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diff --git a/27795.txt b/27795.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d3c4126 --- /dev/null +++ b/27795.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3540 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Apologia Diffidentis, by W. Compton Leith + +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: Apologia Diffidentis + +Author: W. Compton Leith + +Release Date: January 13, 2009 [EBook #27795] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APOLOGIA DIFFIDENTIS *** + + + + +Produced by Meredith Bach and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + [Transcriber's Note: + + Greek words in this text have been transliterated into English and are + found within { } brackets.] + + + + + Apologia Diffidentis + + + + + _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ + + Sirenica + + + + + Apologia Diffidentis + + By + W. Compton Leith + + London: John Lane, The + Bodley Head. New York: + John Lane Company + MCMXVII + + + + + _Third Edition_ + + _Printed in Great Britain + by Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh_ + + + + + To One + Whose Friendship is beyond Desert + and above Requital + + + + +Apologia Diffidentis + + "I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, + or travel been able to effront or enharden me." + + SIR THOMAS BROWNE + + +In the matter of avowals the diffident never speak if they can write. +That is why my apology for a furtive existence is here set down in +solitude instead of being told face to face. You have borne so many +years with my unresponsive and incomprehensible ways that shame at last +constrains me to this poor defence; for I must either justify myself in +your sight, or go far away where even your kindness cannot reach me. The +first alternative is hard, but the second too grievous for impaired +powers of endurance; I must therefore find what expression I may, and +tell you how my life has been beshrewed ever since, a boy of twelve, I +first incurred the obloquy of being shy. The word slips easily from the +pen though the lips refuse to frame it; for I think most men would +rather plead guilty to a vice than to this weakness. + +A doom of reticence is upon all our shy confraternity, and we seldom +make confidences even to each other. It is only at rarest intervals that +the spell is lifted, by silent sympathy, by a smile, by a tear, by I +know not what. At such times our souls are like those deep pools of the +shore, only open to the sky at lowest tides of still summer days, only +to be approached across long stretches of wet sand and slippery shelves +of rock. In their depths are delicate fronded seaweeds and shells tinted +with hues of sundawn; but to see them you must bend low over the +surface, which no lightest breath must furrow, or the vision is gone. + +Few of the busy toilers of the world will leave the firm sands to see so +little; but sometimes one weary of keen life will stray aside, and +oftener a child will come splashing across the beach to peer down with +artless curiosity and delight. Then the jealous ocean returns, and the +still clear depths are confused once more with refluent waters; soon the +waves are tossing above the quiet spot, and the child is gone home to +sleep and forget. I cannot have you with me at these still hours of +revelation; I must tell my tale as best I can with such success as +fortune may bestow. + +I shall say nothing of the miseries which embittered the life of the +diffident boy. But I cannot pass in silence the deeper trouble of +earliest manhood, when my soul first awoke to the dread that though +other clouds might drift westward and dissolve, one would impend over me +for ever. It was at the university that this vague misgiving crept upon +me like a chill mist, until the hopes and aspirations of youth were one +by one extinguished, as to a sailor putting out to sea the comfortable +harbour lights vanish in the wracks of a tempestuous winter morning. I +turned my face away from the gracious young life amidst which I moved, +like a man possessed of a dark secret to his undoing. My heart, yet +eager for the joy of living and yearning for affection, was daily +starved of its need as by a power of deliberate and feline cruelty; and +with every expansive impulse instantly restrained by this daemonic +force, I was left at last unresponsive as a maltreated child, who flings +his arms round no one, but shrinks back into his own world of solitary +fancies. + +I think there is no misery so great as that of youth surrounded by all +opportunities for wholesome fellowship, endowed with natural faculties +for enjoyment, yet repressed and thwarted at every turn by invincible +self-consciousness and mistrust: surely no lost opportunities of manhood +leave such aching voids as these. In the spring-time of life to feel day +by day the slow erosion of the power of joy is of all pains most +poignant; out of it grow anxieties, premature despairs, incongruous with +fresh cheeks and a mind not yet mature. This misery was mine for those +four years which to most men are the happiest of a whole career, but to +me at every retrospect seem so beset with gloomy shadows that could I +live my life again, I would not traverse them once more for all the gold +of Ophir. + +At first I writhed and strained in my bonds, and sometimes would make +timid advances to the generous young hearts around me. But the tension +always proved too sore; I never maintained the ground I had won, and +with a perilous fatalism more and more readily accepted what I deemed +inevitable failure. There were among them, I doubt it not now, +Samaritans who would have tended my bruised limbs; but then they all +seemed to be gliding over the black ice, too happy to stay and lift up +the fallen. And bruised though I was, I still rose time and again and +moved painfully among them, so that theirs was no culpable or merciless +neglect. + +Yet the end for me was illimitable dreariness; and like Archie in _Weir +of Hermiston_, I seemed abroad in a world from which every hope of +intimacy was banished. And as with every month the hopelessness of +resistance was made plainer and plainer, there came upon me the +recklessness of the condemned man who jests or blasphemes to hide his +ruth. Overwrought continually by forebodings of coming pain, unstrung by +strange revulsions, I would pass from burning wrath to cold despair, a +most petulant and undisciplined sufferer. Uniting in one person the +physical exuberance of youth and the melancholy of disillusioned +manhood, I was deprived of the balanced energy proper to either age, and +kept up a braggart courage with the headiest wine of literature. I could +not bear the bland homilies of the preachers, but ranged myself with the +apostles of rebellion who blew imperious trumpet blasts before the walls +of ordered life. + +Verily the violence of the blasts was sometimes such that the ramparts +should have fallen down; and often in my exaltation I already saw them +totter, as I strode along reciting the dithyrambs of men who like myself +could find scarce a responsive heart-beat in all this throbbing world. +Above all I gloried in the declamations of Queen Mab, which sanctioned +by high poetic authority the waste of my affections and my moody +defiance of life's most salutary law. With these upon my lips I roamed, +an absurd pathetic figure, amid the haunts of the Scholar Gipsy, and the +wayward upland breezes conspired with my truant moods. And while I sat +by my lamp late into the night, I turned the pages of pessimists and +cynics, for no principles are dearer to a man than those which allow him +to profess contempt for the benefits which he cannot enjoy. + +Yet by seeking amid such simples a balm for wounded pride, I did not +really deceive myself, but lived as a sophist rather than a philosopher. +And all the while I was digging graves for my better instincts, until my +sexton's mood, confining me within churchyard walls, gave me over almost +entirely to the company of mental bats and owls. The danger of it all +was that though I was yet youthful, and should have been still pliant as +a sapling, I was fostering the growth of those habits which, like rings +in the grain, are the signature of unyielding years. Naturalists say +that a bullfinch fed only on hempseed gradually loses his fair plumage +and becomes black as a raven: so my soul, nourished on thoughts of +rebellion, put off its bright and diverse enthusiasms and was clothed in +the dark garment of despair. + +When the long-desired hour of release came, and I was free to turn my +back upon the spires of my prison city, I had already plumbed an abyss +of misery. The very thought of life in the conflict of the world was +abhorrent; and if I had been of the Roman Church I should have become a +Benedictine and sought a lettered and cloistered peace. I despaired of +finding anywhere upon earth the profound quietude, the absolute +detachment, when a chance occasion seemed to crown my desire, and blind +to all warnings of disillusion, I suddenly set sail for what I then +thought might be a permanent sojourn in the East. + +Within two months' time the whole environment of my life was changed, +and I was established on a lonely plantation set high upon a range of +hills whose slopes were clothed with primeval forests verging to a +tropical sea. My home, a white-walled, red-roofed bungalow with a great +columned verandah like a temple's peristyle, lay in the issue of an +upper valley threaded by a clear stream, whence you may look far down +over rolling plains to an horizon lost in the shimmering heat of noon. +Immediately to the east rose the cone of a great solitary hill, always +outlined against the sky with a majestic isolation that lent it an +almost personal existence, and at the birth of every day bearing the orb +of the rising sun upon its wooded shoulder. Round about, in scattered +villages of thatched and mud-walled huts, dwelled brown men of ancient +pagan ways, men who neither knew progress nor set any price upon time. + +There I entered upon a wholly new existence as remote from all the +social trials which beset shyness as if it were passed in some island of +the uttermost sea. I had escaped from a harrying pursuit; I was free; +and to the bliss of this recovered liberty I abandoned myself, without +attempting to justify my flight to conscience or forming any scheme for +future years. Like a deer which has eluded the hounds, I yearned only +for rest and long oblivion of the chase; I wanted to live woodland days +until, all the strain and panic of the past forgotten, I might rise +refreshed and see a new way clear before me. + +And this first abandonment was a time of ecstasy. The long tranquil days +were crowned by nights of peace yet more desired. I lay beneath the +verandah and watched the stars in their splendour, not the pin-points of +cold light that pierce our misty western heavens, but bright orbs in +innumerable companies hovering upon the tranced earth. Night after night +I saw the incomparable vision; month after month the moon rose slowly +over the high wall of the jungle, first a great globe imminent upon the +trees, next soaring remote through the upper heavens, waning at last to +a sphere of pale unquickening light. I would lie thus for hours +motionless, with lulled mind, until the breeze forerunning the dawn, or +the quavering wail of the jackal, recalled the startled thought to the +prison bonds of self. + +With the gentle lapse of months all these impersonal influences took +dominion over me and gave me a quiet happiness never known before. The +nights brought the greater light; but the days too had their glories. I +would climb the rugged sides of the mountain, and emerging into a colder +world sit beneath an overhanging rock and see the hot air quivering +over leagues of plain; while in the nearer distance, far down beneath my +feet, the rice-fields shone like emerald and the palm-fringed pools like +shields of silver. Or I would stretch myself at early afternoon on the +close-cropped grass on the jungle-edge, and watch the opposite sky take +on an ever-deeper blue against the setting sun behind me. Often at such +times I would hear a rushing in the highest branches, and turning very +silently, see the outposts of a troop of monkeys peering down through +the gleaming foliage. Then, if I moved, neither head nor limb, others +would come, and yet others, leaping from branch to branch and plunging +down from higher to lower levels like divers cleaving a deep green sea; +until at last some slightest involuntary movement of mine would put the +whole host to flight, and greybeards, young warriors, camp followers and +mothers with their children on their backs would spring precipitate from +tree to tree, screaming and gibbering like Homer's sapless dead. Then, +when the stars rushed out and the darkness came on apace, it was sweet +to wander home along those paths so dear to primitive men in all +countries, narrow paths and sinuous, smoothed by the footfalls of +centuries, winding patiently round every obstacle and never breaking +through after the brutal manner of civilization. The fire-flies gleamed +in the brushwood on either hand, and from every side rose that +all-pervading hum of busy insects through which the tropic forest is +never still. + +Amid these surroundings, so peaceful and so new, my soul was stilled to +that {galene} or ocean-calm which the old Greek philosopher found the +highest good for man. And month by month the mere material side of life +grew of less moment; the body fretted the spirit less, but often seemed +a tissue of gossamer lightness through which it could pass at will, as +the breeze through the gleaming spider-webs upon the bushes at dawn. +There were times when the ideal of the mystic seemed well-nigh +accomplished, when my body might almost have been abandoned by the soul +for hours upon end. The words of Emerson seemed to be fulfilled: "By +being assimilated to the original soul by whom and after whom all things +subsist, the soul of man does then easily flow into all things and all +things flow into it: they mix; and he is present and sympathetic with +their structure and law." + +As I write now amid the roar of London traffic, I well believe that to +men who have never bathed in eastern moonlight, the description will +sound hyperbolical and false. But when I think of those old days, how +serene they were, how apart, I let the words stand: I am not artist +enough to give them a more plausible simplicity. All conditions that a +recluse might crave seemed now to be fulfilled for my benefit. The +virgin forests and great hills were a perpetual joy, but there was a +tranquil pleasure in the plantation which man's labour had reclaimed +from these. That was a meet place indeed for the meditation of a quiet +hour, and no more grateful refuge can be conceived than such a shady +grove at the height of noon. You must not fancy an expanse of dusty land +lined with prim rows of plants in the formal style of a nursery garden; +but, spread over the lower slopes of the valleys, spacious woods of +clean, grey-stemmed trees, with overarching branches thinned to cast a +diaphanous shade over the sea of lustrous dark leaves below. The shrubs +stood waist-high in serried, commingling ranks, their dark burnished +leaves gleaming here and there in the sifted rays that found their way +down through the vaults of foliage; the groves of Daphne had no more +perfect sheen. + +I learned to feel for this gracious place a love only second to that of +the wilder jungle; for nature thus tamed to work side by side with man +loses indeed her austerer charm, but not her calm and dignity: these she +brings with her always to be a glory to the humblest associate of her +labour. Often as I pruned a tree, or stripped its stem of suckers, I +felt the soothing, quickening influence of this partnership, and my +thoughts turned to others who had known a like satisfaction and relief; +to Obermann forgetting his melancholy in the toil of the vintage, +plucking the ripe clusters and wheeling them away as if he had never +known the malady of thought; or to Edward Fitzgerald out with the dawn +among his roses at Little Grange. + +Amid these high dreams and simple occupations, time seemed to glide away +like a brimming stream, and the only events that marked the passing of +the years were wayfarings through the country-side, sojournings in +strange, slumbrous native towns, expeditions of wider range to old white +ports of Malabar still dreaming of the forgotten heroes whose story +Camoens sang. After many such journeys the genius of this oriental land +seemed to travel with us, so familiar did every aspect of this simple +Indian life become. Our equipment was of set purpose the patriarchal +gear of native fashion; narrow carts with great lumbering wheels were +covered by matting arched upon bent saplings, and had within a depth of +clean rice-straw on which at night mattresses were spread. Beneath each +yoke went a pair of milk-white oxen with large mild eyes and pendulous +dewlaps, great beasts of a fine Homeric dignity and worthy of +Nausicaa's wain. They swung along with a leisurely rolling gait; and if +their silent feet moved too slowly, the sleepy brown-skinned driver, +crouching on the pole between them, would shame them into speed by +scornful words about their ancestry, more prompt than blows in their +effect on beasts of ancient and sacred lineage. + +We travelled at night or in the freshness of early morning, regardless +of the hours, unfretted by the tyrannous remembrances of appointed +times. Milestones passed slowly, like things drifting, which ask no +attention, and hardly perceived in the moment of their disappearance, +serve only to enrich and replenish the mind's voluptuous repose. It was +a joy to lie drowsily back upon the straw, awaiting sleep and looking +out upon the stars through the open back of the cart, while the +fire-flies darted across the feathery clusters of bamboo, and the +cradling sound of wheels and footfalls called slumber up out of the +darkness. And it was equal delight to spring from the cart at first +flush of dawn, and see some far blue hill in the east lined like a +cloud with broadening gold, until the resistless sun rose a full orb +above it, flooding the grey plains and making the leaves of the banyans +gleam with the lustre of old bronze. But though the sun was come, we +would often press on for yet three hours, through belts of +squirrel-haunted wood, beside great sheets of water with wild-duck +floating far amidst, and borders starred with yellow nenuphars, across +groves of mango and plantain trees into landscapes of tiny terraced +plots, where the vivid green rice-blades stood thick in the well-soaked +earth, and bowed brown figures diverted to their roots the thread-like +rivulet from the great brown tank above. + +Here would be a wayside shrine, a simple stuccoed portico with columns +streaked in red, enclosing the sacred emblems with their offerings of +golden marigold, and bearing upon each corner, carved in dark grey +stone, Siva's recumbent bull. Here millet fields, with hedges of blue +aloe or euphorbias like seven-branched candlesticks, announced a place +of habitation; soon the village itself appeared, a long irregular line +of white-walled houses roofed with thatch or tile, and here and there +greater dwellings with carved balconies and barred verandahs, behind +which impassive white-robed figures sat and seemed to ponder upon life. +On the right, perhaps, would be a shop all open to the road, where, +cross-legged upon a kind of dais, the merchant sat among his piled +wares, unenterprising and unsolicitous, serenely confident in the +balance-sheet of fate. On the left, in a shady corner, a barber would be +bending over a half-shaven skull. Everywhere children of every shade +from yellow to deep umber would be playing solemnly about the ways, +turning upon the passing stranger their grave, unfathomable eyes. + +Beyond the village there would be a rest-house maintained for the use of +wayfaring white men, and here we would repose through the heat of the +day, reclining with a book in rooms shaded with shutters, or with fine +mats drenched from hour to hour with cooling sprays of water. Then with +the sun's decline we would set out once more, meeting a file of +blue-robed women erect as caryatides as they came up from the well, +each bearing upon her back-thrown head a water-jar of earthen or brazen +ware, staying her burden with a shapely brown arm circled with bangles +of glass and silver. In the short hours before the darkness, we would +encounter all the types of men which go to make up Indian country +life--the red-slippered banker jogging on his pony beneath a white +umbrella, the vendor of palm-wine urging a donkey almost lost beneath +the swollen skins, barefooted ryots with silent feet and strident +tongues, crowds of boys and children driving buffaloes and cows, all +coming homeward from their labour with the evening. + +And when these had gone by, and we rolled on through the scented air of +the silent open country, we would come perhaps in the gathering darkness +to a great river lapping and murmuring through the blackened rocks above +the ford, and shining like a glorious path in the light of the rising +moon. Silently, high above the banks, there would flit through the still +air bands of flying foxes awakened for their nightly raid upon the +plantain groves; and in the shadows of the further bank there would +gleam a sudden light, or the echoes of a hailing voice would rise and +then die away. Steeped in the poetry of all these things we would cross +and emerge upon the opposite slope to begin the pilgrimage of the night +anew. So to live tranquil days and unfretful, moving in quiet through a +still land rich in old tradition--this was an experience of peace which +no dreams of imagination could surpass, a freshness of joy penetrative +as the fragrance of unplucked wayside flowers. + +Sometimes we would set out on longer journeys by land and sea, crossing +the wooded ghats and descending to some old port of historic name, +Cochin or Mangalore or Calicut, white places of old memory, sleeping by +the blue waves as if no Vasco de Gama had ever come sailing up out of +the West to disturb their enchanted slumber. The approach to these +dreamy shores was dark and tumultuous, as if nature had set an +initiation of contrasting toil before the enjoyment of that light and +peace. It followed the bed of a mountain stream, which began in a mere +pleat of the hills, tumbling often in white cascades, and enduring no +boat upon its waters until half its course was run. But here it +challenged man to essay a fall; for where it burst its way over rocky +slopes were channels jeopardous and hardly navigable, sequences of +foaming rapids, races of wild water swirling round opposing boulders, +and careering indignant of restraint between long walls of beetling +rock. Here when the sun had gone down we would embark with a crew of +lithe brown men in a boat hewn from a single tree, seamless and stoutly +fashioned to be the unharmed plaything of such rocks and boisterous +waters as these. In these rapids the river waked to consciousness of +mighty life, tossing our little craft through a riot of dancing waves, +whirling it round the base of perpendicular rocks set like adamant in +the hissing waters, sweeping it helpless as a petal down some glassy +plane stilled, as it were, into a concentrated wrath of movement. The +men sprang from side to side, from bow to stern, staving the craft with +a miraculous deftness from a projecting boulder, forcing her into a new +course, steadying her as she reeled in the shock and strain of the +conflict, while their long poles bent continually like willow wands +against her battered sides. The steersman stood silent, except when he +shouted above all the din some resonant, eruptive word of command; the +men responded by breathless invocations to their gods, relaxing no tense +sinew until the pent waters rushed out into some broad pool where the +eased stream went brimming silently, gathering new strength in the +darkness of its central deeps. + +At such places the moon would perhaps be obscured by passing clouds, and +we would land upon an eyot until she shone once more in a clear heaven. +Stretched at length upon the fine white sand waiting for her return, we +could hear the boom of waters in the distance calling us on to a renewal +of the conflict. These periods of great stillness, interposed between +tumults past and impending, had their own refinement of pleasure as far +above the joys of fenced and covenanted ease as the bivouac of the hard +campaign surpasses slumber in the fine linen of a captured city: they +brought the wandering mind into communion with elemental forces, and +seemed to hold it expectant of supernatural events. In that interlunar +twilight there reigned a solemn sense of wonder evoked here eternally, +one felt, from the ancient time, with the rustling of stirred foliage +and the voice of those far waters for its music. + +The lulled reason yielded place to reverie, and the whole rapt being +abandoned itself like an Orphic worshipper to the guidance of an unseen +mysteriarch. This acquiescence in the swift succession of calm to fury +and stress, resembled the quiet which may be conceived to follow sudden +death; the heightened sense of vicissitude in things summoned up and +sustained a solemn mood. All the while that we lay charmed and half +oppressed in this atmosphere as of an under-world, the clouds were +drawing forward on their course; and as their last fringe trailed slowly +by and the moon was revealed once more, the spell was broken in an +instant by human voices calling us to re-embark. Again we glided to the +verge of tumultuous falls, again we were flung through foaming narrows +and labyrinthine passages of torn rocks, until, the last promontory +turned with arrowy swiftness, we shot through a postern of the granite +barrier and bounded far into still water fringed with trees of +profoundest shadow. We put in to shore, for this stage of our journey +was over; the dawn was near; the carts stood waiting on the road. But +the influence of the wonderful night, clinging about us, would keep us +long silent, as if awed by the passing of ancient Vedic gods. + +I will not describe the later stages of these journeys: the coasting +voyages in restful ships that seemed built to sail Maeander; the +touchings at old wharfless ports; the visits to lone temples where +Herodotus would have loved to linger; the rambles on the slopes of +Adam's Peak; the meditations amid the ruins of Anaradhapura and +Pollanarrua, ancient homes of kings, now stripped of every glory but +that of these sonorous names--such are the records of every traveller, +and are chronicled to satiety by a hundred hasty pens. A month of +wandering within the fringe of civilization would be closed by a last +week of patriarchal travel, bringing us back to our remote valley just +as the clouds of the coming monsoon were ranging in denser ranks along +the evening sky like the tents of a beleaguering army. Hardly had we +time to settle down for the wet season, see to the stacking of +fire-logs, and be sure that every tile on the roof was firm in its +appointed place, when the embattled host seemed to break up from its +last camp, and advance upon us along the whole line that the eye +perceived. + +One year I was witness of the first onset, which came in the late +afternoon--an immediate shock of massed clouds without throwing forward +of skirmishers or any prelude of the vanguard. Our home looked down upon +a gentle incline of open grassy land to a broad belt of jungle in the +middle distance; here the undergrowth and small trees had been newly +cleared away, opening out a dim far view across an uncumbered +leaf-strewn floor into the backward gloom of the forest. I sat with my +eyes fixed upon the trees, drawing the rain on with the whole strength +of desire to the parched country lying there faint with the exhaustion +of three months of drought. While I watched, the deep line of cloud, at +first distinct from the forest-top along which it came rolling, +insensibly merged with the foliage, until every contour was lost in a +common gloom, only the great bare stems below standing pale against the +gathering darkness. There was an intense stillness everywhere like the +silence of expectation which falls upon an awestruck crowd; the very +insects had ceased their usual song. And now the ear caught a distant +sound, vague and deep, coming up out of the mid darkness, and growing to +a mighty volume as a sudden wind swept out from the sounding foliage +into the open land and searched every cranny of the house as it passed. +Then, as if drawn by the wind, there came into view among the nearest +tree-stems a moving grey line advancing with a long roar until it hid +the whole forest from sight: it was the wave of battle about to break +upon us. It came on like a wall, enormous, irresistible; one instant, +and it had devoured the intervening space; another, and we were lost in +the deluge, and the great rain drops were spilled upon the roof with the +noise of continuous thunder. As the deep sound reverberated through the +roof above me, I went in exulting to a hearth piled with blazing logs, +glad in the prospect of renewing for many weeks old and quiet habitudes +of indoor life, rich with solace of books and tranquil meditation. + + * * * * * + +I have dwelt upon the outward aspects of my life in exile, because the +sojourn of these years amid the hills and forests taught a natural +leechcraft which was to stand me in good stead in coming years, and may +stand in equal stead other souls desolate as mine. Like the Nile +brimming over the fields, a flood of joy from nature overlaid my parched +being, enriching it with a fertile loam, and shielding it from the +irritations of the world. I lay fallow beneath the still, sunlit waters, +unharrowed by teasing points of doubt, and porous to the influence of an +all-encompassing peace. Exile had opened to me a new heaven and a new +earth, whose freshness and calm charmed thought away from all vain +questionings; the fascination of outward things had for a while cooled +the useless ardour of introspection. But it was inevitable that the +bland ease of such a contemplative life should bring no enduring +satisfaction to the mind; it was not an end in itself, but a mere means +to serenity, a breathing-space useful to the recovery of a long-lost +fortitude. The time was now come when the hunted deer, refreshed in the +quiet of his inaccessible glen, was to awake to new thought of the herd, +and of the duties of a common life; when the peace of successful flight +was to appear in its true light as a momentary release, and no longer as +the ultimate goal imagined in the anguish of pursuit. + +It was during this last monsoon that doubts began to stir within, +interrupting my studies of the systems of Hindu philosophy and my +porings over sacred books. The vague insistence of these misgivings made +me surely aware that even in this eastern paradise all was not well; +but at first I refused to listen, and plunged deep into the maze of the +Vedanta to escape the importunate voice. Yet anxiety came up around me +like a heavy atmosphere; an indescribable sense of disillusion, clinging +as a damp mist, brought its mildew to the soul, until my new heaven was +overcast and my new earth dispeopled of all pleasures. Then one day the +fever struck me down, and of a sudden my mind became an arena in which +memories of earlier life chased one another unceasingly in the round of +a delirious dance. Trivial events impressed themselves on consciousness +with strange precision; objects long forgotten rose before me outlined +in fire--one, a pane of stained glass in Fairford Church, with a lost +soul peering in anguish through the red bars of hell. Each and every +apparition was of the old life; all were emissaries from the forsaken +West summoning me back to my renounced allegiance. When the fever left +me, returning reason slowly brought order amid the welter of confused +ideas, as the ants sorted the grain for distracted Psyche, and for the +first time I considered in the detachment of reminiscence the nature of +my action in leaving England. I sifted the evidence at length as I lay +under the verandah slowly recovering strength; and when at last judgment +was delivered, it took the necessary form of condemnation. + +I saw now that unless a man is prepared to discard every western usage, +to slough off his inherited cast of thought, to renounce his faith, +wholly and finally to abandon his country and his father's house, his +flight is but the blind expedient of cowardice or pride. Here and there +may be born one who can so cut himself off from the parent stem as to +endure a fruitful grafting upon an oriental stock, but I knew that I at +least was none such. I was no more prepared for so uncompromising a +renunciation than any other weakling who seeks prestige by parade of +exotic wisdom, and deems himself a seer if he can but name the Triad, or +tell the avatars of Vishnu, I had not the credulity which may justify +the honest renegade, and the western blood still ran too warmly in my +veins. I felt that were I to stay in the East for fifty years, I should +never reach the supreme heights of metaphysical abstraction whence men +really appear as specks and life as a play; therefore to remain was to +avow myself a runaway and to live henceforth despicable in my own eyes. +For over the unfathomable deep of oriental custom the torrent of our +civilization flows unblending, as in the Druid's legend the twin streams +of Dee flow clear through Bala lake, and never mingle with its waters. +Not for our use is that intricate mind which in logic needs more than +two premises to a conclusion, and in art is intolerant of all void +space, entangling its figures in labyrinths of ornament which Maya +herself might have devised to distract the sight from truth. + +The Hindu has the true dignity of contemplation, and superbly removes +himself from the sordid greeds of life. But in imagining and reviling an +abstraction called Matter, he abides in the errors of the first Greek +sages, and mines so far beneath the trodden earth that when he looks up +into middle day he sees only the stars above him. Could I have shared +the eremite's belief that his prayers help not merely his own solitary +soul but all souls travailing through all the world, I might yet have +remained where I was, an alien living indifferent to the common rule, +like a monk of some shunned exotic order. But with convictions like +mine, to do so would have brought the drear sense of derogation. All the +miseries of the past were as nothing to that; there was but one manly +course--to return and gird my loins for a new struggle with western +life. Within a month from the time when this course was seen to be a +duty, I was standing on the deck of a homeward-bound steamer, watching +the harbour lights recede into the distance. + + * * * * * + +Back once more in England, I threw aside the clinging robe of +meditation, and falling upon work ravenously, indulged what genius of +energy was still alive within me. I made haste to adore all that I had +so lately burned, making life objective, revering personal ideals, and +in the ordinance of material things finding the truest satisfaction of +all endeavour. I saw in civilization the world's sole hope; its brisk +life and abounding force took sudden hold of a fancy enervated by +dreams. Again I found a new heaven and a new earth, though earth was now +no more than man's dinted anvil, and heaven his reservoir of useful +light. I lived for action and movement; I mingled eagerly with my +fellows, and cursed the folly which had driven me to waste three years +in an intellectual swoon. Now the day was not long enough for work, +Lebanon was not sufficient to burn. I saw the western man with race-dust +on his cheeks, or throned in the power-houses of the world, moving upon +iron platforms and straight ladders in the mid throb and tumult of +encompassing engines. One false step, and he must fall a crushed and +mutilated thing. Yet unconcerned as one strolling at large, he +controlled the great wheels and plunging pistons, and brought them to a +standstill with a touch of his finger. The confidence and strenuous ease +of such life compelled me to marvel and admire, and I who had so lately +lain at the feet of eastern sages, set up this mechanician as my god. +If I looked back at all to the land of dreams, the placid figure beneath +the Tree of Enlightenment took on the aspect of a fool's idol, ignobly +self-manacled, pitiful and irksome in remembrance. + +But if once more I dreamed of finality in change I deceived myself, +forgetting that God Himself cannot unmake the past or undo what is done. +A year had hardly gone by in this new apprenticeship to life, when at +moments of weariness or overstrain sharp doubts shot through me and were +gone again, like twinges of sudden pain recalling old disease to one who +has lulled himself with dreams of cure. The feeling of fellowship with +men grew weaker, and as it waned I began to shrink once more from my +kind. I still believed myself happy, but happiness seemed to need +constant affirmation, as though it could make no way in my favour +without display of token or credential to confirm its truth. There were +pauses in the clatter and jangle of life; the revolutions of the great +wheels sometimes slowed into silence; and as these interludes grew more +frequent, I caught myself repeating that I really was content. The faint +assurance given, I flung myself with devouring industry upon my allotted +task, trying to stifle the forebodings which prophesied against my +peace. + +In one such pause my old self appeared before me again, like the face of +an ancient enemy looking in from the darkness; stealthy footfalls which +of late I had so often seemed to hear were now referred to their true +cause as we saw each other eye to eye. The old Adam had awakened and was +come for his inheritance; and the vision of him there across the pane +gazing in upon his own, seemed to arraign me for disowning a brother and +denying his indefeasible right. I recognized that with this familiar +form cold reason had returned to oust the hopes and emotions which had +usurped her office. My rush for freedom had ended, as such sallies often +do, in exhaustion, capture and despair; upon the thrill and thunder of +the charge followed the silence of the dungeon and the anguish of +stiffening wounds. The truth, so simply written that a child might have +spelled it, lay clear before me: I had left reformation till too late. I +was too old to change. + +Even a few years before, I might have dashed out, like Marmion, from the +prison-fortress; but now the opportunity was past and the portcullis was +down. My character with all its faults was formed within me; and the +very years which I had passed in the wilderness, instead of averting the +danger, had set the final seal upon my fate, for when a man has reached +a certain point in life he is intractable to the reforming hand. But +though at last I knew myself beaten, and helpless in the hands of an +implacable power, I fluttered like a wounded bird and sought wildly for +a loophole of escape. I could no longer hope to stand alone against +destiny; that conceit was gone: could I find a comrade to help me +through the press and lift me when I fell? But here the invincible pride +of shyness barred the way, forbidding alike any confession of weakness +or any appeal to man's compassion. I could not bring myself to say: I am +unable to rule my life, do you undertake it for me. Was marriage a +conceivable path of redemption? I had never envisaged it before, but +now, in my desperation, I dreamed it for a moment a possible issue. I +even fixed upon the person who should thus save me from myself, and +beguiled many lonely hours by picturing her charms and enumerating her +noble qualities. + +She lived in a country house where I had been several times a guest, and +she had one of those faces which, in Gray's beautiful expression, speak +the language of all nations. Her features had that sunny charm which +thaws mistrust; she was dowered with all graces and sweet qualities; and +you could no more have doubted the immanent nobility of her nature than +you could have dreamed a stain in the texture of a white petal. And with +all her gentleness there was present I know not what sign and promise of +strength, waking in those who saw her an intuitive trust in loyalty of +uttermost proof. She would have flamed indignant against evil, but only +evil could have moved her from that equal poise of soul which made her +entrance into a room the prelude to higher thoughts and finer feelings. +She was naturally kind without consciousness of a mission, neither +seeking to enslave nor enfranchise, but by a silent outflowing of +goodness ennobling whatever company she was in. Nor was her tongue the +prattling servant of her beauty, but a guide of cheerful converse; for +just as she charmed without device or scheme of fascination, so she +possessed the art of speaking well without seeming to have ever studied +it. In the chase after just and felicitous ideas, she could lead or +follow over the most varied fields with the intuition of the huntress +born. With all these excellences, her wit, her sincerity, her ardour for +all things bright and true, she had no conceit of herself but kept her +father's house in gladness and loved the country-side. + +To her, in these days of imminent dismay, my thoughts flew out as to a +fair protecting saint; until the inspiration of her visionary presence +wrought in my fancy with such a dramaturgic power, that I seemed to walk +daily with her, and to know all those delicate and sweet propinquities +by which liking passes into affection and affection is glorified into +love. So far did these happy day-dreams carry me, that they brought me +to the extreme of imaginary bliss, and poured out for me the wine of +untempered joy which thrills the hearts of lovers on the verge of their +betrothal. The dreams that followed that magic draught denied me no +convincing touch of circumstance, and projected upon a credible and +familiar scene the bright possibilities to which fate denied a real +existence. The scene was always the same, and the words and movements +which entranced me followed each other with almost religious exactitude +of detail which the adult demands of his day-dreams and the child of the +fairy-tale he loves. + +It was always a June afternoon when we went out together, into the +meadows near her home; she moving with fluent grace as befitted a +daughter of the woods, her eyes indrawing joy from all nature, her hair +reflecting rich gold of the sunlight, her whole face lit with the +pleasure of a bright hour; I a mere satellite attendant upon its +central star. We strolled through the four home-meadows, crossed a +high-banked lane and a dingle with a brook running down it, and then +from an open common flooded with sunlight passed into a wood of tallest +beeches. In that cool, shadowy place the sun, searching a way through +crannies in the upper verdure, chequered with patches of silver light +the even mast-strewn floor. The multitude of smooth grey stems rose +aligned like cathedral columns; and the grateful dimness of the wood, +succeeding the glare of day, wakened a sense of purposed protection and +quietude pervading all things, which soothed the mind with the illusion +that this was a sacred spot appointed for an offering of souls. Near one +of those isles of sunlight we lingered; and as she looked up to the +source of light, the movement brought her face near the slanting shaft +of rays, until there was set round it an aureole of dancing beams. It +seemed to me at this part of my dream that there came to both of us some +gracious influence, for as her eyes met mine they dropped again, and +were fixed for a moment upon the wild flowers she carried. Then my heart +began to beat and my whole being to grow greater: impassioned words, to +that hour unconceived, came rushing to my lips; the fire and glory of a +new manhood were kindling in me to the transformation of my +nature--when, in the very moment of utterance, a sheer barrier of doom +descended between me and my joy; the fire was quenched, and my soul was +poured out within me. + +To this fatal point my fancy always brought me and no further, that +coming thus to the threshold of the house of joy and hearing the bars +shoot into their sockets I might thoroughly know my ineffectual self and +leave untouched the forbidden latch. So far I came in my dream times +without number; and always on the verge of joy there came that doom, and +the shooting of those adamantine bolts. + +Yet all the while I wove it, I knew that this texture of dreams must +soon be drawn aside, and like the curtain in the tragedy reveal at last +the horror concealed within. Such brooding was but the deception of a +reluctant spirit dallying and delaying with any trifle by the way to put +off the arrival at the hill of evil prospect. At last I learned the +lesson of this abrupt ending to the dream at the point of full +disillusion; it forced itself upon me with the power of an oracular +utterance warning me to cease my palterings with fate. My reason now +rebuked me like a stern judge, dissecting all false pleas and laying +bare their weakness. What right had I, now knowing myself incurable, +even to dream of easing my own pain by darkening and despoiling a second +life? The love of solitude was now more to me than even the love of a +wife; it would surely come between us like a strange woman, and fill a +pure heart with bitterness. No smiling hopes of a possible redemption +could annul the immutable decree, and if I disobeyed the warning, guilt +as well as misery would be mine; for he is pitiful indeed who only weds +that his wife may suck the poison from his wounds. If I married I should +stand for ever condemned of an unutterable meanness. So I dispelled my +dreams and looked reality in the face. + +It was a dismal prospect that lay before me. Until then the future had +held its possible secrets, its imaginable revelations of change, which, +like the luminous suggestions in dark clouds, allured with a promise of +a brief and penetrable gloom. In my darkest hours I had lulled fear by +the thought of a haply interposing Providence, and drifted on from day +to aimless day nursing the hope of some miraculous release upon the very +steps of the scaffold. But now I was twice fallen; and as a man +abandoned by the last illusion of deliverance calls ruin to him, and in +the new leisure of despair calmly scans the features at which but now he +dared not glance, so I saw as in a hard grey light the true outlines of +my destiny. The wreathing mist, the profound soft shadows, the clouds +with their promise of mutability, were now all gone, leaving the bare +framework of a world arid and severe as a lunar landscape. + +I seemed to be sitting in the dust, as in inmost Asia a sick man may +crouch abandoned, while the caravan in which all his earthly hopes are +centred goes inexorably upon its way. The blue sky flushes to deep +purple before him; night falls; all colour is swallowed up in darkness, +until the jingling camel-bells receding up the pass cross the dividing +ridge, and for him the last silence is begun. Such then was the end of +youthful ambition: for food a mouthful of ashes instead of the very +marrow of joy; for home not the free ocean, but a stagnant pool ringed +with weeping willows, a log's fit floating-place. Here to float, marking +the weed creep onward until all from bank to bank was overfilmed, and +there remained no clear water of space for reflection of a single star: +to float, and feel the sodden fibres of life loosening in slow +decay--this was to be the last state of the seedling which had sprung up +on the mountain slopes with promise of mighty stem and overarching +branches full of sap like the cedars of the Lord. + +My life henceforth was to be ringed round and overhung with so heavy an +air that joy and fancy should never fly in it, but fall dead as the +birds above Avernus according to the ancient story. I seemed to see +nothing upon the path of the future but the stern form of Renunciation +drawing between me and the living world the impassable circle of death +in life, the _ultima linea rerum_. It was the last decree, the +irrevocable sentence, the absolute end: and I had not yet reached half +the Psalmist's span; I had not yet forgotten the lost summer mornings +when the breeze scented with lilac came blowing through the casement, +bearing with it the sound of glad voices welcoming the day. + +Philosophers are prone to gird at the animal in man, accusing it of +dragging the soul down to the mire in which it wallows. They forget that +by its brutal insistence upon physical needs it often preserves from +madness, and timely arrests him who goes like a sleep-walker upon the +verge of the abyss. Weariness and hunger are like brakes upon the car; +they stop the dire momentum of grief, and insure that if misery will +again drive us furiously, she must lash winded steeds anew. But what +force should stay a disembodied sorrow, which unbreathed by period or +alternation of despair, should be rapt onward in the whirlwind and the +hurricane, gathering eternally a fresh impetus of woe? Let us rail at +the body for its weakness if we will, but prize it also for its +restraint of the distracted mind. In the worst hour of my dejection it +was the body which called the lost reason home. I became hungry and ate, +hardly knowing what I did; I slept exhaustion away; and after many hours +awoke with clearer eyes, grateful to the weak flesh, and ready in its +company to face life once more, a defeated but not a desperate man. I +was glad to be thus reminded that the body could play this helpful part, +and my gratitude for its timely rescue taught me in after days to endure +its tyranny with a better grace. In the interlude between despair and +new effort, I once more turned a dispassionate gaze upon myself, as upon +some abandoned slave of a drug; and maintaining an attitude of +half-amused detachment, sought by a diagnosis of my case to establish +the real causes of my failure to lead a normal life. + +At the outset I would make it clear that for me the only shyness that +counts, is that which is so deeply ingrained, as to have outlasted +youth. It may, indeed, be physically related to that transient +bashfulness which haunts so many of us in our younger days only to +vanish at maturity, swift as the belated ghost at cockcrow. But unlike +this common accident of growth, it is no surface-defect, but an inward +stain which dyes the very fibres of the being. It may, indeed, be +somewhat bleached and diminished by a timely and skilful treatment, but +is become too much a part of life to be ever wholly washed away. And the +unhappy step-children of nature whose inheritance it is, seldom find a +deliverer good at need; for as the world draws no distinction between +their grave affliction and that other remediable misery of youth, it +will sanction no other treatment than banter or mockery, which does but +infuse yet more deeply the mournful dye. When this fails, it leaves its +victims to the desolation which according to its judgment they have +wilfully chosen; for the most part ignoring their existence, but often +chastising them with scorpion-stings of disdain. Yet the subjects of +this scorn, sufferers as I believe from a hereditary tendency matured by +neglect into disease, deserve a more merciful usage than this, and their +plea for extenuating circumstances should not be too impatiently +rejected. For in them what is to most men a transient ailment has thrown +down permanent roots to draw a nourishment from pain: and he who is +fortunate enough to be whole should think twice before he makes sport of +those in this distress. + +To me this malady seems to arise from an antinomy between the physical +and intellectual elements of the personality, from an unhappy marriage +of mind and body, suffering the lower of the two partners to abase the +life of the higher by the long-drawn misery of a hateful but +indissoluble union. When the physical and mental natures in a man are +happily attuned, there is a fair concord in his life and the outward +expression of his being is an unimpeded process, to which, as to the +functions of a healthy organism, no heedful thought is given. If both +natures are of the finest temper, they find utterance in a noble +amiability and ease of manner; if both are coarse in the grain, they +blend in a naive freedom always sure of itself, the freedom of Sancho +spreading himself in the duchess's boudoir. Between these two extremes +there intervene a hundred compromises by which minds and bodies less +equally yoked contrive to muffle the discordant notes of an inharmonious +wedlock. + +In most cases use gives to this politic agreement the peace and +permanence of settled habit; the body proves itself so far amenable that +it is accepted as a needful if uninspiring companion, and its plain +usefulness ends by dulling the edged criticisms of the mind. But +wherever there is a permanent incompatibility too profound for +compromise, an elemental difference keeping the personality continually +distraught, then shyness, in the sense in which I understand it, assumes +its inalienable dominion. The flame of rebellion may smoulder unobserved +while the sufferer is in his own home, but among strangers it will +blaze fiercely, as the mind protests against the misinterpretations of +its unworthy partner. This burning shame is not the proof of a foolish +conceit, as unsympathetic criticism proclaims it, but the visible misery +of a keen spirit thwarted by physical defect. The man who manifests it +is angered with himself because through a physical hindrance he has +failed to take the place which would otherwise be his. He is proud, it +may be, but not fatuous; for shyness as a rule implies a comparative +quickness and alertness of intellect: its exceeding sensibility is +exclusive of dulness; and it is frequently due to the presence in a +reluctant body of a mind endowed with active powers. + +Inasmuch as diffidence appears where the subtler formalities of life are +compulsory, it is clear that it essentially belongs to the class called +gentle, for this class alone enforces that exacting code of etiquette to +which our discomfiture is so largely due. Shyness has seldom place in +the patriarchal life where men live, "sound, without care, every man +under his own vine or his own fig-tree," nor among those who, perforce +pursuing a too laborious existence, have no leisure for superficial +refinements. Though here and there you may find a Joseph Poorgrass, it +is rare among the simple; it is not a popular weakness, and therefore +wins no popular sympathy. Such is its first social limitation: it is +almost restricted to the classes which are outwardly refined. + +But it has another limitation of equal importance which may be described +as climatic; for this malady is not found in equal degrees all over the +habitable globe. There are many lands where it hardly exists at all even +among the class which is alone liable to it; and in its serious form it +is found only over a small part of the earth. There are many causes +which conduce to this partial distribution. In one country manners are +not minutely schooled, women being held of secondary account, and men +content without subtlety; in another, life is in itself too primitive to +devise the artifices of refinement; in a third, the fundamental disunion +between the mind and the physical organism is prevented by the kindly +hand of nature. For these reasons all the savage world, all the East, +and the whole of southern Europe have little knowledge of the diffident, +and what zoologists would call the area of distribution of the species +is confined within narrow geographical limits. + +It is in fact chiefly in the north and west of our own continent that +the haunts of the diffident are to be found, for there alone are all the +conditions necessary to their maintenance fulfilled--a society +sufficiently leisured and wealthy to have elaborated conventional rules +of intercourse, the assemblage of both sexes upon an equal footing, and +a climate which exaggerates the antagonism between the quick mind and +the unresponsive body. Here the cold humid airs have produced a race +with great limbs and great appetites, but compensated these gifts by a +certain unreadiness in the delicate encounter of wits and graces. To +these impassive natures all displays of the personality are distasteful, +and the lighter social arts, seeming both insignificant and histrionic, +are learned with difficulty and practised with repugnance. An +awkwardness of address, in the uneducated almost bovine, becomes in the +cultivated a painful reserve and self-consciousness, reflecting in open +physical distress the uneasiness of the man's whole being. + +And among the northern nations which are thus afflicted England has +achieved an undesirable supremacy, having herself smoothed the path of +her eminence by a school system which withdraws her youth from female +influences during the years when the tendency to reserve may be combated +with a certain hope of success. It would ill become one who has never +recovered from the effects of such deprivation to assume on the ground +of his own narrow experience any wide dissemination of similar defects +among his countrymen; his testimony would be received with suspicion, +and he would be condemned as one who to justify himself would drag +others down to his own poor level. Let me therefore place myself on +surer ground by calling as a witness an impartial observer from another +country, one exceptionally trained in the analysis of national +temperament and conduct. + +When M. Taine visited England towards the close of the nineteenth +century one of the first things to attract his notice was the +bashfulness which he encountered in unexpected places. He was surprised +to meet travelled and cultured men who were habitually embarrassed in +society, and so reserved that you might live with them six months before +you discovered half their excellent qualities. To unveil their true +nature there was needed the steady breeze of a serious interest or the +hurricane of perilous times; the faint airs of courtliness could not +stir the heavy folds that hung before their hearts. These strong men +could not join in delicate raillery, but shrank back afraid; as if a +tortoise, startled by a shower of blossoms, should withdraw into that +thick carapace which can bear the impact of a rock. There was one who +stammered pitifully in a drawing-room, but the next day sought the +suffrages of electors with an unembarrassed and fluent eloquence, so +proving that his failure came not of folly or cowardice, but from lack +of training in a certain school of fence. He needed the open air for the +play of his broadsword; and to his hand, apt to another hilt, the foil +appeared a woman's weapon. Speaking of high aims and national ideals, he +moved in a large place oblivious of himself; but in the social arena he +tripped with timid steps, like a man essaying an unfamiliar dance. On +the platform he had the enthusiasm and confidence of an orator; on the +carpet he could not string three sentences in any courtly language. + +In the North the art of mercurial dialogue, which in the South is a +natural gift, is only learned under favourable conditions, and is often +condemned by those who have it not, as a popinjay's accomplishment. +Immediate cordiality to strangers is frowned upon as tending to divorce +courtesy from truth. It is otherwise with the southern peoples. While +the Englishman conceals his benevolence by a frigid aloofness of manner, +or blurts out friendliness like an indiscretion, the Italian is courtly +without a second thought, and the Frenchman seems the comrade of a +chance acquaintance from the moment when he has taken his hand. They are +amiable without effort in the security of a harmonious nature, and if +they encounter diffidence at all, observe it like an anthropologist +confronted with a survival of primitive times in the culture of a +civilized age. + +Taine did not err when he found the home of shyness among the Teutonic +peoples; he saw that it flourishes in climatic conditions acting hardly +upon a vigorous race, and only allowing it to cultivate ease of manner +by effort and outlay, just as they only allow it to raise under glass +the grapes and oranges which more favoured peoples can grow in the open +air. He saw too that this pain of diffidence becomes more subtle as the +progress of culture makes us more sensitive to vague impressions from +our environment, and tunes the nerves to a higher pitch. A shy nature +upon this plane of susceptibility suffers anguish from an uncontrollable +body; and even in peaceful moments the memory of the discomfitures so +inflicted may distort a man's whole view of the world around him. He is +impatient of the wit which demands a versatility in response beyond his +powers, and persuades himself into contempt of those ephemeral arts to +which his nature cannot be constrained. Irritated at the injustice which +places so high in the general scale of values accomplishments which he +cannot practise, shrinking from the suave devices of gesture and +expression which in his own case might quickly pass into antic or +grimace, he withdraws more and more from the places where such arts win +esteem to live in a private world of inner sentiment. As he leaves this +sure retreat but rarely himself, so he forbids ingress to others; and +becoming yearly a greater recluse, he confines himself more and more +within the walls of his forbidden city. The mind which may have been +fitted to expand in the free play of intellectual debate or to explore +the high peaks of idea, loses its power of flight in this cave where it +dwells with a company of sad thoughts, until at last the sacrifice is +complete and the perfect eremite is formed. + +But the virile Teutonic spirit does not suffer things to reach this +ultimate pass without stubborn resistance, and this is one reason why +shyness is often so conspicuous, seeming deliberately to court an +avoidable confusion. Over and over again it forces the recalcitrant body +back into the arena, preferring repeated humiliation to a pusillanimous +surrender. People often wonder at the recklessness with which the shy +expose themselves to disaster, forgetting that in this insistence of a +soul under discomfiture, there is evidence of a moral strength which is +its own reward. What discipline is harder than that which conscientious +diffidence imposes upon itself? To stand forth and endure, though every +instinct implores retreat, is a true assertion of the higher self for +the satisfaction of imperious duty. Such deliberate return towards +suffering is no cowardice, but a triumph over weak flesh; and the +awkward strife of diffidence may often prove a greater feat of arms than +the supple fence of self-possession. + +Like the physical obstacles, the mists, the snows and bleak winds, which +have hardened the fibre of northern men, diffidence as an obstacle to +ease has its place among the causes of strong character; and those who +appear at a first glance weak and ineffectual as Hamlet, will often in +the light of knowledge be found guided by the most inflexible moral +determination. They see, as in a mirage, peace supreme and adorable, but +may not tread the hermit's path that leads to her dwelling. Only a +religious vow might justify the abandonment of the human struggle, and +even that appears desertion. The stern genius of the North grudges +immurement, even to great piety, remembering that Christ himself +remained but forty days in the desert and then returned to deliver the +world. If he had remained there all his life, and never met the +Pharisees and high-priests, our forefathers would have rejected his law. +For this reason there can be no more rest for the shy than for starving +Tantalus; for this reason my flight into the East had been foredoomed to +failure. + +If shyness is thus affected by climate and geography, its birth and +growth are also conditioned by historical causes. Just as it is the +peculiar failing of northern and western peoples, so it is the creation +of comparatively modern times; it had no place among the classified +weaknesses of men until these peoples began in their turn to make +history. + +In Greece, where limb and thought were consentient in one grace of +motion, the body was too perfect an expression of the mind to admit any +consciousness of discord; the greater simplicity of a life passed +largely in the open air, left no place for awkwardness in the franker +converse of man with man. Moreover the seclusion of women rendered +unnecessary that complicated code of manners which the freer intercourse +of the sexes has built up in later times as a barrier against brutality +or the unseemly selfishness of passion. In Greece the words of the witty +and the wise could be heard in the market-place; good conversation was +not for the few alone; and the common man might of unquestioned right +approach the circle of Socrates or Plato. The sense of community was +everywhere, overthrowing reserve, and propitious to the universal growth +of fellowship. + +In the Roman world things were changed; there were more closed doors and +courts impenetrable of access. Insignia of office, gradations of wealth +and rank, sundered those of high estate from classes which now +acknowledged their own inferiority; privacies, exclusions, distinctions +innumerable, altered the face of public life as the easy _mos majorum_ +was confined by the ordinances of encroaching fashion. It was now that +women began to be cast for leading parts upon the great stage of life. +Under the Empire, by the rapid removal of her disabilities the Roman +matron achieved a position of independence which made her, according to +her nature, a potent force of good or evil. It was now that the +intricate threads of social prescription were woven into that ceremonial +mantle which was afterwards to sit so uneasily on the shoulders of +barbarian men. + +But the time for shyness was not yet come, for Italy is a sunny land +where clear air makes clear minds, blandly or keenly observant of the +world, and never impelled by onset of outer mists and darkness to tend a +flickering light within themselves. There was melancholy, high and +stately, such as Lucretius knew, when he went lonely among the +homesteads or along the shore; but it was too exalted to be one with +diffidence, for he who will hold the sum of things in his thoughts walks +on clouds above the heads of men, free of all misgiving. Perhaps beyond +the Alps, in some Rhaetian upland where Roman dignity was interfused with +old barbaric roughness, the first signs of our malady were perceived and +the first ancestor of all the shy was born. But even yet the time was +not ripe, nor the place prepared. Christianity had to come, turning +men's eyes inwards and proclaiming the error of the objective pagan way. +A new feeling, the sense of personal unworthiness before God, spreading +through the Roman world, now stirred mankind to still communing with +themselves, and sanctioned the stealing away from the noisy festivals of +life. By enjoining a search into the depths of the heart, it encouraged +the growth of a self-consciousness hitherto unknown. It was not always a +panic of contrition, sweeping the joyous out of the sunlight into a +monastic shade, which brought the troubled into a new way of peace, but +sometimes a quiet joy in renunciation, congruous with a timid mood, +leading by gradual allurement to cloisters of shadowy lanes and cells +which were forest bowers. The new faith gave open sanction to evasion of +the banquet, and thus fortified and increased those who loved not the +ceremonial day. The spirit of solitude, no more a maenad, but a nun, +sheltered earth's children in the folds of her robe, and no man said her +nay. + +Moreover, Christianity quickened the force of that feminine influence +which Rome had first set flowing through the civilized world, but +diverted the stream from irregular and torrential courses into a smooth +channel gliding amid sacred groves. It clothed woman with ideal grace +and virtue, and perceived in her powers which the virile mind could +never wield. "Inesse quinetiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant, nec +aut consilia earum aspernantur, nec responsa negligunt." So our +ancestors held in the northern woods, and Christianity, purifying and +expanding their belief, fulfilled it with a new perfection. + +But this gradual binding of all men's limbs in silken cords of +reverence, making a rude world civil, was now to inaugurate for +diffidence its miserable career. Through the rough deference of the +German camp, through the Provencal code of _courtoisie_, up to the +modern law of fine manners, the drudge and chattel of the primeval tribe +has risen to impose her law upon the modern world. Earth is better for +this finer power, but social intercourse is less sincere. For woman, +having curbed the brute man by conventional restraints of outward +demeanour, has made human intercourse smooth and seemly, but imposed +upon mankind the wearing of unnatural masks. Before the multitude of +locked souls with labels of smiling faces the sensitive nature feels +itself mocked, and is soon distraught. It cannot suffer convention +gladly for an ultimate good, but is chilled by this everlasting +urbanity, which must, it fancies, be compact of irony and conceal a +disingenuous soul. + +All this finished science of illusion is like an east wind to the +confidences of the shy, and if they stay within its range they are +blighted before their hearts have time to unfold. They long for a less +biting air, for vernal hours in sheltered dells, where without sheaths +and unguarded the hearts of flowers lie open to their neighbours and to +heaven. There was once a simple day when religion set hearts +interflowing, but now it can melt them only within the precincts; the +fire which is carried from the altar is dead at the church door. The +brotherliness of those early days is indeed often found in humble walks +of life, but these we cannot continually tread, because our intellectual +and artistic tastes find there no sufficient nurture. Among the cultured +a cold convention often reigns, behind which only a more persistent +nature than ours can pass. Unless, therefore, we find our way into some +circle of gentle scholars or lovers of the beautiful quite simple in +their tastes, a thing possible but not often granted by a niggard +fortune, we are perforce thrown back upon our own company, and move +towards the grave alone. For this we accuse none; nothing is more at +fault than our own constitution. But to us society is a school of dames, +who are not to be blamed if amid the crowd that clamours for their +teaching, they find no time for the backward scholar. We are the dunces +of the school, and are dismissed without learning the accomplishments +set forth upon the prospectus. That is why in our northern streets so +many seeming hats are cowls. + +In England the loss of congenial intercourse is perhaps more certain +than in other lands. For through his national reserve the +highly-cultured Englishman has a cold perfection of good breeding to +which heartiness is vulgarity; he emanates intimidation, and in courtesy +is rather studious than spontaneous, seldom genial but in an ancient +friendship. If you knew him to the concealed heart, and were suffered to +assay the fine metal beneath this polished surface, you would win a +golden friendship; but only on a desert island would he permit the +operation. To the shy who may encumber his path his bearing seems marked +by an indifference which they magnify into aversion, and are thereby the +worse confounded. In a land where such convention reigns they go through +life like persons afflicted with a partial deafness; between them and +the happier world there is as it were a crystalline wall which the +pleasant low voices of confidence can never traverse. + +I say, then, that the real, the enduring shyness is that inveteration of +reserve to which a few men in a few countries are miserably condemned. +Others know it as a transient inconvenience, as the croup or measles of +childhood; but in us it is obstinate and ineradicable as grave disease. +If out of the long frustration of our efforts to be whole some strain of +bitterness passes into our nature; if sometimes we burn with unjust +resentment against the fate which, suffers such lives as ours to be +prolonged, let it be remembered in extenuation that to those who bear a +double burden human charity owes the larger kindliness. For though like +you we bear our share of common troubles, O happier men and women, the +common pleasures and compensations which are as wings upon your +shoulders are heavy packs on ours. The cheerful contrasts are for you +alone; for us the bright threads interwoven in the dark stuff of life +were faded before they reached the loom. + +You who have the friendships and affections without which you would not +care to live a day, think more kindly of those to whom the interludes of +toil are often harder than the toil itself. Of your charity believe our +fate ordained and not the choice of our own perversity; for what man +born of woman would choose a path so sad, were there not within him some +guiding and possessing devil which he could in nowise cast out? Never +will in maddest hours of freedom consented to such doom; we were +condemned at birth, our threads were spoiled upon the fingers of the +Norns. + + * * * * * + +Such in its broader outlines seemed the infirmity which had grown with +my growth, and now had to be reckoned with, like the bridle of Theages, +as a permanent hindrance to a reasonable happiness. Old hopes lay +shattered about me--well, I had to pick up the fragments and piece +together a less ambitious ideal. + +I will not linger over the forces which helped my resolution, the great +and general remedies which come to the relief of men in like evil case. +Religion, philosophy, art, science, literature--all promised their +anodynes against despair; slowly they stirred in me anew those springs +of interest in life which disillusion seemed to have choked for ever. I +rose up, and looking round upon the world saw that it was still good; +and there came into my memory brave words which a golden book puts in +the mouths of its indomitable knights: "I will take the adventure which +God shall ordain me." I now perceived that if evil fortune had unhorsed +me it had yet left me endurance to continue the combat on foot. My +second failure was more final and disastrous than the first discomfiture +in earlier life, but now the plague of pessimism was stayed by a +greater recuperative power. Those long hours of the long eastern day, +spent under the verandah with books of many ages and languages, had not +been altogether fruitless; they had helped to mature a wider and more +catholic taste than that of restless youth, the kind of culture that +brings not rebellion but peace. + +In my eastern watch-tower I had re-read the great books from a new point +of vantage, and let the eye roam over fields of literature which lie +beyond the undergraduate's bounds; by a still permeation of fine +influence, my crude philosophy was unconsciously mellowed, as the +surface of ivory, according to Roman belief, by the bland air of Tibur. +For by the mere being in an atmosphere of serenity our nature grows +porous to gracious influences streaming in we know not how or when, and +taking their abode in our very grain and structure. And so without +consciousness of good desert, I found myself confident in a new +discipline, and looking for the word of command from wiser leaders than +Byron or the youthful Shelley. Queen Mab was now the saddest rhetoric, +and Childe Harold's plaint unseemly lamentation; I had erased from my +calendar of saints the names of apostles of affliction once held in +honour; the Caliph Amurath with his tale of fourteen happy days out of a +long life of royal opportunity; Swift with his birthday lection from +Jeremiah. Rather there trooped into memory with a quiet pomp and +induction of joy, forms of men who, though justified in rebellion by +every human suffrage, remained loyal to the end and proved by endurance +a more imperial humanity. Socrates unperturbed by mortal injustice; +Dante a deep harmonious voice amid jangling destinies; William the +Silent serene in every desperate conjecture--these seemed now the more +perfect captains. If exile had done no more than transfer my allegiance +to such as these, I had not borne the lash in vain. + +But at the first setting out upon this later stage I had still mistakes +to make, and the ascent to tranquillity was not to be accomplished +without stumbling. It was the old Roman creed which first drew me away +from fretting memories; in its high restraint, as of a hushed yet mighty +wind, it breathed a power of valiant endurance, and promised before +nightfall the respite of a twilight hour. For stoicism has qualities +which seem foreordained for the bracing of shy souls, as if the men who +framed its austere laws had prescience of our frailty and consciously +legislated to its intention. It is the philosophy of the individual +standing by himself, as the shy must always stand, over against a world +which he likes not but may not altogether shun. And in this proud +estrangement it promises release from all the inquisition of morbid +fears, and an imperturbable calm above the need of earthly friends or +comfort or happiness; it plants the feet upon that path of nature along +which a man may go strongly, consoled in solitude by a god-like sense of +self-reliance. This immutable confidence is the essential power of +stoicism, which does not, like the great oriental religions, tame +personality by ruthless maiming, but teaches it to bear the brunt of +adversities erect, like an athlete finely trained. Its very arrogance, +its sufficiency, perforce commend it to those whose instinct urges to +self-abasement: its lofty disregard of adverse circumstance is medical +to their timidity. + +And so in the hour of my bereavement its voice inspired to resistance +like a bugle sounding the advance; its echoes rang with the assurance +that man was not made to be the worm of Eden, darkly creeping in the +dust, but rather its noblest creature, with the light crowning his head +and the winds tossing his hair. And then its strong simplicity, so +masculine and unemotional, was grateful to one now finally dismated, and +so cruelly handled as to have, it seemed, no use for a heart any more. +Better let feeling die than be betrayed by diffidence into the denial of +its true allegiance, or into expressions of the inner life false and wry +as the strange laughter which the doomed suitors in Ithaca could not +control. Though it stifled feeling, the creed of Cleanthes exalted the +intellect, which was all that now remained to me unimpaired; surely it +was the appointed rule for one henceforth to be severed from the +passions and enthusiasms through which humanity errs and is happy. + +"The world," the wise Stoic seemed to say, "is twofold in its nature. +Some things may be changed by man, others are by his utmost effort +immutable. God has implanted in you a right reason by which, when it is +well trained, you can infallibly distinguish between the two, avoiding +thus all unworthy fretfulness and all idle kicking against the pricks. +Therefore he has made you for happiness; for the joy of men is an +achievement; and their misery in the coveting of the unattainable end. +If you would fulfil his benevolent design, seek only what has been +placed in your power, frankly resigning all that lies beyond; but be +ever difficult in renunciation; test and sound well every issue, lest +you leave a permitted good undone, than which nothing is a greater sin. +To be loyal, to be contented, to acquiesce in all things save only in +ameliorable evil, this is to live according to nature, which is God's +administration. If you are assiduous in careful choosing, you will learn +at last to make a right use of every event; you will be harassed no +more by vain desire or unreasoning aversion, but will become God's +coadjutor and be always of his mind. So, when external things have +ceased to trouble your spirit, you will no longer be a competitor for +vanities; but, enfranchised from all solicitude, you will have discarded +envy and conceit and intolerance, which are the ill fruits of that vain +rivalry. You will neither cringe before power nor covet great place, for +alike from inordinate affection and from the fear of pain or death you +will be free. Disenamoured of mundane things, you will live simply and +unperturbed, in kindness and cheerfulness and in gratitude to +Providence. Life will be to you as a feast or solemnity, and when it +comes to a close, you will rise up saying, 'I have been well and nobly +entertained, it is fit that I give place to another guest.'" + +The strength and mastery thus promised raised my dejected spirits, as +the words of a new and sanguine physician may hearten one who had long +lain stricken yet now dares to hope for the day of recovery. This was a +law which did not denounce the world as illusion or enjoin a cloistral +seclusion upon the mind, but rather proposed each and every appearance +as a touchstone on which the quality of personality should be +unceasingly tried. By the constant application of a high standard to +life, it seemed to implant an incorrupt seed of manliness, and to create +in its disciples that saner mood which holds in equal aversion a +Heliogabalus and a Simeon Stylites. So persuaded, I could join with the +fervour of a neophyte in the Stoic's profession: "Good and evil are in +choice alone, and there is no cause of sorrowing save in my own errant +and wilful desires. When these shall have been overcome, I shall possess +my soul in tranquillity, vexing myself in nowise if, in the world's +illusive good, all men have the advantage over me. For all outward +things I will bear with equal mind, even chains or insults or great +pain, ashamed of this only, if reason shall not wholly free me from the +servitude of care. Let others boast of material goods; mine is the +privilege of not needing these or stooping to their control. I will +have but a temperate desire of things open to choice, as they are good +and present, and the tempter shall find no hold for his hands by which +to draw me astray. I will be content with any sojourn or any company, +for there is none, howsoever perilous, which may not prove and +strengthen the defences of my soul. For I have built an impregnable +citadel whence, if only I am true to myself, I can repel assaults from +the four quarters of heaven. Who shall console one lifted above the +range of grief, whom neither privation nor insolence can annoy? for he +has peace as an inalienable possession, and by no earthly tyranny shall +be perturbed. Bearing serenely all natural impediments to action, +trespassing beyond no eternal landmark, by no foolishness provoked, he +shall become a spectator and interpreter of God's works; he shall ripen +to the harvest in the sunshine and wait tranquilly for the sickle, +knowing that corn is only sown that it may be reaped, and man only born +to die." + +The mere repetition of these words, so instinct with the spirit of old +Roman fortitude, roused me to a more immediate resolution than any +other form of solace. There are times when a splendour of exaggeration +is the best foil to truth. The Roman's pride is the best corrective to +the earthward bias of the diffident; by its excess of an opposite defect +it drives us soonest into the mean of a simple and manly confidence. It +is better for us first to repeat, "Dare to look up to God and say: Make +use of me for the future as Thou wilt, I am of the same mind, I am equal +with Thee.... Lead me whither Thou wilt," than to dwell upon such words +as these: "It is altogether necessary that thou have a true contempt for +thyself if thou desire to prevail against flesh and blood"--or these: +"If I abase myself ... and grind myself to the dust which I am, Thy +grace will be favourable to me, and Thy light near unto my head.... By +seeking Thee alone and purely loving Thee I have found both myself and +Thee, and by that love have more deeply reduced myself to nothing." + +This supreme abnegation may leave the saint unharmed, but it is ill +fitted for those who droop already with the malady of dejection. The +divine wisdom which knows the secrets of all hearts and their +necessities infinitely various, shall exact obedience according to no +adamantine law: it loves not the jots and tittles of formalism, nor the +pretensions of those who would cast all things in one mould. From those +made perfect, from the saints whose links with earth are almost severed, +whose sight begins to pierce gross matter through, it may accept +prostration and endless contrite tears, knowing that to these, upon the +very verge of illumination, the forms of slavery have lost their +vileness. But to those who are still of earth and can but conceive God's +fatherhood according to earthly similitudes, it will not ordain a prone +obeisance. Such it will require to stand erect even in contrition, in +that posture which is the privilege of sons. We who are unperfected +affront God supposing him pleased with the prostration of his children. +It is the ignorance of a feudal age that ascribes to him a Byzantine +love of adulation; but that age is no more, and he disserves the divine +majesty who imputes to it a liking for the _esprit d'antichambre_. + +I did not need to dwell upon my weakness and misery but rather upon the +grandeur of humanity, whose kinship and collaboration God himself does +not reject. The Stoic phase was a useful stage on the road of +convalescence, and the majestic words of Epictetus more helpful to a +manlier bearing than the confessions of the saintliest souls. If, as is +not to be doubted, there are others who seek an issue from the same dark +region where I wandered, I do not fear to point them to the Stoic way, +which like a narrow gorge cold with perpetual shadow is yet their +shortest path upward to the high slopes lit with sunlight. Let them +enter it without fear and endure its shadows a while, for by other ways +they will fetch a longer compass and come later to their release. + +But when some interval had passed I became aware that this cold ideal +was not the end, and that out of the gall of austerity sweetness should +yet come forth. Wise men have said that all great systems of ethics +meet upon a higher plane, as the branches of forest trees rustle +together in the breeze; for though in the dark earth their roots creep +apart, their summits are joined in the freedom of clear air. As I now +struck inland from the iron shores of shipwreck, my heart warmed to a +brighter and softer landscape, and with Landor I began to wish that I +might walk with Epicurus on the right hand and Epictetus on the left. +With a later thinker I reflected that if the Stoic knew more of the +faith and hope of Christianity, the Epicurean came nearer to its +charity. For it is true that Stoicism commands admiration rather than +love. It was indeed too harsh a saying that "the ruggedness of the Stoic +is only a silly affectation of being a god, to wind himself up by +pulleys to an insensibility of suffering": that is the judgment of the +bluff partisan, so shocked by the adversary's opinions that he feels +absolved from any effort to understand them. But even those who in +extremity have been roused to new valour by the precepts as by a Tyrtaean +ode, for all the gratitude which they owe, will not impute to their +deliverers an inhuman perfection. The Stoic does in truth wear a +semblance of academic conceit, as though related to God not as a child +to its father, but as a junior to a senior colleague. And with all its +sufficiency, his philosophy seems too Fabian in its counsels; it is +always withdrawing, passing by on the other side, avoiding battle--so +that as a preparation for the uttermost ordeal it will often prove +inferior to the reckless pugnacity of a narrow zealot. + +Then, too, it acts like a frost not merely upon personal, but upon +national ambition, and so keeps the wellspring from the root. Its +assumption of a superhuman fortitude accords but ill with scientific +truth, for if with one bound every man may become as God, he will +despise that infinitely slow upward progression which is the only real +advance. But, above all, it lives estranged from tenderness, in which +alone at certain hours of torment the distracted mind finds God's face +reflected. It preaches renunciation of all vain aversions and desires; +but it repels sweet impulses that are not vain. By exalting apathy in +regard to personal suffering, it becomes insensible to others' pain +also. In the conviction that appeals for sympathy are avowals of +unworthiness, it will have no part in the love of comrades, and it never +discovered the truth that the strength and the compassion of the Divine +are one perfection. + +There is a favourite mediaeval legend depicted in one of the windows of +the cathedral at Bourges, which exposes in a characteristic fashion this +weakness of the Stoic's creed. The Evangelist St John, when at Ephesus, +remarked in the forum the philosopher Cratinus giving a lesson of +abnegation to certain rich young men. At the teacher's bidding the +youths had converted all their wealth into precious stones, and these +they were now bidden crush to dust with a heavy hammer in the presence +of the assembled people, that so they might make public profession of +their contempt for riches. But St John was angered at so wasteful a +renunciation. "It is written," he said, "that whoso would be perfect +should not destroy his possessions, but sell them, and give the proceeds +to the poor." "If your master is the true God," replied Cratinus +scornfully, "restore these gems again to their original form, and then +they shall be bestowed according to your desire." St John prayed, and +the precious stones lay there once more perfect in all their brilliance +and splendour. The moral of the old tale is clear--that all virtue +without charity is nothing worth; and that of virtue without charity, +the Stoic's cold renunciation is the chief type and ensample. + +The insight into this higher truth did not come by inspiration, but was +gradually imparted during long summer days, when I wandered from dawn to +dark among the fields and woods. Hoping at first no more than to tire +the mind with the body and so win a whole repose, I became by degrees +receptive of a new learning from nature, which created new sympathies +and kindled fresh ambitions. Naturally I again read Wordsworth, and now +for the first time since childhood I knew what joys intimacy brings. I +was one of a brotherhood, and wherever I went was sure of a friendly +salutation. Things that grew in silence became my friends; I was with +them at all hours, in light and shadow, in warmth and cold, watching +their gracious and responsive existences, which reject no good gift, but +radiantly grow towards the light while it endures. Insensibly the spirit +of this gentle expansive life was infused within me, until the heart +which I had deemed useless and outworn, began to open like a flower +scathed by frost, at the full coming of spring. The plants and trees +were human to me, the brooks spoke with articulate voice; by that +ancient witchery of animism, old as the relationship of man and nature, +I was put to school again: until at last, absorbed in the vicissitudes +of small things and surrendering reason to a host of pathetic fallacies, +I was taught the great secret that life may not be centred in itself, +but in the going out of the heart is wisdom. And as among human friends +there are some to whom a man is bound by deeper and tenderer links than +to the rest, so it is with these other friends which have no language, +but only the wild-wood power of growing about the heart. Among their +gracious company each man will discover his own affinity, and having +found it will look on the rest of nature with brighter eyes. Some learn +the great lessons from mountains, lakes, and sounding cataracts; others +from broad rivers peacefully flowing to the sea. To me there spoke no +such romantic voices. My wanderings led me through a country of simple +rural charm, and the friends that became dearest to me were just our +English elms. + +Who but the solitary, artists alone excepted, understand the full charm +of elms in an English landscape? To us there is an especial appeal in +their loneliness, as they range apart along the hedgerows, embayed in +blue air and sunlight which do but play upon the fringe of your huddling +forest. See them on a breezy August morning across a tawny corn-field, +printing their dark feathery contours on a blue sky and holding the +shadows to their bosoms; or on a June evening get them between you and +the setting sun, and mark the droop and poise of the upper foliage +fretted black upon a ground of red fire. Here are no cones or +hemispheres, or shapeless bulks of green, but living beings of +articulated form, clothed in verdure as with the fine-wrought drapery +that enhances rather than conceals the beauty of the statue. + +Or at a still later hour, over against the harvest moon, see them rise +congruous with the gentle night, casting round them not palls of ominous +gloom, but clear translucent shadows sifted through traceries of leafage +which do but veil the light. And what variety of form and structure +sunders them from other trees, what irregular persuasive grace. Some are +tall and straight, springing like fountains arrested in the moment when +they turn to fall; others bend oblique without one perpendicular line, +every branch by some subtle instinct evading the hard angles of +earth-measurement as unmeet for that which frames the sky; others again +spread to all the quarters of heaven their vast umbrageous arms. No +trees are so companionable as the elms to the red-roofed homestead which +nestles at their feet and is glad for them. Seen from a distance, how +delightful is this association, how delicate the contrast of tile and +leaf and timbered barn, each lending some complement to the other's +fairest imperfection. Perhaps there will be a whole line of distinct +trees, and then you will see as it were a cliff-side of verdure in +which, beneath the billowy curves of lit foliage, there open caverns and +cool deeps of shadow fit for a Dryad's rest. + +To know the elm-tree you must not come too near, for it too is wild and +does not reveal its nature lightly; you may be cooler in the shadow of +the beech or stand drier beneath the red-stemmed leaves of the sycamore. +Yet it suffers the clinging ivy; it was beloved of poets in old days, +and painters love it still. It has not the walnut's vivid green nor the +rare flush that lights up the pine-stem. Its leaves are rough and of no +brilliance; its bark is rugged also. But in life the familiar guardian +of home meadows, it has stood by our fathers' landmarks from generation +to generation, and when fallen and hewn and stacked it sheds a +fragrance which, wherever perceived in after years, brings back memories +of wanderings in deep lanes and of the great dim barns where we played +in childhood. In the dull winter days when only yews and cypresses wear +their leaves, I sometimes wander to a place whose walls are hung with +the works of many a seer and lover of elms; there seated before a few +small frames I give them thanks for having read the dear trees truly, +and glorified a close and barren gallery with all the breezes and +colours of the fields: I am beyond all noise and murkiness, walking in +the peace and spaciousness of unsullied air. + +To a mind now happily reverted to the primitive confidence in souls +everywhere indwelling and creating sympathies between all things, the +bonds of kinship between man and nature were drawn ever closer, and it +seemed a wholly natural belief that the changes of the visible universe, +affecting things which lived an almost personal existence, should be +instinct with the deeper meaning of events in the drama of human +existence. + +Like the every-day life of men with its imperceptible attritions was the +insensible growth and decay of things; as the tumult of his emotions +were the storms and catastrophes that convulse the face of nature. The +movement never ceased; the transforming power was never wearied; the +spectator had but to give rapt attention, to be carried beyond his poor +solicitudes to a participation in elemental processes of change in which +the fates of humanity were mysteriously involved. The thought of this +indissoluble union kept alive the sense of brotherhood within me, of +responsibility in life, of interest in all that happens; and whether it +was the daily contraction of a pond in drought, or a battle of ants by +the wayside, or the first tinge of autumn upon the woods, all was +ennobled by symbolic relationships to man's experience, which in the +unceasing flow of their perception were lustral to a solitary heart, +without them choked and stagnant. + +There was a certain heath-clad ridge which like a watch-tower set above +a city never failed to bring before the ranging eye some vision +pregnant of those emotions by which the sense of humanity is quickened +to a deeper consciousness of itself. The witchery of space was there +always, and seemed to draw from the soul the clinging mists of her +indifference. It was there that I saw nature in all her moods, and felt +that to each my own moods responded; there that despondency, imagining +her monotony of woe, was confuted by the saving changefulness of created +things. I remember one day, when a summer storm was spending its fury, I +stood upon this ridge and looked across the low lands that stretched +away beneath me. They lay with all their boundaries confused by a pall +of purple gloom, then darkly transparent, and dissolving before the +returning sun, whose penetrative influence was felt rather than actually +perceived. As I gazed, high in the veil of cloud there began faintly to +gleam a spot of palest gold, so high that it seemed to belong to the sky +and to have no part in an earthly landscape. Gradually it expanded, grew +more vivid, and assumed form, other forms and tints emerged beside it, +until at last it was revealed as a ripe corn-field on the high slopes +across the valley, and before many moments had passed, a long line of +downs stood out in the pure air with a sculptural clearness, as if +during the storm all had been uprooted and moved a whole league towards +the spot where I stood. While the rainbow spanned the plain, and the +thunder still rolled in the distance, all the opposite heaven cleared +almost to the furthest horizon; but there a remoter range yet lay +half-covered by a billowy mass of clouds, like the hull of a dismasted +ship in the folds of her fallen sails. At last even this trace of the +battle was gone; the sun shone unopposed; the wet lands and clear sky +were lit with an intenser brightness for their transient eclipse. + +Then the humanity of all these things was borne in upon my mind, and I +was affected by these vicissitudes shadowing forth the destiny of man, +and reminding him in their beautiful and majestic procession that nature +endures no perpetual gloom. The sudden ruin of a bright day in deluge +and darkness and sonorous thunder, the timid reappearance of faint +light, the natural forms strangely emerging from the perplexed wrack +infesting the heaven, and at last seen as never before through leagues +of pellucid air; the thunder's silence, the final and supreme triumph of +light;--these swift yet utter revolutions of the visible world, by very +grace of mutability, were rich with instant consolations for the soul's +misgiving. They served to remind me that the fears, the spiritual +conflicts, the darkness that seems eternal, are mere incidents of a +summer noon and leave behind them a purer and serener day. Through all +this close intercourse with nature my mind was being prepared for a +healthier relation to my fellow-man, and my heart saved from the +petrification of melancholy self-regard. The ever-growing delight in +these inanimate things, the constant discovery of new charms as +knowledge widened with experience, united to prevent stagnation and +despair; they kept heart and mind alert for the perception of new +glories; and it is from a clear sense of their salutary power that I +dwell upon them in this record of a self-tormented life. How should he +find life colourless whose eyes are often fixed upon the sky, who sees +grey zones of cloud flush crimson before the sunrise, and at evening the +wide air richly glowing, moted as with the bloom of plums and the golden +pollen of all flowers? + +At the end of that summer I returned to the occupations of life, +appeased and almost happy in this inheritance of new sympathies. And +before long I found that these were themselves but precursors of that +which was to come, and that like the paranymphs who escort the bride, +they did but apparel the heart for a deeper and more abiding joy. They +were busied about me in tranquil hours, and speaking not, but seeming to +wait in gladness for another, they made me serenely expectant also. They +destroyed all sadness of retrospect; they led me always forward; with +faces transparent with the light of an inward happiness they seemed to +promise a vision at each near bending of the way. From glad looks and +gestures assuring imminent joy, I too was charmed into a like faith, and +went on blithely in the confidence of a coming illumination. Nor was +that hope vain, for at length the mystery was made plain, and one day +they brought me exulting into the presence of the Ideal Love. + +There is a place in every heart which must be filled by adoration, or +else the whole will grow hard and wither like a garden whose central +fountain is grown dry. And though the affection of mortal man or woman +may abandon it, there remains yet this other love which by pure and +strenuous invocation may be drawn to it, and dwell in it, to the +ennoblement of life; so great is the care of providence for mortal need. +Love is our need, and it is given, if we despair not of it, even to such +as have rarely felt the glow of earthly passion. For love is of many +kinds; yet the palest and most subtle of its forms are made real to +those who believe, and may become the guiding influences of their lives. +Such are the visions of the ideal love to which those glad natural +sympathies now led me, leaving me alone awhile that I might worship the +orient light. And when I came out from that presence I rejoiced indeed, +for the path was clear for my return, and life was now glad with promise +like an orchard burgeoning with white blossoms. Old memories crowded +back on me of hours beneath the cedars with the Phaedrus and the Vita +Nuova, hours made happy with intellectual and austere delights. But now +the joy was other than intellectual, though significant tenfold, for +then in untried youth I had wondered at the beauty of an imaginary +world; now with eyes that had looked on desolation I perceived that +these visions were true. For had they been no more than airy fancies, +they surely had not endured throughout these long ages in our laden and +mortal air. + +It was not merely the beauty of a literary setting which had preserved +them: the craftsman's skill might indeed have enhanced their natural +splendour, but it could not have alone inspired them with this perennial +life. The gem with fire in its heart outlives the delicate setting; +though it may be maltreated and buried for centuries by the wayside, it +will come to light when the gold that framed it is long battered or +lost, and will be desired by new generations for its inherent and +unalterable beauty. + +Not Plato's or Dante's creative power, but truth surviving all +incarnations of genius, has kept this celestial gem aglow: they have but +celebrated that which was never mortal, and guided wandering eyes to +heaven's most beautiful star. This intangible and unincarnate vision +exacts more from its votaries than the love which walks the earth: +holding the lover ever in the strain of apprehension, it inures him to +unwearying worship, and itself moving in regions incorruptible, never +loses the glory of its first hour. The years may pass, but one face, +like a hallowed thing, abides continually; years may fret and corrode +other ideals, but to this they add beauties of ever fresh significance. +The auroral glow is always round it, brightening the world, until it +becomes an emblem of illumination and the symbol of eternal truths. This +visionary presence wakes aspiration to new effort and touches the +intellect with passion; beleaguered thought sallies out with new +strength, and the frontiers of darkness recede before it. From this +comes the quickening of the heart without which hope wanes and the mind +is barren: the deep pure joy of contemplation awakens all that is best +in the soul, which goes towards it on tense wings of desire. And as with +time it draws further from the earth, and, following, the soul essays +ever higher flights, it is often poised at a great height as in a trance +of motion, whence it looks back upon the world it has left, and round it +upon other worlds. Then, its love-range being wondrously expanded, it +sees beyond that visionary countenance, which dissolves and forms again +like a delicate wreath of mist; and clear starlight falls upon it from +every side, so that all shadow is destroyed. And when it returns to +earth again, and is forced to contemplate meaner things, it is now aware +that the very soil is compacted of dust of stars, and that he who looks +listlessly upon creation is unworthy of the human name. And so +continually flying forth and returning, it weaves endless bonds between +the infinitesimal and the infinite, forgetting how to despise, which is +the heavenly science. + +All this ardour is awakened and sustained by love, which began in sense +and is now transformed. Through each succeeding change it is known for +the same divine power which has so attuned the body that it vibrates no +more to desire alone, but is now become resonant beneath a faint and +spiritual breath. + +It is an old story that love is sightless, but that is the love which +romps among the roses and is blinded by their thorns. There is another +and a better tradition that love's eyes pierce heaven, and this is a +great truth; for infinity is cold and vaporous until man projects upon +it his mortal ideal, his conception of an earthly love transfigured. +When this beloved guide appears throned above him as in the clouds, he +dares to lift his eyes, and there he reads through its light the divine +purports of his existence. Is it a small thing to stand, though but for +a moment, searching infinity undismayed? This is the celestial ocean to +whose shore he is come; and now "drawing towards and contemplating the +vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and +notions in boundless love of wisdom, until on that shore he grows and +waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single +science, which is the science of beauty everywhere ... beauty absolute, +separate, simple, everlasting, which without diminution, without +increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever growing and perishing +beauties of all other things." + +To some the great perception comes but late, rising from the ashes of +love's common furnace. But they whose hearts have never been consumed in +these roaring flames may find it earlier; and purged from all taints of +jealousy and covetousness, may pass straightway into the bliss of a +higher union. This is that supreme affiance and espousal of the soul +wherein they may be released into a larger air, undelayed by the +earthward longings and gradual initiations of seemingly happier men. +Thus its servants do not decline into slothful service, but are +strenuous always; raised above the acquiescence of use, they never know +the cloying of fruition or suffer the barbarian conquest of +indifference. Their soul is unaffected by material circumstance or +misfortune, and illuminates their lives as often as in the silent hour +of meditation they concentrate their thoughts upon its grace. The cup of +earthly love, even the noblest, is often dipped in Pyriphlegethon, and +the draught it offers scathes the palate until its finest sensibility is +for ever dulled. Those who have quaffed this liquid fire can no longer +understand his mood who leaves the roses and the wine to toil through +deserts in search of limpid water. They think him madly ungrateful for +God's good gifts, a fool abandoning joy proved and present for a shadow +far and incomprehensible. But they who have not denied themselves are no +longer fit judges of him who has renounced. They cannot know that by +this renunciation the senses are thrice refined, and receive as a vital +influence the stellar beam which falls chill and ineffectual upon a +grosser frame. They cannot believe that this love from the infinite +distance wields as mighty a force over renunciant lives as the near +flame of passion over their own. But, for all their denial, it lives and +puissantly reigns. It reigns in very truth predominant, this ideal love +to which space exists not and propinquity is nothing; and it will have +none for its subjects but those who by bereavement or aspiration or +intense purity are inly prepared for its dominion. + +Happy therefore are the shy if in the midst of their tribulation they +are guided to the gateway of so bright a kingdom. It may well be that we +must first be led thither by some dear-remembered and virgin form once +almost ours through earthly love, but now joined to us only by an +imperishable and mystic union. Our sight may at first need the embodied +beauty to give it the finer powers by which the revelation of the ideal +grows familiar to us, but is at last attainable without mortal +intervention by an immediate flight of the soul. Until that late day of +enlightenment we must still be set upon the celestial path by a touch +of human tenderness; a pure yet sensuous yearning must be ours when we +are first girded to the ascent. If there are beings which attain the +fulness of the ideal love without the first inspiration of a fair +earthly form I know nothing in creation to which they may be likened, +nor had I ever part in so rare an enfranchisement. The vision that now +entrances my soul first arose from a living, breathing form radiant with +earthly brightness and instinct with every charm which brings men +fawning to the feet of women. The sensuous frenzy which lovers sing was +also mine, the tremor of the heart, the vibration of the very life; the +deep seventh wave of passion rioted through me also. But from the first +amazement of the shaken being it was not given me to pass through +satisfaction into tranquillity; I was held long in a whirl of trouble; +in the anguish of denial I learned initiation into the mystery which is +eternal and supreme. + +It is good for some of earth's children that passion should be stayed +before it makes ashes of the fancy; for if it does but touch for a +moment only to be withdrawn for ever, it does not destroy, but by its +meteoric passage kindles the imagination with the glow of an +incorruptible flame. It is with them long enough to brand upon memory +the image which, though never renewed before their bodily eyes, by its +very severance from perception puts on an immortality of virginal grace. +Love is understanding, said the poet of Heaven and Hell, and love +ennobled through renunciant years shall at the last encompass the world. +The sensuous glow that first quickened the heart of youth is transmuted +into a purer fire akin to that which moves the spheres. + +To know this truth is their compensation who are swiftly withdrawn from +the warm radiance of earthly love. They are stricken, but before passion +blinds them are rapt into a high solitude, whence, if they truly love, +an infinite prospect is unrolled before them. They know desire; but as +their passion was hopeless in this world, their steps were mercifully +set upon a new path, whereby the bodily semblance of the beloved became +the symbol of spiritual comeliness, alluring the beholder into the +peace of a serene and unworldly mood. A thin and rarefied ideal, you +say, a mirage which no wayfarer can approach: experience rejects these +subtleties, and to these creations of a dream human affection was never +given. True, to hearts established and content in happy unions, to minds +preoccupied with the near cares and pleasures of a home, our distant +visions may appear frail structures wrought in mist by homeless fancy. +But for the exiled heart they are not such, but verities of abiding +inspiration. For the ideal love did not die with Plato, but came again +in mediaeval Italy, and who shall say that even our material age has +banished it from the earth? + +No indeed it is not dead, the ideal love, but indwells, a redeeming +power, wherever there are desolate hearts and minds to be updrawn and +united by its ministry; a power so lustral in its nature, that no abject +and despairing thought creeps into its presence but is purified and +exalted by its regard. This love brings hope and cheerful constancy; +with a shining falchion it affrights into their natal darkness the +monstrous forms of despair, and lends to all work a secret charm of +chivalry. It sustains that high anticipatory mood to which life is but a +preparation, and the bees buzzing round the honey-flowers seem poor +things toiling for an inessential gain. Because it is mystic and +transcendental it is the predestined guide of all whom fate holds +removed from earthly love. This is the old device of the world's +failures, you say, to trick themselves out in Plato's mantle or the +schoolman's cowl, and conceal their spite beneath the pretensions of the +mystic. But I answer that the causes which moved the Greek and the +Florentine are still at work among mankind to-day; they have never +ceased, however much obscured by the glare of triumphant luxury or the +stress of miserable toil. Often when disillusion has laid bare a soul, +this love which did but slumber awakes to contest with envy or despair +the possession of a wounded heart. I aver that any exile from the +happier earth whose heart is pure, if he invokes this love with ardent +faith, may unbar his door and feel that it has passed his threshold. +Let us never be persuaded that the ideal world is far from this earth of +ours, or that the way to it may not be daily traversed by him who has +submitted to the heavenly guide. Not even the close entanglement of +common cares can avail to keep such an one from his love; but as Bishop +Berkeley is said to have been able to pass in a moment from the +consideration of trifling things to the throne of thrones and the seats +of the Trinity, so this lover shall overpass with easy and habitual +flight the barriers that hold most men life-long prisoners. + +For to the Spirit that is chastened and endures there is given a power +of flight and poise, by which, if it abandon itself to the celestial +wind, it may instantly remove from the deeper planes of life, as a bird +by the mere slanting of its wings is carried in proud quiescence into an +upper region of the air. He shall know instant release from the leaguer +of disillusion and vain solicitudes; in the light of one beautiful and +compassionate countenance the unquiet memories of failure shall give up +their exceeding bitterness. + +And though the style and instinct of modern life are hostile to such +love, though in prosperity it is ignored and in adversity often +overborne by a vain uproar of lamentation, yet even in a self-indulgent +and furious world it still draws many to the severe exaltation of its +service. We cannot approach the heights where a Plato and a Dante walked +with ease, but far beneath upon the lower slopes we can draw a breath of +new life as we fix our weaker eyes upon the glory which they saw so +near. Although the men who have there ascended are a supreme company, we +may yet presume to follow; for let it never be said that the gods have +reserved for surpassing genius the consolation of which lesser men have +so much deeper need. But he who would reach a serener air must press +forward strenuously; for as a mountain may have one bare and northern +slope, and another sunlit and clothed with verdure, and yet there may be +a path on each side to the summit, so it is with the ascent to this +felicity. One lingers amid pleasant groves and laughing waters; +another, undistracted by the beauty of any lower zone, but fixing his +eyes upon the far summit, crosses the chill rocky slopes, never feeling +the warmth of the sun and only seeing his brightness reflected from the +highest peak. Though the ways of the two travellers lie far apart until +the end, their endurance may be crowned with the same reward; but he who +knew no dalliance and plucked no fruit has from the beginning seen the +goal clearly, and lived steadfastly in its distant promise. And do you +tell me that this is not love or joy, you who saunter in the verdant +southern valleys breathing a present happiness with the perfume of a +thousand flowers? Your way may lead you upward after long vicissitudes, +but endurance will more swiftly fail you for the last most arduous +ascent. Very love is of the heights, and he whose thoughts have long +been thither exalted will breathe with least pain the attenuate upper +air. + +To this pilgrimage the diffident are foreordained; it is their happiest +hour when they take staff and scrip and set out in earnest for the +shrine built among the mountains. The gardens of Armida are not for +them, nor the warm breezes fragrant of fruit and flowers; but the vision +of a far peak flushed at sundawn draws them onward, and strength and +peace are increased upon them throughout the great ascent. He is still +too rich for pity to whom renunciation brings these high and enviable +hours. + +But the heavens are not opened every day, and the adept of these +mysteries must walk the dull round of common life like other men, not +warmed as they are by the glow of constant friendship, yet cheered by +intermittent flames of remembrance and of hope. The real life of the +diffident is cunningly hidden from those around them, for whom, indeed, +it is wont to have faint interest; but before you who have often sought +me out through fair and foul weather, I may venture to undo the pack of +small resources which brings variety and distraction into lonely days. + +Firstly, I still dare to haunt the forecourts of philosophy. Into her +inner courts I may not penetrate, lacking the leisure which her whole +service demands; yet the loiterings which I may still enjoy are to me +like voyages into a foreign country, and give my mind the healthful +enjoyment of change; they are not long enough to bring that whole +detachment from daily life which, in my case, might prove a perilous +advantage. All that I need for common use is a simple rule based on a +few fundamental thoughts to give me a course upon the wayward ocean, and +though it be full of error as the Almagest, yet it shall surpass the +thumb-rules of Philistia. It must be a doctrine which allows imagination +her right and durable career, and therefore not be monist. For +materialism is too wildly imaginative at the start: like a runner who at +the outset overstrains his heart and thereafter runs no more, the +follower of this creed, by his postulate of a blind impersonal Law, +exhausts his power of speed and plods henceforth eyes downward over +flattest plains of dulness. That my mind may remain curious and alert in +isolation, I must conceive in the universal scheme a power that does +not alone impel, but also draws me forward. For were it true that the +sum of things blunders from change to change, swept by blind force into +uncharted voids, I should abandon myself in despair to that hopeless +course, and drift indifferent to the direction or the end. + +Let me rather believe that if each several idea is compacted by my +active intelligence out of some vast system of relations, then only a +supreme intelligence akin to man's can brace together the whole system +or universal sum of things. For this earth, yes, and all the complex of +the spheres, exist to me imperfectly as idea alone, nor can I conceive +them any complete existence apart from a kindred but omniscient mind. +Each advance in human knowledge should then be an infinitesimal approach +towards the supreme comprehension; and the aspiring race of man is +justified in that inchoation of long hope which is folly to the single +life. + +I would also believe that new relations between things may be detected +not merely by the staid and ordered process of collating abstractions, +which is science, but by swifter and more genial methods of intuition. + + "Hurrah for positive science, + Long live exact demonstration!" + +cried Walt Whitman, exulting over the filed fetters of mankind; and let +us all echo the cry, nor ever forget the razed Bastilles of +superstition. But there glimmers a wealth of truth in the penumbra +beyond our lanterns to which science will creep too slowly without the +aid of imagination. Yet this truth may be seized by swift sallies into +the darkness, and assured to us as it were by some dim apperception of +the soul, when the whole personality is made tense, and subtly +anticipates the cosmic argument. Life is too short to renounce this +daring: the sense of kinship with the All-Consciousness sanctions if not +commands the right adventure. + +It was this feeling which led William Blake to exclaim in his impulsive +way, that to generalize is to be an idiot, that direct perception is +all, and the slow process of the inductive reason a devil's +machination. This method of intuition is to the more sober method of +science as the romantic to the classical spirit in literature, +permitting to the individual mind a licence of noble vagrancy. But it +must be a law for the ordinary intelligence to exercise the two apart, +else it will fall into sick fancies of excitement, and by abuse of wild +analogies lose the vital art of balance and sane comparison. Only the +greatest minds, endowed as it were with some divine genius of +extrication, may dare to practise the two together. So Leonardo da Vinci +drove inference and intuition abreast without disaster, and gathered +from purple distances of thought their wildest and most splendid +flowers. To him, as has been well said, philosophy was something giving +strange swiftness and double sight, clairvoyant of occult gifts in +common or uncommon things. The doom of Phaeton awaits those who now would +follow that marvellous course; but the poetic observation of +resemblances in things remote, which lent so rich a colour to the +science of the Renaissance, may yet be trained in all our minds; and +the philosophy which trusts in the slow suffusion of the worlds with +intellectual light will bless and encourage its reasonable growth. + +Such a philosophy brings also a living sympathy with art. For the artist +ever sees a perfection of truth beyond his rendering, yet always calling +for expression; there is something eternally missed by his highest +effort, and he can never know complacency. The philosophy which +conceives the gradual growth of form through consciousness towards a +perfection infinitely removed, yet in its remoteness drawing up our life +as the moon sways the tides--this surely is the artist's wisdom. +Idealism is like love, {apora porimos}, holding us as it were in touch +with the intangible: it will have us conceive the Absolute without that +helpless absorption in thought which changed Amiel's life from a +fountain to a vapour: it would keep us near the surf and confluence of +things. Its function is not to give any mysterious transcendental +knowledge, but to serve culture "by suggesting questions which help to +detect the passion, and strangeness and dramatic contrasts of life." +And not only to bring suggestions, but repose, by granting to eyes +wearied with minute concerns the contrasts of vast times and spaces, the +majestic idea of the Whole; to change the focus and variously dispose +the perspectives of familiar things. + +An old watchmaker, whose window overlooked a wide meadow, used ever and +again to lay down his instruments to gaze out upon the expanse of green, +pasturing upon it a wandering vague regard, and absorbing from it an +assuagement of his wearied senses which, he said, served him more +effectually after these bright interludes. The province of Metaphysics +should be to us as to this wise workman his field; not a place to dream +our days away in, but for occasional resort; in which we may forget the +infinitesimal in healing visions of broad space and colour. I counsel +every lonely man to satisfy what has been described as the common +metaphysical instinct, and according to his powers to become a +metaphysician. There is no discipline which so well consists with +solitude, none which so instantly enfranchises the mind from the +tyranny of mean self-interest or vain and envious polemics. Men do not +grow sour and quarrelsome about the Absolute: everything that is +polemical is inspired, as Michelet once said, by some temporal and +momentary interest. The man who has climbed to the Idalian spring comes +down benevolent. He does not grudge this toiling ant his grain, that +snarling dog his bone, but is content to live serene, in the certainty +that his soul has great provision, and that though all human things are +small, each is worth its while. Into his hand there is given a scale by +which life is known in its fair proportions; a tranquil joy, disturbed +neither by dirges nor Epinician odes, is poured into his heart and +exalts him above distraction. He respects himself as akin to that great +Self whose perfection shall one day be known; he understands the passion +for the ideal through which men die young; he wonders at envy and in the +happiness of enfranchisement would have all men free. + +The pages of this Almagest are for the exceptional hour; but daily, as +one bookish from the nursery, I read much in many directions. For if +books are called the best friends of happy men, to the sad they are +saviours also. And when I remember too clearly what I am, I turn perhaps +most often to Lucretius. For of all those who have taken up the pen to +assuage the miseries of men, it is he who sings most bravely of the +great endurance. This austere enthusiast, whose soul was never fused in +the fire of friendship; who went apart, as it were, amid thunders upon +the lonely heights; who, without any lover, yet loved his kind so well +that all the years of his maturity, how short and splendid a period, +were poured forth in one song of human consolation,--this man for all +the madness of his creed, was yet aflame with a wisdom to be called +divine. That calm face, lit with one desire--to drive the furies from +the way and soothe the frightened children of men, is ever among the +nobler countenances which fancy summons about my bed. Over the anxious +heart they flow, those slow cadences, so vibrant yet so magnificently +passionless, until the nerves of pain cease to throb, and fear shrinks +as a taint impossible to the patient of such a physician. It is not his +to intimidate or denounce, to evoke visions of lurid hell, to linger +over dire vaticinations, or apportion to each his grade of torment, but +with cool fingers to smooth the hair back from the forehead, and in +grave, tender accents to say: Sleep now, for it was a dream. + +Landor, in a fine passage, compared the merciful tolerance of the Roman +poet with the pitiless ire of Dante, contrasting in respect of the +quality of mercy these two poets, one in their austere perfection, but +so different in their vision of death, and judgment, and ultimate +reward. The seer of lost worlds has written his own defence, and was +indeed but attacked to point the sharp antithesis; but Lucretius, though +he owes it to a literary feint, is very finely praised. And to me it +seems that his compassionate mood increased upon him just because he was +not emulous of the world's gifts or earnest for its pleasures, but +withdrew from the press, and lived out his few great years +contemplating apart the vicissitudes of orbs and men. He did not wait in +ante-chambers or sit at wedding feasts; but severing all entangling and +intricate threads of observance, followed the voice which called him to +solitary places of illimitable prospect. It was not through disillusion +or injustice, or wounded pride, that he walked aloof; but loneliness was +his birthright, and from the hills and headlands to which solitude +allured his steps he saw the dust of mad encounters rise to heaven, and +the rent sails of foundering galleys. He saw, and could not but be wrung +with pity for man deafened to wise counsel by the noise of vanities, and +fiercely conspiring to precipitate his doom. As he went by shore and +upland, there gathered in his mind those resonant hexameters of warning +or consolation, those similes from the life of husbandry and dumb +things, which, set like diamonds in clay, lend to the most arid +arguments their own incomparable splendour, or that homelier beauty +which instantly pierces the defences of the heart. Not diffident as we, +but of a nature so infinitely absent and reserved that in the legend +his wife must concoct a philter to remind him of his love, he is of all +the pagans the best companion for our angrier moods. An archaic and +elemental serenity is upon his language and thought, rebuking our +unprofitable petulance; if emotion gains him he finds utterance in those +tremendous periods "where single words seem to gather out of the deep +and to reverberate like thunder." As the reverberation dies away and the +clouds are pierced by the sun, the world is seen in new lights through +an air clear as upon rain-swept mountains. + +As my reading is incessant, so also is my writing. For the happiness of +man is in his fertility, and of barrenness comes the worst despair. To +be happy is to have issue--children, or books written, or things +beautifully wrought, or monuments of goodness to live after you, if only +in the memory of some tiny hamlet of the folded hills. This is the law +of life that Diotima knew, by which flower and tree, animal and man, +fulfil the end of their creation; and man in nothing more surely proves +his lordship than by his many-handed hold upon posterity. For the lower +creation is procreant in one way, but man in many; who may have +offspring not of body alone but of mind and heart, and be so redeemed +from the grim dismay of childlessness. The greatest human happiness is +to be fertile in every way, a thing granted rarely in the world we know; +the next, perhaps, is that of the parent who gives all of himself to his +family, not tilling any field beyond the charmed walls confining his +desire. The author sure of his fame, the born artist, the benefactor of +his kind, are also happy, seeing their offspring grow in years and in +the power of making a brighter world. + +But he is miserable who, aspiring to follow these, feels his force wane +within him while he remains yet fatherless; or who has sons stillborn, +or weakly, or dishonoured. I question whether sheer degradation into +evil brings more pain to man than such sense of sterility or frustrate +parentage. But it is no small part of human redemption that none need +know the interminable misery. A man may have neither sons nor genius, +but in the dark hour he can go out and give, if it be only a penny or a +kind word, and on that foundation build a temple to receive his +thanksgiving. To give of yourself is good. This is that grand agreement +and oecumenical consent to which those words _quod ab omnibus quod +ubique_ in deed and truth may be applied. For this reason meanness is of +the deeps, and avarice groans in the lowest zone of hell. And if there +are faces of blank and permanent despair upon your path, be sure that +these are not masks of whole men, but of those who wilfully abstained +from joy and have received the greater damnation. My children are mostly +writings, poor weakly creatures dying inarticulate and unchristened, +tenderly remembered by myself only, but at least no nuisance to the +world. I loved them at their birth, I hold them in remembrance, though +they were ever of a hectic and uncertain beauty. + +The comparison of children with branches of the olive is not the mere +ornament of a Bible verse, but the wisdom of one who knew both tree and +child. For as children are bright creatures of swiftly changing moods, +so are the olive leaves in the blue southern air. I once read of an +artist who essayed to paint a group of olives and a cypress growing +before them. Against their silvery leaves its dark burnished form stood +finely mysterious, the contrasting grey lending it a depth of almost +sable colour; all was propitious for his work. Then suddenly, the air +being to all seeming quite still, the grey-green leaves began to shake +and quiver, until each olive tree was like a silver bonfire, tremulous +with a thousand waves of white flame flowing and following along the +branches. It was a revelation and swift effluence of life, perplexing +and full of charm. The brush was laid down, the moment of inspiration +gone, before the capricious leaves ceased their quivering to be robed +once more in grey, casting on the ground that translucent shadow which +tempers the sunlight only, and does not spoil it of its gold. In the end +the canvas was covered, but with a sketch far less true and beautiful +than the painter's first happy vision. Even so of all our children few +attain the perfection of our dreams. While we look, some influence comes +upon them and they are changed, some breeze, born we know not where, +stirs them to their heart of joy while we stand perplexed; innumerable +laughter of leaves, a rushing and a shivering in quick answer to a mere +breath, silence as swift when unperceived it dies away--these are their +replies to our silent invocations. We cannot follow the swift course, +but are quickened with a glad rejuvenescence, the true prize and guerdon +of parentage. They may grow old or die, or bring us sorrow; it is enough +that once they so lived and stirred a pride within us. Let Hedonist and +idealist dispute, let one worship pleasure and another wait on the +intangible joy, but in the fathering and mothering and the bringing up +of young children, of the flesh, the mind, or the spirit, lies the +natural happiness of men and women. It is a joy which outlasts +disillusions; it rests surely upon achievement and deserts which lie +ponderable in the archangel's scales. For it is certain that he who +creates as best he knows best serves God, the world and himself, and +what system of Ethics has conceived a more perfect rule? + +All young life is instinct with such a beauty and trustfulness, that +though he himself may have no part or lot in its creation, and be dumb +or awkward in its presence, a man will be the brighter for having +passed, if but for a moment, out of the darkness of his own course into +the radiance within its orbit. To the diffident this is an especial +grace. For children by some deeper intuition understand us as their +parents cannot do; and when all the world is cold will often smile upon +us with happy upturned faces. It is one of my consolations that the +little players in the parks come running to me rather than to others +with their eternal question after the exact hour of day. For I reflect +that though my face grows wrinkled and drawn with years, there must yet +hover something about its ugly surface which tells of a good will +within. There was a time when I found the children's question +importunate, and drew out my watch ungraciously; but now I feel +disappointment if during their hours of play I can walk my mile without +answering one of these high-pitched inquiries. + +To have the confidence of children is indeed a thing of which a poor +wanderer may be proud, a credential confirming his self-respect, and +worthy one day to be presented at the gate of heaven. Once during one of +my worst hours of desolation, when I was tramping across the fields, I +found a little maid of seven picking primroses on the edge of an old +orchard. For some time I stood watching, so charmed with the grace of +her movements and the beauty of the spring sunlight on her golden mane, +that I lost all consciousness of present trouble, and beyond her fairy +form began to see vague visions of lost happiness returning. As I stood +thus forgetful and looking absently before me, I suddenly felt a touch +which recalled my scattered thoughts: she had come to me and put her +hand in mine. I think in all my lonely life I never felt so swift a +thankfulness as that which suffused me then: the memory of it is always +with me, and now I never see a happy child engrossed in its little task +of duty or pleasure without thinking to myself there is one of those who +truly have power to remit sins. I will not repeat the fond things often +written about children. Not all of them are like the infant angels of +Bellini or Filippino Lippi or Carpaccio; some indeed are strident, pert, +without charm or candour, not doves but little jays; but for the +loveliness of those who have smiled upon me, whether rich or poor, +whether wild or tended flowers, I shall ever hold the whole company +dear. + +Whether I read or write, or go painfully upon difficult paths of +thought, like many other men whom the world dismays, I win a larger +tranquillity and a clearer vision from an increased simplicity of life. +I know that to use the word asceticism of one's daily practice is to +incur the judgment of all those whom the world calls good fellows, whose +motto is live and let live, or any other aphorism of convenient and +universal remission. To them asceticism is the deterrent saintliness +which renounces all joy, and with a hard thin voice condemns the +leanings of mankind to reasonable indulgence. The ill-favour drawn down +by ecclesiastical exaggeration upon the good Greek word {askesis}, which +means nothing more than the practice of fitness, has prejudiced men +against all system of conduct bold enough to include it in their +terminology. + +Kant's chapter on the Ascetic Exercise of Ethics is a fine defence of +that training of the heart and mind which has no affinity with the +morbid discipline of hair shirt and scourge. "The ascetic exercise of +the monasteries," he says, "inspired by superstitious fear and the +hypocritical disesteem of a man's own self, sets to work with +self-reproaches, whimpering compunction and a torturing of the body. It +is intended not to result in virtue but to make expiation for sins, and +by self-imposed punishment the sinners expect to do penance, instead of +ethically repenting." And again--"All ethical gymnastics consist +therefore singly in subjugating the instincts and appetites of our +physical system ... a gymnastic exercise rendering the will hardy and +robust, which by the consciousness of regained freedom makes the heart +glad." + +This is sound doctrine, neither ungodly nor inhuman, the word of a man +in whose veins the warm blood yet flowed. Few pictures of venerable age +please more than that of the old philosopher of Koenigsberg drawn for us +by de Quincey in one of his miscellaneous Essays. There we see Immanuel +Kant, leading his tranquil sane existence, giving his friends sober +entertainment, talking brightly of mundane things, practising "the +hilarity which goes hand in hand with virtue." For me the very +eccentricities of his daily routine have a fascination, and I read them +as a devout Catholic reads many a quaint passage in the _Acta +Sanctorum_. How wise was his nightly habit, as he settled himself in bed +before falling asleep, to asseverate with a sigh of thankfulness that no +man living was more contented and healthier than he! Here is the true +asceticism, the child's glad abandonment to nature maintained and grown +articulate in philosophic age. + +To this beauty of plain life I cannot attain. But my own life is as far +removed as may be from brilliant or luxurious pleasures, and I divide my +time between the country and the town. This I do from obedience to +reason rather than fashion; for while the country has my love, the city +is more remedial to my peculiar pain. There the shy man may have what +Lamb called the perfect and sympathetic solitude, as opposed to the +"inhuman and cavern-haunting solitariness," to which his infirmity +inclines. There he and those who rub shoulders with him on the pavement +can "enjoy each other's want of conversation." No creature with a heart +can jostle daily with his kind, but he wins some consciousness of kindly +feeling. The very annoyances and constraints of propinquity are in their +own way disciplinary, and insistent, uncongenial persons, like glaring +red buoys with clanging bells, serve at least to keep us in the fairway +of navigation. And in a city there are voices of cheerful exhortation +always echoing in the higher air above the roar and the trampling, which +in the interludes of coarser sound, or by our removal into some quiet +court or garden, may be heard repeating their stirring watchwords of +endeavour. We are told that no word spoken ever dies, but goes +reverberating through space for ever. It is my fancy that only evil +words escape into the outer void, which eternally engulfs their +profitless message, while words of hope and helpfulness are not thus +lightly sundered from the world that needs them, but hover still near +above us, descending with every lull of the tumult into those ears which +are strained towards them. The laden air of towns carries not the rumour +of the battle only, but by the presence of these fair echoes held within +it, gives back to the soul more health than ever it drew from the body. +With this thought I am often consoled as I go my way through gloom and +clamour and unloveliness, finding a Providence in places which else seem +abandoned in the outer desolation. + +Nor is the vast city to be valued only for what it gives, but for its +own wonderful self, an obvious point which need not be expanded into a +tedious circle. The shy will naturally draw more advantage from so rich +a field of contemplation than those who seldom walk alone. In London I +often map out a course of wandering which in its varied stages shall +remind me of the change in progress or decay of particular arts or +industries or different quarters of the town. Reading their meaning in +the light of history, I make bare walls speak to me with a personal +voice. Let any one but acquaint himself with the styles of +ecclesiastical or domestic architecture, or of monuments of the dead, or +with the history of the thoroughfares he frequents, and he will be +pleasantly constrained to reflection upon those who have gone before +him. As he stands in the shadow of an ancient church he will think to +himself: "By this very wall Chaucer may have stood." As he walks amid +the reverberating ravines which are city streets he will say: "Here +along green and silent paths the Roman legionary marched when Hadrian +ruled the world." When once the faculty of observation has been awakened +to a permanent alertness, the desire to be widely read in history of men +and their arts will become irresistible; and through the knowledge +gradually amassed it will be thought a sorry chance if any ramble of +wider compass yield no vision which in comeliness or deformity tells its +tale of changing fortune. To appreciate human work, and the conditions +under which it is born, is to exult in abounding sympathy with this +man's conquest over things poor in promise, or to condole with that +man's failure to do the best that in him lay. + +As I walk by the strand of Thames, my fancy sees upon one flood the gay +barge gliding upward to green fields, and the black hull bearing down +the prisoner to the Traitors' Gate. If I go up Holborn, I remember that +where this traffic now thunders John Gerard tended his Physic Garden +when Elizabeth was queen. I know where Sarah Siddons lived; and where +William Blake died; and my curious wanderings are now so far extended, +that when I turn to the great book of London I seldom find a tedious +page. The places where people strove and suffered evoke before me the +forms of men and women dead but unforgotten, and if I am alone I am not +aware of loneliness. + +London is the central wonder, but wonderful also in spirit and +suggestion are those old places which ring it round: these I often +frequent at every season, and carry their portraits over my heart. Let a +man once learn to know them, and his memory shall never starve; he will +never forget the hour when first they yielded him up their secret. Many +moments of intimate delight do I treasure in remembrance, moments when I +was suddenly aware that all previous impressions were the poor +gatherings of purblind eyes; but I will only tell you of one, which may +suffice to show what riches lie ever open to those who roam in solitude. + +It was mid-April and the close of a cloudless day. I had been to the +Observatory hill at Greenwich to see the sun set over London, looking +for such a transfiguration of the grey city as should reveal its line of +warehouses lying along the horizon in a mist of splendour like the walls +of the New Jerusalem. So I had seen it before, marvellous and refined in +unearthly fire: but to-day, in a sadder mood, and hungering more deeply +for the vision, I looked out to the west in vain. For the wind had set +in from the east, and driven back upon the town a zone of iron-grey +smoke, ragged along its upper edge like a great water blown to spray, +but merging below with those gloomy and innumerable buildings. Upon this +the sun, which all day had ridden in a clear air, was slowly falling, +losing radiance with every minute, until as it approached that gloomy +spray it was luminous no more, but a dull red orb whose light, like a +flame withdrawn into the consumed heart of coals, glows for awhile +beneath a gathering film of grey. In a few minutes it descended, as if +sadly and of resolution, into the murky sea, where for a moment its red +curves seemed to refine the smoke into translucency; but at last the +dun waves gathered upon it dark and voluminous, drowning it so deeply +that the clearer sky above was instantly robbed of the wonted +after-glow. Some pale reflection there was in the upper heaven, ensuring +a time of twilight, but no glory; and smitten with a congruous sadness, +I went down to the river. But there, pacing to and fro as if upon a +quarter-deck, with the water lapping upon the wall beneath, I lived one +of the happy hours of life, redeemed from disappointment, and carried +far into a magical world. + +The flood tide, which had turned for more than an hour, was now racing +down wilful for the sea, though the breeze ruffling its surface seemed +to thwart and stay its eager course. And on the surface, indeed, chafed +and broken into innumerable ripples, the wind triumphed; but as one +looked westwards towards the city, it was clear that the sullen strength +of stream and tide had the mastery. For over the broad curving reach, +lit like white unburnished silver with the reflection of the pallid sky, +there glided forward a line of barges each with every red sail set, and +as silent as if they sallied from a besieged city. One by one they hung +out their lights, the lamps swaying and casting yellow bars over the +quivering water, until in perfect silence all passed down before me. +Each in turn attaining the lower bend where the river sweeps northward, +went about and stood for the Middlesex shore; and then for a moment the +wind seemed to overcome the tide, for before the boat could win new way, +lying almost broadside across the stream, the breeze held her +motionless, like a tired bird on a windy day when it flies out from the +shelter of the wood. It was but for a moment, and then the blunt bows +glided forward towards the north bank, and another barge succeeded in +the gathering gloom. + +And so it was until all were passed. The departing light drew the +colours from the red sails and the silvery brightness from the river; +all forms became outlined in black upon what uncertain light remained. +Two men put off in a boat from an anchored ship; the mingled sound of +their oars and voices came with subdued tone as if out of an infinite +distance. Then the whole reach lay bare and silent for a while, and only +the little waves lapping upon the stone steps played an accompaniment to +my dream. + +The hour and the place compelled to reverie, and memory consenting to +their evocative charm, I peopled the still scene with the forms of those +who had swayed or shared the fortunes of this land; imperious Elizabeth +and gentler Mary, the slight heroic figure with one sleeve pinned empty +on the breast, and all those who, going down to their business in deep +waters or returning therefrom, have saluted with melancholy or with joy +these towers and this wooded hill. I thought of the lads playing beneath +these trees, and so inbreathing the spirit of this place that for them +there was no career but to follow the river down to ocean, and ocean +himself in his circuit of the world. I thought of the veterans returned +from that quest, old Argonauts of a later day, now clustering round the +Hospital fires and perhaps recalling amid tales of havens and high seas +the very morning when they first dropped round the bend and passed into +the new world beyond. For this Thames is such an avenue and entry into +marvellous life that earth can show no greater rival, none more rich in +dignity or in the multitude of its merchandise. And if the flood of that +merchandise shall cease, and the stream once more go lonely to the sea +or carry coracles, it cannot be again as if it had never borne great +ships, or swung the Admiral's galley on its tide. + +It is good for an Englishman to stand here and listen to the brown +waters lapping on the old walls and caulked timbers; to hear, as an +under murmur, voices of Lechlade and Bablockhythe, for all intervening +leagues of wood and meadow not altogether lost: before this persistence +and continuity of youth to feel high thoughts stir within him and +solemnize the nativity of new resolve. You cannot feel beneath your feet +these old stones trodden by the great generations of your own blood and +kindred, and not be moved to walk uprightly, to be approved by their +shades as one not unworthy of such descent. For whether such worn +stones be in the aisle of some great minster, or here, paving this +narrow way for hurrying feet, the inspiration is as strong and the +thankfulness not other. For this is a place of meridian, the navel of +our land and empire; the wind searching its alleys has no usual voice, +but as it were a deep and oceanic sound, according with old ballads and +stories of the sea. + +I lingered leaning upon the rail until the tide had fallen from the +wall, tracing along the narrow pebbled foreshore a clear marginal line +of irregular contour, now sinuous, now straight, but palely luminous +like a silver tone on some enamel of old Italy, a line drawn by a master +draughtsman, in its inevitable and sure perfection wholly satisfying the +eye. With the dark bank it vanished towards the great city, now marked +in the upper sky by a hovering brightness of light escaped beyond the +smoky rampart to tell the effort of innumerable lamps beneath, all +pouring their blurred and vain effulgence to the disdainful stars. + +Moreover, the city will give the shy man all the consolations of art, +philosophy and literature of which his education or experience may have +made him worthy. He can see great pictures or read great books at little +cost, and find in them the truest of friends in need. It is so obvious +that a solitary of any culture will find relief with such companions, +that here I take for granted his resort to their aid, and will only +mention two resources from which the real recluse often draws less +advantage than he might, I mean orchestral music and the drama. Any man +of feeling who hears a great symphony ceases to be self-centred with the +first movement; he goes out of himself, and rides upon waves of sound, +exalted by this majesty of collective effort. No other music thrills his +whole being like this, which sweeps him with all around into the very +course of changing fates. In the confluence of dim hopes and passions +which rise above the harmonies like smoke-wreaths riding the red flame, +the soul glows interfluous with other souls and is elated with the +inspiration of their presence. He bears arms exulting who never had +comrades till now; his will is absorbed in confederate joy and human +force unanimous. In this abandonment of the whole being, the diffident +know their fellows near, and in the ecstasy of shared emotion learn the +full measure of their humanity. Philosophers in all ages have known and +taught the power of music in compelling ten thousand to the love of one, +and so ennobling an infinite multitude in the glow of a common emotion. +Sound was the first instinctive language, one for man and winds and +waters; and music, which is the development of this primeval converse, +leaving to grammars the expression of cold and abstract thought, has +gathered about her in her mountain caverns the echoes of all sighs sad +or passionate, of all inarticulate cries born of aspiration or desire, +and there blended them into eternal harmonies which at her word flow +forth and join the hearts of men. + +Indeed, that swift responsiveness of feeling which music thus awakes is +a gift beyond gems of Golconda; not youth's swift effusion cheaply given +and soon forgotten, but the vibration of a heart stirred in sympathy +with some profound note of life, as the dyed pane stirs and quivers +when the organ gives forth its deepest tones. Sentiment is a draught of +old wine passing into the veins and enriching the blood, until in the +generous glow all the privations and the stints of loneliness are +forgotten. Pure emotion is like righteous anger, which may be lawfully +indulged if the sun go not down upon it; and as he who shrinks from all +fire of wrath lives but a vaporous life, so he who will never be moved +is proud of a poor crustacean strength, like the limpet, winning +darkness in exchange for dull stability. As for me, in the propitious +hour when the heart longs for expansion, I give it honourable licence, +and quicken its unfolding by spells of magical words. At such times I +invoke the aid of passionate souls, not shrinking even from the vain, +provided that they loved greatly and give great expression to their +humanity. Such is that wild lover of George Sand whose _Souvenir_, for +all its rhetoric, charms like an incantation. The ancients quenched the +ashes of the pyre with red wine, as if the blood of the god-given vine +could hearten the spirit that yet hovered near. Over my ashes let no +wine be poured, but read me such verses high and valiant, that if my +soul yet lingers undelivered from the earth's attraction it may be +regenerated and set free into a braver life. + +And let the lonely man be an assiduous frequenter of the playhouse, for +the drama will also open the world's heart to him, and that by a plainer +and less elusive speech. Seated in the theatre among his kind, he knows +a deeper pleasure than other men; for while to these the changing scene +brings remembrance or anticipation of familiar things, to him it reveals +whole vistas of life which, except in dreams, his feet may never tread. +When the curtain is rung down, and he goes out into the street, for a +while at least his existence is transformed. All those front doors +aligned in their innumerable sequence, which in daylight or darkness he +passes when he wanders alone, are now no longer barred against him; they +open at the touch of his fancy, and he sees within the light of +homeliness, where father, mother, and child weave round warm firesides +their close conspiracies of affection. At last he knows what is passing +behind those bars; like an old family friend he takes his place by the +fire and receives as of right the confidences which in his real lonely +life never find their way to his ears. He helps the lovers to build +their cloudy castles, he reasons away the parents' care, he goes +up-stairs with a shaded candle to look in upon the children sleeping. +Good women unlock the jewel-caskets which are their souls; happy maidens +are sisterly with him; strong men grapple him to their hearts and call +him friend. He that was vagabond has now innumerable homes, and of the +faces that fleet by him out of doors there are always some which seem to +give him greeting. + +These secret and unavowed alliances transfigure the unlovely streets, +and light in the cavernous blank houses many a glowing and familiar +hearth. As he goes on, careless of distance or direction, he is now +inwardly busy with fresh and delightful dreams. He plights his troth and +earth is Eden; he imagines brilliant hours for the dream-children who +go by his side, holding each of his hands. And if the visions change, +and sorrow or sin pass in over a familiar threshold, what generous +abnegation, what pity, what righteous wrath does he not know, until the +plastic power of fancy moulds out of this poor recluse a man like other +men. Amid these visionary sympathies time goes quickly by, and returning +to his voiceless dwelling he has stored up such wealth of dreams that he +can even endure the supreme test when the lonely man finds himself +sitting in the wan light with no one near him to whom he is dear. Of the +strength and peacefulness which bring him safely through that hour of +desolation he owes much to the players, who have shot the drab texture +of life with an infinity of bright and tender hues, so that he can bear +to turn it in his hands and look upon it with a wistful pleasure. I say, +then, let the shy man frequent the playhouse, and there facet and +burnish his dulled mind until it reflects, if it may not touch, the +many-sided world. + +For the discipline of sympathy, for the quickened sense of comradeship +in work, for the very presence of that unloveliness which compels +sympathy, I dwell more months in the town than in the country-side. But +remembering what Nature did to save me, and owing her an endless debt of +filial duty, I return to her in the summer days, and to make up for the +long months of separation cling nearer to her than most of her truant +sons. For communion with Nature, the ideal joy of country life, is not +attained by the sportsman or the mere player of games, who think of +their bodies chiefly, and use as a means to rude physical vigour the end +ordained for the fine contentience of body, mind, and spirit. Again I +will pass by the obvious and familiar resources of outdoor life, and +speak only of such as men are unaccountably prone to neglect. + +There is a way of learning nature which in this wet land is mostly +followed by tramps and vagrants; the way of sleeping beneath the stars. +So far is this joy from the thoughts of most men, that even George +Borrow felt a strange uneasiness when for the first time the darkness +descended upon him in the open country. I think we carry with us all our +lives that fear of night with which nursery tales inspired our +childhood; it reinforces the later more reasoned fear of boisterous +weather, or of the men who walk in darkness because their works are +evil. We shrink from night as a chill privation of daylight, as a gloom +which we must traverse, but not inhabit; the distrust becomes with years +instinctive and universal, and the nearest approach to friendly relation +with night attained by most of us is a timid liking for the twilight +hours. Yet as the sun rises alike upon the just and upon the unjust even +so does he descend, and we put a slight upon Providence if we abandon to +rogues and rakes that wonderful kingdom of the darkness of which by +natural prerogative we are enfranchised. By never using our proper +freedom, we give them prescriptive licence of usurpation, so that the +hours in which the heavens are nearest to us are become the peculiar +inheritance of thieves. + +I confess that on the night when first I set out to do without a bedroom +I too felt all the force of the traditional mistrust. I heard human +whispers in the wind, and saw the shadows of walls and trees as forms of +men lurking to spring out against me. The movements of roosting birds +startled me as I passed; the sudden silences startled me more. And when +I had spread my gear on the ground and settled down to rest, the sense +of exposure on every side made sleep impossible; time after time I +seemed to hear footsteps stealthily approaching; and there was a +strangeness pervading everything which to my nervous fancy was simply +provocative of apparitions. This lasted many nights; and whether I +established myself on the edge of a copse, or in the open grass, or in a +hammock beneath two trees, I continued a prey to the same uneasy +wakefulness. But then, as if satisfied of good faith by such +perseverance, the night began to wear a friendly aspect, the shadows +gave up their ghosts, and the breezes became the expected messengers of +slumber. + +When the lonely sleeper-out has grown familiar with the moonlight and +the darkness, he is admitted into the number of earth's favoured sons; +for lying like a child upon her bosom, he hears her heart beating in the +silence, and wakes to see her smiling in her beauty like a queen +apparelled. To no man slumber comes more gently than to him; and his +uprising is as that of a child exulting in the cloudless day. Health and +innocence return to him, and his one sorrow is that he has lived into +maturity without continually partaking of these sane and natural +delights. Remorse is his that for all these years he has feared the dews +and shrunk from the bland night airs; and remembering the needless +imprisonment of a hundred chambers, he mourns over the irrecoverable +hours which would have rooted his life more deeply in tranquillity and +strength. But the June sun is up, and the birds are singing: he strides +with light step over the grass, watching the rabbits play in the glades, +and in unison with a host of fellow-creatures singing a welcome to the +dawn. When it is time for him to think of home and he comes once more +beneath a doorway, he has a mind refreshed by the quietude of dim space, +and a heart replenished with innocence and good-will. He who so sleeps +hates no man, and will go upon the dullest way free from petulance or +despair. The scent of the rich earth is in his nostrils, and the +clearness of morning air has passed into his eyes. + +I have made my lair in many places since I first kept house with Nature. +I have couched in heather by the pines of hills far above the Sussex +Weald; I have lain in dry furrows or on the margin of a copse, or in the +parks of the children of fortune, for whose welfare, in gratitude for +their unconscious hospitality, I shall ever pray. But of all wild +resting-places I have known, the openest are the most delightful. To see +the whole sweep of the stars; to lie on the shorn ground free of all +that overshadows or encompasses or confines; to breathe in the great +gulf of air; to stretch unhindered limbs--this is an initiation into a +new life, a pleasant memory in the long glooms of winter. Let nothing +come between you and the stars, that they may look well upon your face, +and haply repenting of some ancient unkindliness, draw you at this +rebirth a new horoscope of blessing and fair fortune. And if slumber +tarries when you lie in an open spot, you may consciously ride the great +globe through space, and like the shepherd watching by his flock in the +clear night while star rises after star, grow aware of the great earth +rolling to the east beneath you. + +In these still hours of night or early dawn there steals upon the +charmed mind an Orphic sense of worship and inexplicable joy. For here +on bare uplands and wooded hills, where the starlight rains down through +the silence, or the day, welling up over the rim of the downs, glides +fresh from the lips of ocean, a calm river of light, here is the place +of Dionysus, of him born from fire and dew, Zagreus the soul of clean +souls and wild lives, his heart a-quiver with vague sadness drawn from +all the worlds, Eleutherios, loosener of heart and lip, the regenerator, +the absolver, the eternally misunderstood, whose true followers are +priests of impassioned pure life, whose wine is not juice of grapes but +the clear air ambient upon the hills. Here when sleep is shamed away by +expectant awe, the whole being grows one with all-environing life; +personality glides into the stream of cosmic existence, lost and found a +thousand times in the trance and ecstasy of dim divine feelings beyond +the power of words inexpressible. It is miracle; it is religion; it is a +feast of purification above pomps or mysteries, a cleansing ritual +without victims and undefiled. In such hours, and in such hours alone, +man and things are joined in a supreme utterance of life high and +humble, transient and immortal, by which the fellowship of all +existences within the universe is made real and significant to the +initiate mind. For in the day fences are about us, roofs and towers +impend above our heads, we are cribbed in streets and markets, the din +of rhetoric or sordid bargaining fills our ears. Or if we withdraw into +some still chamber, yet the walls built by hired hands offend, and the +doorposts of sapless timber; no high influence can penetrate to us save +through the close court of memory, and compared with the breezy starlit +meadows, how poor an avenue to the soul is that! + +And the exuberant sun of noon distracts, and the multitude of his beams +is troublous, for what does sight avail if the things of the heart's +desire are lost in immeasurable perplexities of light? For in the high +day the quivering bright air is more opaque than the dim spaces of +night, so tranquil and severe, or the glowing kingdoms of the morning. +At the springing of the day the eyes open upon awakening flowers, giving +filial heed to the marvellous earth which waits in patience for a human +greeting. I like the passage in which Chaucer tells how in May-time his +couch was spread in an arbour upon the margin of the grass, that he +might wake to see the daisies unfold their petals. Sleeping thus, he +also must have known those intervals of slumber when a sense of some +impending wonder grows too strong for sleep, and all nature seems +calling to high vision. Often I have been thus awakened, not by noise +or movement, but as it were by some strange prescience of beauty +constraining me to rise and look. Once I was drawn some distance round +the corner of a copse, and there, low in the sable-blue of the sky, in a +rivalry of intense but dazzling light, the crescent moon hung splendid +over against a great constellation which glittered like a carcanet of +diamonds. They seemed to speak together as if in some scene or passage +of celestial drama, nor did I know which was the diviner speech, the +moon's unwavering effulgence or that leaping coruscation of the stars. +Nothing stirred on the right hand or the left, but earth and air were +hushed, as if before that colloquy all sound and motion were +miraculously holden. Tall trees brown with densest shadows were massed +upon one side, obscuring half the heaven, and lending by their +contrasted gloom that sense of wizardry in natural things which enchants +the clear summer nights when the air is still. + +This is but one among many visions of which the remembrance makes life +worshipful; and it is pity that at the hour of their coming well-nigh +all whom they should delight lie chambered within brick walls, lost in +sleep or in the mazes of unprofitable thoughts. For these things in +their rare appearances are more precious than an hour's slumber, were it +dreamless as a child's, or all the watches of luxurious unrest. If +another summer is given me I hope to take the road when July has come +with balmy nights, and wander days at a stretch with all I need upon my +shoulders. Then I shall know the real joy of vagrancy, caring little +where night finds me, and quickening my steps for nothing and for no +man. I shall linger in every glade or on every hill-top which calls to +me to stay; I shall tell all the hedgerow flowers, and lean over the +gates to watch the foals playing. The brooks shall be my washing-basins, +and I shall quench hunger and thirst in the tiled kitchens of lonely +farmsteads. If I hear the shriek of a train I shall smile when I think +of its cooped and harried passengers, and plunge devious into some +pathless wood, in whose depths the only sounds are the tap of the +woodpecker's bill or the measured axe-strokes of the woodman. I shall +fling myself down to rest under what tree I will, and pulling from my +pocket the book of my choice, I shall summon a wise and cheerful +companion to my side as easily as ever oriental magician called a jinn +to do him service. I shall once more be commensal with wild creatures, +and wonder that solitude was ever a pain; I shall be healthily +disdainful of the valetudinarian who lives to spoil either his body or +his soul. + +These are the wanderings which henceforward will chiefly suffice to my +need. For since I roamed my fill in other continents the gadfly may no +longer sting me out of my tranquil haunts. In their youth lonely people +suffer more than others from that restlessness which fills the mind with +sudden distaste for the present scene, and a fierce longing to be +somewhere far away. Others are preserved from it by the love of home; +but we, in our poverty of attachment, listen more readily to the +depreciating voice. + +I remember how deep had always been my longing to look out upon the sea +from some Greek island, and how one day, when this desire was granted, +and I walked along hills set high above the blue AEgean, I was seized +with an instant yearning to be instead upon Ranmore Common in Surrey. +Yet at that moment a life's ambition was being fulfilled; I stood in a +scene of incomparable beauty, gazing down on those deep azure waters +whose voice is always to me as a lament for wandering Odysseus; the +lower slopes were rich with olive trees, powdering with silver the +tilled lands round a beautiful monastery lying there in its enchanted +rest. Dark cypresses rose amid white walls of villages, by the contrast +of their gloom making all bright colours glorious; away to the left, +where the shore verged westward tracing inimitable curves between field +and sea, lay slumbering a little white town with minarets and walled +gardens and tiny haven--a very place for Argonauts; and yet my thoughts +turned to the chalk downs of England and honeysuckle crowning the +unfruitful hollies. _Sed quia semper abest quod aves praesentia +temnis_;--Such desire has distracted Roman minds; the perversity is very +old; and perhaps only children find no disillusion in the accomplishment +of a dream. + +For our feet have one country and our dreams another, and there is no +constancy in us. It is not alone in the bartering of one earthly scene +for its fellow that we suffer the sick thirst of change; but into the +rarest hour of achieved ideal to which hope promised her supreme +satisfaction, the same wayward longing will often find a way; as in a +sacred place amid the purest and most exquisite meditations of the soul, +there will suddenly flit inexplicable shadows of irreverence, with +echoes of incongruous voices from the abandoned world. + +But now as the years pass and the penury of human love has made the home +woods and fields more dear, I feel that this unrest is drawing to its +end. For as the seasons pass over the uplands and the meadows, clothing +them with new splendours between the seed-time and the harvest, no +vision rises upon the memory dearer and more beneficent than theirs. As +the lover's fancy dwells upon the image of his beloved in this or that +environment, and thus or thus arrayed, so I see the woods and fields in +the various glories of the year and know not in which garb I love them +best. They have heard my laments, my confidences, all my broken +resolves: they are bound to me by so pure and intimate an affection that +all those grander wonders of the world should never draw me again from +this allegiance. Not for the vision of Himalaya piercing the heaven, or +the sunsets of Sienna, or the moonlight on the Taj Mahal, or for any +other beauty or any wonder shall I weary of the cornfields framed in +elms or the great horses turning in the furrow against the evening sky. + +For with the growth of years our desires wander less, and are mercifully +contracted to the scope of our wearying powers. We haunt the same old +places and want the same old things, dwelling amongst them with an +increasing constancy of devotion. For we find that year by year the old +places and things are not really the same; something has touched them in +our absence; strange still agencies have intervened, long silences of +dissolution and the ineluctable fate of change. And so that perfect +sameness which we find unattainable takes on the quality of ideal and +demands the grown man's devotion, as the change that is forbidden casts +its resistless spell over the guarded and tethered child. The eyes of +youth are on the far end of the vista, those of age upon the near; the +old horse that has drawn the coulter through the clay is glad for the +four hedges of the paddock which irk the growing colt's desire. When +Richard Jefferies was asked why he walked the same lane day after day, +at first he was at a loss for a reply; but gradually the reason became +clear to him. It was because he had become aware of the iron law: +_Nothing twice_: he wanted the same old and loved things not twice but +endlessly; he was yearly more eager to be with them, and paint indelibly +upon his memory their delicate quiet beauty, their soft and perishable +charm. + +That is how I also feel, as with the return of summer I wander out into +the old meadows and climb the familiar hills; I find myself hoping that +nothing is changed, and am stirred with sweet anxieties of reminiscence. +And surely within the enchanted boundaries of the counties where I +ramble, there is variety which not the hundred eyes of Argus could +exhaust. These fields and woodlands in high summer feast all the senses +with a surfeit of delights. How good it is to exercise in all its range +the fine mechanism of the body, suffering each part of it to indulge its +own hunger after beauty; to feel the texture of petals, and draw the +long grasses through the fingers; to breathe an air laden with the scent +of blossoms, passing from uplands fragrant with bean-flowers into +untilled regions odorous with pines; to hear the birds' chorus at +sunrise and the distant sound of reaping; to see innumerable marvels; +the belts of clover mantling wine-dark in the wind; the poppies in the +standing corn, the carmine yew-stems on the downs; above you the soft +grey clouds delicately floating; below you, as the day declines, some +distant lonely water emerging in its glory to be the mirror and refuge +of all heaven's light; to remember the gorse and broom and look forward +to the royal purple of the heather--all this is a consummation of pure +life, a high, sensuous pleasure penetrating to the inmost soul, and of +such exceeding price that to disdain its offerings or to pass incurious +before them, is to live in the blindness of the tribe of Genseric. + +In such wanderings the mind is filled with slow and seasonable thoughts, +lasting as the trees and buildings of the country-side. Old deliberate +contemplations, perceptions after long regard ingathered from abundant +nature, theories leisurely compacted in sunshine or storm, to stand in +the fields of memory, crowned with beauty by the indulgent years. So in +the visible meadows stand the ancient barns, with roofs of umber tiles +parcel-gilded with old gold of lichen, and crowning their seasoned +timbers "as naturally as leaves"; restful structures of a quiet age, +capacious of dim space, unvexed by the glare of a hundred summers. + +And if you ask what profit is here for one who must do battle in the +loud world, study for a while the artifice and industrious policy of +plants by which they attract to themselves the visitants they need or +with most masterful defence repel the importunate advance, and you will +return to the societies of men, even to their parliaments, enriched with +arts of prudence beyond the practice of Machiavel. Examine the dog-rose +upon the hedge, how by putting forth thorns it raises itself to the +light and ranges irresistible along the leafy parapets; see how the +flowers adapt their form and colour to the convenience of the bee or the +predilections of the bird; consider the furze armed with spines against +browsing muzzles, and be near when it casts its seed wide upon the +earth; and then say if among states or governments there is a wiser +economy or an intelligence more provident of its end. I myself have the +conceit that if time, revoking my sentence of superannuation, should +restore my lost years and add youth to the wisdom learned along the +hedges, even I, a very profitless weed, should not again so uncivilly +decay, but flower to another June and see my seed multiply around me. + +Perhaps, if that might be, I should strive to learn thoroughly, and +bring science to bear upon experience. But, as I am, classifications and +dissections are repellent to my fancy. I cannot get to the hearts of +flowers by any Linnaean approach, but go rather by the old animistic way, +still honoured by Milton through his Genius of the Woods: + + "When evening gray doth rise I fetch my round, + Over the mount and all this hallowed ground, + And early, ere the breath of odorous morn + Awakes the slumbering leaves." + +So I greet the blossoms of hill and upland and water-meadow, knowing +them all by their country names, and sometimes fancying that they know +me back: all that is lacking is the tutelary power to guard their growth +and prolong their bright and fragrant lives. What fine old names they +have, great with the blended dignities of literary and rural lore; +archangel, tormentil, rosa solis or sun-dew, horehound, Saracen's +wound-wort, melilot or king's clover, pellitory of Spain! I cannot +coldly divide so fine a company into bare genera and species, but +imagine for them high genealogies and alliances by an imaginative method +of my own: to me the lily and the onion shall never be connections. + +If I must read books on flowers, I take down such a one as Nicholas +Culpeper's _Complete Herbal_, written from "my house in Spitalfields +next the Red Lion, September 5th, 1653." For here is a man who attempers +science with the quaintest fancies after the manner of his generation, +and delightfully misinterprets the real affinity of the flowers and the +heavens. "He that would know the operation of the herbs must look up to +the stars astrologically," says this master; and so to him briony is "a +furious martial plant," and brank ursine "an excellent plant under the +dominion of the moon." Of rosemary he says, "the sun claims privilege in +it, and it is under the celestial ram," and of viper's bugloss, "it is +a most gallant herb of the sun." The bay-tree rouses him to real +eloquence, though not for Apollo's sake. "It is a tree of the sun and +under the celestial sign of Leo, and resists witchcraft very potently, +as also all the evils that old Saturn can do to the body of man; for +neither witch nor devil, thunder nor lightning will hurt a man in the +place where a bay-tree is." + +Reading in this old book of the ordinance and virtues of the familiar +herbs, I escape from the severities of botanical science into a maze of +queer fancies, well suited to those retrospective hours when we love +best what we least believe. And by the pleasant suggestion of astrology +I am led on to contemplate the starry heavens, which I do in the ancient +pastoral way, peopling them with mythical forms and connecting them with +the seasonable changes of rustic toil. I forget for the moment all the +discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler, and see eye to eye with +Cleostratus of Tenedos who nightly watched the stars from the sacred +slopes of Ida. + +Much as the companionships of nature have meant for me, I would not have +any man content himself with these alone. It is not right to live the +slave of Pales, or become the rhapsode of docks and nettles. To be all +for the lower life, were it the fairest, is derogation; and Har and Heva +before they may enter into their kingdom of the flowers must first be +fallen spirits. But continually in the interludes of human endeavour to +rebathe the mind at these clear wells does indeed exceedingly purify and +strengthen against the returning and imminent encounter. Those long +retreats at Walden may not often be repeated, for man is either risen +too high or too far fallen to live well in the sole company of animals +and flowers. What sociologists call the consciousness of kind is as +vital to man as the consciousness of self; and to pine for adoption into +an alien kind is vain on this side transmigration. + +Not seldom my wanderings in town and country lead me to quiet +churchyards, or to those vast cemeteries where the living have +established the dead in avenues and streets of tombs after their drear +suburban fashion. Solitude has ever persuaded to the contemplation of +death, and in these silent places I feel no shock of sadness but am +rather possessed by a familiar spirit of peace. As I wander from path to +path, my fancy is not lamed by mournful thoughts, but finds suggestion +amid the poor laconic histories by which these headstones appeal to him +that passes by. + +It is with most men a natural desire to take their last rest in some +green God's acre, far from the smoke and turmoil of towns, lying in a +fair space amid a small company, where there is a wide prospect of +tilled lands, and the reapers cut the swathes against the very +churchyard wall. And this is my most usual aspiration; yet there are +times when I would not shrink in thought from the Valley of Ezekiel, and +would be content to be written a mere number in some city of the dead, +where at last after all the loneliness of life I should no longer be +kept apart, but be gathered to my fellows where they lie in their +thousands, and be received a member of their society. And though I well +know that it matters not a cummin-seed whether my bones are washed to +and fro on the bed of the sea or my ashes cast to the winds of heaven, +yet I humour this fancy, and find a quiet pleasure in the thought that +death at least may end this isolation. + +And what if the propinquity of these poor remains be gage and promise of +a sympathy of souls unveiled and unhidden by false semblances of the +body? Then should death indeed be the crown of a long desire and give me +at the last the fellowship into which life denied initiation. Surely, as +Coleridge dreamed, there is a sex in souls, which, disengaged from the +coarse companionship of the flesh, shall see into each other's crystal +deeps. Thence, in new life, when the last recondite secret is withholden +no longer, there shall come forth those qualities and powers that +ennobled man and woman in mortality; they shall come forth in all their +several strength and beauty, divinely animate, and reflecting upon each +other bright rays and soft colours invisible upon these misty oceans of +our navigation. + +It is not terrible to think, at times, on death, for that _danse +macabre_ which troubled the fancy of our forefathers is now danced out, +and the silent figure that knocks at every door comes not as a grinning +skeleton but as one of more gentle countenance than any art can express. +The natural change, which to William Blake was but the passing out of +one room into another, is well personified in the merciful figure with +the kind eyes, coming at the sounded hour to lead away into quietness. +My solitude has taught me to know well those noble efforts which art has +made to lift from our bowed backs the burden of the fear of death: I +like to look upon that youthful Thanatos carved upon a column from the +temple of the Ephesian Diana, and every year the red leaves of autumn +persuade my steps to that village rich in elms where lived one who also +saw death so, and laboured to draw the frightened eyes of men from the +hour-glass and the skull to the gracious vision of the deliverer and +friend. There hands which were dear to him have raised a place of +leave-taking upon a green slope, a house of farewell set upon the shore +to receive the last pledges from the living to the absolved and +unburdened dead. + +When first I saw Compton it was a cloudless noon in August, the day of +days in which to come alone into this silent place. Out of the fiery +heat beaten from wall and path like a blinding spray of light, it is a +passage into a dimness of cool space, an air glaucous as the shade of +olives. There from the circuit of a dome look down kind faces of +immortal youth, in form and habit too tranquil for our life, but made +homely to us by the mercy in their eyes, and some quality of the white +soft hands which draws all weariness and all pain towards them. To me it +was as though some furious struggle in the waves were over, and swooning +out of life I had awakened upon a floor of translucent ocean, where, in +a gracious and tempered light, beings of a compassion too intense for +earth, each with a gesture that was not yet a touch, were charming all +the bruises of the lost battle away. Surely this is true vision of +things to come, and to such mercy we shall awaken. It cannot be that +when the eyes reopen they shall see the forms of dark apparitors, or +that the ears shall hear AEacus and Rhadamanthys speaking in dim halls +their cold, irrevocable dooms. No, but there shall be a pause and +respite upon the way from one to another life, and none may be conceived +more grateful than this rest, as it were a sojourn beneath waters of +Eunoe, where a flood of dear memories foreboding good shall absolve us +from the mortal sin of fear. + + * * * * * + +Turning back over these pages, I am conscious that I have failed to give +real experiences their proper life. Describing solitude I have been +dull; I have fixed the rushing flames of emotion in poor flamboyant +lines. I have written far more than any reader but yourself will have +cared to follow; but now at any rate the confession is over, and in the +future I shall work, and use my sight for a worthier end than +introspection. It has been said that the tale of any life is +interesting if sincerely told; and it may be that the most ordinary +lives have the advantage, because it is the common experience which +touches most hearts. For the greater part mine has been a common life, +unglorified by hazards in the field, or bright fulfilment of ambition; +it had been better for its peace if it might wholly have kept the +comfortable, usual way. + +I sometimes wonder whether the printing of these pages will reveal to me +any kinsmen in affliction, for such there must be going westward alone, +and I wish that for a moment we might foregather as we pass, to compare +the marvels of our isolation. Then perhaps I might be urged to higher +effort, hearing stories more pitiful than mine, tales of silent courage +under ban of excommunion to shame me from the very thought of despair. +Poets have metaphorically given colours to souls; mine, I feel, is only +grey, the common hue of shadows; but it was steeped in gloom by a +veritable pain and evils really undergone. And as I reflect upon what I +have written, and try to imagine it read by some brisk person utterly +content with life, I can well understand that the whole thing would +appear to him incredible, too preposterously strange for belief, a +rigmarole of sick fancies beyond the power of hellebore. So be it: I +expect small comprehension and no mercy, for indeed I have written +caring little for such consequence, yielding to that human thirst for +utterance which only confession can slake; as one eases pain by a moan +though there are none to hear it. It is not altogether a grateful task. +For hardly, and then only in a fortunate hour, to one whose years and +feelings have been interwoven with his own, will even a healthy man tell +the tale of his hidden emotion; and mine is the deeper reticence of a +habit which has ever held closely to the recipe of fernseed. To entrust +a confidence to one of unproven sympathy, is to risk a profitless +embarrassment. It has been most truly said that both parties to such +impulsive avowals, whenever they afterwards meet, must feel a constraint +as of confederacy in misdemeanour. + +I have hope that though I came late to the steady labour of the +vineyard, I may yet earn my wage and begin the new day with the rest. +Like Joseph Poorgrass I can now almost regard my diffidence as an +interesting study, and agree with the rustic man of calamities that +destiny might have made things even worse. Certainly the pain grows less +fierce; I can go more readily among my fellows for all but social ends. +For those who live much apart learn at last to see men not as +individuals but in groups: to them it is the type which counts, the +_forma specifica per formam individualem translucens_, of which the +scholastic jargon speaks. Those with whom I come in casual contact +appear to me now in a vague, diffused light like the atmosphere of some +other world. Dwelling upon none with the eyes of intimacy, and passing +swiftly from this to that, I find each but the harmless variant of a +species; if I lingered or came too near, doubtless old apprehensions +would oppress me still. It is a disadvantage of this outlook that the +fascination of detail is lost, and that I have less sense for the +personal in life. But if I grow old I shall regain the interest in +particular things and persons with which age is consoled amid many +miseries; for while youth grows earnest over some riddle of high art or +the occultation of Aldebaran, age is happily absorbed in the arrangement +of a room or discussing the destinies of a single household. + +Meanwhile, though uncongenial to my kind as entering little into their +pleasures, I like to be near them in their grief or happiness, standing +unnoticed in the wind of their fortune's wheel. At least I am not soured +or malevolent, and when there is dancing toward, I am in the crowd upon +the margin of the green. I have abandoned social obligations because I +am unfitted to perform them well, and society high and low exists by +their cheerful fulfilment. But I no longer rail at social law or decline +to see anything but evil in conventions devised by the wisdom and +refinement of centuries. If I refuse invitations and leave calls unpaid, +it is because I am socially bankrupt: were I solvent I should redeem all +debts. + +I decline therefore to denounce Chesterfield and deify Thoreau: there +was exaggeration in both men, and though my sympathies are rather with +the recluse of Walden pond, it is quite probable that Chesterfield was +the more useful of the two. I am a bad player, I have not the high +spirits or the conversational skill which each should contribute to the +social game. And in almost any sport the incompetent confer a benefit by +standing out: at least, that is the opinion which I hear the average +player express. If I lived in the backwoods where any guest is welcome, +it might be my duty to act differently. But my ways are cast in places +where there is no need for social press-gangs, and the highways and +hedges are left unsearched. If therefore by abstention I gain a +qualified peace for myself, and confer positive benefit on others, I may +go my way without serious reproach. + +And I did wisely not to marry, for I should have clung too closely to my +study for the happiness of any woman. I once saw an advertisement in +the newspaper inserted by a discontented young wife whose husband was a +recluse and would not take her out of evenings. She wanted to +communicate with congenial people, and, like a desperate sailor +marooned, was driven to wave her signal in the sight of the casual eye. +This frank confession of abandonment made a profound impression upon me. +I thought to myself, "Master recluse, you are a pilferer and have +filched a life. I am yet more solitary in my estate, and if I followed +your example, should be guilty of a greater wrong." There are, indeed, +hours when I feel embittered at the thought that for one innocent defect +a whole life should be amerced of joy; the finality of loss appals: all +is so irrevocable; _le vase est imbibe, l'etoffe a pris son pli_. +Avoided not without cause by those who were my natural associates, I +grow impenetrable of access, and even in my own family unfamiliar. The +resentment that welled up in the man who told the story of Henry +Ryecroft obtains the mastery, and I feel one in spirit with that lonely +analyst of disillusions. Sometimes a worse darkness gathers round, till +I long for one of those intense and all-absorbing creeds which somehow +seem to tend the brightest hearth-fires which earth knows: for +philosophy, though it invented the void, never built a little Gidding. + +It is then that I feel like the suppliant of the old Babylonian prayer, +"one whose kin are afar off, whose city is distant," and all that +appears before my sight is one scroll of wrongs which this evil heritage +has inflicted upon me. It has made my best years rich in misery; it has +cut me off from marriage; it has compelled me, one hating vain +complaint, to live querulously in the optative mood. Neither poverty nor +sickness could chastise more heavily; for poverty is strong in numbers +and sickness rich in sympathy, but diffidence reaps laughter and is +alone. When such thoughts win dominion over the mind I could envy what +sufferer you will his most awful punishment. For in his agony be sure +there is movement and action; his limbs are torn, yet he is dragged +onward: by his very writhing in the bonds he confesses his life. But I +lie in some dead waste where nothing moves and all is mist without +horizon, lost in an abhorred blankness of dismay to which no positive +suffering may be likened. Thither comes no fierce provocation to quicken +into Promethean scorn; life lies whelmed in blackness unlit by flashes +of defiance or the cold splendour of disdain. + +Empedocles once described his dream of retribution for the last +unutterable offence. For thrice ten thousand years the sinner roams +estranged from bliss, taking all mortal shapes, wearing with tired feet +all the sad ways of life. AEther sweeps him out to Ocean, Ocean casts him +naked on the shores of Earth, Earth hurls him upward to the flames of +Helios, and he, relentless, spurns the victim back to AEther, that the +dread cycle may begin anew. But to be for ever driven in this majestic +whirl of change, to receive the chastisement of all elements and survive +unbroken for a new revolution of the wheel, this is but an assurance of +the very pride of life, it is the charter of an invincible manhood. The +doom which in truth befits the unutterable sin is rather the blank pain +without accident or period, without point or salience to draw from +stunned nature her last energies of resentment. It is well for me that +this misery is short-lived, and that either by thinking on that ideal +love I know the miracle of the twenty-ninth sonnet, or, struggling with +instant effort out of the toils, try to see myself as I appear to +others, one who should scorn to sit in thirst when there are wells yet +for the seeking. + +It is a strange life to lead in this pleasureful world; and if when it +is over I were condemned to live again, coming like Er the Armenian to +that meadow where the lots are thrown down for each to choose his own, I +am already decided what character I should elect to play. I should +neither cast myself for a protagonist's part nor again for that of a +dumb actor in those backgrounds I know too well; but just for a plain +manly character, strong to face all fortunes and rich in troops of +friends. There should be no more evasion or dreary wrestling of mind +with body; but life should move to a restrained harmony, and no elusive +wind should carry half the music away. + +As for what remains of this present dispensation, I shall know how to +endure, trusting that the years may fade finely, like the figures in an +old tapestry, and that the end may come to me as to the old gentleman in +Hans Christian Andersen's story of the Old House. And I have this +advantage over other men, that while they have the whole cornucopia to +lose, I can but be deprived of the dregs in its pointed end. For in what +can there be further punishment? On others, men of happy pasts, dismay +may fall as the ways are darkened before them. But surely I shall be of +good cheer as I come into the land of the fierce old robber Age; for, +stripped long since by a more subtle and insatiate despoiler, I shall +possess nothing of worth to draw his covetousness upon me. So many joys +did my very youth renounce; so many pleasures the Harpies swept from my +place at the spread board of life; such gags and fetters held me while +others danced and sang, that I was the sad familiar of evil fortune +before my companions were acquainted with her name. That leaden weight +which brings others low, by a nice adjustment of the scales shall raise +me for the first time to their equality. And then, as one experienced in +bereavements, of themselves they may seek my company; and I, so long the +useless and estranged, may become at the close their helpful counsellor. + +If only that might be; if only upon the verge of night I might redeem by +usefulness my lost unserviceable day. Then this grey life, so long sole +and intrinsical to itself, should glow at last with some reflection of +the sunset; once more I should know young ardours imagined lost and +devotions miraculously born again. + +You will still encounter me now and then, moving absently through the +crowd, or wandering in some green place, as in the garden of the +Luxembourg Vauvenargues used to meet the wounded of the great battle, +keeping apart in the narrower walks, and leaving the broad central ways +for lighter feet than theirs. He often longed to have speech with them; +but always they turned away, with the proud self-sufficiency of the +disillusioned. Perhaps if he had succeeded he would have found that to +some of them life had its consolations not unlike mine, and that they +could still regard it as something more than a friendly process of +detachment. But it is not our habit to expand; we are ever held back by +the occult pride which the same soldier-philosopher has assigned to one +of his imaginary characters, "cette fierte tendre d'une ame timide, qui +ne veut avouer ni sa defaite, ni ses esperances, ni la vanite de ses +voeux." + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Apologia Diffidentis, by W. 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