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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/13619-0.txt b/13619-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..91e6ca9 --- /dev/null +++ b/13619-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7464 @@ +*** 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 *** diff --git a/13619-h/13619-h.htm b/13619-h/13619-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ccadad0 --- /dev/null +++ b/13619-h/13619-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7573 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14), by Elbert Hubbard</title> + <style type="text/css"> + + P { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + } + hr {text-align: center; width: 50%;} + html>body hr {margin-right: 25%; margin-left: 25%; width: 50%;} + hr.full {width: 100%;} + html>body hr.full {margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 0%; width: 100%;} + hr.short {text-align: center; width: 20%;} + html>body hr.short {margin-right: 40%; margin-left: 40%; width: 20%;} + hr.poem {text-align: center; width: 10%;} + html>body hr.poem {margin-right: 80%; margin-left: 10%; width: 10%;} + + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + img {border: none;} + .ctr {text-align: center;} + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .note {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} /* footnote */ + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 1em; font-size: smaller; float: right; clear: right;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + .poem span.i1 {display: block; margin-left: 1em;} + .poem span.i10 {display: block; margin-left: 10em;} + .poem span.i11 {display: block; margin-left: 11em;} + .poem span.i17 {display: block; margin-left: 17em;} + .poem span.i20 {display: block; margin-left: 20em;} + .poem span.i21 {display: block; margin-left: 21em;} + .poem span.i22 {display: block; margin-left: 22em;} + .poem span.i3 {display: block; margin-left: 3em;} + .poem span.i35 {display: block; margin-left: 35em;} + .poem span.i36 {display: block; margin-left: 36em;} + .poem span.i45 {display: block; margin-left: 45em;} + .poem span.i6 {display: block; margin-left: 6em;} + .poem span.i8 {display: block; margin-left: 8em;} + .poem .caesura {vertical-align: -200%;} + hr.pg { width: 100%; + height: 5px; } + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + pre {font-size: 8pt;} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<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,—<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'>—<i>From "The Earthly Paradise"</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—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—these young men being +nineteen years of age. The slender, yellow, dreamy student of theology and +the ruddy athlete became fast friends.</p> + +<p>"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?</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 "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.</p> + +<p>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 <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 +"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."</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 "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 <a name='V_Page_15'></a>placed Mallory's "Morte d' Arthur" 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 "Gertha's Lovers," "The Tale of the Hollow Land," and +various poems and essays for the <a name='V_Page_16'></a>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.</p> + +<p>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."</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—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.</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 "Blessed Virgin," 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—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 "a +company of historical artists will use their talents in home decoration."</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—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, "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 +<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 "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.</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—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—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, "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.</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—put forth by little men who congratulate +themselves on having scored a point.</p> + +<p>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?"</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—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—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.</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 "The Defense of Guinevere" 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—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.</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—this only I know, that the young man said to me, "Whereas I was +once blind, I now see."</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—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."</p> + +<p>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<a name='V_Page_29'></a> "Open Sesame," 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 "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.</p> + +<p>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, <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—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—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.</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, +"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 <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 "Canterbury Tales." 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 "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."</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 "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.</p><a name='V_Page_34'></a> + +<p>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.</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—beloved by those who knew him best—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'>—<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—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 "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 <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>"But only by adoption!" answered the gracious Lowell.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</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—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' "Life of Washington." It +is the brief of an attorney for the defense. "Little-Willie" anecdotes +appear on every page.</p> + +<p>And thus do we behold the tendency to make Browning something more than a +man—and, therefore, something less.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "Nothing like this has ever +before been written!"</p> + +<p>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 <a name='V_Page_42'></a>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."</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—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 "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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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 "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.</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, "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<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 "the perquisites," 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—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.</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—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.</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 "darkened room," +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—she had to, to +keep him out of mischief—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—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.</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 "natural selection," 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 "revivalists" +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—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, "Nearer, My +God, to Thee."</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—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—she was twenty-six. They read<a name='V_Page_50'></a> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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!</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—or else of barbarism—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—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—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, "What hast +thou done with the talent I gave thee?"</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—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.</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 "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.</p><a name='V_Page_55'></a> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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!</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—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 "Pauline," "Sordello" and +"Paracelsus"; and informed her friends that "Pippa Passes" and "Two in a +Gondola" 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: "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."</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—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—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 "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:</p> + +<p>"What name, please?"</p> + +<p>And the answer was, "John Kenyon."</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—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—"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."</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: "There is nothing to see in me. I am a +weed fit for the ground and darkness."</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—Mr. Kenyon was her cousin.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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.</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—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?</p> + +<p>Here was the finest intellect ever given to a woman—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—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?—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—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.</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>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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—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.</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—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 +"loans"; and finally came to "bless the day that his son had sense enough +to marry the best and most talented woman on earth."</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, "I want her! +I want her!" 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—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 "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.</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>"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.</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'>—<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 "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.</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 "value sense"—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 "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.</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 "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.</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—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—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—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 "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.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "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.</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 "Turner" back to "Tennyson," but was unable to bring it about.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>At Cambridge he was in the habit of reading his poetry to a little coterie +called "The Apostles," 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, "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."</p> + +<p>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."</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 "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.</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>"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.</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: "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."</p> + +<p>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 <a name='V_Page_81'></a>and +tobacco-smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most restful, +brotherly, solid-hearted man."</p> + +<p>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 <a name='V_Page_82'></a>even excuses himself from attending certain social +functions on account of his lack of suitable raiment—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—"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.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "Why, before Mamma +married Papa she had received twenty-three offers of marriage!"</p> + +<p>"Twenty-four, my dear—twenty-four," 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—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—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.</p><a name='V_Page_84'></a> + +<p>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.</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—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: "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 <a name='V_Page_86'></a>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.</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>"In Vienna's fatal walls<br /></span> +<span>God's finger touched him and he slept!"<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>"In Memoriam" is not one poem; it is made up of <a name='V_Page_89'></a>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.</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 "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 <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—that it is as natural and just as necessary.</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"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."<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'>—<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—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.</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—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—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.</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—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.</p> + +<p>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!</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, "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.<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—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 "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":</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"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."<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 +"passiveness" of woman's <a name='V_Page_100'></a>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <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—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.</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—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>"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.</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 +"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.</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—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—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—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—all endeavors to please and placate certain people—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—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."</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—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—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.</p> + +<p>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, <a name='V_Page_108'></a>every smile, every +expression—into all my work. I will live to satisfy my Other Self."</p> + +<p>Do you think it is easy? Try it for a day.</p> + +<p>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.</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. "The female," says +Burroughs, "is always pleased with a male that is pleased with himself."</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—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, "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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p><a name='V_Page_110'></a> + +<p>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.</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—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—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 "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.</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: "He promised he would come back to me, and he will. I +am waiting for him here."</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—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—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!"</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—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.</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—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—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—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.</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 "gentleman volunteers," in spite of his last +solemn words—"Don't let the Awkward Squad fire over my grave!"</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—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 "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.</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'>—<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—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.</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 "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.</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—the gravity of the situation being sustained only by a stern +effort.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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, "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."</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 "a grave and sober person, +but one not wholly ignorant of his own parts."</p> + +<p>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 name='V_Page_124'></a>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.</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—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.</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—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—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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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.</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—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 "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."</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. "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,<a name='V_Page_127'></a> 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."</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, "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.</p><a name='V_Page_128'></a> + +<hr /> + +<p>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!"</p> + +<p>Thackeray adjusted his glasses, looked at the picture carefully, sighed +and said, "What a pity he didn't have just a little good instruction!"</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—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 "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.</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 +"Il Penseroso."</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. "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.</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—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 "neglect," 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—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—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 "Les Miserables" with +suspicion, and at <a name='V_Page_134'></a>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!</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 nebulæ 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—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—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 "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.</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 "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.</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—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—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;'>—<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—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, "If I really +thought he was, I would take his," 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—"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!"</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 "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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <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 "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.</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 "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:</p> + +<p>"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,'"</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 "Adam Bede" or "The Mill on the Floss."</p> + +<p>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?</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 "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!</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—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—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."</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 "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.</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. "Look you," quoth the chief of the +Sports—"look you and observe him fall over me."</p> + +<p>And they looked.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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—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 "pretty creature"—so the admiring husband +called her—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: "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."</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 "Hodge," 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—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—"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.</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—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—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—go out into the woods, and all the +trees say, "Why so hot, my little man?"</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—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 * * * +"by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and +impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."</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 "The Gentleman's Magazine." 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 "Letty," which name, by +the way, is an improvement on Betty, Betsy or Tetsy—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—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>"Sir," said the woman, "I am an old struggler!"</p> + +<p>"Madam," replied Johnson, "so am I!" And he gave her his last sixpence.</p> + +<p>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 <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, "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.</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, "I wrote them both."</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 "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."</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 "Rasselas"<a name='V_Page_163'></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "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."</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, "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."</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: "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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Sir," said Doctor Johnson to a talkative politician, at a dinner-party, +"I perceive you are a vile Whig," 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—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 "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.</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—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.</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—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, "God bless you, my dear."</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—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—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—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 <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—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;'>—<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—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—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—or alleged good folks—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, "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.</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—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.</p> + +<p>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,<a name='V_Page_177'></a> "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."</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—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 "the +unruly member."</p> + +<p>He, of course, was not aware of it, but he was teaching his children by +antithesis.</p> + +<p>"When I meet Macaulay I always imagine I am in Holland," once said Sydney +Smith.</p> + +<p>"Why so!" asked a friend.</p> + +<p>"Because he is such a windmill," was the reply.</p> + +<p>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.</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 "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.</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 "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.</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 +"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.</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, "Macaulay!"</p> + +<p>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.</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 "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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—writing as he felt.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <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 "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.</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—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, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</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 "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.</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 "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.</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 "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!</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—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.</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 "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 <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—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—fifty +thousand dollars—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 "third term."</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 "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.</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—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—to some things.</p> + +<p>He heard the confession, and wept.</p> + +<p>Then he gave the pair his blessing—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 "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.</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 "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.</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—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.</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 "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.</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'>—<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—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 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.</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—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.</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—-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.</p> + +<p>The autopsy proved it was not a malformation, but a displacement.</p> + +<p>"Doctor, now please tell me just what is the matter with me," once asked +an anxious patient.</p> + +<p>"Tut, tut!" replied the absent-minded physician; "can't you wait? The +post-mortem will reveal all that."</p> + +<p>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.</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, "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.</p> + +<p>"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 <a name='V_Page_205'></a>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.</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—for the Ideal.</p><a name='V_Page_206'></a> + +<hr /> + +<p>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.</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—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—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—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?</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—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 "My Lord!"</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—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.</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 +"first love" 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>"Your mother is a fool," said a boy to Byron at college some years later.</p> + +<p>"I know it," 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, "I know you are suffering awfully!"</p> + +<p>"You will never hear me say so," 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—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—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—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—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>"Don't imagine I am such a fool as to love that lame boy," cried Miss +Chaworth to her maid one day.</p> + +<p>Unluckily, "the lame boy" 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, "I have +news for you; get out your handkerchief—Miss Chaworth is married."</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—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—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—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 <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—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 +"Juvenilia" 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—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—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 "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.</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 "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 <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 "Quest of the +Golden Girl."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</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—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."</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—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 "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" appeared anonymously.</p> + +<p>The edition was soon exhausted—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—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—in three volumes—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—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—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.</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, "Maid of Athens, ere we part, give, O give me +back my heart." * * *</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—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>"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."<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—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 "English Bards +and Scotch Reviewers."</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 +"English Bards" was at his service to supply him such satisfaction as he +required.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Haven't you anything else?" asked Dallas.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing but a few stanzas of Spenserian stuff," 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 "Childe Harold." 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>"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."</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—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 "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.</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—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—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.</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—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, +"How much longer are you going to follow this foolish habit of writing +verses?"</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—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—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 "Getting on in the World, or Success as +I Have Found It."</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>"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."<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>"The Last Supper" of<a name='V_Page_230'></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "England has +lost her brightest genius—Greece her best friend."</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'>—<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—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—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 <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—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.</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—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.</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—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—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!"</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, "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."</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—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—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—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—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 +<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—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—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, "I am a +friend of the Church, but I propose to do it the injury of keeping Addison +out of it."</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—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—idle, his <a name='V_Page_246'></a>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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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—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<a name='V_Page_247'></a> Lost" 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—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."</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—it may be a mere +barren ideality.</p> + +<p>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.</p><a name='V_Page_248'></a> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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 "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 <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 +"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.</p> + +<p>Cato made a great mistake in committing suicide—he did the deed right on +the eve of success—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 +"a would-be Mæcenas"; and Pope refers to him as "penurious, mean and +chicken-hearted," 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—sometimes bricks—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, "The Campaign." 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, "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.</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—they were then, and the demand is greater now than ever before. +The highest positions are hard to fill—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 "it," 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 "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."</p><a name='V_Page_254'></a> + +<hr /> + +<p>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.</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 "Easy Chair" of George William Curtis. +Curtis was once called by Lowell, with a goodly degree of justice, "our +modern Addison."</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 "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.</p><a name='V_Page_255'></a> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <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—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 "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.</p> + +<p>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 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 "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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Now, a complete silence concerning things political in the "Tatler" was +hardly possible, and a change of <a name='V_Page_258'></a>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."</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 "Spectator" duly launched with the intended +purpose of forming "a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art +and literature."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.<a name='V_Page_259'></a> The +"Spectator" 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 "Answers to Correspondents" 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 "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.</p><a name='V_Page_260'></a> + +<hr /> + +<p>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!</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 "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 <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 "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.</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'>—<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—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—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, "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.</p> + +<p>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.</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: "My son, this is <a name='V_Page_267'></a>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!"</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—proud, strong and tireless—there come to you thoughts sublime and +emotions such as Wagner knew when he wrote the "Pilgrims' Chorus."</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—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—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—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.</p> + +<p>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, <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—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: "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?"</p> + +<p>"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!"</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—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<a name='V_Page_272'></a> Rosa Bonheur booklet—why not stick to truth?"</p> + +<p>"Truth," I replied, "is hideous, and facts are like some men, stubborn +things. But what was the matter with the Bonheur Little Journey?"</p> + +<p>"You will not be angry with me?"</p> + +<p>"How could I be?"</p> + +<p>"You promise?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well, you said my cousin was a conductor on the Lake Shore—you knew +perfectly well it was the Michigan Central!"</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, "Hast hummed and fluttered about other flowers?"</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—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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I need 'finish,'" I suggested in one of the long pauses.</p> + +<p>"I was just going to suggest it," said the lady.</p> + +<p>"You say you are going to Southey's old home tomorrow—may I go, too?" I +ventured.</p> + +<p>And the answer was, "Of course—if you will promise not to work me up into +copy."</p> + +<p>I promised.</p> + +<p>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.</p><a name='V_Page_274'></a> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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—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—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 <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—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>"Oh, what a funny little church," exclaimed Myrtle; "can't we stop and go +in?"</p> + +<p>It is a curious little building—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 "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.</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, "How lovely!" 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, "the kingdoms of the earth." 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, "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.</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 "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 <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—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>"Any man can succeed with three good women to help him!" said White +Pigeon.</p> + +<p>"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 <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, "To the illustrious Poet-Laureate, Robert +Southey, LL.D." It was as if the play of "Sappho" 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—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—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—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—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?</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—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: "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."</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—we need another + to reflect our thoughts.</p></div> + +<span style='margin-left: 27em;'>—<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 "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 <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—no more.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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 "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.</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—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—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.</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, "How do +you know?"</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—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—the thirteenth—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—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 "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.</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—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—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 "rebels" who merited death.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>Middleton, afterward Bishop of Calcutta, called the <a name='V_Page_298'></a>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.</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, "verbatim et literatim."</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, +"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.</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>"Tut, tut!" said the Chancellor. "Have you forgotten what Saint Paul says +on that very theme?"</p> + +<p>"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.</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—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—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—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—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—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.</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—William Wordsworth—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—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—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—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 "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."</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 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.</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 Göttingen.</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 "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.</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—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>"Gillman," said Coleridge, "I am sick and helpless—look at me!"</p> + +<p>"Why don't you come to my house and live with me?" asked the kind friend.</p> + +<p>"Gillman," said the poor man, "Gillman, I am on my way there!"</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—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.</p> + +<p>"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.</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—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.</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—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."</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—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. "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 +<a name='V_Page_315'></a>statement made by an interested party can go unchallenged. "How do you +know?" and "Why?" we ask.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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 <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!"</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;'>—<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—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—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 +<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—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.</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—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.</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—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, "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.</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—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.</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—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 +"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 <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—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—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.</p> + +<p>The main facts in both "Vivian Gray" and "Contarini Fleming" 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—and he was.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "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."</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 "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 <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—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—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—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.</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 "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.</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: "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."</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—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.</p> + +<p>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 <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—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, "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.</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. "Beware of tobacco, my boy," said an old colonel to him one day; +"women do not like it; it has ruined more charming liaisons <a name='V_Page_333'></a>than anything +else I know!"</p> + +<p>"Then you must consider smoking a highly moral accomplishment," 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—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.</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, "I will now sit +down, but you shall yet listen to me!"</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—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.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "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.</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 "this renegade Jew is +descended from the impenitent thief, <a name='V_Page_337'></a>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.</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 "my excellent, though slightly bellicose friend, child of an +honored race."</p> + +<p>Disraeli did not take up politics to make money—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—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.</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. "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.</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—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—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: "All +sensible men are of one religion."</p> + +<p>"And what is that?"</p> + +<p>"Sensible men never tell."</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 "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.</p> + +<p>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!</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—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>"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.</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—member of a despised race—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 "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.</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—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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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—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?</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—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—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—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 "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. +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13619 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/13619-h/images/ljv5-1-th.jpg b/13619-h/images/ljv5-1-th.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..89d0385 --- /dev/null +++ b/13619-h/images/ljv5-1-th.jpg diff --git a/13619-h/images/ljv5-1.jpg b/13619-h/images/ljv5-1.jpg 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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3de9532 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #13619 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13619) diff --git a/old/13619-8.txt b/old/13619-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5f87ed5 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13619-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7857 @@ +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 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 LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE +GREAT, VOLUME 5 (OF 14)*** + + +******* This file should be named 13619-8.txt or 13619-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/6/1/13619 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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,—<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'>—<i>From "The Earthly Paradise"</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—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—these young men being +nineteen years of age. The slender, yellow, dreamy student of theology and +the ruddy athlete became fast friends.</p> + +<p>"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?</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 "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.</p> + +<p>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 <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 +"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."</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 "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 <a name='V_Page_15'></a>placed Mallory's "Morte d' Arthur" 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 "Gertha's Lovers," "The Tale of the Hollow Land," and +various poems and essays for the <a name='V_Page_16'></a>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.</p> + +<p>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."</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—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.</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 "Blessed Virgin," 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—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 "a +company of historical artists will use their talents in home decoration."</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—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, "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 +<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 "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.</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—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—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, "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.</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—put forth by little men who congratulate +themselves on having scored a point.</p> + +<p>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?"</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—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—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.</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 "The Defense of Guinevere" 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—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.</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—this only I know, that the young man said to me, "Whereas I was +once blind, I now see."</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—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."</p> + +<p>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<a name='V_Page_29'></a> "Open Sesame," 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 "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.</p> + +<p>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, <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—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—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.</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, +"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 <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 "Canterbury Tales." 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 "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."</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 "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.</p><a name='V_Page_34'></a> + +<p>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.</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—beloved by those who knew him best—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'>—<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—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 "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 <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>"But only by adoption!" answered the gracious Lowell.</p> + +<p>"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!"</p> + +<p>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.</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—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' "Life of Washington." It +is the brief of an attorney for the defense. "Little-Willie" anecdotes +appear on every page.</p> + +<p>And thus do we behold the tendency to make Browning something more than a +man—and, therefore, something less.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "Nothing like this has ever +before been written!"</p> + +<p>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 <a name='V_Page_42'></a>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."</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—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 "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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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 "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.</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, "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<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 "the perquisites," 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—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.</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—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.</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 "darkened room," +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—she had to, to +keep him out of mischief—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—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.</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 "natural selection," 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 "revivalists" +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—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, "Nearer, My +God, to Thee."</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—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—she was twenty-six. They read<a name='V_Page_50'></a> 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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!</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—or else of barbarism—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—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—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, "What hast +thou done with the talent I gave thee?"</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—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.</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 "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.</p><a name='V_Page_55'></a> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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!</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—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 "Pauline," "Sordello" and +"Paracelsus"; and informed her friends that "Pippa Passes" and "Two in a +Gondola" 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: "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."</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—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—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 "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:</p> + +<p>"What name, please?"</p> + +<p>And the answer was, "John Kenyon."</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—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—"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."</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: "There is nothing to see in me. I am a +weed fit for the ground and darkness."</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—Mr. Kenyon was her cousin.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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.</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—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?</p> + +<p>Here was the finest intellect ever given to a woman—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—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?—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—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.</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>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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—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.</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—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 +"loans"; and finally came to "bless the day that his son had sense enough +to marry the best and most talented woman on earth."</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, "I want her! +I want her!" 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—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 "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.</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>"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.</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'>—<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 "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.</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 "value sense"—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 "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.</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 "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.</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—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—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—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 "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.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "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.</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 "Turner" back to "Tennyson," but was unable to bring it about.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>At Cambridge he was in the habit of reading his poetry to a little coterie +called "The Apostles," 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, "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."</p> + +<p>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."</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 "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.</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>"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.</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: "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."</p> + +<p>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 <a name='V_Page_81'></a>and +tobacco-smoke; great now and then when he does emerge; a most restful, +brotherly, solid-hearted man."</p> + +<p>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 <a name='V_Page_82'></a>even excuses himself from attending certain social +functions on account of his lack of suitable raiment—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—"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.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "Why, before Mamma +married Papa she had received twenty-three offers of marriage!"</p> + +<p>"Twenty-four, my dear—twenty-four," 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—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—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.</p><a name='V_Page_84'></a> + +<p>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.</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—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: "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 <a name='V_Page_86'></a>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.</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>"In Vienna's fatal walls<br /></span> +<span>God's finger touched him and he slept!"<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>"In Memoriam" is not one poem; it is made up of <a name='V_Page_89'></a>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.</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 "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 <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—that it is as natural and just as necessary.</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"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."<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'>—<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—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.</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—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—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.</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—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.</p> + +<p>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!</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, "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.<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—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 "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":</p> + +<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'> +<span>"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."<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 +"passiveness" of woman's <a name='V_Page_100'></a>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <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—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.</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—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>"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.</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 +"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.</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—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—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—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—all endeavors to please and placate certain people—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—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."</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—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—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.</p> + +<p>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, <a name='V_Page_108'></a>every smile, every +expression—into all my work. I will live to satisfy my Other Self."</p> + +<p>Do you think it is easy? Try it for a day.</p> + +<p>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.</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. "The female," says +Burroughs, "is always pleased with a male that is pleased with himself."</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—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, "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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p><a name='V_Page_110'></a> + +<p>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.</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—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—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 "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.</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: "He promised he would come back to me, and he will. I +am waiting for him here."</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—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—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!"</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—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.</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—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—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—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.</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 "gentleman volunteers," in spite of his last +solemn words—"Don't let the Awkward Squad fire over my grave!"</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—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 "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.</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'>—<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—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.</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 "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.</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—the gravity of the situation being sustained only by a stern +effort.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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, "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."</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 "a grave and sober person, +but one not wholly ignorant of his own parts."</p> + +<p>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 name='V_Page_124'></a>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.</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—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.</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—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—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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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.</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—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 "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."</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. "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,<a name='V_Page_127'></a> 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."</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, "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.</p><a name='V_Page_128'></a> + +<hr /> + +<p>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!"</p> + +<p>Thackeray adjusted his glasses, looked at the picture carefully, sighed +and said, "What a pity he didn't have just a little good instruction!"</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—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 "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.</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 +"Il Penseroso."</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. "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.</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—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 "neglect," 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—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—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 "Les Miserables" with +suspicion, and at <a name='V_Page_134'></a>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!</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 nebulæ 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—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—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 "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.</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 "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.</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—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—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;'>—<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—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, "If I really +thought he was, I would take his," 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—"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!"</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 "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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <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 "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.</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 "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:</p> + +<p>"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,'"</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 "Adam Bede" or "The Mill on the Floss."</p> + +<p>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?</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 "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!</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—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—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."</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 "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.</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. "Look you," quoth the chief of the +Sports—"look you and observe him fall over me."</p> + +<p>And they looked.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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—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 "pretty creature"—so the admiring husband +called her—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: "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."</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 "Hodge," 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—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—"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.</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—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—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—go out into the woods, and all the +trees say, "Why so hot, my little man?"</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—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 * * * +"by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and +impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."</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 "The Gentleman's Magazine." 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 "Letty," which name, by +the way, is an improvement on Betty, Betsy or Tetsy—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—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>"Sir," said the woman, "I am an old struggler!"</p> + +<p>"Madam," replied Johnson, "so am I!" And he gave her his last sixpence.</p> + +<p>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 <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, "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.</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, "I wrote them both."</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 "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."</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 "Rasselas"<a name='V_Page_163'></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "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."</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, "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."</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: "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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Sir," said Doctor Johnson to a talkative politician, at a dinner-party, +"I perceive you are a vile Whig," 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—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 "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.</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—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.</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—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, "God bless you, my dear."</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—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—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—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 <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—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;'>—<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—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—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—or alleged good folks—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, "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.</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—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.</p> + +<p>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,<a name='V_Page_177'></a> "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."</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—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 "the +unruly member."</p> + +<p>He, of course, was not aware of it, but he was teaching his children by +antithesis.</p> + +<p>"When I meet Macaulay I always imagine I am in Holland," once said Sydney +Smith.</p> + +<p>"Why so!" asked a friend.</p> + +<p>"Because he is such a windmill," was the reply.</p> + +<p>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.</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 "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.</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 "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.</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 +"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.</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, "Macaulay!"</p> + +<p>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.</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 "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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—writing as he felt.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <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 "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.</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—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, 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.</p> + +<p>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.</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 "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.</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 "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.</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 "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!</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—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.</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 "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 <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—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—fifty +thousand dollars—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 "third term."</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 "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.</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—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—to some things.</p> + +<p>He heard the confession, and wept.</p> + +<p>Then he gave the pair his blessing—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 "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.</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 "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.</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—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.</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 "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.</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'>—<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—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 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.</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—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.</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—-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.</p> + +<p>The autopsy proved it was not a malformation, but a displacement.</p> + +<p>"Doctor, now please tell me just what is the matter with me," once asked +an anxious patient.</p> + +<p>"Tut, tut!" replied the absent-minded physician; "can't you wait? The +post-mortem will reveal all that."</p> + +<p>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.</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, "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.</p> + +<p>"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 <a name='V_Page_205'></a>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.</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—for the Ideal.</p><a name='V_Page_206'></a> + +<hr /> + +<p>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.</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—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—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—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?</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—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 "My Lord!"</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—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.</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 +"first love" 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>"Your mother is a fool," said a boy to Byron at college some years later.</p> + +<p>"I know it," 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, "I know you are suffering awfully!"</p> + +<p>"You will never hear me say so," 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—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—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—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—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>"Don't imagine I am such a fool as to love that lame boy," cried Miss +Chaworth to her maid one day.</p> + +<p>Unluckily, "the lame boy" 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, "I have +news for you; get out your handkerchief—Miss Chaworth is married."</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—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—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—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 <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—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 +"Juvenilia" 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—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—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 "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.</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 "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 <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 "Quest of the +Golden Girl."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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?</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—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."</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—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 "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" appeared anonymously.</p> + +<p>The edition was soon exhausted—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—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—in three volumes—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—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—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.</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, "Maid of Athens, ere we part, give, O give me +back my heart." * * *</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—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>"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."<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—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 "English Bards +and Scotch Reviewers."</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 +"English Bards" was at his service to supply him such satisfaction as he +required.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"Haven't you anything else?" asked Dallas.</p> + +<p>"Oh, nothing but a few stanzas of Spenserian stuff," 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 "Childe Harold." 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>"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."</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—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 "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.</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—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—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.</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—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, +"How much longer are you going to follow this foolish habit of writing +verses?"</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—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—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 "Getting on in the World, or Success as +I Have Found It."</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>"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."<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>"The Last Supper" of<a name='V_Page_230'></a> 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.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "England has +lost her brightest genius—Greece her best friend."</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'>—<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—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—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 <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—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.</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—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.</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—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—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!"</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, "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."</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—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—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—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—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 +<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—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—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, "I am a +friend of the Church, but I propose to do it the injury of keeping Addison +out of it."</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—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—idle, his <a name='V_Page_246'></a>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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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—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<a name='V_Page_247'></a> Lost" 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—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."</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—it may be a mere +barren ideality.</p> + +<p>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.</p><a name='V_Page_248'></a> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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 "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 <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 +"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.</p> + +<p>Cato made a great mistake in committing suicide—he did the deed right on +the eve of success—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 +"a would-be Mæcenas"; and Pope refers to him as "penurious, mean and +chicken-hearted," 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—sometimes bricks—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, "The Campaign." 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, "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.</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—they were then, and the demand is greater now than ever before. +The highest positions are hard to fill—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 "it," 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 "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."</p><a name='V_Page_254'></a> + +<hr /> + +<p>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.</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 "Easy Chair" of George William Curtis. +Curtis was once called by Lowell, with a goodly degree of justice, "our +modern Addison."</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 "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.</p><a name='V_Page_255'></a> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 <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—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 "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.</p> + +<p>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 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 "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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Now, a complete silence concerning things political in the "Tatler" was +hardly possible, and a change of <a name='V_Page_258'></a>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."</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 "Spectator" duly launched with the intended +purpose of forming "a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art +and literature."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.<a name='V_Page_259'></a> The +"Spectator" 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 "Answers to Correspondents" 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 "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.</p><a name='V_Page_260'></a> + +<hr /> + +<p>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!</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 "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 <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 "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.</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'>—<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—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—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, "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.</p> + +<p>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.</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: "My son, this is <a name='V_Page_267'></a>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!"</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—proud, strong and tireless—there come to you thoughts sublime and +emotions such as Wagner knew when he wrote the "Pilgrims' Chorus."</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—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—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—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.</p> + +<p>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, <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—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: "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?"</p> + +<p>"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!"</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—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<a name='V_Page_272'></a> Rosa Bonheur booklet—why not stick to truth?"</p> + +<p>"Truth," I replied, "is hideous, and facts are like some men, stubborn +things. But what was the matter with the Bonheur Little Journey?"</p> + +<p>"You will not be angry with me?"</p> + +<p>"How could I be?"</p> + +<p>"You promise?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Well, you said my cousin was a conductor on the Lake Shore—you knew +perfectly well it was the Michigan Central!"</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, "Hast hummed and fluttered about other flowers?"</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—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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"I need 'finish,'" I suggested in one of the long pauses.</p> + +<p>"I was just going to suggest it," said the lady.</p> + +<p>"You say you are going to Southey's old home tomorrow—may I go, too?" I +ventured.</p> + +<p>And the answer was, "Of course—if you will promise not to work me up into +copy."</p> + +<p>I promised.</p> + +<p>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.</p><a name='V_Page_274'></a> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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—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—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 <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—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>"Oh, what a funny little church," exclaimed Myrtle; "can't we stop and go +in?"</p> + +<p>It is a curious little building—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 "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.</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, "How lovely!" 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, "the kingdoms of the earth." 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, "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.</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 "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 <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—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>"Any man can succeed with three good women to help him!" said White +Pigeon.</p> + +<p>"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 <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, "To the illustrious Poet-Laureate, Robert +Southey, LL.D." It was as if the play of "Sappho" 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—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—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—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—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?</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—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: "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."</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—we need another + to reflect our thoughts.</p></div> + +<span style='margin-left: 27em;'>—<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 "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 <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—no more.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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 "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.</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—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—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.</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, "How do +you know?"</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—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—the thirteenth—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—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 "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.</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—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—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 "rebels" who merited death.</p> + +<p>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."</p> + +<p>Middleton, afterward Bishop of Calcutta, called the <a name='V_Page_298'></a>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.</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, "verbatim et literatim."</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, +"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.</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>"Tut, tut!" said the Chancellor. "Have you forgotten what Saint Paul says +on that very theme?"</p> + +<p>"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.</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—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—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—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—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—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.</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—William Wordsworth—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—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—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—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 "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."</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 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.</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 Göttingen.</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 "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.</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—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>"Gillman," said Coleridge, "I am sick and helpless—look at me!"</p> + +<p>"Why don't you come to my house and live with me?" asked the kind friend.</p> + +<p>"Gillman," said the poor man, "Gillman, I am on my way there!"</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—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.</p> + +<p>"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.</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—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.</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—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."</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—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. "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 +<a name='V_Page_315'></a>statement made by an interested party can go unchallenged. "How do you +know?" and "Why?" we ask.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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 <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!"</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;'>—<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—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—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 +<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—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.</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—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.</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—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, "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.</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—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.</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—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 +"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 <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—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—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.</p> + +<p>The main facts in both "Vivian Gray" and "Contarini Fleming" 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—and he was.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "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."</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 "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 <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—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—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—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.</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 "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.</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: "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."</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—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.</p> + +<p>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 <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—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, "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.</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. "Beware of tobacco, my boy," said an old colonel to him one day; +"women do not like it; it has ruined more charming liaisons <a name='V_Page_333'></a>than anything +else I know!"</p> + +<p>"Then you must consider smoking a highly moral accomplishment," 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—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.</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, "I will now sit +down, but you shall yet listen to me!"</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—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.</p> + +<p>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.</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, "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.</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 "this renegade Jew is +descended from the impenitent thief, <a name='V_Page_337'></a>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.</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 "my excellent, though slightly bellicose friend, child of an +honored race."</p> + +<p>Disraeli did not take up politics to make money—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—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.</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. "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.</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—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—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: "All +sensible men are of one religion."</p> + +<p>"And what is that?"</p> + +<p>"Sensible men never tell."</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 "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.</p> + +<p>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!</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—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>"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.</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—member of a despised race—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 "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.</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—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.</p> + +<p>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.</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—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—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?</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—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—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—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 "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. +<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 /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/6/1/13619">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/6/1/13619</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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index 0000000..957b191 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13619-h/images/ljv5-9.jpg diff --git a/old/13619.txt b/old/13619.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9309e06 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13619.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7857 @@ +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 + (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 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 ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/6/1/13619 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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