious about
+entering into any Anglo-American alliances. Yet to travel alone often
+seems to be dropping something out of your life. When the voyage is rough,
+the weather bad and the fare below par, my spirits always rise. I say to
+myself: "My son, this is certainly tough--but who cares! We can stand it,
+we have had this way right along year after year--but just imagine your
+plight if there were some one in your charge expecting a good time!"
+
+Then I drink to Boreas and all the fiends of Gehenna, and am supremely
+content.
+
+But suppose the night is resplendent with stars, the waves tremulous with
+reflected beauty, and as the great ship goes gliding across the
+deep--proud, strong and tireless--there come to you thoughts sublime and
+emotions such as Wagner knew when he wrote the "Pilgrims' Chorus."
+
+But you are not happy, simply because you want to tell some one how happy
+you are. What is the starlight for, save to call some one's attention to,
+or the phosphorescent sheen except to be pointed out and enjoyed by two?
+Exquisite beauty, as revealed in music, painting, sculpture or beautiful
+scenery, affects me at times to tears; and there always comes creeping
+into my life a profound sadness, a dread homesickness, to think that in
+this wealth of peace and joy I am alone--alone.
+
+Can you stand by yourself on a hillside and look across a beautiful little
+lake to the woods beyond; or walk through a pine-forest, where the needles
+sink as a carpet beneath your feet, and the air is full of the pungent
+odor of the pine, and the gently swaying tree-tops overhead croon you a
+lullaby--can you enjoy all this without an exquisite melancholy, and a
+joy that hurts, piercing your soul? It's homesickness, that's all; you
+want to go home and tell some one how happy you are. Give me solitude,
+sweet solitude, but in my solitude give me still one friend to whom I may
+murmur, Solitude is sweet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That about the sea and the forest, the wooded hillside and the little lake
+may not be the exact words, but the thought is there just as White Pigeon
+expressed it to me that evening when we sat on the mossy bank of the lake
+at Grasmere and threw pebbles into the water.
+
+I had come up from Liverpool to Bowness, walked over to Ambleside and
+along the lake to Grasmere. My luggage consisted of a comb, a toothbrush
+and a stout second-growth East Aurora hickory stick.
+
+At Grasmere I applied at the Red Lion Inn for supper and lodging. The
+landlady looked at my dusty, rusty corduroys, paused, coughed and asked
+where my luggage was. Wishing to be honest, I displayed the luggage
+aforementioned. She did not smile. She was a large person, sober, sedate,
+sincere and also serious, with a big bunch of keys dangling from a waist
+that once was Grecian. And she told me right there that if I wanted
+accommodations I would have to pay in advance. I demurred, pleaded and
+finally explained that I had lost my money and had sent to New York for a
+remittance, I was a remittance-man. Had this been true, it were sad, yet I
+had a hundred pounds sterling in my belt; but it just came to me to see
+how it would feel to be penniless and friendless and plead for charity. It
+is not hard to plead for charity when one has a pocket full of money.
+
+So I pleaded. But it was of no avail.
+
+I requested a drink of water. This was denied. Then I asked if I could
+wash in the lake; and this favor was granted, and the advice volunteered
+that it would be a good thing to do. And further the kind lady made a
+motion toward a dangling red tassel that hung from a rope, and suggested
+that I get me to a gunnery and quickly, too, otherwise she would have to
+call the porter.
+
+I felt to see that my money was all right--to assure myself it was no jest
+in earnest--and departed. Being singularly psychic to suggestion I
+followed the thought that I wash in the lake, and started in that
+direction, along a footpath that led across a meadow, over a stile. A
+thick growth of bushes lined the lake for aways, and then the footpath
+seemed to follow right through the undergrowth. I pushed the green
+branches aside, and continued along for about a hundred feet, when I stood
+on the green, grass-covered bank of the beautiful "Windermere." Daffodils
+lined the water's edge--the daffodils of Wordsworth--down the lake were
+the white wings of several sailboats; the sun had gone down, but his long
+rays of gold still pierced the sky, while across the water arose, silent
+and majestic, the dark purple hills.
+
+It was a beautiful sight--so full of quiet and peace and rest. I stood
+with hat in hand, the evening breeze fanning my face, enjoying the scene.
+Just then there was a little splash in the water, and looking down I saw a
+woman with back toward me sitting on a boulder, tossing pebbles into the
+lake. By the side of the woman were her hat and book. I was on the point
+of softly backing out through the bushes, when it came to me that I had
+seen that head with its big coil of brown hair somewhere else--but where,
+ah, where!
+
+Why, in Paris, two years before. It was White Pigeon.
+
+She had not seen me. I retraced my steps, and then came crashing through
+the juniper, straight over to the bankside, where I sat down about twenty
+feet from the good lady. I was whistling violently and throwing pebbles
+into the water, not even glancing toward her. She let me whistle for a
+full minute and then said gently: "Do not be absurd! I know you." Then we
+both laughed, and I, of course, did the regulation thing, and asked, "When
+did you arrive, and where are you going, and how do you like it?"
+
+"You see what I am doing here, and as for when I arrived and how long I'll
+stay, and how I like it--what difference is it? There, you are surprised
+to see me, aren't you? I thought you had gotten past being surprised at
+anything, long ago--only silly people are surprised--you once said it,
+yourself!"
+
+Then White Pigeon ceased to speak and we simply gazed into each other's
+eyes. White Pigeon has gray eyes that sometimes are blue and sometimes
+amber--it all depends upon her mood and the thoughts reflected there. The
+long, sober gaze stole off into a half-smile and she said, "You got things
+awfully mixed up in that Rosa Bonheur booklet--why not stick to truth?"
+
+"Truth," I replied, "is hideous, and facts are like some men, stubborn
+things. But what was the matter with the Bonheur Little Journey?"
+
+"You will not be angry with me?"
+
+"How could I be?"
+
+"You promise?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you said my cousin was a conductor on the Lake Shore--you knew
+perfectly well it was the Michigan Central!"
+
+I apologized.
+
+It had been two years since I had seen this woman, and not a letter had
+passed between us. I had sent her a book now and then, and she had sent me
+a sketch or two.
+
+White Pigeon knows nothing about me, and never asked concerning my
+history, which is a blank, my lord! Does the lily inquire of the
+humming-bird, "Hast hummed and fluttered about other flowers?"
+
+That is a charming friendship that asks nothing, makes no demands, needs
+no assurances, never falters, and is so frank that it disarms prudery and
+pretense.
+
+I said as much.
+
+White Pigeon made no answer, but flung a pebble into the lake.
+
+And all I know of White Pigeon is that she was born in White Pigeon,
+Michigan, and had left there ten years before to study art for a short
+time in Paris. The short time extended to ten years.
+
+White Pigeon does not call herself an artist--she only copies pictures in
+the Louvre and gives lessons. "Not being able to paint, I give lessons,"
+she once said to me. The first pictures she copied were sold to kind
+gentlemen who make many wagons at South Bend, Indiana; other pictures went
+to men who have interests at Ivorydale; and some have gone to the
+mill-owner at Ypsilanti, for the mill-owner is interested in art, as all
+patrons of the "Hum Journal" know.
+
+White Pigeon lived at Paris because one must needs live somewhere, and
+rich Americans sometimes send her their daughters to "finish." That was
+what took her over to the Lake District--she was traveling with two young
+women from Grand Rapids. And so these three women were doing Great
+Britain, and White Pigeon was acting as courier, chaperone and instructor.
+
+"I need 'finish,'" I suggested in one of the long pauses.
+
+"I was just going to suggest it," said the lady.
+
+"You say you are going to Southey's old home tomorrow--may I go, too?" I
+ventured.
+
+And the answer was, "Of course--if you will promise not to work me up into
+copy."
+
+I promised.
+
+I found lodgings that night at "Nab Cottage." Being well recommended, the
+landlady did not hesitate, but gave me the best accommodations her house
+afforded.
+
+Hartley Coleridge does not live at "Nab Cottage" now--a moss-covered slab
+marks his resting-place up at the Grasmere Churchyard, and only a step
+away in a very straight row are similar old headstones that token the
+graves of William, Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth. Hartley Coleridge had most
+of the weaknesses of his father, and only a few of his better traits. Yet
+Southey brought up the children of Coleridge and gave them just as good
+advantages as he did his own.
+
+"It is not 'advantages' that make great men--it is disadvantages!" said
+White Pigeon. We were eating breakfast at the table set out under the
+arbor, back of the Coleridge cottage--Grace, Myrtle, White Pigeon and I.
+
+Grace and Myrtle were the Grand Rapids girls, and fine girls, too--pink
+and twenty, with diaries and autograph-fans. Girls of that age are
+charming, but they only interest me as do beautiful kittens or colts.
+Women do not become wise or discreet until they are past thirty. White
+Pigeon was past thirty.
+
+We took the stage that morning at nine o'clock for Keswick. The stage
+started from the Red Lion Inn. It is a great event--the starting of a
+four-horse stage. The guests came out, and so did the boots, and
+chamber-maids and waiters, and the cook came also. They stood in line and
+bade the parting guests godspeed, and all the guests were supposed to
+express gratitude tangibly. The landlady was busy, flying about like a
+Plymouth Rock hen with a brood of ducks. She saw me handing up the
+pink-and-white Grace and Myrtle and the dignified, tailor-made White
+Pigeon, and she came out and apologized profusely for not having had room
+to accommodate me the night before.
+
+At last all the hatboxes and bloomin' luggage were safely stowed, the
+trunks were lashed in place behind, and I climbed to the top of the stage
+and took my seat beside my charges. A merry blast was blown from the
+tallyho horn. A man with a red coat, high white hat, kid gloves and a
+brick-dust complexion mounted the box and gathered up a big handful of
+reins. The hostlers at the heads of the leaders let go, twenty feet of
+whiplash went singing through the air--and we were off!
+
+We swung through the village with more majesty and clatter than the Empire
+State Express ever assumed, stopping just an instant at the post-office
+for a bag of mail that the brick-dusty driver caught with his feet, and
+then away we went.
+
+I am sorry I did not live in stagecoach times--things are now so dead and
+dreary and prosaic. Yet I sometimes have imagined that today the
+stagecoach business in England is a little stagey--many things are done to
+heighten effects. For instance, the intense excitement of starting is not
+exactly necessary--why the mad rush? No one is really in a hurry to reach
+a certain place at a certain time! And all this is apparent when you
+notice that a mile out of town the pace subsides to a lazy dog-trot, and
+the boots has jumped down and unchecked each horse so as to make things
+easy. I was glad the boots got down, for whenever I see a horse's head
+checked up in the air my impulse is to uncheck him--and once on Wabash
+Avenue in Chicago I did.
+
+I was arrested, and it cost me five.
+
+The road to Keswick bristles with history. Coleridge, Wordsworth and
+Southey tramped it many a time, and since their day, thousands of literary
+pilgrims have come this way. That two poets-laureate should have come from
+this beautiful corner of the earth of course is interesting, but the honor
+of being poet-laureate to the King is a shifting honor, depending upon the
+poet. No title can ever really honor a man, although a man may honor a
+title, and no King by taking thought can add a cubit to a subject's
+stature. The man is what he is. Southey succeeded the poet Pye, who was
+laureate before him.
+
+A weaker nature than mine might here succumb to temptation and play
+pleasant philological pranks concerning the poet Pye, but I am above all
+that. Pye was a good man, and if I could remember any of the lines he
+wrote, I would here introduce them; but this is doubtless unnecessary, for
+the gentle reader can recall to suit.
+
+White Pigeon claimed that Pye was greater than Southey, and she further
+said that Tennyson's reputation suffered by consenting to act as successor
+to this line of men in whom felicity and insight were the exception. The
+tierce of Canary was no pay for acting as successor to Pye, but Southey
+jumped at the Canary and slipped his last vestige of radicalism quickly.
+
+"Oh, what a funny little church," exclaimed Myrtle; "can't we stop and go
+in?"
+
+It is a curious little building--that church at Wythburn.
+
+It looks like a little girl's playhouse, that might have belonged to her
+great-great-grandmother.
+
+Opposite this lovely little church is a tavern, where a lovely barmaid in
+white apron and lovely collar and cuffs stood in the doorway, ready to
+serve the thirsty. The red-coated driver pulled in on the tavern side, and
+men in neckerchiefs, hobnailed shoes, blue woolen stockings and
+knee-breeches made fussy haste to water the horses. Old Brick-Dusty
+climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and
+Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn
+Church. There isn't another church in England so peculiar and so
+interesting. A pew is marked sacred to Wordsworth, and one also to Harriet
+Martineau, who I did not know before ever went to church. The silver
+service was the gift of Southey, and is inscribed with his name and crest.
+Southey was a vestryman of Wythburn Church for many years, and sometimes
+read the service there. I stood in the pulpit where Southey stood, and so
+did White Pigeon, and I reminded her that she would never be allowed
+there on Sunday, for Deity is most easily approached and influenced by
+men, as all theologians know and have ever stoutly held. One of the busy
+hostlers came in, pulling his forelock, and apologizing, in a voice full
+of cobwebs, said that the coach was ready to start. We did the proper
+thing, and also as much for the red-coated driver, who, in spite of great
+dignity, we saw was open to reward for well-doing. It was a great mistake,
+though, to "cross his palm," for he began a lecture on the Cumberland
+Kings, that lasted until we got to Thirlmere, where he stopped at the
+Pumping-Station, and told us how the city of Manchester got its
+water-supply from here. To him all things were equally interesting. He was
+still deep in the fight between Manchester aldermen and the 'Ouse of
+Commons when we reached Castle Rigg. The Vale of Keswick opened before us.
+We implored the well-informed driver to stop, and then we got down and
+begged him to go on without us.
+
+Seated there on the bankside we viewed the beautiful scene of lake, valley
+and village stretching out so peacefully before us, all framed in the dark
+towering hills. Even Grace forgot to say, "How lovely!" but sat there,
+chin in hand, rapt and speechless.
+
+Down in that valley, just a little to one side of the village, Southey
+lived for over forty years, and all the visitors he really liked he took
+to Castle Rigg, to show them as he said, "the kingdoms of the earth." It
+was a view of which he never tired. Coleridge came up this way first, and
+took lodgings with a Mr. Johnson, who owned Greta Hall. It is not on
+record that Coleridge paid any rent, but he was so charmed with the
+location that he induced Southey to come and visit him. Southey came and
+liked it so well that he remained. He performed here a life-task that
+staggers one to contemplate: fifty volumes or more of closely set type are
+shown you at the Keswick Museum, duly labeled, "The Works of Southey,"
+Charles Lamb's "Works" were the East India ledgers, but he wrote one
+little book of Essays that are still sweet and fresh as
+wood-violets--essays written hot from the heart, often in tears; written
+because he could not help it, or to please Mary--he did not know which.
+
+No man ever divided his time up more systematically than Southey. He
+produced political and theological essays, histories, poems, diatribes,
+apologies and criticisms, and worked as men work in the Carnegie
+Consolidated Steel Works.
+
+Robert Southey was the precocious son of a Bristol linen-draper. Being
+rather delicate, his parents did not set him to work in a drygoods-store,
+but gave him the benefit of Oxford. The thing that brought him first into
+prominence was an article he wrote for "The Flaggellant," a college paper,
+wherein he ridiculed the idea of a devil. Now the powers did not like
+that--the creed called for a "personal devil," and they wanted one. They
+summoned young Southey before them to account for speaking disrespectfully
+of the devil. The youth was found guilty and expelled.
+
+He was a reckless young man, but recklessness is its own check--in fact,
+all things in life are self-regulating, everything is limited. Southey's
+secret marriage with Edith Fricker tamed him. Nothing tames men like
+marriage; and when babies came, and Coleridge went to Germany, leaving
+Mrs. Coleridge and young Hartley in his charge, Southey realized he was
+dealing with a condition, not a theory. Then soon he had the widowed Mrs.
+Lovell with her brood on his hands, and his old dream of pantisocracy was
+realized, only not just as he expected.
+
+Too much can not be said for the patience and unflinching fidelity shown
+by Southey in shouldering the burdens that Fate sent him.
+
+"Any man can succeed with three good women to help him!" said White
+Pigeon.
+
+"True," said I, "and next in importance to the person who originates a
+good thing is the one who quotes it." Men weighted with responsibilities
+fight for the established order. Southey's pension and his steady income
+came from the men in power, and he made it his business not to offend
+them. Southey was a scholar; he associated with educated people; and once
+he complained because he could not get acquainted with workingmen--they
+shut up like clams on his approach. Of course they did, for we are simple
+and sincere only with our own.
+
+Learned, scholarly and cultured men are to be pitied, for they are ever
+the butt, byword and prey of the untaught, who are often the knowing. As
+success came to Southey he lost the sense of values, that is to say, the
+sense of humor. He attacked Byron with great severity, and Byron's reply
+was the dedication of Don Juan, "To the illustrious Poet-Laureate, Robert
+Southey, LL.D." It was as if the play of "Sappho" were dedicated to the
+Reverend Doctor Parkhurst.
+
+Southey came out with a card declaring he had given Lord Byron no
+permission to dedicate any of his detestable works to him. Byron replied,
+acknowledging all this, but saying he had a right to honor the name of
+Southey, if he chose, just the same. No taint of excess or folly marks the
+name of Southey; his life was filled with good work and kind deeds. His
+name is honored by a monument in the village of Keswick, and in
+Crosthwaite Church is another monument to his memory, the inscription
+being written by Wordsworth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Were Heaven a place, I still politely maintain, it would probably be
+located in the Lake District of England.
+
+Every man of genius the world has ever produced has come from a little
+belt of land in the North Temperate Zone. Snow and cold, rock and
+mountain, danger and difficulty--these are the conditions required to make
+men. The heaven of which I can conceive is a place with plenty of oxygen,
+sunshine and water. In a mountainous country water runs (I hope no one
+will dispute this) and winds blow, and running water and air in motion are
+always pure.
+
+When I have no thoughts worth recording I take a walk, and the elements,
+which seem to carry soul, fill me to the brim.
+
+The Tropics may have much to offer in way of soft, luxurious creature
+comforts. But the Tropics supply sundry and divers discomforts as well,
+and really offer too much; for with the flowers, vines, fruits and
+never-ending foliage go mosquitoes, tarantulas, and snakes that wiggle and
+sometimes bite.
+
+The climate of Cumberland does not overpower one--the air is of a quality
+that urges you on to think and do.
+
+By no reach of imagination can one conjure forth anything more beautiful
+in Nature than is to be realized in vicinity of Keswick; and no home
+thereabouts surpasses Greta Hall in charm of location and quiet, simple
+beauty.
+
+Greta Hall is a rambling pile, constructed partly of stone and partly of
+wood, evolved rather than built, for evidently the work was done by many
+hands, and stretched over a century or more of time. Vines and flowers,
+fruits and shrubbery, stone walls covered close by creeping bellflowers
+where birds chirrup and cheep and play hide-and-seek the livelong day--all
+these are there. The house is situated on a little wooded plateau that
+overlooks the lake, and back of it the solemn and everlasting hills stand
+guard. There are no such mountains here as one sees in Switzerland,
+overpowering, vast, awful in their majesty; but just green-topped,
+self-sufficient and friendly hills that invite you to lift up your eyes
+and be strong.
+
+Visitors are welcome to the grounds at Greta Hall at all times, and the
+kind old gardener who showed us about gathered us bouquets of mignonette,
+rue and thyme, and gave us the history of a wonderful pear-tree that had
+turned into a vine and now covers one whole side of a stable thirty feet
+long. Even a tree will lose its individuality if it is not allowed to
+assert its nature and care for itself. That particular pear-tree, we were
+told, sprang from a slip planted by Shelley when he once came here on a
+visit to Southey; and we were further told that the year Shelley was
+drowned, the leaves of this tree turned pale and withered, and only by
+patient, loving nursing on the part of our old gardener's father was its
+life saved. The residence was closed the day we were there, in dread
+anticipation of Cook tourists with designs on the shrubbery, we had reason
+to believe, but we lingered around the grounds, listened to the soothing,
+rippling lullaby of the Greta, watched the strutting peacocks, and ate
+bread-and-milk, under the trees, out of big bowls supplied us by the old
+gardener for the most modest of considerations.
+
+Southey never really mixed in the wealth of beauty that covers this
+beautiful corner of earth. He was learned and profound, and he took
+himself and the Church and the State seriously. He felt himself a part of
+an indestructible institution, whereas man and all his works are no more
+peculiar, no more wonderful than an ant-hill--and last only a day longer.
+He never realized that he was a part of the great whole that made up
+mountain, lake, globe, wooded glen and tireless river. He differentiated.
+He considered himself a man, an educated man, and therefore a little
+better, and a little above, and a little outside of it all--otherwise how
+could he have withered at the top at the early age of sixty-seven?
+
+This question White Pigeon asked as we sat in the dim quiet of Crosthwaite
+Church, down in the village. I did not attempt to reply--people do not ask
+questions expecting, necessarily, to have them answered. We ask questions
+in order to clarify our own minds.
+
+The warning blast of the coach-horn was heard, and we went out into the
+sunshine. I bade my three friends good-by (first placing my autograph on
+Grace's and Myrtle's fans), and they climbed to the top of the coach. I
+sat on the stone wall and watched them until they disappeared around the
+bend of the road, waving handkerchiefs. That night I made my way over to
+Penreith on the way to Carlisle. It had been a day brimming with thought
+and feeling, and beauty expressed and unexpressed, and the kindness of
+kind friends who understand. That night as I dozed off into deep, calm
+sleep I said to myself: "They were great men, those Lake Poets, and the
+world is better because they lived. But there will come other men and they
+will be greater than those gone--the best is yet to be."
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+
+    Beneath the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the
+    Thrones of Frost, this through the absence of objects to reflect
+    the rays.
+
+    What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own--we need another
+    to reflect our thoughts.
+                             --_Samuel Taylor Coleridge_
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE]
+
+
+Samuel T. Coleridge was a thinker, and thinkers are so rarely found that
+the world must take note of them. John Stuart Mill, writing in Eighteen
+Hundred Forty, assigned first place among English philosophers to Jeremy
+Bentham, incidentally mentioning that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was
+Bentham's only rival.
+
+In philosophy there is an apostolic succession. We build on the past, and
+all the centuries of turmoil and travail which have gone before have made
+this moment possible. There has never been any such thing as "the fall of
+man"; for the march of the race has been a continual climb--a movement
+onward and upward. Were it not for Coleridge and Bentham, we could not
+have had Buckle, Wallace and Spencer, for the minds of men would not have
+been prepared to give them a hearing. "Half the battle is in catching the
+Speaker's eye," said Thomas Brackett Reed; and a John the Baptist to
+prepare the way is always necessary. Without Coleridge to quietly ignore
+the question of precedent, and refuse to accept a thing without proof, and
+ask eternally and yet again, "How do you know?" Charles Darwin with his
+"Origin of Species" would have been laughed out of court. Or probably had
+Darwin been persistent we would have consigned him to the stocks, burned
+his book in the public square, and with the aid of logical thumbscrews
+made him recant.
+
+Even as it was, the gibes and guffaws of the press and pulpit came near
+drowning the modest, moderate voice of Darwin; and for a score of years,
+his reputation as a scientist seemed to be trembling in the balance. Yet
+today the man who would seriously attempt in an educated assembly to throw
+obloquy upon the doctrine of Evolution and the name of Charles Darwin
+would find himself speedily listed with Brudder Jasper of Richmond,
+Virginia. The Church now, everywhere, has its Drummonds, who build on
+Darwin and use his citations as proof; and Drummond merely expressed what
+the many believe--no more.
+
+The man who has dared to think for himself and voiced his thought--the
+emancipated man--has been as one in a million. What usually passes for
+thought is only the repetition of things we have heard or been told. We
+memorize, repeat by rote and call it thought.
+
+With the Church and State in control of food and clothes, and with spears,
+clubs, knives and guns ready to suppress whatsoever seemed dangerous to
+their stability, it is a miracle that men have ever improved on
+anything--for progress has been for centuries a perilous performance. To
+question a priest was blasphemy. To reason with a judge was heinous. To
+think and decide for yourself was to invite torture and death.
+
+And all this was very natural, simply because the superior class who
+monopolized the good things of earth were obliged, in order to enslave and
+tax men, to make them believe that their power was derived from God. And
+thus was taught the "divine right of kings," the duty of submission, the
+necessity of belief and the sinfulness of doubt. The source of all
+knowledge was declared to be a book, and the right of interpretation of
+this book was given to one class alone--those who sided with and were a
+part of the Superior Class.
+
+The reason the race has progressed so slowly is because the strong,
+vigorous and independent have been suppressed, either by legal process, or
+exterminated through war, which reaps the best and lets the weak, the
+diseased and the cowards go.
+
+Those who doubted and questioned have been deprived of food and clothes,
+disgraced, mobbed, robbed, lashed naked at the cart's tail, burned at the
+stake, or separated from their families and transported beyond the sea to
+be devoured by wild beasts, die in jungles, or toil out their lives in
+slavery.
+
+But still there were always a few who would doubt and a few who would
+question; and in the early part of the Eighteenth Century in England the
+government was being put to severe straits to cope with the difficulty.
+Lying in the Thames were receiving-ships on which were crowded men and
+women to be transported. When the ship was full, crowded to her utmost,
+she sailed away with her living cargo. From Sixteen Hundred Fifty to
+Seventeen Hundred Fifty, over forty thousand people were sent away for
+their country's good. The hangman worked overtime, all prisons were
+crowded, and the walls of Newgate bulged with men and women, old and
+young, who were believed to be dangerous to the stability and well-being
+of the superior class--that is, those who had the right to tax others.
+
+Finally, the enormity of bloodshed and woe involved caused a sort of
+concession on both sides to be agreed upon. Oppression continued will
+surely lead to a point where it cures itself, and the superior class in
+England, with a wise weather-eye, saw the reef on which they were in
+danger of striking. They heard the breakers, and began to grant
+concessions--unwillingly of course--concessions wrung from them. The
+censorship was abolished, reform bills introduced, the rights of free
+speech and a free press were partially recognized. The clergy, taking the
+cue, began to preach more love and less damnation; for the pew ever
+dictates to the pulpit what it shall preach. Thus general relaxation was
+in order to meet the competition of rival sects and independent preachers
+that were springing up; for although creeds never change, yet their
+interpretation does, and liberal sects do their work, not by growing
+strong, but by making all others more liberal.
+
+Thus the latter part of the Eighteenth Century witnessed a weakening of
+both sides through compromise. The schools and colleges were pedantic,
+complacent, smug and self-satisfied; by giving in a few points they had
+absorbed the radicals, and the political protesters had been bought off
+with snug places in the excise. Pretended knowledge passed for wisdom,
+dignity paraded as worth, affectation and hypocrisy patronized virtue. And
+Coleridge appears upon the scene, a conservative, with a beautiful
+innocence and an indifference to all pretended authority and asks, "How do
+you know?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The number of people who have written their names large in literature, who
+were the children of clergymen, is no mere coincidence. Tennyson, Addison,
+Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Coleridge--you
+can add to the list to suit. Young people follow example, and the habit of
+the father in writing out his thoughts causes others of the family to try
+it, too. Then there is an atmosphere of books in a rectory, and leisure to
+think, and best of all the income is not so great but that the practise of
+economy of time and money is duly enforced by necessity. To be launched
+into a library and learn by absorption is a great blessing.
+
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-two, the son
+of the Reverend John Coleridge, of Ottery Saint Mary, a small village of
+Devonshire. The rector was also a schoolmaster, just as all clergymen were
+before division of labor forced itself upon us. This worthy clergyman was
+twice married, his first wife bearing him three children, the second ten.
+Samuel was the last of the brood--the thirteenth--but his parents were not
+superstitious.
+
+The youngest in a big family, like the first, is apt to have a deal of
+love lavished upon him. The question of discipline has proved its own
+futility, and when a baby comes to parents approaching fifty, depend upon
+it, that child transforms the household into a monarchy, with himself as
+tyrant. This may be well and it may not.
+
+Little Samuel Taylor seemed to be aware of his power; he evolved a
+wondrous precocity and ruled the rectory with a rod of iron. When he was
+five he propounded questions that shook the orthodoxy of the worthy vicar
+to its very center.
+
+Yet, remarkable as was the intellect of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the
+family would not have remained in obscurity without him. In fact, the very
+brightness of his fame caused the excellence of his brothers to be lost in
+the shadow. His brother James became the father of Henry Nelson Coleridge,
+who married his cousin Sara, the daughter of our poet.
+
+To anticipate a little, it is well enough here to say that the daughter of
+Coleridge was a woman of remarkable excellence, and if you wish to
+disprove the adage that genius does not transmit itself she is a good
+example to bring up--even though there is a difference between fact and
+truth. James Coleridge was also the father of Mr. Justice Coleridge,
+himself the father of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge.
+
+And since iconoclasm is not out of place in an essay on Coleridge, it can
+also be stated that when Sara Coleridge married her cousin she did a wise
+thing. The marriage was a most happy one, and the children of these
+cousins have shown themselves to be beyond the average. And once,
+certainly not with his daughter in mind, Coleridge debated the question of
+consanguinity with Charles Lamb, and proved to his own satisfaction at
+least that the marriage of cousins was eminently sane, proper, just and
+right, and fraught with the best results for humanity.
+
+The only indictment that can be brought against the father of Coleridge is
+that he was a zealous Latin scholar, and proposed that the term "ablative"
+be abolished as insufficient, and in its stead should be used that of
+"quale-quare-quiddative case." He was a simple, amiable, excellent man who
+did his work the best he could, and was beloved by all the parish. As to
+the excellence of the established order of things he had no
+doubts--government and religion were divine institutions and should be
+upheld by all honest men.
+
+As to the vicar's wife we know little, but enough of a glance is given
+into her character through letters to show that she had in her make-up a
+trace of noble discontent. She was not entirely happy in her surroundings,
+and the amiable ways of her husband were often an exasperation to her,
+rather than a pleasure--even amiability can be overdone. He never saw more
+than a mile from home, but her eyes swept England from Cornwall to
+Scotland, and few men, even, saw so far as that a hundred years ago. The
+discontent of Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the heritage of mother to son.
+When Samuel was nine years of age the father passed away. The widow would
+have been in sore financial straits had it not been for the older
+children, and even as it was, strict economy and untiring industry were in
+order. Out of sympathy, Mr. Justice Buller, who had been a pupil of the
+Reverend John Coleridge, proposed to secure the youngest boy a scholarship
+in Christ's Hospital School, and so we find him entered there, July
+Eighteenth, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two. This was a year memorable in the
+history of America; and the alertness of the charity boy's intellect is
+shown in that he was aware of the struggle between England and the
+Colonies. He discussed the situation with his schoolfellows, and explained
+that the mother country had made a mistake in exacting too much. His
+sympathies were with the Colonies, but he thought submission on their part
+was in order when the stamp-tax was removed and that complete independence
+was absurd--the Colonies needed some one to protect them.
+
+Such reasoning in a boy of ten years seems strange, especially in view of
+the fact that a noted professor of pedagogy has recently explained to us
+that no child under fourteen is capable of independent reasoning.
+
+But it is quite certain that young Coleridge's opinions were not borrowed,
+for all the lad's acquaintances, who thought of the matter at all,
+considered the Americans simply "rebels" who merited death.
+
+Coleridge remained at Christ's Hospital for eight years, and before he
+left had easily taken his place as "Deputy Grecian." Charles Lamb has
+given many delightful glimpses of that schoolboy life in the "Essays of
+Elia."
+
+Middleton, afterward Bishop of Calcutta, called the attention of Boyer,
+the master, to Coleridge by saying, "There is a boy who reads Vergil for
+amusement!" Boyer was a strict disciplinarian, but he was ever on the
+lookout for a lad who loved books--the average youth getting out of all
+the study he could.
+
+The master began to encourage young Coleridge, and Coleridge responded. He
+wrote verses and essays, and was a prodigy in memorizing. According to
+Boyer's idea, and it was the prevailing idea everywhere then, and is yet
+in some sections, memorization was the one thing desirable. If the subject
+were Plato, and the master had forgotten his book, he called on Coleridge
+to recite. And the tall, fair-haired boy, with the big dreamy eyes, would
+rise and give page after page, "verbatim et literatim."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before Coleridge went to Cambridge, when nineteen years old he had taken
+on that masterly quality in conversation that made his society sought,
+even to the last. Lamb has told us of the gentle voice, not loud nor deep,
+but full of mellow intonations, and bell-like in its purity.
+
+Such a voice, laden with fine feeling, carrying conviction, only goes with
+a great soul. No doubt, though, the young man had grown into a bit of a
+dictator, and this habit of harangue he carried with him to College. To
+talk enabled him to think, and expression is necessary to growth. So the
+habit of argument with Coleridge seemed Nature's method of developing his
+powers of mental analysis. No more foolish saying was ever launched than,
+"Children should be seen and not heard." From lisping babyhood Coleridge
+talked, and talked much. When he was twenty, at Cambridge, he drew the
+boys to his room, until it was crowded to suffocation, just by the magic
+of his voice, and the subtle quality of his thought. His questioning mind
+went right to the heart of things, and in his divisions and heads and
+subheads even the professors could not always follow him. Let us hope that
+he himself always knew what he was trying to explain.
+
+He discussed metaphysics, theology and politics, and very naturally got to
+treading on thin ice.
+
+In theology his reasoning led him into Unitarianism, then a very fearful
+thing; and in politics he dallied with Madame la Revolution.
+
+A polite note from the Master of the College, suggesting that he talk less
+and follow the curriculum a little more closely, led him straight to the
+Master, with whom he proposed to argue the case, or publicly debate it.
+This was terrible!
+
+Stephen Crane at Syracuse University, a hundred years later, did just such
+a thing. He sought to argue a point in the classroom with Chancellor
+Symms.
+
+"Tut, tut!" said the Chancellor. "Have you forgotten what Saint Paul says
+on that very theme?"
+
+"Yes, I know," replied the best catcher ever on the Syracuse Nine; "yes, I
+know what Saint Paul says, but I differ with Saint Paul." And Stevie,
+unconsciously, was standing on the well-lubricated chute that landed him,
+soon, well outside the campus.
+
+The authorities did not admire the brilliant young Coleridge, full of his
+reasons and prolix abstractions. He was attracting too much attention to
+himself, and gradually gathering about him a throng of admirers who might
+disturb the balance of things. He was there anyway only through
+sufferance, and an intimation was given him that if he were not willing to
+accept things as they existed, and as they were taught, he had better go
+elsewhere.
+
+Piqued by his treatment and feeling he had been misunderstood and wronged,
+he suddenly disappeared.
+
+Some months afterwards, an acquaintance found him in a company of
+dragoons, duly enlisted in His Majesty's service, under an assumed name.
+
+The authorities at Jesus College were notified, and knowing that such a
+youth was out of place serving as a soldier, and feeling further a small
+pang of regret possibly for having driven him away, a plan was set on foot
+to secure his discharge. This was soon brought about, and doubtless much
+to Coleridge's relief. Erelong he found himself back at Cambridge--a
+little subdued, and a trifle more discreet, for his rough contact with the
+workaday world.
+
+A journey to Oxford, to visit an old friend, proved a pivotal point in his
+life. The fame of Coleridge as a poet had gone abroad, and the literary
+fledglings at Oxford sought to do the visitor honor in the proper way.
+Among others whom he met on this visit were Robert Southey and Robert
+Lovell, both poets of considerable local fame.
+
+Lovell had been married but a few months before to a young woman by the
+name of Fricker. Southey was engaged to a sister of the bride, and there
+was still a third sister fancy-free. The three poets became fast friends.
+They were all radicals, full of ambition to make a name for themselves,
+and all intent on elevating society out of the ruts into which it had
+fallen. All had suffered contumely on account of advanced ideas; and all
+were out of conceit with the existing order.
+
+They discussed the matter at length, and decided to set the world an
+example, by founding an ideal colony and showing how to make the most of
+life.
+
+Coleridge had long been interested in America, and from an
+acquaintanceship with sundry soldiers who had helped fight the battles of
+George the Third in the New World, he had gathered a rather romantic idea
+of the country. The stories of returned sailors and soldiers, told to
+civilians, are seldom exactly authentic. And Coleridge the poet, bubbling
+with the effervescence of youth, argued that a home on the banks of the
+Susquehanna, with love and books and comradeship, was the ideal condition.
+
+The matter was broached to the three sisters Fricker, and they of course
+responded--what woman worthy of the name of woman would not? And so the
+arrangements were fast being made, and as a necessary feature the three
+poets were duly and legally married to the three sisters, and Eden was to
+be peopled with the best.
+
+A date was arranged for sailing, but some trifling matter of finance
+delayed the exodus--in fact, certain expected loans were not forthcoming.
+Coleridge put in the time lecturing and preaching from Unitarian pulpits.
+He also tried his hand as editor, but the publication scheme failed to
+bring the shekels that were to buy emancipation. The innate contrariness
+of things seemed to be blocking all his plans.
+
+Meanwhile we find Lovell drifting off into commercialism. That is to say,
+Barabbas-like, he had turned publisher. Gadzooks! What would you have a
+man with a wife and baby do? Live on moonshine--well, well, well!
+
+Death claimed poor Lovell before he could make a success either of
+commerce or of art.
+
+Coleridge moved up to the Lake District, and at Keswick, near where the
+water comes down at Lodore--or did before the stream dried up--he rented
+rooms of a kind friend by the name of Johnson, who owned Greta Hall.
+Southey was writing articles for London papers. He received a guinea a
+column, and when he wrote a poem, as he did every little while, he sent it
+to a publisher who returned him a little good cash.
+
+Southey's wife went up to Keswick on a visit to see her sister, Mrs.
+Coleridge. Southey followed up to Keswick, and rather liked the situation.
+The Southeys and the Coleridges all lived together as one happy family.
+
+Southey was writing poetry and getting paid for it; and beside this had a
+small income. Coleridge allowed Southey to buy the supplies, and when he
+went away on tramp lecturing tours he felt perfectly safe in leaving his
+family with Southey.
+
+While up that way he met a young man, a native, by the name of
+Wordsworth--William Wordsworth--and a poet, too.
+
+Wordsworth had a sister named Dorothy, and this brother and sister lived
+together in a little whitewashed stone cottage, built up against the
+hillside at Grasmere, a village thirteen miles from Keswick. Coleridge
+liked these people first-rate and they liked him. He used to go down to
+visit them, and they would all sit up late listening to the splendid talk
+of the handsome Coleridge. William said he was the only great man he had
+ever met, and Dorothy agreed in the proposition.
+
+Coleridge was discouraged: the world did not care for his work, and the
+men in power had set their faces against him--or he thought they had,
+which is the same thing. There was a conspiracy, he thought, to keep him
+down; and Wordsworth should have advised him to join it, but did not.
+
+Dorothy Wordsworth was a most extraordinary woman--she was gentle, kind,
+low-voiced, sympathetic. She was not handsome, but she had the intellect
+that entitled her to a membership in the Brotherhood of Fine Minds. She
+knew the splendid excellence of Coleridge, and could follow him in his
+most abstract dissertations; and if his logic faltered she could lead him
+back to the trail.
+
+Dorothy Wordsworth admired and pitied Coleridge; and from pity to love is
+but a step.
+
+But Coleridge was not capable of a passionate love--the substance of his
+being was all absorbed in abstract thought. And yet Dorothy Wordsworth
+attracted him as no other woman ever did. He forgot his wife, Sara, up
+there at Southey's. Sara was a better-looking woman than Dorothy, but she
+lacked intellect. Her life was all bound up in housekeeping and going to
+church, and the petty little round of daily happenings to neighbors and
+friends. The world of thought and dreams to her was nothing. She loved
+her husband, but his foolish foibles vexed her, and his lack of
+application prompted her to chide him. And at such times he would turn to
+his friends at Dove Cottage for sympathy and rest.
+
+They used to tramp the hills, and discuss philosophy, and recite their
+poems the livelong day. It was on one such jaunt that out of the ghost of
+shoreless seas they sighted the "Ancient Mariner." Then Coleridge went
+ahead, completed the plot and gave the poem to the world. And once he
+said, half-boastfully, to Dorothy: "This old seafaring poem is valuable in
+that it is a tale no one will understand, but which will excite universal
+interest. Only the perfectly sane and sensible is dull."
+
+Wordsworth had read somewhat of the works of the German philosophers, and
+as he and his sister had a little money saved up they decided to go over
+and attend the lectures at the University of G�ttingen for awhile.
+Coleridge had nothing in the way to prevent his going, too, save that he
+didn't have the money. However, he wanted to go and so decided to lay the
+case before the sons of Josiah Wedgwood. These young men had been
+schoolfellows of Coleridge at Cambridge, and once he had gone home with
+them and so had met their father.
+
+And right here comes a very strong temptation to say not another word
+about Coleridge, but merge this essay off into a sketch of that most
+excellent, strong and noble man, Josiah Wedgwood. Here is a man who left
+his impress indelibly on the times, and whose influence outweighed that of
+a dozen prime ministers. The potter is gone, but he lives in his art, so
+we still have the best and purest and noblest of the soul of Josiah
+Wedgwood.
+
+This man had assisted Coleridge at Cambridge, and it was to his sons
+Coleridge looked for help to realize his Susquehanna dream of Utopia. But
+the Wedgwoods knew the hazy, moonshine quality of the project and made
+excuses.
+
+Coleridge now appealed to them for assistance in a saner project, and they
+supplied him the money to go to G�ttingen.
+
+His stay of fourteen months in Germany gave him a firm hold on the
+language, and a goodly glimpse into the philosophy of Kant, Leibnitz and
+Schleiermacher. When Coleridge returned to England, he went at once to see
+his interesting family. Rumor has it that Mrs. Coleridge, in addition to
+caring for her own little brood and assisting in the Southey household,
+had also been working in the Keswick lead-pencil factory for a weekly wage
+of twelve shillings. The philosopher did not much like this lowering of
+dignity, and said so mildly. This led to the truthful explanation that he
+had hardly done his duty by his family in allowing them to shift for
+themselves or be cared for by kinsmen; and therefore advice from him was
+out of place. In short, Southey intimated that while he would care for
+his sisters-in-law he drew the line at brothers-in-law. And Samuel Taylor
+Coleridge drifted up to London (being down) to see if something would not
+turn up.
+
+His first task there was to translate "Werther," but the work did not seem
+to go. Grub Street took up the brilliant talker, and for a time he gave
+parlor lectures and filled the air of thought and speculation with his
+brilliant pyrotechnics. The force of his mind was everywhere acknowledged,
+but someway he did not seem to get on. Men who have managed the finances
+of a nation often have not been able successfully to control their own;
+and more than once we have had the spectacle of one who could do the
+thinking for a world failing in the humdrum duties of a citizen and
+neighbor. Coleridge tried various things, among others a secretaryship
+that took him to Malta, but the lack of system in his habits and his
+absent-mindedness made him the prey and butt of "practical" men.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Carlyle said that no more dreary record than the lives of authors
+existed, save the Newgate Calendar, he spoke truth.
+
+That the lives of most authors is a series of misunderstandings, blunders,
+heart-burnings, tragedies, is a fact. The author is a man who diverts and
+amuses us by doing the things we would do if we had time; and if we like
+him it is only because he expresses the things we already know. His is a
+hard task, requiring intense concentration--a concentration that can only
+be continued for a short time without the absolute burning out of
+existence.
+
+To think one's best and write out ideas is an abnormal operation. The most
+artistic work is always done in a sort of fever or ecstacy, which in its
+very nature is transient. To hunt and fish and dream and to work with
+one's hands are all very natural; but to sit down and think and then
+express your thoughts by the artificial scheme of writing on paper is a
+dangerous operation. If carried to excess it shall be paid for by your
+life.
+
+Coleridge had turned night into day in his hot zeal to follow the winding,
+dancing mystery of existence to its inmost recess. At times he had
+forgotten to eat or sleep; and then to reinforce despairing nature he had
+resorted to stimulants.
+
+Digestion had become impaired, circulation faulty through lack of
+exercise, so sleeplessness followed stimulation. Then to quiet pain came
+the use of the drug that brings oblivion. And lo! thought burned up
+brighter than ever and all the dreams of youth and twenty came trooping
+back.
+
+Coleridge had made a discovery. He thought he was getting the start of God
+Almighty; but he wasn't, for men have tried that before, and are trying it
+today, and many know not yet that we are strong only as we cling close to
+the skirts of Mother Nature and follow lovingly in her ways.
+
+From his twenty-ninth year we find Coleridge a wreck in mind and body;
+shuffling, sick, disheartened, erratic, uncertain, yet occasionally
+brilliant. He tramped the streets, feared and shunned. His money was gone,
+his power of concentration had vanished. In search of bread he met an
+old-time friend, Doctor Gillman.
+
+"Gillman," said Coleridge, "I am sick and helpless--look at me!"
+
+"Why don't you come to my house and live with me?" asked the kind friend.
+
+"Gillman," said the poor man, "Gillman, I am on my way there!"
+
+So Gillman brought him to his house up at Highgate and took care of him as
+a child. And there he remained, the pride and pet of a group of brave,
+thinking men and women.
+
+He lived on for thirty years, under the kindly, skilful care of his
+friend, but all the real work of his life was done before he was thirty.
+Occasionally the old fire would flash forth, and the wit and insight of
+his youth would shine out. Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron, and others strong
+and great sought him out to hold converse with him. And so he existed, a
+sort of oracle, amiable, kind and generous--wreck of a man that
+was--protected and defended by loving friends; while up at Keswick,
+Southey cared for his wife and educated his children as though they were
+his own.
+
+"I am dying," said Coleridge to Gillman in July, Eighteen Hundred
+Thirty-four; "dying, but I should have died, like Keats, in youth and not
+have made myself a burden to you--do you forgive me?" We can guess the
+answer.
+
+The dust of Coleridge rests in Highgate Cemetery, just a step from where
+he lived all those years. He, himself, selected the place and wrote his
+epitaph. The simple monument that marks the spot was paid for by kind
+friends who remembered him and loved him and who pardoned him for all that
+he was not, in memory of what he once had been.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To a young man from the country, who makes his way up, no greater shock
+ever comes than the discovery that rich people are, for the most part,
+woefully ignorant. He has always imagined that material splendor and
+spiritual gifts go hand in hand; and now if he is wise he discovers that
+millionaires are too busy making money, and too anxious about what they
+have made, and their families are too intent on spending it, ever to
+acquire a calm, judicial mental attitude.
+
+The rich are not the leisure class, and they need education no less than
+the poor. Lord, enlighten thou our enemies, should be the prayer of every
+man who works for progress: give clearness to their mental perceptions,
+awaken in them the receptive spirit, soften their callous hearts, and
+arouse their powers of reason.
+
+Danger lies in their folly, not in their wisdom; their weakness is to be
+feared, not their strength.
+
+That the wealthy and influential class should fear change, and cling
+stubbornly to conservatism, is certainly to be expected.
+
+To convince this class that spiritual and temporal good can be improved
+upon by a more liberal policy has been a task a thousand times greater
+than the exciting of the poor to riot. It is easy to fire the
+discontented, but to arouse the rich and carry truth home to the blindly
+prejudiced is a different matter. Too often the reformer has been one who
+caused the rich to band themselves against the poor.
+
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a Tory who defended the existing order on the
+plea of its usefulness.
+
+He approached the vital issue from the inside, taught the conservative to
+think, and thus opened the eyes of the aristocrats without exciting their
+fears or unduly arousing their wrath.
+
+Self-preservation prompts men to move in the line of least resistance. And
+that any man should ever have put his safety in peril by questioning the
+authority of those able and ready to confiscate his property and take away
+his life is very strange. Such a person must belong to one of two types.
+He must be either a revolutionist--one who would supplant existing
+authority with his own, thus knowingly and willingly hazarding all--or he
+is an innocent, indiscreet individual, absolutely devoid of all interest
+in the main chance.
+
+Coleridge belonged to the last-mentioned type. Genius needs a keeper. Here
+was a man so absorbed in abstract thought, so intent on attaining high and
+holy truth, that he neglected his friends, neglected his family, neglected
+himself until his body refused to obey the helm. It is easy to find fault
+with such a man, but to refuse to grant an admiring recognition of his
+worth, on account of what he was not, is an error, pardonable only to the
+rude, crude and vulgar. The cultivated mind sees the good and fixes
+attention on that.
+
+Coleridge formulated no system, solved no complex problems, made no
+brilliant discoveries. But his habit of analysis enriched the world
+beyond power to compute. He taught men to think and separate truth from
+error. He was not popular, for he did not adapt himself to the many. His
+business was to teach teachers--he conducted a Normal School, and taught
+teachers how to teach. Coleridge went to the very bottom of a subject, and
+his subtle mind refused to take anything for granted. He approached every
+proposition with an unprejudiced mind. In his "Aids to Reflection," he
+says, "He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed
+by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and then end in
+loving himself better than all."
+
+The average man believes a thing first, and then searches for proof to
+bolster his opinion. Every observer must have noticed the tenuous, cobweb
+quality of reasons that are deemed sufficient to the person who thinks he
+knows, or whose interests lie in a certain direction. The limitations of
+men seem to make it necessary that pure truth should come to us through
+men who are stripped for eternity. Kant, the villager who never traveled
+more than a day's walk from his birthplace, and Coleridge, the homeless
+and houseless aristocrat, with no selfish interests in the material world,
+view things without prejudice.
+
+The method of Coleridge, from his youth, was to divide the whole into
+parts. Then he begins to eliminate, and divides down, rejecting all things
+that are not the thing, until he finds the thing. He begins all inquiries
+by supposing that nothing is known on the subject. He will not grant you
+that murder and robbery are bad--you must show why they are bad, and if
+you can not explain, he will take the subject up and divide it into heads
+for you.
+
+First, the effect on the sufferer. Second, the evil to the doer. Third,
+the danger of a bad example. Fourth, the injury to society through the
+feeling of insecurity. Fifth, the pain given to the families of both doer
+and sufferer. Next he will look for excuses for the crime and give all the
+credit he can; and then finally strike a balance and give a conclusion.
+
+One of Coleridge's best points was in calling attention to what
+constitutes proof; he saw all fallacies and discovered at a glance
+illusions in logic that had long been palmed off on the world as truth. He
+saw the gulf that lies between coincidence and sequence, and hastened the
+day when the old-time pedant with his mighty tomes and tiresome sermons
+about nothing should be no more. And so today, in the Year of Grace
+Nineteen Hundred, the man who writes must have something to say, and he
+who speaks must have a message. "Coleridge," says Principal Shairp, "was
+the originator and creator of the higher criticism." The race has gained
+ground, made head upon the whole; and thanks to the thinkers gone, there
+are thinkers now in every community who weigh, sift, try and decide. No
+statement made by an interested party can go unchallenged. "How do you
+know?" and "Why?" we ask.
+
+That is good which serves--man is the important item, this earth is the
+place, and the time is now. So all good men and women and all churches are
+endeavoring to make earth heaven; and all agree that to live, now and
+here, the best you can, is the fittest preparation for a life to come.
+
+We no longer accept the doctrine that our natures are rooted in infamy,
+and that the desires of the flesh are cunning traps set by Satan, with
+God's permission, to undo us. We believe that no one can harm us but
+ourselves, that sin is misdirected energy, that there is no devil but
+fear, and that the universe is planned for good. On every side we find
+beauty and excellence held in the balance of things. We know that work is
+needful, that winter is as necessary as summer, that night is as useful as
+day, that death is a manifestation of life, and just as good. We believe
+in the Now and Here. We believe in a power that is in ourselves that makes
+for righteousness.
+
+These things have not been taught us by a superior class who have governed
+us for a consideration, and to whom we have paid taxes and tithes--we have
+simply thought things out for ourselves, and in spite of them. We have
+listened to Coleridge, and others, who said: "You should use your reason
+and separate the good from the bad, the false from the true, the useless
+from the useful. Be yourself and think for yourself; and while your
+conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the
+opinions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping
+you in ignorance. You grow through the exercise of your faculties, and if
+you do not reason now you never will advance. We are all sons of God, and
+it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Claim your heritage!"
+
+
+
+
+BENJAMIN DISRAELI
+
+    The stimulus subsided. The paroxysms ended in prostration. Some
+    took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated
+    between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury
+    bench, the Ministers reminded me of those marine landscapes not
+    unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of
+    exhausted volcanoes; not a flame flickers on a single pallid
+    crest; but the situation is still dangerous: there are occasional
+    earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumblings of the sea.
+                                               --_Speech at Manchester_
+
+[Illustration: BENJAMIN DISRAELI]
+
+
+Since Disraeli was born a Jew, he was received into the Jewish Church with
+Jewish rites. But Judaism, standing in the way of his ambition, and his
+parents' ambition for him, the religion of his fathers was renounced and
+he became, in name, a Christian. Yet to the last his heart was with his
+people, and the glory of his race was his secret pride.
+
+The fine irony of affiliating with a people who worship a Jew as their
+Savior, but who have legislated against, and despised the Jew--this
+attracted Disraeli. With them he bowed the knee in an adoration they did
+not feel, and while his lips said the litany, his heart repeated Ben
+Ezra's prayer. In temperament he belonged with the double-dealing East. He
+intuitively knew the law of jiu jitsu, best exemplified by the Japanese,
+and won often by yielding. He was bold, but not too bold.
+
+Israel Zangwill, shrewdest, keenest and kindliest of Jews--with the
+tragedy of his race pictured on his furrowed face, a face like an ancient
+weather-worn statue on whose countenance grief has petrified--has summed
+up the character of Disraeli as no other man ever has or can. I will not
+rob the reader by quoting from "The Primrose Sphinx"--that gem of letters
+must ever stand together without subtraction of a word. It belongs to the
+realm of the lapidary, and its facets can not be transferred. Yet when Mr.
+Zangwill refers to the Mephistophelian curl of Lord Beaconsfield's lip,
+the word is used advisedly. No character in history so stands for the
+legendary Mephisto as does this man. The Satan of the Book of Job, jaunty,
+daring, joking with his Maker, is the Mephisto of Goethe and all the other
+playwriters who, have used the character. Mephisto is so much above the
+ordinary man in sense of humor--which is merely the right estimate of
+values--so sweeping in intellect, that Milton pictures him as a
+dispossessed god, the only rival of Deity.
+
+Disraeli, not satisfied with playing the part of Mephisto and tempting men
+to their ruin, but thirsting for a wider experience, turns Faustus himself
+and sells his soul for a price. He knows that everything in life is
+sold--nothing is given gratis--we pay for knowledge with tears; for love
+with pain; for life with death. He haggles and barters with Fate, and pays
+the penalty because he must.
+
+He alternately affronts and cajoles his enemies; takes all that the world
+has to give; knows every pleasure; wins every prize; makes love to the
+daughters of men (without loving them); and winning the one he selects,
+secretly thanks Jehovah, God of his fathers, that he leaves no
+offspring--because the woman fit for his mate and equal to mothering his
+children does not exist.
+
+The sublimity of his egotism stands unrivaled. It is so great that it is
+admirable. We lift our hats to this man. Napoleon gained the field without
+prejudice; but this man enters the list with hate and prejudice arrayed
+against him. He plays the pawns of chance with literature, religion,
+politics, and moves the queen so as to checkmate all adversaries. He
+flouts love, but to show the world that he yet knows the ideal, he
+occasionally pictures truth and trusting affection in his speeches and
+books. This entire game of life is to him only a diversion.
+
+They may jeer him down in the House of Commons, but his patience is
+unruffled. He says, "Very well, I will wait." Now and again he smiles that
+wondrous, contagious smile, showing his white teeth and the depth of his
+dark, burning eyes.
+
+He knows his power. He revels in the wit he never expresses; he glories in
+this bright blade of the intellect that is never fully unsheathed.
+
+They think he is interested in English politics--pish! Only world problems
+really interest him, and those that lie behind mean as much to him as
+those that are to come. He is one with eternity, and the vanquished glory
+of Rome, the marble beauty of Athens, the Assyrian Sphinx, the flight from
+Egypt under the leadership of one who had killed his man--yet had talked
+with God face to face--these and the dim uncertainty of the unseen, are
+the things that interest him. He is a dreamer of the Ghetto.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no taint of mixed blood in the veins of Benjamin Disraeli. He
+traced his ancestry in a record that looks like a chapter from the Book of
+Numbers. His forebears had known every persecution, every contumely,
+slight and disgrace. Driven from Spain by the Inquisition, barely escaping
+with life, when Jewish blood actually fertilized the fields about Granada,
+his direct ancestor became one of the builders of Venice. The Jews
+practically controlled the trade of the world in the sun-kissed days of
+prosperity, when Venice produced the books and the art of Christendom.
+
+To trace an ancestry back to those who enthroned Venice on her hundred
+isles was surely something of which to be proud; and into the blood of
+Benjamin Disraeli went a dash of the gleam and glory and glamour of
+Venice--the Venice of the Doges.
+
+This man's grandfather came to England with a goodly fortune, which he
+managed to increase as the years went by. He had one son, Isaac, who
+nearly broke his parents' heart in that he not only showed no aptitude for
+business, but actually wrote poems wherein commerce was held up to
+ridicule. The tendency of the artistic nature to speak with disdain of the
+"mere money-grabber," and the habit of the "money-grabber" to refer
+patronizingly to the helpless, theoretical and dreamy artist, is well
+known. Isaac Disraeli was an artist in feeling; he must have been a
+reincarnation of one of those bookmakers of Venice who touched hands with
+Titian and Giorgione and helped to invest wisely the moneys the merchants
+of the Rialto made. Never a Gratiano had a greater contempt for a merchant
+than he. Just to get him out of the way, his parents packed Isaac off to
+Europe, where he acquired several languages, and some other things, with
+that ease which the Jew always manifests. He dallied in art, pecked at
+books, and made the acquaintance of many literary men.
+
+When his father died and left him a goodly fortune, he had the sense to
+turn the entire management of the estate over to his wife, a woman with a
+thorough business instinct, while he busied himself with his books.
+
+Benjamin was the second child of these parents. He had a sister older than
+himself, and two brothers younger. Those philosophers who claim that
+spirits have their own individuality in the unseen world, and the accident
+of birth really does not constitute a kinship between brothers and
+sisters, will find here something that looks like proof. Benjamin Disraeli
+bore no resemblance in mental characteristics to his sister or brothers;
+he did, however, possess the mental virtues of both father and mother,
+multiplied by ten.
+
+When twelve years of age he exhibited that intense disposition for mastery
+which was through life his distinguishing trait. The Jew does not outrank
+the Gentile in strength, but the average Jew surely does have the faculty
+of concentration which the average Gentile does not possess. And that is
+what constitutes strength--the ability to focus the mind on one thing and
+compass it: to concentrate is power.
+
+When Ben was sent to the Unitarian school at Walthamstow, aged fifteen, it
+was his first taste of school life. Up to this time his father had been
+his tutor. Now he found himself cast into that den of wild animals--an
+English school for boys. His Jewish name and features and his dandy ways
+and attire made him the instant butt of the playground. Ben very patiently
+surveyed his tormentors, waited to pick his man, and then challenged the
+biggest boy in the school to single combat. The exasperating way in which
+he coolly went about the business set his adversary's teeth chattering
+before the call of "time." The result of the fight was that, even if
+"Dizzy" was not thoroughly respected from that day forth, no one ever
+called, "Old clo'! Old clo'!" within his hearing. Of course it was not
+generally advertised that the lad had been taking boxing lessons from
+"Coster Joe" for three years, with the villainies of a boys' school in
+view. In fact, boxing was this young man's diversion, and the Coster on
+several occasions expressed great regret that writing and politics had
+robbed the ring of one who showed promise of being the cleverest
+welter-weight of his time.
+
+The main facts in both "Vivian Gray" and "Contarini Fleming" are
+autobiographical. Like Byron, upon whom Disraeli fed, the author never
+got far away from himself.
+
+It was not long before the intense personality of young Disraeli made
+itself felt throughout the Walthamstow school. The young man smiled at the
+pedant's idolatry of facts, and seized the vital point in every lesson. He
+felt himself the superior of every one in the establishment, master
+included--and he was.
+
+Before a year he split the school into two factions--those who favored Ben
+Disraeli, and those who were opposed to him. The master cast his vote with
+the latter class, and the result was that Ben withdrew, thus saving the
+authorities the trouble of expelling him. His leave-taking was made
+melodramatic with a speech to the boys, wherein impertinent allusions were
+made concerning all schoolmasters, and the master of Walthamstow in
+particular.
+
+And thus ended the school life of Benjamin Disraeli, the year at
+Walthamstow being his first and last experience.
+
+However, Ben was not indifferent to study; he felt sure that there was a
+great career before him, and he knew that knowledge was necessary to
+success. With his father's help he laid out a course of work that kept him
+at his tasks ten hours a day. His father was a literary man of
+acknowledged worth, and mingled in the best artistic society of London.
+Into this society Benjamin was introduced, meeting all his father's
+acquaintances on an absolute equality. The young man at eighteen was
+totally unabashed in any company; he gave his opinion unasked, criticized
+his elders, flashed his wit upon the guests and was looked upon with fear,
+amusement or admiration, as the case might be.
+
+Froude says of him, "The stripling was the same person as the statesman at
+seventy, with this difference only, that the affectation which was natural
+in the boy was itself affected in the matured politician, whom it served
+well for a mask, or as a suit of impenetrable armor."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That literature is the child of parents is true. That is to say, it takes
+two to produce a book. Of course there are imitation books, sort o' wax
+figures that look like books, made through habit by those that have been
+many years upon the turf, and who work automatically; but every real,
+live, throbbing, pulsing book was written by a man with a woman at his
+elbow, or vice versa.
+
+When twenty-one years of age Benjamin Disraeli produced "Vivian Gray." The
+woman in the case was Mrs. Austen, wife of a prosperous London solicitor.
+This lady was handsome, a brilliant talker, a fine musician and an amateur
+artist of no mean ability. She was much older than Disraeli--she must have
+been in order to comprehend that the young man's frivolity was pretense,
+and his foppery affectation. A girl of his own age, whose heart-depths had
+not been sounded by experience, would have fallen in love with the foppery
+(or else despised it--which is often the same thing); but Mrs. Austen,
+mature in years, with a decade of London "seasons" behind her, having met
+every possible kind of man Europe had to offer, discovered that the world
+did not know Ben Disraeli at all. She saw that the youth did not reveal
+his true self, and that instead of courting society for its own sake he
+had a supreme contempt for it. She intuitively knew that he was seething
+in discontent, and with prophetic vision she knew that his restless power
+and his ambition would yet make him a marked figure in the world of
+letters or politics, or both.
+
+For love as a passion, or supreme sentiment, ruling one's life, Disraeli
+had no sympathy. He shunned love for fear it might bind him hand and foot.
+Love not only is blind, but love blinds its votary, and Disraeli, knowing
+this, fled for freedom when the trail grew warm. A man madly in love is
+led, subdued--imagine Mephisto captured, crying it out on his knees with
+his head in a woman's lap!
+
+But Mrs. Austen was happily married, the mother of a family, and occupied
+a position high in London society.
+
+Marriage with her was out of the question, and scandal and indiscretion
+equally so--Ben Disraeli felt safe with Mrs. Austen. With her he put off
+his domino and grew simple and confidential.
+
+And so the lady, doubtless a bit flattered--for she was a woman--set
+herself to push on the hazard of new fortunes. She encouraged him to write
+his novel of "Vivian Gray"--discussed every phase of it, read chapter
+after chapter as they were produced, and by her gentle encouragement and
+warm sympathy fired the mind of the young man to the point of production.
+
+The book is absurd in plot, and like most first books, flashy and
+overdrawn. And yet there is a deal of power in it, and the thinly veiled
+characters were speedily pointed out as living personages. Literary London
+went agog, and Mrs. Austen fanned the flame by inviting "the set" to her
+drawing-room to hear the great author read from his amusing work. The best
+feature of the book, and probably the saving feature, is that the central
+figure in the plot is Disraeli, himself, and upon his own head the author
+plays his shafts of wit and ridicule. The impertinence and impudence which
+he himself manifested were parodied, caricatured and played upon, to the
+great delight of the uninitiated rabble, who gave themselves much credit
+for having made a discovery.
+
+The man who scorns, scoffs, gibes and jeers other men, and at the same
+time is willing to drop his guard and laugh at himself, is not a bad man.
+Very, very seldom is found a man under thirty who does not take himself
+and all his wit seriously. But Disraeli, the lawyer's clerk, at twenty was
+wise and subtle beyond all men in London Town. Mrs. Austen must have been
+wise, too, for had she been like most other good women she would have
+wanted her protege admired, and have rebelled in tears at the thought of
+placing him in a position where society would serve him up for
+tittle-tattle. Small men can be laughed down, but great ones, never.
+
+A little American testimony as to the appearance of Disraeli in his
+manhood may not here be amiss. Says N.P. Willis: "He was sitting in a
+window looking on Hyde Park, the last rays of sunlight reflected from the
+gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat.
+Patent-leather pumps, a white stick with a black cord and tassel, and a
+quantity of chains about his neck and pockets, served to make him a
+conspicuous object. He has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He
+is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and strength of his
+lungs would seem to be a victim of consumption. His eye is black as
+Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying-in-wait sort of expression
+conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient
+nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a
+particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of
+triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. His hair is as
+extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black
+ringlets falls on his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, which on
+the right temple is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a
+girl. The conversation turned on Beckford. I might as well attempt to
+gather up the foam of the sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary
+language in which he clothed his description. He talked like a racehorse
+approaching the winning-post, every muscle in action."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Disraeli, like Byron, awoke one morning and found himself famous. And like
+Byron, he was yet a stripling. Pitt was Prime Minister at twenty-five.
+Genius has its example, and Disraeli worshiped alternately at the shrines
+of Byron and Pitt. The daring intellect and haughty indifference of Byron,
+and the compelling power of Pitt--he saw no reason why he should not unite
+these qualities within himself. He had been grubbing in a lawyer's office,
+and had revealed decided ability in a business way, but novel-writing in
+office-hours was not appreciated by his employer--Ben was told so, and
+this gave him an opportunity to resign. He had set his heart on a
+political career--he thirsted for power--and no doubt Mrs. Austen
+encouraged him in this. To push a man to the front, and thus win a
+vicarious triumph, has been a source of great joy to more than one
+ambitious woman. To get on in politics, Disraeli must enter the House of
+Commons. Even now, with the help of the Austens, and his father's purse, a
+pocket borough might be secured, but it was not enough--he must enter with
+eclat.
+
+A year of travel was advised--fame grows best where the man is not too
+much in evidence; there is virtue in obscurity. Disraeli decided to go
+down through Europe, traveling over the same route that Byron had taken,
+write another book that would secure him some more necessary notoriety,
+and then stand for a seat in the House of Commons. Once within the sacred
+pale, he believed his knowledge of business, his ability to express
+himself as a writer or speaker, and the magic of his presence would make
+the rest easy.
+
+There was no dumb luck in the matter--neither father nor son believed in
+chance; they fixed their faith on cause and effect.
+
+And so Ben went abroad before London society grew aweary of him.
+
+His stay was purposely prolonged; and news of his progress from time to
+time filled the public prints. He carried letters of introduction to every
+one and moved in a sort of sublime pageant as he traveled.
+
+When he returned, wearing the costume of the East, he was greeted by
+society as a prince. His novel, "Contarini Fleming," was published with
+great acclaim, and interest in "Vivian Gray" was revived by a special
+edition deluxe. "Contarini" was compared to "Childe Harold," and pictures
+of Disraeli, with hair curling to his shoulders, were displayed in
+shop-windows by the side of pictures of Byron.
+
+Disraeli was the lion of the drawing-rooms. When it was known he was to be
+in a certain place crowds gathered to get a glimpse of his handsome face,
+and to listen to his wit.
+
+He introduced several of his Eastern accomplishments, one of which was the
+hookah. "Beware of tobacco, my boy," said an old colonel to him one day;
+"women do not like it; it has ruined more charming liaisons than anything
+else I know!"
+
+"Then you must consider smoking a highly moral accomplishment," was the
+reply. The colonel had wrongly guessed the object of Disraeli's ambition.
+
+He became acquainted with Tom Moore, Count d'Orsay, and Lady Morgan; Lady
+Blessington welcomed him at Kensington; Bulwer-Lytton introduced him to
+Mrs. Wyndham Lewis--wife of the member from Maidstone--aged forty; and he
+was, say, twenty-five. They tried conclusions in repartee, sparred for
+points, and amused the company by hot arguments and wordy pyrotechnics.
+When they found themselves alone in the conservatory, after a little
+stroll, they shook hands, and the gentleman said, "What fools these
+mortals be!" "True," replied the lady; "true, and you and I are mortals."
+And so Disraeli found another woman who correctly gauged him. They liked
+each other first-rate. At last a vacant borough was found and arrangements
+made for the young man to stand as a candidate for the House of Commons.
+The campaign was entered upon with great vigor. Disraeli quite outdid
+himself in speech-making and waistcoats. The election took place--and he
+was defeated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With Disraeli defeat meant merely a transient episode, not a conclusion.
+On the second venture he was elected, and one sunshiny day found himself
+duly sworn in as a member of the House of Commons, with a seat just back
+of Peel's.
+
+There is a tradition in Parliament, adopted also in the United States
+Senate, that silence is quite becoming to a member during his first
+session. Disraeli had a motto to the effect that it is better to be
+impudent than servile, and in order to teach Parliament that in the
+presence of personality all rules are waived, he very shortly indulged him
+in an exceeding spread-eagle speech. But he had not spoken five minutes
+before the members began to laugh. Catcalls, hisses and mad tumult
+reigned. The young man in the flaming waistcoat let loose all his
+oratorical artillery, and the result was bravos and left-handed applause
+that smothered his batteries. Again and again he tried to proceed, but his
+voice was lost in the Clover-Club fusillade. The Chair was powerless. At
+last the speaker saw an opening and roared above the din, "I will now sit
+down, but you shall yet listen to me!"
+
+Opinions were divided as to whether the House had squelched the
+Israelitish fop, or whether the fop had tantalized the House into
+unseemliness. The young man needed snubbing, no doubt, but the lesson had
+been given so brutally that sympathy was with the snubbed. The original
+intent was to abash him, so he would break down; but this not succeeding,
+he had simply been clubbed into silence.
+
+Then when Disraeli refused to accept condolences--merely waiving the whole
+affair--and a few days after arose to make some trivial motion, just as
+though nothing had happened, he made friends.
+
+Any man who shows himself to be strong has friends--people wish to attach
+themselves to such a one. Disraeli showed himself strong in that he held
+no resentment, and indulged in no recrimination on account of the
+treatment he had received. A weak man would have done one of these things:
+resigned his seat, demanded an apology from the House, or refused to let
+his voice again be heard. Disraeli did neither--he continued to speak on
+various occasions, and expressed himself so courteously, so modestly, so
+becomingly, that the members listened in awe and curiosity. Then soon it
+was discovered that beneath the mild and gentle ripple of his speech ran a
+deep current of earnest truth, tinged with subtle wit. When he spoke, the
+loungers came in from the cloakrooms, fearing to miss something that was
+worth while.
+
+The House of Commons experience taught Disraeli one great truth, and that
+was this: the most effective oratory is not bombastic. Among educated
+people (or illiterate) the quiet, deliberate and subdued manner is best.
+Reserve is a very necessary element in effective speaking. It is
+soul-weight that counts, not mere words, words, words. The extreme
+deliberation and compelling quality of quiet self-possession in Disraeli's
+style dated, according to Gladstone, from the day that Parliament tried to
+laugh him down. After that if any one wanted to hear him they had to come
+to him, and he took good care that those who did come did not go away
+empty. He never explained the evident, illustrated the obvious, nor
+expatiated on the irrelevant.
+
+However, the motto, "Impudence rather than servility," was not discarded.
+Instead of a dashing style he developed a slow, subtle, scathing quality
+that was quite lost on all, save those who gave themselves to close
+listening.
+
+And the House listened, for when Disraeli went after an antagonist he
+chose an antlered stag. If little men, fiercely effervescent and
+childishly inconsequential, attempted to reply to him or sought to engage
+him in debate, he simply answered them with silence, or that tantalizing
+smile.
+
+O'Connell and Disraeli, although unlike, had much in common and should
+have been fast friends. Surely the age and distinguished record of
+O'Connell must have commanded Disraeli's respect, but we know how they
+grappled in wordy warfare. Disraeli called the Irishman an incendiary, and
+O'Connell, who was a past master in abuse, replied in a speech wherein he
+exhausted the Billingsgate lexicon. He wound up by a reference to the
+ancestry of his opponent, and a suggestion that "this renegade Jew is
+descended from the impenitent thief, whose name was doubtless Disraeli."
+It was a home-thrust--a picture so exaggerated and overdrawn that all
+England laughed. The very extravagance of the simile should have saved the
+allusion from resentment; but it touched Disraeli in his most sensitive
+spot--his pride of birth.
+
+He straightway challenged his traducer. O'Connell had killed a man in a
+duel years before, and then vowed he would never again engage in mortal
+combat.
+
+Disraeli intimated that he would fight O'Connell's son, Morgan, if
+preferred, a man of his own age.
+
+Morgan replied that his father insulted so many men he could not set the
+precedent of fighting them all, or standing sponsor for an indiscreet
+parent. But with genuine Irish spirit he suggested that if the son of
+Abraham was intent on fight and could not be persuaded to be sensible,
+why, the matter could probably be arranged.
+
+Happily, about this time, police officers invaded the apartments of
+Disraeli and arrested him on a bench-warrant. He was bound over, to his
+great relief, in the sum of five hundred pounds to keep the peace.
+
+O'Connell never took the matter very seriously, and referred soon after in
+a speech to "my excellent, though slightly bellicose friend, child of an
+honored race."
+
+Disraeli did not take up politics to make money--the man who does that may
+win in his desires, but his career is short. Nothing but honesty really
+succeeds. Disraeli knew this, and in his record there is no taint. But the
+income of a member of the House of Commons affords no opportunity for
+display. Disraeli's books brought him in only small sums, and his father's
+moderate fortune had been sadly drawn upon. He was well past thirty, and
+was not making head, simply because he was cramped for funds. To rise in
+politics you must have an establishment; you must entertain and reach out
+and bring those you wish to influence within your scope. A third floor
+back, in an ebb-tide street, will not do. Like Agassiz, Disraeli had no
+time to make money--it was a sad plight. But this was a man of destiny,
+and to use the language of Augustine Birrell, "Wyndam Lewis at this time
+accommodatingly died." Mrs. Wyndam Lewis had been the firm friend and
+helper of Disraeli for many years, and although a small matter of fifteen
+years separated them as to ages, yet their hearts beat as one.
+
+Scarce a twelvemonth had gone before the widow and Disraeli were married.
+They disappeared from London for some months, journeying on the Continent.
+When they returned all the old scores in way of unpaid bills against
+Disraeli were paid, and he was master of an establishment.
+
+Disraeli was thirty-five, his wife was fifty, but it was a happy mating.
+They thought alike, and their ambitions were the same. Disraeli treated
+his wife with all the courtly grace and deference in which he was an
+adept, and her princely fortune was absolutely his. "There was much cause
+for gratitude on both sides," said O'Connell. And there is no doubt that
+Disraeli's wife proved the firmest friend he ever had. For many years she
+was his sole confidante and best adviser. She attended him everywhere and
+relieved him of many burdens. That true incident of her fingers being
+crushed by the careless slamming of the carriage-door, and her hiding the
+bleeding members in her muff, and attending her husband to the House of
+Commons, where he was to speak, refusing to disturb him by her pain--this
+symbols the moral quality of the woman. She was the fit mate of a great
+man, and it is pleasant to know that she was honored and appreciated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To tell the story of Disraeli's thirty years in Parliament would be to
+write the political history of the time. He was in the front of every
+fight; he expressed himself on every subject; he crossed swords with the
+strongest men of his age. That he had no great and overpowering
+convictions on any subject is fully admitted now, even by his most ardent
+admirers--it was always a question of policy; that is to say, he was a
+politician. He gave a point here and there when he had to, and when he
+did, always managed to do it gracefully. When he ambled over from one
+party to another he affected a fine wrath and gave excellent reasons.
+
+Three times he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and twice was he Prime
+Minister, and for a time actual Dictator. But he took good care not to
+exercise his power too severely. When his word was supreme, the safety of
+the nation lay, as it always does, in a strong opposition.
+
+In one notable instance was Disraeli wrong in his prophecies--he declared
+again and again that Free Trade meant commercial bankruptcy. Yet Free
+Trade came about, and the fires were started in ten thousand factories,
+and such prosperity came to England as she had never known before.
+
+Political economy as a science was a constant butt for his wit, and in
+physical science he was dense to a point where his ignorance calls for
+pity. He believed in the literal Mosaic account of creation, and said in
+his paradoxical way on one occasion, that in belief he was not only a
+Christian, but a Jew. And this in spite of his most famous mot: "All
+sensible men are of one religion."
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+"Sensible men never tell."
+
+Had Disraeli been truly sensible he would not have attempted to hold
+Charles Darwin up to ridicule, by declaring in a speech at Oxford that "it
+is a choice between apes and angels." He had neither the ability,
+patience, nor inclination to read the "Origin of Species," and yet was so
+absurd as to answer it.
+
+In his novels of "Coningsby," "Sybil" and "Tancred," he argues with great
+skill and adroit sophistry that a landed aristocracy is necessary to a
+progressive civilization. "The common people need an example of refinement
+in way of manners, art and intellect. Some one must take the lead, and
+reveal the possibility of life in leisurely and luxurious living." And
+this example of beauty, gentleness and excellence was to come from the
+landed gentry of England--ye gods! Was it possible that this man believed
+in the necessity of the gentry as a virtuous example? Or did he merely
+view the fact that the aristocracy were there in actual possession, and as
+they could not be evicted, why then the next best thing was to cajole,
+flatter and discreetly advise them? Who shall say what this man believed!
+
+Sensible men never tell.
+
+But this we know, this man had no vice but ambition. He conformed pretty
+closely to England's ideals, and his thirst for power never caused him to
+take the chances of a Waterloo. His novels show a close acquaintanceship
+with the ways of society, and he knew the human heart as few men ever do.
+The degradation of the average toiler in Great Britain, the infamy of the
+policy extended toward Ireland, and the cruelty of imperialism--all these
+he knew, for his books reveal it; but he was powerless as a leader to stem
+the current of tendency. He acquiesced where he deemed action futile.
+
+"Lothair" is his best novel, for in it he gets furthest away from himself.
+It reveals a cleverness that is admirable, and this same brilliancy and
+shifty play of intellect are found in "Endymion," written in his
+seventy-fifth year. Whether these novels can ever take their place among
+the books that endure is a question that is growing more easy to answer
+each succeeding year. They owed their popularity more to their flippant
+cleverness than to their insight, and their vogue was due, to a great
+extent, to the veiled personalities that interline their pages.
+
+That Disraeli did not carry out all the plans and reforms he attempted,
+need not be set down to his discredit. It is fortunate he did not succeed
+better than he did. He, however, safely piloted the great ship in the
+direction the passengers desired to go; and his own personal ambition was
+reached when he, a Jew at heart--member of a despised race--had made
+himself master of the fleets, armies and treasury of the proudest nation
+the world has ever known.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bound into the life of Disraeli is a peculiar incident in the romantic
+friendship that existed between him and Mrs. Willyums of Torquay,
+Cornwall. About the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, Disraeli began to
+receive letters from an unknown admirer, who expressed a great desire for
+an interview on "a most important business." All public men, especially if
+they have the brilliant mental qualities of Disraeli, receive such
+letters. The sensitive neurotic female who is ill-appreciated in her own
+home and whose soul yearns for a "higher companionship" is numerous.
+Disraeli's secretary used to take care of such letters with a gentle
+explanation that the Chief was out of town, but upon his return, etc.,
+etc., and that was the last of it. But this Torquay correspondent was
+insistent, and finally a letter came from her saying she had come to
+London on purpose to meet her lord and master, and she would await him at
+a seat just east of the fountain in Crystal Palace at a certain hour.
+Disraeli read the missive with impatience--the idea of his meeting an
+unknown woman in this fishmonger manner at a hurdy-gurdy show! He tossed
+the letter into the fire. The next day another letter came, expressing
+much regret that he had not kept the appointment, but saying she would
+await him at the same place the following day, and begging him, as the
+matter was very urgent, not to fail her.
+
+Disraeli smiled and showed the letter to his wife. She advised him to go.
+When his wife said he had better do a thing he usually did it; and so he
+ordered his carriage and went to the hurdy-gurdy show to meet the
+impressionable female of unknown age and condition at the seat just east
+of the fountain. It was a silly thing for the leading member of Parliament
+to do--to make an assignation in a public place with a fool-woman--all
+London might be laughing at him tomorrow! He was on the point of turning
+back.
+
+But he reached the fountain and there was his destiny awaiting him--a
+little woman in widow's black. She lifted her veil and showed a face
+wrinkled and old, but kindly. She was agitated--she really did not expect
+him--and the great man gave a great sigh of relief when he saw that no
+flashily dressed creature had entrapped him. Even if people stared at him
+sitting there it made no difference. In pity he shook hands with the
+little old woman, sat down beside her, calmed her agitation, spoke of
+Cornwall and the weather, and inquired what he could do for her. A
+rambling talk about nothing followed, and Disraeli was sure it was just a
+mild case of lunacy.
+
+He arose to go, and the woman gave him an envelope, saying she had written
+out her case and begged him to read the letter when he had time. The man
+was preoccupied, his mind on great affairs of state--he simply crushed the
+letter into the side-pocket of his overcoat, bade the woman a dignified
+good-morning, and turned away.
+
+It was a month before he found the letter all crumpled and soiled there
+where he had placed it. He really had forgotten where it came from. The
+envelope was opened and out dropped a Bank of England note for one
+thousand pounds. This note was to pay for certain legal advice. The advice
+wanted was of a trivial nature, and Disraeli, always conscientious in
+money matters, hastened to return the money, in person, and give the
+advice gratis.
+
+But the lady had had the interview--two of them--and this was all she
+wanted. Letters followed, and this developed into a daily correspondence,
+wherein the old lady revealed the story of her passion--a passion as
+delicate, earnest and all-devouring as ever a girl of twenty knew. Insane,
+you say? Well, ah--yes, doubtless. But then, love is illusion; perhaps
+life is illusion, a very beautiful rainbow, and why old folks should not
+be allowed to chase it, or allow sweet emotion to gurgle gleefully under
+their lee, a bit, as well as young folks, I do not know. Then, really, is
+love simply a physical manifestation and do spirits grow old? If so, where
+is our belief in the immortality of the soul?
+
+Mrs. Willyums was childless, had long been a widow, was rich, and her
+heart had been in the grave until she began to trace the record of
+Disraeli. She was a recluse: read, studied, fed on Disraeli--loved him.
+After several years of dreaming and planning she had actually bagged the
+game. She was a woman of education and ideas. Her letters were
+interesting--and Disraeli's letters to her, now published, reveal the
+history of his daily life as he never told it to another. At her death the
+bulk of Mrs. Willyum's fortune went by will to Disraeli.
+
+But Mrs. Disraeli was not jealous of this affection. Why should a woman of
+sixty be jealous of another woman the same age? They pooled their love and
+grew rich together in recounting it. Presents were going backward and
+forward all the time between Disraeli's country home and Torquay. Mrs.
+Willyums next came to live at Hughenden. There she died, and there she
+sleeps, side by side, as was her wish, with Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Privy
+Seal, Earl Beaconsfield of Beaconsfield, Viscount Hughenden of Hughenden.
+And the reason the Ex-Premier was not buried in Westminster Abbey was
+because he had promised these two women that even death should not
+separate them from him. So there under the spreading elms, in this
+out-of-the-way country place, they rest--these three, side by side, and
+the sighing breeze tells and tells again to the twittering birds in the
+branches, of this triple love, strange as fate, strong as destiny, warm as
+life, pure as snow, and unselfish as the kiss of the summer sun.
+
+
+
+
+SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF ENGLISH AUTHORS," BEING
+VOLUME FIVE OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED AND
+ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE
+GREAT, VOLUME 5 (OF 14)***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 13619-8.txt or 13619-8.zip *******
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great,
+Volume 5 (of 14), by Elbert Hubbard</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14)</p>
+<p>Author: Elbert Hubbard</p>
+<p>Release Date: October 8, 2004  [eBook #13619]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE GREAT, VOLUME 5 (OF 14)***</p>
+<br><br><h3>E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland<br>
+         and the Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreading Team<br>
+         at https://www.pgdp.net</h3><br><br>
+<hr class="pg" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name='V_Page_1'></a><a name='V_Page_2'></a><a name='V_Page_3'></a>
+
+<h3>Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5</h3>
+
+<h1>Little Journeys to the Homes<br>
+    of English Authors</h1>
+
+<h3>by</h3>
+
+<h2>Elbert Hubbard</h2>
+
+<h3>Memorial Edition</h3>
+
+<h3>New York</h3>
+
+<h3>1916</h3>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>Contents</h2><a name='V_Page_4'></a><a name='V_Page_5'></a>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+ <a href='#WILLIAM_MORRIS'><b>William Morris</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#ROBERT_BROWNING'><b>Robert Browning</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#ALFRED_TENNYSON'><b>Alfred Tennyson</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#ROBERT_BURNS'><b>Robert Burns</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#JOHN_MILTON'><b>John Milton</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#SAMUEL_JOHNSON'><b>Samuel Johnson</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#THOMAS_B_MACAULAY'><b>Thomas B. Macaulay</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#LORD_BYRON'><b>Lord Byron</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#JOSEPH_ADDISON'><b>Joseph Addison</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#ROBERT_SOUTHEY'><b>Robert Southey</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#SAMUEL_T_COLERIDGE'><b>Samuel T. Coleridge</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#BENJAMIN_DISRAELI'><b>Benjamin Disraeli</b></a><br />
+
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='WILLIAM_MORRIS'></a><h2>WILLIAM MORRIS</h2><a name='V_Page_6'></a><a name='V_Page_7'></a><a name='V_Page_8'></a><a name='V_Page_9'></a>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span class='i4'>THE IDLE SINGER<br /></span><a name='V_Page_10'></a>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,<br /></span>
+<span>I can not ease the burden of your fears,<br /></span>
+<span>Or make quick-coming death a little thing,<br /></span>
+<span>Or bring again the pleasure of past years,<br /></span>
+<span>Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,<br /></span>
+<span>Or hope again for aught that I can say,<br /></span>
+<span>The idle singer of an empty day.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>But rather, when aweary of your mirth,<br /></span>
+<span>From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,<br /></span>
+<span>And feeling kindly unto all the earth,<br /></span>
+<span>Grudge every minute as it passes by,<br /></span>
+<span>Made the more mindful that the sweet days die,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span>Remember me a little then, I pray,<br /></span>
+<span>The idle singer of an empty day.<br /></span>
+</div>
+<hr class="poem" />
+<div class='stanza'>
+<span>Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,<br /></span>
+<span>Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?<br /></span>
+<span>Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme<br /></span>
+<span>Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,<br /></span>
+<span>Telling a tale not too importunate<br /></span>
+<span>To those who in the sleepy region stay,<br /></span>
+<span>Lulled by the singer of an empty day.</span>
+<span class='i11'>&mdash;<i>From &quot;The Earthly Paradise&quot;</i><br /></span></div></div>
+<a name='V_Page_11'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-1.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-1-th.jpg" alt="WILLIAM MORRIS"></a></p><p class="ctr">WILLIAM MORRIS</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>The parents of William Morris were well-to-do people who lived in the
+village of Walthamstow, Essex. The father was a London bill-broker,
+cool-headed, calculating, practical. In the home of his parents William
+Morris received small impulse in the direction of art; he, however, was
+taught how to make both ends meet, and there were drilled into his
+character many good lessons of plain commonsense&mdash;a rather unusual
+equipment for a poet, but still one that should not be waived or
+considered lightly. At the village school William was neither precocious
+nor dull, neither black nor white: his cosmos being simply a sort of
+slaty-gray, a condition of being which attracted no special attention from
+either his schoolfellows or his tutors. From the village school he went to
+Marlborough Academy, where by patient grubbing he fitted himself for
+Exeter College, Oxford.</p>
+
+<p>Morris, the elder, proved his good sense by taking no very special
+interest in the boy's education. Violence of direction in education falls
+flat: man is a lonely creature, and has to work out his career in his own
+way. To help the grub spin its cocoon is quite unnecessary, and to play
+the part of Mrs. Gamp with the butterfly in its chrysalis stage is to
+place a quietus upon its career.</p>
+
+<p><a name='V_Page_12'></a>The whole science of modern education is calculated to turn out a good,
+fairish, commonplace article; but the formula for a genius remains a
+secret with Deity. The great man becomes great in spite of teachers and
+parents: and his near kinsmen, being color-blind, usually pooh-pooh the
+idea that he is anything more than mediocre. At Oxford, William Morris
+fell in with a young man of about his own age, by the name of Edward
+Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones was studying theology. He was slender in stature,
+dreamy, spiritual, poetic. Morris was a giant in strength, blunt in
+speech, bold in manner, and had a shock of hair like a lion's mane. This
+was in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three&mdash;these young men being
+nineteen years of age. The slender, yellow, dreamy student of theology and
+the ruddy athlete became fast friends.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Send your sons to college and the boys will educate them,&quot; said Emerson.
+These boys read poetry together; and it seems the first author that
+specially attracted them was Mrs. Browning; and she attracted them simply
+because she had recently eloped with the man she loved. This fact proved
+to Morris that she was a worthy woman and a discerning. She had the
+courage of her convictions. To elope with a poor poet, leaving a rich
+father and a luxurious home&mdash;what nobler ambition?</p>
+
+<p>Burne-Jones, student of theology, considered her action proof of
+depravity. Morris, in order to show his friend that Mrs. Browning was
+really a rare and gentle <a name='V_Page_13'></a>soul, read aloud to Burne-Jones from her books.
+Morris himself had never read much of Mrs. Browning's work, but in
+championing her cause and interesting his friend in her, he grew
+interested himself. Like lawyers, we undertake a cause first and look for
+proof later. In teaching another, Morris taught himself. By explaining a
+theme it becomes luminous to us.</p>
+
+<p>In passing, it is well to note that this impulse in the heart of William
+Morris to come to the defense of an accused person was ever very strong.
+His defense of Mrs. Browning led straight to &quot;The Defense of Guinevere,&quot;
+begun while at Oxford and printed in book form in his twenty-fourth year.
+Not that the offenses of Guinevere and Elizabeth Barrett were parallel,
+but Morris was by nature a defender of women. And it should further be
+noted that Tennyson had not yet written his &quot;Idylls of the King,&quot;-at the
+time Morris wrote his poetic brief.</p>
+
+<p>Another author that these young men took up at this time was Ruskin. John
+Ruskin was fifteen years older than Morris&mdash;an Oxford man, too; also, the
+son of a merchant and rich by inheritance. Ruskin's natural independence,
+his ability for original thinking and his action in embracing the cause of
+Turner, the ridiculed, won the heart of Morris. In Ruskin he found a
+writer who expressed the thoughts that he believed. He read Ruskin, and
+insisted that Burne-Jones should. Together they read &quot;The Nature of
+Gothic,&quot; and then they <a name='V_Page_14'></a>went out upon the streets of Oxford and studied
+examples at first hand. They compared the old with the new, and came to
+the conclusion that the buildings erected two centuries before had various
+points to recommend them which modern buildings have not. The modern
+buildings were built by contractors, while the old ones were constructed
+by men who had all the time there was, and so they worked out their
+conceptions of the eternal fitness of things.</p>
+
+<p>Then these young men, with several others, drew up a remonstrance against
+&quot;the desecration by officious restoration, and the tearing down of
+time-mellowed structures to make room for the unsightly brick piles of
+boarding-house keepers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The remonstrance was sent in to the authorities, and by them duly
+pigeonholed, with a passing remark that young fellows sent to Oxford to be
+educated had better attend to their books and mind their own business.
+Having espoused the cause of the Middle Ages in architecture, these young
+men began to study the history of the people who lived in the olden time.
+They read Spenser and Chaucer, and chance threw in their way a dog-eared
+copy of Mallory's &quot;Morte d' Arthur,&quot; and this was still more dog-eared
+when they were through with it. Probably no book ever made more of an
+impression on Morris than this one; and if he had written an article for
+the &quot;Ladies' Home Journal&quot; on &quot;Books That Influenced Me Most,&quot; he would
+have <a name='V_Page_15'></a>placed Mallory's &quot;Morte d' Arthur&quot; first.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of Burne-Jones on Morris was marked, and the influence of
+Morris on Burne-Jones was profound. Morris discovered himself in
+explaining things to Burne-Jones, and Burne-Jones, without knowing it,
+adopted the opinions of Morris; and it was owing to Morris that he gave up
+theology.</p>
+
+<p>Having abandoned the object that led him to college, Burne-Jones lost
+faith in Oxford, and went down to London to study art.</p>
+
+<p>Morris hung on, secured his B.A., and articled himself to a local
+architect with the firm intent of stopping the insane drift for modern
+mediocrity, and bringing about a just regard for the stately dignity of
+the Gothic.</p>
+
+<p>A few months' experience, however, and he discovered that an apprentice to
+an architect was not expected to furnish plans or even criticize those
+already made: his business was to make detail drawings from completed
+designs for the contractors to work from.</p>
+
+<p>A year at architecture, with odd hours filled in at poetry and art, and
+news came from Burne-Jones that he had painted a picture, and sold it for
+ten pounds.</p>
+
+<p>Now Morris had all the money he needed. His father's prosperity was at
+flood, and he had but to hint for funds and they came; yet to make things
+with your own hands and sell them was the true test of success.</p>
+
+<p>He had written &quot;Gertha's Lovers,&quot; &quot;The Tale of the Hollow Land,&quot; and
+various poems and essays for the <a name='V_Page_16'></a>college magazine; and his book, &quot;The
+Defense of Guinevere,&quot; had been issued at his own expense, and the edition
+was on his hands&mdash;a weary weight.</p>
+
+<p>Thoreau wrote to his friends, when the house burned and destroyed all
+copies of his first book, &quot;The edition is exhausted,&quot; but no such
+happiness came to Morris. And so when glad tidings of an artistic success
+came from Burne-Jones, he resolved to follow the lead and abandon
+architecture for &quot;pure art.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Arriving in London he placed himself under the tutorship of Dante Gabriel
+Rossetti, poet, dreamer and artist, six years his senior, whom he had
+known for some time, and who had also instructed Burne-Jones.</p>
+
+<p>While taking lessons in painting at the rather shabby house of Rossetti in
+Portland Street, he was introduced to Rossetti's favorite model&mdash;a young
+woman of rare grace and beauty. Rossetti had painted her picture as &quot;The
+Blessed Damozel,&quot; leaning over the bar of Heaven, while the stars in her
+hair were seven. Morris, the impressionable, fell in love with the canvas
+and then with the woman.</p>
+
+<p>When they were married, tradition has it that Rossetti withheld his
+blessing and sought to drown his sorrow in fomentation's, with dark, dank
+hints in baritone to the effect that the Thames only could appreciate his
+grief.</p>
+
+<p>But grief is transient; and for many years Dante Rossetti and Burne-Jones
+pictured the tall, willowy figure of<a name='V_Page_17'></a> Mrs. Morris as the dream-woman, on
+tapestry and canvas; and as the &quot;Blessed Virgin,&quot; her beautiful face and
+form are shown in many sacred places.</p>
+
+<p>Truth need not be distorted in a frantic attempt to make this an ideal
+marriage&mdash;only a woman with the intellect of Minerva could have filled the
+restless heart of William Morris. But the wife of Morris believed in her
+lord, and never sought to hamper him; and if she failed at times to
+comprehend his genius, it was only because she was human.</p>
+
+<p>Whistler once remarked that without Mrs. Morris to supply stained-glass
+attitudes and the lissome beauty of an angel, the Preraphaelites would
+have long since gone down to dust and forgetfulness.</p><a name='V_Page_18'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The year which William Morris spent at architecture, he considered as
+nearly a waste of time, but it was not so in fact. As a draftsman he had
+developed a marvelous skill, and the grace and sureness of his lines were
+a delight to Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown and
+others of the little artistic circle in which he found himself.</p>
+
+<p>Youth lays great plans; youth is always in revolt against the present
+order; youth groups itself in bands and swears eternal fealty; and life,
+which is change, dissipates the plans, subdues the revolt into conformity,
+and the sworn friendships fade away into dull indifference. Always? Well,
+no, not exactly.</p>
+
+<p>In this instance the plans and dreams found form; the revolt was a
+revolution that succeeded; and the brotherhood existed for near fifty
+years, and then was severed only by death.</p>
+
+<p>Without going into a history of the Preraphaelite Brotherhood, it will be
+noted that the band of enthusiasts in art, literature and architecture had
+been swung by the arguments and personality of William Morris into the
+strong current of his own belief, and this was that Art and Life in the
+Middle Ages were much lovelier things than they are now.</p>
+
+<p>That being so, we should go back to medieval times for our patterns.</p>
+
+<p>A study of the best household decorations of the Fifteenth Century showed
+that all the furniture used then was made to fit a certain <a name='V_Page_19'></a>apartment, and
+with a definite purpose in view.</p>
+
+<p>Of course it was made by hand, and the loving marks of the tool were upon
+it. It was made as good and strong and durable as it could be made. Floors
+and walls were of mosaic or polished wood, and these were partly covered
+by beautifully woven rugs, skins and tapestries. The ceilings were
+sometimes ornamented with pictures painted in harmony with the use for
+which the room was designed. Certainly there were no chromos and the
+pictures were few and these of the best, for the age was essentially a
+critical one.</p>
+
+<p>A modest circular was issued in which the fact was made known that &quot;a
+company of historical artists will use their talents in home decoration.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Dealers into whose hands this circular fell, smiled in derision, and the
+announcement made no splash in England's artistic waters. But the leaven
+was at work which was bound to cause a revolution in the tastes of fifty
+million people.</p>
+
+<p>Most of our best moves are accidents, and every good thing begins as
+something else. In the beginning there was no expectation of building up a
+trade or making a financial success of the business. The idea was simply
+that the eight young men who composed the band were to use their influence
+in helping one another to secure commissions, and corroborate the views of
+doubting patrons as to what was art and what not. In other words, they
+were to stand by one another.</p><a name='V_Page_20'></a>
+
+<p>Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Arthur Hughes
+were painters; Philip Webb an architect; Peter Paul Marshall a
+landscape-gardener and engineer; Charles Joseph Faulkner, an Oxford don,
+was a designer, and William Morris was an all-round artist&mdash;ready to turn
+his hand to anything.</p>
+
+<p>These men undertook to furnish a home from garret to cellar in an artistic
+way.</p>
+
+<p>Work came, and each set himself to help all the others. From simply
+supplying designs for furniture, rugs, carpets and wall-paper they began
+to manufacture these things, simply because they could not buy or get
+others to make the things they desired.</p>
+
+<p>Morris undertook the entire executive charge of affairs, and mastered the
+details of half a dozen trades in order that he might intelligently
+conduct the business. The one motto of the firm was, &quot;Not how cheap, but
+how good.&quot; They insisted that housekeeping must be simplified, and that we
+should have fewer things and have them better. To this end single pieces
+of furniture were made, and all sets of furniture discarded. I have seen
+several houses furnished entirely by William Morris, and the first thing
+that impressed me was the sparsity of things. Instead of a dozen pictures
+in a room, there were two or three&mdash;one on an easel and one or two on the
+walls. Gilt frames were abandoned almost entirely, and dark-stained woods
+were used instead. Wide fireplaces were introduced and mantels of solid
+<a name='V_Page_21'></a>oak. For upholstery, leather covering was commonly used instead of cloth.
+Carpets were laid in strips, not tacked down to stay, and rugs were laid
+so as to show a goodly glimpse of hardwood floor; and in the dining-room a
+large, round table was placed instead of a right-angled square one. This
+table was not covered with a tablecloth; instead, mats and doilies were
+used here and there. To cover a table entirely with a cloth or spread was
+pretty good proof that the piece of furniture was cheap and shabby; so in
+no William Morris library or dining-room would you find a table entirely
+covered. The round dining-table is in very general use now, but few people
+realize how its plainness was scouted when William Morris first introduced
+it.</p>
+
+<p>One piece of William Morris furniture has become decidedly popular in
+America, and that is the &quot;Morris Chair.&quot; The first chair of this pattern
+was made entirely by the hands of the master. It was built by a man who
+understood anatomy, unlike most chairs and all church pews. It was also
+strong, durable, ornamental, and by a simple device the back could be
+adjusted so as to fit a man's every mood.</p>
+
+<p>There has been a sad degeneracy among William Morris chairs; still, good
+ones can be obtained, nearly as excellent as the one in which I rested at
+Kelmscott House&mdash;broad, deep, massive, upholstered with curled hair, and
+covered with leather that would delight a bookbinder. Such a chair can be
+used a generation and <a name='V_Page_22'></a>then passed on to the heirs.</p>
+
+<p>Furnishing of churches and chapels led naturally to the making of
+stained-glass windows, and hardly a large city of Christendom but has an
+example of the Morris work.</p>
+
+<p>Morris managed to hold that erratic genius, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in
+line and direct his efforts, which of itself was a feat worthy of record.
+He made a fortune for Rossetti, who was a child in this world's affairs,
+and he also made a fortune for himself and every man connected with the
+concern.</p>
+
+<p>Burne-Jones stood by the ship manfully, and proved his good sense by never
+interfering with the master's plans, or asking foolish, quibbling
+questions&mdash;showing faith on all occasions.</p>
+
+<p>The Morris designs for wall-paper, tapestry, cretonnes and carpets are now
+the property of the world, but to say just which is a William Morris
+design and which a Burne-Jones is an impossibility, for these two strong
+men worked together as one being with two heads and four hands. At one
+time, I find the firm of Morris and Company had three thousand hands at
+work in its various manufactories, the work in most instances being done
+by hand after the manner of the olden time. William Morris was an avowed
+socialist long before so many men began to grow fond of calling themselves
+Christian Socialists. Morris was too practical not to know that the time
+is not ripe for life on a communal basis, but in his heart was a high and
+holy ideal that <a name='V_Page_23'></a>he has partially explained in his books, &quot;A Dream of John
+Ball&quot; and &quot;News From Nowhere,&quot; and more fully in many lectures. His
+sympathy was ever with the workingman and those who grind fordone at the
+wheel of labor. To better the condition of the toiler was his sincere
+desire. But socialism to him was more of an emotion than a well-worked-out
+plan of life. He believed that men should replace competition by
+Co-operation. He used to say: &quot;I'm going your way, so let us go hand in
+hand. You help me and I'll help you. We shall not be here very long, for
+soon, Death, the kind old nurse, will come and rock us all to sleep&mdash;let
+us help one another while we may.&quot; And that is about the extent of the
+socialism of William Morris.</p>
+
+<p>There is one criticism that has been constantly brought against Morris,
+and although he answered this criticism a thousand times during his life,
+it still springs fresh&mdash;put forth by little men who congratulate
+themselves on having scored a point.</p>
+
+<p>They ask in orotund, &quot;How could William Morris expect to benefit society
+at large, when all of the products he manufactured were so high in price
+that only the rich could buy them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Socialism, according to William Morris, does not consider it desirable to
+supply cheap stuff to anybody. The socialist aims to make every
+manufactured article of the best quality possible. It is not how cheap can
+this be made, but how good. Make it as excellent as it can <a name='V_Page_24'></a>be made to
+serve its end. Then sell it at a price that affords something more than a
+bare subsistence to the workmen who put their lives into its making. In
+this way you raise the status of the worker&mdash;you pay him for his labor and
+give him an interest and pride in the product. Cheap products make cheap
+men. The first thought of socialism is for the worker who makes the thing,
+not the man who buys it.</p>
+
+<p>Work is for the worker.</p>
+
+<p>What becomes of the product of your work, and how the world receives it,
+matters little. But how you do it is everything. We are what we are on
+account of the thoughts we have thought and the things we have done. As a
+muscle grows strong only through use, so does every attribute of the mind,
+and every quality of the soul take on new strength through exercise. And
+on the other hand, as a muscle not used atrophies and dies, so will the
+faculties of the spirit die through disuse.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we see why it is very necessary that we should exercise our highest
+and best. We are making character, building soul-fiber; and no rotten
+threads must be woven into this web of life. If you write a paper for a
+learned society, you are the man who gets the benefit of that paper&mdash;the
+society may. If you are a preacher and prepare your sermons with care, you
+are the man who receives the uplift&mdash;and as to the congregation, it is all
+very doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>Work is for the worker.</p><a name='V_Page_25'></a>
+
+<p>We are all working out our own salvation. And thus do we see how it is
+very plain that John Ruskin was right when he said that the man who makes
+the thing is of far more importance than the man who buys it. Work is for
+the worker.</p>
+
+<p>Can you afford to do slipshod, evasive, hypocritical work? Can you afford
+to shirk, or make-believe or practise pretense in any act of life? No, no;
+for all the time you are molding yourself into a deformity, and drifting
+away from the Divine. What the world does and says about you is really no
+matter, but what you think and what you do are questions vital as Fate. No
+one can harm you but yourself. Work is for the worker. And so I will
+answer the questions of the critics as to how society has been benefited
+by, say, a William Morris book:</p>
+
+<p>1. The workmen who made it found a pride and satisfaction in their work.</p>
+
+<p>2. They received a goodly reward in cash for their time and efforts.</p>
+
+<p>3. The buyers were pleased with their purchase, and received a decided
+satisfaction in its possession.</p>
+
+<p>4. Readers of the book were gratified to see their author clothed in such
+fitting and harmonious dress.</p>
+
+<p>5. Reading the text has instructed some, and possibly inspired a few to
+nobler thinking.</p>
+
+<p>After &quot;The Defense of Guinevere&quot; was published, it was thirteen years
+before Morris issued another volume. His days had been <a name='V_Page_26'></a>given to art and
+the work of management. But now the business had gotten on to such a firm
+basis that he turned the immediate supervision over to others, and took
+two days of the week, Saturday and Sunday, for literature.</p>
+
+<p>Taking up the active work of literature when thirty-nine years of age, he
+followed it with the zest of youth for over twenty years&mdash;until death
+claimed him. William Morris thought literature should be the product of
+the ripened mind&mdash;the mind that knows the world of men and which has
+grappled with earth's problems. He also considered that letters should not
+be a profession in itself&mdash;to make a business of an art is to degrade it.
+Literature should be the spontaneous output of the mind that has known and
+felt. To work the mine of spirit as a business and sift its product for
+hire, is to overwork the vein and palm off slag for sterling metal.
+Shakespeare was a theater-manager, Milton a secretary, Bobby Burns a
+farmer, Lamb a bookkeeper, Wordsworth a government employee, Emerson a
+lecturer, Hawthorne a custom-house inspector, and Whitman a clerk. William
+Morris was a workingman and a manufacturer, and would have been Poet
+Laureate of England had he been willing to call himself a student of
+sociology instead of a socialist. Socialism itself (whatever it may be) is
+not offensive&mdash;the word is.</p><a name='V_Page_27'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The great American Apostle of Negation expressed, once upon a day, a
+regret that he had not been consulted when the Universe was being planned,
+otherwise he would have arranged to make good things catching instead of
+bad.</p>
+
+<p>The remark tokened a slight lesion in the logic of the Apostle, for good
+things are now, and ever have been, infectious.</p>
+
+<p>Once upon a day, I met a young man who told me that he was exposed at
+Kelmscott House for a brief hour, and caught it, and ever after there were
+in his mind, thoughts, feelings, emotions and ideals that had not been
+there before. Possibly the psychologist would explain that the spores of
+all these things were simply sleeping, awaiting the warmth and sunshine of
+some peculiar presence to start them into being; but of that I can not
+speak&mdash;this only I know, that the young man said to me, &quot;Whereas I was
+once blind, I now see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>William Morris was a giant in physical strength and a giant in intellect.
+His nature was intensely masculine, in that he could plan and act without
+thought of precedent. Never was a man more emancipated from the trammels
+of convention and custom than William Morris.</p>
+
+<p>Kelmscott House at Hammersmith is in an ebb-tide district where once
+wealth and fashion held sway; but now the vicinity is given over to
+factories, tenement-houses and all that train of evil and vice that
+follows in the wake of faded gentility.</p><a name='V_Page_28'></a>
+
+<p>At Hammersmith you will see spacious old mansions used as warehouses;
+others as boarding-houses; still others converted into dance-halls with
+beer-gardens in the rear, where once bloomed and blossomed milady's
+flowerbeds.</p>
+
+<p>The broad stone steps and wide hallways and iron fences, with glimpses now
+and then of ancient doorplates or more ancient knockers, tell of
+generations lost in the maze of oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>Just why William Morris, the poet and lover of harmony, should have
+selected this locality for a home is quite beyond the average ken.
+Certainly it mystified the fashionable literary world of London, with whom
+he never kept goose-step, but that still kept track of him&mdash;for fashion
+has a way of patronizing genius&mdash;and some of his old friends wrote him
+asking where Hammersmith was, and others expressed doubts as to its
+existence. I had no difficulty in taking the right train for Hammersmith,
+but once there no one seemed to have ever heard of the Kelmscott Press.
+When I inquired, grave misgivings seemed to arise as to whether the press
+I referred to was a cider-press, a wine-press or a press for &quot;cracklings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Finally I discovered a man&mdash;a workingman&mdash;whose face beamed at the mention
+of William Morris. Later I found that if a man knew William Morris, his
+heart throbbed at the mention of his name, and he at once grew voluble and
+confidential and friendly. It was the<a name='V_Page_29'></a> &quot;Open Sesame,&quot; And if a person did
+not know William Morris, he simply didn't, and that was all there was
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>But the man I met knew &quot;Th' Ole Man,&quot; which was the affectionate title
+used by all the hundreds and thousands who worked with William Morris. And
+to prove that he knew him, when I asked that he should direct me to the
+Upper Mall, he simply insisted on going with me. Moreover, he told a
+needless lie and declared he was on the way there, although when we met he
+was headed in the other direction. By a devious walk of half a mile we
+reached the high iron fence of Kelmscott House. We arrived amid a florid
+description of the Icelandic Sagas as told by my new-found friend and
+interpreted by Th' Ole Man. My friend had not read the Sagas, but still he
+did not hesitate to recommend them; and so we passed through the wide-open
+gates and up the stone walk to the entrance of Kelmscott House. On the
+threshold we met F.S. Ellis and Emery Walker, who addressed my companion
+as &quot;Tom.&quot; I knew Mr. Ellis slightly, and also had met Mr. Walker, who
+works Rembrandt miracles with a camera.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ellis was deep in seeing the famous &quot;Chaucer&quot; through the press, and
+Mr. Walker had a print to show, so we turned aside, passed a great pile of
+paper in crates that cluttered the hallway, and entered the library.
+There, leaning over the long, oaken table, in shirt-sleeves, was the
+master. Who could mistake that great, <a name='V_Page_30'></a>shaggy head, the tangled beard, and
+frank, open-eyed look of boyish animation?</p>
+
+<p>The man was sixty and more, but there was no appearance of age in eye,
+complexion, form or gesture&mdash;only the whitened hair! He greeted me as if
+we had always known each other, and Ellis and piles of Chaucer proof led
+straight to old Professor Child of Harvard, whose work Ellis criticized
+and Morris upheld. They fell into a hot argument, which was even continued
+as we walked across the street to the Doves Bindery.</p>
+
+<p>The Doves Bindery, as all good men know, is managed by Mr.
+Cobden-Sanderson, who married one of the two daughters of Richard Cobden
+of Corn-Law fame.</p>
+
+<p>Just why Mr. Sanderson, the lawyer, should have borrowed his wife's maiden
+name and made it legally a part of his own, I do not know. Anyway, I quite
+like the idea of linking one's name with that of the woman one loves,
+especially when it has been so honored by the possessor as the name of
+Cobden.</p>
+
+<p>Cobden-Sanderson caught the rage for beauty from William Morris, and began
+to bind books for his own pleasure. Morris contended that any man who
+could bind books as beautifully as Cobden-Sanderson should not waste his
+time with law. Cobden-Sanderson talked it over with his wife, and she
+being a most sensible woman, agreed with William Morris.</p>
+
+<p>So Cobden-Sanderson, acting on Th' Ole Man's suggestion, rented the quaint
+and curious mansion next door to the old <a name='V_Page_31'></a>house occupied by the Kelmscott
+Press, and went to work binding books.</p>
+
+<p>When we were once inside the Bindery, the Chaucerian argument between Mr.
+Ellis and Th' Ole Man shifted off into a wrangle with Cobden-Sanderson. I
+could not get the drift of it exactly&mdash;it seemed to be the continuation of
+some former quarrel about an oak leaf or something. Anyway, Th' Ole Man
+silenced his opponent by smothering his batteries&mdash;all of which will be
+better understood when I explain that Th' Ole Man was large in stature,
+bluff, bold and strong-voiced, whereas Cobden-Sanderson is small,
+red-headed, meek, and wears bicycle-trousers.</p>
+
+<p>The argument, however, was not quite so serious an affair as I at first
+supposed, for it all ended in a laugh and easily ran off into a quiet
+debate as to the value of Imperial Japan versus Whatman.</p>
+
+<p>We walked through the various old parlors that now do duty as workrooms
+for bright-eyed girls, then over through the Kelmscott Press, and from
+this to another old mansion that had on its door a brass plate so polished
+and repolished, like a machine-made sonnet too much gone over, that one
+can scarcely make out its intent. Finally I managed to trace the legend,
+&quot;The Seasons.&quot; I was told it was here that Thomson, the poet, wrote his
+book. Once back in the library of Kelmscott House, Mr. Ellis and Th' Ole
+Man leaned over the great oaken table and renewed, in a gentler <a name='V_Page_32'></a>key, the
+question as to whether Professor Child was justified in his construction
+of the Third Canto of the &quot;Canterbury Tales.&quot; Under cover of the smoke I
+quietly disappeared with Mr. Cockerill, the Secretary, for a better view
+of the Kelmscott Press.</p>
+
+<p>This was my first interview with William Morris. By chance I met him
+again, some days after, at the shop of Emery Walker in Clifford Court,
+Strand. I had been told on divers occasions by various persons that
+William Morris had no sympathy for American art and small respect for our
+literature. I am sure this was not wholly true, for on this occasion he
+told me he had read &quot;Huckleberry Finn,&quot; and doted on &quot;Uncle Remus.&quot; He
+also spoke with affection and feeling of Walt Whitman, and told me that he
+had read every printed word that Emerson had written. And further he
+congratulated me on the success of my book, &quot;Songs From Vagabondia.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_33'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The housekeeping world seems to have been in thrall to six haircloth
+chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center
+table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent
+times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the
+center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a
+bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the
+mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such houses were
+usually to be seen gaudy-colored carpets, imitation lace curtains, and a
+what-not in the corner that seemed ready to go into dissolution through
+the law of gravitation.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the Seventies lithograph-presses began to make chromos that were
+warranted just as good as oil-paintings, and these were distributed in
+millions by enterprising newspapers as premiums for subscriptions. Looking
+over an old file of the &quot;Christian Union&quot; for the year Eighteen Hundred
+Seventy-one, I chanced upon an editorial wherein it was stated that the
+end of painting pictures by hand had come, and the writer piously thanked
+heaven for it&mdash;and added, &quot;Art is now within the reach of all.&quot; Furniture,
+carpets, curtains, pictures and books were being manufactured by
+machinery, and to glue things together and give them a look of gentility
+and get them into a house before they fell apart, was the seeming
+desideratum of all manufacturers.</p><a name='V_Page_34'></a>
+
+<p>The editor of the &quot;Christian Union&quot; surely had a basis of truth for his
+statement; art had received a sudden chill: palettes and brushes could be
+bought for half-price, and many artists were making five-year contracts
+with lithographers; while those too old to learn to draw on
+lithograph-stones saw nothing left for them but to work designs with
+worsted in perforated cardboard.</p>
+
+<p>To the influence of William Morris does the civilized world owe its
+salvation from the mad rage and rush for the tawdry and cheap in home
+decoration. It will not do to say that if William Morris had not called a
+halt some one else would, nor to cavil by declaring that the inanities of
+the Plush-Covered Age followed the Era of the Hair-Cloth Sofa. These
+things are frankly admitted, but the refreshing fact remains that fully
+one-half the homes of England and America have been influenced by the good
+taste and vivid personality of one strong, earnest man.</p>
+
+<p>William Morris was the strongest all-round man the century has produced.
+He was an Artist and a Poet in the broadest and best sense of these
+much-bandied terms. William Morris could do more things, and do them well,
+than any other man of either ancient or modern times whom we can name.
+William Morris was master of six distinct trades. He was a weaver, a
+blacksmith, a wood-carver, a painter, a dyer and a printer; and he was a
+musical composer of no mean ability.</p><a name='V_Page_35'></a>
+
+<p>Better than all, he was an enthusiastic lover of his race: his heart
+throbbed for humanity, and believing that society could be reformed only
+from below, he cast his lot with the toilers, dressed as one of them, and
+in the companionship of workingmen found a response to his holy zeal which
+the society of an entailed aristocracy denied.</p>
+
+<p>The man who could influence the entire housekeeping of half a world, and
+give the kingdom of fashion a list to starboard; who could paint beautiful
+pictures; compose music; speak four languages; write sublime verse;
+address a public assemblage effectively; produce plays; resurrect the lost
+art of making books, books such as were made only in the olden time as a
+loving, religious service; who lived a clean, wholesome, manly
+life&mdash;beloved by those who knew him best&mdash;shall we not call him Master?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='ROBERT_BROWNING'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_36'></a><a name='V_Page_37'></a>ROBERT BROWNING</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_38'></a>
+<span>So, take and use Thy work,<br /></span>
+<span>Amend what flaws may lurk,<br /></span>
+<span>What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim:<br /></span>
+<span>My times be in Thy hand!<br /></span>
+<span>Perfect the cup as planned!<br /></span>
+<span>Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.<br /></span>
+<span class='i20'>&mdash;<i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_39'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-2.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-2-th.jpg" alt="ROBERT BROWNING"></a></p><p class="ctr">ROBERT BROWNING</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>If there ever lived a poet to whom the best minds pour out libations, it
+is Robert Browning. We think of him as dwelling on high Olympus; we read
+his lines by the light of dim candles; we quote him in sonorous monotone
+at twilight when soft-sounding organ-chants come to us mellow and sweet.
+Browning's poems form a lover's litany to that elect few who hold that the
+true mating of a man and a woman is the marriage of the mind. And thrice
+blest was Browning, in that Fate allowed him to live his philosophy&mdash;to
+work his poetry up into life, and then again to transmute life and love
+into art. Fate was kind: success came his way so slowly that he was never
+subjected to the fierce, dazzling searchlight of publicity; his
+recognition in youth was limited to a few obscure friends and neighbors.
+And when distance divided him from these, they forgot him; so there seems
+a hiatus in his history, when for a score of years literary England dimly
+remembered some one by the name of Browning, but could not just place him.</p>
+
+<p>About the year Eighteen Hundred Sixty-eight the author of &quot;Sordello&quot; was
+induced to appear at an evening of &quot;Uncut Leaves&quot; at the house of a
+nobleman at the West End, London. James Russell Lowell <a name='V_Page_40'></a>was present and
+was congratulated by a lady, sitting next to him, on the fact that
+Browning was an American.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But only by adoption!&quot; answered the gracious Lowell.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes,&quot; said the lady; &quot;I believe his father was an Englishman, so you
+Americans can not have all the credit; but surely he shows the Negro or
+Indian blood of his mother. Very clever, isn't he?&mdash;so very clever!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Browning's swarthy complexion, and the fine poise of the man&mdash;the entire
+absence of &quot;nerves,&quot; as often shown in the savage&mdash;seemed to carry out the
+idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as
+black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion
+mahogany, the report that he was a Creole found ready credence. And so did
+this gossip of mixed parentage follow him that Mrs. Sutherland Orr, in her
+biography, takes an entire chapter to prove that in Robert Browning's
+veins there flowed neither Indian nor Negro blood.</p>
+
+<p>Doctor Furnivall, however, explains that Browning's grandmother on his
+father's side came from the West Indies, that nothing is known of her
+family history, and that she was a Creole.</p>
+
+<p>And beyond this, the fact is stated that Robert Browning was quite pleased
+when he used to be taken for a Jew&mdash;a conclusion made plausible by his
+complexion, hair and features.</p>
+
+<p>In its dead-serious, hero-worshiping attitude, the life <a name='V_Page_41'></a>of Robert
+Browning by Mrs. Orr deserves to rank with Weems' &quot;Life of Washington.&quot; It
+is the brief of an attorney for the defense. &quot;Little-Willie&quot; anecdotes
+appear on every page.</p>
+
+<p>And thus do we behold the tendency to make Browning something more than a
+man&mdash;and, therefore, something less.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly women are given to this sort of thing more than men&mdash;I am not
+sure. But this I know, every young woman regards her lover as a distinct
+and peculiar personage, different from all others&mdash;as if this were a
+virtue&mdash;the only one of his kind. Later, if Fate is kind, she learns that
+her own experience is not unique. We all easily fit into a type, and each
+is but a representative of his class.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Browning sprang from a line of clerks and small merchants; but as
+indemnity for the lack of a family 'scutcheon, we are told that his uncle,
+Reuben Browning, was a sure-enough poet. For once in an idle hour he threw
+off a little thing for an inscription to be placed on a presentation
+ink-bottle, and Disraeli seeing it, declared, &quot;Nothing like this has ever
+before been written!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Beyond doubt, Disraeli made the statement&mdash;it bears his earmark. It will
+be remembered that the Earl of Beaconsfield had a stock form for
+acknowledging receipt of the many books sent to him by aspiring authors.
+It ran something like this: &quot;The Earl of Beaconsfield <a name='V_Page_42'></a>begs to thank the
+gifted author of&mdash;&mdash;for a copy of his book, and gives the hearty assurance
+that he will waste no time in reading the volume.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And further, the fact is set forth with unction that Robert Browning was
+entrusted with a latchkey early in life, and that he always gave his
+mother a good-night kiss. He gave her the good-night kiss willy-nilly. If
+she had retired when he came home, he used the trusty latchkey and went to
+her room to imprint on her lips the good-night kiss. He did this, the
+biographer would have us believe, to convince the good mother that his
+breath was what it should be; and he awakened her so she would know the
+hour was seasonable.</p>
+
+<p>In many manufactories there is an electric apparatus wherewith every
+employee registers when he arrives, by turning a key or pushing a button.
+Robert Browning always fearlessly registered as soon as he got home&mdash;this
+according to Mrs. Orr.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, or otherwise, there is a little scattered information which
+makes us believe that Robert Browning's mother was not so fearful of her
+son's conduct, nor suspicious as to his breath, as to lie awake nights and
+keep tab on his hours. The world has never denied that Robert Browning was
+entrusted with a latchkey, and it cares little if occasionally, early in
+life, he fumbled for the keyhole. And my conception of his character is
+such that, when in the few instances Aurora, rosy goddess of the morn,
+marked his <a name='V_Page_43'></a>homecoming with chrome-red in the eastern sky, he did not
+search the sleeping-rooms for his mother to apprise her of the hour.</p>
+
+<p>In one place Mrs. Orr avers, in a voice hushed with emotion, that Browning
+carefully read all of Johnson's Dictionary &quot;as a fit preparation for a
+literary career.&quot; Without any attempt to deny that the perusal of a
+dictionary is &quot;fit preparation for a literary career,&quot; I yet fear me that
+the learned biographer, in a warm anxiety to prove the man exceeding
+studious and very virtuous, has tipped a bit to t' other side.</p>
+
+<p>She has apotheosized her subject&mdash;and in an attempt to portray him as a
+peculiar person, set apart, has well-nigh given us a being without hands,
+feet, eyes, ears, organs, dimensions, passions.</p>
+
+<p>But after a careful study of the data, various visits to the places where
+he lived in England, trips to Casa Guidi, views from Casa Guidi windows, a
+journey to Palazzo Rezzonico at Venice, where he died, and many a pious
+pilgrimage to Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey, where he sleeps, I am
+constrained to believe that Robert Browning was made from the same kind of
+clay as the rest of us. He was human&mdash;he was splendidly human.</p><a name='V_Page_44'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Browning's father was a bank-clerk; and Robert Browning, the Third, author
+of &quot;Paracelsus,&quot; could have secured his father's place in the Bank of
+England, if he had had ambitions. And the fact that he had not was a
+source of silent sorrow to the father, even to the day of his death, in
+Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Browning, the grandfather, entered the Bank as an errand-boy, and
+rose by slow stages to Principal of the Stock-Room. He served the Bank
+full half a century, and saved from his salary a goodly competence. This
+money, tightly and rightly invested, passed to his son. The son never
+secured the complete favor of his employers that the father had known, but
+he added to his weekly stipend by what a writer terms, &quot;legitimate
+perquisites.&quot; This, being literally interpreted, means that he purchased
+paper, pens and sealing-wax for the use of the Bank, and charged the goods
+in at his own price, doubtless with the consent of his superior, with whom
+he divided profits. He could have parodied the remark of Fletcher of
+Saltoun and said, &quot;Let me supply the perquisite-requisites and I care not
+who makes the laws.&quot; So he grew rich&mdash;moderately rich&mdash;and lived simply
+and comfortably up at Camberwell, with only one besetting dissipation: he
+was a book-collector and had learned more Greek than Robert the Third was
+to acquire. He searched bookstalls on the way to the City in the morning,
+and lay in wait for<a name='V_Page_45'></a> First Editions on the way home at night. When he had
+a holiday, he went in search of a book. He sneaked books into the house,
+and declared to his admonishing wife the next week that he had always
+owned 'em, or that they were presented to him. The funds his father had
+left him, his salary and &quot;the perquisites,&quot; made a goodly income, but he
+always complained of poverty. He was secretly hoarding sums so as to
+secure certain books.</p>
+
+<p>The shelves grew until they reached the ceiling, and then bookcases
+invaded the dining-room. The collector didn't trust his wife with the
+household purchasing; no bank-clerk ever does&mdash;and all the pennies were
+needed for books. The good wife, having nothing else to do, grew anemic,
+had neuralgia and lapsed into a Shut-in, wearing a pale-blue wrapper and
+reclining on a couch, around which were piled&mdash;mountain-high&mdash;books.</p>
+
+<p>The pale invalid used to imagine that the great cases were swaying and
+dancing a minuet, and she fully expected the tomes would all come
+a-toppling down and smother her&mdash;and she didn't care much if they would;
+but they never did. She was the mother of two children&mdash;the boy Robert,
+born the year after her marriage; and in a little over another year a
+daughter came, and this closed the family record.</p>
+
+<p>The invalid mother was a woman of fine feeling and much poetic insight.
+She didn't talk as much about <a name='V_Page_46'></a>books as her husband did, but I think she
+knew the good ones better. The mother and son moused in books together,
+and Mrs. Orr is surely right in her suggestion that this love of mother
+and son took upon itself the nature of a passion.</p>
+
+<p>The love of Robert Browning for Elizabeth Barrett was a revival and a
+renewal, in many ways, of the condition of tenderness and sympathy that
+existed between Browning and his mother. There certainly was a strange and
+marked resemblance in the characters of Elizabeth Barrett and the mother
+of Robert Browning; and to many this fully accounts for the instant
+affection that Browning felt toward the occupant of the &quot;darkened room,&quot;
+when first they met.</p>
+
+<p>The book-collector took much pride in his boy, and used to take him on
+book-hunting excursions, and sometimes to the Bank, on which occasions he
+would tell the Beef-Eaters how this was Robert Browning, the Third, and
+that all three of the R.B.'s were loyal servants of the Bank. And the
+Beef-Eaters would rest their staves on the stone floor, and smile
+Fifteenth-Century grimaces at the boy from under their cocked hats.</p>
+
+<p>Robert the Third was a healthy, rollicking lad, with power plus, and a
+deal of destructiveness in his nature. But destructiveness in a youngster
+is only energy not yet properly directed, just as dirt is useful matter in
+the wrong place.</p><a name='V_Page_47'></a>
+
+<p>To keep the boy out of mischief, he was sent to a sort of kindergarten,
+kept by a spinster around the corner. The spinster devoted rather more
+attention to the Browning boy than to her other pupils&mdash;she had to, to
+keep him out of mischief&mdash;and soon the boy was quite the head scholar.</p>
+
+<p>And they tell us that he was so much more clever than any of the other
+scholars that, to appease the rising jealousy of the parents of the other
+pupils, the diplomatic spinster requested that the boy be removed from her
+school&mdash;all this according to the earnest biographer. The facts are that
+the boy had so much energy and restless ambition; was so full of brimming
+curiosity, mischief and imagination&mdash;introducing turtles, bats and mice on
+various occasions&mdash;that he led the whole school a merry chase and wore the
+nerves of the ancient maiden to a frazzle.</p>
+
+<p>He had to go.</p>
+
+<p>After this he studied at home with his mother. His father laid out a
+schedule, and it was lived up to, for about a week.</p>
+
+<p>Then a private tutor was tried, but soon this plan was abandoned, and a
+system of reading, best described as &quot;natural selection,&quot; was followed.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was fourteen, and his sister was twelve, past. These are the ages
+when children often experience a change of heart, as all &quot;revivalists&quot;
+know. Robert Browning was swinging off towards atheism. He grew
+<a name='V_Page_48'></a>melancholy, irritable and wrote stanzas of sentimental verse. He showed
+this verse, high-sounding, stilted, bold and bilious, to his mother and
+then to his father, and finally to Lizzie Flower.</p>
+
+<p>A word about Lizzie Flower: She was nine years older than Robert Browning;
+and she had a mind that was gracious and full of high aspiration. She
+loved books, art, music, and all harmony made its appeal to her&mdash;and not
+in vain. She wrote verses and, very sensibly, kept them locked in her
+workbox; and then she painted in water-colors and worked in worsted. A
+thoroughly good woman, she was far above the average in character, with a
+half-minor key in her voice and a tinge of the heartbroken in her
+composition, caused no one just knew how. Probably a certain young curate
+at Saint Margaret's could have thrown light on this point; but he married,
+took on a double chin, moved away to a fat living and never told.</p>
+
+<p>No woman is ever wise or good until destiny has subdued her by grinding
+her fondest hopes into the dust.</p>
+
+<p>Lizzie Flower was wise and good.</p>
+
+<p>She gave singing lessons to the Browning children. She taught Master
+Robert Browning to draw.</p>
+
+<p>She read to him some of her verses that were in the sewing-table drawer.
+And her sister, Sarah Flower, two years older, afterwards Sarah Flower
+Adams, read aloud to them a hymn she had just written, called, &quot;Nearer, My
+God, to Thee.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_49'></a>
+
+<p>Then soon Master Robert showed the Flower girls some of the verses he had
+written.</p>
+
+<p>Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate, and told his mother so. A young
+woman never cares anything for an unlicked cub, nine years younger than
+herself, unless Fate has played pitch and toss with her heart's true love.
+And then, the tendrils of the affections being ruthlessly lacerated and
+uprooted, they cling to the first object that presents itself.</p>
+
+<p>Lizzie Flower was a wallflower. That is to say, she had early in life rid
+herself of the admiration of the many, by refusing to supply an unlimited
+amount of small talk. In feature she was as plain as George Eliot. A boy
+is plastic, and even a modest wallflower can woo him; but a man, for her,
+inspires awe&mdash;with him she takes no liberties. And the wallflower woos the
+youth unwittingly, thinking the while she is only using her influence the
+better to instruct him.</p>
+
+<p>It is fortunate for a boy escaping adolescence to be educated and loved
+(the words are synonymous) by a good woman. Indeed, the youngster who has
+not violently loved a woman old enough to be his mother has dropped
+something out of his life that he will have to go back and pick up in
+another incarnation.</p>
+
+<p>I said Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate; and she declared that he was
+the brightest and most receptive pupil she had ever had.</p>
+
+<p>He was seventeen&mdash;she was twenty-six. They read<a name='V_Page_50'></a> Shelley, Keats and Byron
+aloud, and together passed through the &quot;Byronic Period.&quot; They became
+violently atheistic, and at the same time decidedly religious: things that
+seem paradoxical, but are not. They adopted a vegetable diet and for two
+years they eschewed meat. They worshiped in the woods, feeling that the
+groves were God's first temples; and sitting at the gnarled roots of some
+great oak, they would read aloud, by turn, from &quot;Queen Mab.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On one such excursion out across Hampstead Heath they lost their copy of
+&quot;Shelley&quot; in the leaves, and a wit has told us that it sprouted, and as a
+result&mdash;the flower and fruit&mdash;we have Browning's poem of &quot;Pauline.&quot; And
+this must be so, for Robert and Miss Flower (he always called her &quot;Miss
+Flower,&quot; but she called him &quot;Robert&quot;) made many an excursion, in search of
+the book, yet they never found it.</p>
+
+<p>Robert now being eighteen, a man grown&mdash;not large, but very strong and
+wiry&mdash;his father made arrangements for him to take a minor clerkship in
+the Bank. But the boy rebelled&mdash;he was going to be an artist, or a poet,
+or something like that.</p>
+
+<p>The father argued that a man could be a poet and still work in a bank&mdash;the
+salary was handy; and there was no money in poetry. In fact, he himself
+was a poet, as his father had been before him. To be a bank-clerk and at
+the same time a poet&mdash;what nobler ambition!</p>
+
+<p>The young man was still stubborn. He was feeling <a name='V_Page_51'></a>discontented with his
+environment: he was cramped, cabined, cribbed, confined. He wanted to get
+out of the world of petty plodding and away from the silly round of
+conventions, out into the world of art&mdash;or else of barbarism&mdash;he didn't
+care which.</p>
+
+<p>The latter way opened first, and a bit of wordy warfare with his father on
+the subject of idleness sent him off to a gipsy camp at Epsom Downs. How
+long he lived with the vagabonds we do not know, but his swarthy skin, and
+his skill as a boxer and wrestler, recommended him to the ragged gentry,
+and they received him as a brother.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that a week of pure vagabondia cured him of the idea that
+civilization is a disease, for he came back home, made a bonfire of his
+attire, and after a vigorous tubbing, was clothed in his right mind.</p>
+
+<p>Groggy studies in French under a private tutor followed, and then came a
+term as special student in Greek at London University.</p>
+
+<p>To be nearer the school, he took lodgings in Gower Street; but within a
+week a slight rough-house incident occurred that crippled most of the
+furniture in his room and deprived the stair-rail of its spindles. R.
+Browning, the Second, bank-clerk, paid the damages, and R. Browning, the
+Third, aged twenty, came back home, formally notifying all parties
+concerned that he had chosen a career&mdash;it was Poetry. He would woo the
+Divine Goddess, no matter who opposed. There, now!</p><a name='V_Page_52'></a>
+
+<p>His mother was delighted; his father gave reluctant consent, declaring
+that any course in life was better than vacillation; and Miss Flower, who
+probably had sown the dragon's teeth, assumed a look of surprise, but gave
+it as her opinion that Robert Browning would yet be Poet Laureate of
+England.</p><a name='V_Page_53'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Robert Browning awoke one morning with a start&mdash;it was the morning of his
+thirtieth birthday. One's thirtieth birthday and one's seventieth are days
+that press their message home with iron hand. With his seventieth
+milestone past, a man feels that his work is done, and dim voices call to
+him from across the Unseen. His work is done, and so illy, compared with
+what he had wished and expected! But the impressions made upon his heart
+by the day are no deeper than those his thirtieth birthday inspires. At
+thirty, youth, with all it palliates and excuses, is gone forever. The
+time for mere fooling is past; the young avoid you, or else look up to you
+as a Nestor and tempt you to grow reminiscent. You are a man and must give
+an account of yourself.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the stillness came a Voice to Robert Browning saying, &quot;What hast
+thou done with the talent I gave thee?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What had he done? It seemed to him at the moment as if he had done
+nothing. He arose and looked into the mirror. A few gray hairs were mixed
+in his beard; there were crow's feet on his forehead; and the first joyous
+flush of youth had gone from his face forever. He was a bachelor, inwardly
+at war with his environment, but making a bold front with his tuppence
+worth of philosophy to conceal the unrest within.</p>
+
+<p>A bachelor of thirty, strong in limb, clear in brain and yet a dependent!
+No one but himself to support, and <a name='V_Page_54'></a>couldn't even do that! Gadzooks! Fie
+upon all poetry and a plague upon this dumb, dense, shopkeeping,
+beer-drinking nation upon which the sun never sets!</p>
+
+<p>The father of Robert Browning had done everything a father could. He had
+supplied board and books, and given his son an allowance of a pound a week
+for ten years. He had sent him on a journey to Italy, and published
+several volumes of the young man's verse at his own expense. And these
+books were piled high in the garret, save a few that had been bought by
+charitable friends or given away.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Browning was not discouraged&mdash;oh no, not that!&mdash;only the world
+seemed to stretch out in a dull, monotonous gray, where once it was green,
+the color of hope, and all decked with flowers.</p>
+
+<p>The little literary world of London knew Browning and respected him. He
+was earnest and sincere and his personality carried weight. His face was
+not handsome, but his manner was one of poise and purpose; and to come
+within his aura and look into his calm eyes was to respect the man and
+make obeisance to the intellect that you felt lay behind.</p>
+
+<p>A few editors had gone out of their way to &quot;discover&quot; him to the world,
+but their lavish reviews fell flat. Buyers would not buy&mdash;no one seemed to
+want the wares of Robert Browning. He was hard to read, difficult,
+obscure&mdash;or else there wasn't anything in it at all&mdash;they didn't know
+which.</p><a name='V_Page_55'></a>
+
+<p>Fox, editor of the &quot;Repository,&quot; had met Browning at the Flowers' and
+liked him. He tried to make his verse go, but couldn't. Yet he did what he
+could and insisted that Browning should go with him to the &quot;Sunday
+evenings&quot; at Barry Cornwall's. There Browning met Leigh Hunt, Monckton
+Milnes and Dickens. Then there were dinner-parties at Sergeant Talfourd's,
+where he got acquainted with Wordsworth, Walter Savage Landor and
+Macready.</p>
+
+<p>Macready impressed him greatly and he impressed Macready. He gave the
+actor a copy of &quot;Paracelsus&quot; (one of the pile in the garret) and Macready
+suggested he write a play. &quot;Strafford&quot; was the result, and we know it was
+stillborn, and caused a very frosty feeling to exist for many a year
+between the author and the actor. When a play fails, the author blames the
+actor and the actor damns the author. These men were human. Of course
+Browning's kinsmen all considered him a failure, and when the father paid
+over the weekly allowance he often rubbed it in a bit. Lizzie Flower had
+modified her prophecy as to the Laureateship, but was still loyal. They
+had tiffed occasionally, and broken off the friendship, and once I believe
+returned letters. To marry was out of the question&mdash;he couldn't support
+himself&mdash;and besides that, they were old, demnition old; he was past
+thirty and she was forty&mdash;Gramercy!</p>
+
+<p>They tiffed.</p>
+
+<p>Then they made up.</p><a name='V_Page_56'></a>
+
+<p>In the meantime Browning had formed a friendship, very firm and frank, but
+strictly Platonic, of course, for Fanny Haworth. Miss Haworth had seen
+more of the world than Miss Flower&mdash;she was an artist, a writer, and moved
+in the best society. Browning and Miss Haworth wrote letters to each other
+for a while most every day, and he called on her every Wednesday and
+Saturday evening.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Haworth bought and gave away many copies of &quot;Pauline,&quot; &quot;Sordello&quot; and
+&quot;Paracelsus&quot;; and informed her friends that &quot;Pippa Passes&quot; and &quot;Two in a
+Gondola&quot; were great quality.</p>
+
+<p>About this time we find Edward Moxon, the publisher (who married the
+adopted daughter of Charles and Mary Lamb), saying to Browning: &quot;Your
+verse is all right, Browning, but a book of it is too much: people are
+appalled; they can not digest it. And when it goes into a magazine it is
+lost in the mass. Now just let me get out your work in little monthly
+instalments, in booklet form, and I think it will go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Browning jumped at the idea.</p>
+
+<p>The booklets were gotten out in paper covers and offered at a moderate
+price.</p>
+
+<p>They sold, and sold well. The literary elite bought them by the dozen to
+give away.</p>
+
+<p>People began to talk about Browning&mdash;he was getting a foothold. His
+royalties now amounted to as much as the weekly allowance from his father,
+and Pater was <a name='V_Page_57'></a>talking of cutting off the stipend entirely. Finances being
+easy, Browning thought it a good time to take another look at Italy. Some
+of the best things he had written had been inspired by Venice and
+Asolo&mdash;he would go again. And so he engaged passage on a sailing-ship for
+Naples.</p><a name='V_Page_58'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Shortly after Browning's return to London, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-four,
+he dined at Sergeant Talfourd's. After the dinner a well-dressed and
+sprightly old gentleman introduced himself and begged that Browning would
+inscribe a copy of &quot;Bells and Pomegranates,&quot; that he had gotten specially
+bound. There is an ancient myth about writers being harassed by
+autograph-fiends and all that; but the simple fact is, nothing so warms
+the cockles of an author's heart as to be asked for his autograph. Of
+course Browning graciously complied with the gentleman's request, and in
+order that he might insert the owner's name in the inscription, asked:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What name, please?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And the answer was, &quot;John Kenyon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Browning and Mr. Kenyon had a nice little visit, talking about
+books and art. And Mr. Kenyon told Mr. Browning that Miss Elizabeth
+Barrett, the poetess, was a cousin of his&mdash;he was a bit boastful of the
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>And Mr. Browning nodded and said he had often heard of her, and admired
+her work.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Kenyon suggested that Mr. Browning write and tell her so&mdash;&quot;You
+see she has just gotten out a new book, and we are all a little nervous
+about how it is going to take. Miss Barrett lives in a darkened room, you
+know&mdash;sees no one&mdash;and a letter from a man like you would encourage her
+greatly.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_59'></a>
+
+<p>Mr. Kenyon wrote the address of Miss Barrett on a card and pushed it
+across the table.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Browning took the card, put it in his pocketbook and promised to write
+Miss Barrett, as Mr. Kenyon requested.</p>
+
+<p>And he did.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Barrett replied.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Browning answered, and soon several letters a week were going in each
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>Not quite so many missives were being received by Fanny Haworth; and as
+for Lizzie Flower, I fear she was quite forgotten. She fell into a
+decline, drooped and died in a year.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Browning asked for permission to call on Miss Barrett.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Barrett explained that her father would not allow it, neither would
+the doctor or nurse, and added: &quot;There is nothing to see in me. I am a
+weed fit for the ground and darkness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But this repulse only made Mr. Browning want to see her the more. He
+appealed to Mr. Kenyon, who was the only person allowed to call, besides
+Miss Mitford&mdash;Mr. Kenyon was her cousin.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Kenyon arranged it&mdash;he was an expert at arranging anything of a
+delicate nature. He timed the hour when Mr. Barrett was down town, and the
+nurse and doctor safely out of the way, and they called on the invalid
+prisoner in the darkened room.</p><a name='V_Page_60'></a>
+
+<p>They did not stay long, but when they went away Robert Browning trod on
+air. The beautiful girl-like face, in its frame of dark curls, lying back
+among the pillows, haunted him like a shadow. He was thirty-three, she was
+thirty-five. She looked like a child, but the mind&mdash;the subtle,
+appreciative, receptive mind! The mind that caught every allusion, that
+knew his thought before he voiced it, that found nothing obscure in his
+work, and that put a high and holy construction on his every sentence&mdash;it
+was divine! divinity incarnated in a woman.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Browning tramped the streets forgetful of meat, drink or rest.</p>
+
+<p>He would give this woman freedom. He would devote himself to restoring her
+to the air and sunshine. What nobler ambition! He was an idler, he had
+never done anything for anybody. He was only a killer of time, a vagrant,
+but now was his opportunity&mdash;he would do for this beautiful soul what no
+one else on earth could do. She was slipping away as it was&mdash;the world
+would soon lose her. Was there none to save?</p>
+
+<p>Here was the finest intellect ever given to a woman&mdash;so sure, so vital, so
+tender and yet so strong!</p>
+
+<p>He would love her back to life and light!</p>
+
+<p>And so Robert Browning told her all this shortly after, but before he
+told, she had divined his thought. For solitude and loneliness and
+heart-hunger had given her the power of an astral being; she was in
+communication with all the finer forces that pervade our ether.<a name='V_Page_61'></a> He would
+love her back to life and light&mdash;he told her so. She grew better.</p>
+
+<p>And soon we find her getting up and throwing wide the shutters. It was no
+longer the darkened room, for the sunlight came dancing through the
+apartment, driving out all the dark shadows that lurked therein.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was indignant; the nurse resigned.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, Mr. Barrett was not taken into confidence and no one asked his
+consent. Why should they?&mdash;he was the man who could never understand.</p>
+
+<p>So one fine day when the coast was clear, the couple went over to Saint
+Marylebone Church and were married. The bride went home alone&mdash;could walk
+all right now&mdash;and it was a week before her husband saw her, because he
+would not be a hypocrite and go ring the doorbell and ask if Miss Barrett
+was home; and of course if he had asked for Mrs. Robert Browning, no one
+would have known whom he wanted to see.</p>
+
+<p>But at the end of a week, the bride stole down the stairs, while the
+family was at dinner, leading her dog Flush by a string, and all the time,
+with throbbing heart, she prayed the dog not to bark. I have oft wondered
+in the stilly night season what the effect on English Letters would have
+been, had the dog really barked! But the dog did not bark; and Elizabeth
+met her lover-husband there on the corner where the mail-box is. No one
+missed the runaways until the next day, and then the bride and groom were
+safely in France, writing letters back from Dieppe, asking forgiveness and
+craving blessings.</p><a name='V_Page_62'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>&quot;She is the Genius and I am the Clever Person,&quot; Browning used to say. And
+this I believe will be the world's final judgment.</p>
+
+<p>Browning knew the world in its every phase&mdash;good and bad, high and low,
+society and commerce, the shop and gypsy camp. He absorbed things,
+assimilated them, compared and wrote it out.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth Barrett had never traveled, her opportunities for meeting people
+had been few, her experiences limited, and yet she evolved truth: she
+secreted beauty from within.</p>
+
+<p>For two years after their elopement they did not write&mdash;how could they?
+goodness me! They were on their wedding-tour. They lived in Florence and
+Rome and in various mountain villages in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Health came back, and joy and peace and perfect love were theirs. But it
+was joy bought with a price&mdash;Elizabeth Barrett Browning had forfeited the
+love of her father. Her letters written him came back unopened, books
+inscribed to him were returned&mdash;he declared she was dead.</p>
+
+<p>Her brothers, too, discarded her, and when her two sisters wrote, they did
+so by stealth, and their letters, meant to be kind, were steel for her
+heart. Then her father was rich; and she had always known every comfort
+that money could buy. Now, she had taken up with a poor poet, and every
+penny had to be counted&mdash;absolute economy was demanded.</p>
+
+<p>And Robert<a name='V_Page_63'></a> Browning, with a certain sense of guilt upon him, for
+depriving her of all the creature comforts she had known, sought by
+tenderness and love to make her forget the insults her father heaped upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>As for Browning, the bank-clerk, he was vexed that his son should show so
+little caution as to load himself up with an invalid wife, and he cut off
+the allowance, declaring that if a man was old enough to marry, he was
+also old enough to care for himself. He did, however, make his son several
+&quot;loans&quot;; and finally came to &quot;bless the day that his son had sense enough
+to marry the best and most talented woman on earth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Browning's poems were selling slowly, and Mrs. Browning's books brought
+her a little royalty, thanks to the loyal management of John Kenyon, and
+so absolute want and biting poverty did not overtake the runaways.</p>
+
+<p>After the birth of her son, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, Mrs.
+Browning's health seemed to have fully returned. She used to ride
+horseback up and down the mountain passes, and wrote home to Miss Mitford
+that love had turned the dial backward and the joyousness of girlhood had
+come again to her.</p>
+
+<p>When John Kenyon died and left them ten thousand pounds, all their own, it
+placed them forever beyond the apprehension of want, and also enabled them
+to do for others; for they pensioned old Walter Savage Landor, and
+established him in comfortable quarters around the corner from Casa
+Guidi.</p><a name='V_Page_64'></a>
+
+<p>I intimated a moment ago that their honeymoon continued for two years.
+This was a mistake, for it continued for just fifteen years, when the
+beautiful girl-like form, with her head of flowing curls upon her
+husband's shoulder, ceased to breathe. Painlessly and without apprehension
+or premonition, the spirit had taken its flight.</p>
+
+<p>That letter of Miss Blagdon's, written some weeks after, telling of how
+the stricken man paced the echoing hallways at night crying, &quot;I want her!
+I want her!&quot; touches us like a great, strange sorrow that once pierced our
+hearts.</p>
+
+<p>But Robert Browning's nature was too strong to be subdued by grief. He
+remembered that others, too, had buried their dead, and that sorrow had
+been man's portion since the world began. He would live for his boy&mdash;for
+Her child.</p>
+
+<p>But Florence was no longer his Florence, and he made haste to settle up
+his affairs and go back to England. He never returned to Florence, and
+never saw the beautiful monument, designed by his lifelong friend,
+Frederick Leighton.</p>
+
+<p>When you visit the little English Cemetery at Florence, the slim little
+girl that comes down the path, swinging the big bunch of keys, opens the
+high iron gate and leads you, without word or question, straight to the
+grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.</p>
+
+<p>Browning was forty-nine when Mrs. Browning died.</p><a name='V_Page_65'></a>
+
+<p>And by the time he had reached his fiftieth meridian, England, harkening
+to America's suggestion, was awakening to the fact that he was one of the
+world's great poets.</p>
+
+<p>Honors came slowly, but surely: Oxford with a degree; Saint Andrew's with
+a Lord-Rectorship; publishers with advance payments. And when Smith and
+Elder paid one hundred pounds for the poem of &quot;Herve Riel,&quot; it seemed that
+at last Browning's worth was being recognized. Not, of course, that money
+is the infallible test, but even poetry has its Rialto, where the extent
+of appreciation is shown by prices current.</p>
+
+<p>Browning's best work was done after his wife's death; and in that love he
+ever lived and breathed. In his seventy-fifth year, it filled his days and
+dreams as though it were a thing of yesterday, singing in his heart a
+perpetual eucharist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Ring and the Book&quot; must be regarded as Browning's crowning work.
+Offhand critics have disposed of it, but the great minds go back to it
+again and again. In the character of Pompilia the author sought to pay
+tribute to the woman whose memory was ever in his mind; yet he was too
+sensitive and shrinking to fully picture her. He sought to mask his
+inspiration; but tender, loving recollections of &quot;Ba&quot; are interlaced and
+interwoven through it all.</p>
+
+<p>When Robert Browning died, in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine, the world of
+literature and art uncovered <a name='V_Page_66'></a>in token of honor to one who had lived long
+and well and had done a deathless work. And the doors of storied
+Westminster opened wide to receive his dust.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='ALFRED_TENNYSON'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_67'></a>ALFRED TENNYSON</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_68'></a>
+<span>Not of the sunlight,<br /></span>
+<span>Not of the moonlight,<br /></span>
+<span>Nor of the starlight!<br /></span>
+<span>O young Mariner,<br /></span>
+<span>Down to the haven,<br /></span>
+<span>Call your companions,<br /></span>
+<span>Launch your vessel,<br /></span>
+<span>And crowd your canvas,<br /></span>
+<span>And ere it vanishes<br /></span>
+<span>Over the margin,<br /></span>
+<span>After it, follow it,<br /></span>
+<span>Follow the Gleam.<br /></span>
+<span class='i8'>&mdash;<i>Merlin</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_69'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-3.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-3-th.jpg" alt="ALFRED TENNYSON"></a></p><p class="ctr">ALFRED TENNYSON</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>The grandfather of Tennyson had two sons, the elder boy, according to
+Clement Scott, being &quot;both wilful and commonplace.&quot; Now, of course, the
+property and honors and titles, according to the law of England, would all
+gravitate to the commonplace boy; and the second son, who was competent,
+dutiful and worthy, would be out in the cold world&mdash;simply because he was
+accidentally born second and not first. It was not his fault that he was
+born second, and it was in no wise to the credit of the other that he was
+born first.</p>
+
+<p>So the father, seeing that the elder boy had small executive capacity, and
+no appreciation of a Good Thing, disinherited him, giving him, however, a
+generous allowance, but letting the titles go to the second boy, who was
+bright and brave and withal a right manly fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Personally, I'm glad the honors went to the best man. But Hallam Tennyson,
+son of the poet, sees only rank injustice in the action of his ancestor,
+who deliberately set his own opinion of right and justice against
+precedent as embodied in English Law. As a matter of strictest justice, we
+might argue that neither boy was entitled to anything which he had not
+earned, and that, in <a name='V_Page_70'></a>dividing the property between them, instead of
+allowing it all to drift into the hands of the one accidentally born
+first, the father acted wisely and well.</p>
+
+<p>But neither Alfred nor Hallam Tennyson thought so. How much their opinions
+were biased by the fact that they were descendants of the firstborn son,
+we can not say. Anyway, the descendants of the second son, the Honorable
+Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt, have made no protest of which I can learn,
+about justice having been defeated.</p>
+
+<p>Considering this subject of the Law of Entail one step further, we find
+that Hallam, the present Lord Tennyson, is a Peer of the Realm simply
+because his father was a great poet, and honors were given him on that
+account by the Queen. These honors go to Hallam, who, as all men agree, is
+in many ways singularly like his grandfather.</p>
+
+<p>Genius is not hereditary, but titles are. Hallam is eminently pleased with
+the English Law of Entail, save that he questions whether any father has
+the divine right to divert his titles and wealth from the eldest son. Lord
+Hallam's arguments are earnest and well expressed, but they seem to show
+that he is lacking in what Herbert Spencer calls the &quot;value sense&quot;&mdash;in
+other words, the sense of humor.</p>
+
+<p>Hallam's lack of perspective is further demonstrated by his patient
+efforts to explain who the various Tennysons were. In my boyhood days I
+thought there <a name='V_Page_71'></a>was but one Tennyson. On reading Hallam's book, however,
+one would think there were dozens of them. To keep these various men,
+bearing one name, from being confused in the mind of the reader, is quite
+a task; and to better identify one particular Tennyson, Hallam always
+refers to him as &quot;Father,&quot; or &quot;My Father.&quot; In the course of a recent
+interview with W.H. Seward, of Auburn, New York, I was impressed by his
+dignified, respectful, and affectionate references to &quot;Seward.&quot; &quot;This
+belonged to Seward,&quot; and &quot;Seward told me&quot;&mdash;as though there were but one.
+In these pages I will speak of Tennyson&mdash;there has been but one&mdash;there
+will never be another.</p><a name='V_Page_72'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>I think Clement Scott is a little severe in his estimate of the character
+of Tennyson's father, although the main facts are doubtless as he states
+them. The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson, Rector of Somersby and Wood
+Enderby parishes, was a typical English parson. As a boy he was simply
+big, fat and lazy. His health was so perfect that it overtopped all
+ambition, and having no nerves to speak of, his sensibilities were very
+slight.</p>
+
+<p>When he was disinherited in favor of his younger brother, a keen, nervous,
+forceful fellow, he accepted it as a matter of course. His career was
+planned for him: he &quot;took orders,&quot; married the young woman his folks
+selected, and slipped easily into his proper niche&mdash;his adipose serving as
+a buffer for his feelings. In his intellect there was no flash, and his
+insight into the heart of things was small.</p>
+
+<p>Being happily married to a discreet woman who managed him without ever
+letting him be aware of it, and having a sure and sufficient income, and
+never knowing that he had a stomach, he did his clerical work (with the
+help of a curate), and lived out the measure of his days, no wiser at the
+last than he was at thirty.</p>
+
+<p>In passing, we may call attention to the fact that the average man is a
+victim of Arrested Development, and that the fleeting years bring an
+increase of knowledge only in very exceptional cases. Health and
+prosperity are not pure blessings&mdash;a certain element of <a name='V_Page_73'></a>discontent is
+necessary to spur men on to a higher life.</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson had income enough to meet his wants,
+but not enough to embarrass him with the responsibility of taking care of
+it. Each quarterly stipend was spent before it arrived, and the family
+lived on credit until another three months rolled around. They had roast
+beef as often as they wanted it; in the cellar were puncheons, kegs and
+barrels, and as there was no rent to pay nor landlords to appease, care
+sat lightly on the Rector.</p>
+
+<p>Elizabeth, this man's wife, is worthy of more than a passing note. She was
+the daughter of the Reverend Stephen Fytche, vicar of Louth. Her family
+was not so high in rank as the Tennysons, because the Tennysons belonged
+to the gentry. But she was intelligent, amiable, fairly good-looking, and
+being the daughter of a clergyman, had beyond doubt a knowledge of
+clerical needs; so it was thought she would make a good wife for the newly
+appointed incumbent of Somersby.</p>
+
+<p>The parents arranged it, the young folks were willing, and so they were
+married&mdash;and the bridegroom was happy ever afterward.</p>
+
+<p>And why shouldn't he have been happy? Surely no man was ever blessed with
+a better wife! He had made a reach into the matrimonial grab-bag and drawn
+forth a jewel. This jewel was many-faceted. Without affectation or silly
+pride, the clergyman's wife did the work that God sent her to do. The
+sense of duty was strong upon <a name='V_Page_74'></a>her. Babies came, once each two years, and
+in one case two in one year, and there was careful planning required to
+make the income reach, and to keep the household in order. Then she
+visited the poor and sick of the parish, and received the many visitors.
+And with it all she found time to read. Her mind was open and alert for
+all good things. I am not sure that she was so very happy, but no
+complaints escaped her. In all she bore twelve children&mdash;eight sons and
+four daughters. Ten of these children lived to be over seventy-five years
+of age. The fourth child that came to her they named Alfred.</p><a name='V_Page_75'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Tennyson's education in early youth was very slight. His father laid down
+rules and gave out lessons, but the strictness of discipline never lasted
+more than two days at a time. The children ran wild and roamed the woods
+of Lincolnshire in search of all the curious things that the woods hold in
+store for boys. The father occasionally made stern efforts to &quot;correct&quot;
+his sons. In the use of the birch he was ambidextrous. But I have noticed
+that in households where a strap hangs behind the kitchen-door, for ready
+use, it is not utilized so much for pure discipline as to ease the
+feelings of the parent. They say that expression is a need of the human
+heart; and I am also convinced that in many hearts there is a very strong
+desire at times to &quot;thrash&quot; some one. Who it is makes little difference,
+but children being helpless and the law giving us the right, we find
+gratification by falling upon them with straps, birch-rods, slippers,
+ferules, hairbrushes or apple-tree sprouts.</p>
+
+<p>No student of pedagogics now believes that the free use of the rod ever
+made a child &quot;good&quot;; but all agree that it has often served as a
+safety-valve for a pent-up emotion in the parent or teacher.</p>
+
+<p>The father of Alfred Tennyson applied the birch, and the boy took to the
+woods, moody, resentful, solitary. There was good in this, for the lad
+learned to live within himself, and to be self-sufficient: to love the
+solitude, and feel a kinship with all the life that makes <a name='V_Page_76'></a>the groves and
+fields melodious.</p>
+
+<p>In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-eight, when nineteen years of age, Alfred was
+sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. He remained there three years, but
+left without a degree, and what was worse, with the ill-will of his
+teachers, who seemed to regard his as a hopeless case. He wouldn't study
+the books they wanted him to, and was never a candidate for academic
+distinctions.</p>
+
+<p>College life, however, has much to recommend it beside the curriculum. At
+Cambridge, Tennyson made the acquaintance of a group of young men who
+influenced his life profoundly. Kemble, Milnes, Brookfield and Spedding
+remained his lifelong friends; and as all good is reciprocal, no man can
+say how much these eminent men owe to the moody and melancholy Tennyson,
+or how much he owes to them.</p><a name='V_Page_77'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Tennyson began to write verse very young. His first line is said to have
+been written at five, and he has told of going when thirteen years of age
+to visit his grandfather, and of presenting him a poem. The old gentleman
+gave him half a guinea with the remark, &quot;This is the first money you ever
+made by writing poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last!&quot;
+When eighteen years of age, with his brother, Charles, he produced a thin
+book of thin verses.</p>
+
+<p>We have the opinion of Coleridge to the effect that the only lines which
+have any merit in the book are those signed C.T. Charles became a
+clergyman of marked ability, married rich, and changed his name from
+Tennyson to Turner for economic and domestic reasons. Years afterward,
+when Alfred had become Poet Laureate, rumor has it he thought of changing
+the &quot;Turner&quot; back to &quot;Tennyson,&quot; but was unable to bring it about.</p>
+
+<p>The only honor captured by Alfred at Cambridge was a prize for his poem,
+&quot;Timbuctoo.&quot; The encouragement that this brought him, backed up by Arthur
+Hallam's declaiming the piece in public&mdash;as a sort of defi to
+detractors&mdash;caused him to fix his attention more assiduously on verse. He
+could write&mdash;it was the only thing he could do&mdash;and so he wrote.</p>
+
+<p>At Cambridge he was in the habit of reading his poetry to a little coterie
+called &quot;The Apostles,&quot; and he always <a name='V_Page_78'></a>premised his reading with the
+statement that no criticism would be acceptable.</p>
+
+<p>The year he was twenty-one he published a small book called, &quot;Poems,
+Chiefly Lyrical.&quot; The books went a-begging for many years; but times
+change, for a copy of this edition was sold by Quaritch in Eighteen
+Hundred Ninety-five for one hundred eighty pounds. The only piece in the
+book that seems to show genuine merit is &quot;Mariana.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Two years afterward a second edition, revised and enlarged, was brought
+out. This book contains &quot;The Lady of Shalott,&quot; &quot;The May Queen,&quot; &quot;A Dream
+of Fair Women&quot; and &quot;The Lotus-Eaters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Beyond a few fulsome reviews from personal friends and a little surly
+mention from the tribe of Jeffrey, the volume attracted little or no
+attention. This coldness on the part of the public shot an atrabilarian
+tint through the ambition of our poet, and the fond hope of a success in
+literature faded from his mind.</p>
+
+<p>And then began what Stopford Brooke has called &quot;the ten fallow years in
+the life of Tennyson.&quot; But fallow years are not all fallow. The dark
+brooding night is as necessary for our life as the garish day. Great crops
+of wheat that feed the nations grow only where the winter's snow covers
+all as with a garment. And ever behind the mystery of sleep, and beneath
+the silence of the snow, Nature slumbers not nor sleeps.</p>
+
+<p>The withholding of quick recognition gave the mind of<a name='V_Page_79'></a> Tennyson an
+opportunity to ripen. Fate held him in leash that he might be saved for a
+masterly work, and all the time that he lived in semi-solitude and read
+and thought and tramped the fields, his soul was growing strong and his
+spirit was taking on the silken self-sufficient strength that marked his
+later days. This hiatus of ten years in the life of our poet is very
+similar to the thirteen fallow years in the career of Browning. These men
+crossed and recrossed each other's pathway, but did not meet for many
+years. What a help they might have been to each other in those years of
+doubt and seeming defeat! But each was to make his way alone.</p>
+
+<p>Browning seemed to grow through society and travel, but solitude served
+the needs of Tennyson.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There must be a man behind every sentence,&quot; said Emerson. After ten years
+of silence, when Tennyson issued his book, the literary world recognized
+the man behind it. Tennyson had grown as a writer, but more as a man. And
+after all, it is more to be a man than a poet. All who knew Tennyson, and
+have written of him, especially during those early years, begin with a
+description of his appearance. His looks did not belie the man. In
+intellect and in stature he was a giant. The tall, athletic form, the
+great shaggy head, the classic features, and the look of untried strength
+were all thrown into fine relief by the modesty, the half-embarrassment,
+of his manner.</p><a name='V_Page_80'></a>
+
+<p>To meet the poet was to acknowledge his power. No man can talk as wise as
+he can look, and Tennyson never tried to. His words were few and simple.</p>
+
+<p>Those who met him went away ready to back his lightest word. They felt
+there was a man behind the sentence.</p>
+
+<p>Carlyle, who was a hero-worshiper, but who usually limited his worship to
+those well dead and long gone hence, wrote of Tennyson to Emerson: &quot;One of
+the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of dusky hair; bright,
+laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most
+delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes
+cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is
+musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that
+may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet
+in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will
+grow to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And then again, writing to his brother John: &quot;Some weeks ago, one night,
+the poet Tennyson and Matthew Arnold were discovered here sitting smoking
+in the garden. Tennyson had been here before, but was still new to
+Jane&mdash;who was alone for the first hour or two of it. A fine,
+large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man is Alfred;
+dusty, smoky, free and easy; who swims outwardly and inwardly, with great
+composure, in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos <a name='V_Page_81'></a>and
+tobacco-smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most restful,
+brotherly, solid-hearted man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;English Idylls,&quot; put forth in Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, contained
+all the poems, heretofore published, that Tennyson cared to retain. It
+must be stated to the credit, or discredit, of America, that the only
+complete editions of Tennyson were issued by New York and Boston
+publishers. These men seized upon the immature early poems of Tennyson,
+and combining them with his later books, issued the whole in a style that
+tried men's eyes&mdash;very proud of the fact that &quot;this is the only complete
+edition,&quot; etc. Of course they paid the author no royalty, neither did they
+heed his protests, and possibly all this prepared the way for frosty
+receptions of daughters of quick machine-made American millionaires, who
+journeyed to the Isle of Wight in after-days. Soon after the publication
+of &quot;English Idylls,&quot; Alfred Tennyson moved gracefully, like a ship that is
+safely launched, into the first place among living poets. He was then
+thirty-three years of age, with just half a century, lacking a few months,
+yet to live. In all that half-century, with its many conflicting literary
+judgments, his title to first place was never seriously questioned. Up to
+Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, in his various letters, and through his close
+friends, we learn that Tennyson was sore pressed for funds. He hadn't
+money to buy books, and when he traveled it was through the munificence of
+some kind kinsman. He <a name='V_Page_82'></a>even excuses himself from attending certain social
+functions on account of his lack of suitable raiment&mdash;probably with a
+certain satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>But when he tells of his poverty to Emily Sellwood, the woman of his
+choice, there is anguish in his cry. In fact, her parents succeeded in
+breaking off her relations with Tennyson for a time, on account of his
+very uncertain prospects. His brothers, even those younger than he, had
+slipped into snug positions&mdash;&quot;but Alfred dreams on with nothing special in
+sight.&quot; Poetry, in way of a financial return, is not to be commended.
+Honors were coming Tennyson's way as early as Eighteen Hundred Forty-two,
+but it was not until Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, when a pension of two
+hundred pounds a year was granted him by the Government, that he began to
+feel easy. Even then there were various old scores to liquidate.</p>
+
+<p>The year Eighteen Hundred Fifty, when he was forty-one, has been called
+his &quot;golden year,&quot; for in it occurred the publication of &quot;In Memoriam,&quot;
+his appointment to the post of Poet Laureate, and his marriage.</p>
+
+<p>Emily Sellwood had waited for him all these years. She had been sought
+after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and
+others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid
+forlorn. But she was true to her love for Alfred. Possibly she had not
+been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson's mother had been. When that
+dear <a name='V_Page_83'></a>old lady was past eighty she became very deaf, and the family often
+ventured to carry on conversations in her presence which possibly would
+have been modified had the old lady been in full possession of her
+faculties. On a day as she sat knitting in the chimney-corner, one of her
+daughters in a burst of confidence to a visitor, said, &quot;Why, before Mamma
+married Papa she had received twenty-three offers of marriage!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Twenty-four, my dear&mdash;twenty-four,&quot; corrected the old lady as she shifted
+the needles.</p>
+
+<p>No one has ever claimed that Tennyson was an ideal lover. Surely he never
+could have been tempted to do what Browning did&mdash;break up the peace of a
+household by an elopement. His love was a thing of the head, weighed
+carefully in the scales of his judgment. His caution and good sense saved
+him from all Byronic excesses, or foolish alliances such as took Shelley
+captive. He believed in law and order, and early saw that his interests
+lay in that direction. He belonged to the Church of England, and doubtless
+thought as he pleased, but ever expressed himself with caution.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to accuse Tennyson of being insular&mdash;to say that he is merely
+&quot;the poet of England.&quot; Had he been more he would have been less.
+World-poets have usually been revolutionists, and dangerous men who
+exploded at an unknown extent of concussion. None of them has been a safe
+man&mdash;none respectable. Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo and Whitman were
+outcasts.</p><a name='V_Page_84'></a>
+
+<p>Tennyson is always serene, sane and safe&mdash;his lines breathe purity and
+excellence. He is the poet of religion, of the home and fireside, of
+established order, of truth, justice and mercy as embodied in law.</p>
+
+<p>Very early he became a close personal friend of Queen Victoria, and many
+of his lines ministered to her personal consolation. For fifty years
+Tennyson's life was one steady, triumphal march. He acquired wealth, such
+as no other English poet before him had ever gained; his name was known in
+every corner of the earth where white men journeyed, and at home he was
+beloved and honored. He died October Sixth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two,
+aged eighty-three, and for him the Nation mourned, and with deep sincerity
+the Queen spoke of his demise as a poignant, personal sorrow.</p><a name='V_Page_85'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>It was at Cambridge he met Arthur Hallam&mdash;Arthur Hallam, immortal and
+remembered alone for being the comrade and friend of Tennyson.</p>
+
+<p>Alfred took his friend Arthur to his home in Lincolnshire one vacation,
+and we know how Arthur became enamored of Tennyson's sister Emily, and
+they were betrothed. Together, Tennyson and Hallam made a trip through
+France and the Pyrenees.</p>
+
+<p>Carlyle and Milburn, the blind preacher, once sat smoking in the little
+arbor back of the house in Cheyne Row. They had been talking of Tennyson,
+and after a long silence Carlyle knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and
+with a grunt said: &quot;Ha! Death is a great blessing&mdash;the joyousest blessing
+of all! Without death there would ha' been no 'In Memoriam,' no Hallam,
+and like enough no Tennyson!&quot; It is futile to figure what would have
+occurred had this or that not happened, since every act of life is a
+sequence. But that Carlyle and many others believed that the death of
+Hallam was the making of Tennyson, there is no doubt. Possibly his soul
+needed just this particular amount of bruising in order to make it burst
+into undying song&mdash;who knows! When Charles Kingsley was asked for the
+secret of his exquisite sympathy and fine imagination, he paused a space,
+and then answered&mdash;&quot;I had a friend.&quot; The desire for friendship is strong
+in every human heart. We crave the companionship of those who <a name='V_Page_86'></a>can
+understand. The nostalgia of life presses, we sigh for &quot;home,&quot; and long
+for the presence of one who sympathizes with our aspirations, comprehends
+our hopes and is able to partake of our joys. A thought is not our own
+until we impart it to another, and the confessional seems a crying need of
+every human soul.</p>
+
+<p>One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad.</p>
+
+<p>We reach the Divine through some one, and by dividing our joy with this
+one we double it, and come in touch with the Universal. The sky is never
+so blue, the birds never sing so blithely, our acquaintances are never so
+gracious, as when we are filled with love for some one.</p>
+
+<p>Being in harmony with one we are in harmony with all.</p>
+
+<p>The lover idealizes and clothes the beloved with virtues that exist only
+in his imagination. The beloved is consciously or unconsciously aware of
+this, and endeavors to fulfil the high ideal; and in the contemplation of
+the transcendent qualities that his mind has created, the lover is raised
+to heights otherwise unattainable.</p>
+
+<p>Should the beloved pass from the earth while this condition of exaltation
+endures, the conception is indelibly impressed upon the soul, just as the
+last earthly view is said to be photographed upon the retina of the dead.
+The highest earthly relationship is, in its very essence, fleeting, for
+men are fallible, and living in a world where material wants jostle, and
+time and change play their ceaseless parts, gradual obliteration comes
+<a name='V_Page_87'></a>and disillusion enters. But the memory of a sweet affinity once fully
+possessed, and snapped by Fate at its supremest moment, can never die from
+out the heart. All other troubles are swallowed up in this, and if the
+individual is of too stern a fiber to be completely crushed into the dust,
+time will come bearing healing, and the memory of that once ideal
+condition will chant in the heart a perpetual eucharist.</p>
+
+<p>And I hope the world has passed forever from the nightmare of pity for the
+dead: they have ceased from their labors and are at rest.</p>
+
+<p>But for the living, when death has entered and removed the best friend,
+Fate has done her worst; the plummet has sounded the depths of grief, and
+thereafter nothing can inspire terror. At one fell stroke all petty
+annoyances and corroding cares are sunk into nothingness. The memory of a
+great love lives enshrined in undying amber. It affords a ballast 'gainst
+all the storms that blow, and although it lends an unutterable sadness, it
+imparts an unspeakable peace. Where there is this haunting memory of a
+great love lost, there are always forgiveness, charity and a sympathy that
+makes the man brother to all who suffer and endure. The individual himself
+is nothing: he has nothing to hope for, nothing to lose, nothing to win,
+and this constant memory of the high and exalted friendship that once was
+his is a nourishing source of strength; it constantly purifies the mind
+and inspires the heart to nobler living and diviner <a name='V_Page_88'></a>thinking. The man is
+in communication with Elemental Conditions.</p>
+
+<p>To know an ideal friendship and to have it fade from your grasp and flee
+as a shadow before it is touched with the sordid breath of selfishness, or
+sullied by misunderstandings, is the highest good. And the constant
+dwelling in sweet, sad recollection on the exalted virtues of the one that
+has gone, tends to crystallize these very virtues in the heart of him who
+meditates them. The beauty with which love adorns its object becomes at
+last the possession of the one who loves.</p>
+
+<p>At the hour when the strong and helpful, yet tender and sympathetic,
+friendship of Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam was at its height, there
+came a brief and abrupt word from Vienna to the effect that Arthur was
+dead.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;In Vienna's fatal walls<br /></span>
+<span>God's finger touched him and he slept!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The shock of surprise, followed by dumb, bitter grief, made an impression
+on the youthful mind of Tennyson that the sixty years which followed did
+not obliterate.</p>
+
+<p>At first a numbness and a deadness came over his spirit, but this
+condition erelong gave way to a sweet contemplation of the beauties of
+character that his friend possessed, and he tenderly reviewed the gracious
+hours they had spent together.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In Memoriam&quot; is not one poem; it is made up of <a name='V_Page_89'></a>many &quot;short
+swallow-flights of song that dip their wings in tears and skim away.&quot;
+There are one hundred thirty separate songs in all, held together by the
+silken thread of love for the poet's lost friend.</p>
+
+<p>Seventeen years were required for their evolution. Some people, misled by
+the title, possibly, think of these poems as a wail of grief for the dead,
+a vain cry of sorrow for the lost, or a proud parading of mourning
+millinery. Such views could not be more wholly wrong.</p>
+
+<p>To every soul that has loved and lost, to those who have stood by open
+graves, to all who have beheld the sun go down on less worth in the world,
+these songs are a victor's cry. They tell of love and life that rise
+phoenix-like from the ashes of despair; of doubt turned to faith; of fear
+which has become serenest peace.</p>
+
+<p>All poems that endure must have this helpful, uplifting quality. Without
+violence of direction they must be beacon-lights that gently guide
+stricken men and women into safe harbors.</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;Invocation,&quot; written nearly a score of years after Hallam's death,
+reveals Tennyson's personal conquest of pain. His thought has broadened
+from the sense of loss into a stately march of conquest over death for the
+whole human race. The sharpness of grief has wakened the soul to the
+contemplation of sublime ideas&mdash;truth, justice, nobility, honor, and the
+sense of beauty as shown in all created things. The man once loved a
+person&mdash;now his heart goes out to <a name='V_Page_90'></a>the universe. The dread of death is
+gone, and he calmly contemplates his own end and waits the summons without
+either impatience or fear. He realizes that death itself is a
+manifestation of life&mdash;that it is as natural and just as necessary.</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Sunset and evening star<br /></span>
+<span class='i3'>And one clear call for me,<br /></span>
+<span class='i1'>And may there be no moaning of the bar<br /></span>
+<span class='i3'>When I put out to sea.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The desire for sympathy and the wish for friendship are in his heart, but
+the fever of unrest and the spirit of revolt are gone. His heart, his
+hope, his faith, his life, are freely laid on the altar of Eternal Love.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='ROBERT_BURNS'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_91'></a>ROBERT BURNS</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_92'></a>
+<span class='i4'>TO JEANNIE<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Come, let me take thee to my breast,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And pledge we ne'er shall sunder;<br /></span>
+<span>And I shall spurn, as vilest dust,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>The warld's wealth and grandeur.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And do I hear my Jeannie own<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>That equal transports move her?<br /></span>
+<span>I ask for dearest life, alone,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>That I may live to love her.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>Thus in my arms, wi' a' thy charms,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>I clasp my countless treasure;<br /></span>
+<span>I'll seek nae mair o' heaven to share<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Than sic a moment's pleasure.<br /></span>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<span>And by thy een, sae bonnie blue,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>I swear I'm thine for ever:<br /></span>
+<span>And on thy lips I seal my vow,<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>And break it shall I never.<br /></span>
+<span class='i11'>&mdash;<i>Robert Burns</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_93'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-4.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-4-th.jpg" alt="ROBERT BURNS"></a></p><p class="ctr">ROBERT BURNS</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>The business of Robert Burns was love-making.</p>
+
+<p>All love is good, but some kinds of love are better than others. Through
+Burns' penchant for falling in love we have his songs. A Burns
+bibliography is simply a record of his love-affairs, and the spasms of
+repentance that followed his lapses are made manifest in religious verse.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry is the very earliest form of literature, and is the natural
+expression of a person in love; and I suppose we might as well admit the
+fact at once that without love there would be no poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry is the bill and coo of sex. All poets are lovers, and all lovers,
+either actual or potential, are poets. Potential poets are the people who
+read poetry; and so without lovers the poet would never have a market for
+his wares.</p>
+
+<p>If you have ceased to be moved by religious emotion; if your spirit is no
+longer exalted by music, and you do not linger over certain lines of
+poetry, it is because the love-instinct in your heart has withered to
+ashes of roses. It is idle to imagine Bobby Burns as a staid member of the
+Kirk; had he been so, there would now be no Bobby Burns. The literary
+ebullition of Robert Burns (he himself has told us) began shortly after he
+<a name='V_Page_94'></a>had reached the age of indiscretion; and the occasion was his being
+paired in the hayfield, according to the Scottish custom, with a bonnie
+lassie. This custom of pairing still endures, and is what the students of
+sociology call an expeditious move. The Scotch are great economists&mdash;the
+greatest in the world. Adam Smith, the father of the science of economics,
+was a Scotchman; and Draper, author of &quot;A History of Civilization,&quot; flatly
+declares that Adam Smith's &quot;Wealth of Nations&quot; has influenced the people
+of Earth for good more than any other book ever written&mdash;save none.</p>
+
+<p>The Scotch are great conservators of energy.</p>
+
+<p>The practise of pairing men and women in the hayfield gets the work done.
+One man and one woman going down the grass-grown path afield might linger
+and dally by the way. They would never make hay, but a company of a dozen
+or more men and women would not only reach the field, but do a lot of
+work. In Scotland the hay-harvest is short&mdash;when the grass is in bloom,
+just right to make the best hay, it must be cut. And so the men and women,
+the girls and boys, sally forth. It is a jolly picnic-time, looked forward
+to with fond anticipation, and after recalled with sweet, sad memories, or
+otherwise, as the case may be.</p>
+
+<p>But they all make hay while the sun shines, and count it joy. Liberties
+are allowed during haying-time that otherwise would be declared
+scandalous; during haying-time the Kirk waives her censor's right, and
+priest <a name='V_Page_95'></a>and people mingle joyously. Wives are not jealous during
+hay-harvest, and husbands never faultfinding, because they each get even
+by allowing a mutual license. In Scotland during haying-time every married
+man works alongside of some other man's wife. To the psychologist it is
+somewhat curious how the desire for propriety is overridden by a stronger
+desire&mdash;the desire for the shilling. The Scotch farmer says, &quot;Anything to
+get the hay in&quot;&mdash;and by loosening a bit the strict bands of social custom,
+the hay is harvested.</p>
+
+<p>In the hay-harvest the law of natural selection holds; partners are often
+arranged for weeks in advance; and trysts continue year after year. Old
+lovers meet, touch hands in friendly scuffle for a fork, drink from the
+same jug, recline at noon and eat lunch in the shade of a friendly stack,
+and talk to heart's content, sweetening the labor of the long summer day.</p>
+
+<p>Of course this joyousness of the haying-time is not wholly monopolized by
+the Scotch. Haven't you seen the jolly haying parties in Southern Germany,
+France, Switzerland and the Tyrol? How the bright costumes of the men and
+the jaunty attire of the women gleam in the glad sunshine!</p>
+
+<p>But the practise of pairing is carried to a degree of perfection in
+Scotland that I have not noticed elsewhere. Surely it is a great economic
+scheme! It is like that invention of a Connecticut man, which utilizes the
+ebb and flow of the ocean-tides to turn a gristmill.</p><a name='V_Page_96'></a>
+
+<p>And it seems queer that no one has ever attempted to utilize the waste of
+dynamic force involved in the maintenance of the Company Sofa.</p>
+
+<p>In Ayrshire, I have started out with a haying party of twenty&mdash;ten men and
+ten women&mdash;at six o'clock in the morning and worked until six at night. I
+never worked so hard, nor did so much. All day long there was a fire of
+jokes and jolly gibes, interspersed with song, while beneath all ran a
+gentle hum of confidential interchange of thought. The man who owned the
+field was there to direct our efforts and urge us on in well-doing by
+merry raillery, threat, and joyous rivalry.</p>
+
+<p>The point I make is this&mdash;we did the work. Take heed, ye Captains of
+Industry, and note this truth, that where men and women work together
+under right influences, much good is accomplished, and the work is
+pleasurable. Of course there are vinegar-faced philosophers who say that
+the Scotch custom of pairing young men and maidens in the hayfield is not
+without its effect on esoterics, also on vital statistics; and I'm willing
+to admit there may be danger in the scheme. But life is a dangerous
+business anyway&mdash;few indeed get out of it alive!</p><a name='V_Page_97'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Burns succeeded in his love-making and succeeded in poetry, but at
+everything else he was a failure. He failed as a farmer, a father, a
+friend, in society, as a husband, and in business.</p>
+
+<p>From his twenty-third year his days were passed in sinning and repenting.</p>
+
+<p>Poetry and love-making should be carried on with caution: they form a
+terrific tax on life's forces. Most poets die young, not because the gods
+especially love them, but because life is a bank-account, and to wipe out
+your balance is to have your checks protested. The excesses of youth are
+drafts payable at maturity. Chatterton dead at eighteen, Keats at
+twenty-six, Shelley at thirty-three, Byron at thirty-six, Poe at forty,
+and Burns at thirty-seven, are the rule. When drafts made by the men
+mentioned became due, there was no balance to their credit and Charon
+beckoned.</p>
+
+<p>Most life-insurance companies now ask the applicant this question, &quot;Do you
+write poetry to excess?&quot; Shakespeare, to be sure, clung to life until he
+was fifty-three, but this seems to be the limit. Dickens and Thackeray,
+their candles well burned out, also died under sixty. Of course, I know
+that Browning, Tennyson, Morris and Bryant lived to a fair old age, but
+this was on borrowed time, for in the early life of each there was a
+hiatus of from ten to eighteen years, when the men never wrote a line, nor
+touched a drop of anything, bravely eschewing all honey from Hymettus.<a name='V_Page_98'></a>
+Then the four men last named were all happily married, and married life is
+favorable to longevity, but not to poetry. As a rule only single men, or
+those unhappily mated, make love and write poetry. Men happily married
+make money, cultivate content, and evolve an aldermanic front; but love
+and poetry are symptoms of unrest. Thus is Emerson's proposition partially
+proven, that in life all things are bought and must be paid for with a
+price&mdash;even success and happiness.</p><a name='V_Page_99'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Burns once explained to Doctor Moore that the first fine, careless rapture
+of his song was awakened into being when he was sixteen years old, by &quot;a
+bonnie sweet sonsie lass&quot; whom we now know as &quot;Handsome Nell.&quot; Her other
+name to us is vapor, and history is silent as to her life-pilgrimage.
+Whether she lived to realize that she had first given voice to one of the
+great singers of earth&mdash;of this we are also ignorant. She was one year
+younger than Burns, and little more than a child when she and Bobby lagged
+behind the troop of tired haymakers, and walked home, hand in hand, in the
+gloaming. Here is one of the stanzas addressed to &quot;Handsome Nell&quot;:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;She dresses all so clean and neat,<br /></span>
+<span>Both decent and genteel,<br /></span>
+<span>And then there's something in her gait<br /></span>
+<span>Makes any dress look weel.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And how could Nell then ever guess why her cheeks burned scarlet, and why
+she was so sorry when haying-time was over? She was sweet, innocent,
+artless, and their love was very natural, tender, innocent. It's a pity
+that all loves can not remain in just that idyllic, milkmaid stage, where
+the girls and boys awaken in the early morning with the birds, and hasten
+forth barefoot across the dewy fields to find the cows. But love never
+tarries. Love is progressive; it can not stand still. I have heard of the
+&quot;passiveness&quot; of woman's <a name='V_Page_100'></a>love, but the passive woman is only one who does
+not love&mdash;she merely consents to have affection lavished upon her. When I
+hear of a passive woman, I always think of the befuddled sailor who once
+saw one of those dummy dress-frames, all duly clothed in flaming bombazine
+(I think it was bombazine) in front of a clothing establishment. The
+sailor, mistaking the dummy for a near and dear lady friend, embraced the
+wire apparatus and imprinted a resounding smack on the chaste
+plaster-of-Paris cheek. Meeting the sure-enough lady shortly after, he
+upbraided her for her cold passivity on the occasion named.</p>
+
+<p>A passive woman&mdash;one who consents to be loved&mdash;should seek occupation
+among those worthy firms who warrant a fit in ready-made gowns, or money
+refunded.</p>
+
+<p>Love is progressive&mdash;it hastens onward like the brook hurrying to the sea.
+They say that love is blind: love may be short-sighted, or inclined to
+strabismus, or may see things out of their true proportion, magnifying
+pleasant little ways into seraphic virtues, but love is not really
+blind&mdash;the bandage is never so tight but that it can peep. The only kind
+of love that is really blind and deaf is Platonic love. Platonic love
+hasn't the slightest idea where it is going, and so there are surprises
+and shocks in store for it. The other kind, with eyes wide open, is
+better. I know a man who has tried both. Love is progressive. All things
+that live should progress. To stand still is to retreat, and <a name='V_Page_101'></a>to retreat
+is death. Love dies, of course. All things die, or become something else.
+And often they become something else by dying. Behold the eternal Paradox!
+The love that evolves into a higher form is the better kind. Nature is
+intent on evolution, yet of the myriads of spores that cover earth, most
+of them are doomed to death; and of the countless rays sent out by the
+sun, the number that fall athwart this planet are infinitesimal. Edward
+Carpenter calls attention to the fact that disappointed love&mdash;that is,
+love that is &quot;lost&quot;&mdash;often affects the individual for the highest good.
+But the real fact is, nothing is ever lost. Love in its essence is a
+spiritual emotion, and its office seems to be an interchange of thought
+and feeling; but often thwarted in its object, it becomes general,
+transforms itself into sympathy, and embracing a world, goes out to and
+blesses all mankind.</p>
+
+<p>Very, very rare is the couple that has the sense and poise to allow
+passion just enough mulberry-leaves, so it will spin a beautiful silken
+thread, out of which a Jacob's ladder can be constructed, reaching to the
+Infinite. Most lovers in the end wear love to a fringe, and there remains
+no ladder with angels ascending and descending&mdash;not even a dream of a
+ladder. Instead of the silken ladder on which one can mount to Heaven,
+there is usually a dark, dank road to Nowhere, over which is thrown a
+package of letters and trinkets, all fastened round with a white ribbon,
+tied in a lover's <a name='V_Page_102'></a>knot. The many loves of Robert Burns all ended in a
+black jumping-off place, and before he had reached high noon, he tossed
+over the last bundle of white-ribboned missives and tumbled in after them.
+The life of Burns is a tragedy, through which are interspersed sparkling
+scenes of gaiety, as if to retrieve the depth of bitterness that would
+otherwise be unbearable. Go ask Mary Morison, Highland Mary, Agnes
+McLehose, Betty Alison, and Jean Armour!</p><a name='V_Page_103'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The poems of Robert Burns fall easily into four divisions.</p>
+
+<p>First, those written while he was warmly wooing the object of his
+affection.</p>
+
+<p>Second, those written after he had won her.</p>
+
+<p>Third, those written when he had failed to win her.</p>
+
+<p>Fourth, those written when he felt it his duty to write, and really had
+nothing to say.</p>
+
+<p>The first-named were written because he could not help it, and are, for
+the most part, rarely excellent. They are joyous, rapturous, sprightly,
+dancing, and filled with references to sky, clouds, trees, fruit, grain,
+birds and flowers. Birds and flowers, by the way, are peculiarly lovers'
+properties. The song and the plumage of birds, and the color and perfume
+of flowers are all distinctly sex manifestations. Robert Burns sang his
+songs just as the bird wings and sings, and for the same reason. Sex holds
+first place in the thought of Nature; and sex in the minds of men and
+women holds a much larger place than most of us are willing to admit. All
+religious emotion and all art are born of the sex instinct.</p>
+
+<p>Burns' poems of the second variety, written after he had won her, are
+touched with religious emotion, or filled with vain regret and deep
+remorse, as the case may be, all owing to the quality and kind of success
+achieved, and the influence of the Dog-Star.</p>
+
+<p>Burns wrote several deeply religious poems. Now, men are very seldom
+really religious and contrite, <a name='V_Page_104'></a>except after an excess. Following a
+debauch a man signs the pledge, vows chastity, writes fervently of
+asceticism and the need of living in the spirit and not in the senses.
+Good pictures show best on a dark back-ground. Men talk most about things
+they do not possess.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Cotter's Saturday Night,&quot; perhaps the most quoted of any of Burns'
+poems, is plainly the result of a terrible tip to t' other side. Bobby had
+gone so far in the direction of Venusburg that he resolved on getting
+back, and living thereafter a staid and proper life.</p>
+
+<p>In order to reform you must have an ideal, and the ideal of Burns, on the
+occasion of having exhausted all capacity for sin, is embodied in the
+&quot;Saturday Night.&quot; It is all a beautiful dream. The real Scottish cotter is
+quite another kind of person. The religion of the live cotter is well
+seasoned with fear, malevolence and absurd dogmatism. The amount of love,
+patience, excellence and priggishness shown in &quot;The Cotter's Saturday
+Night&quot; never existed, except in a poet's imagination. In stanza Number Ten
+of that particular poem is a bit of unconscious autobiography that might
+as well ha' been omitted; but in letting it stand, Burns was loyal to the
+thought that surged through his brain.</p>
+
+<p>People who are not scientific in their speech often speak of the birds as
+being happy. My opinion is that birds are not any more happy than
+men&mdash;probably not as much so. Many birds, like the English sparrow and the
+blue jay, quarrel all day long. Come to think of it, I <a name='V_Page_105'></a>believe that man
+is happier than the birds. He has a sense of remorse, and this suggests
+reformation, and from the idea of reformation comes the picturing of an
+ideal. This exercise of the imagination is pleasure, for indeed there is a
+certain satisfaction in every form of exercise of the faculties. There is
+a certain pleasure in pain: for pain is never all pain. And sin surely is
+not wholly bad, if through it we pass into a higher life&mdash;the life of the
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Anything is better than the Dead Sea of neutral nothingness, wherein a man
+merely avoids sin by doing nothing and being nothing. The stirring of the
+imagination by sorrow for sin, sometimes causes the soul to wing a
+far-reaching upward flight.</p>
+
+<p>Asceticism is often only a form of sensuality: the man finds satisfaction
+in overcoming the flesh. And wherever you find asceticism you find
+potential passion&mdash;a smoldering volcano held in check by a devotion to
+duty; and a gratification is oft found in fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>The moral and religious poems of Burns were written in a desire to work
+off a fit of depression, and make amends for folly. They are sincere and
+often very excellent. Great preachers have often been great sinners, and
+the sermons that have moved men most are often a direct recoil from sin on
+the part of the preacher. Remorse finds play in preaching repentance. When
+a man talks much about a virtue, be sure that he is clutching for it.
+Temperance fanatics are men with a taste for <a name='V_Page_106'></a>strong drink, trying hard to
+keep sober. The moral and religious poems of Robert Burns are not equal to
+his love-songs. The love-songs are free, natural, untrammeled and
+unrestrained; while his religious poems have a vein of rotten warp running
+through them in the way of affectation and pretense. From this I infer
+that sin is natural, and remorse partially so. In Burns' moral poems the
+author tries to win back the favor of respectable people, which he had
+forfeited. In them there is a violence of direction; and all violence of
+direction&mdash;all endeavors to please and placate certain people&mdash;is fatal to
+an artist. You must work to please only yourself.</p>
+
+<p>Work to please yourself and you develop and strengthen the artistic
+conscience. Cling to that and it shall be your mentor in times of doubt:
+you need no other. There are writers who would scorn to write a muddy
+line, and would hate themselves for a year and a day should they dilute
+their honest thought with the platitudes of the fear-ridden. Be yourself
+and speak your mind today, though it contradict all you have said before.
+And above all, in art, work to please yourself&mdash;that Other Self that
+stands over and behind you, looking over your shoulder, watching your
+every act, word and deed&mdash;knowing your every thought. Michelangelo would
+not paint a picture on order. &quot;I have a critic who is more exacting than
+you,&quot; said Meissonier&mdash;&quot;it is my Other Self.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_107'></a>
+
+<p>Rosa Bonheur painted pictures just to please her Other Self, and never
+gave a thought to any one else, nor wanted to think of any one else, and
+having painted to please herself, she made her appeal to the great Common
+Heart of humanity&mdash;the tender, the noble, the receptive, the earnest, the
+sympathetic, the lovable. That is why Rosa Bonheur stands first among
+women artists of all time: she worked to please her Other Self.</p>
+
+<p>That is the reason Rembrandt, who lived at the same time Shakespeare
+lived, is today without a rival in portraiture. He had the courage to make
+an enemy. When at work he never thought of any one but his Other Self, and
+so he infused soul into every canvas. The limpid eyes look down into yours
+from the walls and tell of love, pity, earnestness and deep sincerity.
+Man, like Deity, creates in his own image, and when he portrays some one
+else, he pictures himself, too&mdash;this provided his work is Art. If it is
+but an imitation of something seen somewhere, or done by some one else, to
+please a patron with money, no breath of life has been breathed into its
+nostrils, and it is nothing, save possibly dead perfection&mdash;no more.</p>
+
+<p>Is it easy to please your Other Self? Try it for a day. Begin tomorrow
+morning and say: &quot;This day I will live as becomes a man. I will be filled
+with good-cheer and courage. I will do what is right; I will work for the
+highest; I will put soul into every hand-grasp, <a name='V_Page_108'></a>every smile, every
+expression&mdash;into all my work. I will live to satisfy my Other Self.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Do you think it is easy? Try it for a day.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Burns wrote some deathless lines&mdash;lines written out of the
+freshness of his heart, simply to please himself, with no furtive eye on
+Dumfries, Edinburgh, the Kirk, or the Unco Guid of Ayrshire; and these are
+the lines that have given him his place in the world of letters.</p>
+
+<p>The other day I was made glad by finding that John Burroughs, Poet and
+Prophet, says that the male thrush sings to please himself, out of pure
+delight; and pleasing himself, he pleases his mate. &quot;The female,&quot; says
+Burroughs, &quot;is always pleased with a male that is pleased with himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The various controversial poems (granting for argument's sake that
+controversy is poetic) were written when Burns was smarting under the
+sense of defeat. These show a sharp insight into the heart of things, and
+a lively wit, but are not sufficient foundation on which to build a
+reputation. Ali Baba can do as well. Considering the fact that twice as
+many people make pilgrimages to the grave of Burns as visit the dust of
+Shakespeare, and that his poems are on the shelves of every library, his
+name now needs no defense. The ores are very seldom found pure, and if
+even the work of Deity is composite, why should we be surprised that man,
+His creature, should express himself in a varying scale of excellence!</p><a name='V_Page_109'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>There was nothing of Jack Falstaff about Francis Schlatter, whose whitened
+bones were found amid the alkali dust of the desert, a few years ago&mdash;dead
+in an endeavor to do without meat and drink for forty days.</p>
+
+<p>Schlatter purported, and believed, that he was the reincarnation of the
+Messiah. Letters were sent to him, addressed simply, &quot;Jesus Christ,
+Denver, Colorado,&quot; and he walked up to the General-Delivery window and
+asked for them with a confidence, we are told, that relieved the
+postmaster of a grave responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>Schlatter was no mere ordinary pretender, working on the superstitions of
+shallow-pated people. He lived up to his belief&mdash;took no money, avoided
+notoriety when he could; and the proof of his sincerity lies in the fact
+that he died a victim to it.</p>
+
+<p>Herbert Spencer has said all about the Messianic Instinct that there is to
+say, save this&mdash;the Messianic Instinct first had its germ in the heart of
+a woman. Every woman dreams of the coming of the Ideal Man&mdash;the man who
+will give her protection, even to giving up his life for her, and
+vouchsafe peace to her soul. I am told by a noted Bishop of the Catholic
+Church that many women who become nuns are prompted to take their vows
+solely through the occasion of an unrequited love. They become the bride
+of the Church and find their highest joy in following the will of Christ.
+He is their only Spouse and Master.</p><a name='V_Page_110'></a>
+
+<p>The terms of endearment one hears at prayer-meetings, &quot;Blessed Jesus,&quot;
+&quot;Dear Jesus,&quot; &quot;Loving Jesus,&quot; &quot;Elder Brother,&quot; &quot;Patient, gentle Jesus,&quot;
+etc., were first used by women in an ecstasy of religious transport. And
+the thought of Jesus as a loving, &quot;personal Savior,&quot; would die from the
+face of the earth did not women keep it alive. The religious nature and
+the sex nature are closely akin: no psychologist can tell where the one
+ends and the other begins.</p>
+
+<p>There may be wooden women in the world, and of these I will not speak, but
+every strong, pulsing, feeling, thinking woman goes through life, seeking
+the Ideal Man. Whether she is married or single, rich or poor, old or
+young, every new man she meets is interesting to her, because she feels in
+some mysterious way that possibly he is the One.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I know that every good man, too, seeks the Ideal Woman&mdash;but
+that deserves another chapter.</p>
+
+<p>The only woman in whose heart there is not the live, warm, Messianic
+Instinct is the wooden woman, and the one who believes she has already
+found him. But this latter is holding an illusion that soon vanishes with
+possession.</p>
+
+<p>That pale, low-voiced, gentle and insane man, Francis Schlatter, was
+followed at times by troops of women. These women believed in him and
+loved him&mdash;in different ways, of course, and with passion varying
+according to temperament and the domestic environment <a name='V_Page_111'></a>already existing.
+To love deeply is a matter of propinquity and opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>One woman, whom &quot;The Healer&quot; had cured of a lingering disease, loved this
+man with a wild, mad, absorbing passion. Chance gave her the opportunity.
+He came to her house, cold, hungry, homeless, sick. She fed him, warmed
+him, looked into his liquid eyes, sat at his feet and listened to his
+voice. She loved him&mdash;and partook of his every mental delusion.</p>
+
+<p>This woman now waits and watches in her mountain home for his return. She
+knows the coyotes and buzzards picked the scant flesh from his starved
+frame, but she says: &quot;He promised he would come back to me, and he will. I
+am waiting for him here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This woman writes me long letters from her solitude, telling me of her
+hopes and plans. Just why all the cranks in the United States should write
+me letters, I do not know, but they do&mdash;perhaps there is a sort o'
+fellow-feeling. This woman may write letters to others, just as she does
+to me. Of this I do not know, but surely I would not thus make public the
+heart-tragedy told me in a private letter, were it not that the woman
+herself has printed a pamphlet, setting forth her faith and veiling only
+those things into which it is not our right to pry.</p>
+
+<p>This Mary Magdalene believes her lover was the Chosen Son of God, and that
+the Father will reclothe the Son in a new garment of flesh and send him
+back <a name='V_Page_112'></a>to his beloved. So she watches and waits, and dresses herself to
+receive him, and at night places a lighted lantern in the window to guide
+the way.</p>
+
+<p>She watches and waits.</p>
+
+<p>Other women wait for footsteps that will never come, and listen for a
+voice that will never be heard. All round the world there is a sisterhood
+of such. Some, being wise, lose themselves in loving service to others&mdash;in
+useful work. But this woman, out in the wilds of New Mexico, hugs her
+sorrow to her heart, and feeds her passion by recounting it, and watches
+away the leaden hours, crying aloud to all who will listen: &quot;He is not
+dead&mdash;he is not dead! he will come back to me! He promised it&mdash;he will
+come back to me! This long, dreary waiting is only a test of my loyalty
+and love! I will be patient, for he will come back to me! He will come
+back to me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This world would be a sorry place if most men conducted their lives on the
+Robert Burns plan. Burns was affectionate, tender, generous and kind; but
+he was not wise. He never saw the future, nor did he know that life is a
+sequence, and that if you do this, it is pretty sure to lead to that. His
+loves were largely of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Excess was a part of his wayward, undisciplined nature; and that constant
+tendency to put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his brains, bound him
+at last, hand and foot. His old age could never have been <a name='V_Page_113'></a>frosty, but
+kindly&mdash;it would have been babbling, irritable, senile, sickening. Death
+was kind and reaped him young. Sex was the rock on which Robert Burns
+split. He seemed to regard pleasure-seeking as the prime end of life, and
+in this he was not so very far removed from the prevalent &quot;civilized&quot;
+society notion of marriage. But it is a phantasmal idea, and makes a mock
+of marriage, serving the satirist his excuse.</p>
+
+<p>To a great degree the race is yet barbaric, and as a people we fail
+utterly to touch the hem of the garment of Divinity. We have been mired in
+the superstition that sex is unclean, and therefore honesty and free
+expression in love matters have been tabued.</p>
+
+<p>But the day will yet dawn when we will see that it takes two to generate
+thought; that there is the male man and the female man, and only where
+these two walk together hand in hand is there a perfect sanity and a
+perfect physical, moral and spiritual health.</p>
+
+<p>We reach infinity through the love of one, and loving this one, we are in
+love with all. And this condition of mutual sympathy, trust, reverence,
+forbearance and gentleness that can exist between a man and a woman, gives
+the only hint of Heaven that mortals ever know. From the love of man for
+woman we guess the love of God, just as the scientist from a single bone
+constructs the skeleton&mdash;aye! and then clothes it with a complete garment.</p>
+
+<p>In their love-affairs women are seldom wise, or men just. How should we
+expect them to be when but <a name='V_Page_114'></a>yesterday woman was a chattel and man a
+slave-owner? Woman won by diplomacy&mdash;that is to say, by trickery and
+untruth, and man had his way through force, and neither is quite willing
+to disarm. An amalgamated personality is the rare exception, because
+neither Church, State nor Society yet fully recognizes the fact that
+spiritual comradeship and the marriage of the mind constitute the only
+Divine mating. Doctor Blacklock once said that Robert Burns had eyes like
+the Christ. Women who looked into those wide-open, generous orbs lost
+their hearts in the liquid depths.</p>
+
+<p>In the natures of Robert Burns and Francis Schlatter there was little in
+common; but their experiences were alike in this: they were beloved by
+women. Behind him Burns left a train of weeping women&mdash;a trail of broken
+hearts. And I can never think of him except as a mere youth&mdash;&quot;Bobby
+Burns&quot;&mdash;one who never came into man's estate. In all his love-making he
+never seemed really to benefit any woman, nor did he avail himself of the
+many mental and spiritual excellencies of woman's nature, absorbing them
+into his own. He only played a devil's tattoo upon her emotions.</p>
+
+<p>If Burns knew anything of the beauty and inspiration of a high and holy
+friendship between a thinking man and a thinking woman, with mutual aims,
+ideals and ambitions, he never disclosed it. The love of a man for a maid,
+or a maid for a man, can never last, unless these two mutually love a
+third something. Then, as <a name='V_Page_115'></a>they are traveling the same way, they may move
+forward hand in hand, mutually sustained. The marriage of the mind is the
+only compact that endures. I love you because you love the things that I
+love. That man alone is great who utilizes the blessings that God
+provides; and of these blessings no gift equals the gentle, trusting
+companionship of a good woman.</p>
+
+<p>So, having written thus far, I find that already I have reached the limit
+of my allotted space.</p>
+
+<p>In closing, it may not be amiss for me to state that Robert Burns was an
+Irish poet whose parents happened to be Scotch. He was born in Ayrshire in
+Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine. He died in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-six, and
+was buried at Dumfries by the &quot;gentleman volunteers,&quot; in spite of his last
+solemn words&mdash;&quot;Don't let the Awkward Squad fire over my grave!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His mother survived him thirty-eight years, passing out in Eighteen
+Hundred Thirty-four. Burns left four sons, each of whom was often pointed
+out as the son of his father&mdash;but none of them was.</p>
+
+<p>This is all I think of, at present, concerning Robert Burns.</p>
+
+<p>For further facts I must refer the Gentle Reader to the &quot;Encyclopedia
+Britannica,&quot; a compilation that I cheerfully recommend, it having been
+vouched for to me by a dear friend, a clergyman of East Aurora, who, the
+past year, perused the entire work, from A to Z, reading five hours a day:
+and therefore is competent to speak.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='JOHN_MILTON'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_116'></a><a name='V_Page_117'></a>JOHN MILTON</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_118'></a>
+<span class='i6'>Thus with the year<br /></span>
+<span>Seasons return; but not to me returns<br /></span>
+<span>Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,<br /></span>
+<span>Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,<br /></span>
+<span>Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;<br /></span>
+<span>But cloud instead, and ever-during dark<br /></span>
+<span>Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men<br /></span>
+<span>Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair<br /></span>
+<span>Presented with a universal blank<br /></span>
+<span>Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased,<br /></span>
+<span>And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.<br /></span>
+<span>So much the rather thou, Celestial Light,<br /></span>
+<span>Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers<br /></span>
+<span>Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence<br /></span>
+<span>Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell<br /></span>
+<span>Of things invisible to mortal sight.<br /></span>
+<span class='i10'>&mdash;<i>Paradise Lost: Book III</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_119'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-5.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-5-th.jpg" alt="JOHN MILTON"></a></p><p class="ctr">JOHN MILTON</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Shakespeare and Milton lived at the same time, though the difference in
+their ages was such that we may not speak of them as contemporaries. John
+Milton was eight years old when William Shakespeare died. The Miltons
+lived in Bread Street, and out of the back garret-window of their house
+could catch a glimpse of the Globe Theater.</p>
+
+<p>The father of John Milton might have known Shakespeare&mdash;might have dined
+with him at the &quot;Mermaid,&quot; played skittles with him on Hampstead Heath,
+fished with him from the same boat in the river at Richmond; and then John
+Milton, the lawyer, might have discreetly schemed for passes to the
+&quot;Globe&quot; and gone with his boy John, Junior, to see &quot;As You Like It&quot;
+played, with the Master himself in the role of old Adam.</p>
+
+<p>Bread Street was just off Cheapside, where the Mermaid Tavern stood, and
+where Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson and other roysterers often lingered
+and made the midnight echo with their mirth. In all probability, John
+Milton, Senior, father of John Milton, Junior, knew Shakespeare well. But
+the Miltons owned their home; were rich, influential, eminently
+respectable; attended Saint Giles' Church, and really didn't care <a name='V_Page_120'></a>to
+cultivate the society of play-actors who kept bad hours, slept in the
+theater, and had meal-tickets at half a dozen taverns.</p>
+
+<p>There were six children born into the Milton family, three of whom died in
+infancy. Of the survivors, the eldest was Anne, the second John, the third
+Christopher.</p>
+
+<p>Anne was strong, robust and hearty; John was slender, pale, with dreamy,
+dark gray eyes and a head too big for his body; Christopher was so-so.
+And, in passing, it is well to explain, once for all, that Christopher
+made his way straight to the front in life, taking up his father's
+business and being appointed a Court Officer. Thence he was promoted to
+the Woolsack, became rich, cultivated a double chin, was knighted, and
+passed out full of honors. The chief worriment and source of shame in the
+life of Sir Christopher Milton came from the unseemly conduct of his
+brother John, who was much given to producing political and theological
+pamphlets. And once in desperation Sir Christopher Milton requested John
+Milton to change his family name, that the tribe of Milton might be saved
+the disgrace of having in it &quot;a traducer of the State, an enemy of the
+King, and a falsifier of Truth.&quot; Sir Christopher Milton was an excellent
+and worthy man, and I must apologize for not giving him more attention at
+this time; but lack of space forbids.</p>
+
+<p>Sickly boys who are wise beyond their years are ever the pets of big
+sisters, and the object of loving, jealous, <a name='V_Page_121'></a>zealous care on the part of
+their mothers. John Milton talked like an oracle while yet a child, and
+one biographer records that even as a babe he sometimes mildly reproved
+his parents for levity.</p>
+
+<p>He was a precocious child, and have we not been told that precocity does
+not fulfill its promises? But this boy was an exception. He was incarnated
+into a family that prized music, poetry, philosophy, and yet held fast to
+the Christian faith. His father set psalms to music, his sister wrote
+madrigals, and his mother played sweet strains on a harp to waken him at
+morningtide. The entire household united in a devotion to poetry and art.
+Possibly this atmosphere of high thinking was too rarefied for real
+comfort&mdash;the gravity of the situation being sustained only by a stern
+effort.</p>
+
+<p>But no matter&mdash;father, mother and sister joined hands to make the pale,
+handsome boy a prodigy of learning: one that would surprise the world and
+leave his impress on the time.</p>
+
+<p>And they succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>Of the three Milton children that passed away in childhood, I can not but
+think that they succumbed to overtraining, being crammed quite after the
+German custom of stuffing geese so as to produce that delicious diseased
+tidbit known to gourmets as pate de foies gras. John Milton stood the
+cramming process like a true hero. His parents set him apart for the
+Church&mdash;therefore he must be learned in books, familiar with languages,
+<a name='V_Page_122'></a>versed in theories. They desired that he should have knowledge, which
+they did not know is quite a different thing from wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>So the boy had a private tutor in Greek and Latin at nine years of age,
+and even then began to write verse. At ten years of age his father had the
+lad's portrait painted by that rare and thrifty Dutchman, Cornelius
+Jansen. We have this picture now, and it reveals the pale, grave, winsome
+face with the flowing curls that we so easily recognize.</p>
+
+<p>No expense or pains were spared in the boy's education. The time was
+divided up for him as the hours are for a soldier. One tutor after another
+took him in hand during the day; but the change of study and a glad
+respite of an hour in the morning and the same in the afternoon, for
+music, bore him up.</p>
+
+<p>He was the pride of his parents, the delight of his tutors.</p>
+
+<p>Three years were spent at Saint Paul's School; then he was sent to
+Cambridge. From there he wrote to his mother, &quot;I am penetrating into the
+inmost recesses of the Muses; climbing high Olympus, visiting the green
+pastures of Parnassus, and drinking deep from Pierian Springs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This is terrible language for a child of fourteen. A boy who should talk
+like that now would be regarded with anxious concern by his loving
+parents. The present age is incredulous of the Infant Phenomenon. And no
+<a name='V_Page_123'></a>fond parent must for a moment imagine that by following the system laid
+out for the education of John Milton can a John Milton be produced. The
+Miltonian curriculum, if used today, would be sufficient ground for action
+on the part of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.</p>
+
+<p>But John Milton, though but a weak-eyed boy with a chronic headache, had a
+deal of whipcord fiber in his make-up. He stood the test and grubbed at
+his books every night until the clock tolled twelve. He was born at a
+peculiar time, being a child of the Reformation married to the
+Renaissance. The toughness and grimness of Calvin were united in him with
+the tenderness of Erasmus. From out of the Universal Energy, of which we
+are particles, he had called into his being qualities so diverse that they
+seemed never to have been before or since united in one person.</p>
+
+<p>He remained at Cambridge seven years. The beauty of his countenance had
+increased so that he was as one set apart. His finely chiseled features,
+framed in their flowing curls, challenged the admiration of every person
+he met. A writer of the time described him as &quot;a grave and sober person,
+but one not wholly ignorant of his own parts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There is a sly touch in this sentence that sheds light upon &quot;The Lady of
+Christ's.&quot; John Milton was a bit of a poseur, as Schopenhauer declares all
+great men are and ever have been. With the masterly mind goes <a name='V_Page_124'></a>a touch of
+the fakir or charlatan. Milton knew his power&mdash;he gloried in this bright
+blade of the intellect. He was handsome&mdash;and he knew it. And yet we will
+not cavil at his velvet coats, or laces, or the golden chain that adorned
+his slender, shapely person. These things were only the transient,
+springtime adornments that passion puts forth.</p>
+
+<p>And yet I see that one writer mentions the chaste and ascetic quality of
+Milton's early life as proof of a cold and measured nature. Seemingly the
+writer does not know that intense feeling often finds a gratification in
+asceticism, and that vows of chastity are proof of passion. There are many
+ways of working off one's surplus energy&mdash;Milton was married to his work.
+He traversed the vast fields of Classic Literature, read in the original
+from Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, French, Spanish, Latin and Italian. He delved
+into abstruse mathematics, studied music as a science, and labored at
+theology. In fact, he came to know so much of all religions that he had
+faith in none. He seemed to view religion in the cold, calculating light
+of a syllogistic problem&mdash;not as a warm, pulsing motive in life. His real
+religion was music, a fact he once frankly acknowledged.</p>
+
+<p>On the pinions of music he was carried out and away beyond the boundaries
+of time and space, and there he found that rest for his soul, without
+which he would have sunk to earth and been covered by the kindly, drifting
+leaves of oblivion.</p><a name='V_Page_125'></a>
+
+<p>For some, the secrets of music, the wonder of love, and the misty,
+undefined prayers of the soul constitute true religion. When you place a
+creed in a crucible and afterward study the particles on a slide encased
+in balsam, you are apt to get a residuum or something&mdash;a something that
+does not satisfy the heart.</p>
+
+<p>Milton got well acquainted with theology. It was interesting, but not what
+he had supposed. He came to regard the Church as a useful part of the
+Government&mdash;divine, of course, as all good things are divine. But to
+become a priest and play a part&mdash;he would not do it. He was
+honest&mdash;stubbornly honest.</p>
+
+<p>Seven years he had been at Cambridge, and now that he was just ready to
+step into a &quot;living&quot;&mdash;right in the line of promotion of which his beauty
+and intellect tokened a sure presage&mdash;he balked.</p>
+
+<p>It was a great blow to his parents. His mother pleaded; his father
+threatened; but they soon perceived that this son they had brought forth
+had a will stronger than theirs. Their fond dreams of his preferment&mdash;the
+handsome face of their boy above an oaken pulpit, with thousands feeding
+on his words, the public honors, and all that&mdash;faded away into tears and
+misty nothingness. But parenthood is doomed to disappointment&mdash;it does not
+endure long enough to see the end. Youth is so headstrong and wilful: it
+will not learn from the experience of others.</p>
+
+<p>And all these years of preparation and expense! Better <a name='V_Page_126'></a>had he died and
+been laid to rest with the three now in the churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>Before Milton had served his seven years' apprenticeship at Cambridge, his
+parents moved to the village of Horton&mdash;twenty miles out of London,
+Windsor way.</p>
+
+<p>The village of Horton has not changed much with the years, and a tramp
+across the fields from Eton by way of Burnham Beeches and Stoke Pogis,
+where Gray wrote &quot;The Elegy,&quot; is quite worth while. It is a land of lazy
+woods, and winding streams and hedgerows melodious with birds. One treads
+on storied ground, and if you wish you can recline beneath gnarled old
+oaks where Milton mused and scribbled, and wrote the first draft of &quot;L'
+Allegro&quot; and &quot;Il Penseroso.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Milton loitered here at Horton for six years, and in that time produced
+just six poems.</p>
+
+<p>He was thirty-two years of age, and had never earned a sixpence. But what
+booted it! His father and mother's home was his: they gladly supplied his
+every want; and his mother, especially, was ever his kindly critic and
+most intimate friend. His days were spent in study, dreams, lonely walks
+across green fields, and homecomings when, with his mother's hand in his,
+he would talk or recite to her in order to clarify the thought that
+pressed upon him. Very calm, very peaceful and very beautiful were those
+days. &quot;The pensive attitude of mind brings the best result&mdash;not the
+active,&quot; he used to say. It was then he wrote to his old friend,<a name='V_Page_127'></a> Diodati:
+&quot;You asked what I am about&mdash;what I am thinking of? Why, with God's help, I
+am thinking of immortality. Forgive the word, it is for your ear alone&mdash;I
+am pluming my wings for flight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The good mother had misty, prophetic visions of what this flight might be,
+and had ceased to counsel her son against the sin of idleness. But she did
+not live to see her prophecies confirmed, for in this time of peace and
+love, when the vibrant air was filled with hope, she passed Beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Long years after, John Milton exclaimed, &quot;Oh! Why could she not have lived
+to know!&quot; And the poignant grief of this son, then a man in years (with
+his thirtieth birthday well behind), turned on the thought that he had
+disappointed Her&mdash;the mother who had loved him into being.</p><a name='V_Page_128'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Milton's woes began with his marriage&mdash;they have given rise to nearly as
+much discussion as his poetry. In his &quot;Defensio Secunda,&quot; he tells, with a
+touch of pride, of the absolute innocency that continued until his
+thirty-fifth year. When we consider how his combined innocence and
+ignorance plunged him into a sudden marriage with a bit of pink-and-white
+protoplasm, aged seventeen, we can not but regret that he had not devoted
+a little of his valuable time to a study of femininity. And in some way we
+think of Thackeray, when he was being shown the marvelous works of a
+certain amateur artist. &quot;Look at that! look at that!&quot; cried the zealous
+guide, &quot;and he never had a lesson in art in his life!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thackeray adjusted his glasses, looked at the picture carefully, sighed
+and said, &quot;What a pity he didn't have just a little good instruction!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Milton the student, versed in abstractions and full of learned lore, went
+up the Thames seeking a little needed rest. Five miles from Oxford lived
+an ebb-tide aristocratic family by the name of Powell. Milton had long
+known this family, and, it seems, decided to tarry with them a day or so.
+Just why he sought their company no one ever knew, and Milton was too
+proud to tell. The brown thrush, rival of the lark and mockingbird, seldom
+seeks the society of the blue jay. But it did this time. The Powells were
+a roaring, riotous, roystering, fox-hunting, genteel, but reduced family,
+<a name='V_Page_129'></a>on the eve of bankruptcy, with marriageable daughters.</p>
+
+<p>The executive functions of love-making are best carried on by shallow
+people; so mediocre women often show rare skill in courtship, and
+sometimes succeed in bagging big game. But surely Mary Powell had no
+conception of the greatness of Milton's intellect&mdash;she only knew that he
+was handsome, and her parents said he was rich.</p>
+
+<p>There was feasting and mirth when Milton arrived back in town accompanied
+by his bride and various of her kinsmen. In all marriage festivals there
+is something pathetically absurd, and I never see a sidewalk awning spread
+without thinking of the one erected for John Milton and Mary Powell, who
+were led through it by an Erebus that was not only blind, but stone-deaf.</p>
+
+<p>John Milton was an ascetic, and lived in a realm of reverie and dreams;
+his wife had a strong bias toward the voluptuous, reveling in a world of
+sense, and demanding attention as her right. Milton began diving into his
+theories and books, and forgot the poor child who had no abstract world
+into which to withdraw. Suddenly bereft of the gay companionship that her
+father's house supplied, she felt herself aggrieved, alone; and tears of
+vexation and homesickness began to stream down her pretty cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>When summoned into her husband's presence she had nothing to say, and
+Milton, the theorist, discovered that what he had mistaken for the natural
+reticence <a name='V_Page_130'></a>and bashfulness of maidenhood was mere inanity and lack of
+ideas. But the loneliness of the poor country girl, shut up in a student's
+den, is a deal more touching than the scholar's wail about &quot;the silent and
+insensate&quot; wife. The girl was being deprived of the rollicking freedom to
+which she had been used, but the great man was waking the echoes with his
+wail for a companionship he had never known.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the girl was shrewd. All women are shrewd, I am told, and some are
+wise and some are not; and many women there be who consider finesse an
+improvement on frankness. At the end of a month, Milton's wife contrived
+to have her parents send for her to return home on a visit that was to
+last only until come Michaelmas. But Michaelmas arrived and the young
+bride refused to return, sending back saucy answers to the great author of
+&quot;Il Penseroso.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Milton wrote pamphlets urging that divorce should be
+granted on the grounds of incompatibility, and pronouncing as inhuman the
+laws that gave freedom from marital woes on no less ignoble grounds than
+that a man should violate his honor.</p>
+
+<p>There is pretty good evidence that a part of Milton's argument on the
+subject of divorce was written out while his wife was under his roof. This
+reveals a slight lack of delicacy as well as the author's habit to make
+copy out of his private griefs; but it must be granted that Milton goes to
+the very bottom of the subject, <a name='V_Page_131'></a>even to stating the fact that those
+happily married have neither pity nor patience with those mismated. &quot;If
+you want sympathy,&quot; he says, &quot;you must go to those who are regarded as not
+respectable,&quot; Any man who writes on philosophy can find his every cue in
+Plato, and he who discusses divorce from a radical standpoint can find
+himself anticipated by Milton in the Seventeenth Century. Every view is
+taken, even down to the suggestion of a probationary marriage, which
+Milton thought might come about when civilization had ceased to crawl and
+begun to walk.</p>
+
+<p>One seeks in vain to learn if the unhappy wife of Milton ever read her
+husband's bitter tracts. It is probable she never did, and would not have
+comprehended their import if she had; and it is still more likely that she
+never came to realize that she was wedded to the greatest man of the age.
+A truce was patched up, on the bankruptcy of her father, and she came back
+penitent, and was taken into favor. Not only did she come back, but she
+brought her family; and the ravenous Royalists consumed the substance of
+the spiritual and ascetic Puritan.</p>
+
+<p>Had Milton then died, it is probable that the gladsome widow would have
+been consoled and married again very shortly, just as did the widows of
+Van Dyck and Rubens&mdash;not knowing that to have been the wife of a king was
+honor enough for one woman.</p>
+
+<p>But after fifteen years of domestic &quot;neglect,&quot; during <a name='V_Page_132'></a>which she doubtless
+benefited her husband by stirring in him a noble discontent, she passed
+from earth; and it was left for John Milton to repeat twice more his
+marital venture, with a similar result. And in this, Fate sends back a
+fact that leers like Mephistopheles, by way of answer to Milton's
+pamphlets on divorce: Why should the State grant a divorce, when great men
+refuse to learn by experience, and, given the opportunity, only repeat the
+blunders they have already made?</p><a name='V_Page_133'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>God in His goodness has in certain instances sent great men angels of
+light for assistants&mdash;mates who could comprehend and sympathize with their
+ideals. But it is expecting too much to suppose that Nature can look out
+for such a trifle as that the right man should marry the right woman.
+Nature possibly never considered a time-contract, and she is a careless
+jade, anyway. She moves blindly along with never a thought for the
+individual.</p>
+
+<p>Audubon the naturalist records that one-third of all birds hatched tumble
+out of the nest before they can fly, and once on the ground the parent
+birds are unable either to warm, feed or protect them.</p>
+
+<p>Read the lives of the Great Men who have lived during the past three
+thousand years, and listen closely, and you will hear the wild wail of
+neglected and unappreciated wives. A woman can forgive a beating, but to
+be forgotten&mdash;never. She hates, by instinct, an austere and self-contained
+character. Dignity and pride repel her; preoccupation keeps her aloof;
+concentration on an idea is unforgivable.</p>
+
+<p>The wife of Tolstoy seeking to have her husband adjudged insane is not a
+rare instance in the lives of thinkers. To think thoughts that are
+different from the thoughts one's neighbors think is surely good reason
+why the man should be looked after. Recently we have had evidence that the
+wife of Victor Hugo regarded the author of &quot;Les Miserables&quot; with
+suspicion, and at <a name='V_Page_134'></a>one time actually made preparations to let him enjoy
+his exile alone&mdash;she would go back to Paris and enjoy life as every one
+should. At Guernsey there was no society!</p>
+
+<p>When Isaac Newton called upon his ladylove and in a fit of abstraction,
+looking about for a utensil to push the tobacco down in his pipe, chanced
+upon the lady's little finger, the law of gravitation was abrogated at
+once, and Newton and his pipe were sent, like nebul&aelig; whirling into space.</p>
+
+<p>When the Great Inventor, absorbed in a problem as to Electricity (that
+thing which to us is only a name and of which we know nothing), forgets
+home, wife, child, supper; and midnight finds him in his laboratory, where
+he has been since sunrise&mdash;just imagine, if you please, the shrill
+greeting that is in cold storage for him when he stumbles home, haggard
+and worn, at dawn. How can he explain why he did this thing and answer the
+questions as to who was there, and what good it all did anyway!</p>
+
+<p>Thought is a torture, and requires such a concentration of energy that
+there is nothing left for the soft courtesies of marriage. The day is
+fleeting, and the night cometh when no man can work. The hot impulse to
+grasp and materialize the dream ere it fades, is strong upon the man.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he is selfish&mdash;he sacrifices everything, as Palissy did when
+fuel was short and the clay just at the turning-point. Yes, the artist is
+selfish: he sacrifices <a name='V_Page_135'></a>his wife and society, and himself, too, to get the
+work done. Four-o'clocks, mealtime, bedtime, and all the household system
+as to pink teas, calls and etiquette, stand for naught. And down the
+corridors of Time comes to us the shrill wail of neglected wives, and the
+crash of broken hearts echoes like the sound of a painter falling through
+a skylight. All this is the price of achievement.</p><a name='V_Page_136'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Making a little look backward into Milton's life, we find that until his
+thirty-third year he had not tasted of practical life at all. About that
+time his father, in a sort of desperation, packed him off to the
+Continent, in charge of a trusty attendant, who acted in the dual capacity
+of servant and friend. The letters he carried to influential men in Paris,
+Florence, Venice and Rome secured him the Speaker's eye, and his beauty
+and learning did the rest. His march was that of a conquering hero. In
+Paris he surprised the savants by addressing them in their own tongue, and
+reciting from their chief writers. This was repeated in Italy; and at
+Florence, as a sort of half-challenge for permission to occupy the highest
+seat, he was invited to read from his own compositions, which he did with
+such grace and power that thereafter all doors flew open at his touch.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to England after an absence of fifteen months, he found his
+father's household broken up, and through bad investments, the family
+fortune sadly depleted. But travel had added cubits to his stature: the
+mixture with men had put him into possession of his own, and he now felt
+well able to cope with the world. He secured modest lodgings in Saint
+Bride's Churchyard, and set to work to make a living and a name by
+authorship. His head teemed with subjects for poems, but cash advances
+were not forthcoming from publishers, and, to bridge over, he tried
+tutoring.</p><a name='V_Page_137'></a>
+
+<p>It was at this time that &quot;Paradise Lost,&quot; the one matchless epic of
+English literature, was conceived. Rough jottings were made as to
+divisions and heads, and a few stanzas were written of the immortal poem
+that was not to be completed for a score of years.</p>
+
+<p>The first volume of Milton's poems was issued in Sixteen Hundred
+Forty-five, when he was thirty-seven years of age. But before this he was
+known as the author of some pamphlets which had made political London
+reel. The writer was at once seen to be a man of remarkable learning and
+marvelous intellect, and the work secured Milton a few friends and divers
+enemies.</p>
+
+<p>From a man of leisure Milton had suddenly become a worker, whose every
+daylight hour was crammed with duties. His skill as a teacher brought him
+all the pupils he cared for, and he moved into better quarters in
+Aldersgate. He was immersed in his work, was making valuable acquaintances
+among literary people, was revered by his pupils, and the happiness was
+his of knowing that he was influential and independent. A fine
+intoxication comes to every brain-worker when the world acknowledges with
+tangible remittances that the product of his mind has a value on the
+Rialto. Such was Milton's joy in Sixteen Hundred Forty-three.</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;Comus,&quot; &quot;Il Penseroso,&quot; &quot;L'Allegro&quot; and &quot;Lycidas&quot; had established his
+place as a poet; and the power of his pen had been proven in sundry
+religious and political controversies.</p><a name='V_Page_138'></a>
+
+<p>In his household were two sons of his sister and several other pupils who
+had sought his tutorship. He was contented in his work, pleased and happy
+with the young friends who sat at his board, and in an hour or two
+snatched each day from toil, for music and reverie.</p><a name='V_Page_139'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Seize upon the moments as they fly, O John Milton, and hug them to your
+heart! Those were days of gold when your mother was your patient listener
+and friend. Her love enveloped you as an aura; and her voice, soft and
+low, upheld you when courage faltered. But these, too, are glorious
+days&mdash;days full of work, and health, and hope, and high endeavor. But
+these days of peace and freedom are the last you shall ever know. Even now
+they flee as a shadow and fade into mist! Gross stupidity, silent and
+insensate, sits waiting for you at the door; calumny is near; taunting
+hate comes riding fast!</p>
+
+<p>The sympathy for which you yearn shall be yours only in dreams, and you
+shall be cheated of all the tenderness for which your heart prays. The
+love and gentleness which you associate with your mother, you ascribe in
+innocence and ignorance to all women; but Fate shall undeceive you, O John
+Milton, and make mock of all your high ideals. You dote on liberty, but
+liberty is not for you. You shall see the funeral of the Republic; the
+defamation of your honor; the proscription of all the sacred things you
+prize. Your companions shall not be of your own choosing, but shall be
+those who neither know nor value the sweet, subtle mintage of the mind.
+Around you mad riot shall surge, a hatred for liberty shall prevail&mdash;an
+enthusiasm for slavery. The glorious leaders of your Puritan faith shall
+be condemned and executed, hanged, cut down <a name='V_Page_140'></a>from the gallows alive, and
+quartered amid the hoarse insults of the people they sought to serve; and
+you yourself shall be hunted like a wild beast. You shall see the prisons
+filled to overflowing with men and women whose only crime was their love
+for truth. And a libertine shall sit on the throne of the England that you
+love. These things you shall see with those mild, dark eyes, and then
+night, eternal night, shall settle down upon you; and for those idle orbs
+no day shall dawn nor starry night appear, nor face of man nor child shall
+be reflected there. Your sightlessness shall give those who owe you
+gratitude and love, opportunity to filch your gold; and, lastly, fire
+shall rob you of your books, and well-nigh all your treasures.</p>
+
+<p>Like another Lear, your daughters shall neither esteem nor respect you,
+and the lines you dictate shall be to them but the idle vaporings of a
+mind diseased. Your acute ears shall hear these daughters express the wish
+that you were dead; and then in your blindness you will give yourself into
+the keeping of a woman as dull, inane and unfeeling as the foolish child
+you first chose as wife. But with it all your obstinacy shall constitute
+your power; and that beauty which was yours in youth shall be with you to
+the last. You shall feel all the torments of the damned and become inured
+to the scorching flames of hell! But, as recompense, the splendors of the
+Celestial Kingdom shall open upon your inward vision, and your soul shall
+<a name='V_Page_141'></a>behold that which the eyes of earth have lost. Something great and proud
+shall go out from your presence to all the discerning ones who shall
+approach you; and your end shall be like the setting of the sun, bright,
+calm, poised and resplendent.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='SAMUEL_JOHNSON'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_142'></a><a name='V_Page_143'></a>SAMUEL JOHNSON</h2>
+
+<a name='V_Page_144'></a>
+<div class='blkquot'><p>* * * Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in
+    your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which
+    time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which
+    it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the
+    verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of
+    encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not
+    expect, for I never had a patron before.</p>
+
+<p>    The shepherd in Vergil grew at last acquainted with Love, and
+    found him a native of the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>    Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+    struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the
+    ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been
+    pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind;
+    but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and can not enjoy
+    it; till I am a solitary, and can not impart it; till I am known,
+    and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to
+    confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be
+    unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a
+    patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.</p>
+
+<p>    Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to
+    any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I
+    should conclude it, should less be possible, with less; for I
+    have been long wakened from that dream of hope in which I once
+    boasted myself with so much exultation, my Lord.</p></div>
+
+<span style='margin-left: 17em;'>Your Lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,</span><br />
+<span style='margin-left: 37.5em;'>&mdash;<i>Sam Johnson</i></span><br />
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-6.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-6-th.jpg" alt="SAMUEL JOHNSON"></a></p><p class="ctr">SAMUEL JOHNSON</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>The critics, I believe, have made a distinction between large men and
+great men.</p>
+
+<p>Samuel Johnson was both. He was massive in intellect, colossal in culture,
+prodigious in memory, weighed nigh three hundred pounds, and had
+prejudices to match. He was possessed of a giant's strength, and
+occasionally used it like a giant&mdash;for instance, when he felled an
+offending bookseller with a folio.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson was most unfortunate in his biographer. In picturing the great
+writer, Boswell writes more entertainingly than Johnson ever did, and
+thereby overtops his subject. And when in reply to the intimation that
+Boswell was going to write his life, Johnson answered, &quot;If I really
+thought he was, I would take his,&quot; he spoke a jest in earnest.</p>
+
+<p>Walking along Market Street in the city of Saint Louis, with a friend, not
+long ago, my comrade suddenly stopped and excitedly pointed out a man
+across the way&mdash;&quot;Look quick&mdash;there he goes!&quot; exclaimed my friend, &quot;that
+man with the derby and duster&mdash;see? That's the husband of Mrs. Lease of
+Kansas!&quot; And all I could say was, &quot;God help him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Not but that Mrs. Lease is a most excellent and <a name='V_Page_146'></a>amiable lady; but the
+idea of a man, made in the image of his Maker, being reduced to the social
+state of a drone-bee is most depressing.</p>
+
+<p>Among that worthy class of people referred to somewhat ironically as &quot;the
+reading public,&quot; Boswell is read, but Johnson never. And so sternly true
+is the fact that many critics, set on a hair-trigger, aver that were it
+not for Boswell no one would now know that a writer by the name of Johnson
+ever lived. Yet the fact is, Boswell ruined the literary reputation of
+Johnson by intimating that Johnson wrote Johnsonese; but that is a
+mistake.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson never wrote Johnsonese. The piling up of reasons, the cumulation
+of argument&mdash;setting off epigram against epigram&mdash;that mark Johnson's
+literary style are its distinguishing features. He is profound, but always
+lucid. And lucidity is just what modern Johnsonese lacks. The word was
+coined by a man who had neither the patience to read Johnson nor the
+ability to comprehend him. Only sophomores, and private secretaries who
+write speeches for able Congressmen, write Johnsonese.</p>
+
+<p>Quibblers possibly may arise and present Johnson's definition of
+network&mdash;&quot;anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances with
+interstices between the intersections&quot;&mdash;but with the quibbler we have no
+time to dally. Some people insist on having their literature illustrated,
+just as others refuse to attend <a name='V_Page_147'></a>lectures that are not reinforced by a
+stereopticon.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson had a style that is stately, dignified, splendid. It moves from
+point to point with absolute precision, and in it there is seldom anything
+ambiguous, muddy, confused or uncertain. Get down a volume of &quot;Lives of
+the Poets,&quot; and prove my point for yourself, by opening at any page. It
+was Boswell who set his own light, chatty and amusing gossip over against
+the wise, stately diction of Johnson, and allowed Goldsmith to say, &quot;Dear
+Doctor, if you were to write a story about little fishes, you would make
+them talk like whales,&quot; and the mud ball has stuck. The average man is
+much more willing to take the wily Boswell's word for it than to read
+Johnson for himself.</p>
+
+<p>The balanced power of Johnson's English can not fail to delight the
+student of letters who cares to interest himself in the matter of
+sentence-building. Johnson handles a thought with such ease! He makes you
+think of the circus &quot;strong man&quot; who tosses the cannon-ball, marked
+&quot;weight 250 lbs.&quot; What if the balls are sometimes only wood painted black!
+Have we not been entertained? Read this specimen paragraph:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very
+small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by Nature upon
+few, and the labor of learning those sciences which may by continuous
+effort be obtained is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can
+exert such judgment as he <a name='V_Page_148'></a>has upon the works of others; and he whom
+Nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his
+vanity by the name of 'critic,'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the greatest literary light of his day has been thrown into the shadow
+by a man whom no one suspected of being able to write entertainingly. In
+the world of letters the great Cham exists only as a lesser luminary; just
+as the once-noted novelist, George Henry Lewes, is now known only as the
+husband of George Eliot.</p>
+
+<p>And yet no one is so rash as to say that the name of Boswell would now be
+known were it not for Johnson. And conversely (or otherwise), if it were
+the proper place, I could show that were it not for George Henry Lewes we
+should never have had &quot;Adam Bede&quot; or &quot;The Mill on the Floss.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Boswell wrote the best &quot;Life&quot; ever written. Nothing like it was ever
+written before; nothing to equal it has been written since. It has had
+hundreds of imitators, but no competitors. Matthew Arnold said that no man
+ever had so good a subject, but Arnold for the moment seemed to forget
+that Hawkins, a professional literary man, published his &quot;Life of Johnson&quot;
+long before Boswell's was sent to the printer&mdash;and who reads Hawkins?</p>
+
+<p>Surely Boswell had a great subject, and he rises to the level of his theme
+and makes the most of it. At times I have wondered if Boswell were not
+really a genius <a name='V_Page_149'></a>so great and profound that he was willing to play the
+fool, as Edgar in &quot;Lear&quot; plays the maniac, and allow himself to be snubbed
+(in print) in order to make his telling point! Millionaires can well
+afford to wear ragged coats. Second-rate man Boswell may have been, as he
+himself so oft admits, yet as a biographer he stands first in the front
+rank. But suppose his extreme ignorance was only the domino disguising a
+cleverness so subtle that it was not discovered until after his death! And
+what if he smiles now, as from out of Elysium he looks and beholds how, as
+a writer, he has eclipsed old Ursa Major, and thus clipped the claws that
+were ready for any chance Scot who might pass that way!</p>
+
+<p>John Hay has suggested that possibly the insight, piquancy and calm wisdom
+of Omar Khayyam are two-thirds essence of FitzGerald. If so, the joke is
+on Omar, not on FitzGerald.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen of Johnson's contemporaries wrote about him, and all make him out
+a profound scholar, a deep philosopher, a facile writer. Boswell by his
+innocent quoting and recounting makes his conversation outstrip all of his
+other accomplishments. He reveals the man by the most skilful indirection,
+and by leaving his guard down, often allows the reader to score a point.
+And of all devices of writing folk, none is finer than to please the
+reader by allowing him to pat himself on the back.</p>
+
+<p>If a writer is too clever he repels. Shakespeare avoids the difficulty,
+and proves himself the master by keeping <a name='V_Page_150'></a>out of sight; Renan wins by a
+great show of modesty and deferential fairness; Boswell assumes an
+artlessness and ignorance that were really not parts of his nature. Every
+man who reads Boswell considers himself the superior of Boswell, and
+therefore is perfectly at home. It is not pleasant to be in the society of
+those who are much your superiors. Any man who sits in the company of
+Samuel Pepys for a half-hour feels a sort of half-patronizing pity for
+him, and therefore is happy, for to patronize is bliss.</p>
+
+<p>If Boswell has reinforced fact with fiction, and given us art for truth,
+then his character of Samuel Johnson is the most vividly conceived and
+deeply etched in all the realm of books. But if he gives merely the simple
+facts, then Boswell is no less a genius, for he has omitted the irrelevant
+and inconsequential, and by playing off the excellent against the absurd,
+he has placed his subject among the few great wits who have ever lived&mdash;a
+man who wrote remarkably well, but talked infinitely better.</p><a name='V_Page_151'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Montaigne advises young men that if they will fall in love, why, to fall
+in love with women older than themselves. His argument is that a young and
+pretty woman makes such a demand on a man's time and attention that she is
+sure, eventually, to wear love to the warp. So the wise old Gascon
+suggests that it is the part of wisdom to give your affection to one who
+is both plain and elderly&mdash;one who is not suffering from a surfeit of
+love, and one whose head has not been turned by flattery. &quot;Young women,&quot;
+says the philosopher, &quot;demand attention as their right and often flout the
+giver; whereas old women are very grateful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Whether Samuel Johnson, of Lichfield, ever read Montaigne or not is a
+question; but this we know, that when he was twenty-six he married the
+Widow Porter, aged forty-nine.</p>
+
+<p>Assuming that Johnson had read Montaigne and was mindful of his advice,
+there were other excellent reasons why he did not link his fortunes with
+those of a young and pretty woman.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson in his youth, as well as throughout life, was a Grind of the pure
+type. The Grind is a fixture, a few being found at every University, even
+unto this day. The present writer, once in a book of fiction, founded on
+fact, took occasion to refer to the genus Grind, with Samuel Johnson in
+mind, as follows: He is poor in purse, but great in frontal development.</p><a name='V_Page_152'></a>
+
+<p>He goes to school because he wishes to (no one ever &quot;sent&quot; a Grind to
+college). He has a sallow skin, a watery eye, a shambling gait, but he has
+the facts. His clothes are outgrown, his coat shiny, his linen a dull
+ecru, his hands clammy. He reads a book as he walks, and when he bumps
+into you, he always exculpates himself in Attic Greek.</p>
+
+<p>This absent-mindedness and habit of reading on the street affords the
+Sport (another college type) great opportunity for the playing of pranks.
+It is very funny to walk along in front of a Grind who is reading as he
+walks, and then suddenly stop and stoop, and let the Grind fall over you;
+for the innocent Grind, thinking he has been at fault, is ever profuse in
+apologies.</p>
+
+<p>Many years ago there was a Grind. A party of Sports saw him approaching,
+deeply immersed in his book. &quot;Look you,&quot; quoth the chief of the
+Sports&mdash;&quot;look you and observe him fall over me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And they looked.</p>
+
+<p>Onward blindly trudged the Grind, reading as he came. The Sport stepped
+ahead of him, stooped, and &mdash;&mdash; one big foot of the Grind shot out and
+kicked him into the gutter. Then the Grind continued his walk and his
+reading without saying a word.</p>
+
+<p>This incident is here recorded for the betterment of the Young, to show
+them that things are not always what they seem.</p>
+
+<p>Samuel Johnson, I have said, was a Grind of the pure <a name='V_Page_153'></a>type. He was so
+nearsighted that he fell over chairs in drawing-rooms, and so awkward that
+his long arms occasionally brushed the bric-a-brac from mantels. No lady's
+train was safe if he was in the room. At gatherings of young people, if
+Johnson appeared, his presence was at once the signal for mirth, of which
+he was, of course, the unconscious object.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson's face was scarred by the King's Evil, which even the touch of
+Queen Anne had failed to cure. While a youth he talked aloud to himself&mdash;a
+privilege that should be granted only to those advanced in years. He would
+grunt out prayers and expletives at uncertain times, keep up a clucking
+sound with his tongue, sway his big body from side to side, and drum a
+tattoo upon his knee. Now and again would come a suppressed whistle, and
+then a low humming sound, backed up by a vacant non-compos-mentis smile.</p>
+
+<p>Another odd whim of Johnson's was, that he would never pass a lamp-post
+without touching it, and would go back miles upon his way to repair an
+omission. Surely great wit to madness is near allied.</p>
+
+<p>This most strange young man was a boarder in the home of Mrs. Porter, when
+her husband was alive, and the husband and boarder had been fast
+friends&mdash;drawn together by a bookish bias.</p>
+
+<p>Very naturally, when the husband passed away, the boarder sought to
+console the bereaved landlady, and the result was as usual. And when, long
+years after,<a name='V_Page_154'></a> Johnson would solemnly explain that it was a pure love-match
+on both sides, the statement never failed to excite much needless and
+ill-suppressed merriment on the part of the listeners. In mimicking the
+endearments of Johnson and his &quot;pretty creature&quot;&mdash;so the admiring husband
+called her&mdash;Garrick many years later added to his artistic reputation.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike most literary men, Johnson was domestic, and his marriage was one
+of the most happy events of his career. But to show that the philosophy of
+Montaigne is not infallible, and that all signs fail in dry weather, it
+may be stated that the bride proved by her conduct on her wedding-day that
+she had some relish of the saltness of time in her cosmos, despite her
+fifty summers and as many hard winters.</p>
+
+<p>Said Johnson to Boswell, referring to the horseback-ride home after the
+wedding-ceremony: &quot;Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into
+her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her
+lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and
+she could not keep up with me; and when I rode a little slower, she passed
+me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of
+caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on
+briskly, till I was fairly out of sight. The road lay between two hedges,
+so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon
+come up with me. When she did I observed her to be in tears.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_155'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Shortly after his marriage, Johnson opened a private school for boys. To
+operate a private school successfully implies a certain amount of skill in
+the management of parents; but Johnson's uncouth manners and needlessly
+blunt speech were appalling to those who had children who might possibly
+be given to imitation.</p>
+
+<p>Only three pupils were secured, and but one of these received any benefit
+from the tutor; and this benefit came, according to the scholar, from the
+master's supplying an excellent object for ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>This pupil's name was David Garrick.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting with David Garrick was a pivotal point in the life of Johnson.
+Johnson's mental and spiritual existence flowed on, separate and apart
+from that of his wife. There was no meeting of the waters. His affection
+for her was most tender and constant, but in quality it seemed to differ
+but slightly from the sentiment he entertained toward &quot;Hodge,&quot; his cat.</p>
+
+<p>Hodge was fed on oysters that his owner could ill afford; and after
+Johnson had spent the little fortune that belonged to his wife, the lady
+was regaled on the best and choicest that his income, or credit, could
+secure. But if one of those lightning-flashes of wit ever escaped him in
+her direction, we do not know it. Garrick evidently was the first flint
+that tried his steel. The distinctions of teacher and scholar were soon
+lost between these two, and the lessons took the turn of a <a name='V_Page_156'></a>fusillade of
+wit. They made comments on the authors they read, and comments on the
+people they met, and criticized each other with encaustic remarks that
+tested friendship to its extremest limit. And this continual skirmish that
+would have made sworn foes of common men in a day revealed to each that
+the other had the element of unexpectedness in his nature and was worth
+loving.</p>
+
+<p>Humor and melancholy go hand in hand; both are born of an extreme
+sensitiveness, and the man who smiles at the trivial misfits of life
+realizes also that all men who tread the earth are living under a sentence
+of death, and that Fate has merely allowed them an indefinite, but
+limited, reprieve.</p>
+
+<p>At the outset of Johnson's career, one can not but see that the
+companionship and nimble wit of Garrick saved his ponderous and melancholy
+mind from going into bankruptcy.</p>
+
+<p>And now we find them: one twenty-eight, big, nearsighted, theoretical,
+blundering; and the other twenty-one, slight, active, graceful, practical.
+They were alike in this: they both loved books and were possessed of the
+eager, earnest, receptive mind. To possess the hospitable mind! For what
+greater blessing can one pray?</p>
+
+<p>And then they were alike in other respects&mdash;they were desperately poor;
+neither had an income; neither had a profession; both were ambitious.
+Johnson had written <a name='V_Page_157'></a>a tragedy&mdash;&quot;Irene&quot;&mdash;and he had read it to Garrick
+several times, and Garrick said it was good and should make a hit. But
+Garrick didn't know much about tragedies&mdash;law was his bent&mdash;he had read
+law for two years, off and on. They would go to London and seize fortune
+by the scalp-lock. In London good lawyers were needed, and London was the
+only place for a playwright.</p>
+
+<p>They scraped together their pennies, borrowed a few more, got a single
+letter of introduction between them to some person of unknown influence,
+and started away, with the lacrimose blessings of the elderly bride, and
+of Davy's mother.</p>
+
+<p>They must have been a queer sight when the stage let them down at the
+Strand&mdash;dusty, dirty, tired and scared by the babel of sounds and sights!
+And no doubt Johnson's enormous size saved them from sundry insults and
+divers taunts that otherwise might have come their way.</p>
+
+<p>Those first few weeks in London were given to staring into shop-windows
+and wandering, open-mouthed, up and down. No one wanted the tragedy&mdash;the
+managers all sniffed at it. Little then did Davy dream, as they made their
+way from the office of one theater-manager to that of another, that he
+himself would some day own a theater and give the discarded play its first
+setting. And little did he think that he would yet be the foremost actor
+of his time, and his awkward mate the literary dictator of London. Oh!
+this game of life is a <a name='V_Page_158'></a>great play! The blissful uncertainty of it all!
+The ambitions, plans, strivings, heartaches, mad desires and vain reaching
+out of empty arms! The tears, the bitter disappointments, the sleepless
+nights, the echoes of prayers unheard, and the hollow hopelessness of love
+turned to hate!</p>
+
+<p>And then mayhap we do as Emerson did&mdash;go out into the woods, and all the
+trees say, &quot;Why so hot, my little man?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Garrick, disappointed and undone at the thought of defeat in his chosen
+profession, turned to commercial life and then to the theater. At his
+first stage appearance he trembled with diffidence and all but fled in
+fright. He persevered, for he could do nothing else. He arose step by
+step, and honors, wealth and fame were his. Love came to him: he wedded
+the woman of his choice. And after his death she survived for forty-three
+years. She lived one hundred years, lacking two. Garrick was born in
+Seventeen Hundred Sixteen; and his wife died in Eighteen Hundred
+Twenty-two, which seems to bring the times of Johnson pretty close home to
+us. Throughout her long life, she lived in the memory of the love that had
+been hers; cherishing and protecting, idolizing, as did Mary Shelley, the
+one name and that alone.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson and Garrick thoroughly respected and admired each other, yet they
+often quarreled&mdash;they quarreled to the last. But when Davy had lain him
+down in his <a name='V_Page_159'></a>last sleep, aged sixty-three, it was Johnson, aged seventy,
+who wrote his epitaph, introducing into it the deathless sentence * * *
+&quot;by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and
+impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_160'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Three months in London and Johnson succeeded in getting a place on the
+editorial staff of &quot;The Gentleman's Magazine.&quot; Prosperity smiled, not
+exactly a broad grin; but the expression was something better than a
+stony, forbidding stare.</p>
+
+<p>He made haste to go back to Lichfield after his &quot;Letty,&quot; which name, by
+the way, is an improvement on Betty, Betsy or Tetsy&mdash;being baby-talk for
+Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>They took modest lodgings in a third floor back, off Fleet Street, and
+Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind
+condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt,
+never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky
+broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth&mdash;with the weapons of his
+dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved;
+jeered and praised; feared and idolized.</p>
+
+<p>Coming out of his burrow one dark night, he encountered an old
+beggar-woman who importuned him for alms. He was brushing past her, when
+one of her exclamations caught his ear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir,&quot; said the woman, &quot;I am an old struggler!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madam,&quot; replied Johnson, &quot;so am I!&quot; And he gave her his last sixpence.</p>
+
+<p>But life in London was cheap in those days&mdash;it is now if you know how to
+do it, or else have to. Johnson used to maintain that for thirty pounds a
+year one could <a name='V_Page_161'></a>live like a gentleman, and as proof would quote an
+imaginary acquaintance who argued that ten pounds a year for clothes would
+keep a man in good appearance; a garret could be hired for eighteen pence
+a week, and if any one asked your address you could reply, &quot;I am to be
+found in such a place,&quot; Threepence laid out at a coffeehouse would enable
+one to pass some hours a day in good company; dinner might be had for
+sixpence, and supper you could do without. On clean-shirt day you could go
+abroad and call on your lady friends. Among Johnson's first literary tasks
+in London was the work of reporting the debates in Parliament. In order
+that the best possible results might be obtained, he resorted to the
+rather unique, but not entirely original, method of not attending
+Parliament at all. Two or three young men would be sent to listen to the
+debates; they would make notes giving the general drift of the argument,
+and Johnson would write out the speech. His style was exactly suited to
+this kind of work, being eminently rhetorical. And as at the time no
+public record of proceedings was kept and Parliament did not allow the
+press the liberty it now possesses&mdash;all being as it were clouded in
+mysterious awe&mdash;these reports of debates were eagerly sought after. To
+evade the law, a fictitious name was given the speaker, or his initials
+used in such a way that the individual could be easily recognized by the
+reading public.</p>
+
+<p>Some of Johnson's best work was done at this time, <a name='V_Page_162'></a>and in several
+instances the speaker, not slow to appreciate a good thing, allowed the
+matter to be reissued as his own. Long years after, a certain man was once
+praising the speeches of Lord Chesterfield and was led on to make
+explanations. He did so, naming two speeches, one of which he zealously
+declared had the style of Cicero; the other that of Demosthenes. Johnson
+becalmed the speaker by agreeing with him as to the excellence of the
+speeches, and then adding, &quot;I wrote them both.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The gruffness of Ursa Major should never be likened to that of the Sage of
+Chelsea. Carlyle vented his spleen on the nearest object, as irate
+gentlemen sometimes kick at the cat; but Johnson merely sparred for
+points. When Miss Monckton undertook to refute his statements as to the
+shallowness of Sterne by declaring that &quot;Tristram Shandy&quot; affected her to
+tears, Johnson rolled himself into contortions, made an exasperating
+grimace, and replied, &quot;Why, dearest, that is because you are a dunce!&quot;
+Afterward, when reproached for the remark, he replied, &quot;Madam, if I had
+thought so, I surely would not have said it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Once, at the house of Garrick, to the terror of every one, Burke
+contradicted Johnson flatly, but Johnson's good sense revealed itself by
+his making no show of resentment. Burke's experience was, it must be said,
+exceptional. An equally exciting, but harmless occasion, was the only time
+that the author of &quot;Rasselas&quot;<a name='V_Page_163'></a> met the man who wrote the &quot;Wealth of
+Nations,&quot; Johnson called Adam Smith a liar, and Smith promptly handed back
+an epithet not in the Dictionary. Nevertheless, old Ursa spoke in an
+affectionate praise of &quot;Adam,&quot; as he called him thereafter, thus
+recognizing the right of the other man to be frank if he cared to be.
+Johnson wanted no privilege that he was not willing to grant to
+others&mdash;except perhaps that of dictator of opinions.</p>
+
+<p>When Blair asked Johnson if he thought any modern man could have written
+&quot;Ossian,&quot; Johnson replied, &quot;Yes, sir&mdash;many men, many women, and many
+children.&quot; And if Blair took umbrage at the remark, so much the worse for
+Blair.</p>
+
+<p>We have recently heard of the Boston lady who died and went to Heaven, and
+on being questioned by an archangel as to how she liked it, replied
+languidly, &quot;Very, very beautiful it all is!&quot; And then sighed and added,
+&quot;But it is not Boston!&quot; This story seems to illustrate that all tales have
+their prototype, for Boswell tells of taking Doctor Johnson out to
+Greenwich Park, and saying, &quot;Now, now, isn't this fine!&quot; But Johnson would
+not enthuse; he only grunted, &quot;All very fine&mdash;but it's not Fleet Street.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion when a Scotchman was dilating on the noble prospects
+to be enjoyed among the hills of Scotland, Johnson called a halt by
+saying, &quot;Sir, let me tell you that the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever
+<a name='V_Page_164'></a>sees is the highroad that leads him to England.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This seems to evince a strong prejudice toward Scotland, and several
+Scots, with their usual plentiful lack of wit, have so solemnly written it
+down. But the more sensible way is to conclude that the situation simply
+afforded opportunity for a little harmless banter.</p>
+
+<p>Another equally indisputable proof of prejudice is shown when Boswell
+tells Johnson of the wonderful preaching of a Quaker woman. Johnson
+listened in grim, cold silence and then exclaimed: &quot;Sir, a woman's
+preaching is like a dog's walking on its hind legs. It is not done well;
+but you are surprised to find it done at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One of the leading encyclopedias, I see, says, &quot;Doctor Johnson was one of
+the greatest conversationalists of all time.&quot; The writer evidently does
+not distinguish between talk, conversation and harangue. Johnson could
+talk and he often harangued; but he was not a conversationalist. Neither
+could he address a public assembly, and I do not find that he ever
+attempted it. Good talkers are seldom orators. One reads with amusement
+tinged with pity, of Carlyle's sleepless nights and cold, terror-fraught
+anticipations of his Lord Rector's speech. In deliberative gatherings a
+very small man could apply the snuffers to the great Dictator of Letters.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir,&quot; said Doctor Johnson to a talkative politician, at a dinner-party,
+&quot;I perceive you are a vile Whig,&quot; and <a name='V_Page_165'></a>then he proceeded to demolish him.
+Yet Johnson himself was a Whig, although he never knew it; just as he was
+a liberal in religion, and yet was boastful of being a stanch Churchman.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson's irritability never vented itself against the helpless. His
+charity knew no limit&mdash;not even the bottom of his purse. When he had no
+money to give, he borrowed it. And when his pension was three hundred
+pounds a year, the Thrales could not figure out that he spent more than
+seventy or eighty on himself. The rest went to his dependents. In his
+latter days his home was a regular museum of waifs and strays. There was
+Miss Williams, the ancient aristocratic spinster who came to London to
+have an operation performed on one of her eyes. She came to Johnson's home
+and remained ten years, because she had been a friend of his wife. This
+claim was enough, and she slid into the head place in Johnson's household.
+Her peevishness used to drive the old man, at times, into the street; but
+that tongue of his, with its crushing retorts, was ever silent and tender
+towards her. The poor creature became blind, and used to shock the finicky
+Boswell by testing the fulness of the teacups with her finger.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a Mrs. Desmoulins and her daughter, who drifted down from
+Lichfield and came to Johnson, because forty years before, he, too, had
+lived in Lichfield. He gave them house-room, treated them as guests, <a name='V_Page_166'></a>and
+each week left a half-guinea on the mantel of their room.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was the broken-down Levett, and Francis Barber, who, coming as
+a servant, remained as one of the family, because he was too old to work.
+A Miss Carmichael, in green spectacles and bombazine, carrying a cane,
+completed what the Doctor called his &quot;seraglio.&quot; Writing to Mrs. Thrale in
+playful mood, telling of his household troubles, he says, &quot;Williams hates
+everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins
+hates them both; Poll loves none of them.&quot; And he, the great, gruff and
+mighty Ursa Major, listened to all their woes, caring for them in
+sickness, wiping the death-dew from their foreheads, wearing crape upon
+his sleeve for them when dead.</p><a name='V_Page_167'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>This man tasted all the fame that is one man's due; he had all the money
+he needed, or knew how to use; the coveted LL.D. came from his Alma Mater;
+and the patronage from Lord Chesterfield, for which he craved, only that
+he might fling it back. He was the friend and confidant of the great and
+proud, deferred to by the King and sought out by those who prized the
+far-reaching mind and subtle imagination&mdash;the things that link us with the
+Infinite. The fear of hell and dread of death that haunted him in youth
+and middle age, finally gave way to faith and trust. When partial
+paralysis came to him at midnight, his sanity did not fail him, and
+knowing the worst, he yet hesitated to disturb the other members of the
+household, but went to sleep, philosophizing on the phenomena of the
+case&mdash;alert for more knowledge, as was his wont. Morning came and being
+speechless, he wrote on his ever-ready pad of paper and handing the sheet
+to his servant, watched with amused glances the perplexity and terror of
+the man. He next wrote to his friend, Mrs. Thrale, that letter, a classic
+of wit and resignation, wherein he explains his condition and excuses
+himself for not calling upon her and explaining the matter by word of
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Such willingness to accept the inevitable is curative. He grew better and
+recovered his speech. But old age is a disease that has no cure save
+death. Johnson accepted the issue as a brave man should&mdash;thankful for <a name='V_Page_168'></a>the
+gift of conscious life that had been his. When the last hour was nigh he
+sent loving messages to his nearest friends, repeating their names over
+one by one. His last recorded words were directed to a young woman who
+called upon him, &quot;God bless you, my dear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And so he passed painlessly and quietly into the sleep that knows no
+waking; pleased at last to know that his dust would rest in Westminster
+Abbey.</p>
+
+<p>Thus ended, as the day dies out of the western sky, this life, seemingly
+so full of tempest and contradiction. The autumn of his life was full of
+enjoyment, and no day passed but that some one, weak, weary and worn,
+arose and called him blessed. Most of his wild imprecations and blustering
+contradictions were reserved for those who fattened on such things, and
+who came to be tossed and gored. In his spirit Socrates and Falstaff
+joined hands. In his life there was a deal of gladness&mdash;far, far more than
+of misery and unrest; which fact I believe is true of every life.</p>
+
+<p>The Universe seems planned for good.</p>
+
+<p>A world made up of such men as Samuel Johnson would be a wild chaos of
+tasks undone. But since Nature has never sent but one such man, and more
+than a century has passed since his death and we know not yet with whom to
+compare him, we need have no fears. The world is held in place through the
+opposition of forces: and the body of every healthy man is the
+battle-ground of animal organisms that match strength <a name='V_Page_169'></a>against strength.
+So, too, a healthy society always has these active and sturdy organisms,
+which set in play other forces that hold in check their seeming excess.
+That the Divine Energy should incarnate itself and find expression in the
+form of a man, and that this man should inspire others to think and write,
+to do and dare, is a subject the contemplation of which should make us
+stand uncovered. The companionship of Johnson inspired Reynolds to better
+painting, Garrick to stronger acting, Burke to more profound thinking&mdash;and
+hundreds of others, too, quenched their thirst at the rock which he smote
+whenever he discoursed or wrote.</p>
+
+<p>Sympathy is the first essential to insight. So with sympathy, I pray,
+behold this blundering giant, and you will see that the basis of his
+character was a great Sincerity. He was honest&mdash;doggedly honest&mdash;and saw
+with flashing vision the thing that was; and thither he followed,
+crowding, pushing, knocking down whatsoever opinion or prejudice was in
+the way. And so he ever struggled forward. But hate him not, for he is thy
+brother&mdash;yea! he is brother to all who strive and reach forward toward the
+Ideal. Shining through dust and disorder, now victorious, now eclipsed in
+deepest gloom, in him is the light of genius; and this is never base, but
+at the worst is admirable, lovable with pity. There was pride in his
+heart, but no vanity; and he should be loved for this if for no other
+reason: he had the courage to make an enemy. In his great heart were <a name='V_Page_170'></a>wild
+burstings of affection, and a hunger for love that only the grave
+requited. There, too, were fierce flashes of wrath, smothered in an hour
+by the soft dew of pity. His faults and follies were manifold, as he often
+lamented with tears; but the soul of the man was sublime in its
+qualities&mdash;worldwide in its influence.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='THOMAS_B_MACAULAY'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_171'></a>THOMAS B. MACAULAY</h2>
+
+<a name='V_Page_172'></a>
+<div class='blkquot'><p>The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and
+    spirit of the age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact,
+    he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not
+    authenticated by sufficient testimony. But by judicious
+    selection, rejection and arrangement, he gives to truth those
+    attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative
+    a due subordination is observed: some transactions are prominent;
+    others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is
+    increased or diminished, not according to the dignity of the
+    persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which
+    they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man.</p></div>
+
+<span style='margin-left: 30em;'>&mdash;<i>Essay on History</i></span><br />
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-7.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-7-th.jpg" alt="THOMAS MACAULAY"></a></p><p class="ctr">THOMAS MACAULAY</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Success is in the blood.</p>
+
+<p>There are men whom Fate can never keep down&mdash;they march jauntily forward,
+and take by divine right the best of everything that earth affords. But
+their success is not attained by the Doctor Samuel Smiles Connecticut
+policy. They do not lie in wait, nor scheme, nor fawn, nor seek to adapt
+their sails to catch the breeze of popular favor. Still, they are ever
+alert and alive to any good that may come their way, and when it comes
+they simply appropriate it, and tarrying not, move steadily forward.</p>
+
+<p>Good health! Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the
+crown of your head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in
+sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every
+hand-clasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and never waste a minute
+thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would
+like to do, and then without violence of direction you will move straight
+to the goal.</p>
+
+<p>Fear is the rock on which we split, and hate is the shoal on which many a
+bark is stranded. When we are fearful, the judgment is as unreliable as
+the compass of a ship whose hold is full of iron ore; when we <a name='V_Page_174'></a>hate, we
+have unshipped the rudder; and if we stop to meditate on what the gossips
+say, we have allowed a hawser to befoul the screw.</p>
+
+<p>Keep your mind on the great and splendid thing you would like to do; and
+then, as the days go gliding by, you will find yourself unconsciously
+seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfilment of
+your desire, just as the coral-insect takes from the running tide the
+elements that it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful
+person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming
+you into that particular individual. Thought is supreme, and to think is
+often better than to do.</p>
+
+<p>Preserve a right mental attitude&mdash;the attitude of courage, frankness and
+good-cheer.</p>
+
+<p>To think rightly is to create.</p>
+
+<p>Darwin and Spencer have told us that this is the method of Creation. Each
+animal has evolved the parts it needed and desired. The horse is fleet
+because it wishes to be; the bird flies because it desires to; the duck
+has a web-foot because it wants to swim. All things come through desire,
+and every sincere prayer is answered. Many people know this, but they do
+not believe it thoroughly enough so that it shapes their lives.</p>
+
+<p>We want friends, so we scheme and chase 'cross lots after strong people,
+and lie in wait for good folks&mdash;or alleged good folks&mdash;hoping to attach
+ourselves to <a name='V_Page_175'></a>them. The only way to secure friends is to be one.</p>
+
+<p>And before you are fit for friendship you must be able to do without it.
+That is to say, you must have sufficient self-reliance to take care of
+yourself, and then out of the surplus of your energy you can do for
+others. The man who craves friendship, and yet desires a self-centered
+spirit more, will never lack for friends.</p>
+
+<p>If you would have friends, cultivate solitude instead of society. Drink in
+the ozone; bathe in the sunshine; and out in the silent night, under the
+stars, say to yourself again and yet again, &quot;I am a part of all my eyes
+behold!&quot; And the feeling will surely come to you that you are no mere
+interloper between earth and sky; but that you are a necessary particle of
+the Whole. No harm can come to you that does not come to all, and if you
+shall go down, it can only be amid a wreck of worlds.</p>
+
+<p>Thus by laying hold on the forces of the Universe, you are strong with
+them. And when you realize this, all else is easy, for in your arteries
+course red corpuscles, and in your heart there is the will to do and be.
+Carry your chin in, and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the
+chrysalis.</p><a name='V_Page_176'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Thomas B. Macauley was small in stature; but he always carried his chin
+well in and the crown of his head high.</p>
+
+<p>It was said of Rubens that throughout his lifetime he kept success tied to
+the leg of his easel with a blue ribbon. If ever a writing man had success
+tied to the leg of his easy chair, that man was Macaulay. In the
+characters and careers of Rubens and Macaulay there is a marked
+resemblance.</p>
+
+<p>When Macaulay was twenty-two he was at Cambridge, and the tidings arrived
+that a dire financial storm had wrecked the family fortune. The young man
+had ever been led to suppose that his father was rich&mdash;rich beyond all
+danger from loss&mdash;and that he himself would never have a concern beyond
+amusing himself, and the cultivation of his intellect. And so in practical
+affairs his education had been sadly neglected. But when the news of
+calamity came, instead of being depressed, he was elated to think that now
+he could make himself positively useful.</p>
+
+<p>Responsibility gravitates to the man who can shoulder it. Strong men who
+can wisely direct the efforts of others are always needed&mdash;they were
+needed in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-two, when Tom Macaulay received word of
+his father's trouble&mdash;they are needed today more than then&mdash;men who meet
+calamity with a smile and are pleased at sight of obstacles, knowing they
+can overcome them. Augustine Birrell has written,<a name='V_Page_177'></a> &quot;Macaulay always went
+his sublime way rejoicing like a strong man to run a race, knowing full
+well that he could give anybody five yards in fifty and win easily.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay took up the burden that his father was not able to bear, mastered
+every detail of the business, studied out the weak points, and then
+explained to the creditors just what they had better do.</p>
+
+<p>And they did it.</p>
+
+<p>We always trust the man who has courage plus, enthusiasm to spare, and who
+shows by his manner that he is master of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>In a few years Macaulay saved from the wreck enough to secure his father,
+mother and sisters against want for the rest of their days, and eventually
+he paid every creditor in full with interest. Had he run away from the
+difficulty, as his father was on the point of doing, the family would have
+been turned homeless into the streets.</p>
+
+<p>Moral&mdash;Things are never so bad as they seem; and all difficulties sneak
+away when you look them squarely in the eye.</p>
+
+<p>At this time the family, consisting of the father, mother, three sisters
+and a brother, lived at Fifty Great Ormond Street, not far from the
+British Museum. The house is still standing, but I recently discovered
+that the occupants know nothing, and care less, about Thomas Macaulay.</p>
+
+<p>Tom was the child of his mother. In temperament, <a name='V_Page_178'></a>disposition and physique
+he was as much unlike his father as two men can well be. Old Zachary
+Macaulay was a strong, earnest man who took himself seriously. In latter
+years he grew morose, puritanic and was full of dread of the Unseen. He
+preached long sermons to his family, cautioned them against frivolity,
+forbade music, tabued games, and constantly spoke of the tongue as &quot;the
+unruly member.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He, of course, was not aware of it, but he was teaching his children by
+antithesis.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I meet Macaulay I always imagine I am in Holland,&quot; once said Sydney
+Smith.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why so!&quot; asked a friend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because he is such a windmill,&quot; was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>But then we must remember that Sydney Smith never much liked
+Macaulay&mdash;they were too near alike. Whenever they met there was usually a
+wordy duel. &quot;He is so overflowing with learning that it runs over and he
+stands in the slop,&quot; said Smith.</p>
+
+<p>Tom talked a great deal, he was fond of music and games, and was never so
+pleased as when engaging in some wild frolic with his sisters and any
+chance youngster that happened to stray in. His sister, Lady Trevelyan,
+has recorded that during those days of gloom which followed her father's
+failure, matters were made worse by the stricken man moping at home and
+tightening the domestic discipline.</p>
+
+<p>Tom never resented this, but on the instant the father <a name='V_Page_179'></a>would leave the
+house, it was the signal of a wild pandemonium of disorder. Tom would play
+he was a tiger, and crawling under the sofa would emit fearful growls that
+would cause the children to scream with pretended fright. Next they would
+play fire, and pile all the furniture in the center of the room, heaping
+books, clothing, rugs on top. Then Tom would &quot;rescue&quot; his mother if she
+appeared on the scene, and seizing her in his arms carry her to a place of
+safety, and then engage in a pillow-fight if she came back.</p>
+
+<p>This wild frolic was always a delight to the children, and Tom's
+homecoming was ever watched with eager anticipation. His visits shot the
+gloom through with sunshine, and when he went away even the neighbors'
+children were in tears. His health and enthusiasm infected everybody he
+met.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of looking after his father's business Macaulay unlearned
+most of the previous lessons of his life, and taught himself that to do
+for others and sink self was the manly method. But so lightly did he bear
+the burden that it is doubtful if he ever considered he was making any
+sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>When his father died, Macaulay put entirely out of his mind the question
+of a household separate and apart from that of his mother and sisters. He
+devoted himself entirely to them; he wanted no other love than theirs.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike so many men of decided talent, the best and <a name='V_Page_180'></a>most loving side of
+Macaulay's nature was made manifest at home. His bubbling wit, brilliant
+conversation, and good-cheer were for his own fireside, first; and all
+that cutting, critical, scathing flood of invective was for the public
+that wore a rhinoceros-hide.</p><a name='V_Page_181'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Macaulay's article on Milton, published during his twenty-fifth year, in
+the &quot;Edinburgh Review,&quot; is generally regarded as a most wonderful
+achievement. &quot;Just think!&quot; the critics cry&mdash;&quot;the first article printed to
+be of a quality that electrified the world!&quot; But we must remember that
+this youth had been getting ready to write that article for ten years.</p>
+
+<p>At college Macaulay shirked mathematics and philosophy, spending his time
+and attention on things he liked better. The only study in which he
+excelled was composition. Even in babyhood his command of language had
+been a wonder to the neighborhood in which he lived. Hannah More had for a
+time taken him under her immediate charge and prophesied great things of
+his literary faculty; and his mother was not slow in seconding the
+opinion.</p>
+
+<p>At Cambridge he already had more than a local reputation as a writer, and
+it was this reputation that secured him the commission to write for the
+&quot;Review.&quot; The terrible Jeffrey was getting old and his regular staff had
+pretty nearly worked out their vein. Jeffrey wrote up to London (being
+south) to a friend telling him that the &quot;Review&quot; must have new blood, and
+imploring him to be on the lookout for some young man who had ideas in his
+ink-bottle.</p>
+
+<p>This friend knew the vigor and incisiveness of Macaulay's style, and as he
+read the letter from Jeffrey he <a name='V_Page_182'></a>exclaimed, &quot;Macaulay!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a great compliment to a mere youth to be asked to contribute to the
+&quot;Edinburgh Review.&quot; Edinburgh was a literary center, and you could not
+throw a stone in Princess Street, any more than you can in Tremont Street,
+Boston, without hitting a poet and caroming on two novel-writers and an
+essayist.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Carlyle, five years older than Macaulay, and who was to live and
+write for twenty-five years after Macaulay's passing, had not yet struck
+twelve. London, too, like Edinburgh, was full of writing men, standing in
+the market-places of Grub Street with no man to hire.</p>
+
+<p>And yet Fate sought out Tom Macaulay, five feet four, who had plenty of
+other work on hand; and through that single &quot;Essay on Milton&quot; he sprang at
+once into the front rank of British writers&mdash;and at the same time there
+was thrust into his hands a bonus of fifty pounds for the work.</p>
+
+<p>As a study of a thing that made the reputation of a writer, the &quot;Milton&quot;
+is worth a careful reading. It is very sure that in America today there
+are a hundred men who could write just as good an article, but whether
+these men are Macaulays or not is quite another question. But it is not at
+all probable that a writer will ever again leap into place and power on so
+small a feat.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the article surely shows all the dash and vigor <a name='V_Page_183'></a>that mark Macaulay's
+literary style. There is personality in it; it reveals the red corpuscle;
+and tells without question that there is a man behind the guns. It was
+opportune; for literature at that particular time had reached a point
+where the sciolist was in full possession, and the dead husks of learning
+were being palmed off for the living thoughts of living men.</p>
+
+<p>Periodicity reveals itself in all Nature, and even in the world of thought
+there are years of famine and years of plenty. Dry rot gets into letters;
+things are ripe for a revolution; the tinder is dry, and along comes some
+Martin Luther and applies the torch.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay simply expressed himself boldly, frankly, and without thought of
+favor&mdash;writing as he felt.</p>
+
+<p>The article made a great stir&mdash;the first edition of the magazine was
+quickly exhausted, and Macaulay awoke one morning, like Byron, and found
+himself famous. All there was about it, the &quot;Milton&quot; revealed a man, a
+strong, vivid-thinking, vigorous man, who, seeing things clearly, wrote
+from his heart. Art is born of feeling: it is heart, not head, that
+carries conviction home; but if you have both, as Macaulay had, it is no
+special disadvantage.</p>
+
+<p>From the publication of Macaulay's first article the &quot;Review&quot; took on a
+new lease of life. Prosperity came that way and for the rest of his life
+the &quot;Review&quot; was not long without contributions from his pen; and the
+numbers that contained his articles were always in <a name='V_Page_184'></a>great demand. Writers
+who possess a piercing insight into the heart of things, and who have the
+courage to express themselves, regardless of the views of others, are well
+feared by men in power.</p>
+
+<p>The man who knows, who can think, and who can write, holds a sword of
+Damocles over every politician.</p>
+
+<p>Governments are honeycombed with vulnerable spots; and to secure the ready
+writer on your side is the part of wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay's article on Milton proved that there was a thinker loose, and
+that on occasion he could strike. The politicians began to court him, and
+we find him writing articles of a very Junius-like quality on contemporary
+issues.</p>
+
+<p>When he was twenty-six years old we are told he was &quot;called to the Bar,&quot;
+which means that he was given permission to practise law&mdash;the expression,
+&quot;called,&quot; being a mild form of fiction that still obtains in England in
+legal matters, while in America the word applies only in theology.</p>
+
+<p>The practise of law, however, was not at all to the taste of Macaulay, and
+after a few short terms on the circuit he relinquished it entirely.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime we find he read continually. Indeed, about the only bad
+habit this man had was reading. He read to excess&mdash;he read everything and
+read all the time. He read novels, history, poetry, and dived deeply into
+the dead languages, reading Plutarch's Lives <a name='V_Page_185'></a>twice in a year, and
+Euripides, Thucydides, Homer, Cicero, C&aelig;sar&mdash;all without special aim or
+end. Such a restless appetite for reading is apt to produce mental
+dyspepsia, and is not at all to be advised for average people; and the
+probabilities are that even in Macaulay's case his time might often have
+been better spent in meditation.</p>
+
+<p>In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven appeared in the &quot;Review&quot; the &quot;Essay on
+Mill.&quot; Like all of Macaulay's articles it reveals a wealth of learning and
+bristles with information on many themes. It often seems as if Macaulay
+took a subject simply to execute a learned war-dance around it. The
+article on Mill is a good example of merely touching the central theme and
+then going off into by-lanes of economics, history and civil government,
+with endless allusions to literature, poetry, art and philosophy. It is
+all intensely interesting, closely woven, often gorgeous in its coloring;
+and &quot;style&quot; runs like a thread of gold through it all.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this article appeared, Lord Lansdowne intimated to the young
+writer that he would like the honor of introducing him into public life,
+and if agreeable he could arrange for him to stand for Parliament in the
+vacant seat of Calne.</p>
+
+<p>Calne was one of those vest-pocket boroughs, owned by a single man, of
+which England has so many. The people think they choose their
+representative, but they do not, any more than we do in America. The
+<a name='V_Page_186'></a>government by the Boss and for the Boss is no new institution. Macaulay
+presented himself and was elected without opposition. And so before his
+thirtieth year he found himself on the flood-tide of national politics.</p>
+
+<p>Fifteen years before, if any one had expressed himself as plainly as
+Macaulay did on entering Parliament, he would have had a taste of jail,
+the hulks, or the pillory. So alert had the Government agents been for
+sedition that to stick one's tongue in his cheek at a member of the
+Cabinet was considered fully as bad as poaching, both being heinous
+offenses before God and man. Persecution was in the air and tyranny
+stalked abroad.</p>
+
+<p>But tyranny is self-limiting. If laws are too severe, there will surely
+come a time when they will not be observed, and history shows that the men
+who have introduced the guillotine ended their careers in its embrace.</p>
+
+<p>A change had come in England. The Tories were being jostled from their
+seats, and the Whigs were just coming into power. Liberalism was abroad in
+the land, and surely the time had come when a strong man might speak his
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay was by nature a protester; he was &quot;agin 'em&quot;; and when he chose a
+subject for his maiden speech he was not only sincere, but exceeding
+politic. He guessed the lay of the land, and knew the direction of the
+wind. Heresy was popular.</p><a name='V_Page_187'></a>
+
+<p>His address was in favor of an act removing the legal disabilities of
+Jews. It was a plea for liberty, and such was the vigor, power and vivid
+personality he threw into the address that he astonished the House and
+brought in the loungers from the cloakrooms.</p>
+
+<p>It was his only speech during the session. Efforts were made to get him on
+his feet again, but he was too wise to lend the battery of his mind to any
+commonplace theme. Only a subject such as might stir men's souls could
+tempt him.</p>
+
+<p>Wise Thomas Macaulay!</p>
+
+<p>He had made a reputation as a writer by his first article, and after his
+maiden speech all London chanted his praises as an orator. He practised
+self-restraint and knew better than to dilute his fame by holding argument
+with small men on little topics.</p>
+
+<p>His first speech at the next session of Parliament only served to fix his
+place as an orator more firmly. The immediate excuse was the &quot;Reform
+Bill&quot;; but the subject was liberty, and literature and history were called
+upon to furnish fire and supply the fuel for pyrotechnics. After its
+delivery the Speaker sent for Macaulay and personally congratulated him on
+making the most effective address to which he had listened for twenty-five
+years. The House of Commons, ever willing and anxious to appropriate a
+genius, being glutted by the dull and commonplace, sought in many ways
+from this time forward to do honor to Macaulay.</p><a name='V_Page_188'></a>
+
+<p>The elder members grew reminiscent and said the good old times were coming
+back, and talked of Burke, Fox, Canning and Lord Plunket.</p>
+
+<p>Jeffrey, feeling a sense of guardianship over Macaulay, having launched
+him, as he rightfully claimed, was on hand to hear the speech, and made
+haste to embrace his ward, kissing him on both cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Judging from this distance, there was nothing especially peculiar or
+distinctive about Macaulay's oratory, save his intense personality and
+vivid earnestness. An educated man, thoroughly alive on any one theme, is
+always interesting. And it was Macaulay's policy never to speak in public
+on a theme that did not bring out his entire armament, and yet with it all
+he was wise enough to cultivate a feeling of restraint and leave the
+impression that he had much more in reserve. So it was in his literary
+work: he never wrote when tired, nor attempted to express when he was not
+thoroughly alive to the subject in hand. He watched his mood. And thus in
+all Macaulay's &quot;Essays&quot; we feel the systole and diastole, and the hot,
+strong, impatient movement of ruddy life. There is &quot;go&quot; in every sentence.
+This is what constitutes his marvelous style&mdash;life, life, life!</p>
+
+<p>To very few men, indeed, is it given to be at once a brilliant talker, a
+strong writer and an effective orator. Clever talkers are seldom orators,
+and the great writers usually ebulliate only in the silence of their
+studies.</p><a name='V_Page_189'></a>
+
+<p>The fame of Macaulay went abroad, and he became the social lion of
+London&mdash;he was courted, feted, petted&mdash;and in drawing-rooms when he
+attended, people stood on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of him, and remained
+breathless that they might hear him speak. No doubt the fact that he was a
+bachelor helped fan the social flame. His sister has recorded that every
+morning cards and letters of invitation were piled high on his
+breakfast-table.</p>
+
+<p>With it all, though, the handsome little man preserved his poise, and his
+modesty and becoming dignity in public never failed him.</p>
+
+<p>Such was Macaulay's popularity that, after having served two terms for the
+borough of Calne, the way was opened for him to stand for Leeds. Indeed,
+it is probable that a dozen districts would have been glad to elect him as
+their representative.</p>
+
+<p>After the passing of the &quot;Reform Bill,&quot; to which his efforts had been so
+valuable, he was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Board of
+Control. This Board represented the King in the Government's relations
+with the East India Company. Macaulay, being the strongest man on the
+Board, was naturally chosen its secretary, just as the best man in a jury
+is chosen foreman. Here was a man who was not content to be a mere
+figurehead in office, trusting to paid clerks and underlings to secure him
+information and do the work&mdash;not he. Macaulay set himself the task of
+thoroughly <a name='V_Page_190'></a>acquainting himself with Indian affairs. He read every book of
+importance bearing on the subject; and studied the record and history of
+every man of consequence who was or had been connected with India. His
+intensely practical, businesslike mind sifted every detail, intuitively
+separating the relevant from the inconsequential, so that within a few
+months older heads were going to him for information, just as in a store
+or shop there is always one man who knows where things are, and in times
+of doubt he is the man who is sought out. To the many it is so much easier
+to ask some one else than to find out for themselves; and it also shifts
+the responsibility, and gives one a chance, if necessary, to prove a
+halibi&mdash;goodness gracious!</p>
+
+<p>One feature of the Reform Bill provided that one of the members of the
+Supreme Council of India should be chosen from among persons not connected
+in any way with the East India Company.</p>
+
+<p>This membership of the Supreme Council was a most important office, and
+carried with it the modest salary of ten thousand pounds a year&mdash;fifty
+thousand dollars&mdash;double what the President of the United States then
+received.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay had had no hand in creating this office, and indeed, at the time
+the Reform Bill was being gotten into shape, his interest in Indian
+affairs had only been casual. But now he was recognized as the one man for
+the new office, and the office sought the man.</p><a name='V_Page_191'></a>
+
+<p>Comparatively, Macaulay was a poor man, and the acceptance of the office
+for the term of six years would place him for the rest of his life beyond
+the reach of want. He could live royally and retire at forty years of age,
+with at least thirty thousand pounds to his credit. And yet he hesitated
+about accepting the office. His far-reaching eye told him that an exile
+for six years from England would place him out of touch with things at
+home, and that the greater office to which he aspired would be beyond his
+grasp. Besides that, the fact would always be brought up that his reward
+for well-doing had been enough, just as we have an unwritten law in
+America that there shall be no &quot;third term.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay saw all this and hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>He advised with Lord Lansdowne, and with his sister Hannah, his nearest
+and best friend; and if it had been possible his mother would have been
+given the casting vote; but two years before, she had passed out, yet not
+until she realized that her son was one of the foremost men in England.
+Hannah Macaulay (named in honor of Hannah More) advised the acceptance of
+the office, and upon his earnest request agreed to share her brother's
+exile.</p><a name='V_Page_192'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Hannah Macaulay, gracious in every way, was the sister of her brother. Her
+mind was fit companion for his, and whenever he had a difficult problem on
+hand he would clarify it by explaining it to her; and be it known, you can
+never talk well to a dullard.</p>
+
+<p>And so Hannah the loyal resigned her position as governess, and brother
+and sister packed up and sailed away in the good ship &quot;Asia&quot; for India.
+Among their belongings was a modest library of three thousand volumes, all
+of which, a wit has said, were read twice through by Macaulay on the
+outward voyage. India was safely reached, and Macaulay set himself with
+his accustomed vigor to learning the language and informing himself as to
+the actual status of things, in order that he might provide for their
+betterment. On account of his grasp on legal matters he was elected Legal
+Adviser of the Supreme Council.</p>
+
+<p>Everything went well for a year, and then a terrible calamity overtook
+Macaulay.</p>
+
+<p>His sister was in love.</p>
+
+<p>This seems a good place to explain that Thomas Babington Macaulay himself
+was never in love. He had no time for that&mdash;his days were too full of
+books and practical business to ever waste any time on soft sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>But now he was confronted by a condition, not a theory: Lord Trevelyan was
+in love with his sister, and his <a name='V_Page_193'></a>sister was in love with Lord Trevelyan.
+Macaulay might have discovered the fact for himself and saved the lovers
+the embarrassment of making a confession, had he not been so terribly busy
+with his books, but Macaulay, like love, was blind&mdash;to some things.</p>
+
+<p>He heard the confession, and wept.</p>
+
+<p>Then he gave the pair his blessing&mdash;there was nothing else to do.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long after the wedding that he discovered he had found a
+brother instead of having lost a sister; and the sister being very happy,
+Macaulay was happy, too. He insisted that they move their effects into his
+house, and they did so, all living as one happy family. So the years
+passed; and when children came Macaulay's joy was complete. His heart went
+out to his sister's children as though they were his own. Occasionally the
+good mother complained that the Legal Adviser of the Supreme Council undid
+her discipline by indulging the youngsters in things that she had
+forbidden. To all of which the Legal Adviser would only laugh, and
+crawling under the settle would emit many tigerish growls, and the
+children would scream with terror and delight, and other children,
+brown-legged, wearing no clothes to speak of, would come trooping in, and
+together they would manage, after an awful struggle, to capture the tiger,
+and with some in front and others behind and two or three on his back,
+would carry him away captive.</p><a name='V_Page_194'></a>
+
+<p>One of these children, grown to manhood, Sir George Trevelyan, was
+destined to write, with the help of his mother, the best life of Macaulay
+that has ever been written.</p>
+
+<p>The exile did not prove quite so severe as was anticipated; but when in
+Eighteen Hundred Thirty-eight it was necessary for Lord Trevelyan to
+return to England, Macaulay, sick at the thought of being left behind,
+resigned his office and sailed back with the family.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that officeholders seldom die and never resign. This may be
+true in the main; but surely there can not be found another instance in
+history of a man throwing up an office with a fifty-thousand-dollar salary
+attachment, simply because he could not bear the thought of being
+separated from his sister's children.</p><a name='V_Page_195'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Soon after his return to England Macaulay was elected to a seat in
+Parliament from Edinburgh, a city that he had scarcely so much as visited,
+but to whose interest he had been loyal in that, up to this time,
+nine-tenths of all he had written had been printed there.</p>
+
+<p>To represent Edinburgh in the House of Commons was no small matter, and we
+know that Macaulay was not unmindful of the honor.</p>
+
+<p>His next preferment was his appointment as Secretary of War, and a seat in
+the Cabinet.</p>
+
+<p>During all these busy years he ever had on hand some piece of literary
+work. In fact, all of the &quot;Essays&quot; on which his literary fame so largely
+rests, were composed on &quot;stolen time&quot; in the lull seized from the official
+and social whirl in which he lived.</p>
+
+<p>If you want a piece of work well and thoroughly done, pick a busy man. The
+man of leisure postpones and procrastinates, and is ever making
+preparations and &quot;getting things in shape&quot;; but the ability to focus on a
+thing and do it is the talent of the man seemingly o'erwhelmed with work.
+Women in point lace and diamonds, club habitues and &quot;remittance
+men&quot;&mdash;those with all the time there is&mdash;can never be entrusted to carry
+the message to Gomez.</p>
+
+<p>Pin your faith to the busy person.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay's first and only political rebuff came with his defeat the second
+time he stood for election in<a name='V_Page_196'></a> Edinburgh. His conscientious opposition to
+a measure in which the Scottish people were especially interested caused
+the tide to turn against him.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt, though, the failure of re-election was a good thing for
+Macaulay&mdash;and for the world. He at once began serious work on his &quot;History
+of England&quot;&mdash;that project which had been in his head and heart for a score
+of years. All of his literary labors so far had been merely ephemeral&mdash;at
+least he so regarded them. The Essays he regarded only as so many
+newspaper articles, not worth the collecting. It was America that first
+guessed their true value as literature, and it was not until the American
+editions were pouring into England that Macaulay allowed his scattered
+work to be collected, corrected and put into authorized book form.</p>
+
+<p>This history was to be the thesis that would admit his name to the Roster
+of Fame. But, alas, the history was destined to be only a fragment. It
+covers scarce fifteen years, and is like that other splendid fragment, the
+work of Henry Thomas Buckle, a preface; Buckle's preface is the greatest
+ever penned, with its author dead at forty. The projected work of both of
+these men was too great for any one man to accomplish in a single
+lifetime. A hundred years of unremitting toil could not have completed
+Macaulay's task.</p>
+
+<p>In Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine he was elected Lord Rector of the
+University of Glasgow; and at his speech of installation he took occasion
+to take formal leave of <a name='V_Page_197'></a>political life. He would devote the remainder of
+his days to literature and abstract thought.</p>
+
+<p>Men are continually &quot;retiring&quot; from business and active life, all unaware
+of the grim humor of the proceedings. It was not so very long before
+Edinburgh, in an endeavor to undo the slight she had put upon Macaulay,
+again elected him to Parliament, without his being near, or raising his
+hand either for or against the measure.</p>
+
+<p>And again his voice was heard in the House of Commons.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay was a modest man, and yet he knew his power.</p>
+
+<p>The Premiership dangled just beyond his reach. Many claim that if he had
+not gone to India he would have moved by strong, steady strides straight
+to the highest office that England could bestow. And others aver that when
+he was created a Peer in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven it was a move toward
+the Premiership, and that if his health had not failed he would surely
+have won the goal. But how futile it is to speculate on what might have
+happened had not this or the other occurred!</p>
+
+<p>Yet certainly the daring caution of Macaulay's mind, his dignity and
+luring presence, his patience, self-command, good temper, and all those
+manifold graces of his heart, would have made him an almost ideal Premier,
+one who might rank with Palmerston, Peel, Disraeli or Gladstone.</p>
+
+<p>But the highest office was not for him.</p><a name='V_Page_198'></a>
+
+<p>We die by heart-beats; and Macaulay at fifty-nine had lived as much as
+most strong men do if they exist a hundred years.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to show where Lord Macaulay could have been greater. His life
+lies open to us as the ether. We complain because he did not read less and
+meditate more; we sigh at his lack of religion and mention the fact that
+he never loved a woman, seemingly waiving tautology and the fact that men
+who do not love are never religious.</p>
+
+<p>We forget that it takes a good many men to make the Ideal Man.</p>
+
+<p>If Macaulay had been different he would have been some one else. He was a
+brave, tender-hearted man who lived one day at a time, packing the moments
+with good-cheer, good work and an earnest wish to do better tomorrow than
+he had done today. That Nature occasionally produces such a man should be
+a cause for gratitude in the hearts of all the rest of us little folk who
+jig, mince, mouth, amble, run, peek about and criticize our betters.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='LORD_BYRON'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_199'></a>LORD BYRON</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_200'></a>
+<span>I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>A palace and a prison on each hand:<br /></span>
+<span>I saw from out the wave her structures rise<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:<br /></span>
+<span>A thousand years, their cloudy wings expand<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Around me, and a dying Glory smiles<br /></span>
+<span>O'er the far times, when many a subject land<br /></span>
+<span class='i2'>Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,<br /></span>
+<span>Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!<br /></span>
+<span class='i20'>&mdash;<i>Childe Harold</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_201'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-8.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-8-th.jpg" alt="LORD BYRON"></a></p><p class="ctr">LORD BYRON</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Man! I wonder what a man really is! Starting from a single cell, this
+seized upon by another, and out of the Eternal comes a particle of the
+Divine Energy that makes these cells its home. Growth follows, cell is
+added to cell, and there develops a man&mdash;a man whose body, two-thirds
+water, can be emptied by a single dagger-thrust and the spirit given back
+to its Maker.</p>
+
+<p>This being, which we call man, does not last long.</p>
+
+<p>Fifty-seven generations have come and gone since C&aelig;sar trod the Roman
+Forum. The pillars against which he often leaned still stand, the
+thresholds over which he passed are there, the pavements ring beneath your
+tread as they once rang beneath his. Three generations and more have come
+and gone since Napoleon trod the streets of Toulon contemplating suicide.</p>
+
+<p>Babes in arms were carried by fond mothers to see Lincoln, the candidate
+for President. These babes have grown into men, are grandfathers possibly,
+with whitened hair, furrowed faces, looking calmly forward to the end,
+having tasted all that life holds in store for them.</p>
+
+<p>And yet Lincoln lived but yesterday! You can reach back into the past and
+grasp his hand, and look into <a name='V_Page_202'></a>his sad and weary eyes.</p>
+
+<p>A man! weighted with the sins of his parents, grandparents,
+great-grandparents, who fade off into dim spectral shapes in the dark and
+dreamlike past; no word of choice has he in the selection of his father
+and mother, no voice in the choosing of environment&mdash;brought into life
+without his consent and thrust out of it against his will&mdash;battling,
+striving, hoping, cursing, waiting, loving, praying; burned by fever, torn
+by passion, checked by fear, reaching for friendship, longing for
+sympathy, clutching&mdash;nothing.</p><a name='V_Page_203'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Doctors and priests attend us at both ends of the route. We can not be
+born, neither can we die, without consulting the tax-collector, and
+interviewing those who look after us for a consideration.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor who sought to assist George Gordon Byron into the world
+dislocated the bones of his left foot in the operation. Forsooth, this
+baby would not be born as others&mdash;-he selected a way of his own and paid
+the penalty. &quot;It is a malformation&mdash;take these powders&mdash;I'll be back
+tomorrow,&quot; quoth the busy doctor.</p>
+
+<p>The autopsy proved it was not a malformation, but a displacement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Doctor, now please tell me just what is the matter with me,&quot; once asked
+an anxious patient.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tut, tut!&quot; replied the absent-minded physician; &quot;can't you wait? The
+post-mortem will reveal all that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The critics did not wait for Byron's death&mdash;it was vivisection. And after
+his death the dissection was zealously continued. Byron's life lies open
+to us in many books. Scarcely a month in the entire life of the man is
+unaccounted for, and if a hiatus of a few weeks is found, the men of
+imagination fill in and make him a pirate on the Mediterranean coast, or
+give him a seraglio in some gloomy old Moorish palace in Venice.</p>
+
+<p>In his lifetime Byron was overpraised and overcensured, and since his
+death the dust has been allowed to gather over his matchless books.
+Between the two extremes <a name='V_Page_204'></a>lies the truth; and the true Byron is just now
+being discovered. Byron in literature will not die. He is the brightest
+comet that has darted into our ken since Shakespeare's time; and as comets
+have no orbit, but are vagrants of the heavens, so was he. Tragedy was in
+his train, and his destiny was disgrace and death.</p>
+
+<p>And yet as we review the life of this man, &quot;the lame brat&quot; of his mother,
+as this mother called him, and behold the whirlwind of passion that swept
+him on, the fulsome praise, the shrill outcry of hypocritical prudes and
+pedants, the torrent of abuse, and the piling up of sins that he never
+committed (and God knows he committed enough!); and yet behold his craving
+for tenderness, the reaching out for truth, and hear his earnest and
+unquenchable prayer to be understood and loved, we blot out the record of
+his sins with our tears. To know the life of Byron and not be moved to
+profoundest pity marks one as alien to his kind.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;God is on the side of the most sensitive,&quot; said Thoreau. And did there
+ever tread the earth a man more sensitive than Byron?&mdash;such capacity for
+suffering, such exaltation, such heights, such depths! Music made him
+tremble and weep, and in the presence of kindness he was powerless. He
+lived life to its fullest, and paid the penalty with shortened years. He
+expressed himself without reserve&mdash;being emancipated from superstition and
+precedent. And the man who is not dominated by the fetish of custom is
+marked for contumely by the <a name='V_Page_205'></a>many. Custom makes law, and the one who
+violates custom is &quot;bad.&quot; Yet all respectable people are not good; and all
+good people are not respectable. If you do not know this you are ignorant
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>So imagine this handsome, headstrong, restless young man, in whose lexicon
+there was no such word as prudence, with time and money at his command,
+defying the state, society and religion, and listen to the anathemas that
+fill the air at mention of his name.</p>
+
+<p>That a world full of such men would not be at all desirable is stern
+truth; but that one such man lived is a cause for congratulation. His life
+holds for us both warning and example.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath the strain of the stuff and the onward swirl of his verse we see
+that this man stood for truth and justice as against hypocrisy and
+oppression. Folly and freedom are better far than smugness and
+persecution. Byron stood for the rights of the individual, for the right
+of free speech and free thought: and he stood for political and physical
+freedom, long before abolition societies became popular. He sided with the
+people; his heart went out to the oppressed; and all of his fruitless
+gropings and stumblings were a reaching out for tenderness and truth, for
+life and love&mdash;for the Ideal.</p><a name='V_Page_206'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The father of Byron, the poet, was a captain in the army&mdash;a man of small
+mental ability, whose recklessness won him the sobriquet of &quot;Mad Jack
+Byron.&quot; When twenty-three years of age he eloped to France with the
+Baroness Conyers, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen. Happiness, in a
+foreign country, for a woman who has exchanged one love for another is
+outside the pale of possibilities. Love is much&mdash;but love is not all. Life
+is too short to break family-ties and adjust one's self to a new language
+and a new country. The change means death.</p>
+
+<p>Two years and the woman died, leaving a daughter, Augusta by name,
+afterward Mrs. Augusta Leigh.</p>
+
+<p>Back to England went Mad Jack Byron, broken-hearted, bearing in his arms
+the baby girl. Kind kinsmen, ready to forgive, cared for the child. Mad
+Jack didn't remain broken-hearted long&mdash;what would you expect from a man?
+He sought sympathy among several discreet dames, and in two years we find
+him safely and legally married to Catherine Gordon. Scotch, and heiress to
+twenty-five thousand pounds. On the occasion of the wedding, Jack informed
+a friend that the fact of the lady's being Scotch was forgiven in view of
+the dowry. Most of this fortune went into a rat-hole to help pay the debts
+of the Mad Jack.</p>
+
+<p>One child was born to this ill-assorted pair&mdash;a boy who was destined to
+write his name large on history's <a name='V_Page_207'></a>page. But such a pedigree! No wonder
+the youth once wrote to Augusta, his half-sister, expressing a covetous
+appreciation of her parentage, even with its bar sinister. In passing, it
+is well to note the sunshine of this love of brother and sister, which
+continued during life&mdash;confidential, earnest, tender, frank. In their best
+moods they were both lofty souls, and their mutuality was cemented in a
+contempt for the man who was their sire. This fine brotherly and sisterly
+affection comes close to us when we remember that it was our own Harriet
+Beecher Stowe, with sympathies worn to the quick through much brooding
+over the wrongs of a race in bondage, who rushed into print with a
+scandalous accusation concerning this same sweet affection of brother for
+sister. The charge was brought on no better foundation than some old-woman
+gossip held over the hyson when it was red, and moved itself aright&mdash;all
+vouchsafed to Mrs. Stowe by the widow of Byron in Eighteen Hundred
+Fifty-six. If a woman as good at heart as Harriet Beecher Stowe was
+deceived, why should we blame humanity for biting at a hook that is not
+baited?</p>
+
+<p>No sane dentist will administer an anesthetic to a woman, without a
+witness: not that women as a class are dangerous, but because some women
+can not be trusted to distinguish between their dreams and the facts.
+Every practising lawyer of insight also knows that a wronged woman's
+reasons are plentiful as <a name='V_Page_208'></a>blackberries, and must always be taken with
+large pinches of the Syracuse product.</p>
+
+<p>Mad Jack followed his regiment here and there, dodging his creditors, and
+finally in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one induced his wife to borrow a
+hundred pounds for him, with which he started to Paris intent on
+retrieving fortune with pasteboard.</p>
+
+<p>He died on the way, and the money was used to bury him. The lame boy was
+then three years old, but a few dark memories, no doubt retouched by
+hearsay, were retained by him of Mad Jack, who in his most sober moments
+never guessed that he would be known to the ages as the father of the
+greatest poet of his time.</p>
+
+<p>Mad Jack was neither literary nor psychic.</p>
+
+<p>The widowed mother remained at Aberdeen with her boy, living on the
+hundred and fifty pounds a year that had been settled on her in a way that
+she could not squander the principal&mdash;all the rest had gone.</p>
+
+<p>The child was shy, sensitive, proud and headstrong.</p>
+
+<p>The mother used to reprove him by throwing things at him, and by chasing
+him with the tongs. At other times she diverted herself by imitating his
+limp. And yet again she would smother him with caresses, beseech his
+pardon for abusing him, and praise the beauty of his matchless eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Children are usually better judges of grown-ups than grown-ups are of
+children. This boy at five years of age had estimated his mother's
+character correctly. He <a name='V_Page_209'></a>knew that she was not his steadfast friend, and
+that she was unworthy of his confidence and whole heart's love. He grew
+moody, secretive, wilful. Once, being wrongly accused and punished, he
+seized a knife from the table and was about to apply it to his throat when
+he was disarmed. The child longed for tenderness and love, and being
+denied these, was already taking on that proud and haughty temper which
+was to serve as a mask to hide the tenderness of his nature.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that seven brothers Byron fought at Edgehill, but when we get
+down to the time of Mad Jack there was danger of the name being snuffed
+out entirely. Nature is not anxious to perpetuate the idle and dissipated.</p>
+
+<p>When little George Gordon was ten years old, his mother one day ran to
+him, seized him in her arms, wept and laughed, then laughed and wept,
+kissing him violently, addressing him as &quot;My Lord!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His great-uncle, William, Lord Byron of Rochdale and Newstead Abbey, had
+died, and the big-eyed, lame boy was the nearest heir&mdash;in fact, the only
+living male who bore the family-name. The next day at school, when the
+master called the roll and mentioned his name with the prefix &quot;Dominus,&quot;
+the lad did not reply &quot;Adsum&quot;&mdash;he only stood up, gazed helplessly at the
+teacher, and burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>Even at this time he had given promise of the quality of his nature, by
+his firm affection for Mary Duff, his <a name='V_Page_210'></a>cousin. All the intensity of his
+childish nature was centered in this young woman, several years his
+senior. To call it a passion would be too much, but this child, denied of
+love at home, clung to Mary Duff, to whom he went in confession with all
+his childish tales of woe. When his mother proposed to leave Aberdeen, now
+that fortune had smiled, the anguish of the boy at thought of leaving his
+&quot;first love&quot; nearly caused him a fit of sickness.</p>
+
+<p>And all this wealth of love was met with jeers and loud laughter, save by
+Mary Duff. The vibrating sensitiveness of such a child, with such a
+mother, must have caused a misery we can only guess.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your mother is a fool,&quot; said a boy to Byron at college some years later.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know it,&quot; was the melancholy answer, as the brown eyes filled with
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>When money came, Mrs. Byron's first move was to take the lad to Nottingham
+and place him in charge of a surgical quack, who proposed, for a price, to
+make the lame foot just as good as the other, if not better. To this
+effect wooden clamps were placed on the foot and screwed down by
+thumbscrews, causing a torture that would have been unbearable to many.</p>
+
+<p>No benefit was experienced from the treatment, although it was continued
+by another physician at London soon after. A schoolfellow of Byron's
+visited him in his room when his foot was encased in a wooden <a name='V_Page_211'></a>compress.
+The visitor noted the white face, and the beads of anguish on the boy's
+forehead, and at last said, &quot;I know you are suffering awfully!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will never hear me say so,&quot; was the grim reply.</p>
+
+<p>The emphasis placed on Byron's lameness has been altogether overdone. In
+fact, as he grew to manhood, it was nothing more than a stiffness that
+would never have been noticed in a drawing-room. We have this on the
+testimony of the Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington and others. Byron
+himself made the mistake of referring to it several times in his verse,
+and doubtless all the torture he had suffered through ill-considered
+medical counsel, and his mother's taunts, caused the matter to take a
+place in his sensitive mind quite out of its due proportion. Sir Walter
+Scott was lame, too, but whoever heard of his discussing it, either by
+word of mouth or in print?</p>
+
+<p>Of Byron's life at Harrow we have many tales as to his defending his
+juniors, volunteering to take punishment for them&mdash;and of lessons
+unlearned. He could not be driven nor forced, and pedagogics a hundred
+years ago, it seemed, was largely a science of coercion. Mary Gray, a
+nurse and early teacher of Byron's, has told us that kindness was the
+unfailing touchstone with this boy; no other plan would work. But Harrow
+knew nothing of Froebel methods, and does not yet.</p><a name='V_Page_212'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Byron's first genuine love-affair occurred when he was sixteen. The object
+of this affection, as all the world knows, was Miss Chaworth, whose estate
+adjoined Newstead. The lady was two years older than Byron, and being of a
+lively nature found a pleasant diversion in leading the youth a merry
+chase. So severe was his attack that he was alternately oppressed by
+chills of fear and fevers of ecstasy. He lost appetite, and the family
+began to fear for his sanity. Such a love must find expression some way,
+and so the daily stealthy notes to the young woman took the form of rhyme.
+The lovesick youth was revealing considerable facility in this way. It
+pleased him, and did the buxom young woman no harm.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the mere prettiness and pinky whiteness of a healthy country lass,
+Miss Chaworth evidently had no beauties of character, save those conjured
+forth from the inner consciousness of the poet&mdash;a not wholly original
+condition.</p>
+
+<p>Byron loved the Ideal. And this love-affair with Miss Chaworth is only
+valuable as showing the evolution of imagination in the poet. The woman
+hadn't the slightest idea that she was giving wings to a soul&mdash;to her the
+affair was simply funny.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Byron's great-uncle, from whom he had inherited his title,
+had killed the grandfather of Miss Chaworth in a duel, lent a romantic
+tinge to the matter&mdash;the boy was doing a sort of penance, and in one of
+<a name='V_Page_213'></a>his poems hints at the undoing of the sin of his kinsman by the lifelong
+devotion that he will bestow. This calling up the past, and incautious
+revealing of the fact that the ancestor Chaworth could not hold his own
+with a Byron, but allowed himself to be run through the body by the Byron
+cold steel, was not pleasing to Miss Chaworth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't imagine I am such a fool as to love that lame boy,&quot; cried Miss
+Chaworth to her maid one day.</p>
+
+<p>Unluckily, &quot;the lame boy&quot; was in the next room and heard the remark.</p>
+
+<p>He rushed from the house with a something gripping at his heart.
+Straightway he would go back to Harrow, which he had left in wrath only a
+few months before.</p>
+
+<p>So he went to Harrow.</p>
+
+<p>When he next returned home, his mother met him with the remark, &quot;I have
+news for you; get out your handkerchief&mdash;Miss Chaworth is married.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In just another year Byron was home again, and was invited to dine with
+the Chaworths. He accepted the invitation, and when he was introduced to a
+baby girl, a month old, the child of his old sweetheart, his emotions got
+the better of him and he had to leave the room. And to ease his woe he
+indited a poem to the baby.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Chaworth was not happy with her fox-hunting squire. Her mind became
+clouded, and after some years she passed out, in poverty and alone. And if
+there ever <a name='V_Page_214'></a>came to her mind any appreciation of the greatness of the man
+who had given her name immortality, we do not know it.</p>
+
+<p>The years from Eighteen Hundred Five to Eighteen Hundred Eight Byron spent
+at Cambridge. The arts in which he perfected himself there were shooting,
+swimming, fencing, drinking and gambling.</p>
+
+<p>During vacations, and off and on, he lived at Southwell, a village halfway
+between Mansfield and Newark. Southwell was sleepy, gossipy, dull&mdash;and
+exerted a wholesome restraint on our restless youth. It was simply a
+question of economy that took Byron and his mother to Southwell. The
+run-down estate of Newstead was yielding a meager income, but at Southwell
+one could be shabby and yet respectable.</p>
+
+<p>At Southwell Byron met John Pigot and his sister&mdash;cultured people of a
+refined and quiet sort. Byron took to them at once, and they liked him.</p>
+
+<p>In a country town the person who thinks, instinctively hunts out the other
+man who thinks&mdash;granting the somewhat daring hypothesis that there are two
+of them. So Byron and the Pigots often met for walks and talks, and on
+such occasions the poet would read to his friends the scraps of verse he
+had written. He had gotten into the habit&mdash;he wrote whenever his pulse ran
+up above eighty&mdash;he wrote because he could not help it; and he read his
+productions to his friends for the same reason. Every one who writes longs
+to read his work to some <a name='V_Page_215'></a>sympathetic soul. A thought is not ours until we
+repeat it to another, and this crying need of expression marks every
+poetic soul. All art is born of feeling, high, intense, holy feeling, and
+the creative faculty is largely a matter of temperature. We feel, and not
+to impart our feelings is stagnation&mdash;death. People who do not feel deeply
+never have anything to impart, either to individuals or to the world. They
+have no message.</p>
+
+<p>The young man, fresh from the dusty, musty lectures of Cambridge, and out
+of the reach of his boisterous and carousing companions, grasped at the
+gentle, refined and sympathetic friendship of this brother and sister. The
+trinity would walk off across the fields and recline on the soft turf
+under a great spreading tree, reading aloud by turn from some good book.
+Such meetings always ended by Byron's reading to his friends any chance
+rhymes he had written since they last met.</p>
+
+<p>John Morley dates the birth of Byron's poetic genius from his meeting with
+Miss Chaworth, while Taine names Southwell as the pivotal point. Probably
+both are right.</p>
+
+<p>But this we know, that it was the Pigots who induced Byron to collect his
+rhymes and have them printed. This was done at the neighboring town of
+Newark, when Byron was nineteen years old. Possibly you have a few of
+these thin, poorly printed, crudely bound little books entitled
+&quot;Juvenilia&quot; around in the garret somewhere, and, if so, it might be well
+enough to take <a name='V_Page_216'></a>care of them. Quaritch says they are worth a hundred
+pounds apiece, although in the poet's lifetime they were dear at sixpence.</p>
+
+<p>Byron sent copies to all the leading literary men whom he knew, including
+Mackenzie, the man of feeling. Mackenzie replied, praising the work, and
+so did several others. All writers of note are favored with many such
+juvenilia, and usually there is a gracious electrotype reply. A doubt
+exists as to whether Mackenzie ever read Byron's book, but we know that
+his letter of stock platitude fired Byron to do still better. It is said
+that no flattery is too fulsome for a pretty woman&mdash;she inwardly
+congratulates the man on his subtle insight in discovering excellences
+that she hardly knew existed. This may be so and may not, but the logic
+holds when applied to fledgling authors. When it comes to praise he is
+quite willing to take your word for it.</p>
+
+<p>Byron's spirits arose to an ecstacy&mdash;he would be a poet.</p>
+
+<p>About this time we find Hydra, as Byron pleasantly called his mother,
+rushing to the village apothecary and warning that worthy not to sell
+poison to the poet; and a few moments after her leaving, the astonished
+apothecary was visited by the poet, who begged that no poison should be
+sold to his mother. Each thought the other was going to turn Lucretia
+Borgia, or play the last act of Romeo and Juliet, at least.</p>
+
+<p>There were wild bursts of rage on the mother's part, stubborn mockery on
+the other, followed up once by a <a name='V_Page_217'></a>poker flung with almost fatal precision
+at the poet's curly head.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this he took flight to London and Hydra followed, repentant and
+lacrimose. A truce was patched up; they agreed to disagree, and coldly
+shaking hands withdrew in opposite directions.</p>
+
+<p>After this, when the poet wrote he addressed his mother as &quot;Dear Madam,&quot;
+and confined himself to business matters. Only rarely was there any flash
+in his letters, as when he said, &quot;Dear Mother&mdash;you know you are a vixen,
+but save me some champagne.&quot; If Byron's mother had been of the stuff of
+which most mothers are made, we would have found these two safely settled
+at Newstead, making the best of their battered fortune, with the son in
+time marrying some neighbor lass, and slipping into the place of a
+respectable English gentleman, a worthy member of the House of Lords.</p>
+
+<p>But the boy, now grown twenty, had no home, and either was supplied too
+much money or else too little. He wasted his substance in London,
+economized in Southwell, sponged on friends, and borrowed of Scrope Davis
+at Cambridge. When a remittance again came, he explored the greenrooms,
+took lessons from Professor Johnson, the pugilist (referred to as &quot;my
+corporeal pastor&quot;), drank whole companies under the table, bought a tame
+bear and a wolf to guard the entrance of Newstead, and roamed the country
+as a gipsy, in <a name='V_Page_218'></a>company with a girl dressed in boy's clothes, thus
+supplying Richard Le Gallienne an interesting chapter in his &quot;Quest of the
+Golden Girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But all this time his brain was active, and another book of poetry had
+been printed, entitled &quot;Hours of Idleness.&quot; This book was gotten out, at
+his own expense, by the same country printer as the first.</p>
+
+<p>Surely the verse must have had merit, or why should Lord Brougham, in the
+great &quot;Edinburgh Review,&quot; go after it with a slashing, crashing, damning
+criticism?</p>
+
+<p>When Byron read the review, a bystander has told us he turned red, then
+livid green. He straightway ordered and drank two bottles of claret, said
+nothing, but looked like a man who had sent a challenge.</p>
+
+<p>A challenge! that was exactly what Byron proposed. He would fight Jeffrey
+first, and then take up in turn every man who had ever contributed to the
+magazine&mdash;he would kill them all. And to that end he called for his
+pistols and went out to practise firing at ten paces. Wiser counsel
+prevailed, and he decided to attack the enemy in their own citadel, and
+with their own weapons. He ordered ink, and began &quot;English Bards and
+Scotch Reviewers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It took time to get this enormous siege-gun into position and find the
+range. Finally, it was loaded with more kinds of missiles, in the way of
+what Augustine Birrell has called literary stinkpots, than were ever
+before rammed home in a single charge.</p>
+
+<p>It was an <a name='V_Page_219'></a>audacious move&mdash;to reverse the initiative and go after a whole
+race of critics, scribblers and reviewers, who had been badgering honest
+folks, and blow 'em into kingdom come.</p>
+
+<p>But at the last moment Byron's heart failed him, his wrath gave way to
+caution, and &quot;English Bards and Scotch Reviewers&quot; appeared anonymously.</p>
+
+<p>The edition was soon exhausted&mdash;the shot had at least raised a mighty
+dust.</p>
+
+<p>The author got his nerve back, fathered the book, made corrections; and
+this edition, too, sold with a rush. Byron returned to Newstead, invited a
+score of his Cambridge cronies, who came down, entering the mansion
+between the bear and the wolf, and were received with salvos of
+pistol-shots. Here they played games over the spacious grounds, wrestled,
+boxed, swam, and at night feasted and drank deep damnation out of a skull
+to all Scotch reviewers.</p>
+
+<p>Probably the acme of this depravity was reached when the young gentlemen
+began shooting the pendants off the chandelier; then the servants hastily
+decamped and left the rogues to do their own cooking.</p>
+
+<p>This brought them to their senses, sanity came back, and the company
+disbanded. Then the servants, who had watched the orgies from afar,
+returned and found a week's pile of dishes unwashed and a horse stabled in
+the library.</p><a name='V_Page_220'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Then Byron had reached the mature age of twenty-one, he was formally
+admitted to the House of Lords as a Peer of the realm. His titles and
+pedigree were so closely scanned on this occasion that he grew quite out
+of conceit with the noble company, and was seriously thinking of launching
+a dunciad in their direction. His good nature was especially ruffled by
+Lord Carlisle, his guardian, who refused to stand as his legal sponsor.
+The chief cause of the old Lord's prejudice against the young one lay in
+the fact that the young 'un had ridiculed the old 'un's literary
+pretensions.</p>
+
+<p>They were rivals in letters, with a very beautiful, natural and mutual
+disdain for each other.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron was not welcomed into the House of Lords: he simply pushed in
+the door because he had a right to. He thirsted for approbation, for
+distinction, for notoriety. His sensitive soul hung upon newspaper
+clippings with feverish expectations; and about all the attention he
+received was in the line of being damned by faint praise, or smothered
+with silence. Patriotism, as far as England was concerned, was not a part
+of Byron's composition.</p>
+
+<p>When all Great Britain was execrating Napoleon, picturing him as a devil
+with horns and hoofs, Byron looked upon him as the world's hero.</p>
+
+<p>In this frame of mind he went forth and borrowed a goodly sum, and started
+cut to view the world. He was accompanied by his friend Hobhouse, and his
+valet,<a name='V_Page_221'></a> Fletcher.</p>
+
+<p>It was a two years' trip, this jolly trio made&mdash;down along the coast of
+France, Spain, through the Straits of Gibraltar, lingering in queer old
+cities, mousing over historic spots, alternately living like princes or
+vagabonds. They frolicked, drank, made love to married women, courted
+maidens, fought, feasted and did all the foolish things that sophomores
+usually do when they have money and opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>These months of travel supplied Byron enough in way of suggestion to keep
+him writing many moons. His active imagination seized upon everything
+picturesque, peculiar, romantic, sentimental or tragic, and stored it up
+in those wondrous brain-cells, to be used when the time was ripe.</p>
+
+<p>The disciples of Munchausen, who delight in showing Byron's verse to be
+only biography, have found a rich field in that two years' travel. One man
+really did a brilliant thing&mdash;in three volumes&mdash;recounting the conquering
+march of the poet, whom he depicts as a combination of Don Juan and Rob
+Roy.</p>
+
+<p>The probabilities are that the real facts, not illumined by fancy, would
+be a tale with which to conjure sleep. Foreign travel is hard work. It
+constitutes the final test of friendship, and to make the tour of Europe
+with a man and not hate him marks one or both of the parties as seraphic
+in quality. The best of travel is in looking back upon it from the dreamy
+quiet and rest of home&mdash;laughing at the things that once rasped your
+<a name='V_Page_222'></a>nerves, and enjoying, through recollection, the scenes you only glanced
+at wearily.</p>
+
+<p>Two instances of that trip&mdash;when Hobhouse threatened to desert the party
+and was dared to do so, and Byron slapped Fletcher's face and got himself
+well kicked in return&mdash;will suffice to show how Byron had the faculty of
+seizing trivial incidents, and by lifting them up and separating them from
+the mass, made them live as Art.</p>
+
+<p>At Athens the trio made a sudden resolve to be respectable, and practise
+economy. To this end they hired rooms of a worthy widow, who accommodated
+travelers with a transient home for a moderate stipend. This widow had
+three daughters: the eldest, Theresa by name, lives in letters as the Maid
+of Athens, and the glory that came to her was achieved without any special
+danger to either her heart or the poet's. The young woman, we know,
+assisted in the household affairs; and probably often dusted the mantel in
+the poet's room while he sat smoking with one foot on the table, making
+irrelevant remarks to her about this or that.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he wrote a poem, &quot;Maid of Athens, ere we part, give, O give me
+back my heart.&quot; * * *</p>
+
+<p>With the genuine literary thrift that marked all of Byron's career, he
+preserved a copy of the lines, and some years after recast them, touched
+them up a bit, included the stuff in a book&mdash;and there you are.</p>
+
+<p>The other incident is that of Hobhouse recording in <a name='V_Page_223'></a>his journal the bare
+and barren fact that outside the city wall in Persia they once saw two
+dogs gnawing a human body. Byron saw the sight, but made no mention of it
+at the time. He waited, the scene sealed up in his brain-cells. Years
+after he wrote thus:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall,<br /></span>
+<span>Hold o'er the dead their carnival;<br /></span>
+<span>Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb,<br /></span>
+<span>They were too busy to bark at him.<br /></span>
+<span>From a Tartar's skull they stripped the flesh,<br /></span>
+<span>As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;<br /></span>
+<span>And their white tusks crunched on the whiter skull,<br /></span>
+<span>As it slipped through their jaws when the edge grew dull.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And this only proves that Hobhouse was not a poet and Byron was. The poet
+is never content to state the mere facts&mdash;facts are only valuable as
+suggestions for poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Travel often excites the spirit to the point of expression. Good travelers
+carry pads and pencils. Byron reached England with fragments of marbles,
+skulls, pictures, shells, spears, guns, curios beyond count, and many
+manuscripts in process.</p>
+
+<p>Upon arriving on the English coast the first news that reached him was
+that his mother had just died. He hastened to Newstead and reached there
+in time to attend the funeral, but refrained from following the <a name='V_Page_224'></a>cortege
+to the grave because he could not master his emotions. Their quarrels were
+at last ended.</p>
+
+<p>A diversion to his feelings came soon after, in the way of a blunt letter
+from Tom Moore demanding if Lord Byron was the author of &quot;English Bards
+and Scotch Reviewers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Byron replied very stiffly that he was, but he really had intended no
+insult to Mr. Moore, with whom he had not the honor of being acquainted.
+Furthermore, if Mr. Moore felt himself aggrieved, why, the author of
+&quot;English Bards&quot; was at his service to supply him such satisfaction as he
+required.</p>
+
+<p>The irate Irishman accepted &quot;the apology,&quot; a genial reply followed, and
+soon the poets met at the house of a friend, and there began that lifelong
+friendship, with the result that Moore wrote Byron's &quot;Life&quot; and used much
+needless whitewash.</p>
+
+<p>While abroad Byron had gotten into shape for publication one piece of
+manuscript. This was &quot;Hints From Horace,&quot; and the matter was placed in the
+hands of Mr. Dallas, his businessman, very soon after his arrival. Dallas
+read the poem and did not like it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Haven't you anything else?&quot; asked Dallas.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, nothing but a few stanzas of Spenserian stuff,&quot; was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>Dallas asked to see it, and there were placed in his hands rough drafts of
+the first and second cantos of &quot;Childe Harold.&quot; This time Dallas was
+better suited, <a name='V_Page_225'></a>and to corroborate his judgment the matter was submitted
+to Murray, the publisher.</p>
+
+<p>Murray thought the matter had more or less merit, and arrangements were at
+once made for its publication. And so it came out, hammered into shape
+while in the printer's hands.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Childe Harold&quot; was an instantaneous, brilliant success&mdash;a success beyond
+the publisher's or author's expectations. The book ran through seven
+editions in four weeks, and Lord Byron &quot;became famous in a night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>London society became Byron-mad. The poet was feted, courted, petted.</p>
+
+<p>He indulged in much innocent and costly dissipation, and some not so
+innocent.</p>
+
+<p>Finally all this began to pall upon him. When twenty-six we find him
+making a bold stand for reform: he would get married and live a staid,
+sober, respectable life. His finances were reduced&mdash;all the money he had
+made out of his books had been given away, prompted by a foolish whim that
+no man should take pay for the product of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Now he would marry and &quot;settle down&quot;; and to marry a woman with an income
+would be no special disadvantage. To sell one's thoughts was abhorrent to
+the young man, but to marry for money was quite another thing. Morality
+depends upon your point of view.</p>
+
+<p>The paradox of things found expression when Byron <a name='V_Page_226'></a>the impressionable,
+Byron the irresistible, sat himself down and after chewing the end of his
+penholder, wrote a letter to Miss Milbanke, with whom he was only slightly
+acquainted, proposing marriage. The lady very properly declined. To be
+courted with a fresh-nibbed pen, and paper cut sonnet-size, instead of by
+a live man, deserves rebuke. Men who propose by mail to a woman in the
+next town are either insincere, self-deceived, or else are of the sort
+whose pulse never goes above sixty-five, and therefore should be avoided.</p>
+
+<p>Byron was both insincere and self-deceived. He had grown to distrust the
+emotions of his heart, and so selected a wife with his head. He chose a
+woman with income, one who was strong, cool-headed, safe and sensible.
+Miss Milbanke was the antithesis of his mother.</p>
+
+<p>The lady declined&mdash;but that is nothing.</p>
+
+<p>They were married within a year.</p>
+
+<p>In another year the wife left her husband and went back to her mother,
+carrying in her arms a girl baby, only a few weeks old.</p>
+
+<p>She never returned to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>What the trouble was no one ever knew, although the gossips named a
+hundred and one reasons&mdash;running from drunkenness to homicide. But Byron,
+the world now knows, was no drunkard&mdash;he was at times convivial, but he
+had no fixed taste for strong drink. He was, however, peevish, impulsive,
+impetuous and often very unreasonable.</p><a name='V_Page_227'></a>
+
+<p>Byron, be it said to his credit, brought no recriminating charges against
+his wife. He only said their differences were inexplicable and
+unexplainable.</p>
+
+<p>The simple facts were that they breathed a different atmosphere&mdash;their
+heads were in a different stratum. His normal pulse was eighty; hers,
+sixty-five.</p>
+
+<p>What do you think of a spiritual companionship where the wife demands,
+&quot;How much longer are you going to follow this foolish habit of writing
+verses?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They did not understand each other. Byron uttered words that no man should
+voice to a woman, and his outbursts were met with a forced calmness that
+was exasperating. The lady sat down, yawned wearily, and when there came a
+lull in the gentleman's verbal pyrotechnics, she would ask him if he had
+anything more to say.</p>
+
+<p>One day she varied the program by packing up her effects and leaving him.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, it is easy to say that had this woman been wise she would have
+stood the childish outbursts and endured the peevish tantrums, for the
+sake of the hours of tenderness and love that were sure to follow. By
+right treatment he would have been on his knees, begging forgiveness and
+crying it out with his head in her lap very shortly. But all this implies
+a woman of unusual power&mdash;extraordinary patience. And this woman was
+simply human. She left, and then in order to justify her action she gave
+reasons. Our actions are <a name='V_Page_228'></a>usually right, but our reasons for them seldom
+are.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Byron made no concealment of her troubles. Society had occasion for
+gossip and the occasion was improved. Stories of Byron's cruelty and
+inhumanity filled the coffeehouses and drawing-rooms; and the hints at
+crimes so grave they could not even be mentioned gave the gossips their
+cue.</p>
+
+<p>The press took it up, and the poet was warned by his friends not to appear
+at the theater or upon the street for fear of the indignation of the mob.
+The spoilt child of London was paying the penalty of popularity. The
+pendulum had swung too far and was now coming back.</p>
+
+<p>Byron, hunted by creditors, hooted by enemies, broken in health, crushed
+in spirit, left the country&mdash;left England, never to return alive.</p>
+
+<p>When Byron trod the deck of the good ship bound for Ostend, and saw a
+strip of tossing, blue water separating him from England, his spirits
+rose. He was twenty-eight years old, and the thought that he would yet do
+something and be somebody was strong in his heart. All the old pride came
+back.</p>
+
+<p>The idea that he would not sell the product of his brain for hire was
+abandoned, and soon after arriving in Holland he began to write letters
+home, making sharp bargains with publishers.</p>
+
+<p>Further than this, his attorneys, on his order, made demand for a share of
+his wife's estate. And erelong we find Byron, the wasteful, cultivating
+the good old <a name='V_Page_229'></a>gentlemanly habit of penuriousness. He was making money, and
+had he lived to be sixty it is probable he would have evolved into a
+conservative and written a book on &quot;Getting on in the World, or Success as
+I Have Found It.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Byron's pilgrimage down through Germany, along the Rhine to Switzerland,
+was one of rest and recreation. At Berne, Basle, Lausanne and Geneva he
+found food for literary thought, and many instances in his writings show
+the reflected scenes he saw. No visitor at Lausanne fails to visit the
+Castle of Chillon, and all the guides will recite you these sweeping
+lines, so surcharged with feeling, beginning:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls;<br /></span>
+<span>A thousand feet in depth below,<br /></span>
+<span>Its many waters meet and flow.&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At Geneva began the most interesting friendship between Byron and that
+other young man, so like and yet so unlike him.</p>
+
+<p>Only a few years and Byron was to search the shores of the Mediterranean
+for Shelley's dead body, and finding it, be one of the friends who reduced
+it to ashes.</p>
+
+<p>Tiring of Geneva and the tourists who pointed him out as a curiosity, we
+find Byron and his little party making their way across the Simplon, to
+cross which is an epoch in the life of any man, and then down by the Lago
+Maggiore to Milan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Last Supper&quot; of<a name='V_Page_230'></a> Leonardo da Vinci did not impress Byron&mdash;the art of
+painting never did&mdash;this was his most marked limitation. From Milan they
+wandered down through Italy to Verona and Venice.</p>
+
+<p>The third Canto of &quot;Childe Harold,&quot; &quot;Manfred,&quot; and dozens of shorter poems
+had been sent to Murray. England read and paid for all that Byron wrote,
+and accepted it all as autobiography. Possibly Byron's defiant manner lent
+an excuse for this, but by applying similar rules we could convict
+Sophocles, Schiller and Shelley of basest crimes, put Shakespeare in the
+dock for murder, Milton for blasphemy, Scott for forgery, and Goethe for
+questionable financial deals with the devil. Byron's sins were as scarlet
+and the number not a few, but the moths that came just to flit about the
+flame were all of mature age. Byron set no snares for the innocent, and in
+all of the man's misdoings, he himself it was who suffered most.</p>
+
+<p>The Countess Guiccioli, it seems, was the only woman who comprehended his
+nature sufficiently to lead him in the direction of peace and poise. With
+her, for the first time, he began to systematize his life on a basis of
+sanity. They lived together for five years, and from the time he met her
+until his death no other love came to separate them.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout his life Byron was a man in revolt; and it was only a variation
+of the old passion for freedom that led him to Greece and to his grave.
+The personal <a name='V_Page_231'></a>bravery of the man was proven more than once in his life,
+and on the approach of death he was undismayed. When he passed away, April
+Nineteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-four, Stanhope wrote, &quot;England has
+lost her brightest genius&mdash;Greece her best friend.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His body was returned to England, denied burial in Westminster, and now
+rests in the old church at Hucknall, near Newstead.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='JOSEPH_ADDISON'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_232'></a><a name='V_Page_233'></a>JOSEPH ADDISON</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_234'></a>
+<span>Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,<br /></span>
+<span>My bane and antidote, are both before me.<br /></span>
+<span>This in a moment brings me to an end;<br /></span>
+<span>But this informs me I shall never die.<br /></span>
+<span>The soul, secured in her existence, smiles<br /></span>
+<span>At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.<br /></span>
+<span>The stars shall fade away, the sun himself<br /></span>
+<span>Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;<br /></span>
+<span>But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,<br /></span>
+<span>Unhurt amid the war of elements,<br /></span>
+<span>The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds!<br /></span>
+<span class='i17'>&mdash;<i>Cato's Soliloquy</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_235'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-9.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-9-th.jpg" alt="JOSEPH ADDISON"></a></p><p class="ctr">JOSEPH ADDISON</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.</p>
+
+<p>Expression is necessary to life. The spirit grows through exercise of its
+faculties, just as a muscle grows strong through use. Life is expression
+and repression is stagnation&mdash;death.</p>
+
+<p>Yet there is right expression and wrong expression. If a man allows his
+life to run riot, and only the animal side of his nature is allowed to
+express itself, he is repressing his highest and best, and therefore those
+qualities, not used, atrophy and die.</p>
+
+<p>Sensuality, gluttony and the life of license repress the life of the
+spirit, and the soul never blossoms; and this is what it is to lose one's
+soul. All adown the centuries thinking men have noted these truths, and
+again and again we find individuals forsaking, in horror, the life of the
+senses and devoting themselves to the life of the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The question of expression through the spirit or through the
+senses&mdash;through the soul or the body&mdash;has been the pivotal point of all
+philosophies and the inspiration of all religions. Asceticism in our day
+finds an interesting manifestation in the Trappists, who live on a
+mountain, nearly inaccessible, and deprive themselves of almost <a name='V_Page_236'></a>every
+vestige of bodily comfort; going without food for days, wearing
+uncomfortable garments, suffering severe cold. So here we find the extreme
+instance of men repressing the faculties of the body in order that the
+spirit may find ample time and opportunity for exercise.</p>
+
+<p>Between this extreme repression and the license of the sensualist lies the
+truth. But just where, is the great question; and the desire of one
+person, who thinks he has discovered the norm, to compel all other men to
+stop there, has led to war and strife untold. All law centers around this
+point&mdash;what shall men be allowed to do? And so we find statutes to punish
+&quot;strolling play-actors,&quot; &quot;players on fiddles,&quot; &quot;disturbers of the public
+conscience,&quot; &quot;persons who dance wantonly,&quot; &quot;blasphemers,&quot; etc. In England
+there were, in the year Eighteen Hundred, sixty-seven offenses punishable
+with death.</p>
+
+<p>What expression is right and what is not is largely a matter of opinion.
+Instrumental music has been to some a rock of offense, exciting the
+spirit, through the sense of hearing, to wrong thoughts&mdash;through &quot;the
+lascivious pleasing of a lute.&quot; Others think dancing wicked, while a few
+allow square dances, but condemn the waltz. Some sects allow pipe-organ
+music, but draw the line at the violin; while others, still, employ a
+whole orchestra in their religious service. Some there may be who regard
+pictures as implements of idolatry, while the Hook-and-Eye Baptists look
+upon buttons as immoral.</p><a name='V_Page_237'></a>
+
+<p>Strange evolutions are often witnessed within the life of one individual,
+as to what is right and what wrong. For instance, Leo Tolstoy, that great
+and good man, once a worldling, has now turned ascetic, a not unusual
+evolution in the lives of the saints. Not caring for harmony as expressed
+in color, form and sounds, Tolstoy is now quite willing to deprive all
+others of these things which minister to their well-being. There is in
+most souls a hunger for beauty, just as there is a physical hunger. Beauty
+speaks to their spirits through the senses; but Tolstoy would have his
+house barren to the verge of hardship, and he advocates that all other
+houses should be likewise. My veneration for Count Tolstoy is profound,
+but I mention him here simply to show the danger that lies in allowing any
+man, even one of the best, to dictate to us what is right.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the frightful cruelties inflicted on mankind during the past have
+arisen out of a difference of opinion arising through a difference in
+temperament. The question is as live today as it was two thousand years
+ago&mdash;what expression is best? That is, what shall we do to be saved? And
+concrete absurdity consists in saying we must all do the same thing.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the race will ever grow to a point where men will be willing to
+leave the matter of life-expression to the individual is a question. Most
+men are anxious to do what is best for themselves and least harmful for
+others. The average man now has intelligence enough!<a name='V_Page_238'></a> Utopia is not far
+off, if the self-appointed folk who govern us for a consideration would
+only be willing to do unto others as they would be done by, and cease
+coveting things that belong to other people. War among nations, and strife
+among individuals, is a result of the covetous spirit to possess either
+power or things, or both. A little more patience, a little more charity
+for all, a little more devotion, a little more love; with less bowing down
+to the past, a brave looking forward to the future, with more confidence
+in ourselves, and more faith in our fellows, and the race will be ripe for
+a great burst of light and life.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay has said that the Puritan did not condemn bear-baiting because it
+gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator. The
+Puritan regarded beauty as a pitfall and a snare: that which gave pleasure
+was a sin; he found his gratification in doing without things. Puritanism
+was a violent oscillation of the pendulum of life to the other side. From
+the vanity, pretense, affectation and sensualism of a Church and State
+bitten by corruption, we find the recoil in Puritanism.</p>
+
+<p>Asceticism to the verge of hardship, frankness bordering on rudeness, and
+a stolidity that was impolite; or soft, luxurious hypocrisy in a
+moth-eaten society&mdash;which shall it be? And Joseph Addison comes upon the
+scene and by the sincerity, graciousness and gentle excellence of his life
+and work, says, &quot;Neither!&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_239'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The little village of Wiltshire is noted as the birthplace of Addison, who
+was the son of a clergyman, afterward the Dean of Lichfield. An erstwhile
+resident of Lichfield, Samuel Johnson by name, once said of Joseph
+Addison, &quot;Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not
+coarse, elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the
+volumes of Addison.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For elegance, simplicity, insight, and a wit that is sharp but which never
+wounds, Addison has no rival, although more than two hundred years have
+come and gone since he ceased to write.</p>
+
+<p>Addison was a gentleman&mdash;the best example of a perfect gentleman that the
+history of English literature affords. And in letters it is much easier to
+find a genius than a gentleman. The field today is not at all over-worked;
+and those who wish to cultivate the art of being gentlemen will find no
+fearsome competition. In fact, the chief reason for not engaging in this
+line is the discomfort of isolation, and the lack of comradeship one is
+sure to suffer. To be gentle, generous, kind; to win by few words; and to
+disarm criticism and prejudice through the potency of a gracious presence,
+is a fine art. Books on etiquette will not serve the end, nor studious
+attempts to smile at the proper time, nor zealous efforts to avoid
+jostling the whims of those we meet; for to attempt to please is often to
+antagonize.</p>
+
+<p>Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise seem the three <a name='V_Page_240'></a>ingredients most needed in
+forming the gentle man. I place these elements according to their value.
+No man is great who does not possess Sympathy plus, and the greatness of
+men can safely be gauged by their sympathies. Sympathy and imagination are
+twin sisters. Your heart must go out to all men, the high, the low, the
+rich, the poor, the learned, the unlearned, the good, the bad, the wise,
+the foolish&mdash;you must be one with them all, else you can never comprehend
+them. Sympathy! It is the touchstone to every secret, the key to all
+knowledge, the open sesame of all hearts. Put yourself in the other man's
+place, and then you will know why he thinks certain thoughts and does
+certain deeds. Put yourself in his place, and your blame will dissolve
+itself into pity, and your tears will wipe out the record of his misdeeds.
+The saviors of the world have simply been men with wondrous Sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>But Knowledge must go with Sympathy, else the emotions will become maudlin
+and pity may be wasted on a poodle instead of a child; on a field-mouse
+instead of a human soul. Knowledge in use is wisdom, and wisdom implies a
+sense of values&mdash;you know a big thing from a little one, a valuable fact
+from a trivial one. Tragedy and comedy are simply questions of value: a
+little misfit in life makes us laugh, a great one is tragedy and cause for
+grief.</p>
+
+<p>Poise is the strength of body and strength of mind to control your
+Sympathy and your Knowledge. Unless <a name='V_Page_241'></a>you control your emotions they run
+over and you stand in the slop. Sympathy must not run riot, or it is
+valueless and tokens weakness instead of strength. In every hospital for
+nervous disorders are to be found many instances of this loss of control.
+The individual has Sympathy, but not Poise, and therefore his life is
+worthless to himself and to the world.</p>
+
+<p>He symbols inefficiency, not helpfulness. Poise reveals itself more in
+voice than in words; more in thought than in action; more in atmosphere
+than in conscious life. It is a spiritual quality, and is felt more than
+it is seen. It is not a matter of size, nor bodily attitude, nor attire,
+nor personal comeliness: it is a state of inward being, and of knowing
+your cause is just. And so you see it is a great and profound subject
+after all, great in its ramifications, limitless in extent, implying the
+entire science of right living. I once met a man who was deformed in body
+and little more than a dwarf, but who had such Spiritual Gravity&mdash;such
+Poise&mdash;that to enter a room where he was, was to feel his presence and
+acknowledge his superiority. To allow Sympathy to waste itself on unworthy
+subjects is to deplete one's life-forces. To conserve is the part of
+wisdom. No great orator ever exerts himself to his fullest, and reserve is
+a necessary element in all good literature, as well as in everything else.
+Poise being the control of your Sympathy and Knowledge implies the
+possession of these attributes, for without Sympathy and Knowledge you
+<a name='V_Page_242'></a>have nothing to control but your physical body. To practise Poise as a
+mere gymnastic exercise, or a study in etiquette, is to be self-conscious,
+stiff, preposterous and ridiculous. Those who cut such fantastic tricks
+before high heaven as make angels weep are men void of Sympathy and
+Knowledge trying to cultivate Poise. Their science is a mere matter of
+what to do with arms and legs. Poise is a question of spirit controlling
+flesh, heart controlling attitude. And so in the cultivation of Poise it
+is well to begin quite aways back. Let perfect love cast out fear; get rid
+of all secrets; have nothing in your heart to conceal; be gentle,
+generous, kind; do not bother to forgive your enemies&mdash;it is better to
+forget them, and cease conjuring them forth from your inner consciousness.
+The idea that you have enemies is egotism gone to seed. Get Knowledge by
+coming close to Nature, listening to her heart-beats, studying her ways.
+And let your heart go out to humanity by a desire to serve.</p>
+
+<p>That man is greatest who best serves his kind. Sympathy and Knowledge are
+for use&mdash;you acquire that you may give out; you accumulate that you may
+bestow. And as God has given you the sublime blessings of Sympathy and
+Knowledge, there will come to you the wish to reveal your gratitude by
+giving them out again, for the wise man knows that we retain spiritual
+qualities only as we give them away. Let your light shine. To him that
+hath shall be given. The exercise of wisdom <a name='V_Page_243'></a>brings wisdom; and at the
+last the infinitesimal quantity of man's knowledge, compared with the
+Infinite, and the meagerness of man's Sympathy when compared with the
+source from which ours is absorbed, will evolve an abnegation and a
+humility that will lend a perfect Poise. The Gentleman is a man with
+Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise; and as I sit here in this quiet corner,
+Joseph Addison seems to me to fit the requirements a little better than
+any other name I can recall.</p><a name='V_Page_244'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Born into a family where economy was a necessity, yet Addison had every
+advantage that good breeding and thorough tutorship could give.</p>
+
+<p>At Charterhouse School he won the affection of his teachers by his earnest
+wish to comply. The receptive spirit and the desire to please were his by
+inheritance. When fifteen he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where,
+within a year, his beauty, good nature and intelligence made his presence
+felt.</p>
+
+<p>In another year he was elected a scholar at Magdalen College, his
+recommendation being his skill in Latin versification.</p>
+
+<p>It was the hope and expectation of his parents that he should become a
+clergyman and follow in his father's footsteps. This also seems to have
+been the bent of the young man's mind. But the grace of his personality,
+his obliging disposition, with a sort of furtive ability to peer into a
+millstone as far as any, had attracted the attention of several statesmen.
+One of these, Charles Montague, afterward Lord Halifax, remarked, &quot;I am a
+friend of the Church, but I propose to do it the injury of keeping Addison
+out of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Montague discussed the matter with Lord Somers, and these two concluded
+that just a trifle more maturity of that gently ironical mind, a little
+more seasoning of the gracious personality, and the State would have in
+Joseph Addison a servant of untold value.</p><a name='V_Page_245'></a>
+
+<p>Thus we see that England's policy of selecting and training men for the
+consular and diplomatic service is no new thing. It is a wonder that
+America has not ere this profited by the example. The tradition holds that
+we must at least have a scholar and a gentleman for the Court of Saint
+James, and several times we have been put to straits to find the man. The
+only way is to breed them and then bring them up in the way they should
+go.</p>
+
+<p>But beyond the zealous desire of Montague and Lord Somers to educate good
+men for the diplomatic service, lurked the still more eager wish to secure
+able writers to plead and defend the party cause. With this phase of the
+question America is more familiar; the policy of rewarding able speakers
+and ready writers with offices ready made or made to order has come to us
+ably backed by precedent untold.</p>
+
+<p>Addison set himself to literary tasks, but still regarded himself as a
+scholar. Leisure fitted his temperament&mdash;he was never in haste, even when
+he was in a hurry, and he carried with him the air of having all the time
+there was. Nothing is so ungraceful as haste. Addison always had time to
+listen; and we make friends, not by explaining things to other folks, but
+by allowing others to explain to us.</p>
+
+<p>The habit of attentive, sympathetic listening came to Addison early in
+life. From his twenty-first to his twenty-seventh year he lived a studious
+life&mdash;idle, his <a name='V_Page_246'></a>father called it&mdash;writing essays, political pamphlets and
+Latin verse. His political friends took care that some of the output was
+purchased, so that he was assured a comfortable living; but his success
+was not sufficient to inflate his cosmos with an undue amount of ego.</p>
+
+<p>One small book of criticism which he produced about this time was
+entitled, &quot;Account of the English Poets.&quot; A significant feature of the
+work is that Shakespeare is not mentioned, even once, while Dryden is
+placed as the standard of excellence, just as in &quot;Modern Painters,&quot; Ruskin
+takes Turner and lets him stand for one hundred, and all other artists
+grade down from this.</p>
+
+<p>Addison merely reflected the taste of his time. Shakespeare was not
+thought any more of two hundred years ago than we think of him now, with
+this difference&mdash;that he is the author we now talk about and seldom read,
+but then they did not discuss him any more than we now go to see him
+played.</p>
+
+<p>An interesting character by the name of Jacob Tonson appears upon the
+scene, as a friend of Addison in his early days. Tonson enjoyed the
+distinction of being the father of the modern publishing business&mdash;the
+first man to bring out the works of authors at his own risk and then sell
+the product to bookstores. I believe it is Mr. Le Gallienne who has been
+so unkind as to speak of &quot;Barabbas Tonson.&quot; Among Tonson's many good
+strokes was his act in buying the copyright of &quot;Paradise<a name='V_Page_247'></a> Lost&quot; from
+Simmons, the bookseller, who had purchased all rights in the manuscript
+from the bereaved widow on a payment of eight pounds.</p>
+
+<p>Tonson appreciated good things in a literary way. He was on friendly terms
+with all the principal writers, and did much in bringing some shy writers
+to the front. Addison and Tonson laid great plans, few of which
+materialized, and some were carried out by other people&mdash;notably the
+compilation of an English Dictionary. In Sixteen Hundred Ninety-nine we
+find Addison, in possession of a pension of three hundred pounds a year,
+crossing the Channel into France with the object &quot;to travel and qualify
+himself to serve His Majesty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The diplomatic language of the world was French. With intent to learn the
+language, Addison made his home with a modest French family; and a better
+way of acquiring a language than this has never been devised. A young
+friend of mine, however, recently returned from Europe, tells me that the
+ideal plan is to make love to a vivacious French girl who can not speak
+English. Of the excellence of this plan I know nothing&mdash;it may be a mere
+barren ideality.</p>
+
+<p>A little over a year in France and we are told that &quot;Addison spoke the
+language like a native &quot;&mdash;a glib expression, still able-bodied, that means
+little or much. From France Addison followed down into Italy, and spent a
+year there, residing in various small towns with the same object in view
+that took him to France.</p><a name='V_Page_248'></a>
+
+<p>And one of his admirers relates that &quot;he learned to speak Italian
+perfectly, his pronunciation being marred only by a slight French accent.&quot;
+Addison's three years of foreign travel, and the friendly society of the
+highest and best wherever he journeyed, had caused him to blossom out into
+a most exceptional man. Nature had done much for him, but her best gift
+was the hospitable mind. Travel to many young men is the opportunity to
+indulge in a line of conduct not possible at home. But Addison, ripening
+slowly, appreciated the fact that the Puritan has a deal of truth on his
+side. There is a manly abstinence that is most becoming, and to moderate
+one's desires and partake of the good things of earth sparingly is the
+best way to garner their benefit. No doubt, too, Addison's modesty and
+tendency to shyness saved him from many a danger. &quot;Bashfulness is the
+tough husk in which genius ripens,&quot; says Emerson.</p>
+
+<p>Thus do we find our man at thirty, strong, manly, gifted, handsome,
+chivalrous, proud, yet tender, sympathetic, knowing&mdash;ready to serve his
+country in whatsoever capacity he could serve it best. When lo! the death
+of the King cut off his pension, a new party came in, his influential
+friends were thrown out of power, and Addison's prospects wilted in a
+single night.</p><a name='V_Page_249'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The fact is that Addison from his thirtieth to his fortieth year was
+little better than a denizen of Grub Street. Fortunately he was a
+bachelor, with no one but himself to support, else actual hardship might
+have entered. Several flattering offers to act as tutor or companion to
+rich men's sons came his way, and were declined in polite and gracious
+language; and once a suggestion that he wed a woman of wealth was tabled
+in a manner not quite so gracious. In passing, it is well to state that
+all of Addison's relations with women seem to have occupied a lofty plane
+of chivalry. His respect for the good name of woman was profound, and
+whether any woman ever broke through that fine reserve and exquisite
+formality is a question. He was intensely admired by women, of course, but
+it was from the other side of the drawing-room. He kept gush at bay, and
+never tempted to indiscretion.</p>
+
+<p>Addison's youth was past; he was creeping well into the thirties, and
+still with no prospects. He was out of money, with no profession, and no
+special reputation as a writer. The popular poets of the time were Sedley,
+Rochester, Buckingham and Dorset&mdash;and you have never heard of them? Well,
+it only shows how a literary reputation is a shadow that fades in a night.</p>
+
+<p>Addison had written his &quot;Cato&quot; several years before, but no one had seen
+it. He carried the manuscript about with him, as Goethe did his &quot;Faust,&quot;
+for years, and <a name='V_Page_250'></a>added to it, or erased, all according to the moods that
+came to him. And we have reason to believe that the sublime soliloquy in
+&quot;Cato&quot; was written by Addison when the blankness of his prospects and the
+blackness of the future had forced the question of self-destruction upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Cato made a great mistake in committing suicide&mdash;he did the deed right on
+the eve of success&mdash;he should have waited. Addison waited.</p>
+
+<p>At this time Lord Godolphin, who had the happiness to have a great
+racehorse named after him, occupied the chief place in the Ministry.
+Marlborough had just fought the battle of Blenheim, and it was Godolphin's
+wish to have the victory sung in adequate verse, for history's sake and
+for the sake of the political party. But he could not think of a poet who
+was equal to the task; so in his dilemma he called in Lord Halifax, who
+had a reputation for knowing good things in a literary way.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Halifax was unfortunate in having his portrait transmitted by two
+poets who hated him thoroughly, each for the amply sufficient reason that
+he failed to confer the favors that were much desired. Swift calls Halifax
+&quot;a would-be M&aelig;cenas&quot;; and Pope refers to him as &quot;penurious, mean and
+chicken-hearted,&quot; satirizing him in the well-known character of Bufo.</p>
+
+<p>Do not take the poets too seriously: all good men have had mud-balls
+thrown at them&mdash;sometimes bricks&mdash;and<a name='V_Page_251'></a> Halifax was not a bad man by any
+means. Let the poets make copy of their thwarted hopes.</p>
+
+<p>In reply to Lord Godolphin's inquiries, Halifax said he did indeed know
+the man who could celebrate the victory in verse, and in fact there was
+only one man in England who could do the task justice. He, however,
+refused to divulge his man's identity until a suitable reward for the poet
+was fixed upon.</p>
+
+<p>Godolphin finally thought of an office in the Excise, worth three hundred
+pounds a year or more.</p>
+
+<p>Halifax then stipulated that the negotiations must be carried on directly
+between the Government and the poet, otherwise the poet's pride would
+rebel. Godolphin agreed to shield Halifax from all mention in the matter,
+and the name and address of Joseph Addison were then taken down.</p>
+
+<p>Godolphin had never heard of Addison, but relying on Halifax, he sent
+Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the address named, where Addison
+was found over a haberdasher's, up three flights, back. The account comes
+from Pope, who was the enemy of both Addison and Halifax, and can
+therefore be relied upon.</p>
+
+<p>The Chancellor of the Exchequer broached the subject, was gently repulsed,
+the case was argued, and being put on the plane of duty the poet
+surrendered, and as a result we have Addison's poem, &quot;The Campaign.&quot; It
+was considered a great literary feat in its day, but like all things
+performed to order, comes tardy off. Only <a name='V_Page_252'></a>work done in love lives. But
+Addison slid into the Excise office, taking it as legal tender. This
+brought him into relationship with Godolphin, who one day exclaimed, &quot;I
+thought that man Addison was nothing but a poet&mdash;I'm a rogue if he isn't
+really a great man!&quot; Lord Godolphin was needing a good man, a man of
+address, polish, tact and education. And Addison was selected to fill the
+office of Under-Secretary of State, the place for which he had fitted
+himself and to which he had aspired eight years before. Moral: Be
+prepared.</p>
+
+<p>The party that called Addison was not the one to which he was supposed to
+be attached, but his merits were recognized, his help was needed, and so
+he was sent for. It was a great compliment. But good men are always
+needed&mdash;they were then, and the demand is greater now than ever before.
+The highest positions are hard to fill&mdash;good men are scarce.</p>
+
+<p>Addison's knowledge, his modesty, his willingness, his caution, his grace
+of manner, fitted him exactly for the position; and we have reason to
+believe that the salary of one thousand pounds a year was very acceptable
+to one in his situation.</p>
+
+<p>In another year the Whigs had grown stronger; Halifax was again a
+recognized power; and erelong we find Addison entering Parliament. So
+great was his popularity that he was elected from one district six times,
+representing Malmesbury until his death.</p>
+
+<p>It was stated by Congreve that Addison's habit of <a name='V_Page_253'></a>shyness was an
+affectation. If so, it was a good stroke, for nothing is so becoming in a
+man known to be versatile and strong as a half-embarrassment when in
+society. The Duke of Wellington's awkwardness in a drawing-room put all
+others at their ease. The eternal fitness of things demands that when
+greatness is in evidence some one should be embarrassed, and if the
+celebrity is &quot;it,&quot; so much the better.</p>
+
+<p>Personally, I feel sure that Addison's shyness was not feigned, for on the
+only occasion he ever attempted to speak ex-tempore in Parliament he
+muffed the subject, forgot his theme, and sat down in confusion. With all
+his incisive thought and fine command of language, Addison could not think
+on his feet. And as if aware of his limitations, in one of the &quot;Spectator&quot;
+essays he said, with more or less truth, &quot;The fluent orator, ready to
+speak on any topic, is never profound, and when once his thought is cold
+it will seldom repay examination&mdash;it was only a skyrocket.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_254'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Without Addison's literary reputation, resting upon his essays published
+in the &quot;Tatler&quot; and the &quot;Spectator,&quot; it is very possible that we would now
+know about as much concerning him as we do about Sir John Hawkins. The
+&quot;Tatler&quot; and the &quot;Spectator&quot; allowed him to express his best, and in his
+own way.</p>
+
+<p>With the name of Addison is inseparably coupled that of Richard Steele.
+These men had a literary style which they held in partnership. The nearest
+approach to it in our time is the &quot;Easy Chair&quot; of George William Curtis.
+Curtis was once called by Lowell, with a goodly degree of justice, &quot;our
+modern Addison.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Steele and Addison had been schoolmates at the Charterhouse, and friends
+for a lifetime. They were of the same age within a year. Steele had been a
+soldier and an adventurer, and his disposition was decidedly convivial. He
+was a clever writer, knowing the world of politics and society, but he
+lacked the spiritual and artistic qualities which Addison's moderate and
+studious life had fostered. But on simple themes, where the argument did
+not rise above the commonplace, Addison and Steele wrote exactly alike,
+just as all writers on the &quot;Sun&quot; used to write like Dana. Steele had
+filled the lowest office in the Ministry, the office of &quot;Gazeteer&quot;: the
+duties of the office being to issue a newspaper giving the official news
+of the day. It was a licensed monopoly, and all infringers were severely
+punished.</p><a name='V_Page_255'></a>
+
+<p>Steele, however, did not like the office, because the Powers demanded that
+all writing in the &quot;Gazette&quot; be very innocent and very insipid. &quot;To
+publish a newspaper and say nothing is no easy task,&quot; said Steele. Had he
+lived in our day he could have seen the trick performed on every hand.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the office of Gazetteer was abolished, and any man who wished
+might issue a &quot;gazette,&quot; provided he kept within proper bounds. The result
+was a flight of small leaflet periodicals, quite like the Chapbook
+Renaissance of Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five and Eighteen Hundred
+Ninety-six, when over eleven hundred &quot;brownie&quot; and &quot;chipmunk&quot; magazines
+were started in America. Every man with two or three ideas and ten
+dollars' capital started a magazine. Steele, teeming with thoughts
+demanding expression, at war with smug society, and possessing wit withal,
+started the &quot;Tatler,&quot; to be issued three times a week, price one penny.
+Seizing upon a creation of Swift's, &quot;Isaac Bickerstaff,&quot; a character
+already known to the public, was introduced as editor. Bickerstaff
+announced his assistants, and among others named as authority in Foreign
+Affairs a waiter at Saint James Coffeehouse known as &quot;Kidney.&quot; The spirit
+of rollicking freedom in the publication, with a touch of philosophy, and
+a dash of culture, caught the public fancy at once. The &quot;Tatler&quot; was the
+theme in every coffeehouse, and in the drawing-rooms, as well. Those who
+understood it <a name='V_Page_256'></a>laughed and passed it along to others who pretended they
+understood, and so it became the fad. Then the anonymity lent the charm of
+mystery&mdash;who could it be who was into all the secrets, and knew the world
+so thoroughly?</p>
+
+<p>Addison read each issue with surprise and amusement, but it was not until
+the fifth number that he located the author positively, by reading an
+observation of his own that he had voiced to Steele some weeks before.
+Steele absorbed everything, digested it, and gave the good out as his own,
+innocent and probably unmindful of where he got it. This accounts for his
+wonderful versatility: he made others grub and used the net result.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago Francis Wilson made a mock complaint to the effect that
+whenever he met Eugene Field in the &quot;Saints and Sinners Corner&quot; for a
+half-hour's chat, any good thing he might voice was duly printed next day
+in the &quot;Sharps and Flats&quot; column as Field's very own, and thus did the
+genial Eugene acquire his reputation as a genius. All of which gentle
+gibing contains more fact than fiction.</p>
+
+<p>When Addison saw his bright thoughts appearing in the &quot;Tatler,&quot; he went to
+Steele and said, &quot;Here, I'll write that out myself and save you the
+trouble.&quot; Steele welcomed him with open arms. The first &quot;Tatler&quot; article
+written by Addison relates to the distress of news-writers at the prospect
+of peace. This is exactly in Steele's style; but we find erelong in the
+&quot;Tatler&quot;<a name='V_Page_257'></a> a spiritual quality that was not a part of Steele's nature. From
+current gossip and easy society commonplace, the tone is exalted, and this
+we know was the result of Addison's influence. Out of two hundred
+seventy-one articles in the &quot;Tatler,&quot; one hundred eighty-eight were
+produced by Steele and forty-two by Addison. Yet Steele was wise enough to
+perceive the superior quality of Addison's work, and this dictated the key
+in which the magazine was pitched. Yet the fertility of Steele surpassed
+that of Addison. Steele initiated the crusade against gambling, dueling
+and vice; and this was all very natural, for he simply inveighed against
+sins with which experience had made him familiar. His moral essays were
+all written in periods of repentance. His sharp tirades on dueling in one
+instance approached the point of personality, and on being criticized, he
+resented the interference and expressed a willingness to fight his man
+with pistols at ten paces. It must not be forgotten that Richard Steele
+was an Irishman.</p>
+
+<p>The political tone of the &quot;Tatler&quot; favored the Marlborough administration,
+and on this account Steele was rewarded with a snug office under the wing
+of the State. In Seventeen Hundred Ten, the Whig Ministry fell, but Lord
+Harley knew the value of Steele as a writer, and so notified him that he
+would not be disturbed in possession of his Stamp Office.</p>
+
+<p>Now, a complete silence concerning things political in the &quot;Tatler&quot; was
+hardly possible, and a change of <a name='V_Page_258'></a>front would be humiliating, and whether
+to give up the &quot;Tatler&quot; or the office&mdash;that was the question! Addison was
+in the same box. The offices they held brought them in twice as much money
+as the little periodical, and either the patronage or the paper would have
+to go. They decided to abandon the &quot;Tatler.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the habit of writing sticks to a man; and after two months Steele and
+Addison began to feel the necessity of some outlet for their pent-up
+thoughts. They had each grown with their work, and were aware of it. They
+would start a new paper, and make it a daily; and they would keep clear of
+politics. So we find the &quot;Spectator&quot; duly launched with the intended
+purpose of forming &quot;a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art
+and literature.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Every good thing has its prototype, and Addison in Italy had become
+familiar with the force of &quot;Manners&quot; by Casa, and the &quot;Courtier&quot; by
+Castiglione. Then he knew the character of La Bruyere, and this gave the
+cue for the Spectator Club, with Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew
+Freeport, Will Honeycomb, Captain Sentry and the Templar.</p>
+
+<p>Swift had contributed several papers to the &quot;Tatler,&quot; but he found the
+&quot;Spectator&quot; too soft and feminine for his fancy. Probably Steele and
+Addison were afraid of the doughty Dean's style; there was too much
+vitriol in it for popularity&mdash;and they kept the Irish parson at a
+distance, as certain letters to &quot;Stella&quot; seem to indicate.<a name='V_Page_259'></a> The
+&quot;Spectator&quot; was a notable success from the start and soon put Steele and
+Addison in comfortable financial shape.</p>
+
+<p>After the first year the daily issue amounted to fourteen thousand copies.
+Addison introduced the &quot;Answers to Correspondents&quot; scheme.</p>
+
+<p>He has had many imitators along this line, some of whom yet endure, but
+they are not Addisons.</p>
+
+<p>An imitation of the &quot;Spectator&quot; was started as a daily in New York in
+Eighteen Hundred Ninety-eight. In one week it ran short on phosphorus and
+was obliged to quit. It took two years for Steele and Addison to write
+themselves out, and rather than let the quality of the periodical decline
+they discontinued its publication, quitting like the wise men they were at
+the height of their success.</p><a name='V_Page_260'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>When Addison's tragedy of &quot;Cato&quot; was produced in Seventeen Hundred
+Thirteen, he occupied the first place in English letters. The play was a
+dazzling success; and it is a great play yet. It lives as literature among
+the best things men have ever done&mdash;a masterpiece!</p>
+
+<p>Addison still continued in the service of the State, and wrote more or
+less in a political way. The strain of carrying on the &quot;Spectator&quot; and the
+stress of political affairs had tired the man. The spring had gone out of
+his intellect, and he began to talk of some quiet retreat in the country.
+In Seventeen Hundred Sixteen, in his forty-fourth year, he married the
+Countess of Warwick, a widow of fifteen years' standing. We have reason to
+believe that the worthy widow did the courting and literally took our good
+man captive. He was depressed and worn, and longed for rest and gentle,
+sympathetic companionship. She promised all these&mdash;the buxom creature&mdash;and
+married him, taking him to her home at Holland House. Yes, it would be
+unjust to blame her; doubtless she wished to do for the man what was best;
+and so report has it that she exercised a discipline over his hours of
+work and recreation and curtailed a little there and issued orders here,
+until the poor patient rebelled and fled to the coffeehouses. There he
+found the rollicking society that he so despised&mdash;and loved, for there was
+comradeship in it, and comradeship was what he prayed for. His wife did
+not comprehend <a name='V_Page_261'></a>that delicate, spiritual quality of his heart: that
+craving for sympathy which came after he had given out so much. He wanted
+peace, quiet and rest; but she wished to take him forth and exhibit him to
+the throng. Yet all of her admonitions that he &quot;brace up&quot; were in vain.
+His work was done. He foresaw the end, and grew impatient that it did not
+come. Placid, resigned, sane to the last hour, he passed away at Holland
+House, June Seventeenth, Seventeen Hundred Nineteen, aged forty-seven. His
+body, lying in state, was viewed by more than ten thousand people, and
+then it was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='ROBERT_SOUTHEY'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_262'></a><a name='V_Page_263'></a>ROBERT SOUTHEY</h2>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'><a name='V_Page_264'></a>
+<span class='i8'>Let no man write<br /></span>
+<span>Thy epitaph, Emmett; thou shalt not go<br /></span>
+<span>Without thy funeral strain! O young and good,<br /></span>
+<span>And wise, though erring here, thou shalt not go<br /></span>
+<span>Unhonored or unsung. And better thus<br /></span>
+<span>Beneath that undiscriminating stroke,<br /></span>
+<span>Better to fall, than to have lived to mourn,<br /></span>
+<span>As sure thou wouldst, in misery and remorse,<br /></span>
+<span>Thine own disastrous triumph * * * *<br /></span>
+<span>How happier thus, in that heroic mood<br /></span>
+<span>That takes away the sting of death, to die,<br /></span>
+<span>By all the good and all the wise forgiven!<br /></span>
+<span>Yea, in all ages by the wise and good<br /></span>
+<span>To be remembered, mourned, and honored still!<br /></span>
+<span class='i17'>&mdash;<i>Southey to Robert Emmett</i><br /></span>
+</div></div><a name='V_Page_265'></a>
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-10.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-10-th.jpg" alt="ROBERT SOUTHEY"></a></p><p class="ctr">ROBERT SOUTHEY</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Most generally, when I travel, I go alone&mdash;this to insure being in good
+company. To travel with another is a terrible risk: it puts a great strain
+on the affections.</p>
+
+<p>I once made the tour of Scotland with a man who was traveling for his
+health. He had kidney-trouble belief. I had known the man in a casual way
+for several years, and we started out the best of friends, anticipating a
+good time. We were gone three weeks, and when we got back I hated the
+fellow thoroughly, and I have every reason to believe that he fully
+reciprocated the sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>And yet he was an honest man, and I am, too, although not an extremist.
+There was nothing to quarrel about; it began at Euston Station, where I
+bought third-class tickets. He said he preferred to ride first-class, or
+second, at least&mdash;there was such a thing as false economy.</p>
+
+<p>I asked him why he had not said something along this line before I had
+purchased the tickets.</p>
+
+<p>He retorted that I had not consulted his preference in the matter. I
+brought in a mild rejoinder by moving the previous question, and showing
+that he, himself, had proposed that I should take entire charge of <a name='V_Page_266'></a>the
+arrangements, using my own good judgment at all times.</p>
+
+<p>He said something about his error in supposing he was traveling with a
+discerning person. Just then the guard came along, slamming the doors, and
+we were pushed into a third-class carriage, where we enjoyed an all-day
+journey together.</p>
+
+<p>At Edinburgh my companion wished to ascend the Scott monument, visit a
+friend at the University, and buy a plaid rug at one of the shops in
+Princess Street; while I proposed to look up the footprints of Bobbie
+Burns and John Knox. He said, &quot;Confound John Knox!&quot; I answered, &quot;You
+evidently think I am referring to Knox the Hatter!&quot; He grew mad as a
+hatter, and I had to defend John Knox, and later had to do the same for
+Rab and his friends, as well as for Christopher North.</p>
+
+<p>And so it went&mdash;he pooh-poohed my heroes; and I scorned the friend he
+wished to find at the University, smiled patronizingly on the Scott
+monument, and said, &quot;hoot mon&quot; at the idea of buying a plaid rug in
+Princess Street.</p>
+
+<p>All this was many years ago; since then I have been very cautious about
+entering into any Anglo-American alliances. Yet to travel alone often
+seems to be dropping something out of your life. When the voyage is rough,
+the weather bad and the fare below par, my spirits always rise. I say to
+myself: &quot;My son, this is <a name='V_Page_267'></a>certainly tough&mdash;but who cares! We can stand it,
+we have had this way right along year after year&mdash;but just imagine your
+plight if there were some one in your charge expecting a good time!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then I drink to Boreas and all the fiends of Gehenna, and am supremely
+content.</p>
+
+<p>But suppose the night is resplendent with stars, the waves tremulous with
+reflected beauty, and as the great ship goes gliding across the
+deep&mdash;proud, strong and tireless&mdash;there come to you thoughts sublime and
+emotions such as Wagner knew when he wrote the &quot;Pilgrims' Chorus.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But you are not happy, simply because you want to tell some one how happy
+you are. What is the starlight for, save to call some one's attention to,
+or the phosphorescent sheen except to be pointed out and enjoyed by two?
+Exquisite beauty, as revealed in music, painting, sculpture or beautiful
+scenery, affects me at times to tears; and there always comes creeping
+into my life a profound sadness, a dread homesickness, to think that in
+this wealth of peace and joy I am alone&mdash;alone.</p>
+
+<p>Can you stand by yourself on a hillside and look across a beautiful little
+lake to the woods beyond; or walk through a pine-forest, where the needles
+sink as a carpet beneath your feet, and the air is full of the pungent
+odor of the pine, and the gently swaying tree-tops overhead croon you a
+lullaby&mdash;can you enjoy all this without <a name='V_Page_268'></a>an exquisite melancholy, and a
+joy that hurts, piercing your soul? It's homesickness, that's all; you
+want to go home and tell some one how happy you are. Give me solitude,
+sweet solitude, but in my solitude give me still one friend to whom I may
+murmur, Solitude is sweet.</p><a name='V_Page_269'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>That about the sea and the forest, the wooded hillside and the little lake
+may not be the exact words, but the thought is there just as White Pigeon
+expressed it to me that evening when we sat on the mossy bank of the lake
+at Grasmere and threw pebbles into the water.</p>
+
+<p>I had come up from Liverpool to Bowness, walked over to Ambleside and
+along the lake to Grasmere. My luggage consisted of a comb, a toothbrush
+and a stout second-growth East Aurora hickory stick.</p>
+
+<p>At Grasmere I applied at the Red Lion Inn for supper and lodging. The
+landlady looked at my dusty, rusty corduroys, paused, coughed and asked
+where my luggage was. Wishing to be honest, I displayed the luggage
+aforementioned. She did not smile. She was a large person, sober, sedate,
+sincere and also serious, with a big bunch of keys dangling from a waist
+that once was Grecian. And she told me right there that if I wanted
+accommodations I would have to pay in advance. I demurred, pleaded and
+finally explained that I had lost my money and had sent to New York for a
+remittance, I was a remittance-man. Had this been true, it were sad, yet I
+had a hundred pounds sterling in my belt; but it just came to me to see
+how it would feel to be penniless and friendless and plead for charity. It
+is not hard to plead for charity when one has a pocket full of money.</p>
+
+<p>So I pleaded. But it was of no avail.</p>
+
+<p>I requested a drink of water. This was denied. Then I <a name='V_Page_270'></a>asked if I could
+wash in the lake; and this favor was granted, and the advice volunteered
+that it would be a good thing to do. And further the kind lady made a
+motion toward a dangling red tassel that hung from a rope, and suggested
+that I get me to a gunnery and quickly, too, otherwise she would have to
+call the porter.</p>
+
+<p>I felt to see that my money was all right&mdash;to assure myself it was no jest
+in earnest&mdash;and departed. Being singularly psychic to suggestion I
+followed the thought that I wash in the lake, and started in that
+direction, along a footpath that led across a meadow, over a stile. A
+thick growth of bushes lined the lake for aways, and then the footpath
+seemed to follow right through the undergrowth. I pushed the green
+branches aside, and continued along for about a hundred feet, when I stood
+on the green, grass-covered bank of the beautiful &quot;Windermere.&quot; Daffodils
+lined the water's edge&mdash;the daffodils of Wordsworth&mdash;down the lake were
+the white wings of several sailboats; the sun had gone down, but his long
+rays of gold still pierced the sky, while across the water arose, silent
+and majestic, the dark purple hills.</p>
+
+<p>It was a beautiful sight&mdash;so full of quiet and peace and rest. I stood
+with hat in hand, the evening breeze fanning my face, enjoying the scene.
+Just then there was a little splash in the water, and looking down I saw a
+woman with back toward me sitting on a boulder, <a name='V_Page_271'></a>tossing pebbles into the
+lake. By the side of the woman were her hat and book. I was on the point
+of softly backing out through the bushes, when it came to me that I had
+seen that head with its big coil of brown hair somewhere else&mdash;but where,
+ah, where!</p>
+
+<p>Why, in Paris, two years before. It was White Pigeon.</p>
+
+<p>She had not seen me. I retraced my steps, and then came crashing through
+the juniper, straight over to the bankside, where I sat down about twenty
+feet from the good lady. I was whistling violently and throwing pebbles
+into the water, not even glancing toward her. She let me whistle for a
+full minute and then said gently: &quot;Do not be absurd! I know you.&quot; Then we
+both laughed, and I, of course, did the regulation thing, and asked, &quot;When
+did you arrive, and where are you going, and how do you like it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You see what I am doing here, and as for when I arrived and how long I'll
+stay, and how I like it&mdash;what difference is it? There, you are surprised
+to see me, aren't you? I thought you had gotten past being surprised at
+anything, long ago&mdash;only silly people are surprised&mdash;you once said it,
+yourself!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then White Pigeon ceased to speak and we simply gazed into each other's
+eyes. White Pigeon has gray eyes that sometimes are blue and sometimes
+amber&mdash;it all depends upon her mood and the thoughts reflected there. The
+long, sober gaze stole off into a half-smile and she said, &quot;You got things
+awfully mixed up in that<a name='V_Page_272'></a> Rosa Bonheur booklet&mdash;why not stick to truth?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truth,&quot; I replied, &quot;is hideous, and facts are like some men, stubborn
+things. But what was the matter with the Bonheur Little Journey?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will not be angry with me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How could I be?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You promise?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you said my cousin was a conductor on the Lake Shore&mdash;you knew
+perfectly well it was the Michigan Central!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I apologized.</p>
+
+<p>It had been two years since I had seen this woman, and not a letter had
+passed between us. I had sent her a book now and then, and she had sent me
+a sketch or two.</p>
+
+<p>White Pigeon knows nothing about me, and never asked concerning my
+history, which is a blank, my lord! Does the lily inquire of the
+humming-bird, &quot;Hast hummed and fluttered about other flowers?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That is a charming friendship that asks nothing, makes no demands, needs
+no assurances, never falters, and is so frank that it disarms prudery and
+pretense.</p>
+
+<p>I said as much.</p>
+
+<p>White Pigeon made no answer, but flung a pebble into the lake.</p>
+
+<p>And all I know of White Pigeon is that she was born in White Pigeon,
+Michigan, and had left there ten years <a name='V_Page_273'></a>before to study art for a short
+time in Paris. The short time extended to ten years.</p>
+
+<p>White Pigeon does not call herself an artist&mdash;she only copies pictures in
+the Louvre and gives lessons. &quot;Not being able to paint, I give lessons,&quot;
+she once said to me. The first pictures she copied were sold to kind
+gentlemen who make many wagons at South Bend, Indiana; other pictures went
+to men who have interests at Ivorydale; and some have gone to the
+mill-owner at Ypsilanti, for the mill-owner is interested in art, as all
+patrons of the &quot;Hum Journal&quot; know.</p>
+
+<p>White Pigeon lived at Paris because one must needs live somewhere, and
+rich Americans sometimes send her their daughters to &quot;finish.&quot; That was
+what took her over to the Lake District&mdash;she was traveling with two young
+women from Grand Rapids. And so these three women were doing Great
+Britain, and White Pigeon was acting as courier, chaperone and instructor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I need 'finish,'&quot; I suggested in one of the long pauses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was just going to suggest it,&quot; said the lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You say you are going to Southey's old home tomorrow&mdash;may I go, too?&quot; I
+ventured.</p>
+
+<p>And the answer was, &quot;Of course&mdash;if you will promise not to work me up into
+copy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I promised.</p>
+
+<p>I found lodgings that night at &quot;Nab Cottage.&quot; Being well recommended, the
+landlady did not hesitate, but gave me the best accommodations her house
+afforded.</p><a name='V_Page_274'></a>
+
+<p>Hartley Coleridge does not live at &quot;Nab Cottage&quot; now&mdash;a moss-covered slab
+marks his resting-place up at the Grasmere Churchyard, and only a step
+away in a very straight row are similar old headstones that token the
+graves of William, Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth. Hartley Coleridge had most
+of the weaknesses of his father, and only a few of his better traits. Yet
+Southey brought up the children of Coleridge and gave them just as good
+advantages as he did his own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not 'advantages' that make great men&mdash;it is disadvantages!&quot; said
+White Pigeon. We were eating breakfast at the table set out under the
+arbor, back of the Coleridge cottage&mdash;Grace, Myrtle, White Pigeon and I.</p>
+
+<p>Grace and Myrtle were the Grand Rapids girls, and fine girls, too&mdash;pink
+and twenty, with diaries and autograph-fans. Girls of that age are
+charming, but they only interest me as do beautiful kittens or colts.
+Women do not become wise or discreet until they are past thirty. White
+Pigeon was past thirty.</p>
+
+<p>We took the stage that morning at nine o'clock for Keswick. The stage
+started from the Red Lion Inn. It is a great event&mdash;the starting of a
+four-horse stage. The guests came out, and so did the boots, and
+chamber-maids and waiters, and the cook came also. They stood in line and
+bade the parting guests godspeed, and all the guests were supposed to
+express gratitude tangibly. The landlady was busy, flying about like a
+Plymouth<a name='V_Page_275'></a> Rock hen with a brood of ducks. She saw me handing up the
+pink-and-white Grace and Myrtle and the dignified, tailor-made White
+Pigeon, and she came out and apologized profusely for not having had room
+to accommodate me the night before.</p>
+
+<p>At last all the hatboxes and bloomin' luggage were safely stowed, the
+trunks were lashed in place behind, and I climbed to the top of the stage
+and took my seat beside my charges. A merry blast was blown from the
+tallyho horn. A man with a red coat, high white hat, kid gloves and a
+brick-dust complexion mounted the box and gathered up a big handful of
+reins. The hostlers at the heads of the leaders let go, twenty feet of
+whiplash went singing through the air&mdash;and we were off!</p>
+
+<p>We swung through the village with more majesty and clatter than the Empire
+State Express ever assumed, stopping just an instant at the post-office
+for a bag of mail that the brick-dusty driver caught with his feet, and
+then away we went.</p>
+
+<p>I am sorry I did not live in stagecoach times&mdash;things are now so dead and
+dreary and prosaic. Yet I sometimes have imagined that today the
+stagecoach business in England is a little stagey&mdash;many things are done to
+heighten effects. For instance, the intense excitement of starting is not
+exactly necessary&mdash;why the mad rush? No one is really in a hurry to reach
+a certain place at a certain time! And all this is apparent when <a name='V_Page_276'></a>you
+notice that a mile out of town the pace subsides to a lazy dog-trot, and
+the boots has jumped down and unchecked each horse so as to make things
+easy. I was glad the boots got down, for whenever I see a horse's head
+checked up in the air my impulse is to uncheck him&mdash;and once on Wabash
+Avenue in Chicago I did.</p>
+
+<p>I was arrested, and it cost me five.</p>
+
+<p>The road to Keswick bristles with history. Coleridge, Wordsworth and
+Southey tramped it many a time, and since their day, thousands of literary
+pilgrims have come this way. That two poets-laureate should have come from
+this beautiful corner of the earth of course is interesting, but the honor
+of being poet-laureate to the King is a shifting honor, depending upon the
+poet. No title can ever really honor a man, although a man may honor a
+title, and no King by taking thought can add a cubit to a subject's
+stature. The man is what he is. Southey succeeded the poet Pye, who was
+laureate before him.</p>
+
+<p>A weaker nature than mine might here succumb to temptation and play
+pleasant philological pranks concerning the poet Pye, but I am above all
+that. Pye was a good man, and if I could remember any of the lines he
+wrote, I would here introduce them; but this is doubtless unnecessary, for
+the gentle reader can recall to suit.</p>
+
+<p>White Pigeon claimed that Pye was greater than Southey, and she further
+said that Tennyson's reputation suffered by consenting to act as successor
+to this <a name='V_Page_277'></a>line of men in whom felicity and insight were the exception. The
+tierce of Canary was no pay for acting as successor to Pye, but Southey
+jumped at the Canary and slipped his last vestige of radicalism quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, what a funny little church,&quot; exclaimed Myrtle; &quot;can't we stop and go
+in?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is a curious little building&mdash;that church at Wythburn.</p>
+
+<p>It looks like a little girl's playhouse, that might have belonged to her
+great-great-grandmother.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite this lovely little church is a tavern, where a lovely barmaid in
+white apron and lovely collar and cuffs stood in the doorway, ready to
+serve the thirsty. The red-coated driver pulled in on the tavern side, and
+men in neckerchiefs, hobnailed shoes, blue woolen stockings and
+knee-breeches made fussy haste to water the horses. Old Brick-Dusty
+climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and
+Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn
+Church. There isn't another church in England so peculiar and so
+interesting. A pew is marked sacred to Wordsworth, and one also to Harriet
+Martineau, who I did not know before ever went to church. The silver
+service was the gift of Southey, and is inscribed with his name and crest.
+Southey was a vestryman of Wythburn Church for many years, and sometimes
+read the service there. I stood in the pulpit where Southey stood, and so
+did White Pigeon, and I <a name='V_Page_278'></a>reminded her that she would never be allowed
+there on Sunday, for Deity is most easily approached and influenced by
+men, as all theologians know and have ever stoutly held. One of the busy
+hostlers came in, pulling his forelock, and apologizing, in a voice full
+of cobwebs, said that the coach was ready to start. We did the proper
+thing, and also as much for the red-coated driver, who, in spite of great
+dignity, we saw was open to reward for well-doing. It was a great mistake,
+though, to &quot;cross his palm,&quot; for he began a lecture on the Cumberland
+Kings, that lasted until we got to Thirlmere, where he stopped at the
+Pumping-Station, and told us how the city of Manchester got its
+water-supply from here. To him all things were equally interesting. He was
+still deep in the fight between Manchester aldermen and the 'Ouse of
+Commons when we reached Castle Rigg. The Vale of Keswick opened before us.
+We implored the well-informed driver to stop, and then we got down and
+begged him to go on without us.</p>
+
+<p>Seated there on the bankside we viewed the beautiful scene of lake, valley
+and village stretching out so peacefully before us, all framed in the dark
+towering hills. Even Grace forgot to say, &quot;How lovely!&quot; but sat there,
+chin in hand, rapt and speechless.</p>
+
+<p>Down in that valley, just a little to one side of the village, Southey
+lived for over forty years, and all the visitors he really liked he took
+to Castle Rigg, to show them as he said, &quot;the kingdoms of the earth.&quot; It
+was <a name='V_Page_279'></a>a view of which he never tired. Coleridge came up this way first, and
+took lodgings with a Mr. Johnson, who owned Greta Hall. It is not on
+record that Coleridge paid any rent, but he was so charmed with the
+location that he induced Southey to come and visit him. Southey came and
+liked it so well that he remained. He performed here a life-task that
+staggers one to contemplate: fifty volumes or more of closely set type are
+shown you at the Keswick Museum, duly labeled, &quot;The Works of Southey,&quot;
+Charles Lamb's &quot;Works&quot; were the East India ledgers, but he wrote one
+little book of Essays that are still sweet and fresh as
+wood-violets&mdash;essays written hot from the heart, often in tears; written
+because he could not help it, or to please Mary&mdash;he did not know which.</p>
+
+<p>No man ever divided his time up more systematically than Southey. He
+produced political and theological essays, histories, poems, diatribes,
+apologies and criticisms, and worked as men work in the Carnegie
+Consolidated Steel Works.</p>
+
+<p>Robert Southey was the precocious son of a Bristol linen-draper. Being
+rather delicate, his parents did not set him to work in a drygoods-store,
+but gave him the benefit of Oxford. The thing that brought him first into
+prominence was an article he wrote for &quot;The Flaggellant,&quot; a college paper,
+wherein he ridiculed the idea of a devil. Now the powers did not like
+that&mdash;the creed called for a &quot;personal devil,&quot; and they wanted <a name='V_Page_280'></a>one. They
+summoned young Southey before them to account for speaking disrespectfully
+of the devil. The youth was found guilty and expelled.</p>
+
+<p>He was a reckless young man, but recklessness is its own check&mdash;in fact,
+all things in life are self-regulating, everything is limited. Southey's
+secret marriage with Edith Fricker tamed him. Nothing tames men like
+marriage; and when babies came, and Coleridge went to Germany, leaving
+Mrs. Coleridge and young Hartley in his charge, Southey realized he was
+dealing with a condition, not a theory. Then soon he had the widowed Mrs.
+Lovell with her brood on his hands, and his old dream of pantisocracy was
+realized, only not just as he expected.</p>
+
+<p>Too much can not be said for the patience and unflinching fidelity shown
+by Southey in shouldering the burdens that Fate sent him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Any man can succeed with three good women to help him!&quot; said White
+Pigeon.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;True,&quot; said I, &quot;and next in importance to the person who originates a
+good thing is the one who quotes it.&quot; Men weighted with responsibilities
+fight for the established order. Southey's pension and his steady income
+came from the men in power, and he made it his business not to offend
+them. Southey was a scholar; he associated with educated people; and once
+he complained because he could not get acquainted with workingmen&mdash;they
+shut up like clams on his approach. Of course they <a name='V_Page_281'></a>did, for we are simple
+and sincere only with our own.</p>
+
+<p>Learned, scholarly and cultured men are to be pitied, for they are ever
+the butt, byword and prey of the untaught, who are often the knowing. As
+success came to Southey he lost the sense of values, that is to say, the
+sense of humor. He attacked Byron with great severity, and Byron's reply
+was the dedication of Don Juan, &quot;To the illustrious Poet-Laureate, Robert
+Southey, LL.D.&quot; It was as if the play of &quot;Sappho&quot; were dedicated to the
+Reverend Doctor Parkhurst.</p>
+
+<p>Southey came out with a card declaring he had given Lord Byron no
+permission to dedicate any of his detestable works to him. Byron replied,
+acknowledging all this, but saying he had a right to honor the name of
+Southey, if he chose, just the same. No taint of excess or folly marks the
+name of Southey; his life was filled with good work and kind deeds. His
+name is honored by a monument in the village of Keswick, and in
+Crosthwaite Church is another monument to his memory, the inscription
+being written by Wordsworth.</p><a name='V_Page_282'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Were Heaven a place, I still politely maintain, it would probably be
+located in the Lake District of England.</p>
+
+<p>Every man of genius the world has ever produced has come from a little
+belt of land in the North Temperate Zone. Snow and cold, rock and
+mountain, danger and difficulty&mdash;these are the conditions required to make
+men. The heaven of which I can conceive is a place with plenty of oxygen,
+sunshine and water. In a mountainous country water runs (I hope no one
+will dispute this) and winds blow, and running water and air in motion are
+always pure.</p>
+
+<p>When I have no thoughts worth recording I take a walk, and the elements,
+which seem to carry soul, fill me to the brim.</p>
+
+<p>The Tropics may have much to offer in way of soft, luxurious creature
+comforts. But the Tropics supply sundry and divers discomforts as well,
+and really offer too much; for with the flowers, vines, fruits and
+never-ending foliage go mosquitoes, tarantulas, and snakes that wiggle and
+sometimes bite.</p>
+
+<p>The climate of Cumberland does not overpower one&mdash;the air is of a quality
+that urges you on to think and do.</p>
+
+<p>By no reach of imagination can one conjure forth anything more beautiful
+in Nature than is to be realized in vicinity of Keswick; and no home
+thereabouts surpasses Greta Hall in charm of location and quiet, simple
+<a name='V_Page_283'></a>beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Greta Hall is a rambling pile, constructed partly of stone and partly of
+wood, evolved rather than built, for evidently the work was done by many
+hands, and stretched over a century or more of time. Vines and flowers,
+fruits and shrubbery, stone walls covered close by creeping bellflowers
+where birds chirrup and cheep and play hide-and-seek the livelong day&mdash;all
+these are there. The house is situated on a little wooded plateau that
+overlooks the lake, and back of it the solemn and everlasting hills stand
+guard. There are no such mountains here as one sees in Switzerland,
+overpowering, vast, awful in their majesty; but just green-topped,
+self-sufficient and friendly hills that invite you to lift up your eyes
+and be strong.</p>
+
+<p>Visitors are welcome to the grounds at Greta Hall at all times, and the
+kind old gardener who showed us about gathered us bouquets of mignonette,
+rue and thyme, and gave us the history of a wonderful pear-tree that had
+turned into a vine and now covers one whole side of a stable thirty feet
+long. Even a tree will lose its individuality if it is not allowed to
+assert its nature and care for itself. That particular pear-tree, we were
+told, sprang from a slip planted by Shelley when he once came here on a
+visit to Southey; and we were further told that the year Shelley was
+drowned, the leaves of this tree turned pale and withered, and only by
+patient, loving nursing on the part of our old gardener's father was its
+life saved. The residence was <a name='V_Page_284'></a>closed the day we were there, in dread
+anticipation of Cook tourists with designs on the shrubbery, we had reason
+to believe, but we lingered around the grounds, listened to the soothing,
+rippling lullaby of the Greta, watched the strutting peacocks, and ate
+bread-and-milk, under the trees, out of big bowls supplied us by the old
+gardener for the most modest of considerations.</p>
+
+<p>Southey never really mixed in the wealth of beauty that covers this
+beautiful corner of earth. He was learned and profound, and he took
+himself and the Church and the State seriously. He felt himself a part of
+an indestructible institution, whereas man and all his works are no more
+peculiar, no more wonderful than an ant-hill&mdash;and last only a day longer.
+He never realized that he was a part of the great whole that made up
+mountain, lake, globe, wooded glen and tireless river. He differentiated.
+He considered himself a man, an educated man, and therefore a little
+better, and a little above, and a little outside of it all&mdash;otherwise how
+could he have withered at the top at the early age of sixty-seven?</p>
+
+<p>This question White Pigeon asked as we sat in the dim quiet of Crosthwaite
+Church, down in the village. I did not attempt to reply&mdash;people do not ask
+questions expecting, necessarily, to have them answered. We ask questions
+in order to clarify our own minds.</p>
+
+<p>The warning blast of the coach-horn was heard, and <a name='V_Page_285'></a>we went out into the
+sunshine. I bade my three friends good-by (first placing my autograph on
+Grace's and Myrtle's fans), and they climbed to the top of the coach. I
+sat on the stone wall and watched them until they disappeared around the
+bend of the road, waving handkerchiefs. That night I made my way over to
+Penreith on the way to Carlisle. It had been a day brimming with thought
+and feeling, and beauty expressed and unexpressed, and the kindness of
+kind friends who understand. That night as I dozed off into deep, calm
+sleep I said to myself: &quot;They were great men, those Lake Poets, and the
+world is better because they lived. But there will come other men and they
+will be greater than those gone&mdash;the best is yet to be.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_286'></a><a name='V_Page_287'></a>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='SAMUEL_T_COLERIDGE'></a><h2>SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE</h2>
+
+<a name='V_Page_288'></a>
+<div class='blkquot'><p>Beneath the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the
+    Thrones of Frost, this through the absence of objects to reflect
+    the rays.</p>
+
+<p>    What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own&mdash;we need another
+    to reflect our thoughts.</p></div>
+
+<span style='margin-left: 27em;'>&mdash;<i>Samuel Taylor Coleridge</i></span><br />
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-11.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-11-th.jpg" alt="SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE"></a></p><p class="ctr">SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Samuel T. Coleridge was a thinker, and thinkers are so rarely found that
+the world must take note of them. John Stuart Mill, writing in Eighteen
+Hundred Forty, assigned first place among English philosophers to Jeremy
+Bentham, incidentally mentioning that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was
+Bentham's only rival.</p>
+
+<p>In philosophy there is an apostolic succession. We build on the past, and
+all the centuries of turmoil and travail which have gone before have made
+this moment possible. There has never been any such thing as &quot;the fall of
+man&quot;; for the march of the race has been a continual climb&mdash;a movement
+onward and upward. Were it not for Coleridge and Bentham, we could not
+have had Buckle, Wallace and Spencer, for the minds of men would not have
+been prepared to give them a hearing. &quot;Half the battle is in catching the
+Speaker's eye,&quot; said Thomas Brackett Reed; and a John the Baptist to
+prepare the way is always necessary. Without Coleridge to quietly ignore
+the question of precedent, and refuse to accept a thing without proof, and
+ask eternally and yet again, &quot;How do you know?&quot; Charles Darwin with his
+&quot;Origin of Species&quot; would have been laughed out of court. Or probably had
+Darwin <a name='V_Page_290'></a>been persistent we would have consigned him to the stocks, burned
+his book in the public square, and with the aid of logical thumbscrews
+made him recant.</p>
+
+<p>Even as it was, the gibes and guffaws of the press and pulpit came near
+drowning the modest, moderate voice of Darwin; and for a score of years,
+his reputation as a scientist seemed to be trembling in the balance. Yet
+today the man who would seriously attempt in an educated assembly to throw
+obloquy upon the doctrine of Evolution and the name of Charles Darwin
+would find himself speedily listed with Brudder Jasper of Richmond,
+Virginia. The Church now, everywhere, has its Drummonds, who build on
+Darwin and use his citations as proof; and Drummond merely expressed what
+the many believe&mdash;no more.</p>
+
+<p>The man who has dared to think for himself and voiced his thought&mdash;the
+emancipated man&mdash;has been as one in a million. What usually passes for
+thought is only the repetition of things we have heard or been told. We
+memorize, repeat by rote and call it thought.</p>
+
+<p>With the Church and State in control of food and clothes, and with spears,
+clubs, knives and guns ready to suppress whatsoever seemed dangerous to
+their stability, it is a miracle that men have ever improved on
+anything&mdash;for progress has been for centuries a perilous performance. To
+question a priest was blasphemy. To reason with a judge was heinous. To
+think and decide for yourself was to invite torture and death.</p><a name='V_Page_291'></a>
+
+<p>And all this was very natural, simply because the superior class who
+monopolized the good things of earth were obliged, in order to enslave and
+tax men, to make them believe that their power was derived from God. And
+thus was taught the &quot;divine right of kings,&quot; the duty of submission, the
+necessity of belief and the sinfulness of doubt. The source of all
+knowledge was declared to be a book, and the right of interpretation of
+this book was given to one class alone&mdash;those who sided with and were a
+part of the Superior Class.</p>
+
+<p>The reason the race has progressed so slowly is because the strong,
+vigorous and independent have been suppressed, either by legal process, or
+exterminated through war, which reaps the best and lets the weak, the
+diseased and the cowards go.</p>
+
+<p>Those who doubted and questioned have been deprived of food and clothes,
+disgraced, mobbed, robbed, lashed naked at the cart's tail, burned at the
+stake, or separated from their families and transported beyond the sea to
+be devoured by wild beasts, die in jungles, or toil out their lives in
+slavery.</p>
+
+<p>But still there were always a few who would doubt and a few who would
+question; and in the early part of the Eighteenth Century in England the
+government was being put to severe straits to cope with the difficulty.
+Lying in the Thames were receiving-ships on which were crowded men and
+women to be transported. When the ship was full, crowded to her utmost,
+she <a name='V_Page_292'></a>sailed away with her living cargo. From Sixteen Hundred Fifty to
+Seventeen Hundred Fifty, over forty thousand people were sent away for
+their country's good. The hangman worked overtime, all prisons were
+crowded, and the walls of Newgate bulged with men and women, old and
+young, who were believed to be dangerous to the stability and well-being
+of the superior class&mdash;that is, those who had the right to tax others.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the enormity of bloodshed and woe involved caused a sort of
+concession on both sides to be agreed upon. Oppression continued will
+surely lead to a point where it cures itself, and the superior class in
+England, with a wise weather-eye, saw the reef on which they were in
+danger of striking. They heard the breakers, and began to grant
+concessions&mdash;unwillingly of course&mdash;concessions wrung from them. The
+censorship was abolished, reform bills introduced, the rights of free
+speech and a free press were partially recognized. The clergy, taking the
+cue, began to preach more love and less damnation; for the pew ever
+dictates to the pulpit what it shall preach. Thus general relaxation was
+in order to meet the competition of rival sects and independent preachers
+that were springing up; for although creeds never change, yet their
+interpretation does, and liberal sects do their work, not by growing
+strong, but by making all others more liberal.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the latter part of the Eighteenth Century witnessed a weakening of
+both sides through compromise.<a name='V_Page_293'></a> The schools and colleges were pedantic,
+complacent, smug and self-satisfied; by giving in a few points they had
+absorbed the radicals, and the political protesters had been bought off
+with snug places in the excise. Pretended knowledge passed for wisdom,
+dignity paraded as worth, affectation and hypocrisy patronized virtue. And
+Coleridge appears upon the scene, a conservative, with a beautiful
+innocence and an indifference to all pretended authority and asks, &quot;How do
+you know?&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_294'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>The number of people who have written their names large in literature, who
+were the children of clergymen, is no mere coincidence. Tennyson, Addison,
+Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Coleridge&mdash;you
+can add to the list to suit. Young people follow example, and the habit of
+the father in writing out his thoughts causes others of the family to try
+it, too. Then there is an atmosphere of books in a rectory, and leisure to
+think, and best of all the income is not so great but that the practise of
+economy of time and money is duly enforced by necessity. To be launched
+into a library and learn by absorption is a great blessing.</p>
+
+<p>Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-two, the son
+of the Reverend John Coleridge, of Ottery Saint Mary, a small village of
+Devonshire. The rector was also a schoolmaster, just as all clergymen were
+before division of labor forced itself upon us. This worthy clergyman was
+twice married, his first wife bearing him three children, the second ten.
+Samuel was the last of the brood&mdash;the thirteenth&mdash;but his parents were not
+superstitious.</p>
+
+<p>The youngest in a big family, like the first, is apt to have a deal of
+love lavished upon him. The question of discipline has proved its own
+futility, and when a baby comes to parents approaching fifty, depend upon
+it, that child transforms the household into a monarchy, with himself as
+tyrant. This may be well and it may not.</p><a name='V_Page_295'></a>
+
+<p>Little Samuel Taylor seemed to be aware of his power; he evolved a
+wondrous precocity and ruled the rectory with a rod of iron. When he was
+five he propounded questions that shook the orthodoxy of the worthy vicar
+to its very center.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, remarkable as was the intellect of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the
+family would not have remained in obscurity without him. In fact, the very
+brightness of his fame caused the excellence of his brothers to be lost in
+the shadow. His brother James became the father of Henry Nelson Coleridge,
+who married his cousin Sara, the daughter of our poet.</p>
+
+<p>To anticipate a little, it is well enough here to say that the daughter of
+Coleridge was a woman of remarkable excellence, and if you wish to
+disprove the adage that genius does not transmit itself she is a good
+example to bring up&mdash;even though there is a difference between fact and
+truth. James Coleridge was also the father of Mr. Justice Coleridge,
+himself the father of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge.</p>
+
+<p>And since iconoclasm is not out of place in an essay on Coleridge, it can
+also be stated that when Sara Coleridge married her cousin she did a wise
+thing. The marriage was a most happy one, and the children of these
+cousins have shown themselves to be beyond the average. And once,
+certainly not with his daughter in mind, Coleridge debated the question of
+consanguinity with Charles Lamb, and proved to his own satisfaction <a name='V_Page_296'></a>at
+least that the marriage of cousins was eminently sane, proper, just and
+right, and fraught with the best results for humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The only indictment that can be brought against the father of Coleridge is
+that he was a zealous Latin scholar, and proposed that the term &quot;ablative&quot;
+be abolished as insufficient, and in its stead should be used that of
+&quot;quale-quare-quiddative case.&quot; He was a simple, amiable, excellent man who
+did his work the best he could, and was beloved by all the parish. As to
+the excellence of the established order of things he had no
+doubts&mdash;government and religion were divine institutions and should be
+upheld by all honest men.</p>
+
+<p>As to the vicar's wife we know little, but enough of a glance is given
+into her character through letters to show that she had in her make-up a
+trace of noble discontent. She was not entirely happy in her surroundings,
+and the amiable ways of her husband were often an exasperation to her,
+rather than a pleasure&mdash;even amiability can be overdone. He never saw more
+than a mile from home, but her eyes swept England from Cornwall to
+Scotland, and few men, even, saw so far as that a hundred years ago. The
+discontent of Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the heritage of mother to son.
+When Samuel was nine years of age the father passed away. The widow would
+have been in sore financial straits had it not been for the older
+children, and even as it was, strict economy and untiring industry were in
+<a name='V_Page_297'></a>order. Out of sympathy, Mr. Justice Buller, who had been a pupil of the
+Reverend John Coleridge, proposed to secure the youngest boy a scholarship
+in Christ's Hospital School, and so we find him entered there, July
+Eighteenth, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two. This was a year memorable in the
+history of America; and the alertness of the charity boy's intellect is
+shown in that he was aware of the struggle between England and the
+Colonies. He discussed the situation with his schoolfellows, and explained
+that the mother country had made a mistake in exacting too much. His
+sympathies were with the Colonies, but he thought submission on their part
+was in order when the stamp-tax was removed and that complete independence
+was absurd&mdash;the Colonies needed some one to protect them.</p>
+
+<p>Such reasoning in a boy of ten years seems strange, especially in view of
+the fact that a noted professor of pedagogy has recently explained to us
+that no child under fourteen is capable of independent reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>But it is quite certain that young Coleridge's opinions were not borrowed,
+for all the lad's acquaintances, who thought of the matter at all,
+considered the Americans simply &quot;rebels&quot; who merited death.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge remained at Christ's Hospital for eight years, and before he
+left had easily taken his place as &quot;Deputy Grecian.&quot; Charles Lamb has
+given many delightful glimpses of that schoolboy life in the &quot;Essays of
+Elia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Middleton, afterward Bishop of Calcutta, called the <a name='V_Page_298'></a>attention of Boyer,
+the master, to Coleridge by saying, &quot;There is a boy who reads Vergil for
+amusement!&quot; Boyer was a strict disciplinarian, but he was ever on the
+lookout for a lad who loved books&mdash;the average youth getting out of all
+the study he could.</p>
+
+<p>The master began to encourage young Coleridge, and Coleridge responded. He
+wrote verses and essays, and was a prodigy in memorizing. According to
+Boyer's idea, and it was the prevailing idea everywhere then, and is yet
+in some sections, memorization was the one thing desirable. If the subject
+were Plato, and the master had forgotten his book, he called on Coleridge
+to recite. And the tall, fair-haired boy, with the big dreamy eyes, would
+rise and give page after page, &quot;verbatim et literatim.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_299'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Before Coleridge went to Cambridge, when nineteen years old he had taken
+on that masterly quality in conversation that made his society sought,
+even to the last. Lamb has told us of the gentle voice, not loud nor deep,
+but full of mellow intonations, and bell-like in its purity.</p>
+
+<p>Such a voice, laden with fine feeling, carrying conviction, only goes with
+a great soul. No doubt, though, the young man had grown into a bit of a
+dictator, and this habit of harangue he carried with him to College. To
+talk enabled him to think, and expression is necessary to growth. So the
+habit of argument with Coleridge seemed Nature's method of developing his
+powers of mental analysis. No more foolish saying was ever launched than,
+&quot;Children should be seen and not heard.&quot; From lisping babyhood Coleridge
+talked, and talked much. When he was twenty, at Cambridge, he drew the
+boys to his room, until it was crowded to suffocation, just by the magic
+of his voice, and the subtle quality of his thought. His questioning mind
+went right to the heart of things, and in his divisions and heads and
+subheads even the professors could not always follow him. Let us hope that
+he himself always knew what he was trying to explain.</p>
+
+<p>He discussed metaphysics, theology and politics, and very naturally got to
+treading on thin ice.</p>
+
+<p>In theology his reasoning led him into Unitarianism, then a very fearful
+thing; and in politics he dallied with<a name='V_Page_300'></a> Madame la Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>A polite note from the Master of the College, suggesting that he talk less
+and follow the curriculum a little more closely, led him straight to the
+Master, with whom he proposed to argue the case, or publicly debate it.
+This was terrible!</p>
+
+<p>Stephen Crane at Syracuse University, a hundred years later, did just such
+a thing. He sought to argue a point in the classroom with Chancellor
+Symms.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tut, tut!&quot; said the Chancellor. &quot;Have you forgotten what Saint Paul says
+on that very theme?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, I know,&quot; replied the best catcher ever on the Syracuse Nine; &quot;yes, I
+know what Saint Paul says, but I differ with Saint Paul.&quot; And Stevie,
+unconsciously, was standing on the well-lubricated chute that landed him,
+soon, well outside the campus.</p>
+
+<p>The authorities did not admire the brilliant young Coleridge, full of his
+reasons and prolix abstractions. He was attracting too much attention to
+himself, and gradually gathering about him a throng of admirers who might
+disturb the balance of things. He was there anyway only through
+sufferance, and an intimation was given him that if he were not willing to
+accept things as they existed, and as they were taught, he had better go
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Piqued by his treatment and feeling he had been misunderstood and wronged,
+he suddenly disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Some months afterwards, an acquaintance found him in a company of
+dragoons, duly enlisted in His Majesty's <a name='V_Page_301'></a>service, under an assumed name.</p>
+
+<p>The authorities at Jesus College were notified, and knowing that such a
+youth was out of place serving as a soldier, and feeling further a small
+pang of regret possibly for having driven him away, a plan was set on foot
+to secure his discharge. This was soon brought about, and doubtless much
+to Coleridge's relief. Erelong he found himself back at Cambridge&mdash;a
+little subdued, and a trifle more discreet, for his rough contact with the
+workaday world.</p>
+
+<p>A journey to Oxford, to visit an old friend, proved a pivotal point in his
+life. The fame of Coleridge as a poet had gone abroad, and the literary
+fledglings at Oxford sought to do the visitor honor in the proper way.
+Among others whom he met on this visit were Robert Southey and Robert
+Lovell, both poets of considerable local fame.</p>
+
+<p>Lovell had been married but a few months before to a young woman by the
+name of Fricker. Southey was engaged to a sister of the bride, and there
+was still a third sister fancy-free. The three poets became fast friends.
+They were all radicals, full of ambition to make a name for themselves,
+and all intent on elevating society out of the ruts into which it had
+fallen. All had suffered contumely on account of advanced ideas; and all
+were out of conceit with the existing order.</p>
+
+<p>They discussed the matter at length, and decided to set the world an
+example, by founding an ideal colony and showing how to make the most of
+life.</p><a name='V_Page_302'></a>
+
+<p>Coleridge had long been interested in America, and from an
+acquaintanceship with sundry soldiers who had helped fight the battles of
+George the Third in the New World, he had gathered a rather romantic idea
+of the country. The stories of returned sailors and soldiers, told to
+civilians, are seldom exactly authentic. And Coleridge the poet, bubbling
+with the effervescence of youth, argued that a home on the banks of the
+Susquehanna, with love and books and comradeship, was the ideal condition.</p>
+
+<p>The matter was broached to the three sisters Fricker, and they of course
+responded&mdash;what woman worthy of the name of woman would not? And so the
+arrangements were fast being made, and as a necessary feature the three
+poets were duly and legally married to the three sisters, and Eden was to
+be peopled with the best.</p>
+
+<p>A date was arranged for sailing, but some trifling matter of finance
+delayed the exodus&mdash;in fact, certain expected loans were not forthcoming.
+Coleridge put in the time lecturing and preaching from Unitarian pulpits.
+He also tried his hand as editor, but the publication scheme failed to
+bring the shekels that were to buy emancipation. The innate contrariness
+of things seemed to be blocking all his plans.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile we find Lovell drifting off into commercialism. That is to say,
+Barabbas-like, he had turned publisher. Gadzooks! What would you have a
+man with a wife and baby do? Live on moonshine&mdash;well, well, well!</p><a name='V_Page_303'></a>
+
+<p>Death claimed poor Lovell before he could make a success either of
+commerce or of art.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge moved up to the Lake District, and at Keswick, near where the
+water comes down at Lodore&mdash;or did before the stream dried up&mdash;he rented
+rooms of a kind friend by the name of Johnson, who owned Greta Hall.
+Southey was writing articles for London papers. He received a guinea a
+column, and when he wrote a poem, as he did every little while, he sent it
+to a publisher who returned him a little good cash.</p>
+
+<p>Southey's wife went up to Keswick on a visit to see her sister, Mrs.
+Coleridge. Southey followed up to Keswick, and rather liked the situation.
+The Southeys and the Coleridges all lived together as one happy family.</p>
+
+<p>Southey was writing poetry and getting paid for it; and beside this had a
+small income. Coleridge allowed Southey to buy the supplies, and when he
+went away on tramp lecturing tours he felt perfectly safe in leaving his
+family with Southey.</p>
+
+<p>While up that way he met a young man, a native, by the name of
+Wordsworth&mdash;William Wordsworth&mdash;and a poet, too.</p>
+
+<p>Wordsworth had a sister named Dorothy, and this brother and sister lived
+together in a little whitewashed stone cottage, built up against the
+hillside at Grasmere, a village thirteen miles from Keswick. Coleridge
+liked these people first-rate and they liked him. He used to go down to
+visit them, and they would all sit up late <a name='V_Page_304'></a>listening to the splendid talk
+of the handsome Coleridge. William said he was the only great man he had
+ever met, and Dorothy agreed in the proposition.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge was discouraged: the world did not care for his work, and the
+men in power had set their faces against him&mdash;or he thought they had,
+which is the same thing. There was a conspiracy, he thought, to keep him
+down; and Wordsworth should have advised him to join it, but did not.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy Wordsworth was a most extraordinary woman&mdash;she was gentle, kind,
+low-voiced, sympathetic. She was not handsome, but she had the intellect
+that entitled her to a membership in the Brotherhood of Fine Minds. She
+knew the splendid excellence of Coleridge, and could follow him in his
+most abstract dissertations; and if his logic faltered she could lead him
+back to the trail.</p>
+
+<p>Dorothy Wordsworth admired and pitied Coleridge; and from pity to love is
+but a step.</p>
+
+<p>But Coleridge was not capable of a passionate love&mdash;the substance of his
+being was all absorbed in abstract thought. And yet Dorothy Wordsworth
+attracted him as no other woman ever did. He forgot his wife, Sara, up
+there at Southey's. Sara was a better-looking woman than Dorothy, but she
+lacked intellect. Her life was all bound up in housekeeping and going to
+church, and the petty little round of daily happenings to neighbors and
+friends. The world of thought and dreams to her <a name='V_Page_305'></a>was nothing. She loved
+her husband, but his foolish foibles vexed her, and his lack of
+application prompted her to chide him. And at such times he would turn to
+his friends at Dove Cottage for sympathy and rest.</p>
+
+<p>They used to tramp the hills, and discuss philosophy, and recite their
+poems the livelong day. It was on one such jaunt that out of the ghost of
+shoreless seas they sighted the &quot;Ancient Mariner.&quot; Then Coleridge went
+ahead, completed the plot and gave the poem to the world. And once he
+said, half-boastfully, to Dorothy: &quot;This old seafaring poem is valuable in
+that it is a tale no one will understand, but which will excite universal
+interest. Only the perfectly sane and sensible is dull.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Wordsworth had read somewhat of the works of the German philosophers, and
+as he and his sister had a little money saved up they decided to go over
+and attend the lectures at the University of G&ouml;ttingen for awhile.
+Coleridge had nothing in the way to prevent his going, too, save that he
+didn't have the money. However, he wanted to go and so decided to lay the
+case before the sons of Josiah Wedgwood. These young men had been
+schoolfellows of Coleridge at Cambridge, and once he had gone home with
+them and so had met their father.</p>
+
+<p>And right here comes a very strong temptation to say not another word
+about Coleridge, but merge this essay off into a sketch of that most
+excellent, strong and <a name='V_Page_306'></a>noble man, Josiah Wedgwood. Here is a man who left
+his impress indelibly on the times, and whose influence outweighed that of
+a dozen prime ministers. The potter is gone, but he lives in his art, so
+we still have the best and purest and noblest of the soul of Josiah
+Wedgwood.</p>
+
+<p>This man had assisted Coleridge at Cambridge, and it was to his sons
+Coleridge looked for help to realize his Susquehanna dream of Utopia. But
+the Wedgwoods knew the hazy, moonshine quality of the project and made
+excuses.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge now appealed to them for assistance in a saner project, and they
+supplied him the money to go to G&ouml;ttingen.</p>
+
+<p>His stay of fourteen months in Germany gave him a firm hold on the
+language, and a goodly glimpse into the philosophy of Kant, Leibnitz and
+Schleiermacher. When Coleridge returned to England, he went at once to see
+his interesting family. Rumor has it that Mrs. Coleridge, in addition to
+caring for her own little brood and assisting in the Southey household,
+had also been working in the Keswick lead-pencil factory for a weekly wage
+of twelve shillings. The philosopher did not much like this lowering of
+dignity, and said so mildly. This led to the truthful explanation that he
+had hardly done his duty by his family in allowing them to shift for
+themselves or be cared for by kinsmen; and therefore advice from him was
+out of place. In short, Southey <a name='V_Page_307'></a>intimated that while he would care for
+his sisters-in-law he drew the line at brothers-in-law. And Samuel Taylor
+Coleridge drifted up to London (being down) to see if something would not
+turn up.</p>
+
+<p>His first task there was to translate &quot;Werther,&quot; but the work did not seem
+to go. Grub Street took up the brilliant talker, and for a time he gave
+parlor lectures and filled the air of thought and speculation with his
+brilliant pyrotechnics. The force of his mind was everywhere acknowledged,
+but someway he did not seem to get on. Men who have managed the finances
+of a nation often have not been able successfully to control their own;
+and more than once we have had the spectacle of one who could do the
+thinking for a world failing in the humdrum duties of a citizen and
+neighbor. Coleridge tried various things, among others a secretaryship
+that took him to Malta, but the lack of system in his habits and his
+absent-mindedness made him the prey and butt of &quot;practical&quot; men.</p><a name='V_Page_308'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>When Carlyle said that no more dreary record than the lives of authors
+existed, save the Newgate Calendar, he spoke truth.</p>
+
+<p>That the lives of most authors is a series of misunderstandings, blunders,
+heart-burnings, tragedies, is a fact. The author is a man who diverts and
+amuses us by doing the things we would do if we had time; and if we like
+him it is only because he expresses the things we already know. His is a
+hard task, requiring intense concentration&mdash;a concentration that can only
+be continued for a short time without the absolute burning out of
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>To think one's best and write out ideas is an abnormal operation. The most
+artistic work is always done in a sort of fever or ecstacy, which in its
+very nature is transient. To hunt and fish and dream and to work with
+one's hands are all very natural; but to sit down and think and then
+express your thoughts by the artificial scheme of writing on paper is a
+dangerous operation. If carried to excess it shall be paid for by your
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge had turned night into day in his hot zeal to follow the winding,
+dancing mystery of existence to its inmost recess. At times he had
+forgotten to eat or sleep; and then to reinforce despairing nature he had
+resorted to stimulants.</p>
+
+<p>Digestion had become impaired, circulation faulty through lack of
+exercise, so sleeplessness followed stimulation. Then to quiet pain came
+the use of the drug that <a name='V_Page_309'></a>brings oblivion. And lo! thought burned up
+brighter than ever and all the dreams of youth and twenty came trooping
+back.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge had made a discovery. He thought he was getting the start of God
+Almighty; but he wasn't, for men have tried that before, and are trying it
+today, and many know not yet that we are strong only as we cling close to
+the skirts of Mother Nature and follow lovingly in her ways.</p>
+
+<p>From his twenty-ninth year we find Coleridge a wreck in mind and body;
+shuffling, sick, disheartened, erratic, uncertain, yet occasionally
+brilliant. He tramped the streets, feared and shunned. His money was gone,
+his power of concentration had vanished. In search of bread he met an
+old-time friend, Doctor Gillman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gillman,&quot; said Coleridge, &quot;I am sick and helpless&mdash;look at me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why don't you come to my house and live with me?&quot; asked the kind friend.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gillman,&quot; said the poor man, &quot;Gillman, I am on my way there!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>So Gillman brought him to his house up at Highgate and took care of him as
+a child. And there he remained, the pride and pet of a group of brave,
+thinking men and women.</p>
+
+<p>He lived on for thirty years, under the kindly, skilful care of his
+friend, but all the real work of his life was done before he was thirty.
+Occasionally the old fire <a name='V_Page_310'></a>would flash forth, and the wit and insight of
+his youth would shine out. Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron, and others strong
+and great sought him out to hold converse with him. And so he existed, a
+sort of oracle, amiable, kind and generous&mdash;wreck of a man that
+was&mdash;protected and defended by loving friends; while up at Keswick,
+Southey cared for his wife and educated his children as though they were
+his own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am dying,&quot; said Coleridge to Gillman in July, Eighteen Hundred
+Thirty-four; &quot;dying, but I should have died, like Keats, in youth and not
+have made myself a burden to you&mdash;do you forgive me?&quot; We can guess the
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>The dust of Coleridge rests in Highgate Cemetery, just a step from where
+he lived all those years. He, himself, selected the place and wrote his
+epitaph. The simple monument that marks the spot was paid for by kind
+friends who remembered him and loved him and who pardoned him for all that
+he was not, in memory of what he once had been.</p><a name='V_Page_311'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>To a young man from the country, who makes his way up, no greater shock
+ever comes than the discovery that rich people are, for the most part,
+woefully ignorant. He has always imagined that material splendor and
+spiritual gifts go hand in hand; and now if he is wise he discovers that
+millionaires are too busy making money, and too anxious about what they
+have made, and their families are too intent on spending it, ever to
+acquire a calm, judicial mental attitude.</p>
+
+<p>The rich are not the leisure class, and they need education no less than
+the poor. Lord, enlighten thou our enemies, should be the prayer of every
+man who works for progress: give clearness to their mental perceptions,
+awaken in them the receptive spirit, soften their callous hearts, and
+arouse their powers of reason.</p>
+
+<p>Danger lies in their folly, not in their wisdom; their weakness is to be
+feared, not their strength.</p>
+
+<p>That the wealthy and influential class should fear change, and cling
+stubbornly to conservatism, is certainly to be expected.</p>
+
+<p>To convince this class that spiritual and temporal good can be improved
+upon by a more liberal policy has been a task a thousand times greater
+than the exciting of the poor to riot. It is easy to fire the
+discontented, but to arouse the rich and carry truth home to the blindly
+prejudiced is a different matter. Too often the reformer has been one who
+caused the rich to band themselves against the poor.</p><a name='V_Page_312'></a>
+
+<p>Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a Tory who defended the existing order on the
+plea of its usefulness.</p>
+
+<p>He approached the vital issue from the inside, taught the conservative to
+think, and thus opened the eyes of the aristocrats without exciting their
+fears or unduly arousing their wrath.</p>
+
+<p>Self-preservation prompts men to move in the line of least resistance. And
+that any man should ever have put his safety in peril by questioning the
+authority of those able and ready to confiscate his property and take away
+his life is very strange. Such a person must belong to one of two types.
+He must be either a revolutionist&mdash;one who would supplant existing
+authority with his own, thus knowingly and willingly hazarding all&mdash;or he
+is an innocent, indiscreet individual, absolutely devoid of all interest
+in the main chance.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge belonged to the last-mentioned type. Genius needs a keeper. Here
+was a man so absorbed in abstract thought, so intent on attaining high and
+holy truth, that he neglected his friends, neglected his family, neglected
+himself until his body refused to obey the helm. It is easy to find fault
+with such a man, but to refuse to grant an admiring recognition of his
+worth, on account of what he was not, is an error, pardonable only to the
+rude, crude and vulgar. The cultivated mind sees the good and fixes
+attention on that.</p>
+
+<p>Coleridge formulated no system, solved no complex problems, made no
+brilliant discoveries. But his habit <a name='V_Page_313'></a>of analysis enriched the world
+beyond power to compute. He taught men to think and separate truth from
+error. He was not popular, for he did not adapt himself to the many. His
+business was to teach teachers&mdash;he conducted a Normal School, and taught
+teachers how to teach. Coleridge went to the very bottom of a subject, and
+his subtle mind refused to take anything for granted. He approached every
+proposition with an unprejudiced mind. In his &quot;Aids to Reflection,&quot; he
+says, &quot;He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed
+by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and then end in
+loving himself better than all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The average man believes a thing first, and then searches for proof to
+bolster his opinion. Every observer must have noticed the tenuous, cobweb
+quality of reasons that are deemed sufficient to the person who thinks he
+knows, or whose interests lie in a certain direction. The limitations of
+men seem to make it necessary that pure truth should come to us through
+men who are stripped for eternity. Kant, the villager who never traveled
+more than a day's walk from his birthplace, and Coleridge, the homeless
+and houseless aristocrat, with no selfish interests in the material world,
+view things without prejudice.</p>
+
+<p>The method of Coleridge, from his youth, was to divide the whole into
+parts. Then he begins to eliminate, and divides down, rejecting all things
+that are not the thing, <a name='V_Page_314'></a>until he finds the thing. He begins all inquiries
+by supposing that nothing is known on the subject. He will not grant you
+that murder and robbery are bad&mdash;you must show why they are bad, and if
+you can not explain, he will take the subject up and divide it into heads
+for you.</p>
+
+<p>First, the effect on the sufferer. Second, the evil to the doer. Third,
+the danger of a bad example. Fourth, the injury to society through the
+feeling of insecurity. Fifth, the pain given to the families of both doer
+and sufferer. Next he will look for excuses for the crime and give all the
+credit he can; and then finally strike a balance and give a conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>One of Coleridge's best points was in calling attention to what
+constitutes proof; he saw all fallacies and discovered at a glance
+illusions in logic that had long been palmed off on the world as truth. He
+saw the gulf that lies between coincidence and sequence, and hastened the
+day when the old-time pedant with his mighty tomes and tiresome sermons
+about nothing should be no more. And so today, in the Year of Grace
+Nineteen Hundred, the man who writes must have something to say, and he
+who speaks must have a message. &quot;Coleridge,&quot; says Principal Shairp, &quot;was
+the originator and creator of the higher criticism.&quot; The race has gained
+ground, made head upon the whole; and thanks to the thinkers gone, there
+are thinkers now in every community who weigh, sift, try and decide. No
+<a name='V_Page_315'></a>statement made by an interested party can go unchallenged. &quot;How do you
+know?&quot; and &quot;Why?&quot; we ask.</p>
+
+<p>That is good which serves&mdash;man is the important item, this earth is the
+place, and the time is now. So all good men and women and all churches are
+endeavoring to make earth heaven; and all agree that to live, now and
+here, the best you can, is the fittest preparation for a life to come.</p>
+
+<p>We no longer accept the doctrine that our natures are rooted in infamy,
+and that the desires of the flesh are cunning traps set by Satan, with
+God's permission, to undo us. We believe that no one can harm us but
+ourselves, that sin is misdirected energy, that there is no devil but
+fear, and that the universe is planned for good. On every side we find
+beauty and excellence held in the balance of things. We know that work is
+needful, that winter is as necessary as summer, that night is as useful as
+day, that death is a manifestation of life, and just as good. We believe
+in the Now and Here. We believe in a power that is in ourselves that makes
+for righteousness.</p>
+
+<p>These things have not been taught us by a superior class who have governed
+us for a consideration, and to whom we have paid taxes and tithes&mdash;we have
+simply thought things out for ourselves, and in spite of them. We have
+listened to Coleridge, and others, who said: &quot;You should use your reason
+and separate the good from the bad, the false from the true, the useless
+from <a name='V_Page_316'></a>the useful. Be yourself and think for yourself; and while your
+conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the
+opinions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping
+you in ignorance. You grow through the exercise of your faculties, and if
+you do not reason now you never will advance. We are all sons of God, and
+it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Claim your heritage!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<a name='BENJAMIN_DISRAELI'></a><h2><a name='V_Page_317'></a>BENJAMIN DISRAELI</h2>
+
+<a name='V_Page_318'></a>
+<div class='blkquot'><p>The stimulus subsided. The paroxysms ended in prostration. Some
+    took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated
+    between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury
+    bench, the Ministers reminded me of those marine landscapes not
+    unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of
+    exhausted volcanoes; not a flame flickers on a single pallid
+    crest; but the situation is still dangerous: there are occasional
+    earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumblings of the sea.</p></div>
+
+<span style='margin-left: 10em;'>&mdash;<i>Speech at Manchester</i></span><br />
+
+<p class="ctr"><a href="./images/ljv5-12.jpg"><img src="./images/ljv5-12-th.jpg" alt="BENJAMIN DISRAELI"></a></p><p class="ctr">BENJAMIN DISRAELI</p>
+<br />
+
+<p>Since Disraeli was born a Jew, he was received into the Jewish Church with
+Jewish rites. But Judaism, standing in the way of his ambition, and his
+parents' ambition for him, the religion of his fathers was renounced and
+he became, in name, a Christian. Yet to the last his heart was with his
+people, and the glory of his race was his secret pride.</p>
+
+<p>The fine irony of affiliating with a people who worship a Jew as their
+Savior, but who have legislated against, and despised the Jew&mdash;this
+attracted Disraeli. With them he bowed the knee in an adoration they did
+not feel, and while his lips said the litany, his heart repeated Ben
+Ezra's prayer. In temperament he belonged with the double-dealing East. He
+intuitively knew the law of jiu jitsu, best exemplified by the Japanese,
+and won often by yielding. He was bold, but not too bold.</p>
+
+<p>Israel Zangwill, shrewdest, keenest and kindliest of Jews&mdash;with the
+tragedy of his race pictured on his furrowed face, a face like an ancient
+weather-worn statue on whose countenance grief has petrified&mdash;has summed
+up the character of Disraeli as no other man ever has or can. I will not
+rob the reader by quoting from &quot;The Primrose Sphinx&quot;&mdash;that gem of letters
+<a name='V_Page_320'></a>must ever stand together without subtraction of a word. It belongs to the
+realm of the lapidary, and its facets can not be transferred. Yet when Mr.
+Zangwill refers to the Mephistophelian curl of Lord Beaconsfield's lip,
+the word is used advisedly. No character in history so stands for the
+legendary Mephisto as does this man. The Satan of the Book of Job, jaunty,
+daring, joking with his Maker, is the Mephisto of Goethe and all the other
+playwriters who, have used the character. Mephisto is so much above the
+ordinary man in sense of humor&mdash;which is merely the right estimate of
+values&mdash;so sweeping in intellect, that Milton pictures him as a
+dispossessed god, the only rival of Deity.</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli, not satisfied with playing the part of Mephisto and tempting men
+to their ruin, but thirsting for a wider experience, turns Faustus himself
+and sells his soul for a price. He knows that everything in life is
+sold&mdash;nothing is given gratis&mdash;we pay for knowledge with tears; for love
+with pain; for life with death. He haggles and barters with Fate, and pays
+the penalty because he must.</p>
+
+<p>He alternately affronts and cajoles his enemies; takes all that the world
+has to give; knows every pleasure; wins every prize; makes love to the
+daughters of men (without loving them); and winning the one he selects,
+secretly thanks Jehovah, God of his fathers, that he leaves no
+offspring&mdash;because the woman fit for his mate and equal to mothering his
+children does not exist.</p><a name='V_Page_321'></a>
+
+<p>The sublimity of his egotism stands unrivaled. It is so great that it is
+admirable. We lift our hats to this man. Napoleon gained the field without
+prejudice; but this man enters the list with hate and prejudice arrayed
+against him. He plays the pawns of chance with literature, religion,
+politics, and moves the queen so as to checkmate all adversaries. He
+flouts love, but to show the world that he yet knows the ideal, he
+occasionally pictures truth and trusting affection in his speeches and
+books. This entire game of life is to him only a diversion.</p>
+
+<p>They may jeer him down in the House of Commons, but his patience is
+unruffled. He says, &quot;Very well, I will wait.&quot; Now and again he smiles that
+wondrous, contagious smile, showing his white teeth and the depth of his
+dark, burning eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He knows his power. He revels in the wit he never expresses; he glories in
+this bright blade of the intellect that is never fully unsheathed.</p>
+
+<p>They think he is interested in English politics&mdash;pish! Only world problems
+really interest him, and those that lie behind mean as much to him as
+those that are to come. He is one with eternity, and the vanquished glory
+of Rome, the marble beauty of Athens, the Assyrian Sphinx, the flight from
+Egypt under the leadership of one who had killed his man&mdash;yet had talked
+with God face to face&mdash;these and the dim uncertainty of the unseen, are
+the things that interest him. He is a dreamer of the Ghetto.</p><a name='V_Page_322'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>There was no taint of mixed blood in the veins of Benjamin Disraeli. He
+traced his ancestry in a record that looks like a chapter from the Book of
+Numbers. His forebears had known every persecution, every contumely,
+slight and disgrace. Driven from Spain by the Inquisition, barely escaping
+with life, when Jewish blood actually fertilized the fields about Granada,
+his direct ancestor became one of the builders of Venice. The Jews
+practically controlled the trade of the world in the sun-kissed days of
+prosperity, when Venice produced the books and the art of Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>To trace an ancestry back to those who enthroned Venice on her hundred
+isles was surely something of which to be proud; and into the blood of
+Benjamin Disraeli went a dash of the gleam and glory and glamour of
+Venice&mdash;the Venice of the Doges.</p>
+
+<p>This man's grandfather came to England with a goodly fortune, which he
+managed to increase as the years went by. He had one son, Isaac, who
+nearly broke his parents' heart in that he not only showed no aptitude for
+business, but actually wrote poems wherein commerce was held up to
+ridicule. The tendency of the artistic nature to speak with disdain of the
+&quot;mere money-grabber,&quot; and the habit of the &quot;money-grabber&quot; to refer
+patronizingly to the helpless, theoretical and dreamy artist, is well
+known. Isaac Disraeli was an artist in feeling; he must have been a
+reincarnation <a name='V_Page_323'></a>of one of those bookmakers of Venice who touched hands with
+Titian and Giorgione and helped to invest wisely the moneys the merchants
+of the Rialto made. Never a Gratiano had a greater contempt for a merchant
+than he. Just to get him out of the way, his parents packed Isaac off to
+Europe, where he acquired several languages, and some other things, with
+that ease which the Jew always manifests. He dallied in art, pecked at
+books, and made the acquaintance of many literary men.</p>
+
+<p>When his father died and left him a goodly fortune, he had the sense to
+turn the entire management of the estate over to his wife, a woman with a
+thorough business instinct, while he busied himself with his books.</p>
+
+<p>Benjamin was the second child of these parents. He had a sister older than
+himself, and two brothers younger. Those philosophers who claim that
+spirits have their own individuality in the unseen world, and the accident
+of birth really does not constitute a kinship between brothers and
+sisters, will find here something that looks like proof. Benjamin Disraeli
+bore no resemblance in mental characteristics to his sister or brothers;
+he did, however, possess the mental virtues of both father and mother,
+multiplied by ten.</p>
+
+<p>When twelve years of age he exhibited that intense disposition for mastery
+which was through life his distinguishing trait. The Jew does not outrank
+the Gentile in strength, but the average Jew surely does <a name='V_Page_324'></a>have the faculty
+of concentration which the average Gentile does not possess. And that is
+what constitutes strength&mdash;the ability to focus the mind on one thing and
+compass it: to concentrate is power.</p>
+
+<p>When Ben was sent to the Unitarian school at Walthamstow, aged fifteen, it
+was his first taste of school life. Up to this time his father had been
+his tutor. Now he found himself cast into that den of wild animals&mdash;an
+English school for boys. His Jewish name and features and his dandy ways
+and attire made him the instant butt of the playground. Ben very patiently
+surveyed his tormentors, waited to pick his man, and then challenged the
+biggest boy in the school to single combat. The exasperating way in which
+he coolly went about the business set his adversary's teeth chattering
+before the call of &quot;time.&quot; The result of the fight was that, even if
+&quot;Dizzy&quot; was not thoroughly respected from that day forth, no one ever
+called, &quot;Old clo'! Old clo'!&quot; within his hearing. Of course it was not
+generally advertised that the lad had been taking boxing lessons from
+&quot;Coster Joe&quot; for three years, with the villainies of a boys' school in
+view. In fact, boxing was this young man's diversion, and the Coster on
+several occasions expressed great regret that writing and politics had
+robbed the ring of one who showed promise of being the cleverest
+welter-weight of his time.</p>
+
+<p>The main facts in both &quot;Vivian Gray&quot; and &quot;Contarini Fleming&quot; are
+autobiographical. Like Byron, upon <a name='V_Page_325'></a>whom Disraeli fed, the author never
+got far away from himself.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before the intense personality of young Disraeli made
+itself felt throughout the Walthamstow school. The young man smiled at the
+pedant's idolatry of facts, and seized the vital point in every lesson. He
+felt himself the superior of every one in the establishment, master
+included&mdash;and he was.</p>
+
+<p>Before a year he split the school into two factions&mdash;those who favored Ben
+Disraeli, and those who were opposed to him. The master cast his vote with
+the latter class, and the result was that Ben withdrew, thus saving the
+authorities the trouble of expelling him. His leave-taking was made
+melodramatic with a speech to the boys, wherein impertinent allusions were
+made concerning all schoolmasters, and the master of Walthamstow in
+particular.</p>
+
+<p>And thus ended the school life of Benjamin Disraeli, the year at
+Walthamstow being his first and last experience.</p>
+
+<p>However, Ben was not indifferent to study; he felt sure that there was a
+great career before him, and he knew that knowledge was necessary to
+success. With his father's help he laid out a course of work that kept him
+at his tasks ten hours a day. His father was a literary man of
+acknowledged worth, and mingled in the best artistic society of London.
+Into this society Benjamin was introduced, meeting all his father's
+<a name='V_Page_326'></a>acquaintances on an absolute equality. The young man at eighteen was
+totally unabashed in any company; he gave his opinion unasked, criticized
+his elders, flashed his wit upon the guests and was looked upon with fear,
+amusement or admiration, as the case might be.</p>
+
+<p>Froude says of him, &quot;The stripling was the same person as the statesman at
+seventy, with this difference only, that the affectation which was natural
+in the boy was itself affected in the matured politician, whom it served
+well for a mask, or as a suit of impenetrable armor.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_327'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>That literature is the child of parents is true. That is to say, it takes
+two to produce a book. Of course there are imitation books, sort o' wax
+figures that look like books, made through habit by those that have been
+many years upon the turf, and who work automatically; but every real,
+live, throbbing, pulsing book was written by a man with a woman at his
+elbow, or vice versa.</p>
+
+<p>When twenty-one years of age Benjamin Disraeli produced &quot;Vivian Gray.&quot; The
+woman in the case was Mrs. Austen, wife of a prosperous London solicitor.
+This lady was handsome, a brilliant talker, a fine musician and an amateur
+artist of no mean ability. She was much older than Disraeli&mdash;she must have
+been in order to comprehend that the young man's frivolity was pretense,
+and his foppery affectation. A girl of his own age, whose heart-depths had
+not been sounded by experience, would have fallen in love with the foppery
+(or else despised it&mdash;which is often the same thing); but Mrs. Austen,
+mature in years, with a decade of London &quot;seasons&quot; behind her, having met
+every possible kind of man Europe had to offer, discovered that the world
+did not know Ben Disraeli at all. She saw that the youth did not reveal
+his true self, and that instead of courting society for its own sake he
+had a supreme contempt for it. She intuitively knew that he was seething
+in discontent, and with prophetic vision she knew that his restless power
+and his ambition <a name='V_Page_328'></a>would yet make him a marked figure in the world of
+letters or politics, or both.</p>
+
+<p>For love as a passion, or supreme sentiment, ruling one's life, Disraeli
+had no sympathy. He shunned love for fear it might bind him hand and foot.
+Love not only is blind, but love blinds its votary, and Disraeli, knowing
+this, fled for freedom when the trail grew warm. A man madly in love is
+led, subdued&mdash;imagine Mephisto captured, crying it out on his knees with
+his head in a woman's lap!</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Austen was happily married, the mother of a family, and occupied
+a position high in London society.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage with her was out of the question, and scandal and indiscretion
+equally so&mdash;Ben Disraeli felt safe with Mrs. Austen. With her he put off
+his domino and grew simple and confidential.</p>
+
+<p>And so the lady, doubtless a bit flattered&mdash;for she was a woman&mdash;set
+herself to push on the hazard of new fortunes. She encouraged him to write
+his novel of &quot;Vivian Gray&quot;&mdash;discussed every phase of it, read chapter
+after chapter as they were produced, and by her gentle encouragement and
+warm sympathy fired the mind of the young man to the point of production.</p>
+
+<p>The book is absurd in plot, and like most first books, flashy and
+overdrawn. And yet there is a deal of power in it, and the thinly veiled
+characters were speedily pointed out as living personages. Literary London
+went agog, and Mrs. Austen fanned the flame by <a name='V_Page_329'></a>inviting &quot;the set&quot; to her
+drawing-room to hear the great author read from his amusing work. The best
+feature of the book, and probably the saving feature, is that the central
+figure in the plot is Disraeli, himself, and upon his own head the author
+plays his shafts of wit and ridicule. The impertinence and impudence which
+he himself manifested were parodied, caricatured and played upon, to the
+great delight of the uninitiated rabble, who gave themselves much credit
+for having made a discovery.</p>
+
+<p>The man who scorns, scoffs, gibes and jeers other men, and at the same
+time is willing to drop his guard and laugh at himself, is not a bad man.
+Very, very seldom is found a man under thirty who does not take himself
+and all his wit seriously. But Disraeli, the lawyer's clerk, at twenty was
+wise and subtle beyond all men in London Town. Mrs. Austen must have been
+wise, too, for had she been like most other good women she would have
+wanted her protege admired, and have rebelled in tears at the thought of
+placing him in a position where society would serve him up for
+tittle-tattle. Small men can be laughed down, but great ones, never.</p>
+
+<p>A little American testimony as to the appearance of Disraeli in his
+manhood may not here be amiss. Says N.P. Willis: &quot;He was sitting in a
+window looking on Hyde Park, the last rays of sunlight reflected from the
+gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat.
+Patent-leather pumps, a white stick with a black <a name='V_Page_330'></a>cord and tassel, and a
+quantity of chains about his neck and pockets, served to make him a
+conspicuous object. He has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He
+is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and strength of his
+lungs would seem to be a victim of consumption. His eye is black as
+Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying-in-wait sort of expression
+conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient
+nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a
+particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of
+triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. His hair is as
+extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black
+ringlets falls on his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, which on
+the right temple is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a
+girl. The conversation turned on Beckford. I might as well attempt to
+gather up the foam of the sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary
+language in which he clothed his description. He talked like a racehorse
+approaching the winning-post, every muscle in action.&quot;</p><a name='V_Page_331'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Disraeli, like Byron, awoke one morning and found himself famous. And like
+Byron, he was yet a stripling. Pitt was Prime Minister at twenty-five.
+Genius has its example, and Disraeli worshiped alternately at the shrines
+of Byron and Pitt. The daring intellect and haughty indifference of Byron,
+and the compelling power of Pitt&mdash;he saw no reason why he should not unite
+these qualities within himself. He had been grubbing in a lawyer's office,
+and had revealed decided ability in a business way, but novel-writing in
+office-hours was not appreciated by his employer&mdash;Ben was told so, and
+this gave him an opportunity to resign. He had set his heart on a
+political career&mdash;he thirsted for power&mdash;and no doubt Mrs. Austen
+encouraged him in this. To push a man to the front, and thus win a
+vicarious triumph, has been a source of great joy to more than one
+ambitious woman. To get on in politics, Disraeli must enter the House of
+Commons. Even now, with the help of the Austens, and his father's purse, a
+pocket borough might be secured, but it was not enough&mdash;he must enter with
+eclat.</p>
+
+<p>A year of travel was advised&mdash;fame grows best where the man is not too
+much in evidence; there is virtue in obscurity. Disraeli decided to go
+down through Europe, traveling over the same route that Byron had taken,
+write another book that would secure him some more necessary notoriety,
+and then stand for a seat in the House of Commons. Once within the sacred
+pale, he <a name='V_Page_332'></a>believed his knowledge of business, his ability to express
+himself as a writer or speaker, and the magic of his presence would make
+the rest easy.</p>
+
+<p>There was no dumb luck in the matter&mdash;neither father nor son believed in
+chance; they fixed their faith on cause and effect.</p>
+
+<p>And so Ben went abroad before London society grew aweary of him.</p>
+
+<p>His stay was purposely prolonged; and news of his progress from time to
+time filled the public prints. He carried letters of introduction to every
+one and moved in a sort of sublime pageant as he traveled.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned, wearing the costume of the East, he was greeted by
+society as a prince. His novel, &quot;Contarini Fleming,&quot; was published with
+great acclaim, and interest in &quot;Vivian Gray&quot; was revived by a special
+edition deluxe. &quot;Contarini&quot; was compared to &quot;Childe Harold,&quot; and pictures
+of Disraeli, with hair curling to his shoulders, were displayed in
+shop-windows by the side of pictures of Byron.</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli was the lion of the drawing-rooms. When it was known he was to be
+in a certain place crowds gathered to get a glimpse of his handsome face,
+and to listen to his wit.</p>
+
+<p>He introduced several of his Eastern accomplishments, one of which was the
+hookah. &quot;Beware of tobacco, my boy,&quot; said an old colonel to him one day;
+&quot;women do not like it; it has ruined more charming liaisons <a name='V_Page_333'></a>than anything
+else I know!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you must consider smoking a highly moral accomplishment,&quot; was the
+reply. The colonel had wrongly guessed the object of Disraeli's ambition.</p>
+
+<p>He became acquainted with Tom Moore, Count d'Orsay, and Lady Morgan; Lady
+Blessington welcomed him at Kensington; Bulwer-Lytton introduced him to
+Mrs. Wyndham Lewis&mdash;wife of the member from Maidstone&mdash;aged forty; and he
+was, say, twenty-five. They tried conclusions in repartee, sparred for
+points, and amused the company by hot arguments and wordy pyrotechnics.
+When they found themselves alone in the conservatory, after a little
+stroll, they shook hands, and the gentleman said, &quot;What fools these
+mortals be!&quot; &quot;True,&quot; replied the lady; &quot;true, and you and I are mortals.&quot;
+And so Disraeli found another woman who correctly gauged him. They liked
+each other first-rate. At last a vacant borough was found and arrangements
+made for the young man to stand as a candidate for the House of Commons.
+The campaign was entered upon with great vigor. Disraeli quite outdid
+himself in speech-making and waistcoats. The election took place&mdash;and he
+was defeated.</p><a name='V_Page_334'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>With Disraeli defeat meant merely a transient episode, not a conclusion.
+On the second venture he was elected, and one sunshiny day found himself
+duly sworn in as a member of the House of Commons, with a seat just back
+of Peel's.</p>
+
+<p>There is a tradition in Parliament, adopted also in the United States
+Senate, that silence is quite becoming to a member during his first
+session. Disraeli had a motto to the effect that it is better to be
+impudent than servile, and in order to teach Parliament that in the
+presence of personality all rules are waived, he very shortly indulged him
+in an exceeding spread-eagle speech. But he had not spoken five minutes
+before the members began to laugh. Catcalls, hisses and mad tumult
+reigned. The young man in the flaming waistcoat let loose all his
+oratorical artillery, and the result was bravos and left-handed applause
+that smothered his batteries. Again and again he tried to proceed, but his
+voice was lost in the Clover-Club fusillade. The Chair was powerless. At
+last the speaker saw an opening and roared above the din, &quot;I will now sit
+down, but you shall yet listen to me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Opinions were divided as to whether the House had squelched the
+Israelitish fop, or whether the fop had tantalized the House into
+unseemliness. The young man needed snubbing, no doubt, but the lesson had
+been given so brutally that sympathy was with the snubbed. The original
+intent was to abash him, so he <a name='V_Page_335'></a>would break down; but this not succeeding,
+he had simply been clubbed into silence.</p>
+
+<p>Then when Disraeli refused to accept condolences&mdash;merely waiving the whole
+affair&mdash;and a few days after arose to make some trivial motion, just as
+though nothing had happened, he made friends.</p>
+
+<p>Any man who shows himself to be strong has friends&mdash;people wish to attach
+themselves to such a one. Disraeli showed himself strong in that he held
+no resentment, and indulged in no recrimination on account of the
+treatment he had received. A weak man would have done one of these things:
+resigned his seat, demanded an apology from the House, or refused to let
+his voice again be heard. Disraeli did neither&mdash;he continued to speak on
+various occasions, and expressed himself so courteously, so modestly, so
+becomingly, that the members listened in awe and curiosity. Then soon it
+was discovered that beneath the mild and gentle ripple of his speech ran a
+deep current of earnest truth, tinged with subtle wit. When he spoke, the
+loungers came in from the cloakrooms, fearing to miss something that was
+worth while.</p>
+
+<p>The House of Commons experience taught Disraeli one great truth, and that
+was this: the most effective oratory is not bombastic. Among educated
+people (or illiterate) the quiet, deliberate and subdued manner is best.
+Reserve is a very necessary element in effective speaking. It is
+soul-weight that counts, not mere words, <a name='V_Page_336'></a>words, words. The extreme
+deliberation and compelling quality of quiet self-possession in Disraeli's
+style dated, according to Gladstone, from the day that Parliament tried to
+laugh him down. After that if any one wanted to hear him they had to come
+to him, and he took good care that those who did come did not go away
+empty. He never explained the evident, illustrated the obvious, nor
+expatiated on the irrelevant.</p>
+
+<p>However, the motto, &quot;Impudence rather than servility,&quot; was not discarded.
+Instead of a dashing style he developed a slow, subtle, scathing quality
+that was quite lost on all, save those who gave themselves to close
+listening.</p>
+
+<p>And the House listened, for when Disraeli went after an antagonist he
+chose an antlered stag. If little men, fiercely effervescent and
+childishly inconsequential, attempted to reply to him or sought to engage
+him in debate, he simply answered them with silence, or that tantalizing
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell and Disraeli, although unlike, had much in common and should
+have been fast friends. Surely the age and distinguished record of
+O'Connell must have commanded Disraeli's respect, but we know how they
+grappled in wordy warfare. Disraeli called the Irishman an incendiary, and
+O'Connell, who was a past master in abuse, replied in a speech wherein he
+exhausted the Billingsgate lexicon. He wound up by a reference to the
+ancestry of his opponent, and a suggestion that &quot;this renegade Jew is
+descended from the impenitent thief, <a name='V_Page_337'></a>whose name was doubtless Disraeli.&quot;
+It was a home-thrust&mdash;a picture so exaggerated and overdrawn that all
+England laughed. The very extravagance of the simile should have saved the
+allusion from resentment; but it touched Disraeli in his most sensitive
+spot&mdash;his pride of birth.</p>
+
+<p>He straightway challenged his traducer. O'Connell had killed a man in a
+duel years before, and then vowed he would never again engage in mortal
+combat.</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli intimated that he would fight O'Connell's son, Morgan, if
+preferred, a man of his own age.</p>
+
+<p>Morgan replied that his father insulted so many men he could not set the
+precedent of fighting them all, or standing sponsor for an indiscreet
+parent. But with genuine Irish spirit he suggested that if the son of
+Abraham was intent on fight and could not be persuaded to be sensible,
+why, the matter could probably be arranged.</p>
+
+<p>Happily, about this time, police officers invaded the apartments of
+Disraeli and arrested him on a bench-warrant. He was bound over, to his
+great relief, in the sum of five hundred pounds to keep the peace.</p>
+
+<p>O'Connell never took the matter very seriously, and referred soon after in
+a speech to &quot;my excellent, though slightly bellicose friend, child of an
+honored race.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli did not take up politics to make money&mdash;the man who does that may
+win in his desires, but his <a name='V_Page_338'></a>career is short. Nothing but honesty really
+succeeds. Disraeli knew this, and in his record there is no taint. But the
+income of a member of the House of Commons affords no opportunity for
+display. Disraeli's books brought him in only small sums, and his father's
+moderate fortune had been sadly drawn upon. He was well past thirty, and
+was not making head, simply because he was cramped for funds. To rise in
+politics you must have an establishment; you must entertain and reach out
+and bring those you wish to influence within your scope. A third floor
+back, in an ebb-tide street, will not do. Like Agassiz, Disraeli had no
+time to make money&mdash;it was a sad plight. But this was a man of destiny,
+and to use the language of Augustine Birrell, &quot;Wyndam Lewis at this time
+accommodatingly died.&quot; Mrs. Wyndam Lewis had been the firm friend and
+helper of Disraeli for many years, and although a small matter of fifteen
+years separated them as to ages, yet their hearts beat as one.</p>
+
+<p>Scarce a twelvemonth had gone before the widow and Disraeli were married.
+They disappeared from London for some months, journeying on the Continent.
+When they returned all the old scores in way of unpaid bills against
+Disraeli were paid, and he was master of an establishment.</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli was thirty-five, his wife was fifty, but it was a happy mating.
+They thought alike, and their ambitions were the same. Disraeli treated
+his wife with all <a name='V_Page_339'></a>the courtly grace and deference in which he was an
+adept, and her princely fortune was absolutely his. &quot;There was much cause
+for gratitude on both sides,&quot; said O'Connell. And there is no doubt that
+Disraeli's wife proved the firmest friend he ever had. For many years she
+was his sole confidante and best adviser. She attended him everywhere and
+relieved him of many burdens. That true incident of her fingers being
+crushed by the careless slamming of the carriage-door, and her hiding the
+bleeding members in her muff, and attending her husband to the House of
+Commons, where he was to speak, refusing to disturb him by her pain&mdash;this
+symbols the moral quality of the woman. She was the fit mate of a great
+man, and it is pleasant to know that she was honored and appreciated.</p><a name='V_Page_340'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>To tell the story of Disraeli's thirty years in Parliament would be to
+write the political history of the time. He was in the front of every
+fight; he expressed himself on every subject; he crossed swords with the
+strongest men of his age. That he had no great and overpowering
+convictions on any subject is fully admitted now, even by his most ardent
+admirers&mdash;it was always a question of policy; that is to say, he was a
+politician. He gave a point here and there when he had to, and when he
+did, always managed to do it gracefully. When he ambled over from one
+party to another he affected a fine wrath and gave excellent reasons.</p>
+
+<p>Three times he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and twice was he Prime
+Minister, and for a time actual Dictator. But he took good care not to
+exercise his power too severely. When his word was supreme, the safety of
+the nation lay, as it always does, in a strong opposition.</p>
+
+<p>In one notable instance was Disraeli wrong in his prophecies&mdash;he declared
+again and again that Free Trade meant commercial bankruptcy. Yet Free
+Trade came about, and the fires were started in ten thousand factories,
+and such prosperity came to England as she had never known before.</p>
+
+<p>Political economy as a science was a constant butt for his wit, and in
+physical science he was dense to a point where his ignorance calls for
+pity. He believed <a name='V_Page_341'></a>in the literal Mosaic account of creation, and said in
+his paradoxical way on one occasion, that in belief he was not only a
+Christian, but a Jew. And this in spite of his most famous mot: &quot;All
+sensible men are of one religion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And what is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sensible men never tell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Had Disraeli been truly sensible he would not have attempted to hold
+Charles Darwin up to ridicule, by declaring in a speech at Oxford that &quot;it
+is a choice between apes and angels.&quot; He had neither the ability,
+patience, nor inclination to read the &quot;Origin of Species,&quot; and yet was so
+absurd as to answer it.</p>
+
+<p>In his novels of &quot;Coningsby,&quot; &quot;Sybil&quot; and &quot;Tancred,&quot; he argues with great
+skill and adroit sophistry that a landed aristocracy is necessary to a
+progressive civilization. &quot;The common people need an example of refinement
+in way of manners, art and intellect. Some one must take the lead, and
+reveal the possibility of life in leisurely and luxurious living.&quot; And
+this example of beauty, gentleness and excellence was to come from the
+landed gentry of England&mdash;ye gods! Was it possible that this man believed
+in the necessity of the gentry as a virtuous example? Or did he merely
+view the fact that the aristocracy were there in actual possession, and as
+they could not be evicted, why then the next best thing was to cajole,
+flatter and discreetly advise them? Who shall say what this man believed!</p><a name='V_Page_342'></a>
+
+<p>Sensible men never tell.</p>
+
+<p>But this we know, this man had no vice but ambition. He conformed pretty
+closely to England's ideals, and his thirst for power never caused him to
+take the chances of a Waterloo. His novels show a close acquaintanceship
+with the ways of society, and he knew the human heart as few men ever do.
+The degradation of the average toiler in Great Britain, the infamy of the
+policy extended toward Ireland, and the cruelty of imperialism&mdash;all these
+he knew, for his books reveal it; but he was powerless as a leader to stem
+the current of tendency. He acquiesced where he deemed action futile.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lothair&quot; is his best novel, for in it he gets furthest away from himself.
+It reveals a cleverness that is admirable, and this same brilliancy and
+shifty play of intellect are found in &quot;Endymion,&quot; written in his
+seventy-fifth year. Whether these novels can ever take their place among
+the books that endure is a question that is growing more easy to answer
+each succeeding year. They owed their popularity more to their flippant
+cleverness than to their insight, and their vogue was due, to a great
+extent, to the veiled personalities that interline their pages.</p>
+
+<p>That Disraeli did not carry out all the plans and reforms he attempted,
+need not be set down to his discredit. It is fortunate he did not succeed
+better than he did. He, however, safely piloted the great ship in the
+direction the passengers desired to go; and his <a name='V_Page_343'></a>own personal ambition was
+reached when he, a Jew at heart&mdash;member of a despised race&mdash;had made
+himself master of the fleets, armies and treasury of the proudest nation
+the world has ever known.</p><a name='V_Page_344'></a>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Bound into the life of Disraeli is a peculiar incident in the romantic
+friendship that existed between him and Mrs. Willyums of Torquay,
+Cornwall. About the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, Disraeli began to
+receive letters from an unknown admirer, who expressed a great desire for
+an interview on &quot;a most important business.&quot; All public men, especially if
+they have the brilliant mental qualities of Disraeli, receive such
+letters. The sensitive neurotic female who is ill-appreciated in her own
+home and whose soul yearns for a &quot;higher companionship&quot; is numerous.
+Disraeli's secretary used to take care of such letters with a gentle
+explanation that the Chief was out of town, but upon his return, etc.,
+etc., and that was the last of it. But this Torquay correspondent was
+insistent, and finally a letter came from her saying she had come to
+London on purpose to meet her lord and master, and she would await him at
+a seat just east of the fountain in Crystal Palace at a certain hour.
+Disraeli read the missive with impatience&mdash;the idea of his meeting an
+unknown woman in this fishmonger manner at a hurdy-gurdy show! He tossed
+the letter into the fire. The next day another letter came, expressing
+much regret that he had not kept the appointment, but saying she would
+await him at the same place the following day, and begging him, as the
+matter was very urgent, not to fail her.</p>
+
+<p>Disraeli smiled and showed the letter to his wife. She <a name='V_Page_345'></a>advised him to go.
+When his wife said he had better do a thing he usually did it; and so he
+ordered his carriage and went to the hurdy-gurdy show to meet the
+impressionable female of unknown age and condition at the seat just east
+of the fountain. It was a silly thing for the leading member of Parliament
+to do&mdash;to make an assignation in a public place with a fool-woman&mdash;all
+London might be laughing at him tomorrow! He was on the point of turning
+back.</p>
+
+<p>But he reached the fountain and there was his destiny awaiting him&mdash;a
+little woman in widow's black. She lifted her veil and showed a face
+wrinkled and old, but kindly. She was agitated&mdash;she really did not expect
+him&mdash;and the great man gave a great sigh of relief when he saw that no
+flashily dressed creature had entrapped him. Even if people stared at him
+sitting there it made no difference. In pity he shook hands with the
+little old woman, sat down beside her, calmed her agitation, spoke of
+Cornwall and the weather, and inquired what he could do for her. A
+rambling talk about nothing followed, and Disraeli was sure it was just a
+mild case of lunacy.</p>
+
+<p>He arose to go, and the woman gave him an envelope, saying she had written
+out her case and begged him to read the letter when he had time. The man
+was preoccupied, his mind on great affairs of state&mdash;he simply crushed the
+letter into the side-pocket of his overcoat, bade the woman a dignified
+good-morning, and turned <a name='V_Page_346'></a>away.</p>
+
+<p>It was a month before he found the letter all crumpled and soiled there
+where he had placed it. He really had forgotten where it came from. The
+envelope was opened and out dropped a Bank of England note for one
+thousand pounds. This note was to pay for certain legal advice. The advice
+wanted was of a trivial nature, and Disraeli, always conscientious in
+money matters, hastened to return the money, in person, and give the
+advice gratis.</p>
+
+<p>But the lady had had the interview&mdash;two of them&mdash;and this was all she
+wanted. Letters followed, and this developed into a daily correspondence,
+wherein the old lady revealed the story of her passion&mdash;a passion as
+delicate, earnest and all-devouring as ever a girl of twenty knew. Insane,
+you say? Well, ah&mdash;yes, doubtless. But then, love is illusion; perhaps
+life is illusion, a very beautiful rainbow, and why old folks should not
+be allowed to chase it, or allow sweet emotion to gurgle gleefully under
+their lee, a bit, as well as young folks, I do not know. Then, really, is
+love simply a physical manifestation and do spirits grow old? If so, where
+is our belief in the immortality of the soul?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Willyums was childless, had long been a widow, was rich, and her
+heart had been in the grave until she began to trace the record of
+Disraeli. She was a recluse: read, studied, fed on Disraeli&mdash;loved him.
+After several years of dreaming and planning she had actually bagged the
+game. She was a woman of education and ideas.<a name='V_Page_347'></a> Her letters were
+interesting&mdash;and Disraeli's letters to her, now published, reveal the
+history of his daily life as he never told it to another. At her death the
+bulk of Mrs. Willyum's fortune went by will to Disraeli.</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Disraeli was not jealous of this affection. Why should a woman of
+sixty be jealous of another woman the same age? They pooled their love and
+grew rich together in recounting it. Presents were going backward and
+forward all the time between Disraeli's country home and Torquay. Mrs.
+Willyums next came to live at Hughenden. There she died, and there she
+sleeps, side by side, as was her wish, with Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Privy
+Seal, Earl Beaconsfield of Beaconsfield, Viscount Hughenden of Hughenden.
+And the reason the Ex-Premier was not buried in Westminster Abbey was
+because he had promised these two women that even death should not
+separate them from him. So there under the spreading elms, in this
+out-of-the-way country place, they rest&mdash;these three, side by side, and
+the sighing breeze tells and tells again to the twittering birds in the
+branches, of this triple love, strange as fate, strong as destiny, warm as
+life, pure as snow, and unselfish as the kiss of the summer sun.</p>
+<br /><a name='V_Page_348'></a><a name='V_Page_349'></a>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p>SO HERE ENDETH &quot;LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF ENGLISH AUTHORS,&quot; BEING
+VOLUME FIVE OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED AND
+ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS.
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="pg" noshade>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE GREAT, VOLUME 5 (OF 14)***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 13619-h.txt or 13619-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great,
+Volume 5 (of 14), by Elbert Hubbard
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14)
+
+Author: Elbert Hubbard
+
+Release Date: October 8, 2004  [eBook #13619]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF
+THE GREAT, VOLUME 5 (OF 14)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland and the Project Gutenberg Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 13619-h.htm or 13619-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/6/1/13619/13619-h/13619-h.htm)
+      or
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+
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE GREAT, VOLUME 5
+
+Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors
+
+by
+
+ELBERT HUBBARD
+
+New York
+
+1916
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS
+ROBERT BROWNING
+ALFRED TENNYSON
+ROBERT BURNS
+JOHN MILTON
+SAMUEL JOHNSON
+THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+LORD BYRON
+JOSEPH ADDISON
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+BENJAMIN DISRAELI
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+               THE IDLE SINGER
+
+    Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
+    I can not ease the burden of your fears,
+    Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
+    Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
+    Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
+    Or hope again for aught that I can say,
+    The idle singer of an empty day.
+
+    But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
+    From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
+    And feeling kindly unto all the earth,
+    Grudge every minute as it passes by,
+    Made the more mindful that the sweet days die,--
+    Remember me a little then, I pray,
+    The idle singer of an empty day.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
+    Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
+    Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme
+    Beats with light wing against the ivory gate,
+    Telling a tale not too importunate
+    To those who in the sleepy region stay,
+    Lulled by the singer of an empty day.
+                        --_From "The Earthly Paradise"_
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS]
+
+
+The parents of William Morris were well-to-do people who lived in the
+village of Walthamstow, Essex. The father was a London bill-broker,
+cool-headed, calculating, practical. In the home of his parents William
+Morris received small impulse in the direction of art; he, however, was
+taught how to make both ends meet, and there were drilled into his
+character many good lessons of plain commonsense--a rather unusual
+equipment for a poet, but still one that should not be waived or
+considered lightly. At the village school William was neither precocious
+nor dull, neither black nor white: his cosmos being simply a sort of
+slaty-gray, a condition of being which attracted no special attention from
+either his schoolfellows or his tutors. From the village school he went to
+Marlborough Academy, where by patient grubbing he fitted himself for
+Exeter College, Oxford.
+
+Morris, the elder, proved his good sense by taking no very special
+interest in the boy's education. Violence of direction in education falls
+flat: man is a lonely creature, and has to work out his career in his own
+way. To help the grub spin its cocoon is quite unnecessary, and to play
+the part of Mrs. Gamp with the butterfly in its chrysalis stage is to
+place a quietus upon its career.
+
+The whole science of modern education is calculated to turn out a good,
+fairish, commonplace article; but the formula for a genius remains a
+secret with Deity. The great man becomes great in spite of teachers and
+parents: and his near kinsmen, being color-blind, usually pooh-pooh the
+idea that he is anything more than mediocre. At Oxford, William Morris
+fell in with a young man of about his own age, by the name of Edward
+Burne-Jones. Burne-Jones was studying theology. He was slender in stature,
+dreamy, spiritual, poetic. Morris was a giant in strength, blunt in
+speech, bold in manner, and had a shock of hair like a lion's mane. This
+was in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three--these young men being
+nineteen years of age. The slender, yellow, dreamy student of theology and
+the ruddy athlete became fast friends.
+
+"Send your sons to college and the boys will educate them," said Emerson.
+These boys read poetry together; and it seems the first author that
+specially attracted them was Mrs. Browning; and she attracted them simply
+because she had recently eloped with the man she loved. This fact proved
+to Morris that she was a worthy woman and a discerning. She had the
+courage of her convictions. To elope with a poor poet, leaving a rich
+father and a luxurious home--what nobler ambition?
+
+Burne-Jones, student of theology, considered her action proof of
+depravity. Morris, in order to show his friend that Mrs. Browning was
+really a rare and gentle soul, read aloud to Burne-Jones from her books.
+Morris himself had never read much of Mrs. Browning's work, but in
+championing her cause and interesting his friend in her, he grew
+interested himself. Like lawyers, we undertake a cause first and look for
+proof later. In teaching another, Morris taught himself. By explaining a
+theme it becomes luminous to us.
+
+In passing, it is well to note that this impulse in the heart of William
+Morris to come to the defense of an accused person was ever very strong.
+His defense of Mrs. Browning led straight to "The Defense of Guinevere,"
+begun while at Oxford and printed in book form in his twenty-fourth year.
+Not that the offenses of Guinevere and Elizabeth Barrett were parallel,
+but Morris was by nature a defender of women. And it should further be
+noted that Tennyson had not yet written his "Idylls of the King,"-at the
+time Morris wrote his poetic brief.
+
+Another author that these young men took up at this time was Ruskin. John
+Ruskin was fifteen years older than Morris--an Oxford man, too; also, the
+son of a merchant and rich by inheritance. Ruskin's natural independence,
+his ability for original thinking and his action in embracing the cause of
+Turner, the ridiculed, won the heart of Morris. In Ruskin he found a
+writer who expressed the thoughts that he believed. He read Ruskin, and
+insisted that Burne-Jones should. Together they read "The Nature of
+Gothic," and then they went out upon the streets of Oxford and studied
+examples at first hand. They compared the old with the new, and came to
+the conclusion that the buildings erected two centuries before had various
+points to recommend them which modern buildings have not. The modern
+buildings were built by contractors, while the old ones were constructed
+by men who had all the time there was, and so they worked out their
+conceptions of the eternal fitness of things.
+
+Then these young men, with several others, drew up a remonstrance against
+"the desecration by officious restoration, and the tearing down of
+time-mellowed structures to make room for the unsightly brick piles of
+boarding-house keepers."
+
+The remonstrance was sent in to the authorities, and by them duly
+pigeonholed, with a passing remark that young fellows sent to Oxford to be
+educated had better attend to their books and mind their own business.
+Having espoused the cause of the Middle Ages in architecture, these young
+men began to study the history of the people who lived in the olden time.
+They read Spenser and Chaucer, and chance threw in their way a dog-eared
+copy of Mallory's "Morte d' Arthur," and this was still more dog-eared
+when they were through with it. Probably no book ever made more of an
+impression on Morris than this one; and if he had written an article for
+the "Ladies' Home Journal" on "Books That Influenced Me Most," he would
+have placed Mallory's "Morte d' Arthur" first.
+
+The influence of Burne-Jones on Morris was marked, and the influence of
+Morris on Burne-Jones was profound. Morris discovered himself in
+explaining things to Burne-Jones, and Burne-Jones, without knowing it,
+adopted the opinions of Morris; and it was owing to Morris that he gave up
+theology.
+
+Having abandoned the object that led him to college, Burne-Jones lost
+faith in Oxford, and went down to London to study art.
+
+Morris hung on, secured his B.A., and articled himself to a local
+architect with the firm intent of stopping the insane drift for modern
+mediocrity, and bringing about a just regard for the stately dignity of
+the Gothic.
+
+A few months' experience, however, and he discovered that an apprentice to
+an architect was not expected to furnish plans or even criticize those
+already made: his business was to make detail drawings from completed
+designs for the contractors to work from.
+
+A year at architecture, with odd hours filled in at poetry and art, and
+news came from Burne-Jones that he had painted a picture, and sold it for
+ten pounds.
+
+Now Morris had all the money he needed. His father's prosperity was at
+flood, and he had but to hint for funds and they came; yet to make things
+with your own hands and sell them was the true test of success.
+
+He had written "Gertha's Lovers," "The Tale of the Hollow Land," and
+various poems and essays for the college magazine; and his book, "The
+Defense of Guinevere," had been issued at his own expense, and the edition
+was on his hands--a weary weight.
+
+Thoreau wrote to his friends, when the house burned and destroyed all
+copies of his first book, "The edition is exhausted," but no such
+happiness came to Morris. And so when glad tidings of an artistic success
+came from Burne-Jones, he resolved to follow the lead and abandon
+architecture for "pure art."
+
+Arriving in London he placed himself under the tutorship of Dante Gabriel
+Rossetti, poet, dreamer and artist, six years his senior, whom he had
+known for some time, and who had also instructed Burne-Jones.
+
+While taking lessons in painting at the rather shabby house of Rossetti in
+Portland Street, he was introduced to Rossetti's favorite model--a young
+woman of rare grace and beauty. Rossetti had painted her picture as "The
+Blessed Damozel," leaning over the bar of Heaven, while the stars in her
+hair were seven. Morris, the impressionable, fell in love with the canvas
+and then with the woman.
+
+When they were married, tradition has it that Rossetti withheld his
+blessing and sought to drown his sorrow in fomentation's, with dark, dank
+hints in baritone to the effect that the Thames only could appreciate his
+grief.
+
+But grief is transient; and for many years Dante Rossetti and Burne-Jones
+pictured the tall, willowy figure of Mrs. Morris as the dream-woman, on
+tapestry and canvas; and as the "Blessed Virgin," her beautiful face and
+form are shown in many sacred places.
+
+Truth need not be distorted in a frantic attempt to make this an ideal
+marriage--only a woman with the intellect of Minerva could have filled the
+restless heart of William Morris. But the wife of Morris believed in her
+lord, and never sought to hamper him; and if she failed at times to
+comprehend his genius, it was only because she was human.
+
+Whistler once remarked that without Mrs. Morris to supply stained-glass
+attitudes and the lissome beauty of an angel, the Preraphaelites would
+have long since gone down to dust and forgetfulness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The year which William Morris spent at architecture, he considered as
+nearly a waste of time, but it was not so in fact. As a draftsman he had
+developed a marvelous skill, and the grace and sureness of his lines were
+a delight to Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown and
+others of the little artistic circle in which he found himself.
+
+Youth lays great plans; youth is always in revolt against the present
+order; youth groups itself in bands and swears eternal fealty; and life,
+which is change, dissipates the plans, subdues the revolt into conformity,
+and the sworn friendships fade away into dull indifference. Always? Well,
+no, not exactly.
+
+In this instance the plans and dreams found form; the revolt was a
+revolution that succeeded; and the brotherhood existed for near fifty
+years, and then was severed only by death.
+
+Without going into a history of the Preraphaelite Brotherhood, it will be
+noted that the band of enthusiasts in art, literature and architecture had
+been swung by the arguments and personality of William Morris into the
+strong current of his own belief, and this was that Art and Life in the
+Middle Ages were much lovelier things than they are now.
+
+That being so, we should go back to medieval times for our patterns.
+
+A study of the best household decorations of the Fifteenth Century showed
+that all the furniture used then was made to fit a certain apartment, and
+with a definite purpose in view.
+
+Of course it was made by hand, and the loving marks of the tool were upon
+it. It was made as good and strong and durable as it could be made. Floors
+and walls were of mosaic or polished wood, and these were partly covered
+by beautifully woven rugs, skins and tapestries. The ceilings were
+sometimes ornamented with pictures painted in harmony with the use for
+which the room was designed. Certainly there were no chromos and the
+pictures were few and these of the best, for the age was essentially a
+critical one.
+
+A modest circular was issued in which the fact was made known that "a
+company of historical artists will use their talents in home decoration."
+
+Dealers into whose hands this circular fell, smiled in derision, and the
+announcement made no splash in England's artistic waters. But the leaven
+was at work which was bound to cause a revolution in the tastes of fifty
+million people.
+
+Most of our best moves are accidents, and every good thing begins as
+something else. In the beginning there was no expectation of building up a
+trade or making a financial success of the business. The idea was simply
+that the eight young men who composed the band were to use their influence
+in helping one another to secure commissions, and corroborate the views of
+doubting patrons as to what was art and what not. In other words, they
+were to stand by one another.
+
+Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Arthur Hughes
+were painters; Philip Webb an architect; Peter Paul Marshall a
+landscape-gardener and engineer; Charles Joseph Faulkner, an Oxford don,
+was a designer, and William Morris was an all-round artist--ready to turn
+his hand to anything.
+
+These men undertook to furnish a home from garret to cellar in an artistic
+way.
+
+Work came, and each set himself to help all the others. From simply
+supplying designs for furniture, rugs, carpets and wall-paper they began
+to manufacture these things, simply because they could not buy or get
+others to make the things they desired.
+
+Morris undertook the entire executive charge of affairs, and mastered the
+details of half a dozen trades in order that he might intelligently
+conduct the business. The one motto of the firm was, "Not how cheap, but
+how good." They insisted that housekeeping must be simplified, and that we
+should have fewer things and have them better. To this end single pieces
+of furniture were made, and all sets of furniture discarded. I have seen
+several houses furnished entirely by William Morris, and the first thing
+that impressed me was the sparsity of things. Instead of a dozen pictures
+in a room, there were two or three--one on an easel and one or two on the
+walls. Gilt frames were abandoned almost entirely, and dark-stained woods
+were used instead. Wide fireplaces were introduced and mantels of solid
+oak. For upholstery, leather covering was commonly used instead of cloth.
+Carpets were laid in strips, not tacked down to stay, and rugs were laid
+so as to show a goodly glimpse of hardwood floor; and in the dining-room a
+large, round table was placed instead of a right-angled square one. This
+table was not covered with a tablecloth; instead, mats and doilies were
+used here and there. To cover a table entirely with a cloth or spread was
+pretty good proof that the piece of furniture was cheap and shabby; so in
+no William Morris library or dining-room would you find a table entirely
+covered. The round dining-table is in very general use now, but few people
+realize how its plainness was scouted when William Morris first introduced
+it.
+
+One piece of William Morris furniture has become decidedly popular in
+America, and that is the "Morris Chair." The first chair of this pattern
+was made entirely by the hands of the master. It was built by a man who
+understood anatomy, unlike most chairs and all church pews. It was also
+strong, durable, ornamental, and by a simple device the back could be
+adjusted so as to fit a man's every mood.
+
+There has been a sad degeneracy among William Morris chairs; still, good
+ones can be obtained, nearly as excellent as the one in which I rested at
+Kelmscott House--broad, deep, massive, upholstered with curled hair, and
+covered with leather that would delight a bookbinder. Such a chair can be
+used a generation and then passed on to the heirs.
+
+Furnishing of churches and chapels led naturally to the making of
+stained-glass windows, and hardly a large city of Christendom but has an
+example of the Morris work.
+
+Morris managed to hold that erratic genius, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in
+line and direct his efforts, which of itself was a feat worthy of record.
+He made a fortune for Rossetti, who was a child in this world's affairs,
+and he also made a fortune for himself and every man connected with the
+concern.
+
+Burne-Jones stood by the ship manfully, and proved his good sense by never
+interfering with the master's plans, or asking foolish, quibbling
+questions--showing faith on all occasions.
+
+The Morris designs for wall-paper, tapestry, cretonnes and carpets are now
+the property of the world, but to say just which is a William Morris
+design and which a Burne-Jones is an impossibility, for these two strong
+men worked together as one being with two heads and four hands. At one
+time, I find the firm of Morris and Company had three thousand hands at
+work in its various manufactories, the work in most instances being done
+by hand after the manner of the olden time. William Morris was an avowed
+socialist long before so many men began to grow fond of calling themselves
+Christian Socialists. Morris was too practical not to know that the time
+is not ripe for life on a communal basis, but in his heart was a high and
+holy ideal that he has partially explained in his books, "A Dream of John
+Ball" and "News From Nowhere," and more fully in many lectures. His
+sympathy was ever with the workingman and those who grind fordone at the
+wheel of labor. To better the condition of the toiler was his sincere
+desire. But socialism to him was more of an emotion than a well-worked-out
+plan of life. He believed that men should replace competition by
+Co-operation. He used to say: "I'm going your way, so let us go hand in
+hand. You help me and I'll help you. We shall not be here very long, for
+soon, Death, the kind old nurse, will come and rock us all to sleep--let
+us help one another while we may." And that is about the extent of the
+socialism of William Morris.
+
+There is one criticism that has been constantly brought against Morris,
+and although he answered this criticism a thousand times during his life,
+it still springs fresh--put forth by little men who congratulate
+themselves on having scored a point.
+
+They ask in orotund, "How could William Morris expect to benefit society
+at large, when all of the products he manufactured were so high in price
+that only the rich could buy them?"
+
+Socialism, according to William Morris, does not consider it desirable to
+supply cheap stuff to anybody. The socialist aims to make every
+manufactured article of the best quality possible. It is not how cheap can
+this be made, but how good. Make it as excellent as it can be made to
+serve its end. Then sell it at a price that affords something more than a
+bare subsistence to the workmen who put their lives into its making. In
+this way you raise the status of the worker--you pay him for his labor and
+give him an interest and pride in the product. Cheap products make cheap
+men. The first thought of socialism is for the worker who makes the thing,
+not the man who buys it.
+
+Work is for the worker.
+
+What becomes of the product of your work, and how the world receives it,
+matters little. But how you do it is everything. We are what we are on
+account of the thoughts we have thought and the things we have done. As a
+muscle grows strong only through use, so does every attribute of the mind,
+and every quality of the soul take on new strength through exercise. And
+on the other hand, as a muscle not used atrophies and dies, so will the
+faculties of the spirit die through disuse.
+
+Thus we see why it is very necessary that we should exercise our highest
+and best. We are making character, building soul-fiber; and no rotten
+threads must be woven into this web of life. If you write a paper for a
+learned society, you are the man who gets the benefit of that paper--the
+society may. If you are a preacher and prepare your sermons with care, you
+are the man who receives the uplift--and as to the congregation, it is all
+very doubtful.
+
+Work is for the worker.
+
+We are all working out our own salvation. And thus do we see how it is
+very plain that John Ruskin was right when he said that the man who makes
+the thing is of far more importance than the man who buys it. Work is for
+the worker.
+
+Can you afford to do slipshod, evasive, hypocritical work? Can you afford
+to shirk, or make-believe or practise pretense in any act of life? No, no;
+for all the time you are molding yourself into a deformity, and drifting
+away from the Divine. What the world does and says about you is really no
+matter, but what you think and what you do are questions vital as Fate. No
+one can harm you but yourself. Work is for the worker. And so I will
+answer the questions of the critics as to how society has been benefited
+by, say, a William Morris book:
+
+1. The workmen who made it found a pride and satisfaction in their work.
+
+2. They received a goodly reward in cash for their time and efforts.
+
+3. The buyers were pleased with their purchase, and received a decided
+satisfaction in its possession.
+
+4. Readers of the book were gratified to see their author clothed in such
+fitting and harmonious dress.
+
+5. Reading the text has instructed some, and possibly inspired a few to
+nobler thinking.
+
+After "The Defense of Guinevere" was published, it was thirteen years
+before Morris issued another volume. His days had been given to art and
+the work of management. But now the business had gotten on to such a firm
+basis that he turned the immediate supervision over to others, and took
+two days of the week, Saturday and Sunday, for literature.
+
+Taking up the active work of literature when thirty-nine years of age, he
+followed it with the zest of youth for over twenty years--until death
+claimed him. William Morris thought literature should be the product of
+the ripened mind--the mind that knows the world of men and which has
+grappled with earth's problems. He also considered that letters should not
+be a profession in itself--to make a business of an art is to degrade it.
+Literature should be the spontaneous output of the mind that has known and
+felt. To work the mine of spirit as a business and sift its product for
+hire, is to overwork the vein and palm off slag for sterling metal.
+Shakespeare was a theater-manager, Milton a secretary, Bobby Burns a
+farmer, Lamb a bookkeeper, Wordsworth a government employee, Emerson a
+lecturer, Hawthorne a custom-house inspector, and Whitman a clerk. William
+Morris was a workingman and a manufacturer, and would have been Poet
+Laureate of England had he been willing to call himself a student of
+sociology instead of a socialist. Socialism itself (whatever it may be) is
+not offensive--the word is.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The great American Apostle of Negation expressed, once upon a day, a
+regret that he had not been consulted when the Universe was being planned,
+otherwise he would have arranged to make good things catching instead of
+bad.
+
+The remark tokened a slight lesion in the logic of the Apostle, for good
+things are now, and ever have been, infectious.
+
+Once upon a day, I met a young man who told me that he was exposed at
+Kelmscott House for a brief hour, and caught it, and ever after there were
+in his mind, thoughts, feelings, emotions and ideals that had not been
+there before. Possibly the psychologist would explain that the spores of
+all these things were simply sleeping, awaiting the warmth and sunshine of
+some peculiar presence to start them into being; but of that I can not
+speak--this only I know, that the young man said to me, "Whereas I was
+once blind, I now see."
+
+William Morris was a giant in physical strength and a giant in intellect.
+His nature was intensely masculine, in that he could plan and act without
+thought of precedent. Never was a man more emancipated from the trammels
+of convention and custom than William Morris.
+
+Kelmscott House at Hammersmith is in an ebb-tide district where once
+wealth and fashion held sway; but now the vicinity is given over to
+factories, tenement-houses and all that train of evil and vice that
+follows in the wake of faded gentility.
+
+At Hammersmith you will see spacious old mansions used as warehouses;
+others as boarding-houses; still others converted into dance-halls with
+beer-gardens in the rear, where once bloomed and blossomed milady's
+flowerbeds.
+
+The broad stone steps and wide hallways and iron fences, with glimpses now
+and then of ancient doorplates or more ancient knockers, tell of
+generations lost in the maze of oblivion.
+
+Just why William Morris, the poet and lover of harmony, should have
+selected this locality for a home is quite beyond the average ken.
+Certainly it mystified the fashionable literary world of London, with whom
+he never kept goose-step, but that still kept track of him--for fashion
+has a way of patronizing genius--and some of his old friends wrote him
+asking where Hammersmith was, and others expressed doubts as to its
+existence. I had no difficulty in taking the right train for Hammersmith,
+but once there no one seemed to have ever heard of the Kelmscott Press.
+When I inquired, grave misgivings seemed to arise as to whether the press
+I referred to was a cider-press, a wine-press or a press for "cracklings."
+
+Finally I discovered a man--a workingman--whose face beamed at the mention
+of William Morris. Later I found that if a man knew William Morris, his
+heart throbbed at the mention of his name, and he at once grew voluble and
+confidential and friendly. It was the "Open Sesame," And if a person did
+not know William Morris, he simply didn't, and that was all there was
+about it.
+
+But the man I met knew "Th' Ole Man," which was the affectionate title
+used by all the hundreds and thousands who worked with William Morris. And
+to prove that he knew him, when I asked that he should direct me to the
+Upper Mall, he simply insisted on going with me. Moreover, he told a
+needless lie and declared he was on the way there, although when we met he
+was headed in the other direction. By a devious walk of half a mile we
+reached the high iron fence of Kelmscott House. We arrived amid a florid
+description of the Icelandic Sagas as told by my new-found friend and
+interpreted by Th' Ole Man. My friend had not read the Sagas, but still he
+did not hesitate to recommend them; and so we passed through the wide-open
+gates and up the stone walk to the entrance of Kelmscott House. On the
+threshold we met F.S. Ellis and Emery Walker, who addressed my companion
+as "Tom." I knew Mr. Ellis slightly, and also had met Mr. Walker, who
+works Rembrandt miracles with a camera.
+
+Mr. Ellis was deep in seeing the famous "Chaucer" through the press, and
+Mr. Walker had a print to show, so we turned aside, passed a great pile of
+paper in crates that cluttered the hallway, and entered the library.
+There, leaning over the long, oaken table, in shirt-sleeves, was the
+master. Who could mistake that great, shaggy head, the tangled beard, and
+frank, open-eyed look of boyish animation?
+
+The man was sixty and more, but there was no appearance of age in eye,
+complexion, form or gesture--only the whitened hair! He greeted me as if
+we had always known each other, and Ellis and piles of Chaucer proof led
+straight to old Professor Child of Harvard, whose work Ellis criticized
+and Morris upheld. They fell into a hot argument, which was even continued
+as we walked across the street to the Doves Bindery.
+
+The Doves Bindery, as all good men know, is managed by Mr.
+Cobden-Sanderson, who married one of the two daughters of Richard Cobden
+of Corn-Law fame.
+
+Just why Mr. Sanderson, the lawyer, should have borrowed his wife's maiden
+name and made it legally a part of his own, I do not know. Anyway, I quite
+like the idea of linking one's name with that of the woman one loves,
+especially when it has been so honored by the possessor as the name of
+Cobden.
+
+Cobden-Sanderson caught the rage for beauty from William Morris, and began
+to bind books for his own pleasure. Morris contended that any man who
+could bind books as beautifully as Cobden-Sanderson should not waste his
+time with law. Cobden-Sanderson talked it over with his wife, and she
+being a most sensible woman, agreed with William Morris.
+
+So Cobden-Sanderson, acting on Th' Ole Man's suggestion, rented the quaint
+and curious mansion next door to the old house occupied by the Kelmscott
+Press, and went to work binding books.
+
+When we were once inside the Bindery, the Chaucerian argument between Mr.
+Ellis and Th' Ole Man shifted off into a wrangle with Cobden-Sanderson. I
+could not get the drift of it exactly--it seemed to be the continuation of
+some former quarrel about an oak leaf or something. Anyway, Th' Ole Man
+silenced his opponent by smothering his batteries--all of which will be
+better understood when I explain that Th' Ole Man was large in stature,
+bluff, bold and strong-voiced, whereas Cobden-Sanderson is small,
+red-headed, meek, and wears bicycle-trousers.
+
+The argument, however, was not quite so serious an affair as I at first
+supposed, for it all ended in a laugh and easily ran off into a quiet
+debate as to the value of Imperial Japan versus Whatman.
+
+We walked through the various old parlors that now do duty as workrooms
+for bright-eyed girls, then over through the Kelmscott Press, and from
+this to another old mansion that had on its door a brass plate so polished
+and repolished, like a machine-made sonnet too much gone over, that one
+can scarcely make out its intent. Finally I managed to trace the legend,
+"The Seasons." I was told it was here that Thomson, the poet, wrote his
+book. Once back in the library of Kelmscott House, Mr. Ellis and Th' Ole
+Man leaned over the great oaken table and renewed, in a gentler key, the
+question as to whether Professor Child was justified in his construction
+of the Third Canto of the "Canterbury Tales." Under cover of the smoke I
+quietly disappeared with Mr. Cockerill, the Secretary, for a better view
+of the Kelmscott Press.
+
+This was my first interview with William Morris. By chance I met him
+again, some days after, at the shop of Emery Walker in Clifford Court,
+Strand. I had been told on divers occasions by various persons that
+William Morris had no sympathy for American art and small respect for our
+literature. I am sure this was not wholly true, for on this occasion he
+told me he had read "Huckleberry Finn," and doted on "Uncle Remus." He
+also spoke with affection and feeling of Walt Whitman, and told me that he
+had read every printed word that Emerson had written. And further he
+congratulated me on the success of my book, "Songs From Vagabondia."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The housekeeping world seems to have been in thrall to six haircloth
+chairs, a slippery sofa to match, and a very cold, marble-top center
+table, from the beginning of this century down to comparatively recent
+times. In all the best homes there was also a marble mantel to match the
+center table; on one end of this mantel was a blue glass vase containing a
+bouquet of paper roses, and on the other a plaster-of-Paris cat. Above the
+mantel hung a wreath of wax flowers in a glass case. In such houses were
+usually to be seen gaudy-colored carpets, imitation lace curtains, and a
+what-not in the corner that seemed ready to go into dissolution through
+the law of gravitation.
+
+Early in the Seventies lithograph-presses began to make chromos that were
+warranted just as good as oil-paintings, and these were distributed in
+millions by enterprising newspapers as premiums for subscriptions. Looking
+over an old file of the "Christian Union" for the year Eighteen Hundred
+Seventy-one, I chanced upon an editorial wherein it was stated that the
+end of painting pictures by hand had come, and the writer piously thanked
+heaven for it--and added, "Art is now within the reach of all." Furniture,
+carpets, curtains, pictures and books were being manufactured by
+machinery, and to glue things together and give them a look of gentility
+and get them into a house before they fell apart, was the seeming
+desideratum of all manufacturers.
+
+The editor of the "Christian Union" surely had a basis of truth for his
+statement; art had received a sudden chill: palettes and brushes could be
+bought for half-price, and many artists were making five-year contracts
+with lithographers; while those too old to learn to draw on
+lithograph-stones saw nothing left for them but to work designs with
+worsted in perforated cardboard.
+
+To the influence of William Morris does the civilized world owe its
+salvation from the mad rage and rush for the tawdry and cheap in home
+decoration. It will not do to say that if William Morris had not called a
+halt some one else would, nor to cavil by declaring that the inanities of
+the Plush-Covered Age followed the Era of the Hair-Cloth Sofa. These
+things are frankly admitted, but the refreshing fact remains that fully
+one-half the homes of England and America have been influenced by the good
+taste and vivid personality of one strong, earnest man.
+
+William Morris was the strongest all-round man the century has produced.
+He was an Artist and a Poet in the broadest and best sense of these
+much-bandied terms. William Morris could do more things, and do them well,
+than any other man of either ancient or modern times whom we can name.
+William Morris was master of six distinct trades. He was a weaver, a
+blacksmith, a wood-carver, a painter, a dyer and a printer; and he was a
+musical composer of no mean ability.
+
+Better than all, he was an enthusiastic lover of his race: his heart
+throbbed for humanity, and believing that society could be reformed only
+from below, he cast his lot with the toilers, dressed as one of them, and
+in the companionship of workingmen found a response to his holy zeal which
+the society of an entailed aristocracy denied.
+
+The man who could influence the entire housekeeping of half a world, and
+give the kingdom of fashion a list to starboard; who could paint beautiful
+pictures; compose music; speak four languages; write sublime verse;
+address a public assemblage effectively; produce plays; resurrect the lost
+art of making books, books such as were made only in the olden time as a
+loving, religious service; who lived a clean, wholesome, manly
+life--beloved by those who knew him best--shall we not call him Master?
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+    So, take and use Thy work,
+    Amend what flaws may lurk,
+    What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim:
+    My times be in Thy hand!
+    Perfect the cup as planned!
+    Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same.
+                                        --_Rabbi Ben Ezra_
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING]
+
+
+If there ever lived a poet to whom the best minds pour out libations, it
+is Robert Browning. We think of him as dwelling on high Olympus; we read
+his lines by the light of dim candles; we quote him in sonorous monotone
+at twilight when soft-sounding organ-chants come to us mellow and sweet.
+Browning's poems form a lover's litany to that elect few who hold that the
+true mating of a man and a woman is the marriage of the mind. And thrice
+blest was Browning, in that Fate allowed him to live his philosophy--to
+work his poetry up into life, and then again to transmute life and love
+into art. Fate was kind: success came his way so slowly that he was never
+subjected to the fierce, dazzling searchlight of publicity; his
+recognition in youth was limited to a few obscure friends and neighbors.
+And when distance divided him from these, they forgot him; so there seems
+a hiatus in his history, when for a score of years literary England dimly
+remembered some one by the name of Browning, but could not just place him.
+
+About the year Eighteen Hundred Sixty-eight the author of "Sordello" was
+induced to appear at an evening of "Uncut Leaves" at the house of a
+nobleman at the West End, London. James Russell Lowell was present and
+was congratulated by a lady, sitting next to him, on the fact that
+Browning was an American.
+
+"But only by adoption!" answered the gracious Lowell.
+
+"Yes," said the lady; "I believe his father was an Englishman, so you
+Americans can not have all the credit; but surely he shows the Negro or
+Indian blood of his mother. Very clever, isn't he?--so very clever!"
+
+Browning's swarthy complexion, and the fine poise of the man--the entire
+absence of "nerves," as often shown in the savage--seemed to carry out the
+idea that his was a peculiar pedigree. In his youth, when his hair was as
+black as the raven's wing and coarse as a horse-tail, and his complexion
+mahogany, the report that he was a Creole found ready credence. And so did
+this gossip of mixed parentage follow him that Mrs. Sutherland Orr, in her
+biography, takes an entire chapter to prove that in Robert Browning's
+veins there flowed neither Indian nor Negro blood.
+
+Doctor Furnivall, however, explains that Browning's grandmother on his
+father's side came from the West Indies, that nothing is known of her
+family history, and that she was a Creole.
+
+And beyond this, the fact is stated that Robert Browning was quite pleased
+when he used to be taken for a Jew--a conclusion made plausible by his
+complexion, hair and features.
+
+In its dead-serious, hero-worshiping attitude, the life of Robert
+Browning by Mrs. Orr deserves to rank with Weems' "Life of Washington." It
+is the brief of an attorney for the defense. "Little-Willie" anecdotes
+appear on every page.
+
+And thus do we behold the tendency to make Browning something more than a
+man--and, therefore, something less.
+
+Possibly women are given to this sort of thing more than men--I am not
+sure. But this I know, every young woman regards her lover as a distinct
+and peculiar personage, different from all others--as if this were a
+virtue--the only one of his kind. Later, if Fate is kind, she learns that
+her own experience is not unique. We all easily fit into a type, and each
+is but a representative of his class.
+
+Robert Browning sprang from a line of clerks and small merchants; but as
+indemnity for the lack of a family 'scutcheon, we are told that his uncle,
+Reuben Browning, was a sure-enough poet. For once in an idle hour he threw
+off a little thing for an inscription to be placed on a presentation
+ink-bottle, and Disraeli seeing it, declared, "Nothing like this has ever
+before been written!"
+
+Beyond doubt, Disraeli made the statement--it bears his earmark. It will
+be remembered that the Earl of Beaconsfield had a stock form for
+acknowledging receipt of the many books sent to him by aspiring authors.
+It ran something like this: "The Earl of Beaconsfield begs to thank the
+gifted author of----for a copy of his book, and gives the hearty assurance
+that he will waste no time in reading the volume."
+
+And further, the fact is set forth with unction that Robert Browning was
+entrusted with a latchkey early in life, and that he always gave his
+mother a good-night kiss. He gave her the good-night kiss willy-nilly. If
+she had retired when he came home, he used the trusty latchkey and went to
+her room to imprint on her lips the good-night kiss. He did this, the
+biographer would have us believe, to convince the good mother that his
+breath was what it should be; and he awakened her so she would know the
+hour was seasonable.
+
+In many manufactories there is an electric apparatus wherewith every
+employee registers when he arrives, by turning a key or pushing a button.
+Robert Browning always fearlessly registered as soon as he got home--this
+according to Mrs. Orr.
+
+Unfortunately, or otherwise, there is a little scattered information which
+makes us believe that Robert Browning's mother was not so fearful of her
+son's conduct, nor suspicious as to his breath, as to lie awake nights and
+keep tab on his hours. The world has never denied that Robert Browning was
+entrusted with a latchkey, and it cares little if occasionally, early in
+life, he fumbled for the keyhole. And my conception of his character is
+such that, when in the few instances Aurora, rosy goddess of the morn,
+marked his homecoming with chrome-red in the eastern sky, he did not
+search the sleeping-rooms for his mother to apprise her of the hour.
+
+In one place Mrs. Orr avers, in a voice hushed with emotion, that Browning
+carefully read all of Johnson's Dictionary "as a fit preparation for a
+literary career." Without any attempt to deny that the perusal of a
+dictionary is "fit preparation for a literary career," I yet fear me that
+the learned biographer, in a warm anxiety to prove the man exceeding
+studious and very virtuous, has tipped a bit to t' other side.
+
+She has apotheosized her subject--and in an attempt to portray him as a
+peculiar person, set apart, has well-nigh given us a being without hands,
+feet, eyes, ears, organs, dimensions, passions.
+
+But after a careful study of the data, various visits to the places where
+he lived in England, trips to Casa Guidi, views from Casa Guidi windows, a
+journey to Palazzo Rezzonico at Venice, where he died, and many a pious
+pilgrimage to Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey, where he sleeps, I am
+constrained to believe that Robert Browning was made from the same kind of
+clay as the rest of us. He was human--he was splendidly human.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Browning's father was a bank-clerk; and Robert Browning, the Third, author
+of "Paracelsus," could have secured his father's place in the Bank of
+England, if he had had ambitions. And the fact that he had not was a
+source of silent sorrow to the father, even to the day of his death, in
+Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six.
+
+Robert Browning, the grandfather, entered the Bank as an errand-boy, and
+rose by slow stages to Principal of the Stock-Room. He served the Bank
+full half a century, and saved from his salary a goodly competence. This
+money, tightly and rightly invested, passed to his son. The son never
+secured the complete favor of his employers that the father had known, but
+he added to his weekly stipend by what a writer terms, "legitimate
+perquisites." This, being literally interpreted, means that he purchased
+paper, pens and sealing-wax for the use of the Bank, and charged the goods
+in at his own price, doubtless with the consent of his superior, with whom
+he divided profits. He could have parodied the remark of Fletcher of
+Saltoun and said, "Let me supply the perquisite-requisites and I care not
+who makes the laws." So he grew rich--moderately rich--and lived simply
+and comfortably up at Camberwell, with only one besetting dissipation: he
+was a book-collector and had learned more Greek than Robert the Third was
+to acquire. He searched bookstalls on the way to the City in the morning,
+and lay in wait for First Editions on the way home at night. When he had
+a holiday, he went in search of a book. He sneaked books into the house,
+and declared to his admonishing wife the next week that he had always
+owned 'em, or that they were presented to him. The funds his father had
+left him, his salary and "the perquisites," made a goodly income, but he
+always complained of poverty. He was secretly hoarding sums so as to
+secure certain books.
+
+The shelves grew until they reached the ceiling, and then bookcases
+invaded the dining-room. The collector didn't trust his wife with the
+household purchasing; no bank-clerk ever does--and all the pennies were
+needed for books. The good wife, having nothing else to do, grew anemic,
+had neuralgia and lapsed into a Shut-in, wearing a pale-blue wrapper and
+reclining on a couch, around which were piled--mountain-high--books.
+
+The pale invalid used to imagine that the great cases were swaying and
+dancing a minuet, and she fully expected the tomes would all come
+a-toppling down and smother her--and she didn't care much if they would;
+but they never did. She was the mother of two children--the boy Robert,
+born the year after her marriage; and in a little over another year a
+daughter came, and this closed the family record.
+
+The invalid mother was a woman of fine feeling and much poetic insight.
+She didn't talk as much about books as her husband did, but I think she
+knew the good ones better. The mother and son moused in books together,
+and Mrs. Orr is surely right in her suggestion that this love of mother
+and son took upon itself the nature of a passion.
+
+The love of Robert Browning for Elizabeth Barrett was a revival and a
+renewal, in many ways, of the condition of tenderness and sympathy that
+existed between Browning and his mother. There certainly was a strange and
+marked resemblance in the characters of Elizabeth Barrett and the mother
+of Robert Browning; and to many this fully accounts for the instant
+affection that Browning felt toward the occupant of the "darkened room,"
+when first they met.
+
+The book-collector took much pride in his boy, and used to take him on
+book-hunting excursions, and sometimes to the Bank, on which occasions he
+would tell the Beef-Eaters how this was Robert Browning, the Third, and
+that all three of the R.B.'s were loyal servants of the Bank. And the
+Beef-Eaters would rest their staves on the stone floor, and smile
+Fifteenth-Century grimaces at the boy from under their cocked hats.
+
+Robert the Third was a healthy, rollicking lad, with power plus, and a
+deal of destructiveness in his nature. But destructiveness in a youngster
+is only energy not yet properly directed, just as dirt is useful matter in
+the wrong place.
+
+To keep the boy out of mischief, he was sent to a sort of kindergarten,
+kept by a spinster around the corner. The spinster devoted rather more
+attention to the Browning boy than to her other pupils--she had to, to
+keep him out of mischief--and soon the boy was quite the head scholar.
+
+And they tell us that he was so much more clever than any of the other
+scholars that, to appease the rising jealousy of the parents of the other
+pupils, the diplomatic spinster requested that the boy be removed from her
+school--all this according to the earnest biographer. The facts are that
+the boy had so much energy and restless ambition; was so full of brimming
+curiosity, mischief and imagination--introducing turtles, bats and mice on
+various occasions--that he led the whole school a merry chase and wore the
+nerves of the ancient maiden to a frazzle.
+
+He had to go.
+
+After this he studied at home with his mother. His father laid out a
+schedule, and it was lived up to, for about a week.
+
+Then a private tutor was tried, but soon this plan was abandoned, and a
+system of reading, best described as "natural selection," was followed.
+
+The boy was fourteen, and his sister was twelve, past. These are the ages
+when children often experience a change of heart, as all "revivalists"
+know. Robert Browning was swinging off towards atheism. He grew
+melancholy, irritable and wrote stanzas of sentimental verse. He showed
+this verse, high-sounding, stilted, bold and bilious, to his mother and
+then to his father, and finally to Lizzie Flower.
+
+A word about Lizzie Flower: She was nine years older than Robert Browning;
+and she had a mind that was gracious and full of high aspiration. She
+loved books, art, music, and all harmony made its appeal to her--and not
+in vain. She wrote verses and, very sensibly, kept them locked in her
+workbox; and then she painted in water-colors and worked in worsted. A
+thoroughly good woman, she was far above the average in character, with a
+half-minor key in her voice and a tinge of the heartbroken in her
+composition, caused no one just knew how. Probably a certain young curate
+at Saint Margaret's could have thrown light on this point; but he married,
+took on a double chin, moved away to a fat living and never told.
+
+No woman is ever wise or good until destiny has subdued her by grinding
+her fondest hopes into the dust.
+
+Lizzie Flower was wise and good.
+
+She gave singing lessons to the Browning children. She taught Master
+Robert Browning to draw.
+
+She read to him some of her verses that were in the sewing-table drawer.
+And her sister, Sarah Flower, two years older, afterwards Sarah Flower
+Adams, read aloud to them a hymn she had just written, called, "Nearer, My
+God, to Thee."
+
+Then soon Master Robert showed the Flower girls some of the verses he had
+written.
+
+Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate, and told his mother so. A young
+woman never cares anything for an unlicked cub, nine years younger than
+herself, unless Fate has played pitch and toss with her heart's true love.
+And then, the tendrils of the affections being ruthlessly lacerated and
+uprooted, they cling to the first object that presents itself.
+
+Lizzie Flower was a wallflower. That is to say, she had early in life rid
+herself of the admiration of the many, by refusing to supply an unlimited
+amount of small talk. In feature she was as plain as George Eliot. A boy
+is plastic, and even a modest wallflower can woo him; but a man, for her,
+inspires awe--with him she takes no liberties. And the wallflower woos the
+youth unwittingly, thinking the while she is only using her influence the
+better to instruct him.
+
+It is fortunate for a boy escaping adolescence to be educated and loved
+(the words are synonymous) by a good woman. Indeed, the youngster who has
+not violently loved a woman old enough to be his mother has dropped
+something out of his life that he will have to go back and pick up in
+another incarnation.
+
+I said Robert liked Lizzie Flower first-rate; and she declared that he was
+the brightest and most receptive pupil she had ever had.
+
+He was seventeen--she was twenty-six. They read Shelley, Keats and Byron
+aloud, and together passed through the "Byronic Period." They became
+violently atheistic, and at the same time decidedly religious: things that
+seem paradoxical, but are not. They adopted a vegetable diet and for two
+years they eschewed meat. They worshiped in the woods, feeling that the
+groves were God's first temples; and sitting at the gnarled roots of some
+great oak, they would read aloud, by turn, from "Queen Mab."
+
+On one such excursion out across Hampstead Heath they lost their copy of
+"Shelley" in the leaves, and a wit has told us that it sprouted, and as a
+result--the flower and fruit--we have Browning's poem of "Pauline." And
+this must be so, for Robert and Miss Flower (he always called her "Miss
+Flower," but she called him "Robert") made many an excursion, in search of
+the book, yet they never found it.
+
+Robert now being eighteen, a man grown--not large, but very strong and
+wiry--his father made arrangements for him to take a minor clerkship in
+the Bank. But the boy rebelled--he was going to be an artist, or a poet,
+or something like that.
+
+The father argued that a man could be a poet and still work in a bank--the
+salary was handy; and there was no money in poetry. In fact, he himself
+was a poet, as his father had been before him. To be a bank-clerk and at
+the same time a poet--what nobler ambition!
+
+The young man was still stubborn. He was feeling discontented with his
+environment: he was cramped, cabined, cribbed, confined. He wanted to get
+out of the world of petty plodding and away from the silly round of
+conventions, out into the world of art--or else of barbarism--he didn't
+care which.
+
+The latter way opened first, and a bit of wordy warfare with his father on
+the subject of idleness sent him off to a gipsy camp at Epsom Downs. How
+long he lived with the vagabonds we do not know, but his swarthy skin, and
+his skill as a boxer and wrestler, recommended him to the ragged gentry,
+and they received him as a brother.
+
+It is probable that a week of pure vagabondia cured him of the idea that
+civilization is a disease, for he came back home, made a bonfire of his
+attire, and after a vigorous tubbing, was clothed in his right mind.
+
+Groggy studies in French under a private tutor followed, and then came a
+term as special student in Greek at London University.
+
+To be nearer the school, he took lodgings in Gower Street; but within a
+week a slight rough-house incident occurred that crippled most of the
+furniture in his room and deprived the stair-rail of its spindles. R.
+Browning, the Second, bank-clerk, paid the damages, and R. Browning, the
+Third, aged twenty, came back home, formally notifying all parties
+concerned that he had chosen a career--it was Poetry. He would woo the
+Divine Goddess, no matter who opposed. There, now!
+
+His mother was delighted; his father gave reluctant consent, declaring
+that any course in life was better than vacillation; and Miss Flower, who
+probably had sown the dragon's teeth, assumed a look of surprise, but gave
+it as her opinion that Robert Browning would yet be Poet Laureate of
+England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Robert Browning awoke one morning with a start--it was the morning of his
+thirtieth birthday. One's thirtieth birthday and one's seventieth are days
+that press their message home with iron hand. With his seventieth
+milestone past, a man feels that his work is done, and dim voices call to
+him from across the Unseen. His work is done, and so illy, compared with
+what he had wished and expected! But the impressions made upon his heart
+by the day are no deeper than those his thirtieth birthday inspires. At
+thirty, youth, with all it palliates and excuses, is gone forever. The
+time for mere fooling is past; the young avoid you, or else look up to you
+as a Nestor and tempt you to grow reminiscent. You are a man and must give
+an account of yourself.
+
+Out of the stillness came a Voice to Robert Browning saying, "What hast
+thou done with the talent I gave thee?"
+
+What had he done? It seemed to him at the moment as if he had done
+nothing. He arose and looked into the mirror. A few gray hairs were mixed
+in his beard; there were crow's feet on his forehead; and the first joyous
+flush of youth had gone from his face forever. He was a bachelor, inwardly
+at war with his environment, but making a bold front with his tuppence
+worth of philosophy to conceal the unrest within.
+
+A bachelor of thirty, strong in limb, clear in brain and yet a dependent!
+No one but himself to support, and couldn't even do that! Gadzooks! Fie
+upon all poetry and a plague upon this dumb, dense, shopkeeping,
+beer-drinking nation upon which the sun never sets!
+
+The father of Robert Browning had done everything a father could. He had
+supplied board and books, and given his son an allowance of a pound a week
+for ten years. He had sent him on a journey to Italy, and published
+several volumes of the young man's verse at his own expense. And these
+books were piled high in the garret, save a few that had been bought by
+charitable friends or given away.
+
+Robert Browning was not discouraged--oh no, not that!--only the world
+seemed to stretch out in a dull, monotonous gray, where once it was green,
+the color of hope, and all decked with flowers.
+
+The little literary world of London knew Browning and respected him. He
+was earnest and sincere and his personality carried weight. His face was
+not handsome, but his manner was one of poise and purpose; and to come
+within his aura and look into his calm eyes was to respect the man and
+make obeisance to the intellect that you felt lay behind.
+
+A few editors had gone out of their way to "discover" him to the world,
+but their lavish reviews fell flat. Buyers would not buy--no one seemed to
+want the wares of Robert Browning. He was hard to read, difficult,
+obscure--or else there wasn't anything in it at all--they didn't know
+which.
+
+Fox, editor of the "Repository," had met Browning at the Flowers' and
+liked him. He tried to make his verse go, but couldn't. Yet he did what he
+could and insisted that Browning should go with him to the "Sunday
+evenings" at Barry Cornwall's. There Browning met Leigh Hunt, Monckton
+Milnes and Dickens. Then there were dinner-parties at Sergeant Talfourd's,
+where he got acquainted with Wordsworth, Walter Savage Landor and
+Macready.
+
+Macready impressed him greatly and he impressed Macready. He gave the
+actor a copy of "Paracelsus" (one of the pile in the garret) and Macready
+suggested he write a play. "Strafford" was the result, and we know it was
+stillborn, and caused a very frosty feeling to exist for many a year
+between the author and the actor. When a play fails, the author blames the
+actor and the actor damns the author. These men were human. Of course
+Browning's kinsmen all considered him a failure, and when the father paid
+over the weekly allowance he often rubbed it in a bit. Lizzie Flower had
+modified her prophecy as to the Laureateship, but was still loyal. They
+had tiffed occasionally, and broken off the friendship, and once I believe
+returned letters. To marry was out of the question--he couldn't support
+himself--and besides that, they were old, demnition old; he was past
+thirty and she was forty--Gramercy!
+
+They tiffed.
+
+Then they made up.
+
+In the meantime Browning had formed a friendship, very firm and frank, but
+strictly Platonic, of course, for Fanny Haworth. Miss Haworth had seen
+more of the world than Miss Flower--she was an artist, a writer, and moved
+in the best society. Browning and Miss Haworth wrote letters to each other
+for a while most every day, and he called on her every Wednesday and
+Saturday evening.
+
+Miss Haworth bought and gave away many copies of "Pauline," "Sordello" and
+"Paracelsus"; and informed her friends that "Pippa Passes" and "Two in a
+Gondola" were great quality.
+
+About this time we find Edward Moxon, the publisher (who married the
+adopted daughter of Charles and Mary Lamb), saying to Browning: "Your
+verse is all right, Browning, but a book of it is too much: people are
+appalled; they can not digest it. And when it goes into a magazine it is
+lost in the mass. Now just let me get out your work in little monthly
+instalments, in booklet form, and I think it will go."
+
+Browning jumped at the idea.
+
+The booklets were gotten out in paper covers and offered at a moderate
+price.
+
+They sold, and sold well. The literary elite bought them by the dozen to
+give away.
+
+People began to talk about Browning--he was getting a foothold. His
+royalties now amounted to as much as the weekly allowance from his father,
+and Pater was talking of cutting off the stipend entirely. Finances being
+easy, Browning thought it a good time to take another look at Italy. Some
+of the best things he had written had been inspired by Venice and
+Asolo--he would go again. And so he engaged passage on a sailing-ship for
+Naples.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shortly after Browning's return to London, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-four,
+he dined at Sergeant Talfourd's. After the dinner a well-dressed and
+sprightly old gentleman introduced himself and begged that Browning would
+inscribe a copy of "Bells and Pomegranates," that he had gotten specially
+bound. There is an ancient myth about writers being harassed by
+autograph-fiends and all that; but the simple fact is, nothing so warms
+the cockles of an author's heart as to be asked for his autograph. Of
+course Browning graciously complied with the gentleman's request, and in
+order that he might insert the owner's name in the inscription, asked:
+
+"What name, please?"
+
+And the answer was, "John Kenyon."
+
+Then Mr. Browning and Mr. Kenyon had a nice little visit, talking about
+books and art. And Mr. Kenyon told Mr. Browning that Miss Elizabeth
+Barrett, the poetess, was a cousin of his--he was a bit boastful of the
+fact.
+
+And Mr. Browning nodded and said he had often heard of her, and admired
+her work.
+
+Then Mr. Kenyon suggested that Mr. Browning write and tell her so--"You
+see she has just gotten out a new book, and we are all a little nervous
+about how it is going to take. Miss Barrett lives in a darkened room, you
+know--sees no one--and a letter from a man like you would encourage her
+greatly."
+
+Mr. Kenyon wrote the address of Miss Barrett on a card and pushed it
+across the table.
+
+Mr. Browning took the card, put it in his pocketbook and promised to write
+Miss Barrett, as Mr. Kenyon requested.
+
+And he did.
+
+Miss Barrett replied.
+
+Mr. Browning answered, and soon several letters a week were going in each
+direction.
+
+Not quite so many missives were being received by Fanny Haworth; and as
+for Lizzie Flower, I fear she was quite forgotten. She fell into a
+decline, drooped and died in a year.
+
+Mr. Browning asked for permission to call on Miss Barrett.
+
+Miss Barrett explained that her father would not allow it, neither would
+the doctor or nurse, and added: "There is nothing to see in me. I am a
+weed fit for the ground and darkness."
+
+But this repulse only made Mr. Browning want to see her the more. He
+appealed to Mr. Kenyon, who was the only person allowed to call, besides
+Miss Mitford--Mr. Kenyon was her cousin.
+
+Mr. Kenyon arranged it--he was an expert at arranging anything of a
+delicate nature. He timed the hour when Mr. Barrett was down town, and the
+nurse and doctor safely out of the way, and they called on the invalid
+prisoner in the darkened room.
+
+They did not stay long, but when they went away Robert Browning trod on
+air. The beautiful girl-like face, in its frame of dark curls, lying back
+among the pillows, haunted him like a shadow. He was thirty-three, she was
+thirty-five. She looked like a child, but the mind--the subtle,
+appreciative, receptive mind! The mind that caught every allusion, that
+knew his thought before he voiced it, that found nothing obscure in his
+work, and that put a high and holy construction on his every sentence--it
+was divine! divinity incarnated in a woman.
+
+Robert Browning tramped the streets forgetful of meat, drink or rest.
+
+He would give this woman freedom. He would devote himself to restoring her
+to the air and sunshine. What nobler ambition! He was an idler, he had
+never done anything for anybody. He was only a killer of time, a vagrant,
+but now was his opportunity--he would do for this beautiful soul what no
+one else on earth could do. She was slipping away as it was--the world
+would soon lose her. Was there none to save?
+
+Here was the finest intellect ever given to a woman--so sure, so vital, so
+tender and yet so strong!
+
+He would love her back to life and light!
+
+And so Robert Browning told her all this shortly after, but before he
+told, she had divined his thought. For solitude and loneliness and
+heart-hunger had given her the power of an astral being; she was in
+communication with all the finer forces that pervade our ether. He would
+love her back to life and light--he told her so. She grew better.
+
+And soon we find her getting up and throwing wide the shutters. It was no
+longer the darkened room, for the sunlight came dancing through the
+apartment, driving out all the dark shadows that lurked therein.
+
+The doctor was indignant; the nurse resigned.
+
+Of course, Mr. Barrett was not taken into confidence and no one asked his
+consent. Why should they?--he was the man who could never understand.
+
+So one fine day when the coast was clear, the couple went over to Saint
+Marylebone Church and were married. The bride went home alone--could walk
+all right now--and it was a week before her husband saw her, because he
+would not be a hypocrite and go ring the doorbell and ask if Miss Barrett
+was home; and of course if he had asked for Mrs. Robert Browning, no one
+would have known whom he wanted to see.
+
+But at the end of a week, the bride stole down the stairs, while the
+family was at dinner, leading her dog Flush by a string, and all the time,
+with throbbing heart, she prayed the dog not to bark. I have oft wondered
+in the stilly night season what the effect on English Letters would have
+been, had the dog really barked! But the dog did not bark; and Elizabeth
+met her lover-husband there on the corner where the mail-box is. No one
+missed the runaways until the next day, and then the bride and groom were
+safely in France, writing letters back from Dieppe, asking forgiveness and
+craving blessings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"She is the Genius and I am the Clever Person," Browning used to say. And
+this I believe will be the world's final judgment.
+
+Browning knew the world in its every phase--good and bad, high and low,
+society and commerce, the shop and gypsy camp. He absorbed things,
+assimilated them, compared and wrote it out.
+
+Elizabeth Barrett had never traveled, her opportunities for meeting people
+had been few, her experiences limited, and yet she evolved truth: she
+secreted beauty from within.
+
+For two years after their elopement they did not write--how could they?
+goodness me! They were on their wedding-tour. They lived in Florence and
+Rome and in various mountain villages in Italy.
+
+Health came back, and joy and peace and perfect love were theirs. But it
+was joy bought with a price--Elizabeth Barrett Browning had forfeited the
+love of her father. Her letters written him came back unopened, books
+inscribed to him were returned--he declared she was dead.
+
+Her brothers, too, discarded her, and when her two sisters wrote, they did
+so by stealth, and their letters, meant to be kind, were steel for her
+heart. Then her father was rich; and she had always known every comfort
+that money could buy. Now, she had taken up with a poor poet, and every
+penny had to be counted--absolute economy was demanded.
+
+And Robert Browning, with a certain sense of guilt upon him, for
+depriving her of all the creature comforts she had known, sought by
+tenderness and love to make her forget the insults her father heaped upon
+her.
+
+As for Browning, the bank-clerk, he was vexed that his son should show so
+little caution as to load himself up with an invalid wife, and he cut off
+the allowance, declaring that if a man was old enough to marry, he was
+also old enough to care for himself. He did, however, make his son several
+"loans"; and finally came to "bless the day that his son had sense enough
+to marry the best and most talented woman on earth."
+
+Browning's poems were selling slowly, and Mrs. Browning's books brought
+her a little royalty, thanks to the loyal management of John Kenyon, and
+so absolute want and biting poverty did not overtake the runaways.
+
+After the birth of her son, in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, Mrs.
+Browning's health seemed to have fully returned. She used to ride
+horseback up and down the mountain passes, and wrote home to Miss Mitford
+that love had turned the dial backward and the joyousness of girlhood had
+come again to her.
+
+When John Kenyon died and left them ten thousand pounds, all their own, it
+placed them forever beyond the apprehension of want, and also enabled them
+to do for others; for they pensioned old Walter Savage Landor, and
+established him in comfortable quarters around the corner from Casa
+Guidi.
+
+I intimated a moment ago that their honeymoon continued for two years.
+This was a mistake, for it continued for just fifteen years, when the
+beautiful girl-like form, with her head of flowing curls upon her
+husband's shoulder, ceased to breathe. Painlessly and without apprehension
+or premonition, the spirit had taken its flight.
+
+That letter of Miss Blagdon's, written some weeks after, telling of how
+the stricken man paced the echoing hallways at night crying, "I want her!
+I want her!" touches us like a great, strange sorrow that once pierced our
+hearts.
+
+But Robert Browning's nature was too strong to be subdued by grief. He
+remembered that others, too, had buried their dead, and that sorrow had
+been man's portion since the world began. He would live for his boy--for
+Her child.
+
+But Florence was no longer his Florence, and he made haste to settle up
+his affairs and go back to England. He never returned to Florence, and
+never saw the beautiful monument, designed by his lifelong friend,
+Frederick Leighton.
+
+When you visit the little English Cemetery at Florence, the slim little
+girl that comes down the path, swinging the big bunch of keys, opens the
+high iron gate and leads you, without word or question, straight to the
+grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
+
+Browning was forty-nine when Mrs. Browning died.
+
+And by the time he had reached his fiftieth meridian, England, harkening
+to America's suggestion, was awakening to the fact that he was one of the
+world's great poets.
+
+Honors came slowly, but surely: Oxford with a degree; Saint Andrew's with
+a Lord-Rectorship; publishers with advance payments. And when Smith and
+Elder paid one hundred pounds for the poem of "Herve Riel," it seemed that
+at last Browning's worth was being recognized. Not, of course, that money
+is the infallible test, but even poetry has its Rialto, where the extent
+of appreciation is shown by prices current.
+
+Browning's best work was done after his wife's death; and in that love he
+ever lived and breathed. In his seventy-fifth year, it filled his days and
+dreams as though it were a thing of yesterday, singing in his heart a
+perpetual eucharist.
+
+"The Ring and the Book" must be regarded as Browning's crowning work.
+Offhand critics have disposed of it, but the great minds go back to it
+again and again. In the character of Pompilia the author sought to pay
+tribute to the woman whose memory was ever in his mind; yet he was too
+sensitive and shrinking to fully picture her. He sought to mask his
+inspiration; but tender, loving recollections of "Ba" are interlaced and
+interwoven through it all.
+
+When Robert Browning died, in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine, the world of
+literature and art uncovered in token of honor to one who had lived long
+and well and had done a deathless work. And the doors of storied
+Westminster opened wide to receive his dust.
+
+
+
+
+ALFRED TENNYSON
+
+    Not of the sunlight,
+    Not of the moonlight,
+    Nor of the starlight!
+    O young Mariner,
+    Down to the haven,
+    Call your companions,
+    Launch your vessel,
+    And crowd your canvas,
+    And ere it vanishes
+    Over the margin,
+    After it, follow it,
+    Follow the Gleam.
+                      --_Merlin_
+
+[Illustration: ALFRED TENNYSON]
+
+
+The grandfather of Tennyson had two sons, the elder boy, according to
+Clement Scott, being "both wilful and commonplace." Now, of course, the
+property and honors and titles, according to the law of England, would all
+gravitate to the commonplace boy; and the second son, who was competent,
+dutiful and worthy, would be out in the cold world--simply because he was
+accidentally born second and not first. It was not his fault that he was
+born second, and it was in no wise to the credit of the other that he was
+born first.
+
+So the father, seeing that the elder boy had small executive capacity, and
+no appreciation of a Good Thing, disinherited him, giving him, however, a
+generous allowance, but letting the titles go to the second boy, who was
+bright and brave and withal a right manly fellow.
+
+Personally, I'm glad the honors went to the best man. But Hallam Tennyson,
+son of the poet, sees only rank injustice in the action of his ancestor,
+who deliberately set his own opinion of right and justice against
+precedent as embodied in English Law. As a matter of strictest justice, we
+might argue that neither boy was entitled to anything which he had not
+earned, and that, in dividing the property between them, instead of
+allowing it all to drift into the hands of the one accidentally born
+first, the father acted wisely and well.
+
+But neither Alfred nor Hallam Tennyson thought so. How much their opinions
+were biased by the fact that they were descendants of the firstborn son,
+we can not say. Anyway, the descendants of the second son, the Honorable
+Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt, have made no protest of which I can learn,
+about justice having been defeated.
+
+Considering this subject of the Law of Entail one step further, we find
+that Hallam, the present Lord Tennyson, is a Peer of the Realm simply
+because his father was a great poet, and honors were given him on that
+account by the Queen. These honors go to Hallam, who, as all men agree, is
+in many ways singularly like his grandfather.
+
+Genius is not hereditary, but titles are. Hallam is eminently pleased with
+the English Law of Entail, save that he questions whether any father has
+the divine right to divert his titles and wealth from the eldest son. Lord
+Hallam's arguments are earnest and well expressed, but they seem to show
+that he is lacking in what Herbert Spencer calls the "value sense"--in
+other words, the sense of humor.
+
+Hallam's lack of perspective is further demonstrated by his patient
+efforts to explain who the various Tennysons were. In my boyhood days I
+thought there was but one Tennyson. On reading Hallam's book, however,
+one would think there were dozens of them. To keep these various men,
+bearing one name, from being confused in the mind of the reader, is quite
+a task; and to better identify one particular Tennyson, Hallam always
+refers to him as "Father," or "My Father." In the course of a recent
+interview with W.H. Seward, of Auburn, New York, I was impressed by his
+dignified, respectful, and affectionate references to "Seward." "This
+belonged to Seward," and "Seward told me"--as though there were but one.
+In these pages I will speak of Tennyson--there has been but one--there
+will never be another.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think Clement Scott is a little severe in his estimate of the character
+of Tennyson's father, although the main facts are doubtless as he states
+them. The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson, Rector of Somersby and Wood
+Enderby parishes, was a typical English parson. As a boy he was simply
+big, fat and lazy. His health was so perfect that it overtopped all
+ambition, and having no nerves to speak of, his sensibilities were very
+slight.
+
+When he was disinherited in favor of his younger brother, a keen, nervous,
+forceful fellow, he accepted it as a matter of course. His career was
+planned for him: he "took orders," married the young woman his folks
+selected, and slipped easily into his proper niche--his adipose serving as
+a buffer for his feelings. In his intellect there was no flash, and his
+insight into the heart of things was small.
+
+Being happily married to a discreet woman who managed him without ever
+letting him be aware of it, and having a sure and sufficient income, and
+never knowing that he had a stomach, he did his clerical work (with the
+help of a curate), and lived out the measure of his days, no wiser at the
+last than he was at thirty.
+
+In passing, we may call attention to the fact that the average man is a
+victim of Arrested Development, and that the fleeting years bring an
+increase of knowledge only in very exceptional cases. Health and
+prosperity are not pure blessings--a certain element of discontent is
+necessary to spur men on to a higher life.
+
+The Reverend George Clayton Tennyson had income enough to meet his wants,
+but not enough to embarrass him with the responsibility of taking care of
+it. Each quarterly stipend was spent before it arrived, and the family
+lived on credit until another three months rolled around. They had roast
+beef as often as they wanted it; in the cellar were puncheons, kegs and
+barrels, and as there was no rent to pay nor landlords to appease, care
+sat lightly on the Rector.
+
+Elizabeth, this man's wife, is worthy of more than a passing note. She was
+the daughter of the Reverend Stephen Fytche, vicar of Louth. Her family
+was not so high in rank as the Tennysons, because the Tennysons belonged
+to the gentry. But she was intelligent, amiable, fairly good-looking, and
+being the daughter of a clergyman, had beyond doubt a knowledge of
+clerical needs; so it was thought she would make a good wife for the newly
+appointed incumbent of Somersby.
+
+The parents arranged it, the young folks were willing, and so they were
+married--and the bridegroom was happy ever afterward.
+
+And why shouldn't he have been happy? Surely no man was ever blessed with
+a better wife! He had made a reach into the matrimonial grab-bag and drawn
+forth a jewel. This jewel was many-faceted. Without affectation or silly
+pride, the clergyman's wife did the work that God sent her to do. The
+sense of duty was strong upon her. Babies came, once each two years, and
+in one case two in one year, and there was careful planning required to
+make the income reach, and to keep the household in order. Then she
+visited the poor and sick of the parish, and received the many visitors.
+And with it all she found time to read. Her mind was open and alert for
+all good things. I am not sure that she was so very happy, but no
+complaints escaped her. In all she bore twelve children--eight sons and
+four daughters. Ten of these children lived to be over seventy-five years
+of age. The fourth child that came to her they named Alfred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tennyson's education in early youth was very slight. His father laid down
+rules and gave out lessons, but the strictness of discipline never lasted
+more than two days at a time. The children ran wild and roamed the woods
+of Lincolnshire in search of all the curious things that the woods hold in
+store for boys. The father occasionally made stern efforts to "correct"
+his sons. In the use of the birch he was ambidextrous. But I have noticed
+that in households where a strap hangs behind the kitchen-door, for ready
+use, it is not utilized so much for pure discipline as to ease the
+feelings of the parent. They say that expression is a need of the human
+heart; and I am also convinced that in many hearts there is a very strong
+desire at times to "thrash" some one. Who it is makes little difference,
+but children being helpless and the law giving us the right, we find
+gratification by falling upon them with straps, birch-rods, slippers,
+ferules, hairbrushes or apple-tree sprouts.
+
+No student of pedagogics now believes that the free use of the rod ever
+made a child "good"; but all agree that it has often served as a
+safety-valve for a pent-up emotion in the parent or teacher.
+
+The father of Alfred Tennyson applied the birch, and the boy took to the
+woods, moody, resentful, solitary. There was good in this, for the lad
+learned to live within himself, and to be self-sufficient: to love the
+solitude, and feel a kinship with all the life that makes the groves and
+fields melodious.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-eight, when nineteen years of age, Alfred was
+sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. He remained there three years, but
+left without a degree, and what was worse, with the ill-will of his
+teachers, who seemed to regard his as a hopeless case. He wouldn't study
+the books they wanted him to, and was never a candidate for academic
+distinctions.
+
+College life, however, has much to recommend it beside the curriculum. At
+Cambridge, Tennyson made the acquaintance of a group of young men who
+influenced his life profoundly. Kemble, Milnes, Brookfield and Spedding
+remained his lifelong friends; and as all good is reciprocal, no man can
+say how much these eminent men owe to the moody and melancholy Tennyson,
+or how much he owes to them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tennyson began to write verse very young. His first line is said to have
+been written at five, and he has told of going when thirteen years of age
+to visit his grandfather, and of presenting him a poem. The old gentleman
+gave him half a guinea with the remark, "This is the first money you ever
+made by writing poetry, and take my word for it, it will be the last!"
+When eighteen years of age, with his brother, Charles, he produced a thin
+book of thin verses.
+
+We have the opinion of Coleridge to the effect that the only lines which
+have any merit in the book are those signed C.T. Charles became a
+clergyman of marked ability, married rich, and changed his name from
+Tennyson to Turner for economic and domestic reasons. Years afterward,
+when Alfred had become Poet Laureate, rumor has it he thought of changing
+the "Turner" back to "Tennyson," but was unable to bring it about.
+
+The only honor captured by Alfred at Cambridge was a prize for his poem,
+"Timbuctoo." The encouragement that this brought him, backed up by Arthur
+Hallam's declaiming the piece in public--as a sort of defi to
+detractors--caused him to fix his attention more assiduously on verse. He
+could write--it was the only thing he could do--and so he wrote.
+
+At Cambridge he was in the habit of reading his poetry to a little coterie
+called "The Apostles," and he always premised his reading with the
+statement that no criticism would be acceptable.
+
+The year he was twenty-one he published a small book called, "Poems,
+Chiefly Lyrical." The books went a-begging for many years; but times
+change, for a copy of this edition was sold by Quaritch in Eighteen
+Hundred Ninety-five for one hundred eighty pounds. The only piece in the
+book that seems to show genuine merit is "Mariana."
+
+Two years afterward a second edition, revised and enlarged, was brought
+out. This book contains "The Lady of Shalott," "The May Queen," "A Dream
+of Fair Women" and "The Lotus-Eaters."
+
+Beyond a few fulsome reviews from personal friends and a little surly
+mention from the tribe of Jeffrey, the volume attracted little or no
+attention. This coldness on the part of the public shot an atrabilarian
+tint through the ambition of our poet, and the fond hope of a success in
+literature faded from his mind.
+
+And then began what Stopford Brooke has called "the ten fallow years in
+the life of Tennyson." But fallow years are not all fallow. The dark
+brooding night is as necessary for our life as the garish day. Great crops
+of wheat that feed the nations grow only where the winter's snow covers
+all as with a garment. And ever behind the mystery of sleep, and beneath
+the silence of the snow, Nature slumbers not nor sleeps.
+
+The withholding of quick recognition gave the mind of Tennyson an
+opportunity to ripen. Fate held him in leash that he might be saved for a
+masterly work, and all the time that he lived in semi-solitude and read
+and thought and tramped the fields, his soul was growing strong and his
+spirit was taking on the silken self-sufficient strength that marked his
+later days. This hiatus of ten years in the life of our poet is very
+similar to the thirteen fallow years in the career of Browning. These men
+crossed and recrossed each other's pathway, but did not meet for many
+years. What a help they might have been to each other in those years of
+doubt and seeming defeat! But each was to make his way alone.
+
+Browning seemed to grow through society and travel, but solitude served
+the needs of Tennyson.
+
+"There must be a man behind every sentence," said Emerson. After ten years
+of silence, when Tennyson issued his book, the literary world recognized
+the man behind it. Tennyson had grown as a writer, but more as a man. And
+after all, it is more to be a man than a poet. All who knew Tennyson, and
+have written of him, especially during those early years, begin with a
+description of his appearance. His looks did not belie the man. In
+intellect and in stature he was a giant. The tall, athletic form, the
+great shaggy head, the classic features, and the look of untried strength
+were all thrown into fine relief by the modesty, the half-embarrassment,
+of his manner.
+
+To meet the poet was to acknowledge his power. No man can talk as wise as
+he can look, and Tennyson never tried to. His words were few and simple.
+
+Those who met him went away ready to back his lightest word. They felt
+there was a man behind the sentence.
+
+Carlyle, who was a hero-worshiper, but who usually limited his worship to
+those well dead and long gone hence, wrote of Tennyson to Emerson: "One of
+the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of dusky hair; bright,
+laughing, hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive, yet most
+delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian-looking, clothes
+cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is
+musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that
+may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous; I do not meet
+in these late decades such company over a pipe! We shall see what he will
+grow to."
+
+And then again, writing to his brother John: "Some weeks ago, one night,
+the poet Tennyson and Matthew Arnold were discovered here sitting smoking
+in the garden. Tennyson had been here before, but was still new to
+Jane--who was alone for the first hour or two of it. A fine,
+large-featured, dim-eyed, bronze-colored, shaggy-headed man is Alfred;
+dusty, smoky, free and easy; who swims outwardly and inwardly, with great
+composure, in an articulate element as of tranquil chaos and
+tobacco-smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most restful,
+brotherly, solid-hearted man."
+
+The "English Idylls," put forth in Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, contained
+all the poems, heretofore published, that Tennyson cared to retain. It
+must be stated to the credit, or discredit, of America, that the only
+complete editions of Tennyson were issued by New York and Boston
+publishers. These men seized upon the immature early poems of Tennyson,
+and combining them with his later books, issued the whole in a style that
+tried men's eyes--very proud of the fact that "this is the only complete
+edition," etc. Of course they paid the author no royalty, neither did they
+heed his protests, and possibly all this prepared the way for frosty
+receptions of daughters of quick machine-made American millionaires, who
+journeyed to the Isle of Wight in after-days. Soon after the publication
+of "English Idylls," Alfred Tennyson moved gracefully, like a ship that is
+safely launched, into the first place among living poets. He was then
+thirty-three years of age, with just half a century, lacking a few months,
+yet to live. In all that half-century, with its many conflicting literary
+judgments, his title to first place was never seriously questioned. Up to
+Eighteen Hundred Forty-two, in his various letters, and through his close
+friends, we learn that Tennyson was sore pressed for funds. He hadn't
+money to buy books, and when he traveled it was through the munificence of
+some kind kinsman. He even excuses himself from attending certain social
+functions on account of his lack of suitable raiment--probably with a
+certain satisfaction.
+
+But when he tells of his poverty to Emily Sellwood, the woman of his
+choice, there is anguish in his cry. In fact, her parents succeeded in
+breaking off her relations with Tennyson for a time, on account of his
+very uncertain prospects. His brothers, even those younger than he, had
+slipped into snug positions--"but Alfred dreams on with nothing special in
+sight." Poetry, in way of a financial return, is not to be commended.
+Honors were coming Tennyson's way as early as Eighteen Hundred Forty-two,
+but it was not until Eighteen Hundred Forty-five, when a pension of two
+hundred pounds a year was granted him by the Government, that he began to
+feel easy. Even then there were various old scores to liquidate.
+
+The year Eighteen Hundred Fifty, when he was forty-one, has been called
+his "golden year," for in it occurred the publication of "In Memoriam,"
+his appointment to the post of Poet Laureate, and his marriage.
+
+Emily Sellwood had waited for him all these years. She had been sought
+after, and had refused several good offers from eligible widowers and
+others who pitied her sad plight and looked upon her as an old maid
+forlorn. But she was true to her love for Alfred. Possibly she had not
+been courted quite so assiduously as Tennyson's mother had been. When that
+dear old lady was past eighty she became very deaf, and the family often
+ventured to carry on conversations in her presence which possibly would
+have been modified had the old lady been in full possession of her
+faculties. On a day as she sat knitting in the chimney-corner, one of her
+daughters in a burst of confidence to a visitor, said, "Why, before Mamma
+married Papa she had received twenty-three offers of marriage!"
+
+"Twenty-four, my dear--twenty-four," corrected the old lady as she shifted
+the needles.
+
+No one has ever claimed that Tennyson was an ideal lover. Surely he never
+could have been tempted to do what Browning did--break up the peace of a
+household by an elopement. His love was a thing of the head, weighed
+carefully in the scales of his judgment. His caution and good sense saved
+him from all Byronic excesses, or foolish alliances such as took Shelley
+captive. He believed in law and order, and early saw that his interests
+lay in that direction. He belonged to the Church of England, and doubtless
+thought as he pleased, but ever expressed himself with caution.
+
+It is easy to accuse Tennyson of being insular--to say that he is merely
+"the poet of England." Had he been more he would have been less.
+World-poets have usually been revolutionists, and dangerous men who
+exploded at an unknown extent of concussion. None of them has been a safe
+man--none respectable. Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo and Whitman were
+outcasts.
+
+Tennyson is always serene, sane and safe--his lines breathe purity and
+excellence. He is the poet of religion, of the home and fireside, of
+established order, of truth, justice and mercy as embodied in law.
+
+Very early he became a close personal friend of Queen Victoria, and many
+of his lines ministered to her personal consolation. For fifty years
+Tennyson's life was one steady, triumphal march. He acquired wealth, such
+as no other English poet before him had ever gained; his name was known in
+every corner of the earth where white men journeyed, and at home he was
+beloved and honored. He died October Sixth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two,
+aged eighty-three, and for him the Nation mourned, and with deep sincerity
+the Queen spoke of his demise as a poignant, personal sorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was at Cambridge he met Arthur Hallam--Arthur Hallam, immortal and
+remembered alone for being the comrade and friend of Tennyson.
+
+Alfred took his friend Arthur to his home in Lincolnshire one vacation,
+and we know how Arthur became enamored of Tennyson's sister Emily, and
+they were betrothed. Together, Tennyson and Hallam made a trip through
+France and the Pyrenees.
+
+Carlyle and Milburn, the blind preacher, once sat smoking in the little
+arbor back of the house in Cheyne Row. They had been talking of Tennyson,
+and after a long silence Carlyle knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and
+with a grunt said: "Ha! Death is a great blessing--the joyousest blessing
+of all! Without death there would ha' been no 'In Memoriam,' no Hallam,
+and like enough no Tennyson!" It is futile to figure what would have
+occurred had this or that not happened, since every act of life is a
+sequence. But that Carlyle and many others believed that the death of
+Hallam was the making of Tennyson, there is no doubt. Possibly his soul
+needed just this particular amount of bruising in order to make it burst
+into undying song--who knows! When Charles Kingsley was asked for the
+secret of his exquisite sympathy and fine imagination, he paused a space,
+and then answered--"I had a friend." The desire for friendship is strong
+in every human heart. We crave the companionship of those who can
+understand. The nostalgia of life presses, we sigh for "home," and long
+for the presence of one who sympathizes with our aspirations, comprehends
+our hopes and is able to partake of our joys. A thought is not our own
+until we impart it to another, and the confessional seems a crying need of
+every human soul.
+
+One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad.
+
+We reach the Divine through some one, and by dividing our joy with this
+one we double it, and come in touch with the Universal. The sky is never
+so blue, the birds never sing so blithely, our acquaintances are never so
+gracious, as when we are filled with love for some one.
+
+Being in harmony with one we are in harmony with all.
+
+The lover idealizes and clothes the beloved with virtues that exist only
+in his imagination. The beloved is consciously or unconsciously aware of
+this, and endeavors to fulfil the high ideal; and in the contemplation of
+the transcendent qualities that his mind has created, the lover is raised
+to heights otherwise unattainable.
+
+Should the beloved pass from the earth while this condition of exaltation
+endures, the conception is indelibly impressed upon the soul, just as the
+last earthly view is said to be photographed upon the retina of the dead.
+The highest earthly relationship is, in its very essence, fleeting, for
+men are fallible, and living in a world where material wants jostle, and
+time and change play their ceaseless parts, gradual obliteration comes
+and disillusion enters. But the memory of a sweet affinity once fully
+possessed, and snapped by Fate at its supremest moment, can never die from
+out the heart. All other troubles are swallowed up in this, and if the
+individual is of too stern a fiber to be completely crushed into the dust,
+time will come bearing healing, and the memory of that once ideal
+condition will chant in the heart a perpetual eucharist.
+
+And I hope the world has passed forever from the nightmare of pity for the
+dead: they have ceased from their labors and are at rest.
+
+But for the living, when death has entered and removed the best friend,
+Fate has done her worst; the plummet has sounded the depths of grief, and
+thereafter nothing can inspire terror. At one fell stroke all petty
+annoyances and corroding cares are sunk into nothingness. The memory of a
+great love lives enshrined in undying amber. It affords a ballast 'gainst
+all the storms that blow, and although it lends an unutterable sadness, it
+imparts an unspeakable peace. Where there is this haunting memory of a
+great love lost, there are always forgiveness, charity and a sympathy that
+makes the man brother to all who suffer and endure. The individual himself
+is nothing: he has nothing to hope for, nothing to lose, nothing to win,
+and this constant memory of the high and exalted friendship that once was
+his is a nourishing source of strength; it constantly purifies the mind
+and inspires the heart to nobler living and diviner thinking. The man is
+in communication with Elemental Conditions.
+
+To know an ideal friendship and to have it fade from your grasp and flee
+as a shadow before it is touched with the sordid breath of selfishness, or
+sullied by misunderstandings, is the highest good. And the constant
+dwelling in sweet, sad recollection on the exalted virtues of the one that
+has gone, tends to crystallize these very virtues in the heart of him who
+meditates them. The beauty with which love adorns its object becomes at
+last the possession of the one who loves.
+
+At the hour when the strong and helpful, yet tender and sympathetic,
+friendship of Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam was at its height, there
+came a brief and abrupt word from Vienna to the effect that Arthur was
+dead.
+
+    "In Vienna's fatal walls
+    God's finger touched him and he slept!"
+
+The shock of surprise, followed by dumb, bitter grief, made an impression
+on the youthful mind of Tennyson that the sixty years which followed did
+not obliterate.
+
+At first a numbness and a deadness came over his spirit, but this
+condition erelong gave way to a sweet contemplation of the beauties of
+character that his friend possessed, and he tenderly reviewed the gracious
+hours they had spent together.
+
+"In Memoriam" is not one poem; it is made up of many "short
+swallow-flights of song that dip their wings in tears and skim away."
+There are one hundred thirty separate songs in all, held together by the
+silken thread of love for the poet's lost friend.
+
+Seventeen years were required for their evolution. Some people, misled by
+the title, possibly, think of these poems as a wail of grief for the dead,
+a vain cry of sorrow for the lost, or a proud parading of mourning
+millinery. Such views could not be more wholly wrong.
+
+To every soul that has loved and lost, to those who have stood by open
+graves, to all who have beheld the sun go down on less worth in the world,
+these songs are a victor's cry. They tell of love and life that rise
+phoenix-like from the ashes of despair; of doubt turned to faith; of fear
+which has become serenest peace.
+
+All poems that endure must have this helpful, uplifting quality. Without
+violence of direction they must be beacon-lights that gently guide
+stricken men and women into safe harbors.
+
+The "Invocation," written nearly a score of years after Hallam's death,
+reveals Tennyson's personal conquest of pain. His thought has broadened
+from the sense of loss into a stately march of conquest over death for the
+whole human race. The sharpness of grief has wakened the soul to the
+contemplation of sublime ideas--truth, justice, nobility, honor, and the
+sense of beauty as shown in all created things. The man once loved a
+person--now his heart goes out to the universe. The dread of death is
+gone, and he calmly contemplates his own end and waits the summons without
+either impatience or fear. He realizes that death itself is a
+manifestation of life--that it is as natural and just as necessary.
+
+    "Sunset and evening star
+       And one clear call for me,
+     And may there be no moaning of the bar
+       When I put out to sea."
+
+The desire for sympathy and the wish for friendship are in his heart, but
+the fever of unrest and the spirit of revolt are gone. His heart, his
+hope, his faith, his life, are freely laid on the altar of Eternal Love.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BURNS
+
+              TO JEANNIE
+
+    Come, let me take thee to my breast,
+      And pledge we ne'er shall sunder;
+    And I shall spurn, as vilest dust,
+      The warld's wealth and grandeur.
+
+    And do I hear my Jeannie own
+      That equal transports move her?
+    I ask for dearest life, alone,
+      That I may live to love her.
+
+    Thus in my arms, wi' a' thy charms,
+      I clasp my countless treasure;
+    I'll seek nae mair o' heaven to share
+      Than sic a moment's pleasure.
+
+    And by thy een, sae bonnie blue,
+      I swear I'm thine for ever:
+    And on thy lips I seal my vow,
+      And break it shall I never.
+                              --_Robert Burns_
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BURNS]
+
+
+The business of Robert Burns was love-making.
+
+All love is good, but some kinds of love are better than others. Through
+Burns' penchant for falling in love we have his songs. A Burns
+bibliography is simply a record of his love-affairs, and the spasms of
+repentance that followed his lapses are made manifest in religious verse.
+
+Poetry is the very earliest form of literature, and is the natural
+expression of a person in love; and I suppose we might as well admit the
+fact at once that without love there would be no poetry.
+
+Poetry is the bill and coo of sex. All poets are lovers, and all lovers,
+either actual or potential, are poets. Potential poets are the people who
+read poetry; and so without lovers the poet would never have a market for
+his wares.
+
+If you have ceased to be moved by religious emotion; if your spirit is no
+longer exalted by music, and you do not linger over certain lines of
+poetry, it is because the love-instinct in your heart has withered to
+ashes of roses. It is idle to imagine Bobby Burns as a staid member of the
+Kirk; had he been so, there would now be no Bobby Burns. The literary
+ebullition of Robert Burns (he himself has told us) began shortly after he
+had reached the age of indiscretion; and the occasion was his being
+paired in the hayfield, according to the Scottish custom, with a bonnie
+lassie. This custom of pairing still endures, and is what the students of
+sociology call an expeditious move. The Scotch are great economists--the
+greatest in the world. Adam Smith, the father of the science of economics,
+was a Scotchman; and Draper, author of "A History of Civilization," flatly
+declares that Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" has influenced the people
+of Earth for good more than any other book ever written--save none.
+
+The Scotch are great conservators of energy.
+
+The practise of pairing men and women in the hayfield gets the work done.
+One man and one woman going down the grass-grown path afield might linger
+and dally by the way. They would never make hay, but a company of a dozen
+or more men and women would not only reach the field, but do a lot of
+work. In Scotland the hay-harvest is short--when the grass is in bloom,
+just right to make the best hay, it must be cut. And so the men and women,
+the girls and boys, sally forth. It is a jolly picnic-time, looked forward
+to with fond anticipation, and after recalled with sweet, sad memories, or
+otherwise, as the case may be.
+
+But they all make hay while the sun shines, and count it joy. Liberties
+are allowed during haying-time that otherwise would be declared
+scandalous; during haying-time the Kirk waives her censor's right, and
+priest and people mingle joyously. Wives are not jealous during
+hay-harvest, and husbands never faultfinding, because they each get even
+by allowing a mutual license. In Scotland during haying-time every married
+man works alongside of some other man's wife. To the psychologist it is
+somewhat curious how the desire for propriety is overridden by a stronger
+desire--the desire for the shilling. The Scotch farmer says, "Anything to
+get the hay in"--and by loosening a bit the strict bands of social custom,
+the hay is harvested.
+
+In the hay-harvest the law of natural selection holds; partners are often
+arranged for weeks in advance; and trysts continue year after year. Old
+lovers meet, touch hands in friendly scuffle for a fork, drink from the
+same jug, recline at noon and eat lunch in the shade of a friendly stack,
+and talk to heart's content, sweetening the labor of the long summer day.
+
+Of course this joyousness of the haying-time is not wholly monopolized by
+the Scotch. Haven't you seen the jolly haying parties in Southern Germany,
+France, Switzerland and the Tyrol? How the bright costumes of the men and
+the jaunty attire of the women gleam in the glad sunshine!
+
+But the practise of pairing is carried to a degree of perfection in
+Scotland that I have not noticed elsewhere. Surely it is a great economic
+scheme! It is like that invention of a Connecticut man, which utilizes the
+ebb and flow of the ocean-tides to turn a gristmill.
+
+And it seems queer that no one has ever attempted to utilize the waste of
+dynamic force involved in the maintenance of the Company Sofa.
+
+In Ayrshire, I have started out with a haying party of twenty--ten men and
+ten women--at six o'clock in the morning and worked until six at night. I
+never worked so hard, nor did so much. All day long there was a fire of
+jokes and jolly gibes, interspersed with song, while beneath all ran a
+gentle hum of confidential interchange of thought. The man who owned the
+field was there to direct our efforts and urge us on in well-doing by
+merry raillery, threat, and joyous rivalry.
+
+The point I make is this--we did the work. Take heed, ye Captains of
+Industry, and note this truth, that where men and women work together
+under right influences, much good is accomplished, and the work is
+pleasurable. Of course there are vinegar-faced philosophers who say that
+the Scotch custom of pairing young men and maidens in the hayfield is not
+without its effect on esoterics, also on vital statistics; and I'm willing
+to admit there may be danger in the scheme. But life is a dangerous
+business anyway--few indeed get out of it alive!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Burns succeeded in his love-making and succeeded in poetry, but at
+everything else he was a failure. He failed as a farmer, a father, a
+friend, in society, as a husband, and in business.
+
+From his twenty-third year his days were passed in sinning and repenting.
+
+Poetry and love-making should be carried on with caution: they form a
+terrific tax on life's forces. Most poets die young, not because the gods
+especially love them, but because life is a bank-account, and to wipe out
+your balance is to have your checks protested. The excesses of youth are
+drafts payable at maturity. Chatterton dead at eighteen, Keats at
+twenty-six, Shelley at thirty-three, Byron at thirty-six, Poe at forty,
+and Burns at thirty-seven, are the rule. When drafts made by the men
+mentioned became due, there was no balance to their credit and Charon
+beckoned.
+
+Most life-insurance companies now ask the applicant this question, "Do you
+write poetry to excess?" Shakespeare, to be sure, clung to life until he
+was fifty-three, but this seems to be the limit. Dickens and Thackeray,
+their candles well burned out, also died under sixty. Of course, I know
+that Browning, Tennyson, Morris and Bryant lived to a fair old age, but
+this was on borrowed time, for in the early life of each there was a
+hiatus of from ten to eighteen years, when the men never wrote a line, nor
+touched a drop of anything, bravely eschewing all honey from Hymettus.
+Then the four men last named were all happily married, and married life is
+favorable to longevity, but not to poetry. As a rule only single men, or
+those unhappily mated, make love and write poetry. Men happily married
+make money, cultivate content, and evolve an aldermanic front; but love
+and poetry are symptoms of unrest. Thus is Emerson's proposition partially
+proven, that in life all things are bought and must be paid for with a
+price--even success and happiness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Burns once explained to Doctor Moore that the first fine, careless rapture
+of his song was awakened into being when he was sixteen years old, by "a
+bonnie sweet sonsie lass" whom we now know as "Handsome Nell." Her other
+name to us is vapor, and history is silent as to her life-pilgrimage.
+Whether she lived to realize that she had first given voice to one of the
+great singers of earth--of this we are also ignorant. She was one year
+younger than Burns, and little more than a child when she and Bobby lagged
+behind the troop of tired haymakers, and walked home, hand in hand, in the
+gloaming. Here is one of the stanzas addressed to "Handsome Nell":
+
+    "She dresses all so clean and neat,
+    Both decent and genteel,
+    And then there's something in her gait
+    Makes any dress look weel."
+
+And how could Nell then ever guess why her cheeks burned scarlet, and why
+she was so sorry when haying-time was over? She was sweet, innocent,
+artless, and their love was very natural, tender, innocent. It's a pity
+that all loves can not remain in just that idyllic, milkmaid stage, where
+the girls and boys awaken in the early morning with the birds, and hasten
+forth barefoot across the dewy fields to find the cows. But love never
+tarries. Love is progressive; it can not stand still. I have heard of the
+"passiveness" of woman's love, but the passive woman is only one who does
+not love--she merely consents to have affection lavished upon her. When I
+hear of a passive woman, I always think of the befuddled sailor who once
+saw one of those dummy dress-frames, all duly clothed in flaming bombazine
+(I think it was bombazine) in front of a clothing establishment. The
+sailor, mistaking the dummy for a near and dear lady friend, embraced the
+wire apparatus and imprinted a resounding smack on the chaste
+plaster-of-Paris cheek. Meeting the sure-enough lady shortly after, he
+upbraided her for her cold passivity on the occasion named.
+
+A passive woman--one who consents to be loved--should seek occupation
+among those worthy firms who warrant a fit in ready-made gowns, or money
+refunded.
+
+Love is progressive--it hastens onward like the brook hurrying to the sea.
+They say that love is blind: love may be short-sighted, or inclined to
+strabismus, or may see things out of their true proportion, magnifying
+pleasant little ways into seraphic virtues, but love is not really
+blind--the bandage is never so tight but that it can peep. The only kind
+of love that is really blind and deaf is Platonic love. Platonic love
+hasn't the slightest idea where it is going, and so there are surprises
+and shocks in store for it. The other kind, with eyes wide open, is
+better. I know a man who has tried both. Love is progressive. All things
+that live should progress. To stand still is to retreat, and to retreat
+is death. Love dies, of course. All things die, or become something else.
+And often they become something else by dying. Behold the eternal Paradox!
+The love that evolves into a higher form is the better kind. Nature is
+intent on evolution, yet of the myriads of spores that cover earth, most
+of them are doomed to death; and of the countless rays sent out by the
+sun, the number that fall athwart this planet are infinitesimal. Edward
+Carpenter calls attention to the fact that disappointed love--that is,
+love that is "lost"--often affects the individual for the highest good.
+But the real fact is, nothing is ever lost. Love in its essence is a
+spiritual emotion, and its office seems to be an interchange of thought
+and feeling; but often thwarted in its object, it becomes general,
+transforms itself into sympathy, and embracing a world, goes out to and
+blesses all mankind.
+
+Very, very rare is the couple that has the sense and poise to allow
+passion just enough mulberry-leaves, so it will spin a beautiful silken
+thread, out of which a Jacob's ladder can be constructed, reaching to the
+Infinite. Most lovers in the end wear love to a fringe, and there remains
+no ladder with angels ascending and descending--not even a dream of a
+ladder. Instead of the silken ladder on which one can mount to Heaven,
+there is usually a dark, dank road to Nowhere, over which is thrown a
+package of letters and trinkets, all fastened round with a white ribbon,
+tied in a lover's knot. The many loves of Robert Burns all ended in a
+black jumping-off place, and before he had reached high noon, he tossed
+over the last bundle of white-ribboned missives and tumbled in after them.
+The life of Burns is a tragedy, through which are interspersed sparkling
+scenes of gaiety, as if to retrieve the depth of bitterness that would
+otherwise be unbearable. Go ask Mary Morison, Highland Mary, Agnes
+McLehose, Betty Alison, and Jean Armour!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The poems of Robert Burns fall easily into four divisions.
+
+First, those written while he was warmly wooing the object of his
+affection.
+
+Second, those written after he had won her.
+
+Third, those written when he had failed to win her.
+
+Fourth, those written when he felt it his duty to write, and really had
+nothing to say.
+
+The first-named were written because he could not help it, and are, for
+the most part, rarely excellent. They are joyous, rapturous, sprightly,
+dancing, and filled with references to sky, clouds, trees, fruit, grain,
+birds and flowers. Birds and flowers, by the way, are peculiarly lovers'
+properties. The song and the plumage of birds, and the color and perfume
+of flowers are all distinctly sex manifestations. Robert Burns sang his
+songs just as the bird wings and sings, and for the same reason. Sex holds
+first place in the thought of Nature; and sex in the minds of men and
+women holds a much larger place than most of us are willing to admit. All
+religious emotion and all art are born of the sex instinct.
+
+Burns' poems of the second variety, written after he had won her, are
+touched with religious emotion, or filled with vain regret and deep
+remorse, as the case may be, all owing to the quality and kind of success
+achieved, and the influence of the Dog-Star.
+
+Burns wrote several deeply religious poems. Now, men are very seldom
+really religious and contrite, except after an excess. Following a
+debauch a man signs the pledge, vows chastity, writes fervently of
+asceticism and the need of living in the spirit and not in the senses.
+Good pictures show best on a dark back-ground. Men talk most about things
+they do not possess.
+
+"The Cotter's Saturday Night," perhaps the most quoted of any of Burns'
+poems, is plainly the result of a terrible tip to t' other side. Bobby had
+gone so far in the direction of Venusburg that he resolved on getting
+back, and living thereafter a staid and proper life.
+
+In order to reform you must have an ideal, and the ideal of Burns, on the
+occasion of having exhausted all capacity for sin, is embodied in the
+"Saturday Night." It is all a beautiful dream. The real Scottish cotter is
+quite another kind of person. The religion of the live cotter is well
+seasoned with fear, malevolence and absurd dogmatism. The amount of love,
+patience, excellence and priggishness shown in "The Cotter's Saturday
+Night" never existed, except in a poet's imagination. In stanza Number Ten
+of that particular poem is a bit of unconscious autobiography that might
+as well ha' been omitted; but in letting it stand, Burns was loyal to the
+thought that surged through his brain.
+
+People who are not scientific in their speech often speak of the birds as
+being happy. My opinion is that birds are not any more happy than
+men--probably not as much so. Many birds, like the English sparrow and the
+blue jay, quarrel all day long. Come to think of it, I believe that man
+is happier than the birds. He has a sense of remorse, and this suggests
+reformation, and from the idea of reformation comes the picturing of an
+ideal. This exercise of the imagination is pleasure, for indeed there is a
+certain satisfaction in every form of exercise of the faculties. There is
+a certain pleasure in pain: for pain is never all pain. And sin surely is
+not wholly bad, if through it we pass into a higher life--the life of the
+spirit.
+
+Anything is better than the Dead Sea of neutral nothingness, wherein a man
+merely avoids sin by doing nothing and being nothing. The stirring of the
+imagination by sorrow for sin, sometimes causes the soul to wing a
+far-reaching upward flight.
+
+Asceticism is often only a form of sensuality: the man finds satisfaction
+in overcoming the flesh. And wherever you find asceticism you find
+potential passion--a smoldering volcano held in check by a devotion to
+duty; and a gratification is oft found in fidelity.
+
+The moral and religious poems of Burns were written in a desire to work
+off a fit of depression, and make amends for folly. They are sincere and
+often very excellent. Great preachers have often been great sinners, and
+the sermons that have moved men most are often a direct recoil from sin on
+the part of the preacher. Remorse finds play in preaching repentance. When
+a man talks much about a virtue, be sure that he is clutching for it.
+Temperance fanatics are men with a taste for strong drink, trying hard to
+keep sober. The moral and religious poems of Robert Burns are not equal to
+his love-songs. The love-songs are free, natural, untrammeled and
+unrestrained; while his religious poems have a vein of rotten warp running
+through them in the way of affectation and pretense. From this I infer
+that sin is natural, and remorse partially so. In Burns' moral poems the
+author tries to win back the favor of respectable people, which he had
+forfeited. In them there is a violence of direction; and all violence of
+direction--all endeavors to please and placate certain people--is fatal to
+an artist. You must work to please only yourself.
+
+Work to please yourself and you develop and strengthen the artistic
+conscience. Cling to that and it shall be your mentor in times of doubt:
+you need no other. There are writers who would scorn to write a muddy
+line, and would hate themselves for a year and a day should they dilute
+their honest thought with the platitudes of the fear-ridden. Be yourself
+and speak your mind today, though it contradict all you have said before.
+And above all, in art, work to please yourself--that Other Self that
+stands over and behind you, looking over your shoulder, watching your
+every act, word and deed--knowing your every thought. Michelangelo would
+not paint a picture on order. "I have a critic who is more exacting than
+you," said Meissonier--"it is my Other Self."
+
+Rosa Bonheur painted pictures just to please her Other Self, and never
+gave a thought to any one else, nor wanted to think of any one else, and
+having painted to please herself, she made her appeal to the great Common
+Heart of humanity--the tender, the noble, the receptive, the earnest, the
+sympathetic, the lovable. That is why Rosa Bonheur stands first among
+women artists of all time: she worked to please her Other Self.
+
+That is the reason Rembrandt, who lived at the same time Shakespeare
+lived, is today without a rival in portraiture. He had the courage to make
+an enemy. When at work he never thought of any one but his Other Self, and
+so he infused soul into every canvas. The limpid eyes look down into yours
+from the walls and tell of love, pity, earnestness and deep sincerity.
+Man, like Deity, creates in his own image, and when he portrays some one
+else, he pictures himself, too--this provided his work is Art. If it is
+but an imitation of something seen somewhere, or done by some one else, to
+please a patron with money, no breath of life has been breathed into its
+nostrils, and it is nothing, save possibly dead perfection--no more.
+
+Is it easy to please your Other Self? Try it for a day. Begin tomorrow
+morning and say: "This day I will live as becomes a man. I will be filled
+with good-cheer and courage. I will do what is right; I will work for the
+highest; I will put soul into every hand-grasp, every smile, every
+expression--into all my work. I will live to satisfy my Other Self."
+
+Do you think it is easy? Try it for a day.
+
+Robert Burns wrote some deathless lines--lines written out of the
+freshness of his heart, simply to please himself, with no furtive eye on
+Dumfries, Edinburgh, the Kirk, or the Unco Guid of Ayrshire; and these are
+the lines that have given him his place in the world of letters.
+
+The other day I was made glad by finding that John Burroughs, Poet and
+Prophet, says that the male thrush sings to please himself, out of pure
+delight; and pleasing himself, he pleases his mate. "The female," says
+Burroughs, "is always pleased with a male that is pleased with himself."
+
+The various controversial poems (granting for argument's sake that
+controversy is poetic) were written when Burns was smarting under the
+sense of defeat. These show a sharp insight into the heart of things, and
+a lively wit, but are not sufficient foundation on which to build a
+reputation. Ali Baba can do as well. Considering the fact that twice as
+many people make pilgrimages to the grave of Burns as visit the dust of
+Shakespeare, and that his poems are on the shelves of every library, his
+name now needs no defense. The ores are very seldom found pure, and if
+even the work of Deity is composite, why should we be surprised that man,
+His creature, should express himself in a varying scale of excellence!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was nothing of Jack Falstaff about Francis Schlatter, whose whitened
+bones were found amid the alkali dust of the desert, a few years ago--dead
+in an endeavor to do without meat and drink for forty days.
+
+Schlatter purported, and believed, that he was the reincarnation of the
+Messiah. Letters were sent to him, addressed simply, "Jesus Christ,
+Denver, Colorado," and he walked up to the General-Delivery window and
+asked for them with a confidence, we are told, that relieved the
+postmaster of a grave responsibility.
+
+Schlatter was no mere ordinary pretender, working on the superstitions of
+shallow-pated people. He lived up to his belief--took no money, avoided
+notoriety when he could; and the proof of his sincerity lies in the fact
+that he died a victim to it.
+
+Herbert Spencer has said all about the Messianic Instinct that there is to
+say, save this--the Messianic Instinct first had its germ in the heart of
+a woman. Every woman dreams of the coming of the Ideal Man--the man who
+will give her protection, even to giving up his life for her, and
+vouchsafe peace to her soul. I am told by a noted Bishop of the Catholic
+Church that many women who become nuns are prompted to take their vows
+solely through the occasion of an unrequited love. They become the bride
+of the Church and find their highest joy in following the will of Christ.
+He is their only Spouse and Master.
+
+The terms of endearment one hears at prayer-meetings, "Blessed Jesus,"
+"Dear Jesus," "Loving Jesus," "Elder Brother," "Patient, gentle Jesus,"
+etc., were first used by women in an ecstasy of religious transport. And
+the thought of Jesus as a loving, "personal Savior," would die from the
+face of the earth did not women keep it alive. The religious nature and
+the sex nature are closely akin: no psychologist can tell where the one
+ends and the other begins.
+
+There may be wooden women in the world, and of these I will not speak, but
+every strong, pulsing, feeling, thinking woman goes through life, seeking
+the Ideal Man. Whether she is married or single, rich or poor, old or
+young, every new man she meets is interesting to her, because she feels in
+some mysterious way that possibly he is the One.
+
+Of course, I know that every good man, too, seeks the Ideal Woman--but
+that deserves another chapter.
+
+The only woman in whose heart there is not the live, warm, Messianic
+Instinct is the wooden woman, and the one who believes she has already
+found him. But this latter is holding an illusion that soon vanishes with
+possession.
+
+That pale, low-voiced, gentle and insane man, Francis Schlatter, was
+followed at times by troops of women. These women believed in him and
+loved him--in different ways, of course, and with passion varying
+according to temperament and the domestic environment already existing.
+To love deeply is a matter of propinquity and opportunity.
+
+One woman, whom "The Healer" had cured of a lingering disease, loved this
+man with a wild, mad, absorbing passion. Chance gave her the opportunity.
+He came to her house, cold, hungry, homeless, sick. She fed him, warmed
+him, looked into his liquid eyes, sat at his feet and listened to his
+voice. She loved him--and partook of his every mental delusion.
+
+This woman now waits and watches in her mountain home for his return. She
+knows the coyotes and buzzards picked the scant flesh from his starved
+frame, but she says: "He promised he would come back to me, and he will. I
+am waiting for him here."
+
+This woman writes me long letters from her solitude, telling me of her
+hopes and plans. Just why all the cranks in the United States should write
+me letters, I do not know, but they do--perhaps there is a sort o'
+fellow-feeling. This woman may write letters to others, just as she does
+to me. Of this I do not know, but surely I would not thus make public the
+heart-tragedy told me in a private letter, were it not that the woman
+herself has printed a pamphlet, setting forth her faith and veiling only
+those things into which it is not our right to pry.
+
+This Mary Magdalene believes her lover was the Chosen Son of God, and that
+the Father will reclothe the Son in a new garment of flesh and send him
+back to his beloved. So she watches and waits, and dresses herself to
+receive him, and at night places a lighted lantern in the window to guide
+the way.
+
+She watches and waits.
+
+Other women wait for footsteps that will never come, and listen for a
+voice that will never be heard. All round the world there is a sisterhood
+of such. Some, being wise, lose themselves in loving service to others--in
+useful work. But this woman, out in the wilds of New Mexico, hugs her
+sorrow to her heart, and feeds her passion by recounting it, and watches
+away the leaden hours, crying aloud to all who will listen: "He is not
+dead--he is not dead! he will come back to me! He promised it--he will
+come back to me! This long, dreary waiting is only a test of my loyalty
+and love! I will be patient, for he will come back to me! He will come
+back to me!"
+
+This world would be a sorry place if most men conducted their lives on the
+Robert Burns plan. Burns was affectionate, tender, generous and kind; but
+he was not wise. He never saw the future, nor did he know that life is a
+sequence, and that if you do this, it is pretty sure to lead to that. His
+loves were largely of the earth.
+
+Excess was a part of his wayward, undisciplined nature; and that constant
+tendency to put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his brains, bound him
+at last, hand and foot. His old age could never have been frosty, but
+kindly--it would have been babbling, irritable, senile, sickening. Death
+was kind and reaped him young. Sex was the rock on which Robert Burns
+split. He seemed to regard pleasure-seeking as the prime end of life, and
+in this he was not so very far removed from the prevalent "civilized"
+society notion of marriage. But it is a phantasmal idea, and makes a mock
+of marriage, serving the satirist his excuse.
+
+To a great degree the race is yet barbaric, and as a people we fail
+utterly to touch the hem of the garment of Divinity. We have been mired in
+the superstition that sex is unclean, and therefore honesty and free
+expression in love matters have been tabued.
+
+But the day will yet dawn when we will see that it takes two to generate
+thought; that there is the male man and the female man, and only where
+these two walk together hand in hand is there a perfect sanity and a
+perfect physical, moral and spiritual health.
+
+We reach infinity through the love of one, and loving this one, we are in
+love with all. And this condition of mutual sympathy, trust, reverence,
+forbearance and gentleness that can exist between a man and a woman, gives
+the only hint of Heaven that mortals ever know. From the love of man for
+woman we guess the love of God, just as the scientist from a single bone
+constructs the skeleton--aye! and then clothes it with a complete garment.
+
+In their love-affairs women are seldom wise, or men just. How should we
+expect them to be when but yesterday woman was a chattel and man a
+slave-owner? Woman won by diplomacy--that is to say, by trickery and
+untruth, and man had his way through force, and neither is quite willing
+to disarm. An amalgamated personality is the rare exception, because
+neither Church, State nor Society yet fully recognizes the fact that
+spiritual comradeship and the marriage of the mind constitute the only
+Divine mating. Doctor Blacklock once said that Robert Burns had eyes like
+the Christ. Women who looked into those wide-open, generous orbs lost
+their hearts in the liquid depths.
+
+In the natures of Robert Burns and Francis Schlatter there was little in
+common; but their experiences were alike in this: they were beloved by
+women. Behind him Burns left a train of weeping women--a trail of broken
+hearts. And I can never think of him except as a mere youth--"Bobby
+Burns"--one who never came into man's estate. In all his love-making he
+never seemed really to benefit any woman, nor did he avail himself of the
+many mental and spiritual excellencies of woman's nature, absorbing them
+into his own. He only played a devil's tattoo upon her emotions.
+
+If Burns knew anything of the beauty and inspiration of a high and holy
+friendship between a thinking man and a thinking woman, with mutual aims,
+ideals and ambitions, he never disclosed it. The love of a man for a maid,
+or a maid for a man, can never last, unless these two mutually love a
+third something. Then, as they are traveling the same way, they may move
+forward hand in hand, mutually sustained. The marriage of the mind is the
+only compact that endures. I love you because you love the things that I
+love. That man alone is great who utilizes the blessings that God
+provides; and of these blessings no gift equals the gentle, trusting
+companionship of a good woman.
+
+So, having written thus far, I find that already I have reached the limit
+of my allotted space.
+
+In closing, it may not be amiss for me to state that Robert Burns was an
+Irish poet whose parents happened to be Scotch. He was born in Ayrshire in
+Seventeen Hundred Fifty-nine. He died in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-six, and
+was buried at Dumfries by the "gentleman volunteers," in spite of his last
+solemn words--"Don't let the Awkward Squad fire over my grave!"
+
+His mother survived him thirty-eight years, passing out in Eighteen
+Hundred Thirty-four. Burns left four sons, each of whom was often pointed
+out as the son of his father--but none of them was.
+
+This is all I think of, at present, concerning Robert Burns.
+
+For further facts I must refer the Gentle Reader to the "Encyclopedia
+Britannica," a compilation that I cheerfully recommend, it having been
+vouched for to me by a dear friend, a clergyman of East Aurora, who, the
+past year, perused the entire work, from A to Z, reading five hours a day:
+and therefore is competent to speak.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN MILTON
+
+          Thus with the year
+    Seasons return; but not to me returns
+    Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
+    Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
+    Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
+    But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
+    Surrounds me; from the cheerful ways of men
+    Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
+    Presented with a universal blank
+    Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
+    And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
+    So much the rather thou, Celestial Light,
+    Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
+    Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence
+    Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
+    Of things invisible to mortal sight.
+                                      --_Paradise Lost: Book III_
+
+[Illustration: JOHN MILTON]
+
+
+Shakespeare and Milton lived at the same time, though the difference in
+their ages was such that we may not speak of them as contemporaries. John
+Milton was eight years old when William Shakespeare died. The Miltons
+lived in Bread Street, and out of the back garret-window of their house
+could catch a glimpse of the Globe Theater.
+
+The father of John Milton might have known Shakespeare--might have dined
+with him at the "Mermaid," played skittles with him on Hampstead Heath,
+fished with him from the same boat in the river at Richmond; and then John
+Milton, the lawyer, might have discreetly schemed for passes to the
+"Globe" and gone with his boy John, Junior, to see "As You Like It"
+played, with the Master himself in the role of old Adam.
+
+Bread Street was just off Cheapside, where the Mermaid Tavern stood, and
+where Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson and other roysterers often lingered
+and made the midnight echo with their mirth. In all probability, John
+Milton, Senior, father of John Milton, Junior, knew Shakespeare well. But
+the Miltons owned their home; were rich, influential, eminently
+respectable; attended Saint Giles' Church, and really didn't care to
+cultivate the society of play-actors who kept bad hours, slept in the
+theater, and had meal-tickets at half a dozen taverns.
+
+There were six children born into the Milton family, three of whom died in
+infancy. Of the survivors, the eldest was Anne, the second John, the third
+Christopher.
+
+Anne was strong, robust and hearty; John was slender, pale, with dreamy,
+dark gray eyes and a head too big for his body; Christopher was so-so.
+And, in passing, it is well to explain, once for all, that Christopher
+made his way straight to the front in life, taking up his father's
+business and being appointed a Court Officer. Thence he was promoted to
+the Woolsack, became rich, cultivated a double chin, was knighted, and
+passed out full of honors. The chief worriment and source of shame in the
+life of Sir Christopher Milton came from the unseemly conduct of his
+brother John, who was much given to producing political and theological
+pamphlets. And once in desperation Sir Christopher Milton requested John
+Milton to change his family name, that the tribe of Milton might be saved
+the disgrace of having in it "a traducer of the State, an enemy of the
+King, and a falsifier of Truth." Sir Christopher Milton was an excellent
+and worthy man, and I must apologize for not giving him more attention at
+this time; but lack of space forbids.
+
+Sickly boys who are wise beyond their years are ever the pets of big
+sisters, and the object of loving, jealous, zealous care on the part of
+their mothers. John Milton talked like an oracle while yet a child, and
+one biographer records that even as a babe he sometimes mildly reproved
+his parents for levity.
+
+He was a precocious child, and have we not been told that precocity does
+not fulfill its promises? But this boy was an exception. He was incarnated
+into a family that prized music, poetry, philosophy, and yet held fast to
+the Christian faith. His father set psalms to music, his sister wrote
+madrigals, and his mother played sweet strains on a harp to waken him at
+morningtide. The entire household united in a devotion to poetry and art.
+Possibly this atmosphere of high thinking was too rarefied for real
+comfort--the gravity of the situation being sustained only by a stern
+effort.
+
+But no matter--father, mother and sister joined hands to make the pale,
+handsome boy a prodigy of learning: one that would surprise the world and
+leave his impress on the time.
+
+And they succeeded.
+
+Of the three Milton children that passed away in childhood, I can not but
+think that they succumbed to overtraining, being crammed quite after the
+German custom of stuffing geese so as to produce that delicious diseased
+tidbit known to gourmets as pate de foies gras. John Milton stood the
+cramming process like a true hero. His parents set him apart for the
+Church--therefore he must be learned in books, familiar with languages,
+versed in theories. They desired that he should have knowledge, which
+they did not know is quite a different thing from wisdom.
+
+So the boy had a private tutor in Greek and Latin at nine years of age,
+and even then began to write verse. At ten years of age his father had the
+lad's portrait painted by that rare and thrifty Dutchman, Cornelius
+Jansen. We have this picture now, and it reveals the pale, grave, winsome
+face with the flowing curls that we so easily recognize.
+
+No expense or pains were spared in the boy's education. The time was
+divided up for him as the hours are for a soldier. One tutor after another
+took him in hand during the day; but the change of study and a glad
+respite of an hour in the morning and the same in the afternoon, for
+music, bore him up.
+
+He was the pride of his parents, the delight of his tutors.
+
+Three years were spent at Saint Paul's School; then he was sent to
+Cambridge. From there he wrote to his mother, "I am penetrating into the
+inmost recesses of the Muses; climbing high Olympus, visiting the green
+pastures of Parnassus, and drinking deep from Pierian Springs."
+
+This is terrible language for a child of fourteen. A boy who should talk
+like that now would be regarded with anxious concern by his loving
+parents. The present age is incredulous of the Infant Phenomenon. And no
+fond parent must for a moment imagine that by following the system laid
+out for the education of John Milton can a John Milton be produced. The
+Miltonian curriculum, if used today, would be sufficient ground for action
+on the part of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
+
+But John Milton, though but a weak-eyed boy with a chronic headache, had a
+deal of whipcord fiber in his make-up. He stood the test and grubbed at
+his books every night until the clock tolled twelve. He was born at a
+peculiar time, being a child of the Reformation married to the
+Renaissance. The toughness and grimness of Calvin were united in him with
+the tenderness of Erasmus. From out of the Universal Energy, of which we
+are particles, he had called into his being qualities so diverse that they
+seemed never to have been before or since united in one person.
+
+He remained at Cambridge seven years. The beauty of his countenance had
+increased so that he was as one set apart. His finely chiseled features,
+framed in their flowing curls, challenged the admiration of every person
+he met. A writer of the time described him as "a grave and sober person,
+but one not wholly ignorant of his own parts."
+
+There is a sly touch in this sentence that sheds light upon "The Lady of
+Christ's." John Milton was a bit of a poseur, as Schopenhauer declares all
+great men are and ever have been. With the masterly mind goes a touch of
+the fakir or charlatan. Milton knew his power--he gloried in this bright
+blade of the intellect. He was handsome--and he knew it. And yet we will
+not cavil at his velvet coats, or laces, or the golden chain that adorned
+his slender, shapely person. These things were only the transient,
+springtime adornments that passion puts forth.
+
+And yet I see that one writer mentions the chaste and ascetic quality of
+Milton's early life as proof of a cold and measured nature. Seemingly the
+writer does not know that intense feeling often finds a gratification in
+asceticism, and that vows of chastity are proof of passion. There are many
+ways of working off one's surplus energy--Milton was married to his work.
+He traversed the vast fields of Classic Literature, read in the original
+from Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, French, Spanish, Latin and Italian. He delved
+into abstruse mathematics, studied music as a science, and labored at
+theology. In fact, he came to know so much of all religions that he had
+faith in none. He seemed to view religion in the cold, calculating light
+of a syllogistic problem--not as a warm, pulsing motive in life. His real
+religion was music, a fact he once frankly acknowledged.
+
+On the pinions of music he was carried out and away beyond the boundaries
+of time and space, and there he found that rest for his soul, without
+which he would have sunk to earth and been covered by the kindly, drifting
+leaves of oblivion.
+
+For some, the secrets of music, the wonder of love, and the misty,
+undefined prayers of the soul constitute true religion. When you place a
+creed in a crucible and afterward study the particles on a slide encased
+in balsam, you are apt to get a residuum or something--a something that
+does not satisfy the heart.
+
+Milton got well acquainted with theology. It was interesting, but not what
+he had supposed. He came to regard the Church as a useful part of the
+Government--divine, of course, as all good things are divine. But to
+become a priest and play a part--he would not do it. He was
+honest--stubbornly honest.
+
+Seven years he had been at Cambridge, and now that he was just ready to
+step into a "living"--right in the line of promotion of which his beauty
+and intellect tokened a sure presage--he balked.
+
+It was a great blow to his parents. His mother pleaded; his father
+threatened; but they soon perceived that this son they had brought forth
+had a will stronger than theirs. Their fond dreams of his preferment--the
+handsome face of their boy above an oaken pulpit, with thousands feeding
+on his words, the public honors, and all that--faded away into tears and
+misty nothingness. But parenthood is doomed to disappointment--it does not
+endure long enough to see the end. Youth is so headstrong and wilful: it
+will not learn from the experience of others.
+
+And all these years of preparation and expense! Better had he died and
+been laid to rest with the three now in the churchyard.
+
+Before Milton had served his seven years' apprenticeship at Cambridge, his
+parents moved to the village of Horton--twenty miles out of London,
+Windsor way.
+
+The village of Horton has not changed much with the years, and a tramp
+across the fields from Eton by way of Burnham Beeches and Stoke Pogis,
+where Gray wrote "The Elegy," is quite worth while. It is a land of lazy
+woods, and winding streams and hedgerows melodious with birds. One treads
+on storied ground, and if you wish you can recline beneath gnarled old
+oaks where Milton mused and scribbled, and wrote the first draft of "L'
+Allegro" and "Il Penseroso."
+
+Milton loitered here at Horton for six years, and in that time produced
+just six poems.
+
+He was thirty-two years of age, and had never earned a sixpence. But what
+booted it! His father and mother's home was his: they gladly supplied his
+every want; and his mother, especially, was ever his kindly critic and
+most intimate friend. His days were spent in study, dreams, lonely walks
+across green fields, and homecomings when, with his mother's hand in his,
+he would talk or recite to her in order to clarify the thought that
+pressed upon him. Very calm, very peaceful and very beautiful were those
+days. "The pensive attitude of mind brings the best result--not the
+active," he used to say. It was then he wrote to his old friend, Diodati:
+"You asked what I am about--what I am thinking of? Why, with God's help, I
+am thinking of immortality. Forgive the word, it is for your ear alone--I
+am pluming my wings for flight."
+
+The good mother had misty, prophetic visions of what this flight might be,
+and had ceased to counsel her son against the sin of idleness. But she did
+not live to see her prophecies confirmed, for in this time of peace and
+love, when the vibrant air was filled with hope, she passed Beyond.
+
+Long years after, John Milton exclaimed, "Oh! Why could she not have lived
+to know!" And the poignant grief of this son, then a man in years (with
+his thirtieth birthday well behind), turned on the thought that he had
+disappointed Her--the mother who had loved him into being.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Milton's woes began with his marriage--they have given rise to nearly as
+much discussion as his poetry. In his "Defensio Secunda," he tells, with a
+touch of pride, of the absolute innocency that continued until his
+thirty-fifth year. When we consider how his combined innocence and
+ignorance plunged him into a sudden marriage with a bit of pink-and-white
+protoplasm, aged seventeen, we can not but regret that he had not devoted
+a little of his valuable time to a study of femininity. And in some way we
+think of Thackeray, when he was being shown the marvelous works of a
+certain amateur artist. "Look at that! look at that!" cried the zealous
+guide, "and he never had a lesson in art in his life!"
+
+Thackeray adjusted his glasses, looked at the picture carefully, sighed
+and said, "What a pity he didn't have just a little good instruction!"
+
+Milton the student, versed in abstractions and full of learned lore, went
+up the Thames seeking a little needed rest. Five miles from Oxford lived
+an ebb-tide aristocratic family by the name of Powell. Milton had long
+known this family, and, it seems, decided to tarry with them a day or so.
+Just why he sought their company no one ever knew, and Milton was too
+proud to tell. The brown thrush, rival of the lark and mockingbird, seldom
+seeks the society of the blue jay. But it did this time. The Powells were
+a roaring, riotous, roystering, fox-hunting, genteel, but reduced family,
+on the eve of bankruptcy, with marriageable daughters.
+
+The executive functions of love-making are best carried on by shallow
+people; so mediocre women often show rare skill in courtship, and
+sometimes succeed in bagging big game. But surely Mary Powell had no
+conception of the greatness of Milton's intellect--she only knew that he
+was handsome, and her parents said he was rich.
+
+There was feasting and mirth when Milton arrived back in town accompanied
+by his bride and various of her kinsmen. In all marriage festivals there
+is something pathetically absurd, and I never see a sidewalk awning spread
+without thinking of the one erected for John Milton and Mary Powell, who
+were led through it by an Erebus that was not only blind, but stone-deaf.
+
+John Milton was an ascetic, and lived in a realm of reverie and dreams;
+his wife had a strong bias toward the voluptuous, reveling in a world of
+sense, and demanding attention as her right. Milton began diving into his
+theories and books, and forgot the poor child who had no abstract world
+into which to withdraw. Suddenly bereft of the gay companionship that her
+father's house supplied, she felt herself aggrieved, alone; and tears of
+vexation and homesickness began to stream down her pretty cheeks.
+
+When summoned into her husband's presence she had nothing to say, and
+Milton, the theorist, discovered that what he had mistaken for the natural
+reticence and bashfulness of maidenhood was mere inanity and lack of
+ideas. But the loneliness of the poor country girl, shut up in a student's
+den, is a deal more touching than the scholar's wail about "the silent and
+insensate" wife. The girl was being deprived of the rollicking freedom to
+which she had been used, but the great man was waking the echoes with his
+wail for a companionship he had never known.
+
+Yet the girl was shrewd. All women are shrewd, I am told, and some are
+wise and some are not; and many women there be who consider finesse an
+improvement on frankness. At the end of a month, Milton's wife contrived
+to have her parents send for her to return home on a visit that was to
+last only until come Michaelmas. But Michaelmas arrived and the young
+bride refused to return, sending back saucy answers to the great author of
+"Il Penseroso."
+
+In the meantime Milton wrote pamphlets urging that divorce should be
+granted on the grounds of incompatibility, and pronouncing as inhuman the
+laws that gave freedom from marital woes on no less ignoble grounds than
+that a man should violate his honor.
+
+There is pretty good evidence that a part of Milton's argument on the
+subject of divorce was written out while his wife was under his roof. This
+reveals a slight lack of delicacy as well as the author's habit to make
+copy out of his private griefs; but it must be granted that Milton goes to
+the very bottom of the subject, even to stating the fact that those
+happily married have neither pity nor patience with those mismated. "If
+you want sympathy," he says, "you must go to those who are regarded as not
+respectable," Any man who writes on philosophy can find his every cue in
+Plato, and he who discusses divorce from a radical standpoint can find
+himself anticipated by Milton in the Seventeenth Century. Every view is
+taken, even down to the suggestion of a probationary marriage, which
+Milton thought might come about when civilization had ceased to crawl and
+begun to walk.
+
+One seeks in vain to learn if the unhappy wife of Milton ever read her
+husband's bitter tracts. It is probable she never did, and would not have
+comprehended their import if she had; and it is still more likely that she
+never came to realize that she was wedded to the greatest man of the age.
+A truce was patched up, on the bankruptcy of her father, and she came back
+penitent, and was taken into favor. Not only did she come back, but she
+brought her family; and the ravenous Royalists consumed the substance of
+the spiritual and ascetic Puritan.
+
+Had Milton then died, it is probable that the gladsome widow would have
+been consoled and married again very shortly, just as did the widows of
+Van Dyck and Rubens--not knowing that to have been the wife of a king was
+honor enough for one woman.
+
+But after fifteen years of domestic "neglect," during which she doubtless
+benefited her husband by stirring in him a noble discontent, she passed
+from earth; and it was left for John Milton to repeat twice more his
+marital venture, with a similar result. And in this, Fate sends back a
+fact that leers like Mephistopheles, by way of answer to Milton's
+pamphlets on divorce: Why should the State grant a divorce, when great men
+refuse to learn by experience, and, given the opportunity, only repeat the
+blunders they have already made?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+God in His goodness has in certain instances sent great men angels of
+light for assistants--mates who could comprehend and sympathize with their
+ideals. But it is expecting too much to suppose that Nature can look out
+for such a trifle as that the right man should marry the right woman.
+Nature possibly never considered a time-contract, and she is a careless
+jade, anyway. She moves blindly along with never a thought for the
+individual.
+
+Audubon the naturalist records that one-third of all birds hatched tumble
+out of the nest before they can fly, and once on the ground the parent
+birds are unable either to warm, feed or protect them.
+
+Read the lives of the Great Men who have lived during the past three
+thousand years, and listen closely, and you will hear the wild wail of
+neglected and unappreciated wives. A woman can forgive a beating, but to
+be forgotten--never. She hates, by instinct, an austere and self-contained
+character. Dignity and pride repel her; preoccupation keeps her aloof;
+concentration on an idea is unforgivable.
+
+The wife of Tolstoy seeking to have her husband adjudged insane is not a
+rare instance in the lives of thinkers. To think thoughts that are
+different from the thoughts one's neighbors think is surely good reason
+why the man should be looked after. Recently we have had evidence that the
+wife of Victor Hugo regarded the author of "Les Miserables" with
+suspicion, and at one time actually made preparations to let him enjoy
+his exile alone--she would go back to Paris and enjoy life as every one
+should. At Guernsey there was no society!
+
+When Isaac Newton called upon his ladylove and in a fit of abstraction,
+looking about for a utensil to push the tobacco down in his pipe, chanced
+upon the lady's little finger, the law of gravitation was abrogated at
+once, and Newton and his pipe were sent, like nebulae whirling into space.
+
+When the Great Inventor, absorbed in a problem as to Electricity (that
+thing which to us is only a name and of which we know nothing), forgets
+home, wife, child, supper; and midnight finds him in his laboratory, where
+he has been since sunrise--just imagine, if you please, the shrill
+greeting that is in cold storage for him when he stumbles home, haggard
+and worn, at dawn. How can he explain why he did this thing and answer the
+questions as to who was there, and what good it all did anyway!
+
+Thought is a torture, and requires such a concentration of energy that
+there is nothing left for the soft courtesies of marriage. The day is
+fleeting, and the night cometh when no man can work. The hot impulse to
+grasp and materialize the dream ere it fades, is strong upon the man.
+
+Of course he is selfish--he sacrifices everything, as Palissy did when
+fuel was short and the clay just at the turning-point. Yes, the artist is
+selfish: he sacrifices his wife and society, and himself, too, to get the
+work done. Four-o'clocks, mealtime, bedtime, and all the household system
+as to pink teas, calls and etiquette, stand for naught. And down the
+corridors of Time comes to us the shrill wail of neglected wives, and the
+crash of broken hearts echoes like the sound of a painter falling through
+a skylight. All this is the price of achievement.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Making a little look backward into Milton's life, we find that until his
+thirty-third year he had not tasted of practical life at all. About that
+time his father, in a sort of desperation, packed him off to the
+Continent, in charge of a trusty attendant, who acted in the dual capacity
+of servant and friend. The letters he carried to influential men in Paris,
+Florence, Venice and Rome secured him the Speaker's eye, and his beauty
+and learning did the rest. His march was that of a conquering hero. In
+Paris he surprised the savants by addressing them in their own tongue, and
+reciting from their chief writers. This was repeated in Italy; and at
+Florence, as a sort of half-challenge for permission to occupy the highest
+seat, he was invited to read from his own compositions, which he did with
+such grace and power that thereafter all doors flew open at his touch.
+
+Returning to England after an absence of fifteen months, he found his
+father's household broken up, and through bad investments, the family
+fortune sadly depleted. But travel had added cubits to his stature: the
+mixture with men had put him into possession of his own, and he now felt
+well able to cope with the world. He secured modest lodgings in Saint
+Bride's Churchyard, and set to work to make a living and a name by
+authorship. His head teemed with subjects for poems, but cash advances
+were not forthcoming from publishers, and, to bridge over, he tried
+tutoring.
+
+It was at this time that "Paradise Lost," the one matchless epic of
+English literature, was conceived. Rough jottings were made as to
+divisions and heads, and a few stanzas were written of the immortal poem
+that was not to be completed for a score of years.
+
+The first volume of Milton's poems was issued in Sixteen Hundred
+Forty-five, when he was thirty-seven years of age. But before this he was
+known as the author of some pamphlets which had made political London
+reel. The writer was at once seen to be a man of remarkable learning and
+marvelous intellect, and the work secured Milton a few friends and divers
+enemies.
+
+From a man of leisure Milton had suddenly become a worker, whose every
+daylight hour was crammed with duties. His skill as a teacher brought him
+all the pupils he cared for, and he moved into better quarters in
+Aldersgate. He was immersed in his work, was making valuable acquaintances
+among literary people, was revered by his pupils, and the happiness was
+his of knowing that he was influential and independent. A fine
+intoxication comes to every brain-worker when the world acknowledges with
+tangible remittances that the product of his mind has a value on the
+Rialto. Such was Milton's joy in Sixteen Hundred Forty-three.
+
+The "Comus," "Il Penseroso," "L'Allegro" and "Lycidas" had established his
+place as a poet; and the power of his pen had been proven in sundry
+religious and political controversies.
+
+In his household were two sons of his sister and several other pupils who
+had sought his tutorship. He was contented in his work, pleased and happy
+with the young friends who sat at his board, and in an hour or two
+snatched each day from toil, for music and reverie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Seize upon the moments as they fly, O John Milton, and hug them to your
+heart! Those were days of gold when your mother was your patient listener
+and friend. Her love enveloped you as an aura; and her voice, soft and
+low, upheld you when courage faltered. But these, too, are glorious
+days--days full of work, and health, and hope, and high endeavor. But
+these days of peace and freedom are the last you shall ever know. Even now
+they flee as a shadow and fade into mist! Gross stupidity, silent and
+insensate, sits waiting for you at the door; calumny is near; taunting
+hate comes riding fast!
+
+The sympathy for which you yearn shall be yours only in dreams, and you
+shall be cheated of all the tenderness for which your heart prays. The
+love and gentleness which you associate with your mother, you ascribe in
+innocence and ignorance to all women; but Fate shall undeceive you, O John
+Milton, and make mock of all your high ideals. You dote on liberty, but
+liberty is not for you. You shall see the funeral of the Republic; the
+defamation of your honor; the proscription of all the sacred things you
+prize. Your companions shall not be of your own choosing, but shall be
+those who neither know nor value the sweet, subtle mintage of the mind.
+Around you mad riot shall surge, a hatred for liberty shall prevail--an
+enthusiasm for slavery. The glorious leaders of your Puritan faith shall
+be condemned and executed, hanged, cut down from the gallows alive, and
+quartered amid the hoarse insults of the people they sought to serve; and
+you yourself shall be hunted like a wild beast. You shall see the prisons
+filled to overflowing with men and women whose only crime was their love
+for truth. And a libertine shall sit on the throne of the England that you
+love. These things you shall see with those mild, dark eyes, and then
+night, eternal night, shall settle down upon you; and for those idle orbs
+no day shall dawn nor starry night appear, nor face of man nor child shall
+be reflected there. Your sightlessness shall give those who owe you
+gratitude and love, opportunity to filch your gold; and, lastly, fire
+shall rob you of your books, and well-nigh all your treasures.
+
+Like another Lear, your daughters shall neither esteem nor respect you,
+and the lines you dictate shall be to them but the idle vaporings of a
+mind diseased. Your acute ears shall hear these daughters express the wish
+that you were dead; and then in your blindness you will give yourself into
+the keeping of a woman as dull, inane and unfeeling as the foolish child
+you first chose as wife. But with it all your obstinacy shall constitute
+your power; and that beauty which was yours in youth shall be with you to
+the last. You shall feel all the torments of the damned and become inured
+to the scorching flames of hell! But, as recompense, the splendors of the
+Celestial Kingdom shall open upon your inward vision, and your soul shall
+behold that which the eyes of earth have lost. Something great and proud
+shall go out from your presence to all the discerning ones who shall
+approach you; and your end shall be like the setting of the sun, bright,
+calm, poised and resplendent.
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL JOHNSON
+
+    * * * Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in
+    your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which
+    time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which
+    it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the
+    verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of
+    encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not
+    expect, for I never had a patron before.
+
+    The shepherd in Vergil grew at last acquainted with Love, and
+    found him a native of the rocks.
+
+    Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+    struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the
+    ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been
+    pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind;
+    but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and can not enjoy
+    it; till I am a solitary, and can not impart it; till I am known,
+    and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to
+    confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be
+    unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a
+    patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.
+
+    Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to
+    any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I
+    should conclude it, should less be possible, with less; for I
+    have been long wakened from that dream of hope in which I once
+    boasted myself with so much exultation, my Lord.
+
+    Your Lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,
+                                             --_Sam Johnson_
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL JOHNSON]
+
+
+The critics, I believe, have made a distinction between large men and
+great men.
+
+Samuel Johnson was both. He was massive in intellect, colossal in culture,
+prodigious in memory, weighed nigh three hundred pounds, and had
+prejudices to match. He was possessed of a giant's strength, and
+occasionally used it like a giant--for instance, when he felled an
+offending bookseller with a folio.
+
+Johnson was most unfortunate in his biographer. In picturing the great
+writer, Boswell writes more entertainingly than Johnson ever did, and
+thereby overtops his subject. And when in reply to the intimation that
+Boswell was going to write his life, Johnson answered, "If I really
+thought he was, I would take his," he spoke a jest in earnest.
+
+Walking along Market Street in the city of Saint Louis, with a friend, not
+long ago, my comrade suddenly stopped and excitedly pointed out a man
+across the way--"Look quick--there he goes!" exclaimed my friend, "that
+man with the derby and duster--see? That's the husband of Mrs. Lease of
+Kansas!" And all I could say was, "God help him!"
+
+Not but that Mrs. Lease is a most excellent and amiable lady; but the
+idea of a man, made in the image of his Maker, being reduced to the social
+state of a drone-bee is most depressing.
+
+Among that worthy class of people referred to somewhat ironically as "the
+reading public," Boswell is read, but Johnson never. And so sternly true
+is the fact that many critics, set on a hair-trigger, aver that were it
+not for Boswell no one would now know that a writer by the name of Johnson
+ever lived. Yet the fact is, Boswell ruined the literary reputation of
+Johnson by intimating that Johnson wrote Johnsonese; but that is a
+mistake.
+
+Johnson never wrote Johnsonese. The piling up of reasons, the cumulation
+of argument--setting off epigram against epigram--that mark Johnson's
+literary style are its distinguishing features. He is profound, but always
+lucid. And lucidity is just what modern Johnsonese lacks. The word was
+coined by a man who had neither the patience to read Johnson nor the
+ability to comprehend him. Only sophomores, and private secretaries who
+write speeches for able Congressmen, write Johnsonese.
+
+Quibblers possibly may arise and present Johnson's definition of
+network--"anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances with
+interstices between the intersections"--but with the quibbler we have no
+time to dally. Some people insist on having their literature illustrated,
+just as others refuse to attend lectures that are not reinforced by a
+stereopticon.
+
+Johnson had a style that is stately, dignified, splendid. It moves from
+point to point with absolute precision, and in it there is seldom anything
+ambiguous, muddy, confused or uncertain. Get down a volume of "Lives of
+the Poets," and prove my point for yourself, by opening at any page. It
+was Boswell who set his own light, chatty and amusing gossip over against
+the wise, stately diction of Johnson, and allowed Goldsmith to say, "Dear
+Doctor, if you were to write a story about little fishes, you would make
+them talk like whales," and the mud ball has stuck. The average man is
+much more willing to take the wily Boswell's word for it than to read
+Johnson for himself.
+
+The balanced power of Johnson's English can not fail to delight the
+student of letters who cares to interest himself in the matter of
+sentence-building. Johnson handles a thought with such ease! He makes you
+think of the circus "strong man" who tosses the cannon-ball, marked
+"weight 250 lbs." What if the balls are sometimes only wood painted black!
+Have we not been entertained? Read this specimen paragraph:
+
+"Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very
+small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by Nature upon
+few, and the labor of learning those sciences which may by continuous
+effort be obtained is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can
+exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom
+Nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his
+vanity by the name of 'critic,'"
+
+But the greatest literary light of his day has been thrown into the shadow
+by a man whom no one suspected of being able to write entertainingly. In
+the world of letters the great Cham exists only as a lesser luminary; just
+as the once-noted novelist, George Henry Lewes, is now known only as the
+husband of George Eliot.
+
+And yet no one is so rash as to say that the name of Boswell would now be
+known were it not for Johnson. And conversely (or otherwise), if it were
+the proper place, I could show that were it not for George Henry Lewes we
+should never have had "Adam Bede" or "The Mill on the Floss."
+
+Boswell wrote the best "Life" ever written. Nothing like it was ever
+written before; nothing to equal it has been written since. It has had
+hundreds of imitators, but no competitors. Matthew Arnold said that no man
+ever had so good a subject, but Arnold for the moment seemed to forget
+that Hawkins, a professional literary man, published his "Life of Johnson"
+long before Boswell's was sent to the printer--and who reads Hawkins?
+
+Surely Boswell had a great subject, and he rises to the level of his theme
+and makes the most of it. At times I have wondered if Boswell were not
+really a genius so great and profound that he was willing to play the
+fool, as Edgar in "Lear" plays the maniac, and allow himself to be snubbed
+(in print) in order to make his telling point! Millionaires can well
+afford to wear ragged coats. Second-rate man Boswell may have been, as he
+himself so oft admits, yet as a biographer he stands first in the front
+rank. But suppose his extreme ignorance was only the domino disguising a
+cleverness so subtle that it was not discovered until after his death! And
+what if he smiles now, as from out of Elysium he looks and beholds how, as
+a writer, he has eclipsed old Ursa Major, and thus clipped the claws that
+were ready for any chance Scot who might pass that way!
+
+John Hay has suggested that possibly the insight, piquancy and calm wisdom
+of Omar Khayyam are two-thirds essence of FitzGerald. If so, the joke is
+on Omar, not on FitzGerald.
+
+A dozen of Johnson's contemporaries wrote about him, and all make him out
+a profound scholar, a deep philosopher, a facile writer. Boswell by his
+innocent quoting and recounting makes his conversation outstrip all of his
+other accomplishments. He reveals the man by the most skilful indirection,
+and by leaving his guard down, often allows the reader to score a point.
+And of all devices of writing folk, none is finer than to please the
+reader by allowing him to pat himself on the back.
+
+If a writer is too clever he repels. Shakespeare avoids the difficulty,
+and proves himself the master by keeping out of sight; Renan wins by a
+great show of modesty and deferential fairness; Boswell assumes an
+artlessness and ignorance that were really not parts of his nature. Every
+man who reads Boswell considers himself the superior of Boswell, and
+therefore is perfectly at home. It is not pleasant to be in the society of
+those who are much your superiors. Any man who sits in the company of
+Samuel Pepys for a half-hour feels a sort of half-patronizing pity for
+him, and therefore is happy, for to patronize is bliss.
+
+If Boswell has reinforced fact with fiction, and given us art for truth,
+then his character of Samuel Johnson is the most vividly conceived and
+deeply etched in all the realm of books. But if he gives merely the simple
+facts, then Boswell is no less a genius, for he has omitted the irrelevant
+and inconsequential, and by playing off the excellent against the absurd,
+he has placed his subject among the few great wits who have ever lived--a
+man who wrote remarkably well, but talked infinitely better.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Montaigne advises young men that if they will fall in love, why, to fall
+in love with women older than themselves. His argument is that a young and
+pretty woman makes such a demand on a man's time and attention that she is
+sure, eventually, to wear love to the warp. So the wise old Gascon
+suggests that it is the part of wisdom to give your affection to one who
+is both plain and elderly--one who is not suffering from a surfeit of
+love, and one whose head has not been turned by flattery. "Young women,"
+says the philosopher, "demand attention as their right and often flout the
+giver; whereas old women are very grateful."
+
+Whether Samuel Johnson, of Lichfield, ever read Montaigne or not is a
+question; but this we know, that when he was twenty-six he married the
+Widow Porter, aged forty-nine.
+
+Assuming that Johnson had read Montaigne and was mindful of his advice,
+there were other excellent reasons why he did not link his fortunes with
+those of a young and pretty woman.
+
+Johnson in his youth, as well as throughout life, was a Grind of the pure
+type. The Grind is a fixture, a few being found at every University, even
+unto this day. The present writer, once in a book of fiction, founded on
+fact, took occasion to refer to the genus Grind, with Samuel Johnson in
+mind, as follows: He is poor in purse, but great in frontal development.
+
+He goes to school because he wishes to (no one ever "sent" a Grind to
+college). He has a sallow skin, a watery eye, a shambling gait, but he has
+the facts. His clothes are outgrown, his coat shiny, his linen a dull
+ecru, his hands clammy. He reads a book as he walks, and when he bumps
+into you, he always exculpates himself in Attic Greek.
+
+This absent-mindedness and habit of reading on the street affords the
+Sport (another college type) great opportunity for the playing of pranks.
+It is very funny to walk along in front of a Grind who is reading as he
+walks, and then suddenly stop and stoop, and let the Grind fall over you;
+for the innocent Grind, thinking he has been at fault, is ever profuse in
+apologies.
+
+Many years ago there was a Grind. A party of Sports saw him approaching,
+deeply immersed in his book. "Look you," quoth the chief of the
+Sports--"look you and observe him fall over me."
+
+And they looked.
+
+Onward blindly trudged the Grind, reading as he came. The Sport stepped
+ahead of him, stooped, and ---- one big foot of the Grind shot out and
+kicked him into the gutter. Then the Grind continued his walk and his
+reading without saying a word.
+
+This incident is here recorded for the betterment of the Young, to show
+them that things are not always what they seem.
+
+Samuel Johnson, I have said, was a Grind of the pure type. He was so
+nearsighted that he fell over chairs in drawing-rooms, and so awkward that
+his long arms occasionally brushed the bric-a-brac from mantels. No lady's
+train was safe if he was in the room. At gatherings of young people, if
+Johnson appeared, his presence was at once the signal for mirth, of which
+he was, of course, the unconscious object.
+
+Johnson's face was scarred by the King's Evil, which even the touch of
+Queen Anne had failed to cure. While a youth he talked aloud to himself--a
+privilege that should be granted only to those advanced in years. He would
+grunt out prayers and expletives at uncertain times, keep up a clucking
+sound with his tongue, sway his big body from side to side, and drum a
+tattoo upon his knee. Now and again would come a suppressed whistle, and
+then a low humming sound, backed up by a vacant non-compos-mentis smile.
+
+Another odd whim of Johnson's was, that he would never pass a lamp-post
+without touching it, and would go back miles upon his way to repair an
+omission. Surely great wit to madness is near allied.
+
+This most strange young man was a boarder in the home of Mrs. Porter, when
+her husband was alive, and the husband and boarder had been fast
+friends--drawn together by a bookish bias.
+
+Very naturally, when the husband passed away, the boarder sought to
+console the bereaved landlady, and the result was as usual. And when, long
+years after, Johnson would solemnly explain that it was a pure love-match
+on both sides, the statement never failed to excite much needless and
+ill-suppressed merriment on the part of the listeners. In mimicking the
+endearments of Johnson and his "pretty creature"--so the admiring husband
+called her--Garrick many years later added to his artistic reputation.
+
+Unlike most literary men, Johnson was domestic, and his marriage was one
+of the most happy events of his career. But to show that the philosophy of
+Montaigne is not infallible, and that all signs fail in dry weather, it
+may be stated that the bride proved by her conduct on her wedding-day that
+she had some relish of the saltness of time in her cosmos, despite her
+fifty summers and as many hard winters.
+
+Said Johnson to Boswell, referring to the horseback-ride home after the
+wedding-ceremony: "Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into
+her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her
+lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and
+she could not keep up with me; and when I rode a little slower, she passed
+me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of
+caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on
+briskly, till I was fairly out of sight. The road lay between two hedges,
+so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon
+come up with me. When she did I observed her to be in tears."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Shortly after his marriage, Johnson opened a private school for boys. To
+operate a private school successfully implies a certain amount of skill in
+the management of parents; but Johnson's uncouth manners and needlessly
+blunt speech were appalling to those who had children who might possibly
+be given to imitation.
+
+Only three pupils were secured, and but one of these received any benefit
+from the tutor; and this benefit came, according to the scholar, from the
+master's supplying an excellent object for ridicule.
+
+This pupil's name was David Garrick.
+
+The meeting with David Garrick was a pivotal point in the life of Johnson.
+Johnson's mental and spiritual existence flowed on, separate and apart
+from that of his wife. There was no meeting of the waters. His affection
+for her was most tender and constant, but in quality it seemed to differ
+but slightly from the sentiment he entertained toward "Hodge," his cat.
+
+Hodge was fed on oysters that his owner could ill afford; and after
+Johnson had spent the little fortune that belonged to his wife, the lady
+was regaled on the best and choicest that his income, or credit, could
+secure. But if one of those lightning-flashes of wit ever escaped him in
+her direction, we do not know it. Garrick evidently was the first flint
+that tried his steel. The distinctions of teacher and scholar were soon
+lost between these two, and the lessons took the turn of a fusillade of
+wit. They made comments on the authors they read, and comments on the
+people they met, and criticized each other with encaustic remarks that
+tested friendship to its extremest limit. And this continual skirmish that
+would have made sworn foes of common men in a day revealed to each that
+the other had the element of unexpectedness in his nature and was worth
+loving.
+
+Humor and melancholy go hand in hand; both are born of an extreme
+sensitiveness, and the man who smiles at the trivial misfits of life
+realizes also that all men who tread the earth are living under a sentence
+of death, and that Fate has merely allowed them an indefinite, but
+limited, reprieve.
+
+At the outset of Johnson's career, one can not but see that the
+companionship and nimble wit of Garrick saved his ponderous and melancholy
+mind from going into bankruptcy.
+
+And now we find them: one twenty-eight, big, nearsighted, theoretical,
+blundering; and the other twenty-one, slight, active, graceful, practical.
+They were alike in this: they both loved books and were possessed of the
+eager, earnest, receptive mind. To possess the hospitable mind! For what
+greater blessing can one pray?
+
+And then they were alike in other respects--they were desperately poor;
+neither had an income; neither had a profession; both were ambitious.
+Johnson had written a tragedy--"Irene"--and he had read it to Garrick
+several times, and Garrick said it was good and should make a hit. But
+Garrick didn't know much about tragedies--law was his bent--he had read
+law for two years, off and on. They would go to London and seize fortune
+by the scalp-lock. In London good lawyers were needed, and London was the
+only place for a playwright.
+
+They scraped together their pennies, borrowed a few more, got a single
+letter of introduction between them to some person of unknown influence,
+and started away, with the lacrimose blessings of the elderly bride, and
+of Davy's mother.
+
+They must have been a queer sight when the stage let them down at the
+Strand--dusty, dirty, tired and scared by the babel of sounds and sights!
+And no doubt Johnson's enormous size saved them from sundry insults and
+divers taunts that otherwise might have come their way.
+
+Those first few weeks in London were given to staring into shop-windows
+and wandering, open-mouthed, up and down. No one wanted the tragedy--the
+managers all sniffed at it. Little then did Davy dream, as they made their
+way from the office of one theater-manager to that of another, that he
+himself would some day own a theater and give the discarded play its first
+setting. And little did he think that he would yet be the foremost actor
+of his time, and his awkward mate the literary dictator of London. Oh!
+this game of life is a great play! The blissful uncertainty of it all!
+The ambitions, plans, strivings, heartaches, mad desires and vain reaching
+out of empty arms! The tears, the bitter disappointments, the sleepless
+nights, the echoes of prayers unheard, and the hollow hopelessness of love
+turned to hate!
+
+And then mayhap we do as Emerson did--go out into the woods, and all the
+trees say, "Why so hot, my little man?"
+
+Garrick, disappointed and undone at the thought of defeat in his chosen
+profession, turned to commercial life and then to the theater. At his
+first stage appearance he trembled with diffidence and all but fled in
+fright. He persevered, for he could do nothing else. He arose step by
+step, and honors, wealth and fame were his. Love came to him: he wedded
+the woman of his choice. And after his death she survived for forty-three
+years. She lived one hundred years, lacking two. Garrick was born in
+Seventeen Hundred Sixteen; and his wife died in Eighteen Hundred
+Twenty-two, which seems to bring the times of Johnson pretty close home to
+us. Throughout her long life, she lived in the memory of the love that had
+been hers; cherishing and protecting, idolizing, as did Mary Shelley, the
+one name and that alone.
+
+Johnson and Garrick thoroughly respected and admired each other, yet they
+often quarreled--they quarreled to the last. But when Davy had lain him
+down in his last sleep, aged sixty-three, it was Johnson, aged seventy,
+who wrote his epitaph, introducing into it the deathless sentence * * *
+"by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and
+impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three months in London and Johnson succeeded in getting a place on the
+editorial staff of "The Gentleman's Magazine." Prosperity smiled, not
+exactly a broad grin; but the expression was something better than a
+stony, forbidding stare.
+
+He made haste to go back to Lichfield after his "Letty," which name, by
+the way, is an improvement on Betty, Betsy or Tetsy--being baby-talk for
+Elizabeth.
+
+They took modest lodgings in a third floor back, off Fleet Street, and
+Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind
+condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt,
+never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky
+broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth--with the weapons of his
+dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved;
+jeered and praised; feared and idolized.
+
+Coming out of his burrow one dark night, he encountered an old
+beggar-woman who importuned him for alms. He was brushing past her, when
+one of her exclamations caught his ear.
+
+"Sir," said the woman, "I am an old struggler!"
+
+"Madam," replied Johnson, "so am I!" And he gave her his last sixpence.
+
+But life in London was cheap in those days--it is now if you know how to
+do it, or else have to. Johnson used to maintain that for thirty pounds a
+year one could live like a gentleman, and as proof would quote an
+imaginary acquaintance who argued that ten pounds a year for clothes would
+keep a man in good appearance; a garret could be hired for eighteen pence
+a week, and if any one asked your address you could reply, "I am to be
+found in such a place," Threepence laid out at a coffeehouse would enable
+one to pass some hours a day in good company; dinner might be had for
+sixpence, and supper you could do without. On clean-shirt day you could go
+abroad and call on your lady friends. Among Johnson's first literary tasks
+in London was the work of reporting the debates in Parliament. In order
+that the best possible results might be obtained, he resorted to the
+rather unique, but not entirely original, method of not attending
+Parliament at all. Two or three young men would be sent to listen to the
+debates; they would make notes giving the general drift of the argument,
+and Johnson would write out the speech. His style was exactly suited to
+this kind of work, being eminently rhetorical. And as at the time no
+public record of proceedings was kept and Parliament did not allow the
+press the liberty it now possesses--all being as it were clouded in
+mysterious awe--these reports of debates were eagerly sought after. To
+evade the law, a fictitious name was given the speaker, or his initials
+used in such a way that the individual could be easily recognized by the
+reading public.
+
+Some of Johnson's best work was done at this time, and in several
+instances the speaker, not slow to appreciate a good thing, allowed the
+matter to be reissued as his own. Long years after, a certain man was once
+praising the speeches of Lord Chesterfield and was led on to make
+explanations. He did so, naming two speeches, one of which he zealously
+declared had the style of Cicero; the other that of Demosthenes. Johnson
+becalmed the speaker by agreeing with him as to the excellence of the
+speeches, and then adding, "I wrote them both."
+
+The gruffness of Ursa Major should never be likened to that of the Sage of
+Chelsea. Carlyle vented his spleen on the nearest object, as irate
+gentlemen sometimes kick at the cat; but Johnson merely sparred for
+points. When Miss Monckton undertook to refute his statements as to the
+shallowness of Sterne by declaring that "Tristram Shandy" affected her to
+tears, Johnson rolled himself into contortions, made an exasperating
+grimace, and replied, "Why, dearest, that is because you are a dunce!"
+Afterward, when reproached for the remark, he replied, "Madam, if I had
+thought so, I surely would not have said it."
+
+Once, at the house of Garrick, to the terror of every one, Burke
+contradicted Johnson flatly, but Johnson's good sense revealed itself by
+his making no show of resentment. Burke's experience was, it must be said,
+exceptional. An equally exciting, but harmless occasion, was the only time
+that the author of "Rasselas" met the man who wrote the "Wealth of
+Nations," Johnson called Adam Smith a liar, and Smith promptly handed back
+an epithet not in the Dictionary. Nevertheless, old Ursa spoke in an
+affectionate praise of "Adam," as he called him thereafter, thus
+recognizing the right of the other man to be frank if he cared to be.
+Johnson wanted no privilege that he was not willing to grant to
+others--except perhaps that of dictator of opinions.
+
+When Blair asked Johnson if he thought any modern man could have written
+"Ossian," Johnson replied, "Yes, sir--many men, many women, and many
+children." And if Blair took umbrage at the remark, so much the worse for
+Blair.
+
+We have recently heard of the Boston lady who died and went to Heaven, and
+on being questioned by an archangel as to how she liked it, replied
+languidly, "Very, very beautiful it all is!" And then sighed and added,
+"But it is not Boston!" This story seems to illustrate that all tales have
+their prototype, for Boswell tells of taking Doctor Johnson out to
+Greenwich Park, and saying, "Now, now, isn't this fine!" But Johnson would
+not enthuse; he only grunted, "All very fine--but it's not Fleet Street."
+
+On another occasion when a Scotchman was dilating on the noble prospects
+to be enjoyed among the hills of Scotland, Johnson called a halt by
+saying, "Sir, let me tell you that the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever
+sees is the highroad that leads him to England."
+
+This seems to evince a strong prejudice toward Scotland, and several
+Scots, with their usual plentiful lack of wit, have so solemnly written it
+down. But the more sensible way is to conclude that the situation simply
+afforded opportunity for a little harmless banter.
+
+Another equally indisputable proof of prejudice is shown when Boswell
+tells Johnson of the wonderful preaching of a Quaker woman. Johnson
+listened in grim, cold silence and then exclaimed: "Sir, a woman's
+preaching is like a dog's walking on its hind legs. It is not done well;
+but you are surprised to find it done at all."
+
+One of the leading encyclopedias, I see, says, "Doctor Johnson was one of
+the greatest conversationalists of all time." The writer evidently does
+not distinguish between talk, conversation and harangue. Johnson could
+talk and he often harangued; but he was not a conversationalist. Neither
+could he address a public assembly, and I do not find that he ever
+attempted it. Good talkers are seldom orators. One reads with amusement
+tinged with pity, of Carlyle's sleepless nights and cold, terror-fraught
+anticipations of his Lord Rector's speech. In deliberative gatherings a
+very small man could apply the snuffers to the great Dictator of Letters.
+
+"Sir," said Doctor Johnson to a talkative politician, at a dinner-party,
+"I perceive you are a vile Whig," and then he proceeded to demolish him.
+Yet Johnson himself was a Whig, although he never knew it; just as he was
+a liberal in religion, and yet was boastful of being a stanch Churchman.
+
+Johnson's irritability never vented itself against the helpless. His
+charity knew no limit--not even the bottom of his purse. When he had no
+money to give, he borrowed it. And when his pension was three hundred
+pounds a year, the Thrales could not figure out that he spent more than
+seventy or eighty on himself. The rest went to his dependents. In his
+latter days his home was a regular museum of waifs and strays. There was
+Miss Williams, the ancient aristocratic spinster who came to London to
+have an operation performed on one of her eyes. She came to Johnson's home
+and remained ten years, because she had been a friend of his wife. This
+claim was enough, and she slid into the head place in Johnson's household.
+Her peevishness used to drive the old man, at times, into the street; but
+that tongue of his, with its crushing retorts, was ever silent and tender
+towards her. The poor creature became blind, and used to shock the finicky
+Boswell by testing the fulness of the teacups with her finger.
+
+Then there was a Mrs. Desmoulins and her daughter, who drifted down from
+Lichfield and came to Johnson, because forty years before, he, too, had
+lived in Lichfield. He gave them house-room, treated them as guests, and
+each week left a half-guinea on the mantel of their room.
+
+Then there was the broken-down Levett, and Francis Barber, who, coming as
+a servant, remained as one of the family, because he was too old to work.
+A Miss Carmichael, in green spectacles and bombazine, carrying a cane,
+completed what the Doctor called his "seraglio." Writing to Mrs. Thrale in
+playful mood, telling of his household troubles, he says, "Williams hates
+everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins
+hates them both; Poll loves none of them." And he, the great, gruff and
+mighty Ursa Major, listened to all their woes, caring for them in
+sickness, wiping the death-dew from their foreheads, wearing crape upon
+his sleeve for them when dead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This man tasted all the fame that is one man's due; he had all the money
+he needed, or knew how to use; the coveted LL.D. came from his Alma Mater;
+and the patronage from Lord Chesterfield, for which he craved, only that
+he might fling it back. He was the friend and confidant of the great and
+proud, deferred to by the King and sought out by those who prized the
+far-reaching mind and subtle imagination--the things that link us with the
+Infinite. The fear of hell and dread of death that haunted him in youth
+and middle age, finally gave way to faith and trust. When partial
+paralysis came to him at midnight, his sanity did not fail him, and
+knowing the worst, he yet hesitated to disturb the other members of the
+household, but went to sleep, philosophizing on the phenomena of the
+case--alert for more knowledge, as was his wont. Morning came and being
+speechless, he wrote on his ever-ready pad of paper and handing the sheet
+to his servant, watched with amused glances the perplexity and terror of
+the man. He next wrote to his friend, Mrs. Thrale, that letter, a classic
+of wit and resignation, wherein he explains his condition and excuses
+himself for not calling upon her and explaining the matter by word of
+mouth.
+
+Such willingness to accept the inevitable is curative. He grew better and
+recovered his speech. But old age is a disease that has no cure save
+death. Johnson accepted the issue as a brave man should--thankful for the
+gift of conscious life that had been his. When the last hour was nigh he
+sent loving messages to his nearest friends, repeating their names over
+one by one. His last recorded words were directed to a young woman who
+called upon him, "God bless you, my dear."
+
+And so he passed painlessly and quietly into the sleep that knows no
+waking; pleased at last to know that his dust would rest in Westminster
+Abbey.
+
+Thus ended, as the day dies out of the western sky, this life, seemingly
+so full of tempest and contradiction. The autumn of his life was full of
+enjoyment, and no day passed but that some one, weak, weary and worn,
+arose and called him blessed. Most of his wild imprecations and blustering
+contradictions were reserved for those who fattened on such things, and
+who came to be tossed and gored. In his spirit Socrates and Falstaff
+joined hands. In his life there was a deal of gladness--far, far more than
+of misery and unrest; which fact I believe is true of every life.
+
+The Universe seems planned for good.
+
+A world made up of such men as Samuel Johnson would be a wild chaos of
+tasks undone. But since Nature has never sent but one such man, and more
+than a century has passed since his death and we know not yet with whom to
+compare him, we need have no fears. The world is held in place through the
+opposition of forces: and the body of every healthy man is the
+battle-ground of animal organisms that match strength against strength.
+So, too, a healthy society always has these active and sturdy organisms,
+which set in play other forces that hold in check their seeming excess.
+That the Divine Energy should incarnate itself and find expression in the
+form of a man, and that this man should inspire others to think and write,
+to do and dare, is a subject the contemplation of which should make us
+stand uncovered. The companionship of Johnson inspired Reynolds to better
+painting, Garrick to stronger acting, Burke to more profound thinking--and
+hundreds of others, too, quenched their thirst at the rock which he smote
+whenever he discoursed or wrote.
+
+Sympathy is the first essential to insight. So with sympathy, I pray,
+behold this blundering giant, and you will see that the basis of his
+character was a great Sincerity. He was honest--doggedly honest--and saw
+with flashing vision the thing that was; and thither he followed,
+crowding, pushing, knocking down whatsoever opinion or prejudice was in
+the way. And so he ever struggled forward. But hate him not, for he is thy
+brother--yea! he is brother to all who strive and reach forward toward the
+Ideal. Shining through dust and disorder, now victorious, now eclipsed in
+deepest gloom, in him is the light of genius; and this is never base, but
+at the worst is admirable, lovable with pity. There was pride in his
+heart, but no vanity; and he should be loved for this if for no other
+reason: he had the courage to make an enemy. In his great heart were wild
+burstings of affection, and a hunger for love that only the grave
+requited. There, too, were fierce flashes of wrath, smothered in an hour
+by the soft dew of pity. His faults and follies were manifold, as he often
+lamented with tears; but the soul of the man was sublime in its
+qualities--worldwide in its influence.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS B. MACAULAY
+
+    The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and
+    spirit of the age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact,
+    he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not
+    authenticated by sufficient testimony. But by judicious
+    selection, rejection and arrangement, he gives to truth those
+    attractions which have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative
+    a due subordination is observed: some transactions are prominent;
+    others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is
+    increased or diminished, not according to the dignity of the
+    persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which
+    they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man.
+                                                --_Essay on History_
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS MACAULAY]
+
+
+Success is in the blood.
+
+There are men whom Fate can never keep down--they march jauntily forward,
+and take by divine right the best of everything that earth affords. But
+their success is not attained by the Doctor Samuel Smiles Connecticut
+policy. They do not lie in wait, nor scheme, nor fawn, nor seek to adapt
+their sails to catch the breeze of popular favor. Still, they are ever
+alert and alive to any good that may come their way, and when it comes
+they simply appropriate it, and tarrying not, move steadily forward.
+
+Good health! Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the
+crown of your head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in
+sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every
+hand-clasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and never waste a minute
+thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would
+like to do, and then without violence of direction you will move straight
+to the goal.
+
+Fear is the rock on which we split, and hate is the shoal on which many a
+bark is stranded. When we are fearful, the judgment is as unreliable as
+the compass of a ship whose hold is full of iron ore; when we hate, we
+have unshipped the rudder; and if we stop to meditate on what the gossips
+say, we have allowed a hawser to befoul the screw.
+
+Keep your mind on the great and splendid thing you would like to do; and
+then, as the days go gliding by, you will find yourself unconsciously
+seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfilment of
+your desire, just as the coral-insect takes from the running tide the
+elements that it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful
+person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming
+you into that particular individual. Thought is supreme, and to think is
+often better than to do.
+
+Preserve a right mental attitude--the attitude of courage, frankness and
+good-cheer.
+
+To think rightly is to create.
+
+Darwin and Spencer have told us that this is the method of Creation. Each
+animal has evolved the parts it needed and desired. The horse is fleet
+because it wishes to be; the bird flies because it desires to; the duck
+has a web-foot because it wants to swim. All things come through desire,
+and every sincere prayer is answered. Many people know this, but they do
+not believe it thoroughly enough so that it shapes their lives.
+
+We want friends, so we scheme and chase 'cross lots after strong people,
+and lie in wait for good folks--or alleged good folks--hoping to attach
+ourselves to them. The only way to secure friends is to be one.
+
+And before you are fit for friendship you must be able to do without it.
+That is to say, you must have sufficient self-reliance to take care of
+yourself, and then out of the surplus of your energy you can do for
+others. The man who craves friendship, and yet desires a self-centered
+spirit more, will never lack for friends.
+
+If you would have friends, cultivate solitude instead of society. Drink in
+the ozone; bathe in the sunshine; and out in the silent night, under the
+stars, say to yourself again and yet again, "I am a part of all my eyes
+behold!" And the feeling will surely come to you that you are no mere
+interloper between earth and sky; but that you are a necessary particle of
+the Whole. No harm can come to you that does not come to all, and if you
+shall go down, it can only be amid a wreck of worlds.
+
+Thus by laying hold on the forces of the Universe, you are strong with
+them. And when you realize this, all else is easy, for in your arteries
+course red corpuscles, and in your heart there is the will to do and be.
+Carry your chin in, and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the
+chrysalis.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thomas B. Macauley was small in stature; but he always carried his chin
+well in and the crown of his head high.
+
+It was said of Rubens that throughout his lifetime he kept success tied to
+the leg of his easel with a blue ribbon. If ever a writing man had success
+tied to the leg of his easy chair, that man was Macaulay. In the
+characters and careers of Rubens and Macaulay there is a marked
+resemblance.
+
+When Macaulay was twenty-two he was at Cambridge, and the tidings arrived
+that a dire financial storm had wrecked the family fortune. The young man
+had ever been led to suppose that his father was rich--rich beyond all
+danger from loss--and that he himself would never have a concern beyond
+amusing himself, and the cultivation of his intellect. And so in practical
+affairs his education had been sadly neglected. But when the news of
+calamity came, instead of being depressed, he was elated to think that now
+he could make himself positively useful.
+
+Responsibility gravitates to the man who can shoulder it. Strong men who
+can wisely direct the efforts of others are always needed--they were
+needed in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-two, when Tom Macaulay received word of
+his father's trouble--they are needed today more than then--men who meet
+calamity with a smile and are pleased at sight of obstacles, knowing they
+can overcome them. Augustine Birrell has written, "Macaulay always went
+his sublime way rejoicing like a strong man to run a race, knowing full
+well that he could give anybody five yards in fifty and win easily."
+
+Macaulay took up the burden that his father was not able to bear, mastered
+every detail of the business, studied out the weak points, and then
+explained to the creditors just what they had better do.
+
+And they did it.
+
+We always trust the man who has courage plus, enthusiasm to spare, and who
+shows by his manner that he is master of the situation.
+
+In a few years Macaulay saved from the wreck enough to secure his father,
+mother and sisters against want for the rest of their days, and eventually
+he paid every creditor in full with interest. Had he run away from the
+difficulty, as his father was on the point of doing, the family would have
+been turned homeless into the streets.
+
+Moral--Things are never so bad as they seem; and all difficulties sneak
+away when you look them squarely in the eye.
+
+At this time the family, consisting of the father, mother, three sisters
+and a brother, lived at Fifty Great Ormond Street, not far from the
+British Museum. The house is still standing, but I recently discovered
+that the occupants know nothing, and care less, about Thomas Macaulay.
+
+Tom was the child of his mother. In temperament, disposition and physique
+he was as much unlike his father as two men can well be. Old Zachary
+Macaulay was a strong, earnest man who took himself seriously. In latter
+years he grew morose, puritanic and was full of dread of the Unseen. He
+preached long sermons to his family, cautioned them against frivolity,
+forbade music, tabued games, and constantly spoke of the tongue as "the
+unruly member."
+
+He, of course, was not aware of it, but he was teaching his children by
+antithesis.
+
+"When I meet Macaulay I always imagine I am in Holland," once said Sydney
+Smith.
+
+"Why so!" asked a friend.
+
+"Because he is such a windmill," was the reply.
+
+But then we must remember that Sydney Smith never much liked
+Macaulay--they were too near alike. Whenever they met there was usually a
+wordy duel. "He is so overflowing with learning that it runs over and he
+stands in the slop," said Smith.
+
+Tom talked a great deal, he was fond of music and games, and was never so
+pleased as when engaging in some wild frolic with his sisters and any
+chance youngster that happened to stray in. His sister, Lady Trevelyan,
+has recorded that during those days of gloom which followed her father's
+failure, matters were made worse by the stricken man moping at home and
+tightening the domestic discipline.
+
+Tom never resented this, but on the instant the father would leave the
+house, it was the signal of a wild pandemonium of disorder. Tom would play
+he was a tiger, and crawling under the sofa would emit fearful growls that
+would cause the children to scream with pretended fright. Next they would
+play fire, and pile all the furniture in the center of the room, heaping
+books, clothing, rugs on top. Then Tom would "rescue" his mother if she
+appeared on the scene, and seizing her in his arms carry her to a place of
+safety, and then engage in a pillow-fight if she came back.
+
+This wild frolic was always a delight to the children, and Tom's
+homecoming was ever watched with eager anticipation. His visits shot the
+gloom through with sunshine, and when he went away even the neighbors'
+children were in tears. His health and enthusiasm infected everybody he
+met.
+
+In the course of looking after his father's business Macaulay unlearned
+most of the previous lessons of his life, and taught himself that to do
+for others and sink self was the manly method. But so lightly did he bear
+the burden that it is doubtful if he ever considered he was making any
+sacrifice.
+
+When his father died, Macaulay put entirely out of his mind the question
+of a household separate and apart from that of his mother and sisters. He
+devoted himself entirely to them; he wanted no other love than theirs.
+
+Unlike so many men of decided talent, the best and most loving side of
+Macaulay's nature was made manifest at home. His bubbling wit, brilliant
+conversation, and good-cheer were for his own fireside, first; and all
+that cutting, critical, scathing flood of invective was for the public
+that wore a rhinoceros-hide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Macaulay's article on Milton, published during his twenty-fifth year, in
+the "Edinburgh Review," is generally regarded as a most wonderful
+achievement. "Just think!" the critics cry--"the first article printed to
+be of a quality that electrified the world!" But we must remember that
+this youth had been getting ready to write that article for ten years.
+
+At college Macaulay shirked mathematics and philosophy, spending his time
+and attention on things he liked better. The only study in which he
+excelled was composition. Even in babyhood his command of language had
+been a wonder to the neighborhood in which he lived. Hannah More had for a
+time taken him under her immediate charge and prophesied great things of
+his literary faculty; and his mother was not slow in seconding the
+opinion.
+
+At Cambridge he already had more than a local reputation as a writer, and
+it was this reputation that secured him the commission to write for the
+"Review." The terrible Jeffrey was getting old and his regular staff had
+pretty nearly worked out their vein. Jeffrey wrote up to London (being
+south) to a friend telling him that the "Review" must have new blood, and
+imploring him to be on the lookout for some young man who had ideas in his
+ink-bottle.
+
+This friend knew the vigor and incisiveness of Macaulay's style, and as he
+read the letter from Jeffrey he exclaimed, "Macaulay!"
+
+It was a great compliment to a mere youth to be asked to contribute to the
+"Edinburgh Review." Edinburgh was a literary center, and you could not
+throw a stone in Princess Street, any more than you can in Tremont Street,
+Boston, without hitting a poet and caroming on two novel-writers and an
+essayist.
+
+Thomas Carlyle, five years older than Macaulay, and who was to live and
+write for twenty-five years after Macaulay's passing, had not yet struck
+twelve. London, too, like Edinburgh, was full of writing men, standing in
+the market-places of Grub Street with no man to hire.
+
+And yet Fate sought out Tom Macaulay, five feet four, who had plenty of
+other work on hand; and through that single "Essay on Milton" he sprang at
+once into the front rank of British writers--and at the same time there
+was thrust into his hands a bonus of fifty pounds for the work.
+
+As a study of a thing that made the reputation of a writer, the "Milton"
+is worth a careful reading. It is very sure that in America today there
+are a hundred men who could write just as good an article, but whether
+these men are Macaulays or not is quite another question. But it is not at
+all probable that a writer will ever again leap into place and power on so
+small a feat.
+
+Yet the article surely shows all the dash and vigor that mark Macaulay's
+literary style. There is personality in it; it reveals the red corpuscle;
+and tells without question that there is a man behind the guns. It was
+opportune; for literature at that particular time had reached a point
+where the sciolist was in full possession, and the dead husks of learning
+were being palmed off for the living thoughts of living men.
+
+Periodicity reveals itself in all Nature, and even in the world of thought
+there are years of famine and years of plenty. Dry rot gets into letters;
+things are ripe for a revolution; the tinder is dry, and along comes some
+Martin Luther and applies the torch.
+
+Macaulay simply expressed himself boldly, frankly, and without thought of
+favor--writing as he felt.
+
+The article made a great stir--the first edition of the magazine was
+quickly exhausted, and Macaulay awoke one morning, like Byron, and found
+himself famous. All there was about it, the "Milton" revealed a man, a
+strong, vivid-thinking, vigorous man, who, seeing things clearly, wrote
+from his heart. Art is born of feeling: it is heart, not head, that
+carries conviction home; but if you have both, as Macaulay had, it is no
+special disadvantage.
+
+From the publication of Macaulay's first article the "Review" took on a
+new lease of life. Prosperity came that way and for the rest of his life
+the "Review" was not long without contributions from his pen; and the
+numbers that contained his articles were always in great demand. Writers
+who possess a piercing insight into the heart of things, and who have the
+courage to express themselves, regardless of the views of others, are well
+feared by men in power.
+
+The man who knows, who can think, and who can write, holds a sword of
+Damocles over every politician.
+
+Governments are honeycombed with vulnerable spots; and to secure the ready
+writer on your side is the part of wisdom.
+
+Macaulay's article on Milton proved that there was a thinker loose, and
+that on occasion he could strike. The politicians began to court him, and
+we find him writing articles of a very Junius-like quality on contemporary
+issues.
+
+When he was twenty-six years old we are told he was "called to the Bar,"
+which means that he was given permission to practise law--the expression,
+"called," being a mild form of fiction that still obtains in England in
+legal matters, while in America the word applies only in theology.
+
+The practise of law, however, was not at all to the taste of Macaulay, and
+after a few short terms on the circuit he relinquished it entirely.
+
+In the meantime we find he read continually. Indeed, about the only bad
+habit this man had was reading. He read to excess--he read everything and
+read all the time. He read novels, history, poetry, and dived deeply into
+the dead languages, reading Plutarch's Lives twice in a year, and
+Euripides, Thucydides, Homer, Cicero, Caesar--all without special aim or
+end. Such a restless appetite for reading is apt to produce mental
+dyspepsia, and is not at all to be advised for average people; and the
+probabilities are that even in Macaulay's case his time might often have
+been better spent in meditation.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven appeared in the "Review" the "Essay on
+Mill." Like all of Macaulay's articles it reveals a wealth of learning and
+bristles with information on many themes. It often seems as if Macaulay
+took a subject simply to execute a learned war-dance around it. The
+article on Mill is a good example of merely touching the central theme and
+then going off into by-lanes of economics, history and civil government,
+with endless allusions to literature, poetry, art and philosophy. It is
+all intensely interesting, closely woven, often gorgeous in its coloring;
+and "style" runs like a thread of gold through it all.
+
+Shortly after this article appeared, Lord Lansdowne intimated to the young
+writer that he would like the honor of introducing him into public life,
+and if agreeable he could arrange for him to stand for Parliament in the
+vacant seat of Calne.
+
+Calne was one of those vest-pocket boroughs, owned by a single man, of
+which England has so many. The people think they choose their
+representative, but they do not, any more than we do in America. The
+government by the Boss and for the Boss is no new institution. Macaulay
+presented himself and was elected without opposition. And so before his
+thirtieth year he found himself on the flood-tide of national politics.
+
+Fifteen years before, if any one had expressed himself as plainly as
+Macaulay did on entering Parliament, he would have had a taste of jail,
+the hulks, or the pillory. So alert had the Government agents been for
+sedition that to stick one's tongue in his cheek at a member of the
+Cabinet was considered fully as bad as poaching, both being heinous
+offenses before God and man. Persecution was in the air and tyranny
+stalked abroad.
+
+But tyranny is self-limiting. If laws are too severe, there will surely
+come a time when they will not be observed, and history shows that the men
+who have introduced the guillotine ended their careers in its embrace.
+
+A change had come in England. The Tories were being jostled from their
+seats, and the Whigs were just coming into power. Liberalism was abroad in
+the land, and surely the time had come when a strong man might speak his
+mind.
+
+Macaulay was by nature a protester; he was "agin 'em"; and when he chose a
+subject for his maiden speech he was not only sincere, but exceeding
+politic. He guessed the lay of the land, and knew the direction of the
+wind. Heresy was popular.
+
+His address was in favor of an act removing the legal disabilities of
+Jews. It was a plea for liberty, and such was the vigor, power and vivid
+personality he threw into the address that he astonished the House and
+brought in the loungers from the cloakrooms.
+
+It was his only speech during the session. Efforts were made to get him on
+his feet again, but he was too wise to lend the battery of his mind to any
+commonplace theme. Only a subject such as might stir men's souls could
+tempt him.
+
+Wise Thomas Macaulay!
+
+He had made a reputation as a writer by his first article, and after his
+maiden speech all London chanted his praises as an orator. He practised
+self-restraint and knew better than to dilute his fame by holding argument
+with small men on little topics.
+
+His first speech at the next session of Parliament only served to fix his
+place as an orator more firmly. The immediate excuse was the "Reform
+Bill"; but the subject was liberty, and literature and history were called
+upon to furnish fire and supply the fuel for pyrotechnics. After its
+delivery the Speaker sent for Macaulay and personally congratulated him on
+making the most effective address to which he had listened for twenty-five
+years. The House of Commons, ever willing and anxious to appropriate a
+genius, being glutted by the dull and commonplace, sought in many ways
+from this time forward to do honor to Macaulay.
+
+The elder members grew reminiscent and said the good old times were coming
+back, and talked of Burke, Fox, Canning and Lord Plunket.
+
+Jeffrey, feeling a sense of guardianship over Macaulay, having launched
+him, as he rightfully claimed, was on hand to hear the speech, and made
+haste to embrace his ward, kissing him on both cheeks.
+
+Judging from this distance, there was nothing especially peculiar or
+distinctive about Macaulay's oratory, save his intense personality and
+vivid earnestness. An educated man, thoroughly alive on any one theme, is
+always interesting. And it was Macaulay's policy never to speak in public
+on a theme that did not bring out his entire armament, and yet with it all
+he was wise enough to cultivate a feeling of restraint and leave the
+impression that he had much more in reserve. So it was in his literary
+work: he never wrote when tired, nor attempted to express when he was not
+thoroughly alive to the subject in hand. He watched his mood. And thus in
+all Macaulay's "Essays" we feel the systole and diastole, and the hot,
+strong, impatient movement of ruddy life. There is "go" in every sentence.
+This is what constitutes his marvelous style--life, life, life!
+
+To very few men, indeed, is it given to be at once a brilliant talker, a
+strong writer and an effective orator. Clever talkers are seldom orators,
+and the great writers usually ebulliate only in the silence of their
+studies.
+
+The fame of Macaulay went abroad, and he became the social lion of
+London--he was courted, feted, petted--and in drawing-rooms when he
+attended, people stood on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of him, and remained
+breathless that they might hear him speak. No doubt the fact that he was a
+bachelor helped fan the social flame. His sister has recorded that every
+morning cards and letters of invitation were piled high on his
+breakfast-table.
+
+With it all, though, the handsome little man preserved his poise, and his
+modesty and becoming dignity in public never failed him.
+
+Such was Macaulay's popularity that, after having served two terms for the
+borough of Calne, the way was opened for him to stand for Leeds. Indeed,
+it is probable that a dozen districts would have been glad to elect him as
+their representative.
+
+After the passing of the "Reform Bill," to which his efforts had been so
+valuable, he was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Board of
+Control. This Board represented the King in the Government's relations
+with the East India Company. Macaulay, being the strongest man on the
+Board, was naturally chosen its secretary, just as the best man in a jury
+is chosen foreman. Here was a man who was not content to be a mere
+figurehead in office, trusting to paid clerks and underlings to secure him
+information and do the work--not he. Macaulay set himself the task of
+thoroughly acquainting himself with Indian affairs. He read every book of
+importance bearing on the subject; and studied the record and history of
+every man of consequence who was or had been connected with India. His
+intensely practical, businesslike mind sifted every detail, intuitively
+separating the relevant from the inconsequential, so that within a few
+months older heads were going to him for information, just as in a store
+or shop there is always one man who knows where things are, and in times
+of doubt he is the man who is sought out. To the many it is so much easier
+to ask some one else than to find out for themselves; and it also shifts
+the responsibility, and gives one a chance, if necessary, to prove a
+halibi--goodness gracious!
+
+One feature of the Reform Bill provided that one of the members of the
+Supreme Council of India should be chosen from among persons not connected
+in any way with the East India Company.
+
+This membership of the Supreme Council was a most important office, and
+carried with it the modest salary of ten thousand pounds a year--fifty
+thousand dollars--double what the President of the United States then
+received.
+
+Macaulay had had no hand in creating this office, and indeed, at the time
+the Reform Bill was being gotten into shape, his interest in Indian
+affairs had only been casual. But now he was recognized as the one man for
+the new office, and the office sought the man.
+
+Comparatively, Macaulay was a poor man, and the acceptance of the office
+for the term of six years would place him for the rest of his life beyond
+the reach of want. He could live royally and retire at forty years of age,
+with at least thirty thousand pounds to his credit. And yet he hesitated
+about accepting the office. His far-reaching eye told him that an exile
+for six years from England would place him out of touch with things at
+home, and that the greater office to which he aspired would be beyond his
+grasp. Besides that, the fact would always be brought up that his reward
+for well-doing had been enough, just as we have an unwritten law in
+America that there shall be no "third term."
+
+Macaulay saw all this and hesitated.
+
+He advised with Lord Lansdowne, and with his sister Hannah, his nearest
+and best friend; and if it had been possible his mother would have been
+given the casting vote; but two years before, she had passed out, yet not
+until she realized that her son was one of the foremost men in England.
+Hannah Macaulay (named in honor of Hannah More) advised the acceptance of
+the office, and upon his earnest request agreed to share her brother's
+exile.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hannah Macaulay, gracious in every way, was the sister of her brother. Her
+mind was fit companion for his, and whenever he had a difficult problem on
+hand he would clarify it by explaining it to her; and be it known, you can
+never talk well to a dullard.
+
+And so Hannah the loyal resigned her position as governess, and brother
+and sister packed up and sailed away in the good ship "Asia" for India.
+Among their belongings was a modest library of three thousand volumes, all
+of which, a wit has said, were read twice through by Macaulay on the
+outward voyage. India was safely reached, and Macaulay set himself with
+his accustomed vigor to learning the language and informing himself as to
+the actual status of things, in order that he might provide for their
+betterment. On account of his grasp on legal matters he was elected Legal
+Adviser of the Supreme Council.
+
+Everything went well for a year, and then a terrible calamity overtook
+Macaulay.
+
+His sister was in love.
+
+This seems a good place to explain that Thomas Babington Macaulay himself
+was never in love. He had no time for that--his days were too full of
+books and practical business to ever waste any time on soft sentiment.
+
+But now he was confronted by a condition, not a theory: Lord Trevelyan was
+in love with his sister, and his sister was in love with Lord Trevelyan.
+Macaulay might have discovered the fact for himself and saved the lovers
+the embarrassment of making a confession, had he not been so terribly busy
+with his books, but Macaulay, like love, was blind--to some things.
+
+He heard the confession, and wept.
+
+Then he gave the pair his blessing--there was nothing else to do.
+
+It was not long after the wedding that he discovered he had found a
+brother instead of having lost a sister; and the sister being very happy,
+Macaulay was happy, too. He insisted that they move their effects into his
+house, and they did so, all living as one happy family. So the years
+passed; and when children came Macaulay's joy was complete. His heart went
+out to his sister's children as though they were his own. Occasionally the
+good mother complained that the Legal Adviser of the Supreme Council undid
+her discipline by indulging the youngsters in things that she had
+forbidden. To all of which the Legal Adviser would only laugh, and
+crawling under the settle would emit many tigerish growls, and the
+children would scream with terror and delight, and other children,
+brown-legged, wearing no clothes to speak of, would come trooping in, and
+together they would manage, after an awful struggle, to capture the tiger,
+and with some in front and others behind and two or three on his back,
+would carry him away captive.
+
+One of these children, grown to manhood, Sir George Trevelyan, was
+destined to write, with the help of his mother, the best life of Macaulay
+that has ever been written.
+
+The exile did not prove quite so severe as was anticipated; but when in
+Eighteen Hundred Thirty-eight it was necessary for Lord Trevelyan to
+return to England, Macaulay, sick at the thought of being left behind,
+resigned his office and sailed back with the family.
+
+We are told that officeholders seldom die and never resign. This may be
+true in the main; but surely there can not be found another instance in
+history of a man throwing up an office with a fifty-thousand-dollar salary
+attachment, simply because he could not bear the thought of being
+separated from his sister's children.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon after his return to England Macaulay was elected to a seat in
+Parliament from Edinburgh, a city that he had scarcely so much as visited,
+but to whose interest he had been loyal in that, up to this time,
+nine-tenths of all he had written had been printed there.
+
+To represent Edinburgh in the House of Commons was no small matter, and we
+know that Macaulay was not unmindful of the honor.
+
+His next preferment was his appointment as Secretary of War, and a seat in
+the Cabinet.
+
+During all these busy years he ever had on hand some piece of literary
+work. In fact, all of the "Essays" on which his literary fame so largely
+rests, were composed on "stolen time" in the lull seized from the official
+and social whirl in which he lived.
+
+If you want a piece of work well and thoroughly done, pick a busy man. The
+man of leisure postpones and procrastinates, and is ever making
+preparations and "getting things in shape"; but the ability to focus on a
+thing and do it is the talent of the man seemingly o'erwhelmed with work.
+Women in point lace and diamonds, club habitues and "remittance
+men"--those with all the time there is--can never be entrusted to carry
+the message to Gomez.
+
+Pin your faith to the busy person.
+
+Macaulay's first and only political rebuff came with his defeat the second
+time he stood for election in Edinburgh. His conscientious opposition to
+a measure in which the Scottish people were especially interested caused
+the tide to turn against him.
+
+No doubt, though, the failure of re-election was a good thing for
+Macaulay--and for the world. He at once began serious work on his "History
+of England"--that project which had been in his head and heart for a score
+of years. All of his literary labors so far had been merely ephemeral--at
+least he so regarded them. The Essays he regarded only as so many
+newspaper articles, not worth the collecting. It was America that first
+guessed their true value as literature, and it was not until the American
+editions were pouring into England that Macaulay allowed his scattered
+work to be collected, corrected and put into authorized book form.
+
+This history was to be the thesis that would admit his name to the Roster
+of Fame. But, alas, the history was destined to be only a fragment. It
+covers scarce fifteen years, and is like that other splendid fragment, the
+work of Henry Thomas Buckle, a preface; Buckle's preface is the greatest
+ever penned, with its author dead at forty. The projected work of both of
+these men was too great for any one man to accomplish in a single
+lifetime. A hundred years of unremitting toil could not have completed
+Macaulay's task.
+
+In Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine he was elected Lord Rector of the
+University of Glasgow; and at his speech of installation he took occasion
+to take formal leave of political life. He would devote the remainder of
+his days to literature and abstract thought.
+
+Men are continually "retiring" from business and active life, all unaware
+of the grim humor of the proceedings. It was not so very long before
+Edinburgh, in an endeavor to undo the slight she had put upon Macaulay,
+again elected him to Parliament, without his being near, or raising his
+hand either for or against the measure.
+
+And again his voice was heard in the House of Commons.
+
+Macaulay was a modest man, and yet he knew his power.
+
+The Premiership dangled just beyond his reach. Many claim that if he had
+not gone to India he would have moved by strong, steady strides straight
+to the highest office that England could bestow. And others aver that when
+he was created a Peer in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-seven it was a move toward
+the Premiership, and that if his health had not failed he would surely
+have won the goal. But how futile it is to speculate on what might have
+happened had not this or the other occurred!
+
+Yet certainly the daring caution of Macaulay's mind, his dignity and
+luring presence, his patience, self-command, good temper, and all those
+manifold graces of his heart, would have made him an almost ideal Premier,
+one who might rank with Palmerston, Peel, Disraeli or Gladstone.
+
+But the highest office was not for him.
+
+We die by heart-beats; and Macaulay at fifty-nine had lived as much as
+most strong men do if they exist a hundred years.
+
+It is easy to show where Lord Macaulay could have been greater. His life
+lies open to us as the ether. We complain because he did not read less and
+meditate more; we sigh at his lack of religion and mention the fact that
+he never loved a woman, seemingly waiving tautology and the fact that men
+who do not love are never religious.
+
+We forget that it takes a good many men to make the Ideal Man.
+
+If Macaulay had been different he would have been some one else. He was a
+brave, tender-hearted man who lived one day at a time, packing the moments
+with good-cheer, good work and an earnest wish to do better tomorrow than
+he had done today. That Nature occasionally produces such a man should be
+a cause for gratitude in the hearts of all the rest of us little folk who
+jig, mince, mouth, amble, run, peek about and criticize our betters.
+
+
+
+
+LORD BYRON
+
+    I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
+      A palace and a prison on each hand:
+    I saw from out the wave her structures rise
+      As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
+    A thousand years, their cloudy wings expand
+      Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
+    O'er the far times, when many a subject land
+      Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,
+    Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
+                                                 --_Childe Harold_
+
+[Illustration: LORD BYRON]
+
+
+Man! I wonder what a man really is! Starting from a single cell, this
+seized upon by another, and out of the Eternal comes a particle of the
+Divine Energy that makes these cells its home. Growth follows, cell is
+added to cell, and there develops a man--a man whose body, two-thirds
+water, can be emptied by a single dagger-thrust and the spirit given back
+to its Maker.
+
+This being, which we call man, does not last long.
+
+Fifty-seven generations have come and gone since Caesar trod the Roman
+Forum. The pillars against which he often leaned still stand, the
+thresholds over which he passed are there, the pavements ring beneath your
+tread as they once rang beneath his. Three generations and more have come
+and gone since Napoleon trod the streets of Toulon contemplating suicide.
+
+Babes in arms were carried by fond mothers to see Lincoln, the candidate
+for President. These babes have grown into men, are grandfathers possibly,
+with whitened hair, furrowed faces, looking calmly forward to the end,
+having tasted all that life holds in store for them.
+
+And yet Lincoln lived but yesterday! You can reach back into the past and
+grasp his hand, and look into his sad and weary eyes.
+
+A man! weighted with the sins of his parents, grandparents,
+great-grandparents, who fade off into dim spectral shapes in the dark and
+dreamlike past; no word of choice has he in the selection of his father
+and mother, no voice in the choosing of environment--brought into life
+without his consent and thrust out of it against his will--battling,
+striving, hoping, cursing, waiting, loving, praying; burned by fever, torn
+by passion, checked by fear, reaching for friendship, longing for
+sympathy, clutching--nothing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Doctors and priests attend us at both ends of the route. We can not be
+born, neither can we die, without consulting the tax-collector, and
+interviewing those who look after us for a consideration.
+
+The doctor who sought to assist George Gordon Byron into the world
+dislocated the bones of his left foot in the operation. Forsooth, this
+baby would not be born as others---he selected a way of his own and paid
+the penalty. "It is a malformation--take these powders--I'll be back
+tomorrow," quoth the busy doctor.
+
+The autopsy proved it was not a malformation, but a displacement.
+
+"Doctor, now please tell me just what is the matter with me," once asked
+an anxious patient.
+
+"Tut, tut!" replied the absent-minded physician; "can't you wait? The
+post-mortem will reveal all that."
+
+The critics did not wait for Byron's death--it was vivisection. And after
+his death the dissection was zealously continued. Byron's life lies open
+to us in many books. Scarcely a month in the entire life of the man is
+unaccounted for, and if a hiatus of a few weeks is found, the men of
+imagination fill in and make him a pirate on the Mediterranean coast, or
+give him a seraglio in some gloomy old Moorish palace in Venice.
+
+In his lifetime Byron was overpraised and overcensured, and since his
+death the dust has been allowed to gather over his matchless books.
+Between the two extremes lies the truth; and the true Byron is just now
+being discovered. Byron in literature will not die. He is the brightest
+comet that has darted into our ken since Shakespeare's time; and as comets
+have no orbit, but are vagrants of the heavens, so was he. Tragedy was in
+his train, and his destiny was disgrace and death.
+
+And yet as we review the life of this man, "the lame brat" of his mother,
+as this mother called him, and behold the whirlwind of passion that swept
+him on, the fulsome praise, the shrill outcry of hypocritical prudes and
+pedants, the torrent of abuse, and the piling up of sins that he never
+committed (and God knows he committed enough!); and yet behold his craving
+for tenderness, the reaching out for truth, and hear his earnest and
+unquenchable prayer to be understood and loved, we blot out the record of
+his sins with our tears. To know the life of Byron and not be moved to
+profoundest pity marks one as alien to his kind.
+
+"God is on the side of the most sensitive," said Thoreau. And did there
+ever tread the earth a man more sensitive than Byron?--such capacity for
+suffering, such exaltation, such heights, such depths! Music made him
+tremble and weep, and in the presence of kindness he was powerless. He
+lived life to its fullest, and paid the penalty with shortened years. He
+expressed himself without reserve--being emancipated from superstition and
+precedent. And the man who is not dominated by the fetish of custom is
+marked for contumely by the many. Custom makes law, and the one who
+violates custom is "bad." Yet all respectable people are not good; and all
+good people are not respectable. If you do not know this you are ignorant
+of life.
+
+So imagine this handsome, headstrong, restless young man, in whose lexicon
+there was no such word as prudence, with time and money at his command,
+defying the state, society and religion, and listen to the anathemas that
+fill the air at mention of his name.
+
+That a world full of such men would not be at all desirable is stern
+truth; but that one such man lived is a cause for congratulation. His life
+holds for us both warning and example.
+
+Beneath the strain of the stuff and the onward swirl of his verse we see
+that this man stood for truth and justice as against hypocrisy and
+oppression. Folly and freedom are better far than smugness and
+persecution. Byron stood for the rights of the individual, for the right
+of free speech and free thought: and he stood for political and physical
+freedom, long before abolition societies became popular. He sided with the
+people; his heart went out to the oppressed; and all of his fruitless
+gropings and stumblings were a reaching out for tenderness and truth, for
+life and love--for the Ideal.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The father of Byron, the poet, was a captain in the army--a man of small
+mental ability, whose recklessness won him the sobriquet of "Mad Jack
+Byron." When twenty-three years of age he eloped to France with the
+Baroness Conyers, wife of the Marquis of Carmarthen. Happiness, in a
+foreign country, for a woman who has exchanged one love for another is
+outside the pale of possibilities. Love is much--but love is not all. Life
+is too short to break family-ties and adjust one's self to a new language
+and a new country. The change means death.
+
+Two years and the woman died, leaving a daughter, Augusta by name,
+afterward Mrs. Augusta Leigh.
+
+Back to England went Mad Jack Byron, broken-hearted, bearing in his arms
+the baby girl. Kind kinsmen, ready to forgive, cared for the child. Mad
+Jack didn't remain broken-hearted long--what would you expect from a man?
+He sought sympathy among several discreet dames, and in two years we find
+him safely and legally married to Catherine Gordon. Scotch, and heiress to
+twenty-five thousand pounds. On the occasion of the wedding, Jack informed
+a friend that the fact of the lady's being Scotch was forgiven in view of
+the dowry. Most of this fortune went into a rat-hole to help pay the debts
+of the Mad Jack.
+
+One child was born to this ill-assorted pair--a boy who was destined to
+write his name large on history's page. But such a pedigree! No wonder
+the youth once wrote to Augusta, his half-sister, expressing a covetous
+appreciation of her parentage, even with its bar sinister. In passing, it
+is well to note the sunshine of this love of brother and sister, which
+continued during life--confidential, earnest, tender, frank. In their best
+moods they were both lofty souls, and their mutuality was cemented in a
+contempt for the man who was their sire. This fine brotherly and sisterly
+affection comes close to us when we remember that it was our own Harriet
+Beecher Stowe, with sympathies worn to the quick through much brooding
+over the wrongs of a race in bondage, who rushed into print with a
+scandalous accusation concerning this same sweet affection of brother for
+sister. The charge was brought on no better foundation than some old-woman
+gossip held over the hyson when it was red, and moved itself aright--all
+vouchsafed to Mrs. Stowe by the widow of Byron in Eighteen Hundred
+Fifty-six. If a woman as good at heart as Harriet Beecher Stowe was
+deceived, why should we blame humanity for biting at a hook that is not
+baited?
+
+No sane dentist will administer an anesthetic to a woman, without a
+witness: not that women as a class are dangerous, but because some women
+can not be trusted to distinguish between their dreams and the facts.
+Every practising lawyer of insight also knows that a wronged woman's
+reasons are plentiful as blackberries, and must always be taken with
+large pinches of the Syracuse product.
+
+Mad Jack followed his regiment here and there, dodging his creditors, and
+finally in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-one induced his wife to borrow a
+hundred pounds for him, with which he started to Paris intent on
+retrieving fortune with pasteboard.
+
+He died on the way, and the money was used to bury him. The lame boy was
+then three years old, but a few dark memories, no doubt retouched by
+hearsay, were retained by him of Mad Jack, who in his most sober moments
+never guessed that he would be known to the ages as the father of the
+greatest poet of his time.
+
+Mad Jack was neither literary nor psychic.
+
+The widowed mother remained at Aberdeen with her boy, living on the
+hundred and fifty pounds a year that had been settled on her in a way that
+she could not squander the principal--all the rest had gone.
+
+The child was shy, sensitive, proud and headstrong.
+
+The mother used to reprove him by throwing things at him, and by chasing
+him with the tongs. At other times she diverted herself by imitating his
+limp. And yet again she would smother him with caresses, beseech his
+pardon for abusing him, and praise the beauty of his matchless eyes.
+
+Children are usually better judges of grown-ups than grown-ups are of
+children. This boy at five years of age had estimated his mother's
+character correctly. He knew that she was not his steadfast friend, and
+that she was unworthy of his confidence and whole heart's love. He grew
+moody, secretive, wilful. Once, being wrongly accused and punished, he
+seized a knife from the table and was about to apply it to his throat when
+he was disarmed. The child longed for tenderness and love, and being
+denied these, was already taking on that proud and haughty temper which
+was to serve as a mask to hide the tenderness of his nature.
+
+We are told that seven brothers Byron fought at Edgehill, but when we get
+down to the time of Mad Jack there was danger of the name being snuffed
+out entirely. Nature is not anxious to perpetuate the idle and dissipated.
+
+When little George Gordon was ten years old, his mother one day ran to
+him, seized him in her arms, wept and laughed, then laughed and wept,
+kissing him violently, addressing him as "My Lord!"
+
+His great-uncle, William, Lord Byron of Rochdale and Newstead Abbey, had
+died, and the big-eyed, lame boy was the nearest heir--in fact, the only
+living male who bore the family-name. The next day at school, when the
+master called the roll and mentioned his name with the prefix "Dominus,"
+the lad did not reply "Adsum"--he only stood up, gazed helplessly at the
+teacher, and burst into tears.
+
+Even at this time he had given promise of the quality of his nature, by
+his firm affection for Mary Duff, his cousin. All the intensity of his
+childish nature was centered in this young woman, several years his
+senior. To call it a passion would be too much, but this child, denied of
+love at home, clung to Mary Duff, to whom he went in confession with all
+his childish tales of woe. When his mother proposed to leave Aberdeen, now
+that fortune had smiled, the anguish of the boy at thought of leaving his
+"first love" nearly caused him a fit of sickness.
+
+And all this wealth of love was met with jeers and loud laughter, save by
+Mary Duff. The vibrating sensitiveness of such a child, with such a
+mother, must have caused a misery we can only guess.
+
+"Your mother is a fool," said a boy to Byron at college some years later.
+
+"I know it," was the melancholy answer, as the brown eyes filled with
+tears.
+
+When money came, Mrs. Byron's first move was to take the lad to Nottingham
+and place him in charge of a surgical quack, who proposed, for a price, to
+make the lame foot just as good as the other, if not better. To this
+effect wooden clamps were placed on the foot and screwed down by
+thumbscrews, causing a torture that would have been unbearable to many.
+
+No benefit was experienced from the treatment, although it was continued
+by another physician at London soon after. A schoolfellow of Byron's
+visited him in his room when his foot was encased in a wooden compress.
+The visitor noted the white face, and the beads of anguish on the boy's
+forehead, and at last said, "I know you are suffering awfully!"
+
+"You will never hear me say so," was the grim reply.
+
+The emphasis placed on Byron's lameness has been altogether overdone. In
+fact, as he grew to manhood, it was nothing more than a stiffness that
+would never have been noticed in a drawing-room. We have this on the
+testimony of the Countess Guiccioli, Lady Blessington and others. Byron
+himself made the mistake of referring to it several times in his verse,
+and doubtless all the torture he had suffered through ill-considered
+medical counsel, and his mother's taunts, caused the matter to take a
+place in his sensitive mind quite out of its due proportion. Sir Walter
+Scott was lame, too, but whoever heard of his discussing it, either by
+word of mouth or in print?
+
+Of Byron's life at Harrow we have many tales as to his defending his
+juniors, volunteering to take punishment for them--and of lessons
+unlearned. He could not be driven nor forced, and pedagogics a hundred
+years ago, it seemed, was largely a science of coercion. Mary Gray, a
+nurse and early teacher of Byron's, has told us that kindness was the
+unfailing touchstone with this boy; no other plan would work. But Harrow
+knew nothing of Froebel methods, and does not yet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Byron's first genuine love-affair occurred when he was sixteen. The object
+of this affection, as all the world knows, was Miss Chaworth, whose estate
+adjoined Newstead. The lady was two years older than Byron, and being of a
+lively nature found a pleasant diversion in leading the youth a merry
+chase. So severe was his attack that he was alternately oppressed by
+chills of fear and fevers of ecstasy. He lost appetite, and the family
+began to fear for his sanity. Such a love must find expression some way,
+and so the daily stealthy notes to the young woman took the form of rhyme.
+The lovesick youth was revealing considerable facility in this way. It
+pleased him, and did the buxom young woman no harm.
+
+Beyond the mere prettiness and pinky whiteness of a healthy country lass,
+Miss Chaworth evidently had no beauties of character, save those conjured
+forth from the inner consciousness of the poet--a not wholly original
+condition.
+
+Byron loved the Ideal. And this love-affair with Miss Chaworth is only
+valuable as showing the evolution of imagination in the poet. The woman
+hadn't the slightest idea that she was giving wings to a soul--to her the
+affair was simply funny.
+
+The fact that Byron's great-uncle, from whom he had inherited his title,
+had killed the grandfather of Miss Chaworth in a duel, lent a romantic
+tinge to the matter--the boy was doing a sort of penance, and in one of
+his poems hints at the undoing of the sin of his kinsman by the lifelong
+devotion that he will bestow. This calling up the past, and incautious
+revealing of the fact that the ancestor Chaworth could not hold his own
+with a Byron, but allowed himself to be run through the body by the Byron
+cold steel, was not pleasing to Miss Chaworth.
+
+"Don't imagine I am such a fool as to love that lame boy," cried Miss
+Chaworth to her maid one day.
+
+Unluckily, "the lame boy" was in the next room and heard the remark.
+
+He rushed from the house with a something gripping at his heart.
+Straightway he would go back to Harrow, which he had left in wrath only a
+few months before.
+
+So he went to Harrow.
+
+When he next returned home, his mother met him with the remark, "I have
+news for you; get out your handkerchief--Miss Chaworth is married."
+
+In just another year Byron was home again, and was invited to dine with
+the Chaworths. He accepted the invitation, and when he was introduced to a
+baby girl, a month old, the child of his old sweetheart, his emotions got
+the better of him and he had to leave the room. And to ease his woe he
+indited a poem to the baby.
+
+Miss Chaworth was not happy with her fox-hunting squire. Her mind became
+clouded, and after some years she passed out, in poverty and alone. And if
+there ever came to her mind any appreciation of the greatness of the man
+who had given her name immortality, we do not know it.
+
+The years from Eighteen Hundred Five to Eighteen Hundred Eight Byron spent
+at Cambridge. The arts in which he perfected himself there were shooting,
+swimming, fencing, drinking and gambling.
+
+During vacations, and off and on, he lived at Southwell, a village halfway
+between Mansfield and Newark. Southwell was sleepy, gossipy, dull--and
+exerted a wholesome restraint on our restless youth. It was simply a
+question of economy that took Byron and his mother to Southwell. The
+run-down estate of Newstead was yielding a meager income, but at Southwell
+one could be shabby and yet respectable.
+
+At Southwell Byron met John Pigot and his sister--cultured people of a
+refined and quiet sort. Byron took to them at once, and they liked him.
+
+In a country town the person who thinks, instinctively hunts out the other
+man who thinks--granting the somewhat daring hypothesis that there are two
+of them. So Byron and the Pigots often met for walks and talks, and on
+such occasions the poet would read to his friends the scraps of verse he
+had written. He had gotten into the habit--he wrote whenever his pulse ran
+up above eighty--he wrote because he could not help it; and he read his
+productions to his friends for the same reason. Every one who writes longs
+to read his work to some sympathetic soul. A thought is not ours until we
+repeat it to another, and this crying need of expression marks every
+poetic soul. All art is born of feeling, high, intense, holy feeling, and
+the creative faculty is largely a matter of temperature. We feel, and not
+to impart our feelings is stagnation--death. People who do not feel deeply
+never have anything to impart, either to individuals or to the world. They
+have no message.
+
+The young man, fresh from the dusty, musty lectures of Cambridge, and out
+of the reach of his boisterous and carousing companions, grasped at the
+gentle, refined and sympathetic friendship of this brother and sister. The
+trinity would walk off across the fields and recline on the soft turf
+under a great spreading tree, reading aloud by turn from some good book.
+Such meetings always ended by Byron's reading to his friends any chance
+rhymes he had written since they last met.
+
+John Morley dates the birth of Byron's poetic genius from his meeting with
+Miss Chaworth, while Taine names Southwell as the pivotal point. Probably
+both are right.
+
+But this we know, that it was the Pigots who induced Byron to collect his
+rhymes and have them printed. This was done at the neighboring town of
+Newark, when Byron was nineteen years old. Possibly you have a few of
+these thin, poorly printed, crudely bound little books entitled
+"Juvenilia" around in the garret somewhere, and, if so, it might be well
+enough to take care of them. Quaritch says they are worth a hundred
+pounds apiece, although in the poet's lifetime they were dear at sixpence.
+
+Byron sent copies to all the leading literary men whom he knew, including
+Mackenzie, the man of feeling. Mackenzie replied, praising the work, and
+so did several others. All writers of note are favored with many such
+juvenilia, and usually there is a gracious electrotype reply. A doubt
+exists as to whether Mackenzie ever read Byron's book, but we know that
+his letter of stock platitude fired Byron to do still better. It is said
+that no flattery is too fulsome for a pretty woman--she inwardly
+congratulates the man on his subtle insight in discovering excellences
+that she hardly knew existed. This may be so and may not, but the logic
+holds when applied to fledgling authors. When it comes to praise he is
+quite willing to take your word for it.
+
+Byron's spirits arose to an ecstacy--he would be a poet.
+
+About this time we find Hydra, as Byron pleasantly called his mother,
+rushing to the village apothecary and warning that worthy not to sell
+poison to the poet; and a few moments after her leaving, the astonished
+apothecary was visited by the poet, who begged that no poison should be
+sold to his mother. Each thought the other was going to turn Lucretia
+Borgia, or play the last act of Romeo and Juliet, at least.
+
+There were wild bursts of rage on the mother's part, stubborn mockery on
+the other, followed up once by a poker flung with almost fatal precision
+at the poet's curly head.
+
+Upon this he took flight to London and Hydra followed, repentant and
+lacrimose. A truce was patched up; they agreed to disagree, and coldly
+shaking hands withdrew in opposite directions.
+
+After this, when the poet wrote he addressed his mother as "Dear Madam,"
+and confined himself to business matters. Only rarely was there any flash
+in his letters, as when he said, "Dear Mother--you know you are a vixen,
+but save me some champagne." If Byron's mother had been of the stuff of
+which most mothers are made, we would have found these two safely settled
+at Newstead, making the best of their battered fortune, with the son in
+time marrying some neighbor lass, and slipping into the place of a
+respectable English gentleman, a worthy member of the House of Lords.
+
+But the boy, now grown twenty, had no home, and either was supplied too
+much money or else too little. He wasted his substance in London,
+economized in Southwell, sponged on friends, and borrowed of Scrope Davis
+at Cambridge. When a remittance again came, he explored the greenrooms,
+took lessons from Professor Johnson, the pugilist (referred to as "my
+corporeal pastor"), drank whole companies under the table, bought a tame
+bear and a wolf to guard the entrance of Newstead, and roamed the country
+as a gipsy, in company with a girl dressed in boy's clothes, thus
+supplying Richard Le Gallienne an interesting chapter in his "Quest of the
+Golden Girl."
+
+But all this time his brain was active, and another book of poetry had
+been printed, entitled "Hours of Idleness." This book was gotten out, at
+his own expense, by the same country printer as the first.
+
+Surely the verse must have had merit, or why should Lord Brougham, in the
+great "Edinburgh Review," go after it with a slashing, crashing, damning
+criticism?
+
+When Byron read the review, a bystander has told us he turned red, then
+livid green. He straightway ordered and drank two bottles of claret, said
+nothing, but looked like a man who had sent a challenge.
+
+A challenge! that was exactly what Byron proposed. He would fight Jeffrey
+first, and then take up in turn every man who had ever contributed to the
+magazine--he would kill them all. And to that end he called for his
+pistols and went out to practise firing at ten paces. Wiser counsel
+prevailed, and he decided to attack the enemy in their own citadel, and
+with their own weapons. He ordered ink, and began "English Bards and
+Scotch Reviewers."
+
+It took time to get this enormous siege-gun into position and find the
+range. Finally, it was loaded with more kinds of missiles, in the way of
+what Augustine Birrell has called literary stinkpots, than were ever
+before rammed home in a single charge.
+
+It was an audacious move--to reverse the initiative and go after a whole
+race of critics, scribblers and reviewers, who had been badgering honest
+folks, and blow 'em into kingdom come.
+
+But at the last moment Byron's heart failed him, his wrath gave way to
+caution, and "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" appeared anonymously.
+
+The edition was soon exhausted--the shot had at least raised a mighty
+dust.
+
+The author got his nerve back, fathered the book, made corrections; and
+this edition, too, sold with a rush. Byron returned to Newstead, invited a
+score of his Cambridge cronies, who came down, entering the mansion
+between the bear and the wolf, and were received with salvos of
+pistol-shots. Here they played games over the spacious grounds, wrestled,
+boxed, swam, and at night feasted and drank deep damnation out of a skull
+to all Scotch reviewers.
+
+Probably the acme of this depravity was reached when the young gentlemen
+began shooting the pendants off the chandelier; then the servants hastily
+decamped and left the rogues to do their own cooking.
+
+This brought them to their senses, sanity came back, and the company
+disbanded. Then the servants, who had watched the orgies from afar,
+returned and found a week's pile of dishes unwashed and a horse stabled in
+the library.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then Byron had reached the mature age of twenty-one, he was formally
+admitted to the House of Lords as a Peer of the realm. His titles and
+pedigree were so closely scanned on this occasion that he grew quite out
+of conceit with the noble company, and was seriously thinking of launching
+a dunciad in their direction. His good nature was especially ruffled by
+Lord Carlisle, his guardian, who refused to stand as his legal sponsor.
+The chief cause of the old Lord's prejudice against the young one lay in
+the fact that the young 'un had ridiculed the old 'un's literary
+pretensions.
+
+They were rivals in letters, with a very beautiful, natural and mutual
+disdain for each other.
+
+Lord Byron was not welcomed into the House of Lords: he simply pushed in
+the door because he had a right to. He thirsted for approbation, for
+distinction, for notoriety. His sensitive soul hung upon newspaper
+clippings with feverish expectations; and about all the attention he
+received was in the line of being damned by faint praise, or smothered
+with silence. Patriotism, as far as England was concerned, was not a part
+of Byron's composition.
+
+When all Great Britain was execrating Napoleon, picturing him as a devil
+with horns and hoofs, Byron looked upon him as the world's hero.
+
+In this frame of mind he went forth and borrowed a goodly sum, and started
+cut to view the world. He was accompanied by his friend Hobhouse, and his
+valet, Fletcher.
+
+It was a two years' trip, this jolly trio made--down along the coast of
+France, Spain, through the Straits of Gibraltar, lingering in queer old
+cities, mousing over historic spots, alternately living like princes or
+vagabonds. They frolicked, drank, made love to married women, courted
+maidens, fought, feasted and did all the foolish things that sophomores
+usually do when they have money and opportunity.
+
+These months of travel supplied Byron enough in way of suggestion to keep
+him writing many moons. His active imagination seized upon everything
+picturesque, peculiar, romantic, sentimental or tragic, and stored it up
+in those wondrous brain-cells, to be used when the time was ripe.
+
+The disciples of Munchausen, who delight in showing Byron's verse to be
+only biography, have found a rich field in that two years' travel. One man
+really did a brilliant thing--in three volumes--recounting the conquering
+march of the poet, whom he depicts as a combination of Don Juan and Rob
+Roy.
+
+The probabilities are that the real facts, not illumined by fancy, would
+be a tale with which to conjure sleep. Foreign travel is hard work. It
+constitutes the final test of friendship, and to make the tour of Europe
+with a man and not hate him marks one or both of the parties as seraphic
+in quality. The best of travel is in looking back upon it from the dreamy
+quiet and rest of home--laughing at the things that once rasped your
+nerves, and enjoying, through recollection, the scenes you only glanced
+at wearily.
+
+Two instances of that trip--when Hobhouse threatened to desert the party
+and was dared to do so, and Byron slapped Fletcher's face and got himself
+well kicked in return--will suffice to show how Byron had the faculty of
+seizing trivial incidents, and by lifting them up and separating them from
+the mass, made them live as Art.
+
+At Athens the trio made a sudden resolve to be respectable, and practise
+economy. To this end they hired rooms of a worthy widow, who accommodated
+travelers with a transient home for a moderate stipend. This widow had
+three daughters: the eldest, Theresa by name, lives in letters as the Maid
+of Athens, and the glory that came to her was achieved without any special
+danger to either her heart or the poet's. The young woman, we know,
+assisted in the household affairs; and probably often dusted the mantel in
+the poet's room while he sat smoking with one foot on the table, making
+irrelevant remarks to her about this or that.
+
+Suddenly he wrote a poem, "Maid of Athens, ere we part, give, O give me
+back my heart." * * *
+
+With the genuine literary thrift that marked all of Byron's career, he
+preserved a copy of the lines, and some years after recast them, touched
+them up a bit, included the stuff in a book--and there you are.
+
+The other incident is that of Hobhouse recording in his journal the bare
+and barren fact that outside the city wall in Persia they once saw two
+dogs gnawing a human body. Byron saw the sight, but made no mention of it
+at the time. He waited, the scene sealed up in his brain-cells. Years
+after he wrote thus:
+
+    "And he saw the lean dogs beneath the wall,
+    Hold o'er the dead their carnival;
+    Gorging and growling o'er carcass and limb,
+    They were too busy to bark at him.
+    From a Tartar's skull they stripped the flesh,
+    As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh;
+    And their white tusks crunched on the whiter skull,
+    As it slipped through their jaws when the edge grew dull."
+
+And this only proves that Hobhouse was not a poet and Byron was. The poet
+is never content to state the mere facts--facts are only valuable as
+suggestions for poetry.
+
+Travel often excites the spirit to the point of expression. Good travelers
+carry pads and pencils. Byron reached England with fragments of marbles,
+skulls, pictures, shells, spears, guns, curios beyond count, and many
+manuscripts in process.
+
+Upon arriving on the English coast the first news that reached him was
+that his mother had just died. He hastened to Newstead and reached there
+in time to attend the funeral, but refrained from following the cortege
+to the grave because he could not master his emotions. Their quarrels were
+at last ended.
+
+A diversion to his feelings came soon after, in the way of a blunt letter
+from Tom Moore demanding if Lord Byron was the author of "English Bards
+and Scotch Reviewers."
+
+Byron replied very stiffly that he was, but he really had intended no
+insult to Mr. Moore, with whom he had not the honor of being acquainted.
+Furthermore, if Mr. Moore felt himself aggrieved, why, the author of
+"English Bards" was at his service to supply him such satisfaction as he
+required.
+
+The irate Irishman accepted "the apology," a genial reply followed, and
+soon the poets met at the house of a friend, and there began that lifelong
+friendship, with the result that Moore wrote Byron's "Life" and used much
+needless whitewash.
+
+While abroad Byron had gotten into shape for publication one piece of
+manuscript. This was "Hints From Horace," and the matter was placed in the
+hands of Mr. Dallas, his businessman, very soon after his arrival. Dallas
+read the poem and did not like it.
+
+"Haven't you anything else?" asked Dallas.
+
+"Oh, nothing but a few stanzas of Spenserian stuff," was the answer.
+
+Dallas asked to see it, and there were placed in his hands rough drafts of
+the first and second cantos of "Childe Harold." This time Dallas was
+better suited, and to corroborate his judgment the matter was submitted
+to Murray, the publisher.
+
+Murray thought the matter had more or less merit, and arrangements were at
+once made for its publication. And so it came out, hammered into shape
+while in the printer's hands.
+
+"Childe Harold" was an instantaneous, brilliant success--a success beyond
+the publisher's or author's expectations. The book ran through seven
+editions in four weeks, and Lord Byron "became famous in a night."
+
+London society became Byron-mad. The poet was feted, courted, petted.
+
+He indulged in much innocent and costly dissipation, and some not so
+innocent.
+
+Finally all this began to pall upon him. When twenty-six we find him
+making a bold stand for reform: he would get married and live a staid,
+sober, respectable life. His finances were reduced--all the money he had
+made out of his books had been given away, prompted by a foolish whim that
+no man should take pay for the product of his mind.
+
+Now he would marry and "settle down"; and to marry a woman with an income
+would be no special disadvantage. To sell one's thoughts was abhorrent to
+the young man, but to marry for money was quite another thing. Morality
+depends upon your point of view.
+
+The paradox of things found expression when Byron the impressionable,
+Byron the irresistible, sat himself down and after chewing the end of his
+penholder, wrote a letter to Miss Milbanke, with whom he was only slightly
+acquainted, proposing marriage. The lady very properly declined. To be
+courted with a fresh-nibbed pen, and paper cut sonnet-size, instead of by
+a live man, deserves rebuke. Men who propose by mail to a woman in the
+next town are either insincere, self-deceived, or else are of the sort
+whose pulse never goes above sixty-five, and therefore should be avoided.
+
+Byron was both insincere and self-deceived. He had grown to distrust the
+emotions of his heart, and so selected a wife with his head. He chose a
+woman with income, one who was strong, cool-headed, safe and sensible.
+Miss Milbanke was the antithesis of his mother.
+
+The lady declined--but that is nothing.
+
+They were married within a year.
+
+In another year the wife left her husband and went back to her mother,
+carrying in her arms a girl baby, only a few weeks old.
+
+She never returned to her husband.
+
+What the trouble was no one ever knew, although the gossips named a
+hundred and one reasons--running from drunkenness to homicide. But Byron,
+the world now knows, was no drunkard--he was at times convivial, but he
+had no fixed taste for strong drink. He was, however, peevish, impulsive,
+impetuous and often very unreasonable.
+
+Byron, be it said to his credit, brought no recriminating charges against
+his wife. He only said their differences were inexplicable and
+unexplainable.
+
+The simple facts were that they breathed a different atmosphere--their
+heads were in a different stratum. His normal pulse was eighty; hers,
+sixty-five.
+
+What do you think of a spiritual companionship where the wife demands,
+"How much longer are you going to follow this foolish habit of writing
+verses?"
+
+They did not understand each other. Byron uttered words that no man should
+voice to a woman, and his outbursts were met with a forced calmness that
+was exasperating. The lady sat down, yawned wearily, and when there came a
+lull in the gentleman's verbal pyrotechnics, she would ask him if he had
+anything more to say.
+
+One day she varied the program by packing up her effects and leaving him.
+
+Of course, it is easy to say that had this woman been wise she would have
+stood the childish outbursts and endured the peevish tantrums, for the
+sake of the hours of tenderness and love that were sure to follow. By
+right treatment he would have been on his knees, begging forgiveness and
+crying it out with his head in her lap very shortly. But all this implies
+a woman of unusual power--extraordinary patience. And this woman was
+simply human. She left, and then in order to justify her action she gave
+reasons. Our actions are usually right, but our reasons for them seldom
+are.
+
+Mrs. Byron made no concealment of her troubles. Society had occasion for
+gossip and the occasion was improved. Stories of Byron's cruelty and
+inhumanity filled the coffeehouses and drawing-rooms; and the hints at
+crimes so grave they could not even be mentioned gave the gossips their
+cue.
+
+The press took it up, and the poet was warned by his friends not to appear
+at the theater or upon the street for fear of the indignation of the mob.
+The spoilt child of London was paying the penalty of popularity. The
+pendulum had swung too far and was now coming back.
+
+Byron, hunted by creditors, hooted by enemies, broken in health, crushed
+in spirit, left the country--left England, never to return alive.
+
+When Byron trod the deck of the good ship bound for Ostend, and saw a
+strip of tossing, blue water separating him from England, his spirits
+rose. He was twenty-eight years old, and the thought that he would yet do
+something and be somebody was strong in his heart. All the old pride came
+back.
+
+The idea that he would not sell the product of his brain for hire was
+abandoned, and soon after arriving in Holland he began to write letters
+home, making sharp bargains with publishers.
+
+Further than this, his attorneys, on his order, made demand for a share of
+his wife's estate. And erelong we find Byron, the wasteful, cultivating
+the good old gentlemanly habit of penuriousness. He was making money, and
+had he lived to be sixty it is probable he would have evolved into a
+conservative and written a book on "Getting on in the World, or Success as
+I Have Found It."
+
+Byron's pilgrimage down through Germany, along the Rhine to Switzerland,
+was one of rest and recreation. At Berne, Basle, Lausanne and Geneva he
+found food for literary thought, and many instances in his writings show
+the reflected scenes he saw. No visitor at Lausanne fails to visit the
+Castle of Chillon, and all the guides will recite you these sweeping
+lines, so surcharged with feeling, beginning:
+
+    "Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls;
+    A thousand feet in depth below,
+    Its many waters meet and flow."
+
+At Geneva began the most interesting friendship between Byron and that
+other young man, so like and yet so unlike him.
+
+Only a few years and Byron was to search the shores of the Mediterranean
+for Shelley's dead body, and finding it, be one of the friends who reduced
+it to ashes.
+
+Tiring of Geneva and the tourists who pointed him out as a curiosity, we
+find Byron and his little party making their way across the Simplon, to
+cross which is an epoch in the life of any man, and then down by the Lago
+Maggiore to Milan.
+
+"The Last Supper" of Leonardo da Vinci did not impress Byron--the art of
+painting never did--this was his most marked limitation. From Milan they
+wandered down through Italy to Verona and Venice.
+
+The third Canto of "Childe Harold," "Manfred," and dozens of shorter poems
+had been sent to Murray. England read and paid for all that Byron wrote,
+and accepted it all as autobiography. Possibly Byron's defiant manner lent
+an excuse for this, but by applying similar rules we could convict
+Sophocles, Schiller and Shelley of basest crimes, put Shakespeare in the
+dock for murder, Milton for blasphemy, Scott for forgery, and Goethe for
+questionable financial deals with the devil. Byron's sins were as scarlet
+and the number not a few, but the moths that came just to flit about the
+flame were all of mature age. Byron set no snares for the innocent, and in
+all of the man's misdoings, he himself it was who suffered most.
+
+The Countess Guiccioli, it seems, was the only woman who comprehended his
+nature sufficiently to lead him in the direction of peace and poise. With
+her, for the first time, he began to systematize his life on a basis of
+sanity. They lived together for five years, and from the time he met her
+until his death no other love came to separate them.
+
+Throughout his life Byron was a man in revolt; and it was only a variation
+of the old passion for freedom that led him to Greece and to his grave.
+The personal bravery of the man was proven more than once in his life,
+and on the approach of death he was undismayed. When he passed away, April
+Nineteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-four, Stanhope wrote, "England has
+lost her brightest genius--Greece her best friend."
+
+His body was returned to England, denied burial in Westminster, and now
+rests in the old church at Hucknall, near Newstead.
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH ADDISON
+
+    Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,
+    My bane and antidote, are both before me.
+    This in a moment brings me to an end;
+    But this informs me I shall never die.
+    The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
+    At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
+    The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
+    Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
+    But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
+    Unhurt amid the war of elements,
+    The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds!
+                                       --_Cato's Soliloquy_
+
+[Illustration: JOSEPH ADDISON]
+
+
+Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
+
+Expression is necessary to life. The spirit grows through exercise of its
+faculties, just as a muscle grows strong through use. Life is expression
+and repression is stagnation--death.
+
+Yet there is right expression and wrong expression. If a man allows his
+life to run riot, and only the animal side of his nature is allowed to
+express itself, he is repressing his highest and best, and therefore those
+qualities, not used, atrophy and die.
+
+Sensuality, gluttony and the life of license repress the life of the
+spirit, and the soul never blossoms; and this is what it is to lose one's
+soul. All adown the centuries thinking men have noted these truths, and
+again and again we find individuals forsaking, in horror, the life of the
+senses and devoting themselves to the life of the spirit.
+
+The question of expression through the spirit or through the
+senses--through the soul or the body--has been the pivotal point of all
+philosophies and the inspiration of all religions. Asceticism in our day
+finds an interesting manifestation in the Trappists, who live on a
+mountain, nearly inaccessible, and deprive themselves of almost every
+vestige of bodily comfort; going without food for days, wearing
+uncomfortable garments, suffering severe cold. So here we find the extreme
+instance of men repressing the faculties of the body in order that the
+spirit may find ample time and opportunity for exercise.
+
+Between this extreme repression and the license of the sensualist lies the
+truth. But just where, is the great question; and the desire of one
+person, who thinks he has discovered the norm, to compel all other men to
+stop there, has led to war and strife untold. All law centers around this
+point--what shall men be allowed to do? And so we find statutes to punish
+"strolling play-actors," "players on fiddles," "disturbers of the public
+conscience," "persons who dance wantonly," "blasphemers," etc. In England
+there were, in the year Eighteen Hundred, sixty-seven offenses punishable
+with death.
+
+What expression is right and what is not is largely a matter of opinion.
+Instrumental music has been to some a rock of offense, exciting the
+spirit, through the sense of hearing, to wrong thoughts--through "the
+lascivious pleasing of a lute." Others think dancing wicked, while a few
+allow square dances, but condemn the waltz. Some sects allow pipe-organ
+music, but draw the line at the violin; while others, still, employ a
+whole orchestra in their religious service. Some there may be who regard
+pictures as implements of idolatry, while the Hook-and-Eye Baptists look
+upon buttons as immoral.
+
+Strange evolutions are often witnessed within the life of one individual,
+as to what is right and what wrong. For instance, Leo Tolstoy, that great
+and good man, once a worldling, has now turned ascetic, a not unusual
+evolution in the lives of the saints. Not caring for harmony as expressed
+in color, form and sounds, Tolstoy is now quite willing to deprive all
+others of these things which minister to their well-being. There is in
+most souls a hunger for beauty, just as there is a physical hunger. Beauty
+speaks to their spirits through the senses; but Tolstoy would have his
+house barren to the verge of hardship, and he advocates that all other
+houses should be likewise. My veneration for Count Tolstoy is profound,
+but I mention him here simply to show the danger that lies in allowing any
+man, even one of the best, to dictate to us what is right.
+
+Most of the frightful cruelties inflicted on mankind during the past have
+arisen out of a difference of opinion arising through a difference in
+temperament. The question is as live today as it was two thousand years
+ago--what expression is best? That is, what shall we do to be saved? And
+concrete absurdity consists in saying we must all do the same thing.
+
+Whether the race will ever grow to a point where men will be willing to
+leave the matter of life-expression to the individual is a question. Most
+men are anxious to do what is best for themselves and least harmful for
+others. The average man now has intelligence enough! Utopia is not far
+off, if the self-appointed folk who govern us for a consideration would
+only be willing to do unto others as they would be done by, and cease
+coveting things that belong to other people. War among nations, and strife
+among individuals, is a result of the covetous spirit to possess either
+power or things, or both. A little more patience, a little more charity
+for all, a little more devotion, a little more love; with less bowing down
+to the past, a brave looking forward to the future, with more confidence
+in ourselves, and more faith in our fellows, and the race will be ripe for
+a great burst of light and life.
+
+Macaulay has said that the Puritan did not condemn bear-baiting because it
+gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator. The
+Puritan regarded beauty as a pitfall and a snare: that which gave pleasure
+was a sin; he found his gratification in doing without things. Puritanism
+was a violent oscillation of the pendulum of life to the other side. From
+the vanity, pretense, affectation and sensualism of a Church and State
+bitten by corruption, we find the recoil in Puritanism.
+
+Asceticism to the verge of hardship, frankness bordering on rudeness, and
+a stolidity that was impolite; or soft, luxurious hypocrisy in a
+moth-eaten society--which shall it be? And Joseph Addison comes upon the
+scene and by the sincerity, graciousness and gentle excellence of his life
+and work, says, "Neither!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The little village of Wiltshire is noted as the birthplace of Addison, who
+was the son of a clergyman, afterward the Dean of Lichfield. An erstwhile
+resident of Lichfield, Samuel Johnson by name, once said of Joseph
+Addison, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not
+coarse, elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the
+volumes of Addison."
+
+For elegance, simplicity, insight, and a wit that is sharp but which never
+wounds, Addison has no rival, although more than two hundred years have
+come and gone since he ceased to write.
+
+Addison was a gentleman--the best example of a perfect gentleman that the
+history of English literature affords. And in letters it is much easier to
+find a genius than a gentleman. The field today is not at all over-worked;
+and those who wish to cultivate the art of being gentlemen will find no
+fearsome competition. In fact, the chief reason for not engaging in this
+line is the discomfort of isolation, and the lack of comradeship one is
+sure to suffer. To be gentle, generous, kind; to win by few words; and to
+disarm criticism and prejudice through the potency of a gracious presence,
+is a fine art. Books on etiquette will not serve the end, nor studious
+attempts to smile at the proper time, nor zealous efforts to avoid
+jostling the whims of those we meet; for to attempt to please is often to
+antagonize.
+
+Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise seem the three ingredients most needed in
+forming the gentle man. I place these elements according to their value.
+No man is great who does not possess Sympathy plus, and the greatness of
+men can safely be gauged by their sympathies. Sympathy and imagination are
+twin sisters. Your heart must go out to all men, the high, the low, the
+rich, the poor, the learned, the unlearned, the good, the bad, the wise,
+the foolish--you must be one with them all, else you can never comprehend
+them. Sympathy! It is the touchstone to every secret, the key to all
+knowledge, the open sesame of all hearts. Put yourself in the other man's
+place, and then you will know why he thinks certain thoughts and does
+certain deeds. Put yourself in his place, and your blame will dissolve
+itself into pity, and your tears will wipe out the record of his misdeeds.
+The saviors of the world have simply been men with wondrous Sympathy.
+
+But Knowledge must go with Sympathy, else the emotions will become maudlin
+and pity may be wasted on a poodle instead of a child; on a field-mouse
+instead of a human soul. Knowledge in use is wisdom, and wisdom implies a
+sense of values--you know a big thing from a little one, a valuable fact
+from a trivial one. Tragedy and comedy are simply questions of value: a
+little misfit in life makes us laugh, a great one is tragedy and cause for
+grief.
+
+Poise is the strength of body and strength of mind to control your
+Sympathy and your Knowledge. Unless you control your emotions they run
+over and you stand in the slop. Sympathy must not run riot, or it is
+valueless and tokens weakness instead of strength. In every hospital for
+nervous disorders are to be found many instances of this loss of control.
+The individual has Sympathy, but not Poise, and therefore his life is
+worthless to himself and to the world.
+
+He symbols inefficiency, not helpfulness. Poise reveals itself more in
+voice than in words; more in thought than in action; more in atmosphere
+than in conscious life. It is a spiritual quality, and is felt more than
+it is seen. It is not a matter of size, nor bodily attitude, nor attire,
+nor personal comeliness: it is a state of inward being, and of knowing
+your cause is just. And so you see it is a great and profound subject
+after all, great in its ramifications, limitless in extent, implying the
+entire science of right living. I once met a man who was deformed in body
+and little more than a dwarf, but who had such Spiritual Gravity--such
+Poise--that to enter a room where he was, was to feel his presence and
+acknowledge his superiority. To allow Sympathy to waste itself on unworthy
+subjects is to deplete one's life-forces. To conserve is the part of
+wisdom. No great orator ever exerts himself to his fullest, and reserve is
+a necessary element in all good literature, as well as in everything else.
+Poise being the control of your Sympathy and Knowledge implies the
+possession of these attributes, for without Sympathy and Knowledge you
+have nothing to control but your physical body. To practise Poise as a
+mere gymnastic exercise, or a study in etiquette, is to be self-conscious,
+stiff, preposterous and ridiculous. Those who cut such fantastic tricks
+before high heaven as make angels weep are men void of Sympathy and
+Knowledge trying to cultivate Poise. Their science is a mere matter of
+what to do with arms and legs. Poise is a question of spirit controlling
+flesh, heart controlling attitude. And so in the cultivation of Poise it
+is well to begin quite aways back. Let perfect love cast out fear; get rid
+of all secrets; have nothing in your heart to conceal; be gentle,
+generous, kind; do not bother to forgive your enemies--it is better to
+forget them, and cease conjuring them forth from your inner consciousness.
+The idea that you have enemies is egotism gone to seed. Get Knowledge by
+coming close to Nature, listening to her heart-beats, studying her ways.
+And let your heart go out to humanity by a desire to serve.
+
+That man is greatest who best serves his kind. Sympathy and Knowledge are
+for use--you acquire that you may give out; you accumulate that you may
+bestow. And as God has given you the sublime blessings of Sympathy and
+Knowledge, there will come to you the wish to reveal your gratitude by
+giving them out again, for the wise man knows that we retain spiritual
+qualities only as we give them away. Let your light shine. To him that
+hath shall be given. The exercise of wisdom brings wisdom; and at the
+last the infinitesimal quantity of man's knowledge, compared with the
+Infinite, and the meagerness of man's Sympathy when compared with the
+source from which ours is absorbed, will evolve an abnegation and a
+humility that will lend a perfect Poise. The Gentleman is a man with
+Sympathy, Knowledge and Poise; and as I sit here in this quiet corner,
+Joseph Addison seems to me to fit the requirements a little better than
+any other name I can recall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Born into a family where economy was a necessity, yet Addison had every
+advantage that good breeding and thorough tutorship could give.
+
+At Charterhouse School he won the affection of his teachers by his earnest
+wish to comply. The receptive spirit and the desire to please were his by
+inheritance. When fifteen he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where,
+within a year, his beauty, good nature and intelligence made his presence
+felt.
+
+In another year he was elected a scholar at Magdalen College, his
+recommendation being his skill in Latin versification.
+
+It was the hope and expectation of his parents that he should become a
+clergyman and follow in his father's footsteps. This also seems to have
+been the bent of the young man's mind. But the grace of his personality,
+his obliging disposition, with a sort of furtive ability to peer into a
+millstone as far as any, had attracted the attention of several statesmen.
+One of these, Charles Montague, afterward Lord Halifax, remarked, "I am a
+friend of the Church, but I propose to do it the injury of keeping Addison
+out of it."
+
+Montague discussed the matter with Lord Somers, and these two concluded
+that just a trifle more maturity of that gently ironical mind, a little
+more seasoning of the gracious personality, and the State would have in
+Joseph Addison a servant of untold value.
+
+Thus we see that England's policy of selecting and training men for the
+consular and diplomatic service is no new thing. It is a wonder that
+America has not ere this profited by the example. The tradition holds that
+we must at least have a scholar and a gentleman for the Court of Saint
+James, and several times we have been put to straits to find the man. The
+only way is to breed them and then bring them up in the way they should
+go.
+
+But beyond the zealous desire of Montague and Lord Somers to educate good
+men for the diplomatic service, lurked the still more eager wish to secure
+able writers to plead and defend the party cause. With this phase of the
+question America is more familiar; the policy of rewarding able speakers
+and ready writers with offices ready made or made to order has come to us
+ably backed by precedent untold.
+
+Addison set himself to literary tasks, but still regarded himself as a
+scholar. Leisure fitted his temperament--he was never in haste, even when
+he was in a hurry, and he carried with him the air of having all the time
+there was. Nothing is so ungraceful as haste. Addison always had time to
+listen; and we make friends, not by explaining things to other folks, but
+by allowing others to explain to us.
+
+The habit of attentive, sympathetic listening came to Addison early in
+life. From his twenty-first to his twenty-seventh year he lived a studious
+life--idle, his father called it--writing essays, political pamphlets and
+Latin verse. His political friends took care that some of the output was
+purchased, so that he was assured a comfortable living; but his success
+was not sufficient to inflate his cosmos with an undue amount of ego.
+
+One small book of criticism which he produced about this time was
+entitled, "Account of the English Poets." A significant feature of the
+work is that Shakespeare is not mentioned, even once, while Dryden is
+placed as the standard of excellence, just as in "Modern Painters," Ruskin
+takes Turner and lets him stand for one hundred, and all other artists
+grade down from this.
+
+Addison merely reflected the taste of his time. Shakespeare was not
+thought any more of two hundred years ago than we think of him now, with
+this difference--that he is the author we now talk about and seldom read,
+but then they did not discuss him any more than we now go to see him
+played.
+
+An interesting character by the name of Jacob Tonson appears upon the
+scene, as a friend of Addison in his early days. Tonson enjoyed the
+distinction of being the father of the modern publishing business--the
+first man to bring out the works of authors at his own risk and then sell
+the product to bookstores. I believe it is Mr. Le Gallienne who has been
+so unkind as to speak of "Barabbas Tonson." Among Tonson's many good
+strokes was his act in buying the copyright of "Paradise Lost" from
+Simmons, the bookseller, who had purchased all rights in the manuscript
+from the bereaved widow on a payment of eight pounds.
+
+Tonson appreciated good things in a literary way. He was on friendly terms
+with all the principal writers, and did much in bringing some shy writers
+to the front. Addison and Tonson laid great plans, few of which
+materialized, and some were carried out by other people--notably the
+compilation of an English Dictionary. In Sixteen Hundred Ninety-nine we
+find Addison, in possession of a pension of three hundred pounds a year,
+crossing the Channel into France with the object "to travel and qualify
+himself to serve His Majesty."
+
+The diplomatic language of the world was French. With intent to learn the
+language, Addison made his home with a modest French family; and a better
+way of acquiring a language than this has never been devised. A young
+friend of mine, however, recently returned from Europe, tells me that the
+ideal plan is to make love to a vivacious French girl who can not speak
+English. Of the excellence of this plan I know nothing--it may be a mere
+barren ideality.
+
+A little over a year in France and we are told that "Addison spoke the
+language like a native "--a glib expression, still able-bodied, that means
+little or much. From France Addison followed down into Italy, and spent a
+year there, residing in various small towns with the same object in view
+that took him to France.
+
+And one of his admirers relates that "he learned to speak Italian
+perfectly, his pronunciation being marred only by a slight French accent."
+Addison's three years of foreign travel, and the friendly society of the
+highest and best wherever he journeyed, had caused him to blossom out into
+a most exceptional man. Nature had done much for him, but her best gift
+was the hospitable mind. Travel to many young men is the opportunity to
+indulge in a line of conduct not possible at home. But Addison, ripening
+slowly, appreciated the fact that the Puritan has a deal of truth on his
+side. There is a manly abstinence that is most becoming, and to moderate
+one's desires and partake of the good things of earth sparingly is the
+best way to garner their benefit. No doubt, too, Addison's modesty and
+tendency to shyness saved him from many a danger. "Bashfulness is the
+tough husk in which genius ripens," says Emerson.
+
+Thus do we find our man at thirty, strong, manly, gifted, handsome,
+chivalrous, proud, yet tender, sympathetic, knowing--ready to serve his
+country in whatsoever capacity he could serve it best. When lo! the death
+of the King cut off his pension, a new party came in, his influential
+friends were thrown out of power, and Addison's prospects wilted in a
+single night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fact is that Addison from his thirtieth to his fortieth year was
+little better than a denizen of Grub Street. Fortunately he was a
+bachelor, with no one but himself to support, else actual hardship might
+have entered. Several flattering offers to act as tutor or companion to
+rich men's sons came his way, and were declined in polite and gracious
+language; and once a suggestion that he wed a woman of wealth was tabled
+in a manner not quite so gracious. In passing, it is well to state that
+all of Addison's relations with women seem to have occupied a lofty plane
+of chivalry. His respect for the good name of woman was profound, and
+whether any woman ever broke through that fine reserve and exquisite
+formality is a question. He was intensely admired by women, of course, but
+it was from the other side of the drawing-room. He kept gush at bay, and
+never tempted to indiscretion.
+
+Addison's youth was past; he was creeping well into the thirties, and
+still with no prospects. He was out of money, with no profession, and no
+special reputation as a writer. The popular poets of the time were Sedley,
+Rochester, Buckingham and Dorset--and you have never heard of them? Well,
+it only shows how a literary reputation is a shadow that fades in a night.
+
+Addison had written his "Cato" several years before, but no one had seen
+it. He carried the manuscript about with him, as Goethe did his "Faust,"
+for years, and added to it, or erased, all according to the moods that
+came to him. And we have reason to believe that the sublime soliloquy in
+"Cato" was written by Addison when the blankness of his prospects and the
+blackness of the future had forced the question of self-destruction upon
+him.
+
+Cato made a great mistake in committing suicide--he did the deed right on
+the eve of success--he should have waited. Addison waited.
+
+At this time Lord Godolphin, who had the happiness to have a great
+racehorse named after him, occupied the chief place in the Ministry.
+Marlborough had just fought the battle of Blenheim, and it was Godolphin's
+wish to have the victory sung in adequate verse, for history's sake and
+for the sake of the political party. But he could not think of a poet who
+was equal to the task; so in his dilemma he called in Lord Halifax, who
+had a reputation for knowing good things in a literary way.
+
+Lord Halifax was unfortunate in having his portrait transmitted by two
+poets who hated him thoroughly, each for the amply sufficient reason that
+he failed to confer the favors that were much desired. Swift calls Halifax
+"a would-be Maecenas"; and Pope refers to him as "penurious, mean and
+chicken-hearted," satirizing him in the well-known character of Bufo.
+
+Do not take the poets too seriously: all good men have had mud-balls
+thrown at them--sometimes bricks--and Halifax was not a bad man by any
+means. Let the poets make copy of their thwarted hopes.
+
+In reply to Lord Godolphin's inquiries, Halifax said he did indeed know
+the man who could celebrate the victory in verse, and in fact there was
+only one man in England who could do the task justice. He, however,
+refused to divulge his man's identity until a suitable reward for the poet
+was fixed upon.
+
+Godolphin finally thought of an office in the Excise, worth three hundred
+pounds a year or more.
+
+Halifax then stipulated that the negotiations must be carried on directly
+between the Government and the poet, otherwise the poet's pride would
+rebel. Godolphin agreed to shield Halifax from all mention in the matter,
+and the name and address of Joseph Addison were then taken down.
+
+Godolphin had never heard of Addison, but relying on Halifax, he sent
+Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the address named, where Addison
+was found over a haberdasher's, up three flights, back. The account comes
+from Pope, who was the enemy of both Addison and Halifax, and can
+therefore be relied upon.
+
+The Chancellor of the Exchequer broached the subject, was gently repulsed,
+the case was argued, and being put on the plane of duty the poet
+surrendered, and as a result we have Addison's poem, "The Campaign." It
+was considered a great literary feat in its day, but like all things
+performed to order, comes tardy off. Only work done in love lives. But
+Addison slid into the Excise office, taking it as legal tender. This
+brought him into relationship with Godolphin, who one day exclaimed, "I
+thought that man Addison was nothing but a poet--I'm a rogue if he isn't
+really a great man!" Lord Godolphin was needing a good man, a man of
+address, polish, tact and education. And Addison was selected to fill the
+office of Under-Secretary of State, the place for which he had fitted
+himself and to which he had aspired eight years before. Moral: Be
+prepared.
+
+The party that called Addison was not the one to which he was supposed to
+be attached, but his merits were recognized, his help was needed, and so
+he was sent for. It was a great compliment. But good men are always
+needed--they were then, and the demand is greater now than ever before.
+The highest positions are hard to fill--good men are scarce.
+
+Addison's knowledge, his modesty, his willingness, his caution, his grace
+of manner, fitted him exactly for the position; and we have reason to
+believe that the salary of one thousand pounds a year was very acceptable
+to one in his situation.
+
+In another year the Whigs had grown stronger; Halifax was again a
+recognized power; and erelong we find Addison entering Parliament. So
+great was his popularity that he was elected from one district six times,
+representing Malmesbury until his death.
+
+It was stated by Congreve that Addison's habit of shyness was an
+affectation. If so, it was a good stroke, for nothing is so becoming in a
+man known to be versatile and strong as a half-embarrassment when in
+society. The Duke of Wellington's awkwardness in a drawing-room put all
+others at their ease. The eternal fitness of things demands that when
+greatness is in evidence some one should be embarrassed, and if the
+celebrity is "it," so much the better.
+
+Personally, I feel sure that Addison's shyness was not feigned, for on the
+only occasion he ever attempted to speak ex-tempore in Parliament he
+muffed the subject, forgot his theme, and sat down in confusion. With all
+his incisive thought and fine command of language, Addison could not think
+on his feet. And as if aware of his limitations, in one of the "Spectator"
+essays he said, with more or less truth, "The fluent orator, ready to
+speak on any topic, is never profound, and when once his thought is cold
+it will seldom repay examination--it was only a skyrocket."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Without Addison's literary reputation, resting upon his essays published
+in the "Tatler" and the "Spectator," it is very possible that we would now
+know about as much concerning him as we do about Sir John Hawkins. The
+"Tatler" and the "Spectator" allowed him to express his best, and in his
+own way.
+
+With the name of Addison is inseparably coupled that of Richard Steele.
+These men had a literary style which they held in partnership. The nearest
+approach to it in our time is the "Easy Chair" of George William Curtis.
+Curtis was once called by Lowell, with a goodly degree of justice, "our
+modern Addison."
+
+Steele and Addison had been schoolmates at the Charterhouse, and friends
+for a lifetime. They were of the same age within a year. Steele had been a
+soldier and an adventurer, and his disposition was decidedly convivial. He
+was a clever writer, knowing the world of politics and society, but he
+lacked the spiritual and artistic qualities which Addison's moderate and
+studious life had fostered. But on simple themes, where the argument did
+not rise above the commonplace, Addison and Steele wrote exactly alike,
+just as all writers on the "Sun" used to write like Dana. Steele had
+filled the lowest office in the Ministry, the office of "Gazeteer": the
+duties of the office being to issue a newspaper giving the official news
+of the day. It was a licensed monopoly, and all infringers were severely
+punished.
+
+Steele, however, did not like the office, because the Powers demanded that
+all writing in the "Gazette" be very innocent and very insipid. "To
+publish a newspaper and say nothing is no easy task," said Steele. Had he
+lived in our day he could have seen the trick performed on every hand.
+
+Finally the office of Gazetteer was abolished, and any man who wished
+might issue a "gazette," provided he kept within proper bounds. The result
+was a flight of small leaflet periodicals, quite like the Chapbook
+Renaissance of Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five and Eighteen Hundred
+Ninety-six, when over eleven hundred "brownie" and "chipmunk" magazines
+were started in America. Every man with two or three ideas and ten
+dollars' capital started a magazine. Steele, teeming with thoughts
+demanding expression, at war with smug society, and possessing wit withal,
+started the "Tatler," to be issued three times a week, price one penny.
+Seizing upon a creation of Swift's, "Isaac Bickerstaff," a character
+already known to the public, was introduced as editor. Bickerstaff
+announced his assistants, and among others named as authority in Foreign
+Affairs a waiter at Saint James Coffeehouse known as "Kidney." The spirit
+of rollicking freedom in the publication, with a touch of philosophy, and
+a dash of culture, caught the public fancy at once. The "Tatler" was the
+theme in every coffeehouse, and in the drawing-rooms, as well. Those who
+understood it laughed and passed it along to others who pretended they
+understood, and so it became the fad. Then the anonymity lent the charm of
+mystery--who could it be who was into all the secrets, and knew the world
+so thoroughly?
+
+Addison read each issue with surprise and amusement, but it was not until
+the fifth number that he located the author positively, by reading an
+observation of his own that he had voiced to Steele some weeks before.
+Steele absorbed everything, digested it, and gave the good out as his own,
+innocent and probably unmindful of where he got it. This accounts for his
+wonderful versatility: he made others grub and used the net result.
+
+Some years ago Francis Wilson made a mock complaint to the effect that
+whenever he met Eugene Field in the "Saints and Sinners Corner" for a
+half-hour's chat, any good thing he might voice was duly printed next day
+in the "Sharps and Flats" column as Field's very own, and thus did the
+genial Eugene acquire his reputation as a genius. All of which gentle
+gibing contains more fact than fiction.
+
+When Addison saw his bright thoughts appearing in the "Tatler," he went to
+Steele and said, "Here, I'll write that out myself and save you the
+trouble." Steele welcomed him with open arms. The first "Tatler" article
+written by Addison relates to the distress of news-writers at the prospect
+of peace. This is exactly in Steele's style; but we find erelong in the
+"Tatler" a spiritual quality that was not a part of Steele's nature. From
+current gossip and easy society commonplace, the tone is exalted, and this
+we know was the result of Addison's influence. Out of two hundred
+seventy-one articles in the "Tatler," one hundred eighty-eight were
+produced by Steele and forty-two by Addison. Yet Steele was wise enough to
+perceive the superior quality of Addison's work, and this dictated the key
+in which the magazine was pitched. Yet the fertility of Steele surpassed
+that of Addison. Steele initiated the crusade against gambling, dueling
+and vice; and this was all very natural, for he simply inveighed against
+sins with which experience had made him familiar. His moral essays were
+all written in periods of repentance. His sharp tirades on dueling in one
+instance approached the point of personality, and on being criticized, he
+resented the interference and expressed a willingness to fight his man
+with pistols at ten paces. It must not be forgotten that Richard Steele
+was an Irishman.
+
+The political tone of the "Tatler" favored the Marlborough administration,
+and on this account Steele was rewarded with a snug office under the wing
+of the State. In Seventeen Hundred Ten, the Whig Ministry fell, but Lord
+Harley knew the value of Steele as a writer, and so notified him that he
+would not be disturbed in possession of his Stamp Office.
+
+Now, a complete silence concerning things political in the "Tatler" was
+hardly possible, and a change of front would be humiliating, and whether
+to give up the "Tatler" or the office--that was the question! Addison was
+in the same box. The offices they held brought them in twice as much money
+as the little periodical, and either the patronage or the paper would have
+to go. They decided to abandon the "Tatler."
+
+But the habit of writing sticks to a man; and after two months Steele and
+Addison began to feel the necessity of some outlet for their pent-up
+thoughts. They had each grown with their work, and were aware of it. They
+would start a new paper, and make it a daily; and they would keep clear of
+politics. So we find the "Spectator" duly launched with the intended
+purpose of forming "a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art
+and literature."
+
+Every good thing has its prototype, and Addison in Italy had become
+familiar with the force of "Manners" by Casa, and the "Courtier" by
+Castiglione. Then he knew the character of La Bruyere, and this gave the
+cue for the Spectator Club, with Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew
+Freeport, Will Honeycomb, Captain Sentry and the Templar.
+
+Swift had contributed several papers to the "Tatler," but he found the
+"Spectator" too soft and feminine for his fancy. Probably Steele and
+Addison were afraid of the doughty Dean's style; there was too much
+vitriol in it for popularity--and they kept the Irish parson at a
+distance, as certain letters to "Stella" seem to indicate. The
+"Spectator" was a notable success from the start and soon put Steele and
+Addison in comfortable financial shape.
+
+After the first year the daily issue amounted to fourteen thousand copies.
+Addison introduced the "Answers to Correspondents" scheme.
+
+He has had many imitators along this line, some of whom yet endure, but
+they are not Addisons.
+
+An imitation of the "Spectator" was started as a daily in New York in
+Eighteen Hundred Ninety-eight. In one week it ran short on phosphorus and
+was obliged to quit. It took two years for Steele and Addison to write
+themselves out, and rather than let the quality of the periodical decline
+they discontinued its publication, quitting like the wise men they were at
+the height of their success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Addison's tragedy of "Cato" was produced in Seventeen Hundred
+Thirteen, he occupied the first place in English letters. The play was a
+dazzling success; and it is a great play yet. It lives as literature among
+the best things men have ever done--a masterpiece!
+
+Addison still continued in the service of the State, and wrote more or
+less in a political way. The strain of carrying on the "Spectator" and the
+stress of political affairs had tired the man. The spring had gone out of
+his intellect, and he began to talk of some quiet retreat in the country.
+In Seventeen Hundred Sixteen, in his forty-fourth year, he married the
+Countess of Warwick, a widow of fifteen years' standing. We have reason to
+believe that the worthy widow did the courting and literally took our good
+man captive. He was depressed and worn, and longed for rest and gentle,
+sympathetic companionship. She promised all these--the buxom creature--and
+married him, taking him to her home at Holland House. Yes, it would be
+unjust to blame her; doubtless she wished to do for the man what was best;
+and so report has it that she exercised a discipline over his hours of
+work and recreation and curtailed a little there and issued orders here,
+until the poor patient rebelled and fled to the coffeehouses. There he
+found the rollicking society that he so despised--and loved, for there was
+comradeship in it, and comradeship was what he prayed for. His wife did
+not comprehend that delicate, spiritual quality of his heart: that
+craving for sympathy which came after he had given out so much. He wanted
+peace, quiet and rest; but she wished to take him forth and exhibit him to
+the throng. Yet all of her admonitions that he "brace up" were in vain.
+His work was done. He foresaw the end, and grew impatient that it did not
+come. Placid, resigned, sane to the last hour, he passed away at Holland
+House, June Seventeenth, Seventeen Hundred Nineteen, aged forty-seven. His
+body, lying in state, was viewed by more than ten thousand people, and
+then it was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+                         Let no man write
+    Thy epitaph, Emmett; thou shalt not go
+    Without thy funeral strain! O young and good,
+    And wise, though erring here, thou shalt not go
+    Unhonored or unsung. And better thus
+    Beneath that undiscriminating stroke,
+    Better to fall, than to have lived to mourn,
+    As sure thou wouldst, in misery and remorse,
+    Thine own disastrous triumph * * * *
+    How happier thus, in that heroic mood
+    That takes away the sting of death, to die,
+    By all the good and all the wise forgiven!
+    Yea, in all ages by the wise and good
+    To be remembered, mourned, and honored still!
+                                  --_Southey to Robert Emmett_
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT SOUTHEY]
+
+
+Most generally, when I travel, I go alone--this to insure being in good
+company. To travel with another is a terrible risk: it puts a great strain
+on the affections.
+
+I once made the tour of Scotland with a man who was traveling for his
+health. He had kidney-trouble belief. I had known the man in a casual way
+for several years, and we started out the best of friends, anticipating a
+good time. We were gone three weeks, and when we got back I hated the
+fellow thoroughly, and I have every reason to believe that he fully
+reciprocated the sentiment.
+
+And yet he was an honest man, and I am, too, although not an extremist.
+There was nothing to quarrel about; it began at Euston Station, where I
+bought third-class tickets. He said he preferred to ride first-class, or
+second, at least--there was such a thing as false economy.
+
+I asked him why he had not said something along this line before I had
+purchased the tickets.
+
+He retorted that I had not consulted his preference in the matter. I
+brought in a mild rejoinder by moving the previous question, and showing
+that he, himself, had proposed that I should take entire charge of the
+arrangements, using my own good judgment at all times.
+
+He said something about his error in supposing he was traveling with a
+discerning person. Just then the guard came along, slamming the doors, and
+we were pushed into a third-class carriage, where we enjoyed an all-day
+journey together.
+
+At Edinburgh my companion wished to ascend the Scott monument, visit a
+friend at the University, and buy a plaid rug at one of the shops in
+Princess Street; while I proposed to look up the footprints of Bobbie
+Burns and John Knox. He said, "Confound John Knox!" I answered, "You
+evidently think I am referring to Knox the Hatter!" He grew mad as a
+hatter, and I had to defend John Knox, and later had to do the same for
+Rab and his friends, as well as for Christopher North.
+
+And so it went--he pooh-poohed my heroes; and I scorned the friend he
+wished to find at the University, smiled patronizingly on the Scott
+monument, and said, "hoot mon" at the idea of buying a plaid rug in
+Princess Street.
+
+All this was many years ago; since then I have been very cautious about
+entering into any Anglo-American alliances. Yet to travel alone often
+seems to be dropping something out of your life. When the voyage is rough,
+the weather bad and the fare below par, my spirits always rise. I say to
+myself: "My son, this is certainly tough--but who cares! We can stand it,
+we have had this way right along year after year--but just imagine your
+plight if there were some one in your charge expecting a good time!"
+
+Then I drink to Boreas and all the fiends of Gehenna, and am supremely
+content.
+
+But suppose the night is resplendent with stars, the waves tremulous with
+reflected beauty, and as the great ship goes gliding across the
+deep--proud, strong and tireless--there come to you thoughts sublime and
+emotions such as Wagner knew when he wrote the "Pilgrims' Chorus."
+
+But you are not happy, simply because you want to tell some one how happy
+you are. What is the starlight for, save to call some one's attention to,
+or the phosphorescent sheen except to be pointed out and enjoyed by two?
+Exquisite beauty, as revealed in music, painting, sculpture or beautiful
+scenery, affects me at times to tears; and there always comes creeping
+into my life a profound sadness, a dread homesickness, to think that in
+this wealth of peace and joy I am alone--alone.
+
+Can you stand by yourself on a hillside and look across a beautiful little
+lake to the woods beyond; or walk through a pine-forest, where the needles
+sink as a carpet beneath your feet, and the air is full of the pungent
+odor of the pine, and the gently swaying tree-tops overhead croon you a
+lullaby--can you enjoy all this without an exquisite melancholy, and a
+joy that hurts, piercing your soul? It's homesickness, that's all; you
+want to go home and tell some one how happy you are. Give me solitude,
+sweet solitude, but in my solitude give me still one friend to whom I may
+murmur, Solitude is sweet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That about the sea and the forest, the wooded hillside and the little lake
+may not be the exact words, but the thought is there just as White Pigeon
+expressed it to me that evening when we sat on the mossy bank of the lake
+at Grasmere and threw pebbles into the water.
+
+I had come up from Liverpool to Bowness, walked over to Ambleside and
+along the lake to Grasmere. My luggage consisted of a comb, a toothbrush
+and a stout second-growth East Aurora hickory stick.
+
+At Grasmere I applied at the Red Lion Inn for supper and lodging. The
+landlady looked at my dusty, rusty corduroys, paused, coughed and asked
+where my luggage was. Wishing to be honest, I displayed the luggage
+aforementioned. She did not smile. She was a large person, sober, sedate,
+sincere and also serious, with a big bunch of keys dangling from a waist
+that once was Grecian. And she told me right there that if I wanted
+accommodations I would have to pay in advance. I demurred, pleaded and
+finally explained that I had lost my money and had sent to New York for a
+remittance, I was a remittance-man. Had this been true, it were sad, yet I
+had a hundred pounds sterling in my belt; but it just came to me to see
+how it would feel to be penniless and friendless and plead for charity. It
+is not hard to plead for charity when one has a pocket full of money.
+
+So I pleaded. But it was of no avail.
+
+I requested a drink of water. This was denied. Then I asked if I could
+wash in the lake; and this favor was granted, and the advice volunteered
+that it would be a good thing to do. And further the kind lady made a
+motion toward a dangling red tassel that hung from a rope, and suggested
+that I get me to a gunnery and quickly, too, otherwise she would have to
+call the porter.
+
+I felt to see that my money was all right--to assure myself it was no jest
+in earnest--and departed. Being singularly psychic to suggestion I
+followed the thought that I wash in the lake, and started in that
+direction, along a footpath that led across a meadow, over a stile. A
+thick growth of bushes lined the lake for aways, and then the footpath
+seemed to follow right through the undergrowth. I pushed the green
+branches aside, and continued along for about a hundred feet, when I stood
+on the green, grass-covered bank of the beautiful "Windermere." Daffodils
+lined the water's edge--the daffodils of Wordsworth--down the lake were
+the white wings of several sailboats; the sun had gone down, but his long
+rays of gold still pierced the sky, while across the water arose, silent
+and majestic, the dark purple hills.
+
+It was a beautiful sight--so full of quiet and peace and rest. I stood
+with hat in hand, the evening breeze fanning my face, enjoying the scene.
+Just then there was a little splash in the water, and looking down I saw a
+woman with back toward me sitting on a boulder, tossing pebbles into the
+lake. By the side of the woman were her hat and book. I was on the point
+of softly backing out through the bushes, when it came to me that I had
+seen that head with its big coil of brown hair somewhere else--but where,
+ah, where!
+
+Why, in Paris, two years before. It was White Pigeon.
+
+She had not seen me. I retraced my steps, and then came crashing through
+the juniper, straight over to the bankside, where I sat down about twenty
+feet from the good lady. I was whistling violently and throwing pebbles
+into the water, not even glancing toward her. She let me whistle for a
+full minute and then said gently: "Do not be absurd! I know you." Then we
+both laughed, and I, of course, did the regulation thing, and asked, "When
+did you arrive, and where are you going, and how do you like it?"
+
+"You see what I am doing here, and as for when I arrived and how long I'll
+stay, and how I like it--what difference is it? There, you are surprised
+to see me, aren't you? I thought you had gotten past being surprised at
+anything, long ago--only silly people are surprised--you once said it,
+yourself!"
+
+Then White Pigeon ceased to speak and we simply gazed into each other's
+eyes. White Pigeon has gray eyes that sometimes are blue and sometimes
+amber--it all depends upon her mood and the thoughts reflected there. The
+long, sober gaze stole off into a half-smile and she said, "You got things
+awfully mixed up in that Rosa Bonheur booklet--why not stick to truth?"
+
+"Truth," I replied, "is hideous, and facts are like some men, stubborn
+things. But what was the matter with the Bonheur Little Journey?"
+
+"You will not be angry with me?"
+
+"How could I be?"
+
+"You promise?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you said my cousin was a conductor on the Lake Shore--you knew
+perfectly well it was the Michigan Central!"
+
+I apologized.
+
+It had been two years since I had seen this woman, and not a letter had
+passed between us. I had sent her a book now and then, and she had sent me
+a sketch or two.
+
+White Pigeon knows nothing about me, and never asked concerning my
+history, which is a blank, my lord! Does the lily inquire of the
+humming-bird, "Hast hummed and fluttered about other flowers?"
+
+That is a charming friendship that asks nothing, makes no demands, needs
+no assurances, never falters, and is so frank that it disarms prudery and
+pretense.
+
+I said as much.
+
+White Pigeon made no answer, but flung a pebble into the lake.
+
+And all I know of White Pigeon is that she was born in White Pigeon,
+Michigan, and had left there ten years before to study art for a short
+time in Paris. The short time extended to ten years.
+
+White Pigeon does not call herself an artist--she only copies pictures in
+the Louvre and gives lessons. "Not being able to paint, I give lessons,"
+she once said to me. The first pictures she copied were sold to kind
+gentlemen who make many wagons at South Bend, Indiana; other pictures went
+to men who have interests at Ivorydale; and some have gone to the
+mill-owner at Ypsilanti, for the mill-owner is interested in art, as all
+patrons of the "Hum Journal" know.
+
+White Pigeon lived at Paris because one must needs live somewhere, and
+rich Americans sometimes send her their daughters to "finish." That was
+what took her over to the Lake District--she was traveling with two young
+women from Grand Rapids. And so these three women were doing Great
+Britain, and White Pigeon was acting as courier, chaperone and instructor.
+
+"I need 'finish,'" I suggested in one of the long pauses.
+
+"I was just going to suggest it," said the lady.
+
+"You say you are going to Southey's old home tomorrow--may I go, too?" I
+ventured.
+
+And the answer was, "Of course--if you will promise not to work me up into
+copy."
+
+I promised.
+
+I found lodgings that night at "Nab Cottage." Being well recommended, the
+landlady did not hesitate, but gave me the best accommodations her house
+afforded.
+
+Hartley Coleridge does not live at "Nab Cottage" now--a moss-covered slab
+marks his resting-place up at the Grasmere Churchyard, and only a step
+away in a very straight row are similar old headstones that token the
+graves of William, Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth. Hartley Coleridge had most
+of the weaknesses of his father, and only a few of his better traits. Yet
+Southey brought up the children of Coleridge and gave them just as good
+advantages as he did his own.
+
+"It is not 'advantages' that make great men--it is disadvantages!" said
+White Pigeon. We were eating breakfast at the table set out under the
+arbor, back of the Coleridge cottage--Grace, Myrtle, White Pigeon and I.
+
+Grace and Myrtle were the Grand Rapids girls, and fine girls, too--pink
+and twenty, with diaries and autograph-fans. Girls of that age are
+charming, but they only interest me as do beautiful kittens or colts.
+Women do not become wise or discreet until they are past thirty. White
+Pigeon was past thirty.
+
+We took the stage that morning at nine o'clock for Keswick. The stage
+started from the Red Lion Inn. It is a great event--the starting of a
+four-horse stage. The guests came out, and so did the boots, and
+chamber-maids and waiters, and the cook came also. They stood in line and
+bade the parting guests godspeed, and all the guests were supposed to
+express gratitude tangibly. The landlady was busy, flying about like a
+Plymouth Rock hen with a brood of ducks. She saw me handing up the
+pink-and-white Grace and Myrtle and the dignified, tailor-made White
+Pigeon, and she came out and apologized profusely for not having had room
+to accommodate me the night before.
+
+At last all the hatboxes and bloomin' luggage were safely stowed, the
+trunks were lashed in place behind, and I climbed to the top of the stage
+and took my seat beside my charges. A merry blast was blown from the
+tallyho horn. A man with a red coat, high white hat, kid gloves and a
+brick-dust complexion mounted the box and gathered up a big handful of
+reins. The hostlers at the heads of the leaders let go, twenty feet of
+whiplash went singing through the air--and we were off!
+
+We swung through the village with more majesty and clatter than the Empire
+State Express ever assumed, stopping just an instant at the post-office
+for a bag of mail that the brick-dusty driver caught with his feet, and
+then away we went.
+
+I am sorry I did not live in stagecoach times--things are now so dead and
+dreary and prosaic. Yet I sometimes have imagined that today the
+stagecoach business in England is a little stagey--many things are done to
+heighten effects. For instance, the intense excitement of starting is not
+exactly necessary--why the mad rush? No one is really in a hurry to reach
+a certain place at a certain time! And all this is apparent when you
+notice that a mile out of town the pace subsides to a lazy dog-trot, and
+the boots has jumped down and unchecked each horse so as to make things
+easy. I was glad the boots got down, for whenever I see a horse's head
+checked up in the air my impulse is to uncheck him--and once on Wabash
+Avenue in Chicago I did.
+
+I was arrested, and it cost me five.
+
+The road to Keswick bristles with history. Coleridge, Wordsworth and
+Southey tramped it many a time, and since their day, thousands of literary
+pilgrims have come this way. That two poets-laureate should have come from
+this beautiful corner of the earth of course is interesting, but the honor
+of being poet-laureate to the King is a shifting honor, depending upon the
+poet. No title can ever really honor a man, although a man may honor a
+title, and no King by taking thought can add a cubit to a subject's
+stature. The man is what he is. Southey succeeded the poet Pye, who was
+laureate before him.
+
+A weaker nature than mine might here succumb to temptation and play
+pleasant philological pranks concerning the poet Pye, but I am above all
+that. Pye was a good man, and if I could remember any of the lines he
+wrote, I would here introduce them; but this is doubtless unnecessary, for
+the gentle reader can recall to suit.
+
+White Pigeon claimed that Pye was greater than Southey, and she further
+said that Tennyson's reputation suffered by consenting to act as successor
+to this line of men in whom felicity and insight were the exception. The
+tierce of Canary was no pay for acting as successor to Pye, but Southey
+jumped at the Canary and slipped his last vestige of radicalism quickly.
+
+"Oh, what a funny little church," exclaimed Myrtle; "can't we stop and go
+in?"
+
+It is a curious little building--that church at Wythburn.
+
+It looks like a little girl's playhouse, that might have belonged to her
+great-great-grandmother.
+
+Opposite this lovely little church is a tavern, where a lovely barmaid in
+white apron and lovely collar and cuffs stood in the doorway, ready to
+serve the thirsty. The red-coated driver pulled in on the tavern side, and
+men in neckerchiefs, hobnailed shoes, blue woolen stockings and
+knee-breeches made fussy haste to water the horses. Old Brick-Dusty
+climbed down to see a man in the tavern, and the Michigan contingent and
+Colonel Littlejourneys slid down the other side and went into Wythburn
+Church. There isn't another church in England so peculiar and so
+interesting. A pew is marked sacred to Wordsworth, and one also to Harriet
+Martineau, who I did not know before ever went to church. The silver
+service was the gift of Southey, and is inscribed with his name and crest.
+Southey was a vestryman of Wythburn Church for many years, and sometimes
+read the service there. I stood in the pulpit where Southey stood, and so
+did White Pigeon, and I reminded her that she would never be allowed
+there on Sunday, for Deity is most easily approached and influenced by
+men, as all theologians know and have ever stoutly held. One of the busy
+hostlers came in, pulling his forelock, and apologizing, in a voice full
+of cobwebs, said that the coach was ready to start. We did the proper
+thing, and also as much for the red-coated driver, who, in spite of great
+dignity, we saw was open to reward for well-doing. It was a great mistake,
+though, to "cross his palm," for he began a lecture on the Cumberland
+Kings, that lasted until we got to Thirlmere, where he stopped at the
+Pumping-Station, and told us how the city of Manchester got its
+water-supply from here. To him all things were equally interesting. He was
+still deep in the fight between Manchester aldermen and the 'Ouse of
+Commons when we reached Castle Rigg. The Vale of Keswick opened before us.
+We implored the well-informed driver to stop, and then we got down and
+begged him to go on without us.
+
+Seated there on the bankside we viewed the beautiful scene of lake, valley
+and village stretching out so peacefully before us, all framed in the dark
+towering hills. Even Grace forgot to say, "How lovely!" but sat there,
+chin in hand, rapt and speechless.
+
+Down in that valley, just a little to one side of the village, Southey
+lived for over forty years, and all the visitors he really liked he took
+to Castle Rigg, to show them as he said, "the kingdoms of the earth." It
+was a view of which he never tired. Coleridge came up this way first, and
+took lodgings with a Mr. Johnson, who owned Greta Hall. It is not on
+record that Coleridge paid any rent, but he was so charmed with the
+location that he induced Southey to come and visit him. Southey came and
+liked it so well that he remained. He performed here a life-task that
+staggers one to contemplate: fifty volumes or more of closely set type are
+shown you at the Keswick Museum, duly labeled, "The Works of Southey,"
+Charles Lamb's "Works" were the East India ledgers, but he wrote one
+little book of Essays that are still sweet and fresh as
+wood-violets--essays written hot from the heart, often in tears; written
+because he could not help it, or to please Mary--he did not know which.
+
+No man ever divided his time up more systematically than Southey. He
+produced political and theological essays, histories, poems, diatribes,
+apologies and criticisms, and worked as men work in the Carnegie
+Consolidated Steel Works.
+
+Robert Southey was the precocious son of a Bristol linen-draper. Being
+rather delicate, his parents did not set him to work in a drygoods-store,
+but gave him the benefit of Oxford. The thing that brought him first into
+prominence was an article he wrote for "The Flaggellant," a college paper,
+wherein he ridiculed the idea of a devil. Now the powers did not like
+that--the creed called for a "personal devil," and they wanted one. They
+summoned young Southey before them to account for speaking disrespectfully
+of the devil. The youth was found guilty and expelled.
+
+He was a reckless young man, but recklessness is its own check--in fact,
+all things in life are self-regulating, everything is limited. Southey's
+secret marriage with Edith Fricker tamed him. Nothing tames men like
+marriage; and when babies came, and Coleridge went to Germany, leaving
+Mrs. Coleridge and young Hartley in his charge, Southey realized he was
+dealing with a condition, not a theory. Then soon he had the widowed Mrs.
+Lovell with her brood on his hands, and his old dream of pantisocracy was
+realized, only not just as he expected.
+
+Too much can not be said for the patience and unflinching fidelity shown
+by Southey in shouldering the burdens that Fate sent him.
+
+"Any man can succeed with three good women to help him!" said White
+Pigeon.
+
+"True," said I, "and next in importance to the person who originates a
+good thing is the one who quotes it." Men weighted with responsibilities
+fight for the established order. Southey's pension and his steady income
+came from the men in power, and he made it his business not to offend
+them. Southey was a scholar; he associated with educated people; and once
+he complained because he could not get acquainted with workingmen--they
+shut up like clams on his approach. Of course they did, for we are simple
+and sincere only with our own.
+
+Learned, scholarly and cultured men are to be pitied, for they are ever
+the butt, byword and prey of the untaught, who are often the knowing. As
+success came to Southey he lost the sense of values, that is to say, the
+sense of humor. He attacked Byron with great severity, and Byron's reply
+was the dedication of Don Juan, "To the illustrious Poet-Laureate, Robert
+Southey, LL.D." It was as if the play of "Sappho" were dedicated to the
+Reverend Doctor Parkhurst.
+
+Southey came out with a card declaring he had given Lord Byron no
+permission to dedicate any of his detestable works to him. Byron replied,
+acknowledging all this, but saying he had a right to honor the name of
+Southey, if he chose, just the same. No taint of excess or folly marks the
+name of Southey; his life was filled with good work and kind deeds. His
+name is honored by a monument in the village of Keswick, and in
+Crosthwaite Church is another monument to his memory, the inscription
+being written by Wordsworth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Were Heaven a place, I still politely maintain, it would probably be
+located in the Lake District of England.
+
+Every man of genius the world has ever produced has come from a little
+belt of land in the North Temperate Zone. Snow and cold, rock and
+mountain, danger and difficulty--these are the conditions required to make
+men. The heaven of which I can conceive is a place with plenty of oxygen,
+sunshine and water. In a mountainous country water runs (I hope no one
+will dispute this) and winds blow, and running water and air in motion are
+always pure.
+
+When I have no thoughts worth recording I take a walk, and the elements,
+which seem to carry soul, fill me to the brim.
+
+The Tropics may have much to offer in way of soft, luxurious creature
+comforts. But the Tropics supply sundry and divers discomforts as well,
+and really offer too much; for with the flowers, vines, fruits and
+never-ending foliage go mosquitoes, tarantulas, and snakes that wiggle and
+sometimes bite.
+
+The climate of Cumberland does not overpower one--the air is of a quality
+that urges you on to think and do.
+
+By no reach of imagination can one conjure forth anything more beautiful
+in Nature than is to be realized in vicinity of Keswick; and no home
+thereabouts surpasses Greta Hall in charm of location and quiet, simple
+beauty.
+
+Greta Hall is a rambling pile, constructed partly of stone and partly of
+wood, evolved rather than built, for evidently the work was done by many
+hands, and stretched over a century or more of time. Vines and flowers,
+fruits and shrubbery, stone walls covered close by creeping bellflowers
+where birds chirrup and cheep and play hide-and-seek the livelong day--all
+these are there. The house is situated on a little wooded plateau that
+overlooks the lake, and back of it the solemn and everlasting hills stand
+guard. There are no such mountains here as one sees in Switzerland,
+overpowering, vast, awful in their majesty; but just green-topped,
+self-sufficient and friendly hills that invite you to lift up your eyes
+and be strong.
+
+Visitors are welcome to the grounds at Greta Hall at all times, and the
+kind old gardener who showed us about gathered us bouquets of mignonette,
+rue and thyme, and gave us the history of a wonderful pear-tree that had
+turned into a vine and now covers one whole side of a stable thirty feet
+long. Even a tree will lose its individuality if it is not allowed to
+assert its nature and care for itself. That particular pear-tree, we were
+told, sprang from a slip planted by Shelley when he once came here on a
+visit to Southey; and we were further told that the year Shelley was
+drowned, the leaves of this tree turned pale and withered, and only by
+patient, loving nursing on the part of our old gardener's father was its
+life saved. The residence was closed the day we were there, in dread
+anticipation of Cook tourists with designs on the shrubbery, we had reason
+to believe, but we lingered around the grounds, listened to the soothing,
+rippling lullaby of the Greta, watched the strutting peacocks, and ate
+bread-and-milk, under the trees, out of big bowls supplied us by the old
+gardener for the most modest of considerations.
+
+Southey never really mixed in the wealth of beauty that covers this
+beautiful corner of earth. He was learned and profound, and he took
+himself and the Church and the State seriously. He felt himself a part of
+an indestructible institution, whereas man and all his works are no more
+peculiar, no more wonderful than an ant-hill--and last only a day longer.
+He never realized that he was a part of the great whole that made up
+mountain, lake, globe, wooded glen and tireless river. He differentiated.
+He considered himself a man, an educated man, and therefore a little
+better, and a little above, and a little outside of it all--otherwise how
+could he have withered at the top at the early age of sixty-seven?
+
+This question White Pigeon asked as we sat in the dim quiet of Crosthwaite
+Church, down in the village. I did not attempt to reply--people do not ask
+questions expecting, necessarily, to have them answered. We ask questions
+in order to clarify our own minds.
+
+The warning blast of the coach-horn was heard, and we went out into the
+sunshine. I bade my three friends good-by (first placing my autograph on
+Grace's and Myrtle's fans), and they climbed to the top of the coach. I
+sat on the stone wall and watched them until they disappeared around the
+bend of the road, waving handkerchiefs. That night I made my way over to
+Penreith on the way to Carlisle. It had been a day brimming with thought
+and feeling, and beauty expressed and unexpressed, and the kindness of
+kind friends who understand. That night as I dozed off into deep, calm
+sleep I said to myself: "They were great men, those Lake Poets, and the
+world is better because they lived. But there will come other men and they
+will be greater than those gone--the best is yet to be."
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE
+
+    Beneath the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the
+    Thrones of Frost, this through the absence of objects to reflect
+    the rays.
+
+    What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own--we need another
+    to reflect our thoughts.
+                             --_Samuel Taylor Coleridge_
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE]
+
+
+Samuel T. Coleridge was a thinker, and thinkers are so rarely found that
+the world must take note of them. John Stuart Mill, writing in Eighteen
+Hundred Forty, assigned first place among English philosophers to Jeremy
+Bentham, incidentally mentioning that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was
+Bentham's only rival.
+
+In philosophy there is an apostolic succession. We build on the past, and
+all the centuries of turmoil and travail which have gone before have made
+this moment possible. There has never been any such thing as "the fall of
+man"; for the march of the race has been a continual climb--a movement
+onward and upward. Were it not for Coleridge and Bentham, we could not
+have had Buckle, Wallace and Spencer, for the minds of men would not have
+been prepared to give them a hearing. "Half the battle is in catching the
+Speaker's eye," said Thomas Brackett Reed; and a John the Baptist to
+prepare the way is always necessary. Without Coleridge to quietly ignore
+the question of precedent, and refuse to accept a thing without proof, and
+ask eternally and yet again, "How do you know?" Charles Darwin with his
+"Origin of Species" would have been laughed out of court. Or probably had
+Darwin been persistent we would have consigned him to the stocks, burned
+his book in the public square, and with the aid of logical thumbscrews
+made him recant.
+
+Even as it was, the gibes and guffaws of the press and pulpit came near
+drowning the modest, moderate voice of Darwin; and for a score of years,
+his reputation as a scientist seemed to be trembling in the balance. Yet
+today the man who would seriously attempt in an educated assembly to throw
+obloquy upon the doctrine of Evolution and the name of Charles Darwin
+would find himself speedily listed with Brudder Jasper of Richmond,
+Virginia. The Church now, everywhere, has its Drummonds, who build on
+Darwin and use his citations as proof; and Drummond merely expressed what
+the many believe--no more.
+
+The man who has dared to think for himself and voiced his thought--the
+emancipated man--has been as one in a million. What usually passes for
+thought is only the repetition of things we have heard or been told. We
+memorize, repeat by rote and call it thought.
+
+With the Church and State in control of food and clothes, and with spears,
+clubs, knives and guns ready to suppress whatsoever seemed dangerous to
+their stability, it is a miracle that men have ever improved on
+anything--for progress has been for centuries a perilous performance. To
+question a priest was blasphemy. To reason with a judge was heinous. To
+think and decide for yourself was to invite torture and death.
+
+And all this was very natural, simply because the superior class who
+monopolized the good things of earth were obliged, in order to enslave and
+tax men, to make them believe that their power was derived from God. And
+thus was taught the "divine right of kings," the duty of submission, the
+necessity of belief and the sinfulness of doubt. The source of all
+knowledge was declared to be a book, and the right of interpretation of
+this book was given to one class alone--those who sided with and were a
+part of the Superior Class.
+
+The reason the race has progressed so slowly is because the strong,
+vigorous and independent have been suppressed, either by legal process, or
+exterminated through war, which reaps the best and lets the weak, the
+diseased and the cowards go.
+
+Those who doubted and questioned have been deprived of food and clothes,
+disgraced, mobbed, robbed, lashed naked at the cart's tail, burned at the
+stake, or separated from their families and transported beyond the sea to
+be devoured by wild beasts, die in jungles, or toil out their lives in
+slavery.
+
+But still there were always a few who would doubt and a few who would
+question; and in the early part of the Eighteenth Century in England the
+government was being put to severe straits to cope with the difficulty.
+Lying in the Thames were receiving-ships on which were crowded men and
+women to be transported. When the ship was full, crowded to her utmost,
+she sailed away with her living cargo. From Sixteen Hundred Fifty to
+Seventeen Hundred Fifty, over forty thousand people were sent away for
+their country's good. The hangman worked overtime, all prisons were
+crowded, and the walls of Newgate bulged with men and women, old and
+young, who were believed to be dangerous to the stability and well-being
+of the superior class--that is, those who had the right to tax others.
+
+Finally, the enormity of bloodshed and woe involved caused a sort of
+concession on both sides to be agreed upon. Oppression continued will
+surely lead to a point where it cures itself, and the superior class in
+England, with a wise weather-eye, saw the reef on which they were in
+danger of striking. They heard the breakers, and began to grant
+concessions--unwillingly of course--concessions wrung from them. The
+censorship was abolished, reform bills introduced, the rights of free
+speech and a free press were partially recognized. The clergy, taking the
+cue, began to preach more love and less damnation; for the pew ever
+dictates to the pulpit what it shall preach. Thus general relaxation was
+in order to meet the competition of rival sects and independent preachers
+that were springing up; for although creeds never change, yet their
+interpretation does, and liberal sects do their work, not by growing
+strong, but by making all others more liberal.
+
+Thus the latter part of the Eighteenth Century witnessed a weakening of
+both sides through compromise. The schools and colleges were pedantic,
+complacent, smug and self-satisfied; by giving in a few points they had
+absorbed the radicals, and the political protesters had been bought off
+with snug places in the excise. Pretended knowledge passed for wisdom,
+dignity paraded as worth, affectation and hypocrisy patronized virtue. And
+Coleridge appears upon the scene, a conservative, with a beautiful
+innocence and an indifference to all pretended authority and asks, "How do
+you know?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The number of people who have written their names large in literature, who
+were the children of clergymen, is no mere coincidence. Tennyson, Addison,
+Goldsmith, Emerson, Lowell, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Coleridge--you
+can add to the list to suit. Young people follow example, and the habit of
+the father in writing out his thoughts causes others of the family to try
+it, too. Then there is an atmosphere of books in a rectory, and leisure to
+think, and best of all the income is not so great but that the practise of
+economy of time and money is duly enforced by necessity. To be launched
+into a library and learn by absorption is a great blessing.
+
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-two, the son
+of the Reverend John Coleridge, of Ottery Saint Mary, a small village of
+Devonshire. The rector was also a schoolmaster, just as all clergymen were
+before division of labor forced itself upon us. This worthy clergyman was
+twice married, his first wife bearing him three children, the second ten.
+Samuel was the last of the brood--the thirteenth--but his parents were not
+superstitious.
+
+The youngest in a big family, like the first, is apt to have a deal of
+love lavished upon him. The question of discipline has proved its own
+futility, and when a baby comes to parents approaching fifty, depend upon
+it, that child transforms the household into a monarchy, with himself as
+tyrant. This may be well and it may not.
+
+Little Samuel Taylor seemed to be aware of his power; he evolved a
+wondrous precocity and ruled the rectory with a rod of iron. When he was
+five he propounded questions that shook the orthodoxy of the worthy vicar
+to its very center.
+
+Yet, remarkable as was the intellect of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the
+family would not have remained in obscurity without him. In fact, the very
+brightness of his fame caused the excellence of his brothers to be lost in
+the shadow. His brother James became the father of Henry Nelson Coleridge,
+who married his cousin Sara, the daughter of our poet.
+
+To anticipate a little, it is well enough here to say that the daughter of
+Coleridge was a woman of remarkable excellence, and if you wish to
+disprove the adage that genius does not transmit itself she is a good
+example to bring up--even though there is a difference between fact and
+truth. James Coleridge was also the father of Mr. Justice Coleridge,
+himself the father of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge.
+
+And since iconoclasm is not out of place in an essay on Coleridge, it can
+also be stated that when Sara Coleridge married her cousin she did a wise
+thing. The marriage was a most happy one, and the children of these
+cousins have shown themselves to be beyond the average. And once,
+certainly not with his daughter in mind, Coleridge debated the question of
+consanguinity with Charles Lamb, and proved to his own satisfaction at
+least that the marriage of cousins was eminently sane, proper, just and
+right, and fraught with the best results for humanity.
+
+The only indictment that can be brought against the father of Coleridge is
+that he was a zealous Latin scholar, and proposed that the term "ablative"
+be abolished as insufficient, and in its stead should be used that of
+"quale-quare-quiddative case." He was a simple, amiable, excellent man who
+did his work the best he could, and was beloved by all the parish. As to
+the excellence of the established order of things he had no
+doubts--government and religion were divine institutions and should be
+upheld by all honest men.
+
+As to the vicar's wife we know little, but enough of a glance is given
+into her character through letters to show that she had in her make-up a
+trace of noble discontent. She was not entirely happy in her surroundings,
+and the amiable ways of her husband were often an exasperation to her,
+rather than a pleasure--even amiability can be overdone. He never saw more
+than a mile from home, but her eyes swept England from Cornwall to
+Scotland, and few men, even, saw so far as that a hundred years ago. The
+discontent of Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the heritage of mother to son.
+When Samuel was nine years of age the father passed away. The widow would
+have been in sore financial straits had it not been for the older
+children, and even as it was, strict economy and untiring industry were in
+order. Out of sympathy, Mr. Justice Buller, who had been a pupil of the
+Reverend John Coleridge, proposed to secure the youngest boy a scholarship
+in Christ's Hospital School, and so we find him entered there, July
+Eighteenth, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two. This was a year memorable in the
+history of America; and the alertness of the charity boy's intellect is
+shown in that he was aware of the struggle between England and the
+Colonies. He discussed the situation with his schoolfellows, and explained
+that the mother country had made a mistake in exacting too much. His
+sympathies were with the Colonies, but he thought submission on their part
+was in order when the stamp-tax was removed and that complete independence
+was absurd--the Colonies needed some one to protect them.
+
+Such reasoning in a boy of ten years seems strange, especially in view of
+the fact that a noted professor of pedagogy has recently explained to us
+that no child under fourteen is capable of independent reasoning.
+
+But it is quite certain that young Coleridge's opinions were not borrowed,
+for all the lad's acquaintances, who thought of the matter at all,
+considered the Americans simply "rebels" who merited death.
+
+Coleridge remained at Christ's Hospital for eight years, and before he
+left had easily taken his place as "Deputy Grecian." Charles Lamb has
+given many delightful glimpses of that schoolboy life in the "Essays of
+Elia."
+
+Middleton, afterward Bishop of Calcutta, called the attention of Boyer,
+the master, to Coleridge by saying, "There is a boy who reads Vergil for
+amusement!" Boyer was a strict disciplinarian, but he was ever on the
+lookout for a lad who loved books--the average youth getting out of all
+the study he could.
+
+The master began to encourage young Coleridge, and Coleridge responded. He
+wrote verses and essays, and was a prodigy in memorizing. According to
+Boyer's idea, and it was the prevailing idea everywhere then, and is yet
+in some sections, memorization was the one thing desirable. If the subject
+were Plato, and the master had forgotten his book, he called on Coleridge
+to recite. And the tall, fair-haired boy, with the big dreamy eyes, would
+rise and give page after page, "verbatim et literatim."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before Coleridge went to Cambridge, when nineteen years old he had taken
+on that masterly quality in conversation that made his society sought,
+even to the last. Lamb has told us of the gentle voice, not loud nor deep,
+but full of mellow intonations, and bell-like in its purity.
+
+Such a voice, laden with fine feeling, carrying conviction, only goes with
+a great soul. No doubt, though, the young man had grown into a bit of a
+dictator, and this habit of harangue he carried with him to College. To
+talk enabled him to think, and expression is necessary to growth. So the
+habit of argument with Coleridge seemed Nature's method of developing his
+powers of mental analysis. No more foolish saying was ever launched than,
+"Children should be seen and not heard." From lisping babyhood Coleridge
+talked, and talked much. When he was twenty, at Cambridge, he drew the
+boys to his room, until it was crowded to suffocation, just by the magic
+of his voice, and the subtle quality of his thought. His questioning mind
+went right to the heart of things, and in his divisions and heads and
+subheads even the professors could not always follow him. Let us hope that
+he himself always knew what he was trying to explain.
+
+He discussed metaphysics, theology and politics, and very naturally got to
+treading on thin ice.
+
+In theology his reasoning led him into Unitarianism, then a very fearful
+thing; and in politics he dallied with Madame la Revolution.
+
+A polite note from the Master of the College, suggesting that he talk less
+and follow the curriculum a little more closely, led him straight to the
+Master, with whom he proposed to argue the case, or publicly debate it.
+This was terrible!
+
+Stephen Crane at Syracuse University, a hundred years later, did just such
+a thing. He sought to argue a point in the classroom with Chancellor
+Symms.
+
+"Tut, tut!" said the Chancellor. "Have you forgotten what Saint Paul says
+on that very theme?"
+
+"Yes, I know," replied the best catcher ever on the Syracuse Nine; "yes, I
+know what Saint Paul says, but I differ with Saint Paul." And Stevie,
+unconsciously, was standing on the well-lubricated chute that landed him,
+soon, well outside the campus.
+
+The authorities did not admire the brilliant young Coleridge, full of his
+reasons and prolix abstractions. He was attracting too much attention to
+himself, and gradually gathering about him a throng of admirers who might
+disturb the balance of things. He was there anyway only through
+sufferance, and an intimation was given him that if he were not willing to
+accept things as they existed, and as they were taught, he had better go
+elsewhere.
+
+Piqued by his treatment and feeling he had been misunderstood and wronged,
+he suddenly disappeared.
+
+Some months afterwards, an acquaintance found him in a company of
+dragoons, duly enlisted in His Majesty's service, under an assumed name.
+
+The authorities at Jesus College were notified, and knowing that such a
+youth was out of place serving as a soldier, and feeling further a small
+pang of regret possibly for having driven him away, a plan was set on foot
+to secure his discharge. This was soon brought about, and doubtless much
+to Coleridge's relief. Erelong he found himself back at Cambridge--a
+little subdued, and a trifle more discreet, for his rough contact with the
+workaday world.
+
+A journey to Oxford, to visit an old friend, proved a pivotal point in his
+life. The fame of Coleridge as a poet had gone abroad, and the literary
+fledglings at Oxford sought to do the visitor honor in the proper way.
+Among others whom he met on this visit were Robert Southey and Robert
+Lovell, both poets of considerable local fame.
+
+Lovell had been married but a few months before to a young woman by the
+name of Fricker. Southey was engaged to a sister of the bride, and there
+was still a third sister fancy-free. The three poets became fast friends.
+They were all radicals, full of ambition to make a name for themselves,
+and all intent on elevating society out of the ruts into which it had
+fallen. All had suffered contumely on account of advanced ideas; and all
+were out of conceit with the existing order.
+
+They discussed the matter at length, and decided to set the world an
+example, by founding an ideal colony and showing how to make the most of
+life.
+
+Coleridge had long been interested in America, and from an
+acquaintanceship with sundry soldiers who had helped fight the battles of
+George the Third in the New World, he had gathered a rather romantic idea
+of the country. The stories of returned sailors and soldiers, told to
+civilians, are seldom exactly authentic. And Coleridge the poet, bubbling
+with the effervescence of youth, argued that a home on the banks of the
+Susquehanna, with love and books and comradeship, was the ideal condition.
+
+The matter was broached to the three sisters Fricker, and they of course
+responded--what woman worthy of the name of woman would not? And so the
+arrangements were fast being made, and as a necessary feature the three
+poets were duly and legally married to the three sisters, and Eden was to
+be peopled with the best.
+
+A date was arranged for sailing, but some trifling matter of finance
+delayed the exodus--in fact, certain expected loans were not forthcoming.
+Coleridge put in the time lecturing and preaching from Unitarian pulpits.
+He also tried his hand as editor, but the publication scheme failed to
+bring the shekels that were to buy emancipation. The innate contrariness
+of things seemed to be blocking all his plans.
+
+Meanwhile we find Lovell drifting off into commercialism. That is to say,
+Barabbas-like, he had turned publisher. Gadzooks! What would you have a
+man with a wife and baby do? Live on moonshine--well, well, well!
+
+Death claimed poor Lovell before he could make a success either of
+commerce or of art.
+
+Coleridge moved up to the Lake District, and at Keswick, near where the
+water comes down at Lodore--or did before the stream dried up--he rented
+rooms of a kind friend by the name of Johnson, who owned Greta Hall.
+Southey was writing articles for London papers. He received a guinea a
+column, and when he wrote a poem, as he did every little while, he sent it
+to a publisher who returned him a little good cash.
+
+Southey's wife went up to Keswick on a visit to see her sister, Mrs.
+Coleridge. Southey followed up to Keswick, and rather liked the situation.
+The Southeys and the Coleridges all lived together as one happy family.
+
+Southey was writing poetry and getting paid for it; and beside this had a
+small income. Coleridge allowed Southey to buy the supplies, and when he
+went away on tramp lecturing tours he felt perfectly safe in leaving his
+family with Southey.
+
+While up that way he met a young man, a native, by the name of
+Wordsworth--William Wordsworth--and a poet, too.
+
+Wordsworth had a sister named Dorothy, and this brother and sister lived
+together in a little whitewashed stone cottage, built up against the
+hillside at Grasmere, a village thirteen miles from Keswick. Coleridge
+liked these people first-rate and they liked him. He used to go down to
+visit them, and they would all sit up late listening to the splendid talk
+of the handsome Coleridge. William said he was the only great man he had
+ever met, and Dorothy agreed in the proposition.
+
+Coleridge was discouraged: the world did not care for his work, and the
+men in power had set their faces against him--or he thought they had,
+which is the same thing. There was a conspiracy, he thought, to keep him
+down; and Wordsworth should have advised him to join it, but did not.
+
+Dorothy Wordsworth was a most extraordinary woman--she was gentle, kind,
+low-voiced, sympathetic. She was not handsome, but she had the intellect
+that entitled her to a membership in the Brotherhood of Fine Minds. She
+knew the splendid excellence of Coleridge, and could follow him in his
+most abstract dissertations; and if his logic faltered she could lead him
+back to the trail.
+
+Dorothy Wordsworth admired and pitied Coleridge; and from pity to love is
+but a step.
+
+But Coleridge was not capable of a passionate love--the substance of his
+being was all absorbed in abstract thought. And yet Dorothy Wordsworth
+attracted him as no other woman ever did. He forgot his wife, Sara, up
+there at Southey's. Sara was a better-looking woman than Dorothy, but she
+lacked intellect. Her life was all bound up in housekeeping and going to
+church, and the petty little round of daily happenings to neighbors and
+friends. The world of thought and dreams to her was nothing. She loved
+her husband, but his foolish foibles vexed her, and his lack of
+application prompted her to chide him. And at such times he would turn to
+his friends at Dove Cottage for sympathy and rest.
+
+They used to tramp the hills, and discuss philosophy, and recite their
+poems the livelong day. It was on one such jaunt that out of the ghost of
+shoreless seas they sighted the "Ancient Mariner." Then Coleridge went
+ahead, completed the plot and gave the poem to the world. And once he
+said, half-boastfully, to Dorothy: "This old seafaring poem is valuable in
+that it is a tale no one will understand, but which will excite universal
+interest. Only the perfectly sane and sensible is dull."
+
+Wordsworth had read somewhat of the works of the German philosophers, and
+as he and his sister had a little money saved up they decided to go over
+and attend the lectures at the University of Goettingen for awhile.
+Coleridge had nothing in the way to prevent his going, too, save that he
+didn't have the money. However, he wanted to go and so decided to lay the
+case before the sons of Josiah Wedgwood. These young men had been
+schoolfellows of Coleridge at Cambridge, and once he had gone home with
+them and so had met their father.
+
+And right here comes a very strong temptation to say not another word
+about Coleridge, but merge this essay off into a sketch of that most
+excellent, strong and noble man, Josiah Wedgwood. Here is a man who left
+his impress indelibly on the times, and whose influence outweighed that of
+a dozen prime ministers. The potter is gone, but he lives in his art, so
+we still have the best and purest and noblest of the soul of Josiah
+Wedgwood.
+
+This man had assisted Coleridge at Cambridge, and it was to his sons
+Coleridge looked for help to realize his Susquehanna dream of Utopia. But
+the Wedgwoods knew the hazy, moonshine quality of the project and made
+excuses.
+
+Coleridge now appealed to them for assistance in a saner project, and they
+supplied him the money to go to Goettingen.
+
+His stay of fourteen months in Germany gave him a firm hold on the
+language, and a goodly glimpse into the philosophy of Kant, Leibnitz and
+Schleiermacher. When Coleridge returned to England, he went at once to see
+his interesting family. Rumor has it that Mrs. Coleridge, in addition to
+caring for her own little brood and assisting in the Southey household,
+had also been working in the Keswick lead-pencil factory for a weekly wage
+of twelve shillings. The philosopher did not much like this lowering of
+dignity, and said so mildly. This led to the truthful explanation that he
+had hardly done his duty by his family in allowing them to shift for
+themselves or be cared for by kinsmen; and therefore advice from him was
+out of place. In short, Southey intimated that while he would care for
+his sisters-in-law he drew the line at brothers-in-law. And Samuel Taylor
+Coleridge drifted up to London (being down) to see if something would not
+turn up.
+
+His first task there was to translate "Werther," but the work did not seem
+to go. Grub Street took up the brilliant talker, and for a time he gave
+parlor lectures and filled the air of thought and speculation with his
+brilliant pyrotechnics. The force of his mind was everywhere acknowledged,
+but someway he did not seem to get on. Men who have managed the finances
+of a nation often have not been able successfully to control their own;
+and more than once we have had the spectacle of one who could do the
+thinking for a world failing in the humdrum duties of a citizen and
+neighbor. Coleridge tried various things, among others a secretaryship
+that took him to Malta, but the lack of system in his habits and his
+absent-mindedness made him the prey and butt of "practical" men.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Carlyle said that no more dreary record than the lives of authors
+existed, save the Newgate Calendar, he spoke truth.
+
+That the lives of most authors is a series of misunderstandings, blunders,
+heart-burnings, tragedies, is a fact. The author is a man who diverts and
+amuses us by doing the things we would do if we had time; and if we like
+him it is only because he expresses the things we already know. His is a
+hard task, requiring intense concentration--a concentration that can only
+be continued for a short time without the absolute burning out of
+existence.
+
+To think one's best and write out ideas is an abnormal operation. The most
+artistic work is always done in a sort of fever or ecstacy, which in its
+very nature is transient. To hunt and fish and dream and to work with
+one's hands are all very natural; but to sit down and think and then
+express your thoughts by the artificial scheme of writing on paper is a
+dangerous operation. If carried to excess it shall be paid for by your
+life.
+
+Coleridge had turned night into day in his hot zeal to follow the winding,
+dancing mystery of existence to its inmost recess. At times he had
+forgotten to eat or sleep; and then to reinforce despairing nature he had
+resorted to stimulants.
+
+Digestion had become impaired, circulation faulty through lack of
+exercise, so sleeplessness followed stimulation. Then to quiet pain came
+the use of the drug that brings oblivion. And lo! thought burned up
+brighter than ever and all the dreams of youth and twenty came trooping
+back.
+
+Coleridge had made a discovery. He thought he was getting the start of God
+Almighty; but he wasn't, for men have tried that before, and are trying it
+today, and many know not yet that we are strong only as we cling close to
+the skirts of Mother Nature and follow lovingly in her ways.
+
+From his twenty-ninth year we find Coleridge a wreck in mind and body;
+shuffling, sick, disheartened, erratic, uncertain, yet occasionally
+brilliant. He tramped the streets, feared and shunned. His money was gone,
+his power of concentration had vanished. In search of bread he met an
+old-time friend, Doctor Gillman.
+
+"Gillman," said Coleridge, "I am sick and helpless--look at me!"
+
+"Why don't you come to my house and live with me?" asked the kind friend.
+
+"Gillman," said the poor man, "Gillman, I am on my way there!"
+
+So Gillman brought him to his house up at Highgate and took care of him as
+a child. And there he remained, the pride and pet of a group of brave,
+thinking men and women.
+
+He lived on for thirty years, under the kindly, skilful care of his
+friend, but all the real work of his life was done before he was thirty.
+Occasionally the old fire would flash forth, and the wit and insight of
+his youth would shine out. Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron, and others strong
+and great sought him out to hold converse with him. And so he existed, a
+sort of oracle, amiable, kind and generous--wreck of a man that
+was--protected and defended by loving friends; while up at Keswick,
+Southey cared for his wife and educated his children as though they were
+his own.
+
+"I am dying," said Coleridge to Gillman in July, Eighteen Hundred
+Thirty-four; "dying, but I should have died, like Keats, in youth and not
+have made myself a burden to you--do you forgive me?" We can guess the
+answer.
+
+The dust of Coleridge rests in Highgate Cemetery, just a step from where
+he lived all those years. He, himself, selected the place and wrote his
+epitaph. The simple monument that marks the spot was paid for by kind
+friends who remembered him and loved him and who pardoned him for all that
+he was not, in memory of what he once had been.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To a young man from the country, who makes his way up, no greater shock
+ever comes than the discovery that rich people are, for the most part,
+woefully ignorant. He has always imagined that material splendor and
+spiritual gifts go hand in hand; and now if he is wise he discovers that
+millionaires are too busy making money, and too anxious about what they
+have made, and their families are too intent on spending it, ever to
+acquire a calm, judicial mental attitude.
+
+The rich are not the leisure class, and they need education no less than
+the poor. Lord, enlighten thou our enemies, should be the prayer of every
+man who works for progress: give clearness to their mental perceptions,
+awaken in them the receptive spirit, soften their callous hearts, and
+arouse their powers of reason.
+
+Danger lies in their folly, not in their wisdom; their weakness is to be
+feared, not their strength.
+
+That the wealthy and influential class should fear change, and cling
+stubbornly to conservatism, is certainly to be expected.
+
+To convince this class that spiritual and temporal good can be improved
+upon by a more liberal policy has been a task a thousand times greater
+than the exciting of the poor to riot. It is easy to fire the
+discontented, but to arouse the rich and carry truth home to the blindly
+prejudiced is a different matter. Too often the reformer has been one who
+caused the rich to band themselves against the poor.
+
+Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a Tory who defended the existing order on the
+plea of its usefulness.
+
+He approached the vital issue from the inside, taught the conservative to
+think, and thus opened the eyes of the aristocrats without exciting their
+fears or unduly arousing their wrath.
+
+Self-preservation prompts men to move in the line of least resistance. And
+that any man should ever have put his safety in peril by questioning the
+authority of those able and ready to confiscate his property and take away
+his life is very strange. Such a person must belong to one of two types.
+He must be either a revolutionist--one who would supplant existing
+authority with his own, thus knowingly and willingly hazarding all--or he
+is an innocent, indiscreet individual, absolutely devoid of all interest
+in the main chance.
+
+Coleridge belonged to the last-mentioned type. Genius needs a keeper. Here
+was a man so absorbed in abstract thought, so intent on attaining high and
+holy truth, that he neglected his friends, neglected his family, neglected
+himself until his body refused to obey the helm. It is easy to find fault
+with such a man, but to refuse to grant an admiring recognition of his
+worth, on account of what he was not, is an error, pardonable only to the
+rude, crude and vulgar. The cultivated mind sees the good and fixes
+attention on that.
+
+Coleridge formulated no system, solved no complex problems, made no
+brilliant discoveries. But his habit of analysis enriched the world
+beyond power to compute. He taught men to think and separate truth from
+error. He was not popular, for he did not adapt himself to the many. His
+business was to teach teachers--he conducted a Normal School, and taught
+teachers how to teach. Coleridge went to the very bottom of a subject, and
+his subtle mind refused to take anything for granted. He approached every
+proposition with an unprejudiced mind. In his "Aids to Reflection," he
+says, "He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth will proceed
+by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and then end in
+loving himself better than all."
+
+The average man believes a thing first, and then searches for proof to
+bolster his opinion. Every observer must have noticed the tenuous, cobweb
+quality of reasons that are deemed sufficient to the person who thinks he
+knows, or whose interests lie in a certain direction. The limitations of
+men seem to make it necessary that pure truth should come to us through
+men who are stripped for eternity. Kant, the villager who never traveled
+more than a day's walk from his birthplace, and Coleridge, the homeless
+and houseless aristocrat, with no selfish interests in the material world,
+view things without prejudice.
+
+The method of Coleridge, from his youth, was to divide the whole into
+parts. Then he begins to eliminate, and divides down, rejecting all things
+that are not the thing, until he finds the thing. He begins all inquiries
+by supposing that nothing is known on the subject. He will not grant you
+that murder and robbery are bad--you must show why they are bad, and if
+you can not explain, he will take the subject up and divide it into heads
+for you.
+
+First, the effect on the sufferer. Second, the evil to the doer. Third,
+the danger of a bad example. Fourth, the injury to society through the
+feeling of insecurity. Fifth, the pain given to the families of both doer
+and sufferer. Next he will look for excuses for the crime and give all the
+credit he can; and then finally strike a balance and give a conclusion.
+
+One of Coleridge's best points was in calling attention to what
+constitutes proof; he saw all fallacies and discovered at a glance
+illusions in logic that had long been palmed off on the world as truth. He
+saw the gulf that lies between coincidence and sequence, and hastened the
+day when the old-time pedant with his mighty tomes and tiresome sermons
+about nothing should be no more. And so today, in the Year of Grace
+Nineteen Hundred, the man who writes must have something to say, and he
+who speaks must have a message. "Coleridge," says Principal Shairp, "was
+the originator and creator of the higher criticism." The race has gained
+ground, made head upon the whole; and thanks to the thinkers gone, there
+are thinkers now in every community who weigh, sift, try and decide. No
+statement made by an interested party can go unchallenged. "How do you
+know?" and "Why?" we ask.
+
+That is good which serves--man is the important item, this earth is the
+place, and the time is now. So all good men and women and all churches are
+endeavoring to make earth heaven; and all agree that to live, now and
+here, the best you can, is the fittest preparation for a life to come.
+
+We no longer accept the doctrine that our natures are rooted in infamy,
+and that the desires of the flesh are cunning traps set by Satan, with
+God's permission, to undo us. We believe that no one can harm us but
+ourselves, that sin is misdirected energy, that there is no devil but
+fear, and that the universe is planned for good. On every side we find
+beauty and excellence held in the balance of things. We know that work is
+needful, that winter is as necessary as summer, that night is as useful as
+day, that death is a manifestation of life, and just as good. We believe
+in the Now and Here. We believe in a power that is in ourselves that makes
+for righteousness.
+
+These things have not been taught us by a superior class who have governed
+us for a consideration, and to whom we have paid taxes and tithes--we have
+simply thought things out for ourselves, and in spite of them. We have
+listened to Coleridge, and others, who said: "You should use your reason
+and separate the good from the bad, the false from the true, the useless
+from the useful. Be yourself and think for yourself; and while your
+conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the
+opinions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping
+you in ignorance. You grow through the exercise of your faculties, and if
+you do not reason now you never will advance. We are all sons of God, and
+it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Claim your heritage!"
+
+
+
+
+BENJAMIN DISRAELI
+
+    The stimulus subsided. The paroxysms ended in prostration. Some
+    took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated
+    between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury
+    bench, the Ministers reminded me of those marine landscapes not
+    unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of
+    exhausted volcanoes; not a flame flickers on a single pallid
+    crest; but the situation is still dangerous: there are occasional
+    earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumblings of the sea.
+                                               --_Speech at Manchester_
+
+[Illustration: BENJAMIN DISRAELI]
+
+
+Since Disraeli was born a Jew, he was received into the Jewish Church with
+Jewish rites. But Judaism, standing in the way of his ambition, and his
+parents' ambition for him, the religion of his fathers was renounced and
+he became, in name, a Christian. Yet to the last his heart was with his
+people, and the glory of his race was his secret pride.
+
+The fine irony of affiliating with a people who worship a Jew as their
+Savior, but who have legislated against, and despised the Jew--this
+attracted Disraeli. With them he bowed the knee in an adoration they did
+not feel, and while his lips said the litany, his heart repeated Ben
+Ezra's prayer. In temperament he belonged with the double-dealing East. He
+intuitively knew the law of jiu jitsu, best exemplified by the Japanese,
+and won often by yielding. He was bold, but not too bold.
+
+Israel Zangwill, shrewdest, keenest and kindliest of Jews--with the
+tragedy of his race pictured on his furrowed face, a face like an ancient
+weather-worn statue on whose countenance grief has petrified--has summed
+up the character of Disraeli as no other man ever has or can. I will not
+rob the reader by quoting from "The Primrose Sphinx"--that gem of letters
+must ever stand together without subtraction of a word. It belongs to the
+realm of the lapidary, and its facets can not be transferred. Yet when Mr.
+Zangwill refers to the Mephistophelian curl of Lord Beaconsfield's lip,
+the word is used advisedly. No character in history so stands for the
+legendary Mephisto as does this man. The Satan of the Book of Job, jaunty,
+daring, joking with his Maker, is the Mephisto of Goethe and all the other
+playwriters who, have used the character. Mephisto is so much above the
+ordinary man in sense of humor--which is merely the right estimate of
+values--so sweeping in intellect, that Milton pictures him as a
+dispossessed god, the only rival of Deity.
+
+Disraeli, not satisfied with playing the part of Mephisto and tempting men
+to their ruin, but thirsting for a wider experience, turns Faustus himself
+and sells his soul for a price. He knows that everything in life is
+sold--nothing is given gratis--we pay for knowledge with tears; for love
+with pain; for life with death. He haggles and barters with Fate, and pays
+the penalty because he must.
+
+He alternately affronts and cajoles his enemies; takes all that the world
+has to give; knows every pleasure; wins every prize; makes love to the
+daughters of men (without loving them); and winning the one he selects,
+secretly thanks Jehovah, God of his fathers, that he leaves no
+offspring--because the woman fit for his mate and equal to mothering his
+children does not exist.
+
+The sublimity of his egotism stands unrivaled. It is so great that it is
+admirable. We lift our hats to this man. Napoleon gained the field without
+prejudice; but this man enters the list with hate and prejudice arrayed
+against him. He plays the pawns of chance with literature, religion,
+politics, and moves the queen so as to checkmate all adversaries. He
+flouts love, but to show the world that he yet knows the ideal, he
+occasionally pictures truth and trusting affection in his speeches and
+books. This entire game of life is to him only a diversion.
+
+They may jeer him down in the House of Commons, but his patience is
+unruffled. He says, "Very well, I will wait." Now and again he smiles that
+wondrous, contagious smile, showing his white teeth and the depth of his
+dark, burning eyes.
+
+He knows his power. He revels in the wit he never expresses; he glories in
+this bright blade of the intellect that is never fully unsheathed.
+
+They think he is interested in English politics--pish! Only world problems
+really interest him, and those that lie behind mean as much to him as
+those that are to come. He is one with eternity, and the vanquished glory
+of Rome, the marble beauty of Athens, the Assyrian Sphinx, the flight from
+Egypt under the leadership of one who had killed his man--yet had talked
+with God face to face--these and the dim uncertainty of the unseen, are
+the things that interest him. He is a dreamer of the Ghetto.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no taint of mixed blood in the veins of Benjamin Disraeli. He
+traced his ancestry in a record that looks like a chapter from the Book of
+Numbers. His forebears had known every persecution, every contumely,
+slight and disgrace. Driven from Spain by the Inquisition, barely escaping
+with life, when Jewish blood actually fertilized the fields about Granada,
+his direct ancestor became one of the builders of Venice. The Jews
+practically controlled the trade of the world in the sun-kissed days of
+prosperity, when Venice produced the books and the art of Christendom.
+
+To trace an ancestry back to those who enthroned Venice on her hundred
+isles was surely something of which to be proud; and into the blood of
+Benjamin Disraeli went a dash of the gleam and glory and glamour of
+Venice--the Venice of the Doges.
+
+This man's grandfather came to England with a goodly fortune, which he
+managed to increase as the years went by. He had one son, Isaac, who
+nearly broke his parents' heart in that he not only showed no aptitude for
+business, but actually wrote poems wherein commerce was held up to
+ridicule. The tendency of the artistic nature to speak with disdain of the
+"mere money-grabber," and the habit of the "money-grabber" to refer
+patronizingly to the helpless, theoretical and dreamy artist, is well
+known. Isaac Disraeli was an artist in feeling; he must have been a
+reincarnation of one of those bookmakers of Venice who touched hands with
+Titian and Giorgione and helped to invest wisely the moneys the merchants
+of the Rialto made. Never a Gratiano had a greater contempt for a merchant
+than he. Just to get him out of the way, his parents packed Isaac off to
+Europe, where he acquired several languages, and some other things, with
+that ease which the Jew always manifests. He dallied in art, pecked at
+books, and made the acquaintance of many literary men.
+
+When his father died and left him a goodly fortune, he had the sense to
+turn the entire management of the estate over to his wife, a woman with a
+thorough business instinct, while he busied himself with his books.
+
+Benjamin was the second child of these parents. He had a sister older than
+himself, and two brothers younger. Those philosophers who claim that
+spirits have their own individuality in the unseen world, and the accident
+of birth really does not constitute a kinship between brothers and
+sisters, will find here something that looks like proof. Benjamin Disraeli
+bore no resemblance in mental characteristics to his sister or brothers;
+he did, however, possess the mental virtues of both father and mother,
+multiplied by ten.
+
+When twelve years of age he exhibited that intense disposition for mastery
+which was through life his distinguishing trait. The Jew does not outrank
+the Gentile in strength, but the average Jew surely does have the faculty
+of concentration which the average Gentile does not possess. And that is
+what constitutes strength--the ability to focus the mind on one thing and
+compass it: to concentrate is power.
+
+When Ben was sent to the Unitarian school at Walthamstow, aged fifteen, it
+was his first taste of school life. Up to this time his father had been
+his tutor. Now he found himself cast into that den of wild animals--an
+English school for boys. His Jewish name and features and his dandy ways
+and attire made him the instant butt of the playground. Ben very patiently
+surveyed his tormentors, waited to pick his man, and then challenged the
+biggest boy in the school to single combat. The exasperating way in which
+he coolly went about the business set his adversary's teeth chattering
+before the call of "time." The result of the fight was that, even if
+"Dizzy" was not thoroughly respected from that day forth, no one ever
+called, "Old clo'! Old clo'!" within his hearing. Of course it was not
+generally advertised that the lad had been taking boxing lessons from
+"Coster Joe" for three years, with the villainies of a boys' school in
+view. In fact, boxing was this young man's diversion, and the Coster on
+several occasions expressed great regret that writing and politics had
+robbed the ring of one who showed promise of being the cleverest
+welter-weight of his time.
+
+The main facts in both "Vivian Gray" and "Contarini Fleming" are
+autobiographical. Like Byron, upon whom Disraeli fed, the author never
+got far away from himself.
+
+It was not long before the intense personality of young Disraeli made
+itself felt throughout the Walthamstow school. The young man smiled at the
+pedant's idolatry of facts, and seized the vital point in every lesson. He
+felt himself the superior of every one in the establishment, master
+included--and he was.
+
+Before a year he split the school into two factions--those who favored Ben
+Disraeli, and those who were opposed to him. The master cast his vote with
+the latter class, and the result was that Ben withdrew, thus saving the
+authorities the trouble of expelling him. His leave-taking was made
+melodramatic with a speech to the boys, wherein impertinent allusions were
+made concerning all schoolmasters, and the master of Walthamstow in
+particular.
+
+And thus ended the school life of Benjamin Disraeli, the year at
+Walthamstow being his first and last experience.
+
+However, Ben was not indifferent to study; he felt sure that there was a
+great career before him, and he knew that knowledge was necessary to
+success. With his father's help he laid out a course of work that kept him
+at his tasks ten hours a day. His father was a literary man of
+acknowledged worth, and mingled in the best artistic society of London.
+Into this society Benjamin was introduced, meeting all his father's
+acquaintances on an absolute equality. The young man at eighteen was
+totally unabashed in any company; he gave his opinion unasked, criticized
+his elders, flashed his wit upon the guests and was looked upon with fear,
+amusement or admiration, as the case might be.
+
+Froude says of him, "The stripling was the same person as the statesman at
+seventy, with this difference only, that the affectation which was natural
+in the boy was itself affected in the matured politician, whom it served
+well for a mask, or as a suit of impenetrable armor."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That literature is the child of parents is true. That is to say, it takes
+two to produce a book. Of course there are imitation books, sort o' wax
+figures that look like books, made through habit by those that have been
+many years upon the turf, and who work automatically; but every real,
+live, throbbing, pulsing book was written by a man with a woman at his
+elbow, or vice versa.
+
+When twenty-one years of age Benjamin Disraeli produced "Vivian Gray." The
+woman in the case was Mrs. Austen, wife of a prosperous London solicitor.
+This lady was handsome, a brilliant talker, a fine musician and an amateur
+artist of no mean ability. She was much older than Disraeli--she must have
+been in order to comprehend that the young man's frivolity was pretense,
+and his foppery affectation. A girl of his own age, whose heart-depths had
+not been sounded by experience, would have fallen in love with the foppery
+(or else despised it--which is often the same thing); but Mrs. Austen,
+mature in years, with a decade of London "seasons" behind her, having met
+every possible kind of man Europe had to offer, discovered that the world
+did not know Ben Disraeli at all. She saw that the youth did not reveal
+his true self, and that instead of courting society for its own sake he
+had a supreme contempt for it. She intuitively knew that he was seething
+in discontent, and with prophetic vision she knew that his restless power
+and his ambition would yet make him a marked figure in the world of
+letters or politics, or both.
+
+For love as a passion, or supreme sentiment, ruling one's life, Disraeli
+had no sympathy. He shunned love for fear it might bind him hand and foot.
+Love not only is blind, but love blinds its votary, and Disraeli, knowing
+this, fled for freedom when the trail grew warm. A man madly in love is
+led, subdued--imagine Mephisto captured, crying it out on his knees with
+his head in a woman's lap!
+
+But Mrs. Austen was happily married, the mother of a family, and occupied
+a position high in London society.
+
+Marriage with her was out of the question, and scandal and indiscretion
+equally so--Ben Disraeli felt safe with Mrs. Austen. With her he put off
+his domino and grew simple and confidential.
+
+And so the lady, doubtless a bit flattered--for she was a woman--set
+herself to push on the hazard of new fortunes. She encouraged him to write
+his novel of "Vivian Gray"--discussed every phase of it, read chapter
+after chapter as they were produced, and by her gentle encouragement and
+warm sympathy fired the mind of the young man to the point of production.
+
+The book is absurd in plot, and like most first books, flashy and
+overdrawn. And yet there is a deal of power in it, and the thinly veiled
+characters were speedily pointed out as living personages. Literary London
+went agog, and Mrs. Austen fanned the flame by inviting "the set" to her
+drawing-room to hear the great author read from his amusing work. The best
+feature of the book, and probably the saving feature, is that the central
+figure in the plot is Disraeli, himself, and upon his own head the author
+plays his shafts of wit and ridicule. The impertinence and impudence which
+he himself manifested were parodied, caricatured and played upon, to the
+great delight of the uninitiated rabble, who gave themselves much credit
+for having made a discovery.
+
+The man who scorns, scoffs, gibes and jeers other men, and at the same
+time is willing to drop his guard and laugh at himself, is not a bad man.
+Very, very seldom is found a man under thirty who does not take himself
+and all his wit seriously. But Disraeli, the lawyer's clerk, at twenty was
+wise and subtle beyond all men in London Town. Mrs. Austen must have been
+wise, too, for had she been like most other good women she would have
+wanted her protege admired, and have rebelled in tears at the thought of
+placing him in a position where society would serve him up for
+tittle-tattle. Small men can be laughed down, but great ones, never.
+
+A little American testimony as to the appearance of Disraeli in his
+manhood may not here be amiss. Says N.P. Willis: "He was sitting in a
+window looking on Hyde Park, the last rays of sunlight reflected from the
+gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat.
+Patent-leather pumps, a white stick with a black cord and tassel, and a
+quantity of chains about his neck and pockets, served to make him a
+conspicuous object. He has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He
+is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and strength of his
+lungs would seem to be a victim of consumption. His eye is black as
+Erebus, and has the most mocking, lying-in-wait sort of expression
+conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient
+nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a
+particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of
+triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. His hair is as
+extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black
+ringlets falls on his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, which on
+the right temple is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a
+girl. The conversation turned on Beckford. I might as well attempt to
+gather up the foam of the sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary
+language in which he clothed his description. He talked like a racehorse
+approaching the winning-post, every muscle in action."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Disraeli, like Byron, awoke one morning and found himself famous. And like
+Byron, he was yet a stripling. Pitt was Prime Minister at twenty-five.
+Genius has its example, and Disraeli worshiped alternately at the shrines
+of Byron and Pitt. The daring intellect and haughty indifference of Byron,
+and the compelling power of Pitt--he saw no reason why he should not unite
+these qualities within himself. He had been grubbing in a lawyer's office,
+and had revealed decided ability in a business way, but novel-writing in
+office-hours was not appreciated by his employer--Ben was told so, and
+this gave him an opportunity to resign. He had set his heart on a
+political career--he thirsted for power--and no doubt Mrs. Austen
+encouraged him in this. To push a man to the front, and thus win a
+vicarious triumph, has been a source of great joy to more than one
+ambitious woman. To get on in politics, Disraeli must enter the House of
+Commons. Even now, with the help of the Austens, and his father's purse, a
+pocket borough might be secured, but it was not enough--he must enter with
+eclat.
+
+A year of travel was advised--fame grows best where the man is not too
+much in evidence; there is virtue in obscurity. Disraeli decided to go
+down through Europe, traveling over the same route that Byron had taken,
+write another book that would secure him some more necessary notoriety,
+and then stand for a seat in the House of Commons. Once within the sacred
+pale, he believed his knowledge of business, his ability to express
+himself as a writer or speaker, and the magic of his presence would make
+the rest easy.
+
+There was no dumb luck in the matter--neither father nor son believed in
+chance; they fixed their faith on cause and effect.
+
+And so Ben went abroad before London society grew aweary of him.
+
+His stay was purposely prolonged; and news of his progress from time to
+time filled the public prints. He carried letters of introduction to every
+one and moved in a sort of sublime pageant as he traveled.
+
+When he returned, wearing the costume of the East, he was greeted by
+society as a prince. His novel, "Contarini Fleming," was published with
+great acclaim, and interest in "Vivian Gray" was revived by a special
+edition deluxe. "Contarini" was compared to "Childe Harold," and pictures
+of Disraeli, with hair curling to his shoulders, were displayed in
+shop-windows by the side of pictures of Byron.
+
+Disraeli was the lion of the drawing-rooms. When it was known he was to be
+in a certain place crowds gathered to get a glimpse of his handsome face,
+and to listen to his wit.
+
+He introduced several of his Eastern accomplishments, one of which was the
+hookah. "Beware of tobacco, my boy," said an old colonel to him one day;
+"women do not like it; it has ruined more charming liaisons than anything
+else I know!"
+
+"Then you must consider smoking a highly moral accomplishment," was the
+reply. The colonel had wrongly guessed the object of Disraeli's ambition.
+
+He became acquainted with Tom Moore, Count d'Orsay, and Lady Morgan; Lady
+Blessington welcomed him at Kensington; Bulwer-Lytton introduced him to
+Mrs. Wyndham Lewis--wife of the member from Maidstone--aged forty; and he
+was, say, twenty-five. They tried conclusions in repartee, sparred for
+points, and amused the company by hot arguments and wordy pyrotechnics.
+When they found themselves alone in the conservatory, after a little
+stroll, they shook hands, and the gentleman said, "What fools these
+mortals be!" "True," replied the lady; "true, and you and I are mortals."
+And so Disraeli found another woman who correctly gauged him. They liked
+each other first-rate. At last a vacant borough was found and arrangements
+made for the young man to stand as a candidate for the House of Commons.
+The campaign was entered upon with great vigor. Disraeli quite outdid
+himself in speech-making and waistcoats. The election took place--and he
+was defeated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With Disraeli defeat meant merely a transient episode, not a conclusion.
+On the second venture he was elected, and one sunshiny day found himself
+duly sworn in as a member of the House of Commons, with a seat just back
+of Peel's.
+
+There is a tradition in Parliament, adopted also in the United States
+Senate, that silence is quite becoming to a member during his first
+session. Disraeli had a motto to the effect that it is better to be
+impudent than servile, and in order to teach Parliament that in the
+presence of personality all rules are waived, he very shortly indulged him
+in an exceeding spread-eagle speech. But he had not spoken five minutes
+before the members began to laugh. Catcalls, hisses and mad tumult
+reigned. The young man in the flaming waistcoat let loose all his
+oratorical artillery, and the result was bravos and left-handed applause
+that smothered his batteries. Again and again he tried to proceed, but his
+voice was lost in the Clover-Club fusillade. The Chair was powerless. At
+last the speaker saw an opening and roared above the din, "I will now sit
+down, but you shall yet listen to me!"
+
+Opinions were divided as to whether the House had squelched the
+Israelitish fop, or whether the fop had tantalized the House into
+unseemliness. The young man needed snubbing, no doubt, but the lesson had
+been given so brutally that sympathy was with the snubbed. The original
+intent was to abash him, so he would break down; but this not succeeding,
+he had simply been clubbed into silence.
+
+Then when Disraeli refused to accept condolences--merely waiving the whole
+affair--and a few days after arose to make some trivial motion, just as
+though nothing had happened, he made friends.
+
+Any man who shows himself to be strong has friends--people wish to attach
+themselves to such a one. Disraeli showed himself strong in that he held
+no resentment, and indulged in no recrimination on account of the
+treatment he had received. A weak man would have done one of these things:
+resigned his seat, demanded an apology from the House, or refused to let
+his voice again be heard. Disraeli did neither--he continued to speak on
+various occasions, and expressed himself so courteously, so modestly, so
+becomingly, that the members listened in awe and curiosity. Then soon it
+was discovered that beneath the mild and gentle ripple of his speech ran a
+deep current of earnest truth, tinged with subtle wit. When he spoke, the
+loungers came in from the cloakrooms, fearing to miss something that was
+worth while.
+
+The House of Commons experience taught Disraeli one great truth, and that
+was this: the most effective oratory is not bombastic. Among educated
+people (or illiterate) the quiet, deliberate and subdued manner is best.
+Reserve is a very necessary element in effective speaking. It is
+soul-weight that counts, not mere words, words, words. The extreme
+deliberation and compelling quality of quiet self-possession in Disraeli's
+style dated, according to Gladstone, from the day that Parliament tried to
+laugh him down. After that if any one wanted to hear him they had to come
+to him, and he took good care that those who did come did not go away
+empty. He never explained the evident, illustrated the obvious, nor
+expatiated on the irrelevant.
+
+However, the motto, "Impudence rather than servility," was not discarded.
+Instead of a dashing style he developed a slow, subtle, scathing quality
+that was quite lost on all, save those who gave themselves to close
+listening.
+
+And the House listened, for when Disraeli went after an antagonist he
+chose an antlered stag. If little men, fiercely effervescent and
+childishly inconsequential, attempted to reply to him or sought to engage
+him in debate, he simply answered them with silence, or that tantalizing
+smile.
+
+O'Connell and Disraeli, although unlike, had much in common and should
+have been fast friends. Surely the age and distinguished record of
+O'Connell must have commanded Disraeli's respect, but we know how they
+grappled in wordy warfare. Disraeli called the Irishman an incendiary, and
+O'Connell, who was a past master in abuse, replied in a speech wherein he
+exhausted the Billingsgate lexicon. He wound up by a reference to the
+ancestry of his opponent, and a suggestion that "this renegade Jew is
+descended from the impenitent thief, whose name was doubtless Disraeli."
+It was a home-thrust--a picture so exaggerated and overdrawn that all
+England laughed. The very extravagance of the simile should have saved the
+allusion from resentment; but it touched Disraeli in his most sensitive
+spot--his pride of birth.
+
+He straightway challenged his traducer. O'Connell had killed a man in a
+duel years before, and then vowed he would never again engage in mortal
+combat.
+
+Disraeli intimated that he would fight O'Connell's son, Morgan, if
+preferred, a man of his own age.
+
+Morgan replied that his father insulted so many men he could not set the
+precedent of fighting them all, or standing sponsor for an indiscreet
+parent. But with genuine Irish spirit he suggested that if the son of
+Abraham was intent on fight and could not be persuaded to be sensible,
+why, the matter could probably be arranged.
+
+Happily, about this time, police officers invaded the apartments of
+Disraeli and arrested him on a bench-warrant. He was bound over, to his
+great relief, in the sum of five hundred pounds to keep the peace.
+
+O'Connell never took the matter very seriously, and referred soon after in
+a speech to "my excellent, though slightly bellicose friend, child of an
+honored race."
+
+Disraeli did not take up politics to make money--the man who does that may
+win in his desires, but his career is short. Nothing but honesty really
+succeeds. Disraeli knew this, and in his record there is no taint. But the
+income of a member of the House of Commons affords no opportunity for
+display. Disraeli's books brought him in only small sums, and his father's
+moderate fortune had been sadly drawn upon. He was well past thirty, and
+was not making head, simply because he was cramped for funds. To rise in
+politics you must have an establishment; you must entertain and reach out
+and bring those you wish to influence within your scope. A third floor
+back, in an ebb-tide street, will not do. Like Agassiz, Disraeli had no
+time to make money--it was a sad plight. But this was a man of destiny,
+and to use the language of Augustine Birrell, "Wyndam Lewis at this time
+accommodatingly died." Mrs. Wyndam Lewis had been the firm friend and
+helper of Disraeli for many years, and although a small matter of fifteen
+years separated them as to ages, yet their hearts beat as one.
+
+Scarce a twelvemonth had gone before the widow and Disraeli were married.
+They disappeared from London for some months, journeying on the Continent.
+When they returned all the old scores in way of unpaid bills against
+Disraeli were paid, and he was master of an establishment.
+
+Disraeli was thirty-five, his wife was fifty, but it was a happy mating.
+They thought alike, and their ambitions were the same. Disraeli treated
+his wife with all the courtly grace and deference in which he was an
+adept, and her princely fortune was absolutely his. "There was much cause
+for gratitude on both sides," said O'Connell. And there is no doubt that
+Disraeli's wife proved the firmest friend he ever had. For many years she
+was his sole confidante and best adviser. She attended him everywhere and
+relieved him of many burdens. That true incident of her fingers being
+crushed by the careless slamming of the carriage-door, and her hiding the
+bleeding members in her muff, and attending her husband to the House of
+Commons, where he was to speak, refusing to disturb him by her pain--this
+symbols the moral quality of the woman. She was the fit mate of a great
+man, and it is pleasant to know that she was honored and appreciated.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To tell the story of Disraeli's thirty years in Parliament would be to
+write the political history of the time. He was in the front of every
+fight; he expressed himself on every subject; he crossed swords with the
+strongest men of his age. That he had no great and overpowering
+convictions on any subject is fully admitted now, even by his most ardent
+admirers--it was always a question of policy; that is to say, he was a
+politician. He gave a point here and there when he had to, and when he
+did, always managed to do it gracefully. When he ambled over from one
+party to another he affected a fine wrath and gave excellent reasons.
+
+Three times he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and twice was he Prime
+Minister, and for a time actual Dictator. But he took good care not to
+exercise his power too severely. When his word was supreme, the safety of
+the nation lay, as it always does, in a strong opposition.
+
+In one notable instance was Disraeli wrong in his prophecies--he declared
+again and again that Free Trade meant commercial bankruptcy. Yet Free
+Trade came about, and the fires were started in ten thousand factories,
+and such prosperity came to England as she had never known before.
+
+Political economy as a science was a constant butt for his wit, and in
+physical science he was dense to a point where his ignorance calls for
+pity. He believed in the literal Mosaic account of creation, and said in
+his paradoxical way on one occasion, that in belief he was not only a
+Christian, but a Jew. And this in spite of his most famous mot: "All
+sensible men are of one religion."
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+"Sensible men never tell."
+
+Had Disraeli been truly sensible he would not have attempted to hold
+Charles Darwin up to ridicule, by declaring in a speech at Oxford that "it
+is a choice between apes and angels." He had neither the ability,
+patience, nor inclination to read the "Origin of Species," and yet was so
+absurd as to answer it.
+
+In his novels of "Coningsby," "Sybil" and "Tancred," he argues with great
+skill and adroit sophistry that a landed aristocracy is necessary to a
+progressive civilization. "The common people need an example of refinement
+in way of manners, art and intellect. Some one must take the lead, and
+reveal the possibility of life in leisurely and luxurious living." And
+this example of beauty, gentleness and excellence was to come from the
+landed gentry of England--ye gods! Was it possible that this man believed
+in the necessity of the gentry as a virtuous example? Or did he merely
+view the fact that the aristocracy were there in actual possession, and as
+they could not be evicted, why then the next best thing was to cajole,
+flatter and discreetly advise them? Who shall say what this man believed!
+
+Sensible men never tell.
+
+But this we know, this man had no vice but ambition. He conformed pretty
+closely to England's ideals, and his thirst for power never caused him to
+take the chances of a Waterloo. His novels show a close acquaintanceship
+with the ways of society, and he knew the human heart as few men ever do.
+The degradation of the average toiler in Great Britain, the infamy of the
+policy extended toward Ireland, and the cruelty of imperialism--all these
+he knew, for his books reveal it; but he was powerless as a leader to stem
+the current of tendency. He acquiesced where he deemed action futile.
+
+"Lothair" is his best novel, for in it he gets furthest away from himself.
+It reveals a cleverness that is admirable, and this same brilliancy and
+shifty play of intellect are found in "Endymion," written in his
+seventy-fifth year. Whether these novels can ever take their place among
+the books that endure is a question that is growing more easy to answer
+each succeeding year. They owed their popularity more to their flippant
+cleverness than to their insight, and their vogue was due, to a great
+extent, to the veiled personalities that interline their pages.
+
+That Disraeli did not carry out all the plans and reforms he attempted,
+need not be set down to his discredit. It is fortunate he did not succeed
+better than he did. He, however, safely piloted the great ship in the
+direction the passengers desired to go; and his own personal ambition was
+reached when he, a Jew at heart--member of a despised race--had made
+himself master of the fleets, armies and treasury of the proudest nation
+the world has ever known.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bound into the life of Disraeli is a peculiar incident in the romantic
+friendship that existed between him and Mrs. Willyums of Torquay,
+Cornwall. About the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, Disraeli began to
+receive letters from an unknown admirer, who expressed a great desire for
+an interview on "a most important business." All public men, especially if
+they have the brilliant mental qualities of Disraeli, receive such
+letters. The sensitive neurotic female who is ill-appreciated in her own
+home and whose soul yearns for a "higher companionship" is numerous.
+Disraeli's secretary used to take care of such letters with a gentle
+explanation that the Chief was out of town, but upon his return, etc.,
+etc., and that was the last of it. But this Torquay correspondent was
+insistent, and finally a letter came from her saying she had come to
+London on purpose to meet her lord and master, and she would await him at
+a seat just east of the fountain in Crystal Palace at a certain hour.
+Disraeli read the missive with impatience--the idea of his meeting an
+unknown woman in this fishmonger manner at a hurdy-gurdy show! He tossed
+the letter into the fire. The next day another letter came, expressing
+much regret that he had not kept the appointment, but saying she would
+await him at the same place the following day, and begging him, as the
+matter was very urgent, not to fail her.
+
+Disraeli smiled and showed the letter to his wife. She advised him to go.
+When his wife said he had better do a thing he usually did it; and so he
+ordered his carriage and went to the hurdy-gurdy show to meet the
+impressionable female of unknown age and condition at the seat just east
+of the fountain. It was a silly thing for the leading member of Parliament
+to do--to make an assignation in a public place with a fool-woman--all
+London might be laughing at him tomorrow! He was on the point of turning
+back.
+
+But he reached the fountain and there was his destiny awaiting him--a
+little woman in widow's black. She lifted her veil and showed a face
+wrinkled and old, but kindly. She was agitated--she really did not expect
+him--and the great man gave a great sigh of relief when he saw that no
+flashily dressed creature had entrapped him. Even if people stared at him
+sitting there it made no difference. In pity he shook hands with the
+little old woman, sat down beside her, calmed her agitation, spoke of
+Cornwall and the weather, and inquired what he could do for her. A
+rambling talk about nothing followed, and Disraeli was sure it was just a
+mild case of lunacy.
+
+He arose to go, and the woman gave him an envelope, saying she had written
+out her case and begged him to read the letter when he had time. The man
+was preoccupied, his mind on great affairs of state--he simply crushed the
+letter into the side-pocket of his overcoat, bade the woman a dignified
+good-morning, and turned away.
+
+It was a month before he found the letter all crumpled and soiled there
+where he had placed it. He really had forgotten where it came from. The
+envelope was opened and out dropped a Bank of England note for one
+thousand pounds. This note was to pay for certain legal advice. The advice
+wanted was of a trivial nature, and Disraeli, always conscientious in
+money matters, hastened to return the money, in person, and give the
+advice gratis.
+
+But the lady had had the interview--two of them--and this was all she
+wanted. Letters followed, and this developed into a daily correspondence,
+wherein the old lady revealed the story of her passion--a passion as
+delicate, earnest and all-devouring as ever a girl of twenty knew. Insane,
+you say? Well, ah--yes, doubtless. But then, love is illusion; perhaps
+life is illusion, a very beautiful rainbow, and why old folks should not
+be allowed to chase it, or allow sweet emotion to gurgle gleefully under
+their lee, a bit, as well as young folks, I do not know. Then, really, is
+love simply a physical manifestation and do spirits grow old? If so, where
+is our belief in the immortality of the soul?
+
+Mrs. Willyums was childless, had long been a widow, was rich, and her
+heart had been in the grave until she began to trace the record of
+Disraeli. She was a recluse: read, studied, fed on Disraeli--loved him.
+After several years of dreaming and planning she had actually bagged the
+game. She was a woman of education and ideas. Her letters were
+interesting--and Disraeli's letters to her, now published, reveal the
+history of his daily life as he never told it to another. At her death the
+bulk of Mrs. Willyum's fortune went by will to Disraeli.
+
+But Mrs. Disraeli was not jealous of this affection. Why should a woman of
+sixty be jealous of another woman the same age? They pooled their love and
+grew rich together in recounting it. Presents were going backward and
+forward all the time between Disraeli's country home and Torquay. Mrs.
+Willyums next came to live at Hughenden. There she died, and there she
+sleeps, side by side, as was her wish, with Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Privy
+Seal, Earl Beaconsfield of Beaconsfield, Viscount Hughenden of Hughenden.
+And the reason the Ex-Premier was not buried in Westminster Abbey was
+because he had promised these two women that even death should not
+separate them from him. So there under the spreading elms, in this
+out-of-the-way country place, they rest--these three, side by side, and
+the sighing breeze tells and tells again to the twittering birds in the
+branches, of this triple love, strange as fate, strong as destiny, warm as
+life, pure as snow, and unselfish as the kiss of the summer sun.
+
+
+
+
+SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF ENGLISH AUTHORS," BEING
+VOLUME FIVE OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED AND
+ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE
+GREAT, VOLUME 5 (OF 14)***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 13619.txt or 13619.zip *******
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:42:32 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-15 04:42:32 -0700
commit	36d233a6667bed3c9c7807e50b646b4db8f378aa (patch)
tree	dd23a50ceac8c6f4bb63df384fec6c9bfdf7ac99