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diff --git a/7053-h/7053-h.htm b/7053-h/7053-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..acfdd85 --- /dev/null +++ b/7053-h/7053-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6542 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Pages From a Journal, by Mark Rutherford</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .5em; + text-decoration: none;} + span.red { color: red; } + body {background-color: #ffffc0; } + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Pages From a Journal, by Mark Rutherford + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Pages From a Journal + with other Papers + + +Author: Mark Rutherford + + + +Release Date: August 1, 2019 [eBook #7053] +[This file was first posted on March 2, 2003] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAGES FROM A JOURNAL*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1901 T. Fisher Unwin edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/cover.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Book cover" +title= +"Book cover" + src="images/cover.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>Pages<br /> +From a Journal</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>WITH OTHER PAPERS</i></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +MARK RUTHERFORD</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall"><i>Author +of</i></span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">“THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK +RUTHERFORD,”</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">“CLARA HOPGOOD,” ETC., +ETC.</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/tpb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Decorative graphic" +title= +"Decorative graphic" + src="images/tps.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="GutSmall">LONDON</span><br /> +T. FISHER UNWIN<br /> +<span class="GutSmall"><span class="smcap">Paternoster +Square</span></span><span class="GutSmall">, E.C.,</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">1901</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">[<i>SECOND IMPRESSION</i>.]</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">[<i>All rights reserved</i>.]</p> +<h2>Contents</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>A Visit to Carlyle in 1868</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Early Morning in January</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page14">14</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>March</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page16">16</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>June</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page18">18</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>August</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page20">20</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The End of October</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page22">22</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>November</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page25">25</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Break-up of a Great Drought</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page28">28</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Spinoza</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page32">32</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Supplementary Note on the Devil</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page58">58</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Injustice</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page62">62</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Time Settles Controversies</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page64">64</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Talking about our Troubles</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page66">66</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Faith</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page70">70</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Patience</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page74">74</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>An Apology</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page78">78</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Belief, Unbelief, and Superstition</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page83">83</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Judas Iscariot</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page87">87</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Sir Walter Scott’s Use of the Supernatural</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page96">96</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>September, 1798</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page99">99</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Some Notes on Milton</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page110">110</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Morality of Byron’s Poetry. “The +Corsair”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page125">125</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Byron, Goethe, and Mr. Matthew Arnold</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page133">133</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>A Sacrifice</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page149">149</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Aged Three</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page152">152</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Conscience</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page153">153</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>The Governess’s Story</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page160">160</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>James Forbes</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page170">170</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Atonement</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page174">174</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>My Aunt Eleanor</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page180">180</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Correspondence between George, Lucy, M.A., and Hermione +Russell, B.A.</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page200">200</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p>Mrs. Fairfax</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page218">218</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>A VISIT +TO CARLYLE IN 1868</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">On</span> Saturday, the 22nd of March, +1868, my father and I called on Carlyle at 5, Cheyne Row, +Chelsea, with a message from one of his intimate friends.</p> +<p>We were asked upstairs at once, and found Carlyle at +breakfast. The room was large, well-lighted, a bright fire +was burning, and the window was open in order to secure complete +ventilation. Opposite the fireplace was a picture of +Frederick the Great and his sister. There were also other +pictures which I had not time to examine. One of them +Carlyle pointed out. It was a portrait of the Elector of +Saxony who assisted Luther. The letters +V.D.M.I.Æ. (“Verbum Dei Manet in +Æternum”) were round it. Everything in the room +was in exact order, there was no dust or confusion, and the books +on the shelves were arranged in perfect <i>evenness</i>. I +noticed that when Carlyle replaced a book he took pains to get it +level with the others. The furniture was solid, neat, and I +should think expensive. I showed him the letter he had +written to me eighteen years ago. It has been published by +Mr. Froude, but it will bear reprinting. The circumstances +under which it was written, not stated by Mr. Froude, were +these. In 1850, when the Latter-day Pamphlets +appeared—how well I remember the eager journey to the +bookseller for each successive number!—almost all the +reviews united in a howl of execration, criticism so +called. I, being young, and owing so much to Carlyle, wrote +to him, the first and almost the only time I ever did anything of +the kind, assuring him that there was at least one person who +believed in him. This was his answer:—</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: right">“<span +class="smcap">Chelsea</span>, 9<i>th March</i>, 1850.</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">My good young +Friend</span>,—I am much obliged by the regard you +entertain for me; and do not blame your enthusiasm, which well +enough beseems your young years. If my books teach you +anything, don’t mind in the least whether other people +believe it or not; but do you for your own behoof lay it to heart +as a real acquisition you have made, more properly, as a real +message left with you, which <i>you</i> must set about +fulfilling, whatsoever others do! This is really all the +counsel I can give you about what you read in my books or those +of others: <i>practise</i> what you learn there; instantly and in +all ways begin turning the belief into a fact, and continue at +that—till you get more and ever more beliefs, with which +also do the like. It is idle work otherwise to write books +or to read them.</p> +<p>“And be not surprised that ‘people have no +sympathy with you’; that is an accompaniment that will +attend you all your days if you mean to lead an earnest +life. The ‘people’ could not save you with +their ‘sympathy’ if they had never so much of it to +give; a man can and must save himself, with or without their +sympathy, as it may chance.</p> +<p>“And may all good be with you, my kind young friend, and +a heart stout enough for this adventure you are upon; that is the +best ‘good’ of all.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">“I remain, yours very +sincerely,</p> +<p style="text-align: right">“T. <span +class="smcap">Carlyle</span>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Carlyle had forgotten this letter, but said, “It is +undoubtedly mine. It is what I have always believed . . . +it has been so ever since I was at college. I do not mean +to say I was not loved there as warmly by noble friends as ever +man could be, but the world tumbled on me, and has ever since +then been tumbling on me rubbish, huge wagon-loads of rubbish, +thinking to smother me, and was surprised it did not smother +me—turned round with amazement and said, ‘What, you +alive yet?’ . . . While I was writing my <i>Frederick</i> +my best friends, out of delicacy, did not call. Those who +came were those I did not want to come, and I saw very few of +them. I shook off everything to right and left. At +last the work would have killed me, and I was obliged to take to +riding, chiefly in the dark, about fourteen miles most days, +plunging and floundering on. I ought to have been younger +to have undertaken such a task. If they were to offer me +all Prussia, all the solar system, I would not write +<i>Frederick</i> again. No bribe from God or man would +tempt me to do it.”</p> +<p>He was re-reading his <i>Frederick</i>, to correct it for the +stereotyped edition. “On the whole I think it is very +well done. No man perhaps in England could have done it +better. If you write a book though now, you must just pitch +it out of window and say, ‘Ho! all you jackasses, come and +trample on it and trample it into mud, or go on till you are +tired.’” He laughed heartily at this +explosion. His laughter struck me—humour controlling +his wrath and in a sense <i>above</i> it, as if the final word +were by no means hatred or contempt, even for the jackass. +“ . . . No piece of news of late years has gladdened me +like the victory of the Prussians over the Austrians. It +was the triumph of Prussian over French and Napoleonic +influence. The Prussians were a valiant, pious people, and +it was a question which should have the most power in Germany, +they or Napoleon. The French are sunk in all kinds of +filth. Compare what the Prussians did with what we did in +the Crimea. The English people are an incredible +people. They seem to think that it is not necessary that a +general should have the least knowledge of the art of war. +It is as if you had the stone, and should cry out to any +travelling tinker or blacksmith and say, ‘Here, come here +and cut me for the stone,’ and he <i>would</i> cut +you! Sir Charles Napier would have been a great general if +he had had the opportunity. He was much delighted with +Frederick. ‘Frederick was a most extraordinary +general,’ said Sir Charles, and on examination I found out +that all that Sir Charles had read of Frederick was a manual for +Prussian officers, published by him about 1760, telling them what +to do on particular occasions. I was very pleased at this +admiration of Frederick by Sir Charles . . .</p> +<p>“Sir John Bowring was one of your model men; men who go +about imagining themselves the models of all virtues, and they +are models of something very different. He was one of your +patriots, and the Government to quiet him sent him out to +China. When he got there he went to war with a third of the +human race! He, the patriot, he who believed in the +greatest-happiness principle, immediately went to war with a +third of the human race!” (Great laughter from +T.C.) “And so far as I can make out he was all +wrong.</p> +<p>“The <i>Frederick</i> is being translated into +German. It is being done by a man whose name I have +forgotten, but it was begun by one of the most faithful friends I +ever had, Neuberg. I could not work in the rooms in the +offices where lay the State papers I wanted to use, it brought on +such a headache, but Neuberg went there, and for six months +worked all day copying. He was taken ill, and a surgical +operation was badly performed, and then in that wild, black +weather at the beginning of last year, just after I came back +from Mentone, the news came to me one night he was +dead.”</p> +<p>On leaving Carlyle shook hands with us both and said he was +glad to have seen us. “It was pleasant to have +friends coming out of the dark in this way.”</p> +<p>Perhaps a reflection or two which occurred to me after this +interview may not be out of place. Carlyle was perfectly +frank, even to us of whom he knew but little. He did not +stand off or refuse to talk on any but commonplace +subjects. What was offered to us was his best. And +yet there is to be found in him a singular reserve, and those +shallow persons who taunt him with inconsistency because he makes +so much of silence, and yet talks so much, understand little or +nothing of him. In half a dozen pages one man may be guilty +of shameless garrulity, and another may be nobly reticent +throughout a dozen volumes. Carlyle feels the +contradictions of the universe as keenly as any man can feel +them. He knows how easy it is to appear profound by putting +anew the riddles which nobody can answer; he knows how strong is +the temptation towards the insoluble. But upon these +subjects he also knows how to hold his tongue; he does not shriek +in the streets, but he bows his head. He has found no +answer—he no more than the feeblest of us, and yet in his +inmost soul there is a shrine, and he worships.</p> +<p>Carlyle is the champion of morals, ethics, law—call it +what you like—of that which says we must not always do a +thing because it is pleasant. There are two great ethical +parties in the world, and, in the main, but two. One of +them asserts the claims of the senses. Its doctrine is +seductive because it is so right. It is necessary that we +should in a measure believe it, in order that life may be +sweet. But nature has heavily weighted the scale in its +favour; its acceptance requires no effort. It is easily +perverted and becomes a snare. In our day nearly all genius +has gone over to it, and preaching it is rather +superfluous. The other party affirms what has been the soul +of all religions worth having, that it is by repression and +self-negation that men and States live.</p> +<p>It has been said that Carlyle is great because he is graphic, +and he is supposed to be summed up in “mere +picturesqueness,” the silliest of verdicts. A man may +be graphic in two ways. He may deal with his subject from +the outside, and by dint of using strong language may +“graphically” describe an execution or a drunken row +in the streets. But he may be graphic by ability to +penetrate into essence, and to express it in words which are +worthy of it. What higher virtue than this can we imagine +in poet, artist, or prophet?</p> +<p>Like all great men, Carlyle is infinitely tender. That +was what struck me as I sat and looked in his eyes, and the best +portraits in some degree confirm me. It is not worth while +here to produce passages from his books to prove my point, but I +could easily do so, specially from the <i>Life of Sterling</i> +and the <i>Cromwell</i>. <a name="citation10"></a><a +href="#footnote10" class="citation">[10]</a> Much of his +fierceness is an inverted tenderness.</p> +<p>His greatest book is perhaps the <i>Frederick</i>, the +biography of a hero reduced more than once to such extremities +that apparently nothing but some miraculous intervention could +save him, and who did not yield, but struggled on and finally +emerged victorious. When we consider Frederick’s +position during the last part of the Seven Years’ War, we +must admit that no man was ever in such desperate circumstances +or showed such uncrushable determination. It was as if the +Destinies, in order to teach us what human nature can do, had +ordained that he who had the most fortitude should also encounter +the severest trial of it. Over and over again Frederick +would have been justified in acknowledging defeat, and we should +have said that he had done all that could be expected even of +such a temper as that with which he was endowed. If the +struggle of the will with the encompassing world is the stuff of +which epics are made, then no greater epic than that of +<i>Frederick</i> has been written in prose or verse, and it has +the important advantage of being true. It is interesting to +note how attractive this primary virtue of which Frederick is +such a remarkable representative is to Carlyle, how <i>moral</i> +it is to him; and, indeed, is it not the sum and substance of all +morality? It should be noted also that it was due to no +religious motive: that it was bare, pure humanity. At times +it is difficult not to believe that Carlyle, notwithstanding his +piety, loves it all the more on that account. It is strange +that an example so salutary and stimulating to the poorest and +meanest of us should be set by an unbelieving king, and that my +humdrum existence should be secretly supported by +“Frederick II. Roi de Prusse.”</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * *</p> +<p>Soon after Carlyle died I went to Ecclefechan and stood by his +grave. It was not a day that I would have chosen for such +an errand, for it was cold, grey, and hard, and towards the +afternoon it rained a slow, persistent, wintry rain. The +kirkyard in Ecclefechan was dismal and depressing, but my +thoughts were not there. I remembered what Carlyle was to +the young men of thirty or forty years ago, in the days of that +new birth, which was so strange a characteristic of the +time. His books were read with excitement, with tears of +joy, on lonely hills, by the seashore and in London streets, and +the readers were thankful that it was their privilege to live +when he also was alive. All that excitement has vanished, +but those who knew what it was are the better for it. +Carlyle now is almost nothing, but his day will return, he will +be put in his place as one of the greatest souls who have been +born amongst us, and his message will be considered as perhaps +the most important which has ever been sent to us. This is +what I thought as I stood in Ecclefechan kirkyard, and as I +lingered I almost doubted if Carlyle <i>could</i> be dead. +Was it possible that such as he could altogether die? Some +touch, some turn, I could not tell what or how, seemed all that +was necessary to enable me to see and to hear him. It was +just as if I were perplexed and baffled by a veil which prevented +recognition of him, although I was sure he was behind it.</p> +<h2><a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>EARLY +MORNING IN JANUARY</h2> +<p>A <span class="smcap">warm</span>, still morning, with a clear +sky and stars. At first the hills were almost black, but, +as the dawn ascended, they became dark green, of a peculiarly +delicate tint which is never seen in the daytime. The +quietude is profound, although a voice from an unseen +fishing-boat can now and then be heard. How strange the +landscape seems! It is not a variation of the old +landscape; it is a new world. The half-moon rides high in +the sky, and near her is Jupiter. A little way further to +the left is Venus, and still further down is Mercury, rare +apparition, just perceptible where the deep blue of the night is +yielding to the green which foretells the sun. The east +grows lighter; the birds begin to stir in the bushes, and the cry +of a gull rises from the base of the cliff. The sea becomes +responsive, and in a moment is overspread with continually +changing colour, partly that of the heavens above it and partly +self-contributed. With what slow, majestic pomp is the day +preceded, as though there had been no day before it and no other +would follow it!</p> +<h2><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +16</span>MARCH</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is a bright day in March, with a +gentle south-west wind. Sitting still in the copse and +facing the sun it strikes warm. It has already mounted many +degrees on its way to its summer height, and is regaining its +power. The clouds are soft, rounded, and spring-like, and +the white of the blackthorn is discernible here and there amidst +the underwood. The brooks are running full from winter +rains but are not overflowing. All over the wood which +fills up the valley lies a thin, purplish mist, harmonising with +the purple bloom on the stems and branches. The buds are +ready to burst, there is a sense of movement, of waking after +sleep; the tremendous upward rush of life is almost felt. +But how silent the process is! There is no hurry for +achievement, although so much has to be done—such infinite +intricacy to be unfolded and made perfect. The little +stream winding down the bottom turns and doubles on itself; a +dead leaf falls into it, is arrested by a twig, and lies there +content.</p> +<h2><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +18</span>JUNE</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is a quiet, warm day in +June. The wind is westerly, but there is only just enough +of it to waft now and then a sound from the far-off town, or the +dull, subdued thunder of cannon-firing from ships or forts +distant some forty miles or more. Massive, white-bordered +clouds, grey underneath, sail overhead; there was heavy rain last +night, and they are lifting and breaking a little. Softly +and slowly they go, and one of them, darker than the rest, has +descended in a mist of rain, blotting out the ships. The +surface of the water is paved curiously in green and violet, and +where the light lies on it scintillates like millions of +stars. The grass is not yet cut, and the showers have +brought it up knee-deep. Its gentle whisper is plainly +heard, the most delicate of all the voices in the world, and the +meadow bends into billows, grey, silvery, and green, when a +breeze of sufficient strength sweeps across it. The larks +are so multitudinous that no distinct song can be caught, and +amidst the confused melody comes the note of the thrush and the +blackbird. A constant under-running accompaniment is just +audible in the hum of innumerable insects and the sharp buzz of +flies darting past the ear. Only those who live in the open +air and watch the fields and sea from hour to hour and day to day +know what they are and what they mean. The chance visitor, +or he who looks now and then, never understands them. While +I have lain here, the clouds have risen, have become more +aërial, and more suffused with light; the horizon has become +better defined, and the yellow shingle beach is visible to its +extremest point clasping the bay in its arms. The bay +itself is the tenderest blue-green, and on the rolling plain +which borders it lies intense sunlight chequered with moving +shadows which wander eastwards. The wind has shifted a +trifle, and comes straight up the Channel from the illimitable +ocean.</p> +<h2><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +20</span>AUGUST</h2> +<p>A <span class="smcap">few</span> days ago it was very +hot. Afterwards we had a thunderstorm, followed by rain +from the south-west. The wind has veered a point northerly, +and the barometer is rising. This morning at half-past five +the valley below was filled with white mist. Above it the +tops of the trees on the highest points emerged sharply +distinct. It was motionless, but gradually melted before +the ascending sun, recalling Plutarch’s “scenes in +the beautiful temple of the world which the gods order at their +own festivals, when we are initiated into their own +mysteries.” Here was a divine mystery, with +initiation for those who cared for it. No priests were +waiting, no ritual was necessary, the service was +simple—solitary adoration and perfect silence.</p> +<p>As the day advances, masses of huge, heavy clouds +appear. They are well defined at the edges, and their +intricate folds and depths are brilliantly illuminated. The +infinitude of the sky is not so impressive when it is quite clear +as when it contains and supports great clouds, and large blue +spaces are seen between them. On the hillsides the fields +here and there are yellow and the corn is in sheaves. The +birds are mostly dumb, the glory of the furze and broom has +passed, but the heather is in flower. The trees are dark, +and even sombre, and, where they are in masses, look as if they +were in solemn consultation. A fore-feeling of the end of +summer steals upon me. Why cannot I banish this +anticipation? Why cannot I rest and take delight in what is +before me? If some beneficent god would but teach me how to +take no thought for the morrow, I would sacrifice to him all I +possess.</p> +<h2><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>THE +END OF OCTOBER</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is the first south-westerly gale +of the autumn. Its violence is increasing every minute, +although the rain has ceased for awhile. For weeks sky and +sea have been beautiful, but they have been tame. Now for +some unknown reason there is a complete change, and all the +strength of nature is awake. It is refreshing to be once +more brought face to face with her tremendous power, and to be +reminded of the mystery of its going and coming. It is +soothing to feel so directly that man, notwithstanding his +science and pretentions, his subjugation of steam and +electricity, is as nothing compared with his Creator. The +air has a freshness and odour about it to which we have long been +strangers. It has been dry, and loaded with fine dust, but +now it is deliciously wet and clean. The wind during the +summer has changed lightly through all the points of the compass, +but it has never brought any scent save that of the land, nothing +from a distance. Now it is charged with messages from the +ocean.</p> +<p>The sky is not uniformly overcast, but is covered with long +horizontal folds of cloud, very dark below and a little lighter +where they turn up one into the other. They are incessantly +modified by the storm, and fragments are torn away from them +which sweep overhead. The sea, looked at from the height, +shows white edges almost to the horizon, and although the waves +at a distance cannot be distinguished, the tossing of a solitary +vessel labouring to get round the point for shelter shows how +vast they are. The prevailing colour of the water is +greyish-green, passing into deep-blue, and perpetually shifting +in tint. A quarter of a mile away the breakers begin, and +spread themselves in a white sheet to the land.</p> +<p>A couple of gulls rise from the base of the cliffs to a height +of about a hundred feet above them. They turn their heads +to the south-west, and hover like hawks, but without any visible +movement of their wings. They are followed by two more, who +also poise themselves in the same way. Presently all four +mount higher, and again face the tempest. They do not +appear to defy it, nor even to exert themselves in resisting +it. What to us below is fierce opposition is to them a +support and delight. How these wonderful birds are able to +accomplish this feat no mathematician can tell us. After +remaining stationary a few minutes, they wheel round, once more +ascend, and then without any effort go off to sea directly in the +teeth of the hurricane.</p> +<h2><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +25</span>NOVEMBER</h2> +<p>A <span class="smcap">November</span> day at the end of the +month—the country is left to those who live in it. +The scattered visitors who took lodgings in the summer in the +villages have all departed, and the recollection that they have +been here makes the solitude more complete. The woods in +which they wandered are impassable, for the rain has been heavy, +and the dry, baked clay of August has been turned into a slough a +foot deep. The wind, what there is of it, is from the +south-west, soft, sweet and damp; the sky is almost covered with +bluish-grey clouds, which here and there give way and permit a +dim, watery gleam to float slowly over the distant +pastures. The grass for the most part is greyish-green, +more grey than green where it has not been mown, but on the rocky +and broken ground there is a colour like that of an emerald, and +the low sun when it comes out throws from the projections on the +hillside long and beautifully shaped shadows. Multitudes of +gnats in these brief moments of sunshine are seen playing in +it. The leaves have not all fallen, down in the hollow +hardly any have gone, and the trees are still bossy, tinted with +the delicate yellowish-brown and brown of different stages of +decay. The hedges have been washed clean of the white dust; +the roads have been washed; a deep drain has just begun to +trickle and on the meadows lie little pools of the clearest +rainwater, reflecting with added loveliness any blue patch of the +heavens disclosed above them. The birds are silent save the +jackdaws and the robin, who still sings his recollections of the +summer, or his anticipations of the spring, or perhaps his +pleasure in the late autumn. The finches are in flocks, and +whirl round in the air with graceful, shell-like convolutions as +they descend, part separating, for no reason apparently, and +forming a second flock which goes away over the copse. +There is hardly any farm-work going on, excepting in the ditches, +which are being cleaned in readiness for the overflow when the +thirsty ground shall have sucked its fill. Under a bank by +the roadside a couple of men employed in carting stone for +road-mending are sitting on a sack eating their dinner. The +roof of the barn beyond them is brilliant with moss and lichens; +it has not been so vivid since last February. It is a +delightful time. No demand is made for ecstatic admiration; +everything is at rest, nature has nothing to do but to sleep and +wait.</p> +<h2><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>THE +BREAK-UP OF A GREAT DROUGHT</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">For</span> three months there had been +hardly a drop of rain. The wind had been almost +continuously north-west, and from that to east. +Occasionally there were light airs from the south-west, and +vapour rose, but there was nothing in it; there was no true +south-westerly breeze, and in a few hours the weather-cock +returned to the old quarter. Not infrequently the clouds +began to gather, and there was every sign that a change was at +hand. The barometer at these times fell gradually day after +day until at last it reached a point which generally brought +drenching storms, but none appeared, and then it began slowly to +rise again and we knew that our hopes were vain, and that a week +at least must elapse before it would regain its usual height and +there might be a chance of declining. At last the +disappointment was so keen that the instrument was removed. +It was better not to watch it, but to hope for a surprise. +The grass became brown, and in many places was killed down to the +roots; there was no hay; myriads of swarming caterpillars +devoured the fruit trees; the brooks were all dry; water for +cattle had to be fetched from ponds and springs miles away; the +roads were broken up; the air was loaded with grit; and the +beautiful green of the hedges was choked with dust. Birds +like the rook, which fed upon worms, were nearly starved, and +were driven far and wide for strange food. It was pitiable +to see them trying to pick the soil of the meadow as hard as a +rock. The everlasting glare was worse than the gloom of +winter, and the sense of universal parching thirst became so +distressing that the house was preferred to the fields. We +were close to a water famine! The Atlantic, the source of +all life, was asleep, and what if it should never wake! We +know not its ways, it mocks all our science. Close to us +lies this great mystery, incomprehensible, and yet our very +breath depends upon it. Why should not the sweet tides of +soft moist air cease to stream in upon us? No reason could +be given why every green herb and living thing should not perish; +no reason, save a faith which was blind. For aught we +<i>knew</i>, the ocean-begotten aërial current might forsake +the land and it might become a desert.</p> +<p>One night grey bars appeared in the western sky, but they had +too often deluded us, and we did not believe in them. On +this particular evening they were a little heavier, and the +window-cords were damp. The air which came across the cliff +was cool, and if we had dared to hope we should have said it had +a scent of the sea in it. At four o’clock in the +morning there was a noise of something beating against the +panes—they were streaming! It was impossible to lie +still, and I rose and went out of doors. No creature was +stirring, there was no sound save that of the rain, but a busier +time there had not been for many a long month. Thousands of +millions of blades of grass and corn were eagerly drinking. +For sixteen hours the downpour continued, and when it was dusk I +again went out. The watercourses by the side of the roads +had a little water in them, but not a drop had reached those at +the edge of the fields, so thirsty was the earth. The +drought, thank God, was at an end!</p> +<h2><a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +32</span>SPINOZA</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Now</span> that twenty years have passed +since I began the study of Spinoza it is good to find that he +still holds his ground. Much in him remains obscure, but +there is enough which is sufficiently clear to give a direction +to thought and to modify action. To the professional +metaphysician Spinoza’s work is already surpassed, and is +absorbed in subsequent systems. We are told to read him +once because he is historically interesting, and then we are +supposed to have done with him. But if +“Spinozism,” as it is called, is but a stage of +development there is something in Spinoza which can be superseded +as little as the <i>Imitation of Christ</i> or the +<i>Pilgrim’s Progress</i>, and it is this which continues +to draw men to him. Goethe never cared for set +philosophical systems. Very early in life he thought he had +found out that they were useless pieces of construction, but to +the end of his days he clung to Spinoza, and Philina, of all +persons in the world, repeats one of the finest sayings in the +<i>Ethic</i>. So far as the metaphysicians are carpenters, +and there is much carpentering in most of them, Goethe was right, +and the larger part of their industry endures wind and weather +but for a short time. Spinoza’s object was not to +make a scheme of the universe. He felt that the things on +which men usually set their hearts give no permanent +satisfaction, and he cast about for some means by which to secure +“a joy continuous and supreme to all eternity.” +I propose now, without attempting to connect or contrast Spinoza +with Descartes or the Germans, to name some of those thoughts in +his books by which he conceived he had attained his end.</p> +<p>The sorrow of life is the rigidity of the material universe in +which we are placed. We are bound by physical laws, and +there is a constant pressure of matter-of-fact evidence to prove +that we are nothing but common and cheap products of the earth to +which in a few moments or years we return. Spinoza’s +chief aim is to free us from this sorrow, and to free us from it +by <i>thinking</i>. The emphasis on this word is +important. He continually insists that a thing is not +unreal because we cannot imagine it. His own science, +mathematics, affords him examples of what <i>must</i> be, +although we cannot picture it, and he believes that true +consolation lies in the region of that which cannot be imaged but +can be thought.</p> +<p>Setting out on his quest, he lays hold at the very beginning +on the idea of Substance, which he afterwards identifies with the +idea of God. “By Substance I understand that which is +in itself and is conceived through itself; in other words, that, +the conception of which does not need the conception of another +thing from which it must be formed.” <a +name="citation34a"></a><a href="#footnote34a" +class="citation">[34a]</a> “By God, I understand +Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting +of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and +infinite essence.” <a name="citation34b"></a><a +href="#footnote34b" class="citation">[34b]</a> “God, +or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which +expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily +exists.” <a name="citation34c"></a><a href="#footnote34c" +class="citation">[34c]</a> By the phrases “in +itself” and “by itself,” we are to understand +that this conception cannot be explained in other terms. +Substance must be posited, and there we must leave it. The +demonstration of the last-quoted proposition, the 11th, is +elusive, and I must pass it by, merely observing that the +objection that no idea involves existence, and that consequently +the idea of God does not involve it, is not a refutation of +Spinoza, who might rejoin that it is impossible not to affirm +existence of God as the <i>Ethic</i> defines him. Spinoza +escapes one great theological difficulty. Directly we begin +to reflect we are dissatisfied with a material God, and the +nobler religions assert that God is a Spirit. But if He be +a pure spirit whence comes the material universe? To +Spinoza pure spirit and pure matter are mere artifices of the +understanding. His God is the Substance with infinite +attributes of which thought and extension are the two revealed to +man, and he goes further, for he maintains that they are one and +the same thing viewed in different ways, inside and outside of +the same reality. The conception of God, strictly speaking, +is not incomprehensible, but it is not <i>circum</i>-prehensible; +if it were it could not be the true conception of Him.</p> +<p>Spinoza declares that “the human mind possesses an +adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of +God” <a name="citation36"></a><a href="#footnote36" +class="citation">[36]</a>—not of God in His completeness, +but it is adequate. The demonstration of this proposition +is at first sight unsatisfactory, because we look for one which +shall enable us to form an image of God like that which we can +form of a triangle. But we cannot have “a knowledge +of God as distinct as that which we have of common notions, +because we cannot imagine God as we can bodies.” +“To your question,” says Spinoza to Boxel, +“whether I have as clear an idea of God as I have of a +triangle? I answer, Yes. But if you ask me whether I +have as clear an image of God as I have of a triangle I shall +say, No; for we cannot imagine God, but we can in a measure +understand Him. Here also, it is to be observed that I do +not say that I altogether know God, but that I understand some of +His attributes—not all, nor the greatest part, and it is +clear that my ignorance of very many does not prevent my +knowledge of certain others. When I learned the elements of +Euclid, I very soon understood that the three angles of a +triangle are equal to two right angles, and I clearly perceived +this property of a triangle, although I was ignorant of many +others.” <a name="citation37a"></a><a href="#footnote37a" +class="citation">[37a]</a></p> +<p>“Individual things are nothing but affections or modes +of God’s attributes, expressing those attributes in a +certain and determinate manner,” <a +name="citation37b"></a><a href="#footnote37b" +class="citation">[37b]</a> and hence “the more we +understand individual objects, the more we understand God.” +<a name="citation37c"></a><a href="#footnote37c" +class="citation">[37c]</a></p> +<p>The intellect of God in no way resembles the human intellect, +for we cannot conceive Him as proposing an end and considering +the means to attain it. “The intellect of God, in so +far as it is conceived to constitute His essence, is in truth the +cause of things, both of their essence and of their +existence—a truth which seems to have been understood by +those who have maintained that God’s intellect, will, and +power are one and the same thing.” <a +name="citation37d"></a><a href="#footnote37d" +class="citation">[37d]</a></p> +<p>The whole of God is <i>fact</i>, and Spinoza denies any +reserve in Him of something unexpressed. “The +omnipotence of God has been actual from eternity, and in the same +actuality will remain to eternity,” <a +name="citation38"></a><a href="#footnote38" +class="citation">[38]</a> not of course in the sense that +everything which exists has always existed as we now know it, or +that nothing will exist hereafter which does not exist now, but +that in God everything that has been, and will be, eternally +<i>is</i>.</p> +<p>The reader will perhaps ask, What has this theology to do with +the “joy continuous and supreme”? We shall +presently meet with some deductions which contribute to it, but +it is not difficult to understand that Spinoza, to use his own +word, might call the truths set forth in these propositions +“blessed.” Let a man once believe in that God +of infinite attributes of which thought and extension are those +by which He manifests Himself to us; let him see that the +opposition between thought and matter is fictitious; that his +mind “is a part of the infinite intellect of God”; +that he is not a mere transient, outside interpreter of the +universe, but himself the soul or law, which is the universe, and +he will feel a relationship with infinity which will emancipate +him.</p> +<p>It is not true that in Spinoza’s God there is so little +that is positive that it is not worth preserving. All +Nature is in Him, and if the objector is sincere he will confess +that it is not the lack of contents in the idea which is +disappointing, but a lack of contents particularly interesting to +himself.</p> +<p>The opposition between the mind and body of man as two diverse +entities ceases with that between thought and extension. It +would be impossible briefly to explain in all its fulness what +Spinoza means by the proposition: “The object of the idea +constituting the human mind is a body” <a +name="citation39"></a><a href="#footnote39" +class="citation">[39]</a>; it is sufficient here to say that, +just as extension and thought are one, considered in different +aspects, so body and mind are one. We shall find in the +fifth part of the <i>Ethic</i> that Spinoza affirms the eternity +of the mind, though not perhaps in the way in which it is usually +believed.</p> +<p>Following the order of the <i>Ethic</i> we now come to its +more directly ethical maxims. Spinoza denies the freedom +commonly assigned to the will, or perhaps it is more correct to +say he denies that it is intelligible. The will is +determined by the intellect. The idea of the triangle +involves the affirmation or volition that its three angles are +equal to two right angles. If we understand what a triangle +is we are not “free” to believe that it contains more +or less than two right angles, nor to act as if it contained more +or less than two. The only real freedom of the mind is +obedience to the reason, and the mind is enslaved when it is +under the dominion of the passions. “God does not act +from freedom of the will,” <a name="citation40a"></a><a +href="#footnote40a" class="citation">[40a]</a> and consequently +“things could have been produced by God in no other manner +and in no other order than that in which they have been +produced.” <a name="citation40b"></a><a href="#footnote40b" +class="citation">[40b]</a></p> +<p>“If you will but reflect,” Spinoza tells Boxel, +“that indifference is nothing but ignorance or doubt, and +that a will always constant and in all things determinate is a +virtue and a necessary property of the intellect, you will see +that my words are entirely in accord with the truth.” <a +name="citation40c"></a><a href="#footnote40c" +class="citation">[40c]</a> To the same effect is a passage +in a letter to Blyenbergh, “Our liberty does not consist in +a certain contingency nor in a certain indifference, but in the +manner of affirming or denying, so that in proportion as we +affirm or deny anything with less indifference, are we the more +free.” <a name="citation41a"></a><a href="#footnote41a" +class="citation">[41a]</a> So also to Schuller, “I +call that thing free which exists and acts solely from the +necessity of its own nature: I call that thing coerced which is +determined to exist and to act in a certain and determinate +manner by another.” <a name="citation41b"></a><a +href="#footnote41b" class="citation">[41b]</a> With regard +to this definition it might be objected that the necessity does +not lie solely in the person who wills but is also in the +object. The triangle as well as the nature of man contains +the necessity. What Spinoza means is that the free man by +the necessity of his nature is bound to assert the truth of what +follows from the definition of a triangle and that the stronger +he feels the necessity the more free he is. Hence it +follows that the wider the range of the intellect and the more +imperative the necessity which binds it, the larger is its +freedom.</p> +<p>In genuine freedom Spinoza rejoices. “The doctrine +is of service in so far as it teaches us that we do everything by +the will of God alone, and that we are partakers of the divine +nature in proportion as our actions become more and more perfect +and we more and more understand God. This doctrine, +therefore, besides giving repose in every way to the soul, has +also this advantage, that it teaches us in what our highest +happiness or blessedness consists, namely, in the knowledge of +God alone, by which we are drawn to do those things only which +love and piety persuade.” <a name="citation42a"></a><a +href="#footnote42a" class="citation">[42a]</a> In other +words, being part of the whole, the grandeur and office of the +whole are ours. We are anxious about what we call +“personality,” but in truth there is nothing in it of +any worth, and the less we care for it the more +“blessed” we are.</p> +<p>“By the desire which springs from reason we follow good +directly and avoid evil indirectly” <a +name="citation42b"></a><a href="#footnote42b" +class="citation">[42b]</a>: our aim should be the good; in +obtaining that we are delivered from evil. To the same +purpose is the conclusion of the fifth book of the <i>Ethic</i> +that “No one delights in blessedness because he has +restrained his affects, but, on the contrary, the power of +restraining his lusts springs from blessedness itself.” <a +name="citation43a"></a><a href="#footnote43a" +class="citation">[43a]</a> This is exactly what the Gospel +says to the Law.</p> +<p>Fear is not the motive of a free man to do what is good. +“A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his +wisdom is not a meditation upon death, but upon life.” <a +name="citation43b"></a><a href="#footnote43b" +class="citation">[43b]</a> This is the celebrated +sixty-seventh proposition of the fourth part. If we examine +the proof which directly depends on the sixty-third proposition +of the same part—“he who is led by fear, and does +what is good in order that he may avoid what is evil, is not led +by reason”—we shall see that Spinoza is referring to +the fear of the “evil” of hell-fire.</p> +<p>All Spinoza’s teaching with regard to the passions is a +consequence of what he believes of God and man. He will +study the passions and not curse them. He finds that by +understanding them “we can bring it to pass that we suffer +less from them. We have, therefore, mainly to strive to +acquire a clear and distinct knowledge of each affect.” <a +name="citation43c"></a><a href="#footnote43c" +class="citation">[43c]</a> “If the human mind had +none but adequate ideas it would form no notion of evil.” +<a name="citation44a"></a><a href="#footnote44a" +class="citation">[44a]</a> “The difference between a +man who is led by affect or opinion alone and one who is led by +reason” is that “the former, whether he wills it or +not, does those things of which he is entirely ignorant, but the +latter does the will of no one but himself.” <a +name="citation44b"></a><a href="#footnote44b" +class="citation">[44b]</a> <i>They know not what they +do</i>.</p> +<p>The direct influence of Spinoza’s theology is also shown +in his treatment of pity, hatred, laughter, and contempt. +“The man who has properly understood that everything +follows from the necessity of the divine nature, and comes to +pass according to the eternal laws and rules of nature, will in +truth discover nothing which is worthy of hatred, laughter, or +contempt, nor will he pity any one, but, so far as human virtue +is able, he will endeavour to <i>do well</i>, as we say, and to +<i>rejoice</i>.” <a name="citation44c"></a><a +href="#footnote44c" class="citation">[44c]</a> By pity is +to be understood mere blind sympathy. The good that we do +by this pity with the eyes of the mind shut ought to be done with +them open. “He who lives according to the guidance of +reason strives as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or +contempt of others towards himself with love or generosity. . . . +He who wishes to avenge injuries by hating in return does indeed +live miserably. But he who, on the contrary, strives to +drive out hatred by love, fights joyfully and confidently, with +equal ease resisting one man or a number of men, and needing +scarcely any assistance from fortune. Those whom he +conquers yield gladly, not from defect of strength, but from an +increase of it.” <a name="citation45a"></a><a +href="#footnote45a" class="citation">[45a]</a></p> +<p>“Joy is the passion by which the mind passes to a +greater perfection: sorrow, on the other hand, is the passion by +which it passes to a less perfection.” <a +name="citation45b"></a><a href="#footnote45b" +class="citation">[45b]</a> “No God and no human +being, except an envious one, is delighted by my impotence or my +trouble, or esteems as any virtue in us tears, sighs, fears, and +other things of this kind, which are signs of mental impotence; +on the contrary, the greater the joy with which we are affected, +the greater the perfection to which we pass thereby; that is to +say, the more do we necessarily partake of the divine +nature.” <a name="citation46"></a><a href="#footnote46" +class="citation">[46]</a> It would be difficult to find an +account of joy and sorrow which is closer to the facts than that +which Spinoza gives. He lived amongst people Roman Catholic +and Protestant who worshipped sorrow. Sorrow was the +divinely decreed law of life and joy was merely a permitted +exception. He reversed this order and his claim to be +considered in this respect as one of the great revolutionary +religious and moral reformers has not been sufficiently +recognised. It is remarkable that, unlike other reformers, +he has not contradicted error by an exaggeration, which itself +very soon stands in need of contradiction, but by simple sanity +which requires no correction. One reason for this +peculiarity is that the <i>Ethic</i> was the result of long +meditation. It was published posthumously and was discussed +in draft for many years before his death. Usually what we +call our convictions are propositions which we have not +thoroughly examined in quietude, but notions which have just come +into our heads and are irreversible to us solely because we are +committed to them. Much may be urged against the +<i>Ethic</i> and on behalf of hatred, contempt, and sorrow. +The “other side” may be produced mechanically to +almost every truth; the more easily, the more divine that truth +is, and against no truths is it producible with less genuine +mental effort than against those uttered by the founder of +Christianity. The question, however, if we are dealing with +the New Testament, is not whether the Sermon on the Mount can be +turned inside out in a debating society, but whether it does not +represent better than anything which the clever leader of the +opposition can formulate the principle or temper which should +govern our conduct.</p> +<p>There is a group of propositions in the last part of the +<i>Ethic</i>, which, although they are difficult, it may be well +to notice, because they were evidently regarded by Spinoza as +helping him to the end he had in view. The difficulty lies +in a peculiar combination of religious ideas and scientific +form. These propositions are the following:—<a +name="citation47"></a><a href="#footnote47" +class="citation">[47]</a></p> +<blockquote><p>“The mind can cause all the affections of +the body or the images of things to be related to the idea of +God.”</p> +<p>“He who clearly and distinctly understands himself and +his affects loves God, and loves Him better the better he +understands himself and his affects.”</p> +<p>“This love to God above everything else ought to occupy +the mind.”</p> +<p>“God is free from passions, nor is He affected with any +affect of joy or sorrow.”</p> +<p>“No one can hate God.”</p> +<p>“He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him +in return.”</p> +<p>“This love to God cannot be defiled either by the effect +of envy or jealousy, but is the more strengthened the more people +we imagine to be connected with God by the same bond of +love.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The proof of the first of these propositions, using language +somewhat different from that of the text, is as +follows:—There is no affection of the body of which the +mind cannot form some clear and distinct conception, that is to +say, of everything perceived it is capable of forming a clear and +adequate idea, not exhaustive, as Spinoza is careful to warn us, +but an idea not distorted by our personality, and one which is in +accordance with the thing itself, adequate as far as it +goes. Newton’s perception that the moon perpetually +falls to the earth by the same numerical law under which a stone +falls to it was an adequate perception. +“Therefore,” continues the demonstration (quoting the +fifteenth proposition of the first part—“Whatever is, +is in God, and nothing can either be or be conceived without +God”), “the mind can cause all the affections of the +body to be related to the idea of God.” Spinoza, +having arrived at his adequate idea thus takes a further step to +the idea of God. What is perceived is not an isolated +external phenomenon. It is a reality in God: it <i>is</i> +God: there is nothing more to be thought or said of God than the +affirmation of such realities as these. The “relation +to the idea of God” means that in the affirmation He is +affirmed. “Nothing,” that is to say, no reality +“can be conceived without God.”</p> +<p>But it is possible for the word “love” to be +applied to the relationship between man and God. He who has +a clear and adequate perception passes to greater perfection, and +therefore rejoices. Joy, accompanied with the idea of a +cause, is love. By the fourteenth proposition this joy is +accompanied by the idea of God as its cause, and therefore love +to God follows. The demonstration seems formal, and we ask +ourselves, What is the actual emotion which Spinoza +describes? It is not new to him, for in the <i>Short +Treatise</i>, which is an early sketch for the <i>Ethic</i>, he +thus writes:—“Hence it follows incontrovertibly that +it is knowledge which is the cause of love, so that when we learn +to know God in this way, we must necessarily unite ourselves to +Him, for He cannot be known, nor can he reveal Himself, save as +that which is supremely great and good. In this union +alone, as we have already said, our happiness consists. I +do not say that we must know Him adequately; but it is sufficient +for us, in order to be united with Him, to know Him in a measure, +for the knowledge we have of the body is not of such a kind that +we can know it as it is or perfectly; and yet what a union! what +love!” <a name="citation50"></a><a href="#footnote50" +class="citation">[50]</a></p> +<p>Perhaps it may clear the ground a little if we observe that +Spinoza often avoids a negative by a positive statement. +Here he may intend to show us what the love of God is not, that +it is not what it is described in the popular religion to +be. “The only love of God I know,” we may +imagine him saying, “thus arises. The adequate +perception is the keenest of human joys for thereby I see God +Himself. That which I see is not a thing or a person, but +nevertheless what I feel towards it can be called by no other +name than love. Although the object of this love is not +thing or person it is not indefinite, it is this only which is +definite; ‘thing’ and ‘person’ are +abstract and unreal. There was a love to God in +Kepler’s heart when the three laws were revealed to +him. If it was not love to God, what is love to +Him?”</p> +<p>To the eighteenth proposition, “No one can hate +God,” there is a scholium which shows that the problem of +pain which Spinoza has left unsolved must have occurred to +him. “But some may object that if we understand God +to be the cause of all things, we do for that very reason +consider Him to be the cause of sorrow. But I reply that in +so far as we understand the causes of sorrow, it ceases to be a +passion (Prop. 3, pt. 5), that is to say (Prop. 59, pt. 3) it +ceases to be a sorrow; and therefore in so far as we understand +God to be the cause of sorrow do we rejoice.” The +third proposition of the fifth part which he quotes merely proves +that in so far as we understand passion it ceases to be a +passion. He replies to those “who ask why God has not +created all men in such a manner that they might be controlled by +the dictates of reason alone,” <a name="citation52"></a><a +href="#footnote52" class="citation">[52]</a> “Because to +Him material was not wanting for the creation of everything, from +the highest down to the very lowest grade of perfection; or, to +speak more properly, because the laws of His nature were so ample +that they sufficed for the production of everything which can be +conceived by an infinite intellect.” Nevertheless of +pain we have no explanation. Pain is not lessened by +understanding it, nor is its mystery penetrated if we see that to +God material could not have been wanting for the creation of men +or animals who have to endure it all their lives. But if +Spinoza is silent in the presence of pain, so also is every +religion and philosophy which the world has seen. Silence +is the only conclusion of the Book of Job, and patient fortitude +in the hope of future enlightenment is the conclusion of +Christianity.</p> +<p>It is a weak mistake, however, to put aside what religions and +philosophies tell us because it is insufficient. To Job it +is not revealed why suffering is apportioned so unequally or why +it exists, but the answer of the Almighty from the whirlwind he +cannot dispute, and although Spinoza has nothing more to say +about pain than he says in the passages just quoted and was +certainly not exempt from it himself, it may be impossible that +any man should hate God.</p> +<p>We now come to the final propositions of the <i>Ethic</i>, +those in which Spinoza declares his belief in the eternity of +mind. The twenty-second and twenty-third propositions of +the fifth part are as follows:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“In God, nevertheless, there necessarily +exists an idea which expresses the essence of this or that human +body under the form of eternity.”</p> +<p>“The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the +body, but something of it remains which is eternal.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The word “nevertheless” is a reference to the +preceding proposition which denies the continuity of memory or +imagination excepting so long as the body lasts. The +demonstration of the twenty-third proposition is not easy to +grasp, but the substance of it is that although the mind is the +idea of the body, that is to say, the mind is body as thought and +body is thought as extension, the mind, or essence of the body, +is not completely destroyed with the body. It exists as an +eternal idea, and by an eternal necessity in God. Here +again we must not think of that personality which is nothing +better than a material notion, an image from the concrete applied +to mind, but we must cling fast to thought, to the thoughts which +alone makes us what we <i>are</i>, and these, says Spinoza, are +in God and are not to be defined by time. They have always +been and always will be. The enunciation of the +thirty-third proposition is, “The intellectual love of God +which arises from the third kind of knowledge is +eternal.” The “third kind of knowledge” +is that intuitive science which “advances from an adequate +idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the +adequate knowledge of the essence of things;” <a +name="citation54"></a><a href="#footnote54" +class="citation">[54]</a> “No love except intellectual love +is eternal,” <a name="citation55a"></a><a +href="#footnote55a" class="citation">[55a]</a> and the scholium +to this proposition adds, “If we look at the common opinion +of men, we shall see that they are indeed conscious of the +eternity of their minds, but they confound it with duration, and +attribute it to imagination or memory, which they believe remain +after death.” The intellectual love of the mind +towards God is the very “love with which He loves Himself, +not in so far as He is infinite, but in so far as He can be +manifested through the essence of the human mind, considered +under the form of eternity; that is to say, the intellectual love +of the mind towards God is part of the infinite love with which +God loves Himself.” <a name="citation55b"></a><a +href="#footnote55b" class="citation">[55b]</a> “Hence +it follows that God, in so far as He loves Himself, loves men, +and consequently that the love of God towards men and the +intellectual love of the mind towards God are one and the same +thing.” <a name="citation55c"></a><a href="#footnote55c" +class="citation">[55c]</a> The more adequate ideas the mind +forms “the less it suffers from those affects which are +evil, and the less it fears death” because “the +greater is that part which remains unharmed, and the less +consequently does it suffer from the affects.” It is +possible even “for the human mind to be of such a nature +that that part of it which we have shown perishes with its body, +in comparison with the part of it which remains, is of no +consequence.” <a name="citation56a"></a><a +href="#footnote56a" class="citation">[56a]</a></p> +<p>Spinoza, it is clear, holds that in some way—in what way +he will not venture to determine—the more our souls are +possessed by the intellectual love of God, the less is death to +be dreaded, for the smaller is that part of us which can +die. Three parallel passages may be appended. One +will show that this was Spinoza’s belief from early years +and the other two that it is not peculiar to him. “If +the soul is united with some other thing which is and remains +unchangeable, it must also remain unchangeable and +permanent.” <a name="citation56b"></a><a +href="#footnote56b" class="citation">[56b]</a> +“Further, this creative reason does not at one time think, +at another time not think [it thinks eternally]: and when +separated from the body it remains nothing but what it +essentially is: and thus it is alone immortal and eternal. +Of this unceasing work of thought, however, we retain no memory, +because this reason is unaffected by its objects; whereas the +receptive, passive intellect (which is affected) is perishable, +and can really think nothing without the support of the creative +intellect.” <a name="citation57a"></a><a +href="#footnote57a" class="citation">[57a]</a> The third +quotation is from a great philosophic writer, but one to whom +perhaps we should not turn for such a coincidence. “I +believe,” said Pantagruel, “that all intellectual +souls are exempt from the scissors of Atropos. They are all +immortal.” <a name="citation57b"></a><a href="#footnote57b" +class="citation">[57b]</a></p> +<p>I have not tried to write an essay on Spinoza, for in writing +an essay there is a temptation to a consistency and completeness +which are contributed by the writer and are not to be found in +his subject. The warning must be reiterated that here as +elsewhere we are too desirous, both writers and readers, of clear +definition where none is possible. We do not stop where the +object of our contemplation stops for our eyes. For my own +part I must say that there is much in Spinoza which is beyond me, +much which I cannot <i>extend</i>, and much which, if it can be +<a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>extended, +seems to involve contradiction. But I have also found his +works productive beyond those of almost any man I know of that +<i>acquiescentia mentis</i> which enables us to live.</p> +<h2>SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON THE DEVIL</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Spinoza</span> denies the existence of the +Devil, and says, in the <i>Short Treatise</i>, that if he is the +mere opposite of God and has nothing from God, he is simply the +Nothing. But if a philosophical doctrine be true, it does +not follow that as it stands it is applicable to practical +problems. For these a rule may have to be provided, which, +although it may not be inconsistent with the scientific theorem, +differs from it in form. The Devil is not an invention of +priests for priestly purposes, nor is he merely a hypothesis to +account for facts, but he has been forced upon us in order that +we may be able to deal with them. Unless we act as though +there were an enemy to be resisted and chained, if we fritter +away differences of kind into differences of degree, we shall +make poor work of life. Spinoza himself assumes that other +commands than God’s may be given to us, but that we are +unhesitatingly to obey His and His only. “Ad fidem +ergo catholicam,” he says, “ea solummodo pertinent, +quæ erga Deum <i>obedientia</i> absolute +ponit.” Consciousness seems to testify to the +presence of two mortal foes within us—one Divine and the +other diabolic—and perhaps the strongest evidence is not +the rebellion of the passions, but the picturing and the mental +processes which are almost entirely beyond our control, and often +greatly distress us. We look down upon them; they are not +ours, and yet they are ours, and we cry out with St. Paul against +the law warring with the law of our minds. Bunyan of course +knows the practical problem and the rule, and to him the Devil is +not merely the tempter to crimes, but the great Adversary. +In the <i>Holy War</i> the chosen regiments of Diabolus are the +Doubters, and notwithstanding their theologic names, they carried +deadlier weapons than the theologic doubters of to-day. The +captain over the Grace-doubters was Captain Damnation; he over +the Felicity-doubters was Captain Past-hope, and his +ancient-bearer was Mr. Despair. The nature of the Doubters +is “to put a question upon every one of the truths of +Emanuel, and their country is called the Land of Doubting, and +that land lieth off and furthest remote to the north between the +land of Darkness and that called the Valley of the Shadow of +Death.” They are not children of the sun, and +although they are not sinners in the common sense of the word, +those that were caught in Mansoul were promptly executed.</p> +<p>There is nothing to be done but to fight and wait for the +superior help which will come if we do what we can. Emanuel +at first delayed his aid in the great battle, and the first brunt +was left to Captain Credence. Presently, however, Emanuel +appeared “with colours flying, trumpets sounding, and the +feet of his men scarce touched the ground; they hasted with such +celerity towards the captains that were engaged that . . . there +was not left so much as one Doubter alive, they lay spread upon +the ground dead men as one would spread dung on the +land.” The dead were buried “lest the fumes and +ill-favours that would arise from them might infect the air and +so annoy the famous town of Mansoul.” But it will be +a fight to the end for Diabolus, and the lords of the pit +escaped.</p> +<p>After Emanuel had finally occupied Mansoul he gave the +citizens some advice. The policy of Diabolus was “to +make of their castle a warehouse.” Emanuel made it a +fortress and a palace, and garrisoned the town. “O my +Mansoul,” he said, “nourish my captains; make not my +captains sick, O Mansoul.”</p> +<h2><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +62</span>INJUSTICE</h2> +<p>A <span class="smcap">notion</span>, self-begotten in me, of +the limitations of my friend is answerable for the barrenness of +my intercourse with him. I set him down as hard; I speak to +him as if he were hard and from that which is hard in +myself. Naturally I evoke only that which is hard, although +there may be fountains of tenderness in him of which I am +altogether unaware. It is far better in conversation not to +regulate it according to supposed capacities or tempers, which +are generally those of some fictitious being, but to be simply +ourselves. We shall often find unexpected and welcome +response.</p> +<p>Our estimates of persons, unless they are frequently revived +by personal intercourse, are apt to alter insensibly and to +become untrue. They acquire increased definiteness but they +lose in comprehensiveness.</p> +<p>Especially is this true of those who are dead. If I do +not read a great author for some time my mental abstract of him +becomes summary and false. I turn to him again, all summary +judgments upon him become impossible, and he partakes of +infinitude. Writers, and people who are in society and talk +much are apt to be satisfied with an algebraic symbol for a man +of note, and their work is done not with him but with +<i>x</i>.</p> +<h2><a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>TIME +SETTLES CONTROVERSIES</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">We</span> ought to let Time have his own +way in the settlement of our disputes. It is a commonplace +how much he is able to do with some of our troubles, such as loss +of friends or wealth; but we do not sufficiently estimate his +power to help our arguments. If I permit myself to dispute, +I always go beyond what is necessary for my purpose, and my +continual iteration and insistence do nothing but provoke +opposition. Much better would it be simply to state my case +and leave it. To do more is not only to distrust it, but to +distrust that in my friend which is my best ally, and will more +surely assist me than all my vehemence. +Sometimes—nay, often—it is better to say nothing, for +there is a constant tendency in Nature towards rectification, and +her quiet protest and persuasiveness are hindered by personal +interference. If anybody very dear to me were to fall into +any heresy of belief or of conduct, I am not sure that I ought to +rebuke him, and that he would not sooner be converted by +observing my silent respect for him than by preaching to him.</p> +<h2><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +66</span>TALKING ABOUT OUR TROUBLES</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">We</span> may talk about our troubles to +those persons who can give us direct help, but even in this case +we ought as much as possible to come to a provisional conclusion +before consultation; to be perfectly clear to ourselves within +our own limits. Some people have a foolish trick of +applying for aid before they have done anything whatever to aid +themselves, and in fact try to talk themselves into +perspicuity. The only way in which they can think is by +talking, and their speech consequently is not the expression of +opinion already and carefully formed, but the manufacture of +it.</p> +<p>We may also tell our troubles to those who are suffering if we +can lessen their own. It may be a very great relief to them +to know that others have passed through trials equal to theirs +and have survived. There are obscure, nervous diseases, +hypochondriac fancies, almost uncontrollable impulses, which +terrify by their apparent singularity. If we could believe +that they are common, the worst of the fear would vanish.</p> +<p>But, as a rule, we should be very careful for our own sake not +to speak much about what distresses us. Expression is apt +to carry with it exaggeration, and this exaggerated form becomes +henceforth that under which we represent our miseries to +ourselves, so that they are thereby increased. By reserve, +on the other hand, they are diminished, for we attach less +importance to that which it was not worth while to mention. +Secrecy, in fact, may be our salvation.</p> +<p>It is injurious to be always treated as if something were the +matter with us. It is health-giving to be dealt with as if +we were healthy, and the man who imagines his wits are failing +becomes stronger and sounder by being entrusted with a difficult +problem than by all the assurances of a doctor.</p> +<p>They are poor creatures who are always craving for pity. +If we are sick, let us prefer conversation upon any subject +rather than upon ourselves. Let it turn on matters that lie +outside the dark chamber, upon the last new discovery, or the +last new idea. So shall we seem still to be linked to the +living world. By perpetually asking for sympathy an end is +put to real friendship. The friend is afraid to intrude +anything which has no direct reference to the patient’s +condition lest it should be thought irrelevant. No love +even can long endure without complaint, silent it may be, an +invalid who is entirely self-centred; and what an agony it is to +know that we are tended simply as a duty by those who are nearest +to us, and that they will really be relieved when we have +departed! From this torture we may be saved if we early +apprentice ourselves to the art of self-suppression and sternly +apply the gag to eloquence upon our own woes. Nobody who +really cares for us will mind waiting on us even to the +long-delayed last hour if we endure in fortitude.</p> +<p>There is no harm in confronting our disorders or +misfortunes. On the contrary, the attempt is +wholesome. Much of what we dread is really due to +indistinctness of outline. If we have the courage to say to +ourselves, What <i>is</i> this thing, then? let the worst come to +the worst, and what then? we shall frequently find that after all +it is not so terrible. What we have to do is to subdue +tremulous, nervous, insane fright. Fright is often prior to +an object; that is to say, the fright comes first and something +is invented or discovered to account for it. There are +certain states of body and mind which are productive of +objectless fright, and the most ridiculous thing in the world is +able to provoke it to activity. It is perhaps not too much +to say that any calamity the moment it is apprehended by the +reason alone loses nearly all its power to disturb and unfix +us. The conclusions which are so alarming are not those of +the reason, but, to use Spinoza’s words, of the +“affects.”</p> +<h2><a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +70</span>FAITH</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Faith</span> is nobly seen when a man, +standing like Columbus upon the shore with a dark, stormy +Atlantic before him, resolves to sail, and although week after +week no land be visible, still believes and still sails on; but +it is nobler when there is no America as the goal of our venture, +but something which is unsubstantial, as, for example, +self-control and self-purification. It is curious, by the +way, that discipline of this kind should almost have +disappeared. Possibly it is because religion is now a +matter of belief in certain propositions; but, whatever the cause +may be, we do not train ourselves day by day to become better as +we train ourselves to learn languages or science. To return +from this parenthesis, we say that when no applause nor even +recognition is expected, to proceed steadily and alone for its +own sake in the work of saving the soul is truer heroism than +that which leads a martyr cheerfully to the stake.</p> +<p>Faith is at its best when we have to wrestle with despair, not +only of ourselves but of the Universe; when we strain our eyes +and see nothing but blackness. In the <i>Gorgias</i> +Socrates maintains, not only that it is always better to suffer +injustice than to commit it, but that it is better to be punished +for injustice than to escape, and better to die than to do wrong; +and it is better not only because of the effect on others but for +our own sake. We are naturally led to ask what support a +righteous man unjustly condemned could find, supposing he were +about to be executed, if he had no faith in personal immortality +and knew that his martyrdom could not have the least effect for +good. Imagine him, for example, shut up in a dungeon and +about to be strangled in it and that not a single inquiry will be +made about him—where will he look for help? what hope will +compose him? He may say that in a few hours he will be +asleep, and that nothing will then be of any consequence to him, +but that thought surely will hardly content him. He may +reflect that he at least prevents the evil which would be +produced by his apostasy; and very frequently in life, when we +abstain from doing wrong, we have to be satisfied with a negative +result and with the simple absence (which nobody notices) of some +direct mischief, although the abstention may cost more than +positive well-doing. This too, however, is but cold +consolation when the cord is brought and the grave is already +dug.</p> +<p>It must be admitted that Reason cannot give any answer. +Socrates, when his reasoning comes to an end, often permits +himself to tell a story. “My dialectic,” he +seems to say, “is of no further use; but here is a tale for +you,” and as he goes on with it we can see his satyr eyes +gleam with an intensity which shows that he did not consider he +was inventing a mere fable. That was the way in which he +taught theology. Perhaps we may find that something less +than logic and more than a dream may be of use to us. We +may figure to ourselves that this universe of souls is the +manifold expression of the One, and that in this expression there +is a purpose which gives importance to all the means of which it +avails itself. Apparent failure may therefore be a success, +for the mind which has been developed into perfect virtue falls +back into the One, having served (by its achievements) the end of +its existence. The potential in the One has become actual, +has become real, and the One is the richer thereby.</p> +<h2><a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +74</span>PATIENCE</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">What</span> is most to be envied in really +religious people of the earlier type is their intellectual and +moral peace. They had obtained certain convictions, a +certain conception of the Universe, by which they could +live. Their horizon may have been encompassed with +darkness; experience sometimes contradicted their faith, but they +trusted—nay, they knew—that the opposition was not +real and that the truths were not to be shaken. Their +conduct was marked by a corresponding unity. They +determined once for all that there were rules which had to be +obeyed, and when any particular case arose it was not judged +according to the caprice of the moment, but by statute.</p> +<p>We, on the other hand, can only doubt. So far as those +subjects are concerned on which we are most anxious to be +informed, we are sure of nothing. What we have to do is to +accept the facts and wait. We must take care not to deny +beauty and love because we are forced also to admit ugliness and +hatred. Let us yield ourselves up utterly to the +magnificence and tenderness of the sunrise, though the East End +of London lies over the horizon. That very same Power, and +it is no other, which blasts a country with the cholera or drives +the best of us to madness has put the smile in a child’s +face and is the parent of Love. It is curious, too, that +the curse seems in no way to qualify the blessing. The +sweetness and majesty of Nature are so exquisite, so pure, that +when they are before us we cannot imagine they could be better if +they proceeded from an omnipotently merciful Being and no +pestilence had ever been known. We must not worry ourselves +with attempts at reconciliation. We must be satisfied with +a hint here and there, with a ray of sunshine at our feet, and we +must do what we can to make the best of what we possess. +Hints and sunshine will not be wanting, and science, which was +once considered to be the enemy of religion, is dissolving by its +later discoveries the old gross materialism, the source of so +much despair.</p> +<p>The conduct of life is more important than speculation, but +the lives of most of us are regulated by no principle +whatever. We read our Bible, Thomas à Kempis, and +Bunyan, and we are persuaded that our salvation lies in the +perpetual struggle of the higher against the lower self, the +spirit against the flesh, and that the success of the flesh is +damnation. We take down Horace and Rabelais and we admit +that the body also has its claims. We have no power to +dominate both sets of books, and consequently they supersede one +another alternately. Perhaps life is too large for any code +we can as yet frame, and the dissolution of all codes, the fluid, +unstable condition of which we complain, may be a necessary +antecedent of new and more lasting combinations. One thing +is certain, that there is not a single code now in existence +which is not false; that the graduation of the vices and virtues +is wrong, and that in the future it will be altered. We +must not hand ourselves over to a despotism with no Divine right, +even if there be a risk of anarchy. In the determination of +our own action, and in our criticism of other people, we must use +the whole of ourselves and not mere fragments. If we do +this we need not fear. We may suppose we are in danger +because the stone tables of the Decalogue have gone to dust, but +it is more dangerous to attempt to control men by fictions. +Better no chart whatever than one which shows no actually +existing perils, but warns us against Scylla, Charybdis, and the +Cyclops. If we are perfectly honest with ourselves we shall +not find it difficult to settle whether we ought to do this or +that particular thing, and we may be content. The new +legislation will come naturally at the appointed time, and it is +not impossible to live while it is on the way.</p> +<h2><a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 78</span>AN +APOLOGY</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> these latter days of anarchy and +tumult, when there is no gospel of faith or morals, when +democracy seems bent on falsifying every prediction of earlier +democratic enthusiasts by developing worse dangers to liberty +than any which our forefathers had to encounter, and when the +misery of cities is so great, it appears absurd, not to say +wrong, that we should sit still and read books. I am +ashamed when I go into my own little room and open Milton or +Shakespeare after looking at a newspaper or walking through the +streets of London. I feel that Milton and Shakespeare are +luxuries, and that I really belong to the class which builds +palaces for its pleasure, although men and women may be starving +on the roads.</p> +<p>Nevertheless, if I were placed on a platform I should be +obliged to say, “My brethren, I plainly perceive the world +is all wrong, but I cannot see how it is to be set right,” +and I should descend the steps and go home. There may be +others who have a clearer perception than mine, and who may be +convinced that this way or that way lies regeneration. I do +not wish to discourage them; I wish them God-speed, but I cannot +help them nor become their disciple. Possibly I am doing +nothing better than devising excuses for lotus-eating, but here +they are.</p> +<p>To take up something merely because I am idle is +useless. The message must come to me, and with such urgency +that I cannot help delivering it. Nor is it of any use to +attempt to give my natural thoughts a force which is not inherent +in them.</p> +<p>The disease is often obvious, but the remedies are +doubtful. The accumulation of wealth in a few hands, +generally by swindling, is shocking, but if it were distributed +to-morrow we should gain nothing. The working man objects +to the millionaire, but would gladly become a millionaire +himself, even if his million could be piled up in no other way +than by sweating thousands of his fellows. The usurpation +of government by the ignorant will bring disaster, but how in +these days could a wise man reign any longer than ignorance +permitted him? The everlasting veerings of the majority, +without any reason meanwhile for the change, show that, except on +rare occasions of excitement, the opinion of the voters is of no +significance. But when we are asked what substitute for +elections can be proposed, none can be found. So with the +relationship between man and woman, the marriage laws and +divorce. The calculus has not been invented which can deal +with such complexities. We are in the same position as that +in which Leverrier and Adams would have been, if, observing the +irregularities of Uranus, which led to the discovery of Neptune, +they had known nothing but the first six books of Euclid and a +little algebra.</p> +<p>There has never been any reformation as yet without dogma and +supernaturalism. Ordinary people acknowledge no real +reasons for virtue except heaven and hell-fire. When heaven +and hell-fire cease to persuade, custom for a while is partly +efficacious, but its strength soon decays. Some good men, +knowing the uselessness of rational means to convert or to +sustain their fellows, have clung to dogma with hysterical +energy, but without any genuine faith in it. They have +failed, for dogma cannot be successful unless it be the +<i>inevitable</i> expression of the inward conviction.</p> +<p>The voices now are so many and so contradictory that it is +impossible to hear any one of them distinctly, no matter what its +claim on our attention may be. The newspaper, the +circulating library, the free library, and the magazine are doing +their best to prevent unity of direction and the din and +confusion of tongues beget a doubt whether literature and the +printing press have actually been such a blessing to the race as +enlightenment universally proclaims them to be.</p> +<p>The great currents of human destiny seem more than ever to +move by forces which tend to no particular point. There is +a drift, tremendous and overpowering, due to nobody in +particular, but to hundreds of millions of small impulses. +Achilles is dead, and the turn of the Myrmidons has come.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Myrmdons, race féconde<br /> +Myrmidons,<br /> +Enfin nous commandons:<br /> +Jupiter livre le monde<br /> +Aux Myrmidons, aux Myrmidons.</p> +<p>Voyant qu’ Achille succombe,<br /> +Ses Myrmidons, hors des rangs,<br /> +Disent: Dansons sur sa tombe<br /> +Ses petits vont être grands.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>My last defence is that the Universe is an organic unity, and +so subtle and far-reaching are the invisible threads which pass +from one part of it to another that it is impossible to limit the +effect which even an insignificant life may have. +“Were a single dust-atom destroyed, the universe would +collapse.”</p> + +<blockquote><p> “ +. . . who of men can tell<br /> +That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell<br /> +To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,<br /> +The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,<br /> +The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,<br /> +The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,<br /> +Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet<br /> +If human souls did never kiss and greet?”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +83</span>BELIEF, UNBELIEF, AND SUPERSTITION</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">True</span> belief is rare and +difficult. There is no security that the fictitious beliefs +which have been obtained by no genuine mental process, that is to +say, are not vitally held, may not be discarded for those which +are exactly contrary. We flatter ourselves that we have +secured a method and freedom of thought which will not permit us +to be the victims of the absurdities of the Middle Ages, but, in +fact, there is no solid obstacle to our conversion to some new +grotesque religion more miraculous than Roman Catholicism. +Modern scepticism, distinguishing it from scholarly scepticism, +is nothing but stupidity or weakness. Few people like to +confess outright that they do not believe in a God, although the +belief in a personal devil is considered to be a sign of +imbecility. Nevertheless, men, as a rule, have no ground +for believing in God a whit more respectable than for disbelief +in a devil. The devil is not seen nor is God seen. +The work of the devil is as obvious as that of God. Nay, as +the devil is a limited personality, belief in him is not +encumbered with the perplexities which arise when we attempt to +apprehend the infinite Being. Belief may often be tested; +that is to say, we may be able to discover whether it is an +active belief or not by inquiring what disbelief it +involves. So also the test of disbelief is its +correspondent belief.</p> +<p>Superstition is a name generally given to a few only of those +beliefs for which it is imagined that there is no sufficient +support, such as the belief in ghosts, witches, and, if we are +Protestants, in miracles performed after a certain date. +Why these particular beliefs have been selected as solely +deserving to be called superstitious it is not easy to +discover. If the name is to be extended to all beliefs +which we have not attempted to verify, it must include the +largest part of those we possess. We vote at elections as +we are told to vote by the newspaper which we happen to read, and +our opinions upon a particular policy are based upon no surer +foundation than those of the Papist on the authenticity of the +lives of the Saints.</p> +<p>Superstition is a matter of <i>relative</i> evidence. A +thousand years ago it was not so easy as it is now to obtain +rigid demonstration in any department except mathematics. +Much that was necessarily the basis of action was as incapable of +proof as the story of St. George and the Dragon, and consequently +it is hardly fair to say that the dark ages were more +superstitious than our own. Nor does every belief, even in +supernatural objects, deserve the name of superstition. +Suppose that the light which struck down St. Paul on his journey +to Damascus was due to his own imagination, the belief that it +came from Jesus enthroned in the heavens was a sign of strength +and not of weakness. Beliefs of this kind, in so far as +they exalt man, prove greatness and generosity, and may be truer +than the scepticism which is formally justified in rejecting +them. If Christ never rose from the dead, the women who +waited at the sepulchre were nearer to reality than the +Sadducees, who denied the resurrection.</p> +<p>There is a half-belief, which we find in Virgil that is not +superstition, nor inconstancy, nor cowardice. A child-like +faith in the old creed is no longer possible, but it is equally +impossible to surrender it. I refer now not to those who +select from it what they think to be in accordance with their +reason, and throw overboard the remainder with no remorse, but +rather to those who cannot endure to touch with sacrilegious +hands the ancient histories and doctrines which have been the +depositaries of so much that is eternal, and who dread lest with +the destruction of a story something precious should also be +destroyed. The so-called superstitious ages were not merely +transitionary. Our regret that they have departed is to be +explained not by a mere idealisation of the past, but by a +conviction that truths have been lost, or at least have been +submerged. Perhaps some day they may be recovered, and in +some other form may again become our religion.</p> +<h2><a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>JUDAS +ISCARIOT—WHAT CAN BE SAID FOR HIM?</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Judas Iscariot</span> has become to +Christian people an object of horror more loathsome than even the +devil himself. The devil rebelled because he could not +brook subjection to the Son of God, a failing which was noble +compared with treachery to the Son of man. The hatred of +Judas is not altogether virtuous. We compound thereby for +our neglect of Jesus and His precepts: it is easier to establish +our Christianity by cursing the wretched servant than by +following his Master. The heinousness also of the crime in +Gethsemane has been aggravated by the exaltation of Jesus to the +Redeemership of the world. All that can be known of Judas +is soon collected. He was chosen one of the twelve +apostles, and received their high commission to preach the +kingdom of heaven, to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the +lepers, and cast out devils. He was appointed treasurer to +the community. John in telling the story of the anointing +at Bethany says that he was a thief, but John also makes him the +sole objector to the waste of the ointment. According to +the other evangelists all the disciples objected. Since he +remained in office it could hardly have been known at the time of +the visit to Bethany that he was dishonest, nor could it have +been known at any time to Matthew and Mark, for they would not +have lost the opportunity of adding such a touch to the +portrait. The probability, therefore, is that the robbery +of the bag is unhistorical. When the chief priests and +scribes sought how they might apprehend Jesus they made a bargain +with Judas to deliver Him to them for thirty pieces of +silver. He was present at the Last Supper but went and +betrayed his Lord. A few hours afterwards, when he found +out that condemnation to death followed, he repented himself and +brought again the thirty pieces of silver to his employers, +declared that he had sinned in betraying innocent blood, cast +down the money at their feet, and went and hanged himself.</p> +<p>This is all that is discoverable about Judas, and it has been +considered sufficient for a damnation deeper than any allotted to +the worst of the sons of Adam. Dante places him in the +lowest round of the ninth or last of the hellish circles, where +he is eternally “champed” by Satan, “bruised as +with ponderous engine,” his head within the diabolic jaws +and “plying the feet without.” In the absence +of a biography with details, it is impossible to make out with +accuracy what the real Judas was. We can, however, by +dispassionate examination of the facts determine their sole +import, and if we indulge in inferences we can deduce those which +are fairly probable. As Judas was treasurer, he must have +been trusted. He could hardly have been naturally covetous, +for he had given up in common with the other disciples much, if +not all, to follow Jesus. The thirty pieces of +silver—some four or five pounds of our money—could +not have been considered by him as a sufficient bribe for the +ignominy of a treason which was to end in legal murder. He +ought perhaps to have been able to measure the ferocity of an +established ecclesiastical order and to have known what would +have been the consequence of handing over to it perfect, and +therefore heretical, sincerity and purity, but there is no +evidence that he did know: nay, we are distinctly informed, as we +have just seen, that when he became aware what was going to +happen his sorrow for his wicked deed took a very practical +shape.</p> +<p>We cannot allege with confidence that it was any permanent +loss of personal attachment to Jesus which brought about his +defection. It came when the belief in a theocracy near at +hand filled the minds of the disciples. These ignorant +Galilean fishermen expected that in a very short time they would +sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. +The custodian of the bag, gifted with more common sense than his +colleagues, probably foresaw the danger of a collision with Rome, +and may have desired by a timely arrest to prevent an open +revolt, which would have meant immediate destruction of the whole +band with women and children. Can any position be imagined +more irritating that that of a careful man of business who is +keeper of the purse for a company of heedless enthusiasts +professing complete indifference to the value of money, +misunderstanding the genius of their chief, and looking out every +morning for some sign in the clouds, a prophecy of their +immediate appointment as vicegerents of a power that would +supersede the awful majesty of the Imperial city? He may +have been heated by a long series of petty annoyances to such a +degree that at last they may have ended in rage and a sudden +flinging loose of himself from the society. It is the +impulsive man who frequently suffers what appears to be +inversion, and Judas was impulsive exceedingly. Matthew, +and Matthew only, says that Judas asked for money from the chief +priests. “What will ye give me, and I will deliver +Him unto you?” According to Mark, whose account of +the transaction is the same as Luke’s, “Judas . . . +went unto the chief priests to betray Him unto them. And +when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him +money.” If the priests were the tempters, a slight +difference is established in favour of Judas, but this we will +neglect. The sin of taking money and joining in that last +meal in any case is black enough, although, as we have before +pointed out, Judas did not at the time know what the other side +of the bargain was. Admitting, however, everything that can +fairly be urged against him, all that can be affirmed with +certainty is that we are in the presence of strange and +unaccountable inconsistency, and that an apostle who had +abandoned his home, who had followed Jesus for three years amidst +contempt and persecution, and who at last slew himself in +self-reproach, could be capable of committing the meanest of +sins. Is the co-existence of irreconcilable opposites in +human nature anything new? The story of Judas may be of +some value if it reminds us that man is incalculable, and that, +although in theory, and no doubt in reality, he is a unity, the +point from which the divergent forces in him rise is often +infinitely beyond our exploration; a lesson not merely in +psychology but for our own guidance, a warning that side by side +with heroic virtues there may sleep in us not only detestable +vices, but vices by which those virtues are contradicted and even +for the time annihilated. The mode of betrayal, with a +kiss, has justly excited loathing, but it is totally +unintelligible. Why should he have taken the trouble to be +so base when the movement of a finger would have sufficed? +Why was any sign necessary to indicate one who was so well +known? The supposition that the devil compelled him to +superfluous villainy in order that he might be secured with +greater certainty and tortured with greater subtlety is one that +can hardly be entertained except by theologians. It is +equally difficult to understand why Jesus submitted to such an +insult, and why Peter should not have smitten down its +perpetrator. Peter was able to draw his sword, and it would +have been safer and more natural to kill Judas than to cut off +the ear of the high priest’s servant. John, who shows +a special dislike to Judas, knows nothing of the kiss. +According to John, Jesus asked the soldiers whom they sought, and +then stepped boldly forward and declared Himself. +“Judas,” adds John, “was standing with +them.” As John took such particular notice of what +happened, the absence of the kiss in his account can hardly have +been accidental. It is a sound maxim in criticism that what +is simply difficult of explanation is likely to be +authentic. An awkward reading in a manuscript is to be +preferred to one which is easier. But an historical +improbability, especially if no corroboration of it is to be +found in a better authority, may be set aside, and in this case +we are justified in neglecting the kiss. Whatever may have +been the exact shade of darkness in the crime of Judas, it was +avenged with singular swiftness, and he himself was the +avenger. He did not slink away quietly and poison himself +in a ditch. He boldly encountered the sacred college, +confessed his sin and the innocence of the man they were about to +crucify. Compared with these pious miscreants who had no +scruples about corrupting one of the disciples, but shuddered at +the thought of putting back into the treasury the money they had +taken from it, Judas becomes noble. His remorse is so +unendurable that it drives him to suicide.</p> +<p>If a record could be kept of those who have abjured Jesus +through love of gold, through fear of the world or of the scribes +and Pharisees, we should find many who are considered quite +respectable, or have even been canonised, and who, nevertheless, +much more worthily than Iscariot, are entitled to +“champing” by the jaws of Sathanas. Not a +single scrap from Judas himself has reached us. He +underwent no trial, and is condemned without plea or excuse on +his own behalf, and with no cross-examination of the +evidence. No witnesses have been called to his +character. What would his friends at Kerioth have said for +him? What would Jesus have said? If He had met Judas +with the halter in his hand would He not have stopped him? +Ah! I can see the Divine touch on the shoulder, the +passionate prostration of the repentant in the dust, the hands +gently lifting him, the forgiveness because he knew not what he +did, and the seal of a kiss indeed from the sacred lips.</p> +<h2><a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>SIR +WALTER SCOTT’S USE OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE “BRIDE +OF LAMMERMOOR”</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> supernatural machinery in Sir +Walter Scott’s <i>Monastery</i> is generally and, no doubt, +correctly, set down as a mistake. Sir Walter fails, not +because the White Lady of Avenel is a miracle, but because being +miraculous, she is made to do what sometimes is not worthy of +her. This, however, is not always true, for nothing can be +finer than the change in Halbert Glendinning after he has seen +the spirit, and the great master himself has never drawn a nobler +stroke than that in which he describes the effect which +intercourse with her has had upon Mary. Halbert, on the +morning of the duel between himself and Sir Piercie Shafton, is +trying to persuade her that he intends no harm, and that he and +Sir Piercie are going on a hunting expedition. “Say +not thus,” said the maiden, interrupting him, “say +not thus to me. Others thou may’st deceive, but me +thou can’st not. There has been that in me from the +earliest youth which fraud flies from, and which imposture cannot +deceive.” The transforming influence of the Lady is +here just what it should be, and the consequence is that she +becomes a reality.</p> +<p>But it is in the <i>Bride of Lammermoor</i> more particularly +that the use of the supernatural is not only blameless but +indispensable. We begin to rise to it in that scene in +which the Master of Ravenswood meets Alice. “Begone +from among them,” she says, “and if God has destined +vengeance on the oppressor’s house, do not you be the +instrument. . . . If you remain here, her destruction or +yours, or that of both, will be the inevitable consequence of her +misplaced attachment.” A little further on, with +great art, Scott having duly prepared us by what has preceded, +adds intensity and colour. He apologises for the +“tinge of superstition,” but, not believing, he +evidently believes, and we justly surrender ourselves to +him. The Master of Ravenswood after the insult received +from Lady Ashton wanders round the Mermaiden’s Well on his +way to Wolf’s Crag and sees the wraith of Alice. +Scott makes horse as well as man afraid so that we may not +immediately dismiss the apparition as a mere ordinary product of +excitement. Alice at that moment was dying, and had +“prayed powerfully that she might see her master’s +son and renew her warning.” Observe the difference +between this and any vulgar ghost story. From the very +first we feel that the Superior Powers are against this match, +and that it will be cursed. The beginning of the curse lies +far back in the hereditary temper of the Ravenswoods, in the +intrigues of the Ashtons, and in the feuds of the times. +When Love intervenes we discover in an instant that he is not +sent by the gods to bring peace, but that he is the awful +instrument of destruction. The spectral appearance of Alice +at the hour of her departure, on the very spot “on which +Lucy Ashton had reclined listening to the fatal tale of woe . . . +holding up her shrivelled hand as if to prevent his coming more +near,” is necessary in order to intimate that the interdict +is pronounced not by a mortal human being but by a dread, +supernal authority.</p> +<h2><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +99</span>SEPTEMBER, 1798. “THE LYRICAL +BALLADS.”</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> year 1798 was a year of great +excitement: England was alone in the struggle against Buonaparte; +the mutiny at the Nore had only just been quelled: the 3 per +cent. Consols had been marked at 49 or 50; the Gazettes were +occupied with accounts of bloody captures of French ships; +Ireland may be said to have been in rebellion, and horrible +murders were committed there; the King sent a message to +Parliament telling it that an invasion might be expected and that +it was to be assisted by “incendiaries” at home; and +the Archbishop of Canterbury and eleven bishops passed a +resolution declaring that if the French should land, or a +dangerous insurrection should break out, it would be the duty of +the clergy to take up arms against an enemy whom the Bishop of +Rochester described as “instigated by that desperate +malignity against the Faith he has abandoned, which in all ages +has marked the horrible character of the vile +apostate.”</p> +<p>In the midst of this raving political excitement three human +beings were to be found who although they were certainly not +unmoved by it, were able to detach themselves from it when they +pleased, and to seclude themselves in a privacy impenetrable even +to an echo of the tumult around them.</p> +<p>In April or May, 1798, the <i>Nightingale</i> was written, and +these are the sights and sounds which were then in young +Coleridge’s eyes and ears:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“No cloud, no relique of the sunken day<br +/> +Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip<br /> +Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.<br /> +Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!<br /> +You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,<br /> +But hear no murmuring: it flows silently,<br /> +O’er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,<br /> +A balmy night! and tho’ the stars be dim,<br /> +Yet let us think upon the vernal showers<br /> +That gladden the green earth, and we shall find<br /> +A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We happen also to have Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal for +April and May. Here are a few extracts from it:—</p> +<blockquote><p>April 6th.—“Went a part of the way +home with Coleridge. . . . The spring still advancing very +slowly. The horse-chestnuts budding, and the hedgerows +beginning to look green, but nothing fully expanded.”</p> +<p>April 9th.—“Walked to Stowey . . . The sloe in +blossom, the hawthorns green, the larches in the park changed +from black to green in two or three days. Met Coleridge in +returning.”</p> +<p>April 12th.—“ . . . The spring advances +rapidly, multitudes of primroses, dog-violets, periwinkles, +stitchwort.”</p> +<p>April 27th.—“Coleridge breakfasted and drank tea, +strolled in the wood in the morning, went with him in the evening +through the wood, afterwards walked on the hills: the moon; a +many-coloured sea and sky.”</p> +<p>May 6th, Sunday.—“Expected the painter <a +name="citation101"></a><a href="#footnote101" +class="citation">[101]</a> and Coleridge. A rainy +morning—very pleasant in the evening. Met Coleridge +as we were walking out. Went with him to Stowey; heard the +nightingale; saw a glow-worm.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>What was it which these three young people (for Dorothy +certainly must be included as one of its authors) proposed to +achieve by their book? Coleridge, in the <i>Biographia +Literaria</i>, says (vol. ii. c. 1): “During the first year +that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations +turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power +of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to +the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of +novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden +charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or +sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to +represent the practicability of combining both. These are +the poetry of nature. The thought suggested +itself—(to which of us I do not recollect)—that a +series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In the one, +the agents and incidents were to be, in part at least, +supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the +interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such +emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing +them real. And real in this sense they have been to every +human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any +time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the +second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the +characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in +every village and its vicinity, where there is a meditative and +feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them, when they +present themselves.</p> +<blockquote><p>“In this idea originated the plan of the +<span class="smcap">Lyrical Ballads</span>; in which it was +agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and +characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to +transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance +of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination +that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which +constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other +hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm +of novelty to things of everyday and to excite a feeling +<i>analogous to the supernatural</i>, <a +name="citation103"></a><a href="#footnote103" +class="citation">[103]</a> by awakening the mind’s +attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the +loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an +inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film +of familiarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, +ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor +understand.</p> +<p>“With this view I wrote <span class="smcap">The Ancient +Mariner</span>, and was preparing, among other poems, <span +class="smcap">The Dark Ladie</span> and the <span +class="smcap">Christabel</span>, in which I should have more +nearly have realised my ideal, than I had done in my first +attempt.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Coleridge, when he wrote to Cottle offering him the <i>Lyrical +Ballads</i>, affirms that “the volumes offered to you are, +to a certain degree, <i>one work in kind</i>” <a +name="citation104a"></a><a href="#footnote104a" +class="citation">[104a]</a> (<i>Reminiscences</i>, p. 179); and +Wordsworth declares, “I should not, however, have requested +this assistance, had I not believed that the poems of my Friend +would in a great measure <i>have the same tendency as my own</i>, +<a name="citation104b"></a><a href="#footnote104b" +class="citation">[104b]</a> and that though there would be found +a difference, there would be found no discordance in the colours +of our style; as our opinions on the subject of poetry do almost +entirely coincide” (Preface to <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, +1800).</p> +<p>It is a point carefully to be borne in mind that we have the +explicit and contemporary authority of both poets that their aim +was the same.</p> +<p>There are difficulties in the way of believing that <i>The +Ancient Mariner</i> was written for the <i>Lyrical +Ballads</i>. It was planned in 1797 and was originally +intended for a magazine. Nevertheless, it may be asserted +that the purpose of <i>The Ancient Mariner</i> and of +<i>Christabel</i> (which was originally intended for the +<i>Ballads</i>) was, as their author said, <i>truth</i>, living +truth. He was the last man in the world to care for a story +simply as a chain of events with no significance, and in these +poems the supernatural, by interpenetration with human emotions, +comes closer to us than an event of daily life. In return +the emotions themselves, by means of the supernatural expression, +gain intensity. The texture is so subtly interwoven that it +is difficult to illustrate the point by example, but take the +following lines:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Alone, alone, all, all alone,<br /> +Alone on a wide wide sea!<br /> +And never a saint took pity on<br /> +My soul in agony.</p> +<p>The many men, so beautiful!<br /> +And they all dead did lie:<br /> +And a thousand thousand slimy things<br /> +Lived on; and so did I.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * *</p> +<p>The self-same moment I could pray:<br /> +And from my neck so free<br /> +The Albatross fell off, and sank<br /> +Like lead into the sea.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * *</p> +<p>And the hay was white with silent light<br /> +Till rising from the same,<br /> +Full many shapes, that shadows were,<br /> +In crimson colours came.</p> +<p>A little distance from the prow<br /> +Those crimson shadows were:<br /> +I turned my eyes upon the deck—<br /> +Oh, Christ! what saw I there!</p> +<p>Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,<br /> +And, by the holy rood!<br /> +A man all light, a seraph-man,<br /> +On every corse there stood.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Coleridge’s marginal gloss to these last stanzas is +“The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies, and appear in +their own forms of light.”</p> +<p>Once more from <i>Christabel</i>:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone,<br +/> +She nothing sees—no sight but one!<br /> +The maid, devoid of guile and sin,<br /> +I know not how, in fearful wise,<br /> +So deeply had she drunken in<br /> +That look, those shrunken serpent eyes,<br /> +That all her features were resigned<br /> +To this sole image in her mind:<br /> +And passively did imitate<br /> +That look of dull and treacherous hate.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>What Wordsworth intended we have already heard from Coleridge, +and Wordsworth confirms him. It was, says the Preface of +1802, “to present ordinary things to the mind in an unusual +way.” In Wordsworth the miraculous inherent in the +commonplace, but obscured by “the film of +familiarity,” is restored to it. This translation is +effected by the imagination, which is not fancy nor dreaming, as +Wordsworth is careful to warn us, but that power by which we see +things as they are. The authors of <i>The Ancient +Mariner</i> and <i>Simon Lee</i> are justified in claiming a +common object. It is to prove that the metaphysical in +Shakespeare’s sense of the word interpenetrates the +physical, and serves to make us see and feel it.</p> +<p>Poetry, if it is to be good for anything, must help us to +live. It is to this we come at last in our criticism, and +if it does not help us to live it may as well disappear, no +matter what its fine qualities may be. The help to live, +however, that is most wanted is not remedies against great +sorrows. The chief obstacle to the enjoyment of life is its +dulness and the weariness which invades us because there is +nothing to be seen or done of any particular value. If the +supernatural becomes natural and the natural becomes +supernatural, the world regains its splendour and charm. +Lines may be drawn from their predecessors to Coleridge and the +Wordsworths, but the work they did was distinctly original, and +renewed proof was given of the folly of despair even when +fertility seems to be exhausted. There is always a hidden +conduit open into an unknown region whence at any moment streams +may rush and renew the desert with foliage and flowers.</p> +<p>The reviews which followed the publication of the <i>Lyrical +Ballads</i> were nearly all unfavourable. Even Southey +discovered nothing in <i>The Ancient Mariner</i> but “a +Dutch attempt at German sublimity.” A certain learned +pig thought it “the strangest story of a cock and bull that +he ever saw on paper,” and not a single critic, not even +the one or two who had any praise to offer, discerned the secret +of the book. The publisher was so alarmed that he hastily +sold his stock. Nevertheless Coleridge, Wordsworth, and his +sister quietly went off to Germany without the least disturbance +of their faith, and the <i>Ballads</i> are alive to this day.</p> +<h2><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>SOME +NOTES ON MILTON</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Much</span> of the criticism on Milton, if +not hostile, is apologetic, and it is considered quite correct to +say we “do not care” for him. Partly this +indifference is due to his Nonconformity. The +“superior” Englishman who makes a jest of the +doctrines and ministers of the Established Church always pays +homage to it because it is <i>respectable</i>, and sneers at +Dissent. Another reason why Milton does not take his proper +place is that his theme is a theology which for most people is no +longer vital. A religious poem if it is to be deeply felt +must embody a living faith. The great poems of antiquity +are precious to us in proportion to our acceptance, now, as fact, +of what they tell us about heaven and earth. There are only +a few persons at present who perceive that in substance the +account which was given in the seventeenth century of the +relation between man and God is immortal and worthy of epic +treatment. A thousand years hence a much better estimate of +Milton will be possible than that which can be formed +to-day. We attribute to him mechanic construction in dead +material because it is dead to ourselves. Even Mr. Ruskin +who was far too great not to recognise in part at least +Milton’s claims, says that “Milton’s account of +the most important event in his whole system of the universe, the +fall of the angels, is evidently unbelievable to himself; and the +more so, that it is wholly founded on, and in a great part +spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod’s account of the decisive +war of the younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his +poem is a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention +is visibly and consciously employed; not a single fact being for +an instant conceived as tenable by any living faith” +(<i>Sesame and Lilies</i>, section iii.).</p> +<p>Mr. Mark Pattison, quoting part of this passage, remarks with +justice, “on the contrary, we shall not rightly apprehend +either the poetry or the character of the poet until we feel that +throughout <i>Paradise Lost</i>, as in <i>Paradise Regained</i> +and <i>Samson</i>, Milton felt himself to be standing on the sure +ground of fact and reality” (<i>English Men of +Letters</i>—Milton, p. 186, ed. 1879).</p> +<p>St. Jude for ages had been sufficient authority for the +angelic revolt, and in a sense it was a reasonable dogma, for +although it did not explain the mystery of the origin of evil it +pushed it a step further backwards, and without such a revolt the +Christian scheme does not well hold together. So also with +the entrance of the devil into the serpent. It is not +expressly taught in any passage of the canonical Scriptures, but +to the Church and to Milton it was as indisputable as the +presence of sin in the world. Milton, I repeat, +<i>believed</i> in the framework of his poem, and unless we can +concede this to him we ought not to attempt to criticise +him. He was impelled to turn his religion into poetry in +order to bring it closer to him. The religion of every +Christian if it is real is a poem. He pictures a background +of Holy Land scenery, and he creates a Jesus who continually +converses with him and reveals to him much more than is found in +the fragmentary details of the Gospels. When Milton goes +beyond his documents he does not imagine for the purpose of +filling up: the additions are expression.</p> +<p>Milton belonged to that order of poets whom the finite does +not satisfy. Like Wordsworth, but more eminently, he was +“powerfully affected” only by that “which is +conversant with or turns upon infinity,” and man is to him +a being with such a relationship to infinity that Heaven and Hell +contend over him. Every touch which sets forth the eternal +glory of Heaven and the scarcely subordinate power of Hell +magnifies him. Johnson, whose judgment on Milton is +unsatisfactory because he will not deliver himself sufficiently +to beauty which he must have recognised, nevertheless says of the +<i>Paradise Lost</i>, that “its end is to raise the +thoughts above sublunary cares,” and this is true. +The other great epic poems worthy to be compared with +Milton’s, the Iliad, Odyssey, Æneid, and Divine +Comedy, all agree in representing man as an object of the deepest +solicitude to the gods or God. Milton’s conception of +God is higher than Homer’s, Virgil’s, or +Dante’s, but the care of the Miltonic God for his offspring +is greater, and the profound truth unaffected by Copernican +discoveries and common to all these poets is therefore more +impressive in Milton than in the others.</p> +<p>There is nothing which the most gifted of men can create that +is not mixed up with earth, and Milton, too, works it up with his +gold. The weakness of the <i>Paradise Lost</i> is not, as +Johnson affirms, its lack of human interest, for the +<i>Prometheus Bound</i> has just as little, nor is +Johnson’s objection worth anything that the angels are +sometimes corporeal and at other times independent of material +laws. Spirits could not be represented to a human mind +unless they were in a measure subject to the conditions of time +and space. The principal defect in <i>Paradise Lost</i> is +the justification which the Almighty gives of the creation of man +with a liability to fall. It would have been better if +Milton had contented himself with telling the story of the +Satanic insurrection, of its suppression, of its author’s +revenge, of the expulsion from Paradise, and the promise of a +Redeemer. But he wanted to “justify the ways of God +to man,” and in order to do this he thought it was +necessary to show that man must be endowed with freedom of will, +and consequently could not be directly preserved from yielding to +the assaults of Satan.</p> +<p><i>Paradise Regained</i> comes, perhaps, closer to us than +<i>Paradise Lost</i> because its temptations are more nearly our +own, and every amplification which Milton introduces is designed +to make them more completely ours than they seem to be in the New +Testament. It has often been urged against <i>Paradise +Regained</i> that Jesus recovered Paradise for man by the +Atonement and not merely by resistance to the devil’s +wiles, but inasmuch as Paradise was lost by the devil’s +triumph through human weakness it is natural that <i>Paradise +Regained</i> should present the triumph of the Redeemer’s +strength. It is this victory which proves Jesus to be the +Son of God and consequently able to save us.</p> +<p>He who has now become incarnated for our redemption is that +same Messiah who, when He rode forth against the angelic +rebels,</p> + +<blockquote><p> “into +terror chang’d<br /> +His count’nance too severe to be beheld,<br /> +And full of wrath bent on his enemies.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is He who</p> + +<blockquote><p> “on +his impious foes right onward drove,<br /> +Gloomy as night:”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>whose right hand grasped</p> + +<blockquote><p> “ten +thousand thunders, which he sent<br /> +Before him, such as in their souls infix’d<br /> +Plagues.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. L.</i> vi. 824–38.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Now as Son of Man he is confronted with that same Archangel, +and he conquers by “strong sufferance.” He +comes with no fourfold visage of a charioteer flashing thick +flames, no eye which glares lightning, no victory eagle-winged +and quiver near her with three-bolted thunder stored, but in +“weakness,” and with this he is to “overcome +satanic strength.”</p> +<p>Milton sees in the temptation to turn the stones into bread a +devilish incitement to use miraculous powers and not to trust the +Heavenly Father.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Why dost thou then suggest to me +distrust,<br /> +Knowing who I am, as I know who thou art?”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> i. 355–6.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Finding his enemy steadfast, Satan disappears,</p> + +<blockquote><p> “bowing +low<br /> +His gray dissimulation,”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> i. 497–8.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and calls to council his peers. He disregards the +proposal of Belial to attempt the seduction of Jesus with +women. If he is vulnerable it will be to objects</p> + +<blockquote><p> “such +as have more shew<br /> +Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise,<br /> +Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck’d;<br /> +Or that which only seems to satisfy<br /> +Lawful desires of Nature, not beyond.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> ii. 226–30.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The former appeal is first of all renewed. “Tell +me,” says Satan,</p> + +<blockquote><p> “‘if +food were now before thee set<br /> +Would’st thou not eat?’ ‘Thereafter as I +like<br /> +The giver,’ answered Jesus.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> ii. 320–22.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>A banquet is laid, and Satan invites Jesus to partake of +it.</p> +<blockquote><p>“What doubts the Son of God to sit and +eat?<br /> +These are not fruits forbidd’n.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> ii. 368–9.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But Jesus refuses to touch the devil’s meat—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Thy pompous delicacies I contemn,<br /> +And count thy specious gifts no gifts, but guiles.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> ii. 390–1.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>So they were, for at a word</p> +<blockquote><p>“Both table and provision vanish’d +quite,<br /> +With sound of harpies’ wings and talons heard.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> ii. 402–3.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>If but one grain of that enchanted food had been eaten, or one +drop of that enchanted liquor had been drunk, there would have +been no Cross, no Resurrection, no salvation for humanity.</p> +<p>The temptation on the mountain is expanded by Milton through +the close of the second book, the whole of the third and part of +the fourth. It is a temptation of peculiar strength because +it is addressed to an aspiration which Jesus has +acknowledged.</p> + +<blockquote><p> “Yet +this not all<br /> +To which my spirit aspir’d: victorious deeds<br /> +Flam’d in my heart, heroic acts.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> i. 214–16.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But he denies that the glory of mob-applause is worth +anything.</p> +<blockquote><p> “What is +glory but the blaze of fame,<br /> +The people’s praise, if always praise unmixt?<br /> +And what the people but a herd confus’d,<br /> +A miscellaneous rabble, who extol<br /> +Things vulgar, and, well weigh’d, scarce worth the +praise?”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iii. 47–51.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To the Jesus of the New Testament this answer is, in a +measure, inappropriate. He would not have called the people +“a herd confus’d, a miscellaneous +rabble.” But although inappropriate it is +Miltonic. The devil then tries the Saviour with a more +subtle lure, an appeal to duty.</p> +<blockquote><p>“If kingdom move thee not, let move thee +zeal<br /> +And duty; zeal and duty are not slow;<br /> +But on occasion’s forelock watchful wait.<br /> +They themselves rather are occasion best,<br /> +Zeal of thy father’s house, duty to free<br /> +Thy country from her heathen servitude.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iii. 171–6.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But zeal and duty, the endeavour to hurry that which cannot +and must not be hurried may be a suggestion from hell.</p> +<blockquote><p>“If of my reign prophetic writ hath told<br +/> +That it shall never end, so when begin<br /> +The Father in His purpose hath decreed.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iii. 184–6.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Acquiescence, a conviction of the uselessness of individual or +organised effort to anticipate what only slow evolution can +bring, is characteristic of increasing years, and was likely +enough to be the temper of Milton when he had seen the failure of +the effort to make actual on earth the kingdom of Heaven. +The temptation is developed in such a way that every point +supposed to be weak is attacked. “You may be what you +claim to be,” insinuates the devil, “but are +rustic.”</p> +<blockquote><p>“Thy life hath yet been private, most part +spent<br /> +At home, scarce view’d the Galilean towns,<br /> +And once a year Jerusalem.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iii. 232–4.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Experience and alliances are plausibly urged as indispensable +for success. But Jesus knew that the sum total of a +man’s power for good is precisely what of good there is in +him and that if it be expressed even in the simplest form, all +its strength is put forth and its office is fulfilled. To +suppose that it can be augmented by machinery is a foolish +delusion. The</p> + +<blockquote><p> “projects +deep<br /> +Of enemies, of aids, battles and leagues,<br /> +Plausible to the world”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iii. 395–3.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>are to the Founder of the kingdom not of this world +“worth naught.” Another side of the mountain is +tried. Rome is presented with Tiberius at +Capreæ. Could it possibly be anything but a noble +deed to</p> +<blockquote><p> “expel +this monster from his throne<br /> +Now made a sty, and in his place ascending,<br /> +A victor people free from servile yoke!”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iv. +100–102.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“<i>And with my help thou may’st</i>.” +With the devil’s help and not without can this glorious +revolution be achieved! “For him,” is the +Divine reply, “I was not sent.” The attack is +then directly pressed.</p> +<blockquote><p>“The kingdoms of the world, to thee I +give;<br /> +For, giv’n to me, I give to whom I please,<br /> +No trifle; yet with this reserve, not else,<br /> +On this condition, if thou wilt fall down<br /> +And worship me as thy superior lord.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iv. 163–7.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This, then, is the drift and meaning of it all. The +answer is taken verbally from the gospel.</p> + +<blockquote><p> “‘Thou +shalt worship<br /> +The Lord thy God, and only Him shalt serve.’”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iv. 176–7.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>That is to say, Thou shalt submit thyself to God’s +commands and God’s methods and thou shalt submit thyself to +<i>no other</i>.</p> +<p>Omitting the Athenian and philosophic episode, which is +unnecessary and a little unworthy even of the Christian poet, we +encounter not an amplification of the Gospel story but an +interpolation which is entirely Milton’s own. Night +gathers and a new assault is delivered in darkness. Jesus +wakes in the storm which rages round Him. The diabolic +hostility is open and avowed and He hears the howls and shrieks +of the infernals. He cannot banish them though He is so far +master of Himself that He is able to sit “unappall’d +in calm and sinless peace.” He has to endure the +hellish threats and tumult through the long black hours</p> + +<blockquote><p> “till +morning fair<br /> +Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray,<br /> +Who with her radiant finger still’d the roar<br /> +Of thunder, chas’d the clouds, and laid the winds,<br /> +And grisly spectres, which the Fiend had rais’d<br /> +To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire.<br /> +But now the sun with more effectual beams<br /> +Had cheer’d the face of earth, and dri’d the wet<br +/> +From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds,<br /> +Who all things now beheld more fresh and green,<br /> +After a night of storm so ruinous,<br /> +Clear’d up their choicest notes in bush and spray<br /> +To gratulate the sweet return of morn.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iv. 426–38.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There is nothing perhaps in <i>Paradise Lost</i> which +possesses the peculiar quality of this passage, nothing which +like these verses brings into the eyes the tears which cannot be +repressed when a profound experience is set to music.</p> +<p>The temptation on the pinnacle occupies but a few lines only +of the poem. Hitherto Satan admits that Jesus had +conquered, but he had done no more than any wise and good man +could do.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Now show thy progeny; if not to stand,<br +/> +Cast thyself down; safely, if Son of God;<br /> +For it is written, ‘He will give command<br /> +Concerning thee to His angels; in their hands<br /> +They shall uplift thee, lest at any time<br /> +Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.’”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iv. 554–9.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The promise of Divine aid is made in mockery.</p> +<blockquote><p>“To whom thus Jesus: ‘Also it is +written,<br /> +Tempt not the Lord thy God.’ He said, and stood:<br +/> +But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iv. 560–2.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It is not meant, “thou shalt not tempt <i>me</i>,” +but rather, “it is not permitted me to tempt +God.” In this extreme case Jesus depends on +God’s protection. This is the devil’s final +defeat and the seraphic company for which our great Example had +refused to ask instantly surrounds and receives him. +Angelic quires</p> + +<blockquote><p> “the +Son of God, our Saviour meek,<br /> +Sung victor, and from heavenly feast refresh’t,<br /> +Brought on His way with joy; He unobserv’d,<br /> +Home to His mother’s house private +return’d.”</p> +<p style="text-align: right">(<i>P. R.</i> iv. 636–9.)</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Warton wished to expunge this passage, considering it an +unworthy conclusion. It is to be hoped that there are many +readers of Milton who are able to see what is the value of these +four lines, particularly of the last.</p> +<p>It is hardly necessary to say more in order to show how +peculiarly Milton is endowed with that quality which is possessed +by all great poets—the power to keep in contact with the +soul of man.</p> +<h2><a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>THE +MORALITY OF BYRON’S POETRY. “THE +CORSAIR.”</h2> +<p class="gutsumm">[This is an abstract of an essay four times as +long written many years ago. Although so much has been +struck out, the substance is unaltered, and the conclusion is +valid for the author now as then.]</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Byron</span> above almost all other poets, +at least in our day, has been set down as immoral. In +reality he is moral, using the word in its proper sense, and he +is so, not only in detached passages, but in the general drift of +most of his poetry. We will take as an example “The +Corsair.”</p> +<p>Conrad is not a debauched buccaneer. He was +not—</p> + +<blockquote><p> “by +Nature sent<br /> +To lead the guilty—guilt’s worst +instrument.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He had been betrayed by misplaced confidence.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Doom’d by his very virtues for a +dupe,<br /> +He cursed those virtues as the cause of ill,<br /> +And not the traitors who betray’d him still;<br /> +Nor deem’d that gifts bestow’d on better men<br /> +Had left him joy, and means to give again,<br /> +Fear’d—shunn’d—belied—ere youth had +lost her force,<br /> +He hated man too much to feel remorse,<br /> +And thought the voice of wrath a sacred call,<br /> +To pay the injuries of some on all.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Conrad was not, and could not be, mean and selfish. A +selfish Conrad would be an absurdity. His motives are not +gross—</p> +<blockquote><p> “he +shuns the grosser joys of sense,<br /> +His mind seems nourished by that abstinence.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He is protected by a charm against undistinguishing +lust—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Though fairest captives daily met his +eye,<br /> +He shunn’d, nor sought, but coldly pass’d them +by;”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and even Gulnare, his deliverer, fails to seduce him.</p> +<p>Mr. Ruskin observes that Byron makes much of courage. It +is Conrad, the leader, who undertakes the dangerous errand of +surprising Seyd; it is he who determines to save the harem. +His courage is not the mere excitement of battle. When he +is captured—</p> +<blockquote><p>“A conqueror’s more than +captive’s air is seen,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and he is not insensible to all fear.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Each has some fear, and he who least +betrays,<br /> +The only hypocrite deserving praise.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>One thought alone he could not—dared not meet—<br +/> +‘Oh, how these tidings will Medora greet?’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Gulnare announces his doom to him, but he is calm. He +cannot stoop even to pray. He has deserted his Maker, and +it would be baseness now to prostrate himself before Him.</p> +<blockquote><p>“I have no thought to mock his throne with +prayer<br /> +Wrung from the coward crouching of despair;<br /> +It is enough—I breathe—and I can bear.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He has no martyr-hope with which to console himself; his +endurance is of the finest order—simple, sheer resolution, +a resolve that with no reward, he will never disgrace +himself. He knows what it is</p> +<blockquote><p>“To count the hours that struggle to thine +end,<br /> +With not a friend to animate, and tell<br /> +To other ears that death became thee well,”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>but he does not break down.</p> +<p>Gulnare tries to persuade him that the only way by which he +can save himself from tortures and impalement is by the +assassination of Seyd, but he refuses to accept the +terms—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Who spares a woman’s seeks not +slumber’s life”—</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and dismisses her. When she has done the deed and he +sees the single spot of blood upon her, he, the Corsair, is +unmanned as he had never been in battle, prison, or by +consciousness of guilt.</p> +<blockquote><p>“But ne’er from +strife—captivity—remorse—<br /> +From all his feelings in their inmost force—<br /> +So thrill’d—so shudder’d every creeping +vein,<br /> +As now they froze before that purple stain.<br /> +That spot of blood, that light but guilty streak,<br /> +Had banish’d all the beauty from her cheek!”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The Corsair’s misanthropy had not destroyed him. +Small creatures alone are wholly converted into spite and +scepticism by disappointment and repulse. Those who are +larger avenge themselves by devotion. Conrad’s love +for Medora was intensified and exalted by his hatred of the +world.</p> +<blockquote><p>“Yes, it was +Love—unchangeable—unchanged,<br /> +Felt but for one from whom he never ranged;”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and she was worthy of him, the woman who could sing—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Deep in my soul that tender secret +dwells,<br /> +Lonely and lost to light for evermore,<br /> +Save when to thine my heart responsive swells,<br /> +Then trembles into silence as before.</p> +<p>There, in its centre, a sepulchral lamp<br /> +Burns the slow flame, eternal—but unseen;<br /> +Which not the darkness of despair can damp,<br /> +Though vain its ray as it had never been.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He finds Medora dead, and—</p> + +<blockquote><p> “his +mother’s softness crept<br /> +To those wild eyes, which like an infant’s wept.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>If his crimes and love could be weighed in a celestial +balance, weight being apportioned to the rarity and value of the +love, which would descend?</p> +<p>The points indicated in Conrad’s character are not many, +but they are sufficient for its delineation, and it is a moral +character. We must, of course, get rid of the notion that +the relative magnitude of the virtues and vices according to the +priest or society is authentic. A reversion to the natural +or divine scale has been almost the sole duty preached to us by +every prophet. If we could incorporate Conrad with +ourselves we should find that the greater part of what is worst +in us would be neutralised. The sins of which we are +ashamed, the dirty, despicable sins, Conrad could not have +committed; and in these latter days they are perhaps the most +injurious.</p> +<p>We do not understand how moral it is to yield unreservedly to +enthusiasm, to the impression which great objects would fain make +upon us, and to embody that impression in worthy language. +It is rare to meet now even with young people who will abandon +themselves to a heroic emotion, or who, if they really feel it, +do not try to belittle it in expression. Byron’s +poetry, above most, tempts and almost compels surrender to that +which is beyond the commonplace self.</p> +<p>It is not true that “The Corsair” is +insincere. He who hears a note of insincerity in Conrad and +Medora may have ears, but they must be those of the translated +Bottom who was proud of having “a reasonable good ear in +music.” Byron’s romance has been such a power +exactly because men felt that it was not fiction and that his was +one of the strongest minds of his day. He was incapable of +toying with the creatures of the fancy which had no relationship +with himself and through himself with humanity.</p> +<p>A word as to Byron’s hold upon the people. He was +able to obtain a hearing from ordinary men and women, who knew +nothing even of Shakespeare, save what they had seen at the +theatre. Modern poetry is the luxury of a small cultivated +class. We may say what we like of popularity, and if it be +purchased by condescension to popular silliness it is +nothing. But Byron secured access to thousands of readers +in England and on the Continent by strength and loveliness, a +feat seldom equalled and never perhaps surpassed. The +present writer’s father, a compositor in a dingy printing +office, repeated verses from “Childe Harold” at the +case. Still more remarkable, Byron reached one of this +writer’s friends, an officer in the Navy, of the ancient +stamp; and the attraction, both to printer and lieutenant, lay in +nothing lower than that which was best in him. It is surely +a service sufficient to compensate for many more faults than can +be charged against him that wherever there was any latent poetic +dissatisfaction with the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life +he gave it expression, and that he has awakened in the +<i>people</i> lofty emotions which, without him, would have +slept. The cultivated critics, and the refined persons who +have <i>schrecklich viel gelesen</i>, are not competent to +estimate the debt we owe to Byron.</p> +<h2><a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +133</span>BYRON, GOETHE, AND MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD</h2> +<p class="gutsumm">(<i>Reprinted</i>, <i>with corrections</i>, +<i>by permission from the</i> “<i>Contemporary +Review</i>,” <i>August</i>, 1881.)</p> +<p><span class="smcap">Mr. Matthew Arnold</span> has lately +published a remarkable essay <a name="citation133"></a><a +href="#footnote133" class="citation">[133]</a> upon Lord +Byron. Mr. Arnold’s theory about Byron is, that he is +neither artist nor thinker—that “he has no light, +cannot lead us from the past to the future;” “the +moment he reflects, he is a child;” “as a poet he has +no fine and exact sense for word and structure and rhythm; he has +not the artist’s nature and gifts.” The +excellence of Byron mainly consists in his “sincerity and +strength;” in his rhetorical power; in his +“irreconcilable revolt and battle” against the +political and social order of things in which he lived. +“Byron threw himself upon poetry as his organ; and in +poetry his topics were not Queen Mab, and the Witch of the Atlas, +and the Sensitive Plant, they were the upholders of the old +order, George the Third and Lord Castlereagh and the Duke of +Wellington and Southey, and they were the canters and tramplers +of the great world, and they were his enemies and +himself.”</p> +<p>Mr. Arnold appeals to Goethe as an authority in his +favour. In order, therefore, that English people may know +what Goethe thought about Byron I have collected some of the +principal criticisms upon him which I can find in Goethe’s +works. The text upon which Mr. Arnold enlarges is the +remark just quoted which Goethe made about Byron to Eckermann: +“<i>so bald er reflectirt ist er ein +Kind</i>”—<i>as soon as he reflects he is a +child</i>.</p> +<p>Goethe, it is true, did say this; but the interpretation of +the saying depends upon the context, which Mr. Arnold +omits. I give the whole passage, quoting from +Oxenford’s translation of the <i>Eckermann +Conversations</i>, vol. i. p. 198 (edition 1850):—</p> +<blockquote><p>“‘Lord Byron,’ said Eckermann, +‘is no wiser when he takes ‘Faust’ to pieces +and thinks you found one thing here, the other +there.’ ‘The greater part of those fine things +cited by Lord Byron,’ Goethe replied, ‘I have never +even read; much less did I think of them when I was writing +“Faust.” But Lord Byron is only great as a +poet; as soon as he reflects he is a child. He knows not +how to help himself against the stupid attacks of the same kind +made upon him by his own countrymen. He ought to have +expressed himself more strongly against them. ‘What +is there is mine,’ he should have said, ‘and whether +I got it from a book or from life is of no consequence; the only +point is, whether I have made a right use of it.’ +Walter Scott used a scene from my ‘Egmont,’ and he +had a right to do so; and because he did it well, he deserves +praise.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Goethe certainly does not mean that Byron was unable to +reflect in the sense in which Mr. Arnold interprets the +word. What was really meant we shall see in a moment.</p> +<p>We will, however, continue the quotations from the +<i>Eckermann</i>:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“We see how the inadequate dogmas of the +Church work upon a free mind like Byron’s and how by such a +piece (‘Cain’) he struggles to get rid of a doctrine +which has been forced upon him” (vol. i. p. 129).</p> +<p>“The world to him was transparent, and he could paint by +way of anticipation” (vol. i. p. 140).</p> +<p>“That which I call invention I never saw in any one in +the world to a greater degree than in him” (vol. i. p. +205).</p> +<p>“Lord Byron is to be regarded as a man, as an +Englishman, and as a great talent. His good qualities +belong chiefly to the man, his bad to the Englishman and the +peer, his talent is incommensurable. All Englishmen are, as +such, without reflection properly so-called; distractions and +party-spirit will not permit them to perfect themselves in +quiet. But they are great as practical men. Thus, +Lord Byron could never attain reflection on himself, and on this +account his maxims in general are not successful. . . . But +where he will create, he always succeeds; and we may truly say +that, with him, inspiration supplies the place of +reflection. He was always obliged to go on poetizing, and +then everything that came from the man, especially from his +heart, was excellent. He produced his best things, as women +do pretty children, without thinking about it, or knowing how it +was done. He is a great talent, a born talent, and I never +saw the true poetical power greater in any man than in him. +In the apprehension of external objects, and a clear penetration +into past situations, he is quite as great as Shakespeare. +But as a pure individuality, Shakespeare is his superior” +(vol. i. p. 209).</p> +</blockquote> +<p>We see now what Goethe means by +“reflection.” It is the faculty of +self-separation, or conscious <i>consideration</i>, a faculty +which would have enabled Byron, as it enabled Goethe, to reply +successfully to a charge of plagiarism. It is not thought +in its widest sense, nor creation, and it has not much to do with +the production of poems of the highest order—the poems that +is to say, which are written by the impersonal thought.</p> +<p>But again—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The English may think of Byron as they +please; but this is certain, that they can show no poet who is to +be compared to him. He is different from all the others, +and for the most part, greater” (vol. i. p. 290).</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This passage is one which Mr. Arnold quotes, and he strives to +diminish its importance by translating <i>der ihm zu vergleichen +wäre</i>, by “who is his parallel,” and +maintains that Goethe “was not so much thinking of the +strict rank, as poetry, of Byron’s production; he was +thinking of that wonderful personality of Byron which so enters +into his poetry.” It is just possible; but if Goethe +did think this, he used words which are misleading, and if the +phrase <i>der ihm zu vergleichen wäre</i> simply indicates +parallelism, it has no point, for in that sense it might have +been applied to Scott or to Southey.</p> +<blockquote><p>“I have read once more Byron’s +‘Deformed Transformed,’ and must say that to me his +talent appears greater than ever. His devil was suggested +by my Mephistopheles; but it is no imitation—it is +thoroughly new and original; close, genuine, and spirited. +There are no weak passages—not a place where you could put +the head of a pin, where you do not find <i>invention and +thought</i> [italics mine]. Were it not for his +hypochondriacal negative turn, he would be as great as +Shakespeare and the ancients” (vol. i. p. 294).</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Eckermann expressed his surprise. “Yes,” +said Goethe, “you may believe me, I have studied him anew +and am confirmed in this opinion.” The position which +Byron occupies in the Second Part of “Faust” is well +known. Eckermann talked to Goethe about it, and Goethe +said, “I could not make use of any man as the +representative of the modern poetical era except him, who +undoubtedly is to be regarded as the greatest genius of our +century” (vol. i. p. 425). Mr. Arnold translates this +word “genius” by “talent.” The word +in the original is <i>talent</i>, and I will not dispute with so +accomplished a German scholar as Mr. Arnold as to what is the +precise meaning of <i>talent</i>. In both the English +translations of Eckermann the word is rendered +“genius,” and after the comparison between Byron, +Shakespeare, and the ancients just quoted, we can hardly admit +that Goethe meant to distinguish scientifically between the two +orders of intellect and to assign the lower to Byron.</p> +<p>But, last of all, I will translate Goethe’s criticism +upon “Cain.” So far as I know, it has not yet +appeared in English. It is to be found in the Stuttgart and +Tübingen edition of Goethe, 1840, vol. xxxiii. p. 157. +Some portions which are immaterial I have omitted:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“After I had listened to the strangest +things about this work for almost a year, I at last took it +myself in hand, and it excited in me astonishment and admiration; +an effect which will produce in the mind which is simply +susceptible, everything good, beautiful, and great. . . . +The poet who, surpassing the limit of all our conceptions, has +penetrated with burning spiritual vision the past and present, +and consequently the future, has now subdued new regions under +his limitless talent, but what he will accomplish therein can be +predicted by no human being. His procedure, however, we can +nevertheless in a measure more closely determine. He +adheres to the letter of the Biblical tradition, for he allows +the first pair of human beings to exchange their original purity +and innocence for a guilt mysterious in its origin; the +punishment which is its consequence descending upon all +posterity. The monstrous burden of such an event he lays +upon the shoulders of Cain as the representative of a wretched +humanity, plunged for no fault of its own into the depths of +misery.</p> +<p>“To this primitive son of man, bowed down and heavily +burdened, death, which as yet he has not seen, is an especial +trouble; and although he may desire the end of his present +distress, it seems still more hateful to exchange it for a +condition altogether unknown. Hence we already see that the +full weight of a dogmatic system, explaining, mediating, yet +always in conflict with itself, just as it still for ever +occupies us, was imposed on the first miserable son of man. +These contradictions, which are not strange to human nature, +possessed his mind, and could not be brought to rest, either +through the divinely-given gentleness of his father and brother, +or the loving and alleviating co-operation of his +sister-wife. In order to sharpen them to the point of +impossibility of endurance, Satan comes upon the scene, a mighty +and misleading spirit, who begins by unsettling him morally, and +then conducts him miraculously through all worlds, causing him to +see the past as overwhelmingly vast, the present as small and of +no account, and the future as full of foreboding and void of +consolation.</p> +<p>“So he turns back to his own family, more excited, but +not worse than before; and finding in the family circle +everything as he has left it, the urgency of Abel, who wishes to +make him offer a sacrifice, becomes altogether +insupportable. More say we not, excepting that the +motivation of the scene in which Abel perishes is of the rarest +excellence, and what follows is equally great and +priceless. There now lies Abel! That now is +Death—there was so much talk about it, and man knows about +it as little as he did before.</p> +<p>“We must not forget, that through the whole piece there +runs a kind of presentiment of a Saviour, so that the poet at +this point, as well as in all others, has known how to bring +himself near to the ideas by which we explain things, and to our +modes of faith.</p> +<p>“Of the scene with the parents, in which Eve at last +curses the speechless Cain, which our western neighbour lifts +into such striking prominence, there remains nothing more for us +to say: we have to approach the conclusion with astonishment and +reverence.</p> +<p>“With regard to this conclusion, an intelligent and fair +friend, related to us through esteem for Byron, has asserted that +everything religious and moral in the world was put into the last +three words of the piece.” <a name="citation143"></a><a +href="#footnote143" class="citation">[143]</a></p> +</blockquote> +<p>We have now heard enough from Goethe to prove that Mr. +Arnold’s interpretation of “<i>so bald er reflectirt +ist er ein Kind</i>” is not Goethe’s interpretation +of Byron. It is to be remembered that Goethe was not a +youth overcome by Mr. Arnold’s “vogue” when he +read Byron. He was a singularly self-possessed old man.</p> +<p>Many persons will be inclined to think that Goethe, so far +from putting Byron on a lower level than that usually assigned to +him, has over-praised him, and will question the “burning +spiritual vision” which the great German believed the great +Englishman to possess. But if we consider what Goethe calls +the “motivation” of Cain; if we reflect on what the +poet has put into the legend; on the exploration of the universe +with Lucifer as a guide; on its result, on the mode in which the +death of Abel is reached; on the doom of the murderer—the +limitless wilderness henceforth and no rest; on the fidelity of +Adah, who, with the true instinct of love, separates between the +man and the crime; on the majesty of the principal character, who +stands before us as the representative of the insurgence of the +human intellect, so that, if we know him, we know a whole +literature; if we meditate hereon, we shall say that Goethe has +not exaggerated. It is the same with the rest of +Byron’s dramas. Over and above the beauty of detached +passages, there is in each one of them a large and universal +meaning, or rather meaning within meaning, precisely the same for +no reader, but none the less certain, and as inexhaustible as the +meanings of Nature. This is one reason why the wisdom of a +selection from Byron is so doubtful. The worth of +“Cain,” of “Sardanapalus,” of +“Manfred,” of “Marino Faliero,” is the +worth of an outlook over the sea; and we cannot take a sample of +the scene from a cliff by putting a pint of water into a +bottle. But Byron’s critics and the compilers tell us +of failures, which ought not to survive, and that we are doing a +kindness to him if we suppress these and exhibit him at his +best. No man who seriously cares for Byron will assent to +this doctrine. We want to know the whole of him, his +weakness as well as his strength; for the one is not intelligible +without the other. A human being is an indivisible unity, +and his weakness <i>is</i> his strength, and his strength +<i>is</i> his weakness.</p> +<p>It is not my object now, however, to justify what Mr. Arnold +calls the Byronic “superstition.” I hope I +could justify a good part of it, but this is not the +opportunity. I cannot resist, however, saying a word by way +of conclusion on the manner in which Byron has fulfilled what +seems to me one of the chief offices of the poet. Mr. +Arnold, although he is so dissatisfied with Byron because he +“cannot reflect,” would probably in another mood +admit that “reflections” are not what we demand of a +poet. We do not ask of him a rhymed book of proverbs. +He should rather be the articulation of what in Nature is great +but inarticulate. In him the thunder, the sea, the peace of +morning, the joy of youth, the rush of passion, the calm of old +age, should find words, and men should through him become aware +of the unrecognised wealth of existence. Byron had the +power above most poets of acting as a kind of tongue to +Nature. His descriptions are on everybody’s lips, and +it is superfluous to quote them. He represented things not +as if they were aloof from him, but as if they were the concrete +embodiment of his soul. The woods, the wilds, the waters of +Nature are to him—</p> + +<blockquote><p> “the +intense<br /> +Reply of <i>hers</i> to our intelligence.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>His success is equally marked when he portrays men or women +whose character attracts him. Take, for example, the girl +in “The Island”:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“The sunborn blood suffused her neck, and +threw<br /> +O’er her clear nutbrown skin a lucid hue,<br /> +Like coral reddening through the darken’d wave,<br /> +Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.<br /> +Such was this daughter of the southern seas,<br /> +<i>Herself a billow in her energies</i>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p> +<p>Her smiles and tears had pass’d, as light winds pass<br +/> +O’er lakes to ruffle, not destroy, their glass,<br /> +<i>Whose depths unsearch’d</i>, <i>and fountains from the +hill</i>,<br /> +<i>Restore their surface</i>, <i>in itself so +still</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Passages like these might be quoted without end from Byron, +and they explain why he is and must be amongst the +immortals. He may have been careless in expression; he may +have been a barbarian and not a +εύφυής, as Mr. Matthew +Arnold affirms, but he was <i>great</i>. This is the word +which describes him. He was a mass of living energy, and +therefore he is sanative. Energy, power, is the one thing +after which we pine in this sickly age. We do not want +carefully and consciously constructed poems of mosaic. +Strength is what we need and what will heal us. Strength is +true morality, and true beauty. It is the strength in Byron +that falsifies the accusation of affectation and posing, which is +brought against him. All that is meant by affectation and +posing was a mere surface trick. The real man, Byron, and +his poems are perfectly unconscious, as unconscious as the +wind. The books which have lived and always will live have +this unconsciousness in them, and what is manufactured, +self-centred, and self-contemplative will perish. The +world’s literature is the work of men, who, to use +Byron’s own words—</p> +<blockquote><p>“Strip off this fond and false +identity;”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>who are lost in their object, who write because they cannot +help it, imperfectly or perfectly, as the case may be, and who do +not sit down to fit in this thing and that thing from a +commonplace book. Many novelists there are who know their +art better than Charlotte Brontë, but she, like +Byron—and there are more points of resemblance between them +than might at first be supposed—is imperishable because she +speaks under overwhelming pressure, self-annihilated, we may say, +while the spirit breathes through her. The Byron +“vogue” will never pass so long as men and women are +men and women. Mr. Arnold and the critics may remind us of +his imperfections of form, but Goethe is right after all, for not +since Shakespeare have we had any one <i>der ihm zu vergleichen +wäre</i>.</p> +<h2><a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 149</span>A +SACRIFICE</h2> +<p>A <span class="smcap">fatal</span> plague devastated the +city. The god had said that it would continue to rage until +atonement for a crime had been offered by the sacrifice of a +man. He was to be perfect in body; he must not desire to +die because he no longer loved life, or because he wished for +fame. A statue must not be erected to his memory; no poem +must be composed for him; his name must not appear in the +city’s records.</p> +<p>A few volunteers presented themselves, but none of them +satisfied all the conditions. At last a young man came who +had served as the model for the image of the god in his +temple. There was no question, therefore, of soundness of +limb, and when he underwent the form of examination no spot nor +blemish was found on him. The priest asked him whether he +was in trouble, and especially whether he was disappointed in +love. He said he was in no trouble; that he was betrothed +to a girl to whom he was devoted, and that they had intended to +be married that month. “I am,” he declared, +“the happiest man in the city.” The priest +doubted and watched him that evening, but he saw him walking side +by side with this girl, and the two were joyous as a youth and a +maiden ought to be in the height of their passion. She sat +down and sang to him he played to her, and they embraced one +another tenderly at parting.</p> +<p>The next morning was the day on which he was to be +slain. There was an altar in front of the temple, and a +great crowd assembled, ranked round the open space. At the +appointed hour the priest appeared, and with him was the youth, +holding his beloved by the hand, but she was blindfolded. +He let go her hand, knelt down, and in a moment the sacrificial +knife was drawn across his throat. His body was placed upon +the wood, and the priest was about to kindle it when a flash from +heaven struck it into a blaze with such heat that when the fire +dropped no trace of the victim remained. The girl, too, had +disappeared, and was never seen again.</p> +<p>In accordance with the god’s decree, no statue was +erected, no poem was composed, and no entry was made in the city +records. But tradition did not forget that the saviour of +the city was he who survived in the great image on which the name +of the god was inscribed.</p> +<h2><a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 152</span>THE +AGED TREE</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">An</span> aged tree, whose companions had +gone, having still a little sap in its bark and a few leaves +which grew therefrom, prayed it might see yet another +spring. Its prayer was granted: and spring came, but the +old tree had no leaves save one or two near the ground, and a +great fungus fixed itself on its trunk. It had a dull life +in its roots, but not enough to know that its moss and fungus +were not foliage. It stood there, an unlovely mass of +decay, when the young trees were all bursting. “That +rotten thing,” said the master, “ought to have been +cut down long ago.”</p> +<h2><a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +153</span>CONSCIENCE</h2> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Conscience</span>,” said I, +“her conscience would have told her.”</p> +<p>“Yes,” said my father. “The strongest +amongst the many objections to the Roman Catholic doctrine of +confession is that it weakens our dependence on the +conscience. If we seek for an external command to do what +ought to be done in obedience to that inward monitor, whose voice +is always clear if we will but listen, its authority will +gradually be lost, and in the end it will cease to +speak.”</p> +<p>“Conscience,” said my grandmother musingly +(turning to my father). “You will remember Phyllis +Eyre? She was one of my best friends, and it is now two +years since she died, unmarried. She was once governess to +the children of Sir Robert Walsh, but remained in the house as +companion to Lady Walsh long after her pupils had grown up. +She was, in fact, more than a companion, for Lady Walsh trusted +her and loved her. She was by birth a lady; she had been +well educated, and, like her mistress, she was devoutly and +evangelically pious. She was also very handsome, and this +you may well believe, for, as you know, she was handsome as an +old woman, stately and erect, with beautiful, undimmed +eyes. When Evelina Walsh, the eldest daughter, was about +one and twenty, Charles Fysshe, the young heir to the Fysshe +property, came to stay with her brother, and Phyllis soon +discovered, or thought she discovered, that he was in love with +Evelina. He seemed to court her society, and paid her +attentions which could be explained on one hypothesis only. +Phyllis was delighted, for the match in every way was most +suitable, and must gladden the hearts of Evelina’s +parents. The young man would one day be the possessor of +twenty thousand acres; he had already taken a position in the +county, and his soul was believed to be touched with Divine +grace. Evelina certainly was in love with him, and Phyllis +was not backward in urging his claims. She congratulated +herself, and with justice, that if the marriage should ever take +place, it would be acknowledged that she had had a hand in +it. It might even be doubted whether Evelina, without +Phyllis’s approval, would have permitted herself to indulge +her passion, for she was by nature diffident, and so beset with +reasons for and against when she had to make up her mind on any +important matter, that a decision was always most difficult to +her.</p> +<p>“Charles stayed for about six weeks, and was then called +home. He promised that he would pay another visit of a week +in the autumn, when Sir Robert was to entertain the Lord +Lieutenant and there were to be grand doings at the Hall. +Conversation naturally turned upon him during his absence, and +Phyllis, as usual, was warm in his praise. One evening, +after she had reached her own room and had lain down to sleep, a +strange apparition surprised her. It was something more +than a suspicion that she herself loved Charles. She strove +to rid herself of this intrusion: she called to mind the +difference in their rank; that she was five years his senior, and +that if she yielded she would be guilty of treachery to +Evelina. It was all in vain; the more she resisted the more +vividly did his image present itself, and she was greatly +distressed. What was the meaning of this outbreak of +emotion, not altogether spiritual, of this loss of +self-possession, such as she had never known before? Her +usual remedies against evil thoughts failed her, and, worst of +all, there was the constant suggestion that these particular +thoughts were not evil. Hitherto, when temptation had +attacked her, she was sure whence it came, but she was not sure +now. It might be an interposition of Providence, but how +would it appear to Evelina? I myself, my dears, have +generally found that to resist the devil is not difficult if I am +quite certain that the creature before me is the devil, but it +does tax my wits sometimes to find out if he is really the enemy +or not. When Apollyon met Christian he was not in doubt for +an instant, for the monster was hideous to behold: he had scales +like a fish, wings like a dragon, feet like a bear, out of his +belly came fire and smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a +lion. After some parleying he cast his dreadful dart, but +Christian, without more ado, put up his shield, drew his sword, +and presently triumphed. If Satan had turned himself, from +his head to his ankles, into a man, and had walked by +Christian’s side, and had talked with him, and had agreed +with him in everything he had to say, the bear’s claws +might have peeped out, but Christian, instead of fighting, would +have begun to argue with himself whether the evidence of the face +or the foot was the stronger. He would have been just as +likely to trust the face, and in a few moments he would have been +snapped up and carried off to hell. To go on with my story: +the night wore on in sophistry and struggle, and no inner light +dawned with the sun. Phyllis was much agitated, for in the +afternoon Charles was to return, and although amidst the crowd of +visitors she might be overlooked, she could not help seeing +him. She did see him, but did not speak to him. He +sat next to Evelina at dinner, who was happy and expectant. +The next day there was a grand meet of the hounds, and almost all +the party disappeared. Phyllis pleaded a headache, and +obtained permission to stay at home. It was a lovely +morning in November, without a movement in the air, calm and +cloudless, one of those mornings not uncommon when the year +begins to die. She went into the woods at the outer edge of +the park, and had scarcely entered them, when lo! to her +astonishment, there was Charles. She could not avoid him, +and he came up to her.</p> +<p>“‘Why, Miss Eyre, what are you doing +here?’</p> +<p>“‘I had a headache; I could not go with the +others, and came out for a stroll.’</p> +<p>“‘I, too, was not very well, and have been left +behind.’</p> +<p>“They walked together side by side.</p> +<p>“‘I wanted to speak to you, Miss Eyre. I +wonder if you have suspected anything lately.’</p> +<p>“‘Suspected? I do not quite comprehend: you +are very vague.’</p> +<p>“‘Well, must I be more explicit? Have you +fancied that I care more for somebody you know than I care for +all the world besides? I suppose you have not, for I +thought it better to hide as much as possible what I +felt.’</p> +<p>“‘I should be telling an untruth if I were to say +I do not understand you, and I trust you will pardon me if I tell +you that a girl more worthy of you than Evelina, and one more +likely to make you happy, I have never seen.’</p> +<p>“‘Gracious God! what have I done? what a +mistake! Miss Eyre, it is you I mean; it is you I +love.’</p> +<p>“There was not an instant’s hesitation.</p> +<p>“‘Sir, I thank you, but I can answer at +once. <i>Never</i> can I be yours. That decision is +irrevocable. I admire you, but cannot love you.’</p> +<p>“She parted from him abruptly, but no sooner had she +left him than she was confounded, and wondered who or what it was +which gave that answer. She wavered, and thought of going +back, but she did not. Later on in the day she heard that +Charles had gone home, summoned by sudden business. Two +years afterwards his engagement with Evelina was announced, and +in three years they were married. It was not what I should +call a happy marriage, although they never quarrelled and had +five children. To the day of her death Phyllis was not sure +whether she had done right or wrong, nor am I.”</p> +<h2><a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>THE +GOVERNESS’S STORY</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the year 1850 I was living as +governess in the small watering-place S., on the south coast of +England. Amongst my friends was a young doctor, B., who had +recently come to the town. He had not bought a practice, +but his family was known to one or two of the principal +inhabitants, and he had begun to do well. He deserved his +success, for he was skilful, frank, and gentle, and he did not +affect that mystery which in his elder colleagues was already +suspected to be nothing but ignorance. He was one of the +early graduates of the University of London, and representative +of the new school of medical science, relying not so much upon +drugs as upon diet and regimen. I was one of his first +patients. I had a severe illness lasting for nearly three +months; he watched over me carefully and cured me. As I +grew better he began to talk on other matters than my health when +he visited me. We found that we were both interested in the +same books: he lent me his and I lent him mine. It is +almost impossible, I should think, for a young man and a young +woman to be friends and nothing more, and I confess that my +sympathy with him in his admiration of the Elizabethan poets, and +my gratitude to him for my recovery passed into affection. +I am sure also that he felt affection for me. He became +confidential, and told me all his history and troubles. +There was one peculiarity in his conversation which was new to +me: he never talked down to me, and he was not afraid at times to +discuss subjects that in the society to which I had been +accustomed were prohibited. Not a word that was improper +ever escaped his lips, but he treated me in a measure as if I +were a man, and I was flattered that he should put me on a level +with himself. It is true that sometimes I fancied he was so +unreserved with me because he was sure he was quite safe, for I +was poor, and although I was not ugly I was not handsome. +However, on the whole, I was very happy in his society, and there +was more than a chance that I should become his wife.</p> +<p>After six months of our acquaintanceship had passed, M., an +old schoolfellow of mine, took lodgings near me for the +summer. She was a remarkable girl. If she was not +beautiful, she was better-looking than I was, and she possessed a +something, I know not what, more powerful than beauty to +fascinate men. Perhaps it was her unconstrained +naturalness. In walking, sitting, standing—whatever +she did—her movements and attitudes were not impeded or +unduly masked by artificial restrictions. I should not have +called her profound, but what she said upon the commonest +subjects was interesting, because it was so entirely her +own. If she disliked a neighbour, she almost always +disliked her for a reason which we saw, directly it was pointed +out to us, to be just, but it was generally one which had not +been given before. Her talk upon matters externally trivial +was thus much more to me than many discourses upon the most +important topics. On moral questions she expressed herself +without any regard to prejudices. She did not controvert +the authenticity of the ordinary standards, but nevertheless +behaved as if she herself were her only law. The people in +R., her little native borough, considered her to be dangerous, +and I myself was once or twice weak enough to wonder that she +held on a straight course with so little help from authority, +forgetting that its support, in so far as it possesses any vital +strength, is derived from the same internal source which supplied +strength to her.</p> +<p>When she came to S. she was unwell, and consulted my friend +B. He did not at first quite like attending her, and she +reported to me with great laughter how she had been told that he +had made some inquiries about her from one of her neighbours at +home with whom he happened to be acquainted, and how he had +manœuvred in his visits to get the servants or the landlady +into the room. I met him soon afterwards, and he informed +me that he had a new patient. When he heard that I knew +her—I did not say how much I knew—he became +inquisitive, and at last, after much beating about the bush, +knitting his eyebrows and lowering his voice, he asked me whether +I was aware that she was not quite—quite <i>above +suspicion</i>! My goodness, how I flamed up! I +defended her with vehemence: I exaggerated her prudence and her +modesty; I declared, what was the simple truth, that she was the +last person in the world against whom such a scandalous +insinuation should be directed, and that she was singularly +inaccessible to vulgar temptation. I added that +notwithstanding her seeming lawlessness she was not only +remarkably sensitive to any accusation of bad manners, but that +upon certain matters she could not endure even a joke. The +only quarrel I remember to have had with her was when I lapsed +into some commonplace jest about her intimacy with a music-master +who gave her lessons. The way in which she took that jest I +shall never forget. If I had made it to any other woman, I +should have passed on, unconscious of anything inconsistent with +myself, but she in an instant made me aware with hardly half a +dozen words that I had disgraced myself. I was ashamed, not +so much because I had done what was in the abstract wrong, but +because it was something which was not in keeping with my real +character. I hope it will not be thought that I am prosing +if I take this opportunity of saying that the laws peculiar to +each of us are those which we are at the least pains to discover +and those which we are most prone to neglect. We think we +have done our duty when we have kept the commandments common to +all of us, but we may perhaps have disgracefully neglected +it.</p> +<p>Oh, how that afternoon with B. burnt itself into my memory for +ever! I was sitting on my little sofa with books piled +round me. He removed a few of the books, and I removed the +others. He sat down beside me, and, taking my hand, said he +hoped I had forgiven him, and that I would remember that in such +a little place he was obliged to be very careful, and to be quite +sure of his patients, if they were women. He trusted I +should believe that there was no other person <i>in the world</i> +(the emphasis on that word!) to whom he would have ventured to +impart such a secret. I was appeased, especially when, +after a few minutes’ silence, he took my hand and kissed +it, the first and last kiss. He said nothing further, and +departed. The next time I saw him he was more than usually +deferential, more than ever desirous to come closer to me, and I +thought the final word must soon be spoken.</p> +<p>M. remained in S. till far into the autumn, but I did not see +much of her. My work had begun again. B. continued to +call on me as my health was not quite re-established. We +had agreed to read the same author at the same time, in order +that we might discuss him together whilst our impressions were +still fresh. Somehow his interest in these readings began +to flag; he informed me presently that I had now almost, entirely +recovered, and weeks often passed without meeting him. One +afternoon I was surprised to find M. in my room when I returned +from a walk with my pupils. She had been waiting for me +nearly half an hour, and I could not at first conjecture the +reason. Gradually she drew the conversation towards B. and +at last asked me what I thought of him. Instantly I saw +what had happened. What I imagined was once mine had been +stolen, stolen perhaps unconsciously, but nevertheless stolen, my +sole treasure. She was rich, she had a father and mother, +she had many friends and would certainly have been married had +she never seen B. I, as I have said, was almost penniless; +I was an orphan, with few friends; he was my first love, and I +knew he would be my last.</p> +<p>I was condemned, I foresaw, henceforth to solitude, and that +most terrible of all calamities, heart-starvation. What B. +had said about M. came into my mind and rose to my lips. I +knew, or thought I knew, that if I revealed it to her she would +be so angry that she would cast him off. Probably I was +mistaken, but in my despair the impulse to disclose it was almost +irresistible. I struggled against it, however, and when she +pressed me, I praised him and strove in my praise to be +sincere. Whether it was something in my tone, quite +unintentional, I know not, but she stopped me almost in the +middle of a sentence and said she believed I had kept something +back which I did not wish her to hear; that she was certain he +had talked to me about her, and that she wished to know what he +had said. I protested he had never uttered a word which +could be interpreted as disparaging her, and she seemed to be +content. She kissed me a little more vehemently than usual, +and went away. We ought always, I suppose, to be glad when +other people are happy, but God knows that sometimes it is very +difficult to be so, and that their happiness is hard to bear.</p> +<p>The Elizabethan studies had now altogether come to an +end. In about a couple of months I heard that M. and B. +were engaged. M. went home, and B. moved into a larger +town. In a twelvemonth the marriage took place, and M. +wrote to me after her wedding trip. I replied, but she +never wrote again. I heard that she had said that I had +laid myself out to catch B. and that she was afraid that in so +doing I had hinted there was something against her. I heard +also that B. had discouraged his wife’s correspondence with +me, no other reason being given than that he would rather the +acquaintanceship should be dropped. The interpretation of +this reason by those to whom it was given can be guessed. +Did he fear lest I should boast of what I had been to him or +should repeat his calumny? Ah, he little knew me if he +dreamed that such treachery was possible to me!</p> +<p>I remained at the vicarage for three years. The children +grew up and I was obliged to leave, but I continued to teach in +different families till I was about five-and-forty. After +five-and-forty I could not obtain another situation, and I had to +support myself by letting apartments at Brighton. My +strength is now failing; I cannot look after my servant properly, +nor wait upon my lodgers myself. Those who have to get +their living by a lodging-house know what this means and what the +end will be. I have occasionally again wished I could have +seen my way partially to explain myself to M., and have thought +it hard to die misrepresented, but I am glad I have not +spoken. I should have disturbed her peace, and I care +nothing about justification or misrepresentation now. With +eternity so near, what does it matter?</p> +<blockquote><p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">Inscription On The Envelope</span>.</p> +<p>“<span class="smcap">To my niece +Judith</span>,—You have been so kind to your aunt, the only +human being, at last, who was left to love her, that she could +not refrain from telling you the one passage in her history which +is of any importance or interest.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2><a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +170</span>JAMES FORBES</h2> +<p>“<span class="smcap">It</span> is all a lie, and it is +hard to believe that people who preach it do not know it to be a +lie.”</p> +<p>So said James Forbes to Elizabeth Castleton, the young woman +to whom he was engaged. She was the daughter of a +clergyman, and James, who had been brought up at Rugby and +Oxford, was now in his last year at a London hospital, and was +going to be a doctor.</p> +<p>“I am sure my father does not know it to be a lie, and I +do not myself know it to be a lie.”</p> +<p>“I was not thinking of your father, but of the clergy +generally, and you <i>do</i> know it to be a lie.”</p> +<p>“It is not true of my brother, and, excepting my father +and brother, you have not been in company with parsons, as you +call them, for half an hour in your life.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean to tell me you have any doubts about this +discredited rubbish?”</p> +<p>“If I have I would rather not speak about them +now. Jim, dear Jim, let us drop the subject and talk of +something else.”</p> +<p>He was walking by her side, with his hands in his coat +pockets. She drew out one of his hands; he did not return +the pressure, and presently released himself.</p> +<p>“I thought you were to be my intellectual +companion. I have heard you say yourself that a marriage +which is not a marriage of mind is no marriage.”</p> +<p>“But, Jim, is there nothing in the world to think about +but this?”</p> +<p>“There is nothing so important. Are we to be dumb +all our lives about what you say is religion?”</p> +<p>They separated and soon afterwards the engagement was broken +off. Jim had really loved Elizabeth, but at that time he +was furious against what he called “creeds.” He +waited for three or four years till he had secured a fair +practice, and then married a clever and handsome young woman who +wrote poems, and had captivated him by telling him a witty story +from Heine. Elizabeth never married.</p> +<p>Thirty years passed, and Jim, now a famous physician, had to +go a long distance down the Great Western Railway to attend a +consultation. At Bath an elderly lady entered the carriage +carrying a handbag with the initials “E. C.” upon +it. She sat in the seat farthest away from him on the +opposite side, and looked at him steadfastly. He also +looked at her, but no word was spoken for a minute. He then +crossed over, fell on his knees, and buried his head with +passionate sobbing on her knees. She put her hands on him +and her tears fell.</p> +<p>“Five years,” at last he said; “I may live +five years with care. She has left me. I will give up +everything and go abroad with you. Five years; it is not +much, but it will be something, everything. I shall die +with your face over me.”</p> +<p>The train was slackening speed for Bristol; she bent down and +kissed him.</p> +<p>“Dearest Jim,” she whispered, “I have waited +a long time, but I was sure we should come together again at +last. It is enough.”</p> +<p>“You will go with me, then?”</p> +<p>Again she kissed him. “It must not be.”</p> +<p>Before he could reply the train was stopping at the platform, +and a gentleman with a lady appeared at the door. Miss +Castleton stepped out and was at once driven away in a carriage +with her companions.</p> +<p>He lived three years and then died almost suddenly of the +disease which he had foreseen would kill him. He had no +children, but few relatives, and his attendant was a hospital +nurse. But the day before his death a lady appeared who +announced herself as a family friend, and the nurse was +superseded. It was Elizabeth: she came to his bedside, and +he recognised her.</p> +<p>“Not till this morning,” she said, “did I +hear you were ill.”</p> +<p>“Happy,” he cried, “though I die +to-night.”</p> +<p>Soon afterwards—it was about sundown—he became +unconscious; she sat there alone with him till the morning broke, +and then he passed away, and she closed his eyes.</p> +<h2><a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +174</span>ATONEMENT</h2> +<p>“<span class="smcap">You</span> ask me how I lost my +foot? You I see that dog?”—an unattractive +beast lying before the fire—“well, when I tell you +how I came by him you will know how I lost it;” and he then +related the following story:—</p> +<p>I was in Westmoreland with my wife and children for a holiday +and we had brought our dog with us, for we knew he would be +unhappy with the strangers to whom we had let our house. +The weather was very wet and our lodgings were not comfortable; +we were kept indoors for days together, and my temper, always +irritable, became worse. My wife never resisted me when I +was in these moods and the absence of opposition provoked me all +the more. Had she stood up against me and told me I ought +to be ashamed of myself it would have been better for me. +One afternoon everything seemed to go wrong. A score of +petty vexations, not one of which was of any moment, worked me up +to desperation. I threw my book across the room, to the +astonishment of my children, and determined to go out, although +it was raining hard. My dog, a brown retriever, was lying +on the mat just outside the door, and I nearly fell over +him. “God damn you!” said I, and kicked +him. He howled with pain, but, although he was the best of +house-dogs and would have brought down any thief who came near +him, he did not growl at me, and quietly followed me. I am +not squeamish, but I was frightened directly the oath had escaped +my lips. I felt as if I had created something horrible +which I could not annihilate, and that it would wait for me and +do me some mischief. The dog kept closely to my heels for +about a mile and I could not make him go on in front. +Usually the least word of encouragement or even the mere mention +of his name would send him scampering with delight in +advance. I began to think of something else, but in about a +quarter of an hour I looked round and found he was not behind +me. I whistled and called, but he did not come. In a +renewed rage, which increased with every step I took, I turned +back to seek him. Suddenly I came upon him lying dead by +the roadside. Never shall I forget that shock—the +reproach, the appeal of that poor lifeless animal! I +stroked him, I kissed him, I whispered his name in his ear, but +it was all in vain. I lifted up his beautiful broad paw +which he was wont to lay on my knee, I held it between my hands, +and when I let it go it fell heavily to the ground. I could +not carry him home, and with bitter tears and a kind of dread I +drew him aside a little way up the hill behind a rock. I +went to my lodgings, returned towards dusk with a spade, dug his +grave in a lonely spot near the bottom of a waterfall where he +would never be disturbed, and there I buried him, reverently +smoothing the turf over him. What a night that was for +me! I was haunted incessantly by the vivid image of the +dead body and by the terror which accompanies a great +crime. I had repaid all his devotion with horrible +cruelty. I had repented, but he would never know it. +It was not the dog only which I had slain; I had slain Divine +faithfulness and love. That <i>God damn you</i> sounded +perpetually in my ears. The Almighty had registered and +executed the curse, but it had fallen upon the murderer and not +on the victim. When I rose in the morning I distinctly felt +the blow of the kick in my foot, and the sensation lasted all +day. For weeks I was in a miserable condition. A +separate consciousness seemed to establish itself in this foot; +there was nothing to be seen and no pain, but there was a dull +sort of pressure of which I could not rid myself. If I +slept I dreamed of the dog, and generally dreamed I was caressing +him, waking up to the dreadful truth of the corpse on the path in +the rain. I got it into my head—for I was +half-crazy—that only by some expiation I should be restored +to health and peace; but how to make any expiation I could not +tell. Unhappy is the wretch who longs to atone for a sin +and no atonement is prescribed to him!</p> +<p>One night I was coming home late and heard the cry of +“Fire!” I ran down the street and found a house +in flames. The fire-escape was at the window, and had +rescued a man, his wife and child. Every living creature +was safe, I was told, save a dog in the front room on the +ground-floor. I pushed the people aside, rushed in, +half-blinded with smoke, and found him. I could not escape +by the passage, and dropped out of the window into the area with +him in my arms. I fell heavily on <i>that</i> foot, and +when I was helped up the steps I could not put it to the +ground. “You may have him for your pains,” said +his owner to me; “he is a useless cur. I +wouldn’t have ventured the singeing of a hair for +him.” “May I?” I replied, with an +eagerness which must have seemed very strange. He was +indeed not worth half a crown, but I drew him closely to me and +took him into the cab. I was in great agony, and when the +surgeon came it was discovered that my ankle was badly +fractured. An attempt was made to set it, but in the end it +was decided that the foot must be amputated. I rejoiced +when I heard the news, and on the day on which the operation was +performed I was calm and even cheerful. Our own doctor who +came with the surgeon told him I had “a highly nervous +temperament,” and both of them were amazed at my +fortitude. The dog is a mongrel, as you see, but he loves +me, and if you were to offer me ten thousand golden guineas I +would not part with him.</p> +<h2><a name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +180</span>LETTERS FROM MY AUNT ELEANOR <a +name="citation180"></a><a href="#footnote180" +class="citation">[180]</a> TO HER DAUGHTER SOPHIA, AND A FRAGMENT +FROM MY AUNT’S DIARY.</h2> +<p style="text-align: right">January 31, 1837.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dearest Child</span>,—It is now a +month since your father died. It was a sore trial to me +that you should have broken down, and that you could not be here +when he was laid in his grave, but I would not for worlds have +allowed you to make the journey. I am glad I forced you +away. The doctor said he would not answer for the +consequences unless you were removed. But I must not talk, +not even to you. I will write again soon.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">Your most affectionate mother,</p> +<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Eleanor +Charteris</span>.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: right">February 5, 1837.</p> +<p>I have been alone in the library from morning to night every +day. How foolish all the books look! There is nothing +in them which can do me any good. He is <i>not</i>: what is +there which can alter that fact? Had he died later I could +have borne it better. I am only fifty years old, and may +have long to wait. I always knew I loved him devotedly; now +I see how much I depended on him. I had become so knit up +with him that I imagined his strength to be mine. His +support was so continuous and so soft that I was unconscious of +it. How clear-headed and resolute he was in difficulty and +danger! You do not remember the great fire? We were +waked up out of our sleep; the flames spread rapidly; a mob +filled the street, shouting and breaking open doors. The +man in charge of the engines lost his head, but your father was +perfectly cool. He got on horseback, directed two or three +friends to do the same; they galloped into the town and drove the +crowd away. He controlled all the operations and saved many +lives and many thousands of pounds. Is there any happiness +in the world like that of the woman who hangs on such a +husband?</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: right">February 10, 1837.</p> +<p>I feel as if my heart would break if I do not see you, but I +cannot come to your Aunt’s house just now. She is +very kind, but she would be unbearable to me. Have +patience: the sea air is doing you good; you will soon be able to +walk, and then you can return. O, to feel your head upon my +neck! I have many friends, but I have always needed a human +being to whom I was everything. To your father I believe I +was everything, and that thought was perpetual heaven to +me. My love for him did not make me neglect other +people. On the contrary, it gave them their proper +value. Without it I should have put them by. When a +man is dying for want of water he cares for nothing around +him. Satisfy his thirst, and he can then enjoy other +pleasures. I was his first love, he was my first, and we +were lovers to the end. I know the world would be dark to +you also were I to leave it. Perhaps it is wicked of me to +rejoice that you would suffer so keenly. I cannot tell how +much of me is pure love and how much of me is selfishness. +I remember my uncle’s death. For ten days or so +afterwards everybody in the house looked solemn, and occasionally +there was a tear, but at the end of a fortnight there was smiling +and at the end of a month there was laughter. I was but a +child then, but I thought much about the ease and speed with +which the gap left by death was closed.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: right">February 20, 1837.</p> +<p>In a fortnight you will be here? The doctor really +believes you will be able to travel? I am glad you can get +out and taste the sea air. I count the hours which must +pass till I see you. A short week, and +then—“the day after to-morrow, and the day after +to-morrow of that day,” and so I shall be able to reach +forward to the Monday. It is strange that the nearer Monday +comes the more impatient I am.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: right">March 3, 1837.</p> +<p>With what sickening fear I opened your letter! I was +sure it contained some dreadful news. You have decided not +to come till Wednesday, because your cousin Tom can accompany you +on that day. I <i>know</i> you are quite right. It is +so much better, as you are not strong, that Tom should look after +you, and it would be absurd that you should make the journey two +days before him. I should have reproved you seriously if +you had done anything so foolish. But those two days are +hard to bear. I shall not meet you at the coach, nor shall +I be downstairs. Go straight to the library; I shall be +there by myself.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">Diary</span>.</p> +<p>January 1, 1838.—Three days ago she died. +Henceforth there is no living creature to whom my existence is of +any real importance. Crippled as she was, she could never +have married. I might have held her as long as she +lived. She could have expected no love but mine. God +forgive me! Perhaps I did unconsciously rejoice in that +disabled limb because it kept her closer to me. Now He has +taken her from me. I may have been wicked, but has He no +mercy? “I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire +to reason with God.” An answer in anger could better +be borne than this impregnable silence.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>January 3rd.—A day of snow and bitter wind. There +were very few at the grave, and I should have been better pleased +if there had been none. What claim had they to be +there? I have come home alone, and they no doubt are +comforting themselves with the reflection that it is all over +except the half-mourning. Her death makes me hate +them. Mr. Maxwell, our rector, told me when my child was +ill to remember that I had no right to her. +“Right!” what did he mean by that stupid word? +How trouble tries words! All I can say is that from her +birth I had owned her, and that now, when I want her most, I am +dispossessed. “Self, self”—I know the +reply, but it is unjust, for I would have stood up cheerfully to +be shot if I could have saved her pain. Doubly unjust, for +my passion for her was a blessing to her as well as to me.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>January 6th.—Henceforth I suppose I shall have to play +with people, to pretend to take an interest in their clothes and +their parties, or, with the superior sort, to discuss politics or +books. I care nothing for their rags or their gossip, for +Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, or Mr. James Montgomery. I +must learn how to take the tip of a finger instead of a hand, and +to accept with gratitude comfits when I hunger for bread—I, +who have known—but I dare say nothing even to myself of my +hours with him—I, who have heard Sophy cry out in the night +for me; I, who have held her hand and have prayed by her +bedside.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>January 10th.—I must be still. I have learned this +lesson before—that speech even to myself does harm. +If I admit no conversation nor debate with myself, I certainly +will not admit the chatter of outsiders. Mr. Maxwell called +again to-day. “Not a syllable on that subject,” +said I when he began in the usual strain. He then suggested +that as this house was too large for me, and must have what he +called “melancholy associations,” I should +move. He had suggested this before, when my husband +died. How can I leave the home to which I was brought as a +bride? how can I endure the thought that strangers are in our +room, or in that other room where Sophy lay? Mr. Maxwell +would think it sacrilege to turn his church into an inn, and it +is a worse sacrilege to me to permit the profanation of the +sanctuary which has been consecrated by Love and Death. I +do not know what might happen to me if I were to leave. I +have been what I am through shadowy nothings which other people +despise. To me they are realities and a law. I shall +stay where I am. “A villa,” forsooth, on the +outskirts of the town! My existence would be fractured: it +will at least preserve its continuity here. Across the +square I can see the house in which I was born, and I can watch +the shadow of the church in the afternoon slowly crossing the +churchyard. The townsfolk stand in the street and go up and +down it just as they did forty years ago—not the same +persons, but in a sense the same people. My brother will +call me extravagant if I remain here. He buys a horse and +does not consider it extravagant, and my money is not wasted if I +spend it in the only way in which it is of any value to me.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>January 12th.—I had thought I could be dumb, but I +cannot. My sorrow comes in rushes. I lift up my head +above the waves for an instant, and immediately I am +overwhelmed—“all Thy waves and Thy billows have gone +over me.” My nights are a terror to me, and I fear +for my reason. That last grip of Sophy’s hand is +distinctly on mine now, palpable as the pressure of a fleshly +hand could be. It is strange that without any external +circumstances to account for it, she and I often thought the same +things at the same moment. She seemed to know instinctively +what was passing in my mind, so that I was afraid to harbour any +unworthy thought, feeling sure that she would detect it. +Blood of my blood was she. She said “goodbye” +to me with perfect clearness, and in a quarter of an hour she had +gone. In that quarter of an hour there could not be the +extinction of so much. Such a creature as Sophy could not +instantaneously <i>not be</i>. I cannot believe it, but +still the volume of my life here is closed, the story is at an +end; what remains will be nothing but a few notes on what has +gone before.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>January 21st.—I went to church to-day for the first time +since the funeral. Mr. Maxwell preached a dull, doctrinal +sermon. Whilst my husband and Sophy lived, I was a regular +attendant at church, and never thought of disputing anything I +heard. It did not make much impression on me, but I +accepted it, and if I had been asked whether I believed it, I +should have said, “Certainly.” But now a new +standard of belief has been set up in me, and the word +“belief” has a different meaning.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>February 3rd.—Whenever I saw anything beautiful I always +asked Tom or Sophy to look. Now I ask nobody. Early +this morning, after the storm in the night, the sky cleared, and +I went out about dawn through the garden up to the top of the +orchard and watched the disappearance of the night in the +west. The loveliness of that silent conquest was +unsurpassable. Eighteen months ago I should have run +indoors and have dragged Tom and Sophy back with me. I saw +it alone now, and although the promise in the slow transformation +of darkness to azure moved me to tears, I felt it was no promise +for me.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>March 1st.—Nothing that is <i>prescribed</i> does me any +good. I cannot leave off going to church, but the support I +want I must find out for myself. Perhaps if I had been born +two hundred years ago, I might have been caught by some strong +enthusiastic organisation and have been a private in a great +army. A miserable time is this when each man has to grope +his way unassisted, and all the incalculable toil of founders of +churches goes for little or nothing. . . . I do not pray +for any more pleasure: I ask only for strength to endure, till I +can lie down and rest. I have had more rapture in a day +than my neighbours and relations have had in all their +lives. Tom once said to me that he would sooner have had +twenty-four hours with me as his wife than youth and manhood with +any other woman he ever knew. He said that, not when we +were first married, but a score of years afterwards. I +remember the place and the hour. It was in the garden one +morning in July, just before breakfast. It was a burning +day, and massive white clouds were forming themselves on the +horizon. The storm on that day was the heaviest I +recollect, and the lightning struck one of our chimneys and +dashed it through the roof. His passion was informed with +intellect, and his intellect glowed with passion. There was +nothing in him merely animal or merely rational. . . . To +endure, to endure! Can there be any endurance without a +motive? I have no motive.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>March 10th.—My sister and my brother-in-law came to-day +and I wished them away. Now that my husband is dead I +discover that the frequent visitors to our house came to see him +and not me. There must be something in me which prevents +people, especially women, from being really intimate with +me. To be able to make friends is a talent which I do not +possess, and if those who call on me are prompted by kindness +only, I would rather be without them. The only attraction +towards me which I value is that which is irresistible. +Perhaps I am wrong, and ought to accept with thankfulness +whatever is left to me if it has any savour of goodness in +it. I have no right to compare and to reject. . . I provide +myself with little maxims, and a breath comes and sweeps them +away. What is permanent behind these little flickerings is +black night: that is the real background of my life.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>April 24th.—I have been to London, and on Easter Sunday +I went to High Mass at a Roman Catholic Church. I was +obliged to leave, for I was overpowered and hysterical. +Were I to go often my reason might be drowned, and I might become +a devotee. And yet I do not think I should. If I +could prostrate myself at a shrine I should want an answer. +When I came out into the open air I saw again the +<i>plainness</i> of the world: the skies, the sea, the fields are +not in accord with incense or gorgeous ceremonies. Incense +and ceremonies are beyond the facts, and to the facts we must +cleave, no matter how poor and thin they may be.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>May 5th.—If I am ill, I shall depend entirely on paid +service. God grant I may die suddenly and not linger in +imbecility. So much of me is dead that what is left is not +worth preserving. Nearly everything I have done all my life +has been done for love. I shall now have to act for +duty’s sake. It is an entire reconstruction of +myself, the insertion of a new motive. I do not much +believe in duty, nor, if I read my New Testament aright, did the +Apostle Paul. For Jesus he would do anything. That +sacred face would have drawn me whither the Law would never have +driven me.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>May 7th.—It is painful to me to be so completely set +aside. When Tom was alive I was in the midst of the current +of affairs. Few men, except Maxwell, come to the house +now. My property is in the hands of trustees. Tom +continually consulted me in business matters. I have +nothing to look after except my house, and I sit at my window and +see the stream of life pass without touching me. I cannot +take up work merely for the sake of taking it up. Nobody +would value it, nor would it content me. How I used to pity +my husband’s uncle, Captain Charteris! He had been a +sailor; he had fought the French; he had been in imminent danger +of shipwreck, and from his youth upwards perpetual demands had +been made upon his resources and courage. At fifty he +retired, a strong, active man; and having a religious turn, he +helped the curate with school-treats and visiting. He pined +away and died in five years. The bank goes on. I have +my dividends, but not a word reaches me about it.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>October 10th.—Five months, I see, have passed since I +made an entry in my diary. What a day this is! The +turf is once more soft, the trees and hedges are washed, the +leaves are turning yellow and are ready to fall. I have +been sitting in the garden alone, reading the forty-ninth chapter +of Genesis. I must copy the closing verses. It does +me good to write them.</p> +<p>“And Jacob charged them, and said unto them, I am to be +gathered unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that +is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the +field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, +which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a +possession of a burying-place. There they buried Abraham +and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; +and there I buried Leah. The purchase of the field and of +the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth. And +when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up +his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered +unto his people.” There is no distress here: he +gathers up his feet and departs. Perhaps our wild longings +are unnatural, and yet it seems but nature <i>not</i> to be +content with what contented the patriarch. Anyhow, wherever +and whatever my husband and Sophy are I shall be. This at +least is beyond dispute.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>October 12th.—I do not wish to forget past joys, but I +must simply remember them and not try to paint them. I must +cut short any yearning for them.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>October 20th.—We do not say the same things to ourselves +with sufficient frequency. In these days of book-reading +fifty fine thoughts come into our heads in a day, and the next +morning are forgotten. Not one of them becomes a +religion. In the Bible how few the thoughts are, and how +incessantly they are repeated! If my life could be +controlled by two or three divine ideas, I would burn my +library. I often feel that I would sooner be a Levitical +priest, supposing I believed in my office, than be familiar with +all these great men whose works are stacked around me.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>October 22nd.—Sometimes, especially at night, the +thought not only that I personally have lost Tom and Sophy, but +that the exquisite fabric of these relationships, so intricate, +so delicate, so highly organised, could be cast aside, to all +appearance so wastefully, is almost unendurable. . . . I +went up to the moor on the top of the hill this morning, where I +could see, far away, the river broaden and lose itself in the +Atlantic. I lay on the heather looking through it and +listening to it.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>October 23rd.—The 131st Psalm came into my mind when I +was on the moor again. “Neither do I exercise myself +in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I +have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of its +mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.”</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>October 28th—Tom once said to me that reasoning is often +a bad guide for us, and that loyalty to the silent Leader is true +wisdom. Wesley, when he was in trouble, asked himself +“whether he should fight against it by thinking, or by not +thinking of it,” and a wise man told him “to be still +and go on.” A certain blind instinct seems to carry +me forward. What is it? an indication of a purpose I do not +comprehend? an order given by the Commander-in-Chief which is to +be obeyed although the strategy is not understood?</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>November 3rd.—Palmer, my maid, who has been with me ever +since I began to keep house, was very good-looking at +one-and-twenty. When she had been engaged to be married +about a twelvemonth, she burned her face and the burn left a bad +scar. Her lover found excuses for breaking off the +engagement. He must have been a scoundrel, and I should +like to have had him whipped with wire. She was very fond +of him. She had an offer of marriage ten years afterwards, +but she refused. I believe she feared lest the scar, seen +every day, would make her husband loathe her. Her case is +worse than mine, for she never knew such delights as mine. +She has subsisted on mere friendliness and civility. +“Oh,” it is suggested at once to me, “you are +more sensitive than she is.” How dare I say +that? How hateful is the assumption of superior +sensitiveness as an excuse for want of endurance!</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>November 4th.—Ellen Charteris, my husband’s +cousin, belongs to a Roman Catholic branch of the family, and is +an abbess. I remember saying to her that I wondered that +she and her nuns could spend such useless lives. She +replied that although she and all good Catholics believe in the +atonement of Christ, they also believe that works of piety in +excess of what may be demanded of us, even if they are done in +secret, are a set-off against the sins of the world. In +this form the doctrine has not much to commend itself to me, and +it is assumed that the nuns’ works are pious. But in +a sense it is true. “The very hairs of your head are +all numbered.” The fall of a grain of dust is +recorded.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>November 7th—A kind of peace occasionally visits +me. It is not the indifference begotten of time, for my +husband and my child are nearer and dearer than ever to me. +I care not to analyse it. I return to my patriarch. +With Joseph before him, the father, who had refused to be +comforted when he thought his son was dead, gathered up his feet +into the bed and slept.</p> +<h2><a name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +200</span>CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN GEORGE LUCY M.A., AND HIS +GODCHILD, HERMIONE RUSSELL, B.A.</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Hermione</span>,—I have sent +you my little volume of verse translations into English, and you +will find appended a few attempts at Latin and Greek renderings +of favourite English poems. You must tell me what you think +of them, and you must not spare a single blunder or +inelegance. I do not expect any reviews, and if there +should be none it will not matter, for I proposed to myself +nothing more than my own amusement and that of my friends. +I would rather have thoroughly good criticism from you than a +notice, even if it were laudatory, from a magazine or a +newspaper. You have worked hard at your Latin and Greek +since we read Homer and Virgil, and you have had better +instruction than I had at Winchester. These trifles were +published about three months ago, but I purposely did not send +you a copy then. You are enjoying your holiday deep in the +country, and may be inclined to pardon that incurable old idler, +your godfather and former tutor, for a waste of time which +perhaps you would not forgive when you are teaching in +London. Verse-making is out of fashion now. +Goodbye. I should like to spend a week with you wandering +through those Devonshire lanes if I could carry my two rooms with +me and stick them in a field.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">Affectionately,<br /> +G. L.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Godfather</span>,—The little +<i>Musæ</i> came safely. My love to you for them, and +for the pretty inscription. I positively refuse to say a +single syllable on your scholarship. I have deserted my +Latin and Greek, and they were never good enough to justify me in +criticising yours. I have latterly turned my attention to +Logic, History, and Moral Philosophy, and with the help of my +degree I have obtained a situation as teacher of these +sciences. I confess I do not regret the change. They +are certainly of supreme importance. There is something to +be learned about them from Latin and Greek authors, but this can +be obtained more easily from modern writers or translations than +by the laborious study of the originals. Do not suppose I +am no longer sensible to the charm of classical art. It is +wonderful, but I have come to the conclusion that the time spent +on the classics, both here and in Germany, is mostly thrown +away. Take even Homer. I admit the greatness of the +Iliad and the Odyssey, but do tell me, my dear godfather, whether +in this nineteenth century, when scores of urgent social problems +are pressing for solution, our young people ought to give +themselves up to a study of ancient legends? What, however, +are Horace, Catullus, and Ovid compared with Homer? Much in +them is pernicious, and there is hardly anything in them which +helps us to live. Besides, we have surely enough in +Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, to say nothing of the +poets of this century, to satisfy the imagination of +anybody. Boys spend years over the <i>Metamorphoses</i> or +the story of the wars of Æneas, and enter life with no +knowledge of the simplest facts of psychology. I look +forward to a time not far distant, I hope, when our whole +pædagogic system will be remodelled. Greek and Latin +will then occupy the place which Assyrian or Egyptian +hieroglyphic occupies now, and children will be directly prepared +for the duties which await them.</p> +<p>I have in preparation a book which I expect soon to publish, +entitled <i>Positive Education</i>. It will appear +anonymously, for society being constituted as it is, I am afraid +that my name on the title-page would prevent me from finding +employment. My object is to show how the moral fabric can +be built up without the aid of theology or metaphysics. I +profess no hostility to either, but as educational instruments I +believe them to be useless. I begin with Logic as the +foundation of all science, and then advance by easy steps +(<i>a</i>) to the laws of external nature commencing with number, +and (<i>b</i>) to the rules of conduct, reasons being given for +them, with History and Biography as illustrations. One +modern foreign language, to be learned as thoroughly as it is +possible to learn it in this country, will be included. I +desire to banish all magic in school training. Everything +taught shall be understood. It is easier, and in some +respects more advantageous, not to explain, but the mischief of +habituating children to bow to the unmeaning is so great that I +would face any inconvenience in order to get rid of it. All +kinds of objections, some of them of great weight, may be urged +against me, but the question is on which side do they +preponderate? Is it no objection to our present system that +the simple laws most necessary to society should be grounded on +something which is unintelligible, that we should be brought up +in ignorance of any valid obligation to obey moral precepts, that +we should be unable to give any account of the commonest physical +phenomena, that we should never even notice them, that we should +be unaware, for example, of the nightly change in the position of +planets and stars, and that we should nevertheless busy ourselves +with niceties of expression in a dead tongue, and with tales +about Jupiter and Juno? For what glorious results may we +not look when children from their earliest years learn that which +is essential, but which now, alas! is picked up unmethodically +and by chance? I cannot help saying all this to you, for +your <i>Musæ</i> arrived just as my youngest brother came +home from Winchester. He was delighted with it, for he is +able to write very fair Latin and Greek. That boy is nearly +eighteen. He does not know why the tides rise and fall, and +has never heard that there has been any controversy as to the +basis of ethics.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">Your affectionate godchild,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Hermione</span>.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Hermione</span>,—Your letter +was something like a knock-down blow. I am sorry you have +abandoned your old friends, and I felt that you intended to +rebuke me for trifling. A great deal of what you say I am +sure is true, but I cannot write about it. Whether Greek +and Latin ought to be generally taught I am unable to +decide. I am glad I learned them. My apology for my +little <i>Musæ</i> must be that it is too late to attempt +to alter the habits in which I was brought up. Remember, my +dear child, that I am an old bachelor with seventy years behind +me last Christmas, and remember also my natural limits. I +am not so old, nevertheless, that I cannot wish you God-speed in +all your undertakings.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">Your affectionate godfather,<br /> +G. L.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Godfather</span>,—What a +blunderer I am! What deplorable want of tact! If I +wanted your opinion on classical education or my scheme I surely +might have found a better opportunity for requesting it. It +is always the way with me. I get a thing into my head, and +out it comes at the most unseasonable moment. It is almost +as important that what is said should be relevant as that it +should be true. Well, the mistake is made, and I cannot +unmake it. I will not trouble you with another +syllable—directly at any rate—about Latin and Greek, +but I do want to know what you think about the exclusion of +theology and metaphysics from the education of the young. I +must have <i>debate</i>, so that before publication my ideas may +become clear and objections may be anticipated. I cannot +discuss the matter with my father. You were at college with +him, and you will remember his love for Aristotle, who, as I +think, has enslaved him. If I may say so without offence, +you are not a philosopher. You are more likely, therefore, +to give a sound, unprofessional opinion. You have never had +much to do with children, but this does not matter; in fact, it +is rather an advantage, for actual children would have distorted +your judgment. What has theology done? It is only +half-believed, and its rewards and punishments are too remote to +be of practical service. They are not seen when they are +most required. As to metaphysics, its propositions are too +loose. They may with equal ease be affirmed or +denied. Conduct cannot be controlled by what is shadowy and +uncertain. We have been brought up on theology and +metaphysics for centuries, and we are still at daggers drawn upon +matters of life and death. We are as warlike as ever, and +not a single social problem has been settled by bishops or +professors. I wish to try a more direct and, as I believe, +a more efficient method. I wish to see what the effect will +be of teaching children from their infancy the lesson that +morality and the enjoyment of life are identical; that if, for +example, they lie, they lose. I should urge this on them +perpetually, until at last, by association, lying would become +impossible. Restraint which is exercised in accordance with +rational principles, inasmuch as it proceeds from Nature, must be +more efficacious than an external prohibition. So with +other virtues. I should deduce most of them in the same +way. If I could not, I should let them go, assured that we +could do without them. Now, my dear godfather, do open out +to me, and don’t put me off.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">Your affectionate godchild,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Hermione</span>.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Hermione</span>,—You terrify +me. These matters are really not in my way. I have +never been able to tackle big questions. Unhappily for me, +all questions nowadays are big. I do not see many people, +as you know, and potter about in my garden from morning to night, +but Mrs. Lindsay occasionally brings down her friends from +London, and the subjects of conversation are so immense that I am +bewildered. I admit that some people are too rich and +others are too poor, and that if I could give you a vote you +should have one, and that boys and girls might be better taught, +but upon Socialism, Enfranchisement of Women, and Educational +Reform, I have not a word to say. Is not this very +unsatisfactory? Nobody is more willing to admit it than I +am. It is so disappointing in talking to myself or to +others to stop short of generalisation and to be obliged to +confess that <i>sometimes it is and sometimes it is +not</i>. I bless my stars that I am not a politician or a +newspaper writer. When I was young these great matters, at +least in our village, were not such common property as they are +now. A man, even if he was a scholar, thought he had done +his duty by living an honest and peaceable life. He was +justified if he was kind to his neighbours and amused himself +with his bees and flowers. He had no desire to be +remembered for any achievement, and was content to be buried with +a few tears and then to be forgotten. All Mrs. +Lindsay’s folk want to do something outside their own +houses or parishes which shall make their names immortal. . . +. I was interrupted by a tremendous thunderstorm and +hail. That wonderful rose-bush which, you will recollect, +stood on the left-hand side of the garden door, has been stripped +just as if it had been scourged with whips. If you have +done, quite done with the Orelli you borrowed about two years +ago, please let me have it. Why could you not bring +it? Mrs. Lindsay was saying only the other day how glad she +should be if you would stay with her for a fortnight before you +return to town.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">Your affectionate godfather,<br /> +G. L.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Godfather</span>,—I have +sent back the Orelli. How I should love to come and to +wander about the meadows with you by the river or sit in the boat +with you under the willows. But I cannot, for I have +promised to speak at a Woman’s Temperance Meeting next +week, and in the week following I am going to read a paper called +“An Educational Experiment,” before our Ethical +Society. This, I think, will be interesting. I have +placed my pupils in difficult historical positions, and have made +them tell me what they would have done, giving the reasons. +I am thus enabled to detect any weakness and to strengthen +character on that side. Most of the girls are embarrassed +by the conflict of motives, and I have to impress upon them the +necessity in life of disregarding those which are of less +importance and of prompt action on the stronger. I have +classified my results in tables, so that it may be seen at a +glance what impulses are most generally operative.</p> +<p>But to go back to your letter. I will not have you +shuffle. You can say so much if you like. Talk to me +just as you did when we last sat under the cedar-tree. I +<i>must</i> know your mind about theology and metaphysics.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">Your affectionate godchild,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Hermione</span>.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Hermione</span>,—I am sorry +you could not come. I am sorry that what people call a +“cause” should have kept you away. If any of +your friends had been ill; if it had been a dog or a cat, I +should not have cared so much. You are dreadful! +Theology and metaphysics! I do not understand what they are +as formal sciences. Everything seems to me theological and +metaphysical. What Shakespeare says now and then carries me +further than anything I have read in the system-books into which +I have looked. I cannot take up a few propositions, bind +them into faggots, and say, “This is theology, and that is +metaphysics.” There is much “discourse of +God” in a May blossom, and my admiration of it is +“beyond nature,” but I am not sure upon this latter +point, for I do not know in the least what +φυσις or Nature is. We love +justice and generosity, and hate injustice and meanness, but the +origin of virtue, the life of the soul, is as much beyond me as +the origin of life in a plant or animal, and I do not bother +myself with trying to find it out. I do feel, however, that +justice and generosity have somehow a higher authority than I or +any human being can give them, and if I had children of my own +this is what I should try, not exactly to teach them, but to +breathe into them. I really, my dear child, dare not +attempt an essay on the influence which priests and professors +have had upon the world, nor am I quite clear that +“shadowy” and “uncertain” mean the same +thing. All ultimate facts in a sense are shadowy, but they +are not uncertain. When you try to pinch them between your +fingers they seem unsubstantial, but they are very real. +Are you sure that you yourself stand on solid granite?</p> +<p style="text-align: right">Your affectionate godfather,<br /> +G. L.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Godfather</span>,—You are +most disappointing and evasive. I gave up the discussion on +Latin and Greek, but I did and do want your reply to a most +simple question. If you had to teach children—you +surely can imagine yourself in such a position—would you +teach them <i>what are generally known as theology and +metaphysics</i>?—excuse the emphasis. You have an +answer, I am certain, and you may just as well give it me. +I know that you had rather, or affect you had rather, talk about +Catullus, but I also know that you think upon serious subjects +sometimes. These matters cannot now be put aside. We +live in a world in which certain problems are forced upon us and +we are compelled to come to some conclusion upon them. I +cannot shut myself up and determine that I will have no opinion +upon Education or Socialism or Women’s Rights. The +fact that these questions are here is plain proof that it is my +duty not to ignore them. You hate large generalisations, +but how can we exist without them? They may never be +entirely true, but they are indispensable, and, if you never +commit yourself to any, you are much more likely to be +practically wrong than if you use them.</p> +<p>Take, for example, the Local Veto. I admitted in my +speech that there is much to be urged against it. It might +act harshly, and it is quite true that poor men in large towns +cannot spend their evenings in their filthy homes; but I +<i>must</i> be for it or against it, and I am enthusiastically +for it, because on the whole it will do good. So with +Socialism. The evils of Capitalism are so monstrous that +any remedy is better than none. Socialism may not be the +direct course: it may be a tremendously awkward tack, but it is +only by tacking that we get along. So with positive +education, but I have enlarged upon this already. What a +sermon to my dear godfather! Forgive me, but you will have +to take sides, and do, please, be a little more definite about my +book.</p> +<p style="text-align: right">Your affectionate godchild,<br /> +<span class="smcap">Hermione</span>.</p> +<p><span class="smcap">My dear Hermione</span>,—I +haven’t written for some time, for I was unwell for nearly +a month. The doctor has given me physic, but my age is +really the mischief, and it is incurable. I caught cold +through sitting out of doors after dinner with the rector, a good +fellow if he would not smoke on my port. To smoke on good +port is a sin. He knows my infirmity, that I cannot sit +still long, and he excuses my attendance at church. Would +you believe it? When I was very bad, and thought I might +die, I read Horace again, whom you detest. I often wonder +what he really thought upon many things when he looked out on +the</p> + +<blockquote><p> “taciturna +noctis<br /> +signa.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Justice is not often done to him. He saw a long way, but +he did not make believe he saw beyond his limit, and was content +with it. A rare virtue is intellectual content!</p> +<blockquote><p>“Tu ne quæsieris, scire nefas, quem +mihi, quem tibi<br /> +Finem dî dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios<br /> +Tentaris numeros.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The rector was telling me about Tom Pavenham’s +wedding. He has married Margaret Loxley, as you may perhaps +have seen in the paper I sent you. Mrs. Loxley, her mother, +was a Barfield, and old Pavenham, when he was a youth, fell in +love with her. She was also in love with him. He was +well-to-do, and farmed about seven hundred acres, but he was not +thought good enough by the elder Barfields, who lived in what was +called a park. They would not hear of the match. She +was sent to France, and he went to Buenos Ayres. After some +years had passed he married out there, and she married. His +wife died when her first child, a boy, was born. Loxley +also died, leaving his wife with an only daughter. Pavenham +retired from business in South America, and came back with his +son to his native village, where he meant to spend the rest of +his days. Tom and Margaret were at once desperately smitten +with one another. The father and mother have kept their own +flame alive, and I believe it is as bright as it ever was. +It is delightful to see them together. They called on me +with the children after the betrothal. He was so courteous +and attentive to her, and she seemed to bask in his obvious +affection. I noticed how they looked at one another and +smiled happily as the boy and girl wandered off together towards +the filbert walk. The rector told me that he was talking to +old Pavenham one evening, and said to him: “Jem, +aren’t you sometimes sad when you think of what ought to +have happened?” His voice shook a bit as he replied +gently: “God be thanked for what we have! Besides, it +has all come to pass in Tom and Margaret.”</p> +<p>You must not be angry with me if I say nothing more about +Positive Education. It is a great strain on me to talk upon +such matters, and when I do I always feel afterwards that I have +said much which is mere words. That is a sure test; I must +obey my dæmon. I wish I could give you what you want +for what you have given me; but when do we get what we want in +exchange for what we give? Our trafficking is a clumsy +barter. A man sells me a sheep, and I pay him in return +with my grandfather’s old sextant. This is not quite +true for you and me. Love is given and love is +returned. À Dieu—not adieu. Remember +that the world is very big, and that there may be room in it for +a few creatures like</p> +<p style="text-align: right">Your affectionate godfather,<br /> +G. L.</p> +<h2><a name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 218</span>MRS. +FAIRFAX</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> town of Langborough in 1839 had +not been much disturbed since the beginning of the preceding +century. The new houses were nearly all of them built to +replace others which had fallen into decay; there were no drains; +the drinking-water came from pumps; the low fever killed thirty +or forty people every autumn; the Moot Hall still stood in the +middle of the High Street; the newspaper came but once a week; +nobody read any books; and the Saturday market and the annual +fair were the only events in public local history. +Langborough, being seventy miles from London and eight from the +main coach-road, had but little communication with the outside +world. Its inhabitants intermarried without crossing from +other stocks, and men determined their choice mainly by equality +of fortune and rank. The shape of the nose and lips and +colour of the eyes may have had some influence in masculine +selection, but not much: the doctor took the lawyer’s +daughter, the draper took the grocer’s, and the carpenter +took the blacksmith’s. Husbands and wives, as a rule, +lived comfortably with one another; there was no reason why they +should quarrel. The air of the place was sleepy; the men +attended to their business, and the women were entirely apart, +minding their household affairs and taking tea with one +another. In Langborough, dozing as it had dozed since the +days of Queen Anne, it was almost impossible that any woman +should differ so much from another that she could be the cause of +passionate preference.</p> +<p>One day in the spring of 1839 Langborough was stirred to its +depths. No such excitement had been felt in the town since +the run upon the bank in 1825, when one of the partners went up +to London, brought down ten thousand pounds in gold with him by +the mail, and was met at Thaxton cross-roads by a post-chaise, +which was guarded into Langborough by three men with +pistols. A circular printed in London was received on that +spring day in 1839 by all the respectable ladies in the town +stating that a Mrs. Fairfax was about to begin business in Ferry +Street as a dressmaker. She had taken the only house to be +let in Ferry Street. It was a cottage with a front and back +sitting-room, and belonged to an old lady in Lincoln, who +inherited it from her brother, who once lived in it but had been +dead forty years. Before a week had gone by four-fifths of +the population of Langborough had re-inspected it. The +front room was the shop, and in the window was a lay-figure +attired in an evening robe of rose-coloured silk, the like of +which for style and fit no native lady had ever seen. +Underneath it was a card—“Mrs. Fairfax, Milliner and +Dressmaker.” The circular stated that Mrs. Fairfax +could provide materials or would make up those brought to her by +her customers.</p> +<p>Great was the debate which followed this unexpected +apparition. Who Mrs. Fairfax was could not be +discovered. Her furniture and the lay-figure had come by +the waggon, and the only information the driver could give was +that he was directed at the “George and Blue Boar” in +Holborn to fetch them from Great Ormond Street. After much +discussion it was agreed that Mrs. Bingham, the wife of the wine +merchant, should call on Mrs. Fairfax and inquire the price of a +gown. Mrs. Bingham was at the head of society in +Langborough, and had the reputation of being very clever. +It was hoped, and indeed fully expected, that she would be able +to penetrate the mystery. She went, opened the door, a +little bell sounded, and Mrs. Fairfax presented herself. +Mrs. Bingham’s eyes fell at once upon Mrs. Fairfax’s +dress. It was black, with no ornament, and constructed with +an accuracy and grace which proved at once to Mrs. Bingham that +its maker was mistress of her art. Mrs. Bingham, although +she could not entirely desert the linendraper’s wife, whose +husband was a good customer for brandy, had some of her clothes +made in London when she stayed with her sister in town, and, to +use her own phrase, “knew what was what.”</p> +<p>“Mrs. Fairfax?”</p> +<p>A bow.</p> +<p>“Will you please tell me what a gown would cost made +somewhat like that in the window?”</p> +<p>“For yourself, madam?”</p> +<p>“Yes.”</p> +<p>“Pardon me; I am afraid that colour would not suit +you.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Bingham was a stout woman with a ruddy complexion.</p> +<p>“One colour costs no more than another?”</p> +<p>“No, madam: twelve guineas; that silk is +expensive. Will you not take a seat?”</p> +<p>“I am afraid you will find twelve guineas too much for +anybody here. Have you nothing cheaper?”</p> +<p>Mrs. Fairfax produced some patterns and fashion-plates.</p> +<p>“I suppose the gown in the window is your own +make?”</p> +<p>“My own make and design.”</p> +<p>“Then you are not beginning business?”</p> +<p>“I hope I may say that I thoroughly understand +it.”</p> +<p>The door leading into the back parlour opened, and a little +girl about nine or ten years old entered.</p> +<p>“Mother, I want—”</p> +<p>Mrs. Fairfax, without saying a word, gently led the child into +the parlour again.</p> +<p>“Dear me, what a pretty little girl! Is that +yours?”</p> +<p>“Yes, she is mine.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Bingham noticed that Mrs. Fairfax did not wear a +widow’s cap, and that she had a wedding-ring on her +finger.</p> +<p>“You will find it rather lonely here. Have you +been accustomed to solitude?”</p> +<p>“Yes. That silk, now, would suit you +admirably. With less ornament it would be ten +guineas.”</p> +<p>“Thank you: I must not be so extravagant at +present. May I look at something which will do for +walking? You would not, I suppose, make a walking-dress for +Langborough exactly as you would have made it in +London?”</p> +<p>“If you mean for walking about the roads here, it would +differ slightly from one which would be suitable for +London.”</p> +<p>“Will you show me what you have usually made for +town?”</p> +<p>“This is what is worn now.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Bingham was baffled but not defeated. She gave an +order for a walking-dress, and hoped that Mrs. Fairfax might be +more communicative.</p> +<p>“Have you any introductions here?”</p> +<p>“None whatever.”</p> +<p>“It is rather a risk if you are unknown.”</p> +<p>“Perhaps you have been exempt from risks: some people +are obliged constantly to encounter them.”</p> +<p>“‘Exempt,’ ‘encounter,”’ +thought Mrs. Bingham: “she must have been to a good +school.”</p> +<p>“When will you be ready to try on?”</p> +<p>“On Friday,” and Mrs. Fairfax opened the door.</p> +<p>As Mrs. Bingham went out she noticed a French book lying on a +side table.</p> +<p>The day following was Sunday, and Mrs. Fairfax and her +daughter were at church. They sat at the back, and all the +congregation turned on entering, looked at them, and thought +about them during the service. They went out as soon as it +was over, but Mrs. Harrop, wife of the ironmonger, and Mrs. Cobb, +wife of the coal merchant, escaped with equal promptitude and +were close behind them.</p> +<p>“There isn’t a crease in that body,” said +Mrs. Harrop.</p> +<p>On Monday Mrs. Bingham was at the post-office. She took +care to be there at the dinner hour, when the postmaster’s +wife generally came to the counter.</p> +<p>“A newcomer, Mrs. Carter. Have you seen Mrs. +Fairfax?”</p> +<p>“Once or twice, ma’am.”</p> +<p>“Has she many letters?”</p> +<p>The door between the office and the parlour was open.</p> +<p>“I’ve no doubt she will have, ma’am, if her +business succeeds.”</p> +<p>“I wonder where she lived before she came here. It +is curious, isn’t it, that nobody knows her? Did you +ever notice how her letters are stamped?”</p> +<p>“Can’t say as I have, ma’am.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Carter shut the parlour door. “The smell of +those onions,” she whispered to her husband, “blows +right in here.” She then altered her tone a +trifle.</p> +<p>“One of ’em, Mrs. Bingham, had the Portsmouth +postmark on it; but this is in the strictest confidence, and I +should never dream of letting it out to anybody but you, but I +don’t mind you, because I know you won’t repeat it, +and if my husband was to hear me he’d be in a fearful rage, +for there was a dreadful row when I told Lady Caroline at Thaxton +Manor about the letters Miss Margaret was getting, and it was +found out that it was me as told her, and some gentleman in +London wrote to the Postmaster-General about it.”</p> +<p>“You may depend upon me, Mrs. Carter.” Mrs. +Bingham considered she had completely satisfied her conscience +when she imposed an oath of secrecy on Mrs. Harrop, who was also +self-exonerated when she had imposed a similar oath on Mrs. +Cobb.</p> +<p>A fortnight after the visit to the post-office there was a +tea-party. Mrs. Harrop, Mrs. Cobb, Mrs. Sweeting, the +grocer’s wife, and Miss Tarrant, an elderly lady, living on +a small annuity, but most genteel, were invited to Mrs. +Bingham’s. They began to talk of Mrs. Fairfax +directly they had tasted the hot buttered toast. They had +before them the following facts: the carrier’s deposition +that the goods came from Great Ormond Street; the lay-figure and +what it wore; Mrs. Fairfax’s prices; the little girl; the +wedding-ring but no widow’s weeds; the Portsmouth postmark; +the French book; Mrs. Bingham’s new gown, and +lastly—a piece of information contributed by Mrs. Sweeting +and considered to be of great importance, as we shall see +presently—that Mrs. Fairfax bought her coffee whole and +ground it herself. On these facts, nine in all, the ladies +had to construct—it was imperative that they should +construct it—an explanation of Mrs. Fairfax, and it must be +confessed that they were not worse equipped than many a +picturesque and successful historian. At the request of the +company, Mrs. Bingham went upstairs and put on the gown.</p> +<p>“Do you mind coming to the window, Mrs. Bingham?” +asked Mrs. Harrop.</p> +<p>Mrs. Bingham rose and went to the window. Her guests +also rose. She held her arms down and then held them up, +and was surveyed from every point of the compass.</p> +<p>“I thought it was a pucker, but it’s only the +shadow,” observed Mrs. Harrop.</p> +<p>Mrs. Cobb stroked the body and shook the skirt. Not a +single depreciatory criticism was ventured. Excepting the +wearer, nobody present had seen such a masterpiece. But +although for half a lifetime we may have beheld nothing better +than an imperfect actual, we recognise instantly the superiority +and glory of the realised Ideal when it is presented to us. +Mrs. Harrop, Mrs. Cobb, Mrs. Sweeting, and Miss Tarrant became +suddenly aware of possibilities of which they had not hitherto +dreamed. Mrs. Swanley, the linendraper’s wife, was +degraded and deposed.</p> +<p>“She must have learned that in London,” said Mrs. +Harrop.</p> +<p>“London! my dear Mrs. Harrop,” replied Mrs. +Bingham, “I know London pretty well, and how things are cut +there. I told you there was a French book on the +table. Take my word for it, she has lived in Paris. +She <i>must</i> have lived there.”</p> +<p>“Where is Great Ormond Street, Mrs. Bingham?” +inquired Mrs. Sweeting.</p> +<p>“A great many foreigners live there; it is somewhere +near Leicester Square.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Bingham knew nothing about the street, but having just +concluded a residence in Paris from the French book, that +conclusion led at once to a further conclusion, clear as noonday, +as to the quality of the people who inhabited Great Ormond +Street, and consequently to the final deduction of its +locality.</p> +<p>“Did you not say, Mrs. Sweeting, that she buys her +coffee whole?” added Mrs. Bingham, as if inspiration had +flashed into her. “If you want additional proof that +she is French, there it is.”</p> +<p>“Portsmouth,” mused Mrs. Cobb. “You +say, Mrs. Bingham, there are a good many officers there. +Let me see—1815—it’s twenty-four years ago +since the battle. A captain may have picked her up in +Paris. I’ll be bound that, if she ever was married, +she was married when she was sixteen or seventeen. They are +always obliged to marry those French girls when they are nothing +but chits, I’ve been told—those of them, leastways, +that don’t live with men without being married. That +would make her about forty, and then he found her out and left +her, and she went back to Paris and learned +dressmaking.”</p> +<p>“But he writes to her from Portsmouth,” said Mrs. +Bingham, who had not been told that the solitary letter from +Portsmouth was addressed in a man’s handwriting.</p> +<p>“He may not have broken with her altogether,” +replied Mrs. Cobb. “If he isn’t a downright +brute he’ll want to hear about his daughter.”</p> +<p>“Well,” said Mrs. Sweeting, twitching her eyes as +she was wont to do when she was about to give an opinion which +she knew would disturb any of her friends, “you may talk as +you like, but the last thing Swanley made for me looked as if it +had been to the wash and hung on me to dry. French or +English, captain or no captain, I shall go to Mrs. Fairfax. +Her character’s got nothing to do with her cut. +Suppose she <i>is</i> divorced; judging from that body of yours, +Mrs. Bingham, I shan’t have to send back a pelisse half a +dozen times to get it altered. When it comes to that you +get sick of the thing, and may just as well give it +away.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Sweeting occupied the lowest rank in this particular +section of Langborough society. As a grocer Mr. Sweeting +was not quite on a level with the coal dealer, who was a +merchant, nor with the ironmonger, who repaired ploughs, and he +was certainly below Mr. Bingham. Miss Tarrant, never having +been “connected with trade”—her father was +chief clerk in the bank—considered herself superior to all +her acquaintances, but her very small income prevented her from +claiming her superiority so effectively as she desired.</p> +<p>“Mrs. Sweeting,” she said, “I am surprised +at you! You do not consider what the moral effect on the +lower orders of patronising a female of this kind will be, +probably an abandoned woman. The child, no doubt, was not +born in wedlock. We are sinners ourselves if we support +sinners.”</p> +<p>“Miss Tarrant,” retorted Mrs. Sweeting, +“I’m the respectable mother of five children, and I +don’t want any sermons on sin except in church. If it +wasn’t a sin of Swanley to charge me three guineas for that +pelisse, and wouldn’t take it back, I don’t know what +sin.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Bingham, although she was accustomed to tea-table +disputes, and even enjoyed them, was a little afraid of Mrs. +Sweeting’s tongue, and thought it politic to interfere.</p> +<p>“I agree with you entirely, Mrs. Sweeting, about the +inferiority of Mrs. Swanley to this newcomer, but we must +consider Miss Tarrant’s position in the parish and her +responsibilities. She is no doubt right from her point of +view.”</p> +<p>So the conversation ended, but Mrs. Fairfax’s biography, +which was to be published under authority in Langborough, was now +rounded off and complete. She was a Parisian, father and +mother unknown, was found in Paris in 1815 by Captain Fairfax, +who, by her intrigues and threats of exposure, was forced into a +marriage with her. A few years afterwards he had grounds +for a divorce, but not wishing a scandal, consented to a +compromise and voluntary separation. He left one child in +her custody, as it showed signs of resemblance to its mother, to +whom he gave a small monthly allowance. She had been +apprenticed as a dressmaker in Paris, had returned thither in +order to master her trade, and then came back to England. +In a very little time, so clever was she that she learned to +speak English fluently, although, as Mrs. Bingham at once +noticed, the French accent was very perceptible. It was a +good, intelligible, working theory, and that was all that was +wanted. This was Mrs. Fairfax so far as her female +neighbours were concerned. To the men in Langborough she +was what she was to the women, but with a difference. When +she went to Mr. Sweeting’s shop to order her groceries, Mr. +Sweeting, notwithstanding the canonical legend of her life, +served her himself, and was much entangled by her dark hair, and +was drawn down by it into a most polite bow. Mr. Cobb, who +had a little cabin of an office in his coal-yard, hastened back +to it from superintending the discharge of a lighter, when Mrs. +Fairfax called to pay her little bill, actually took off his hat, +begged her to be seated, and hoped she did not find the last lot +of coals dusty. He was now unloading some of the best +Wallsend that ever came up the river, and would take care that +the next half ton should not have an ounce of small in it.</p> +<p>“You’ll find it chilly where you are living, +ma’am, but it isn’t damp, that’s one +comfort. The bottom of your street is damp, and down here +in a flood anything like what we had fourteen years ago, we are +nearly drowned. If you’ll step outside with me +I’ll show you how high the water rose.” He +opened the door, and Mrs. Fairfax thought it courteous not to +refuse. He walked to the back of his cabin bareheaded, +although the morning was cold, and pointed out to her the white +paint mark on the wall. She, dropped her receipted bill in +the black mud and stooped to pick it up. Mr. Cobb plunged +after it and wiped it carefully on his silk +pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Cobb’s bay window commanded +the whole length of the coal-yard. In this bay window she +always sat and worked and nodded to the customers, or gossiped +with them as they passed. She turned her back on Mrs. +Fairfax both when she entered the yard and when she left it, but +watched her carefully. Mr. Cobb came into dinner, but his +wife bided her time, knowing that, as he took snuff, the +handkerchief would be used. It was very provoking, he was +absent-minded, and forgot his usual pinch before he sat down to +his meal. For three-quarters of an hour his wife was +afflicted with painfully uneasy impatience, and found it very +difficult to reply to Mr. Cobb’s occasional remarks. +At last the cheese was finished, the snuff-box appeared, and +after it the handkerchief.</p> +<p>“A pretty mess that handkerchief is in, +Cobb.” She always called him simply +“Cobb.”</p> +<p>“Yes, it was an a-a-accident. I must have a clean +one. I didn’t think it was so dirty.”</p> +<p>“The washing of your snuffy handkerchiefs costs quite +enough as it is, Cobb, without using them in that way.”</p> +<p>“What way?” said Mr. Cobb weakly.</p> +<p>“Oh, I saw it all, going out without your hat and +standing there like a silly fool cleaning that bit of +paper. I wonder what the lightermen thought of +you.”</p> +<p>It will already have been noticed that the question what other +people thought was always the test which was put in Langborough +whenever anything was done or anything happened not in accordance +with the usual routine, and Mrs. Cobb struck at her +husband’s conscience by referring him to his +lightermen. She continued—</p> +<p>“And you know what she is as well as I do, and if +she’d been respectable you’d have been rude to her, +as you generally are.”</p> +<p>“You bought that last new gown of her, and you never had +one as fitted you so well.”</p> +<p>“What’s that got to do with it? You may be +sure I knew my place when I went there. Fit? Yes, it +did fit; them sort of women, it stands to reason, are just the +women to fit you.”</p> +<p>Mr. Cobb was silent. He was a mild man, and he knew by +much experience how unprofitable controversy with Mrs. Cobb +was. He could not forget Mrs. Fairfax’s stooping +figure when she was about to pick up the bill. She caused +in all the Langborough males an unaccustomed quivering and +warmth, the same in each, physical, perhaps, but salutary, for +the monotony of life was relieved thereby and a deference and +even a grace were begotten which did not usually distinguish +Langborough manners. Not one of Mrs. Fairfax’s +admirers, however, could say that she showed any desire for +conversation with him, nor could any direct evidence be obtained +as to what she thought of things in general. There was, to +be sure, the French book, and there were other circumstances +already mentioned from which suspicion or certainty (suspicion, +as we have seen, passing immediately into certainty in +Langborough) of infidelity or disreputable conduct followed, but +no corroborating word from her could be adduced. She +attended to her business, accepted orders with thanks and smiles, +talked about the weather and the accident to the coach, was +punctual in her attendance at church, calm and inscrutable as the +Sphinx. The attendance at church was, of course, set down +to “business considerations,” and was held to be +quite consistent with the scepticism and loose morality deducible +from the French book and the unground coffee.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>In speaking of the male creatures of the town we have left out +Dr. Midleton. He was forty-eight years old, and had been +rector twenty years. He had obtained high mathematical +honours at Cambridge, and became a tutor in a grammar school, but +was soon presented by his college with the living of +Langborough. He was tall, spare, clean-shaven, grey-eyed, +dark-haired, thin-faced, his lips were curved and compressed, and +he stooped slightly. He was a widower with no children, and +the Rectory was efficiently kept in order by an aged +housekeeper. Tractarianism had not arisen in 1839, but he +was High Church and an enemy to all kinds of fanaticism, apt to +be satirical, even in his sermons, on the right of private +judgment to interpret texts as it pleased in ignorance of Hebrew +and Greek. He was respected and feared more than any other +man in the parish. He had a great library, and had taken up +archæology as a hobby. He knew the history of every +church in the county, and more about the Langborough records than +was known by the town clerk. He was chairman of a Board of +Governors charged with the administration of wealthy trust for +alms and schools. When he first took office he found that +this trust was controlled almost entirely by a man named Jackson, +a local solicitor, whose salary as clerk was £400 a year +and who had a large private practice. The alms were +allotted to serve political purposes, and the headmaster of the +school enjoyed a salary of £800 a year for teaching forty +boys, of whom twenty were boarders. Mr. Midleton—he +was Mr. Midleton then—very soon determined to alter this +state of things. Jackson went about sneering at the +newcomer who was going to turn the place upside down, and having +been accustomed to interfere in the debates in the Board-room, +interrupted the Rector at the third or fourth meeting.</p> +<p>“You’ll get yourself in a mess if you do that, Mr. +Chairman.”</p> +<p>“Mr. Jackson,” replied the Rector, rising slowly, +“it may perhaps save trouble if I remind you now, once for +all, that I am chairman and you are the clerk. Mr. Bingham, +you were about to speak.”</p> +<p>It was Dr. Midleton who obtained the new Act of Parliament +remodelling the trust, whereby a much larger portion of its funds +was devoted to education. Jackson died, partly from drink +and partly from spite and vexation, and the headmaster was +pensioned. The Rector was not popular with the middle +class. He was not fond of paying visits, but he never +neglected his duty, and by the poor was almost beloved, for he +was careless and intimate in his talk with them and generous to +real distress. Everybody admired his courage. The +cholera in 1831 was very bad in Langborough, and the people were +in a panic at the new disease, which was fatal in many cases +within six hours after the first attack. The Rector through +that dark time was untouched by the contagious dread which +overpowered his parishioners, and his presence carried confidence +and health. On the worst day, sultry, stifling, with no +sun, an indescribable terror crept abroad, and Mr. Cobb, standing +at his gate, was overcome by it. In five minutes he had +heard of two deaths, and he began to feel what were called +“premonitory symptoms.” He carried a brandy +flask in his pocket, brandy being then considered a remedy, and +he drank freely, but imagined himself worse. He was about +to rush indoors and tell Mrs. Cobb to send for the surgeon, when +the Rector passed.</p> +<p>“Ah, Mr. Cobb! I was just about to call on you; +glad to see you looking so well when there’s so much +sickness. We shall want you on the School Committee this +evening,” and then he explained some business which was to +be discussed. Mr. Cobb afterwards was fond of telling the +story of this interview.</p> +<p>“Would you believe it?” said he. “He +spoke to me about nothing much but the trust, but somehow my +stomach seemed quieter at once. The sinking—just +<i>here</i>, you know—was dreadful before he came up, and +the brandy was no good. It was a something in his way that +did it.”</p> +<p>Dr. Midleton was obliged to call on Mrs. Fairfax as a +newcomer. He found Mrs. Harrop there, and Mrs. Fairfax +asked him to step into the back parlour, into which no one in +Langborough had hitherto been admitted. Gowns were tried on +in the shop, the door being bolted and the blind drawn. Dr. +Midleton found four little shelves of books on the cupboard by +the side of the fireplace. Some were French, but most of +them were English. Although it was such a small collection, +his book-lover’s instinct compelled him to look at +it. His eyes fell upon a <i>Religio Medici</i>, and he +opened it hastily. On the fly-leaf was written “Mary +Leighton, from R. L.” He had just time, before its +owner entered, to replace it and to muse for an instant.</p> +<p>“Richard Leighton of Trinity: it is not a common name, +but it cannot be he—have lost sight of him for years; heard +he was married, and came to no good.”</p> +<p>He was able to watch her for a minute as she stood by the +table giving some directions to her child, who was sent on an +errand. In that minute he saw her as she had not been seen +by anybody in Langborough. To Mrs. Bingham and her friends +Mrs. Fairfax was the substratum of a body and skirt, with the +inestimable advantage over a substratum of cane and padding that +a scandalous history of it could be invented and believed. +To Langborough men, married and single, she was a member of +“the sex,” as women were called in those days, who +possessed in a remarkable degree the power of exciting that +quivering and warmth we have already observed. Dr. Midleton +saw before him a lady, tall but delicately built, with handsome +face and dark brown hair just streaked with grey, and he saw also +diffused over every feature a light which in her eyes, +forward-looking and earnest, became concentrated into a vivid, +steady flame. The few words she spoke to her daughter were +sharply cut, a delightful contrast in his ear to the dialect to +which he was accustomed, distinguished by its universal vowel and +suppression of the consonants. How he inwardly rejoiced to +hear the sound of the second “t” in the word +“distinct,” when she told her little messenger that +Mr. Cobb had been “distinctly” ordered to send the +coals yesterday. He remained standing until the child had +gone.</p> +<p>“Pray be seated,” she said. She went to the +fireplace, leaned on the mantelpiece, and poked the fire. +The attitude struck him. She was about to put some coals in +the grate, but he interfered with an “Allow me,” and +performed the office for her. She thanked him simply, and +sat down opposite to him, facing the light. She began the +conversation.</p> +<p>“It is good of you to call on me; calling on people, +especially on newcomers must be an unpleasant part of a +clergyman’s duty.”</p> +<p>“It is so, madam, sometimes—there are not many +newcomers.”</p> +<p>“It is an advantage in your profession that you must +generally be governed by duty. It is often easier to do +what we are obliged to do, even if it be disagreeable, than to +choose our path by our likes and dislikes.”</p> +<p>The bell rang, and Mrs. Fairfax went into the shop.</p> +<p>“Who can she be?” said the Doctor to +himself. Such an experience as this he had not known since +he had been rector. Langborough did not deal in +ideas. It was content to affirm that Miss Tarrant now and +then gave herself airs, that Mrs. Sweeting had a way of her own, +that Mr. Cobb lacked spirit and was downtrodden by his wife.</p> +<p>She returned and sat down again.</p> +<p>“You know nobody in these parts, Mrs. +Fairfax?”</p> +<p>“Nobody.”</p> +<p>“Yours is a bold venture, is it not?”</p> +<p>“It is—certainly. A good many plans were +projected, of which this was one, and there were equal +difficulties in the way of all. When that is the case we +may almost as well draw lots.”</p> +<p>“Ah, that is what I often say to some of the weaker sort +among my parishioners. I said it to poor Cobb the other +day. He did not know whether he should do this or do +that. ‘It doesn’t matter much,’ said I, +‘what you do, but do something. <i>Do</i> it, with +all your strength.’”</p> +<p>The Doctor was thoroughly Tory, and he slid away to his +favourite doctrine.</p> +<p>“Our ancestors, madam, were not such fools as we often +take them to be. They consulted the <i>sortes</i> or lots, +and at the last election—we have a potwalloping +constituency here—three parts of the voters would have done +better if they had trusted to the toss-up of a penny instead of +their reason.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Fairfax leaned back in her chair. Dr. Midleton +noticed her wedding-ring, and also a handsome sapphire +ring. She spoke rather slowly and meditatively.</p> +<p>“Life is so complicated; so few of the consequences of +many actions of the greatest moment can be foreseen, that the +belief in the lot is not unnatural.”</p> +<p>“You have some books, I see—Sir Thomas +Browne.” He took down the volume.</p> +<p>“Leighton! Leighton! how odd! Was it Richard +Leighton?”</p> +<p>“Yes.”</p> +<p>“Really; and you knew him?”</p> +<p>“He was a friend of my brother.”</p> +<p>“Do you know what has become of him? He was at +Cambridge with me, but was younger.”</p> +<p>“I have not seen him for some time. Do you mind if +I open the window a little?”</p> +<p>“Certainly not.”</p> +<p>She stood at the window for a moment, looking out on the +garden, with her hand on the top of the sash. The Doctor +had turned his chair a little and his eyes were fixed on her +there with her uplifted arm. A picture which belonged to +his father instantly came back to him. He recollected it so +well. It represented a woman watching a young man in a +courtyard who is just mounting his horse. We are every now +and then reminded of pictures by a group, an attitude, or the +arrangement of a landscape which, thereby, acquires a new +charm.</p> +<p>Suddenly the shop bell rang again, and Mrs. Fairfax’s +little girl rushed into the parlour. She had fallen down +and cut her wrist terribly with a piece of a bottle containing +some hartshorn which she had to buy at the druggist’s on +her way home from Mr. Cobb’s. The blood flowed +freely, but Mrs. Fairfax, unbewildered, put her thumb firmly on +the wrist just above the wound and instructed the doctor how to +use his pocket-handkerchief as a tourniquet. As he was +tying it, although such careful attention to the operation was +necessary, he noticed Mrs. Fairfax’s hands, and he almost +forgot himself and the accident.</p> +<p>“There is glass in the wrist,” she said. +“Will you kindly fetch the surgeon? I do not like to +leave.”</p> +<p>He went at once, and fortunately met him in his gig.</p> +<p>On the third day after the mishap Dr. Midleton thought he +ought to inquire after the child. The glass had been +extracted and she was doing well. Her mother was at work in +the back-parlour. She made no apology for her occupation, +but laid down her tools.</p> +<p>“Pray go on, madam.”</p> +<p>“Certainly not. I am afraid I might make a mistake +with my scissors if I were to listen to you; or, worse, if I were +to pay attention to them I should not pay attention to +you.”</p> +<p>He smiled. “It is an art, I should think, which +requires not only much attention but practice.”</p> +<p>She evaded the implied question. “It is difficult +to fit, but it is more difficult to please.”</p> +<p>“That is true in my own profession.”</p> +<p>“But you are not obliged to please.”</p> +<p>“No, not obliged, I am happy to say. If my +parishioners do not hear the truth I have no excuse. It +must be rather trying to the temper of a lady like yourself to +humour the caprices of the vulgar.”</p> +<p>“No; they are my customers, and even if they are +unpleasant they are so not to me personally but to their servant, +who ceases to be their servant when she ceases to be employed +upon their clothes.”</p> +<p>“You are a philosopher, madam; that sentiment is worthy +of Epictetus.”</p> +<p>“I have read Epictetus in Mrs. Carter’s +translation.”</p> +<p>“You have read Epictetus? That is +remarkable! I should think no other woman in the county has +read him.” He leaned forward a little and his face +was lighted up. “I have a library, madam, a large +library; I should like to show it to you, if—if it can be +managed without difficulty.”</p> +<p>“It will give me great pleasure to see it some +day. It must be a delightful solace to you in a town like +this, in which I daresay you have but few friends. I +suppose, though, you visit a good deal?”</p> +<p>“No; I do not visit much. I differ from my brother +Sinclair in the next parish. He is always visiting. +What is the consequence?—gossip and, as I conceive, a loss +of dignity and self-respect. I will go wherever there is +trouble or wherever I am wanted, but I will not go anywhere for +idle talk.”</p> +<p>“I think you are right. A priest should not make +himself cheap and common. He should be representative of +sacred interests superior to the ordinary interests of +life.”</p> +<p>“I am grateful to you, madam, very grateful to you for +these observations. They are as just as they are +unusual. I sincerely hope that we—” But +there was a knock at the door.</p> +<p>“Come in.” It was Mrs. Harrop. +“Your bell rang, Mrs. Fairfax, but maybe you didn’t +hear it as you were engaged in conversation. Good morning, +Dr. Midleton. I hope I don’t intrude?”</p> +<p>“No, you do not.”</p> +<p>He bowed to the ladies, and as he went out, the parlour-door +being open, he moved the outer door backwards and forwards.</p> +<p>“It would be as well, Mrs. Fairfax, to have a bell hung +there which would act properly.”</p> +<p>“I don’t know quite what Dr. Midleton +means,” said Mrs. Harrop when he had gone. “The +bell did ring, loud enough for most people to have heard it, and +I waited ever so long.”</p> +<p>He walked down the street with his customary firm step, and +met Mr. Bingham who stopped him, half smiling and not quite at +his ease.</p> +<p>“We are sorry, Doctor, you did not give Hutchings your +vote for the almshouse last Thursday; we expected you would have +gone with us.”</p> +<p>“You expected? Why?”</p> +<p>“Well, you see, sir, Hutchings has always worked hard +for our side.”</p> +<p>“I am astonished, Mr. Bingham, that you should suppose +that I will ever consent to divert the funds of a trust for party +purposes.”</p> +<p>Mr. Bingham, although he had just determined to give the +Doctor a bit of his mind, felt his strength depart from +him. His sentences lacked power to stand upright and fell +sprawling. “No offence, Doctor, I merely wanted you +to know—not so much my own views—difficulty to keep +our friends together. Short—you know Tom +Short—was saying to me he was afraid—”</p> +<p>“Pay no attention to fools. Good +morning.”</p> +<p>The Doctor came in that night from a vestry meeting to which +he went after dinner. The clock was striking nine, the +chimes played their tune, and as the last note sounded the +housekeeper and servants filed into the study for prayers. +Prayers over they rose and went out, and he sat down. His +habits were becoming fixed and for some years he had always read +in the evening the friends of his youth. No sermon was +composed then; no ecclesiastical literature was studied. +Pope and Swift were favourites and, curiously enough, Lord +Byron. His case is not uncommon, for it often happens that +men who are forced into reserve or opposition preserve a secret, +youthful, poetic passion and are even kept alive by it. On +this particular evening, however, Pope, Byron, and Swift remained +on his shelves. He meditated.</p> +<p>“A wedding-ring on her finger; no widow’s weeds; +he may nevertheless be dead—I believe I heard he +was—and she has discontinued that frightful +disfigurement. Leighton had the thickest crop of black hair +I ever saw on a man: what thick, black hair that child has! +A lady; a reader of books; nobody to be compared with her +here.” At this point he rose and walked about the +room for a quarter of an hour. He sat down again and took +up an important paper about the Trust. He had forgotten it +and it was to be discussed the next day. His eyes wandered +over it but he paid no attention to it; and somewhat disgusted +with himself he went to bed.</p> +<p>Mrs. Fairfax had happened to tell him that she was fond of +walking soon after breakfast before she opened her shop, and +generally preferred the lane on the west side of the +Common. From his house the direct road to the lane lay down +the High Street, but about a fortnight after that evening in his +study he found himself one morning in Deadman’s Rents, a +narrow, dirty alley which led to the east side of the +Common. Deadman’s Rents was inhabited by men who +worked in brickyards and coalyards, who did odd jobs, and by +washerwomen and charwomen. It contained also three +beershops. The dwellers in the Rents were much surprised to +see the Doctor amongst them at that early hour, and conjectured +he must have come on a professional errand. Every one of +the Deadman ladies who was at her door—and they were +generally at their doors in the daytime—vigilantly watched +him. He went straight through the Rents to the Common, +whereupon Mrs. Wiggins, who supported herself by the sale of +firewood, jam, pickles, and peppermints, was particularly +disturbed and was obliged to go over to the “Kicking +Donkey,” partly to communicate what she had seen and partly +to ward off by half a quartern of rum the sinking which always +threatened her when she was in any way agitated. When he +reached the common it struck him that for the first time in his +life he had gone a roundabout way to escape being seen. +Some people naturally take to side-streets; he, on the contrary, +preferred the High Street; it was his quarter-deck and he paraded +it like a captain. “Was he doing wrong?” he +said to himself. Certainly not; he desired a little +intelligent conversation and there was no need to tell everybody +what he wanted. It was unfortunate, nevertheless, that it +was necessary to go through Deadman’s Rents in order to get +it. He soon saw Mrs. Fairfax and her little girl in front +of him. He overtook her, and she showed no surprise at +seeing him.</p> +<p>“I have been thinking,” said he, “about what +you told me”—this was a reference to an interview not +recorded. “I am annoyed that Mrs. Harrop should have +been impertinent to you.”</p> +<p>“You need not be annoyed. The import of a word is +not fixed. If anything annoying is said to me, I always ask +myself what it means—not to me but to the speaker. +Besides, as I have told you before, shop insolence is +nothing.”</p> +<p>“You may be justified in not resenting it, but Mrs. +Harrop cannot be excused. I am not surprised to find that +she can use such language, but I am astonished that she should +use it to you. It shows an utter lack of perception. +Your Epictetus has been studied to some purpose.”</p> +<p>“I have quite forgotten him. I do not recollect +books, but I never forget the lessons taught me by my own +trade.”</p> +<p>“You have had much trouble?”</p> +<p>“I have had my share: probably not in excess. It +is difficult for anybody to know whether his suffering is +excessive: there is no means of measuring it with that of +others.”</p> +<p>“Have you no friends with whom you can share +it?”</p> +<p>“I have known but one woman intimately, and she is now +dead. I have known two or three men whom I esteemed, but +close friendship between a woman and a man, unless he is her +husband, as a rule is impossible.”</p> +<p>“Do you really think so?”</p> +<p>“I am certain of it. I am speaking now of a +friendship which would justify a demand for sympathy with real +sorrows.”</p> +<p>They continued their walk in silence for the next two or three +minutes.</p> +<p>“We are now near the end of the lane. I must turn +and go back.”</p> +<p>“I will go with you.”</p> +<p>“Thank you: I should detain you: I have to make a call +on business at the White House. Good morning.”</p> +<p>They parted.</p> +<p>Dr. Midleton presently met Mrs. Jenkins of Deadman’s +Rents, who was going to the White House to do a day’s +washing. A few steps further he met Mr. Harrop in his gig, +who overtook Mrs. Fairfax. Thus it came to pass that +Deadman’s Rents and the High Street knew before nightfall +that Dr. Midleton and Mrs. Fairfax had been seen on the Common +that morning. Mrs. Jenkins protested, that “if she +was to be burnt alive with fuz-faggits and brimstone, nothink but +what she witnessed with her own eyes should pass her lips, +whatsomever she might think, and although they were +a-walkin’—him with his arm round her waist—she +did <i>not</i> see him a-kissin’ of her—how could she +when they were a hundred yards off?”</p> +<p>The Doctor prolonged his stroll and reached home about +half-past eleven. A third of his life had been spent in +Langborough. He remembered the day he came and the +unpacking of his books. They lined the walls of his room, +some of them rare, all of them his friends. Nobody in +Langborough had ever asked him to lend a single volume. The +solitary scholar never forsook his studies, but at times he +sighed over them and they seemed a little vain. They were +not entirely without external effect, for Pope and Swift in +disguise often spoke to the vestry or the governors, and the +Doctor’s manners even in the shops were moulded by his +intercourse with the classic dead. Their names, however, in +Langborough were almost unknown. He had now become hardened +by constant unsympathetic contact. Suddenly a stranger had +appeared who was an inhabitant of his own world and talked his +own tongue. The prospect of genuine intercourse disclosed +itself. None but those who have felt it can imagine the +relief, the joyous expansion, which follow the discovery after +long years of imprisonment with decent people of a person before +whom it is unnecessary to stifle what we most care to +express. No wonder he was excited!</p> +<p>But the stranger was a woman. He meditated much that +morning on her singular aptitude for reflection, but he presently +began to dream over figure, hair, eyes, hands. A picture in +the most vivid colours painted itself before him, and he could +not close his eyes to it. He was distressed to find himself +the victim of this unaccustomed tyranny. He did not know +that it is impossible for a man to love a woman’s soul +without loving her body. There is no such thing as a +spiritual love apart from a corporeal love, the one celestial and +the other earthly, and the spiritual love begets a passion +peculiar in its intensity. He was happily diverted by Mr. +Bingham, who called about a coming contested election for the +governorships.</p> +<p>Next week there was another tea-party at Mrs. +Cobb’s. The ladies were in high spirits, for a +subject of conversation was assured. If there had been an +inquest, or a marriage, or a highway robbery before one of these +parties, or if the contents of a will had just been made known, +or still better, if any scandal had just come to light, the +guests were always cheerful. Now, of course, the topic was +Dr. Midleton and Mrs. Fairfax.</p> +<p>“When I found him in that back parlour,” said Mrs. +Harrop, “I thought he wasn’t there to pay the usual +call. Somehow it didn’t seem as if he was like a +clergyman. I felt quite queer: it came over me all of a +sudden. And then we know he’s been there once or +twice since.”</p> +<p>“I don’t wonder at your feeling queer, Mrs. +Harrop,” quoth Mrs. Cobb. “I’m sure I +should have fainted; and what brazen boldness to walk out +together on the Common at nine o’clock in the +morning. That girl who brought in the tea—it’s +my belief that a young man goes after her—but even they +wouldn’t demean themselves to be seen at it just after +breakfast.”</p> +<p>“You don’t mean to say as your Deborah encourages +a man, Mrs. Cobb! I don’t know what we are +a-comin’ to. You’ve always been so particular, +and she seemed so respectable. I <i>am</i> +sorry.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Cobb did not quite relish Mrs. Harrop’s pity.</p> +<p>“You may be sure, Mrs. Harrop, she was respectable when +I took her, and if she isn’t I shan’t keep her. +I <i>am</i> particular, more so than most folk, and I don’t +mind who knows it.” Mrs. Cobb threw back her cap +strings. The denial that she minded who knew it may not +appear relevant, but desiring to be spiteful she could not at the +moment find a better way of showing her spite than by declaring +her indifference to the publication of her virtues. If +there was no venom in the substance of the declaration there was +much in the manner of it. Mrs. Bingham brought back the +conversation to the point.</p> +<p>“I suppose you’ve heard what Mrs. Jenkins +says? Your husband also, Mrs. Harrop, met them +both.”</p> +<p>“Yes he did. He was not quite in time to see as +much as Mrs. Jenkins saw, and I’m glad he +didn’t. I shouldn’t have felt comfortable if +I’d known he had. A clergyman, too! it is +shocking. A nice business, this, for the +Dissenters.”</p> +<p>“Well,” said Mrs. Bingham, “what are we to +do? I had thought of going to her and giving her a bit of +my mind, but she has got that yellow gown to make. What is +your opinion, Miss Tarrant?”</p> +<p>“I would not degrade myself, Mrs. Bingham, by any +expostulations with her. I would have nothing more to do +with her. Could you not relieve her of the unfinished +gown? Mrs. Swanley, I am sure, under the circumstances +would be only too happy to complete it for you.”</p> +<p>“Mrs. Swanley cannot come near her. I should look +ridiculous in her body and one of Swanley’s +skirts.”</p> +<p>“As to the Doctor,” continued Miss Tarrant, +“I wonder that he can expect to maintain any authority in +matters of religion if he marries a dressmaker of that +stamp. It would be impossible even if her character were +unimpeachable. I am astonished, if he wishes to enter into +the matrimonial state, that he does not seek some one who would +be able to support him in his position and offer him the sympathy +which a man who has had a University education might justifiably +demand.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Sweeting had hitherto listened in silence. Miss +Tarrant provoked her.</p> +<p>“It’s all a fuss about nothing, that’s my +opinion. What has she done that you know to be wrong? +And as to the Doctor, he’s got a right to please +himself. I’m surprised at you, Miss Tarrant, for +<i>you’ve</i> always stuck for him through thick and +thin. As for that Mrs. Jenkins, I’ll take my Bible +oath that the last time she washed for me she stunk of gin enough +to poison me, and went away with two bits of soap in her +pocket. You may credit what she says: <i>I</i> don’t, +and never demean myself to listen to her.”</p> +<p>The ladies came to no conclusion. Mrs. Bingham said that +she had suggested a round robin to Dr. Midleton, but that her +husband decidedly “discountenanced the +proposal.” Within a fortnight the election of +governors was to take place. There was always a fight at +these elections, and this year the Radicals had a strong +list. The Doctor, whose term of office had expired, was the +most prominent of the Tory and Church candidates, and never +doubted his success. He was ignorant of all the gossip +about him. One day in that fortnight he might have been +seen in Ferry Street. He went into Mrs. Fairfax’s +shop and was invited as before into the back parlour.</p> +<p>“I have brought you a basket of pears, and the book I +promised you, the <i>Utopia</i>.” He sat down. +“I am afraid you will think my visits too +frequent.”</p> +<p>“They are not too frequent for me: they may be for +yourself.”</p> +<p>“Ah! since I last entered your house I have not seen any +books excepting my own. You hardly know what life in +Langborough is like.”</p> +<p>“Does nobody take any interest in +archæology?”</p> +<p>“Nobody within five miles. Sinclair cares nothing +about it: he is Low Church, as I have told you.”</p> +<p>“Why does that prevent his caring about it?”</p> +<p>“Being Low Church he is narrow-minded, or, perhaps it +would be more correct to say, being narrow-minded he is Low +Church. He is an indifferent scholar, and occupies himself +with his religious fancies and those of his flock. He can +reign supreme there. He is not troubled in that department +by the difficulties of learning and is not exposed to criticism +or contradiction.”</p> +<p>“I suppose it is a fact of the greatest importance to +him that he and his parishioners have souls to be saved, and that +in comparison with that fact others are immaterial.”</p> +<p>“We all believe we have souls to be saved. Having +set forth God’s way of saving them we have done all we +ought to do. God’s way is not sufficient for +Sinclair. He enlarges it out of his own head, and instructs +his silly, ignorant friends to do the same. He will not be +satisfied with what God and the Church tell him.”</p> +<p>“God and the Church, according to Dr. Midleton’s +account, have not been very effective in Langborough.”</p> +<p>“They hear from me, madam, all I am commissioned to say, +and if they do not attend I cannot help it.”</p> +<p>“I have read your paper in the Archæological +Transactions on the history of Langborough Abbey. It +excited my imagination, which is never excited in reading +ordinary histories. In your essay I am in company with the +men who actually lived in the time of Henry the Second and Henry +the Eighth. I went over the ruins again, and found them +much more beautiful after I understood something about +them.”</p> +<p>“Yes: exactly what I have said a hundred times: +knowledge is indispensable.”</p> +<p>“If you had not pointed it out, I should never have +noticed the Early English doorway in the Chapter-house, so +distinct in style from the Refectory.”</p> +<p>“You noticed the brackets of that doorway: you noticed +the quatrefoils in the head? The Refectory is later by +three centuries, and is exquisite, but is not equal to the +Chapter-house.”</p> +<p>“Yes, I noticed the brackets and quatrefoils +particularly. If knowledge is not necessary in order that +we may admire, its natural tendency is to deepen our +admiration. Without it we pass over so much. In my +own small way I have noticed how my slight botanical knowledge of +flowers by the mere attention involved increases my wonder at +their loveliness.”</p> +<p>There was the usual interruption by the shop-bell. How +he hated that bell! Mrs. Fairfax answered it, closing the +parlour door. The customer was Mrs. Bingham.</p> +<p>“I will not disturb you now, Mrs. Fairfax. I was +going to say something about the black trimming you +recommended. I really think red would suit me better, but, +never mind, I will call again as I saw the Doctor come in. +He is rather a frequent visitor.”</p> +<p>“Not frequent: he comes occasionally. We are both +interested in a subject which I believe is not much studied in +Langborough.”</p> +<p>“Dear me! not dressmaking?”</p> +<p>“No, madam, archæology.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Bingham went out once more discomfited, and Mrs. Fairfax +returned to the parlour.</p> +<p>“I am sure I am taking up too much of your time,” +said the Doctor, “but I cannot tell you what a privilege it +is to spend a few minutes with a lady like yourself.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Fairfax was silent for a minute.</p> +<p>“Mrs. Bingham has been here, and I think I ought to tell +you that she has made some significant remarks about you. +Forgive me if I suggest that we should partially, at any rate, +discontinue our intercourse. I should be most unhappy if +your friendship with me were to do you any harm.”</p> +<p>The Doctor rose in a passion, planting his stick on the +floor.</p> +<p>“When the cackling of the geese or the braying of the +asses on Langborough Common prevent my crossing it, then, and not +till then, will my course be determined by Mrs. Bingham and her +colleagues.”</p> +<p>He sat down again with his elbow on the arm of the chair and +half shading his eyes with his hand. His whole manner +altered. Not a trace of the rector remained in him: the +decisiveness vanished from his voice; it became musical, low, and +hesitating. It was as if some angel had touched him, and +had suddenly converted all his strength into tenderness, a +transformation not impossible, for strength is tenderness and +tenderness is strength.</p> +<p>“I shall be forty-nine years old next birthday,” +he said. “Never until now have I been sure that I +loved a woman. I was married when I was twenty-five. +I had seen two or three girls whom I thought I could love, and at +last chose one. It was the arbitrary selection of a weary +will. My wife died within two years of her marriage. +After her death I was thrown in the way of women who attracted +me, but I wavered. If I made up my mind at night, I shrank +back in the morning. I thought my irresolution was mere +cowardice. It was not so. It was a warning that the +time had not come. I resolved at last that there was to be +no change in my life, that I would resign myself to my lot, +expect no affection, and do the duty blindly which had been +imposed upon me. But a miracle has been wrought, and I have +a perfectly clear direction: with you for the first time in my +life I am <i>sure</i>. You have known what it is to be in a +fog, unable to tell which way to turn, and all at once the cold, +wet mist was lifted, the sun came out, the fields were lighted +up, the sea revealed itself to the horizon, and your road lay +straight before you stretching over the hill. I will not +shame myself by apologies that I am no longer young. My +love has remained with me. It is a passion for you, and it +is a reverence for a mind to which it will be a perpetual joy to +submit.”</p> +<p>“God pardon me,” she said after a moment’s +pause, “for having drawn you to this! I did not mean +it. If you knew all you would forgive me. It cannot, +cannot be! Leave me.” He hesitated. +“Leave me, leave me at once!” she cried.</p> +<p>He rose, she took his right hand in both of hers: there was +one look straight into his eyes from her own which were filling +with tears, a half sob, her hands after one more grasp fell, and +he found that he had left the house. He went home. +How strange it is to return to a familiar chamber after a great +event has happened! On his desk lay a volume of +Cicero’s letters. The fire had not been touched and +was almost out: the door leading to the garden was open: the self +of two hours before seemed to confront him. When the tumult +in him began to subside he was struck by the groundlessness of +his double assumption that Mrs. Fairfax was Mrs. Leighton and +that she was free. He had made no inquiry. He had +noticed the wedding-ring, and he had come to some conclusion +about it which was supported by no evidence. Doubtless she +could not be his: her husband was still alive. At last the +hour for which unconsciously he had been waiting had struck, and +his true self, he not having known hitherto what it was, had been +declared. But it was all for nothing. It was as if +some autumn-blooming plant had put forth on a sunny October +morning the flower of the year, and had been instantaneously +blasted and cut down to the root. The plant might revive +next spring, but there could be no revival for him. There +could be nothing now before him but that same dull duty, duty to +the dull, duty without enthusiasm. He had no example for +his consolation. The Bible is the record of heroic +suffering: there is no story there of a martyrdom to monotony and +life-weariness. He was a pious man, but loved prescription +and form: he loved to think of himself as a member of the great +Catholic Church and not as an isolated individual, and he found +more relief in praying the prayers which millions had before him +than in extempore effusion; humbly trusting that what he was +seeking in consecrated petitions was all that he really +needed. “In proportion as your prayers are +peculiar,” he once told his congregation in a course of +sermons on Dissent, “they are worthless.” There +was nothing, though, in the prayer-book which met his case. +He was in no danger from temptation, nor had he trespassed. +He was not in want of his daily bread, and although he desired +like all good men to see the Kingdom of God, the advent of that +celestial kingdom which had for an instant been disclosed to him +was for ever impossible.</p> +<p>The servant announced Mrs. Sweeting, who was asked to come +in.</p> +<p>“Sit down, Mrs. Sweeting. What can I do for +you?”</p> +<p>“Well, sir, perhaps you may remember—and if you +don’t, I do—how you helped my husband in that +dreadful year 1825. I shall never forget that act of yours, +Dr. Midleton, and I’d stick up for you if Mrs. Bingham and +Mrs. Harrop and Mrs. Cobb and Miss Tarrant were to swear against +you and you a-standing in the dock. As for that Miss +Tarrant, there’s that a-rankling in her that makes her +worse than any of them, and if you don’t know what it is, +being too modest, forgive me for saying so, I do.”</p> +<p>“But what’s the matter, Mrs. Sweeting?”</p> +<p>“Matter, sir! Why, I can hardly bring it out, +seeing that I’m only the wife of a tradesman, but one thing +I will say as I ain’t like the serpent in Genesis, +a-crawling about on its belly and spitting poison and biting +people by their heels.”</p> +<p>“You have not yet told me what is wrong.”</p> +<p>“Dr. Midleton, you shall have it, but recollect I come +here as your friend: leastways I hope you’ll forgive me if +I call myself so, for if you were ill and you were to hold up +your finger for me not another soul should come near you night +nor day till you were well again or it had pleased God Almighty +to take you to Himself. Dr. Midleton, there’s a +conspiracy.”</p> +<p>“A what?”</p> +<p>“A conspiracy: that’s right, I believe. You +are acquainted with Mrs. Fairfax. To make a long and a +short of it, they say you are always going there, more than you +ought, leastways unless you mean to marry her, and that +she’s only a dressmaker, and nobody knows where she comes +from, and they ain’t open and free: they won’t come +and tell you themselves; but you’ll be turned out at the +election the day after to-morrow.”</p> +<p>“But what do you say yourself?”</p> +<p>“Me, Dr. Midleton? Why, I’ve spoke up pretty +plainly. I told Mrs. Cobb it would be a good thing if you +were married, provided you wouldn’t be trod upon as some +people’s husbands are, and I was pretty well sure you never +would be, and that you knew a lady when you saw her better than +most folk; and as for her being a dressmaker what’s that +got to do with it?”</p> +<p>“You are too well acquainted with me, Mrs. Sweeting, to +suppose I should condescend to notice this contemptible stuff or +alter my course to please all Langborough. Why did you take +the trouble to report it to me?”</p> +<p>“Because, sir, I wouldn’t for the world you should +think I was mixed up with them; and if my husband doesn’t +vote for you my name isn’t Sweeting.”</p> +<p>“I am much obliged to you. I see your motives: you +are straightforward and I respect you.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Sweeting thanked him and departed. His first +feeling was wrath. Never was there a man less likely to be +cowed. He put on his hat and walked to his committee-room, +where he found Mr. Bingham.</p> +<p>“No doubt, I suppose, Mr. Bingham?”</p> +<p>“Don’t know, Doctor; the Radicals have got a +strong candidate in Jem Casey. Some of our people will +turn, I’m afraid, and split their votes.”</p> +<p>“Split votes! with a fellow like that! How can +there be any splitting between an honest man and a +rascal?”</p> +<p>“There shouldn’t be, sir, but—” Mr. +Bingham hesitated—“I suppose there may be personal +considerations.”</p> +<p>“Personal considerations! what do you mean? Let us +have no more of these Langborough tricks. Out with it, +Bingham! Who are the persons and what are the +considerations?”</p> +<p>“I really can’t say, Doctor, but perhaps you may +not be as popular as you were. You’ve—” +but Mr. Bingham’s strength again completely failed him, and +he took a sudden turn—“You’ve taken a decided +line lately at several of our meetings.”</p> +<p>The Doctor looked steadily at Mr. Bingham, who felt that every +corner of his pitiful soul was visible.</p> +<p>“The line I have taken you have generally +supported. That is not what you mean. If I am +defeated I shall be defeated by equivocating cowardice, and I +shall consider myself honoured.”</p> +<p>The Doctor strode out of the room. He knew now that he +was the common property of the town, and that every tongue was +wagging about him and a woman, but he was defiant. The next +morning he saw painted in white paint on his own wall—</p> +<blockquote><p>“My dearly beloved, for all you’re so +bold, <br /> +To-morrow you’ll find you’re left out in the cold;<br +/> +And, Doctor, the reason you need not to ax,<br /> +It’s because of a dressmaker—Mrs. +F—fax.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>He was going out just as the gardener was about to obliterate +the inscription.</p> +<p>“Leave it, Robert, leave it; let the filthy scoundrels +perpetuate their own disgrace.”</p> +<p>The result of the election was curious. Two of the +Church candidates were returned at the top of the poll. Jem +Casey came next. Dr. Midleton and the other two Radical and +Dissenting candidates were defeated. There were between +seventy and eighty plumpers for the two successful Churchmen, and +about five-and-twenty split votes for them and Casey, who had +distinguished himself by his coarse attacks on the Doctor. +Mr. Bingham had a bad cold, and did not vote. On the +following Sunday the church was fuller than usual. The +Doctor preached on behalf of the Society for the Propagation of +the Gospel. He did not allude directly to any of the events +of the preceding week, but at the close of his sermon he +said—“It has been frequently objected that we ought +not to spend money on missions to the heathen abroad as there is +such a field of labour at home. The answer to that +objection is that there is more hope of the heathen than of many +of our countrymen. This has been a nominally Christian land +for centuries, but even now many deadly sins are not considered +sinful, and it is an easier task to save the savage than to +convince those, for example, whose tongue, to use the words of +the apostle, is set on fire of hell, that they are in danger of +damnation. I hope, therefore, my brethren, that you will +give liberally.”</p> +<p>On Monday Langborough was amazed to find Mrs. Fairfax’s +shop closed. She had left the town. She had taken a +post-chaise on Saturday and had met the up-mail at Thaxton +cross-roads. Her scanty furniture had disappeared. +The carrier could but inform Langborough that he had orders to +deliver her goods at Great Ormond Street whence he brought +them. Mrs. Bingham went to London shortly afterwards and +called at Great Ormond Street to inquire for Mrs. Fairfax. +Nobody of that name lived there, and the door was somewhat +abruptly shut in her face. She came back convinced that +Mrs. Fairfax was what Mrs. Cobb called “a bad +lot.”</p> +<p>“Do you believe,” said she, “that a woman +who gives a false name can be respectable? We want no +further proof.”</p> +<p>Nobody wanted further proof. No Langborough lady needed +any proof if a reputation was to be blasted.</p> +<p>“It’s an <i>alibi</i>,” said Mrs. +Harrop. “That’s what Tom Cranch the poacher +did, and he was hung.”</p> +<p>“An <i>alias</i>, I believe, is the correct term,” +said Miss Tarrant. “It means the assumption of a name +which is not your own, a most discreditable device, one to which +actresses and women to whose occupation I can only allude, +uniformly resort. How thankful we ought to be that our +respected Rector’s eyes must now be opened and that he has +escaped the snare! It was impossible that he could be +permanently attracted by vice and vulgarity. It is singular +how much more acute a woman’s perception often is than a +man’s. I saw through this creature at +once.”</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p>Eighteen months passed. The doctor one day was unpacking +a book he had bought at Peterborough. Inside the brown +paper was a copy of the <i>Stamford Mercury</i>, a journal which +had a wide circulation in the Midlands. He generally read +it, but he must have omitted to see this number. His eye +fell on the following announcement—“On the 24th June +last, Richard Leighton, aged 44 years.” The notice +was late, for the date of the paper was the 18th November. +The next afternoon he was in London. He had been to Great +Ormond Street before and had inquired for Mrs. Fairfax, but could +find no trace of her. He now called again.</p> +<p>“You will remember,” he said, “my inquiry +about Mrs. Fairfax: can you tell me anything about Mrs. +Leighton?” He put his hand in his pocket and pulled +out five shillings.</p> +<p>“She isn’t here: she went away when her husband +died.”</p> +<p>“He died abroad?”</p> +<p>“Yes.”</p> +<p>“Where has she gone?”</p> +<p>“Don’t know quite: her friends wouldn’t have +anything to do with her. She said she was going to +Plymouth. She had heard of something in the dressmaking +line there.”</p> +<p>He handed over his five shillings, procured a substitute for +next Sunday, and went to Plymouth. He wandered through the +streets but could see no dressmaker’s shop which looked as +if it had recently changed hands. He walked backwards and +forwards on the Hoe in the evening: the Eddystone light glimmered +far away on the horizon; and the dim hope arose in him that it +might be a prophecy of success, but his hope was vain. It +came into his mind that it was not likely that she would be there +after dusk, and he remembered her preference for early +exercise. The first morning was a failure, but on the +second—it was sunny and warm—he saw her sitting on a +bench facing the sea. He went up unobserved and sat +down. She did not turn towards him till he said “Mrs. +Leighton!” She started and recognised him. +Little was spoken as they walked home to her lodgings, a small +private house. On her way she called at a large shop where +she was employed and obtained leave of absence until after +dinner.</p> +<p>“At last!” said the doctor when the door was +shut.</p> +<p>She stood gazing in silence at the dull red cinder of the +dying fire.</p> +<p>“You put the advertisement in the <i>Stamford +Mercury</i>?” he said.</p> +<p>“Yes.”</p> +<p>“I did not see it until a day or two ago.”</p> +<p>“I had better tell you at once. My husband, whom +you knew, was convicted of forgery, and died at Botany +Bay.” Her eyes still watched the red cinders.</p> +<p>The Doctor’s countenance showed no surprise, for no news +could have had any power over the emotion which mastered +him. The long, slow years were fulfilled. Long and +slow and the fulfilment late, but the joy it brought was the +greater. Youthful passion is sweet, but it is not sweeter +than the discovery when we begin to count the years which are +left to us, and to fear there will be nothing in them better than +in those which preceded them that for us also love is +reserved.</p> +<p>Mrs. Leighton was obliged to go back to her work in the +afternoon, but she gave notice that night to leave in a week.</p> +<p>In a couple of months Langborough was astounded at the news of +the Rector’s marriage with a Mrs. Leighton whom nobody in +Langborough knew. The advertisement in the <i>Stamford +Mercury</i> said that the lady was the widow of Richard Leighton, +Esq., and eldest daughter of the late Marmaduke Sutton, +Esq. Langborough spared no pains to discover who she +was. Mrs. Bingham found out that the Suttons were a +Devonshire family, and she ascertained from an Exeter friend that +Mr. Marmaduke Sutton was the son of an Honourable, and that Mrs. +Leighton was consequently a high-born lady. She had married +as her first husband a man who had done well at Cambridge, but +who took to gambling and drink, and treated her with such +brutality that they separated. At last he forged a +signature and was transported. What became of his wife +afterwards was not known. Langborough was not only greatly +moved by this intelligence, but was much perplexed. Miss +Tarrant’s estimate of the Doctor was once more +reversed. She was decidedly of opinion that the marriage +was a scandal. A woman who had consented to link herself +with such a reprobate as the convict must have been from the +beginning could not herself have possessed any reputation. +Living apart, too, was next door to divorce, and who could +associate with a creature who had been divorced? No doubt +she was physically seductive, and the doctor had fallen a victim +to her snares. Miss Tarrant, if she had not known so well +what men are, would never have dreamed that Dr. Midleton, a +scholar and a divine, could surrender to corporeal +attractions. She declared that she could no longer expect +any profit from his ministrations, and that she should leave the +parish. Miss Tarrant’s friends, however, did not go +quite so far, and Mrs. Harrop confessed to Mrs. Cobb that +“she for one wouldn’t lay it down like Medes and +Persians, that we should have nothing to do with a woman because +her husband had made a fool of himself. I’m not a +Mede nor a Persian, Mrs. Cobb. I say let us wait and see +what she is like.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Bingham was of the same mind. She dwelt much to +herself on the fact that Mrs. Midleton’s great-grandfather +must have been a lord. She secretly hoped that as a wine +merchant’s wife she might obtain admission into a +“sphere,” as she called it, from which the other +ladies in the town might be excluded. Mrs. Bingham already +foretasted the bliss of an invitation to the rectory to meet Lady +Caroline from Thaxton Manor; she already foretasted the greater +bliss of not meeting her intimate friends there, and that most +exquisite conceivable bliss of telling them afterwards all about +the party.</p> +<p>Mrs. Midleton and her husband returned on a Saturday +afternoon. The road from Thaxton cross-roads did not lie +through the town: the carriage was closed and nobody saw +her. When they came to the rectory the Doctor pointed to +the verse in white paint on the wall, “It shall be taken +out,” he said, “before to-morrow morning: to-morrow +is Sunday.” He was expected to preach on that day and +the church was crammed a quarter of an hour before the service +began. At five minutes to eleven a lady and child entered +and walked to the rector’s pew. The congregation was +stupefied with amazement. Mouths were agape, a hum of +exclamations arose, and people on the further side of the church +stood up.</p> +<p>It was Mrs. Fairfax! Nobody had conjectured that she and +Mrs. Leighton were the same person. It was unimaginable +that a dressmaker should have had near ancestors in the +peerage. It was more than a year and a half since she left +the town. Mrs. Carter was able to say that not a single +letter had been addressed to her, and she was almost +forgotten.</p> +<p>A few days afterwards Mrs. Sweeting had a little note +requesting her to take tea with the Rector and his wife. +Nobody was asked to meet her. Mrs. Bingham had called the +day before, and had been extremely apologetic.</p> +<p>“I am afraid, Mrs. Midleton, you must have thought me +sometimes very rude to you.”</p> +<p>To which Mrs. Midleton replied graciously, “I am sure if +you had been it would have been quite excusable.”</p> +<p>“Extremely kind of you to say so, Mrs. +Midleton.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Cobb also called. “I’ll just let her +see,” said Mrs. Cobb to herself; and she put on a gown +which Mrs. Midleton as Mrs. Fairfax had made for her.</p> +<p>“You’ll remember this gown, Mrs. +Midleton?”</p> +<p>“Perfectly well. It is not quite a fit on the +shoulders. If you will let me have it back again it will +give me great pleasure to alter it for you.”</p> +<p>By degrees, however, Mrs. Midleton came to be loved by many +people in Langborough. Mr. Sweeting not long afterwards +died in debt, and Mrs. Sweeting, the old housekeeper being also +dead, was taken into the rectory as her successor, and became +Mrs. Midleton’s trusted friend.</p> +<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2> +<p><a name="footnote10"></a><a href="#citation10" +class="footnote">[10]</a> Since 1868 the +<i>Reminiscences</i> and his <i>Life</i> have been published +which put this estimate of him beyond all doubt. It is much +to be regretted that a certain theory, a certain irresistible +tendency to arrange facts so as to prove preconceived notions, a +tendency more dangerous and unhistorical even than direct +suppression of the truth or invention of what is not true, should +have ruined Carlyle’s biography. Professor +Norton’s edition of the <i>Reminiscences</i> should be +compared with Mr. Froude’s.</p> +<p><a name="footnote34a"></a><a href="#citation34a" +class="footnote">[34a]</a> <i>Ethic</i> pt. 1, def. 3.</p> +<p><a name="footnote34b"></a><a href="#citation34b" +class="footnote">[34b]</a> Ibid., pt. 1, def. 6.</p> +<p><a name="footnote34c"></a><a href="#citation34c" +class="footnote">[34c]</a> Ibid., pt. 1, prop. 11.</p> +<p><a name="footnote36"></a><a href="#citation36" +class="footnote">[36]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 2, prop. +47.</p> +<p><a name="footnote37a"></a><a href="#citation37a" +class="footnote">[37a]</a> Letter 56 (Van Vloten and +Land’s ed.).</p> +<p><a name="footnote37b"></a><a href="#citation37b" +class="footnote">[37b]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 1, coroll. +prop. 25.</p> +<p><a name="footnote37c"></a><a href="#citation37c" +class="footnote">[37c]</a> Ibid., pt. 5, prop. 24.</p> +<p><a name="footnote37d"></a><a href="#citation37d" +class="footnote">[37d]</a> Ibid., pt. 1, schol. to prop. +17.</p> +<p><a name="footnote38"></a><a href="#citation38" +class="footnote">[38]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 1, schol. to +prop. 17.</p> +<p><a name="footnote39"></a><a href="#citation39" +class="footnote">[39]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 2, prop. +13.</p> +<p><a name="footnote40a"></a><a href="#citation40a" +class="footnote">[40a]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 1, coroll. 1, +prop. 32.</p> +<p><a name="footnote40b"></a><a href="#citation40b" +class="footnote">[40b]</a> Ibid., pt. 1, prop. 33.</p> +<p><a name="footnote40c"></a><a href="#citation40c" +class="footnote">[40c]</a> Letter 56</p> +<p><a name="footnote41a"></a><a href="#citation41a" +class="footnote">[41a]</a> Letter 21.</p> +<p><a name="footnote41b"></a><a href="#citation41b" +class="footnote">[41b]</a> Letter 58.</p> +<p><a name="footnote42a"></a><a href="#citation42a" +class="footnote">[42a]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 2, schol. +prop. 49.</p> +<p><a name="footnote42b"></a><a href="#citation42b" +class="footnote">[42b]</a> Ibid., pt. 4, coroll. prop. +63.</p> +<p><a name="footnote43a"></a><a href="#citation43a" +class="footnote">[43a]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 5, or pp. +42.</p> +<p><a name="footnote43b"></a><a href="#citation43b" +class="footnote">[43b]</a> “Agis being asked on a +time how a man might continue free all his life; he answered, +‘By despising death.’” (Plutarch’s +“Morals.” Laconic Apophthegms.)</p> +<p><a name="footnote43c"></a><a href="#citation43c" +class="footnote">[43c]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 5, schol. +prop. 4.</p> +<p><a name="footnote44a"></a><a href="#citation44a" +class="footnote">[44a]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 4, coroll. +prop. 64.</p> +<p><a name="footnote44b"></a><a href="#citation44b" +class="footnote">[44b]</a> Ibid., pt. 4, schol. prop. +66.</p> +<p><a name="footnote44c"></a><a href="#citation44c" +class="footnote">[44c]</a> Ibid., pt. 4, schol. prop. +50.</p> +<p><a name="footnote45a"></a><a href="#citation45a" +class="footnote">[45a]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 4, prop. 46 +and schol.</p> +<p><a name="footnote45b"></a><a href="#citation45b" +class="footnote">[45b]</a> Ibid., pt. 3, schol. prop. +11.</p> +<p><a name="footnote46"></a><a href="#citation46" +class="footnote">[46]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 4, schol. prop. +45.</p> +<p><a name="footnote47"></a><a href="#citation47" +class="footnote">[47]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 5, props. +14–20.</p> +<p><a name="footnote50"></a><a href="#citation50" +class="footnote">[50]</a> <i>Short Treatise</i>, pt. 2, +chap. 22.</p> +<p><a name="footnote52"></a><a href="#citation52" +class="footnote">[52]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 1, +Appendix.</p> +<p><a name="footnote54"></a><a href="#citation54" +class="footnote">[54]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 2, schol. 2, +prop. 40.</p> +<p><a name="footnote55a"></a><a href="#citation55a" +class="footnote">[55a]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 5, coroll. +prop. 34.</p> +<p><a name="footnote55b"></a><a href="#citation55b" +class="footnote">[55b]</a> Ibid., pt. 5, prop. 36.</p> +<p><a name="footnote55c"></a><a href="#citation55c" +class="footnote">[55c]</a> Ibid., pt. 5, prop. 36, +coroll.</p> +<p><a name="footnote56a"></a><a href="#citation56a" +class="footnote">[56a]</a> <i>Ethic</i>, pt. 5, prop. +38.</p> +<p><a name="footnote56b"></a><a href="#citation56b" +class="footnote">[56b]</a> <i>Short Treatise</i>, pt. 2, +chap. 23.</p> +<p><a name="footnote57a"></a><a href="#citation57a" +class="footnote">[57a]</a> Aristotle’s +<i>Psychology</i> (Wallace’s translation), p. 161.</p> +<p><a name="footnote57b"></a><a href="#citation57b" +class="footnote">[57b]</a> Rabelais, <i>Pantagruel</i>, +book 4, chap. 27.</p> +<p><a name="footnote101"></a><a href="#citation101" +class="footnote">[101]</a> Hazlitt.</p> +<p><a name="footnote103"></a><a href="#citation103" +class="footnote">[103]</a> Italics mine.—M. R.</p> +<p><a name="footnote104a"></a><a href="#citation104a" +class="footnote">[104a]</a> Italics mine.—M. R.</p> +<p><a name="footnote104b"></a><a href="#citation104b" +class="footnote">[104b]</a> Italics mine.—M. R.</p> +<p><a name="footnote133"></a><a href="#citation133" +class="footnote">[133]</a> <i>Poetry of Byron chosen and +arranged by Matthew Arnold</i>—1881.</p> +<p><a name="footnote143"></a><a href="#citation143" +class="footnote">[143]</a> “<i>Adah</i>.—Peace +be with him (Abel).</p> +<p><i>Cain</i>.—But with <i>me</i>!”</p> +<p><a name="footnote180"></a><a href="#citation180" +class="footnote">[180]</a> My aunt Eleanor was thought to +be a bit of a pagan by the evangelical part of our family. +My mother when speaking of her to me used to say, “Your +heathen aunt.” She was well-educated, but the better +part of her education she received abroad after her engagement, +which took place when she was eighteen years old. She was +the only member of our family in the upper middle class. +Her husband was Thomas Charteris, junior partner in a bank.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAGES FROM A JOURNAL***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 7053-h.htm or 7053-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/7/0/5/7053 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. 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